The burning man in the Spike Jonze video for Wax's "California" hauls ass (in slo-mo) down Gardner Street in Los Angeles before rounding the corner onto Sunset Boulevard heading west. The video was banned from daytime airplay on MTV.

Watch the video for "California"

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Located on the same campus as the Weisman Art Museum, the McNamara Alumni Center is another example of eye-catching modern architecture. Designed by the New Mexico-based architect Antoine Predock (and named after an alumnus who donated $3 million towards its construction), the rounded, angular McNamara is intended to resemble a giant, granite-sheathed geode. Irregular windows and large slits of glass penetrate the exterior of the Great Lump of Oak St.

Inside McNamara is Memorial Hall, an 85-foot high behemoth of a room, with a processional arch from the previous property's tenant (Memorial Stadium, 1924) displayed inside.

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In 1966, Robert Pirsig moved to this address in St. Paul with this wife, Nancy, and son, Ted. A year later, Pirsig began a series of lighthearted essays that would transform into his best-selling book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig lived at this home as he wrote the book at his office during the early hours of the morning.

In a 1974 interview, Nancy Pirsig talked of how the entire family was practicing Zen Buddhism. Every morning, rising early, they would start the day together in their dining room, moving the furniture and meditating on cushions in silence. Afterward, they would have tea, talk, and go for a long walk along the river near their home.

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Located across the street from Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center was formed in 1972 by founder Dainin Katagiri Roshi.

At that time, Robert Pirsig had been studying zen meditation, and in 1973 he became a board member and vice-president at the incorporation of the new Minnesota Zen Meditation Center.

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Robert Pirsig wrote the majority of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle while working at his office at Century Publications above Robert's Shoes. He was employed as a technical writer for Honeywell. He would go to sleep at 6pm, then wake to write from 2am to 6am before work. The book combines a discourse on the metaphysics of quality, an examination of America's mainstream/counterculture split and a "real" haunting of personal madness.

ZAMM was published in 1974, after being rejected 121 times (a Guinness World Record for a best-selling book).

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