Dear Editor,
Your Gay Days coverage told the story of one family with kids against a background of (by my count) seven salacious details that painted the rest of the gay experience as little more than sex, drugs and disease. To be fair and balanced, your next article about a religious gathering should weave the story of one family with kids into a tapestry of snarky details about priests raping children, popes covering up scandals, preachers using meth with hookers, bigoted religious researchers hiring rent boys, terrorists flying planes into buildings and groups of fine young Christians fag-bashing people as they leave gay bars.
Jake
Monday, June 28, 2010
Time Magazine didn't print my letter
Fortunately, I found a blogger who'd print it for me:
I saw Stanley Cup at the Chicago pride parade!
I think he’s the one holding the giant silver thing in this picture:
So another pride parade has come and gone, and I remain as ambivalent about the festivities as ever. But not for the usual reasons.
Despite a lot of people’s worries that the so-called freak-show aspect of the parade just feeds into negative gay stereotypes, I’m actually thrilled that the parade gives drag queens and leather queens and muscle queens and duct-tape-on-their-boobs queens a day to say To hell with what you think—this is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it.
But.
I’m not a fan of the sheer relentlessness of it all. The noise. The crowds. The mess. The drunks. The drunks who manage to spill their drinks all over me. And the fact that anyone who forks over whatever the entrance fee is seems to get a place in the parade … never mind that the damn thing goes on for four-plus hours. Or that a bunch of people walking in mismatched T-shirts—no matter how noble their organization or how fabulous their cause—does not really make visually interesting parade fodder.
And yet.
I feel compelled to go every year. Even though I find it to be only about 50% fun. And I have no idea why I keep going. Maybe because I might miss seeing some hot guy on a float. Because in this day and age it’s impossible to find pictures of hot guys on the Internet. Or maybe because if some remote friend doesn’t see me there it might not occur to him to invite me to his pride party the next year and I’ll feel like a loser.
Despite my determination to not let myself have any fun, though, I did have a lovely weekend. I went to a few parties, I finished the Proud to Run 10K in a respectable time, I spent all day Saturday with a bunch of fabulous friends, I got a parade-watching sunburn, I got tons of compliments on my tattoos, I fell off the no-diet-soda wagon, I got back on, I fell off the almost-no-alcohol wagon, I got back on (after five drinks in one day, which is more than I usually drink in five months), and I spent the post-parade hours singing show tunes at Sidetrack with the domestic partner and a steady parade of friends who bounced in and out of our evening.
Plus I went to what was perhaps the only pre-pride brunch in the city that had three straight pregnant women on the guest list. Unfortunately, only one picture has been uploaded to Facebook so far and nobody in it is pregnant. At least not to my knowledge:
But I did take two artistic portraits at the brunch with my iPhone that will undoubtedly sell for thousands of dollars at my photography retrospective auction in the years following my untimely artists’ death. I have titled them for your convenience so you can place your bids more easily from the catalogue:
Pride Brunch with Cat 1
Pride Brunch with Cat 2
So another pride parade has come and gone, and I remain as ambivalent about the festivities as ever. But not for the usual reasons.
Despite a lot of people’s worries that the so-called freak-show aspect of the parade just feeds into negative gay stereotypes, I’m actually thrilled that the parade gives drag queens and leather queens and muscle queens and duct-tape-on-their-boobs queens a day to say To hell with what you think—this is who I am and I’m not going to apologize for it.
But.
I’m not a fan of the sheer relentlessness of it all. The noise. The crowds. The mess. The drunks. The drunks who manage to spill their drinks all over me. And the fact that anyone who forks over whatever the entrance fee is seems to get a place in the parade … never mind that the damn thing goes on for four-plus hours. Or that a bunch of people walking in mismatched T-shirts—no matter how noble their organization or how fabulous their cause—does not really make visually interesting parade fodder.
And yet.
I feel compelled to go every year. Even though I find it to be only about 50% fun. And I have no idea why I keep going. Maybe because I might miss seeing some hot guy on a float. Because in this day and age it’s impossible to find pictures of hot guys on the Internet. Or maybe because if some remote friend doesn’t see me there it might not occur to him to invite me to his pride party the next year and I’ll feel like a loser.
Despite my determination to not let myself have any fun, though, I did have a lovely weekend. I went to a few parties, I finished the Proud to Run 10K in a respectable time, I spent all day Saturday with a bunch of fabulous friends, I got a parade-watching sunburn, I got tons of compliments on my tattoos, I fell off the no-diet-soda wagon, I got back on, I fell off the almost-no-alcohol wagon, I got back on (after five drinks in one day, which is more than I usually drink in five months), and I spent the post-parade hours singing show tunes at Sidetrack with the domestic partner and a steady parade of friends who bounced in and out of our evening.
Plus I went to what was perhaps the only pre-pride brunch in the city that had three straight pregnant women on the guest list. Unfortunately, only one picture has been uploaded to Facebook so far and nobody in it is pregnant. At least not to my knowledge:
But I did take two artistic portraits at the brunch with my iPhone that will undoubtedly sell for thousands of dollars at my photography retrospective auction in the years following my untimely artists’ death. I have titled them for your convenience so you can place your bids more easily from the catalogue:
Pride Brunch with Cat 1
Pride Brunch with Cat 2 Friday, June 25, 2010
What the hell do gay people have to be proud of?
We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes, when entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what the Christian hate industry works so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.
We’re proud because more and more, we are able to live our lives openly and joyfully without fear of losing our jobs, losing our housing, losing our families and losing our lives.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our increasingly venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because this weekend we’ll celebrate with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, attitude queens and you’d-never-know-they-were-queens queens, and together we can see through the “pride” in our parade and enjoy the underlying Pride in our parade.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what the Christian hate industry works so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.
We’re proud because more and more, we are able to live our lives openly and joyfully without fear of losing our jobs, losing our housing, losing our families and losing our lives.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our increasingly venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because this weekend we’ll celebrate with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, attitude queens and you’d-never-know-they-were-queens queens, and together we can see through the “pride” in our parade and enjoy the underlying Pride in our parade.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Internet is for Gary Coleman stories
For those of you not versed in the canon of high culture, there is a Tony-award-winning musical from times of yore that weaves stories of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption across socioeconomic and ethnic lines, all told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement. Much like Les Misérables, the show explores these themes through the characters caught in their mighty vortices, giving them both sympathy and dignity while taking groundbreaking liberties with the conventions of the musical theater genre.
The show is, of course, Avenue Q. And in its very early scenes, as its characters are introduced and defined through tales of their abject suffering, we meet the most pathetic, fragile creature of the entire dramatis personae: Gary Coleman
Yes, that Gary Coleman, whose first couplets are so full of pathos and heartbreak it almost pains me to quote them here for you. But I will anyway:
Anyway, when the domestic partner and I started dating and we’d spend our days listening to Broadway cast albums together—as all gay couples do, so do not judge—the domestic partner eventually turned to me and asked me if Gary Coleman received royalties for being portrayed every night so realistically in a Tony-award-winning musical of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement.
And I, the keeper of all empirical truth, was for once unable to answer his question. For once.
But suddenly the Gary Coleman question became our shorthand for all things unanswerable. Like How do you throw away a garbage can? Or Why is Rush Limbaugh allowed to marry four times while we’re not allowed to marry even once? Or Why is Sarah Palin allowed to live?
So when we bought our Two Bedroomed Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie® Dream Condo and started painting and repairing and upgrading it before we moved in, I posted a picture of Gary Coleman in our so-palatial-it-has-its-own-ZIP-code master bedroom closet after I finished painting it just to give the domestic partner a giggle the first time he saw my finished handiwork.
And it worked!
But eventually we installed elfa shelving and stuffed the closet with the billions of dollars’ worth of designer clothing our celebrity designer friends give us when they use our TBTBOFBDC for their couture photo shoots, and Gary Coleman got moved to the mirror over the sink in our ultra-plush, members-only-spa-like master bathroom. Where we quickly stopped even noticing he was there as he started to wither and curl from years of exposure to shower steam and high-end hair product. Which is kind of like a sad metaphor for his career, but we were too busy trying on couture to really care.
But then Gary Coleman actually died.
And now that we’ve started re-noticing the picture on our mirror, it seems cavalier bordering on cruel to take it down and throw it away. Though we probably eventually will, just as soon as we finally turn the paint chips you see in the background of this picture into actual paint that we actually put on the walls:
In the mean time, I leave you with a charming pastiche number from Act 1 of Avenue Q that’s not sung by the Gary Coleman character, but most of his songs are pretty lame and unquotable so who cares? Enjoy:
The show is, of course, Avenue Q. And in its very early scenes, as its characters are introduced and defined through tales of their abject suffering, we meet the most pathetic, fragile creature of the entire dramatis personae: Gary Coleman
Yes, that Gary Coleman, whose first couplets are so full of pathos and heartbreak it almost pains me to quote them here for you. But I will anyway:
I’m Gary ColemanIn the show, Gary Coleman is played by an actor who is obviously not the actual Gary Coleman. Probably because the Avenue Q creators knew the actual Gary Coleman would eventually die and actors are easier to replace than Gary Coleman.
From TV’s Diff’rent Strokes.
I made a lotta money
That got stolen by my folks.
Now I’m broke and I’m the butt
Of everyone’s jokes.
Anyway, when the domestic partner and I started dating and we’d spend our days listening to Broadway cast albums together—as all gay couples do, so do not judge—the domestic partner eventually turned to me and asked me if Gary Coleman received royalties for being portrayed every night so realistically in a Tony-award-winning musical of love, betrayal, understanding and redemption told against a backdrop of poverty and despair in a New York tenement.
And I, the keeper of all empirical truth, was for once unable to answer his question. For once.
But suddenly the Gary Coleman question became our shorthand for all things unanswerable. Like How do you throw away a garbage can? Or Why is Rush Limbaugh allowed to marry four times while we’re not allowed to marry even once? Or Why is Sarah Palin allowed to live?
