Eclectic

Last weekend I attended some of the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival which consisted of seven short educational films and then and Q&A session with the film makers, on subjects ranging from climate change (specifically rather than generally) to shark genetics. It isn't something that I would ordinarily go to, or necessarily attend again, but it I did find it incredibly interesting. One of the things that I love about this city is the extraordinary amount of things to do, and the seemingly inexhaustive range of events. Whatever my interest, however niche, I am sure that it would be catered for here.

This week we almost attended a free talk on colony collapse disorder (one of Mike's ambitions is to keep bees but it would be cruel to me to keep them in the flat) but needed a night in with the knitting. In hindsight, I wish we had gone as that is when the scarf started to go badly wrong...but let's not talk about that again.

We also also nearly attended (this is a new great way of being more interesting, to tell you what I didn't see but could have, had I not got some feeble excuse instead) a grilled cheese sandwich competition where we could have helped out as judges. We didn't attend because Noreen* our weekend guest was in no fit state that morning for the outside to see, following a rather splendid night in a new pub which I found, which will be getting a whole post to itself. Apparently there was such a massive turnout that they had to restrict numbers to 500, so it seems likely we would have missed out on tasting had we gone, particularly as I thought it started at 1pm when actually it was Noon. Next year, more cheese has been promised. Phew.

On Tuesday, we did attend (yay!) a City Arts and Lectures Talking Music event with John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats. We have one Mountain Goat's album and like it so when we saw that they were playing in the city on Wednesday, thought it might be good to see them, particularly as events seem to be much cheaper in this neck of the woods. It was sold out but Mike noticed the Talking Music evening instead. It seemed like it would be a little strange, putting in my mind the image of a high-brow episode of Parkinson (a mix between Wogan and Late Night Review with Mark Kermode perhaps?) and we would be in the live audience. However, it exceeded all of my expectations and I had a wonderful civilised evening.

It was actually more like just a nice chat between Tobias Wolff, an author (and yes, he was just as adorable in real life as he is in that picture) and John Darnielle who looked more like Harry Potter in real life as opposed to that picture, but was far more engaging, with some music at the end. SO much better than a gig! We sat down in comfortable chairs, in a beautiful theatre located inside the War Memorial Veteran's Building and listened to two intelligent people who had genuine warmth for each other chat about music, writing; life in general. The audience was full of die-hard fans and we had no idea what half the references were about but that didn't seem to matter.

I came away thinking that I must listen to more Mountain Goat's music, and read anything and possibly everything by Tobias Wolff.


* Names have been changed to protect the inebriated.