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Thursday, 20 July 2006 (shoot out the lights) 8:23am By the time Vash picked me up at half past six yesterday evening, after the majority of the game parking had been done, the garage was back down to a mere twenty-five dollars. It is to laugh. Speaking of laughing, last night I co-hosted Bad Porn Night. The movie was the original version of The Devil in Miss Jones. It came out in 1973, the same year I did. If that's what was considered sexy back then, it's astonishing that any of us were ever conceived.
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 (two months gone) 9:17am Best. Scam. EVER. The Beacon Garage at 4th and Townsend, which serves the Safeway next to it and the luxury apartments above it and many a traveler (including Christa when she briefly visited a few months back) now has signs up which say that due to a "technical error," the flate rate for the garage is now twenty-five dollars until further notice. That is so brilliant. Need to stop at Safeway on your drive home, get the traditional bag of groceries with the celery and french bread sticking out of the top? Fuck you. That'll be twenty-five smackers. Man. Whoever came up with that deserves a raise. 1:40pm Except there's a game at the Fucking Ballpark, so somebody realized that twenty-five bucks is too cheap. It's now thirty. They literally crossed out the old price with a red marker and wrote the new one. I should feel sorry for baseball fans getting gouged, but somehow, I don't.
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Tuesday, 18 July 2006 (this simple fact) 8:52am Oh, man. The Wikipedia entry on Zippy the Pinhead includes a paragraph on our play from a couple years ago. Not only am I mentioned ("with Sherilyn Connelly as the ghost of Karen Carpenter"), but my name is linked to an as-yet unwritten article. That is so very, very tempting. 9:42pm I went to the Sea Biscuit this evening, ordered a mocha (nothing like that shot of caffeine at 8pm!), put my Manson/Nine Inch Nails mp3 CD on shuffle, and wrote longhand. It worked for my Transforming Community piece, so I'm hoping it works for my Paul Reubens Day story and soon-to-exist Medialoper column and everything else from here on out.
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Monday, 17 July 2006 (fifth of four) 9:18pm On the way to Fresno, I did some rather stupid: I corrected someone. The guy at the Subway at Los Banos called me "sir," and I corrected him. He just looked at me with the blankest of stares, laughed (this large blonde man wants me to call him "miss!"), then resumed staring. When he called me "sir" again I even stupidlier corrected him again. He laughed again, and said something in a not-English language to the other employee, who chuckled. I said nothing more, though I probably glowered more than I should have. Funny thing about hundred-plus degree weather: it's not so bad, especially in a desert climate (with easy access to water, shade and refrigeration). I found myself getting used to it fairly quickly when we hit Fresno late Friday afternoon, mostly thinking is that it?. And that is, in fact, it. Hell, I used to walk miles across town in the summer and not give it much thought. Evidently I didn't mind that I would be sweating like a pig by the time I reached The Ex's place. Vash and I had dinner with my Dad on Friday night, hit the Forestiere Underground Gardens and the Chicken Pie Shop on Saturday morning, went on a successful thrifting expedition downtown (yay Amvets!), swam and ate and hung out with two of my three brothers, and, much to our surprise, headed back home Saturday night. We'd originally planned on leaving Sunday morning, but for the not the first time, going home at night sounded much more appealing. Beating the heat and being in town for the third day of the Silent Film Festival were both strong persuaders. The only really disappointing part about leaving so early, aside from not really experiencing the beauty that is the Fresno summer nighttime, was the fact that Vash and I were sleeping in a room which was architecturally identical to my bedroom growing up. Same size, the window and the closet were exactly the same, it's even in the same part of the house. My old bedroom, give or take the fifty yards or so between that and the actual house in which I grew up. (I think the profound weirdness of the fact that my mom has moved back to the street we lived on until I was ten, and into a house which is the same design minus one bedroom, still hasn't struck me. Either that, or I'm so accustomed to weirdness that I've learned to readily accept it, no matter how personal.) We were both too tired on Friday night to do anything but crash, thus we never really got the chance to properly...er...well, there's always next time. Saturday afternoon was the first time I've swum in at least a decade. I've never swam in San Francisco, and The Ex and I quickly fell out of the habit of doing so on our return trips to Fresno. It took a while to readjust, but it did remind me of a suggestion Rimma once made to look into the public pool on 19th Avenue in the Sunset. You know, for exercise and stuff. Remember how I once seemed to give a damn about exercise, and did something about my loathsome body rather than just complain about it? It's the Sava Pool, to be precise. I checked it out this afternoon, and though I didn't go inside, I realized very quickly that I don't dare go there by myself. Not at first, anyway. I'd absolutely have to be with a partner, preferably (but not necessarily) someone who's been there before. It'll probably be Vash's friend Zoe, who's been going to public pools for many years now. If I'm with one person who obviously thinks I belong, then maybe everyone else will, too. Zoe's going to be back in town the weekend of Dore Alley (where the erstwhile Ali was the prettiest pony last year, she was), so hopefully I'll be taking the first of many dives and laps in early August. Oh, and the ironic part? The pool is slated to close for renovation in September. Because I'm going to start using it, and heaven forbid anything be too convenient. The next closest public pool is in the Richmond, and too far away to be considered close at all.