So when we bought our Two Bedroomed Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie® Dream Condo and started painting and repairing and upgrading it before we moved in, I posted a picture of Gary Coleman in our so-palatial-it-has-its-own-ZIP-code master bedroom closet after I finished painting it just to give the domestic partner a giggle the first time he saw my finished handiwork.
And it worked!
But eventually we installed elfa shelving and stuffed the closet with the billions of dollars’ worth of designer clothing our celebrity designer friends give us when they use our TBTBOFBDC for their couture photo shoots, and Gary Coleman got moved to the mirror over the sink in our ultra-plush, members-only-spa-like master bathroom. Where we quickly stopped even noticing he was there as he started to wither and curl from years of exposure to shower steam and high-end hair product. Which is kind of like a sad metaphor for his career, but we were too busy trying on couture to really care.
But then Gary Coleman actually died.
And now that we’ve started re-noticing the picture on our mirror, it seems cavalier bordering on cruel to take it down and throw it away. Though we probably eventually will, just as soon as we finally turn the paint chips you see in the background of this picture into actual paint that we actually put on the walls:
In the mean time, I leave you with a charming pastiche number from Act 1 of Avenue Q that’s not sung by the Gary Coleman character, but most of his songs are pretty lame and unquotable so who cares? Enjoy:
I’m not wearing underwear today.
No I’m not wearing underwear today.
Not that you probably care
Much about my underwear.
Still nonetheless I gotta say
That I’m not wearing underwear today.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
10,000 miles is a long way to run
Especially when it’s really only 205 miles. But 36 hours of living like circus people in a crowded van with occasional breaks to run lonely 10Ks through oppressive heat or inky blackness has a way of feeling as long and arduous as a swim from Maine to Hawaii. Or a walk from Hollywood to Argentina. Or an emotional trek from Palin to reality.
In any case, the 205-mile relay from Madison to Chicago last weekend was at once exhausting, sweaty, painful, smelly as a bucket of goat butts and quite possibly the second awesomist running experience of my life … right after crossing my first marathon finish line.
Our team of 12 runners was divided into two vans, and we hopscotched all over Wisconsin and Illinois through 36 transition points, dropping off runners, picking up runners, grabbing showers in college dorms, grabbing sleep in 40-minute shifts on the van floor, changing clothes in front of each other, checking cell phones for updates on runners’ pace times, posting pictures on Facebook through the magic of iPhone technology, chugging more Gatorade than can possibly be healthy for anyone … and generally having a freaking amazing time collectively running a whopping 205 miles from 7:00 am Friday to 7:00 pm Saturday.
Since my van held runners 7 through 12, we didn't have to be at the start line in Madison so early on Friday so we took our leisurely time Friday morning getting up to just somewhere near Madison. Here we are at transition point 6 waiting for runner number 6 from van number 1 (got all that?) to reach us so we could start our half of the adventure:
I was runner number 9, which put my first leg of the race at 2:00 in the afternoon on what ended up being a swelteringly hot day. Here I am waiting for the baton—which was really a slap strap that wraps around your wrist—before my little Gatorade-distended belly and I began our 8.5 miles through what you can see is a pretty shade-free section of oh-my-holy-crap-on-a-fart-colored-cracker-is-that-hot rural Wisconsin:
My team found me around my sixth mile to reload my no-I'm-not-in-my-third-trimester-of-gestating-triplets tummy with water and Gatorade before sending me back into the oppressive heat:
As I continued slogging through my little sun-drenched nightmare, I found myself wishing that a local hunter might mistake me for a deer trying desperately to masquerade as a human by wearing hunter-orange running shorts and shoot me in the head for my hubris. But I had no such luck.
By the time I passed my grotesquely sweaty slap strap to runner number 10, I was sunburned and delirious, but already enamored of the epic adventure I had embarked on:
Once we got through our 12th runner, we passed the baton (as it were) back to van number 1 and used our six hours of down time to scrub the stink off us in a college dormitory and grab some dinner at a local carb emporium. The rules for the relay clearly stated that all runners had to wear reflective vests when the sun was down with no exceptions so we dutifully wore them to wolf down our bowls of pasta and plates of pizza:
I have no photos of my 2:00 am 6.5-mile run in my reflective getup and my headlamp (which felt ridiculous but ended up being an awesome accessory for running down rural highways in pitch blackness) but the weather had turned blessedly cool and I was positively euphoric through my entire hour with my slap-strap baton wrapped securely around my midnight-blackened wrist.
My van finished our night shift at dawn and we used our down time to nap in whatever configurations we could manage in the van, near the van and perhaps even under the van. And by morning we found ourselves waiting to start up our third shift in a school parking lot with hundreds of other team vans (this one time ... at van camp ...) while storms rolled in and threatened to shut us down completely.
Which they did. And they did. Except we never really saw the storms. But we got tons of tweets from the race organizers telling us to stay in our vans until we got the go-ahead to resume the relay. So of course we used the down time to organize all the crap we had stashed in the back of our van:
The race came back to life after two hours, and my last 5.5-mile leg along a manicured suburban nature trail at 2:00 was another study in glorious weather and runner's euphoria. And by the time I passed off my final baton, I had thankfully burned off the Gatorade bloat in my poor little tummy:
And now all that's left is the memories. And the few pictures we took. And of course the blog post. But now I have a new hobby! And since the team I ran on this year was a corporate team of some friends who are moving to freaking Australia in a few months, I've already emailed all my fun runner friends to build our own team for next year. And we're going to have a cool team name ("Princess Sparklepony and the Li'l Glitterpickles" is currently my working title) and cool shirts and cool vans and even more Gatorade bloat and goatbutt stink and it's gonna be awesome and I'm so excited I can't wait for June so I can do it all over again!
In any case, the 205-mile relay from Madison to Chicago last weekend was at once exhausting, sweaty, painful, smelly as a bucket of goat butts and quite possibly the second awesomist running experience of my life … right after crossing my first marathon finish line.
Our team of 12 runners was divided into two vans, and we hopscotched all over Wisconsin and Illinois through 36 transition points, dropping off runners, picking up runners, grabbing showers in college dorms, grabbing sleep in 40-minute shifts on the van floor, changing clothes in front of each other, checking cell phones for updates on runners’ pace times, posting pictures on Facebook through the magic of iPhone technology, chugging more Gatorade than can possibly be healthy for anyone … and generally having a freaking amazing time collectively running a whopping 205 miles from 7:00 am Friday to 7:00 pm Saturday.
Since my van held runners 7 through 12, we didn't have to be at the start line in Madison so early on Friday so we took our leisurely time Friday morning getting up to just somewhere near Madison. Here we are at transition point 6 waiting for runner number 6 from van number 1 (got all that?) to reach us so we could start our half of the adventure:
I was runner number 9, which put my first leg of the race at 2:00 in the afternoon on what ended up being a swelteringly hot day. Here I am waiting for the baton—which was really a slap strap that wraps around your wrist—before my little Gatorade-distended belly and I began our 8.5 miles through what you can see is a pretty shade-free section of oh-my-holy-crap-on-a-fart-colored-cracker-is-that-hot rural Wisconsin:
My team found me around my sixth mile to reload my no-I'm-not-in-my-third-trimester-of-gestating-triplets tummy with water and Gatorade before sending me back into the oppressive heat:
As I continued slogging through my little sun-drenched nightmare, I found myself wishing that a local hunter might mistake me for a deer trying desperately to masquerade as a human by wearing hunter-orange running shorts and shoot me in the head for my hubris. But I had no such luck.By the time I passed my grotesquely sweaty slap strap to runner number 10, I was sunburned and delirious, but already enamored of the epic adventure I had embarked on:
Once we got through our 12th runner, we passed the baton (as it were) back to van number 1 and used our six hours of down time to scrub the stink off us in a college dormitory and grab some dinner at a local carb emporium. The rules for the relay clearly stated that all runners had to wear reflective vests when the sun was down with no exceptions so we dutifully wore them to wolf down our bowls of pasta and plates of pizza:
I have no photos of my 2:00 am 6.5-mile run in my reflective getup and my headlamp (which felt ridiculous but ended up being an awesome accessory for running down rural highways in pitch blackness) but the weather had turned blessedly cool and I was positively euphoric through my entire hour with my slap-strap baton wrapped securely around my midnight-blackened wrist.
My van finished our night shift at dawn and we used our down time to nap in whatever configurations we could manage in the van, near the van and perhaps even under the van. And by morning we found ourselves waiting to start up our third shift in a school parking lot with hundreds of other team vans (this one time ... at van camp ...) while storms rolled in and threatened to shut us down completely.
Which they did. And they did. Except we never really saw the storms. But we got tons of tweets from the race organizers telling us to stay in our vans until we got the go-ahead to resume the relay. So of course we used the down time to organize all the crap we had stashed in the back of our van:
The race came back to life after two hours, and my last 5.5-mile leg along a manicured suburban nature trail at 2:00 was another study in glorious weather and runner's euphoria. And by the time I passed off my final baton, I had thankfully burned off the Gatorade bloat in my poor little tummy:
And now all that's left is the memories. And the few pictures we took. And of course the blog post. But now I have a new hobby! And since the team I ran on this year was a corporate team of some friends who are moving to freaking Australia in a few months, I've already emailed all my fun runner friends to build our own team for next year. And we're going to have a cool team name ("Princess Sparklepony and the Li'l Glitterpickles" is currently my working title) and cool shirts and cool vans and even more Gatorade bloat and goatbutt stink and it's gonna be awesome and I'm so excited I can't wait for June so I can do it all over again!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
When to think of me as insane
7:00 am Friday
I pile into a rental van with a driver, two friends and three people I’ve never met to trek to our starting point in the 200-mile, 36-hour Milwaukee-to-Chicago relay. Our team has 12 runners, but our van holds runners 7 through 12 so we don’t have to be all the way to Milwaukee for the 7:30 am start. Which means I get to sleep in my own bed instead of a van with six strangers the night before I run.
