thought of the day

Two things today:

1) Note to straight women: Gay men are not accessories, unless it is to a crime.

2) I am thinking about the pseudonym Robert Arthur Ganouche, just so I can write Bob A. Ganouche.

sleet leopard

Mac users might want to wait a couple of days before installing Apple's new OS update (Snow Leopard) and there may be some quick updates. Some users are experiencing some permissions problems, although these seem mostly ignorable or self resolving. (PGP users, of which I am not one, also note that the current PGP desktop does not work with Snow Leopard.)

Monday morning

Let's get started.

Days look like midwestern tourists

And Shilpa's uterus explodes, taking out an eye.

Shilpa posted this ridiculous photo of Amy Day and Paul Day, unrelated.


The comments took on a life of their own.

Happy to You 2

My nephew Leland, all of two and a half, loves birthdays. Birthday cake and ice cream are a hit, and the whole blowing out the candles and opening presents. Not just for him obviously, but everybody's birthdays. He calls all cake, as well as the entire pomp and ritual of birthdays (candles, blowing outr candles, presents) "happy to you."

It's so freaking adorable.

"Uncle Wilson's here! Can we have happy-to-you now?"

Then try explaining that he has to wait for happy-to-you until after cocktail hour, then dinner, then happy-to-you."

Of course, he may never learn the proper term for cake or birthday rituals as he's got the rest of the extended family referring to it all as happy-to-you.

And a happy-to-you to me and you!

Happy to You!

So far I am loving this first of many 39th birthdays! It's my first birthday since Facebook tipped and the constant good wishes are brightening my day almost as much as the ridiculous sunshine and heat on this side of San Francisco.

Yesterday RoMo took me out for a birthday burger at Harvey's, my favorite, and we had a wonderful noontime in the corner window toasting and greeting or many friends passing by. I was swayed from my burger craving by the toasted turkey and peppers with havarti pannini.

Happy birthday to me, James is off for the rest of the day and in the neighborhood prepping for Burning Man, and so we're back to Harvey's for a proper birthday cheeseburger.

This cracks me up: James is off today because they had to close his MegaBioCorp campus due to a toxic ammonia leak at a nearby salami plant.

You can't make that stuff up. And I try.

Last night I got to visit the too-rarely-sighted and too-radiant Jenny, whose birthday is tomorrow, and the in-town-from-Paris-for-too-briefly Rod and Marco. Loved seeing them (although the $10 per small cocktail at Getane was a little beyond my comfort price point, even though it made for a nicer crowd), and a shower and wardrobe change after put me a bit late for Kyle birthday party at Truck. Love that crowd—all furry and ruggedly handsome. Woof.

Which may be why I was easily swayed to another party later at the Powerhouse. I did not realize it was an underwear party, but when in Rome. All in all I welcomed my birthday with a lot of fun, and I got to use my favorite line in blogging/texting/updating:

"And I'm not wearing any pants."

Dark Disney Double Feature

Together on the marquee: a film noir festival and Sing Along Mary Poppins. On a single-screen theater, it looks like the former features the latter.


Ah yes, Mary Poppins: a dark tale of a commandeering nanny with supernatural powers.

I see what you mean

At Davidson, I designed my own major, Cross Cultural Communication, through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. As a graduation gift, my adviser gave me one of my favorite books: Envisioning Information by the impressive Edward Tufte.

In this spirit, I was excited to discover David McCandless's wonderful blog Information Is Beautiful, where he celebrates good information and idea presentation design. I'm already addicted.

Check out the educational infographics, from the Billion Dollar Diagram to today's Time Travel in Popular Film and TV.

And should you need it, there is a link to the handy Movie Monster Comparison Chart:

Upgrades tomorrow

Wilson will be upgrading to Wilson 39 tomorrow, as Apple releases Snow Leopard. The most impressive bits about the Apple OS upgrade are performance rather that flashy bits, but still pretty cool. I'm looking forward to better interoperability with Exchange servers at work. The speed bump will be nice too.

What is there to know? For my Apple friends who are not Apple power users, here's the best bits:

1) From Gizmodo, a quick and easy review of what's in the upgrade.
and
2) From LifeHacker, what to do before you install it.

By all accounts though, it is a major upgrade if only behind the scenes—and amazingly inexpensive at only $39.

some squares of SF patchwork quilt of neighborhoods are danger zones

So act accordingly.

pardon me, but have you any pay groupon?

For great group discounts, don't pay the supplier, pay Groupon.

