It's funny to me that Tony Soprano always watches the history channel and Biography. That's all I ever watch either. I never cared for episodic television. Presumably Tony Sporano is an extension of the show's creator, as are all the rest of the characters. In episode III of season IV, Tony goes off on a vent about "special interest" and asks what happened to the guys like Gary Cooper. Cooper he describes as "the strong silent type" who didn't complain about being "poor, Irish from Texas - whatever the fuck".

I watched the Biography edition of Jimmy Stewart, and he struck me as having lived his life the same way. He worked in the studios, he married one woman and stayed with her until she passed away. When WWII broke out he enlisted in the Air corps and flew B-17s over Europe. When the war ended and he was discharged , he returned to his "job" as an actor and never mentioned his service. When he was honored by the academy back in the late '70s, he appeared on stage looking great, silver-haired, with the same likable smile he always had. Unimpressed by his own life.

A week later Biography profiled Marlon Brando: "The rebel, misfit actor". It came across that he was always the center of attention, with his mysterious method and use of props to prepare himself. Then, as his career progressed, he got sidetracked by all these things that were removed from his own life: He became involved in the Tahitian independence movement , and American Indian struggles. He was frequently getting arrested, and God knows where his kids were or who was steering them into the adult world. He was taking all kinds of self-prescribed shit, and juicing and turning into a whale... Then, by the '80s his world was collapsing: his son killed somebody, and Brando himself was sitting in the docket, sobbing and pleading for the court to have mercy on him. I guess his half-Tahitian daughter killed herself, and there was some speculation about sexual abuse in the Brando house. The whole thing was a smoking, flaming wreck. Very tragic.

Obviously there's more separating Jimmy Stewart and Marlon Brando than a generation gap, but I couldn't help seeing the simlarity between Brando's life's arc, and A LOT of people I grew up around.

Some of the best movie watching experiences I've had were those instances when I dozed off in the middle of the film for 10 or 15 minutes. I could count on feeling quite refreshed and interested - receptive - once I was back from my slumber. It feels good to give oneself permission to sleep.
Gartists must possess, among other things, a rigorous honesty about how they view and mythologize themselves. Where else would fictitious characters come from? The ability to understand the value in an experience, a landscape or a certain light; I imagine that's what enables one to draw from it again and again. If you know why sunsets are romantic (fleeting, rarified last breath of the day - before plunging into night, mystery, sex, lunacy, danger), then you can use those pieces like spare parts. I guess this would be most true of filmmakers. Musicians must experience such emotional stimulii in a completely different language or sensibility.

I watched Montenegro tonight, and I felt my dormant longing to be a fiery Slav reawakened. I imagine that's what one's supposed to feel. Perhaps not everyone responds the same way. There's like 10 other people I've ALSO always wanted to be: They take turns at the helm of my subconscious imagination.

I dreamed last night that i was in Montreal, and I finally had a new motorcycle. I was very self-consciously proud of it. But I also had my old bike, and I kept needing to leave one or the other at someone's house. I was supposed to go to janie's (which had relocated to park Ave. between Van Horne and Bernard) but I was stopped in a store by two of the Mexican guys who worked on painting my house. We got into a fight, and one of them tied a lit cigarette to my arm with a little black piece of silk. I got it off with a very deft calm move, and then began stabbing him in the bottom of his feet.
I really need a change. Maybe sleep in a bed that has access to better dreams.

On the morning of the day in which I am to die, I hope to...
Lovely a time I'm having with Vince and Judy &
Kid gloves fit snug but are not fashionable. How
expensive - I'd even say expansive, hemispherical... I lose
track Whack! lip smack-shellac bivouac nice rack
Kerouac was unrecognizable in his teddy bear
costume. Personally i believe we all love to wear someone else's
clothes the wind-o I wont too sea know moor. Fair wall and
Good-buy anything you want. But you'll have to carry it around all
day-o, day-ay-o, daylight come and me won' go
home cooking. that's what I miss the
most - Oh Daddy, you the MOST!! The most far-out cat daddy.
But I have a smashing woodsplitting motherfucker
headache medicine didn't work for the
skeleton - skinny. That's what we're all gonna be on the BIG
Halloween Nightmare on Elm St. Psycho Blood beach The Thing
Squirm in their chairs. But the king did not
expect the best. because this Halloween's gonna be on fire.