Sunday afternoon, we saw The Unholy Three at the Silent Film Festival.
It wasn't quite as strange as I'd been hoping. That evening at Bad Movie Night, we did Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace. It was even worse
than I'd remembered. Man, that movie sucks balls. Unsurprisingly, the people who'd gotten upset that we would dare insult Star Wars and swore they'd be
there to defend it never showed up.
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Friday, 14 July 2006 (shining in the light) 8:12am The average cornea is about .5mm thick. Mine are about .65mm. I rule!
So the Kaiser ophthalmologist told me. (The part about the thickness, anyway. The part about ruling, I extrapolated.) After
a Clockwork Orange-esque series of tests involving icky eyedrops and bright lights and things poking my eyes, she
informed me that my aside from the nearsightedness, my eyes are fine. No sign of glaucoma, my father's genetic legacy, and there
doesn't seem to be any reason that I wouldn't be able to get Lasik. There
was some weird pigmentation or something, which is why I had to go in yesterday, and I have to go back in September to do a
peripheral vision field tests. Ugh. You basically look into a big white disc for a half hour and press a button when you think you see
a light somewhere. Not painful, but dreadfully dull.
Haven't done one since I'm going to try to think of it as a psychedelic experience—if i look into the negative abyss, i can see angels!—though I suppose getting stoned beforehand wouldn't help.
Anyway, here's what people have to deal with (86kb image) if they walk past my workstation from the west. Left to right: a tattered flyer for an Olympia club called Deep Cuts, Crash, Holy Wood, a Banana Republic ad, an Uphill Both Ways flyer, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, an ad for a Suicide Girls compilation CD (scavenged by Vash in New York last year), the cover of Cinema Sewer #17, the international poster for Velvet Goldmine, Celebrity Skin, Lest We Forget (when one of the straight boys saw it for the first time, he stopped and gaped for a few moments, with a classic "you have got to be shitting me" look on his face), Blood Bucket Ballyhoo, and the 2006 Silent Film Festival (which we'll be missing because we'll be in Fresno). Please note that the tribble is now clearly marked, which should help to avoid repeats of the flicking incident. (And, yes, that's Healthy Penis on the other side of the tribble.) There's more space, and eventually it'll be filled, but that's enough for now. Unless you approach from the east (74kb image), or sit at my desk and keep your right eye open. Clockwise: Antichrist Superstar poster, ahhhhhhh!, a breathtakingly beautiful trannypr0n star whose name I don't know, Vash and I, Ryder, Rosario Dawson's character poster from Rent, and a poster from when Maddy and I saw Lisa Germano at DuNord a few years. If you squint real hard, you can see the cover for Custer's Revenge. It helps me to do my job. Honest.
Once again, for no good reason, it strikes me that I'm the same age my mother was when she had me. Things were different in 1973, to put it mildly.
