
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Every Heart Beats True...For the Red, White and Blue...

Friday, July 3, 2009
Glamping In The Great Outdoors
So off we went into The Great Outdoors. After we parked the car at our cush little campsite (complete with one of those wooden landscape scenes with holes where people can stick their faces while someone takes their picture from the other side), we blew up our rafts and paddled into the river. There we spent the day laughing at ourselves for various reasons including the fact it took us hours to figure out how to tie our rafts together without floating into riverbank in the process. Hours! And, yes, we had oars.
An additional complication arose due to the fact that I had not been planning on glamping, or rafting for that matter, and the best I could do for "water shoes" were my canvas espadrilles with a high platform heel and a buckling strap around the ankle. Since exiting the river entailed regrouping on the beach side and then swimming back across to the campground side, it felt like too much effort to buckle and unbuckle my shoes, which were waterlogged after being tied to the handle of my raft all day. So after I put on my shoes in order to contend with the rocky "beach," I attempted to swim across the river in them, which turned out to be, err, the more work-intensive option.
Visual: me in a polka dot bikini, holding onto a large inner tube, doggie paddling my way across a 4-foot deep river while being pulled under by what felt like 10-pound weights on my feet. Every time I kicked my legs, the large and motley gathering of local river goers would see a high heel espadrille pop into the air at which point I would observe their perplexed reactions, start laughing, and then choke on the water--a cycle that repeated itself many, many times. I told one concerned-looking guy (who was wearing a wife beater and a Marlboro hat) that I was training for a Navy Seal test. Unclear if he bought it.
Regardless, glamping was a great success and I may have even improved my swimming endurance along the way.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
In the Knick of Time
With Pride coming up, I found myself in a panic over my hair. No, I'm not going to be dancing on a float in front of thousands of people nor am I attending any formal events. In fact, I'm going to be out of town this weekend. Then why the panic? Well, the boys (and girls) start arriving in San Francisco early in the week (as in NOW), and I'm certainly not going to have a repeat of my 2007 Pride experience, when, clearly, I was ill-prepared.
I don't always get it 100% right when it comes to explaining my good friend's personal journey in perfectly PC terminology (still struggling a little with Queer vs. Gay and, for example, if it's ok to ask a FTM for a tampon if you're pretty sure they have one in their bathroom)...but I'm getting there.
In the words of Harvey Milk, "I like to sit in the window and watch the cute boys walk by." And I love that Nick is now one of those boys...
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Them's Fightin' Words
I totally forgot that I was kind of in a bar fight last week! Well, the fight mostly belonged to my friend, Amy, but I was sitting next to her for half of it so I feel like it was my fight, too, by association. And I made it worse at the end which means I can totally claim bragging rights to having had a hand in the brawl. Win!Out
It all started with a call from Amy on a Tuesday, saying that she was on her way to The Phoenix Club (the Irish pub right near my apartment) where she would be meeting up with her boyfriend/fiancé, Matt. She invited me to come down and hang with them, which would be the perfect chance for me to return the pirate “undergarments” that I had borrowed from her for Bay-To-Breakers (long story involving my participation in a Louisiana Crawfish Boil group costume). It took me a little while to get to the bar and by the time I did, all hell had broken loose.
According to Amy, the saga started when she was pulling into a parking spot on Valencia St. and a car pulled up beside her. The female driver yelled through the car window that the spot was hers...and Amy best move out da way. Amy stated the obvious, which was that she got there first and that the spot, clearly, belonged to her. The other driver (whom we’ll call KrazyGirl for simplicity’s sake) disagreed and unleashed on Amy, bad.
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A Self Respecting
At this point, Amy felt nervous that if she did park there, KrazyGirl would key her car the minute she walked away to meet Matt. So, like any self respecting
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Before Amy had the chance to tell Matt anything, she overheard KrazyGirl complaining to the bartender about “the self-entitled blond bitch who tried to steal her spot.” Not about to stand by and listen to herself be smacktalked, Amy marched right up to KrazyGirl and told her that she was, well, krazy.
