I had a very intense day at work. That's not a bad thing, it was fun selling my wares to people that are excited about what they are going to do for a New Year's Eve or NY's Day party.

I love it when people are in a party mood and want to know what to do with food and wine to make it a fabulous night! I know all of the answers, well many of them anyway, and it gives me a lot of pleasure to give them the tips that will make it easy for them to impress their friends and have a good time doing it.

When someone comes back in a week or so and tells me that "everything worked out so well and everyone loved it! Thank you! The party was great! You're amazing!", well, that makes me feel good.

And I know that they will be back for more, (There's about a hundred people that come to ask me about what to do now fairly regularly during the party seasons).

Of course, that's the idea; I am in the biz of selling this stuff, but it's nice to know that during certain times of the year, there are these people at parties having a good time and telling the host or hostess, "OMG, this is amazing! Where did you get it? What is the recipe? What is this, it's incredible!"

When someone thanks you like that, it's sweet.

My resolutions for the New Year?

I resolve to do more of that sort of thing this year, because it makes me happy.

I resolve also, to do more of this same sort of thing for someone outside of my work, because that might make me happier.

I resolve to be flexible in my plans, in my life, in my work, no matter where it takes me.

I resolve to treasure my friends and family and to visit them whereever they might be whenever I can.

I resolve to spend some very good time this year with my beautiful red headed kids; my niece and my nephew...

I resolve to work hard enough and be smart enough to make some serious money this year.

I resolve to not go to a gym under any circumstances, but to do my floor exercises every day.

I resolve to not have exactly the same hair color for more than three months at a time.

I resolve that I will finally buy eye-glasses, and they will mostly be for reading, but they will be pricey English made round shaped frames with amber colored acetate rims and I will look fabulous in them.

Furthermore:

I will find a hat that suits me perfectly.

I will travel a lot.

I will move up in my work and enjoy every minute.

I will visit Ireland again and go to The George and every other gay pub in Dublin.

I will fall in love again.

Someone will fall in love with me.

well, there...



durlx

Well, it was a fabulous Christmas day!



I went over to Robert's house around two and met Richard and Virgil and Joe there. We exchanged gifts and I must say that Robert out did himself this year! I got a pair of very thin portable speakers, a stack of recordable CDs, a really hot pair of biking gloves, and best of all, he knitted me a scarf. No one else has ever knitted something for me before... and it's just the right colors and just the right length. It's so perfect!

I also got some socks from Richard and a "candle garden" from Virgil and Joe.

We sat down to a very good meal; roast beef and eight vegetable dishes, everything done just right. I washed it all down with a champagne from New Mexico... yea, there is a very respectable champagne from NM! Gruet. It's quite the find.

So, while we were eating, we suddenly noticed that the clickity noise of the sleet had stopped. And we heard someone yelling outside.

It was SNOWING!



We were all totally delerious, about this, as was Robert, as you can see. In the twenty five years that I've lived here, it has only really snowed three times, and this is only the second time that the snow has stuck a bit on the ground. A fukin' Christmas miracle! As we stood out on Robert's front steps, we heard people just screaming out loud from all over the neighborhood, screaming! ... it was amazing.



Here's a movie of it.

We went back in and back to the table. The conversation over the meal was smart and clever; I wish I had more time to spend with these guys than I do... they are all intelligent men, very sharp and quick and fun to talk with.

Yea, it was really good day...

Hope that your day was really good as well.


durlx

Spoken: GOOD EVENING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. IT'S TRULY
A REAL HONORABLE EXPERIENCE TO BE HERE THIS EVENING.
A VERY WONDERFUL AND WARM AND EMOTIONAL MOMENT FOR
ALL OF US. AND I'D LIKE TO SING A SONG: FOR ALL OF
YOU.

It's Christmas in Heaven,
All
the children sing,
It's Christmas in Heaven,
Hark hark those church bells ring.
It's Christmas in Heaven,
The snow falls from the sky...
But it's nice and warm and everyone
looks smart and wears a tie.
It's Christmas in Heaven,
There's great fil
ms on TV...
`The Sound of Music' twice an hour
And `Jaws' I, II, and III.
There's gifts for all the family,
There's toiletries and trains...
There's Sony Walkman Headphone sets
And the latest video games.
It's Christmas it's Christmas in Heaven!
Hip hip hip hip hip hooray!
Every single day,
Is Christmas day.