2:00 pm Friday
I’m runner number 9, and this is roughly when I start my first leg of the race … give or take a couple hours depending on how fast runners 1 through 8 get through their first legs. I have to pound out 8.40 miles on this leg. And thanks to my mega-double-hella-wicked sinus infection—which after 15 days is finally 99% gone—I’ve done exactly two training runs—maxing out at 6.34 miles last night!—to build up to what promises to be a freaking painful hour-and-a-half-plus of running in what promises to be freaking endless rain. And since I have what we will politely call the sense of direction of Sarah Palin trying to find her own ass with a flashlight, there is a very good chance I could miss whatever directional signs are placed along the route and find myself frolicking among Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs in cerebral Kentucky’s venerated Creation Museum without much effort. For this, I am actually nervous about a run. Which hasn’t happened since I ran my first half marathon almost 10 years ago.
1:30 am Saturday
Eleven runners later—assuming Adam and Eve don’t run over me riding their dinosaur to church—this is roughly when I start my second leg of the race. After sleeping and stinking and politely trying not to fart in a van full of sweaty, rain-soaked runners I barely even know, I get to leave the safe confines of my pleather bucket seat and run 6.46 miles somewhere in the wee early hours of Saturday. In anywhere from a 30-50% chance of rain. But it’s 1.94 fewer miles I have to get lost and wander off to dance to Quisling John’s music at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth temporary wedding.
12:30 pm Saturday
And then I’m back to running in the hot afternoon sun, assuming all the predicted rain clears up. So I’ll either have heat stroke or wet-shoe blisters to complement my unrelenting swamp ass. The start time on my last leg actually has a massive give-or-take window on our runner spreadsheet to accommodate the giant time variables involved in propelling 12 people over 175 miles through 33 legs to get me to the start of my last 5.86 miles … which is the one number that’s fixed on our spreadsheet.
4:30 pm Saturday
This is our predicted finish time, in a Chicago lakefront park that’s literally stumbling distance from my house. Or a short plane ride from the BP Gulf Coast Aquatic Preserve. Depending on my state of mind—and level of hydration—I may actually drink some alcohol to celebrate what will be either my coolest or my most horrifying runner experience to date. But either way, I get two T-shirts out of the deal. (I need more T-shirts!) And maybe some new lifelong friends. Unless they accidentally breathe in the van after I run.
One week later
I start my hardcore training for the New York City Marathon. Can I get a WOOT?
I pile into a rental van with a driver, two friends and three people I’ve never met to trek to our starting point in the 200-mile, 36-hour Milwaukee-to-Chicago relay. Our team has 12 runners, but our van holds runners 7 through 12 so we don’t have to be all the way to Milwaukee for the 7:30 am start. Which means I get to sleep in my own bed instead of a van with six strangers the night before I run.
2:00 pm Friday
I’m runner number 9, and this is roughly when I start my first leg of the race … give or take a couple hours depending on how fast runners 1 through 8 get through their first legs. I have to pound out 8.40 miles on this leg. And thanks to my mega-double-hella-wicked sinus infection—which after 15 days is finally 99% gone—I’ve done exactly two training runs—maxing out at 6.34 miles last night!—to build up to what promises to be a freaking painful hour-and-a-half-plus of running in what promises to be freaking endless rain. And since I have what we will politely call the sense of direction of Sarah Palin trying to find her own ass with a flashlight, there is a very good chance I could miss whatever directional signs are placed along the route and find myself frolicking among Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs in cerebral Kentucky’s venerated Creation Museum without much effort. For this, I am actually nervous about a run. Which hasn’t happened since I ran my first half marathon almost 10 years ago.
1:30 am Saturday
Eleven runners later—assuming Adam and Eve don’t run over me riding their dinosaur to church—this is roughly when I start my second leg of the race. After sleeping and stinking and politely trying not to fart in a van full of sweaty, rain-soaked runners I barely even know, I get to leave the safe confines of my pleather bucket seat and run 6.46 miles somewhere in the wee early hours of Saturday. In anywhere from a 30-50% chance of rain. But it’s 1.94 fewer miles I have to get lost and wander off to dance to Quisling John’s music at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth temporary wedding.
12:30 pm Saturday
And then I’m back to running in the hot afternoon sun, assuming all the predicted rain clears up. So I’ll either have heat stroke or wet-shoe blisters to complement my unrelenting swamp ass. The start time on my last leg actually has a massive give-or-take window on our runner spreadsheet to accommodate the giant time variables involved in propelling 12 people over 175 miles through 33 legs to get me to the start of my last 5.86 miles … which is the one number that’s fixed on our spreadsheet.
4:30 pm Saturday
This is our predicted finish time, in a Chicago lakefront park that’s literally stumbling distance from my house. Or a short plane ride from the BP Gulf Coast Aquatic Preserve. Depending on my state of mind—and level of hydration—I may actually drink some alcohol to celebrate what will be either my coolest or my most horrifying runner experience to date. But either way, I get two T-shirts out of the deal. (I need more T-shirts!) And maybe some new lifelong friends. Unless they accidentally breathe in the van after I run.
One week later
I start my hardcore training for the New York City Marathon. Can I get a WOOT?
Monday, June 07, 2010
There is so much going through my head right now
Most of which are the ingredients in crystal meth, apparently. I’ve been fighting the mother and father and pit bull and vindictive, murderous neighbor of all sinus infections for more than a week now. I finally broke down and admitted it was more than allergies late last week, and my doctor put me on four medications for it:
• Z-Pak to kill the sinus infection
• Flonase to shrink the polyp (which is such a pretty word) in my sinuses that is preventing things from draining properly
• Claritin D to start my own meth lab
• Ibuprofen to mask the pain that the other three meds are obviously incapable of overcoming
Have you tried to buy Claritin D lately? You have to go through a freaking background check—at least in Illinois—complete with a scan of your driver’s license, a series of questions and a signed statement that yes indeed you are suffering from horrifying head pain and not instead planning to blow up your toothless family in your cousin's dented trailer as you try to make enough meth to fund an afternoon at McDonald’s because all you are legally allowed to buy is 10 pills.
I’m happy to report that five days after firing up my own personal meth lab—ahem, combination drug therapy—I can finally function in polite society without hoping I stumble on an armed robbery so I can provoke the gunman into shooting me in the head.
I even ran 4.5 miles on Saturday, though the angry monkeys having a pickaxe fight in my skull were not happy with all the jostling and they banged their rusty implements of war on the side of my head right above my right ear every time my feet hit the ground. But I have to run this 200-mile relay on Friday so I had no choice but to soldier on and get some miles under my belt. Monkeys be damned!
I also haven’t missed a workout through any of this—vanity before comfort!—though there were a few days where the exertion of bench pressing 225 lbs (a number he worked modestly into his blog post) was enough to fill my throbbing head with images of brains and mucous and freakishly inflamed sinus tissue (and polyps! because you can never say that word too often!) splattered all over the gym walls. Polyps!
But! I’m happy to report that today I feel about 85% better, enough so that I’ve promised myself I won’t complain about the pain to my long-suffering colleagues today at work. You people, though? Different story. Please re-read this blog post 173 more times until your brain can approximate the pain mine has endured for the last 10 days.
• Z-Pak to kill the sinus infection
• Flonase to shrink the polyp (which is such a pretty word) in my sinuses that is preventing things from draining properly
• Claritin D to start my own meth lab
• Ibuprofen to mask the pain that the other three meds are obviously incapable of overcoming
Have you tried to buy Claritin D lately? You have to go through a freaking background check—at least in Illinois—complete with a scan of your driver’s license, a series of questions and a signed statement that yes indeed you are suffering from horrifying head pain and not instead planning to blow up your toothless family in your cousin's dented trailer as you try to make enough meth to fund an afternoon at McDonald’s because all you are legally allowed to buy is 10 pills.
I’m happy to report that five days after firing up my own personal meth lab—ahem, combination drug therapy—I can finally function in polite society without hoping I stumble on an armed robbery so I can provoke the gunman into shooting me in the head.
I even ran 4.5 miles on Saturday, though the angry monkeys having a pickaxe fight in my skull were not happy with all the jostling and they banged their rusty implements of war on the side of my head right above my right ear every time my feet hit the ground. But I have to run this 200-mile relay on Friday so I had no choice but to soldier on and get some miles under my belt. Monkeys be damned!
I also haven’t missed a workout through any of this—vanity before comfort!—though there were a few days where the exertion of bench pressing 225 lbs (a number he worked modestly into his blog post) was enough to fill my throbbing head with images of brains and mucous and freakishly inflamed sinus tissue (and polyps! because you can never say that word too often!) splattered all over the gym walls. Polyps!
But! I’m happy to report that today I feel about 85% better, enough so that I’ve promised myself I won’t complain about the pain to my long-suffering colleagues today at work. You people, though? Different story. Please re-read this blog post 173 more times until your brain can approximate the pain mine has endured for the last 10 days.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Bad Idea Bears
I haven’t even run for a bus since I took off my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes at the end of the Chicago Marathon in October.
So when a friend asked me to be on his 12-person team to run a 36-hour, 200-mile relay from Madison to Chicago three weeks from now, I wisely said no … though I told him if he got desperate he should ask me again and we could talk.
I never heard back from him, but then a different friend asked me to be on his team … and then he asked again … and again.
And I thought about it long and hard. I weighed the pros (bragging rights, cool race shirt, forced cardio just in time for spring, make new friends) and the cons (no foundation of training, 15 new pounds of bodyweight [good bodyweight, just for the record] to propel through space and time, sleeping in a van with strangers, pooping who knows where) and I decided against it.
