Cougar's Crapstand

Tonite we were at the comic shop and we heard a commotion outside. Rich & I were like what the hell is that? A customer in the store told us that there was a protest going on. We asked him what they were protesting and the guy had no idea, so we stepped outside but couldn't see their pickets or understand what they were chanting. The only thing we did know is that once again, protesters had shut down Castro Street by blocking the 18th & Castro intersection. Rich walked down and discovered that the protesters were responding to the vote in Maine repealing the right for gays and lesbians to get married. We both agree that protesting is a good thing, we might not participate but we still feel it is good that others do.

This is where our problem lies. We own a business in the Castro. We donated to the No On 8 campaign. We were grandfathered into remaining married because of our wedding before Prop 8 passed. We feel that everybody deserves the right to get married. What we don't agree with is that all these GLBT protesters are shutting down the gay neighborhood!!!! They are hurting the neighborhood that supports them! How does protesting in your own neighborhood do any good??? The neighborhoods of Chinatown, the Mission, Bayview/Hunter's Point ALL voted for Prop 8, those are the places that these Do-Gooders need to get their asses to and protest! All they are doing by protesting in their own backyard, is pissing people off. We talked to several other business owners and managers in the Castro, and we all agree. These goddamn protests only hurt our own! One shop closed an hour early, they lost business, our hourly report showed that once the protest started, we should have just closed and gone home. A friend of ours came into the shop shortly before closing and was visibly shaken up. He told us that he was driving home from work and wanted to pick up his books and he got caught in the middle of the protest. He said at least 10 people jumped on his car and started banging their fists on his windows and yelling obscenities at him. He now has a huge dent in the hood of his car. He is a gay man. Did he deserve this?? NO!! He voted against Prop 8. He shops in the Castro and supports numerous gay owned businesses. But a bunch of hippy dippy queens took their frustrations out on him. Yes, we all want our civil rights, but don't infringe on other people that want those same rights!

Did the blacks in the 60's protest for civil rights by marching through Harlem or harming their own neighborhoods? NO!! They marched from the deep south to D.C., where the people that had been oppressing them could see the protest. That's all I'm saying. If you wanna protest, don't preach to the choir and the people who already believe in your cause, go march where you can try and make a difference and sway the opposition's opinion.

Today is low_fat_muffin's Natal anniversary! Yay!!!

I hope Katie Dog and David give you everything you want and more :)

Today Is Miss Olive's 4th birthday, so we took her to the toy store a few blocks away to see if there was anything on her "must have" list. She got to meet a happy and very excited husky that wanted to jump and play with her, but of course she is always the lady and stood by, demurely wagging her tail. We got her a gourmet wet food and some other gifts. We got home and gave her some kibble with the treat, and some leftover mashed potatoes (which are her absolute favoritist food!) and since we didn't have any candles, we used some fancy toothpicks.

                                                                 

After her birthday dinner we gave her her gifts. She got a new loopie, it's a Halloween mummy, and a Happy Birthday doggie cookie. She'll be nibbling on the cookie for the next few weeks because after fighting so hard to get her girlish figure, she doesn't want to lose it. She is so much fun, she wears her party hat and doesn't mind it at all.

                                                                                            


She's the most beautiful doggie in the world! Happy Birthday Princess Cutie-Butt!!!!!

                                                                                           

( NSFW hotties )


All in all it was a fantastic anniversary!

Today was our first anniversary of getting married. Darren, who officiated our ceremony last year at the Folsom Street Fair started off the fair with us. His partner had put his back out earlier this week, and his partner thought that Rich & I were harmless enough for Darren to hang out with and not get into any trouble. If you wanna know the truth, we don't go looking for trouble, it just seems to find us.

We just watched tonight's episode of Glee. The few episodes that have aired so far have made us laugh our asses off. It is one of the best written, well acted, best produced, best edited, everything a sitcom should be television show should be. It pulls at your heartstrings. It makes you laugh. It's mean spirited (like real life). It is on the Fox network. Tonight's episode was soo much more than anything we would EVER expect on network t.v.

Last week's episode had the cheerleaders pitting the Cheerios (cheerleading squad) against the Glee squad with the Cheerios coach pulling the strings. A couple of the cheerleaders convinced a black girl on the Glee squad to go after the token gay guy on the Glee squad as a bf. Last weeks musical number after she figured it out that he was gay was hysterical enough. They broke out into a musical number of her singing "I Bust The Windows (Out Your Car)". And then the gay guy tells her, that she is the first person that he has ever come out to as gay, and she realizes everything and how life is. When she apologizes to him for "busting the windows out his car" and offers to pay for it, the token gay guy says that she doesn't need to worry about it because his father had taken away his car (an S.U.V.) after finding his son's tiara collection. It was soooo fucking funny!

