Oh, Just Get Out Already

Not Kevin Spacey. And that's a good thing.

Since I have to replace the seal on my toilet today and, oddly, am not particularly enthused about the prospect, allow me to waste some time here ranting instead.

Over at www.expatriato.blogspot.com , our dear Muscato points out yet another profile of Kevin Spacey that tiptoes around his possibly poofiness cause, you know, innocent until proved, “Mr. Spacey does not comment on his private life,” it’s all just malicious rumors, yadda yadda whatever. As Tallulah once said “I don’t know, he’s never sucked my cock.” Personally, I don’t need his mouth wrapped around my manmeat to make the leap that a man of his age and background with no visible female attachments is, oh I don’t know, GAYGAYGAYGAYGAYGAY.

Ahem.

But this isn’t really just about him. It’s about me, of course. Isn’t everything? It’s about the damage that your life led in the closet does to my life led outside it. An important way in which homophobes have their fear and loathing of gay men (that would be me. Hi!) reinforced is by a lack of exposure to us. The less contact they have with queers leading lives out of hiding, the easier it is for them to convince themselves we don’t even exist and therefore our demands for equality are unwarranted. It’s like seeking protection for leprechauns.

So. Gays in highly public arenas (Oscar winning actors, for instance) could have a beneficial impact on breaking down that invisibility by stepping up and saying “I suck dick. Mmm, it’s tasty.” I understand they have no real individual obligation to do so. I’m explaining why I don’t respect their choice not to.

Oh, it’s their personal life? Please. They’ve chosen to enter a profession that features photos of Brittney Spears’ vagina. How much privacy were they hoping for?

Yep, it’s frightening to announce that you’re a perv, and when you’re trying to get started in that field the last thing you need is one more obstacle. Got it. But one of the reasons being gay is an obstacle is the closet of actors who’ve made it, like Spacey. OK, it’s chicken and egg, gay actors have to hide because there are no roles for gay actors because gay actors are in hiding. So Will on Will and Grace is a straight man; and Heath Ledger plays Ennis and grants detailed interviews about how icky it is to kiss Jake Gyllenhaal (ingrate); and all the other scraps of gay roles go to straight actors in a kind of sexual blackface. And even in 2008, you can still see polls of people who claim they know no gays or lesbians. Of course you do sweetie. His name is Kevin Spacey.

The Houseboys of Summer

How poignant Labor Day always seems; the end of summer and all that. Even in San Francisco, we say goodbye to barefoot days; fresh tomatoes and peaches; and houseboys like Flaubert Herakles here undressing beneath the I-280 overpass under the mistaken impression that they are, in fact, at the beach. Silly pusses.

It's All Relative

Teeth cleaning Thursday morning! Woo to the hoo!

Every time I go in, I have to struggle against the urge to ask my hygienist if she thinks she and I are related. She's a big, tough gal who looks like she would know her way around a beer joint, a description which covers most of my sainted mother's kith and kin. Her family, the Baldridges, ran to women who could chew up men like crushed ice, but just rolled their eyes at masculine foolishness and made babies instead.

This hygienist looks like all of them sort rolled up into one formidable package. And yet, I just can't imagine explaining to a woman who brings in carpenter tools to work on my mouth that she reminds me of the trashiest line of my white trash heritage. I mean, despite what many of my friends will be only too glad to tell you, I'm not crazy.

I Saw a Squirrel

I have a great fondness for the curmudgeonly Invader Zim, but I truly love Gir. I think he's gay, and a sybaritic idiot. What's not to love?

Late Nite BART

Normally, the commute on BART from downtown to home is as interesting as, well, a commute. People get on the train, read their books, stare off into space, lead lives of quiet desperation, get off the train. You know the drill. But when I have to stay late, like I did last night, my, what a little moonlight can do.

I always board at Embarcadero, the first stop in downtown, and there and at the next stop, Montgomery, the passenger list is pretty much business guys like me fleeing the office and just trying to get the hell on home. When the train pulls into the Powell Street station, it’s another world. Powell is the vortex of tourist San Francisco; the end of the cable car line is directly above the station, Union Square with all its stores and hotels is right there. The doors of the train spring open and a wave of drunk, raucous tourists descend. Yeah! Hey! Par Tay! Where on earth are these people going at 9 o’clock at night on a subway headed off to the Mission and suburbs south of town? And why are they so loaded this early in the evening? Who knows?