Mel's Halloween Opus

Long time no blog!
I took a couple hours off from my chores and tasks around the big blue house yesterday; so that I could visit a funky little motorcycle shop down by the ballpark. I chanced upon this [guy] and his start-up garage through craigslist.org. He advertised "a whole bunch of F-2 and F-3 parts" that he'd collected for years. My bike being without gauges, or matching colored wheels I figured I'd see what I could... See.
It's not often I find myself down on the Embarcadero, and I was struck by the utter newness of it. It's really a planned city, without any semblance of spontaneity or random expression. I realized, by my own equation, that it had none of what I consider Quality. But I should qualify that my reaction was influenced by the lack of numbered addresses visible on any of the new retail/office complexes. I was rolling along on the bike, my eyes dangerously off the traffic, scanning the sides of these buildings, and unable to situate which block of king street I was on. Suddenly I was forced onto the southbound 280, headed for Potrero Hill. The plight of the newby. I'm sure the workers just haven't gotten around to bolting the number plates onto the buildings.
But after all this driving, the motorcycle shop was closed. "Goddamn everything!" I thought to myself. I'd called the guy on the phone two hours before, and he didn't mention anything about closing early. Thinking to myself that the fellow may just be on a coffee run, I took out my book and decided to settle in and wait for awhile. I was rather grateful to be in a different setting, away from my house and my neigborhood. I leaned against the bike and began to read from CITY OF QUARTZ when a middle-age couple, climbed out of a white SUV, approached me and asked if I was: "...Looking for Casey?" They appeared to be his folks, and as they went on to explain how they were up from San Luis Obisbo, basically dropping in and checking up on their son, and his new (13 months young) enterprise. They expressed dissapointment that he'd split in the middle of the day, while clients (me) waited outside. I gathered he wasn't overburdened with customers - at least not in mom and dad's opinion.
Interesting thing. Usually I'm the one who does all the talking, but these guys - in what I'm seeing now was an atempt to hold me there until Casey returned and snared some sale - essentially bent my ear about their son. They told me of his lifelong misadventures (including federal prison), his dreams of redemption in a motorcycle shop... And I thought about ur friend N.A., and breathed a discreet sigh of relief on his behalf.
I was thinking to myself: Boy would Casey hate to know about this conversation. Mom and dad are sweet; I found myself touched by their openness about their son's (comment tu dis..?) issues. But the utter lack of respect for his privacy was at the same time quite awkward. I don't know what I'd do if my mom and dad were telling some stranger the kind of stuff I wouldn't even share in an AA meeting.
And I don't mean American Airlines.

Ahh... Gusty, warm nights in October. I'm set to walk over to the cafe on 22nd street and make a plan (pitch a plan - is more like it) to the very sweet German girl who works there. I saw her on the street today, and she told me to come by her work at eight - when she finishes - and it seemed to be hummin'.
But now... Ah, confidence, bluster, swagger, bullshit... Where do they go?

I've noticed no one writes LOVE STUFF on Blogger; at least in our little camp. It's not the greatest, this "boy meets girl" thing. Not the most interesting story out there. My back is sore for some reason. It's that tired-sore that always seems to suggest psychosomaticality. I'm trying to figure out if my loss of mojo to go hang with this girl stems from my own depleted energies from working, or some "worm hole" of the moods I unwittingly crawled into.
Or, if it's something coming from her; a shift in her consciousness. Life is not in a vacuum. I wish I could just lie down on a hardwood floor.

I walked the dog around the neigborhood and up to Dolores park tonight. There were several parties going on in different corners of the park - some final hoorah for Critical Mass. I steered pretty well clear of them; somehow the energy didn't seem that positive. It was more like people looking for a struggle in which to pour their energies. All over the mission district I saw groups of six or seven cyclists, heading home after the big rallye, and filling the lanes with their bikes two and three abreast. A small taste of power tends to have an ugly effect on weak-minded people. The whole thing seemed defiant and confrontational, for the sake of defiance and confrontation. HEY MAN, DON'T FUCK WITH US. WE'LL HIT YOU WITH OUR KRYPTONITE LOCKS.
Everybody's got a plan to make the world better. Invariably calls on other people to change what they are doing.

I keep having these weird encounters with groups of lesbians around here. This area has become the stomping ground for young, angry, punk-rock dykes. They go to the Lexington Club on 19th street, and when there's enough of them together, they start fronting tough. How dumb can you get? I've heard other people recount the same experience. Gay, straight... It's all the same. If you act like a shithead, you will be treated like a shit head. Sometimes you'll be treated like a shithead even if you're an angel. That's just the nature of life.

