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Tuesday, 10 June 2008 (second thoughts at the start) 2:11pm My roots are now blonde, and in a few hours the squid will be tightened. Hopefully at some point in the next week I can get some new press pictures taken, what with the iron being hot and all. It doesn't come up all that often, but I still feel kinda dishonest about the fact that I'm currently using one from 2006. After the squidtightening, I'm meeting up with Bunny and her friend Jeri, a writer and underground filmmaker. sometime after midnight you need a lot of love, don't you? it shows, huh? it does. | ||
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Monday, 9 June 2008 (get out the gun) 3:10pm Unexpectedly (but happily) hosted Bad Movie Night last night, since one of the scheduled hosts bailed. That'll happen, especially when it isn't one of our regulars hosts. (Our regulars are far less likely to flake than our guests. Go figure.) The feature was Thinner, and it was very bad. Bunny managed to make it there for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, and I gave her a lift home afterward. She's sounding healthier. Tonight Ilene reblondifies my roots, and tomorrow the squid gets tightened. Speaking of which, though I'm quite good at remembering anniversaries with girlfriends (Folsom's gonna hurt this year), I totally forgot about the one-year anniversary of the squid on May 27. Or, considering the whole creepy personification thing I do with it, its first birthday. Either way, damn. It's been a year. 6:54pm An excellent way to alienate a potential loyal customer: post your hours as being open until eight, but instead kicking people out a half past six because you've decided to close early. I mean, I know I'm a just another hipster douchebag with a laptop, but still—well played, Jackie's Vinoteca & Cafe. Thank goodness Caffe Trieste is around the corner. | ||
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Sunday, 8 June 2008 (three days in rome) 1:54pm The Best of SFinX show last night was fantastic, and I killed. I think. That's how it felt, anyway. (One of the other readers told me afterward that he liked my reading because: as usual, you took me out of my comfort zone, with the talk about satanism. It was a compliment and I very much took it as such, though I guess I tend to forget that some people aren't so comfortable hearing about Satanic Masses.) Sat with Horehound and gave him a lift home after, then hooked up with Rhiannon and Sean and Alexia at the Phoenix, where I had two Harvey Wallbangers, purely out of curiosity. (I still like Bloody Marys better.) I was asleep on the Green Room couch at The Dark Room by two, and slept until ten. Eight hours of sleep. What a trip. | ||
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Saturday, 7 June 2008 (a dark and laughing rain) 2:15pm At Cafe Que Tal at Guerrero and 22nd. Never been before, but I was able to park for free nearby and it's as good a place as any to spend the afternoon before my gig tonight. I'm really happy with how the piece has turned out. It's an excerpt from Exchange and Descent, as the majority of my infrequent featured readings have been these past six months, but it's taken on a life of its own and made me think differently about the structure of the book. Yay for progress. I wrote for a few hours after work last night at the Muddy Waters at 24th and Valencia, and after Bunny got off work she joined me and we headed into the Haight for the Found Footage Festival. It was fun, as always. I drove her back home, then returned to the Black Light District, reflecting on the fact that I'm actually feeling kinda happy lately. These things are always up and down, rising and crashing, and it's nice to be back to the upswing, for however long it lasts. | ||
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Friday, 6 June 2008 (choosing my confessions) 9:23am I am so very, very glad I didn't agree to organize the Tranny Stage at Pride this year. 11:22am At Mikl-Em's suggestion, I've started watching 30 Rock. I now have a huge crush on Tina Fey. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 3:27pm Last night I saw The Blob at The Dark Room, and afterward Rhiannon and I watched the premiere of Swingtown with Jim and Erin, partially because Erin's sister Jill is the costume designer. She was in town last month, in fact, and while I was writing at the front desk of The Dark Room she returned from a shopping trip with dozens of bags containing several thousands of dollars worth of seventies-ish clothes she found in thrift stores in the Mission. Ah, the glamour of showbiz. Tonight, Bunny and I are going to the Found Footage Festival at the Red Vic. (Ennui, who was kinda bummed that she'd be missing it what with traveling to Europe and all, asked me to buy her a DVD.) Bunny was originally going to relax at home tonight and attend my reading tomorrow night, but she realized that she had a prior commitment on Saturday, so she decided to join me tonight so we'd get to hang out this weekend. Very sweet of her. | ||