The next stop is the grimy but fascinating Civic Center, where more drunks pile on. The main difference in the two groups is that the Civic Center loadoes got shit faced in bars with much dirtier bathrooms and paid a lot less for their drinks. Aside from that, not much. Smelly and loud and wearing shorts in San Francisco in August, with their legs blue from the cold. Maybe that’s why they’re drinking.

After that, the two stops in the Mission tend to be people exiting, going home or on off to the enchantments of magical 16th Street. And then, finally, my stop, the quiet, good taste of Glen Park. As I leave I hear one of the drunk ladies suspiciously asking “Is this going to Berkeley?” No dear, you are not. And every minute takes you farther away from there, but you know what? Not my problem. I’m home.

Fresh Hell

The charming Muscato reminds us August 22 is the birthday of my favorite writer, Dorothy Parker. Miss Parker was author of one of the few poems I can quote from memory:

O life is a glorious cycle of song;
A medley of extemporanea.
And love is a thing that can never go wrong.
And I am Marie of Romania.


Well, here we are.

Sunshine, Lollipops, Etc....

Sweetums, it's been the most glorious day. Details would be just too tedious, but three separate medium sized problems here at work solved themselves, each just as I was gritting my teeth and preparing to wade into them, none with any direct intervention by me and one while I was at lunch. Yes, bitches, yes, the power of burritos with extra salsa proved once again. I am happy as Shelly Winters on a diet pill/daiquiri spree.

The Name Blame Game

The results are in! It's the Munroe Sisters vs. the Divine Chan Triplets. Yes, the Munroes, America's singin', sinnin', tippytoe tap dancin' Sweethearts taking on those SIrens of the Mysterious East. It's the Smackdown of the Century! Don't miss it on Drague Pay Per View.

Hair

As a little baby fag, I had such a crush on Bobby Sherman.

How I overlooked the fact that he had the same hairdo as Ma Brady is beyond me. I must have been blinded by love.

Name Game

I have no idea why this blog has suddenly swerved into Trannyland, but there you are. One possible reason: Project Runway's big night of the Drag Queen Zombies. In reading about it, I stumbled onto the Drag Queen Name Generator

My Drag Queen Name is Grace Monroe.
Take The Drag Queen Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

I have to say, I was sorely disappointed in mine, "Grace Monroe." Am I missing a joke here? If so, feel free to explain it me. All I can picture with Grace Monroe is the heroine of some not-very-good chick lit effort about a divorcee with kids who finds True Love despite her weight issues. Let me tell you, that is not the drag image I'm looking for.

I'm sure everyone knows about the drag queen name game where you take the name of your first pet and add it to the street you grew up on and voila (or walla, as someone once wrote me in a very disturbing email) your new genderfuck nom. In my case, Duchess Bayshore. That's much more like it, stylish, glam, pearl-touching.

There's No Business

Darlings, thanks so much for your enthusiasm over You're Too Big for Polka Dots! Your replies and suggestions were exactly what I expected of you all. Based on your input, I've decided to revise the format from a drag revue (how tired, afterall) to the much more exciting and popular Lesbian/Farm Animal smut genre. Considering the range of your talents, I'm sure you'll fit in just fine, and maybe even better, than in my original thought.

Mwah, great big air kisses to everyone.

Casting Call

Let's put on a show kids. I've decided to produce a dragaganza online and you're invited to be in it! Mostly because you're too obstreperous to ignore. I think that's always a good personality trait in a semi-professional trannie entertainress. The show's called You're Too Big for Polka Dots and did I mention it's at the fabled My-O-My Club out by the lake in New Orleans?

Anyway, since it's my show, I get to be the star. What, you got a problem with that? Shut up and sit back down. I shall take the stage as Coco Vreeland and I plan on wowing them with my big number "Strike a Match," as performed by April Ames. No, of course I don't know the words, who cares? You think Madonna actually knows what she's lip synching? Get real. I'll eat red hots so my gums and tongue will be bright red and recite the words "Thursday root beer float' and no one will know the difference.

I'm asking our dear friend Kebbin to pull his turn as Miss Simma Down performing Shirley Bassey's cover of "I Who Have Nothing" but that's as far as I have gotten in lining up the talent. This is where little you comes in. Let us know your stage name and what you'll be performing. Don't forget to bring your music. And get your own damn eyeliner.

