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"Cirrhosis" is the New Black

4/28/2013

A plastic philodendron xanadu

"What a lovely shade of existentialism you're wearing!"

I was shopping for a new backpack this morning when I found a blue one I liked. It was just what I wanted - nice material, the right amount of pockets, wide shoulder straps. When I flipped it over to read the price tag, I noticed the color name next to the bar code. It read: overcast.

On seeing this, I took a quick look at the color names on other backpack styles. The red was something like, sanguine. The brown was simply, luggage. Black was midnight. The grey - dove - was more in the ballpark, but still, they couldn't just say "grey." Elsewhere in the department, blue, red, brown, and gray (and many other colors) were described in terms that had nothing to do with their appearance. THINK FAST - what color is sunset? Is it orange? Yellow? Bluish-purple?

It was as though someone took a thesaurus and used every synonym, except for the original color. And this phenomena continued - in not just other departments - but in other retailers, from bras to pants to expensive porcelain china. Nothing was taken at face value. It was as though the original Crayola 8-pack box had never even existed. "And there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it," I thought as I carried my overcast backpack home. "Somebody needs to come up with some ground rules, so overly-creative color descriptions can have a little consistency."

So, with that in mind, may I suggest the following:

Traditional colors are best described in medical terms:

Red...arterial
Green...nausea
Yellow...jaundice
Blue...varicose
Purple...trauma
Brown...melanoma
Black…cavity (cavity)
White...vertebrae

Softer traditional colors/pastels should be described with food:

Pink (light)...lunch meat
Pink (dark)...bologna
Light Green...absinthe
Light Yellow...cheese
Light Blue...syrup
Deep Purple...liver

Colors whose names also describe the "thing" that inspired them should be renamed in vague, confusing, completely-unrelated abstracts:

Lavender…philanthropy
Peach...metaphor
Orange…purification
Lime…Oedipal
Orchid...shame
Rose...melancholy
Silver...angst
Gold…onomatopoeia

If we all agree to follow a few basic color-name rules, all of our lives will be a lot less philodendron xanadu.

(I'm using plant names in place of adjectives, btw.)

2 Comments

Top Ten List #2

4/24/2013

1 Comment

The Lego table is round, like a petri dish

Top Ten List:
Reasons for the Empty LEGO Table:

QUICK NOTE: Most bookstores now have a "Lego Table," a neat little place for kids to play with Lego blocks (encouraging a toy purchase). The table is short, round, and contains six deep compartments stocked with oversized Legos. Hundreds of children play with these blocks each week, and periodically - like any popular public toy - those Legos need to be run through the dishwashers to avoid the next HOT ZONE outbreak.

With that in mind, here are some fun (fictional) suggestions for why the Legos might be missing. Imagine being a customer, and overhearing two booksellers talking to each other, unbeknownst that you are listening <eg>:

1. Do we have any idea how long the nest was there?
2. Well, I suppose those little holes in the blocks are the perfect place for eggs.
3. Yeah, But how could it have bitten a child? I mean, not to sound harsh, but why wouldn't it have used it's stinger?
4. Well that's fifty shades of disgusting.
5. Oh, God...and to think of how long it went unrefrigerated.
6. You know, that's why we have a diaper changing station in the restroom. And a trash can for that matter. And I'm sorry, but did you say a colostomy bag?
7. Holy shit. I mean, we all thought that sound was a baby's rattle.
8. I can't believe there was enough blood for a sample. Are we sure it was HIV?
9. Ok, I know it's gross, but just out of curiosity, how many Legos was she able to fit inside?
10. I know you can make your own cars, trucks, houses, city buildings, Star Wars playlets, Harry Potter castles, and even pirate ships out of Legos. But this has to be the first time ever that someone made toilet paper. (Chuckling.) And they used both white and red pieces...

Damn, that must have hurt.

1 Comment

If You Build It, The Gays Will Come

4/21/2013

2 Comments

Just up the street from my house sits the old Northgate shopping center. It's a rambling outdoor retail mall built during the Mad Men era, and 40 years ago, the place must have been spectacular.

