Where do I begin? It’s been a bit of a crazy time the past few days. So I think I’ll start at the end, and go backwards.

Last night I spoke at the Distant Lands Bookstore in Pasadena. Odd that I would be speaking in front of a group (at least one that I do not know) in the same town that I was born in. I only lived there for the first year of my life, but I think I must have viewed the Castle Green Apartments at a very young age, and the viewing of these apartments directly affected my view on life. The Castle Green is a giant structure covering at least one city block, all stucco and crazy Arabic windows. It is bleeping fantastic. It’s the kind of building you drive by and say What the Hell is That and How do I Get In. I have a crazy fantasy that I was conceived there.

So before I went to speak at Distant Lands, I stopped in one of my Pasadena accounts, a wine store with a tasting bar. This was a good move as I was able to kill a couple of pre-talk hours there and therefore, feel less nervous. There were a couple of older, rich, wine-drinking dudes at the bar, and me. There was a girl and a sort of schizo dude working at the shop/bar. Between the four of them there was enough stimulus that I could effectively not think about the speaking in public thing. I drank a glass of New Zealand Riesling, and one of the older wine-drinking dudes told me about his life. He reminded me of my dad – a guy who is aging yet, he still thinks he has a way with the ladies. He actually said to me – “stick around – I’ll wine, dine and line you.” Dude. 1985 is over, nobody is packing an eightball in the glovebox of their Datsun 300ZX any more. Those days are gone. The girl working behind the bar told me how stressed she was and how her co-workers and her customers were treating her. Her life is a living hell, pretty much. It was an odd couple of hours and then I left and checked into the Pasadena Inn, changed and walked to the bookstore where I was to speak.

I was shocked to find that there were over sixty people coming to hear me talk, that it was the largest crowd in many a moon, according to the bookstore personnel. I was worried about people looking at my toenails! I did not have to worry about that. The crowd gathered, I was announced, and we were on.

I started out talking about the way Venice has two parts, the tourist part and the local part, and how they were invisible to each other. It didn’t take long before the crowd began asking questions, and then it was easy – they asked, and I answered. This went on for some time until the bookstore staff made us stop. Some of the questions were good (“what do the Venetians drink?”) and some not so good (“I went to a restaurant on an island that served all you can eat seafood, we were part of a tour, do you know that restaurant?”) It all moved quickly, only one guy fell asleep, two people left early, but the other sixty-two seemed to enjoy themselves.

It was a good night. Tomorrow I will write about a fantastic 36 hours in New York City.

I spent my formative years listening to music. I remember listening to Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water” when I came home from the first grade, and the first record I played on my plastic Playschool record player (or at least the first record I want to remember owning) was the Moody Blues “Days of Future Passed.” On my 8th birthday, instead of “Happy Birthday to You” I heard the Beatles “Birthday” song. Let’s just say I have never let go of my rock and roll roots.

I also love to cook, to drink, to be a quasi-gourmet, to pretend to be a jet-setter. These are all fairly un-rockandroll things, except for maybe the drinking. I read Bon Appetit and Gourmet. This is extremely non-rocking.

So imagine my surprise when I turned a page in my new Bon Appetit tonight and found a picture of non other than Joe Perry, guitarist of Aerosmith, hawking his new hot sauce. I’m sorry to say, my stomach turned. It seems things have been going steadily downhill since Led Zeppelin sold out in that Jaguar commerical (or whatever car that was. Let’s please not talk about Sting.)

Joe Perry! I remember when he used to be so unbelievable cool. So distant, so remote, and such a slaying guitarist. I always had a thing for him, and was totally devasted when I saw him in a Gap ad.

I mean, these guys don’t really need the money from a Gap ad, do they? Don’t they already have gazillions from the bazillion records they had sold? The ninety nine World Tours?

And now, to see Joe Perry in friggen Bon Appetit. Maybe I am getting old. Maybe he is getting even older. Maybe Bon Appetit thinks they have totally scored. Joe Perry looks uncomfortable in the picture. It’s all very sad and confusing to me.

