it's over. move to somnia.

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Houston: a multiperspective description

Annie (friend and fellow visitor): Everything looks unfinished and decrepit here. It's like Mexico. Something--an overpass, an offramp--is left sitting around, not being worked on for years, and by the time it's done, it already looks old.

Margaret (my aunt, a resident): The road construction everywhere around town mostly comes from two sources: the 2012 Olympic bid...

Annie: I wouldn't want the Olympics to show up here. This isn't the face I'd want America to present to the world. It's weird to think that I and the people who live here vote for the same President. I feel like I have nothing in common with people who live here.

Margaret: ...and what I call the Bubba Rail. [Pork, anyone?] It's going to go from the baseball stadium to the football stadium, even though the majority of people who would use it are coming in from west of the city. There are also some infrastructure improvements [sewer and fiberoptic cable, I think] going in.

Annie: The road and highway system here is crazy. You'll be driving along and the lane you're in will just end. No warning. Suddenly there's another car right next to you.

Margaret: It's a concrete jungle.

Annie: There are often no signs explaining upcoming exits--you're just expected to swerve across six lanes of traffic? Highway onramps are frequently just unmarked, and are dangerously short. And I've noticed that all the billboards advertise cars or beer.

Me: Or "gentleman's clubs." Houston is the only large city in the United States without zoning. Anything goes, so long as you can pay for it. That's why you'll see a 30-story apartment complex surrounded by single-family homes (as is the case across the street from my grandmother's old house), or a playground amidst a group of industrial buildings. It's humid and hazy and spread out; you look around outside and it feels abandoned.

Annie: Why would anybody go outside in such disgusting weather? [And it's only April.] I don't think I ever need to come back here.

[This is the product of separate conversations, fused for continuity.]
peachy as always, Mike at 12:38 PM

 
South by South-Central

Yo yo yo...I'm off to H-town for a weddin', dogz. Peaceably assemble elsewhere for the weekend.
peachy as always, Mike at 12:36 PM

 
It's Not About Music, It's About Semantics...and Bondage

1. So, the other day I was listening to "They Might Be Giants" by They Might Be Giants (containing the lovely lyrics "They might be bald/ They might be snow/ They might be something else in the snow"), thinking about how, if that song had been on their eponymous album They Might Be Giants, it would be called the title track. But it's not, so it isn't anything. Except self-titled, I guess. (But a song?)

2. My favorite Madonna lyrics? So glad you asked! Number one is from "Don't Tell Me" (honestly, the attention paid to the songwriting on Music really paid off, despite the notable share of duds that litter the album): "Tell the bed not to lay/ Like the open mouth of a grave, yeah/ Not to stare up at me/ Like a calf down on its knees." It's great in that it's morbid enough to make me shudder, but achieves that sense without being too obvious.

Running a close second for my affection is a simple and direct line from "Human Nature": "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me." The remarkable thing about it, though, is that it comes from an otherwise horrible song. Really, the most redeeming aspect to the song is the hilarious and sexy (why can't she always use those actors?) video she made for it, which is still one of my favorites. Madonna (with black afro-cornrows) gently whipping a chihuahua. Multiethnics in leather and vinyl struggling with black rope. M and friends prancing on stilettos and playing what appears to be human tic-tac-toe (hey, humor me). Bondage as a party game! Whee!

peachy as always, Mike at 4:09 PM

 
Faux-bulosity

The Faux Queen Contest: it's probably the most cheeseball, most entertaining, most only-in-San-Francisco, most you-had-to-be-there event I've seen in a loooong time. A Faux Queen, you see, is a drag queen trapped in a woman's body...or more comprehensibly, a woman dressed like a man dressed like a woman. Simple! Fun! Ripe for outrageousness!

The thirteen contestants ran the gamut from Bride of Chucky to Southern hot stuff to just-too-cute.

-The first contestant, Ann Ziety (think about it) (but not too hard), came out wearing freak-show makeup and twirling batons while lip-synching "Miss World" by Hole. I was cheering like mad. It got better...

