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Monday, 20 May 2002 (air to the drone) 10:14am Orky came over yesterday afternoon, resulting in getting out the green bong (the cleaner of the two, since we had company), resulting in munchies, resulting in Chinese food being ordered, resulting in me eating more than I should have, resulting in me weighing myself this morning, resulting in a slight feeling of panic upon seeing that that I'm approaching 175, an increase of least ten pounds in the weeks since the contract ended, resulting in a burst of will to get me to the gym this morning, blaring morning radio in my ear or not. Cause and effect, y'see. 5:53pm I never did hear back from Lew, but Leigh wrote asking if I'm available to work Wednesday through Friday of this week. For no good reason I glanced at the calendar—yeah, I'm real busy—and responded in the affirmative. The timing's kinda good, actually; beyond the fact that it'll be nice to work, even for a few days, it coincides with Maddy's trip to visit her sister and nephew in Nebraska. At least I'll be working and not overly distracted by missing her, although not having her on Trillian will be a drag.
My brother Barefoot has posited that 1988
was the worst year ever. Upon reflection, I think that 1999 has taken that particular crown. There were some
good moments, to be sure, a few bright spots which burned as glorious as any have in any year, but for the most part it (to use
Maddy's favorite epithet) sucked on toast. Sometimes I think one of the only good things to come out of it was Maddy arriving
out here in December, and even that was much more difficult than it should have been, since her family was opposed to the idea and
tried to hold her down. Even though the ensuing months were a tad bumpy (much of 2000 wasn't so swell, either), it turned out
to be a wonderful thing indeed.
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Sunday, 19 May 2002 (2nd son syndrome) 9:00am Like the man said, what did you expect from a pig but a grunt?
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Saturday, 18 May 2002 (the mothership and the fatherland) 8:33am Another myth shattered: the author of Valencia doesn't actually live on Valencia. Not anymore, anyway, if she ever did. We discovered this last night when we gave Michelle a lift to her place after she hosted a reading at a Bernal Heights bookstore. (It's weird how you can never venture into a certain part of town, then start going there all the time. The store's just down the street from Wild Side West, a bar we went to with Simon and Cassie a few weeks back, and a short jaunt from the El Rio.) It makes sense, of course, considering that she'd moved out of town for a while—if we moved away, the odds are against us being able to return to the same apartment, or even the same part of town. Which, for us, is a strong persuader to stay where we are. Brian once exhorted me to travel, to see the world, and all I could think was, I can't leave! Where will I live when I come back?
Maddy let slip to Michelle that she'd been considering going in June to K'vetch,
a montly queer open mike, and Michelle asked if she was going to read something.
She looked a bit disappointed when Maddy said she didn't think she'd be up for it
the first time out, but that she might in July. Michelle said that she'd look forward to
it then. Of course, that kind of support from someone she looks up to so much may
well have the effect of giving Maddy the necessary courage (and creative inspiration)
sooner rather than later. Heck, it might even get me off my duff, since it's something
that's crossed my mind as well. It helps that I'm not feeling quite so self-conscious
about my voice these days, partly from hearing F2Ms like Rocco or Cooper Lee
Bombadier speak and perform. If they can be comfortable with theirs, I can be with mine.
Or so I tell myself, anyway.
The net result was that I fully (sober? aware? focused?) for the rest of the day, which was a good thing since The American Astronaut was playing at The Red Vic and I wanted to see it again. Yep, we're among the few creatures with opposable thumbs who haven't seen Spider-Man or Attack of the Clones, but we went to see this no-budget b&w sci-fi micro-epic that nobody's heard of for a second time. This would probably qualify us as pretentious, except that...um...er...oh, hell, I don't know. There must be some reason. Anyway, I heard one of the employees describing it to a customer as a "love it or hate it movie," and he's quite correct. The employee clearly was in the former camp, as am I, though based on the grumblings I heard afterwards most of the audience fell into the latter. (One of them even described it as "slow and hard to watch." Philistine.) Besides the aforementioned pretentiousness, the fact that it's an employee favorite will keep me coming back whenever they play it—I mean, how cool, is that? A movie theater where the employees are actually involved with and care about what they show? Oh, I'm going to be inconsolable when the inevitable closure happens....
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Friday, 17 May 2002 (i don't want to be the one) 3:09pm Also performing at the El Rio on Wednesday night was Rocco's hip-hop group, The End of the World. Check 'em out. Lew hasn't responded. Maybe he's on vacation. I haven't been back to the gym, though for the last few months I've been good about starting the morning with stretches and crunches. It's something, especially since my middle is the part that needs the most work.
