I Couldn't Help But Overhear

Last night I was out to dinner celebrating my good friend's birthday, and we were in a rather cramped little restaurant. These are pretty status quo for San Francisco: due to ridiculously high rent prices for everything from studio apartments to storefronts, we pride ourselves on cramming the most people per square foot as possible everywhere. After all, we fit a population of 750k people into 49 square miles. That's a picture of the actual restaurant to the right there, and those tables at the bottom are about the layout of where we were.

So we're at this rather nice restaurant in a bank of four tables that are all maybe five to six inches apart. I'm talking I could barely squeeze my forearm between them if I tried. So, this means that it is nearly impossible to not overhear what is being said next to you. Plus, as my friend has a particular penchant for hearing what people around us are saying, we had a few laughable moments at the expense of those around us. And for that I apologize if these people happen to be reading this or have any clue in the slightest of who I am.

Now, the best part of the night was when the table to our left was in the midst of a heated discussion. See, there was some kind of Prop 19 discussion going on between a man and a woman seated next to us. Both were in the late twenties to early thirties range, and the man seemed to be an ardent supporter for legalizing marijuana. Personally speaking, I agree if for no other reason than the fact that here in SF it is so commonplace that it might as well be legal, and we can both lose the social stigma of it being an "illegal drug" as well as make a sweet amount of coin by legal sales. Still, he was amped up to the point that his female companion had to shush him a couple of times, most notably of which was after he yelled out "Come on, it's just weed!" Again, I have heard that argument hundreds of times from many people, but you have to admire the man's conviction given his surroundings.

Funnier still is the fact that I was relaying a few stories I'd picked up the night before. One of which involves a former high school acquaintance who has gone completely off the deep end and was just making no sense in his attempts to wander into conversations. I mean, come on, the guy called me one of the greatest DJs who has ever lived. Yup. The other story was a secondhand tale of some friends from high school and their bachelor party shenanigans which involved a lot of alcohol, a combined bill of nearly a thousand dollars at a strip club, and a friend who soiled his drawers in a drunken stupor, deposited his underpants in a nearby trash receptacle, and continued on partying, only to arrive at said strip club, and upon removing his pants in a private booth, realized that he was sans chonies. Granted, much of this tale was relayed in hushed tones, but still, I can only imagine what the people next to us must have heard. Guess this teaches me to go to a nicer restaurant where people can hear about the wild exploits of my friends.

Couch Potato Week/end

I've spent a hell of a lot of time house sitting over the last little while - I think I've been house sitting for somebody for six or seven of the last eight days. One thing I always appreciate about house-sitting for people on the weekends is the ample supplies of cable channels running marathons of their programs. That and sports, of course. I've been able to watch playoff baseball, regular season football, and over the last two days, a whole crapload of "Ghost Adventures" on Travel Channel. I don't know what it is, but there's something that is just super entertaining about both learning about haunted sites around the country and watching a musclebound tool with a cock-a-doodle-douche haircut (who just so happens to be a former wedding DJ of all things) getting the crap scared out of him. It's the recipe for a fantastic weekend of doing nothing. But for me, this existence is a little strange - I didn't go out Saturday at all (going to my parents' place for dinner doesn't count), and I haven't left the house I'm house sitting all day today save for walking the dog twice. Yes, literally walking a canine, not the euphemism, you dirty kids. But yeah, this sedentary life is pretty damn foreign to me.

But you know what? Every now and again, a couple of days spent in like this really do me well, more than anything else because now I want to go out and raise hell tomorrow. Usually, I'd just be keeping the status quo of doing a few things here and there every day, but now after two days of doing no work outside of solidifying a nice butt indentation on my friends' couch, I am looking forward to doing some writing, some cleaning, some music composition, hell some anything that doesn't involve sitting down or watching a TV screen. Yes, it helps that I am going to a show tomorrow night, so I know I'll be getting out of the house in the evening time, but I'm talking about waking up at a somewhat human hour, taking the dog out for one last walk before her parents get back into town, and going home and checking a bunch of stuff off my list.