-Contestant #2, Anita Cocktail, was my early-on pick to win. (She did. Amid giant heaving sobs. No suspense for you!) Sporting a giant martini glass, styrofoam olives coming out of her bouffant, a dress with more olives implied all around, and a voice midway between a gravel crusher and Darth Vader, she had the attitude down ("I will kill you, bitch!"). She sang (Yes, sang! Damn good singing voice, too.) a medley of highly (boldface doesn't do it justice) salacious songs (something about licking and screwing and W-O-M-A-N), all the while demonstrating an agility of tongue that put Gene Simmons to shame. Really. She made over $100 in tips (for SF Sex Info and the Women's Community Center--oh yeah! it's a charity event, by the way!), whereas everyone else hovered in the high 20s.

-The contrast between Anita and the third contestant (no name necessary) was beyong marked. 'My talent is...I have breasts! And I can't lip sync!' Ugh. (She won second runner-up and I felt sick.)

Other highlights:

-One woman did a really cute comedy routine as an on-air personality for the Psychic Shopping Network. ("Here we have the all-seeing third eye, for 20-20-20 vision!") She put a lot of work into it, had the drag queen look down, and the props were great (especially the crystal ball-phone--too bad she couldn't accept a collect call from the afterlife). I tipped her, since no one else seemed to.

-Winner of the "Too Fish" award (i.e. last place, as the contestant who sadly presents herself most like a real woman) did a number from Cabaret. Whatever. The judges announced this was her second year straight winning it. Sheesh.

-Runner-up (and easy crowd-favorite) was the not-exactly-aptly-named Rat Bitch, a total goth girl who came out on stage with two Beetlejuice-looking backup dancers carrying red candles. Black and purple clothes, white makeup with lips seemingly tied together. Damn good costumes. She stood there looking forlorn as some vaguely industrial music started...the tune changed (hey, that sounds oddly familiar...but I couldn't place it), and they put their candles down and started busting out. The vocal track began, and damned if RB didn't maintain her Siouxsie aspect all the way through Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now." Brought down the house, she did.

-The Judges' Award went to one of the two most bizarre performances of the evening (the other I had a personal connection to, as you'll see, dear reader). I forget the poor dear's name, but she definitely has a career in avant-garde art out there. The song was a Dolly Parton number, I think. (Dolly or Tammy or another of those underrated country goddesses who seemed to dominate the evening--Windy Plains, last year's winner, also did a couple of performances that night, one to a rousing patriotic country hymn called "United States of America" accompanied by two gayboys in vaguely Boy-Scout-looking attire, waving big American flags.) ...the gist was "it's great that feminists are making waves in the cities, but I'm a country girl looking after a couple of kids and I've got another on the way." The stage was set up with a vaguely kitchen-setting: table, bottle of Jack Daniels, phone, etc. Our darling was wearing a long curly blond wig, bad make-up (of course), and a big fake pregnant belly under a sundress. OK, fine, cute, everything's going well...the song is starting to wind down, when suddenly she picks up a butcher's knife and performs a C-section on herself! Fake blood and placenta spill everywhere, she reaches in and grabs a plastic baby doll, and tosses it out to the crowd. Ho-ly-crap. (Note: when the awards are announced later, she is wearing a bikini and is very, very thin.

-Then there was Asian Princess. She must have known she was not going to win anything, because she definitely was the most laissez-faire about her act. She started out in a cowboy hat and some unmemorable outfit, dancing with a guy in a gorilla suit (also with cowboy hat), singing along with to Shania Twain's "Man, I Feel Like a Woman." So far, so blah. Then she leapt off the stage, gorilla following, and sauntered through the crowd right past me, turned on her heel, and made a beeline for the stage again, surreptitiously grabbing my pal Hao's wrist (somebody had to drive me there, kids--and why wouldn't an Asian Princess want an Asian Prince?), and reascending with him in tow. As she lassoed Hao and sat him down on a rockinghorse, the gorilla tied his hands behind him. They put a boa around his neck, smeared lipstick all over his face, and plopped a (de rigueur) cowboy hat on his head, while making him rock and (at one point) sing. I really wish I'd had my camera with me, instead of just a priceless memory and a blog to announce it to the world. Ah, well. I was laughing on the floor.

