The other night, I woke up at midnight (gone to bed at 8 with this stupid lung infection) and couldn’t go back to sleep. The RLA was in the living room, watching “Meat Loaf: To Hell & Back” on VH1. While it wasn’t dreadful, it wasn’t good, per se. The guy who played Jim Steinman  reminded me a lot of the actor who plays Lucious Malfoy in the Potter series*, and one thing leading, as it so often does with me, to another, I ended up on the IMDB looking for both.

Which, of course, this being the web, led me happily from site to site until I ended up at Jim Steinman’s blog. YESH! He has a blog.

Which led to another half an hour of poking into various links and sub-sites and sub-sub-sites.

(Fade to Black)

VOICE OVER:

It was long ago and it was far away, and I was living in New York City. I had a friend, of sorts, an actor by the name of Richard Dunne, who had starred in the Miami road production of EQUUS. I went to see his band play at some dive in the Village and he was all excited because he had auditioned for something exciting…a musical based on Peter Pan.

(Dissolve to present)

I never really saw Richard after that, and never heard what happened with that play. Over the years, whenever Meat Loaf made yet another return to the music scene, there would be a story about Jim Steinman, and maybe 10-12 years ago I think I heard something about a musical he had done back in the 70s about Peter Pan. I remember thinking then that that had probably been what Richard had been so worked up about.

Today, in all the digging, somewhere in the Steinman site, is a scan of the original program from the Kennedy Center production of “Neverland” and starring in the role of Baal (the Peter Pan character) was Richard Dunne. And there are even photos.

Huh. Sometimes these interwebs are amazing things, are they not?

* Zachary Throne is definitely hotter than Jason Isaacs, though when placed side by side.

You have got to be fucking kidding. That’s it? That’s the way The Sopranos ends? Not with a bang (or a Badda Bing) and not with a whimper but with a fucking Journey song? Not even a Springsteen song, or a South Side Johnny number? A fucking Journey song?

Granted, Phil Leotardo had one of the “best” deaths I’ve ever seen on film/video, and fully deserved every second of it. Granted, the tension was excrutiating. Granted, Sil didn’t die, but our last shot of him wasn’t too hopeful.

But that ending? I’ve seen science fiction b-movies with better endings. I mean, why didn’t the credits just roll “The End?”

Pathetic. I feel dirty. Used. Fuck you David Chase. That sucked. And to add insult to injury, my last shot had to be of that useless twat Meadow?

Feh.

dragged my sorry ass to the doctor yesterday. received two prescriptions, a lecture and orders to go back to bed.

that is all.

well, except that i’m moving this site to a new host because my current host is retiring from the hosting biz. this is the perfect time to break out a couple of new skins. one is coming from the wonderful girls at moxie design studio and the other is the one i’ve been dicking around with for at least 6 months.

i’d hoped to be able to work on that (and a handful of quilts) while on this vacation, but the truth is i’m lucky just to be able to type an entry. too weak to hit the shift key, tho.

The ever eloquent Keith Obermann gives one of his best. And I give it to you, as my Independence Day gift.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Not Silvio Dante! Damn that David Chase. He could kill off Christafuh, no problem. Bobby Baccala? Who cares? Uncle Junior, AJ, Meadow, even Paulie Walnuts or Carm, and I would be upset, but mostly OK. Wll, upset if it were Paulie or Carm, frankly, AJ and Meadow are total dead weight. And I was happy to see Tony finally shove his shoe up AJ’s self-indulgent, whiney ass. But Sylivo? Little Steven? My pretend boyfriend? (Not to be confused with my imaginary long-time lover, The Bob, or my special boytoy, The Boss.) Silvio, ambushed in the parking lot of the Bing, hospitalized and never expected to regain consciousness? Noooooooooooooooo. This sucks. I wanted Sylvio to walk away.

I should know better of course, this has always been a morality play, and you can’t shoot a bitch in the forest, or strangle a co-worker for disloyalty and not expect to meet your just rewards. Which means last night’s Sopranos was mild compared to next week’s expected blood bath.

Still and all, I’ll miss Silvio and his hair.

And what kind of professional ethics does Peter Bogdonovich have? (not Peter, of course, his character) Telling an entire table full of shrinks that Melfi is treating Tony Soprano, a fact he only knows because he treats Melfi. So much for patient confidentiality. And then she reads that stupid article and dumps Tony, in a particularly snippy and bitchy way. Tony respects her though, and doesn’t kill her on the spot, which he would have done a few years ago, so so much for therapy isn’t working for him.