But then I did the math. I’d be expected to run three eight-ish-mile legs with breaks as long as it takes 11 other team members to run eight-ish miles each. And I can usually ramp up to eight miles within my first month of marathon training each spring. Plus it’s a hellofa way to kick off marathon training for the summer.
So I said yes. Hesitantly.
And my initial burst of regret tinged with slight panic was ameliorated when I received the runner breakdown and discovered that as runner number 9, I was responsible for three legs of only 6.5 miles each. Which is totally doable. I think.
So last night I started training. I dug out my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes, unlocked my hamstrings, stripped down to a pair of shorty running shorts (hey, I didn’t eat right and get plenty of sleep and lift weights to put on 15 new pounds for my health) … and realized as I headed out the door that I hadn’t charged my grotesquely expensive GPS running watch. But I churned out three-plus miles with relative ease … though my quads and abs made sure I knew that my last mile was very unfamiliar territory after six months of enduring nothing but squats and crunches.
And when I got home and scrubbed the stink off so as not to repel my poor domestic partner into the more redolent arms of a homeless junkie, I sat down to read through the event rules and other runner information. And I was shocked to discover the complete anarchy under which the race will be run:
So when a friend asked me to be on his 12-person team to run a 36-hour, 200-mile relay from Madison to Chicago three weeks from now, I wisely said no … though I told him if he got desperate he should ask me again and we could talk.
I never heard back from him, but then a different friend asked me to be on his team … and then he asked again … and again.
And I thought about it long and hard. I weighed the pros (bragging rights, cool race shirt, forced cardio just in time for spring, make new friends) and the cons (no foundation of training, 15 new pounds of bodyweight [good bodyweight, just for the record] to propel through space and time, sleeping in a van with strangers, pooping who knows where) and I decided against it.
But then I did the math. I’d be expected to run three eight-ish-mile legs with breaks as long as it takes 11 other team members to run eight-ish miles each. And I can usually ramp up to eight miles within my first month of marathon training each spring. Plus it’s a hellofa way to kick off marathon training for the summer.
So I said yes. Hesitantly.
And my initial burst of regret tinged with slight panic was ameliorated when I received the runner breakdown and discovered that as runner number 9, I was responsible for three legs of only 6.5 miles each. Which is totally doable. I think.
So last night I started training. I dug out my specially fitted, custom-orthotics-enhanced running shoes, unlocked my hamstrings, stripped down to a pair of shorty running shorts (hey, I didn’t eat right and get plenty of sleep and lift weights to put on 15 new pounds for my health) … and realized as I headed out the door that I hadn’t charged my grotesquely expensive GPS running watch. But I churned out three-plus miles with relative ease … though my quads and abs made sure I knew that my last mile was very unfamiliar territory after six months of enduring nothing but squats and crunches.
And when I got home and scrubbed the stink off so as not to repel my poor domestic partner into the more redolent arms of a homeless junkie, I sat down to read through the event rules and other runner information. And I was shocked to discover the complete anarchy under which the race will be run:
- Obscenity Rule: any team vehicle that is decorated with obscene images or representations, use of obscene language Warning for 1st offense; 2nd offense; disqualification.
- Urinating/defecating or the appearance of urinating on public or private property that is part of the course including, but not limited to Transition Areas, will result in Immediate Disqualification
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
How to survive the dentist
1. Pee. Being trapped for more than an hour with an entire Teamsters union plus all their industrial-grade tooth-pulverizing tools crammed in your mouth is not the time to discover your bladder is painfully full. So take a moment to make a pre-emptive pee before you climb in the chair.
2. Sit still. Apparently I spent the early moments of my filling-replacement procedure on Monday wiggling my feet to distract myself from the fact that four adult human hands plus two suction tubes plus an assortment of super-glue-strength bonding compounds plus a rock-boring drill borrowed from the Manhattan subway expansion project were wedged in my delicate little mouth. I wiggled so much that my dentist’s assistant eventually had to ask me nicely but firmly to sit still. Like a big boy.
3. Breathe through your nose. Despite recent advancements in suction technology, water and pulverized tooth bits and probably clumps of leftover pudding from a nearby grade-school lunch program will puddle in the back of your mouth as your cracked old fillings are being drilled out of your head. Resist the urge to think about how easily this gunk could become a fatal choking hazard. Or to valiantly compare yourself to a waterboarding victim.
4. Don’t bite your tongue. It will be numb to the point you won’t even be sure you even have a tongue. Especially when you’re pumped full of enough Novocain to mask the horror of two filling removals. Keep in mind that your teeth are designed to chew meat. And your tongue is meat. So keep whatever bit of it you’re aware that you still have away from your molars.
5. Reward yourself with something nice when you’re done. My dentist is across the street from the Mac store. I went home Monday night with two new fillings, partial control over my lower face and one of these pretty kitties:
2. Sit still. Apparently I spent the early moments of my filling-replacement procedure on Monday wiggling my feet to distract myself from the fact that four adult human hands plus two suction tubes plus an assortment of super-glue-strength bonding compounds plus a rock-boring drill borrowed from the Manhattan subway expansion project were wedged in my delicate little mouth. I wiggled so much that my dentist’s assistant eventually had to ask me nicely but firmly to sit still. Like a big boy.
3. Breathe through your nose. Despite recent advancements in suction technology, water and pulverized tooth bits and probably clumps of leftover pudding from a nearby grade-school lunch program will puddle in the back of your mouth as your cracked old fillings are being drilled out of your head. Resist the urge to think about how easily this gunk could become a fatal choking hazard. Or to valiantly compare yourself to a waterboarding victim.
4. Don’t bite your tongue. It will be numb to the point you won’t even be sure you even have a tongue. Especially when you’re pumped full of enough Novocain to mask the horror of two filling removals. Keep in mind that your teeth are designed to chew meat. And your tongue is meat. So keep whatever bit of it you’re aware that you still have away from your molars.
5. Reward yourself with something nice when you’re done. My dentist is across the street from the Mac store. I went home Monday night with two new fillings, partial control over my lower face and one of these pretty kitties:
Monday, May 17, 2010
Three ways I'm celebrating Syttende Mai
1. Forgetting to wear red. Though there is a red star on my fancy reversible belt buckle and my trendy shoes have red detailing. For those of you inclined to oppress us Norwegians with your selfish ignorance of our rich, lutefisk-and-sweater-based culture, Syttende Mai—literally “The Seventeenth of May”—is Norwegian Independence Day, which celebrates the day Norway declared itself to be an independent nation from those oppressive Swedes in 1814. I have no idea if wearing red is any official way to celebrate this day, but I’ve always worn a red shirt on May 17 so I could be my own one-man Borgertoget. Except today, obviously. But I am wearing a pale gray shirt that pays tribute to the pale white palette of Norwegian foods and food-covering sauces. So there’s that. Ett språk er aldri nok!
2. Getting two fillings replaced. I haven’t had a cavity since junior high school, so these dull silver bad boys in my molars have to be almost 30 years old. My dentist says they’re cracked, and since the gums around these teeth always bleed when I floss, I’m inclined to think it’s time to go under the drill again. Traditionally Norwegian Independence Day is not celebrated by attacking Norwegian-Americans with drills, but replacing fillings carries with it a high probability of wearing a paper bib with blood on it. Which equals red. Which equals Norwegian pride. Vær vennlig og snakk saktere!
3. Writing my monthly blog post. Seriously, I have no idea why I’ve been so not-bloggy lately. I’ve had a ton of adventures to write about. And tons of snarky thoughts I wanted to share. (Sarah Palin was in Chicago last week! Which means puppies died and blood ran out of our faucets and thinking people got scabby rashes on our asses.) And I’ve even enjoyed two stay-all-day-in-front-of-the-TV days in the last month. Which means I’ve had time to write. Or time to be a complete vegetable. But since vegetables are good for you, the TV won. Luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål!
2. Getting two fillings replaced. I haven’t had a cavity since junior high school, so these dull silver bad boys in my molars have to be almost 30 years old. My dentist says they’re cracked, and since the gums around these teeth always bleed when I floss, I’m inclined to think it’s time to go under the drill again. Traditionally Norwegian Independence Day is not celebrated by attacking Norwegian-Americans with drills, but replacing fillings carries with it a high probability of wearing a paper bib with blood on it. Which equals red. Which equals Norwegian pride. Vær vennlig og snakk saktere!
3. Writing my monthly blog post. Seriously, I have no idea why I’ve been so not-bloggy lately. I’ve had a ton of adventures to write about. And tons of snarky thoughts I wanted to share. (Sarah Palin was in Chicago last week! Which means puppies died and blood ran out of our faucets and thinking people got scabby rashes on our asses.) And I’ve even enjoyed two stay-all-day-in-front-of-the-TV days in the last month. Which means I’ve had time to write. Or time to be a complete vegetable. But since vegetables are good for you, the TV won. Luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål!
Friday, May 07, 2010
I'm back from ... um ... Europe!
I made all kinds of awesome blog posts and posted all kinds of awesome pictures while I was there. But they were in … um … Euros so they didn’t translate to most American computers. Sorry if you had gotten the impression that I’d just abandoned my blog in favor of sitting around watching TV for weeks and weeks. Because I’d never get that lazy about blogging. Ahem.
Anyway!
I have three huge announcements to make:
1. I turned 42 while you weren’t looking. My bosoms have officially drooped and gone dry. I’m currently tucking them in my foundation garments so they don’t bounce around and hurt people when I walk.
2. I stopped drinking soda. Because my trainer told me to. About ten thousand times. I had my last bubbly, delicious glass of chemical refreshment the night before my birthday. And I think I actually had withdrawal symptoms for the first week. I’m a reformed junkie! Tomorrow will mark three weeks of sobriety, and I think I deserve some kind of medal or coin or dead hooker or whatever it is they give out to mark such milestones in other reformed-junkie support groups.
