Halloween Costumes For Those Who Don’t Really Want To Try Too Hard – Don’t Get Me Started!

As I’ve said on many occasions, I’ve just never been that much into Halloween but I understand that there are people out there who will be dragged to parties or whatnot this weekend and yet they want someone else to do their thinking for them or at the very least, give them a solution to the costume dilemma. So here it is, Halloween costumes for those who don’t really want to try too hard – Don’t Get Me Started!

While dead celebrities top the list when it comes to Halloween costumes, I suggest that with any costume, instead of doing the obvious and dressing like the dead celebrity (or imprisoned celebrity or celebrity in general) go as someone from their life or on the peripheral of the situation.

Michael Jackson

·         Go as the doctor who injected Michael. All you need is a syringe, a cell phone and to pay no attention to any of your patients (or party guests as it were)

·         Go as Jermaine Jackson – just wear big sunglasses from the 80’s you have lying around in your drawer, every bracelet within a five mile radius and bore everyone with going on and on about how Michael was “the most important person in the world”

Bernie Madoff

·         Men go shirtless and just tell everyone Bernie Madoff took the shirt off your back too – to complete the costume you should have a foreclosed home and a set of keys to a Bentley

·         Go as Ruth Madoff – blonde bob wig, glasses and whenever someone talks to you just say, “no comment”

Jon & Kate

·         Ladies, paint this phrase on a t-shirt, “Yeah, I slept with Jon Gosselin too”

·         Men, cover yourself in Ed Hardy clothing and go as Jon’s friend…guess what? You’re an asshole too

Additional Ideas

·         If you’re a brunette and have two friends who are brunettes and you can get your hands on some black men, just dress slutty and you’re the Kardashians

·         Wear no costume and just tell everyone you’re on a reality show that you know is going to be a huge hit and next year what you’re wearing this year is going to be THE costume

·         If you hang with a fashionable crowd, wear something from and go as “last season”

·         Buy some fangs – vampires are very in this season. For an added boost to the costume, slap some white powder on your face

·         And if you really want to protest the whole Halloween scene even while going to a Halloween party, just write on a t-shirt, “H1N1 Carrier” (or just slap a sticker that says, “H1N1” on your man purse and then you’ll actually be carrying H1N1, get it?)

If Your Teen Looks Like A Freak Here’s A Chance To Get Them Employed! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Yesterday I was driving down the road running some errands and I saw the typical person on the corner spinning a sign. There was a time when this was unusual however in this day and age there seems to be many a sign spinner on many a sidewalk. What made me take notice of this was not how he was spinning the sign (because he was not bothering to even attempt to spin the sign, rather just holding it at an angle that used the sidewalk as a support for the corner of the sign). No, the reason I noticed him was due to his gothic appearance. As I got closer I noticed that he had the dyed black hair with bright red bangs hanging over his eyes and the all black clothing which featured the black stretch pants. As I got even closer to passing him in my car I saw that he had eye liner appropriately over-applied, pierced lip and the black nail polish to match. The business he was promoting? A Halloween store. And that’s when it struck me, if your teen looks like a freak here’s a chance to get them employed! – Don’t Get Me Started!

While any other time of year it may be easy for your teen (or twenty year old) to say that they got turned down for a job due to their gothic appearance or too many tattoos, etc., this is the time for you to make your move. I’m sure the kid that I saw was wearing his own clothes as his “costume” and that the black nail polish, eye liner and dyed hair came before he turned in his application. What your children don’t realize is that the way they’re dressing every day is all ready a costume. (Hey, don’t knock it. If you work in corporate America you probably have a costume you wear every day too, it’s just that you call it, “business casual.”)

So how great for your kid to be able to wear what they want to wear, sort of be that moody person that they are anyway (people will think they’re “really in character”) and get paid for it? They can sell people rubber rats and fake blood, cool, right? They can act like they’re in the latest rash of vampire movies and television shows filling up the pockets of the many studios that create such entertainment and be cool all at the same time.

It seems to me that Halloween is the one holiday that people spend a ton of money on no matter what the economy is doing. (I don’t get it myself. And at the risk of being drummed out of the gay corps I will tell you that I can’t even remember the last time I actually “dressed up” for Halloween. ) I understand that people like to leave their dreary lives behind for one weekend a year, dressing up like a sexy nurse and whatever the male equivalent may be. It allows people who live what they consider mundane lives to suddenly break out and be a pair of boobs with their wife bound together by a cartoon oversized strand of pearls. And perhaps my vision has been skewed by the fact that I live in Vegas where at any time of day or night you can see the people who have been saving their jeans that are too tight with their too high heels they can’t walk in, just to wear them when they get to “Sin City” where no one knows them and they can unleash their inner slut (thus the reason for the success of the “What Stays In Vegas” campaign).  In fact, the fantasy of being whoever you want to be is exactly what keeps Vegas in business (and I suspect Halloween as an industry) so sure, why not have a little of that each year in your own hometown without having to buy a plane ticket? Of course the problem with doing this type of thing at home is that unlike in every superhero story, people actually know it’s you and simply putting on a mask or glasses does NOT make you unrecognizable to the general public (or your friends).

But back to the topic at hand, instead of doling out another cent for your eighteen year old to buy more black nail polish or hair dye, why not have them make their own money to buy it at least one time a year? I’m telling you, I’ve seen it and I know it will work if your teen looks like a freak here’s a chance to get them employed! – Don’t Get Me Started!

P.S.

Haunted Houses need people too! Get your freaks out there working.

How I Fell In Love With My Playtex Living Gloves – Don’t Get Me Started!

For those of you who have a proclivity for rubber against your naughty bits, move along, this is not a blog post for you. I’m sorry to say that there will be no discussion of the ways you can “get off” while wearing a pair of rubber gloves. No, this is a typical Scott story of how he discovered that the commercials sometimes are right and how I fell in love with my Playtex Living Gloves – Don’t Get Me Started!

I am sorry to say that I am not the sort of fussy overly clean stereotypical gay you’ve seen in television and movies. (I know, you’re disappointed but there, I’ve said it). That said I’m not someone who lives in squalor either. I like things clean it’s just that when it’s me who is doing the cleaning it’s like everything else in my life, I like a good deadline. A friend coming to stay is the perfect deadline I need but due to the fact I live in Vegas where when friends come to visit they usually stay somewhere on the Strip and don’t often stay with us I can’t use that as the only time I clean as I would live in a way too dirty environment. So while a deadline like someone coming to visit sometimes works, there are other times when I simply can’t take it anymore and I run around the house like the old “white tornado” from the television commercials. Like some sort of cleaning and sanitizing Tasmanian devil, no one and no surface is safe. This normally goes on for about two to three hours until I find myself falling over with exhaustion and cleaning chemical fumes inhalation falling into a heap on the sofa for the rest of the day.

The thing about me is that I never really learned how to clean. I know some of you will find this an odd comment, after all you’re saying, all you do is you spray some cleaner on something and wipe it with a sponge and it gets clean, right? Yeah, that’s the simple stuff but what I mean is that I have no idea (even though I’ll soon be 45 years old) how to use a mop. I don’t care if it’s the old fashioned kind with the Raggedy Ann hair bottom or the new ones where you can squeegee the water out with a pull back on the lever. The whole process of mopping remains a mystery to me. Most of the time I just feel as though I’m pushing dirty water around the floor and no matter if I’m on my knees scrubbing or using a mop the results are always less than I desire or expect.  And if you’re mopping and then putting the mop in the bucket to rinse it, after awhile isn’t it just being rinsed in dirty water so then you’ve just got a mop of dirty water that you’re pushing around the floor? Obviously I’m missing a big piece to this puzzle.