You and your baby on a Saturday night. And it was. Saturday we arrived at the summer place on the Gulf. Took our traditional first night walk down to the Sandbar for our traditional first night burger at the bar. And walking home I felt the first tickle in my throat.

Fell into bed and slept for 12 hours. Woke up to the cold from hell.

I have spent my entire vacation huddled in a double layer of sweat pants and t-shirts under extra blankets in bed. On one day only did I get in the Gulf to bullshit with the members of the Noodle Brigade. I have ventured out only under the cabana. No walks on the beach. No nights spent drinking martinis until I drool. No smoking. No dinners at restaurants.

No. This vacation has seen me sucking on lemon slices, sipping hot tea and eating very lemony/garlicky tabooli, trying to beat this into submission.

The RLA has gotten brown. Star has gotten brown. Last night another pair of friends arrived from Tennesee to check out the summer place and consider buying in, and I all but talked to them through a screen door, with a hazmat mask on.

Do I know how to party or what?

Still, I managed to drag my sorry ass over to the most fabulous yarn store I’ve ever set foot in, and picked up a pile of wonderful things. Star and I explored the snotty bead store, and found, like so much else in life, that observation alters outcome. In this instance, the owner was in the store that day and the usually thinly veiled hostility of the help was transformed into cheery greetings and warm offers of assistance.

And, the best thing of all? I has a bucket. I found it in the surf as the RLA and I walked home from the Sandbar along the beach. There it was, bobbing and rolling and looking like it would wash ashore, and then not. I waded out in my shorts and snagged it. It is purple. It is mah bucket. Mr. Walrus, eat your heart out.

I have a dirty little secret that I feel compelled to share with you all.

I have a soft spot for romantic comedies (films). I have an especially soft spot for Hugh Grant. I love Hugh Grant. I also adore Drew Barrymore, and will watch any romantic comedy she makes. The RLA and I just watched “Words and Music” and we both loved it.

Does that make us shallow?

Star, the number 1 and number 3 surrogate daughters and I went to see the revival of Camelot on Sunday. With us was one of Star’s nieces and the man who broke my heart when I was twenty-one.

The Number 1 and I waited outside the mini-van for him. I was smoking a pink cigarette, and had already put down a quick martini in anticipation of our meeting. Last year we saw each other for the first time in almost 20 years, but the RLA was with me to remind me of who I am and what year it is.

I started by saying to the N1SD “do you remember last year or so, we took you to dinner at the middle eastern place and as we were leaving, you mentioned in passing that you thought perhaps you had been in love?”

She didn’t. I reminded her that she had just broken up with someone and wasn’t sure if her heart was broken too. Oh. Yeah. She remembered now.

“Well,” I replied “it seems certain that you weren’t in love, or you would have known. This man we’re waiting for, he was my first love. Your father would have it that I left him for this guy, but that isn’t the whole truth. This is the man who broke my heart, the one who got away.”

I put out the pink cigarette, and looked up to where he was crossing the street, his grey hair longer and his bald spot larger than last year. He’s wearing a wheat-colored linen suit. I smile and say to her, “Hard to believe, huh?”

But oh, those salad days when we were together. We were the king and queen of cool…at least until he walked into my dorm room, took me by the hand, stared deep into my eyes and said “Hey. When nothing’s there anymore, nothing’s there. What are you going to do?” and walked out.

It was a week before finals. I managed a 4.0 that semester, but I’ll be damned if I can remember anything from that moment to when my parents picked me up to take me home for the summer.

My last semester at school was painful, because I saw him everywhere on campus, and with him the stringy blonde who had taken my place. I graduated. I moved to New York City. And then, a miracle happened. He called me out of the blue to say that he was passing through town and would I like to have dinner with him.

So I did. And he moved in with me and spent the summer before graduate school living in my first apartment with me. We walked to Chinatown. We saw avant garde films projected onto sheets in unmarked galleries in a nascent SoHo. We argued. We loved each other. And then summer ended, and he went on to film school and then we drifted apart.

But always and ever, I wanted him to return. I married the Antichrist praying for a “Graduate” moment, when he would show up and take me away. And I would have gone, gladly. I would have walked away from any and every relationship I was ever in, to go away with Bruce.

Until I married the RLA. And then, like looking into Schroedinger’s box, reality became fixed. There is no longer a shoulda woulda coulda. There is only the RLA, and our life together.

And this life I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Oh, yeah. Camelot. Michael York was wonderful, the woman who played Guinevere was wonderful, the giant who played Lancelot had a beautiful voice. As always, Jenny leaves Arthur for that tool, Lance. I cried, thankful that at last and at least, I know when I’m in the right place.

