Category: Reminiscence and Reflection

Digital Reminiscing

Vague nostalgia this afternoon. After reading the nice things Becky said about me on her new site, I started thinking back to who inspired me as I was getting started with Planet SOMA back in the dark ages of the mid 1990s.

Unfortunately, a lot of the sites I was looking at back in 1995 and 1996 no longer exist, with the notable exception of Justin’s Links from the Underground, which could easily be called the grandfather of the personal web site. I guess it’s been a primary inspiration over the years, even though I rarely stop by anymore.

The personal sites I look at regularly these days would include these:

I don’t get around much these days. Life is about spending less time in front of the computer, not more time…

Neither do I spend as much time on email. I was moving all my archived mail from ZIP disks to my hard drive today and I looked at some of the older stuff. I realized that:

  • I used to engage in serious ongoing correspondence (daily even) with people I’d never met. I don’t do nearly as much of this now.
  • I used to have email relationships with a few people which were considerably more flirtatious than I remember.
  • There are a lot fewer people using AOL than there used to be. Or at least a lot fewer of them are contacting me.

I’ve reached the bottom of the page and I’m hungry, so I’ll stop short of tying this all together into ny sort of coherent thought or theme.

Video Memories

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been engaging in the tediously entertaining task of dubbing all my 8mm camcorder videos (dating back to 1994) to VHS. I’m in the middle of 1998 now.

A couple of things I’ve realized in the process:

  • My hairline has remained pretty constant since 1995.
  • The early videos (where I was using the video camera as a video camera rather than as a glorified still camera to get screen shots for the website) were much more entertaining.
  • I really porked out in 1997 and 1998. I think a good chunk of it’s gone now.
  • My apartment used to be the most disgusting, nasty pigsty in the world.
  • I hate my “conversational voice”.
  • I like my mom and dad a lot and I miss being around them on a regular basis.

It’s kind of fun going back and looking at the old stuff again. I’ve seen people I forgot I knew and places I forgot existed. And this is only after 5 1/2 years. It’s amazing how much San Francisco has changed (mostly for the worse, I’m afraid) in this short period of time.

I’ve watched Sarah’s hair grow from millimeters to inches. I’ve enjoyed close-ups of food from every diner and dive imaginable. I’ve seen myself having sex on numerous occasions. I’ve re-lived road trips and visits from friends. And, as always, I’m still more concerned with what I didn’t shoot than with what I did. South of Market, before it succumbed to yuppie cancer, would be one thing I’d like more of. More sex would be nice too, but I imagine I already have more of that on tape than most people anyway.

It was not a bad way to kill a few days, all things considered.

The Real World


Mmmm. Yummy long-haired boy…

Damn Mark for writing something about that Real World – New York marathon before I had a chance to. I was watching it too. Even stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to finish it, at which point I promptly turned off the TV before being assaulted by the London brats, the SF brats, or, God forbid, the Hawaii or LA wankers.

Didn’t much care for Eric the gym clone; despite his chest and all, he was just too well-scrubbed and plastic (and a bit of an asshole). Predicatably, the one I craved was Andre. He’s in an LA band called Milkweed now, in case you care. But Andre aside, the whole New York cast was the only one I really liked. They were people whose party I would have gone to. Most of the subsequent youngsters were people I’d avoid like the plague, which is probably why I never watched the show much after 1992.

And yes, I’m skipping Survivor too. I just can’t imagine caring what happens to ANYONE in that collection of Blind Date rejects.

I think “The Real World” was a brilliant idea for a show, despite its “casting” since the first year. In 1992, of course, I’d just moved from the south to the big city. I wasn’t Julie (I most certainly wasn’t anything approaching a virgin) but I got the concept all the same. And, of course, this show was the direct precursor to today’s web journals, spycams, blogs, etc. It gave a whole generation the idea of enjoying intimate gimpses of complete strangers doing more or less nothing.

Unfortunately, it also led to Friends…

Randomly Saturday

So maybe I’m the last person on the web to catch on to The Dreamweaver Depot and the Dreamweaver Supply Bin, but they’re still pretty cool. I like to fantasize about keeping Planet SOMA pretty low-tech, but not all my design clients are necessarily so inclined, and one can ever have too many navigation tools at one’s disposal, after all…

Maybe next week I’ll start having the Planet SOMA logo flying around the page. Maybe not. But I sure do like the idea of making collapsible outline menus, ,especilly when they’re also usable by that significant number of people who (wisely) browse with Javascript disabled.

But enough tech talk. Does anybody else remember this show? I watched it every week as 12-year-old, but all the other kids didn’t know about it even THEN. Probably because they all had actual friends thay played with on Saturday afternoons. I do remember it was little bit silly, but, since puberty was striking at the time, I remember even more clearly that Mike Darnell (who played the older brother) had a really great butt.

