Seriously, WTF?

Sunday afternoon I went out to the Clement Street Chinatown in search of a bag of army men to serve as Lilliputians for my Gulliver costume. I was mesmerized by one bargain store which featured such oddities as this clear rip-off of Head and Shoulders shampoo. Same bottle shape, same graphic design, but with NOTHING to help with dandruff. Just soap in a bottle. At least I hope it is soap. I took this grainy photo with my cell phone.

Notice it says it is "to rinse away loose dandruff." So this stuff could even be water. Or acid for that matter. Whatever, it scares me.

But not as much as this, which at $1.49 I had to buy:

WTF!? Made from or for?
For that fuller bodied afterbirth? Does your umbilical cord have split ends?

>shudder<

Boo!

Some say that Halloween in San Francisco is redundant. As Halloween, or the Gay High Holy Day, falls on Monday this year, the parties (of course) are on the Saturday prior. This year there seemed to be very few Halloween parties. But you know me, I'll make my own fun. Empact/Campus Life down the hall had been pushing their UCSF Masquerade Ball. Typically I think of school functions as not the best party on the menu, but in the absence of other offers, I put it out to the zoo crew—Kevin, Barney, RMJ, Marco, and Douglas. Four of us actually work at UCSF (but none on the same campus) so it was not such a far-fetched idea. The party was free for students, and a mere five bucks for faculty and staff. Tickets included a tour of the new Mission Bay Community Center, two drinks, and food. The two drinks alone would be worth the five bucks. With the right people, any event can be a fabulous party. And these are the right people. Ultimately, it was only Kevin and I who decided to go. But as always, we ARE the party of two.

The party in and of itself was a bit lame, but we had a fucking fabulous time. The worst: the frightening lighting and the scary karaoke. The best: endless beer flow, hot viking muscle and tight Hooter's "girl," and the other messy/funny staff who showed up. I wonder sometimes if Kevin hasn't ruined me for other men. We can always make our own fun out of anything. And the man understands the value of an event, a buzz, and a roadie. Clearly, I need a man who, together with me, is eager and able to spin straw into gold. Or perhaps, Goldschlagger.

Kevin's costume was just "70's Guy," which I suspect was just an excuse to pour himself into some seriously tight pants. Damn if they didn't look good on him though. I about lost it when he shared that he had to wear a thong to avoid the VPL. But as 70's guy in tight bell-bottoms, he found his fellow groove-things.

Me? I went as the Phantom of the Opry.


The student dressed as a viking was just tooooo adorable. His dimples were so deep you could eat soup out of them. And his torso was quite that of a Thunder God. I started calling him Thor. That would be to his face by the way. Later that night, Kevin and I were peeing next to him in the bathroom (not in the street-- that's another story). Either Kevin or I said something to him about being or asked him if he was Thor. Kevin: "Are you Thor?" Me: "Well it hurthz... He pulled a muthel and now he's thor."

Kevin started counting, "one...two...three..." It took to the count of six before Thor got the joke and laughed. Sometimes it is comforting that the beautiful/muscle people are also not that bright. Not that I am snotty and not that I am really into muscle worship. But still. Damn he was built. Kevin spent his eye-time on one of the "Hooter's Girls"-- every year some quartet of guys does the Hooter's drag thing. But one of these boys filled out his tighty-oranges really, really well.

Like I said, Kevin and I can make any gathering fun. It's a two step process: (1) find the bar (2) find the one or two other zany people and make it happen. Clearly, we made some friends:



(That's Michael, a Katrina refugee from New Orleans, as Tweety Bird.)
We caravanned with our new crazy companions to a party in the Tenderloin. If there is a scariest part of the tenderloin, this place was the creepy place next door. (Boo Radley would have been like, "dude, you guys are freakin' me out.") It was really crowed and really straight with very few costumes. We helped ourselves to some Heineken and nosed around. We went downstairs into the basement which was the office/bedroom of this "apartment" (term used loosely). There was a couple on the couch and there was a distinct air that this was supposed to be the makeout room. Lighting people! PLEASE. What is it with straight people and bad lighting? Kevin and I stayed at this party just long enough to fix the lighting (we are such good fags) and get another beer for the sidewalk. We found the only other gay man there who was in some sort of shirtless nature costume. He was very specific about what sort of wood nymph he was, but I had to question his faerie wisdom in affixing the leaves, ivy and bark to his flesh with superglue. I think he should have asked someone at Cliff's for suggestions. I think it would have been easier if he had just stapled the damn stuff to his body.

