In Which We are Victimized Before We Indulge Musically

 

Oh goddamit.  Once again, some fucking THIEF has swiped my credit card number.  This happens on the regular so often that I am no longer irate about it, but rather, simply sort of glum.  I know this dance all too well; my credit card company (much more vigilant than I am about these things) contacts me to ask about some purchase they deem sketchy.  Spoiler alert: it is sketchy.  Once I acknowledge that I have never heard of the vendor or purchase, they cancel my card and I get to brace myself for several weeks of trying to remember which automatic payments and subscriptions I need to update.  Is this a way to celebrate Christmas?  Apparently it is.

In other xmas news, I have decided this year to not indulge in my annual rant against Christmas music.  I have clearly established how I despise the mewling tones of the tunes for, as Jon over at Razzle Dazzle puts it, the Festering Season. 

Instead I will give it up for the one exception I am willing to make every year and that is for Darlene Love and her bombshell, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).  I am not the only one so very taken by this song, her appearance on the David Letterman show was an annual event from 1994 to 2014.  After the end of the Letterman show, she moved her act to The View from 2015 until 2023.  That is quite a run, and a well-deserved one. 

Ms Love has one of the great, powerful voices in rhythm and blues.  There are very few singers who can match her when she digs in and really starts belting out.  Her collaboration with Phil Spector in the '60s was a work of genius, and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is a prime example of that. The song is buoyant with his trademark massive Wall-o-Sound, but Darlene Love's powerhouse singing actually manages to match it.

Without further ado, take it away Darlene.

Baby, please come home:

I find the word "panties" to be so luridly thrilling.

I think this portion of my blog, and its fascination with dicks and butts, does not give enough attention to tiddies.

Also, nut sacs.

Still, it's hard to argue with buttchops like this.

Diego Sans remains studly.

Xtra beefy

I had a good time last week in Texas, but the enchiladas were shockingly disappointing.  Shocking.

My hotel's shower was very nice, but could have been improved by a muscly companion therein.

In Which We Are Carolled

I was so close.  For the last couple of years I have celebrated making it all the way to Christmas without being subjected to any Christmas music.  I know being so hostile to the mewling tunes of this joyful season makes me an easy target for people wanting to call me a misanthropic grinch.  Fuck that.  It's only that I am willing to say out loud what  everyone else is thinking.

This year seemed to be shaping up for yet another Xmas uninfested by Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer and the like.  Since I pretty much go nowhere except my bathroom and Peet's Cafe (and they have totally gotten on board the no Christmas music train) I felt safe, foolishly safe.  I would just slide through what Jon, from Give Em the Old Razzle Dazzle, calls the festering season without my ears being punished.  

And then I had to go see my doctor.  What was waiting for me there?  Guess.  I opened their door and was confronted with Andy Williams, Perry Como, and Nat King Cole crooning fucking carols. And not just any carols, but the insipid, saccharin version.

Ugh, this is already been a difficult year.  I should have known.

Guys to soothe your holiday battered earholes:

Jean Franko, still in the wrapping, sort of.

I finally found out the name of this guy and his angelic backside, please give a warm peenee welcome to Alfred Herrera

Here we have the seasonal stylings of Jack Harrer, another one of those Bel Ami sluts.

My friends and others who enjoy low humor used to call this pose The Landing Pad.

Some anonymous, but humpy strumpet.

I know it's been a long year.  Lay down and take it easy for a while.

Everything is Relative

I had just clicked on a blog I'm rather fond of (brutos eros) and run across this charming tableau

when the guy who does my taxes (Taxguy) called to chat about how painful my relations with the IRS were going to be this year.  The whole thing made me wonder about karma and the coincidence of the universe and the similarity between insufficient deductibles and buttplugs.

Also, I think the red bucket lends an ominously festive note, don't you?

Also, here's my crixmus card for all you mischievous miscreants

Thank you wondermark comics

Cause If They Don't Dance, Then They're No Friend of Mine

Turns out I vacation so I can take naps in beds other than my own.  Secret Agent Fred and I took the train down to Los Angeles and I spent almost the entire 11 hour trip asleep.  Nothing is as lulling as the rolling rhythm of a train and there's really nothing else to do, anyway.

