Just Calm Down

I would just like to point out that even though I am the blogger who had to escape from a white trash childhood in Texas, it is my readers from presumably more civilized backgrounds and current locations who have so enthusiastically jumped on the "Kill the raccoons and eat them" bandwagon in my earlier Fucking Raccoons post.

Who knew I had a bunch of Jethro Bodine fans as commenters?

Also, this just in, if you Google "Shirtless hillbilly" in order to find an image to illustrate a post like this, you are going to be immersed in a universe of some really scary photos.  And also, Alexander Skarsgård, which is always welcome, but seems sort of unfair.

Fucking Raccoons

Before, and definitely pre-raccoon.

mrpeenee's attempt at a lily pond was an unmitigated disaster.  Fucking raccoons.  They were out there every night gleefully splashing in it like it was a goddam waterpark.  One night I leaned out the bathroom window to shine a flashlight down at the ringleader and I can only describe his attitude as insolent.  I couldn't find anything to throw at him except several packages of Rolaids, but since I throw like a girl (and a particularly uncoordinated girl, at that) I completely missed.   And then the motherfucker ATE THE ROLAIDS.  I lay in bed listening to him crunching on them as I seethed.

That was pretty much the last straw.  I finally broke down last week and moved the lilies to a big pot that I fitted with a mesh screen cover (very attractive.  It looks like the latest thing in white trash trailer park decorating.  The upside: raccoon-proof.)

The lily "pond' although "lily bucket" would probably be more accurate.

Secret Agent Fred and I bailed out the tank and I've planted it out with irises.

After.  Sigh.

R Man and I  moved into this house 16 years ago and every spring when the irises around town burst into their frilly beauty, I would plan to plant a bunch the next fall and then I would promptly forget all about it until spring rolled around again.  It was one of them cycle of nature thingies.  This year, though, the presence of a big ass empty planter right in the beginning of the season to put out irises was nothing short of a godsend, so maybe all this worked out.  Still, fucking raccoons.

Ahoy, Matey

Avast!  We here at mrpeenee, Inc.  would like to remind you to get yerself a Polly, prepare to be boarded,  blow me down, surrender your booty and walk the longarm, September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

talklikeapirate.com/

Bang It

So I bought a gong. Yeah, it's pretty cool. What, are you trying to say you've never wanted one? As if.

When I was a very young little faglette, I was in band in junior high and high school. I was a band fag. In every band room, there was a gong and an absolute rule against hitting it. Of course, the need to do so was equally absolute, but the thing is, striking a gong is not something you can do covertly. It is in the nature of the beast, not going to happen.

So lo these many, many years later I was noodling along on the internet and suddenly recalled my long suppressed desire for a gong. I am not good at suppressing much of anything, let alone when I have a credit card at hand and a website called gongsunlimited.com singing its siren song. And now I have a gong.

It's lovely, hammered brass on a tasteful elm stand with a beautiful resonant tone. It's pretty badass. I hit it every time I pass it. The down side: it alarms Saki. The best thing: it alarms Saki.

I really am a bad person.

Groceries and Drama

So very much NOT what mrpeenee's Friday night looked like.

Secret Agent Fred and I caught up over lunch on Friday, discussing the political conventions, ramifications of our on-going struggle against the patriarchal norm and why they were so few cute boys out in the Castro.  Afterwards, we considered going out for drinks (always an amusing prospect with Fred,) but I was feeling feeble and my back achey, so I begged off and offered to drive him over to his boyfriend's house.  Fred has been staying there on and off over the last few months and renting his own stylish pied a terre on Air BnB.  It's been working well, Fred needs the money and tourists get the thrill of crashing in Fred's studio.  Fred will assure you, very firmly, he's located not in the the Tenderloin, but on the fringe of Nob Hill, sort of the Tender Nob, heehee.

So we went wheeling off to the boyfriend's place and on the way there, I recalled the new Whole Foods had just opened, sort of nearby and I dragged Fred off for an inspection.  Too late, I realized I had traded Fred's suggestion of an evening of society and high life for one consisting of grocery shopping.  I know that awful harridan MJ from Infomaniac is always harping on what a musty old fussbudget I am, but never had I been forced to see how close to the truth she might be until the evening found us yukking it up in the produce aisle.  I saw myself as just one fluffy miniature poodle short of truly becoming a creaky Old Mary.

On the bright side, they had nectarines on sale.

After we checked out, I ferried Fred on over to Duane's and came home to brood.  How had I, the terror of French Quarter cocksuckers during the reign of Depeche Mode, turned into such a frump?  Turned out I didn't have long to think about it cause Fred called to announce he had broken up with his boyfriend and needed a place to stay.  So now we have house guests, Saki and I, which is fine with me, I adore Fred, but Saki is so not feeling the love about Fred's cat.

I know from experience the best role in breakups is to be supportive, but to try not to vent about how you always knew the ex was no good and sort of fatuous and dressed funny.  As soon as you go down that road, reconciliations on their part become so uncomfortable.  I remain loving and nonjudgmental.  Saki just wants the brown bedroom with its attached bath back as part of his territory.

Also, let me be clear Fred seems to be doing OK with all this, sad, but not heartbroken.  Apparently it's been in the works for a while and I know it's always easier to be the dumper than the dumped.  Still, I worry that this is all my fault.  Am I to blame for exposing Fred to the fast lane life of Whole Food's baked goods department?  The timing seems terribly fraught.

Open Your Golden Gate. Five Dollar Toll.

There is, for many of us, a sort of quiet, overcoming-adversity pride to living in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities on the planet.  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers face down real estate prices that compete with Manhattan; groceries which, by weight, cost about the same as narcotics; and gasoline that appears to be a handcrafted and smuggled in at night to judge by what we pay at the pump.  And now this:

From the San Francisco Chronicle's Sept. 4 story on parking meters (which were charging on Labor Day.  No free parking for you, sucker!)