Shit. It's Sunday, and I have to go work on the house. Everyday I work on the house. It has gotten so hard to keep at it. I think I am in the sixth or seventh week of painting, and though it's near done - everyone says so - I can't seem to see the end. The most interesting thing about this process, is seeing myself brought to the end of my will; my strength; my resolve. i consider myself the strongest man alive, but I'm watching the steeply banking downward curve of my focus.
The hardest thing is knowing how much personal business needs seeing to, and not having the nergy at the end of the day to deal with it. yesterday our front door lock went on the fritz, and I just left it. For all I know the house is wide open. My room upstairs is just a sty, mattress bare, clothes on the floor, alongside garbage, crumpled up receipts, pieces of sandpaper. If only I coyuld finish today, in one twelve hour rush of work. I would totally do it. Instead I'm only able to fill holes and gaps in the wood with caulking and bondo. I want to take this day off, but I'll regret it tomorrow.
It's scary to push myself so hard and so far.

I'm experiencing a goddamn amazing piece of time travel today. I's like a science fiction movie, in which a character keeps walking through those viscouous liquid time portals, unwillingly walking back and forth from one dimension to another. Today it was 1994 for me; halfway through my undergrad and trying to extract some information or service from concordia University.

It all started when i decided i would apply to UCLA's MFA program, with the notion of fast-tracking myself to YET another dimension, where everyone's above the line, the grass is green and the girls are pretty: With a masters degree i could say goodbye forever to grip trucks, sandbags, cable runs, shitty six day weeks... But the deadline is upon me, and suddenly i have to rememeber my student ID # and password for the on-line admisiions and transcript services (and the former wasn't VALI - when did I change that?)

When I left concordia, and Montreal, i never thought I'd look back, but now six years later THINGS HAVE CHANGED. dealing with institutions takes a lot of experience. I feel like I'm out of shape. I have two weeks to hustle my application together for the Fall 2003 semester. That one won't be in my hands.

I gave Mike Manzone notice of my intention to take over his apartment on march 1st, 2001. He seemed agreeable to it. I have a stable life in my future. Just the thought of it seems to energize me.

My blogs are not smelling too fresh right now. What, it's been three weeks since I touched this. Goddamn, what happens? It's like a blackout drunk - waking up in jail, or a wrecked car. I don't even drink. I'm addicted to painting.

Everything i want to write is too personal for blogger-forum. I don't know if that's good or bad. I should probably branch off to another venue of personal expression. Ambitions thwarted by procrastination; I'm not going to lay that one out. Letting fall every plan or design... Smoking has really cost me a lot in the last 18 months. I only have one week left of that.

I was excited about going to new york a few weeks ago, but now i'm shuddering at the thought of living out of bags for another month - two - three months. Who knows? I know i can buck up, but it's not too inviting.

Zack asked me tonight what i planned to do on Sept 11th, and I hadn't thought about it. Inwardly, I figured I'd wait and see what happened... you know - out in the world. Maybe I'd arm myself in the house, and listen to patriotic radio broadcasts. I'm not going out and around the Mission district. I know there will be marches, and demonstrrations calling for peace and rethinking of American policy. I think that's so childish and simplistic and goddamn holy. I'd rather go out to Alameda and attend services on the U.S.S. Hornet. I find that much more comforting than the alternative-world of this neighborhood. I don't know what I'll do on Sept 11. If I work on painting the house, i'll probably hang an American flag on the scaffold. Everyone else on the block can find their own interpretation of events.

The week seemed to run by in hyper-time, and i didn't get to exert any creative energy on blogger or anywhere else, unless you count LA PEINTURE.

The stress level of the week was moderate most of the time, with a couple moments of code red when we rigged the scaffold to do the 35' high sunburst of bartlett St. My dad seems to think I'm going over budget, and I need to start thinking about cutting corners. I'm of the mind that there couldn't be a less perfunctory prep, unless we painted right over the cracked, peeling paint. Sigh.

Last night Terry and I went to see an old French film at the castro, and I found myself uplifted by the experience. When we entered the theater, the old Wurlitzer organ was playing LA VIE EN ROSE in baseball-time and we giggled at the wonderful otherness of it. I found myself thinking about value and romance, and the book of short stories i want to write which would explore those themes.
Sitting in the theater, as the lights dimmed down, I was struck like lightning with the conclusion that exposure to life, and people and ideas and culture saves us from our own nihilistic thoughts. In that moment, I realized that the Herculean task of painting our old house has a certain, preciousness to it - if i can find it. I can be Chaplin - or harold Lloyd - riding on the hands of the big clock tower, or scrambling up and down the scaffold, with gallons of beautifully colored liquids -clanging against each other, gently seeing to every inch of the old, wooden facade. A nail or a screw here, and some sanding there, and as we move the scaffold another 10' feet, the poor, broken old house emerges with a sparkle; and every passer-by smiles, and thanks us for taking care of the old place.

