November 29, 2004

Christmas Kittens

Macy's is very, very clever. I'm sure the whole retail industry is anxious to goose consumer spending this Christmas, what with the prolonged war, the traumatic election, and the rickety economy. They'll stop at nothing to loosen our reluctant wallets. They'll even exploit baby animals!

I heard that, this year, the windows at Macy's are festooned with live kittens. How low is that? No one can resist kittens! So I tucked my camera into Magma Lou's basket and pedalled over there. Sure enough, there are kittens, and they're magnetic. People were crossing the street just to gawk at the kittens, all tumbling playfully or dozing, couched in adorable miniature anthropomorphic scenes: a boudoir, a library, a café.

And of course, an SPCA volunteer was patrolling the corner. You're going to give money to the Christmas kittens, aren't you? You don't hate kittens, and Christmas, and freedom—do you? Patriotic and manipulable citizen that I am, I gave him ten bucks. For the Christmas kittens.

November 25, 2004

Dan The Automator

I hear about Dan The Automator all the time. He's very popular with the "kids these days" in SF. So I went with Ert and her friend Eric to see him at Club Milk tonight, and to get my dance on. On the crowded, red-lit dance floor, I decided that I don't care about Dan The Automator. I did enjoy his opener, DJ Ted Shred. I thought my head would pop off when he mixed Neil Diamond's "Cracklin Rosie" with Tone Loc's "Wild Thing". Does that make me officially old, bouncing around to music that's 20 years old? Anyway, here is a photo of DJ Ted Shred with famous local pimp Fillmore Slim.

November 24, 2004

Victoria Fish Turturro

Hilda has been in labor, on and off, for two days now. Everybody is twiddling their thumbs while hippie midwives clash with whitejacketed doctors over how best to expedite this birth. I receive periodic text messages from Colby providing status reports. It may all end in a C-section later today. Or tomorrow. No one knows!

Meanwhile, Colby's cat is temporarily lodged at my apartment so that she's not underfoot. Her name is Victoria Fish Turturro. She's petite, plush, and does not like other cats, especially large male cats. Though she has lived with Sasha before, she consistently warns him away with toothy hisses, and occasionally takes a swing at his face. He's unimpressed and often responds by simply turning his back to her. Such an exchange had just taken place when I got this rare picture of the two of them sharing the comfy guest bed.

A moment later, Fish abandoned the bed in disgust and Sasha took over her prime spot on the crumpled duvet. I suspect this was his secret plan all along.

November 22, 2004

1966 Ford Ranch Wagon

My life is better since I broke my last car and subsequently sold it. I don't wake up, suddenly, before sunrise, desperately trying to remember whether the streetsweeper is coming this morning. I don't play games of denial about my stack of parking tickets. I don't pay for insurance or wretched gasoline. I don't eternally orbit the four square blocks around my destination, craning my neck in hopes of spotting a rare parking space. When I want to leave town, I rent a car that is brand new, with a bumpin' stereo and absolutely no mechanical problems. I have no car-related stress, and very low transportation expenses.

But recently I've started obsessing about this car in my neighborhood. It's always parked near Church and Hermann, where I often pass by. It's a 1966 Ford Ranch Wagon. It's light blue. It's an automatic (I still don't know how to drive a stick). It's capacious. It could easily be pimped with a custom paint job. And now it's for sale.

I really don't need a car. I just want to go hiking on weekends and maybe visit Costco once in a while. I could join City Carshare. But this car has soul.

What should I do? I took an informal poll on chat. To summarize, the girls all think it's hot, and the boys all think it's a piece of shit that would give me no end of trouble. Except for Zach, who urges me to buy it and trick it out; but he's heavily medicated, so we take his ravings with a grain of salt.

I'm not going to buy that car. I'm not going to buy that car. I'm gonna buy that car! No wait, I mean I'm not going to buy that car. Not.

