When Foodies, Shootings, and Quotations Mix....

Some people sound like supreme a-holes. From this article focusing on the murders that continue to take place on and around Mission, but one example:

“It’s kind of scary, but kind of fun,” says Dana Humphrey, 28, as she sat eating at Gracias Madre, a vegan restaurant where the tacos aren’t cheap. Her friend Alexis Papeshi, 28, who lives in the Marina, agrees. “It has some cachet,” she says. ’Oh we are in the Mission, we are so cool.’”

Tacos aren't cheap is an understatement at Gracias Madre. That is one of many ABSURDLY expensive restaurants elbowing into the Mission, along with their a-political, self-focused set of fools-for-clientel. I'd Gracias, Madres if the gap between conspicuous consumption and three-job working class folks were more like a puddle.

Inverta-a-Year, The Saga Continues

Another sign of this year being way wrong? I arrived at Zeitgeist to be greeted by a door dude with a smile who called me by my name, complimented my necklace, and acted equally gracious on my way out. Every single person working there was ridiculously friendly, actually. It make me definitely not want to drink.

Since Dolores = Sorrows

I was particularly pleased to see the following stencil sprayed out on the walk along Dolores Park, although I am still one-eye-opened to finding #45. You go ahead and school that Dolores and her poetry making ways.

You Too Could Live on Solid Rock in SF Bay...

... for a cool $22 million.

Hey, earthquakes are no joke, and solid rock is the best. Anyone?

Today I Laughed Out Loud

At Facebook, no less.

At this event: April 4 - We Are One (and your money's funny - I would like to add) Rally outside the Federal Reserve Building. 4:20pm in San Francisco. April 4th. The anniversary of Dr. King Jr.'s assassination. And a NATIONAL Day of Action pushing back for educational equity, pushing against budget values and the scapegoating of unions and public schools and anyone doing anything of worth, it appears. It is hopefully a big day.

And more specifically at a poster's response, "Can't make it, have yoga."

Funny. You cannot see me, but I am pointing at the tear streaming down my face.

L.A. Really Has Nothing On Us

In 2003, San Francisco had the foresight to enact a law changing the term "pet owner" to "pet guardian." And today there were hella guardians watching their companions pee all over San Francisco's urban equivalent of Venice Beach: Dolores Park. With the temperature getting to nearly 60 degrees, everyone (complete with fixie, skinny jeans, and wee pooping companion) was basking in the Vitamin D and watching our equivalent of water (Dolores Street traffic). Packed in whether sitting or moving, I could not help but ear-hustle what I took to be a quintessential San Francisco conversation:

A: Well, her mother, you know, was Army... while her father was from the Air Force.

B: Aaaaah.

A: So I am sure you can imagine what an impact that had on her personality.

B: Yes.

A: I mean, she is really an unusual chihuahua.

Me: Blink.

Freecycle: Sometimes It Feels a Lot Like Christmas

So I have been a little shy to RECEIVE on Freecycle since the creepiness of last Spring, plus I am in super purging mode.

But then I went and banged my blender jar in the edge of my sink. And my beautiful blender jar, which has faithfully served me in so many capacities since EB gave it to me one Chanukah in the '90s... cracked and broke. Bummer.

And so I looked on-line. Total replacement blender? $60 plus the irritation of being unnecessary. Replacement jar? $30, half as irritating, but still filing under Bummer. Turned to Freecycle figuring, eh, what the heck. I posted my WANT. No bites.

Sighed. Waited a week.

I especially hate buying things in December, lest someone believe I am a willing participant in the consumeristic holiday shopping bullshit. So I figured on no blender until the new year. Bummer bummer bummer Fine fine fine. But in the meantime why not repost my hopes back on Freecycle just one more time.

And a woman replies,
Hey, I have a jar just sitting here because the blender shorted out a couple weeks back. Maybe it will somehow work?

And over the course of a few emails we come to find... we have the exact same blender. I go there. She comes to the door with the jar. Actually, her partner, their kid, their cousin, their grandma ALL come to the door to witness how totally random this exchange working out really is. And everyone is so very happy and the end result for me and mine? Hellllllla soup.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Seriously. But even as global climate change is making us cock our dim San Francisco heads like confused dogs, there are always a couple born-n-raised True San Francisans things you can count on.

