Oakland, California: Sunday morning ... woke to the sound of a full choir, singing and wailing, sounds bleeding out from a Baptist church across the way. One word for ya: LOUD! And the music was really good! I mean, they were JAMMIN'! It was all the way across the street, but it was so cranked up, so fulla passion, it made me awake with a fart and a smile, and I felt like giving a jovial scream of, "Hallelujah!" I almost expected Little Richard himself to come running out, with his ass on fire, going, "Whoooooo!" (You know, that thing the Beatles stole ...)

Later in the day, I was walking down the street, and this car goes speeding by, at like, 90 mph. Flyin'! Didn't even see it coming. And this woman jumps outta the way, up on to the pavement, and grabs my arm, panting. She says,
"You know what I thought, honey??"
"Um ... what?" says I.
"I thought there'd be, like, bullets flyin' and shit. Whew! 'Cuz, you know, when people drive THAT fast in a residential zone, there's usually something going down."
"Ugh," says I.
Then she goes into this story about how a few weeks ago, she'd been driving, right down on Adeline, not too far away from where we'd been standing. This car went by, at supersonic speeds, she said, and then there was the "rat-a-tat-tat" of bullets, and one guy was shot and died on the spot, and another innocent just spun his SUV around, to avoid being hit, and his automobile flipped right over. But he lived, and she did, too. And she thought it was gonna happen again, today.

"You just never know ..." she stammered.

I nodded. Then I just kept walking ...