Okay, I'm out of here. No updates unless I can get internet access. Do they have that in England?

So if you feel like praying that the flight makes it okay and I don't freak out half way across the Atlantic, I'd appreciate it.

Just had my first flying-related panic attack.

Let the good times roll.

My passport is ready. A whole 25 hours before I would have been completely up shit creek with a non-refundable paddle.

Note to self: Next time your passport expires, renew the fucking thing immediately.

So, in a mere 25.5 hours, I will be boarding a bus to take me to the airport. Four hours later I will be white-knuckled and shaking as we take off for London. Hopefully, the combination of cool music on my CD player, horse tranqulizers Tylenol PM, and my flying mantra ("Oh God, please don't let us crash," repeated until plane touches down) will see me safely to London in time to start the morning.

Note to teammates: Happy Well-Rested Crash - teddy bear, cuddly, fun. Sleepy Grumpy Crash - grizzly bear, sharp claws, deathbringer.

All the things I swore to accomplish before leaving for my trip are nowhere near completion. I'm dumping it all on my boss's desk. I feel horrible about it, but that is how it goes sometimes.

Oh, God. I just realized I have to pack. What the hell should I bring for a week in London? What do people wear in London? I'm a jeans and t-shirt sort of guy. Will I be able to get in the clubs like that or do I need to bring "nice" clothes?

Damn.

Since several of my blogger friends have already discussed this weekend in more eloquent terms than I'm able to write, I'll post my GB:NY (thanks to boifromtroy for that title) awards.

The Trompe L'Oeil Award goes to Zeitzeuge for his interesting, um . . . self portrait. It was either this or the Everything Is Bigger In Texas Award.

The Jewish Mother Award goes to, well, Zenchick, of course. Thanks for the Mylanta, mom.

The Dukes of Hazzard Award is a three-way tie between Mezzanine, Zeitzeuge and Michael. Those accents had me fixin' to thrown on my short shorts and change my name to Daisy. Okay, fine, I'd actually be Boss Hogg.

The Twink Magnet Award goes to BoiFromTroy who always seemed to be in the company of the cute boys. Lucky bastard.

The Dude, Who's That Guy You Were Just Talking To? Award is a tie between Addaboy and AccidentalNewYorker. Every time I walked away from either of these two, at least one or two guys would come up and ask me that question with a little hint of lust in their eyes. Ah, to be good looking and sought after. Sigh.

The Oh My God, I Love Gawker Award goes to Famous Author Rob Byrnes for his Choire Sicha impersonation.

The Sexy Voice Award goes to Palochi. Damn, son, if I knew you sounded that good, I'd have been drunk dialing you months ago.

More to follow soon . . .

Many of our non-rugby playing events in London involve tours of famous places. According to an e-mail I just got, one of our tours involves having access to 'the Royal box'. I am fervently praying that the Royal box is attached to either Prince William or Prince Harry, but I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed.

Unrealistic Promises I'm Making Today
I will not start drinking shots.
I will not hit on the cute guys.
I will not remove my clothing or anyone else's.
I will not allow my Texas accent to come out while talking to the Southern boys.
I will not start singing showtunes at the top of my lungs on the street with MAK, PatCH and Bob.
I will not tell everyone my naked Celine Dion story.
I will not talk endlessly about rugby.
I will not get all moody about the fact that most of these guys have boyfriends and I don't.
I will not forget everyone's real names and just refer to them by their blog names.
I will not repeat the bathroom incident.
I will not do the boat race, beer slide or elephant walk at the rugby party.
I will not watch the 'who's got the biggest dick' contest that will likely happen at the rugby party.
I will not act like a drunk frat boy.
I will not vomit.
I will not make fun of anyone who vomits.

Realistic Promises I'm Making Today
I will wake up tomorrow with a blinding hangover and a dread fear of what will get posted on Monday.

Please remember . . . what happens at the blogger party stays at the blogger party.

Oh, yeah. Last night was the series finale of 'Angel' and the season finale of 'Law & Order'. I'm housesitting for Stuff who is out of town and since I don't get WB and my recption on NBC kinda sucks, decided to watch them at his place.

So I was movin' on up to the east side, to his deluxe apartment in the sky (or tiny studio on the second floor to be accurate). I grabbed a couple of slices, went upstairs, settled in on the couch and turned on the tv.

That son of a bitch had his cable disconnected while he was out of town.

Bastard!!!

I made it home in time to catch L&O but not Angel. Anyone tape it?

