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Saturday, 10 October 2009 (waltzing's for dreamers) 2:11pm I sat with Sadie in the front row of The Dark Room last night for the second weekend of Tales. It was nice. We don't hang out much anymore, and I miss that, though I don't expect it'll ever really happen again the way it used to. She left afterward, and I'd originally planned on going to Divas to dance. Instead, I hung out with Jim and Erin and Rhiannon in the green room, because hanging out with my friends (or my family, as I more ofen think of them) is more important. Eventually it got too late to make it to Divas before the cover kicked in, so I went to Shotwell's with Rhiannon. She bought me a beer, I put five dollars in their jukebox, and danced to the music as best as I could hear it over the din. There wasn't a lot of room, either, and I got a lot of weird looks from the hipster boys. The hipster girls didn't seem to care either way. What mattered was, I got to dance to my music. On my way home, I stopped at the Walgreens in the Castro, because I had stuff to buy and there was parking. (Besides, I had a hunch I wasn't going to want to leave the house today to run errands, and whooboy, was I right.) As I wandered through the cleaning supplies, a somewhat scraggly guy came up to me and ask if I was a performer. I said I was, and he replied that he'd seen me at The Garage recently. Of course, my mind completely blanked—really? I've performed at The Garage? When was that?—but he mentioned the gig in particular, and we chatted for a few minutes. It was a little jarring when he introduced himself as "Jeff," but thankfully it doesn't happen all that often. Ah, the glamour of showbiz. 10:29pm At a noise show in West Oakland with Marta. The arachnid-men you may experience are completely normal and no cause for alarm. | ||
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Friday, 9 October 2009 (why what was done was done) 4:36am The ship is about to hit the moon. Make a wish. 11:12am Frak. It's official: I need new gym shoes. I've had this pair for over a year now and it's generally only recommended to replace them after six months. The treads are worn down, they aren't support-y as they once were, and the fabric on the inside is starting to tear and rub against my feet, all of which is accelerated by the fact that I'm doing more impacty stuff now than when I was working out at the gym on a regular basis (because at least then I'm spending part of the time on machines where my feet are strapped in). Not good, but I can't even begin to afford a new pair right now, so I'll deal. 2:45pm "Let us give thanks for the shallow and superficial things, sometimes all we have to cling to in moments of duress." 4:12pm Backstory is like kudzu. Or roaches. Or...potato chips? Whatever the proper metaphor is, once you start it, it never ends. sometime after midnight When the five dollars worth of music you've put in the jukebox is finished, it's time to go home. | ||
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Thursday, 8 October 2009 (push it) 7:14pm Gothed out tonight. It's been a while, and besides, Matthue Roth is in town from New York. 10:48pm I just had an Anchor Steam, because it's cheap and I'm pretty sure it's one of Barefoot's favorite beers. That's my main beer criteria. I'm at The Attic with Matthue and his wife. I've never gotten the appeal of this place, probably because I'm not nearly hip enough. Still, though, Matthue was marveling at how much less expensive alcohol here is than in New York. Hey, at least that's one thing San Francisco does better. | ||
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Wednesday, 7 October 2009 (permafrost) 1:13pm That whole Great Famine business a few centuries back notwithstanding, I must be the only Mick alive who can't grow potatoes. It's probably because of my kraut blood. So, I'm reading in Litquake's Lit Crawl a week from Saturday for Instant City. I even have my own bio page on the Litquake site. Dig me, I'm official! I'm excited about it, both because I've wanted to be in Litquake for years, and I can read pretty much whatever I want so long as it's under seven minutes. (Though the editor tells me it's not required to read from the magazine, I'll probably read my story "Tchotchke," which is going to be in the Instant City #7.) After that, I've got nothing lined up. Hopefully if Thomas Roche does Christmas Sucks again this year he'll ask me to be in it, and I wouldn't be surprised if Joe asks me to read in a show in The Garage, but otherwise my plate is pretty much empty. For a while I was going to be curating a big show that was going to happen at the LGBT Center in November, but it was canceled due to monetary and logistical reasons. It's a shame, but at the same time it's a small relief. For as busy as this past year as been, it's actually kinda nice to not have any big projects pressuring down on me. I mean, nothing other than finding a job, selling Bottomfeeder, writing Landing on Water, continuing to curate and host Bad Movie Night every week, and that sort of background noise. Otherwise, it's smooth sailing. | ||
