Mike Jutan's World: Dawn 2008: Jewish Contemporary Museum opening

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Dawn 2008: Jewish Contemporary Museum opening

The sweet glorious awesome of the weekend continued in its glory on Saturday. I got up at insane-o-clock (roughly 10:30am PST) and spent a couple of hours packaging up certain ILM-related items for certain awesome members of the Jutan Clan inner-circle of trust. (You know who you are) haha. Yeah anyway I had some cool presents to send my family and my good friends back in Canada, and so I spent some time packaging all that stuff up. Then off to downtown to find that the only post office right downtown is CLOSED ON WEEKENDS?! Ummm??! I just thought they were on their lunchtime siesta, but then forgot this isn't Spain, nor is it the Basque Country.

So a bit of a (major) schlep across downtown carrying several boxes and envelopes of stuff, I got to Fedex and wandered in there. I asked the 12 year old behind the counter if they sold boxes and she said "yep - over there" and actually it worked out pretty well. I boxed up my stuff better, and borrowed a tape gun there for a bit too. Good times. Then off to the DSW Shoe Warehouse (seriously), still carrying boxloads of stuff. I wandered in there, arms full, and the door girl (who also was about 12) gave me a weird look but I kept going anyway, straight to the sock aisle. My parents were just visiting, and my Mom said my Dad really liked the Dockers socks she bought him there, and I should send 3 pairs. :) So I found the famed socks eventually, bought them, and tipped my hat to the same security girl on the way out (who gave me a bit less of a weird look that time). Then off to the secret underground Post Office in Macy's, and that worked out well. Mailed off all the stuff. Then jumped on a streetcar to the Ferry Building...

And I missed my favourite Blue Bottle Coffee stand by 8 minutes. Crap. Thank goodness for the Blue Bottle Cafe. (See later on in this post).

Anyhoo, I had some tasty food and did my usual chill-out-have-lunch-and-don't-talk-to-anyone-
and-then-relax-from-a-crazy-week-and-watch-the-water
moment at the Ferry Building in my secret spot that the crowds of people don't seem to know about for some reason.

Then back to the mall, wandered around, bought a cool shirt at H&M and so ons.

Then met Julien and his friend Daniel (but pronounced "Danielle") in the evening and went for dinner to this tasty Asian Fusion style place in the fancy mall downtown, it was pretty siiiick!

And then off to meet Lauren at the lineup for Dawn 2008, the pre-opening party at the brand new Jewish Contemporary Museum in San Francisco! Turns out... the line was 1000 people long AND they had completely sold out before the lineup even got started. I didn't know what to do, and Daniel and Lauren were kind enough to tell us to go in and they'd just wait for a bit and see if the line would start moving. Once we got in there they told us we couldn't leave, or they wouldn't let us back in. Crap.

So we left Daniel and Lauren outside in the capable (and insane) hands of crazy/hilarious Pixar Lauren, who came up to introduce herself to me with a classic "Hey, are you Mike Jutan?!!! I know allllll your friends from Pixar!!" moment, which was obviously super nice and made my night.

Julien and I then went to see a talk by Jonathan Safran Foer, the legendary author of "Everything is Illuminated", the powerful/strange/interesting/ridiculously unique book that I read recently and loved. As expected, he was a true artist. What a strange view of the world he has, and I loved it. The way he expressed himself was just like his writing style, and was inspiring, hilarious, bleak, pensive, angry, calming and about 300 other powerful emotions all at once and in some sort of balance. Clearly, a true artist. It was TOTALLY AMAZING.

After that finaaaaaaaaaally Lauren and crazy Pixar Lauren got in, and they were major troopers for staying in the line forever. We went to the William Steig exhibit, the illustrator who did the book called "Shrek", which the movies are based on. Pretty awesome stuff, and there were some cool Shrek concept art pieces in there.

After that, there was some live music, some good tunes, some cheesecake eating, a tall dude in a spandex bunny costume, and you know, the usual kind of thing you see at a Jewish Art Museum... bagels, cream cheese, and a bunch of people hanging around the food table. (Including us) It was awesome as expected. Good bagels!

After the night of fun we headed to Mel's Drive In which was gloriously close to the museum, and had some late night food before all heading back to our homes. Awesome times, awesome people, and I just loved it all.

Ok enough yapping, time for photos.