Neptune Landing

      Heeeeyyyy is for horses! And it's just this type of friendliness and exuberance that we should bring into the Chinese New Year of 2014 (starting on Friday, January 31 for western countries). As we emerge from the shy Snake year of 2013, it's high-flying time to put on our dancing shoes on Friday night and get down to "bizness" on Monday morning. You will generally have a renewed excitement towards any work projects, especially if they are in the arts or entertainment sector.       Freedom and travel are also big themes during a Horse Year. Luck, too, is all around.       Things to watch out for include ego inflation, foolhardiness and a lack of focus (starting too many projects and finishing none). Be careful about galloping over anyone's feelings. The redeeming quality is that the horse is inherently generous - just make sure you can deliver the goods along with the promises!       Here's a fun link from the Astro Twins:  http://astrostyl

      It's been a week abuzz with a level of gaiety that surprises even San Francisco. LOOKING, a new program that features gay male characters in Fog City, premiered last Sunday on HBO to mixed reviews. More excitingly, Armistead Maupin returned to the town that made him famous (he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his partner). Maupin, whom I worship (obviously), is the best-selling writer of the "Tales of the City" series, a string of books that fictionalized life in 1970's San Francisco. He began penning his tales as a serial at The Pacific Sun then The San Francisco Chronicle, two broadsheets where he had worked as a correspondent.       Last Sunday, I enjoyed the chance to hear Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells interview Maupin on his latest (and last) installment of the TOTC series. It's a book called " The Days of Anna Madrigal " and it's delicious.       There will be no spoilers (as I'm only partway

       In shamanic terms, ghosts are known to exist in the middle-world or our consensual reality here on Earth. They have either been trapped here or, according to shamanism pioneer, Michael Harner, are known as quasi-compassionate ethnocentric spirits who are "deceased persons" having "significant determination and power to remain in the Middle World to look after their surviving family members. They are typically the spirits of people who possessed considerable power during their lifetime but lost it, usually very late in life. The deceased person's power spirit usually lingers in the Middle World in haunts that had long been familiar to it." These spirits stay behind to watch over their family or kin and if you mess with their living relatives, they can be quite vindictive.        In Sam Baltrusis's 2012 book, "Ghosts of Boston: Haunts of the Hub," we meet a range of old and various spirits who have stayed behind, some for nostalgic reasons

         Upon moving to Fog City, an older gay man told me that most guys who move here stick to a 3-mile-radius within the Castro, Mission, Lower Haight and Hayes Valley and, in effect, never get to see the bountiful beauty of the Bay Area. It's true that people often get stuck in the San Francisco isolation tank, viewing BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) as if it's an intergalactic vehicle that (yawn) we just don't have the gumption to take. That all changed with me last weekend when Mauricio and I took a day trip to Berkeley, California, boarding our bikes onto one of BART's roomy Richmond-bound trains.              Berkeley, California. Hearing the name, I immediately conjure Cambridge, Massachusetts in my mind but Berkeley seems even more unruly, the scourge of the political right and the place where they burn bras and demand free speech . We ventured there on a misty day (Thank the Goddess, we need the moisture) when the UC Berkeley campus was still closed due t

       In popular music and literature, California and sunshine are an inseparable pair. Like siamese twins, one is forced to follow the whims of the other. I never understood why Florida is considered the Sunshine State since it often seems wet, balmy and humid whenever I visit. In The Golden State, we often snicker at the unfortunate weather gripping the rest of the "humid continental" lower 48. Polar Vortex? Is that a new tech-start-up we ask?        Fair weather smugness aside, we shouldn't engage in so much schadenfreude, when we realize that climate change is very much a global phenomenon. Living in Northern California, I assumed that summer fog and rainy winters would keep my skin nice and moist. Unfortunately the reality is that the Bay Area and the state as a whole is suffering the worst drought in four decades . This is unprecedented because the cost of fruits and vegetables could skyrocket for shoppers across the nation if the gods don't soon bestow us wit

        Boston Skyline as seen from Governor                                                                                                           Hutchinson Field in Milton               For a city that laps the Atlantic waters, Boston, considered the most Eastern of American East Coast cities, has some of the best sunsets. At 42 degrees north latitude in late December, the day is over within the span of ordering a "Medium Regular*" at Dunkin' Donuts. Therein lies the efficiency of its people, for the citizens are compelled to run errands in a timely manner to soak up that meager Vitamin D. With this steady drumbeat, I still managed to catch up with 90% of friends and family within a 6-day-stretch.          How I tortured myself at missing that other 10%! But if there's one thing I've learned in running my own business is that you can't please all of the people all of the time. You can only make concessions and ice-breath promises that the