December 17, 2009
Last night The Girl and I slipped out of work early and raced down the peninsula to attend the annual holiday party of the Silicon Valley startup for which I’ve been doing freelance writing over the last couple years. I like that gig. It buys things like engagement rings that my retrograde day-job salary probably wouldn’t permit.
So we get down there, thanks to a Google Maps route that (we learned, reading only the next instruction rather than the entire set of directions) orders us to get off the 280 about halfway to our destination, gets us lost with a handful of “0.1 miles” switcharounds, and then tells us to get back on 280 South for another 15 miles. It’s like Google Maps just wanted to stop for coffee, or something.
The event itself was lovely, an excellent combination of low-key and lavish, and full of friendly people. The Lovely Parting Gift was a pretty nice fleece pullover with the company logo, and the gregarious CEO had made sure to get a couple for me and my adorable Plus One, apparently having noted we’d been left off the “tell us your size” email that only circulated internally. That’s one on-the-ball CEO, you know? And we met the two founders of the company, a couple unassuming foreign-born engineers who were very easy to chat with.
There were two strange observations I made over the course of the evening.
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December 15, 2009
I am engaged to a stealth immigrant, one who blends into the American landscape like a flawlessly trained infiltrator from behind the Iron Curtain … until certain Yawning Cultural Chasms reveal themselves in conversation.
“You’re over 30 years old,” I tell her. “How could you have never seen Star Wars?”
“It’s not like I’ve never heard of it,” she replies. “It’s the one with Captain Kirk and the pointy-eared guy.”
“This … cannot stand.”
So I get ahold of the movies. My friend Mark, a genuine Star Wars obsessive, had downloaded the original originals (ripped from ’90s laser discs) back when you could only get the smeared-with-CG “Special Editions.” Those were the versions that she had to see. So in October, we went down to LA to coo at Francesca & Andi’s new baby, and stayed with Mark & Christine (and Van & Nick & Faye … it was cozy). I got the three discs from Mark, and about three weeks ago, my beloved and I watched the first one, these days known as “A New Hope.”
It had turned out that a fellow Fu student is a teenage boy named Yoda (no wonder he’s learning martial arts) and when I explained the goofy voice I was suddenly talking in by showing her the Luke-Meets-Yoda clip off YouTube, she’d seemed intrigued enough to finally show her the movies. She dozed through much of the last third (being quite tired, in her defense, and really not a fan of this kind of movie), despite me jabbing her with a broomstick every thirty seconds. Nonetheless, she was game to see the second one. So that was the first one down. Moving on.
Special Guest Stars, Urban Crime, and the Panic of the Disc Error
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December 14, 2009
Well, that was a nice break. Or perhaps better: Well, that was a psychotic break. Been so fucking busy over the past few months, I’ve completely let this thing slide. Largely because I think I totally lost the thread of why I was doing this blog thing, anyway. I need to reconsider that.
But right now I need to go pick up The Girl from BART … she gets home late on kung fu nights, and deadly ninja that she is, if I show up late, she just walks the hell home in the dark anyway.
Coming soon: Star Wars! Kate Beckinsale! The Great Garage Break-In! A Few of My Favorite Things! Pluto! (Not the planet or the dog!) And: Not a Goddamned Word About Wedding Plans!
Montreal Botanical Garden’s annual Chinese lantern extravaganza (Sept. ‘09)
July 29, 2009
After a lovely evening, we ate a light breakfast on this sunny enclosed veranda and conversation that turned gently, amusingly on happiness and the future, I said something about “first things first,” and came around the table with the little jewelry box. Winning a loosely defined bet with Francesca, I did not crack a joke anywhere in this process. No doubt paying off long odds on any wagering among Petra’s friends, she did not run away.
It was a great setting, relaxed and romantic. Also, I’d positioned myself between her and the exits.
We like sapphires.
July 26, 2009
July 13, 2009
It was the long walk to the office today. My “casual carpool ride” dropped me and the other random passenger down by the bus terminal, a 25-minute walk from my office. That’s the official dropoff point, but on better days I get taken much closer. The ride was smooth, at least, and the driver didn’t blast the radio. What seems to be a Christian talk station has been, from the back seat, a sibilant murmur that allowed me to read my novel about the end of the world.
Seemed like a good day for a walk, anyway—that rare San Francisco summer morning where the sky is pure and endless blue. But the sunlight was naked and hostile, the kind that makes your skin tingle, the kind that makes you think about melanoma.
I make my way up Market Street, among office workers, tourists and suburban shoppers, the traffic racing through intersections, then lurching to a halt at each change of the lights. I’m past Fifth Street now, into the sketchy, run-down stretch of mini-marts and strip joints when I pass two homeless guys. That is, I’ve passed a dozen homeless guys just in a block and a half, but these two I notice. Bearded old guy in a baseball cap, sitting on the filthy pavement, his back against the plywood screening off the long-closed “LA Girls.” Standing over him, a younger guy, could be late thirties or mid-40s, depending on how many drugs he’s been doing, and for how long. They’re talking. The guy on the ground burbles something about “evil.”
