It seems appropriate that a mourning dove stopped by this morning. J took the dogs out at 6am this morning only to find that 3 baby starlings were on the deck. They’d fallen out of the nest that is in the eve of our house behind the gutter. Still alive, J picked them up and put them in a box. We can’t get to the nest to put them back in, but we’ll take them to the local wild bird rehab center today when they open. Other birds stopped by as usual this morning looking for food, and that’s when I snapped these photos.
After J’s birthday, we planned to take the friends to The Complex Night Club. We were warned it was under new management, but we didn’t listen. We arrived there around 10pm and the parking lot was empty. But it was pretty early for a Friday night, so we decided to go in anyway. And it was no cover charge before 11, so that rocked. The place did eventually begin to fill up, but with kids ranging from 18 to 20. Suddently, we were singled out at the bar like 8th grade chaperones at an 80s school dance. Club kids, clad in fingerless gloves, glitter, fauxhawks, polos and neck ties, Underroos, and knee high socks crowded around the dance floor with their glow sticks and bottles of water to watch the drag show.
The show was hosted by Siren. Click on her name to watch a video of her. She wasn’t too bad. But her cast mates were a Marilyn Manson wannabe named Nick October, some over make-up’ed queen whose name I can’t remember, and a short drag king named Ryan. Nick October had short hair, no boobs, and wore one piece pant suits low cut to show off his chest tattoos. He was quite scary. Like I said, Siren was okay, but my favorite had to be Ryan. He (she) was a stout little performer with a garage band attitude. In one of his numbers, he wore a Chinese/Russianesqe black and red uniform and danced around with a red paper umbrella. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what drag shows have come to!
Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties and flaunting around in my cuffed jeans with my bottle of water and glow necklace, drag queens had big boobs, big hair, and big camp. They weren’t these skinny, boobless, short hair, dominatrix-like kids. Don’t believe me? Here’s my old friend Allysun Wonderland from Memphis, Tennessee.
And here she is with another of my ole favs, Miss Beverly Hills…
Friday night I took J to Momo’s for his birthday. Five of our friends joined us for the celebration. Good food! Good drinks! Good laughs! Good times! J even got up and learned how to belly dance. Here are some highlights…
My favorite. It's been a while since we had a photo made.
Sunday night I watched the Tony’s. See my previous post about those. I had not watched them in years, so it was a lot of fun. I also went to see Angels and Demons with a friend that afternoon. I thought it was a good adaptation of the book overall although they did leave out quite a few minor characters. See my previous post about it too.
Monday, J returned from his weekend trip at about 11:30. I had already finished most of the laundry and housework by the time he arrived. Monday night we watched Showtime’s new show, Nurse Jackie. I thought it was pretty good, and I’d probably watch it again but it’s not a show I’m probably going to be hooked on.
Tuesday morning was spent waiting to take J to the dentist. His appointment to have a tooth pulled was at 3pm. I took a book to read while I waited in the waiting room. Also, while waiting, a mother and four small children arrived. One of the kids was a small baby who had just started walking, and apparently had also just messed his diaper. His mother preceded to sit down and fill out paperwork while her kids played on the floor and baby walked around smelling up the place. I was so close to saying something but managed to keep my cool. After about thirty minutes, she did go change baby. While she was gone, a dental assistant came out and sprayed Lysol. Another assistant then came out and got me and took me back to sit with J. His stubborn tooth finally came out in seven pieces. After bringing him home, I went to get soup and to get a prescription for pain meds filled for him. We watched Roseanne reruns till time for bed.
I’ve almost finished reading John Rechy’s Coming of the Night this week, only 44 pages left. I picked it up because it was mentioned in the last book I read. It’s not very good though, but I’m so close to finishing it now.
Wednesday was back to work for me. J took that day off to rest from the tooth pulling. We were anxious to see the Top 20 perform on So You Think You Can Dance. I kept getting pissed because the news kept cutting in to talk about bad weather approaching. Our lights actually went out at 9:30 that night, luckily after SYTYCD had ended, and were off till 4am.
Thursday night on the SYTYCD results show, we said good-bye to Tony and Paris. I totally agreed with the bottom 3 couples, so any of them leaving was okay with me. Here is Tony and Paris’s performance…
Friday was the end of my short 3 day work week. It was also John’s birthday! We celebrated after work by going to Momo’s that Greek restaurant I raved about in a post last month. Afterwards, we went to the Complex, and boy was it ever. More about the birthday and the Complex in my next post.
Saturday was spent recovering from Friday night. I did do some shopping for a friend’s birthday gift. Saturday night we watched a movie called The Uninvited. It was awesome. It reminded me of movies like Hush, Hand that Rocks the Cradle, or Sixth Sense. Definitely worth seeing if you like suspense.
I was surprised today to see that my book, Stealing Wishes, has finally made it to #1 in Amazon’s Gay Fiction Community. Thanks to everyone who has voted and helped get it up there! Hopefully this exposure will create a few more sales!
I watched the Tony Awards last night. It’s the first time I’ve watched them in forever. It was great to see Elton John and Liza Minelli both preform. They were both in the opening number briefly. Liza actually won another Tony for Liza’s At the Palace. She still looks great!
