Displaced

It’s the second day of summer and Midsummer’s Eve and hot as blazes in San Francisco. Even if you didn’t know how hot it is, you’d know something was off because the tourists have come out of their hovel hotels and are crawling all over the place. Go home silly people blocking my bike’s path! Go home! This city is not for visiting.

Our place is usually lovely and breezy but since we’re on the third floor, beneath the black tarpaper roof, we bake in the heat. I make spa water – charcoal filtered water with oranges or lemons – so we stay hydrated. Glasses of spa water are everywhere. Our studio has begun to resemble the house in Signs. Remember that movie? The last good one Shyamalan did?

The little girl is always asking for a glass of water and leaving half-full glasses all over the house. And it turns out that the aliens are burned by water. Remember? And the brother is a former baseball star. And just before the wife died years earlier, she tells Mel Gibson to tell him – the brother – , “Swing away, Merrilll. Swing away!” And Mel Gibson doesn’t know what she means, thinks she’s delirious from pain, until the aliens are there in the house and the water glasses are everywhere and Merrill’s bat is above him on the wall. And Mel Gibson says, “Swing away, Merrill! Swing away!” And he does, breaking the bat and the alien and shattering glasses and glasses of water onto the otherwise invincible alien. Remember?

That’s what our apartment looks like, minus the alien.

Here’s how 4/15 rolled for me this year.

• Let’s set the stage. I didn’t get my taxes done last week because I was rushing to get to New York. I decided that wouldn’t be a problem I would get back on the 14th, so I had that evening to get them sorted. That was my first miscalculation: since I was up at 2AM PST to catch my plane back from New York, by the time I got home from work that night, I was running into walls I was so tired. Scratch getting them done Monday night.

• Panic: how was I going to get my taxes done and to the post office on Tuesday by 5PM when I had to be at work all day?

• Relief: e-file, that’s how. I’d start ’em over lunch and e-file by midnight.

• Panic: I got to work on Tuesday and realized I’ve left my W-2 at home so I could only load TaxCut on my laptop at work but not actually do any of the tax entry. Deep breath.

• Relief: Got home early, got sorted out, ready to roll.

• Panic: After getting through my federal taxes and moving on to my state returns, it turns out I’m married. Even though I have never been married, the status has not generally struck me as something that creeps up on you so I do a little light research. R and I are Registered Domestic Partners (or RDP, in the catchy parlance of our government) in the state of California. As of last year, that means that in the eyes of the (state) law, we are effectively married and have to file as such. Aside from the emotional repercussions – what did I wear? did I register? – I now have a problem at 8PM. TaxCut populates my state taxes using my federal tax info and my federal tax info says I’m single. But in California, I’m not. While I appreciate the health insurance being an RDP entitles me to, it’s annoying that my crunchy granola state and my fascist (for now) national government can’t get on the same page. Especially at 8PM on the 15th.

• Relief (tiny). It appears there is a workaround. If I save a copy of my accurate federal return (the one I will file that says I’m single), I can create an inaccurate one saying I’m married that can be used as the basis of the state one. This strikes me as encouraging lying and criminality on the part of H&R Block but whatever. It’s getting late.

• Panic. I do as I’m told, re-do everything, save my screwy second version of my tax returns and am all set to file. But no. What was I thinking? Of course, no. I cannot e-file a federal return that says I’m single (accurate) and a state return that says I’m married (also accurate). This is the software’s way of encouraging me to get with the conservative agenda and pick a lane.

• Relief. I’m wily. The software wants me to e-file both state and federal in one transaction. I decide to e-file my federal and state separately using the two separate but equally accurate files. Clever, right?  Right hand doesn’t know what left hand’s doing, right? So far so good: I make it to the e-file screen on the federal taxes.

• Panic. I can no longer locate the Key Code that came with my tax software and that is required to get through the e-file screens. Where is it? Printed on the sleeve that the software came in. The software that I installed at the office. The sleeve that I stacked with some other papers to come home with me from said office but which, after a thorough search of the home premises, I cannot locate at 9PM.

• Resignation. I get in the car in my pajamas and head to the office.

• Relief. I find the sleeve, drive home and e-file my federal return without further glitches. The finish line in sight, I get some ice cream and start on the state filing.

• Panic. Not so fast: for reasons passing understanding, you can’t e-file your state taxes separately from your federal until the federales approve your federal ones. And I’m guessing that won’t happen at 10PM on the 15th. I give up. I start Googling penalties for late filing.

