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Saturday, 31 January 2004 (down 2) 9:15pm Okay. Pretty sure now that I haven't gone mad. The person at the Jon Sims Center was certainly wondering as I insisted that the website said Seeley's show was at six tonight, not eight. Fortunately, I'm the kind of person who has six or seven windows open in Opera at any given moment and usually leaves it like that when they know they'll be gone all day long, so when we got home the calendar page was still up. They've since corrected it, but see? See? It did say six! And they spelled the name of the show wrong, too! More Phonetic Phun: is that word pronounced "KROO-kid" or "KROOKD" (one syllable)? My vote's for the latter.
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Friday, 30 January 2004 (high pitch polytone) 9:37am How can you be sure that next week's Wicked Messenger, for which there are now fly0rs blanketing certain parts of the Mission, is the best value for your entertainment dollar? Because it has the Trade Mark of Quality, that's how. The more inside a joke, the funnier it is.
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Thursday, 29 January 2004 (sealed within) 8:58am More airline ticket trauma. At least it really isn't my fault this time.
If you're going to have to be on hold with an airline, you could do worse than Southwest.
It's a shame that pogrom
is such a loaded word, becuase phonetically, it's a lot of fun. pog-ROM! puh-GROM! Wheee!
Aren't pogs even collectable toys?
But. I can not accept this: America West's QIKCHECK-IN. No. It is so very, very wrong. By the way, the CAPITALIZATION is theirs. Try though I might, I cannot read/pronounce it as "Quick Check-In," which is clearly what they want. I don't care how stylish you think yr spelling is, a q followed by any vowel other than a u makes a hard "k" sound, not the "kw" sound of quick. Period. Therefore, it's "Kick Check-In." How is that nobody in the company picked up on that? Even the old video game Qix got it right, for Pete's sake! I wouldn't be surprised if someone deep in the bowels of the company did object, but got voted down or ignored, as us lingufascists often are. As usual, having said it before necessitates me saying it again: the dangerous thing about trying to be clever is that it can make you look like an idiot.
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Wednesday, 28 January 2004 (the architects of law) 10:08am One of the more annoying things about this job is that The Boss lives in fear of getting "gouged." Everyone else's prices are too high, be it the phone company, the two different print shops we're using, pretty much anyone trying to make a profit. Makes it difficult for me to get things done. Of course, he regularly inflates prices and has done more than his share of gouging. He may have even engaged in some traditional smuggling in his younger days. Nobody fears theft like a thief. 11:39am The Boss just asked me to start staying until five rather than half past four. Because I'm a tool, I said yes. I do now get a half-hour lunch break to make up for it. Officially, I mean. I've always eaten at my desk, and will probably continue to do so—there's no break room, and I really need a table of some sort—and it's never been a problem if I run short errands, mainly because I never ask and he never notices. In any event, last night I was k'vetching to Maddy that I need to start exercising more, and now I guess I have no excuse. Nothing like a walk through the industrial section of Sausalito to bore you out of your skull.
There's another business a couple doors down from ours. Walking by, I can see two computer screens
throw the window. One of those two employees is always playing solitaire. I don't know why that amuses
me, but it does.
