Year: 2000

Death, Rain, Love, Hate, Etc.

Death:

My uncle died a week ago, followed by a third cousin I hadn’t seen (or really thought about, I confess) for 15 years or so. Once I’d finished thinking about the family, Charles Schulz passes on just as his final strip runs. And then tonight came “death night” in prime time, with a guest bimbo on “King of the Hill”, Maude Flanders on “The Simsons”, and Giardello on “Homicide: the Movie”.

Rain:

I love rain, and I try to enjoy it in the winter since it doesn’t rain here in the summer. Rain is probably my favorite weather, with dense fog a close second. But enough is enough, already. It essentially hasn’t stopped raining for four days. Forecast for next week: rain on Mondy, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Things I love today:

  • Valentine’s Day candy is already being marked down.
  • Green Apple Books

Things I hate today:

  • Puddles. Everywhere.
  • The idiot in the Mercedes who came within six inches of hitting my car today while turning in front of me (I was going straight) from the INSIDE lane.
  • Nicotine addiction.
  • The bitch in the BMW who rode my ass all the way down Bayshore Boulevard when (a) she could easily have passed and (b) I was already doing 50 in a 35 zone.

Final question:

Why does it seem the more expensive the car, the greater the likelihood the driver will be an asshole?

Ella, Sex, and Weight Loss

Two Ella Fitzgerald specials in one week. Yer humble host is in heaven. She’s one of the few singers I remember seeing on the Ed Sullivan show as a young’un. Loved her then and until the night she died. That night in 1996, I just happened to connect with a very adorable boy in Sacramento. We listened to Ella and fucked all night. On the way home the next day, I heard about her death and knew I’d always remember both her and the boy.

It’s one of the few celebrity deaths I remember quite so clearly. I also remember hearing about John Lennon, at the end of a really rough night working at McDonald’s when I was 16. That was rough. and I was at my grandmother’s house when Elvis died. That one didn’t affect me much at all. Probably because he’s really still alive, huh?

But lest this get morbid, I’ll move on to something more positive. I think.

It seems my sex drive has returned. Tentatively. As I mentioned in email to a friend in the UK this week, it nearly scurried right back in last weekend when confronted with the distinct lack of selection in my neighborhood watering holes. Maybe it was the rain. Or maybe I should have gotten drunk. But this crowd would have required getting REALLY drunk…

All the same, yer humble host senses that he might allow himself to be persuaded to do the nasty at some point in the next few weeks. Perhaps I’m just tired of watching the same old porn over and over again. Maybe I’m just excited that I can once again wear clothes I haven’t been able to put on in years.

This half-baked scheme features no guaranteed results. Ultimately, I’ll probably get bored with the idea and remember that I LIKE not having to chase someone out of the house early in the morning. I guess I could just do it in public like I used to, huh?

I’ll keep you posted, though…

19 February 2000

I moved Irma into the living room tonight. I thought she deserved a change of scenery, and it was part of a general rearrangement to make way for the three latest members of the family. I’m now harboring twelve houseplants. I’m never lonely…

Dinner at the Pizza Joynt with Jamie tonight. Bob Coffin was pumping the organ for all it was worth, with the standard fare and also (are you ready) a Wurlitzer version of “Stairway to Heaven”. I don’t think Jamie quite believed me when I gasped at the realization of what we were hearing, but soon the recognition overtook her as well. A Led Zeppelin song played on a pipe organ is not something one forgets easily.

Afterward, there was Super K-mart in Oakland which, I repeat, is perhaps the purest and most wonderful shopping experience to be had.

When I got back to the ‘hood at midnight, there was not a parking space to be had. I’m not really sure what the hell’s going on down here tonight, but from the parking scene, I have a feeling I’m glad to be missing it. My return to the world of the promiscuous will just have to wait one more night. I’m going to bed…

That Annoying Weekend

It’s just a little creepy when people recognize yer humble host in bars just because of this website. It’s happened quite a number of times over the past four years (and again tonight), but I still haven’t quite gotten used to it.

