the king of all liars

up till now, the best one i'd heard was on a shuttle from the atlantic city airport where a fellow rider claimed to have built an automobile that ran on used vegetable oil. he'd taken it cross country once too, though he'd have to stop at mcdonalds ever couple hundred miles and ask the fry cook for a bottle of their used oil. apparently, that made the car leave a trail of french fry fragrance.

well that all changed at the 21st amendment this past evening. i met a friend for a beer before the giants game and found him conversing with an older gentleman. as i approached him, he excused himself to the bathroom, but not before introducing me to bobby. i asked if he was also headed to the giants game. he said no. and i believe that to be the last truthful statement he uttered.

now with my fleeting memory, i'll never be able to do justice to the whoppers he dropped, but here goes.

- professional craps gambler, or "whale" as he likes to call himself, who travels the world, but spends a lot of time in vegas, mostly in comped suites at the belaggio.
- bigtime sports bettor, i mean to the tune of 2k-3k per game. that is all 16 nfl games every week. but he never uses a book. being italian, you just bet person to person.
- godson of frank sinatra
- and my personal favorite, fucked playmates with whitey bulger, reputed boston mob boss

the gayest thing i've ever done

other than suck that biker's dude cock (just kidding). well it has to be shopping at the container store. and not just shopping, but examining the various opening mechanisms to garbage cans; comparing the aesthetics of an enamel paint versus stainless steel; wondering if an 8 gallon capacity would be enough, even for a single "man".

as i wandered through the 2(!) expansive floors of every goody ever conceived that could hold other goodies, i wondered, perhaps out loud, whether i was actually one of those dudes who gets married, has kids, and on their 42nd birthday finally gets the whole guys in uniforms thing.

and this suspicion only grew with each moment i weighed the merits of whether a dual-direction drip tray warranted an extra $20 for a dish rack. i determined it did. well it had to be -- the red sticker pasted onto each box said so. so i was relieved to see another man pushing a well-stocked shopping cart past my aisle; at least until he greeted his boyfriend (the top) in a voice i could only imagine on a man if a monkey had been trying to juice an alto tenor's balls.

so as i stood waiting to checkout, i resolved to watch some porn or use my hammer to do something as soon as i got home.

well just as soon as i set up the dish caddy.

the business model of outlets

everyone loves getting a deal. it makes you feel smart, as if you've somehow outsmarted the system such that your money is doing more for you than the next guy's money is doing for him.

the outlet mall depends on this sort of thinking. fancy brand names set up shops, take in the past season's (and sometimes many seasons before that) ugliest designs, reduce their markup by some impressive percentage, and hope their brand will blind the shopper's aesthetic instinct. not to say that one cannot find worthwhile purchases, but one has to look mighty hard. and i can only guess what great proportion of shoppers feel the tinge of buyer's remorse on the drive back home.

all of this makes sense for the hugo bosses, calvin kleins, and kenneth coles of the world. but as i strolled through the 100-degree heat of the gilroy premium outlets, a store caught my eye. not because i thought i might find the one piece of attractive clothing, but because i could barely fathom how an outlet for this particular vendor came to be: jelly belly.

would a jelly belly outlet sell all the flavors that no one cared to purchase, i.e. tasted like shit? and if so, what would possess someone to patronize the store? granted there are plenty of fat people moving (or not) around gilroy but would they not opt for the flavors that actually taste good. after all, i can't imagine the candy to be prohibitively expensive. i mean, they do sell them at safeway.

light bulb. how about a gummi bear outlet. we can sell bulk packages of the yellow ones that even half the fat little 8-year olds who get picked last in kickball leave in the bag.

know your audience

through my year of j school, one theme always arose in discussions of the media: they don't write for the people who read them. it's why there's a business section in the paper, but not a social welfare section. it's why the silicon valley gets big coverage while oakland is largely ignored.

these thoughts occurred to me as i was picking up a few slices at arizmendi for my saturday lunch. as i ambled down ninth avenue, i noticed a banner hanging across the front of andy's, one of the local chinese joints. it boasted that asian weekly had bestowed the honor of best kung pao chicken (presumably for either sf or the bay area).

now i am not here to uphold or debunk asian weekly's claim. in fact, i am completely unqualified to do so, for i have never tasted andy's kung pao chicken, nor have i ever ordered it elsewhere. furthermore, i have never ate at a chinese restaurant where any of my companions to do so. this leads to me believe, that asian people don't really order that dish.

which brings us to the original point. why would a newspaper written for an asian audience have a best of category that is irrelevant to an asian audience?

