My Article Is Up on Today's Vintage!

Hi Everyone!

My lastest article for Today's Vintage is up online, please check it out at
http://www.todaysvintage.com/decorating/contentview.asp?c=259340

Wham, Bam Thank You Ma'am!

Yipes, what the hell happened! It seriously feels like last year I was complaining about getting "Honey'd" and now my big gripe is getting "Ma'am'd" all over the place. I clearly recall (not that long ago) turning to friends and saying things like, "Did you hear that? The girl working at Macy's just called me Honey" or "Should people younger than me call me Honey?" Now, every time I buy a cup coffee, pay for something at the grocery store, or call the phone company I get, "Thank you very much Ma'am" or "How can I help you, Ma'am?"

One time while I was playing poker at the Wynn, the dealer addressed me as Ma'am and I gave him a scornful look. One of the guys at the table spoke up and said, "If I was a woman, I would NOT want to be called Ma'am." The dealer replied, "Well, then what should I call her?" Without skipping a beat he said, "Call her Foxy!" So, for the rest of the time I was in Vegas, if someone called me Ma'am I would tell each person, "If you have to call me something, call me Foxy!" That was real fun and it definitely livened things up a bit.

Asking the guy at the phone company to call me Foxy doesn't work in the same way as it did in Las Vegas. Geesh, Barbara Boxer was called Ma'am and then she was ridiculed for saying something about it. I have no idea how to address the problem. I have tried a few things, but most of them have backfired, like with Barbara. For instance, if I say something like, "Hey, there is no need to start Ma'aming me" they simply inform me that they are merely addressing me with respect. No matter how compelling I think my argument is against that, they are not convinced. They think it shows respect and that is all that counts. I have tried calling the Ma'amer Sir (if male), but I quickly found out that guys like being called Sir. It is not really on equal footing with Ma'am. Calling someone Mister is getting closer, but unless they are a doctor or a general, it seems to go right over the offender's head. Most of the time, if I say anything about it at all, I just look like a raving, mad, bitch.

So, my new thing is to just Ma'am them back. For instance, if someone asks me, "May I help you Ma'am?" I reply, "Yes, you may Ma'am." This totally freaks the offender out, especially if the person is a man. If it is someone at a utility company, by the time the conversation is over they had stopped calling me Ma'am, Honey, Miss, or anything derogatory. It works like a charm. Every once in a while the person says something about me calling them Ma'am. I tell them, "Calling me Ma'am is just as inappropriate as addressing you as Ma'am." Then I'll add (just to turn the screw a little bit more) "Thank you very much, Ma'am."

I Love San Francisco

Today, I love San Francisco and I love living here. Lately people I meet, freely tell me how much they hate it or that they will "NEVER, IN A MILLION YEARS, EVEN FOR A MILLION DOLLARS, EVER COME TO SAN FRANCISCO" when I mention I live in here. Albeit it seems like I am meeting more people from places I would NEVER, IN A MILLION YEARS, EVEN FOR A MILLION DOLLARS, EVER go to myself, but being confronted with that kind of bias, rocks me a little bit and forces me to look at who is saying this and why.

Last year a couple of months after I sold my second store, I sublet my apartment and went to Vegas. My plan was to stay for three months in the vacation condo (nobody lives in) my family has. I ended up staying in Las Vegas for eight months. I mostly played poker with men ranging in age between 22 and 70 years old who were visiting or had moved to Vegas just to play poker. Sometimes I would be at a table with the same guys for more than five hours, so chit chat was inevitable. Mostly, the banter was stuff like, "Where are you from? What do you do for a living?" That kind of thing all very calm and mundane. However, if and when I mentioned that I was from San Francisco, all Hell broke loose.

Mostly, the reactions were things like, "My wife wants to go there, but I refuse!" or "I'm not gay." Which at first was rather amusing, but eight months of this day in and day out, coming from different people, became a little macabre and quite a bit funnier. Here's a perfect example of that delightful combo of hilarity and perversion.

