The sun is shining and I've mostly recovered from my humiliating walk through yesterday's rain with an uncooperative Kitten Umbrella. It refused to stay open, but it wouldn't close, either, and I didn't want to stand there in front of the Vespa shop fighting with it, so I ended up walking through the drizzle holding the rickety handle while the Kittens flopped limply, like a limp, floppy kitten in the grip of a lackadaisical raptor, AND IS THAT A GREAT SIMILE, OR WHAT!

Nevertheless, I held my head high and when I got back to the office, refolded the Kitten Umbrella into its tiny carrying case for the next sucker to use. Ha ha, sucker!

I spent last night, and the previous two nights, with the Keelhauler in San Pedro. It has always been my dream to visit San Pedro, with its large um, berths of container ships and the refineries and all. Finally, my dream came true. The Keelhauler's ship is in the yard there, and he is enjoying the luxury of staying at the Best Western until the work on the ship is finished. He was kind enough to invite me to visit him, and of course I dropped everything. I mean, it's the Best Western, yo. The BEST.

Hey, check it out... I just looked across the street, and there's a guy wearing a fedora and a denim vest over a flannel shirt, standing next to a shopping cart. He's picking up pieces of something (possibly bread) off the ground, taking a bite, and throwing the rest down. It's like my own little Jim Jarmusch movie. Life is good!

So... San Pedro. The Keelhauler and I had dinner at a little downtown place, and I ordered what turned out to be the best meal I've had in perhaps ever. Lobster ravioli in avocado curry cream sauce. Does it sound gross? It was not. It was superb. The ravioli were fashioned from glossy black-and-white-striped pasta, causing this meal to be forever known as Stripey Plate. All hail the Stripey Plate. It is, as my friend Janey used to say, a TBO, or taste-bud orgasm.

From our seat on the patio (featuring the word FLAMENCO written in white rope lights) we could see a great bar called TOMMY'S YACHT CLUB, the facade of which featured a large painting of a ketch at an angle simultaneously perpendicular and parallel to the viewer.

Following dinner, we went next door to a bar called the S. S. Porthole, in which I tried to order a Miller High Life (it's the Champagne of beers, y'all) and was informed by the bartender that he'd drunk the last one. Rip! So, we made a different selection and sat down in a booth beneath a model of a tall ship ("The Red Jacket"), to check out the scene. Not long after, the bartender hollered for my attention, and held up a frosty Miller High Life, which he then proceeded to open and drink. My bitterness was mollified by the Keelhauler's noting that the portholes behind the bar had paintings of the ocean set behind them, on a system of rollers that created the illusion of motion. Because when you're sitting in a loud bar drinking cheap beer, you want to dislodge your equilibrium as much as possible.

Tommy's Yacht Club turned out to be notable for its lack of deck-shoe-wearing patrons and the bartender, who was wearing a tight mesh half-shirt and a spiked leather collar. Also, it was filled with enormous longshoremen, two of whom were wearing t-shirts--one black, one white--bearing giant red stop signs bearing the words STOP SNITCHING. The guys next to us were drinking shots of Jagermeister dropped into rocks glasses filled with beer. I don't know the name of the drink, but it's probably something like The Deer Hunter. Try one today for maximum nausea!

The twenty songs I picked on the jukebox never came up, possibly owing to the "your song next" rip-off feature, but we had a good time hanging around and people-watching, or trying to secretly people-watch without arousing the ire of the screaming table of identical-looking girls, with strappy, overly hardwared metallic handbags and raccoon eyes. (They will rip out your earrings if you piss them off--I know from experience.)

When we couldn't take the fun any more, we walked a few blocks back to the hotel, past the construction site where the new live/work lofts are going in, and the many independent art galleries lit up to display bright abstract oils. Ahead of us, the silhouette of a huge container ship slipped through the water, taller than the Maritime Museum at the waterfront, and we speculated on what it might carry: bananas, bamboo furniture, or Kitten Umbrellas. You just don't know until you look inside.

Star of the day. . .Jonathan Safran Foer