Let's see... What can I say that isn't said over and over in other places?
It was hot. The black polyester and the plastic helmets were not particularly helpful in this weather.
The band was Unit 23 this year -- way towards the front of the parade. This is because the Pride Committee wanted us to go onto the main stage at 12:45 and play for about 5 minutes, so we had to be early enough in the parade to meet that schedule. As it turned out, a couple of their speakers didn't show up on time, so we were actually off the stage before 12:45
All in all, I did not do very much after the parade was over. I sat in the band booth and played music for another 15 minutes or so. I ate a corn dog. I got Cloris Leachman to sign a copy of her autobiography (she didn't hear me properly, so she signed it to "Billy and Jeff"). I ate an It's It. And I waited around the entrance to both the Public Library and the Asian Art Museum in case any soc.motss people showed up. None did.
And there were so many people with iPhones at Civic Center that they jammed all communications on the AT&T network -- the phone had four bars and was connected to the 3G network, but everything failed to work. I had to walk nearly all the way to Market Street to make phone calls, and I couldn't upload any pictures at all. Chip finally figured out that the only thing that would work reliably was text messaging.
This morning, Dixieland Dykes +3 played at the Pride Brunch. The brunch is hosted by Donna Sachet and Gary Virginia, and features brief speeches by the grand marshals of the Pride parade. This year's grand marshals include Cloris Leachman, Lt. Dan Choi, Dan Nicoletta, and some of the producers of "Milk." Proceeds from the brunch benefit Positive Resource Center.
Then in the evening, as always, Castro Street and several surrounding streets were blocked off for "Pink Saturday." This year was much more a formal event than previous years -- many more police barriers used to form actual entry corridors, in order to permit security to search people's bags, conficscate any alcohol they found, collect $7 from them and mark them with a pink sticker to indicate that they'd paid. There were lots and lots of cops visible, as well as people in orange "community safety" vests. There were banks of Port-a-Johns every half block or so. And there were "beverage booths" selling, basically, beer.
As usual, around sundown, the band marched single-file down the middle of Castro Street from 19th and stopped in a couple of different spots to play for a while to an enthusiastic crowd.
So here's the pictures (click on them to enlarge them):
I was thinking about Chapel Hill 1980s music and did some digging around YouTube. I stumbled across this reconstructed video for the dBs' song, "Neverland."
A little less than two weeks ago, Huffington Post ran a story about people's horror stories regarding collection agencies. At the end of that article, they solicited readers to submit their own tales of dealings with collection agencies.
As it happens, since we moved to San Francisco in 1990, I have had more than just a few instances of dealings with credit reports and collection agents -- all regarding people who are not me. So I dropped a note to HuffPo giving some specific details of these mistakes, and I got a call from Andrew Delaney last Friday. His resulting story got posted this morning.
As I have said previously here:
"According to http://ww2.howmanyofme.com/, the most recent census shows that the USA is home to approximately:
"8,869 people named William Green (or Greene) "65 people named Will Green(e) "1,439 people named Willie Green(e) "18 people named Willy Green(e) "404 people named Bill Green(e) "909 people named Billy Green(e) and "40 people named Wiley Green(e).
"That's 11,744 of us who get each other's mail, phone messages and attempts at debt collection. And some of us are probably related to each other."
This dates back to 1991, when I decided to join the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band. Not knowing for certain whether I would like playing a musical instrument after more than ten years of not doing so, I decided to rent a trombone for three months as a trial. So I went to a music store in Oakland. They ran a credit check on me. Then they huddled in the doorway, glancing at their printout and then at me. Finally someone came over and said, "We're just a little concerned about this credit report. It says that you had a tax lien against you last year when you lived in San Leandro." I said, "I've never lived in San Leandro. I moved to California from North Carolina just over a year ago." She said, "Well, we kind of thought it might not be you. The names matched, but the Social Security numbers did not." So they let me rent the trombone. I mean, come on. We're only talking about $100 here. At least they had perspective.
But that was the start of a series of instances where people researching my credit history came up with the credit histories of other people named "William Green" or started calling and mailing me collections notices for other people with the same name as mine.
After dealing with this identification confusion several times, I have learned not to freak out whenever this happens. It used to upset me. Then I figured out that unless it actually affects my credit standing (such as the time that my bank cut my credit limit to $1,000 based on an incorrect credit report), I have nothing to worry about. I just need to repeat, "No, that's not me, you have the wrong person," and it usually stops pretty quickly.
I think that the main reason that Mr. Delaney liked my story was the recent twist wherein collections agents have started using automatic message machines. One left the rather harsh statement, "By continuing to listen to this message, you are confirming that you are... WALLY... GREEN..." on our answering machine. So we were able to provide him with an actual recording of the collection call (the sound file is included in the HuffPo story.)
Just once in my life, I want to go to a store, have a credit check run on me and have them get a credit report that tells them, "Please offer him a comfortable chair and ask what you can do to make his shopping experience more pleasant. If he says that he wants one of everything in the store, just smile and ask, 'What color?' "
Every June, the Lambda Youth Project and Project Eden host a prom for LGBTQ youth and straight allies.
