They've got his number

Seriously. That guy is such a mess, he got 86'd from 440 for 69'ing.

more jury duty notes

Shilps was on jury duty last week; I'm up after Labor day; and my sister-in law Steff was called up and served while I was home in Nashville.

And via e-mail from her this morning, their business has concluded and she can share that she served on the jury with former Nashville Mayor and former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen.  Kinda cool.

Steph Curry back at Davidson

Great story: star basketball player left Davidson before he graduated for the NBA.  Now that the lockout is continuing, he has re-enrolled full time, is working with the basketball team as much is as allowed, and hopes to graduate.  CBS sports has a write-up.

It's a pretty awesome story (even if CBS refers to Davidson as a "university" and not a college).

Awesome story for Davidson and for Curry.  Right on.

and go Cats!

new job!

Hey Kids.

Blogging has been idle for the past two weeks as it has been an unprecedented rapid recruitment/ application/ interview/ offer/ process and today is officially my last day at work.  I am excited about my new position, a significant internal promotion, and I will start this new adventure Monday morning.  Anticipating the demands of the new gig, I wanted to be able to spend some quality time with Franna and Papa John before the move,so I took a spur of the moment long weekend in Nashville, from which I just returned.

I have lots of thoughts on the weekend, and some photos and and memories to share too, but I basically I've had zero time to post from packing up work, rushing home, then rushing back for my two final days of meetings and boxing up the office.  Hence the no blogging.  I considered adding a series "stuff I've found in my desk that I meant to blog about but never did," but in retrospect their humor value was less than the value of the time I would need to write them up.

So.  No posting.  Rants have been piling up and I foresee a cathartic day of purging in about six weeks.

But for now:  off I go.

My office is taking me to a farewell lunch at Hard Knox, our comfort food go-to in the Sunset, then helping me move my boxes to my new office at Laurel Heights.

The new job does have its drawbacks:  I'm going from a three-block walk to a commute.  I'm going from "come in whenever" to "be on time, and early." I'm leaving working at a desk with my best friend only ten feet away.  I'm moving from an enormous office with a door that closes and windows that open and looking over Golden Gate Park and the ocean (on a clear day) to a small interior box with no sunlight.  And I'm going from Master of My Domain to Steep Learning Curve.

But it is well past time for a change.  And I am totally going to geek out with the new responsibilities.

Onward.  Upward!

Drinks after the first new paycheck are on me.

equal rights and copy rights

Just another observation that my photo taken during an anti-Prop 8 rally in2008 is getting increasingly popular on the web. This time Kenneth in the 212 gave a citation, but to Towleroad, who took it from me.

I'm happy to release most of my work (which has appeared in print as well as web publications) under a Creative Commons license, but at a minimum I request attribution. Sure, I myself repost web images here all the time to illustrate a post, but I always cite or directly link through to the source whenever available, particularly if it is from someone's Flickr stream. (And my site is not-revenue generating, which to me makes a difference.)

This doesn't bother me too much, and I am a little flattered, but if it goes viral I would like to have had the credit.

Update:  Kenneth in the 212 has duly noted.  Thanks!

justice with just us

I've received my summons for jury duty, starting the day after Labor Day.

Another friend has been in the box this week, and shared some quality observations:

"Whenever I'm at the Hall of Justice on Bryant St, I can't help but to think, 'Ain't nobody here getting a jury of their peers.'"

And while waiting for voir dire, a man in a crazy costume and giant, rainbow, afro wig was physically escorted from the jury pool waiting room. The man sitting next to my friend leaned over in his chair and said in a low voice, "Now he knows what he's doing."

Previously I had told her to remember to pick up her Princess Leia costume from the cleaners.

"transit first" will drive you crazy

The City leaders in the Mayor's office, City Hall, DPT, and Muni have an open and aggressive policy to make it as difficult and as expensive as possible to own a car in this city, much less drive.  And forget about parking.  These policies fall under the utopian idea of "Transit First," wherein personal conveyances are unnecessary thanks to fabulous systems of public transportation.