Horribly, horribly busy. And the fact that I'm going to London in five days just came crashing down on me. I have so much to do that I may have to curtail some of this weekend's festivities.

Speaking of which, the industrious BoifromTroy created a logo for our Friday night gay blogger (and their friends) get-together. Pretty cool looking, don't you think?

Let's see . . . anything else?

Oh, yeah. Someone found my site by searching for "Italian Greyhound flaccid penis". I so don't want to know what that's all about.

Still liking 'Colonial House'. Still think the governor is a sanctimonious prick. Still think the lay preacher is a self-important prick. Still think a couple of the guys are hot, though the more scruffy and dirty they get, the less I think so.

The issue of the gay guy coming out was handled fairly well, I suppose, though the governor pissed me off with his 'confession is the first step to mastering your sin' comment that he made (not to the gay guy, thank God). The other thing that kind of pissed me off was that the governor decided not to punish the guy for being gay. Okay, I understand that homosexuality would have been punished back in 1628, but it wasn't like the guy was caught having sex with another guy. He admitted to being gay in the context of everyone in the group talking about who they were in real life, as opposed to the roles they are playing on 'Colonial House'. The fact that the governor felt that he had to decide not to punish the guy pisses me off. It wasn't like he had to decide not to punish the Voorhies family for being atheists or any of the women for having jobs or being 'liberated' in the real world.

I'm getting entirely too worked up over this.

And we're moving on.

So, I'm enjoying watching the group adapt to the work and the primitive conditions. I was amazed watching them make the spars and build the house. I love the little voiceovers that explain the history and conventions of the time. Last night's fact that stuck in my head, water was often foul so people drank fermented drinks most of the time. Some people drank up to a gallon of beer a day. Make that cider instead of beer and I'd have been a happy puppy.

Sadly, I'll be missing the next couple of episodes because of my trip to London. Damn. Somebody better tape it.

Day two of legalized gay marriage in Massachussets. Stars haven't fallen to earth. Statues of Jesus aren't weeping blood. Demons haven't risen from the earth to feed off the blood of Christian babies in Boston.

Just thought I'd point that out.

This is pretty damned amazing, especially if you live in a part of NYC that it covers. It's a sort of virtual walking tour.

Here is what I found out. Jack Kerouac wrote 'On the Road' two blocks from where I live. Mike'nDavid live across from Woody Guthrie's old apartment and the restaurant on the first floor of their apartment was a lesbian bar back in the Stonewall era.

I'm spending way too much time on this site, but it's really cool.

A few things to cover today, so please try to keep up.

First, Colonial House rocks. I would so love to do a show like this. I think, just for shits and giggles, I'll sign up for the next one. The odds are I won't get picked, but what the heck.

I didn't much care for the sanctimonious Southern Baptist preacher who was the governor of the colony (though his leadership skills seemed much better than the touchy feely guy who replaced him), but I felt horrible for what his family went through during the filming (they found out early on that their son and their daughter's fiance were in a car wreck; the fiance was killed, but they haven't told what happened to their son. The family went back to Texas; last night's episode ended with the preacher/governor returning, without his family, but they didn't say if he was staying or if his family would be returning. I doubt it).

On a less serious note, they showed two of the guys skinny dipping. Yeah, it was hot.

After watching the show and the little 'making of' special, I surfed for a little while until I ran across Oprah's 'Colonial House' special. It seems she spent a couple of days with in the colony toward the end of the show. It was fascinating having just seen the first episode then being able to see how the community had changed over the four months. People were thinner. A lot thinner. And really, really filthy. But they really seem to have come together as a group, so I'm really looking forward to watching them come together during the upcoming episodes.

Oh, and one of the guys on the show is gay. Apparently this becomes an issue, so I'm curious to see what happens.

Earlier in the evening I went to a fundraiser for a charity called Living Beyond Belief. The group raises money to give scholarships to teens who work as HIV/AIDS peer educators. Great organization, but the event was a bit of a cluster fuck. The invitation said the event started at 6. Well, that's when the doors opened and the silent auction started. The actual event didn't start until 8:30. Or rather, that's when it would have started if the talent had shown up on time. As it was, things didn't get started until 9:15. I don't know if it was Rosie Perez who was late or Daphne Rubin-Vega, but I'm not a big enough fan of either of them to stick around.

The important thing is that the group raised decent money at the event (I'm pretty sure I won a silent auction or two) and that the teens who were getting awards (the awards were called Butterfly Awards and were beautiful) were having a great time.

