I just noticed that.

I don’t know where the week went.

We had a bit of good news earlier in the week that came right on the tail-end of some bad news, but I can’t tell you about it because it’s kind of personal.

What I can tell you is that the weather was all icky and cold until I got the good news after the bad, then the weather suddenly turned all nice, like the weather was just waiting on my news.

So apparently, the state of meteorological affairs for the greater San Francisco/Bay-Area hinges entirely on whether good things or bad things happen to me.

This being the case, if local people would like to continue having good weather, you should probably send me nice things, or at least make nice comments below.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t seem to have any influence on the weather in other places, such as Toledo, Canada and Africa.

Not that I’d want to. It’s far to0 great a responsibility.

But I am going to go out today and enjoy the lovely weather here in the greater San Francisco/Bay-Area, and I’m going to try to avoid bad things because I don’t want to walk home in the rain, because I don’t own an umbrella.

Yes, you heard me right, I live in San Francisco and I DON’T OWN AN UMBRELLA.

If a local person wants to do a good thing and send me one, that’d be nice but it would defeat the purpose because then the lovely weather would stick around and I wouldn’t need it, which would create a paradox, which is bad, so then I really would need it, so it’s a darned good thing you sent it!

But not really, because the act of sending me an umbrella is what would create the paradox in the first place, so it’s all kind of like “Schrödinger’s cat,” who is better off left-alone, as you know if you stayed awake in your high-school physics class.

Of course, if you didn’t stay awake you probably don’t know about Schrödinger’s cat which means you’re going to send me an umbrella because you’re kind, albeit a little sleepy, and so it will rain today, but perhaps not because none of us can really determine the outcome through cause-and-effect, we have to wait to see the results.

But even this cannot be something absolute, because of the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics in which Schrödinger describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the help of a diabolical mechanism.

Don’t you see then, how this ties-in with the weather here in the greater San Francisco/Bay-Area? Picture if you will, a  scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat’s life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead, which means.. (drumroll!)

It could be both RAINY AND SUNNY AT THE SAME TIME!

..here in the greater San Francisco/Bay-Area.

Which is not surprising to you in the least if you’re a local who lives here.

In which case, send me an umbrella.

Hey, have you guys seen this yet?

It’s filmed right in our backyard! Or our front yard.. or something..

It just showed up on HULU, so Dorian and I watched the pilot episode last night along with episode two.

It’s fun to see sights we’re so familiar with, but we haven’t seen the cute blonde chick who plays a San Francisco police detective, or Hurley from “Lost.”

I guess they’re out there somewhere though, because they traipse all over San Francisco in the series while looking for prisoners who escaped Alcatraz in 1963 and are running amok committing crimes.

The premise of the show is that the prisoners all disappeared abruptly one cold night back then, and are now reappearing in our time looking like they haven’t aged a day.

Turns out the prisoners themselves don’t know what happened either.

I like this one scene where Hurley/Doc gives the cute blonde detective chick a look that basically says, “Hey, I was on ‘LOST’ and I can’t believe THIS SHIT!”

No really, he did..

So, the show is definitely a mystery/sci-fi period thing that meshes a little bit of LOST with PAN-AM and DOCTOR WHO. It’s fun and more importantly, it takes place right outside our front door. As I type, the real Alcatraz is approximately three miles to my port side.. *points*.. but I don’t think the prisoners all just vanished one night and are now running around our neighborhood.

At least I hope not.

The word around here is that Alcatraz the prison closed up shop in 1963 and just reassigned the prisoners to other penal institutions. In the TV show that’s the cover story and also in the show, like in reality, Alcatraz is a tourist attraction today that’s run by the National Park Service.

But we enjoyed watching the show not only for the good story, but the fact that the characters kept going into buildings we go into and walking by the same panhandlers who we walk by, and jumping out of the way of the same maniacal cab drivers that we do!

If you haven’t seen it I’ve embedded the pilot episode from Hulu below, because I know that your idea of a good time is to come to my blog for the express purpose of watching TV shows. You’re welcome.

ALCATRAZ.. the pilot!

NOTE –  If you plan to visit us here in San Francisco someday and have never been here before, this series is a good way for you to familiarize yourself with local sights and  extremely implausible science fiction all in one shot.

ADDITIONAL NOTE, AND A SAD ONE AT THAT – From IMDB.. “Even though the show is set in San Francisco, and some of the pilot was filmed in the city and on Alcatraz itself, the producers of the show opted to film the rest in Vancouver, mainly because of the much more attractive production rebates than California and the city of San Francisco could offer, much to the chagrin of the San Francisco film industry. “

So like, never mind. Dammit. Friggen’ CANADIANS.

NOTE TO SELF – Always check IMDB first, before spending an hour on a post about some stupid TV show.

Lollygagging in front of the hotel on Market Street with Wilson, Bruce and Max..

Yes, I said “lollygagging.” We were literally gagging on lollys.

The America’s Cup is coming to San Francisco.

Now, that can either mean the world-famous yacht-race or the big-ass metal cup that the winner of the race wins.

In this post I’m going to talk about the cup because it was the first of two world-famous, big-ass metal cups that I’ve actually gotten to hang-out with.

The second one is The Stanley Cup, which is the world-famous, big-ass metal cup they win in hockey. I actually had lunch with The Stanley Cup once. No kidding.

I posted about that a few years ago.

San Francisco is all a-twitter because The America’s Cup race is coming here in 2013, which means that the actual cup is too. Heck, I think the cup is already here, judging by a bunch of photos I found at The America’s Cup website.

I won’t repost them here because the cup people will sue my pants off and we’ve already had our “no pants on the train day,” so I’ll just tell you about them..

The pics show the cup posing next to The Golden Gate Bridge, riding cable cars, giving a hippie in The Haight a buck, and so on. It appears to have had a pretty good time. Although I hope it didn’t feed the Sealions at Pier 39 because you can get a ticket for doing that.

There’s even a pic of the cup gazing in wonder up at The Transamerica pyramid, as if it can’t believe there’s something actually taller and gaudier than it is.

The cup is really big, and old, having been made back in eighteen-forty-something. I’m sure if I were able to take it to lunch we’d get a senior discount.

It will be good to see the cup again. We shacked-up for three days back in ’87, when Dennis Conner won it for the USA. I was working as a security guard for a company that provided security guards to places that needed them, and the boss called me one day and said, “We’re sending you down to The San Diego Yacht Club for the weekend to guard The America’s Cup because it will be on display there.”

So I got to stand around for six hours a day, three days straight, staring at The America’s Cup as it stood encased in a huge glass container right in front of me, and when I was tired of staring at the cup, I’d stare at the people who came in to stare at the cup.

The best story that comes out of this concerns our friend Elizabeth, who Dorian and I met in the mid-nineties while working together at a theater up in Ashland, Oregon. We were all talking one day and Liz said she’d been to San Diego, and for some reason I told her about how I had guarded The America’s Cup for the three days it was on display at The San Diego Yacht Club in 1988.

Her eyes got really big as she said, “Whoa, that was YOU?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Uh yeah,” I said. “That was me. Wait.. what do you mean?”

“My dad took me to see the cup when I was twelve years old because he was in San Diego on a business trip and had taken me along. We went to the yacht club and I remember standing there looking up at it in the glass case, and I remember the security guard smiling and talking to me. That was YOU?”

Yeah, that was me. Here we were in Oregon about seven years later and Liz was in college while working part-time at the theater we were involved with.

Small world.

I didn’t remember the twelve-year-old version of Liz from that day at the yacht club, as more than one father had brought his kids in to see the cup, but according to her I was friendly and made her laugh.

So, the cup is coming to town, and I’m looking forward to it. Maybe this time, if The Stanley Cup doesn’t mind, we’ll actually do lunch.

I’ll think I’ll take it to Tommy’s Joynt.

