thecolororange

Measuring Up

2007-02-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

When do acquaintances become friends? Friends become good friends? Good friends become best friends? New friends become old friends? And so on.

I'm not exactly sure of that answer, but I am happy to write a post about our good pals Jon and Dana Shank, and seeing that gradual motion over the past 2 or so years. He was a classmate of C's at Stanford and she is his wife, who I became close with through our gang of SO's (significant others, in Stanford-speak). On paper, I don't know if we would have matched up well. They both went to Stanford for undergrad, he was BMOC (big-man-on-campus) with his baseball scholarship and fraternity membership, she was in a popular sorority, etc, and they already had a full docket of friends coming into business school. We were the gay couple from the east coast who didn't know anyone.

Thankfully, Jon and Christian met early on in first quarter and hit it off. We went skiing together in Tahoe for C's birthday their first year in school and they rode with us on the way to and from, where we really got to know each other (and disoverd a common love of Chipotle, which we waited 100+ miles to eat at). GSB events were always more fun when they were around. We were in the ski house in Tahoe last year, and went to Costa Rica for spring break. In short, lots of really really fun common events where we would always enjoy each other's company in the midst of a cool backdrop. (well, mostly cool-- I don't know if you could really call the GSB Auction "cool"....) We affectionately called each other our GSB "best-ies", or slang for best friends in the world of Mrs. Shank.

But it's really been since Jon and Christian graduated last year that I have seen our friendship evolve to the next step. They still live in Palo Alto as Dana finishes her last year in law school, so we're not as physically close as we used to be, but we've still managed to make time at least once a month or so to get together. It can be as casual as a dinner over at their place, or as it was this morning, a brunch in Burlingame, which is about half way between SF and Palo Alto. We sat down this morning and quickly began catching up on all of the latest stuff happening in our lives; C's new job, our hunt for a house, Jon's job, Dana's final stretch in school, etc etc. After brunch, we bummed around the shops in the neighborhood, hanging out, etc. In short, nothing particularly special.

But it is in that very "non-specialness" that I realized how, in fact, it is. When you are with other people in a fairly mundane setting of a brunch and feel like you can talk about anything and the understanding that they will listen, that's pretty powerful. And there we were, doing just that, not really talking about anything special per se, but as I think back over, it was really fantastic.

They are an extremely positive couple to be around. I'm sure they have their differences, but pretty much every interaction we've had been with them shows that the chemistry that they share between them is infectious; they are very much in love with each other and seem eager to share that with the other people in their lives. They have a very wonderful trait of not only being able to share richly about what is happening in their lives, but also of listening to and richly caring what is happening in ours.

I think about that a lot after we see them; there's no question that I'm able to talk about what's going on in my life. But am I also interested to hear about however I am talking to has to say? Do I really care about what they are talking about? Mostly yes, but sometimes, honestly, no. And am I fully investing in relationships that return this kind of warmth and value, and frankly, not investing in ones that don't? Again, mostly yes, but not always.

Making time to see each other? Learning good lessons from each other? Thoroughly enjoying time together and looking forward to the next? Feeling like I can trust them? I know there's no "official" measuring stick from friends to good friends and so on. But with amazing people like Jon & Dana in my life, it doesn't seem to matter much.

You Gotta Have a Plan (Part 2)

2007-02-01T22:32:00.001-08:00

I've written about planning before and well, about my difficulties in this area. I mean, I haven't done so bad this far-- got a great man, a good job, like where I am living, etc. and that all couldn't have just happened by accident, right? But if you ask me where I am going to be in 10 years and what I want to be doing, do I know the answer? Does anyone?

Thankfully, there are people out there who do. One of them is my Dad, and today is a really happy day in the Baker family. He's been someone to look up to all my life for a lot of reasons, but today I get the amazing honor of saying I'm proud of him. You see, about ten years ago, after 25+ years in the construction business, he decided to switch career paths and move to the lighting industry. He became president of a company that an old friend of his had founded but needed a seasoned executive to come in and take to the "next level". I remember when he called me to tell me about it; after serving as VP at his then company for many years, this was his opportunity to actually run a company and the long-term goal would be to grow it large enough so that it would be acquired. I nodded as I listened, even though I didn't really know what he was talking about. Acquired? What does that mean? Why is that a good thing? But it did always stick with me.

One of the most amazing things about my Dad is that although he is one of the funniest people I know, when it comes to work and business, no one takes it more serious. As I have come to learn more about business and Christian was going through his MBA, we would get involved in some pretty hefty discussions about Hanover Lantern. He would proudly tell us about how well the company was doing and talk about the future and his vision for what it would hold. Although we didn't directly talk about it much after that first conversation, he was working his butt off to grow the company and ultimately position it for an acquisition.

And so it has come. The company was acquired yesterday by one of the largest lighting manufacturers in the country. Even better, they are going to keep the company as a separate division so everyone gets to keep their jobs in the same place. That is, except for Dad. He decided that after being his own boss for so long, he just didn't want to work for someone else again. When we spoke this morning after the happy congrats and all, he told me he realized you come to a point in your life where time becomes more important than money, and he wants to spend time with my stepmom, etc. Amazing-- he's teaching me about life even through all of this business stuff.

The first thing I thought this morning when I read the press release (!) about the acquisition was that discussion we had way back when he first told me about the move. Everything he has done with the company has been moving towards this point and he achieved it. He laid out a plan and accomplished it, pure and simple. There's been many before and I'm sure many to come, but what better lesson to get from your Dad?

So while I'm certainly not at his level of planning yet, I'm trying. And I have a brilliant role model to show me how it's done.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!

2007-02-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

Moments of delight are something we talk about a lot at Yahoo! in terms of product design. When a product takes care of something for you, like say, remembering your personal information from last time you visited a website, that's nice. But when something comes along that anticipates a need you didn't even know you had, that's the true delight.

Christmas came in January this past week when my new Nintendo Wii arrived fresh from a shipment from Ebay. Christian had originally meant it to be a Christmas present and even waited in line over 2 hours (!) at J&R Computer World in NYC when they first came out back then. It wasn't meant to be since they were out by the time he got inside the store and they were all over $600 on Ebay. The one I bough ended up half that price, less than a month later, a good lesson in Christmas buying hysteria.

So the set-up for this system in case you don't know is that it comes with a controller that is a bit different than most video game systems. This controller is actually used as an instrument in the games. The system came with a sports disc that includes seemingly hum-drum games like tennis, golf and boxing. Except this time, rather than pressing buttons to serve and volley, you actually swing the controller to hit the ball. It's most impressive in tennis, where you actually have to stand in front of the TV and dart back and forth to get the ball. I got a second controller and Christian and I actually played tennis in our living room last night and worked up a bit of a sweat doing it!! What fun, and for any of you in SF who want to come over and give it a try, let me know! Playing the game, you can really feel like the designers of the system decided to just make it, well, plain fun, and were looking to delight the users of it.

I had a similar experience with the nifty Nike/iPod connector that my brother and sister-in-law sent me for Christmas. Its a small piece you can plug into your iPod to keep track of how long and far you go when running. I've used it a few times so far and think its a great invention. But I had an extra delight when I went for a run earlier this week-- when I completed the run, the normal female voice-over came on the headphones and said the time of the distance of the run, as it usually does.

But then a man's voice comes on and says "This is Lance Armstrong. That was your longest run so far! Congrats and keep up the good work." My first reaction was "are you kidding me?!!" and then I thought "Thanks, Lance!" and I can't wait to hear that again. How incredibly motivating and a small but thoughtful touch the designers added.

So I didn't really ever think that I wanted to play tennis in my living room or have a doo-hickey that connects to my music player to keep track of when I exercise. But I wouldn't want to live without them now. And to that, I'm sure the owners of the products are delighted themselves.

Free Music!

2007-01-24T23:11:00.002-08:00

Everybody, including me, loves free stuff. I remember when the original Napster came out—it was before I even had a computer at home. I was visiting my Mom and decided to see what all the hoopla was about. In a matter of minutes, I was downloading a lot of music that I could only dream of finding before, especially in the arena of dance/electronic music that I like. I freeloaded for awhile until Napster and its successor Kazaa were eventually shut down; around the same time, I got my first iPod and iTunes came out for the PC, so downloading became legal and guilt-free.

But free downloads are back, dear dance music fans, this time in the form of podcasts. (For the uninitiated, podcasts are like radio shows that people record with their home computers and can consist of music, talk, video, or a combination of all three.) DJs and producers alike create sets of music, upload them to iTunes or their own websites, and allow users to download them, add them to their iPods and they are off. Most often they are sets about an 1-2 hours long, and they are totally free. Yes, you can’t rip singles you like out of them, but I’ve still found it to be a great way to discover music. If you subscribe, any time a new one is up, it automatically downloads and you can have it set to sync to your iPod. Its like getting a free mix CD every time one shows up!

So here’s a list of my current favorites:

Boramusic.com HouseCast

A DJ from Hartford , CT (of all places) named Kered is solidly my favorite podcast. He is a DJ and a promoter for events in Hartford, so each one consists of a 30-40 min set by Kered himself, followed by an interview with whatever DJ is playing his club that weekend, and then a 30-40 min set by that DJ. The guest DJs are some giant names—Deep Dish, Gabriel & Dresden, and the like. But it’s usually Kered’s sets that I prefer—chock full of the funky electro house sound I’ve come to like since I moved to SF. (Warning—the interviews are usually wildly insipid—the DJs say crap like “I like to take the people on a journey” and stuff like that—just hold down fast forward on your iPod during these parts and enjoy the music!) Often times when we are out, I’ll hear a song that I recognize and realize it was on one of these podcasts a few months back. The best part is Kered adds a new one every 2-3 weeks, so its like getting a collection of the coolest new music each month.

Velvethead

A local DJ I found through the cool Y! podcast search, this guy is all about the warm SF house sound that I love. Think DJs like Miguel Migs, Julius Papp and the Hed Kandi and Om labels, and you’ve got this one nailed. My friend Lem would love this-- it’s perfect for poolside grooving. I also like to listen to it at work when I really need to focus on a design I’m working on and want an upbeat sounds that is not too distracting with heavy beats. The sets play right through with no voiceovers, which is nice as well. A favorite is his Naked Music Tribute from August—there’s songs in there any End Up-goer will appreciate, but anyone who likes dance music can enjoy as well. (Diva lovers, there's a bootleg Mary J Blige as the first track on his most recent set that you'll probably like...)

Alyson Calagna’s HouseBlend (iTunes)

Alyson has been an and coming DJ on the gay-circuit for a few years now and has a couple of podcasts that are tasty blends of stuff I like about circuit music—booming beats and female vocals without getting too diva-ish or pots and pans-ish. Christian and I had the pleasure of meeting her in Miami a bunch of years back and she was really cool, and her latest podcast is a well made, high-energy collection of the latest stuff heard in the clubs.

In My House by Flooker (iTunes)

This is one I found on iTunes and the best part about it is he does one every week. He speaks at the beginning in some foreign language, but all of the music is pure House. It can drift to the Euro side of things too much for me, but again, the frequency of new sets showing up is a delight.

Tongcast by Pete Tong (iTunes)

One of the granddaddies of current house music, Pete Tong has been spinning records in England , Ibiza and around the world for what it seems like forever. One of the first import CDs I bought in the mid 90s was by him! His sets are usually pretty upbeat and fun, although he recently has been drifting into more crusty and guitar like sounds that I don't necessarily love, but its always interesting. He actually talks a fair amount between songs and is pretty entertaining, if not for his accent alone. Every track is "essential", but he does call out the names and the mixes of the songs, so it’s a good way to learn who does what.

Bravehound
Lastly, some hottie in Vancouver keeps a blog and posts occasional podcasts which are really off the hook. His blog is worth visiting just to see what he looks like, but the music he produces really is fantastic. The latest one, Groove Tonight, is chock full of electro house goodies, but then he surprises you with a new mix of Janet's classic, "The Pleasure Principal". Tasty stuff, and all free!

So it’s not the same thing as Napster, but to me, still pretty darn good. If any of you know of any others I should check out, please add a comment. Happy listening!

The Value of a Dollar

2007-01-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

When you think about it, a dollar really doesn’t go very far. It’s hard to even buy a bottle of soda for less than one. It seems like it really takes a lot of them to do anything at all, and anything you want to do that is seemingly cool, even more. But I have a way of thinking about a dollar that might change your outlook.

It all started many years ago when I was skiing with my family at a resort outside of Pittsburgh during college. I was with my dad, stepmom, aunt, uncle and my then (ahem) girlfriend. My parents had actually treated my girlfriend to lessons for Christmas, so while she was with the teacher, I headed to the back of the mountain with my uncle, who is an amazing skier and quite the partier to boot. He has a set of ski poles that literally unscrews where he was fond of keeping peppermint schnapps. It’s amazing what that can do to keep you warm on the freezing cold lift, especially for the night skiing done on the east coast.

So we’re on the lift, trading shots of schnapps and he was telling me about how everytime he goes skiing, he tries to ski enough times to get it down to a dollar per run. So if the lift ticket cost $30, if he was able to get 30 runs in, it was worth it. After all, he said, skiing is a very expensive endeavour, but if you think about it in terms of a dollar per run, well, then maybe its no so bad. I told him that was a pretty cool idea and then asked for another shot of schnapps.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this theory has a pretty broad application. I started to think about it in terms of when I buy clothing—like, if a pair of jeans is $50, if I wear them 50 times, then its only a dollar per wearing, and that doesn’t seem that bad. Shoes are wear it works especially well, especially if they become a favorite pair. I’ve used this rationalization with Christian many times when trying to convince him to buy me whatever it is I want and it is a surprisingly compelling argument.

Take a computer for example. When I bought my Mac last fall, I thought about it in these terms—I use it every day, often times, more than once. If I have it for at least 4 years, which is how long I had my last computer, that’s 1460 days. It made it easier in my head to go for the large 24” monitor version of the Mac! (well, that and I really wanted it…)

So next time you look at one of those crinkled up George Washingtons in your pocket, try and think about this theory. It can a lot further than you think.

Back for 2007

2007-01-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

Dear readers (if there are any left):

Sorry for the self-imposed hiatus. Christian arrived back in town right before Xmas and with everything going on and the holidays, etc., writing really slipped through the cracks. But I'm back to writing more often again (already have 2 new entires done, posting one tonight and another later this week), so please start reading again. And as always, I love to see your comments below. If I am going to take a break again in the future, I'll add a post.

Thanks and happy new year.

Razzle Dazzle Em (Or Don't)

2006-12-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

My latest list of cool stuff...

Theatre: When in New York last week, Christian and I went to see "Chicago" on Broadway. We had both wanted to see it for awhile, particularly since the brilliant Bill Condon film a few years back that garnered a bunch of well-deserved Oscars. I was able to score some half-priced orchestra seats at the TKTS booth that was only a few block from Cs apt, and we were set.

Unfortunately, we both ended up being very disappointing. Despite the long string of stars that have moved through the show since its re-opening 10 years ago, the best this show could do was Huey Lewis as Billy Flynn. The actress who played Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones in the movie) was at least 45-50 years old. The production values of the show were high-school grade at bestremember the fabulous last scene of the movie when Zelleweger and Zeta-Jones are doing their last number in front of all of those lights on the stage? The stage equivilant had long strands of tinsel that looked more appropriate for your Aunt Hildas Christmas tree. The orchestra took 80% of the stage, which left few opportunities for anything impressive to happen.

I got to thinking about it seems a lot times when expectations are high for something, I feel let down. I hate it when that happens. On the upside, I cant wait to see what Condon does with the upcoming film version of "Dreamgirls". I was on the fence about the movie until I saw the previewit looks amazing! (And GO Jennifer Hudson...)

Movies: I caught 2 of the movies du jour over Thanksgiving and fortunately, both seemed to live up to the hype. Borat was outrageously offensive as advertised and despite many of the funny parts being given away in the commercials, there was plenty of R-rated (even X??) that they saved for the movie. They found a good way to keep the satire front and center, despite all of the shenanigans. Of course, we saw it in Gettysburg , PA with my brother and sister, and on the drive home, were wondering if the rest of the people in the theatre got the satire...... since they mostly seemed to not be laughing at the same time as us.

We also caught Casino Royale, new James Bond flick with the hot hot hottie Daniel Craig taking over as 007, and just debonair The debonaire flake that he had turned into in the last 10 years had grown pretty tiring to me, as of the only reason he was ever able to get out of the crazy situations he found himself in was cause, you know, hes James Bond. The new movie thankfully casts all of that schmaltz aside and instead re-introduces us to a gritty, conflicted Bond that is vastly more entertaining to observe. I was also surprised/impressed at the somewhat stunning number of times they showed Mr Craig in various states of undress, esp compared with that of his female counterparts. Score one for the boys and girls who appreciate that and note to directors along with the interesting dialouge and story, more of scenes like in the pic for the ensuing films, please.

TV: There are a ton of great new shows on this year, but its been two old favorites that have regained their mojo this season that I think are worth mentioning here. First is "Desperate Housewives", which has ranged from thrilling (the grocery store episode) to haunting (Lynette's quiet but fierce threat to the chick who was hitting on her husband) to just downright entertaining (this season's mystery gets a bit more interesting with each week). While some of the "funny" parts seem to stretch a bit, I'm happy to say Wisteria Lane is back to its wild wacky self and I'm looking forward to see where it all goes. If you turned it off after last year's mediocrity, you should tune back in.

Another show, which I should be embarrasseds that I watch, is "The OC", which is back with a vengenance so far this year. It's added back in the self-awareness of the lunacy of the whole thing that was lost in the last two years, along with the trademark great music. If you haven't heard "Love You Till the End" by the Pouges, do yourself a favor and download it now. What a great song. The ratings have been in the cellar even for a Fox show, so this could be the last year and it would be at least good to see it go out well.

