Author: David

Ummm, a War

So it would seem we’re at war. And I didn’t hear a damned thing about it until hours after the fact.

Used to be this type of thing would result in an immediate (if brief) interruption of all programming on all commercial TV stations. I was home all day. The TV was on. I didn’t see a bulletin or hear a single word until I watched the 7:00 news.

Ironically, one of the top stories was about the “apathy” many Americans were showing toward the whole thing. Given a reliance on TV news, it’s a fucking miracle most of us even KNEW about it.

I’m sure the “big three” affiliates probably had plenty of live coverage, but who the hell watches ABC, CBS, or NBC anymore? You’d think the beginning of a war might have at least merited a MENTION on the other stations too.

On a related note, check out this bitchin’ TV site. While you’re at it, check out yesterday’s link du jour again too.

The Spirit

Only nine shopping days ’til Christmas. I’m not trying to be blatantly commercial or anything, but this seems like a good time to re-visit David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries. If I were less pure of spirit, I’d mention that you can buy the book from which these excerpts were taken right here on the site. But mentioning that would be wrong somehow.

Last note for the day: if you do nothing else today, visit this website. Just do it. Trust me.

Things I Love This Week

Home today, sitting in one of those thousands of San Francisco apartments with no heat or insulation to speak of. But it never gets cold in SF, you say. Perhaps not, by most standards, but it sure FEELS cold when it gets into the 40’s at night and you’re sitting in a drafty Victorian huddled over a wimpy space heater.

For a change of pace, here are some things I’m loving this week:

  • Reruns of “The Critic” on Comedy Central
  • Minute Maid Lemonade on sale at Safeway
  • Kelley’s Coffee Shop in Oakland (review coming soon)
  • The creepy new decor at My Place on Folsom Street (or is it just out of date Halloween decorations?)
  • My blanket

The Great Blackout of ’98

So I should’ve just stayed in bed.

I woke up about 8:45 and noticed the power was out. Dutifully, I got up, took a shower, dressed, and trudged off toward my part-time job, thinking this was just another neighborhood outage. Figuring that grabbing a bus on Folsom would really suck since all the traffic signals were out, I walked upto Mission. I was a little freaked out to notice the lights were still out and that none of the electric buses were running. I kept walking. I was starting to guess this might be a little more than a local occurence. Little did I know that power was out all over the city.

Jeez…what a mess. A million people without power. Minimal transit, no stoplights, nothing. By Fourth and Market, I decided to go back home and just read my book. And I never got my Sausage McMuffin. At least, though, the blackout gave me time to finish the Road Trip 98 saga (once the lights came back on).

Site-related

Gosh darn. That link from the Advocate I mentioned a few days ago went away pretty damned fast. Why am neither particularly surprised nor particularly upset? Now visitors to their page of links can find reassuringly happy and safe sites which don’t say anything bad or question those “happy upscale gay” aesthetics and demographics.

A little more of Road Trip 98 is here for your perusal, including Minneapolis Finale and Minneapolis to Kansas City. More later tonight or tomorrow.

Alas, most of the email I hadn’t answered yesterday still hasn’t been answered today…

I Hate This Week

I hate this week.

I think I started a message to a friend with those words earlier tonight as a slightly lame excuse for my glacial email response time of late. I guess I could use it as an excuse for the slow pace of my site updates too, particularly with respect to Road Trip 98.

I’ll spare you all the details, lest this become one of those increasingly ubiquitous “why I’m not updating” or “why my life sucks” rants. Suffice to say that my life doesn’t suck, that I’m not updating because I’m really busy right now, and that it will all get better in a few days. I may even get around to answering some mail. Then it will be time to go home for Christmas and it’ll all start over again.

$3.50 a Pack, My Ass…

$3.50 a pack, my ass…Since giving up smoking was not an option this weekend, seems the next best choice was a Friday night road trip to Reno to stock up on cheap Camels. It was a good excuse for an extra unplanned road trip anyway. And now I’m set through Christmas and my annual visit to Mom and Dad in North Carolina.

 

OK…almost anything is a good excuse for a road trip in my view. Cigarettes suddenly escalating in price from about $2.75 a pack to about $3.50 a pack in California (over the course of one weekend) is an incredible excuse. Throw in one roomie with a 4-wheel drive vehicle and all the ingredients are there. So this weekend, we braved snow-covered mountain roads, sleazy overpriced motels, and frightening Reno queer bars all (OK…mostly…) for cheap cigarettes.

We headed out about 1:30 on Friday afternoon. Traffic was a little heavy all the way to Sacramento, and we skipped the traditional Chick-Fil-A stop in Farifield. Malls, after all, are pretty damned unpleasant on the day after Thanksgiving. We opted for the Wienerschitzel located a few blocks from the State Capitol.

