i predicted all but two awards correctly: best adapted screenplay (i thought for sure it was going to go to Up in the Air) and best original screenplay i thought would go to tarantino for Inglorious Basterds as a consolation prize. this was a fairly predictable year as most of the acting awards had been locked for a couple months now and all the precursors indicated that Avatar would NOT win…so…i’m nothing special. i just pay careful attention to the precursors.

i hated the opening of the show. maybe i’m in the minority but i HATE neil patrick harris. i know everyone is all kinds of up his ass and he’s sooooooo cool…but when i see him, all i think about is this kid:

i’m surprised that when the director yelled cut after that horrendous performance, the other child actors didn’t completely gay bash him since it would probably happen eventually. although…since i have too much time on my hands i thought i would do some research to see what gay little derek is up to these days:

QUELLE SURPRISE! muscial theater? no fuckin’ way! actually, at least he looks pretty decent and sounds pretty good. i kind of would have liked to see him break into “Yankee Doodle” in the middle of the show.

i thought monique’s speech was nice and i loved Sandy B’s speech. let’s be honest, while i really enjoyed her performance in The Blind Side and the nomination was totally deserved, i don’t think she should have won. but i like her, so i’m okay with her winning. i think even she realizes the award is more because people like her and not really about the performance.

i HATED that after Kathryn Bigelow won for best director, the first female ever (and you know Barbaa Streisand was just seething as she announced it), the orchestra played “I am Woman”. god. now if the black gay guy won (Lee Daniels who directed Precious) would they have played something by RuPaul? i would love that and would probably not have been offended.

i watched The Cove–the winning doc about the dolphins in japan. i wish ABC hadn’t cut away when what’s his name flashed his poster…it might have been more effective had they just included the number in the speech. but, i think enough people saw it, or could pause it on their tivo’s or googled the movie to find out more information. btw…there are very few movies that horrify me, that i find excellent but usually can’t stomach more than the initial viewing. Boys Don’t Cry is one of them. The Cove is another. i absolutely applaud the filmmakers, divers, activists, scientists and everyone involved in exposing the secret of this japanese town and the very graphic, extremely sad, and moving footage they manage to capture is necessary to make change. more info can be found at:

http://takepart.com/thecove

that footage is haunting and stays with you.

great, now i’m sad.

so listen up bitches:

for fuck’s sake, eat a full meal before you go out drinking. don’t come into any gay bar or club without having eaten something before hand. i know most of y’all have some sort of eating disorder, but no gay bar manager, bartender, bouncer, busboy wants to carry your drunk bag of bones out the door because you can’t stand up.

don’t drink a bottle of wine with the other 18 girls you plan on bringing with you before you come out to gay bars because NOTHING you order from us mixes well with wine. not vodka, not rum, not beer, not the shots you will try to order later.

don’t fuckin’ tell me how to make a drink or tell me there’s not enough vodka because most of us in this industry have been doing this longer than you’ve been of age and are purposely serving you weak drinks BECAUSE YOU CAN’T HANDLE YOUR SHIT AND WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH YOU LATER.

it’s a gay bar. that means men. men who don’t want screaming, shrieking, cackling girls in their space or their face. when they tell you to back the fuck up, do it.

the “men’s room” is NOT unisexual. they don’t want you in there looking for your friends, taking up space in the mirror, asking people how you look so you can feel better about yourself.

see those empty spaces by the cash registers? those are called serving wells. unless you’re getting a drink, stay the fuck out of them. if you are getting a drink, use them. DON’T fuckin’ push and elbow guys out of your way in the middle of the bar to order a drink and if you do, i guarantee no bartender is going to rush over to help you, believe, you are his last priority. and if one of those guys you pushed out of your way, hits you, we will applaud.

if someone is being mean to you, i do not care. you are a visitor from another planet and sometimes the natives are hostile especially when the visitors are loud, selfish, rude, annoying, loud, and drunk. don’t waste my time and yours complaining to me about it because i don’t fuckin’ care.

