Irish and Crazy

Around the holidays I always like to sit back and reflect on the past few months. So, in honor of St. Patrick's Day I thought I'd do a little bloggie update.
In January I received some interesting news. This should come as no surprise to many of you, but it seems that Laura Bush and I have similar tastes in music:

I don't know if we both have "9 to 5" downloaded or not, but I picture her with her little black Nano in the morning jamming to Dolly on her way to work, much the same way I do. Other items of note that we have in common: we both also like to read, wish we could dress like Nancy Reagan, and Marcia Gay Harden can do a wicked impression of both of us.

Speaking of which, the Oscars pretty much blew this year. Well, not the majority of them, just the ending. I was also a little disappointed that the producers didn't try a little harder with the show in general. They were too busy choreographing ridiculous production numbers, forcing poor Lauren Bacall to read a teleprompter when she's almost legally blind, and pushing absurd LA racial melodramas on voting Academy members, when they could have put their focus elsewhere, like on the fact that they were only one "Monster-in-Law short" of a "9 to 5" reunion. If you catch my drift.

Here's something that you probably have seen, but it's always worth revisiting, and although it doesn't soften the blow, it may bring a smile to the faces of thousands of disenfranchised gay Academy voters who were intimidated into not voting for Brokeback:
http:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ

New Year, New Beginnings

Being at home for the holidays, no one was happier than me to see some of the positive changes in the lives of my family. That's why I was glad to hear that one of my half cousins was living with my uncle again and Mother, upon hearing that he had never been in a church before, summarily placed him in her Sunday School class. Indeed, one week he claimed to know nothing of the manger or Blessed Virgin, and not two weeks later he had been cast as Joseph in the Christmas Eve nativity play! It took me nearly 12 years to make such a leap. But I digress.
I began to question some of my mother's teachings, though, and wondered if she might be sending some mixed signals to her impressionable youth when I studied some of the drawings he had made for her.

At first glance, it looked like one of my own Christmas drawings that I had made as a child. But upon closer inspection, I noticed this:

Mother claims to have no knowlege of how her name morphed from "Aunt Elaine" into "Ant Allah," but I have no doubt that, Christmastime notwithstanding, terrorism was at work here.

I'm sorry...?

Really? I mean, really?

Released: 11/23/05

Released: 12/21/05

Oh, ok, so you're telling me

this isn't then? Oh, ok.

So then

this isn't anything like right?

Oh, ok, sure.

All I Want for Christmas is...

+


These two pictures describe how I'm feeling this weekend.
(That dog is named Guido and is blind, by the way. At least he's not ugly.)

And then there's bea...

Monday night I was fortunate enough to see a one-night only return engagement of Bea Arthur's one woman show. This particular show and I have a long history of just missing each other (on Broadway, in Atlantic City, etc), so I was so grateful that I finally got to see it. Who knows, it may be the last time she ever does it. I got the tickets for my birthday from my best friend and favorite sea hag. And, damn, was it a good show. Of course, it helped that it was such a receptive audience. When she entered it was like that convention seen from The Witches, only instead of the Grand High Witch there was Bea and instead of the little witches there was a bunch of gay men. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to make that analogy work.
Bea was surprisingly sprite and limber for what I expected and she didn't look too bad either (although I think she's progressively losing her voice). From the balcony, she sort of looked like:
+ by way of
It was intense. But amazing.

Ugly...

In sad news, Sam, the world's ugliest dog, died this week. In some ways, his death is sort of a blessing, may he rest in peace, because his popularity was waning. A few months ago, you couldn't go on facebook without seeing a third of your friends using his glamour shots as their FB pictures. All that's changed now, though.
Still, I'm gonna miss that bitch. Happy Holidays.

Menopause: What's going on?

