If you’ve been to Harvard Square in the past two years you know who I’m talking about. He’s the asian guy who saws manaically at his bowed, one-stringed instrument (which I don’t know the name of; probably one of these) while staring off crazily into the distance.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He’s simply a virtuoso whose art simply sounds cacophonous to my untrained Western ears. But the more I saw him there, with his Kleenex box for donations, I came to a hypothesis that, no, he’s just some crazy guy sawing manaically at his one-stringed instrument.

The hypothesis was more or less confirmed during our recent trip to San Francisco where we saw probably a half dozen guys playing similar instruments on various Chinatown street corners. When they played, it sounded, you know, like music.

The thing I don’t get is that the guy in Harvard Square doesn’t seem to be displaying one of those Cambridge street artist licenses that all the other buskers in the square have. What’s up with that?

The other thing that drives me bonkers: he seems to be  always there, right in front of the Coop. Even those damnable Andean pan flute bands seem to sleep sometimes.

Say it ain’t so! No more Trupiano?

Contrary to what The Onion says, Pittsburgh has been overdue for its first zombie attack.

(For those who haven’t seen this, similar public zombie spectacles originated in San Francisco and spread to Vancouver, Madison, Toronto, New Orleans and here in Somerville/Cambridge (where anti-zombie protesters held signs saying, brilliantly, “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Gggblaaaagh“)).

While some of these cities may have a greater tradition of public spectacle, none can match Pittsburgh for its rich zombie history (except for New Orleans, which handily beats all comers in both categories). The modern conception of the zombie was born there, in fact, when George Romero, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate, filmed Night of the Living Dead in Western Pennsylvania with a crew and production facilities based in Pittsburgh. Night of the Living Dead, both the 1968 and 1990 versions, also featured WPXI fixture “Chilly Billy” Cardille, most famous for hosting Chiller Theater, a local horror show in the 60’s (and into the 70’s?). (By the time my childhood rolled around, he was hosting (I’m not kidding) a 7pm televised bingo show.)

Bringing things full circle, the walk was organized by It’s Alive, a Pittsburgh television show which has taken on Chiller Theater’s late-night horror movie mantle. This, according to my cousin (and frequent RFB commenter) Margaret, whom you see in Zombie form pictured above. It’s actually her flickr photos that tipped me off to the event.

As if to punctuate the end of a horrible Red Sox season, the Hood blimp crashed.

We decided over breakfast this morning: Dubloons and Ezros. Minting and printing to commence.

Also, money-related, for those with whom were we were talking the other night about J.S. Boggs, I sort of now remember why I interviewed him when I worked at In Pittsburgh in the early 90’s. It was something about the closing of some South Side landmark, maybe the Channel 4 clock? This reminded me that he helped save the Brew House.

It’s getting to the point where I should have a Pittsburgh category.

I would have just stuck this brief Time interview in my del.icio.us daily links (feed) but I noticed that it mentions that he just finished a film project which is based on a Mircea Eliade story, and thought Steve might care (if he indeed still reads this).

Looks like a site is up. I’m really glad that it’s going to be animated.

Just more proof that Union Square is becoming Where It’s At in Somerville. Science, music, burlesque; what more could you want?

Item. Mountain Goats, at the Warhol Museum, this wednesday, September 20. Go!

Item. We had dinner at The Stinking Rose, an all-garlic restaurant here in San Francisco that Summervillain always talks about, and right next door was this place called “Giordano Bros.” who advertised the Steelers game at 5:30 (that’s when they play Monday Night Football here on the west coast, god love ‘em) as well as All-In-One Sandwiches. Pittsburghers will know that they’re copying the Primanti Brothers, who serve their sandwiches with the fries and slaw on the sandwich.

You know, you just get off from a double shift in the mill, you’re hungry, you don’t have time to screw around with side dishes.

Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds.

We took a jog the other morning along the waterfront from our motel toward Fort Mason. It was a beautiful, 65-degree, sunny San Francisco day. We stopped at the Safeway on the way back and bought some bottles of water and cereal. The marina district has a very slight seamy side (I’m thinking of some sketchy $39/night motels on Lombard), but mostly seems full of really posh, Architectural Digest-quality townhouses as you get closer to the water. We walked back down Chesnut street, where the occasional keepin-it-real taqueria is sandwiched between Williams Sonoma and a coffee shop (out of which is inevitably walking a woman in sunglasses and running shorts, carrying a latte like a torch).