The L.A. tain station is gorgeous

We stayed in the Biltmore downtown,  where the lobby and other public spaces were also pretty spectacular, with all the original, elaborate details intact,

but our shabby rooms upstairs were like being confined in an old folks home designed by somebody who had seen The Shining once too often, complete with fluorescent lights and dingy yellowing paint.  We fled to a tonier hotel I like in West Hollywood, so I could sleep in a nice place and so we could be closer to the gogo boys of Santa Monica Boulevard.

The car rental place stuck us with a white Chevy Impala, the Car of Shame.  The poor clerk handling the exchange was trying to be pleasant, he was pretty cute, and acknowledged this was not exactly the Batmobile, but I was overcome by some kind of gay Tourette Syndrome where I couldn't help blurting out bitchy snark.   I am ashamed, but it's true, we did look like we could be busting hookers in Hollywood.  Did I just imagine the valet parkers sniggering as we pulled up?  Maybe, but this was L.A. after all, where you are what you roll.

Speaking of muscular semi-naked guys dancing to Madonna, we had a lovely evening out at some bar that I swear is a time warp to 1990.

The strippers were terribly cute and Fred has a way with them, they're drawn to him like he's a puppy with a fistful of singles.

Tragically, I now find out we missed the 2013 GoGo Boy Appreciation Day Festival and Competition by a few weeks.  Count me in for next year's.  I'll see you there.

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:

Isn't Christmas Over Yet?

I have not been happy the last couple of days. Yes, it's true. Turns out Christmas is a dreary time for the recently bereaved. I miss R Man, I miss him a lot. Just earlier this month I was struck by how much better I had been feeling and then Xmas, everywhere. Even porn sites are getting in the spirit.

Rats.

But you know, I am not by nature a droopy, morose Goth-y sixteen year old and so I resist. Avoiding sad songs is crucial; anything written in a minor key is deadly. You know what helps? Punk and Rockabilly, my old faves.

and Grace Jones in a Box

So I got my christmas card from dear friend Pee Wee. We were introduced at the Dinah Shore lesbian golf tourney mixer years ago. "Pee Wee, Peenee. Peenee, Peewee.

Anyway, it just served to remind me it's time for that annual highlight of Christas chestnuts, The Playhouse Christmas Special. You should at least watch the Marine Corps gogo Boy theme song. Go here

No, that's not the Kidney Stone I Passed

Part of the incessant barrage of commercials over this merry season is the particularly shrill shilling of "Chocolate diamonds." Isn't that precious? Taking rocks that were considered worthless (Wikpedia assures us brown diamonds have typically been employed only in industrial uses, like grinding equipment. Much like these fucking commercials) and then increasing their market value by connecting them with something actually desirable, like chocolate.

Honey, let me tell you, were I to be a Lady presented with a poop colored gemstone as a Crixmus present by some schmuck, I would replace said diamond in the setting with his left testicle, make a pate out of his right one and force him to eat it. Saint Zsa Zsa of Gabor, if you can't afford a decent diamond, spring for some overly fabulous rhinestone. Or a nice hazlenut praline truffle.

Or better still:

Big Box

I've mentioned before that any shopping not conducted at the grocery or Walgreen's does not thrill me, and those expeditions are rarely the high point of the day, even if they do result in cookies and Vicodin. So I buy all my clothes online and a new batch just showed up. I'm holding off on opening them until Christmas. Isn't that precious? I expect to be somewhat surprised with the contents since I have already forgotten what I bought. R Man, god love him, was never good at guessing what presents to get me and would simply demand a detailed list from me in November. And by detailed I mean not just "cashmere sweater, 1," but explicitly running down what color, size, and where he could get it.

Saki thinks the shipping is simply a superior way of getting wrapping paper and boxes for him to play in. He's a playah.

