Long story short, go out with a friend and wind up hanging out with her friend and walking her home. From Lower Haight to the Tenderloin I might add. So I step it up and ask her out (quoth me "so, do you want to go out sometime?’). She says yes and actually seems like she meant it. I’m a tad excited- she’s cute, spunky, can drink like a fish, and is way funny. We e-mail. She says she’s busy and that I should try again later in the month. When it’s around the time she says she’ll be free, I e-mail her again to try and set a date. I don’t hear back from her.

A week goes by and still no word. Feeling slightly sympathetic to her earlier pleas of busy-ness, I still think it a tad rude, so I decide to get a bit ballic and send kind of a bitchy, you blew it babe e-mail (in a nice but kind of nice way, of course). A couple of hours later, I hear back from her.

In a voluminous e-mail she apologizes and details all the things that made her unable to respond. She’s been doing this, doing that, working here, working there. That was the short version. Then she tells me the long version. Seems she just broke up with someone who she lived with and is still dealing with it. And that they might get back together and she’s dealing with it all right now. And it was their anniversary a few days ago and she’s dealing with that too. Oh, the ex? Another girl.

Needless to say, I’m a little gobsmacked. Reading the entire e-mail left me pretty much speechless. Not exactly what I was expecting to happen.

Now, there’s pretty much two ways of looking at the whole situation. The first one, of course, is that I’m an idiot. The second one is the "Chasing Amy" Scenario. But either way you look at it, it’s all just one of those things that makes dating in this city so gosh darn interesting.

Now let’s start with the I’m an idiot option. She did mention that night that she writes lesbian porn. She also did say that part of the reason she was so busy is because she was seeing all these movies at the Gay/Lesbian Film Festival. It was also mentioned at some point that night that she used to live with another woman and not just as a roommate.

Okay, yes, those are all pretty good signs. But on the other hand, who doesn’t write lesbian porn? And in this city, everyone goes to one or two screenings of the Gay/Lesbian film festival. For some, it’s like wearing a Che Guerera t-shirt or saying you’re a member of the Green Party.

And as for the living with another woman? Lesbian phase. Hell, half the women in this city went through that phase at some point of their San Francisco experience. It’s totally so five minutes ago. In fact, it’s such a cliché now that in the very first episode of the "Real World Austin" the ho’ish castmember with daddy issues and the ho’ish castmember with self-esteem issues made out in the hot tub and the only reaction it elicited was nothing but a roll of the eye and a yawn. I know plenty of people whose plus one went through the phase and now they’re one big happy Breeder couple. I thought she was probably bi. Again, not that out of the ordinary. And if she was bi, that could only mean three things- that she really swings both ways, that she’s a total mess and has had a couple of bad relationships with guys so swings the other way, or she’s just acting out daddy issues and wants to show how wild and crazy she can be. Either way, two out of three are fine by me and the third (crazy) is workable.

Plus, it’s not like she said something like "I dig chicks and chicks only." You’d figure that after a night of conversation, there’d be some mention of it, or at least more than a passing reference in between stories of hooking up with guys. And just as women who are in a relationship should, as a courtesy at least, somehow slip a mention of their attachedness into a conversation, shouldn’t the same be true of lesbians around single guys? I’m not saying they should say it loud and proud (although if they want to, go nuts), but maybe just be all subtle like. Or more subtle than my idiot-self picked up on. When I even told my friend I asked her out on a date, my friend didn’t say anything to the affect that I was barking up the wrong tree. Turns out she thought she was bi too. And while my gaydar has been a bit off lately and it’s harder at times with gay women than gay men, I just didn’t pick anything up. She didn’t look lesbian or act lesbian but just kind of looked and acted, well, like any number of women in this city.

Oh, and one more thing. I found her Friendster profile online, or at least I think it’s her. In it she says she’s looking for a relationship-- with men. Ironically I didn’t ask out someone I met at a party last weekend because her Friendster profile mentioned she was living with her domestic partner (speaking of women who didn’t mention SO’s or orientation in the midst of a long conversation). And if you can’t believe what you read on the internet, what can you believe?

But what if I’m not an idiot? What if we’re in the Chasing Amy scenario? She did say yes when I asked her if she wanted to go out, although I’ll leave the Talmudic discussion of whether "go out" means "date" or "go out" means "hang out and talk about writing lesbian porn." And not only did she apologize for lack of e-mail, but she kind of asked for another chance and invited me out with her tomorrow night.

And will I? Let’s see, she just got out of a heavy relationship, a relationship with somebody who she met four years ago the Pride March. Someone who put her on the back of their motorcycle to ride with Dykes on Bikes. I’m a nice Jewish boy from the Main Line. Most of my friends are married with houses and with 2.5 kids. This is all way over my head. In terms of dating, it’s expert level. It’s like being an intermediate skier at best trying to ski a double black-diamond. With a cold. And a bad ankle. In a snow storm. And I’m not even going to get into the fact that in her like two-page response I found out way too much about her relationship, post-relationship sex life, her attempts at trying to get back together with the ex and well, way, WAY too much information. On the other hand, she was kind of cute.

