Pride is coming up soon in SF and it’s certainly my busy season as far as banging out some Oasis interviews, meeting celebs, seeing movies, etc.

The plan so far is to interview: Chuck Pannozzo of Styx; Jai Rodriguez of Queer Eye; Alan Cumming, who’s here with a new movie in the festival; RuPaul, also with a new movie in the festival; Wilson Cruz; and who knows who else…

As for the film festival, if you want to run into me, here’s where I’ll be:

Suffering Man’s Charity, SUFF19C, 9:30p, Castro, Tuesday, June 19
Eternal Summer, ETER20P, 6:30p, Parkway, Wednesday, June 20
Glue, GLUE20P, 9:15p, Parkway, Wednesday, June 20
Rock Haven, ROCK21C, 9:30p, Castro, Thursday, June 21
DL Chronicles, DLCH22C, 9:30p, Castro, Friday, June 22
Curiosity of Chance, CURS23C, 6p, Castro, Saturday, June 23
Starrbooty, STAR23C, 8:30p, Castro, Saturday, June 23
Itty Bitty Titty Committee, ITTY24C, 7:30p, Castro, Sunday, June 24

Press do not get plus-ones for films, so I can’t get anyone in with me. You’re responsible for getting your own tickets.

And then I take a few days off before reviewing the True Colors Tour in Berkeley with Erasure, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry and Dresden Dolls.

It’s hard work, but somebody has to do it.

Counting Crows Adam Duritz on the role of an artist (in re: to their new record):

“I don’t know what it is yet but you can’t really know that. You pour yourself into it and you focus everything you have on it and it…it comes out how it comes out. The only thing you, as an artist, can every really do is make sure it’s everything and exactly what you want it to be. Which is the same thing as it being perfect…for me. After all, that’s all our role is: to feel something and express it the way we want to express it. If you do that, it’s uncompromised and pure and perfect. And that makes me happy. The rest is up to all of you to judge.”

Paris Hilton gave Barbara Walters a strange quote today:

“I was not eating or sleeping,” Hilton said of her first few days in prison. “I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage. It was a horrible experience.”

I actually think prison is a literal cage, no simile necessary.

Going to Texas in a day or two, so mainly just cleaning the apartment up. I don’t know what the compulsion is… like, it doesn’t seem to bother me when I haven’t vacuumed in a while or such when I’m living here. But, when I come home from a trip, I like the place to look great. Now, if it *always* looked great, then that would make it easier, no? Don’t get me wrong, it always looks good, just not great.

So, lot of activity on Saturday… had a wedding to go to in Carmel, and a concert that night in the city. Initially, I expected to be in NYC by now or, barring that, in Texas for my nephew’s third birthday. With all the confusion around my whereabouts, neither of which had me in SF this weekend, I said I would be unable to make my friend’s wedding reception, although i realized that I had never properly followed up and told her why, which would have been nice. I mean, otherwise, the invite is like, “We want you to share this special day with us…” and it’s just like, “Thanks, but… NO.” But whatever…

Since I didn’t know what was going on, I also bought tickets to see Mika that night at The Fillmore. I didn’t anticipate a problem selling them if it came to that.

When NYC fell through (I did post about that on here, didn’t I? In any case, the apartment swap didn’t pan out.), the gears switched to Texas. So, then it was like… eh, I have these Mika tickets… and well, he’s three and a birthday party for a three year old is just a large number of people I don’t know and have to make small talk with, and I hate small talk, and it’s not even his birthday until Thursday anyway…

So, the plan became: no NYC, Mika, Texas on Tuesday (cheapest fare), and I would be able to attend my friend’s wedding, but not the reception. This time sort of dictated by the fact that I had previously already RSVP’d as no, but see aforementioned references to Mika tickets and my lack of desire to make small talk in large groups of strangers.

So, I rented a car, drove to Carmel (2+ hours), had a vegan lunch in Santa Cruz en route, tried to do the 17-mile drive around Pebble Beach to kill time before the wedding (which almost made me late for the wedding, since I lack the “guy gene” that would have made me think that a one lane road through a golf course would have bottlenecks as cars slowed down to watch people tee off?! The mind still can’t grasp why watching strangers golf is any cause for applying the brakes.)