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Thursday, 5 June 2008 (ghosts of metal birds) 11:34am A few weeks back, a little coffee joint called Cento opened downstairs from NakedSword. I haven't been to the Seattle's Best at the Borders in the meantime, since Cento's mochas are quite yummy and I like supporting mom-and-pop operations, such as the taqueria around the corner from which I get my daily lunch of beans and rice. Total protein, motherfrackers! And a month from now it won't matter because, if all goes according to schedule, we'll be in our new location which is only five blocks away physically but several zillion miles emotionally. Change happens, things get shook up, and while I'm not happy about it I can't change it either, so I'm working towards acceptance. I've already found one plus: it's a mere two blocks away from a Gold's Gym, that being the gym to which I haven't been in quite some time but still have a membership. (Sound familiar?) What's more, our new office has an assload of parking, and I've already gotten dibs on one of the spots. So, being able to drive and having a place to park Phoebe with a gym two blocks away—I've gotta be able to make this workable. Especially since there's a remote, unconfirmed, but extant possibility that the new office space will have a shower. Which, really, would solve ninety percent of my issues right there. It would be kinda vaguely similar to when I'd go to the Club One on the first floor of Autodesk in 1998. Sorta kinda. Close to that, anyway. But, somehow, this'll work. This move has been threatened for some time now, well over a year, so it figures the reprieve is over. Quite frankly, if it has to happen at all (and it must, because everything happens eventually), this is the best possible time, because— Okay, reality break: I'm really damned lucky, employment-wise. Blessed. I have a great job which I enjoy, pays the rent and feeds my family (i.e. Perdita), I can be myself, none of my bosses are even close to being like the Bad Man in Sausalito, and even though I sometimes get mopey about my social awkwardness here (waaaah! my archnemesis and her minions don't let me join in any of their reindeer games!), the fact that I'm mostly left alone is a good thing. I'm a fat, lazy American, and while I'm solidly middle-middle-class in terms of income, I've got a sweet deal and I ultimately don't care much about money anyway. Conclusion: I have nothing to complain about. —I'm doing much better emotionally than I was, say, around this time last year. During the upheavel of 2007, having this place as a constant, unchanging routine helped me keep grounded while eveything else in my life seemed to be imploding. Though it still hurts, the hole in my heart from losing mi vashita is finally beginning to heal, not because of anyone that I've dated or am dating or am quasi-dating, but just because of distance, what Willie called the healing hands of time, the only thing that works. (I'm nowhere close to being ready to interact with her again, to risk resetting the wound to zero, but soon. Someday. Eventually. I hope.) And while the noisemakers have arguably gotten worse with the addition of the third giraffe, I'm feeling more comfortable at the Black Light District lately. Granted, I have to have earplugs in and preferably headphones on, but still, I spent much of Monday and all of Tuesday night there, and I'm not even in a huge rush to leave on weekend mornings. It's a little different on those rare evenings and mornings when someone stays over, but, as I say, those are rare, and I have no reason to believe it'll happen again anytime soon. And, eventually, the bad people above me will go away. It ain't about winning, but, damnit, I'm gonna win. Didn't stay home last night, though. I went to Bunny's apartment after work, and from there we drove to Dave and Buster's in bustling metropolitan Milpitas for a surprise birthday party for Sean Owens. Dave and Buster's had been described to me a "Chuck E. Cheese for adults," and there's an element of that (especially in the aggressive mediocrity of the food), but I'd argue that it's ultimately going for more of a Vegas vibe. Which I don't object to at all. Maybe that's why they asked to see our IDs before going in, though that didn't account for the fact that there were many children present, including a seventeen year-old girl who eventually glommed onto our group. She seemed mostly taken with Sean, though she was rather enchanted by our whole motley crew of San Francisco theater folk. And not even the upper-crust Orpheum/ACT type, but grungy Dark Room/Exit Theater denizens. (My people!) Probably a lot more interesting than Milpitas high school kids. There were all manner of midway/carnvial-type games, including variations on Skee-Ball and the like, but Bunny and I spent most of our game-playing time on House of the Dead 4. She's a hardcore horror movie-buff, and she really likes shooting zombies. We left around midnight. I dropped her off back at her place, then went home. | ||
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Wednesday, 4 June 2008 (only found in the night) 10:11am Impermanence: the office is moving in early July. For real. | ||
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Tuesday, 3 June 2008 (the long farewell of the hunger strike) 10:34am Can't know until you fail, right? I decided to investigate this cougar thing, specifically the bar with the strongest reputation, the Balboa Cafe. Yeah, slight problem with that plan, a detail which the I somehow failed to absorb ahead of time in spite of the location at Fillmore and Greenwich or the fact that the word "Marina" is associated with it even more than the word "cougar": it's a fracking Marina bar. I don't go into the Marina very often, and have never been in one of the bars, with good reason. I got there around nine, and as soon as I could see in the window I could tell the place wasn't for me. In addition to the fact that it was packed and there were no seats at the bar, it was...well, it was very Marina. Rich kids, for want of a better way to put it. On a higher level of