if you think you can slap one of my customers and they won’t have the nerve to slap you back, you are sorely mistaken.

and to the GAY GUYS who bring these girls with them to the gay bars…STOP IT. find a new group of friends. these girls are awful, everyone hates them. my girlfriends would NEVER behave like this in a gay bar, i assure you there are better women out there to be friends with.

i used to live on a street called Orleans St. in an older part of lakeridge virginia, that connected at either end with Sturbridge Drive to create what we always called “the block”. like as in, “we’re going to ride around the block!” so i thought it might be fun to go on a tour of that block and meet some people along the way. imagine i’m five and i’m on my bike (no helmut–we didn’t need ‘em).

first of course, i have to stop three houses up and pick up my friend Whitney. I remember we didn’t use phones back then. if you wanted to see if someone could play, you’d walk up the street, knock on the door and ask whomever answered if “whitney could come out and play”. didn’t matter that it was 9 a.m on a saturday, i just walked up and knocked on the door. between whitney’s house and my own, there was donna’s (our babysitter who looked like Belinda Carlisle) and then the Utz’s but not the ones you are probably thinking of.

so now whitney and i are on our bikes and we turn left onto Sturbridge, heading down hill to a pipestem on the right. a pipe stem is like a random driveway that ends in three or four houses tucked back behind the houses along the streets. for some reason i had a lot of friends who lived on pipe stems. it’s like a cul-de-sac without the sac. down that first pipestem lived the Blackburns and they were awesome. always up for playing soccer or huge games of kick the can. plus, one year we built a mini golf course in their back yard.

but no one was home, or because it was 9:15 on a saturday morning they chose not to answer the door. so whitney and i continue on, down a great big hill and turning onto a cul-de-sac on the left where this kid adam lived. i knew adam from kindergarten and he had red hair and lots of freckles. he also had the largest collection of smurf figurines i have ever seen. and i have seen a lot of smurf figurine collections.

but he wasn’t home either, so went across the street to maggie’s house to see her hot brother who we always thought may have killed someone at some point in his life.

where sturbridge reunites with Orleans st., we turn left and oh, there’s the basketball court under the powerlines! this was where my mom would walk to to access the trails that ran down under the powerlines, to the creek where a beaver attacked my dog, all the way to Omisol Lake. which is weird because if you continued on past Lake Omisol, continued along the power lines, past the mattresses and crumbling chimneys filled with beer cans and used condoms, you would eventually get to the creek that flowed near our other house (the one i sort of grew up in–3rd grade on).

a few more houses after that, we come to another pipestem where this kid ryan lived, and no one was really friends with him, but he had a trampoline so we used him for it. the house next to his in the pipestem had two near-all-black german shepards named prince and king who scared the shit out of us…but we could face that fear in order to jump on the trampoline. on the other side of Orleans st from Ryan’s pipestem, lived Cheryl who was really fun, but later, in high school turned kind of crazy. i’m not talking like fun crazy, but like real crazy.

a bit further up, we find Mrs. Duncan’s house–who is one of my mother’s best friends. their yard had like two fruit bearing cherry trees which we used to climb and eat from all the time. BEWARE THE CHERRY WITH THE WORM. there is nothing worse than finding that one. the duncans lived on the corner of Orleans st. and a cul-de-sac whose name i can’t remember. I remember a bunch of nuns also lived on that cul-de-sac.

then continuing on Orleans right before the big hill to my house, we pass Jake’s house and Jake was this little dog who seemed to always run free and he would chase you on your bike as you passed and next to his was Mrs. Kostalucki’s house and she was my kindergarten teacher. she’s probably dead and buried now, but one time i ran over her dog’s foot on my bike. my bad. next to her house, there were the petruskys who i think had ducks? someone had ducks in their back yard and i think it was them. The Petruskys rented out a room to this guy that would always come out and ask you to punch him in the stomach and it always felt like he had a thick piece of plywood under his shirt because his stomach was hard as a rock. he also always seemed to have a beer in his hand.

