Fiasco for Lunch

Somethings are just not meant to be.

Like our lunch party yesterday. mrpeenee has hosted more dinners than I could begin to count. I like 'em. Even so, I am not immune to catastrophe in them, as witnessed by this lunch. Four friends, an easy menu, no big deal, right? Huh.

I made chicken pot pie with a cornbread crust, an almost effortless recipe, forgiving and actually benefitting from having the sauce, chicken and vegetables cooked the day before and then combined just before you eat. Everything's going along swell and I step into the kitchen 7 minutes before it's done to check on it and discover the cornbread crust is black and smoking.

Did I panic, fall to ground cursing and shrieking like Linda Blair? I did not. I announced lunch would be a little delayed (what's the point of pretending?) and went back in the kitchen prepared to pry the crusty crust off and make a new one. My equanimity was rewarded, too; when I pushed a spatula under the burnt part, it came right off and revealed a perfectly done, unburnt layer below. Thank you Saint Donna of Reed. It was actually terribly yummy. I wish I had saved you some.

Of course, I forgot to mention I had also burned a pecan pie earlier that morning and NOTHING would save that sombitch. It was one of those stupid recipes where you put the pie in at one temperature and ten minutes later turn the oven down to a less blasto range, but I overlooked that step. Oops. Pecan charcoal.

Two burnt pies in one lunch: what are the chances? I regaled our guests with the story of R Man's old friend Mike who came to dinner often and we had some disaster each and every time. I must have been a little too enthusiastic in the telling, because all the guests (one of whom is an Episcopalian priest. I think he may have worried I was accusing him of some kind of anti-hostette voodoo) swore this was not their fault. I wasn't blaming you, I tried to say, but no one listens to me.

Anyway, the salad was delish. And not burnt.

Cleaning Tips

Say you wake up in the middle of the night and really, really need to pee. What? These things don't happen to you? You were born under the sign of the Sleeping Camel? Fine, whatev. Say you're mrpeenee and you wake up in the middle of the night and you really, really need to pee. After not stumbling, but rather gliding like a sylph into the bath, you let fly and instead of the reassuring tinkle of water on water, you hear the much more ominous splash of water on wood. Wooden toilet seat, to be precise. And then you remember the cleaning ladies have been here again and they always, always put the lid down.

You remind yourself they do no do this to irritate you (or "piss you off." Heeheehee. Get it? Piss you, oh never mind;) they are doing their job. It is not a rebuke. OK, maybe it's sort of a rebuke. Rebukeish. Do you go back to bed muttering "I gotta clean that up tomorrow..."? CERTAINLY NOT. You get the lovely cucumber scented cleaner and the paper towels and have a brisk round of 4 a.m. floor mopping. Because that is the Right Thing To Do.

I hope we have all learned a valuable lesson from this.

Poutine Madness

Since the World Series or the Suprabowl or whatever it is in Vancouver now has splattered all over the media, everybody is all about poutine, but mrpeenee already had it nailed because when it comes to junk food and gay porn, come to mrpeenee. Am I right?

I had run into the concept of poutine ever so much earlier last year in some damn blog or the other and was instantly charmed. First, there's the name "POUTINE"; a noun that sounds as nasty as the item it identifies. I love symmetry like that. Also, it genuinely sounds yummy. I want some, but I don't want to go to Canada to snag it cause MJ from Infomaniac is the Official National Stalker of Canandia. Scary, huh?

Also, what I want to see is a cute naked guy slurping down the poutine. Sloppily. Wouldn't that be thrilling? I couldn't find a picture of one, so we'll just have to settle for houseboy Gnut Danius.

Movie Meme

Movies. Hmm. When the movieola meme started passing around, I knew it was just a matter of time until I got tagged. Even though I love memes, this particular one makes me feel inadequate; there are whole blogs devoted to discussing movies and they do so in much more erudite terms than I could ever scrape up. My favorites are Sunset Boulevard and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and if you think I am going to try and add my two cents to what has been written already about them, you’re nuts.

The Cool Cookie over at Doing Hard Times in Shaker Heights not only tagged me, but sent in a reminder nagging me to get to it and including the astonishing sentence: “My last thought, tomorrow, when they knock me out for the gallbladder operation will be ‘I wonder if Peenee has whipped it out, yet...’ ” which wins the Jewish Mother Don’tMindMeI’llJustSitHereInTheDark Guilt Award for 2010. Yes, it does seem sort of an extreme method of getting me to finish, but whatever works.