From 1962 through the early 1990s, Northgate had three major anchors, 30+ specialty stores, a movie theater, a two-story bank, several bars & restaurants, a huge private hardware store with multiple floors, and a free-standing ice cream barn open during summer. Judging from the parking lots - two in front and five in back - the mall was the epitome of modern suburban shopping.

Today's Northgate plaza is almost a ruin. Two of its anchors have closed completely, and the one that remains is on its third tenant. The bank's drive-through windows are broken, and the few occupied specialty stores include a pawn shop, liquor store, tobacco shop, nail salon, a Family Dollar, and an Army recruiting center. The last two restaurants are low-end Chinese, and one (a buffet) actually caught fire last year. The theater's roof is collapsing. Weeds reclaim the back parking lots every spring. The ice cream barn is somehow still standing, but the rotting structure is clearly unfit for occupancy -

"50" is the new "30" my ASS.

It always pisses me off when malls like Northgate fall into disrepair. To me, these places are history, and I envision their modern potential. If I had the bucks, I'd revamp the entire complex - using the present strip malls of Sun City, AZ (built in 1960) as inspiration.

Let me explain:

Sun City's original strip malls are also obsolete, but they've all been reimagined as clean, kitschy, well-merchandised thrift stores that attract shoppers from throughout the Phoenix area. Northgate has a nice thrift store now (in one of the old anchors), but its specialty is furniture - which means there are opportunities for other/different "specialized" thrift stores (including high-end). Ultimately, all businesses are welcome - provided they maintain a cleanliness curb-appeal. No dirty windows. No cluttered sidewalks.

On the backside of Northgate, I'd encourage businesses that directly benefit the community - like a BIG Laundromat (with Cable TV, steam-iron tables, and a kids playground), a Hispanic Bookstore/Newsstand, a place for teens to go at night (like a hip community center with realistic activities), and of course, a great local hair/nail salon. An Internet cafe is a must. I'd also like to see a comic shop with game nights.

Finally, in order for this to work, the New Northgate plaza needs a nice, neighborhood, Cheers-y gay bar. This city is full of gay people (just look at the BNSF Metra on Pride day), and there is absolutely no reason for Aurora's continuing homophobia. I suggest the pub be located at the back of the mall, within the old theater - the icing on the cake for a restored/revitalized, and totally retro-modern Northgate. Gays love shit like this, and if done correctly, Northgate could be a Mecca for the gay community throughout the entire western suburbs - and that's an investment in Aurora that would never stop paying off.

If you build it, the gays will come with their credit cards.

2 Comments

The Stoner, the Psycho, the Trick, and the Drunk

4/20/2013

1 Comment

In hindsight, I should have been a bit more more concerned -
- when I saw the body at the bottom of the basement stairs.

I should explain.

A naked ass was the first thing I saw, when I came up the second-floor stairs a good ten hours earlier. Sure, it was a young naked ass, but it was anything but a pretty naked ass. It was the kind of naked ass that you see on rough-trade guys, whores who've been fucked so many times, they can't even feel toys anymore - unless, of course, the dildo was lubed with Tabasco Sauce.

The ass was the guest of my roommate - a renter I'll call "the Stoner." The Stoner was talking to my second roommate - a medicated, bipolar, schizo-affective "Psycho" - and the two were discussing the possibility of a three-way with the "ass" - hereby known as the "Trick. " The Stoner wanted to tag-team the Trick (with the Psycho), but the Psycho didn't want to because he felt the Trick was a "train wreck" (based on his experience hooking up with the Trick almost three years before). I came into this discussion at the tail end, and once the Stoner & Trick saw me eavesdropping, the conversation stopped cold and they returned to their rooms. I was left alone to stare at the Trick, and his mouth full of gingivitis.