When it comes to cleaning, I believe that no matter what the cost to the environment or my own personal health, if the product says it will eat through the dirt (even at the cost of your lung) I’m in. That’s right, I stand in front of the cleaner aisle in the store and look for whatever I can find with the most skull and cross bones on it and that’s what I buy. When I finally use the products I tend to do everything you’re NOT supposed to do. I use them in the small confined bathrooms with very limited ventilation and I mix as many of them as possible because I figure that if one set of chemicals won’t do the job than the other three I mixed in will help the process out. I don’t mind scrubbing but when there are bubbles that will actually scrub for you that come out of the nozzle of the can, why would you bother, right? And up until recently, I did this all with naked hands and wondered when I was finished why my hands felt as though they were on fire and as if the skin was about to peel off.

That is until I found the little yellow hands helper that you housewives have known about for years, the Playtex Living Glove! Sure I had seen the commercials growing up but I figured that a real man didn’t need to wear such a thing unless he was mixing toxic chemicals (oh shit, that IS me, see paragraph above) I mean I thought it was for more of a commercial chemical environment. But on a recent Friday night all that changed.

The cleaning my house was about to get was premeditated. I had stopped at the store to buy more supplies (I need to say at this point I have more cleaning supplies in my home than the law allows or that I should have considering I’m not cleaning every moment of every day. This also means that I have about two of everything because I forget what I have under the sink and figure I do need an additional, Kaboom, Fantastik or Scrub Free and buy it when I’m about to go on a cleaning spree because I can’t really remember what I have and don’t have so there’s almost as many cleaning products under the sink as unused hair care products which I lovingly call my, “product graveyard.”) And near these cleaning products in the store, I ran across the Playtex living gloves. I thought back to my last cleaning extravaganza when I had almost passed out after being on my knees and hunched over the tub scrubbing with a mixture of Clorox and six other products in the bathtub until the chemicals had eaten away at my hands, t-shirt and my sinuses were on fire. I tossed the gloves into my cleaning supply filled basket and went to the checkout.

When I began my cleaning regime I almost forgot about the gloves but after a thorough cleaning of the mirrors in the bathroom I ran across them and put them on. Hmmmm, they felt a little strange. I could easily put my fingers together but they felt all how shall I put this? Rubbery I guess? I went about the cleaning and all the while I would get glimpses of myself in a mirror with my tousled hair, t-shirt and bright yellow gloves, I looked like I could invent something! As I scrubbed I will say that my hands began to sweat a bit in the gloves but nothing would deter me now. I could actually scrub away without that burning sensation of the chemicals eating through my flesh and I was loving every minute of it. As I sprayed the Scrubbing Bubbles I thought about how wonderful the sound was and wondered why no one had put this on a Sharper Image product that gave you the option of soothing sounds to fall asleep to like rain, ocean or chemical bubbles popping to do your cleaning for you.

Morning Glow For Gays – Don’t Get Me Started!

October 1, 2009 the state of Nevada began letting same sex (and not same sex) couples register as Domestic Partners. Yesterday the United States Government added crimes against gays to the list of hate crimes. Of course as a gay man who did theatre most of my life, the song that went through my head was from a musical, Pippin - “Morning Glow” here is an excerpt - “Morning glow, morning glow, starts to glimmer when you know, winds of change are set to blow and sweep this whole land through. Morning glow is long past due.” Morning Glow for gays – Don’t Get Me Started!

I had a young man write into me about being gay and how it affected him living in what’s known as “the bible belt” and knowing at fourteen he’s gay. He asked for advice and I gave the best that I could letting him know it was from my point of reference and what I had experienced. I read a blog (or hub as they say on hubpages.com) about a woman worried that although she thinks her parents all ready know she is bi-sexual she’s afraid they will disown her if she tells them. I felt compelled to leave a comment. While the advice I gave to both was very different, I did my best to show compassion and understand that as a forty-something gay man, my coming out was very different.

To the young boy I told him to be careful, to not come out until he was ready. To not tell the world until he was sure that he was able to accept the possible hate and rejection that would come along with it. I stressed time and time again for him to do whatever it was he needed to do to keep him as safe as possible. I warned against sharing his feelings of his sexuality with teenage friends who may or may not be loyal and may or may not keep it to themselves. I encouraged him to find a support network. I told him to email me whenever he wanted. He’s emailed me several times and I’m pleased to report that he found a friend who actually came out to him and although he is maneuvering through adolescence and not officially “out” to everyone who knows him, all ready suffering at the hands of those who are calling him names, I’m proud to say he’s bobbing and weaving and staying afloat even with the huge waves of hatred being thrust upon him. I know in my heart he’s going to be okay.

To the woman who was worried about her parents I wrote to her saying, “No one can say how anyone will really react to something (especially when they’ve seemingly made their opinion known on a topic) but know that sometimes when it’s someone who is your child, your friend, your parent, somehow the idea of “disowning” or cutting someone out of your life based on something like sexuality becomes more difficult. It’s no longer an abstract. It’s the little girl who took your hand to cross the street and that image is sometimes enough to help parents to begin to see the whole person and not just their sexuality. Coming out is a continual process but worth every minute of it. If you think of all the minutes you’ve spent worrying about it, trying to hide it, etc. you’ll discover that once you’re out you can use those minutes for a lot more productive things.” I know in my heart she’s going to be okay.

There are still many battles and wars to be won to obtain equality and on most days I think about our rights being half empty but today they feel half full. A scary feeling because when you’re waging a war you can never become complacent but right now my heart and eyes are full. I know that those who will follow will be better taken care of then those who came before me or me. And isn’t that what we all want for our children? (Even the ones who are only related by our minority, sexuality or hair color) “So, morning glow all day long. While we sing tomorrow’s song. Never knew we could be so strong but now it’s very clear. Morning glow is almost here. Morning glow by your light, we can make the new day bright and the phantoms of the night will fade into the past. Morning glow is here at last.” Morning glow for gays – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’m Not A Germaphobe, I Just Play One When You’re Sick And Touching Me! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Well a big, “BRAVO!” to the media for making both the common flu and the latest politically correct named strain of flu, H1N1 (instead of making swine feel badly about themselves) and making all of us hyper aware that around every corner the germs are lurking and trying to get at us at any cost. Now I’m not one to go along with the crowd (as anyone can tell who ever read my postings online or knows me in person) so when the whole spraying up people’s noses and the next to be shots and the worry about whether there would be enough vaccine to go around or if we’d have to make Soylent Green out of people to create more of the magical elixir that was to keep us safe I have to admit that I sort of took the whole, “This could never happen to me approach.” I wash my hands a lot on a regular basis and I’m pretty good about the vitamins and supplements I take so I was feeling pretty good about not marching in the H1N1 Pride Parade of vaccinees when I encountered my dry cleaning woman. Just from looking at her I could see her red puffy eyes and baggage enough to go on safari under her eyes. And as she held out my change I realized that I’m not a germaphobe, I just play one when you’re sick and touching me! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I used to be an actor of sorts for a living so I normally pride myself on the way I’m able to fool people into thinking I’m interested in their farchacta story of their child saying their first word, or making the woman behind the counter at the bank think that she’s just changed my life by making my deposit. These are things I do in life to ultimately get what I want. I over compliment as needed to get not what I need right at the moment maybe but to get what I eventually want. Because you see, some day when that bank teller has all ready closed her window and sees me standing in that long line she’s going to remember how nice I was and go ahead and motion me forward and take the five extra minutes to help me while the non-descript losers stay behind in line waiting for the one last teller who is on and is as slow as the side of Anna Nicole’s head that did math. So all that said, I think I’m pretty good at having a p-p-p-p-p-poker face. Let me set the scene for you, it was closing time at the dry cleaners but the woman who works there motioned me in anyway and locked the door behind me proving my point that all those times of telling her that her hair looked nice when it looked exactly the same and was awful was paying off. The only problem was when my dry cleaner, nose a-running went to hand me my change I know I grimaced and placed my hand a little lower so that she would drop the change into my hand instead of placing it there making contact with the lunar surface of my hand. My performance was a complete failure for as she completed the transaction she said, “Don’t worry I just used sanitizer before I came to the counter.” “Yeah, right.” I thought as I wondered if I could get away with cutting my hand off at the wrist or if I was going to have to take off the entire arm. She unlocked the door and I left wishing her a better feeling rest of her evening.