Generally I am opposed to the whole "sloth for fun" idea, since I usually get so distracted, but I tell you what, there's nothing like a rainy weekend in the Outer Sunset to make the allure of sitting on a couch watching cable TV sound like music to my ears. I guess now the big test will be to see if I blog again tomorrow and show that I kept riding this wave of energy to fruition.

My New Car Is So Great, I Don't Even have to Know How to Drive!

Okay. Tell me you've seen those commercials. The Mercedes ones, where the morons talk about how badly they can't drive, but it's okay because because the car fixes the mistakes for them. They get me just unwarrantedly angry. I'm talking I kind of lose my shit. (Yes, the video is right there, but there's another one like it too that's been all over TV lately)

See, I am a simple man who believes in the fine art of driving. The closest I've ever come to a luxury car was my 1978 Cadillac, which was incredibly luxurious, but was considered state-of-the-art for having a tape deck instead of an 8-track player. I've never owned a car with seat warmers, cup holders, a backup camera, or a lot of the other amenities that you hear about with new cars. (No, cup holders are not a new-fangled luxury development, but come on, is a simple place to put my coffee while driving too much to ask, Isuzu?) But here's the thing: I don't need them. I have my four wheels (five if you count the steering wheel hurr hurr hurr), my engine, and an entire brain full of driving know-how. I can parallel park in spots that I shouldn't rightly fit into. I understand merging lanes from an onramp. I can stay in my lane, keep safe distances from the car in front of me, and even stop in a comfortable manner. I know these are all shocking and high-risk maneuvers for some people, but for chrissakes, it's something that should come second nature to people who deem themselves functional enough to actually operate a motor vehicle.

So, maybe now you can understand why this commercial tees me off so much. I am all for these wonderful technologies that will help keep unsafe drivers a little safer. But you know what might really make them a hell of a lot safer? Getting them off the road. Making sure they don't drive because they can't drive. Yes, it's fantastic that a car can correct your drifting into another lane, but if you knew how to drive in the first place, or weren't too busy adjusting your radio, talking on the phone, drinking your latte, and yelling at your kids in the back seat at the same time, you might have not gone over that lane line in the first place. I just find it ridiculous that car companies have given in to the fact that when a vast majority of the population is driving, they have their heads so far up their own asses that they can't be held accountable for actually, you know, driving their friggin' car.

So, help me out folks. I never thought I'd say this, but get on that horn of yours. When someone is driving like a damn fool, use that glorious invention on your steering wheel to correct the driver and their idiot driving before their car has a chance to, or in case their car can't. I will do my part, but I have an Isuzu Rodeo, and if you've ever heard the horn on those things, they can't hardly scare a kitten.



Sorry for all the bitterness and spite recently, but apparently my decreased caffeine intake over the last few days, paired with the warm-ish weather, has made me a bit churlish. I will do everything in my power to make sure that my next post is all silly, smarmy, and wry as you usually tend to expect.

You're Kidding, Right?

Yesterday, as you either read already, or can read by simply scrolling down a little bit, I wrote about the warm weather and all that. I was trying to find a good example of someone to use for a sweaty celebrity to complete my simile. Those of you who are Simpsons nerdy as myself may remember the episode where Homer fell in love with his co-worker Mindy, and tried to write an eloquently stated breakup talk on his hand before confronting her, but got sweaty palms due to nervousness and said "Jeez, I'm sweating like Roger Ebert here." Normally, I would have just recycled that line, but given Ebert's recent medical issues and his downright inspiring fight with thyroid cancer, I don't really think it's anyone's place to poke fun at him anymore. But allow me to get off my soapbox for a second.

So, in the hopes of finding a good, and possibly embarrassingly sweaty picture of some celebrity I just typed in "fat guy celebrity" thinking I could turn up a funny image of some guy that we all know and love who had a healthy glow of well-earned perspiration. I didn't find that, but I think the Gandolfini picture I chose at least works on some level, as he looks kind of big and miserable.

However, in this search, I couldn't help but notice a link towards the top of the page for "FatGuyShirts.com" and being a man of generous carriage who prides himself as having a keen eye for interesting, fun, or entertaining t-shirts, I thought I'd give it a look. What I found was not only borderline offensive, it was kind of worrisome.

