Bye bye red truck

A year ago, when I was still employed by a software company at a ridiculously high salary, I decided it was time to replace the Toyota MR2 we've been driving for several years. And since I'd always wanted to get a light pickup ever since my days in the early 80s as a delivery truck driver, I determined to replace the sports car, named Martina, with a truck. We found a great deal on a pretty red 2002 Ford Ranger and paid cash. Three weeks later I was laid off.

I really like the truck. The only problem is that it's a lot harder to park a pickup truck, even a "compact" one, in San Francisco than Martina (which we wisely held onto). So we rarely used the truck, though I did drive it down to the desert and back last November. Since then we've mostly used it to help people move.

As a sign of how temporary I must have viewed this relationship, I never named the truck. It's just the red truck. Well, we're getting kind of broke, despite my measly hourly wages, and finally determined to sell the truck. it's going this weekend, by hook or crook.

Down and out

The city has survived another heat wave, worse than the last -- the temperature reportedly hit 97. This is unheard of, but it certainly explains why it was impossible Sunday evening to get cool, and the way the house just seemed to get warmer and warmer instead of cooler. To top it off, Sunday is garbage night, and we put our cans on the front sidewalk, next to the gated-off breezeway. Our bedroom window faces the breezeway, and of course we had to keep the window open because of the heat. So that meant listening to bums going through the recycling for hours on end, looking for cans and bottles. Of course each one has to look, because, ya know, he might be the first to get there.

But I shouldn't complain. I could be one of those bums. Although I'm not sure I'd ever fall so low as to go through people's recycling for cans.

You know what -- those people work hard. They push their loaded-up stolen shopping carts for miles across the city, looking for cans and bottles that are worth pennies to them. At the end of six or eight hours' work, maybe they've got twenty or thirty bucks worth. What they do with the twenty bucks is, of course, their business. But it's a shame that energy can't be put to good use -- like actually cleaning all the garbage from the streets, not just the recyclable garbage.

Last night the fog returned, in a tentative way; today was sunny again, but vastly cooler. Tonight the fog is coming in for real. I find myself hoping that's the last of the summer's heat, but this year has been so screwy that I'm afraid it's not.

Why we fight

Tipped off by Gawker -- a reliable source of gossip -- in the sense that "reliable" means that it comes out every weekday and has something interesting, not in the sense that it can be relied upon to always be true -- tipped me to this NY Daily News story about James Gandolfini getting smashed at a Manhattan nightclub. It mentions a girlfriend, so I googled her and found this astonishing photo.

I ask you. Where else but in Hollywood can a fat ugly bastard like that get some smashing babe one-third his weight, with a smile wider than the Golden Gate? Well, okay, I guess a Russian mobster could also do as well. And maybe a Columbian drug lord.

Gee, I wonder why those characterizations come to mind.

Blog I do

Some stories friends will be interested in, for various reasons (they are varied friends):

LA Times, 17 Sep 03: Modesto Man Accused in Archbishop's Death -- A human rights group sues former Salvadoran air force officer in the 1980 killing of Romero.

NY Daily News, 17 Sep 03: Not Under His Thumb -- Mick Jagger explains the hell of being Mick Jagger: everyone who sleeps with him has too-high expectations.

The Guardian (U.K.), 17 Sep 03: Snubbed unknown sweeps giants off shortlist -- The Booker Prize judges have ignored the uncrowned king of English letters [that would be Martin Amis] and two past winners in favour of an unpublished writer.

And finally, Vandals rampaged through my alma mater in suburban Houston, further solidifying its reputation as a mini-Gomorrah.

High concept

The Chronicle printed one of those Fall Movie Preview features that are, along with the typical end-of-year looks back at the news, one of the most tedious and regrettable parts of the newspaper. But one of the descriptions caught my eye:

Oct. 10: "Good Boy!" -- Tells the tale of a 12-year-old who discovers that his new puppy can talk. Not only that: He's an alien from the Dog Star sent to investigate why canines strayed from their original mission and instead became man's best friend.

That second sentence is EXACTLY the premise of a musical I invented, for a musical theater class I took in the mid-1980s, entitled "God Dog." Intended to be a satire of "Cats," and never fully developed (it was just a class project), the show's only difference from the above summary was that we played a whole crew of astro-dogs, not just one, bent on this recovery mission. And it was a musical. We came to earth to find satified mutts, one of whom sang a show-stopper blues tune entitled "I'm a Bitch, and I Like It."

I'm not the type to sue, though. Imagine the embarrassment of claiming you had dreamed up the idea for a stupid kids' movie -- half a stupid kids' movie.

That were they thinking

Last night on the local PBS station, a two-hour Frontline episode, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, aired. I watched it between pitches of the baseball game, and parts of it were so riveting that I missed several important plays. In addition to hitting most of the points you'd expect -- escapees from the WTC who saw God's hand in their survival, grieving relatives who wanted to know where God's hand was for their loved ones, and the now-predictable montages of smoking ruins set to the strains of Barber's Adagio for Strings -- the show was most interesting when it examined hard questions. To its credit, the show didn't shrink from putting a conservative rabbi on the air who said that you can't credibly claim God saved you from the pit when so many others are mourning people whom God didn't deign to save. And most interestingly of all, the show lingered on the point that is, to me, the most fascinating of all: The choice faced by people on the upper floors to jump to certain death or perish in the smoke and fires. And that image -- which apparently the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to show -- of two people holding hands while they fell to their deaths, a picture that proved that people had not been somehow blown out of the building but were jumping intentionally.

It's that decision to jump from 100 stories up that fascinates me. As a firefighter said in the film by the Naudet brothers titled simply 9/11, the firefighters arriving on the scene were stunned by the fact that things "must be so bad up there that people would rather jump from a hundred stories up" than face the fire and smoke. Of course, no one who was privy to those decisions survived, so we'll never know what was going through their minds, how they could weigh the factors. Talk about fight or flight.

The show was weakened by the filmmakers feeling obliged to make the end of the show somehow uplifting. That's when they brought in Barber and the montage; but that's when they also talked about the two people jumping hand in hand. Somehow the music was supposed to transform the ghastly images and discussion into an uplifting conclusion -- that the will to reach out to one another transcended the evil of the day. I didn't buy it, partly because Barber is so overplayed that I think it dilutes whatever (usually sentimental) point is being made, and partly because I don't think there's much comfort in the gesture. Yes, there's something in it, in one person literally standing on the abyss saying to another "Take my hand and we'll go together." But then they died horribly -- nothing pretty about it. They weren't listening to Barber on the way down; if their brains had the bandwidth to process any sounds, it was their own screams.

Nevertheless, if I put myself in their place -- I've always been terrified of burning to death. If it's up to me, I'm definitely jumping.

Another note for clear writing

It's always important to write clearly and concisely, as these jokers now realize:

South Bend Tribune, 11 Sep 03

Men botch robbery after arguing;
Demanding note confuses clerk

MISHAWAKA -- Two would-be robbers who tried to hit up [sic -- "hit up"?] a 7-Eleven store early Tuesday left the West Douglas Road store empty handed after feuding with each other when a clerk couldn't understand the intent of a threatening note.

A clerk at the store told Mishawaka police that the two males entered the store at 910 W. Douglas Road at about 4:30 a.m., selected several items and carried them to the checkout counter.

She said the two men lingered in the store for several minutes before deciding what to buy.

After approaching the counter, one of the men, a 5-foot-5 thinly built white man with dark short hair, said he needed to retrieve money from his car and left the store. The second man, also white, 5-foot-7, with a medium build, short blond hair and a mustache, followed the first man outside.

The clerk said the two men spent about five minutes talking outside before re-entering the store.

When the two approached the counter, the shorter man had a checkbook in his hand and asked the clerk for a pen, police reports said.

The man then allegedly handed the clerk his checkbook and written on a carbon-copy of a check were the words: "put it in the bag." Below the words was another phrase that the clerk vaguely remembered as a threat that the two will come after her.

The clerk, who was apparently confused by the men's actions and didn't comprehend the "put it in the bag" command, replied to the shorter man, "What is this?"

The man responded that he didn't know because his buddy wrote the note.