Tunes: Above & Beyond's album "Tri-State"has been in nonstop rotation on my iPod. It captures the sweeping elements of their bestmadonnamixever of "What it Feels Like for A Girl" from a few years back and I just seem to be reaching for it again and again. Check it out, esp the minimal beauty of track 10, "Good for Me".

Another remixer that seems to be everywhere these days is Dirty South. First popping up earlier this year with some great house mixes, he has a hot electro mix of DM's classic, "Just Can't Get Enough" out now. Of course, it hasn't been released but I was able to track it down on a podcast. I just bought some new software that should allow me to manipuate these files, so stay tuned for some podcasts of my own coming in the new year.

In other genres, perhaps in reaction to the stunning disappointment her new release 20 Y.O., Ive been mining Janet Jacksons catalogue for some good music and have found comfort in the realm of janet" and Velvet Rope. Its surprising how relevant and fresh both albums still feel a decade later, while the new one is D.O.A, which migh have been a more approrpriate name. At least I just found on iTunes a Bimbo Jones mix of "So Exited", which sounds like it could come from David Harness' deck at the End Up. Go on Miss Janet, where's the good stuff?

And so ends this list of the good stuff.

An Era is Over

2006-11-20T23:43:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to report that as of today, Christian and I are no longer in the possession of property in Washington, DC. We successfully closed on our house at Beekman Place and despite the sagging market conditions in the area, were still able to get a deal that sets us up well for whenever we turn to buy here in SF.

But selling the house is not without regret. I read somewhere awhile back that like your first love, you never really get over your first house, and I think that will probably be true for this place with me. At the urging of my parents, I bought the place as a clueless 25-year old after a week long search landed me in a place only a few doors down from where I had been renting for the first 2 years I lived in DC. (Thanks for the urging and support, Mom & Dad!) I moved in right as Christian and I were getting back together after his brief first stint in SF, and before long, he would move in and we would make it our first home. The house became known as the "frat house" since we had so much more space than most of our friends, so people would just come up and hang out. After we got a grille, we started to throw "Frat House BBQs" each Thursday night since so many people went to the beach or out of town for the weekend. There was the legendary post-2000 election party we had for Ted and Todd that Todd couldn't even make it to since he was in Florida. There were also the many nights watching "24" and "American Idol" with Phil, Ted, Derek, Lem and Matt, and the countless other times we entertained there.

And of course we lived there when we adopted Hobbes, who after a rough start of pulling down our newly-installed wood blinds in panic attacks after we left for work, quick ingratiated himself into our lives, where he will be forever. We owned Marty the Miata, Andy the Acura and Murray the Murano during our time there. We went through numerous layoffs and downsizings at my company. I'll never forget the day of our wedding, when I thought we were going to get rained out, when the sun came out after I got out of the shower and I was dancing around our bedroom so excited about what was to come. We remodeled the kitchen and downstairs with tremendous improvements. I found out my grandmother passed away in that house right before we moved. We got to know our friendly neighborhood cop. We laughed. A lot. We built the foundation of the relationship we have today.

So financially, yes, it is a good thing we are making this transaction. Life milestone-wise, also good. But there will always be a piece of 1656C Beekman Pl with me.

** Anyone needing a rock star realtor in DC, look up Charlie Gaynor. He pretty much did everything for us since we were in SF and I couldn't be more pleased with the experience. Thanks to DWK for recommending him!

Reasons to be Happy

2006-11-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

On Christian’s urging, I saw the new Will Ferell movie, “Stranger than Fiction”, last night. Ferell plays a straight-laced guy who starts to hear a nararrator in his head, documenting his life, who is a real author writing his story in a novel. The movie starts strong, wanes a bit in the middle, but really brings it home at the end. It reminds you to appreciate all of the subtle nuances that make life the precious thing it is.

And so this is my list for today:

* I had to go on a work trip early this morning, and as I came around the corner to Candlestick Point, looked to the left and saw the sunrise coming up over the San Francisco Bay. The sky was a stunning mix of blue, orange and red as the sun peaked through the clouds. One time Christian and I watched the sunrise in Miami and I said to him “God just turned the light on.” Indeed.

*There’s a batch of good new TV shows this season, and the networks are showing an unusual dedication to them. I read with great pleasure last night that “Friday Night Lights”, a drama set in small Texas town following the local obsession with the high school football team that’s been struggling in the ratings, got picked up for the full season. I watched the first few episodes and was immediately drawn in by the stunningly true depiction of a town very similar to the one I grew up, as well as the star quarterback suffering a neck injury much like the one I did when I was in middle school, although his resulted in paralysis and mine, thankfully, did not. NBC picking up the show for the whole season is a welcome relief, and along with the other pleasant surprises of the season like the doofy fun “Ugly Betty” and the refreshingly real gay courtship and on-screen kisses on “Brothers & Sisters”, its nice to see some quality shows hitting the airwaves and getting the support they deserve.

*Buttermilk biscuits. Mmmmm, I had one at breakfast this morning and they are just yummy.

*Matt & Michael are taking off for a fun 1.5 week trip to London and Amsterdam and I’m really excited to hear about their adventures when they return. Matt urged me to come with them about a month ago and I have to admit, I was very tempted. But we ultimately decided to keep our plans to head home and spend Thanksgiving weekend with my family in PA, and as soon as I’m able to hug my step-mom, who is just recovering from a surgery, or hold my newborn nephew, or clown around with my brother, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel I have made the right decision.

*Work has been going really well lately for me. I was chatting with Titus and he was saying that he admired how passionate I was about my job and sure enough, I am. When I left the Travel industry after 6+ years of working in a field I have a personal obsession with, I was unsure how excited I could get about Customer Care, Matt’s snarky-but-well-deserved- after-all-of-my-payroll comments “help desk” snipings notwithstanding. But through a combination of hard work and maneuvering myself into a good position, here I am. That said, a lot of my goodwill towards work right now has to do with the positive feedback I’ve recently received from my director and also the VP of the business unit that I work in. So managers out there, don’t forget – if you have people in your group are doing a good job, tell them! You never know how far a pat on the back will take them.

*South Africa became the 5^th nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage yesterday. One of the leaders of a GLBT group in South Africa said “It forced us (South Africans) to consider: what does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale.” A question for the rest of the world and the USA—how is it that of all places, South Africa, home of apartheid, et al, is now one ahead of most of you in equality? Cheers to all of our boys in South Africa!

*I've worked it out that while in San Diego today, I'm going to see my pal Erin. It's always fun when business trips allow you to see a friend as well.

*And lastly, the countdown begins: 1 month from today, Christian returns to SF for good! It can’t come fast enough.

No Camera Required

2006-11-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

I really love to take pictures, but I don’t know if I would call myself a photographer. It’s not so much the precision of the picture itself that I concern myself with as much as capturing the memories of whatever it is that I am doing while I am taking the pictures. At pretty much any event I go to with friends, family, Christian and/or Hobbes, I usually have my camera with me to snap at least a few pics to help encapsulate it into memory. And at the end of every year, I put them together along with other mementos into a scrapbook for a Christmas gift for Christian, a tradition that started 1.5 years into our relationship together and will now be entering its 7^th iteration this holiday season.

Since we moved to the west coast, my trips home to Pennsylvania to visit my family have become much less frequent than when I lived a short 90 miles away in Washington, DC. Like anything that was once plentiful and then becomes rare, I now appreciate these visits much more than I used to, and I think the same is true for them seeing me. Pretty much every time I go home, I have my camera in hand, snapping as many pictures as I can of my nephews as they grow up too fast, my grandmother sipping her standard glass of champagne, and other family moments. Often when I call my mom she references having just had dinner with my brother and wife or that my nephews had all just left after spending an afternoon in the pool. I have to admit it’s sometimes hard to hear the everyday things that happen there that I’m not a part of by virtue of where I have chosen to settle my life.

This past weekend, Christian’s mom and stepdad (Jane and Skip) arrived with a moving truck from Dallas to move here to the Bay Area. They had asked if they could borrow our SUV for awhile as they run all of the errands that you need to when you are moving into a new house. So I drove out to see them yesterday to welcome them to San Francisco and check out their new house. Melissa and Alex (C's sister and husband) were also there, with their two adorable little boys, and it was quite a site to see them as they are unpacking in their new digs, just a few minutes from where Melissa lives and about 30 min from our place.

I spent about an hour there, getting the tour of the house, hearing about the plans they have to decorate, and regaling at the size of their yard, as it will be Hobbes’ new vacation home when we are away. After that, I popped over to Melissa and Alex’s and played trains with their 3-year old, Alister for a bit. Then I went upstairs to hang out ("visit", as C calls it) with the adults for awhile, also playing “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out” on Alex’s rad original Nintendo that he got from Ebay a month ago. Then it was time to go, so Alex and Alister drove me back to my house, and we made plans for me to come back out for dinner sometime this week or next.

Once I was home last night, I realized that I had not taken my camera along and therefore took no pictures. And as much as I love to usually commemorate big days like yesterday, what I’ve come to realize is that because of Jane, Skip, Melissa, Alex, Alister and Beckett’s proximity to where we live, we’re going to have lots of days like this. Families who live close to each other do stuff like this all the time; hanging out during the day, eating dinner together, giving each rides, etc. Things like these are going to become much more commonplace, and therefore, the need to take pictures to capture the “preciousness” of it will become less.

Not that I won’t appreciate the increase in family time; if anything, being so far from the family that I grew up with makes me even more eager to invest in the family that I married into here. But for the first time as an adult, I’ll get to have a family living in the same town that I am. What a great feeling.

So my camera may not be used quite as often on these family days, but that’s okay. We’ll just have to take additional trips to Pennsylvania to appreciate coming home to SF and our family here even more.

Part of Something Good (Part 2)

2006-10-30T21:27:00.000-08:00

I wrote earlier about getting involved in helping to design Yahoo's first foray into marketing directly to the gay community with the Pride site we rolled out last summer. As that project was winding down in June, I had the opportunity to get involved with another volunteer design project that while not as personal to me, ended up being pretty satisfying as well.

The Yahoo Employee Foundation (YEF) is an entirely employee funded and managed organization that gives grants to local non-profits for causes centered around the environment and local community. It's unique in that it has no corporate oversight; the board is made up entirely of employees and the funding comes entirely through donations that employees make. The group organizes large volunteer opportunities like re-building local homes and gift drives for local kids. Twice a year, donors can sponsor their favorite non-profit to receive a grant, and the organization has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars in its 5+ years of existence. It's a feel-good group that makes me proud to be a Yahoo, and I got involved last year by beginning to donate a small part of my paycheck each week and by joining the Communications Committee.

YEF's website was last redesigned in 2000 or so, and it looked that way. The layout, fonts, and palette were hopelessly outdated; much in the way of a leisure suit, what looked good then certainly did not look good now. It also smacked of the late 90s/early 00s trend of building a site that was not much more than brochure-ware, with limited or no functionality. So a small team of us swooped in to upgrade the site, and it rolled out a few weeks ago with the launch of the annual fundraising campaign, and you can see a screen shot above.

My involvement was again at the conceptual design and information architecture level, as well as art directing and managing the site through production and release. The visual design was done by the designer who works with in my team at Customer Care and she did a great job. The site now looks like it belongs in the modern day and we have plans for adding more functionality in the coming months.

I used to struggle with knowing that I wanted to volunteer somewhere, but I just didn't know how or where. For now, it seems I've found my niche helping out on these do-good side projects that take advantage of my design and management skills. As I mentioned before, it's been largely Christian's influence that has caused me to get involved in these types of volunteer projects, and I thank him greatly for it. His commitment to the greater good is certainly starting to work its way on to me, and I'm certainly better for it.

** As for my day job, we just rolled out a new version of Yahoo! Help Central with a nifty module that pulls content in from Yahoo! Answers, where users ask and answer questions themselves. Check it out at http://help.yahoo.com.

Worst. Schwag. Ever.

2006-10-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of working for a Silicon Valley firm is all of the free stuff you get. I've been decently lucky so far to pick up a couple of t-shirts, a gym bag, and a couple of jackets with Yahoo! proudly emblazoned on them. A lot of people wear this stuff to work and some even make a hobby of collecting the stuff. There's even a website, called Valleyschwa g, which is dedicated to allowing people to swap stuff from their company's for others. The name itself is a take-off of the tech gossip blog, Valleywag.

I know. This is nerd's paradise. Bear with me.

A few weeks ago was "National Customer Service Week" (did you somehow miss it?) and being part of the Y! Customer Care group, we had a lot of fun stuff happen. Breakfast one day, ice cream the next, and the week culminated with handouts of a super comfy new fleece that is modestly labeled with a Y! Customer Care logo on the front and a Y! 2006 on the back, which will enter heavy rotation for me once it starts to get a bit cooler here in SF. But we also received something this week that is beyond description. See the picture to the right here.

It's a pen! It's a lanyard! It's a globe! It's a back scratcher! It's a relay baton?! It's a lot of things combined into one that leaves the imagination running wild as to who or what could actually use this thing. Its hard to tell by the pic, but it's about 3x the width and 2x the length of an actual pen, which makes it really hard to hold, despite the handy black grip at the bottom. The globe does spin, which is handy... I guess. We all had a good chuckle about these thing-a-mo-bobs, as everyone was aware of how hideous they were, and went back to work shortly after they were distributed.

But I must say, a worse schwag gaffe came from my former company, the old US Airways. Times were tough for most of the time I was at the airline and beyond the travel benefits, freebies were hard to come by. Budgets were being slashed left and right, salaries were being cut, jobs were being eliminated, etc, so the corporation was hardly in a place to be able to give stuff away, and I think most of us who were left after all of the layoffs collectively understood that. I even started holding a pot-luck each Christmas at my house that became a 4-year tradition in my group.

But one year, a few days before Christmas, I came home from work and found a white box in front of my door. It was about 2 feet high and about 1.5 feet wide. There was no return address on it and naturally, I was curious as to what it was and who it could be from. I took it inside and quickly opened it. Inside, I found a giant cylindrical block of cheese, like in the pic here, with a small navy US Airways sticker on top of it. No card, no note, no anything other than a huge block of cheese. Um, okay?

At work the next day, people timidly started to talk about the mysterious block of cheese. Had it only been sent to a select group of people? Who had actually sent it? Had the company got a giant shipment of cheese that couldn't be used elsewhere, so they sent it to us? Like the current season of "Lost", way more questions were brought up than answers presented. Before long, emails started going around with "The Top 50 Things You Can Do with the Cheese", including things like doorstopper and giant hockey puck. If I had still had that list, I would post more, it was deliriously hilarious and provided some much needed laughs in the office, but I don't think that was the intent.

I suppose whoever had the idea of giving employees something for Christmas had his or her heart in the right place. The company had taken a lot of things away from employees over the previous years and the thought was genuine. But as they say, execution counts as well, and in this area as it did with lots of other things, the company couldn't have stumbled more. I mean, a 5 pound block of cheese? It ended up only engendering more ill will towards the company from an already disenfranchised employee group.

So as Yahoo! weathers a round of bad press about the missed earnings these past two quarters and continues to see the stock be hammered, I'm taking solace in some of my past experiences here. As ridiculous as the pen/lanyard/ who-the-hell-knows-what-it-is is, it was followed up with something most employees see as an actual "thank you" for all the contributions made to the company that actually engendered the goodwill that schwag is supposed to. The company tries to make a good environment for its employees, and I really appreciate it.

But if I come home in a few weeks and find a small white box on my doorstep, I reserve the right to change that opinion.

I'm Lovin' It

2006-10-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

I spent last week in New York City visiting Christian and as expected, it was a blast. A definite highlight included seeing a taping of David Letterman where Jon Stewart and Nick Lachey were the guests. Stewart was hilarious, almost upstaging Letterman at times, and Lachey was as hot as expected. The entire interview was about his divorce, which I sorta felt bad about until he preformed his new song I Cant Hate You Anymore or whatever its called and I thought this guys is still making tons of money off that relationship, so then I didnt mind as much. Of course, if he needs any comfort, I would be happy to help.

We also went to hear none other than my fantastic-favorite DJ, Kaskade, spin at a mega-club called Pacha, named after one in the clubbing mecca of Ibiza . It was one of those clubs that have 6 floors. It had the works, from a chill downstairs to hip-hop floors, and reminded me of the kind that I used to go to with my girlfriends before I came out, where I sorta liked the music, but never really got the crowd. I was a little concerned by the people in line, which were pretty "bridge and tunnel", as they say. But once inside, it didn't matter much. Christian and Derek managed to find the one gay bartender in the place and we were set with one free round of cocktails after the next. (Membership has its privlidges!) Kaskade didnt come on until 1A, but it was well worth the wait. He played a bunch of songs from his new album, Love Mysterious and the song he played right before we was my all time favorite by him, "Its You, Its Me. What a treat! (Thanks to Lem for the suggestion)

We also ate a number of fantastic restaurants, as expected in New York City . The city is renowned for the variance and quality of the places to eat, with good reason.Particuarly where Christian is living, just south of Tribeca, there were many great new places to discover. An instant favorite for brunch is a place called Kitchenette, which has the best peach jam this side of the stuff my great grandmother used to jar herself and store in the basement of our house. However, as great as most of them were, there always seemed to be something that made it not as good as expected. We visited old favorites such as Rosa Mexicano (pomegranate margaritas are as good as remembered and we sat near Glenn Close, but $28 for a small serving of guacamole???!). Odeon is a 24-hr cafe that was frequented by Andy Warhol and other 80s luminaries back in the day and while the burgers were good, but the end price ended up being ridiculously high. We also visited The Harrison , a swanky place with a great interior and promising appetizers, but alas, my main course came out not cooked enough and was just ok. (at least my Dad picked up the check for that one, thanks Dad!) So while each place had tons of great things going for them, the end feeling usually left me wanting something more.

