memed

I've been tagged. Miss Janey tells me I must answer 6 questions about myself, and I know better than not to do what Miss Janey says. So here we go, although I have to warn you, my answers are kinda lame.

What Was I Doing Ten Years Ago – 1998
I was teaching at night and working in a cubicle in a vast windowless labyrinth of brown "woodtone" panelling during the daylight.

5 Things On My To Do List For Today
1. get my hair cut by Ha, the Vietnamese Victoria Beckham of the Westbank.
2. Drive my mother to her medical appointments.
3. Iron and wash for Monday
4. Go to Biglots/Target/World Market (see question below)
5. Take myself to a movie (?)

Snacks I Enjoy:
(Finally, a question I can get excited about.)

1.LU biscuits (maybe my favorite cookie...and I don't even like cookies)

That fat little French schoolboy is taunting me right now in fact.

2.Munchos- probably one of the worst foods one can eat.



3.Chips and salsa (When stuck at home, these Xochitl chips are passable). Salsa I must make myself.



4.Spree. I love them.


5.





Things I Would Do If I Was A Billionaire
I'd buy a house. I'd give to charity. I'd buy art.

Places I Have Lived:
Ahem.. Well, here's the saddest of all questions to answer.
1.The Westbank (the...ummm..."rive gauche" ...in so many ways...of New Orleans)
2. New Orleans itself.

Here are some blogs I enjoy:

See over there on the right at my "Go Here" list -->

emperor's new vogue

I found these photos (supposedly) from Vogue (presumably a European version) and (allegedly) for Tom Ford.
I don't know if any of that is right, but it could be.
Doesn't much matter.








I know Mr. Ford has veered dangerously close to skeeviness lately, with all the nudity (especially those ads for the fragrance...tacky).

Though you won't hear me complaining about his own time in the shower.
Still, again, it all tends to smell a bit like desperation.

Despite it all, these pics I tend to like. There's something Helmut Newton-ish about them. It's certainly better done than most of the other uses of nudity to sell clothes (Abercrombie and Fitch, CK, etc.) I've seen. And the nudity doesn't even upstage the clothes. That's pretty good.

Actually, they kind of remind me of Manet's "Le Dejeuner sur L'herbe":



Oh, and seeing peen is nice too.

"you gonna make me..."

Sometimes, for certain reasons (like now), I feel like I could listen to this (by the underappreciated, I think, Jones Girls) on a continous loop.

I'm always learning.

I spent Saturday in a friend's pool, drinking vodka, playing ball with the 7 year old son of a heroin addict.

By dusk, after the children had left, I was cornered by a former Olympic synchronized swimmer (in nothing but his briefs, because he had forgotten his swim trunks on the counter at home). He was hot, I mean J.C. Penney-catalog-model hot.
He was exictedly telling me about his childhood Thanksgiving dinners.

Seems his father was a doctor somewhere in New England. Every year, after they'd finished eating, he told me, the kids would be sent off to gather up the young cats from the yard. The cats would be injected with drugs. The kids would be left to play with the drugged cats until they were comatose (the cats, I think, not the kids)
Then they'd clear off the dinner table, and his father would tie their tubes, right there on the dining room table(again, the cats', I think).

He and his much less attractive boyfriend came by with their (presumably spayed) very frisky puppy, who promptly peed in the pool.

The boyfriend told me all about the Navy and the three Mormon "heavens." Like 9 tenths of every gay man I've ever met, he'd been raised a Mormon. Seems if you're gay and Mormon, you'll be going to a lower level "heaven," a bit less bright than the upper and midrange heavens that straight Mormons get to go to, as he explained. I'm guessing it's probably flourescent lighting there.
Harsh.
The straight dead Mormons can visit you in the lower heaven, but you as a homo can't go up. (There's a joke in there that I'm too proud {lazy} to make. Ha.)

I also learned from the host's best friend, that coffee grounds will get rid of cellulite. She was later found passed out in front of the bathroom door. I found my empty bottle of vodka nearby.

pomp and circumstances

From what I hear, there was no 200 pound/yellow chiffon/wrestling drama at last week's graduation ceremonies.

