Cat Tales, Cat Teeth

Saki, the Evil and Adorable Cat, had to go in for his annual check up (which, I'd just like to point out in passing, costs more than mine does.  Not that I mind, no of course not.)  The very cute vet pressed vigorously for me to bring him back and have his teeth cleaned.  Possibly he needed to make an extra mortgage payment this month, maybe his membership in the transvestite hooker gambling morphine ring was coming up, who knows?   R Man and I had always resisted having our cats' teeth cleaned since it requires general anesthesia and that seems to involve so many more risks than reward.

But this time, Dr. Curtis batted his blue eyes at me and added that Saki had a ginormous cavity in there and needed to have the tooth pulled.  Oy.  Coincidentally this was the same time NormaDesmond and  Designing Wally were both suffering through dental crises and their pitiful cries were still echoing in my pointy little head as I thought about Saki putting up with a toothache for who knows how long.  So I gave the go ahead Thursday.

It's been a rough couple of days for both of us.

Saki

Designing Wally

Norma Desmond

Some other guy.

When I picked him up after the procedure, I noticed a huge handwritten "CAUTION!!!" on his chart.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Oh, he was not happy about this," the receptionist assured me airily.

I had no trouble translating that "Who did he bite?"

"Everybody."

When we got home he was growling and crazy, and I could barely get him to settle down long enough to take the stupid little plastic cone collar off.  I was going to take a picture, because I am a bad person, but it was already traumatic.

 The vet also sent home some pain medicine that I'm supposed to shoot from a syringe onto his gums, but the two times I tried that only got him more freaked out and didn't seem to help, and now he seems to be recovered so I'm thinking of using the leftovers on myself or shipping them off to Norma and her dry socket.  Cause I'm a giver.

Brunch and More. Or Less.

How mortifying that my drink of choice is a Cascade Ice Pink Grapefruit flavored sparkling water with an Alka Seltzer thrown in, cause I am a Wild Man.  Just a regular panic, I tell ya.  It's sparkling!  It's grapefruit-y!  It makes me burp!  Sort of like a now,  happenin' Fresca.

How did Max Veneziano get in here?

Speaking of surveys, I have decided to create The Brunch Project since going out to brunch seems to be the highpoint of my week (which also raises the question "Is it really 'brunch' if it lasts eight hours and includes three bars and two restaurants?'  To which I can only reply "Fuck yeah.")

The Brunch Project will report back about these bacchanals with details on where we went, what we ate, which drinks were the tastiest, who was the cutest queers spotted and any police action involved.  But impertinent monkeys that you are, I am sure mrpeenee readers will want more, so here's the deal.  You send me the questions you want us to include on the Project Report and I'll be sure to use them in the survey which brunch participants will be asked to complete.

Stupid Back

My back, never terribly cooperative at the best of times, has been giving me grief all week.  I took to my bed with ice packs and muscle relaxants, hounded my chiropractor, prayed to the Psychic Friends - nothing helped.  Then this morning I dragged my sorry ass of to a "late brunch" (which is code for drinks and vicodin) with Secret Agent Fred and several friends and now, many hours later, I feel ever so much better.   Maybe it was the pizza.

A graphic representation of my backache this week:

Ick.

Much better.

Worthless.

Much better.

Done

I just love crossing things off my little OCD To Do list.

1) Get my creaky old Mac upgraded and all the bugs lurking around in its depths expunged so that watching porn wouldn't be so annoyingly slow.  I had planned to haul the old dear all the way down to a very inconvenient part of downtown where the very idea of parking is to be laughed at when I remembered Secret Agent Fred's boyfriend Duane works for Apple.   He knows all the kinds of tech stuff required and which is at the fingers of an ordinary 6 year old, but beyond mrpeenee.

We had a very amusing afternoon as he beat the computer into submission and then we went over to Fred's and rearranged his kitchen because we're all gay and stuff.  And now that my computer is blazing along, I realize how sluggish it's been and how resigned I had gotten to it.  No more, mutha.

2) Go see Dark Shadows.  Also with Secret Agent Fred.  I loved it, it looks great, so very Tim Burton-ish with lots of visual gags.  Michelle Pfeiffer is very tough bitch, which I love, especially when she parks herself at the top of some stairs with a shotgun anchored on her hip, blazing away.  Johnny Depp, of course, is wonderful.  I had worried after seeing the trailer that he would just be some halfassed cross between Captain Jack Black and the Michael Jackson imitation from Willy Wonka, but nope.  Interesting and funny and sexy, even under a couple of pounds of kabuki/dracula makeup.

3) Find a Christmas card, just to get ready.

Check, Check and Check.

Where's Norma's Drink?

Miss Desmond is waiting.

via Ivan Garcia

Computer. On.

I have to take my computer in to be upgraded and unclogged and have its proctological exam and be dusted and I'm not really sure what all.  Super Agent Fred has generously agreed to lend me his spare one (he has a spare computer.  Hmm.)  Is that going to work?  Is life ever that simple?   Probably not, so I probably won't be online for a while.  If my posts seems sort of stale, if my scintillating comments don't appear on your blogs and if the stock prices of porn companies slump, you'll know why.

Blood Sport

Can there be any doubt that it is, indeed, a wonderful time to be alive?  HBO's series True Blood returns June 10.  I am a huge-ish fan, even though I am well aware of the show's flaws, especially the luridly bad Southern accents plopping out of the cast's mouths.  But you know what makes up for all that?

Alexander Skarsgård's creamy, creamy creaminess

and Joe Manganiello's man titties.

Now word reaches us that Christopher Meloni, who apparently exists mainly to make me tingly all up in my bits, will be joining the cast.  I suppose the quota of hot guy pussy was just not up to Executive Producer Alan Bell's exacting standards.  To which I can only say, god love you, Alan Bell.