And every year, some fundamentalists come to wave signs and scream at the kids that they'll die before they turn forty, that they're evil and that their going to the prom is making the baby Jesus cry.
So every year, Project Eden asks the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band to come stand outside the prom and play music to drown out the fundamentalists.
In the last couple of years, these fundamentalists have gotten bolder and uglier and nastier. This year, there were two men with megaphones. One wore a jacket with "Fear God" and many other Westboro-worthy things printed on it (followed by a woman in a similar jacket carrying a video camera and recording the crowd). The other man wore a shirt that on the front had the word "Homo" with a slash through it, and on the back read "Got AIDS Yet?" (photo below). Both were repeatedly yelling into their megaphones that the people trying to block their megaphones were hate-filled hypocrites.
Can you imagine? You're holding a prom, and some innocent man just happens to walk by and just happens to yell through a megaphone that everyone going into the prom is evil and going to hell. If people ask him to stop, it can only be from hatred, not from self-defense or anything like that. And if they physically try to stop him from delivering his love-filled message of hellfire, damnation, disease and early death (caringly and tenderly through a megaphone), it can only be because they hate both Jesus and free speech. And the people waving signs that say " 'Gay' = Pervert" or "Homo Sex is a threat to national security" or "You were NOT born gay!" cannot possibly be the hateful people in this scenario.
Part of me says, "Go ahead. Let them speak as freely as they want. The kids need to get used to hearing this and seeing their neighbors display their true colors." But part of me says that this could still be too much too soon for some of these kids.
The most telling thing of all to me is the fact that the organizers ask that no one videotape or photograph the kids going into the prom. The kids have no way of knowing who is behind the camera. For all they know, you might be taking their picture in order to put it on the Internet in order to say, "Here's a gay person. If you see him/her, injure or kill him/her." Which, given the fates of several LGBT youths (Californians Gwen Araujo and Lawrence King come immediately to mind), is not an entirely unreasonable fear. In past years, some kids have freaked out at the sight of cameras and turned away from entering the prom.
This year, I was tempted to walk up to one of the guys with the megaphones and say, "Dude, don't you think you're overcompensating just a little? I mean, I can totally understand why you would have some self-esteem issues, but you're not completely unattractive. I'm sure that there is some man out there who would be willing to go out with you, especially if you took a little more care with your hair or your clothes. Maybe you just haven't met the right man yet. Hell, if it will shut you up, I will personally take you over behind those bushes right now."
But I know better than to think seriously that this would accomplish anything.
Since Nanci doesn't yet have any videos from "The Loving Kind" up on YouTube, I thought I'd give you her live version of Julie Gold's song, "Good Night New York."
Nanci Griffith's new CD, "The Loving Kind," was released on yesterday, June 9. The title refers to Mildred Loving of the landmark Supreme Court case, "Loving v Virginia," which struck down all state bans on interracial marriages.
I haven't gotten my copy yet, but should have it before the weekend (it's on its way from Amazon).
Okay, I've held off re-posting this since I first saw it a couple of weeks ago. But now that Boing Boing has finally found it, then I have to do it just to make this video as ubiquitous as possible.
I thought that the literal version of Take On Me was pretty funny, but this one has better jokes, so the underlying joke lasts longer. IMHO.
"Bay leaf , Greek Daphni, Romanian Dafin, Portuguese Louro; is the aromatic leaf of several species of the Laurel family . Fresh or dried bay leaves are used in cooking for their distinctive flavor and fragrance, which are used for their flavour in cooking. It was also the source of the laurel wreath. "A laurel wreath is a circular wreath made of interlocking branches and leaves of the Bay Laurel , an aromatic broadleaf evergreen. In Greek mythology, Apollo is represented wearing a laurel wreath on his head, and therefore the expression of 'resting on one's laurels.' A wreath of bay laurels was given as the prize at the Pythian Games (one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games, held every four years at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi) because the games were in honor of Apollo and the laurel was one of his symbols ever since his unsuccessful pursuit of Daphne.
"In Chinese folklore there is a great laurel tree on the moon, and the Chinese name for the laurel, , literally translates to 'moon-laurel.' This is the subject of a story of Wu Gang, a man who aspired to immortality and neglected his work. When the deities discovered this they sentenced Wu Gang to fell the laurel tree, whereupon he could join the ranks of the deities; however, since the laurel regenerated immediately when cut, it could never be felled. The phrase ('Wu Gang chops the tree') is sometimes used to refer to endless toil, analogous to Sisyphus.
"In Greek mythology, the tree was first formed when the nymph Daphne changed into it to escape the lustful pursuit of the Olympian god Apollo. Daphne is the Greek name for the tree."
In fact, it's just 12 days shy of being exactly a year since I found myself on the Found site.
I've made several other submissions to "Found" that I thought would get chosen before this one -- including a MUNI repair order pointing out that the driver's seat smells like urine, a City Car Share damage report on the back of which someone had scrawled directions all over, over which someone else had scrawled "I LOVE SATAN" and a prayer card.
Let's see... What can I say that isn't said over and over in other places?
Posts
