TB Plane Patient Overexposed? – Don’t Get Me Started!

So I’m on the elliptical machine at the gym this morning (listening to Glamorous Life by Sheila E. followed by C’est La Vie by Robbie Nevil) when I look up to see a white truck being filmed by a news crew on one of the monitors that carry news shows at that time of the morning. Across the scroll at the bottom it says, “Breaking News” and it seems as if the helicopter is having difficulty staying still enough to get a shake free shot of this truck as it drives at normal speed through traffic. This seemed all too familiar, a white vehicle driving the streets and getting news coverage? It was so dull to watch you couldn’t quite figure out why they would stay on this shot and yet you couldn’t look away. Of course, all I could think was that O.J. Simpson had killed again and was now making his getaway in a truck instead of a Bronco but then the scroll at the bottom of the television screen explained, “TB plane passenger being taken to Denver hospital for quarantine.” Obviously a slow news day. TB plane patient overexposed? – Don’t Get Me Started!

The news has been full of this story and frankly, while I understand the need for some concern, there are several doctors stating that the level of infection this guy had was so slight that the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. Be that as it may, I can tell you from a first hand experience, you can’t be too careful. We were headed to Arizona on yet another Southwest flight to go to a wedding or bar mitzvah or something. They loaded us on the “bus” airline and then we all just sat there. Suddenly you saw flight attendants, gate attendants and pilots walking to the back of the plane. What was to be an hour flight ended up being two hours on the tarmac in Vegas before we even took off for the hour flight to Arizona. Finally they came on the mic and told us that a woman had boarded the plane with three children, when she pre-boarded (Read my rant about pre-boarders…Pre-Boarders Are Killing Air Travel) one of the children was asleep in her arms. When the flight attendant assisted her in getting all her kids seat belted in, she noticed the one who was asleep was covered in red spots…chicken pox! So, they had to wait until they could contact the woman’s doctor to find out if the kid (the woman and her other two kids) were still infectious. They couldn’t get a hold of her doctor so they had the airline’s doctor assess the situation and finally she and her spotted kids were taken off the plane. When we landed in Arizona no one was allowed to leave the plane until a representative came on and told us that we would all be signing waivers that they had told us we could possibly have been exposed to chicken pox. If we agreed to sign the waiver, they would mail us I think $200 a piece in travel vouchers. Well, come on, it was a three hour tour that should have only been an hour; of course everyone was like, “Give me a barf bag and I’ll sign it, anything to get the hell out of here.”

Having never had chicken pox myself (and being a Jew, which translates into a hypochondriac) I of course was checking myself hourly for two weeks after the incident sure that I had not only contracted chicken pox but was also cursed with several other diseases. (Had it always hurt when I raised my arm this way or was it the start of degenerative arthritis?) So I get a little of what these passengers are going through and I have sympathy for them.

We all know that once you get on a plane you’re sucking in the worst air imaginable for the duration of your flight and I don’t care if you wear an Ion sensor around your neck, a surgical mask (in the hope of looking more like Michael Jackson) or wrap yourself in cellophane, you’re being exposed to the world’s nastiness during air travel. Get over it.

So while I agree that we should all be warned by fellow passengers of their communicable diseases, I also think that we need to understand that we’re not all that safe even if the person you’re fighting with for the arm rest has fresh breath and no signs of sickness. It’s just another pitfall of life, you know, like eating the 100 calorie packs like they’re going out of style and not understanding why you’re not losing weight when you didn’t eat real Oreos. Never admitting you have just ingested every little baggie in the box, consuming 12,000 calories and enough aspartame to pickle your kidneys. (Okay, well maybe that’s only my pitfall.)

The point is that they could have been filming a Wonder Bread truck for all we know and why we should have to see the transportation of a quarantined TB patient the same way we watched an ex-football star try to escape from police is beyond me. After all, they had their man. It wasn’t as if police and news crews were chasing a fugitive. From seeing pictures of Lindsay Lohan passed out in a limo to the TB patient, I’m as Ryan Seacrest used to say, “Scott Out!” TB plane patient overexposed? – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Gay Military Linguists Discharged! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Well honestly, the title of this blog sounds a bit like a gay porn video but today on CNN.com they have video of a military linguist who was thrown out just because he said that he wanted to serve his country as an openly gay soldier (He’s Jewish too but no worries, he’s not me, God knows). Apparently since the start of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” the military has lost about sixty of these much needed specialists as well as many more men and women in other areas of the service. The “family values” groups of course say that we would lose a lot more soldiers (you know; the straight “good” kind) who would refuse to serve next to an openly gay comrade if we let the gays be gays. Gay military linguists discharged! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now for some of you, I know you’re still back on the word, “linguists” and I must admit it always takes me a second read to get over that word. I don’t know, for me there other words that come to mind that involve portions of the word that send my mind reeling in another direction. You know; cunning little words that have to do with giving oral sex to women. On the whole, it just seems like a lesbian word to me, doesn’t it to you? It’s like I’m one of those people who see words as colors and shapes or what have you. Okay I’m not; I think it’s just that I do word association because I was never good with my own language. Well, for those who need clarification, it isn’t the act of female oral sex; a linguist is someone who speaks several languages.

You see, the thing is that we gays are good at a lot of things and I’m not sure if it’s because we’re able to add an “S” into words that don’t even have one in the actual word itself (“Vanna, can I buy an “S”?) or what but apparently we’re good with a second, third and sometimes fourth language too. We apparently make great linguists. (And linguini if you happen to be dating an Italian!) As for me, all I know is a little Hebrew and that has more to do with “hocking” sounds in the back of your throat than the “S” sound. (Boys, mind – gutter – out) But here’s the deal, when the military is in great need of people to translate these languages I don’t understand why the need for the service is less important than who is giving the service. (Just ask the supposed straight guys who frequent and believe the posts on Craig’slist, stating “straight” guys are looking for a blow job from a “dude” just to try it out for the first time) Come on kids, let’s all grow up, shall we?

