Month: October 1999

25 October 1999

Dang. I threw up the wrong date AND forgot to put my Ammiano banner back up. That’s what I get for experimenting, I guess…

Don’t worry if you’re feeling disoriented. So am I. I’m just playing around with some potential new front page designs. Ultimately, I figure I’ll end up with a modified version of the old one, just because it works. All the same, though, I may play with a few others over the next couple of days. Fear not, though. Frames, animated crap, and the like will not figure into the equation.

Weekend…

Dinner with Dan, his current, and Jamie on Friday night. 24th Street. Puerco Asada. El Trebol. Cheap food served by a nice lady who gives great “mom” vibes with a Salvadorean accent. Dinner was followed by ice cream at Mitchell’s. Banana. Made on the premises. I skipped the maize y queso, as these are not my idea of proper ice cream ingredients. But what do I know anyway?

Saturday night was dinner with Mark in Berkeley. Tandoori prawns. Eggplant something. Pakoras. Nan. No surrogate mom, but a good meal all the same. I left my cap on the table. They gave it back. Then Mark and I toured scenic downtown Oakland.

Against my better judgment, I went out for a beer later. On Saturday night. First time in two months or so. It was as big a mistake this time as ever. Apparently it was Lesbian Domanatrix night at the Eagle. I love Lesbians. I can tolerate dominatrices. But neither sight was what my hormones were looking for at 1:00 in the morning. Alas. My Place and Hole in the Wall provided no real relief either. Look for my Folsom Street obituary page soon. Even so, I got two free beers, so the night wasn’t a total loss. I must’ve been broadcasting depression rays.

Today I made eggs and bacon and grits, as is my usual Sunday morning habit. After I finished the paper and the “In the Heat of the Night” marathon on TNT, I drove out to the avenues to photograph a soon to be demolished Safeway and have a hot dog at the soon to be demolished Doggie Diner.

New “Simpsons”. Re-run on “Futurama”. A quick bowl of cereal and it’s time for bed, I guess…

Behind the Times

It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, but I closed an email message to Sarah this afternoon with something to the effect of “Gotta run…there’s the doorbell…” Sounds a little anachronistic in retrospect.

Yer behind the times humble host, volume 15:

  • I still prefer to read the newspaper in its cumbersome paper format, and I regularly spend money for content I could read free online. I make an exception for my hometown paper which I can’t buy here.
  • Iced tea must be brewed in a suitably stained pot. Iced tea in a can or bottle is a crime against nature.
  • I wish radio stations still had jingles and played music in the morning.
  • I have never owned an automobile with power locks or windows.
  • I do not automatically address strangers using their first names unless they introduce themselves that way, especially if they’re older than me. Yes, I behaved the same way even when I worked in retail customer service.
  • Canned vegetables are just fine in a pinch, thank you.
  • My long distance carrier is AT&T.
  • Give me “Maude” over “Ally McBeal” and “Streets of San Francisco” over “Nash Bridges” any day of the week.
  • The TV in my living room is a 20-year-old Sony. I’m not really inclined to replace it anytime soon.
  • Coke really does taste better from a glass bottle.
  • “Downtown” by Petulia Clark is still one of my favorite songs, even though it was released the year I was born. I listen to KABL more than KUSF these days.
  • I still use a 28.8K modem. I still believe all web designers should be forced to do the same.
  • My dream car is a 1964 Corvair convertible.
  • The last bar I visited was the Tonga Room. There will be pictures soon…

The Great Funk of 1999

Remember when this site used to be sarcastic and funny?

Something’s gotta give. In case it hasn’t been painfully obvious, I’ve been in a heavy-duty funk for months now, my worst since the Great Funk of 1989. It’s a combination of many things, from boredom to finances to a general uncertainty about where my life is going to the fact that I just plain don’t like San Francisco much anymore. I’ve been coping with it so far, but it’s starting to affect my daily life in disturbing ways.