So that was my evening.

The last thing to talk about, assuming you're still with me, is a party this Friday night. My rugby team is going to London next week to participate in the Bingham Cup tournament (basically the World's Cup for gay rugby). We will be having a going away party at the Eagle on Friday night from 7 until . . . well, it will probably migrate to someone's apartment before the night is done. Since there are going to be so many out of town bloggers visiting New York, I hope to get some of them to the party. Of course, I want all the New York bloggers there as well.

The party kicks off with $5 all you can drink beer from 7 p.m. until the kegs run out. Now in fairness, given that the rugby boys are big drinkers, I doubt the kegs will last long. So get there early.

After that, we have drink specials until 10. The party will be on the roof deck unless it rains.

Expect rugby songs, beer fights, boat races, gratuitous nudity, and generally bad behavior. It should be fun. If any of you want more info about this, drop me a line (my e-mail link is on the right).

Another meme. From Kris. Below is the college board list of books that kids should have read by the time they go to college (or something to that effect). I've put the one's I've read in bold.

Not great, but not too bad compared to most Americans, I'd wager. And I read two of the novels in French, rather than translations.


Beowulf

Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart

Agee, James - A Death in the Family

Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain

Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot

Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March

Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre

Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert - The Stranger

Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop

Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales

Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard

Chopin, Kate - The Awakening

Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness

Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage

Dante - Inferno

de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote

Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment

Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy

Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers

Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss

Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays

Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying

Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury

Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby

Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary

Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust

Golding, William - Lord of the Flies

Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph - Catch 22

Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms

Homer - The Iliad

Homer - The Odyssey

Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House

James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady

James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw

Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis

Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior

Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt

London, Jack - The Call of the Wild

Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain

Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener

Melville, Herman - Moby Dick

Miller, Arthur - The Crucible

Morrison, Toni - Beloved

O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find

O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night

Orwell, George - Animal Farm

Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago

Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales

Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way

Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49

Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front

Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac

Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep

Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare, William - Hamlet

Shakespeare, William - Macbeth

Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet

Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion

Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein

Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Sophocles - Antigone

Sophocles - Oedipus Rex

Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island

Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels

Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair

Thoreau, Henry David - Walden

Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace

Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons

Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Voltaire - Candide

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five

Walker, Alice - The Color Purple

Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth

Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories

Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass

Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie

Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse

Wright, Richard - Native Sons

Good weekend, I suppose. Didn't do anything Friday night. I did some shopping and cleaning on Saturday. Still not much selection at the farmers' market, but things should start picking up soon.

Saturday night I got together with Turtle, Paul, Ted, Doug and David (teammates of mine) for drinks at Ty's (where I was hit on by a guy who looked like Art Carney, who is, bear in mind, dead) and dinner at Cowgirl Hall of Fame (chicken-fried steak). While we were at dinner, the skies opened up. Lightning, thunder, street flooding . . . woo hoo! The storm up here have been awesome recently.

Let's see. Sunday was the AIDS Walk; there were about 10 or so guys from the team walking. I snuck off early to see 'Homebody/Kabul' by Tony Kushner out at BAM. It was a remarkable play.

After it was over (3 hours and 45 minutes with 2 ten minute intermissions), I headed back home. I decided to see 'The Mudge Boy' that evening; Mike'nDavid met me there. From the descriptions I'd read, I expected this to be a comedy/drama coming of age, family thing. Maybe a little like 'Ma Vie en Rose'.

Well, it was nothing like 'Ma Vie en Rose'. It was really disturbing and upsetting. I'm still in kind of a funk over it. Maybe I'll write about it a little later.

Suffice to say, between 'Homebody/Kabul' and 'The Mudge Boy', Sunday was a depressing, if somewhat cultured, day.

I just applied for my passport renewal. While this is all well and good, I made the mistake of holding my new passport photo next to my old passport photo.

Now I have "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables stuck in my head.

Getting old sucks.

WTF is up with blogrolling today? It isn't working and it's causing my blog to load really slowly.

I watched Elephant last night. I would say I watched at least a third of the movie in fast forward. It sucked.

Near as I can tell, Gus Van Sant made this movie in order to be around very, very cute high school boys. Fine. I'm cool with that. But the least he could have done was take a page out of Victor Salva's book and actually hired one or two people who could act.