Here’s the rules, even though I’m sure you’ve seen them on everyone else’s blog: “Share three classic movie moments that have, in some shape or form, made you buy things, do things, think things that perhaps you shouldn't have.” And speaking of other blogs, have you seen what this meme has turned up? Amazing the things people will admit to seeing, up to, and including Adventures in Babysitting.

For my turn, I’ll go ahead and admit my most significant movies are all porn. Really, is anyone surprised? Man on man adventures whose “dialogue” includes the line “I’m here to see about your plumbing,” never fail to thrill me. My three classics:

Hawaiian Heat introduced me to a star whose charms still fill my firmament and firm my fillment. Mike Betts. Mmms. So manly and beeyootiful and sullen.

The Road Home (which is also the name of some funky post Katrina New Orleans recovery effort) is notable not just because it stars the luscious Todd Gibbs, a ginger whose skin is so white it seems transluscent, but also because it includes a scene wherein old time megastar Ryan Idol portrays a priest to whom Gibbs turns for confession. Idol forces Gibbs to recount all kinds of shenanigans he’s been forced to submit to while Idol spanks his own monkey on the other side of the confessional screen. Thrilling.

The Scorpion King. Oh, it’s not gay porn? I beg to differ. If ever a camera lingered lovingly on giant man titties, enormous thighs of death, and booty, booty, booty, it’s this one. Short of The Rock actually taking a double headed dildo up his poop chute, I can’t imagine how it could get any gayer.

I know I’m supposed to pass the meme along now but a) the last time I did I got nothing but grief from all the recipients and b) no one is left. Everyone has already been tagged with this. So let’s just whisper a quick “Rest in Peace” and let it go.

Bloglandia

A couple of years ago, the New York Review of Books (isn't it cleaver of me to imply I am a regular peruser of NYRB? So veddy Intellectual. It's a lie; R Man reads it, I just stumbled on the story while I was throwing the stack of old issues into the recycling. But let's ignore that) any way, they had a story about blogging, how it had evolved. The writer made the interesting point that blogs were originally more like newspaper columns (some, like the Huffington Post, or Queerty, or Towleroad still are) but many had morphed into something more like long running dialogues between friends, friends who usually know each other only through the blog itself. Certainly, mrpeeneee cops to that. I'm not sure what I intended when I started, probably nothing, but I like what this has turned into.

Don't all our blogs, taken as a sort of messy whole, seem rather like sitting around a table after dinner talking? I Should Be Laughing is the smart, politically aware guest, infomaniac, Lethal Dose, Mean Dirty Pirate, are busy making smutty double entendres, Felix in Hollywood, Stirred Straight Up, and Muscato are the stylish, raffish ones at the bar. The Cool Cookie, Night is Half Gone and Miss janey are the voices who spin stories like all my crazy relatives always did. Kabuki Zero is repurposing the foil from the turkey into a hat. Suffering Fools Badly Post Apocalyptic Bohemian and Temporary Troublespots are the sassy bitches brewing trouble. And all of us brought together by thombeau, so is he the host? Now there's a scary idea, but wasn't everybody glad to have the old darling back? Did I leave anybody out? Probably, I'm doing this off the top of my head and it's all sort of more twee than I meant, but I love ya, mean it.

But that's what I like about this, why I stick around, the stories and the snark and the funny pictures and the general idiocy. You just don't get that reading teh New York Review of Books, you know.

And little me? I must be the daffy aunt saying inappropriate things and flashing the houseboy.

Which reminds me:

Uncouched

More davenport reports. The day before our couch was supposed to be delivered, I listed our old one on Craigslist for free; I wanted to get it out of the way for the new one. It was snapped up that very evening by an adorable gay boy who was as fresh-faced as the really superior porn starlets of today generally are. I was delighted to pass along our venerable sofa to someone so deserving and who flashed his butt crack when he bent down to pick it up.

I was considerably less delighted the next day when I found out we wouldn't have a couch for ten weeks while our new one is being handcrafted by blind nuns in Belgium, or something like that anyway. No problemo, I blithely thought, I'll just rent one. Hah.

The rental showroom is near my office, I sailed in there and ground to a graceless halt on the doorway, stunned by the awfulness spread before me.

Let's do a little compare and contrast exercise, shall we?

What I'm waiting for: Glamorous, stylish, beautiful as Lauren Bacall in her heyday, whispering of gin martinis and good times.