society and all that. Dressed differently, acting differently, very much not at all like me or even like the Mission hipsters I associate with. These were not my people, not at all, and I stick out like more of a sore thumb amongs them than they do amongst us. Plus, I didn't see any women who appeared over thirty-five, which was the whole damn raison d'etre. I stood outside in the wind pretending to talk on my cell phone for a good fifteen minutes, both waiting for a seat to open up at the bar and for my courage to rise accordingly. No such luck on either point. And man oh man, was I an object of curiosity for the people inside. It seemed like there was someone doing a nudge-n-point at me at any given time. Seriously, I got more stares in that short time through the window than I got the last time I was amongst the tourists in Union Square. I can only imagine what it would have been like if I'd actually gone inside. I considered going to Divas—the bar at which I accordingly feel most comfortable in—but Rhiannon, whom I'd been texting with non-progress reports, invited to me come hang out with her and her roommates. And I did, since being with friends always trumps drinking alone. 12:21pm From an interview with Michelle Tea by Ariel Gore shortly after Valencia came out. Emphasis mine. Ariel Gore: Are you in need of a safe house these days?Just a tad relevant. (Less relevant is that I slept in Ariel's basement with her cat and did a show with her in Portland in November 2005. Tiny world.) | ||
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Monday, 2 June 2008 (hereditary taint) 10:50am Excellent Bad Movie Night last night. A packed house, it was a movie I've always loved (Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive), Bunny sat with me in the front row, Ilene was in the audience with a newbie and Rimma was one of the hosts. And it was one of my better nights on mic, too. I was totally on my game, and the audience was on my side. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. That's just how it goes when you do something nearly every week. As I was cleaning up after the show, I reflected on how damned lucky I am to get to do this, to indulge myself so thoroughly. Even when I was taking out the copious empty beer bottles (our audience likes the hooch, they do), I felt happy and satisfied and tried to appreciate the moment as best as I could. It won't last, it never does, someday these particular circumstances will change and I won't have the option to spend the weekend at The Dark Room writing and working the door for plays (being the face of the dark room, as Erin puts it) and going out for drinks afterward and having meals with good friends and hosting my show. For now, though, I'm blessed. First thing I saw in the office this morning was the scowling, dismissive look of my archnemesis. Balance, see. It's all about balance. | ||
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Sunday, 1 June 2008 (the breath between storms) 2:04pm And so begins June. Bunny did come by The Dark Room last night, but didn't stick around for the play as she's been continuing to battle the cold she's had ever since we started hanging out. (Which is a coincidence, I'm sure.) We talked for a while outside, making plans to hang out and maybe do the dinner-and-a-movie thing again sometime this week, and she gave me a copy of an old, well-loved children's book called Baby Animals in Color. Just because. After the play, I joined Rhiannon, Sean & Alexia and Michelle & Don on a boozing venture down to Doc's Clock. I had already gotten permission to sleep in the Green Room, so I had two Bloody Marys, followed by a White Russian later at The Phoenix. I have some questionable history with that place, and I'd imagine I'm not the only one. I was in bed by three, and woke up at ten well-rested and not at all hungover, which is always nice. Yay for regular hydration. Having my earplugs in and no sunlight to contend with also helped. However, My plan to get a head start on writing didn't quite happen, as I wound up hanging out with Jim and Erin in their room, including a seriously yummy breakfast of plantains which Jim picked up from the El Salvador Restaurant across from the street. They do pupusas as well, so I'm totally taking Ennui there for breakfast when she returns from Europe in July. Since I do like to get some exercise every day, I decided to take a walk before I got to work. Plus, it's a really beautiful day in the Mission. So I swung by Phoebe to make sure her windows are all intact (they are), eventually finding myself at Rainbow Grocery. While I was there I ran into Mike Spiegelman, who invited me to his nearby apartment to meet his seven month-old daughter, Molly, which I did. Even I had to admit she's really cute, and Mike's pride in her is more than a little obvious. When I first met Mike, we didn't really get along all that well. I was stage-managing The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy at Spanganga and playing Frankie Mouse, and Mike was playing Ford. I got the distinct impression that he hated me—it didn't help that he snapped at me at one point when I tried to stage-manage him—and it took a couple years before I felt comfortable around him. We've become pals since then, of course, to the extent that he invites me into his home to meet his daughter. For as many relationships of mine go sour, how many people I've been close to who don't talk to me anymore (and, in fairness, I don't talk to them, either), it's nice when they go the opposite direction. | ||
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