Very little dialogue, I would guess that all of it was improvised. The kids couldn't act and certainly shouldn't have been allowed to try improv. They had an annoying habit of looking at the camera. Special effects blew (usually when someone gets shot, there are entry and exit wounds. Not in this movie). Glacial pacing. Long, drawn out 'mood setting' shots of people walking down hallways or of clouds (after the third or fourth one, I started using the fast forward button). A gay shower scene that comes out of nowhere. Very little actual emotion.

This is the only Van Sant movie I've seen. I would like to rent a couple of his other ones (ones that he wrote and directed as well as ones that he only directed) to see if I hate him as a director or as a writer, or perhaps as both.

Last night I rented Elephant and Love Actually. I watched Love Actually last night and found it to be a delightfully charming movie. And I cried like a little girl for the last 15 minutes or so. I'm one of those sappy, romantic types and I'm a sucker for a happy ending where the guy gets the girl (or the guy gets the guy or the girl gets the girl depending on what I've rented).

I think I'm going to buy this movie.

I imagine Elephant won't be quite as much of a lovely, romantic romp.

Very fun dinner last night with Rob, David, Faustus and E.S. Good food and great conversation.

After dinner, Rob, David and I went to see 'Mean Girls'. I'll admit to not really caring for it all that much. Sure, there were funny bits, but it really wasn't anything that hasn't been done before in a thousand movies. I'd bet that the movie wouldn't have been made if Tina Fey wasn't involved, but who knows.

I did think that the acting was good, though. And there were some hot guys.

Two interesting hits on my site today. One was looking for "orlando bloom shirtless Troy." The other was looking for "Ross Friends shirtless."

Both of those make my toes curl for entirely different reasons.

Dinner tonight with David, Faustus and E.S.. Very, very cool. All we need is Dorothy Parker and we'd be all set.

Weekend update. Friday - rugby board meeting; not horrible. Saturday - slept until 3; woke up; did nothing. Sunday - slept until 1; woke up; did nothing.

Okay, not entirely true. Played about 6 hours of solitaire. Drank a dozen diet Dr. Peppers. Called both moms for Mother's Day. Watched TV (cursed, evil box). Wanked to computer porn Did online research. Bought a vacuum. Cleaned up around the house. Bought some lilac from the deli next door.

I also blew off the rugby tournament on Saturday. And the party that followed at our president's place. Totally in an antisocial mood. Not that there is anything unusual about that.

Yet another reason to love Mark.

His review of 'Van Helsing'.

". . . the movie was like having a clown screaming in your face for two hours while being hit in the head with a baseball bat."

Now on with the answers to last week's questions.

From Homer

1. You are on death row - what will be your last meal?

My mom's cooking - Chicken soup (best in the world), Biscuits, Pumpkin Pie.

2. What will be the last song you listen to?

Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

3. Who will be the last person you have sex with (anybody in the world)?

What with death breathing down my neck, I imagine that sex would be the last thing on my mind. But if I had to choose, there was this guy, Nathan, that I had a huge crush on in college. Straight, of course. But since this is just a fantasy anyway . . . I'd choose him.

But earlier in that same evening, I'd want to get with Daniel Cudmore, Orlando Bloom, Keanu Reeves (if I can keep him from speaking), Brad Pitt, most of the Bel Ami 'models' and the French and English national rugby teams. I mean, what the hell? It's not like I'd have to worry about being tired and sore the next day.

My blog is one year old today.

Woo hoo!

Your questions answered.

From Brian
1. If you could be any kind of salad dressing, what would you be and why?

I would be red wine vinaigrette. Light, subtle, doesn't overwhelm, with a certain tart tanginess.

2. Where's the weirdest place you had sex and without getting too crass...what happened?

In a Sunday school room at church (sorry if this lowers anyone's opinion of me . . . assuming that is even possible). As for what happened, that's a story for another time, suffice it to say that a truth or dare game got out of hand. Which is exactly what you expect when you play truth or dare with another boy.

3. Kumquats or plethora -- which word sounds funnier to you and why.

Kumquats. Because a 'kw' sound if extremely funny in the middle of a word. That is why Aquaman is inherently funnier that any of the other Superfriends. Plus, the mother of a friend of mine once accidentally asked a stockboy if his store sold 'kumtwats'. She immediately realized what she said, blushed, turned around and never went back to that store again.

From Sherry
1. if you could be a world expert on anything, what would it be?

Two of my odd little passions are ethnobotany and theatre history. Of the two, I'd love to be a world expert on theatre history.

2. what is the most embarrassing article of clothing you own?

