room porn

This was the cover of Elle Decor a few months ago(one of only three magazines to which I actually subscribe...how gay is that?). It stuck in my mind for some reason.

I just like this room.
That's the only reason I've put up this picture. No deeper meaning than that.
Sorry.

It's also why I've just spent precious time I should be using to clean the toilet
looking up the decorator and then downloading photos from his website.
This is his own apartment, by the way, and not surprisingly looks better than any of the other places he's done. Why is that?
I love the mix of furniture, mid century, Victorian, and that velvet couch! I'm not too thrilled with the art work, however, but that could be changed. It's the palette of colors that intrigues me most, subtle but not too boring.

We are living in the end times.

Behold the bastard child of Abercrombie and Fitch, begat by Myspace, part of the lost tribe of Olan Mills.

Apparently, this is a new trend in high school yearbooks.

I found this by way of gawker.com and thought it represented perfectly....something....(note the sandals and cargo shorts by the way). I'm just not sure what.

Read for yourself here: Narcissus of Massapequa

a random intersection of recent posts

Today, I went on yet another one of my interminable dates with my lonesome. I saw "Atonement" for real this time. (in short, beautiful, and pretty good)

Driving into the parking lot, looking for a spot to park, I catch sight of a tall, cute kid. "What an interesting haircut that kid's got," I admire. "If I were as tall and thin as he is, I'd like that jacket too." The older guy next to him offers him a light and turns around.

And I see that it's none other than this guy, the one...well, one of them....who told me I was too old for him...ten or so years ago.

I waited a few minutes until they were safely in, bought myself a ticket, got a (real, not diet, dammit) coke...(albeit a medium) and went in.

deco mayo

One of the things that brings a tiny bit of joy to my heart every time I pass it is the old Blue Plate Mayonnaise building. It's not far from where I live now and even nearer to where I used to live. Although abandoned now and looking kind of rough around the edges since Katrina, she's still got it.

She's a streamlined Art Deco beauty, with a slightly nautical feel...perfectly appropriate for mayonnaise production, of course.

Howcha do, howcha do, howcha do

A mid-sixties show about a broke divorced society doyenne living with her daughter in a Hamptons mansion?

No, it's not "Grey Gardens," the sitcom, it's the forgotten Phyllis Diller vehicle: "The Pruitts of Southampton."

I'd never even heard of this until today, (by way of Lady Bunny), but I'd love to see it! "The Lucy Show" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" seemed to be front and center in the writers' minds, but who cares.

I mean who doesn't love Phyllis Diller?
And, most intriguingly of all, Gypsy Rose Lee plays a "nosey" neighbor. God, I'd kill to see that. (By the way the exteriors were filmed at the Biltmore house, the Vanderbilt mansion in NC. I remember going there when I was 13.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.)

Alas, all I could find was the intro:



You have to admit that's one hell of a catchy theme song,
and those outfits!

Let's see Nicolas Ghesquiere do some of that.

the cold cold business world

A while back my friend Mark mentioned that they'd come to "escort" a coworker of his from the office after she had been fired due to cut backs.

I was shocked by this and asked him if this was common in the business world.
I've never worked in quite this sort of environment, so it kind of shocked me. He works in a law office.

I suppose I'm just naive. He wrote this in response today:

No, it's not uncommon "business" procedure. Usually,
though, they're supposed to let you go on a Tuesday or
Wednesday, thus you still have some weekdays to cope
with your being let go, and a chance to go apply for
Unemployment Insurance and stuff.

They will, sometimes, escort you off the property,
confiscate your pass key, de-activate your e-mail,
etc. The fear is that you will try to sabotage the
place, and thus people with access to computer systems
or other technical things are carefully watched. And
the irony too is that the longer you've been at a
company the more they suspect you of malicious intent.
Like my uncle, he worked in the IT department of a
large insurance company. He worked there for maybe
20-30 years, and when they let him go they made him
leave that same day. No chance to say good-bye to your
co-workers, no nothing. It's very cruel, the business
world.

In that way it's much better to quit and give your two
weeks notice. Thus you get a chance to say your
good-byes (and maybe be taken out for lunch by
co-workers), you can wrap up your work, take home your
belongings, pass on whatever knowledge you have to
co-workers, etc.

But my coworkers... like _________ who was let go on
Monday...never even got to take their belongings home.
They shuffle you out the door and mail your personal
belongings to your home. You are treated like a
criminal.

I had no idea. Is he right? Is this the way it is in the cut throat world of tooth and claw capitalism? Or is it just the way it is in the canyons of Toronto.