At any rate, with this ridiculous war you would think that the right wing would be trying to load the military up with us gays just to get rid of us. You know, get us on their soil so we don’t attack their crotches here. Isn’t that the big theory about terrorists and doesn’t it also apply to the gays cause we’re oh so similar? You know, we’re attacking the straightees way of life here in the US just like the terrorist attacked on 9/11, taking the lives of innocent people. Damn us gays, with our insidious plans of world domination by trying to “pair up” in marriage like the Wonder Twins from The League of Justice so that we have the same powers as the straight world. (“Shape of a human being, form of an equal citizen, wonder twins activate!”) They’re stopping our big plans of becoming equal citizens by disallowing us to marry just as effectively as they are winning the war on terror. Isn’t it time they just admit it? They need us. Whether it’s to translate languages, carry a gun, or do a myriad of other things, they need us. Could this be the same reason men don’t ask for directions? They’d have to admit that they can’t do it all themselves? (Well ask the “little women” behind the men, who have known for years us gays, I mean guys can’t do it on our own. Thus the reason gays have fag hags – sorry, ladies, I mean C.F.C.s (close female confidants) - too!)

With the loss of so many lives and now Cindy Sheehan no longer putting up a fight for the peace effort, who will stand up to the political posse that is our government to try to talk some sense into them? (You know we’re in trouble when we have to rely on Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin.) I know us gays scare people (I think it has some correlation to our love of dressing up and the whole Halloween holiday but I don’t have any kind of clinical study to back my findings) but those who know and love us know that there’s really nothing to be afraid of at all.

Let me translate it into gay stereotypical references for you. The Wizard of Oz (Think the 1939 movie version, put the book and musical Wicked aside for just a moment). The government is like the Cowardly Lion, clutching their own tail and wondering who pulled it. We gays are of course, Dorothy (the small and meek) who want adventure, to help the people we meet along the way and ultimately just want to go home. The military is the projected image of the Wizard of Oz but much like the Wizard, they have no power and we should pay no attention to the man behind that curtain. If only they could see us this way instead of painting us as one of the witches, wishing our red and white candy cane striped hose was under a house, maybe, just maybe we could defeat the Wicked Witches of the West, East and anywhere else. After all, wasn’t it Dorothy who figured out that plain water would destroy the witch? Not the Wizard, not the Lion and certainly not the flying monkeys! Sure it may have been luck but what would have happened if she hadn’t been there at all? Gay military linguists discharged! – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Paris and Lohan; Take The Key And Lock Them Up – Don’t Get Me Started!

I let the Paris goes to prison storyline pass by as I thought that giving it as much attention as everyone else in the world would just feed into the ridiculousness of it all but with the new allegations against Lindsay Lohan, I can stay silent no longer. (Or for those who know me, it’s more like I can’t keep my trap shut any longer) Paris and Lohan; take the key and lock them up – Don’t Get Me Started!

Here’s the deal, both Paris and Lohan are part of not only a new celebrity phenomenon but a new party for pay deal that is just ridiculous. Although Paris would like you to believe that she makes her money on the runways of the world and Lohan would like you to believe that she makes her money riding around in Herbie the Love Bug, they really make the bulk of their money by attending parties. That’s right, I don’t know how many of you know this but they are actually paid a lot of money just to show up at a party because of the media attention it will give the shindig. What a life, right?

So you take people who have no grasp on reality that are pampered beyond reason, are prone to excess, pay them to party and what do you think you’re going to end up with? Perhaps they could just call it work related problems that they’ve both become sloppy drunks who drive around thinking they are above the laws of humanity. Or perhaps they can get workman’s comp for their injuries for yet another Mercedes driven into a tree in Beverly Hills. (You’ll all be happy to know that a certain vodka company has pulled out from sponsoring – in other words paying her and for – Lindsay’s birthday bash!)

What shocks me is the sympathy that goes out to them. I don’t get it. Look at Brandy, who is now being sued by the family of the person that she killed while driving drunk. Instead of feeling sorry for these celebs, when are we going to stop these children (even some that are of legal age, they have the mentality of children). And shouldn’t Entertainment Tonight be asking this instead of reporting stories like, “And now, we have photos of Lindsay puking on the sidewalk on Saturday after her Friday tree climbing experiment.” One has to wonder why these pampered poodles are driving anyway. I mean, from the reports, apparently Lohan had her chauffer driving them around all night but when she got back to her mansion at 5 am, they all piled into her convertible. (Obviously the destination was a tree because we all know how pretty trees are first thing in the morning in LA, especially when you’re looking at them through a cracked windshield.) Then she called her chauffer to come get her and take her to the hospital where the police finally tracked her down. So now I get it, a chauffer is for taking you around to parties and hospitals only, I had no idea.

I just think it’s about time we show the world that we’re not as stupid and starry eyed as we look when it comes to celebrities taking the lives of others in their hands because they were drunk. I’m suggesting that it’s time to make a celebrity jail. It won’t be like Promises (the famous Malibu rehab that most stars go to get away from their legal responsibilities when driving under the influence or other legal troubles). No, the celeb prison would be a place where there are only celebrities so they wouldn’t have to worry about being with the rest of prison population but they would have to pay to have it built and they would have to pay at least $1,000 a day to stay there. Already we could build a Mel Gibson, Brandy, Paris and Lohan wing (and that’s just the drunk tank). Similar to the way they treated the famous drunk, “Otis” in Mayberry on the Andy Griffith show, the celebs would just sit on display and anyone could come and look at them like animals in a zoo. This would create additional revenue and would assist the stars from not going into withdrawals from the press not following them. You could pay $10 to just watch them in their cells detoxing and for an extra $25 you could taunt them with your cell phone as you watch them go ballistic because they haven’t been able to text anyone the entire time they’ve been in jail. This would also serve as a way to show everyone that these celebs are no better than anyone else and in fact they’re a little more pathetic than most of us. Big signs would read, “Don’t feed the prisoners egos.”