The clerk told police the men began to argue over the note and left the store. The clerk heard the taller man angrily tell his companion that he was not getting "into the car."

The taller man apparently changed his mind and both left in the vehicle, heading west on Douglas Road in a dark-colored Suzuki, possibly a Sidekick.

Mishawaka police said they believe the two robbers have struck before, on Sept. 6. Police said descriptions of the men, similar food items left on the counter, and an identical note handed to a clerk at a 7-Eleven store at 1302 Milburn Blvd. last Saturday resemble the latest botched robbery attempt.

Police said in the Sept. 6 holdup, the two men successfully ordered the clerk to put money into a bag before leaving. But one of the men allegedly left behind a Mountain Dew, and a can of the soda was also left at the counter during the attempted robbery on West Douglas road.

There are several things I love about that story. First, the 5'7" man is described as "the taller man" (emphasis mine). How often does that happen? Second, the note was the same as one used in an earlier 7-Eleven holdup, but that one was successful -- which leads you to wonder, was the first note clearer, or was the first clerk just smarter -- or dumber, depending on how you look at it. Third, they had to borrow a pen to write their stickup note with. Considering how helpful the clerk must have been, it's a wonder he didn't try to help them write the note. And finally, these guys apparently start eating and drinking during their heist -- then leave the grub behind.

I can just see this happening at the l.n.c.b. "Sure, here's a pen -- and while you're writing that note, would you like to sign up for our email newsletter?"

Last night at the l.n.c.b. I freaked out my fellow employees when I revealed my age. It happened when a middle-aged woman -- that is, about my age -- asked a clerk next to me whether Aqualung or Thick as a Brick would be more appropriate for her 16-year-old. This led to me mentioning that the first time I heard Thick as a Brick I was 16 myself, and it was playing at the graduation party for an older student; we spent much of the party just grokking the album's faux-newspaper LP cover and insert and wondering what it had to do with the record. "You were 16 when this album came out??" my co-worker asked. "How old are you?" When I said I was 47, another clerk blurted out, "That's how old my mother is!"

He's cute, too. I'll bet his mother's really hot.

Tell me about your mother

I still haven't really gotten the whole weblog thing. I just saw this funny piece (funny probably only to those familiar with San Francisco politics) and thought, hey, I'll send email to all my friends with the URL. Then I realized: Dummy, that's what the weblog is for. You're supposed to blog such things (which I got from Metafilter, by the way) and your friends -- if they're the least bit interested in what you have to say, much less some unrelated crap you found on the web -- can read it there. Otherwise you're just cluttering up their inbox.

I drove to Pleasant-not and back today, just because Cris had to go. It's my day off and we drove out there together, listening to the CD of mostly 60s psychedelia I'd burned using iTunes. (Conclusion: Much as I like it, Positively 4th St. doesn't belong with songs like Almost Cut My Hair and Dear Prudence.)

Back in the city, I went to Aardvark Books, my favorite excuse to hang around on Church St., and picked up a collection of Dori Seda's comix work. I'd heard a lot about it but never had the chance to see much of it.

'The most corporate kiss ever'

In its entirety, here is a short opinion piece from The Guardian. (By the way, all the British, Australian and Indian papers referred to the incident using the word "snog.")

The most corporate kiss ever

Marina Hyde
Wednesday September 3, 2003
The Guardian

It was not the evident desperation of most parties in the Madonna/ Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera snog at last week's MTV video awards that made it so hilariously unerotic. It is simply that the kiss - still enjoying repeated run-outs on magazine covers and celebrity shows this week - must go down as the most corporate pucker-up of all time.

With the music industry ever so slightly less laissez-faire than it used to be, one can only imagine the armies of business-schooled marketing experts who number-crunched long into the night to calculate the precise financial gain this momentary lip merger would bring to each involved party.

"Yes, partial insertion of the tongue will play well on balance," some sharp suit calculated. "What we lose in Iowa we'll just hoover up in the bi-coastal markets. Groping's strictly out across the board, though - gentle head support only or you can press 87,000 less albums each and forget Oprah promotion."

That the perfectly marvellous Christina should never have got involved with such a desperate stunt is a fact too obvious even to discuss. As for the motives of her dancing partners... well, the brief dynastic coupling seemed formulated to help Britney lurch into a more racy adult market while allowing Madonna to allege she still has the power to shock. Although once you've done it with a bleeding Jesus (on an altar and surrounded by burning crosses) the leery games mistress thing's arguably a bit of a climbdown. Still, if it plays well in the heartland...

Breaking point

I reached my breaking point yesterday at the l.n.c.b.

But first: the news. This piece of analysis from the Baltimore Sun suggests the recent incident in Mississippi with the Ten Commandments monument in the state supreme court building was not just a bit of clownish Southern Man behavior but a possible spark for a resurgence of the Christian Right.

So -- about the l.n.c.b. My decision to stop working there wasn't based on any one incident, although the fact that another employee was mugged on the way home from work, not four days after R. was attacked inside the store by an ex-boyfriend, didn't help. And it wasn't a crazy customer or the prospect of putting away 100 heavy, slick magazines that were scattered about the place. It was simple exhaustion that made me decide, about fifteen minutes into the start of my shift yesterday, that I just couldn't do it anymore.

I made it to the end of the shift -- in fact, I felt a little better in the last couple of hours than the first couple of hours -- but was so tired when I got home. This morning my eyes were killing me, another sign of exhuastion and of the dehydration that comes from standing in that store for six or eight hours at a time. So at noon I called up my friend the boss and told her I had to stop. I'll work out the end of next week, and I left open the possibility of working some shifts there in the future.

Today I came home from my other job and crawled right into bed. In fact, I did that on Tuesday, too, the day after a shift. Another sign that the whole situation was just unworkable.

And yet a large percentage of the American population has two jobs -- not counting, of course, those parents (almost all of them women) who work all day long and then come home and have the primary childcare, cooking and housekeeping responsibility in their homes. I'd like to say I have a newfound respect for such people, but I'm still too tired to think about it.

Coincidentally, there was a minor earthquake tonight and the l.n.c.b. was at the epicenter. Not strong enough to cause any damage, I assume. A 3.9 is no big deal.

Run away!

After the Giants game, I watched... maybe... seven seconds of the new meta-realty show Joe Schmoe. That was all I could stand. I am 47 years old and this is beyond me. True, two years ago I watched and enjoyed Big Brother, but that was when they had almost real people on the show; this summer's version of BB is filled with fit 21-year-old eye candy -- who needs it! Schmoe is essentially a triple-layered satire of shows like BB. You have the contestants, the big house, the one-way mirrors, the syping cameras and microphones. But in this case, the whole thing is actually a send-up of reality shows; the "contestants" are all actors playing parts in a reality show, as if to satirize it. But wait -- satire is not the point. The point is the degredation of the only cast member who is not in on the gag -- he thinks it really is a reality show. And the television audience is in on the joke from the beginning.

And so fucking what? It's not like a reality show has any reality, much less realism, in the first place -- we're not exactly talking The Truman Show here. You know what I think? I think they tried to make a funny satire of reality shows, and they realized, shit, this is just not funny, it's impossible to satire this crap because it never took a live breath in the first place. But they had all this footage. So they realized, hey, we can salvage this by making it about degredation. Let's reshoot a few scenes with Clyde, making him look like the patsy, and then we'll shoot a bunch of interviews giving the audience an "inside view" of the whole thing. Then maybe we'll have something.

I'm making it sound much more interesting than it really is. But I ask you: after an atrocity like Dog Eat Dog, just what is there left of reality tv to satirize?

And why the hell am I writing about it in the first place? Simply to express my increasing astonishment and alienation with American culture. I know, I'm not exactly going out on a limb here by criticizing reality tv. And yet millions of dollars are expended in its production and broadcast. Well, I gues it's cheaper than a war. If you're a Hollywood executive, the worst you can do is make bad television. Just think what you can do if you're president.

Oh dear

Satire is dead, Garry Trudeau wrote many years ago. But that doesn't keep stories like this from popping up: a version of the New Testament being marketed to teenage girls with a cover resembling a teen fashion magazine, including lines like "How Get Along with Your Mom" and "Beauty Secrets You've Never Ever Heard of Before!"