It's just that the public transit system sucks epic.  The citizenry's unbridled hatred of Muni service is exceeded only by it's disdain for Muni management.  "Transit first!"  the officials cry as they remove parking, prevent parking structures, and tax the hell out of auto-owners.  "Take Muni to the Insert-Great-Event-Here!"

Trust me, we would all love to take Muni, but the odds we can cross a city only 7 miles across within an hour is a total crap shoot.   Often the emphasis is on the crap.  It kills me that I am only four or five metro stops from downtown, and it often takes an hour to get there, that is if there is not some system failure or unannounced redirection.

The real pain comes when the City expects everyone to use public transit for high-population events, but the transit agency takes no actions to provide increased or adequate service for such events.  Pride brings a half a million people downtown, but more years than not Muni is running it's usual light Sunday schedule leaving hordes of citizens stranded around the city.  Or the Giants' World Series parade.  Or concerts around town.  Or New Year's Eve.

A timely case in point is this weekend for the three-day Outside Lands super music festival in Golden Gate Park:  As reported in the local blog Civic Center:

The Outside Lands music festival started its three-day rock music marathon in Golden Gate Park on Friday, and this was what was printed prominently in an Examiner story:

The crowds on Friday were dutifully following this advice but the criminally mismanaged Muni system hadn't bothered to schedule any extra buses on the few lines that travel close to Fulton and 30th Avenue such as the 5-Fulton, so the vehicles were overfilled before they even exited Market Street for the park.

The crowds on Friday were dutifully following this advice but the criminally mismanaged Muni system hadn't bothered to schedule any extra buses on the few lines that travel close to Fulton and 30th Avenue such as the 5-Fulton, so the vehicles were overfilled before they even exited Market Street for the park. 

Beleaguered Muni drivers were forced to drive by stranded would-be passengers without stopping for them, and frustrated concertgoers were then trying to hail nonexistent cabs.

"With extremely limited parking availability at the Outside Lands music festival, taking public transit or alternate means of transportation is encouraged in order to reduce congestion."

The blog's photos of sardine-packed Muni busses is disheartening.

And according to Akit's Complaint Department: Half of the parking area at Ocean Beach was closed off for Outside Lands attendees, and only one car parked there.

pull it down from the flagpole

and see who salutes.

Michael Petrelis reports that Matthew Bajko is resigning from the MUMC, and so maybe some of the shenanigans surrounding the flagpole in Harvey Milk Plaza will come to an end.

familiar sight

I'm an avid reader of the mostly news site Towleroad ("A site with homosexual tendencies" by Andy Towle).  I thought the photo accompanying the news in one of today's posts looked familiar.

It is.

I took it.



I repost a lot of Towleroad stuff here, and always cite when I do so.  A little credit here would have been nice.  Just sayin'.

I was surprised to see it actually, as last year, for a variety of reasons,  I had to set my entire photostream to "hide from public searches."  This was likely pulled from this previous blog post.

Nena is going to get soaked

Wonderfully immature engineers come up with genius ideas that the 12-year-old inside you freaking loves, and that your mother would give that face of disdain.  I remember on one of our many multi-family weekend trips to state parks around the South, Dad surprised the kids with a three-man water balloon launcher.  It was basically several yards of rubber tubing with a pouch—a man would hold each end of the loop and a third would hold the balloon in the center pouch and sit down between the other men acting like goal posts and slingshot the water balloon a good hundred yards.

We thought this was the coolest thing ever.  And our dad was made of awesome (which, for the record, he was).  Only people who did not know my dad "when" wonder where I get it.  "It" being my fascination for gadgets and high-tech solutions to playground problems.

Now, imagine such a young geek with this disposition growing up to become an engineer, as they often do.  But one of them has access to a factory and a team of other immature engineers and venture capitalists who giggle and say "awesome" under their breaths when presented with otherwise-ridiculous idea pitches.

There is a reason I am a frequent shopper at ThinkGeek.com.  And brought to my attention today via Laughing Squid, the geniuses at ThinkGeek have come up with a spigot (or if you're from the South: hosepipe) attachment that both rapidly fills and then ties water balloons.  Tying water balloons was always the hard and sometimes painful part of any water balloon fight.  This is exceptionally clever, and someone put a lot of effort into a problem that admittedly really had no need of solving.

