From The Mercury News today:

"Bravo has announced it will be doing a spin on its hit show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'' in which five straight guys will offer manly advice to a gay guy. (The one-hour special will be called, naturally, "Straight Eye for the Queer Guy.'')

Among the things the straight guys will offer tips on: power tools, proper garage decor, the basics of pro football, doing your hair in less than two minutes and, of course, sports event etiquette."

What about "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl"? I want the guys to tell women "Say No to Crack (butt crack). G-String Sightings, and Belly Hangings."

I worked out for an hour at the gym this afternoon on the elliptical trainer, and for forty minutes on Saturday. I'm trying to exercise more, because the weight is not coming off despite the fact that I'm eating very little. My jeans are also getting really tight, and it's freaking me out.

When I was working in an office, I walked on my breaks and ended up doing 4-5 miles a day. I don't walk as much now that I work from home, and it's really making a difference in my ability to lose and maintain my weight.

I can't wear tight jeans anymore, not after all these months of them being nice and loose.

I'm trying to do the Oprah/Bob Greene way of exercising. Greene wrote that the only way to lose weight was to exercise at your correct training rate. The gym machines are good for keeping track of my heart rate, since my dinky heart rate monitor is a joke.

I try to exercise with my heart rate at 126-143 beats, which is 70% of 80% of my training rate something that Greene recommends. My gym shirt was soaked today, and the machine said I spent 52 minutes in the 70% to 80% zone. Greene also says that if you're not sweating, you're not working.

I'd like to work up to start running again, but even on the treadmill, running is really hard on my knees. The elliptical trainer is supposed to simulate running, without all the pounding and stress on your legs and feet, so it's what I'll use for now.

So I'm finally caught up to my day 9 Nanowrimo word total. I've written 15,000+ plus words, and finished four chapters.

I had to force myself to sit down and write. I had to keep telling myself that I had chosen to do this, that I wasn't a victim. That I signed up to write 50K words in a 30 days, because it's a good thing, because it proves to me that I can write practically every day if I choose to, and that I can get a ton done if I put my mind to it and choose it.

That's one of the gifts of the Matrix Trilogy for me. To remind me that I choose to do all the things I'm doing, that I'm not a victim, that all of this (my writing obsession) is my choice, and I can choose differently if I want to at each and every moment.

And boy, do I need reminding constantly that I'm choosing to be a writer, which means I have to write, write more, and then write some more, and then keep writing every day of my life probably, until I get a great product.

I just logged into the VPN at work to check if Monday really was a holiday for my company. Damn! It's not. I'm like so bummed.

I don't know why I thought we were going to get Veteran's Day off. Good thing I checked.

I saw "The Matrix Revolutions" at the Imax theatre this morning. Wow, I loved it. I was shopping at Macy's Union Square afterwards, and having non-stop insights, and thinking this isn't really the best place to have philosophical insights.

You can't help but think that everyone is just a program when you're walking through the center of the Macy's cosmetics aisle, or when you're listening to a Green party long haired hippie boy nut case trying to chat up some chick on Muni. I'm not sure which program is scarier.

I definitely need to see the movie again in about a week, when I've had a chance to properly think about everything I've seen.

One question keeps coming up repeatedly in my head.

Chocolate or Vanilla? Choose.

I'm behind in my word count, but I have the weekend to make up for it. I only finished half my word count for Thursday, and now I'm too tired to write. ARGH!!

It really helps me to think about what I'm going to write about before I sit down. I haven't been doing that, so I got stuck and came up with a blank.

Thank god for weekends, and Monday is a holiday at work as well.

I've been having strange dreams every night. Maybe it's because of the lunar eclipse that's happening this weekend, Stargazers Await Weekend Lunar Eclipse, or because of the Harmonic Concordance or because of all those darned sun flares.

If you're so inclined, this is the weekend that's supposed to very good for wishing and or meditating for what you want out of life and for the world.

I'm going to wish for good things to happen for everyone and for peace for our troubled world. And for myself, I'm wishing what I've wished for since I was young child; to fulfill whatever purpose God has planned for my life, to do what I born to do.

There must be some divine reason out there, why my life turned out the way it did.

It's a rainy night in San Francisco, and I went to First Thursdays with a friend of mine. Here's the SFGate's review of First Thursdays, Art's not the only thing on display 'First Thursdays' draw scores of people for galleries, free wine . . . and each other.

Drank way too much bad white wine, and now I have the munchies. All that art, and still I didn't see anything I'd by dying to have if I had the cash to buy it. Sad!

