Them is dancing shoes

MJ posted this image on her blog, The Infomaniac.  I remember this era in shoes - about 1975-76.

Back then, my father and my mother got into a pissing match over child support an alimony.  So my mother and I were broke and living in Shaker Heights - counting every  penny, on Food Stamps, and I was getting free lunches at school while Dad was living very well.

Steve Tepper's Bar Mitzvah was coming up and I was growing like a weed.  At 13 I size 11 feet and none of my dress shoes, or my last suit fit me.  We didn't have folding money for new clothes, and there wasn't anything like a credit card back then. So Mom rounded up every Eagle Stamp we had and she and I glued them into books.  Each book of Eagle stamps got you a $3 credit at The May Company.  So off we went, loaded down with $10 in birthday money (advanced from my grandfather) and a trash bag full of Eagle stamp books.  In all, we had $75, and May Company was having one of its clearance sales.

The money was enough to buy me a sport coat two sizes too big, which I was expected to grow into, socks, underwear and new dress pants, two sizes too long - again, I would grow into them.

But we had $10 left for shoes.   And so we went to the clearance  racks where we found men's shoes just like those in the picture for $9.99.  Here was the problem - men's feet generally run from size 9 to size 11.  I wore a 10 at that point so there were no shoes for me.

There was, however, that pair of Dexter shoes in size 13's (that looked alike like the shoe on the right) except with navy trim on the toe and round the heel.  Since my dress pants were blue - Mom said we'd get those and that she would make them fit my feet.

A child of the Great Depression, making do was what she was best at.  We didn't have any safety pins, and my ride was an hour away, so she attacked the clothes with straight pins. "If you don't move around too much, these should stay in place."

So the sleeves on the shirt were turned in and using straight pins, she pinned so they were the right length.  Same with the sport coat, although the shoulders were so wide I looked like I was wearing shoulder pads.  The pants were shortened and she rolled and pressed the extra eight inches of fabric into cuffs, and then "pinned" in place.

For the shoes however, she jammed a tube sock into the end of each shoe and then had me try them on.  Between the 2" heel, the platform and the tube sock I was really unstable when I stood up.  They made my feet look they belonged on a clown. Her solution?  "It'll be dark - Just sit there."

I tried sitting there once we got to the dinner, but a 13 year old boy can only sit some place for so long.  So I got up and moved around like the other kids.  And that's when the pins started giving way.  At some point the cuffs (which were also pinned in place) slipped.  I looked like someone who was playing dress up in their fathers clothing.

One of the servers - a black plump woman - saw me and took me aside.  "You're coming undone.  Let me help you get it all back together."  She explained that she had a son "just my age," and that she had to buy him clothes he would grow into as well.  She saw that Mom had used straight pins and told me to sit while she got her purse, from which she pulled one big diaper pin with dozens of safety pins dangling like beads.  In a few minutes she rolled me back into something that looked like the clothes fit me and I was no longer getting jabbed and scraped whenever I moved.  Then she noticed the shoes.

"Those are the snazziest shoes here at the party," she said with a big smile.  "Them is dancing shoes.  Now go find your friends."  And off I went.

I don't remember much else about the evening except the huge shoes made me sound like a Clydesdale every time I took a step, and they  made me fall down twice.  That made me deathly afraid of them.  So after that night "my dancing shoes" spent the next year in the clothes closet, and then they were thrown away before we moved out of Shaker Heights.

My feet never did come close to size 13.  But I still buy my shoes marked down - way down.  But I hope and pray that those chunky bad ass shoes never become the rage again.  I don't think I could survive another pair of them.

Who got it right, and who didn't read the instructions.

OK, so a couple days ago I had a post called What do you know, and I am shocked to see that only three of you bitches knows how to read directions!

How simple could I make this? My instructions were:

If you know what it is, respond to this post with a comment saying yes. If you don't know, then reply with a comment that says no.  Its that simple. 


Yes, it was that simple.   If you know what it is, answer YES. If you don't know, answer NO.

When I tried this on Facebook, I had a 90% success rate, but I had to tell on woman that she was report for detention because she kept crossing the line.

So why out of the eight people responded, did only three people, get it right?  Beats me.

First of all, the most fabulous artist alive, Unknown, got it right and scores a point for the team.  He wins the good will of DHTiSH, and go ever where and brag to his friends "I am careful, I am thorough and buzz me Miss Blue, I am a trustworthy Bee-Atch.

Secondly, Mistress MJ and Margaret got it right, but they then continued to add verbiage, which knocked them out of contention for the Grand Prize by .25%.  Still, I'm giving it to them.  They get to brag as well

Then there were Mr. Peenee, Pirate, Miss Plumbcake - who by the way wins DHTiSH's version of the illustrious "Governors Award" for combining the most humorous answer with the most ingenious use of the item - who just commented.  Which what a comments section is for right?  Right.  But they didn't win.  If I had a trombone and a mute, I'd be making the "so close, but no you didn't win sound."