As I got to my car I suddenly became aware of everything I was touching. And while I’m pleased to say that I’m not a nose picker on the whole, suddenly I wanted to, I wanted to pick my nose very badly but knew that would be the start of the end, like hoof and mouth disease, I would be taking the infected finger that had gotten the diseased change and shoving it into my nose where it would begin to spread like wildfire through my system until I had become an H1N1 statistic. As I was laying on my death bed I would film a Public Service Announcement warning kids about the dangers of picking your nose and it would become a YouTube viral (literally) sensation (which I’m sorry to say the ones I’ve posted to date have so not reached this status - http://www.youtube.com/user/somelikeitscott) only to die never knowing I was a YouTube sensation for two days and had even been shown on Oprah as a moving tribute and warning to children everywhere not to pick their noses. I’m glad to say that this urge subsided and I did not pick my nose.

When I arrived home I began the disinfecting process of not only my hand but everything it had touched. Now I’m not one to do all of this normally but as I see how many people are lining up for their shots and knowing I won’t be one of them (probably more out of laziness and a cockiness that only comes from being an American who thinks he’s Superman without any Kryptonite in sight) I realized that perhaps I did care a little more about this whole new strain of flu than I was letting on. I thought of making a doctor’s appointment, I thought of changing dry cleaners and then I did what all red blooded Americans do, I decided instead of doing anything to just sit down and watch TV instead where to news came on to a story about how much vaccine was left in Vegas. I’m not a germaphobe, I just play on when you’re sick and touching me! – Don’t Get Me Started!

White People Are Getting So Tan They Look Like Walking Slim Jims! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I get the whole liking the way you look with a “bit of color” as opposed to the pasty pallor normally reserved for our thoughts of the British and those who profess to be the healthiest of us, the Vegans (who always look like death warmed over to me with their sallow complexion and concave bodies). And when HD television came along I guess somewhere someone decided that anyone on television needed to be as orange as an Oompah Loompah (though I think everyone looks like freaks on television anymore with that orange base makeup but I guess once again, this cheese stands alone on this idea). But my concern is with the people who are addicted to tanning. We all know who they are and we all know at least one. There was a time when it was only for George Hamilton but now it’s apparently for anyone who wants to continually fry their skin over and over again. The only problem is that white people are getting so tan they look like walking Slim Jims! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I have a relative who is one of the walking Slim Jims, she has her own tanning bed and spends twenty minutes almost every other day in her own personal tanning bed. As she has been doing this for over twenty years I would say that she certainly has gotten her money’s worth but my concern is that her pancreas is now the same color of her skin, crispy oven baked chicken is what her skin looks like and it’s scary. Scarier than that is that she recently told me that she is going in for a spray tan next week. So that would be spraying some more tan color on top of her all ready really, really tan body. First of all I don’t know why anyone would want to do this when you’re all ready so tan and second I don’t know why these people think this makes them look more attractive?

I understand not being able to understand moderation and that we’re a society of addicted people whether it be addicted to drugs and alcohol or diet soda and tanning. We don’t seem to do very well at “enough” we always want MORE than enough. The problem is that when it comes to appearance we end up getting so addicted to looking someway that what we think makes us look better has in actuality made us our own freak show. If you inject that much fat from your ass into your lips, you look like a freak. If your boobs are now larger than two small children, you’ve gone too far. And if your skin looks like a Slim Jim, you’ve tanned too much and you need to just stop.

If you don’t know if you’ve gone too far, please feel free to send me a photo and I’ll let you know. But rest assured that this is not only the tanning people and plastic surgery people. If you have built up your body so much that your chest looks like the front of a Mack truck but have the calves and ankles of a fourteen year old girl (because in most cases you can only build up your calves so much) you have managed to make yourself so top heavy that you stand no chance of staying upright in a strong wind.

Hey, I’ve got enough low self esteem that if I gave it to them I could bring the Kardashians down to feeling like regular folks and while there are certainly things I’d like to change about myself, I realize that if I changed everything I wanted to change that I would no longer be me. I would not be a “Swan” as on the ill fated plastic surgery show that was on for a couple of seasons until they discovered that everyone ended up looking alike and they had created a group of Fembots with all the self esteem and none of the substance so the post surgery women had to move to Stepford Wifeland or something. If I were to get plastic surgery I would just look like another forty-something gay with no sense.

So while I’ve spent my time in the tanning bed as well as the spray tan room, I’ve always managed to stop myself before I became an Oompah Loompah because let’s face it, I’m short and if I got orange I’d only be some green hair and some overalls away from singing about snosberries. But to those of you who don’t seem to know when to stop, I’m begging you to please use your lifelines, phone a friend or ask the audience that walks by you every day. Sure most people suggest you stop so that you don’t get cancer, I just want you to stop because you white people are getting so tan you look like walking Slim Jims! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’ve Got An Idea, Let’s Discriminate Against Everyone – Don’t Get Me Started!

As a short Jewish man who has been in a relationship with a six foot black man who was once an altar boy for years, I know a little something about discrimination but this recent news story of an interracial straight couple being told by a Louisiana Justice of the Peace that he wouldn’t marry them because he felt that children from interracial couples had too rough a time of it in the world of course hit a little closer to home for me. Not that we have children (we’ve done our level best to try over the years, having lots of sex but as of now, no luck – I’m sure I don’t understand why). I’m ashamed to say that there was a small part of me that reveled in the fact that there were some straightees out there being denied their rights to marry. As a recently registered Domestic Partner I can tell you that my experience in the process had no shoes, no rice, no registering at Crate and Barrel but now we’re “partnered” in the eyes of the state of Nevada though we have no health benefit rights nor any federal rights that married couples have. Oh yeah, and if we move to a state that doesn’t recognize Domestic Partnerships then we just have a certificate from Nevada that means nothing unless we want to no longer be Domestic Partners and then we have to go through a bunch of legal crap. Anyway, the more I read and heard about the interracial Louisiana couple being denied the right to marry by a Justice of the Peace the more I began to think that the time is now. I’ve got an idea, let’s discriminate against everyone – Don’t Get Me Started!

The web is filled with people complaining about being denied this or that. In fact at times it seems as though blogs (and no, I’m not excluding mine) have become one very large high speed “comment box” – remember those? As they say, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one but the more you read what people have to say the more you discover that when people start talking about other people, it seems people are not all that thrilled with anyone who isn’t just like them. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that there’s that whole passage somewhere in the bible about God making man in his own image that hangs people up? Maybe they think that if God made them in his image than they are what everyone else should look like too but of course they never think that the people who don’t look like them were also made in God’s image and so either God is a chameleon who constantly changes his image (and sex) and creates people in all of his different images or the whole God made man in his own image is a load of crap. Whatever the reason, while I’d like to believe we all on huge Benetton ad from the 1980s, there seems to be a whole lot of hate out there by people who aren’t thrilled with people who aren’t just like them or at least look just like them.

So my idea is to just go ahead and just start throwing that discrimination around to everyone. It shouldn’t just be for minorities anymore. I think it’s good for white people to feel as though they have to cross to the other side of the street when they see a bunch of black people coming down the street. It’s a completely irrational fear but if they stopped and realized for a moment that they feel sort of discriminated against because they had to cross the street to walk down the street then maybe they’d start to discover how stupid and irrational most discrimination is and that in a way they’ve just felt discriminated against even though it was self imposed. They assessed the situation and decided that it would be better to walk on the other side of the street, right? But I’m sure a wacko like a Rush Limbaugh could convince his zany followers that the white people were discriminated against in this case.

My point is that the above scenario is silly, right? But isn’t someone telling a couple they can’t get married because of the children they might have just as silly? And by the way, I wonder if he would have married the couple if he found out they were sterile or couldn’t have children? Would that be okay to this moron? The problem I see with this Justice of the Peace, besides the obvious is that he works for the state and therefore he is supposed to work within the laws that were created by the people for the people and not just willy nilly make up his own laws, right?

