I heard the devastating news on the radio at my Dad's house. For the record, I don't own, and have never owned, a beach house. Although I've rented one with friends. Also not rich, but working on it.

Dad's on a nostalgia kick, which means we got to watch slides.


Dad loading up the projector


My brothers & sister dying Easter eggs. Check out that wallpaper!


Dad with Oma on the back of the moped


My brother and sister and me in our bunkbeds. Those were the days!

Some xmas pix from this year:

A few thought before I head East tomorrow.

Really I think it boils down to finding something you're passionate about doing, and someone to do it with. Someone in the same time zone would be nice, but you take what you get.

On recalibrating perception - I think we all project our own ideals onto the blank spaces of others. It's even easier to do these days given the ways we meet people. I think it's a good idea to get a reality check when you can.

Wow, I guess that's it! Seemed so profound before.

Just got the scoop from Dad. Guess I'm not the only one making last minute travel changes. Does this seem complicated or is it just me?

I fly into Charlotte, NC to my sister's tomorrow. We'll meet Dad and Jean at the Columbia zoo with the kids on Tuesday evening, then all drive to Dad's house in SC. Erik & Alisha get in from Atlanta that night too, but they have to leave early on Christmas eve for a flight to Nebraska to spend Christmas with her family. My sister's husband gets in on Thursday, so I'll have his truck when they all go to Woodruff, SC to spend Christmas afternoon with his family. Dad and Jean are driving to her daughter's place in Tennessee on Sunday, 26th, so I'll meet up with my sister then and caravan back to Charlotte. (Wait, not done yet.) Then, my sister, brother-in-law, three kids and I all pile into their Honda Pilot to drive up to Connecticut to visit my other brother for New Year's Eve. Erik & Alisha fly back to Atlanta on the 30th then take a 6AM flight up to CT/NY on the 31st. Dad just told me he and Jean decided to drive up to CT directly from Memphis for New Year's too. Should be a houseful!

Oh yeah, so I decided as long as I was in the state, I would swing by Buffalo on my way home. If you see someone wandering around Elmwood inappropriately dressed for the weather, it's probably me. Hope to meet some peeps.

During the (e:estrip) illegal character striptease[inlink]paul,2506[/inlink]last night, this FAX came in, probably only the third FAX I've gotten all year. I have no idea why it was sent to me. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

I wasn't going to post it at first, but the timing was just too weird. And I had to do something during the interminable pauses while (e:Paul) performed his magic behind the scenes. So I OCR'd it and posted it. Ironically, it had the most illegal characters of all my posts, and eventually was sacrified in the great time warp of '04. I may be tempting fate by posting it again now. Keep your fingers crossed.

Global_Exchange
415-255-7296
12/15/04 7:05 PM 1/1
Contact: Greta Christina greta @gretachristina.com

For immediate release: Dec. 15,2004
Please announce/post until Jan. 11,2005

Annie Sprinkle to Appear at "Paying For It" Reading at A Different Light, Jan. 11

Annie Sprinkle, prostitute/porn star turned performance artist, writer, sex educator, and Ph.D., will be appearing at a reading/book signing for the new book Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers and Their Clients. Recently cited as an expert resource in the nationally-syndicated sex advice column "Savage Love," Paying For It is a book of advice for sex work customers, written by sex workers and former sex workers. Does your sex worker's face light up when she or he sees you walk in the door? If not, the wise, outrageous voices in this book can make the difference between a so-so session and an hour you'll remember the rest of your life. Contributors to the book include Annie Sprinkle, Nina Hartley, Carol Queen, Vic St. Blaise, Matt Bernstein Sycamore, and more.

The reading/book signing will be on Tuesday, January 11, at A Different Light Books, 489 Castro Street, near the comer of Castro and 18th Streets in San Francisco. In addition to Annie Sprinkle, the participants will include Lex Kyler, a.k.a. Vic St. Blaise (founder and editor of the sex worker zine "Whorezine" ); Cleo Dubois (BDSM educator/ritualist and producer of the videos "Tie Me Up" and "The Pain Game" ); Steve Mitchell (male stripper and ten-year veteran of the business), Liberty N. Justice (peepshow dancer and "talk to a live nude girl" booth entertainer from 1990 to 1993); and the book's editor, Greta Christina. The event will start at 7 pm.

"If you're a sex work customer, this book will be life-changingly useful. If you're not, it'll just be entertaining and enlightening. Funny, smart, and both blunt and kind, it gives customers a hefty dose of practical advice on how to make their sex work encounters more pleasant and fun. And it gives the rest of us a unique insight into the nuts and bolts of the sex industry." -Susie Bright

"One of the best sex guides I've ever read." -Betty Dodson

"Smart, sane, and fun to read, Paying For It takes the guesswork out of being the ideal client. A boon to buyer and provider alike." -Lily Burana

For more information or to request a review copy of the book, please contact greta @gretachristina.com, or visit www.gretachristina.com.

My ex-roommate has an autographed picture of himself with Annie Sprinkle. If I don't start getting more people signing up on estripwest maybe I'll post it there and see if that helps.

I dreamt I was visiting e-town and having dinner with a bunch of (e:peeps). There was a constant commotion going on while the waiter came over to tell me which of the specials were still available and which ones weren't, then left me to tell everybody else. As the conversation came around to ordering I said I was going to have the roast beef special, and that the waiter had said they were out of all the other specials. Everybody else decided to have the roast beef special too. I started worrying what if I had misunderstood the waiter and they were really out of roast beef? I tried to convince everybody to choose a back-up order just in case.

Oh, and I made a pretty funny joke about (e:peeperoni)'s. I guess you had to be there.

p.s. - one of you looked remarkably like Edward Burns . Who was that?

