neutral ground

This morning, I drove past, just to see if it would still be there.

It was.

I live in a highly lesbian area. It's wonderful. It's one of the reasons I love this place.

The other night watching HGTV (which, sadly, is pretty much the only tv I can manage nowadays) I noticed on their "House Hunters" that they were in NO.
A lesbian couple was looking for a new home. I thought to myself snarkily,
"Where? Midcity? pfffft."

And surely enough, as they pan to the happy couple walking around, I see that they're within walking distance of my home. I recognize the houses.

My snarkiness instantly evaporated, replaced by childlike excitement. "Oh my God, look, the lesbians on tv are in my neighborhood!"
But the views of the neighborhood were fleeting.

Anyway, a few months ago, during the (very ignored) Louisiana Primary, two of my neighbors (who live in a huge Victorian on the corner) were out on the neutral ground
("median" for the rest of the US).

They were supporting a six foot tall piece of plywood with "VOTE FOR HILARY!" spray painted in red on it. (By the way, I didn't)

They were frantically waving the six foot tall plywood sign (I wouldn't want to get in a fight with either, let's just say).

"VOTE FOR HILARY" has been leaned up against the Victorian porch for the past few months, getting bleached and warped by the elements.

But, as of this afternoon, it's still there.

guess the artist

Can you guess the artist of the collages below?
I found these at the Paris Review, and was surprised, but in retrospect shouldn't have been.

Lovely.



Find out here

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.

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

"show your sharp tipped teeth"

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


Good advice all around.