'Tain't funny, Magee.

As much as anything, I just want this documented while it's reasonably fresh in my memory.

My phone rang about about ten minutes to midnight tonight, just a couple of minutes after I got home from eating dinner after band rehearsal.  We both looked at the clock (in a "what time exactly is it that someone is calling?" reflex -- 11:51 according to the clock on our microwave), and Chip said, "Well, at this time of night, it's probably okay to answer it."

So I answered it.

"Is this Billy?"  (a slight Southern accent in the voice)

"Who's calling?"

"This is Johnny.  Remember me?"

You need to know that I have an uncle named Johnny, and, though this voice sounded a bit deeper than his, I thought maybe he had a cold or something.  And the "remember me?" question is not entirely out of keeping with his personality.

I said, "How are you doing?"

"Why weren't you at the meeting last Tuesday night?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said you were going to come to the meeting last Tuesday night.  Why didn't you come?"  (Pretty sure now that this is not my Uncle Johnny...)

"Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about.  I don't remember telling anyone I would be at a any meetings last Tuesday."  (I don't have to think about this -- I have band rehearsals every Tuesday night, so if I promise to go somewhere else on a Tuesday, not only do I not forget to go, I call two or three people in the band to tell them that I won't be at rehearsal.)  "Are you sure you have the right number?"

"This is Billy, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I cannot think of any meetings I was supposed to be at last Tuesday."

"You promised you'd be there, and a lot of people are upset that you didn't come after you promised." 

(Okay, this is starting to feel surreal.)

"What meeting are you talking about?"

"The Ku Klux Klan.  I know where you live.  You live at..."

And then he told me my address.  And he was correct.

"Do I need to come over there and get you right now?  You're name's Billy, isn't it?"

"Yes." (Not a lot of sense in denying it at this point.)  "But there are a lot of Billys out there, and a lot of Billys with my last name.  Are you sure you've got the right one?"

"Are you not Billy Rose?"

"No."

"Oh.  Then I have the wrong number."  And he hung up.

I thought about it for a few seconds and called the closest police station's non-emergency number and explained the call to them.  A few minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I went outside to talk to two policemen.  I told them the content of the phone call.  I said, "I suppose there was no explicit, direct threat in there, but it disturbs me.  He had my address right, so I don't understand how he could have a wrong number."

One of the policemen said, "Are you listed?"

"Yes, but I'm listed under my real name.  If they were looking for 'Billy Rose,' they wouldn't have found me."

"Well, you can look up any kind of information on anybody on the Internet."

"But if they used the Internet to find my correct phone number and my correct address, then they would have gotten my real name, too."

Bottom line: There's not a lot the police can do about it (not that I thought they could) other than listen to me and make a record of my report.  They gave me a slip with a CAD number on it, telling me that if they call again, and especially if they make any more obvious threats, to call the station and give them the CAD number so it would be reported as part of the same incident.

This reminded me very much of how I felt many years ago in a somewhat similar situation.  I used to record the band's information recording -- when and where the band would meet for specific events, or if someone wanted to join the band, when and where we rehearse.  One week when I was checking the answering machine messages, there was one short one: "Thanks for telling me where to find you.  I'll be down there next week with a shotgun."  I was hearing this about half an hour before the start of the rehearsal where the guy had threatened to show up with a shotgun.

It's a weird, surreal, helpless feeling.  It brings waves of absolute insecurity in which you are certain that someone out there, just out of your sight, is poised and waiting to harm you or kill you if they can.  By definition, it is terrorism.  I don't use the word lightly (like some "news" networks I could name).  I mean it literally -- the point of terrorism is to make someone else afraid all the time, not knowing whether they will be attacked, not knowing whether someone who wants to hurt or kill you is waiting outside the next door or around the next corner.  For about half an hour after the call, I felt unsafe enough that I considered calling around to see if I could find a hotel room for the night, just so I wouldn't have to sleep in this apartment tonight.

So if this was someone's idea of a funny prank call, I hope he is smart enough never to admit to it when I am within reaching distance of him.

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse December 21, 2010

At around 12:40 last night (this morning), I realized it was supposed to be around the time the lunar eclipse should be reaching its peak.  So we went outside and took the video camera.  I honestly did not expect that the camera would be able to pick up anything at all (well, nothing visible or even vaguely in focus).

Much to my surprise, I got a couple of shots of the moon while it was completely red.  So I went back inside and got the humongous zoom lens and a little tabletop tripod.  Then I sat outside on the cold wet driveway (not in the rain, mercifully) for an hour, recording the shadow leaving the moon's surface.

