Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Sat 10/21/00:

Worked outside finishing up the front yard. I�ve finished pulling up all of the euryops and moving the surviving plants around. Now I just need to redo the mulch. In the early afternoon, John went to have lunch with some old high school friends and I went over to Pasadena Pride. The pride festival was in front of city hall this year. It made for a picturesque setting. Pasadena has one of the smaller festivals in the area, but it�s also more friendly and family (couples w/kids kinda family) oriented than some of the others. Catalyst, the GLBT advocacy group which organizes this pride, had several members of their youth group staffing the info booth, so there was a bunch a bunch of bright faced eager young kids helping out. The next generation of leaders I guess.

The main stage was set up on the steps of City Hall and at one point the Campers performed. It�s been a while since I've seen them perform, but they were still as funny as I remembered. JPL had set up a science display/booth and there was a pet area as well. Because of the pet area, there were a bunch of people with dogs wandering around. A body building, gay couple with an equally bulky pit bull, sporty looking women with equally athletic looking golden retrievers, a thin white guy carrying around a tiny chihuahua, it was hard to not start laughing. That old adage about people looking like their pets and vice versa was true that day.

I had a chance to talk and catch up with some people that I hadn�t seen in a while, JamesL, Rick, Rosemary, Sister Candy among others. I found out that for a very short time, there was a possibility that the festival may have been held on the Colorado St. bridge. Pride at Suicide bridge would have been interesting.

That night, Kristen came over for an anime fest. After getting into Sailor Moon because of sailors Uranus and Neptune, she�d started looking into other anime series and had decided that I needed to see some of this stuff. Before the fest though, we went to dinner at Good Earth, stopped at Best Buy where I blew some money on the three dvd Toy Story set, then stopped for some movie snacks at Whole Foods (chips, cookies and an odd lime/cactus fruit drink that she wanted to try).

Back at my place, we started watching the dvds that she had brought. Kristen succeeded in getting me hooked on Bubble Gum Crises 2040. Female mercenaries with attitudes in formfitting armored battle suits fighting craved rouge robots while swearing like sailors. What's not to like? Apparently this was a remake of an earlier series and was a hit even though it aired at one A. M. in Japan. Between the stylized violence and some possible sexual tension between a couple of the women I could see why. Of course after watching the first four episodes, Kristen told me that was all that was currently available on dvd. Dang, very annoying.

Next up was Revolutionary Girl Utena. At its most basic, it is a modern fairy tale tale about how a teenage school girl (Utena) who always dresses in boys clothes accidentally ended up getting engaged to another girl (Anthy) after winning a sword duel with another student. Now that was a weird sentence. The artwork was really crisp and the entire thing is very stylized and artsy. It�s supposed to be a popular kids show. I have trouble picturing an American kids cartoon where one girl would declare her eternal love for her cross dressing best friend by jumping on her, but it appears that it�s a no issue in Japan. Dif� cultures and all. I haven't quite made up my mind about it yet. Kristen lent me some more episodes to watch, with the warning that it took her while to get into it and that there was a lot more to the plot than appeared from the first couple of episodes.

Last was an episode of Sol Bianca. Hard drinking, hard fighting, amoral female space pirates out to steal an antique dueling pistol on some planet that for some odd reason looks like a cross between Italy and Spain. I had no real idea what was going on in the story, but it all looked great. The artwork seems to have influenced by both Nagel and Musha. It was much appreciated that the people were drawn �realistically� (no big eyes).

In addition to the Utena episodes, Kristen lent me some episodes of the original version of Bubble Gum, so I now have a bunch of stuff to watch. She may have succeeded in getting me hooked onto this stuff. Which as we joked that evening is a large part of our friendship (eating and talking �bout our shared hobbies and interests).

Sun 10/22/00:

John and I pretty much just spent the day running errands. We did manage to have a late lunch with my sister at a chain Chinese restaurant down in Orange County. Other that, the day was fairly dull, which was appreciated. It gave me a chance to excel at being lazy.

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