But then, there were the answers from Carl of Carl's Laptop, and George W. Tush.

Evidently, neither of them read the following statement: "Don't spoil this for other people.  No cloy hints to others."

Let us just say that if I were going to throw a surprise party, or share a secret hidden treasure, that both of you guys would be out of the running.  I was looking for a simple "Yes" or "No", not a "I know it and I'm going drop a big hint, like the name".  

Remember in prison, no one likes a stoolie.  And I have worked inside prisons, so I know.

So when Cookie hits the big time, or I have to hide a body, I know that I can count on that artist extraordinaire, Unknown, to have me covered and keep a secret, and that I will buy MJ and Margaret a drink.  But Carl and George, sorry.  Not even parting gifts for you.

Life without Lucy: Has it really been this long ago?

I remember this because it was the only time I can remember CBS truncating its broadcast shows for a tribute for one of their own stars. 

What do you know?

The item pictured below is something we all know, but all of us knows what the name is or what it is called.

If you know what it is, respond to this post with a comment saying yes. If you don't know, then reply with a comment that says no.  Its that simple. And clicking on the image to see the name of the file will tell you nothing.  So don't even try it.

In a day or so I'll tell you what it is. Don't spoil this for other people.  No cloy hints to others.

Happy belated birthday, Miss Cartilage

Sylvia Lewis, born April 22, 1931. Please forgive for the lapse.

I hate live theater

Really?  Can I really suspend this much disbelief? No.

One of the things that I deal with on a fairly frequent basis is that people seem to think that simply because I'm gay, I like the theatre.  They are always trying to give me tickets to the grade "Z" Broadway series that travel through Columbus, Ohio, or get me to go to their local community theater's productions.

"What do you mean you don't love theater," they state rhetorically. "You're gay - you're supposed to love theater!"

"I'm a man, and a man is supposed to supposed to love women," I answer.  And then I remind them of the lesson of the platypus and to never count on nature to be consistent.

Truth be told - I not only have a fairly strong hatred of live theater, but I tend to avoid any sort of live performances at all.  This includes being around people who whip out guitars and try and impress you with their chords and music that touches their soul.  

I blame most of this on my upbringing which was knee deep in attending all sorts of shows, and worse yet being in these shows.

Shaker Heights schools were very big on exposing us to the arts, so we were always being loaded onto a bus to go see this and go see that.  One trip was to see Marcel Marceau, only to have him take the stage without his make up and talk to the 2,000 students in the theater about the "illusion of the theater".  Great if you're in high school student in a drama class.  But we were in third grade, and I found it boring.  In fourth grade? They hauled our asses to the high school to see a production of A Dolls House.

And then there were the little theaters and community theaters in the suburbs that surrounded Shaker Heights.  Of course Shaker had to be different, so we had no "little theatre", instead we had the Shaker Players, which in some way was an attempt to be different.  Evidently, someone got the idea that "theatre" implied a building, while "players" implied raw talent.  Ah, yes: the "Theatah" and the "Dahnse".

At some point I figured out that for the actors, being on stage meant more to them than to me in the audience  and my dislike of theater was born.

In my youth, Fiddler on the Roof was a constant.  At any given point in the calendar, somewhere within ten minutes, some poor schmuck had been packed into peasant gear and was reaching into the very marrow of his being to live up to the posters in the grocery stores that claimed he was Tevia!  And after the show he would hop in his Sedan D'Ville and drive home to his wife and children, read the paper, eat something, take a dump and go to bed. If I were were a rich man?  If I were played by Norm Richmond, is more like it.  In fact, so many of the men who went to our temple played Tevia one year, our Reform Jewish congregation stated looking like the Orthodox had taken over. 

Ten minutes to the north or west, you could find two or three or six different communities doing The Sound of Music.  One community would do it straight, while the neighborhing community had cast and directed it into zionist statement about getting the Jewish VonTrapp family out of Austria.  Even the nuns looked and sounded like Molly Picon.

I found Oklahoma! to be, at it's best, just ok.  It's hard to form a meaningful attachment to one of the greatest works of the American stage when Curley is played by a man who Slavic accent was so thick he sprayed the audience with his saliva.  And have you ever been to Oklahoma? The characters in the musical aren't like anyone from Oklahoma I've ever encountered.

By the time I arrived at South Pacific, I was ready to leave and found myself wishing My Fair Lady would just shut the hell up. Death of a Salesman?  Who doesn't want to sit through a play that reminds us that in some way, we're all failures?  And there is A Long Days Journey Into Night.  I mean what family doesn't have its problems?  I could stay home and see better dysfunction, and with my mother's smokers cough it was almost like someone was dying of TB, too.