But if a Justice of the Peace can get away with this ridiculous behavior I think we should all start doing it to show the people who most often aren’t discriminated against what it feels like. Let’s stare and tell people with more than two children that they’re freaks. No more shows about some weird Mormon family and their nineteen kids, let’s have shows about gay black people with no children doing nothing out of the ordinary. I’m going to start pointing and laughing at redheads because I’ve never been attracted to someone with red hair so why not make them feel bad about themselves? I’m going to call them, “Howdy Doody” or “Heat Miser” – sure maybe not as bad as being called “fag” but who wants to be called Howdy Doody? I’m going to start making fun of people who are big and buff. That’s right, they work so hard to be healthy looking and fit, I’m going to start miming body building poses when I see those kinds of people and then tell them they’re on steroids and have a forehead as big as a dining room table. When I see attractive people I’m going to look at them and act like I’m trying to tell them they have something on their face like a piece of food or something and then as they try to wipe it away I’m going to say, “Oh sorry, you didn’t have anything on you it’s just that face of yours. Ugh.” Ridiculous? You bet but at the heart of it, isn’t all discrimination ridiculous? I just think that there have not been enough people who have felt discriminated against so let’s get busy and change the world, kids. I’ve got an idea, let’s discriminate against everyone – Don’t Get Me Started!

I Don’t Trust People Who Wear Too Many Rings – Don’t Get Me Started!

I wouldn’t exactly call it a phobia and I know that a lot of people will read this and think that it’s just me being a “bitchy queen” who is judgmental but I can’t help that, when you write a blog, you share a lot of things about yourself. You share some serious things and some silly things and depending upon how much you want to reveal of yourself you also may share your fears, hopes and dreams. This would fall under the silly category. The reason I don’t consider it a phobia is because I’m not afraid of people who wear too many rings, it just makes me cringe. I don’t trust people who wear too many rings – Don’t Get Me Started!

While there are some things that apply to both men and women (and this is certainly one of them) there are different reasons that men who wear too many rings and women who wear too many rings make me scrunch up my face in horror. Let’s start with women. I grew up in a house with a woman who had more costume jewelry than the law allows. She had the stuff her mother had given her which included rings, bracelets, brooches, etc. and then there were “the sets” you know, the matching earrings and necklace (and some of the necklaces had a removable medallion on it so that it could go from a necklace to a brooch by simply removing the chain it was on). So from an early age I knew more than most about costume jewelry, real jewelry and why Coco Chanel always said to take one accessory off before you leave your home.

When I see women who are wearing a ring (or rings) on every finger or even just on most of their fingers, there are two words that come to mind, “refugee” and “cheap” I guess it’s because in my mind, if you’re wearing this much jewelry you either had to leave your home quickly (never to return) so you put everything you own on or you just don’t have any sense and so you’re wearing everything you own because you have no taste. In most cases, the rings that people who wear too many rings wear are really cheap. They’re mostly the 10k gold variety instead of 14k (or they’re gold filled or vermeil) and they almost always have a “diamond” somewhere on them but they’re diamonds that are so small that there should be a new word for something that’s smaller than a “diamond chip”, they’re set in silver metal to make the diamond look bigger than it actually it is. Of course this doesn’t really work but for some reason, the designers of costume jewelry think it does. I remember a “fashion ring” I got when I was a kid. It was made by Pierre Cardin and I think I got it at a department store and it had one of these “diamonds” in it and I thought it was mighty fancy, I was eleven. I was wrong.  

I’ve never quite understood the whole philosophy that more is better. And I would honestly like to know what is going on in these women’s heads. I think some women are wearing their mother’s, grandmother’s and aunt’s rings or something but still ladies, remember that less is more and just because you want to wear the jewelry of your beloved relatives who have passed doesn’t mean you have to wear everything every day. And can someone explain to me why it is that women who seemingly want to draw so much attention to their hands always have the worst fingernails? Wearing enough rings to cover your bulging or perhaps hairy knuckles does not camouflage the fact that you have dry skin and not enough sense to push those cuticles back and put a decent shade of polish on the nails that isn’t all chipped up. Is it any wonder why I think this makes a woman look cheap? I mean, unless you’re conducting a séance later in the evening and trying to evoke the dead, please ladies, keep the rings to a minimum.

Now men, what the hell is wrong with you? Opera conductors and Liberace aside, the men wearing too many rings thing just started a few years ago. It all started with those damn chunky silver rings that men thought looked cool on their index fingers (they never did to me). The Celtic patterns gave way to skulls and other assorted silver nightmares immortalized in rings and tattoos. The disease spread from the index finger, choosing not the several ring suitable fingers and heading straight for the thumb. The thumb? What thumb (besides Tom Thumb) needs a ring? Trick question – no thumb needs a ring (whether you’re a man or a woman), it makes your thumb look all the more short and stubby compared to your other fingers and besides being unattractive it just seems to serve no purpose to me whatsoever. I remember when I did some directing for Virginia Opera, all the conductors and directors had oversized rings on their index fingers but I assumed this was because they were so damn dramatic and in the case of the conductors, perhaps the lights would bounce off the ring and assist the performers and orchestra alike to keep time with the music. If you’re simply walking around in everyday life boys, you don’t need all the jewelry, especially all the rings (and in Jermaine Jackson’s case, get rid of all those freaking bracelets, it’s like you’re going to break out in a belly dance at any given moment or something, very feminine looking and just tacky Jermaine). And this goes for you to Mr. fashion icon, Karl Lagerfeld – I haven’t seen the entire documentary about him but you only have to watch about the first half hour to see how many silver rings Mr. Lagerfeld has to pack when traveling, he has an entire dresser top covered in bowls of rings, trying desperately to decide which rings he’ll “need” he finally dumps about three bowls of rings into his makeup bag before scooting out to go to the airport. Ugh.

In summation, I guess I have to go back to my earlier comments about those of you out there wearing too many rings. Those of you who right now can look down at your hands and see more than say two rings should know how the rest of the world feels when they look at you. They don’t think you look “artsy” or “fashionable” ya just look tacky and stupid. There, I’ve said it and would it kill you to get a manicure? Enough. I don’t trust people who wear too many rings – Don’t Get Me Started!

An Open Letter To Facebook Regarding My “Relationship Status” – Don’t Get Me Started!

On October 1, 2009 Nevada began to allow Domestic Partnership registration to begin in the state. This is for not only same sex couples but for any two consenting adults who are not related, are living in an “intimate” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) relationship and have agreed to share their lives with one another (as well as a few other requirements). Not only the gays lined up to be registered (though I must admit that the whole “registering” thing feels more like Nazi Germany “registering” Jews but maybe that’s just me being a Jew and all) opposite sex couples and elderly couples can also benefit by this law giving them the right to hospital visits, making health decisions for their “partner” all the while not having to give up any of their social security from their dead spouse because technically they aren’t re-married. While I had my misgivings about the whole thing (more to read on that at a later date) I convinced my spouse of twenty-one years that we needed to do this thing. Sure, it has no meaning outside our state with the Federal Defense of Marriage Act still on the books giving us no rights to get tax breaks be recognized by anyone other than the few states that accept Domestic Partnerships and Same Sex Marriage but should something God forbid happen to one of us (in the state of Nevada), as long as I keep my Xeroxed copy of our certificate (and no doubt a copy of the law too) I can get into his hospital room without a court order (well according to law I can anyway, let’s hope I never have to find out if this will really work or not as let’s face it, in hospitals or anything else you’ve just got to hope that you get a gay or someone gay friendly in order to ensure not only your rights but that you won’t be treated like dirt. And for those of you who say it’s 2009 and such things don’t happen, I say to you, “Bullshit” come on and put on my Pradas for a day and see how you get treated.) So with all the romance of going to a notary and sending in the form with a check and receiving our certificate in the mail we are officially Domestic Partners and so it came to pass that I started to think about the little things like my Facebook status only to find out that although there are many options for your “Relationship Status” on Facebook, Domestic Partnered is not one of them so I’d like to take this time to recommend they add some additional relationship distinctions and get rid of a few – An open letter to Facebook regarding my “Relationship Status” – Don’t Get Me Started!

