A Travelogue Part Deux

So, I spent the day in Berkeley yesterday, so the only thing to do about it, obviously, is to write another travelogue about it. And here we...go.

Austin picks me up, Bela's in the car. I bring along a box of chocolates and we head off to pick up Dolan. After doing so, we drive over to a liquor store to procure an item of sensitive nature. And from there, after comparing a certain flavor of gum to my feces, we headed to the BART station. After getting all the ticket bullshit sorted out, we get on the train, and play Six Degrees of Separation, which is a fucking hard game. I had a really good one, but Robert Rodriguez just had to make From Dusk till Dawn. This weird black lady makes fun of me for holding onto the box of chocolates, claiming that it will have already melted by the time it's opened. So we opened it and are greeted with gloop and liqueur. So after we promptly ravage it and trash it once we reach Berkeley, with Dolan spitting some of it back up, disgustingly. It looked like smeared shit all over the clean, white nutrition facts.

Anyway, we arrive in Berkeley and Bela decides we'll meet up with her sister later. We walk around Starbucks and some pizza place before we go into the campus. We take our own tour of campus, avoiding the heat by dodging into the shade. We go by a few impressive and imposing buildings (Biology building is fucking huge). I figure I better get used to the feeling of being a smaller cog in a greater machine, otherwise I'm going to hate college. But the walk was fun. After that, we hit up another Starbucks where I futilely try to use Bela's BlackBerry to check the score of the Giants/Patriots grudge match. (Pats lost, fuck yes). Anyhow, Bela's sister, Luba, meets up with us in Starbucks and starts talking about Cal, how, when you're at a public institution, there's a veil of anonymity between you and everyone else, how the admissions process works, the sometimes utter stupidity of students (For an essay exam, a student emailed her asking whether or not they needed a Scantron. For fuck's sake). It was pretty enlightening, much more informative than what that admissions officer said to us the summer previous.

She said my friends should act out my play too. As if anyone would want to be in that production. >_<

So shortly after that, we walk towards Telegraph, a huge busy street full of shops and restaurants and shit. We go to this store called "The T-Shirt Orgy," which has some really cool stuff, but I decide against buying something. Missed opportunity, because that shirt was off the hook. And so was this "Ace of Spades" shirt I saw on a rack. Oh well.

We walk down to a four-floor bookstore which shocks me. I browsed the basement and the second floor, found Choke by Chuck Palahniuk and Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. After I bought Lolita, I swore on my life not buy another book. But I fucking caved and spent 18 bucks on both of them. I'm a weakling.

So at this point, we're all starving balls. We head to "Smart Alec's," a health food joint which is also a damn tasty place to eat. At this point, Lucas comes down, looking very angry. Apparently, he had wanted to go to SF, but we went to Berkeley instead and he had to go home at 9 to go to a party or some shit...I don't fucking know. I do know it was a blight on my meal, the best damn chicken sandwich I ever had that someone else paid for (fucking books!). Anyway, we finish eating and go outside, pondering what to do next that doesn't involve money. As we ponder, Lucas decides to peace out and says quickly "I'm going to Rasputin's." Despite his continuous protests, we clearly see he's pissed as shit. We go to find him in Rasputin's, but he isn't there, having fucked off to Amoeba, another indie music store. So we spend some time browsing the records and CDs, it's really cool. I wish I had a record player, that'd be like the most novel thing ever.

Austin gets a call from his dad, asking him to pick up a copy of "The Kids are Alright," a rockumentary featuring the Who. Amoeba doesn't have it, so we go back to Rasputin's. Turns out they don't have it either, so we just browse the store. Lucas decides to leave without telling anyone, and he's gone. How rude, right? But whatever. Bela picks up a poster and we head back out. The Game was actually signing shit in Rasputin's - I saw a frail Asian man with miscellaneous Game merchandise running excitedly home. I throw some change into a bum's cup, to which he happily replies "God bless you!"

Anyway, we decide to go home, but not after I piss out an aquarium's worth of urine in Starbucks, exacerbated by the fact that you have to fucking buy something before you can use it. Twats. So we go to our train, and begin to wait. And here's where shit gets real. Another bum, covered head to toe in a black shroud thing pushing a shopping cart full with what I assume is shit asks this guy for some cash, to which he politely rebukes her. She mumbles something and walks along, looking at mine and Bela's cellphones. She begins to loudly curse and swear, something about "Fuck you Whitey, five hundred dollars, phones, Fuck you to hell, go to hell, you son of a bitch, I'll stab you and make you bleed over the tracks, fucking whitey, fuck, shit, kill you." She was out of her goddamn mind, so we all just kept ignoring her, to which she responded by swearing louder. I didn't feel threatened or anything, I was just weirded out.

Then we got on BART and went home. Dolan pitched the idea of a screenplay to me, which I finished this morning. Should be interesting to see how that goes.