If My Hairline Recedes Anymore I’m Going To Have To Go On Tour With Eddie Munster The Musical – Don’t Get Me Started!

I don’t know about other men, I can only speak for myself but the whole aging thing has me really pretty stumped. I don’t understand why I can’t lose that extra ten pounds around my middle, I don’t understand why the hair in my nose grows more plentiful than on my head, I don’t understand a lot of things but I do know that if my hairline recedes anymore I’m going to have to go on tour with Eddie Munster The Musical – Don’t Get Me Started!

I suppose this is a bit of a cautionary tale to you kids out there reading this (as if there are any). When I was little I dreamed of being Eddie Munster. From birth I was performing show tunes and any time I saw a male child in a commercial or on a television show I wanted to be him. I can remember my parents taking me to a dinner theatre production of Annie Get Your Gun when I was little. There was a boy in the show that played Annie Oakley’s brother. I remember leaning over to my mother and saying, “I hope he breaks a leg and they have to ask me to do the part for the second act.” Never mind that I wouldn’t know the show one bit, I just assumed when I walked into the room, everyone would know I was pure show biz. I’m sure they did from my slicked back hair, blue platform shoes and well, just what I like to call my “Top Hat And Tails” approach to life. Meaning, that I always thought I was in an MGM musical and didn’t understand that everyone else couldn’t hear the playback that was going on in my head. Anyway, I remember watching The Munsters as a kid and thinking that not only was that Eddie Munster one hell of an actor I thought I’d like to have that widow’s peak business going on. (Of course at the time I thought it was real – ah, youth) So perhaps I cursed myself but recently when in a fitness class, I looked in the mirror to see a reflection that resembled someone from the 1980’s cast of Sweating To The Oldies and as I ran my hands through my hair to try and get rid of some of the sweat I noticed that my hairline was creeping further and further back. Widow’s peak achieved, yea me.

I’ve known for quite some time now that I’m losing the hair on the back of my head but I’ll admit it, since I rarely look at the back of myself in a mirror it’s easy enough to ignore or at least act as if the hair still exists back there in my own mind. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t look at myself naked either. I could be completely gangrene from the neck down and never know it. But when you start to get confronted with stuff on the front of you it becomes a little harder to become that ostrich with the front of your head in the sand. I don’t mind my age and I don’t kid myself with the old, “You’re only as old as you feel” because on some days that would be six hundred years old for me. No, on the whole I think I’m aging as gracefully as an old Jew can. I mean let’s face it, the fact that I’m with a black man does not help my case. He is “ageless and timeless” as one of our friends said years ago and as time wears on I fear that people will start saying, “I had no idea that Sidney Poitier was dating Jackie Mason.” But there’s something more to being confronted with the things you can’t change about yourself (well, at least not without the help of a doctor, a scalpel and a lot of plastic).

I can’t really change my metabolism and without plugs or starting to wear a toupee I can’t really do anything about the hairline creep but still some days I just want to be Snoopy on his doghouse, shaking my fist in futility at the Red Baron. But see the Red Baron only existed in Snoopy’s mind and my hairline creep is reality and on display daily for the world to see. Maybe that’s the key, maybe I need to start shifting my reality a bit so I won’t care so much. I used to say that at the end of my life I wanted to be in a sanitarium (I guess from seeing those Susan Hayward movies), I figured it was nice and white there and they gave you your meals and if you didn’t want to see someone who came to visit you then you could just act crazy and they would send them away like an assistant would do for you. Okay, maybe that’s not the answer but maybe I’ll be able to accept the things that I can’t change a little better if I start hearing that soundtrack in my head again, “I’m putting on my top hat, putting on my white tie, polishing my nails…” If my hairline recedes anymore I’m going to have to go on tour with Eddie Munster The Musical – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...

I Think Bumper Stickers Are Stupid And That Goes For Stick People Families, Children Kneeling At Crosses And Everything Else – Don’t Get Me Started!

My grandfather was a Cadillac salesman. He would always tell us to get a white car and to keep it clean because it would have better resale value. Even the thought of a possible bumper sticker on a car would send him into a catatonic fit and my father inherited the same opinion plus a little more. So I guess it’s only natural that I think bumper stickers are stupid and that goes for stick people families, children kneeling at crosses and everything else – Don’t Get Me Started!

I don’t care how the rest of my life looks I start to get a twitch in my eye if there’s even a gum wrapper on the floor of my car. I know exactly where it comes from, I understand that some things are just “passed down” from generation to generation and that instead of me getting money, huge estates or even a clef chin like Cary Grant, I got the “keep your car as clean and pristine as you can” gene instead.

But honestly I just don’t understand the whole bumper sticker thing. Let’s start with political bumper stickers. I don’t get these or why these aren’t removable after the election. Are you really proud that you’re displaying the “losing team” on your bumper months after the election? Does it give you some sort of pride or something that you backed a loser and now you appear to have sour grapes that they didn’t win by still displaying it on your bumper? Frankly when George W won his second term I didn’t understand why anyone would have a bumper sticker on their car for him and what’s more there was more than once when he was doing a crappy job that I had to stop myself from ramming the car in front of me that had a George W bumper sticker on it just to get out some of my anger at George himself. These should definitely be removable – Post-It people, get on it, will ya?

Next up are the “Proud Parent” “Stick People Family” “Child Kneeling At Cross” and every other stupid God Damned thing on your bumper or on your back window. What I find is that the people who have the stick family on the back of their van are perhaps the worst drivers in the world. Perhaps because they’ve cluttered their back window with so much crap they can’t see out of it. They also seem to have all three of the above mentioned on their car in most cases. What I find is that on the whole they seem to be all about keeping their “stick family” together but couldn’t give a damn about anyone else on the road or paying attention to driving their vehicle. Look, I don’t care that you’ve got three girls, one boy, a cat and a dog as your stick people windowed indicates. What are you going to do when the husband leaves you, the cat dies and the boy turns out gay? It’s going to take an awful lot of Goo Gone to get rid of those figures.

Lest you think I’m leaving out us gays, I can assure you that my loathing for all things bumper sticker goes for the rainbows, Human Rights Campaign “equal” signs and those annoying bumper stickers that lesbians with four children notoriously have on their bumpers, “Hate Is Not A Family Value.” Ugh. Well now your car has no value since you put that stupid thing on your bumper so you win, I guess.

I know that this reads as if I’m the old man on the porch just screaming at passer-bys for no reason but honestly I don’t get it. Then again, I also don’t get the naked girl silhouette mud flaps, I don’t get the Beanie Babies or collection of baseball hats in your back window and I certainly don’t get bumper stickers. I think bumper stickers are stupid and that goes for stick people families, children kneeling at crosses and everything else – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/I-Think-Bumper-Stickers-Are-Stupid-And-That-Goes-For-Stick-People-Families-And-Everything-Else

The Twenty-Something Kid At The Sandwich Place Hit On Me, There’s ANOTHER Place I Have To Avoid! – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’m not being modest when I say that I don’t get hit on. I don’t even remember the last time someone actually hit on me and while I’ll admit that since I’m not looking for romance that perhaps I’m just oblivious to anyone hitting on me…but I doubt that very much. When you’ve been with someone for almost half of your life as I have I think you just emit some sort of scent or pheromone that lets people know that you’re one half of the oldest monogamous gay couple in history or something (yes, I think that scents can be that sophisticated) But yesterday there was no mistaking what the guy behind the counter was selling and it wasn’t just a baguette. The twenty-something kid at the sandwich place hit on me, there’s ANOTHER place I have to avoid! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Let me give you a little history here. The place in question is a national chain so I don’t want to mention their name or get anyone in trouble but if you think fresh bread and use a little imagination you can probably come up with the name, Mr. or Ms. Holmes! I often get catering done through them as they prepare their gourmet sandwiches in a great way for office luncheons. (Yes, another clue my Dear Watson) So I’ve grown to know the staff and they know me. I purposely am overly friendly because they have saved my ass more than once when I needed a rush catering job due to this “friendship” I have cultivated. The kid in question I think is a manager there and he has often helped me to get my order packaged to go. (For the first time in my life, no double entendre intended) When I call in an order I always know it’s him because as I’ve written about before, if you want good guest service you have to find the gay or what I like to call the GBN – Gay Boys’ Network. Although I’ll take a lot of heat for this one, you know when you’re talking to someone in the “network” when you hear the sibilant “s” on the other end. And lest you think I’m throwing stones, I’m sure that people recognize my sibilant “s” when they talk to me – which by the way, is not an affectation but something I’ve dealt with my whole life, even causing people to call me “Miss” on the phone ALL THE TIME.. I’ve also been called Miss in person, even when I have stubble on my chin but I think that has something to do with being Cleopatra in my past life or something and some of my feminine appeal just carried over into this life (yes, I’m kidding).