You know they are a pretty savage race, those Canadians.

what does one do?

The other day at Dollar Tree (why do so many of my stories begin like this? Don't judge.), while wandering the frozen food aisle (did you know there's a frozen food aisle there now? It's mostly freezie pops and sour "creme"....but still...very exciting), I heard the shrill yell of a child.

This, of course, is not at all unusual in Dollar Tree. For example, on my last trip, the four year old diva hurtling herself headfirst from of a pair of still-wired-together plastic high heels....straight into the Laffy Taffy.

I can't say if that was a complete accident on her part, however, if you know what I mean.

But this yell was different. I could hear real pain in the boy's voice, and I could hear his father's (presumably) voice, low and menacing. Eventually I caught a good look at what was transpiring.

It was sickening.

The father had jerked the boy up off the ground. The boy was all of 6 years old or so. The father was a good 6 foot 4. With one fell swoop he jerked the boy up into the air by one arm, nearly dislocating it. The child screamed in pain, crying hysterically. The father put him down roughly and threatened to pull him up again, "if you don't shut up that cryin', boy!"

The boy, needless to say, couldn't stop crying. I mean what living being could after that sort of pain, and surely enough the father (I use the term loosely) jerked him back up again by the arm. He did this a total of 4 times. I swear it looked like he had dislocated the boy's shoulder.

All the while the mother (a term I use just as loosely) was wheeling yet a younger child around in the cart, also screaming, and a middle child, a girl, followed behind sullenly. The mother never said a word, watching her son be tortured.

I felt so impotent at that moment I was shaking with anger. I didn't know what to do. I glared at the guy, and kept my distance, but followed them around the store...keeping my eyes on him for the while. We made eye contact and this seemed to keep him from doing it again ...in the store at least.

God help the poor boy when he got home. I could see the manager looking at him too, but she never said anything either. I wish I hadn't been so intimidated by this guy, but he was frightening, let me be blunt. I didn't know what to do.

I mean, how could one report this, and to whom? "Hi Officer, yes, I see a guy. No, I don't know his name, but he's abusing a child right now. They'll be gone soon. No, I don't know where they live."

What does one do in this sort of situation? It left me frustrated and angry and just plain sad for this poor child. I'm still frustrated and angry and sad in fact.

"and trust us, we see you take your wieners for long walks"

“We are holding Jesus ransom until you clean up the poopie from your wieners and trust us we see you take your wieners for long walks w/out picking up their poopie in our yards. This has upset us dearly so please clean up all the weiner poopie, if you want to see Jesus unharmed. Sincerely, Lindy Lane Residents.”

Found this gem by way of dlisted.
It's a story about a ransom note that this lovely lady in Michigan got from her neighbors.

Chocolate Vagina Capital City of America

Excting news here by way of sturtle and the Times Picayune (I had to verify, because it seemed too..umm...good (?) to be true).
Can you imagine?

On April 12, "The Vagina Monologues," which has become a worldwide phenomenon, launching the V-Day project to end violence against women, will play the 17,000-seat New Orleans Arena with a cast scheduled to include Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Jennifer Hudson, Ellen DeGeneres, Charmaine Neville, Salma Hayek, Rosario Dawson, Ashley Judd, Julia Stiles, Marisa Tomei and Oprah Winfrey, for whom Ensler is writing a new monologue.

April 11 and 12 will find the Louisiana Superdome interior turned into a pink and red vagina -- "with a big vagina entrance," Ensler said -- as a setting for performance events, parties, parades, workshops, wellness and education programs, speakers, even spa treatments, which will be free to residents of New Orleans and the Gulf South. (Men are excluded only from the spa.)

For those two days, New Orleans will be "the Vagina Capital of America," Ensler said. "We're coming here to say that we should celebrate New Orleans, cherish it, protect it, just as we do our vaginas, and make sure it goes on and on."

27 Cliches

Today, in a pique of boredom, I took myself to another movie (one day I'll put out, right?)
Actually, maybe it's time to slip a ruffie in my drink.

I paid for a ticket to "Atonement," but decided at the very last minute to see "27 Dresses."
I figured I have enough wet drizzly melodrama in my life already, right?

No, I figured I'd see the chick flick...well, the other chick flick.

Somehow I keep hoping to replicate the serendipitous chick flick magic of "Under the Tuscan Sun," a movie I happened to enjoy and roll my eyes at simultaneously.
It's never happened since

So it was just me and an audience of big girls (natch) on a rainy cold Saturday morning.

