San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday

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It only took me 24 minutes to decide not to attend a 24-hour Fitness Center ever, ever again. This is an organization that advertises never-ending -- also known as eternal – a.k.a. infinite, as in from before the beginning of time beyond the ends of time, as in not ever stopping, exercise. A shelter that boasts of the availability of upper deltoid pumping iron machinery at 2:30 in the morning, also known as in the middle of the night.

The fact that I was even drawn to joining such an organization, which by its very name is suggestive of all my deepest fears and nightmares, is clearly indicative of its intrinsic evil. But one day I stopped thinking altogether and accepted on faith that committing to an automatic monthly checking account deduction of $60 was a guarantee that I would regularly show up at this place. When I called up about their services, an appointment was scheduled for me to tour the facilities – 11:00 in the morning on a weekday. This is a very good strategy to lure prospective buffed up wanna-bes because, hey, who’s at the gym at this time? It looks like it’s all for you. What you experience is this vast chrome wonderland of mirrors, treadmills, happy music and a few lone muscled men in tight shorts breezily chatting with each other as their biceps inflate by the minute. Since everyone else is at work, I suspect that they are actors (“Hi, I’m not really a member, but I play one at 24-hour Fitness Center”). Either that or they are the most well built homeless people I’ve ever seen.

As you take in the sites, bobbing your head to that happy beat, you find yourself smiling hypnotically. Your host is like Mr. Rourk from Fantasy Island; he is charming and easy-going and he regales you with success stories of fat, lazy, depressed people who came to this beautiful place where it turned out to be so easy to become thin and energetic. It’s not a dungeon where they whip you into shape and make you eat gruel. It’s like the Playboy Mansion. Why, it’s better than sex. I mean, you want to do it all the time! It’s the best drug in the world and you will be addicted to it and, yeah, you will get high!

Along with all this sheer ecstasy comes a really, really nice personal trainer who is at your disposal any time you want. These personal trainers are walking all over the place, smiling, nodding at you, concerned for you. They are a constant, benevolent presence who would never let you make a fool of yourself as you, say, fumble around a weight machine, squinting as you squat down to interpret the 20 step instructions on how to adjust it to your height, weight, age, boob size, and IQ. There are also four people at the front desk to greet you and help you in any way they can. They embody customer service and would never, say, spend all their time chatting to each other and ignoring you while you try to ask for a refund on the $1.50 you lost in the soda machine.

This is great, you say to Mr. Rourk. Sign me up! What transpires after that is a whirlwind of activity -- smiles and laughter, claps on the back, signing of contracts, money changing hands, finalized with a grand feeling of accomplishment. I’m improving myself, you think. You call your mother who thinks that you drink too much. You let her know that you have just traded your beer bar in for a barbell. She is so proud of you!

Then comes the day, perhaps the very following day, when you go to the gym. You don’t just go to the gym. You spend two hours the night before rummaging through your closet, searching for an “outfit” – one that says: “I work out. I have always worked out. I belong here.” Unfortunately, your butt suggests otherwise. Nothing looks right. And you don’t own the right sneakers. You only have a pair of 15-year-old muddy Converse high tops. What all this translates to is that you won’t make it to the gym right away. It will have to wait until you go shopping for all the right gear. Three months and $280 of membership fees later, you have some clothes. The initial excitement has worn off. Another three months goes by.

One day, you are totally disgusted with yourself. You throw those nice new clothes in a bag and you go to work. Then work is over and it’s time to get moving! After work: the most available, normal time for exercising. You think so. When you get to 24-Hour Fitness Center, you realize that everyone else in the world thinks so too. How marvelous for a lonely, single woman, such as myself to find a place with wall-to-wall people. Or make that, treadmill-to-treadmill people. How titillating it was for me how, after 30 minutes of waiting for just one machine to be available, to finally be able to use the thigh machine – the one where you sit up and spread your legs wide open, then close, then open, then close, then open…..then find a nice man leaning on the front of the machine, watching, waiting. Some people wait around their whole lives for this kind of subtly erotic interlude. I guess the excitement of it all was too much for me to bear. I left.

I went about four more times after that, each time experiencing a new brand of customer service. I decided that I would stir up some good karma by repaying 24-Hour Fitness Center with the same generosity it had shown me. Because of the organization’s generous nature, it had obviously oversold its facilities to thousands of people who would never actually be able to use them. I gracefully bowed out, allotting my space to all those other suckers, I mean, athletes , so that one day, they may too get to see what it’s like to actually use a treadmill. I’m sure 24-hour Fitness Centers have enough people signed up. I’m sure they won’t replace me. They don’t need the money.