What of Jacques Brel?   Is he alive and well and living in Paris?  Really?  Well, no.  Jacques Brel was the popular piece for dinner theater's that popped up all over Cleveland in the late 1960s.  These venues seemed to occupy storefronts in a near empty strip shopping centers, and the "Troubadours" (don't call them waiters because they are serious actors) who are going to bring Mr. Brel to life looked suspiciously like the garcon who served your meal baked chicken and California medley vegetables.  Slap a beret on them and they thought they were Edith Fucking Piaf.  Yawn. Oh, excuse me - we're supposed to think we're in gay Puree.  Ennui.

The only thing good entertainment bound to come out of one of these performances was the one woman, or man, who allowed themselves to be touched by the music to the point where they wept and called out "encore!"  You knew that was someone who had too much rose to drink with their meal, or the parent of one of the performers.  On the rare chance that they would turn to you to see if you too were touched to "the very marrow of your soul" like they had been, then you were face to face with the person Barbra Streisand sang about in "People."

While I love movies, I'm not so thrilled with musicals, with the exception of Hello Dolly.  The stories interest me, but I find it implausible that people would just break out in song to move a plot along.  Steven Sondheim is an amazing talent, but I will never join in and sing Tits and Ass at a piano bar.  I'm not a kill joy, it just isn't me.

The worst - and I mean WORST theatre experience I ever had was back in 1984 when I found out that the doctors thought I had a rare form of liver cancer, which luckily, I found out months later I did not.

However early in the process, to get me uncurled from the fetal position, a friend had tickets to Nunsense at Players Theater here in Columbus.  Players' was a troupe with a long and illustrious past, and this production was in its experimental "studio" open concept theater.

"C'mon - it'll get you mind off of this for two hours, then we can go get something to eat and you can complain about how much you hated it," she said.

So I'm sitting there trying not to think of the possibility of dying, and the cast of part time actresses hits the stage and breaks out into a song and a dance.  People around me are smiling and having a good time, and then the unthinkable happens: the nuns make a break for it and head into the audience.

And one of them gets me in her sights.

The bitch wants me to come on stage and share in the fun.  Under normal circumstances its a no-go as introverts aren't good at giving up control. But this night, I just wanted to be left alone.

So up the steps she flies and grabs a hold of my hand and tries to drag me on stage to dance a jig with them.   I'm crying, I'm upset and I have death on my mind, and this "actress" thinks I'm laughing to the point of tears.  She keeps tugging on me, and I keep trying to get her to let go. Finally, her grip slips, and down she goes a flight of bleacher stairs and lands on her tuckus.  The good news is that we weren't on a balcony or she would have sailed over the railing and fallen to her certain death.  And the rest of the audience thinks its part of the show. The bad news is she kept glaring at me for the rest of the production.

My husband, on the other hand, loves live theatre, and I support him in that love.  I have been known to go to productions and be pleasantly surprised.  And I do this because I love him and he loves it.   But it doesn't mean that I love theater.  It means I have survived it.

There are, of course exceptions. I am ALWAYS up for the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Their dancing is superb, their comic timing perfect. And I love opera, because it is so over the top. I mean what's not to love when the Worthington Ohio Civic Light Opera does Aida in a school gym and for an elephant on stage they either build one out of a refrigerator box - OR - dress someone's Great Dane up as Barbar. Now that's entertainment.

But on the whole, if an entertainer's poster in Las Vegas promises that "Jimmy Martin Sings the Songs of Your Life His Way," he's more inclined to be met with defiance than he is applause from this begrudging audience member.

Chasing Rainbows: The Christian Right and Homosexuals

Dr. Hutcherson: "Now don't let me get started."

In May 2011 the Gallop Organization announced that the majority of American's no longer were opposed to gay marriage.  In fact, the difference between those polled in 2010 and those polled in 2011 had effectively switched positions - a movement of ten points.

This is not to say that same sex marriage is going to be the norm in 2012.

Far from it, the Christian Right - those people who hide behind the words and actions of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, while acting in complete defiance of his words and actions - are still trying to save their world by grasping at straws.  The latest tactic is for the movement to "change" the terminology - to re-frame and re-define the words used in the fight against gay marriage, which they in the movement prefer to call "Sodomite Marriage".

The latest silly salvo and suggestion for beating back the "homosexual menace" comes from "Dr." Ken Hutcherson, a onetime football player for the Dallas Cowboys and current minister of a church in Washington State.  Hutcherson HATES homosexuality, is obsessed with it, and has made it his career to scuttle equal rights and legal protection for members of the LGBT community.  The "Reverend" is also Rush Limbaugh's best buddy and performed Limbaugh's fourth wedding service. How's that protecting traditional marriage?  