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As you can imagine, KrazyGirl did not take kindly to this and ripped into my friend for thinking she had any right to take a spot from “a local.” It turns out that KrazyGirl lives on the block (which makes her my neighbor—eek) and believes that she has first dibs on every spot between 19th and 20th streets, even if she gets there after someone else has begun to pull in. We could spend time dissecting this curious logic, but let’s just move on, shall we?
Who? That Douchbag?
So Amy, amused at how ridiculous this was, starting laughing and Krazy girl got upset…at which point she accused Amy of stalking her and called the PoPo. While they were waiting for the police to arrive, Amy explained to KrazyGirl that she had planned to meet her boyfriend at this very bar which just so happend to be located on KrazyGirl’s personal block--no stalking involved. KrazyGirl then glanced in Matt's direction, pointed at him, and commented, “Who? That douchebag?”
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So the police arrived and interviewed everyone. KrazyGirl told her side of the story and added that Matt had tried to hit her. Huh? Ummm, no. The police took everyone’s information and made both Amy and KrazyGirl promise that they would not speak to each other for the remainder of the evening—like two kindergartners relegated to separate time-out corners. KrazyGirl was confined to the bar area and Amy to the cocktail table area. It was at this point that I walked in...and returned the pirate panties to their rightful owner.
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The Professor
Fast forward to the end of the night when KrazyGirl is walking out of the bar. As she passes our table, one of us (I wonder who?), yells “byyyyye!” and she immediately flips out (oops!). It was at this point that she educated us about how we are all huge losers and how she is smarter than all of us combined since, after all, she’s a math teacher at a community college. (How she knew we weren’t at the bar for a MENSA meeting remains a mystery.) And just to prove it, she held up a text book and shook it at us.
At this point, we started to feel sorry for KrazyGirl. She was just so krazy, poor thing. But before we had time to act on our sympathy, she dropped an insult that really crossed the line. Before I tell you what it was, it’s important to remember that, over the past 3 hours, Amy’s parking spot had been taken from her, she had been called a bitch, she had overheard Krazygirl talk smack about her to the bartender, her fiancé had been called a douchebag and she had been forced to spend 30 minutes getting interviewed by the police. All this, and she was still in moderately good spirits.
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Things Escalate
As she was leaving, KrazyGirl announced that if there was so much a fingerprint on her car when she returned from wherever she was going (maybe to teach an Algebra II class? Conic sections?), Amy’s car would wind up in a ditch in Hunter’s Point. Despite this weirdly violent threat, Amy kept her cool. But then KrazyGirl swung below the belt adding “and I bet you don’t even know where Hunter’s Point is, being from the Marina and all!” It was this comment that sent my friend over the edge.
Background: For those of you who don’t live in SF, there has been a long-running battle between these two diametrically opposed neighborhoods. The
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The Return of the PoPo
So Amy and Matt pretty much ripped this girl "up one side and down the other" as they say, and KrazyGirl huffed her way down the block…with her math book. Not 10 minutes later, the police came back and asked what happened. Turns out, they had been called again. The funniest thing about this part of the saga is that the police were now interviewing Amy and Matt, who were sitting on stools at a high cocktail table, through the window of the bar (see above pic for set-up). “She called me a d-bag!” Matt relayed. “And threatened to drive my girlfriend’s car into a ditch!” “Wait!” Amy added. “She called me a...Marina Girl.”
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And with that, the interview came to a screeching halt. I could be wrong, but it appeared as though the cop was horrified on Amy’s behalf. He put away his notepad and made us promise not to interact in any way with KrazyGirl if she returned. Then he went back to whatever he was doing before he started interviewing us through the window.
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And that, my friends, was my first bar fight of the summer. Moral of the story? When you're out in the Mission, it's all fun and games until someone is slandered with the nastiest two words in the hood: Marina Girl.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The City By the Bay
May, 2009 marked my 10-year anniversary in
Oh, what’s that, you say? Summers in
So off we went down Highway 1 with my furniture in the back of a rental van. Along the way, Verd and I caught up on life post-college, taking breaks to visit the redwoods and marvel at the glimmering Pacific. I could feel my spirits lifting with every crash of my dresser against the center console. Who could afford bungie cords? We were 23!