First, here's the link, see for yourself: http://www.fatguyshirts.com/

Now, hopefully you scanned at least most of those, but I personally, as a guy who is carrying more weight than he'd like, finds this sight nauseating. Obesity has a nasty habit of killing people, and here in the U.S. we have a distorted view of caloric intake and portion sizes. Yes, I enjoy "extreme foods" as much as the next guy. Yeah, I'd probably try the hamburger made out of grilled cheese sandwiches once, just to say I did, if we had a Friendly's around here. However, as much as I'll defend eating good (yeah, another recent blog tie-in, so sue me), I also think there is a limit to what is funny. When you're trying to convince someone to buy a shirt celebrating the fact that they can't see their toes or bringing up the slogan "Eat Now, Think Later" I kind of want to punch whoever thinks these shirts are funny or appropriate in the face. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that these shirts are available in sizes up to 6XL. I mean, I know it's kind of an extreme example, but to my eyes, this would be no different than someone marketing a line of extra-small t-shirts to people with Anorexia with slogans like "Does my ribcage make me look fat?" on them. Yes, that's a horrible thing to say, but you get my point. I mean, just look at where we are as a country: obesity is gaining on smoking at an alarming rate as the leading cause of death according to the New York times.

Sorry to sound preachy here; you know I usually keep things light here, but this one really got to me for some reason. Still, there is a very, very fine line between being comfortable in your own skin and denying medical knowledge. This may be a bit of my own insecurity speaking here, but I don't want to celebrate the fact that we as a society are pushing towards morbidly obese at an alarming speed. (I was going to make a joke about it being the fastest that overweight people have moved for anything recently there, but it seemed out of place. Thoughts?)

There should be some grandiose closing to this rant of mine, but I kind of feel like I hit all the bullet points I needed to. So to ease the tension, I'll close with one of my favorite "fat guy" jokes:

Two fat guys are drinking together in a bar, and one friend turns to his buddy and says 'your round'. His buddy says 'So are you, you fat bastard.'

Sweatin' Like James Gandolfini Over Here

It's been hot here. Not that ridiculously crazy that a lot of people should be complaining about it and all that, and that's only kind of what I'm going to do here. So while I know that it's been warm out, and there's exactly jack that I can do about it, there's a bit of a mental thing people need to remember when it comes to the weather.

See, unlike so many of you people out there who were born and raised in places where the sun comes out for more than about three weeks out of the year, I was raised in the Fog Belt of San Francisco. This means when the weather reaches much of anything over about 75, I start to wilt just a tad. So rather than explain why that is, I will explain how I react to it. See, much like the majestic kangaroo will dig itself down into a burrow and wait for the uncomfortable heat of the Australian Outback to subside, so does the native unreticulated Bill seek shelter from the sun, and avoid all activity unless absolutely possible when my fair city's weather reaches "warm" status. I would be so bold to believe that you, internet friends, already know that about me, since chances are if you're reading this right now, you have probably had some real-life interaction with me, and in the course of that you have probably invited me out for something in the afternoon on a warm day; and unless that something involves indoor air conditioning or maaaaaaybe ice cream, chances are I've given you either a well, well formulated excuse or I have just plain said "It's too goddamn hot for me to leave my basement." It's fine, it's regular, it's nothing personal, and I'll be more than happy to join you come sundown for some nice cool cocktails in the cool recumbent breeze of the evening time.

Somehow, not surprisingly to many, my family has not gained this understanding about the Bill in my 29 years on this planet. Somehow whenever it is too warm for me to wear pants, I manage to talk to one of my parents who encourages me to go outside and get some fresh air. Now, let me remind you of the assertion I have made in the past: I am not exactly the outdoorsy type. I don't go frolic in the sunshine. I don't go for a stroll when it's nice and sunny, and I sure as hell will not schedule one of my rare bouts of exercise for a day when it's 80-plus. Quite simply put, leaving the cool and relaxing embrace of my basement hovel, where I get no direct sunlight and can escape further into the garage for an extra ten to fifteen degree drop on a good day, does not sound like a good or fun idea to me. I know lots of people love to get out and get active on those rare sunny days in San Francisco, but this kid is not one of them. I'm much more inclined to go on a late night walk or hit my stationary bike when it's raining outside. Besides, is there really that much difference on a warm day between reading my book indoors and reading my book outdoors? Nope, didn't think so.