]]> http://rhodester.net/the-americas-cup/feed 0 http://rhodester.net/bryan-rides-bart http://rhodester.net/bryan-rides-bart#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:55:25 +0000 David Rhodes http://rhodester.net/?p=12022

My old pal Bryan Carnett visited during the summer of 2011 with his wife, Wynne, for their 30th anniversary.

He’d never ridden BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) before, so we killed some time on the trains while letting Wynne and Dorian sleep in early on a Saturday morning..

It was like taking a kid to Disneyland for the first time, except the mice are smaller!

Sam Austin on Sax in Civic Center Station

Dorian and I didn’t get out for New Year’s Eve this year because she wasn’t feeling well. So after we ushered in 2012 together I grabbed the video cam and took a walk by myself at about 1:00am to capture life on Market Street.

Sorry about the coloring, my cam is kind of old and not great at night shooting in the city.

NOTE — at4:18 an SFPD unit rolling code three almost clocks a guy in a crosswalk. Also, the ending of this video sucks. We can’t all be Martin Scorsese.

Maybe I’m a little hard of hearing in my old age, but I could have sworn I heard Dorian say that “Mercury is in Gatorade” and that’s why I’m having all these computer woes.

Frankly I don’t see how a bit of liquid metal in a sports drink could have anything to do with it unless someone spilled some on my computer, but that seems unlikely because we don’t really keep that kind of stuff lying around.

For one thing, Mercury is poisonous! That’s right.. even if you ingest a tiny little bit it could kill you deader than dead, and that’s pretty dead my friend.

Also, Gatorade is yucky. I haven’t tried any in years but I’d imagine it still looks and tastes like cold donkey piss. So we don’t have any around here.

Today I’m supposed to get the new adapter to replace the one that died. We ordered it late on Friday, which was what they call “Black Friday,” which was a really bad time to go shopping for a new one but we did anyway, but the guy wanted almost forty bucks for the one he had in stock.

This was in downtown San Francisco, and as we left the store to head home empty-handed we looked up from the bustling crowd and saw these two news helicopters hovering over our heads. THAT, my friends, was the defining moment, because THAT was when I discovered exactly how popular this blog really is!

I mean, here they were, following my every move with huge telephoto lenses as I went store-to-store trying to find a replacement adapter. I could practically hear the announcer shouting over the “chop chop chop” of the rotor-blades, “He’s going into the computer store at fourth and Howard now, and we’re all hoping he gets what he came for, because life won’t be the same for any of us if The Rhodester Chronicles can’t get regular updates. Back to you, Jen and Frank..”

There was a cop standing next to us on the corner as we waited for the light to change in our favor, so I casually commented, “They’re tracking me, you know!”

I pointed upward at the choppers.

He glanced up at them and then slowly looked me up and down. “Actually sir, they’re watching the occupy protestors in Union Square a few blocks away. Um, what did you say your name was again?” His right hand brushed against the canister of pepper spray attached to his belt.

“Nothing! I didn’t! Have a good day officer!” The light changed and we scurried home, being careful to avoid Union Square.

We heard later that shoppers ignored the protestors and practically trampled them to get those three-dollar waffle-makers. Not quite as exciting of a story as Rhodester out adapter-shopping on a Black Friday, but there you have it. Back to you, Frank and Jen..

I am updating on Dorian’s Macbook once again, just as I did yesterday, but hopefully this will be the last time because hopefully my new adapter will arrive soon and hopefully I can use my Netbook to catch-up on this blog, my Facebook, and Candace, my favorite model at Met-Art.

I have yet to figure out how to “clear history” on the Mac.

I am writing you today from a Macbook.

This is because the adapter on my Netbook died, so the Netbook ran out of steam. Yes, we use steam-powered computers around here. They look awesome with all that brass trim and I look good in goggles.

But seriously, I have to use Dorian’s Macbook because my own machine is down and out for a few days, but I don’t care for it one bit. It’s not so much that it’s a Mac, it’s just that I don’t really know how to use it and also, it’s not mine.

We last shared a computer around 1995. No kidding. Then I got my own and she used the one we were sharing, and we’ve always managed to each have our own since that time.

I don’t mind sharing things with Dorian, like when we have dinner and when we see a movie and stuff like that. It makes it better, actually. But not computers. When you run a blog and do all kinds of online busy-work, it’s just better to have your own.

Some couples won’t agree with this and will give me a hard time about it. “We share a household computer,” they’ll say. “The kids use it too and we all just take turns because it brings us closer together as a family.”

As they say this, you can hear the dial-up connecting in the background.. “zhiing-da-ding-zha-zzzzzzttt!”

I know a guy who even shared an email account with his wife. I guess there aren’t enough email addresses to go around *cough* but he said it was because “they don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Well, we don’t either but it just seems that’d be a big old pain in the ass because I like to sort my email and keep it all neat and tidy, which takes some doing. I couldn’t imagine having to sort hers too and make sure everyone knows to put her name in the subject line if it’s for her, or whatever.

By the way, that couple split-up. We’ve been married for 22 years. Some things you have to just keep to yourself.

So here I am, without my personal Netbook because we have to wait a few days on the adapter we ordered. Being right in the middle of San Francisco we thought, “Hey, why order one when there are all these electronic stores around and they’d be likely to have one in stock?”

So we took a walk, popping into store after store and coming up empty. Finally, one store had the EXACT adapter I needed! The guy even brought it out and showed me, and I compared it with the dead one I’d brought along to make sure it was a match.

Thirty-nine bucks.

WHAT??????????

We told him how they were ten dollars online so of course he urged us to go ahead and order one that way because he wasn’t coming down in price. He lied because we managed to talk him down to thirty-two, but that was still too rich for us.

So we came home and placed an order for a new one at fifteen bucks once shipping was added in, and it’ll be here in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here wondering why I can’t right-click or copy/paste anything. And what the hell are those bouncy little cartoons down below? Also I had no idea Dorian is part-owner of a casino.

The things you learn when you share a computer!

Uncle Val was an Aussie with a slight speech impediment, which made him a bit hard to understand.

He called my aunt Ruby “Woobie,” which he’d shout from the kitchen whenever he needed some help.. “WOOBIE! HEP ME GIT DA PAN OUT!”

She’d excuse herself from visiting and shuffle in there, leaving mom and dad with us kids to watch “Let’s make a deal!” which seemed to always be on. Did Monty Hall not have his own family to spend Thanksgiving with?

This was Thanksgiving with Val and Ruby, who’s last name I never knew. Ruby was my mom’s aunt and I guess she’d be about a hundred by now, or more. Val would certainly be a hundred and twenty.

They were old when I was a kid, and although everyone seems old to a ten-year-old, Val and Ruby were ancient. He was slightly stooped over and never left the house without his cane in one hand and pipe in the other. He always had that aromatic wisp of tobacco hanging around him that so many uncles and granddads used to have, back in the day.

Ruby was plumpish but not a lot, and she was the sweetest woman in the world. I now know where my mom got it from, because she was second sweetest until she inherited the main title after Ruby passed away sometime in the late seventies.

I always thought Val was the greatest cook who’d ever lived. He spent most of the day in the kitchen on these Thanksgiving reunions and the spread he’d lay out come late afternoon was fit for a king’s buffet. I knew he worked as a chef in a fancy restaurant, so it was never a surprise that we all got the royal treatment once a year.

About a decade after our last time with them, mom gently broke the news to me that he’d never been a “chef,” but rather a cook at a greasy-spoon in downtown San Francisco.

Another childhood illusion shot to heck.

Dorian and I found the old house during a visit to San Francisco a number of years back. It was smaller than I’d remembered, as they always are. It’s on South Van Ness not far from downtown, and as we sat in the car and looked over its traditional San Francisco style facade I grew more than a little wistful while recalling those (at least) ten annual Thanksgiving day visits we enjoyed.

