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He Came from the Porch


Picture shamelessly lifted from It Came from the Porch, because my camera’s still busted, dammit…

“Thanks, to the internet now I can be a nympho and share my body without getting VD or smelling gross guys.” I’d love to claim that wonderful line, but it was in a porn spam I got this afternoon. I just thought it was too perfect not to share with the world. So there it is…

I didn’t realize that Trey was being all industrious and updating his site while he was here. I figured the fact that he was flying back tonight might save me from being the last to write about Saturday’s “bomb this restaurant and put numerous webzines out of business” lunch at Greens.

No such luck, and yes, yer humble host DOES eat the occasional vegetarian meal, thank you.

All in all, it was a nice Saturday, starting with Trey, Mark, Lezlee, Mar and Darren and I in own private dining alcove. One wonders if the wait staff put us there because we looked like we might cause trouble. Afterward, we drove by Sarah’s apartment and waved (she was home sick) and went on a whirlwind tour of San Francisco. we hit all the hotspots: the Tenderloin, the Mission, the Doggie Diner head, and Twin Peaks, not to mention the Planet SOMA Factory™.

It all ended at Safeway (as so many things do with me) and I drove home remembering that I’m rarely disappointed when I meet the flesh and blood renditions of people I’ve met online. Today was not an exception. Class all the way, even if the restaurant did hide us in a corner.

By the way, there are no dirty pictures and I have no idea about any sex clubs in Oakland, nor do I particularly care, thanks…

God Hates Web Designers

Krispy Kreme opens Tuesday night. I haven’t been quite this excited since I finally found fried okra in San Mateo a couple of months ago. Of course, several friends and I will be there tonight for some grand opening doughnuts. I thought about making this an officially-sanctioned Planet SOMA Non-event™, but I’m not sure exactly what time we’ll be there, so maybe not…

That said, maybe it IS time for another Planet SOMA Non-event™. The birthday thing was kind of fun, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Perhaps we could invade the Doggie Diner, or maybe the spacious and often-empty hoffbrau in Daly City. I’m thinking about Saturday 22 April as a potential date, using Jeff’s birthday’s an excuse. Of course, he’ll be in Greensboro at the time, but I think he’d want us to celebrate all the same. Thoughts welcome.

If you’re having trouble reading this, so am I…

We were speaking of inept web design a couple of days back. A case in point would be the piece of crap known as godhatesfags.com. You’d think these idiots would want as many people as possible to read their babbling, but badly-written stylesheets render much of the site illegible on a Mac at 832×624. I could only imagine it’s worse at a higher resolution. I guess ignorant wannabe Christians have a propensity toward ignorant wannabe web designers.

Maybe God hates screen fonts larger than 8-point too…

Time for The Brady Bunch. I’m not sure if it has God’s seal of approval or not, but at least you can read the credits.

Lost 45s

How much do I love this (or this, if you’re inclined toward Windows Media Player)? It’s exactly the tapes I used to make for my friend Duncan, trying to dig up just that one obscure single which peaked at number 37 in 1981 and was never heard much again.

I sometimes wonder if songs like “My Girl” by Chilliwack or “5-7-0-5” by City Boy or “Hold On” by Ian Gomm were really all that good or if they just seem good because they haven’t been played into the ground for 20 years like others which had little more initial chart presence. Even when they were new, though, I think I sort of liked the bottom half of the top 40 a little better than the top half.

But then again, I prefer fog to sunshine too, so my opinions may be questionable. And I have little patience with any of the current top 40, whatever said designation means in 2000 anyway.

Anyway, there’s something sort of comforting about listening to this stuff with that slightly out of phase streaming audio sound. Reminds me of when I used to listen to distant AM radio stations at night.

It’s taken billions of dollars in technology to give us the effect of a cheap transistor radio. By God, I say it was worth it.

Oh God. They’re playing Andy Gibb. Gotta run…

The Weekend

So I’ve just returned from the Eagle and the going away bash for my friend Eugene, the latest victim of this “great economy” which is doing so many wonderful things for all of San Francisco.

