Century of Fakers

During last night's Three Kinds of Stupid Happy Hour at the Rickshaw Stop, we started talking about the cop-killing case that's making such a stink in S.F. right now. (Hey, where were you last night anyway? You missed the great tag-team DJ action, the new Streets song that sounds like the Strokes, the J-Kwon-J.Giels-Led Zep-Triple Threat mash-up, the awesome panini sandwich, the volleyball. Better mark your calendar for next Wednesday.)

We're supposed to be pissed that DA Kamala Harris isn't pushing for the death penalty for the gang member who allegedly shot and killed a cop. Never mind that trying someone for the higher penalty costs more, takes far far long, must withstand more appeals, and won't bring back the dead man. What about the fact that no one gives a rat's twat when some kid from Hunter's Point gets gunned down? Or when a cop shoots an unarmed 17-year-old black girl? Or kills a bi-racial, mentally disturbed 23-year-old who's acting strangely in a movie theater? These cops don't even get punished, let alone sent to the gas chamber.

And aren't cops paid to put their lives on the line? Yes, it sucks when they get shot. Boy, does it ever. But I don't see anyone paying out a pension for those dead kids' parents either.

And how about Dianne Feinstein demanding the death penalty while speaking at the cop's funeral! Talk about bad taste. Talk about blood lust. Talk about defaming a place of god. Not that I believe in god.

What kind of weird world are we living in when the two most level-headed politicians around are Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom?

New music!

1. New Mum! Now like the pixie-drunk child of Blonde Redhead and Goblin.
2. New Call and Response! Now like latter period Stereolab, without the experimentation (i.e., decent background music that has no hooks).
3. New Devendra Banhart! Now with a full band, but Elka took it so I can't say how good it is.
4. New Bright Black! Now (and before) like Mazzy Star, only with more pot and more crickets.
5. New Cee-lo! I still don't get it.

God damn, I've been watching a lot of films lately. No, it's not because I'm semi-employed; it's because of the SF International Film Festival. If you get one of those nifty press passes, you can go to two preview screenings every day, plus bring home VHS tapes AND check out the films during the actual festival showings. It's pretty sweet. Only I'm starting to miss the real world a bit. Every time anyone talks to me, I have nothing to say other than "I saw a good film" or "I saw a crappy film." Then I can tell them the plot, but no one really likes to hear about movie plots, especially foreign films that they probably won't see anyway.

So I've decided to just not go out. Or catch up on what all my friends are doing. Chris is learning how to be Fatboy Slim. Brent is trying to find where all his company's server files went to. Kathleen is preparing to go to France for three months. Jake is on vacation. Bruce is trying to impregnate his wife. Russ is driving down to Santa Barbara for one show. Elka is painting and painting and painting.

Jeez, there's just not that much gossip these days. Why isn't anyone doing something scandalous? Come on, people!

Anyway, I'm writing reviews of the films for Kitchen Sink. Supposedly, they'll be up on the website eventually. While you wait breathlessly for them, here's some other things I've learned from the festival:

*Everyone in wants to move to Arica. It is the New York City of Chile.
*All the teenagers yell a lot in the French projects.
*The Polish really aren't that attractive a people.
*Icelandic people are all as weird as Bjork.
*Deadpan comedy is the new slapstick.
*The cop film really needs to be retired.
*Tesla coils are always funny.
*Someone should give Taylor Mead a starring role, immediately.
*Whipped cream makes good lingerie.
*Daniel Auteuil is the finest actor of his generation. This isn't funny, it's just true.
*There's a lot of bad Euro-disco being played in clubs in Buenos Aires.
*Scenes where 60-something women screw their daughters' much younger boyfriends make me uncomfortable.
*Everyone should see Everyday People -- it's like a Spike Lee movie without all the yelling or Wayne Wang's Smoke without the sentimentality.
*This is the worst SFIFF year in recent memory. Why? Because a lot of the movies really suck. But also, there's no Mary-Louise Parker in it.

One night last week I came home late and got totally sucked into Five Senses, mainly because of Parker. There's just something about her -- that sad, thorough stare, that bitterly crinkled mouth -- that gets me every time.

Mmm, bitterness.

I did something very stupid yesterday. I applied some muscle relaxant. In a sensitive area.

On Saturday, I thought I'd pulled a groin muscle playing basketball. It didn't feel that bad while playing -- just a little sore -- but afterwards I could barely walk. And to go dancing that night, I had to drink a bunch of whiskey and some Dr. Pepper (separately) and take some aspirin.

But I still hurt on Sunday, so I bought some Ben Gay. This in itself felt strange, since I'd never purchased the stuff before. Who buys this gunk? Does a topical muscle relaxant actually do anything? And why does it have to smell like mint flavored locker room?

Anyhoo, I put that stuff on and went back to the computer. Five minutes later I nearly fell off the chair! It burned and burned and burned. And it wasn't a place I wanted it to burn.

I tried to wash it off but it was too late. I finally knew what Jerry Lee Lewis meant when he sang "Great Balls of Fire."

I sure hope it's better by this Saturday's Three Kinds of Stupid party. I don't want the whole party to smell like mint.

I would make a terrible recovering addict. I just can't give things up.

Luckily, so far I don't have to. But in the interests of fairness, I've been trying to not eat sugar around Elka. She's a diabetic and so she can't eat sugar (unless she really needs to eat sugar, and then watch out). When I'm devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry's, I can see her eyes get all squinty and bitter because she just has to sit there.

So, I'm trying to refrain, at least when she's around. Which is harder than it looks. I forget how many things have sugar in them, and how those things are a very regular part of my life.