Vash is picking me up in a while, and we'll begin our Valley descent. Her car is already packed, so it'll be a straight shot from here. For the first time in years, I'll be leaving town without a laptop. I didn't actually check, but I'm pretty sure it still doesn't work. I'm actually nervous. I'm not sure why. I haven't been nervous about Fresno for years. Recent events, perhaps. Or maybe because it's expected to hit upwards of 109F this weekend.
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Thursday, 13 July 2006 (spoiling for a fight) 8:12am Yet another frackin' Kaiser appointment this afternoon. This is another one to do with my eyes, but exactly what, I'm not sure. When I eventually get home I have to pack, 'cuz Vash and I are going to driving to Fresno tomorrow. Haven't been to the Fresno in the middle of summer for a few years now, and there's a good reason—triple-digit temperatures are expected for this weekend. Goody. I canceled the x-ray appointment for tomorrow afternoon, so instead of taking the day off as original planned, I'll be going to work but leaving early. This means I'm going to cancel the consult, too. I guess that's being responsible. When my hair is freshly blondified and flatiron-straight as it is now, I like to fancy that I resemble Patricia Arquette on this cover.
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 (walking on a wire) 8:12am Had a quasi-date scheduled for last night, but I canceled. Flaked, one might say, though I did call and write. Just wasn't feeling it. No spark. Nothing would have happened, because I don't think I would have found the person attractive in person. Certainly they weren't doing anything for me online or speaking briefly on the phone. Nothing against them; just not my type. 7:12pm My roots have been reblondified. Though no toner was used, the pink is just a subtle tone through the rest. For as much as I like the pink, I can't help thinking that the more natural-colored my hair, the better. But not brown, which is my natural-natural color. I'm not ready to go that far.
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Tuesday, 11 July 2006 (i want to see the bright lights tonight) 9:47am Two sets of screaming children on the train, at opposite ends. Man, that's fucking beautiful. Symmetrical and in stereo. The only way it could be more prefect would be if the trains had the disembodied God voice like the buses. Only a matter of time. Between Best Buy and picking up Vash from her calligraphy class Saturday morning, I checked out the new Mission Bay Branch of the Library. Very modern, very shiny. Much like the redesigned Main Branch, which opened ten years ago this April, one's first thought upon entering is great, but where are all the books? Once you find them, the selection isn't so great, but I was ploeased to see the graphic novels shelf included How Loathsome. (Us narcissistic underacheivers need all the validation we can get.) In any event, the branch is all of two blocks away from my office, and it's going to be all about the DVDs. Avast! Not that I don't check out books. My current out list includes The Queer Movie Poster Book by Jenni Olson, American Splendor: Our Movie Year by Harvey Pekar, The Missing Person by Alix Ohlin, Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick, A History of Violence by John Wagner, The Book of Mr. Natural by R. Crumb, The Collected Strangers in Paradise Volume One by Terry Moore, Transmetropolitan 2: Lust for Life by Warren Ellis, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, The R. Crumb Handbook by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski, The Complete Peanuts 1957 to 1958 by Charles M. Schulz, American Splendor - Unsung Hero : the Story of Robert McNeill by Harvey Pekar, The New American Splendor Anthology by Harvey Pekar, and Odds & Ends by R. Crumb. It's not as many as it looks like, honest. Vash is reading The Missing Person, and I've finished some of the others. And, yeah, the majority of them are comics, but they're for research, okay? As I'm brainstorming ideas for the comic Vash and I are planning, it's very easy to get discouraged. Everything I think of seems boring and hackneyed and (because it's me) self-indulgent. That's evidently okay for other people, but not me. (To answer your question, this page is free and utterly voluntary; anyone who goes to the trouble of reading it is willfully exposing themselves to the content, whatever it may be. I'm not sullying anyone's precious LiveJournal Friends page, nor am I part of a webring. Do webrings even exist anymore? For that matter, is anyone else still foolish enough to code an online diary by hand?) I'm strongly considering canceling my consultation for FFS, and of course the Necessary X-Rays. The money aspect is really scaring me.
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