In church, I felt a bit like George Bush with all his signing statements. A lot of my “Lord Hear Our Prayer”s were followed by a mental asterisk, with which things I didn’t agree with, which things I wanted to further define, which things I thought the church should clear up, etc. Oddly enough, it is a strange thing to mentally footnote such things, because it seems to me that people who aren’t into religion are generally thought of as atheists or agnostics. I’m fine with spirituality, but think religion… eh, we can certainly do without it. Still, if you think that God and the Church are two separate things that are barely tangentially related, seems odd to give him notes on church stuff, no?

After church, just a straight shot back up to SF, picking Jeremy up on the peninsula and driving up to see Mika.

Mika was phenomenal live. Just a great entertainer. Seemed rather chuffed how many people in San Francisco, this being his first proper show here, knew all the words to his songs. The crowd was dancing and singing along, just a great party vibe. It almost seemed like the audience and performer were all in on the same secret of his music, surprised we were all in a room sharing it, and that so many people that will be hearing him live in the future don’t even know who he is yet.

He played all the killer cuts from the album, with covers of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These)” by the Eurythmics, and “I Want You Back,” by the Jackson 5, both of which served his amazing falsetto well. Short show, given him having only one album, so I drove Jeremy back to the train station to catch the late train home. En route, I was thinking, there’s no way he’ll come out of the venue that fast, I should go back.

As Jeremy was getting out of the car, I said, you might want to leave your poster with me. I think I’m going to swing by The Fillmore and see about getting it signed. Again, I think Mika is just a massive talent, and this may be the easiest time to ever get his signature on something (I say this now just for how ironic will be when we’re dating at some point).

I get back to the Fillmore, and it looks pretty thinned out, but then I see about a dozen people standing around with posters. Score. Eventually, a road manager or someone comes out, says Mika is not feeling well, but will sign everything for us. He just won’t pose for posters or be able to talk. We can take photos as he’s signing, just no posing.

He comes out a few minutes later, with a grey sweatshirt hood over his head, still hot as hell, though (although the same look on Eminem looks tough… eh, not as much with Mika). I had chatted up the guy in line behind me, so he was going to snap pics of me and Mika and e-mail them to me, and says he’ll still try and get them.

My turn arrives, and I mentioned that I wrote a great review of his album and have been giving him lots of love on my gay youth website. He smiles. I tell him that I initially was going to interview him, but decided that since it is a gay youth site, I didn’t want yet another version of that same interview he has to give on that topic. (Now, I thought this was a bit of a slam, since I don’t want to interview him in Oasis because he’s not openly gay, and the point of the site is providing role models to kids).

But Mika turns around what I say and makes it sounds supportive. “So, you’re just focusing on the music and not all of the rest… sounds great.”

On the sexuality front, I also mentioned that I took one shot at him in the review. He wanted to know what I wrote, very playful, though. He didn’t seem bothered by it at all. So, I told him that if someone wants to change themselves, and their first go-to is Grace Kelly and their fallback is Freddie Mercury, well… would you even have to wonder if they’re gay. He just smiled, as he’s gotten a lot worse from reviewers, heh.

I see the guy snapping photos of us talking, and tell him I’ll probably post the pic of us on Oasis, so he goes into PR mode and poses with me for one pic (didn’t get it yet, we’ll see what it looks like). I’m the only person to get a picture taken with him outside, though.

As he was leaving, I told him it’s the best debut album I’ve heard in a long, long time, just killer stuff and that he’s so talented. I told him I’ll be pushing him on Oasis with everything he does. We shook hands, and that was that.

I was a bit hyped up/tired from the Mika/all-day driving thing, I guess, because I woke up early to return the car… and then seemingly took a 3+ hour nap after lunch. With the Tonys looming on TV, I decided it would be best to see a movie, so that I’d be out of the house when the awards were happening live on the east coast, as I have too many people on IM who would be following it, and a lot of the sites I visit would have news about it, etc. So, I decided to finally see Once. My pick was thinking I should see it before Texas in case it disappears, but now I’m thinking that might become the sleeper hit of the summer and be around for a while. But my sensibility doesn’t often translate into commercial fruition, so we’ll see.