It's Christmas it's Christmas in Heaven!
Hip hip hip hip hip hooray!
Every single day,
It's Christmas day.

First of all...



The pic of the front of the house, the "retro look", but after Sammy and Mike added the lights to the overgrown bush. (btw, I am trying out more colors for the text... I am so color blind... let me know if it's horrible).

Here's a family pic...



It's a pic of my sister, my brother and my niece in the pool of that cruise ship they all got to go on, with my sis-in-law and the totally adorable lil' Evan in the foreground. I love tham all dearly, but this pic of Evan just gives me total Uncle Bunny fits... he is sooo cute!



I can't believe that I forgot to watch Saturday Night live tonight!

Colin Ferrell was hosting and The Scissor Sisters were the musical guests! OMFG! I hope someone taped it! Colin was dreamy in "The Home at the End of the World"; he's such a big star and it's hard not to look at him closely on screen... but



...Lil' Jake Shears, the very, very gay lead singer for the Scissor Sisters is such lil' hottie!

And did I mention that he is sooo gay? How gay you might ask?

Well, for this kind of info, it's always important to go to a good source, and there's one resource for salascious news that always seems to provide what you need.

FleshBot! A very erudite source of sleazy info and one that I think must be extremely trustworthy as the editor, John d'Addario lives in my neighborhood. He was recently featured in the local Bywater rag and I think I would like to meet him, if he ever gets to leave his post at the high bandwidth computer station he must use to source out all this delicious material. Don't have anything to report about his personal habits. I'm not sure which team he bats for; but editorially, he seems to treat all perversions with equal glee. Straight titalation gets a lot of play here, but Gay is not ignored.

For example, this mention of a website called "Hispandex".

"Spandex might have gotten a bad rap over the years (thank you, Richard Simmons), but on those who abide by the old chestnut about it being a privilege, not a right, it can be sexy in the right circumstances. That said, we can't say that everyone on this site is doing his part to rehabilitate this much-maligned fabric (or is even wearing it, for that matter)�but if you simply appreciate the pervy thrill of checking out guys on the beach who don't know they're being photographed, we guess it really doesn't matter what kind of bathing suit they're wearing."

Bwahaha! Smart and funny writing about smut. What more can you ask for?

Wellllll, how about a link to pics of Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters... right here. Do a search for Jake Shears and see what comes up. Or anyone else that comes to mind for that matter.

My fav X-mas songs.

Right now... x-mas songs by Rockapella, (you should hear these guys), Manhatten Transfer (sublime), any Ella, (but especially "Santa Claus Got Stuck In My Chimney", yuk yuk), Bing for good measure, Aaron Neville, (our local angel), Elvis, (Santa Claus Is Back In Town!), the Ravonettes, a few songs by the Blind Boys of Alabama, (but they scare me a bit), all of an old album called "The 1926 Wurlitzer Band Organ , Carousel Christmas" (because it was recorded from a band organ in my favorite amusement park, Seabreeze, near Rochester, NY, ... a fire in 1994 destroyed this amazing machine and the historic PTC carousel I grew up with...), "Christmas Time's A'Coming" by Emmylou Harris, and when it all gets toooo sentimental, I play all of Bob River's "Twisted Christmas" albums. They are a delightful relief from too much holiday spirit; totally nasty and brilliant parodies of any and almost every x-mas song you've ever heard.

My I-Pod.

It's an eclectic collection... what? you couldn't tell from my x-mas collection? But that's what's great about the i-pod; it takes all of this in and organizes it!

....into catagories, albums, genres, artists, and "playlists" which I get to set up, and then have the option to choose random play so I never know what's coming up next. I've filled up about 20 percent of it's capacity, (about four days of music!), and I keep finding more stuff. Unlike the old way I used to collect music, I would buy a CD and then lose it or forget it. i-pod remembers everything and where it is, and it fits in my pocket. More important; it sits on my desk, a lil' juke box with everything I want to hear right dere.

Films, this week.

