XXX_Mas Quiz Part 2; The Faster and Furiouser!

What you want for Christmas... if your friends were millionaires: Really? My college loans paid off and a house! And if they’re really rich, a Lexus!

What you want for Christmas... for real: Kids in the Hall Season 3 and to spend time with my friends.

What you want for Christmas... in abstract: I read the Time article about Bono and Bill & Melinda Gates. I wish every rich person could commit themselves to doing at least what those three do. Just that much would probably change the entire world.

Year of the first Christmas you can remember: 1974

Ever in a holiday play? When? Yep. All over as a child, I’ve played Joseph and a shepherd. Never got to play a wise man; they always had fabulous costumes….sigh…

An early Christmas memory?
In 1974, it was a very very cold Christmas with no snow whatsoever. Well, every picture of Santa’s sleigh I’d ever seen had runners for snow and not wheels. Well, I kept popping out of bed to see if I could see Santa approaching in the freezing cold without snow. And then I went to my sisters’ window and looked and…and…THERE WAS A FLASHING RED LIGHT! RUDOLPH!!! (I was 5, by the way, and had lost my twin brother the previous summer to a car accident…) I ran to bed and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t control the excitement. I kept running to the window to check on how much closer Rudolph’s blinking red nose was…and it never got closer… AND THEN IT DAWNED ON ME! IT WAS SO COLD OUT THAT SANTA, RUDOLPH, THE SLEIGH AND THE EIGHT OTHER REINDEER HAD FROZEN IN MID-AIR!!! I ran downstairs to tell my Mom and Dad and caught them putting the gifts under the tree. My dad yelled, “Get the feck back up in bed!!!” (He was Irish…) But my mom knew it was too late and I had learned the secret. I was crying, heartbroken and confused. My mom sat me down in our love seat with a big afghan that was “hers” and that we kids weren’t normally allowed to touch. She made me spiked hot chocolate (she was Irish too). She told me about Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy as Dad finished putting up the gifts. I asked Mom if that Jesus Christ guy was real too. She laughed and assured me he was and he was who really mattered. And we watched the tree and we listened to Bing Crosby sing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” on my parents’ gigantic Zenith phonograph player. I fell asleep in the chair wrapped in my mom’s afghan until my brothers and sisters came tumbling down the steps. They saw me in Mom’s blanket sleeping in the parlor and were scared and shocked, thinking I’d laid there myself, thinking maybe I’d met Santa, not knowing what my parents and I already knew.

I kinda lost some innocence that year, starting with the death of my brother David and ending with Christmas night, but I also got one of the best memories I ever had of my parents. My mom would lose her lovely step-dad the next Christmas, and a baby girl would die of SIDS before the next, and before the third Christmas, my mom took her own life after battling with drugs, alcoholism and a philandering husband who’d cheated on her and her 7 kids for over 12 years.

So we take our memories where we can, whether they are good or bad. Usually, they’re a mix of both, and that’s what makes them more real.

By the way, the red blinking “Rudolph” light…was a radio antenna I’d never noticed before.

Favorite holiday ornament (Past and present):
Past: Those weird bubbly lanterns that had lights built into them. Them and the plastic “snowballs” that fit around the bulbs.
Present: My Pokey Little puppy, my sugar plum fairy with a body of plum, and the anthracite evil queen pop to mind, but I have tons of lovely ornaments.

Decoration you dread seeing every year: I hate those evil looking elves in the felt suits! And they’re back!?!?!?

Classic Christmas song you never get tired of: There’s one that most people don’t know. “Joseph Kind Joseph” but I also love “O Holy Night,” “What Child is This?”, and “Lo, How a Rose.”

Classic Christmas song you loathe: Ooo, “The Holly and the Ivy.” I just think it sounds wretched, especially with that five-octave jump on the freaking word “thee”!!!

Modern Christmas song you never get tired of: “Fairy Tale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (I am Irish, too.)