This week, the father catches his son with a couple girls recording on a home video, them performing Beyonce's "Single Ladies". The son trying to put on the "straight act" for his father says that he is on the football team as a kicker....... Wackiness ensues, and the son ends up winning the game for the team. It was all so textbook. It was brilliant writing on the way there, and fantastic acting and everything. But then out of left field comes the ending. The Token Gay is looking all gay in the mirror after the football game, and giving himself a facial, and his father walks in, "catching him".

The son comes out to his father, and you are soooo waiting for his BUTCH father to disown him and kick his ass.... but the father says that since the boy's mother died at such an early age, that he has known that his son was gay since he was 3 years old, and that he was okay with that. That all he wanted for his son was for him to be a winner.

I think this touched me so much because we are now in a different generation from what I grew up in. When I was an adult, my father told me that I would never amount to anything if I chose to be gay, and here it is, not a generation later, and it's on mainstream t.v. that a father is accepting of his son, even knowing that he is gay. He just wants his son to be a winner. He's a total fucking redneck... I know it's only a t.v. show.... but it brought tears to my eyes and gives me hope. Me, the most jaded of people, in a jaded world.

It makes me smile, and gives me hope.

So we had the day off, but still did all the behind the scenes work for the store, so not a "real" day off. Anyhow, a friend of ours as a wedding present, took the video supplied from 2 separate cameras and edited them together for a great video of our ceremony. As extras he included things like a trip around the comic shop, the wedding reception, full with me flipping off the camera. BUT! The best part of it was the video footage of Miss Olive.



It was just a few minutes of her playing in the kitchen and the living room. As we were watching the dvd this afternoon, Miss Olive was lying on the floor between our chairs. The video of her with Rich telling her to go grab her "loopie" (one of her toys) was so frickin cute! And the next thing we knew, Olive got up off the floor from between us, ran to her toybox and picked her loopie out!!!! All from hearing it on the tv! She's soo frickin adorable :)  And since we started her on her diet, she's lost 5 pounds and no evil bitches have made nasty comments about what a fat ass she has.

I just had some guy digging through these boxes for 30 minutes, grab a comic out of the box, turn and yell across the store to ask me how much the comic cost..... why are you buying a comic (reading material) if you can't read the signs on the boxes?????

I call my LJ "Cougar's Crapstand" cuz that is what our apartment is. Rich & I both have certain things that we love and adore and collect. In our living room I have a shelf of all things Thor/Asgard. From Mjolnir to Stormbreaker; Loki, Odin, Throg, Asgardian Storm and Ulik to a couple different Thor helmets. Why this compulsion? I have no idea. Thor has always been my favorite hero since I was a kid. Now I can decorate with him in mind.



On the other side of the room is the mantle of Rich's favs. Mostly villains. His main girl is Mystique and he calls Mr. Sinister his other husband.

I think this is why we are married. We go together perfectly. Both of us kind of odd and quirky, but in good ways :)

So my friend Cameron gave me a paid subscription for my LJ (thank you sooo much!!!) All I need to do is figure it out now.



This is me meetin Lady Antebellum!  Wheeeeeee!!!! I loves them :)

Rich finally got home about 1:30 a.m. Friday night/Saturday morn. And of course he was frisky :)  Then we got to the unpacking of the bags.... He picked up some great stuff for me at Comic-Con. He got me a signed set of variant Locke & Key box set, signed not by the artist but by the writer, Joe Hill!!!! How much does that frickin rock?!? I've loved the books ever since they started coming out but it wasn't until they had been put out in a bound edition and nominated for an Eisner award that I found out the writer is Stephen King's son. I adore Stephen King and I adore his son almost as much now. Rich also got me a dozen more Thor comics to fill out my collection :)  And an Asgardian Storm bust! I don't know how we're gonna get her to fit on my Asgard shelf, but when it comes to these things Rich is a miracle worker. He got me all sorts of other things too. He spoils me rotten sometimes.

I finally got to sleep in on Saturday after such a long week, but then I had to get going to replace my stolen cell phone. I went to T-Mobile and a really nice young lady named Cristol helped me. I told her the basics of what I wanted and she showed me the several models that fit the bill. The last phone she showed me, off in the corner at the other side of the store was the one I fell in love with. It's an 8 megapixel camera along with being a phone. It has the touchscreen thingy and all that, which I'm trying to teach myself how to use. I'm kind of technically behind the times, so this is my jumping on point.  21st century here I come!

Rich & I got up early Sunday morning to get ready to go to Dore Alley. We freshened up Rich's hair and then he did his thing to it like something out of There's Something About Mary, we doused each other in sunscreen and headed out the door. We got there about noonish and immediately grabbed our chicken-on-a-stick and snarfed them down. Then it was off to get a beer and find our perch. Normally we hang out all day with our friend Anthony, but we haven't seen him around lately and he wasn't at Folsom last year or Dore this year :(   We perched at our spot outside of The Powerhouse(where we always hang) and it was non-stop visiting with friends and comic shop customers. Our friend Joe showed up and hung with us until we left. All he had on was a black leather jock, seeing a side to joe that we had never seen before was pretty cool. I saw a friend from years past and gave him a giant sized bear hug, Rick is such a wonderful guy and I love seeing him looking healthy and happy. A bunch of other friends were at the fair and I was kind of the anchor. Joe & Rich running off for naked Twister, and Desmond running off to ...who knows what, and Kenne & Craig runnin around. I just held our spot down so everybody new where to come back to. I had a blast.

