Spring

Perhaps you heard?  Sunday, April 20 was both Easter (as I like to point out, a Jewish fairy tale about zombies celebrated with symbolically ritualized cannibalism.  Fabulous) and also the highly unofficial holiday of 420, which for reasons no one knows celebrates marijuana.

I don't really care one way or the other about either of them, in fact, I had forgotten this was Easter until Friday when I was trying to make reservations for brunch.  My biggest complaint on Sunday was that the confluence of both meant that every idiot in town whose driving was impaired either by religious fervor or dope, or both, was in my way.  There is an intersection where three streets cross and some buffoon attempting a left turn had some crisis of confidence and just gave up, sitting in the middle, blocking the rest of us.  Maybe it was an art piece, there's lots of those around here.

On the brighter side, the brunch was just charming and included an ice cream cone for dessert and I found a great couch for the New Orleans house.

Also blooming right now is my beautiful, beautiful cereus, so yay for spring and all that.

Choo choo

Somehow, I don't imagine this is our conductor.

Secret Agent Fred and I are spending Christmas day taking the train down the coast to Los Angeles.  It's supposed to be a really spectacular trip and I like riding on trains,

but right now, four hours before we're supposed to leave, Fred and I are both sort of loaded (in Fred's case, you can delete the "sort of" part.  Plowed would be a better description.)  Still, how hard can it be to get on a train?

Hmmm.

We'll be back soonish, I'll tell you all about it.

More Thanks. Lotsa Thanks.

Oh, hay.  Do I still have a blog?  Waddya know?

Do you remember Thanksgiving?  A couple of weeks ago?  Some friends and I went down to Big Sur to spend the Feast of Fat in this place that was astonishingly sumptuous.

This is the view from the backyard.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to Northern California's excessive prettiness."  Sometimes it's sort of oppressive, much like what I assume dating this guy might be like.

I made turkey and cornbread dressing and gravy, all of which was totally delicious, if I say so myself, and our friend J made pulled pork for sammiches, which was even more tasty and the place even had a dance floor where mrpeenee demonstrated the moves that made him the terror of bars throughout the 80s

and there was a giant soaking jacuzzi tub for after dancing.  All fabulous.  And that's when the cocaine came out.

Oh my little schnitzels, I haven't done any coke since Ronald Reagan was president, but it turns out I can still snorfle it up like a Dyson.  My co-miscreants, all of whom are considerably younger than me and were not around for the Liza Minnelli years were most impressed.  Apparently they had fallen for my respectable facade all these years.

Equally impressive to them was at the very end, when there was only smallish pile left and someone (NOT ME) spilled water on it.  I had only the briefest pause before I announced "I'm licking that up."  Who wants to waste cocaine?  It was one of those decisions you make that even as you're processing it, you think "Probably not the best idea," but that doesn't stop you.  And besides the feeling returned to my tongue by the next morning.  Pretty much.

A lovely Thanksgiving.

Everything counts in large amounts.

Here Comes Peter

So I spent all day today convinced it was Easter Sunday.  The very nice hostess at the Burritt Room, where we had a fabulous early dinner, confirmed that I was a week early.  On the up side, she convinced us to come back next Sunday (which claims to actually be the day) for brunch.  Bottomless mimosas to celebrate the horrific torture and murder of a Jewish prophet and his sort-of-scary zombie path to holiness!  All right!

What makes this annoying (aside from the possibility I have lost what little mind I ever had) is the fact that I am one of the very few people who can rattle off how the date Easter falls on is determined.  The very same church which refused my ultra fabulous campaign for ultra fabulous popester created a bizarre formula for Easter while they were struggling for the hearts and minds of heathens.  Since the heathens were reluctant to give up their holidays, the church just absorbed them and turned them into ecumenical holy days or feasts.  Thus Easter is a moveable feast because it changes each year.

Calculating the date has its own name, "Computus" and here's how it works:  Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox.  There was probably something about sacrificing a goat when it was still heathen property, but that didn't make it past the Jewish Passover.  The name "Easter" comes from a pre-christian goddess names Oestrus, which also lent itself to the biology term estrus for when Ladies can make babies out of their eggs.

Paganism: the church is stuffed with it.

I can also name all seven dwarves by memory.

Give It Up

And may the peace of the Lenten season be with you.  You did know today, Ash Wednesday, is the start of Lent, right?  Also, you knew that people who say "Happy Lent" like "Merry Christmas" are just misguided morons who are missing the whole point, right?

And we all are planning on what to give up for Lent as part of our penance, penance as miserable sinners who have left undone what we ought to have done, right?  Personally, each Easter, I know the quiet satisfaction of having stuck with my vows of having done strictly without whatever it is I have sworn off.  How do I exhibit such strength of will?  I always choose to give up things I hate, that's how.  That way, as I'm tucking into my chocolate bunnies and everyone around me feels guilty about failing to stick with their promise to stop drinking, I can think "Whew, I am SO glad I didn't go BASE jumping, just like I said I wouldn't."

For Lent 2013, I swear to pass on:

Indian food
Macadamia nuts
lesbian porn
Sylvester Stallone
Vitamin water
Standing around nude with the naked guys at Naked Guy Park
Yarn

I am certainly NOT giving up the fleshly pleasures.