Modern Christmas song you loathe: "The Christmas Shoes” We ALL hate it.

How many languages can you say "Merry Christmas" in? I am with Marcie. 4, I think. English, Spanish, French and Italian.

Naughty or Nice? Yep, uh huh….nice…nice the whole way…

Best Scrooge Ever: Bill Murray

Favorite Christmas Ghost: Carol Kane, whichever one she played.

Favorite Misfit Toy: Oh, the spotted elephant!

Can you wrap presents well? Yep, I’m gay, also!

What tops your tree? Nothing this last two years… With Cathy’s computer desk, we have no room for a tree. But usually, a neatish star made out of dried grape vines, painted gold, and would up in while lights.

If you were a Christmas elf, what would your name be? Strumpet

Coke - The Real Thing

I did coke only once - Halloween 1992 - and only once and never again.

I did about a line and a half and felt like I was the blessed god of the universe for about 5 hours.

Then for the next two days it felt like I'd gone to the beach - let's say a beach with an amusement park nearby. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Except at this beach, I got severely sunburnt all over, and then I ate bad seafood and got food poisoning, and then I had to ride a slow rollercoaster in the hot sun for two days straight while everyone in the world got together and secretly planned how they would brutally and painfully murder me - laughing at me the whole time.

That's what coming down off of coke felt like to me. It was one of the worst experiences in my entire life.

If you do cocaine just once, and you start to come off of it, you realize something really quickly. You now have two options: one is to never take it again so you never have to feel that shitty again, and two is to keep doing it so you never come down again.

I chose option one. And I truly felt that with this choice I would never have to feel this particular Hell again. But this weekend, with the crap that's happening to me at my company and the TERRIBLE flight home, I now have gotten to feel this way again. I tell you, I don't want to pour out my sob-story. But I will say that between my company's recent accidental but devastating treatment of its employees and the stomach-churning turbulence on the worst flight of my life, I can now confirm that it's a horrible, awful, unspeakable feeling.

I will say this about the flight. It IS kind of funny how quickly this turned into a clichéd’ “flight from Hell” - with babies screaming their heads off, overhead compartments flying open, several passengers filling barf bags, and even a Catholic woman weeping and praying over her rosary. I am dead serious. It was truly what happened without exaggeration. And I certainly didn’t need THAT after my dealings with my company (which I still pray will pull its head out of its ass and do the right and good thing I truly know my company is capable of…)

My VERY Early Oscar Predictions

Which will be edited furiously as I see more films.

I guess I am excited because it really has been a good year for movies. I haven't been this excited since 1998 (that was the year of Gods & Monsters, Saving Private Ryan, A Simple Plan, Shakespeare in Love, and Elizabeth)

Best Supporting Actor
Matthew Broderick – The Producers (even though he should be in the Best Actor category, I think the producers will put him here to give him a chance)
Frank Langhella – Good Night & Good Luck
Paul Giamatti – Cinderella Man
Ed Harris – A History of Violence
Bob Hoskins – Mrs. Henderson Presents
And at this point, I think it belongs to Frank Langhella, with a possible upset by Matthew Broderick

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Clarkson – Good Night & Good Luck
Catherine Keener - Capote
Shirley McLain – Rumor Has It…
Rachel Weisz - The Constant Gardner
Robin Wright Penn – King Kong
Give it to Catherine Keener already!

Best Actor
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – Capote
Nathan Lane – The Producers
Heath Ledger – Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Pheonix – Walk the Line
David Straithairn – Good Night & Good Luck
I’ve only seen three performances, but they were all amazing – everyone in this category should be proud, but right now, I’d say it goes to Phillip. Hopefully, Heath and Nathan are so incredible, they give the brilliant Hoffman a serious run for his money. This really is the best category this year, as there are several fantastic lead male performances.

