Remembering back to the mid/late 80s, 15th St SE on Cap Hill was the cutoff line, the red line if you will, for a “good” neighborhood. I know this because I had friends that lived on the 1400 block. I even stayed with them one summer while I worked in town.

The local Metro stop was & is Potomac Avenue Station. I would use this stop 20 years ago, and even though the stop is only two or three blocks away from my friends’ house it was a still a little leery at night and you had to watch yourself. This was when violent crime in DC (and America for that matter) was starting to get a little out of control. I remember lots of carjackings happening that summer, which was a new phenomenon at least in DC.

Come to think of it, I had my car stolen around the corner from Po-Ave Station that summer too. It was found and returned, busted steering column and all. At least they didn’t wreck the thing or drive it into the river.

Fast forward to today, and my favorite Mexican restaurant is a block away from the Station, there’s a fun local bar where you can play dominoes a block away and for Christ’s sake there’s a new Harris Teeter right across Pennsylvania Ave.

Neighborhood on the upswing, right? Maybe not so much.

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I hate washingtonpost.com. If I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I hate washingtonpost.com. It never gives me news that I’m interested in. It never gives local news. Its articles are always focused on national politics (or worse yet, the suburbs), regardless of what else is going on in the world and never what is happening within the city from where it gets its name. For example, a tsunami may be killing a quarter of a million people halfway around the globe but some Senator getting an expensive haircut or a soccer hockey sockey mom in the H8ST8 stretching her grocery dollar is the top story. In short, a waste of time. Sadly, I can track local news better elsewhere.

Unfortunately I’ve spent lots of time this week on WaPo’s site waiting for Todges’ obituary to be posted. I haven’t seen it yet—have I missed it? If you’ve seen it, please let me know. But I did notice the amount of space they dedicate to actual stories they’re reporting. It’s minimal. For instance let’s examine a typical obit page on the Post and see how much pixel area is actually devoted to delivering content.

This page’s pixel area is 1039 x 1903 (that’s some fun numbering, I must admit). This gives 1,977,217 square pixels, if you will. The article space numbers 249,737 pixels. Advertising occupies a whopping 1,045,508 pixels and the remaining 681,972 pixels are devoted to mastheads, navigation and direct links to other articles.

Breakdown
Content: 12.6%
Navigation: 34.5%
Advertising: 52.9%

i think that thee and we shall go to sleep
it is not worth it right now
grotesque screeching cacophony
end of line. reset.
admin 878
a distant radio whistling tunes that nobody knows
toxic mortgage debt
you’re living in a disco/forget about the rat race
you’re slowly disappearing from my view
under severe liquidity pressure
“a complex situation”

It may be trivial and a couple of weeks late, but it will make for a good diversion. Let’s talk about the iPhone 2.1 software update and how it has stopped my recent really bad cursing habit.

I was looking forward to some new cool features in the 2.1 update (cut/paste) but they weren’t introduced. But what I really, really wanted was to fix the damn problems. See, there goes the cursing again. My biggest hangups were: looooooooong backup times, apps crashing, redonk times in downloading & initializing new apps and was there anything else? Battery life, whatever, I’m constantly recharging this thing because I’m constantly playing with it and therefore depleting its charge, and dropped calls, yeah, like I even use this thing as a phone. Although it has been know to ring upon occasion.

So.

Here’s what Apple promises with the new ‘date: 

I’m finding myself being a messenger and also a sleuth. There are so many aspects and details of Todges’ life that I feel compelled to have answered. I know this isn’t a quest like in the movies where I will come to a huge realization in the end, but I still need to know more information.

Today I’ve been given the name of the contact person in Todges’ Blade obit; I’ll call him tomorrow and navigate through that difficult conversation.

Tonight I met up with mcG before the Sandra Bernhard show, and had to tell him about Todges. mcG was there the evening that I met Todges, and had he not been late I might not have met T. So again I’m sharing the information, of what little I feel I know.

This conversation takes up most of our time before the show, but I’m glad we got it out of the way so we could enjoy our evening. Which we did. Sandra’s show was a little off, in timing and content. It’s a redux of her 20-year-old Without You I’m Nothing, and due to current events it was obvious when she was lapsing into the script of the old show. So it was a little disjointed. Enjoyable, though. And funny as hell too (natch).

