For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been engaging in the tediously entertaining task of dubbing all my 8mm camcorder videos (dating back to 1994) to VHS. I’m in the middle of 1998 now.

A couple of things I’ve realized in the process:

• My hairline has remained pretty constant since 1995.
• The early videos (where I was using the video camera as a video camera rather than as a glorified still camera to get screen shots for the website) were much more entertaining.
• I really porked out in 1997 and 1998. I think a good chunk of it’s gone now.
• My apartment used to be the most disgusting, nasty pigsty in the world.
• I hate my “conversational voice”.
• I like my mom and dad a lot and I miss being around them on a regular basis.

It’s kind of fun going back and looking at the old stuff again. I’ve seen people I forgot I knew and places I forgot existed. And this is only after 5 1/2 years. It’s amazing how much San Francisco has changed (mostly for the worse, I’m afraid) in this short period of time.

I’ve watched Sarah’s hair grow from millimeters to inches. I’ve enjoyed close-ups of food from every diner and dive imaginable. I’ve seen myself having sex on numerous occasions. I’ve re-lived road trips and visits from friends. And, as always, I’m still more concerned with what I didn’t shoot than with what I did. South of Market, before it succumbed to yuppie cancer, would be one thing I’d like more of. More sex would be nice too, but I imagine I already have more of that on tape than most people anyway.

It was not a bad way to kill a few days, all things considered.

The weekend’s passed pretty damned quickly, I must say, even though I haven’t really done all that very much.

Friday night was dinner with Jamie at this coffee shop by Lake Merritt in Oakland which serves grits. Had a big glob of them with my chicken-fried steak, while these two creepy fags in matching shirts kept staring at me. A consequence of having been recognized in public a few times because of your website is that you never know if you’re being cruised or just recognized. In this case, I didn’t much care. They both gave me the willies, and it wasn’t just the matching outfits.

Went out Friday night, and everyone I saw gave me a similar case of the willies.

On Saturday, I had Dan and Jamie over for jambalya (frozen), collard greens with cabbage (fresh), jalapeño black-eyed peas (canned), corn bread (mix), and strawberry shortcake (fresh). We watched Roadside Prophets, which is one of my favorite movies no one’s ever seen. Two more people have seen it now, and this is a good thing.

Today, I’m working on a website I don’t much like as a favor to a boss at a part-time job I very much hate. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I meant that I hate the job, the boss, or both right now. Either way, it’s not a great way to spend an afternoon. Of course, it’s not entirely without compensation. I get a percentage of every video which will never be sold on this site no one will ever visit. And I get to spend my Monday morning at work in relative peace.

Off to cruise the Monster Board again.

Mmmm. Yummy long-haired boy…

Damn Mark for writing something about that Real World – New York marathon before I had a chance to. I was watching it too. Even stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to finish it, at which point I promptly turned off the TV before being assaulted by the London brats, the SF brats, or, God forbid, the Hawaii or LA wankers.

Didn’t much care for Eric the gym clone; despite his chest and all, he was just too well-scrubbed and plastic (and a bit of an asshole). Predicatably, the one I craved was Andre. He’s in an LA band called Milkweed now, in case you care. But Andre aside, the whole New York cast was the only one I really liked. They were people whose party I would have gone to. Most of the subsequent youngsters were people I’d avoid like the plague, which is probably why I never watched the show much after 1992.

And yes, I’m skipping Survivor too. I just can’t imagine caring what happens to ANYONE in that collection of Blind Date rejects.

I think “The Real World” was a brilliant idea for a show, despite its “casting” since the first year. In 1992, of course, I’d just moved from the south to the big city. I wasn’t Julie (I most certainly wasn’t anything approaching a virgin) but I got the concept all the same. And, of course, this show was the direct precursor to today’s web journals, spycams, blogs, etc. It gave a whole generation the idea of enjoying intimate gimpses of complete strangers doing more or less nothing.

Unfortunately, it also led to Friends…

Photo by Sarah

The second annual Planet SOMA Memorial Day Walk Across San Francisco is now complete. Sarah came along this year, since it was also her birthday. It was fun. More pictures and exciting observations may follow. As may pictures of Sunday afternoon’s long drive, which ended up hitting Sacramento, Auburn, Isleton, and other stray spots.

I’m really beat, which is frightening because we did our seven-mile walk 30 hours ago…

More excitement: half a million hits on the old front page counter. Wow. What can I say but “thanks for coming by and keep hitting that “reload” button often!” And thanks also to Fitz for capturing the moment in a screen shot since I was still fast asleep at the time. I wasn’t really expecting to cross the mark until mid-morning.

There is very little further excitement, save for the fact that I’ll be making a quick trip to LA with Duncan in a few weeks. More details to come, but this probably won’t be the long road trip I’ve been promising for a couple of months. Should be fun anyhow, though…