September 30, 2003

Dear X

I love finding discarded notes on the street. They're usually very personal, yet anonymous, and there's something heartbreaking about their being abandoned on the filthy pavement and stepped on by strangers. Tonight I found this one, written on the back of a flyer for a spoken word variety show called Writers With Drinks, on the sidewalk at Haight and Fillmore:

Dear X

I hope this finds you well. I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to hang out with you more in PDX. I suppose I had a lot of anxiety about leaving. When I first got here I almost lost my shit. Everything seemed so close and there were so many people and didn't know why the fuck I was here. Now I've kind of relapsed into city mode. I got a new cog today because the hills have been kicking my ass with the 48 x 17. So I kicked up to a 19 and it's a little smoother on the ups. Drivers are pretty good, which helps when cutting through traffic. It'll take some getting used to though.

This is definitely a strange city. Being on a--

It ends there. Someone here in the Lower Haight is recently transplanted from Portland, zipping through SF traffic on a newly-upgraded bicycle, and feeling a little uprooted and lost. But he (the handwriting is masculine) has a friend, "X". And he's already learning to slice through the claustrophobic closeness with the slender profile of a bicycle. I'll wonder about him tomorrow as I'm pedalling downtown, gliding along with other anonymous cyclists, all like a school of fish choreographed to avoid being crushed.

September 30, 2003

Tyrannosaurus Alert

This sign is posted outside an apartment building on Noe Street. The text below the picture reads as follows:

Tyrannosaurus Alert Status

This week: GREEN Alert

A mature, horned male has been involved in several recent incidents which have occured [sic] in the Duboce Triangle. Attacks have occured [sic] after 2am. Single intoxicated males walking around and around and around the blocks of Noe, 15th, and Henry Streets (for unclear reasons) are advised by the SFCTC (San Francisco Center for Tyrannosaurus Control) to stay safe.

Warning: status will switch to red alert in the Duboce Triangle sometime in late October when egg clutches hatch, and parents are feeding hungry nestlings.

It took me a few weeks to get around to photographing this sign. When I first spotted it, the sign warned that T-Rex was displeased by the recent Muni fare hike, and neighbors were advised pacify him by refusing to pay the extra 25 cents.

Now apparently the dinosaur has learned to accept the new $1.25 fare and is instead addressing the problem of drunken single men who walk "around and around and around". Kudos to the T-Rex for educating the public about this insidious new menace!

Is T-Rex the new Frank Chiu?

September 28, 2003

That's Not Your Baby

Discussing racially offensive humor, one friend told the following joke:

A maternity ward accidentally mixes up three newborn babies. They inform the three couples: a Georgian couple, an Armenian couple, and an African couple.

"We're very sorry about the mixup," says the nurse. She shows them the three babies and asks the mothers to choose.

The Georgian woman points at the black baby and says, "That's the baby I want."

"But Ma'am," says the nurse, "you know that's not your baby."

"Yes, but at least it's not Armenian!"

The point of debate was whether this joke insults both Africans and Armenians, or just Armenians.

One opinion was the joke aims to insult Armenians by ranking them below Africans, because Armenians might consider Africans inferior. The Georgians think they're better than both.

Another was that the joke aims to insult Armenians by implying that a baby who's obviously not one's own is better than always wondering whether your baby might be--*facepucker*--Armenian. For the baby's black skin, one can substitute some other distinguishing characteristic, such as an epicanthic fold or wacky hair.

It's a funny joke, at any rate. For Georgians, Armenians, and Africans, substitute emacs, vi, and pico users. By the way, my friend Aram is Armenian, and he's going to kick your ass. He's straight outta Oaktown, yo.

September 28, 2003

Stevie Brown's Redwood Wedding

Stevie is a good pal from my days at UC Berkeley. I had a tiny studio in the El Granada Building, across the street from Sproul Plaza. As an English major, I spent most of my time at home, reading and writing until midnight to keep up. Stevie often stopped by after class, sometimes with fun friends in tow, to distract me from my homework. As I recall, he had a fondness for Mills chicks.

Yesterday, Stevie married the lovely and well-travelled Jess at the Mendocino Woodlands. Their friends and family travelled from New York, Toronto, Chicago, Austin, Southern California, and the Bay Area. We all slept in comfy cabins and enjoyed food by a matronly French-speaking lady, including unforgettable cream puffs dipped in chocolate sauce.

I'm thinking about those cream puffs right now, and salivating like a Basset Hound. Mmm, creamy pastry... and drippy chocolate....

The bride generously allowed the female attendants to choose their own gowns, limited by a few specifications, chiefly that the color be exactly one of five lovely shades of blue. Rather than subject myself to the frustration of shopping for just the right dress, I bought a few yards of fluid blue lycra and made my own. If I say so myself, it turned out beautifully and I had fun wearing it. Of course, nobody was more stunning than the bride in her hand-beaded fairy princess gown.

Among the non-traditional elements of the wedding was a Ghanaian palm wine ceremony. The groom takes a sip of palm wine. The bride then closes her eyes, and the groom hides. The bride must find him in order to claim her sip of the palm wine. This part took a little while. Palm wine is actually pretty yummy, tasting like melon juice, though the bride assured me that this was unusually palatable palm wine and that the real stuff tastes like ass.

The bride and groom chose their new surname from a hat. As dictated by chance, they're taking the bride's name--Brown. This turns Stevie Collins into Stevie Collins Brown. If you say it blaxploitation-style, "Stevie Brown" sounds like an African-American woman with a huge 'fro and a gun.