Then I thought I'd quickly splice something together and slap it up on YouTube.  But I figured that speeding up the video would make it a whole lot more interesting.  As it turns out, Premiere takes about one hour to process one minute of fast-motion video.  I finally went to bed around 4 a.m., unable to stay awake any longer.  Then I let it finish rendering everything when I got back up again around noon today.

And that's why I didn't get this video posted on YouTube until around 4:00 this afternoon, more than twelve hours after the eclipse ended.

Life In a Day - My Video

21323-2

Here's my video submission for "Life In a Day."  Just in case you were interested. The title, "21323-2," is the title that "Life In a Day" requested I put on it.

Life In a Day

Life In a Day: How We're Editing

On Saturday, July 24, 2010, Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald, working in partnership with YouTube, asked people all over the world to record [1] themselves doing whatever they would ordinarily be doing that day and then send them the footage.  To ensure more global participation, they sent many cameras to areas that do not have ready access to YouTube or the Internet.  From the footage they received, they will edit a documentary showing how people all over the world spent their time and lived their lives on this one day.

On this particular day, I had exactly three things I needed to do:  (a) do laundry; (b) go to the dentist and get a temp filling removed and replaced with a crown; and (c) go to the gym.

I suppose I could have asked my dentist if he would allow me to film and if he would sign a release, but I figured that a medical professional doing anything more than a routine exam would be an idiot to open himself to a huge potential liability by allowing a patient to record a medical procedure taking place.  So I didn't even bother to ask.

Our gym has signs all over the place saying, "No photography, not even with your cell phone."  So I didn't even bother to ask.

This just left me with one possibility:  Record myself doing laundry.  But, hey, they said in their instructions that it did not matter how mundane or boring you thought your video was, just record it and send it to them.

So that's what I did.  I turned out to be exceedingly lucky.  The laundromat was completely empty when I went there.  The whole time I was doing laundry, only one person ever came into the laundromat with me.  He emptied his dryer and left again immediately.  So I did not have to either (a) explain what I was doing or (b) ask anyone to sign a release form.

It really is quite boring -- an hour of footage that starts with one of our cats having a love affair with one of my dirty shirts as I was gathering the dirty clothes (she alternately wriggled and writhed on it, and sat still and licked it), then moves on to me putting clothes into washing machines, me putting coins into slots, me adding detergent, me putting clothes into the dryer, me watchin' the clothes go 'round, watchin' the clothes go 'round, me playing "Scrabble" on my iPhone while waiting for the clothes to dry, and me folding clothes.

I uploaded it in full HD glory in three ten-minute chunks to YouTube (I had mercy and cut some of the really long parts down) and submitted them to the "Life In a Day" YouTube page.

Today, I had a small odd turn of events.  I checked my blog stats and saw that someone from England had arrived on this blog from my YouTube channel.  So I went to check my YouTube channel to see if they had left a comment or something like that, and I noticed that there was a new message in my YouTube Inbox.  "Life In a Day" had written to me this morning to inform me that my footage made it into the cut of 100 hours of footage that would be used for the final film.  They give no guarantee that any of my footage will make it to the actual final cut, but they wish me to upload my camera-original footage to them for editing.

Coolness.

[UPDATE: Here's my reconstituted video.]

The coincidence about this is that if hadn't just happened to check my YouTube channel, I might not have noticed the message for weeks or months (because I just simply never look there on the off-chance that someone's trying to reach me), and I would have missed this chance.  But instead, I managed to see it very shortly after it arrived.

Of course, I suppose it's entirely possible that the person who checked my blog was someone from "Life In a Day" trying to find a way to contact me other than through my YouTube channel.  If that's the case, then it worked.

One little snag, though.  The laundromat is a completely unattended operation.  I need to track down the owner or manager to get him/her to sign a release form, as well as the owner of the building.  I guess I'll have to leave a note and ask someone to contact me.

--------------------------------------------------------------

[1] A semantic issue:  the word, "film," seems inappropriate because no film is involved; the word, "videotape," seems inappropriate because the video is recorded onto a hard drive or onto flash memory; using the word, "video," as a verb seems just plain wrong; and the word, "record," seems insufficiently descriptive.  Oh, the pain of semantic dilemmas!  Any suggested alternatives?

It Made My Day

It's not often that you get a telemarketing call and get that "It Made My Day" feeling.

However, I just had the following phone conversation (at 10:30 on a Sunday morning): 

Me: Hello? 

Ricky:  Hello, may I speak to Mr. Green? 

Me:  And who is calling? 