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Thursday, 16 May 2002 (place where the black stars hang) 3:09pm It just figures that, inasmuch as we have a target audience, they don't get cable. And I can't say I blame them, really. The most low-end cable package is $35 a month, and it's arguable whether or not there's enough worth watching to justify the cost. If we cancelled it, we certainly wouldn't be the only producers in town who couldn't watch their own show. (But then there's Invader Zim on Nickelodeon...) 5:36pm We'd been at the El Rio for a while before the show began last night when Michelle Tea came up to us with one of the kittypr0n flyers we'd brought along, asking if she could mention the show onstage. Considering that we figured we'd be lucky if anyone even noticed the flyers at all, we said yes. She also asked if we use other peoples' cats, excited at the prospect of her cat being on the show. The answer to that, of course, was very much a yes. Her partner Rocco, who may well be a bigger cat person than both of us put together, seemed positively thrilled with the idea. Onstage, she encouraged people to watch the show, pointing us out and telling them to get a flyer and ask us about getting their own cats on the show—"I know I will." She even pronounced kittypr0n correctly, impressive considering she'd never heard it spoken aloud before and the tendency is to pronounce the last syllable as "porn." For that matter, she got my name right as well, something I always appreciate. One could argue there's no better place to advertise a public access show about cats than to a room with a large dyke percentage (it's a stereotype, but not one without validity), and we did get people asking us for flyers, even for multiples. Of course, none of them actually have cable, not even Michelle, though at least one mentioned having a friend who does. It made me feel terribly bourgeois.
It also increases the pressure, just a little bit. There may actually be people watching next month. It's kinda scary,
because I have this fear that we're overselling the concept, that they'll be disappointed when they see that it really
is just video footage of cats put to music. No more, and probably a lot less. Then again, it's public access, and
even the most well-produced stuff on public access is fairly bargain basement. Besides, we're not amateurish,
we're...punk! That's it!
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Wednesday, 15 May 2002 (strange attractor) 9:40am Using every ounce of will I possess, I went to the gym this morning. My weight's been hovering around 170, a definite increase over the last few weeks, surely due to having fallen off the wagon in terms of my eating habits. It didn't help when we went to Chevy's last night after an editing session at the studio was cut short due to equipment troubles. (Nobody on the staff could figure out what the problem was, but we got compliments on the kitties and the concept of the show. I think some of them appreciate the fact that it isn't just talking heads, as is the case with so many of the other shows.) Add that to the abundance of sushi and other things the day before, plus my tendency to munch when I'm at home, which isn't the case when I'm at work...I didn't gain weight when I was unemployed before, and I'm determined not to let it happen this time. It's a pride/self-worth thing, probably not entirely healthy. (And, of course, there's Kirsten Dunst in a cheongsam. That's always a strong motivator, even though no amount of getting in shape will change they tend not to be designed for shoulders as broad as mine. But pick pick.) However, after about forty-five minutes on the crosstrainer I realized that I was still somewhat sniffly and my throat was still producing copious amounts of phlegm at inopportune moments. So I probably shouldn't have been there at all. KFOG blaring from the speaker behind my ear didn't make it any more hospitable, but I'm not going to let that keep me from going. Still, has commercial radio always been so vulgar—I don't mean profanity—and I just didn't realize it until I stopped listening on my own? Speaking of such things, ever since mid-Septermber there's been a Clear Channel billboard downtown with a flag, the words "United We Stand" and a url, clearchannel.com/relief fund. Click on it. C'mon, do your patriotic duty and show the terrorists that we're all, like, standing united and stuff. Hrm. Doesn't work, does it? But that's what's on the billboard! Well, maybe the space between "relief" and "fund" is a typo, so we'll try it without: clearchannel.com/relieffund. Nope. Still nothing. It's been there ever since Osama was the Big Bad (as opposed to returning fave Saddam Hussein), so surely they would have fixed it, right? One would think a big huge media company like that, which already owns multiple radio and teevee stations and is even about to start controlling distribution of newspapers on city streets could have spent the few minutes necessary to set up a redirect so that when people tried to go that URL, it actually worked. And, for the record, the URL was broken in September, too. I tried. Unless, I suppose, they actually don't give a flying fuck and were just trying to cash in on the patriotism fad like so many other good capitalists. Nah, that couldn't possibly be it. Could it?
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Tuesday, 14 May 2002 (god in three persons) 10:11am Maddy experienced her first earthquake at 10pm last night, a 5.2 centered about 70 miles away. (It wasn't the first since she moved out here, but ironically we were out of town when the last one hit.) She was sitting at the computer and I was half-dozing on the couch. Since it was over quickly and there was no damage or real sense of danger, she found it rather exciting, as first-timers often will. It's still a peculiar sensation to me, and I'm a native Californian. Despite the state's reputation, we don't get them that often.
