Demographic data have been released on the 4,037 same-sex couples who obtained marriage licenses in San Francisco from Feb. 12-Mar. 11, 2004. The Chron reports that while 91.4% live in California, the total group hails from “46 states and eight other countries, are highly educated, range in age from 18 to 83 but generally are middle-aged, and represent hundreds of occupations.”
Yikes. I arrived at the office at about 11 this morning. Apparently there was some electrical fire in the Metro system this morning, which disrupted service on the red line. By the time I got to Gallery Place to switch to the red, they were making announcements about fifty-minute delays. And when I saw the masses of people on the platform, I decided, screw this, I’ll just go above ground and walk to my apartment to wait this whole thing out. Which I did. (I had also contemplated walking between the affected stations. The Post reports that thousands of people did, “producing an unusual mass trek down Connecticut Avenue near the National Zoo.”)
I called Tina and Danielle at work, and they were super in providing me with info on alternate means of transportation, but by the time I went back out and walked to Dupont Circle, it seemed things were slowly getting back to normal. The trains were sharing one track, so it was slow going, but here I am in Bethesda, finally, to find that the department printer has a paper jam, and one of my ceiling lights has burnt out. Great.
The silver lining: on the way to my apartment, I stopped at Cosí on the corner of 15th and K, and tried one of their omelette bagels. Quite tasty, and when you pair it with a grande coffee, it all comes to under four bucks.
Also in the Times magazine is an interview with Rufus Wainwright, who just bought a Gramercy Park one-bedroom apartment.
Morning routine: When I’m not touring or working a lot I usually get up at 11. I sleep in the nude and I walk around nude in my apartment, so I’ll make coffee and then sit at the piano. I usually play piano for a good two hours in the buff. There is no view from any of my windows, just a view of building walls, which most people might feel closed in, but the fact that I’m such a “naturalist” and a musician, the privacy is just great. Then I watch C-SPAN for like an hour and a half, get dressed up and go for a long walk around the city. And that’s usually when I write a lot of lyrics.
C-SPAN? Who’d have guessed?
What he takes with him on tour: On tour, the less you have with you, the better. At the end of the tour you always end up with crateloads of junk. People give you a lot of stuff on the road. If you ask for something onstage, it usually shows up at your hotel the next day.
The last thing he asked for: Underwear. And a lot of underwear would be thrown at me when I was onstage. Right now I’m trying for a flat-screen TV, a fireplace, and a chandelier.
So, kids, next time you see him, be sure to bring a housewarming gift for his new place. And take care throwing that chandelier onstage.
The Times‘s fashion coverage usually skews toward women’s fashions, but Sunday’s magazine covers the men. And we like that. (Link via Jeff, who makes special note of Jeremy Bloom. Yum.)
By the way, a good site for photos from all the men’s fashion shows is GQ UK. (I have Stephen to thank for telling me about the site a while back.)
Ah, welcome back to Rebel O’Prince, and happy St. Patrick’s Day. I knew St. Pat figured into my family history somehow–no, silly, I’m not Irish, though I will accept kisses today–and last night I was trying to remember. It was on the tip of my brain, and then finally I got it: the church at which my parents were married, two days after Christmas just over 28 years ago, was St. Patrick’s, a small church (now dwarfed by a Marriott hotel) in downtown San Francisco. Another association: my cousin Leah’s birthday is today. Cheers! (And the birthday of Six Feet Under‘s Mathew St. Patrick is, yes, St. Patrick’s Day. What are the odds?)
We going a-drinking tonight, Thom?
[By the way, the Google logo is looking pretty today.]
The Times‘ Ed Levine is back from his quest:
A month ago I set out to explore the state of the cheesecake in New York City, and thereby, I hoped, to find the city’s best. Thirty days, 30 sojourns across the city, and more than four dozen cheesecakes later, I can attest to the health of our shared cheesecake culture. Opinions about cheesecake are, of course, as multitudinous in New York as its citizens. Tempting as it may be to do, I will not crown a “best” cake, but seven of them.
Now, how exactly do I go about becoming a food critic?
I’ve been a fan of William Haefeli‘s cartoons for the New Yorker for a while now. Haefeli, described by cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as “a paragon of taste,” draws in a clean style–which he attributes to his commercial-art training–and consistently makes wry, urbane observations.
A bunch of his cartoons have gay themes. Here are some of my favorite captions:
“We’re not doing anything for Gay Pride this year. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re used to it.”
“I still say we should get a queen-sized mattress–despite the obvious jokes it will invite among the sales staff.”
“So if you’re the best man at a gay wedding, is that like being first runner-up?”
“I’m combing our finances for all this disposable income I keep reading we have.”
“Which should we go see: the straight romantic comedy where the heroine’s best friend is a gay man, or the gay romantic comedy where the hero’s best friend is a straight woman?”
More of Haefeli’s work and other New Yorker art can be viewed and purchased at Cartoon Bank. Thom was saying it’d be cool to get a print or two, and I agree.
Is it safe to say that America has a love-hate relationship with shopping malls? Even their creator eventually came to despise what the American shopping mall had become. There’s an interesting article in this past week’s New Yorker (“The Terrazzo Jungle” by Malcolm Gladwell) on Victor Gruen (1903-80), Viennese architect and emigré:
Fifty years ago, Victor Gruen designed a fully enclosed, introverted, multitiered, double-anchor-tenant shopping complex with a garden court under a skylight–and today virtually every regional shopping center in America is a fully enclosed, introverted, multitiered, double-anchor-tenant complex with a garden court under a skylight. Victor Gruen didn’t design a building; he designed an archetype. [… He] may well have been the most influential architect of the twentieth century. He invented the mall.
Later in life Gruen fell into disillusion. His idealistic vision of planned community spaces, recalling European city squares, had been taken by developers in a different direction.
Malls, he said, had been disfigured by “the ugliness and discomfort of the land-wasting seas of parking” around them. Developers were interested only in profit. “I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments,” he said in a speech in London, in 1978. He turned away from his adopted country. He had fixed up a country house outside of Vienna, and soon he moved back home for good. But what did he find when he got there? Just south of old Vienna, a mall had been built–in his anguished words, a “gigantic shopping machine.” […] Victor Gruen invented the shopping mall in order to make America more like Vienna. He ended up making Vienna more like America.
Related: review of Mall Maker, a Gruen biography; article entitled “The Corruption of the Shopping Mall.”
