This Mortal Coil

I took this picture of Sam Storicks in January 2004 when we met for lunch in the Castro. Sam passed away last night; he was 30 years old.

Sam (front) with Jeff

Sam (front) with Jeff, January 2004

My first encounter with Sam was through his friend Ryan who had an account on blogspot. Ryan and Sam were friends, and following a link from Ryan’s blog to Sam’s, I came to know a young gay man living in Tucson who worked in the military. Sam had a rough start in life and he was doing what he could to restore personal order. I was hooked on Sam’s blog: his writing was acerbic and intelligent beyond someone his age. When my blog popularity was much higher, I gave Sam space on my website for him to keep a blog, away from prying eyes. He eventually reserved his own domain and became a (truly) independent blogger.

It wasn’t until the fall of 2003 when we finally met. He was visiting California and we agreed to get together for a couple drinks. I was not ready for Sam’s personality, to be honest. I became so conservative in my daily life that Sam’s joie de vivre shocked me out of my comfort zone. Now, I look forward to people exceeding my expectations and I have people like Sam to thank for that.

We didn’t meet again until he moved from Tucson to San Francisco to be with Jeff. When I saw him the second time, Sam started taking prescription drugs to help battle depression. I sat across from Sam but he was not in his body. The drugs had reduced Sam to a man who was nothing like the acerbic, whip-smart guy I grew to know. I didn’t know how to interact with him, and I was worried.

That was the last time I saw Sam.

Sam and Jeff ran the course of their relationship, as relationships can sometimes do that. The prescriptions went away or Sam’s body finally learned how to process them, I’m not sure which outcome is the correct one. But Sam met a guy named Greg and they moved to Portland to live happily ever after. Strange how things can move so quickly when they’re presented online but there you have it. Sam became a popular DJ in his own right, spinning at clubs along the west coast and bear culture parties. When he wasn’t a DJ, he was a flight attendant posting on his social networks about all the adventures in the sky. His acerbic wit was as whip-smart as ever.

Last night, Justin and I were enjoying a cocktail when my friend Dennis called me. I could hear him crying as he told about Sam in the hospital and most likely ready to die. I spent my night between Justin and Facebook so I could, basically, watch Greg post status updates about Sam’s condition.

Greg wrote that Sam passed away last night, he was surrounded by his loved ones.


When I was in a former relationship, Bruce and I talked about death and funeral arrangements. (This is the sort of conversation topic I have with people, I like to think big-picture.) Bruce said that when he died, his soul would be with God and whatever friends & family wished to do with the body was their business. I hadn’t thought of death like that because the thought hadn’t occurred to me that funeral arrangements provide nothing more than closure for people still alive.

With the advent of the internet and social media, websites and pages exist for people who haven’t been with us for a long time. It is strange to see the electronic existence of a person who’s left this earth. Closure takes on a whole new level and, honestly, it is strange to think people can gain some peace of mind from posting messages on a dead person’s wall.

Today I am recording all of my passwords for Justin when, godforbid, I die. Whatever happens to my website and social network profiles, I leave in his capable hands.

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The End of Bad Relationships

Two years ago I bought an iPhone 3G. I never desired the iPhone – I bought myself the first generation PRADA mobile by LG and I ♥ that phone wholeheartedly – I only bought one because my former business partners wanted our company to design and develop iPhone apps. In order to build these apps, we needed iPhones. I couldn’t argue with that logic so I packed away my PRADA mobile, canceled my contract with T-Mobile, and waited in line with every other crazed consumer for hours to own the iPhone 3G.

My phone bill with T-Mobile was well under $80 a month. My original phone bill with AT&T was close to $160 a month, based on services I always had with T-Mobile. Based on my monthly usage for minutes et al, I was able to reduce my monthly bill to $130. So not only did I own what appeared to be an expensive toy, but I was paying a hefty premium to use it.

We never built any iPhone apps, we didn’t come close to even starting UI designs for any of our ideas. I retired my phone and said good-bye to an awesome phone carrier just so I could own an overpriced piece of plastic that would seamlessly sync with iTunes. Oh, joy?