Sometimes all we have got is the memories of the coolness we have seen, heard, and known. I wonder if the kids of today see Justin Timberlake in the same way I used to see Joe Perry. I guess you could ask Joe Perry’s kids. I wish I could tell Joe’s kids how I used to listen to “Train Kept a Rollin” when I was fourteen and how Joe was like a god to me. I wish I could tell them how that could never happen to me now that he is hawking hot sauce in Bon Appetit.

I learned a phrase once from a dear friend, Prentiss Smithson that I use constantly to this day. The phrase is, “I am worn to a Nub.” It is so much more glamorous to say “I am worn to a Nub” than it is to say “I am very, very tired.” I’ve learned things from my years in the Castro District, let me tell you.

Anyway, I am well and truly worn to a Nub. I was in Chicago, I was sick, and now I am home. But let’s not forget that I am also, well, me. So even though I was sick and also WTAN, things happened and before I knew it was 2:00 A.M. (I am talking about today? Yesterday?)

It was Sunday. Yesterday, moving into today. Me and my posse worked hard and then slowly broke down our booth at Bookexpo, being of course the last people who weren’t Union Workers to leave the hall. It’s a combo of excessive wine consumption and attention deficiency disorder, our inability to break down our booth in an efficient manner and I won’t bore you with those details here.

We finally emerged into a perfect Chicago night, brought our bags-full-o’-books to the hotel, and went to a Pub for dinner. That would be Kitty O’Shea’s Pub, in the Chicago Hilton & Towers. Kitty’s is not a normal hotel bar – it’s a cool place. I met one of my long-term (almost a YEAR!) boyfriends there once. We pounded a lot of fattening pub food, drank some cocktails and a bottle of wine, and then my posse (boss, co-worker, co-worker’s mate) all lit up cigars.

Being in my flawed (sick) state, I couldn’t really take the smoke. So I moved a few feet away where two guys were watching the Sopranos on a TV overhead. It was nice, mellow and smoke-free, and then the Sopranos was over and I started talking to the two guys. One was around fifty and lived in Florida, and the other was probably thirty and was a Chicago cop. We were all brought together for a moment by the Sopranos and for a little while, we really had a good time. Things were mellow and it was a perfect Sunday night in Chicago, until things went a little sour.

After a time, the young cop looks at me and says, “I don’t know who your Party is, but…..)” then goes on to tell a story about some guy he hates who is screwing the system, welfare and all that, his wife is obese, and the cop is paying for all that.

This came sort of out of nowhere, and I was like, huh? What do you mean, my Party? Then both of them were totally staring at me. And my hair is looking really, really normal right now.

I am not part of any “Party” I told them. I’m just a citizen. But somehow, somewhere, things had crossed over into a weird space. They both started railing on me about the Democrats and how they were screwing everything up. I swear to you, I said nothing to deserve this, nothing to egg them on. Those two guys went off like a Republican M80 (wish I knew the name of a larger explosive, but I don’t). The cop was fairly mellow, but that other guy… he seemed so nice, but….

I guess the gist of what I am getting at is, I am not use to meeting people who really believe what our government is telling them, i.e. George Bush is protecting you, and me, and our children, and our grandchildren, from the terrorists. Whatever, everyone has the right to their own belief system. But last night was the first night I have ever run across people who would kill ME, run ME down because I don’t believe in the same things as them. It was quite frightening. Florida guy was Really Railing – he was not making any sense at all. He was talking about building a wall around the U.S. and then all the countries that were eating all our food would dissolve. “America is the economy of the the World!” He said. “Without us, everyone else would die!”

“Uh, excuse me, (Mr. freak.)” I said. “I lived in Italy and I think they can do OK without the U.S. Also I think most countries in Europe can do without us.”

“Blah! Ha! Them… didn’t you watch CNN today?” (The D Day thing.) “Without us the Europeans would be Speaking German! Blah! Ha!”