After a long and winding road (both literally and figuratively) we made it to SF. Verd flew back to Boston, and I moved onto my friend Becca’s couch. Upon her recommendation, I took the open room at her pal Heather’s place and officially began my life as a
Hailing from the great state of
I was incredibly lucky to meet all sorts of fun friends over those introductory years…another one of them being Ms. Marisa. Courtesy of Craigslist, I met her through a temporary living situation, yet, thankfully, her starring role wound up being not-so-temporary. It was Marisa who decided that a 10-year anniversary warranted an “Adult Dinner Party” since, after all, we were adults now. So threw one she did. And the theme was, of course,
Seated at our table were some of my oldest friends in the city (along with some new yet golden ones): a former roommie, my boss from my first job, and, of course, Mr. Graves. We spent the evening telling stories from the early years which was fun, and by fun I mean mortifying. (Remember when Lauren killed her roommate’s hamster*? What about that time when Mickey needed back-up behind the Powerhouse bar during the Folsom St. Fair and somehow convinced her to serve the stark naked/endlessly amused clientele? Oh! And remember that really weird guy she dated who….” ). Ugh.
All in all, the night was a huge success and Marisa’s homemade fare impressed everyone—including her. As for the “adult” aspect of the Adult Dinner Party party, well, I’m not so sure we delivered. Perhaps in another 10 years we’ll nail that part.
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*Wait! It’s not as bad as you might think. What happened was that I had come home one night and put little Puff in his hamster ball. Exhausted from my duties as an up and coming PR professional, I accidentally fell asleep while he was in there and woke up in the morning to find an empty ball (gasp!). Little did I know, my roommate had stashed deposits of rat poison around our flat after spotting a mouse in the kitchen one day. The rest is history. May our dear Puff rest in peace.
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Watch a video of Marisa preparing the Red Snapper for the Ciappiono.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
I Saw Flight of the Conchords! Live!
...and can confirm that Bret and Jemain are just as cute in person as they are on TV. I don't want to make you jealous or anything, but I think they were sending a secret message to me when they performed my favorite number: the Hiphop-Potamus Vs. Rhymenocerous rap. Yee-ah! Check it:
I'll have you know that:
"Their rhymes are so potent that in that small segment
they made all of the ladies in the area pregnant.
Yeah that's right, sometimes their lyrics are sexist.
But you lovely b*tches should know that they're trying to correct this."
hahahhahaha
Sunday, June 7, 2009
FunEmployment
It’s all the rage these days. Everybody who’s anybody is doing it. If you’re thinking I’m talking about pairing American Apparel leggings with cute skirts, think again. I’m talking about funemployment.
As you’ve heard, my company closed down in February, and I’ve been freelancing ever since. Thanks to friends who sell fancy laundry products and build iPhone apps, I’ve managed to stay somewhat occupied.
Following are some things I’ve learned as a member of SF’s funemployed citizenship:
- If you ask nicely, the guy behind the counter at Pirat Cat Community Radio will trade you a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream for a cup of coffee. Everybody wins…
- Do not rollerblade across the city in broad daylight and expect that your new freelance boss won’t see you aaaand call you out on your nerdy endeavor the next day when you go in for your first real meeting. Also assume that when you share this unfortunate story with your friends, they will all tell you the same rollerblading joke: “What the worst thing about rollerblading? Answer: having to tell your parents you’re gay.” Ugh.
- You can camp near the RRR resort in Guerneville for 1/3 the cost of staying in one of their kind-of-gross rooms. Aaand you can apply hustling techniques to competitive Taboo games resulting in a free mudslide from their infamous mudslide machine. No one suspects a team consisting of a little blond girl and a gorgeous drunk boy to be the fiercest in the land/at the pool. Well, I got news for ya, suckers: we are.
- Say yes when your friend with a hammock AND a hot tub asks you to house-sit for him. Olė!
I will continue to add to this list as my valuable learnings grow. Stay tuned…