Sacramento Bee - Sunday Travel

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Camping is a nice thing, but it lacks the natural forming of friendships that a rafting trip provides. When you go camping, mostly you just want to get some peace and quiet. So you drive two or three hours, pull into a park where you’re directed to squeeze into a driveway roughly half the size of the one you have at home, to a patch of dirt and rocks with some pretty weeds, cigarette butts, and a death pit/ barbecue grill sporting the remnants of Jeffrey Dahmer’s last 18 meals. You get out of your car, stretch and breathe in the fresh air, pop a beer, set up your tent, throw some chemically treated starter logs in the pit, strike that match, sit back in your lawn chair, and inhale with fantastic satisfaction that cigarette as you marvel at how you’re so at one with the yourself and the universe. Just you and nature, and maybe, just maybe, a smile and a nod at the family of nine running and shouting and setting off stink bombs from the 30 foot metal trailer in the lot next to yours. They’re there. You’re here. That’s camping. Unless you’re like my mother, Valerie, and you don’t just say “hello”. No. You join them, forcing your own family to become best friends with them for the next three days, even if you find them utterly loathsome.

People go rafting to be at one with nature, but they go also for a thrill, and the comprehension that they will be sharing their experiences with other people. They go knowing that they have no control over what kind of strangers they will be teamed up with on a rubber boat with their butts within three inches of each other for six inescapable hours. Surely, you think, they will be like you – adventurous, interesting, interested, fun, smart and cool. That could even be one of the reasons you go -- to meet other interesting people like yourself. Like my mother says, you don’t want to meet your future husband in a bar, you want to find one doing healthy activities like rafting because it’s a sign of emotional well-being because they’re not, you know, drunk. One hopes.

So I went rafting with all this in mind, except for the husband seeking thing because everyone knows you don’t find a husband when you’re consciously looking – you only find someone else’s when you’re unconscious. But I had been feeling kind of down and this seemed like just the thing to give my spirit a rattle -- feel some life around me and enjoy some interesting conversations other than the usual “hey lady, you wanna buy some crack? No? Well screw you!”

My friend, Kelly, and I packed the back of my Ford Explorer with the usual camping necessities – the tent, the sleeping bag, the Coleman stove. The wine, brie, steaks, strawberries. The queen-size airbed with foot pump, pillows, slippers and Walter, my stuffed red dog with the orange and black spotted nose. And we headed off to Coloma State Park, the grassless Mecca for would-be and have-been rafters. That night, after two hours of pumping up my bed, we supped on succulent steaks and sipped a delicious Merlot as we chatted with anticipation about our upcoming adventure. It was amazingly quiet and we felt lucky that we had two empty lots on either side of us. I was still just a camper at that moment, not having yet rafted, so I was in the solitude and silence mode.

We were up at dawn. The airbed had leaked and our hipbones and elbows were gradually impaled by gravel and pieces of glass. I had found a new method of getting to work on time. Toss the alarm clock, I said to myself, this works much better. At 10:00 after some delicious coffee and a breakfast of eggs and bacon we drove the five minutes over to the middle fork of the American River where the rafting company awaited us. The Whitewater Connection representative teamed us all up quickly into four different boats where we strapped on our lifejackets and, with barely a hello to any of our mates, started an easy float down the river led by our delicious “Kiwi” (as the New Zealander referred to himself) guide, Mark. Sigh, what a man.

So I introduced myself to each person on the boat. Sitting in front of me at the head of the boat was this incredibly handsome French man in California for a six-week visit. His name was Olivier, and having grown up in France myself, I greeted him in French and asked about his vacation. He was so happy – my having been the first person he had met in America who spoke his language. I haven’t been attracted to anything male in the last year that hasn’t been neutered or didn’t meow and suddenly I have two men whom I could really love right there in that little boat. No, I don’t mean in the boat.

Behind me was my friend Kelly, and across from Handsome Frenchman and us was the Brown family – wife Audrey, husband Milton, 9-year-old son Jamie and 7 year old daughter Melissa. I was a little worried about our safety driving this thing with the two kids, but my fears about them were quickly assuaged when Mr. Brown asserted his leadership with an impressively angry sounding squeal to Jamie to put his hat on.