Ultimately we ended up in the Castro with the rest of the gay Super Saturday bunch, which is always better than Halloween night and all the bridge-and-tunnel looky-loos. It was a great night. You can count on us to keep the BOO in BOOze.

darkness with not yet sight of dawn

I finally understand it now:

Odo et amo.

And even its often companion:

Lacrimas.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I had never seen the movie or the play before. Loved it. Kevin and I took in the show last night as part of our Out with A.C.T. season tickets. I may have missed the first 10 minutes of dialog as I was thoroughly distracted by Brick, who spent the entire first act in his boxers and looked really good doing it. I noted to Kevin, who shared the sentiment, that it was really difficult to watch someone toss back whiskey for three hours and it wasn't me. Boy were we thirsty for that bar at intermission. And as we walked out into the first intermission, after an hour of period Mississippi accents, I thought, "Lawd. I'm gonna be leavin' here talkin' like where I was raised." And sure enough it was so.

Our favorite line of the play, a little offhand, throw-away remark, which may have to find its way to a t-shirt:

"I never did trust a man who didn't drink..."

Why we love Denny's.

It's not the hash browns, or the biscuits and gravy.

a-pall-ing.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Well, yeah I can- I haven' t had much time to post anything so I am just throwing thoughts up when I can. I did take two pics I'd like to share. First of all, the florist was almost a caricature of the Good Christian Mountain White Woman. Ample proportions, big vertical bangs, and lots of White Rain to hold it in place. In this part of the country, Jesus and Bible thoughts aren't just cross-stitched on anything not nailed down, but also scrawled in Sharpie on notebook paper and taped up on doors and walls. Such was this florist shop. The "showroom" had many, many funeral arrangements on display. All of them plastic, and shiny with plastic, shiny ribbon. And disturbing on multiple levels. The worst was a big purple number never to be found in nature. I could not think, at that particular moment, anything I rather not have on my grave. (Give me time in solace and I may come up with something worse, but not yet). It was just so awful, I mentally dubbed it "the Wall of Appalling Palls." And as with so many WTF things, I had to snap a picture.

Also in this shop: a tragic display of teddy bears, presumably to send with ordered floral arrangements, arranged just so they all look like they had taken some pills and hung themselves in a mass suicide. I half-expected to find one bear with eyes bulging and tongue protruding.

It looked like for "The Teddy Bear Picnic," they asked Jim Jones to bring the drinks.

However I will say this-- her work with real flowers (and no bears) for the wedding was absolutely lovely. And the bouquets were flawless.

Treats in Montreat

Just got back from a fun but exhausting weekend in Black Mountain, NC. I stayed in bed Thursday to get over a cold before taking the nightmare red-eye to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jen offered to give me a ride to SFO in Rob’s car as she was picking up an inbound Rob at about the same time. However, this meant I had to get to Paul and Jen’s place in the Castro with my luggage. Carting my backpack, wheelie-luggage, jacket, and pillow (the cabin we rented did not include bedding) up to the corner, on the N, then allllllll the way down Duboce, then up to 19th was a bit of a bothersome haul. And lugging my luggage around like that made me get “Delta Dawn” stuck in my head. (And all the folks ‘round Brownsville do say I’m crazy.)

It seems in their desperation to stay in business, USAir/ US Airways has revised their business model to make sure they fail. Of the three or four over-night flights leaving SFO to eastern points around the same time, all of them were "oversold." How many people fail to show up for a redeye flight? If they could take another flight, they would have. And of course they will significantly inconvenience any passenger they bump, because clearly the red-eye is the only flight that would get them when and where they needed to be-- at 11:00 at night, it's not like there are many more options. The flight was miserable and abysmally hot and crowded. I had packed some Jack and a pillow hoping both would facilitate sleep, but no such luck. I would close my eyes for periods and wish for sleep, but would be distracted by the crazy amount of hot in there.

