Monday, November 10, 2003
I was watching television the other night (taking a break from writing, I swear) when I saw this horrific commercial. It was one of those public service announcements, about the dangers of skin cancer. They had some poor fellow on there, sitting in his living room, talking about the small speck of melanoma that once blossomed at the tip of his nose. But that was just the beginning. In the last few seconds of the commercial the guy literally takes off his nose, and sits there on his couch as if meditating on his awful fate and on all of his youthful, sun-lit indiscretions. Meanwhile the camera just sits there, allowing us a partial view into the large red hole on his face. It was just plain wrong, and for that reason alone it will be a successful commercial, because I keep picturing it. Against my will, of course.
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A posting from Craig’s List’s M4M section:
Dear Al Qaeda(sic)
Please put anthrax spores in all the crystal meth
so I never have to read another PnP ad again
Thank you
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Friday night I went to a reading at the Modern Times bookstore on Valencia Street, after circling the neighborhood for about an hour, looking for parking. Margo, my writing instructor, teaches several workshops a week, including one in the San Francisco County Jail, with some of the prisoners. The reading was by some of the prisoners who had been released. There was much talk of healing and empowerment and giving voice, words that kind of make my skin crawl. But there was one guy, who looked a little like Elvis Costello on speed. He stood at the podium, his body in constant restless motion. He was a great poet and he had a funny, self-deprecating manner. I loved watching his nervous tics as he talked between poems, giving brief, abortive attempts at introductions. “When love goes away,” he said, “there’s, you know, a distance that can’t be breeched.” His eyes widened on breeched, and he held his hand up, palm facing us, as though pressing it against a window.
