(no, you may not ask why i have this picture or where i procured
a police riot helmet.)
So i'm getting into the habit of waking up at four in the afternoon, which may stem from my other new habit of staying up till five in the morning. Couple this with autumn days that end before anyone wants, I've really set myself up. I was eating my Grape Nut O's, wondering why I didn't get waken up by my friend just before one in the afternoon who was to be taking me to a play entitled Soup, as I'm always a fan of plays and free plays are a favorite kind. No phone call from her.
One phone call I did receive was from my Amazing High-Speed Internet Access Provider, stating that, from now on, I don't have service, since they are bankrupt. The only reason I got up at all was because of noises coming from out of my room reminded me that people usually get up every day and do something. I glanced at our clock that's set by the Atomic Clock of Boulder, Colorado that's right across the street and it was, indeed a little after four. I was going to go skating in the morning, but I didn't see much of that morning, so I snorted up my Fancifully Shaped Bran O's, got my pads together and headed to the park. It'll be dark in a an hour, which is really going to screw me up, having only that hour of daylight to tell me that yes, in fact, a day did happen. What an easy way to depress yourself.
Skating is one of those things that makes me feel good or, more specifically, makes me NOT feel like a lazy ass that works on a computer all day and is slowly wasting away to nothing. I could never get fat, but I can do a pretty good job of being ghost like with shanty muscles and visible ribs. The rib I cracked this summer, when skating incidentally, looks really sweet. It kind of does this jiggle right before it connects to my breast bone. With my solo pierced right nipple and that odd pimple, the left side of my chest is somewhat smaller than my right. One of those things that only I would notice.
No one was really at the skate park; a few kids, me and that was it. The darker it gets, the smaller the obstacles I try to skate are. Once dusk turns to night, there isn't anything for your eyes to tell you 'this my friend, is a continuous curved surface that reaches an angle of 90 degrees before tapering off and ending with a slightly obtruding steel bar, denoting the end of the physical ramp, which should give you a signal to either turn, do some sort of aerial movement or otherwise change your rotational path - take caution!' Riding a black board, on a 33% gray surface at dusk doesn't give the miracle that is your brain much to go on. You can eat shit real good basically.
I was skating with this other guy, on the smallest of all the ramps. He gave me some advice; he told me to change the angle of my back foot from here:
to here:
And giving me his argument to this earth shattering thesis, i thought "yeah right motherfucker, like I don't know how to skate, only been doing this for 14 years of my life, but I'll try this little 'idea' of yours one time and see how udderly unrehearsed you are in the skateboard world". Back in real life, I shrugged, said OK and dropped in to what was going to be another doomed attempt at a simple trick i've been trying on similar sized ramps since I was 15 like the Big Fish Skate Park in Breckenridge, CO, stealing the Little Debbie snacks while working the pro shop and letting people in for free. Went for the trick, got to the part I always get stuck on and, and... made it. *snap* just like that, just like if I'd been doing it since I was fifteen at the Big Fish, ripe from the hangover I received in Denver and stinking from the cigarettes of goth kids at Paris on the Platte.
I'm a bit more sensitive on where exactly I place my foot now.
Dusk turned definetly into night and with a few people that just got the park, I basically rolled round everywhere you can roll around when no one is in your way and absolutely no one is watching, just burning my legs and telling myself I'm actually physically active. Went home, tried to find some sort of night time fun with friends but couldn't find anyone's number that could have the grace of my company. So i got coffee and read.
Apparently, today was special day at the coffee shop, as there was a seven dollar cover to get in. Hot Shot Musician Night does not mend well with alex Is Poor Always. I sip sipped outside and read Me Talk Good One Day, yet another BGT'M BAG (Book Given to me by a Girl). The odd thing about this book, is it's actually speaking to me, telling me to photo copy every chapter and send these chapters out to various people I know. "Oh man," caffienated and excited me exulted, "I can send this chapter about being the main character teaching an Intro to Creative Writing teacher to my old Intro To Creative Writing teacher - you know, the one whose class I failed, I'm sure she'd love to read something I find tearfully witty sent by her favorite student. Or, or this chapter! This chapter about his 12 failed attempts at being an artist, it's full of conceptual artsy jibber jabber and what it's like to be on Speed. My, my... friend in Sante Fe (of all places) will LOVE it! Yeah! Go me!". I wanted tonight to go to sleep at some 'regular' time, but this wasn't happening, so I went skating again, this time, on campus.
There's this one parking lot on campus that's just made for rolling on a board with 4 wheels. It's the parking lot right outside my first (and last) dorm room, so we were a bit intimate, but still only friends if that makes any sense. Not sure how many other people feel that way about asphalt and concrete. There was a football game this night. Lots of cars in the parking lot, but it was an away game, so people were all packed in their dorm rooms shouting for the mighty home team the... ah, the one that plays for the College. I can't say that I go to football games, at all. It's some stinky animal that's now extinct in Boulder. How fitting.
I met up with a kid named Pete. Pete just moved here from Mass. and was living in his ex-girlfriends dorm room and just got a job at Star Bucks (one of the seven in town) We decided to stop skating and start eating. We walked the campus to "The Hill District" The cool, hip, (crappy) college district kind of place, where there's more tattoo, skate shops and head shops than restaurants. In a way, it's sort of like living in the center of NYC; the rent is high, the rooms are small, the parking isn't existent and if you want to be cool and get your share of the The College Experience, you live On The Hill. I. Never. Want. To live On The Hill.
