siete de mayo

best part about sunday: dancing horses at the oakland cinco de mayo festival! dos equis and i walked over to international blvd in the sparkly sunshine, stopping to check out the horse show happening in the guadalajara restaurant parking lot. there was a live ranchera band playing songs while cowboys dressed up in shiny chaps and vests spun their crimp-tailed horses in tight circles or had them bobbing their heads and dancing merengue steps alongside one another. there was also a blasé little 6- or 7-year-old caballero with blue popsicle-mouth sitting on his miniature horse and letting moms put their frilly-dressed infants in the saddle with him as he posed for pictures.

nerve-racking part about sunday: you know that scene in napoleon dynamite where he draws a picture of one of the popular girls to ask her to the dance, and he writes something like, 'there's more of where this came from, if you'll go to the dance with me,' and she opens it up and is horrified by the, uh, neo-primitif stylings of the drawing? miss J had kindly agreed to sit for me this weekend so i could get back in the painting groove (though for me it is more like a muddy track i keep veering off of). having not painted anyone's portrait for years, i wasn't expecting anything stunning to appear on the canvas, but i wanted to get a good enough likeness that she wouldn't have one of those freaked out moments of 'oh my god i don't really look like that do i do i' – and, well, it's an OK start but her twin sister said it looked like she was about to kick someone's ass. and she also has a manly strong jawline. she did not, however, look upon it in dismay, and we still have one or two more sittings lined up for me to get it straight.

last night: improvisational jazz/noise performance at 21 grand. eh. V's sunday sessions here in studio four make much more sense to my brain. but it was interesting, and the three of us who went enjoyed a good chat over drinks and belgian frites at luka's taproom both beforehand and afterwards.

tonight: i'm going to yosemite! yesssss.