Afterwards we walked over to the 9:30 Club for Blowoff. I think this was the first of the season after their summer hiatus/roadshows. Am I wrong? It was packed and a lot of fun, great music by Rich and Bob, and Nick turnt it out with the visuals. Trippy. It was nice to be taken to a better place for a little while.

Today the Washington Blade published an “In Memoriam” for Michael Todd Hodges. His obit will be published in the Post next week.

Todges reluctantly informed me that he was HIV+ while we were dating. In fact, it turned out to be one of the reasons for conflict between us. The conflict was not because of his status, but because we had discussed his status and decided the most responsible thing to do would be to make a doctor’s appointment at Whitman Walker, talk to a doctor and figure what was safe and what was not, get a little more informed, etc. He never made the appointment and I think this is what started driving us apart. In hindsight, I should have made the appointment if he wasn’t going to, but yet I didn’t either.

After speaking with folks this week after hearing of Todges’ passing, one has said the cause was lung cancer/infection and another said throat cancer. Of course it could be a combination of both and not so localized. During these conversations, they would mention “when Todd was sick” or “how long Todd had been sick” and I wasn’t sure if they were speaking of the HIV or the cancer, so I kept mum on his HIV status, because at the time he told me only one other person knew. Maybe this wasn’t the case anymore.

The Blade’s mention states: “Michael Todd Hodges—40, A Creative Director at Gratis Internet, died September 2 of complications from AIDS.” So there you go. Maybe he didn’t keep it such a secret since the time I’d known him. I guess it’s odd to read “complications from AIDS” because you don’t really hear that phrase that much anymore, at least not as much as you did twenty years ago. But it still happens. According to the National Cancer Institute, AIDS-related cancers include Hodgkin disease and cancers of the lung, mouth, cervix, and digestive system.

The funny thing about all of this is the image of Todges that was submitted. Gracefully, it’s in full color, as he would have wanted. And he’s rockin’ a ’stache. Yes, a moustache. I’m guessing this photo would have be from at least 10 years ago or so, but I don’t remember ’staches being in vogue at that time. Then again, I had long hippie hair ten years ago, so what do I know? At least he looks good.

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During lunch today I noticed I had a voicemail from a non-descript 703 number, which means whomever called was not in my Address Book. I thought it might be my brother, calling me from his work phone in Crystal City, since he had called last night. It wasn’t. I didn’t know who it was, and she did not leave her name. What she did mention, however, was that it concerned Todd Hodges, whom you all know I lovingly always called “Todges”.

This did not sound like a good call to be getting, much less returning.

Was Todges in the hospital? In jail? Had he gone missing? The worst fears came about when she informed me that Todges had passed away on September 2nd. I found myself pacing in the courtyard where I was outside, having finished lunch and half of a BSG Season IV episode. It’s windy and hard to hear, my heart is pounding and my body’s going a bit numb and I’m still trying to listen to all the facts.

Peggy (that’s her name who left the message) says Todges succumbed to a lung infection (still waiting on verification from this—I heard it was lung-something. Verification: cancer, of lung & throat.) and friends have divided his phone and Address Book and were calling the people in them, of which I was one.

Although Todges and I had spoken infrequently and ran into each other seldomly since having our 20 Dates together, we were still friendly to each other and had we had more time apart, I think would have become even better friends. We attempted to get together for a drink in July, but that fell through. I wish we would have had that drink together now.

Things I will always remember about Todgie: his undying lurv for Madonna (stages beyond the normal), he was a great cook and an even greater sculptor, his ability to know designer pieces—whether these be clothing or furniture, the way he called his phone a “fome”, how he loved incredibly spicy hot thai food.

The Corcoran, where he studied and also taught, will be holding a celebration of his life and retrospective of his work on Saturday, October 25th at 1pm. A private memorial service will be held later that day at the Embassy Suites at the Convention Center, Finn and Porter Restaurant, Private Event Room at approximately 2:30pm.

For donations to the M. Todd Hodges Memorial Fund, please contact Corcoran Gallery of Art/Corcoran College of Art + Design, Attention: Development Office/Janice Marks—enclose letter or add to memo line: “M. Todd Hodges Memorial Fund”, 500 Seventeenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20006. Contributions can also be made online through the Corcoran’s website: http://www.corcoran.org/campaign/gift_tribute.htm

RIP, Todges, 1968–2008.

UPDATE: Todges’ Blade obit is here and his Washington Post obit is here.

Name, Age, Occupation, Hobbies and any other observations you may have that you’d like to share in the Comments section, please.