It’s Memorial Day weekend, of course. No telling what other best-forgotten memories will surface. I’ve already been digging through the “American Top 40” book. Stay tuned for more…

Shit. Literally.

Take the new and improved Planet SOMA Factory tour…

Crimes against nature:

  • Canned corn
  • Low-flow toilets
  • The upcoming “Gilligan’s Island” marathon on Nick-at-Nite

Of course, numbers one and three paint me as a snob and number two makes me look anti-environment. But canned corn is just plain nasty, on the same level as canned squash and canned rutabagas. “Gilligan’s Island” is pure crap, and while I love a lot of crap, I don’t love this particular crap. Number two on the list is, of course, related to crap as well and to the fact that I want said crap to disappear when I ask it to by flushing the crapper.

I guess number two could also be related to “number two”, for those of you who grew up using that particular term. I grew up in a “stinky” house myself. It seved as both noun and verb (“I have to stinky” or “there’s still stinky in the commode”). Most of my friends were from “doo doo” homes. I never met “poop” people until I moved to California, and even then, most of them were from Ohio.

Please don’t inundate me with email about the term you used to describe defecation unless it was really funny…

Randomly Wednesday

Thing I really hate today:

More or less complete strangers (with whom I’ve exchanged ONE very brief round of email) who spontaneously add me to their “forwarded forwarded email virus alerts ” mailing lists. I’m not too fond of ANYONE who does this, but to do it after one round of email is truly repulsive.

Note to sender: I don’t have a Windows machine (thank God), I’ve already deleted this message 20 times this year, and spam is bad enough, thanks, without having it come from “friends” too.

Realizations while listening to the 1980s station while driving to Safeway tonight:

You never would have heard a segue between Tone Loc and the Cure on any actual radio station during the actual 1980s. Things just didn’t work that way. Stations focusing on the 1960s and 1970s offer similarly improbable pairings of, say, Steppenwolf and Neil Diamond.

Commercial oldies stations have this way of mushing up an entire decade into a format which says “if it was a hit and it will make people stop changing stations until the next commercial, we will play it.” Which is, of course, the whole point of commercial radio. Keep in mind that you are not the radio station’s customer. You are its product, neatly delivered to its actual customers, the advertisers.

Of course, what this means is that commercial radio pretty much sucks as far as long-term listening goes (KABL excepted, of course). It’s not really designed for that, even though some of us still do it. I my be a program director’s wet dream; I’m so lethargic that once I have a station set, I don’t change it until the most heinous thing imaginable assaults me. Which is why I listen to college radio a lot…

Never much been one for switching stations a lot, be it radio or TV. Watching TV with a remote-happy partner who can’t stay parked for more than 30 seconds (my dad, for example) is my idea of an evening in hell. And, despite claims to the contrary, there must be a lot of others like me. Otherwise, the networks wouldn’t sandwich all their new (and often rotten) shows between two hits. This would also explain why I’ve started watching The Fresh Prince after Roseanne every day.

I’m sort of curious how other people feel about this too, but wondering aloud might result in a lot of email I probably won’t answer, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.

But I’m off the stated topic, I’ve used up my space, and I haven’t even gotten to my other realization: that “Oh Sheila” by Ready for the World really desperately wanted to be a Prince song. Or a Sheila E song, which is essentially the same thing, all in all.

Back to the grind…

A Drinking Life

I hardly ever drink anymore and I’m glad. I was never really what you’d call an alcoholic anyway, but I used to drink a lot and there were times when it was a bit problematic. So maybe “drinking problem” would have been the correct term.

The first time was on New Years Even 1979-80. There were disastrous results. All of 1980 was a little disastrous now that I think about it. I didn’t drink much after that until I started going to queer bars at 19.

When I was in my twenties, it was not unusual for me to drink a 12-pack over the course of a evening and then drive home from wherever I happened to be. I’d have beers before going out, beers while I was out, and more when I got home. At last call, the normal procedure was to get two or three beers to last through that “generous” half-hour North Carolina bars give you to finish up.

Sometimes my friends and I would drive an hour and a half to Raleigh or Charlotte, drinking all the way in the car. We’d hit two or three bars and then drive home, maybe even having one or two more in the car on the way back. We never much thought anything about it. One night, a friend and I even drove to Myrtle Beach (a good 200 miles away) after last call, spent the day there, went out drinking that night, and drove home afterward for a grand total of 48 hours awake. It’s a miracle I made it to 30 alive and without a DUI.

It just seemed natural in those days to start drinking at 10 and continue as late as possible. I couldn’t imagine a party or a night out without lots of beer. I drank a lot at home too. I’d get drunk to make a tape or just get drunk to get drunk. Then I’d wake up the next morning and go to work, albeit with a bit of a headache.