There were also a Macy Gray look-alike (no comment) and a hilarious bug-eyed baby-doll girl who performed Cyndi Lauper's "Hole in my Heart That Goes All the Way to China," filling it with increasingly more blooper sound-effects to which she reacted in terror. Beat-the-ground funny. But the real hero of the evening was the woman at the SFSI table who dumped condoms (male and famale!), lube, and lollies into my hands, proclaiming that the more I took, the less she had to carry home. Too kind.
peachy as always, Mike at 5:22 PM

 
Big Bumpin' Birthday Jamboree

Amber

So, Amber is great. She's equally the karaoke fiend I am. She and I and six of her mysterious other friends went down to the Music Box and screamed a bunch of stuff at one another (guess what: we can still sing along passably with "Turtle Power," despite not having heard it in over a decade). I learned that as much as "The Greatest Love of All" strikes me as having the same anthemic power as "I Will Survive" does for others, sometimes it's best to just abandon the song and provide a running dialogue for the two young lovers (because they're ALWAYS young lovers) in the video.

John

Forget the traditional party: John wanted to go climbing. So maybe I should have...gotten more rest...and eaten more heartily...and warmed up a little, before I went. Well, my first two runs were great. I practically sprinted up a couple of 5.9's (woo. hoo.), and then...I was done. Lying on the floor sure felt good.

Somehow managed to gather up enough energy for some inept Dance Dance Revolution...

and then off to Joe's Crab Shack! The kitchiest theme restaurant ever, complete with embarrassing costumes for the birthday boy (Hula John!) and dance performances by the waitstaff (to such surprisingly beat-heavy classics like "Wild Wild West"--the Will Smith version--no less). Oh, it was great.

Me

Thank you to everyone who came to my far-too-many celebrations: the office party, the rollicking karaoke night (mine was first!), the slapdash Chevys dinner, the surreal house party [mental note for next time: dinner party or afternoon barbecue--simpler, smaller, more relaxed], the movie, and the family fooding.

I was going to relay a bunch of crazy anecdotes, but...hey, wow! Four cakes! Random chick sharing my mike (and enduring a spanking) during "Stupid Girl"! Shirts and books! Martha Stewart's head! Dancing hat! Yeah, never mind.
peachy as always, Mike at 5:21 PM

 
ABC-TV and I

So I was cleaning my room last night, and turned on the TV for a little auditory distraction. Hey, look! It's Spin City! I used to love it, years ago. I loved Carter Heywood, the vanguard for desirable black gay characters on TV (now joined by Keith the Insuperable on Six Feet Under and Aneesa the Just-Being-Herself on The Real World).

I'm watching the opening credits, which have clearly changed since last I watched, and...There's Charlie Sheen and Heather Locklear! There's what's-his-name who plays Paul! The guy who plays Carter! The guy who plays Stewart! And Barry Bostwick (recently of "I'm Barry Bostwick!" "Who's Barry Bostwick?" fame)!

But wait. I distinctly remember at some point there being THREE other women on the cast. Visions of Heather Locklear billy-clubbing them and eating their hearts dance through my head...and then the insipid plot begins. Whatever.

All that matters is that toward the end of the show (as I'm hanging up my pants), the Heather/Caitlyn character is leaving the Charlie/Charlie character a fake message about her fake fantasy about some guy coming up to her to start speaking to her in Italian. Some guy standing five feet away comes up to her (hey! it's Heather Locklear!) and says "Hola, señorita." She gives him a disgusted look (granted, he's no Charlie Sheen, but Charlie's not my ideal drink--and this guy isn't pulling anything lecherous) and says "That was Spanish!" while turning to walk away.

OK, OK, OK, hold up there a second. Ha ha. Spanish is measurably sexier that Italian. There's just no contest. I've been studying Italian off and on for the past few months and while it definitely sounds like a better language for telling jokes in, that just doesn't count as sexy.

That's all for now...