• Resurrection. I’m nothing if not stubborn and I’ll be damned if the IRS and H&R Block are going to both get the better of me in one night. That’d be a bit much for anyone, I’d think. I find the California State Franchise Tax Board web site which looks like it was put together in 1982 by a bunch of seven-year-olds with an Etch-a-Sketch and one orange crayon. Using my print-out of the un-file-able TaxCut state return, a spoon and some cunning, I manage to get through all the screens and get within $50 of the result TaxCut spit out. This site requires no oversight by the federales and lets me submit my state taxes. I do not have a warm fuzzy feeling because the site is so amateur it feels like I’ve just sent the Crown Jewels overnight using a plain envelope, some twine and the post office, but whatever: I am a tax-filing, law-abiding, married/single citizen once more.

I hate to do this but I’ve got to give the new Sundance Cinema a thumbs down. I wanted to like you, Sundance Kabuki Cinema, I really, really did. But you disappointed me and now I am crestfallen and slightly angry and feel a little bit dirty for wanting to go out with you at all.

Maybe it’s because I had such high hopes for our first date. Maybe it’s because I dressed all hip in my black turtleneck and it turns out you cater to middle-aged annoying people. Maybe it’s because I thought you were going to be a taste of home, a little slice of Manhattan on the west coast, a hipster haunt with your over-priced tickets ($27 for two) and your cocktail lounge and your upscale snacks (Izzy sodas!) But no. It turns out your forty-foot bamboo plants are just a screen for you to hide your mediocrity.

Let me offer you some constructive criticism so you can do better.

• When new visitors ask where they should eat – the upstairs cafe or the restaurant you opened next door that replaced Pasta Pomodoro, you should not tell them to go next door. The place next door is trying very hard to look upscale in a downscale neighborhood. The food is trying to be upscale too but it fails. Green Goddess salad with tempura avocado? Nice try but it’s an avocado. Pecorino mac and cheese ($9)? It’s covered with breadcrumbs like something from Stouffers and has less flavor than the boxed version. I liked Pasta Pomodoro better. (Speaking of which, try their prosciutto tortellini in pink sauce as take-out comfort food sometime.)
• Three bathroom stalls in the women’s bathroom? I don’t think so.
• Reserved seating is so yesterday. Just stop it. Even the Ziegfeld in New York doesn’t do that anymore. I would rather have to show up half an hour early to get a prime location and sit next to other committed viewers than show up two minutes ahead of time and sit next to a couple of baby boomers who ordered their seats online four days ago because their lives just aren’t interesting enough to have anything better to do.
• Tickets for $13.50. Do I really need to say anything else on the subject? I know you’ve got to pay off the remodel, but find another way.
• The Sundance Catalog is displayed on the side tables in the hall. This is shameless but predictable cross-marketing. The Sundance Catalog, for anyone flirting with checking it out, is on a par with the cinema: some interesting things but wildly pricey and of inconsistent quality.

What was good about it? The movie. The seats. The fact that I can get a drink on-site to take the edge off my annoyance. Would I go again? Only if I were desperate to see a first-run indie film. But I’d try the Lumiere first. Or the Embarcadero. And no, you can’t have my phone number. And I’m not free Thursday.

R, that’s what. R spent twelve hours today cutting over my old Movable Type platform to the new Movable Type platform and cleaning up categories, spacing, widgets and other things that wake me up in the middle of the night. Hooray R! You are officially da man.

A frighteningly familiar take on 30-something weekends in San Francisco. Hmmm. It might be time to make some changes.

I’m back from New York. It snowed. I loved it. That’s what February’s supposed to be like.You know what February’s not supposed to be like? Flowering tress, that’s what. What is wrong with California?

Oh. My. God. If you live in San Francisco, you have got to venture over to the land of Gucci babies, Pucci mamas, over-bred puppies and post-frat bankers and get yourself a grilled cheese sandwich at the Blue Barn on Chestnut Street in the Marina. Holy Lord but they are good. They make me want to move into their storefront. In the mornings, they would give me cups of their famous Blue Bottle coffee to cleanse my palate. After that, I could help them fill up their organized, shiny containers with quantities of perfect, colorful vegetables for their custom-made salads. I wouldn’t have any salad though. I would eat only cheese.

