Ooooh, we got to go to San Francisco Friday morning. We went with friends Mark and Corey to see Kooza! the new Cirque du Soleil offering in SF. Wonderful! Marvelous! Exciting! Hilarious!

Well, shit. Words just don’t do it justice. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much. I’ve never been to Cirque du Soleil, so it was all new and dazzling to me. The acts were astonishing. All of them. Contortionists did things humans really can’t do (but would make them ever so interesting as sex partners) – in particular one woman was laying on her chest, chin to the floor, with her legs bent up backwards over her head, feet touching the floor, and she walked her legs in a circle all the way around herself and her chin and chest stayed still. It was rather spiderlike and really, really weird and wonderful. And creepy. Creepy.

There were various great characters playing little pieces throughout the show. One of the characters I liked best was a King — very tall with big hands and long fingers. He did great physical shtick and reminded me of a cross between Kramer on Seinfeld and the mad doc on Back to the Future. He was *very* funny and full of surprises. One little scene in particular – he walked a bad (human) dog that needed to relieve itself. The King picked up the imaginary poo leavings with a bag slowly and carefully drawn out of his pocket and fluffed open, cleaned the whole area very carefully, taking his time and scraping it up and making it look real and being tediously anal about it. When he was finished, he casually flung it out over the audience. Surprise! We were grossed out and laughing about being grossed out by imaginary poo and the juxtaposition of his careful cleaning with the careless tossing. Writing this, BTW, took much longer than watching it and wasn’t nearly as much fun.

My favorite act was the Wheel of Death:

This thing was suspended from the center by ropes and two muscle guys made it go around its axis by running inside the wheels and changing the balance of it. (Reminded me of our inversion table.) It was mind-boggling to watch. When the first guy jumped up into the air while he was on top of it, seemingly in defiance of gravity, the entire audience gasped in unison. I can’t even begin to describe it, but I want to watch it again. And again and again. Awesome physical and mental coordination between the two men. They were dressed as satyrs, little lovely goat guys that puffed and pranced around being macho. Corey and I loved us them satyrs, we did, and in our younger days might have pranced backstage to find them.

The show was lovely and so was everything else. The day was breezy and beautiful. We stayed at the Serrano, a “boutique” hotel in downtown SF. It was an interesting old place and we enjoyed our stay there. Found it on teh iterwebs. They let me park free overnight (Regular $39.95 for valet !11!1) because we were in the hybrid. Cool. And the hotel is dog friendly. And BONUS there’s a liquor store across the street from which Mark immediately procured beers for all involved.

We ate dinner next door at Ponzu after the Kooza show. We ate there because it was easy and we were all well on the way to being liquored up. It turned out to be a good choice and we all shared everything. Yummy stuff. Duck breast, tuna tartare, pork (tenderloin?), vegetable red curry, charred rare beef of some sort, kimchee rice, and calamari. Weird but delightful combination washed down with good beer. Next time we’re loading up on the calamari and tuna, as we were pretty much in agreement that it was the best we’d ever had. Might have been the beer and the fact that we were all starving, but I don’t think so.

A good time was had by all.

Next day Bob and I hit the De Young Museum.