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.

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.

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.

Holiday Spirit

I've meant to feature this album cover since my friend Rich and I found it in thriftshopland last July, but I never got around to it until now, so I hearby declare today to be the end of that stupid Christmas/New Year's holiday thing and the start of Tropicana Holiday. Woo hoo.

I'm especially glad to have moved past all that other, lesser holiday stuff since they didn't really work out that well. A tradition in the South is to eat black-eyed peas and cabbage for good luck on New Year's Day. Usually I make my own peas and cole slaw to revel in my southern roots, but this year I wasn't feeling the culinary love, so I sprang for canned peas, feeling all the while as if I were letting my every female antecedent down as I did so.

I was so ashamed I failed to notice what I was buying was actually black beans. Oops. And I forgot the whole thing until 11:45 tonight and I was so rushing around to get it together, I wound up putting in way too much salt in the cole slaw. I managed to choke down a couple of bites but the garbage disposal got most of it. I only hope that counts and that this is not some augury of the year to come. 2011 was bad enough.

A Foggy Fourth

Our friends Anne and Mike brought over barbecue ribs for dinner tonight, which was terribly sweet of them, especially since Anne is a vegetarian (she had macaroni.) I had hoped we could watch the (completely illegal) firework shows down in the Mission neighborhood after dinner. Every year, the best displays are put on by the thugs in the 'hoods below our canyon. We watch them from the hill at the foot of our street, which we refer to as the Loma cause we're all California and stuff.

So here's the view of the Loma about 5:00:

And here it is, about 8:00, shortly after dinner and as the fog was blasting in:

Fogific Fourth of Julys are simply the way things roll here more often than not. So instead of fireworks, we had a lovely, cozy fire and listened to disco off my iPod.

Certainly, as a child of the south, I understand how inconceivable curling up by the hearth on a July evening seems, but we do it a lot. The Pacific at our doorstep acts like a big ass air conditioner and I, for one, bless it every day. The idea of owning a set of sweaters I wear all summer is both endearing and ludicrous and you would have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.

The disco was nice too.

Carnival and Buddah

Happy Twelfth Night to you all. This is the start of Carnival, so in New Orleans the grande dames of society (also known as the Old Bats) are rockin it ON hoping to have their husbands stay to the end of the party rather than sneaking off to the stripper bars in Metairie. And just now my slightly retarded I-Tune shuffle feature for once came through and is playing an old timey Mardi Gras tune, Iko Iko. The gods speak to us. Around this time of year, New Orleans radio stations dig out an array of the same songs each year, like Christmas carols, but more cool. Mardi Gras Mambo, Tipitina, Big Chief: I loved them all right up to the annual point of being sick to death of them.

Also, this being the twelfth day of Christmas, appropriately enough, I got my last present. Actually it had just been held up, but the timing seems propitious and now that it's here, I'm thrilled.

A ginormous carved, gilded face of Buddah. Perfect for our bright red hall.

Happy, You Know, New Year and All That Stuff

Indeed, mrpeene wishes you all the happiest of holidays, now that they're safely out of the way.

I know 2009 has been widely reviled, but I was kind of fond of it. I think it just got a bad rap from hanging around the wrong crowd. Once again, I have managed to fool my bosses into not realizing I have no idea what I'm doing, so I didn't get fired. We managed to not only keep our house, but refinance it. And I'm totally sorry Bea Arthur died (a moment, please,) but I didn't, so yay for that. I learned how to make the uber-tasty Chicken Marballa. All in all, a perfectly fine year.

Plus we all made it through the carnival of Michael Jackson's death and that has to count for something. Media are still trying to resuscitate that story, nosing around for dirt, but for real, what's left? Is someone going to uncover he was a junkie boy lover who dabbled in Arabic tranny moments?Oops, too late.

So, on with the brand new shiny decade. R Man and I spent New Year's Eve the way we always do, asleep. I went to bed about 10:00 knowing that shortly before the stroke of midnight, I would be woken by the fireworks echoing in the canyon we live in. Sure enough, 23:50 on the dot and KABLOOEY. Glen Canyon opens into the Mission where hooligans set off some serious explosions. In the past, it has sounded like the fall of Saigon down there, but this year was rather restrained. The economy, everything gets back to the economy.

It's a Good Friday

The agency I work for announced that we can all go home today at 3:00. A sincere and wholehearted Yippee for that, although also slightly mystified. Someone had to explain to me that today is Good Friday, a fact which had slipped past my constant vigilance. I made the usual joke about any Friday that gets me off work three hours early is a good one, but actually I knew about Good Friday. Honest. I was raised as a Christian, a Baptist in fact, even if it didn't stick. Christians, you know, are the one who worship some zombie god with rites of ritual cannibalism and homophobic vitriol and chocolate bunnies. I am all for chocolate bunnies.

Speaking of bizarre cultural tidbits, have you ever seen Peeps jousting? You put two Peeps in a microwave, arm them with the little plastic spears you garnish tropical drinks with, hit the microwave on high and let the games begin. I'll try to post the youtube video of it, but youtube has not been cooperating with me lately. We'll see.