What they had: Butt hideous.

And then the sales associate (or "shopgirl" as she deserves to be spoken of) came over and slowed down chewing her gun long enough to challenge me with "Do you need something?" Charming.

I know it may be hard to believe but mrpeenee is usually polite, even to lesser beings. I may have a large penis, but I am a lady. Nevetheless, this was wasting my lunch hour, I was unenthusiastic about the whole thing anyway (Is it just me or does "rent-a-couch" bring to mind bed bugs to you, too?) and now I'm getting attitude. "I don't think so, I was looking for something that wasn't ugly," I replied

Things went downhill from there. I left. Yes, we don't have a couch now, but furniture is so over-rated, don't you think?

Room and Bored

Quel tragique, my little schnauzers. The fabulous new sofa we had snagged last week at Room and Board was delivered to day. Or was attempted to be delivered. As much as it longed to be held in our loving arms, it wouldn't fit up the stairs, even though the store previously had sent out a special Fit Team to measure and see if it would. The verdict: Too Damn Big, which I've heard plenty of times before, but never so bitterly.

So I just marched my little self back down there, dusted myself and started all over again. A terribly sweet matronly saleslady (side note: how sad it is to realize all these motherly types are my contemporaries. Laugh now, bitches, your day will come.) In trying to help us find a couch that was similar in sleek lines, long enough for us to lie on, but short enough to fit up the damn stairs, she led us back to the first couch I had fallen in lust with: a beauty in velvet, the epitome of Hollywood Regency glamour, a chaise with lines so taut they look like they were cut with an Xacto blade. It seemed the universe was having one cruel jest on me after another as I explained I would love to consider it, but it didn't come in the ivory velvet we wanted.

Turns out the Mommie saleslady is also our Fairy Godmother since she firmly contradicted me, went over to the swatch cabinet and yanked out the most luscious cream velvet you could ask for. Why the minion last week couldn't find it is beyond me, but there it was and I am not arguing.

And now I have the couch I truly wanted in the first place. Life is so sweet. Feast your eyes, my dears, on our new glam fest (you have to imagine it in ivory). If only the fucker fits.

Begin at the Beginning

And then Uncle Mike told Tommy he liked gladiator movies, too!

Frisbee

Oh dear. Yet another giant among us has passed. Walter Morrison, who invented the Frisbee, has kicked it. Frisbees are much beloved as sports alternatives by those of us so very be-sissified that we are completely incapable of throwing a ball.

Mrpeenee has a personal interest in the fine Frisbee; I am the only person in universe who has ever been injured by one. I was smacked in the nose by a special Glow-in-the-dark one and the tip of my nose broke off. I’m not making this up, I don’t have to. To this day, I have a little gobbet of cartilage floating under the skin right at the very end of my schnoz, ruining its delicate line and giving me a decided hook to the starboard.

I wonder if it’s too late to sue?

Super Bowl Has Nothing to Do with Bowling. Who Knew?

So, did you know the Superbowl was Sunday? Yeah. Turns out it’s this “football” thing and a bunch of guys from New Orleans

(not these guys) beat some other guys. I think. But it would appear there weren’t any strippers at the halftime show so everybody was bummed.

Be sure to tune into mrpeenee for all your sports news needs. Coming soon, “Baseball: Is that the Big Round One or the Little Round One?”

CouchezPotatoes

Darlings, our poor old couch has finally surrendered to gravity and just collapsed in the middle. It was a long struggle, but the death knell, she was rung. Since R Man's main past-time is lying on it, listening to Baroque music and thinking deep thoughts, talking him into a new one was actually easier than I expected. We sailed off to Room and Board this afternoon and in less than a half hour found our new baby:

Fabulous? Oh yes. Stylish? Totally. Long enough that I can stretch my 6'3" self out on it? Completely, utterly, Hooray for Hollywood YES. So long in fact that the store is sending some guys out first to measure our stairs and make sure they can get it in here.

Size Queens. What can you expect?

Also, speaking of size queens, and wondering if it’s too damn big, I stole this from Kevin, over at The Lisp.

Q, G. What's the Real Difference?

I think it must be the collision between my extreme myopia and my world-view that causes me to so frequently look at a website new to me and see the well-known acronym “FAQS” as “FAGS.” Is it a special button for me and my tribe, or is it a link to naughty photos of houseboys cavorting together?

Nah.

Imagine my disappointment.