Whatever the weather,
1. True San Franciscans will still call it 'going to the beach' when we take our asses to Ocean Beach and sit in our cars, cracking a window (maybe), but definitely reading the newspaper and sipping on hot beverages from the thermos, never once getting out of the car and
2. If Mitchell's (Ice Cream shop, not to be confused with the Mitchell Bros' O'Farrell Theater folks) is open, there is gonna be a line waitin' on ordering a scoop or several.

Yea, I'm sure the cropping up of the fashionista organic creamery set has stolen some thunder from Mitchell's, but you cannot keep a serious San Francisco institution down. More venerable than Bi-Rite's Creamery (I'm not hatin, I'm just sayin), Mitchell's has been doling out ice cream from behind what appears to be two feet of double paned bullet proof glass to every ice cream fanatic regardless of age, ethnicity, size, dress label, income, taste bud practically daily since 1953. I have witnessed the most roly-poly, church-clothes-donning, maniacal-grin-wearing 4 year old muffin-heads practically invite an early heart attack in their 10 a.m. sprint to get from minivan seat to the Mitchell's line. I'm just saying, one thing you can count on is that there is always a line at Mitchell's, and it is usually thick.

So I was headed home the other day, and, as I mentioned, this whole past week has been cooooooooold. I don't mean my own wimpy 'It's less than 68 degrees!' cold. I mean, I get that I got cold in Mali during the summer, I got cold in Vietnam when the temperature dipped to under 92% F. I regularly get cold in NYC summers - and not from the air conditioning. I get that I am a visionary in terms of what a person can get cold in... But here I mean 'Baby, I really can and in fact I'm gonna stay cuz it's cold outside' cold. I'm talkin' 'Whadarewe,eastcoasters?' cold. 46 degrees cold. 'Wearing a wool hat and fleece everything and puffy jacket and I'm still cold' cold. So cold that, heading home, I was smugly prepared to shake my fleece-engulfed head at the brave/fool-hardy Mitchell's devotees. And it was so cold that my jaw was too tightly scarf-swaddled to drop at the sight of no one at the open-doored Mitchell's.

Whaaaaaaaat? Don't get me wrong. It is cold enough to stand in front of Mitchell's and throw some milk, sugar, cream, salt, and perhaps a vanilla bean into the air and have it land your mouth as ice cream. That is not what I am saying.

I am saying that apparently people are off doing just that on some other sidewalks in San Francisco this particularly frigid week, because there was no line at Mitchell's. I feel vaguely uncomfortable. And it almost makes me want ice cream.

My Inner Child? Definitely No Honor’s Student at the Yoga Institute

There are two or three things I don’t understand in the world. There might be more. But they definitely include:

1. The continued consumer interest across decades in the Speedo (or, as Pamikins would say, the SpeedNo.) Despite my general admiration for all items cut from gold lamé, just talking about this sets off my goose bumps, and not the good kind.

2. Why yoga, in addition to apparently transforming the mind-body-spirit, also changes speech patterns, a trend especially evident in its instructors (see Date Two below).

3. How my lack of short term memory can result in my ability to revisit to things I have already established I don’t like and find out afresh whether they can count as a New Thing to Try.

Each month I like to do something new. But, like any unfortunate network series, I appeared last month to be in re-runs, thus making October "Let’s See if I Like Yoga (again)" Month.

This time I avoided all hot yoga, proving that I am at least slightly Pavlovian. Instead, I opted for a studio in Bernal. Let me just say for the record, they were great. Besides the very first woman I met at the front desk, who apparently did not take her Yoga Peaceful Pill, everyone was really so very nice, kind, unpretentious (despite their linguistic limitatings). There were no mirrors, no sound of sweat dripping like rain off an awning into 120 degreed heated carpeted rooms. The bolsters and straps and other unnecessary yoga industry crap? Smelled only slightly foul. The instructors smiled genuinely and soberly from their fleshy, squishy, bony, whatever bodies as they greeted you and introduced their inner children with names decidedly not borne of the Nevada Playa. Did I mention they were great? So the thing to remember is... it's not you, Bernal Yoga, it's me.

People talk to me about yoga the way homophobes talk to lesbians:

Sweetie, you just haven’t met the right class.

