Current mood:	good
Current music:	The Clash - Train in Vain

Palm Springs and the High Desert
Dorothy and I spent this weekend in Palm Springs with our friend Branden and her sister Binky since they were house sitting some place with room to spare. Branden is one of the few people I know who I could talk with all day and really enjoy it. I'd never been to Palm Springs proper before. The city has the same population as ours at about 40,000, though it's more spread out over rougher terrain. The basin of the valley is flat and sandy with some dunes and some shurbs and rocks. Randomly interspersed between the crazy number of single story residential lots, golf courses and restaurants were the remains of palm tree groves, valued in passed decades for their yield of dates. There was a bar called Heaven like in the Talking Heads song. People don't mill around in Palm Springs due to the crazy temperatures except on the main strip, where every building has the waiting-in-line-at-Disneyland overhead water mist outside. There isn't too much abandoned shit and all stucco is far more extreme than any in the rest of California.

On Saturday, I think, or Sunday, we went "uphill" to the high desert, home to Yucca and Joshua Tree. When you drive up to Yucca or Joshua Tree, it's called "going uphill" because it's literally uphill from the rest of the valley. This is amazing word efficiency. Yucca was some thirty minutes away and far more isolated and desolate than Palm Springs. Like Branden said, this is the place where you cannot grow grass, ever. You will fail again and again and only face embarrassment.

Though Palm Springs-- and all cities-- attract specific brands of crazies, drugs and perverts, the high desert is among my absolute favorites. Aside from the always exciting abandoned shit and unpaved roads, the first thing that stuck out for me was the University of Mental Physics. The site was a sprawling complex of outdoor, attached dormitories, chapel sanctuaries, Buddhist monuments, and communal living quartersin the architectural styling of the 70s of the future. You know, what the future was like in the 70s. Though the place was deserted, the sanctuary had signs of recent use. A full water cooler sat outside the locked doors beside a stack of cups and I poured myself a cup, certain it would not contain LSD. Mental Physics seemed to be a blend of New Age communal spirituality, Buddhism, and drum circles from what I gathered off the fliers around the complex and from Branden and Binky.

Yucca had a great independent cafe which impressed me with a superior cappuccino. I can't remember the name, unfortunately, but realize that any barista's skill can easily be determined by the quality of their cappuccino. I'd rank the one I had a B+, definitely a high B+. Like, 88%. The quality of foam was nearly perfect, being extremely dense without visible bubbles and visually resembling whip cream. However, the drink lacked the proper portion of foam to milk which should always be 50%. This drink consisted more like 76% milk and had there been any more milk, it would need to be considered a latte. Still, it was an enjoyable cappuccino. Keep this tip in mind when you visit Starbucks and if they give you a cappuccino with huge air bubbles that tastes of hints of salt or burnt milk, you need to step up. Force the inferior barista to accept their position as a minion and a hack because it's bullshit and they're ripping you off.

This is a huge tangent. However, there was something amazing in Yucca that captivated all of us and touched us in unspeakable ways.

From the highway, we noticed a lime green booth with a sign that read "The World Famous Crochet Museum." Obviously, we needed to see it for ourselves. I pulled the car around the back of the strip of businesses where the booth was-- I call it a booth because it's size resembled something like three phone booths and, unlike a shack, had large picture windows on it's longest sides. The entire lot was unpaved and the museum was flanked on one side by a free standing garage and a garden of personified metal sculptures cast from found auto pieces. Across the dirt lot was another free standing garage and beside it, a rickety stage with peeling paint. An old man walked from the garage as we approached.

Dorothy rolled down the window. "Hi, we saw the World Famous Crochet Museum from the highway, we just wanted to come and see it, come and see the museum. Can we park here?"

He stared at her for a moment, then said "...what's up?"

She repeated herself and we parked the car. We piled into the crochet museum. Every available space in the museum hosted a little creature, empty wine bottles serving as the skeletons for black and gray poodles and there were crochet frogs and snakes and lizards. There was a crochet bowl of crochet Oreos and crochet tacos. The Oreos, especially for me, were shocking and incredible. But then Binky told us to look across the way at the art exhibits in the garage the old man was sitting in with his book.

I approached. In the center space of the garage hung a massive mobile at least 13 feet in diameter with wire arms in every direction, drifting slightly in the breeze. Rubber chickens sporting huge, realistic cocks hung from each arm, some in elaborate feather headdresses, some with billiard eight balls on their backs or legs, some with many cocks bundled together from the same chicken or sometimes several cocks together from many chickens. My eyes came downwards and I noticed a soft blanket and pillow on the ground beneath the mobile. Four or five cocks lay together in a pile on the pillow. I suddenly fell into shock realizing that some dude out here in the high desert spent many hours perfecting the balance of his chicken and cock mobile, many nights and hot days focusing and enduring trial and error. Suddenly, all the cocks on the pillow started pulsating simultaneously. I looked to the rest of the cocks and realized that all had been activated simultaneously and were pulsating in unison. Not only was this a giant mobile with rubber chickens and enormous cocks, it also was had motorized cocks operating in unison without battery power.