(I know, I'm kind of disappointed by that too)

By all accounts it was a fairly dignified affair (though there was a rogue balloon salesman stealing a table).

I didn't attend.

I know, bad of me. It was the first time I've ever missed a graduation. In my defense, I was actually flooded in that night. It was yet another occurrence of flooding here. My street was inundated and not passable. In fact, I came within one inch of getting my new car flooded.
Add to that, the fact that I didn't feel very good, and that last year, I went and most other faculty members weren't there, I just opted out.

The next day, of course, I was busted. I ran into a parent and the assistant principal in the "hall" (well, what will be a hall when one day we get a roof)
"Where were you last night?" The parent asked.
"I was flooded in," I say, embarrassed, even if it was the truth.
"You should have heard it," the assistant principal says.
"What?"
"The speeches," she goes on. "The valedictorian's and the salutatorian's. They were all about you."
"Yeah," the parent says. "It's like you was God or something."

Immediately, I was grateful I had missed that mortification.

work notes

Yesterday, the janitor, who is the spitting image of Flavor Flav, and a Vietnam vet with a tragic and colorful back story, rushed up to me with a bucket in one hand and a shovel in the other.

"Hey, look what I got!" he exclaimed excitedly.
I looked into the bucket and saw a headless snake.
"I found it out by the tree behind the classroom. I killed this one, but there's a whole nest of 'em! You know what kind it is?"
"Ummm..no." I answer. "Maybe you can take it to Miss Jones, the biology teacher."
"Ah yeah"
I thought it was kind of sweet how a headless snake could turn a grown man into a 10 year old boy again.

--------------------------------------------------
"Did a lot of people drown?" A student of mine asked yesterday, genuinely concerned.
I was reviewing the Colonial period.
"Huh?" I asked, completely baffled by her question.
"You know," she went on to explain. "When we wasn't part of England no more?"
I think...and then realize what she's thinking.
And with admirable lack of sarcasm on my part (I thought), I explained that when America separated from England there was no geological damage done.
A few other students did snicker at her, and I was slightly reassured that they did.
--------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow is graduation. The past two years have been fairly uneventful, thankfully.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
I was relating the story to a friend the other day of a few years ago. I was sure I had told it before, but maybe she'd forgotten it. I know I haven't. A few years ago
our principal had made the point of formalizing the event, dressing it up.

As part of this stiffening of etiquette, the faculty had processed in our various caps and gowns before the students. We sat together and the ceremony began with great formality. Despite repeated interruptions by overly enthusiastic relatives, things were going nicely.
Suddenly, however, somewhere in the middle of the P's, all of 10 feet away from me, I hear a tussle. Or should I say, feel a tussle going down.

I glance over to the left and see a 200 pound woman in a light yellow chiffon summer dress being violently wrestled to the ground by two NOPD officers. She and her date, in a navy suit, are cuffed and dragged off screaming through the aisles. They resisted arrest.

On the way down she bit the police officer. They were dragged along the floor for about 50 feet and then out of the auditorium. I think I saw a bit of yellow chiffon snagged on the carpet.

Then the ceremony resumed. We went back to the R's.
------------------------------------------------------------

Lastly, sadly, the curse of my homeroom is alive and well. It seems I jumped the gun the other day in crowing that it was dead.

Yes, it seems I have let yet another of my students get pregnant. It's still but a rumor however. Again I feel like a bad daddy. She is, however, from a completely different quadrant of the room this year.
I don't know if that's an improvement...or a sign of it spreading.

nothing much

I went to see "Prince Caspian" today. I woke up early and didn't know what to do with myself, so I drove out to the suburbs and decided to see a movie. It was 10 am.
I had no clear idea of what to see. It was between "Harold and Kumar, etc." (the first of which I never did see) or "Narnia: Redux" (the first of which I did see.)
I chose Narnia, mainly because of the poster.

I read all the Narnia books back when I was a child, and liked them enough to finish them all....but in the intervening centuries, I've forgotten the plot almost so completely as for it to a a whole new experience for me.