This went on for a while. I had not the wherewithal to fight with this guy, but instead had a very sick feeling in my gut – there are Bush-loving people who HATE people who don’t love Bush out there. Florida-freak went off to the bathroom. Chicago cop said, “I gotta go.” We looked at each other. He knew he had opened this can of worms, and that it had fed on me. And that he was too much of a pussy to admit to that. He left and Florida Freak came back. Thankfully, so did my friend Chad.

At this time, there was also a guy sitting near us at the bar. His eyes looked in different directions and he was very, very drunk. He was totally deranged looking.

Chad, the only one left of my posse at that point, joined me in the bar, where Florida Democrat hater was still railing on me. The world’s problems are because of Clinton, also Democrats like me, you know.

Florida homey wasn’t prepared for Chad though. Hee hee. Chad ripped through that guy like a razor cutting through licorice. “You served?” Chad asked him. “Yeah?” The guy said. Chad really did serve, and spent time in Somalia, and I am thinking Florida guy was maybe telling a fib. The deranged guy comes up and says, “Woof, woof!” The discussion gets very animated and then the deranged guy is talking to me, and I miss the very heated departure of the Florida republican guy. Chad is grinning, but I am still chilled by the vehemence of the Florida guy. He really disliked me, and for no other reason but that I did not believe in Bush and his terrorist threat. I am too WTAN to make sense now, but will try to make sense of the whole thing a little later. In the meantime, PEACE.

Greetings from Chicago, where it is Saturday night, and I am sick. Even though I am sick, the day has not been uneventful. I rode the wave on an endless supply of Aleve (more than the recommended daily dosage, should have read the package I guess before I took seven of them.) At any rate I had no choice because I had to work and there was no way I could get through the day without swallowing. So, I took a major quantity of over-the counter-drugs.

The call of free internet and my addiction to writing weird crap drove me to the lobby of my hotel, but now that I am here I realize I must make this quick, as my drug-induced energy is waning, and quickly. I am too scared now to take more Aleve. I may have to suffer through several hours of not being able to swallow. Luckily I am not yet congested, because that takes all the fun out of partying while sick.

The coolest thing that happened today was we went to a party on a rail car, in Union Station. It is an old rail car and you can rent these things and cruise around in them! All over the country! If you have ever taken a train, please throw away all thoughts of those moments. These rail cars have leather sofas and kitchens. I was completely in love the moment I stepped into that car. There was not much room so there was lots of squeezing around people. I earned bad points for saying that of course Smarty Jones did not win the Triple Crown, that shit is all fixed, and also that George W. was going to try to capitalize on the death of Ronald Reagen. It was a small space, and I guess I should be more conscious of sound carrying in these situations. But I gained points when we were all discussing the renting of the rail cars and how food and beverages were included. “All beverages?” I asked. “Like liquor too?” A moment passes. “Suckahs….” I yell and the whole car erupts with laughter. “I’ll drink a bottle of Bailey’s before 10 A.M!” Some guy says. It was a different kind of after trade show party, one of the best ones I have ever been to. I will not rest until I get to rent one of those rail cars and go to New Orleans in it.

Today we also had an altercation. It was me, my boss, my co-worker Chad, and his girlfriend Gina. (Earlier, Gina, who is a chiropractor, did some weird thing to my neck that totally freaked me out, but that is another story.) We all left the convention center where there was a huge line for cabs and also, for the busses that take you to the hotels. We never wait in line, we just walk towards the hotel until we can flag a cab. But today we encountered the security guard from hell. We walked up the street, and he points back and says, CAB LINE OVER THERE. We were like, Dude, we are walking. (Until we can get a cab that is.) He was watching us for a long time, I guess, because we heard a shout and someone on the other side of him hailed a cab. He was screaming and ranting at these people, when we hailed a cab and got in. This is Chicago – there are cabs everywhere. So, we are in the cab going down the street and the Security guard walks out into the road, and stands, arms outstretched, in front of our cab. GET OUT OF THE CAR, NOW he says. We were like, are you tripping? My boss is yelling, you have no authority here in the middle of a Chicago Street! The guard comes over and demands that the cab pull over and kick us out. The poor cabbie, who had no idea what was going on, said quietly, I can’t kick a fare out of my cab. The guard was kicking and hollering and I swear, was about to completely lose it when we pulled away.