There are a couple. My most embarrassing article is probably my compression shorts that I wear under my rugby shorts when I play. They are great, comfortable, keep all the naughty bits where they're supposed to be, but they are also skin-tight and leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

The other article of clothing would be a Jiffi Condom t-shirt that was an impulse buy when I was in London studying for a summer. If memory serves (I don't think I've ever worn it), it reads "Jiffi Brand Condoms" on the front and the back reads "Don't be daft, don't be silly, wear a Jiffi on your willy" . . . or words to that effect. And I'm not sure if it's 'willy' or 'willie'.

For the record, I will not be wearing that while I'm in London.

3. how many people have you snogged?

Hmmm. More than I should have and fewer than I wish. Truth is, that is one of my favorite activities, though many gay men consider it to be something that should be rushed through in order to get to the 'good stuff.'

From The Other Brian
1. What do you like best about your life?

It's a two-edged sword, but I guess what I like best is that I've always had an easy life. I've never really been deprived. There has always been enough money. No great losses. School was never much work. Jobs have been fairly easy to come by and haven't been horrible. My friends and family are generally good people.

The down side to all of this is a lack of motivation. I've known people who've really been deprived and have worked their asses off to make up for it. They usually wind up being very successful people. Would I have been like that if I'd had to work harder for what I've gotten?

2. What do you like least about your life?

I'm not really happy. There are times when I'm more or less content. Sometimes there are fleeting moments of joy. But most of the time I feel like I'm existing rather than living.

3. Do you judge others by higher or lower standards than you use to judge yourself?

Lower standards than I use to judge myself, but I have impossibly high standards for myself (at least that's what my shrink was always harping on). Even if the standards are lower for others than for myself, they are probably unfairly high.

If the blogger boys call to say that we're all meeting for happy hour, but that we aren't going to stay out too late or drink too much, they are lying.

God, I'm wrecked.

Oh, one other thing. If you give us your number, we will drunk dial you. And we will sing show tunes.

Stolen from Inspired by Patrick and Brian.

Three Questions

Here is how it goes.

- Anyone and everyone who reads this, gets to ask me three questions. Leave the questions in the comments section
- Ask me anything you want and I will truthfully answer it*.
- On your blog, copy and paste this text inviting your friends to ask you anything.

Sounds easy enough, right? Let the question-asking begin!

*Of course, if you ask something completely crass, rude or inappropriate, the answer might be that it's none of your fucking business. Therefore...play nice.

I almost called in sick today. It's not so much that I feel 'sick' sick; it's just this general sense of ennui, masking itself as malaise.

Recently I've begun to feel like a character in a Chekhov play. I'm bored. I'm tired. I want to go to Moscow.

Well, not exactly, but you get my drift.

Maybe it's all the vodka.

Anyway, happy Cinco de Mayo. Not my favorite Mexican holiday; I've always been a Dia de los Muertos man, myself. But here is a recipe for y'all to try to celebrate the French getting their asses kicked by the Mexicans. Don't ask me how it tastes, you couldn't pay me enough to eat tripe.

Mamacita's Menudo

1 calf's foot (about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds)
2 pounds honeycomb tripe
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic, peeled
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
4 quarts of water
3 large chiles anchos
A large chile poblano, peeled or 2 canned, peeled green chiles
1/2 cup canned hominy (1 pound) drained (see note below)
Salt as necessary
1 scant teaspoon oregano

Have the butcher cut the calf's foot into four pieces. Cut the tripe into small squares. Put them into the pan with the rest of the ingredients. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Lower the flame and simmer uncovered for about 2 hours, or until the tripe and foot are just tender but not too soft. Meanwhile, toast the chilies well. Slit them open and remove the seeds and veins from the chile poblano, cut it into strips, and add to the meat while it is cooking. Remove the pieces of calf's foot from the pen, and when they are cool enough to handle, strip off the fleshy parts. Chop them roughly and return them to the pan.

Add hominy and continue cooking the menudo slowly, still uncovered, for another 2 hours.

Add salt as necessary. Sprinkle with oregano and serve (see note below).

This amount is sufficient for 7 or 8 people. It should be served in large, deep bowls with hot tortillas and small dishes of chopped chile serranos, finely chopped onion and wedges of lime for each person to help himself, along with Salsa de Tomate Verde Cruda to be eaten with tortillas.

Also taken from her.

