Just 24 hours after a troubled 3rd year law student at UC Hastings threatened a suicide leap off the school’s landmark tower, a high ranking diplomat from a “Rogue State”, made a brave appearance in the same potentially contentious academic environment. While not as visually dramatic as the hysterical student with her cellphone in hand being talked down by police negotiators from her 21st floor perch, the ground floor speech by the Syrian Ambassador (and fellow blogger) Imad Moustapha dealt with matters of a far more grave consequence than a student’s bizarrely botched love life.

Mustapha, made an eloquent spokesman for a nation that most Americans can’t fathom, find on a map, and perhaps hear only about when a Fox News correspondent mentions it’s candidacy for the Bush administration’s “Axis of Evil”. Just steps from the plaza named after the United Nations he spoke of some of the inner machinations of that body that left his countrymen a bit more than puzzled.

He spoke of a need for better relations between our two countries, and that the smaller Syria would prefer less bullying & bluster from the current administration. Unlike the reception that awaited Iran’s President Ahmadinejad at Columbia in New York, Imad Moustapaha found a far more colloquial reception at the state’s oldest law school.

He claimed he turned down speaking at the local Commonwealth Club in favor of appearing before law students, as a deference to his life before international diplomacy took him away from his job teaching computer science in Damascus.

Fluent in four languages, co-author of the UN-sponsored “Human Development Report in the Arab World”, Moustapha holds a Phd he earned in the UK, and was Dean of IT at the University of Damascus before accepting his Ambassadorship in 2004. Equally parts charming, witty and defensive of Syria’s political positions, the Ambassador relayed tales of his transistion from simple academic life driven by science to life on the diplomatic frontlines, and his small country’s larger perspective on world events and relationships. He brought to San Francisco his perspectives from 4000 year old Damascus, the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city, and he referred to Cairo and Baghdad as baby cities , since they are only some 1000 years old.

Moustapha, standing under a rotating slide show of his country’s treasures and sites, gave brief introductory statements, but spent most of his hour with the students engaged in Q&A. Unfortunately, not that many questions came down the pipe because some of these were “big” questions, not easily answered in short soundbites when involving complex and sometimes confrontational geo-political issues.

More after the jump…

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[Foolish mortals.] Welcome to a galaxy - and a glitter-dusted crotch - all too close for comfort. (And no Monroe Ficus satellite in sight.)

That was the throwdown Peaches Christ asked tonight’s audience for “Midnight Mass“. As “Miss Thing, The Merciless”, she orchestrated a brilliant radio serial that saw fags, dykes, bears, twinks, radical fairies, sci-fi nerds, satin fetishists, 80’s hags, (and any non-Republican), all unite under one intergalactic rainbow. For the fate of the universe. Against an imperialist despot. Hmm. (Hush child, I’m talking about Dino De Laurentis.)

“Fish Gordon” broadcasted its cliff-hanger glamour, hook, line and sinker for a very receptive, cheerful audience. I’m still wondering why, at 3:07am, I somehow walked out kinda sober. Oh well. There’s always today’s beer bust. See your flashy ass there.

No, the Republican presidential debates haven’t landed in South of Market. Better. The Eagle hosted its annual mud wrestling event this past Saturday. Individuals very secure in their body image grappled and slid their way through smackdowns, headlocks and more than a little hosing down afterwards. At left is retro homo extraordinaire, DJ Bus Station John and a brave extroverted contestant. We both agreed that oddly absent from such an elaborate presentation was, say: an announcer, rounds, winners… Hmm… wait… Could this just be an excuse for ‘the gays’ to get silly, half-naked (or more) and ‘dirty’ in public? I’ll vote for that ticket. And thank God, unlike last year, I managed not to get entirely bystander-splattered in my quest for the best boozy photos.

A co-worker of mine took this adventure trip out to the Farallon Islands to see Great White Sharks. Nature’s most perfect killing machine. A fish that breathes murder and exhales terror. The multi-toothed, never-sleeping, two-ton savage appetite of nature.