They have six kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches. Goat, Sheep, Cheddar and three other kinds which I barely looked at because I snagged on the sheep’s milk cheese with jambon serrano and fig jam. The jam caramelizes in tiny chewy pockets in the bread. It is the best – the BEST – sandwich I have had in a long time. And I love me some sandwiches. I am a grilled cheese fanatic. For the record, I am also nutty for BLTs but that’s not what we’re talking about right now.

In addition to their grilled cheese menu, they have other sandwiches (which, I am sure, are of a lesser breed since they don’t include grilled cheese), macaroni and cheese and salads (fresh and packaged). They also have a mini cheese counter and Acme baguettes if you feel like you need to go home and have DIY grilled cheese. Oh – they also sell the jammy figginess that makes me swoon.

The place only has a couple of tables, so it’s mostly a take-out thing. If you have to take-out, don’t wait until you get home to open up your toasty warm packet of cheesy goodness. Eat it immediately. Go back often.

How do you honk at the guy in front of the guy in front of you?

Twice in the last two weeks I have been irritated at the car in front of the car in front of me. In New York, everyone behind that front car would be honking, creating a chorus of justified displeasure. I admit that the tenth cabbie in the line doesn’t know anything about what’s going on except that he’s not moving, but who cares? Not moving in New York is bad.

In San Francisco, no one honks except to be annoying. The justifiable honk is almost unknown. So when I honk as the second car up from me sits at a green light, the driver in front of me – who should also be honking but isn’t – glares at ME. Like I’m the one making the mistake. Where’s their sense of civic duty? The greater good? Come on people, get it together. We all have to live in this town.

Anyone in the path of the tour of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? should go. It stars Kathleen Turner, who is predictably at home in the boozy, buxom Martha and Bill Irwin who is fluid and excellent as George. (Am I the only one who read the books about the hippos when I was a kid?) It is a rare opportunity to see Mr. Irwin, who trained, as I did, at the Circus Center in San Francisco. His rubbery and precise physicality serves George well. I saw this same production last year in New York with Nicole Kidman and it was exactly as painful as it should be and just a little more brilliant than that.

No, that’s not right. I didn’t see it “with Nicole Kidman” as in, “she was in the show.” I saw it “with Nicole Kidman” in that we went to see it together. I mean, I didn’t actually see it with Ms. Kidman per se. We were both there. We both stood in line for the bathroom. We sat a couple of rows away from each other, which I’ve done with people I do know, so it might have been like we were together. Except for her not knowing my name. And being there with other people. Except for that, we were there together. Just like me and Mats Wilander were dating when I was 11. Like that kind of “together.” You know what I mean.

Like a good New Yorker, I studiously avoided granting her any special attention, unlike the middle-aged woman from Omaha or Debuque or Tampa or who cares where because it was clearly Not New York in front of me, who chattered relentlessly at Ms. Kidman. I do not do this with celebrities. I feel that it would bring shame upon me and upon my family, although I’m unclear on what form that might take, since I do not usually offer both attention and my home address in the same breath.

For the record, I do not enjoy Ms. Kidman’s work. If you knew me, you would know this because I can’t stop myself from saying something cutting and personal every time she wafts onto a screen. I find her brittle. I also wish she would acknowledge the fact that she’s gay instead of continuing to marry men as if she weren’t. (I have third-hand confirmation on this, but I can’t tell you from who because I promised I wouldn’t, even though my source is notoriously indiscreet. And a psychiatrist, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is a little disturbing.)

On the other hand, I am in love with Edward Albee. In an unfortunate turn, I am taken and he is gay, but who’s counting? I have loved him since I read The Zoo Story when I was sixteen and seeing this production renews my love.

The tour will be in San Francisco for now and then move to Tucson in mid-May.

Not being able to remember how I found out about Annabelle Verhoye is an annoying lapse. I was rattling around New York for several years so it’s probably inevitable that I would cross paths with a lot of intriguing people and forget how I met most of them.

Beginnings be damned, I tracked her down once I did see her work, inviting myself, with my nonexistent art-buying budget into her studio on the west side on a bitterly cold winter day five years ago. I can’t explain why I loved her pieces. I do not usually like overtly feminine work. It must be the combination of the alien shapes of her delicate women and flowers combined with the layers of materials – paint, plastic, glass – that attracts me.

If you are in New York this week, go and see her first solo show at the Opera Gallery. Annabelle herself is warm and welcoming and her work is worth a trip.