Monthly Archives: May 2005

Oh, right. I forgot:

Why did we once think Brad Pitt was really hot?

Is it that he used to be hot, and he simply isn’t now?

Or were we suffering from some collective delusion?

The other day, E.S. and I were watching Antiques Roadshow, a television program in which unsuspecting people bring possessions they think might be valuable to be appraised on national television. I’ve seen the show only a handful of times, but, as far as I can tell, generally one of two things happens: either somebody brings some random thing her grandmother gave her once to keep her quiet when she was a mewling eight-year-old and it turns out to be worth tens of thousands of dollars, or somebody brings something he bought in an antique store for $250, thinking he was cleverly putting one over on the store owner, and it turns out to be worth $12.

The best part of the episode E.S. and I were watching came when a woman brought in her dead husband’s guitar. It was a Martin and turned out to be a very rare model and in pristine condition, so the appraiser suggested she could get as much as $35,000 for it at auction. She smiled and said that was nice to know, but that she wasn’t going to sell it, because the memory of her dead husband was too dear to her. She said it in a way that made me believe it, too; she didn’t play guitar at all, but it was obvious she was telling the truth.

I turned to E.S. and we had the following conversation:

FAUSTUS: Honey, if I die and it turns out that some worthless-seeming tchotchke I have lying around would get $35,000 at auction, I want you to sell it in an instant.

E.S.: No. I won’t care how much it would get at auction. I’ll want to keep it forever, so I’ll always have something to remember our love by.

Pause.

FAUSTUS: Okay, what I actually mean is, if you die and it turns out that some worthless-seeming tchotchke you have lying around would get $35,000 at auction, I’m going to sell it in an instant.

E.S.: Why are you so unromantic?

FAUSTUS: I wonder how much this chair is worth.

The reading went well.

However, right now I am flying so high from the Vicodin I “borrowed” from my brother and took last night to quiet the agony in my shoulder enough for me to fall asleep that even thoughts of getting as fat as Matthew Perry and having to check myself into rehab aren’t enough to bring me down.

Oh, shit. I just had a thought of my career tanking as much as Matthew Perry’s has after the end of Friends.

Now that’s a bucket of cold water in the face.

Okay, back on earth again.

Okay, so I’m having this reading tomorrow at Barnes & Noble. It’s my first public appearance as a haiku author, and while I have some idea of what I’m going to do, or at least how to fake it, I’m still kind of freaking out and nervous and excited and proud and brimming with all sorts of emotions about the whole thing.

And E.S. isn’t coming.

He says he’s “on overnight call” at the “hospital” and has to stay there to “take care of” his 17 “patients” who are “mentally ill.”

This all sounds like hogwash to me. His priorities are obviously drastically misplaced.

So my question to you is: how should I punish him?

N.B.: This is today’s second post.

Oh, all right, I might as well.

The person who has never been seen in the same room as I has been interviewed at Gothamist by the lovely and talented Rachel Kramer Bussel.

I must say, though he’s not a bad-looking guy, I think I’m much funnier than he is.

On Saturday night E.S. and I went to Margaret Cho’s Assassin; it was the first time we’d ever seen her live, and we shrieked with laughter through the entire thing.

Far more deeply satisfying, however, was going to the bathroom before the show started and seeing a man with whom I’d gone on a date over three years ago and who was the subject of my very first blog post ever. I had a great time on the date. He, evidently, did not, as evidenced by his rejection of me in an email in which he did not capitalize the first-person singular pronoun.

And on Saturday, he looked terrible. He hadn’t gotten fat, but his face was so lined and haggard and droopy as to suggest years spent wandering in the desert in search of the Promised Land.

Far be it from me to suggest that he had the Promised Land within his grasp and that his present desiccation is merely the natural result of his failure to do anything about it when he had the chance.

I feel kind of lame using this blog as a platform for publicity whoring, so I’m going to do my best to keep it to a minimum.

That being said, this coming Thursday, May 26, at 7:00 p.m., I’ll be doing a Gay Haiku reading/Q&A/book signing at Barnes & Noble on 6th Avenue at 22nd Street in Chelsea.

The event should last for about a half hour. Given that if I read for twelve minutes I would go through the entire book, I obviously need to mix it up a little bit. (I can’t believe I just wrote “mix it up,” but I did. Soon enough I’ll be saying things like “bling” and then all will be over.) So I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen. Perhaps I’ll have a meltdown in front of everyone and curl up in the fetal position and my psychiatrist boyfriend will have to hospitalize me on the spot.

So if you’re interested in seeing that, come to Barnes & Noble at 6th and 22nd on Thursday at 7:00.

Also, Carolyn McCormack didn’t look a day older than she did on her first appearance on Law & Order in 1990.

Whatever she’s taking, I want some.

Cons of teaching three step aerobics classes and one body sculpting class in a day:

1. By the end of the day your scapular muscles will be so tight as to keep you in constant agony and force you to swallow twelve aspirin between midnight and 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

Pros of teaching three step aerobics classes and one body sculpting class in a day:

1. Carolyn McCormack, who plays Dr. Elizabeth Olivet on Law & Order, will come to the body sculpting class. You will be so thrilled that during class you will say things like, “You can do these pushups on your knees or on your nose” instead of “on your toes” and then have to correct yourself. You will rush up to her afterwards and stutter breathlessly that you love her work. She will thank you and tell you it was a great class.

I wonder how many classes in a row I’d have to teach before Chris Meloni came to one of them.

But the agony my muscles would suffer would be worth it, just to see him exercise his glutes.