Happy Holidaze

Sixty years ago today, Ike and Mamie lead the survivors of the Annual Solstice Virgin Sacrifice stumbling away from the slaughter pit. Ike is lost in thought as to which might still be the most succulent, while Mamie manages to cling to her dazed consciousness only by focusing on what awaits her in the White House cellar.

Merry Exmas!!

Did You Know Christmas is Coming Up?

We actually know heterosexual men. Straight males who love the furry clam, the pink taco, the innie, not the outie, the hole not the pole. Five of them - no, six - wait, make that seven. Maybe 6.5. One of the straightest of them made us a fabulous gingerbread house. God love him, he knew we could use a little Christmas, right this very minute and he came across.

My favorite part? The tiny little gingerbread man packing a tiny little gingerbread bazooka.

The artist claimed it was no such thing, that, instead, it represented him carrying in firewood, but considering how carefully he's aiming it at his tiny little gingerbread wife, I am not fooled.

I recognize psychosexual dynamics, the madonna/whore conflict, the terror of the desired that straight men have to live with. Of course, we gays don't have all that; we just don't like pussy.

Unless it looks like this.

I snagged this photo from Kevin over at The Lisp and let me just thank him publicly. I think this will be my favorite Xmas present this year.

I genuinely am delighted with the house; the artistry is very impressive and it was most considerate of the old darling to make it for us. I had to have a very firm talk with Saki about not fucking with it. Negotiating with a cat: always your first mistake.

And it seems as if this will be the only gesture towards the season we will be presenting this year at Chez peenee. That's fine with me, I'm lukewarm towards Christianity as a whole. Most of my religious instruction consisted of "Shut up and sit down" so once I escaped and understood the whole thing was a Jewish fairytale about a zombie starring in a snuff film featuring his cannibalistic ex-boyfriends, I don't know, the magic sort of escaped me.

But let me go on the record as being firmly in favor of gingerbread houses.

Christmas Passed

Twas the night before Crixmus......and Urban Street Pirate dropped by.

The next day was a little something we like to call "Christmas." Maybe you've heard of it? While everyone else was snoring away at visions of sugar plums, I got up and made Spice Applesauce Muffins and then served them with tea in bed.Don't you wish you were married to me? Yeah, sometimes I wish I was married to me, too.

And then, PRESENTS:

Including the present that had been transported to the floor sometime during the night.No one is pointing any fingers, but I have my suspects.

Suspect A: j' accuse.

Gifties were a big hit. I got lavender argyles, hoo hoo.

Urban Street Pirate thought we had given him a stole. I considered explaining it was, in fact, a largish bath mat, but decided to leave him his sad little dreams.Besides, I think he looks good in it. If you see him out at the bars tonight, be sure to compliment on it.

I gave R Man a netsuke shelf. Saki dug it. Shades of old, prissy poofs in Tilling, we have turned into E.F. Benson's Georgie. Someone shoot me. Please.

I also found a totally cool picture frame at a consignment store,so I went out to Ocean Beach, shot some random pictures and blew one up for it as another R Man present. He likes, but then again, it's all about the frame.

In my post about the new color in the dining room, that sharp-eyed minx, Diane von Austinberg, demanded to know what we were putting in the living room where the astronaut picture had been. Zip it sister, I wanted to snap, it's a secret. Well, now the truth can be told. R Man's christmas present is up on the wall where the astronauts lived so happily for so long.And then Christmas was over. How was yours?

Paper Tiger

My white trash mommie could not bring herself to prepare me for the wild world by teaching me to cook, balance a checkbook or even run a washing machine, but she did manage to instill one housekeeping virtue in me that I have never shaken: One must not waste wrapping paper. When I was growing up, Christmas morning was a tense exercise in a sort of reverse origami; paper was meticulously removed from packages, folded neatly and then put aside for next year, then you could look at your present. If it wasn't for the various hurricanes that swept through our home, I'm sure there would still be the crumbling remains of paper from before I was born.