I even spoke to the bear I saw last year with the word Redneck tattooed across his back, and a bear paw tattooed on his right arm. Both designs are colored in the fashion of the confederate flag. He had a drawl, and it made me swoon. He shook my paw after letting me take a couple pics of his ink, and that was that.

After the fair we had to hit Burger King...of course. And then it was off to MUNI to come home. Only one problem. At the Civic Center MUNI station there wasn't a change machine at our end of the station. There was a machine to break a $20 into $1s and $5s but no machine to break the $1s into change. Rich got the station agent to come out of his glass booth and he put the bills into a BART ticket selling machine and then starting pressing buttons over and over. We finally got the change but it costs us a nickel for a BART ticket we never got...hmmm. We made it home and Miss Olive was ecstatic to see us and that's all she wrote.

It was a wonderful weekend, filled with family, friends, and lots of love :)

I can't even begin to say how shiteous the past couple days have been. Rich left for Wonder-Con in San Diego yesterday morning (his first break/getaway from SF in over 3 1/2 years (he SOOO deserves a break)(my hubby has had NOOO break at all since we opened the store!). I'm totally supportive of him, and have been eager to see him get a break from the business, have some fun, spend some time with friends and all. So it starts with yesterday. Wednesday is new comic book day, so I was on my own to work my way through it, no hay problema. We had asked a friend if he could do the Zipcar thing (because of my retinopathy I haven't driven in 7 years), and he kind of just didn't respond. So we added me onto the business Zipcar account, and I just drove like a grandmother (NOT!) and it was a mess of trouble with the UPS Hub and the shipment... I'll just say that I broke numerous laws and pissed off a group of road construction guys. The rest of the day went great, except for only being able to sit down for at most 5 minutes. My fucked up back and hips are pissed at me something fierce for pushing myself so hard, but it's nothing a few painkillers can't help.

So today being a new day and all, I get to work and it's the usual Thursday. Thursdays are ALWAYS the most fucked up day of the week. It's like the methadone clinic has let out all the freaks and they come to visit the comic book shop. With Rich being in San Diego (and even when he's home) we text back and forth constantly. I don't use my cell phone for anything more than to make a few business calls a month and to text and talk to my hubby. I'm not like one of those people that is joined with a bluetooth thingy-ma-bob in my head that can't be disconnected from technology for 2 seconds without imploding or having a breakdown. In fact, as I found out tonight... I have only used my phone for 6 minutes in the past 14 days.

Rich & I had been texting back & forth while he's at Comic-Con, and my phone was right next to the Savers Boxes behind the counter at work. I went to text Rich about a troublesome customer and I realize my cell-phone isn't there. I immediately knew that something was amiss. I look around on the floor behind the counter to see if I had knocked it off while using the computer's mouse or something... nope. So I start using the business landline to call my cell number to listen for Dead Or Alive's "That's The Way I Like It" an full volume (cuz I'm deaf also along with being blind, so my ringer is ALWAYS on 7). There's no tune playing and I realize that at some point one of the fuckhead freaks that I have had to deal with today had stolen my phone.  I think back to when I texted Rich last, and what I had to deal with customer-wise since then.... there were SOOOO many possibilities. I went over to look for an Ultimate Wolverine title, I went to look for a t-shirt, I had to deal with the asswipe opening the variant cover Daredevil, the coule of tweakers with the candy fixation, the  freaks that messed up the store picking up shit and leaving it everywhere. I had NO idea what happened to my phone.

I called Rich on the store's landline to tell him, he was all like...call your number and listen for your ringtone, and I was like DUH! I did that to no avail. Then I googled T-Mobile's number and called them to shut off my phone service. Gabriel (that was his name) was all like... well when people lose their cellphones, they should retrace their steps and see if they dropped it somewhere. I'm almost losing my cool, but kept it in check. The comic shop is not a big space. If a person sneezes or even whispers you hear it....if my phone was in the store I would have heard the fucking ringtone!!!!!! I hadn't been anywhere else since 11a.m. in the morning, I don't carry it in my pocket, I don't carry it around.... all it does is sit on the savers table behind the counter unless I'm using it. OK, so I cancel the phone, and I decide to close the story early to run down to T-Mobile to get a new phone before they close, so at least my hubby and I can talk and chat while he's out of town.