Elton didn’t win for Billy Elliot’s music, but Billy Elliot did win for Best Actor in a Musical and Best Musical. The lead in Billy Elliot is played by three boys, so they made history by all winning for Best Actor.
Hair won for Best Revival of a Musical.
I thought the Shrek number was hilarious. Very clever costumes!
And kudos to Constantine Maroulis (American Idol) for being nominated for Rock of Ages.
Neil Patrick Harris was the host. Why? I have no idea. You didn’t even see him that much although he did close the show with a song.
Alice Ripley won Best Actress in a musical for Next to Normal, and it was this performance that I was most impressed with.
I went to see Angels and Demons today. If you read my blog, you know this was the first book I read this year. While the movie didn’t stay true to the book (Do they ever?), it didn’t stray from the main storyline much either. Overall, it was a decent adaptation that nonreaders are sure to enjoy.
It’s interesting to see what characters Hollywood writers focus on and which ones are crucial to the book’s plot, but don’t make it onto the screen. Vittoria’s father played a huge part in the beginning of the book in the antimatter plot, but is never mentioned in the movie. In fact, the whole antimatter story which took up about 100 pages in the book is quickly summed up in five minutes at the beginning of the movie which kind of took away from the overall seriousness of it. I was also disappointed to find they left out the head of CERN completely. While he is not mentioned in a big portion of the book, his wheelchair camera was an important part of revealing the bad guy. The movie took a lot of focus off of CERN completely, and put more focus on someone inside the Vatican being responsible for the events. Speaking of bad guys, the villian doing all the kidnapping and killing was not portrayed much as an evil guy at all. He doesn’t even kidnap Vittoria in the movie; instead, he walks away from Vittoria and Langdon when they finally confront him.
One part of the book also focused on two reporters that were following the action as a subplot in the book. In the movie, there was no focus on any set of reporters in particular. Instead, there were only scenes of different reporters from different countries reporting the news from St. Peter’s Square at different scene breaks. It was clever to see how each reporter was reporting something different back to their homeland than the others, and when news of events was released it had been altered from the truth that had actually taken place. A great metaphor for religion, science, history, and society today!
Also, in the book, all four cardinals who were kidnapped are successfully killed. In the movie, the last cardinal survives and becomes Pope in the end. Perhaps they changed this so that the one underlying event taking place throughout the movie and book (picking a new Pope) is given closure.
While this was Dan Brown’s first book featuring Robert Langdon as a characters, it’s interesting that The Da Vinci Code caused more of a stir among churches and got much more publicity than Angels and Demons did. I thought Angels and Demons was just as rivoting when it comes to the book. The movie, not so much, but it was still good and I highly recommend it. Tom Hanks was his usual self, but I like him and don’t think I’ve seen a movie of his that I didn’t like. Missing storylines and characters, or not, I still enjoyed the movie and I’m glad I saw it.
Sunday this week was pretty uneventful. I prefer them that way. J and I did a bit of shopping. We went to Old Time Pottery where he bought some metal artwork for our living room and bedroom walls. We also finally bought a metal celestial sun for the back of the house. We’ve been wanting one forever. We made a trip to Gamestop for him to buy a few games for the X-Box 360. I’m not much of a player, but I like to watch. LOL That sounds perverted, I know. We also stopped at the farmer’s market for some fruit for the week, where I bought a pineapple. I’d never bought a real pineapple before, the whole thing anyway, but I couldn’t resist because they were so cheap. And I mainly wanted it so I can cut off the top and attempt to pot it.
Monday was a pretty uneventful day outside of being the start to another work week. Why is there no good television on Monday nights? Tuesday is pretty much the same way. We had a wicked storm mid afternoon on Tuesday that happened right when I was on my way back to work from lunch. Several tree limbs were blown down around the neighboorhood, including an entire tree in one of neighbor’s yards adjacent to our back yard, which they have not yet cleaned up.
Thank goodness for Wednesday. Not only was it a payday, but it was also Vegas week on So You Think You Can Dance. Thursday night they revealed the final top 20 dancers.
And I have to admit I lost just a little bit of my love I had for Mia Michaels after the way she treated Brandon last night. Before revealing he’d made it into the Top 20, she really ripped him apart. “I just don’t get you,” is all she could say rather than actually offering him useful criticism. Luckily, Debbie Allen and Mary Murphy, and even Nigel, came to his defense and finally gave him some positive words before revealing he’d actually made it. Thank you, Mary! Watch the video and judge for yourself….
So, it’s Friday! TGIF! J has a weekend trip to the lake planned with a friend and won’t be back till Monday. It’s going to be a nice long weekend for me in which I hopefully plan to get some writing done. We both took off next Monday and Tuesday, so it’s going to be a nice four day weekend for both of us.
I went to see Angels and Demons today. If you read my blog, you know this was the first book I read this year. While the movie didn’t stay true to the book (Do they ever?), it didn’t stray from the main storyline much either. Overall, it was a decent adaptation that nonreaders are sure to enjoy.
