Forgive me for my absence, I have been moving apartments — and Lord knows how fun that is.

Nonetheless, I am continuing my European vacation nostalgia with my time in Madrid.

I enjoyed the quaintness of Madrid. We stayed at a Best Western hotel where we could enjoy a rousing game of Conecta 4 in the lobby as well as a nice shower which I used as a recording booth to sing the entire soundtrack of Rent.

The weather was gorgeous the entire time we were there and we took advantage of it. We dined on Filipinos (as shown in the picture) whilst admiring the Rizal monument and Bertha and I utilized this beautimous weather for a nice workout in the park:

While we were there, we continued our museum spelunking with the Reina Sofia and the Caixa Forum (which was designed by the same peeps who did SF’s de Young Museum). We also saw a bullfight — which I wrote about in my journal:

It was fascinating, exhilarating and PETA-unfriendly to sit in the nosebleed section of a huge stadium and watch some dude mutilate a bull with a big dong.

Aesthetically, they were rough around the edges and showed every Xerox flaw with pride. Zines were a DIY piece of counterculture and each of them honed in on a particular niche. From pulp fiction to science fiction to politics – they were self-made pamphlets of personality and were a cult phenomenon distributed amongst a small group. Essentially, they were the original blog – but a lot cooler and a lot more character.

I am basically degrading what I am doing right now.

Lucky for us in the SF Bay Area, Rock Paper Scissors Collective partnered with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for Zine Mart, a special pop up shop of ‘zines.

Through Nov. 22, an archive of these self-produced publications and will also feature instructional videos and contributions from other ‘zine collectives in the Bay Area. Specially commissioned ‘zines and multiples will also be available from Ari Marcopoulos, Bozidar Brazda, Kamao Patton, Marc Arthur, Vanessa Albury, Tammy Rae Carland, Taravat Talepasand, Joseph Akel, Isaac Valdez, Nick DeMarco and others.

This past Friday, I went through the Transbay tunnel to pay a visit the opening and was quite impressed, if not inspired.

There’s a gritty sensibility with zines that make them appealing. The gamut of zines ranged from raunchy gay publications to quirky subject matter (i.e. an entire book on candid apologies). Morrisey even had his own zine:

What made the event even more fun, was when I saw Tabitha Soren. I had immediate flashbacks of MTV News briefs circa 1990. Do you remember those? It was the period of time when MTV was relevant.

The cut & paste & Xerox appeal had me in a state of nostalgic excitement. I never had the chance to write or create my own zine back in the day because I wasn’t cool enough. That said, don’t be surprised if you see a zine by the title of “the finer dandy” laying about in various hip spots around the city.

Sure, I still won’t be cool enough, but hopefully the cool zine kids will let me play.

To get a little more cultured, I decided to go to the American Museum of Natural History and then the next day I went to The Met (a.k.a. The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

I felt so refined as I walked amidst fifth grade classes and tourists with fanny packs.

All was going well until I saw this at the Museum of Natural History:

Then I saw this at the Met…

Okay. I was laughing to myself when I was taking these pictures. I felt like a 5th grader when they split the class up into boys and girls and show them those “your body is changing” videos. God I am so mature.

P.S. What is the female version of the word “phallus?”

The event featured designs from the always lovely Colleen Quen and Jude Gabbard, a face I am not familiar with in the SF fashion scene – but talented nonetheless.

The two went to China’s most remote and poorest areas, the Guizhou Province, where they learned their way of life – primarily the fashion. They came back stateside and took what they learned to create stunning garments:

I swear, lately I think I have some sort of awkward social disorder. I get all funky and giggly and annoyingly chatty when I go to these events and mingle. I am sure it’s just me being uber self-conscious, then again, maybe I am not too far from the truth. I feel like I am socially raping people when I talk to them. I get all weird and creepy and I feel myself smiling with this uncomfortable vibe that comes across as youthful and stupid.

Nonetheless, Colleen has always been a down-to-Earth designer – and she is really big time! She was on an episode of that Tyra Banks-fest celebration of self television show called America’s Next Top Model. You know, it’s that one show where these girls think they are competing to be a model, but in actuality they are just a bunch of drones being brainwashed to be a cult offspring of Tyra.

Anyways, I remember when I took Alice (my chain restaurant confidant) to one of Colleen’s shows last year where they gave away free Beard Papa cream puffs. Alice took six of them. We got kicked out. Just joking. But those cream puffs are damn good.

While I was giving socially uncomfortable glances to random urban art hipsters people in the Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art Gallery, I noticed two people walk in. One tall slender boy who looked familiar to me. The other was a young man with unruly hair and large rimmed eye glasses. He looked like a haggard ’70s dork with Bill Gates appeal.

After staring at them for a bit, I realized the slender boy was Joseph Cross from the good book turned bad movie “Running with Scissors”. I had no idea why he was in San Francisco. But the geek next to him was Emile Hirsch who has been in the city for the filming of Gus Van Sant’s movie, “Milk”.

I kept on glancing over in their direction remembering the time when I interviewed Emile for “Into the Wild.” I wondered if should go up to him and say, “Hey Emile, do you remember me? I interviewed you last year when you were doing a press tour for “Into the Wild.”

He would look at me strangely and then say, “No. Leave me alone.”

Okay, maybe not. He’d probably think I was just creepy, bordering on the line of stalker.

I mean, how can he forget me? I know he probably got interviewed by over 100 journalists for that movie, but you don’t meet many giggly Filipino-American journalists on an everyday basis.

Plus, look at us in this picture:

We look like the best of friends.

Okay, now I sound like a stalker.

Even so, I did get to do non-Fashion Week stuff with my friends Janet and Erline:

One day, Erline and I (Janet was at work) decided to take advantage of the free Friday admission to the MoMA, and put some culture in our blood.

Flash photography is not allowed. I got chastised by a security guard because my flash accidentally went off.

Busted me.

Remember those three-lined pieces of paper we used to practice our cursive and printing on in the first half of elementary school?

Are you bored yet? If not, here’s some more.

I am a fan of modern art, but a lighter and an instamatic camera? Come on. To make things more pompously pointless, they were in a glass case. It is not that serious.

This mosaic – or whatever you want to call it – was very enjoyable.

Any piece of art that has that faceless international symbol man in compromising positions is good in my book.

Then there were those pieces of art that are bizzare, but fun to look at – I thought the VCR piece was quite clever:

Don’t these look like big piles of bronzed elephant poop?

And are you ready for the big finish?

Wasn’t that fun?