Groupon is a city-based collective bargaining action that finds great deals for residents if enough people sign up for a particular deal. For an example, a salon might offer $80 facials for $20 if 150 people sign up for the bargain. You can sign up to buy on the website, and only when the minimum level of participation has been met ("The Deal Is On!") are you committed to the charge. Late-comers can still buy into the deal until the deal runs out (of either time or availability).

I just got a $150 auto detailing service for $39. I've been meaning to get Linda detailed since I bought her three years ago. Good deal for me!

The default city for www.Groupon.com is Chicago, so you'll need to click "visit more cities" at the top to find if Groupons are available in your town. Clearly, San Francisco is an option, but Nashville readers take note that you're in on the deals too!

Party by EJ

Elizabeth James is hands down the best party/event planner I know. And her Christmas parties are legendary.

EJ's style and skills are prominently featured this week in the Style Blueprint blog. Well done EJ. And now I am more inspired than ever to do it right for my 39th!

gather the neighbors for the vacation slideshow

Okay, actually it's a video. But even though it is toddler-centric, I think quite entertaining even if you don't know the kid. The vacation was much fun, and Leland cracks me up so much you can see what 98% of the photos I took were of the tyke.

The video is in full splendor over at my MobileMe Gallery. Right here.

I didn't upload it to YouTube as their computers would tag the background music as infringing. (I think this is just fair use—it's just a home movie for heaven's sakes.) Blogger videos tend to be of poor quality and the sounds gets out of sync.

If you're a family friend or have ten minutes for some cuteness, check it out.

get ready to RUMBLE!

My nephew Bradley has launched his new blog RUMBLE. Bradley is a huge sports fan and is the photog and videog for the Ensworth High School football team.

Sports fans and Nashville folks should run, don't walk (and foul when the ref is not looking over) to check it out. Brad will be covering Ensworth High School sports and much more.

Adds the B-man: "Nashville followers may be interested since it also will cover local stories and sports other than Ensworth. I'm also trying to get some hits so I can get ad money for a new ca... I mean for a school charity project. "

Add it to your blogroll. Every hit counts, even the late ones.

speaking of cake

I had a joint birthday party with my brother Mac when I was home in Nashville—something we have never done before actually. Mom was already really cool about celebrating each of us individually. Even this time we had out own cakes. Mom made her old-family recipe cake that I have always loved having for my birthday and still tastes like childhood. Mac got his favorite but not homemade yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

I mentioned this to Shilpa, who is now craving chocolate frosting.

I think that Chocolate Frosting would be a great drag name.

Things going on this Friday the 28th

Let's see...this Friday there's:

Apple's release of the new OS Snow Leopard
An underwear party at Play (Nashville)
The Outside Lands Music & Arts Fest opens
Trannyshack's Bjork night
The Mishap Prom

oh yeah, it's my birthday!

Last year was so much freaking fun. I think I am going to plan something big and family-friendly this year, which means I'll have to hold it after the actual date when (1) it is not Labor Day weekend and (2) I can get my shit together.

Stay tuned.

sit on her facebook

Who hasn't had that comment or wall post they didn't want everyone to see? I myself posted to Jen's wall yestreday instead of sending her an e-mail. Basically, the "new" bassist (it's been at least a year) for 77 El Deora is built out of the sexy, and during their show on Sunday I left a FB message for Jen to amuse her after the set. I forgot that Mike approached me at Friday's gig and told me he found that we had FB friends in common and so we are now FB friends ourselves.

I wrote: "Man, Mike is so hot I want to take the B out of Bass Player."

I forgot that as Jen's friend, that will show up in his news feed. I'm hoping he's flattered.

Or suddenly curious.

Still, this is classic. And you know that it's all too common.


see more Fail Blog

L.O. Freaking L.


Update: Jen deleted my wall comment. Ha!

SF Candy Land

I mentioned last week that Hasbro turned the twisty part of Lombard Street into a giant Candy Land board, but this photo is just out from the AP and really merits reposting.


(AP Photo/Hasbro Inc., Darryl Bush)

Awesome.

street food a dead end?

I passed on the Street Food Fair this weekend. Considering the over-hype and media saturation, I thought it would be less casual and eclectic and more mob. That, and frankly I had lots of stuff that just had to get done.

PeeDee, Alert Reader and Street Food Aficionado, texted from the event that Street Food had definitely jumped the shark.

Judging by the write up at the SFist, I'm inclined to agree: "The first annual SF Street Food Fest went down on Saturday, and pretty much half of San Francisco showed up to the one-block-long festival. The thing got a ton of buzz, a piece on NPR, links on a hundred websites, and as we all know, street food and nonstaurants are all the rage right now."