Okay, now here comes the standard "not that there’s anything wrong with it" disclaimer. The crazy thing about all of this isn’t the lesbianism, or the bisexuality or dykes on bikes. It’s about asking some girl out, thinking you’ll maybe get a nice date out of it, only to be caught in the middle of some huge lesbian drama. It’s about thinking dinner and drinks and getting in response a story about being distraught because it was the four year anniversary of their meeting and not being able to ride with Dykes on Bikes made her cry all weekend. Between this and a few other similarly related events that have happened lately, it’s just basically been the cap of a crap month. To paraphrase Larry David, sometimes it’s better not to leave the house. Which is pretty much what I’m going to do for the next few months or so. It’s dangerous out there.

All I can say is thank God for TiVo.

You know what job I want? I want to be a reporter on the Natalee Holloway case (or whatever the hell her last name is). You can't tell me those guys are working more than a couple of hours a day. And if they are, I'm guessing it usually consists of taking cell phone calls by the resort pool. I wonder how hard it was to find people to take the case. Like some news editor went out into the offices and told a bunch of reporters that they had a choice between going to Iraq or Aruba, which one would they choose. It's not like there's any news happening in the rest of the world too.

I actually wondered that if they would have found Natalee's body last night, would MSFOXNN have gone with that story of Smirkboy's speech.

Speaking of Smirkboy, part of me is actually happy he won re-election. Why? Because payback's a bitch. All of a sudden, it seems like people are finally catching on to him.

Heard Bette Midler's "The Rose" on the shuttle ride home tonight. You know that song: "Some say Love, it is a River...." You know what? It's a pretty cool song if I don't say so myself-- much underrated and forgotten about. Or maybe it's just because it was the big makeout song at the Camp Tov Day camp Overnight.

I think in honor of the recent Supreme Court anti-downloading decision, I'll download it off Limewire later tonight.

Oh, I finally heard back from my new favorite credit card company. First of all, five days to replay to an e-mail? Great customer service there, especially when all I got was a form letter saying they'll look into it. Second of all, I finally got the bill. It came in pretty much a plaine white envelope with new title, header, or what they say in the biz as "call to action." Not even the damn name of the company.

In other words, I am not impressed. And not thrilled either.

You know what I've always wondered? Did Bryan Adams pick the year 1969 in "Summer of 69" just because he thought it would be funny to sing "me and my baby in 69!" or did the year '69 have special significance to him? Like he got his first guitar then or had his first girlfriend? Because it kind of cheapens the song to think that there's no nostalgia or meaning behind and that it's just one big huge Beavis joke.

Last night I went to a "dress as your favorite celebrity" party. Since I have a collection of about three costume’s that I rotate around depending on the need, I decided to go with my Star Trek red shirt and go as a Star Trek dude. Yeah, technically a Star Trek dude in a red shirt isn’t a celebrity (I don’t think James "Scotty" Doohan is a big enough celebrity to muster a costume) but the concept of a Star Trek red shirt is a celebrity in and of itself. It’s almost iconic and isn’t the whole point of dressing as a celebrity to dress as something iconic? Besides, it’s not like I wanted to put any effort into getting an outfit together.

The party goes on and I suddenly realize that there’s a problem with dressing up as a Star Trek person at a party. That is, of course, it’s way too easy to be seen as some uber-geek by everyone at the party. After all, when you’re at a party in which most of the people you either don’t know or don’t really know that well, you don’t want to be seen as the kind of guy who guys to conventions. And let’s face it, in Geek culture, Trekkies are the bottom of the barrel, the guys even Star War nerds beat up. Hell, Lord of the Rings nerds beat them up too.

I was doing fine for much of the evening but then while talking to a bunch of people somebody tried to figure out who I was. For whatever reason, they all somehow came to the conclusion that I was Sulu. Now, I could have just played along with the joke and said, "yep, I’m Sulu" and not come off as geeky, but, of course, I couldn’t. Because, as anyone knows, Sulu was a yellow shirt (Federation Officer) and not a Red Shirt. Hello?

Blew that cover.

Then, later on in the night, people started coming up to my shirt, pressing the Star Trek insignia, and saying things like "beam me up, Captain" thinking that the insignia was also the communicator. Once again, I could have played along with it, but, of course, I had to open my mouth. I mean, who isn’t aware of the fact that in the original Star Trek, they used communicators to communicate and it wasn’t until the "Next Generation" that the insignia’s also worked as communicators. Sheesh.

Guess who’s now known as the biggest geek on the kickball team?

Speaking of geeks, in a moment of impulse shopping, I ordered a kick-ass Buffy poster online. The site offered to send it framed, but it would have been another $80 to frame it. Considering I can get a cheap frame thing at Wahlgreen’s and considering it’s a poster for a defunct TV show, I said no to the frame. The thing shows up and I find out Wahlgreen’s doesn’t sell poster frames big enough for the poster I bought. So I checked out a frame store this afternoon and discovered that the cheapest frame I can get for it is over $100. Now what am I going to do? On the other hand, no kick-ass poster is worth $120. Especially when you’re a 37 year old single guy.