This all happened at roughly 4pm on a Thursday.
I'm the "Drunk," btw…

Fast-forward ten hours to two in the morning. I'm asleep in my first-floor bedroom, when I hear a CRASH from my living room. Upon investigating, I find the Trick - wasted - giving crabs to my couch, next to a broken lamp and a spilled potted plant. He's holding a damaged iPad, and I don't know if he had just broken it now - or if the glass had shattered earlier, during sex. Whatever the case, he looked at me and - yecch - smiled. I scowled disapprovingly, and returned to my bedroom in silence.

Ten minutes later, a second crash occurred when the Trick stumbled into my bedroom, having mistaken my frown for an erection. I shouted "GET OUT!" from the bed, and the dude staggered backwards into the dining room, slamming my table and chairs into the wall. I heard him recover, then lurch into the kitchen. The Trick somehow managed to pull the drapes from the wall before losing his balance and falling down the basement stairs (and into the pool of water & bleach, described in my previous blog). "Protecting my property value" was the ONLY thing that made me get up to check on him, and I found myself standing on top of the stairs, staring at what was indeed a train wreck…especially when I noticed that the Trick's big toenail had come off during the fall.

I suspect that happened due to fungus.

I suppose that at this particular moment, most people would have done something like…oh gosh, I don't know…CHECKED TO SEE IF HE WAS OKAY. But the only thought that crossed my mind was: "Seriously...I got out of bed for this?" I stood on top of the stairs in silence, my eyes following the debris trail of Hamburger Helper boxes and canned vegetables. (We use that stairwell as a pantry.)

What bothered me most about the experience wasn't that a person might have injured himself. It was the fact that - at the tender age of 44 - this event was something normal to me, a common enough occurrence that I didn't even shrug my shoulders. I've battled alcoholism myself for 21 years, and God knows I've had my share of embarrassing moments. But even as a drunk, I felt no sympathy at all as I saw this dude in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, his clothes growing lighter as the bleach ruined the color.

I was disgusted - not for him, but in myself.

1 Comment

My Basement Floor, Wet With Heavenly Father's Salvation

4/18/2013

1 Comment

The Book of Mormon, www.chicagonow.com

"Why are you punishing ME?" I yelled at God this morning -
"I'm not the one who gave Jesus a costume of Christmas lights!"

In the spirit of full disclosure, I wasn't really yelling at God. I was actually yelling at my basement ceiling, imagining that God was a few floors up, beyond the roof, beyond the clouds, and definitely beyond all the thunder & lightning.

I was standing alone in my laundry room, with cold, wet, bare feet and just enough water on the floor to cause a problem. It's been raining for several days in Chicago, and the last 24 hours have been plagued with violent thunderstorms, flooded underpasses, and overflowing storm drains. My house has an old stone-walled basement, but as it sits on top of a hill, it's also dry...or at least, it used to be. But as of this morning I've lost all bragging rights to a dry basement - and for that, I blame Sexy Jesus.

"I think God's angry at us for seeing Book of Mormon," I joked, as we drove to the old Shubert theater through wall after wall of water last night. I was with a friend and his partner, and the three of us were heading into the city for dinner and a show. The storms were so powerful, we couldn't even see the skyline, and Chicago just sort of "appeared" in our headlights, dark shapes of buildings outlined by lightning. We ran from the car, to the restaurant, and later, to the theater. Apparently, it rained throughout the show as well, but if we did hear thunder, we assumed it was part of the score.

Book of Mormon was amazing, the funniest musical I've ever seen (and better than The Producers). I won't rehash the show's great reviews - I really can't add anything to what others have already said - but I will say that I enjoyed the musical's many (unexpected) "visual gags," including Jesus in twinkling Christmas lights, and an X-ray showing a book (of Mormon) shoved up someone's ass.

But I still think it's no coincidence that after laughing so hard, I awoke to find a world of water damage - like Stephen Baxter's Flood. The Catholic in me feels guilty whenever I allow myself to have fun...and watching Jesus dance with Hitler, Jonny Cochran, & Jeffery Dahlmer was enough to make even Seth MacFarlane wince, and most definitely...fun.

Totally worth the wet feet, and the melancholy that always follows seeing gay men half my age who never knew the sadness of the nineties.