November 21, 2004

Joe Frank, Live

Joe Frank performed live at the Great American Music Hall tonight. He hasn't been on the radio in about two years now; the stage is his new medium. Joe now combines his spoken performance with video sequences (starring himself) and short interludes featuring a hornplayer and a hot chick performing an interpretive dance. I thought the dancing was sophomoric and dull, but it did provide opportunities for Joe to leer craggily, which we enjoy. The video added a new dimension to the show; I hope we'll see some standalone Joe Frank movies making their way into the film noir world.

The show was great, and it reassured Renee and I that Joe's career is still on an upward trajectory, perhaps more now than before. In fact, he looked pretty happy for a man who writes so darkly; he even cracked a few smiles. Perhaps sitting alone in a radio studio didn't suit him as well as this new format does. Now his audience can engage with him. He knows instantly when he's hit a nerve.

Did you know that Joe once wrote and performed some radio commercials for Saturn? They're cynical and surreal. It's amazing that a major corporation ever aired such weirdness. Fortunately, the commercials are archived here for our listening pleasure. "Haircut" and "Horse" are my favorite ones.

November 11, 2004

Cleaning House

Can you believe it can take three years to finalize a perfectly simple, uncontested divorce? The whole story is complicated and very tiresome to tell. Its moral is that you should always make a prenuptual agreement. I don't care if your betrothed is your divinely ordained soulmate and you both have sublime eternal love shining out of your asses. You must make a prenuptual agreement anyway.

Anyhow. That's all finished as of last Friday. Suddenly the past has melted away, and the future feels fresh again!

On Saturday, Ert and I took a semi-spontaneous road trip to LA to attend a party for our pal Zach and his charming fiancee Kristy. The drive was easy, our host was gracious, and their pals are fun. Zach looks very well considering he recently broke his back! He's walking around and everything, with a brace and a curmudgeon-style cane. The next day, we got to see Sonic and Frank in Ventura, then enjoyed the California coastal scenery on a leisurely drive up Highway 101.

Since then, I've been cleaning house: shaking off my malaise, reforming my diet, organizing my closet, paying off debts, making decisions and plans, and feeling free. Suddenly, I've almost got my shit together! Amazing.

And guess what? Any day now, I'm going to be a godmother! Colby and Hilda must love me very much to have given me that gift. I can hardly wait to meet this creature. Its sex is unknown, but it will have a long, fierce name and an exotic look. It will be very, very smart. People will dress it funny until it's old enough to get the joke. It's so exciting!

November 5, 2004

Incident at Loch Ness

Werner Herzog has a better sense of humor than I thought. Incident at Loch Ness is a Christopher Guest/Blair Witch Project-style mockumentary. I got all excited, first because when I initially heard about this movie, it wasn't scheduled to screen in SF, and then because the theater promised that Herzog would be there in person!

Unfortunately, Werner Herzog is unable to be here tonight. Writer/director Zak Penn and cryptozoologist Michael Karnow will be here for Q&A....

The audience, briefly disgruntled, quickly cheered up as the movie hit its stride.

Cinematographer John Bailey is making a documentary about Herzog, who's making a documentary about the why people imagine the Loch Ness Monster, with Penn as his producer. The movie begins plausibly, but nobody is behaving quite naturally; they're clearly acting, and in no danger of Oscar nomination.

Then it just becomes silly: Penn makes everyone wear dorky "expedition uniforms" while on the boat, a Playboy model appears and announces she's the "sonar operator", and Herzog storms out in a fit of artistic indignation as an assistant delivers a pathetic remote-controlled fake Nessie. The whole farce offends the real Nessie, who sinks their boat and devours two crew members. Herzog, swimming for shore in a wetsuit, captures unprecedented underwater footage of the monster before losing consciousness.

Absurd! And hilarious to a theater half-full of cinema geeks on a Friday night. We were all pretty jolly by the time Penn and Karnow (now revealed to be a good pal of Penn's and not a crazy cryptozoologist) took the stage. Penn used his cellphone to relay some questions to Herzog, who was busy somewhere editing a film to meet an urgent deadline, and the audience seemed consoled about having been stood up. I learned from Penn and Karnow that people in Hollywood regularly get together with their pals and make dumb little films that hardly anyone will see, on the cheap and just for fun.