After months of putzing around, I finally got around to getting myself a massage. Let’s just say there’s nothing more disappointing than a bad massage. For whatever reason, I’ve been all stressed out lately, thus no sleeping. So what I needed more than anything was for the masseuse to go in there, get with the "power of Shiva compels you," and kick the crap out whatever stress is running around my body. Didn’t happen. For whatever reason, the masseuse took it away on me. It was more like she just invited my stress out for lunch and politely asked it to leave. I was able to get a nap out of it, but right now I just feel all oily and kind of wishing I had that $80 back.

It's one thing to have saggy breasts- at some point everyone does. It's quite another thing to wear a low cut outfit that let's everyone see how saggy they are. And it's a whole other thing when you also have tattoos on each saggy breast that does nothing more than draw everyone's attention to the saggy breasts. In other words, iyick. At least she didn't have those icky pockmarks you get from shooting to much smack like half the women on 16th & Mission.

Yep, I'm back. Sorry I was away.

By the way, my new credit card company? Hasn't e-mailed me back yet about my inability to pay my credit card. I'm sure the first time I'll hear from them is when they call to complain about the fact I haven't paid.

PS- I think my new Best Disc Ever is my brand new live Fu Manchu live double CD. Why Stoner rock didn't take over the world I'll never know. Sure as hell kicks the living crap out of all those ripoff 80's bands with "the" in the title that the kids are so into these days. The reason is fairly obvious. One, whenever somebody hits a chord, you can hear the amp go about as loud as possible without actually frying. And two, cowbell. Because what the world needs now is more cowbell.

I'm trying to do the conscientious thing and pay my credit card. Now that I'm working, I'm good like that. As I go to pay off my main card, I find out that the credit card company has been bought by another credit card company. For like the third time over the past couple of years I might add. I, of course, didn't know this because whenever I get mail in my mail box from a credit card company that doesn't look like a bill, I instantly throw it away.

How I found out about all of this is because I went to the old company's web site to pay my bill but got re-directed to another web site. I go to that Web site and find out that I have to register again in order to access my account. I do not want to register again only because I don't like the idea of having to give my credit card digits to yet another site. Considering my credit card apparently is being passed around like that girl Nikki from first floor who made her way through my dorm floor freshman year, I don't feel like it's my responsibility to enter that information again.

No problem, I'll just call the customer service number and do it over the phone. So I call the number on the back of my card and get told to call a new number. The voice on the other end of the phone? Not your typical voice mail voice, but your typical southern accent, all of which made it sound like one of the Admin's at the previous company left the message on the voice mail as everyone was cleaning out the offices during moving day. Call the new number. Another voice, the real kind of voice mail voice, tells me that they're receiving too many calls at this particular moment and so I should call back. Considering how cheap the web site looked, the voice on the original voice mail message, and this message, I am not impressed with this new company.

I call a few more times and finally get through and prompted to press "1" for English. Which I do. Nothing. The call is disconnected. Call again and the same thing happens, disconnected. Call again and again and again and keep on getting disconnected.

Ten minutes later, I finally get through and am told to give them my account number of ss# in order to access my account. I give them my credit card #. The voice mail voice on the other hand tells me they have no record of my information. Try my ss#. Same message. Try both numbers again and get the same response. Apparently, my new credit card company has absolutely no record of me. I press "0" in hopes I can get to a real person, but apparently, no real people actually work for them.

Okay, you want me to register online so I will. I go to the crappy-ass looking web site and once again enter my information. This time I'm told that I can't use my old account number, but have to use the account number for my new card. As in the new card I threw away because I thought it was junk mail, as would anyone else who gets a letter from some random credit card company they never heard of. The message says, however, that if there's a problem, I can call customer support and they'll help me. There is no number, however, given. So I click on the "customer support" link on the site and am taken to a page that just gives me an e-mail address.

Faced with no other options, I did what I had to do and sent them an e-mail. One that said in no specific terms what my problem is and that I needed their help to pay my off my credit card. Oh, and that if I was dead broke and hadn't eaten in months and was lost on some random island and the only way I could eat anything was to use their credit card, I still wouldn't. Because they fucking SUCK.

PS- in throwing the phone around my apartment in anger at the tenth or eleventh attempt to get past their voice mail system, I accidently tore a hole in my pants. Whoever the company is that now has my credit card, I hate you.

Here is not a good way to start the week:

You toss and turn all night with insomnia. Bad, read a book at 4:30 in the morning insomnia. At 6:30 you decide to get up and start going to work not because you have a lot to do, but because you’re tired of lying in bed trying to keep the mind from racing. So you get up and shower but still feel so out of it that you daze out in the shower and get out much later than normal. While eating breakfast, you decide to make a cup of coffee to bring with you on the train so you can at least wake up before getting to work. Right before you leave, you go pour yourself a cup only to discover that something’s not right with the coffee. Somehow, instead of putting the water where the water is supposed to go, you poured it where the coffee grinds go. Instead of the coffee getting brewed into the glass container, it brews inside the coffee maker, a thing you discover when you open the coffee maker up and all the brewed coffee explodes all over the kitchen sink. You take a look at the clock and realize that if you clean up the kitchen, you’ll miss the train so make a quick swipe and get ready to leave the door. But as you open the door, you get that rumbley, grumbley feeling in the stomach that tells you that something wicked this way comes. Take care of it now, you’ll miss the train and completely waste the decision to get up early. Take care of it later, it means praying through an hour long commute that you can hold out. You decide to risk it, a decision that means that before almost every stop, you wonder if there’s a bathroom in the station that you could run up and use in case you need to. You realize that if worst comes to worst, your screwed.