Hutcherson believes now the time to take back the "rainbow", a symbol that, according to him, we homosexuals stole from Christians.  That's right - according to Hutcherson, the rainbow is a Christian symbol, and he wants to take it back in the name of his brand of glory to God.  Hutcherson wants everyone BUT gay people to be able to fly rainbow flags, free from being thought that they are homosexuals themselves.

Never mind that Christianity has a tradition of stealing symbols and icons of other things from other religions:

1) The Christmas tree, which Christians stole from Pagan traditions.

2) And as for celebrating Christ's birth December 24-25 - again, the Pagans came up with an idea of celebrating the solstice on December 21st first, while bible scholars believe that Jesus was born in either September or October, not December.

3) The yule log?  Pagan, again.

Now he wants rainbows, too:

"So what is it going to take to wake up this sleeping beauty known as the Bride of Christ? Do we not see what is at stake? Don’t we understand that if our symbols can be hijacked, so too can everything else we hold dear? The rainbow is only one example of many where the church has passively sat by and allowed others to redraw lines on the playing field. Linguistic redistricting is a pet peeve of mine, so don’t even get me started about terms like “tolerance,” “justice” and “love.” Those fish will be fried at a later date. But for now, I have a simple proposition: Let’s take the rainbow back." 

Yes, Dr. Hutcherson, its more important to rail against "linguistic redistricting" while you use that tactic while  you call for the recapturing of the rainbow.

Life has taught me that whenever anyone says "don't get me started" not only can't you stop them from already starting, but they are so far on their way to making a arguments and pointing fingers that they have lost sight of thoughtfulness and have already arrived at self parody and hypocrisy.

When the other side in this social struggle sees people turning their backs on their irrationality, and their only advice is to chase after a rainbow, we need to push harder for equality for all and we need to remember never to let bigots like him, like Phil Burress and the people at the American Family Association and the Nation Organization for Marriage define who we are and what we want, which is equality.

 And as for Hutcherson? Me thinks he doth protest too much. Me thinks there's a little bit of Rainbow Bright mixed with a healthy dose of self loathing in him that wants to be free, if he'll only let it out and let it shine.

Family Drama: Such Tsoris

Oy.  Something else we may be waiting on.

We got word last night that my father in law had an onset of numbness in his right side, hearing loss and extreme confusion.   He's ninety, and ninety in every sense of the word.

He's also a retired doctor, and in a fit of "heal thyself" peppered with finality, he called my brother in law to say that he was probably having a stroke and that there was no use in going to the hospital.   "No," says Doc, "and I don't want the squad - we'll just let this play itself out."

This lead to some confabs between the siblings and it was decided that there wasn't much that could be done for someone who lived a full life and wanted nothing to be done.

So the husband called the parents (who live 400 miles away) and spoke with his father, who is certain that it wasn't much more than a TIA, and that he was on a winning streak with his free cell game on the computer of ten straight games.   But that stroke?  "I figured that it would be a peaceful end," dad said.

The husband was a bit confused by the whole shebang, and he felt pretty helpless. I mean we are taught from children - something goes wrong and you call the ambulance.  Right?

As I learned from my mother's illness, when they make up their minds.  They are made up. When we make up our minds, they'll be made up, too.

While I love them, they aren't my parents - I'm an orphan by definition even though I'm approaching 50.  So I have to support them - it's their body, their life.  And I don't think that Doc is being foolish.  What's the point of a very long life to want an end with doctors sticking drainage tubes and needles in your arm.  Mom was no heroic measures, and I want the same thing for me.

Still, for someone who has never tread this path, husband needs to sort this all out.  I need to be by his side, which I do with a glad heart.

When I go out to lunch, I go way out to lunch...

I spent the day with our neighbor Gloria.  It started out with a call from her:

"Hey, you want to do lunch later?  I need something different - tired of the same old same old."

I said how about Corkey's, and she asked where it was, and I said Cleveland and she said "I'm all in."

So two hours up, we stuffed ourselves silly with matzo ball soup, knishes, corned beef and chopped liver.  Then we filled up coolers to bring this stuff back to Columbus because you can't get good "Jew Food" in Ohio's Cowtown Capital.

So we decided to hit up a couple antique stores in Larchmere and on the way down there we meandered through Shaker Heights and Gloria was agog.

"These lovely neighborhoods just keep going and no two houses look alike," she said.

We drove by my childhood home - the one I wish I could own again - which is built in the Federal Style, and the new people have restored much of the front facade that the people before them crapped over with Victorian bric-a-brac.  It looks lovely.

And then we came home and I stuffed my Mister Topogrosso self with more corned beef.  Yummy.

