My Hero... Craig Ferguson

If you've read prior posts, you already know how much I adore Craig Ferguson... okay, it's more like, he's my ideal man.

Last night, Craig gave the most beautiful eulogy to his father, Robert, who died of cancer on Sunday at the age of 75. I've never heard such a heartfelt, loving testimony to another human being. I was left with the feeling that I knew the man and, moreover, had an insight into who the real Craig is. I'm still reeling from the emotion of it all.

How brave is Craig? To stand on national television and, with incredible sincerity and generosity of spirit, allow us into his heart and his pain... with the utmost of grace.

If you missed it, you can watch it at http://www.cbs.com/latenight/latelate/comedy/, click on January 30th.

If that doesn't make you shed a tear... then you have my sympathies.

So Many Movies, Such Little Time...

So, when it's pouring rain and you're feeling somewhat brain damaged from the night before, what better opportunity than to catch up on your movie watching...

Hence, Saturday found me crawling in the door at 5:00 am, post dinner with Mr. A at the Slow Club (my all-time favorite dining spot in SF) followed by a fab party thrown by a friend of Mr. A's, a hot photographer for his gorgeous model girlfriend. Yeah, it was one of those beautiful people crowds, with the exception that everyone was super sweet and interesting to talk to... so, needless to say, we were the last to leave.

The movie line up: Must Like Dogs, Flight Plan, Lord of War, Wedding Crashers, The Constant Gardener... in that order... a nice rollercoaster ride through genres. None of them was truly awful, only The Constant Gardener was truly excellent.

And, in the last week I've managed to catch up on most of the likely Oscar nominations... Brokeback Mountain is undoubtedly going to win for best picture, and even though Philip Seymour Hoffman did a fabulous job in Capote, Joaquin Phoenix gets my vote for best actor... we'll see...

Goofy TV Worth Watching

Last night I called Frankie to welcome him home from two weeks of grueling business travel and caught him just as he was sitting down to “American Idol.”

What channel is it on?
Two.

I turned on the TV.
Maybe I’ll watch it.
Let’s catch up tomorrow, have a drink.
Sure. Welcome back.

Instead I submerged my body in hot water and read a book.

An hour later, Channel 2 was announcing “Skating with Celebrities.” As I was deciding between DVDs, I found myself listening to Scott Hamilton describe how they had paired a celeb with a ranked skater and the couples were going to compete, with one being eliminated each week, until one couple was left skating.

Now whether watching celebs willing to make fools of themselves while adamantly refusing defeat has anything to do with it, or not, today I ran an entire lap around Stow Lake… which has to be close to a mile (anybody out there know?). Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I consider that reasonable progress after only a week’s effort.

So, here’s looking forward to the next installment of “Skating with Celebrities,” which I give two thumbs up for good, clean, uplifting fun.

Sassy? ... or not?

Don’t feel like I’ve been very sassy lately… probably because I’ve been so introspected… maybe that’s what a new year does to people… or maybe… it’s just me! However, according to my astrological reader Jonathan Cainer, I’m not alone since all Leos have not been feeling their usual gregarious selves… possibly something to do with the moon being in Cancer (a home-loving sign).

On a positive note, I’m happy to report that good things arise out of ruin and my friends in Ross have found a place to live, which sounds like not only a good move but beneficial all round. And, by the way, where was Sean Penn when he was needed? Sure, he’ll jaunt off to Baghdad and New Orleans, but what about round the corner to his own community? Geez, Sean, sorry I rooted for you in that Oscar nomination… not to infer that I had any sway there other than being a ticket-buying movie-goer.

Back at the ranch – more precisely, the yoga studio -- I just did my first back bend in years – woo hoo! (If you’ve read prior posts, you’ll know that 3 years ago I was rear-ended by an 81-year-old woman, who shouldn’t have been driving since she couldn’t even stand on her own two feet unaided.) Thanks so much to the gracious and loving Samantha Terhune at Yoga Tree.

Samantha does back-to-back classes in their Hayes Valley location on Friday nights… a great way to start a weekend…

I’ll get back to my normal single and sassy self out on the scene in good time… meanwhile, I’ll remain single and keep perusing the online ads… Speaking of which, since my friend Di and I discovered that we’d not only dated but… well, that’s between girlfriends… the same guy, I’ve always thought that online dating services would benefit from a ‘dating feedback’ mechanism. Not a place to ‘diss dishonorable men, but a place to genuinely comment on whether the person was who they claimed to be…

On that note, I have some movies waiting for me...