Luckily, you make it but are never so happy to get into the office.

And as you work through the day, suffering through yet another night of no sleep and way too much coffee, you find yourself facing the final indignity of them all- you’ve got that stupid Counting Crows "Round Here" song going through your head.

Sorry for the lack of postings, especially after such a weekend that was, but you know, there’s that missing blonde girl in Aruba and what are my concerns when there’s a missing blonde girl out there? Hell, what else in this world matters if there’s a missing blonde out there?

Anyways, all I can say about the weekend is that it’s funny how things work out. In your mind, you have it all perfectly planned out- drinks with one friend on Thursday, dinner and drinks with a huge group of people on Friday, then brunch and wine tasting on Saturday. It’s, as they say, all good. Except between the drinks on Thursday and way too many drinks on Friday, not to mention recurring insomnia and a crazy week at work, brunch on Saturday turns into a struggle and wine tasting problematic and just like that, your big crazy weekend culminates with watching Tivo’ed up "Buffy" and "Lost" on Saturday night.

Oh, I did see "Star Wars" again, this time for the second time, and it’s still good. Oh sure, the plot doesn’t quite hold up as well the second time and Annakin’s descent into badness doesn’t quite make as much sense, but whoo-whee, I do love that Gen. Grievious.

PS- random song I downloaded over the weekend: Jefferson Airplane’s "Find Your Way Back." Between that and the downloading of "Hell is For Children," it’s looking like I’m in an early 80’s kind of mood.

37. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be 37. And I don’t like it, not one bit. 37 is way too late thirties, way too old to even pretend I’m in my early 30’s or mid 30’s. Most 37 year olds are suburban bound with kids galore, SUV’s, and financial planners. I have none of those things. It’s especially disconcerting because I consider most of my 30’s to be a total and complete waste, a total wash. I wish I could knock about five to six years off my age, just say that that last five or so years didn’t really happen. Hell, most of the people I hang out with in a somewhat regular basis are between 28-32, it’s not like I’m much different from your standard, typical early thirty something.

The funny thing is that sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly ennui-istic, I get that feeling that nothing’s really changed over the past year. Which is kind of funny because, if you remember, at this point last year I was unemployed, broke, totally freaked out, and not particularly doing well at all. None whatsoever. A year later, three life changing type things have happened- I got a job, I got a writing gig, and I bought TiVo (which is the more important of those three things I’ll let you guess. On top of that, I went to Chile, got a foul ball at a baseball game (still one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me), and saw a Star Wars prequel that didn’t suck. In other words, I have no reason to be full of any sort of ennui. In fact, it should be the opposite. I love my job, make way more money than I’ve ever made before or thought I could ever possibly make, and can actually consider myself a writer. In other words, the thing I need to worry about isn’t that nothing has really changed but is this- I think I’ve peaked.

I had a strange craving for frozen pizza tonight. Yeah, I know, totally not healthy. And yeah, I know, totally not worth it considering I can afford to walk out my door and eat at a five star restaurant these days. But still, sometimes all you want out of life is some frozen pizza.

It’s become obvious over the past couple of days that I am now officially having a crappy month. Of course, this comes with the standard caveat in that I’ve had some pretty landmark crappy months before and this is in no ways, up there with those months. See comment about being able to afford going to a five-star restaurant. But still, I have all the signs of a crappy month going on- pissy mood, my back is all achey and my carpal tunnel is acting up, and my insomnia has gone from just getting up early to "I wonder what’s on at 4 in the morning." The good thing is that I’ve been so slammed at work lately that I haven’t been able to really dwell on the crappiness of the month but on the other hand, I’ve been slammed at work. Which is a whole other matter because I’m actually kind of digging it only because I’ve had a couple of slow months there and it’s kind of fun to be in a constant state of emergency. I am, however, not quite sure about the fact that I’m now involved in a project that involves people whose titles involve the words "Vice" and "President," not to mention "Director" or that I’m working on something that will very quickly be shown to the head of Super Mondo. Coming back from a rare lunch break only to discover a series of about ten e-mails of which you are the central point and to which various people who make way more money than me are saying that I have the answer to all their questions is kind of a weird feeling. So is the fact that I now have carte blanche to walk into a VP’s office and make him crack the whip somewhat.

Oh wait, where was I? Did you know that Snapple Lemonade and vodka make a pretty decent cocktail? Did you know that my new favorite random download is Ratt’s "Lay it Down?" Or that I’m pretty sure that the secret behind "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is whoever plays Larry’s wife and that she rocks? Or that I’m becoming a huge Spurs fan, or at least seriously rooting for them?

Okay, here’s some more random songs I have on my computer-

Dokken’s "Breaking the Chains"
Tears for Fears "Women in Chains"
Kermit the Frog "Rainbow Connection"
The Go-Go’s "Head over Heels"
Rush "Subidvisions" (otherwise known as the song that caused immeasurable high school angst in that I did a drum solo to the song at a school dance only to realize that Sarah Sl------ was watching the whole time).
Eric Cartman "Come Sail Away"
Prince "Raspberry Beret"
Montell Jordan "This is How We Do It" (and you can’t tell me this song doesn’t f-ing rock)
Mary J. Blige- "No More Drama"

And the Pentultimate:
Pat Benatar "Shadows of the Night."

