one is silver, the other gold: part done!

Thursday, jul. 31, 2008   |   0 comments

Oh dear. Where were we? Finishing this description of all the friend-packed fun I’ve been having lately is getting harder by the day, what with time continuing to pass in the meanwhile, thereby packing more also-fun events onto the pile of things I want to remember not to forget! And now somehow I’m farther behind in my round-up than when I first started? Time is the worst! Not for the first time do I find myself wishing for a time-stopping Gold Watch machine—I wouldn’t even use it to win roulette or untie ladies’ bikini tops. I’d just stop time for a day or two, long enough to get my internet timeline caught up with my actual lifetime, and maybe take a sweaty long nap. (Explanaside: I have not been sleeping at all well these days, between the biting of mosquitoes, and the howling, growling house mammals, and also french-fry poisoning, I haven’t experienced more than a handful of restful hours of the last week, and I’m the walking woozy as a result. I also have epic chin acne, and a randomly swollen left foot. There’s a party going on right here, it turns out?)

Okay: So: Saturday: Mic checks, mimosas, and handbag parties
After staying up late GoGos dancing and donut cramming the night before at the Mightyhaus party, I found it difficult indeed to peel my old self out of bed on this particular Saturday morning. But peel myself I did, for I was scheduled to appear on the What We Do: Pursuing Your Passion Never Gets Old panel at the BlogHer conference, and staying in bed was not really an option, though a bed-based panel—with breakfast burritos!—would have been interesting. (Next year!) And so I got up, dabbed some aspirin between my lips, hurtled on the best panel-worthy outfit I could muster, and Marco drove into the city with silent, brooding, stage-frightened me at his side. (I’m convinced that each time I speak publicly I’m shortening my lifespan by at least a month. I’ll have to drive over a lot of railroad tracks with my fingers crossed to gain back the lost time…typing this, it suddenly occurs to me that maybe not everyone knows about the “railroad tracks+crossed fingers=one extra day of life” recipe. Maybe this is another one of my weird only-child things?)

Things got off to a mildly rocky start, but once I made it through my sputtering self-introduction—during which Maggie had to throw me a few life-saver questions (“And you are…?”)—I managed to start swimming and stop sinking long enough to actually get to the point of enjoying myself. I have no idea what I said, stage fright for me being the equivalent of seven memory-obliterating Swedish Massages (scroll down for the recipe), but I do remember laughing a whole lot and being super interested in everything everyone else was saying (both the ladies on my panel as well as all the nice audience people). Apparently I also did a lot head flapping and perhaps even some mild seizing, because word has it my lapel microphone only caught every other word I said, like Lina Lamont in The Dueling Cavalier. Yes, yes, yes? No, no, nooooo.

After the panel, I did a quick book signing. (Yes, I’m still trotting that one out, can you believe it?) Then I went to the BFD meet-and-greet-(and-mimosas!) event, where Annie and I participated in some rapid-fire chatting with the lovely Mo, Wheetabix, and a whole circle of lovely ladies. Then we darted over to the Can You Take Back Naked Blogging? panel, which was heart-wrenching (the depths that comment ogres can sink to!) and funny (watch a crying baby turn her mother’s milk-laden breasts into Pavlovian squirt guns!) and generally great, aside from the audience person who chose to clip her nails during the show, which is possibly the grossest, most brain-curdling sounds ever and whenever I hear it I just want to punch the whole world. But sadly there was no time for world-punching, because quick like a cheetah we had to sprint over to the closing keynote, Living the Truman Show, which was a whole rainbow of interesting, wow.

Fame is a very weird thing in and of itself, but there’s something extra boggling about highly contextualized fame. Like a hotdog-eating champion, he can stroll around Cost Plus or wherever completely unmolested, without anyone noticing or even really caring who he is. But then he walks in to a hotdog-eating conference, and everyone’s face turns toward him and tracks him like a sunflower follows the sun. And all those sunflowers want their picture taken with him.

It can be a little disconcerting to witness, especially if you have no prior understanding that such a thing existed, at least not at that level. It feels like you just turned over a rock and suddenly there’s this whole world of activity going on, with its own complicated system of loyalties and betrayals and misunderstandings. It’s fascinating. But uncomfortable, too, and maybe even a little scary? Hm.

Finally, a shot of the ceiling of the antechamber of the keynote ballroom.

After the keynote I did a quick Oh Mighty Isis costume-change into my great Great Lakes dress, and Annie and I dashed over to Macy’s for the strange end-of-conference shop-and-sip party involving champagne-drinking amongst the handbags and noodle-gobbling amongst the shoes. Fun! Weird!

Oh, just sipping champagne over here by the cash register.