Anyway, the kid in question I deal with all the time and he usually answers the phone. When he answers the phone I always know it’s him, saying his name as you would when you recognize a friend’s voice on the other end of the phone. Over the two years that I’ve been going there (at least once a week) believe me when I say the conversation has always been strictly orders, additional cookies and a reprimand for whatever was inevitably left out of the last order I picked up there. All business until today.

As I was waiting for my order to be assembled I happened to mutter out loud that I had just found out I needed to go to one of those cupcake stores for someone’s birthday at work and didn’t know if I could get there and back to the office in time for the lunch but I was going to try my damndest. The kid in question (who was unfortunately not helped by his parents by giving him a name normally associated with females) I’ll call him “Cruz” a name I’ve never heard but was the first thing that came up when looking for unisex names of a certain origin and does fit the situation as that’s what he did to me. Hearing my frustration about the cupcakes and mock yelling at Cruz for not having them there so that I wouldn’t have to make an additional stop he began telling me about a place that has “the best cake in the world” but then added that it was far from this location. “Thanks. Big help there.” I said with all the sarcasm normally associated with me. As I used the “Where” application on my iPhone to find the nearest cupcake place Cruz continued to talk about other places and I nodded and smiled in all the proper places until I lifted the phone to my ear to dial the Land of Cupcakes or whatever it was called to find out where the hell they were located. As I listened to the recorded message telling me of the six thousand cupcake varieties before they mentioned the location, Cruz was still talking. I couldn’t tell you what he was talking about until he said, “Ssso SScott, what clubss do you go?” I was like, “What? Sorry, I know it’s rude to be on the phone but I’ve got to figure out where this place is – what did you say, Cruz?” He repeated, “Ssso SScott, what clubs do you go?” As only I can I said, “Clubs? Are you kidding me? I’m too old for the clubs, I’m forty-five.” With this Cruz leaned over the counter and said, “Oh Ssscott, you’re no too ol’.” The look in his eyes meant only one thing, he wanted me like I wanted to eat every pastry in his case at the moment (Yet another unintended double entendre that just slipped out – oh, that’s one too, right?) I can’t remember what I said next but I’m sure the look of shock and being appalled all at that same time that washed across my face told the tale. Not appalled because he isn’t attractive, on the contrary but I’m not in the market for romance and if I was, I’d care more about how attractive someone’s checkbook is than their head of hair. I looked at my watch and then yelled down the entire restaurant to “Ashley” who was getting my order ready, “What are you, killing that soup back there?”as I raced to the back of the store. When I got my order and passed the front counter again, Cruz was not there and it wasn’t until after I got in my car that it all hit me that I had just been hit on.

I don’t have a choice, I’ll go in there again but right now I just feel sort of yucky about the whole thing. Was I rude? Did I hurt his feelings? Does this mean no extra goodies for no charge from here on in? (The REAL issue) I don’t know, I just know that it may be awkward the next time I see Cruz. But what gets me more than anything was that I didn’t even get to enjoy being hit on by a twenty-something because I was in such haste. When is that going to happen again? Curse you damn cupcakes! The twenty-something kid at the sandwich place hit on me, there’s ANOTHER place I have to avoid! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Twenty-Something-Kid-At-The-Sandwich-Place-Hit-On-Me-Theres-ANOTHER-Place-I-Have-To-Avoid

Gay, Straight I Don’t Care Who You’re Sleeping With I Just Want To Know What You Do With The Fourth Arm? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Okay so this is yet another one of those entries that most people would advise me against. They would say, “Ask your friends or something but no one wants to read about that on your website.” These are the EXACT statements that always make me want to write a blog immediately. So here it is, maybe it’s not the answer to the BP oil spill or who will win Dancing With The Stars this season but I have to know. Gay, straight, I don’t care who you’re sleeping with I just want to know what you do with the fourth arm? – Don’t Get Me Started!

As those of you that read this blog know, I have been with the same man in a completely monogamous relationship for the past twenty-one years now so I’m more than a little embarrassed that in all this time I have not been able to figure this one out. I don’t know if I had possibly had multiple partners or something if I would have created a larger research data base or what but this is where you come in.

In most couples there are two sets of arms, right? So when you’re in bed together and you’re getting all cozy and snuggly, invariably there is one arm that gets in the way of everything, right? You can slip down the body of the person you’re next to, laying your head on the other person’s chest and clamp your arm closest to their body to your side but it won’t be long before you suddenly feel as though you may never move that arm again if you don’t move it. Position change! Or you can put your arm under the pillow of your partner but if you’re both facing up, this is going to be even more uncomfortable for you as we know the head is the heaviest part of the body (in most cases). Position change! You could try the whole letting your partner be “Sunny Side Up” and you laying on your stomach with one arm across them but circulation is not going to be your friend and it won’t be long before you feel like you could shoot up without a tourniquet. For those of you reading this thinking that “spooning” (the art of both laying facing the same direction lying like two spoons in a drawer) is the answer I can tell you that there’s still going to be one arm in the way no matter if you go under your partner’s head or once again try the clamping it to your side technique. In some respects I think this answers the age old question of exactly why the dish ran away with the spoon. The dish was trying to save the spoon’s life from lying next to the other spoons!

Over the years I’ve tried everything I know with my limbs flying akimbo trying to find the perfect position but alas, like knowing how to use a compass or how anyone sits through an entire Matthew McConaughey movie it’s beyond my comprehension. (He should just stick to having his shirt off in People magazine as a career…oh wait, isn’t that his whole career at this point anyway?)

Now for those who will write to me telling me that any of my above positions are just the perfect thing for you and your mate I’m going to ask you to answer the next question, for how long is that position going to work for you? Sure I can do a bunch of positions thanks to my years of dance and being limber but when I have to hold my right foot on red and my left arm on green it won’t be long before I’m begging someone to spin the spinner so that I can move my left arm again before we fall in our nightly game of Twister. Gay, straight, I don’t care who you’re sleeping with I just want to know what you do with the fourth arm? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Gay-Straight-I-Dont-Care-Who-Youre-Sleeping-With-I-Just-Want-To-Know-What-You-Do-With-The-Fourth-Arm

I Feel Like Judy Garland Without The Studio Contract, Voice And Mickey Rooney – Don’t Get Me Started!

While I supposed I could meditate or go to a yoga class, during times of extreme stress I tend to medicate. Now sometimes it’s with Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies or sometimes even just a Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks (which I’m convinced has mood stabilizers in it) but recently I took to some pills to sleep only to find that in the morning I needed coffee to even make it possible for me to lift my head up to see my computer screen at work. As always I have to put the whole thing in terms I can understand and so I began to think about the old Hollywood studio system and how they reportedly worked Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney into the ground, rehearsing and shooting them for 18 hour days only to give them downers to sleep for a few hours and then waking them back up after two to three hours sleep with some uppers and starting the whole thing over again. As I tried to pry my eyelids open one morning “Jonesing” for a fix of coffee to wake me up I thought, “I feel like Judy Garland without the studio contract, voice and Mickey Rooney – Don’t Get Me Started!

For those of you ready to throw me into rehab I can assure you that what I’m taking is all prescribed medication and that I don’t take it every night. (Does that sound like every drug addict on the Intervention show or what?) I used to work with a guy and when we would travel on business I would swear by Tylenol PM, when you go from time zone to time zone your body never wants to be asleep when it needs to be and so I would always use some Tylenol PM to get me to sleep so that I was worth something the next day. My co-worker would say, “Neely, get off the dolls!” (Please see the movie or book Valley of the Dolls to understand this reference). And although I’ve moved on from the over–the-counter solutions  to things like Ambien (which always sounds like the Steven Spielberg film company, Amblin so somewhere in my deluded head it makes me feel like it must be safe if you can connect ET to it – it’s definitely the Ambien talking).

Ah Ambien, whoever invented this didn’t do as good a job as the guy who came up with the all the crazy things that Ambien can supposedly make you do. There have been reports that Tiger Woods used it for his crazy sexcapades, some people claim that it made them go to their refrigerator in the middle of the night and act like a bear in a campground eating everything in sight. Some get night terrors from it (which makes me think of people with the covers pulled up under their chin with red circles around their eyes just screaming into the night in a paranoid fit). But for me, for the most part, it just puts me to sleep (that I know of) but since I’m a six hour a night sleeper at the most, when the alarm rings and I start my day I feel like George Jetson moving on some modern conveyer belt taking me to feed the cats, shower, shave and coif all while still only having barely one eye open. I do wonder how the scented candle and crystals under the bed people do it, wondering if they don’t have a better idea than mine as I drive to Starbucks with the sunglasses firmly in place like a celebrity avoiding the paparazzi managing a semi-smile for the girls behind the counter as they say, “The usual?” And I grunt or simply nod my head as a response.