I didn’t remember the earliest ones of course, but I knew that mom and dad had been going there since being married in 1957, so I certainly must have gone along every year starting in November of 1959.

I miss them terribly whenever this holiday rolls around, and I miss mom and dad, both of whom are long gone now. Val taught me what a boomerang was, since we all admired the fancy one he had on display in the living room. He never took if off the wall, claiming it was made of the bone of a large whale that had been slain by one of his ancestors. The wink that accompanied the story might have discredited it, but great-uncles with bushy white mustaches and funny accents always told the truth, didn’t they?

Ruby sewed things and even though mom sewed things too, she’d take the specialty jobs to Ruby because Ruby was the sewing queen of the universe. When mom passed away I found aunt Ruby’s sewing basket tucked into a special corner of her cedar chest reserved for treasures of the past.

When Dorian and I made a permanent move to San Francisco we settled near South Van Ness. I think on Thanksgiving day I’m going to go look for the old house again, and if I find it, perhaps I’ll find a part of myself that I’ve long since forgotten about.

God rest you Val and Woobie, I’m thankful to have known you both.

This is San Francisco City Hall. We live about a block away and can see it out the window.

“Hello San Francisco City Hall!” *WAVES*

The neat thing about living so close to San Francisco City Hall is that it’s pretty, with its cool dome and gilded gold edges and neat-oh lighting at night.

The bad thing about living so close to San Francisco City Hall are the protests, which happen on a regular basis. Whenever some group has a beef with city government they show up here to march around, wave placards and shout rhyming chants about the snit they’re in.

Our favorite protest has happened several times this year,  when the city’s taxi drivers get into a huff over something and endlessly circle the block around City Hall as they lay on their horns to express their displeasure.

It’s brash, noisy, yellow fun!

Speaking of yellow fun, someone peed in a bank lobby earlier this week and yep, it was during a protest. We heard the commotion and found out later it was because a bunch of students stormed into a Bank Of America lobby and conducted a “sit-in,” where they all locked arms and sat down to chant. Evidently they weren’t allowed to use the restroom so it became a “pee-in” too.

To be fair only one person peed in the lobby but that’s all it takes to taint the fine, upstanding image of idealistic protesters who are sacrificing so much to make this world a better place for you and me.

Or in this case, to get the attention of a regent from UC Santa Cruz who serves on the BOA board because they want to object to how much regents and people like that are paid while tuition fees get hiked time and again, pricing out students who are not able to pay.

We guess they made their point just before being arrested because the regent herself came down to the bank branch and cleaned up the puddle of pee! Okay, no she didn’t.. it was the CEO of Bank Of America! Okay, it was the branch manager!

Aw heck, who are we kidding here? It was a ninety-nine percenter, Miss Daniela Boone, a single-mom who works part time as a bank teller. After all the cops had left and the commotion died down, the assistant branch manager told her to go get a mop along with some disinfectant out of the custodial closet and “take care of that disgusting mess.”

What the guy who peed in the corner didn’t know was that Daniela herself had been on the fast-track to getting a fine education at UC Santa Cruz, but had to drop out because she refused to give up the baby. With the cost of tuition and all, she just couldn’t pay after her first semester so she ended up going to San Francisco City College where she balances school with the bank job.

She’d heard about the protests too and having been affected by all those rate hikes she really wanted to join in, but she had to work that day. After all, she has a son to worry about.

So she cleaned up the pee.

At least she fared better than Samantha Thomas. That name won’t mean anything to you, but it should to ANONYMOUS, that now-famous hacker group who likes to “protest” things by poking around on corporate computer servers and messing them up.

You see, awhile back there was this big old protest here against one of the transit systems because a transit cop shot an unarmed man down in a station, which wasn’t a good thing at all. So a bunch of protesters started showing up in the stations to disrupt commuting here in the city, and as a tactic to throw them off, the transit people shut-down the cell-phone system.

That’s when ANONYMOUS got involved (free-speech and all, you know?) so they hacked into the transit computer and publicly posted the physical addresses of all the transit police.

So who’s Samantha Thomas? She was the daughter of officer Thomas, who lives over in El Cerrito. It seems there’s this very bad guy who just got out of prison, and officer Thomas was the cop who’d arrested him a few years ago. The bad guy recently camped out all night in front of the Thomas house and then followed Samantha to her school. She didn’t make it though.

HAHA! We here at The Rhodester Chronicles are such tricksters! This is because Daniela Boone and Samantha Thomas don’t really exist. Let’s just call them “fictitious consequential metaphors.” No, we don’t know who really cleaned up the pee and we don’t know if anything bad happened from posting addresses of the transit cops, but it could have.

One thing we do know, and we know this for certain, is that Martin Luther King would never have publicly posted addresses of police officers to “teach them a lesson” no matter how badly they’d treated him, and they’d been pretty awful to him at times. He also wouldn’t have peed in a bank lobby, or advocated that behavior from anyone in his camp.

A friend of ours recently said about our modern protesters, “when you engage most of these people in conversation it becomes obvious that all of this anger is three thousand miles wide but only about an inch deep,” and you know what? He’s right.

Folks, you have every right to go out and wave signs while shouting, but your rights come within an inch of our collective noses. PLEASE think before you do something stupid.

Do the cops overstep their boundaries? Sure. Do they get too rough and aggressive? You bet. Sometimes that’s just perspective though. Some of you don’t think you should be arrested at all while  others want to be arrested, to prove your point.

Fine.

But keep us in mind, won’t you? We’re not only bank tellers who have to clean up pee and cops who have daughters in school, we’re also clerks and train-drivers and teachers. Your fight isn’t with us, we’re just the collateral damage strewn about as you march toward City Hall while holding high the flaming beacon of hope that symbolizes your quest for a better tomorrow.

Just don’t wave that thing around too much or you’re going to burn the whole darned neighborhood down.

Yesterday, a guy died under our window and I felt nothing.

We live in a residential hotel in downtown San Francisco. A lot goes on around here and it’s easy to get de-sensitized to people. It’s easy to not care.

I try not to let that happen to me, but it does. A part of it is self-preservation.

Try not to judge me too harshly about my feelings toward this guy until you’ve heard a little about him. He and his girlfriend are homeless and have been hanging out in this area for about a year. She’s late thirties, he was maybe forty-five at the most. Their fights were epic.

She’d scream at him and he’d yell back at her in a gravelly voice until the blows came. Then they’d pummel each other. Sometimes it’d turn into a wrestling match in the parking lot below, with one or the other burying their opponent’s face into the asphalt. Police and medics are on a first-name basis with them.

These are the type of people I call “homeless-by-choice.” I know some have a problem with that term, but I don’t care; they don’t live here and see this stuff first-hand. Granted, probably no-one starts off with the intent of being homeless, but drugs and/or alcohol just get the best of them and they give up at some point. They no longer try to get any help and they generally feel that the world is against them. They just don’t care anymore.

This guy’s name was Jimmy, which I only know because she constantly shouted it during their fights. “Fuck you Jimmy, you bastard! I hate you! Burn in hell you sonofabitch!” He used his fists and hands more than his voice and he was hard to understand so I never got her name. I’ll just call her Sally.

It became apparent at some point that Sally was pregnant. I remember the day I heard her tell someone, and then as the months went by she started to show more. This didn’t change anything. They still lived on the street, mostly under our window, and they still fought.

When she was in her final month he’d kick her and hit her. Did I call 911? Initially, yes. But when they’d be back on the street and and it would continue, you just reach that awful point of not caring anymore. You can only do so much.

I have to commend Sally for bringing this baby to term and letting social services have him. She disappeared for a few days, right around the time she was due. Then she showed up again, very unpregnant and saying things like “they better take care of my son.”

Recently she went off on another yelling rant at Jimmy, this time saying, “I can’t believe you won’t let me go visit my own son! He’s your son too, don’t you want to go see him? They’ll let us but you won’t even try, you bastard!”