3. I switched from plastic gym water to metal gym water. My trusty plastic water bottle had seen me through two marathons and almost two years of lifting. It was really just a Powerade bottle I hadn’t thrown away because it had a built-in grip that was easy to hold through the sweatiest runs and a wide mouth that was easy to refill from any drinking fountain or hose or municipal toilet. Despite my best attempts to ignore the obvious, though, the inside of it had started to smell as sour as George Rekers’ boy-hooker-stained underpants. And I kept stumbling on more and more scary reports that my well-used bottle was already leaching polyethelene phthalates into my uterus and giving my unborn children mushy little Palin brains. So I finally broke down and bought a non-fetus-deforming stainless steel bottle in a hypermasculine gunmetal gray color to complement my hypermasculine demeanor and gunmetal gray pallor. Here is a candid shot of the two bottles meeting right before the old one went to the “retirement home” next to our garbage can. It just puts a lump of heartbreaking sorrow in my polyethelene phthalate-drenched uterus:
P.S. How awesome is our toaster? It has a digital toast setting … in a hypermasculine blue!
P.P.S. If I ever formed a drag band, I would totally call it Polyethelene Phthalates and the Estrogenic Compounds.
P.P.P.S. I wasn’t really in Europe. But I totally have a girlfriend who lives in Canada.
Anyway!
I have three huge announcements to make:
1. I turned 42 while you weren’t looking. My bosoms have officially drooped and gone dry. I’m currently tucking them in my foundation garments so they don’t bounce around and hurt people when I walk.
2. I stopped drinking soda. Because my trainer told me to. About ten thousand times. I had my last bubbly, delicious glass of chemical refreshment the night before my birthday. And I think I actually had withdrawal symptoms for the first week. I’m a reformed junkie! Tomorrow will mark three weeks of sobriety, and I think I deserve some kind of medal or coin or dead hooker or whatever it is they give out to mark such milestones in other reformed-junkie support groups.
3. I switched from plastic gym water to metal gym water. My trusty plastic water bottle had seen me through two marathons and almost two years of lifting. It was really just a Powerade bottle I hadn’t thrown away because it had a built-in grip that was easy to hold through the sweatiest runs and a wide mouth that was easy to refill from any drinking fountain or hose or municipal toilet. Despite my best attempts to ignore the obvious, though, the inside of it had started to smell as sour as George Rekers’ boy-hooker-stained underpants. And I kept stumbling on more and more scary reports that my well-used bottle was already leaching polyethelene phthalates into my uterus and giving my unborn children mushy little Palin brains. So I finally broke down and bought a non-fetus-deforming stainless steel bottle in a hypermasculine gunmetal gray color to complement my hypermasculine demeanor and gunmetal gray pallor. Here is a candid shot of the two bottles meeting right before the old one went to the “retirement home” next to our garbage can. It just puts a lump of heartbreaking sorrow in my polyethelene phthalate-drenched uterus:
P.S. How awesome is our toaster? It has a digital toast setting … in a hypermasculine blue!
P.P.S. If I ever formed a drag band, I would totally call it Polyethelene Phthalates and the Estrogenic Compounds.
P.P.P.S. I wasn’t really in Europe. But I totally have a girlfriend who lives in Canada.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Underpants Gnomes
I'll be stripping down to my fancy underwear again this year to raise money for the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus' Big Package Auction fundraiser at Sidetrack on May 8. I don't know if that will inspire you to show up and bid on our fabulous travel/spa/entertainment/merchandise packages or stay home and hide behind the couch with a Bible and a can of mace.
Either way, here's this year's promo video featuring underwear-clad footage of last year's event. I might also appear in it as as one of the implied-to-be-naked package-holding dudes who flash in and out of the background. Clearly, I can be flattered into stripping down for anything that involves standing around in my underwear in a bar.
Either way, here's this year's promo video featuring underwear-clad footage of last year's event. I might also appear in it as as one of the implied-to-be-naked package-holding dudes who flash in and out of the background. Clearly, I can be flattered into stripping down for anything that involves standing around in my underwear in a bar.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
We’re back from our Broadway overdose!
And I owe you reviews of all the shows we saw and catty comments about all the celebrities we ran into.
And I’m fully aware that by “I owe you” I actually mean “I intend to write but you have no obligation to read or even care about” but “I owe you” sounds more like my ramblings provide actual value, which helps offset my crippling self-image issues about the mole on my foot. Plus it makes that first sentence easier to embroider on a sampler.
In the mean time, I leave you with a picture of the dog we stayed with in New York. This is Q:
Q lives with a handsome college friend of mine and his equally handsome husband in their fabulous Art Deco sunken-living-room-and-arched-doorway Chelsea apartment. And Q has a bone. And he wants to make sure that you know he has a bone, so he shows it to you from many different angles and with many different grunts and whimpers so that there is no chance that you will miss the fact that he has a bone. He doesn’t want you to tug on it or take it from him or throw it for him to fetch. He just wants to make absolutely sure that you know he. has. a. bone. Plus if you take him for a walk in Chelsea, he will attract legions of muscular, well-moisturized men who will want to say hi to you. Bone!
And I’m fully aware that by “I owe you” I actually mean “I intend to write but you have no obligation to read or even care about” but “I owe you” sounds more like my ramblings provide actual value, which helps offset my crippling self-image issues about the mole on my foot. Plus it makes that first sentence easier to embroider on a sampler.
In the mean time, I leave you with a picture of the dog we stayed with in New York. This is Q:
Q lives with a handsome college friend of mine and his equally handsome husband in their fabulous Art Deco sunken-living-room-and-arched-doorway Chelsea apartment. And Q has a bone. And he wants to make sure that you know he has a bone, so he shows it to you from many different angles and with many different grunts and whimpers so that there is no chance that you will miss the fact that he has a bone. He doesn’t want you to tug on it or take it from him or throw it for him to fetch. He just wants to make absolutely sure that you know he. has. a. bone. Plus if you take him for a walk in Chelsea, he will attract legions of muscular, well-moisturized men who will want to say hi to you. Bone!
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Adventures in unplanned retail
Behold our new refrigerator/freezer:
It actually makes cold! Unlike our old refrigerator/freezer, which stopped accomplishing cold-related tasks a week ago … just in time to ruin the Easter aspic. Which we didn’t make because we don’t celebrate Easter and I’m not even entirely sure what’s in aspic. But if we were Easter aspic eaters our non-cold-making refrigerator/freezer would have left us in a fine how-do-you-do.
Now avert your gaze from its fine shiny surface long enough to notice how it sits nestled next to a wall. (A wall covered in artifacts of my Norwegian heritage, which makes it a cool wall. But that’s not the point of this paragraph.) Now try to picture our old side-by-side refrigerator/freezer sitting next to that wall. Now try to picture us opening the left side-by-side door about a quarter of the way for three freaking years because that’s as far as it would open because that’s what happens when you’re a moron developer who designs a kitchen in such a way that you put a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer right next to a goddamn wall.
Thankfully, the moron developer installed a cheap-ass side-by-side refrigerator/freezer that lasted a whopping six years before it had to be replaced by a sturdy, EnergyStar-rated, non-side-by-side refrigerator. So though we hadn’t really wanted to drop more than a thousand dollars on appliances in the week before we drop a couple thousand dollars on a whirlwind Sondheim festival on Broadway—we leave in the morning!—we can at least open our goddamned freezer when we get back.
You may remember that we also had to buy a fancy new washer/dryer in February when the cheap-ass one from the cheap-ass developer stopped making motion and heat. And nobody wants to buy just one unplanned, unbudgeted-for major appliance in a three-month period. Nobody. Thankfully, we bought them from the same place. And thankfully and the domestic partner has the kind of balls I lack—the kind of balls that get you a sizeable discount on your second major appliance purchase in three months when you remind the lady on the phone that you bought the first one at full price.
So we leave for our Anyone Can Whistle/A Little Night Music/Sondheim on Sondheim tour secure in the knowledge that the milk will probably still be cold and the meat will probably still be pink when we get back. Even though the credit cards will still be very, very warm.
It actually makes cold! Unlike our old refrigerator/freezer, which stopped accomplishing cold-related tasks a week ago … just in time to ruin the Easter aspic. Which we didn’t make because we don’t celebrate Easter and I’m not even entirely sure what’s in aspic. But if we were Easter aspic eaters our non-cold-making refrigerator/freezer would have left us in a fine how-do-you-do.
Now avert your gaze from its fine shiny surface long enough to notice how it sits nestled next to a wall. (A wall covered in artifacts of my Norwegian heritage, which makes it a cool wall. But that’s not the point of this paragraph.) Now try to picture our old side-by-side refrigerator/freezer sitting next to that wall. Now try to picture us opening the left side-by-side door about a quarter of the way for three freaking years because that’s as far as it would open because that’s what happens when you’re a moron developer who designs a kitchen in such a way that you put a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer right next to a goddamn wall.
Thankfully, the moron developer installed a cheap-ass side-by-side refrigerator/freezer that lasted a whopping six years before it had to be replaced by a sturdy, EnergyStar-rated, non-side-by-side refrigerator. So though we hadn’t really wanted to drop more than a thousand dollars on appliances in the week before we drop a couple thousand dollars on a whirlwind Sondheim festival on Broadway—we leave in the morning!—we can at least open our goddamned freezer when we get back.
You may remember that we also had to buy a fancy new washer/dryer in February when the cheap-ass one from the cheap-ass developer stopped making motion and heat. And nobody wants to buy just one unplanned, unbudgeted-for major appliance in a three-month period. Nobody. Thankfully, we bought them from the same place. And thankfully and the domestic partner has the kind of balls I lack—the kind of balls that get you a sizeable discount on your second major appliance purchase in three months when you remind the lady on the phone that you bought the first one at full price.