Coming soon: my birthday! Amber's birthday! John's birthday! (which is today! hey, how about that!) Bridget Schwartz: comedic genius! and the Faux Queen Contest, where women stop being women and start being men...dressed as women! (I'll explain when I get to it)
peachy as always, Mike at 4:59 PM

 
To All My Devoted Fans...

[snicker] Oh, um, sorry for the inaction. Will write something redemptive soon.
peachy as always, Mike at 2:38 PM

 
Now Read This

Mmmm. televisionwithoutpity is my new favorite calorie-free indulgence. Snarky scene-by-scene recaps of all your favorite non-sitcom shows. So much content. So...good.

It's not TV, it's WWW.

peachy as always, Mike at 5:56 PM

 
Happy Birthday to Me!

and Colin Powell.

and Paula Cole.

but me, primarily.

peachy as always, Mike at 11:00 AM

 
Circularizing

So it appears that my pal John has seen fit to link here, seeing as I actually went and told him about the existence of this formerly invisible blog.

On the off chance that anyone reading this hasn't already seen what he has to say (and wants to), go on and check out his "rant." (Wow, that takes me back to 1999.) He actually hangs out his dirty laundry, crazy as it seems.
peachy as always, Mike at 1:49 PM

 
Dead Dog Philosophy

This is much too easy to make boring.

*The facts:

-My family had to put my dog, Barney, to sleep in January. He was suffering from all sorts of decrepitude. Born almost exactly ten years after me, he'd be 14 this month.

-He was a poodle, about a foot high (not the manliest kind of dog, eh?)... Still, my father nicknamed him King of the House, and proclaimed his bear-hunting abilities often.

-I have just finished reading Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, his account of traveling America in a camper with only his pet poodle to keep him company.

*Exploration:

I was struck by the personality (the nobility and emergent ferocity) Steinbeck endowed Charley with, and how closely it mirrored Dad's interactions with Barney. Dad had recommended the book to me a couple of years back, but reading it this past month had been an appropriate kind of mourning, I thought. I've lived away from home for the past five-and-a-half years, and it didn't shake me deeply to hear of his passing. I'm sure in some ways Dad may have modeled his interaction with Barney on Steinbeck's prose (One of Dad's favorite interpretations: "He's saying, 'Where's my share? I work hard to protect you! I'm the king!'"), but my perspective showed Steinbeck to be echoing my personal experience. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a good epitaph.

It's as if my friend is unbound by time, safely in print. Will my memories cross with what I read? Perhaps not; we never really took Barney out of town except to go up to the mountains. I doubt the account of Charley snarling at bears (!) in Yellowstone or blocking Steinbeck's entrance into Canada will confuse me too much, but I do see him beatified in my mind now.

Last week in my improv comedy class, the instructor asked for a couple of personal stories we were willing to share and let the rest of the class act out. "It can be very emotional," she cautioned. Nevertheless, in between Buddy's attempt to cut a friend's hair in grade school ("Just like my dad, who was a barber") and Rick's episode being locked out of a hotel room naked ("And then a busload of Rastafarians came in and I was trying to hide behind a palm and one of them shouted, 'Hey, mon! Thees guy here got no clothes on!'..."), I told a story about Barney.

I was maybe twelve. I wanted to take him for a walk but couldn't find his leash, so I tied him up with dental floss. Kids do these things. No big surprise that he got away...but he dashed into the street, directly in the path of a pickup truck or van or something...I'm hazy on it. I saw him go down underneath, and his body rolled on the ground below. Miraculously, he got up and tore off screeching toward our house, about a mile away. You bet I ran my ass off trying to get there after him.

I got home, yelling "IS HE OK? WHERE IS HE?" at my family.
"Michael, you're white as a sheet!"
"WHERE'S BARNEY?"
"What? What's wrong?"
He was in the backyard somehow, nursing his wounds.

I tried to explain that he'd lived another ten or so years, it was OK. Still, it took a few minutes before anyone would volunteer to act it out. They were horrified. But so it went. Their staging was all right, but didn't really bring any new dimension to the memory.