I know some people think this is barbaric but isn’t it time we take some drastic measures? I mean come on, don’t your kids deserve better role models and don’t we all deserve something better for all the attention and money we give these celebs? Think about it, they could build the prison at Hollywood and Highland and then you could see the Kodak theater where they do the Oscars and Idol finale, see the famous Grauman’s where the celebs put their feet in cement and finish the day at the Hollywood Prison where the only bars celebs deal with are the ones they put their hands through to sign autographs. Ah, Hollywood the land of dreams. Paris and Lohan; take the key and lock them up – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Shouldn’t General Pace Be Pulling An Isaiah Washington? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Excuse me for not getting all excited about Isaiah Washington’s new public service announcement about how “words have power” to hurt or heal that supposedly premiered during reruns of Grey’s Anatomy last night. I am one of the six people in the world who don’t watch the show, don’t care about the show and was only affected by the “scandal” of Washington calling fellow co-star T.R. Knight a fag because people I know who do watch the show asked for my opinion. Here’s the deal, he’s an actor that got lucky landing a hit series (the same as Knight). These people have been on for what; one or two seasons and we know nothing about their background as far as education or political beliefs, etc. and guess what? We shouldn’t care. These are actors people, they’re paid to make you believe the character they’re playing and it doesn’t mean that they have to have personal character. Instead of worrying about Hollywood celebs being “mean” to the gays, shouldn’t we be more worried about the people who make our laws and lead our military? Shouldn’t General Pace be pulling an Isaiah Washington? – Don’t Get Me Started!

See we get so wrapped up in our celebrities that we forget that actors (and believe me I know from personal experience and include myself in this bunch) are a needy lot on the whole. They have low self-esteem from the constant rejection that is this business and although I never experienced it myself (as I’m the greatest never was been there ever was) I understand that once you get some fame it is all consuming to figure out how to keep it and continue to stay on top of your game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not feeling sorry for the chosen few who make it in the business (getting to walk red carpets and drive one of their eighteen Hummers), I’m just saying that we have to understand that fame comes with its own set of problems and these people are usually just as needy as the abused wives on Maury.

What astonishes me is that we as a society focus on these actors instead of our leaders. I’m not saying it shouldn’t matter at all when someone is in the public eye and they spew hate, I’m just saying that the odds are both the actors in question probably won’t even have careers in five years (when the series is done) and will have no lasting affect on humanity while our political leaders’ opinions and legislation will affect us for a very long time to come.

For those of us who were bullied in school and beyond, we should know better than to allow the bullies to define us. (Because just like people not flying after 9/11, that means that the terrorists win.) Haven’t we learned anything from our past? And shouldn’t the organizations who sit down with stars that make these inappropriate comments do more than just create a PSA (Public Service Announcement) with the celeb and get a picture with them on their camera phone?

I know I’m just talking crazy when I question why we care about Mel Gibson hating Jews, Michael Richardson and/or Imus going off on Blacks and Washington or sports figures calling someone a fag. They don’t affect whether or not I can visit my mate in the hospital, they don’t change the fact that I can’t adopt in many states and what they say won’t make it possible for me to donate blood.

It’s not that I’m not concerned at all with public figures promoting a healthy environment endorsing people respect and get along with one another, it’s just that I’m just as worried about American Idol contestants at seventeen singing “She Works Hard For The Money” and “Roxanne” (songs that deal with prostitution) when the demographic for the show’s audience is kids as I am with Washington leaning over his cast mates backstage at an awards show lying when he says he didn’t call someone else on the show a fag.

If we’re going to put a big spotlight on actors and performers for being “inappropriate” to us gays shouldn’t we also focus on our political figures? In fact, shouldn’t we focus more on our political leaders? Maybe not, perhaps we’ve gotten it right as celebrities seem to be shaping the lives of our children and future generations much more than political figures or their parents. Political figures have become like banks, there’s really no option but to have a bank account and yet we allow them to abuse us with ridiculous charges (for things like ATMs) and make us feel bad about ourselves when we go asking them for help because we made a late payment in 1982. We allow them to abuse us, define us and pass judgment on us. But the difference is that as Lincoln said, “…government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.” So if that’s true shouldn’t we demand more from the “government of the people” as Lincoln said? Then again, it was an actor who killed him! Shouldn’t General Pace be pulling an Isaiah Washington? – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Just For Men – Haircolor For Men (Yeah, Gay Men,That Is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

Okay, so when the folded sealed card came in the mail with two men on the front with their capped teeth and they’re coordinating colored short sleeved polo shirts, I figured it was just another card for another product. But as soon as I opened it, I noticed something a little different about this piece of advertising. Could it be the men seemed, I don’t know…really enjoying one another’s company a little more than in most ads? Did they resemble older International Male models a little too much? (Read that blog here…Remember the International Gay...I Mean, International Male Catalog?) What was it about this card? As I always look at the pictures first (with any book or anything) it just made me a bit quizzical. Then I realized, oh my God, this is a gay, gay, gayer than gay advertisement. Just For Men – Haircolor for men (yeah, gay men that is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

Here’s the honest to God text verbatim from inside the folded card (in italics) and my comments after…

Stay In The Game

Gray hair can hide who you really are. Just For Men Haircolor brings back the natural-looking color you had before you started going gray. With Just For Men, they’ll see the real you. Oh really? They’ll see the real you? But isn’t the real you gray? So if you’re all dyed up like a pump that goes with a bridesmaid dress, how are they going to really see the “real” you? (Here’s a tip…to get to see the real guy – when they take off their pants, which they’ll do if you’re doing your job right at all, find the driver’s license…you get the real age and usually a chuckle from the photo. Of course if they don’t put their wallet in their pants because it will make only one of their cheeks look like a bubble butt than you’re out of luck. And if they carry their wallet in their man purse well then, you’re just on your own.)

It’s Romantic

He likes it when you make a little extra effort to look great for him. Getting rid of gray says you take care of yourself. Absolutely...NOT. A little effort is taking yoga to be more limber or getting your hair cut the way they like it instead of the way you like it. And by all means, never mind that you’re six hundred pounds, just dye your hair cause that says you take care of yourself.