So, if you are one of those wonderful folks who enjoys a nice warm outdoorsy afternoon, I say bully for you! I will never stand in your way, and will only occasionally try to lure you from your self-improvement with a cold pitcher of beer somewhere we can sit outside, but all I ask is that you extend the same courtesy and understanding to those of us who are cold weather kids, and prefer to hide behind fans and cool beverages when the clouds aren't there to comfort us. Most of you do, and I love you for it.

Eating Well vs. Eating Good

Okay, so this post has been brewing in the ol' brain pan for a little while here, but I figure tonight is as good as any to dust it off because I have been blowing my nose so much today that I think a wee portion of my brain has ended up in all those discarded tissues.

For those of you who know me, I'm what some might call "portly". I was once a fit and trim young whipper-snapper, but my current corpulence might lead you to believe otherwise. Personally, I think I'm too tall to be portly, but that's all semantics. Long and verbose story short, I'm a big guy and I loves me some food.

Having said that, I do my best to eat well when I can - I always make sure I incorporate fruits and vegetables into my meals, and the closest I come to fast food joints are pubs that serve fish and chips or getting a burrito at my local taqueria. I can't really remember the last time I ate a meal in like a Burger King or Taco Bell or anything like that. Still, at my former place of employment, I had a number of co-workers who were "foodies" but they always tended to eat on the ridiculously healthy and scant side. This got me thinking: when did we, as a society, forget how to eat food that is at least relatively good for you that comes in a reasonable portion? And when the hell did debates go from "chicken or pork" to "quinoa or spelt"? I mean, are ancient grains really that big of a deal for people who eat real food?

This isn't just a "big guy is cranky about skinny people eating tiny bowls of skinny people food" rant; I am thinking specifically of examples in my family and those around me. Yes, my grandfather was an anomaly: he smoked up to three packs a day, drank four pots of coffee a day (yes pots, no that's not a typo) and added heaping mounds of salt to damn near everything he ate. He lived to be eighty five, and had a build somewhat similar to mine. My grandmother (on the other side of the family) is going to turn 96 in just over a month, salts everything she puts in her mouth, and even puts butter on cookies. I shit you not. Now, granted, they didn't grow up in an era where restaurants were churning out two and three thousand calorie meals, they couldn't buy a 96 oz. Coke at 7-11, and they didn't have all the chemically treated crap that we have today. But you know what? They ate. They boozed it up (believe me, I have NOTHING on them in their prime when it comes to drinking). They didn't worry about hydrogenated oils in their foods or if they needed whey protein supplements.

Another perfect example is Julia Child. For my sensibilities, she is everything that is right with cooking and cuisine. She had a ball, she loved to cook, and she loved to eat. A recent article I read classified her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as one of the top five unhealthiest cookbooks of the decade, yet she lived to be 92 -- what the hell is wrong with us nowadays that we can't eat or enjoy real food? Have you seen that cookbook? Have you read the recipes? There is so much butter in there, she could have singlehandedly saved the entire dairy industry. And you know what else? The dishes are fucking delicious.

So next time you're down at Whole Foods or somewhere like that, and you're wondering if you'd be better eating faro or millet, take stock of what you're eating and try something from the butcher counter instead. Yeah, you might have to put in an extra hour on the treadmill or something like that, but you know what, it'll taste a whole hell of a lot better going down, and you will probably find that it was unbelievably worth the extra effort. Personally I feel life's just too short to tolerate the food you eat, I'll gladly exchange a week or two of the tail end of my life if it means I have cleaned my plate and an completely satisfied when I finish a meal.

If you're like my relatives (and me) you'll probably want to chase that red meat with some bourbon, but that's a whole other blog entry for a whole other time.

Failure isn't all that bad.

This past weekend I spent a somewhat larger-than-normal amount of time watching sports. I watched college football, end-of-season baseball, pro football, and even a few brief moments of professional rodeo, but that was just in passing, I swear.

