Paul's dog's log blog

James suggested the title, following Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, and the idea was that Ziggy would narrate, following Flush, how I planted a tree in front of the house on my 40th birthday. But Ziggy's busy napping on James, who's busy reading Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present, so I'm going to assume responsibility for the blog, as usual.

"You're really owning this 40 thing," someone said to me. Maybe making a film in eight weeks to have it ready for the birthday party was excessive, but if you're going to pull a two-month all-nighter I say do it in your 30s while you still have the energy. Anyone who had any proximity to the production knows that The Glitter Emergency took a toll on me and bystanders of varying degrees of innocence, and more than one person warned me against going immediately on vacation when it was through, mindful of Wall Street types who celebrate the first day of vacation with a nice coronary. So the film premiered on the eve of 40 and on the birthday itself, I had a project: plant a tree in the derelict planter in front of our house (see above).

After James delivered a conference paper in the morning, he and I went to lunch on Castro Street (unheard of luxury) and took a book with us: Mike Sullivan's The Trees of San Francisco. This is a great book by an old friend who's an attorney by trade and totally OCD about trees in his spare time. James and I went through the book picking out trees that seemed like a good fit for our Jacaranda-lined block, and after much deliberation decided on a Jacaranda. But when we got to the nursery, there were no Jacarandas to be had (not even for ready money) and so we settled on a Ceanothus 'ray hartman,' which blooms blue.

Glitter Emergency press in the Weekly and the Guardian had reached all the way out to Sloat Garden Center, resulting in unexpected celebrity treatment and a friends & family discount on the tree and accessories. Back home, James and Ziggy recovered from the day's exertions while I performed the following tasks:

While I was planting the tree, James was making my birthday cake, and a card arrived from Mavis & Carole. It says, "one cannot have too large a party." It's a coded message - "Festa" means "party" in Italian, and they (my honorary lesbian aunts) are always telling me I'm too thin. Proof: the card came with a See's gift card.

The tree one month after planting, on June 28th. The plastic containers are my elaborate drip-watering system.

Green shoots up top where the tree had been dead a month ago:

David Weissman's "We Were Here"

We Were Here creative team: Marsha Kahm (director of photography), Bill Weber (editor/ co-director), Lauretta Molitor (sound recordist), David Weissman (producer/director)

Today James and I saw two documentaries at the 34th SF queer film festival - at the Castro, David Weissman's We Were Here, a documentary about the AIDS epidemic, then a doc about William S. Burroughs at the Victoria. I tried to post this to the We Were Here Facebook page, but couldn't. I knew I was keeping this blog around for something:

David, what an unforgettable experience to see this today in that theater with that audience.

To echo what others have already said, it made me so proud to be a San Franciscan - not just because of the response this city summoned to the epidemic, but because such a masterly work of art about it came from here. I want to thank you again for what you accomplished - and it's something I'll study in the years to come - how you established so much trust in the opening minutes of the film that you could take us to such terrible places, take me so much farther than I thought I would be able to go without putting up defenses, shutting down, turning away.

The film is an object lesson in the power of restraint: you built up so much capital, and then you spent all of it, and wisely. I left the theater exhilarated today, no less by the spirit and humanity of your five subjects and the world they stood for and evoked than by the compassion and psychological brilliance of the choices you and Bill made.

It's hard to imagine more hazardous territory for a documentary or a more successful execution. Thank you for making this film.