This week I will begin the first installment of the "Painting the Gingerbread palace" feature on filbert.net. There will be pictures and stories. I hope everyone stops in to take a look.

I only had a couple of minutes to read the other bogs on filbert this morning, but it was like a book I couldn't put down. Only later when I was at work in San Rafael did it occur to me that the growing collection of people submitting words (on filbert.net) has begun to emit an energy greater than itself. Or I should say, for me, its meaning has deepened. I began to wonder if I couldn't detect a pattern or rythmn of life - faintly - the ripple across our many private consciences. Huh.

Everything seems kind of crazy and upside down, but no one is getting hurt, so I'm not worried. I'm trying hard to get Terry and David Hale to conribute blogs to the page, so hopefully we'll see some new blood.

Why does that seem suddenly morbid? Seeing new blood?

Today I was working for Brad, trying to figure out why a 220V dryer plug was smoking at a house up in Marin. The power was supposed to be off, and I was a bit absent minded as I rapped with Tim, and Don the customer. I was squatting down, prying the the plug out from the steel box with a screwdriver when it suddenly blew up: There was still current in the circuit from some hinky, old school wiring job done in the early seventies, and I'd inadvertently shorted it. The arc was shooting out blue/orange flames about a foot, and sparks of burning metal poured onto the floor like as they would from a mini-crucible. I pulled my hand back as fast as I could, but not before it was burned and blackened. Tim said later it was smoking as I tucked it into my armpit and said; "I'm burned"

But it seems okay, so I'm not overly upset. Like the car crash Matt and I had on Fountain St. in Hollywood; no one was hurt, so I thought it was pretty cool. I'm beginning to realize that I'll take anything over normal, day to day life. The only things that make me feel alive are emotions, and I only respond to the powerful ones anymore. Addiction.

Sex seems to be the furthest thing from my mind. How odd. It's as if my body spares me the distraction, becasue it lend snothing to the process in which I'm living. There is nothing cosy, or sweet or sensual - sleep-in-on-saturday-morning about my existence. It's all mental fucking discipline. They say (in martial arts) if you control the head, you control the body. I'm astonished to see, at 33 years old, that I've finally wrested control from my pay-per-view imagination.

Terry and I dropped into the mst fascinating place tonight. He had noticed an arresting, old-timey diner on Bayshore blvd. called SILVERCREST (WE NEVER CLOSE) and insisted that we go. I've driven by the place many times on my way to Visitacion valley, but it had never occurred to me to drop in. Well tonight was the night.

The SILVERCREST diner is all crimson red-painted stucco on the outside, with red neon lights from the sevnties announcing its pleasures to the passing vehicles. We pushed open the back door to go in, and it was 1970 inside. A group of cool, streetsmart, older black guys were playing pool in the darkened backroom bar, A scratchy jukebox had a James Brown track going - something i'd never heard before. And all night there were old soul and R & B songsplaying - that I'd never heard before.
A man walked past us and suddenly asked: "How y'all doing?" He wore an oldtimey brown, pinstripe suit and sandals with socks. One of his eyes was obscured by a milky cataract: The other was framed by a scar that could have been made with a chainsaw. He walked up to a row of five identical vintage pinball machines, pumped a quarter in one, and proceeded to play at it for no less than an hour and a half. He left without ordering so much as a coffee.

We sat the bar, a little bit unsettled by the perfect otherness of our surroundings, when the owner himself walked up and gruffly asked us what we would have. The old guy had his gray hair combed into a hustler's pompadour, and he wore his shirt open to show what once must have been a very alluring chest. I was scanning the breakfast menu when Terry suddenly started yammering at the guy in Greek, without so much as asking where he comes from. Of course terry had found the one Greek in san Francisco.

We're like family down there now.

This better not crash.

Something great might come out,and I wouldn't want to lose it.

I went out with Suzette for a few hours tonight. Sweet girl, if not a little distant from life. She has her feet pretty well planted on earth, with only a few exceptions.

