Travel Time

Speaking of drinking, Secret Agent Fred and I are off for the bright lights of New Orleans on Saturday for a week.  Unless the world ends today.

Yall have a lovely Christmas and I'll be back on the Feast of Steven, deep and crisp and even.

This Just In:

mrpeenee is just the teensiest bit drunk.  We went out tonight with friends to see the one man show of Leslie Jordan, who is, as a side note, like mrpeenee also a 57 year old big sissy from the South, so a lot of his stories resonated, except for the ones about doing speed fueled drag as a teenager.   Still, it was pretty amusing.

The show required a two-drink-minimum, so I had a couple of Cosmos, because I am a Lady, and they were tasty, tasty, tasty, but STRONG.  So I'm a little drunk.

Back in the day, mrpeeenee was a Big Mess.  A Big Drunk Mess.  As loaded as I am at this moment was merely a brief stop on the Big Drunk Mess Line; it was the I Think I'll Have Another Pitcher of Margaritas stop.  So very much not happy times.  Let me just say how very glad I am to no longer be on that sloppy train.  Plus typing is hard when ones fingers seem slightly unconnected.

Instead, muscle pussy:

Just Answer the Question

Dearies, so sorry to be sort of AWOL lately (did you notice?  Shut up.)  Aunt peenee has been involved in a bad patch of neck-and-back aches and crouching over a keyboard to knock out a blog post was just so not appealing.

In the midst of my personal Hunchback Festival, I had to go run a bunch of errands.  Isn't that always the way?  On the list was a smog certification test for my car so I trotted on down to a typically grimy little garage fitted out with all those oily garage-type thingies, one astonishingly cute technician and the issue of W magazine that had a feature about Chris Hemsworth.  Of course.  I do so love living in San Francisco.

To kill some time, I limped over to a hideous nearby cafe.  Lit with mercury vapor lamps, it had the same charming ambiance of the New Orleans police department's holding cells.  How, you ask, does mrpeenee know what the inside of the NOPD lockdown looks like? Let's stay on point here, shall we?

While trying to find an empty seat for me and what they cynically claimed was coffee, I realized all the management, staff and clientele looked like their resumes (or rap sheets) would include the phrase "sheltered workshop."  Prominently.  Amazingly, the best available table was right next to two very good looking men even more out of place in the joint than I was.

It didn't take me long to realize it was a job interview.  In a skeezy cafe at 5:30 in a questionable part of town.  Hmmm.  The guy interviewing was using all those pointless questions H.R. teaches clueless management, like "If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would be?'  instead of "Can you do this job?" and "Will the petty cash box be safe around you?"  There was lots of pointless yammering about "team evolution."  It's possible the word "paradigm" was let loose.

Since the interviewee looked like this

except in a navy blue sweater, or as much of the sweater as could stretch over his massive massiveness, I briefly entertained myself by wondering if it was possible that he was shooting for a job in the pornography field.  It certainly seems like it would have been an excellent career choice.  Then I remembered that almost certainly a porn interview would have been much more along the lines of "Let me see it.  Hard."  Which would have been okay with me and probably the rest of the cafe.  Certainly the barista.  It also would have been more useful than asking "What do you think your personal weakness in a group dynamic might be?" although that could apply to the world of smut too.

I do so love living in San Francisco.

TCB

Christmas is upon us once again.  Perhaps you had heard?  Just in case you hadn't here is some Xmas  smut.  You know somewhere, someone has a freak on for this stuff cause, you know, a lid for every pot and all that.

At lunch today, I realized it's not even a week into December and I am already sick of holiday music, washed up singers (looking at you, Rod Stewart) puking up sickly retreads of tunes trying very hard to be ecumenical by not mentioning Jeebus Whatshisname during a holiday inspired by his birthfday.  It's not that I've grown sick of them, it's more that I reached my saturation point years ago and now the instant they roll back around, I am ready to do violence at the first tinkling strain I hear of Silent Night.

