In Which We Are Arty

Super Agent Fred gave me a charming pair of portraits for my birthday. They are a couple of powerful women who have challenged and overcome the limitations society has attempted to place on them.

They are top-notch bitches.

I realized this afternoon that my entire social life revolves around sitting in Peet’s cafe and scowling at people. I’m not complaining, and it makes me wonder, what’s really so bad about leprosy?

Sort of along those same lines, my dear, dear niece Amber has revealed she has plans for me should I ever find myself living out of a shopping cart under a freeway here. She has a lovely big house and assures me that I’m welcome there, which is so sweet of her, and there’s a big private loft above the living room that’s all mine. I see my future before me, the crazy old uncle locked in the attic, occasionally howling, demanding coffee and gay pornography. Actually, it sounds okay.

I know I mentioned in the last post the newspaper in Austin had warned that security lines were so bad at the airport they wanted you to get there three hours early. Obscene. I got there a couple of hours before my flight and my Uber driver dealt with the massive traffic outside by simply driving around it and then cutting through three lanes of idling traffic to drop me off. What a gal.

I have Clear, the pre-approved security, get-out-of-jail card and that let me jump to the head of the line and then the frazzled TSA agent just waved a bunch of us through an old timey metal detector instead of the Star Trek-y booth and boom, I was through security in less than 15 minutes. I spent longer in line at the coffee place getting a latte. Irony, it’s what’s for dinner.

guys I’d wait in line for:

Willie Gomez, who still refuses to publish nude pictures on the internet, selfish bastard.

Arty AND meaty, the best of both worlds.

Sorry, you’ll have to repeat yourself; all I can hear is your dick.

Soon it will be beach weather. Are you ready?

Deservedly cocky.

Some cliches are just too potent to ignore.

Turkey. Of Course

Over the last several years I have come to be the host of Thanksgiving dinners for a regular group of my friends whom I think of as “The Children.”  As in “The Children are coming to dinner.”  Mostly because they are all young enough to actually be my offspring, were I wacky enough to spring off, but also because, as in the case of providing the traditional Thanksgiving, I have somehow morphed into a mother figure. To be more accurate, a grandmother figure.

Four of the Children are out of town this holiday and I was remarking to Super Agent Fred (the only one who would be around) how I was looking forward to taking drugs and sleeping all day instead of cooking.  Fred looked absolutely stricken and protested that he was looking forward to turkey.  And gravy.  And mashed potatoes.  And dressing.

Of course I relented and thus wound up slinging a menu that exactly reproduced what my grannies would have knocked out 80 years ago.  And it was delicious, thank you very much, so I guess I’m glad I did, but the dinner did leave behind a refrigerator full of left overs because it turns out scaling down a celebratory dinner for 10 to one for 2 does not work.  I just don’t know how to make my granny’s cornbread dressing  in a size smaller than what could be described as a vat.  We will be dining on that fucking turkey all week.  Turkey salad, Turkey Tetrazini, turkey sammiches.  OK by me.

Also in other domestic news, the garden always looks sort of shaggy around this time of year.  Most thing suddenly green from the rain finally starting, but also quietly revving up for the burst of flowers spring will have.  The most appealing contradictions are the Australian Tea Trees, brilliant rose and pink and crimson right now.  The two in the picture are about 20 years old and have taken that long to really get established and turn out such show off blooming.  I see them from my bathroom window every time I go pee.  That is not what the average garden planning book would consider, but I’m glad I planted them where I did.

The view from the toilet.

Pancakes and Rain and Smacking Fred in the Head

I know I’m always yammering about how balmy (and fucking expensive) life in San Francisco is, but even here, winter visits occasionally.  Like today, gray, drizzling, the kind of dank cold that settles into your every nook as soon as you set foot out the door.  Of course, when I feel the urge to whine about our winter, I remember Mistress Infomaniac trapped up in the tundra of Canadia, battling caribou just to get a goddam coffee, eking a living as a professional seal blubber gatherer, and I have to count my blessings.

Like going out for delicious pancakes and sausage for breakfast in a cozy cafe with humpy waiters.  Since I tend to go to sleep at dawn, breakfast is a rare treat for me, but today I couldn’t get to sleep so I battled my way through the clammy chill and wound up with my favorite, lemon pancakes with marion berry sauce.  Because it’s San Francisco and we’re all fancy and stuff.  originally, the waiter appeared with French toast and when I demurred, he corrected his mistake by reaching over to the table behind me to pick up my pancakes from them and give them their French toast.  Which leads one to wonder, why hadn’t they said something when a large plate of pancakes appeared before them?  Do they not know what French toast looks like?  Were they simply blinded by the waiter’s massive chest muscles? The waiter (and his big round titties) assured me they had not spit on the pancakes, so I tucked in.