She boated out there, my co-worker did, and sat in the boat an arm’s breadth from these gray and white avatars of death. Some people on her tour–either insane or brave, only their families or doctors know for sue–went into a shark cage and into the water. Tourists goes into cage. The cage goes into the water. The sharks in the water. Our shark.

(True Story: I watched Jaws when I was five on TV. I was sitting on the couch next to my mother. She kept telling me to not dangle my little feet off the edge of the couch, as the shark under the couch would eat me. She also told me–with utter seriousness–that Jaws was a true story. I’ve been terrified of sharks and the open ocean ever since.)

Apparently though, the water at the Farallon Islands is very murky and the people in the shark cage couldn’t see anything. I asked if they chummed–tossed fish bits into the water–to attract the sharks, but that wouldn’t work as the blood-hungry monsters live off elephant seals. And they couldn’t exactly kill a seal and bait the water with it, could they?

Instead they dragged a surfboard behind the boat and watched the sharks attack it. A surfboard. So, what they were doing in effect was training sharks in the Farallones to attack tasty surfboards. Nice. Click through above to get details about the shark tour, if you’re the type who digs this sort of thing.

And if you want to see an amazing video of Great White Sharks leaping through the air and–oddly enough–attacking surfboards being pulled behind boats, rent Air Jaws from GreenCine or Netflix sometime.

What started out as a standard ‘meet for a birthday cocktail’ midweek took a different turn, as we rounded the corner from Coco500, headed for the Vima dance studio on 3rd, near Brannan. The birthday girl has been taking the Argentine Tango lessons for the past month or so, and so I decided to drop in and observe.
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Now that I’m working in Palo Alto, Caltrain is my pal. It’s three blocks to the station and three blocks to work, with a 5 minute ride in between. The train timing in the morning, though, means that I have a 5 minute window in which both trains go whooshing by; so if I don’t catch the 8:13 or the 8:18 I’m screwed for another hour. The other trains until 9:13 are express trains that skip Palo Alto! Coming back at night it’s the same.

So I’m getting intimate with the train platform and its surrounding businesses. I can go to the drugstore at Sequoia Station and buy toothpaste or whatever, blow some money on a latte, or get a bagel. What I mostly do, though, is watch people and talk with people. This morning at coffee the most amazing woman in a tight puffy pink jacket with fur trim explained the mechanics of her hairpiece to me. There’s no way to describe the hairpiece without sounding melodramatic. It swirled, cascaded, shone, and made me want to twine my hands in her luscious chestnut tresses. Seriously, that was some pornstarlicious hairpiece! I forgot to brush my own hair this morning or even look at it. The other thing I do at the station in the cold grey morning is whip out my laptop and try to get on the Pizza and Pipes free wireless (like right now.)

No matter what, at the station there are always hunky guys in uniforms doing something. Police, security guards, dudes in orange vests and hard hats with a lot of things hanging from their belts like Harriet the Spy. Then there are smug-looking guys with manicures and nice haircuts with laptops and mountain bikes. There’s a category that I think of as “ladies in nurse shoes” who look like they’re going to work in a hospital or doctor’s office, where they’ll change into scrubs. The upper class looking women clutch their sparkly beaded handbags, lips pursed, brave and resolute, as if thinking “I can’t believe I’m actually taking the train!” Safari time, ladies. Me, I might look like I’m playing hooky from the alternative high school but if you look a bit more closely you will see the analogue to the mountain bike guys: a smug-assed GenX technocrat whose laptop bag cost more than the sum total of all the clothes I’m wearing.

On a recent trip to New York I noticed an odd synchronicity of shoes and bags. On the subway, people’s shoes always perfectly matched the social class of their carrying bags. Sneakers went with backpacks. Leather shoes (whether pointy or sensible) went with leather purses or classy-looking satchelly briefcases. And one category always had fancy square-bottomed twisted canvas-handled department store shopping bags, and the other had plastic bags from the drugstore. It was eerie. Here the rules seems a bit more mixed up.

Caltrain itself is lovely. Clean, bright, quiet, roomy, with comfortable seats. The ride through Redwood City reveals the interestingly squalid back of Cosco, a lot of grey-looking auto body shops in the very sweet neighborhood on the other side of the tracks in back of Target, and then the green, green, gated and walled backyards of people in mysterious Atherton. I think really rich Ents live in Atherton. Menlo Park has apartments, apartments, then a scrubby field, then the train station.