So I flew back Sunday night, and after only eating brunch before I left, by the time I got back to SF, I was fairly hungry. T-Todd was sweet enough to stay with Hobbes while I was gone, so he picked me up and I was getting ready to take him home when he said Dont tell anyone, but I am really craving McDonalds. Do you want to stop there on the way to my place? (Sorry Todd, guess I just told people..) And so we did and I must say, the meal was pure heaven.Two cheeseburgers and a large fry, and I was a happy man. This meal cost about $5 and all I could do was think about all of the $$ I spent on these fancy restaraunts in NYC and if Im being truly honest, none gave me even close to the pleasure I got from woofing down those burgers and fries.

Does this mean I am giving up on fine dining for Taco Bell Hell? Not exactly, but it did stop and make me think. Where else can $5 buy so much culinary happiness?

Maybe I'm more "bridge and tunnel" than I thought....

A San Francisco Treat

2006-10-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

This has happened a few times to me. I order something from Netflix that I think I should watch, like a classic that I have never seen, or one of the recent heavyweight movies I missed at the theatres. But then it arrives, and I just can't bring myself to watch it. Other movies come and go, multiple shows from Tivo are viewed, and the movie sits there on top of the DVD player, unloved and unwatched. So I resolve that if-I-don't-watch-it-by-this- weekend-I-will-send-it-back. But something nags at me, like you should really watch this film and you've paid all that money to let it sit there collecting dust.

I've gone through this process a few times, with recent highly rated movies such as Munich and Capote, only to end up sending them back because I just don't make the time to sit down and watch, and after they sit there for over a month, I figure I probably never will. Well, I finally sat down to watch one of these this past weekend, and what a treat it turned out to be.

I watched the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Vertigo, a movie that I had never seen. The basic premise is about a former detective that watches a colleague fall to death, becomes powerfully afraid of heights, and retires. An old college buddy asks him to take on a special project that involves following his wife, who he is convinced has been inhabited by a spirit of a woman who has been dead for over 100 years. In traditional Hitchcock themes, nothing is what it seems and the plot certainly kept me interested, as well as the actors, including James Stewart's lead role, Kim Novak as the blonde bombshell, and a WAY pre-Dallas Barbara Bel Geddes in the role as the detective's best friend and unrequited love. At 2+ hours, the movie is a bit sprawling and some of the effects that I'm sure were frightening back then wouldn't even scare a kid on an amusement park ride, but I'm glad I kept watching. The twist of the plot puts anything M Night Shamalyn has done to shame, the score is hauntingly beautiful, and the last 2 minutes are simply stunning.

But the real star of the movie to me was San Francisco. Released in 1958, Hitchcock chose to make the setting of the city a true part of the film. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the Presidio to Coit Tower, many of the familiar icons are represented in all of their glory. The pic to the right is from a key scene in the movie by the Golden Gate. Beyond that, however, was the representation of a gloriously colorful and clean city, filled with people dressed in suits and fur tulles going about their business. The shots that were filmed along the streets of the city shocked me with their pristine and I'll just say it, clean, nature. The remasteredremastered the movie did a terrific job of presenting the 50s theme of innocence that is deliciously juxtaposed against the darkness and fear of the plot and characters. As I've continued to settle into feeling like a San Franciscan, this movie made me proud to be a resident of the city.

So I highly recommend to anyone from the Bay Area to add this movie to your queue and don't let it languish. It's a real San Francisco Treat!

Taking a Bite

2006-10-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

The Top 10 Reasons I FINALLY Switched to a Mac

10) They are just so freaking cool

9) I got tired of being the only designer in the world who doesn't use one for his primary computer

8) The latest ads are hilarious (and convincing)

7) Garage Band will allow me to make my own mixes and podcasts (coming soon!)

6) I was pretty tired of CTRL + ALT + DELETE

5) The 24" monitor really is stunning

4) Derek & Lem and Phil & Ted and especially Alex each have one and, frankly, that bothered me

3) All of the main stuff I used on the PC (iPod, music, photos, etc) I was able to easily transport over

2) I've wanted one for over 5 years

1) Did I mention how freaking cool they are??

So this is the first of hopefully many blog entries and other creations to come that will be created on my new Mac. I'm happy to finally be part of the club!

Scary Fast, and Green Too!

2006-09-27T22:44:00.001-07:00

Innovation: The act of introducing something new.

I think there is plenty of innovation happening at Yahoo!, but it's always worthwhile to take a look outside of your industry for inspiration. Today, some of that was brought to our front door, via a speaker series held on campus. Tesla Motors is a start-up company based here in the Bay Area, but rather than building the latest internet widget, they build cars. But not any cars, mind you-- very, very fast cars that oh-yea-by-the-way, also are electric. The CEO of the company and some of the staff members came into Yahoo! today to talk about their work in progress and allow those of us who are car geeks to marvel at what they have created, and also get the chance to take a look at one of the 10 prototype cars that have been built so far.

It sure looks like a modern day sports car, with many Lotus/British references, but still maintaining a unique look. It is run by a battery that sits in the trunk (that's the white box in the pic to the left here) that is smaller than a car battery, and that is all there is for power. It can do 0-60 mph in 4 seconds, faster than pretty much every sports car out there, including big names like the Corvette and Porsche 911. It has a range of up to 250 miles on one charge, well enough to get around town and for all but the longest commutes. Simply plug it in when you get home, and the next morning, its ready to go- it gets the equivalent of 135 mpg (!) and costs a penny per mile to operate. Amazing stuff, despite the accompanying $100k price tag.

The inspiration for all of this? The desire to want to be environmentally conscious while also wanting to actually enjoy driving that car have thus far been totally separate. Yes, we can all marvel at how nifty the Toyota Prius looks and that it gets 50+ mpg, but by pretty much all accounts, its about as fun to drive as a Corolla. And while all of the sports cars out there are no doubt fun to drive, the sub-teen mpg is hard to swallow for any environmentally-conscious car enthusiast. Thus, the Tesla Roadster.

Obviously there are hundreds of innovations in the design, build and engineering of this car. However as a person who likes to drive cars fast but also would like to be as socially responsible as possible, this car creates a new niche and potentially a new market altogether. Tesla still faces many hurdles to see if it will ultimately work in the marketplace. They won't even ship their first car until next year, and have ambitious plans for a sedan to follow in 2009/2010.

But the innovation of introducing something so immediately understandable yet at the same time so new, to me, is the real revelation of the Tesla. Motor on!

** Read more about the Tesla on their official site

You Gotta Have a Plan.... Or Do You?

2006-09-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Christian and I go back and forth a lot about planning. He is an uber-planner; me, not so much. I prefer to let things happen organically—when things happen you didn’t expect, that makes it even better to me. I’ve been able to get through life so far pretty well this way, but being married to someone who feels the opposite, this has at time caused “strain” on us. With him being gone this fall, I’ve really managed to keep myself busy with lots of plans, so perhaps I’m not as organic as I think. We’ve had a few longer-ranging plans come from when he and I take trips together (ie, the "Bermuda Plan" called for settling down a bit with a dog/SUV/computer, the "Idaho Plan" called for C going to grad school in CA and the "Africa Plan" calls for kids in the next 5 years…) but other than that, I don’t know how much long term planning I really do.

I was lucky enough last week to be invited to attend a lunch with Jerry Yang, one of the original founders of Yahoo! He’s been pretty much a celebrity since he and David Filo famously created the company in trailers on the Stanford campus, on the covers of many, many magazines, and worth well over (yes, say it like Dr Evil), 1 BILLION dollars. The employees of Yahoo! are known as Yahoos, and his title is Chief Yahoo.

So after the company started growing so fast and he stopped knowing everyone’s names, he started this program called “Chat and Chow”, where two dozen or so people get invited to come and have lunch with him in one of the classrooms on campus. We were informed in the email invite that the format is intended to be very open and casual, but you never know how these things are going to go. How many times have all of us been to “informal” events with company leaders that are little more than meet and greets where afterwards mgmt crosses “Employee Engagement” off the to-do list until next quarter.

Happily, it ended up being a really interesting session. There were about 20 people there, all from the UED (User Experience & Design) team, from varying levels of background and experience. The session started with each person saying who they were, what they did, how long they have been with Y!, a cool innovation that they’ve seen at Y! or outside, and a question for Jerry.

It was a neat way to start off the meeting, as the wildly varying degree of innovations that each person saw was really cool. It ranged from a baby book to the Yahoo! Answers product to a new screwdriver design. The questions were also interesting—many centered around the new brand advertising Yahoo! launched this week (see the adverts here—I like the HOUSE one, but the car one is pretty lame to me) to how the different orgs in the company could be more nimble to enabling an environment that encourages more innovation.

Jerry proved to be as humble and down to earth as the press reports him to be. He was almost an awkward speaker, looking at the floor a lot, but still had a lot of good insights to share and was very open with us. He talked about the organizational difficulties of comparing ourselves to start-ups, which are often competitors in certain areas, how the UED organization needs to continue to be stronger, and other interesting tidbits from someone with his level of access. The session was fairly interactive, mostly engaging, and I think most of the group enjoyed it.

He actually closed the session with my question – “Where do you see Y! in 5 years, and how accurate were you in your predicition about what we’d be doing 5 years ago now?” He chuckled and said “not really that close” and went on to talk about the rapid acceleration of social media and other factors that didn’t seem as close in 2001. He postulated a bit about life for Yahoo in 2011 and some things we should focus on, but openly said that even with the maturing of the internet space, its still really hard to know.

So what does all this mean? Is it better to develop a plan and stick to it? Or is it better to just figure it out as you go? I think, as with most things, the right answer is somewhere in the middle. It's important to have an idea of where you want to be, but also be flexible enough to adjust as things happen in life and business. Not a bad message to take away from meeting with one of the biggest celebrities in Silicon Valley.

Mr Fix It

2006-09-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

So I am going to admit to something that no man ever wants to: I am very unable to build anything. From the most simple of constructions (putting together a TV stand) and household items like changing a light fixture, I have difficulty even thinking about this stuff, much less actually trying to do it. As Christian says, when we think about renovations, we don’t pick up a hammer, we pick up the phone... for a contractor. Despite being the son of the owner of a construction company, I just never picked any of that up. Call it the fabulous gene, if you will.

And even though I am a software designer, I have largely remained blissfully naïve about anything to do with hardware. Christian was sweet enough to set up our computer when we got it a few years ago, as with each ensuing move we’ve had. Routers? Motherboards? Video cards? Huh?

All that came to a screeching halt over the few days. Our home PC was on the fritz and with Christian away all fall, it was up to me to get it fixed or be without the internet at home. As with anyone else, the fear of not being able to download music, check my email, pay my bills, and, um, oogle at Big Muscle each night was clearly the driver here to get it fixed.

The issue seemed to be something similar to an issue we had before, where the monitor would not go out of power save mode, so I was hoping it might be a simple fix. Well, after an hour of screwing around myself, then checking the online FAQs for about 30 minutes, chatting with an agent from Gateway for another hour, and then a 15 min call that cost $3/min, my cadre of support folks and I seemed to locate the problem- the power source in the PC was blown. The agent told me they were easy to replace, I could go to Best Buy the next day and be all set. I asked him again if it was easy to do and he said it should take about 10 minutes. “Ok, maybe I can do this”, I say to myself uneasily.

So the next night I sit down and open the box of the power supply, hoping there are very explicit instructions. Instead, try a sheet that basically said “see your computer’s instructions”, which of course were lost in the ether of many moves. I was able to find some instructions online and despite a few setbacks that most people would probably breeze through, about an hour later, I had the new power supply installed in the PC—yes!

Not so fast. When I booted up, it worked, but the monitor still did not come on—ugh! So back on the chat site I go, not wanting to pay another $30 to have to find my answer. Again, after about an hour of back and forth, the agent tells me the video card is blown as well, and I need to replace that as well. Um, are those easy to install also?

So after another trip to Best Buy, I feel ready to go again. My video card was in the motherboard, so I had to spend another 30 min chatting to make sure nothing special was required. Let her rip, says the agent, so I try it and about 30 min later, seem ready to go. I boot it up, but nothing. So I open it again, making sure all of the connections are good. Another 10 min go by, and I try it again.

And OH MY GOD, it worked! I literally danced around the apartment for about 10 minutes, Hobbes must have thought I was crazy. I actually did it. Another roadblock would be ahead, as I wanted to back up all of our photos and music in anticipation of getting a new computer (a Mac—hurrah!) and the power source for the external hard drive was nowhere to be found. A little crafty thinking later, I realized the plug for our iPod alarm clock looked to be the same size, and sure enough, it was. A few hours later, everything was backed up and in the next few weeks, I should be getting the new Mac!!

Patience, persistence, and a little ingenuity helped me get through this mess and now the PC is back online. So am I ready to try and start building things? Not exactly. But it feels good to know that if I tried, I probably could.

Of Mushrooms and Princesses

2006-09-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of a gamer, but I have loved the Nintendo series of Mario games pretty much from the start. The original Nintendo was released in the fall of 1985 and my brothers and I begged my parents to get it for Christmas, but they insisted that the system and games ($30/game!!) were just too expensive. So it became one of the best days EVER when that Christmas morning, "Santa Claus" delivered a sparkling new Nintendo system and the game that came with it, as we all now know, was Super Mario Bros.

It was a mad scramble to get it hooked up the TV in the family room and thus began the many, many, many, MANY hours I would spend playing this game and its subsequent sequels. Among my favorites were Super Mario Bros 3, where Mario could gain the raccoon tail to knock out his opponents, and of course, Super Mario Kart, where Mario raced against some of his classic opponents in a knock around go-kart style that included the ability to knock off others with heat-seeking mushrooms and banana peels. And of course, Mario's cause was always the noble one-- to flatten the evil dragons in quest to rescue the princess!

After college though, despite the newer releases on Nintendo 64, Game Cube, etc., Mario seemed to leave my life. Until last month, when I was home visiting. I was headed to bed after a nice visit with my mom. I walked by the kids game room, where my 15-year old nephew (Tyler) has all the latest games like Xbox 360, Playstation 24, and Portable Whatever-they-are-calling-it-these-days. But much to my surprise, I heard a very familiar tune coming from the room, so I poked my head in and EUREKA, they are playing the original Super Mario Bros on an original Nintendo machine that he found in the garage of my parents house. Somehow, after all these years, the system and game were still working and my nephew and his friend were playing it in all its glory. Tyler, he who spends many hours playing the latest games with people he doesn't know on the internet, with the infinite layers these games have, said the simplicity of the game intrigued, and frankly, vexed him. I promptly said "Move over kids, let the old timer show you how its done!". And despite the fact that I haven't played the game in well over 10 years, I somehow was able to remember where the secret warp zones and extra coins where! The next day, I told my brother Joe about it, who used to hang out in my room and watch me play, and it was game on like 1986 all over again.

The other instance came this week when my colleague Leslie mentioned she recently received a GameBoy DS for a gift. (that's DS, as in Double Screen, to the uniformed like me) She had the Mario Kart game and I asked if I could play for a bit. I did, and said it was fun, and she told me that I should buy one too so we could play against each other! I was tempted..... But what really pushed me over the edge was yesterday she brought in the Super Mario Bros game for the system. I thought I would play for a few min like I did with the other game, but over an hour and completing 2 worlds later, I was hooked. Its an updating of the game with some fun twists (there's a BIG mushroom which allows you to smash everything on the screen and also a tiny mushroom which allows you to go places you couldn't otherwise, etc etc) but still the same over simplistic yet oddly engrossing set-up-- smash mushrooms, collect coins, save princess.

As it should be.

** For anyone who is into this like me, check out details on the new Wii from Nintendo. Looks prety awesome to me...

Effort

2006-09-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

Effort: The use of physical or mental energy to do something.

To me, effort is one of the biggest currencies people have out there. I mean, it takes effort to keep a good relationship, be it with your significant other, or friends. It takes effort to do a good job at work. It takes effort to know what you want and go after it. It's something that we all have the ability to do, but only some really make the effort to do.

So I'd like to share some examples of efforts my friends have made recently that have touched me:

Brian and I used to live just blocks apart and work one floor apart, but its taken some extraordinary effort on his part to really make us the great friends we've become. After we moved to SF and he moved to Frankfurt, Germany, he took the time to come the whole way here for a long weekend in the Fall of 2004. It it ended up one of those incredible bonding weekends where we talked about all kinds of things we never had before and learned that we had way more in common than previously thought. He's made the effort to come here at 5 times since then, including this past weekend, and ever time he visits, it's always a blast, and I always feel closer with him after he leaves. I know it takes a tremendous amount of effort to come the whole way here, and I really appreciate it.

Our good pal Lee also come from DC to visit for a weekend last month. Surprisingly, this was his first visit to the Bay Area, and he made the most of it. He borrowed the MINI to drive up the coast as he experienced the stunning scenery of Point Reyes and Muir Woods. He had asked if he could use his iPod while in the MINI, but I sadly reported that I didn't have any connections for the car. It was a brief conversation; I told him I tons of CDs he could borrow and left it at that. So what do I receive in the mail a week later? A hook-up for the iPod that uses that radio rather than the tape player, so now the MINI is all set up for iPod motoring! Of course I didn't expect any kind of gift for hosting him. But he took the effort to not only give me something I will make frequent use of, but something I didn't even know I wanted.

While we were in Africa last month, Todd stayed at our place for some of the time to look after it and make use of our laundry and cars. We were glad to have someone stay there since we were gone so long and he even picked us up at the airport on time. But there were a few extra "effort" touches when we got home that demonstrates what a classy guy he is. He took the time to wash the car and have our place spotless while we were gone, which was great. Beyond that, we found a vase full of flowers and a nice note thanking us for always making him feel at home. While those gestures didn't take nearly as much effort as the cleanings did, they are they ones that touched me more.

So sometimes it's the big things, and sometimes it's the small. I feel pretty lucky to have such thoughtful friends and I can only try and make the effort to let them know how much I appreciate it.

Movement

2006-09-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

** Note to readers-- I'm back online and will be posting much more frequently now, so leave a message and let me know you are still out there! Thanks for stopping by.

