Journals : 1997 : Part 3
2 September 1997 | Link this
Planet SOMA US Tour. Read more.
2 November 1997 | Link this
I think my recent rants about SF may have given the impression that I don't like it here very much anymore. I may even have said as much somewhere; I can't recall. I'm now serving notice that it ain't true. I still love the city, despite all its faults. I will say that I'm concerned about the direction it seems headed in, and that I'm just not sure I like the company it's keeping lately. I will also admit I am considering leaving Sodom-by-the -Bay for a number of reasons, only some of them related to the city itself.
But I still have an unbelievable love for this place. I care what happens here. Enough so, I might add, that I feel the need to criticize things which are just plain wrong. Maybe my romantic love has turned into a parental sort of love. That said, I will add that I'm trying to look at things with a more balanced eye and to start once again occasionally observing some of the things which I love.
I couldn't find my wallet for a few minutes yesterday. The frustration almost moved me to tears. Tonight I was cleaning up my room. My impatience with the never-ending pile of stuff actually DID move me to tears. I sat on my bed, looking at piles of paper and dirty clothes and started sobbing. I put my head in my hands and began bawling. It was scary...
So what the fuck is going on here? Dirty clothes don't usually affect me this way. I'm not the type who spontaneously combusts at the slightest provocation. This is not normal behavior.
What thoughts ran through my head? Well, mostly I kept pondering the fact that I'm a 33 year old chain smoker with a beer gut, living in a tiny little apartment about two steps up from squalor, working part-time at a job I could do in my sleep, and suddenly realizing that at this "ripe old age", I have absolutely no more idea what I'm going to do with my life than I did when I was ten.
It was not a particularly pleasant state of mind.
Being an aimless slacker may be cute when you're 25. Jeez, an entire media culture and demographic profile has developed around it. But when you're reaching your mid 30's, it becomes damn near pathetic. And scary as hell.
I've been in a rotten mood all weekend, Maybe it'll get better tomorrow. Right now, though, I keep looking around this dark, microscopic little apartment and I think I'm gonna scream. Of course moving out of the apartment would mean moving out of SF, since the only way I can even afford the current hovel is through rent control. I've been living here five years and the place has never seemed quite so unpleasant before.
But tonight, as I tried to sort through and rearrange all the physical shit, I kept conjuring up assorted emotional shit at the same time, and the two shits combined were overwhelming. Maybe a little Pepto Bismol...
And I can't seem to focus on anything lately. Right now, I'm in the process of reading four different books. I'm working on three different big projects for Planet SOMA. I can't seem to commit completely to any of them, so all the projects and the books (and the email) are just sitting around in various states of completion, waiting patiently for me to give any of them a respectable amount of time.
I won't even discuss the fact that I almost have to force myself to leave the house lately. Or that I seem to be screamingly impatient with everyone and everything when I do. Or especially the fact that I didn't even watch "The Simpsons" tonight. If I did that, someone (like me) might get the notion that I'm depressed. Couldn't have that...
So before I get even whinier, I think I'll just go to bed. At least I've managed to remove all the dirty clothes that were covering it.
11 November 1997 | Link this
Thanks to those of you who expressed concern and support. I'd like to announce at this time that I've decided to put my midlife crisis on hold for a few years and that the laundry is not currently making me cry...
27 November 1997 | Link this
Thanksgiving Dinner happened at the home of my friends Kevin, Steve, and Todd. These are all expatriate North Carolinians like myself; I actually lived with Steve and Todd for my first month in San Francisco. And i work with Kevin. So it was a homecoming of sorts.
The alcohol started flowing about 5:30. The music was a strange mix of the Fifth Dimension, X, and a collection of Coca-Cola commercials from the 60's sung by Tom Jones, the Supremes, and more. Kevin did most of the cooking. His recommendation to me was to "bring something beige", so my white trash contribution was a squash casserole heavy on the mayonnaise and cream of mushroom soup.
Dinner came about 9. Suffice to say 'twas a masterpiece. I was pretty staved, having managed to eat nothing but a bowl of cereal and a pack of crackers all day. ...
After dinner, things got really strange. Somehow, an unidentified man with a guitar appeared. I'm not really sure if anyone knew him or figured out where he came from. But soon we were all sitting around the living room singing "Dead Puppies" and other Doctor Demento classics. I was frightened to realize that I still know all the words to "I'm Looking over My Dead Dog Rover".
It was time for another beer...
5 December 1997 | Link this
It was not until I was in college that I really started to realize that there were people other than my family who I still wanted to see over Christmas. Maybe this was because for the first time I knew people whose primary residence was not Greensboro, North Carolina. When my friends went home for Christmas, I felt a little lost.
Those of us who stayed in Greensboro for the break (I did so because I lived there), we'd compensate by doing things like opening the campus radio station for the day, and making road trips to see the people we missed.
When I moved to Charlotte, going home for the holidays was an easy day trip. I could be in and out in 36 hours or less. More time was not really required because I was able to come home once a month or so.