I shut everything down, and at 7:25 I've grabbed my bag and am running out the door. The phone is ringing and I thought it would be Rich, so I answer it. It was an out of town customer that is in SF on business that was in on Sunday and I was holding some stuff for him that arrived in yesterday's shipment. I told him that I was closed because of an emergency and he said that he'd be right there, that he leaves town in the morning. So me being the nice person that I am, waited around for 20 minutes until he finally showed up. I rang him up and ran out the door with him. I race walk to the MUNI station and there is a train arriving at the station that I run down the stairs to catch...I get down to Powell Street Station and book on up the escalators and arrive at the T-Mobile store at 8:01.......they closed at 8!!!!!!!!   If I hadn't been nice and stayed there waiting for the guy.....I know.....if only.

At the apartment, we never use the landline. So the cordless phone is dead. So I grab Miss Olive for walkies and head to Walgreen's at 9p.m.ish. I ask William (the cashier) what phones-with-cords they have. I have my choice....either Shrek or Hannah Montana...... well guess what folks, I have a brand spankin new Hannah Montana phone! WEEEEEEE! Talk about a day from hell. And I've called and left many messages for my hubby and I guess I just don't get to talk to him till he gets home. Life kind of sucks today :(

I'm just soooo fucking pissed off that a customer in our very own business stole my cellphone! And I was trying it myself to lean over the counter to reach where it would have been. Me being 6'3"ish with a VERY long arm reach was a strain. Then on top of that...my phone was a piece of shit! I've had it for 7 months now and I hated it! It was a cheap ass piece of shit! Not some fancy I-Phone thing with a touch screen and all, just a cheap piece of crap that wouldn't even tell me the name of the person calling me. I guess that's what frustrates me most. If you're gonna steal something, why steal a stale heel of bread from a homeless person....why not steel a loaf of gourmet Artisan bread from Donald Trump??? I know whatever...life moves on, just my rant for the day.

A couple months ago I got an email from the Lady Antebellum fan club saying that I could buy tickets presale for a concert they were going to be performing at in the bay area. I clicked on the link and almost wet myself when I saw who would be performing. Lady A, Miranda Lambert, Sugarland, Montgomery Gentry and Melon Head...I mean Kenny Chesney. The first 3 WOW!!!! Then we could leave. I waited a couple days until I could get the tickets on sale. The website had problems and I couldn't buy tickets, so I was kind of bummed. A Couple days later tickets went on sale officially. I went on line, and to get floor seat tix it would have been almost $300 for us to go :(

A week or so later, Rich was watching TV and saw an ad saying to go on-line and register to win free tix to the concert, so he went on-line and registered to win. The very next day he got a call and we had won tix!!!! REWET myself! Then we got the tix and they were in the nosebleed section. I can live with that. No problem.

A while later low_fat_muffin  posted on LJ that there would be special urinal pads with the Wolf 95.7 logo that howled. How many times can one guy wet himself????? 

I went to the Lady Antebellum website and requested a "meet & greet". A few days ago I received an e-mail that I had won entry to the meet & greet! It just keeps getting better!!!! Then Thursday I received an e-mail from The Wolf about discount tix to the concert. I asked Rich and we decided we should try it. We got lower box tix for $29.50 instead of the $109 price! SCORE!! So what to do with the extra tix, we gave them to a country fan we know, she was ecstatic.

We left extra early today to get to the Will Call Box for my pass and directions for the Meet & Greet. Then stood in line for the doors to open. We got in the PERFECT line. We were the 3rd set of people in the door and we broke out bookin our asses off to get up to the concourse level and hit the men's room to steal a urinal pad....... there weren't any :(    Color me bummed. And the guy that walked in right behind me into the men's room looked at me like I was a freak (cuz I had walked in, looked at the urinals and then walked out looking WAY disappointed) and not peed.

We got some beer and walked around. How odd it was, to be in SF and I was all like "how many years of inbreeding did it take to create this?" I've been to Nashville and Branson, MO... there were hot beefy redneck guys all over...at tonight's concert there were a few, and I felt that if these people spent half the money that they were spending on Kenny Chesney, beer, and Copenhagen, they would have perfect teeth instead of just a couple of them to pass around at X-Mas dinner.

I got in line and then wandered down the maze to the meet & greet. There was a silver haired lesbian in front of me that was also a member of the Lady A fan club and she was really really nice. When it got to my turn to meet them, I told them how much I think they rock country music, and Dave (the guitar player/shorter dude) shook my paw, I told the lead singer dude (Charles) that realizing how tall he actually is in person made me happy (I couldn't tell him that he was way hotter before he starting manscaping his arms and chest), but he had some sort of words tattooed on his right forearm that I had never noticed before when seeing him on tv. Dave then shook my hand a second time. Hillary Scott, the female vocalist, was soo tiny! She had on heels that were at least 5 inches high and then she was just barely as tall as the guitarist, but she was outstandingly gorgeous and had the warmest most beautiful smile. She gave me a hug and then pretty much all at the same time, all 3 of them told me how great my beard was. I wanted to ask the guys if they would like feeling it between their legs. PURRRRRRRRR

We took to our seats with a few more beers to wait for the show to begin. The warm up pitchers mound was right in front of us, and we got a lot of laughs out of all the testosterone being burned up by bumpkins pretending to be pitching. A crew of drunks showed up and sat behind us, and we had a blast joking around with them. And a really really cute guy with 2 beards (chix) sat right next to me. The girls were nice and offered us some of their popcorn.