Ricky:  This is Ricky, I am calling from Dish (blah-blah-blah), and I am calling to offer you satellite service.  Did you know that you can get over 200 channels with our service? 

Me:  Really?  And did you know that you just called a number that is listed with the National "Do Not Call" Registry for marketing calls? 

Ricky (seriously):  Oooh, no!  I did not know that! 

Me:  So would you like me to report you, or would you like to hang up now? 

Ricky (sounding very sincere):  I think I'd better hang up now! 

[click] 

IMMD.

Life's (and the Interweb's) little mysteries.....

About two months ago, I posted about my top ten favorite new CDs by new artists of 2009.  Considering that I had only bought around ten new CDs by new artists,[1] it was not so much a question of "selection" as it was "what order should I put them in."

Little Boots came in at number 4, and La Roux tied for first (with folk artist Lisa Hannigan, who is, in some ways, the Anti-Electropop).  I stated that as a rule, dance music and electropop were things that I haven't really had a great love for since the 1980s, but these two at least seemed to have some legitimate credit and legitimate talent.[2]  I even stated that this kind of music was stuff that I would ordinarily expect to be making fun of rather than listening to.  At no time did I say that "the year 2009 was a breakthrough for electro pop".  Susan Boyle was on the list, fer cryin' out loud, as well as Megan Lynch's album of songs from Warner Brothers cartoons.

So imagine my surprise this afternoon when I checked my blog stats to find that someone arrived on this blog from Wikipedia.  Following the link, I found a sparse, three-sentence entry headed "2009 in electro pop music."  The first of the three sentences is "The year 2009 was a breakthrough for electropop," with a footnote reference attributing this blog as the source of the statement.

I suppose that writing any kind of blog will inevitably lead one to being cited on Wikipedia at some point or another.  It just hadn't occurred to me.  And, frankly, I would probably prefer to be cited as an authority on some kind of music other than electropop.

Whatever.

------------------------------------------

[1] Yes, I really do mean "CDs" and not "blasted low-quality under-sampled artifact-ridden Internet downloaded mp3s/m4as."  Call me a dinosaur, but I prefer quality to convenience.

[2] After writing that posting, I did actually break down and purchase Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster," considering it to be kind of inevitable.   I did not deem it necessary to edit the blog entry in order to add Lady Gaga to the list.

Castro Street Fair 2009 - The Videos

Castro Street Fair 2009

Chip shot the footage of the band playing, and I shot the rest of the footage.  I edited the video, Chip edited the audio.

I already said everything else I want to say about the street fair on the photo post.  So there.

Also, here's my video of the full song played by La Gente (the sidewalk band in the video above):


La Gente at Castro Street Fair

Addictionary (again)

Gymnauseum -- noun, When working out at the health club, the feeling you get that lets you know that you really should have stopped working out about ten minutes ago.

[UPDATE 8/31/09: For the second time out of two submissions I've made to Addictionary, and for the second time in one week, my submission to Addictionary has been chosen as "Word of the Day"]

Word of the day

My submission to the Addictionary was chosen as today's Word of the Day:

proselytute - noun, Someone who receives pay for presenting political or religious opinions disguised as fact or news

USAGE - The cable news station's pundit made millions working as a proselytute, but his lucrative career was cut short when he was arrested in a proselytution sting.

National Anthem

Tonight's Giants/Cincinnati game was also the fifth annual LGBT Night With the Giants.

So, logically, the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band were invited to play the national anthem while the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco sang it.

I am not a fan of organized sports in general or of baseball. I've been to two Giants games ever -- one in Candlestick Park, and one in Pacbell / SBC / AT&T Park. They both bored me to tears.

On the other hand, there is at least a little bit of bragging rights in being able to say you've done this. I can say that I have played music (legitimately as a part of a musical program for which people paid for tickets to see) in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, Herbst Theater and Davies Symphony Hall (but never, alas, the War Memorial Opera House). And now I can say that I've been on the field at P/S/A Park and played the national anthem.

Slowly but surely, I'm hitting all the San Francisco landmarks.

(As always, clicking on these pictures makes them much, much bigger.)

Huffington Post

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?' "

Synchronicity

After finding myself on "Found" magazine's website this morning, I found this on my way to work this morning.

I'm guessing it's a homemade flash card (there are three schools near our apartment).

It turns out that there is some basis for the info on the card:

"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."

"Found" again

For the second time in a year, one of my submissions to Found Magazine has been chosen "Find of the Day."

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.

Sorry so silent....

I'm sorry not to have posted anything new for a while. If you haven't guess, I'm in one of those "My job is eating my life" phases. I'm writing this in at 11 p.m. in a ten minute break I'm taking while working in a hotel room in Irvine.