So is this modern day cycle of uppers and downers I’ve created for myself (coffee in the morning and then Ambien at night) the same as the Benzedrine induced days of Judy Garland under the supposed slave driver whip of Busby Berkley trying to get all of her steps right while lip syncing to her own recordings while hitting her marks to be in the camera shot? There’s a part of me that wishes it was. There will be no premier when I’m done with this “production” that seems to never have an end date of principal shooting, just another day to face and another caffeine portion to ladle down my gullet to ensure that I can “Put on a show” for everyone in my life. No score by Rodgers and Hart, no snappy chorus girls and boys to back me up and no chance of my show being preserved on film for all eternity. Still, I think it’s best I get off the junk, the “dolls” before something really bad happens, like I start getting depressed (one of the side effects from Ambien) of is it too late for that having re-read this entry? I feel like Judy Garland without the studio contract, voice and Mickey Rooney – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/I-Feel-Like-Judy-Garland-Without-The-Studio-Contract-Voice-And-Mickey-Rooney

Malawi Gay Couple Sentenced To 14 Years Of Hard Labor Are We Here In America All That Much Better When It Comes To Gay Rights? – Don’t Get Me Started!

According to Associated Press writer Raphael Tenthani in an article dated May 20, 2010, after having an engagement party at the end of December 2009, Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza from Malawi were arrested, convicted and have now been sentenced to 14 years of hard labor. This is the maximum sentence that can be applied for “unnatural acts and gross indecency” according to the laws of this land. And as I read about these men being led from the court room to jeers from onlookers screaming that they should have gotten more years I couldn’t help but think, Malawi gay couple sentenced to 14 years of hard labor are we here in American all that much better when it comes to gay rights? – Don’t Get Me Started!

No one was surprised by the verdict or the sentence and the human rights organizations that always try to intervene have begun the process to assist these men. So all we can do as most say is, “Put our trust in the Lord that justice will eventually be served.” Wow, I can all ready feel the hair standing up on the backs of necks across America as I mention the “Lord” – after all, so many of the Christian Right have made it very clear that the “Lord” is theirs alone. Sure they tell you that Jesus loves you and will forgive you your sins if you fall on your knees and worship him and allow Him into your heart but let’s face it, with all the fear of the Lord they have and propagate they really think their devotion and their cash will not only get them a better pew when it comes time to do their time in the afterlife but allows them a sole property to rights to the “Lord.” But that’s not what this blog is about.

I began to think of the movie, “Gentlemen’s Agreement” the movie starring Gregory Peck about anti-Semitism but more about the scene where Gregory Peck’s Jewish friend played by John Garfield addresses Peck’s fiancé, Kathy played by Dorothy McGuire who has described being at a dinner party where a man made a joke about Jews, here’s a transcript version of the script (written by Moss Hart) from http://www.script-o-rama.com/:

Kathy: At dinner a man told a vicious story. I was ill with shame.

Dave: What kind of story, Kathy?

Kathy: Oh, it was just a story.

Dave: Suppose you tell me.

Kathy: Well, it was just a vulgar little joke. It has nothing to do with this.

Dave: Maybe it has. What kind of joke? I can take naughty words.

Kathy: But why? Oh, all right. It was a man named Lockhardt and he tried to get laughs with words like kike and coon. I despised him, and everyone else…

Dave: What did you do when he told the joke?

Kathy: What do you mean?

Dave: I mean, what did you say when he finished?

Kathy: I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to leave. I wanted to say to everyone, “Why do we take it? When he’s attacking everything we believe in? Why don’t we call him on it?”

Dave: What did you do?

Kathy: I just sat there. I felt ashamed. We all just sat there.

Dave: Yeah. And then you left and got me on the phone.

Kathy: Later, after dinner was over I said I was ill and I am.

Dave: I wonder if you’d feel so sick now, Kathy if you had nailed him. There’s a funny kind of elation about socking back. I learned that a long time ago. Phil’s learned it.

Kathy: And I haven’t?

Dave: Lots of things are pretty rough, Kathy. This is just a different kind of war.

Kathy: And anybody who crawls away is a quitter just as much as…

Dave: I didn’t say that. You did. Somebody told a story. Sure, a man at a dinner table told a story and the nice people didn’t laugh. They even despised him, sure. But they let it pass.

Kathy: Behind that joke there’s Flume Inn (A “restricted” hotel in the film that doesn’t allow Jews to stay as guests – yes, this really happened in our history of America) and Darien and Tommy and those kids. If you don’t stop with that joke, where do you stop? Is that what you mean?

Dave: That’s right

So while we here in our comfy American homes sit back and think we’re so much better than the world at large and that gays should just shut up all ready because at least they’re not being jailed here in America, is that really something to be celebrated or hang our red, white and blue top hat on? And the last time you were in a group of people and the “funny guy” in the crowd talked with a lisp and bent his wrist down what did you do?

I’m the largest proponent you’ll find for finding humor as a way to deal with life but when I saw the photos of these two men in shackles simply because they love one another and want to share their lives I couldn’t help but think not only about the party “gay joke” people but the people who have stopped gays from being allowed to be recognized as married or obtaining equal rights in this country. No, we weren’t sentenced to 14 years of hard labor and we’re not in physical jails due to our gayness but we’re in a jail that has been created by the so-called religious (that is not supposed to have anything to do with our government). Allowed to walk free but not love freely and be recognized for our commitment to one another. So I think it’s time for America to get off its high horse of “we’re doing better than most countries” and start living up to the mottos, “The home of the free and the brave” “And liberty and justice for all.” Malawi gay couple sentenced to 14 years of hard labor, are we here in American all that much better when it comes to gay rights? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Malawi-Gay-Couple-Sentenced-To-14-Years-Of-Hard-Labor-Are-We-Here-In-America-All-That-Much-Better

Have I Created The Gold Standard For Laziness? – Don’t Get Me Started!

While I have always considered myself an organized person and I’m proud to say that I for the most part eat healthy and try to contribute to society on the whole, lately I’ve been noticing more and more how much stuff I keep putting off to do around the house and I have finally reached a level where I believe I may have created the gold standard for laziness – Don’t Get Me Started!

While I have a backup for almost every product in my home – toothpaste, window cleaner, etc. so that I will never run out and then have to run out to the store (wow, that statement started with me thinking it was a good example of me being prepared like a good Boy Scout but ended up with me sounding like I’m too lazy to run out of things, hmmm) what I’ve recently discovered is that some things just don’t get done and I have to wonder why. Why for example has the Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner been without good batteries to operate it for over a week? For the first few days I gave myself a pass because I would get in the shower each morning and act like Homer Simpson, “Doh, need new batteries in the cleaner thing.” But after a week it couldn’t have still been that, right? So finally after over a week I was watching my Tivo’d shows and in the middle of it I jumped up like someone who has been hypnotized to act like a chicken when someone says the word, “clean” and dug through the “battery drawer” and then ran to the bathroom to change the batteries. Never mind that the bottle in the auto-cleaning dispenser was full so when I tipped it to try and remove the batteries the Scrubbing Bubbles liquid seeped all over my arm and I could swear that I felt some scrubbing going on. Again, lazy – could I have taken the bottle out before taking the batteries out? Apparently not. I thought I could get the batteries changed without taking the bottle of liquid out of the dispenser. I was wrong and thanks to my laziness there’s now an eighth of a bottle of cleaner left and I don’t think it did a thing for the walls or the bathroom rug that it leaked on while I was turning it over and wrestling with it to get the old batteries out and the new batteries in.

After the bathroom incident I returned to my sofa and hit the play button to return to my Tivo watching smelling like Spring Rain. As I sat and then laid down on the sofa I began to look around the house and started to rationalize with myself. “Hmmm, that cabinet is really dusty. But if I dust it now, it’s just going to get dusty again, right? So should I go ahead and dust it now or wait until right before my guy gets back from his trip? Seems to make more sense to do only one dusting instead of two, right?” Once you start cutting deals like this with yourself you’re on a slippery slope of water slide proportions.

I can’t tell you why I felt as though I had accomplished something on the same level as finding a cure for cancer in the fact that I had changed the batteries in the Scrubbing Bubbles dispenser but I did and as a result it gave me a “pass” on doing a lot of other things that needed to be done around the house in my lazy rationalization brain. The odd part was that even as I was convincing myself I knew I was trying to convince myself about something that should never even be considered as rational or a good idea. Is this what they call lying to yourself? Or was I just slowly slipping into the coma of complacency?

How long would it be before I was sitting in front of the television watching The Biggest Loser eating a Whopper with cheese meal, licking the salt off of my fingers that would blow me up like a tick moments after eating it causing great discomfort for hours yet telling myself I “deserved” it because I’d worked out a few days in the week. All the while shaking my head at those “losers” on the television who were working out like crazy people to get rid of the traces of years of doing what I was doing right now?