As it is, R Man and I have a vast collection of wrapping material going back to when we first got together in New Orleans, and we've lived here in San Francisco for 21 years. Pictures of our Christmas mornings show us growing grayer, but the pile of gifts looks like it never changes. Only our jammies evolve.

This year, though, I was just a wild man and actually went out and bought new paper. You can do that, you know. I was standing in Walgreens looking at their pitiful selection (and why in one of the few times in two decades that I've bought paper I wound up there is just one of those Christmas mysteries) when I was struck by a particularly gay roll. I couldn't decide if the decorations were martini olives or billiard balls, but amidst all the insipid Santas and holly, its cheeky humor appealed to me mightily.

And then, like one of those trick pictures with blurs that resolve into dolphins or cats or lesbians when you look at it the right way, I suddenly realized it was just tree ornaments. How disappointing, but I got it anyway. I plan on sticking with my claim that it's olives. As you can see:

The Mall. Dear God. The Mall.

What do I have in common with my heterosexual brethren? Aside from the fact we all like to stick our wieners in somebody's mouth? We all hate shopping. Hate, hate, hate it. In any form or fashion hate it. Not just Christmas - any time. I have mentioned, have not I, how thrilled I was to discover you can buy clothes at Costco. I would never venture beyond there and Walgreen's if I could help it. But Christmas rears its ugly head and I'm faced by my two problems: I love to give presents and I love to get them. I don't particularly care what's in them, I just thrill to the big, unopened pile of them, the mystery, the possibility of them.

So, that finds me this afternoon in Bloomingdale's, the nadir of a man's shopping experience. All I wanted was some shirts for R Man, but no, that's asking too much. I picked over racks of crappy, really expensive schmata that couldn't have announced more clearly its origin in slave labor sweatshops if it had a logo consisting of shackles and whip. All of it trying so very hard to be so very hip and failing miserably and all of it apparently targeted towards skateboarding suburban boys with mommy's credit card. And why on earth would that market be in Bloomingdale's? Even I, in my failing decripitude, could find a hipper store than that without breaking a sweat. The whole place seems to be shrieking "Weren't the 80s a bitchin' decade?" Well yes, but time to move on, darling, move on. And so I did, fleeing to the mall outside and running straight into a lounge area filled with middle aged guys parked there by their wives. I'm sure their glazed, bitter expressions mirrored my own. For an instant I was sorry not to have been straight, so I could have sent the little Missus off handling the shopping while I sat glumly thinking about porn. But then I remembered, you know, vaginas and all that. I decided it isn't worth it.

So here is the statement that truly reveals the depths of my stodgienss: "Thank god for the Docker's store." Well, it's better than Walgreen's.

Ugly Hats. Loaded Santas. Tis the Season.

Truly, I have no vanity. When one's best feature is in one's pants, being concerned about fashion seems like too much trouble. Even so, when I discovered my new winter hat (in a hardware store, natch) this afternoon, I was a teensy bit disconcerted by its aggressive dorkiness. It looks rather like a cloche which has been left out in the rain more than once; it emphasizes every flaw in my long bony face like a neon arrow; its color is most likely described as Hairball Gray. And yet, I adore it. Mostly because it fits, which is not something I come across frequently in what little hat shopping I indulge in. I have a big head (not in the sense of being stuck up, remember, the only deadly vice I skip is vanity) but in the sense that I have a great big skull; one assumes it must be all the super duper brain matter lodged therein. Knit caps, on the other hand are designed for the daintily empty pinheads of all the geisha boys one sees around here. Plus, this particular one is warm and covers my ears, which are always icy. R Man can pretend not to know me when we'e on the street together, I don't care as long as my ears aren't numb.

And then, right after I snagged my hat and was walking down Castro admiring my startling reflection in every window, we ran into Santarchy, a flipped out parade and party of miscreants tarted up as old Saint Nick. Old Saint Nick on a bender, but still.... About a couple hundred Santies and every one of them tripping like a million screaming monkeys. We passed one small group that was either fighting or trying to wrestle one of their number up off the sidewalk. Hard to tell. A good time was being had by all.

I do love San Francisco.