I ended up getting a coughing fit, so I left a bit early, but I'm sure I can figure out the end. I mean it's the most formulaic chick flick I've seen in a long while, and that's saying something. It's so contrived it's almost hilarious.
Yes, it was bad.
I knew it would be. I just wanted a few hours out of the cold watching scenes of NYC and pretty people who have "love" problems. Is that so wrong?
(don't answer)

Anyway, I kept thinking why is Katherine Heigl doing this to herself? She seems intent on sabotaging her career. And poor James Marsden. I think I like him.


Why's he in this crap? They both work really hard to make it adequate, but never quite do.
So there's my unsolicited review in a nutshell.

our daddy of univision

Today at lunch, at a Mexican restaurant in the suburbs, a real one, where none of the waitstaff actually speaks English, and you can see the cans of lard in the kitchen, I found a Spanish language magazine on the holy card dispenser.

It's right next to the gum machine and exactly the same, except that for fifty cents you might, if you're lucky, get an iridescent Virgen de Guadalupe card.

I have quite a collection, I'm proud to say.
But I digress...

Anyway, on the magazine cover is a photo of a long standing, almost forgotten crush of mine.

I mean I had a crush on Jorge Ramos when Reagan was in office, ferchristsakes! (or whatever the Spanish equivalent of that is)

Back then I would watch Univision news, blissfully ignorant of whatever he was talking about. Does it really matter?

He's 54 now, and god-damned if he's not even better looking now.
As far as I'm concerned he's what that milquetoast Anderson Cooper could never hope to be.

Lightbulbs and cookies

In support of the writers' strike, I've decided to go into reruns.
(ok, who am I kidding. Fuck the writers, what have they ever given me? I'm just too sick and lazy to type right now.)

Anywho, here's a post from back in 2006:

I was thinking today about my first group of gay friends. I was maybe 23 or so (kind of old, come to think about it now) and very naive.

Not that I'm not still naive, but just imagine me at that age.

I had met a guy in an art class named Patrick. He was very tall and skinny and fixated on two things:

*younger guys (though all of 20 himself)

*Madonna

*violent imagery.

(ok, so I said only two things, but at least two of those three are pretty much the same, if you think about it, right?)

His paintings were always of bloody figures at war, it seemed. At the time, he was squatting at a house near the Fairgrounds
(next door to the scene of a notorious satanic cult murder a few years later, so I remembered reading with horror in the Times Picayune…..human hearts buried under the floorboards and everything)

I, however, had no clue as to that sort of thing.
Actually, I had no clue period, about *anything* at that age.

One of my most vivid memories of that time is bringing over freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and light bulbs. They had burned them all out at the house and had no money to buy more. Wanting to be helpful, or just plain pathetic, I drove up to the nearly dilapidated house, next door to the Satanic cult, parked my Escort on the street and, like Little Red Ridinghood, brought the cookies (in a basket for God’s sake) in.

The cast of characters was always changing, but here were the lead players:

Patrick, the violent, pre-pedophile, Madonna fan.

Joao, an 18 year old Brazilian model/prostitute who constantly practiced his gymnastic routine (he was going to the Olympics he insisted).

Daniel, a straight native westbanker for whom Patrick had an unrequited lust. Daniel had an encyclopedic knowledge of music. I remember he initially sneered at me, making fun of my suspected musical tastes. Within a few minutes, however, I had redeemed myself and he completely ignored Patrick
Needless to say Patrick was livid with jealousy.

Bill, an overweight Disney store employee who was reviled for his old age (30!). He shared the pedophilic tendencies of Patrick. The stories he told of the Disney store exploits are not fit to print….well, yet.

To round it out, there was the ever revolving cast of Patrick’s tricks. One of the more memorable of these, whose name I can't remember, was from New Jersey. He was a hustler and a crack addict. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone doing crack.

I actually asked him, "what are you doing?"
I thought it was a craft, no doubt.

He told me, "some crack, man."

He was very nonchalant and actually pretty nice. He talked incessantly of “ ‘shrooms.” He kept looking in the yard for them. I helped.

Hell, I had read a book about truffle hunting in Normandy somewhere along the line, hadn't I? Somehow I won him over too. I think it was the cookies.
Of course he disappeared the next morning with Patrick's lighter and 50 dollars.

The most bizarre member of this group, however, was clearly me...me and my basket of cookies and lightbulbs. You don't get much more bizarre than that.

After Patrick left for San Francisco, I decided not so much to go back "into the closet," as "back on the shelf."

