Monday, it was 90 degrees here. Wednesday, the wind was blowing so hard it rattled my house's windows. Today, there was a thick layer of hail before I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Tricks, treats and psychotic weather.

Chicago Cubs fans have a new goat - and wouldn't you know it, The Smoking Gun has outed him.

Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, Corporate Pimps Whose DSL Fucks Up on Me 24/7 Park, whatever. I'm a lifelong Giants fan, and I don't really understand why people would be so up in arms about changing the name of the ballpark from one soulless fiberoptic cabal to another. It's not like Pac Bell Park has a classy sounding name like Fenway Park. It was our old shitty phone provider, and SBC is our new shitty phone provider. Deal, folks.

What do I think of my state's next governor? I'm too disappointed and mentally fatigued to say, but I'll leave it to Frank Rich.

Short notes, in disjointed non-chronological order after a long and extremely fun week:

First off, support local theater, dammit. My friend Kate's in a funny, engagingly written play called [sic] at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco ( on Jackson between Battery and Front). G and I had a luxurious dinner at Kokkari and then crossed the street to see the show on Thursday night. The Eureka is a nice theater space in a very accessible area with lots of street parking. And there was a handful of people in the audience. I'm not exaggerating, it was somewhere around 10-15, I think, which is abysmal, especially considering the script and the strong performances of the three principals (Kate, as ever, is deft and hilarious). I felt for them; no matter how good the material, performing for such a small house is dispiriting (I've done it numerous times). [sic] is running in repertory with another production, which I hope to see before both shows close next weekend.

It's been a sometimes scary, sometimes exhilirating week for me in the realm of performance. I worked through a song in my City College singing class on Wednesday night - "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. It was an educational, humbling, interesting experience. It made me realize that given a great song like that, I can have an audience react with laughter and great enthusiasm. Technically, I have a ways to go, I need to learn a lot of songcraft, and I'd like to channel a bit more of Zero Mostel, but the foundation is there and fairly solid, and for that I'm glad.

Friday evening, the family, G and I got to attend Teatro Zinzanni, a dinner / cabaret / circus / comic / gymnastic bouillabaisse well worth coughing up the big bucks to see. This is not going to translate to written word very well at all, but here goes. I got pulled out of the audience to do a participation bit with a hilarious performer, the fellow who plays "Le Chef." Since the opportunity was right, I got to ham it up and play off the pro, and in doing so, I was able to crack him up and get the audience to almost eat out of the palm of my hand. It's not often I get to get my groove thing on to the strains of Tom Jones's "She's a Lady" in front of a tentful of perfect strangers. My longtime friends (and people who saw me on that game show back in the day) won't be surprised that by the end of the bit, the audience was chanting, "Lou! Lou! Lou!"

It's an elemental joy when I can perform, in whatever capacity I can find (or finds me), and elicit a reaction other than indifference. The rush of it is addictive. Times like this I feel like chucking the day job out the window and throwing myself into the arts / showbiz full-time. Then I realize that I have 3 years of payments left on the car, other assorted bills, etc. It's getting late, so I'll expound on the internal struggle later, but it's nothing that isn't new - just something I've been able to sublimate in various degrees since I graduated college. Now to bed - I have a long Java class in the morning, then a haircut in the afternoon, then a weekend-long voiceover class. The wheels keep turning.

Once again, the Giants broke my heart. And now the A's are choking in the bottom of the 8th in Game 4. Christ.

Well, at least I wasn't attending the Siegfried & Roy show in Vegas. The weekend after my 30th birthday, I went to Vegas, and my family got me tickets to S&R, fairly close up, right in front of a catwalk connected to the stage. In one memorable moment, two guys shrouded in masks, capes, and obscenely huge codpieces were dragging Roy along the catwalk to feed him to a stupid-looking mechanical dragon. As they crossed in front of us, Roy was able to get loose for a second to lay his hands on my date's shoulders and cry, "Please help me! Somebody help me!" or something of the sort. Now, the scariest part of this whole half-baked magic show skit was seeing Roy's facelifts up close; his heavily eye-shadowed lids were drawn back to a point where he looked downright Asian. Combine that with his Germanic screams for help, the fact that he was flanked by two Druid porn stars, and the two-drink minimum for the show, and needless to say there was a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there. Here's hoping Roy gets better.

Schwarzenegger '03: Where there's smoke, there's Führer!