They say insanity can be defined by doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result each time. I think insanity is lying on the sofa proud of yourself for changing batteries that it took you over a week to change when you had the batteries in the house the entire time. There’s only one way to stop the madness and it’s to get off your ass and dust the damn cabinet. Dust was designed to come back and make you have to dust again, it’s like nose hair or your colon. Sure you can go ahead and ignore them but at some point no one’s going to hear a word you say because you have more hair coming out of your nose than is on your head and if you don’t take care of your colon you’ll eventually just have a shit explosion (I’m guessing). So there are certain things you only have to do once like losing your virginity or being raped when you buy your first car on your own. But other things have to be continuously maintained like your lawn and your sense of style. Still that sofa is a real temptress, I know because it helped me create the new gold standard for laziness! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Have-I-Created-The-Gold-Standard-For-Laziness

I Know How To Do A Lot Of Things, Cooking Is Not One Of Them – Don’t Get Me Started!

For most of my life I’ve tried to hide my weaknesses. They include not being able to NOT eat an entire box of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies in one sitting, never getting the blue piece of “pie” in Trivial Pursuit because I have no idea about anything geographical, not understanding anything about financial matters and the list goes on and on. But now that I’m in my mid-forties a sort of calm has come over me and instead of trying to hide the empty box of cookies in the trash under the 100 calorie packs of Chips Ahoy box or the broccoli that’s gone bad, act like I know where Canada is or smiling and nodding as if I know what people are talking about when they talk about the stock market or their IRAs I’ve decided to just stop the madness. When my spouse is home he cooks every night, he’s great at it. While I watch cooking show after cooking show (and my spouse asks if it ever inspires me to try any of the recipes I see – it doesn’t) when he’s out of town on business I do dabble in the world of cooking mostly out of necessity. I like to think as I search online for the recipe and follow it to the letter that I’m practicing so that when he comes home I’ll be able to actually make something edible. I always think it’s going to turn out great and it never does so I’ve just decided to accept that I know how to do a lot of things, cooking is not one of them – Don’t Get Me Started!

I reached my breaking point last night. When my spouse is gone I never open the freezer (unless there’s ice cream in it or a box of Thin Mint cookies) and when my spouse comes home he always asks the same question, “What did you eat while I was away? You didn’t touch anything in the freezer that I left for you.” Never mind that he’s left little frozen packets of delicious homemade spaghetti sauce, pulled barbeque pork and various other things he’s made in the freezer that all I would have to do is reheat, I know there’s no ice cream or Thin Mints in there so I never open the thing. But this time I vowed it would be different. So a day ahead I took out that ground turkey to thaw in the frige and then I started my search online for recipes. Would it be the Rachel Ray turkey chili? No. Would it be Mediterranean turkey burgers? No. Finally I decided on a turkey meatloaf recipe that according to the almost fifty people who had reviewed it was undoubtedly the most tasty, delicious meatloaf in the history of the world. I stopped at the market to get the ingredients I knew I didn’t have (only to discover when I arrived home that we had almost all of the ingredients, another thing that makes my spouse crazy – I don’t actually look at what we have and don’t have before I go shopping, he usually does the shopping so when I shop it’s a disaster – so let’s just say I’ll be getting an earful as to why we now have two full bottles of Worcetshire sauce in the cupboard when he gets home and no, he won’t care that the extra one I bought was on sale!)

As I walked into the kitchen I took a deep breath and threw myself into my work with gusto. I was chopping onions, mincing garlic adding some mushrooms even though the recipe didn’t call for it, sautéing all of it while lightly beating one egg and separating the other one to use only the egg white like someone was filming me for a cooking show. Within a half an hour I had created the meatloaf and had it on the pan and in the preheated oven. As it cooked for the hour I knew that the tide had turned. I could actually smell it and it smelled, dare I say it, “Good?” I imagined my spouse coming home and me saying, “Oh no, I’m making dinner tonight” and blowing his taste buds out of the water with what had become MY meatloaf recipe now. In the final moments of it cooking I made a large garden salad and dressing (okay, I can’t lie I used Good Seasons for the dressing but the cutting up of the Roma tomatoes, green peppers, Persian cucumbers and using not only a baby greens mix but some baby spinach was all me, baby).

When the hour was up I took the meatloaf out of the oven to let it rest for the five minutes stipulated in the recipe. It looked like meatloaf, it smelled like meatloaf so I figured that barring something alien-like jumping out of it and attacking me that I had finally hit upon a winner. I sliced it and put it on the plate and I have to say it looked promising.

It only took one bite to realize that after chopping, slicing, dicing, sautéing and everything else that it was the most tasteless thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. As I tried to console myself, telling myself that at least it wasn’t awful, it was after all edible, I slowly came to the realization that there are some things in life that I’ll never be good at and this was one of them. I’m a good writer, an excellent party guest, can get almost anything out of someone just by talking to them on the phone having never met them and the list goes on and on. And believe me when I say that I’m not boasting when I say the list is quite impressive in its entirety (list upon request). So why oh why should I be concerned if there are things I don’t do well? The answer is simple, I shouldn’t. So I’ll leave the cooking to the experts (my spouse) and I’ll leave stressing about things I don’t do well by the wayside. We can’t all be Julia Child but we can’t all be Some Like It Scott either. I know my place in this world and as time goes on I’m getting more and more comfortable with it. I know how to do a lot of things, cooking is not one of them – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/I-Know-How-To-Do-A-Lot-Of-Things-Cooking-Is-Not-One-Of-Them

If Betty White And Getting The Gay Couple From Modern Family To Kiss Can Get Campaigns On Facebook, I Want One Too! – Don’t Get Me Started!

We all know what happened when after seeing the Superbowl commercial younger fans discovered Betty White (shocking to some of us that have watched and loved her for years), they started a Facebook campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live and guess what? It worked! While Marketing Directors everywhere have discovered a new way to get their message across – for free – others feel as though it’s started a new wave of Internet thuggory. I’m not sure if it is as dangerous as some are making it out to be but when I read that a recent Facebook page had been created to get the gay couple on the television series Modern Family to kiss I began to wonder. If Betty White and getting the gay couple from Modern Family to kiss can get campaigns on Facebook, I want one too! – Don’t Get Me Started!

Although Marketing people will tell you that they know exactly what makes a video go viral on YouTube or that they know exactly how to Tweet their way into making someone famous I can tell you that in most cases something else is involved. Something some of us have learned to call, “dumb luck.” No one really knows why over ten people sent me via email and three “friends” on Facebook posted to their wall the other day a sixth grader who plays the piano and sings Lady GaGa. Sure he’s great but does anyone really know why it gets passed around and become a viral video? The quick answer is, no but we all know that in less than a week thanks to his viral status he’ll be asked to be on Oprah with her “most talented kids” and before you know it he’s Justin Bieber – whoever the hell he is?!? I admit I haven’t seen or heard him, I just know that his bangs sweep over his forehead and he’s a sensation among the tween set and is getting more press than the Kardashians (at the moment).

So I’ve thought and thought about it and I’m wondering (just like several other million people I’m sure) how I get in on some of this action. After all, Facebook and YouTube are free (for the moment) so it’s not like it would cost a bunch of money I don’t have but what do I do or how do I get someone to create something that puts me in emails of everyone I’ve never met (nor want to meet) and posted on Facebook walls everywhere? I don’t want to don eyeliner and cry about Britney Spears. I don’t want to try and teach my cat to sing, “Endless Love” with me. So how do I make it happen, people? Come on, work with me. I thought that I was on my way a few times only to find out they were false starts. When I blogged for Project Runway Season 3 for bravotv.com I was sure I was on my way to becoming the blogger of the gayest network on television that doesn’t identify as gay (other than Lifetime) but then everyone who was ever on a Bravo show got a blog and that made my blogs less “interesting” to the folks at Bravo. I posted a video on YouTube about Johnny Weir getting robbed at the Olympics and received some of the most hits ever for one of my videos yet Joy Behar didn’t call and ask me to sit on her show and talk about it. And most recently I did a video on Zumba (a group fitness class) that got the Zumba community clicking a lot on the video (and also almost got me banned from Zumba classes in Las Vegas) but not one invite did I get to do stand up at fitness conferences (which by the way, I’m available for). So as I lay awake at night wondering what it will be or what will push me over the proverbial edge into being noticed, I can’t help but think that perhaps I’m missing something. Missing something that like in most cases is right in front of me but for some reason I can’t see it. I mean there’s a gay who has been posting videos on trying to recapture his jawline by losing weight (he felt his chin had disappeared with the weight he put on) who is getting more hits and is being featured on websites. Where is the Logo network? They need me. They need a forty-something gay doing quick commentary in between commercials because after all, how many blocks of Buffy The Vampire can you show each day without some sort of break?