Clearly, I was not cut out for gay life, I decided. I mean really, this was not at all what I had thought this whole "gay" thing would be. Not at all.

I had pictured "gay" life to be....

oh, I don't know...Noel Coward dialogue...or Wham! videos...and, above all, gentrification.
Certainly not squatters and lighter thieves.

It took a few more years before I met my next set of gay friends, who were a bit more domesticated, not quite, but a bit more.
And now, ultimately, the third and current set are the most "domesticated" yet.
In the best way.
When I contrast the two groups it just makes me smile.

old school

It's clear from this pastiche that Snoop and I watched and listened to many of the same things growing up.
And is it just me, or is that a faint echo of Paul Hardcastle's "Rainforest" I hear?

Whatever, I like.

overheard

"So, it's finally happened. All of your cousins are in jail at the same time.
Oh, and one of the sons too."

My mother, tonight over dinner.

(She means of course my five paternal cousins. She's overly proud of the fact that there are just two from her own side.
She's such a snob.)

To quote Big Edie, today's "a God-damned beautiful day" and I'm wasting it.

Or at least it feels like I am.

In my defense, I am still a bit sick. Thursday was particularly rough, and I had planned to take a sick day on Friday. Friday morning I decided to go into work, and don't you know, had to sub for some asshole who decided to take the day off.
Typical.

I went to bed promptly at 6 pm last night and woke up feeling a bit better, with a wonderful, cool sunny day before me.

Feeling the obligation to do something, this morning I drove off to the library, looked around...had lunch at a suburban McDonalds (which, for the nearly complete absence of English speakers there, could have been in Ciudad Juarez for all I'd have known)...and now I'm back here, under Raoul, my electric blanket.
Sad.

I'd thought of taking myself to a movie, but that's gotten a bit old, since I take myself to a movie pretty much every week. It's getting to be an expensive date, and besides I never seem to put out, so why bother.

A few weeks ago, facing a similar situation (but a less pretty day) I called five friends. That didn't quite work out, and I gave up number six.

I think I saw "Juno" that day. (Good, cute enough, but not quite as good as the hype.)

Ok, I've decided I'm turning off Raoul and going for a drive.

Just wondering....

Can anyone figure out from where I took....ok, stole...the artwork in the header above?
It's close to my heart.

just a few of the phrases that have wormed their way into my head this year:

"I know it's rough, but show some class." April Ames, by way of
Fabulon

"If you crossed the overwrought Mediterranean of the late 60’s with the funeral parlor stylin that competed with Art Deco in the 30s, you’d get this. It’s what Carmela Soprano would get wet for in decorating. It’s the complement to all those Tuscan villa Mcmansions squatting in the suburbs."
MrPeenee, by way of MrPeenee

"Notice the Slit" Brenda Dickson, by way of Pen15

"'Ooh girl, do you know who Vera Wang is?'
'No...Do she do nails...I need a fill.'"
by Ayem8y by way of Mean Dirty Pirate.

"We are both doing real well. Derek is still assistant team leader in the junior’s department at Bon-Ton." by Michael, by way of Temporary Trouble Spots

"Brituation" by Joe, by way of "Joe to hell

"....and then I thought of him again just now when I went to pee and the tip of my dick was stuck to my underpants. At first I was like, "What the?" and then I was all, "Oh, yeah! Hot guy from this morning."
Happy New Year!" by Michael, by way of Pipedreams

the little green moon

One of the joys lately of coming home has been seeing the newly re-lit weather ball on the dilapidated, ghostly old Falstaff brewery building. At night it looks like a small green moon on the horizon.

Here are some other nice photos of the brewery I found browsing online. I love the one of King Gambrinus looking over the city. The other is of the former beer garden, on the roof.





Found from Skyscraperpage

absolutely gratuitous

but worth it.

You excuse yourself from the table to use to restroom at brunch. It's a nice restaurant. It's a nice day.

As it is prone to do, the toilet decides to overflow. You frantically plunge it into submission with whatever weapon you can find, in this case a filthy toilet brush. You wash yourself off as best you can, mop your forehead and open the door, which faces straight into the dining room.

Still red faced with exertion and embarrassment, your shoes still a bit moist with toilet water, you walk right into a guy with whom you'd been on a one time date, someone who told you that you were "too old" for him ten or so years ago, when he was your age now.

You apologize and skulk past him, hoping not to be dragging a bit of toilet paper from your shoe and drink your tea.

At least this time you don't have to listen to an hour of mindless small talk before the embarrassment sets in, right?

New from Royal Daulton

I'm hoping it's slotted for use as a piggy bank.