Once is about a busker who meets a girl that plays piano. They start making music together. And it’s just this little precious gem of a movie about their lives intersecting. It is just so magical. The music works well, and it has the feeling of a musical without being one, since they are songwriters. It is also interesting to see them bring emotional material mined from their previous relationships into their lyrics, work on it together, and still get a sense that it is bringing them closer together. Such a delicate thing, pulled off masterfully. One of the few movies I’ve seen this year (if not the first) where I know I’ll own the DVD.

So, I get home, and start watching the TIVO’d Tonys. As much as I love Broadway, I’ll be the first to admit that all awards shows are a bit… eh. Of course, given the circle jerk that is the Oscars, there seems to be a lot more of the talent and love of theater on display here. There’s just some things that the Oscar montage can’t capture, and it is the delicate balance of people singing, dancing and acting together onstage. Even the winners were so reflective of their love of the craft and discipline of it all.

David Hyde Pierce thanked his partner of 25 years from the stage, only recently naming him in the press and coming out as a result. Funny story. I’ve known he was gay for years. At one point, I had called the Frasier offices, when he was Niles on the show, and mentioned wanting to interview him for Oasis, nd that I had heard he was openly gay.

Now, you have to imagine that this could never happen in the Perez Hilton/TMZ world we now live in, the publicist tells me, “Hmm, I know he’s gay… let me check with him and see if he talks about that with the press.” Again, this is so old school, closets-are-safe Hollywood, which I thought went out of fashion long before me cold-calling people. Anyway, a little while later, she calls back and tells me that he doesn’t talk about it publicly. Again confirming it. So funny.

But for how much these three-hour shows seems stilted, any three hour show that has live performed medleys from Chorus Line (the camera barely found the one guy I know in the cast, oh well), Curtains, 100 in the Shade, Mary Poppins, and Spring Awakening, well… how bad can it be?

Spring Awakening was the leader on the awards front. Best musical, book, score, and a few others, including beat featured actor for Jon Gallagher Jr., who I wrote up as the highlight of the show in my review of the show on Oasis after seeing it over the holidays. It was interesting watching them work “Totally Fucked,” into their medley, rather than change some lyrics as they did with other excerpts. The cast just put their hands over their mouths for every Fuck and just made it part of the fun.

And that about wraps this post up…

OK, looks like all my CSS and PHP guesswork has finally yielded results, and the new website is officially live.

I love the graphic, which my friend Eriq did for me on a recent afternoon. Was interesting starting from scratch in Photoshop and building up a concept from nothing.

The idea behind the graphic was from seeing the opening credits of the movie of my still-unfinished book in a dream one night. It was sort of like a Weight Watchers weigh-in, with all these different predominately-female feet stepping on and off a scale (albeit a spring-loaded bathroom scale, despite the fact that WW uses digital), and as they step on, the blurring numbers settle on the names in the opening credits instead of the numbers on the scale. And, no, I didn’t remember any of the names from the credits. I still don’t have a clear sense of that stuff.

This is itself an offshoot of my imagined book cover, which is a more vertical version of the above imagery. The book is also a bathroom scale, female feet again, although you get the full feet and scale in the image, and then the title of the book there. I flip back and forth between whether the name of the book is in the scale where the numbers should be (which seems like it wouldn’t be big enough in that case), or whether it is just super-imposed over the graphic that has actual numbers on the scale.

In any event, using that concept on the website is sort of my way of putting some positive vibrations behind that idea, since authors have little control over their book art and no control over their film adaptations.

Some of the areas in the navigation are premature, but will make more sense after the book is published, but I hate doing techie stuff, so I’d rather they sit there for now than require another round of technical stuff from me later.

Not much else going on. Haven’t done yoga for the past two days, not sure which day I hit, somewhere in the mid-80s. Yesterday, I woke up with a really sharp pain in my upper back, where my right shoulder meets my neck. It always seems silly to say that I slept wrong, because you’d think I’d have nailed sleeping properly by now. In any event, it’s still a bit sore, so I haven’t gone. I am going to Texas next week, so I want to make sure I’m not sore for the visit. The NYC apartment swap didn’t happen, so I’m in SF this summer. That’s about it for now.