I hear a lot about "the gay movement", particularly from the wackos on the far Right fringe, and I wonder what that is. Even as a somewhat-politically minded gay person, I'm not sure I could define what it is. Is it as general as trying to secure equal rights as others? Is it focusing too much on marriage rights? Not enough on what the heck LGBTQQY is? Is it about securing hate crimes legislation? Or maybe just what happens in the gay clubs around the world each Saturday night?

I don't know about that, but I got two really nice reminders of progress while visiting my family in Pennsylvania last weekend. The first came from my mom at funeral for an older family member. After the service in the graveyard, we saw an old family friend who I had not seen since I was very small. She first introduced my brother and his wife, and in then turned to me and Christian. I cringed for a moment in fear of the dreaded "friend" label, but in her next breath, introduced me and "my partner" Christian. This was the first time I could ever remember her using that term for Christian. It may not be a big deal to some, but for my mom to get over the "friend" label hump felt like really good progress to me.

The other, more surprising one, came later that night. I was playing video games (the original Nintendo, playing "Super Mario Bros", another entry forthcoming about that...) with my 15 yr-old nephew (Tyler) and his best friend, Jeff. Christian and I have been together for 8 years and he's been around my family extensively since then. I never really had "the talk" about Christian's and my relationship with my nephew, esp since C has been around for almost as long as he can remember, and I figured that was really up to my sister, his mom. So I was explaining to them about driving down from New York, since I flew in there (about a 4-hour drive from home) the night before since Christian is spending all fall there for training for his new job. After I said that, Jeff says to me with all of the possible sincerity a 15-yr old boy can muster, "But will you guys be able to see each other?".

I was immensely touched and blown away by the fact that the first question a high school kid in the small town that I grew up in was to show genuine concern that Christian and I would be able to see each other over the 4 months that we'll be separated. I smiled and told him that I would be spending a few weeks over the fall working from the Y! offices in New York, and that we were hoping the time would go by quickly until Christian came back to SF. When I was his age, I couldn't even fathom the word "gay", much less what a gay relationship looked like, much less to show concern for someone I barely knew in a relationship like that.

Is that the kind of "gay movement" that will keep Pat Robertson up at night? Maybe not. But it sure felt like moving ahead to me.

Pics My Mom Probably Wouldn't Want to See

2006-07-23T23:12:00.000-07:00

We're back from Africa and as predicted, it was the trip of a lifetime! I'll have more anecdotes and photos from the trip later this week, but these two pictures are from the more adventorous side. The one on the left from the Zambezi River, where miraculously, we did not flip the boat on that rapid! Christian's arms are in the top left of the frame hanging on for dear life and the rest of us in the boat are covered in water-- it's a tremendous shot. The other is from the "gorge swing", also in Zambia, where we stepped off a cliff, free fell for a few seconds, and then swung back and forth in the gorge. After looking at the pics, we concluded these were probably ones that our collective Moms would rather not see....

Moment In Time

2006-06-22T05:45:00.000-07:00

Christian and I are set to go on our trip of a lifetime to Southern Africa-including stops in Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and of course South Africa over the next 3 weeks. It should be absolutely amazing and I hope to be able to make a few postings from the trip, but I'm not sure of what internet access will be like in places like the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls, so I will do the best I can.

Before C started school, we hoped to do some sort of trip like this, but I started so quickly at Yahoo!, that didn't quite work. So now its our turn, and we're celebrating C's graduation, our recent 5-year anniversary and this special moment in time before C heads back to the workforce. As Brenda told us when we got married, people don't stop enough in life to celebrate special moments, so this is what we are trying to do, and who knows what is ahead of us? Things like safaris, rafting and shark diving are on the to-do list but as past travels have shown, its always the unexpected that proves the most memorable. Will it be a stunning view from an oceanside cafe like in Mexico? Or the cows and cemetary game as we crossed the expanses of Costa Rica? I can't wait to find out.

Stay tuned!

Part of Something Better

2006-06-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things I have always admired about Christian is his commitment to volunteering. Pretty much since I’ve known him, he’s always been involved in some kind of efforts that benefits someone outside of him and his work. This came pretty directly from his mom, who taught him from early on that this type of involvement was important, and Christian has made very good on it, from his involvement with Make a Wish to more recently the Point Foundation.

For some reason, I missed this lesson when I was younger. Its not that my parents aren’t civic-minded (my Mom’s month in New Orleans after the Katrina disaster is a good illustration of that), but for one reason or another, it just never really came up when we were kids. So when I became a grown-up and married Christian, I always admired his conviction with volunteering, but struggled with how to get do something myself.

I’m proud to say I’ve found something pretty cool. I wrote earlier about Yahoo! Pride, an employee group that caters to the LGBT (that’s lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender for the folks at home) audience, and how I helped to program the a new music station called Gay Club Mix. That was neat, but my involvement was pretty minimal. After that launched, Brady, the leader of the group, Brian, a fabulous MBA intern who helped prove the worth of the GLBT audience to Yahoo! during his internship and will be joining Yahoo! this fall, and I wondered how we could really get Yahoo! to get behind the community in a much more visible way. We ended up with the idea of a promotional page for Gay Pride, and I’m proud to say that it launched today. I provided the conceptual design and wireframes, basically figuring out what was going to go on the page and where. From there, I handed my design off to Brian and Ernie, a set of 2 amazingly talented guys who provided the visual design (the color, fonts, and images) and the web development (actually building the whole thing), and I continued to act as the art director. I’m immensely proud of the result, and you can see it at http://events.yahoo.com/pride06/.

Brian, Brady and I agreed from the start that we would try and leverage as many of the community elements as possible from across Yahoo! and to design it in a way that would be relatively easy to implement. After all, this was a volunteer effort for the 3 of us and anone else who would get involved, above and beyond our normal daily responsibilities! Highlights include exposing community pictures of Pride from Flickr, the wildly popular photo sharing site Yahoo! acquired last summer and Pride events from upcoming.org, where users can share events with the community. Brian’s visual design, with the avatars in the header and the use of playful color throughout the page is really fantastic, and it’s all built in the latest coding technology, meaning its very light and flexible. When we found out that Travelocity was going to be a sponsor, it was icing on the cake.

So it launched early this morning and we're getting a lot of positive feedback internally, from people as high as the Chief Marketing Officer. It's a great feeling to combine two thing I love-- design and the gay community-- with something I've been wanting to do-- volunteering. We hope this is just the start of marketing to the LGBT community at Y! and I can't wait to find something like this again.

Love is in the Air

2006-06-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

There's just something fantastic about love. In the past two days, I've been able to experience or witness some different stages of it, make me appreciate it even more.

Friday night, Christian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. We were treated to an extra special early present last weekend when we attended the wedding of our good friends from DC, Curtis and Ryan. These guys are one of those couples who just make you happy to be around, and the wedding was a pure reflection of that. The outpouring of love and support each of their families provided, including such wonders as each of their moms walking them down the aisle together and Curtis' sister giving one of the toasts, was remarkable. Additionally, getting to celebrate this occasion with all of our best friends from DC was great as well, feeling the love from a circle of people who, despite some of us who have moved away, will probably always be the best group of friends we will ever have. And lastly, as and icing on the cake surprise for us, Brenda Grisham, the woman who conducted our ceremony 5 years back, was the person they had selected to do their wedding. We had not seen her since our own special night and it was a real treat to catch up with her and marvel in all the amazing things that have happened since we got married. (that's us with her)

Friday night was the actual day of our engagement and we went out to dinner at a place called Palamino, in downtown SF. The night before our wedding, we treated our families and best ladies to a dinner at the Palamino in DC, so the restaurant has special meaning to us. We told the waitress when we sat down that we were celebrating our 5th anniversary, and she told us that she had already had 2 other anniversaries and an engagement that night! We don't usually go out to dinner with just us, so it was a nice time to reflect on our 5 years and talk about what we hope will happen over the next 5. It was a warm night in the city, so after that, we strolled along the Emarcadero along the SF Bay and took in the all of the lights of the bridge and the buildings in the city. But by far, the highlight of the night was what we spent most of the dinner talking about-- naming the two kids we hope to have by the next big anniversary. I look forward to telling them lovingly someday how and when we figured out what their names will be.

And lastly, we spent a deliriously tender evening on Saturday night with our gang here in San Francisco. The setting was Supper Club, which puts cocktails, a 5-course fancy dinner, beds, and performance art into a blender, mixes up, and serves for utter enjoyment. There were 12 of us, set up over 3 beds where you could literally lay, and the best thing about it was how you could move around and talk to each person in the group. With us were two of our best SF friends, Maria (in the white) and Titus (in the black) both who had relatively new boyfriends visiting from out of town, and both in the mad theros of newfound love. What a fantastic thing to observe, and over the course of the 3 or so hours we were there, feel a part of. The hanging on every word said, the passionate gazes, and the hoping of the best for the future were all there, and I couldn't be happier for both of them. As I told Maria, although the intensity of that time doesn't always stay, the underlying passion can and should, and I feel fortunate enough to be in a relationship where it does. Moreover, getting to spend time with all of my favorite people here in our new home for a night was just what the doctor ordered to cure me of any home sickness after last weekend.

So although its not quite springtime anymore and I'm still trying to get used to these cold SF summers, I really feel like love is in the air. And what a beautiful thing it is.

How Sweet It Is

2006-04-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

I never have to question what a fantastic relationship I have with Christian, but sometimes he catches me by surprise and makes me love him even more. We moved about two months ago and I had been itching to have a party, so with my birthday last week, we agreed to have a housewarming/birthday party this past weekend at our place. We have been very busy decorating/buying new stuff for the place and I was looking forward to having our friends over. We used to have parties all the time when we lived in Washington and I have missed the entertaining. Christian decided to make some white-wine sangria, Dana made some delicious crostinis, and the we had a ton of beer and liquor waiting for the crowd to arrive.

The party was going along very well when Christian called me into the living room and I knew what was coming. I had almost told him not to get me a cake because 1, I donÂt really like cake, and 2, this was really more of a housewarming party than a birthday party anyway. I mean, I turned 32, its not like its that big of a deal or anything. So what does he do? He presents me with a cake that he had made from a picture that was taken the first day I got my MINI convertible. We were staying with his sister out in Marin, right across the Golden Gate bridge, and after I had given each of the family members the obligatory ride, I went out for a cruise by myself.

After a delightfully curvy drive around the perimeter of the area, I drove into Tiburon, which is directly across the bay from San Francisco and has views of the GG Bridge as well. I was busy snapping pictures of ÂCoopÂ, as we named the car, when a passerby car drove by the small parking lot I was in, slammed on the brakes, hit reverse, and quickly joined me in the parking lot. The driver and his wife got out of his car and just had to know what the car was (my shipment was just the 2nd of the convertibles into the US, so it was still pretty new at the time), and that they loved the color, etc, etc. I thought driving with the top down across the GG Bridge was cool enough on my first day of owning this car, and then I get to have random strangers oogle all over it! Well, they offered to snap a pic of me with the car and the bridge in the background, and this picture was the one that Christian used as the basis for the icing on my 32nd birthday cake.

So in addition to thoroughly enjoying the company of all of the people who came out to celebrate with us, I also got to revel in the happy memory of the first day that I got a car I had anticipated getting for almost 3 years. While he also got me a fantastic present (the new SLVR phone with iTunes!) I bet it will be this cake that I remember when I reflect on my 32nd. Happy birthday, indeed.

Powder Hounds

2006-04-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

My friend Todd gave me a card for my birthday some years ago that had a picture of an old woman skipping across wet pavement on sidewalk that read 'Ever notice how 'what the hell' is usually the right decision?' That has stuck with me for some time, and certainly rang true this past weekend.

I wrote an earlier entry about learning to snowboard and how, although it's been challenging, its been fun to learn something new. Well, this weekend, my good friend Maria and I took off for Tahoe, hoping to get one last good weekend in, and since she is a skier, I would also get to ski at least once this season. Saturday brought heavy winds and only two lifts open on the mountain and as we went to buy lift tickets, people who came down once and said it was horrible conditions. We sadly decided to pass on skiing.

We both had plans in SF on Sunday, but decided to at least spend the night in Tahoe and try to have some fun before heading back in the morning. However, early the next morning, a huge snowstorm hit the motion, and we woke in the morning to at least 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. 'What the hell' we said... and what a treat was waiting for us-- tons of powder and hardly anyone on the mountain. However, this being the first time that I had skied this year, I was feeling a bit tentative. Especially skiing in such deep snow, where I could quickly found my skis to be under a half foot of snow, and despite skiing for 20 years now, I have never really been in conditions like this.

Maria is a great skier, however, and gave me a quick lesson in powder snow, and we were off. What a day we had! Despite how much my legs burned to make these impossible turns in the powder and how cold it was, it ended up being The snow as amazing, and the above photo was snapped of me as we made our way down one particularly difficult and powder-laden run as the snow pelted us. The visibility was poor, needless to say. I didn't really think that I would be able to do such runs, but it turned out to be really fun. When she skis with her her dad and brother in such conditions, they call themselves the 'powder-hounds' and I am now an honorary member.

Had we left earlier in the morning, it wouldn't have turned out like that. The weekend was quite a bonding one for us, and I'm glad we said 'what the hell'.

Costa Rica, Cows & Cemeteries

2006-04-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

Over C's Spring Break, we made a trek to Costa Rica. This had been a country that had been on my list to see for over 5 years, and it really turned out to be the trip I had always hoped it would be. We saw some amazing sites like the Arenal Volcano-- we got to hike around the base of it, and then when the sun set, see lava flow down the side. We saw the hot springs of Tabacon, where people frolic in the natural heated water in a so beautiful-it-almost-seems-like- Disneyworld-setting except that volcano towering above us was real. We hiked through the Monteverde Cloud Forest, saw monkeys frolic above us, and saw the quetzal, an indigenous bird that our guide was thrilled to see so many of. And of course, we zip-lined-- climbing platforms that towered some 400+ foot above the trees, attaching ourselves to wires and sliding to and from. (yes, it was scary, but it was fantastic) The weather held out for most of the trip, the hotels were good, and the first-class flights were nice as well. (thanks again, Mom)

But as I mentioned on our recent trip to Mexico, as wonderful as all of those things were, something I couldn't have planned for was the highlight of the trip. We ended up traveling with John and Dana, a classmate of C's and his wife, who although were already very high on my list of awesome people, have climbed even higher after the trip. The itinerary worked out that we flew into San Jose together and then would drive together for the 4 hour journey up to Arenal, and then the next 4 hours to Monteverde. Traveling together is an excellent test of a relationship between two people, and even more so four people when you're in a country where no one has ever been, the roads are incredibly poor and good directions are hard to come by. And as it turns out, it will be the time spent with John and Dana on the roadtrips that I'll most likely remember when I look back on the trip.

To use the word 'road' on the way between Arenal and Monteverde is somewhat of a joke. We followed a partially paved road winds around Lake Arenal that then gives way to a mish mash of dirt and rocks for the last 70 mile push to Monteverde (a long way when you're only going 20 mph or so). We tried to make the best of it; we stopped in a town of a few homes and 1 "soda", the Costa Rican term for a cafe. No one at the restaurant spoke English and our Spanish was all pretty rusty. There was no menu and the cook just said 'bistec'. We rolled with it, ordered cuatro platas, and it turned out to be a fabulous meal.

As we pushed on, the drive became weary. We passed a lot of farms, with cows everywhere mindlessly grazing. When we passed a small church with a cemetery, I was reminded of a game my parents used to have my brothers play on road trips. The rules were simple: one person took each side of the road, and as fields went by filled with cows, the person who had that side of the road counted as many as they could see until they were out of sight. The one with more cows wins. Oh, the catch? All would be good unless you passed a cemetery on your side; once that happened, all of your cows would be dead and you'd have to start over from zero. I told this story to make fun of myself and the country surroundings that I grew up in and as we wound our way through the heart of Costa Rica, everyone chuckled. And about 2 minutes later when Dana saw some cows on her side, she started frantically counting. John was on the other side, and it was game on. For the next hour, we laughed excitedly as each new field approached, and time seemed to fly.

In the end, poor John ended up having two cemeteries on his side of the road, and Dana ended up winning the game handily. I hope I get to tell that story to their grandkids someday, and I'll probably still be laughing. If you would have told me going into the trip that all of those dusty hours in the car, counting cows, would have been a highlight, I wouldn't have believed it. But that's the beauty of travel, and really, life- no matter how hard you plan, you never quite know what's around the next bend.

But I'm pulling for more cows.

My Brush with Reality (TV)

2006-04-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

It was (finally) sunny here in San Francisco on Saturday and I decided to go for a fun and take Hobbes along with me. (I'm still reveling in the fact that I can go out my door and pass by SBC Park and the Bay Bridge within minutes) The street that SBC Park (where the San Francisco Giants play) is right behind our new apartment, and I'm headed towards the Park when I see the billboard that I've posted a copy of here. I chuckle to myself and think that a group of San Francisco liberals probably got together a bunch of money and decided to give the ol' finger to the biggest cheater in sports since, well, probably ever.

I love sports, but other than going to actually watch the games in nice parks like Camden Yards, and SBC Park, I haven't much cared about baseball since the players strike in 94. Despite my nonchalence about the sport, however, I still have a reverence for the records that the sport holds dear. The Red Sox come back two years ago was some of the most riveting TV ever, as was the Cubs collapse the year before. Sadly, I'm continually shocked at how more and more players are either saying they doped while in the sport or are getting caught and the league does nothing about it. So needless to say, despite being somewhat of a fan of Barry Bonds early in his career when he played for the Pirates, I don't think much of him now.