That is my disclosure about AT&T and the iPhone: I am not a fan of either one. In the two years I have been an AT&T customer, my phone calls consistently drop with the changing of the wind. I can stand on the sidewalk, the iPhone indicating that I have full network coverage, and my phone call gets dropped. I often call a friend in New York who’s become so accustomed to our phone calls ending abruptly that we naturally assume it will happen each and every time. Which is often the case.

AT&T swears on a stack of Bibles that the problem is not with the network but with the iPhone itself. And I can agree with AT&T’s position, given how many times I have an issue using the iPhone.

I have never been a fan of the sound quality on the iPhone. I can never properly hear a caller unless I am inside and wearing the special iPhone earbuds. Without those earbuds, the caller sounds far away and I can hear the outside environment more than the caller’s voice. This reason alone has made me dislike the iPhone from day one.

As far as calls are concerned, incoming ones seem to pose a problem with the iPhone. A call will come through so I tap Accept. The iPhone does not register my touch so I tap again. And again. If there is a magical tap to accept an incoming call, I have yet to learn it. It’s simply easier to not accept and then return the phone call.

I will scroll a web page in Safari which, strangely, prompts the iPhone to adjust volume. Even though my fingers are nowhere near the volume adjustment. If I want to leave a web page and return to another one I had open, Safari freezes up before I am able to see the page queue. I’ve made a practice of only keeping three pages open at any given time, and those many can still cause Safari to lag.

I ask friends with iPhones about their issues, nobody seems to ever experience anything but dropped calls. So I make an appointment with a Genius at the Apple store in hopes of finding a solution. The iPhone is taken by a Genius into the backroom of the store where a “firm” restart is conducted on the phone. Somehow, this “firm” restart goes above and beyond any normal restart or System Restore I can conduct via iTunes. The iPhone will operate normally for a week before going back to its previous strange behavior.

As for the constantly dropped phone calls? Apple blames AT&T for the problem.

Come July 11, my contract with AT&T expires. I am but one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unsatisfied customers looking to get as far away from AT&T as humanly possible. And AT&T knows this. Last Saturday I called AT&T inquiring about my contract; twenty minutes later, my monthly bill was reduced to $80 based on new incentives that went into effect June 7.

But are these incentives enough to keep me as an AT&T customer? Two words: hell and no.

Apple is releasing the iPhone 4, available for purchase on June 24. Friends are in a frenzy to pre-order their iPhone 4 which will only be available to AT&T customers. With all the bells & whistles included on the iPhone 4, are they enough to keep me a loyal Apple customer? Again: hell and no. I could care less if the iPhone 4 were the Sweet Baby Jesus descended from Heaven above, I need a phone that allows me one simple act: to place phone calls that I can actually hear clearly.

A friend sent me a link on the U8800 from Huawei, and honestly I would trade the iPhone I own right now for that smartphone*. Until Huawei releases the U8800 in America, come July 11 I plan to unlock the iPhone 3G in my possession and return to T-Mobile. I may not have the same amazing screen resolution of iPhone 4 users, but at least I will be able to have an uninterrupted phone call with friends.

*Unless PRADA and LG release a third iteration of its phone, then I will sell other people’s kidneys on the open market to buy it.

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Odi et amo

Last week, we went to see Jóhann Jóhannsson at The Triple Door. The show was his Seattle debut and I was excited to hear Jóhann perform with a string quartet. We were seated at a table toward the back of the theater where other folks had purchased “standing room only” tickets. I didn’t think anything of the folks standing near our tables since we were at The Triple Door and I’ve always enjoyed concerts with minimal distraction.

That was until a group of people behind our table decided to hold a conversation as the opening artists were performing onstage. It wasn’t bad enough that people thought they were more important than the musicians, but other people around us decided to join in the sense of entitlement and talk amongst themselves.

I had absolutely no problem turning around, looking at one of the women dead in the eyes, and giving her a look that said, “You and I both know that I will get off my chair, grab you by your distressed hair, and drag you out of this theater if you do not shut the hell up this very moment.” I have mastered the art of the deathly cold stare. She and her friends quickly made tracks for another area of the theater.