Ming the Merciless woke up at four a.m. and demanded to go out. Not having opposable thumbs, he required my assistance in this matter to turn off the alarm, unlock the pool door and open same.

I tried to go back to sleep, and was just getting into a dream when my alarm clock rang. I managed to hit the snooze button and then slept through the second ringing. Which isn’t really ringing, it’s some electronic version of surf. Sounds more like broken glass rattling in a thermos, but whatever.

The RLA has been on duty up at my parent’s home, packing and sorting and dumping for the last week. He took the dogs, but let me bring JoJo home on Sunday. This has added a dog walk to my morning routine. This morning, since I was already dragging and late, JoJo refused to poop. Around the block, up and down, singing the doggie has to poop song. Nada. Nothing. No use.

Running really late, I zoomed to the train station, where the only available parking spots were those formed by the space left when two over-sized vehicles park in compact spaces, each with one set of tires over the line, thereby rendering the third, central space unusable for anything wider than a bicycle.

To the top of the parking garage, and back down, narrowly avoiding head-ons with the folks rushing up the ramp later than I. To the flat lot, where the person in front of me took the last remaining space. Back out onto Dixie Highway, back to the original parking garage, and up to the roof, where, hidden behind a giant pickup truck, I found a place to park Zelda Bleu.

The escalator to the train platform was undergoing repair, and so I made it to the platform as the train was leaving the station. But not before some asshat punched the elevator button six or seven times, reaching over me to do so. Cause, yeah, (and I said it loudly) I wouldn’t have thought to do that.

Finally made it to the office, where, in anticipation of our new hire, one of my co-workers “cleaned” the new kid’s work space. That is, if by clean you mean dumped all the old files in the trash, piled everything that might be useful or kept on the desk, emptied the bookshelves into piles on the chair, opened every box and left the whole thing looking worse than it did before she started. And left it there for me, no doubt, to make ready for the new kid.

Thanks. I needed something to keep myself busy with today. Other than my regular workload, I mean.

The other night, the RLA*, the ADS** and I were walking our dogs, and one thing led to another and we ended up talking about tv cowboys and their horses.

Roy Rogers rode Trigger. Dale Evans rode Buttermilk. Buttermilk was a palomino, and so was Trigger. Except I couldn’t remember what Trigger looked like. I could only remember Buttermilk.

The Lone Ranger rode Silver, who was a white horse, or since it was old black and white tv, maybe a light dapple grey. Tonto rode Scout, and Scout was… a pinto? An appaloosa?

Fury was black. Bret Maverick rode a black horse, but did the horse have a name? Bat Masterson only rode in stagecoaches, that I can recall.

The boys on the Ponderosa? Can’t remember any of their horses, although I watched the show every Sunday night. Did one of them ride a buckskin? Did Little Joe ride a paint?

In other odds and ends, I just bought a new domain name. Reecie, of the Mild, Mild West let her domain expire, and in double checking to be sure it really did, the following phrase popped up as a related search “mild burning symptoms”. How that relates to Mild, Mild West is something only a computer knows. But it cracked me up. So much so that I am now the proud owner of mild
burningsymptoms.com

What do you think the content of that site should be? A wiki of Paris Hilton bashing? The place I write the stuff that’s too rude for here?***

Just a page that asks the question “what the fuck are you looking for here?”

I don’t know. I only know that it makes me laugh. Mild Burning Symptoms. Schnort. I have a whole line of t-shirts planned to go along with the “I’d Rather Be Widowed” shirt, and they are all rather snarky, so maybe this should be the name of my clothing line?

What else? I have nothing planned for the weekend, but my toe is good enough to stand on, so maybe it will be a long two days of sewing. Purses for the etsy shop. A couple of dresses for moi. Design and upload the art for the rest of my t-shirts.

A long, and productive weekend. What a concept.

* The Renowned Local Artist

** The Artist Down the Street


*** Is there such a thing?

Happy Birthday, Bob.

The genius, the magician, the one and only Bob Dylan turns 66 today. I’m afraid there’s only left overs for dinner tonight, Bob. But you never show up, so I didn’t make anything special. Still, if you do manage to come by my house tonight, I could throw together a cake. (The RLA is out tonight, too. It’s Boys’ Night Out at the Casita des Zapatos.)

My door is always open, if you’re in the neighborhood.

Love you forever, Miz Shoes.

Broke the pinkie toe on my right foot Saturday, opening the gate to the driveway on my way to run a day full of errands. True to my family of origin, I just shoved my foot into my clog and went around town for the next 5 hours in pain, and ignoring it.

