|
| < 7/1 7/2 7/3 7/4 7/5 7/6 7/7 7/8 7/9 7/10 >
|
Tuesday, 10 July 2007 (the crushing blow) 9:51pm The Fucking Ballpark has been a boon to the economy of the surrounding area, which is to say the neighborhood of my office. No question there. I remember what it was like when I worked around the corner at Organic in 1997, how Happy Donut was like the last outpost on the edge of civilization. Now the area is thriving, and there's no arguing that it's due to the hovering Major League Baseball colossus. I still hate the fans, though. Especially these past couple of days, during the All-Star Game. It's bad enough during the season as it is, but now the sidewalks are thick with Norms in their red-and-orange branded paramilitary sportsfan gear, walking advertisements for a sports machine which sees them as the dollar signs which they are. It's not so bad when I'm walking to work in the morning, since most of them are around the Moscone Center, no doubt waiting for the "Free Taco Bell Samples!" to become available. When I'm walking to the bus stop at the charmingly cracked-out corner of Eddy and Cyril Magnin at four in the afternoon, however, I'm going directly against the flow of traffic, all six feet of me in shiny black pants and long crumbling Chloe coat and Cotton Candy-Colored Cranial Squid (with six weeks of roots and counting) up in pigtails, a genuine San Francisco queer alien freak something-or-other far outside of their experiences, smack dab into them and their disbelieving gazes. Some make comments, some don't. It brings to mind the eternal Hot Topic t-shirt, which is funny because it's true: you laugh at me because i'm different. i laugh at you because you're all the same.
| ||
 | ||
Monday, 9 July 2007 (night comes in) 9:12am Last night's feature (KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park) went much better than I'd expected. Between Queer Open Mic and Bad Movie Night, I'm having entirely too much fun these days. 10:39pm The Black Light District is clean now. It had to be, since my landlords came over tonight to talk about the noise complaints. Both of them, the husband and wife, the latter who hasn't been here since Maddy moved out and thus had never met Perdita. Thankfully, Perdita was in full-on Super Deluxe Affectionate Kitty mode, which always helps. I'd been worried that they were going to tell me to stop complaining or move the hell out. Neither was said, or even implied, and they seemed sympathetic to my concerns, especially the ones involving the domestic violence. Not much I can do now but ride it out.
| ||
| ||
Sunday, 8 July 2007 (pour down like silver) 3:10pm Best memoir title ever: Need More Love. Too bad Aline Kominsky-Crumb already used it. Vash came into town last night to see Clue, and then we returned to Wonderland. After a voyage into Alameda this morning for breakfast, I've been working on promo stuff for Vash's upcoming show.
| ||
| ||
Saturday, 7 July 2007 (dimming of the day) 2:35pm Spent a nice and low-key evening with Johanna. We had dinner at the gaudy Mexican place in West Portal near the tunnel, then went back to her place (after swinging by the Black Light District to acquire media) to watch Tron, after which we were both more than ready to crash. I woke up in her bed at eight this morning to what sounded like someone moving a couch back and forth, dragging it along the floor. I guess that sort of thing happens everywhere, not just at my place. Johanna didn't stir at all. I figured she was used to it, and when it ended, I went back to sleep. In retrospect, I think I may have dreamed it. Either that, or it was the Blair Witch. Both seem equally likely. After we had breakfast, I returned home around eleven. As I drove up, a police car passed me. The front gate was wide open, and another police car was parked in the street out front. (Sometimes I think the best part of being a cop must be all the free doubleparking.) I got more than a little nervous, imagining the apartment burglarized, both their floor and mine, all my stuff gone, Perdita missing— Nothing of the sort happened, at least in my apartment. Everything where was I'd left it, including Perdita. I tried listening to what was going on upstairs, but they were being uncharacteristically quiet. It's possible that the gate being open and the cop car out front were just coincidences, that they'd been careless and the cops were there for one of the other houses. Or maybe there'd been another huge noisy domestic outburst, and one of the lateral neighbors called the cops. I don't know, and I suppose I don't really want to know, lest I get my hopes up. Five years ago today, I read at K'vetch for the first time. Though I'd shouted my way through "Rockin' in the Free World" at a couple of RustFests and had done a spot of karoake, it was my first time attempting my own material in front of an audience since the disastrous visit to a comedy open mic on Good Friday in 1997. From the essay Marilyn Wann asked me to write for the 2005 National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance Convention: The first day I willingly stepped on stage to perform my own material was Good Friday, March 28, 1997. It was a comedy open mic at a coffeehouse with an exceedingly straight crowd. But that was okay, since by all appearances I was a straight boy. I bombed miserably, which I've since learned is extremely common for first-timers in that room. All the same, I never returned, and I would not approach a mic again for five years.But K'vetch (which I have not attended since December 2004 mostly because of Bad Movie Night) was much more important, my first time at a literary open mic, my first time saying to the world: hey, i wanna be a writer. here's my stuff. i hope you like it. I don't consider this diary to serve that purpose, since, frankly, I don't think it's very good. Eight years of rough drafts and half-baked ideas, out here for whoever wants to see it.