And finally…

It’s Says You’re One Of The Guys

When your gray is gone, you fit in better with everyone. With Just For Men you look – and feel – like you really belong. Well, that’s it! Yes, I guess if you only hang around with people twenty years your junior, then yes, I guess you “fit in better with everyone” you’re currently hanging around with if you don’t have any gray in your hair but for those of us who actually date and hang around with people close to our age (the real one), gray is just fine, thank you very much.

I need a product telling me that I’m too old to be gray (or gay as it were) about as much as teenage girls need another airbrushed photo of a model on a cover of a magazine proving that no matter how they starve themselves they’ll never be thin or pretty enough as the model that was created electronically. Go ahead, please feed on the gay growing up fear to sell your hair dye like a piranha because you know what? We’ll all buy into it as much as everyone who ever bought a Chia Pet, Ginsu knives or The Clapper.

Come on gays, haven’t we all had just about enough? I mean, I don’t care if you dye your hair (God knows I did for awhile) but just because you don’t dye you’re hair doesn’t say you’re not one of the guys, in fact it tells me that you’re confident in who you are, what you have to offer the world and are probably someone I’d want to know as opposed to the deluded men who dye their hair too much, tan too much and have all the muscles but sound like gas is escaping whenever they speak.

Trust me when I say, I wasn’t picked for any team at any time so the last thing I need now that I’m in my forties and going gray is an ad telling me I’m not one of the guys. I heard enough of that throughout my academic life and beyond. It’s like the Paul monologue from A Chorus Line when he says, “See when I quit school, what I was doing was trying to find out who I was and how to be a man. You know, there are a lot of people in this world who don’t know how to be men. And since then, I found out that I am one. I was looking for the wrong thing. I was trying to be butch.”  So you’ll excuse me Just For Men, if I don’t equate having dyed hair as a sign of “being one of the guys.”

I get it, I’m taking it too seriously or I should be excited that a mainstream company has advertising for the gays. Well, perhaps I am taking it too seriously but forgive me for not getting all goose pimply over the fact that this company has a smart (and most likely gay, gay, gayer than gay) marketing executive. Good for them for getting money out of us but they need to remember that some of the people they’re marketing to understood a long time ago that no matter how much we worked out or dyed our hair, we were never going to be carded at a bar again and are okay with it. And besides, it throws the whole balance of the gay culture off. If the “Daddies” are going to dye their hair to look like the “Twinks” then no one is going to know who to go to when it comes time to be “taken care of” in the style they’d like to grow accustomed to.

I don’t know, I guess it’s just another step in us gays trying to gain acceptance (from one another). So stay in the game, be one of the guys, after all, it’s romantic dying your hair. (Or so they say) Just For Men – Haircolor for men (yeah, gay men that is) – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Brothers And Sisters (And Sobbing) Season Finale – Don’t Get Me Started!

If you’re someone like me who has a Tivo filled with programs and have not yet watched the season finale of the show Brothers And Sisters (Or God Forbid, don’t care about this show, you know you should, right?), take this time right now to go read one of my blogs from my archives. For the rest of you, I don’t know about you but I couldn’t take it, it was a three or four hanky affair. Brother And Sisters (and sobbing) Season Finale – Don’t Get Me Started!

Now as I’ve said before, I’m a crier. I don’t care if it’s Maury reuniting loved ones who haven’t seen one another in years or a coffee commercial at Christmas, I just lose it. Thus the reason I can no longer watch Extreme Home Makeover, it dehydrates me. (Read that blog… I Detest Cheap Sentiment - Don't Get Me Started!) Again I say, if you don’t know anything about Brothers And Sisters or haven’t watched the finale stop reading cause I’m going into details.

Now I started watching this show from its first episode. Sure, I had read it had a gay character so of course that gave it a space on the Tivo automatically (sort of like my guy always talks about the show, “Julia” with Diahann Carrol – his relatives would call one another and say, “Look there’s a colored woman on TV! And she isn’t a maid!”) We gays tend to get the same way about shows that have gay characters but I have to say that more than the whole “it’s got a gay character” thing, I watched it for Sally Field. I know it’s an old joke but “I like her, I mean, I really like her.” I love her so much I find her damn Boniva ads interesting and have on more than one occasion wondered if I need it too (it’s for bone loss in women) just because Sally Field is so damn convincing.

I have no delusions about this show. This is a nighttime Soap as Dallas and Dynasty were before it. It has so much damn drama that it took them having five kids and an illegitimate one just to spread all the drama legitimately and evenly among its characters. I have to say that the gay character is the floundering one that they don’t seem to know what to do with so he lost his appeal early on to me. He’s another one of those, “I’m gay and have hang ups so it’s okay that I’m a whore but I’m a lawyer so that should make everything all better.” Believe it or not, and I know this doesn’t make for good drama but there are gays out there who are actually successful in their careers and have successful personal lives too. (Shocking, right?) What gets me about all of this is that you know the show’s creative team is as gay as gay can be so wouldn’t you think they would try a little harder to break through the stereotype; just a little? And now the big gay finale shockers (last chance to stop reading) Kevin makes out in the pantry with the senator’s brother who he previously botched a date with while the help continues to cut the crudités for Kitty’s engagement party. Not to be out done by this, we soon find out that the senator’s brother is also a Methodist minister. And again, the conflicted Kevin (both in the character and the writing for the character) stumbles his way through a “You work downtown and I work downtown, maybe we could have lunch.” But more than this gay lack of the edge of your seater (as the Kevin character has seen more action than Alicia Bridges sang about in the 70’s – you know, “Action I got so much to give. I want to give it; I want to get some too…whoo ooh!”) is the whole Brokeback Saul storyline, when Michael Nouri shows up (honestly haven’t cared about him since 1983’s Flashdance) proclaiming that he has divorced his wife and is gay. Telling Saul this we get in an instant that they shared more than friendship back in the day but just in case you’ve missed your phallic moment for the month, Nouri puts his hand on Saul’s that just happens to be on the neck of a wine bottle. Come on gayers, you don’t know how to write for the other gay characters (one of the reasons I think ol’ Kevin has had a Pride Parade full of people in his bed since the start of the season), don’t make another one. God love you writers, figure out what to do with the Kevin character and then you can have another gay one, okay? It’s a little like, finish what’s on your plate before you go in for seconds.

