Later. An hour running around shooting pictures, most of them the usual almost got it failures, but some of them well worth the effort. So I have some pictures to use as a buffer for the next couple of weeks. Oh, and I'm still not one hundred percent. The wine last night, well, a bit of an effect, but the lungs are still rasping (albeit less and less) and an hour was quite enough walking, thank you, as I left twenty minutes before the parade started. Of course I always leave before the parade starts, but usually after more than just an hour's shooting.

Lots of photographers there, which isn't surprising when I saw the number of attractive women participating, wearing little more than, well, makeup. That's too hokey. One must keep one's lip more hip in discussing the intricacies of photographing naked women. The group, although smaller, was a bit like Carnaval, the costumes similarly skimpy, albeit less elaborate. Still, with the crowd, opportunities for some decent candid's which means, tired or not, I'm happy.

“...the intricacies of photographing naked women?”

You run around with a bunch of heavy camera equipment shooting (in my case) candid portraits of (in my case) primarily women, although you shoot portraits of men as well if they've done anything interesting, until you're tired and then you get on a BART train and come home for a nap and maybe a nice glass of orange juice. There might be more to it if I were thirty years younger, but my suspicion is the only difference would be I'd shoot more pictures in longer sessions. I can see that difference in just these last ten years, let alone thirty.

With an attitude like that you're going to end up a bachelor.

Mr. Chomsky later this evening at the Paramount. I did find and buy a ticket to the Dylan concert at the Berkeley Greek theater for fifty dollars. The quotes for tickets I was seeing on the web at two hundred dollars a pop were evidently for, I don't know, really good seats or offered by scalpers, probably the former. Hard to sell tickets at four times what you can buy them for from Ticketmaster to anyone but an idiot. Like me, maybe.

This marks three events I'm attending in the next ten days, two concerts and this talk by Mr. Chomsky. Dylan, well, I've never seen Dylan live and I'd like to while both of us are still alive and he's still touring. And I need to get out in an evening now and again if only to test this hermit in the apartment business. There's got to be more in life than Korean soaps.

Later still. I understand now why the Chomsky ticket went for fifty bucks, as his talk was the center piece of a fund raiser for something called MECA, the Middle East Children's Alliance. No complaints, I saw Chomsky on the billboard and didn't read the fine print, interesting to see how many people were in attendance for an event like this. Not a full house, but a fair number of people at fifty dollars a head. The talk focused on the administration's position on Gaza and the Middle East under the Obama administration and was pretty much what I was expecting. No really new information, some interesting quotes I hadn't heard before, preceded and followed by exhortations to contribute money to MECA, of course, but I believe that's why they call them fund raisers.

A number of other fund raising organizations along with a local public radio station and the like were passing out leaflets in front of the theater since, I assume, they figured anyone who's going to pop fifty bucks to hear Chomsky would be a likely target for their own organizations. Like running a gauntlet to get in, but again, making sense. Am I happy with attending? I think I was. Would I do it again? Maybe. I might.