Shit, i'm bored. I may as well just go to bed. I have all these house-demands that must be seen to tomorrow, and I promised Nick I'd help him organize his garage.

It seems when i think about blogs during my day, I rememeber interesting (at least to me) tid-bits that I can put in my blog later on. It's clear to me that I'm much too far in the zone with this painting thing. I'm doing my typical all or nothing charge, and evrything is falling apart. Yet i can't take my eyes off the goal. I fantasize about freedom from this place, and this project, and yet I don't exactly know what i'll do or where I'll go after.

But i feel deep down that I'll come flying out of here like a catapault. Energy. I pray something nice comes of it.

Vinnie's back.

And I've been gone too long. This is not going to be long because I'm on an early-rise program (that way the bad juju can't get me). Finally everybody left, and I'm able to return to my monotonous, predictable life of coffee, cigarettes, house-painting and baby.

I've decided to work on training baby to be a watchdog, instead of a guard dog (cause there's a difference). A watch dog barks at the sound of an intruder to the house. A guard dog puts him in the ground. Once i'm awake I can do that myself (lol).

I powerwashed the houser this weekend. What a goddamn stressful experience that was. I had meant to be low-key about the whole thing, but when I pull-started the machine (it's GAS) it was so loud, I may as well have been in a bi-plane. I started the wash down in the breezeway on 21st st., and the water jet was taking off dirt, grime, airborne pollution, paint chips, pieces of house... Everything was blowing 30 feet away onto the neigbours place, and the parked cars on the street. I was stripped down to shorts and sandals, soaking wet, swearing - going up and down the ladder (which was too short). So much fucking crap came off the house i had to wash most of Alan's place after - and then there was 500 gallons of black water pooled down in his shed entrance, swirling with branches, paint chips and pigeon skeletons. And that was only one small part of the whole three day job. This thing is so massive.

But I got the star quaterback flying in from Montreal. We're gonna be PENDEJOS EN CONTROL, gussying up the old whore of a house , just like we did back in our reefer-smoking, plalteau-painters co-op days of youthful; misadventure. Wiyth terry on the crew i feel we shall be invincible.

"Give me ten divisions of men like that, and our problems here will soon be over."

"Ahhhhhhh! The puppies...!!!"

"Are you leaving? Cause I'm COMING."

Well, there's sure been a lot of laughs the last few days. Every guy I know is taking some shade of ass-kicking this Summer - so I don't feel too bad anymore. And it turns out the dead whale was just another 1/4 mile to the north. We'd have smelled it if we were downwind. Too bad. It's probably just a skeleton by now. I make light of all that because I can't really deal with a blue whale getting run over by a tanker and washing up in Marin County. I can only deal with the animal apocalypse through cruel humor, set off like a hand grenade in a crowd of people.

Vinnie's baclk alright, and he's half out of his head from the paint fumes - or the stench of some personalities around these parts.

At the Ingleside police station, on Ocean ave., there's an old slab of bullet-proof glass hanging on display next to the desk where they write down reports and deal with the public. The lexan (i think that's what they call it - now) has five highly visible impacts from what I guessed was a 12ga. shotgun firing 00 buckshot. It looks quite striking, hanging there on the wall. It's the first thing you see when you walk into the station. The second thing you see is a plaque commemorating an officer who was killed in the line of duty, back in 1971.
Now I don't know why, but 1971 just seems like the year that kind of thing would happen. The early seventies has this tough, psycho, bluntness to it; or so it seems to me now. Maybe it's just the way cars were designed... Those Detroit irons, with their V-8 hemmies and glass-pack mufflers were the chariots of that decade's villains. There were certainly a lot of tough-guy movies (DOG DAY AFTERNOON, DIRTY HARRY, TAXI DRIVER).
I found it easy to imagine the night it happened. The parking lot full of cruisers, and fog rolling in from Daly City... Some Hellborn villain with a trenchcoat and three-days growth of a beard, skulks up to the old wooden door of the precinct house and slips in under the greenish glow of the bare flouro tubes... Pulling that sawed-off duck gun from under the coat and...
"Can I help you sir?"

