fabio's Friends
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends View]
Below are the most recent 23 friends' journal entries.
| Friday, November 6th, 2009 |
veedub
|
9:44a |
excerpt du jour
From the days up in the Napa Valley when I had been a food-Nazi and attained a body-fat level of 13%, until my graduation from State, when I had let it rise closer to 20% in order to prevent premature menopause, I had remained quite buff. Not possessing the kind of body that looks great in competition, I had wisely not gone there, but I still looked good. I began training people at Club One and Cathedral Hill, and eventually ended up at the Golden Gateway Tennis & Swim Club, a tiny little gym built as an afterthought to the tennis courts and pool for the dwellers in the Golden Gateway Apartments. I had a couple of regular clients, and things were cool until the club was sold to Western Athletic Clubs, and the place got gentrified. The director of the club was a slick guy from one of the other WAC Clubs, and it was only because I had a couple of ongoing clients who were loyal to me that I managed to stay on as an employee. My immediate supervisor, Bruce, was a nice guy who was a former Olympic rower, and we got along just fine, but the people in the office were another matter. The next few years of working as a PT were made memorable by the onset of menopause. I didn’t mind the hot flashes, which I cheerfully and stubbornly insisted were mini-trips to Hawaii; but the mood swings were fierce. I would burst into tears at the least provocation, and sometimes for no reason at all. I was publishing a health and fitness zine for women called NoMansLand, mainly dealing with health issues of midlife women. I had decided that since I had gone deaf because of blood clots on the auditory nerves due to taking high-estrogen birth-control pills back in my 30s, I was not a good candidate for hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, which all the doctors were pushing at the time. It wasn’t until much later that the dire effects of HRT were discovered; at this time HRT was universally recommended, and my Kaiser doctor thought I was a little peculiar for insisting on doing menopause “on the natch.” At one of the ACSM conventions in Seattle I organized a workshop to discuss alternative ways of dealing with menopausal symptoms, and got in a bit of trouble. The ACSM was run by doctors, and the funding came primarily from pharmaceutical companies. I was told to shut up and sit down, basically. But I didn’t. I had built my own website, http://www.wiggage.com, and I put the contents of NML online. The CompuServe forums I had been active in during the late 80s and early 90s gave way to HealthWorlds and FitnessWorlds, my attempt to spread the gospel of natural menopause. Even though they are long gone from my website, they can still be found via the Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html. Evening primrose oil and dong quai were my salvation. They helped immensely with the mood swings and even the hot flashes. I can still recommend them to anyone in that situation. And when I began having daily headaches and Kaiser prescribed nortriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant, I made the amazing discovery that the little pills made me happier and less jittery. I can put up with a little dry mouth for that. I had to rethink the way I believed I was as a person. It wasn’t until I was no longer depressed that I realized that I had been chronically depressed since I was a child, and it wasn’t my fault! And it answered several questions I’d had about other people in my family: Auntie Debbie’s and her daughter Netta’s suicides, Auntie Eva’s nervousness, cousin Stuart’s depression, my mother’s rapid mood swings, and my grandmother’s bizarre behavior and lonely death in the crumbling old house in Richmond, surrounded by hoarded junk and isolated from her family for years. It was chemistry, and it could be altered. I can’t tell you how happy I was to realize this. So menopause was a time of self-discovery which made me realize that there was only so far I could go toward re-making myself into the image of a jock. Training clients was still fun and rewarding; but the gym business is primarily run by the money people, not the health people. So on my 60th birthday I bid goodbye to that world. |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 |
veedub
|
1:23p |
excerpt
Zombie Jamboree The Toads celebrate Brigid celebrate as close to February 2 as possible, and it’s usually a quiet little ceremony. Cynthia’s particularly devoted to Brigid, being a Celt. (I’m more partial to Hestia myself, but in practical terms that just means keeping the house clean and neat.) For most Bay Area witches, February is a run-up to Pantheacon. Pantheacon is a yearly convention of witches, pagans, heathens and other assorted folk which takes place on Presidents’ Day weekend at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, which has been the site of many sci-fi conventions, and thereby has inured its staff to hordes of costumes weirdoes wandering about the premises. P’con is four days of getting together with my coreligionists and their spiritual cousins from all the worlds (and when I say “all” I mean ALL), and it serves as a slightly more religious version of Burning Man, with workshops and ceremonies from Greek Reconstructionists, Feris, Kali-worshippers, Norse Heathen blots and Gnostic Masses, to Discordian parody rites, Jim Morrison memorial circles whose primary purpose is apparently to get shitfaced on ritual whiskey, various authors published by Llewellyn flogging their latest books, workshops from celebrities such as