There will be new posts one day within the next week or two, I promise.

Low key inauguration day

(Picture via Huffington Post)

I was kind of surprised on my way to work that everything (and everyone) was pretty low key.

I stayed at home long enough to hear President Obama (I do like being able to type that) give his inauguration speech, then I left for work. I made a point to walk down 18th so I could walk up Castro on my way to work, expecting to encounter some signs of celebration, even if only small and localized. But it was quiet. Relatively few cars on the streets for 9:30 a.m., many empty parking spaces on Castro Street. Through the open window of one bar, I saw several people (including an elderly black man in uniform) with their eyes glued to a television, but otherwise, everyone seemed to be going about their daily routine.

I took the F-Market to work, and it was pretty much the same story all the way up Market Street. I saw an occasional person wearing an Obama shirt, but no outward displays of jubilation.

The only thing of note (totally unrelated to the inauguration) was a homeless man on the F who seemed to be entertaining himself, which seemed kind of fitting after the events of my commute home last night. At first, this 300-plus pound man was flopping his limp-wristed hands around and talking to no one in particular, I couldn't even understand what he was saying. Then he turned around and stared purposefully toward the rear of the car. He turned his head and scanned everyone on the F and said, "ARF! ARF, everyone, ARF!"

Then he stood up and grabbed his Hefty bag full of possessions and stopped beside the young woman seated in front of where he had been sitting, leaned down into her face and snapped, "ARF!" He stopped at every seat between him and the front door and said "ARF!" into each and every face on the right side of the car, most of whom were children under the age of 12. Once he got off the streetcar, everyone who had been holding their breath exhaled and started laughing.

Anyway, the long national nightmare is ended. We have a new president. Finally.

I know a lot of people who have been so burned so badly and so often over the last eight years that they are afraid to have genuine hope for anything. They're convinced that something or someone will come along to take their hope away from them yet again, either by violence or by politcal maneuvering by the extreme right or political blunders by the extreme left. And I have to admit that maybe they're justified to some degree, given our country's recent history.

But I think that they secretly hope for hope.

On a related note (no pun intended): The Freedom Band has a tradition. When politics permit, the band keeps "Happy Days Are Here Again" as an active number in the marching music. You can imagine that the band has had this song in storage since the year 2000, not playing it at all for the last eight years. I have been wondering whether it was the right time to bring it back out, given the mixed blessing of the election of Obama versus the passage of Proposition 8. But I have been informed that the band is officially adding "Happy Days Are Here Again" back to its standard repertoire.

For what that's worth.

Samaritans?

I cannot yet draw any conclusions from or glean any moral to this story, so I'll just tell what happened and let you draw your own conclusions. This is kind of long, but bear with me. If nothing else, see if you can find the hidden good Samaritans in these events.

I left class at 9:30 at Grant and Market and walked toward the Montgomery BART/MUNI station. At the corner of Montgomery and Market, a few feet away from the entrance to the station, someone was lying on the sidewalk -- I couldn't see well enough to identify the person's gender. There was a shopping bag on the ground, with a few items scattered nearby, and someone was helping the person to stand.

My quick assessment was that it was someone helping a drunk friend who had tripped and fallen. But he was having difficulty helping the fallen person get up. A third man, a tall, slender black man, came over to help. They were having difficulty helping him up (by now I could see that it was an elderly Chinese man), and he was having trouble standing upright. The young black man (named Nate, I found out) started gathering the old man's items up off the sidewalk, including one trainer that had come off. I asked if they had everything handled, and they both shrugged and made faces. Nate said, "I don't know, I just got here."

The Chinese man was about five foot six with a crew cut, and a very large bleeding lump coming up on his forehead. He had blood in both his eyes. I asked him, "Do you need help?"

He said, "You know why I fell down? I've been walking around for two hours looking for my car. Someone stole my car! And I lost control and fell down."

He was standing upright now, and I could see him better. Both his forearms were swollen, but that looked like something that was a problem before he fell. He clung to the shopping bag as if he was afraid that someone would try to take it from him.

"Do you know how much BART charges for senior citizens' fare?"

Nate and the other man shook their heads no, and I said I didn't have any idea.

"My wallet was in my car, and I don't have any money to take BART home."

"Do you want me to call for help?" I asked, "Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

"No," he said adamantly, "no ambulance."

"Do you want me to call the police?"

"Yes. I would like the police, but no ambulance."

Not knowing any station numbers, I had no choice but to dial 911.

