rant whine 'splain espouse: Jenny Day

Friday, August 06, 2004

Jenny Day

To celebrate Jenny's birthday, which was actually Tuesday (but it was her last week of school, so I let her juggle me around in favor of her completing her final project for Java class, a bad-ass D&D character generator; I know, totally dork -- but hey, she did it in fuckin' Java! how cool is that?), I declared Friday to be Jenny Day.

I gave her a bunch of photos of Schoolies to remember them by, and a certificate that granted to the bearer three wishes, and guaranteed that I would indulge her in (almost) anything (one day only, some restrictions apply).

This is because, being the exceptionally good friend that I am, I normally flat out refuse to indulge Jenny in most of the just plain ridiculous things that she has a tendency to indulge in (self-pity, lack of self-esteem, and, well, self-indulgence, to name a few. but also, um, really really terrible movies).

Well, I try anyway.

Okay, so with this certificate she would be allowed, on Jenny Day only, to be indulged in any number of time wasting, childish, embarrassing, lame, stupid, bizarre, foolhardy, slackworthy, self-destructive, and/or completely drippy past-times that I ordinarily would veto out of hand. Like going to an incredibly cheesy girl-movie, for example.

But I also wanted to surprise her with something in particular I had planned, so I picked Jenny up and we drove up to San Francisco. Turning up 3rd, she commented, "I hope you're not taking me to the MOMA, because I'm not really in a museum mood today." Well, good thing I hadn't planned to take her to the MOMA!

Of course, I had planned to take her to a museum about a block and a half away, the Cartoon Art Museum. Well, I kept my mouth shut until we got there, and when I pointed to the sign and said, "I know you're not in a 'museum mood' today, but maybe the Cartoon Art Museum is cool enough to be an exception," she was either gracious enough to do a really good job of sounding like she really wanted to do it, or was actually being sincere.

Well either way, we checked it out. Small place (but not too small), really cool space (read: Mark's kinda architecture). And just the right size to be not too much for someone who was "not in a museum mood."

The current special exhibits are on political cartoons from 1800s-era SF newpaper The Wasp (fair), and Raggedy Ann and Andy (eh). But the other half of the galleries contain the permanent collection. Very cool stuff from the last 100 years or so, ranging from Fritz the Cat to Zippy and Peanuts to Astro Boy. The highlights for me were the animation storyboards and the Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes prints and sketches. My two favorite comics right next to each other on the wall!

So we also did some shoppin', some futile walkin' around looking for the damn Urban Outfitters, some Apple Store visitin', and some hangin' in the park, where a guy walked by with a huge smile on his face and excitedly exclaimed in a thick Japanese accent that "Some people they say you ugly!" while pointing at me. To which my reply was, "Great!" To which his reply was to repeat that some people, you know down there, down the path the other way from the way he was going, thought I was ugly. "Fantastic! Thanks!" And apparently he was very excited by my response, because his smile grew to a point that it could not possibly have gotten any bigger and still remained within the constraints of his face, and he gave me a double thumbs up.

Now I definitely want to move to San Francisco.

Photo of the (Jenny) Day™

Jenny's 3 wishes:
1) To watch sappy movie Love, Actually (which was actually pretty darn good), without me talking at all. Yeah, I didn't really hear that last part.
2) That I'd use a LiveJournal icon that she'll make for me. I shudder to consider the implications of this, but I agreed.
3) That we'll go snowboarding this winter. Well, it was late by the time she finally came up with this one, and we were both pretty tired, so I didn't bother to point out that I'd have done this one anyway.