Is it really worth getting your panties in such a bunch? I’ve got to go to bed now, and hope I am not a slave to the Aleve in the morning.

I’m feeling sort of sad today, sort of out-of-sorts. For one thing, June Gloom is here and it is foggy where I live. Another, I had to have some dental work done and it hurts now that the shots have worn off. But the main reason I am sort of sad, actually more like grumpy and pissy, is that the stash of wine I brought home from my big work tasting in late April is now history.

This is the worst part of my job. Because of my job, I can’t drink Charles Shaw, I can’t drink jug wine, I can barely swallow anything that costs less than $10.00, unless, of course, I am at a party and there is nothing else to drink.

When I first got my job it was almost 20 years ago, I was just 21 and drinking Glen Ellen by the gallon. I was in college, I lived with three other students and our crazy, freeloading boyfriends, and we lived on something like 50 cents a day. In those days, I had absolutely no problem drinking that swill. It was easy with eight people in a three bedroom flat.

Damn the palate. It keeps progressing even if your brain (or your income) stays in one place. If you drink good wine, even once in a while, it leaves an impression that is hard to forget, and then it is even harder to go back to swill. So, you drink a little better wine, like maybe Forest Glen or Mondavi Woodbridge. The palate, after a few more good-wine-teasers, says f*** you the next time you try to drink Forest Glen. And on and on it goes. Before you know it you are looking at the top shelf in the grocery store, where all the wines are over $20 and if you are lucky, some are on sale.

For the past month I have been drinking $35 Zinfandels and $50 Meritages on a nightly basis. My palate, now, is like THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU, YOU ARE MY HERO. Just now though, I had to pull a $10.99 Chianti on my palate. Now, The Palate is saying GO TO THE STORE HONEY, AND BRING YOUR CHARGE CARD.

My palate embarrasses me sometimes, like when it makes me smuggle wine into a baseball game or a concert, because I can’t drink what they’ve got there. Sometimes people snicker behind my palate’s back, when I bring moderately priced Gewurztraminers to the beach, instead of Miller Lite. But I stand behind my palate, and ignore the stares and giggles, because I know that we have together forged ahead and somehow, built something.

It’s too bad that what we have built is so expensive. Also, that if I was, say, suddenly unemployed, everything would tumble down around us and I would be drinking stuff I find on sale at the canned foods store. The Palate would not be happy with this situation.

Onward, back into the land of the $10.99 bottle with occasional attack on the cellar. It’s only eleven months until I am in Nirvana again.

On one of the big travel message boards, one of the ones where people are allowed to be hostile to their fellow humans, a poster reprimanded someone for hating Venice. “Asshole,” she said (in so many words), “why don’t you just go back to San Diego, or wherever it is you are from.” Implying that San Diego is all white bread suburb action. Like not as cool as wherever she was from.

Well, I may be twisting words ever so slightly so, but the jist of it is there. And my message to Travel Board Homegirl is, clearly you have not seen the best of San Diego.

San Diego is a BORDER TOWN. Even better, it is a border town where cool people from other cities choose to move to. Like me! I’m not holding back.

I lived in Italy in 2001, and came home for the holidays. I met with my bosses on New Years Day, 2002, in Sonoma. I wanted to come back, they wanted me back. “I won’t go back to San Francisco” I said. “OK,” said Head Honcho. “Where do you want to go?” He said. I thought for a minute. “I want to go to San Diego,” I said. But really, I meant Ocean Beach.

The reason I even thought of this place is that my brother has lived here for a long time. I would come and visit and drink Vodka Collinses and smoke Camels and eat fish tacos and feel totally at home. But San Diego, and Ocean Beach are different. Ocean Beach is the best part of San Diego, and possibly the best part of California. It is glorious here. It has an edge – like Budapest has an edge, or New Orleans has an edge. Ocean Beach is a state of mind that is totally beyond anyone not mentally prepared for it.