Anyway, tasty.

I came home, made a pot of stew, puttered around, never could get to sleep until about 9:00 this evening, almost exactly one hour before a thoroughly drunken Super Agent Fred decided to rock out downstairs with the worst music ever recorded.  Dylan.  The Association.  Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.   God knows why, his tastes are eclectic to the point of random.  I went downstairs, threatened to hit him in the head with gong mallet (it’s padded, OK?) and then did because he turned the volumeback up.  Sometmes beating your child is the only answer.

Speaking of abusive realtionships, have you seen Good Behaviour?  It’s fabulous.  It stars Michele Dockery, late of Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary, as a white trash crackhead grifter who hooks up with the astonishingly hot Juan Diego Botto who is by turn both sexy and menacing.  The banter is very tight and amusing, but not brittle and Dockery is great.  Thumbs up.  Go watch it.

Botta.  Mmmmmm.  Botta

Always, Always, Listen to Cher

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via GIPHY

Allright bitches. It’s been a week. Unless you are planning a coup (and if you are, I ask, please don’t) it’s time to move on. We’ve all been through the stages of grief now: anger, denial, bargaining. whatever the other one is, and now it’s time for acceptance.

Unless of course, you are Secret Agent Fred, in which case the stages are Valium, cheap beer, Vicodin, cheap beer, and cheap beer. Also, Fred has used his art as therapy to “work through his issues.” Personally, I don’t think Fred could get through all his issues with a GPS and a machete, but, you go, girl.

President Trump.  Snap out of it.  But also, here, just to make us all feel a little better on this cold gray day

Fredtastic

A few years ago, Secret Agent Fred decided he didn’t want to paint anymore.  The muse had deserted him.  He continued with graphic design and working in sketchbooks (see below for one of his gold leaf smut pieces)

but he was through with his larger scale canvases.  I was disappointed, I like his work very much.  So I was delighted when he announced this evening that he had decided to take the brush back up.  His inspiration?  An airing last night on TCM of Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, one of the worst movies ever to see the light of day, but also starring Susan Hart.  It turns out he had started a painting featuring Miss Hart a while ago and had never finished it.  Actually, I had seen the canvas and had always thought it was finished, but he’s the artist, he gets to say when something is complete and when it needs something.  In this case, what it needed, according to Fred’s tiny little brain, was a raven spitting up blood.  I think it best not to ask why.

I also always thought this was Diana Rigg, but I see now I was incorrect.  Also, I’m not sure why Fred is working on this lying on the garage floor (the painting, not Fred, or at least, not Fred the last time I looked,) but again he’s the artist.

Go see more of Fred’s work at Its Fredtatstic

In Which mrpeenee Reports In

It’s been a rather trying couple of weeks around here.  I had a colonoscopy, a teeth cleaning and a birthday.  It’s not exactly been leaping from heights to heights.

I can sense my longtime readers tensing up, readying themselves for a colonoscopy blow-by-blow, but I’ll spare us all that, mostly because I was completely knocked out, at my insistence, and have nothing to report.  “One step short of zombie” was my actual instruction to the nice little anesthesiologist and he came through.  I have to say, the drugs are very effective, but I remember them being more amusing last time.

My later chat with my regular doctor about the results weren’t that much more enlightening.  He brought up photos from the scan on the computer even though I insisted I was not interested in a slide show.  Since he’s also an old friend he felt free to make cracks about how a gay man shouldn’t make such a fuss over a delivery to the rear entrance, so to speak.  I felt free to mention how he should shut the fuck up.  Our conversation ended with him remarking, in a genuinely startled tone, “Wow they really went way up there.”  Great.  Maybe they were looking for gerbils, I don’t know.  I wasn’t there at the time.

Also: teeth cleaning.  I’ve always been a star pupil at my dentists, breezing through the hygienist’s scraping and sawing, lalalalahla.  This time, though, my toothy luck ran out.   My tooth girl, Penny, seemed unhappy.  Apparently, it was like the Red Wedding up in there.  I tried to think of a way to blame it all on my cat, but she wasn’t having it.  Penny was disappointed, sad and disappointed in me.  I felt bad, my gums had let her down.  Had she announced my dental hygiene would henceforth include a rosary and five extra Hail Marys, I would have been rattling those beads quicker than you could say knife.

After all that, I have to say my birthday was quite a relief.  Balmy and blue, the kind of perfect San Francisco day that reminds us why we pay so very much to live here.  Secret Agent Fred and I repaired to Neiman’s for a lovely tea.  Mine was bolstered by a couple of Vicodins and a concoction called the Lady in Red cocktail.  The menu listed several harmless ingredients, but it turned out to be basically a glass of vodka stained magenta.  Perfect.  One assumes the ladies who lunch crowd that frequents Neiman’s are serious about their cocktails.  Fine with me.

