Comfortably Numb

How can the mind be the natural enemy of anything? Pseudo-intellectual twaddle.

Do not ask for whom the Book Tolles, it Tolle$ on thee.

I shall now live fully in the present by popping open a Newcastle.

Give me the Stoics any day.

Oh shit ….

@blogenfreude: It’s just another ploy to distract us from Benghazi(!).

@¡Andrew!: God caught Yogi & Boo-Boo badabinging.

@blogenfreude: Climate change and plate tectonics are just a myth.

Question: Is there a place near San Francisco that is an old – from say the 1890s through the 1920s – beach resort. Should either be fancy or remote beaches with an old hotel a la The Shining. Satan doesn’t necessarily need to be involved. Is there anything like Fire Island there? Or Catalina? It has to be northern California because plot. What about north of Carmel? That stretch of the coast? Would have to be accessible by train. My first thought was Sausalito and the beaches of Marin, like Muir beach. What about Angel Island? These are wealthy people on their honeymoon in 1920. The husband, for some reason I’ve yet to fathom, is given to swimming naked. It’s summer and it should be hot. They go for three months, as people used to do, so it needs to be kind of like paradise.

It could also be north of SF, I guess.

Andrew, Will you talk to me? (Very few people will these days. And mostly they’ll only do it once.) Are you on FB? Or I can give you an email and you can call?

@Benedick: Cliff House? Also benefits from being a ruin. And being featured in Harold and Maude.

@Benedick: I just sent a note to Nojo with my contact info to send along; I’d love to talk, and I’m not on the Instaface. I’m about to head to the gym and do some other Desperate Househuzbandy things (let your imagination run wild) and will be available late this afternoon/evening.

I don’t know nuthin’ bout no San Francisco beach resorts, tho. All of my SF knowledge is wisdom that I’ve gleaned from multiple viewings of Basic Instinct in English and español.

“Se bajó antes de que él se bajó.”

“¡Su coño ha frito tu cerebro, jefe!”

¡Ay, dios mío!

@¡Andrew!: you can get me direct at wisterly@me.com. I want to talk about Seattle. And also your life choices.

@nojo: Where is that? Isn’t it also featured in Alexander’s Ragtime Band?

@Benedick: Cliff House overlooks the ocean on the west side of SF, and sits adjacent to a long, lovely beach. It’s been rebuilt several times — the ruins are the Sutro Baths next door, which were quite elegant in their day.

Wikipedia has a good overview, with historical pictures. Given various phases of destruction and rebuilding, you’ll want to double-check the condition in 1920.

@Benedick: The water is so fucking cold at Ocean Beach in SF near the Cliff House (and Muir Beach in Marin) that any nude swimming would take about 10 seconds before hypothermia sets in. There are some wicked nasty waves and undertow year round, and generally this time of year the entire Sunset and Richmond districts (those on the west side closest to the ocean) are socked in with fog.

At that time, I think Angel Island was still being used as the Ellis Island of the west. Not much pleasure time there.

You need to come out here and do some research.

Fanks. I think that is the intended location from ARB. It’s where Ty Power and Alice Faye finally realize they’re in love when she sings Now It Can Be Told, a song that Don Ameche just wrote to tell her that his loins burn for her. Score by Irving Berlin who also suggested the very loosely autobiographical story. Directed by the brilliant Henry King. Most striking scene is when John Carradine as Charon in the guise of a taxi driver takes Alice across the Styx and then back to deliver her to her true love. In my estimation, the best of the classic musicals. Don’t miss next week’s lecture on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Why yes I am a big homo, thank you for asking.

Good idea but they closed because of weird liquor laws that were imposed after it was rebuilt. Someone tried to reopen in 1920 but without a license – so that’s not gonna work. The original building (love how it hangs out over the cliff, not unlike Catt’s ass in chaps), the one that burned, looked like the old wooden palace hotels that we had here. They had long been closed when 7 of them burned in the late 70s when a local volunteer fireman got bored and set them on fire so he could help put them out. The one that remains is the Mohonk House Hotel, about a half hour away. The great and amazing hotel here was the Catskill Mountain House. That didn’t burn but fell out of fashion and then into disrepair. Washington Irving set his extremely odd tale about Rip van Winkle on the mountain below it.