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Tuesday, 6 October 2009 (dog star descends) 7:11am My dreams are generally about my anxieties. They're almost never pleasant fantasies, and sometimes those aren't much better, because when I wake up the thing that was making me happy doesn't actually exist. That's no good. Part of my unconcious's campaign aginst me is that even in my dreams, people often refer to me as a boy and/or use the wrong pronoun. Thanks, brain! On the plus side, it tends to happen more often in dreams than in real life, so yay reality on that count. So I just woke up from a dream which had a lot of my standard elements—a setting physically resemblent of Fresno State University (though not actually FSU in the dream), unsuccessfully trying to get from one place to another, that sort of thing. Except that at one point I looked in a mirror, something I can't remember ever happening in a dream, and my face was...different. In a good way. More like a girl's face. (The nose was kinda large, but in a good Diva Zappa-esque way.) I remember thinking: oh, good. after ten years, the hormones have finally kicked in. And then I woke up, and...yeah, not so much. I mean, I do look a lot different than I did—I think? I hope?—but... 9:10am Still haven't heard from the editor at Seven Stories. In the meantime, I wrote my original almost-agent, the one from back in March. She's returned to work, and is still interested in (possibly) representing me. I've sent her the latest version of the manuscript (it's gone through quite a few changes over the past six months, as we all have), and now I move on and wait for her to respond without actually waiting for her to respond. She'll want to work with me or she won't, just like the publisher will want the book or they won't. And there's a new episodes of WTF with Marc Maron, which means it's time to go running. 3:31pm One thing I'll give 30 Days of Night credit for is that I wanna see Barrow, Alaska. I've always been rather curious about that part of the world. 5:54pm ...and now I go running again, because there's still light. I don't know if it's doing me a damn bit of good, I feel like I'm just getting fatter and fatter, but I'm doing my best. Whether or not my best is good enough remains to be seen. | ||
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Monday, 5 October 2009 (murderwrecker) 10:31am I only ran for half an hour today, because the Fresh Air episode I was listening to was not as interesting as I'd hoped, plus I told myself that I had a lot of stuff I needed to get done. We'll see how that goes. 5:11pm Yeah, thought so. | ||
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Sunday, 4 October 2009 (the ambivalent abyss) 11:49pm We pulled ourselves out of bed sometime after noon, went out for brunch, came back with the intention of being productive, and wound up napping for a few hours. That's how it goes sometimes. We drove into the Mission and parted company before Bad Movie Night (30 Days of Night). | ||
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Saturday, 3 October 2009 (blood deep in dread) 11:51am I just ran for an hour, because Marc Maron's latest podcast is an hour. That's how it works. And though I use sunsceen, my freckles are disturbingly prominent when I've been out in the sun for a while. Newsflash: I have freckles, which you can't really tell in most pictures, except maybe this one. Or this one, which I'm pretty sure was Ripley's favorite for that very reason. 10:17pm Post-show meal at Big Lantern with Marta, because being a zombie is hungry work. Much bigger crowd tonight, and a better show overall. My timing was better than last night, Jim and I worked together fabulously, and the technical issues which plauged last night's episodes were revolved. At my request, Puzzling Evidence was kind enough to tape both shows, which makes me happy. sometime after midnight We came home, did a couple hits of nitrous, and processed. There's been a lot more of that lately. | ||
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Friday, 2 October 2009 (putrifying fire) 2:47pm Tonight's the big show. All the friends I've invited have declined for various reasons, and I've promoted it in all my usual channels, though those have never actually resulted in people showing up. Oh well. The audience will be whatever it'll be. 11:30pm Having post-show beers at Shotwell's with Rhiannon. Sadly, it's too crowded to dance. The show went well. Not a huge crowd—there never is on an opening night—but they had fun, and I even remembered all my lines! Really, it's easily the most fun I've had on stage in a long time. For as fulfilling as "Intersections and Interventions" and "The Last Dog and Pony Show" were, there's a certain emotional toll to them. For this, I just get to dress up and be goofy, and you can't beat that. sometime after midnight I'm not drunk—I drank half a glass of Double Chocolate Stout over two hours ago—but I'm hiccuping so much, I might as well be. Sleeping is gonna be tricky. | ||
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Thursday, 1 October 2009 (ashen) 11:10am Bleh. That was inevitable, I suppose—our first fight. Well, it was sort of a fight. Certainly it was nothing compared to the scream-and-swearfests that used to happen with Maddy, or even simply as emotionally intense as it would often get with Vash or Ripley. It was kinda familiar, but not. And, as I say, inevitable, especially since we've been dating for five months, and likely will for many more months to come. 8:54pm In addition to hosting this weekend, I've also put together a preshow video for Tales from The Dark Room, which includes the full trailers for "Mant!" and "The Tingler." Because I'm all meta like that. | ||
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