"I have a man here who fell down and has a very big bump on his forehead. He says he does not want an ambulance, but he wants the police. He says his car was stolen."

"He doesn't want an ambulance?"

"No, he said that he does not want an ambulance, just police. He's hurt and bleeding, but he doesn't want an ambulance."

"Is the blood spurting?"

"No, but he's got a knot the size of a golf ball, and blood is trickling down his face, and he has blood in both his eyes."

"And he just wants the police, and not an ambulance?"

"No ambulance, just police."

He heard this and started nodding approvingly.

"Where are you?"

"Montgomery and Post."

"Montgomery and Post?"

"Montgomery and Market."

Nate interjected, "Tell 'em we're outside the Citibank building."

"We're outside the Citibank building, just at the entrance to MUNI."

"Which side of the street are you on? What building are you in front of?"

"We're outside the Citibank building."

"And what is your name?"

"Billy Green."

He interjected, "My name's Elmer. Like Elmer Fudd."

"Your name again?" she asked.

"Billy B-I-L-L-Y Green."

"And your phone number?"

I told her. She asked me to repeat it for confirmation, and I did so.

"Is he Asian?'

"Yes, he's Asian."

I guess she didn't hear me well, because she asked, "Is he white? Is he black, latino, Asian?"

"He's Asian."

"Okay. How old is he?"

"How old are you?"

Elmer said, "Seventy-...six. Seventy-eight. Somewhere in there."

"He says he's seventy-six or seventy-eight."

"I was born in 1932."

"He was born in 1932."

"How tall is he?"

"About five foot six, he's wearing a black vest, blue short-sleeved shirt, white pants, trainers."

"A black vest?"

"A black vest, blue short-sleeved shirt, white pants, trainers, holding an orange shopping bag. I'll wait with him until someone gets here."

"Okay. I'll send out a patrol car, they should be there in a few minutes."

I hung up and told them that someone was coming. The first man, seeing no sense in hanging around any further, walked off, but Nate decided to wait as well. Elmer picked up his shopping bag and started down the sidewalk.

Nate called out, "Hey, they're coming. You don't need to go anywhere."

Elmer called back, "I'm just going over here where they can see me better." He stopped beside the JC Decaux lighted advertising kiosk, clinging to the shopping bag, looking up and down the street for the approaching police car and sighed, "They're never there when you want them." I looked up and down the street, half expecting an ambulance, since 911 calls are (or were at one time) required to send at minimum one police car, one fire truck and one ambulance in response to every call.

Long, awkward pause.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"It hurts," he said, matter-of-factly.

"I bet it does. Your eyes are really, really red, and that knot looks very nasty. And your hands are swollen."

Nate leaned over and whispered, "Gout."

Elmer held up his left hand for me to look at. It had dozens of little cracks and scrapes on his swollen palm and fingers, all bleeding.

"That happened when I fell down. It hurts."

"It looks like it would hurt. Did you trip because your shoe fell off?"

"No, it came off when I fell. You know why it came off? I tie them loose so I can put my shoes on and off without tying them. Wastes too much time."

He put his shopping bag between his feet, and took a long time to stand back up -- partly because he was having trouble balancing, partly because he was afraid the bag would fall over, even though it was braced between his feet.

"I need BART fare. Do you know how much senior citizen BART fare is?"

"You don't need to worry about that. The police will take care of you."

"Somebody stole my car!"

"Did you see them steal your car?" asked Nate.

"No."

"Well, it might just have been towed if you were parked in the wrong place, you know."

"But it's a holiday."

"Yes," sighed Nate. "It's a holiday."

I noticed Barack and Michelle Obama's faces peeking out from under Nate's coat.

"What's the shirt say?'

Nate opened his coat to show the shirt. It was a large airbrushed black and white portrait of the Obama family with "We are family" printed over the picture, and "OBAMA" spelled out in large block letters made of the American flag outlined in gold foil.

Elmer said, "Man, that's a nice one. How much did you pay for it?"

"Ten dollars."

"That's nice."

"Yep, that's really cool," I added.

Elmer pointed at it, smiled and said, "That's history. I should call home and tell them where I am."

"Do you want to use my phone?" I asked.

"Yes. 6-5-0..."

"Hold on, slow down.." I opened my phone and dialed the number as Elmer dictated it to me. Once I heard ringing, I handed him the phone.

"Mommy? ... Oh.... Let me talk to... Somebody stole my car.... I can't. It was in the car.... I'm at Montgomery and Market outside the Citibank building.... Okay." He hung up the phone and handed it back to me. "Oh, I didn't say good-bye. My wife is coming to get me, we don't need the police anymore."