Best Actress
Claire Danes – Shopgirl (I wish I liked the film more)
Felicity Huffman - Transamerica
Charlize Theron – North Country (Double Ugh!)
Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line
Ziyi Zhang – Memoirs of a Geisha
I haven’t seen Transamerica yet, but the spin is that Felicity already has this one. Poor Reese, who did such a great job.

Best Film
Brokeback Mountain
Good Night & Good Luck
King Kong
Munich
The Producers
I’m guessing Munich.

Best Director
Ron Howard – Cinderella Man
Ang Lee – Brokeback Mountain
Peter Jackson – King Kong
Fernando Mereilles – The Constant Gardner
Steven Spielberg – Munich
And again, Spielberg.


And yes, I do expect that Narnia, King Kong, and Harry Potter will be largely ignored. Or at least I hope. Even though they may be perfectly charming films, they'll rake in money hand over fist, and I'd like the see the smaller ones get nominated more. Although, the Oscars are people voting for themselves, and they often vote where the money goes... So I'm probably a bit wroing here, sadly.

A Blak Day in Soda-ville

Coca Cola Company recently announced they are going to start production in 2006 of COCA COLA BLAK, basically Coke with some coffee added in...

Well, of course people are freaking out, barfing, and bitching. (All at the same time!)

My friend stuporfly says:
I've heard that once you go Coca Cola Blak, you never go back.

My reply:
Also I heard these cans are much bigger than your average Coke cans...genetics...

XXX-Mas Quiz

Courtesy of Marcie!

Colored lights or white lights?
They have lights for different ethnic groups now?!?!?! (And aren’t you supposed to say African American lights?)

Real tree or fake tree?
A real one that has been treated with a plastic polymer like the dead human bodies in that science display in Tampa

What is your least favorite thing about the holidays?
That Jesus crap!

What is the one thing that you would like to see under the tree this year?
A 12,000 foot drop

What is your favorite thing to do/build in the snow?
Mass graves

What is your favorite holiday drink?
Sawdust

What is your favorite holiday smell?
Debt

Who is your favorite reindeer?
Me and Prancer had a lovely secret rendevous (I like to call it a “reindeer-vous”) in Reno several years and bottles of Scotch ago… …sigh.... He was hung like a…well, like a reindeer.

What is your Christmas Eve ritual?
David and I eat Chinese food and go see a movie. (Anyone can join us!) If I am feeling a certain nostalgic sense of masochism, I go to a midnight mass at a Catholic church…

Are you a Friday after Thanksgiving shopper?
No, but I DO LOVE watching the chaos of the greed-riddled on TV. It’s like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, except less civilized.

What is your favorite holiday food?
Suet

How did you find out that Santa wasn't real?
You mean Saint Nick had a boob job!?!?!?

Who do you want to be under the mistletoe with?
The Grim Reaper…give me that fatal kiss, baby!

Do you spend Christmas with a lot of family?
I don’t hate myself that much!

Do you still make snowmen and snow angels?
Yes, but now I make them out of tin foil and chewing gum ad dead garden slugs.

Do you still have snow ball fights?
Yes, but now we use old floor wax and soiled hobo pants.

What's your favorite Christmas movie?
Evil Dead IX

What do you plan to do for New Year's Eve?
I will be in Charlotte at a fabulous party, no doubt.

What's the most expensive thing you've gotten for Christmas?
A hernia

How early do you wake up on Christmas morning?
Around 6p.m.

What was the best gift you ever got as a kid?
Parole

A Loverly Weekend

This was a pretty cool weekend, so I want to kind of fill people in.

On Friday, I slept late and then called my home office and told them I got Trilegent as a major client. 16 classes in the first 6 months of 2006! Whoo hoo!