1 Comment

The Dukes of Hamburg

4/15/2013

3 Comments

"What happened to Shain Gandee isn't a human tragedy-
it's a story from the goddamn Darwin Awards."

I love it when I make a joke that I know is friggin' hysterical, but rather than laughter it's met with crickets - as people are too politically correct to acknowledge that something's funny. I wasn't a fan of Buckwild - I haven't watched MTV since the 80s - and the only reason I even know the show existed was because the reality star's passing made the Drudge Report (just below the news from Pyonyang that Kim Jung Ugh was reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally going to launch his missiles this time).

But once I read of Gandee's death, not only did I spit out my coffee, I couldn't help but think of the Darwin Awards books: stupid people die in stupid ways, removing themselves from the gene pool. I mean, muddin' after last call...and then accidentally axfixiating three people including yourself. How is that not complete and total stupidity...and how is that not funny?

In fact, the story of how Buckwild came to be reminds me of David Sedaris's "Based on a True Story," from the essay collection, Holidays on Ice. In the essay, Sedaris describes a sleazy Hollywood producer who commandeers a backwoods church service (after a horrible local tragedy) to pitch a made-for-TV movie based on events. I'd like to see Sedaris rewrite Based on a True Story For the Buckwild survivors, only this time, not hold so much back.

Speaking of Sedaris, I was reminded of him yesterday when I read a story involving Justin Beiber and the late Anne Frank. I don't have the quote handy, but after signing the guest book at Anne Frank's house, Beiber said something like, "If she were alive today, I think Anne Frank would be a Beiber girl." ( Sedaris once wrote an essay about buying/redecorating the Anne Frank house). Though not a Darwin Awards moment, I still smiled at how the singers casual remark became bigger news than North Korea. I didn't spit out my coffee this time, but I have high hopes that Beiber himself will go muddin' someday...at three in the morning after last call, with Kim Jung Yuck in the passenger seat.

If Anne Frank were alive, she'd totally LOL.

3 Comments

Top Ten List

4/10/2013

91 Comments

Top Ten List:
Children's Books That Didn't Quite Make it to the Publisher

1. Charlotte's Website
2. Frog and Toad are, err..."Roommates"
2. The Little Meth House on the Prairie
3. Diary of a Gimpy Kid
4. The Little Engine That Couldn't Say No
6. Thomas the Tranny
7. Fancy-Boy Nancy
8. The Little Drummer Magazine Boy
9. The Hardly Boys
10. Harold and the Throbbing Purple Crayon

91 Comments

No Wonder Mr. Brady Liked Sears

4/9/2013

1 Comment

So, I'm taking a dump in a public restroom when I notice that someone wrote SUCK ME on the back of the stall door. "Now that takes me back, "I thought with a smile, remembering those days before the Internet, when bathroom sex was common.

When I was a teen, almost everyone knew about the "cruisy" toilets, and closeted gay men wrote messages on walls. Any dude with a Damron could grab a quick blow-job at Sears, and with all that flying semen, it's no wonder that we're all told now to wash our hands after using the bathroom. (Gay bathroom sex was even mentioned in this past week's Mad Men.)

"You just don't see graffiti like that anymore," I admired to myself, wiping & standing, and pulling up my pants. "Bathroom stall artwork is a craft from another era…and these kids today have no idea what life was like before computers, cell phones, and even small pagers."

Cold-cruising 80s-style is a long forgotten art, and that goes for more than just restrooms. I remember a time when sex was abundant, and available in rest stops, public parks, dirty bookstores...and the I-90 Oasis, just after the evening's rush hour. Nowadays, a toilet is just a toilet, rather than a forum for gays to meet & greet, with the ambience of endless possibilities.

I thought about that when I flushed.

Out of complete and total boredom during last week's three-day weekend, I installed "Grindr," an iPad app. Grindr makes even cell phones obsolete, and within two minutes of signing up, I was staring at no less than 30 different guys...all in the immediate area, and all looking to get it on as soon as humanly possible.