And then (this is still the same Saturday?) I strapped on a conical birthday hat and went behind the bookcase and down the rabbit hole of Bourbon and Branch with a whole crew of outstanding ladies and gentleURLs (Jon, Sarah, Antonia, Carol, Alice, Eden, Melissa, Maggie, Bryan) to celebrate of the birth of the sweet baby awesome that is Heather! After a flurry of ridiculous drinks and loud bar-shouting, we broke into cabs to hit North Beach for some birthday fooding.

Our particular cab was helmed by a creepy little man who happened to overhear me say (possibly because I was yelling?) that I wasn’t wearing any underwear—not for sexy reasons but because I’d only just discovered that the underpants I’d been wearing with success all day did something new and awful and sausage-y once I made the switch to my clingy woolen dress. Me, while backing slowly out of the cab so as not to Britney my parts all over Little Italy: “Oh no! I’m not wearing any underwear!” Perv Griffin, eye-locking me in the rear view: “I thought so.” Me, to Sarah and Carol who were already halfway up the street: “DID YOU HEAR WHAT PERV GRIFFIN JUST SAID TO ME?” Perv Griffin: [Nothing but the sounds of a cab peeling out into the night.]

After a long, chatty dinner there was some muttering about hitting another bar…WHAT? Luckily everyone else was just about as exhausted as I was, and we all agreed to use the last 2% of our energy reserves to just stagger home. I cabbed to BART with Jon, Heather, and Carol, wherein we were razzled and dazzled by the driver’s (NOT Perv Griffin) selection of energizing panty jams. I asked the cab at large if anyone knew what we were listening to, because it was actually kind of glorious and perhaps just the new soundtrack my staid life is begging for? Jon whipped out his iMachine, put it up to the speakers, then started tapping on buttons and sending pings out into space or whatever. And within moments, he turned to us with a wide, proud smile and held out his computational device, which, based on sound-waves alone, had managed to produce both the name of the song and the panty jamming individual who created it. (Data which I’ve since totally forgotten. I was tired! And drunk! And not wearing any underwear.) We were all suitably impressed with the technological feat, and were in the middle of oohing and ahhing when the cab driver nonchalantly ejected the CD, upon which all the salient info was clearly printed, and handed it to me, all: Is THAT what you idiots were looking for?

And…that’s it! I hopped out of the cab, got onto the BART, and Marco kindly met me at the station and drove exhausted, silent, already-hung-over me home again, home again.

But that’s not all! (I know. I’m sorry. It’s like there was never a time when I wasn’t writing this entry.)

Sunday: Brunch with my amazing friend-since-high-school Megan and her new man, Tony, then to the Oakland Museum with Brian and Sandra for the Birth of Cool, then off to Batman II, III, IV, and V. Have you seen that movie yet? No? Well be prepared to walk out feeling like you’d just beer-bonged four entire movies all at once.

Hat shopping in the Oakland Museum gift shop.

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis with Maggie, Marco, and Sarah, during which Marco told the story of the fake “perfect for burning man” ads he’s been placing on Craigslist in an attempt to get Stephen and Jessica of Vintage Microwave to profile them, which caused Maggie to actually spit-take into her water glass, possibly the only non-elegant thing I’ve ever seen her do. Dear diary!

Wednesday: Dinner at the St. Francis again, this time with the McSweeney’s kids. Food, fun, and monkey grinder milkshakes!

Friday: Impromptu Domino Magazine watermelon margaritas at our house. Fun, fun, fun…and then drunken sadness.

Saturday: Hangover, hangover, hangover…then only at dusk managing to rally for a jaunt to Dolores Park for The Breakfast Club amongst a sea of drunks and puppies and groping hippies for Kari’s birthday!

Why was it called The Breakfast Club when they were there the whole Saturday, and the only meal they had was lunch?

When the lights, go down, on the city.

Birthday Kari and old rubber face.

Sunday: Quality time with my mom and Frank, then home for a re-screening of Lost in Translation, which is still pretty much perfect, it turns out. And how often in life do you get to put the words “still” and “perfect” together?

Tuesday: Dinner at the St. Francis AGAIN for long, leisurely chatting about trains and time zones and midwives with some of my oldest and dearests: Heidi, Liz, back-in-town Jill, and later Sunny.

Wednesday: Orange tang booze drinks and mini hamburgers at the CB2 opening party and then mojitos and big rolls of sushi products at the Ritz with Jill, Marco, Adam, and Julia, whee!

Drinking the koolaid.

Marco is a giant among hamburgers.

Then, finally, finally TODAY! Just another day at the bank, plus the endless exhaustion of words and photos that you see before you.

And now, here I sit, internet sore and halfway hungry, my ears aching with earphone fatigue, my glasses smudged with finger juice. Ah so! THIS is what living in the now feels like.