Bull Run

Friday night I got tickets for Lance & Greg (they are an ampersand now), RMJ, and me for the Kinsey Sicks show "Wake the Fuck Up America!" (spoofing the television morning program format as the framing story for this show).

The day before, RMJ sent out this e-mail:

Hola gents ..
quickly now .. but excited to join you boys for some Sickly Kinetic
laughs & political humour manana.
Wilson, you met my friend Juan Carlos .. he has invited us to join him
for a Spanish patron saint fiesta tomorrow after the performance.
So latin .. but I do not have all the details just yet ... and I do
say that with love.

Anywho... the reason for mentioning this now, in honour of the Patron
Saint, todos will be wearing White ... Lance&Greg, hopefully this will
excite you, since you must still be freshly dressed in your Majorca
winning whites from Wimbledon!!!!! (oh my golly!) ... Federer is not
so bad in white either. tho my eye is on Novak.

Ahh. .. to be accessorised with a red bandanna ....

too easy, but Wilson, post-Aussie-glow, perhaps there are a few red
bandanas in chez Wilson's? Again, said with love.

Anywho .. will follow up .. wanted to plant the seed. I will happily
pick up 4 bandanas in hopes it works/you'd like to go!

Besos.x

Gay Greg had the most genius response:

I eagerly await the translation of this text.

I, moderately fluent in Robert Michael, translated.

Basically, we need to wear white to the show because we are invited to a Latin Patron Saint of Something party afterwards..

And bring a red bandanna if you've got one. If not, RMJ is willing to shop.

Being from Tennessee, I have two or three at home. I know I have at least two. I'll check.

And I don't have any white pants, but have white shirts. Unfortunately, my best white shirts are western, and combined with the bandanna will look a little ho-down-y.

But you can't keep a good ho down.

I'm in.

Upon further clarification, it was a Pamplona/Running of the Bulls-themed party, and RMJ sent out a photo of what attire we should aim for.

I want to take a moment to respect that RMJ sent a photo as an attachment to an e-mail. For him, that is a serious technological achievement, and I want to applaud that.

Knowing my friends as I do, I did not e-mail a reminder to Lance & Greg. The odds of their costuming, or being up for a late night of carousing with an unknown crowd, were slim.

On the other hand, knowing RMJ as I do, when he askes that I show up in costume, I do. I've learned to run with it. And if anyone knows the value of an invitation, it's RMJ.

Unfortunately, not wanting to park at Civic Center I decided to take MUNI, which of course meant that RMJ and I went to the show in costume.


The party was, of course, wonderful. Our host was the energetic and adorable Bernardo, who is also, as far as I could tell, the God of all things Google Geo. The rest of the guests rounded out a who's who of Google, Apple, and Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay. Topically, I would not be hurting for conversation.

However, and forgive me if I mangle names through the rest of this post, I may have been the only one there who was non with the hable.

As far as I could tell, Bernardo was the pied piper of this merry band. Roberto (as he became) and I were invited along as friends of Juan Carlos (whom I met at Pink Saturday). I got to meet Juan Carlos' other half Albert, and possibly the guests of honor: Mocha, Marta, and Geraldine visiting from Spain.

I was very glad to have followed my costume request without question. We brought it, and were well received for doing so.


I also had to love Juan Carlos' and Albert's accessories: They only could find one bandanna between them...


so they cut it in half for the outfits.


I also want to celebrate Bernardo's newfound love of Apple technology, evidenced by iPods, docks, iPhones, and most centrally, the AppleTV...


...on which we were able to watch all sorts of Running of the Bulls videos streamed directly form YouTube. Very cool. I love mine for this sort of instant and contextual entertainment, and it was nice to see it invoked elsewhere.

Inspired and intoxicated, we went out into the cool Noe Valley night,


divided into runners and bulls,


and had our own version of Pamplona.



Many thanks and muchas gracias to our host Bernando!

He's already blogged the night, and you can use Google translator to get the idea.

My flickr set is here.

And for your viewing pleasure: a little video montage of the night. I tired to find and download a good Spanish (i.e. from Spain) dance track to go with this. They were playing some really awesome music at Bernardo's. But a search of the current hits in Spain reveled Rihanna's Please Don't Stop the Music at number one, and all the others were soulful ballads and not party music at all. I tried the Rihanna track first, but this one seemed so much more peppy.

And, you know, in Spanish. Even though Gloria is from PR.



A higher-quality version for sharing is located in the gallery.

Robert and I joined a bunch of the Spaniards Saturday "morning" at Lime before their flight left in the "afternoon."

But that is so much another post.