And so I signed up to go on first dates with different kinds of yoga classes, just to be sure that they were, indeed, the yogacentrics I suspected them to be. And here is what I found:

Date One: Restorative Yoga. I now understand this to be a fancy term for Napping. I see why people like it – it’s like kindergarten, but more appropriately timed, because 33 years Post-K, I am finally at the stage in my life when I am less interested in peering up the teacher’s skirt and more interested in sleeping... because I am just dog-tired. And in my desperation, I will totally pay to sleep with anything, even a pre-me slightly dampened, body-odor-scented blanket, it turns out. But ultimately, that says less about the yoga form than my weakness for a quicky wherever I can find it.

Date Two: Hatha Yoga. At least linguistically, this is perhaps the most evolved? rudimentary? form of yoga, a.k.a. Day No Wasted Words, a time of molding body and language to its essential parts. No Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns, Articles/Determiners, Possessive Adjectives or Commas need apply for yoga instructor positions, resulting in echoes of the following "sentence":

... place left hand in-breath right knee out-breath slight pivot palms out palms rotate face in in-breath hmm-hmmm...
Response? Uh-uuuuuuuuuuuh (if you, like me, are a Wordy Words A Lot - the Playa name awaits patiently my arrival I am sure).

Date Three: Restorative Flow. Napping + Balancing = Napping for no one + Me falling frequently. Unless you count the Domino Effect (and my ability to mastermind several of them), this was decidedly not a flow in the more commonly held sense of the word; it was more like a skip... like in a record or a CD. Not that anyone knows what those are anymore. I am dating myself. No really, RF, it is me, not you.

Date Four: Pilates. Every time I try to talk about this one, I am re-informed by my many yogic-headed friends out there that YOGA studios do not have PILATES, and in my born-again virginal state I must’ve gotten confused. Thus I will henceforth refer to this as YOGATES. In this way, you all can feel more comfortable with me checking out what was so obviously "not pilates" at the yoga studio. Best date yet. I engaged many laughing muscles. Apparently a tranny form of yoga at best, or in the wrong bar at worst, Yogates and I could maybe just maybe get down, if it existed as an actual word. At least it made me laugh.

Date Five: Flow. No napping, just dominoing, and thus time to turn off this faucet and conclude to myself and my favorite yogacentrics out there that yoga? It is just not for me. It is not a lifestyle choice, it is just who I am.

So one or two things I understand. Those definitely include:
1. I am open to a less conventional set-up, if anyone can find me a Yogates Studio, I will reconsider my anti-stretching-class identity.

2. I will neither be the future manufacturer nor sporter of any bumper sticker stating: My inner child is an honor’s student at the Yoga Institute.

Valencia Street: The Oh My of the I-ron-y

It was mayhem on Valencia Street this afternoon well into the evening, with San Francisco showing its true colors of equal parts concern and self-absorbic irony.

Valencia Street off 19th was filming Trauma, apparently some new show that is based in San Francisco. I have no idea if it is a "reality" show, but if it is, I am gonna assume the episode's trauma involves a car running over a bicyclist, a boy getting stabbed on a MUNI without working surveillance cameras (no wait, that is seemingly weirdly prohibited north of Mission Street), or some BiRite Creamery eater cracked out on the toxic levels of sugar in their Salted Caramel ice cream starting a restaurant riot because some menu lacks sufficient vegan options...

Meanwhile, Valencia between 16th and 17th was also shut down for an actual trauma, in the form of a jumper the po-po were trying to talk down - apparently, they were still trying to around 9:20pm. True to form, at both locations were gawkers saying stupid inappropriate shit and taking cell phone pictures. And in both locations were people totally irritated that they couldn't get to their preferred happy hour drinking establishment/cafe in a timely manner. One-dress-stop-shopping Valencia Quarter, how nauseating.

Reason Number 3549 to Love and Fear San Francisco

As many of you know, it is a life goal of mine to keep the locally-owned and operated Balboa Theater running strong through the sheer frequency of my patronage. I will go see anything there. Even things I am totally disinterested in seeing.

Awesome. So that is the caveat.

I heard a rumor that on Sundays, one could see the film Julie and Julia there for free if you brought a cake with you. Seemed harmless enough. I baked brownies.

Yes, they had the same argument that you all just brought forth:

Do brownies qualify as cake?