How is it that I always forget that Bear Rendezvous Weekend is in town and always make the mistake of going out? Nothing against bears, but they’re not really the “type” I’m looking for while on a sex quest. And everyplace was annoyingly crowded all weekend, which might explain last night’s parking drama.

Anyway, I met this nice boy at the Eagle last night. As a matter of fact, he was the only one in the whole place I was interested in, so I was pretty pleased when our smiles turned into conversation. He was cute as a bug’s ear, and he started playing with my ear (which was more fun than it sounds). I was getting all hot and bothered, and then, out of nowhere, he left to go back to Sacramento with his friends. I always have drama with boys named Christian.

At least I found some really good asparagus this weekend. That may have been the high point…

Surreal Things, Love, and Hate

I didn’t think it could get much more surreal than hearing “Stairway to Heaven” on a pipe organ in a pizza parlor on Friday night. I was wrong.

I was changing channels tonight and something caught my eye on one of the local PBS stations: a rerun of “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show” from about 1961. The strange special effects in the first musical number were bizarre enough, with singers “floating” against a blue sky background (body parts kept disappearing). The “Peanuts” opening sequence as a little odd as well.

Midway through the show, though, came the piece de resistance: Ernie Ford and Tony Bennett and a full orchestra singing Hank Williams songs. This was about a strange as it gets. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” with a horn section was followed by “Jambalaya” with both the horn section and a collection of about 15 perky white singers in evening wear. All in brilliant, headache-inducing color on semi-demagnetized 2-inch videotape.

I sort of hoped it would all end in a commercial for Martha White Flour, but it didn’t…

Things I love today:

Things I hate today:

  • This chest cold, which is showing signs of getting nastier and nastier (no doubt spurred on by cheap cigarettes in San Bruno).
  • Hot, sticky weather in February.
  • Waiting until the last minute to pay my car insurance and finding AAA closed for the holiday.

Interviewed

Interviewed. Me. Imagine that. And with only one inconsequential misinterpretation regariding hits…


Still life with Kleenex, Alka Seltzer, and orange juice (Me, 1996)

So the time has finally come. I’ve managed to develop that annual nastiest cold in the world. Maybe even the worst cold in a couple of years. Oddly enough, this one seems to have moved from my chest to my head, instead of vice versa which is my usual pattern. It kept me away from my part-time job today (like that’s particularly difficult…) but it didn’t stop me from looking like a heroin addict at a meeting about some freelance work.

What really sucks about being sick in San Francisco in February, though, is having to drag your ass out in the freezing cold and pouring rain to move your car on street cleaning night. Of course, just about anyplace else, the cold would be colder and the rain would be harder, so I guess I shouldn’t bitch.

But I’m sick and I’m cranky. I’ll bitch if I goddamn well please. Why should this be different from ny other day?

Things I love today:

Things I hate today:

    • Kleenex rash.
  • That useless, tough, taste-free corned beef brisket I bought at Safeway this weekend.
  • The aroma of that homeless guy who sat down next to me at lunch today.

28 February 2000

Why no, this picture has nothing much to do with anything. But wait. Come to think of it, I did have lunch at Burger King today. Maybe it’s a subliminal thing. Or it could just be that I liked the picture…

Either way, lunch at Burger King was about as strenuous as it got today. I’m getting a little better, I guess. I can breathe again, but my ears are still stopped up and I’m still a little achy. All in all, though, things are improving. And my gardenia bloomed.

So in case no one noticed, I uploaded a remodeled Planet SOMA yesterday. There are some subtle page layout changes, and I’ve added a search form on every page. A lot of older pages are now gone, bringing the grand total down to a still unwieldy 420. I’m still playing around, so there may still be a few minor changes. Let me know if you run into problems.