Still, in watching these games, I came to a somewhat stunning realization: in our modern sports franchises, if someone does well: they hit the game-winning hit, they hit a home run, or they make just about any play in football that would be classified as "good", they almost always, without fail, get completely whalloped by their teammates. That's why nowadays when a baseball player sees his teammates waiting to congratulate him at home plate, he flings off his batting helmet: he knows with no helmet on, his teammates can't completely whomp him over the head. And don't get me started on the "we won" dogpiles that happen, though mostly in the playoffs. Just take a quick look at the picture at the top of this blog. Yeah, would you want to be on the bottom of that pile? If you sprinkled in a few players from the other team, wouldn't that much more closely resemble a giant fight where a bunch of players have to deal with a few weeks' worth of suspensions? Yeah, thought so.

Football is far worse. Part of it is that it seems like pretty much any time anyone makes a play that just five or ten years ago was considered routine, they have to jump around and wave their arms like they've never made a tackle or defended a pass before in their lives. But I digress. With football, there is a lot of congratulating going on with the other guys on your team. Yes, this is in part because you have plenty of time between plays to celebrate, but still. But the thing about these celebrations that get to me is that they're all violent. It's all headbutting, shoving, and smacking; and I swear sometimes if a guy makes a good play, he gets hit harder by his own teammates in congratulation than they get hit by the opposition. Yes, I know they're premier athletes, and they're in peak physical condition, and they have about four metric tons of pads and braces that make them about as strong (and as human) as Robocop, but there will be a day when someone dislocates their shoulder by shoving their teammate who made a huge tackle. Mark my words. We already had a pie-to-the-face injury in baseball this year.

So this is why I say: sometimes it's not so bad to screw up. Yes, I'm competitive as anyone else out there. I have a strong distaste for losing, and I love the thrill of the hunt. But, if you'll notice, if someone screws up in sports, whether it's dropping a pass, missing your defensive assignment, or giving up the game-ending walkoff home run, that guy becomes a total pariah. They put their head down, they walk to the opposite end of the bench, and nobody gets close to them for fear of catching their suck. You drop one fly ball, and suddenly you're a leper. Yes, it's rough, but you know what? Nobody ever got a concussion from being banished to the other end of the bench. But then again, maybe that's why my athletic career stopped after high school.

"Hey, You Seem Like a Nice Guy"

Saturday night I was out at the bars, as I am so often fond of doing. However, there was another semi-regular occurrence that I'm not quite as fond of: some incredibly odd, probably drugged-out gentleman came up to me outside the bar and dragged me through about fifteen minutes of odd chatter in which I couldn't exactly get a word in to either engage the person or dislodge myself from the conversational vice-grip this man held me in.

I listened to stories about his growing up in San Francisco, his grandfather, who was some kind of trailblazing pioneer, apparently. I learned about how he thought it was fine to steal a bicycle as long as you needed it but how you had to be careful about the bikes you stole, because he stole one that turned out to be a fixie, and he didn't realize it until he was approaching a busy intersection and couldn't find the brakes. I heard about his new interest in panting, how he loved to repair bikes, and how his brother was a wildly successful community college baseball coach.

And why did I find this out? Because I was standing there.

This would have been fine if it were an isolated occurrence, but I swear to you, crazy people have an incredible knack for finding me. Friends tell me it's because I look like a nice guy and am approachable, but I think I must put off some crazy person pheromone or something, because seriously, this shit is a little out of hand. So I will provide you with some highlights of the vast ocean of crazy person knowledge that I have gleaned in my years on this planet.

• From the crazy chain-smoking bum on Greyhound: "Don't smoke. heh heh heh Don't smoke don't smoke don'tsmokedon'tsmoke ahahhahahhahhaha" I proceeded to see him chain smoke six cigarettes in the fifteen minute stopover, all the while coughing some awful sound that resembled a car trying to start and backfiring.

• A woman outside Annie's Social Club kept informing me that I was the supervisor, that I knew a vast list of names that she began to rattle off, that I was definitely that muthafuckin supervisor, wasn't I? Also, that my friend and drummer Taylor was on his last strike. Mmm mmm mm, and he better look out, because you KNOW what happen when he get that last strike. Mmmm mmm. Supervisor man gonna have to deal with that. And supervisor man can't be bothered with that, because he's such good friends with (some name I have no idea about that apparently I was good friends with).