In addition to the biblical text — written in the modern English of the New Century Version — Revolve also features teen 'zine staples such as quizzes, Top 10 lists, and Q&A's. They focus, however, on religious topics like, "Are you dating a godly guy?" and inner-beauty advice. There are also tips on prayer, volunteerism, and calendars with entries, such as "Pray for a person of influence: Today is Michael Jordan's birthday" on Feb. 17.

In other non-news: It is a lovely cool, sunny day, and I have the day off from one of my jobs (while still being obliged to go to the l.n.c.b. in the evening). I went to morning prayer this morning and was the only one there, but it was beautiful and quiet and my solo voice echoed in the sunny church.

People have asked me, What happened with that incident in the l.n.c.b. where an employee was injured? I don't know yet. When I left the place Saturday evening, the poor girl was lying on the couch in the breakroom being ministered to by a supervisor while an Emeryville cop stood around casually. Undoubtedly he took a report from her which included the name and address of the perp, an old boyfriend. And I spoke briefly to the boss after church on Sunday; she said she had calls in to corporate to find out what assistance they could offer. I'll go back tonight and perhaps find out something.

Bad day

End of a long day at the l.n.c.b.. My usual Saturday shift -- 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- felt longer and more tiring than usual. I spent most of the time at the registers ("at reg"), as usual, dealing with the usual Saturday waves of shoppers. One moment there would be no one in line; three minutes later there would be seven people in line, waiting to check out. We have new cash registers at half the stations, and these are both quieter and quicker, so everyone gravitates to them. When I came over and filled in on reg. no. 5, one of the old ones, during a break, the grating sound of the printer hitting the register tape and the motion (now uncessary on the new registers) of actually tearing the receipt off for the customer already seemed strange.

All day long things felt a little off. My friend the boss took 25 minutes to work through a complicated return-recharge transaction with a woman who had bought scads of blank journals for her fifth-grade students; I did a few returns, but luckily they were all easy ones. The strangest one was when a slender woman wanted to return a book about vegetable juice she had bought at a branch of the l.n.c.b. in upstate New York, and it was sticky, as if it actually had vegetable juice on it. Oh, and the funny thing that happened was when a young couple came in with these two books: a do-it-yourself divorce guide, and a bartender's guide. Nyuck nyuck.

Nevertheless, all day I had a foreboding that something would happen, a robbery or something. And I felt worn down and tired. My last two hours I was scheduled on reshelving, a task I welcomed since the store has been in such lousy shape for the last few weeks. While people have been on vacations, the place has never gotten completely put together at the end of the day, a fact I find depressing -- it makes the whole experience of working there somewhat Sisyphean. I put away, in several sections, books that had been left about the store yesterday and today: novels, business books, history books, books that go in the "General Metaphysics" section (where all the weird-ass New Age stuff goes, that is, if it doesn't go in the "Magic" or "Speculation" sections).

Fifteen minutes before the end of my shift, I got a page and went to spell the guy in the music dept. while he took a break. I hung out there, standing in front of the fan, answering the phone, which no one else seemed to be answering. Finally at 7:02 the guy who belonged in music came back and said, "Wow, you're really removed from all the excitement back here." I said yeah I guess so. "No, did you hear what happened?" he asked. "R_____ was working in the cafe when an old boyfriend came in and came around the counter and threw hot coffee in her face. They're calling the ambulance right now. You really didn't hear anything?"

Yes, he said, yes

Here's an irresistible story from today's "Minor League Notebook" column in the New York Times:

A KEROUAC BOBBLEHEAD

Jon Goode, the director of media relations for the Class A Lowell Spinners, a Boston Red Sox [baseball] farm team, wanted to honor the author Jack Kerouac, who was born in Lowell, Mass., but he was not sure about the way to do it.

He called representatives of James Irsay, the owner of the Baltimore Colts, who purchased the original manuscript of Kerouac's most famous book, On the Road, in 2001, to see about bringing the manuscript to the ballpark. He was told that the manuscript was too expensive to travel, but he was also told that Hillary Holladay, a member of the English department at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, had gone to them with a similar idea.

So Goode called Holladay, and they met to try to figure out a way to honor Kerouac. Of course, Goode, being involved with baseball promotions, had an immediate idea: Jack Kerouac bobblehead dolls.

"She looked at me like I had about 10 heads," he said of Holladay's reaction. "But I explained to her that not everybody gets a bobblehead doll and that it's a big honor, and she decided to go for it."

Jack Kerouac Night, which was held Aug. 22, was a huge success. Goode said that peoplle lined up as early as 11:30 p.m. -- the gates opened at 5:30 p.m. -- and that the crowd had a distinctly literary flavor.

Arise ye prisoners of want

I love Fridays -- my day off. I do errands, read, see films, and always end the day by spending two hours on the treadmill in the basement watching the Giants on TV. (I hasten to say that, without the ballgame, it's a deadly dull two hours. I don't like exercise and I've never been able to understand people who do it for the sake of it. I'm doing it to keep from getting a fucking stroke.) Even when the Giants lose, like tonight, it's fun. I'm doing 7 miles at a pop now. I don't run much; mostly I walk. That's why it takes two hours.

My big leisure this afternoon was a trip out to the Richmond to see an obscure 1997 Japanese film, Bounce Ko Gals (a.k.a. Leaving) at the 4-Star. (The film festival page alleging it is a 2002 film is wrong.) Cute little Japanese girls, sex industry storyline: my kind of picture. I hasten to add that the entire movie transpires without any of the characters in the movie actually performing a sex act, on screen or off. Mostly they just make appointments with losers and then rob them. There's a sentimental yakuza who used to be a student radical; he owns a bar with The Internationale on the karaoke system -- that's the kind of gag they have in the film.

It was chilly and foggy out there on Clement St., and sunny and cool in north Bernal Heights when I got back. A lovely holiday all around.

Other creatures of the night

My two favorite customers from my Monday night shift at the l.n.c.b.:

The woman who brought the following books to the register: a book about loneliness; a book about how to survive a breakup; a book about shyness; and some other self-help book I can't remember. She was cute, too. It's amazing how much you can infer (or wrongly assume) about someone based on their purchases -- which is why we should never let the feds get access to library records.

And then there was the man who wanted books on "the culture and geography of Mississippi." The l.n.c.b. doesn't have a geography section, and we're not very good on searches by subject, but I looked up "Mississippi" on the computer, and all I found were books whose titles indicated they were either about slavery or the Civil Rights movement -- titles like Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy or Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter . No, I don't want that, he said -- I want something on the culture. Well, what the hell is the culture of Mississippi besides slavery and the Civil Rights movement? I really didn't know what to tell him, and just led him to the U.S. History section and left him there. At least an hour later he came up to the register, just as the store was closing, with a state map and a book -- I don't remember what it was, unfortunately, but it seemed vaguely about the culture of the South.

Of course, I could have told him to go read the novels of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner. But I have a confession to make. I haven't read either author.

Last week I pissed off a customer without even meaning to. These students from Cal park themselves in the l.n.c.b.'s cafe for hours to study -- I suppose because they live in shared apartments and have noplace else to go. At the end of the day last Wednesday we were closing and every customer had left but this one guy who was scribbling away, showing no sign of moving. I was in the cafe picking up the piles of books and magazines that people leave in the cafe all day long without buying; I may have been a little irritated at that habit of the customers when I walked by him and said "Time to pack it in, pal." He muttered something, packed up his things and left. I later heard that he got so pissed off that he called the manager on the phone an hour later and tore her a new asshole. I felt bad that she had to catch shit for something I'd done. But talk about over-reacting.

The famous and near-famous

I just failed to get into a screening of the new movie Tekonolust. My friend Bob Ostertag knows the filmmaker and invited several friends to the premiere this evening. Outside the theater he introduced us to actress Karen Black. Unfotunately the theater sold out before we got to the front of the line, which was bad for us but good for the film, which was completed two years ago and is still seeking a wide release.

So I came home and I'm watching the ballgame on TV. It's all good.

I met Bob twelve years ago when the Kronos Quartet commissioned and performed a piece called All the Rage. The live performance involved Kronos live on stage with a hundred dancers, me among them -- it was the last dance performance I ever did.