"Too late. Don't you hear the sirens? They're almost here."

As I expected, a fire truck came pulling up. Nate was running around waving his arms to get their attention and pointing toward where Elmer was standing. "Here! He's over here!" I could see an ambulance approaching from down Market.

The fire truck pulled up, and an ambulance followed a few seconds later. Four firemen got out and started toward us. The oldest fireman, the one with tattoos covering both his forearms, walked over to talk to Nate and started chatting with him off to the side while the driver made a bee-line for me and Elmer. "What's going on here?"

"He fell down."

Elmer immediately started in, "I just wanted the police."

"You just want the police? Then why'd you call us?"

I interrupted, "I dialed 911, but I told them he only wanted police and not an ambulance."

The driver pointed to his bleeding forehead. "Is this new?'

I said, "Yes. It was fresh and bleeding when we picked him up. It just happened."

"Why did you fall down?"

"I lost my balance. I fell down."

"But you don't want an ambulance. Why do you want the police for your head?"

Elmer protested, "I don't. I want the police because my car was stolen."

"When was it stolen?"

"This afternoon."

"And you're just calling the police about your stolen car now, but you don't want help with this? We're outta here."

The firemen all piled back into the fire truck. As the truck pulled away, the EMTs stepped forward.

"Do you need help?"

"No, I just want the police," Elmer insisted.

The EMT said, "Well, while we're here, can we look at that bump on your head? Can we clean that and dress it for you?"

Elmer shrugged and said, "Okay."

The EMT put his arm around Elmer's shoulder and said, "Come on in the back of the ambulance, and we'll take care of you." He looked over his shoulder and said, "Thanks, guys. You don't need to stick around anymore. We've got it."

Nate and I walked up the sidewalk together. Nate said, "That fireman told me that they encountered this guy yesterday."

"Okay. Well, we did what we could. You take care."

"You, too." Nate shook my hand and ducked into the 7-11.

I went into the MUNI station and lucked out by being able to step directly onto a J-Church. I finally remembered to put my iPod headphones back on and turned it back on.

At Powell Street station, a skinny, scruffy man in his 30s started walking up the aisle asking every person on the car, "Fifty cents for BART fare? Do you have fifty cents I can have for BART fare?" He was slurring his words.

I looked at him and said, "Sorry, I got nothing," and he turned to ask the next person.

Just before entering Van Ness station, the train stopped. And stayed. And stayed.

He apparently reached the end of the car without anyone helping him out with fifty cents for BART fare. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him quite clearly, even over my iPod.

"Not a single fucking person on this fucking train can help me out with fifty fucking cents for fucking BART fare?!?! I dying of fucking cancer, dying of fucking AIDS, and no one's going to give me fifty fucking cents?! What is WRONG with you fucking people?!"

After a couple of minutes of this, the woman in blue scrubs sitting across from me pulled the stop request cord in order to get the driver's attenttion (assuming, I guess, that the driver couldn't hear this top-of-the-lungs rant going on the car). Luckily, at the same moment, the car pulled into Van Ness station.

All the thoughts running through my mind were along the lines of "Dude, how can I possibly refuse when you ask so nicely! And besides, if you haven't noticed, if you really want BART, you've fucking stayed on the fucking train too fucking long! BART doesn't fucking connect to fucking Van Ness. I just either helped create an ambulance bill for an uninsured man or abetted an EMS time waster. Maybe both. I do not need this right now."

Of course, this was all in my head. I have much more sense than to try to reason with anyone addressing an entire MUNI car at the top of his lungs.

I hoped that he would get out at Van Ness and toyed with the idea of getting out myself if he didn't. But he seemed to have quietened down a good deal. I could still hear him talking at the back of the car now, but he wasn't shouting anymore, and he seemed to have stopped moving up and down the aisle. I pulled one earbud out of my ear to see what I could hear, and I heard, "Why won't anyone help me?" and put the earbud back in.

As the train pulled out to the surface, I turned in my seat and saw at the rear of the car that some young man was sitting in the rear seats with him and chatting with him. They both stood up, and the young man walked the length of the car and back again -- I guessed that he had gone to ask the driver for a transfer for his new-found friend.

I have no idea how he did it, but that young man calmed him down and helped him find some kind of resolution to at least one of his problems.

For that, I salute him. But at this minute, I have a headache and need to take some aspirin and go to bed.

My nominees for the real Samaritans in this story: The EMT who convinced Elmer to get his head wound dressed, and the young man who calmed down the screaming homeless person.

