i’m just too full of stories and ideas today. it will probably be the most-blogged day i’ve had so far.

picture a small hispanic-run stereo equipment shop just enough outside of downtown so it’s in the less nice part of the “downtown” area. they’re always blaring bad music out onto the street from their very large speaker systems. only today, as i walked with work people to go get some snacks and coffee (but no coffee for me. snapple, thanks), it was finally playing for a willing audience. there was this really skinny, crazy white-haired old homeless guy standing in front of the big stack of speakers dancing (i think) what can only be described as a broken jig. he was just sort of hopping in place and waving his arms slightly, going from one foot to the other and spinning a little bit. we were on the opposite side of the street so i couldn’t tell if he was singing or saying anything, but it was great! and in addition to that, there had to be over twenty pigeons gathered around him, some flapping around. it’s like they gathered to watch the fun. and they were only around him too, nowhere else along the street. it was insane! working in the city makes for some interesting sights some days.

after the break i went back to the office and me and another worker got our collective minds smacked down at college jeopardy online. what kind of category is “decorative arts” anyway? we finished with negative thousands at least twice.

back to beggars though. i’m reading shakespeare’s twelvth night on the bus today, and the clown character is getting money from the duke by clever rhetoric and wordplay. sort of riddling the duke into paying him for his clever speeches. suddenly i had this great vision of the many panhandlers around our school and downtown LA going at it with that approach. having all these clever rogues cajoling me with their sharp wits, and me giving them coins for their mastery of language and double-meaning. oh, how much better would that be than people just shaking cups or saying, “yo man, spare some change?”. i wonder if there were even such things as clowning beggars, or if it was just a stage device. how would a drifter become so clever? perhaps i should enquire. or more likely i’ll just go on dreaming of a fantastic place presented to me by the stories i read. (sigh).

maybe that’ll do for today but i guess we’ll just have to wait and see.