It dawned on me as we were leaving that its been four years since I had been by the old place that was my home fifty years ago.  Fifty fucking years ago.  I am shocked.

Tomorrow its back to the grind here at the house - we have yard work on the schedule.  Yawn.

House is "having a little work done" to it

In preparation to the move that we may or may not be undertaking - and now we have ANOTHER six week wait in front of us before we get more news - House is having work done on it to make it feel younger and prettier.  What we're trying to do is get all the shit down that a housing inspector would find after we are in contract so there aren't any last minute surprises.

Durable Restoration sent two of it's hunkiest - jaw dropping HOT - employees to operate on House.  At these prices - they are not cheap, but House deserves the best - I was hoping for cute and instead they sent handsome and nice men to perform the procedures.  Seriously, these men are jewels.  One of them is built like a porn star and looks like Christian Bale's younger brother.

Today was Porch's day to have some tuck pointing performed.  So they have ground out the shitty mortar and are prepping the mixer to use a historically accurate lime and sand based mortal that is softer than cement.  Mortar isn't glue for bricks, it instead is a buffer between bricks that allows a brick to expand and contract naturally without grinding up the bricks around it.  In an older house where the bricks are softer, if you use a portland cement mortar, the mortar is too hard to allow the brisks to expand and they start to crack and spall.  This is what Cookie's college education taught him.

Tomorrow, if they get this finished today, they climb up on the roof and tuck point our small chimeny.

Ohio's #1 Bigot, Phil Burress Strikes Again

This is Phil Burress, Ohio's number one bigot.

Burress, from his home city of  Sharonville in S.W. Ohio operates two groups that are anti-gay, anti-family and anti-anyone who doesn't look like Phil Burress.  They are "Citizens for Community Values" and "Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage".  I'm not linking to them because I have no desire to to provide them with web traffic.

Burress is a former serial husband (he's been married many times), an alcoholic and sex addict who has made it his mission to make Ohio a safe state for him and him alone.  To do this, Burress - a man who believes that "Government" should stay out of local government matters - bullied through the Ohio Legislature laws to place limits on local business people so that Ohio, not local governments, could the adult entertainment industry.  So Burress, in addition to being a recovering alcoholic and sex addict, is also a man who believes that local governments can't be trusted with things important to Burress, but on everything else they can decide for themselves.

And then in 2004, Burress and his clan put together what is the most restrictive wording in the nation for a state constitution to define marriage between one man and one woman, AND invalidate "domestic matter" contracts between legal, consenting adults.  Burress then pushed that amendment statewide and in November, 2004 got it through the general election.

How terrible is this law?  If Cookie were to drop over my keyboard at this exact moment, even though my will leaves everything to my husband, the Amendment could compel the court to throw out my my wishes - made of sound mind and body - and give everything to my brothers.  My brothers are nice people, but Burress' language undoes 500 years of civil law respecting the wishes of the deceased and instead hands over half of everything that my husband and I have worked together to get in our lives and it gives it to people who have done nothing for me.

Now that's Draconian.

This past winter, a bipartsian group of Ohioians have been trying to get language on the ballot that would overturn the 2004 amendment.  At first, Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine (who is a personal friend of Cookie's, and Cookie's one time boss as well - and Cookie has nothing but the utmost of respect for Mike) wouldn't approve the ballot language because it wasn't legal.

A couple weeks ago, DeWine approved the amended language.

And then guess who decided to start playing hardball?  Phil Burress.

In an interview in the Columbus Dispatch in March, Burress said that he would fight the measure.

And today, Ohio's version of Cthulhu arose from his cave of solitude in Cincinnati and filed the first shot to put down this equality nonsense by suing Mike DeWine for approving the language. 
Apparently, Phil Burress is not pleased. He's also bitchy about the fact that Cincinnati, Ohio has betrayed his will by electing its first openly gay councilman.  Said Burress in the Columbus Dispatch:


"“There is a reason why fewer people live in Cincinnati now,” said Phil Burress, whose conservative group is based in Sharonville. “Cincinnati residents will be in for a rough ride the next two years.”"

Like I said, he's bitchy and spiteful.  And he's illogical.  He has no facts to support positions, but he does know how to ruin everyone elses fun.  And no wonder fewer people in Cincinnati - would you want to live there with Phil "Evil Puppeteer" Burress saying that he was going to make sure that that the next two years are going to be unpleasant ones?

Keep your eye on this, because we are either going to take this law down, or Phil Burress could be visiting a community near you, real soon.

Cruising in an electronic age

My husband and I will celebrate our 15th anniversary this May, and I am happy to report that I am still head over heels in love with him - even more so - all these years later.  We are our best friends and we are in propinquity - we even finish each others sentences.  He makes my my face light up when he enters a room and we make each other tingle - in a good way.