What else did I do on Friday? I met up with Sarah and Joshie at Barnes & Noble, and Joshie agreed to let me take him to dinner and RENT. This is where the rest of my theatre friends are going to disagree with me, but the movie SUCKED!!!!!!!!! The thing is: the original musical succeeds because it was timely and the score (the sound) was a lot sharper than anything heard on Broadway in a long time. However, the lyrics were still incredibly unsubtle and the plot and characters were overblown and hackneyed. The stage version of RENT was basically a heavy-handed AIDS melodrama with 1-dimensional people calling for living “bohemian.” The cheesy ending did more damage than good. The reason we listened is because the music was fresh. Also, the complete lack of subtlety or complexity fit the mid-90s ACT-UP zeitgeist towards AIDS.

The movie could’ve made things more complicated. The script could’ve made things more layered. It could’ve made the evil people more sympathetic. It could’ve shown the real price of supposed boho living. It could’ve done so many things, and instead it made bad choice after bad choice. Here are a few that pop to mind:

- Instead of voicing over a lot of the singing with more “real life” shots, all of the actors were instructed to sing everything very melodramatically at each other with pat Broadway gestures. Then Columbus – the dumbass director – put all of these cheesy, overwrought moments of actors screaming their songs to each other into the film.
- When we see the “Tango Maureen,” with the fantasy sequence, we get our hopes built up that the film will act like a film instead of a filming of the stage version, but no other song gets this nice approach.
- On lines like “you’re looking at my ass” instead of a subtle, close and sensitive shot with wit and charm in the delivery, Mimi is down on all fours sticking her derriere up in the air like a fucking cat in heat and screaming the line at full volume. This “bold gesture” may work on stage, but it DOES NOT work when the fucking camera lens is basically poking at the actress’s sphincter!
- In “Today for You, Tomorrow for Me” there was not a single shot of the akita or the street performance or the doggie suicide or anything, just Angel’s performance to the guys in the apartment singing about it but not showing it. IT’S CALLED FILM!!!!
- The “Santa Fe” moment worked, because for once the subtext was buried in the song, not shouted out in the lyrics and filmmaking. Given the dumbass director’s approach, I’m surprised they didn’t rewrite the song to be something like:
That homeless lady got you down
I’m here to turn that smile around
You’re a better person, you wild Bohemian!
I wrote this verse, so listen to me, man!
- Roger’s “Bon Jovi” moment in New Mexico – where was someone to push him off the fucking mountain for this cheesy, hair-band moment??!?! And why did he go if by the end of the song he’s back in NYC with a new guitar?!?!?!
- Mimi’s death scene – all it was missing was the lolling tongue and the Xs over the fucking eyes!

Joshie hated it too! So… I laughed several times during the film at how bad it was. Joshie said he rolled his eyes so much, he saw more of the inside of his skull than the film. I was scared he’d like it, but we spent a good hour over at Borders railing on it. And then I called Toddie, who’s seen it four times, and made sure he wasn’t going to regale me in the future with why he thought that piece of shit was right next to CITIZEN KANE in quality.

Saturday, I went to the gym, which I am enjoying. Then I went home and did some laundry. Then David and I went to his sister’s 40th birthday party. And then Cathy, Joshie and John Bateman joined us for Jimmy Crescitelli’s 50th. (David has a good description here: http://davidroz.blogspot.com/2005/12/oh-yeah-that-other-thing.html) It was a blast.

On Sunday, I went to AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS in Mount Dora, where I got to see Joel Warren shirtless…. Sigh…. It was a good production, really! Then David and I took Mattie out for ice cream – David also describes it in his blog. I love Mattie!

Then, I picked up Sarah, and she and I went to the Rosie O’Grady Highland Bagpipe Band concert. 11 bagpipers; it was amazing! They all came marching in – oh, did I mention that the concert was FREE!!!! They did Scottish songs, Irish songs, some dancing, and very bad jokes and skits about bagpipe players. They did a perfectly horrible version of “My Heart Will Go On” from TITANIC (mostly, ballads just don’t work with 11 bagpipers blaring them out…) They did a stunning, stirring, beautiful version of “Highland Chapel” with an organist! I actually got sort of teary-eyed, because their narrator did a lovely job introducing the history the song is based on. They had a ten-year-old drummer with the drum section, and he kicked ass! They had kilts but, sadly, no tam-o-shanters. They had the girl playing the tenor drum and spinning the pom-pom drumsticks in the air. It was so much fun!