The cherrypopping that night started this particular ball rolling, two hundred and three readings and/or hostings since then (not counting Bad Movie Night) including an original piece for The Vagina Monologues, a handful of stories and essays in print with more in the queue, a book in the works when I'm not concentrating on commissioned gigs, occasional theatrical work, perservering despite a fair amount of domestic resistance until early 2005, and assorted side projects (kittypr0n, Wicked Messenger, Rush Hour on the Event Horizon, other things I'm probably forgetting)—something resembling a career gaining something resembling momentum, thanks to me overcoming my shyness that night and sticking with it since then. I feel like I could have done more in the past five years, but at least I have something to show for the time, which is more than I can say for any other half-decade of my life.
| ||
| ||
Friday, 6 July 2007 (a little bit terrified) 1:12pm I'm off the bunnylunches for the time being, and have developed a ritual with the taqueria around the corner from my office. As soon as I walk in—or, at least, as soon as the woman behind the counter sees me—they start whipping up a container of beans and rice, and I get called (guapa!) to the front of the line. I'm usually in and out in two minutes, for as many dollars. Not a bad deal at all.
| ||
| ||
Thursday, 5 July 2007 (when the spell is broken) 9:11pm As Vash and I walked past Live Oak Memorial Pool in Oakland, a group of teenage boys were outside. A number of them stared, and one of them yelled: how tall is you? hey, how tall is you? I didn't reply, since I didn't care to hear the chorus of that's a man! which would surely follow. Vash gripped my hand harder and started walking faster. The boy then yelled: well, fuck you, then! If anything happens to me, which is feeling more likely these days, the important stuff on my home and laptop and work computers is under /deadman/writing. That's what I'd like to be saved and, if possible, published posthumously as an editor sees fit. Especially /ExchangeAndDescent, the book which I hope live long enough to at least see finished. And if I do get offed, at least solace can be taken in the fact that my dirty male energy was never allowed to ruin the sanctity of Osento. Besides, I've made it into on Sherilyn Fenn's IMDB biography page, last entry of "Trivia:"
Inspired writer Sherilyn Connelly who took from Fenn the first name she goes under. So there.
| ||
| ||
Wednesday, 4 July 2007 (a sunken dream) 8:09pm Few things say "loser" like being alone with no plans on the Fourth. 9:40pm At Divas, for the same reason as ever: it's better than nowhere, and I'm not ready to go home on this Fourth of July, for which I've made no evening plans. Vash is working at home alone, Sadie is on a date, Hayley and Ennui are in different timezone, and I already have plans with Johanna this Friday. Besides, she's surely hanging out with friends, as all smart people are. I'd go home if I thought it would be quiet. But it won't be, not yet. They'll probably be lighting firecrackers above my bedroom until midnight, starting again at seven in the morning. I have tomorrow off from work, but I don't especially want it. Just means more shit I gotta do on Friday. And I can't sleep in tomorrow. Not allowed. It's why I'm going to ask Johanna if we can stay at her place on Friday night. Saturday mornings in particular at the Black Light District are no good. I'm really starting to lose it. There are dents in my ceilings where there weren't dents before, and scuffs on my knuckles to match. But they aren't making me go away. Except in my head. And most nights. Spent most of the day with Sadie. We met up briefly with Vash, who joined us at Castro and 19th to get her camera from me. The three of us talked for a while, eventually joined by a woman whom none of us knew. She looked and to an extent sounded like one of Maddy's extended family, though not Maddy herself. Sadie had the misfortune to be sitting closest to her and thus had to talk to her the most, usually fielding dumb questions like: why are you wearing those fishnet stockings? I mostly had her on ignore until she said to me: did you used to be a mayan? All I could think of was Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which I've never seen, but I'm pretty sure was about Mayans. Or Aztecs? Hell, could be Incas. What the hell did the question even mean? As I was pondering this, Sadie took up the slack: that's a very personal, impolite question, and none of your business. Oh! She asked if I used to be a man! Her twang just added an extra syllable in the form of a long "I" sound. Duh. And, ugh. It's been like an epidemic lately (just like around this time last summer), and in a sad way I was glad to have Sadie and Vash there to witness it. An extended session of "Why it's rude to ask that" followed, taking longer than it should have due to the woman's inability to remove her foot from her mouth. At one point she said that it was because she was stoned—gosh, that excuses everything, doesn't it?