“But I left my hat at the camp, Dad.” Jamie explained.

Dad’s superior understanding of the gravity of the situation became increasingly apparent and loud. I responded pettily as I was very jealous of his natural sense of authority, his keen focus and, mostly, the nasal quality of his voice.

“Look,” I interrupted the man; “He left it. We’re not going back, so stop yelling and let’s enjoy ourselves.” See why I feel ashamed?

In fact, the kids were great. They rowed hard and strong, they listened to instructions from the guide, and they were obviously enjoying themselves. I wondered if part of their enjoyment included the energetic alternating witty repartee from their parents. “Isn’t this fun Melissa isn’t isn’t isn’t it… do you like it are you happy we brought you here isn’t this fun Melissa? JAMIE! Don’t splash your sister! We’re here to have a good time, dammit! Stop it! Stop it!”

We all enjoyed it very much.

Handsome Frenchman, on the other hand, turned into Prissy Frenchboy who seemed to think that this was a Disneyland ride – It’s a Small World After All – and that he didn’t have to do any actual real rowing – that it was just for show. This embarrassed me in front of my cute Kiwi guide, Mark, who had instructed us that we had to coordinate our rowing and we had to row strong, we had to row deep and that the rowers in the front of the boats would lead the pace. Well, Frenchboy seemed to think that speech was just for show too, like the funny Disney guides on the boat ride through the “jungle”, so he would do one little flicking rowing thing, and look at the clouds, and leave his paddle dragging in the water for me to hit with my oar as I rowed again. Mark patiently instructed us again -- like a kindergarten teacher telling a 5-year-old for the tenth time that drawing on the wall is wrong. But it was all Frenchboy’s fault! Flying through the next set of rapids he held his oar over his head and fell backwards on me. I caught him – me and my 102-pound body – and pushed his 170-pound body back to the upright position. No more Mr. Nice Chick for me. As soon as Mark yelled at us to row, row, row and Olivier just sorta smiled and dipped his oar in, I whacked it with my own oar and hollered at him in French to row faster! And row stronger! Go! Go! Go! Go! I screamed. I had control now! He looked at me like I was insane. I was, and I liked it, so I screamed again. And it worked. Where there was only chaos, I created order.

Kelly and I drove back to our camp, exhilarated and exhausted, looking forward to a relaxing dinner by the quiet river. The two lots next to us had been filled by five lovely trailers, out of which spilled about 35 happy campers; the Buckwalter clan led by their matriarch, Kathy, who came right over to us, introduced herself, let us know in 15 seconds that she was an ex-alcoholic (no, she didn’t say “recovering”), and that she had had plastic surgery and liposuction on every single part of her body.

“Yup,” she said, “You think I’d have boobs this solid at my age? My doctor is an artiste. There’s no way you would guess that I’m 57.”

You’re right, I thought to myself; I thought you were 60. She called us Beverly Hills girls and said she was a real country girl, and she spoke with this southern country accent, but she only lived 30 miles south of Coloma. She left our company after detailing how her last lipo sucked a whole gallon of cellulite right out of her butt. I thanked her for sharing with us. It seems the Buckwalters went there every year to go rafting, but being true country folks, they didn’t need no stinkin’ guide. They had their own rafts.

And that’s the difference between campers and rafters. The bonding. The opening up. Later that night, she stumbled over to say hi, reeking of booze. Someone must have spilled it on her, because she told us she doesn’t drink. She invited us to come over and hang with her clan. I declined. It was unfortunate that my mother wasn’t there to accept.

San Francisco Chronicle - OpEd

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When I grow up I want to start my own cable company. I am a displaced artist, a writer that doesn’t write, a secretary who’s yearning for artistic expression and freedom from my administrative chains has turned me into a bitter, evil creature who wants to rule the world. I want revenge. I want total control --just like my corporate mentor and personal hero, TCI, my own cable provider, who makes the most powerfully irrational decisions and carries off their task with sinister glee. I want to laugh in the face of reasonable and practical requests from potential customers. I want to feel the desire and need of television addicts and make them bend to my own cast iron, impractical and completely preposterous will. How I came to this healthy revelation began on the day that I made that great leap into adulthood: I could afford to watch 62 channels and remove the aluminum covered hanger from my television.