UPDATE: Just checked, and until this injury I’d done 89 classes in 89 days. Had I known that yesterday, I’d've probably gone sore, tried it for a few minutes and then left, just to hit 90, hehe.

So, I’m on the phone with my mother this morning, and she asks if I say the new photos of my niece in Texas. For a reason I have yet to figure out (mainly because it involves going through my voluminous e-mail rules), whenever my sister-in-law sends me e-mail, I don’tget it, but when my brother does, on the same provider, etc., it comes through fine. So, my mother forwards the pics to me.

When I get the new e-mail, there’s about 30 confirmations from eBay that my auctions have all been listed successfully. This is news to me, as I’m not selling anything on eBay. They are all multiple DVD box sets for very low prices, like four seasons of Star Trek Enterprise on DVD for like $70. In addition to the listings, two of the items have already sold.

My identity theft flags go up, and I hurry over to my eBay account, thinking I’ll be locked out. But I’m not. I log in, change the password. Then I bounce over to PayPal, and again, no activity there since my last visit, change that password, too.

Then I investigate the auctions. I was thinking there would be some money order requested as payment, or some other service, but the auctions said PayPal was preferred. So, the auctions are listed as me, without affecting my account information, and payment is also going to me. The only snag is that I’m not selling any of these items.

I quickly add a note to all the auctions for people not to bid, since they are a mistake. Reading on eBay’s help site, it says to cancel auctions if this happens, so I do (thanks to eBay for requiring me to input EVERY auction number, and not have a special link to kill multiple auctions at once).

I send them e-mail, they send me stuff back a few hours later confirming it wasn’t done by me, my account has been credited for the auction listing fees, etc. So, everything’s fine.

The only thing that has been perplexing is… what is the point of it? I mean, what is the end game here? I could see if they had gotten into my PayPal, but even then, you can’t easily switch the bank account for the deposits. That takes about a week.

So, someone starts auctions in my name, prices the stuff to move, says PayPal is the preferred payment whereby anyone winning the auction can deposit money from their credit card into my account, but then they can’t get the money.

What am I missing?

After missing yoga on Sunday, and never since then, the marketing part of my brain adapted quickly. The word consecutive disappeared, and I would just switch to saying I’ve done XX classes now, the implication being consecutive.

But today, I fixed things by doing a double class, attending both the 6:15 am and the noon classes. While not getting me back the word consecutive, it lets me say 70 classes in 70 days and such. So, that has a good ring to it.

I was a bit apprehensive about going twice. It is an intense class, after all. But the second class was much easier and seemed to fly by quicker than the first.

From the moment pranayama breathing starts at the beginning, it was definitely different doing a second class. My lungs were immediately filling up more than a typical breathing exercise. And the stiffness of the initial backward and forward bends was gone, my body jamming right into them without stiffness, tension or anything else.

No major differences, though. Everything seemed a bit easier, stretched a bit more, and I think the novelty of seeing how much more I could do (if anything) made for a good class, rather than phoning it in since I’d already done it once today. For example, there are a lot of sit-ups between floor postures. Usually, my fingers touch my toes. In the second class, my toes were hitting where my wrist meets my palm with my fingers wrapping down the bottoms of my feet.

I can’t say I’m a convert to double classes, but they are no longer scary. It is a huge timesuck, though.

But, as a result, I can now say that I’ve done 72 classes in 72 days.

It had to happen eventually, but I did not go to yoga today.

That said, I tried and wanted to.

I woke up early and did the Mother’s Day calls, felt fine. I knew I couldn’t go to 9 a.m. yoga, as I was buying tickets to the VERY small club date that Maroon 5 is playing on June 1. As expected, it sold out almost instantaneously and, as intended, I got tickets.

I had my bag packed for noon yoga, and around 10:30-11, I had a slight headache, but nothing I was worried about. Then, in rapid succession, I started sneezing rather frequently and my nose filled with fluid and started running. Aside from this quick-onset symptom, I felt fine. In fact, had it been a gym visit and not yoga, I’d've probably gone.