And speaking of my friends' accomplishments, here's a piece on extreme programming by my friend Martha Baer, former Wired managing editor and now a freelancer.

And I met both Bob and Martha through Sara Miles, a great editor, journalist and activist. Those are three highly talented people.

FBI informant inflated facts in effort to publish book

I loved this story from my old Houston suburban neighborhood, about some pathetic dweeb -- described as an "FBI operative," which means what, exactly? Was he an FBI agent, or just an informant? -- inflated reports in order to attract a book contract as well as wreak revenge on a handsome astronaut. My favorite quote:

"He said his wife was tired of supporting him. He didn't have any income. If I couldn't get a book sale quick or a movie contract, he was going to have to go back to work and he wanted to write for a living."

How well I know that feeling.

Can't stomach Demo hacks. Must... vote... otherwise

A friend wrote:

Dear Friends, I'd like to hear your thoughts on some upcoming election issues. I'm planning to vote "No on recall; yes on Bustamante" in the California gubernatorial recall election on Oct 7. Anyone see any reason to do otherwise?

Well, yes, I replied to him. The fact that Bustamante, like Gray Davis, is a totally unappealling MEDIOCRE PARTY HACK.

He responded:

Frustration shared, Mark, but what are you actually going to do?

And I answered: http://www.georgyforgov.com. Now, someone has pointed out: But she's selling thongs on her merchandise page. My point exactly. To my knowledge there is no other candidate selling thongs, unless... I guess I'd better check Angelyne. Nope, no thongs for sale. How about Larry Flynt? Yes, he sells thongs too! It just goes to show there are some candidates thinking outside the box.

That will be the extent of my political commentary for the next six weeks.

In other news, an Ohio grad student gave me a shout-out in her blog; she found me, she said in a follow-up email, by googling Frighten the Horses. Welcome Rita!

Couldn't resist

A high point last night at the l.n.c.b. was when a customer brought this anthology to the counter. I couldn't resist exclaiming "I've got a story in this!" Caught a little off guard, all she could say was, "Really?" in a mild tone, as if that were more information than she wanted from the counter boy who was selling her 500 pages of dirty stories.

I wasn't asleep!

With my new schedule, it's harder to update my blog. Of course I can always do so from work, but then only the blog page is updated, and not my home page -- I can only do that by manually editing the page and FTPing it to the server. And there's no FTP software on the computer at work, yet. But now it's my day off, and I report the following.

Last night I had a sort of kung fu/thriller movie dream. I woke up in the middle of the night and tried to write it down in the dark. When I looked this morning at the notebook, I saw that I had written over a previsouly written page -- rendering both dreams illegible. The only thing I remember clearly is that the dream was set in some kind of company or organization that had at least two levels of indirection for customers, in order to mislead them about the company's real mission (which had something to do with superhero crime fighting or something). The first level was a computer game which the customers were supposed to spend months or years figuring out. But for the really smart customers who finally got to the last level in the game, there was virtual reality sex. And yet virtual reality sex was not the main business of the company, only something else to mislead the customers and keep them from discovering its real activities. Nevertheless, the people who actually worked at the company frequently took advantage of the virtual reality sex themselves, perhaps while waiting around for someone to launch them on some life-saving mission.

At the l.n.c.b., I continue to encounter customers who are amusing or dismaying, or sometimes both. But I think the saddest thing is the "reshelves" shelf. When a customer returns a book, it gets put on the "reshelf" shelf behind the counter and, all things being equal, put back on the shelves at the end of the day. When I see things on that shelf that I've personally sold, it makes me sad sometimes. Like on Monday someone bought a book off the classics shelf, Histories by Herodotus. On Wednesday I saw it had already been returned.

Then there are the customers who seem to think we are a used bookstore. A guy came in Wednesday with four books; no receipt, and they didn't have the characteristic l.n.c.b. bar code sticker on the back cover. Clearly they were books that had been sitting on his shelves for some time, never read. We took three of them. The fourth, I was going to give the guy a refund for as well, but a manager discovered the fact that it was an outdated edition. The transaction took forever because the manager had to look them all up on the system after I had also done so. Then the manager took it upon himself to scold me for doing several things wrong during the whole affair, including letting the guy stand and wait while I took care of other customers during the time the manager was looking up his books. Personally I feel the other customers shouldn't have to wait while some lame-off cashes in some books that probably were never bought at the l.n.c.b.. But according to the manager, we're all just supposed to stand there.

So far on my day off I've accomplished getting a haircut. Later on I'll go to the bank. I might go see a film. Nothing stupendous. We can't afford anything stupendous anyway.

But you've got to admit, they had a hell of a logo

Yesterday on some NPR show -- "Marketplace," or "Fresh Air" -- I heard a story that was, partially at least, about Germany's attempts to redefine its image, and make it seem like more of a cool, happening place. "Unfortunately," said a German marketing consultant who has been hired to take on this task, "we are still suffering from the negative branding we accomplished from the years 1933 to 1945."

Negative branding. Yes, I guess they managed to convince everyone that Germans were rapacious, fanatical, power-mad, and willing to employ any means to the end of world domination. But they had style. Doesn't that count?

Monday's favorite customers at the l.n.c.b.: The late-fiftyish Jewish woman who smacked two books on the counter for return -- "A book about Siberia and a self-help book! Well, I'm not going to Siberia and I don't need any more mental health, no matter what they think!" -- and the young black woman who called asking for a book called Pimpnosis. Actually she didn't know the exact title, only that it started with "pimp" and it was pimp-no-something. I found it on the system and went to the shelves to locate it. Sure enough, there was an expensive hardback with nice arty black-and-white pictures of street prostitutes and mostly-undressed women in bars; the text was a novel about, yes, pimps. From an admiring standpoint. As far as I could tell, the book was less about the women and more about the narcissim of the self-styled pimps, an occupation the book took entirely seriously. It was neither ironic not an exposé.

I went back to the phone and told the girl I couldn't find it on the shelves. "But I need that book so bad!" she cried. "I need to send it to someone in prison in Southern California!" In the background was a crying baby. I'd heard about all I needed to hear. "Sorry, maybe I can look for it later," I said. "Well, can you call me back if you find it?" she insisted. She gave me a phone number and told me her name was Mahogany.

The fact is, prisons won't give hardback books to inmates. The materials can too easily be made into shanks. But that's not the real reason I pretended we didn't have the book. In truth, I was just too disgusted.

Rants that you will enjoy

Sunday morning after another day of working at the l.n.c.b.. Yesterday a woman with two children brought a fancy pen and notebook to the register; the total was nineteen dollars and change. The card she gave was “declined,” the first time that’s happened to me. She asked for an ATM, was sent to the food court adjacent to the l.n.c.b. and never returned as far as I could see. It was also the day that a woman called on the phone asking for a book supposedly entitled Sandwiches That You Will Enjoy -- a book which, according to all the computer records at our disposal (including Books in Print) does not now exist, if it ever did. Due to a miscommunication, the woman was left on hold while the employee who was helping her left for her mid-shift break, and when I finally picked up the line after five minutes, she was madder than a drunken trailer wife on Cops. She asked to speak to the manager so I had to hand her over to the supervisor of the hour who endured her angry rantings for several minutes.

I read a novel called The Monk Downstairs. It was short and rather shallow, I thought. But despite those characteristics, it was widely and positively reviewed. I have ordered another by the same author, because I found out that his agent lives in Berkeley and is connected to a powerful New York agency. Perhaps I can finagle a way to get my novel to this woman.

I’m also reading The Crazed by Ha Jin and The Book Against God by James Wood. I’m really into reading novels since the l.n.c.b. job started.

You are what you buy to read

Working at the l.n.c.b., one is in a position to observe people's secret desires, fears and obsessions. Consider:

The cuddling couple who bought three wedding magazines, a book about having the perfect honeymoon, and a football magazine

The lady d'une certaine age who refused to believe we didn't have in stock "All Families Are Psychotic" by Douglas Coupland (whose name she insisted on pronouncing "coop-lund")

The man and woman who came in, twenty minutes apart, each looking for books on lonliness.