OOPS! I forgot to mention that before the concert entry, we found out that Jennifer Nettles (lead singer for Sugarland had lost her voice in the recording studio (and nobody could find it)) so they were out of the concert, and also that Montgomery Gentry had turned down the date a while ago. No big deal to me, I loves me some Lady A and Miranda! Rich wanted to go home after getting a refund.

Lady A opened the night with their 1st song being "Looking For A Good Time" then in the middle of the song some strange thing happened that was soo frickin cool! They mashed their song up with AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long".......WEEEEEEEEE! Great mash up. With Sugarland cancelling, the other 2 acts were supposed to sing long sets. Lady A sang for about 50 minutes, all their own songs (except the mash-up) and then John Mellencamp's "Hurts So Good". I love them! Even though Hillary's microphone was turned down too low and you really couldn't hear her harmonies.

Miranda came on next, and she sang for over an hour. She never did sing "Gunpowder and Lead" or "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" though. I use to have both of those tunes as my ringtone, so I was kind of bummed. But in the middle of her set the beer hit me, and I had to piss. So we got up and got to the top of the stairs and she started singing Joan Jett's "I Love Rock n Roll". I couldn't pee yet... we watched her on the jumbotron and she was totally lipsynching the song!!!  Oh well.

It was a fantastic night out! We heard the phrase "Rockin' a beer gut" a couple times, We saw what Ellie May Clampett would look like 40 years after the Beverly Hillbillies, I personally wondered who was taking care of all those meth labs that had been abandoned by those concert goers, and for Kenny Chesey it seemed like most of the females dressed and acted like they were going to a hooker's convention!

And last but not least was the guy with the word "REBEL" tattooed on his forearm in the fashion of a confederate flag. WTF! You could afford the ink, but you only got 2 teefs in yo head!

Time to write a little something so I know I'm still alive. Randomocity at its worst!

Let's start with the intersection from hell outside our front door. The week before last I took Miss Olive out for her afternoon walk, as we're crossing in the crosswalk on the walk signal, some asswipe not paying attention floors the gas pedal and cuts across the intersection even cutting across the opposite traffic lanes. I see him and without thinking anything but protecting my little girl, I fling 60 pounds of puppy back on her leash and her momentum pulls me back out of the way and the guy slams on his brakes and stops about 3 feet away from us. He's like "oops" and I'm yelling at him that he almost killed us, he just drove off, no big whoop.

This leads to something that I still don't understand. I'm 6'4", with a big bushy beard and a nose ring. Where ever I go, I get stared at. (with and without the nosering) like when I was in Branson, MO and they put my picture on the jumbotron. I get stared at constantly, I'm used to it, but then why can the asswipe in the car not see me? Why is it that when I walk down the sidewalk people bodycheck me as if I'm invisible and they didn't see me? Do people run into street signs and fire hydrants and buildings all the time cuz they don't see or notice them? If everybody can stare at me, then why am I so invisible? It's a definite paradox.

Back to the intersection from hell... just a few days after the near miss, Olive and I are waiting for the light to change, and there is some 20-something woman with a couple grocery bags standing next to us. The light changes and we both go to step off the curb, but down the block from us, heading our way, is a police car with lights and siren blaring. I pull Miss Olive back up on the sidewalk, but the grocery girl has her I-Pod buds in and doesn't hear the siren, so she keeps waddling her fat ass across the street. I start yelling at her to stop, and she doesn't respond, I yell louder and louder yet, until she finally hears me. She turns around and snarls at me very loud, "WHAT!?" I'm pointing at the police car barreling towards her but she just flips her hair while turning around and continues to waddle in front of the oncoming cop car. The cop blasts the siren at her, and she just turns and sneers at the cop, he has to slam on his brakes to not run her over and she continues her waddle, not speeding up at all. I don't get it, are people really THAT self absorbed?? I guess so.

Next in the shadows of my mind are all the reality shows we've been watching. The ONLY reason we watched Dancing With The Stars was to see the fabulousness that is Lil Kim...... she sooo frickin rocked it week after week, but when she was voted out before Ty (who we think is a real hotty, check out that basket!) who couldn't dance to save his life, we quit watching. Our friend Desmond is guessing that the gal from The Bachelor is going to  win since the new season of the Bachelorette begins directly after the DWTS show.

Next there was The Amazing Race. We soo wanted Margie & Luke to win, Luke being a gay deaf guy, that's the kind of hero that deserves the million bucks. The reason they lost though was because Luke totally fell apart on the last challenge, Rich & I both screamed at the tv. We didn't think it was at all fair that the final 2 legs of the race were in China though, where the brother sister team spoke the language fluently. It definitely gave them an unfair advantage. If they had spent 2 legs of the game in a nation of deaf people and they didn't know sign language, I bet Margie & Luke would have kicked the nice sister and her nelly shrieky brothers asses!
 