While they note that a good time was had by all, the massive turnout tells me the trend will be a victim of its own success. It's gone from cool to commodity, and subculture to commercial. While popularity means success in some ventures, I think one that derives no small part of its value from a cool, in-the-know factor will not become more cool by being completely common.

John Hughes tribute video

pretty cool. worth sharing.



I think Some Kind of Wonderful is my favorite Hughes movie.

Chow down

Chow, the awesome eatery on Church near market, burned for over half an hour this morning and will be closed for at least a couple of weeks for repair! This time, burned is not well done.

Unsavory news indeed.

News via SFist and Eater SF.

77 El Deora at Hotel Utah Tonight

77 El Deora will be playing with Dave Gleason and the B Stars tonight at the Hotel Utah Saloon at 4th and Bryant.

Things kick off at 9:00. It's been waaaay too long since I got my honky tonked.

Also see them Sunday in fair Fairfax across the Golden Gate.

gone Jebus fishin'

Via Alert Reader Eric Armour: Stuff Christian Culture Likes.

His favorite is the Papyrus Font.

This font is everywhere, to be sure. In the secular realm it is used in coffee shops menus, yoga studios, camping supply stores and on Thai restaurant signage.

Papyrus runs rampant amongst church websites, bulletin handouts, and most particularly with women’s ministries. Papyrus font is to women’s ministries what grunge fonts are to youth ministries.

Mine is the Jesus Fish Decals.

USPS accepting applications

A: "Do you hear that workplace suicides have increased 28%?"
B: "No. But workplace homicides I understand."

J'ai HO!

Shilpa has been getting all sorts of wrong number calls to her cell phone. It got to the point that she couldn't even let it go to voice mail anymore and started answering her "unknown number" calls with "I'm sorry but I think you have the wrong number."

Finally another call came in to her mobile with the number displayed and Shilpa answered it. A very, shall we say, "ethnic" voice told her, "Girl, I think we have the same phone number." Shilpa, who you know, can read, told her, "No, your number is 685-. This number is 385-." Shilpa resisted telling her that you can't call your own number.

Conversation, not to Shilpa, continued on the other end: "Oh girl, this is the wrong number!"

Okay, wrong calls explained. But I couldn't leave it there and searched the alternate number, only to find that it is the number for an escort. The preliminary search told me it belonged to someone named Jojo.

After I found her escort listings, I wondered if perhaps it is more J-O, J-O.

See one of her ads for sensual massage here.

fiber content

I've been taking a glass of fiber every day since the whole diverticulitis thing years ago. I have to say, I actually love it and it not only keeps things running smoothly, as it were, but it has loads (ahem) of other health benefits.

However, since I've been gone for 12 days, I've been off my regular habit and therefore off my regular habit.

In conversation with my mother, who by necessity takes her own special travel blend of bran on vacation, I had to confess that my morning constitutional had become more like bylaws.

San Francisco IS Candy Land!

Why I freaking love SF.



Lombard Street has been transformed into a giant Candy Land playscape.

Which I could go play!

The previous details from the SFist:

In honor of the board game's 60th anniversary, San Francisco's Lombard Street will get a sweet makeover on Wednesday. (Heh.) The crooked street will transform into a giant Candy Land board. According to SF Appeal, "The street will be closed to traffic as children from the University of California, San Francisco Children's Hospital participate in the game as colored game pieces and interact with life-sized game characters, according to organizers." (Why do only children get to play?! Bah. Nevertheless, it still sounds seriously awesome.) The game, introduced in 1849, was designed by Eleanor Abbott, while she was recovering from polio. Candy Land's first ads promised parents that the game fulfilled "the sweet tooth yearning of the younger set without the tummy ache aftereffects." Some alterations to modern versions of the game include changing the name of Queen Frostine is Princess Frostine, which is stupid, and renaming Molasses Swamp to Chocolate Swamp, which makes sense because no normal child should know what molasses is. Wednesday's event will also feature a big party and delicious cake.

More: Local CBS has footage.

Also

sad time leaving

Goodnight beach. Goodnight family. Goodnight Nashville. It's time to go back to San Francisco and work and business and cool fog and cold nights and my fast life of busy and bustle. And in between of course, more adventures.



See you soon in SF.

Love from Nashville

The party vacation is coming to a close. Tonight is a birthday dinner for Brother Mac and me and I fly back tomorrow.

The sun is out and I'm going to hit the pool one last time. A little late in the day—another long night last night, featuring showtunes at Tribe, so bad it was fun dancing at the Wildhorse, dinner at the Hermitage Cafe, and another closing of Play.