Nanowrimo progress. I'm still a day behind, but I've caught up now for Day 5 count at 8,381 words. I'm now on Chapter 3, and hopefully tonight I'll finish the chapter.

I'm trying to decide if I want to post my novel somewhere, so people can read it if they want. But I don't know. It's a first draft, and a production oriented first draft at that, which means I don't have time to edit or go back.

I'm thinking, there's enough bad writing on my blog page and one the web. Do people really want to read more bad prose?

Plus, then there's the pain of uploading the darn thing every day. Issues of copyright. Not to mention the endless bad punctuation, bad spelling, bad dialogue, bad everything that makes up a first draft of a novel.

On the Nanowrimo site, people are posting excerpts of their novel. Some people are even posting their whole novel on the Net. I like the idea of it for sure. Seeing a novel unfold is fun, akin to reading a blog journal I suppose. But I don't know.

The Chano Dominguez concert last night was amazing. Dominguez is a fantastic pianist. I loved how he fused jazz with flamenco. The juxtaposition of the two different worlds for me was mind boggling.

Listening to Dominguez play jazz last night made me realize all the associations I make from jazz. When I listen to jazz, in my mind I see cities like NYC, Chitown and Philly, I see smoky bars, I see dark alleys and streets, and I hear the noise of rush hour traffic.

I also kind of think of bad sex, but that's only because I was introduced to jazz when I was 18 by this guy I was sleeping with occassionally in college. It wasn't a dating thing. He lived on my floor, I was a freshman, he was a senior, he had a mercedes, and if the two of us happened to run into each other late at night on the floor, we'd eventually end up in bed. It was all very light, very casual, and mildly amusing at times.

Anyway, he had a huge jazz record collection (he was a total purist) and a to die for stereo set up in his room and he'd always have the music going during our interludes. The sex was awful, but the music was fantastic and since he knew I didn't know anything about jazz he decided to educate me. The whole thing with him probably wouldn't have gone as long as it did without his music and his willingness to share it with me.

Back to Chano Dominguez. So I'm hearing Dominguez play these jazz riffs, and I'm thinking NYC, and then I hear his singer belting out a flamenco style song and his dancer doing the flamenco hand claps and then getting up and dancing during the piece. It was wild.

Jazz combined with moorish influenced flamenco music is just a bizarre combo, but I loved it.

While listening to the music, I kept thinking of a modern Spanish city filled with tall buildings and all the trappings of any major metropolis. And if I was going to film a movie in Spain, I would have to have Dominguez's music on my soundtrack.

Here's a link to one of his cds, Hecho a Mano. Listen to Retailia, which is a bulerias, to see what I mean.

I would love to see Dominguez play his music in Spain, just to see what his hometown crowd thinks of his flamenco/jazz fusion.

There's also another cd of his worth checking out called 10 de Paco, especially the track "La Tumbona".

Is it ill if to get in the mood for a jazz/flamenco performance, I listen to Enrique Inglesias' song "Escape" in english and spanish? It's like a favourite song for me.

Si decides dejarme
No te voy a suplicar
Alla tu si mas tarde
Aunque corras, te escondas
No puedes escapar
Aunque corras, te escondas
No puedes escapar

Did I tell you my fifth generation West Texas man speaks, reads and writes french and spanish fluently? I've already got digs in about leftist San Francisco politics, dotcomers, and the french.

And yes, he's a tobacco chewing, whip cracker smart, SUV driving, former bull-riding rodeo wannabe, ex-Dallas the series extra, single malt scotch whiskey sipping, life long, Bush voting republican, oozing with heaps and heaps of guy-guy non-metrosexual animal charm.

He's somebody any Cali girl worth her salt knows she shouldn't be attracted to, but is anyway because it's like an animal and/or a karmic thing.

For looks, think Steve Croft from 60 Minutes, or Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, only younger, with reddish hair, but not so chubby and wrinkled.

I didn't write yesterday, but I just finished chapter 2 and I'm now caught up for my word count for Day 4. I'm at 6,700 words. I still have to write for Day 5, which means the start of Chapter 3. That's 13 pages of single spaced text. Yikes!

Chapter 3 and 4 is Day 1, first meeting in Dallas, lunch at the Hyatt Regency Dallas. I stayed at this hotel the last time I was in Dallas. It's a great hotel, and within walking of the site of the Kennedy shooting, the book depository and the infamous grassy knoll.