But here it is.  And it is beautiful.




And I may be an enabler, but I think I am going to order one for my nephew who is starting college this week.  This could help in rush season, or get him expelled.  I'm on the fence with this idea.  I imagine bumper stickers and protest signs that read "Water balloons don't get people expelled, but the resulting personal injuries and physical damage does."

stick it to him

I thought I had posted this here last year when Super Cool Girl Gilly Comes first brought it to my attention, with the awesome tag "Creeptastic!" Here is a superlatively sexist and surreally disturbing ad for tab cola from the 1970s.



Yes. By all means. Be a "mind sticker." Which I think may have also been the name of the creature in a Wes Craven or Stephen King novel.

HSB lineup announced

And there is going to be a RIDICULOUS amount of talent in Golden Gate Park the first weekend in October.  Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has announced the lineup for this year's weekend of music extravaganza.  I could camp out all day at every stage, but Sunday is reserved for dancing on Sundance Saloon's outdoor stage at the Castro Street Fair (always the first Sunday in October).

I appreciate the years when the "first weekend in October" and "the first Sunday in October" don't fall on the same dates so that these events aren't mutually exclusive.  I thought I might get another separation this year with Friday falling in September, but the HSB folks' calendar shows Saturday as the beginning of the weekend and so HSB will run 9/1-10/2.

Honestly, the lineup of artists is amazing.  But be warned that getting there is not half the fun, and be sure to stake out your squatting claim early and bring a blanket to sit on.

also called "popular"

Via the SFist's coverage of the newly annual Slut Walk protesting the casual treatment of sexual assaults. It's not exactly on topic for the protest, but it is funny.

flag day

"Flagging in the Park" has become an annual celebration in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. Trying to be diligent, I wouldn't let myself walk over to the party until after I had gotten most of the Saturday chores done—but it was such a great time and a beautiful day I wish I had left more of my domestic work undone. While I did not join in with the flagging, it was hard to resist the dancing—the DJ was amazing and I was properly schooled for not knowing who DJ Susan Morabito is. She played such a fun all-day set of celebratory highs, grooves, downslides and climaxes. So. Much. Fun.

.

I took some fun pics, and some video clips (that pic above is supposed to be animated). The accompanying music, Brendan James' The Lucky Ones, is clearly not the style of music everyone was flagging to, but as I was walking to work and thinking of putting together a clip video, this song came on my iPod's playlist and just seemed to fit. We are the lucky ones—the lovers, the thrivers, and the survivors. We celebrate not the loss, but the lives.

Let your flag fly.

dose of awesome

And suddenly, my day is awesome:

just what the doctor ordered

Ah.  It's August in San Francisco, so when I went out to Matt's "Rx: Prescription for Summer Fun" backyard social on Saturday in a short-sleeved linen shirt, I should have instead worn a parka like the sensible SFers.  Thank God for sixteen years of being conditioned to dress in layers.  At one point, I swear I saw snow, but that could have just been other people seriously playing along with the Rx theme.

I just brought a half dozen pill bottles filled with Tic Tacs and offered dolls to those in need.  The best scenario we came up with was that "four out of five pills are Tic Tacs.  You take your chances."  Which is really up to personal opinion as to what's a win or a lose there.  Other folks preferred a ratio of one out of five were mints, and the power of suggestion is really something to see.

And custom labels really make or break accessory-based comedy.

hand crafted music for your live listening pleasure

This Friday at the Makeout Room is a rare treat:  77 El Deora with Jeffrey Luck Lucas.

It's an early show, 7:30 to 9:30 and will start your weekend off right.  We could all use this this music to soothe our savage breasts.  The Makeout Room is at 3225 22nd Street in the Mission.