the davis reduction

of the select group of guys who i consider true friends, one seems to do exceptionally well with the opposite sex -- with one caveat. he's got terrible taste in women. he thinks asian girls are overrated -- fine, i agree -- but he also digs the trashy look as well. the around-the-block but i clean up well thing. if i didn't know him and saw a photo album of his exes, i'd have pegged him for italian with an affinity for gold necklaces and earrings.

so to no suprise, the conversation lead to the discussion of handling women. the techniques, so to speak. his #1 ploy: the davis reduction. now i'd never heard mention of this particular tactic, so i asked him to explain. apparently, reduction is the term doctors use for mending broken bones. davis is his physician colleague who has transplanted this method to the male-female relationship.

apparently, davis, like so many others, has a difficult girlfriend, one whose psychosis seems to arise at regular intervals. and so when one of her moods shows, it's time to cut off the face time. ignore her, then reestablish the connection a few days later (say five) as if nothing out of the ordinary has taken place.

subtle, yes. without words you have communicated to the female who has control over the relationship. yet you were not mean, and in fact she has nothing to even accuse you of, since nothing out of the ordinary has even transpired. at least she thinks that's what you think.

i was of two minds while listening to my friend elaborate on the practice. one, i've always done this, though i never came up with a clever name for it. and two, it's retarded that this is how relationships have to work. because my friend was right. and so despite my approaching true adulthood (30) and him on the fast track to a career in orthodpedics, this is the idiocy that all people deal with. all for a little love; and a little more sex.

0 for 2

it's pretty rare for people to flake on me. i think it's because people like me. it might be because i make plans with so little time in advance there's no way to weasel out. nonetheless, on each of the last two evenings, i've had people cancel on me. goddamn planning.

but it's worked out. sort of. instead of drinks and dinner, i "decided" to work. and by work, i mean play cards. i think that sounds terribly pretentious -- when you refer to playing a game as work -- but when you're counting on the money to pay your apartment and nourishment, it is what it is.

i've been running a little salty recently; it may have something to do with my karma being shit right now. so instead of pushing things, i've pretty much stayed away from the (virtual) table. but my "diligence" paid off during the unexpected open spots in my schedule. a few fortunate cards, some horrendous play by my fellow players, and the last two days have given me rent and a token for my orange savings account.

all the same, i'd like to avoid the flaking moving forward. the good luck can stay though.

that looks mighty heavy, sir

make a list of the most loathesome activities and moving surely makes an appearance somewhere near the top. i can say that to be true, both personally and for all those individuals who populate the p2p review sites, like gayot, tribe and yelp. there you find dozens of posts entitled 'best money i've ever spent' or 'absolutely worth it'.

heeding the advice of those experienced with movers and the voice inside my head saying hard labor is better left to others, i secured an appointment with the local faves, delancey street movers. in three hours -- including an unpaid lunch break -- they moved my stuff from my one bedroom in palo alto to the same in san francisco. i'm not sure they broke much of a sweat.

and therein lies the rub. while i loafed in a lawn chair basking in the peninsula sun, phoning my other bourgeosie friends to extol the virutes of hired muscle, i began to feel, well, a wave of femininity. and the feeling was only exacerbated when the most diminutive of the three movers tossed my dresser -- which i nearly slipped a disc trying to move in -- over his shoulder and walked, seemingly on a layer or air, down the stairs and to the moving truck.

"strong, isn't he," another of the movers mouthed to me. yes, he was. but something made me suspect something between the lines. i found a silent, "weak, aren't you" there.

yes i was happy to not be scuffing my hands while fumbling box after box, item after item of furniture. hell, i might get a splinter. still, what does it say about a man who, through hours of work where the only thing he moves are numbers around a spreadsheet, has sissified to the point where he cannot even move his own possessions?

all these thoughts crossed my mind as i sipped a glass of bordeaux while unpacking my belongings from the boxes -- so neatly stacked by those three blue collar fellows.

attractive people don't like the homeless

i recently attended a charity art auction sponsored by an organization called the coalition to end homelessness, a name that more or less explains what the org considers its mission.

taking place at the somarts center on brannan, i figured it would attract a young and cultured, yet still profoundly hipster crowd. hence, even if i didn't take a liking to the art -- which i didn't -- i would still have plenty of pleasing things to look at. and not that i'm superficial, but this is was a profoundly unattractive crowd. and not that stylish to boot.

recently returning from a one year exile on the peninsula, i'm easily impressed by even a hint of urbanity (i.e., vintage jeans, you must be cool) on this night though, i may have secured the title of most metropolitan at this gathering. at least i had a hood.