Go Get Another Soda, Dude. Seriously.

I'm here at the Audi dealership in Santa Clara getting my headlight repaired. I'm having them do it while I wait. I took my laptop just in case, and yup, they've got free Wi-Fi access.

Even better is the hot guy sitting next to me. Let's see...well-groomed. No wedding ring. Was he checking me out? He certainly took his time bending over to get his soda out of the vending machine. Hmmmm.

Grey shirt. Jeans. Dark coat. Arnette sunglasses. Late 20s, or early 30s. If this is you, email me. Seriously.

It's interesting what I can access from this Wi-Fi point. Joe. My. God. is blocked explicitly. Faggoty-Ass Faggot is not. Some blogger.com sites were coming up before, but it seems that they're having trouble loading now in my browser (though they're coming up fine in my RSS reader). The Bank of America site comes through fine, but Citibank is having trouble loading.

Arnette guy's car is done. Damn.

Playwriting final.

Okay, I'm back from my playwriting final. The way this works is that you put your plays into a box, and they get pulled out more or less and random. Each person was supposed to write one 3 page play; I wrote three, without telling anyone what I was planning. Here's what I wrote:

The Destiny of Purina -- About an anthropomorphic can of beef dog food in a vegan home. It gets thrown out, so despite wanting to be eaten (thus fulfilling its destiny), the can ends up in a landfill, where it will sit, alone, for centuries.

At the Factory -- A scene from a neo-facist version of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

A Really Bad...Restaurant -- A man is trying to propose to his girlfriend, but the waiter (who is sort of a god in this world) keeps interfering. The joke in this play is that I packed in as many bad theatrical choices as I could (transitions that are too short, underused characters, upstaging, gratuitous swearing, a ponderous monologue, and a character that has just one line, at the end).

Each of my plays had the line "I'd like a garden salad. With a nice vinaigrette." at some point, but no one picked up on that as a hint that they were all written by the same person (though they remembered it afterwards when I mentioned it).

And that's it for playwriting this quarter. I'm taking it again next quarter, of course, but that won't start for three weeks. Having the break is nice, but I'm going to miss having my weekly fun.

Best Gay Blogs Interviews Big Red Dave

My interview with Best Gay Blogs went up this morning. For the 2% of you who have found my site through something other than BGB, I'd recommend that you check them out. It's rapidly becoming the best place to find gay blogs.

I do wish I had provided a better picture. This one, for example:



Oh well, next time.

Busy

Have you ever woken up on Monday morning and realized that you've got a big project to do by Friday and no time in which to do it? That was me, at about 5:50 this morning.

Actually, the big issue is that I'm busy every night this week, but I need to get the house whipped into shape for a family visit this weekend. I've got work stuff tonight and Thursday night. Tuesday night I'm going to an acting class: they're performing a series of 3-page plays as directing/acting exercises. Since I wrote one, I want to be there when it's performed.

Wednesday night is the final for playwriting class. There's no final exam, but it's tradition that everyone writes an anonymous 3-page play based on some theme, and then we all guess who wrote which plays. This quarter's theme is "sick, twisted, and involving food", and I'm feeling the urge to be an overachiever.

More details later.

Update: And now one of the headlights on my car is burned out. So now I've got a (hopefully) quick trip to the dealer scheduled for Friday morning.

Dinner and a Show

For KK's birthday last night we went to dinner, and the aforementioned show at Cobb's Comedy Club.

Dinner: it was a lot of fun. I got to sit next to KK's parents, who are great to be around. I saw some friends I hadn't seen in a while.

We ate at a tapas restaurant in North Beach. For those of you unfamiliar with tapas, let me explain the concept to you. In Spain, it's little dishes of free bar snacks. In America, it's still little and still snack-sized, so you end up buying several of them, but each dish costs as much as an entree at, say, Applebee's.

So you spend $40, and when you leave you're still so hungry that you go to the pizza place next door and get a couple of slices. Fortunately, we were able to skip this step last night. Cobb's serves food, a fact that about half of our party took advantage of.

Now, lest you think I'm complaining, I will say that I knew what I was getting into, and I spent about as much as I expected to. If anything, I spent a good part of last night just laughing at the absurdity of it all (whispered to the friend next to me: "do you think that if we call a pizza place, we can get something delivered here?").

The show was at Cobb's was hilarious. Both Hal Sparks, and his opener, Dan Rothenberg were very funny. Hal is very physical, and uses his body more than any other comedian I've ever seen.

Dan, though, provided what was for me the most memorable line of the evening. He's mostly straight, but had a gay period when he lived in the Castro ten years ago (damn, why the hell didn't I meet him?). Here's his (heavily paraphrased) observation of gay vs. straight sex:

There's a lot more surprise with gay sex. With straight sex, people just fall into their roles. With gay sex, you never know what's going to happen. Get two tops together, and it's 'checkers, anyone?'.

Ain't that the truth.

Celebrating a Birthday

I didn't go out last night: a combination of rain, a lingering cold, and a call from a friend kept me in all evening long. But I will be out tonight: I'm going to be up in San Francisco to celebrate the birthday of my friend KK. After dinner, we're going to Cobb's Comedy Club in North Beach to see Hal Sparks.

"But wait," you say, "Hal Sparks is a comedian?" It's true: before he was on Queer as Folk, he was a host for E!'s Talk Soup.

I do want to add one more paragraph. Not because I have anything to say, but because I want to push the picture of Ralph Lauren's Mountain-Boy (from Thursday's post) down so I don't see it when I look at this blog.

Down.

Down.

Down.

There.

Beards!

