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Wednesday, 10 January 2001 (rubbing doesn't help) 10:25am There's nothing quite like sleeping after a late night on a day you have off to find it raining outside to make you exquisitely depressed. At least, that appears to be the point at which the lines are converging. There was some laughter at Citizen Kane, though not as much as Vertigo and not quite as much as I'm expecting from Touch of Evil this weekend, especially if the last time I saw it at The Castro is any indication. I'm strongly considering just renting the fucking DVD instead. The worst of it was coming from a guy sitting alone a couple rows ahead of us, who appeared to laughing at random things. Look! Orson Welles is showing an emotion! It's funny! Although there's some heavy drama, it's also a very funny movie at times, and intentionally so. But the guy never laughed at the jokes, probably because he didn't get them. He was just there to laugh at the funny old people. Imagine the retarded guy from Cube in the movie theater scene from Cape Fear, and you'll have a pretty good idea. In spite of my shaving wound, we went to Roderick's. I'm glad we made it, since it's their final night; a new club opens in the same space next week, Camera Obscura. Anodyne was there, though we only spoke briefly, as she was with other people, and I saw Sara from a distance but we never actually hooked up. Probably because I spent almost two hours dancing, surely some kind of personal record for the post-'99 years. (1999 has begun to take on mythic proportions in my mind.) A lot of that time was on the stage, in the presence of many painfully perfect girls, at least upon first inspection. Normally a tiny blonde in a form-fitting catsuit or a quasi-stripper in schoolgirl garb plus stripeys would do untold damage to my already creaky ego. But I'm also trying to realize that it's futile, since I'll never ever ever be them, in much the same way that oregano will never be marijuana, or lead will never be gold. But lead isn't such a bad thing, and it can actually be useful. Like, if you need to block someone's x-ray vision, or you're a pencilmaker during a graphite shortage. And as lead goes, I'm okay. I might as well be, since I'm not going to get any better. This is it. This is as it as I'm ever going to be. Considering that for the majority of my life I was a big hairy male, I'm actually doing better than I ever could have hoped. I just have to keep it in perspective, is all. (What's more painful: desiring the impossible, or the improbable?)
Maddy mentioned that when I'm on the stage towards the back, I blend in with the wall
and can't be seen. Good. Sometimes that's what I desire most.
The Ex forwarded me a message this morning about Neil Young playing a surprise (surprise!) gig at the Warfield
tonight and tomorrow. Tonight's kinda out of the question (although it would be a whole heck of a lot safer than
diriving down the Peninsula), but tomorrow sounded like a definite possiblity. Except that Neil went and
cancelled tonight's show and sorta put tomorrow night's show on hold, then seems to have decided to play
tonight after all, but not tomorrow. It would be incredibly frustrating if it wasn't so completely typical
of Neil.
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Tuesday, 9 January 2001 (sooner or later) 9:46am I cut myself shaving this morning. I shave maybe every two or three days, usually because I'm actually going somewhere that matters. Otheriwse, the growth just isn't that bad. Oh, it's coming in stronger now than it did, say, a month ago. But that's just the way it works. The more time passes, the more it'll come back in and reassert itself. I suspect I'll start getting zapped again next month. Right there's a couple dozen black hairs growing on my upper lip, and that number is going to rise. In other words, I'm getting there, but I'm not done.
But, still, in spite of the sparse, peach-fuzziness of the existing hair,
I still cut myself on what seems like a regular basis. Maybe I'm using
the same razor for too long; at this point I shave infrequently enough to
justify throwing out a blade after two or three uses. On the other hand,
it seems to always happen in the same place, immediately to the right of
my mouth. I guess the area around the mouth is just especially sensitive,
as evidenced by the slight scarring. Joy.