Oh well, whatever. Good night Gracie

Because of the glories of internet file sharing, one can download totally random songs that one hasn't heard in a long time but always liked despite it all. I have a lot of them, which is probably why I'm one of those bad people who stopped buying CDs and just downloads more and more music. And the point of this blurb? Tonight's Totally Random Song that I Rocked Out To? Zebra's "Whose Behind the Door."

A song by a band I always thought had Zep potential. And boy, was I wrong about that.

Last week, some 12 year old kid was killed when he was attacked and munched on by the families two pit bull dogs. Attendant hand wringing and cries of tragedy soon commenced, with lots of debate about whether pit bulls should be legal or not. The story is sad and awful and all that but I don't feel that sorry for the family. After all, in a strict Darwinian sense, what happened wasn't as much of a case of tragedy but of being a dumbass (dumbassosity?). Everyone knows pit bulls can be dangerous and they had two. They then left the kid alone with them for several hours and bad things happened. Quelle suprise. Would everyone, especially the virulently anti-gun people, be as upset if, say, the father brought home two semi-automatic weapons, left them lying around the house, only to have the kid accidently blow himself up?

But wait, the story gets better. The mother called the Chronicle to say that hours before the kid was munched upon, the mother told the kid to go into the basement and stay there until she came back. Because the dogs were acting up.

"I put him down there, with a shovel on the door,'' said Faibish, who had left the boy alone with the dogs on June 3 to run some errands. "He had a bunch of food. And I told him, 'Stay down there until I come back.' Typical Nicky, he wouldn't listen to me.''

So the dogs are acting up and she told the kid to hide in the basement? Wouldn't it of made more sense to, oh, I don't know, lock the dogs up in the basement? Nothing to see here, move along. She then told the writer that she was upset because people were criticizing her for what happened. Don't you see, she was a good parent? She saw the dogs were acting up and she knew they were dangerous, so she locked the kid in the basement and went off. What? She left him with some food. She also called to say that she wanted to say that pit bulls are getting a bad rap as a breed and wanted to defend them . Which is true if you think about it, I know plenty of people with poodles and when one of them either gets a bit peevish or horny, the mother has to send the kids to the apartment safe house.

The other thing about pit bulls is that they're a pretty popular breed. You would think that with all the bad press that they get that they wouldn't be such a popular breed and that, say, a mother with a small child wouldn't want to have one. But that's not the case- it's kind of cool to have one. Why? Because they've been to known to kill people. That makes them dangerous- edgy even. Thus they're cool. If they did nothing but lie in the field all day and sniff dandelions, they wouldn't be popular. All of which is another reason I'm not that teary when a pit bull attacks their owner (neighbors, on the other hand....). You got the damn dog because they're known for being a killer so what the hell did you expect?

And yes, they can be totally sweet dogs. I know. I even know from first hand experience in that I once helped out in a pit bull rescue (poor, sweet Scraps). I also know that they have jaws that are so strong that when they clamp onto something, they hold on for so tight that you could up the ball or rag that they're holding onto, and swing them around. Strong jaws and sharp teeth mean that when they bite, bad things could happen. Even if they don't intend it that way. Which is why, say, Retrievers make such good pets- they're jaws were bred so that they have a soft bite. Retrievers don't accidently kill small children. But you wouldn't want Junior to have a Retriever would you, because they're soft. They're not edgy. They don't kill things.

In other words, whatever.

Oh, and speaking of dogs, I was riding the 22 the other day when some lady gets on with some big retriever type mutt dog. For awhile there, dogs weren't aloud on buses, or they could but only if they were guard dogs. Because the dog lobby is pretty vocal here in SF, that's been slowly amended to allow other dogs on. But there were always stipulations- they had to be muzzled, they couldn't be too big, they could get on but only by paying a special fare. Somehow it's slowly turned into a policy of just let the damn dogs on.

Now this dog was well behaved. It didn't bark, didn't get all hyper, didn't do anything. She/he was from what I can tell a totally well behaved, sweet dog. The problem, though, was that it was also a big dog. With a big leash. And all of this on a crowded bus. What this meant, then, was that whenever somebody had to get off, they would have to somehow navigate not only over and around the dog, but over and around the dog's leash. This is never an easy feat on a crowded bus and when the person with the dog is strategically placed right by the doors and so people from both sides of the bus had to get around her and the dog.

I don't quite remember what brought this up, but last night as friends and I were out for drinks, we got into a debate in which we were trying to reason between two equally great things. As we were trying to work our way around the debate, somebody did an "a-ha" and jumped in with the name of a paradigm that described our Socratic debate- "Dark Side of the Moon" vs. "Wish You Were Here". The question, of course, is which great Pink Floyd album is better and if one can actually ascertain which one is better. Pretty much everyone agreed that while "Dark Side" is stronger song by song, "Wish You Were Here" has a resonance that "Dark Side" doesn't. Like the fact that the title track "Wish You Were Here" is maybe the best song Floyd ever did. Or there was my arguement, that while "Dark Side" is a better album, I'm more emotionally attached to "Wish You Were Here" because just hearing the first five or six notes to the album instantly brings back warm fuzzy memories, usually involving a three chambered bong named Otis.

