Castro Street had really expanded by the time we got back to it. Like the many headed Hydra (I figured I’d go with a Greek reference again), Castro was starting to live up to it’s reputation. There had to be a good 100,000 folks partying down. Unfortunately, they stopped the alcohol consumption on the street this year, so it apparently wasn’t as cool as last years. This was what I heard anyways; it was pretty damn wild to me. We listened to this funk band play hits of the 70s while dressed in multicolored wigs and revealing outfits…and that was just the guys! The female back-up singers were mighty cold; you could tell if you looked at their tops close enough. Changomo somehow managed to start talking to the Girls Gone Wild film crew while they were cruising the street. In his words though, he choked. They asked him to do something “wild;” what that would entail being he’s a guy I have no idea and it probably stumped him too. It’s not like he can flash his chest or anything. Willy decided at about this point to take a picture with all the women that he could. This is going to make for some entertaining viewing when he develops those pics; he has pictures with nurses, scantily clad women with one asking to be spanked(that should be a good shot), more nurses…there really were a lot of nurse costumes. One particular group of girls was not amused by his request as they were being questioned by several of San Francisco’s finest as one looked like she was about to be arrested for public intoxication…I believe their direct phrase was ”Fuck off!” Changomo took exception to this bit of rudeness, but I could understand their apprehension, so we managed to drag him off before he gave the cops a different target for their hassles. It was about this time that my stomach began to rebel against that drink I forced it to endure and I was really damn tired what with no sleep and all the driving, so I was ready to head back to the hotel. I ended up escorting Changomo’s wife back as well as she was up past her bedtime. I swear, she’s like an old woman; has to be in bed by 10 or she melts or something. Anyways, there were no taxis to be found and we ended up having to walk about a mile and a half back. I did manage to get into the room before I collapsed into hibernation. Although I barely made it to 2 a.m., I considered it a fairly successful night. I saw some of the strangest shit I had ever seen, had caramel apple slices at a gay man’s house (hmmm….that doesn’t sound right), and partied with some of my oldest friends. Good times.

The next morning after we finally became fully conscious, Willy and I headed over to my Dad’s house in the Oakland hills. It was empty for the weekend as he and his new wife went to Jamaica with the kiddies to celebrate their wedding anniversary. He purposely got married on Halloween just so he wouldn’t forget his anniversary this time. I guess it’s as good a reason as any, and I’m sure his new wife appreciates at least some effort on his part. Jamaica is a god damned paradise too, so there better be no complaints. Willy had never been to my pop’s house so I gave him the tour. It’s a beautiful home built right on the hillside with the first level being the top floor with the other two floors built beneath. He just finished the last level which I believe he christened the Money Pit when it was finally completed only 5 months after it was supposed to. I can’t complain; there is a guest room down there that I can now use when I visit. It’s kind of strange living away from my parents in the fact that they moved away from me. Isn’t is supposed to be the other way around? We washed up and were joined by Changomo and his wife later that day. We were going to drive up to Napa and I suppose do the hair of the dog and keep drinking, but that didn’t happen. The reason for it not occurring is actually kind of stupid; we started watching the World Series of Poker. I’m not sure why this was so enthralling, but we couldn’t stop watching. I was rooting for “Dutch” Boyd, this young guy who looked like Kurt Warner but acted like Ben Affleck. He could do all types of tricks with his chips, had attended college at 12, went to law school at 15…yeah, he was way overqualified to be a professional gambler. He just seemed like he was straight out of that movie Rounders, though. He ended up finishing 18th, but he was happy as hell to have gotten that far. Changomo loved Scotty Nguyen, who was a previous champion and talked a whole bunch of trash in broken English. You really had to see him to believe it. In point of fact, there were 3 Nguyens all competing in the final stage of the Championship; I guess Vietnamese really are good at gambling. With that said, I’m not sure what Newjen’s problem is. He’s Vietnamese but a TERRIBLE gambler! I guess it must have skipped his generation or something. Watching this show made me reminisce back to high school where Willy, Changomo, Moodsquad, Johan and Jon used to play poker almost every day after school for hours. We never really lost a whole lot of money until we got out of high school…maybe that’s why we stopped playing. It’s a lot easier to recover from losing 2 dollars than from 150 bucks. It was my damn father that raised the stakes for good. Trust me, never start playing Guts for big money. You start getting people trying to mortgage their watches and their shoes just to stay in. It’s not a pretty sight.

Our only choice at this point was to go see a movie, so we headed out to Emeryville’s new shopping center which included a nice, new AMC theatre. There really wasn’t much to see, so instead of taking my advice to watch Lost in Translation, that Bill Murray movie directed by Sofia Coppola that I hear is really good and I STILL haven’t seen yet, we decided to take a chance and watch Mystic River. Oh my god. This is a decision on par with with Portland drafting Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. This was the most god awful film I have ever sat through. Usually I can enjoy bad movies because I can make fun of the bad acting, or the terrible storyline, but this one seemed to go out of it’s way to deny any enjoyment whatsoever. There wasn’t a damn thing salvageable about this trash; the only way it could have been saved is had all the copies of the film burned up and saved the country from having to watch any of it. There were several fine actors in the film, Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon being two, who managed to take it seriously enough that it couldn’t be laughed at but had to work with material that should have been used to paper the bottom of a bird cage. It’s really sad…I like Kevin Bacon, but he just keeps going out of his way to make terrible movies. Willy thought this movie would be a good idea…I should have suspected something. The last time he wanted to see a movie it was the Hulk. There’s two hours of my live I’ll never get back. We all decided Willy wasn’t allowed to make any more movie choices for at least a year. Personally, I think he got off way too lightly. They were laughing at me because I came out of the theater with a stunned look on my face, but at least I managed to not scream out “This movie is Shit!” like Changomo did in the middle of it. I have some standards. We finished the night with dinner at the California Pizza kitchen, which was decent, I suppose. They make exotic pizzas and because they’re “special,” they can charge twice what they’re worth. It’s amazing what we as consumers will put up with. Anyways, this pretty much ended the night as we went back to my dad’s place, said goodbye to Changomo and his wife and ended up passing out on the couch watching tv. I was waiting for my friend Jules to give us a call, but she ended up calling after I had fallen asleep. Eh…her loss. Hell, maybe I’m becoming an old man. That’s two nights in a row I fell asleep way too early…oh well, at least I have my hair. *Knock, Knock*