*Questions:

-Does print engage the imagination more than the stage? Or was it that the staging is based on my (apparently riveting) telling of the event? Or that I had no preconceived impression of the print stories?

-In telling that anecdote to my class, did I bring Barney back to life in a way (for my classmates, who never knew him)? Is that any different from how the book I read brought Charley and Steinbeck to life for me, although they are both long dead? Does it matter that Steinbeck was both narrator and character?

-Did seeing my dog "die" early in his life make it easier to deal with his actual passing? Or was it just the distance inherent in living away for so long?

-Has watching Six Feet Under gotten to my head?
peachy as always, Mike at 5:27 PM

 
Questions, Questions

Q. No, really, what is that large gray area on the right side of the screen?
A. It's a metaphor.
peachy as always, Mike at 1:17 PM

 
No More Chanting! No More Chanting!

Every once in a while San Francisco spectacularly reasserts just what it is that makes her such a draw in the first place.

*12:15. I arrive at Justin Herman Plaza, where Market just about (but not quite) meets the Embarcadero. The revelers are already there, marching in a circle and beating drums. Dressed like clowns and clubbers and carrying signs with various types of nonsense ("I LIKE HALVAH!" "He's always never not been there!") scrawled across them, the First Church of the Last Laugh looks like a PG-rated version of San Francisco's famous Halloween. Kids running around in frightwigs and crazy pants further the impression. They're surrounded by plainslothes bystanders. It's a little too voyeuristic.

But this is my first time witnessing the annual St. Stupid's Day Parade, and I have no idea what's going to happen. So far, it seems a lot more orderly than its autumnal counterpart.

*12:20. The parade begins. Young women (my age, probably) wearing angel wings skip around and sprinkle glitter, while pretty much everyone else who isn't playing some sort of solipsistic character is sticking dots on one another. I am handed a sheet of yellows and commanded to send them around. I do as I'm told.

*12:25. Bishop Joey--the ringleader of all this stupidity--stops the crowd and starts talking on his megaphone. I'm in a bad position to hear, but from the crowd's reaction he's pretty funny. Old lottery tickets are waved around. I find myself wanting one, but I feel silly enough being there in officewear.

*12:30. We're in the Financial District, at the Tomb of Stupid. I have no idea what the thing is. Perhaps a utility shed. Somebody knocks three times: no answer, just like the last 23 years. The Bishop asks for a moment of silence, so everyone starts screaming.

*12:45. Despite all the emphasis on stupidity, I notice the paradegoers are very good about not blocking traffic or being obnoxiously loud. Critical Mass could learn something here.

We stop in front of the bronzeworkers' memorial statue at Market and somewhere. The Bish invokes John Ashcroft as someone climbs up on the statue and tastefully covers the three of the workers' exposed buttocks with red fabric, red fabric, and an adult diaper. Two knobby features at either end of the mini-plaza are revealed to be giant lug nuts holding Old San Francisco to New. They are mystically tightened and we all jump at once, about three or four hundred of us, to see if any of the City dislodges. Nope.

*12:55. Filing into the plaza under the E*Trade building, I notice that costumed people now heavily outnumber those (like me) in plainclothes. Dodging out of the way of a mini-stiltwalker, I wonder where they all came from. They start chanting, "Go back to work!" at the smiling onlookers, and the comment is made that anyone who'd work in a cubicle for eight hours a day must be really stupid. I am invisible.

*1:10. We're in front of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building. I really have to admire how synchronized all the disparate drummers and other percussionists are. Some announcement is made, and the Sock Exchange begins, with old leggings of all sorts being flung in the air. It reminds me of the tortilla throw before the Bay to Breakers, except I find myself relieved that this time it doesn't involve wasting food...not to mention that a sock falling on one's head hurts a lot less than a flying tortilla. This is anything but stupid.

I take off toward the office shortly thereafter, figuring I don't really need to see people flinging pennies at the Banker's Heart, that hideous black sculpture on the north side of some anonymous financial tower. As I pass, stickers strewn about my shirt, someone seeing the parade a block away asks, "What kind of freak show is that?" I say nothing.
peachy as always, Mike at 6:50 PM