Then somebody threw the debate into a tizzy when they threw out the elephant in the room of the discussion- "The Wall." The person who posed the original question was immediately taken aback and proposed that "The Wall," with the exception of a few songs and the cool ass cartoons from the movie, is actually not a great album. This brought cries of blasphemy and impassioned pleas to it's pretanatural greatness. I, of course, argued that "the Wall" cannot be discussed in terms of the music and it's songs but it's affect, it's status not as a great album, but as a signifier for teen angst and the universal message of "everything sucks." After all, there was a point in everyone's existence when "The Wall" was more than a disc or a movie but a way of seeing the world. And there were instances, in High School and in college, where the mere mention of it brought immediate knowing glances and feelings of "right on." For instance, my high school had this kind of shed out by the practice fields that each senior class (or more like all the cool kids) traditionally would spraypaint all their names on and write things like "San Dimas High Rules." One day, a bunch of the stoner, rebel kids painted over all the names and slogans and made it look like the shed was part of "The Wall." It was painted all white with black lines signifying bricks. It was one of the few moments in my High School existence where, just for a moment, it seemed like the underdog, the uncool kids, had risen up against cool kids. Then again, in college, a friend moved into his dorm room only to discover that a previous occupant had painted the lyrics of "Comfortably Numb" on the wall. This wasn't seen as annoying, or obnoxious, but like the sayings of an Oracle, a prophet. Who cares if the entire album falls apart after "Comfortably Numb," only a few songs are really that memorable, and the story makes no sense? That album speaks.

And we all agreed that there was no right way of answering the question and so another round of whiskey shots was proferred.

Here's something that doesn't happen every day- tonight's yoga class consisted of me, another schlubby guy, and a hardcore lesbian with tattooes everywhere. Oh, and the teacher was a tranny. At one point, he/she/it helped me get into a pose and as he/she/it moved me around, my arm accidently brushed he/she/it's surgically altered breast.

And on another completely different topic, everytime I come out of BART, I always get harassed by these kids asking me to sign a petition that would stop the military from recruiting in high schools. That's a total dumbass idea. And not just because it's one of those dumbass ideas that occasionally makes us a laughingstock throughout the country. It's dumbass because I'm pretty sure it's a free country. Which means that people can choose to do anything they want. That means that if some kid wants to join the army and go fight in Iraq, they have every right to. Right? Isn't that the whole point of freedom of choice? If say the local crack ho' organization (or, as one would say in this city, crack sex worker organization) came to recruit kids and people tried to block them, the verysame people protesting the military would start screaming oppression and facism and all that. Just because somebody chooses to do something you don't agree with, doesn't mean they don't have a right to do it.

Right?

As Darth Vader would say, "Noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Okay, here’s the second part of the story, which isn’t nearly as good as the first part, mainly because it’s late and I drank half a bottle of wine while catching up on my Buffy episodes on Tivo. And away we go….

If the decision was to get my hair styled, the obvious question would be where? After all, there’s a thousand stylists in the naked city but where to go? It’s not like I’ve been in the loop on good salons to go to. And it’s not like I’m the kind of guy who would go up to another guy and say "hey, I like you’re hair. Where did you get it cut?" So, I did what anyone else would do in a situation like this- I went to Citysearch and looked it up online.

After fiddling around for a few minutes, I found a place. It looked cheap, had a good score, and was in the Castro. Because if you’re going to get a hair cut, you might as well go to the Castro. Where else would you go? It’s like if you want to drink good beer, you go to Belgium. Or if you want good chocolate, you go to Hershey’s. So I called and made an appointment.

I have to say however, that calling to make an appointment was not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. In fact, it was kind of scary. I don’t go to places that schedule appointments. Or with places that charge over $15 for a haircut. And while going to the Castro to get a haircut might make sense, it’s a little scary. It’s the Castro after all. I might want to get a bit Queer Eye with my haircut, but not that much Queer Eye. Getting a new haircut is kind of scary cause you never know if it’s going to work, let alone if it’s any good, until it’s done. It could look great in a book or when they’re cutting it, but as soon as you go home, ruh-oh. What if they cut too much off? What if they give me highlights? What if they give me a faux-hawk? What if they gel my hair? Once the hair is cut, there's no turning back.


When I got there, it was pretty much what I expected. It was tastefully done in the interior and all the stylists were either gay or crazily coiffed. As I looked around at not only the stylists but all the clientiele, then looked at my completely unruly hair, made much unrulier by your typical San Francisco wind, I wondered what everyone thought when I walked in. Like were they standing there going "Oh my God?" Did the stylist who would eventually have to cut my hair mutter a curse under her breath? Or did she think that my makeover would be so extreme she might as well call ABC to come over and film it for Extreme Makeover?