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Monday, 8 January 2001 (larvatus) 9:11am The recycling only gets picked up if it's in paper bags; you can't just pile boxes on the sidewalk. This is not a detail comprehended by our upstairs neighbors, who did just that last week and no doubt scractched their heads when it didn't get taken away. They apparently felt their obligation had been satisfied, since they left the boxes on the sidewalk. I had been mildly tempted to at least bring the stuff inside the gate (experiencing a rare but mild degree of homeowner embarrassment, since the rest of the people on our block seem to understand how the system works), but didn't, since the last thing I want to do accept any kind of responsibility for our neighbors. If I do it once, they might start expecting it. Unh-unh. They've long since annihilated any sort of goodwill I might have otherwise shown. So one of the landlords (the husband) came by this weekend to clean it up. I talked to him a bit and made sure he knew it wasn't our stuff and ergo not our responsibility. I felt a little juvenile, but jeez, they started it! No fair! Anyway, he then emailed both us and the upstairs neighbors:
It won't make a difference, of course. They'll still leave the gate open when they're expecting a delivery (I ordered sushi last night and the doorbell rang when it arrived, fancy that) or having friends over or are just feeling lazy. (When they do decide to close it, the slam is usually so loud the cats stick to the ceiling, but that's another issue entirely.) At least now we officially have the landlords on our side, and that makes me feel just a little better about it all.
They didn't put out their garbage last night, but I didn't expect they would.
My question is, how much time has to pass before taking stuff out of the can doesn't qualify as stealing toys from needy children? The drive and the holiday are long past, but you never can tell about the statute of limitations on these things. I don't particularly want any of the stuff, mind you, I'd just like to know.
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Sunday, 7 January 2001 (smaller and smaller) 9:46am Shrine was okay last night. Not as much fun as last week, more fun than it's been other times. That kinda thing. I'm still glad I went, and intend to go again, perhaps even on something resembling a regular basis. How very retro. 4:34pm Well before Shrine, we went out to dinner with Dana and Costanza last night at a comparatively swanky restaurant called The Cliff House. The ostensible reasons were to give us our presents and to thank us for catsitting during their honeymoon, but I think the real reason was because it makes all feel like grown-ups. At least as much as possible when half the patrons give our motley group of vampires The Look as we enter, but really, that's part of the fun. As Costanza pointed out, the wait staff is always very friendly no matter what. And the food was damned good—even the gyoza, which I felt compelled to order out of the same morbid curiousity with resulted in me ordering a burrito at a truck stop in Topeka, Kansas. Maddy and I are planning on venturing back to the Great Plains later this year; there's a part of me which is sorely tempted to sample Nebraska sushi, which I know for certain exists, as unlikely as it may seem. (Even if they are a front for the Moonies. Really, who am I to judge?) Dana gave me an absolutely beautiful skirt from Hot Topic (yes, I can say that without irony, thank you very much), and today I found there a perfect top to go with it. A velvet number that laces up the front with long flowy sleeves, the kind of thing which I've always adored but never have been able to find in a proper size. Until now. Maybe I won't feel quite as underdressed at Roderick's on Tuesday. I'm going, really. Damnit. Citizen Kane is also playing at the Castro that evening (which is one of those can't-miss-no-matter-what events, regardless of how catty the audience may get), so it's gonna be a busy night...
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Saturday, 6 January 2001 (land of sunshine) 4:02pm From the mid-eighties until the early to mid-nineties, Conk and I had an odd little custom. Whenever he'd call me (or vice versa), the first thing he'd say was "So?" And I would immediately reply "So what?" And the conversation would proceed normally. Neither us have ever been sure exactly how it started; as these things often will, it just sorta sprang into on existence. That was then. Now, our phone conversations are a bit more one-sided, generally involving him leaving voicemails asking me to please call him. This morning he was even kind enough to mention his email address, and said that if I wanted him to stop calling to send him a message with simply "Stop calling me" as the subject line. I suppose that sounds not unlike a spammer offering opt-out instructions, with two crucial differences: A) if I did it I do believe he would stop, and B) we were already old friends when we watched the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation at his place in '87. In other words, he deserves better than that. There was never anything resembling a real falling-out between us; we drifted apart, sure, but people change over 15 years. It happens. Considering how much I've changed over the last three years, and that's only one-fifth of the time we've known each other.