Currently the options on Facebook are the following and here are my thoughts about them:

·         Single (we get it, leave it)

·         In A Relationship ( get rid of it - this is way too vague, you can be in a relationship with your doctor or pet but “in a relationship” when you’re actually dating someone just means that one or both of you can’t commit and so you’re dressing it up by calling it a “relationship” – I say change this one to single because until you legally commit to one another you’re really still single

·         Engaged (again, we get it, leave it and good for you said the bitter homosexual who has no way to get married in the state he lives or in most states let alone have his government recognize his union with the same rights of married people thanks to the Religious Right who run the country…are you old white people with your out of touch ideas dead yet?)

·         Married (leave it but if you’ve read the rest of this you all ready know how I feel about this one)

·         It’s Complicated (get rid of it - this is for high school kids who think everything in life is one big reality show that they’re starring in. The only thing “complicated” about a relationship is if you’re in a sexual relationship with an animal or something.)

·         In An Open Relationship (Please get rid of this and change it to read, “Slut” whether you’re a man or woman who wants to be with a man, woman or blender chances are that you may be devoted to one person but if you’re having sex with everyone who comes into contact with you, you’re really just a slut. This would also take the place of the “It’s Complicated” category as I’m sure many sluts use that distinction too. This would also make it easier for quick hook ups, etc. If you see someone’s status is a slut and you’re a slut, then you’re half way there to filling one another’s sluts, I mean, slots.)

·         Widow/Widowed (get rid of this – way to bring everyone down Facebook)

And now my suggested adds

·         Domestically Partnered ( Hey, I hate the sound of it too but the more we let people know how stupid it is, the better chance we have to at some point getting some real equality and just switching the legal system to create Civil Unions and let the churches, synagogues and temples, etc. to grant Marriage to people, plus give us a gay a break, it’s all we have at the moment and we paid our $70 to the state so come on Facebook!)

·         Civil Union (see above – remember that this is all we have in some states)

·         Was With Someone One Once (this is more hopeful than the whole “Single” status and let’s everyone know that at least at some point in your life someone besides your right hand wanted you which should make you more attractive to the masses)

Look, some may say that things like the status on Facebook is a minor thing but thanks to the inequalities some of us face every day you discover that even the little things make you feel “less than” thanks to our wonderful hypocrisy that is our country. And some of us just feel we have to take a stand. “All men are created equal under the law.” (Unless of course they’re sleeping with other men) “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” If you’re serving in the military and don’t tell us you’re gay, don’t march in a Pride parade or pin a rainbow to your uniform, we’re willing to look the other way but if we find out you’ve done any of those, you’ll be drummed out of your job with a dishonorable discharge (worse than you got after giving that guy at the gym a blow job and had to be on antibiotics for a month) taking away all the benefits received by straights and supposed straight people who have served their country. Defense of Marriage Act. A federal law that states marriage can only be between one man and one woman. How does that defend marriage, the astronomical divorce rate in this country or Britney Spears from marrying again? (Way to go straightees) So my plea is not to the government (at this point, after all, as long as President Obama shows up to gay fundraisers to give speeches promising more of what he has yet to and may or may not deliver to us gays in terms of being treated equally in the eyes of the law of this society we’re all happy that he attended and that is supposed to be enough…Mr. Obama I’m here to tell you it’s not enough.) I think it’s time to focus on what we can change, the businesses like Facebook that have become our social network (for the anti-social who want to seem social by reconnecting with classmates they haven’t seen in years from their homes while eating bags of Cheetohs and trying not to get the orange dust all over their computer keys, building imaginary farms, live an imaginary mafia life and letting everyone know everything they’re doing from watching their kids play soccer to taking a dump!) How about doing something real for us Facebook? How about showing the world that our relationships are more than just “Complicated” but that they are put into boxes by laws that are ridiculous but all we can get at the moment so we’ll take what we can get it and just bitch about it on our blogs? An open letter to Facebook regarding my “Relationship Status” – Don’t Get Me Started!

Speeding Ticket Or Let’s Make A Deal? – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’ve only ever had two speeding tickets in my life and one of them I received recently. It was one of those situations where I was speeding, knew I was speeding and as I glanced to the right I saw the police officer in his car with his radar gun. I locked eyes with the radar gun, took my foot off the gas and almost instinctually pulled over to the side of the road seconds before the police officer had a chance to turn his disco lights on. As I reached for the registration, proof of insurance and license he came to the side of my car and I simply handed the items out of the window. I sat there waiting for him to return but as I don’t get speeding tickets often I had no idea about what was about to happen. Speeding Ticket or Let’s Make A Deal? – Don’t Get Me Started!

As he handed me back my paperwork he explained that I was going 45 mph in a 30 mph zone however he said he was going to state that I was going 35 instead of 45. What was there some sort of special discount coupon or something that I had handed over to get this “special” deal? No, there had been nothing, no begging by me, no real conversation and yet he was willing to take 15 mph off the ticket. I found it odd and when I got home and looked at the ticket (or citation I guess I should say) I noticed that it listed all three speeds on the paper that shot out of the handheld device he used to issue the ticket. (Back in my day they actually had to write them out but this was a computer printout – complete with my name misspelled.) So did he really give me a break? I dunno. I looked on the back of the ticket and there was a fee structure for penalties and yet nowhere on the ticket could I see if I was an “A”, “B”, etc.

As the weeks passed I tried to look for the citation on the county’s website. I couldn’t find it or rather it couldn’t be found in their system. About three weeks later I got a postcard in the mail (with a different citation number than the one that was given to me on the ticket I got the date of the infraction) giving me my options of how to go to court or pay except it still didn’t tell me what I owed or how to find out. The court date was a week away. With the postcard in hand I decided to call the court. After being on hold for quite some time I got a live person on the phone. Her voice was sweet and she seemed to have a nice disposition. I was immediately taken in, asking her about the two citation numbers, etc. She found my record and was quick to say that she couldn’t believe that he gave me a ticket when I was only going five miles over the speed limit. I agreed (knowing I was going fifteen miles over the speed limit but at least I now knew that from the county’s standpoint I’d only been going five miles over the limit). She asked if I had entered a plea in the case yet. Of course I told her no and asked my options. She gave me the guilty, non-guilty and some “other” choice which I didn’t understand the name of what she said. When I asked about the “other choice” she told me it was a way of not admitting guilt but agreeing to pay the fee. I asked about the fee and was informed that I was a “C” which meant $190.00. I thought I heard wrong. I asked what my options were and she started giving my payment options when in fact I was thinking about the online driving school, etc. How many points? Why not driving school? I began to pepper her with questions to which she said, “Look, I’m making it a parking ticket so you won’t even have to get any points, I’ll give you another month to pay it and this way you don’t have to spend 5 hours of your time and $35 to take the driver’s class.” She told me that she could not tell me how to plead (in a tone that was clear enough for any recording to prove there was no coercion on her part). I agreed to the “other” choice but immediately felt dirty as if I’d cut some deal I shouldn’t have cut. I called back the next day to find out that it indeed had been reduced to a parking ticket and there were no points attached to it but the $190.00 stood and was due in a month. I could not change my plea the deal with the devil had been done, sealed in blood apparently.

When I hung up the phone it hit me. Not to get all Oliver Stone conspiracy theorist on you but it dawned on me that this was a corrupt governmental process in action and I had helped. Everyone I spoke to seemed as though they did this thousands of times each day. I’m sure that is in fact the case. I began to realize that it’s cheaper for the county to have me pay an outrageous fee than to have to spend the money to pay a teacher, pay the electric for the building and other associated bills with operating the driving school. Better to make me feel as though I’m getting a deal when they’re getting much more money out of me. The thing is that I DID think I was getting a deal until the second call.