As I get closer to the billboard, a guy approaches me and asks me if I would mind answering some questions about it. I figured he was on the PR team for whoever created the billboard and they were looking for some good quotes. So I popped out my ear buds and before I knew it, was being filmed as the reporter asked me questions like 'Who do you think is behind this billboard' and and 'Do you think the Giants would be better off without Bonds?' I said that even though the Giants would probably not win as many games without him, they would be better off without him. I continued that it would be nice to see them get rid of him, but I didn't see it happening since pretty much everyone in baseball seems so crooked and out to protect their own. I finished with something along the lines like he was a cheater and didn't belong in the sport or record books.

After the interview was over, I said 'So, are you guys associated with the people who put this up?" The reporter quickly responded saying 'No, we actually don't know who is behind this at all. We work for ESPN." There was a pregnant pause and then it dawned on me as I said 'Are you the crew that is following Bonds around for that reality show, following his run towards the home run record?' and he said 'Yep'.

Feeling a bit red-faced, all I could stammer was 'Lucky you', grabbed Hobbes, and headed off. Will I be the next reality TV star? Doubtful. But I think it pays to know who is interviewing you before you spout off!

Learning is Fun (I Think)

2006-03-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

After skiing for 20 years, I decided that I wanted to learn to snowboard this year. I did this for a couple of reasons: although I loved to ski, I was always a bit curious about what all the rage about snowboarding was about; many of my friends had 'converted' from skiing and said they would never go back; the equipment is a whole lot more comfortable; and I thought, learning something new would be fun. Plus, Christian said he would do it too so I thought it would be something neat for us to do together.

Everyone who snowboarded warned me that the first few days would be spent pretty much exclusively on my a**. Over New Year's weekend, we took a group lesson and after the lesson was over, it took 45 minutes to get down one of the bunny slopes. But I guess because I had been so conditioned to expect so little, the day was mostly enjoyable. After being rained out the rest of the weekend, we were back on the mountain with our friends Ryan and Tom, who were both just learning as well. It snowed all day, so anytime I fell, it was like falling into a pillow. After a few trial runs on green dots (that's the easiest slopes) and not falling much, we were collectively emboldened to try some blue squares (intermediate). I really felt like I was catching on, and was hooked.

Well, 2 months went by, and for one reason or another, we didn't make it back up to Tahoe until this past weekend. I knew I'd be a bit rusty, but expected to pick right up where I left. Um, not quite. Getting off the lift became the terror it was on the first day, I couldn't go more than a minute or so without falling, and couldn't even get close to riding on my toes. (To non-snowboarders-- the idea is to go back and forth between riding on heels and toes) We decided to take another lesson and ended up with Bibi, an instructor whose accent was so thick, I could barely understand her. It didn't help that Christian picked up what she was teaching quickly and I just couldn't get it. Bibi kept barking empty praise at me that I finally had to tell her 'I need a minute' to get her away from me. After the lesson, we did one more run and I sorta felt like I sorta was getting it, but overall, the day was a wash. I left the mountain pretty disgusted. I was so frustrated that I wanted to turn in my snowboard and get skis for the next day-- I just wanted to know what the hell I was doing.

Alas, I didn't swap my board out for skis and it was back to the mountain on Sunday. After a first few couple of rough runs, something changed. I was able to be up for a bit longer and I was starting to actually get it. Of course, there was still a lot of falling-- a lot of falling. But I was getting the feel of what it's like to ride on your toes and get the "S" turns. Yes! So then what do we do? Follow our bonehead friend Peter up to a run called Siberia Express. It was a crazysteepnarrow run that we had no business being on. After a brief freak out and throwing some expletives at Christian (sorry, honey), we somehow got down the hill. But over the next few (less steep) runs, the feeling was there again. Awesome! We stopped for lunch and were back out on the mountain. After each time I fell, I could stay up a bit longer and carve longer. However, at this point, even though my brain was totally in the game, my body said no. After 2 long days of falling and falling and falling and twisting in ways I didn't know it could, I was done. As we walked off the slope, I felt good about the improvements I had made and can't wait to get back out there again.

I think our culture of immediate gratification has taught us to expect to master things right away. Any software package I open or website I go to, I feel like I should be able to get right away. I felt like after a day or two of boarding, I should be as good as I was at skiing. Well, it didn't work out quite like that, but I think I'm okay with that. It's an important lesson to remember - learning can be fun again.

A Part of Something Good

2006-03-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

When I started my job at Yahoo, which is about 30 miles south of San Francisco, I assumed there would be gay folks everywhere. I mean, the only thing gayer than working at an airline is living in San Francisco, right? Yahoo had the requisite domestic partner policy (that was great for us since Christian was in school) and this being the Bay Area, there was a very open environment. But I was surprised to find that there really just wasn't much of a presence of gays and lesbians at Yahoo!, or so it seemed. That is, until an acquaintance of mine named Brady, who went to Stanford with some of my other friends, started at Yahoo and decided to change all that.

Pretty much single-handedly, he created a GLBT (that's Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered) employee group called Yahoo! Pride that held a number of social events and what do you know, there were a lot more folks there than I thought! He began a number of initiatives to raise awareness of GLBTs across the company. He started a email list where people could communicate with each other (messages like 'Anyone up for a karoke night tonight' or group screenings of Brokeback Mountain were common). A wonderful achievement was last summer, not long after the group formed, during Pride month when a rainbow flag was hung in the cafeteria for the week. Having your workplace place something that is so commonly associated with a group you are part of is a tremendous feeling.

Additionally, he worked to educate how marketing to the GLBT audience could benefit the different businesses that are part of Yahoo. One of these such initiatives was to create a station in the Launch internet radio service that would cater to the gay audience, and he was looking for help to program it from members of the employee group. Dubbed 'Gay Club Mix', this was pretty much right up my alley. I poured through my catalog of songs and created a spreadsheet of 300+ songs and sent them in.

Well, the station went live last week and has been an instant success. It debuted in the top portion of audience members listening of all the stations on Launch and after listening myself for a few hours, I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Yes, the icons like Madonna and Cher are there, but there were also some less mega-popular songs that I had suggested made their way in as well (Mike Rizzo's mix of Becky Baeling's 'Getaway' was one of the such surprises.) So next time you forget your iPod at work, give this station a shot. (Note: a Yahoo! ID may be required) But beware-- you will be tapping your feet and dancing in your chair!

The Good Life

2006-03-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

Ahhh, the good life. It's something we all aspire to live. I'm pleased to report we just got back from the big birthday celebration for Christian in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and got to live that cherised good life for a few days...

Casa Nautilus, the home where we stayed, proved to exceed my (and I think everyone's!) expectations. It was about 7 miles south of the city, perched right on the side of a cliff overlooking The Arches, a stunning Vallara landscape icon. There was a staff of a house man, a cook and a maid who had margaritas and guacamole waiting for us when we arrived, cooked us breakfast every day, and dinner two of the nights we were there. Good life, indeed.

Beyond being waited on hand and foot at the house when we were there, we also had some amazing dinners. The first night out was recommended to us by good friends from C's school and it proved the perfect locale for us all to re-connect; the staff even sang Happy Birthday in Spanish to Christian after dinner. Sunday night we had dinner at an exclusive hotel with a terrace on the side of a hill overlooking the city. We had the deck all to ourselves and got to watch the sun slowly sink into the Pacific Ocean as we sipped cocktails The terrace only had 3 tables capped off with a mariachi band playing. The food was of the fresh out of the sea variety and even though I've had more expensive bottles of champagne before, I don't remember them tasting quite so good.

As shocking as it may be though, this wasn't the best meal experience we would have. Having a staff to serve you food is a great concept -- if you have arranged in advance for them to have the food and for them to be there to cook it for you. Unfortunately, we didn't plan ahead so well on one of the days, and what we thought was the legendary Hotel of the Black Iguana next to the house was certainly a hotel and legendary as promised, but it hasn't been open in years. Miles from anywhere closeby to get food and unable to reach cabs, I had to reach back into my 'Logistics Man' playbook and pull out a full house. We ended up wandering a little bit down the road on the search for something, anything, when a local who worked at one of the mega-houses like the one we were staying in happened to walk out front of the house. We accosted her and she recommeded Le Kliff, which was about 3 miles down the road. However, this being rural Mexico, the roads were quite narrow and there was no way to get a cab.... she recommended the bus and before I could say 'Lady, I don't even ride buses in my home country, much less one that is notorious for rickety old machinery..', one pulled up behind us, she flagged it down, and 50 pesos later, we were on our way. The bus was an old beat up school bus painted blue and the bus driver's four year old sun was sitting with his back to the dashboard collecting the fare. Oh, don't ask me why, but a teddy bear was taped to the area above the dashboard. But little did we know what would be there when we arrived-- simply one of the most stunning restaraunts I have ever had the pleasure of going to. Nestled on the side of the cliff, the picture to the right was taken right by our table and was but one of the many stunning ones I snapped while there. That's why you have to love when unplanned things happen when travelling-- we went from destitue on the side of a road to a decadant experience in about 5 minutes. Even when we weren't trying to lead the good life, it seemed to find us!

Iit probably doesn't matter where we would have gone, being with 7 of my best friends plus Christian is a formula for fun no matter what. But given the choice, I'd take the good life route anytime.

More Absurd than Absurd

2006-02-24T17:21:00.000-08:00

Not completely satisfied to horde marriage rights for themselves and themselves only, Social Conservatives are now moving to try and pass more laws outlawing gays from adopting, USA Today reports. In particularly oppressive states like Ohio, laws are actually making their way through the state houses, despite the numerous reports that having gay parents has little impact on a child's ability for success (or not) and that even most of the jerks who voted to outlaw gay marriage don't support it. Read this amusing retort from a Senator in Ohio I found on the Akron Bee site that helps to highlight the important theme here -- just because certain people think that a "way of life" is inherently bad (be it gay or Republican or, gasp, both), that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to have kids.... or get married or.... have a normal life.... or... whatever.

To: All Senate Members
From: Senator Robert Hagan
Re: Co-Sponsorship Request
Date: February 22, 2006
I intend to introduce legislation in the near future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents. Policymakers in Columbus have ignored this growing threat to our communities for far too long. My legislation is modeled after a bill recently introduced in the Ohio House by Rep. Ron Hood (R-Ashville via Carrollton), which would prohibit homosexual, bisexual and transgender people from adopting children. It is unclear at this point whether Rep. Hood supports my legislation, though I remain hopeful.
Credible research exists that strongly suggests that adopted children raised in Republican households, though significantly wealthier than their Democrat-raised counterparts, are more at risk for developing emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, an alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves, and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.
In addition, I have spoken to many adopted children raised in Republican households who have admitted that, ``Well, it's just plain boring most of the time.'' In fact, one adopted child raised in a fiercely partisan Republican household in suburban Cincinnati described his upbringing as ``18 years of hellish terror.'' ``A nightmare I haven't yet awoken from,'' said a 25-year-old Republican adoptee that chose to remain nameless.
If you are interested in co-sponsoring this legislation, please feel free to contact my office.

As ridiculous as it is to consider, I wish a few of them could read this and see the ridiculousness they continue to raise through their efforts to keep things to themselves that they don't own. To my dear family members/readers who don't think the current adminstration's support of these people effects anyone, here's another example of efforts to institutionalize homophobia-- that is, the ability to lawfully discriminate against me and people like me. When will it end?

We Live Here!

2006-02-17T19:28:00.000-08:00

Christian and I talked for many years about living in San Francisco. We even had a name for it-- 'The West Coast Plan'. We would have fun during our 20s, and then by the time I turned 30 (which seemed sooooo far away when we hatched the plan), we would really sit down and figure out a) if/how we would start a family and b) try and determine where we would settle, ie, California. Hence, the name of the plan.

So we had a great time in our 20s and I never really thought we would live in California anyway. But then Christian got into Stanford and I got my job at Yahoo! within a month of each other, and we suddenly found ourselves living here on the west coast. Many times since then, whenever we experience something very California-- say, looking out over Lake Tahoe or a week of 75 degree temperatures in February, we would turn to each other and say 'We live here!' There's always a sense of amazement that we're both here, actually living the life we talked about for so long.

But now it gets better, because we actually live in San Francisco, not a suburb. I was walking Hobbes tonight up on top of Potrero Hill (our neighborhood) and came across a view like the one in the picture, as the sun was setting. The city sat there in all her glory, the Bay Bridge lit up and the sun setting behind the Golden Gate. It was a stunning view, and it really hit me-- 'we live here!'

So we only have an apartment, we're still a bit away from seriously considering kids, and Christian hasn't even graudated or started his job yet. But standing there on the top of the hill, overlooking my new home city, I couldn't help but feel the West Coast plan is coming into place.

I trust that will be the first of many more wonderful San Francisco memories to come.

"Going to the Chapel... And We're Gonna Get DP'd..."

2006-02-08T19:35:00.003-08:00

Well, not really, but Christian and I did finally fill out the forms to be domestic partners here in California and send them away for official recognition. (For those of you who don't follow this closely, Mass. is the one state we can get married in but they don't marry out-of-staters due to a law from the early 1900s that tried to discourage inter-racial marriages (!) while VT and CT call them civil unions, and CA domestic partnerships that grant most of the in-state rights of married couples such as estate rights and hospital visitation)

It was just as I had imagined my government would recognize my relationship someday.... on a quick break from work.... squeezing into an cube of an administrative assistant at Yahoo who is also a Notary Public.... Christian wearing a Stanford sweatshirt and flip-flops and me in my polo shirt and jeans..... and when I heard the forceful stamp of the notary's stamp against the printed-from-the-internet form, I really felt that my government was doing right by me.

Uh, not quite. I'm not one to kick a gift horse in the mouth and all, but even my most optimistic description of the transaction today would equate the process to applying for a driver's license. Christian and I have been together 8 wonderful years now - and one commitment ceremony (in Washington, DC), one civil union (in Vermont), one near-marriage (in San Francisco during those glorious few days of Valentine's Day 2004 when Mayor Newsome opened up City Hall) and now a domestic partnership later, I'm left to wonder what the big deal is about just calling it a marriage and being done with it already.

In fact, the euphoria that we felt when we got to be part of those historic days in San Francisco led us to say 'Look, we're not doing this again until it's 100% legit, recognized in the municipality we live in, and we are married. Period.' But here we go again, drawn like moths to the flame of any governmental recognition. So why keep doing it? Well, it's important to stand up and be counted, I think. Call it civil union, domestic partnership, whatever, if someone is counting, I think that Christian and I should be part of it. To let people know that there are people that think, even though its pretty much marriage in everything but name to the state of California, that even those rights conferred are still important. To let people know that these increments of steps are a good thing, even if its still not enough.

Nearly 5 years out from our big event, I can truly appreciate the gravity standing in front of your friends and family and committing your love, carries-- what most people called getting married. Back then, we struggled with what to call it; some members of my family had issues with the 'wedding' word. This being 2001, before gay marriage was even a term here in the US, we called it a commitment ceremony. It was a wonderful event, hands down the best day of my life. But in hindsight, it was a wedding, and we got married, government be damned. And we should have called it that. If I asked any of my married friends/readers 'Would you rather have a civil union, domestic partnership or a marriage..?', what would they say? Separate is not equal, period.

All that said, this is still a milestone in our relationship, and one worth celebrating and noting. I'm so lucky that I get to be domestic partnered/civil unioned/married/sharing my life/whatever you call it with someone as kind, loving and generous as Christian. The labels we have or don't have or have full access to does nothing to dimish that, but I still look forward to the day we get to add a wedding certificate to our ever-growing collection of documents.

Anti-Rockwell

2006-02-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

I just came across this delightfully subversive photo portfolio on vanityfair.com. Dubbed 'Anti-Rockwell', photographer Erwin Olaf takes the familiar settings we've seen from various rooms with a character or two, and spins them on their head. My favorites are 'The Bedroom' (is he getting into bed? What is he thinking about?), 'The Hallway (what are these two people up to?), and pictured here, 'The Ice Cream Parlor'.

Enjoy the photos and wonder away if this is the antithesis of Rockwell or what else could be.....

Super Memories

2006-02-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

It's Super Bowl time and my team is IN-- Go Steelers! I like pretty much all sports, but the NFL has a special place in my heart. My dad took me to see a Baltimore Colts game in 1983 when I was nine or so, and I've been hooked ever since. I collected all of the helmets out of those 25-cent machines at the grocery stores, had an NFL lunchbox and would keep track of the standings throughout the season. Since I was a swimmer, I decided that the Dolphins would be my favorite team, and it was a good choice, as Dan Marino was just beginning his career as I began to follow the game. However, I also became particularly fond of the bad teams of the era, part of my always-root-for-the-underdog mentality-- some teams that have since become a whole lot better (Seattle and Tampa Bay) and others that are still among the bottom feeders (New Orleans and Arizona).

Every game matters in the NFL and despite the Patriots' recent run, parity runs rampant in the league. No one would have predicted a Pittsburgh/Seattle Super Bowl this year and that's one of the things I love about the game. With the NFL, there are no endless string of meaningless games (hello baseball!), no disproportiante level of oversized egos that ruin the game (NBA) and a sport that more than just a few other people in the country follow (NHL). Years later when I went to school in Pittsburgh, I adopted the Steelers as my favorite team, as they continue to be. I've been to games in Pittsbugh, Washington, Baltimore, Buffalo, Tampa, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle. I'd like to go to every stadium in the country, but Christian asked if we could skip Kansas City and I said ok. Yes, I've been an NFL fan all of my life, something that has been made a bit more challenging since I have discovered that I'm gay, but my love with the game continues.

So as we roll into the Super Bowl weekend, I thought I'd share some of my favorite Super Bowl memories:

Super Bowl XX - After they dispatched of my Dolphins and became the first wild card team to win all road games to go to the Super Bowl, I really wanted the 85 Patriots to give the Bears a run for their money. As I mentioned before, I always seem to root for the underdog. Probably because of their overwhelming popularity, I was pretty tired of Jim McMachon, the Fridge, etc etc. and their Super Bowl Shuffle. Final score? Chicago 46, New England 10. No one said rooting for the underdog was easy.