Liner notes:

MAURICE TANI: 77 EL DEORA 
(Jenn won't be at this show. Maurice & Co. go it alone...)
Set in an emotionally bleak California dystopia, where the just-foreclosed suburbs infest the ranch and farm land, this uncanny concept CD is a blast of Bakersfield with a ground-cover of Weeds. The music is The Buckaroos with bravura and pop touches--traces of Roy Orbison, The Mavericks, even Burt Bacharach. (Interesting use of III chords, for you music nerds.) Tani is the writer, the arranger, the baritone who may have listened to Texas Playboys’ singer Leon Rausch once or twice. The songs are truly for grownups. This is thoughtful, heart-wrenching stuff about human asteroids that wonder where and how they lost their way and if there is a GPS that works. The songs are also darkly funny comments on such faves as power, desire, adrenalin, ambivalence, and narco squad surveillance. Highlights include torch song "Rain," George Jonesian "Shattered," not-ready-for-Oprah "I Just Dodged a Bullet," etched-in-angst "Radio City"...

-Jeep Rosenberg, Freight Train Boogie.

JEFFREY LUCK LUCAS
Darkly gorgeous, unexpectedly uplifting, these nine slow-moving songs traverse desolate nighttime landscapes where conversations in road-houses and at neon-lit kitchen tables drift suddenly from trivialities to life-altering truth. The coffee turns cold, the cigarettes burn down, and all of the sudden someone you love is looking you in the eye, demanding, "Tell me why / your kindest words are just shy of lies." Jeffrey Luck Lucas, a SF-based songwriter who got his start with garage-Kinks The Morlocks before earning a masters in cello composition and performance, is not one to shy away from the confrontational in this, his second solo album. Still, his voice is so gentle and mournful, his arrangements so supple and glowing that you don't see the knife right away...or perhaps, if you're unlucky, at all... 

-Jennifer Kelly, Dusted Magazine

Greetings Professor Falcon. Would you like to play a game?

As a very much "computer guy," I may be an oddity in that I don't play computer games. Not anymore. I lose enough of my life online and working on my laptop that I feel no lure to spend additional hours in a virtual gaming environment. That being said, I do remember when we would spend hours in high school and even college on adventure games such as King's Quest and Prince of Persia.

The first King's Quest was a real breakthrough and set the trend for adventure/interactive games played on a mappable grid of screens. King's Quest was so popular I believe it led to eight sequels. Prince of Persia became the obsession of half of my fraternity brothers in college, and we would even resort to message boards on Prodigy for help (Prodigy! Seriously!  With our fancy new, state-of-the-art 14.4k baud dial-up modem!). Prince of Persia continued into ever-increasinly sophisticated sequels and ultimately a big budget Disney movie.

I have a fond nostalgia for King's Quest, which I originally played off of a 5" floppy disk on my dad's work Compaq hooked up to a TV set.  In seventh grade. Now this Compaq was the first "portable" computer. Which meant it had a handle attached to a small gold screen and two floppy drives and could be lugged around, but only by large, strong men as it weighed 50 lbs or more. It could not be called a "laptop" by any stretch of the imagination as to place it on your lap would crush your knees and splinter your femurs. My roommates and I in college got King's Quest II our Sophomore or Junior year and could play it in color on an LC II. Oooooh.

Last year, some programmers at ADG Interactive made the original Kings Quest playable as a web-based game. It was a little buggy, but fun to click around. Now they have recreated the game as a modern download, bumping the colors from 16 to 256, but keeping the 8-bit feel as close to the original as possible. It's available as a free download for Mac or Windows.

For your Prince of Persia retro fun, the original Prince of Persia has been released as game for the iPhone. It's good for nostalgia, but I remember that some incredibly complex and precisely timed maneuvers (key strokes) were requires to advance in this game and can only imagine the touch interface for such actions would be frustrating. But have a go. It's only $0.99 and has been updated to work on the iPad as well.

let's see Ricky down at the club

As the web abounded with celebrations of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday this weekend, let's also take a moment for the contribution of her Cuban-born husband and his latin song stylings which were the rage in the NYC dinner club scene at the time. This month, the San Francisco Public Library is featuring a traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian: American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music, which "presents the musical contributions of U.S. Latinos from the 1940s to the present, exploring the social history and individual creativity that produced stars like Tito Puente, Ritchie Valens, Celia Cruz, Carlos Santana and Selena."