FAQS

FAGS

Compare and contrast.

mrpeenee versus The Man

When Diane von Austinburg and I were attending the You of Tee college place (actually, only Diane was attending. I was just paying tuition and hanging around) we met while working on the college newspaper, The Daily Texan. The Texan was a pretty hilarious place, a den of dopers and bowling enthusiasts. Almost the only thing I learned while in school there was how to spell the word "corduroy" and how to lay out a publication, both courtesy of the Texan rather than any so-called class.

Laying out the paper was always a late night affair, dragged out by repeated trips to a nearby alley to smoke astonishing quantities of mediocre dope. One of those late, late nights, a friend and I were alerted to what our other friend Lara claimed was the side splitting graffiti in the women's bathroom. We immediately went to investigate, but I felt it didn't live up to its reputation, so we left. As we stepped out the door, we came face to face with two of the campus cops.

Believe me, they did not look like this.

UT's cops were humorless jerks who lacked the personal magnetism to make it into ROTC and were bitter because of it. They did not approve of druggy hippies, and certainly not two faggy ones emerging giggling out of the ladies toilet.

After we stared at each other, equally aghast, for what seemed eternity-ish like, they remembered whatever training they had slept through and asked what we thought we were doing. Fortunately I was devious enough to lie, firmly, and claim Lara had sent us in because she had heard some guy in there and was frightened. I know, brilliant, huh?

There were a tense few moments; I don't know if they were evaluating the likelihood of how truthful I was being or if they were just trying to mentally sound out the big words I had used. Then in another flash of inspiration (two in a row! Score!) I announced I had to get back to work. "I have a paper to get out," I said grandly and walked off. The cops must have just shrugged and went off for doughnuts. We never saw them again.

I should have been scared; God knows my academic standing was already so shaky it wouldn't have taken much to get tossed out on my skinny ass. Although, really, I'm still not sure walking in the wrong restroom is a crime. Nevertheless, I wasn't freaked out, I was as thrilled with my bad self as if I had pulled a heist over Interpol rather than fast-talking a couple of mentally impaired goons.

Anyway, the next year I really was kicked out of school, but for abysmally poor grades and not for any ladies room shenanigans. Still, I'm glad I don't have a rap sheet that notes "Restroom trespassing." How mortifying would that be?

Mommy Mobsters

R Man had to go in to be scoped by our gastroenterologist (Have I mentioned due to our late middle age stuff, we have become tight with our g.e.? On first name basis in fact. "Jane, darling, wassup?" "Oh mrp, lookin' good." Carumba.) and I accompanied him because the drugs they give you in order to shove a camera down your throat tend to sort of wipe you out. Funny, huh? So after the procedure you need to have a rational person (or in this case, me) around to talk to the doctor and then make sure you actually get home and not go off staggering around downtown with your pants on your head.

While R was enjoying the thrill of semi-invasive medical hi-jinks, I went to lunch. Jane's office is in a fashionable part of town called Laurel Heights. I despise it. It is to breeder Ladies of a certain age as the Castro is to queers; Ground Zero. Every stretch of sidewalk is commandeered by mommies striding along to yoga with whatever spawn they've managed to come up with, wearing unattractive sensible shoes.

I usually am ok with breeder people. I'm sure it's not their fault, but there is something about these particular women who seem to emit a thrilled smugness about their own reproductive ability that just goes right up my nose. "Look," they seem to be saying, "My uterus works. Revel in it." Well, speaking of organs, my colon works, too, but I don't feel the need to show off the results.

Mostly it's the goddam strollers, the SUVs of the fecund, that work my nerves so.

Behemoths that function mainly to draw attention to their cargo, in this neighborhood they are traffic hazards everywhere. I had to ask one Lady to move hers so I could sit down at the only empty table and after she heaved a huge sigh indicating what a burden it was, she had to struggle to get the stupid thing to move six inches so I could squeeze past. I wanted to explain I was only in her 'hood because I am a white slaver and I was casing out the joint for a raid, but her little precious was safe since I was not in the market for the obviously genetically defective, but I let it pass. You know why? Because I have manners, motherfucker.

When I finally got home, houseboy Gnut Arialdus had to lead me in a meditative chant for the better part of an hour to calm me down.

And Even More

What the hell?

My Brain is Too Small. Yep.

I had a big crush on Billy Herrington during the Clinton administration, but hadn't really thought much about him since. I recently found out he is a huge phenomenon in Asia. Why ask why? Still, if their freaky little obsession can generate this, it's ok with me.