I don’t know what it is but I know it’s out there and I’m putting out my cry for help to all of you. HELP! For fuck sake, HELP! If Betty White and getting the gay couple from Modern Family to kiss can get campaigns on Facebook, I want one too! – Don’t Get Me Started!

And please vote for me to get my own show on the Oprah Network by following this link, watching my video and voting several thousand times – share with your friends and enemies too please!

http://myown.oprah.com/audition/index.html?request=video_details&response_id=977&promo_id=1

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/If-Betty-White-And-Getting-The-Gay-Couple-From-Modern-Family-To-Kiss-Can-Get-Campaigns-On-Facebook-I-Want-One-Too 

How Niecey Nash Taught Us All Something About Self Deprecating Humor – Don’t Get Me Started!

As I watched Niecey Nash each week on Dancing With The Stars I loved her even more than I had loved her seeing her on her other shows like Reno 911, The Insider, Clean House, etc. While she may not have been the most dazzling dancing star on the show she made up for it with her bigger than life personality and comedic timing (which no one else has on that show). So in week one as she talked about her “jiggly parts” I laughed along with everyone else, when she and her partner Louis did a tango centered around fighting for food I smiled but as the rest of the cast (and guest commentators) began talking about Niecey’s food intake and jiggly parts I realized that although she had opened that can of worms they were now crawling about in an ugly way all over the show. How Niecey Nash taught us all something about self deprecating humor – Don’t Get Me Started!

Maybe what Niecey Nash was doing couldn’t officially be considered self deprecating humor as she seemed to not be making fun of herself as much as she seemed to just be putting herself out there celebrating the fact she wasn’t a size 2 and liked food. But as someone who for years has been the brunt of my own jokes only to see it snowball into allowing co-workers and the like to think that it was a way of me opening the door for them to make jokes about me I can tell you that the pattern is repeated by us low self esteemers time and time again.

The idea behind self deprecating humor is to get to yourself before someone else gets to you. If you were a kid who always got thrown in the dumpster (yes, I watch Glee) and you decide to throw yourself in to everyone’s amusement, sure you’re going to make everyone laugh at the moment but you’re also going to send a subliminal message to everyone that you think it’s okay to be thrown in the dumpster. So the next time someone throws you in the dumpster are they to blame or are you for trying to make light of it in the first place?

People tell me that within minutes of meeting me you find out (from my own mouth) that I’m Jewish and that I’m gay. I’ve had several people ask me why this is and why it’s the same for so many people who are Jewish and/or gay. Sure I can go to my past and cite the example of the kid who when my brother and I were kids played with us for weeks until one day he arrived on our doorstep to inform us that he could no longer play with us because his father had told him we were “dirty Jews.” So my reasoning has always been that I tell people up front about my being Jewish or gay because if you have a problem with either I want to know up front. I don’t want to have to wait a few weeks and think that we’re starting a healthy business or personal relationship and then find you think the holocaust didn’t exist and that gays are subhuman. I want to save us both the trouble. But because it seems a bit coarse to me to just mention it outright, I do it with humor. I let it drop in conversation, “That’s what having a Jewish mother means, she calls to find out if you make it home safe…every day from the office.” Or I say something like, “Yeah, I’m gay so I know exactly where every throw pillow should go.”

So while I think I’m being humorous what I find is that more often than not, suddenly the people I’ve been telling these jokes too suddenly become to feel as though they can say, “Let’s get Scott to call and Jew them down.” And that’s when you realize that for whatever reason you started telling those self-deprecating humor jokes the fact of the matter is that you’ve opened a sort of Pandora’s box for the people you’ve told to feel comfortable telling them too to you at your expense.

That’s what I think happened with Niecey Nash. When she first did her few jokes about food it was funny but then the tide started to turn. You heard things like one of the other celebrities in a joking segment talk about “getting the food away from Niecey” to get the advantage over her on the dance floor and by the time of her final appearance when they did the DanceCenter comedy sketch it seemed as though food and her “jiggly parts” were all that they talked about and it just made me uncomfortable.

What those of us have to realize is that while self deprecating humor is sometimes the funniest and quickest way to help people understand who you are and how funny you are and supposedly show just how comfortable you are about yourself, it also has the danger of giving people the unwritten license to make jokes at your expense. Does it mean I’ll stop making these jokes? No. But I’m also more careful about the jokes I tell, who I tell them to and at what point we’re in in our relationship. How Niecey Nash taught us all something about self deprecating humor – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Niecey-Nash-Taught-Us-All-Something-About-Self-Deprecating-Humor

Another Gay Weighs In On The Controversial “Straight Jacket” Article In Newsweek About Gay Actors – Don’t Get Me Started!

I read all the controversy before I read the actual article. All I knew was that a gay writer had written a piece for Newsweek about gay actors not being able to play straight roles (based on a review of Broadway’s Promises, Promises with Sean Hayes and citing several other examples such as the new Glee cast mate, openly gay Jonathan Groff to Rock Hudson and Portia de Rossi) and the gay community was livid. Not only the gay community but celebs such as Kristen Chenoweth (Hayes co-star) were lambasting this writer and demanding his gay and his writer union cards be burned at the stake. Here’s the original article http://www.newsweek.com/id/236999?cnn=yes and after reading it I couldn’t help myself. Another gay weighs in on the controversial “Straight Jacket” article in Newsweek about gay actors – Don’t Get Me Started!

I read the piece and although I haven’t seen the performance of Sean Hayes in Promises, Promises I have to say that I think that on some level the author of this article, Ramin Setodeh is doing what any writer does who writes essays such as the one for Newsweek. He’s giving his opinion and the last time I looked, free speech was still allowed in this country. You can disagree with him all you like and you can voice that opinion from the tallest tree if you want here in America but you can’t deny this guy for voicing his own opinion. It always gets me how people are all about free speech until someone says something that they disagree with or don’t like.

And now for the real shocker to some, I don’t disagree with everything this guy has to say. Frankly I’ve only ever watched three minutes of “How I Met Your Mother” but I’ve always felt as though Neil Patrick Harris reads gay in this role and I don’t think it’s just my gaydar at work. And while I thought that Sean Hayes did an admirable job with his made-for-television bio epic of Jerry Lewis (am I the only one who remembers this and yes, I truly have more worthless knowledge in my head than knowledge worth something) I remember thinking that he read a little gay around the edges in the role, then again, who would say that Jerry Lewis’ characters or even his almost cliché famous lines including, “Laaaaady!” are straight sounding?

When the author talks about revisiting Rock Hudson’s work with the knowledge that he was gay I think he’s looking for something that isn’t there or as I like to put it about the portion of the gay community that wants to believe everyone is gay, he seems to be “looking at the world through gay colored glasses.” I don’t think that Rock Hudson reads gay in his movies but then again I never really thought he was that much of an actor.

While the author talks about the success of straight actors being able to play gay better than gay actors being able to play straight I think he may be right only from a perception factor. What isn’t factored in is that we know way too much about the personal lives of celebrities now (thank TMZ, the 24 hour news cycle and blogs for this one). Frankly my dears I don’t give a damn if Clark Gable had gay affairs (a claim from some book that was written a few years ago) because when he was famous the studio system only allowed us to know what they wanted us to know about the stars and yes, I’m going to say it, I liked it better that way. I don’t need to know about every trial and tribulation a celebrity is going through trying to have a baby or keep their relationship with a sports star passionate. In fact the more I know about someone’s personal life the more it’s going to impede the way that I look at them when I see them on the screen, straight or gay.

I don’t have the foggiest notion what Meryl Streep or Al Pacino’s personal lives are like so when I watch their movies I’m able to only see the character they’re creating. I’m not proposing that actors should “stay in the closet” as bitter uncastable queen Rupert Evert suggests but I also think there’s something to be said for keeping your personal life personal when your job is to create a multitude of different believable characters on stage and screen. I’m not denying that the fault may lie in me for knowing too much about an actor to allow that to get out of my way when I watch their performances. While I can watch early Woody Allen movies with great delight (even to this day) when I see his works after marrying his somewhat step daughter several years his junior all I can think is pedophile and it makes me uncomfortable so I’ve stopped watching his more current movies where he appears in them.

So what I think is that we all know too much about each other and the actors of the world today have lost their mystique so therefore it’s harder to believe the characters they portray on the screen. While old Hollywood made up cat fights and let only the scandals that would help an actor’s career be known, today we all know too much and I think it makes it harder for us to dispend our belief when we see them in a role. The same can be said for real life thanks to Facebook and Twitter where people let us know everything they’re doing from wasting their lives building imaginary farms to having a good bowel movement. And I for one miss some of the good old fashioned acting people did on screen and in real life. Another gay weighs in on the controversial “Straight Jacket” article in Newsweek about gay actors – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Another-Gay-Weighs-In-On-The-Controversial-Straight-Jacket-Article-In-Newsweek-About-Gay-Actors

Organized Religion Is The Same Thing As Organized Crime – Don’t Get Me Started!