Periodically, however, I browse the electronic personals.  I do not, and would, not cheat on my husband; I never entertain anyone other than he in our bed.  I also do not climb into the beds of others.

So why do I look at the personals?  Truth be told, it makes me feel a bit naughty.  AND I like to keep abreast of the modern ways that people look for either a sex date or that certain someone.

I'm old enough to remember the good old days of cruising for sex, where a look, or the tap of a toe was good for a minutes of diversionary fun.

But the new era of electronic dating is a cruel world.  It's abrupt, and there is no room for nuance.  Worse still, it's full of badly worded prose and terrible pictures.

What I have found is thus far:

1) Fifty percent of ads are men wanting to meet men.
2) Fifty percent of the ads tend to fall into the category for using someone in the short term, or "blow and go".
3) Eighty percent of the ads contain bad photographic images of people.  Bad lighting, bad focus and just not flattering.
4) Ten percent of the eighty percent mentioned above tend to have bad photographic image of the guy  holding their toy breed dogs and of that, two percent of said ads invite other men to "fuck them like a bitch in heat."  This begs the question is the invitation for the man, or the dog?

And if I can interrupt here, their is nothing like a mood killer element in a personals picture.  The dog looks cute, but who wants to fuck someone while their doggy whines in the hall way as I suspect many of these pampered pets do.  Thank you.

5) Five percent of the ads are from people who just like to meet new people.
6) Twenty-Five percent of the ads are from people who just want you to walk into their house, through an open door and fuck them, and then just go away.  You never see their faces in their pictures, just their arses.
7) Seventy percent of the ads are from people who know EXACTLY what they want, and they want the rest of the world who don't fit that description to just leave them the fuck alone.
8) About ten percent of the men mentioned in number seven will even suggest that if you aren't EXACTLY what they are looking for "don't even think" about contacting them.  That's right, don't even allow your brain to even consider contacting them. (And, as a matter fact, if they had their druthers, they would also prefer that you not click on their hyperlink to their ad at all.)
9) Fifty percent of ads are from guys who are - and get this: "Straight Acting".
10) Forty-nine percent of those straight acting men also use the girlish phrase "UB2" in their ad as well.
11) Fifty percent of those "Straight Acting" men like taking it "in the ass" or in their "man pussy".

And if I may creep in here - I find the term man pussy one of the most girlish things that any guy could say about a part of their body.

12) Five percent of the ads are from men who like to dress up as women and identify as "Kim" or "Doris" or  "Tiffany".
13) And of that five percent, ninety percent just look ugly in a merry widow and other "pretty-pretties".
14) And nearly 100% use the wrong color of lipstick, which adds to their unladylike appearance.
15) Forty percent of all ads mention a fetish.

Again, as a sidecar: None of the ads ever mentions fetish for fetish statuary.  I hoping to be pleasantly amused one day and come across one. But I'm not holding my breath.

16) Of the fetish based ads, a large percentage of them feature big beefy men, posing in a very masculine fashion, wearing leather, metal, tattoos and they are posed not in a dungeon, but against a background of Laura Ashley wallpaper, Precious Moments statues and white wicker furniture.  To these men I ask, I you looking for a man, or a guest spot on the Dinah Shore Show?
17) About fifty percent of the general ads are from young men under the age of thirty who are looking for men under the age of thirty.
18) About twenty percent of the ads in a general site are men in their thirties who are looking for men, ages 18-25.
19) About ten percent of the ads are from men who are ages 40-70 looking for men or "bois" (and not in the  French sense) ages 18-25.
20) And I think - and this is icky - that of the men mentioned in number 19, that some wouldn't mind it if someone slipped under the 18 year floor. Ick.
21) About two percent of the men who place ads want to be diapered.

Note: I have yet to find anyone who wants to change these men and their soiled diapers.

Caption it

OK, readers: caption this picture.

Love It or List It or Just Get the Fuck Away From Me

If you haven't guessed by now, its TV Rant Week on DHTISH.

Today my object of scorn is my new favorite thing to watch and yell at the TV over: HGTV's Canadian import Love It or List It.

Essentially, this show is all about The Drama.  It has to be.  There is no way that there are this many well to do stupid people in Canada.  We're talking C-A-N-A-D-A, our better educated, cooler (in terms of culture and outdoor temperatures) neighbor to our north.  I simply refuse to believe that there are any rude people up there. But in terms of drama, this is all mapped out, er excuse me, ooot.

The basis for this show is to take a couple who have outgrown their home - either literally or metaphorically.  Into this comes a "realtor" and a "decorator" in the guise of  David Visentin and Hilary Farr.  Visentin is really whiny.  And Hilary?  She's just a cunt*.  But I love her.  Seriously. Hilary is totally bitchin'.