Year end (Part Three)

Pride Parade

I joined the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band in late 1991. Since 1992, I have marched in every Gay Pride parade except two: In 2000, I had minor foot surgery, and it was several months before I could walk without pain, so I did not march in the parade that year; and in 2008, chiefly due to work-related travel commitments,

In 2000, instead of marching, I babysat the band's post-parade information booth. So this year was the first year I've actually stood on Market Street and watched the parade since 1991.

You know, when you march in a parade, the only thing you remember about it is what you did and maybe the three or four floats or other entries that precede you and follow you. It leaves you with very narrow memories of what is actually a pretty huge event. If you've marched in your parade year after year after year, think about stepping out of it one year, just to remind yourself of what the event is.


Facebook

The woman who organized 1...2...3:45 6/7/8 posted a Facebook event page for it. So I signed up for a Facebook account in order to visit her event page. All I did was sign up -- I didn't post any photos of myself, type in any personal information or anything.

A couple of months later, someone in the band found me and sent a friend request. I accepted, and things snowballed from there.

This nice thing about it is that I have more contact than I used to with friends and relatives on the other side of the country.


Milk Memorial March


Milk Memorial March

Notice that the video refers to it as the "Memorial Concert & March." This event is usually better described as "Memorial Speeches and March." The SF Gay Men's Chorus also celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. And since their first public appearance was on the steps of City Hall at the end of the candlelight march, they performed several numbers on the steps of City Hall in between the speeches from Tom Ammiano, Willie Brown, Stuart Milk, Jonathon Moscone, etc.

This year, due (I think) to (a) the release of "Milk," (b) the fact that 2008 was the 30th anniversary of the assassinations and (c) the narrow passage of Prop 8, the Milk and Moscone Memorial March was much better attended than it has been in several years. As you can see in the video, I attended this year (for the first time in at least five years).


Gym

I did the unthinkable in September: I joined a gym.

Turning 47, I realized that I'm past the age where I can stay under 200 pounds without regular exercise.

It's amazing how much time a gym can take. If I leave work at 6, go home, change, then go to the gym for an hour and a half or two hours, I don't get home until after nine o'clock.

Oh, well. A fag's gotta do what a fag's gotta do.


Miscellaneous trivial items

** We went to see "The Drowsy Chaperone," "Spring Awakening" and "Rock 'n' Roll." We also went to see Dar Williams at Great American Music Hall and my nephew's band at Slim's. We had tickets to see Alison Moyet at the Warfield, but she canceled her tour a couple of weeks before she was scheduled to play here. Bummer.

** Favorite albums of the year: David Byrne/Brian Eno, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today"; Bob Mould, "District Line"; Dar Williams, "Promised Land"; Grace Jones, "Hurricane"; Elvis Costello, "Momofuku."

** Favorite TV shows: 30 Rock, The Office, Stephen Fry In America, QI, Shameless,

** Favorite movies: Milk, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Indiana Jones And the Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull. Sorry, I still haven't seen a good chunk of movies that came out this year. For example, I've got "Burn After Reading" from Netflix, but I haven't watched it yet.

** We went to the SF Zoo for the first time in over ten years. I'll have to do that again, and not wait ten years this time. Also on the "must do" list: Go to the newly reopened Academy of Sciences.

** Because of the blog, I started carrying a small 10 mega-pixel camera in my coat pocket at all times. The biggest plus of this is that I never say "Man, I wish I had a camera with me." The only downside is for people I run into accidentally. (That's not really true. When I ran into Joe "Joe.My.God" Jervis a couple of months ago, I never once pulled the camera out of my pocket.)

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I guess that's about as much of a summary of 2008 as I want to give.

We return you now to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

Year end (Part Two)

MILK

Early in 2008, I went to a cattle-call audition for extras for a movie being made about Harvey Milk. I got no further contact from that cattle-call. But a citywide call went out to help recreate the massive candlelight march for the ending of the film. I still had some 1970s clothes in the closet from ten years ago when I auditioned for the original "Tales Of the City" series, so I dressed Chip and myself up to take part in the candlelight march. That filming was very interesting.For one thing, it kind of turned into "old home" night -- I kept running into people I knew. We wound up marching with a trumpet player and a clarinet player from the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band.

The first time they filmed, everything was quiet and solemn and reverent. The second time they filmed, as we walked up Market toward Van Ness, someone inside one of the buildings started talking very loudly. It sounded like they were on the phone describing the candlelight march to them (even though this was after midnight, and possibly after one a.m.). I don't think they knew just how clearly their voice carried down the street. Then someone else turned on their motorcycle and started revving the engine. Apparently, though, these things did not interfere with the filming.