A few details I left out of the first dance saga,[inlink]twisted,106[/inlink] if you can believe it.

It was the morning of the wedding (scheduled for 4PM) and my sister was still searching for the right song. My bro-in-law had pitched many outstanding selections, but none of them struck home with her.

Cue the fatal moment when I off-handedly recall the time my sister, at the impressionable age of 14 or so, announced she wanted "Evergreen" to be her first dance song. Even as my mind was accessing another memory of her saying the same thing about "Endless Love" but before I could formulate the words, my sister declared "Evergreen" would be a good choice, my brother-in-law agreed, and the deal was done.

I want to go on record as saying I have a deep and abiding appreciation for Ms. Streisand (although those fingernails scare me), but given the two theoretical options, I probably would have gone with Lionel Richie on that particular occasion. I don't know what my sister would have done, and that's what haunts me.

My brother's first dance selection was even more down to the wire. They were still deliberating between U2's "All I Want Is You" (my brother's choice) and Jimmy Buffet's version of "Brown-Eyed Girl" (my sis-in-law's choice) when the rehearsal dinner video soundtrack (which also included Vince Guaraldi, the Smiths and others - I was NOT launching a subliminal campaign for my song suggestion) interjected the third option. Actually it came down to Alisha wanting the video song and Erik refusing to concede the decision. Alisha left it up to him, with her vote definitively cast for Phil Collins.

The wedding day arrives and besides doing whatever it is guys do before a 6PM wedding, my brother makes a big show of trying to find someone with a CDRW and internet access from the hotel so he can mysteriously download something. At the wedding reception he gives the CD to the DJ and won't say what's on it. Good thing the darn thing worked.

As my brother said later that evening, I had "picked out Christina's first dance song" (I did NOT pick it out! I only reminded her of something she said 13 years earlier!) and they were still together after 10 years. So he decided to go with "my" song.

Gosh darn it that's too much pressure! I'll check back with you here in 10 years and let you know how they're doing.

(Ok, I have my own freakin' estrip site. Why am I still posting over here? Back to my own time zone. Come visit!)

(12-13) 08:57 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --
Oracle snaps up PeopleSoft for $10.3 billionhttp://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2004/12/13/financial0917EST0493.DTL

Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software.

Well, at least now I may not have to fill in those 19 pages of paperwork. [inlink]twisted,98[/inlink]

Update 1:55PM PST - Just got the phone call. Back to the job postings.

It's funny how the mind works. I was recently reminded how I played a part in determining the "first dance" song when my youngest brother got married a year and a half ago. Now, I would never presume influence like that on such a personal decision. In fact, the thought terrifies me. Maybe it's because through another fluke of happenstance, I'm almost certainly responsible for the first dance song my sister used at her wedding. (I don't want to go into it right now. I know there are Barbra Streisand fans in the audience - let's just leave it at that.) Anyway, if you TELL me, at the tender age of 14, what you want your first dance song to be, you have to EXPECT me to remember that 13 years later.

So anyway, being a bit gun-shy on the subject, I found myself in a dilemma 6 months before my brother's wedding when I was shopping at IKEA (I swear this is a true story) and a song I'd never heard before comes over the store sound system. I'm really not paying much if any attention to what's playing, but like that feeling of inevitability when you feel yourself surrendering to sleep, this song tacitly penetrated my consciousness until I was standing stock still wondering what IS this song? and trying to memorize key lyrics so I could look it up when I got home. At the same time thinking, oh crap! This would be the perfect first dance song for Erik and Alisha.

Well, I knew I had to look it up, but I held firm on not intervening in the decision process for a long time. The song was from the soundtrack for the animated version of Tarzan, and I had visions of it being about Tarzan's eternal love for Cheetah, or some other innuendo fatal to my relationship with my future sister-in-law if my brother did use it at my suggestion and they later watched the movie, which I had never seen.

Anyway, I did eventually propose the song to them as nonchalantly as possible, posting the MP3 on the family website for them to preview. To my relief, they thanked me but said they had a short list of songs already under consideration. In true contrarian form, I almost immediately started thinking they were making a big mistake dismissing this song so quickly. But my fear of inadvertantly impacting any portion of their wedded life negatively far outweighed any ego I may have had about it.

Fast forward to a month before the wedding. Somehow I end up in charge of producing a multimedia presentation for the rehearsal dinner. Two weeks, 130+ scans, inestimable miles of video footage watched and imported, one 120G firewire drive purchased, one bum digital video camera and another begged/borrowed one later, my 23 minute epic was done. The grand finale cut to the song in question.

Suffice to say, after seeing the video for the first time in the intimate company of their closest friends and family on the eve of their wedding, my sister-in-law decided that's the song they should use for their first dance. I don't think my brother will ever forgive me. ;-)

Phil Collins - You'll Be In My Heart from the Tarzan soundtrack.

p.s. - I'll have to save my Peter Gabriel vs. Phil Collins story for another post, since this one is already way too freakin' long. Or just read my Cure vs. the Smiths[inlink]twisted,90[/inlink]post. Ok, that's not really the same (in my book) but you get the idea.

From the SF Chronicle's Pink section today:

NAUGHTY SANTA'S BLACK MARKET

This most irreverent crafts fair of the season has established a two-hour "family period" that is stroller- and young adult-friendly (4-6 p.m.). Along with more than 60 Bay Area artisans selling offbeat handmade gifts (porn decoupage, anyone?), the Black Marketeers are also promising a dozen Santas on stilts and other entertainments. $6 admission. 4 p.m.-midnight at SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan St., San Francisco; (415) 695-9100, www.naughtysantas.org.

Anybody need me to pick up a little something for that certain someone?

(Reprinted with permission from estrip:west )