Am I going to pay the $190.00? Sure because I just want this done with at this point. But I’ll know better next time. And all of this deal cutting may be the very reason why Las Vegas is the first place I’ve ever lived where you ALWAYS see handcuffs on EVERYONE stopped by police. I think it’s because everyone agrees to these dirty deals with high fees and then can’t or forget to pay them so then they put a warrant out for you and make even more money off of you. If there’s a next time I will ask the cop why he’s reducing the speed, I’ll ask the county whore who cuts the deals why I can’t go to school, etc. I’m definitely smarter but I’m still out $190.00 for what would appear is five miles over the speed limit. So the question is, “Speeding ticket or Let’s Make A Deal” – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Speeding-Ticket-Or-Lets-Make-A-Deal

Stop The Tivo I Want To Get Off – Don’t Get Me Started!

When Tivo began it seemed as though it was the greatest invention ever. Sort of how I imagine everyone felt about television when it began and then when it went to color. It was like suddenly seeing everything you wanted to see the way you wanted to see it, right? But now that my Tivo is filling up with one two hour long reality show after the other what I find it that the only way to get through all that recorded programming is to become a prisoner in my home on weekends and/or weeknights, sitting firmly planted on the sofa while wishing that the stars could get through their dancing a little faster, that the desperate housewives could somehow sum up their weekly issues in thirty minutes instead of the forty (this includes time for fast forwarding the commercials) so that I could have a life again. Stop the Tivo I want to get off! – Don’t Get Me Started!

What is undoubtedly a great invention has turned into a Frankenstein of sorts in my home. I find myself desperately trying to watch everything I’ve Tivo’d before the next episode of it comes on the following week and then God forbid if something is happening real time on television because I don’t see it…ever. I’m chained to that small box that holds all of my shows. The other problem is that mine came with the cable company so it’s a Tivo wannabe along the lines of a Berbie doll (don’t know if they ever made these but I’m sure there was a Barbie knock off somewhere at some point, you get the idea). And although the cable company is supposed to know when shows take place and their length, I’ve yet to see the end of countless shows because it cuts off because the show goes a minute longer and apparently the cable company and/or my DVR doesn’t know about it or whatever. ARGHHH!

The latest invention in Marketing has caused even more problems for me. Those of you who watch Desperate Housewives will know what I’m talking about. They’re a new breed of commercials that they’ve created that have the same sort of look, feel and music of the television programming that you’re watching so to the untrained eye, even when fast forwarding through a show, you’ll stop because you think it’s “Bree having sex with Susan’s ex” when in fact it’s really just some unknown people who aren’t having sex they’re just talking on their Sprint phones and talking about it. Ugh.

I used to treat my Tivo/DVR like a hot nightclub. You know how there’s a fire code occupancy limit and that sometimes they don’t let anyone in until someone leaves? Well, that’s been my policy, if American Idol finished its season then So You Think You Can Dance could take its place. But with more and more shows seemingly producing seasons that go back to back what are you supposed to do when Dancing With The Stars is on the same time as Biggest Loser AND So You Think You Can Dance? That alone (If you can record all three at the same time, which I can’t on my Tervo) can create up to 6 hours of viewing from a single night. I don’t have six hours every night nor do I want to have six hours every night when I’m sitting in front of my television feeling my waistline get larger and larger.

At first I blamed the shows, what’s with there being sixteen stars on Dancing With The Stars? I thought it was too many when they started the season with 12 celebrities but sixteen? Come on, that makes more two hour episodes (no show needs to be over an hour, if it is we used to call that a miniseries), more weeks of the show and more viewing I don’t have the time or energy to view. If I’m feeling this way, what must the people who also record Oprah every day and the like be feeling? Meanwhile no wonder soap operas are dying, who has the time to watch your daytime shows at night when there’s six hours of nighttime programming to watch every night too? If you do the math for just weekdays, by the weekend you have a minimum of 30 hours of programming to watch every weekend. According to studies for healthy living, you’re only supposed to watch an hour or two of television a night. Is it any wonder why America is obese? If you’re sitting there (and let’s face it, after an hour you lay down) watching television for thirty hours, there’s bound to be some consuming of peanuts, pretzels, ice cream and worse when you’re fast forwarding through the commercials to try and get to the next segment of the fatties trying to sweat it off on Biggest Loser right?

As I sat last night being totally frustrated that I was wasting an entire evening watching show after show, not taking phone calls from people I actually know and aren’t on reality shows and ignored my cats I thought this is completely crazy, I’ve lost all control and I hate it. So, I’m taking a tip from the Hoarders show before they get cured, I’m going to start hoarding my own time for doing things other than television. I don’t care what it is, it could be actually having a pen meet the paper to write an actual letter to someone I know, it could be walking around the block, it could be brushing my cats more or whatever but like any drug, once it gets into my system I can’t stop. So instead of coming home and turning the television on, I’m going to create a plan of attack for the night, decide what I will and won’t watch on television and hopefully feel more motivated about my own reality show that is my life instead of watching the antics of the scripted and non-scripted on television! Stop the Tivo I want to get off! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Well Buddy, You’re Wearing The Wrong Shirt! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’d really like to believe that these things happen to other people but the more I live my life the more I get the feeling that certain absurdities of life have been reserved for only me. Let’s make this clear, I’m not acting like a victim here, I’m just stating the facts. How many people do you know discover after three years that the DMV wrote down the wrong sex on their driver’s license? (The first blog I ever wrote - http://dontstartscott.blogspot.com/2005/04/dmv-is-convinced-im-woman-dont-get-me.html) And believe me, that’s just the tip of the ol’ iceberg. But the other day as I was racing around Target looking to get in and get out, I hear this loud voice behind me, “Sir…” it began rather quietly but got louder and louder and there was a humming sounds accompanying it until finally the cacophony of it all made me turn around to discover this woman on a scooter, scooting up beside me with one hand on the handlebars and the other gesturing toward me. “SIR!” she said indignantly. I turned and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t work here.” As I turned to race to another aisle to get what I needed and get out, I hear the scooter backing up and the woman saying rather loudly, “Well buddy, you’re wearing the wrong shirt!” – Don’t Get Me Started!

As I looked down I noticed that I was wearing my Armani Exchange red dress shirt with my black dress pants. I guess Target will be happy to know that having everyone in their stores wear those red shirts is working but as I heard the woman and realized the shirt I was wearing was red, I sort of mumbled to myself, “Well it’s a red shirt but it’s not the right pants to be working here.” I let the words trail off, they weren’t intended for her to hear but I realized as they were forming and going out into the universe just how lame they were. It didn’t even make sense. Why was I trying to defend my shirt? My fashion sense? And why was I trying to use the pants as the factor that would certainly elevate me above being a Target worker? (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a Target worker, in fact I loves me some Target)

But besides my lame response I had to think about the woman who had scooted to me to try to get my attention. I don’t know what it is but to me the scooter generation is just lazy on the whole. Now before you start sending your hate mail, I’m sure that the invention of the scooter has really helped a lot of people but too often I see the people either lugging their scooter and hoisting it up to put on the special mount they have on their car for it or in one case, a woman was actually behind her scooter pushing it. (I can only assume it ran out of gas or electricity or whatever the hell those things run on) This leads me to believe that not everyone who has one really needs one. And now that stores have put them in as courtesy vehicles, people are using them like those shopping carts that they made look like race cars so that your kid could feel cool while you’re shopping. I see people who walk perfectly fine into the store and then they get on the scooters the store provides and suddenly can barely reach for a shelf.