The only thing I know about organized crime is what I’ve seen in the movies and on television but from everything I’ve seen organized religion is the same thing as organized crime – Don’t Get Me Started!

I’ve been a Jew all my life and will be one all my life (no matter how many people write in and tell me that I need to accept Jesus as my personal savior – save yourself and leave me out of it, please). I don’t care what you worship and supposedly the laws of America say the same thing too but once people start supposedly organizing their worshiping it creates a breeding ground for such crimes against humanity that I honestly don’t get how they can delude themselves into convincing themselves and others that they’re actually doing good.

The fact that anyone can allow the Pope to use the word “sin” when the real word is “crime” for what the many priests have done to children all over the globe is beyond me. Come on, what kind of sick game of semantics is that? Maybe that hat is a little too tight. The problem is not “sin” in your church, it’s pedophiles that are committing “crimes” and you have committed crimes for your involvement of shuffling these pedophiles around hoping no will notice and for allowing these sickos to go to other places to commit the same crimes over and over again. Now I don’t know if you’ve seen the Godfather movies but isn’t this what they do? You kill someone and then they send you to “disappear” in Italy for a few years?

And while we’re on the topic is the Pope any different than the Godfather? He sits on high ruling the people he’s bullied into thinking they’re “family” and uses them to make as much money and get as much power as possible for himself.  I’m telling you, I’ve seen a lot of movies and the story of the Pope and the Godfather share more than a few plot lines.

Believe me when I say I’m not excusing organized Jewish religion either that seems more worried about getting money for a building fund than building the spiritual background of their congregation in many places. And don’t even get me started on the Mormons and their “temple” where they just make shit up as they go along, keeping women pushed down until they’re breeding them to elders like a puppy mill. Once again, I don’t have a problem (like some) with thinking that people are allowed to worship whoever they want but when they get together they seem to look more and more like the villagers from an old horror movie with their pitchforks and torches, attacking the so-called monster when they’ve become the monsters themselves.

Please don’t try to tell me that I’m using the same mentality by stereotyping the entire group of organized religion as they do to us gays. I don’t sit around saying that I’m better or living my life the way everyone else should and they do, don’t tell me they don’t. And for the record, I’ve never fucked a kid up the ass or taken money under the false pretenses that I can get someone a better seat on the Heaven Tram and you, the organized religious have done both. How do you sleep at night? You’re so worried that I’m sleeping with another man yet you lay in your pious bed of ill gotten tax free gains all the while knowing you’re destroying the very souls you claim to be saving.  

I’m so tired of the Religious Right telling me that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination. Look, I don’t think everyone in the world should be gay but I also don’t think everyone in the world has to be straight, white and Christian to be treated as equals either. I’m not sitting on any high horse saying that I know better or that the way I worship is the way everyone should worship. I’m not talking about beliefs here I’m talking about facts. The fact that so many children have been molested by religious leaders is astounding and the fact that they are allowed to hide behind their robes and church walls while trying to throw us off the scent of their corruption with their frankincense just doesn’t make any sense to me. If you knew of a day care that was beating kids and it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, it would be shut down for the common good and the perpetrators of the crime would be punished. Why does the church get a “Get Out Of Molestation Free Card?”  And please don’t tell me about the “restitution” they’ve made in the cases where they’ve been caught because that’s nothing but hush money which takes us back to where we began, organized religion is the same thing as organized crime – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...

Okay But Did You Know Lena Horne Personally? – Don’t Get Me Started!

I get that we identify with celebrities, especially those that come into our homes on a regular basis via our televisions. But see, just cause you know who they are and watch everything they do whether it be acting or on Entertainment Tonight doesn’t mean that you actually know them. Shocking to some I’m sure but that’s the truth of the matter. I don’t care how much you delude yourself into thinking you could be best friends with a celebrity if the two of you met, the bottom line is that in most cases you’re never going to meet them nor have their cell number and become BFFs. So why oh why do some of you feel the need to refer to celebrities you’ve never met only by their first name? Unless they’re Cher or Charro it’s just silly to me that some people think it’s acceptable to call a celebrity or anyone they don’t really know by their first name only. I just have to ask as you write on your Facebook page, “Lena you were such a true talent and inspiration. I’ll miss you, girl.” If you really knew the Lena Horne at all other than watching her movies or going to one of her live shows then by all means I guess you’re on a first name basis if not, keep it to Lena Horne or Ms. Horne please. I get that you liked her as a performer, okay but did you know Lena Horne personally? – Don’t Get Me Started!

It’s this strange phenomenon I’ve never been able to understand. How people can take things that happen to celebrities so personally to the point where they feel they know them. Take the whole Tiger Woods thing for example. I don’t care how many women Tiger Woods has shtopped, it’s none of my business frankly but when you watch the entertainment shows and worse, read comments online with millions of people commenting about “Tiger” and “Elin” as if they’re their personal friends I wanna puke. The same only gets worse when someone has a nickname that their closest friends use but then becomes part of the language of the online Cheetoh stained finger set when they post their comments. Sandra Bullock is a perfect example. Here’s a typical comment, “Sandy, move on with your life and forget all about that scum bag, you’re a classy lady who will find someone that truly deserves you.” I’m sure Sandra Bullock is reading (not) and if she were thinking, “Oh thank you catlvr267, you really made me feel better about the whole situation. Are you available for lunch next week?”

And it’s not only the common folk who do this, the reporters on entertainment shows drive me crazy with their seeming comfort in referring to celebrities whom they don’t know or have never interviewed by their first names. “I saw Tom and Katie backstage at that event as I was interviewing the girls from The Hills and they were just great.” Were they? Was what they were doing having anything to do with you or are you just a typical celebrity-fucker trying to get your fifteen seconds of fame by having been in the same room with someone who is famous?

I know to many this may seem a very small and petty thing to be going off about but it makes me crazy. I particularly love living in Las Vegas where it seems as though every celebrity winds up eventually. I love to read on acquaintances Facebook pages, “Was at Lavo last night with Kim and Chloe” – were you really with them or just among the crowd of people who were in the same room as Kim and Chloe Kardashian? And while we’re on the subject can anyone explain to me what these celebrities do when these nightclubs hire these types of celebrities to “host” nights at their club? What do they do besides show up and sit at a VIP table with their friends?  I don’t get it.

I admit it, I don’t get a lot of things. This whole thing reminds me of an experience a friend of mine had at a theatre his family owned. There was a special event and Dr. Maya Angelou was a special guest speaking to a women’s group that had rented the theatre. My pal is one of those great Italian family guys who thinks and treats everyone like family from the moment that he meets them so it was no surprise that after being in the room with Dr. Maya Angelou for five minutes he said to her, “Hey Maya Angelo (making her name Italian), we need to get you to the stage now.” Dr. Angelou stopped what she had been doing and said, “Have we met before?” My friend nodded to signify they had not. “I didn’t think so. My name is Dr. Angelou.” Now while some may think this was snotty, I totally get it. If you don’t know someone, address them appropriately and respectfully.

So while I too was a fan of Ms. Lena Horne, I can assure that there will be nothing on my Facebook page or website that refers to her by her first name only because I didn’t earn that right by ever even meeting the woman. I do appreciate all that Lena Horne did in her career not only at a time when African Americans were only slightly represented in the movie industry as well as the American society and I’m grateful to be able to watch Ms. Horne’s performances that were captured in film but I also respect her enough to say, “Ms. Horne your talents will be missed.” And for those who choose to just use her first name again I ask, okay but did you know Lena Horne personally? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Where Are The Gay Stereotypes When I Need Them?  – Don’t Get Me Started!

 Being a gay man in his forties was once considered impossibility for the most part. Being gay was for the young and there were no older gay people in existence. Okay, that is completely an untrue statement but a stereotype that existed when I was growing up at least. Sure you could say that it was my perspective on things as a young man but think about it, how many older gays did you hear about when you first started hearing the term “gay” meaning something other than it did as a Cole Porter lyric? Probably not many so while most gay men were perceived as some sort of handsome Dorian Gray/Dracula type it was easy to think of them possessing talents (and lifetimes) that other mere mortals did not possess or understand. Where are the gay stereotypes when I need them?  – Don’t Get Me Started!

While there are plenty of gay stereotypes I think have really moved into the cliché category to the point where they’re even laughable to us gays, such as limp wrists and lisps, there are still other stereotypes that I wish we could hold onto but as time moves on and people discover that gays are just like everyone else (cringe, well sort of) I think we’re losing our edge just a bit. You see there was a time when women might remark, “Oh he’s too good looking to be straight, he must be gay.” That’s a stereotype (while it’s never been said about me) that we’d like to hold onto. We’d also like to hold onto the stereotype of gays knowing more about fashion, design and being the most witty and clever in the room.