Lon Milo Duquette and Luisah Teish (I am a complete fangrrrl over Lon Duquette, and make sure to go to anything he presents no matter what it’s about, unless it conflicts with something I’m actually in); and an extensive vendor room for those who, like me, cannot do without shopping. Sing, O Muse, of the marvels of the Pantheacon Vendor Room, renowned among sellers and buyers alike! Wonderful clothes costing far too much and which cannot be worn except possibly at Samhain or the Ren Faire (or P’con, where the fantastic is not even noteworthy in the halls and public spaces, unless it involves snakes or other familiar creatures, or truly spectacular tattoos and/or piercings and/or brandings), but which cast a glamour over the passerby so that s/he is impelled to purchase these garments and long for the few occasions when they can be worn in public. Jewellery to hang from every possible personal crevice or piercing. Magickal objects with no mundane use but with infinite appeal. Books, divination cards, rune sets, everything an aspiring witch or magickian could hope for, all in one big room, with the overflow running down the hall outside (readers! massage!). Give voice to praise of the parties up in the hotel suites, noteworthy among which is the famous Absinthe Party, such a hot ticket (at least when absinthe was still illegal) that once it gets going there’s no room for anyone else to get into the room and, once in, it is nigh impossible to get out, trapping the partygoer back-to-back and belly-to-belly with the famous and near-famous of the Pagan world. What I imagine (never having been to one) a Hollywood party must be like, only with more mascara. It’s not the beginning of the festive year chez Vee and Ron, but it’s one of the best ways of meeting people we don’t see all that often. For the past few years I’ve either been giving presentations or participating in presenting large rituals, everything from the Toads’ sporadic dramatization for little kids of the Kore/Demeter story (I get to play Hekate and the Narrator) to last year’s Ole Time Feri Revival Meeting, which was THE Feri big ritual that year and managed to stuff over 200 people into one of the ballrooms to shout “Amen!”, sing gospel songs suitable tweaked for a non-Xtian audience, and listen to Brother Tim, Brother Philip, and Sister Jenya preach it to the skies on the theme of following Prince’s advice about punching a higher floor. Whoo. The next Big Event among the Usual Suspects is the Brides of March, put on by our friend Danger Ranger of Burning Man as something to pass the time until the next Burn (well, there’s also the totally illegal Xmas tree burn on the beach in early January, but you didn’t hear that from me. Since we bought our permanent tree, we have to scour the neighborhoods for a suitable dead tree to contribute to the bonfire, but that’s easy-- the pickings are really good, and if we had a truck we could load it up, no problem.) Anyway, the Brides of March is when Danger organizes a group of people, male, female, and ever shade in between and beyond, to meet downtown dressed in bridal gowns and work our way through neighborhood bars and stores, including Macy’s, the Disney Store, Gumps, and Neiman-Marcus, scaring the populace or evoking smiles, depending. One of my favorite pictures of the Brides is the Usual Suspects posed in front of a store billboard, all in wedding dresses, with the sign behind us saying “Capture the Charm of San Francisco.” Yes, we do capture the charm. Another opportunity to run around in public in costume. Am I developing a theme here? Yes, I am an unabashed clothes horse. I come by it naturally: B was very fashionable and her shoe collection, while not quite up to Imelda Marcos level, was pretty extensive for a mid-income woman. But the gene was somehow tweaked in me. My usual daily wear is tee shits (usually black) and black yoga pants, with pirate boots. However, my closet boasts a selection of fancy-dress that allows me to wear complete Halloween attire without having to buy it. Aside from the wedding dress, which is really due for a replacement, as it was not in the best of shape when I first got it from Goodwill, there’s a Pilgrim outfit: black dress, white bonnet, white apron, white blouse with large collar on which is inscribed “B+”; the Official Pirate Outfit described earlier; and a reasonably authentic late Victorian jacket, high-necked blouse, and skirt accompanied by a preposterous little hat with a stuffed bird on it, which I assembled for one year’s Dickens Fair, and which got so many compliments that I was amazed, since it took about ten minutes to put together. I still have to get or make a bustle, which would complete the look, but close enough for jazz. I have managed to acquire a few garments for Ron from sellers at the Dickens Fair and P’con. There’s a very nice grey morning suit with a tailcoat and satin stripes to the trousers, a cummerbund, a grey top hat, and the perfect shirt. This outfit was purchased over the course of several years, as each piece was rather expensive, but Ron looks the perfect Victorian gentleman in it, so it was worth it. And the black military tailcoat from P’con is wonderful to behold. It fastens with silver buttons and chains, and there are silver buttons in the back and at the sleeves. When wearing it at P’con, Ron also wears a Utilikilt, a previous P’con purchase. There are a lot of nice-looking male legs to be seen at P’con. I do like men in kilts… I was very taken with the military tailcoats, but fortunately they didn’t have one in my size.
 |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 |
veedub
|
4:07p |
|
alixandrea
|
4:40p |
Feeling God-like...