(I am, however, perfecting my 13 3/4 year old British school boy accent to take up Elizabeth's challenge.)

Anyway, in short, the movie was all right, kind of like the first one. Nothing earth shattering. Those British kid actors, the leads, irritate the hell out of me, however. I just want to slap every last one. I think it would do a world of good for them to be slapped a few times.

The only reason I decided to see it anyway, was because of this:

Thanks to Frontier Psychiatrist for alerting me to his name: Ben Barnes.

Totally dreamy....almost too much so.
I mean, it's kind of hard to concentrate on all these talking animals and dancing trees and such when the 13 3/4 year old British boy in me is in a mad fit of a crush.

Anyway, afterward, I went to a McDonald's. Just after sitting down, I look at the counter and see the most attractive young family you can imagine.

It was a young woman with a baby, and the father. He (the father) was startlingly attractive, classically tall and with a profile to die for, both in their mid twenties...very all American.

The whole family seemed to be deaf...or at least the parents did, who were cheerfully communicating with sign language. The mother articulated enough to order.
They got their food silently. They sat down silently. They ate silently.
Even the baby never made a sound. I don't know why, but the whole family was even more beautiful for the silence.

"I confessed to her over the yoghurt."

"She accepted my disability very calmly. She said it made no difference to our love but I couldn't help thinking that her kisses lacked their usual passion as we were saying good-night after youth club.
Friday Oct 2.
I am very unhappy and once again turned to great literature for solace."

(From The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4)

As you can see, I've been tagged by JB at My Grey Garden.
His instructions were:

1.Pick up the nearest book.
2.Open to page 123.
3.Locate the fifth sentence.
4.Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
join the fun, if you please.

(I'm going to be thinking with a 13 3/4th year old British accent now for weeks...again.)

Hot tranny crime

Here's a bit of local news from tonight. And to think, I was at this BK, my local one, just yesterday. Good thing I left my wig at home.

Burger King order comes with a side of weird
by The Times-Picayune
Wednesday May 14, 2008, 10:26 PM
By Daniel Monteverde
Staff writer

Even for a restaurant with a slogan that promises "Have it Your Way," it may have been the most unusual order the staff at the Carrollton Avenue Burger King has ever filled.

As employees were preparing to open Sunday at about 4 a.m., a tall, slender redhead, dressed in a colorful floral dress and pink necklace, entered the store.

But the figure wasn't a mother popping in for a warm Mother's Day breakfast. "She" wasn't even a woman, but a cross-dressing robber. And cold, hard cash was the order.

The suspect got into the store by crawling through the drive-through window, New Orleans police said.

Once inside, he demanded money before slinking out the same window to make his escape. Police said he fled in a white pickup truck.

According to a separate police report, 17 minutes earlier in the 2800 block of South Claiborne Avenue, an armed man dressed in a wig and dress carjacked a truck. No other details on the carjacking were available.

Employees said they were not free to comment on the incident, referring any questions to the store's owner.

But one employee, who saw the security camera footage, said that since the suspect made the effort to dress the part of a woman, he should not have halfhearted it.

"He should've gone to the spa first," the employee said.

The store's owner did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday night.

Police described the suspect as a man in his mid-20s, 6-foot-1-inch tall and weighing about 180 pounds. He was wearing a red wig, pink necklace and a red, white and black floral dress during the time of the robbery. It was not known whether stilettos or pumps were the footwear of choice.

Sunday's incident was the latest in a string of men disguised as women behaving badly.

In early January, a man wearing makeup, a black wig, sunglasses and boots, a dark jacket and pants and carrying a black purse robbed a Metairie Road bank.

Later that month, a man wearing what one eyewitness described as a "long, blond wig, like Nancy Sinatra" opened fire on a man in Algiers outside a neighborhood bar that was holding a weekly trivia night inside.

Anyone with information about this robbery should contact Sgt. Shaun Ferguson at (504)¤658-6024 or (504)¤658-6020 or Crimestoppers at (504)¤822-1111 or (877)¤903-7867.

Read it here

Mother's day snapshots

So, I asked my mother what she wanted to do this year for Mother's day. "Let's go to the buffet at the casino," she tells me. I groan, but go. It's her day after all, right?
Last year it was a bit more tony, but this year it was strictly downmarket.

