Well, I hope that all of you dear readers are all still loving hearing me spout about Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, cause I have more news!

Here in San Francisco, Armistead will be honored at the Opening Night of LitQuake '07, which is an annual literary festival here in our highly literary city.  He will be awarded the festival's first Barbary Coast Award for lifetime achievement!

Notable Bay Area residents/Armistead- related famous people Laura Linney, Michelle Tea, Jon Ginoli of Amoeba and Pansy Division fame AND Judd Winick, among others, will be speaking.  At last, the mystery of spotting Armistead and Judd of the Real World San Francisco eating together recently at Zazie is solved!  I feel better now.  According to Judd's Wikipedia entry, Armistead even spoke at Judd & fellow Real Worlder  Pam's wedding!  Who knew?

Jon Ginoli
Returns
Nearly 8 Years Employment

ME: Hi Jon. So what music was playing in your house when you were a kid?

JG: My parents didn't really have records but they always had the radio on. 

To pop stations?

Yeah, and when I turned 6 my parents moved to a new house out in the suburbs in a new development where there weren't any other kids around, so I made friends with the radio. So from the time I was 5 until I was 10, which is roughly 1965-1970, I absorbed Top 40 radio like a sponge. Pretty good timing, huh?

Totally, you lucked out. What was the first song/record that really got you into music? 

Um I remember being really blown away by "Reflections" by the Supremes and "Monday Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas. Oh and "Windy" by the Association.

What's the first show you went to?

The first real concert I went to was one of the worst concerts I have ever been to because when I was 14 I went to see Jimmy Buffett in Peoria.

Gross.

Peoria got very few concerts back then.

Who took you?

I went by myself. He had a song on the radio that I liked. When I heard other songs I thought, "Oh, this isn't very good."

Smart kid.

But the second concert was Bob Seger and that was a big step up.