The Survivor finale last night... what a let down. The moment they voted Taj out, we watched the rest of the show in fast forward. I understand it's a game, but Taj deserved a lot more respect than they gave her. They had been together from day one and she had never sold them out, but they threw her under the bus and then fed her to the piranhas. Then when JT got the extra $100,000 from the viewers, I felt even more gyped. Taj should have got it. And JT with the scraggly beard and the fangs was adorable, at the finale he had his teeth fixed and a bad 80's hair don't, and had been dressed in the darkness of his trailer by his mother without her coke bottom glasses on. Yup, color me bitter.

American Idol is why I originally started posting on LJ, but I'm over it after the past few seasons. Adam & Allison should have been in the top 2, not Hokey "My wife is dead" Gokey or Chris"I sing out of the side of my mouth badly". And after watching last week's episode, I honestly thought that Adam had thrown the competition so that he would get 3rd place and not be locked into the complete control contract that the top 2 get roped into. But I'm happy as stink on shit that he's still in it. I am soo there the day his CD comes out. I love that whole David Bowie/Freddie Mercury/Glam Rock image and he can actually sing, along with the excellent showmanship. Yay Adam!

The last week has been an anomaly for Rich & I... we ventured out of the house twice!!!!! Can you frickin believe it???? US! Out of the house twice! No cameras were present though so there's no evidence. First off we went to see the new Star Trek movie with our pal James. Rich was dragged kicking and screaming to the theatre because he is not into Star Trek at all, he doesn't hate it or anything, he just never got into it. I on the other hand went into it blindly, having not read a single thing about it before seeing it. Then when they started with the time loop thing with the Romulans, I rolled my eyes and all I could see throughout the movie was First Contact, where the Enterprise had to correct the timeline from the Borg. I'm sooo over the timeline shit! But they did it so fucking fantastically well!!!!! I loved the movie! It's like what Marvel did with the Ultimate Universe. Taking the same people but in a different universe/reality. Rich is now a Trekkie (for new movies anyhow, not the past) cuz he loved it to, and thought that Bones was h-a-w-t!

Our second outing was with our friends Emily, Kenne and Desmond to the 80's music club called Flashdance. We saw all sorts of LJers there and FTP sat with us for a few minutes. With the specialness that is me, I can't dance (NO balance) but I am SUCH a product of the 80's, I just sat there and sang along and grooved my upper body, while my mind drifted off. The flashback was brought on by Book Of Love's "Boy".... back in the 80's, going to school in Bumfuck Idaho for clothing and textile design, I had a thing for black and for lace, and lion's head drawer pullers. Black liquid eyeliner, bangs covering half my face, a total goth one day and a Wham puppy the next. My friends and I dancing at Cafe Spudnik while drinking espresso and smoking cloves. The John Fleuvog shoes that were as pointy as the Wicked Witch of The West's shoes, that if you normally wore a size X, you had to get 2 sizes bigger in order for your feet to fit in them (the specialness that is me never got to where Fleuvog's though :() The paleness of our pasty white skin, cuz we never saw sunlight, and when idiots asked us why we were so pale, we told them that we took small doses of arsenic to maintain our ghostly pallor, and them being such idiots, believed us, All those weekend nights spent grooving to the Cure, Strawberry Switchblade, Malcolm McLaren, PIL, Heaven 17, Siouxsie, Tin Tin, Yello, etc. I so look back on those times and (new) romanticize them. They were the Reagan/Thatcher years... the music was the perfect escape. That's what Flashdance brought me back to last night. A great night out with friends and my meandering mind.

 

I started writing weekly in LJ years ago about American Idol. I stopped doing that, but after tonight, I had to write about it. I went into tonight thinking that it was supposed to be "Top 100 I-Tunes Downloads". Thus I was expecting current songs to be sang. For the past week Rich and I were discussing songs that people should sing, what would best fit their personalities and voices. Tonight was almost as bad as fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

Anoop started with some song from Usher that was so bland...I've been saying that he never should have made it into the top 12 because of his shiteous performance of Bobbie Brown's "My Prerogative"...I LOVE that song (I am a product of the 80's you know!). To choose some 3 note Usher song and add nothing to it was lame.

Megan sang some crap Lauryn Hill/Bob Marley song. I guess it was from 1999, I know that was the year I was coming out of my "Black Period" a total vacuum from knowing anything about pop culture and popular music, but my friend HoneyLamb was sooo current on everything, and I guess I kind of recognized the song, but I thought it was a bad choice from somebody that I did like. I'm over Megan's song choices, I have given up on her, a singer that I originally was rooting for.