Starting in January, the city will begin handing out tickets for expired meters seven days a week, Sundays included. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's will be the only days when meters won't be enforced.

It's the little things.

On the other hand, our dear sistah Magda in New Orleans writes that today was the first he's had power since the hurricane passed through five days ago.  Let me tell you, sweetie, five days at the end of the summer in NOLA with no air conditioning is not something anyone should have to face.

Meanwhile, back home in SF, I went out for drinks with some friends and was freezing because I had forgotten a jacket.  You'd think more than 20 years here would teach me, but no.  Maybe I just can't afford common sense.

Houseboy booty.  Don't forget Speak Like a Pirate Day is coming up, Sept. 19.  Arrgh.  Prepare to be boarded.

A Night at the Theatuh

Jon over at Give ‘em the Old Razzle Dazzle recently posted about the charming Yvonne De Carlo on her Sept. 1 birthday which  brought to mind the  magical evening some friends and I saw her in a bizarre live show in New Orleans in 1986 or '87.

My friend Abby was house manager of the theater and had called to beg me to scrape up as many of my friends to come for free to the show because ticket sales had been so anemic she needed to paper the house.  A bunch of us agreed, which may have been a mixed blessing for Abby since we wound up laughing so hard we had the audience around us, composed almost entirely of Old Dears, glaring at us viciously.

I think the show was called something like "Legends of the Silver Screen," but it lives on in memory as "Has Beens on Parade."   I guess it might charitably called a "cabaret act."  Besides Yvonne, it also trotted out Howard Keel, Katherine Grayson, Jane Russell, Mamie Van Doren (!) and Dorothy Lamour.

Each one would creak out on stage, fumble through a couple of songs and what they must have thought was patter and then shuffle off.  The whole evening carried with it a thrilling frisson that any one of them might actually die right there before us, onstage.  Surely that's how troopers like this would want to go.

Mamie van Doren was tarted out (and I mean that in the most literal sense of the term) in a gown that looked a lot like it had been run up from a shower curtain.  As the designated chicken of the group, she flashed most of her still substantial cleavage in a manner that was awe inspiring.  Possibly a little scary, too.

Howard Keel came out with an oxygen tank and thanked Jesus for something or the other.  It wasn't clear exactly what.

Howard was followed up by his old co-star Katherine Grayson who reminisced about her role in Show Boat (in her review of it, Pauline Kael referred to Ms Grayson as "the singing valentine", a reference to the saccharine soprano she typically belted out.)  We all settled in expecting her to take a crack at "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" or maybe even "After the Ball " (man, would that have been appropriate.)  Instead she launched into an astonishing cover of "Ole Man River."  Apparently, her range had dropped into something approaching basso and she wasn't about to raise her sights any higher.

We ran into Abby at the  intermission which everyone (including, apparently, the cast) spent getting as loaded as possible.  She apologized for getting us into what was rapidly turning into a theatrical disaster. We laughed, made some jokes about Madame Tussard and got more glares from the people around us.

Then we were back for Jane Russell.  All I recall about her was that she had some trouble with her props when she tried "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" (the nerve!) and that she looked a lot like a mean lesbian gym teacher.

Yvonne was up next and really was the most successful of the whole lot, mostly because she didn't seem to be taking any of it too seriously.  She sang "Before the Parade Passes Me By" and got so tangled up in the last chorus, she finished a bar behind the band.  She just laughed and said "I guess that's a parade that passed me by!"  Yukyukyuk.  What a gal.

Dorothy Lamour, who was born in New Orleans, was last and came out to a very warm hand.  There were people in the audience who obviously knew her from their long gone youth and she worked it, recalling watching vaudeville in the theater we were in.  By that point in the evening, she could have pulled out a reminiscence about seeing John Wilkes Boothe there and I doubt anyone would have batted an eye.   She sang something or the other, but so many people in the audience had fallen asleep, she could have gotten away with shadow puppets.

There was something like a curtain call when they all came back out.  I have never seen a cast taking their bows with so many of the audience determinedly making their way up the aisles.  My friends and I were probably some of the only faces they could have seen, and we were still laughing.

So hahahaha, and now I am slightly mortified to realize that even though they seemed so terribly ancient, I am now closer in age to these dinosaurs than the stoned and giggling smartypants I was then.   Wait, is that a parade I see passing by?

To put this in pespective, a similar show today might very well be composed of Neil Young, Micky Dolenz, Bette Midler, Henry Winkler, and Adrienne Barbeau.  Singing "Ole Man River."  Actually, I would line up for that show. 

Clint, Clint, Clint

OK, I haven't watched the entire lunacy that is Clint Eastwood's remarks (one would be hard pressed to call it a "speech") at the Republican convention, but not because I haven't tried.  I just can't sit through more than a few seconds of the stammering, wandering,"I left my tinfoil hat at home" wackiness of it.

And then, in reading about it, I stumbled across the slightly astounding fact that he's scheduled to direct Beyonce in a remake of the movie A Star Is Born.  Wow.  On so many levels, wow.

Wow number 1: Clint Eastwood is a proven good director (Million Dollar Baby.)  He is also a proven crazy old man (Republican National Committee convention.)

Wow number 2:  Beyonce is making a movie career out of resurrecting gay singing icons gone-by, either dead (Etta James in Cadillac Records,) from one of their past heydays (Diana Ross in Dreamgirls.  Sort of.) or fictional/past/dead (Esther/Judy Garland in A Star is Born.)   A mrpeenee prediction: before the next presidential election, we will see Beyonce in a remake of Yentl.  You heard it here first.

Wow number 3.  Clint Eastwood used to be really cute.