During each show, one home owner wants to stay, one wants to go.  Its the job of the realtor to find a place that the homeowners love and will choose over their own house.  It's Hilary's job to redo the house and entice them to stay.

All of the couples are unlikeable.  They lash out at Hilary and they belittle Visentin.

And the drama? In the middle of EVERY episode, something goes wrong back at the ranch and part of the renovation doesn't happen as promised. It's either the crappy sewage lines, or the crappy support column in the living room, but it always goes wrong. This brings out the worst in one of the home owners, but usually both.

And the angst, and the anger and the resentment and the lashing out tell us that either everyone involved with this farce is 40, going on six, or that our cooler neighbors to the north are just a bunch of fuckwits.  Canadians are anything and everything, but unless you are talking about Vancouver hockey fans, they are not fuckwits.

And about this time you say to yourself "Fuck them both.  They deserve what they get."

Get it? Got it? Good.

Well this evening, on an episode entitled Downsizing Debate we were treated to an old snippy queen named "Michael" and his thirty year younger partner "Jeff".  Michael wants to move into something perfect and refuses to pay more than $400,000 (Canadian).  Jeff wants to stay.  And their present home had a bathroom in the master bedroom. Handy for sling play, but tacky.

But as the clock ticked on, it became very clear that these two old queens weren't fun.

They weren't clever.

They weren't even close to being entertainingly bitchy.

They were, however, every gay man's absolute nightmare.  They were this gay man's nightmare to be sure.

Michael is the type of homosexual that gives all of us a black eye.  He is every negative gay stereotype rolled into one nasty, vile, spoiled, bitter old queen.  And what came forth from Michael's mouth was beyond bitchy - beyond me being bitchy right now.  If this man moved in next door to us, my husband and I would leave the neighborhood.

Jeffery, on the other hand, was totally overshadowed by his older "parent" in Michael, who came complete with Eurotrash accent and a vile temper.   So we know that either Jeffery is a top, or he's total pussy whipped by his effete mincing and persnickety "husband".

Michael is the type of old queen that makes Boys in the Band look like Mel Brooks comedy.  A funny Mel Brooks comedy.

In the end, they decided to ... either love it or list it, but I'm not going to ruin it for you.

Watch for yourself, and if you haven't thrown a rock through the TV screen, then pat yourself on the back.  But you will, and trust me on this, agree - that Michael is a total CUNT.  And I do NOT mean that in the best Brit Slang kind of way.

I'm all for fun, but seldom have I wanted to get in the car and drive to Canada slap someone.

Why?

Because Hilary is the cunt on this show, and no one should ever out-cunt her.

*In the best of Brit slang.

Even though her voice is like nails on a chalk board to my ears...

...I'm taking Paula Deen's side.

In the news today media curiosity Anthony Bourdain again saw an opportunity to get people to notice that he exists by assailing Paula Deen.

Bourdain seems to be under the impression that by verbally thrashing Deen, that his stock will go up and he can make the jump from 2nd rate cable network personality to America Food Savior by behaving like a shrill woman scorned.

Deen, on the other hand is handling her end of the situation just fine.

Me?  I'm fed up by the self-indulgent Bourdain.  He's a bully and he's snob.  And his persecution of the sickeningly sweet Deen is about inflicting pain on her and while he gets rich of it.

If Anthony were here - and if he were he would be duct taped to a lawn chair and slathered with honey and placed nearest the closest wasp nest, and a pair of soil Depends shoved into his mouth - I would say "Anthony, you giving Paula a tongue lashing about fat and salt is like you giving a group of High School  students a lecture on the evils of a world class asshole. It does no one any good but it feeds your God complex."

Seriously, someone needs to electrocute his testicles.

As for Deen, she owes her readership NOTHING but what she wants to write about.  Only a fool would make a Krispy Kreme Bun'd hamburger a daily staple in their lives.  Think about it.  It's either something you would want to taste once in a life time or something that you would never put in your mouth.  And even if you did eat one every fucking day of your life, you get what you deserve.

My advice to Paula Deen is be who you are.  And the next time someone brings up Bourdain's name, and no matter how badly you want to say "Gai kakhen afenyam"* just reply "He's special, isn't he?" and leave it that.

Because when push comes to shove, people will never look back on obnoxious, elitist, nasty, old, ugly, stinky slob like Bourdain and remember anything about him other than how he became obsessed with Paula Deen and behaved like a total asshole.


*This is the ultimate curse in Yiddish - something so ripe with imagery that even I have only used once or twice.  These are the last words uttered by my Aunt Nan to my Step Monster after we buried my father.   "Gai kakhen afenyam" literally means "go shit in the ocean".  Not a nice thought.  No?

Sitting Shiva for Possum Dearie

"Honey - come look.  There's a 'possum playing dead in the front garden!"