Sometimes these rants were accompanied by the sound of breaking glass as she’d fling a bottle at him. This is only after every drop had been wrung out of it first.

Yesterday we were watching some TV show when her yells brought me to the window, which they hadn’t for a long time. You learn to tune it out – white noise – but this was different. She was sobbing heart-wrenching, deep sobs without being able to catch her breath. “Don’t you do this to me Jimmy, you bastard, don’t leave me alone out here goddammit!”

It occurred to me I’d heard sirens a few minutes earlier but we hear those all the time too – more white noise – so I hadn’t realized they’d stopped in the parking lot down below.

I pulled back the curtain to see Jimmy laying on his back, staring vacantly up to the sky. He was a crimson, purplish-blue. I’d seen it before; he was gone. Probably an overdose or heart-attack. A group of firemen and medics stood around him as a gurney was brought over from an ambulance, then they lowered it and rolled him onto it. She asked where they were taking him.

“San Francisco General, ma’am.”

They rolled what was left of him off to the ambulance, which then took its time leaving. No code-3, another indication that it was over for Jimmy. She stood and stared at it as it pulled into traffic, then collapsed to her knees and sobbed.

I closed the curtain and said to Dorian, “Jimmy’s dead. No more fights!”

“Huh, that’s too bad.” She meant the part about him being dead, of course. We won’t miss the fights at all.

Then we resumed our TV show.

I thought about it, and the only conclusion I can come to over my lack of caring is that Jimmy died long ago. It’s nothing new. Yesterday, his body gave out. That’s all. His soul was dead already.

This past Monday, Dorian and I toured a US Navy minesweeper.

This is because it was the end of Fleet Week here in San Francisco and I was in the US Navy a long time ago, so I always wanted to take Dorian aboard a US Navy ship. But we ended up on a minesweeper instead.

Okay, I’m being mean to minesweepers. But this is only because they’re a lot smaller than other Navy ships and they don’t shoot missiles or anything, and they’re made of wood.

There were a couple of US Navy ships made out of steel that were docked at the same pier, one being a guided missile cruiser and the other a guided missile destroyer. No, I don’t know what the difference is, other than one cruises and the other destroys. You’d think they’d each be capable of both of those things. Anyway, they were giving tours too, but we landed in a group that ended-up on the minesweeper.

This was because the US Navy was rotating the tours, in that they’d take 20 people out of this massive line we were in and assign them to go on the guided missile cruiser and then they’d assign 20 more to go on the guided missile destroyer and then the next 20 got the minesweeper.

A genuine US Navy Ensign came up to give us our tour and even though he introduced himself I can’t remember his name so I’ll just call him Ensign Bobo, because he looked like an Ensign Bobo. He seemed to enjoy being a crewman on a minesweeper but he kind of brightened up once we got to talking about the guided missile ships because he said he hoped to be assigned to one in the next few years.

This minesweeper, the USS Chief, is about the size of a commercial fishing boat and Ensign Bobo showed us a cool submersible submarine thingy that they put in the water to go after mines and detonate them, then he showed us this array on the back that he said they tow behind the mine sweeper to detect mines, and all of this was being said while other people were on the guided missile cruisers being shown guided missile systems.

I joked with him that I thought we were going to get to see a MIME SWEEPER, which the US Navy deploys to France and Golden Gate Park right here in San Francisco to clear out those pesky white-faced street performers. He didn’t seem to think that was funny as he caressed his side-arm while gazing at me with a look that said, “I already have to give this stupid tour on this dumb wooden boat, so don’t push it.”

Speaking of that, yes the minesweepers in the US Navy are the only Navy “ships” that are still made out of wood. This is because mines are magnetic and are designed to be attracted to the steel hull of regular ships.

We learned quite a bit about mine sweeping during this tour!

Ensign Bobo told us that Iran has the biggest stockpile of mines in the world, so US Navy minesweepers are actually useful because the Navy deploys them to that region as a “defense measure.” He said that Iran doesn’t actually put the mines in the water, because they know the US Navy has badass mine sweepers like this one that will sweep for their mines and then blow them up before the ships get there, so technically the US Navy minesweepers really have nothing to do.

This may account for why Ensign Bobo seemed so bored. I know the poor fella wants to get over to the guided missile cruisers someday and shoot missiles at actual targets, so I hope he gets his wish. But not really, because that would mean we’re at war again and we’ve had enough of that these past 20 years, don’t you think? Maybe he can spend his career shooting practice missiles at deserted islands, like we used to do when I was on a ship.

We’d go out off the coast of California and shoot our big gun at San Clemente island, and sometimes we’d shoot it at old Navy ships left over from world-war 2 that the Navy wanted to sink anyway, and sometimes we’d shoot our surface-to-air missile system at drones, which were just being developed then and had propellers.

We’d also shoot dummy anti-submarine missiles at our own submarines, which we never seemed to hit. That’s how good our own submarines are and how bad my old ship was, which is long gone now but the submarines are still around.

Okay, on to pictures of our minesweeper tour..

Dorian with a crewman from the USS Chief, our minesweeper, decked out behind them in patriotic red, white and blue bunting for Fleet Week 2011.

Dorian on the bridge of the USS Chief minesweeper as Ensign Bobo explains something-or-other to someone.

Me on the bridge of the USS Chief.

Dorian next to the helm control on the bridge of the USS Chief as Ensign Bobo answers questions behind her.

A US Navy patrol boat keeps a watchful eye on the minesweeper and guided missile ships moored nearby.

The USS Chief minesweeper with the array on the fantail that they put in the water to look for mines that are never there.

The Guided Missile Destroyer USS Milius.

Crewmembers stand on the fantail of the USS Milius as we walk by. In the background are the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island.

The Guided Missile Cruiser USS Antietam with a view of the Transamerica Pyramid being sucked into the fog.

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, framed by the Bay Bridge and the US flag on the fantail of the USS Antietam. The Carl Vinson made an appearance in San Francisco for Fleet Week but didn't give any tours.

US Navy Blue Angels

On Sunday we went down to the marina district here in San Francisco to catch the airshow for Fleetweek 2011.

They always show you aircraft that are not the US Navy Blue Angels first, for like two hours, and then they wrap it up by showing you the Blue Angels, who kind of blow everything else away.

That’s not to say the acts that come on first aren’t good.. they’re fantastic.

It’s just that if they were a tasty spread you’d put on your English muffin instead of airplanes, then all the preliminary acts would be margarine (starting with Blue Bonnet and working their way up) and The Blue Angels would be butter. Pure, golden butter from happy cows in California, not those freezing cows standing in a blizzard in Wisconsin.

We went last year and really liked it. So we took a bus to the same spot and arrived right when the Canadian Snowbirds were doing aerial loops and stuff.

The Transamerica Pyramid

These were followed by a solo US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet that showed us all how badass it is by going about 700 mph at fifty feet above San Francisco Bay, turning on a dime, climbing straight-up for about 3000 feet and and then launching a rocket barrage at the Transamerica Pyramid and leveling it to the ground in seconds. Color me impressed!

Then a United Airlines 747 flew really low right in front of us, which resulted in a massive tidal-wave of yawns. It turned around and did it again while the announcer extolled the virtues of flying United but he didn’t say anything about Virgin Air, which can probably fly low too, and show better movies while doing it. They also have the best fare from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate bridge that you’re going to find anywhere, especially if you fly round-trip first class.

Coit Tower

Next was a US Airforce F-15 Eagle, which did basically the same kind of things the Navy Super Hornet had done except for leveling the Transamerica Pyramid because there was only one of those, so Coit Tower got blown to smithereens. I actually found this more impressive because it’s a much smaller target and it’s shaped like either a fireman’s nozzle or a fireman’s penis, depending on who you talk too.

Or at least it used to be.