So it's finally starting to dawn on my ultra thick head, that the only way I'll ever make significant process as a writer is to work like a bow wow, a doggie.

I had the same realization when I was working at one of my corporate jobs, that if I worked my bunnies off I would get promoted and make more money. And it worked. I worked 60-80 hours, went into the office every weekend, and got promoted and huge raises every year.

Writing looks like it works the same way. Maybe other people have it differently, but my karma is definitely to work like a dog to get anything I want.

And I hate my work karma, because I'm essentially an incredibly lazy, lazy person. That's what the Dreamworks SKG guy talked about, working hard and having passion. Mostly he emphasized the working hard part. That's the only thing you can control in life, the amount you work. Everything else is fate and being in the right place at the right time.

I'm still in the beginning stages of writing my new novel, and already I'm thinking what I need to do to improve what I've written, never mind that the novel writing is actually going really well.

The work I need to do on my writing seems never ending There are things I left out in chapter 1 and 2 that need to be put in, and I want them to revealed by action or conversation bit by bit to move the story forward. The groundwork is there, but I'm still going to have to do a ton of rewriting and filling in and work.

Writing is work, work, work, just like all my jobs, and I hate it, I totally hate it!

For tonight's entertainment, I'm off to see to see a jazz/flamenco performance at the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina.

A friend called me and said I had forwarded her a NYTimes article about one of the performers awhile ago, and now that same man is here in town performing.

My friend is an avid student of flamenco dance, and even spent a couple of weeks in Spain studying flamenco last year.

The performers we're seeing tonight are Chano Dominguez with special guest Jerry Gonzalez.

If the mayoral candidate that I've voted for doesn't get in, it wouldn't be the first time. I hated Willie Brown, and never once voted for him.

Is San Francisco that progressive? I've lived here for a long time, and I don't even know the answer to this question.

The ex-catholic brother, who goes to my church, was telling me that the majority of San Franciscans call themselves catholics, and attend very conservative catholic churches. He said he was even surprised by this fact, since San Francisco has a such a vaunted reputation for being a liberal city.

I was shocked by this little factoid myself, and I've lived here for a long time. I still don't know how to fit the whole catholic conservative thing with the way the city votes. It's a mystery that I'm trying to figure out.

It shouldn't have been that shocking I guess, because I did see more than a few Bush/Cheney signs here during the 2000 presidential election. And there's still a ton of people who are flying high their american flags.

But I like that we're a mix of all kinds of people. It's the way a city should be, diverse and full of people with different opinions, who have to work together to get things done.

But I grew up in an ethnically and politically diverse neighborhood, so I'm used to it.

If the democrats can't win the mayor's seat for the city and county of San Francisco, then you can bet the mortgage that Bush will win reelection in 2004. It's what happened in 2000. Bush got in because in the split of the left between the Greens and Demos.

The battle for the soul of the democratic party continues, while the rest of the country is electing republican governors. Heck, the state just elected a republican governor. The democrats are imploding from the inside out, and that's a sad thing for democratic candidates across the country and in California.

I got invited to hear an interview tonight, like how it's done on Inside the Actor's Studio, with some exec from Dreamworks SKG.

The guy serves as Steven Spielberg's primary executive reviewing projects that Spielberg is considering as a director. "Bottom line, Adam is at the heart of the decision making apparatus for one
of Hollywood's flashiest studios.  He is one of the most savvy, creative, and accomplished executives at any of the majors."

His credits include preDreamworks, Home Alone, Pelican Brief and Get Shorty, and Dreamworks, Galaxy Quest, Gladiator and Meet the Parents.

Screenplays aren't my thing anymore, but I'm going because I'm curious to hear what he things make a bankable Hollywood movie. And it will be interesting because Dreamworks SKG isn't the multimedia behemoth it promised to be.

I got tired to listening to news talk radio, so I'm listening to Live 105 and they're playing all this 80's music like The English Beat, Depeche Mode, and The Smiths. They call the program Flashback Rewind.

The music makes me want to go DC and listen to ska bands at the 9:30 Club, which is across from the National Portrait Gallery. It's so weird that the club is still there. They had the best bands, and a really great tarot card reader upstairs.

Here's some website said about the place.

The 9:30 club is an alternative rock club that can accommodate large crowds, with a moveable stage that can change capacity instantly. A four year old state of the art facility, it has three levels, three bars, and a full food menu. Once located in downtown Washington, the club has become legendary for hosting every alternative or modern rock band that has been around for the last sixteen years.