The wrong bulge

Why is it that whenever a politician is busted for sending R-rated photos of himself, it always seems to be the wrong politician? Case in point, Anthony Weiner. I can honestly say that I never looked at him and imagined wanting to see his bulge, nor did I ever wish to see the somewhat scorched-looking torso of Rep. Chris Lee.

Why did these politicians think that sending lewd images of themselves would get some woman hot? Anthony Weiner's political career did impress me - he has a great point of view and great panache, although like many politicians, his debut in politics seemed a little shady. But he clearly has bad judgment if he thought his bulge was going to entice, rather than repel, any female onlooker.

You would think it would be the so-called hot ones who have pictures of themselves scantily clad at the ready. I am not attracted either to Men's Health coverboy Rep. Aaron Schock nor Sen. Scott Brown, two oft-mentioned "hunks" o' government. But if anyone was going to flash a bulge, you would think it would be these two.

Currently, the only politician I am attracted to (now that Tony Blair and Idi Amin are out of office) is Rep. Paul Ryan, or, as I like to call him, "the Dark Lord." Truly, so cute! But so evil, as well. Can't you just imagine his blue eyes boring into you as you (bound and gagged, of course) struggle to moan for help? Just to look at his beautiful, manicured hands is to imagine those hands cutting off your oxygen, just as he is trying to do with America's budget. Where is his bulge? Where is his blue dress? Nowhere, that's where. Phooey.

If anyone has a picture of Paul Ryan naked, and doesn't mind me building a blog post around it (and forwarding it to a small group of like-minded political enthusiasts), please send me a jpeg?

Tracy Morgan

What kind of a world do we live in where even the gays have lost their sense of irony? Okay, that's a loaded question, but in reality I'm really surprised that people don't get that Tracy Morgan's whole persona is an act, a character. To me, he's a performance artist, a genius on the level of an Andy Kaufman or a Stephen Colbert. But even some of the gays whose opinions I respect (William, Johnathan, the staff of OUT) seem to be upset by his homophobic standup act. Does anyone really think that mopey, gay Midwestern teens would feel a real threat from a man who so often dresses in drag? Give gay teens some credit! And give the bullies who harass them some credit, too - I'm sure that if bullies start stabbing teens now, they probably weren't too far away from doing so to begin with. You may not believe in me, bullies, but I believe in you. I'm sure Tracy will check himself into rehab now, or set up an awkward visit with some teens who've been bullied. Oh, well. Joan Rivers and "Family Guy" might as well take a few months off, until the dust settles. And Alec Baldwin better pray that Youtube crashes. And you, Tina Fey, re-watch "30 Rock"'s loathsome and very funny "feminism episode," please. And if anyone feels the urge to stab me to retaliate for this post, by all means, stab away. I'm a big fan of irony!

Uniqlo tee

I went out to Queens last night, and walked in to find my father and sister looking through my father's ADT papers. His ADT alarm was malfunctioning, so every few minutes, it was emitting a tooth-grinding shriek. But the only person who knew the security code to turn off the alarm was Miss Webster, his former home health aide, who recently moved back to St. Kitts! They forced me to get on the phone with ADT, and ADT walked me through the steps of disabling the alarm - I felt like Macgyver with a screwdriver in my hand, disabling an alarm - it felt like I was disabling a bomb. Why doesn't my father - an accomplished man with a strange fear that bands of roving maladroits are rampant in Queens, lurking about and waiting for the opportunity to kidnap 90-year-old men with incontinence issues - know the code to his house's security system?

Afterwards, my nerves still on edge from the shrieking of the alarm, my father sat me down and told me that my real father's estate may have finally been settled, and that there may be "some money there waiting for me." Ha! That estate has been in a mysterious limbo for 30-plus years, and I don't believe it will ever truly be settled. But that's between you and me. My father told me to call my cousin Ann in Antigua, who is the lawyer for the estate. What an awkward conversation that will be - especially since Ann's daughter Joy herself was kidnapped a couple of weeks ago (it turned out okay) and I haven't called Ann yet to see how she's doing. My slowness in showing my concern for my relatives has cost me dearly in the past, and that trend continues, it seems.

