A Day at Mills College

I went in to work with Bri today. He made it sound like there'd be nothing worth taking pictures of so I didn't bring my camera. Big mistake. But it was interesting even without it. Mills is in nestled in the woods with the enterance in the middle of a rough Oakland neighborhood. There's bullet holes in the buildings closest to the street. Razor-wire fences line the campus. But you wouldn't know it from inside the college. It's a 100-something acre campus, the size of UC Berkely, but with only 2000 students. Bri's "building" is really a 2 story house. Strangely enough, named Kapiolani, like the road a block from my house. Hawaii-Cali connections all over the place. Anyways, I got to know his peeps a bit and we went for a lunch-time swim. Bri's been working on getting a "lake" ready for use as a campus water source. They're also trying to get the campus trees to a more native state. You have to get permits to cut down trees, except the hated Eucalyptus, so he's got to deal with tons of beurocracy. Good times.

That night, Jesse came up and we went to see that band with the "pretend we're in antarctica, pretend we don't exist" song. I don't quite remember the name. Midnight something maybe? I don't know. The first band was pretty obviously novice. I had a good time remembering my highschool metal band days. The singer looked like Bruce Lee: no shirt, somewhat scrawny and flexing the whole time. The bassist looked thoroughly stoned and just kind of nodded his head with his mouth open while repeatedly turning his amp up every minute or three. The second "band" was really two white guys and a cd player. A dynamic duo - one big, one scrawny. I really liked them though - funny rap and lots of jumping around. Comical. "Start smoking" and the make fun of republicans songs were great. Some douche-bag behind us kept yelling "boo" after each song, and the whole area around us was pissed at him. Jackass. Then Midnight whatever came on. They had lights, costumes, and a lot more of a stage presence. Some attitude, but they were tight so they were somewhat justified. After half an hour, we got the point. It started to sound the same. Pop-ish. But good. The dude's stuffed tights were hilarious. Nothing like dressing like a woman and stuffing a bunch of stuff down your tights to make your junk look huge.....