Afterwards Fred and I went off to some tasteful haberdashery for to me buy some birthday socks.  A very attractive sales clerk, a lanky doe-eyed beauty, rolled out drawersful of the most dazzling stockings.  I should mention I had all afternoon been interspersing my conversation with Fred with the announcement “It’s m’burthday, bitch.”  It seemed to excuse any possible lapse, such as when I was jauntily pointing out socks and gaily instructing the dreamboat clerk “I’ll take that and that and a box of those.  It’s m’burthday, bitch.”  He didn’t even bat one of his lustrous and thick eyelashes.  “Happy birthday, sir,” he murmmered.   It was a slow Tuesday afternoon in the store, I was the only customer and if it took being addressed as “bitch” to make a sale, well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Socks.  Always an appropriate gift.

Спасибо

Those of you who remember my fondness for Nasty Mormon Boys will no doubt be unsurprised by my recent text to Secret Agent Fred which read “OMYGOD, do you know what you get when you google “naked Russian Orthodox calendar”?”

I wanted to return the favor to Fred since just this afternoon he absolved me from feeling guilty about eating an entire bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.  Apparently they’re practically health food.

Anyway, to save you some Googling (although I know that’s where you’re all headed right after this and before hell) here are some previews:

This.

This:

And this:

A little of this:

Not to mention this:

And especially this:

The one on the left looks especially Slavic.  Maybe it’s the white lace.

Do I believe these are representatives of the Russian Orthodox clergy?  Mmmmmmmm, no.  Nor do I believe that blonde tranny did not give me the crabs in New Orleans in 1987.  Do I care either way?  No.  Also, this just in, Goldfish crackers are not a health food.

I Hate Writing. I Love Having Written.

In an almost charming back-and-forth in the comment section of Cafe Muscato , Diane von Austinburg and Muscato were griping about my lack of writing, blogging, mash notes, whatever, so I’m ripping off a portion of an email I JUST SENT to Diane as proof that they’re full of baloney.  There.

to wit:

“I had a dream some person stole a baby and then I was reprimanding them for this and then, I don’t know, they died? Maybe? Anyway I wound up with the baby and was terribly confused.

Did I tell you about the path o’ destruction I found here when I came home? A busted window, a broken lamp, a hole in the office closet door, my keyboard and mouse replaced because the old had “gotten fried,” and the dried remains of some mysterious fluid splattered all over the upper stairwell and hall. Secret Agent Fred blamed Saki, Saki took that “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t” attitude cats are so fond of. I’m not sure I believe either of them.”

See?  I write.  News you can use, gossip, and slander all rolled up with possibly prophetic dreams.

Speaking of dreams:

Also, while I’m recycling old emails to friends who don’t deserve them, here’s part of one I dashed off to Night is Half Gone’s Jason while we were ducking and weaving in New Orleans last month:

“two of my neighbors blipped up on Friday and tried to be trouble to me, but I charmed them into fucking off. Later, I mentioned to the contractor and one of his minions “I got 99 problems and that hag ain’t one of them.” Both of the guys seemed gratifyingly amused, less amusing was their attitude of complete astonishment that I could paraphrase rapper thugs. Bitch, what you looking at, I am down.”

I’m telling you, epistolary.

Crime Spree and a Movie

Secret Agent Fred and I sailed off to go see Mad Max Fury Road the other afternoon and I am here to report that is one film that moves right along, apparently assuming, correctly, that no one in the audience is interested in thinking about what’s going on.  It nominally features the fabulous Charlize Theron and the always luscious Tom Hardy, but actually the stars are the almost constant explosions.  There is so much shit blowing up and the camera is tossed about with such carefree insouciance, it’s often difficult to tell who, or what is getting blown up this time.

While I’m fond of sci-fi as a genre, the real pull was Mr. Hardy and his pouty lip beauty, but tragically, he’s off screen for lots of the running timing and for most of the first third of the show he’s dressed in what appears to be a gardening trowel strapped to his face.  So distracting.

Plus, after the movie we got back to my car and found it had been broken in.  I had left it unlocked (which is most unlike me) so at least they didn’t bust out a window.  All they got for their troubles was a plastic bag of loose coins I kept for parking meters (Hoo hoo!  Must have been close to four bucks!  Score!) and a fabulous suede jacket from Coach, probably retailing at $400 or $500, but that I got at a thrift store for like $30 I think.  When I found it, I was swayed by the Coach label and the fact the sleeves were long enough for me, but honestly, it was always enormously too big for me.  It made me look like a well dressed refugee.

Much worse was the Levi jacket of Fred’s they made off with which was adorned with a collection of buttons, including one of Any Winehouse as the Madonna.  Fred is terribly distraught and who can blame him?