I'm so excited for y'all to see this video! (Scroll down.)

But first... I am writing a Star Trek comic called Star Trek: Zero Point, published by the wonderful folks at IDW, with art by the phenomenal Isaac Sanchez Gonzalez and lettering by the heroic Jodie Troutman.

It takes place five years after the end of Star Trek: Picard, and follows Captain Raffi Musiker and her first officer, D'Vana Tendi, as they seek out future threats to the galaxy and try to nip them in the bud. Ethical debates! Real-life science! Weird shit! I'm putting all my favorite things into this comic and having an absolute blast. The first issue of Zero Point comes out in October, but NOW is the time to request it from your local comics retailer. (See my very short video tutorial on how to pre-order comics.)

Okayyy with that out of the way...

Here I Am In April 2000, Talking About Being Trans

Back in April 2000, I had barely started my transition. No hormones, no hair removal, no surgery, no legal gender/name change. I was brand new — I hadn't even settled on a name yet. I was going by Julia for a minute. On one of my first ever times going out into the city dressed in women's clothes, I ran into a camera crew from a local TV show by and for trans people, and suddenly found myself on television. Along with my landlord!

Backing up a tiny bit here...

When cable TV was the main way people watched television, there was a thing called public access cable. Basically, anyone could make a TV show and put it on the air. (There's a fascinating new documentary on HBO Max called Bang My Box: the Robin Byrd Story, which covers a beloved X-rated TV show that appeared for years on New York City's public-access cable. It explains a lot more about the history of public access cable, and just how weird it could get.)

Here in San Francisco, our local public access cable included a talk show made by trans women and aimed at the trans community. I won't reproduce its name here, because it would be considered offensive in 2026 — but a quarter century ago, trans people were using such terminology to describe ourselves all the time. The host of this TV show was the late Nadia Cabezas, aka Kitty Kastro, a flamboyant local character who kind of pushed people's buttons on purpose. Her producer and main camera operator was Dina Boyer, who also documented tons of important trans events from the 1990s and 2000s.

So this video is the entire episode of that show from April 16, 2000. Thanks so much to the phenomenal Cara Esten Hurtle (of New Session fame) for digitizing it.

(To see me, skip to 30:25 — I'm hoping it'll autoplay at that timestamp.)

Among other things, this episode includes Jamison Green (a vitally important trans masc leader who founded a groundbreaking organization for trans men) playing the bongos. Plus Kitty Kastro interrogating some ten-year-old Girl Scouts about trans inclusion, and later discussing her history of having Hepatitis C. (One thing I admire about Kitty Kastro is that she was determined to bring sensitive topics to the light, including health stuff.) And then there's an interview with...me.

As I said, I was barely out in April 2000. You can tell by watching the video. I'm out for a stroll in the Castro neighborhood with my friend Ted, whom I've since lost touch with — if you see this, Ted, email me! — and we get pulled into an on-the-street interview segment. 

It's kind of embarrassing how clueless I am in this video, though it's understandable. I was nervous as heck and had no idea how to respond to the questions I was being asked. At one point, Kitty Kastro asks me how I identify, and I respond that I'm a "doo-wop transsexual." (At the time, people identified as pre-op, post-op or non-op transsexuals, depending on their surgical status.) I then, painfully, explain the joke. Ted honestly fares much better.

The good thing about this interaction is that I seem really happy to be out and about as myself — which I absolutely was. At the time, it was nice to see two trans women talking and sharing something. I absolutely come across as a sheltered middle-class white person, because that's what I was, but I also manage to model pride and self-acceptance. Which is not nothing. Oh, and I reference a thing that I had kind of forgotten about, where I went out on Halloween 1999 dressed as Wonder Woman and my ride (Ted) flaked so I had to ride BART home at midnight. It was honestly no big deal, but I was a bit nervous.

My interview with Kitty Kastro concluded, and just then, my landlord Mark came walking down the street. I'm like 99 percent sure that my landlord did not know I was trans until this moment. I whisper to my friend Ted, "Oh shit, it's my landlord." Kitty Kastro hears this and immediately turns the camera back on.

The interview with my landlord is actually delightful to watch. It's the best part of the whole segment. He shows zero concern at finding out that his downstairs tenant is trans — in fact, you can see a tiny smile on his face. When Kitty Kastro says I'm "different," he recoils and says, "What's your problem?" He goes on to say it's "awesome" and "cool" having a trans tenant, a sentiment that many landlords in 2000 (or today) would not endorse. 

At last, he turns to the camera and says that any landlord who won't rent to trans tenants is "lowlife trash." (He also says that there are tons of bad landlords out there, but also plenty of good landlords, which is... well, debatable.) And he holds up his cruxifix to the camera and says, "I'll tell you something else: I'm a Christian."

IDK, hearing a self-professed Christian proclaim that people who discriminate against trans people are "lowlife trash" makes me feel a certain way, then and now.

So you know, if I had to come out to my landlord as trans, this was probably the best outcome you could hope for — and thanks to the magic of public-access cable, you can watch it happen in real time. 

Music I'm Listening To Right Now

I've never listened to Charli XCX on purpose, though I've liked some of her songs that I've heard around. I read somewhere that her new album, Music, Fashion, Film is more guitar-driven than her other music, and that intrigued me enough that I started listening to it. And... I like it quite a bit. A few songs, "Rock Music," "2007," "I'm Afraid," and "Persona," stand out as especially fun and memorable. Overall, it still feels a bit too influenced by 1980s music for my liking, like a lot of pop music lately, but at least it's 1980s guitar-driven pop rather than pure synthpop. A heavy layer of irony feels like it's saturating everything, like she is "making" "rock" "music." The song "Wink Wink" kind of gives the game away, in fact: she doesn't really mean any of it, and she's just fucking with us. But overall, I have been enjoying this album quite a bit, and it's making me want to listen to more of her older stuff.