Dolores Park renovation

Hmm.  Seems like the community steering committee wants "improvements with as little change to the park as possible," while the Park & Rec Department is thinking more "Disneyland."  With a a food (truck) court.

Follow the Dolores dizziness at Uptown Almanac.

happy news

LittleBigChris posted a note today, celebrating his fourth anniversary with Nick. Chris and I have stayed in touch since our blog connection, and he and Nick are happily living together in Houston now. Four years from a YouTube flirtation, and a long weekend long-distance date from Iowa to NYC to domestic southern bliss. Love on guys.

If Paul Lynde weren't always so high, or self-loathing

Typically, really young gay guys who think they're funny because they are sassy/bitchy annoy the hell out of me. Bitchy in and of itself isn't funny. It's just bitchy. You have to be clever to be funny. That means smart. If the delivery is sassy or bitchy, then that's performance. Which can deliver and land the clever.

Louis Virtel, too young to be this awesome, is an entertainment writer in L.A. and has started his own YouTube Channel with episodes of his Verbal Vogueing. Virtel may be young and sassy, but he brings the big Funny, then beats you with it until you are on the ground unable to take any more.

Kind of like an L.A. cop with a nightstick made of bitchy.

I would want to be around this guy all the time, except then no one would pay any attention to me. And I imagine he's exhausting.

But clever.

my pleasure

Are you a Tosh.0 fan? If so, you'll remember this bit, which cracked me UP.

Tosh.0
Get More: Tosh.0 Videos,Daniel Tosh,Web Redemption

Flagging in the Park was this Saturday (joyful! video to follow), and whom should I see amongst my crowd of flagging friends? The Pleasure Coach himself Bob Patrick.

He is quite charming in person, and gives really good hugs. He also stopped by the rodeo booth at Dore and said "hey." He's a super nice guy with the most peaceful vibe. So much so you almost forget that just below eye-contact level his nips are larger than Pink Pearls.

Honky Dore

Dore Alley was this weekend (formally the "Up Your Alley" Fair from Folsom Events) and it was much fun and a reminder as to why I love this town and don't think I can move back to Nashville.

Again, I did not take photos this year. Not that there wasn't lots to see it's just that I'd rather be a part of it than removed from it, and photography at this event is really better left to the professionals. The SFist has a gallery that is suitable for work and most sensibilities. Saturday afternoon I did a Flickr search for the tag "Dore." I had to laugh at myself as out of the hundreds (thousands?) of photos that appear, an easy half of them feature people I know on a first-name basis.

After accidentally oversleeping, I spent most of the day pouring beer for the Rodeo booth and only enjoyed the fair myself for the last rather chilly hour. I generally love volunteering to serve at these events as the front line is so social and I get to see so many fun friends and frisky strangers. Although I couldn't find my ABC certification card—I tore up my desk for weeks and couldn't find it— so I was relegated to the back of the booth and the taps. When my shift was finally over, and the fog had chilled us in ernest, I was eager to change out of beer-soaked athletic shoes and shorts into boots and jeans—only to open my bag and find I had packed everything else but left my pants at home. It reminded me of the time I packed two left boots when volunteering for for Sundance at Pride. It was cold enough, and the idea of walking the fair in shorts, baggy shirt, and somewhat beer-soggy shoes in the cold leather streets abhorrent enough, that I thought about riding home, getting jeans, and cabbing back. Instead I just walked up to Market Street, bought some black jeans, and came back. Only when I was checking out and the clerk asked for ID did I find my APB certification stuck behind my organ donor card in my wallet. I'd had it the entire time. Grr.

But I did love working with my rodeo peeps, and even from the back of the booth I got to visit with some wonderful people, and still managed to get rather overstimulated by all of the furry eye candy and sexually-charged, light-hearted frivolity. I love this town. And sometimes, that is a wet, sticky sort of love.


I really don't understand the pearl-graspers and Puritans who are so against such a thing--never has holesome been so wholesome.

It's as wholesome as a petting zoo. It's just that it's a heavy petting zoo.

And you are welcome to feed the bears.