During the presidential campaign last year, playing a low stakes no-limit game at The Palms, I noticed that the guy to my left kept calling the Asian dealer Kim, when her name tag clearly read some thing else. So, I turned to him and said, "Her name isn't Kim." So, the 45 year old man with a front tooth missing, wearing a T-shirt two sizes too small that had a picture of President Obama dressed like Mr. T (with the Mohawk, gold chains, and earrings) looking ragged like a homeless guy with an outstretched hand saying, "Got Change?" asks me, "What the hell is wrong with you?" But, before I could answer another guy at the table chimes in with, "She's from San Francisco."

I want to hear your stories about meeting people from places (other than here) who find it necessary to tell you how they feel about San Francisco...good or bad...or the types of people you have confronted who throw around the word, "liberal" like it is a weapon.

I could not find the actual T-shirt online, but I found this...you get the picture!

Not Bi-Focals, Tri-Focals!

Yesterday, after breakfast with my awesome new friend Patter, I checked out five eye glass stores listed in my insurance network. I hated everything. The last store I walked into was awesome. It had a variety of frames I really liked. It took an hour and a half for me to decide on a pair of frames, because there were so many to choose from. I went with a pair of Oliver Peoples, which were a hundred dollars more than the ones I sort of liked at the first place I went into on Thursday. Yeah, I started shopping for frames on Thursday.

My insurance doesn't even cover half of the cost of my glasses. They are going to cost me $500.00, with my insurance coverage. The total came to $909.00. I just don't remember having to pay that much for glasses in the past. The salesperson informed me that in the past I only needed single vision lenses and this prescription is for tri-focals.

Tri-focals, are you kidding me? I totally freaked out. To calm me down they assured me the reason mine are so expensive is, because my lenses won't have the delineation lines. Well, that helped...I feel so much better, now. What a bummer.

Dirty Laundry

I made it back to San Francisco early Thursday morning and couldn't wait to check out the art shows in town. I covered five art openings the next day (Friday July 10th) Venus Gallery, Curiosity Shoppe, 31 Rausch, Electric Works, and 1AM Gallery.

This week's comments about last week's art openings are up to be viewed on Artbusiness.com.

If you can only make it to one art show this week or month I suggest you check out Electric Works: The Cresting Wave - The San Francisco Underground Comix Experience.
Artists: Mark Bode, Vaughn Bode, Guy Colwell, R. Crumb, Jay Kinney, Paul Mavrides, Dan O'Neill, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Larry Todd, Randy Vogel, S. Clay Wilson. Curated by Dan Fogel.

Life Trumps Facebook

Well, I saw an old friend today. When I say old, I mean I have known him a long time. He's old, but I am older than him. Johhny was my boyfriend when I was 18 years old. We had some crazy times. However, I decided not to be friends with him about 15 years ago for reasons that may not even be true.

A couple of months ago I received a Facebook Friend request from him. I realized that I was still very angry and I told him I had no intentions of being his friend, even in cyberspace, because of what he had done to me. He thought I was talking about the things he did when we were teenagers and in his words, told that me hanging onto grudges for 30 years isn't good. However, I was talking about something that had happened 15 years ago. That is when I realized 15 years is also a long time.

Today, I saw him for the first time since the last incident and we talked about what had happened and I told him that 15 years is a long time to hang onto a grudge and I was through with it. We talked for about 15 minutes. Afterward we both felt great and close. As we finished hugging, Johnny exclaimed "See, life actually trumps Facebook!"

Michael Jackson Is Dead

I have been purposely ignoring all of the hoopla surrounding Michael Jackson's canonizing, I mean death. The day he died, I was more upset about Farrah Faucet dying. However, I like this article (which is beautifully written) posted on Truthdig.com, check it out...

The Man in the Mirror

AP photo / Jacqueline Larma

Images of a young Michael Jackson fill the TV screens at a downtown Los Angeles bar near the site of his memorial service.