Super Bowl XXV - Say 'wide right' to any sports fan and he will immediately think of this game, where Bills kicker Scott Norwood just missed a kick at the end of the game to win it for Buffalo. This was my junior year in high school, and my whole group congregated in the basement of my friend Jason's parents house. There were probably 20 or so of us crowded to watch the game and as Norwood's kick went up and just missed, we were all jumping up and down in excitement. However, there wasn't much room to do that and one of my friends ended up putting a hole in the ceiling with his head. And Norwood thought he was in pain!

Super Bowl XXX- My senior year of college in Pittsburgh and the Steelers were finally back in the Super Bowl to win 'one for the thumb', or a 5th championship since the 4 they notched in the 70s. Living in Pittsburgh was INSANE at the time-- you couldn't go anywhere without seeing black and gold or hearing people talking about it. I remember being at the grocery store when the Steelers fight song came on the music system and pretty much everyone in the store was singing right along. My roommate and I had a gang over to watch the game and it was very exciting. Alas, due to a poor special teams outing and a few interceptions, the Steelers were never much in it. Already down at halftime, the group at the house was looking for something to give them a sign of hope. And there it was- in the form of Diana Ross, the halftime performer. As Ms Ross sang her song, my friend Jen Kelly suddenly cried--'There it is... she's wearing gold............ and she's black!" Priceless.

Super Bowl XXXIV- So I had come out of the closet and suddenly found myself surronded by people who didn't know the first thing about football. I decided to throw a party we dubbed 'Super Butch' and try to get my friends excited about the game. I had to break it down to the point of explaining what a first and ten meant and that a field goal was three points as opposed to a touchdown being six points with an extra point being one. The game ended up having one of the most breathtaking finishes in history--St Louis stopped Tennesee a yard and a half shy of a tieing touchdown on the last play of the game-- but the excitement level just wasn't the same when watching the game with a group of people for whom it was the same as watching a foreign movie with no subtitles. A few weeks later, one of those friends would invite me to a party to watch the Oscars and I couldn't imagine why people would get together to watch that. Much like I'm sure they thought about getting together to watch a football game.

I'm hoping that Super Bowl XL will be added to this list when the Steelers finally get that one for the thumb. So till Super Sunday, GO STEELERS!

If You're Going to San Francisco....

2006-01-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

We're moving! After countless drives to and from the city from Palo Alto, we found an apartment and are moving in the middle of next month. We are both very excited to be in the heading back to city life-- as lovely as PA has been, we just never quite fit in with all of the strollers and Volvo station wagons in our neighborhood.

A brief history lesson of Ben and Christian-lore: we met in 1998 during C's senior year at Georgetown, he had already accepted a job in San Francisco starting in September. Not that it mattered much; we fell in love anyway. But he moved and began another love affair of sorts; this one with the city of San Francisco. He decided in late 99 to move back to DC to see if things would work out with us, and thank goodness, they did. However, he always wanted to get back to San Francisco. Over the next years and many visits to the city, he convinced me that it would be pretty exciting to move to SF as well. So when he got into Stanford, it was great, except we had to live 30 mi. south of San Francisco in Palo Alto, not the city! Yikes...

So having lived in the hood during our years in DC and now having lived almost 2 years in the 'Burbs, the following has become even more clear in my head:

People who live in the suburbs always say it isn't bad to drive to the city when they come in. They're lying. It sucks. Especially the driving back part.
The grocery stores in the suburbs are a lot bigger and better stocked. Anyone who lives in Dupont Circle is well versed in the 'Soviet Safeway', that would often be totally out of milk, eggs, etc. and then force you to stand in lines that could take 15 minutes to get through. The Safeway in Palo Alto is an entire city block that has enough food to feed a small country for a month. With parking.
People who live in the city will always think they are superior to those who don't. There's a certain street cred that comes with putting up with all the sacrifices required to live in the city that creates this air. And for the most part, they're right.
The suburbs are safer. Two of my friends in the city have had their cars broken into and a thief chased away from breaking into their house (see aforementioned street cred). Conversely, Christian and I didn't lock our door here in Palo Alto for months on end until I finally recently insisted that we do-- you know, just because.
City people don't really understand why people who do live in the suburbs. Countless times when I've met people in San Francisco over the past two years have simply asked 'Why?' when I said we live in Palo Alto. Despite the argument of Christian being at school in Stanford, me working close by, the weather, etc., most of the would just nod at me with a vague sense of recognition, much in the same way a child listens to their parents talk about how much harder they had it when they were younger.
Strangely enough, stuff you need is closer by when you live in the suburbs. The city has all of the cool boutiques and the fabulous place for brunch, but as much as city people may not like to admit it, everyone has to get to Target and the like. Fact is, they and other frequent shopping needs are just closer to the suburban folks.

Despite all of the niceties of the suburbs, there are many more reasons we can't wait to get back to the city side of the equation. But I think the largest one, and the one that every city person will always have, is the sense of adventure city life entails. Suburban life has a comforting sameness, but its just not as exciting. City life has an energy, a verve, a sense of wonder the suburbs, even one as delightful as Palo Alto, can't match.

So on we go, to finally live the life we've been looking forward to for 7+ years, in San Francisco.

I Knew It All Along...

2006-01-26T16:47:00.000-08:00

I just got done reading this book called 'Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Pop Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter'. Its written by an acclaimed scientific writer named Steven Johnson takes the accepted conventional wisdom that things in pop culture like video games, reality shows and the Web are bad for us and completely turns it on its head. In his last book, Johnson monitored his own brain waves and reported about how to better harness them, so no worries that this would be a piece of US Weekly fluff.

His argument centers around what he calls 'The Sleeper Curve', which says that all of the things that pop culture throws at us creates a much higher cognitive load and therefore, creates the ability to think, create, and solve at a higher level. He uses a number of examples and makes a compellingly provocative case that people maybe shouldn't worry so much about the content of what people (read: children) are consuming, but what they are doing with it and how it informs critical thinking.

Two examples he uses:

People constantly bemoan video games and how they are no good for kids. But Johnson digs a little deeper and reveals how much thinking really goes into these games, which often take more than 40 hours to solve. He draws on the most popular video game of all time (one, I admit, I never much got into), The Sims: players must probe the virtual world, form hypothesis about what something might mean, reprobe with that hypothesis in mind and then learn if it worked or not. While kids don't necessarily think of it that way, repeating this process over and over again to get to the ultimate goal of the game is a lesson well learned. Compared to Pong or Ms. Pac-Man (which, I must admit, I still enjoy from time to time), which teach little more than pattern recognition, the Sleeper Curve shows itself.
He compares TV shows of a generation ago to now. He takes highbrow shows such as 24 and compares it to Dragnet. As anyone who watches 24 knows, it takes all of your attention to follow along and they still find ways to completely shock you with the twists and turns of the plots. He compares this to Dragnet, which while an extremely popular show, really only had one thread that needed to be followed. Or even more recently, Dallas-- which although it had multiple storylines, the writers and directors used obvious clues in the scripts and staging to allow a viewer who wasn't paying such close attention to follow along. On the other end of the TV food-chain, he compares the dreaded reality shows like Survivor to The Love Boat. No one would characterize either show as high-brow entertainment, but even the casual viewer of Survivor would agree the storylines require a deep and thorough understanding of how the characters interact with each other and the fundamental fallacies of human nature to really follow along. As much as we loved the crew of the Love Boat, there was never much guessing about the roles they each played and what the outcome of the show would be.

There are many more examples in this quick 200-page read and I recommend it for any pop culture observer or, honestly, parents (who have the time to read!) Its refreshing to see such a solid argument against what most people commonly accept to be true.

So there-- pop culture is good for you. Us Weekly readers of the world, rejoice!

** Read a delightfully detailed review of the book by Malcolm Gladwell, of 'Tipping Point' and 'Blink' fame

To the Nth Degree

2006-01-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

Every now and then a band comes along that makes you stop. And. Say. Oh Yeah....

This edition's version of that band is called Morningwood (get it?). Despite the sophomoric name for the band, their sound is all out fun rock n' roll, a nice break to my ear from the house music I'm usually so obsessed with. The sound calls to mind the latest craze of danceable rock a la Franz Ferdinand and the Killers, but the lead singer here is a woman who works it out. Their recently-released eponymous album is a kick in the pants from the start to finish, esp 'Babysitter' (inc. the lyric 'don't you need someone to tuck you in....your momma shouldn't let me babysit....) and 'New York Girls' (n-n-n-n-New York Girls... you know you're hot... a-a-a-a-attitude.... and that's what makes you rock!)

But the best song by far is called 'Nth Degree' and the video is even better. The song is a groovy combination of rock and disco (Smashing Pumpkins' '1979' had to be an influence here) that is fun in itself. The video starts with a record rack and as the person pulls each album cover out, its a walk through the history of music over the past 30 years. Each vignette has the members of the band in some typical video frame of the decade. Pissed off punk of the late 70s? Check. Aerobics of the early 80s? Check. Heavy metal concert videos of the late 80s? Check. Rap videos of the 90s? Check check check. They are all here, with many others and its result is deliriously genius. Watch it here and pay attention to the different ways 'Morningwood' is spelled out on the various albums.

Is it music that will be remembered 20 years from now? Probably not, but its still fun. Its this type of combining the best of different elements to make a new one (read Matt's entry on The Gorillaz, another hybrid band that is mega-popular right now) that's also happening all over the Web as well, known as 'Web 2.0'. As long as it produces results like this, may such innovation continue to prosper.

Brokeback Mountain : The Good, The Bad, and The Hot

2006-01-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

I finally got to see 'Brokeback Mountain' right before New Year's Eve. I was pleased to see the movie held up to all of the reviews' glowing praise through my eyes. The film captured the gay experience like no other so far and will hopefully become the hit it deserves to as it opens up wider this month. I wanted to throw in a few comments, without revealing any major plot points for those who haven't seen it yet.

The good:

Honesty: The movie does not flinch from telling the truth, whether it be to the two men's genuine and endearing love for each other, or the ill effect their dishonesty with their wives and families has on everyone involved. If more of the people who are carping about the film's pushing of the 'gay agenda' would actually see it, much of that furor would die down. There's no romanticism of homosexuality here, and the movie is better for it.
Parents' Effect: The flashback scene where Ledger's dad takes him to see what happened to the local farmer who lived with another man is haunting in its own context. But what gay person didn't sit there and reflect on the numerous times as pre-adolescents, before any semblance of sexuality was showing, that we all were told or shown that quite simply, gay=bad? The gay jokes.... the comments about AIDS..... the lack of any visibility into any type of positive gay images.... so years later when those feelings began to manifest themselves, they needed to be quickly and quietly buried. Haunting stuff.
Gay-Straight Relationships: In a refreshing turn, the movie took time to show how a gay man and straight woman can start a relationship and build something from that. Many of my gay friends have said they've known from day one they were gay, but it wasn't that obvious for me. I dated my share of women through college and had genuine feelings for them, which I saw on screen for the first time.
The acting: This is the movie that should define Heath Ledger's career. He took what in many actor's hands could have been a mean-spirited, self-loathing cretin and made him a tortured soul who every gay man, or anyone who has ever had something be so right yet so wrong, will identify with in some way or another.

The bad (or not-as-good, anyway...)

Pace: The movie is sloooooow. The first hour of the movie is very lush in its scenery and its long drawn out build up to Jake and Heath's first encounter. Things start moving faster towards the middle and completion of the film, and then were almost too fast for me. The scene where Jake's character's story is concluded was too fast and ambiguous. Overall, I would have preferred the pace to be evened out a bit.
Sense of time: The story is told over 20+ years, but beyond Anne Hathaway's sometimes amusing wigs (read a funny blog entry charting America's history through said wigs), it was hard to get a real sense of time passing. Obviously the same actors had to play the parts across the expanse of years, but I felt a bit better job could have been done to demonstrate it.

The hot:

Come on, Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger make out! What else do you need to know?? But seriously, the release of pent up emotions and fumbling nature of their first encounter is amazingly true.

Overall, its a brilliant film. The best part about it for me is that it makes the viewer think and for many straight people in the audience, see a part of the gay experience they would have not otherwise seen. I left the movie satisfied, but the more I reflect on it and discuss it with others, the more it effects me. To me, that's what makes a powerful piece of media-- when people continue to discuss the good and bad long after its been produced.

Well, and lord knows all of us guys will be talking about the hot for sometime as well.

Re-Connection

2006-01-04T21:39:00.000-08:00

Life has an interesting way of never turning out quite like you expect it to. I had my plans for the holidays all set-- spending a week with the family in Hanover, PA (nice, but not that exciting) and then heading up to Tahoe to join the rest of our ski house for a long weekend full of fabulous skiing over the New Years Eve weekend. And although Tahoe ended up being really fun (despite spending NYE by candlelight, as the power was out due to flooding), the real joy came from spending the week at home.

Not being home for Thanksgiving led me to book an entire week to visit for Christmas. Almost immediately after I booked my flight, I thought 'What did I just do? Christian is going to be in Asia with his Stanford friends, and I'm going to friggin' Pennsylvania? For a week!??? What am I thinking??'

Thank goodness I did. Here are some highlights from the trip, almost direct from a Garrison Keillor novel:

I have a huge family, and had lots of time to spend, so I made the most of it. I had 2 days of Christmas shopping and getting caught up on family gossip with Mom (we'll make the Famous Hot Wiener next time!). I got to see my god-daughter's holiday pageant and marvel at the expanse of cultures she is being exposed to-- her class is like the United Colors of Benetton. I had a nearly 3 hour lunch with my Dad and Stepmom and spent a wonderful day with my crazy Baker family, where a family tradition was continued by giving me a rubber chicken (long story). I got to visit with my favorite aunt at her house (my parents now live right next door to her) for awhile and talk about religion and Christian and I having a family, things I never imagined we'd discuss. I had dinner with my sister and her family at her house, talking about all of the kids' days, and then I hung out with the kids in their playroom. Spending the amount of time at home I did helped to reveal depths in my familial relationships I hadn't seen before.
I had a nice lunch with my brother. (at a Mexican restaraunt... in Hanover!!) I know that doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but it is. We were close years ago in college, but as we became adults, we took very different paths. You know, like I did the 'gay, big city, make my own way' thing and he did the 'straight, move home, work for Dad' thing. But at lunch and over the week, I felt a re-connection I hopet to nurture into 2006. We acted like clowns like we used to and we talked about life and family like we never did before. Like brothers are supposed to, I guess.
I went out for dinner and drinks with one of my best friends from high school who I had not seen in 7+ years. We went to the local pub, and proceeded to sit there for about 6 hours, catching each other up on our lives, loves, jobs, etc, etc. It was a great affirmation of an outstanding friendship that had been dormant for sometime but now seems as if its been but a day since we've seen each other. Of course, re-connecting with her was wonderful and I look forward to seeing her next time I go home, but a close second for the night was witnessing a bar-fight. I was exhilarated. They just don't do that kind of stuff in the Castro.
I got to spend a lot of time with my niece, who was visiting from Florida, and my nephews, who also live in my hometown. They're great kids and its important to me that Uncle Ben not just be 'the one who lived in California' when they look back on their childhoods.
I was visiting this cool little trinket store in downtown Hanover that a woman who used to work in my grandfather's dress store (and was my buddy when I was very young) owns. She wasn' t there, but I ended up buying a few things, and the women who rang me up said 'Are you Ben Baker?! I haven't seen you since you were thisbig!' Turns out she's the owner's sister and she shared a story with me about my grandfather (who has been dead for over 10 years) and cousin that I had never heard. So I'm standing in a store that I go into probably every 3 years talking to someone I have no memory of meeting and she is telling me a sweet anecdote about my family. Neato.

And so it goes. If I had been home for just two days, or an afternoon as I used to when I lived in Washington, it couldn't have happened like this. Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Maybe, but either way, I had this amazing re-connection with my hometown and family that I never expected.

So the highlight of my Christmas break came from the time with my family. Like I said, life has a way of not exactly turning out like you plan. And that's a good thing.

Madonna & Me

2005-11-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

Ahhh..... that collective sigh you hear from across the nation right now is that of gay men and Madonna fans (which, admittedly, are mostly the same crowd) after repeated listening of her new album, 'Confessions on a Dance Floor'. She leads it off with the stomping first single 'Hung Up' that infectiously samples ABBA, and keeps that tempo straight through 12 tracks. I hear influence from her entire catalogue here (Is that 'Burning Up' I hear in 'Sorry'? 'Papa Don't Preach' in 'Let It Will Be'? 'Secret' in 'Isaac'? Awesome!) and am very satisfied with the collection. (Well, mostly-- does she really feel like a dork when she's not in 'New York'?) Matt wrote earlier about 'daring' her to return to her provocative days with her next release and although there is nothing earth-shattering on it and I don't think the pope will be upset by anything in this release, its a welcome sign to see her delivering such a top-notch dance album.

I've loved her since hearing 'Holiday' on the radio on the way to the YMCA one afternoon (I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday but I remember exactly where I was in 1983 when I heard that track???) and thinking that the DJ said the singer's name was Macdonna. As with any gay man my age, her influence on my life has been pretty huge, so with that, I present my top 5 Madonna moments:

Material Girl video
Ahh, 1984-- Swim team and stickers took up most of my time, but I was also beginning to discover music. One of the best parts of going to visit my Dad every other weekend was that he had cable (we didn't get it at home until 1987!). Once we got to his house, I would bolt back to my room, turn on MTV, and be glued to the tube pretty much the whole time I was visiting. And there she was, in that iconic pink dress, singing about cold hard cash, and being carried around by a host of handsome men. Although I would be years off from understanding that those guys probably had something to do with my interest, this would remain my favorite video and song for many years to come.

