Every place I live, a Holy Grail appears. There's a place that I hear everyone talk about for years, but never find or is always closed, there's that secret menu item that's only prepared once every blue moon when the tides converge at a certain place, there's a band that performs under freeway overpasses during finals week. Yes, I know there's only one Holy Grail, but it's my favorite quest item. Also, you could put beer in the Grail, and many of these places are alcohol-related.

Here's the current list, and some of the past favorites.

Santa Barbara:
Completed Holy Grail Quest: Telegraph Brewing Company. It's a warehouse where beer is brewed, with a big skylight, and a counter and sink shoved in the corner. Show up some afternoons and they'll pour you drinks. There's a well priced beer tasting that lets you try a lot of quality beer and gets tiny me sloshed. Telegraph also created a porter I actually liked. I'm not a fan of dark beers, but theirs is an exception. A lot of the servers are also brewers, so hobbyist brewers come in and talk technical beer stuff, and it's fun to listen. Beware the bathroom when it's busy, there's only one. Also, it's open kinda odd hours, hence why it was subject to a quest.

RG knows his boozeahol! That's a California Ale, Telegraph's flagship beer and my favorite. You can get it year round.

I forget what this dark porter was called, and I don't think it's available anymore. It's worth coming back in different seasons because the beer changes. This was a summer beer.

New Holy Grail: See the grunion run.

San Francisco:
Toronado Bar. Holy crap that's a lot of beer! I found out about them during the Bay Area microbrewery week, when they brought in a ton of barleywine. Keep planning to go, keep getting plans canceled. The bar and its huge beer list is taking on mythic proportions in my head now. Must go and see. Must stop calling it Tornado Bar.

Greater Bay Area:
Past Holy Grail: The Phenomenauts Command Center. The Phenomenauts are my favorite local band.
 
Their motto is "Science and Honor," and they sing about space and exploration and robots and foozball battles with aliens. Plus they put on a kick-ass live show. Gadgets, costumes, rabid fans, all sorts of fun nonsense. Earth is the best!

The Command Center is a big warehouse between Oakland and Berkeley that's been done up to include a big stage, and is also home for a lot of people. The location is an open secret known only to true Phenomenauts Cadets, or people who use internet search engines. I went to a pre-Halloween show there and it was one of the better small music venues I've attended. The upper level balcony with velvet-lined alcoves and scattered couches is fun, I hung out there and made fun of costumed attendees until the show started. Again, beware the bathroom, it's over-packed. This is a BYOCan venue. I went sober so I wouldn't have to deal with the bathrooms. The shows are fun enough without booze.

New Greater Bay Area Quests:
St. George Brewery in Alameda. Their absinthe is smooth and delicious and ridiculously alcoholic. I believe they're the only United States brewery currently making absinthe, and it's amazing. I had it at the Irish Pub in Berkeley, which is actually run by an Irishman. The pub is worth visiting, but I'm far more excited about St. George's. They also make Hangar One vodka. My alcohol-connoisseur friends inform me that they like playing with small batches of weird booze before selling to the public. There's rumors of a duck fat infused vodka called foie ka. I like duck, I like vodka, and my curiosity demands I investigate. Besides, holy crap was that absinthe tasty!

Other things that I want to see, but that have not reached Grail level quest difficulty:
That SF restaurant that plays foreign films on the wall while you're eating. I forget the name, someone suggested going once, and I'm not really that excited about foreign films, but I heard they've played Dr. Strangelove. Either I'll find this place or borrow a projector and do weird movie dinner at somebody's house.

Free SF MOMA: First Tuesday of the month. I'm typically not a fan of modern art, but I'm bummed I missed Richard Avedon's photography. It'd be good to check out the MOMA, just to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Golden Gate Park Reclaim the Streets - I went once, and that was awesome! Car traffic was shut down for parts of Golden Gate Park, and there were people jazzercising in the middle of the road, someone riding around a tricycle blasting Bollywood dance music, little kids wobbling on new sets of wheels, hot hippie chicks and hipster boys, musicians, synchronized dance troupes, and all sorts of folks. Best part? Roller blade dancing! Middle aged paunchy guy in a top hat and shorts rocking out on roller blades, dancing line of women with curly grey hair all doing synchronized moves, girls in furry boots and short skirts, etc etc. That's excluding Thriller performed on skates, because I was late and missed it. Heard it was impressive, though. I plan to show up with my skates and get lessons. I need my camera next time.

Livermore winery on the edge of LLNL. I want to see scientists gettin' drunk, and maybe I'd see some old mentors there. LLNL scientists taught me and my little brother martial arts. Plus it's like 20 minutes away from my parents' house.

Star Trek Exhibition at the Tech Museum: I want to sit on the replica bridge of the Enterprise and make silly pronouncements. RG, tell your friend I'll pay her if she makes me an original series uniform. My sewing skills aren't up to the task. Then together we can execute my plan to go clubbing with a Star Trek dress sans insignia and see if anyone notices. Hee hee.

San Jose MOMA: They ran an exhibit on Escher, and the history of robots as depicted in popular culture. I missed both. I can't miss the next one! I'm way more excited about this than the SF MOMA.

It's important to have goals. It's also important to explore cities, and extract all the weird, tasty, fun goodness.

This Thanksgiving, I burdened my sister with the meaning of bukkake.

I was browsing Facebook with my little brother, showing him pictures of people he was curious about, and we ran across a picture that was tagged "Bukkake the Alpaca." My sister looked over and flipped. We figured it was because that was an appropriate name for a messy spitting animal. Actually, she had thought it had read "bukkaka", which means spreading your thighs, more or less, in Tagalog. We informed her she was wrong, so she kept pestering us to tell us what it meant, and we refused, of course, because the whole family's sitting there in the living room. Then she pulled out her laptop and said she'd Google it, and we at least convinced her to use Urban Dictionary, which has no photos. There was about 5 minutes of "whyyyyy" and funny faces.

Later she informed me the last and first trains of BART are where people go for anonymous sex. Parts of my commute make more sense now.

How did we both get to our respective ages without knowing these things?

  Went to open mike comedy night in San Francisco.

Stand up comedians extraordinaire, Devon and Drakonskyr


Lithium98, in front of the camera this time!

It was fun meeting people from the internet in real life. I met people who I didn't know from the internet as well. It was refreshing to meet strangers who will banter and talk about fun things, instead of huddling with their tiny crowds and glaring at the outsiders. More on that subject later.

Good night, good reminder that people can be awesome to newcomers.

First there's all that Xanga chatter about rape fantasies. I'll just say, good posts Mori and Rissa!

Then I sign into Facebook and someone has posted this:



Latest flash game craze? Well, maybe. It's a Danish ad campaign against domestic violence.

Choose mouse or webcam. The webcam option sounds neat but was buggy for me.

A dayglo pink bar appears, labeled "pussy" at one end and "gangsta" at the other. You start at 100% pussy. The more you hit the bitch, the more gangsta and the less pussy you get.

Every time you hit the bitch, there's a couple seconds where she gives you a hurt stare. At first she's insulting you - I don't speak Danish but a middle finger salute's pretty clear. Then she starts getting bruises on her face and gets quieter. Finally she falls over and lies there, crying, while the game informs you 100% Gangsta is really 100% Idiot. Then some Danish appears onscreen, probably anti-violence stuff, and then it asks you to link it on facebook.

This shit is surreal.

Titles of partially typed blogs:

Vengeance and Fashion
Talking to strangers
Healthy writing, with good muscles and a glossy coat
you have to play without the ball
Read Book 4

Coming soon (maybe) to a screen near you!