The one character who has come around both in his life and storyline is Justin. And as the youngest of the siblings (of Sally Field and Tom Skerritt – whom I’ve loved ever since he played Shirley MacLaine’s husband in the ballet blockbuster, “The Turning Point”) heads off on the escalator at the airport to report for duty in Iraq all I could think was, “Gee, I hope he takes a bullet early there so that he can come back for his rehabilitation.” The show needs him too much to send him to Iraq now. You know, they can come up with something brilliant and never done before say, him being blinded and he has to come home all angry but at least we get him back in the show interacting with everyone. Just please dear God, don’t do the whole “live from Iraq” Justin.

The rest of the characters manage to make their usual dialogue good enough to keep you interested and although there was no real cliff hanger here, the Walker clan ends up like we met them, dramatic but interesting. So no need to ask if I’ll be watching again next year, I will be. I can only hope that they don’t do what every other show seems to do which is on a week, off three. I’ve got a crazy idea, how about some producers and writers who know what’s going to happen to the characters ahead of time so they give us a whole season uninterrupted? Am I the only one who remembers television seasons that coincided with the entire school year? (As I always say, another blog for another day) For those who read this and don’t watch the show, I’m sure they’ll be re-playing the whole season before it comes back on next year so catch up people, will you? Then you’ll see what all the drama is about. Brother And Sisters (and sobbing) Season Finale – Don’t Get Me Started!

 
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Trust Me, Clean Out Your Sock Drawer! – Don’t Get Me Started!

So I had been putting it off for weeks but finally I changed over my closets from the winter clothes to the summer clothes. You see, here in Vegas we only have those two seasons really. It’s all ready close to 100 degrees so it was time to put the cashmere away under the bed until next season. There was at least one huge garbage bag of clothes that went to Goodwill and so I felt as though I was really accomplishing something. Then in my cleaning frenzy it occurred to me that in the eight years of living in Vegas, I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned out my sock drawer. Sure I’ve bought more socks and I’ve even thrown some out along the way but a whole take everything out, throw stuff away and put stuff back in, I’ve never done it. Trust me, clean out your sock drawer – Don’t Get Me Started!

For you, it may not be a sock drawer, it may be something else like the top of a closet or under the bed but trust me, we all have these dark secret places where we continually put stuff in but nothing ever comes out. It’s a little like the Hotel California that the Eagles sang about.

For me it was my sock drawer. There were some socks in there that I don’t even remember buying and I would make a pretty good bet that they never even made it on my feet. Some were from years and years ago when I was obsessed with matching my socks to my suit or pants color (no, I did not say pantsuit!). So there were pairs that only went with certain things. It’s like my guy is always saying to me, “You have outfits, not clothes.” Is it my fault I was raised on garanimals? (I just looked it up online and I can not even believe they still make these clothes…here you go… http://www.garanimals.com/ ) For those four people who don’t know what garanimals were/are, they were a clothing line designed to help kids pick out their own outfits. All the pants with the monkey on them went with the shirts that had a monkey on them. Oh, how I loved these clothes at an early age. But as we see, it kept me making “outfits” instead of really learning what pieces you can take from several different places and put them all together beautifully no matter how much I watch What Not To Wear on TLC. Let’s face it, I’m still looking for the lions to match up.

When I got everything out of the drawer, (unlike a gay bar) the first ones to be thrown out were the singles that had managed to sneak in and just lay around at the bottom of the drawer for far too long. The next ones to go were the ones that I had worn into the ground so they had holes yet still there were times when I would wear them. Then there were the ones that I have no idea how they got there…the thin, silky, over-the-calf socks in green with a pattern up the calf (Had I gone through an Italian phase I don’t remember?). And finally when everything was thrown away and the drawer was looking so ready for its close-up, I thought, “Shit, now I have to do the underwear drawer.”

You see this whole spring cleaning bullshit is just that, bullshit. They don’t tell you when you start with one drawer you’re going to be spending the rest of your day looking at every article of clothing you have wondering whether you’ll ever get into it again, why you ever bought it, if you can live without it and why you would ever buy let alone wear turquoise and orange elastic underwear unless you had the tights and cape to go with it and were saving humanity.

There were some, let’s just say, “Scary” things in the underwear drawer that don’t need to be discussed here but I’ll just say there was plenty of stuff from my youth that simply had to go so you can just let your filthy minds run rampant. I had no idea half of that stuff was in there and was amazed to find AA batteries that were outdated by at least five years in there. We all know that’s where you keep batteries and bow ties, right, in the underwear drawer?
  

The thing about cleaning is that while it’s cathartic to a certain extent, once you start you can never be finished with it. You see, I did two drawers and a closet and yet as I’m typing this, the top of my desk is so filled with crap that I want to kill myself so I feel as if I accomplished nothing. There’s a part of me that really just wants to get out garbage bags and throw everything out or maybe put the whole “lot” on EBay like that woman did. Did you hear about her? She decided that she needed to get out from under everything that she had in her house and start fresh so she put her whole house of stuff on EBay. The last time I checked, she had a bid for like $200 and her reserve bid was $1,500.00. No, I couldn’t put it on EBay, I’d be afraid I would end up like her, not only did she want to get rid of it but the world was telling her that her shit wasn’t worth anything. My self esteem isn’t in a good enough place at the moment to handle all of that stress too.

So I’ll do my best to make my way through the rest of my crap because when you think about it, we accumulate so much stuff that it’s really unbelievable and most of it is shit that we don’t need, want or even remember wanting. So while it may be scary, I’m telling you that you need to start somewhere. Trust me, clean out your sock drawer – Don’t Get Me Started!