Vouge
Vouge came out the summer of 1990 as we all turned 16 and my group of friends was discovering the level of freedom having cars afforded us. Whether it was going to the mall, seeing a movie or just hanging at a house, we pretty much had something to do every night that summer. One warm night, we were all packed in my car (aka "the Party Max") on the way to a carnival and stuck in traffic, inching along to get a parking spot in the field next to the firehouse. I'll never forget blasting the song over and over with my friends Bethany and Tracy hanging out of my sunroof vouging, while the rest of us in the car laughed and danced along. Years later at Bethany's wedding, she would request this song, we'd all dance to it and laugh like we were 16 all over again.

Erotica Album
The fall of 1992 had me leaving the comforts of home for the 'big city' of Pittsburgh and college. One of my first days at school, I went out wondering around the city, admiring the tall buildings and verve of the city streets, and happened upon a large record store. This was a far cry from the small shop in the mall where I grew up and I was immediately engrossed-- a forerunner to the hours I now spend in Virgin Mega-Stores and on iTunes. I bought 'Erotica' that day and although it was mostly panned by critics, it quickly became my favorite release of hers to date, and accompanied me on many long drives back and forth between Pittsburgh and Hanover. The album had it all-- the sexy and frosty sounds of title track, 'Bye Bye Baby' and 'Words'; the twirling highs of 'Fever' and 'Deeper and Deeper'; the button-pushing of 'Where Life Begins' and of course, the soulful depths of 'Bad Girl' and 'Rain'. It reminds me of a big time in transition in my life and I think still stands as her most balanced album.

Ray of Light
How can you not love this song? Combined with the video, this was Madonna returning to her roots and showing us all how it's done. (Parallels could certainly be drawn with this and 'Confessions') But it's a little thing that endears this song to me. Remember the hip movements she makes in the video when she sings 'Earth shall be as one...'? When I first met Christian in the spring of 1998, this song was huge, and one night just a few days into our relationship, we were out at a club, the song came on, and we laughingly mimicked the move. It became an inside joke between us and ended up on the CD we gave out at our wedding because of the joke. So every time I hear the song, I think of being young, falling in love, and Christian. In other words, exactly what great music should do.

'Music' Remix
So she was popular again, and she kept the good times rolling in 2000 with the release of 'Music'. We were keeping the good times rolling as well, as we were knee deep in the days of experiencing what it meant to be young and gay in a big city. Nation was the club we hit most often, and it was of the warehouse mega-club variety, where anyone who was anyone was there pretty much every Saturday night, or so we thought. One of the two or three biggest remixers of the time, Hex Hector, did a mix of the song that played off the good time lyrics 'Music... makes the people... come together...' and had some serious peaks and valleys to the beats. Whatever DJ was playing the club always seemed to play this mix at the 'right time' to get the crowd in a frenzy and send the fun factor into the stratosphere. We still go out dancing from time to time and certainly still have our share of fun, but this mix reminds me of many of those crazyawesome nights when many of the best friendships that I still have today were being forged under that giant disco ball at Nation.

So I'll keep listening to 'Confessions' and reflect over the good times her music has brought me over the years. Where will the next significant Madonna-moment be for me? I don't know, but I'm just glad she's back to making the good times music she does so well.

Logistics, Pinor Noir and Such

2005-11-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me and Christian knows that he's the organizer and I'm.... not. We jokingly refer to me as 'the idea guy' who might say something crazy like 'We should go to Hawaii for a week', but then the next day, Christian will have multiple flight itineraries and hotel options to select from. Our wedding was a perfect illustration of this-- although I had a lot of grand ideas (it should be black-tie elegant.... we should have a martini bar..... we should have lots of color... and of course I don't want a seated buffet dinner......), if it hadn't been for all of the hours of work Christian put in, we probably would have had our commitment celebration on the back porch of our house in DC with catering from McDonald's.

From time to time, we'd have an argument about it or two, but my rationale was always something along the lines of 'but you LIKE to plan, and I don't, so doesn't it work in the end?' Details were never really my strength, and since someone else was so ready to take care of it, I just stepped back.

However, in a strange turn of events, or perhaps a bit of growing up on my part, I've taken over the role of 'Logistics Man', as I call it, of late, and I'm beginning to see what the fun of it all is. It started this summer when Christian went to New York for his internship and he told me he was frightened that they would shut off the electricity at the house because I would forget to pay the bill or they would foreclose the house because I would forget to pay the mortgage. But the summer passed without incident, including multiple travel plans I had to execute, and I was getting the hang of this stuff. But a big test came last weekend-- our best friends Phil and Ted were visiting from DC, Christian was totally socked in with school work, and Matt and Michael were going to be out of town, so who was left to make a plan for their visit? Especially for Phil, who effortlessly orchestrates rafting and ski trips for over 75 people?!!! Never fear, Logistics Man is here!

There are few things I like more than getting together good friends of mine who have never met before. It's something about the mixture of people who know me from different walks of my life and seeing what happens when they get blended together that really gives me a charge. And what better way to do that than to rent a limo and take a tour up to wine country?

Starting with the two of us and Phil and Ted, we asked Kevin and Juan to join, since they knew P&T from DC. Then to raise the interest factor just a bit more, we threw in our some our best-loved SF buds, Titus and Maria. I was pretty sure it was going to be fun, but you never know how these things will turn out-- will it be legendary fun or will there be a steely silence like at those family reunions when Uncle Larry tells the same joke he's been telling for 20+ years?

I'm happy to report all went well. We paid visit to three different wineries on our 6-hour tour and with the 'you can't sit in the same seat you did in the limo before' rule, a continual mixture of new and old friends sat next to each other. A flow of wine and fun, emotional, and silly stories filled the limo. As you can see from the picture, everyone ended up integrating nicely and it was really a great day for all involved.

As much fun as it all was, the continual 'thank you's' from people I love were even more sweet-- after all, without Logistics Man, we may well have ended up hanging out at the McDonald's all day! I'm getting that its not only the fact that you get to enjoy stuff you plan, you also get to see people you care about it enjoy and know that you helped make it happen.

I'm sure that once school settles down a bit for Christian, he will resume wanting to plan things, which will be great. But it's nice to know, if I need to, I can reach into the closet, dust off that "LM" cape, and feel confident to plan things as well.

Reason Number: Yahoo!

2005-10-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

Many of our friends know about a sweet little 'game' C & I play, called 'Reason Number'. The way it works is one of us says 'reason number' and the other than thinks of a reason why he loves the other, the idea being that there are SO MANY reasons why, there's always something new to say. Yes, it's sappy and all of that, but it works for us and is something we've been doing pretty much as long as we've been together. (Astute guests to our wedding would have seen it in our cleverly placed in the invitations)

However, as much as I love Christian, I feel the need to write about Yahoo!, where I work, and the multitude of reasons why I like being there. But it's way more than I originally thought after quitting my job and moving across country to start my job in less than a week last summer. Paying for us to move to a place like here in the Bay Area where we had wanted to live for quite awhile indebted me to the company from the first minute I started. Yes, there is no dress code, so I can wear the proverbial shorts (which I rarely do) and flip-flops (which I always do) each day to work. I get to work around some of mad talented designers, engineers and product managers that help create all of the cool stuff you see on the site, and be on the inside track of all the amazing things happening inside the company, playing with the products before they get launched. At a more basic level, coming from working at a bankrupt airline that kept cutting salaries and benefits, having basics like stable benefits and feeling confident that I will be rewarded for my efforts is nice. The free gym is pretty nice too, and I've been able to take advantage of that much more over the last 6 months. And all of that is, as expected, truly wonderful.

But it's the much smaller things that really get me. The company really tries to make life as good as possible for us Yahoos, as we're called. Things like every Tuesday, there is an RV that rolls up on to campus offers haircuts and on Wednesday, the same set-up for a dentist. I don't know about you, but those two items are some of the things I hate doing most, so being able to get up from my chair and be at the appointment 2 minutes later, have it be done and back in my chair 2 minutes after that is pretty darn nifty. There's a free soda fountain in each building and in the cafeteria- where they have both Coke and Pepsi, to please everyone. It seems not a month goes by where I don't come in and some random, cool tsatske is on my desk promoting an upcoming event. Tomorrow is 'Oktoberfest', and today we got a glass stein, so you can probably figure out what will be served. Awesome! But it was an event last week that really prompted me to write. As you can see in the picture, in effort to promote a partnership between Y! Photos and Target, "Bullseye", was brought on to campus. (Although a little secret-- his real name was Buddy!) But of course, its not enough for them just to have him there-- there was a line-up to receive an exquisitely-designed gift bag with a stuffed version of Bullseye in it, the chance to get your photo with him, and then the next day, the printed photo was available for pick-up. Holy cow, how do they even think of this stuff, much less do it??

This isn't to say life's a dream at Y!, because it's not. Just like anywhere else, there's office politics, late hours, and deadlines that come too soon. But unlike anywhere else, they bring the freaking Target dog on campus! And that's the latest reason number why I love being a Yahoo.

Emerald City Report

2005-09-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

C and I spent the past weekend in Seattle and here's a report:

The view from the top of the Space Needle is a lot better when it's clear. I was in Seattle a few years ago and it was cloudy, but I insisted on going to the top because damn it, I was in Seattle and wanted to do it. No surprise, I couldn't really see anything from the top. But we had great weather this time and saw some amazing views (but sadly, no Mt. Rainier).
It could be because we live in a place that hasn't seen rain since April, but there was greenery everywhere in Seattle! From all the different fir trees on the drive in, everything just felt so alive. I liked it.
We had some TREMENDOUS meals. From a random BBQ place we found for lunch and a cute place in Capitol Hill (the gay neighborhood in Seattle) we had for dinner, the service and food was all top-notch. But, if you're ever in Seattle, don't miss Dahlia Lounge, right downtown. It had great ambiance, terrific food and service, but the best was saved for last: it's a fancy place, but on the dessert menu was *made to order doughnuts*. We order them, and about 10 minutes later, the waiter comes out with a paper bag, shakes it up, rips it open and places six warm pastries with a side of strawberry jam and vanilla spread. I have one word: divine.
Not that I didn't know this before, but I don't like buses. Especially when we're the 7th of 8 stops. Living in enviro-friendly CA has helped me get over my general aversion to all modes of public transport, but buses are where I draw the line. If you're ever on vacation with me, please note.
Although it's over-run with tourists, Pikes Market is actually kinda neat. We got to see the people throw the fish back and forth and although kitschy, it was fun. Also saw some amazingly beautiful flowers that we wish we could find here-- see a photo of the dahlias.
The Amazon headquarters building is really cool looking. So is the Seattle Public Library.
We went to see the Seahawks (that's the NFL football team for my gay readers) play at Qwest Field, which has some stunning views of the city and of the 10 or so places I've seen NFL games at, is far and away the best. We got to see the far out Grambling St. band perform at halftime and the Seahawks ended up holding on for the victory, 21-18. Go Hawks!
It had been a really long time since Christian and I had a weekend where we were both exploring a new city for the first time, and weren't meeting friends or family on the trip, and it was awesome. From walking all over the city, shopping, all the great meals, hanging in our hotel room, shopping and lastly to the football game, it was all wonderful to be there and experience it all with him. After 7+ years, there's no one I'd rather spend my time with, no matter where I am.

Make Mine a Royale with Cheese

2005-09-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty addicted to music. I especially like electronic music that finds ways to twist the same ol' thump-a-thump into something unexpected, but have also been trying to dig more into rock and country as of late. Today I log-on to Y! Music Unlimited and am presented with a smorgasboard of recommended albums based from my ratings of other songs and albums I've listened to and was pleasantly surprised that of the 30 or so suggested, I hadn't heard of a good 20 of them. So how do I choose what to listen to? Nothing scientific-- if I like the name of the group, or the cover art, I go for it. (Once again, I must sing the praises of the online subscription-based music service-- any music fans out there, please do yourself a favor and get hooked up with one of them NOW!)

The recommendations included acts named M83, Super Furry Animals, Cosmic Gate, Supergrass, Elbow and Casting Crows-- who are these people? I dunno yet, but I'll be sure to report back. Presented with a plethora of groovy-sounding names, I settled on a group called Mint Royale, selected simply because I loved Samuel L Jackson's line from Pulp Fiction where he talks about what they call a Big Mac in Amsterdam-- a Royale with Cheese. Plus the cover art featured two space men-looking things on a pink background. Good enough.

You ever listen to an album for the first time and just can't believe how good it is? I've now listened to their latest album, 'See You in the Morning' 4 times since 4P this afternoon. They combine elements of house, funk, dancehall, and a bit of ethereal vocals into an intoxicating mix of sounds I can't get enough of. Imagine a more soulful Deep Dish. A less breathy Delerium. A sexier Dubtribe Sound System. Stir, and dig it.

Research turns up they are a pair of blokes from the UK (of course) who met at a party held by Jockey Slut magazine-- good things HAD to come from that. They mixed some songs in the late 90s and got picked up by notable DJs across the pond like Pete Tong and Boy George. This new album is their 3rd, and by my intense sampling of this one and brief listens of the other 2, the most balanced and mature. (Again, love that a subscription service enables this quick discovery and sampling)

These songs begged to be remixed and I found that the first single of this album, 'Wait for You' apparently already has few mixes out there. My favorite is track #9, the title track 'See You in the Morning'--I can only hope that will be the next single and find its way into capable remixer's hands. The song takes me to one of my more recent happy memories-- perched up on a hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Ocean with some of my best pals here in SF, and of course, I hadn't even heard it yet then! Don't you love it when music does that? I think that's one of the reasons I love music so much-- a simple song can take you back to a certain place or time in an instant. Like last night, the Cars 'Lets Go' comes on and I'm taken back to the drive to my senior prom singing the song out loud in my mom's car with my date and friends. I literally can see my date's (hideous) red dress moving as she happily danced in her seat to it and sang 'She got wonderful eyes... and a wrist and mouth...'. Or how our wedding song, Sister Hazel's 'Ceriline' can still make me cry like I did when it was the last song played that night. And so on--good stuff.

Just when I think there's no new sounds to find out there, here comes Mint Royale. Check 'em out... and go ahead, make it with cheese.

Playing a Good (Dirty) Game

2005-09-09T17:50:00.000-07:00

I recently read about this site-- KnowThyNeighbor.org, a deliciously devilish activist twist using the internet around the gay marriage debates. Being part of a happy, healthy relationship for 7+ years now that has included a commitment ceremony with 150 friends and family in 2001, getting a civil union in the basement of a town hall in Vermont in 2002, and (by total chance-- or not...) being in San Francisco last year for the Valentines Day weddings has made the gay marriage issue essential to me. As I hope most people know, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last year that denying gay people the ability to marry simply because of the sex of their selected spouse was unconstitutional, and the state shortly thereafter became the first state in the country to allow marriage for same-sex couples. (The California legislature also recently passed a bill allowing same-sex marriages, but our governor, given the ruin the rest of his administration is currently in, is too much of a 'girly-man' to sign.)

'We' (the same-sex marriage proponents) try to take the high road as much as possible. We try to talk about love and commitment, holding up all of the wonderful examples of lesbian couples who have been together for 50+ years, same-sex couples who have opened their homes to adopted children, and the other wonderful and varied family types that make up the community. We try to have rational discussions around why tax-paying American couples like Christian and I should be allowed to be recognized by our government in the same way any old straight couple is, and the 1000+ benefits marriage brings couples that we miss out on-- mundane things like tax filings, hospital visitation, Social Security, etc. We try to stress that it isn't about taking anyone's benefits away, but opening the opportunity to many additional couples who crave the social significance the institution has, and who would try to preserve its importance. And we stress this isn't about religion--churches can decide who they marry and who they don't. We say it's about fair and equal access to the same things most people take for granted-- what could be more American than that?

And all the while, 'they' (the same-sex marriage opponents) pull out as many outrageous and 'dirty' scare tactics as possible. They use imagery and words that conjure up old pedophilic stereotypes. Bible phrases are flung around about Soddom and Gomorrah and people hold protest posters saying catchy, if empty, statements like 'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'. They say things like we want to wreck the 2000+ years of ground the institution of marriage is based upon and that if we are allowed to get married, then why not allow people to marry their family members, someone who is already married, or, *gasp* their dogs? It's almost like the two sides are talking about two entirely different issues.

So that what's so great about this new site. Even though same-sex marriage has been legal for a year now and more than 6000+ same-sex couples have been married, a group of 'they' in MA want to roll back marriage rights, and to do that, they need to circulate around a petition gaining enough signatures to place it on the ballot next fall. So here's where the creativity comes in-- the petition is public record, so the organizers of knowthyneighbor.org have built a website that allows people to search and see who has signed the petition. Meaning, if friendly neighbor Linda who loves coming over for coffee, appreciates the gardening tips you give and always tells everyone how 'fabulous' her gay neighbors are has signed it, you'll be able to find out and say 'Linda, I thought we were friends, what's the deal?' and so on. It's genius!! In the best case scenario, it affords the opportunity for gay people across MA to engage in dialogue with these people and give them the chance to learn why marriage benefits are so important for the strengthening of families and how all of the strong rhetoric the right is selling is really beside the point. At worst, it embarrasses these people who are selfishly hoarding a benefit all people should have equal access to, and lets us know not to give Linda anymore of those gardening tips.

Is this is a bit of a dirty play? Perhaps, but I'm betting most people signing those petitions might think twice if they think everyone at the PTA might find out about it. And the site is not about ugly name-calling or lost friendships. There's a page that includes 'talking points' which gives a bunch of stats around why same-sex marriages are a good thing, to help people engage in healthy discussions. We can't be afraid to fight fire with fire. As more people see that all we want is the same rights and privileges others have, progress will continue. And if it takes veering just a bit off the high road every now and then to get there, so be it.

Let's Hear it for the Girls (Part 2)

2005-08-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

One of the wonders of keeping a blog is you never know who's going to read it and how they might respond. I got an email from one of my dearest friends from college who just so happens to be a woman and she said that her 14-year old stepdaughter told her that she thinks its 'cool' that she has gay friends AND that she and 'now they are on the hunt for that one boy in high school that has yet to "come out" so they can make him their fabulous friend....'