So we leave for our Anyone Can Whistle/A Little Night Music/Sondheim on Sondheim tour secure in the knowledge that the milk will probably still be cold and the meat will probably still be pink when we get back. Even though the credit cards will still be very, very warm.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Top 10 reasons I haven't updated my blog in decades
1. I’ve been kickin’ it old skool
I have no idea what that actually means, but it sounds younger and hipper than I’ve been lollygagging around.
2. I’ve discovered Words with Friends
It’s the iPhone version of Scrabulous, which was Facebook’s legally-squashed-by-Hasbro version of Scrabble. And it is now my #1 favorite way to be unproductive. I usually have 10 to 15 games going at a time, most of which I play on the bus to and from work (which is where I used to read Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker so I’m now so far behind on my current events that I ask you to let me know the moment Lincoln gets home from the theater). It’s also been a really good way to tune out Judge Judy, the #1 home-TV-watching guilty pleasure of a certain domestic partner who shall not be named here. If you want to play with me, open a game against NofoJake … and send me a message to let me know who you are!
3. We’ve been cleaning house
And by “cleaning house” I mean vacuuming up colonies of dust bunnies that literally looked like mountains of pillow stuffing under our bed, schlepping entire carloads of clothes, furniture and electronics to the Brown Elephant, and sorting through mountains of paperwork from banks, investments, insurance companies and our many ceramic figurine collector clubs.
4. I have spring allergies
Speaking of dust bunnies, my spring allergies have kicked my ass this year like a bully on a gayground. They knocked me out so hard this weekend I took a four-hour nap on Saturday and a six-hour nap on Sunday in addition to the eight hours of sleep I got every night. And I’m still stuffy and sleepy and cranky and about eleven other potential dwarf names. But I just took a Claritin so I’m on my way to being Claritin Clear™! At least I should be at some unspecified time that is presumably in the near future, according to the vague promise on the packaging.
5. I’m shaving my legs
As my trainer inches me closer and closer to my giant-bodybuilder vanity fantasies, I have actually started piling on some measurable muscle mass. (Alliteration runs rampant!) I’m currently up to 205 pounds (from the 195 base weight I’ve maintained for the last 10ish years, give or take the months on either side of a marathon). Most of my new weight seems to be in my legs, which are actually so big I can’t wear two of my favorite jeans anymore. Woot! And now that I feel like I’m actually getting big, I’m further feeding into my giant-bodybuilder vanity fantasies by shaving my legs like all the big kids do at the gym. And shaving meaty legs takes a freakishly huge amount of time. Plus when you’re naturally hairy you have to maintain your shave virtually every day. Plus when you’re naturally pasty you have to slather on self-tanner all the time so you don’t scare children and interfere with the light refraction on the Hubble Telescope.
6. We’ve been tackling long-overdue home projects
There were so many not-quite-dones on our unofficial to-do list that I finally typed everything in a two-page document, organized it by the rooms in our house and taped it on the kitchen cabinet were we can be reminded of our self-imposed obligations every time we feel the urge to collapse unproductively on the couch with a jar of marshmallow fluff and a spoon. By my unofficial count, we’re a good 5% through the list, but that’s farther than we’d be if we didn’t have a list. Our biggest accomplishment this weekend: We finally hung the curtains in our guest bedroom, which will be occupied by my family when they come to stay with us for my birthday.
7. I’m turning twice the legal drinking age
Speaking of my birthday, I’ll be a whopping 42 in less than two weeks. Which means I’m too old and tired to deal with newfangled things like “blogs” and “technology” and “jazz” and “Sarah Palin.”
8. I keep getting blood tests
One of the fun parts of getting older is watching your body slowly fall apart. My body’s newest trick: low thyroid output and high prolactin output. Which means new medications. And endless blood tests to monitor how the medications are (or aren’t) working. I’m so full of needle punctures I’m holier than the pope! Especially because I don’t help priests fuck little kids!
9. I’m planning a birthday party
If you live in Chicago, come to show tunes at Sidetrack on April 18 and look for us near the Liza cake in the south bar. We’re starting around 4:00 and going until we’re all jittery from carbs, sugar, fat and Dreamgirls clips. But be warned: This is a show-tune birthday, which requires show-tune flair. So to show respect for my age, you need to show up in your Cats T-shirt or your Les Miz button or your Damn Yankees cap or your A Chorus Line legwarmers or you can simply re-create Barbra's orange-and-fur “Don't Rain on My Parade” ensemble. Or if you want to go low-key, just show up with your best friend Stephen Sondheim.
10. I’m a tranny hot mess
Again, I have no idea what that means. But it sounds younger and hipper than I’m too gender-confused, sweaty and rumpled to write in my blog.
I have no idea what that actually means, but it sounds younger and hipper than I’ve been lollygagging around.
2. I’ve discovered Words with Friends
It’s the iPhone version of Scrabulous, which was Facebook’s legally-squashed-by-Hasbro version of Scrabble. And it is now my #1 favorite way to be unproductive. I usually have 10 to 15 games going at a time, most of which I play on the bus to and from work (which is where I used to read Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker so I’m now so far behind on my current events that I ask you to let me know the moment Lincoln gets home from the theater). It’s also been a really good way to tune out Judge Judy, the #1 home-TV-watching guilty pleasure of a certain domestic partner who shall not be named here. If you want to play with me, open a game against NofoJake … and send me a message to let me know who you are!
3. We’ve been cleaning house
And by “cleaning house” I mean vacuuming up colonies of dust bunnies that literally looked like mountains of pillow stuffing under our bed, schlepping entire carloads of clothes, furniture and electronics to the Brown Elephant, and sorting through mountains of paperwork from banks, investments, insurance companies and our many ceramic figurine collector clubs.
4. I have spring allergies
Speaking of dust bunnies, my spring allergies have kicked my ass this year like a bully on a gayground. They knocked me out so hard this weekend I took a four-hour nap on Saturday and a six-hour nap on Sunday in addition to the eight hours of sleep I got every night. And I’m still stuffy and sleepy and cranky and about eleven other potential dwarf names. But I just took a Claritin so I’m on my way to being Claritin Clear™! At least I should be at some unspecified time that is presumably in the near future, according to the vague promise on the packaging.
5. I’m shaving my legs
As my trainer inches me closer and closer to my giant-bodybuilder vanity fantasies, I have actually started piling on some measurable muscle mass. (Alliteration runs rampant!) I’m currently up to 205 pounds (from the 195 base weight I’ve maintained for the last 10ish years, give or take the months on either side of a marathon). Most of my new weight seems to be in my legs, which are actually so big I can’t wear two of my favorite jeans anymore. Woot! And now that I feel like I’m actually getting big, I’m further feeding into my giant-bodybuilder vanity fantasies by shaving my legs like all the big kids do at the gym. And shaving meaty legs takes a freakishly huge amount of time. Plus when you’re naturally hairy you have to maintain your shave virtually every day. Plus when you’re naturally pasty you have to slather on self-tanner all the time so you don’t scare children and interfere with the light refraction on the Hubble Telescope.
6. We’ve been tackling long-overdue home projects
There were so many not-quite-dones on our unofficial to-do list that I finally typed everything in a two-page document, organized it by the rooms in our house and taped it on the kitchen cabinet were we can be reminded of our self-imposed obligations every time we feel the urge to collapse unproductively on the couch with a jar of marshmallow fluff and a spoon. By my unofficial count, we’re a good 5% through the list, but that’s farther than we’d be if we didn’t have a list. Our biggest accomplishment this weekend: We finally hung the curtains in our guest bedroom, which will be occupied by my family when they come to stay with us for my birthday.
7. I’m turning twice the legal drinking age
Speaking of my birthday, I’ll be a whopping 42 in less than two weeks. Which means I’m too old and tired to deal with newfangled things like “blogs” and “technology” and “jazz” and “Sarah Palin.”
8. I keep getting blood tests
One of the fun parts of getting older is watching your body slowly fall apart. My body’s newest trick: low thyroid output and high prolactin output. Which means new medications. And endless blood tests to monitor how the medications are (or aren’t) working. I’m so full of needle punctures I’m holier than the pope! Especially because I don’t help priests fuck little kids!
9. I’m planning a birthday party
If you live in Chicago, come to show tunes at Sidetrack on April 18 and look for us near the Liza cake in the south bar. We’re starting around 4:00 and going until we’re all jittery from carbs, sugar, fat and Dreamgirls clips. But be warned: This is a show-tune birthday, which requires show-tune flair. So to show respect for my age, you need to show up in your Cats T-shirt or your Les Miz button or your Damn Yankees cap or your A Chorus Line legwarmers or you can simply re-create Barbra's orange-and-fur “Don't Rain on My Parade” ensemble. Or if you want to go low-key, just show up with your best friend Stephen Sondheim.
10. I’m a tranny hot mess
Again, I have no idea what that means. But it sounds younger and hipper than I’m too gender-confused, sweaty and rumpled to write in my blog.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Corrupting the youth
My sweet, adorable nephew just turned 11 and he finally got a cell phone from his tyrannic, cruel, cell-phone-withholding parents. And the domestic partner and I paid for a year’s worth of text messaging so he could keep up with his little buddies … and so he could pester us with hourly updates about his life. At dinner! Waking up! Going 2 school!
I pretty much live by text messaging. It’s fast, it’s convenient, it’s not disruptive whenI should be paying attention in meetings I’m on the bus and it requires a bare minimum of human interaction. Text messaging may very well be the perfect husband! But until now I texted only with adults whose adult voices and adult senses of humor came through every time I read their texts.
Which is why it’s so weird to be texting with a kid. Even though I know my nephew better than I know my adult friends, I just don’t hear his squeaky little voice in the texts he sends me. For some reason, our text interactions feel abstract and clinical instead of warm and conversational to me. And it’s not just because he’s the only person I text with who actually uses doofy texting contractions without irony. U r the bst uncle evr!
But that’s changing.