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And I Am Telling You…You Men Shouldn’t Be Singing Dreamgirls! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I don’t care that Rosie has had one on The View or that we should all stand proud behind our gay guy pals as they plaster all over YouTube with their renditions of And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going from Dreamgirls, I’m telling you it ain’t right and I can take no more of it. (And that goes for kids singing this song too – totally inappropriate.) And I am telling you…you men shouldn’t be singing Dreamgirls! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I have never been one to think that the “pronoun switch” that many performers do in order to sing a song that was created for the opposite sex is proper. In my opinion, if it’s written for a man, then a man should sing it and vice versa. I don’t want to hear, “Someday she’ll come along, the gal I love.” When it’s supposed to be, “Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.” Do you mean to tell me that there are not enough songs in the universe? Couldn’t you find something else to sing that is say, more appropriate?

And then there are the gays (God love us) who don’t change the pronoun and love singing, “And all because of the man that got away.” But times have changed, we get it, you’re gay but you’re singing a woman’s song my dears and unless you’re doing Judy at a Palm Springs drag club at 3am complete with the over-the-top Judy palsy mannerisms from the movie A Star Is Born, I’m just not buying. It’s not shocking or inventive it’s just something I’m not interested in and don’t get why anyone else would be, frankly.

But in a recent search for YouTube clips for the site I was simply amazed at the amount of people who post themselves on YouTube singing THE song from Dreamgirls and how many of them are men. I don’t care if you actually sound good singing the song or you’re black, white or albino (although most of them are white boys trying to sing that funky music) you just need to stop it right now. Most of you are doing impersonations of Jennifer Holiday. I thought we all got over that when Sam Harris channeled Patti LaBelle on “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” in the 80’s on Star Search. Boys, boys, boys, we’ve been there, seen it and please dear God, can’t we get past it?

As I’ve said before, I have never understood why some gays find it attractive or funny to become a cartoon version of a black woman in their mannerisms. All the “Girl, you know what I’m saying” with the head bobbing and arms a flailing just grates on my last nerve. I would get it if that’s just who you are as a person but these mannerisms are put on and well, yuck. I can hear some of you six foot, seventy pound white boys now, “Girl you know you just be a hater cause you ain’t got no pipes to be singing so good.” I’m not a girl, I’m a man and I’m not trying to be mean or bitchy, I’m just really begging you to stop embarrassing yourself and every man, woman, child and decent drag queen in the universe.

Someone has got to put a stop to this and it may as well be me. But just in case you aren’t convinced….watch the following YouTube videos… And I am telling you…you men shouldn’t be singing Dreamgirls! – Don’t Get Me Started!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxe6QuMU370

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRexSeidRF0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9KkdVnmg4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HClpf6YbZ3I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJvIOWYK7xo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9mMr4awxdc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY1PRuOSP4M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZbpDnJ0wIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbaruWlfHqc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_tntTFHFEI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRhGA8thxD8

However boys, if you must bellow it out…please do it as part of your own space, part of your own time…here’s your accompanist…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqBpH_4wxmk

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What Do We Leave? Nothing Much…Only Dinner Theatre – Don’t Get Me Started!

For those avid fans of this blog prepare yourselves as before I even begin this blog I all ready know that it will read very differently than most of my blogs. You see, as I said on the gay, gay, gayer than gay page about myself, the piece of myself I show in my blogs is only one verse in a song that has many verses and choruses. I worked and met my guy at a dinner theatre in Delaware. We went show to show to show for eleven years at that theatre – rehearsing one show while performing another show. I started as a performer and by the time I left I was working in marketing for the theater, directing, choreographing, creating musical revues and still performing for the producers in the shows. It was the closest I think I may ever be to being my ideal, George M. Cohan (the role I played my senior year in high school in the musical made famous by Joel Grey), they called him “the man who owned Broadway.” The theater closed its doors this year and while it was sad and strange to be so far away when it closed, it was even stranger to hear that last week they auctioned off the lights and almost everything that wasn’t nailed down. Not to get too Jewish on you, but it feels like that scene from Fiddler On The Roof when the Jews are being kicked out of their homes in Anatevka. What do we leave? Nothing much…only dinner theatre – Don’t Get Me Started!

There are places and people that come into your life when you least expect it and impact your life so greatly that you don’t realize it while it’s happening. Maybe you never fully understand their impact but once you’ve been away from it for at least eight years (as I have now) gaining a little perspective, you at least realize how much it all meant and means to you. You understand how much you travel with it in your heart and soul every day and how it made you part of who you are today. Some people will say it was a building, period but for many who have had similar experiences somewhere they’ll understand that that “building” wasn’t a house for shows, memories, love and friendship, it was a home (albeit a dysfunctional home) where all those things took place and more, where I always felt like family and like a childhood home that gets sold or demolished, it will be strange and heart breaking to never stand in the building again.  

It wasn’t Broadway, very few of us who start on the journey to make it there make it anywhere but I did make it in this dinner theatre. So what that it was Wilmington, Delaware and I would never win a Tony for my work? I was part of the fabric of this place where people brought their families, laughed, applauded and sometimes were moved to silence by a scene or song. Like a lot of things in life when looked back upon, I took it for granted more than I should have perhaps but the good news is that I did everything I wanted and needed to do while I was there. I got to do a lot there professionally but more importantly, I got to meet the man whom I’d share my life with and create lifelong friendships that last until this day. Sure there are some people we don’t keep in touch with or that have fallen out of our lives but there are some very important relationships that will never fade. To wax poetic, as they say, for just a moment, it’s like the end of A Chorus Line when the lights go out on “the line” kicking to symbolize that there is no end, somewhere there’s always a chorus kicking and that’s how I’ll remember the theatre and its people…they’re there somewhere…maybe not in that building anymore but the moments in my heart are frozen forever, indelibly.

As I was talking to one of my dearest friends about the auction and she was telling me how the “Braille curtain” – the main stage drape that would go up in a scalloped pattern like the icing on the side of a cake (funny I should reference a cake as the theatre was The Three Little Bakers founded by a trio of brothers who were acrobats in vaudeville who started a bakery when one of them broke their back forcing them out of show business and then eventually they built the dinner theatre, getting them back into the show business while still baking). The curtain, which we were always told was a $20,000 curtain; went for some ridiculously low amount. We heard a lot about that curtain and its worth over the years and now it had apparently been sold to a theatre in New Jersey for very little. As my friend was telling me about it, my mind was racing wildly (per usual) and instead of allowing great sadness to envelope me, I did what I do…I said, “Well, I feel about it like I do when your puppy dies and your parents tell you that it’s gone to live on a farm. In my mind I want to believe that the curtain really just went to a theatre in Jersey where I know they’ll do awful community theatre shows behind it but the theater will be so happy to have gotten this curtain for such a song and they’ll work so hard on their awful shows and they’ll put those shows on (and they’ll be awful) but the curtain, like the puppy, will be happy because at least it’s in a theatre/farm. Well, in my mind anyway.”

