Wat's On Me DV- ARRRRRRRGH

Ahoy, matey! I thought I would give you a rundown of what I've been watching on the Tee-Vee lately, since all I can afford to do these days is go to Gay-A meetings and the gym, I've been following a few shows almost every week.

As far as regular series, I am bucking the trend and still enjoying Heroes pretty regularly. Last season was pretty dismal, what with the Mexican chick with the eyes that bled tar and the way they totally screwed up the blond chick with multiple personality disorder so badly they are now on their third version of the same character, and she sucks every time. But I think they've managed to jettison the worst of what ailed the show and I look forward to it every Monday.

I'm also watching Brothers and Sisters and Desperate Housewives on Sundays the last couple of months. I'm enjoying the former more and just end up watching Housewives as I eat and wait for the other show.

I'm also liking this season of Top Chef, although I'm not nearly as emotionally invested as I was the first two seasons. I have to say that if someone at Food Network hasn't already figured it out, they need to find some way to get a series or some sort of commitment from chef-testant Fabio. If they haven't realized he is a star in the making they are just not very bright.

UPDATE: Here's what "they" are saying about Fabio's television prospects.

I'm also still completely riveted by the A&E show Intervention. There was a heartbreaking rerun a couple of weeks ago with Lawrence, a poor man from Las Vegas who literally drank himself to death. I am always fascinated by the lengths that people will go to in order to justify their actions or cover up their deep-seated paralyzing fear. But maybe I'm just projecting. A&E has many episodes available of Intervention to watch via their web site.

On a lighter note, Cartoon Network is running regular episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. It's a team-up show featuring Bats and various DC Comic characters. The series takes lots of liberties particularly with Batman's co-stars, changing their ages as well as personalities and powers, but it's a lot of fun, entertainingly written and the animation is pretty freakin' good. I also end up watching The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk on the CN, although it seems they only made about 8 episodes of the Avengers and repeat them ad infinitum.

I'm also still enjoying the occasional episode of Little People, Big World and I watched the audition episodes of American Idol, but now that the freak show is over and they are actually competing, I find that I watch about 10 seconds of a song and then fast forward through, I check to see if Paula Abdul is drunk yet and then lose interest.

I Believe

That there are two kinds of people in the world. Those that use an inordinate amount of toilet paper and the rest of us. And while I no longer obsess to the point of an unhealthy distraction about such trivialities, I find it telling that those that use fistfulls of the butt-wipe also almost never buy any .

Ah well, at least my face wasn't eaten off by a drugged-up chimp.

Amen.

Follow Up

-via New York Post

Manhattan prosecutors are seeking felony charges against the four young alleged graffiti vandals arrested in the recent spray-paint attack on Central Park's Bethesda Terrace, The Post has learned - even though two of the suspects are only 16...

...The graffiti is scrawled across the entire 150-year-old wall "as if they were just walking along, spraying as they walked," noted Doug Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy.

The damage - which includes the tags "3D," "28," "Braze," and "Skky," along with an upside-down smiley face - can't merely be painted over or power-washed off, like most graffiti.
The terrace features mosaics of colored sandstone, a material that's too fragile to withstand that kind of blast, Blonsky said.
The sandstone is also very porous, he said, meaning it has now absorbed the purple, red and black paint like a sponge.
The only remedy is the application of a special chemical poultice that slowly draws out the spray paint, Blonsky said. For the poultice to work, the temperature of the stone must be raised to about 50 degrees, he said.
The process - which is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $60,000 - requires that carefully monitored heaters be installed on scaffolds around the affected areas, with the heat trapped inside tenting made of fire-resistant carpeting.

Checking In

Sorry I haven't posted all week, but I've been kind of sort of mildly stressed about the (lack of) job situation, and I haven't been in much of a mood to share. I spend part of every single day scouring the Craigslsit ads and checking in at the New York Times help wanted and trying to register with various headhunters that are recommended to me as well as Jobs.com and their ilk.

The discouraging part of all that is that I hardly ever get so much as a phone call or e-mail as a response. For someone with my experience, not getting even a passing interest is pretty unusual, and very hard to deal with. A couple of times I have sent duplicates of my correspondence to my Gmail account, because I occasionally start to doubt that my regular email is functioning.

Logically, I know that this is a whole different economy I am playing in now. Jobs are scarce, and the people that respond to any job posted I'm sure measure in the hundreds. It's not surprising I get lost in the shuffle. But I have a good resume, I've written a great cover letter that I sometimes tailor to the individual job posted, and I don't think I'm being egotistical in assuming that my writing at least makes it pretty clear that I'm reasonably intelligent. So when I get absolutely no response day after day ( now week after week) it starts to get pretty demoralizing.

One of the things they try to teach you in Gay-A is the need to give up trying to impose your will on how your life will unfold. On the surface, it can be viewed as a pretty passive response, one where you simply throw up your hands and leave everything to "God's will". I don't see it that way, at least not entirely.

