neon, harry potter, and an outdoor pharmacy

this weekend we brought ourselves a smattering of interest.

the heat wave has (finally!) broken and i can once again breathe. seriously, peeps. i'm not fucking with you here. temps over 100 degrees for eons in a row can lead to my own private nervous breakdown. it is very hot in the middle of the country, but there is also a foreseeable end to the summer. unlike back home where seasons exist, i can see no end to this meteorological road to nowhere. if i'm going to try and "make the best of shit" here then i refuse, i revolt, i just can't be asked to do it while playing the part of a rotisserie chicken. thank goodness for the slight break. the weather giving us the brief reprieve from postmodern wasteland hellhole ambience, derek and i got out of the house.

we ventured downtown to the library once again for more language materials, courtesy of the children's department. picture dictionaries are a good way of learning some basic vocabulary. oddly enough, it was a bit difficult to hear the librarian directing us to the correct shelves because of all the screaming teenage girls out in the rotunda. if you've been keeping up with mary's blog at all, you saw her reference to the band harry and the potters. (she has some myspace page link in a post.) yes, they do have all songs about books - mostly the harry potter series. they even had an opening act here in the form of draco and the malfoys! two bands for free! lest you think that we were the oldest people in the crowd, there were PLENTY of adults out there without kids, and many chicks dressed like hogwarts students. in the middle of the opening act, derek even saw an albino asian guy in the audience. wow! had he been a midget i possibly would have fainted on the spot. the pop culture of it all was enough to make me feel like some carpe diem is totally worth it when mary tells you to go do something dweeby. there's nothing like an entire corridor of people screaming in the library. it's possible that the noise alone was worth the trip.

after the show we headed a few blocks down the road to the museum of neon art. this is one of those things in the city that i would definitely recommend. it's a smallish place (though not much smaller than the alleged museuom of contemporary art) loaded with restored signs and rotating exhibits. the mechanical rendition of a cat was my favorite, with the plasma jellyfish a close second. if you're ever stuck in suckifornia with free time, go see this place. the FIDM gallery was closed by the time we left all that neon, but they have some sort of costume gallery that looks to be neat-o. maybe we'll pop in next time around.

on the way back to the car, we stopped by a place called the bishop. it's a coffeeshop that would seem to be one of the few places downtown who will brave being open on the weekend. the guy inside was even somewhat amiable, probably a sort of desperate plea owing to the desolation of the area on a saturday afternoon.

after a spot of free trial coffee, we continued our walk until we came upon some filming hubbub. inching closer we could see that the filming was for a commercial. in fact, they had blocked off several downtown blocks to recreate an entire cvs pharmacy in the middle of an intersection. some advertising agency's accountant is going to be very happy when this whole thing is over. this is some crazy shit, i tell you. there were even those label signs at the end of each fully stocked row to tell you what they had. it was bizarre enough to pass simply for the fact that you don't often walk by an entire shelf of toiletries unless you're actually in a store. besides that, it just looked like a big clusterfuck of overspending. there must have been a good fifty people running around straightening goods and putting up more signs. there were mega-huge lights on cranes for the affair! when i hear that this shitty place is out of touch with normal goals and morals of the american people, this is the picture that will forever come to mind.

did i mention that they were filming less than a hundred feet outside the front doors of a rite aid pharmacy? i heart sarcastic irony.