This week I watched "Bad Santa". Leave it up to the Coen Brothers to come up with a story like this about a self hating alcoholic thief with a midget partner in crime, who finds a soft spot for a very strange lil' kid. Billy Bob Thorton is brilliant in this film, prolly the only actor who could have gotten away with such an unsavory role, but everyone in the film does well, and especially the strange lil' kid. He's great. But this is not a "feel good film". It has it's very funny moments, but it will not make you happy for the holidays.

I also watched "Party Monster" again, and enjoyed it. I love Seth Green and he plays a veeery gay part here, some of this film is very amusing. Some of it is not, but Macaulay Culkin, well, it's hard not to look at him, especially in the scenes after he gets out of rehab and hosts a party dressed in some strategically placed bandages and you get to see his butt. You know, Culkin is a film actor, the camera gets him and you have to look. Just wonder what mister homo alone will be able to do with his adult career...

On deck for this weekend, "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" which I saw when it first came out, but it deserves a second viewing. One of my team members handed me a copy of "Elf", and assured me that I was wonderfully funny... we'll see.

And I have a copy of "Neverland". The gay one from last year, not the new one.

Which reminds me... the other night at work, two of the guys were talking about Chris Rock's take on Micheal Jackson, about Micheal showing up twenty minutes late for court and "dressed like Captain Crunch!" perfect.


Well, that's it, the beginning of the fourth year of this journal. I tried doing a diary, a journal a lot of times before, but I never had any success with this journal thing until I put my ass online; suddenly, I had to produce.

And over the years, a few people have told me that it meant something to them. Recently, someone told me that I inspired them to start their own blog. This is good; how many times do you get to inspire someone to write... yeah, that's really good.

BTW, Noah needs your thoughts and whatever you can send his way in that respect. He's apparently in a coma and that's a bit scary for this rather extraordinary young man that many people have come to know and love on the net.

Special thanks to GC of GayCams and BadPuppy for hosting the message board these last three years.

And here's a blast from the past...

Parade Movie


hehe, seems like a long time ago.....


durlx

Christmas.

I got home from work this evening and put up the lights for this year. I decided that I wanted big ol' C-9 lights, the ones that were the only "outdoor lights" when I was a kid.

(There will be a picture here sooner or later with Robert standing on the steps in awe of the holiday display... having trouble with the ftp this evening, don't have a clue why!)

So, I bought three 30 light sets of C-9 lights in "traditional colors", which would be perfect for the look I wanted this year, sort of retro. It wasn't until I got home and looked at the boxes, that I realized that the three sets drew 600 watts total; sort of like running a small space heater on the front steps! Oh, what the hell, it's X-Mas...

Anyway, they look just fine. As I was putting them up and some of the lights were lit, Robert and I were looking at the results and one of our older neighbors came by on the way to a concert at the cathedral in Jackson Square. He stopped to talk for a bit and said that the lights looked "very sturdy". We both found this comment rather oddly amusing.

I may add a thing or two to the ensemble. I have those rubber rats left over from Halloween. I may do a trace of small lights on the posts with the rats (glittered up and with red bows around their necks) running toward each other, maybe with a wreath...

If you get the idea that I have a twisted view of the holidays, well you are correct; over the years, I've had to make the holidays over a few times when the old things didn't resonate anymore. Don't worry about the rat thing; it will be tasteful and amusing... and very New Awlins.

BTW, did you notice?
I changed the format for the blog. After three years, I decided it was time for a change. The new look is more like many of the other blogs, but it has the features that I liked in the other blogs, and it was sooo easy, just a click and several minutes of cold fear as the entire thing republished. I may do some customizing... but for now, I think I'll let it be. It's amazing enough to me that I have kept this up for this long. I've never been able to sustain any kind of journal for as long as this before, not even close.

New Orleans, Hollywood!

All The Kings Men, the remake, is being filmed here right now and that's a pretty big deal.

(New Orleans, LA) -- After months of anticipation, local casting calls, and hype, the film "All the King's Men" is finally shooting in New Orleans. The cast includes Jude Law, Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, Patricia Clarkson, and James Gandolfini. The movie is a remake of the film telling the story of Louisiana political legend Huey Long. It's the latest in a string of movies taking advantage of tax incentives to film in Louisiana.