Who wants this crap?  Who thought it would be a good idea to see what Ella Fitzgerald could do with Little Drummer Boy?  I am fully prepared to give my business to any bar, restaurant or store that puts up a sign saying "Carol Free Zone."

As an anodyne to the Bangles covering Blue Christmas and all the other seasonal pap out there, let me offer the Verve remix of Nina Simone's Take Care of Business.  A few years ago, the venerable jazz label Verve shared their fabulous catalogue with modern producers and DJs who wanted to update these classics with some very mixed results.  This is, I think, one of the most successful.

I don't think you can refer to the lyrics as double entendres, they are so thinly veiled.  "O lawd, don't keep me waiting / Be as firm as can be" is more like a single entendre, or 1.5 at best.

The whole is very loose-limbed and crazy (with trombones!  And castanets!) especially for a Simone song, but then, Our Lady of Did I Ask You, Motherfucker? shows up to very firmly kick the project's butt into gear and the contrast makes things fascinating.

Take it away, Miss Simone:

Cat Tales

Secret Agent Fred has been staying at Chez peenee for a while and I'm helping him take care of his elderly cat, Steve, by administering doses of antibiotics while Fred is out being a SLUTTY, SLUTTY JEZEBEL WHORE FUDGEPACKING STRUMPET.  Not that I mind of course.

What's striking is the difference between Steve and my cat Saki.  Saki is a vicious little shit (he has a permanent big red "CAUTION" on his file at the vet's and two of my Thanksgiving guests ignored my sternly worded warning to leave him alone, to their later bleeding regret.  In their defense, he is adorable.  But vicious.) Steve, on the other hand, is the most amenable, affectionate, sociable cat I've ever run across.  But while I can always get medicine down Saki's gullet with nothing more than a general air of irritation from him, Steve turns into a whirling dervish, bucking and astonishingly adept at keeping the dropper out of his mouth.   He's fast for an old codger.  At least he doesn't try to scratch.  I shudder to think of the damage that Saki could dish out if he disliked getting dosed the way Steve does.

Also, I have a hard time blaming Steve; the medicine smells strongly like old bananas and seems to be upsetting his stomach.  Antibiotics do the same thing to me, so I'm sympathetic.  Still, his coughing sneezing fits sling cat snot widely, so the sooner all this is behind us the better.

Anyway, here I am granma peenee pottering around with the cats in a frumpy cardigan while Fred is out terrorizing queer bars.  NOT THAT I MIND.  Of course not.  It's just when I pictured minding pussy in my dotage I was thinking more along the lines of this.

I love the astonished look on that big lug's face when things get out of hand, so to speak.

Or this

Or something.

Vote Now!

A ginger selling something or the other.  Who knows?

My dears. the polls are OPEN and the race is on.  First the UN votes Palestine as a state; and then that slattern MJ has opened the Kitchen Queen contest over at Infomaniac ; and now you can vote for the smut of your choice at  Cybersocket

Secret Agent Fred and I spent an amusing time last night reviewing their lists ("stars," products, sites and other ephemera) and vetting the prospects. I meant to save the best for a post here today, like this

but I realize now that I failed to note what, or who, the different pictures were of so I just wound up with a big ol' pile of smut.  Regrettable.

Part of the problem is that all-too-common bugaboo of internet browsing: distraction.  Fred and I started out looking up names from Cybersockets' lists that we didn't recognize, but that quickly turned into each of us sharing with the other our favorite performers or auteurs or nastiest or freakiest and the whole thing dissolved into a jungle of unrelated tabs.

People like feets.

One  of things that I was reminded of is how often porn stars (or "people of porn" as I like to call them) turn up with those weird eye problems known as "wall-eyed" or "wandering eye" (Wikipedia kindly informs us this is properly called strabismus.)  Persons less nice than me refer to this as "seeing you coming and going" "being able to drop a dime and pick up two nickels" or simply "da crazy eye."

In other fields of entertainment this condition is more of a handicap, but in the egalitarian world of feelthy pictures what's in your pants seems to cancel everything else out.

And who gets MY vote?  Beats me.  I'm still doing research.  Or "research."  Because I am thorough, bitches.