finally, up the hill–wait, let’s walk our bikes cause my legs are tired–and we’re almost there. oh, shit, there’s that red headed Evans boy who lived next door. LETS BOOK! (that means, let’s get the hell out of there before he sees us).

sigh. well, that was fun. it’s 9:30 am. what should we do now? let’s just go around the block again.

oh sure, Siobhan Magnus was great and i think the best of the night, but let’s be real here. girl is weird. my next favorite was Michelle Delamore who was gorgeous and her voice was serviceable, but on a night where everyone kind of sucked, that’s not hard to do. i loved that on one of my (nerdy) idol blogs and forums, someone joking said “i think she gave me a makeover at the mac counter in miami.” ha.

then, after idol was over, i watched the ladies short program and uh, when did that sport suddenly get dominated by asians?

i did think that Joannie Rochette–the canadian skater whose mother passed away two days ago–did very well and currently sits in third place. Her breakdown after she finished and the subsequent overwhelming support from the home crowd was one of the more touching things i’ve seen on tv and that includes Puppy Bowl 6.

speaking of orphans, i’m going to go watch that supposedly terrible movie called Orphan. i already know the twist ending. she’s not an evil child. she’s an evil dwarf.

ok, so i helped a little bit. while he made homemade cupcakes and pizza dough, i topped those cupcakes with some duncan hines canned frosting (which i will be eating later with a spoon) and a spinach salad that i dumped out of a bag from the grocery store into a serving bowl. in my defense, however, i did add some feta cheese and i did make my own salad dressing AND, most importantly, HOMEMADE croutons. thank you very much.

the bed was made, the house clean and the flower arrangements complete (again, i made those). yes, i’ve discovered that i’m quite adept at arranging flowers. psst. the secret is scotch tape and i think i learned that on the Christopher Lowell show.

i don’t know what kind of flowers these are, but i like how it turned out:

these are some sort of daisies:

we can now add “florist” to my list of things i’m pretty-good-but-not-great-at.

so…the pizza. let’s just say that all promises of “never order pizza delivery again” were destroyed by our experience cooking pizza for our friends. not only did it take forever, but it made a mess of my kitchen unlike anything i have ever seen. my oven needs to be cleaned, and let me tell you, a red baron pizza or a homemade pizza co. pie or some reheated dominos does not do that to an oven. dough equals not fun.

this is mikey struggling with the dough. please note that my counter tops do not under any circumstances look like this on a day to day basis.

then scotty g puts down his class of wine to help out:

and they managed to come up with a test pie. or a test slug. it looks like a slightly unmotivated fifth grader’s science project wherein he had to create a ‘cell’.

fresh out the oven:

it was actually quite tasty. using Rao’s marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, a little oregano, some red and orange peppers, italian sausage and caramelized onions, our little test pizza was a success!

then we placed a bigger pie into the oven and had yet another success!!!!

so while everyone enjoyed their pizza and salad…

the topic of babies and adoption came up and mikey and i were informed that among several notable couples in our social circle, we ranked pretty low in the “soon to adopt a baby” rankings. and by low i mean last. now, i have never really discussed my desire to adopt or not adopt a baby of any kind other than the furry and four legged with any of my friends so for us to be ranked dead last seems odd…since i’ve never really discussed my feelings either way. with anyone.

and yes, it’s true that we probably do rank last since i don’t imagine purchasing one (because unless you get with a lez, you’re buying a baby either in travel, legal, or black market fees) in the next five, ten, twenty years, in fact, when i think of the future, i don’t really picture any kids in there with me and mikey. not that i’m against them. i love being an uncle and i think that’s enough for me. i have no paternal hankerings or longings. so does not talking about it mean we automatically rank last?

also, during said notification of our last place standing, the way in which the news was delivered had an undertone that reflected the fact that maybe the ranking was more than just who seemed most ready. i couldn’t help but feel there was an ability or quality or lifestyle judgement that affected our ranking. it wasn’t said outright, but it just seemed to be in there between the lines. and if that sentiment was–perhaps unintentionally–there, mikey and i would make far greater parents than either couple in this ranking, but all involved would make great parents anyway so what’s the point in ranking friends?