Behind us was a mother and daughter, maybe 5.

“Mom, I want a manicure and pedicure”.

“Oh, I don’t know”

“Pleeeeease?!”

“I don’t think we have enough time before you have to get to school.”

Pause. Mom says nothing.

“Mom, please check what time it is.”

“Oh, ok, we do have enough time.”

“Yippeeeeeee!”

We’ve taken it pretty easy this vacation, opting not for the “Oh, my god, we’re never coming back here, so we must see everything!!!” mania that drives us to every park, museum, shop, cemetery, library, pedestrian street, festival, and parade in whatever place we’re visiting. I exaggerate, and I have deeply enjoyed prior vacations, but I think we needed a more low-key, recharging type vacation this time. California in general and San Francisco in particular seems like somewhere where we very well may return in the future, so we haven’t been packing it in too hard.

(You know, maybe we should; I guess it’s not impossible that a bald madman will purchase a lot of real estate along the San Andreas fault and then send some nukes into the fault so that all of the current coastaline will drop off into the ocean, which, as a child, is what I assumed would happen someday, after watching the original Superman. The plan seemed so obvious to me then that I figured it was only a matter of time before someone just carried it out.)

Anyway, we have done a fair bit of seeing of sights and acquiring of things on our trip. Here are some things I’m very happy with.

• A $0.50 paper accordion in Chinatown that actually plays two notes (but unfortunately can’t be controlled really)
• Several interesting zines and indie publications, most notably, Ker-Bloom, which I found on the indie shelves at City Lights, and whose author, I coincidentally noticed had done them at the SFCB where we saw the steamroller prints being made the other day.
• A corduroy jacket at Jetrag vintage clothes in LA.
• A book of some crazy Sun Ra pamphlets, also from City Lights.
• The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas by Davy Rothbart, from Skylight Books where we went with Patricia in LA.
• Various items from various spots in SF, which we were directed to by Matt Shaw in the excellent recommendation list he made us.

If not, now’s the time. I love Cat and Girl.

Like, not having hot water in our cute inexpensive motel for the second day running.

Like, falling down like a dope after tripping over a curb, breaking the lens on your camera, the second camera to bite the dust in the last 12 months.

Like, running out of clean socks.

That said, life’s still pretty good.

There so much good stuff to write about, I don’t even know where to begin.

Let’s start with the obvious. First, I get to be married to the most wonderful person in the world, and have been so for five years yesterday. Happy Anniversary, to her turniptude, the dubstress, T-Dubarino, Teresita!

Second, happy first birthday to Hope, one of the two best nieces a guy could have.

And then the assorted great stuff we’ve done today. We rode the bus to Flax in the morning. After lunch, we went to a really nifty street fair at the San Francisco Center for the Book. In addition to seeing a lot of book artists and letterpress printers selling really cool work, there were a bunch of people making these huge prints by inking linoleum cuts and running them over with a steamroller. I will almost certainly write more about this on the Rainy Planet Press Blog soon. After that, we walked to the Mission district and nearly drown in the hipsterdom of it all.  I enjoy stopping in at 826 Valencia and some of crafty shops. A lot of the shops on Valencia Street felt a lot like Magpie, but amped up and stretched across a bunch of shops stretching for five or six blocks. Just to keep it real and remind you that the Mission isn’t completely totally gentrified yet, we saw a (possibly homeless) guy unconscious on the street, two police officers bringing a guy in handcuffs back to the scene, with some witnesses saying “yeah, that’s him; he kept kicking him in the stomach”.

And then we had another fabulous dinner at an Italian place not so far from our cute motel.
And yet, despite it all, travel fatigue has officially set in. I’m getting to the point where I am really missing the cats, and just feel like sitting at home all day.

Greetings from the west coast. I have a large backlog of posts that will have to wait until tomorrow, but I thought I’d revel in the free ubiquitous San Francisco wi-fi by saying ‘hello’.

It was harder to find in LA, to be sure, but also, to be fair, we didn’t really try that hard. Nice to be offline once in a while. The B&B we stayed at in Cambria, CA last night didn’t even have cell phone coverage, which was actually awesome.

Have some photos to tide yerselves over.