After some discussion, the staff consensus was:

They do.

Phew. So they denuded me of my Tupperware of brownies and ushered me into the movie.

At 11:30pm last night I exited the theater to find this:



Yes, for those of you who cannot squint sufficiently to see anything on my absolutely terrible camera phone, it was tables filled with slices of cake and cake products. For everyone at the theater. Or on the street. Or wherever.

And we ate hella cake. Rum cake, mocha cake, lemon cake, indeterminable taste cake, velvet cake... I ate much more sugar than I normally should even eat at ... say... 1pm, much less at almost midnight.

And then I peeled myself away for home. But the staff pleaded:

Take as much cake as possible in your Tupperware. We do not want waste!

And as I am a fan of being waste-free, I complied. I boarded the 31 MUNI at close to midnight with cake. Hella cake(s). And I learned something about San Francisco MUNI passengers as I walked up and down its aisles offering cake to everyone...

There are shocking amounts of people in San Francisco who are willing to take pre-cut, clearly homemade pieces of cake from an obviously sugar-cracked-out wild eyed grinning stranger who points and says,

Ooooh, would you like some cake? How's about that one? I think it is rum-soaked... that one I believe is coconut-chocolate... Ooooooh, you are so welcome!

And between the patrons of the Sunday Night 31 Balboa and the 22 Fillmore, now at close to 1am, I got off the bus for my home with Tupperware tucked under my arm, having moved all the cake into random strangers' gullets. Reason Number 3549 to Love and Fear San Francisco and our particular sense of what is reasonable to offer and receive.

Freecycle: Sometimes Fun, Sometimes Scary, Always an Adventure

It started with his offer of headlamps. I raise my interested hand, he gives me a phone number, we talk, and he says he'll look around and then also uncovers all these sleeping pads and other stuff that could be useful to people who camp with hella kiddies.

I get his address. I get the car. I double park in his neighbor's driveway, just like his instructions suggest. Ring bell and wait. Meanwhile I am staring at the doors to two flats. One door open, the other one closed.

When no one comes, I holler helloooooooooo to the open door. Two women inside continue to sit, smoking, on their couch. One looks irritatedly at me and then turns away. They are apparently not the friendliest of neighbors, these flats.

I ring the bell twice more. Three minutes later, the door finally opens and this guy appears, carrying a slightly odd vibe. He gets a little agitated that I interacted with the downstairs women, and "Come in, come in"s me.

Now I gotta say, when I Freecycle, I bring stuff downstairs or throw it over the balcony, depending.

Not this fella. He tells me to follow him up, as the materials are in the back room. I walk in the entrance and he closes and triple bolts the doors behind me.

I am not pleased.

He ushers me to go in front of him up the stairs, and I reply, You go ahead, sir. But I want to make sure they don't come to tow the car, so I will just unlock this door again and leave it open for a moment.

To which he replies, I have a cat.

So I just unlock the door and leave it closed and follow him up. He talks wayyyyyyy too much - like nervous people talk. About how he is getting evicted and has to move, and where will he go? Babble babble babble. I keep my 6 million janitor-esque set of keys like brass knuckles in my hand. Notice the details in every room. Where is the kitchen. Do I see knives or open windows. What about the girls who are just below who have seen me. How loud my boots will be if I stamp hard on the ground. It is just so great to be trained to notice details like a girl in the United States. Awesome. So by this time, he gets to the room.

I stand in the hallway.

He: You can come in, ya know.

My Half Lie: No thanks. My friend is waiting for me to finish this because she lives two blocks from here and is supposed to meet me.

He is offering me all manner of helpful camping stuff, explaining shorty-story style the history of each item, but whatever he holds out, he holds out like food to a feral cat - just far enough to make them come forward. I am a just feral enough kitty, however, that I just put my hand out while staying in the hallway.

I always set an alarm on my phone for Freecycle and so my phone starts blowing up.

The other half of my lie: She is walking towards this address to meet me at the car. That must be her wondering where I am. I gotta call her back or go down - I am late. Thanks for the stuff.

And I bolt down the stairs to the outside world.

He follows me down, and when we get outside I turn to say:
I thank you for the things to help us out. That is cool. However, in the future, never bolt your door and ask a strange woman to come up to a back room. It is socially awkward and a bit scary, sir.