1. What is the “theme” on your calendar this year?
Naked French rugby players. Mmmm . . . Dieux Du Stade.

2. Do you read the newspaper every day?
Not the print versions. Just the online ones.

3. What kind of shoes are you wearing right now?
Johnston & Murphy oxfords. Size 11.5.

4. What magazines do you subscribe to?
Better Homes & Gardens, Out, Blues Revue, Writer's Digest, Lambda Literary Review, Time Out New York, and . . . um, Freshmen.

5. What is your favorite condiment?
Mustard . . . neon yellow French's.

6. What was the first occupation you remember wanting to have?
A professor. Actually, the Professor (from Gilligan's Island).

7. Are you a green thumb?
Yep. I love plants and they love me. Just goes to show what a $100,000 degree in Botany will do for you.

8. Did you have an imaginary friend when you were little?
Yes.

9. Do you floss regularly?
Floss? What's that again?

10. If you could still hang posters of celebrities on your walls and get away with it like when you were 12, who would be on your walls right now?
Daniel Cudmore and Orlando Bloom, preferably in the same poster. And shirtless.

11. Do you keep shoe boxes or throw them away?
Keep 'em, use 'em.

12. Would you be embarassed if someone looked under your bed?
Dear God, yes.

13. If you could be one character in book, who would you be?
Mr. Darcy. Though I often feel like him anyway.

14. What do you sleep in?
Would it be tacky to offer to show you?

15. What is your favourite word?
Cool.

Taken from her.


Cheese Test: What type of cheese are you?

In the past week, two of my friends have been quoted in the NY Times. One is a lawyer who was talking about a death penalty case, if I remember correctly. The other is an actress/playwright who was quoted in an article about the surge of politically-themed art and theater that is being planned around the Republican convention.

Cool stuff.

I may not be famous, or even interesting, but I know people who are.

You may not like his politics. You may not give a flying fuck about his football team. But you gotta love the quote.

Quote of the Day
When people ask me how I can be Republican and gay, I tell them it's because I like ass-f*cking. - Boi From Troy

I just noticed that my blog will be one year old this Sunday.

I'm not sure what I'll do to celebrate. Maybe I'll try that 'alcohol' thing the kids keep talking about. Apparently you can drink it. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try it once. But I certainly won't make a habit of it.

On the good news/bad news front, I was futzing around with my TV set yesterday and somehow managed to get the antenna to work. Oops. Rather than ripping out whatever wire I had managed to connect, I sat down and watched part two of '10.5', which was truly and spectacularly horrible. Everyone involved with it should be deeply ashamed. And I feel truly bad for the trained monkeys that they hired to write the script, which was indeed the TV equivalent of flinging feces.

But I watched it.

That's why I haven't made any serious effort to get cable or attach my antenna. I am mesmerized by the idiot box to the exclusion of all else. Well, except for porn. They run neck and neck. Or neck and something else. The point is, this is not a good thing.

So I suppose it is inevitable that I will be watching the 'Friends' series finale. I haven't seen the show since 2001. I assume I haven't missed anything important. Everyone's still white. They don't have any other friends. They drink coffee. Chandler is annoying. Monica looks anorexic. Ross hasn't yet been bludgeoned to death. Joey and Phoebe are still two-dimensional. Rachel is . . . whatever it is that she is. Cute and whiny?

What I'd like to see on the finale. Joey admits that he and Chandler are more than friends. The monkey comes back and kills Ross. Phoebe marries Ozzy Osbourne and gets a spinoff series on MTV. Rachel . . . ah, who the fuck cares? The episode ends with Monica finally snapping after not having eaten for about 6 years and eating the rest of the cast.

Then, after the credits, we find out that the entire series was just a dream Ugly Naked Guy was having.

Fin.

So what do you figure? Ten years until the reunion special? Five? Fall?

I'm still remarkably busy at work. And yet, I'm blogging. I need a break and this is lunchtime, so I'll cut myself a little slack.

I'm still working on my job description (turns out everyone has to do one . . . since we can't all be getting fired, I'm not too worried). On paper, I do a lot.

Well, back to the salt mines. Okay, it's not really a salt mine. There are precious few of those left in Manhattan.

I need a few more hours in the day. Too much to do.

Anyway, a brief synopsis.

Friday night/Saturday - Unpacking at mom's house.

Sunday - Youth Rugby camp. Had 8 kids show up despite the weather. Great time.

Sunday night - Happy hour(s) with Stuff and Hugh. Splash, g and Barracuda. Good time.

Stuff is off to China today. Damn. Ah well, I guess I'll have to get the blogger boys to take me out more often.