Beards are back? Big, fluffly, mountain-man beards? Say it ain't so...

Actually, in the technology world, there's a tradition of men with big hair and big beards. Unfortunately, it's usually a marker of a lack of social and/or grooming skills. That's not true outside of Silicon Valley, but nevertheless if I see, say, the Ralph Lauren model on the left, my reaction is not "how masculine" but rather "Asperger's; watch out!"

And I really think it's best for me to hang out with people who have better social skills than I do...

It's Working!

Well, putting my blog on Best Gay Blogs has certainly helped the traffic. They've sent me an interview, which I'm hoping to complete tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, here's some (borderline NSFW) gay content that I hope you enjoy:
The Cleaning Hunk

Shoreline Panoramas

For some reason, a few years ago this little hill was created near Shoreline Park in Mountain View. It is across the street from Shoreline Amphitheatre. I assume it was made from dirt that was dug up as part of some construction project.

Today, since it was nice out (finally!), I walked up to the top of this hill and shot some panoramas. These are QuickTime VR panoramas, which means they are 360° panoramas that require QuickTime to display. They are also both about 1.25MB in size, so rather than display them in-line, I will give you links to click on:

North shot

South shot

I take these panoramas as a sequence of overlapping images and "stitch" them together using a piece of software called The Panorama Factory. If two adjacent images are very different, it can cause problems for the stitching software. I took the south shot first, but there were several trees and bushes around that spot that were blowing in the wind, which I thought would cause problems. So I took the north shot just in case. Fortunately, the south shot turned out as well.

These two images have "hotspots" which allow you to "travel" from one to the other. I'll let you figure out where they are.

Brrrr

From my last post:

...the rains just won't stop...

I just got my natural gas bill. In the past month, I've used three times as much gas as during the same period last year.

Damn arctic fronts.

What's Up, Doc?

From last November:

...once my birthday is past, everything starts reversing itself. The rain stops. It gets warm. The days lengthen. DST comes back. The end of March through Memorial Day is probably my favorite time of the year: everything is getting better, and the year is full of potential.

I've been imagining that, once March rolled around, I would write a corresponding entry about how much I'm enjoying this time of year, etc. But in reality, I'm stressed at work, the rains just won't stop, Battlestar Galactica is on hiatus until summer, and to cap it all off, today my 8-month old iPod died:


The good news is that I took it the Apple store and they replaced it, just like that.

Oh, and there is one other bright spot: a couple of people have arrived and on Friday I get to meet them. First, Kel Von Texas from Who Threw That Ham at Me? recently arrived from, well, Texas. He's going to experience St. Patrick's Day in the Castro. As am I.

As for the second arrival, he coming from much farther away:

Hi, My Name Is Dave...

...and I'm an introvert.

Happy Birthday to Me

It was my birthday on Sunday. I am now 35 years old. The median age of males in the United States is 34.96 years. Despite that, I had a good weekend. Dinner with my parents on Friday and a movie and dinner with friends on Sunday. On Saturday, I had no plans and headed up to San Francisco to welcome in my birthday at midnight. There I had the good fortune to meet M, a handsome, sweet, friendly 22 year-old from Rhode Island. We were able to hang out for only an hour, as he was flying back the next day. But it was a nice hour.

Where Y'all At?

So I recently got an account with StatCounter.com so that I could track where all ten of you have come from.

To the four of you that found me via comments I left on other blogs, welcome! Mental note: post a hell of a lot more comments on other people's blogs.

To the person who found me while doing a search for "Chad Fox", welcome! Perhaps if there were more references to more popular bloggers on my page, more people would find me.

Chad Fox Chad Fox Chad Fox Chad Fox. Faggoty-Ass Faggot Faggoty-Ass Faggot Faggoty-Ass Faggot. Hot Toddy Hot Toddy Hot Toddy. All Preparation and No H. All Preparation and No H. All Preparation and No H.

To the three of you that found me while looking for Red River Dave, welcome! I apologize for the lack of rivers in my blog, but I live in Silicon Valley, where all the rivers have been paved over. I hope the redness and Daveness make up for it.

Little. Yellow. Different.

To the person who found me by doing a search for "Stephen Underhill", sorry for being a tease.

Joe. My. God.

And finally, to the person who has actually come back 3 times, I adore you.

The Lost Find.

Does This Post Make Any Sense?

Last night, I was listening to something about fear of commitment. Specifically, about how being afraid to commit can lead to inaction which, itself, can lead to loss of opportunity and regret.

There is someone whom I had feelings for at one point. I guess I still do, after a fashion. But nothing ever happened, and long ago we long ago grew distant. This man has a blog on which I lurk. This morning I read something on his blog that drove home last night's point. Drove it home with a sledgehammer and ice pick. It wasn't about me at all, but suffice it to say that had I known about it back when, well...I would like to think things would have been different.

Damn.

Oscar Wrap-Up

I had a few friends over for the Academy Awards last night. I never watched the award shows until I bought my townhouse in 1999. Among my friends, I was the first with a good-sized living room and a large TV, so someone suggested we watch the Oscars at my place. I've done it every year since.

(Now, of course, several of my friends have upgraded to large flat-panel TVs, so I'm no longer leading in the, ahem, size category).

Last night was nice. Good friends. Lots of food (pizza, cheese and crackers, home-made bread and lemon bars, a little raspberry cake and some Koo-Ki Sushi) and a goodly amount of wine. I threw a some logs on the fireplace (it was cold, windy and rainy last night), and it made for a very nice evening.

Plus now my house is clean. I really need to throw more parties.

Real Life Simpsons Intro

http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw.