June 28, 2007
I don't want to alarm you, but I'm pretty sure the Mayor is in love with me.
Yesterday I went to a press conference in Chinatown (forget it, Jake) where the Mayor was speaking. I sat up front, against the advice of my fourteen year old back-of-the-class brain, to try and let my tape recorder hear what was going on.*
Anyway, I was basically face to face with him and I swear he kept looking me right in the eye until I got too shy to watch him anymore and took to staring determinedly at my notebook. It's possible he was just looking in my general direction, but I choose to believe he has ants in his pants for me, if you know what I mean.
*Interesting fact: Real reporters have camera men, who in turn have microphones, which they set up in a competitive bouquet in front of the presenters. This leaves the reporters to basically have a cocktail party in the back of the room, chattering away and ignoring the presenters because the mics are taking notes for them. If you don't have a microphone of your own up there and are trying to actually hear what's going on, this practice is irritating as fuck.
Posted by didofoot at 08:48 AM | Comments (3)
June 27, 2007
Sugar and milk
I quit drinking coffee over the weekend. I lasted about fifteen minutes before giving in and rushing back to the coffee maker, filling it and switching it on and hanging all over it in a blubbering mess of gratitude and apology.
"Why would you quit?" Jack asked, astonished, when I told him later.
"I don't want a beverage to master me," I said stubbornly. "No inanimate thing should be the boss of me."
"Why NOT?" he said. "Life is crappy enough. Why eliminate one of the few pleasures?"
He has a point, although my life is not especially crappy. But for me, drinking coffee is definitely an addiction more than a pleasure. I feel a deep-seated panic at the idea of really giving it up forever.
"So what?" said Jack when I told him this. "One or two cups a day, that's just a joy, man." And I could not disagree.
"Jack convinced me to stop giving up coffee," I told Gene when he came back in the room. I clutched my mug happily to my chest, and I might have crooned to it a little bit.
"Oh, good," said Gene in a tired voice, glaring at Jack. I wonder what happens to an employee who actively makes his boss's home a more hyper place to be.
Posted by didofoot at 09:04 AM | Comments (1)
June 26, 2007
How to make urban tea
I am steeping in San Francisco. Little frayed pieces of my bones and muscles wriggle out along the streets, along the avenues, all the way to the sea.
San Francisco is steeping in me. Streetcars run up and down my spine, dinging their happy idiot bells, and Coit Tower spears out through my heart, a plaster cactus spine that points right at you.
Posted by didofoot at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2007
And I'm afraid nobody here can help you.
You are a solitary person, and I'm afraid nobody here can help you. You like to be on your own. As a teen, you wandered the darkened streets of your neighborhood, a second-hand trench coat wrapped around your shoulders and your fingers wrapped around an old kazoo you kept in your pocket. Your friends mostly stayed at the party.
I'm afraid nobody here can help you with that, or with the fact that so many nights spent mooning around will imprint those streets indelibly onto your dreamscape, so that well into your twenties every dream you have takes place at night, wandering those empty pavements. Sometimes, in the dreams, you can fly. There's simply nothing we can do.
Nobody here can help you when you leave the party early. And though you sensibly climb onto the passenger seat of Kati's truck -- because you know, after that one time, that if you try to walk home alone Gene will simply follow you, secretly and at a distance, until two blocks from your house you catch sight of this shadowy figure and run, uphill, for your life -- though you accept your ride home, still you stare out the window into the yellow-lit night and wish, sort of, that you were out there, barefoot and wandering.
There is simply nobody here who can help you with that. Let me connect you to Corporate.
Posted by didofoot at 01:35 PM | Comments (1)
June 22, 2007
About that river trip...
Remember how I said we should go to the Yuba on July 7? I actually meant we should go on Sunday, July 8. Sunday, as you know, was originally named for the Norse god Sunne, the god of rivers. So it is the only possible day of the week on which to visit a river.
Also, we're having my grandfather's birthday party on Saturday.
Anyway, sorry for the change. But mark your calendars for Sunne-day, July 8, for fabulous Yuba adventures!
Posted by didofoot at 08:14 AM | Comments (4)
June 21, 2007
Gli accenti
In Italian there is no silent e: all vowels are pronounced. Think about what kind of a culture produces such an upfront language, where no letter hides itself behind another.
Then again, there are the accents. Sometimes an accent will indicate that a vowel is open or closed; sometimes there is no accent, and then you have to guess. So there is uncertainty too.
Posted by didofoot at 08:26 AM | Comments (1)
June 20, 2007
Books versus birds
Yesterday I spent a long time sitting on the floor of Green Apple and considering whether Deirde Bair's biography of Simone de Beauvoir was worth $6 to me. I really liked her biography of Anais Nin. And having this on my shelf might make me look smarter. But in the end, $6 just seemed like too much to pay.