But unfortunately, just like everything else, you have to take the good with the bad and also understand that time marches on and you must go with it. Along with us raising families now and fighting for our rights to be married, we’re having to lose some of our super human powers, be them perceived or not and I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. I want it all. I want to have my cake, eat it and be gay thin all at the same time, please. I want to continue to look at the world through pink cosmopolitan colored glasses, sipping away at life’s comical display before me and commenting with a raised eyebrow.

When I was young the world of being gay included exciting nightclubs like Studio 54, the likes of tortured artists such as Andy Warhol and designers like Bob Mackie. It was a bejeweled world that glittered not only from sequins but from the pure energy of it. If there was a gay at a party he was the life of it. He was the perfect best friend to women and men respected the place the gay best friend held in their wives’ lives. Sure this wasn’t the life that everyone led but to my eyes this was what I was getting myself into and I couldn’t wait to have a dinner party every night of the week and plenty of people to hang on my every word. But as I was growing up getting ready to “come of age” into my true gayness, something changed, something happened and I’m not sure that it wasn’t AIDS that started to strip away at our erudite veneer.

You see when HIV and AIDS first came on the scene it was known as “the gay cancer” and I think to a great many people, the disease created the face of what it was to be gay in the eighties into the nineties. No longer were we Liberace (in his prime) laughing all the way to the bank in his sequins. No longer were we the most handsome man in the room. In fact, the disease was taking one of the most handsome men in the world, Rock Hudson and making him frail before the public’s eyes. Here was this god among men and women who looked gaunt and ill. (I’m still not totally convinced that this isn’t where the whole idea of gay thin came from in a complete misunderstanding by a generation of what it meant to be gay – they saw this as gay – gaunt and well, gay thin.) Yes, Rock Hudson who once towered over the world in his good looks and stardom was now a frail creature who looked older than his years. Someone had destroyed his painting in the back room of his house that had been aging for him all those years and this was what we got in return. It was shocking, horrifying and not so different from the climactic scene of Dorian Gray.

Once the gay image had been converted to be one of men dying of AIDS related illnesses we were at the bottom of the pile. We were seen as the diseased you didn’t want to be around and we became a stronger community unto ourselves by helping one another. Slowly we turned the tide of the illness that was synonymous with gay and as we remade ourselves and our image we somehow decided that we needed to build in a different direction. Sure it could have been the leaders in the community were getting older too so they wanted different things personally and it showed globally but here we were getting off of the parade floats and moving into the suburbs with our 2.5 children, picket fences and golden retrievers. No longer were we gays the handsome mythical gods, no longer the Paul Lynde in the center square but Donna Reed living next door who was active in the PTA and made better cookies than any other mom on the block.

I don’t want to be perceived as some sort of limp wristed queen but I also don’t want to seem as though I’m trying to assimilate into the straight world of carpools just to get the human rights I deserve. So is there or can there be a balance between both worlds? Will the public at large or we the gay world allow ourselves to celebrate both our likenesses and differences with the straight community? I hope so because I don’t want to be a gay who knows what you should or shouldn’t be wearing and have to know how to change a tire too. Where are the gay stereotypes when I need them?  – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Where-Are-The-Gay-Stereotypes-When-I-Need-Them

Is Blogging Dead? – Don’t Get Me Started!

As I was watching the movie Julie & Julia about the woman that started a blog and ended up with a book and a movie deal I don’t mind telling you that bitterness was on my mind’s menu. I have been blogging since 2006 and I can tell you that no one has approached me to compile my efforts into a book or to make any of my writings into a movie. So as I approach the fourth anniversary of blogging and my website I have to wonder, “Is blogging dead?” – Don’t Get Me Started!

When I started blogging most blogs were about technical matters – how to create an ip address (though I claim to be a bitechual because I like electronic gadgets I have no idea what this means) or blogs about creating a mutual fund. Another category was celebrity gossip and news (think Pink Is The New Blog and TMZ). And of course blogs that featured porn. When I began I was sure that my pithy humorous takes on life would garner me thousands of hits every day and eventually a contract to just sit in my pajamas posting my blogs while corporate sponsors showered me with cash and gifts in between my appearances on the Rosie O’Donnell show and having segments on Good Morning America. I’m still waiting.

(Get the RSS feed and be updated any time I update the blog - http://www.somelikeitscott.com/blog_rss.xml)

After a year or so at the urging of my mother and others I was told that written blogs were dead. So while I still posted five written blogs a week I started doing video blogs. Now I was not only on my own website but I was on YouTube so no doubt Entertainment Tonight would soon have me on the red carpet interviewing celebs and doing eye rolls into the camera as they left me to talk to the next celeb interviewer. As I watched videos with cats that played the piano go viral racking up millions of hits with a guest spot on Letterman, I didn’t get a viral hit, just got sick and have limped along with my small but devoted fan base (to whom I’m grateful to have, believe me) of about a hundred or so.

http://www.youtube.com/user/somelikeitscott

When Facebook came out I put up a “fan” page on it to my website as people assured me this would be the “tipping point” for my blog and that thousands of people would sign up to see the postings on it. After about a year of that I have reached the legendary status of 23 people who “like” it (in the new Facebook vernacular this means that’s how many people signed up to it).

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Some-Like-It-Scott/114437058226

Then Twitter came into existence and I have to say that my jaded tendencies finally got the better of me. Was I really now going to start sending 140 characters out to the world on a regular basis as well as everything else? But more to the point could I take the rejection that I would be doing it for the possible six people who would “follow” me as opposed to the hundreds of thousands that follow such non-celebs as say Nadya Crazy-With-A-Billion-Children Suleman? The answer is no, I couldn’t do it.

So here I sit with all of the above listed forays into the world of Internet fame and fortune and after four years nothing to show for it and more to the point feeling as though in the last four years blogging has gotten to the point that unless you’re on the Huffington Post acting like a journalist or appearing on The Joy Behar Show with the title “Social Commentator” on the screen across your chest you’re really just writing and creating videos that go out into what has become the World Wide Waste Of Time.

Do I think I’m the gay equivalent to a modern day Erma Bombeck? You bet. Do I think my work is better than that moron Perez Hilton who draws cum shots on celebrities, outs gays and then gets booked on CNN as a supposed, “Gay Groundbreaker” puke – yes. But just like the actor who doesn’t speak up on stage, I’m what I like to call “dying with my secret.” And what’s more, I’m not convinced that the entire blogging community hasn’t become so saturated that it’s cancelled itself out of useful or even humorous existence.  So what’s next? I’ll be honest, I don’t know. With well over 800 blogs, essays and close to 80 videos on YouTube I’m still the Greatest Never Was Been That’s Ever Been.

Although this has seemed like some major whining I can assure you that I still have hope. I still believe that as the true human embodiment of Peter Pan, somewhere there’s a Tinkerbell to drink the poison to save my blogging life and give me some fairy dust to make this fairy fly (as long as I can think lovely thoughts). Still, do I continue writing into the void? Or perhaps take time off from the daily unpaid grind to actually try to write the great Amerigay novel or screenplay? If you’re reading this you may have read other entries of mine (or not) so if you’re a network executive or publisher sign me up or give some much needed advice. In fact even if you’re not someone who will give me a major deal I want to hear your opinion. What should I do next or should I just go back to my garden variety gay existence of work, a spouse of twenty-one years and two cats named for musical theatre characters and allow the world to continue on without my commentary? Feel free to shower me with praise, cash and prizes, comments about me going to hell for being a homosexual or anything else and help me try to answer the question of not only what I should do next but what about the other billion bloggers out there? Is blogging dead? – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Is-Blogging-Dead

I Admit It, I Love The Sound Of My Own Voice – Don’t Get Me Started!

I could say that it’s because I was a teacher or a performer but the simple fact of the matter is that I recently made a discovery that isn’t all that surprising. I admit it, I love the sound of my own voice – Don’t Get Me Started!

The time I spent in theatre culminated in me directing and choreographing. I remember loving giving everyone “notes” after a rehearsal. They were all exhausted from having just done run through after run through of a number or show and then it was my time to go through each scene or number and give detailed notes to make it better. “Stage left is way too far stage left in the spacing in the Charleston section of that number. God gave you peripheral vision people, how about using it?” I always tried to temper my criticism with some sarcasm and something a little funny so that people might better remember the notes I was giving them. I had sat through enough director or choreographer’s notes sessions to know that performers really only want to be told they’re perfect and that they can go home and soak their feet, the last thing they want at the end of a rehearsal is to hear someone go on and on about everything they’ve done wrong. As a performer you always looked at how many pages they had in their hand as they started their notes as it would give you an idea how long you would be there. But you couldn’t really tell until they got to the end of the first page. If they had used the back side of each piece of paper too you might as well settle in for a long winter’s nap. Still as a director, choreographer, teacher, party guest there’s something about a captive audience that has always appealed to me.