In any case the night that the cop got killed was the same night the lexan got that nice, decorative etching. I asked: That's how I know. I happened to be there at the precinct because some fool kid with a shaved head in a souped-up Honda Civic hit me in my truck and then drove off. It was more dramatic than that in the moment, but I'm just tired of recounting the story. I changed lanes, pulling in front of him: He didn't like it, so he pulled into the emergency lane and passed the two cars on my right, cut hard across two lanes of traffic so that he was 4' in front of my bumper, and then he locked his brakes. I didn't have a chance of stopping, so I skidded right into the back of his car. He booked out of there, but another car stopped and the driver said he saw the whole thing and would testify the guy had made a reckless, deliberate move causing an accident - and then fled the scene. So I'm probably not going to get shagged for any money (thank God).
But it's looking like there's nothing I can do to that punk kid. The cops won't touch a traffic violation, unless an officer witnesses it. No one really cares. What the kid did is basically legal, because it's not covered by any part of the vehicle code. I doubt that kid even has a licence, let alone insurance. Driving like he was I would guess he is a convicted felon. No one just pulls a move like that suddenly - out of the blue.

When i finished the paperwork at the police station, I asked one of the cops what happened to the guy who shot up their station house.
"Did he get the San Quentin gas chamber?" I asked the desk sergeant.
He barely looked up from his paperwork.
"He was never caught." He grumbled.

So why in Christ's name do they have that 30 year old nightmare hanging on the wall like a trophy? Is that to show what a tough job it is? Or to remind people to be patient when they wait in line for an hour to report their injury or wrongdoing? I was really puzzled about that as I drove home. These guys adorn their station with a souvenir of the night some psycho came in and shot the place up like a Terminator - and then got away - through a parking lot full of cop cars. Whatever.

I was just grateful to get my car home and into the garage without any altercations, road rage or freeway shootings. There was a humorously ironic moment as I drove home, and looking back in the rearview mirror, I noticed my new punched-steel cab screen that protects the rear window (since it got smashed in three weeks ago). I cover my back, and I get hit in the front! What do i need now? Roo-Bars? A roll-cage? Self-inflating tires? I'll just have to go back to the truck accesory center and spend some more money. Just make the check payable to Mad Max.

I'm struck by the high political content of my fellow bloggers at filbert.net. Perhaps I should jump in too.

Then some might say: Perhaps not, Vinnie.

Ever since I was in film school, I kept hearing about the "old-boy networks" that kept women out of the movie business. It was assured to me that I would one day become one of the gatekeepers, as that was a position a white guy was guaranteed, but it didn't really work out that way. Perhaps it was the year that I spent in Latin America: People said I possessed a "Corazon latino". I wonder if I could use that to get into UCLA grad school.

Anyway, women do really well at the crew level of film production. I suspect this "fast-track" is a result of guys (best boys and keys) who like having chicks around, which is a form of objectification, but if that gets you a union card and some benefits - what the hell.

But I wonder why there aren't more women struggling to break into the male-dominated world of construction. No one is swinging at the glass ceiling of drywall carpentry, or plumbing. I've worked on hundreds of construction crews, and it's a cock-fest through and through. I think iIt would be great to have some gals around. It would be almost tolerable.

I read somewhere that women and minorities are under-represented in the world of architecture. Now obviously you don't need to know conduit bending and rebar framing to design a building, but it would make sense to me that someone in the field would have to possess at least SOME background in the trades, as opposed to a mere certificate from an art school. We build on the experience of others. Every stud you nail up in a house is a microcosm of the Brooklyn Bridge, because the principles are identical. Layout, cutting, joining...

When John Roebling died, something like four years into the ten year construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, it was his wife who picked up the project and carried it to completion. She didn't write columns about women's under-representation in bridge-building, from the student's lounge of the gender studies department. She just jumped in and did it, and I would imagine she thoroughly understood the project because she was a partner in the family business of cable-making. I don't imagine she did this in order to attain rockstar status in 19th century New York society circles.

I've heard that James Cameron can perform any technical fuction on a film set. From mixing sound, to loading magazines to setting C-stands; he has a firm grasp of all the mechanics of production. That's a total grasp of the medium. I think that's a worthwhile goal for anyone who aspires to lead. But now most directors and D.P.s go to film school, and graduate right into their postions at the top of the industry. It's a shame because those sexy jobs are like a fancy uniform worn by an army officer who's bought a regiment for it's social status, but shuns other officers who've actually had experience in a bush war.

Like in THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

I think I'm most annoyed at my new environmentalist roomate, who can't seem to even get a handle on recycling. The guy never seems to turn the taps all the way off, and if the toilet's running, he'll let it go for hours. In his room he has five 100W bulbs burning in the overhead chandelier, instead of just getting a 60W desk-lamp for his computer table. But to hear him go on about proposed oil drilling in Alaska! I think that stuff is just social grist for San Francisco kids. You have to say what everyone else is saying. I guess if you went to Los Angeles with a mouthful of Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky, you'd last as long as water lily in the Mojave Desert (and I'm talking L.A. - not Santa Monica)

All the roomates I've had here, upon moving out, throw all their unwanted crap into the breezway between our place and Alan's. When people are under the gun, it's TO HELL with principles.