After this we went to the AMC Van Ness, where I blew $8.50 to watch cartoon penguins surf.
I don't know if I'm comfortable with the label 'Philistine.' Maybe just 'brainiac-challenged.'
Posted by didofoot at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2007
On returning from the Castro Safeway
ME: They had this whole display at Safeway of "Films for Guys" DVDs.
GENE: You didn't...
ME: No, I didn't buy anything. But I was curious to see what constitutes a guy film.
GENE: And?
ME: Taming of the Shrew, starring Elizabeth Taylor.
GENE: Huh.
ME: Our neighborhood is...different.
Posted by didofoot at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2007
Because at midnight we consider the Pope
ME: Are you awake?
GENE: Mmph! Nyguh...yes.
ME: Why did we call the last Pope 'John Paul'? He was Italian, so wasn't his name really Giovanni Paolo? So why do we Anglicize his name? We don't refer to Mikhail Gorbachev as 'Michael,' after all.
GENE: ...
ME: You weren't really awake, were you.
GENE: No.
ME: Sorry.
Posted by didofoot at 09:20 AM | Comments (4)
June 15, 2007
The lions and the Christians
Found this in an old letter that I never got around to sending and thought I would recycle it. This is from 2004:
Gene recently decided he wanted to make his own cologne so that he didn't smell like anyone else. He had heard that the Body Shop had ingredients for making one's own scent, so we stopped in there over the weekend. They had six "essential oil" scents in tester bottles for combining. We were fiddling around with them when one of the store employees -- clearly the kind of girl who would describe herself as "a little bit psychic" without irony -- oozed up to us. She took Gene by the hand and started massaging his forearm.
"You're looking for a scent that exemplifies who you are, right?" she asked with impressive incorrectness.
"Uh," said Gene, trying and failing to gently free his arm. "Actually I'm just looking for something that smells good."
"You're a strong person," she said, ignoring him in favor of her corporate soul-reading trance, and rubbing her hands up and down his arm to his extreme dismay. "You're also passionate. And I'm reading just a hint of citrus."
"Do you need a scent, too?" another employee asked me as I stood on the sidelines.
"No, thanks," I said. "I'm just here to watch the lions and the Christians."
The girl was now dropping little splashes of various oils onto Gene's still-trapped arm, pausing after each one to smell it and then encourage him to smell it. "It's good, right?" she encouraged him. "Cinnamon. And here's a little hint of chocolate. And the slightest breath of mint. And some grapefruit." You can imagine.
For the next two days, every hour was punctuated by Gene sniffing his arm and mournfully declaring, "I still smell." I don't think it's worn off yet; we might have to employ steel wool. In the meantime I continue to get my cologne fix from all the beautifully-scented men of the Castro. I'm thinking I might just eliminate the middle man and start wearing Gene's old cologne myself. Don't you think that would be a magnificent, Georges Sand kind of thing to do?
Three years later, the scent has mostly worn off, but he never did find the perfect smell. Holler out if anyone has a suggestion. Eau de Concrete?
Posted by didofoot at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2007
Who-ba? Yuba!
Michele and I are planning a trip to the Yuba River on July 7 and you are all invited. Natural rapids, a riverside picnic and a lot of naked gay guys just upriver -- who's with us?
Photos of previous years are here, here and here.
All those interested, post a comment or just email me.
Posted by didofoot at 11:23 AM | Comments (4)
June 13, 2007
Late
MUNI put a rock to my scissors again last night on my way to my first Italian class. Even with extra time padded into the lining of my transit schedule, still the late bus made me late for lecture. And then I was all sweaty from rushing.
I'm always a little surprised to find I can sweat. It doesn't seem like something I would do. Though I suppose the alternative -- closed pores, a gradual buildup, and then one day a spontaneous firework: sweat bomb everywhere! -- is hardly preferable.
Anyway, I don't know quite what to do about MUNI. Maybe next time I will try being paper.
Posted by didofoot at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)
I win
From The Art and Craft of Feature Writing:
My own selective list of what readers like, in descending order of preference:
1. Dogs
Score!
Posted by didofoot at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2007
Travelers beware
My friend recently had a miserable experience at the WooGo Central Park Tempo Apartments in New York City. I offered to use my modest little soapbox here to warn other travelers about this place. Here's her review of the WooGo Apartments:
"Appalling customer service. The advantage of clean, comfortable (though small) rooms and convenient location is offset by two noteworthy problems: the WooGo Central Park is rodent-infested, and the concept of customer service is unknown to the staff: two days to deliver fresh pillow cases is a problem; four days to exterminate a troublesome mouse is unacceptable."
Posted by didofoot at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2007
My faulty understanding of financial realities
ME: I found a perfect house for us to buy. [Shows ad for perfect house.]