“Yeah, he’s the lord of both good and evil,” the younger guy explains, with the zeal of a door-to-door Mormon. The seated wreck, talking like he’s got a mouthful of marbles, says something else, and the Ahura Mazdan says, “Yeah, he’s present in all things.”
Just as I’m passing them—and resisting the temptation to stay and eavesdrop—I see a girl dart across the street. A young woman, maybe late twenties, in a summery heather skirt and a black scoop-necked top, and after bounding across the street, she looks back over her shoulder, in the direction of oncoming traffic. She cranes her neck and stands on tiptoe on one foot, in the way that universally indicates she’s looking for a taxi. None is coming, and she’s just turning to continue walking when there’s a tap on a horn and a black car—one of those spotless town cars rented for occasions when a limo is too outré—pulls up beside her. The window’s down, so I see the driver. Ordinary Latino guy in his thirties, neat, T-shirt, vibing like a dude just on his way to work. Body language tells the story: She has no idea who he is. He sees she needs a ride and is offering it. Chivalrous, at least on the surface. But don’t take the ride, woman—you never know what’s under the surface. What’s present in all things.
They talk. She looks around, she considers … and opens the rear door, disappearing behind black-tinted glass.
I squint through my sunglasses, watching the car pull away. Then I turn back toward my office, the unforgiving sun sizzling on my neck.
July 10, 2009
Okay, technically ninja don’t do kung fu, but no one reads this anyway.
Which is good, since I never post nothin’. Busy. Tons of freelance work, and anxiety-inducing secret plans to spend every dime of cash it earns me. And soon.
April 24, 2009
I gotta remember to carry that new little Nikon around with me.
Spring reaches San Francisco in fits and starts, with three days of tremendous sun, warm despite the winds, bracketed by the kind of days where I have to close all the windows at night, lest my shivery girlfriend go home to her own, less arctic apartment.
The highlight of the changing season, of course, is the young women putting away their winter wardrobes. Yet that’s never more than a fleeting entertainment, if you will. It’s always the deeply strange that makes a real impression. And since I work down near Civic Center and the Tenderloin, “deeply strange” is like your supervisor’s simmering rage … after awhile you hardly notice it anymore.
Today I’m sitting in the sunny window of a taqueria behind my office, having finished scribbling in a notebook and now enjoying a goofy novel called Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse. I look up, and underbaked cuties from Hastings law school or neighborhood semi-toughs in their hoodies move along the sidewalk whenever I look up. I take note of each and then forget them as quickly as my eyes fall back to my page. Then I glance up to see two refugees from Middle Earth rolling down McAllister, one of them literally.
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April 15, 2009
So I walked around and took pictures of buildings and people and statues and such. Standard operating procedure for me, and even though this trip I had twice as many cameras and took (more than) twice as many pictures as usual, there’s not much to say about criss-crossing my way day after day through the narrow, irregular streets of old Prague, and every detail of architecture, especially the lavish art nouveau and the occasional sleeker bit of deco.
The Girl was working with her friend on a documentary, arranging interviews and conducting them once a dead-professional Irish cinematographer set up his camera and lights. This project is why we had to go at an … atypical time of the year, tourism-wise, 
and while it was cold every day, briefly rainy on several, we only got snow toward the end.
I will observe, by the way, that about a week after we got back, it was 70 degrees every day, with lows of about 47 — which was pretty much the high for the days we were there. Still, Prague has lots of trees, and I got a better look at the buildings with most of them stripped bare. And also, I’m told the city is much prettier in spring and autumn, particularly, which just means that even though we spent two weeks there, and I’ve photographed it so heavily I should donate to that Google Maps project that covers every square inch of a city’s streets, I still have something to look forward to when we return.
[Fun fact: 1800 pictures of this city, and Prague Castle is in the background of fully two-thirds of ‘em.]
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April 7, 2009
Still haven’t gotten any more thoughts together on Prague. Catching up on the freelance work, a last Wondercon piece for Badmouth, the Springsteen show, and a quick trip to Tahoe last weekend with Mari and Ed while Eddie was out from med school on Spring Break. Maybe this weekend. Meanwhile, a couple quick notes to myself on my recent airplane reading … after the jump.
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So we get down there, thanks to a Google Maps route that (we learned, reading only the next instruction rather than the entire set of directions) orders us to get off the 280 about halfway to our destination, gets us lost with a handful of “0.1 miles” switcharounds, and then tells us to get back on 280 South for another 15 miles. It’s like Google Maps just wanted to stop for coffee, or something.
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