Otherwise, a pretty uneventful weekend. Dan and Jamie came over for dinner on Friday night, I spent most of Saturday updating Did You Bring Bottles (only three months late), and today I tried unsuccessfully (again) to get my hands on some Krispy Kreme Doughuts.

Last Tuesday, as promised, we hit the grand opening. There was a line with a 90 minute wait. We went to a carnival in Oakland instead. This afternoon, the line was down to only an hour. I drove around Oakland and bought a cake at the Super K-mart instead. They’re good doughnuts, but they’re not THAT damned good.

Things I love this week:

Thing I really hate this week:

  • Long, hype-induced lines at the Krispy Kreme.

Yeah, I realize that I continue to have nothing particularly interesting to say. It’s always like that after the February sweeps, I guess…

God Hates Idiots

Fred Phelps was scheduled to visit my home town today. Good old Fred. His antics have done more to help the cause of gay rights than any paid lobbyist could ever hope to accomplish. I renew my call to add him to the payroll…

The touch of anti-Semitism is a nice testimony, I might add, about the Inner Klansman which Fred and his merry band of Topekans face each morning (after their prayers, of course) when looking in the mirror. It’s refershing to see a group which realizes that if one aspires to complete idiocy, one must at least do so consistently.

Speaking of idiots with lousy websites, anyone visited the NRA page recently? I challenge you to find one news item which isn’t in Real Audio format. Not a text article on the whole site. Earth to gun-crazy freaks: the web and TV have not merged quite yet, thank God (even though God may hate gun control too for all I know)…

At least their site will probably cause numerous individuals not to join Charlton’s Raiders (Heston’s Heroes?), so there’s some hope…

Quoth God (through Charlton Heston): “Thou shalt not kill.”

Quoth Archie Bunker (speaking of bigots and idiots): “All scotch tastes the same. It all tastes like iodine.”

Quoth Yer Humble Host: “I hate scotch. God hates iodine. Charlton Heston may hate fags, but I don’t much care”

No, it didn’t make sense, but it sounded amusing while I typed it. Probably had something to do with the lack of sleep…

Hitchhiker

So Dan, Jamie, and I went on our usual Friday night dinner thing, this time to a barbecue joint in Oakland. Afterwards, we decided to take a drive up into the hills before grabbing some dessert.

After twisting through Glenview and Montclair, we ended up on Snake Road, which is very aptly named, as it twists and turns up and down hills with no lights, few guardrails and (mercifully) little traffic. Apparently, it’s the place of choice for partying East Bay teenagers.

Jamie started remembering ghost stories from her childhood about strange sightings on this road (which sounded remarkably similar to the ones I grew up hearing about Old High Point Road in Greensboro). This is one creepy, deserted stretch of road, so imagine how startled we were to nearly run down a hitchhiker at 10:00 at night.

It was probably stupid to pick him up, but we felt sorry for him (and he was quite adorably scruffy). Anyway, we figured we outnumbered him no matter what happened. His name was Seth and he looked even better close up. He said his car had broken down. There was something strange about him. I figured he was stoned.

I think Jamie was craving him, but I could tell he liked boys when he kept brushing his hand against my leg in the back seat. He said he was headed to a party in Lafayette (almost a contradiction in terms, I thought) so Dan agreed to drive him there. I was glad, because his absent-minded hand motions were getting a little more aggressive and pointed.

By the time we got to Lafayette, I think we’d pretty much arrived at the official point of “petting”. I advised him that he needed to come back to San Francisco with me. He agreed, but said he had to go into the party for a minute to let his friends know.

Dan, Jamie, and I waited more patiently than you might have expected from any of us. I think they were being nice because of our Krispy Kreme fiasco last week. But finally, I went up to the house to get him (if just to tell him to “fuck off” for making us wait so long.

A guy about my age answered the door and I asked if Seth was there. His face lost most of its color and he asked “Seth who?”. I described him and his face lost the rest of its color.