But the kid was making the rounds at the party Friday night, and damn, he creeped me out. (I call him a kid, but he was of legal age. We all know people like that. I can think of at least one person in their early twenties who acts like they're pushing twelve.) He had one of those faces, like Ron Perlman or Luis Guzman, which seems to prove evolution—we must have come from apes, 'cuz homeboy is clearly lagging behind. His body also struck me as oddly shaped. (Or is that another value judgment?) Didn't matter, though, because he was dry-humping anyone who had a dick, and nobody was turning him down. (Seldom have I felt more relieved to not look like a boy and ergo not appear to have a dick, lemme tell ya.) On second thought, "dry-humping" may not be the best phrase, since it implies the presence of clothes. Like many others at this tropical/Hawaiian-themed party, he was wearing nothing more than a grass skirt, and it was only halfway over his ass anyhow. For my part, I'd considered both a sarong and the Anya dress before realizing that since I still had a cold I should dress for warmth and/or comfort. I went with what I consider to be street clothes (black vinyl pants, fishnet shirt over a tank top), and a fake tropical flower in my hair which I think I last wore at Isotope's WonderCon-Tiki party. To honor the theme, you understand. Maddy said it increased my overall Bettie Page-iness. I don't exactly buy it, but I'll accept the compliment all the same. A number of Spangangers were present, including Jim & Erin and Ty & Cory. At one point Maddy and Erin were sitting on couch talking when they realized that the weird-looking kid was getting a blow job just a couple feet away, putting them in what Jim referred to as the "spooge zone." When they moved to a different couch, the kid was practically offended, disengaging himself from the other fellow's mouth in order to follow and tell them that it was okay for him to be getting blown because he was with his husband (suuuuuure), and what's more, it was that kind of party. No argument there—they just didn't want to be in splatter danger. The sad part is how it was more important to him that they knew he had the right to be getting a blow job, which they weren't trying to prevent in any way, than it was for him to actually get blown. Poor kid. Fugly and no sense of priorities. Ty and I finally got a chance to talk about my play. She's doing the lighting for all the episodes but seems particularly excited about mine, since she gets to be experimental. After all, it's not like I can afford anything resembling sets, so the ambience and sense of place is going to have to be suggested by the light and sound. Ty seems more than up to it. The party started at eight, but, as is so often the case, didn't pick up until later. Certainly true for my part; I didn't know there was any grass available until around eleven. That's when the host (graciously) gave me the snickerdoodle of which I (quasi-wisely) only ate half of. By midnight, I was baked. Really baked. Way super baked. As baked as I should have been at, oh, say, nine, so that come one or two in the morning I would have come down enough to drive safely. But that story's been told. (I'd also like to state, for the record, that if anything had happened on the drive home, it would have been my fault and my fault alone. I recognize and accept that.) There were two questions which defined the evening for me. "Why don't girls do this?" Asked by Cory as Maddy pointed out some very wet-humping on the couch after midnight, involving many more men than just the kid. I'm nowhere near the accomplished voyeur that Cory is, and generally don't care one way or the other about other people fucking, but it was hard not to watch. Lord knows nobody minded—as Maddy and Erin discovered earlier, sometimes the opposite is the case. Besides, Cory enjoys it so much, it's easy to have a good time. Her joy is infectious. (Feel free to make your own joke from that. I'm not going to bother.) Besides, gay sex is pretty fun to watch. Certainly much more than straight sex, which I find a little off-putting. Being a humorless dyke and all. "Unflippinbelievable!" Cory enthused. "This is so great! Fucking on couches never happens at dyke parties!" I couldn't say she was wrong. It's entirely possible I haven't been to the right parties, but in my experience...yeah, I just haven't been going to the right ones. One of the fellows got off the couch and walked towards us. Maddy reminded me not to shake his hand. I am so so so glad she said that. It's not that I automatically shake the hand of everyone i meet, but I was just baked enough that I needed to be told that in case the situation arose. Getting a jormy hand would have squicked me out something fierce. He then asked the other question: "What's your genre?" All is not perfect, but I love my life, I really do. I love that I can be stoned out my gourd at a very gay party and have a post-coital man wearing little more than a grass skirt and a cowboy hat ask about my genre. Wow. I felt like such a rock star at that moment. I look like I have a genre. I told him I'm a primarily a writer who does spoken word, and have also been getting into acting and directing. Seems he's organizing a performance series at Venue 9, and thinks I'd be perfect. The idea is to have a wide range of performers each doing five minutes of something French-themed, be it in the language, about France, or even just something read with a French accent. Whatever. The unpredictability is the point. Nothing I've yet written even remotely qualifies, so of course, I told him I was interested. What the hell. Challenges are good. And I'm often told I look French when I'm wearing my beret, so I'm halfway there, right? At the beginning of the night, the host's bedroom was the place to put coats and bags, which we did. By the end of the night (by the time we left, at least, which is not the same thing) it had become Another Place to Fuck. After all, there's a bed and everything, so it makes sense. The threesome in progress was only partially on our stuff, so we didn't have to disrupt them too much. The fellow on top even complimented Maddy on her Bettie Page lunchbox. See? Even a piece of tin was still more Page-y than me. So, yeah. It was a good evening. And next time I'll start earlier.
