Life in the key of E flat minor

Of course, when I got the room 347 at my hotel in Cambridge, I should have known that it was a good sign (with 3 and 7 being my lucky numbers.) My group of co-workers ended up going to Jacques Carabet on Broadway at Piedmont. It's a gay bar that does karaoke on Tuesday nights - it's also known for it's female impersonators day in and day out. From the other gay folks that we encounted at our conference, Jacques didn't sound like it was going to be busy. But isn't that how we like our karaoke bars? Immediately, I called Melissa and asked her if she remembered the time that I took her and a few other co-workers to a drag show in San Francisco. I took them to the Tranny Shack at the Stud (on a Tuesday night) and we were there for what we hoped was a good drag show, and it was, albeit it was a drag king contest. It's not everyday that you get to take your co-workers to a drag show, and it's not everyday that you can drag the office to a gay and lesbian karao...

For those of you who have read Ulysses , you will understand my well wishes. For those who haven't, learn more from wikipedia: Bloomsday .

I saw a cute squeaky-clean fair-skinned auburn-haired blue-eyed student walking the other day. If the OED had full-color pictures, he'd be there under preppy . Complete with the madras shorts. That's when my horror set in. Madras! There's something just so scary to me about that many different colored plaids in one place. It must be from growing up in the 70's with Garanimals . (This example is a very calm sample of madras. The Penn fellow I saw had yellows, robin blues, roses and light greens: like an easter egg was dressing for a tropical summer.) I'll stick to my solid colored shorts, thanks.

or (my emotional recollections of the 2006 Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament.) picture courtesy of the San Francisco Fog I lost myself in the weekend. I felt myself not just being this physical entity of a specific volume. I was 700 different people. There was no line between single and plural. I did my best. I played my heart out. I fought. I tackled. I drove that maul. I won my hooks. I outjumped my competition. I scored a try. I fell hard. I failed to stop the other team. I hightackled. I had a penalty against me. I had my hands in the ruck. I broke my collarbone. I bruised my thighs. I limped afterward. I lost to the Convicts and I won against the Fog . It's not easy to explain how one feels as part of sometime much bigger than himself. How do you capture the sensation of the opposite of the pluralis majestatis, the royal we ? How can one find a way to use singular pronoun as a way to refer to the entire group!? That was the feeling of this weekend. After being eliminat...