I've just been to the nurse to have the anit-pig-death and anti-seasonal-death jabs, for free because I'm asthmatic. Now (apart from a slight ache in my left arm where the pig-death was injected) I feel invincible! :-P This feeling is compounded by the fact that Last July went down very well indeed in Whitby on Friday, I had a fabulous holiday, made it there and back on one (admittedly large) tank of diesel and managed this last despite taking five people and an amplifier up an unexpected ONE-IN-THREE-OHGODSWE'RENOTGOINGTOMAKEIT-W AIT, HOW DID WE JUST DO THAT??? HILL!!More to follow when I've started feeling mortal again. ;-P Current Mood:  amused |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
veedub
|
7:12p |
excerpt
The Night Shift Last night Ron and I went to the annual Dia de los Muertes procession in the Mission, as we have for the past several years. Diane and Miles (aka the Dharma Dumplings), Don and Yoshiko, and three other people met us at La Corneta Taqueria on Mission Street to fuel up beforehand. Diane looking splendid in a wide-brimmed white hat with a white veil, a black jacket, white tulle petticoat over black tights and boots, and a red feather boa, with her face done up as a skeleton. She was carrying a staff topped with a skull rattle, and from which hung bells on ribbons. Miles was rather more subdued: all black, with a staff atop which sat a stuffed raven, but since he is tall and large and graced with a long grey beard and hair (looking amazingly like Andrew Weil), he was still able to stand out in the crowd of costumed revellers. Ron and I having shot our wad a few days previous on Samhain itself (Ron as Baron Samedi with top hat, cigar, one-lensed sunglasses, face painted one-half black, one-half white, and his extremely spiffy military tailcoat with the silver buttons and chains; me in skull-face makeup, black wig topped with a three-cornered hat which sported a yellow ostrich feather, the usual piratical gear of big white shirt and striped stockings, pirate boots, a leather bustier, and my magnificently evocative brocade coat), we elected to merely go in civilian clothing. I did have a picture of Jack Skellington on my shirt-front, but otherwise we did nothing to compete with Diane’s glory. These holiday events have become worn into grooves by now. The season kicks off with preparations for Cynthia’s big Samhain ritual: putting up a cloth maze in her basement garage using lengths of muslin which have been painted with sketches of the cave-paintings at Lascaux and elsewhere, and using strings of lights at floor-level to make it a little more spooky. Cynthia starts building her western altar about a month in advance. It takes up one entire wall in the ritual room, and usually features tree-branches decked with pictures of the Beloved Dead, both hers and other coveners’; one year she used a wrought-iron garden arch as a framework, which was quite magnificent. Then there’s the ritual itself, with one person asperging attendees before they enter the maze, a challenger at the other end of the maze, a guide across the river (actually a temporary streamlet in the garden), a welcomer into the sacred space, and a couple of musicians playing each person into the room, where they can now write the names of their Beloved Dead and attach them to the altar. The four quarters are cast, each by a different covener, ending with three voices for North. Baron Samedi and Hekate are invoked (the Baron likes to make a dramatic entrance by taking a mouthful of rum and spraying it into the air, but he has pity on Cynthia’s asthma and leaves his cigar unlit). Then we each are brought into the “boat” and sail to the Isle of the Dead. The “boat” needs a little explaining: one person is the prow, repeating some phrase like “to the shining isle” over and over again. Then two people are placed behind the first person, with one hand each on his or her shoulders. These two will repeat a different phrase, such as “over the sunless sea”. Next three people are brought in, then four, and then rows of four until everyone is in the boat, each row repeating a different phrase. The whole “boat” sways from side to side, and the effect is hypnotic. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever attended Cynthia’s Samhain ritual I had to let go of the people ahead of me and sit down before I fell down. Eventually the voyagers reach the Isle of the Dead, and each one takes a turn at lighting a black candle for their own Beloved Dead, and saying who it is for and perhaps a little about them, until the entire altar is brilliantly lit by the many candles, and the pictures seem to stare back at us the living. When the Dead have been saluted (and this can be anyone who has died since the previous Samhain, or someone we wish to memorialize each year), everyone turns to the East, where there is another altar-- this one all in white and gold-- which is the place to celebrate the new babies which have been born since the previous Samhain. It’s not always about literal babies; sometimes it’s a new project, or a new intention. After this the circle is opened so that the feasting can begin, with the singing of “Happy Trails,” which is about the oldest tradition the descendants of the Compost line have. “Happy Trails” is the way the Composters always finish their get-togethers, whether it be a formal ritual or a party. Then a day or two later comes Dia de los Muertos. The Usual Suspects (Ron, me, the Dharma Dumplings, Don, Yoshiko, others of the Toads, sometimes Dusty and Danger, and occasionally Champagne Bob) meets to eat first, then walks over to the starting place on Bryant Street at 24th. There are costumed dancers, baterias (one group all in white, another all in black), and other bands. Most of the people in the procession are in skull-face makeup, and some are elaborately dressed. There’s a huge stage-coach, drawn by eight bicyclists, which belongs to the Apocalypse Puppet Theater group, and there are drums, drums, drums. You can’t help but dance down the street. At the end of the parade is Garfield Park, where there are dozens of candle-lit shrines to the dead, ranging from a simple clothesline on which people can peg papers with their departed dear ones’ names to elaborate outdoor living rooms, complete with Oriental rugs, lamps, pictures, statues, flowers, and photographs of the dead. Some of these are for the personal dead, and others for celebrities: one of the most-visited last night was a shrine to Michael Jackson. The next milepost on the Holiday Highway is the Waifs and Strays Thanksgiving, which we host on alternate years with the Dharma