My friend and I went to see free Shakespeare in Golden Gate Park. It was a hot day, which is rare in that part of San Francisco, and I roasted my legs while sitting in the full sun.

They're like burnt and on fire right now, but I put some after sun lotion on them so hopefully I won't peel or burn. The sun was so hot today, and it's still hot at 8 pm.

Usually the fog rolls in on hot days, but not today. The whole city seemed be out enjoying the park, and it was great to see everyone out.

We watched "Love's Labour Lost", which was done with late 50's costume La Dolce Vita style. Everyone was good, except for the page who was played by a girl. She totally annoyed me for some reason. She was very cloying, and really not that funny.

Usually the pages are played by guys, and it's a different part when it's played by a guy. The page part is supposed to be a young boy in his teens, and most actors play it that way. This actor chick played it like a some 20 or 30 something chick, which was so off putting in a way.

I don't know. The rest of the audience seemed to like her, so maybe I was the only one who kept praying for a giant hook to get her off the stage. The critic at the SF Chron thought the performances were uneven, and for once he and I agreed.

At Sharon Meadow the local radio station Alice 97.3 put on their annual "Now and Zen" festival, which featured Liz Phair, Maroon 5, Seal and Duran Duran.

The music was so loud from Now and Zen, that we could hear it during the Shakepeare play. It was kind of annoying but kind of fun, because we had wanted to go to Now and Zen but decided we didn't want to pay that much money for the tickets.

I kind of felt that I got my wish. I saw free Shakespeare in the Park and I heard Duran Duran and Maroon 5, the two bands whose music I really like.

The music was so loud that you didn't really have to pay money to hear the concert. There was a ton of people sitting in front of the flower conservatory enjoying the concert, because the sound at that location was so clear.

I heard that Maroon 5 song they keep playing on the radio "Harder to Breathe" (they sound Bon Jovi to me), Seal's hits (saw him in concert a few years ago), and all my Duran Duran faves. YAY!!! And I didn't have to pay $40 to hear them.

My friend had seen them in their young and beautiful days, and we both wanted to remember them as those pretty young boys on that boat sailing on the ocean and not have that be spoilt by an older and I'm sure more weathered version of themselves playing their old hits at some kind of reunion concert.

Simon LeBon was beautiful and I want that memory of him preserved!

Here's a very interesting article on The Darwin Awards website, Stupidity should be cured — Watson.

The best bit from the stupidity story:

"If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease," he was quoted by The Times of London as saying. "The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it?

"A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent."

I got into a Second City Television mood, and started surfing the internet for news about them. I remember watching their show a long, long time ago, and thinking they were so funny and just as good as Monty Python's Flying Circus. I love Monty Python!

The big news is the Second City Televisious group is releasing on DVD next year their shows from NBC. I bel they'll be expensive, but definitely worth getting.

Then I went surfing for Monty Python stuff, and they have a 14-dvd set of all of their Flying Circus shows. It's not cheap, but it might be worth getting one day.

I have this one memory of an SCTV show, where there some kind of murder on the show and the people involved were all children's television stars. It must have been very funny if I still have memories of it to this day.

I have a couple of Monty Python Flying circus memories as well. One is a sketch where there's a bunch of people in a boat, and they're out in the middle of the ocean. They're starving and have to decide which people to eat.

My other vague memory is when they used to go out and interview people in the english countryside, and the interviews were always so strange, but funny in an odd way. It wasn't until I saw British television years later, that I realized they were spoofing BBC interviews.

BBC news is a riot. They're so different from american news. When I was there in the mid 90's, I couldn't believe they didn't show satellite pictures for the weather report. Instead, they showed what looked like felt cutouts for rain over a felt cutout of the British Isles. What a goof!

Following in the Dark - tentative chapter divisions and titles

1. In the Beginning
2. The Mother of all experiences
3. Alone with him
4. Darkness pulls you
5. Darkness Descends
6. Following in the Dark
7. You can't see in the Dark
8. You can't hear in the Dark
9. You can't move in the Dark
10. Darkness has no pain
11. Alone in the Dark
12. In the Darkness all is revealed
13. Entombment
14. Between the Darkness and the Light
15. Out in the Light
16. The Darkness hides all
17. The Stranger in the Light
18. Light hurts
19. Light lets you move
20. Light lets you hear
21. Light lets you see
22. Leading in the Light
23. Light lifts you up
24. Light invites you
25. At one with him again
26. The start of something new
27. Another beginning

These chapter titles are so structured, and I've never done that with my stories before. Usually I just write and write, and then afterwards step back to see what I've done.

Not this time. This story is structured like a pyramid. You go up, get to the top, and then descend in the way you went up, so the chapters for the ascent and descent mirror each other.

I don't know why I made it so complicated, but it makes sense somehow to structure the story this way.

But who knows? I could change it all next week.