Nothing will turn you into a redneck quicker than the rental business. As long as home-ownership increases in America, folks will vote conservative. It's not the media herding everyone around with frightening headlines about crime and terrorism.

Brad was telling someone a story about a carpenter who had sawed off the end of a piece of plywood that he was actually standing on. I guess the point of the story was that people actually do such things.

Today I got to thinking that I did something similar, when i rented this apartment to a couple of guys, on the promise that I would "almost never" be around. Well, I'm around. I live there. I sleep there, and wake up there. I have my morning coffee and shower there... I'm there. How fucking dumb. I wasn't supposed to be there. I hang out in the garage a lot.

The camping trip turned out to be kind of nice. Roadtripping with one's old man can be challenging, but we did alright. The lowest moment had to be when we drove 26 miles up a valley, and then plunged down another 16 miles of dirt roads, to get to a hot spring (which i insisted that we go to) only to find forty cars there. The place was a friggin' built-up ashram/meditation center. And this is in the hinterland. What was I thinking? That there would be a wild, untouched "stash" of a hot spring - in fucking California?

Ass-rams and zen yoga centers have this really positive, benign image (becaiuse they're soooo spiritual), but as far as I'm concerned it's just one more way to get you to pay $200/day to go into a hot spring - THAT'S IN A NATIONAL FOREST! How is that any different than a resort in palm Springs, or a golf course in Florida? I'll tell you what's different: Semantics. Which (ety-MO-logically means "some antics". Like - those are SOME antics you're up to, but I'm smelling through it!

So we dusted that place, and set up camp in a very buggy site about five miles back up the hot, dusty road. Whatever.

Walking up 21st street tonight, I turned back towards my house, and caught sight of the moon - the big, bright full moon, with fast moving white fog drifting by -- it made me gasp. I really did a double-take. I thought to myself - "the moon is full. So that's what's going on." The house looked like something from a horror film, with the tall chimney pots and plastic owls silhouetted against the gunmetal-blue night sky. And then i thought to myself: I can't believe I have to paint that motherfucker.

Summer 2002. You son of a bitch- are you still here?

The Folder LOVE Has No Messages

That's what YAHOO MAIL said when I finished deleting the contents of that folder. I went one by one, reading (skimming) old electronic love notes, and then deleting them. Cleaning house? What, am I going to war here? Am I joining a monastery?

It occurred to me tonight, as I tried to talk up a camping trip idea, that everything in the world is just a rearrangement of the particles that form everything else. It's all the same stuff, like building blocks, only shaped into something new. Like this trip: I begin to see what I've always known (and managed to forget) about everyone else I try to become involved with. I always seem to end up in the same place with people. It feels as if nothing ever changes. Like two boxers who keep having rematches and keep fighting to a draw. But this goes against the supposed (the alleged) chaos of the universe.

Or maybe it's myself who never changes. Could it be?

Sometimes I sense there's an order to life, but I can't grasp it, for being too much in my body, and too involved in the material world. People's reactions to an invitation to go camping suddenly seem familair, like repeats of thikngs we've attempted before. Perhaps I have to do something different.

I have this desire to drop everyone in my life. I wish I could change what I represented to others, but i guess others will always see you for who you are, better than you see yourself.

The night before last, I awoke having a terrible lucid nightmare. A cobwebby, dusty hunk of fluff had fallen from the ceiling (or from somewhere up above the ceiling - like dreamland) and landed on my face (as I lay in bed) and it teemed with tiny, aggressive little flies. It was so nasty. I sprung from my bed and rolled right out the door of my room, naked, into the hallway - slamming the door behind me and wiping my face as if it was covered in flies. Breathing heavily, i reached for the knob, and opened the door a crack, as if to inspect what heinous, supernatural fly-infested attic-fluff had landed on me, but of course there was nothing there. Nice.

The same night my dad dreamed, as he recounted to me later, that i'd had an altercation with a black guy, in some crowded public place, and I went after him with a socket wrench. Pop said the dream had an underlying feeling of doom. Needless to say i played it real cool the next day, smiling at everyone, and joyfully waving pedestrians by me in the crosswalk. Funny symbolism a socket wrench. I wonder if that's in THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF DREAMS. Something that ratchets things down, and only goes in one direction. Sounds like my life.