I turned to my left where another two women decided that their conversation was also more important than the musicians. I shushed the woman into silence. Literally. I held my finger to my lips as I looked straight at her. At first, the woman was shocked by what she was being told by a complete stranger – the nerve! – but then quickly, quietly acquiesced.

This isn’t the first time I have had to ask/tell people to shut the hell up during a band’s performance. More often than not, I try to attend shows where the volume is so inexplicably loud that the crowd has no other choice but to watch the show. For those times when I want to see an artist with a softer side, I pray for a venue where paid staff swiftly remove entitled patrons from the theater.

I want to know when it became all right for people to talk during a musician’s performance. How is it that we still eschew people who have the audacity to talk during a concert of a symphony orchestra, but we let it slide when folks are too entitled to take their conversations outside a venue?

I wish I could paint a broad stroke and blame everything on hipsters but, alas, they are only part of the problem. To be honest, I am slowly warming up to the idea of hipsters. I mean, who would work at Whole Foods? It’s not as if those shelves are gonna stack themselves.

And I would love nothing more to attribute society’s sense of entitlement on a particular generation, but honestly this lack of etiquette spans generations. It has gotten to the point where I no longer want to see my favorite artists perform live because I will spend most of the evening flying into a rage because some yokel needs to tell his friend about something totally unrelated to the artists or the venue.

When Jóhann returns to Seattle, I hope he chooses another venue where “standing room only” tickets will not be sold and the theater staff will take swift action against any and all patrons who feel it’s important to talk with their friends during a performance. I love his music but I hate his fans.

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Crack’d. Whack.

Hey kids! Fun story. Know what happens when you install the new WordPress 3.0 beta? It breaks your previous template! And then you don’t have anything to show people except a blank screen. How fun is that? Oh, the good times.

Stay tuned, I am incredibly busy and will hopefully have all sorts of good news to share with you. And maybe a working WordPress template. Who knows!

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Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Pistachio Buttercream

Jesus, is it already the end of March? I swear time is flying out the window. Well, we’re here together now, so let’s make the most of it with another vegan recipe. From me to you.

Using my vanilla cake recipe, I made its cocoa counterpart and folded in 2/3 cups melted chocolate chips. A cake this decadent deserves an equally sinful frosting. And nothing says “Oh. My. God.” like chocolate and pistachios. Don’t believe me? Make a pistachio marzipan sometime and coat it in chocolate. We’ll talk after you change your drawers.

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Learn From My Mistakes™: So You Want To Be A Success

A friend and former coworker of mine is venturing into business for himself: a “have IA – will travel” enterprise, if you will. He’s enjoyed my past entries about freelance and has mentioned (more than once) that we should talk more over drinks sometime – code for “I want to pick your brain” – as he ventures into sole proprietorship. Since my upkeep in this blog has been less than exemplary, I thought his search for knowledge would be as good a time as any to post what (and what not) to do in business.

I should preface this entry by stating a) I’ve learned these lessons first-hand and b) you shouldn’t take what I say as gospel truth. Obviously, mileage will vary depending on how you choose to work. Without further adieu!

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Vegan waffles that don’t suck

Today I awoke with a craving for waffles. And tho’ I loves me some Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero for all their vegan cookbooks & recipes, I wanted waffles that didn’t require ground flax seeds or pumpkin purée. We had a container of soy yogurt in the refrigerator and it makes a great substitution for sour cream. And sour cream waffles greatly satisfy any waffle craving: crispy outside, custardy inside. When Isa and Terry couldn’t provide me the recipe I required, I went looking online.

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Happy New Year!

2010 Winter Mix

2010 Winter Mix

Like every New Year, I like to start the duration of winter with a music mix for friends. I never thought so many of my friends would look forward to my Winter Mix but look forward they do. My 2010 Winter Mix is an eclectic journey through classics and emerging artists, 60 tracks in all. If there was a theme to choose this year’s mix, it’d be the influence Justin’s had on my music experience (and vice versa). In the spirit of always looking playlist information every time I migrate my music collection to a new library, here are the songs in the order presented:

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Fresh Feeling

When I was eight years old my mom gave me and my two younger siblings a movie option: we could either see Disney’s re-release of Bambi, or we could see Halloween III: Season of the Witch. We jumped up and down chanting the latter option like we children were witches dancing around a bonfire. Then we went to the theater and actually watched the movie, scenes of Halloween masks melting the faces of children and killers claiming their victims with a cordless drill to the head. Twenty-something years later, I’d like to apologize to the moviegoers who were subjected to my vocal protests during the movie: my mom had the power to veto and she was not about to see her money wasted on those tickets. To this day, the theme song from that movie gives me the shakes.