I’m not sleeping well. My stomach hurts. I’m not getting things done. I watch a lot of TV. I sit. I spend the weekends taking long drives into nowhere, partially to avoid doing much of anything else. I’m not writing. I don’t follow through on personal projects. I’m even moving slowly on work-related ones. The email just doesn’t get answered, except during occasional bursts of energy. Sex? Yeah, right.

I keep thinking that I’m going to “fix everything” and do everything I need to do “this weekend”. I never do. Things pile up after a few months of this, sometimes catastrophically.

And I don’t really feel like talking about any of it, except in cryptic statements about what a rotten mood I’m in or how “stressed” I am. Maybe talking about it in depth would involve too much of an admission that something is really wrong.. Or maybe it would involve actually “inviting someone in”, something I’ve been accused of being reluctant to do.

Last time I felt this rotten, I quit my job, moved home with Mom and Dad, and went back to school full-time. I’m hoping I come up with a similarly creative plan this time. Maybe I’ll hash it out here. Hmmm…I’m lazy and depressed, and now I’m gonna whine about it on the site even more. The should drive the hits way up, huh?

I’d go on, but it’s time for Maude on Nick-at-Nite. I’ll work on the diagnosis later…

’90s Retro

Since the turnaround time for “retro” and nostalgia seems to be approaching about five years lately, I figured this might be a good time to begin compiling some official “90’s retro” items which will soon seem as quaint and dated as acid-washed jeans, Cold War propaganda, or avocado appliances.

Here’s my list so far:

  • Simple Shoes
  • Twin Peaks
  • The Macarena
  • Queer Nation
  • Jesse Ventura
  • Conan O’Brien
  • Ridiculously exaggerated baggy pants
  • Emoticons
  • Melrose Place
  • Martha Stewart
  • Boston Market
  • Real Stories of the Highway Patrol
  • Cigars and cigar bars
  • Boy bands
  • “Extreme” sports
  • “Extreme” anything
  • High-tech stock boom
  • George Magazine
  • Olestra
  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Modems
  • Windows 95
  • Jokes about stained dresses and oral sex
  • Star Trek spinoffs
  • Y2K paranoia

A couple more things for your soon-to-be-retro-kitch list:

  • Girls smoking (very big) cigars
  • Jesse Camp, the “people’s choice” host of MTV
  • All of MTV, especially Loveline
  • Jesse Ventura, the other “people’s choice”
  • The Blair Witch Project
  • Blair Witch Project send-ups (like the Scooby-Doo commercial)
  • Giant talking M&M’s
  • Ralph Reed
  • Newt Gingrich
  • Non-genetically-altered food
  • Campaign finance reform
  • Any Internet-related service not dominated by phone companies
  • Phones with cords
  • Personal comfort, privacy and dignity for airline passengers

California May Not Be Paradise

Another exciting weekend in California:

  • A 7.0 earthquake hits the Mojave Desert just in time for the tenth anniversary of the Bay Area’s Loma Prieta Earthquake. You know, the 1989 earthquake whose damage we’re still arguing about repairing a decade later? I can always remember the date, even thought I didn’t live here at the time, because it’s also my Mom’s birthday.
  • Fires in Redding cause a smoky haze all over Sacramento, 160 miles south. It looked like the whole city was on fire. I know. I was there making a somewhat unplanned cameo appearance. It was pretty nasty.
  • An asshole in a Lexus almost crashes into me as he backs out of the garage in his live/work loft. He then has the audacity to shoot ME the bird for blowing my horn at him.

Of course, there are assholes everywhere (even though there seem to be considerably more than there used to be in San Francisco lately). But you have to move to California to get the added bonuses of earthquake paranoia, fires which manage to affect a quarter of the state, and laws which keep you from smoking a cigarette in a bar when the stress gets to you.

Other advantages include paying more for gas and groceries than anyone else in the country, half a million bucks for a three bedroom house, unbelievable traffic, a perpetually brown landscape, and what seems to be a complete and total ban on grape Pop-tarts.

Yet somehow 40 million people believe that living in California is worth all the hassle, expense, and even danger. I used to understand why (sort of). Now I’m just baffled most of the time…