I don’t think it’s wrong to romanticize our past (as long as we have some base of reality somewhere in our lives). I know therapists may not agree with me but for me it works. I’m glad I wasn’t there to see the people walking through the theater as the auctioneer said, “How much for the grand piano?” I want to think of a woman I worked with for years who played Aunt Eller in Oklahoma standing on a bale of hay auctioning everything off like they auction the girls’ hampers filled with lunch at the box social scene in the musical. “Come on folks, it’s all for the good of Scott’s sanity (or the school house as she says in the musical) we need to raise more money than that, gotta get enough for a nice big chimbley (chimney).”

At the risk of sounding like Nora Desmond from Sunset Boulevard (the musical of course), “everything’s as if we never said goodbye.” As long as I wasn’t there, as long as I didn’t see it happen, it’s as if I never have to say goodbye to that time in my life, the memories or the building. Besides, what’s a building compared to someone to share your life with (who shares a lot of your same memories) or really, really wonderful friends? In my head I was there at the auction and it’s a production of Fiddler On The Roof and we’re all standing around, all of us that ever worked there on the stage and we say then sing, “Well, The Bakers hasn’t been exactly the Garden of Eden. It’s true. After all what have we got here? A little bit of this, a little bit of that, some lights, a table, a curtain, a soft chair? Someone should have set a match to this place years ago.” What do we leave? Nothing much…only dinner theatre – Don’t Get Me Started!

 
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Damn You Post Office, I Just Bought Super Hero Stamps! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I get it okay, I get it that everything eventually goes up in price. I remember when my grandmother (Mom’s mom) lived with us and she would go to the grocery store. It seemed all she ever wanted to discuss when she got home was how much the price of cabbage or cucumbers (no, it wasn’t always about “c” words) had gone up in price and how outraged she was about the situation. At the time, I was like, “What’s the big deal?” You see, that was way before I learned about rage, disgust, indignation, shock and appall. (Yes, it was a simpler time for me.) So I was not surprised by the recent postal rate increase however, I can not even begin to believe all the new rules that are going along with the rate hike. Damn you post office, I just bought super hero stamps! – Don’t Get Me Started!

At first I just assumed that it was another increase so I got over it rather quickly and simply but then my mother went to mail some of our MikWright cards (if you don’t know about these AND haven’t bought them by now you must have been sick or in Europe…but here you go…buy them immediately… http://www.somelikeitscott.com/somelikefaves.html ) Apparently part of the whole new system is that it costs more to send something if it doesn’t bend in half. This is something I don’t get at all. So now you’re going to tell us that it’s going to cost extra if we don’t want our mail mutilated? If our mail can’t be flexible and qualify to join the cast of a Cirque de Soleil show so we should all suffer and pay more? Look, I know these are tough times but guess what post office, you’re going to think yourself right out of existence here with these kinds of ideas…who do you have working for you? The schmuck who invented New Coke?

Almost immediately I emailed my pal at MikWright to let him know about all this earth shattering news regarding the postage situation. His response was that of course he knew all about it and here’s how it explained it… The formula for the new postage rates equals something like e=mc2. If a letter ... first ounce .41 plus .17 for each ounce up to 3.3 ounces. anything over that is .80 first ounce plus the .17 per. if a "letter" is bigger than 6 1/8 inches x 11 then it is auto .80+ because it's considered a "flat" piece. Well guess what? I was never good at word problems. I don’t know what time the bus from Albany will get to Newark if it’s traveling at a speed of 40 miles per hour, has fourteen overweight people, two models and dog and the driver is an ex-convict and the carpool lane is out of the question. No, now I’m more confused than I ever was about the entire situation. And I don’t know about you but no matter what else happens to me in life I don’t want to be considered a flat piece. Anything but that, right? (Quickly, everyone, you have permission to clutch your pearls!)

Does the post office/government not get it that we are some of the least educated people in the world due to the lack of funding for education in the USA? I blame them for the lack of education I got in public schools that makes it impossible for me to figure this whole thing out. Shouldn’t they be trying to make it easier to understand? You know like computers, DVD players, Tivo and fast food worker training? “Click on the stamp to mail” that’s about what I can handle at this point in my life. I don’t know; the whole thing is causing undo stress on me so I may have to talk to a lawyer about the situation. (Okay just kidding but you know it had been about three paragraphs where I hadn’t said anything stereotypically Jewish and I have to get my quota in or risk being thrown out)

And perhaps I’ve just hit on something…it would seem to me that right after the post office finally got a decent Hanukkah stamp, a Hattie McDaniel (Mammy from Gone With The Wind) stamp, Judy Garland stamp and  Ella Fitzgerald stamp that suddenly these stamps simply weren’t “good enough” for the post office. Hmmm…well, that just about covers my life – getting rid of the Jews, blacks and gay icons on stamps. And what about that new Jamestown triangle stamp? (No boys, not a lick of pink on it, not one of the triangles that Hitler put on us and now we put on ourselves.) Am I wrong that Jamestown was the start of the stealing land from the Native Americans to form a more, well, you know, as whitey, white, white folk would say, “a more perfect union?”

The point is while all life around me is getting more and more complicated, I want mailing to be a simple experience dammit. I want to be able to mail my cards with me in drag at seven years old without having to wonder if I can still bend (I spent years as a dancer and yes, can still do a split – okay, it’s only on the left side but it made me more attractive, didn’t it?). I’m one of those people who still mails cards and letters so why not cater to me and those like me and just stop, wait a minute Mr. Postman. (You didn’t really think I’d get through the blog without a musical reference, did you?)