Then some guy did some really cool stunt flying in a shiny red bi-plane without getting killed even once! He was good too, and described what he was doing over his radio which they patched into the loudspeaker system so we all could hear it..

“I’m now going into an inverttteeddddd rooolllllll.. which hassss… about 7 geeeeessss………. ooooohhhh GODDDDDD!!!!! DAYUMMMMM!!!! huh huh uhhhhh !!!!!!!”

When he was done he flew away, then the big show rolled in. It was magnificent! It was powerful! It was MAJESTIC and BEAUTIFUL and there was no stopping it!

IT WAS… FOG!!!

That’s right. Good old San Francisco Bay fog, which has the worst timing in the world because it rolled in from out there on the ocean just as the red bi-plane guy was finishing up his act.

The Blue Angels whooshed in like they owned the damned sky or something, but took one look at that fog and whooshed out again, with their announcer apologetically explaining that there wouldn’t be a Blue Angels show today because it’s “not safe.” It seems those wussys refuse to go head-on at each other at 400mph, 50-feet over the water when it’s in a thick fog bank.

Gosh, they have high standards.

So we got to see almost everything but the Blue Angels, which we saw a little bit of, but only flying in formation and looking down with concerned expressions at the onslaught of fog that was spreading rapidly over the bay and yanking sailing vessels and slower airplanes down to the depths of Davy Jones locker in its icy-cold death grip.

We made a video but it didn’t turn out so great, since it doesn’t have much of The Blue Angels, so here’s my old (okay, she’s not really old) blogging pal Nikki Desuasido with a better glimpse of them doing cool stuff in this video, which was wisely shot the day before we went. Nikki is also more fun to look at than I am, so she gets invited to yacht parties and stuff..

Nice shoes, doll.

The loveliest thing happened yesterday.

This was after the craziest thing, that came just after the damn-near funniest thing, which was proceeded by the most interesting thing.

I’m writing while seated at a desk that faces a second-story window. The view out the window is of a bank parking lot right here in downtown San Francisco, so I see a lot of interesting things. Sometimes they’re followed by crazy, funny things.

Once in a great while something lovely happens. But that’s rare.

There’s an ATM on the side of the bank building so a lot of people pull in for a few minutes to hop out of their vehicles and withdraw cash. I see that about a hundred times a day. A white pick-up truck pulled in yesterday, and I heard a lady shouting in Spanish so I looked up and out the window.

She was really yelling at the guy who was driving, who presumably was her husband. They were both around fifty-something, Hispanic, and well-dressed. They were either headed to or just coming from something, but apparently he’d had too much to drink. That might have been what she was yelling about but I don’t know a lick of Spanish so I wasn’t sure.

As he got out of the truck to head to the ATM she got out of the passenger side and circled around while continuing to yell at him. He stopped and argued back, but it was all in Spanish so I didn’t have a clue what it was about. The interesting part came when she walked up and slapped him. It wasn’t a big deal, as he was a large man and she a small woman, but she really clocked him good.

He took it and then took another, and then put his hands up and told her to stop hitting him, I’m guessing, because she did. But then the funniest thing happened when he turned to go to the ATM and she went back to the truck. It was funny because there were three cardboard boxes of tomatoes in the back and she started grabbing them and launching them at him while he was making his ATM withdrawal.

He ducked while punching his pin into the machine as a tomato splattered just overhead. She kept yelling in Spanish and throwing, and some of them hit him while most missed, then he spun around to stumble briskly back to the truck.

This is when funny gave way to crazy, because an SUV had pulled in and the guy driving must have said something to her. She went off on him in English, because he was a white dude who probably wouldn’t understand Spanish ranting, so that’s when I figured out the guy driving her truck was indeed her husband who was indeed drunk, and she didn’t care for it one little bit.

She started dropping F-bombs like crazy as she yelled at the guy driving the SUV, telling him to mind his own effing business because if she wanted to yell at her drunken husband and try to keep him from drunk-driving then who was that guy to criticize her, eh?

As her tomato-drenched husband started up the truck and proceeded to pull out of the lot without her, she suddenly realized she didn’t have her sweater and purse; two necessary items she’d need when abandoned to the chilly evening streets of San Francisco, so she bolted over to the truck, flung the passenger door open and retrieved them before slamming the door and cursing loudly at him in Spanish.

I may not know any Spanish but I know cursing in any language, especially when it’s accompanied by slamming doors.

As the drunken husband tore out of the lot, the crazy cursing lady just stood there and sobbed. The SUV guy had made his ATM withdrawal, so he started up the vehicle and proceeded to back out, then he slowly turned and sidled up next to the now sobbing crazy cursing lady.

What happened next was the lovely part.

Because, you see, she had been so crazy mad a few moments before that she’d really reamed a new one for the SUV guy, who’d probably just made some simple wisecrack like “you tell ‘em, lady!” or some such in the middle of her tomato assault.

She “F**K YOU!” ‘d him about ten times in the midst of it and even kicked the side of his nice SUV at one point, which some of you can totally understand if you’ve ever been around a wife who’s that pissed off.

But all that seemed to have melted away when this woman was left standing alone in the middle of a parking lot, her husband having chosen the low-road. She sobbed and drooped and looked absolutely shattered, which broke my heart and that of the SUV guy’s girlfriend, who got out of the passenger side of their vehicle and came around to stand in front of the woman, her face radiating concern.

Not a word was said as the woman sobbed and the girlfriend watched, and then, after a few seconds, the girlfriend embraced her.

They hugged for what seemed a very long time.

I felt like the voyeur from hell now, but the story playing out was a fascinating one and it was all right in front of my window so I had every right to it, right?

I could hear it all now and the exchange was in English, so I understood every bit as the sobbing Hispanic lady told the girlfriend that her husband had just picked her up from work but he’d been drinking and she didn’t want him to drink and drive, because she loves him and they have kids and stuff.

Their three teenagers would be home waiting for them, but the husband wanted to withdraw more cash to go out drinking and dancing, and he wanted her to go but if she refused he’d just drop her at home and go himself.

She thought it was a stupid idea and she told him so, then demanded that he come home too but let her drive because he’d had too much already. He told her his mind was made up, so the act of pulling into the bank parking lot to withdraw their hard-earned cash from an ATM for that purpose is what set her off.

She apologized to the couple for going off on them and they told her it’s alright because she was mad, and anyone would be, you know? Then she said she didn’t know how she was getting home because he’d taken all the cash so they offered her a ride, but she refused and said she’d walk because she only lived on the other side of San Francisco, so it’d only take her a couple of hours.

They wouldn’t hear of it and tried to get her to accept the ride but she was sorry she’d spoiled their evening as much as she had already, so the girlfriend pulled out some cash and gave it to her saying, “Please, it’s not safe to walk clear across the city, at least get something to eat nearby and then after you’ve calmed down take a bus home, okay?”

The woman finally agreed and accepted the bills that had to be forcibly squeezed into her hand. Hugs were exchanged as tears were dried and the woman walked away with a heart-felt “Adios, and gracias!”

The couple sat in the still-idling  SUV and watched her until she disappeared around the corner, then they pulled out and went on about their business. They were better people from that moment on.

Craziness and fury begat something briefly funny yesterday, but then it turned lovely and made for better people all around, except for the guy who took that low-road. I hope he’s okay, but he needs a few life lessons himself.

Someone recently said to me, “Okay, you are officially the most interesting person I’ve ever met.” This was after I told them I did a stint at Seaworld in San Diego as a mime some years ago.

I don’t know about that “interesting” part. I don’t think of myself like that, it’s just that I’ve had a lot of various gigs because my left and right brain are always battling each-other and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to decide what I want to do when I grow-up.

So far I’ve been a dishwasher, sailor, clerk, security-guard, actor, radio announcer-producer, mime, taxi-driver, film and TV extra, Starbucks barista and a handful of other things. My résumé takes up half a tree.

