Tag: ruba

Welcome back to the human race

I’m warming up to Ruba. There’s no where else to go that late, so this is a good thing. This evening’s entertainment included some personal history about being a Marine and a felon simultaneously and how that worked out, someone’s idiotic $500 plastic sunglasses, and a guy named Bilbo who wore too much fringed stuff and a mullet.

Now here’s the good news: Panera’s putting in a location on 17th, apparently in the former Rite-Aid. Hurray for the imminent arrival of good free wifi, lots of power plugs, decent coffee, and food.

I was listening to “Sultans of Swing” on the radio in my car and realizing that what I like about that song is the bassline, although it’s supposed to be a Guitar Asshole Song.

Finally, the National Weather Service agrees that our weather has been all fucked-up:

The heat that scorched Southern California this past weekend was not only record breaking…but largely unprecedented in recorded history. Strong high pressure centered over the southwest United States sent easterly flow and strong sinking and compressing motion into Southern California that maximized the heating. Monsoon moisture also contributed to the heat by keeping the minimum temperatures up…and numerous daily high minimum temperature records were also broken for much of the last week.

Several high temperature records on Saturday were the all-time highest for the entire period of record (see details below). This is particularly remarkable in Escondido since the record dates back to 1900. At San Diego Lindbergh Field the temperature peaked at 99 degrees…becoming the hottest day since September 25 1989…which is still the last 100-degree day on record.

Also remarkable for areas near the coast was the time of year for this extreme heat since several daily records were not just broken…but shattered (by 16 degrees in Escondido!). normally onshore flow with a marine air presence dominates the weather near the coast at this time of year…so record high temperatures are not as high as they are during the late Summer and early fall…when Santa Ana conditions are usually the cause of high temperature records and are more likely to occur.

Pier Paolo Fettucine

I made dinner tonight consisting of: seared New England jumbo scallops; tricolor rotini pasta with fresh garlic and olive oil; and fresh green beans with butter and fines herbes. I do like to cook a good meal.

Went to D’s and Ruba in turn. I’m trying to get used to Movie Guy Dan’s way of telling a story which is in fits and starts with lots of digressions that go nowhere, and fragmented narrative that’s always getting derailed. Plus twitches. He’s just enough older than me that his “back in the day” stories are all about the big kids who were cool that I couldn’t hang out with, so I’m always hungry for the tale. But damn, it’s a frustrating conversational style.

Ruba was the usual trance-inducing mess. Fifteen-year-old rebel teenagers, twentyish blown-sideways-through-life people playing pool and smoking with “what the fuck happened” looks on their faces, and a rotating cast of alarming old men. The guy I call “Super-Catholic” was there. He’s a sixtyish guy with close-trimmed grey hair who wears Mr. Rogers cardigans and sensible shoes. The one time I overheard his conversation at D’s he was trying to get some college guys excited about the Catholic Church in a very Reach Out To The Generations With Youth Group Training way. He alarms me.

The pool playing and the weird lighting and the excess caffeine and the general Ruba atmosphere put me into a trance state in which I watched a rogues gallery play pool to an increasingly peculiar soundtrack: Billy Squier’s “In the Dark”, Van Hagar, Lionel Richie’s “Stuck On You” (worst song ever), and a long painful set of Easy Rockin’ Hits concluding with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. All for the benefit of the manager, a perky Middle Eastern lady in her late fifties. The kids weren’t impressed. I was pretty shocked when that awful Hungry Eyes song from “Dirty Dancing” came on. It’s like she was trying to clear the joint with music that I found painfully unhip twenty years ago.

I like watching people play pool. The rhythm of it, and trying to predict the shots, and watching them try to predict the shots, all of it. I like Ruba generally, because I’m such a complete outsider there that I don’t feel left out. I can just watch the circus go by in awe. Rich suburban boys with tough-guy neck tattoos, part-time porn stars, defrocked college athletes, half-reformed skinheads, dorkwad normals huffing on hookahs, teenaged girls trying to look older and more sophisticated, and every kind of almost-loser Orange County has to offer. There’s nothing like it.