Before I go, a final word on the Hermitage Cafe. I don't have time to do it justice here, but the Hermitage Cafe is a quiet legend around here and Keith's, and Keith's bestest buddies Joey's and Eric's, favorite place to eat. You have GOT to love a diner that doesn't open until 10:00 at night. No wonder it's famous with the just-before-they're-famous artist crowd.


I love the Hermitage Cafe, and succumbed to the loving embrace of chicken fried steak with biscuits and gravy.

.
And you know, Keith.

Keith, Joey, and Eric are here so often they call her Momma and are closer to her I think than to most of their own family members. I'm in love with Momma too.


Keith et al know and command the jukebox, with occasional dance performances depending on the crowd (or just that Darius was unaware of the affect Beyoncé was having on him at the time).

Some of the Sundance crowd in SF may recognize the Hermitage Cafe...


from Sugarland's Baby Girl video.

where the Shilpa should shop

Seen in Helios Art Glassworks in Nashville—the studio and shop of artisan and dear old friend Tyree MacFarland:

Gourmet hot dog stand at Five Points in East Nashville

Okay, now it just sounds gay.

And "I Can Bleed" Book

Look Mommy, I can empathize all by myself.

See in a bookstore in the children's section. Is the Hindenburg disaster and the painful, fiery death of its passengers really a good story for the learning-to-read age?



Oh..the...Mommy, was does h-u-m-a-n-i-t-y spell?

(Since posting this to Facebook I have been corrected that this is not for three-year-olds but for reading level three.)

What's next? A Jonestown book with sample FlavorAid?

Drive South

I flew to Nashville on Friday to spend a fun day with friends before driving my parents the 8 or 9 hours (we need to stop a lot) to Rosemary Beach, on the Florida panhandle west of Panama City. It's a nicer version (if you can imagine) of the developments similar to Seaside (set of The Truman Show about 15/20 minutes West on 30A.

It was a long drive down, and an even longer drive back. I got back to Nashville around midnight last night. The trip was fantastic, and more Nashville adventures are pending before I wing back to real life.

Blogging as I have time, but it's another gorgeous and hot summer day here so I don't want to waste it on the computer.

Here are some snapshots from the ride down:


An old Stuckey's in very rural Alabama, which seemed to be a Stuckey's no more but did house a typical "gift" shop and a Dairy Queen. Dairy Queens are hard to come by in California, and I was happy to stop, stretch my legs, let Dad walk and use the facilities, and get me a Dairy Dip.



Papa John enjoys a Dairy Dip
I took in a lot of forgotten southern Americana on the hot drive south. We had to stop for gas in a scary, scary part of Montgomery, Alabama to leave I-65 South for Route 331 (Montgomery is where, I've learned, Channing Tatum grew up and whose father still has a farm —I was flipping through the GQ interview while waiting at one of the stops). Back to this scary area and scary gas station—only one of the three restrooms was in working order, and all had a series of locks, chains, and padlocks. I had to wonder what the hell went on around here that necessitated the locks, AND what circumstances caused each of the locks to be penetrated. On the way back I noticed this was near the bus station. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Anyway, it was so remarkable I took a snap with my phone.


Just before sunset, we finally made it to the amazing house. Four bedrooms, 4.5 baths, pool, and carriage house with it's own self-contained apartment which can sleep four.


Ah. Finally. Some surf and sun.


In the morning I played in the pool with the kids for about 45 minutes before putting on sunscreen. Ouch. I'm just starting to peel now.

I've heard that the first step

is admitting that you have a problem.

Raycation

I'm off to Nashville then driving the parents to Florida for a vacation with the whole family.

I'm hoping for some serious poolside rays to darken this San Franciscan pale.

Posts will be light at best while I am away.

Last word: Farewell John Hughes. The X'ers won't forget about you.

Shilpadelphia

Because she is all about the brotherly love.

It's Raksha Bandhan, when Indian girls honor and celebrate their brothers. Tonight she's performing the ceremony for the loving brothers in her life: Kevin, Pee Dee and me.

We are family, and she is Sister Shilpa Sledge.



And shout to absent New Zealand brother Barney, who started calling Shilpa Shilper/Shilpers. So much love. The love is not absent, event thought the Barney is.

Apples iPhone app process complete fustercluck

When it comes to the completely closed and obfuscated iPhone application review approval process, Apple's hypocrisy, inconsistency and capriciousness bordering on cruelty continues unabated, if not at an accelerated pace.