Finally, about half an hour after I got there and about twenty minutes past my scheduled appointment, the stylist who would eventually be my stylist finished up her previous appontment and came to get me. The stylist was a big girl, wearing leather pants, shoes with about a six inch platforms, and a died pink dreadlocked mohawk cut. Oh, this was such a good idea. When she introduced herself she handed me out a form to fill out, partly asking where I found out about the place, partly to ask me about my hair. What kind of barber makes you fill out a form? Is there a database that the info gets entered into? I fill it out as best as possible but stumble upon the question "what do you not like about your hair." Who likes their hair? Seriously. It’s one of the biggest existential questions out there- what do you not like about your hair? I took a writing class once and that question was used as a prompt and fifteen minutes later the entire class had about a page worth of kvetches about their hair. Nobody likes their hair.

I fill out the form, hand it on in, and go sit down. She then proceeds to ask me what I want with my hair. Like I know. I tell her the usual specific answer- I wanted it kind of shortened, kind of trimmed, but not too much and just make it nice. Which was the truth- I wanted to spice things up and wanted to keep things kind of long, but I had no idea what I wanted and wasn’t even sure anything could be done with my hair. She then asks me a bunch of questions about my hair, like how often I shampoo and what kind of shampoo I use and I notice that for pretty much every answer I give, she tells me I shouldn’t be doing like that and need to do something else instead. Who knew? And great- I’m totally failing hair style.

The cut begins and at this point, I am freaking, a total stress case. Luckily, however, the cut starts off with a shampoo and if there’s anything that can relax somebody, it’s having their head pulled back into a sink and having warm water run through their hair while somebody brushes it. Seriously. A couple of seconds into the shampoo, I start relaxing, getting into it. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Shampoo over, my stylist starts cutting away. She suggests a couple of shampoos I should use, rocks out to the 80’s music being blasted on the stereo, and I get into the groove of it all. After about twenty minutes, the cut is done. Now it’s just fixing things up. She pulls out a flobee looking contraption and blows off my still wet hair and then reaches towards the shelf to pull out a gob of styling gell. Now, I never use gell. Never ever. I hate how it feels, I hate having to put it in, and I have the whole artificiality of it. But what can I do? She lathers up, tells me how to do it, then slops it all over my hair and tells me I shouldn’t touch anything with a comb, especially once my hair dries.

And with that, my cut is done. She pulls out a mirror to show it to me and, well, I looked awful. I looked, well, I don’t even know how to describe it. My hair was partly curly, partly spiky, and partly lumpy. But of course, she’s sitting there holding the mirror and asking for my opinion, probably feeling all proud of herself for bringing order to the disorder of my hair and because I’m a nice guy, I naturally tell her it looks great. Cause I hate when they ask for your opinion on your hair when it’s done. Like anyone’s going to say "Jesus frickin’ Christ, I look like a poodle." I tell her it looks great, pay her off, buy some supplies (why not?) and head home. Completely and totally terrified that I’d run into somebody I know. I was supposed to maybe meet a friend at the Union Street Fair after the haircut but I told him it would depend on the cut. If it was good, I’d go out. If it was bad, I’d stay at home and hide. I was going to hide.

Funny thing about the cut, though- by the time I got home and it completely dried, it didn’t look half bad. It was a little curly, a little spiky, kind of like Justin Timberlake’s public hair look Definitely not me, but still kind of styling. And so I thought, hey I can do this. I can look like this. I’ll just follow my instructions and even hit the gel. I can be Queer Eye.

But then it hit me. I’m about to be 37. That’s kind of old. Way too old to be changing your look every two or three months. That’s what being a teenager is for. I mean, rock stars do it all the time but I’m not a rock star (well, in my own mind, I am, but that’s only in my mind). In fact, when it came down to it, I wanted to be normal again. My own normal, schlubby, frumpy self. Which in a way, is what doing makeovers teaches you, that all in all is all we are. Or something like that. But then, I did look good. And I was going to a party that night. So I decided to leave it as is for the night, to go out looking like an overweight, Jewish Justin Timberlake. Cause it’ll be fun. Like wearing a wig or a costume or something and for one night, one more night, be something I’m not.

And how well did it work? Once again, no girls would talk to me.

Long story short, everything is as it as was- my hair is short. Not spiky, not long, not nearly that curly. Just is how it is always is. But now I know that if I ever feel like living it up, I’m just some hair gel away from changing it all.

Wait, did I say I'd post the second part of the haircut story tonight? I meant tomorrow night. Too gosh darn tired.

I do have this, though- a blurb I wrote in SFist got linked to on Wonkette. Which in blogger terms is the equivelant of getting a story into the New York Times. Except without getting paid. Or, in other blogging terms, if bloggers are like one big huge High School clique (which the blogging universe is really like) with Anna Marie as the bell of the ball, one of the cool kids just said hi to me in the hallway.

I did something really crazy and grew my hair out. How crazy was it? I have kind of straight, kind of curly, kind of wavy Jewfro hair. The kind of hair that’s neither here nor there, just is. As a result, whenever it got to a certain length, it just became this wild, unruly mess.

I’ve only grown it out twice. Once was in high school when I decided to go with long hair as a way of giving a rebel yell and rebelling against your standard upper-middle class conformity. That didn’t work out as it was the wrong time (mid-80’s) in the wrong place (the Main Line) to rebel against conformity by actually doing something non-comformist. In other words, no girls would talk to me. Then I grew it out in college, back in my stoner days, when I wanted to wave my freak flag high. That didn’t work out because I realized I wasn’t that freaky. In other words, no girls would talk to me.