But it could be worse. I could be giving sugar up altogether. What misery! Remember when Bruce and I tried to copy the Seinfeld "contest" episode and see who could go the longest without wanking off? No? Well, it was truly hilarious. And painful. Because I never want anything as much as when I can't have it. I found myself thinking about wanking all the time, merely because it was forbidden.

Going cold turkey with sweets would be even worse. Sugar's ever-present; at least you have to be somewhere secluded to have a wank.

Speaking of wanking, I don't like Bart Davenport's new direction. The flat saxophone player, the long solos, the boogie-rock structures -- bleh. More solo acoustic, more goofy dancing! I don't want to have to give him up too.

Man, what a shitty weekend. You know the kind? The kind that sucks big donkey balls? Yep, that's the kind.

But Ajax begged and pleaded for me to write about it, so here goes.

There are, as a writer, those weekends when you feel you can see the future. You can see the desperate loneliness and horrific bitterness and bitter horrificness that is old age. You can see the end. The end is nigh.

Because sometimes you just can't write. That happened this weekend. Actually, it happened last week and this weekend. It happened for a long time. (For all I know, it's still happening.)

I was trying to write a music article for a general interest magazine. They'd sent back the first draft saying it needed more opinions and less of straight journalism. Great! I've got opinions! Like: You suck!

Nah, just kidding. You don't suck. You don't blow either. Unless you want to. And then you do it nicely.

Anyhoo, this article proved near impossible to write. This, I thought, was my Waterloo (and I'm not even wearing a funny hat). Every sentence felt like a mule was kicking me in the head. Or rather, I wished a mule would kick me in the head so I could write better sentences. I spent all Thursday and Friday poking away at it, with it poking back, to no avail.

When I showed up at the Paramount Theater in Oakland for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I was miserable (and late). Luckily, the movie wasn't playing until the following Friday. This night it was Lite Jazz and dudded-up African Americans.

So Elka and I headed off to Cafe Van Cleef, where I had a girlie drink and moaned and groaned. And suddenly, with a lot of prodding from Saint Elka, I had a brilliant idea. Dumb it down! Make it so simple the aging yuppies can understand it.

Great! I was happy. And Elka was depressed. (The old relationship teeter-totter is a confounding thing.) So we went home, and her blood sugar plummeted enough for me to beat her at Scrabble.

You thought the story was over. It isn't! The next day I tried to dumb the article down, but it sucked even more. By the time Kathleen and Eric's Costa Rican cocktail and dinner odyssey rolled around, I was way ready for some Panty Rippers. The problem was they ripped more than my panties -- my whole brain stopped functioning, except for the little part that kept chanting "It's over, it's over" like the freaks in, well, Freaks.

After awhile, Elka had some kind of odd reaction, and we had to leave. (She is such a delicate creature.) By the time we reached my house, I'd spiraled down the rabbit hole of self-obliteration. I didn't want to talk, and she made me. Damn her.

Then we took a nap. A good one.

And when I woke up the next day the little writing elves had finished the article. Right? Wrong! Damn them too. So I played some softball (3 for 4, if you count the fielder's choice where everyone was safe), and wrote some more, and went to see the Eternal Sunshine of Yada Yada Yada. It wasn't bad, but mainly because of Kate Winslet.

And today I woke up and realized something: Some of your children are going to be ugly and/or stupid. And you'll have to pretend you like them as much as the others. The best you can do is get them a decent haircut and some braces and hope they survive. You send them out into the world and pray that no one ever mentions them again. That's just the way life is.

Goodbye, my ugly, stupid child.

I saw Tom Waits in Amoeba SF this weekend. At first I wasn't sure if it was him, because, you know, he sort of looked like a bum who'd been given a free shower and some Marin yippie hand-me-down clothes that were five sizes too big. Plus, he's got red hair, and his face looked kind of doughy and nondescript -- you expect that face to be lean and leaping out at you.

But here's the weirdest thing. You'll never guess which section of the store he was shopping in. The used reggae section.

I kid you not. That next record of his is going to be super crazy. Maybe he'll do a reggae album like Serge Gainsbourg did in 1979. I want to hear him cover "Hey Bartender." Or "My Boy Lollipop."

What else? Oh yeah, I now know what elephant piss tastes like. Or at least I think I do.

A few weeks ago, we went to Sacramento for some thrift shopping. On the way, we stopped at a 99 cent store. They had all sorts of bizarre products that never quite made the grade: energy drinks especially for Silicon Valley workers, Vietnamese coffee drinks called Hello Boss, and Ultra Red Korean Ginseng soda. I bought the latter, thinking that six-year-old ginseng should pack more of a wallop than Red Bull, for sure.

Wrong. Or at least I never got to find out how much of an energy wallop Ultra Red gives, because the flavor was so repellent. I had one sip and nearly screamed in pain. That's how hideous it was. I can only imagine that a fat man's sweat socks might taste like this, after he's run a marathon.

Naturally, I had another drink. I thought that, like Red Bull, it might be an acquired taste. The only thing I acquired was an aftertaste that lasted for the next four hours. I immediately poured the whole can down the drain.

But that wasn't the end of it. Like some kind of horrible curse, the stench of the liquid lived on. The smell wafted down the hall and into my room, and could be smelled there for hours. And two days later, I was nearly knocked over by the odor when I turned on the garbage disposal. I'm frightened of what it would've done to my stomach if I'd drunk the whole thing!

One last thing: Has anyone tried this new, legal drug salvia divinorum? Apparently, it comes from the herb sage, and rock stars Andrew WK and Will Oldham say it delivers a life-altering experience. They claim it makes you see the world from the perspective of a rock. Andrew is rumored to be writing his next album from this vantage point, a fact that probably won't amuse his fans -- or Budweiser.