Dumplings. This custom began the first year after Ron’s mother Claudia died. The Waifs and Strays are anyone who doesn’t have a family in the area, or doesn’t get along with their family, or is simply fed up with their family and wants to go somewhere that is more fun. It actually started out as the Waifs and Strays Xmas and soon expanded. Whoever is hosting one hosts the other one next year. It’s a pot luck dinner, with the hosts providing the turkey and/or ham. Some time during the season we get dressed up in Victorian gear and go to the Dickens Fair at the cow Palace. Any occasion requiring a costume is all right with me. Strictly speaking, I’m kind of out of the period of Dickens, as my garb is more 1870’s than1850’s, but hey... Then there’s the Yule Feast, for the Toads plus guests. Unlike the Waifs and Strays celebrations, the Yule Feast is a sit-down dinner by candlelight. This particular holiday belongs to Ron, who cooks a festive three-course dinner for the 25 or so invitees, which has a different national theme each year. We have had Russian, Norse, Italian and lots more. Ron, of course, can remember every menu for each feast since the beginning. It’s actually a ritual, but in the very loosest sense of the word. There’s the darkening of all the lights and then the lightine of the candles, one for each guest; the reading of the poem “The Shortest Day;” the battle between the Holly King and the Ivy King (which has to take place in the street outside because there’s insufficient room in the house); and the gift grab-bag. Since the house is really tiny and the living room and dining room are at right angles to each other, we have to arrange the three tables in a slightly curving line starting next to the skeleton in the northeast corner (which catches the sunset light on the day of the Winter Solstice through the bedroom window and through the kitchen, all the way from the southwestern to the northeastern side of the house) and ending at the hearth. If we have over 25 people, I usually end up sitting in the fireplace. This could be because I’m representing Hestia, but the truth is that we can’t curve the tables around more to avoid the fireplace because then people at one end wouldn’t be able to see the people at the other end. December 24 is the day to get together with the Miller clan. We haven’t hosted it for a while because there are so many Miller, what with the younger generation getting married and setting up housekeeping. Last year we gathered at Brian and Heni’s high-rise apartment overlooking the Oakland Bay Bridge, which was distinctly different from Alan and Marisa’s place in Napa or Donald and Patrice’s place in San Ramon, or Dennis and Carolyn’s in Danville. There’s only one Miller brother who doesn’t live in the Bay Area; that is Ted, who lived on the East Coast and who we only see at weddings and funerals. The others manage to get together twice a year, once during the summer and once on Xmas Eve. Xmas used to take place at Claudia’s, but after Dennis and Donald married and started having kids and competing claims from their in-laws it got pretty hectic; two Xmas dinners plus a major commute, with screaming kids in the back of the car. No fun. So all the brothers agreed that Xmas Eve would be their day to get together. After Claudia died it was comforting for the brothers to be together rather than letting the family drift apart. Xmas Day: you can’t have too many celebrations. If it’s a year on which we didn’t host Thanksgiving, we can usually manage to serve some leftovers from Yule as well as yet another turkey and ham, but if the Dumplings are hosting Xmas, Ron usually makes what the Miller family calls “the pink stuff.” This is technically known as “vinegret,” a traditional winter salad of root vegetables cut to a very fine dice, with beets supplying the color. All the brothers except Dennis, who is notoriously kitchen-shy, try their hand at the pink stuff, but Ron’s is the best. Xmas means another gift grab bag, which is easier to manage than the sometimes tortuous arrangements the Miller brothers and their wives have for Dec. 24. When the family started growing, it got very expensive for everyone to give everyone else a present, so now each person gets to buy for one other person, plus something for the “little girls,” Alan’s daughters Clare and Natalie. The girls are getting to be teenagers, so their days of many many presents are drawing to a close; but once the slightly-older and just-married nephews and nieces start having babies, it’ll start all over again. Alan and Donald are twins, but Alan didn’t get married until Donald’s kids were already in school, which is why Alan’s kids are so much younger than their cousins. We used to buy a tree every year, but when the price of a decent-sized tree went into three figures, we invested in a fake one from Target. It’s pre-lit, which is wonderful: I have spent more years than I care to remember wrestling with tangled strings of tree lights. I have a lot of ornaments, more than will fit on any one tree unless it’s one of those giant ones; so decorating the tree is always an interesting art process for me. In recent years I have taken to putting the Blue Fairy Barbie that Diana gave me on the top of the tree; and I have always had or made plenty of quite pagan looking ornaments. So the tree, which goes up on December 1, is part of all the ceremonies. I surround the base with my collection of stuffed toys and a few artfully arranged gift boxes. The effect is all that could be desired. Witchy and Victorian. When the tsunami of gift-giving that is Yule and Xmas have crashed over us and left us gasping on the metaphorical sand, the next holiday doesn’t involve exchanging presents. Hooray! Nor does it involve going out and getting drunk and kissing strangers at midnight. New Year’s Eve is generally quiet, with bed before midnight (unless it’s a millennium, of course, which involved fireworks and champagne atop Twin Peaks with the thirty or so people who had gathered there). New Year’s Day is the holiday to watch. The Usual Suspects assemble at the Portals of the Past in Golden Gate Park at eleven a.m. and walk through the park all the way to the beach, where we make offerings of candy and silver to Yemaya, tossing them into the ocean and then running away as fast as we can without looking back, just in case the Goddess decides she likes our gifts so much she’ll take us along with them. Then we repair to a nearby Chinese restaurant and stuff ourselves before the obligatory “Happy Trails.” And then there’s Pantheacon to look forward to, but that deserves a chapter of its own.