Now my toe looks like a miniature eggplant. I’ve gotten very, very good at athletic wrapping. At least my feet match again, since it was two years ago that the RLA rearranged the furniture in the bedroom and in the middle of the night, when I jumped up to let the cat in out of the rain, I swung around the end of the bed and right into a chair leg, snapping the pinkie toe on my left foot.

So many thoughts on so many subjects.

Item the first: Something has been bothering me about ANTM since Wednesday night. Jaslene didn’t pass the psych test last season, and that’s why she wasn’t on, but she went to therapy and tried out again. Uh, maybe I read Sun Tzu, Musashi and Machievelli too many times* but if you’re giving these hamsters psych tests, then you (meaning the producers et al) have a pretty good idea how they are going to decompensate during the series. This means that they ARE casting for the psycho bitch (NeNe Vibrato), the crying girl (Brittney), the gently bewildered (Natasha and Kathleen) and all the other stereotypes we know, love and have come to expect. Creepy or no?

Item the second: I keep having dreams about my old college chum Pati. I went so far as to look her up on various people-finders and she may or may not be living a couple miles down the road. The last I’d heard, she was living in Georgia with her parents.

Pati was bi-polar, and never diagnosed, until later in life, like when we were in our mid-twenties and by then, she was happy with being bi-polar and didn’t want to/simply didn’t take her meds. I loved being around her when she was manic, but she got vicious when she was depressed. We quit being friends when I was going through my divorce and she was in a down cycle and it didn’t work too well, friendshipwise.

I’d love to see her again, but I’m afraid to call. Yes or no?

Item the third: I’ve come to realize that I am a tad borderline bi-polar myownself. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just prone to severe mood swings. You know, like suicidal downs and Top of the World, Ma ups.

I’ve been on Prozac for years, and while it shaves the peaks and valleys, the ups and downs are still there. I just don’t crawl in the closet, turn off the lights and curl up in the fetal position anymore.

But. I don’t know quite how to express this, the ups are still hard to manage. I am currently in the middle of one that, were I not on meds, would be dangerous. I am so full of creative energy, and have so many ideas that I want to pursue, that I don’t know where to begin.

Because I’m on the drugs, I can almost prioritize and get things done, but in my bones, I feel the fire and the spin. This would be a very bad cycle, were I not damped down.

Pati hated the damping down, and that’s why she wouldn’t take her meds. Because I’m in this part of the cycle, I think that’s why I want to make contact with her again. But that would be bad, maybe. Fuel to the fire, maybe. Or she might just hang up on me, still pissed off or whatever.

I don’t know. I’m writing. I’m designing t-shirts. I’m entering photos in contests. I’ve got a pile of fabric on my sewing table, and another pile of patterns and a project list that I want to finish by tomorrow night.

The energy blast is good, but I know that there will be a crash after. Maybe this is the bounce back from the depression I was in for two months prior to this, though. Maybe I need to up my meds. Maybe I just need a vacation.

In any event, I have work that I set for myself today, so you’ll excuse me if I leave you now.

*OK, I only read “The Prince” once, and maybe not even all the way through, but I got the gist of it.

Ah, another season of ANTM slogs to a close. In the words of my beloved husband, as the credits rolled and I groaned over the winner: “Why do you even watch this?”

Because it’s a train wreck, honey. A train wreck and a morality play all in one. Where else can I see people so delusional, and yet allowed to roam free? Where else can I watch drag queens without paying a cover charge? And where else but Greek tragedy does hubris get rewarded so generously?

Ahhhh. So here it is, the final three are Natasha the Mail-Order Russian Bride, Jaslene of Dubious Gender, and NeNe Vibrato, she of the beach-living husband, floppy baby and nonstop bitchiness.

There is some recapping, and we finally(!) see Natasha’s husband and baby in one photo. Let me just say that he doesn’t look twenty years older and the three of them make one gorgeous family. Whoo-hoo.

Then it’s off to their final photo shoot: the Cover Girl cover slash beauty shot. They are on their own here, since Mr. Jay will be off with the tv spot shoot, where the girls have to ad-lib a commercial. So that they shouldn’t be flying solo, last year’s winner, CariDeemented arrives to give them advice. She won, despite asking Nigel about the stick up his ass, so yeah, I guess you might consider taking her advice. Or not, like if you wanted to win.

Jaslene has a hard time looking soft, commercial and pretty (and you know, that is such a cheap shot that even I will forgo the obvious joke). She also interviews that smiling makes her face hurt. OK, now I have to go there? That is totally a line from Rocky Horror and one delivered by my previous favorite tranny, Dr. Frank N. Furter. But whatever.

