Charlie’s Blog

It’s Sunday afternoon! The sun is shining outside, but I just have to update before I go back outside. I worked today and yesterday which wasn’t too bad, but it definitely sucks getting up early on the weekend. The funny thing about my restaurant is that it’s a few blocks away from a prison downtown so we get colorful characters every so often. They’re not shy about doing time, either! This guy today volunteered that he just served for violating his parole. Had I been thinking about you, loyal readers, I would’ve probed for more information, but I’m sorry. Next time!

My two favorite songs this weekend are "Fancy" by Reba and "Just Like Jesse James" by Cher. Shout out to Leia for introducing me to Reba. That’s right, from now on I’m going to link my shout outs! Get ready for some fun! Anyway, as usual, I’m too broke to actually buy these songs so I found places to listen to them online. One site is just too good to keep to myself. It’s smashits  (with one "H") where you can listen online to songs and album by most pop artists for FREE. Not snippets or samples either, you get the entire songs! Reba isn’t there, but there’s always fancyreba

Last night was the chorus new member social. It was fun. There was karaoke, but they didn’t have my songs. I ended up singing "Dancing Queen" by mistake. It wasn’t my best turn.

Now, I’m going up to North Park to see my favorite Queer Eye, Ted, give a lecture and sign books. I was hesitant to go because I’m sure he’ll be talking a lot about preparing dead animal (aka meat), but I’m so celebrity-starved! I’m going to wear the green jacket my mom just gave me that says "There’s plenty to eat without choosing meat." I know that’s a lot for a jacket, but whatever. Anyway, it’ll be my second time meeting him. Shout out to Jeff who got me into a swanky Chicago charity event two years ago where Ted was a special guest.

That’s all. I’ve got a day off tomorrow! I’m going to go to an event with the accounting club at SDSU! My rock star livin’ is gonna catch up with me one of these days!

Well, I am blogging today from the computer lab at SDSU. That’s right, school has started…finally. I felt like I was waiting forever for it to start (I moved here in September!), but now I can’t wait for it to end. Not that it’s unpleasant, I’m just not really a school person. If you don’t know, I’m in a MS in Accounting program, but I was able to squeeze in a ballet class into my schedule, so it won’t be all number crunching. Believe it or not, I’ve already finished my first assignment, and it’s not due for two days!

Being back in school feels just like that song, "I Wish I Could Go Back To College," from "Avenue Q." Everyone is so much younger than me! And they all dress so hip…the girls, at least. They all look like Nicole Richie. The guys are all tan with spiked hair and light blue t-shirts. I ran into two people I know so far. One guy, Andrew, from high school is in one of my classes, and another guy who I lifeguarded with at the El Cerrito pool is in my program. Small world!

Speaking of small world, last summer I ran into my old roommate, Mark, in Washington Square Park in New York. I was just sitting on a bench, stuffing my face, when he walked by me. It had been at least a year, and neither of us knew that the other was in NY. Anyway, I went to LA last weekend to see my parents and grandma, and I called up another ex-roommate, Meli, to hang out. It turned out that Mark was visiting LA this week, so we all got together plus Brian and Christine from HS. It was great. We went to Silverlake which is an artsy LA community that was recently featured in the book/movie, "Shopgirl."

Shit, I gotta run to class. Lata!

Don’t even get me started!

Happy MLK Day! Celebrate Diversity! And if you’re in Chicago, Celebrate Diversey!

This weekend I met a guy with my name. He was visiting from Chicago, in fact. Anyway, I did the whole, "you’re Charlie, I’m Charlie…" with him. On Saturday, a big group of us was paying at a restaurant. Everyone put in cash except Charlie who threw in a credit card. I saw the other guys passing the card around and whispering for a minute. It seemed like they weren’t sure which Charlie had put in the card. Then, one of them shoved the card in my face, and it turned out that the other Charlie had my same last name! Our middle initials were different, his government name was really Charlie unlike my Charles, and he was a Jr, but we were both Charlie Fields! How uncanny is that? It’s not very often that I meet another Charlie, and even though my Fields is pretty generic, it’s pretty rare that I meet someone with it. I’ll tell you, though, I saw CF Jr. getting down on the dance floor at Mary’s last night. He was dirty-dancing on his man like Trina! Woo!