Besides the fact that scooter people are constantly in everyone’s way (this would also include you people who feel the need to bring your double wide strollers into tight aisles at stores with your kids screaming and reaching out to destroy everything within their Mothra-like grasp while you look disgusted that people aren’t moving out of your way or thinking you and your children are adorable). That’s it, what is it about someone in a scooter that instantly makes them an asshole? Hey, I get it, you’re using a scooter but allow me to treat you like people with real disabilities who don’t enjoy preferential treatment because they have a physical or mental ailment, you non-handicapped scooter person. Scooter people have the sense that they have the right of way well let me get this out of the way, you don’t. See, I’m walking so that gives ME the right of way. If you want the right of way, get off your cushy seat and walk like the rest of us. Meanwhile, I guess I need to stop wearing that name tag (just kidding) “Well buddy, you’re wearing the wrong shirt!” – Don’t Get Me Started!

Vegas Needs Gays – Don’t Get Me Started!

When I moved to Vegas (almost eleven years ago) the real gay bars were all contained on a strip behind the Strip known as “the fruit loop” a sort of industrial space of the town that you had to know where you were going to find but like most gay ghettos, the gays who wanted to be fruits in the loop had no trouble finding it. I’ll admit that I’ve never even been to the fruit loop so I can’t talk about it with much hands on information. A few years ago Krave opened on the actual Strip and it touted itself as the first gay club on the actual Strip. Although a recent trip to Krave proved to me that the club while predominantly gay is becoming sort of what all clubs are becoming, places for people to get fucked up and find a partner for the next twenty minutes. But recently I’ve noticed a bit of a trend in the Vegas gay club scene and that is that many of the mainstream clubs or casinos are now blatantly pandering to get gays. And like that old “B” science fiction movie of the 1950’s that proclaimed, “Mars Needs Women” I think that Vegas is sending a message just as loud and clear – Vegas Needs Gays! – Don’t Get Me Started!

It started out (or I should say that I became aware of it) when I received an invite from the local gay magazine (through Facebook so I’m not sure if that’s an invite, an evite or simply an announcement but you get the idea) that on Tuesday nights, the House of Blues Foundation Room was going gay. That’s right, the Foundation Room which was always sort of the elite part of the House of Blues was now opening its door officially for the gay dollars. I went to the launch night and you can read that blog here http://hubpages.com/hub/It-Cant-Be-Me--It-Must-Be-You). While I haven’t been back and I hope that it’s successful for all parties concerned, it’s not my “scene” shall we say (and if you read the blog you’ll get why).

Well recently Revolution (the club outside the theatre that houses the Cirque show Love) announced that it was now featuring “Closet Sundays.” The tag line for these nights is, “For boys who like boys and their girlfriends.” Am I the only gay in the world who has no idea what this means? Am I the only gay in the world that is slightly offended by the fact that they want gays to go to a night that has “closet” in the title? And what of this Closet Sundays, does it mean like it seems to imply that it’s for guys who like guys but don’t want anyone other than the guys that they’re with for ten minutes to ten years to know? Is it a place for gays to bring the girls in their life who have the unrequited love for them so that the gay can meet their Mr. Right while giving their gal pals (formerly known as fag hags) an opportunity to shop for a new gay to be attached at the hip to or with? Or is it simply a catchy name and I’m completely over reacting to it? It could be one or all of the above, I honestly just don’t know.

When it comes to clubs in general, I think the shift everyone has seen over the past few years is that anyone who is in business and wants to stay in business is going to go after any and every dollar out there. Sure right now the mainstream clubs may be going “gay for a night” but I predict that soon it won’t matter if you’re gay or straight (sung to Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”), if you want to go to a club to meet some meat then any club is going to be catering to you and the people going to these clubs are going to be forced to become more accepting of the fact that when a girl is looking at a couple she might be interested in the guy or the girl or both (and the same goes for guys). The more people become comfortable with their sexuality, the more I think we’re going to see everyone letting it all hang out everywhere. Now I’m sure there will still be a market for the gay leather bars for those who are only interested in meeting gays who are into leather or some other sort of specific fetish but it’s a bit of a cool thing that we’re seeing sluts getting to get into the mainstream of any club, isn’t it? No longer will you have to seek out that crappy rainbow windsock in front of a dingy bar, now you can go into any bar USA, get fucked up and feel fucked that you fucked someone you shouldn’t have or wouldn’t have fucked if you’d been sober.

The thing that these clubs need to remember is that we gays are just as out of work as everyone else. The days of gays being seen as these people who have disposable incomes due to the fact that they didn’t have any children or legal spouses are over. That’s right, more and more gays have legal spouses, children and their disposable income went with the wind the same as many other people’s extra mad money. The playing field is becoming more and more level (like it or not) and the gays aren’t all spending all their money on hair highlights and Hummers anymore. In a way it’s great to see that Sin City may be leading the way to making gays more welcome at even the most local of watering holes but I’m not kidding myself, the real acceptance here is by business owners that do not care whose cash, Mastercard, Visa or Amex their processing for that $17 martini. And while some may say that this is yet another thing that will “stay in Vegas” let’s hope that acceptance doesn’t only happen here. And while you right wingers may start getting nervous, please don’t. Nevada still doesn’t allow gay marriage (we just got Domestic Partnership but it does not include all the rights of marriage). But businesses are getting smarter about leaving Jesus at church if it means that Jesus and Bob kissing at their bar is going to bring in more money! Vegas Needs Gays! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment?
http://hubpages.com/hub/Vegas-Needs-Gays

Love Means Not Knowing Whose CDs Are Whose – Don’t Get Me Started!

Before we all downloaded all our music there was a time when CDs ruled the earth. Now for some of us we also remember when cassettes, 8-tracks, reel to reels and a thing called a record ruled the earth and we were all cursing the technology that made us completely replace all our records or cassettes to CDs but I digress. I recently had a thought about being with the same man for twenty-one years. I thought about the fact that most likely we’ll be together until death do us part and while straight couples often stay together for the sake of the kids or something like that we don’t have any children so if we ever did decide to go our separate ways we would certainly have to talk about the cats and the visitation there but other than that I began to think about other things that would be difficult to part with (besides my spouse whom I’m completely silly mad over) and that’s when it occurred to me that love means not knowing whose CDs are whose – Don’t Get Me Started!

Yes, while some people may think that love is someone who takes care of you (either financially or spiritually) what I discovered was that love (when you’ve been in it for as long as we have) finds other ways to let you know you’re in love. After all these years of being together I honestly don’t remember whose CDs are whose. Sure there are some CDs that I specifically remember getting and we have some duplicates from when we first combined our lives and collections (because we have similar tastes in music) but for the most part the over four hundred CDs we have are joined like we are to create a sort of mosaic of our lives that includes pieces of both of us to create one fabulous collection, relationship, life.

Now if I’m being completely honest then I have to admit that I’ve known this for some time and used it to my advantage. You see, like buying your spouse two tickets to a concert or a show (where you’re giving the gift of giving that gives back to you too because you know they’re going to take you to the show) when you buy someone that you cohabitate with a CD, there’s no way that it’s not being downloaded into your collection too. See this way you have the good feeling of giving combined with the really great undercurrent of the feeling of getting because in essence you’re buying the CD for yourself but to all parties concerned it seems like a gift so it’s a win/win. Sure on occasion this technique can backfire but it only backfires every once in a great while so for most CD gift giving your safe in getting too.

The thing you have to do is learn how to finesse this whole thing. I’ll admit that in the beginning I would buy a CD for my spouse, open it, download it to my collection and then give it to him. I never quite got why he thought this made it a used gift. (Okay maybe I wasn’t that stupid but I acted as if I didn’t understand why the lack of a plastic seal made it less of a gift.) So I will tell you that you need to not open it or play it first. I know this sounds like something everyone should know but I chose to ignore knowing it. I thought it made us seem more like a real couple when in essence it just made me a real asshole. (The same can be said for DVDs or anything else that has a seal or wrapper on it – yes, this includes candy bars.)