I think what this person meant was that I have a lot of crazy stories, which is true for the most part, because if you’re around long enough and do enough things then crazy stuff is bound to happen to you.

So I think I’ll dedicate the next few posts on this blog to some of those titillating tales. The criteria I’m setting for myself is that they all have to be non-fiction from my past. Nothing is made-up, nothing is embellished. These things really happened. But take note that the title of this post includes the word “terror” only for the purpose of alliteration. These tales are only terrifying to certain people who need to get out more.

I’ll start by digging deep and going way back to my high-school years with a short little diddy because I’ve already taken enough of your time in setting this whole thing up. So here we go..

PONDEROSA HIGH SCHOOL – 1975
(excerpted from this post and edited)

The boy was still a boy as he stepped off the yellow bus with the rest of his peers. But several years had trundled by, leaving him taller, lankier and a bit of a smart-ass. He and his buddy ditched the group that was headed into the museum at Golden Gate park during their field trip to San Francisco.

The two opted instead to take an unofficial tour of the park and purchase an unofficial joint from a much older and scruffier black man who approached them. The high-schooler was smart, really! He just didn’t know it yet.

They found some bushes to hide in for the purpose of toking up. Then they spent the next two hours wandering the park in a daze, watching it ebb and flow. People flung grins at them as they passed by, while the world spun with the two clinging madly to it. They laughed as trees danced and birds sang songs with actual words in them for a change. They spun and spat on the ground more in those two hours than they’d ever done in either of their 16 years.

The problem was that they’d gotten used to the passive (by comparison) dime-bags circulating around the school, wherein one had to take heavy draws on the substance to instigate any kind of the slightest buzz. This stuff in the park was out of their league, but they didn’t know it, so they employed the same enthusiasm while inhaling as they’d done with the cheap shit and it kicked their collective asses.

After reconnecting with the group later on they wondered between them what in the hell WAS IN THAT STUFF? The teacher balled them out but he so resembled a yapping little dog wearing a suit jacket and jeans that the two couldn’t help snickering, which caused the nappy little dog to yap more, which caused their snickers to explode into guffaws. It was all quite the psychedelic cycle of craziness, that culminated with a visit to the principal’s office the next day.

They were dumb, but smart enough to not ‘fess-up to the principal despite his repeated questioning, so in this day long before drug testing was standard they managed to get off with a stern verbal warning and a shaking finger.

But a lesson was learned that day, and caution was born in the writer of this tale. As for the other, we don’t know – his prison stint in the next decade would attest not.

Coffeesister and I know this young lady who is almost ready for college, and she happens to live in Texas.

She’ll probably end up going to a university in that fine state, but for about ten seconds the idea was proposed and considered that she should actually come out here for school. Here being California and, more specifically, San Francisco.

This young lady is surrounded by helpful people, one of whom exhorted her NOT to entertain the notion of a higher education in San Francisco, namely because of “naked people on roller-blades in the gay district and too much smog.”

I know this because she messaged me to tell me this is what the person said. I, however, put her fears to rest by telling her that there is no smog in San Francisco, and that the naked gay people will not harm her.

First of all, let’s address the smog issue..

I haven’t seen smog here in 30 years. Not that I’ve lived here that long, but I came here with my folks when I was a kid and I lived here for the first year I was in the Navy because my ship was at Hunter’s Point, and I can say first-hand that even though there was a bit of smog then, there certainly isn’t any now.

This is partially because the wind won’t let any smog stay around. It all gets blown out to sea because the city is situated on a peninsula, but there’s not even that much of it these days because of all the clean-air initiatives that have been enacted over the years. It took a long time for all those vehicles that were exempt to die off but they’re finally doing so, and newer autos are no longer belching out black smoke like those old ones did.

They’ve also cleaned up factories and public transit – most of the buses and trains here run on an electrical grid and the few that don’t run on natural gas.

So I haven’t seen any smog around here in almost 30 years, but I did see a couple of naked dudes the other day, and I have this to say about that..

They won’t harm you. And even if you think they might, it’s fairly easy to check to see if they have any weapons on them because, really, they have no place to hide them.

Coffeesister and I went up to the Castro – which is what that well-meaning Texan was referring to when they said “the gay district” – and we sat in a little outdoor plaza sipping on a couple of cappuccinos that we’d obtained from Castro Coffee. It was a beautiful day and the capps were delicious, so we just sat there, sipping and watching life swirl around us.

Over on the opposite side of the plaza sat two naked dudes who may or may not have been gay, but probably were, and were also sipping coffee and taking in the nice day. They weren’t entirely nude, being clad in sneakers, but that was it. For the record, they weren’t roller-blading and I have yet to see anyone do so in the nude, but I’m sure it’s happened.

I don’t know why it’s happened, or why these particular two guys like to sit in the plaza nude, but in that district they can without being hassled by cops or fellow citizens, so they do.

They weren’t carrying any weapons upon their person (I’m certain of this) and they didn’t bother anyone. They did exactly what coffeesister and I did, only they did it without any clothes on.

I love freedom.

I can tell you that I’d much rather have them around than the guy in the train station last night.

He was smoking on the platform and someone asked him to please not smoke because smoking isn’t allowed on the platform, so he launched into a string of obscenities and then threatened the person with a knife. He didn’t actually pull a knife – he just said he had one on him and that if the other person didn’t shut-up he’d pull it out and slit their throat. Cops were called but I left before they got there.

Sometimes you get both naked dudes and knife-wielding train-platform smokers in this city, because it’s a big city and things like that come with living in a place like this.

But you don’t get smog. Not anymore.

The key is to just go the other way when the obscenities and threats start and let the cops handle it, because that’s what we pay them for.

And when naked gay dudes sit around and have coffee, just take a sip of yours along with a breath of fresh air as you thank God that you’re alive and free.

Kerli at SFPride 2011 - photo by Dave Rhodes

On Sunday June 26th, San Francisco threw a party in our backyard in celebration of gay pride. These videos tell the story..

VIDEO ONE (14:58) – Dave and Dorian awake to popstar Kerli doing a sound-check in their room, followed by gay cowboys line-dancing to Lady Gaga on their bed.

Then they go down to see the parade, which seems to consist almost entirely of the back of people’s heads. At the parade they meet a guy named Arthur, whose face gets really excited while he’s talking to Dave.

After that it’s off to Civic Center where a San Francisco band called “Stiletto Ghetto” has taken the main stage, while all kinds of people in all kinds of outfits walk around being all kinds of insane..

LINKS - The Dancing gay cowboys are called “The Sundance Bandits,” and along with the country/western venue outside our window they are sponsored by San Francisco’s Sundance Saloon – Mr. Natural teaches music in Haight Ashbury - Stiletto Ghetto can be heard in this clip, so rock their YouTube channel.

VIDEO TWO (14:57) – While taking a break in the room, we get something from GREASE and SHANIA TWAIN, then it’s back down to the plaza to wait in line several months for a beer.

Linda Perry is onstage with her band Deep Dark Robot, followed by The Queen Diva, Big Freedia and her booty bouncin’ babes. Kerli wraps up the clip with “Army of Love” and “Walking On Air.”

Dave discovers that concert speakers ten feet high do not translate well to a hand-held video camera. You will discover this too, so basically we’re just digging the visuals here, right?  Rock on.

LINKS - Linda Perry still rocks the house – Big ol’ booties bounce along with BIG FREEDIA – Kerli kills us with sweet bubblegoth for her moonchildren.

VIDEO THREE (3:48) - Luciana destroys Dave’s mic on the video cam, but we forgive her because she’s absolutely one HELL OF A LIVE PERFORMER.

We return to the room after the whole thing is over and Dave calms the freaked-out cat while miscreants rip up the dance-floor in the bank parking lot.

LINK - LUCIANA’S WEBSITE ROCKS!