I'm Not Here Right Now

Isn't it a truism that everyone leaves Paris in August to go on vacation? San Francisco seems to have picked up on that idee this week. The streets aren't empty, what with flocks of tourists wandering aimlessly, but I think the offices must be. Every email I send out bounces back with an immediate reply "I'm out of the office. Nyah, nyah, nyah." None of my phone calls go anywhere except into voicemail. And our office here couldn't be more empty if the plague had mowed through.

I can't blame anyone, it's a lovely day with the air cool and the sun warm and oh hell, I think I just might have to slime on out right now.

Please leave a message at the tone.

Here Come the Planes

In 1982 (I know, I know, some of you weren't even born then; others were simply not paying attention. Spare me) according to our good friends at Wikipedia the Grammy nominations for best song were:

Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) performed by Christopher Cross, (Just Like) Starting Over performed by John Lennon, Endless Love performed by Lionel Richie, Just the Two of Us performed by Bill Withers & Grover Washington, Jr.

Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes won. Maybe not paying attention wasn't such a bad idea.

However, also in 1982, I went to a show of a performer I'd never heard of and was absolutely dazzled. Laurie Anderson and her United States tour was the smartest, wittiest, most fascinating thing I'd ever seen. Flawless. It more than just the music, which was weird and intriguing, it was the way the sounds and the visuals of the show (I think this was the one where she held a light bulb in her mouth) worked together. Listening to the album now, I can still remember how images on the screen behind her or even just phrases projected there would change the meaning of the song or make it funny or involve the audience in on the joke.

There aren't many things I look back on as being in the right place at the exactly right time, but that show in New Orleans when I was young and interested in being wowed was one of them.

And long cars in long lines and great big signs and they all say: Hallelujah. Yodellayheehoo. Every man for himself. Ooo coo coo.

Baffling

As a worldly sophisticate, I certainly know there are somethings which are simply not understandable, which brings me to Sting. I have always been baffled by the number of people (usually Ladies of around my era) who swoon over him, thrilling to his sexiness. The hell? Scrawny with a mean little face and an expression that seems to imply he's not getting enough fiber in his diet, I just don't see it. Do you see it? I didn't think so. Surely it's not his voice. If your sound is such that every drunk frat boy in America can accurately imitate it, it would seem you'd need another line of work, but no, he's a Big Star.
Sting


Not Sting

Wacky Workaday World

I believe I have mentioned one of my many, many jobs is organizing the training program here. In that capacity, I field calls from the public where all sorts of riff raff plead "Oh please, mrpeenee, please let me come teach a class for you." And then I say something like "Well that's a very interesting point," and pretend to listen to whatever it is they're saying while I'm really savoring the post over on Stirred Straight Up where tjb wrote a thrilling ode to Sam Elliot.
Anyway.

This morning, my first back in the office after the tribulations of going to Washington, I had some schmoe making his pitch when I heard a rather distinctive sound in the background. “Surely this guy is not pissing while he’s asking me to let him be a teacher here,” I thought. My charitable denial might have lasted longer if the even more distinctive sound of a toilet flushing hadn’t come though then.

Mr. schmoe will not be presenting a seminar at our agency.

A la jardin

This time of year is, in many ways, the high point for gardens in San Francisco. Here's some of my current greatest hits.Abutilon, flowering maple.

My well loved drag queen fuchsia. It's ancient and I think the flowers look like the earrings a particularly trashy drag queen would choose.

I love hydrangeas. This is one of ten I have in pots and scattered around the yard. The french name is Hortensia.

Carnations and zinnias, pink, pink, pink.


The brilliant blue of this delphinium resists being photographed. You'll just have to trust me.

Home again, home again

When I was younger and wild to get out and about, any trip anywhere was welcome, but I was always too poor to do any real traveling. Now that I can afford it, I have become so cranky about the hassles of airports that I would do anything to avoid them. It's cheap shots like that which make me hate irony.

My trip to Washington last week, fer instance. I had great connections, short lines, interesting things to read on the plane, pharmaceuticals at hand, I paid extra for more leg room so the seats were the best I could hope for and yet I still spent the nine hours in transit pouting that I was not home with the cat.

Once there, things were fine. The training itself was no worse than things like this usually are, and better than some I've been dragged too. I got to catch up with my colleagues (hello to Jane in Honolulu) many of whom are witty and fun and we got to gossip viciously about those who aren't. Just like junior high! Yay!