 |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Monday, November 2nd, 2009 |
veedub
|
11:40a |
excerpt
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again I had been gradually working my way around the senior centers and YMCAs of the City, teaching aerobics classes which were usually aimed at older women. Chinatown Y was an interesting venue, as there was no actual space set aside for aerobics classes, the wood-floored gym being reserved for after-school basketball for the neighborhood youth. So my class took place in a lobby whose floor was linoleum over concrete, where I had to pull all the chairs over to the wall and stack them before class, and where there were columns interspersed through the room, so it was difficult to see what everyone was doing at once...or would have been, had there been more than five or six elderly Chinese women in my class at any one time. I slowed the action down and cut out any jumping in order to save their feet, and mine. But I also had a great deal of fun making mix tapes for the class. My favorite was a workout that took place to the original cast album of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can get a lot of cardiovascular juice out of doing the Time Warp. (I don’t think any of the class recognized the music.) After the Chinatown Y I worked for a while at the one just off Geary and 17th Avenue, and at the Stonestown Y near SFSU (which is the one at which I was originally trained) before landing a paid gig at the Parkmerced Community Center. Parkmerced is what is politely referred to as a “planned community” adjacent to San Francisco State University. Built in the 1940’s as a group of high-rises and accompanying ground-level townhouse units, by the late 1980’s it was owned by the infamous Leona Helmsley, the “Queen of Mean,” and was a study in decrepitude. The townhouses were little boxes with fake Southern-mansion columns at the front doors, and the high-rises were huge crumbling monoliths, all situated on streets with Spanish names in radiating patterns which were very confusing to walk in if you didn’t live there. Take one wrong angle and you could end up miles from your destination, and figuring out which was the correct angle was nigh impossible, as all the vistas were identical. I finally figured out that I should navigate by the sun, but that didn’t help on foggy days. The Rec Center was way across on the far side of Parkmerced from the bus stop, so I did a fair amount of preliminary wandering and cursing before each class. One fine October day, I was in the kitchen making myself a snack at home on Fifth Avenue, getting ready to go and teach my class, when there was an ominous low rumbling noise, everything started moving, and every car alarm in the neighborhood went off at once. Earthquake. I left the kitchen in a big hurry (there were too many knives and hanging pots and pans there for safety), and stood in the doorframe of the bedroom, clutching the doorframe tightly through the interminable shaking. Officially, the Loma Prieta quake only lasted fifteen seconds, but time really does slow down to let your life history run in review in your head. Several loud crashes from the kitchen and living room reassured me that I was in the safest place possible, but how safe was that? Ohshit ohshit I’m gonna die, this is the Big One, I’m gonna die. After about a hundred years of subjective time, the house semed to coast to a stop. The car alarms were still sounding in chorus on the street, and I crept nervously through the flat checking the damage: broken glass on the floor, bookcase skewed and emptied of its contents--it was a damn good thing I hadn’t been on the couch-- kitchen knives all over the floor, an interesting crack in the staircase wall that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago… An aftershock rattled the place, and I grabbed the portable radio, slammed down the stairs and sped out on to the street to find most of my neighbors milling around and talking in hushed tones. There was a large yellow plume of smoke in the direction of the Marina district, but more immediately, Hilary, the twelve-year-old daughter of my upstairs neighbors, came out her front door and said her parents were driving to Santa Cruz and she was alone in the house. I sat with her on the front steps listening to the portable radio. The Bay Bridge was out, and people had been killed in the Marina, South of Market, and the Cypress Freeway. Neighbors were wandering around talking to each other who had never talked to each other before. It was as if the quake had turned us for the nonce into a small town. I rather liked it. An across-the-street neighbor came and took Hilary to spend the night with her family. Greg and Rose, Hilary’s parents, had been en route to Santa Cruz. They had gone on a weekend getaway and had driven almost right into the epicenter before they had to turn around and return to the City; and so Hilary’s first grown-up Home Alone experience was over. I went back into the house as dusk came on, keeping the portable radio on for company and for updates. The TV had fallen on its face and was totalled, as was the VCR, and the bookcase would need some repair before I could re-shelve the hundreds of books that lay strewn across the couch and the floor. I picked up and swept up as much of the broken glass as possible before it got too dark to see, as the power was out, and spent the rest of the evening piling books in neat rows by candlelight. Ron was at work at the Donatello Hotel’s restaurant downtown, where he was head chef, and the phones were down as well, so I simply assumed that I’d see him when I saw him. The news that night was mainly about the Marina fire and the Bay Bridge collapse, but the focus then shifted to the Cypress structure, where the most deaths had taken place and where for the next several days the rescue efforts were concentrated. Almost overlooked was the death of six people South of Market, where a brick building had collapsed on them, which would have been a major headline had it happened in isolation. And the whole World Series thing, damn: thousands of people in Candlestick Park getting ready to watch a historic Oakland-San Francisco series-- and then the quake, on nationwide live TV no less. You have to hand it to San Francisco for spectacle. Ron