I don't know who reads any of this, so i gotta keep it on the up and up. Maybe I need some other repository of my thoughts than BLOGGER.

Another day of flat nothingness. Unless I'm missing something. Perhaps these are dynamic, vivacious, ass-kickin' times. But I'm just not seeing it.

It's the damn fog. This dirty, griity, grey mass hanging 20' over the sidewalk. Well yeah, no wonder everyone walks around in a daze, talking about conspiracy theories.

I really don't know what my next move is going to be. I'd be thrilled to go camping for three days, and just sit, and draw, and write, and smoke cigartettes and drink coffee. But I'll probably end up going alone, because most of my friends are too out of it to get it together.

Sad but true.

I miss L.A. I miss something. Something's missing. I hate having roomates. I just avoid the house. I sat on the front porch for something like and hour this evening, not knowing where to go. Maybe I'll move into the basement, or one of the flea circus hotels on Mission street.

I keep checking my e-mail, waiting for J to hit back; not knowing what I want for an outcome. What a muddle. There's nothing worse than muddled love, when you're trying to assess whether this other person cares about you. When someone else relates such thoughts to me, my response is usually to tell them that their doubts are well-founded. If you have to ask if said person cares about you, then it's not coming across in their behaviour. Seems obvious.

But it's different when it's me.

Problem. I can't write about girl issues here. People might read it.

I can't write about dog issues.

I'm not going to write about my job.

And that doesn't leave a hell of a lot.

This is a bad day for blogging. Unless there's some great thought in my own mind that even I can't see. Just there behind the thicket of painting and realestate drudgery...

B comes to mind actually. I gave my notice today, which was friendly. And then we conversed a lot about firefighting (one of my areas of vicarious expertise). This is real guy-bonding stuff; expressing affection w/o confronting any akward issues.

B wanted to be a firefighter, but he couldn't get into the dept. apart from volunteering (affirmative action). He finally gave up and became a contractor full-time. If you talk to him about it, it's clear that was the defining non-event of his life. It's too bad, because he's a nice guy, and probably would have been good at it. I asked him why he didn't apply for Oakland or Frisco, and he said he wasn't mentally prepared to do the job in a big city - at least not at the time.

I was like: "Shit dude! I'd do it."

And probably get myself into a world of trouble, as I mange to do with everything else.

I told N today that i viewed my life, and most everyone's life as default of their ability versus their circumstance. Whatever we do, it's the most we could make, of what we had within ourselves, and we we were faced with from outside ourselves. Obviously what arises next is the question: Can we ever change; can we possibly do more - or do different? Or is the math too perfect? is the formula bulletproof?

You get these shows like FANTASY ISLAND, SURVIVOR or Canada'a THRILL OF A LIFETIME. The idea is that normal people are placed in extraordinary situations, and they can really know if they ever had something more in them than their banal workaday lives. I think I know what the answer is.

I need some lemonade for the fridgee. Something tells me I'm going to wake up and find myself very thirsty tomorrow morning.

God I want to get the fuck out of here. Ok, I said it. The only problem with this town - for me - is this feeling like I've constantly JUST quit smoking. And the real pisser is, I can't go anywhere. I have to stay and buck up. Maybe if my attitiude was just a little better. But then i don't even believe that.
Sunday night is tough. There's never enough time. I don't want to sleep, I would like to unflod it back into a weekend (Hell, I'd just like to have the weekend all over again.

I have this obsessive ritual of trying to find a good place for everything. I move stuff all around this house, tring to attain some perfection of plaement, so that it's there when I need it. I try hanging my motorcycle helmet in the garage for a change, and on a hook next to it i can hang my messenger bag, wirth all the crap I'll need at work tomorrow... But then I wanted the bag for something else, and it's down in the garage. I think: perhaps I need another bag. I need two of everything (I'm alreadyt doing that).

There's a lot of resistance in life these days. As hard as I try to make a plan and see it through; the shit gets away from me. All I managed to do this weekend is hang a picture on the wall - and it's crooked. I keep telling myself that I'm lucky, and thing could be a lot tougher, but it seems like I need Norton disc utilities, on my fucking brain. It's age isn't it?

I'm going to quit my job tomorrow, or a leats anounce to Brad that i need two moths to finish fixing up my own place. I'm sorry to have to do it. I really like Brad, and I'm going to miss the relationship.