About those two, my friends whom I tell about them always say, "Why didn't you introduce them?" The truth is, it didn't occur to me. But to say to someone, "Why, that trollish guy over there was just asking for the same thing! Why don't you chat with each other instead of wallowing in your separate hells?" -- that would be a little intrusive, I think. My job is simply to lead them to the "Self-Help" section and wish them well.

It's all a little like being a shrink, perhaps, except people come up and lay their interests and obsessions literally before you. You put them in a bag and give them back to them, after charging them money for them.

To better endure my hours standing on my feet at the end of the day, I have done two things: started taking Ibuprofen before and during a shift, and bought the fattest, most cushy and expensive Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts. The results of these steps is that I'm no longer utterly exhuasted at the end of the shift. Last Wednesday I actually had a little bit of energy by the end of the day.

This is my day off. As usual I spent it doing errands and exercising. Then in the evening, Cris had a date, so it's my chance to sit around reading and playing the Bob Dylan CDs she hates. Quelle luxe.

America today

Here's a good one, courtesy Space Waitress: The FBI questioned a man after someone spotted him reading a news editorial entitled "Weapons of Mass Supidity" in a coffee shop. He rightly concludes: "It seems like a dark day when an American citizen regards reading as a threat, and downright pitch-black when the federal government agrees."

Does everyone remember what to do if the FBI calls, or comes to your door? Here's a nice refresher: Know Your Rights, and another: Just Say No to the FBI and Police.

Do I think cops are a good idea when a drunken neighbor is beating on my front door screaming threats, or when people are running riot after a football loss? Sure. But as the Sf Chronicle's Jon Carroll wrote yesterday, this whole War on Terror thing is way out of hand.

So far, we've cracked down on a whole bunch of visa violators. Now I hate visa violators as much as the next guy, but wouldn't it be great to get actual accessories to the actual terror attack? John Ashcroft: inept fascist. He can't even run a police state right.

I'll take Dictator Targets for $1000

A Pentagon agency is setting up a web-based betting pool for people who want to make wagers on the likelihood of assassinations, coups, terrorist attacks and other catastrophes, the Asociated Press reported (link to SF Gate).

In a news conference Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticized the market:

"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Wyden said.

Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and "unbelievably stupid... Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?"

Who's behind it? None other than John Poindexter.

Echo of Stephanie

A reader wrote me about Stephanie, a former girlfriend who died in a car wreck in 1999, and sent me this picture of her and the rest of the on-air staff. That's her standing with her hand on the desk.

He writes:

I went to Boston College with Stephanie (and was also a) dj at WZBC. Her shows were so... I hate to say touching, but they were. They were very personal, romantic, geared towards her audience, inspirational, ecclectic for sure. ... She and I were eventually banned from being in the dj booth at the same time because we would get so much shit for "immaturity." Stephanie and I did news together (which no one ever listened to or realized the station had) by just grabbing various shit off of the AP machine. Her delivery, and dead serious alert tone (done completely comically of course) would literally have me on the floor. Stephanie was someone who could make me laugh till it hurt. During the begathon to raise money for the station, her spots were so fucking funny. The recording she did for the sign off of the station nightly, which she made for just me to play was so amazing. She was just so funny and such a crack up.

Way back then

Yesterday was a day off, so I went to the huge and understuffed San Francisco Public Library. One of several new or refurbished buildings that line the Civic Center Plaza, the library is an attractive hodgepodge of styles which nonetheless probes to be a spectacularly inefficient library-- if you believe the critics. I went to the periodicals department on the 5th floor, loaded some microfilm into an ancient viewer, and typed in several news stories reporting on the October, 1990 demonstration protesting the visit to SF by evangelist Larry Lea. The Texas preacher wanted to "exorcise" the "evil spirits" he said held sway over San Francisco -- on Halloween, which is practically a national holiday here (if San Francisco were a nation). A grand time was had by all.

I had two amazingly nerdy customers this week at the l.n.c.b.. The first was an 11-year-old boy who, while his mother checked out her purchases, earnestly explained to her some arcane point having to do with "Lord of the Rings" and Sauron's powers and the Ring and all. The second was when some schlub returned a Monty Python boxed set of DVDs and bought a huge box of "Windows XP Server" software and manuals. Only a real nerd would have a boxed set of ten Monty Python DVDs, and only a truly deadly one would exchange it --unopened -- for software. And boring server software, at that. The damn box of software weighed a ton; it's the first time I've double-bagged something.

One down, many to go

Last week I sent off a query about my novel to a prospective agent -- the first one I've tried, someone whose name I got from a client of his -- and today I got back a nice but short email: no dice. So my summertime fantasy of going from no agent to having an agent in exactly one week is over. Now starts the hard work of gathering information about other agents who might be interested, and sending queries to them. I'll try not to be tiresome about it, for I fear the process of sending out queries and getting negative answers has a very good chance of becoming extremely tiresome. How about this: I'll make a scorecard.

Eat at Mick and Jimmy's!

I love this story from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (link courtesy poyner.og/romenesko). It starts off to be a story about how a small Minnesota town is advertising itself as the alternative to mass-mall culture with the slogan "Secede from Starbucks Nation." The story goes on to cite many of the charms of Excelsior, including its claim that Mick Jagger was inspired there to write the song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." According to the town wag, who really is named Jimmy, he met up with Jagger at the town's pharmacy after they played a gig in the burg in 1964 (they really did play there) and in complaining about receiving a regular coke instead of a cherry coke at the soda fountain, uttered the now-famous phrase.

Alphabetizing

Among other attributes, one of the main qualities that got me hired at the l.n.c.b. was my familiarity with the alphabet. I was asked to take on, from time to time, sections of the store where the alphabetizing was particularly bad -- meaning that customers had torn up the section and books had gotten reshelved in the wrong place -- and clean them up. One of the most egregious sections is the poetry section -- so bad that I spent part of my lunch hour working on it, and then after my shift was over, I actually went back and worked on it for another 35 minutes, off the clock. Why? Because it's bad enough that no one buys poetry, but if they did go looking for poetry, it would be tragic if they couldn't find what they were looking for. The work of Charles Simic was for some reason spread all over the S's. Wilson, the several Williamses, and Whitman were all entwined, along with a stray Louise Gluck. Mary Karr was all over the place, and Kenneth Koch was hiding among the M's. I tried to put things back in order, but the poetry section was too large to be made perfect in just an hour -- which is, I guess, a blessing.

I found another news story about Clear Lake, the amorphous suburb in Texas where I went to high school, and where I set many of my erotic stories involving teenagers. (You won't find Clear Lake on any map; Clear Lake City (not an incorporated city, by the way) is more or less the center of it, but much of that is in fact an incorporated area of Houston, which is actually 25 miles north. It's all very confusing and not worth figuring out, but if you really want to, use Yahoo maps to find Webster, TX, and then Seabrook, TX, and the Clear Lake area includes those towns and everything in between.) Mysteriously dead teenagers with the wrong friends are the victims in this story. One of the teens is named Tiffany, of course. I'll try to run updates (here's an AP story) of this story, which should have some legs, though not as long legs as the story of Andrea Yates who lived in the same neighborhood -- that's the insane housewife who drowned all her kids.

I celebrate these horrific tales because they fit my mental picture of the place, a desperately sterile suburb practically coated in bored teenagers and middle-class angst.

Egads

And having just sent off my first query to an agent, in what may be a long attempt to get my novel published, I come across this article from New York magazine, about how new authors with first novels are treated nowadays. Strangely, it's actually easier to get a big advance for your first novel -- but if it doesn't come close to making back the advance, you can be finished in publishing, just like that. No one else will touch you, because you'll never be a "first novelist" again.

No pressure there, eh? I foresee a lot of people getting name changes or resorting to pseudonyms. "Sure, it's my first novel! Mary Jo Schultz has never had a publishing contract before, no sir!"

There's more at the Book Babes column on poynter.org, focussing on the part journalists play in the book publicity machine. It doesn't give me much confidence when the columnist writes:

Schaper asks a simple question that cuts to the heart of all the idealistic blather about books as a vehicle for ideas. "If nobody knows your book is out there, where is its value?"