As a 44 year old man, I was clearly in the minority; most of the dudes were late teens/early 20s, with photos taken from high school. But gotta' love the gays...even age couldn't stop my "new meat" status, and within 10 minutes, my chat box was full. And as a man who finds intelligence & wit more attractive than looks, I was, indeed, taken by what I found:

"Hey."
"Sup?"
"Yo."
"Dude."
"Hey sup dude u wanna fuk?"

"There will never be another Oscar Wilde my ass," I thought…

You know, It's amazing how conveniences that are meant to bring us closer are often the things that make us feel that much lonelier.

I really should write that on a bathroom wall, sometime.

1 Comment

Dog Shit is the New Black

4/4/2013

1 Comment

So, I'm standing in line at the grocery store when I notice that the guy in front of me has dog shit smeared on his pants.

The dude was a big guy, 30s, heavyset, shaped like a flesh-colored snowman. He was white, bald with a shaggy beard, and he had a ring of oily red hair that connected his ears across the back. He was dressed all in black - a shapeless T shirt, baggy sweatpants & crocks - which made the dog shit stand out that much more. When I looked closer at his clothing, I noticed that he was also covered in dog hair. Between the hair, the shit, and the pantihose-stuffed-with-Crisco muscle tone, this guy was literally one of the ugliest men I've ever seen, and totally fodder for The People of Wal Mart site.

And I couldn't help but notice that he was buying lube...

Speaking as a man who's not in great shape himself, it's hard to look attractive once you get past 40. I've learned to soften the flab by hiding behind heavy starch, wide belts, and oversized shirts...and when I do wear a T-shirt by itself, it's always thick cotton. I don't dress up to go to the grocery store, but I also take a moment to pause in front of the mirror before leaving to make sure I don't look hideous. So far, I'd like to think I've succeeded.

I have a cat myself, so I know the efforts that must be taken to avoid leaving the house in a fur coat. My cat is ancient - I have photos of her on my biography page - and she reminds me of The Peanuts' "PigPen" because she's always surrounded by a cloud of hair. Josie (my cat) is 20 years old, and she occasionally leaves bonbons on the carpet, when she can't quite make the litterbox. I forgive her accidents because of age, but I also clean them up immediately…and never - I repeat, never - have encountered any shit that sticks to my clothing. But this guy did. And it was so wet, it smeared. And apparently it was so common an occurrence, he didn't even think to look at his clothes before leaving the house.

WHO LIVES LIKE THAT? Seriously, I want to know.

Sorry for talking about dog crap, but I really needed to vent.

1 Comment

How NOT to be Sexually Attractive in a Retail Store

4/3/2013

1 Comment

"Do you think that your wife would find you sexually attractive Right now, Sir?"

It always amazes me when I'm shopping in a retail store, and I see a grown man raise a stink about a minor policy issue. Let me repeat that: a GROWN MAN shouting at the clerk, as though the employee had just spat on his kid - or copped a feel of customer's daughter. And its usually something to do with a return:

"It's not MY fault!" the customer whines. "How was I supposed to know about your return policy? Did you expect me to read the receipt?" I chuckle as I watch these alpha-dudes rattle on and on at Target or Penny's, especially when they never consider about how they actually appear to female onlookers...or to the gay men who are standing right in front of them. I often wonder why observers are thinking:

"You're such a STUD, the way you belittled that clerk!"
"When you threatened to call corporate, it made me HARD!" (Or wet, if you're a girl.)
"(Cough, cough!). Sir, please I can't BREATHE through your billowing clouds of testosterone!"

When a female manager takes a complaint like this, just once I'd like to see her clear the counter with a sweep of an arm, mount the surface, spread her legs and scream, "TAKE ME, TAKE ME, TAKE ME!" ...especially if the dude's in the store with his girlfriend or family. "I WANT YOU INSIDE ME!"

If I were the Wal Mart MOD when that happened, I'd totally give the guy a refund.

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Dave'sBlogArchive2013 - 2018A Gay Man's Life in the Suburbs - and Beyond.

Dave's
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2013 - 2018

A Gay Man's Life in the Suburbs - and Beyond.