Here's a partial list of crazy eyed beauties.

Scott Carter.  He's Spanish so of course his nom d'porn is "Scott Carter."  Of course.

Francesco D'Macho.  Nice dick, unfortunate eyes.

Jonathan Agassi. "Hey!  I'm over here! Hey!  Oh."

Jimmy Durano.  I am so ashamed of even commenting on these boys' slight disability when they are blessed with so many other sterling qualities.

Sunday Night at the Movies

As I mentioned, the New York Times groused that Liz and Dick was "not terrible enough," but I don't know what they were whining about, it seemed plenty awful to me.  Puh-lenty.  Diane von Austinburg kept asking what I had expected.  It was pretty much just as bad as I had been led to think, but that was what kept me cringing and moaning loudly throughout.

We debated who might have been better cast in the leads.  I was undecided between William Shatner and Courtney Love as Richard Burton, but absolutely convinced that Liz should have been Lypsynka.

Then we stumbled on a French silent movie that made no sense, possibly because we were all loaded by then, possibly because we missed the first hour and had to refer to all the characters by labels like "Baby Teeth" and "Crazy Wig".  There was a seance in the Magic Room where Crazy Wig's brother climbed under the table, apparently to orally satisfy the guests.  As you can imagine, the whole thing was a great improvement over Liz and Dick.

We Give Thanks for So Many Things

In case you missed it, Thursday was Thanksgiving.

before

after

Let's just move on, but not before offering up sincere and deep thanks to Diane von Austinburg (who blew in town just for the cooking) and Secret Agent Fred, both of whom were great help.

In more up-to-the-moment news, we are sharing in the general slavering over tonight's trainwreck that is the Liz and Dick movie starring Lindsay Lohan.  A great many reports confirm that it seems destined to challenge Plan 9 from Outer Space's long held title as the worst movie ever made.  The New York Time's review actually said that it wasn't "terrible enough."  That's right, they were complaining it was insufficiently crappy.  Wow.  That's just greedy.  Anyway, come 9:00 PM West Coast time, count on the inhabitants of Chez Peenee to be in our jim jams, thrilling to this epic.

Lifesaving bitches at attention in case the Virginia Woolfe scenes overcome mrpeenee.

In Which Fred Causes Trouble. Again

Secret Agent Fred and I were out sort of running errands earlier this week.  Actually, let me correct that, "running errands" sounds infinitely more focused and purposeful than Fred and I ever are.  Think of it more as "We were wandering around and occasionally, errand-like events more or less occurred."  Yeah, that's more like it.  Anyway, as part of our bumbling, we washed ashore in an odd part of town near the nursery I like because they always have a huge clearance sale this time of year to make room for Xmas trees and I have scored some prime flowers and shrubs there marked down to less than 75 per cent of the original asking price.

I wanted to also show Fred an odd little gem near there that's fascinated me for years.  I assume the Silver Crest Donut Shop is Exhibit A on somebody's thesis trying to prove holes in the fabric of time exists.  A grimy, 24 hour joint with a pool hall beer joint in the back, it has obviously never been touched by the brush of gentrification so obvious in other parts of San Francisco.  It usually seems deserted, but the beer joint is so dark, it's impossible to be sure what's lurking around the edges.  Child molesting gremlins, at a guess.  I understand patrons refer to it as "The Crust."

We rolled in and Fred was boggled and started shooting pictures of the out of date decor and semi-antique fixtures.  A frumpy hag shuffled out of the bar and agreed to sell me two donuts, but made her dark suspicions concerning the two of us evident. She repeated my order several times, with the emphasis shifting around in it as if she was trying to figure out what my con was.  "You want two donuts?"  "You want two donuts?"  "You want two donuts?"  By the time she was through even I was wondering what I was covering up.  Did I mention her thick Russian accent?  Oh yeah.

Then she noticed Fred and his camera and her background as a Russian mafia hit man kicked in.  "No pictures.  This private property.  Stop pictures."  We got the donuts and fled, it seemed possible she would have been training to kill armed with nothing but her ratty mule house shoe.