But, yoga is all about concentration, which frequent sneezing doesn’t really help, and inhaling and exhaling through your nose for six counts in, six counts out. And now, nose breathing is off the menu. As it rolled in pretty fast, I was slightly taken aback at going from fine to somewhat sick, even though I still felt fine.

I push off the noon class, figuring I’ll fare better for 4:30 or 6:30p, because at that point, I’ll have the advantage of drugs.

So, normally I would leave at around 4p for 4:30p yoga, but today, I go at 3:30p. I’m thinking it might be something in the apartment, since it seemed more allergy than illness, although I don’t have any allergies really. I figured fresh air would do me good, so I dosed up on Tylenol Sinus and took a slow walk toward yoga, hoping for my nasal whatever it is to lift as I get closer to yoga.

It doesn’t. I keep thinking of my reaction to someone else in class constantly inhaling their mucus back into their nose through yoga postures and decide I am not going to be that guy.

So, I go to Herbivore for early dinner, thinking I’ll hang out a bit longer and see if I clear up for the 6:30 class. After dinner, and some forced window/store shopping, it clearly wasn’t going anywhere, so yoga bag on my back, I walk home.

I guess my body was through too many temperature extremes this week and is pushing back. We had a heatwave in the city early this week, so my time was spent nearly naked in my apartment, with a fan blowing, except for when I was nearly naked at yoga. One problem, the hot yoga in a heatwave is a fickle beast, and on Monday, the normally 100-105ish room was up to 116 degrees. We all did the class, no problem. No one passed out or anything.

As the week progressed, the temperature came back down, sharpening the contrast once again between the outdoors and yoga. On Friday, when I studied with Rajashree, the room there was up around 115 and outside was much much cooler.

And, last night, for fireworks at the bay, I was bundled up in a sweater, T-shirt, a heavy jacket, gloves, and was still a bit chilly. So, going from the rainforest-like conditions of hot yoga in a heatwave to winter in the space of six days may have done me in.

Anyway, the hope is that this is a passing thing, and tomorrow I am back in class. I can just do a double one day this week, and instead of saying I did X number of classes “in a row,” I’ll just switch to saying I did X classes in X days, which will seem consecutive.

Oh well… it was bound to happen. Hopefully I wake up feeling fine. I got my traditional cold elixir this night, a half gallon of Odwalla orange juice.

Yup, still going… 67 consecutive days and counting.

So, Friday was a slight change of pace. I went to a different studio, with the owner of my usual studio, and took a class led by Rajashree, Bikram’s wife, who was in town for some events. It was interesting to take a class from her just for the sake of it being someone so closely connected to the origin and continuation of the practice but, at the end of the day, it was just another class.

Most of my friends know that my sense of history and such is pretty blank. These days, I get the benefit of saying I’m living in the now, rather than trying to relive my past or live out a projected future. But honestly? My memory has never been too on top of most things.

A friend just started taking Bikram at my studio, although we’ve never been in the same class yet (making two friends i got to go now, who both prefer evening classes, whereas I do at 9a or noon). He got really sore in class and says it wipes him out, and asked if that happened to me when I started. I said I didn’t recall being sore or anything, but then decided to send him the links to the first few days of my Bikram blogging. And, yeah, first class, references to being sore. So, it’s good i write stuff here, or else I’d never remember anything.

The owners of the yoga studio took me out to dinner on Friday night after Rajashree’s class. Initially, there was talk of doing something aorund North Beach, where the class was, so I just figured, ‘Eh? Bunch of Italian places there, T-shirt and pants will be fine.’ When I get to the studio, they tell me they have a reservation at Greens, which is this really high-end vegetarian place right on the bay, with an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course, being in the land of tech millionaires, you can always dress like a slob and get away with anything. Walking past an open house for a $2.5M apartment, sweaty, on your way home from the gym? No problem, just walk in, they will show you around like you might be the future owner because, frankly, they can’t tell the millionaires from the dorm students. Got to love that aspect of the area.

Read “This Year You Write your Novel” by Walter Mosley, following my tradition of only reading books from people who have written multiple books. Another tight read of no bullshit advice. One thing that resonated was he considers reading the book a draft. So, write it… draft one. Read draft one… that’s draft two. Rewriting that text is draft three. Interesting idea.