“That’s Seth Turner you’re describing.”

“Great. Is he here?”

“No. He died. Ten years ago tonight, as matter of fact. He was killed in a car wreck on Snake Road on his way to a party here. It was just after midnight on April Fool’s Day 1990.”

Sites, Email, Etc.

Yes, the banner is back. And yes, it’ll stay there until every one of you has visited my creation, dammit…

It was a fun little April Fool’s gag yesterday, I thought. A little more subtle than last year’s rainbow-encrusted Planet SOMA Circuit Party, at least. Thanks to Jamie for actually planting the idea in my head as we really WERE driving on Snake Road and talking about ghost stories.

It’s hot as hell in San Francisco and I don’t deal with that well. It hit 82 yesterday, which is hotter than it usually gets her in the summer, gosh dern it. Damned inland winds; this hot air should stay in Fresno where they seem to appreciate it.

Did the quarterly purge of my email inbox a couple of days back; it’s now been pruned to a quite manageable 31 pending messages, many of which I intend to answer tonight. I always feel a little guilty when I do these purges, because it reminds me of how many people I haven’t answered over the past few months and of how they’ll probably never get answers now that they’ve been moved into email purgatory.

So, once again, I’ll ask anyone who didn’t get a response to forgive me. It’s not that I don’t like you. As a matter of fact, if you said something that pissed me off, you probably would have gotten a really fast response (although you might not have particularly liked it). I feel guilty about that, too, because it means that I’ve often given a higher priority to anonymous assholes than to generally nice people.

All in all, though, my email is overwhelmingly positive, which is pretty amazing given that my site is pretty visisble and that I am very opinionated. So to the nice people (and to all my former friends who were current friends until I got so bad about answering email), I once again say thanks and I’ll try to get better.

Maybe. Right now I’m going to point the fan directly at my bed and try to go to sleep…

4 April 2000

Yes, the damned banner is animated now. Yes, I was bored.

Speaking of bored (or boring), VH-1 seems to be hitting bottom in its effort to become the full-time Behind the Music Channel. No Doubt. Now really, just who the hell cares about the inside story of No Doubt ? They had one really annoying hit and then pretty much faded, much to the relief of yer humble host.

Of course, someone will disagree. Obviously. Someone at VH-1 already did.

Moving on to more important matters, I now have Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. After two unsuccessful runs, the attempt with Sarah Sunday afternoon (following High Fidelity) finally produced the goods. I am happy. I am full. I may even be a little sick. But damn, they was good.

Things I really, really hate today:

  • AT&T Cable (or more specifically, this afternoon’s lack thereof).
  • The latest round of Gap commercials which rip off West Side Story.
  • Gap commercials in general.
  • Drunk idiots who mumble and then reach out and grab you in bars.

Things I more or less like today:

  • MISCMedia
  • San Francisco pedestrians who fight back when some idiot almost runs them down in a crosswalk.
  • Having enough clean underwear to avoid the laundromat for at least two more days.

Keep your ears (and calendars) open for an exciting announcement about Saturday night, the 22nd of April…

Taxes and Movies

Maybe there is a god. I just figured my taxes and realized I owe less than half what I expected. This, it goes without saying, is a very good thing, since I had precious little idea how I was going to pay the tax man this year. Of course, this is more a testament to how little money I made last year than to anything else, but I’m OK with it as long as I can eat for the rest of the month…

On an unrelated note, it’s very disorienting to watch Jessica Fletcher cavorting with Victor Mature. That’s what I get for watching Samson and Delilah on AMC while I do my taxes. It’s even worse than watching Lily Munster nudge up against Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments.

I’ll bet Lily Munster never owned a gun in her life (or lives).

Things I hate today:

  • Form 1040, Schedule C, Schedule SE, Form 1099.
  • Mrs. Paul’s Stuffed Shrimp
  • Diet Coke (I tried, I really tried…)

Things I love today:

San Francisco news personality with whom I think I’d most hate being stranded on a desert island:

That is all…