Man, talk about a cutthroat attitude. "The idealistic blather about books as a vehicle for ideas." If she were in charge, I guess she'd kill the New York Times Book Review and just cover books in the business section once a week along with the rest of the "Information Industry."

Update: and here's something on the same theme from the newspaper The Scotsman: First Impressions Count In Publishing, reacting to and extending the New York article. The anecdote about an author's mother fishing his manuscript out of a garbage can and sending it to an agent is quite touching.

Into the future

Two minor milestones achieved this week: 1.) I finally sent a query letter for my novel Make Nice to an agent. I got the name of the agent from a writer I met up at Holden Village in June. Whether this will turn out to be beginner's luck and I get an agent on the first try -- man, that would have to be unbelieveable luck; either that or my novel is more impressive than I think -- or (more likely) it's just the first in many queries. My friend Katia has sent out about fifty queries over a year and a half, trying to get her novel represented.

And 2.) I put out another issue of the church newsletter I edit. It contains a piece I wrote up at Holden, to be published in their newsletter as well, about walking their labyrinth and how it's like writing a novel.

Speaking of books, my friend Qiron has used iUniverse to publisher her book Feminist Folktales from India. Qiron, a brilliant law graduate who speaks several languages, has been toiling in as a technical writer for several years, and is one of many Sybase alumnae. If I had a dollar for every technical writer who used to work at Sybase, I could buy myself a damn fancy meal. Fortunately for me, Cris still works at Sybase, so we can buy ourselves a fancy meal once in a while anyway.

Why English teachers grow old

A man in Pennsylvania convicted of disorderly conduct was sentenced to read Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird and report on it. Sounds like a neat idea? Then why are librarians and English teachers cringing? Because they hate the idea of reading and writing as punishments. Reading and writing are supposed to be empowering, uplifting, fun. Using literature to punish somebody practically guarantees that person (an adult in this case, but more often a student) will avoid reading and writing like the plague in the future.

Nevertheless, I'm bringing the news story to work today at the l.c.n.b.. The staff needs the laughs, in my opinion.

A friend today told me she saw my name in Plyllis Burke's book Family Values and wondered if that were me. Yes, it was I carrying that sign at the Basic Instinct protests reading BUTT-UGLY DOUGLAS GO HOME.

New! A month after coming back from Holden Village, I have finally posted an edited version of the journal I kept while I was up there.

Were my dogs tired

Last night I put in my first-ever non-training real-live full shift at the l.c.n.b.. An hour repairing the alphabetic order of part of of the fiction section, followed by two hours at the cash register, then an hour off for "lunch" (though it was 7 pm), part of which I spent on my feet as well, actually shopping in the store -- for it was Employee Appreciation Day and we got 40% off. Then I spent two more hours at the information desk, another hour "on reg" (on the cash register, that is), and a final segment putting away magazines that people had scattered about the store all day long. At midnight I left, footsore. I'm going to have to buy a new pair of sneakers for this job, the cushier the better. And take Ibuprofen before and during.

Thus I spent the last hours of a warm, sunny day. Then this morning the fog was in and the sky was cool and gray. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the sequence of warm summer days followed by cool gray summer days during which the sun comes out maybe from 11:15 to 3:00. Nor will I cease being grateful for the coolness, a soothing breath that comes without fail after two or three days of "heat." That's in quotes because a hot day for San Francisco is when it gets up to 85. If it gets over 90 the people just lie on the floor with a cool cloth over their forehead. At least I do.

Here's what I bought on Employee Appreciation Day: The Book Against God, a novel by James Wood; Advertisements for Myself, a 1959 collection of magazine pieces by Normal Mailer, which includes his famous piece "The White Negro" as well as other meditations on pop culture -- he was being sardonic about that stuff a decade before Tom Wolfe; and The Unconquerable World, the new book by Jonathan Schell.

Les Amis

Went to Oakland for a pre-Bastille Day party at the house of a friend, Catherine. Catherine is not only a good friend -- we've known each other for 20 years now -- but my ex-wife. We got married in 1984, when we were lovers; she got her green card after a couple of years, and our divorce followed that. She became an American citizen about seven years later, and works now as a drama therapist in the teen psych ward in an East Bay hospital. She has changed very little in twenty years; her French accent, despite having become more understandable, is still charming, and she looks just about as cute as she was when she was 24. Definitely still has the same figure; I know because she showed guests a lot of photos taken on a recent vacation to Hawaii with her now-boyfriend Brandy. Much of the party I just sat and watched her chitchat and play verbally with her best friend Betty, who arrived with her from France and who's known her since high school. They were so cute together twenty years ago I cast them in a theater production as St. Joan and St. Catherine in heaven, and they're just as endearing now.

If all this sounds twee and patronizing, then I'm just not diong a very good job of describing them in action. Utterly relaxed with each other, they carry on a rapid-fire stream of mixed French and English, their hands and faces flashing from gesture to gesture and expression to expression, repeatedly breaking into peals of laughter. Just two good friends talking together -- bosom buddies. As usual, I was caught between enjoying their interplay and feeling a little sad because I wasn't in the middle of their palaver -- I don't understand French -- and because I so rarely have had, in my life, a friend as close as they are to each other.

Found a job

Though I started this week at the l.c.n.b., it's pretty low pay for only 24 hours a week. So I was looking for something else. And though the church secretary job I was hoping for over the last couple of months fell though, I found another one -- that is, a secretary (or "parish administrator") job at a different church. The pay is 75% higher than at the l.c.n.b. and I'm sure the work will be both more fulfilling and less stressful. Between the two jobs I might actually make enough money to pay tax this year.

But everything is supposed to be confidential at the church job; I won't blog about it. Anyone who wishes to know about the events at the church will have to read my novels in the future; perhaps something will leak in, vastly camouflaged.

I'll start there a week from Monday. Monday and Wednesdays will be rather full, as I go from one job over the bridge to the other, but I want to keep a toe hold at the l.c.n.b. for a while, both out of regard for the friend who got me the job there and because it is another five or six hundred dollars a month.

To celebrate, I bought a pair of shoes. Actually I bought the shoes for the job interview so that was rather in reverse. Then I went grocery shopping and went home and exercised. I'm on a weight loss kick so I've upped my every-other-day exercise to five miles on the treadmill.

I can help you!

I've just finished three days of training for my new career in retail at the Large National Chain Bookstore (l.n.c.b.). I've learned to run the registers, to remove DVDs and CDs from their plastic security cases, to search for things on the in-store databases (a woman today wanted a book she'd heard of that was "short stories about tennis." We even had a copy "on hand" -- supposedly. When I took her over to the Sports section, tennis was all mixed up with hockey, soccer and wrestling, so we never found the book she was looking for), to load up electronic "gift cards," to invite people to join the company's email newsletter (3% positive response is the goal!).

My favorite moment so far was when the goth girl who was training me was saying you should recommend another book to go with the book someone had already picked up. "If someone picks up Hillary Clinton's new book, what would you recommend?"

"How about Ann Coulter's new book?" I chirped. She nearly blushed, which for a goth girl would have been a major disaster. "Don't get me started!" she finally sputtered.

The job pays just a little bit better than the $8/hr. I was making doing data entry as a temp in 1989. The point of the job is not the money but the toehold. In case Cris loses her lucrative software job, one of us needs to be employed at a place that gives domestic partners benefits.

In any case, I immediately got a lead on another job, one which would pay 75% more, and which I could actually do along with the l.c.n.b. job.

Independence Day

For years I've resisted the supermarket "club cards" that supposedly save shoppers a couple of bucks while allowing supermarket companies to collect data on their buying habits. Gradually I noticed that practically everyone else who shopped at Cala or Safeway used the cards, and the other day I thought, well hell, I bet I could just enter a random phone number -- you can enter "your" phone number instead of swiping your "club card" -- and it'll be somebody in this neighborhood. So I entered my own exchange and four random digits and sure enough, it went through. I saved three dollars and change.

Excellent. But then I went home and entered the phone number in Google. Within less than a minute I found that the phone number I'd used is the home number of a lawyer who works for the local branch of the ACLU! I love this country!

I won't tell the phone number; make up one on your own. Just use an exchange that's common in the supermarket's neighborhood. Then the market won't be able to track your Friday night purchases of cheap boxed wine and Cosmopolitan magazine.