 I think that’s why I’m so good at a party. I have interesting anecdotes from my theatre days as well as my corporate experiences that never cease to amuse those who know me and those who’ve just met me but recently I’ve begun to wonder if I have become the dreaded old person that really is just talking to hear themselves talk. If an actor was so into a scene but it wasn’t playing past the first row in the theatre I used to call it “artistic masturbation” after all, just like masturbation the actor was the only one getting anything out of it, right? Well I began to think that not only my talking but my blog may be my own version of artistic masturbation. True, no one has to be forced to read the blog (and don’t I know it from the number of people who visit it each day) but at a dinner party if you’re sitting next to me you just might be stuck hearing the entire story about the time I was under a couch for the start of Act Two in a show and about five minutes in, right before I was to make my shocking entrance from underneath the sofa I heard a thud only to find out that the actor who had been speaking had a heart attack and fell to the floor. He lived and it makes a great story. (Be aware that there is much more when telling this story and it has lots of arm gestures)

I remember once working with an older famous actor and when the director would tell him to do anything we were forced to listen to story after story about it. “I remember the first time I was told to move stage right. I was working in Summer Stock and there were several people you might know in the cast, allow me to list them…” On and on he would go and while the first few rehearsals we found the stories amusing, by the fourth rehearsal I know we were all thinking, “Just move stage right you God Damned old coot and shut it.”

Look, I’m not saying I hit every time but I like to think that I tell a good tale. The flipside to that is that I also find that I have less and less patience for anyone else taking too long to tell their story. And while I’d like to think that I’m looking at the people I’m speaking to in order to see if they’re rolling their eyes in boredom or trying to get away from me, I can’t help but think sometimes I just don’t care. Sometimes I’m just doing my act and indulging in a little artistic masturbation. I admit it, I love the sound of my own voice – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/I-Admit-It-I-Love-The-Sound-Of-My-Own-Voice

Hotel Rooms And The “A’s” Next Door – Don’t Get Me Started!

Let’s face it, unless you know a hotel and have stayed there before it’s a complete crapshoot when you book online. The pictures look great, it looks like a big room and then you find out that it’s a bed that goes almost to the four walls that are your room. But perhaps nothing was more unsettling to me during a recent hotel stay than to find that there was one of those “adjoining” doors between my room and the people who were settled into the room next to me. That’s right, they were “A” and I was “B” and I was having none of it. Hotel rooms and the “A’s” next door – Don’t Get Me Started!

It was supposed to be one of those “spa and athletic” hotels. There was a spa in it somewhere I guess (though I would never end up seeing it) and there was plenty to do from an athletic standpoint from the book that listed all the amenities. And although it seems like a bit of a gay stereotype I would lying if I didn’t just go ahead and admit that it was more the spa portion that attracted me to the hotel. Though I would have a weekend full of activities on my own, I thought that the fact that it was a spa hotel would mean I don’t know that there would be an ever present water fountain trickling in the background of each room while they piped in patchouli and other exotic scents meant to soothe and calm. Not so much.

As I opened the hotel room door I was greeted by the bed. Now if I had been some sort of prostitute or alcoholic this would have been a great room because less than one step to get to the bed and there was so little space to walk around the bed that you could be one of the Flying Wallendas and not hurt yourself as the bed would catch you at every turn. It gave the feeling of being in a padded room. The bathroom was more spa-like and was about the same size as the bedroom which gave you an odd feeling that perhaps the bathroom was the better place to spend the night. As I had checked in late and had to be up early the next morning I had left a wakeup call. After unpacking and settling into the bed I noticed two things I had not noticed before. The first was that there was no clock in the room (I felt like I was back in Vegas) and the second was that the phone (that was going to ring at 6:30am the next morning was not on one of the bedside tables but on a tiny Bob Cratchit desk that was the furthest from the bed you could get in the room.

And as I surveyed the room from the gargantuan bed I suddenly saw it, the door to the “A” room. I don’t know who was over there but that hardly mattered. As I laid there in the bed (which I must admit was one of the most comfortable beds ever) I couldn’t help but think that at any moment the door to the “A” room would come flying open and suddenly there would be an axe murderer in the room with me or worse, someone that was “nice” and wanted to meet a new friend saying, “Oops, I didn’t know anyone was on this side of the door but now that I’m here do you want to make smores on the coffee maker heating element?” I stared at the door and imagined all the things you shouldn’t. You know, the closet door from the movie Poltergeist – “Go into the light Carol Ann” rang in my brain. As I was laying there I decided to call my spouse to get my mind off the door (though it was hardly easy to do as it was directly across from the bed and I would be facing it all night).

As I was talking to my spouse he kept saying, “What? I can’t hear you. Are you whispering?” Of course I was whispering it was almost 1am and I didn’t want to be a bad neighbor to the “A’s” that I didn’t even know. As my spouse assured me I was being ridiculous by all the scenarios I had created in my mind not the least of which was whispering so that he couldn’t understand a word I was saying and telling him that I couldn’t turn on the television because it might disturb the neighbors I didn’t know because I had surmised that the walls were very thin even though I couldn’t hear them and I don’t really guess they could hear me, he lovingly assured me that I was being irrational and after wishing me a nice night’s sleep got off the phone with me as soon as possible.

There I was, 1am and staring at the door. I can’t remember what time I fell asleep but I finally managed it. The good news was that I never saw or heard from the “A’s” the entire weekend and that I have an amazing internal body clock that woke me up, as the wakeup call never happened. The bad news was that I couldn’t help but look at that door every night and wonder what was on the other side and if I would encounter it. From now on I’m asking the question when I book a room, “Do you have adjoining rooms?” Because I’ve got enough stress in my life without worrying about hotel rooms and the “A’s” next door – Don’t Get Me Started!

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...

I’m Not Sure About The Quality But My Best Pal And I Share A Large Quantity Of Experiences – Don’t Get Me Started!

A recent trip to my hometown and a visit with my best pal for the last thirty-five years or so revealed something to us both that we found shocking. Although we would like to say that everything we’ve done together has been one big barrel of fun the truth of the matter is that this is not the case. I don’t think it’s uncommon when you’ve known someone for a really long time that you sometimes reflect on the happier times you’ve shared but in a Starbucks with no kids or spouses we discovered that I’m not sure about the quality but my best pal and I share a large quantity of experiences – Don’t Get Me Started!

If I was better at math I would say that it was a numbers game but since I have no idea what exactly you have to do to “run the numbers” or much of anything when it comes to equations of the mathematical sort I have to us an analogy (which is the only way I understand or can describe anything). So I’d have to break it down this way, when I was an actor I tried to go on as many auditions as possible (or as my mother would always say to me, “AA” which did not mean to join Alcoholics Anonymous but rather to “Always Audition” even if the part was for a one eyed sailor who could quack like a duck while playing the accordion – none of these skills do I posses). The theory being that the more you auditioned the more likely you were to get something. More auditions, more chances. The same realization came to me when I was talking to my friend. Because we share so many experiences the likelihood of us having good memories or experiences has been increased but that’s not the staggering part. The staggering part is that we have shared so many experiences that it would take another thirty-five years to even talk about all of them.

As we sat around the Starbucks table then sat around the house with her children and then around the dinner table with her husband and parents only a small portion of the shared experiences were told. And since my pal is also an actress and because as I’ve written before that I tend to “make shit up” the re-telling of our joint experiences had everyone in stitches to the point that you would think we were a comedy act. But what struck me was that it wasn’t the “happy” experiences that brought the most enjoyment to the audience or to us, it was the crappy or ridiculous experiences that had us all doubled over and laughing until the tears were streaming down our faces.

Yes, we’ve shared a great deal during our years of friendship. We’ve laughed with one another, held one another when we were in tears and done a lot of yelling. I don’t really know if our happy times outnumber our sad times but I know that even when we’ve lived in different states we haven’t had to look too far to see that we were beside one another all the way. What makes us pick up the phone sensing when one of us is having a bad day through some sort of cosmic juice can attached to a string I’ll never know. And why or how it works I wouldn’t even begin to investigate. I know people always say it’s quality over quantity but in this case - I’m not sure about the quality but my best pal and I share a large quantity of experiences – Don’t Get Me Started!

Read About Our Experiences At My Best Friend’s Weddings here:

http://hubpages.com/hub/My_Best_Friends_WeddingS_

Wanna Comment or Read The Comments? Click Below...
http://hubpages.com/hub/Im-Not-Sure-About-The-Quality-But-My-Best-Pal-And-I-Share-A-Large-Quantity-Of-Experiences