All of my calls to Jude Law's people about a lunch date have not been returned... bwahahaha. But all these people are in town and will be for a while and that's kind of interesting... I'd love to meet Anthony Hopkins!

And here's something; as I was leaving the store this evening, I noticed this guy with dark hair and a rather interesting mustache, thin. He was dressed to the enth degree and groomed to the enth degree as well; you just had to look at him, he stood out among all the other customers. After I got home, I found myself thinking about this guy. Who was he? Certainly no one local... just too polished looking. I did an image search on Google for Sean Penn and... it was him... the store was busy and no one was paying any attention. And this is why fabulous film stars like to come here. People leave them alone. Queen Latiffa was in just three weeks ago, she did get recognized, but she was very gracious about it...

Family.

My family, (my sister and brother and their spouses, my Dad, my brother's kids, my cousin Eugene and his new wife Tammy and her kids, my cousin MaryAnn, my cousin Eddie and his wife, Phyllis and a few other family members and friends, all of whom I love dearly), have been on an 8 day cruise following Gene and Tammy's wedding. I wasn't able to go. It wouldn't have been career suicide... just career stupidity; it's just not the time to take off if you're in the retail biz. And if I had been with this company for maybe say, five years already and a bit more settled in place, I could have done it probably, but now was not the time. There's just too much coming up that's critical with respect to the rest of my work with WFM.

Not spending time with my family right now, especially my niece and my new nephew kind of hurts, but there will be time soon... it will work out. My sister and brother and I have agreed that I have to do my career, especially after spending so much time with my Dad after my Mom died. Getting back to work was difficult last time and I was lucky to find a company to work for that didn't have a prejudice for people over forty...or even... you bitch! I am strong and smart and incredibly efficient! How dare you patronize me! You "human resource" person!

(BTW, forty something, that's when age descrimination starts... didn't see it coming, couldn't even imagine it, but it happened).

So, they'll all be back on shore this weekend. Can't wait to hear all about it. And my brother has a new digital camera... can't wait to see the pics!


Movies.

This week, I watched Fellini's Roma, which everyone says is not one of his best, but I still love it. The scenes where they go down into the Rome subway system with the director of subway construction, and where you first see this huge mastedon "tooth" on a carraige, and where he tells them on the railway into the construction site about how many years it takes to dig the tunnels, because every "few hundred metres" they find some archeological site and then have to shut down for the archiologists to study it, and they all finally get to the drilling face...

And the forman says that the "gauge" , ( which I first thought looked plausible enough, but that I now recognise as the work of one of Fellini's brilliant set designers, who recently did all the sets for "Gangs of New York" at Cinicite), says that they are coming on to a probable site... so they shut down, and then carefully gouge out the next few metres of soil and OMG, there's a hole into the space... and there's this amazing ancient Roman Villa, with these fabulous frescos all over the wall and these amazing statues! Everyone in the scene wades around in the shallow water in awe, but suddenly the air from outside, finally let into this ancient space full of beautiful wall paintings and sculpture, causes everything to melt and fade. Everyone is shocked and stunned...

There are some parts of "Roma" that are somewhat documentary looking just before this, and the first time I saw this film, I bought it. I believed the whole scene for a few minutes... and then I remembered it was Fellini. That's why I love Fellini; you know you are watching a great film maker, a master of fantastic images... and still, you forget and believe.

NetFlix.

I watched "The City of Lost Children" last week, a very interesting looking film. I liked it, but if you rent it, choose the version in French with English subtitles. The dubbed English version is dreadful beyond belief!

I also watched the first half of Season Three of "Strangers With Candy".

Amy Sedaris is a mad godess! I recommend this to you all. If you don't get it, just e-mail me and I'll try to explain.

Netflix is great! You just pick the things you want to see on-line and make a list. You get the first three films and then every time you return one, they send you another. No postage, no late fees; the sooner you return a movie, the sooner you get the next one on your list. It's perfect!


Everything else.

Well, it's O.K. Still a lot of possibilities on the horizon, actually quite a bit more of them than a week ago. And that's all fine. I'm a bit tired of the way things are and a change of scenary would do me good.

I'm looking forward to the January trip to Vegas; it's always fun and I get to see luca again...

durlx