GENE: We can't afford that.
ME: I thought you could get a real estate loan?
GENE: Not for that much.
ME: It seems like if we want it bad enough, the extra money should just appear.
GENE: Nope, because we don't live in a Disney film.
ME: Sigh. Real estate is a wish your heart makes.
Posted by didofoot at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2007
In which I am captured by hair dressers
It's 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon and I'm sitting in a hotel suite while two strangers fondle my hair. Alas, it's not the prelude to an orgy blog: it's fashion.
While striding along in my dressy togs today, late for a fancy-pants luncheon/fund-raiser, I was stopped by a lovely girl who gave me a flyer that said Model Call. It happens that the Bumble & Bumble road show is in town and looking for hair models.
"You sit on stage all day and have your hair cut," the girl explained to me.
"I have my hair cut all day?" I asked, but no. A large part of it seems to just be sitting.
If this is all sounding sort of vague and hard to picture then you're right there with me. After my lunch, I went to the room number on the flyer, where four British people -- all of them much better looking than me -- were sort of hovering around, mostly ignoring the five or six model girls who came and went while I was there.
"Have a seat," a woman said when I walked in. I sat. She immediately pulled out my ponytail and started spreading my hair over my shoulders.
"Um...what's this all about, exactly?" I said. Her answer was to bring a much frownier British man over, who also fondled my hair without meeting my eyes. I was starting to worry. Were these the white slavers my mother never warned me about?
After a third Brit had also touched my hair with alarming (but also kind of soothing) familiarity, they all stood back and looked at me.
"What could you do with it?" the woman asked the frowning guy, who answered her in, as far as I could tell, a kind of Cockney-accented growling. She nodded sagely.
"You realize this is all incredibly surreal, right?" I said loudly. Finally they all looked at me. The woman blinked.
"You mean because you're in a strange room and strangers are touching your hair," she said. Clearly it had not occurred to her before.
Actually, the surreal part came mostly from the models that kept coming and going. I wanted to point out that there was much better hair than mine on offer, but stayed mum because there was a chance I'd get paid for this.
They were all startled by my blue streak. It was shown to all the Brits as they entered and left the room. "Oh, I like it," they all said, with varying degrees of conviction. "It's so...interesting."
Finally, the frowning man suggested that, were I to be chosen, he would cut my hair into something "less teenage." They took my polaroid and my number and sent me off. I have this feeling, maybe from the way I kept looking at them warily, or from the way I finally shouted "HANDS OFF, FLESH-EATERS!" at them, that they are not planning to call.
I've now had two brushes with the fashion industry, and the consistent trend seems to be the people in charge ignoring the models. In both cases, I kept trying to converse, or at least get some kind of verbal reaction, but it was nearly impossible to get through. In both cases, the photographers or scouts or whoever would wander off in the middle of a sentence to take phone calls or joke with other photographers or do anything to emphasize that the model does not need to be taken seriously as a person. It's weird. I'm glad I'm a writer and not a piece of meat for a living. Still, if they want to pay me to give me a fabulous haircut, I'm not going to say no.
Posted by didofoot at 03:02 PM | Comments (4)
June 05, 2007
Please. Stop.
A few weeks ago, I was heading downtown to meet my dad. Zooming through the MUNI tunnels with my nose in a book, I finally noticed we were zooming faster than usual. In fact, "I can't stop," said the conductor apologetically -- and said again, with rising panic, as we whizzed through Civic Center and Powell, finally screeching to a stop in the tunnel just past Montgomery, where we all got out and walked back to the station.
Fast forward to today, when yet another bus whizzed merrily past me as I stood at the bus stop fruitlessly waving my handsome, man-sized hands. ("I can't stop!") Which caused me to be late for my appointment, which caused me to reschedule, which means tomorrow I'll be rushing from my meeting with a rough-and-tumble union organizer straight to my fancy fashion lunch for dogs. Which will require either a wardrobe more convertible than Barbie's or else machinations on the level of a French farce.
These are but two files from my cabinet of anecdotal evidence which, considered as a whole, proves that MUNI is ruining my life.
Very well, I shall know how to act.
Posted by didofoot at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2007
Clouds
I'm having this memory today, maybe triggered by the lowering skies, of the first time I went to Gene's house, back when we were kids. His mom made us lemonade and looked delighted to see me (a welcome I would have thought I'd wear out in thirteen-odd years, but no, bless her). Gene and I sat in the backyard and played nerd games and smouldered at each other in an adolescent way.
Afterwards, I walked home in my floaty flowered dress and passed an old man out torturing his lawn. "Hey, pretty girl," he called. "Where's the rain?" He pointed a trowel at the cloudy sky.
I smiled and shook my head. When you're fourteen and in love, you never do expect the rain to come.
Posted by didofoot at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)