The other thing I found is an online site, when Googling something entirely off-topic. But it was a list of 50 things to keep writers motivated. In the top ten was paying yourself a salary, not real money, but basically come up with an hourly rate and all of your leisure time comes out of that budget. So, no writing = no dining out, no movies, nothing. Interesting idea.

That’s about it, mainly wanted to check in with the Bikram stuff. At this point, I’d be hard-pressed to imagine how I wouldn’t do 90 classes in a row. May as well do 100, sounds nicer. I used to do to the gym every day, so this isn’t really new, except for the eating issues and the timing aspect for the classes. One guy I met at the Rajashree training also used to be over 300 pounds and lost a lot of his weight through diet and Bikram. He’s on a pattern now of doing doubles, although the thought of two of these classes in a day is pretty hard to fathom. More from a time standpoint than the actual practice. I may do a double one of these days, though, since I want to go to an amusement park, and want to get the yoga out of the way for more roller coaster time.

Went to Slanted door with family tonight, then watched the KFOG Ka-Boom Fireworks show over the bay. Good stuff. Amazing how well they synchronize the fireworks to the music.

That’s the term I’ve started using for the time I’ve spent recently.

I’m not someone to take the easy road. I actually don’t think one exists. Insert Robert Frost line here.

By doing yoga, meditating, losing weight, all of these things, I’m redefining who I am.

When it comes to writing, I largely don’t know what I’m doing, so every day I learn how to do what it is I want to do. I realize there is a simplistic version where I’ve always been a writer, and now I’m just writing a different thing, but… it’s just not true. There are skills that carry over, sure. But, a large part of it is like… what am I doing?

I think part of that is education-based. In high school, I tuned out. In college, I did what I needed to do to get by. I never really built a skill set where I learned to challenge myself and rise to a challenge. I’ve always been smart enough to do work whereby I didn’t really have to give 100 percent. Only now, I came up with something that demands it, so I’m learning how to do that. In school, I could aply myself just a little bit, and pass a test. My jobs? Pretty much the same story. Of course, it is a bit silly, as I know I have the skills and talent, but I’ve never had to teach myself this degree of focus before. So, it’s a learning process.

On the personal side, a lot has changed. I know there are people who lose weight, and they just become skinny versions
of who they were before. Of course, I would never do something so easy. To me, it is just a ton of inquiry. I think my weight affected a lot of directions in my life (sexuality, too, to a much much smaller extent). So, it isn’t a case of just losing weight and doing the same thing as before. I see myself as a new person, and part of defining who this new person is is questioning everything from the ground up.

I mean, at present, I’m developing a spiritual side, a yoga practice, a meditation practice, a writing practice, a vegan identity, a gay identity, and… each one of these things on their own can be pretty revealing. A yoga teacher the other day asked me if anything emotional was coming up because of how dedicated I’ve been, as they believe yoga is a way to deal with emotional issues. But, honestly, when you add that to everything else, who can determine a causal relation between anything right now? I’ve got too much going on. If yoga bringing up emotions? Or is it the writing? Or the meditation? Or the spiritual quest?

I do think there is going to be a convergence and clarity on all of the above in this calendar year, though.

That’s sort of where The Jesus Years term comes from. I mean, you hear that Jesus was born in a manger and all that (probably untrue, but whatever). And then you hear that he’s a carpenter, goes into the desert for 40 days, and starts teaching the world his message.

So, that’s quite a chunk of missing time there, between infant and carpenter. I mean, decades are unaccounted for?! And that’s sort of how i feel about my time now. I shouldn’t really be writing about it on here. It’s not really something that benefits from documentation. Much better to come out the other side of it all and just have it all together.

I’m kind of avoiding anything that leads to this discussion lately. Haven’t been looking to date, since it’s like, ugh, do i really want to have to talk about any of this?! I recently RSVP’d as not attending a wedding for the same reason (I’ll show up in church, though, just not for the dinner/reception). Just not really wanting to put myself in situations where this comes up as a topic. Any of it.

Just want to show up fully-defined down the road a bit, have a finished book, established yoga practice, spiritual clarity
, and just really stop all the navel-gazing. Well, you know… AFTER this is posted, that is.