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2001-07-23 It seems like every day this past week was a different event. Wednesday night the Boyfriend and I saw Lyle Lovett at Wente Vineyards in Livermore�quite a drive (about an hour and half, since we left early and missed a lot of traffic.) So it was quite good to leave work early, in order to drink a bottle of wine, eat a pretty decent buffet spread, and sit around chatting with my baby (even though it was in the late evening sun, ack!) The concert itself was fantastic. His Big Band's style changes so smoothly from Gospel to Country to Jazz to Folk. Lyle Lovett's songs and patter are witty and intelligent. And we saw a couple of unbelievable performances with Lyle offstage completely�a kick-ass version of "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues" by Francine Reed, and a Cello and Drum solo, where violent and unusual playing techniques were done to a defenseless Cell to make it make some decidedly un-Cello-like sounds. I'd never thought of the Cello as a percussion instrument until that. My only problem with the concert was that sometime after dinner I ended up feeling really out of place. Not just because of Chris, the perfectly tanned, perfect-teeth six-foot-four Stepford Wine Server who waited on us. But also the crowd, who was nearly all white, suburban, and seemed...I don't have a good word for how I sense this...they smelled very Christian. I can't explain why, but there it was, and it made me feel very alien. I'd forgotten this over the course of the concert. But the gospel music encores, while showcasing Lyle and the vocalists very well, didn't help dissuade me from this feeling either; finding the words "shepherd" or "redeemer" in my music is unnerving to me. It's probably not a surprise to many, but anti-Christian bigotry is one of my worst prejudices. Yes, I know that there are gay Christians. I've known some very nice people who were Christian too. Honestly, I try not judge all Christians by the behavior of the few, but it's hard for me to remember that only a few of them actually want me dead (in a general sense, not a specific one.) A large number are willing to let me be if I pretend to be straight for them. Even more really don't care in the slightest. I try not to treat christians differently, but every time I meet someone who is smart and liberal (or laissez-faire on social politics) and a Christian, it throws me, and I have to make an effort for a while to not treat this person differently now that I know. Is this what straight people have to deal with when queer people come out to them? Thursday was the Roommate's birthday, and it was relatively quiet at home in the Geek Pad. Sushi was eaten, and I think I did pretty good for presents, even if a couple of them were last minute substitutions and such. This was not the most organized Week-of-July-Birthdays I've done in the past few years. C'est la Vie. Friday night The Roommate and a couple of his current or previous coworkers went to dinner across the street from our house. I almost didn't bother showing up since I was late, but it turned out they had just been seated. It was good, since I got to meet the subjects of many of his stories; they were both good people, and I'd let them back into the house again. Since I arrived late I ended up on an edge of the table, next to one of the two's 7 year old daughter, who was sharp and cute and had an encyclopedic knowledge of "Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps." While it was a Mexican restaurant, we didn't practice our Spanish together, which is probably good. I don't know if I could handle the humiliation of a small child saying to me, in the honesty of all small children, "Your Spanish is really awful." Though, apparently, I'm not going to have a problem with an large number of Spanish Adults telling me the same thing, so go figure. Well, I got my revenge for this oversight by stuffing the small child with chocolate cake until she was anxious and jittery, and then gave her back to her mother. No, I don't plan to have kids of my own; why do you ask? I "played" the Sims a bit more after they left. I use scare quotes because I went on an SimFurniture spree, downloading chairs and walls and floors for a while. Then I discovered that one of my hundreds of files was crashing the game, so I spent the rest of the night restarting the computer and relaunching the game to find the problem. I count it as Karmic Payback for the Chocolate Cake. So instead I did something which is unusual for me lately. I slept in.
2003-03-29 - Moving Notice |
