Saturday Brain Dump

[As a result of the Chronicle story, Red Room added hundreds of new members (are you one of them yet? Sorry, Max; it's hard out here for a pimp); generated many, many requests from prospective authors; and fomented a heady sense of OMyGodThisIsReallyHappeningOMyGodWeHaveALotOfWorkToDo this week. Among my high points:]

[-posting a thank-you comment on a French blogger's site. In French! Unless you count some extremely minimal interaction with some guests at the Cute Victorian Hotel Around The Corner, this is the first time I've ever used my once gleaming, now rusting French professionally.]

[-a visit yesterday from Red Room author Bill Hayes, whose blog post on aspects of his partner's premature death is probably the most moving thing on the site right now. Bill's pic made me think tall, thin, scholarly; instead, think 5'9, gym-cut, and ironic T-shirt-clad. Mr. Clean rather than Captain Picard. I.e., hawt. I work with two other queer men, and you can imagine the teenage-girl keekeekeeing that went on after Mr. Hayes left. Especially after the ritual toast of the pink champagne he brought us was drunk.]

[-emailing to and fro with Red Room author Shaun D. Landry, who's hosting a show at Mighty tonight, a show to which I'll be taking a-bit-too-excited-maybe-out-of-town guest John H. If I'm feeling really ambitious, I may even interview her and put it up on Red Room.]

[But now it's the weekend, and except for one or two quick breaks to moderate blog comments (which i love; feel my power!), I'm off work, and ready to play. John H. wants to go to U-Lee on Russian Hill for dinner, so that's where we'll be before the show. The fattest, most flavorsome potstickers in the known universe will be ours! Before that? Well, I know John loves to shop, so beyond the obligatory trip to Amoeba Records a couple of blocks from Maison le Trou, I think it's past time I spent the gift cards I got for Christmas, don't you?]

[My mother...well, shouldn't at least one blog paragraph from time to time start with those words? I think so. Anyway, my mother has this love for throwing a quirk into gift-giving that makes Christmas a cross between Norman Rockwell and Deal Or No Deal. She's taken my dad's family's tradition of writing obtuse clues on gift tags to another level. Who can forget two years ago when she just taped three small snips of soldering wire to the package that contained bro-in-law Mike's DVD of the first season of The Wire, making our first nonverbal gift clue.]

[That tag is now a Christmas ornament to go on my sister's family's tree, and its genius has yet to be approached by any of us. Not content to rest on her laurels, Mom has turned her fiendish Yuletide imagination from confounding clues to the gifts themselves. Now for a few years, folks have gotten into the habit of presenting me with gift cards rather than things like sweaters or socks, and that's fine, but it makes for a rather drama-free moment when the giftee opens that inevitable small envelope from Borders or the Gap.]

[Well, a drama-free Christmas just isn't Christmas to my mother, so this year, she inserted gift cards for me, Kate, and Mike into these little, plastic ball-in-maze games that you had work out to claim your card. Well, Ms. Spatial-Relationships-Smarty-Pants Kate worked it in like three minutes, Mike in maybe ten, and guess who, forty-five minutes later, was focusing all his crosseyed attention and will on a tiny ball bearing encased in a ridiculous piece of plastic? Not the Niece Audrey, I can tell you that much right now.]

[Yes, I finally got it. But let's just say that if my Oedipal issues weren't worked out yet, any trace has now been obliterated.]

[Anyway, I haven't had a chance to use the damn cards yet, so I think a day walking around the downtown San Francisco part of the beautiful green forest is in store for John H. and me today. It's sunny, there's the newest pedestrian spaces (where it seems you can't set a foot down without bumping into an interactive podcast) to explore, there are cream puffs to eat...I think keeping occupied will not be a problem.]

[OK, off to clean this sty of an apartment in case John H. wants to view le Trou.]

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