After that weird talk with my father, I went into the kitchen and saw a roach! Gaaaa! Maxine wanted to spray it, but I refused to use the spray, instead choosing to kill it with my bare hands. People are far too squeamish about using their hands to kill roaches, I feel - it's the most environmentally friendly method, and you get to kill a living being with your bare hands! (If you sometimes feel powerless, killing is one way to take your power back. Over the years - especially my childhood years - I have clapped mosquitoes between my palms, squeezed beetles, de-winged moths - and now, in my adulthood, I feel a strange sense of power, which sometimes manifests itself as a paralyzing anxiety). After I killed the roach, my sister smiled weakly and said "eEeEeEeE." I cracked up. Then I went downstairs into my childhood bathroom and took this picture. I'm wearing a recent purchase, a dark grey tee from Uniqlo. There were many options of colors in this particular tee shirt model, but I chose this color and a purple one, too - because those reminded me of tee shirts of mine from the past. To someone who is powerful, though, ahem, "between inheritances," with a seemingly never-ending gig providing technical support to a surprisingly helpless father and sister, wearing a familiar tee is perhaps the only self-comfort available at times. That, and Paxil.

Clip a loaf

A bird shat on me today. Are you one of those people who think that's good luck? I'm not.

I can remember with great clarity the occasions in my life where I bird has hit me with an ass apple. The first time, I was working as a temporary Census worker. God, it must have been 1990. I was crestfallen when it happened; I thought life was a bit of a charnal pit already - I was a fat kid with a part-time job, living at home again with my sadistic parents, on summer break from college. And then to top it all off, I had to make my rounds to the homes of strangers in Queens, covered in excreta.

The second time it happened, I was wandering in Midtown during a patch of, ahem, under-employment. I think I had just seen David Dinkins walking in the street, and, while that did thrill me, it probably offered me no succor, as he was unemployed himself at the time. What could a sighting of David Dinkins do for me?! I remember feeling overwhelmed and forming this thought: What has God wrought? Literally. I was thinking in complete sentences back then, as if I was writing my thoughts down in a little book. And then a bird hit me with its sphincter spear.

Today, I was walking from CVS with a bag full of pills when I felt what I at first thought was a blast from a bb gun. I put my hand to my head and drew it back filled with stool. But what did it mean? I know that birds are God's emissaries on Earth, so what was God trying to tell me? I'm actually in a good place in my life right now. My meds are working. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from my job. I just purchased a li'l Netbook, and now will be tap-tap-tapping away at my unpublishable novel. I'm not seeing anyone, and so have a little extra money in my pocket.

This is a picture of me in the bathroom at work after I had washed my head off. I'm wearing some Barney's shirt, which I recently shortened the sleeves of. A little speck of the bird's toilet orphan is on my shoulder, but you'd never see it unless you looked for it.

I remember a scene from Orwell's Animal Farm in which a flock of birds "mutes" on some farmers. My English teacher at the time told us that "mute" in this context meant to "clip a loaf," as it were. I can say in all sincerity that I have had a very Orwellian day today.

Pizza party!

It was Annie's bday, so I took her to that Max Brenner restaurant in Union Square, where we had a delicious supper. Annie never warns people when her birthday is approaching ... she only tells you months later, so you can feel terrible about forgetting it, and she can be a martyr of a sort. But now I will have the last laugh! I've saved Annie's bday in an internet program, so I get a reminder about it every year. Now, every year I tell her she's an old hag like me, and then I take her out to dinner so we can have some food for our Boniva to dissolve in.