———————————————————————–

EXTRAS..

Stills of Kerli performing live..

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Onstage at SFPride KERLI performed two hits, “Army of Love” and “Walking on Air.” Here are her stunningly creative and visionary videos to those songs, plus another called “Tea Party.”

YouTube user jbuckenthal was in attendance at SFPride and got much better clips of Kerli performing live. The audio on these is pretty decent..

ARMY OF LOVE

WALKING ON AIR

—————————————-

RANDOM YOUTUBE find of the CENTURY – Evidently the guy standing behind us at Luciana’s set knows all the words to her songs. You can see Dorian’s hat (with the white dots) directly in front of him through most of this clip, and my right arm on her shoulder (rainbow wristband). At 5:04 is a very nice shot of Dorian’s arm appreciating the song.

Oh, and apparently NOBODY has a mobile device that can handle Luciana’s music..

Thanks YouTube user grytestriped for posting that. And thanks also for not picking my pocket because apparently, you could have.

Some more kick-ass LUCIANA videos..

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Linda Perry and Deep Dark Robot..

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Big Freedia, The Queen Diva!

photo by jean kouley on flickr

This is a response I received via email to a job query about a security position at a club. I actually considered it for a few seconds ($25.00 PER HOUR??) but reconsidered when I realized he’s saying that security is encouraged not to wear pants.

Sometimes it just ain’t about the money, you know? (I removed what little identifying information there was to further anonymity)..

This position is for private security at a San Francisco sex club, located in the xxx district.

The position pays $25.00 an hour. (The exact address will be provided after you are hired.) This is being stressed because I have had numerous applicants go through the interview process, and then announce they were not comfortable working in a sex club or around nude people, who may or may not be having sex. If you are not willing to work with|around nude people having sex, please don’t waste my time.

These are the basic guidelines: naturally, these will be discussed in additional detail at the employment interview.

· The company “uniform,” which we provide, is as follows: regular staff wears a white t-shirt with STAFF in black letters, and security wears a black t-shirt with SECURITY in white letters. Dark sneakers are not required, but are encouraged.

Cockrings and piercings are allowed, but we encourage you to leave all other jewelry in your employee locker. This uniform will be worn at all times while on duty; removing the uniform for any reason without management permission is grounds for immediate termination.

· We do not charge a deposit for the t-shirt. However, if you don’t return it when you terminate your employment, there will be a $25.00 fee.

· Cell phones, cameras and other devices are strictly prohibited at all times.

· The primary role of Security is to make the lawyers happy. Just having someone on site reduces our Liability Insurance. There are no in-and-out privileges at the club, and all transactions are conducted indoors. (People enter the building, pay the fee, put their clothes and other belongings in a locker, and wear the key around their neck.) Staff follows the same procedure.

· The club is located in an unmarked building. There is no sign, or anything else, to advertise what the building contains.

· While you are working (in the t-shirt) you are prohibited from having body contact with a guest unless they initiate it first. IF someone touches you and you wish to have sex with them, you are allowed, but THEY MUST MAKE FIRST CONTACT.

We have no problem with Security playing with the guests: it makes things interesting for the guests, and the more sexual activity and variety happening the better. HOWEVER, if you touch someone first (a guest), you may be accused of sexual harassment and potentially even sexual assault. Because of the legal requirements, this does NOT apply to other employees – if you want to play with an employee, you are allowed.

· ALL SEXUAL ACTIVITY, REGARDLESS OF EMPLOYEE OR GUEST, MUST BE SAFE SEX AND CONSENSUAL. ANY violation of this rule, even if requested, will result in the guest being removed from the building, and the employee being terminated.

· You may, on rare occasions, be required to ask someone to leave. This happens only if they are observed doing drugs (we don’t want to lose our license) or are drunk and becoming obnoxious. We avoid, if at all possible, calling the police. The police, however, can and do stop by the club at will. Anything that occurs between the police and employees and guests will not be discussed. Violation of this will result in immediate termination, no questions asked, and no exceptions.

· The State of California prohibits smoking in the building. Since everyone will be nude, smoking is conducted on an enclosed outdoor patio only.

· Guests are allowed to bring alcohol and drink it at will. Employees are not.

· Employees are granted free admission to the club anytime they are not working. If they are with someone, the other person gets a 50% discount.

· At no time will an employee wear the company uniform if not on payroll.

· ANY act of violence|aggression will result in the guest being evicted. Employees who commit an ANY act of violence|aggression will be reviewed on an individual basis.

· Company policy does not prohibit members of a family from working the same shifts. However, because of the nature of the business, it is generally discouraged.

· You MUST sign a statement agreeing to become an Independent Contractor. In the simplest terms, this means we pay you cash (weekly, with the first payment being two weeks from the start date. This gives the payroll people time to get their jobs done.) YOU assume responsibility for reporting your income to the State of California and IRS. We do not deduct, nor do we assume responsibility, for taxes, disability insurance and social security.

· You agree that should you terminate your position, you will not be paid until the next scheduled pay date.

· Club hours are 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM daily. You will be required to work your choice of Friday or Saturday night. You may work both if you choose. You are encouraged to work as many hours as possible, not to exceed 10 hours daily (with a minimum of 6 hours daily) and a maximum of 50 hours a week.

· There is no maximum age of employment. Legally, we cannot hire anyone under the age of 18.

· People with physical disabilities are welcome. (We have employees who are in wheelchairs, and an amputee.)

· Benefits are provided after 60 days. Currently, we offer Blue Cross, but that is being changed. Additional information will be made available when circumstances are solidified.

If you are still reading this, and would like an in-person interview, send me an email telling me why you want the position, what you like and dislike about the position, and why I should hire you. (That is just to get to know you better.) You will hear from me with 36 hours, and an interview will occur as well.

We need people, and you are encouraged to pass this information to anyone that might be interested in working for us. If you refer someone and they are hired, I offer a referral bonus.

Thanks,

xxx

Rhodester’s note – Anyone in the San Francisco area feel up to doing this? Drop me a line and I’ll refer you to the guy, so I can get that tasty referral bonus while at the same time keeping my pants on.

Eric and Tom in Civic Center Station, San Francisco - photo by Dave Rhodes

How’s that for a headline?

You’ll be seeing it if Eric the singing cowboy decides to go ahead with a suit against the band, Train, claiming that they lifted part of a song he wrote in 2005 called “Tonight” for their hit “Hey, Soul Sister.”

I was on my way back through Civic Center Station a few nights ago when Eric asked me to have a listen to “Tonight,” which he then played for me on his guitar. Yep, there’s a similarity to the end of the Train song when it gets to the lyric “I don’t want to miss a single thing you doooo.. tonight.”

Eric claims that people who pass in the train station point out the similarity when he’s playing his song, asking, “Did you adapt that from “Hey, Soul Sister?”

He says he wrote “tonight” in 2005, and given that Train originates from San Francisco (“Hey, Soul Sister” is from the album called “Save Me San Francisco) there’s every possibility that they’ve heard it, as he’s played it hundreds of times in public.

We’ll point out that there’s a classic song called “Tonight” that was penned by Bernstein and Sondheim for the musical “West Side Story” so the choice of that title may not have been the best idea on Eric’s part, but it’s not the same song at all.

Eric’s “Tonight,” however, bears a striking resemblance to a part of “Hey, Soul Sister.”

He asked my advice. I’m not one for frivolous lawsuits and chasing an easy buck, but I thought of the obstacles he’d face if he ever tried to get “Tonight” published. “Hey, you copied that Train song!” So I told him to just hit up one of the law firms in the city and see what they think.

I told him he’d need concrete proof that he wrote it in 2005. He said he video tapes all of his songs when he writes them and locks them away in-case of anything like this. So far so good.

I told him that as far as I knew he’d have to show that a certain percentage of his song is similar to the hit Train song, but I didn’t know how much. That would be for his lawyer to decide.