We were not a normal family when it came to watching movies. Alice in Wonderland was followed with The Thing, starring Kurt Russell and a alien-infected dog whose head split open like a flower before a bagpipe-inspired mass erupted from the carcass. After Willie Wonka & The Chocolate FactoryThe Shining. Hey, why not, right? Both movies have important morals for children to learn:

  1. adults cannot be trusted because
  2. they want to kill you

A childhood of scary movies produced a love for quality horror films. I still regard The Exorcist as one of my favorite scary movies but The Exorcist III has one of the scariest moments in horror for me. And that scene in Poltergeist III with Tangina in the elevator? Jesus Mary Joseph.

I didn’t have high expectations for The Ring when I saw it in the theater. How scary can a PG-13 film be? After watching that film, I covered every mirror in my apartment for a week. To this day I cannot look at a mirror when the lights are turned off. I don’t care how absurd it may seem to fear imaginary characters from horror films but undead young children are fucking terrifying. They just are.

For years friends have encouraged me to write about my life adventures. There are days when I have the necessary momentum to write about my job on Fire Island when I was 18, or my short-lived immersion in a yoga sex cult. But then I lose the inertia to sit down and write. I don’t have writer’s block, rather lack of desire to spend hours chronicling my life—nothing kills the spirit of writing like comparisons to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. I don’t want to write to be another gay man writing about his life, I want to transcend who I fuck*.

The other evening I awoke with a urgent need to pee. As I made my way to the bathroom I made certain not to look in any mirror. That’s when I realized, as I sat on the toilet peeing, an irrational fear at 35 is something worth exploring. Possibly in a horror story. I’ve watched enough scary movies to know how to write a good horror plot.

If you are also a purveyor of quality horror, what do you enjoy most? What should I absolutely avoid at all costs? Or should I just stick with what is tried and true and simply unload all of my family baggage into a book that could rival the length of War and Peace?

* Thank you, Erika, for writing that wonderful description about me.

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Vegan Betty


Each loaf measures 14" by 7"

Each loaf measures 14" by 7"

This is my second attempt at baking bread. Before I had a chance to photograph my first attempt, Justin was already in the kitchen with a bread knife making quick work of the loaf I baked in a proper loaf pan. These loaves were permitted to sit on a cool rack long enough for me to snap this photo with my iPhone. Then Justin took to them with a bread knife.

In all my years of cooking and baking, I had never attempted baking bread from scratch. I think it had everything to do with my mom baking whole wheat bread at home. No matter how amazing the bread smelled whilst baking, that loaf came out hard as a rock and resembled a similar density. I know that white flour is eschewed by all proper gay homes but baking with whole wheat flour just ain’t gonna happen. I’d much rather endure the carbs in loaves baked with white flour. Also, I’m not partial to eating rocks.

I have my mom’s copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook which, surprisingly, contains many recipes that can be made vegan. The recipe for white bread in the cookbook called for 3 tablespoons shortening which probably meant lard back in Betty’s time. A simple conversion to hydrogenated vegetable oils and I had vegan bread rising & baking in the kitchen. The trick to baking bread is allowing the dough to properly rise twice. During my second attempts, I let the loaves rise for over an hour which created a lighter density when fully baked.

Baking bread loaves bigger than a baby has its advantages:

  1. One loaf is just the right size for making Roasted Eggplant and Spinach Muffuletta Sammiches from The Veganomicon
  2. The insides of the bread loaf that need to be excavated for the aforementioned sammiches can be dried and used for the crumb topping of Pumpkin Penne Pasta with Caramelized Onions (also from The Veganomicon)

We’re saving the other loaf, what’s left of it anyway, for French toast this weekend.

Cookbooks, people. They’ll save the publishing industry and destroy the processed foods industry.

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