you know how straight girls have a sort of silent ‘race to the ring’ competition going on amongst themselves? well they do. i’ve witnessed it. it’s cutthroat and nasty. well, is there some sort of gay baby race thing going on now that i didn’t know about? cause that’s not a race i need to be a part of. baby’s ruin everything. goodbye good times! so long friends! check ya later, sleep and gym time! hellooooo spare tire and three a.m. feedings! top of the mornin’ to ya, eternal stench of sour milk and desperate calls for a babysitter so you can go to a movie once a month!

but don’t get me wrong, i like kids.

and then, while watching the coverage of the men’s snowboarding half pipe, i have to ask if it’s a law that all male snowboarders have to have long hair.

i discovered what delia is today, at least what her kind of mutt-ness is called. she’s half border collie and half labrador and someone somewhere came up with the name ‘borador’. cute. she’s a borador.

other than the balloon i may or may not have stolen from CVS (i paid for it, i think. i just don’t remember even being there), we decided that we would just go out for dinner and not do presents for VD. although…i did pick up a box of chocolates for mikey from ACKC over on 14th street:

uh, lets not talk about who has eaten most of them.

on friday, mikey invited a bunch of friends over to watch the opening of the olympics and by watching i mean seeing who could talk the loudest and make the wittiest gay comment the quickest. which is why i tend to avoid viewing parties of things i actually do want to watch like awards shows and awards shows.

notice me sitting on the couch straining to hear. alone.

to celebrate the olympics, mikey made a cookie cake with homemade, er, icing that he, uh, artfully formed into a sort of replica of the canadian flag:

surprisingly the whole thing was gobbled up. not surprisingly, it was all we offered to eat.

here are a couple of pictures of our host with some of the louder talkers. a third declined to be photographed since she looked like a scrub.

Timtation and Mikey:

Jersey Shore:

On saturday, mikey and i finally headed out of the house to the mall. i seriously needed to take the car out somewhere, anywhere, since it’s been sitting in the garage since last friday. i was going to return some new bedding i bought, but we opted to keep it as we couldn’t find anything else that we liked better and we seriously needed a new duvet cover. one, the old one was really really old and two it’s the same color as the walls and i either bought a new one or painted. it was a simple decision really.

later that evening mikey and i went out to dinner at Palette at the nearby Madison Hotel. it was pretty good. there was a dude celebrating VD with his mistress at the table next to us. mikey said that all guys celebrate VD on the 13th with their hos and then on the 14th with their wives.

i tried to get a nice photo of the two of us for the holiday but someone wouldn’t take it seriously:

i’m not saying who…

and then this is him taking it seriously and me getting seriously annoyed:

and we’re back to being obnoxious:

15. Taylor Dayne.

14. Robyn.

13. Michelle Williams. Beyonce ain’t even close to making this list.

12. Kelly Clarkson.

11. Dolly Parton.

10. Amanda Overmyer. I only have one album of hers, but have listened to it a bazillion times so i think that warrants her a spot on the list.

9. Belinda Carlisle. i’m sure she’ll move up soon once i get these new songs into rotation. if only i could care as much for her french language stuff she’s been putting out. i don’t think i will. ever.

8. Carrie Underwood.

7. Concrete Blonde. Again, I only have a few songs from each album, but i do love all of those songs and play them constantly.

6. Dixie Chicks.

5. Lady Gaga. She’s tricky because i have most of her music but most of it i hardly listen to, but the five or six songs that i love, i listen to a whole lot.

4. Britney Spears. if i’m being fair then i must include her on this list even though over have of the play counts are due to mikey.

3. Pink.

2. Sugarland.

1. Madonna. Obviously. i think even if i only listened to every madonna track i have ONE time, i have so many that with my very complex calculations, she would still end up on top. just like she likes it.