Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
Update: I didn’t realize that Tim had already posted about this on his LJ. Damn, he’s quick.
Tonight Tim, Steve, Tom, and I met Rhonda and Lindsey at Meteor. It’s a great bar, but not long after we arrived, the music got louder, making conversation difficult. We voted to adjourn to The Compound and play 1,000 Blank White Cards.
Continue reading “1,000 Blank White Cards”
Yesterday, our friend Lindsey called Tim to let us know that her father was collecting clothes to take to the Astrodome for the people being relocated here from New Orleans. She and Rhonda knew that we were feeling helpless and asked if we wanted to donate. OF COURSE! And I called my mother, who went through her clothes, too.
As soon as Lindsey and Rhonda found out we had some boxes for them, they jumped in the not-so-trusty truck and drove over to pick them up, even though they’d just gotten home from the gym. And could we just give them the clothes?
No, we had to abuse them. First, River took a flying leap of joy from the front porch to do a body block on Rhonda, who doesn’t weigh much more than River. Clearly, he thought she needed some love. Fortunately, Lindsey had managed to evade his exuberant welcome, but then she made the mistake of stepping inside, where she was greeted by the “We never get any attention, please touch us NOW” reactions of Margot and Guinness, who basically treated her body like a ladder that needed immediate climbing.
Further, just to show that no good deed goes unpunished, even though I KNEW they’d just left the gym, it never occurred to me to offer them a beverage.
Rhonda and Lindsey, tell me what to stock in my refrigerator. I keep water, sugar-free lemonade, Coke C2, and Diet Coke. But I’ll put whatever you like to drink in there and WILL NEVER SO SHAMEFULLY NEGLECT YOU AGAIN.
Meanwhile, kudos to you two and to Lindsey’s father for making it possible for us to help in some way.
P.S. Most of those clothes came from Tom. Who knew my husband had been such a clothes hoarder all these years?
Sometimes I just have to get out of the Home Office; a change of scenery can provoke renewed creativity.
Tonight, I’m working at Hollywood Cafe. There’s a Jackie Chan movie on and plenty of patrons chattering, but for some reason, I can still work here.
This used to be Hollywood Cafe and Books. Now the bookstore is around the corner on Fairview; it’s the only surviving GLBT bookstore in Houston. As far as I know, Marlon still works there. I adore Marlon. Stop into the bookstore and say hello to him sometime, or to the equally fabulous Ryan.
The affiliated restaurant next door once gave me some fortune cookies late at night because I was shooting photographs for possible use on the jacket of THREE FORTUNES. Alyson went with their own cover, but I still appreciate the generosity of the restaurant.
Check out Hollywood Cafe for coffee, a snack, their wifi connection, the gigantic TV screen, or conversation on the outside patio, where you can keep an eye on people going in and out of the bars, or maybe get Merlyn to read your Tarot cards.
Remember how Tom “fixed” the leak under the bathroom sink?
Continue reading “Leavin’ on a jet plane”
Ah… June. The annual opportunity for whiners to say to their gay brothers and sisters, “Stop dressing (or undressing) like that for the Parade! You know the media will focus on you. Then all the straight people will be scared and think we don’t deserve equal rights and blah blah blah…”
Spectators who are too stupid to have figured out where the media turns its cameras are too stupid to grasp the concept that “equal rights” is not the same as “special rights.” If a parade was 500 people calmly strolling along in business suits, the streets wouldn’t be lined with anyone, including the media, and it still wouldn’t make stupid and mean people strike their foreheads and exclaim, “Oh my gosh, yes! They are JUST LIKE US. Quick, let’s give them the right to marry and adopt children and leave their partners their worldly goods and not be fired or bashed or ostracized for who they are!”
It’s a parade. It’s a PRIDE parade. So if getting your sculpted body on a bar float, or wearing a wig that weighs more than a golden retriever, or pulling the leather out of the closet helps you feel proud of who you are and celebrate it, hooray!
And next time, dammit, throw me more beads because that bratty kid next to me who was there with his whole family–and I’m betting NONE of them were gay–was lunging for and snatching everything that came our way.