Of course, the credit card company will still know. If you start down the paranoid road of trying to deny people access to your data, you could drive yourself crazy. Nevertheless, there's no reason to offer up your personal information if you can easily avoid it.

Lusties take over

I missed this story over the weekend, but a fellow Troublemaker alerted me to it: The strippers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco have taken over the ownership of the business. They became the first unionized strip club in the U.S. in 1995 -- as documented in the film Live Nude Girls Unite! -- and when management threatened early this year to close the joint, the dancers took it over instead, making it a cooperative. Just another reason I love living in San Francisco where, by the way, another employee-owned business, Good Vibrations, is the nation's largest mail-order supplier of sex toys, erotic books and media, and other bedroom-related goods. (Be sure to stop in one of their three attractive retail stores in the Bay Area!)

Reader of the month

This week's big kiss goes to my friend Dina for reading the entire ms. of my novel in less than a week, flagging typos and questions -- and did it over Pride weekend. Definitely beyond the call of duty. For thanks I took her to dinner at Spiazzino, a recently opened Italian restaurant on Valencia St. It's in that space formerly occupied by Val 21. The pasta dish I had was great, so give it a try.

Later in the evening I took my first look at some of the articles people have sent me for the next issue of the newsletter I edit for my church. Though each of the articles was written by a college graduate, they're going to need a lot of work. I cringed at sentences like "Living in Danville and working in Berkeley, it is quite a commute to attend the Foundation board meetings" (in San Francisco).

Man. Fortunately there's no solid deadline -- though I would like to get the next issue out this month.

I learned earlier today that one of the part time jobs I thought I might get, at another church, won't come through for some time. So in the meantime it looks like more hours at the Large Nationwide Bookstore Chain.

Speaking of bookstores, check out this 30 Jun 03 story from the SF Chronicle. Some neighbors in affluent Noe Valley have united to pull the locally-owned bookstore out of debt.

Back to the cool

Part of the joy of living in San Francisco is returning to the city from somewhere else, especially if it's summer and you've just been to a sweaty locale. New York's had worse heat waves, but it felt plenty hot 'n humid to me, especially last Friday when there was some kind of "ozone alert." I took that to mean the air pollution was particularly bad, a fact my eyes attested to. They got so red and swollen I had to take my contact lenses out for the duration. (Typically, I blamed myself: I'm still getting accustomed to the soft "extended wear"-type lenses. But on second thought, I think it was the bad air.) No wonder there are so many advertisements for spas, plastic surgeons and beauty treatments of various kinds -- the air is filthy, at least at times during the summer.

So coming back to San Francisco (I missed a local mini heat wave -- the only kind we ever have -- while on the east coast) and waking up to cool, sunny weather is fabulous. The yellow hills are like lemon cakes with a frosting of fog, and the garden is brilliant with flowers and greenery. Out my back window I can see the grapefruit rees in the neighbors' yards. It's so beautiful.

Today I have little to do but errands and chores. My next writing mini-project will be to put together a twenty page synopsis of my novel for the agent whose name I got from a fellow writer at Holden Village. Once that's done I can work on incorporating edits from Dina, whom I gave the latest version of the novel to just before leaving for New York. She's supposed to flag "redundancies" and anything else that jumps out at her. Then, finally, I can work on groundwork for my next book, which I've decided will be a modern-day exploration of alienation as lived in the softwear industry and in the paranoid canyons of the desert.

 

Last morning in NY

We're finishing up our trip to New York, by rights the last vacation we'll have in a long time. Not just because we're broke but because the company Cris works for has now taken up the practice of deducting mandatory days off from employees' vacation pay. So that even though it looks like she has two weeks of vacation saved up, five of those days are being decimated this week as the company makes everyone take a mandatory "vacation" the week of Independence Day. Thus we all become happy Americans.

I almost wrote "the company Cris still works for." Having spent more than ten years at Sybase, she must be one of the oldest employees now, what with the dotcom boom that drained off many workers and endless series of layoffs that canned many more. She's been there so long we still marvel each time she escapes a layoff. Until now it's been mostly a matter of morbid curiosity: which one of us would lose our corporate jobs first? I've been laid off three times from three companies in the last six years; Cris has dodged it each time. Now that we need the income, this has become less morbid curiosity and more anxious worrying. But I was raised a solid member of the middle class: I don't worry too much about whether I'll survive.

Yesterday, on our last full day in New York, we made our annual pilgrimage to the Bronx Zoo and the pen of Rapunzel, the Sumatran rhino. We learned the poor creature is sick. Sumatran rhinos famously die in captivity and this is one of three in the U.S. She's been here every time we've visited, for the last five years. When we got to the zoo in midday, she was conked out in the ground, snoozing in the heat; after 4:00 she was up and doing her usual pacing around the grass and dirt pen. I was glad that our last view of the creature was that of an active rhino, not a sleeping one.

Today all we're accomplishing is packing. Cris sent me out of the room to get me our of the way, so I'm at a Kinko's, where they charge 30 cents a minute (!) to use these machines.

As I've said before, this is my last fling before I actually settle down and, for the first time since early October, get a job -- at a large national chain bookstore. I'll be working for a friend so I won't be able to publish much dirt about the l.n.c.b. -- she's doing me a favor by hiring me in these times. A church secretary job is the only other thing on the horizon for me.

New jobs mean the end of long mornings of reading the paper and long afternoons of working on my (fortunately completed) book. Of course, I suppose I could sell my (fortunately completed) book for a lot of money and won't have to work after all, but since the liklihood of that is nil, I'll be selling books in the more common way: over the counter. I'll be sure to note the first time if and when someone actually buys one of my own books.

Still in New York

Cris and I are supposed to be doing this trip on the cheap. Most of our hotel is being paid for by our Hilton "points," and her air ticket was free. We're not spending the way we used to -- no Broadway show tickets. But we're still spending a lot, I'm afraid, on meals and souvenirs. We walk into a museum shop and emerge fifty or eighty bucks later. Credit cards are dangerous things.

The weather here was hot and humid and sticky in that inimitable New York way for the first few days of our trip. We spent as much time as possible indoors, in museums, movies, and the hotel, and tried not to travel places on the subway we had to transfer (the trains are airconditioned, but the platforms are, famously, not). We did spend an evening at Shea Stadium, but watching a ballgame in warm weather is a treat for someone from San Francisco where, not even a week ago, I wore long underwear to a night game.

Today the weather changed. It was a little cooler and the humidity was much lower. We braved an architectural walking tour, and later walked through Greenwish Village and Chinatown to Little Italy, where Mulberry Street was closed and the sidewalks were covered with restaurant tables. We had a great meal at one of those restaurants -- and I'm sorry I can't plug it, but I have no idea of the name -- they all are more or less alike as far as I could tell. Cris bought a bunch of t-shirts with the word "fuck" on them. Finally, back to the hotel, where we iced our ankles and knees and watched things like "World's Scariest Police Chases" on television. Quelle luxe!

Privacy confirmed

Where were you when you heard about the Supreme Court decision overturning Bowers v. Hardwick and affirming the right of individuals to privacy in their homes? Cris and I were in an elevator in the New York Hilton, one of those elevators with an annoying television playing CNN Headline News when the news was flashed upon the screen. (At least it wasn't just some tourist commercials.)

Loath as I am to add to the crush of comments on the matter, I have to say I was most amused by what Jerry Falwell had to say (no surprise there). Quoted in the New York Times this morning: "It's a capitulation to the gay and lesbian agenda whose ultimate goal is the legalization of same-sex marriage."

That's funny for a few reasons. First, on this day even Jerry Falwell has to say the words "gay and lesbian" -- not perverts, sodomites or any of the other slurs he would have used ten or twenty years ago. Second, he thinks the "ultimate agenda" for queers is legalization of same-sex marriage. My first reaction to that was, ha, just wait til he sees what else we have in store. Once Candace Gingrich becomes President, all must learn to play the piano! The color turquoise will be forbidden! (Apologies to the city of Palm Springs.) Tout le monde will be forced to wear natural fabrics! And everyone will moisturize.