He looks embarrassed, but again, I never did see or get any signs of a cat.

Socially awkward? Opportunist? Answer unknown. Freecycle. Like all potential interactions between women and men in this country, it also has the potential to be called Fearcycle. Bummer.

Smart-ish .... and Dumber

Somehow, the juxtaposition between two pieces of news struck me, and not because I was hit by a flying newspaper, and only perhaps because this is why I don't read the paper:

(1) The Associated Press reported today: "The Obama administration joined a federal judge Wednesday in urging Congress to end a racial disparity by equalizing prison sentences for dealing and using crack versus powdered cocaine." About f-bombing time (see below).

VERSUS

(2) The Supreme Court hearing and UPHOLDING the FCC v. Fox Network case about networks getting fined for the utterance of one prime-time "expletive," which some of these f$#%ing celebrities -- aka Scalia's

"foul-mouthed glitterati,"

-- accidentally let slip during whatever live this-or-that they are doing.

Really, federal courts have NOTHING better to do than split-vote along wing lines about one slipping f-bomb? But really, it isn't even that so much as what Scalia saying that the FCC is right to worry about this so that networks could be expected to continue to "give conscientious parents a relatively safe haven for their children." To learn no expletives, just racist, heterocentric, ableist, sizeist, sexist stereotyping. Cool.

And yet even more but really, it isn't even that so much as this all goes back to the FCC's decision in 2006 that found "News Corp’s Fox TV network violated decency rules when singer Cher blurted out an expletive during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards broadcast and actress Nicole Richie used two expletives during the 2003 awards." Like THAT is what makes Fox News completely and utterly indecent and violating. Puh-leeze.

And An Era Ends

In the form of the Parkway Speakeasy Movie Theater in Oakland, lakeside.

When I was ten, I transferred into a new junior high, where I met my lifelong friend and conspirator, MW. When people ask her how we became friends, she tells them that this crazy short new girl invited her to her birthday party. She wasn't sure about the girl, but she was polite so she went anyways. And found out that for my birthday we would go see Vertigo at the then-independent, locally run Bridge Theater. And MW knew we would be friends for life.

But The Bridge is now a Landmark, which is somehow getting as close to "independent" in the Bay Area as movie theater can be. For now, this Sunday, after twelve years of charging like $5 a head and then serving couch sitting people pizza and beer and popcorn (and eventually wine and salad and pasta and all sorts of stuff) while we watched the boys babble their weird rambling introductions to whatever happened to be playing that day, the Parkway Speakeasy will be closing its doors. It is a sad time for independent, community theater. They did open the El Cerrito one, which will continue to operate, but this still marks the end of an era for me. R.I.P.

Just Imagine You Walked into Your Livingroom, and Your Table Was Gone

Ah Freecycle. So freewheelin, so strange.

It started with me manifesting. Ok, there, I admit it. I am sure this is all my fault. That and the existence of the word 'manifesting.'

I measured the space in my house for a side table I decided would be helpful to my organizational system. And then I thought about how to bring such a measurement of a table into my life.

Within 24 hours, there arrived an OFFER ad on good ol' Freecycle, the infestation of all manifestations. Someone in the Haight posted the offering of a side table in the EXACT dimensions I was looking for.

I asked. She accepted. We made a time.

I asked for a photo. She wrote a brief description. I asked for her number in case something came up. She wrote nothing. I asked if there was a driveway I could stop in. She wrote more nothing. I got a car. I got into the car, muttering the address to myself as I drove. As I drove, I quite possibly dyslexified the address. It is possible.

I got to the address. Well, what was hopefully the address. It was certainly a version of it.

I parked in the neighbors' driveway and pondered how many nanoseconds I could leave my vehicle unattended blocking a driveway before the Peace and Love residents of the upper Haight had my ass ticketed and towed. I locked the car to give myself time against AAA jimmying my locks.

I rang the bell.

No answer.

I rang the bell.

No answer.

I dawdled on the sidewalk.

The gate buzzed for a second. I took a last look at the car and ran back to the gate.

It buzzed. I shoved in the gate. The apartment door was locked. I knocked.

The door buzzed and I stumbled into the bottom of a two-story steep windy staircase. Greeeeeeat.

I hollered: HELLO?