On the way home on Friday people all over the train (I walked from end to end) were drinking beer, kicking back, and talking to strangers. Was that special Friday night mojo? Or is Caltrain in the evening always like that?

I’ll have more to say about Palo Alto later.

Note: post amended for clarity

Do you walk fearlessly through SoMA, right along 6th Street, late at night without a group of friends around you? Can you throw your elbows up and make the walk through Chinatown without getting stopped by the throngs of crowds? Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a North Beach brawl on a Saturday night just because it’s 2 a.m. and fighting is better than going home? Or did you brave Halloween in the Castro without any worries? What do you think of getting away from all of this insanity to spend some time on an island deserted except for your enemies (and that huge camera crew)?

Perhaps you were meant to be on the next season of Survivor. So mark your calendars for the open casting call. It takes place on January 20th from 10 - 2 at the Metro PCS on Van Ness. Applications are available for download here. Even if you don’t want to try out, you might want to wander down to the area and check out the people who do think that they could be the next Survivor.

Every year, I always feel some sort of nagging “I shoulda, coulda, woulda ” when it comes to New Years Eve. Unlike those quieter manufactured religious holidays, NYE is sorta a huge amateur night and mess, one that is celebrated all over.

There are giant pricetags put on often ordinary looking shows and then there are some magical bills that actually do seem worthwhile…

I never seem to know for sure where to head to, so I end up seeing the Supersuckers at Slims or something…( well not this year, cuz they are in Utah…)

I know that because I spent way too much time this past month compiling a list of all the huge mega concerts & even many lil pub & vfw hall shows I could find…

Not just in the Bay Area mind you, but from Amsterdam to Auckland, Tokyo to Tucson…

and I figgered I should post it here before it becomes horribly out of date within the next few dozen hours…

So if yer looking on info on where the party is at when they drop the big ball…

read on after the jump…
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In the late nineteenth century, one million dollars was a lot of money. But it wasn’t too much for Adolph Sutro, the man behind one of the most extravagant leisure locations in historic San Francisco. The year was 1896, the man was a former mayor of the city, and the location was the west coast of the city. The creation was the Sutro Baths, a magnificent public bathhouse.

Many people have heard the term bathhouse and know only vaguely what this means, usually linking it in their minds with the sexual havens of more modern days. At its most basic, the Sutro Baths was a public swimming pool. But this slight description belies a much grander reality. This swimming pool area actually consisted of seven different swimming pools which were designed in Greek style within glass walls which overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Toys for swimmers included diving boards and slides as well as trapezes and swings. Ten thousand people could fit in to the baths at any given time.
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yay the city from the air

Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Like the world needs another blurry airplane window photo? Hell yeah. My individual cameraphone makes it holy, I tell you! As we wheeled over the bay from Oakland Airport I had several Big Thoughts, suitable for having on airplanes over and over when one is on an airplane:

- Death will be swift if we crash right now. Not to worry. No control. Wave with it.

- The city is so small! All the cities are so tiny and brave. There’s more empty space all around us than we remember, all the mountains and forests and fields and oceans. And yet all the mountains and forests and stuff have a surprising number of snaky little roads. How is it that we manage to infest the world so thoroughly? And how is it that we haven’t completely carpeted it (yet) with our crap?

- Where exactly is the Suisun Marsh? Or marshes? Where that one woman who wrote “The Flavors of Home” finds wild asparagus and spiritually bonds with the earth by eating its amazing products? Or are these marshes ruined? Will I ever find wild asparagus or will I have to content myself with miner’s lettuce all my life?

- “San Francisco, San Francisco, you’re a muttering bum in a brown beat suit.” (Kerouac.)

- Almost all of the most famous and powerful people and emperors and kings and generals in history that I can think of: they didn’t get to see this amazing view like I’m seeing it. Eat your heart out, Alexander “the Great”… buddy. I can fly. Ha!

I’ll see y’all on the Seattle metroblog for the rest of this week, unless the rain makes me melt.