By Chris Hedges

In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship. The commercial exploitation of Michael Jackson’s death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever-changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. He could not disentangle his public and his private self. He became a commodity, a product, one to be sold, used and manipulated. He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that are at the core of our corporate culture. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate, disfiguring quests for physical transformation were expressions of our own yearning. He was a reflection of us in the extreme. (read more)

A New Yorker Article About My Friend Anna Sophie

This is an interview in the New Yorker with my friend Anna Sophie Lowenberg, also check out her show Sexy Beijing.

This is the website for Sexy Beijing http://www.sexybeijing.tv/new/default.aspx

Posted by Evan Osnos July 10, 2009

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2009/07/qanda-anna-sophie-loewenberg.html

Q. and A.: Anna Sophie Loewenberg

Anna Sophie Loewenberg is the star and producer of “Sexy Beijing,” an online series of sly, knowing videos about a hapless, curious foreigner which has proved popular among expats, language students, and mainland Chinese. (The début episode, “Looking for Double Happiness,” has been viewed more than one and a half million times on YouTube.) The videos, which run from five to ten minutes, are loose parodies of “Sex and the City,” with Loewenberg playing a hammy version of herself, careering around town to interview construction workers, dog-walkers, cranky old men, and, on occasion, Lubavitchers about their love lives. The latest episode goes online this week. Read More...

The THIRD of July

I took this coming out of the golf course in Vegas the THIRD of July...

Lights Out

Saturday, I got tore up at the Venetian...I played 4 hands. My pocket 10's were beaten by pocket 8's, my pocket Kings were beaten by pocket 6's, I folded my pocket Jacks when one of my preflop callers bet into me on the flop of 2 flush, 3 straight cards and a queen. What did me in was, when I raised (all in) a reraise (preflop) with pocket kings and the raiser had aces. Lights out for me took about an hour.

My Hair Hurts

Good morning everyone! Sleeping is not so simple in Las Vegas. The weather contributes to my sleep deprivation issue as much as the sun. The temperature outside was 90 degrees at 3:30 this morning, which was the coolest it has been here in days. Air conditioning is imperative in the desert. However, sleeping with the air conditioning blasting all night, basically sucks the moisture right out of the air and all life as we know it. I can feel my skin and hair drying up as I write this. Too much air conditioning also gives me a sore throat.

On the other hand, not having the air conditioning on while trying to sleep feels like laying in an oven set to broil. Then there is the issue of the sun. I mean give me a break, the sun rises at like 5 am and in an instant the pitch black room is so bright it hurts my eyes. If I go to sleep when it is still dark outside, within a few hours I am jolted from my dreams by the sunrise with my eyes, throat, and head all hurting at once. I don't even drink alcohol. That's when I get up, go to the bathroom, down a bottle of water, get back in bed, put on my movie star--don't bug me, kid--eye mask and wrestle with the elements until I fall back to sleep for maybe another hour or two.

I know the best time to sleep in the desert is at night, because it is the coolest and darkest time of the day. However, it's Vegas, baby. Why would I sleep at night?

The Lynn Brigade

I have created a monster. It is completely my fault, all of my doing. I had a bad feeling. I remember thinking, it is just a Facebook group, how much harm could this cause? Boy, was I wrong. It seemed so innocent at the time, kind of cute even. The Lynn group looked like a field of fluffy bunnies frolicking in the sun. But, once you open the door and they all come scurrying in, then what?

I was invited to join the Lynn group on Facebook, for obvious reasons, which I accepted. Right away there was one friend request from a stranger named Lynn. I did not know what to think about it at the time. I shrugged it off. Now a month later, every time I log on to Facebook there is at least one more friend request from another stranger named Lynn or some variation of the name. I don't know what to do, I don't want total strangers as my Facebook friends. I feel bad, they're harmless, like cuddly bunnies. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, especially someone named Lynn.