Lee and I met in Turkey in the summer of 1995 when I was traveling with Mindy. We were staying at a Villa in Bodrum that belonged to Scott, one of Mindy's friends from Vassar, and Lee arrived in Bodrum with Nathan, a friend of Scott's from Occidental. There is some surviving photographic evidence of our Turkey trip. At the time, I referred to Lee by his full name ("Lee Baker") at all times. I did this partly to differentiate him from his friend and travelling companion Lee Boyle, and partly because I liked the sound of his name. As you would probably understand, he has since demanded that I stop using his full name when writing about him. I guess it seemed sort of impersonal and weird to him.

Perhaps a goofy news article from Yahoo will make you smile.

lee baker 3/21/00 1:00:28 PM:
Look at you stealing my mullet thunder . . . without even doing the story justice. You turned a dramatic mullet hunting tale into a mere sidenote. Your post contained no description of the cut, the dramatic mullet hunt, and sadly, the final telling comment of a rather severe gray lesbian mullet? I am very disappointed that your competitive nature spoiled the story for everyone...

Jess Barron 3/20/00 8:02:12 PM:
I thought for sure that you were going to write in and post about how we met the guy who runs MulletsGalore.com this weekend (in SF). But, I suppose I beat you to it. I love that we're competitive that way. I gave you all day to post!

I was busy changing and updating my other blog, which is now called Nostalgia for the Present, after the college newspaper column I used to write.

Jess Barron 3/15/00 4:00:08 PM:
I'll just ignore the ending of your last post. *Of course* I endure (and even enjoy) your late night phone calls... You should take a lesson from me.

Yikes! Camille just sent me the link for this very scary article from MSNBC. Just one more thing to worry about... I really want to believe that technology is improving our lives and will continue to do so in the long-run. But, did you ever read The Unabomber Manifesto? I had to read it for a class at Vassar, and although it is clumsily written he does bring up some thought-provoking questions about American culture's increasing expression of inferiority (think about the lead male characters in "Fight Club" and "American Beauty") and people's increasingly growing drive for material acquisition.

lee baker 3/11/00 7:16:45 AM:
The people of blogger have updated their site to make it useable to people on Macs using Explorer, but it comes at the cost of saying your site is "Powered by Blogger!" I like the new interface and since I am not the one responsible for posting to a certain website, I can dream in beige and not worry about the legal mumbo jumbo.

My vacation began yesterday and I am feeling useless. I spent Friday slacking with the Bens . . . the only productive moment i had was buying Girl Scout cookies (productive in the sense that it can be construed as grocery shopping) and perfecting multiple kills in CounterStrike ( I am not sure how it is productive, but it is.) Speaking of Girl Scouts . . . I have a bone to pick with that organization, it should be illegal to sell cookies on the streets after hitting you up at work. Its bad enough that they guilt you into three boxes of do-si-does at the office, now they are attacking me at the corner store when I am high and in need of beer. Not Fair. After a few hours of gaming, two basketball games, and a sandwich from Big Sherms accented by a box of do-si-does, I was sufficently worn out and fell asleep just before 8 pm. Indulging in early dosing left me wide awake at 3:30 am, which would have been much worse if I hadn't made a phone call which rudely awakened Jess and forced her to entertain me. Thanks Jess, this post is dedicated to you.

Jess Barron 3/9/00 11:33:10 AM:
I'm wearing my short plaid pleated schoolgirl skirt today with white knee socks and my platform Mary Jane's. I keep wondering whether it's appropriate office attire, but Selena has worn hers to the office before and it's equally short. My co-workers at Scour can be pretty creative dressers. I'm no longer the wildest dresser in the office as I was in Boston. The weird thing about wearing this outfit is that our Beverly Hills office building houses several lawfirms and other "serious" business-y type places, in addition to the wild, wild start-up web companies and film companies. So, I feel a little weird wandering the halls here. I was in the elevator with a woman with a long conservative navy blue suit, and I think she thought I was a prostitute. But other people have smiled at me, and told me it looks cute.

I think my outfit is a reaction to yesterday's Salon article about the Japanese girlie-girls. It's so odd that their society views them as so shocking and dangerous. It may also be a reaction to things you said to me on the phone last night -- about me sort of acting as a tease with boys. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I don't know if I'm offended. I don't know if you're wrong. I don't know if you're right. But what you said is making me think about it, so there probably is something there...

I added that new Mary McCarthy bio to my Amazon.com wish list. Have you seen it yet? You should make one too. That way we can buy each other books. I also like seeing the other books they recommend to me. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this concept of pushing other products at someone based on what they like. It's marginally creepy. But I'm still intrigued to find out what they recommend.

Jess Barron 3/8/00 4:59:26 PM:
FINALLY, you have posted. This blog was quickly becoming a sore spot for us -- with me in New York at the Internet Music Festival and you busy studying for your NASD test (congratulations on passing, BTW). Hopefully we can get our acts together now. You realize that you're going to hafta post more regularly now, or risk inciting my wrath.

Thanks for sending me the Salon article about the new Mary McCarthy bio this morning. She's such an interesting person. I love their description of her as "the left-wing scrapper and wickedly erotic novelist." The first time I was ever in LA (October 1998), I was reading another Mary McCarthy bio, and Hillary saw it and asked me why I was reading it. I guess -- without knowing much about her except for that she was a Vassr girl and a leftist intellectual -- most people assume that Mary McCarthy's life was dull. In reality, she was probably one of the most sexually liberated an outspoken women of her time. She had more lovers (and husbands -- she would divorce one as soon as she entered into an affair with the next one) and she wasn't afraid to comment intelligently and openly on sex, which is difficult enough in the 1990s nevermind in the 1940s. She's definitely one of my role models.

Allyson sent me another Salon article this morning -- the one about the young Japanese girls who wear the huge platform boots. My friend Josh moved to Tokyo two years ago to teach English, and he liked these kogaru girls so much that he hasn't come back yet. He's the one who really got me into anime. He had a theory that the appeal of anime was all about mixing big robots (scary and dangerous technology) and little girls (cute -- though scary and dangerous -- nymphets). He would always use the word kawaii (cute) in his e-mails to me about the girls he would see in clubs with the ultra-high platform boots -- he knew I totally loved that look. It's so funny because he's like 6'3" with blonde hair and blue eyes. I bet he looks so exotic towering over the whole city with his extreme Anglo Saxon features.

I read a really insane random feature on The Nation today. It's called The Secret History of Lead. I started reading it because I thought it was going to be about lead paint. (I grew up in a house with lead paint.) But, it's actually about the history of lead in gasoline. It opens with a paragraph so intriguing, that I ended up reading the entire spread:

The next time you pull the family barge in for a fill-up, check it out: The gas pumps read "Unleaded." You might reasonably suppose this is because naturally occurring lead has been thoughtfully removed from the gasoline. But you would be wrong. There is no lead in gasoline unless somebody puts it there. And, a little more than seventy-five years ago, some of America's leading corporations--General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey (known nowadays as Exxon)--were that somebody. They got together and put lead, a known poison, into gasoline, for profit.

lee baker 3/8/00 11:18:19 AM:
The last few weeks I have been in the dog house with Jess for not posting to the Blogger . . . even though I have been hard at work at improving my resume with a new NASD license. With the passing of my test yesterday, my excuse not to post has run out . . .

Nothing too exciting to report except that my girlfriend has an unhealthy obsession with journaling her life on the web, which I might add, she has some how guilted me into as well.

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