Took the day off from my job yesterday as my friend James was visiting, and we took in San Francisco, where he is looking for a place.

Being cheap bastards with bellies full of calorific pub grub from the Phoenix and a hankering for James to really see the neighborhoods he is considering for an abode, we walked EVERYWHERE. From the Mission through the Castro to the Haight, and then over to USF where we took a bus to a Chinatown and then walked through North Beach to the BART. In the rain. And it was grand!

Also stopped in for fun at the fancy-schmancy San Francisco headquarters for Scientology. Okay, it was really so James could use the facilities and we could escape the rain for a while -- and he owes me bigtime for fending off getting a stress or personality test and not succumbing to getting my thetan on while he took his sweet time.

My impressions while I dilly-dallied around the 30 foot long display of the life of L. Ron: nice looking place, decidedly not intimidating yet strangely posh, but most important, quite warm and not wet! I'm not one for organized religion anyway, and Scientology to me is really no different from a lot of other religious organizations and their houses of worship, but I must say I did get a wee bit of a creepy vibe in there. Must be the Cruise effect.

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I have another amendment to my best of 2007 post: I wrote a bit about Einsturzende Neubauten's 2007 album, Alles Weider Offen in regard to their unconventional (and totally rad) way of putting out their album themselves -- therefore screwing the record companies while rewarding fans with a product they had a hand in creating (this last part is so crucial to me, especially after hearing the abysmal new album from Bauhaus).

Anyway, I totally forgot to include this album in my tops for 2007! Such a good listen, harkening back to classic Neubauten. I have such immense respect for Blixa Bargeld and his effortless weaving in and out of different genres of music and spoken word. True talent!