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Tuesday, 27 January 2004 (the state of decay) 9:07am The readthrough went well. I think we may have a halfway decent play on our hands. And if not, well, at least it'll be over in twenty minutes. Ty couldn't be at the readthrough because she had to work the lighting of a private event at Spanganga, so we swung by afterwards to give her the latest copy of the script. (Private event, but we were able to get in easily enough. It's all about looking like you have a destination.) Although she wasn't feeling well, Erin took us around the corner to see their new space. They're essentially gutting the place and rebuilding. It's going to be pretty damn neat. Jim and Erin need a new space because Sean is moving Spanganga. Not closing, simply moving. Jim and Erin are not following, however, but instead starting a new performance space with Heather from Big Burlesque. All is amicable with Sean; Jim and Erin are just doing their own thing, is all. It won't be competition with the new location of Spanganga, either. San Francisco is more than big enough for the both of 'em. The more places for art the better, and as far as I'm concerned it means there'll be two performance spaces I can be involved with instead of one. Who knows, it may even eventually be the home of Wicked Messenger. On a different note: look! Buffy's sister has boobies now! Obviously, She's All Grown Up and Not An Innocent Little Girl Anymore. She Is Sexy and You Want to Fuck Her.
Burn, Hollywood, burn...
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Sunday, 25 January 2004 (a detuned radio) 11:30pm The bags o' stuff have been donated away, and we've begun the even more painful process of weeding out the CD collections. I'll probably be taking mine to trade in at Aquarius Records—there's so much more of my kind of thing there than at Amoeba these days. God, I'm pretentious. Meanwhile, I continue to ponder the question, why is the most unaesthetically appealing one at a party always the most promiscuous?
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Saturday, 24 January 2004 (a dark, tired year) 11:03am Okay. Driving on 280 in what felt like a rainstorm at two in the morning while still stoned from a pot snickerdoodle? I don't recommend it. Really. Bad. Idea. To be avoided, if at all possible. Quite possibly one of the most harrowing drives of my life. I regretted it almost as soon as I hit the onramp, feeling like I was a novice driver in over my head. But I didn't trust surface streets, since I had to get from SOMA to the Outer Sunset and there were a lot of cops out. I did not want to get pulled over. I wasn't drunk, and I hadn't been smoking so I didn't smell like grass, but still, I was in no condition to deal with that sort of thing. Obviously, we made it home in one piece. Hooray for small miracles. My nerves were too raw for music on the freeway, since I was hyperaware of the fact that we could die at any moment. I needed to concentrate like I'd never concentrated before, although talking with Maddy helped keep me grounded. Once we were back on the surface streets, in a part of town with less traffic and no noticeable police presence, I felt brave enough to turn on the radio. I'm now convinced that the station which can occasionally be heard o ver k-mozart is KGA out of Spokane, since it's the only one at 1510AM to carry The Midnight Trucking Radio Network.
It's both annoying and cool at the same time. I've always been
fascinated by how radio signals behave, especially the distances they can travel, and I find the idea of them
coming in all crackly and mysterious from parts unknown in the dead of night to be wonderfully evocative.
It's something I picked up from my mother, since she listened to a lot of distant radio (especially AM) while I was growing up.
