A return to Davis, University Town.

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I moved away from Mexico. I don't have a job, so I'm kind of hanging out for a few weeks. I decided to take a jaunt to my old ciudad universitaria.

(I regularly update this blog.)

I got into Davis on Thursday night. (I chose the Carl's Jr. Jalapeno Burger over In N Out. What? I wasn't hungry at the Kettleman City offramp.)

When I got to Jason's house there were fraternity pledges preparing an exchange with a moderate sorority. They aren't a politically centrist sorority, they're the fairly attractive sorority, which is a major accomplishment for the chapter of the fraternity having this exchange.

I'm not sure what the theme was but I was zip-tied to a girl who was excited to find out that I was responsible for the Picnic Day Anthem . She told me she played it five hundred times on Picnic Day, and that it is in heavy rotation on her iPod.

I partied as hard as I was used to in Davis, harder actually because someone taught me how to dance Bhangra. (To dance Bhangra mime these instructions: "Take out the light bulb and Turn on the Faucet.")


While my partying levels soared, by body's ability to imbibe all of those beverages was not so hot. I spent a majority of Friday feeling like shit.

I used to drink so well when I was in college, now it pains me. My friend Shawn reminded me that just means I'm not an alcoholic anymore. Literally that's true, my body is reacting unhappily to poison.

I know it's an old wives tale, but I still subscribe to the belief that the best way to cure a hangover is to watch a zombie movie in the movie theater. Luckily a zombie movie was playing, and members of my former Zombie Movie Club were available to watch it.

My friend Bruce is potentially the most appropriate person that I know to be with during a zombie attack. He has been known to carry weapons and plan escape routes. He is also the least appropriate person to take to see a zombie movie. He yelled for Sarah Polley not to go into a room every three minutes when we saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead. This time he vomited.

"It was a pretty good story, but if it was in a book or a comic I could handle it."

28 Weeks Later, will make the most hardcore dudes throw up.

On Friday night we went to see the Keak da Sneak hyphy music concert at the AEPi Jewish fraternity. Bruce describes the hyphy movement as like "Hakuna Matata, but you're down to kill a motherfucker."

(The best website on the topic of hyphyness is: Nation of Thizzlam)

Joel told me he saw the AEPi's advertising the concert to thugged-out black dudes on the quad. He said they showed the fliers to their friends and then all walked over, weirded out that the Jewish fraternity was promoting hyphy-ness and that strangely enough they were going to be attending.

"This shit is quite profoundly ironic."

We didn't actually go into the concert, we watched from a balcony of an apartment. It was great, because we didn't have to wade through an unenthusiastic crowd, and avoided the very likely riot that would ensue after the police decided the concert was too loud. It never happened, I lost a bet.

Afterwards we went to Bernardo's to drink Wicky-Wacky-Woos (a hurricane with a shot of 151 in the straw, they'll only serve you three.) I went from feeling that I could never be as drunk as I was the previous night, to being as drunk as I was the previous night.

We went to a party at the J-Street Co-Op celebrating Whole Earth Festival, the hippie Picnic Day. Incidentally we went from a concert that was supposedly hyphy to a place that was supposedly hyphenated. Apparently they spell their co-op: "J street CoOp."

Being at that party made me feel like I was on drugs. It's probably because I may have eaten some sort of confection that could have been processed with drugs.

I distinctly remember having a very friendly conversation with someone that I'd always recognized but never met, and then also seeing that person's face later in the night, when I was talking about something that was clearly disturbing to him.

I think I talked to a British guy about Jewish and English comedy styles, but the conversation quickly dwindled into a paranoid rant about how Brits tend to think Americans are stupid, and how I thought that this particular Brit was calling me "a stupid."

I remember yelling at a girl who was very punk rock, for not responding to my facebook messages about wanting to record a rap record with her. I actually think she's still interested.

The party got broken up and I had to go back to Jason's house, luckily Bruce had been planning routes, and led us back to the house. I threw up, which is uncommon in my life. It was probably a side-effect of the zombie movie.

On Saturday I woke up feeling worse than on Friday. I slept until 3, then I walked to campus to view the festivities. I ended up eating a pizza by myself in a corner of the Coffee House.



I went back and took a nap. I woke up, we got food, went to a Coffee House party, and finally made it to the (very hyphenated) on-campus co-ops.

The Saturday night party of Whole Earth Festival rivals Holyland and Picnic Day as the being one of the best annual parties in Davis history. Though I did agree with my friend's who had been regulars to the event that "it's too crowded" and "it was so much better three years ago."

After the co-ops we were trying to go to an after-party at the Domes, it's the hippie capital of Davis. There wasn't an after-party, but there were enough people who thought that a party was going to happen to actually make a party happen.

A guy played a steel body guitar as we sung along and danced to our own versions of the chicken dance. (To dance Chicken mime these instructions: "I don't want to be a Chicken, I don't want to be a duck, so shake your butt, hey hey hey.")

I ate Del Taco.

That was my weekend.

College life is exciting while you're living it, but it's hard to keep up after you don't drink six nights a week.

THE NEXT STEP!

I have several ideas. I might drive to Canada. I might drive to San Francisco, or I might wait around and become the captain of a houseboat on Lake Shasta in two weeks.

We'll see.

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Comments

[Gene]

My suggestions go as follows: a) visit me in San Francisco b) join me on Diana's houseboat and ummm go on houseboats