didn’t get home that night: as it turned out, he was organizing an impromptu soup-kitchen at the Donatello for people marooned downtown, and managed to get a phone message to me that he wouldn’t be home, after a few hours. And Diana called from Chicago at two in the morning: she had been watching as the networks repeated the famous shot of the car going off the Bay Bridge, over and over, and hadn’t been able to reach our phone until then. I don’t know how phone service was restored so fast, as electricity and gas was out for much longer. Eventually we got things squared away and replaced the TV and VCR (which were old anyway). And not too many months later, my friend Don McFarland told me about a new group which was starting up called the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, or NERT. During the Marina fire, the fire department was overwhelmed. The fireboat Phoenix was available, but the tides were too low for it to pump seawater from the Bay to the fires on Divisadero Street. Several hundred local civilian volunteers dragged hoses to the fireboat, and the fires were finally extinguished. (A detailed report of the events in the Marina can be read at http://www.sfmuseum.org/quake/ops5.html. Interestingly, SFFD radio communications were overtaxed, and much of the information about the fire was gained from live TV coverage, courtesy of the Goodyear blimp, which was to have been filming the first game of the World Series that day. The fire chief, who was in Boston attending an urban fire forum, was flown by chartered jet and FBI helicopter back to Central Fire Alarm Station.) The civilian volunteer hose-draggers were the core of what later became NERT. The SFFD offered (and still does) free six-week neighborhood trainings in emergency preparedness to any adult civilian who wants it. Twenty years later, there are thousands of NERTs, most still active. There are two big drills a year, one on the anniversary of the 1906 quake, in April, and the other on October 17, the anniversary of Loma Prieta. As a NERT, it’s my responsibility to stock up on emergency supplies, make sure the house is as earthquake-safe as possible, and in the event of a quake to take care of my house and family first, then my immediate neighbors, and then report to the local Incident Command for assignment as search-and-rescue, triage, HAM operator, or whatever else is needed. The twentieth anniversary citywide drill was recently held on Marina Green, and we practiced several of these skills (not the least of which is remaining comfortable with a yellow hard-hat perched on one’s head). Ron and I have been NERTs for years, gone to Incident Command trainings, served as neighborhood coordinators in both the neighborhoods we’ve lived in, and even tested for our HAM licenses-- not that I ever got any practice at that. I don’t think I’d be terribly adept at it, as I am still having a lot of trouble adjusting to using a cell-phone, Ron having gotten past my resistance to owning one by forcing one on me in the guise of a birthday present. I’m still ticked off at him for that. The test for the HAM TEchnician license consisted of a morning spent memorizing the answers to the test questions, and then an hour or so spent in regurgitating them on to the test form. I’m not sure how that qualifies me to operate a HAM radio, but I am the proud owner of the call sign KG6ICP, at least until September of 2011. As they say, that and a quarter will get you on the bus, except that it’s $2 now. Mark had had a gig scheduled on October 17 at the then-brand-new Marriott Hotel, which locals call the “Jukebox Marriott” because of its resemblance to a big huge shiny glass-encrusted jukebox. October 17, 1989 was the hotel’s opening day, and it has been hinted that possibly the earthquake was a form of divine retribution… but no. Nothing happened when they built the Sutro Tower, and that’s easily as ugly as the Jukebox. In any case, Mark’s gig was delayed a week, and the Jukebox has loomed over Market Street quite harmlessly ever since. Mark had been keeping extremely busy ever since Dorian’s death, sometimes taking on two and even three gigs in a day; he was definitely the hardest-working drummer in Chicago, and was getting plenty of jingle and session work as well as recording with other musicians. 1989 was also the year he started touring and recording with Paquito d’Rivera. Mark had always liked to play Latin jazz, and one of his first bands was a Brazilian group, back when he was still in his teens. But this was hitting the Big Time. According to Paquito’s website: Drummer/percussionist/composer Mark Walker, originally from "Central America" (Chicago, Illinois) began his tenure with Paquito D'Rivera in 1989, when Paquito came to Chicago and needed a drummer who could handle a variety of rhythmic styles. Since then Mark has performed around the globe and recorded many Grammy award-winning albums, not only with Paquito, but also Oregon, Caribbean Jazz Project, Michel Camilo, Lyle Mays, Cesar Camargo Mariano, New York Voices, Patricia Barber, and many more. Mark is also associate professor at Berklee College of Music... -- http://www.paquitodrivera.com/band.htmlSo it’s useful to have a variety of skills. Not to mention talent to burn. Mark has been all over the world with Paquito, and with Oregon and other groups, and he was one of Paquito’s Septet when they played at Blair House for Michelle Obama’s birthday party the night before President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, so hard work can take you a long way (even though that particular night wasn’t a paying gig. Still.)
Current Mood:  accomplished |
veedub
|
8:56a |
quiz break
You Are a Geek
|
You love to learn, especially when it's about technology. No subject is too obscure for you.
You enjoy tinkering with things to see how they work. You aren't a traditional learner either... you need to hack around to figure things out.
You may have the brains to be a super rich Silicon Valley geek, but you're truly content to have your own favorite projects, subjects, and toys.
For you, being a geek is not about the glory. It's about a love of digging deep and truly understanding the world.
|
*sigh* |
crackedbones
|
4:01p |
|
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 |
veedub
|
11:42a |
and the excerpts begin again...