Nothing.

UM HELLO?

A woman's voice: WHAAAAAAAAAT?

Me: HI, ER, I'M FROM FREECYCLE? I'M ---?

Her: ( )

Me: ER, OH, I THINK I TALKED TO A K----. IS A K---- HERE?

Her: YEA, SHE'S IN THE BACK. (Door slam, followed by silence.)

Me: Er, ok.

I climb the stairs to arrive at an entrance-y type of hallway. It has a couch in it, and next to the couch is a side table. The side table is about the size I'd imagined. The side table more or less looks like the very vague description its owner had offered in lieu of a photo. It is a very nice table. Just the sort of table a person such as myself might manifest. But the side table? It also had a bunch of stuff on it. Not Stuff to Freecycle seeming stuff, more like Stuff We Read and Do while sitting on the couch. Like mail and bills and stuff. Hmmm.

Me (back to yelling): ER, HELLO? HELLO? K----? (As I wander through the cricket-chirpingly-vacant apartment)

Silence.

Me (still yelling): ER, HELLO? ANYONE? IS THIS THE TABLE?

Silence.

Me (more yelling): OK, WELL I AM GOING TO TAKE Y'ALL'S TABLE NOW. I AM GOING TO PUT THE STUFF THAT'S ON IT ON THE COUCH. OK? COOL? HELLO? (Pause) OK, I AM LEAVING WITH YOUR TABLE NOW.

Silence.

Me (last yelling): OK, HERE I GO! WELL, THIS IS VERY STRANGE! GOOD NIGHT!

I then cuss audibly while nearly breaking my neck getting the table single-handedly down the stairs. Thankfully, the neighbors have yet to get DPT on my ass by the time I get to my car, and so away I drive with my nice little table that is hopefully not made of cocaine or anything else rapidly disintegrating or illegal.

I am a little scared to check my email, fearing K---- will email me to ask: Why didn't you show up at my place? And reiterate her address, which will have all the same numbers as where I was, but in a different order. Hmmm. Thoughts?

UPDATE #1:
My rather squawky conscience insisted that I write to K---- to ask if her table was gone. At midnight, she wrote be back:

Well you didn't stop by did you?! So of course it is there. Peace, k

Despite the clear passive aggressive sign-off of Ms. K, I experienced stomach churning and proceeded to spend the evening wrapped in a guilt quilt, reluctantly trying to figure out how to return the perfectly dimensioned side table to its rightful owners.

UPDATE #2:
K----- wrote again at 9 a.m:

Oh how strange. You must have been here when I stepped out somehow. Which is strange because I didn' step out. But I see that the stand is no longer here, so I guess you found the right place. :) k

Me: Phew.

So Many Reasons to Love Craig from Craig's List

Really. I am a fan.



It all started when Craig from Craig's List invited me to dinner.

Someone who said her name too fast called my cell from a blocked number during my prep period.

Hello!

Hello, am I speaking to (insert my name here)?

Yeeeeeeeeeeees? (My suspicious mind.)

Craig would like you to be a guest at his table for Celebrity Waiter.

Huh? Who? (My confusion.)

Craig Newmark.

(OK, actually, at the time I didn't get the name. I was calling him Newmeyersomething for a long time. But I have been corrected.)
And who is that?

You know… Craig Newmark?

(My silence.)

You know… Craig? (Her exasperation.) From Craig’s List Craig? (Distinct sound of her rolling eyes through the phone.)

Oh. Huh. Whacky! Fer shure... (Sound of my synapses catching up with the rest of my body, linking together all the information I clearly do not know.) ...Wait, what's a Celebrity Waiter?

Craig would pay for you to sit at his table. He would pay for a whole table of teachers. He would be your celebrity waiter. He would give you money to tip him. You would use this money to tip him. He will compete with the other celebrity waiters to see who can raise the most tip money from their tables, which all goes to a non-profit that this is a fundraiser for. You would tip him every time he does something outrageous, helpful, or extraordinary. All the money would go to charity. (My unasked question about pocketing the money answered. Check. Just kidding.)

Um, like I would tip him his own money for bringing me soup? Or more like I would have to tip him for a lap dance? Because I don’t actually really want a lap dance.