But years and years later, way past the age when you’re supposed to make huge changes in one’s appearance, I decided to grow it out again. For six months. And this time, I got into it. Accepted it’s unruliness and even embraced it. It was a new me. A more laid back me, a more edgier me, and considering that long hair is coming back in style, a hipper me. And I liked the new me. And as far as I knew everyone liked the new me as everyone kept on telling me that they loved the long hair (or so they said). But after six months, it got to be too much.

First off, long hair is a hassle. I always had short hair as much for it’s lack of hassle than for fashion purposes. You just wake up, brush the hair for a few seconds, then head on out. And you never have to worry about the wind. With long hair, it’s not quite so easy. I found myself spending a lot of time combing my hair. I even bought a second brush so I could brush my hair at work if I needed it. I bought conditioner. I used blow dryers. I worried about it. And don’t even get me started on the havoc the wind can cause, especially in a city that has wind as one of it’s trademarks.

The problem is that from day-to-day, even hour to hour, the hair would change. Sometimes it would look fine. Sometimes it would have strands sticking out everywhere and I’d be rocking the Albert Einstein look. Other times it would puff out to the side but have no poof up top and so I’d be rocking the Oompa Loompa look. And other times I’d look in the mirror only to realize I was rocking the Peter Brady look. And sometimes I’d look in the mirror and see the beginnings of a mullet looking back at me. That, of course, must not stand.

So this weekend I decided to make the bold move and get it lopped off. The only question was how. Because while I didn’t like it’s unruliness, I still kind of liked the long-hairness of it, the whole feeling of it being a new me. If I just went to the usual place and get the usual hair cut, all that six months of being a new me would go down the drain. Besides, one thing I always hated about making huge changes to one’s appearance is when you show up for school/work and everyone, and I mean everyone says the same thing: "Oh, you got your hair cut, didn’t you?" Like once is fine, but after the fifth or sixth time I’m over it.

Which left open a whole new option which I never thought I’d ever consider- getting it styled. Now, keep in mind I am so not the styled hair type. For most of my life, I’ve gotten the cheap and quick haircut. I like the cheap and quick haircut. Getting it styled? Well that’s scary. I’m just not the styling kind of guy. And what happens if the style is wrong? Like if I get it cut one way only to walk and discover it’s so totally wrong? It happened a couple of times. Once I went to a stylist and asked for the Alan Hunter hair cut. It lasted one day before my mother took me back to the place to get the mullet portion cut off. Another time my brother and I went to this barber who did some styling, an Italian guy, and at the end of a rather nice cut, he grabbed the hair dryer and proceeded to pouf out the hair and make it all Guido-ish. Needless to say, we couldn’t get home to depouf it fast enough….


we’ll continue the rest of this tomorrow as it’s late and I’m tired and I still have to catch up on my weekend Tivo, a thing made more heartbreaking because Tivo totally fucked up again and missed the first half of the two-part opener of Lost.

Yeah, I know, stay away from politics. But then I read this:

" Washington -- A military inquiry has found that U.S. guards or interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba kicked, stepped on and splashed urine on the Quran, in some cases intentionally and in others accidentally, the Pentagon said Friday.

The splashing of urine was among the cases described as inadvertent and was said to have occurred when a guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into a detainee's cell.

Give me a frickin' break. Seriously.

And you know what we have here? That is one magic piss.

The drivers who drive the shuttle I take to and from work like to blast their stereos while driving. In the morning, it's KISS, the classic soul station and in the afternoon, it's usually some soft rock crap. While both drivers crank it, I don't mind. First off, the morning ride is usually made a little better because the music is pretty good (they played Archie Bell's "Tighten Up" this morning and if that song doesn't make you tap your feet, I don't know what will). I also don't mind because I'm happy the shuttle is there so if they want to crank the music to keep them on their toes and drive faster it's okay by me.

Friday afternoon as I was going home, some woman sitting behind me, a woman who doesn't normally take the shuttle leaned over to me and in a very loud voice said "Do you know if they have to play their music so loud? I forgot how loud it was." Okay, the music is a bit loud and it's soft rock crap (I think at that point it was a song by Chicago) but by the very point of her leaning over to engage me in a conversation about the loudness of the music, I am now brought in on her complaint about the music. So if the driver heard her, instead of it coming off as being dissed by just her, I am now dissing by association. I do not want to diss the driver. I might need the driver at some point to wait a bit longer to pick me up, for instance. But it's too late.

I have noticed, however, that ever since then, the music has been played at a much lower volume.

I've had the same property management company since I moved into my place but three months ago, it changed. So I now have a new one with a new name, address, phone number, etc. I haven't entered the name and adress of the new company into my address book but I'm not worried about it I've put all the information on a piece of paper in a place where I always, and I mean always, see it. So I go pay this month's rent and naturally, can't find that piece of paper, the same one I see almost every other day.

After a bit of detective work, I finally figure it all out thanks to the magic of online banking and Google. I put the envelope together and go get a stamp from my large collection of stamps that I've been accumulating and to which I also have put in a place that I see every day. They're not there either. Can't find the stamps.