Still Crazy After All These Years It was 1987, and Ron and I had been married for ten years. We had agreed that we would renew our vows every ten years, but when we were deciding on a place to do it, we found that the smaller room at the Pete Douglas beach house in Half Moon Bay, where our original ritual had been held, wasn’t available for rent any more, only the larger room. The larger room was painted black, and the seating was mostly risers; there were no windows, as that’s where all the music performances for the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society took place. And it smelled horribly of booze and tobacco smoke, so we decided to look elsewhere. We finally decided on the Noe Valley Ministry, a church hall with a kitchen and plenty of room. It wasn’t fancy by any means, but it was reasonably close to home, and the price was right. Several out-of-town guests came to this iteration of the wedding: while I was living in the Napa Valley, I had become a regular on a comedy call-in show which originated in Cincinnati, called Talk-Talk (originally TalkBack, until someone with more expensive lawyers decided they wanted the name). The deal was that Jerry Galvin, the emcee, would present some absurd scam each week (such as the new law requiring all eighteen-year-olds to leave home) and listeners would call in with their reactions. The occasional person who took it seriously was anticipated with great glee by Jerry and his staff. In the persona of “Valerie-From-Calistoga,” the airhead aerobics queen, I would call in each week, sell my schtick to Jerry’s watchdog assistant Lynn (on guard against potential bores and religious nuts), and add my bit to the proceedings. Since I was feeling very isolated during my stint in the Valley, except for a very few friends I made there, like Champagne Bob, and the occasional visitor from the City, TalkTalk was the bright spot of my week for several years. I was elected President of the United States on one program, and won the Olympic gold medal for aerobic shopping on another. I still have tapes of many of these shows sitting in my basement. But I digress. There were several people who only wrote in to the show rather than calling in. Ron Frakes, one of the wittiest of these, and I began exchanging messages back and forth, and eventually I invited him to come and visit and attend the re-wedding. Ron F. actually did show up. I remember wandering around the city with him as he shopped for a lava lamp, which was just enough out of fashion to be hard to find, but not out-of-date enough for the next few years to be considered retro. He also started writing for the Compost NewsLetter (CNL), a zine which I had started as a calendar of events for Compost Coven, and which morphed, when Compost grew less active and more far-flung, into a lit-zine, mostly but not exclusively for horror and fantasy stories. There were regular columnists, such as Diane Fenster, who wrote about herb-lore, my husband Ron’s “Hail to the Chef” recipe columns, Ron Frakes’s Cincinnati stories, Leah’s recounting of
Greek myths, and Brigit Brat’s columns about, well, being Brigit Brat. Most of these can still be found at http://www.compostcoven.org/cnl/contents.html, along with a selection of the better short stories. These were the days when I had abandoned teaching Witchcraft for what I thought would be forever. I had initiated a few people over the 1980’s, but my days of teaching groups were gone. Or so I thought. Through the good offices of my friend Diane Fenster, I had been introduced to the Macintosh computer. She was working for San Francisco State University as a graphic artist for the Science Department’s magazines, and she set me loose on one of the Macs in the school’s computer library with copies of MacPaint and MacWord. I was hooked within the first half-hour, and bought my first Mac Plus at a considerable student discount from the SFSU bookstore a couple of months later. Ron, at first a little dubious, was soon a convert. I discovered HyperCard and the burgeoning internet (well, CompuServe, anyway), and began producing CNL digitally instead of by the tried and true manual paste-up method I had been using ever since my days on the Chicago Seed. Ah, the days of bitmapped illustrations, and floppy-swapping, when 4MB of RAM was as big as all outdoors… The wedding, to get back to what I was talking about initially, was lovely. My Auntie Renee had come, as did my mother; Renee was dedicated to immortalizing every moment of her visit by taking pictures incessantly, and Bee was just as dedicated to reminding Renee “don’t forget to focus!” Finally, as we were walking through the tree-fern garden in Golden Gate Park, she said it once too often, and the usually placid Renee, lowering the camera from her eye, looked meaningfully at Bee and grated, “if you tell me to focus one more time…” And my friend and partner-in-crime Donnie M came down to the city from Napa, which took a bit of doing; his mother was the only one who could drive him, and she usually worked weekends as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant in Napa. But she managed to deliver him to the church and pick him up afterward. I always thought that she must have been some kind of saint. She had a bunch of kids, all boys, and all reckless, and all forever getting into motorcycle accidents or other major traumas, and it couldn’t have been easy coping with D’s progressive disability. But both Donnie and his mom were always cheerful; he treated any considerations of safety as a joke, and was always signing up to do things like wheelchair parachuting or downhill skiing. Whenever I feel scared at tackling something new I think about Donnie; and whenever I feel alarm at anything my kids are planning, I think about his mother. As I said, the wedding was lovely (yes, I am going to get back to it.) Ron didn’t cater this one himself, but had it professionally done. We had the same wedding cake as we had at our original wedding: a chocolate cake from the Cake Gallery in the shape of Winnie-the-pooh smoking a joint with the caption “Time For a Little Something.” (The Cake Gallery is this great bakery South of Market where you can order cakes with photographs of whatever you like on them, or in the shapes of Naughty Bits, if that’s what you like to serve your guests.) We had invited a couple of hundred people, and only about 80 showed up, so there was a ton of food left over. Annie and her friend Karen, a gorgeous six-foot-three model, took most of the leftovers home; I think it fed them and all their friends for a week. While Renee and my mother were in town we all went to Ivy’s, where