The Surreal World, San Diego

A few weekends ago, my partner, Andrew, and I took a trip down to San Diego. We decided to take a stroll in Balboa Park. As we entered the park, we heard a mariachi band playing. "Is that 'Hotel California'?" I asked. "Yup," said Andrew. Aside from being instrumental, it sounded remarkably like the version from the bowling scene featuring The Jesus in The Big Lebowski. "That's weird," said I. So we continued on, and in an attempt to find a Japanese tea garden, we wound up on a detour that took us down a hill and past some construction on one side of the dirt path, and trees and meadows on the other. As we rounded a corner, we came upon a 20-something skate punk. He disembarked from his skateboard and approached a stump that sat off the path a bit, in the shade of a large tree. He positioned himself on the stump and proceeded to open an instrument case, whereupon he pulled out . . . an accordion. He started to play some jaunty little tunes, which formed the soundtrack for the rest of our walk. Then, marveling at the strangeness of the scene, we made our way back up to the museums and walkways in the main part of the park. It was now nearly 45 minutes after we had first entered the park, but as we approached the entrance/exit, we began to hear the strains of the mariachi music again. "Wait . . . is this still 'Hotel California'??" It was. For a brief moment, I wondered if we had entered some sort of time warp, that led to some sort of alternate universe in which skate punks play jaunty tunes on accordions. As we mused over whether they had played a 45-minute-long jam version of the song, or had played it again and again like an mp3 on repeat (or, OK, had simply gotten back around to the beginning of a second set), we passed a man walking three rabbits on leashes. That's right -- rabbits. At that point, we began to feel as though the only thing missing was a midget talking backwards about a lodge in the woods.


This picture is not from the park, though this little guy (from the San Diego Zoo) would likely have felt right at home there. He poked his head out of this burlap sack, looking perturbed, just moments after a monkey had pulled on the sack and subsequently scampered away to hide and observe the results of his action, presumably laughing at having pulled one over on the otter once again.