I met at 9:15 a.m. three young women who said they had been waiting in line since 2 p.m. the day before to score tickets to the Maroon 5 appearance sponsored by the large corporation’s retail outlet’s grand opening. Their names are or were Swasti Shukla, Vidya Ramesh and TeJashi Pradhar, all apparently from Cupertino, California, about 15 miles south of here. Swasti said she was a B.U. grad –like the semi-fictional “I’ll show her” ex-girlfriend of Zuckgoldberg — and studying for the bar exam, and an English major, as I was, back in the day (we used Old English, in Shapiro’s Marlowe class, or Latin in our discussion of Hollenshed, but I digress). Vidya had a hoodie with Greek lettering, not for her sorority but for an engineering fraternity; she has a bacherlor’s from UCB but is now at Stanford, the campus, not the real estate / retail ground leasor, excepting these last 20 hours or so. I took the opportunity to hip them about Rupa Marya, which one of them conjured to her supersmart/GetSmart hand-held dohicky, of unclear corporate origin. Their wristbands revealed them to be number 80 of the Hot 100, the ones who scored two tickets apiece for Saturday’s big show, which will be on the roof or top floor of the adjacent parking structure. The lot looks to hold 1,000 cars per floor, or about 5,000 people, although the show is allegedly limited to 1,000. And although I was able to scam my way to a special viewing box for the ribbon cutting, thanks to this here little blog, the helpful event worker emphasized that my laminate will not do Jack Shit on Saturday. (We’ll see…)

Speaking of Jack Shit, someone useful and Maroon-obsessed told me what the bleeped out parts of the new Maroon 5 song are. Something about crappy fairy tales and an ex-girlfriend who eats too much fast food. And still uses a payphone, and does not have a phone like Vidya Ramesh the engineer does.

I also met a high-ranking pr flack for this large corporation, Doug Free, who said he went to high school with Craig Chaquico, of Grace Slick’s band, was worried about Levon Helm’s wellbeing, but had never met Dennis McNally — although he was a classmate of Rich Kelly, and agreed that he was a demon at the net (tennis, not information super highway).

I also met three Palo Alto mayors within one hour, and schmoozed with. Sid Espinosa, the former mayor who actually is the head of philanthropy for This Behemoth and was apparently being paid to be here today, beyond access to Adam Levine, Yiaway Yeh, the actual mayor, who made a joke about the opening falling so close to Tax Day, and Greg Scharff, who is on Palo Alto City Council, is Vice Mayor, and who I described in front of our little temporary clique of schmoozers as “the next Mayor” which got a bigger reaction that I thought it would.

I also ran into Jim Cuneen, who I think of as a fellow Gunn tennis player, in the hey day of Gunn tennis — during The Streak — 185 wins in a row, a national record for any sport — and we talked tennis and the old days. I recalled his old Valient and its “hee-haw” horn; Cuneen always reminds me of George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, buying his luggage, before he falls into the indoor pool. Jim is some kind of lobbyist in San Jo, has a child at St. Francis, and cut his political teeth working for people like Ed Zschau, Becky Morgan and Tom Campbell. I compared him to Gary Fazzino. There was another Gunn grad there, I think on the corporate dole, but I did not catch his name, an ’89. Scharff asked me about Cuneen’s backhand, and I said “Be afraid. Very afraid.”

Meanwhile, getting psyched for sneaking into the Maroovies, I will pop in on the Palo Alto Downtown association’s 4/20 4:20 shindig, something Green. At Lytton Plaza, which I track and haunt and

I was fishing for a Stew reference that I will have to come back to:

(twenty minutes or half a can of soda later — this is an update — the lyric from Stew’s “Drug Suite” which pre-dated and gave birth to “Passing Strange” the line is “I am here to house the haunt”…that would be cool if Maroon 5 would cover something that dark and deep…now back to twenty minutes ago):

edita, four hours later: I returned to the scene of my crimes to update and post more photos to this blog entry. I am sitting here at Microsoft –shit, if they can donate $1 million to four educational non profits I can mention them once — Retail at Stanford Shopping Center, A Simon Property — now I sound like Morgan Spurlock — at 3 p.m sharp (but not Sharp, as far as I know) on a sunny Thursday, April 19, 2012 tapping away on a $1499 Sony VAIO L23BFX — and a nice on the dole bloke named Martin from Leland High/SFSU soccer, he played for Dave Gold but does not know Brian Ho or his organ, offered me a Mountain Dew just when I thought I was due for the old 8-6. Weird. Check that: Mtn Dew -R.

He said there is a slightly cheaper thingy he can let me have for $800 from HP, if I ever want to kill my Luddite jones. If they comp me, maybe, but for now its three last men standing, me, Wendell Berry and Jerry Mander, using the cloud. (I have never bought a computer but update my blog and check my email at the library or borrow from friends and family, but not on a smart phone. Mine is hella stupid. But not Slightly Stoopid, alas.

I bounced off of Cuneen my Greg Alden, Mark Mitchell, Matt Mitchell, Michael Jessup riff. Cuneen would know the Alden’s I knew, because Ellis Alden was Tom Campbell’s campaign treaurer in 1988, but did not know that Greg was a CCS doubles champ for Menlo and now manages the Stanford Park Hotel and its new Menlo Grill, I was sort of reviewing once, with an American Twist approach. At the Ari Cartun Bob Dlyan thing, a couple Friday’s back, it was “Fifth Friday” in March, I met a dude from Arkansas I think it was who knew Chip Hooper in his best days but could barely believe me that at Gunn Hooper, who rose to like seventeen or seven in the world was only number four on his high school team. And I met in the laundry room of my apartment building the number 1 ranked 12 and under girl in NorCal who was dragging her laundry bag but could stop a tank like at Tienman Square with her groundstrokes, a Michael Jessup protegee and Terman High student. I subtly recruited her for Gunn — namedropping CCS champs Rebecca Dirksen, Stephanie Savides and Barrie Bulmore — but I have a sense she is more likely to go Nick Bollatieri or some such. Her name is Sara. No last name needed. Her strokes are Micro-hard.

Music fans Swasti Shukla, Vidya Ramesh and TeJashri Pradhan lent their likenesses to the Microsoft Retail and Maroon 5 hype and hoopla for about 20 hours