Wednesday evening I got to nip over to Dupont Circle and the Phillips Collection for an orgy of modern art - Kline, Rothko, the usual gang. More cheap irony: the two special exhibits were both California artists. Richard Diebenkorn, whose big linear abstracts I love, had a show about his time in New Mexico, before he moved to Santa Monica and created the pieces I like so much. The ones in this show were interesting in that they were earlier evolutions of his style with the colors already in place, but the forms more mushy and less interesting than the Ocean Park series.



The other show was Brett Weston, a photographer whose work I'd only seen in group shows before. A gallery full of his best stuff is just dazzling. He printed in beautiful saturated blacks and silvery grays that transform his very naturalistic shots almost into abstracts. Lovely.



And then I got back on the plane and came home to my sweet, sweet boyfriend and vicious little cat and San Francisco.

Yay.

Dee Cee

mrpeenee is off tomorrow morning to Our Nation's Capitol for training. The specific topic of the training has been explained to me more than once, and I've cast a jaundiced eye over the agenda, but I'm still not clear on the point of this whole thing. That's not unusual for our agency.

I will actually be there less time than I will be traveling, but I am not complaining. In and out is fine with me. While I think it's important to occasionally return to the South during the summer to remind myself why I'm so glad to have escaped, I'm not crazy, after all.

The only touristy thing I'm considering is a short hop over to the Phillips Collection, a charming museum near Dupont Circle. Aside from that, it's me and the Holiday Inn's air conditioner, all the way.

Design Starred

While R Man is fascinated with such gritty TV fare as Oz and Dexter, I prefer the decorating shows on HGTV. As I've pointed out before, they always have a happy ending and the crappy homes they reveal people huddled in allow me to feel terribly superior.

Jason over at night is half gone encourages me to reveal that my fave is Design Star, a game show masquerading as the search for the host of a new HGTV show. While the promos for the show emphasize the design talent of the competitors, the stunts that lead to the weekly eliminations would stump the ghosts of Billy Baldwin and Dorothy Chandler. Combined. The challenges always involve bizarrely short time limits and restrictions on supplies that boggle the mind. One memorable one required everyone to whip up a room from stuff they found in a pet shop or auto supply house.

Instead of design, what the show really emphasizes is how well the contestants perform on camera as a host. That, after all, is the true point; you can see HGTV realizes as long as the winner can handle pointing at before and after shots, the producer and other off-camera talent can deal with the actual decorating.

This is the third season winding down (tomorrow night is the finale. Can you hardly wait?) I've noticed each year the cast tends to be pretty consistent. There's always some wacky, artsy type who gets tossed early; some hateful bitch who sticks it out almost to the end cause she's all the drama and the audience hates her; some earnest sweet straight girl who cries and talks about the family she misses so much so the wifeys at home can have someone to identify with; a bitchy nellie queen for comic relief; and a prime piece of hunky eye candy for visuals.

Two years ago the eye candy won, yay, while generating a storm of pissy message board comments from the heartland complaining that he was a) too wiling to take his shirt off (completely insane considering this boy's luscious tits and shoulders and b) that he's "too gay." Who did these people think most of HGTV's audience is? Nuns with a freak on for redecorating?
David Bromstad, too gay? Too bad.

Even better, shortly after this season's humpiness got the boot, it came out that he had performed gay porn a few years ago. And not just any porn, but some substantial, whack-a-mole S&M and bondage cinema verite. Thrilling. If only I could get X-Tube to work I’d be able to report more authoritively on its quality.
Mikey V, too bad? Gay too.

The producers should be making novenas of gratitude for this little peccadillo since otherwise the show this year has mostly been notable for how astonishingly dull the decorating has been. Tidy is about the best you can say for these efforts. One particularly galling show had them doing competing suites in the Grand Ole Opry Hotel in "shabby chic." God knows they nailed the shabby part. I hate shabby chic, it's such a cliche and all that ratty, peeling paint just makes me wonder how anyone can dust it.

The only other style demonstrated has been some vaguely contemporary, sort of minimal ho-humnism. Sleek, square, low slung in chocolate browns and reds with some Asian piece thrown in. Wow. Sure didn't see that coming. Nosiree. The cover of every Metropolitan Home since the first George Bush presidency, who'd a thunk it?

So of course, after nothing but snark about the show, you can count on finding me glued to it Sunday night, rooting for the muscley bald guy. I am so there.