Out of the Closet...

After a very pleasant, though somewhat inebriated (at least a couple bottles of very good red wine imbibed), visit with my friend H and her fabulous boyfriend D (who’s going to come back and help me get my Viao working on DSL – woo hoo!!), I happened upon Tom Sellick as Chief Jesse Stone on Channel 5 last night. The man is still hot. Here’s wishing him an early Happy Birthday – he’ll be 61 on 29th January.

I’ve been busy working on my web site so that I, finally, have a reel of my work online. I’d forgotten how gratifying web publishing is... so here’s blowing my cover… www.newshoesproductions.com.

In the ‘Tipping Point’, Malcolm Gladwell explores the concept of six degrees of separation. It’s an interesting read that I recommend. I recently decided to explore the concept myself and sent an email to my network of friends asking if they knew anyone at a certain company at which I’d like to work. The results are fascinating. I know two people who know two people who work at the company. I also know someone who knows someone who knows two people who know the owner and founder of the company. On top of which, I got turned on to a cool networking site www.linkedin.com -- check it out. Oh, and keep your fingers crossed I get the job!

Did I mention that Mr. A cut 8 inches of my hair last week? It’s so liberating! Then we attended the reception at Creativity Explored, where Mr. A indulged and bought hundreds of dollars of art. I was his consultant but refrained from any purchases myself since I have yet to pick up the piece I bought in October, not to mention the two pieces I bought by Todd Brown over at The Art House. If you’re not familiar with The Art House, please check it out and support a good cause by attending one of their weekly concerts. And if you're in the market for art, swing by when Todd's having an auction to raise money for rent. Great art at great prices!

After the reception, we headed over to one of our constant top fave restaurants Andalu for delicious tapas and their not-to-be missed White Sangria... yummy!

Stop looking for Mr. Right... he's married to Prince Charming!

The running, or I should say ‘jogging’, is proceeding apace… not exactly a fast pace, but it’s a pace.

Along with the outdoors portion of my fitness regime, I’m getting back into yoga and went to back-to-back classes on Friday night led by my newly discovered yogini, Samantha Terhune. For a moment of sheer bliss, there’s nothing to beat the head massage she gives you while lying in a restorative pose propped with mounds of blankets and bolsters in a room filled with love... aah. Check out Yoga Tree .

I’m so excited for Mr. A. He called me after midnight buzzing over his hot first date with a man he met during the holidays. J sounds absolutely adorable and perfect for Mr. A… on top of which, not only did he pick Mr. A up at his apartment in his Mercedes and tell him he looked like a million bucks, he treated dinner and was a perfect gentleman (well, almost)... with promises of another date real soon.

It's almost enough to renew my faith in romance… sigh.

Twat did you say?

For anyone who missed Craig last night, he used the word “twat” repeatedly. Presumably, he’d checked it out with his legal department before going on air. I checked the American Heritage dictionary and it doesn’t even rate a mention. More modern devices return the word as slang for vulva or, alternatively, a man who is a stupid incompetent fool. Twat was that you said about our president?

The core of Craig’s rant was the uproar surrounding James Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces.” Where on earth is it written that an author cannot deviate one iota from fact? Okay, so it’s supposed to be a memoir, but everyone embellishes. It’s part of telling an interesting story. Everyone recounting a shared experience will tell a different version, somewhat embellished, somewhat edited. So he inflated the truth to make it more dramatic, big deal!

As for J.T. Leroy, that’s just plain funny. I even attended a book reading last year hoping for a glimpse of the elusive author, whose persona, it turns out, is completely fabricated. I’m not offended. I’m just jealous. From where I sit, it seems that publishers want controversy about their authors. It sells more books. Take my fellow countrywoman JK Rowling, for example. She was made out to be a homeless pauper, which turns out to not be entirely the case, but it sure got her lots of attention. Now, if I don’t turn up a job real soon, I might be out on the streets myself. Perhaps then the memoir that I’ve written might actually get published… mmmh… eviction notice anyone?