I did get some nice plants at the sale.

The End Times, an Ongoing Report

My dears, we must be strong and face the very worst head on: Hostess Bakeries, purveyors of Twinkies, Dolly Madison snack cakes, Ding Dongs, and other fine, fine delectables is going out of business.  A strike by its workers, falling on the heels of its bankruptcy a couple of years ago has put a stake through its junk food heart.  A workers' strike!  Commie bastards.

You must know mrpeenee is an absolute fiend for Ding Dongs.  Their plasticy, vaguely "chocolate" exterior and whatever the hell that white stuff in the middle was: mmmm, heaven.  And now to think they've been done in by American's turn to more healthful eating.  Go stuff a fucking apple in your mewling little pie hole and leave my Dolly Madison twelve pack alone, thats what I say.

Reports are already filtering in of hoarding.  Can you blame us?

Echium

I have meant for awhile to tidy up the far back corner of my yard.  When R Man and I bought this house 15 years ago, I cleared out all the invasive crap that covered the yard and, faced with a big blank dirt slate and little experience with gardening in California, I started sticking in plants randomly.  My plan: "it'll either live or it won't."  In that particular spot of the garden, I tucked in a couple of shrubby plants, native to Madeira, called Echium.  They've turned into one of the most successful (if you want to call it that) specimens in my erratic efforts.

The original crop.

Cross bred into this.

Maybe a little too successful.  Bear in mind one of its common names is Patterson's Curse because of its aggressive and invasive nature.  But I still like it because it has beautiful  tiny sapphire blue and purple flowers that mass together to make huge clusters up to six feet long on spikes that can be twelve feet tall.  It is a "say something" plant.

And what it says in my yard is "Get out the way, bitch" because those two modest ones I put in all those years ago have cross pollinated with sluttish echiums from all over San Francisco (bees love them) to found a dynasty of shaggy monsters the size of Madonna's ego that have covered a quarter of my open space.  I still appreciate their beautiful big blue blossoms, but enough is enough and I decided to clear them back.  I'm not terribly worried about losing them, I've cleared them out a two or three times in the past and my experience is they will be back flourishing in a couple of years.

Pretty, but trouble.  Isn't that always the way?

So I armed myself with lopers, pruners, a saw and a hatchet I call "The Punisher" and headed off for the back.  This is not dainty Jane Austen lady's gardening, this is more like  Sherman's March to the Sea.  As I was whacking my way through the brush a piece of debris flew up to hit me in the eye and knocked my contact lens right out.  The nerve!

On one of my previous assaults on the echium stronghold, four or five years ago, friends took this little snap which they still think is just the height of hilarity.

"Oh no, you DID NOT just attack me back.  Behold I am peenee, destroyer of Echium fastuosum.  Hear the tread of my boot and know your death, shrubby motherfucker."

And believe me, destroy them I did, having replaced my contacts with my glasses and a resolve to take that patch of Edenic paradise down to the ground.  Which I did.  Take that, bitches.

Namaste, Bitches

Now that all that election foolishness is past, can we get back to discussing more important and amusing things, things like me?  Just for instance.

And what's up in the peenee world?  Our dear friend Secret Agent Fred has taken to forwarding me artistic images he finds whilst out and about on the internet.

God bless Fred.

Also, I have resumed yoga (and can I reiterate how annoying yoga is in that no verb actually relates to it?  I'm "doing" yoga.  I'm "practicing" yoga.  I'm "performing" yoga.  Yuck.  Sounds more like I'm contemplating taking up porn.)   Anyway, I'm back on the yoga train.  I purposely did not say anything about this because there is nothing worse than announcing your plans for improvement and then you sort of drift off, but your friends remember and somebody asks "So how's the (fill in the blank: yoga, meditation, jogging, porn, whatever) going?" and you have to come up with some lame answer that doesn't reveal you failed to last three days on the path to enlightenment.