Fags, Their Hags and Other Joys of Nature

Do you believe in time warps?  Rips in the fabric of the universe that allow one to see or even visit the past?  I think I blundered into one at lunch today.  Of course, considering I don't get up until after 1:00 most afternoons, "lunch" is a slippery concept, usually occurring around 2:00 or 3:00, but since the menu today was pancakes and sausage, breakfast might seem accurate.   Nouns are just so darn confusing.

As I was snarfling down my short stack, BAM, time warp.  At first I thought it was only the vaguely generic disco bleating overhead, then possibly the gaggle of poofters loudly discussing The White Party (surely that doesn't still exist, does it?)  But then I realized the table one over from me so forcibly reminded me of a post I put up three years ago  HERE .

Like this sort of, but, you know, with more clothes.

 Today, as then, I was witness to a tragedy in the making.  Let's see, plump, loudly chipper young woman?  CHECK.  Her much more attractive male companion?  CHECK.  Her frequent pats and strokes as part of her bubbling conversation which he didn't quite recoil from, not quite?  CHECK.

Of course, young people now are so flexible about their sexuality, not like my hidebound old contemporaries, and freer to make a spectrum of intimacy choices and blahablahablah, but at lunch today, just as on the subway then, I thought to myself "Honey, no guy who wants to give you advice about your shoes is ever going to be Your Man."

In news closer to home I also took a walk up the canyon I live in.  It's pretty.

And I took pictures of my garden for MJ over at  Infomaniac, who is demanding them from all her readers.

A focus this time of the year is the big ass echium, the pointy purple flowers that look they were designed by Dr. Seuss.

Even up close they look like they began as props for Star Trek.

Campanula are pretty and they're the result of a bunch I just dug up in a friend's yard and plopped down in a bare spot.

Wall o' Jasmine, directly beneath my bedroom window.  Heavenly on a still evening after a warm day.

Watsonia, related to gladiola and which thrive here. I always mean to put in a bunch more, but always forget until way too late in the year, like now.

Then I took a nap cause really, how much do expect from an old man, regardless how sprightly and youthful looking he is.

The Bane of Our Time

Justin Bieber hair.

It must be stopped.

Darkness

When mrpeenee was just a mere scamp, trapped in the white trash swamps of the Gulf Coast, my how I adored Dark Shadows.  I would scurry home from school every day to be completely absorbed by it.  I was oblivious to its cheesy production values and clumsy acting gaffes (although I do remember the actors staring blankly at each other when one of them would blow his/her lines, which happened so often I think I assumed it was intentional.)  The glacial plot was fine with me, I was 12 years old and had plenty of time to kill.  I even convinced myself I had a crush on Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid.)  I think I must have been suffering some kind of vampire related temporary insanity.

Imagine my thrill when I heard Johnny Depp and Tim Burton (a collaboration I think is always inspired) had taken on the project of reviving the old hag.  Super Agent Fred shares my delight and, in fact, is streaming the original as preparation and has taken to orating the overly florid opening ("My name is VictOHHHRia Wintahrs...."  We're planning an a afternoon at the movies, but that might include She Male Sperm Whores 2.  You never know.

The Many Faces of Diva

Here we have Miss Ross in a 3:50 retrospective of her entire career of fabulosity, albeit with those bothersome Supremes edited out.  From a very authentic looking Hullabaloo vintage show (with the world's coolest boots showing off a snappy mashed potatoes/pony choreography thang,) through the Mahogany era fashion shoot (replete with Avedon-ish hair styling,) a disco whirl of red sequins (if you look carefully, you can see the pole she was presumably lashed to to insure she didn't fall into the fireworks,) and finally an MTV homage with white mink, yet more sequins (natch) and safety gays bursting out of the smoke machine.  One can assume without even looking for them that torn jeans are in there somewhere.

The wigs alone create a sort of hairpiece timeline.  I have to say, though, the Vidal Sassoon bob and leather miniskirt, while rather flattering, are almost an insult to those of us cherishing memories of the glam contrast between her bouffant and her rhinestone crusted sheaths.

I think it a song of great charm, vaguely Motown-ish, very much playing to her vocal strengths and conscious of her weaknesses.  Does the background vocals sound familiar?  They should, they are our old friends the Bee-Gees, who also wrote this gem.  Someday, this will be required viewing in seminars on 20th Century History.

Gaultier on File

Darlings, being, as I am, of the Glamorous Life I felt I had to go take in the exhibit at the dreadful de Young Museum here titled The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.  I hoped to be interested, but not much more since the de Young has mounted shows that would have embarrassed the AV club at a small high school.  In fact, it was astonishing and thrilling.  There were several mannequins with their faces projected onto them that were eerily lifelike, including the one who seemed to actually be making eye contact with you.

And the dresses!  Girleene!  What fabulous creations, with astonishing details like lace made from sharkskin and a metal bustiere or a leopard skin created from thousands of tiny, tiny beads.  Gorgeously  beautiful, feminine, gauzy gowns with slyly witty references about fetish wear tucked in.  Mermaid dresses.  Lace bell bottoms for particular men.  A lovely linen man's suit printed on the back with a life size photo of naked male muscles and appliqued with the butt of a pair of cutoff levis and a red hanky in the pocket.  We called it the Mullet Suit, business in the front and party in the back.

My only cavil was that it would have been even more wonderful to actually see some of the more trailing, swishy gowns paraded down the catwalk by a woman with hips narrower than her cheekbones, the way the were meant to be.  You could tell what gorgeous motion they were built to display.

And, of course, Madonna.