'Bred Crumbs

11:07 PM Clearly, this is a much anticipated movie. As I walked to get cash and dinner tonight, I went by the movie line and found it already backed up a whole block.

Harry Potter? Oh, no. This was at the Roxie.

The legendary San Francisco-based, women-owned and operated sex toy, book and video store, Good Vibrations, presents the premiere of Please Don't Stop: Lesbian Tips For Givin' and Gettin' It. This groundbreaking new video is the first sexually explicit educational video from Good Vibrations ever created for and by lesbians of color. Featuring an all-woman-of-color cast and crew, genuine female orgasms, and a spectacular female ejaculation scene!

Betcha won't see that in Harry Potter!

And that line of people was all "of color," right? Oh, no. All women? Again: oh, no no no.

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The point at which street cred becomes invisible to the naked eye: Ice-T on Hollywood Squares.

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Tonight on ER: the cranky lesbian nurse tells a staff member not to do something although the staff member is trying to save someone's life. The staff member defies her.

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CNN Headline News' Kris Osborn: dreamy.

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10:54 AM Things that amused me this morning:

-- A German shepherd filling the back seat of the Alfa Romeo in front of me.

-- The appearance on TV, once again, of CNN correspondent Matthew Chance. Matthew Chance. And he's British. Wolf Blitzer, eat your heart out.

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Footnote to yesterday's occasion: Driving home from work across the Bay Bridge, cursing traffic, I remembered how crossing the very same bridge five years earlier, finishing my move West, was exciting as hell.

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08:35 AM My tenure in San Francisco began five years ago today.

Dropping job and native land in hopes of finding a place in which I felt like I actually belonged, I timed my arrival to get here before my birthday, building in extra travel days in case I hit snow on my northern route. Instead, the worst weather I had was the sleet that dropped periodically as I left Kentucky. From Nebraska on, it was clear and 68 degrees.

The five-day solo trip in a big yellow truck with car in tow strikes me now as a dream -- a dream featuring a dreadful absence of decent radio stations and a long creepy Nevada segment in which I ran out of gas (a mile from a station) because the TripTik lied to me about a fuel location and I ended the exhausting day in Reno at a disturbing motor-lodge style Motel 6 where the light was left on for me only in the most technical sense.

The next day, a sunny Thursday, I rolled into The City.

I didn't expect San Francisco to magically transform my fate. I just hoped to escape the rut that was Kentucky and take advantage of a solid San Fracisco bedrock of great friends and an open-minded culture to build a better life.

That has happened more than I would have dared expect.

A lot has changed in five years -- career path, skill sets, neighborhood, dating status, hair color. My confidence has grown and my circle of friends has expanded in unexpected directions. Yes, there's been trauma (some self-created) along with the triumphs, but the good things that have happened here are numerous, and well beyond the bounds of my former Kentucky imagination.

Recently, trying to sort out the world since a certain day in September, I've taken into consideration that I moved myself from the unremarkable upper-South riverside townlet of my birth to a place that's a more tempting target for the world's mayhem-makers. But so be it, because even if my welfare is a tad more at risk here (because, hey, let's not forget the earthquakes!), San Francisco has helped me make my life far more rich than anyplace else could have.

Here's to five more.

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12:06 AM On this rainy weekend (hello, "winter"), while Robbie and I waited a typically long time for the F line on Market, another man at the stop suddenly asked us:

"About how much does a dozen eggs cost around here?"

This is not the strangest thing that has happened to me on a rainy day at a San Francisco bus stop.

Sometime last year, I was leaving work downtown and going somewhere other than home, putting me at a less-traveled bus stop that I was usually at. There was only a young woman waiting with me there. We made a little small talk about what a crappy day it seemed to have been for everyone, but otherwise we kept quiet and bore the lingering drizzle. Suddenly, I felt pressure, weight, and warmth on top of my head, on the left side.

I turned my head to see a tall man standing there, facing my side, resting his chin on my head.

For reasons unknown, I was far more puzzled than scared. I just looked at him, my expression no doubt conveying, 'The hell? He stared back for a second or two. Then he turned and walked away.

There was nothing threatening about him. He was just some guy in the rain wagging an Old Navy bag. I suspect he thought I was someone he knew and was stricken by a paralyzing embarrassment when I turned and wasn't the person who would be OK with propping up his skull.

The woman at the stop expressed surprise and praise at how calm I handled it all. I can't really explain it, except that it had indeed been a wet, crappy workday. I think my prevailing emotion was, Oh, what now?

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We rented the DVD of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was more enjoyable than I expected, and does indeed look amazingly realistic a lot of the time. And a couple of the bonus features -- way-funny "outtakes" and a shot-for-shot homage to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" -- may be worth the purchase price.

The set also has a feature in which you get to re-edit a scene from the movie. The only other DVD I've seen with that is the most recent version of Die Hard. But why, in both cases, did the producers of these action-oriented, special-effects-driven flicks choose, for our supposed interactive amusement, a conference-room scene? What fun!

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A brief re-viewing of part of Trekkies reinvoked my fascination with Gabriel Koerner, the blond, mulleted 14-year-old who displays an amazing familiarity with, devotion to, and passive-aggressive obsession with the Trek universe. I, like many others who've seen this funny/scary documentary, wondered how Gabriel would turn out when he grew up, with a suspicion that little Gabriel would never get around to developing an interest in girls, if you see my meaning. (And why wouldn't one assume that? He didn't just agonize about uniform details, for Spock's sake; he was a 14-year-old who knew about topstitching.)

Research shows that Gabe's doing OK four years later. He's written at length about the traumatic backstory to his Trekkies appearance. He works for 3DO and helps create Star Wars trading cards. And he found a girlfriend. Well, he's still young.

Oh, but I kid the Trek fan. Good on ya, Gabriel.

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Yes, I do other things on weekends besides watch DVDs and Google-stalk D-level celebrities. I just don't write about them in public.

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