….has stopped working. That is not a good thing in Houston.
Several years ago, when my writing partners and another couple of friends and I still frequented our chat room, I was always telling long, pointless stories about my daily life. I never realized how many of these had to do with animals until Tim one time said, “Your life is like a Disney movie.”
It is weird that I could live in the middle–not the urban sprawl–of the country’s fourth-largest city and still have so much wildlife around. The Compound is only a mile from Houston’s beautiful skyscrapers. Yet we have more than the usual pigeons and squirrels (although we have those in abundance). I see and often interact with tons of birds, opossums, racoons, an occasional escaped ferret, and of course, that boldest of urban dwellers, big fat rats. So far, not one of them has sewn me a dress, broken into cheerful song about following my dreams, or rescued me from a wicked stepmother…maybe because I forgot to have a stepmother.
The view from our dining room is a privacy fence. I hung flowers there to make it more interesting. They all died. I don’t know if it was because of our relentless sun or because the cross piece of that fence is what I call the “habi-trail.” It’s a major rat route. Nothing like sitting at the table with dinner guests and remarking, “Oh, look! A rat!” I finally filled the pots with cacti and aloe, all thriving in spite of being on the rodent highway.
Traffic on that highway has been slow lately. I think it’s because of the neighborhood bully, Yellow Cat from next door. Not only has he waged war on the rats, but he keeps beating up everyone’s house cats when he catches them outdoors. Day and night, I spot him all over the ‘hood, looking for trouble. Everybody’s talking about him–Notorious C.A.T.
I suspect his story’s ending is going to be more De Palma than Disney.
Deep in one of Tim’s journal entries, Rhonda (rightfully) chastised me for letting Houstonians in THE DEAL use the term “palmetto bug.” She also wrote entertainingly of her mother’s assault on these tree roaches with flip flops, then Rhonda shocked me by saying she goes after them with a rolled up newspaper. My answer, below.
Continue reading “Palmetto Bugs, Revisited”
It’s the first day of spring and I just saw a yellow butterfly. It’s not the first butterfly I’ve seen this year, but still, I’ll take it as a good omen. I’ll take all the good omens I can get.
One time (at band camp) at Baba Yega’s, one of my favorite Montrose eateries, I shared my lunch with a butterfly. It landed on a piece of melon and stayed with me, drinking, for nearly half an hour. Better than watching the Discovery channel!
I recently went to Baba Yega’s for the first time in quite a while. I remember when it was a dumpy little place with great food. Then there was a kitchen fire and they renovated, and it was nicer and still had great food.
One of its best features was the garden. A rock fountain, pond, exotic birds, tons of beautiful water flowers surrounded by other flowering plants always in bloom… It was great to eat a relaxed lunch, wander through the garden and talk to the birds, then exit through Wild Earth, their metaphysical shop, which was a source for the essential oils, herbs, and stones and crystals I use in my bodywork and energy work practice.
It’s changed again. Wild Earth is gone. I guess they’re expanding an express feature of the restaurant into that space. The birds are gone. When I was there, the doors to the garden were closed. I don’t know if that was because of the cool weather or if lingering in the garden is no longer encouraged.
The food is still fine, but it’s not as much fun–nor does the brisker pace encourage you–to watch the clientele. The patrons could be picked up and set down in any suburban Bennigan’s or TGI Friday’s and blend into the unauthentic decor. Yet another Montrose establishment adapting to the changes of the last ten years. I miss the grittier, edgier Baba Yega’s…and Montrose.
….that it was sort of cold outside? I realize that’s relative, considering the snow and ice being dumped on much of the rest of the country, but it was a surprise to take a little walk to my mother’s and find out too late that a jacket would have been a good idea.
…that just as chilling would be Publishers Weekly snubbing one of our novels for the first time ever? No review? What’s up with that? Are we chopped liver?
…that I’d have a reason to think of chopped liver today? What the hell IS chopped liver? I don’t even like liver, and chopped liver sounds worse.