Monday, April 1, 2024
In Which mrpeenee Goes to Paris
Friday, March 29, 2024
In Which We Voyage
Sunday afternoon, Diane von Austinburg and I will hurl ourselves into the sky and hopefully land in Paris the next morning. Woohoo. I'm looking forward to our trip very much, we'll also be dropping in on Venice for a few days. I haven't been to Europe in more than 30 years, but my previous trips to Paris were very successful and got all the obligatory destinations out of the way so now I can concentrate on my favorite Parisian activity which is simply wandering around aimlessly.
Or possibly just holing up in my hotel room since the weather forecast calls for Gallic gray skies and chilly rain. As sort of a bon voyage from San Francisco, the weather here has flipped from gorgeous sunny spring back to drizzly winter; I feel like I'm rehearsing for my vacation.
We do have a couple of plans, the one I'm looking forward to the most is an exhibit of work by my favorite artist in the world, Mark Rothko. It's the largest show of his stuff ever mounted and I only found out about it after I had already arranged the trip. We get there the day before the show closes, it was meant to be.
I also arranged for massages in both Paris and Venice. Experience has taught me that being trapped in an airplane results in my creaky old carcass needing some assistance straightening up. The website for the spa in Venice was very straightforward and I got the reservation with no problem. The Parisian one, naturalment, was considerably more difficult; I'm still not 100% sure I have a reservation. I'm sure it'll be fine.
"I'm sure it will be fine" pretty much sums up my attitude for this whole trip; I've done fuck all research for where to go and what to do. We'll be in Paris and Venice. It's going to be wonderful. So adieu bitches, the boulevards and the canals are calling me.
Fellow travelers:
Friday, March 22, 2024
In Which We Go to Church
First let me emphasize, I WAS NOT EAVESDROPPING. I was at Peet's, the best cafe in the world, and a couple of elderly queers sitting behind me were discussing how to get more kids to come to church in very clarion tones. What was I supposed to do, stick my fingres in my ears? I was immediately not on their side. If the youth of today are not interested in what you're selling, maybe, I don't know, stop harassing them?
They had a number of plans, or maybe just concepts, the most effective sounding of which was to utilize peer pressure. I'm not editorializing, they used that specific phrase. Did they think these kids are unaware of religion? That they could explain "Jesus died for your sins blah blah blah" and the kids would fall in line? "Sure count me in. And tell Father Rafferty the next time he puts his hand down my pants I'm going to charge him 20 bucks."
There were numerous details hashed out so they were still sitting there when I got up and left and I got a good look at them. For one thing, one of the elderly queers was an old lady with a deep voice, so oops. Her fellow conspirator was a plump elf with one of those beards that doesn't go down far enough past his jawbone to be convincing. He was the one who pronounced the word "teenager" a little too enthusiastically.
My relation with church going is not nearly as traumatic as that of some gay men (or what these kids they were plotting against are probably in for.) My family was vaguely southern Baptists; one of my aunts told me when my father's mother decided the family needed to have a religion, she just looked around to see what flavor to pick and landed on the Baptists.
Southern Baptist is one of the most conservative of American Protestant sects. They take the prohibition against false idols very seriously to the point where they have no stained glass, no statues, no icons, nothing to look at when you're a board little kid and the guy at the front is droning on and on. I had no idea what was going on, my entire religious education consisted of "Shut up and sit down." Unlike other religions, Baptist do not have communion every week, but occasionally, for no reason I understood, the church would break out stale crackers and grape juice, because Baptist forbid drinking alcohol. I thought we were just having snacks.
Eventually, when I was about 11, I got baptized. Everybody else my age was doing it, even Blake Lively, so I figured whathehell and signed up for it. Baptists do not baptize babies, you have to go through some indoctrination before they let you into their pyramid scheme. There was a big tub behind the altar, big enough for the preacher and me both to stand in. He asked if I took the lord for my savior and I answered somewhere between "yeah sure" and "I guess so" which seemed good enough for him so he grabbed me and shoved me under the water.
Growing up on the Gulf Coast I had spent plenty of time in swimming pools with hooligans who dunked me and this was just as pleasant. My mother said I came up spluttering with my eyes huge. Well duh. Didn't you see that guy try to drown me? That preacher went on to become the mayor of the nasty little town I grew up in and I vaguely remember later some scandal involving him like all good Southern Baptists eventually indulge in.