Here are some highlights:

In the parking lot, I park next to a ubiquitous white pickup truck, with its windows rolled up tight.
Inside, I see a fifty something year old black man in a baseball cap, half slumped over the wheel, sleeping or dead....with a cigarette burning its way to his lip.

"You're going to park next to that!?" My mother asks, alarmed.
"I'm tired of driving around." I answer. We'd driven fruitlessly around the lot for what seemed like forever.
"Well, don't blame me when we come back and find your car burned!" she huffs.

Upon entering, the sign warns us ominously:
"No firearms"
"No sleeveless t-shirts"
"No masks or plastic face coverings"
"No bedroom slippers"

You just know that a masked, bedroom slippered sleeveless t-shirt woman got caught one day smuggling a firearm in her purse.

In the elevator, a sixty something woman with cotton candy thinning hair, dyed a nice shade of burgundy, drives in on a motorized scooter, with her daughter and the oxygen tank in tow. She wheezes through the plastic tubes in her nose for my mother to "press 2, darlin'. Thanks."

In the dining room, we're seated across from a family reunion of what look like carnies.

My mother shoves me in the arm. "Tien ca," she tells me (using the French as she does when she tries to be discreet).
"Look at that!"
I look.
It's a late twenty something white female. She's skinny, but nine months pregnant. She's been squeezed into a long white figure hugging dress.

Crocheted.

She looks like an anaconda who's just eaten a gazelle, in white crochet.

"You think she did that dress herself?" my mother sneers.

"I don't know about the dress," I tell her, "but it looks like she did that tattoo herself." It's a large tattoo on her shoulder, reading "Doodie."

She's got a Deliverance style buzz cut and looks scarily similar to the father of her fetus. She's eating an ice cream cone, staring blankly ahead, practically giving it a blow job while her grandfather (in overalls, no less) looks on.

I try to down my mashed potatoes.

"show your sharp tipped teeth"

Liking this song right now. (The Kills with "Cheap and Cheerful")


Good advice all around.

book note

I just returned from the public library and re-checked out a book I had checked out a few weeks ago. It's Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman. I'd read about it at
Band of Thebes and it sounded interesting. I like Proust. Aciman is a Proust scholar. His novel is very Proustian.
(that's a lot of Proust for one post)
Anyway, I read a few chapters before having to return it. My two week allotment was up and I hadn't finished it. It's hard for me to read when reading is kind of my job.

Of course, I skimmed through it and read all of the dirty bits before I dropped it back in the slot.

I'm no fool.

But even the dirty bits are kind of Proustian. That's not a complaint, just a comment.
But I'm giving it a try again.
It's actually beautifully written, but a bit tough going at times, and sad in general.

It's about a young man and the affair he has with an older (24 or so) man, a guest of his parents'. It's set in the Italian Riviera sometime (I like to imagine) in the 80's. I'm not sure why.
Lord knows I can totally relate.
I know I spent many a summer on the Italian Riviera flirting with handsome literary types in their 20s. (In my mind)

Birmanie

I've been reading about what's happened in Burma (dammit, I'm going to call it by its rightful name, I don't care) and its history since the Cyclone hit, and it seems that "Myanmar" is but a name forced on it by an evil junta.
Plus, I've always liked that name "Burma" It reminds me of rubies...and Birmanie (how it was listed prettily on the French maps in my French textbooks)....oh, and Burma-shave signs along the highway.

I read in the paper that its junta keeps refusing to accept foreign aid
in the aftermath of the storm.

Anyway, it sounds eerily similar to our own goverment's refusal to accept foreign aid here during Katrina. Actually, the whole thing brings up bad memories for me.

I didn't know to whom to donate, but I knew it wouldn't be the Red Cross. They are nothing but corrupt and useless to those in need. I know this all too well.

I don't know if my money will make it to help the people there, but I donated anyway.
It only seems right.

easy, breezy, covergirl!