There's something about middle-aged women that I find very attractive and vaguely irresistable. Oh, I'm not sure what it is really but it's always been there. I find them mature and sensible and demure to the point of distraction, and decidely un-flakey like many of the young people that I know. They're intelligent and wordly, oftentimes very ambitious and powerful. Here are some of the more notable of my meoopausal and post-menopausal crushes - they should be fairly obvious:


I'm not a vain person but women of a certain age have been making passes at me lately to the point where I feel I need to write about it in my blog. It's starting to get rather intense and a little ridiculous. Oh, sure, they're a little old for me, I mean, god forbid someone my own age should make a pass at me. But I started keeping a pass tally to keep my life in order:
N.M. - 8 M.H. - 5 P.B. - 1 P.H. - 20
A.H. - 4 N.G. - 21 J.S. - 11 T.S. - 30

On a sad, related note, Virginia Hollingsworth died this week. Oh, I know she and Blanche fought a lot, and she ruined Big Daddy's funeral. I confess I always liked Charmaine better, especially when she was on Dr. Quinn. But it's sad, nevertheless. She managed to live a while after her unfortunate kidney diagnosis.

Speaking of middle-aged women, Mother gave me some rather nice presents for my birthday this weekend. I wore one of my new sweaters to church on Sunday with the tag still in it and then threatened to return it, which I knew would blow her mind. She's constantly fighting many internal battles, one of the major ones being between parsimony and morality. Although her integrity would never allow her to let me return it, the fact that we could and get the money back drives her crazy. It's not her fault, that's the way she was brought up. If anything, I blame puritanism, capitalism, communism for being an alternative to capitalism, and the Protestant work ethnic, all of which she was raised on. I know this and I love messing with her. Hey, she's my mother.

The Gym's Getting Too Gay

I think the Palladium gym is getting a little gay for my taste. It's getting so bad a fella can't go into the weight room withought being overwealmed with gaiety. It used to be a nice mixed-gender group but now it's nothing but muscular, sweaty guys in those god-awful wife beaters lifting enormous weights. You always feel so self-conscious about your body cause they're always judging you. It's so bad I went in there the other day and they were playing Gwen Stefani. That's how I knew it was bad. So I just did my business and left. The only time I can go now is Sundays at 9 cause it's empty during Desperate and they play an R&B station instead.

Real Willis

Real Willis's new facebook picture scares me. He looks like Richard Belzer on Law & Order: SVU and I don't think he means to, which is crazy cause he does and I love Richard Belzer. Look, see for yourself: Is he not a dead ringer for him or what. I mean, call me crazy but that's been going around a lot lately. This is a perfect example:

Doris Belack and Joanna Merlin confuse me all the time. One was in Tootsie, one was in the Ten Commandments. But get this: both play judges on Law & Order. Coincidence...? Oh shit, when I googled Merlin's name to find this picture, it came up with the Tisch site. She teaches in grad acting. Ok, just called and left a message on her voicemail. I hope she calls me back on Monday. Here's another example:

Not that Todd looks like him, or is similar to him in any way, I'm just saying some people look a lot like each other when they wear makeup.
To tie this all together, Belzer is friends with Baskin and Irving. I know cause I saw them together. I hope he's not really weird too.

Smurf Wars

Dear UNICEF,

I like you and sometimes I put pennies in your orange box at Halloween time. However, please stop using Smurfs to promote your war agenda.

"The 20-second video commercial clip aims to show that war can happen in the most innocent of places, and the victims are of all ages and all walks of life. The advertisement is aimed at an adult audience and is only shown after 9 p.m. to avoid upsetting young Smurfs fans." - random "Celebrating Ramadan" website

I'm a young Smurf fan and I have to watch TV after 9 pm cause that's the only time Law & Order and Desperate come on. Look, we all know the war is between the troops and the terrorists and doesn't have anything to do with us. So please leave me and the Smurfs the fuck out of it. Thanks.

- Smurphy

Christmas is Coming

This was not more evident than when Father picked me up at the train station and already had his favourite Philly Christmas radio station on in the car. Father and I both like Christmas because we get bored with our lives in the Fall and need something to look forward to.

At my barber's a few weeks ago I heard a 7 year old in another chair complaining that his mom won't let him watch their Christmas movies yet. Get over it. I was 17 before my mom started letting me watch Christmas movies by myself. I've already watched "Rudolph" and "A Christmas Carol" this year. It reminded me of this summer when this 11 year old kid came into my memorbilia shop on the boardwalk and asked for the LP of the Rosalind Russell version of "Gypsy." I didn't even know there was another "Gypsy" besides the Bette one at his age! His mother has no idea of the years of grief that are coming her way.

I bought Christmas cards at Target today. And I'm sorry, people who don't like Christmas are going to have to just like the card with the word Christmas crossed out, I'm not getting generic winter ones this year.