Posted 9:48 AM by Blah blah

SF MOMA. True Body Wraps with Sara. Dinner with Chris. Shakespeare with Cheshire Dave.

Had a great time Sunday. Sara, one of Christine's friends, recently opened her body wrap/spa/massage place in San Francisco, called True Body Wraps. She and David also just had a baby girl Andrea a few months ago! She invited me and her friends to a little open house party for the spa and to meet her baby.

That morning, I went with a friend, Cindy, to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The museum was showing the last day of a huge exhibition by Yoko Ono (wife of John Lennon). Call me a barbarian, but Yoko is way too pretentious for me.*Gag* I've tried to appreciate modern art. For instance, I like Salvador Dali and this guy whose funny paintings hang in the LA County Museum of Art. I prefer modern artists who show traditional artistic (i.e. drawing, sculpture, etc.) skills but may twist things around to make an effect. An example of lousy art: one of Yoko's short films, "The Fly," shows a fly buzzing and walking over the body of a naked woman. The fly was "directed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono." The woman never moved or spoke. They put in these buzzing, squealing sound effects to mimic the insect.

Modern "artistes" are the only people smart enough to do the impossible. They know how to make a naked woman look boring. While the fly went bzzzz, I went zzzzzz.

Here are some examples of Yoko's art. They show her role in "transforming works that were originally light and transparent into bronze, symbolizing a shift from what she calls 'the sixties sky' to the new 'age of commodity and solidity.' "

1. A transparent little maze (made from Plexiglass?) stands in the room. You must take off your shoes and walk through it, one person at a time. In the middle you find...a toilet. (But no toilet paper!)

2. Yak with Yoko: a normal phone sits on a ledge. Yoko calls that phone occasionally and talks to whomever picks it up. If I answered, I'd just say "Raymond's Pizza! Would YOU like to get our two-for-one special, topped with oatmeal, wheat germ, and freshly cut grass from my backyard?"

3. You hear a recording of traffic noise. This is part of a series of recordings (released on CD) called something like "Normal Sounds." Yoko coughs over the noise. She does it on purpose. Get it? Get it???

4. A pile of round stones lies on the floor, surrounded by a marked square. You kneel, pick up a stone, and put it on top of the pile, which falls down again.

5. A piece of wood hangs on the wall. A hammer lies next to it, with some nails. You are supposed to hammer a nail into the wood. (And while you're at it, would you fix my sink?) Through THIS exhibit, Yoko met John Lennon. He hammered her thumb by accident, and the rest is Beatle history! (I'm kidding.)

6. A green apple sits on a pedestal. Someone has taken two bites of out it. They change the apple daily after it has rotted a little. While you contemplate this, you think of the decay of civilization and the end of free love and those Jesus-like sixties hairstyles. You think of Austin Powers and what a set of bad teeth would have done for you then. You meld with the overarching karma of the intensity of this experience. Someone behind you says "Hurry up," knocking you out of your introspection. You realize you've missed lunch with your friends. Secretly, you swipe the apple. You eat it.

Next I met Sara, her husband David, and the gurgling baby Andrea. One of Sara's friends, this girl who acted as a "subsitute eyebrow plucker" at her spa, tried to explain what "body wrapping" is to me. She couldn't do it. I will take body wraps on faith from now on and leave them to women.

Then I met this girl J, who has known Sara since they were roommates back in Taiwan in their "Love Boat" study tour. Damn, I wish I had applied for the Love Boat (Chientan)! She brought her younger sister along, and our talk went a lot like this:

Me: So what kind of sports do you do?
J: Well someone gave me a tennis racket once, but I haven't really played it. I am trying to learn some golf, but...
Younger sister: She sucks.
Me: Ohh....so how long have you lived in the South Bay?
J: About two and a half years. (Smiling) I still don't know that many people. I knew this guy _______ once, and he told me...
Younger sister: She was actually dating him.
...
Me: So you work for Apple? Huh! How has the morale been for you guys since Apple had those economic problems?
J: Well we've felt much better since we released the iMac and came out with all of our "flavors!"
Me: Oh yeah, flavors! Like peach...
J: We don't have peach!
Me: I meant ah...durian?

Next, we had dinner with Chris! He's from Malaysia and gay and SUCH a cool, kind, entertaining guy! He had many stories to tell and is getting involved in a lot of interesting projects, like this Asian-geared magazine he wants to start with this girl Mochi_bun. He's also active in helping the Chinatown community. He has a ton of girl friends and, as you can understand, many want to "convert" him into a straight man. I was inspired by how positive and energetic he was about life! I'll see him again soon.

I'd met him at Amabelle's beach BBQ a few weeks ago. Amabelle, who just started working as an elementary school teacher, just invited us to yet another group BBQ in SF.

Yay Chris! Love your new dyed purple-brown spiky hair! Note my recent bad haircut.



Finally we went to Berkeley to see Shakespeare's Henry IV, done by the Impact Theatre. They played extra-low budget, wearing normal street clothes. The guy who played Falstaff was especially funny, and he looked like one of those WWF wrestlers. Met Cheshire Dave and his girlfriend Sarah, who recently finished law school. They did the swordfights in Henry IV very slowly, like a John Woo movie. And the one Asian girl in the cast did most of the killing. Whoo! The theatre group hired a fight choreographer for this play, and his business card reads: "Official badass."