Elizabitch Hasselbitch is a "Gokey Girl" and Danny was the first person of the evening to pick a contemporary song, but he was shouty and flat throughout the entire song. Yes WE KNOW YOUR WIFE DIED!!!! But Your chops weren't up to the task, and I know the judges are pushing you through and the public LOVES your back story, but I am actually a member of the "buying" public. Rich and I buy CDs, we don't just download songs for free, or spend 99 cents for a song... we support the musical artists we like. You would not be one of them. You are like Taylor Hicks Part Deux....and where did he end up? Without a recording contract and playing Teen Angel in a roadshow production of Grease.

When Matt sang The Fray, I was cringing and begging for a tourniquet to cut off the blood loss from my ears.

Scott at the piano singing Billy Joel...yes I had Billy Joel albums on 8-track, and vinyl, I think you are getting the sympathy vote because of your handicap...this is a COMPETITION for a recording contract!!!!!! You don't belong here!!!!

Allison!!!! What can I say? WE LOVE YOU!!!! They ridiculed the way she dressed, from the second I saw her I was thinking an updated Cyndi Lauper, and she really should have sang Pink's "Sober" and knocked the stuffing out of the judges and the American public. Instead she sang a No Doubt song that I love. I'm not dissing her for her song choice but she could have done so much better.

So let's see....Usher from 2004, Lauryn Hill from 1999, Rascal Flats 2008, The Fray 2008ish, Billy Joel 1977, No Doubt 1996... let's see where this goes!!!!

Lil, she is our pick to win the Idol Award this year, sings some piece of crap Celine Dion song, she sang it ok, but at the chord change is where it turned "good", not great. They told her to sing a Mariah song or something... and then they would burn her ass like the world's worst hemorrhoids if she did that, because "how can you compete with Mariah Scarey?!?!?!"  The song was OK, she doesn't deserve to go home, but nothing stellar.

Adam announced that he was going to sing Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music"....another song I had on 8-track (with Kung Fu Fighting and Fly Robin Fly) and my heart sank....as I screamed at Rich about how I thought this was gonna be current songs that are popular downloads... then Adam performed. Yes I know, he's a big ole flaming 'Mo and he was on Broadway in Wicked.... a big nelly flamer... that if the Red States find out, he's gone... but he was THE BEST performer of the night! He made it fun and contemporary, I think that's what the whole singing competition is about for AI.

Kris sang "Ain't No Sunshine".... how many years in a row on AI can we here this???? FIND SOMETHING NEW!!!! He sang it OK, and he's gonna be safe so whatever.

Now.....Celine Dion from 2002, Wild Cheery from 1976 and Bill Withers from 1971...... why don't we just send all the singers to a nursing home to play requests????? I'm over it!!!! Hey guys, I'm old but can you bring the music into the 21st century and sing something I'll spend my hard earned money on? PLEASE!!!!!!

I was running out the door Saturday to walk Miss Olive before heading up to the comic shop, and the mail had been dropped through the slot.  There I could see an envelope with my mother's handwriting on it and my heart started thumping so hard in my chest, and my mind went blank.  What should I expect from her?  Olive and I get back from walkies and come upstairs to the kitchen.  I texted Rich, who was at WonderCon, that my mother had sent me a card/letter but I still had not even opened it.  I opened it. Inside was one of those generic cards that grandmothers collect in boxes, those "all occasion" cards that just scream "I don't really feeling like taking the time to go get a specific card for you".

Here's what she wrote to me:
"My best wishes to you and Rich. Hope you will be happy in the years to come.

You said for me to call, but I probably won't be doing that to bother you in your busy schedule.

Things are fine here.

Love ya, Mom"

I've been wanting a response from her so bad, and this is not even remotely what I would have expected.  After thinking about it though, this IS the response I should have expected.  I pour my heart out in a 4 page legal size paper handwritten letter, about asking for her to show some respect to Rich, but out of all four pages, THE ONLY thing she got out of it was the one line where I said that "yes mom, I really am a busy man with a busy life". 

After reading the card, I texted her entire response to Rich, and then slowly kind of shuffled to work (I was already sick with the flu and not feeling well at all).  It kept going through my mind that she is going to be 70 years old later this year, and she has nobody.  Literally NOBODY there for her anymore.  She nagged my father to death ever since I can remember (he gave up on living and just sat and rotted for the last few years of his life).  My brother has wanted nothing to do with her since he was in Junior High school.  Only one of her surviving brothers and sisters will talk to her, and that's usually only to let her know that somebody has passed away. 

It's truly sad.  I've always been her rock, but because I rocked the boat and talked about the elephant in the middle of the room, she has cut out the last remnant of family and the closest thing to a best friend that she has ever known.

Maybe that's why I can never even dream of leaving San Francisco.  I've made a "family" here.  Not just Rich and Olive and Mo, but people like Joe, the crazy old eccentric aunt. Kenne, the sweet naive sister that you want to look out for cuz men are such scum and you don't want to see her get hurt by them.  James, that super cool uncle that was just about the same age as you.  Kurt, the oh so wise older brother that seems so grounded, but is so twisted and fun when nobody is watching.  And all the wacky inbred cousins that make up the scenery of my life, Emily, Desmond, Paul, Kelley, Sal, Porn David, The Professor. 