I laughed out loud when I saw the t-shirt she was wearing! It's an inside joke that not too many people know - Annie and our friend Kristin have a fake band named Pizza Party, that exists only for them to take funny "album cover" photos and post them on their Facebook pages. I remember looking at these posts once and feeling both impressed by their wit and a little jealous that I wasn't in the band. I wish I had the link. I just googled "kristin anne pizza party" to try to find the link again, and instead I found a link to a segment on New Jersey's News 13 where Kristin embarks on a unicycle ride across the state, in the hope of inspiring "locals to live their dreams." I quickly closed my browser window ... sometimes we find that we don't know our friends as well as we thought. And perhaps that's for the best.

Here's the unicycle segment link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaD3ZXZVK50

!

White people

I hesitate to post about this, because it might offend some people, but for all my life, I have tried to avoid buying articles of clothing with pictures of white people on them. I have nothing against you, white people! But there are so many of you - in my neighborhood, my career, my social life - I don't need to see you depicted on my clothing. Plus, as a minority, I feel that I should be going above and beyond to find positive portrayals of black people to wear. Trust me when I tell you, it's hard to find positive portrayals of black people on clothing. Sigh.

As I've mentioned on my blog before, an old boss once tried to give me a pair of cufflinks with white babies depicted on them! "Oh, no!" I practically screamed at him. "I'm not going to walk around this place with a pair of white babies on my wrist!" It helps the story if you imagine that the place of work was Sotheby's, where I was the only black man employed, aside from the art handlers.

Imagine this, then ... after a weeks-long search for the perfect pair of khaki pants, after I had ventured bravely into what is consistently my fashion Waterloo, Urban Outfitters, found a pair of khakis that I loved (slim fit, a slightly olive tint), laundered this pair of pants (thus rendering them unreturnable), and then hung them up ... Imagine my shock at looking closer at the pocket after something had caught my eye ... closer, still closer ... and then realizing, with a sinking feeling, that a bunch of white children - practically microscopic but still there! - were cavorting around inside the button.

I have many racial hangups, it's true. This story illustrates just one of them.

Kiss & Fly

Susan somehow convinced me to drag my ass out to Kiss & Fly to see a bizarre live taping of the "Judith Regan Show." I went not only to prove that I can still lurk around at hip clubs at my age, but also because I wanted to meet the legendary Judith Regan, who used to work for the publishing company I work for. One of my colleagues has saved a voicemail from Judith in which she starts off all nicey-nice, but then begins screaming at him so loudly that, years later, the sheer terror she must have inspired is still palpable. Because I had a crazy mother, I find crazy ladies really fascinating, and I go out of my way to befriend and mollify them. But I was unable to get close to Judith at Kiss & Fly, however - that dirty old Dennis Hof from HBO's "Cathouse" was in my way. :(



Susan and I were watching Vicki when Susan muttered to me, "Look at Vicki. What is she going for here - winter, spring, summer, or fall?" I cracked up, because I love catty fashion commentary! Then Susan told me that my evil college journalism nemesis Tom McGinty is up for two Pulitzers this year! I swear, if Tom McGinty wins a Pulitzer, I will plotz. Back at Utica College, he won every single award ever created, and tried to discredit me as a less-than-serious journalist! I will never forgive him for referring to me as the "part-time Arts & Entertainment Editor of the Tangerine." As my life has taught me, people hate the arts ...


Right after this picture was taken, some creeping fellow asked if I would come say hello to his friend, who was giving me the eye, and who apparently owns some gas stations. Even though I was not attracted to his friend, a gas station owner is a step up from my usual love interests, who are generally unemployed and sort of psychotic and detached. I went and said hello, but I guess I didn't make the cut, because I was dismissed after that. "We like to meet a lot of people," the creeper said. Apparently, the creeping friend and the gas station owner flew home that night in the gas station owner's personal helicopter. Ah, well. I guess I should count myself lucky. With my luck, I probably would have been thrown from the helicopter mid-flight.



Susan became drunkenly obsessed with getting a picture taken with Dennis Hof, and I took the opportunity to slip out and head home to bed with the Colonel. A typical night for the Gregster. No Pulitzer in hand, no digits from the gas station millionaire - but all the overweight cat I can snuggle.