Pictures will be up later!

September 24, 2003

Introducing New Lemurama

My old site was stale, so here's a spiffy new one! Have I mentioned lately how much I like lemurs? Except, I can't stand that lemur puppet on the PBS show "Zoboomafoo", the one that says, "leap, leap, leap...". Like Zoboo, the creature above is a Verreaux's sifaka, a species famous for brief spurts of very silly bipedal locomotion, the only lower primate that can "walk" upright. It's one of the few beings that's as dorky as I am!

Thanks to Oscar for creating these Netflix plugins for Movable Type! Now my fellow cinephiles can scrutinize my queue and shake their heads at my taste in films. Oscar's willingness to waste time helping me achieve my foolish blog-dream is a credit to the psychiatric profession and the State of Connecticut.

September 21, 2003

On The Road Association

At my hideyhole in the mountains, we have a road association to govern the maintenance of our private dirt roads. Our road association dues pay for yearly grading, repairs, and snow-plowing. There are 41 parcels in our road association, each one 20-30 acres, all arrayed around the peak of our mountain. Some parcels have only one part-time resident, while others support multiple extended families year-round.

Yesterday was the annual meeting of the road association. Mainly we re-elected our officers (and I got voted in as a trustee), ratified the changes to the bylaws that were voted on last year, then rehashed the problem of getting an electric gate approved and funded. It's well nigh impossible to launch any such project, since it requires approval by 2/3 of the association members, most of whom are reclusive paranoiacs who'd rather skin a skunk than participate in neighborhood politics. Adjacent neighborhoods report fewer incidents of poaching or burglary after installing their own gates.

After the meeting came the potluck barbecue and socializing. Popular topics included cantankerous neighbors, drug raids, spring boxes, water pumps, cisterns, propane appliances, hunting, good dogs and bad dogs, general homesteading, and the quality of this year's harvest. To illustrate the latter topic, one neighbor brought a foot-long specimen for everyone to admire. We all went home, stuffed and happy, for siestas.

Today on my way down the mountain, I passed a dead fawn, probably hit by a car. Four vultures, looking magnificently creepy, were gorging on its carcass. The fawn's head and hindquarters were intact, while its midsection had been picked down to the ribcage and spine. The birds hefted themselves aloft as I passed, then set themselves back down to hunker over the fawn.

I must start carrying my camera more so I can illustrate this blog.

September 11, 2003

My New Sewing Technique is Unstoppable

After several weeks of searching on Craigslist, I am now the proud owner of a fine used serger. Since I make a lot of my own clothes, it'll be great to be able to make them with tidy, professional-style seams and hems instead of ragged ones. But though the serger comes with a manual, a video, and a huge binder full of advanced notes, I'm sure I'll need a class to learn how to operate it proficiently.

It was refreshing to meet the man who sold me the serger--a bassoonist with the SF Opera and the SF Ballet, and a gourmand. He sews his own formal shirts for performances, and sewed his own tents for his periodic mushroom-hunting expeditions. He spent at least a half-hour gently explaining this complicated machine and giving me tips that aren't in the manual.

Everywhere I went today, people were talking about where they were two years ago. Where was I? My coworkers and I were told that the company would understand if we didn't come to work that day. My pal Renee picked me up and we hit one of the local Irish pubs for fish and chips, therapeutic cider, and slack-jawed TV-news-ogling. I went to work the next day, but downtown was still all but deserted, and everyone was behaving half-hysterically. The day after that, I didn't even bother leaving the house; I curled up in the poof chair with Sasha and slept all day.

September 10, 2003

Flash Mob #4: The Paparazzi

Today I attended my first flash mob event, and boy was that five minutes of hella fun!

I, Lamont, and about a hundred other folks loitered casually at the cable car turnabout at California and Market, next to one of the shafts leading to the Embarcadero BART station. Some had cameras, while others, like me, had paper and pencil.

At exactly 6:22pm, we turned into paparazzi and swarmed the top of the BART shaft. Cameras flashing, jumping up and down, we mobbed everyone who emerged from the shaft.

"Ooooh, ooooh! Can I have your autograph? Please?? Oh wow, thank you, I'll treasure it! I have all of your albums! I love your movies! I LOVE YOU!" Ordinary commuters were greeted like gods, embraced and petted and praised. Most grinned delightedly, posed, and signed autographs. One pair of middle-aged ladies indifferently pushed past the ecstatic mob. Two of the mobsters cheated by descending the shaft and then ascending to be photographed and fondled.

I scored three autographs and jostled lots of groovy people. In fact, I'd say the jostling was most of the fun, along with the infectious simultaneous smiles of a hundred people. Who knew a mob mentality could be so friendly?

At exactly 6:29, a murmur suddenly spread: "Run away... run away...." Folks scurried every which way and the mob evaporated. As Lamont and I nonchalantly exited the scene, a cab driver pulled up and asked what all the fuss had been. "A bunch of celebrities were coming out of BART," explained Lamont, sticking to the script. The cab driver looked just like Woody Harrelson.

September 9, 2003

The Color of Monkey

After decades of ugly-ass army-green banknotes, the US is finally getting new 20-dollar bills featuring... color! Not bad, but it's still pretty anemic compared to many banknotes from abroad. It turns out that old US banknotes also featured colorful illustrations, and somewhere along the way we went monochomatic. Money can be art--it can even be sexy!

September 8, 2003

Now with Vitamin Who

My brains are juicy and nourishing. I might occasionally emit a tasty thought in this brand new weblog. Watch this space!