I think what they are trying to say is that it's kind of useless to spend all your time worrying about the outcome of a situation, particularly after you have done all you can to to address the issue. I can't make people open my email and read my resume. I can't force people to respond. And sitting at home obsessing over my powerlessness gives me even less power than if I just get on with it and leave it up to "The Universe". And it goes without saying that getting drunk or high or otherwise trying to mitigate how uncomfortable I feel by altering my emotional perceptions won't serve any function either.

And that, I think, is what they mean by giving up your will. I understand the concept. I'm just finding it difficult to keep in practice as I live day after day on $10 or $20 bucks. To which, were I counseling someone else, I would reply:

Think of all the people in this world who don't have that...

Where's My Fucking Coin?

I was a little preoccupied this weekend, involved peripherally in some local controversy. Basically, some big-mouthed queen got her drunk on and got all uppity in a well-known local burger bar. That's when the staff took exception and knocked her off her drunken feet and then tossed her and her badly dressed and coiffed bf out to the bricks. Unfortunately, this particular raging mess had access as an editor to a local on-line restaurant and nightlife blog and before you could say Rosa Parks she was playing the part of gay-bashed victim. All the gay-parazzi and the other food blogs ran the story without bothering to notice that there were holes in the account you could ride a bareback bottom through.

Well it turns out that a videotape showed up from the night in question and not only does it completely contradict Proud Mary's account of her "gay-bashing", but it seems to do some liver damage as to who actually threw the first punch, or in this case, bitch-slap.

Fortunately, most of the bloggerati seems to have come 'round and everyone apparently starts to agree that this was an all-too-familiar case of drunken, over-entitled, rude homo, bitchiness. The only remarkable part is that a gay man with a modicum of influence was stupid enough to act like a total douch-bag in a public place, and then turn around and cry homophobia and gay-bashing when he basically got his ass handed to him.

In any case, I totally missed posting about the fact that on Saturday I celebrated two years of sobriety.

Gross!

I was taking Riley for his morning walk and making my rounds of the neighborhood (Dunkin Donuts coffee, NY Post, bank) when we cut through Stuyvesant Park for the second time. Riley stopped to gobble something, not an unusual occurrence since he scavenges all the time (and this includes pizza crusts, broccoli, twigs and branches, popsicle sticks). Only this time when I looked down I noticed a tail sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He had happened upon a frozen dead mouse and proceeded to gulp it down whole like a damn reptile. I tried to open his mouth and remove the mouse-sicle but he was having none of it. Since I had already fed him his morning meal, all I could do was offer him an appropriate wine to accompany his afternoon amuse-bouche.

Trial begins For HIV Gene Therapy

-By Aaron Rowe for Wired

Gene therapy that could immunize people against the most common type of HIV is ready to be tested on humans.

Recruiting for the trial began Tuesday, and the first people to receive the experimental treatment will be HIV patients with drug-resistance problems.

Read More here ...

Stupid Kids! Get Off My Lawn!

This is a photo I took back in 2004 from inside the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park. It's hanging right now in a display of B&W photos running down a wall in my kitchen. Below are two more photos from that day that I've been hanging on to, hoping that I will be inspired one day to salvage them and find a creative use for them.



About two years ago, the Central Park Conservancy spent 7 milllion dollars to upgrade and restore the Terrace, cleaning, replacing and restoring the 16,000 tiles that make up this beautiful underpass. Click here if you want to view a really cool interactive New York Times article about the project.

And unfortunately, below is the damage that four incredibly stupid teenage vandals inflicted on the walls in black and purple spray paint the other day.

-photos via Gothamist, photographs by Jen Chung














Stupid, stupid, stupid. If you ask me, an appropriate punishment will be making all four of them work on getting every speck of that paint off the walls with individual toothbrushes, while people in New York City are encouraged and allowed to pass by repeatedly and viciously kick each one in the ass.

Babies On The Brain - E*Trade Babies

I'm not even getting a baby, but I seem to have babies on the brain lately. I swear, this won't turn in to the baby channel or anything. I'll still say fuck even though I never seem to actually fuck anymore. Still, this is good for a giggle...

Look!

On Saturday I finished my 10 weeks of parenting classes and got my certificate. As you can see I am now eligible to become a foster and/or adoptive parent in New York State. Now I need to turn in my application, have my fingerprints filed, registered and checked (which takes about a month), have my home study completed (I am already ahead of the game because I have a separate, furnished bedroom all set), get a land line phone put back in my apartment (It's a rule...) and, oh yeah, find my kid.

But none of that can happen until I get a job and have a regular paycheck coming in as well as get caught up on rent and bills.

DO YA HEAR ME UNIVERSE? TIME'S A WASTIN'!!