In other words, I need to show a little backbone and call him. As far as I know I haven't
been outed to him; he refers to me as Jeff in the messages, but that doesn't necessarily mean
he doesn't know. In any event, it's not right of me to cut him off just because I'm afraid of what
his reaction might be, even if his early nineties conversion to conservative xtianity (with the
standard accompanying political shift; I recall having seen Dan Quayle's book at his place once)
implies he might be less than understanding. Call me prejudiced if you will (and if you believe
Pat Robertson, conservative xtians are the single most persecuted segment of the population,
and I suppose tobacco smokers come in a close second), but if you subscribe to
particular dogma, those who find themselves on its enemies list.
So, in any event, I won't come out to him over the
phone. And, now that I think about it, I am going to Fresno fairly soon...
He called back not two minutes later. After I said "Hello?" he said "So?" and it went from there, like the old days. Sorta. More or less. I didn't get the impression he'd heard anything about me, and I didn't offer. Which makes me chickenshit, I suppose. We talked for about half an hour. Among other things, he wanted to know if I could do some writing for him for a business venture. (I didn't exactly sign an NDA, but I'm assuming it was implicit.) I politely declined, both for time reasons and because I have an intense fear of biting off more than I can chew, which is why I almost always turn down the side projects I occasionally get offered. I hardly have the discipline necessary to do what meager amount of writing this page requires; the last thing I need is someone else relying on me. He suggested we get together next time I'm in town, and I agreed that it was a good idea. I didn't mention our impending visit. Maybe I'll tell him, maybe I won't. I guess I have to figure out how much slack I owe myself, and when it runs out.
I've been thinking about going to Shrine tonight, in spite of the potential harm
to the Balance of the Force by me attending two weeks in a row. Besides the fact
that I actually want to, there's also that silly little anniversary tradition of mine, since my first
time was early January of '99. The Friday of the same week I started at CNET. But, y'know,
the less I think about that particular chain of events, the better.
My computer's duelling OSs have been installed and maintained by Dana and Costanza, she doing NT and he Linux. Costanza just a little while ago was telling me that packages are, as far as he's concerned, the only way to install software, although admittedly it takes a while to get a hang of it. The funny thing is, I trust them both, and suspect they're both quite right.
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Friday, 5 January 2001 (out of my depth) 6:38am For no apparent reason other than me breaking it, Netscape on my home computer isn't working. If there's another functioning browser on the system, I don't know where it is (I'd be more than happy to use lynx, and do use it occasionally when working on my own page, but suffice it to say most of the web is a tad less than lynx-friendly). The only thing I can think to do is reboot, and frankly, I'm kinda nervous about doing so 'cuz the last few times I tried to start it up it wouldn't let me, and I feel like I'm on borrowed time as it is. Ah, modern life. On the plus side, I was talking to The Ex's sysadmin/guru boyfriend about some of my recent difficulties, and he admitted that he finds package management as baffling as I do. Made me feel just a little less stupid. 8:59am If you've spent any time around Market and Second in downtown San Francisco (and who hasn't?), you've seen the small man who walks around with a sign demanding Clinton be impeached for treason against the 12 Galaxies, or something like that. He's as much of a crazy-person staple downtown as the guy who used to sit near Powell Station with the "Fornicators, Repent!" sign. Actually, now that I think about it, I haven't seen him around for a while. Further proof that San Francisco's culture is dying. Anyway, I noticed this morning that he's changed his sign from "Clinton" to "Bush." I'll bet the suspense of the last few months had been absolutely killing him. Which for some reason reminds me of something I saw on the BART the other day. A woman had something hanging on her chest; I didn't see what it was, but I'd guess it was probably in ID card of the sort which are common in workplaces these days. Printed on the strap, however, were the letters W.W.J.D. It took me a moment to realize that it stood for What Would Jesus Do? It's a (phrase? slogan? bit of meaningless doggerel?) which got probably its widest exposure last year when Gore, desperate to one-up Bush's xtian lip service, said it was the basis of his decision-making process. (I suspect Jesus would probably say something along the lines of, "What the fuck is the federal deficit? Are sheckels involved? I've been out of it for a while, y'know.") There are times when I wish I was rich. Certainly an influx of cash would come in handy, if only to pay off my student loans and car and my one (1) credit card. But like anyone else, there are times when I wish I could come up with a get-rich-quick scheme, something which is only questionable from an ethical and not a legal standpoint. And if this job has taught me anything, it's that the physical world is little more than a vast field of advertising opportunities. That said, I sincerely wish that sometime in the last decade I would have thought to myself, "Hmmm, maybe I can market products with four letters which stand for a mind-numbingly stupid concept that the gullibly pious will purchase in droves, thinking they're doing their part to spread the word of their Gawd and securing themselves a place in heaven!"