Even into my thirties I could still pull a pretty serious drunk now and then, although living two blocks from my favorite bars at least kept me out of the car. There were the occasional weekends when my roomie and I would stay up all night and hit the Watering Hole or the End-up at 6AM. I spent many other weekends walking around drunk and in circles at sex clubs until I finally got bored with that.

The one day a year or two back, I realized I don’t drink much anymore. I haven’t really drunk at home in several years, and I can’t manage more than a couple of beers on my rare nights out either, unless I’m prepared to feel like I’m going to die the next morning. The thought of drinking and driving terrifies me.

In a way, I sort of miss it sometimes. But then I get my senses back, see how much weight I’ve lost and how much less stupid I act, and I get over it…

Lost 45s

How much do I love this (or this, if you’re inclined toward Windows Media Player)? It’s exactly the tapes I used to make for my friend Duncan, trying to dig up just that one obscure single which peaked at number 37 in 1981 and was never heard much again.

I sometimes wonder if songs like “My Girl” by Chilliwack or “5-7-0-5” by City Boy or “Hold On” by Ian Gomm were really all that good or if they just seem good because they haven’t been played into the ground for 20 years like others which had little more initial chart presence. Even when they were new, though, I think I sort of liked the bottom half of the top 40 a little better than the top half.

But then again, I prefer fog to sunshine too, so my opinions may be questionable. And I have little patience with any of the current top 40, whatever said designation means in 2000 anyway.

Anyway, there’s something sort of comforting about listening to this stuff with that slightly out of phase streaming audio sound. Reminds me of when I used to listen to distant AM radio stations at night.

It’s taken billions of dollars in technology to give us the effect of a cheap transistor radio. By God, I say it was worth it.

Oh God. They’re playing Andy Gibb. Gotta run…

Happy 100K


10,000 Miles Ago…

My car finally hit 100,000 miles on Sunday, right in the middle of beautiful downtown Pescadero CA. Of course, since I have a Toyota, I don’t get to see “all zeroes”. This milestone won’t occur for another 900,000 miles. I feel a little cheated.

Longtime readers might remember when I bought it, why, and where it’s taken me. Or they may just not care. Which is quite understandble, but I thought my trustworthy little Toyota desrved a little recognition for all its accomplishment. It’s avoided major breakdowns (and break-ins) for three years now.

OK, I also didn’t have anything else better to write about tonight, my life having taken one of those “uneventful” turns lately. Thus, I offer random thoughts for a Monday night:

  • One thing you can always count on: if you walk by Julie’s Supper Club on a Saturday night, there will always be a drunk yuppie idiot saying something really stupid at the top of his lungs.
  • Most unexpected song heard in a queer bar this weekend; “Cool Places” by Sparks with Jane Weidlin. Runner-up: “Jesus Walking on the Water” by the Violent Femmes.
  • One more thing you can always count on: in any given week, “Back to the Future” will be airing at least once on TNT or TBS. Guranteed.
  • When I was 13 and really obsessive, I would have killed for a website like this. Even at 35, and no longer obsessive, it’s still pretty cool.
  • No, the aforementioned link has nothing to so with sex, thank you.
  • Showing my age: it strikes me that the first actual date I went on with a guy (as opposed to the first sex, which happened much, much earlier) was to see “Terms of Endearment”, which is right now showing on TBS.
  • Yes, “Back to the Future” was on right before it.

Happy Tuesday…

Today in History

Glad everyone got a little chuckle out of the regular guys. Good response to that one, which proves (once again) that people never respond to what you think they will.

Turns out the wording on my contact page has given some people the impression that I don’t necessarily read all my email. This is not true. I read everything; it’s the responses that I’m treating a little too casually these days. I’d love to say it’s getting better, but it’s not. Which is sad.

Eighteen years ago today, I met my friend Jeff in a public toilet. We’d met before, but this time I realized that neither of us was really there to take a piss.

Seventeen years ago today, I had a first encounter with someone I believed to be a really nice guy. We had nasty sex in my grandmother’s house (I was house-sitting). Didn’t see him again until sixteen years ago tomorrow, and that second reunion started a very unpleasant 1984. I looked at the coincidence involving the dates as a sign that this was something good. Now I realize that said coincidence was merely unfortunate.

Fifteen years ago today, I was in Raleigh, crying my eyes out, but we covered that a few months back.

Thirteen years ago today, I was developing a crush on a skate rat who later invaded my home for several weeks. He was cute as a bug’s ear, but h only liked girls.

Twelve years ago today, some friends did a Culture Club song in drag. it was pretty good.

Not that any of this really means anything, and not that anything particularly significant happened today, but this time of year is one of those which has historically produced events which seemed worthy of journal entries at the time.

Not this year, though, I guess…