We stopped at the College Park Starbucks where a barista named Ney gave us free coffee and hot chocolate. He’s CUTE! He’s studying to be a fireman! He has a crush on Sarah and we interrupted just as Jeff Lindberg was making his move. Rob Guest was there also. Jeff was heartbroken and Ney and Sarah were both adorable…

Great weekend altogether!

West Virginney - Part III

The mountains of West Virginia are actually quite beautiful. And when it snows big chunky fakes, it’s even more gorgeous. Especially if you’re in somewhere warm.

But if you have to drive the curvy mountain roads through a blizzard, it’s a bit scary.

But it was really beautiful, like living in a big snow globe. It snowed like this up near Parkersburg, both on the day we arrived and on Thanksgiving morning.

The area is really gorgeous. But it’s still funny to see a steep drive leading down to a highway. You look up that drive and you see an old rusty mobile home or a beat up Winnebago. And someone’s living there. You wonder how these people give directions to their place. You hope they aren’t in there surrounding by empty bourbon bottles and listening to Patsy Cline LPs, too lazy to brush the pile of burning cigarette ash off of the arm of their broken La-Z-Boys. Or pregnant, eating a can of frosting over the sink while E! True Hollywood stories blares out lives more fabulous than they’ll ever achieve. They turn the knobs on their old Zenith with a channel wrench.

If it were clean, such a Spartan living sort of attracts me. I could do it for a week, at least. I could! You’re up there all alone, reading any book you want, making sure you have enough frozen veggies to make a different soup every day. You work for a couple hours a day on a play you dreamed about only a week before. Your place smells like lemongrass candles you bought earlier. You drink warm herbal tea and always wear flannels and thick socks. You take lots of hot baths. You make hand-made postcards to send to your friends, who think you’re nuts for doing this for a week. Sort of a West Virginia sabbatical, a white trash cloistering, a spiritual journey in a scrappy doublewide.

I could definitely do it. I hate snow, but I picture spending time in a cold barren land, like Iceland. I have comforting visions of walking across a frozen lake all alone. I wish I found a cold primordial cave only I knew the existence of.

These times alone; they don't seem to fit my personality, but I still dream about them. In the long run, I wouldn't trade my friends for anything, but I might abandon them for a few days.

Mah Trip to West Virginney - Part Doe

OK, so there are a LOT of great things about me, but one thing that ISN’T is my sense of direction.

I swear the minute I step into a mall, that hand of God comes down from Heaven and spins the whole damn building so I can never find where I’ve parked.

I never really learn a place until I can consistently point to where North is. And that takes years.

I get lost easily driving, and typically ask for tons of milestones (you pass an orange house, you pass a green store, and you pass a rotting corpse…)

Well, on the way to West Virginia, I got on the wrong road in Wythville. I nudged Cathy from her sleep and asked her if we should be on 83 South. She kinda rolled over and mumbled that 77 and 83 merged and then went back to sleep.

We stopped at a rest stop, and I looked at the map and remarked that the star (“You are here”) was not in the right spot. She replied that it was an old map and she thought the star had “slipped.” The glue, she said, had come loose…

Then she got back into the car and promptly fell back asleep. Then, later on the road, I poked her and asked if we should be passing Blountsville. She said her simple computer printout map didn’t have details and went back to sleep.

Then I shook her and asked if we should be passing a town called Adkins. She barely stirred.

Finally, I slapped her awake and said “We’re going into Tennessee, and I know that’s wrong.” She finally woke up, all frustrated. I stopped at a service station and got a more detailed map. We were an hour off-path. She was pissed.

OK, but I never said I was Lewis and fucking Clark…