Brian took me to the Health Food Store (HFS) the other day to buy bananas. If you haven’t been around me in a while, I’ve been eating a lot of bananas lately. So, I needed a lot. The HFS happened to have a whole case just sitting out so I got it. I arrived at the check-out line, and every motherfucker in it seemed compelled to stare, ask questions, and make an unfunny comment about my purchase (in that order)! One guy was all "wow! That’s a lot of bananas!" Brian said, "he’s gone bananas!" Then the guy’s gf came to the line, and the guy said, "look, he’s gone banana crazy!" Well, sister-girlfriend just thought that was hilarious and laughed and laughed. We didn’t really understand, especially because "banana crazy" doesn’t even make sense. Maybe it was an inside joke. A lot of people in these HFS’s are high, so maybe that was part of it. There was another guy who was like "what are you gonna do with so many bananas???" and I tried to ignore him like "hey, what’s up," but he just glared at me like he wasn’t going to let me blow off his question. These HFS people are so intrusive!

I saw "Last Holiday" yesterday. It’s a fun movie, but there was a lot of eye-rolling going on in my corner of the theater. There were also a lot of babies there. My girl, Alicia Witt, was in it (the redhead, Zoe, from "Cybil"), as well as Gerard Depardieu, who actually wasn’t obnoxious! I wouldn’t recommend the film to vegetarians, however. The lady behind me gave an audible play-by-play of the plot as it unfolded. While this might have been helpful in a hard-to-follow story like "Mission Impossible," but LH didn’t leave much room for guesswork. I tried to give her one of my patented dirty looks, but the back of my seat was so high that it was a real strain to look back at her. Instead, I embraced the commentary! Oh, there was also an old lady sitting by herself in front of us. At one point during the movie, she turned to the family behind her and asked the father for some candy. He seemed confused but eventually gave her a handful! No, they were not related. Don’t get me started!

Whew! I’m enjoying a day off from my ultra-stressful cafe job. First, I got a haircut (actually, I got all of them cut!rotf lol), but really, the guy did a good job again. He seemed to remember so much about me. I’m positive he took notes about our conversation during my first appointment and reviewed them before this one. I’ve read about salespeople doing that. That’s cool, though, because it’s nice when people remember stuff about you.

Last night, I saw one of the worst movies EVER! It’s called "Hostel." Never before had I seen so many people walk out of a film. I thought about it, but I was just too curious to find out how the mess would resolve itself. Somehow, everything was resolved, but it was seriously fucked up. I thought I could handle high levels of gore after having seen "Sin City" and "Saw II," but this was really in a league of its own. This movie is actually doing well in the box office, and I wonder if European hostels will suffer as a result. When I stayed in hostels, I used to worry about people stealing my stuff while I was asleep. After this movie, I’d pray to wake up in the same bed with both eyes in their sockets. BTW: German and Czech speakers (shout out to Alison) would probably get little more out of the film than I did.

Shout out to Suri! He came here for a few days as part of his "Rainbow Tour" of interviews. He had outlined the design of my bedroom when he was last here, and this visit he got to see it all realized. He gave me another idea that I think I will carry out to give my bed a little Beyonce-flair.

I registered for my courses! They start next Thursday. Luckily they are all on Tuesday and Thursday so I won’t have to schlep all the way to campus everyday. I was even able to sneak in a ballet class during my afternoon break.

That’s what’s happening over here. Back to you, Tom.

That’s right! I am coming to you live from Salt Lake City, Utah where I have been enjoying a gay ski vacation! After three days on the slopes, I am taking our last day off to let my body recover and to update everyone on my trip.

Snowboarding is fucking hard! I’ll just tell you that. I first learned how to do it five years ago while I was studying abroad. We had a fun-filled Xmas week in the Alps where I took a daily group lesson with a bunch of ten-year-olds (shout out to Alison and Kara…Boom!) Anyway, a lot of what I learned then did not come back to me during my first day on the slopes. I took a couple hard falls. This one stranger saw me fall and said "I’ve seen you do that too many times today." At first, I was thinking, "why don’t you mind your own fucking business (myofb)" but then I took what he said to heart and decided to sign up for a group lesson. Since I was the only one at my level, I actually got a private lesson for a group price. My instructor was very laid back and nice…typical snowboarder. After that I was much more confident.

The second day, some boarders in my group took me all over the mountain, including some pretty tough runs, but I made it in one piece and improved a lot. Yesterday, I was in a bit of a mood (I know, me??) and wasn’t so into the hard runs. I eventually broke off and just stuck to the green runs. At the end of the day, I had a bit of a mishap getting on the chair-lift, and the boot adjustments of my snowboard got messed up so I couldn’t ride down the mountain once I got to the top. They had to send the ski patrol up to accompany me back down the lift! They call that "downloading." Anyway, almost my entire group of 16 guys happened to be coming up that same lift as I was going down, and it was so embarassing!

OK, enough for now. I’ll be back in sunny CA tonight where I plan on getting serious about surfing!