The nephew and his sister and his parents are currently at the end of a whirlwind spring break trip to DC. And he’s been texting me minute-by-minute updates of the sites they’ve visited. At the natl hstry museum. Just came out of the house of Rep. In line at Arlington!
Like a conscientious uncle—and a person who freaking loves DC—I’ve tried to respond to all his texts with educational information or leading questions or suggestions for fun things to do. Like my insistence that they all sit on the top steps of the Lincoln Memorial and take in the gorgeous view of the Mall below. It’s seriously my favorite spot in all of DC.
And the nephew has done a great job of holding up his end of the conversation … especially when he told me they'd stopped to have dinner on their drive east to DC:
What 11-year-old says I know, right? HOW CUTE IS THAT? But I still don’t hear his squeaky little voice in that conversation.
And I totally don’t hear his squeaky little kid voice in today’s exchange, which simultaneously makes me laugh and wonder when he got clever enough to keep up with his corrupting uncle who is surely going to whatever circle of hell is reserved people who have no respect for the dead or the theater:
I pretty much live by text messaging. It’s fast, it’s convenient, it’s not disruptive when
Which is why it’s so weird to be texting with a kid. Even though I know my nephew better than I know my adult friends, I just don’t hear his squeaky little voice in the texts he sends me. For some reason, our text interactions feel abstract and clinical instead of warm and conversational to me. And it’s not just because he’s the only person I text with who actually uses doofy texting contractions without irony. U r the bst uncle evr!
But that’s changing.
The nephew and his sister and his parents are currently at the end of a whirlwind spring break trip to DC. And he’s been texting me minute-by-minute updates of the sites they’ve visited. At the natl hstry museum. Just came out of the house of Rep. In line at Arlington!
Like a conscientious uncle—and a person who freaking loves DC—I’ve tried to respond to all his texts with educational information or leading questions or suggestions for fun things to do. Like my insistence that they all sit on the top steps of the Lincoln Memorial and take in the gorgeous view of the Mall below. It’s seriously my favorite spot in all of DC.
And the nephew has done a great job of holding up his end of the conversation … especially when he told me they'd stopped to have dinner on their drive east to DC:
What 11-year-old says I know, right? HOW CUTE IS THAT? But I still don’t hear his squeaky little voice in that conversation.
And I totally don’t hear his squeaky little kid voice in today’s exchange, which simultaneously makes me laugh and wonder when he got clever enough to keep up with his corrupting uncle who is surely going to whatever circle of hell is reserved people who have no respect for the dead or the theater:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
It becomes more official by the minute
I'm running New York this fall. Woot! And now it's officially too late to change my mind about Chicago. Not that I would have anyway. But still.
Monday, March 22, 2010
We managed to avoid the paparazzi on our cruise!
When you live the glamorous life of a world-famous blogger, ubiquitous celebrity spokesperson and A-list gadfly, you get really good at avoiding the paparazzi that hound you everywhere you go. Or so I hear. I mean it's a constant struggle.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard. And we somehow managed to avoid pretty much every camera on our cruise. And since I carried my camera with me everywhere but used it to take exactly 15 pictures all week—three of which turned out dark and blurry—there isn't a lot of photographic evidence we were even on the good ship Solstice.
But! Thanks to the miracle of the Internets and the stalker photo-stealing capabilities of Facebook, I've been able to assemble a bunch of other people's photos—some of which actually include us—into a picture directory I can call my own!
So let's cruise (ahem) through our borrowed trip memories, shall we?
First of all, here is the beautiful Celebrity Solstice, our home away from land for a whole week. See the row of orange lifeboats? Our private balcony—and now that we've sampled the charmed private-balcony life of people who scrimp and pinch so they can afford to sail in rooms with private balconies, we are never going back to the prison-like confines of an interior stateroom—was one floor above the space between the leftmost two lifeboats:
Before we set sail, we were docked in a space crammed with other cruise ships, including this one that sounds like it might be expensive:
Gay boys on gay cruises are compelled to decorate their doors in gay ways. I think we succeeded gaily:
We set sail the night of the Academy Awards, which were broadcast on a giant screen in the giant theater on the ship with a couch full of sassy drag queens and raunchy comedians sitting below the screen making catty comments. Here's my husband and our fabulous friends Curtis and Chris hanging out in the theater in the moments before the broadcast ... and before we discovered just how excruciatingly painful unrehearsed commentary can be, even when it comes from sassy drag queens and raunchy comedians:
The cafe on the ship is open 24 hours a day, and—in contrast to the formal dining room—it's very casual. Here's what a gay cruise looks like on the first morning. And for those of you who aren't gay, here's our secret for always looking so young and fresh:
Our first port of call was Coco Cay in the Bahamas. We couldn't pull our massive ship up to the island, so we had to drop anchor a couple hundred feet (or knots or ripples or whatever unit seafolk use to measure distance across water) away from shore and ride smallish boats called tenders to get to land. Here's the view of our mighty ship from one of our tenders:
Coco Cay, though lovely, has a distinctively Disney flair to it. I'm a huge Disney fan, so I'm not saying this as an insult. But I have a hard time thinking we experienced Coco Cay the way the pirates did:
Here's the view from our tender as it pulled up to the boat slip on the island. Notice how easily I throw nautical terms like tender, slip and aaaarrrrrgh! into this blog post.
Coco Cay beach is stunningly lovely:
And here's the view from our beach chairs:
Back on the ship, we had our first themed party: the Dog Tag T-Dance. A t-dance, which is often spelled tea dance, is just an afternoon dance where you're as likely to find tea as you are to find teabaggers and their misspelled anti-black people Obama signs. Here's a crowd shot I stole from someone's Facebook page. It illustrates nicely how useful my tattoo is when I'm trying to find myself in photos of giant crowds of men:
Here's another crowd shot I stole from the t-dance. It contains two of the five guys I drooled over all week but never got the stones to walk up and say hi to:
Our second port of call was St. Barth, which, like practically every island in the Caribbean, features charming architecture echoing a history of Dutch, English, French and/or Spanish occupation; stores dedicated to selling overpriced jewelry and dustables to tourists; pre-Revolutionary buildings with pre-Revolutionary cannons in front of them; and giant nautical objets d'tourist that you can use to lend drama to your vacation photos:
St. Barth has dramatic mountains and huge bays filled with giant private yachts. We asked a local to take a picture of us in front of both as though we were mega-wealthy yacht-and-mountain-owning moguls. But he cropped us too tight so for all you know this picture was taken in front of a flooded Walmart parking lot in South Carolina:
We tendered back to the ship in choppy water after sunset. Here's the best my intrepid little camera could do to capture the majesty and grandeur of the good ship Solstice without aid of natural light or terra firma:
Our next t-dance was disco themed. And the gays NEVER pass up a chance to dress in ridiculous polyester:
We met a lot of fun new friends on the ship, and we went out of our way to coordinate dinners with everyone in the ship's grand dining room. There was only one night where we couldn't scare up dinner dates so we asked to be seated at a table for four and play dinner-companion roulette with another couple. Unfortunately, we didn't specify that we wanted to be seated with an English-speaking couple, so we and our German dinner companions spent a whole hour gesturing at our food and making nummy sounds at each other. I broke out in a cold sweat from the awkwardness of it all. But! Most of our dinners were more fun, like this one with all our new best coastal friends who hail from New York and San Francisco:
Only on a gay cruise can you get away with wearing cheesy matchy-matchy shirts. Justin got to be Partner A because he's bigger and he can beat me up:
My favorite part of the gay cruises is hanging out by the pool and meeting new people. Here we are with our new best friend Ron from New York, who has actual Broadway connections. Which is like catnip to us. Sparkly, marabou-trimmed catnip. We might as well be posing with Sondheim himself here:
There is goofy poolside entertainment on the ship every afternoon, like spoofs of Project Runway or Dancing with the Stars. Those of us in the know stake out good deck chairs so we can watch all the goofiness without standing on our tippy-toes. And once in a while we get captured in strangers' photos that get posted on Facebook:
Here's a closeup of that last shot, which shows me sitting tantalizingly close to some distractingly attractive men:
Gay boys in speedos socializing in a giant pool. It truly is heaven on earth. Except for the love handles that glow so loudly from my lower back:
More socializing in the pool. More proof that I don't suck in my stomach hard enough when cameras are around:
The last t-dance of the week is called Splash, and it has a nautical/poolside theme. Unfortunately our cruise wasn't the epitome of warm Caribbean weather, and people actually bundled up instead of parading around in skimpy costumes for this dance. But not us! Because we had adorable outfits!
There are huge themed parties almost every night on the ship. We packed fabulous costumes to wear to the FantaSea party and the Lost Island party, but they started too late and we were too tired to go to them. But we did stay up past our bedtime for the week-ending White Party, where people dress any way they want as long as they're in white. And our $25 white nerd costumes were pretty fabulous, despite the fact that my pocket protector kept sliding down like it was some kind of kitten-sized messenger bag:
Atlantis, the company that charters these cruises and makes them fabulously gay, knows how to throw a party ... with lasers and fog machines and massive speakers and top-name deejays. Here's a shot of the White Party crowd dancing away to thunderous music on a gorgeous ship in the middle of the Caribbean:
And here's a shot taken without a flash, which shows all the cool laser effects:
The guy on the right went to my high school. I used to deliver his family's newspaper. He's five years older than I am but he looks 10 times younger and hotter. Life is so not fair:
I leave you with one more look at us in our fabulous White Party costumes as we flank our distractingly tattooed and distractingly hot stateroom neighbor:
And let me point out that micro-spray SPF is about as useful as a Sarah Palin opinion. I applied my micro-spray SPF 45 every 45 minutes or so on our cruise and I still turned bright red on the first day I was in the sun. Unfortunately, that's all the sunscreen we'd packed. But rest assured I'm going back to the thick goopy SPF 45 that's kept me reliably pasty white for all my smooth, relatively wrinkle-free years. Sunburns are for nerds.
