A Queen City Addendum

Almost forgot to add the wonderful experience we had at the cinema last night. We saw Changing Lanes, a film with an OK script, a couple of good acting jobs, and bad everything else. Behind us, a mouth-breathing cretin was sleeping through the whole movie, seemingly. Then at one point, someone walked down the aisle past me and let out a loud, wet fart. I turned to see which mulleted Ohio troglodyte commenced with the flatus, and to my surprise, it was a woman. Fucking A. Are people so deconditioned to the movie-watching experience because they spend so much time viewing at home? Or should I just chalk it up to the midwest experience?

And one more thing: the Montgomery Inn was a total tourist trap, and the barbeque was thoroughly mediocre. But the Skyline cheese coney was pretty tasty.

Dateline: Porkopolis

Just got back from the Reds vs. Giants game. They can't blow up Riverfront Stadium soon enough - it's about as bad as Candlestick Park. Final tallies:

Giants 5, Reds 4
Ticket: $35
Beer: $5.25
Skyline Chili Cheese Coney Dog: $2.25
Soda: $3.25
Having the peckerwood family in front of us have a completely stupid spat: priceless

The trip out yesterday was smooth and painless. I even got a whole row to myself on the airplane, manna from heaven for any fat traveler. Last night, we had dinner at a cute little Italian joint just over the river in Covington, Kentucky. As a native San Franciscan, I still can't wrap my mind around the predominantly brick architecture in town. Verdant scenery all around, occasionally broken up with a strip mall and a bar-and-grill chain franchise. Thunderstorms rolled through overnight, breaking into my sound sleep with the occasional Gothic flash of lightning and ear-splitting thunderclap. Josh's 3BR house is huge and unbelievably inexpensive. The Hustler bookstore downtown is a clean, well-lit shrine to freakiness, like Good Vibrations, only completely misogynist and tacky. And soon, we shall see if the Montgomery Inn's barbeque is all it's cracked up to be, then perhaps a run to Graeter's for an ice-cream denouement.

Once again, I'm going to be feverishly packing last-minute for a trip. Tomorrow, I fly to Cincinnati for the weekend to hang out with Josh, a recent escapee from the Bay Area. Some may call Cinci the Queen City, some may call it Porkopolis, but I like to think of it as the Birthplace of Bootsy Collins.

Anticipated highlights include: Skyline or Gold Star Chili; ribs at the Montgomery Inn; ice cream at Graeter's; the Giants whooping ass on the Reds on Sunday; and last but not least, being violently ill when I see up close how much lower the cost of living is there. Some people looked at me funny when I mentioned where I was going for a long weekend. All I can say is: if there's major league baseball, beer, and good food of any particular stripe, it's a destination for me. And hell, any place known as Porkopolis sounds like my personal Mecca.

It was a nice, low-key weekend. I needed it, after having my ass fairly well-kicked at the workplace the last couple of weeks. I had a lovely date Friday night and got a semi-healthy 6 hours of sleep before I got up and drove to aerobics class. Then a haircut, a trip to the Tiburon Library, a nap, and in the evening my first meal at a fabulous Greek restaurant in S.F. Today, I woke up late after sleeping off my o.d. of baklava, then met up with Dan at the local brewpub for lunch, then back home where I eventually succumbed to a late-afternoon / early-evening heavy nap. Times like those are little reminders from my body – something like, "You need to recharge your batteries, so you'll be hitting theta-wave rapid eye movement stage right about... now." It was one of those wake-up-groggy-not-refreshed naps, and now I'm not sure when I'll be getting back to sleep. And tomorrow I need to have my car's oil changed at 8 in the a.m. Ugh.

I spent my evening finishing the second season of The Sopranos on DVD. So now I'm only 2 years behind the state of the art in pop culture. And then I finally scratched a simmering itch for The Stooges by picking up their first 2 albums – so now I'm only 33 years behind the rock underground state of the art. I heard "1969" on the posthumous Joey Ramone album. When I popped Fun House into the CD player, the first song sounded really familiar, and then I realized that Rage covered it on the Renegades album. The originals are much better. And on a tangential note, "Lust for Life" is better heard when not on a freaking cruise ship commercial.

Callbacks were last night in Mill Valley. Ugh. I sucked. They're putting on The Tempest, and I wish to God I had read the fuckin' play before I did cold reads for it. (Yeah, I'm a theater major who's never read or seen The Tempest – and I've read and performed in Cymbeline, for Christ's sake. Talk about obscure Bard works.) So it goes.

Yesterday, for the first time in 7 years, I auditioned. I finally said what the fuck, dusted off an old Shakespeare monologue, and auditioned in Berkeley and Mill Valley. I got invited to callbacks in Mill Valley on Monday night. (The Berkeley audition was for their entire upcoming season, so who knows, I might get a callback from them down the road.) It wasn't too bad – funny how it works when you go into something with no expectations. If it were an audition for one of the heavy hitters in the Bay Area, like American Conservatory Theater or Berkeley Repertory Theatre, I'd be hellaciously nervous. Nonetheless, a good start.

My cubicle's getting moved in the near future. Can't be soon enough. I sit right in front of 4 conference rooms. No one ever shuts the fucking door when they have meetings. Then I look like an asshole when I demand common courtesy and shut the conf room door myself. In my blackest of secret hearts, I'd rather be passive-aggressive, crank up the volume on my computer, and start playing a completely inappropriate MP3 like "Catholic Girls." But when I get to work, the id takes a holiday. Until I can get to Blogger.

Move over Twinkies, you may not be the shelf life king any longer.

Every so often, I like to check my log files to see who hits my site, where they came from, etc. Going over the logs from March 30 and 31, there was a spate of hits from various IP addresses in Canada. My hypothesis: my episode of Win Ben Stein's Money from almost 3 years ago was broadcast on Canada's Comedy Network around that time. (I managed to sneak in a plug for kipilman.com on the show.) Any of my northern brethren out there know for sure? Hit the email link on the left and drop me a line.

It was a drizzly, grey, cool day. Or as I like to call it, "Every other day in Seattle." I like days like this, actually. I've loved rainy days since childhood. I zoomed home from aerobics class, driver's side window rolled down, a long rumbling Velvets song on the stereo. The sun had set, but the horizon was a low neon blue. Reminded me of dewy, late nights/early mornings in summer.

There was a woman who was a checkout clerk at the Safeway near my house. She worked there for years; I remember her starting there as a bagger, probably close to 10 years ago. In recent times, I'd go shopping there, usually on Sunday nights right before closing. I'd get in her line, try to flirt with her – honestly, you can't really be that suave when you're buying Hot Pockets, Ben & Jerry's and Wild Cherry Pepsi at 10:45 at night. She seemed sweet. Her name tag read "Marisa." That was all I knew about her, until today.

She had a three-year-old daughter. Early Monday morning, they checked into a relatively new, upscale hotel in Mill Valley. Three hours later, Marisa went to St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco and said she had committed infanticide back at the hotel.

I had read the story fleetingly yesterday in the afternoon papers. When I read today the name Marisa and the words "Safeway retail clerk," I wasn't sure if it was her. When I saw her picture in the paper, I got chills.

Most incongruous quote of the day, from newly-taken-out-of-mothballs Phil Donahue:

"When you think Phil, you think hip-hop..."

I pray P. Donny was using a heavy inflection of irony when he said that – irony doesn't always translate from the spoken word to the printed page. But you never know – MSNBC could finally score that lucrative St. Ides ad contract because of this.