Funny thing, the hit on my front page are way up over the past few weeks. I’d been averaging about 350 a day, while it seems to have blown up to about 425-450 lately. One day last week, almost 500 people came in through the front door. Maybe this “hands off” policy, where I’ve only been updating the journals, is a good thing. Odder still, though, is that overall site traffic has stayed pretty stable, despite all the additional hits on the front page.

Now that you’re thoroughly bored, I’ll sign off, so I can attempt the sleep I didn’t get last night. Whatever I have, it’s starting to grate on every remaining nerve in my body.

Prop 22

If there’s anyone out there who can give me an acceptable answer to either of the following two questions, I’ll be very surprised:

  1. Just how, exactly, would extending the right of marriage to same-sex couples have ANY effect (positive or negative) on any existing heterosexual marriage?
  2. When discussing Constitutional law and human rights, what does it really matter what God or the Bible have to say about anything (or even what Confucius or The Great Pumpkin say, for that matter)?

Granted, they’re both more or less rhetorical questions and it would be hard to find an answer to satisfy me. But they’re the primary idiocies being used to defend the passage of California Proposition 22 next week.

Note that I’m not putting down God, the Bible, Confucius, or (heaven forbid) The Great Pumpkin here. I’m just stating that religious teachings are no more a basis for extending (or denying) human rights in this country than are the oft-cited “court of public opinion” or the idea that allowing more motivated couples to marry will somehow “weaken” the institution.

Ultimately, Proposition 22 will pass, it will be challenged in court, and (eventually) it will be overturned. You can’t vote on human rights in a public referendum and expect it to stick or to have a valid outcome. I doubt that plantation owners in South Carolina would have been chomping at the bit to outlaw slavery in 1860, had such a referendum occurred, for example.

Anyway, please don’t hesitate to vote simply because this referendum shouln’t be on the ballot and will be eventually declared unconstitutional. Vote no on 22. While you’re at it, consider voting no on 21 (for being just plain wrong) and on 23 and 27 (for being just plain silly). If you want to vote yes on something, go for 30 and 31.

I’ll skip the presidential candidates for now. Would that I could continue doing so in the future as well…

Randomly Sunday

Only 16 days until Krispy Kreme arrives in the Bay Area. I went by the new store in Union City yeaterday and supervised the construction for a few minutes. The “hot doughnuts now” sign is expected to be lit on 21 March, signalling a new world of North Carolina sanity only 30 miles or so from San Francisco. Let’s hope this grand innovatrion eventully makes its way into the city as well.

If we could just come up ith a couple of K&W Cafeterias now, I think California might be infinitely more bearable.

Random thoughts:

  • One more “William Shattner Sings the Classic Rock Hits Badly” commercial for Priceline.com might drive me over the edge and cause me to throw my TV through the window of the yuppie slum across the street. There’s “camp” and there’s “just plain stupid”. These spots are dangerously close to the latter.
  • I’m actually voluntarily going to the Castro this afternoon. Seems there’s a bit of a demonstration against Prop 22, featuring actual bands and everything. Aside from supporting the cause, it should be fun to see how the fluffy Castro boys react to actual electric guitars in their rainbow-encrusted midst. It should also be nice to think back about a time when the Castro was a social and political center rather than just a shopping center.
  • I’m excited that I’ve finally eaten at the Granada Cafe on Mission , satisfying a five-year craving. Dan, Jamie, and I ventured in Friday night. Odd little place: the food was passble, the salad dressing was frightening, and the bar was inspiring. It helped, of course, that there was also a banquet for a large amply-proportioned family in varying degrees of booze-induced disarray. They were definitely a colorful bunch, noisy, but generally good-natured. My only complaint would be that, from the aroma in the bathroom, they had a little problem with aim.
  • Happy news of the weekend: I think jeans which actually FIT may be slowly coming back into style, at least among those of legal age. This is quite refreshing after a decade of wondering if guys had suddenly started being born without asses.