@SanFranLefty: Thanks but bugger. So nothing to compare with Montauk or Fire Island? What about Carmel? I’ve been there. Is that Cannery Row? I need to check train schedules. They need to leave NYC on the 20th Century Ltd. But could change at Chicago for a train to southern CA. Trouble is I think that’s a different route. And of course, no one wants to end up in Sandy Eggo.

@Benedick: They could take the train from Chicago to LA in the 1920s. Also, you can go swimming at the beaches in LA without freezing your tush off or being sucked out to sea and drowned.

My grandmother grew up in LA in the 1920s, and her stories always made it sound delightful (streetcars, fresh air, sunshine) compared to what it had turned into in the 1960s-70s (sprawl, smoggy air, crazy people running around Topanga Canyon).

Cannery Row is in Monterey, which is near Carmel. Carmel is where Clint Eastwood was the mayor, and the movie Play Misty for Me was filmed in part there.

I’m not sure we’re taking my needs seriously enough. It’s not football, people.

@SanFranLefty: Monterey. Excellent.

@Benedick: I’m only taking the 20th Century if Madeline Kahn is on it.

@SanFranLefty: When I take the ferry to Vallejo, we pass a hotel/ B&B? on an island where they bring in fresh water everyday. Does that ring a bell? I can’t remember the name.

@Benedick: The lodge in Pfeiffer Big Sur is lovely.

@SanFranLefty: Was part of Angel Island used for concentration camps?

Oh! What about Half Moon Bay?

@Benedick: Check out Asilomar, which is a gorgeous lodge designed by Julia Morgan and built in 1913 just outside of Monterey. I’ve stayed there for a wedding, there is a small beach but it’s pretty rocky (it’s right next to Pebble Beach golf course). Probably not as dangerous as Ocean Beach, since it’s somewhat sheltered by Monterey Bay.

@JNOV: I never get in the water past my waist at HMB, because the undertow is pretty damn gnarly. That’s where they do Mavericks! Japanese and German POWs were housed at Angel Island during WWII, but it wasn’t a concentration camp for Japanese-Americans. You can camp at Angel Island, but there’s no lodge there. I think this is the place you were thinking of that’s on some rocks in the middle of the Bay.

That looks like this place.

I’m surprised that northern CA doesn’t seem to have anything comparable to Montauk or the Long Island beaches. I guess it’s all those rocks.

@JNOV: Half Moon Bay looks kind of perfect. Plus it has a Ritz Carlton!

@Benedick: You have to go to Florence, Oregon, to find the nice beaches. Only you don’t want to go to Florence, Oregon.

@nojo: I went to Florence, Oregon 12 days after being in Florence, Arizona. There was an awesome brew pub there. It felt like heaven after being in that apocalyptic desert hellshow.

IOW, OR-Flo > AZ-Flo.

@SanFranLefty: Well jeez, lower the bar. Florence’s value is knowing when to turn right from Eugene to Cape Perpetua.

@SanFranLefty: And IT-Flo whips them both.

Welllll, the VA continues to implode. I’m up for a transfer to…PORTLAND!

Or Spokane (out of the VA), or Kansas (kind of in the VA), or SLC (in the VA). I just need to get out of the VA.

Has anyone been watching the hearings? Whistleblowers in Philly, yo! This is going to be a mess.

@Benedick: It’s a beauty.

@SanFranLefty: Yup! That’s it!

@JNOV: Portland, ME, or Portland, OR are two of my dream escape spots. SLC is awesome, according to a (not closeted) ghey boy friend of a friend of mine visiting from rural southern Idaho.

@SanFranLefty: A friend from SLC said I’d hate it there. I don’t want to leave WA, but I have to get out of this RO. BUT listening to the VBA whistleblowers tells me that we are all experiencing the SAME THING! Unbelievable! I wonder what’s going to happen when the VBA panel testifies. I’m interested to see what Hickey says.

I pause the computer and call a Congresscritter who asked a question, and I leave a VM with my answer. This is ridiculous. I LOVE what I do, but I hate they way they make us do it.