I assure you, this is not that kind of event. (Sound of her huffy feathers ruffling. Sound of my belief that the need for clarification usually trumps the danger of irritating others.)

So I tip him for bringing me vegetables?

Sure. Right. Fine. Whatever. (Sound of her regret at having to call me.)

And Craig is totally paying for me. I do nothing. (Sound of my genetic lawyer mind at work on overtime.)

Right. For your whole table. A table of teachers and Craig would like you all to be his guests. (Sound of her fingers tapping on her desk.)

(Sound of my synapses falling into place enough for me to understand that though a table of teachers is clearly a charity case here, we are not the actual charity for which Craig is fundraising and so I say:) Well fer shure. Sign me up.

In all this it did not occur to me to ask how this woman got my cell phone number. Details, details, details.

Weirder still is that when I put the word on the street to get some of those details, all the usual suspects denied any knowledge of how I got invited. Actually, many of them expressed surprise – like my boss, who I found out would also be there, but as a minion in the back room, counting money that comes in, because she works for the beneficiary of this particular fundraiser. Which means that I do, too. And yet I am a paid-for guest.

So even weirder still is that another one of the celebrity waiters there is the local head of AT&T (or something like that). So of course I take the occasion to ask him WTF is wrong with AT&T for donating the maximum amount allowed to the Republican Party, thereby causing me to refuse to pay AT&T any more money. He does not have a good answer for me, and I am still waiting. Bad celebrity waiter. He is apparently generous, but for the wrong team. And he is certainly not generous with information.

And even weirder still is that another of the celebrity waiters is MC Hammer, who auctions off both a very fluffy white coat and a private dance lesson (with him, duh) and who allows me to politely address as “Mr. Hammer, no one will believe me, so can I take a picture with you?” Which makes him the most generous Celebrity Waiter so far, but in a good way, not like the bad AT&T man. Because Mr. Hammer dances on stage, sells the coat off his back, and generously agrees to a photo op, even though he cannot figure out who will be taking our picture, since I did not have any enterage in tow. I try to ease his worries by shoving our faces together and holding my arm and camera out in classic chin-enhancing self-portrait taking pose. I mean… I am a self-portrait pro! He STILL looks worried but I do it.
Which apparently is yet more evidence that I am a complete sin verguenza, for it turns out to be common knowledge that you just don’t self-portrait with celebs. (I don’t know how everyone but me knows this, yet everyone groans audibly when I mention this part of the story.) And my point? MC Hammer? Very generous celebrity waiter. In a good way.

And meanwhile back at our own table: Weirder still was how much drunker our celebrity waiter was than our table of mooching teachers. One glass of wine for us, one swig from the bottle for him. Aw. Having said that, Craig still wins my prize for the most generous funny and kind celebrity waiter. Not only did he pay for all of us ragamuffin teachers to invade this shin-dig, he paid us to tip him, let us take whack-ass pictures of him, AND he even bought me an Elmo Doll. Very generous.


And it totally wasn't his fault that Elmo now officially scares the poop outa me. Craig couldn't have known. I mean, Elmo seemed innocent enough at first. I was a bit worse for wear as I stumbled from Union Square onto MUNI towards home. It was frigid out so I wedged Elmo under my armpit. I didn’t understand why I kept hearing voices. But it is MUNI, so not a big surprise there. And it was even colder and more desolate on my street, so with Elmo tucked under my elbow, I clutched my wrap tighter around my flimsy cotton dress. And heard more voices. I spun wobbily around in my 5 inch spiked heels. Saw no one. Clutched and walked. Heard more voices. Really one voice. Teasing. Nasally.

Made it into my apartment, hearing that weird voice as I turned the key to open my door. Hmmm. I detached Elmo from under my armpit and looked him face to face. Placed him on the couch. And he SPOKE. God knows what he was going on about – his annunciation sucks. Turns out Craig gave me a Talking Elmo. Creepy shit. But Craig didn't mean to terrorize me with this addition to my home and really, I am now a die-hard Craig fan. It is possible the feeling is not mutual, but I am a loyal girl, so I dare you to bad mouth my new favorite rich person. Maybe I will even MC him from the event.

On other good news fronts, this event also allows me to check off my “I will say yes to one random thing per week” resolution. For this week anyways.