We approached the underpass that leads to this mythical place and noticed ten police officers with full on riot gear and what looked like paint ball guns. 'Stranger things' I think we both thunked. Stranger things. We wanted a slice of pizza, no funny business
We got up to The Hill and the crowds of college kids, drunk from cheap beer fetched from large kegs, whistling and cheering, flipping over cars and burning light posts, were a many. Important game I guess. I still wanted the slice of pizza. We made a few steps towards the hoopla and were instructed by a very rioted out police officer to turn around. We did and went around all this excitement and went up The Hill another way. Everyone was just kinda looking at the main attraction of lots of kids yelling lots of team pride stuff and police officers not liking this. One pizza place was closed, the other packed, the other one seemed to be under marshal law at the moment, so was opted to play some video games. At the stroke of 12 it was going to be Pete's Twenty First, he had enough money for a beer and then he had to go home. So we wanted to wait for that.
We played video games till the whatever that was going outside seemed more interesting than Tekken 4. Pete doesn't know we have riots on the hill every two years or so. After a bit, we were locked inside by the owner, which is an odd thing to have happen to you. I saw this kid I know, Raf, holding a very expensive camera with hopefully, some memorable shots. He has a Pea coat and I wished I still had my Pea coat to be as hip as he was. I made some sort of arm movement from the other side of the glass, but he didn't seem too concerned about me. I didn't seem too concerned about him, more his jacket.
We got let out and then everyone started running as the police started pelting people with tear gas. Tear gas starts as a mild annoyance and then starts suffocating you, and all you think is that you don't want to be in the area that you're in at the moment. The problem was, we were now in the middle of the two apexes of this little village romp, so we had to get inside for any sort of safety. The Fox was letting people in, but decided they weren't after we got to the doors. Dicks. So we raced to the market across the street who thankfully allowed us in. People inside were sniffing onions to get rid of the affects of the tear gas and we just looked outside at the clouds of teargas and all the people running away and towards it.
We all sort of chatted inside the store, I bought a Sierra Mist and a King Sized package of Resee Peanut Butter Cups and joked to Pete about the situation. We talked about basic things you talk about when stuck inside a market cause the outside air isn't breathable and the police are making the neighborhood a war zone. Everything quieted down at about midnight and i said fair well to Pete as he was getting his beer and I just sort of hung around until more tear gas was set off for No Apparent Reason and I, again had to run somewhere where the gas wasn't. Football better be the coolest fucking sport, if it stops me from getting a slice of pizza.
At least I got to see the police's armored patrol vehicle. It has a cute name that I can't quite remember at the moment. Something like 'Sam'. I don't think Boulder should have an armored police anything. I don't think that's a solution. I'll end my editorial, since I didn't burn anything or destroy someone's property. I did see every single college bloke that i didn't like and soon, they'll be the people driving their fancy cars to work that I'll wave a tired arm as the run over a puddle and splash water on a neurotic painting on the very same subject matter. Oh future, come quick!
I skated home and was happy to be skating again. The entire length of Broadway was being cut off by fire trucks, public transportation vehicles and whatever weighed more than ten tons and could be easily transported onto a main artery of the town. It was quite ridiculous. I got home and order, well a pizza. One large pizza, mushrooms and peppers - $7.47 - money well spent, ready in 10 minutes and just a block away. Oh I love you Martin Acres.
Fetched my pizza. They screwed the order, giving me pepperoni instead of peppers. This wouldn't be big deal, but I don't eat flesh. The pizza maker offered me a soda, an extra large for the same price and 7 minutes to wait for the new pizza to bake. I was game. I wandered around the other side of Base Mar Center, looking to see if mi roommate was working at Kinkos at midnight on a Saturday, more to laugh at him than anything else. He wasn't, but today was also Boycott Taco Bell Day, so i viddyed that.
Not only were they boycotting Taco Bell, they were giving free burritos to anyone in a car that would boycott them as well. What a deal. I hung around all these practicing anarchists, quite the indy crowd and noticed one of the people from a Propaghandi show I went to recently. At that show, he was boycotting The Thanksgiving Day Parade that was going to take place in Denver. This man is the master of stopping things. He's a big boy too. I jived with these hip kids, noticed that they all had black hoodys with things written on them and I had a black hoody with things written on it and felt quite a part of this core group of movers and shakers. A man in a gray Toyota Truck had stopped the take out line at The Bell. We didn't know what was up, but upon further investigation, he seemed to be dead - or at least real drunk. He was honestly doing quite a bit for the strike force I was hanging out with. I looked closer at the man and noticed an eery resemblance to my Libby Hall dorm roommate, Motoko, that would constantly wake me up at odd hours on Saturday asking me to help him stop freaking out from all the fabricated drugs he had been taking that very night. Of all places. Of all nights.
It turned out not to be him, but a random guy that had driven straight to Colorado from Tennessee or something like that and simply, fell asleep in the take out line. I hanged around the Anti- Run For The Border crowd a little while longer, had some vegan cheescake, forgot to ask for the recipe, signed the petition, got some literature and fetched my now extra large pizza that now came to the price of a medium. Oh my. Am I that thin?
After eating the pizza and wasting time, it was again 4:30 in the morning. My goal of going to sleep before two had failed and all my clothes smelled like tear gas. And that pizza? It had peppers but no mushrooms. I couldn't really complain, but I knew how it was, being a veteran of the pizza making business. I put the entire pizza box in the fridge, pinning 6 different kinds of beer in six different kinds of bottles in awkward positions that would all shift if anyone wanted anything from the fridge and thought that when I got up, the entire kitchen would smell like hops, or, I'd have the rest of the pizza for my 4:00 pm breakfast the next day.
