1 Sep 2024 - 1:11am

Honestly, I really don't feel up to it. But I feel less up to the tasks of describing what's going on now, or what was going on in 2016. So I guess there's no choice but to fish around in the...

Box of Happy Things | Part 3

September 2011

Wunderlicht had a booth at Unite 11, a 3-day conference for Unity developers. The event was held at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. Unity is a game engine/development platform, and Lilienthal was being positioned as an ancillary product to boost its effectiveness. I was on hand to help demo Lilienthal's interoperabilty with Unity. I rotated with a couple co-workers; two hours on, one hour off. As had been the case with my prior booth demo-ing days, we didn't get very many folks stopping by or asking questions. So I just rummaged through the content directory and fiddled with stuff. One of the new items was this awesome model of a Vietnam-era US Army zombie, created by Lilienthal power user (and former student of mine) Donovan, who was working as an animator at Whiteout during this time. There was a big flatscreen display at the front of the booth, and I just ran the zombie character through some of the modeling, texturing anf lighting tools. At one point, Wunderlicht's CEO was doing stand-up interviews in front of the booth, and I thought it would be funny to manipulate the zombie as if it were creeping up behind him. I thought I was being clever and puckish. Apparently I wasn't; the interview was moved outside.

Eventually the expo hall closed for the day, the booths were tarped and I was sent on my way. I had no particular place to be for a while, and I had a few bucks in my pocket for a change. Hadn't driven, so I was free to ramble. I walked north and eastward, skirting Chinatown. The streets quiet in the slanting light of the evening. Distance is always strange for me in The City. It felt like I strolled for miles; a review of the map tells me it was well under a single mile to my destination: City Lights Books, where I hadn't been in years. It was also quiet and uncrowded within. I sat downstairs and read a few chapters of Violence Girl by Alice Bag (one of the founders of the L.A. punk scene in the late 70s).

I eventually bought a copy of Hawk Moon by Sam Shepard and went next door to Vesuvio to read it over a pint of something cold and hoppish. Again, only a few people in the place. No music or tv blaring over the bar. The building creaked around me deliciously, as I sat and read. Over a half century of raucous and clamorous evenings, or rather the ghosts thereof, swirled in thought-motes around me, invisible and inaudible, but still within my ability to imagine: Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Corso, Snyder all talking and drinking and exuberating at once. And, of course, the rumpled bhikku himself Ti Jean Kerouac. I pictured myself in the din of that history, as if leaning into a party from the doorway of an adjacent room, cupping hands and shouting: "Hey, 'Sal Paradise'! Did you know that in about 30 years the city is gonna name that alley outside after you?!" Picturing the quick succession of emotions running across his face (disbelief, disdain, astonishment, gratitude and back to disdain) before he silently waved me away.

(I should add that there was an evening-ghost in the place that did belong to me personally, a memory from my own lived experience. It's kind of mentally paper-clipped to this Happy Thing, so it's actually already been pulled from the box. But I'll tell it another time...)

Two or three more pints and I was ready regain my pleasantly numb and only slightly unsteady stance, to head down Montgomery to BART, then across the bay, then over the hills to my home. Wife greeted and kissed. Dogs hugged. Sleep and dreams eventually entered.

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