Ear Hustling a San Francisco Moment

A gal on a fixed gear bike perched herself against a parking meter on 16th Street in front of the old Café Macondo to tell her friend on the other side of her iPhone:

“I was inside all day today. Woke up. Went to Zeitgeist. From there I went to the gym. Which was definitely not the right order.”

This will only make sense to you if you know SF, in which case you'll understand my uncontrollable mutter as I walked by, "No comment (#47)."

Today's Lead Article in Teacher Magazine

Title?

"Plans Delayed for Bully-Free School"

I don't even know what to say about that. Perhaps you do?

Another Reason to Love Craig's List MCs

But first, this year's CLMC Best Title as Visual Award goes to:

N Judah This Afternoon Holding Starbucks with Right Nose Ring

Huh?

So what was the left nose ring doing?

And now, my-nother reason for loving this section (dedicated this week to T and P):

In M4W, titled: Guy in swing downstairs at Power Exchange

MC: Hi, I was the naked guy in the swing downstairs, you were the pretty woman with someone else. You said hi. Send me an email or be sure and come by Friday nite between 10PM and 2AM to say Hi!

Hope to see you again!

LOL. God bless the lovers, the dreamers, and Kermit the Frog.

Despite the G.reat W.eenie, DC Teems With Activist Spirit

But they are a little clumpy in the summer.

So I was informed by reliable PD sources that for ten hours a day, seven days a week, any sick person can experience the true blue jubilation of being subjected to the workings of a full-scale police station without actually getting beat down and then booked for (blink) “resisting arrest.” Yep, DC’s got a Museum of Crime and Punishment, which apparently includes all sundry items from a lie detector you can try to pass to the “artifacts" of "criminal consequences": guillotine, gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection machine, self-created devices for injury and escape [eh? now that is a criminal consequence? you have to fashion your own weapons? nice], and Al Capone’s jail cell.” Wait a sec – aren’t some of these things certain states still like to use at 12:01 a.m? And are things “artifacts” if they are still in use? I know, details, details.

The museum, it turns out, belongs to the school of Realism. You pay hella dough to get into and out of the system, and, with seemingly no irony, the museum charges 12-59 year olds as adults. Huh. Couldn’t have predicted that. It is almost like this museum is guiding national policy.

Getting ready to move to (or from) DC yet? If that doesn’t get you to turn on your printing press and crack open your Realities of the Prison Industrialist Complex Statistics Manual, it turns out the museum employs (?) black men in orange jumpsuits to desiccate as they pound the muggy summer sidewalk, "inviting" folks in. Now, that shit is just plain ol' FUCKED UP. Unbelievably, no locals are becoming summer sweat puddles next to these fellas fliering AGAINST the museum or contents thereof – or at least handing out accurate pro-dignified-life literature. I mean, where the hell ARE the skinny white anarchist crews when ya need ‘em? Is there a Franti show somewhere I don’t know about? Shit, if folks were down to organize I’d crank out the fliers. Shit, I’ll make the MyFace group. Send me word.

However, lest you believe that G. Whiz’s DC has become apolitical cesspool waiting for salvation from the beautiful Obama, right close to this museic atrocity, I caught up with the sign waving “Stop Bird Pornography: Save Our Feathered Friends” contingent. This is one passionate group who are probably perfectly normal pervy folks and perhaps not even vegetarians. But they are definitely down to yuck the yum of Birdy Porn watchers everywhere. Feel free to read more here:



I, for one, ask: Wait, are these people for or against it? Let the elderly and binocular-toting have some fun! And, fer realz, the problem is that there are sexy birds to be peered at everywhere. I, for one, have a lifetime goal of trying to avoid too much eye-feather contact, especially after one pooped on my head and then another (one minute later) pooped on my self-righteously-upturned-in-horrified-mid-gesticulation palm (ruuuuuuuuuude) on 16th Street back in the day.

But in DC, Bird Blindness simply wasn't possible. Birds are EVERYWHERE. Some are quite fetching, too. There, I admit it. Now, I am no virgin bird watcher but I am a fully awful bird identifier, and even as I type here in DCA's airport boarding area, there are chickadees of some sort looking at me cock headed and flying around the room. Seriously. In the airport. Now, I don’t wanna sound like a victim blamer, but these DC birds? Believe me, they WANT to be looked at. I'm just sayin'.