Ron was working as a cook, for dinner on the house. Ron was wearing his hair in long curls, Peter-Frampton-Comes-Alive-style (permed--his hair is naturally straight as a stick), and at the time I thought it looked perfectly adorable. Now I look at the pictures and wonder what we could have been thinking, but, hey, it was the Eighties. It was also during this time, while Ron was working at Ivy’s, that he got friendly with D B, who was working as a salad prep man there. D was living on Fulton Street on property that belonged to St. Mary’s Hospital, and in fact his back yard overlooked the hospital’s ambulance entrance. There were three apartment buildings connected to each other on the property, and over the course of several years, D, a talented landscaper, had “encouraged” the collapse of fences separating the back gardens, landscaped the entire area, and filled the gardens with wonderful little nooks and sitting-places. There was a model railroad, maintained by D’s brother, an avid model railroad fanatic, surrounding the only remaining section of lawn; winding paths in brick and tile, laid by D and his friends; benches, flowering trees, and, certainly not least, an assortment of more-or-less decorative objects (gazing balls, statues, dressmaker dummies, African masks, stuffed animals, wicker men and women, strings of beads, vases shaped like Elvis and other luminaries, and a model of the Golden Gate Bridge, complete with toy cars) which leaned against fences, dangled from or wound around trees, or simply stood independently, surrounded by flowers. This wonderland, B Park, was the site of barbecues in the summer, with the barbecues set up at one end against the ventilation outlet from the hospital, the model railroad making its trips and stops under the proud supervision of D’s brother, who arrived supplied with a camel’s-hair brush to remove tiny grains of dirt or sand from the tracks when needed. There was usually live music courtesy of a group of D’s friends who were in a band, but when they didn’t play there was always D’s stereo, blasting out the back windows of his apartment. His Halloween parties were even more well-attended; in fact, he had to stop giving halloween parties after one year when over 200 people showed up. Inside, the decor of his apartment was as vivid as that in the garden. D had been collecting postcards for years and stapling them to his walls and ceiling in the back room. (There was even one of me, a picture taken at one of our own parties by Fred the Finn, a photographer who supplied me with a pair of googly-eye glasses to pose in, captioning the resulting picture “Who Needs Drugs?” I still have a few of those kicking around somewhere…) That was the back living room. The front living room was a surrealist paradise, a tribute to Cher, Marilyn, Madonna, and other icons, whose photographs were collaged all over the walls except just behind the fish-tank, and with partial clothing-store dummies disposed about the space in casual poses. At one time there was a large cage of finches as well. The bathroom and kitchen were full of slogans culled from the headlines, advertisements, odd little signs D had found, posters from rock concerts, and the same sort of memorabilia with which I had filled my apartment in Chicago when I was married to Byrd years before. D was a Deadhead, and on Jerry Garcia’s birthday every year, August 1st, he would hold a sidewalk chalk party outside in front of his building, supplying large colored chalks to anyone who happened along and wanted to contribute to the underfoot mural. D’s roommate during the first years we knew him, P, was distinctly odd, even among D’s eclectic array of friends. P was a home-care nurse who spent very little time at home, and his room, which was only opened to the privileged few for viewing, was a shrine to Barbie. He had boxes and boxes and boxes of different models of Barbie, stacked up on the bed so that if he wanted to go to sleep they would all have to be taken down. And there was a strong smell of mothballs, which permeated that end of the house even when his door was closed. He believed that mothballs would prevent disease and keep him young, so he surrounded himself with them. Occasionally he would have a garage sale at which he sold 1970’s clothing. There was a never-ending supply, and nobody ever knew where he got it all. All anyone knew was that it smelled of mothballs, so he didn’t manage to sell much of it. D was fond of Aerosmith, and on January 29, 1988, Ron and I went with him and his sister to a concert at the Cow Palace. Everyone was either drunk or stoned, and D’s sister, a tough little dyke with a tendency to get into fist-fights, was both. I decided I’d be less likely to get into trouble if I sat by myself, so I ditched the others and went to the other end of the arena, meeting up with them afterward. I had my Fast Pass so I could get home alone if necessary, because, well, you never knew. (2101 words)
 |
justinsane
|
5:26a |
One thing
I'm big on showing people proper respect, but at the same time I HATE doing tribute shows because oh the reason for them. It's going to be a very long un-fun 12 hours! |
| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:01p |
|
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 |
veedub
|
1:10p |
|
veedub
|
1:06p |
how did they know?
You Should Be a Pirate for Halloween
|
You are jolly, outgoing, and the life of every party.
When you get dressed up for Halloween, you go all out. You even change the way you walk and talk.
You are somewhat dramatic and a great actor. You really belong on a stage.
Seriously, why limit yourself to dressing up one day a year? You know how to work a costume!
|
Current Mood:  amused |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Thursday, October 29th, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:03p |
|
alixandrea
|
1:22p |
|
alixandrea
|
11:22a |
Resolution afternoon gig final details
Hi all! Further to my previous post ( http://alixandrea.livejournal.com/377654.html), I am very proud to announce that after Last July's live performance, Gothic belly dancer extraordinaire SaschA will be taking the stage to entrance and bewitch you as you sup your cocktails! In order to allow SaschA time to arrive and bedeck herself in her finery, the time of the gig has been moved very slightly, and will now begin at 3.30pm. Hope to see you there! Alix x Current Mood: excited |
| Monday, October 26th, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:02p |
|
| Sunday, October 25th, 2009 |
crackedbones
|
4:01p |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fabiolanzoni's Friends Page
thoughtful