Once I calmed down, I still had to laugh -- same-sex marriage! So scary. Ooga booga booga! What if they realized many queers don't want "marriage" if it imitates that of our parents? The freedom to be miserable -- to feel trapped -- to live with someone who despises you. Gee, I've wanted that all along -- not. The fact is, queer people have been free all along to be just as miserable with each other as our parents were, and we don't even have to get married to do it. As far as I'm concerned, Jerry Fallwell can stuff marriage up his fundamentalist fanny.

No, not all queers feel that way. The point is not to "imitate" marriage but to procure the same legal protections -- I know. But I wish there were no legal protections for marriage. Then all relationships would be treated the same without benefit of approval by the state or church.

Ripped from the wires

While I was in Seattle last week I came across this story in the Seattle Times. I offer it as evidence that journalism in Seattle is not, as some have said, dead or dying. Read this excerpt and watch for the word "basement."

Taking it all off: the lowdown on the Brazilian wax

By Pamela Sitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

For bringing the Brazilian bikini wax to Seattle, Anne Uhlir credits actress Demi Moore.

Uhlir, who waxes everything from eyebrows to panty lines, had been called to the Four Seasons Hotel to give the visiting Moore a standard bikini wax — only it wasn't.

"She was like, 'I want the full monty' (translation: everything off)," Uhlir recalls, "and I said, 'Are you sure?' "

That brief 1999 encounter launched Uhlir's Wax On Spa on Capitol Hill, specializing in "the full monty" — commonly known as the Brazilian bikini wax. Wax On — the self-proclaimed "Home of the Brazilian Bikini Wax" — is one of a growing number of local salons to offer the Brazilian, which is a very thorough removal of one's pubic hair. ...

"What makes a Brazilian a Brazilian is when I 'clean the basement,' " said Pegi Carnahan, who does at least five a day at ARIA Salon on Capitol Hill. "It's Brazilian (thong-style) swimwear that requires that kind of intense wax, which is why they call it a Brazilian."

I just came from Holden Village, where it's hard to convince people to clean the bathrooms. I wonder what they'd say if they knew there are people whose job it is to wax the hair off people's "basements."

Blaze of light

On clear summer evenings in San Francisco, one discovers a little-discussed advantage of the usually present fog: it blocks the setting sun. Not that there's anything wrong with sunlight or sunsets, but late afternoons -- by which I mean 7:30 pm, like now -- with the sun slanting low across the city: man, what an explosion of light. (Someone wrote me after seeing my abortive "Living in SF" blog, in which I made all of three entries. They wanted to know things about what it's really like to live in SF, which is just why I created that blog. But I didn't have time to do two blogs and write a book. So all you get is this one. I'll try putting more "what it's like to live in SF"-type things here.

For today, there's the blazing low sun of early summer, and this website, which quite boggles my mind in its earnest reaching attempts to invent something we otherwise call "religion" or even "spirituality" without ever using those words or even admitting to the existence of same.

Several years ago, at the instigation of a supervisor at work, I signed up for a couple of weekends of what was billed as a "communications seminar." I showed up at the first session, at a rented hall in downtown San Francisco, and found that I had signed up for basically an EST-like weekend in which we were going to be put through the wringer and then all bond. During the opening address, the event's leader discussed a number of concepts relating to new age spirituality (like "your soul's desire"), apparently supposing that none of the 100 people attending the event were aware of the existence of organized religion, since she said several times that there was nowhere in today's society a person could have these spiritual needs fulfilled -- except, of course, in the very seminar we were attending.

I'm not suggesting that the person behind "Your Celebrations" has any relation to that EST-like seminar, but her assumption seems to be the same: One has a need for events, consultations and rituals to mark the significant occasions of one's life, and for presumably wise people to help you get through them; since human society has never seen fit to meet these needs until now, we'll just make it up as we go along, producing "healing ceremonies to release illness, forgive others or let go of anger."

It's all so earnest and well-meaning that it seems mean to make fun of it. But are people really so clueless that they are in need of a made-up spirituality? Aren't any of the religious traditions of the last 3000 years sufficient to -- to quote them again -- "expand your horizons and nourish your soul"?

All this is illustrative of "what it's like to live in San Francisco." (Okay, this woman's from the East Bay, but here it's the same.) Not the new age spirituality per se, but the notion that one is supposed to regard anything well-meaning, no matter how preposterous, and accept it with a mild sense of tolerance. As I've written elsewhere, the one taboo in San Francisco is not some outré sexual act, but disapproval or, more precisely, laughing at someone's earnest attempts at identity. If someone says "This is me, this is what I do," you're not supposed to laugh. You're just supposed to say, Oh, how creative of you.

So I'm obliged to say: Vaya con dios, Alexandra True -- or whatever your real name is. Or... well, not con dios. I guess it would have to be con "the light of your own acceptance and unconditional love until you are overflowing." No need to ask forgiveness of a God, to accept or try to improve your karma, to follow a law or a tradition. It's all within you -- "flood yourself" (holy baptism, Batman!) with "your own acceptance." Sheesh.

Now it's summer

I worked last night on editing the journal I kept up at Holden Village. I wanted to post an edited version of it so that friends can see what I was up to there, and so that people searching for information on the place can find a detailed account by somebody. But after working on my personal journal entries for more than an hour, I came to the conclusion that they were both too personal and too boring for anyone to want to read. So I'll give it another shot, starting fresh and maybe including just a few verbatim excerpts from my actual journals. Readers might have to wait a few days for that, however.

How I spent my first full day back in town after seven weeks: errands, websurfing, puttering around the house, watching a little television. The biggest event was when Cris and I walked to the nearby Park Bench Cafe to have coffee and a croissant to celebrate Croissant Day. This purely private holiday marks the day in 1986 when I was sitting in a nearly deserted high school cafeteria, waiting to help register students for summer school. Cris and I were both summer school teachers; she approached me and mooched a croissant which, having brought about three of them, I could not refuse. We chatted all morning, went to lunch together, and that was the start of our relationship 17 years ago. Five years after that we became domestic partners on the same day, thus reinforcing the anniversary aspect of the date (actually four days ago, but I was in Seattle then).

Obligatory silly link: Biblical figures bobblehead dolls.

Jiggity jig

After a long, long trip on buses and trains (I won't bore you with the details), I pulled into Emeryville aboard Amtrak this morning sometime before nine. We had just cruised along the shore of San Francisco Bay with the morning sun lighting up the city like a dream. I've had the experience of seeing the city from the air after coming back from a long trip and almost weeping, it was so beautiful. This experience was like that. "There's San Francisco!" I cried to everyone else in the car, pointing out the windows at the apparition across eight miles of water. No one responded, except for a leery look on the part of a few passengers.

Cris picked me up and we had a late breakfast, the better to wait out the morning traffic. Then we flew home across the Bay Bridge and into our street. In the house, the cats approached cautiously -- it had been seven weeks, after all.

Yes, it's good to be home. There are bills to pay, errands to run, and our friend Nancy reset the passwords to our wireless node without telling me, so that my laptop is incommunicado. (I'm doing this entry on the big Macintosh.) But the air is sweet and cool and the flowers in the garden are so pretty. Newspapers are plentiful; the Giants are on the radio; the internet works.

It'll take until my laptop is back on the wire before I can post a long journal of the last seven weeks. I'll feature that on another page.

Down from the mountain

HELLO HELLO HELLO     I'm in Seattle -- down from Holden Village. Dialing in from a motel while I watch the Giants-Dodgers game on ESPN, I've just come back from a big fat dinner at a big hotel and a visit to the local branch of the Lusty Lady. So yeah, I'm re-entering.

Tried to phone Ellen but it was busy. I'll get her a little later. Til then A BIG FAT THANKS to Ellen for posting my postcards. Please read below in the blog for some of my exploits over the past few weeks.

I'll post a longer version of my sojourn up there after I get back to San Francisco on Friday the 20th. Til then, briefly: My tooth, which was a major problem during week three, seems to be fine. I finished work on the second draft of my novel, and I even got the name of an agent from a writer I met up there. I managed to make it thorugh my weeks in the kitchen there without poisoning anybody.

For more updates, check back in a few days. And THANKS also to everybody who sent me a postcard up there.