The voice of Darth Vader, the guy with the epic voice in Field Of Dreams, has passed on. Field Of Dreams is an OK movie but it will always have a special meaning for me because one night in 1995 I was sitting in my room in the Olympic Training Center, watching my TV that I had to stick my finger into a hole to change channels, and was watching that movie. The whole idea of building your own ball field reminded me of the kind of thing my dad might have done. The part where there's some ghostly voice saying "Ease his pain" I was actually crying. It really got to me in a way that surprised me. I found out the next morning that that was probably the exact time my father died, back in Hawaii. It's not very scientific but there you have it.
Last night I got a batch of things ready to photograph, "played with my food" AKA divided the fish and hamburger into portions and put into the freezer, started a load of laundry, and got a batch of books ready to take to the used book store.
I woke up at 7AM amazingly, then went back to sleep until 11AM when I got a call from some volunteer reminding me to vote no on proposition 34. I said I'll probably vote that way. I'm going to study my election materials carefully.
Besides all the other things I have to do today, I want to see if I can watch the presidential debate. It turns out I can watch it on YouTube so that's good - I won't have to spend money sitting somewhere with a TV.
I left here with my (heavy!) books and packages around 3, dropped off the packages at the post office and took the (heavy!) books to the used book store. I ended up getting $10 in cash. I took the books they didn't want and put them in the little free library on Shasta.
I went to Whole Foods and got wine and put it in the bike bag and then got some food and a bottle of Lagunitas IPA. I rode back here, stopping for bubble mailers at the Amazon place, and picking up a few more books but here it got interesting.
I picked them up from the little free library on 5th, and the old guy whose house it was in front of came out. "You finding anything good?" he asked. I said I was, kind of. He said something about being sure to put a lot of books there and I said "I'd always figured you were a voracious reader". Well, I should have said "I thought you read a lot" following the rule of the first Cat In The Hat books which were written in Basic English so even the uneducated or dull could understand them. The guy seemed to not understand the term "voracious" and my explaining it didn't help. I finally said, "This is not a 'San Jose' conversation, a 'San Jose' conversation would be more like 'You gotta cigarette?' followed by 'You gotta dollar?' or 'Which way's the bus?'" and ended with "I talk too much!" and rode off. Maybe the old dum-dum just likes the books because most have colorful covers.
Really I'm starting to re-think the whole thing. The "book racket" was nice when I wanted to stock up on Jewish books, and it was a great way to fund my expensive Koren chumash which I really like, but it's a lot of work for little money even in trade credit and there are not a lot of books I'm that keen to get now, as I've got plenty to read.
So while watching the debate I cleaned up the last of my books and am throwing in two big books by Abba Eban I'll probably never get around to reading, and will do one last book run tomorrow. Then, after that, I'm just going to stick with busking.
In fact, in riding around today, I noticed a fair number of people walking around the Paseo de San Antonio and around the $2 hamburger place that's owned by a Trumper so even though it's students I might try busking there because there's no set demographic that tips me.
The debate by the way was kind of hilarious. Donnie had this old-man slump and played his invisible accordion one-handed as the other hand was used to lean on the podium with. He scowled constantly like he had "something died" farts that were seeping up through his suit. The times he tried smiling were just gruesome. Harris did great. I felt like I was watching the Kennedy-Nixon debate, the first debate on TV. Except Nixon was actually intelligent so those who listened on the radio thought Nixon won and those who watched on TV thought Kennedy won. Even just on the radio, I'd have known Harris wiped the floor with The Dump.
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