Sharon, the bride, was kind enough to collect me at the ungodly hour of 6:30 the next morning. I got to take about a two hour nap at their new house before we started our road trip up to Montreat. Short version of the story: LOVE Sharon. A remarkable woman and much fun to be around. I can see a lifetime of happiness for her and Francis.

The road trip revealed several “I’ve got to blog that” moments which never quite encoded into long-term memory. But one glaring sign that made me bust a gut was that the powers that be who oversee the Gas/Food/Lodging next exit blue interstate signs now include Hooter’s as food next exit. As I looked up to the ridge as we passed, I saw that it was situated next to another restaurant called Hillbilly’s. Somehow that seemed fitting.

When Sharon and I arrived, the boys who had arrived the day before for the bachelor party were off to Asheville, so I was Sharon’s gal pal for the day—we went to finalize things at the florist, ran several errands, had a little lunch (ah! The land of “sweet tea”), and set up for the rehearsal dinner. Ultimately I returned to the house we had all rented and got to have a disco nap before the evening’s festivities. After the rehearsal dinner (to which I was encouraged to and did in fact wear sequins, and was beloved), we all gathered back at the cabin/house.

It was great to see the boys again. In the Fiji party house, we were Towner and his wife Holly (who organized the house and brought bedclothes, towels, etc.), Sean and his wife Meg (another stellar woman and party wife), Taylor and his partner Jimmy, Lee, and me. Jimmy and Taylor have been together for like 12 years, and 9 of them solid. Three cities now I think. Such a wonderful loving couple.


I am disappointed in myself when I find myself begrudging other’s happiness—those too cutesy couples with their matching BMWs or washboard abs and “we”ness. But not these two. These are just loving guys in love. And I suppose after nine years, they have settled into true couplehood, and not ‘boyfriends’ whom I usually encounter. Jimmy has been historically a bit reserved, or at least around the husband’s crazy fraternity brothers. I don’t know what has changed, if anything, but he was just one of the guys this trip and wonderful to have around. He doesn’t drink much, but managed to find a recipe he liked.

The new drink
Jimmy concocted a cocktail of vodka, ginger ale, lime, and vanilla. Yummy. A little like a cream soda. Jimmy, for the first time in his life apparently, became the bartender for the party. He didn’t have a name for these so I christened this drink, and Jimmy himself, the Jimmy Janga.

Hmmmmm. Jimmy Janga.

Hammered Boy made an appearance, and the next day was not so much fun. There was dancing on and peeing off of the porch. Lots of boozing (did I really drink the entire bottle of mandarin myself?) and lots of schmoozing.

I really should have followed Taylor’s lead when he bowed out at 2:30 when Sean and Towner got into an annoying hour-long discussion over the proper translation of some Greek terms. “Uh, guys, can we go back to talking about tits or something, because this is just killing me.” I poured Sean, thinking he was whispering but shouting in a stage whisper, into his bed around 3:30 or 4:00. Apparently he got up sometime in the night to pee, and tried to get back into bed in the wrong bedroom. Towner had to take him back to his room, where Sean then woke up his own wife and said, “Hey, they told me I’m supposed to sleep here.”

[redacted]
We did not see him for most of the next day. I was awake, but wishing I shared in his oblivion.

Oh yeah. The wedding was really nice too.

Tell time.

Okay, haven't blogged in a while. It's been a mixture of nothing exciting going on and very exciting goings on, but ones for which public reporting would be unwise. You'll have to guess.

I have been spending more time with "the Frenchies." Meaning Paul's boyfriend Frederic, his friend Emmanuel, and their cohort. Emmanuel quit his job teaching at The French School (where he s with Frederic) and opened a salon across the street from my place. Pitch is a cool place, and I have been trying to drum up some new clients for his shop as well as attract one or more gay stylists. Emmanuel himself is not a stylist; he just owns the place. He has designed the place to double as a nightclub on occasion. (Pitch was in fact the name of his former club from long ago.) Emmanuel hosts a circle of other Français for card night on Tuesdays. I've been invited to hang out, drink, observe this complex game, and practice my French. They play a game with looks similar to the American game of hearts, but with a deck of like 72 cards—and it's called Tarot but is not prognostic.

