Weekend update

It’s been a busy weekend.  Friday was after-work drinks at Lookout with our friend D whom we’ve known since we were just coming out in San Jose.  We met, I believe, at the gay community center down there, the Billy de Frank center, when it was on Keyes Street in a rundown Victorian.  And that, believe me, was before any downtown renaissance.  But we wanted to catch up with D, who now lives in Noe Valley and works for a high-tech firm near the ballpark, because he had just gotten back from the East Coast where he went to visit his mother in the hospital.  Fortunately she took a turn for the better, and is now out and in convalescent care.  The doctors said her condition might have been related to taking too much calcium.  Anyway, D has been stressed about his parents, work, and,  well D is pretty much a ball of stress in the best times, so we knew he needed some help unwinding.

Since we were drinking at Lookout, we ended up eating dinner across the street at Bagdad Cafe.  Now, I used to like Bagdad Cafe but what has happened?  I’m not going back, at least until I forget this visit, but I do hope they can get the kitchen and menu back on track because I used to like eating there, with the funky decor and friendly servers.

Which reminds me that R and I ate at the new Kasa restaurant on Thursday night.  I hope they get everything worked out – it was so busy that the brand-new staff were quite frazzled.  And given that Pak-Wan is just a short #33 Muni ride down to 16th and Valencia, I hope they get the food prep kicked up a notch as well.  It wasn’t that it was bad (go to Bombay Oven on Market for that) but it was a watered down experience, and not executed well at that.  But they’re brand new so I’ll check back and hope it was just opening jitters.

Saturday I attended the day-long Guy Writers’ conference at the Gay Community Center.  Organized by Philip Huang and others of Guy Writers, the keynote was given by John Fisher; playwright, Artistic Director for Theatre Rhinocerous, and now teaching at Yale.  The event  was an opportunity to meet and network with fellow queers who write, whether prose, poetry or plays.  An indie film producer / script writer participated as well.

I was frankly surprised at the number of people I met – even in this small town of Queeristan,  you can’t ever claim to have run into everybody.  I just seems that way sometimes, right?

I attended workshops on using spontaneity in writing, and writing for humor; and picked up techniques I will definitely be able to put to work.  I came away with more contacts, and inspiration, than I went in so the time was well spent for me.

After the conference, I headed over to Corona Heights to a friends house for a combination birthday / CD-release party.  Had a few too many of the wicked orange margaritas, and chatted with people like I was saying my last words and my head would be lopped off if I stopped.  Very unlike me – but yes – those last Tudors episodes are still giving me nightmares.

I did find out from a friend who works at Falcon that drama a-plenty is brewing there.  Or maybe has already boiled over.  A coup d’etat shook the place at the end of May, with locks changed and the CEO forced out by (formerly) silent partners mid-day.  Rumors are swirling about a possible move to Las Vegas.  New web domains are being snatched-up.  Reports are that Falcon has been hurt by subscription sites like Sean Cody.  I better get my friend Erik Rhodes on the line and find out what he knows.  He’s been silent on this topic so far on his blog.

We were tired after the party, so had a quick bite to eat at (Pasta) Pomodoro on 24th.  I was bad and had the delicious lasagne with fontina and mushrooms.  They rotate recipes every few months, and this is one of the best, so I indulged a little.   But it was the small portion, which is quite filling enough.  We ended up catching the new episode of Kathy Griffin’s Life on the D-List (gay stereotypes that we are) on DVR, then crashing early.

Today I managed to get out to the gym for a stairmaster climb and some weightlifting.   One of these days I keep telling myself I am going to try Spinning, but haven’t gotten motivated enough so far.  I managed to research and write another weekly article for Online Tech Tips, which I got a week behind on when I was visiting my Dad back in Delaware.  R is now making veal meatballs and vegetables for dinner which should go well with the cool weather today.

And I am going to sign off here and try writing another episode of The Alien at the Coffeehouse.

Energy drinks, Greenpeace, Civil Liberties and Kirk Read

It’s been a busy hump day here in Queeristan.  I’m working on two technical writing assignments, and trying to keep my story ‘Alien in the Coffeehouse’ flowing as well.  I may have mentioned I was introduced to a drink called “Zrii” a few weeks ago – the drink actually came in a swag-bag of trinkets from the San Francisco GLAAD media awards dinner.  I rarely drink so-called energy drinks and Zrii didn’t label itself as an energy drink, but since I had it I drank it one afternoon and had a fa-bu-lous spurt of writing and concentration, with no crash symptoms later.  I looked around for more Zrii but it’s a MLM (multi-level marketing) product meaning it’s prohibitively expensive.

I tried out “Steaz” Energy drink yesterday to see if that helped my keep up my energy and concentration.  Advertised as all organic, with green tea and other herbs, I had hopes that it might provide a boost.  Nope, nada, just a hard crash a few hours later, without any uptime at all.  Today I am going to try “Full Throttle – Unleaded” (meaning no carb/sugars).  I’ll let you know if it has any effect.

Out at the gym and running errands today I could not help notice (and you probably ran into them too) the many volunteers with Greenpeace and the ACLU, helping protect our environment and civil liberties at the cost of “just a minute” (ACLU) or even “just a second of your time” (Greenpeace).  I guess there’s an attention-bidding war going on out there in our streets, and Greenpeace currently holds the advantage.

Which reminded me of Kirk Read’s performance art piece “This is the Thing”, performed last weekend as part of the Queer Arts Festival 2008, wherein one of his topics was imitating an environmental group volunteer, wandering the stage with a clipboard, asking “Have you got a minute for the environment?”  Which he did for a few minutes before begining to hop and stomp his feet, as the lights faded.  Hey – I’m just relating, not interpreting.

Speaking of whom, Kirk Read is conducting one of the workshops at the GuyWriters conference at the Gay Community Center this Saturday.

GuyWriter’s Conference

The GuyWriters is a Bay Area collective of Gay poets, playwrights and prose authors.  On Saturday June 21 as part of the 2008 Queer Arts Festival activities, a day-long series of workshops will provide inspriation and information.  Join in!

Full information and agenda are posted here at the conference website.

Despite the richness of queer arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, many of us writers are left scratching our heads: Why is there no conference serving gay writers? What happened to Outwrite? What happened to San Francisco as a center of queer literature and publishing?

Is there still a there there?

To revitalize the gay literary movement, GuyWriters calls all gay-identified and bisexual male poets, prose writers, and playwrights to gather for a one-day conference. Featuring workshops by Joël Tan, Kirk Read, Jay Frazier, Jaime Cortez, Matthew Graham Smith, John Fisher and other home-grown talent, the GuyWriters Conference offers participants the chance to pick up new skills, learn about the craft and the business of writing, and network with some of the most prolific gay writers in the Bay Area.

This is where the action is, boys.
Be there. Plug in.