Things got intersting as we got closer to the Sierra Nevada. Three lanes of traffic were funnelled into one at Applegate for no apparent reason other than to make trucks stop and install chains. Seems a sign might have been just as effective since the trucks had to leave the road anyhow. Mysteries of the California Highway Patrol…

Actually, the drive wasn’t bad. We hit maybe five miles of light wet snow near Donner Summit and manged to pretty much avoid most of the cannibalism jokes. By Reno, things were pretty dry.

  

A nice room at an ungodly price right on the strip featured cable TV and a pretty spiffy pink and black bathroom. There was also a walk-in closet which Dan kept coming out of (and scurrying back into).

My apologies. Dan does not scurry.

Dinner at a dirt cheap casino prime rib kind of place. Then queer bars. I do not understand queerdom in Reno. There always seem to be lots of bars. There never seem to be any people in them. Friday night on a holiday weekend, thousands of people in town, packed casinos, yet there were no more than 10-15 people in any of the four bars we hit. Am I missing something?

Names of the bars (just in case): Quest, 1099, Bad Dolly’s, Five Star. And let me tell you there’s a lot of real estate invoved if you cover that circuit on foot. In the cold. And the rain.

 

Got to bed way too late. Got up not long after. I was prepared to be cranky all day, but the shower was too good. Much better than the wimpy trickle at home. There was hope. We went to Virginia City via some chain restaurant with a very bored waitress.

Virginia City is cute in that western antique and miner-kitsch sort of way. Dan looked at cute boys in Wranglers with big belt buckles. I looked in vain for boys who fit my definition of cute. Then I looked for falling snow. I got a little of that at least. I figured we’d see more on the way home, sinve the tops of the mountains were covered with clouds.

 

And the snow started around Truckee. I like Truckee. It’s much nicer than Needles, its southern “gateway to California” counterpart…probably has something to do with Needles being in the middle of the Mojave Desert…

 

After Truckee, we flew through most of the route to Sacramento, except when we sat in all that traffic which wasn’t moving through Donner Pass (again, for no apparent reason). Deciding to skip the I-80 nightmare from Sacramento to SF, we took the back road, through the Delta. Crawdad sandwiches at Ernie’s in Isleton. Mmmm…

Home. Bed.

Oh yeah…the cigarettes… I didn’t buy any in Nevada. I bought five cartons in Sacramento. Apparently, some uninformed merchant hadn’t gotten the word about the statewide markup. $15.99 a carton. Eighty miles from home…

Thanksgiving feasting at my traditional gathering of expatriate North Carolinians was a blast. There are no pictures, but I believe I have some leftovers from last year.

Gay Resource?

Wow…I’ve discovered that Planet SOMA is now linked by the Advocate as a gay resource. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or horrified. I think I’ll choose “amused”, particularly given all the less than complimetary things I’ve had to say about the Advocate over the years.

Guess their marketing department wasn’t consulted…

Another great discovery today came as I looked for something in “the drawer”. Every house has one; it’s that place where stuff lands when you don’t know what else to do with it. Didn’t find what I was looking for, but we have masking tape. And chopsticks. Who knew…

Road Trip 98 now includes the first parts of the Minnesota story. Seems it’s going to take me as long to get the trip online as it did to actually take the trip.

Dragging

I am dragging. I hate this; I’m not really sick, just worn out and feeling pretty unwilling and unable to do much of anything. I’m not sure if it makes me feel better or worse that my roomie says he just got over the same thing and that it’s “going around”.

I’m always amused by the way California food editors think Southern people eat. In this week’s paper, I read something about how to prepare a “traditional Southern Thanksgiving meal”. One of the most important dishes was something called a “beet and kumquat salad”. Yeah, right…

A congealed salad with canned pears, Cool-whip, and marshmallows maybe, but a “beet and kumquat salad”??? Give me a fucking break.

Road Trip 98 now includes the stretches from Detroit to Milwaukee and Milwaukee through my arrival in Minneapolis.

More Stuff

Link du jour: Infiltration, “the zine about going places you’re not supposed to go”. Great stuff. Great pictures. Great links. Truly a site after my own heart.

While I’m at it (and avoiding coming up with anything new of my own), check it this well-worded article on why Californians pretty much have no right ever to use the term “storm”. I think I said some of the same things last winter. I haven’t seen anything resembling a storm (or even a good rain) in six years here. It’s a little creepy.

Lastly, was Sunday night’s “Simpsons” (the hippie episode) thoroughly lame and a complete waste of George Carlin’s voice? Or was it just me?