My move here has been ultra-successful. I love Ocean Beach. I love the beach culture, the weirdo in the dollar shop screaming “Linda Blair! Exorcist! Whore, whore!” I love the smell of warm fog. I even love the taste of cheap Zinfandel, when it involves Shuffleboard at Tiny’s Pub. I love that I live a block from the ocean, that there are meth-heads around, that downtown San Diego is directly East from me. I love the Ocean Beach post office, where the vibe is so laid back that someone actually got reprimanded for being an asshole-waiting-in-line. The postmaster lady said, “I’m sorry sir, but that kind of behavior is not allowed in Ocean Beach.”

What does this have to do with Border Town? you ask. Absolutely bleeping nothing. But today I sat on a rock at Sunset Cliffs, a half block from my house, drinking white wine and looking at the sea. There was a Mexican family hanging out next to me, eating some tasty grub like boiled shrimps in the shell, carnitas and salsa, and drinking Bud Light. They were having their Memorial Day picnic like all good Americans, and because of the proximity I kept looking over at them. I was reading my Saveur magazine and also, staring at these girls pounding food.

Finally, one of the Mexican women walks towards me, I think she is walking somewhere else, but soon her shadow is over me. I look up. She smiles, with a gold tooth glowing in her mouth. “Would you like a soda?” She asks, holding out a 7-up. I’ve been here two years, almost to the day, and I love it more with each passing second.

In Italy, there is a show on late at night called Super Sexy Blob. Or at least there was – I’m not sure if it is on anymore. It is a crazy show with these quick images flashed on screen – girls in a hot tub, Monster Trucks crushing things, Strongman contests, more girls, more boobs, Motocross races… stuff that would appeal to a 17 year old guy with a very limited attention span. I loved it.

Friday night, random thought #157 – Super Sexy Blob, Super Sexy BLOG!!! Doy, what took me so long to figure that one out? I immediately went home and emailed Pauline to make sure she was cool with the new title. Queen Pauline was cool with it.

So here we go… more random flashes of weirdness. Here’s hoping it’ll be as entertaining as Super Sexy Blob.

Tonight, in a rare moment away from the computer, I flipped through the free San Diego rag, the San Diego Reader. What I saw there shocked and horrified me.

Aren’t these free papers suppose to be all left-wing and PC and shit? At least that was the way they were, back in the day when I use to read them (San Francisco, circa 1991.) Of course I remember the large number of personal ads that I suppose paid for said papers. But… with the advent of internet dating, I guess the free liberal papers have had to look for their income elsewhere.

Times, they are a changin’. Used to be that with a paid personal ad in one of these papers, the possibility of getting laid from placing a simple ad calmed people down and they were able to realize that no one is really getting laid, not really. Now, everything has moved past getting laid into some crazy no-mans land of depression and other disturbing afflictions (besides not-getting-laid), which of course keeps one from getting laid, even though that person probably would not have gotten laid anyway.

I fear I am not making sense, but the number of horrific messages flying off the page into my sensitive brain are befuddling me. The messages are as such (and off just a scant few of the pages of the free paper:)

Unable to ENJOY the things you use to do? Sad? Depressed? Is Lack of Sleep Making it Hard for you to Face the Day? Angry & Irritable? Is Your Mind Like A Storm? (Kind of liked that one…) Shift Work, Sleep Disorder? Tired of Being Criticized for Smoking? Lack of Concentration? Bi Polar? Drinking? Smoking? Hepatitis? Bad Knees? Bad Hips?

This totally frightening part of the paper moves on into ads that offer “Mexico’s Premier Plastic Surgeon” and “Get Ready for Summer – Start your Plastic Surgery Now.” Complete with some nice Before and After Pictures.

Oh, my. It would be nice if we could just go back to those days where it was just “am I getting laid, am I the one everyone wants to lay, or do I have no chance, ever, of getting laid. ” Now, our worlds are controlled by sinister forces – people who want you to think it doesn’t all come down to that.

Last night I watched a film called “Modern Romance” starring Albert Brooks. Well, I was watching, eating, and reading all at the same time. The movie was kind of lame so it didn’t really grab me as total immersion material, only as background noise/glimpse into early 80’s drug use material (ludes! Who does those anymore?)