Alas, I did not. Oh well. Worldwihoutendamen.
And so it goes.
If we do, it should be fun. It's the restored 70mm print which I saw during the rerelease a few years back, but Maddy's never seen it at all. I can only hope that the audience won't be too catty—which is foolish of me at best, as I've been to that theater enough to know better. Okay, folks, I know the movie's old and the people in it dress and act in a way which seems campy to us now, but roll with it, huh? And if you stop and think about it, the way they dress and act only goes to heighten how dark and twisted a film it is. Although I'll grant it's a little funny when the Mission District is referred to as skid row. But otherwise...
If we don't, we'll eat at Orphan Andy's then go home. It'll have been worth a shot.
Meanwhile, I've discovered the fragility of the Palm III. Mine has been neglected since before xmas; I forgot to
grab it before I went on the mini-vacation, and have now discovered that in spite of not being in use the batteries
have nonetheless died, functionally resetting it. So my Palm has a clean slate. (It's a metaphor for something,
but I'm not sure what.)
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Thursday, 4 January 2001 (there are no more tickets to the funeral) 9:16am With the new year, a lot of people are redesiging their pages. I would, if I had the foggiest idea what to do with it besides a few tweaks here and there. Certainly the archive page needs a lot of work. Otherwise, the site is what is, pretty much. 3:32pm In addition to having dinner (The Ex's homemade tacos, which I haven't had in years—a surreal experience having them again, to say the least), we did the xmas gift exchange last night. We gave them a I-Zone Polaroid camera, which aren't yet trendy enough to be too kitschy for self-conscious hipsters such as ourselves. Even if it is the official camera of the Britney Spears tour. They gave us a glass votive holder with a hand-painted design she did herself. (Along a tin of Penguin Mints, which seems to have become a can't-miss gift with me.) I'm glad to see she's taken up painting again; it's something she hasn't done in a very long time, probably since the early nineties. Art was a passion of hers once, and like so many things which were strong back then, it faded away towards the latter half of the decade. It's good that she's regaining some of them—including a degree of contentment, something which had been very much missing. Living well is the best revenge, though neither of us have any desire to take revenge on the other; rather, I think we're both happy to see the other is living well. Somehow, it makes everything we went through (together, and during the process of un-togethering) worth it. I wrote my dad; looks like we'll be getting together sometime in the next month or so. And there's a message from Conk on the voicemail which I've yet to summon the courage to answer...
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Wednesday, 3 January 2001 (closedown) 9:37am Back at work. Not at my best, but I can't justify letting what has been downgraded to a case of the sniffles keep me home any longer. What would the shareholders think? Probably the same thing I'm thinking now: Jesus, the company's stock has dropped fifty dollars from last year! Not that we're the only ones, and in spite of the drop we're still doing better than most (it was over fifty to begin with), and it still isn't below my strike price, but jeez...I was really wanting that 16:9 teevee, not to mention there's a few student loans hanging over me...