Then, a couple of months later, the band was asked to portray themselves (essentially). They were filming the 1978 Gay Pride parade, and they knew that the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps had made its debut that year in the parade behind Harvey Milk's car. So they asked the band to come be in the parade behind Harvey's car. Almost all the footage they shot of the band wound up on the cutting room floor. But when the Blu-ray disc becomes available, you can bet that I'll be looking at my TV screen with a magnifying glass trying to identify faces.

Then, a couple of weeks after that, they asked the band to come back again. They also knew that the band had spontaneously marched into the "No on 6" victory party, so they asked the band to re-create that as well. So we stood around in an elementary school for six hours, then another hour or so filming inside what used to be the Rawhide.

Out of these three shoots, I got a total of about three seconds of screen time, in about three-quarters profile from behind. Apparently, I have a very recognizable head, though, because people keep asking if that was me (or telling me that they saw me -- apparently, my nephew nearly went berserk in a theater in Charleston when he recognized me in the film). I also got a movie prop -- a T-shirt bearing the band's original 1978 logo, which never really appears in the film at all.

Then, in the end of October, I had the great good fortune to be able to attend the world premiere of "Milk" at the Castro Theater. One of the partners in my firm was invited, and, since he would be out of town, he asked me to represent the firm at the event. I was way up in the balcony, but, dammit, at least I was there.


1...2...3:45 6/7/8

It was in Lynne Soffer's Dialects class that I met a woman who asked me if I would be interested in participating in a public event she was planning. Though I never heard her say it explicitly, I guess that she was inspired by Improv Everywhere's "Food Court Musical." She wanted as many people as possible to break into song and dance in Union Square. She got the necessary permits and permissions, and the event was officially part of the public entertainment in the square that day, scheduled to take place at 3:45 on June 7, 2008 (3:45 6/7/8).

I told her that a world where I don't dance is a better place for everyone concerned, but I would be happy to videotape the performance. We put Chip up on top of Macy's with one camera, and another guy who showed up with "What can I do to help" got another camera thrust into his hands. I posted the video at that time, but here it is again:


It's Oh So Quiet: Current.com

To be continued.

Year end (Part One)

It's time to take stock of the year that is about to end.

Edu-ma-cation

I took three classes at ACT -- Dialects (Lynne Soffer) starting in January; Improv (Barbara Scott) starting in March; and Movement / Viewpoints (Mark Jackson) starting in June. All three were wonderful and memorable classes with wonderful and memorable teachers, as well as wonderful and memorable classmates. Due to work-related travel requirements, I had to skip the fourth quarter, but I'm returning next week to take Voice and Speech (Jeffrey Draper).


This Blog

It was in April during Barbara's Improv class that I started this blog. I did it mainly because of her flatly stated attitude that positives help us much more than negatives -- not just in improvisation, but in life in general. So I wanted to create a space where I could keep away from the things in my life that cause me stress or that cause my personality to head toward negativity (thus the subtitle, "Nothing Serious" -- and if you don't know where the "Go, Play, Boy, Play" title comes from, go back here and read the first posting). This is why I often try to avoid talking about my job and politics, though if I do discuss them, I try to say mostly positive things.

Of course, it is impossible to discuss politics in any way without potentially creating some static somewhere -- for example, if I am overjoyed at knowing that the current president is leaving office and believe that his ceasing to be president will, in fact, reduce the basic level of my free-floating anxieties, there are many, many people out there who will disagree with me. Vocally. But, in the immortal words of Bette Midler, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

Here's all I'll say about work: In another few months, none of my long-standing (2-8 years) clients will be in the same line of business that they were in two years ago. (Oddly enough, this is not actually a result of the economic crisis -- the companies were headed in this direction already.) This by itself is a source of stress for me, because it means that all my routines are overturned. I have actually pointed out that, since my work is already in transition, maybe now would be a good time to take me off those clients completely and give me clients closer to home. So keep your fingers crossed for me, that maybe all the trips to Southern California might be reduced or eliminated.


To be continued.

So I'm NOT the only one this happens to....

From charleston.net:

A man robbed a bank in Charleston last Friday morning. The witnesses said that the robber was "a man around 60 years old" (my emphasis).

Bank tellers managed to slip a tracking device into the money they gave him. Using this tracking device, the police arrested a suspect, Mark Tirico, aged 47.

This is not unlike the time two years ago when an acting teacher told me I could easily play "anything from 50 to 80," then blanched when I told him I was only 45. Apparently, he thought he was being generous in saying that people would believe that I was only 50....