Still does, in fact. Anyway, I so need to get a shortwave
radio, though I'd probably just keep it tuned to numbers stations.
I've also been feeling like the ambulatory dead. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with last night's debauchery so much as the persistent illness, which appears to be ramping back up. Maddy's heading out to find food, kill it and bring it back for our victory feast. I, meanwhile, am very happy to not leave the house. Ever notice how sometimes, regardless of what your social life is normally like, setting foot outside is just the most abhorrent thought ever? That's me. I did the rock star thing last night. Now I hide from the world.
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Friday, 23 January 2004 (cloudburst) 11:11am I have a new favorite radio station: k-mozart 1510am. They call themselves an "alternative classical music station." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I like what I've heard so far—except when, in certain parts of town, a conservative talk station bullies its way into the signal. Hearing some yutz suddenly start talking about Democrats are distorting Bush's unemployment record while you're digging some minor key violins will harsh your mellow, lemme tell ya.
The weird thing is, the competing station doesn't seem to be in the immediate vicinity on the dial,
which makes me think it's another station on the same frequency coming in from very far away.
Spokane, maybe. Still, given the choice, I'd rather listen to right-wing
AM talk radio than just about any mainstream FM station. know thy fuckin' enemy, after all. The commercials are more entertaining, too—at
least, if you're amused by ads for get-rich-quick schemes and miracle diet pills, as I am.
You can tell what a media outlet really thinks of its audience by the advertising it serves up, and I can only conclude conservative
stations know their listeners are morons.
Meanwhile, I've come to the conclusion that he's attracted to red text. He caught a glimpse of my sfgoth mail window earlier, and immediately asked what that was on my screen. After all, he's made it clear that me doing Personal Stuff is tantamount to stealing money right out of his pocket. In this case, I had an excuse: the work mail server was down, and I was having to use my sfgoth mail for business stuff. It's not the first time he's had that reaction to my mail window, and yet he's never seemed to care about my work mail, which is a green-on-black version of this. It's a webmail client which he doesn't use, so I know it isn't that he groks it as specifically being work. I really think it's the color. (Like a bull? Is it really the red they react to? That seems too easy.) In any event, my mail and text editor are now green on black. Wheee! I'm invisible! Still ready to hit alt-tab at a moment's notice, though.
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Thursday, 22 January 2004 (sink back to another day) 9:01am Still not well. Betterer, maybe. The writing group was last night. Went well, even though attendance was sparse. Lauren wasn't able to make it, but Meliza did. It's always good to see her. She makes the best notes. Felt painfully inadequate at times, but, well, there's nothing new under that particular sun. The comedy group meets tonight. Once again, I'll be unprepared.
There are still things to be said about the photoshoot on Sunday. Not necessarily interesting things, but things nonetheless.
11:01am
11:58pm Sabrina wasn't able to make it to the comedy group tonight due to sickness (so she claims, but, really, what are the odds of her being sick right now?), and Sarah was late, so Lynnee and I had time to go over his scenes in the script and do a readthrough. It was the first time I've ever heard someone reading my words the way they were meant to be read, accepting and even welcoming direction. (I certainly don't count the classmate's short film in college, since she completely butchered the work I did on her script, but due to our strict film school adherence to auteurism I couldn't point it out to her.) It's going to take some getting used to, but I think I like it. And, of course, it's no small honor that Lynnee is the first actor I've worked with—almost as much of an honor as him asking me for feedback on the outline for his Godspeed movie script. Meanwhile, he's having some difficulty getting Tribe 8 together in time for the next Wicked Messenger, but he's determined to make it happen. I certainly hope so, both on general principle and because they're on the brand new fly0r, so it must be true. I like how this latest fly0r looks. It's only a slight tweak of the previous design, but it amuses me, and I'd like to think the small print at the bottom is somewhat reminiscent of Michelle's style in promoting shows. "Reminiscent" being entirely different from "a rip-off of," you understand.
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