Natasha is good at smiling, and looking soft, commercial and pretty. But then she gets flustered and embarrassed and is even cuter.

NeNe waltzes in and just carries on like she’s already the winner, perhaps because Carideemented has been giving her advice that starts “after you’ve won”. NeNe, not being the brightest but certainly the most egotistical of the lot, probably took that to mean that she had, in fact, already won. So she preens and smiles and preens some more. Everyone on set jokes with her about acting/looking like she’s already won, and that just adds fuel to her fire.

Then we have the unscripted tv spots. Natasha is backstage at a photo shoot. She has written and memorized a script for herself. The Cover Girl flack and Mr. Jay tell her to scrap the script and just wing it. The resulting commercial is cute and incomprehensible.

NeNe Vibrato is out in Sydney Harbour, and starts her commercial by saying, “Nine months ago I had a baby and I thought my life was over.” The CG flack and Mr. Jay, look at each other and simultaneously shriek CUT!!!! Let’s not go there, sistergirl. Let’s try it again, a little more upbeat and positive, ok? So she gets all cute and happy and waves her arms around and delivers.

Jaslene is in a limo, and gives a sing-song freaky face version, but nails it by talking about how the product matches 97 percent of all skin tones, including hers, y “soy latina”. The CG flack just comes in his chinos. ChaCha Diva does good, in an awful sort of way.

Interviews and confessionals follow, and NeNe Vibrato is full on Cuntie-Pie ala mode. She’s on and on about how she’s got this in the (ho)bag, how she hopes the OTHER finalist isn’t Natasha, because (and I’m pretty much quoting this) she “walks like a pigeon-toed duck with poop coming out of his butt.” And then she smirks and smiles and is so proud of her analogy. She just giggles over what a cute, but oh-so-naughty girl she is.

Judging. Nigel brings it home, and reminds us why he is our favorite male ex-model turned internationally renowned fashion photographer/pervy judge. He takes NeNe Vibrato’s photo betwixt thumb and fore finger, and holding it at arm’s length like the reeking piece of shit she is, says well, she’s beautiful, yes, but she is hardly the freshest face in the box. She photographs old, and her look is old and I’ve seen this face a million times. This is America’s NEXT Top Model,  and we’re looking for something new.

The rest of the judges all nod sagely. The critiques are sharp, and Jaslene is called to task for her appalling delivery of her commercial. They applaud the fact that she managed to hide her Jay Leno jaw long enough to be photographed looking pretty and sort of soft.

Natasha is just Natasha, and Twiggy and Nigel and Tyra all love her to death. So does your viewing audience, peeps.

The girls come back in to face Tyra (wearing a set of false eyelashes that must do double duty as weight training for your eyelids). She gives a photo to Jaslene. She gives her usual wahwahwah, so who goes home. NeNe is holding Natasha’s hand. Who’s two-faced now, you old hag? Natasha gets the picture and NeNe almost drops dead. She was so sure she had it in the bag. See? Morality play. Hubris. Good times.

Back to the house, where NeNe opines about how she’s glad she didn’t win, because she has knowledge and something inside. Yeah. It’s called bitterness. Classy to the end, just like so many other LOSERS. I guess she’s going to have to hock that big-ass pearl after all. HAH!

Then Natasha comes in to find Tyra waiting on the couch. It’s face time. She talks about her years at university in Moscow, where she had nothing. NOTHING. She talks about how she’s an American, now, and how America is a melting pot, and she represents all Americans with accents. Like me? I come from the South, y’all.

Next is Jaslene, and cries and cries and kisses Tyra’s fat ass. Aiee, ju have shanjed mi vida, Tyra. This has been a life-altering experience. Ju know, cuz last season, I dint get nowhere and now here I yam inna top two. Weepy, weepy, snivel.

I turned to the husband, and said: he just won.

And then the fashion show which is lame, but not as lame as the bride of dragula that they did last year, in which Carideemented totally robbed Melrose. As in years past, there is drama on the catwalk, when Natasha’s skirt just slides off her butt. She calmly steps over and out of it and keeps catwalking.

Finally, though, all good things must come to an end, and so after much deliberation, the judges decide that Jaslene will be…. America’s Next Top Tranny.

Really. Did you SEE the size of his wrists? I’m just saying. I can’t wait till next year when they have to use subtitles for his MLAACG commercials. Because, you know, I’ll be on the couch, cosmopolitans in hand, watching the train wreck for another season.

Is it wrong that I am not at all saddened by the sudden death of Jerry Falwell, and, in fact, may even be a little bit hopeful that nobody will pick up the reins (or reign) of his evil empire of neo-con religious zealots?