At any rate, Emmanuel is a cool guy with great music. He's buddies with a DJ from the Supper Club, which opened its U.S. location just a couple of weeks ago. Emmanuel has the Supper Club SF San Francisco CD set, which is great, and invited us to the second opening night. It's an invitation-only club and with high-concept design and cool music. Most of the place is white with mattresses for seating, and circe-du-soleil type entertainment during the dinner seating. Kevin came along with me (excellent wing queer for chi-chi straight clubs). We had a fun if not expensive time. It was nigh near impossible to get a drink in that place, and the weak cocktails were pushing $10 each. By adding just one or two more registers, they could certainly double their evening take, and keep their patrons happier. As Kevin and I noticed, it was clearly a straight bar. Gay bars know how to make strong drink, and how to keep them coming.

Visually, the place gets nothing but high praise from me. The music was a mix of excellent house-ish grooves and remixed vocals. We the over 30 (well, over 35) appreciated the 'classics.' The quality of interesting samples or house-stylings of early 80s songs was lost on the predominately early 20-something crowd.

Long blog short: very cool, expensive, and excellent company (the Frenchies).

I also got the opportunity to wear my LED belt buckle. I saw one in a shop in Copenhagen but was unwilling to spend the $130 for it. I found one online for $30. The red ones are even cheaper. They are made in China so the pre-programmed messages are things like "happy lucky" "good for you" and "good joy." The programming instructions are a bit painful to decipher from the Asian ESL.

My programmed messages included:
Howdy.
Single.
Cowboy Up!
and my favorite message for a belt buckle:
Your face here.

Bill, whom most of my friends know as Seattle Guy, arrived in town the next afternoon (Saturday). We met for lunch in my neighborhood before heading into Golden Gate Park for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. As sunny was it was in the Castro, the park was cold and so foggy, at times opaque gusts would obscure our view of a stage. But the music, as always, was wonderful. And I have never seen the park or this festival as packed. Truly an insane amount of people, and clearly predominately bridge-and-tunnel. I shudder to think of the crowds that would descend on Sunday when Dolly would make her appearance. Unfortunately, I took ill during the afternoon and had to go home and stay in during the night. Let me tell you, sitting in a dense crowd of thousands is one of the worse places to realize you have to find a potty and quick. Not to mention the lines for the porta’s. And, ew, the porta’s. However, while waiting in line I ran into Bill Penuel—a friend from grammar school/high school/church in Nashville. He's been out here with his wife for like 8 years and we have never run into each other.

Only at a bluegrass festival I suppose.

Two final notes on the Hardly Strictly:

(1) The Dry Branch Fire Squad is always a pleasure. And they just get more and more charming the more I hear them. if you can find an album, buy it.

(2) To that extremely annoying girl sitting next to us—we are here to hear Gillian Welch sing. Not you. We get it, you know the words. You don’t have to belt them out like it’s your own personal karaoke audition. No one is going to discover you now. If any professional music people are in this crowd, they are here for the show too. I get it that you are trying to impress your friends and show that you, and only you, are the true Gillian fan and therefore better than they are. Shut up and listen: it’s not true, we don’t care, and you are seriously pissing off the people around you.

Okay, one more thing: Love Emmylou.

That's about 9/30 and 10/1. I am way behind. More on Bill, Bryan, Keith, Barney, Trannyshack, Midnight De Young, and fabulous Blog finds to come.

Go Go a Jimbo

Jimbo gave me a lift to pick up the car last night. Runs great. I'm very happy. While it lasts.

No Transmission

Saturn installed a used transmission Friday. It didn't work. Luckily, they figured this out before I had to deal with getting there and having it break on me later-- labor for repairing this repair is not covered by their service warranty. (Luckily? If I were lucky I wouldn't need another transmission). They ordered another one which should arrive and be installed today or tomorrow.

I have strangely gotten used to being without a car. But I am also without groceries and am spending too much time and money on buses and cabs. But perhaps in the long run less money than the $2k repair. Dunno. I have also been limited to certain neighborhoods and outings. Kind of a pain. Especially when I need to run to a specific shop or someplace like Target or Sausalito.

The main drawback is that there is just no easy way to get to Sundance without a car. And I think people have been killed on the bus route that goes by there. I think a one-way cab ride would be about 20 bucks. The city's cab prices/policies are ridiculous. (But hey, as I said in my last post, still LOVE this town.)

No Transmission.