'Bred Crumbs
10.10.02
The inclusion of a young gay man and his conservative dad was not an incentive to watch the current edition of CBS' The Amazing Race; indeed, it's a demerit. But I just found out the two are from my old stomping grounds of Lexington, Ky. And more important: the dad manages the Lexington Ice Center, part of a family entertainment complex that also houses the biblical mini-golf course. (Warning: the link is Tripod-infested.)
I experienced this place once, but my group had time to play only one of the three Bible-themed courses. We went with the Old Testament course, complete with one hole built into a Noah's Ark and a "plague" of ceramic frogs sprinkled throughout the course. We never did get why one hole was shaped like a giant foot (with the tee in the heel and the cup in the big toe). The creation of man? Wandering in the desert (barefoot)? A Footprint in the Sand? It was unclear. Maybe we missed a sign.
This Amazing Race's Lexington ice-rink link triggered nostalgia for the Kentucky Thoroughblades, a hockey team that arrived in Lexington right before I moved to SF in late '96. Besides having one of the best sports team names ever*, the 'Blades** had a studly horse mascot, Lucky – who was born after this site's very own The 'Bred, thank you very much.
The team was moved to Cleveland in 2001. But Lexington just got another hockey franchise, also well named – the Lexington Men O' War. For those not familiar with the history of horse-based gambling venues, Man O' War was a racing legend, the Babe Ruth of the sport. Without the drinking, swearing, and hate.
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What is the term for when a TV series has already jumped the shark and is now confirming its determination to suck? Well, that's where Will & Grace is now. In just a handful of episodes beginning at the end of last season, it has turned a sharp corner from Must See to Must Avoid. Who could have predicted that someday the only part of NBC Thursday I'd want to watch would be the 8:30 show? (Then again, who could have predicted that NBC would ever air a show as good as Scrubs at 8:30 Thursday?)
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Wow, now I can get The New York Times on my computer – but with the inconvenient layout and intrusive mid-sentence continuations of the print version! I wonder if it also comes with an ink-smudge tool? (And be careful: don't accidentally put the Electronic Edition where the dog goes!)
I need to get me one of them there big silver serving trays. They seem so versatile and valuable to personal safety. First Vin Diesel surfs down a staircase on one; now the guy in The Transporter deflects small missiles with one. I hear they can also be used as a food delivery system.
10.06.02
After delightfully teasing us for a couple of weeks, San Francisco summer finally arrived in full force just in time for the Castro Street Fair today. The effect was that a newcomer would have sworn the city had passed a law forbidding men to wear shirts.
There are a couple of things that can slightly dim my enjoyment of even the best festival. One is the risk of my own clumsiness: if I look up, I'll bump into something; if I look down, I'll bump into someone. Another is when someone else tries to inflict his/her/its way of enjoying the proceedings directly onto you, which happened to Robbie twice today.
The first time, I heard him yelp suddenly and say, "What the hell?" He did this because someone had bitten him on the ass.
The culprit was an older/middle-aged man. His excuse was, "You told me to." What he meant was that the T-shirt Robbie happened to have on said BITE ME on the back. Anyone who has a grain of sense or is not desperate and pathetic would not for a moment take these words literally, but unfortunately we were dealing with this loser. We parted ways from him as quickly as possible; Robbie was much less bothered by the whole incident than I was.
Besides, did the shirt say BITE MY ASS? No. So what was chomp-man's justification for that?
Later, we were standing and resting near the Latin music stage after threading through the crowd for a while, enjoying the scenery, when suddenly some girl we didn't know was grabbing Robbie's hand and tugging on his arm. We responded in some puzzled, polite way that we didn't know who she was or what she was doing, and, indicating our cameras, she maddeningly perkily said, "You're photographers? Well, don't watch, participate! Come dance!" And she made another attempt at grabbing his arm and pulling him out into the street where others were dancing.
Robbie is not a dancer. This is perfectly OK. What is not perfectly OK is that annoying tendency of some outgoing people to assume that we would all be better off if we behaved exactly like them. Last time I was in New Orleans, there was one night I was exploring the bars of the gay end of Bourbon and two separate people told me to smile more and have fun. Thing was, I was having a right nice time, enjoying my drinks and the ambience. I just wasn't standing around grinning like an idiot as if I were auditioning to host Trading Spaces or something. Furthermore, I made new friends, wink wink, before the trip was over without pretending to be a toothpaste commercial.
Robbie pulled his arm away from the self-appointed joy enforcer, and we suddenly adopted the tactic of ignoring her, then walked away. By then I'm sure she'd set her fun-fascist sights on someone else. Maybe someone who was interested in being asked to dance by a female.
Despite these intrusions, the day was a fine one. And of course, the now omnipresent Cheerful Walking Penis was there. Lots of folks wanted their picture taken with him. Everyone loves the Cheerful Walking Penis. Even tiny lesbians love the Cheerful Walking Penis. I saw one high-five him.
You know that big $69 million California Super Lotto jackpot? Well, I won.
A dollar. For matching the Mega Number and nothing else. Still, I broke even for this draw.
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Minor site tweaks continue. Note the navigational links up top, which now all hew to one side of the page instead of sprawling and are sequenced a little more logically. This cosmetic change happened along with two more substantial alterations: (1) the correction of a mistake I just found – turns out that in my last substantial redesign, I accidentally stripped out the "Next Crumbs" links on archive pages; and (2) the partial return of the long-lost Crumbtents. This site index is now in a less comprehensive but more manageable format, linking the weekly archive pages and listing topic highlights of each. Right now, only 2002 is indexed; I'll work my way backward as time permits.
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