What I could not afford, however, was to take an entire day off from work to stay home waiting for the cableguy -- oh, I’m sorry -- the Cablevision Technical Consultant to show up at 4:59:58 to plug me into an eternity of Brady Bunch marathons. I know I am not alone -- they must come across this every day. And, in fact, the nice lady on the phone there told me that about 95% of their patrons say the very same thing. Fortunately, I had a friend staying with me temporarily, trying to sort his life out. He has some problems. I suggested that he be at my home to sign off on my desire to be a part of the cable family. That’s fine, said the nice lady, but the service will be in his name and his name only will appear on the bill. But he does not live here -- I live here, I said. That does not matter, said the nice lady, who started to become less nice. But what if I give him a letter with my signature authorizing the transaction, and a utility bill to prove that I am the tenant of this apartment? I am, after all, the actual person who is buying this service, I maintained. No, the lady intoned. I also have a year’s worth of pay stubs and a business card showing that I am a fully employed, well-paid and responsible person, I offered. That does not matter, said the lady, who’s now steely, willful imperatives were sending a little thrill down my spine. But my friend is a homeless, alcoholic, schizophrenic who can’t take care of himself, much less my cable bill, I said. That does not matter, came The Voice that had by now fully captured my senses, lulling me into total submission as if TCI was the Jim Jones of cable access services.

TCI still preferred -- insisted -- on putting a total stranger who lives out of a shopping cart and who considers underwear to be a portable outhouse, on this billing account as the preferred customer. I took their offer. I do indeed have expanded turbo powered cable with every movie channel known to man. I still have no say as to what to do with my cable. I want to cut it down to the basic channels. I cannot. I want to cancel it. But I cannot. Not until my friend’s voice -- or one of them -- gives them the authority they need. So now I spend my off hours wandering through Golden Gate Park, poking my head in all the bushes and all those funny little tents, calling his name. On that day that I find him, on the day that he can cancel my account -- that will be the day that I am free. On that day that I become free, the oppressed will become the oppressor. On that day, I will start my own cable company.

San Francisco Chronicle - OpEd

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I feel left out.

Everyone else gets to scream and shout with righteous indignation about how their particular group is vilified on a regular basis. But I, too, have realized that I have been the subject of terrible prejudices for many years now.

I didn’t realize it until I had fully absorbed the 450 Oprah Winfrey, 328 Sally Jesse Rafael, 263 Jenny Jones and 137 Riki Lake shows that painstakingly took the time to educate me on how truly horrible my life has actually been. To think that all these years I have walked through life blindly, feeling happiness, when in reality my psyche was being secretly stabbed with the daggers of human bigotry. I can’t believe all the years of unhappiness and anger I have to catch up on.

I have been maligned for almost every physical characteristic I possess, the way I speak, where I live, my purple shoes, my love for my cat, and every job I have ever had. I have apparently been sexually harassed, harangued, and assaulted. I guess. I never knew how much sex I had in my life until my recent enlightenment. I thought that my sex life was really boring.

My first newly un-repressed memory of prejudice was when I was three years old and my mother read me Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat”, the story about the weird cat that comes to alleviate the boredom of the brother and sister. Why was it a brother and sister? I don’t have a brother. I have two sisters. What’s wrong with a story about a cat and three sisters? Didn’t Dr. Seuss think it was interesting enough to write about three sisters? Do you realize how many families out there are not comprised of a brother and a sister? What’s so perfect about that?

Then another horrifying memory came me. It seems that my poor, unsuspecting mother took me to a movie one day about some bizarre, screwed up chick named Pippi Longstocking, who was covered with freckles and moles on her face and body.

Just like me.

It’s difficult enough having to live with the pain of people saying, “You have freckles” without creating entertainment out of it, thereby inciting people to surmise that all girls with freckles and moles are whacked out freaks. All those sidelong glances, all those notes passed in class. Now I know what they were about. No wonder no one takes me seriously.

Then there’s the men. Oh the men. Yech! Horrible, bad, bad men.

I would like to preface this by saying “thank you” to those insightful school administrators who had that filthy little 6-year old boy punished and kicked out of school for kissing that girl on the cheek. He knew exactly what he was doing -- using his sick, Don Juan charms to get only one thing from her.

I have an intensely private and deeply disturbing admission to make, which I must bring out in the open in order for me to begin my healing process. This will be shocking to you, so if there are any children reading this article with you, please have them leave the room.

Thank you.