This is what greeted me when I returned home last night from teaching a genealogy class.

In Shaker Heights we had squirrels and birds and the occasional raccoon.  But central and southern Ohio are ripe with opossums, henceforth to be called possum, and they are, for the most part harmless when alive and at their worst, road kill and ripe when laying dead by the side of the road.

The husband pointed into the day lily patch in front of our porch and sure enough, in the midst of  fresh green growth was an adult sized possum.

"How long do they play dead?" the husband asked.

"How long has that one been there?"

"He was there this morning," husband stated.

My husband is brilliant and bright and pure of heart, so it fell to me to tell him that the flies swarming the body were an indicator that for this possum, if it were playing dead, it was giving us an Oscar caliber performance.  It was not just playing dead, but it was dead.

We stood there for a moment, both of us trying to ignore the proverbial "elephant in the livingroom", which for us was the "opossum in flower bed," and when neither of us volunteered to speak up, I seized the day and said what needed to be said:  "When are you going to scoop it out?"

"ME?" responds my strong, handsome man like a school girl asked to pick up a booger.  "Why do I have to deal with that?"

I explained to husband that since I was the one who had to clean the drains in the house - because the black muck harvested from a clogged drain makes him - quite literally - hurl, AND that I was the one who crawled up ladders to clean out the gutters - again, its the rotting muck - that it fell to him to remove said possum from the garden.

Just then, three police cars came to a screeching halt in front of the house where "Diane From New York City" lives (she never joins in the conversations with the Committee of the Middle of the Street, and she is totally psycho, and has a mouth on her that would Belle Barth blush) so the husband had a handy excuse to look away, and change the subject.  And after the police left, there was an impromptu meeting of the Middle of the Street Committee because you know that people love to speculate why the police show up as they did.  So Possum Dearie spent another night in the sylvan splendor of the flower bed.

This morning, Possum Dearie was still resting in the flowers; husband assured me he would get to it this evening and off to work he went.

This meant that I was home, alone with a dead being laying ten feet from the front door, and the weatherman was telling the viewing audience that while the temperature today would be cool, the sun would bright and would warm up the sidewalks and the ground.  Taking it one step further, that would heat up the possum and draw flies, and I didn't want to be the house on the street that had a fly problem.  People on this street will and do frequently talk, and I for one would rather do the talking instead of being a topic at the next meeting of the Committee of the Middle of the Street.

Considering everything he does for me - and its more than most husband would do for their spouse under normal circumstances - I put on my shoes, grabbed the shovel and harvested me one dead possum.  Rigor mortis had set in the corpse was heavy, its wee tiny claws clenched. As I tried not to drop him into our lawn, his body moved as one unit, like a toy or a rock and I was thankful for that.  Had his furry legs and arms failed about it would have reminded me that this had been a living being.

Still, I wanted to afford our uninvited guest some level of dignity.  So I put him in a Trader Joe's paper bag, dug a deep hole out back behind the garage where the dogs, cats and raccoon's couldn't get to him and buried him (or her) and took a minute to look at myself.

"How," I asked myself, "did a child of Shaker Heights ever come to this - burying a dead possum?"

As I could find no answer that was profound or even funny for my selfish question, I pushed the dumpster back over the spot when the nasty little thing was buried and headed back towards the house.  Nature would have its way with him and he would return to the earth from which he crawled or walked or whatever a possum does to get from one place to another.

And then it struck me - anyone else would have thrown the body in the dumpster, but I went the extra mile and buried it where another animal wouldn't dig it up and leave the carcass for me to find tomorrow or the day later.  And I didn't throw it away because you're not supposed dispose of dead  animals in the dumpsters that our fair city has for us to use in the alleys.  That I followed the rules or propriety, and did the right thing to do instead of the expedient thing, reminded me that I did the right thing.  Had I still been in Shaker, I would have called for someone from the city to do it.  Seriously, would my father or brothers ever been able to do this? Not just no, but Hell No!

My self congratualtory moment was disturbed when I heard a "yoo hoo" from one of my neighbors.  It was so shrill and off tone that I wondered if the possum could hear it.

"What ya doing,"called out Storms A Brewing Corliss over the fence that separate our yard from her's.  I explained that I had just gotten rid of the possum.

"Possum?  And you threw it away? Possum's good eatin'!" she replied.  "Ever had it?  Tastes good - tastes just like chicken." I wasn't sure if she was saying it jest, or not, but I was hoping she was.

Once inside, I called the husband and told him he was off the hook, that I had covered the mirrors and set out uncomfortable wooded crates for us to sit on while we sat shiva for the thing.

"What did you do with it?" he asked.

"Corliss saw me and gave me a recipe for dinner," I explained.  "You know what they say - Possum is good eatin'."

Exodus, Google Style

I am so loving this!