• Some crunk in the Boom-Boom Room wisely informed me that the problem with the Fillmore neighborhood is that it went to shit because there were no more "corner bums". See, back in the days, if kids were screwing up and causing trouble, there was a bum down on the corner who knew everyone, and he would narc the kids out to their parents. Nowadays that we got no corner bums, we got nobody keeping these damn kids in check.

• An unfortunate soul who happened to be leaning on my car after I left band practice down in the Tenderloin spent a long, long time laboriously explaining to me what had gone wrong with his life, why he couldn't get a job, the best way to lift weights, why you have to be good at lifting weights if you're going to prison, why you should love your family, and how he was going to get back on his feet in no time. He was also convinced that I'd just walked out from playing a gig at the Warfield, so I'm not sure he was quite all together.

• A very standoff-ish person in the Inner Sunset informed a group of friends and myself that us damn kids have no sense of respect, and that's why the world is in its current state. It was entirely our fault, and if us damn kids couldn't show some respect, we could just go straight to hell and stop being cruel. "Us damn kids" were all 28-32 years old.

• A happy-go-lucky gent approached myself and a friend simply to tell us that his personal definition of a psychopath is someone who starts laughing at their own joke as a means of making other people laugh, rather than letting the joke be the reason for the laughter. He proceeded not only to break his own rule a number of times via random interruptions of conversation, but he also claimed that I was exempt from this rule, because I "was already a pretty upbeat guy" so apparently I couldn't be a psychopath.

The list goes on and on, but those are a few of the highlights. Somehow they flock to me, and everyone tells me it's because I seem like a nice guy. Here's my problem and curiosity: if I am apparently such a friendly and approachable guy, why is it that I mainly tend to draw in and interact with people who are completely fucknuggets crazy, but not cute girls? Damn universe.

Complacency

Wow. This is kind of sad. I can't believe I haven't written a blog post in like 75 days. That's borderline unfathomable. But I was thinking about this the other day, and I realized that I've just kind of settled into life recently, and I can't say that I've been that content with it. Yes, I see my friends a lot, yes I go out, and I've even been working the last month, so that has taken up a reasonable amount of time. Still, other than that, I realize that a lot of my time has been spent just killing time. Yes, it's fun to watch TV or fart around on the internet, and it can be really, really fun to play video games. A lot. But still, when you're doing all that, you're not doing things to improve yourself or your situation, and in that way, I feel like August in particular was kind of like quicksand. I haven't read enough recently, I haven't blogged, I haven't been actively pursuing finding new full-time work. I've been kind of a bum.

Yes, it's been nice, but looking back now, I really do have to ask myself: what have I been on vacation from? I began the official "unemployed" status way back at the end of May, and the final few weeks at the job were mostly a matter of me showing up and keeping my seat warm and keeping my computer from going into standby mode - I'm not saying I tanked the job, or that I was slacking off, it's just that more and more tasks that used to keep me busy at work were being moved to other people. So it's not like I was burned out from being so taxed at the workplace. Yes, I was mentally burned out by being stuck in a job that I fully realized wasn't interested in keeping me around, but that was about it.

So, my freelance job officially ended yesterday (due primarily to the possibility of new full-time employment, but more on that as it develops) and I am trying to mentally challenge myself (and aid that fact by stating it on the internet) that I want to get back in the swing of things. I want to go to the coffee shop and read. I want to write more music. I want to look for a job that will not only support the true Bill lifestyle, but will excite me enough to convince me that I will actually be there for more than a year or two until I figure out what I really, really want to do.

So, the next time you see me, or talk to me, or email me, give me some shit. Ask me what I'm reading, and what I read before that. Check my GoodReads account to see how often I start a new book. Check and see if I'm working on some new songs for the band. Ask me how the job hunt is going. Pull the Stewie Griffin and ask how the novel is coming (it isn't right now, so don't get all worked up). I may sigh, I may look all sad if things aren't going according to plan, but dammit, that's how I stay on task. That and making lists. Lots of lists. So I hope not to be complacent; not to sit around playing XBox or scratching myself, or whatever it is I do when I'm doing absolutely nothing, and I'm asking all of you who read this to help keep me good to my word. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a comic book to read.