I confess that I had my dress pulled up probably over thirty times on the jungle gym in the course of my pre-pubescent experience. And not only by boys. By girls too. And I think even some dogs. You know how those beasts can be with their big, wet noses.

After un-repressing these memories, I’ve been overwhelmed with the realization that I had had my innocence slowly strangled, squeezed, and finally stolen by this intricate web of bigotry and sexual harassment day after day. Year after year. It’s a wonder that I haven’t suffered a complete mental breakdown.

I am very proud of myself and my wondrous strength and courage.

Fortunately, I have way too much time on my hands.

I will spend it championing the rights of the non-brother/sister family structure. I will sue those nazis who published that trash. I will join the Board of Supervisors and have that lesson in non-diversity ripped off the shelves. I will write letters to newspaper editors and movie theater management that freckled, moled women like me will not tolerate being maligned for the sake of mass entertainment. I will picket the elementary school playgrounds where sexual deviance runs rampant.

Thank God that we have arrived at this era of enlightenment. We are free at last.

Now if you will excuse me, I must go. I’m being highly offended at this very moment by my boss standing here asking me why I’m writing something personal on company time. She obviously hates creative people.

I think I’ll sue.

Lake Chapala Review - Jan 2008

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There’s a very interesting and common restaurant business paradigm that I have observed living in Ajijic over the last few years. It has become quite a trend which new restaurant owners like to copy -- a business plan with an unusual twist – an unfairly maligned final step known as “going out of business”.

What is this paradigm? Here are the steps for this popular business model:

1) Open up a restaurant. Hire really nice, efficient staff. Serve generous portions of good, fresh food. Keep prices reasonable.

2) Wait three months until you have acquired a large, happy, loyal clientele.

3) Fire the really nice, efficient staff and replace them with either rude or just plain disinterested staff. Serve half portions with canned or frozen substitutes. Double prices.

4) Go out of business.

5) Rinse and repeat.

I could list over a dozen of these failed restaurants – or rather, successful restaurants if they are following the above business model. There are several which are still here but will soon follow in their competitors’ footsteps because they are just oh so close to accomplishing Step 4.

Baguette’s was a good example. Nice, relaxed atmosphere, friendly service, and decent inexpensive food. And then “Mr. X” took it over. Mr. X wanted to make a lot of money real fast. He was a smart business man, after all. Mr. X decided that the old nachos, made with fresh tortilla chips, real melted cheese, jalapenos and guacamole, were spoiling his customers. Those people and their fancy, high falootin’ needs! Mr. X could make a lot more money if he replaced that with wholesale stale Doritos and partially melted lumps of Velveeta. And forget the guacamole! What would his customers expect next? Diamonds sprinkled on top? Oh yes, and replace those regular size wine glasses with barbie doll goblets. Who would notice? And then as Mr. X surveyed his empty restaurant day after day after day, reflecting on the odd aroma he was detecting from having his head so far up his posterior, his quaint little restaurant quietly went out of business.

Then there is a place that is still up and running. The owner is currently only halfway through Step 3. So that it remains anonymous, I’ll use my expert secret code skills and refer to this restaurant as Shmel Shmjardin. A formerly delightful place where I used to spend my pesos at least three times a week. Here are some positive qualities that it still possesses: It’s in an awesome location, and their food is edible and reasonably priced. Here WAS the most important quality they possessed: One of the friendliest, most efficient wait staff ever. This was the reason my friends and I patronized this restaurant so frequently. But I could see all along that there was a problem with all this. Some people think high class means being aloof and condescending. It is an interesting phenomenon that many people believe all over the world. Thank goodness the owners came around and realized that we don’t want to eat in some folksy place where people annoy you by greeting you effusively and making sure you are happy with your meal. How pedestrian. What we really want is to be treated like crap. And so the original wait staff, all of whom showed an extreme lack of class by the ridiculously friendly and efficient way in which they behaved, was fi... uh, were abruptly allowed to not work there any more. And now the restaurant is filled with a delightfully aloof, and occasionally rude (you pay extra for that) staff who is totally indifferent to your petty desires, such as asking for mayonnaise on the side, or, say, wanting some silverware.

And so I say to the owners of Shmel Shmjardin, “Shmgood shmluck!” Sadly, I will not be returning to your restaurant, and neither will many other people I know. It’s too high class for us. Enjoy reaching Step 4 of the most popular business paradigm in town!