—and also reasoned that since she wasn't too embarrassed to ask the question, then it made since to her that I wouldn't mind answering it. Wow. For as much as the teenagers who chased after me calling me "sir" on Sunday night were being malicious, this was like a display of pure, if well-intentioned, ignorance. She also mentioned that she thought I was a genetic girl until she heard my voice. There's probably a lesson in there which I'm missing. Not that I'd said a word on Sunday night. Presently, a gruff Carl-eqsue guy just came in and asked the bartender why she didn't have the fireworks on the teevee. For my money, fireworks on the teevee is not too far off from ventriloquism on the radio. At least the latter has a point, i.e. the character created by the ventriloquist. Charlie McCarthy actually had a distinct personality, and was pretty funny to boot. Mortimer Snerd, on the other hand, was pure nightmare fuel and had no damned point at all. Like fireworks on the teevee. The fireworks from the wharf were still going on when I arrived. You could see them looking north up Polk, which was kinda pretty in its own way, the splarkiness framed by that particular urban scene. It was also disconerting, since occasionally a boom would roll down the street sounding like a car crash, or more likely a truck crashing into a building at full speed. At first I'd thought that's what it was. There probably could have been a few gunshots without anyone really noticing. Of course, we're talking about Polk and Post, so that's pretty much the case for any night. I gave the owner a copy of Instant City with my Divas article. I hope he likes it.
| ||
| ||
Tuesday, 3 July 2007 (beyond and back) 6:10pm From 3rd and Townsend to Haight and Masonic is a ninety-minute walk—possibly less if you aren't carrying a laptop. 11:34pm Saw Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters at the Red Vic with Maddy tonight. I like the show, so I liked the movie. She's never seen the show, but she seemed to like the movie all the same.
| ||
| ||
Monday, 2 July 2007 (universal corner) 7:56pm A tourist just said look, it's beetlejuice! The name's lydia, you flyover-land schmuck. 10:38pm Great turnout at Bad Movie Night yesterday, a loud, rowdy and fun crowd for (of all things) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. You never can tell. Got harrassed by some kids before the show who were chasing after me calling me sir, but, hey. These things happen. Process-a-thoned this afternoon, first with Jezebel, and then with Vash. Things were said which needed to be said.
| ||
| ||
Sunday, 1 July 2007 (never say forever) 3:20pm Although we didn't have the best seats acoustically speaking and Vash's fatigue got the better of her, the Steve Roach show at Grace Cathedral on Friday night was fantastic. (If you're into that sort of thing, which I am.) On Saturday morning, I finally got the bloodwork my oft-postponed next doctor appointment done. After dinner at the hoity-toity steak restaurant that evening, I went to The Dark Room for a show called Voices From the Big Easy, wherein I went all fangirl on Jenna Mammina, who said I made her day, and she gave me a couple of shout-outs as she performed. I also networked a bit for a potential gig should I manage to get my ass to New Orleans again, and I talked to Jim about (finally!) doing a solo show. It was after one by the time I left and the exclusion of caffeine from my diet recently made me dozey, but I went to the Power Exchange anyway, what with my car being parked around the corner. Not much happened, though a bunch of Hell's Angels did show up. They didn't do much of anything but walk around and watch. Ironically, my current reading material is Hunter S. Thompson's. Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.. I was back home and in bed by around five, and the giraffe was stampeding a few hours later, as is its wont. Because I don't exist, and it wouldn't matter if I did.
| ||
| ||