Nope, I've got a fantastic life, with the family of people I have chosen. No regrets.  At least I'm happy and can live with myself :)

So I sent my mother a handwritten letter about how I felt.  It's been a couple weeks and she hasn't responded.  I see in the news today that the state of Idaho struck down legislation granting equal rights to gay people. I am so devastated even though I don't even live there anymore.  My mother in her passive-aggressive way sent me a self-addressed stamped letter to acknowledged the Christmas present she sent me. She appreciated the photo album I had put together and written everything out in, but never acknowledged the national magazine that Rich was given props in and had a write up in.  She asked me about why I am "so angry" that I didn't sign the card with "love".

My Valentines response to her.  I sent her a card and a hand written letter explaining how I felt.  That after 8 years of being together, she never could even acknowledge Rich and I as partners, and all I asked from her was that she show some respect to Rich. Waiting has been hell and my heart is broken that she couldn't  pick up her phone and call me. 

All I want to do now is write a letter (not even hand written) and tell her about the years of hell in elementary school being beat up (I have the scars in and outside my lip) and the years of junior high being beat up and shoved into lockers and physically/mentally abused. And  then the years of high school being physically abused along with the mental and emotional abuse I put up with from not only my classmates but my teachers.

Should I tell her about college and having physical threats against my life and having my car egged, tomatoed, and my tires slashed?  Should I tell her about how one company I worked for changed their promotion policies because I passed them all, so they had to be changed so I could advance no further? Should I tell her about being sexually harassed by my general manager but couldn't say anything because I would just have been fired, even though he wanted to shove his "cone of cups" up my ass and I said no.  Should I tell her that I was stalked and raped and left in a pool of blood from my head and my ass, and told that if I said anything that he would kill my family? Should I tell her about how the nursing home I worked at (because of being religion oriented) changed their "employee of the month" policy because a "fag" won it 3 months in a row?   Should I tell her that even living in San Francisco that I have been verbally assaulted and that I have even had a broken beer bottle thrown at me, that thank god I was wearing a leather vest that saved my life (I still have the vest with the hole cut through it).  

I'm just VERY hurt right now, and am lashing out at something intangible.  I know that.  It's just that my mother has meant soo much to me for so long, and now at 41 I'm feeling like an orphan, and all I want to do is hurt hurt her like she has hurt me.  I'll get over it, I just need to vent.

A new comic came out last week called "Bad Dog".  I finally got a chance to read it today.  I wasn't too impressed with the art in it, but the main premise is 2 bounty hunters with one of them being a werewolf.  The other guy is some raunchy ex-preacher with a mouth like a sewer.  As I was reading I was repeatedly literally laughing out loud!  That's what I want in a book sometimes.  Anyhow, my quote of the day is from Wendell (the ex-preacher):

"Old people!  Fucking Walking mummies, desiccated and reanimated on viagra and the fumes of bingo markers!"

I picked up the mail yesterday, and there is an envelope from Blue Cross/Anthem with the "important changes to your coverage inside" bullshit printed on the outside. I know what that means, and I'm thinking how much lube do I fucking need this time while they fuck me again. Gee! They're only raising my premium 21.7% this year! I should feel lucky. Right?  I looked in my checkbook register and started tracing my insurance payments back to March of 2006. That was the time when they almost double my rates and I ended up having to lower my coverage in order to keep my health insurance. At the start of 2007 Blue Cross raised my premiums 13.5%, and then 5 months later when I turned the big 4-0, they raised it another 24.3%.  Six months after that they raised my premium again for the annual cost. Another 24.7%!!! So in only 3 years time, my health insurance premium has more than doubled, it's increased 214%........WTF!!!!!

I haven't even mentioned that when I used to go in for bloodwork, my insurance paid for it. In November 2007 when I went to the doctor with a fractured rib, they needed to do the basic bloodwork, since I hadn't been toa doctor in years. I didn't think anything of it, until I got the bills for the x-rays, and a $1500 bill for the bloodwork. My insurance paid absolutely nothing!!! So they screw me this hard with ever increasing premiums, and then they don't have to pay for any services. If that's not a scam, I don't know what is.

I know that the Laissez Faire/ Free Market/ Chicago School of Economics/Invisible Hand bullshit that is supposed to make everything more competitive and affordable, but in this day and age, with the stock market losing 30-40% of its value, to 2.8 million jobs lost last year, to record numbers of bankruptcy, to hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes. How can a company justify increasing a customers costs by 25% a year, when the value of their dollar is shrinking. I didn't get a cost of living raise at my job in the last 3 years that increased my income by 214%, so WTF!

Should I write my congress boobs about how fucked up this is? *******sigh******* *bangs head on desk, face first*******

I forgot to mention that my health insurance does not include dental.