Oh I’ll go along with it and somehow figure out the whole equation that has become the “mailing experience” but it doesn’t mean I won’t be bitter about it. It doesn’t mean that I won’t curse the person who brought this upon me and well, oh, just damn you post office, I just bought super hero stamps! – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Another Gay Myth Exposed – Public Restrooms Are Not Hot – Don’t Get Me Started!

I know that George Michael would say something different and there are plenty of gay porn movies out there that seem to show bathrooms as the poor man’s gym hook up spot but I can tell you from personal experience that such is not the case. Prepare yourselves to delve into a world rarely talked about and read as I do it again, another gay myth exposed – public restrooms are not hot – Don’t Get Me Started!

The Piss and Moan club (now already I can tell that some of you boys are at the edge of your seat) well, sit back and sit up straight for God’s sake do you want to be a hunchback? Today I’m in the public bathroom where I work when suddenly the door slams open. I was in a stall but I hear this guy rushing in. The next thing I hear is, “AHhhhhh….Oohhhhhh….oh yeah, wooooo…” That’s right, here I had always been under the impression that to “piss and moan” meant to “bitch” when this guy was doing the real deal. It sounded like a bad porn movie and trust me when I say, this guy was just peeing. (That much I could see through the stall!) He had his head tilted back and he was in ecstasy over the peeing he was doing. This guy had to have been saving it up for years or else had one too many free beers while playing slots at one of the casinos on The Strip. (Think the original Austin Powers movie but less funny and with a lot more “oohing” and “ahhing.”) I was stunned and didn’t dare come out of the stall because I mean, what do you say, “Wow, you sure do get into peeing, don’t ya?” Is there anything appropriate to say? Does Hallmark or even my pals at MikWright make a card for such an occasion? I kept telling myself that the guy was passing a kidney stone or something and somehow it made me feel a little better. But not so much when he didn’t wash his hands, instead he finished off with a “woo hoo” a zip up and he was gone.

Then I began to think of the other odd occurrences and “habits” that make a bathroom so not gay hot. Now every female comedian has gone on about how men can’t seem to get their pee in a toilet bowl to save their life, what I can’t figure out is why the need to pee all over the seat? I mean, I get you might not lift the seat in a public bathroom but you’d think with all the sports oriented men out there that they would like to make two points by getting the pee in or at least a rebound after the first spurt doesn’t go in. I don’t know, maybe they’re going for three points from the key? (Am I dazzling you with my basketball jargon? I’m full of surprises, kids) You would think that from their competitive nature alone that their aim would get a little better instead of causing them to I guess say, “What the hell? I already missed the bowl let me just go ahead and decorate the seat in my pee!” Again, I know that there are some men out there who are so into all of this right now that they can barely get their flies undone fast enough but please people, know that this isn’t something all “the gays” are into and there are plenty of straight men who are into the peeing thing as a turn on big time.

One time I was in a public bathroom at an airport and there was a guy in the stall on his cell phone. For the life of me I can’t imagine being on your cell phone and taking a dump. (Well, let’s just say I can imagine it if you’re not talking and you’re phone is on mute) but this guy was holding an entire conversation! There was farting, grunting and I’m not sure but I think he sold all his Disney stock but finally he was finished I suppose as I heard him say, “Well, I gotta go, I’m getting down to the paperwork now.” I kid you not, this one I am not making up, I’m not embellishing and who in the hell would want to or need to in this case, I ask you? As I stood at the urinal I know that I just started looking around in shock, almost wanting to see if anyone else had heard all of this going on so that I wouldn’t think I was crazy. No one looked at me and who could blame them at an airport bathroom with a guy in a stall on a cell phone carrying on a conversation?

Finally there is the guy who goes into a stall to pee even though he’s going to be standing up either due to all the urinals being taken or some because I think they feel it’s more private…well it WOULD be more private if they would shut the damn door! (These guys must be straight because all gays pee sitting down – at least I had a female friend of mine convinced of that at one time. Yes, before it was on Will and Grace, way back in the late eighties. A female pal had a friend of mine over and me to watch gay porn as she had never seen it and was dying to watch it with us for some reason. Well, as my male friend goes into the bathroom she says, “Oh, I forgot to tell him that the seat doesn’t stay up on its own in that bathroom.” I said, “Suz, don’t worry, he’s gay, all gays sit down when they pee.” We had her convinced for days as she conducted a survey of every gay man we knew and we winked behind her head to get our fellow gays to agree with our story.) But here’s the deal, if you’re going to take the time to go into a stall, close the damn door. It is not a urinal…it has a door on it for closing. I will never understand these men who stand there peeing only to have every other man come into the bathroom, see all the urinals taken and then slam the door into their ass as they go into what they think is an unoccupied stall. Then having to mumble and say, “Hey sorry dude.”

Okay, wait a minute…maybe I’ve been wrong all along, that sounds exactly like a scene and line out of a gay porn film! Well, say what you will and God love your little hearts for being into whatever the hell you’re into, who am I to judge? (Well, we all know exactly who I am to judge…these blogs are filled with my judgments) but honestly, let me say for the most part, public restrooms are not like the ball room at a kid’s playground. Okay, let me re-phrase that…for most of us, bathrooms are used for their intended purposes and not as a gay hook up locale. (Notice I said MOST of us…you know who you are who feel differently) but for the rest of us gays, we need to let people know that contrary to certain celebs and stories they’ve heard it’s time to set the record straight…or at least defend our gay honor that we’re as dull as the straightees sometimes. Another gay myth exposed – public restrooms are not hot – Don’t Get Me Started!

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Pre-Boarders Are Ruining Everything For All Of Us! – Don’t Get Me Started!

May I simply say that I don’t care if you’re flying on a first class airline or you’re traveling (as I often do on my short hops to LA) on Southwest, there need to be some rules set down for all of the pre-boarders in the world in order for me to not completely lose my mind when it comes to air travel. Pre-boarders are ruining everything for all of us! – Don’t Get Me Started!

On a side note, I know that Southwest claims that one o