Tomorrow, I'll have been at this company for two years. I see that not as a
sign of stability in my life, but rather as
evidence that time is speeding up and the end of the universe is nigh. Finally.
1. American Psycho
Everything else I saw:
All About My Mother, Best in Show, But I'm a Cheerleader,
Chicken Run, Dark Days, Dracula 2000, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Girl Next Door, Grass, The Interview,
Jesus' Son, Mission: Impossible 2, Mission to Mars, The Ninth Gate, Quills, Rules of Engagement,
Scream 3, Small Time Crooks,
U-571 and X-Men. I think that's all of them, at least for movies released in 2000. I need to start writing these things
down, I suppose.
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Tuesday, 2 January 2001 (sinking, spinning) 6:57am If I hadn't dreamed, I might not be sure whether or not I slept at all last night. I think my body's pretty well gotten out of the bed-before-midnight habit. Whoops. After tossing and turning in bed for an hour, we smoked a bit. It helped (probably because I judged it correctly and managed to not take that one last unnecessary hit), even though the neighbors were clomping around upstairs. It wasn't as bad as the time a few months when they were blasting Kool & the Gang late into the night. It wasn't during that party a few weeks ago, or any other appreciable reason; I can only assume they simply wanted to celebrate good times. The garbage from that aforementioned party (and the weeks following) is still piling up in the entryway with a kind of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout-esque determination. Not surprisingly, it has become a rallying point for the local ant population, which had been ignoring us of late because we'd been doing things like taking out the garbage on a regular basis. I mean, I don't mean to sound like of them pointy-headed academics, but I'm pretty sure there's some cause-and-effect at work. At least the landlords know about it. The wife came by last week to pick up the rent and drop off our xmas present (a box of Jelly Bellys which Maddy assures me is actually quite expensive, certainly moreso than the "nothing at all" we got them), thus allowing her to see for herself the welcome sign our neighbors have put out for the local vermin. She was suitably appalled, and made it quite clear that if it does result in new pest infestation, the neighbors will have to pay to fix it. And, hopefully, it was a subtle (or less than subtle) reminder to her that just because we pay less than half of what they pay, and even considerably less than average in this city for the amount of space we occupy, at least we aren't total assholes. Thank gawd that still counts for something, somewhere.
We also scored points when she saw the poster on our front door (on the outside, but not visible
from the street or even much of the entryway). It's a British movie poster for The Crow, with
a bit of text which sounds thrice-translated but probably isn't: "At A Cinema Near You From June."
She appreciated it as a Brandon Lee poster; it seems her cousin is a Bruce Lee historian and collector, and as a result she's very much into all
things Lee. Considering that I had been worried they might find us putting posters outside to be a
little...trashy, this is a good thing.
They pulled a Dark City while I was gone. Seems like nearly everyone has switched offices except me. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, in spite of the fact that we've hit an iceberg and it doesn't matter where fucking deck chairs are—which is to say, we're supposed to be moving out this building by the middle of the year. Whatever. I'm just glad they're leaving me in my little hole for now.
I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. The timing certainly works out, since I'm back at work and all.
What's going on in my head, and more specifically the cavities of my head, is a comparatively natural process and actually signifies that my body is working correctly (if it wasn't it wouldn't be fighting off the germ or virus or whatever it is), but I'm still tempted to cast blame. I think I'll blame this on the fact that the last time I went, Trader Joe's in Daly City didn't have the chewable Vitamin C tablets of which I'm so fond. As a result I'm not getting as much ascorbic acid as I would otherwise, so my defenses are down, so I've gotten sick. QED. The neighbors did put out their trash, all of it, about five times more than the garbagemen will normally pick up. But they got it all; I'm guessing the company is being a little more generous because of the recent holidays. I wonder what will happen when it starts piling up again by the end of the month.
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Monday, 1 January 2001 (back at the beginning) 10:32am Okay, now what? Can past transgressions be forgiven? Can there possibly be a better time than right now?
knowing better is no excuse.
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