So this is amazing on a couple levels:
1) That a stepmother and daughter can say the word 'gay' out in the open without it being a big deal
2) That a 14 year old thinks its cool her stepmother has gay friends...
3) And she can tell her stepmother she is actively looking for a gay friend, already recognizing how special such a bond can be
4) That this discussion is happening in Pittsburgh, PA

So, a special 'holla!' to my favorite redhead for always being so wonderful for the 12+ years now we've known each other and for sharing this terrific story. It shows that even though some of us may not be on the front lines of the movement every day, living and loving openly can effect unmeasurable people- and finding out about every now and then is just icing on the cake. If this isn't progress, what is?

Let's Hear it for the Girls

2005-08-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

Much has been written about the bonds between gay men and straight women. You know, the intimate bonds that derive from a common understanding of what its like to put up with other men's crap, to live in a world that automatically puts you at an underdog status, and of course, the common love of shoes. Lord knows most of us gay guys wouldn't have had any friends in grade and high school without them and many of those girls wouldn't had fun college formal dates who complemented your outfit, liked to dance, and then strangely didn't want to sleep with you afterwards. Although I have had the pleasure of being friends with many wonderful women over the years, I have two stories of amazing women who have strongly influenced me-- one from years ago and one from much more recently.

My best friend from high school is Amy, and she and I instantly became best friends when we randomly sat next to each other at our freshman orientation, held just two days before the first day of 9th grade. As daunting as any freshmen experience is, I had the added pressure of just moving to a new town. Therefore, I was in a new school with new people and was still recovering from a sever neck injury in a car accident that had necessitated me re-learning how to walk and subsequently losing a lot of weight, making me that much more of an awkward 14-year old. (Oh yea, and I was gay in a small town in Pennsylvania) But that didn't matter to Amy, and after giggling our way through that orientation night, we quickly began 'the traditional phone call', talking on the phone for hours on end each night about things only 14 year olds can.

But the cruel reality of being the new kid on the block didn't take long to set in. The intense homophobia of the 14 year old boys started in a matter of days after school started, and before long, everyone started saying I was gay this, gay that... and as much as I wish I would have had the balls or the awareness to come out, that simply wasn't an option that time. (A posting for another time-- my mom finding me in my bedroom during this time sobbing and me telling her it was because everyone thought I was gay....) So do you know what Amy did for me? Despite the fact that there was no romantic inkling between us, we were spending a lot of time together both at and after school, and thus 'the scheme' (as we called it) was born. We would simply tell everyone that we were dating, thereby invalidating the gay rumors and getting the rumor mill to move on to its next target. And you know what? It worked like a charm. No one questioned that we were a couple, and for the most part, the gay rumors subsided.

Years later, she would be the first person I would tell out loud that I was gay, stand up for me in my wedding with Christian, and ask me to be the godfather to her daughter, Riley. It doesn't get any better than that.

Amy and I are still close, but life has certainly taken us in different directions. So that brings me to one of the nicest surprises of 2005 so far-- my best girlfriend here in SF, whose name is Diana. We met through work at Yahoo!, where in a 1-1 meeting we had to introduce ourselves, upon learning that I was gay, promptly told me she wanted a gay best friend so we could shopping together and I could decorate her apartment, etc etc.... As offensive as that may sound to some of you, it was said with a charm and innocence that resonated with me. Of course, I was like 'well, let's have lunch and see where it goes...', not ready to commit to making her over just yet. :-)

That was about 6 months ago, and since then, we've gone from work lunch buddies to happy hours after work to shopping partners on the weekend days to Friday night dinners with my friends to exploring the best SF nightlife has to offer, which has been tremendous. What has been even better than the increasing cross section of our social lives, though, has been the perspective she brings to my life and the great phone conversations we have about the stuff happening in our lives. I'm pretty lucky in that I don't really have much in life to complain about-- but of course, I still do. Tonight I was whining about missing Christian, this being the last week that he is gone before he finally comes home for good. And after making me chuckle at my own babiness, she says to me, 'Ben, instead of being upset about it, how about enjoying the feeling of desire? Knowing that you love him so much and can't wait for him to get back, how about reveling in that feeling, realizing its only temporary and appreciating the intense love that creates that feeling?'

Damn. That's pretty smart. And a way of thinking I really hadn't considered.

So she fits the cliches I had always heard of a best girlfriend to gay guys-- she's gorgeous, smart, funny, and (when prompted) has a great sense of style. But its those nuggets of wisdom that only a woman can bring, and alternatively, the perspective that I help bring to her, that has really made me appreciate her and look forward to the years of friendship that lay ahead.

So as much as I love boys, it's nice to know that there's still room for the ladies. Lets hear it for ya!

Skin is In...

2005-08-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

I like being in the know-- being up on the neatest, coolest stuff happening around. And what's better than sharing the cool stuff with other people? So here's a smattering of the things I'm into these days:

Toy: Yahoo! Music Unlimited. It took me forever to get around to do this, but for any music fans out there, please do yourself a favor and sign-up for one of the subscription-based music services. I've discovered more new music in the last month than I have in the last year, and its all becuase as soon as I hear about a band, I can pull up their whole album and listen to it-- without paying (well, of course, there is a small monthly fee, but Yahoo!'s is like $60 for the whole year!) It's nearly rendered my iPod obsolete. Yes, you don't own the music, but you can still download as you like, but now with full knowledge that you actually like the album. Seriously, it rocks and has helped me discover the below bands...

Listen: The Be Good Tanyas-- Beyond the trippy name, they are sort of a modern-day chick Crosby, Stills, & Nash. The music is full of acoustic guitars and nice harmonies that remind you alternative music doesn't necessarily have to be angry. Check out the album, Chinatown, to listen to at when you want to mellow out or for a quiet dinner party. Along similar lines, remember the first time you heard Dido and thought 'gee, here's a nice sound' before you heard all of those songs over and over and over again? Keren Ann's quiet vocals have similar haunting qualities, with a bit of French lyrics thrown in to make it even sexier. Her latest album, Nolita, is perfect for the next romantic dinner you have and is a nice departure from the yawners our other chanteuse favorites have put out lately that will leave your spouse/SO/trick wondering 'where did he find this cool music?'. Aquanote is another recent find. Their album, The Pearl, is a mellow electronic blend that reminds me of Chicane's Behind the Sun, one of my all-time favorite albums. Perfect for pool-side listening as we all soak up the last rays of summer.

SF Groove Scene: Bootie. This is a monthly mash-up party that we checked out this past weekend and it was a blast. The cocktails were flowing, the space was sufficiently dance-able while still maintaining an edge and the crowd was perfectly blended. (Cute gay guys? Check. Hip straight couples? Check. Freaky guy dressed in a white and black striped bodysuit with a mohawk almost as big as him? Check.) Nice. The crowd was into it and Smash-Up Derby, the world's 'only' mash-up band performed.

We heard songs as random as The Beatles v. Gary Newman (Baby You Can Drive My Car v. Cars), Madonna v. Kelis (Holiday v. Milkshake) on to Gwen Stefani v. Cameo (Hollaback Girl v. Word Up) and everything else you couldn't possibly imagine in between. Sweet! Not all of the songs worked great, but try finding a drip of this creativity next time you hear insert random circuit DJ name here. See http://www.bootiesf.com/ for more and see you there next month!

Wear: Modern Amusement. I'd seen this brand in few boutiques here and there over the past few years, but had never bought anything. The clothes are a nice collection of hip, modern lines without being D&G over the top. I picked up a pair of blue seersucker with color stripes earlier this summer and every time I wear them, at least 1 person asks me where I got them. In NYC a few weeks ago, I picked up a pair of brown striped slacks (at my new favorite store - Atrium in Soho-- it rocks!!) that are even better and will be great for fall. Expect to see their little crow logo popping up more and more-- which, of course, if it does too much, I'll promptly stop advocating it.

*Sigh*- that's the curse of sharing too much cool stuff, so that's it from my treasure chest for now. Enjoy.

R.I.P., TV Guide

2005-08-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if anyone read about this, or even cares, but TV Guide is under-going a radical change0ver. You can read about it at http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2005-07-26-tvguide-relaunch_x.htm, but basically what's happening is they are pretty much dumping the TV listings stuff and going the celebrity coverage route. Although it doesn't come out and say, it seems clear to me that the magazine's management is tired of all the grocery store moms picking up US Weekly and Star rather than their mag, and are throwing in the towel to join the celebrity coverage fest, figuring people can figure out their own damned TV listings.

Now don't get me wrong. I love the trashiness of the aforementioned titles and their numerous spin-offs. Try as I might to resist, I often find myself glued to the glossy pages full of the latest divorce rumors for Nick and Jessica; photos of Gwenyth and Apple stealing down a Manhattan street, the deliciously devilish fashion police in the backs of the magazines and such. Bonnie Fuller (the former editor of US and now publisher of Star, for those of you less-celebrity inclined readers) deserves nothing but accoldaes for creating an eminetly enjoyable and catty view for and of our celebrity obsessesed culture. And the growing roster of copycats proves its financial model-- the US version of OK!, which just launched here, apparently is paying Michael Jackson $2M Gs for his story.

But I can't help but shed a tear at the passing of TV Guide. As a young gay boy growing up in the middle of nowhere in PA, TV Guide was my only weekly insight into the wonderful world of Hollywood and the stars that made it up. I remember reading it each week, especially as the front part of the magazine, called 'The Grapevine', was beefed up over the passing years in celebrity-based coverage. Small bits would come out about stars' comings and goings in the shows, a couple of pictures would surface from awards shows, and I ate it up with a spoon. It was much more pure in its intentions-- not to create or react to rumors, but to simply report and perhaps add to my perceived glamour of what it was like to be a celebrity. With the rampant papparazzi and incessant lies created by the current crop of magazines, much of that glamour hardly seems worth it to me.

Again, I'm not knocking the current mags. I read them with naughty pleasure as much as the next guy. But when I see an icon like TV Guide passing from its current incarnation, I can't help but feel a bit wistful for the good ol days.

Good, I got that off my chest. Now, I need to get back to my US and see the summer's weight winners and losers, and oh!, the latest pictures of Linday Lohan shopping on Rodeo Drive, and.....

Bitten by the Big Apple... and Loving It

2005-08-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

New York City! The lights, the glitz, the glamour..... I just didn't think it was for me. I am in New York City, staying with Christian for the week and working from the offices here. Christian has found a great little apartment (and yes, its little, but not closet-small, like I feared it might be) that is right in the heart of Chelsea, so its a really good spot. I had spent a lot of time here over the years, esp when Christian's sister lived here, so we had a free place to stay and could fly here via US Airways Shuttle for free. I always enjoyed the visits, but was anxious to get back to Washington when we would leave. When I first got here last week, the energy that I usually feel when I come to NYC wasn't present, and I thought to myself, well, I guess I've finally become a good California boy.

But not so fast. After a fun few days filled with fabulous shopping (thanks for the cool new outfit CH!), cool bars (warning to those boys coming here-- sadly, xl is on its way out, but Secret is a groovy new place...), delicious cupcakes from a local bakery (Billy's Bakery at 9th and 21st RULES), Broadway shows (please do yourself a favor-- SEE 'Avenue Q' and SKIP 'Fiddler on a Roof'), Lazer Tag (dont ask), a run down the Hudson river, and most importantly, breatheable weather, I am hooked on the city. It's really exciting, actually, because when we hatched this plan for me to come stay with Christian for a week, I thought i would be a great way to try New York on for a week without the commitment of actually moving here. And who doesn't love commitment-free affairs?

So my affair with the city will continue. I can't imagine San Francisco will think I'm cheating.

Pride (In the Name of Love)

2005-07-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

I think pride is a pretty good word. Well, pride with a lower case 'p' anyway. Like many other things, the gays have sorta run that word into the ground. Don't get me wrong, this is not a dossier about the lost relevance of Pride, as I happen to think that they still serve a terrific purpose and unless you're in Washington, DC, are a lot fun. But when I'm encouraged to feel Pride for the Left-Handed Lesbian Bowlers of Marin County, I feel the purpose got lost somewhere.

No, I'm here to talk about good ol fashioned pride, or at least definition #2 as I found in dictionary.com-- 'Pleasure or satisfaction taken in an achievement, possession, or association'. It's sort of a funny thing- pride, that is. It's not something we're really supposed to feel about ourselves (for risk of being perceived as arrogant) and its a little strange to say about your friends (for fear of being perceived as superior). But nevertheless, this is a tale of pride I have taken in two of my best friends and the paths they have taken over the last months.

I'll start with my bestest of best friends, Matt. We've been best friends for many years now and have been through all kinds of ups and downs together-- he's a good cat. He's got a heart of gold, is wickedly funny, and has great taste in music. But he's a worrier-- you know, like he's always worried he didn't turn the oven off.

Last summer when Christian and I moved to the Bay Area and Matt kept telling me he would be moving here as well, I never let myself believe it-- I just didn't want to be dissapointed if it didn't work out. Needless to say, when he snagged himself a great job and landed out here in January, I was ecstatic. So he and his bf Michael get here, and before long, land themselves a fat pad in the Mission District and are totally set up for success. (Particularly after his studio in DC, a place I affectionately called 'the shitbox', this place is outright palacial) But that true sense of ease seemed to still elude him. He had troube adjusting to not having all of the friends in DC to hang out with, trying to get his new place all in order, and find a sense of home here. I just tried to continually tell him it was all good and that he should breathe, relax, and enjoy the goodness around him.

And you know what finally happened this week? I saw it-- Matt and Michael had me over for a dinner party on Wednesday and I got to watch him be busy preparing dinner in the kitchen, making sure our glasses of wine were full, and everything was just so. I saw a sense of felicity I'm not sure I've ever seen in him over the 6+ years we've been friends. The night was a total success-- dinner was great, their place looked awesome and I felt this shift in him, like he was finally there-- breathing, smiling, and just relishing life. He and I went out the next night to a club just a few blocks from his place, had an epic evening full of merriment, and you know, I don't think he ever once asked about the oven.

So if watching your best friend finally feel comfortable in his own skin isn't something to feel pride in, I don't know what is.

The other story has some similarities, but also many differences. It's about my dear friend Todd, another recent transplant from DC. Todd is far and away the most original and out right clever person I know. He radiates a light, a core of energy, that I have found irresistible ever since we met, also about 6 years ago. Like my friendship with Matt, we had been friends long enough to see lots of highs and lots of lows, but after we moved here to California last summer, I kept hearing more and more stories of today's mis-adventures- and not in a good way. He and I kept in touch, but always talked around what he was really experiencing. After a friend of ours suddenly passed away last winter, at the funeral, I decided I needed to reach out much more than I had. A simple but difficult question of 'Are you taking care of yourself, Todd?' led to much more detailed conversations of what was really happening and how to make it better. Before long, he joined the migration west to see what SF would hold for him. He took a temp job, found a place to live in the Castro, and with Bailey Beagle, his trusty sidekick, quietly slipped into town in February.

And what a transition it's been. He's found a terrific new job with a company that blends his unique blend of legal and communications prowess that looks like it could hold a lot of potential for him. When he speaks about the company, there's a sense of opportunity and confidence I haven't heard since he was working on the Gore campaign in 2000. But much beyond the career stuff, Todd, or at least the T-Todd I first fell in love with and always knew was there, is back in full force, coming more alive each day. In his short time here, he's amassed an amalgam of friends that represent the many colors of his personality, he's put his finger on the pulse of what's happening in San Francisco, and has filled his life with positive energy. He's been able to balance a sense of responsibility while still being able to take advantage of the good times this city offers-- from herbal hikes in the Presidio to volunteering with Stop AIDS and back around to the bizarre underbelly of SF drag shows, he's finding a center in life that just 6 months ago seemed miles away.

Again, if that's something I shouldn't feel pride about, I don't know what is.

So as the summer progresses and Pride festivals continue across the country, I say good for them. I'll leave the Transgendered Choir, the Queer Blind Fish Lovers and the Knitting Club for Leather Chub Midgets to their Pride floats and bask in the pride of seeing two of my oldest and dearest friends find the contentment they so rightfully deserve.

The Color Orange

2005-07-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what it is I like so much about the color orange, but I do know I have always liked it. You see, as a young (gay) boy, when I was at the age of deciding who my favorite NFL teams were (a dichotomy for which we'll discuss in another posting), I quickly decided on the Miami Dolphins (orange and aqua team colors) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had orange and white colors-- long before the days of Jon Gruden-- (settle down, Christian) and their current colors of platinum and burgandy. Now, one could easily say the gay thing had something to do with picking these somewhat flamboyount colors, but I've just always been drawn to the color. From the Tide branding to the big orange buttons on Blogger (and, ahem, the predominant color on usairways.com), I just dig the color. An old friend of mine from Washington, DC said that he read an article in GQ that said orange was sighted as the least common favorite color and being the somewhat counter-culturist I am, I always took that as a bage of honor.

Even my partner, Christian, has allowed orange to overtake our current house-- we have a large orange piece of art on the wall, an orange lamp, and and orange bowl on the table. (lest you think this sounds like orange overload, everyone who comes here likes the art and the lamp and bowl are univerally liked as well) I generally am drawn to orange t-shirts, jackets, and shoes-- you should see these Adidas sneakers I have, I think you can see them from the moon.

But as with everything else, there can be too much of a good thing. I have yet to see an orange car that I like (mid 70s Vettes nonwithstanding, which are so cheesy, orange almost adds to it). In fact, when I ordered my MINI last year, orange was an available color, but I passed and took the blue. And there's a lot of bad shades of orange out there-- neon, traffic cones, the Tennesee Volunteers, and many hair dye jobs come to mind.

So it's not an absolute obsession, but one worth noting anyway, and one that I thought would be an appropriate name for my blog. (BTW, as far as the domain goes, thecolororange was already taken, so i tacked on SF at the end but will refer to this blog as thecolororange, cool?)

And there you have it.