When R Man got sick and I started seriously taking care of him, I blew off yoga.  I wasn't in the mood for much of anything, spinal twisty flexy things included.  But that's been almost two years and I was stiff and achy so last month: Yoga-time!

Why yoga? Because I was one of the sissy girly boys who could neither throw nor catch anything and couldn't sprint to the end of this sentence, I was always uninterested in physical activities until I stumbled on yoga.  I was thrilled to find out that, sincee I'm double jointed, all those bizarre looking poses are a snap for me.  Hoo hoo, take that, homphobic, moronic junior high coaches of my past.

And when does the meditation thing start?  I never have any of that higher minded crap in my yoga.  I'm too busy trying to get the poses down right so that I don't tear my hamstring (again) and then I'm thinking "I wonder if there's any Butterfingers left?" so not much meditation.

The only thing I refuse to indulge in is yoga classes.  I get in there and the teacher says "So now put your right hand on your left knee...." and I freeze and think "Which one is my left?  Which one is my hand?"  Plus you're always surrounded by these skinny bitches in their Lulu Lemmon yoga togs and their tidy-ass ponytails doing all the poses just a tiny bit better than the teacher.  I know you're not supposed to be worrying about how well anyone else is doing, but get real.  I wind up spending all my energy on refraining myself from slapping them.

So I do my yoga alone at home and just wearing a tee shirt.  I know I'm leaving myself open to a bunch of low-minded comments here, but I hate wearing pants for yoga.  There is absolutely no sweatpants in the world loose enough to be comfortable when one is trying to see how far one can bend over backwards.  Fortunately, I  have no mirrors in there so I'm spared what is probably pretty close to this:

I swiped this from MJ over at Infomaniac.  It was attached to Mitzi's recipe, but I suspect it is actually a snap of MJ.

Goddam paparazzi.

à choix multiple

Ask yourself: "Was this my Halloween?"

 A bowl of leftover candy because no little urchins showed up to extort Butterfingers and peanut M&Ms out of your unwilling grasp?

Or was it this:

Don't you wish it was?

Also, in loading the picture of the candy bowl, I stumbled across this little treat in our files.  Apparently it is one of R Man's old fans from back in the day.  R Man was very popular.

Life in San Francisco

The recent Folsom Street Fair, featuring public bondage, gays dressed up like pandas, and my favorite thrift store, Out of the Closet.

Stormy Weather

No snark from me about mrpeenee readers who are riding out Hurricane Sandy.  Eeks.  It sounds astonishingly bad, even, as the youth of today would have it, srsly bad.  I had planned to make a public service announcement reminding everyone buying emergency supplies that when the power goes out, even the cheapest bourbon tastes better without ice than any gin, but events sort of overtook me, so here's hoping the best for all you Mid-Atlantic types.

Bracing for the surge.

I supported our sisters in peril by going out for a massage at the spa this afternoon.  I snagged one of my favorite massage guys; he does this thing where he pinches your Achilles tendon HARD.  It is both excruciating and exquisite at the same time.  Fabulous.  I only hoped that help.

mrpeenee Explains Baseball

Baseball is not the one with the pointy brown ball, that's football (but not the football all the rest of the world calls football,) it's the one with the small white ball, but not the really small ball cause that's golf.  There are a whole bunch of rules, the point of which are to make the whole fucking thing take longer than it needs to.  The last time mrpeenee was dragged to a game he was caught reading a book by his long suffering father.  I was bored, what did he expect?  As Aunt Ida in Female Trouble reports "The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life."

So the World Series apparently is this baseball thing, much like Project Runway's Season Finale, and San Francisco is in the series hoo hoo, and seems to be winning, more hoo hoo.  Even as a sportsphobic gayboy, I have to admit it is sort of thrilling to have the home team doing so well.  You go girls!

Just this evening, a particularly pleasant, warm l'heure bleue, Secret Agent Fred and I were making our way through the Castro and the queer bars were yelling and high fiving like a Hooters after too much cheap speed with all the TVs tuned into the game.  I'm pretty sure most of these poofters have no firmer athletic insights than does mrpeenee, but they were not allowing that to slow down their sloe-gin-fizz-fueled mayhem.

