the first amoeba took a lot of my scientific learning co. money when i worked in berkeley. i was 23, had a decent salary, and had never seen a record store like amoeba in my life. a few years later they put one in the haight in san francisco. that one took even more of my money. then i moved to l.a. just in time for them to open a mecca-esque amoeba superstore. course when i lived in l.a. i had no money. perhaps there’s a baton rouge branch in the near future?

with the day to myself and christian’s car, amoeba came calling.

i foolishly put an hours worth of time in the meter thinking i wouldn’t be long. i quickly fell into that amoeba trance and lost track of time and space. suddenly i snapped out of it and realized i’d been browsing for about an hour and fifteen minutes and was only in the m’s. i had some chick hold my records and sprinted outside, this time cleaning out christian’s change compartment and loading up with two + hours.

then there’s the sad moment when you realize you’re holding two thousand dollars worth of music and only have forty to spend. this time i had to part with a gil scott heron record, yo la tengo’s ‘i can hear the heart beating as one,’ a new record by giant sand, de la soul’s ’stakes is high,’ gbv’s ‘propeller’ and ‘under the bushes, under the stars’ (i actually can’t believe i left that one behind) and several others. hurts to much to go on …

the final haul was a pristine version of van halen’s ‘fair warning’ for $6, the silver jews ‘the natural bridge,’ cedric burnside and lightnin’ malcom’s ‘two man recking crew’ and a t-shirt.

an admirable show of restraint, i think …

in addition to being delicious, it possesses magical powers. these people all know it, too.

you see, this woman and i …

can … fight.

i mean really fight.

not physically fighting or anything. she could surely kick my ass, so i never started any shit like that. i’m talking about good old crazy couples fighting. we fought at a gillian welch concert. we fought while camping in sequoia national forest. we fought while camping at the kern river. we fought at parties. and weddings. at pizza huts and taco stands. we fought at amusement parks and in yoga studios. we fought at pismo beach. we fought in san francisco, los osos, and illinois. we fought before sex and after sex, and during sex a few times, too. we fought on halloween and on christmas. valentines day? forget it. we fought on thanksgiving and on new years day. we fought all the fucking time. but never once at musha. actually, if we could have spent our entire relationship within the walls of musha, you’d be looking at a family of 18 right now. magical fucking powers …

musha green salad. in baton rouge, they’d cover this baby in bacon and ranch.

oh, dear god … spicy tuna dip. this … {sigh} … this thing is my favorite thing. i like music and girls and dogs and spicy tuna dip. last supper kinda shit. dear god …

shu mi. means something like dumpling scallops. this is the dingus’ favorite.

musha fried chicken. smothered in various radishes, lemon juice …

char han. some kind of fried rice. always comes last, no matter when you order it. one of life’s mysteries. worth the wait.

cold duck ponzu. those are fresh peppercorns, baby.

the remains of the green tea sundae (i had had some sake by this point and forgot about the photo shoot).

wilshire @ fifth if you’re ever in santa monica.

through these hills …

with …

and …

and …

we are in search of this buffalo …

and when we find it, we will take it – a.l.i.v.e. – to this man …

who lives here …

who promises us a rich bounty of love potion brewed by this woman …

which we will drink of heartily, screwing into the night, until we succumb to lullabies sung by these men …

if at any point on our journey, we encounter el bandito …

and he is angry …

he might lock us up in here …

or might even enlist this woman …

to use her powers to turn us into …

which is obviously a dancing tree.

so please wish us well!

we mean you no harm!

we believe in peace!

and love!

and some other stuff …

and we only want back what the white man stole from us!

what is rightfully ours!

o!

go!

god!

good!

speed!

damn near unconscious.

but they do have number 6:

number 6 comes from here:

number 6 is brought to life by the hands and heart of this woman:

she makes every single number 6 (and all the other numbers) one. at. a. time. she is very beautiful. i told her so, and she responded in a way that was modest, yet still subtly revealed that she is often told how beautiful she is.

quite a woman …

if i lived in los osos, the locals would know me as number 6, and i would spend my days raising chickens and playing washers in the backyard and brewing my own beer and starting fires and drinking on the roof and playing mandolin and christopher sine would be my neighbor and it would all look something like this:

post malibu fish and (scallops) and chips (decent celebrity citing of anthony kiedis in a new black tesla roadster) …

i was about to (finally) sleep a spell under this umbrella …

when i heard a dolphin cry.

when a dolphin cries it’s kind of like when doves cry, but a little less sad.

watch closely … there’s dolphinos in those waves.

course i missed all the real good shit with the camera, but this was a full blown dolphino festival. fifty or so. feeding. riding the waves. tail flipping. jumping. they were only about thirty feet off the shore. right in the breakers.

coulda shoulda woulda stripped down and joined them.

you sure don’t get dolphinos in the b.r.

and you don’t realize how much you miss dolphinos until you see for yourself with your own eyes some god damn dolphinos.

the trip was actually pretty pleasant. for only the second time in my life i drew the plane ticket next to the hot chick. the first time was in new zealand, flying from auckland to fiji. i can’t remember her name, but she was british, had just broken up with her boyfriend, and was going to the same remote island i was going to. sorted. yesterday, jenna was going to san luis as well, so we had the flight, the layover, and the second flight to hang out. she designs airplanes for the military that can transform themselves into helicopters in mid air. so as an engineer, then, she was pretty socially awkward. but very sincere and sweet. while laying over in lax, we sat looking through a cooking magazine. about half way through it, she found an article about a friend of hers who invented a cupcake with a french toast cake and white frosting sprinkled with bacon. she said, ‘hey, i know that girl!’ i said, ’shit, i want to marry that girl, she put bacon on a cupcake.’ we laughed and wondered how strange it was to randomly see someone you know in a cooking magazine. a few pages later, i see a picture of a guy sitting in an oscar meyer weiner mobile. i take a long look at him and go, ‘hey! i know that guy!’ turns out he passed through baton rouge a few months ago and ended up at a bar downtown where there was an lsu poetry reading. he quickly became the most popular guy in the room because, you know, he drove the fucking weiner mobile.

strange coincidences …

and then there was california.