I told him that if he just presented his case and played both songs for them, they would decide whether to take it or not based on its merits. If they decide not to take it then try another law-firm or two, but give it up if it goes nowhere. The two songs are not really that much alike, so there’s probably nothing in this.

For the record (and hopefully to stay out of trouble here), I like Train. I like “Hey, Soul Sister,” it’s a fantastic song. I personally think singer/writer Patrick Monahan likely didn’t “borrow” anything from a train-station musician, but we’re all subject to influence. Is there a chance he could have heard Eric’s song and that part stuck with him? Sure. Does it mean Eric is owed anything?

I honestly don’t know, but I don’t think so.

I’ve used jokes and stories from other writers after first rewriting them in an original way, or at least as original as I can get. If anyone wants to sue me for plagiarism, good luck proving it. There’s nothing new under the sun; a good artist or writer just finds a clever way to repackage.

I’m certainly not a lawyer. I don’t want to be a lawyer and I don’t even like being in the same elevator with them. That being said, please know that I advised Eric to hit up a couple of firms in town only because he was going to do so anyway. But I want to ask readers who are a little more savvy about this kind of thing what they think.

I’ve embedded the Train song “Hey, Soul Sister” below but I know Eric won’t let me post his video, so I won’t even ask. Suffice to say that the lyric I mentioned earlier and the music during that part is the only similarity in the two songs. The catchy “Hey hey.. hey hey hey hey HEY” is ALL Monahan’s..

I'm careful to show my ticket at all times when in the "paid area" of the train station

Yesterday was my birthday, so Dorian and I decided to go out on the town to celebrate my getting one year closer to filling the inside of an urn.

We decided the occasion called for a beer.

We didn’t know where we’d have the beer as we didn’t really make any plans, but San Francisco is cool that way because you can walk almost anywhere in the city and come across things you haven’t discovered before, so you go, “Hey, that looks cool!” and then you go in.

We went to The Castro District first, which is the gay mecca of San Francisco if not the world, because our bank is there and we needed money for our little adventure.

Our bank isn’t gay, I don’t think, but it’s like a block from Harvey Milk’s famous camera store so it’s at least gay friendly. I’m sure our bank and the camera store are good friends, and our bank goes to some of the gay parties that the camera store invites it to, just to be supportive, and maybe even they go shopping together, like on Sundays because that’s when the bank is closed.

Dorian adopts some hippies in the Castro

While leaving the bank, we came across some modern-day hippies who’d strategically placed themselves near an ATM to hustle for handouts. Their names were Lilly and “Clive.”

I put “Clive” in quotes because I can’t post the name he gave me, due to this being a family-friendly blog and I don’t want to shock your aunt Mabel.

Our conversation started because Lilly complimented Dorian on her artsy appearance, then I told them a story about seeing my first hippie in 1968 right here in San Francisco, then they complimented me on how well I was functioning given my age, since I’d just admitted to being sentient in 1968. They were impressed that I walk unaided and that they didn’t have to shout for me to hear them, although I admit I faked hearing almost half of what they said. Lilly is from a southern California city called Sam Dayglo and “Clive” arrived here last year, having itched a slide all the way from something called “the Nexus.”

We also pondered why people call them “modern-day hippies,” when the hippies in 1968 were “modern-day hippies” too, beings how it was modern day to THEM, back then.

Then we smoked a bowl and complimented irony.

I mean contemplated. We contemplated irony.

I almost said “comprehended.” We did that too, but just barely, ironically enough.

After I gave Lilly and Clive a couple of bucks for letting me take their picture and for giving back my wallet, Dorian and I decided to go out to a neighborhood called “West Portal,” because we seem to go to the Castro a lot and on this adventure we wanted to go somewhere where there weren’t any hippies we hadn’t visited much.

We hopped a train to get there and then walked around for a bit, until we came across a Mexican joint called “La Taqueria,” or something, so we decided to go in and have dinner.

Oh wait, the name is up on the sign.. *squints*.. EL TOR.. TOREEE.. UH.. DOR.. Ah, El Toreador! Yes, I know it well.

We had to wait for a table, which never takes over five minutes at Mexican restaurants when I flash my fake INS badge at the host.  We told him we’d be out front, because Dorian wanted to show off the new outfit she’d recently bought and have me take her picture.

Okay, the picture was my idea, so it’s not like she’s going around saying “Take my picture, I have a new outfit!” We just need to be clear on that.

We also didn’t tell the host WHY we’d be out front because we didn’t think he needed to know all the details about her outfit and the picture, because it seemed as though just telling him we’d be there would suffice. It turns out we were right because he never even asked, he just came out and got us when a table opened up.

Before he did that though, we were checking out the Peet’s Coffee next to the restaurant and made a snap decision to go have coffee there after our dinner because it was kind of close.

Once inside, we were seated at our table and Dorian grabbed the camera to take a picture of me, so this is what her view was like all through dinner..

I know, that chick in back over my shoulder is really cute, eh? LUCKY DORIAN!

I had an Alleycat beer, which comes in a ginormous bottle. This place has a selection of approximately 4, 392 beers from hundreds of foreign countries like France, Africa, Amsterdam and Arizona.

Dorian told me I resembled the alleycat on the label of the beer and I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I ate half her dinner.

I wonder what the alleycat on the label is drinking? It’d be pretty weird if it’s not an Alleycat beer, huh?

But if it is, then what label is on the bottle of HIS beer? It couldn’t be the label he’s posing for, because that didn’t exist yet due to the fact that he’s in the act of posing for it right then and there. No wonder they show him drinking it from a glass instead! Showing the label could theoretically unravel the entire space/time continuum.

I ponder these things. Especially after a 22 ounce Alleycat Beer that followed so closely on the tail of a hippie encounter in the Castro.

El Toreador has almost every kind of beer imaginable yet they still serve Bud and Coors, presumably to appease customers who are lacking in imagination.

El Toreador is a very colorful restaurant. They have a lot of splashy props and stuff, including fake birds and plants. You know that attraction at Disneyland where you go into the tiki-hut and it has all these birds that crack jokes and sing to you?

Well, El Toreador is exactly like that, except their birds don’t crack jokes or sing. They don’t even move, really, unless you’ve had more than a few Alleycats.

We left El Toreador and decided to blow off the Pete’s Coffee next door because it had closed by the time we got out so we thought, “Geez, if they can’t stay open like an hour later just so we could get a coffee then fine, they’re not getting OUR BUSINESS.”

We walked over to the West Portal train station to catch a train downtown because we decided to go to The Coffee Bean near Powell and Market instead.  We knew it’d still be open and we have friends who work there, because we go there all the time, and the staff decided long ago that they might as well be nice to us because they weren’t going to get rid of us very easily.

Fortunately the next train to come along was going downtown, which wasn’t a big surprise because on that side of the platform they ALL go downtown..

The train to take us downtown approaches at a high rate of speed, like, 7 miles per hour or something.

When we got down to The Coffee Bean it turned out that Kristie was the Barista, and she made us a couple of cappuccinos. She’s very friendly, super cute and possibly single, so if there are any guys reading this who are interested then just email her at Kristie@gothefuckaway.com or add her on Facebook.. her name is Kristie Backthefuckoffmothafuckabeforedavebeatsyoass. I think she’s Norwegian or something.

Kristie makes Kappuccinos while Dave Kompliments her.

Another short train ride to get home had us disembarking at Civic Center Station where Sam Austin can be found swinging his Sax around on most nights. Sammy is a cool cat who spins some righteous notes that waft through the air and light on the fancy of all who pass by. Then they hopefully toss a buck into his cup.

Sammy and Davy, swingin' cool and smooth as gravy.

We made it back safe and sound, so here I am posting about it while I continue to compliment the irony of it all.

I mean comprehend the irony. No wait.. contemplate.

It might be time for bed. Goodnight.