Baseball.  Yay.

Define "Gay"

Everybody knows I like the porn, right?  I have an archivist knowledge of the subject as well as an aficionado's fondness of it.  So when the topic of Resse Rideout, porn person, and his being straight while professionally having sex with other men came up (on some really unfortunate VH1 show,) I was less than impressed.  Plenty of guys doing the nasty in gay porn and other rent-type boys insist they are straight.  Maybe they really are just interested in easy money, maybe they gots issues.  Either way, I don't particularly care.

What struck me more in this instance was the substantial gap in appearance between the mister and his missus:

Reese, the kind of muscley smoothness and pretty face I'm so darn fond of.

Mme. Rideout, who looks like she would be someone you could turn to if you were interested in finding out the current price of crystal meth.

Also, as a side note, there was a period when Reese Rideout's face looked sort of odd.  I thought he had had cheap work done, but now seeing his charming wife, I wonder if, instead, it was recreational chemicals.

Cause he's not gay.  Heavens no.

You Know, Halloween's Coming

I understand this story is not funny, it is, in fact, tragic on many levels.  And yet, because I have the same sense of humor I had in junior high, I cannot helped being amused by the many odd, odd elements of it.

To wit: two naked, gay, Wiccans (and doesn't that sound like a bad joke your uncle would tell?  Two naked gay Wiccans walk into a bar....) in a nasty little burg near here called Vallejo apparently went off their meds, killed their pet duck, busted out the windows of their own cars, set their house on fire and then one of them pulled a rifle on responding police officers and was shot dead.

Wow.

Oh, also, our crack local media outlet reports "The slain man had a collection of 400 fluorescent lightbulbs in a shed in the backyard."  Cause, you know, we need to know that.

Again, I understand some poor sick man was so tormented by his own demons he wound up dead.  Not funny.

The pet duck and the fluorescent lightbulbs, on the other hand, almost funny.  Sort of funny.

OK, I'm ashamed.

Here, eye candy:

Funnies

Many thanks to Muscato for pointing us towards Mary Worth and Me which I have been plowing through all night.  A blurb on the site announces "Reminds us of Mystery Science Theater 3000" which is sort of close, but doesn't do it justice.

The funnies of my 1960s youth still fascinate me, Ms Worth certainly in that firmament, along with Juliet Jones (prissy bitch) and the vaguely homorific Gil Thorpe.  Actually, I realize Gil was only gay because I had a big ole crush on him and his industrial strength crew cut.

and because the strip could be relied on for frequent scenes set in a high school locker room's showers.


My fave was Brenda Starr, Reporter.  When I was fumbling through journalism school, I had a charming blown up picture of Ms Star announcing fierily, as her eyes did their patented blaze "I don't speak to entertainment press."  It was a quote I longed to use myself, but oddly, never got to.

Slightly better, here's one I just found.

We've all been there, haven't we?  The stringy hair, the long shower trying to wash the shame away, the oh-so-conveneint amnesia.  Speaking as the voice of experience (much like Mary Worth!) I say if the police aren't asking uncomfortable questions, it's probably best not to worry too much about those lost weeks.  How good could they have been?  Move on sweetie.

M, Our 1,000th Post and mrpeenee, Destroyer of Slugs

I have a striking addition to the garden, a variegated Brugmansia.

Our heroine in February

Nowadays.  Please note chewed-the-fuck-up leaves.

I was very struck by it when we met at the nursery cause I had never seen a variegated one before.  Beautiful big chartreuse and lemon yellow leaves, someday it will be seven feet tall with huge, salmon pink drooping blossoms.  It's already doing quite well, pretty much tripling in size since last spring, despite some pest chewing up its big leaves.

That's why when I saw this banana slug (one of the goddess's most grotesque grotesqueries) loitering near it this morning, with a completely unconvincing air of innocence, I moved to destroy Mr. Slug without a moment's hesitation.  Mercy is not an option when it comes to protecting my broadleaved semi-tropical darlings.