Bird by Bird

Or is it breath by breath? Or step by step? Either or, they all apply…

On my second day of ‘jogging’, I called CT to ask her how exactly it was we did this before. Unfortunately, she was no help. She said that we simply did it. Oh, yeah, Nike. Just do it.

A New Beginning

More than a decade ago, I started running daily with my good friend CT. It was painful, but we were persistent and to ensure I had incentive I set the goal of running the Paris marathon for an upcoming milestone birthday.

At the time I worked for Sega in Redwood City and had to be at work at 8:30. Luckily, they had a shower for employee use. CT and I would meet at 6:30 by the little outdoors gym beside the marina at Fort Mason and plod our way to beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and back again. By the time we hit the final stretch, the endorphins had kicked in and we felt invincible. By the time we made our respective commutes, we were ready to kick ass!

At the time I was also earning a degree in Multimedia at San Francisco State University, one of the first programs in the country to teach the interdisciplinary skills needed to create CD-ROMs. I very quickly realized, however, that the Web was the way to go. And, came up with the inspired idea of creating a women’s web site, which I thought would be perfect for Nike to sponsor, that catalogued our daily running efforts as we increased our strength and our mileage – for by that time I’d convinced CT that she needed to run a marathon too. I didn’t pitch Nike (dammit, don't you always regret the things you didn't do?), but I did run the Paris marathon… and here I am ten years later and blogging is all the rage… who would have thought?

I mention this because today I started running again. After checking the marathon off my to-do list, I got bored, pregnancy got in the way of CT being able to run (too much pressure on her bladder, but shh) then she went and lived in Singapore for 3 years while I was rear-ended by an old bat in a Cadillac and unable to sustain any kind of exercise… not even my beloved yoga.

Today wasn’t pretty but it was a beginning and since it’s a new year, well, here’s to new beginnings for everyone though hopefully they don’t all lead to marathons.

p.s. did you see my future boyfriend on the People's Choice Awards last night? Wasn't Craig handsome?

Happy f***ing New Year!

You would think that writing a couple of paragraphs a day about nothing in particular would be easy, but life intervenes…

I spent last week in Ross helping my friend who came downstairs on the morning of new year’s eve to discover her ground floor under four feet of water. Back upstairs to wake up her husband, she couldn’t even see their cars beneath the torrent of brown water that rushed by. When the water finally receded it left a coating of mud on everything, and I do mean everything… the inside of the stove and dishwasher looked like they’d been spray painted a glorious shade of shit. If seeing your Christmas tree floating on its side next to your drowned pet bunny wasn’t bad enough, she’d been using her garage as a storage unit, which contained about, oh, another entire household worth of belongings.

Back in San Francisco, I’ve been battling with the lovely folks at Earthlink to figure out why my DSL suddenly quit. After several hours on the phone to India with very polite people who stick faithfully to their useless script and apologize profusely for the inconvenience, I was still none the better off. Thankfully, a friend’s boyfriend is not only a tech genius, he’s also a nice enough guy to give up his Sunday afternoon to help me out. As big a whiz as he is, it took three hours to fix and even then he still couldn’t get my old faithful Sony Vaio to work… sigh. Now, I’m on my iMac, which I recently purchased for the sole purpose of editing video… well, not any more, I guess!

So, isn’t this fascinating reading? Chock filled with news of the exciting life as a single in San Francisco?

I did meet a man I liked, and will continue to like, if only he’ll call me as he said he would to “compare schedules” and plan our next date. I mean, couldn’t he have planned it while he had me on the phone? Or did I say something utterly off-putting that he used that as an excuse and I’ll never hear from him again? While it won’t exactly break my heart, it does leave me with yet another ‘what the f**k was that?’ dating experience. Besides concluding “he just isn’t that into me,” my consolation is that I’m not the only one who seems to have these dating ‘joys’. Take my friend, Mr. A, for example… after getting a boy -- with whom he was cozy enough to invite to friends’ for Thanksgiving -- a killer job at the Supper Club, the boy now doesn’t have the decency to return his phone calls. What’s up with that?

Speaking of indecent men… Woody Allen’s new movie is superb. And, I finally got around to watching the first three films of Krysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue -- sheer brilliance -- oh, that was right before my DVD player decided to die...