The amazing thing about being in love is that the longer you’re in it the more you discover just how lucky you are to be in it and how it materializes in the most unexpected ways. I know that people talk about passion ebbing (though I have to tell you I have not experienced that myself) but when you’re in love, really in love you discover that while it sometimes appears on small notes of paper or a dozen roses for a special occasion, the old theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore show is more on the money, “Love is all around.” And as I look around at our home (and the crap we’ve collected) I also see the things that we’ve amassed that not only make us uniquely us but that show our love for certain things and one another. It could be something we bought on one of our trips together that reminds us of that time or it could be something that we never intended to evoke memories or emotions, like our CD collection. Sure we can tell one another we love one another but to me, true love means not knowing whose CDs are whose – Don’t Get Me Started!

Liza’s At The Palace (and Las Vegas)! – Don’t Get Me Started!

If you haven’t read about my less than great experience when I went to see Liza Minnelli the last time she was almost in town, read it here first - http://hubpages.com/hub/An-Evening-With-My-Guy--My-Parents-and-Liza-With-A-Z. And if you’re not aware of my Gay Icons tribute to Liza, you can see that here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie6ZdQtGiys. Enough with the self promotion and on with the show, that’s right, after a not so swell experience seeing Liza earlier this year, she made her way back to Vegas, my mother got the comp tickets and last weekend there we sat, my mother, father and spouse, fifty feet away from the one, the only, Liza Minnelli! Liza’s At The Palace (and Las Vegas)! – Don’t Get Me Started!

We knew the seats were bound to be better than the last tickets we had to see her and although there was something strange about seeing the supposed same show twice in one year, there we were sitting in a booth in a Vegas showroom a mere fifty feet from the stage and as the music began, the curtain lifted to reveal the orchestra you could feel the excitement in the room and in each other (as we were rather squished in the booth). As they announced her and she came onto the stage I thought how wonderful she looked (and how nice to this time be sitting close enough to see that it was actually her and not as I said about the last time I saw her, “as far back as we were sitting it just looked like a sixty year old pair of eye lashes attached to a Liza wig.”). She looked great and when she opened that mouth of hers to deliver that first song there was a huge (yet silent) sigh of relief from my gang because while there’s no getting around the fact that she is older and sounds it a little, she’s still Liza and she can still belt out a number.

As I watched her go from number to number (oft times looking out at us and making it feel as though she was looking exactly at us as we were dead center) I thought about what it must be like to be Liza Minnelli. Take away her pedigree of her mother being Judy Garland and her father being Vincente Minnelli and just look at the body of work this woman has produced and you can’t help but be impressed. I think more than anything what struck me about her performance was that she was not only not hanging from some rope (hello Pink from the VMA’s), depending on lavish costumes (hello Lady Gaga) or having a bunch of dancers around her, when she sang each song it was from her heart. She was acting while singing every word. I think people tend to forget what a hell of an actress Liza Minnelli is but when you’re sitting that close and can see every nuance to her performance you realize, oh boy do you ever that what you have is a true triple threat (not the way they call people a triple threat now because they’re rappers, dancers and clothing designers). She won the Oscar for Cabaret but there’s so much more to this performer. I wondered if modern day performers understood what this woman has that they lack. I wondered if they thought they were doing (with their lip synced tracks, pyrotechnics and flashy production values) what this woman can do with one very carefully painted eye brow raise.

If I sound like a gushy queen or stereotypical gay man going overboard over a gay icon, I apologize but it’s something more than loving Liza (which I do), it’s about re-discovering what makes the true celebrities and stars truly worthy of those titles, compared to the supposed celebrities and stars of today. And for those of you who wonder why gays identified with Judy Garland and/or Liza all you have to do is hear them sing one song. Within one song you see and hear a resilient soul that has been through a lot but hasn’t lost its voice. When they sing they share their soul with you and that connection speaks to a lot of gays and straights alike. That’s what makes them great. When Liza sits on a chair and begins, “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky…maybe this time he’ll stay…” you believe every word she sings and by the end of the song the hope she finds in the lyric you can’t help finding in yourself a little too, “Maybe this time, maybe this time, maybe this time I’ll win.”

If you have any opportunity to see Liza Minnelli’s “Liza’s At The Palace” run do not walk to see it because who knows how many of these iconic performers we have left and how many opportunities we’ll have to see them? Don’t miss out! Liza’s At The Palace (and Las Vegas)! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Reality “Star” Paychecks, So Much For So Little? – Don’t Get Me Started!

While flipping channels the other night, my television landed on the show Extra, or The Insider or one of the many annoying supposed “entertainment” shows that really discuss very little about entertainment and more about Jon Gosselin who while some may find entertaining, I just find sad…really sad. At any rate, they began to talk about the salaries of people who appear on television reality shows. Now as a somewhat Insider myself (that’s right kids, I know people “in the biz” as it were) I knew that certain F List celebrities who go on reality shows bring home a six digit paycheck but what many might not know is that those six digits are not only for Mr. Jefferson (twenty years after his show went off the air) but for the blonde, somewhat beautiful, insipid idiots that currently appear on reality television with no real credits to their name other than just that, the reality show they’re doing. That’s right, the blondes from The Hills reportedly get somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $125,000 per episode (the guys on that show apparently top out at a mere $65,000 per episode)! As I don’t watch that show I find it difficult to believe that these gals could be worth it but then I started asking myself if any of these people are worth it? Reality “Star” paychecks – so much for so little? – Don’t Get Me Started!

We all get why producers can afford to pay their reality stars more than real actors get for television shows because the producer doesn’t have to pay a script writer (paying them residuals, royalties, etc.) or anyone else for that matter other than the people on the show, the crew, and a really patient editor that has to go through about forty hours of nothing video and magically create a show filled with drama and intrigue each week. And I’m sure that the producers are walking away with a lot more money too without those extra salaries to pay.

And when you see how people parlay their “celebrity” from a small reality show appearance into an actual career of sorts you have to wonder if there isn’t a market for sending a kid to a reality television casting coach instead of college at this point. Imagine it, it would be a lot less upfront money and if your kid gets on a reality show then they would not only not have college student loans but they may actually be able to buy you a swanky house like a rap star. Of course there’s always the danger like the story I read about some little known but supposedly made a crap load of money rap star’s wife who once he was killed (is that considered “in the line of duty” I guess) that she is now homeless with their five children. I guess he wasn’t as famous as Tupac and that she couldn’t hock the diamond encrusted medallion or earrings those rappers wear to pay the mortgage on their three million dollar house that they couldn’t really afford anyway. Should we feel sorry for her that she couldn’t keep the payments up on her Maybach? Maybe the government can bail her out?

Like it or not kids, fame is fleeting. I’m all for people making “hay while the sun shines” (or in my case, making “gay” while the sun shines – hello, reality producers are you reading and getting how great I’d be?) but the inevitable fact is that unless you really have some sort of talent (hello, Tony Bennett recently signing a ten million dollar recording deal) you may make a few million if your reality show stays on television long enough but in the long run you’ll become a footnote on Wikipedia sooner than later. You will be the new generation of star kids who were once famous, put all their money into drugs or press agents and sycophants who will suck you dry and leave you like a Dirk Diggler from the movie Boogie Nights, selling your dick to people on the street once your heyday has passed. The only difference is that while we can all remember how cute Dana Plato was on Different Strokes and feel a little bad that she ended up being a small time criminal drug addict, losing her battle and life to addiction in a mobile home, I never thought Heidi and Spencer were all that lovable or cute. So if they lose all their teeth and end up working at a dry cleaner I’m really not going to care. (And I suspect no one else will either)

So sure, it seems like a good plan to give up trying to find something your talented at and working hard at it making a career and a life for yourself for the sake of your fifteen minutes of fame and fortune but be warned that at the end of most red carpets is not the pot of gold like leprechauns promised at the end of the rainbow, no once you’re no longer interesting on the red carpet you fall into oblivion or worse, you end up on a VH1 special, “Whatever happened to those reality stars we never really cared about anyway?” Omarosa are you listening? Reality “Star” paychecks – so much for so little? – Don’t Get Me Started!