Unfortunately, old habits die hard. And we somehow managed to avoid pretty much every camera on our cruise. And since I carried my camera with me everywhere but used it to take exactly 15 pictures all week—three of which turned out dark and blurry—there isn't a lot of photographic evidence we were even on the good ship Solstice.
But! Thanks to the miracle of the Internets and the stalker photo-stealing capabilities of Facebook, I've been able to assemble a bunch of other people's photos—some of which actually include us—into a picture directory I can call my own!
So let's cruise (ahem) through our borrowed trip memories, shall we?
First of all, here is the beautiful Celebrity Solstice, our home away from land for a whole week. See the row of orange lifeboats? Our private balcony—and now that we've sampled the charmed private-balcony life of people who scrimp and pinch so they can afford to sail in rooms with private balconies, we are never going back to the prison-like confines of an interior stateroom—was one floor above the space between the leftmost two lifeboats:
Before we set sail, we were docked in a space crammed with other cruise ships, including this one that sounds like it might be expensive:
Gay boys on gay cruises are compelled to decorate their doors in gay ways. I think we succeeded gaily:
We set sail the night of the Academy Awards, which were broadcast on a giant screen in the giant theater on the ship with a couch full of sassy drag queens and raunchy comedians sitting below the screen making catty comments. Here's my husband and our fabulous friends Curtis and Chris hanging out in the theater in the moments before the broadcast ... and before we discovered just how excruciatingly painful unrehearsed commentary can be, even when it comes from sassy drag queens and raunchy comedians:
The cafe on the ship is open 24 hours a day, and—in contrast to the formal dining room—it's very casual. Here's what a gay cruise looks like on the first morning. And for those of you who aren't gay, here's our secret for always looking so young and fresh:
Our first port of call was Coco Cay in the Bahamas. We couldn't pull our massive ship up to the island, so we had to drop anchor a couple hundred feet (or knots or ripples or whatever unit seafolk use to measure distance across water) away from shore and ride smallish boats called tenders to get to land. Here's the view of our mighty ship from one of our tenders:
Coco Cay, though lovely, has a distinctively Disney flair to it. I'm a huge Disney fan, so I'm not saying this as an insult. But I have a hard time thinking we experienced Coco Cay the way the pirates did:
Here's the view from our tender as it pulled up to the boat slip on the island. Notice how easily I throw nautical terms like tender, slip and aaaarrrrrgh! into this blog post.
Coco Cay beach is stunningly lovely:
And here's the view from our beach chairs:
Back on the ship, we had our first themed party: the Dog Tag T-Dance. A t-dance, which is often spelled tea dance, is just an afternoon dance where you're as likely to find tea as you are to find teabaggers and their misspelled anti-
Here's another crowd shot I stole from the t-dance. It contains two of the five guys I drooled over all week but never got the stones to walk up and say hi to:
Our second port of call was St. Barth, which, like practically every island in the Caribbean, features charming architecture echoing a history of Dutch, English, French and/or Spanish occupation; stores dedicated to selling overpriced jewelry and dustables to tourists; pre-Revolutionary buildings with pre-Revolutionary cannons in front of them; and giant nautical objets d'tourist that you can use to lend drama to your vacation photos:
St. Barth has dramatic mountains and huge bays filled with giant private yachts. We asked a local to take a picture of us in front of both as though we were mega-wealthy yacht-and-mountain-owning moguls. But he cropped us too tight so for all you know this picture was taken in front of a flooded Walmart parking lot in South Carolina:
We tendered back to the ship in choppy water after sunset. Here's the best my intrepid little camera could do to capture the majesty and grandeur of the good ship Solstice without aid of natural light or terra firma:
Our next t-dance was disco themed. And the gays NEVER pass up a chance to dress in ridiculous polyester:
We met a lot of fun new friends on the ship, and we went out of our way to coordinate dinners with everyone in the ship's grand dining room. There was only one night where we couldn't scare up dinner dates so we asked to be seated at a table for four and play dinner-companion roulette with another couple. Unfortunately, we didn't specify that we wanted to be seated with an English-speaking couple, so we and our German dinner companions spent a whole hour gesturing at our food and making nummy sounds at each other. I broke out in a cold sweat from the awkwardness of it all. But! Most of our dinners were more fun, like this one with all our new best coastal friends who hail from New York and San Francisco:
Only on a gay cruise can you get away with wearing cheesy matchy-matchy shirts. Justin got to be Partner A because he's bigger and he can beat me up:
My favorite part of the gay cruises is hanging out by the pool and meeting new people. Here we are with our new best friend Ron from New York, who has actual Broadway connections. Which is like catnip to us. Sparkly, marabou-trimmed catnip. We might as well be posing with Sondheim himself here:
There is goofy poolside entertainment on the ship every afternoon, like spoofs of Project Runway or Dancing with the Stars. Those of us in the know stake out good deck chairs so we can watch all the goofiness without standing on our tippy-toes. And once in a while we get captured in strangers' photos that get posted on Facebook:
Here's a closeup of that last shot, which shows me sitting tantalizingly close to some distractingly attractive men:
Gay boys in speedos socializing in a giant pool. It truly is heaven on earth. Except for the love handles that glow so loudly from my lower back:
More socializing in the pool. More proof that I don't suck in my stomach hard enough when cameras are around:
The last t-dance of the week is called Splash, and it has a nautical/poolside theme. Unfortunately our cruise wasn't the epitome of warm Caribbean weather, and people actually bundled up instead of parading around in skimpy costumes for this dance. But not us! Because we had adorable outfits!
There are huge themed parties almost every night on the ship. We packed fabulous costumes to wear to the FantaSea party and the Lost Island party, but they started too late and we were too tired to go to them. But we did stay up past our bedtime for the week-ending White Party, where people dress any way they want as long as they're in white. And our $25 white nerd costumes were pretty fabulous, despite the fact that my pocket protector kept sliding down like it was some kind of kitten-sized messenger bag:
Atlantis, the company that charters these cruises and makes them fabulously gay, knows how to throw a party ... with lasers and fog machines and massive speakers and top-name deejays. Here's a shot of the White Party crowd dancing away to thunderous music on a gorgeous ship in the middle of the Caribbean:
And here's a shot taken without a flash, which shows all the cool laser effects:
The guy on the right went to my high school. I used to deliver his family's newspaper. He's five years older than I am but he looks 10 times younger and hotter. Life is so not fair:
I leave you with one more look at us in our fabulous White Party costumes as we flank our distractingly tattooed and distractingly hot stateroom neighbor:
And let me point out that micro-spray SPF is about as useful as a Sarah Palin opinion. I applied my micro-spray SPF 45 every 45 minutes or so on our cruise and I still turned bright red on the first day I was in the sun. Unfortunately, that's all the sunscreen we'd packed. But rest assured I'm going back to the thick goopy SPF 45 that's kept me reliably pasty white for all my smooth, relatively wrinkle-free years. Sunburns are for nerds.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
We're back!
But our luggage isn't. While we wait for it to be delivered so we can fire up the washing machine and start scrubbing all that sun-drenched happiness out of our cruisewear, I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I was a big dork for carrying my camera around the whole damn trip but taking pictures with it exactly 15 times.
But!
We did get someone to take a picture of us in our fabulous costumes for the fabulous week-ending white party. And while everyone else on the ship dressed as angels or sparkleponies or tiny little underpants wearers or people in basic white garments, we very cleverly went as nerds, complete with white high socks, white support underpants, white bow ties, contrasting white-or-black taped glasses (because I couldn't find two pair of white ones), and clear pocket protectors (because I couldn't find white ones). But they were packed with brightly colored pencils! Arranged in the order of the rainbow! Because we're gay!
But! Nobody told me my pocket protector had slipped well below my shirt-pocket area for this picture, lending a saggy-bosom effect to my otherwise awesome nerd costume. Which made me look totally nerdy:
I'm in the process of stealing other people's cruise photos off the Internets so I can present you with a more complete Atlantis cruise photo portfolio ... and to give you the impression that I am actually capable of remembering to use my camera. Stay tuned!
But!
We did get someone to take a picture of us in our fabulous costumes for the fabulous week-ending white party. And while everyone else on the ship dressed as angels or sparkleponies or tiny little underpants wearers or people in basic white garments, we very cleverly went as nerds, complete with white high socks, white support underpants, white bow ties, contrasting white-or-black taped glasses (because I couldn't find two pair of white ones), and clear pocket protectors (because I couldn't find white ones). But they were packed with brightly colored pencils! Arranged in the order of the rainbow! Because we're gay!
But! Nobody told me my pocket protector had slipped well below my shirt-pocket area for this picture, lending a saggy-bosom effect to my otherwise awesome nerd costume. Which made me look totally nerdy:
I'm in the process of stealing other people's cruise photos off the Internets so I can present you with a more complete Atlantis cruise photo portfolio ... and to give you the impression that I am actually capable of remembering to use my camera. Stay tuned!
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Gratuitous Nipple Shot
Here we are looking all macho and stuff in our adorable matching camo shorts (camo = très butch!) on last year's Atlantis cruise:
And we're about to go back for more! And compared to last year, this year really is all about the more: More adorable matching outfits! More tattoos! More body mass! More speedos! More gay!
We board the good ship Solstice in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday and I'll go an entire week without access to blogger, facebook, gmail or joe.my.god. I just hope there's something to see or do on the ship to keep me entertained.
And I'll be sure to tell you all about it when I get back. Be good while we're gone.
And we're about to go back for more! And compared to last year, this year really is all about the more: More adorable matching outfits! More tattoos! More body mass! More speedos! More gay!
We board the good ship Solstice in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday and I'll go an entire week without access to blogger, facebook, gmail or joe.my.god. I just hope there's something to see or do on the ship to keep me entertained.
And I'll be sure to tell you all about it when I get back. Be good while we're gone.
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