feather2pixels

The rumors are true: Ben Hill and Aimee made a San Francisco pit stop to begin their mid-winter drive up the coast to Portland. They were a short twenty-two hours, but long enough to eat out three times and purchase two different quasi-legal drugs. For all his last minute-ness, it was Ben Hill‘s third visit to San Francisco. His first year out, Ben Hill was just reentering society, dazed and despondent after an autumn of skeleton shifts and nights on the couch. Ben Hill was on the move by the time of his second appearance, and on Saturday Ben Hill arrived married.

Nowell got involved for the unexpectedly good sushi feast on Saturday night and was a good sport the next morning, beating us to an early morning rendezvous at Sparky’s for breakfast. Later that day and as usual, he left us in awe of the new home that he and Sadie purchased that week. It is not so much a home as it is a compound, with square faucets and soaked in thick buttery sunlight on a pretty block in Cole Valley. It’s hard to imagine being unhappy there. Not that I was happy. Anyways, the weather was spectacular and there were plenty of glow in the dark tattoos to go around.

Ben Hill: A short Appreciation:

As a the first guest blogger on the online juggernaut that is Feather2Pixels, I must immediately point out something that has been distressing me about the site. If one (say, me) types in “Ben Hill“into the search engine, NOTHING comes up.

New York City:

  

Christmas Eve. The most boring night of the year. I couldn’t even find an open grocery store, so instead of running an errand for my family I listened to Joanna Newsom’s new album the way it was meant to be heard: in a dark corner of the Super Fresh parking lot locked in my mom’s brand new SUV.

Joe and Anna announced their engagement at Rich’s Other Place on Friday, which is as good a place to tell your friends you are getting married as it is a place to cut high school. She wore black gloves until the unveiling and I am glad to report that Rich’s grilled corn muffins are back to the excellent standards of ten years ago. It was actually the first time I met Anna. Even if I didn’t like her, I would obviously never trash talk her on the internet, but she was friendly and I took to her right away. A smart woman makes her fiance’s best friends feel welcome. I can see what Joe sees in her.

After breakfast, Joe and I bowled a three game series and played six games of air hockey. He bowls with his dad’s old eighteen pound ball, heaving it in to the air as high as possible so that it lands with a left hook. When hit just right, it detonates the pins with a furious explosion to hell. Any other time it splits them. On Friday, though, he was rusty and I beat him with a reliable 13 pound house ball that apparently used to belong to a Chun C. Chung. Back at my house, we realized that Joe never signed my senior yearbook and so I handed him a pen and he got his big chance. I had almost forgot what it felt like to have friends who know the way to your house without directions. (Not to downplay the significance of Ben, who probably still needs a map for his own special reasons).

That night, Shal and Ammora joined us for drinks at the nation’s second largest mall, where she works (and had just personally completed $33,000 in home theater sales). Our server has a thick, juicy Philadelphia accent but there was an unsettling lack of smoke in the bar. Side note: apparently in Philadelphia proper, there is now an official smoking ban. I went down there last night with my cousin Rebecca to investigate and I am happy to report that at the Locust Bar–on tenth at Locust, where The Rascal and I used to get loaded when she was still nineteen–there is not only smoking, but an ashtray at each table.