The intended-to-be-reliable dictionary, and the only reliable one so far for the iPhone, has been met with constant censorship, crippling restrictions, and now an adults-only rating. Never mind that there are dozens of other dictionaries approved for the app store with offensive content and inaccurate source material, Apple has now gone on to censor a freaking dictionary! And require it to be tagged as restricted to 17 and over. Censored words include ass (as in donkey) and cock (as in chicken). In a dictionary. The chicken says fustercluck.

Ninja Dictionary had a simple and admirable goal—and word man that I am I would have paid happily for it. Matchbook Software describes the app as such:

Ninjas are three things:

1. They’re smart
2. They’re quick
3. They’re deadly accurate

Ninjawords is a dictionary for the iPhone built on these principles.

Alas, Apple appears to have no such aspirations.

And if an Apple acolyte like me is getting all ranty, you know that division must be really effing up.

Maybe I could help. Maybe they are hiring. But would I really want to throw myself into that pit? Maybe, if the attitude was one of change and improvement. The silence from Cupertino says no.

Update: Engaget has more.

We've seen plenty of stories thus far detailing the company's absurd, reactionary, and typically confusing application rejections or changes for its App Store, but the treatment given to dictionary app Ninjawords seems particularly telling. In essence, the program, a simple and fast reference tool -- a straight-up dictionary -- has omitted a handful of common words seen as objectionable by the Star Chamber of application reviewers at Apple HQ. What kind of words, you ask? Well, namely the same kind of words which you can find in any standard dictionary in just about any classroom in this country.

As does Gizmodo: The Stupidest App Store Incident Yet: Apple Censors a Dictionary

finger looking good

My laptop is back and happy and I finally uploaded some photos last night. One shot was of the entrees at Lance & Greg's engagement party. I'm still off carbs and such (leaving for the beach this weekend), but Man—I will tell you what I want. What I really, really want.

Doesn't this look good? Fresh homemade macaroni and cheese and spicy fried chicken from the Katrina-displaced New Orleans chefs at Yat's in Jack's bar on 24th.

Off for lunch of salad. Meh.

the Routesy fight continues

And I'm continuing to root for Peterson and his Routesy.

The Muni Diaries has a recent update.

And from Routesy's Twitter feed July 30: Routesy—now has top-notch legal representation. The fight is now officially underway! Thanks for your patience, everyone. :)

jury duty potential service ends in mistrial

Holy crap: I was almost picked months ago to serve on this jury. I was called back for two weeks before being ultimately dismissed. In the news today: the case has resulted in a mistrial and they'll have to do the whole thing over.

They pulled hundreds of citizens for jury selection on this one the first time. I can't imagine what trouble jury selection will be this time around with even more publicity. (Although I suppose by reposting I am not helping things.)

noon shows today

I think it's going to be weird downtown at noon today, with massive amounts of people protesting the Governor's death-sentence cuts to state AIDS/HIV funding coinciding with T-Mobile's advertising stunt dropping "100 stunt skydivers into the air to perform synchronized formations over the city" as well as fly-by jets and skywriting.

Maybe they can skywrite "Stop AIDS!"


Photo by Thomas Hawk.

I feel like a vampire

with all this coughin'.

Maybe I'll curl up with tea and True Blood. Or Buffy.

Who's your Daddy's Boy 27?

Carl, SF Leather Daddy's Boy XVI, asked if I would design the poster's for this year's pageant competition. I'm happy to oblige, but my laptop was in the shop and I had to work with a surrogate machine, Apple's Pages app and images from my own Flickr set. (I had original art directions in mind, but not the tools.) I was pleased I could use my own photostream as stock and pulled a couple of photos to blow up as background: the first from Dore Alley 2006 and the latter from Folsom 2008.

_
That's MasterDro on the right. And my eye.

Fun.

(Original photo from the left.)

picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head

Pat the bunny.

urine the money

Scene: Vainly searching for a bridesmaid dress around Union Square.

Wilson: Where to next?
Shilpa: I don't know, but I have GOT to pee.
Wilson: Oooh. There's an app for that! [Wilson pulls out the iPhone, launches "Sit or Squat"]
Nearest nice pubic bathroom is....20 feet this way, Saks Men's Store. I'll pretend to shop so you can use the restroom.

Leaving the store:
Wilson: Seriously, how did finding you a place to pee cost me $140?

Hoppered Up

Local SF artist John Ellingson has some very cool prints available in his online store. My favorite (found via Laughing Squid) is this take on Hopper's Night Hawks. (Originally used for an article in Wired.)
The interpretation with Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart was one of my brother Mac's favorites. It spoke to him. This one speaks to me. Probably over IM.

still circling

Well, I'm emotionally crippled. Can I get a parking placard for that?