Normally we would have been asleep in bed and might not have noticed it, but thanks to her new work schedule our sleeping (and waking) habits
have been thrown all out of whack. Arbitrarily deciding that her working six-hour days like she's been doing for the last few months just wasn't
any good, her bosses now have her coming in for only four hours, from 1:30pm to 5:30pm, with a temp filling in for the first half of the day. She's
currently waiting for word on whether or not the EDD will be paying her for the four hours she's not working; if not, she'll be back to working
regular eight hour days (even if I were steadily employed, her only working part time would be problematic) and whatever progress has been made
in her body will be reset to zero. This is the sort of thing which makes it very difficult to get into a comfortable rut. And we were doing so good there
for a while...
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Monday, 13 May 2002 (earth covers earth) 4:23pm I went to Umeko, the sushi buffet place in Japantown, for lunch. Ate way too much, as usual, and felt guilty about it. Of course. At least I got that particular craving out of my system for a while. The Ex informs me that Neil Young's been playing stealth gigs recently, and the most reliable rumor has him at the Great American Music Hall tonight. Tempting, particularly considering how fond I am of the venue, but I don't think so. The ticket will probably cost more than I care to pay right now—I really need to curb my spending—plus, if the setlist from one of the more recent shows is any indication he'll probably play "Let's Roll", and I don't think I'm ready to be in an enthusiastic crowd when it begins. I mean, what if I'm not able to hide my discomfort? And I don't even want to get into the trademark dispute over those two words, because I'll just start ranting about what's wrong this country, and really, nobody wants that.
I wrote Lew this morning, asking if he had any idea when Phase Two would be starting. Haven't heard back yet. I also noticed that
a proposed addition to the site, one that I actually worked on on my last day, hasn't been implemented yet. Which doesn't necessarily
mean there's anything for me to do. Gah.
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Sunday, 12 May 2002 (the swinging reflective) 10:37am I bought a new VCR yesterday, and underneath the phone number and URL for the Service Center was this: "No holiday for 24 hours all year round." My first guess was that it had been translated from another language, or perhaps many—say, starting in Swahili, then into Japanese, then Polish, and a quick stop in Esperanto before making it to English—but it's just as likely to have been written by a native English speaker. Or, more likely, several English speakers. It has the feel of a sentence that got bounced around a Marketing department, and believe me, I've seen my share of those. 3:33pm Yes, I did my good kid duty and called my mother. No cards or flowers, though—the Hallmark stockholders will have to do without my help. The older I get the more I resent that sort of commercialization. Makes me wonder how old Sparky was when the Peanuts xmas special first aired. Though I'm still drainy and sniffly today, I'm feeling a little better, good enough that we're definitely going to the Robert Rich show tonight. Not that I'd ever seriously considered not going, but at least there's a chance in hell I'll enjoy myself, and that my sinuses won't drown out the music. Ambient music is particularly susceptible that sort of thing. At least I don't have a celphone.
We made a kittypr0n flyer, which we'll
be distributing this Wednesday at yet another spoken word thing hosted by Michelle Tea. Seems an appropriate place, somehow.
By RIAA standards, what we do is copyright violation, piracy, theft, whatever you'd care to call it. We're using music without paying for it. It's funny how, so far, people who aren't with major labels and probably make far less money from their work than even the lowest act on the record industry totem pole don't seem to mind. (On a related note, I try to buy a CD at every show I go to these days, because that's how these people make their living. I don't buy every CD they offer because I'm kinda lacking in the "making a living" department myself, but I do what I can. Anyway, hardly any of them have dog bones—you know, those sticky things along the tops of the jewel cases that are damn near impossible to get off without an Exacto or a laser scalpel. The same also goes for stuff I've bought at Aquarius on Valencia. In fact, the only CD I've bought lately that has on is Souljacker by eels, who are on Dreamworks. This all means something, but I'm not sure what.) The show itself was great, and Maddy, who normally doesn't accompany me to these things for various reasons, enjoyed it as well. I was worried that, since in the long run it was little more than a bald man bouncing between stacks of equipment with copious wires and blinking lights playing music that she hears all the time at home anyway, she would be bored and restless. I think part of what appealed to her—and certainly does to me—is how low-key it was. There's something nice about seeing music performed without all the frills and distractions that accompany your average pop music show. People were quiet, and listened. I could get used to it. Or maybe I'm just getting slow in my old age.
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