One of the many things I love about Gawker are the photos they occasionally choose for their Gawker Stalker section (like a tilde for Tilda Swinton, or a pair of silicone breasts for, well, that could serve for any number of people, couldn't it?)

Anyway, while there the other night, I noticed a photo of this person, on whom I've had something of a crush for the past five or so years (that's another clue by the way)
Can you guess who he is?

Hollywood!

This is a photo from my front door a few minutes ago.
I just got home a few minutes ago and snapped this photo. I didn't want to be too obvious, since there are lots of hollywood types around and I don't want to look like too much of a rube, you know.

Actually, even though I had to park a good ways away, my walk was made more pleasant by a number of cute men imported from...well, somewhere other than around here, that's for sure.

Some are set decorators. They're rummaging around boxes in the front of my home. A few look like extras, very cute extras, filling out forms on the curb. A few are caterers, they've pitched a tent across the street. The directors, lighting men, gaffers (whatever that is, I'm sure they're here) are all around too. I even see a lesbian script girl (or is that "person" walking by too.

I woke this morning to the sound of hammers and the hum of 18 wheelers. It was 5 am. By the time I left at 6:30, the street had been closed.
I got home to find that they seem to be filming in the house across the street. They've built a backdrop about 10 feet tall in front of the windows, with fake plants, presumably to give a natural look when filmed from inside. They've spot lit the other side of the house, to flood it with light. I suppose they're filming inside.

I have not, as of yet, seen any stars.

I have, however, figured out what the movie is. I had asked online, and was doubtful of the answer I received, but I now think I was told correctly.
There's a clue in the picture above. I'll give you a hint: "Miami Jail."


Oh, ok, here's the answer.

Read more here...with pictures!


(I did not, repeat, not, take this picture.)

Ok, if you'll all excuse me, I have some stalking to do:

front yard, back lot

Last week, I had actually completely forgotten about this past weekend being the second weekend of Jazzfest. I went to a movie with my friend (and neighbor) Velinda who asked me, "so, what are you going to do tomorrow?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you won't be able to go home again, you know." She said.
"Tomorrow? You mean it's starting again tomorrow?" I say, peeved.
"Yes, I'm going out of town. I'll be having a facial." she says blithely.

Her school actually gave them four days off because of the parking situation. My school? No such luck.
But Friday I left a bit early, the weather was threatening and I figured that there might be a chance of my parking. I was optimistic. Surely no one will be out there in this sort of weather, at this time, right?

Thankfully, I had packed again just in case.
I got back home to find the same mayhem of meter maids, flurries of orange tickets, and hordes of birkenstock, hat wearing tourists. I had to get out.

So, I drove directly over the bridge, and spent the last weekend again with my mother. Again.
Despite the fact that she's not feeling well, she still managed to make me take her to nearly every retail establishment on the West bank. She's a trooper.
I, however, am not. I need a vacation.

I just got home now, and was miraculously able to park right in front of my apartment.
The last of the tourists were wandering by. I notice a sign tacked up on the tree in front of my front door.



Seems like there will be a film crew in the neighborhood. They've been before, but never this close. Literally on my front step. I walked about the neighborhood but noticed that my block, in fact, my building, is the only one with the signs.

Across the street, in the alley, guarded by a very bored looking security guard are some huge spot lights. I guess he'll be there all night?



While taking the picture, a gaggle of nurses fresh from the Jazzfest, giddily gathered around.
"Oh wow...look over here!!" the blond exclaims. "They're filming a movie!"
"I wonder what it is?" her brunette friend asks a bit drunkenly. "Something with Brad Pitt maybe?"
They all giggle.
"You ought to look that up online," another one says. "We could be extras!"
"But they don't need nurses." The brunette says disappointedly.
"We wouldn't have to be nurses in the film, silly." The blonde laughs.

I guess I'd better make some alternate plans for Tuesday, but I definitely will try to get home first. I want to see what it is. I hope it's a nursing movie, just to prove that snotty blonde wrong.

vocabulary

Student sentence from a recent vocabulary test:

Gall (v)- It really galls me when Brittney licks my arm.

(Brittney is the girl in the next desk)

She got full credit.
Sometimes I just don't want to know.