Then came the move to San Francisco. I spent my first four Christmases on the west coast, due to the logistics and economics of the trip. I visited at other times, but never made the holiday trek. And I was never really bothered by this, although I'm sure my parents were disappointed.
Here, I had my friends and my bars and my alleys. I was never alone for the holidays except once in 1994, after I'd just broken up with my longest-term boyfriend.
Last year, though, having just become unemployed by choice, I made the trip home on Christmas Eve. The plane was crowded, every passenger looked as if they were going off to war, and the movie sucked. Once I got home, it was a nice visit and all, but I'd just as soon have made it at a less insane time of year.
So it looks like I'll be going home again this year, thanks to a family friend who works for USAir. I'll fight my way onto a crowded plane at an unusual time of day, since we "freebie travelers" have to take what we can get, spacewise. I'll arrive in the cold of North Carolina, be glad to see my parents and friends, eat lots of food, gain still more gut, and have a thoroughly nice time.
But I'd still just as soon do it some other time of year.
7 December 1997 | Link this
As a part-time Administrative Assistant, one of my duties is to facilitate the annual holiday party. Anyone who's even done this knows what fun that is. Two things are essential: tons of food and tons of booze. The space and all other concerns are secondary.
Fortunately, we had a good space too thanks to the a connection at the Casting Couch microcinema. Not only was the spot really comfortable, but we got to see "Frosty" and "The Grinch" in grotesque detail as they were projected behind us. The drunker everyone got, the scarier the claymation figures got....
The lack of smoking facilities inside made the front door area more and more popular as the night wore on. Things also begain to calm down a bit as the free booze ended between 9:30 and 10. By 11 or so, the exodus had commenced in earnest, with one faction (yer humble host included) migrating to a "queer boys night out" in the South of Market Area I call home. I'll skip that part of the story for right now, lest I have to change the names to protect the innocent.
17 December 1997 | Link this
I just don't understand:
- Why does anyone watch MTV these days? Is it just that I've aged out of the target audience or are endless reruns of "Road Rules" and "The Real World" just plain BORING?
- How is it that in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, there are homeless people who will spend the holidays barricaded outside Golden Gate Park?
- Why is it that I always expect people in Volvos to be really incompetent and indecisive drivers? And why am I correct in this assumption about 80% of the time?
- Why is it that I always expect people in BMWs to be really arrogant and inconsiderate drivers? And why am I correct in this assumption about 95% of the time?
- Why do people who live in outlying suburbs, pay no city taxes, and contribute virtually nothing to the urban economy feel they have ANY right to complain about the city?
- What is the point of the SF Sidewalk web site? And why would anyone go there when they could hit the Guardian site instead?
- Who the hell buys all those millions of copies of "Reader's Digest" which are sold every month?
- Why does it cost 50 cents more to sell a gallon of gas in San Francisco than in Atlanta? I somehow thought there was more oil in California than in Georgia.
- When did people start believing that being rude and unreasonable would get better "results" than being civil and polite?
- How can anyone spend an hour talking on the phone with someone who lives less than a mile away?
18 December 1997 | Link this
It is absolutely freezing cold here, or so it seems. Mind you, it never really gets all THAT cold in San Francisco; I doubt the temperature has fallen below 40F (4C). But in colder climates people have a miraculous thing which is lacking here: HEAT.
You'd be amazed just how hard it is to find heat here. The place I work doesn't have any at all, the logic being that the machines generate a sufficient amount. My apartment has one under-powered gas blower which keeps the ceiling of the hallway toasty warm and wouldn't dare intrude on any of the rooms.
This lack of warmth is everywhere, from restaurants to stores to bars to buses. I've spent nights in drafty old Victorians which made me long for the warmth of a snow-covered house back east. I've bought clothes in department stores without trying them on just because I couldn't face being naked in the dressing room.
This could be why San Franciscans seem to get one cold which starts in November and lasts until March, never really getting very serious, but always lurking under the surface. Colds here are just like the weather: chronic, never acute.
But in a few short months, we'll be warm again. The temperatures will climb, and -- of course -- no one here has air conditioning either...
21 December 1997 | Link this
Signs of Christmas in the City:
- Embarcadero Center looks like four hugely disproportionate Christmas presents and the Transamerica Pyramid looks like an oversized tree.
- Driving down Fifth Street near Market is something only the bravest among us will risk.
- The absence of crowds due to Christmas parties and people leaving the city actually made the Hole in the Wall Saloon bearable last night.
- Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley was closed off today so that all the people who scorn materialism and commercialism could make a quick buck selling T-shirts, crystals, and a plethora of strange-smelling items.
- The ratio of Christmas songs to other types on Muzak and KABL has finally hit 99-1.
Note du jour: a recent look at a cheap Spanish-English dictionary finds "Hanukkah" defined as "Christmas for the Jews". I'll let this one stand on its own...umm...merits and close with it.