Anyhow this movie is from 1981 and also stars Kathryn Harrold who is looks like a fish and is really skinny. Bruno Kirby is in it too and wears a black leather vest and is really skinny. All the skinny people in this film are just skinny, not enhanced skinny like they are in the movies these days.

Which gets me to the real point (finally.) There is a scene early on where Albert and Kathryn are in bed that grabbed my attention for like, two minutes. This is because, Albert Brooks has a hairy back. I have new appreciation of Albert Brooks all of a sudden. I never really thought of him as, well, hot. Maybe he was considered hot in 1981? I kind of doubt it.

The thing is, I really LIKE hairy backs. I remember the first time I saw a hairy back and that was on Robin Williams in “Moscow on the Hudson.” I’ll never forget that scene where he was in the bathtub with his girlfriend and all that hair. I was fascinated, revolted, and turned-on at the same time. I was pretty young then, and Robin Williams is almost too hairy. Now, I just think back hair is very nice and I am not ever revolted by it.

So all morning I have been trying to think of anyone on the big screen that has back hair. I can’t think of anybody! Is back hair uncool? Are guys plucking or waxing their back hair? Or are hairy guys just keeping their shirts on? I never typed “back hair removal” into a search engine before today.

Help me, people. Please tell me George Clooney has back hair and I just never noticed it before. (Yeah, right.) Maybe Michael Palin? He seems like someone who would have back hair and not shave it. Hmmm. Maybe I saw his back on one of those travel shows he did and it’s just now coming back to me. Must see if they have those shows at the library.

Oh, how I wish we weren’t such a weird country where men really do love fake breasts (they do in San Diego at least) and where men don’t like hair on their backs. Or maybe I am just trippin’ and have just not noticed any hairy backs since 1984. But this is doubtful.

I read somewhere once that every person stops their emotional development at a certain stage of their childhood and they remain emotionally at that age for their entire lives.

I’m fairly sure this is true of most people and I am totally sure that it is true of me. I just can’t figure out if my emotional development stopped at age eight, or age thirteen.

It doesn’t really matter, I am pretty much a child. As long as I can feed myself and protect myself from a storm, I guess that it is OK to be an eight year old in a thirty-nine year old body.

I went to Disneyland yesterday. The land where people like me (emotionally retarded freaks?) feel happy and at peace with the world.

I love Disneyland. It is beyond all reason. I always loved Disneyland as a kid, and when I grew up and they added Downtown Disney with all it’s bars and restaurants and a cocktail was only a Monorail Ride away, I loved Disneyland even more. When I am at Disneyland, the eight year old and the thirteen year old inside of me get to rage in the open air.

“I’m going to ride the Matterhorn THREE TIMES” I scream to no one in particular. When, the first time, the ride breaks down right when I am about to board, I get a look on my face like I am going to kill someone. “Does this happen often?” I ask the dirndle skirted kicker offer. “All the time,” she says, smiling torturously. Bleeping eighteen year old – who does she think she is?

It all works out in the end though and I ride all the rides and run around and eat pretzels, pizza and fudge. There are fireworks and swing bands and emotionally retarded people everywhere.

I get to be a brat at Disneyland, too. After dodging one too many SUV sized strollers, I get a bit pissy and the thirteen year old comes out. At closing time, heading for Downtown Disney, a crazed woman comes toward me at a high speed with a giant stroller with a seven year old and a four year old in it. (I am estimating the ages, but you get the idea.) “JESUS!!!” I say. “WATCH IT!!!” I am doing this purely to screw with her – it is midnight and she is pushing 200 pounds of stroller and children. “YOU WATCH IT!!!” She screams back, totally stressed and aggravated. Hee hee.

What is up with all the strollers, anyway? No wonder kids are so fat – they get pushed around in the comfort zone until they are nine. I am serious. I thought strollers were for babies, or at least no-one older than three.

But me being me, I wish I could get pushed around in a stroller. And since I am only eight, perhaps I will get my wish someday.