Slug, meet salt.

Salt, meet slug.

You know how to kill a slug?  You either can feed it to your duck, and had I duck I would have, or you can pour salt on it.  The slug dissolves into a goo slime, hopefully in a spasm of agony.  I would feel some compunction about this if it hadn't been feeding on one of my plant favorites and besides, how much sympathy can you muster for a creature whose camouflage seems to consist of passing for a fresh cat turd?

And yes, one thousand posts down.  Who'd a thunk it?

How many Houseboys with big tits and bulging baskets does this make?  More than we could want to count.

In Which mrpeene Catches up With the Rest of TV Land

It's true, I have avoided the siren lure of Downton Abbey.  It premiered right in the middle of the very dark days of R Man's death and, oddly, I was not up to the thrills of Edwardian Yorkshire society.  Of course that couldn't last; how could a man who's read and re-read all of E.F. Benson resist the Dowager Countess?

Over the last couple of nights I have given myself over to a marathon of all 16 episodes, sort of an orgy of tea and turbans.  I love it, just like everyone said, but I think that may have been part of my reluctance to dive in after missing it originally.  Could it really be as archly amusing as reports had it?  Turns out, it is.

Even before watching it, I had a clear image of the whole thing being a sort of mash-up between Upstairs, Downstairs and Gosford Park, especially since Maggie Smith is pretty much the same character in both the Park and the Abbey.  And aren't we all glad of it?  I know she can border on scenery chewing, but also, when she decides to crank up her guns, the old girl can be astonishingly devastating and effective.  It was the upcoming cage match between her and Shirley MacLaine that finally convinced me to get on board the Abbey train.

My only complaint: the luscious, luscious Theo James (who played the luscious, luscious Turkish attache) was killed off less than a whole episode into the madness.  That left the show with some pretty fine eye candy, but nothing of the stellar quality of Theo. 

Theo James was also the only good bit in some dreadful BBC sci-fi gibberish called Bedlam.

Still, come January when it returns, I'll be there.  I already am sort of jonesing for that beautiful red velvet couch in the library.

In Which mrpeenee Hugs a Tree

Before I start whining again, let me clear up an earlier misunderstanding.  Last spring I wrote about the canyon I call home, including this shot of neighborhood eucalyptus,

and dear NormaDesmond commented something along the lines of being surprised since he thought I lived in San Francisco.  SIGH.  As a matter of fact, I live not only in San Francisco, but in the very center of it, geographically.  It just happens that my neighborhood is a huge canyon (the unimaginatively named Glen Canyon,) undeveloped except for the street I live on.  I suspect this represents real estate development shenanigans, but it's ok with me because I get to live like Lisa Douglas from Green Acres: a big city gal surrounded by greenery.

Anyway, I interrupted my demanding schedule of vicodin induced napping to bustle down to a meeting this afternoon at the Glen Canyon Rec Center (a Rec Center!  Complete with muscular young hooligans shooting hoops next door.) that had been called to protest over plans to cut down a bunch of the enormous eucalytus and other trees that fill the canyon.

San Francisco is a tiny peninsula wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Bay with no rain nine months out of the year.  Before the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it had no trees, just windswept sand dunes and stunted scrub.  By the 1920's, agressive planting of eukes, cypress and pines in the parks and open spaces around town had helped alleviate that to a degree, but San Francisco still has one of the smallest surface areas covered by a tree canopy in America.  We have about 12 percent; not much more than Las Vegas, for christ sake, and far less than Houston's more than 30 per cent.

So it would seem like, with climate change looming, we would cling to each tree, tooth and nail.  Instead, the SF recreation and parks' Natural Areas Program pushed through city legislation to remove thousands of trees here to help restore the landscape to what it was originally.  Hard to argue with that, but I do because I do not think the trade off of all the trees is worth it.

The meeting was exactly what I expected, a roomful of old local hippies with a seasoning of crazy guys.  They're slated to start cutting trees in a couple of weeks and I don't know if this protest has any chance of working.

Again, sigh.

Why do I expect this is not what's in store?