The only other thing I really remember from my churchly days was my grandmother taking me to a revival. Revivals are when some traveling preacher would set up a big tent and preach and carry on. The church I was familiar with was blandly suburban, pretty much no different from all the other Protestants in town, but these guys were the real deal. They were one small step away from snake handlers and speaking in tongues. I was astonished by it all. It was at night and there were bright bare bulbs strung overhead and seating was just boards on top of milk crates. I have never been to a carny side show, but whenever I read about them the image of that evening comes vividly to mind.
Anyway, my little brother died and my grandmother attempted to console my mother by telling her Jesus loved him so much, he took him "home" which sounds like pedophilia to me, but whatever. The whole thing went over with my mother about as well as you would expect and that was pretty much the end of mrpeenee and the Baptists. It was okay with me, they didn't have those snacks nearly often enough and they weren't really that good anyway.
Guys worth worshiping:
Friday, March 15, 2024
In Which Nursepeenee Considers Rectal Thermometers for Everyone
Sunday, March 10, 2024
In Which We Consider Photographic Proof
Our dear friend Bobby claims that I only write this blog in order to complain. To prove what nonsense that is, let me point out that it was a lovely day this afternoon and the cherry trees in the Castro are already starting to bloom.
I spent the afternoon organizing old printed photos, by which I mean I would pick pictures up out of one stack and put them in another and do absolutely nothing about them. I have a rough estimate that I probably have about 3, 000 photos. I never ever go back and look at them, but I decided I'm going to try and cull out the really dead wood and make some room in the closet that the boxes they live in are currently occupying.
I hired an organizer to come in on Wednesday and look through all these stacks and piles of so many much younger mrpeenees. My direction to the organizer is simple: pitch all the pictures that have no people in them.
My beloved R Man and my sainted mother shared one common trait, they were terrible photographers. Both demanded that the subject freeze and stand perfectly still while they tried to push the shutter button. Inevitably the result was a crooked blur that they swore was a picture. R Man dealt with his photography limitation by taking pictures of mostly landscapes because mountains don't move. Thus about easily a third of those 3,000 are just random mountains and forests and streets. When I look back at them, all I see are images that I already remember. So those 50, 60 shots of the hotel in Glacier Park in 1988? Out. Actual pictures of friends and relatives, many of whom have moved on to the other side of the grass, those I'll keep.
Here's a few that I've already run into and decided to put in the keep pile.
A tiny little mrpeenee, circa 1956, with my father, I think in Galveston. What strikes me most about this, aside from how absolutely adorable I was, is how very dark my father was. He had beautiful olive skin that never burned and would tan in the time it took him to cross a street. Did he pass that gene down to me? Hell no.Thursday, February 29, 2024
In Which We Fill Out Forms
I did my taxes tonight, always a highlight of the year. Hot little forms have been showing up in the mail for the last couple of months all claiming to be "important tax information." which I pile up on my desk where they glare balefully at me. I spend all of February doing nothing about them and dreading the day I will actually dive in and wrestle them to the mat. When I finally do turn to, all I have to actually do is check off a bunch of little boxes my tax guy has created. They are all questions like "did you invest in bitcoins last year?" And then every year I remember, oh yeah this is no big deal, this is why I pay the tax guy. EVERY. YEAR.
As long as I was in a government state of mind, I went ahead and completed my census form. I had merrily assumed it would just be asking for my address and if I was a white boy. It did ask that but it also seemed reluctant to take my word for a number of other impertinent queries.
For instance, it asked how many people lived here. I said just me and then the next question was, pretty much, are you sure? What about just for a little bit? Did you look in the closet, did you check under the bed? Dude, I swear I am the only one here.
They also focused a lot on my internet access and tools, to the point where I started to wonder if this was actually a census or a marketing survey.
They then asked in two different places what my ancestry or ethnic origin is, like they were trying to catch me out on a lie. When I checked off "white" it wouldn't let me move on until I specified what flavor of white I am. I claimed I was Finnish because I figured that would screw up their algorithm. My family comes from England, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, pretty much everywhere the natives survive on potatoes and cabbage. So I suppose I could have just listed "Western Europe," but where's the fun in that?
Guys:
In Which We Suffer Yet Another Birthday
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