Unexpected Plans

Ever have one of those lazy weekend mornings when you think you have no plans for the day, but then it turns out you're giving a class on fellatio?

Ya, that's the day I'm having. It seems that at a dinner party some weeks ago I told a friend's new fiance, who I'd known for all of 15 minutes, that I'd teach her how to give great head as an engagement present to my friend. So now they've come to collect on what seemed like a whimsical, fun idea after a few drinks but is now terrifying under the sober light of day.

Are offers made while drunk even valid once sobriety sets in? Aren't there rules or escape clauses for this kind of thing?

Christ.

Well, guess I'd better go prepare ... I've got a blow job workshop to deliver.

Booze got me into this. Maybe booze will get me out of it ... or at least through it. Where's the tequila?

It's Been a Lovely Weekend

I'm thinking of taking up Poi. While still pretty spastic, I'm better at it than I expected and I could use the upper body exercise.

All Gay Men Secretly Want To Be Madonna

Although with Carson, it's not much of a secret.

"When do the beatings start?"

Don't make me blog you

The ultimate modern threat.

Happy Birthday, Mike

Kelli Takes It In The Mouth

Open wide!!!

I Need An Intervention

I love bridge. No ... I really, really love it. It is the ultimate card game. I used to play hearts, spades and gin rummy. But bridge trumps them all. I'm ruined. All I want to play anymore is bridge. I play bridge, in one form or another, practically every day.

One man, more than any other, is to blame for this ... my friend, American Contract Bridge League Silver Life Master, Ilan Tadmor.

Ilan is a hard core bridge pusher, as seen here in his booking photo from when he was arrested for peddling copies of Marty Bergen's bridge book, Points Schmoints! to innocent children on the board walk in Atlantic City.

Ilan organized a lovely bridge party yesterday ... where else? But the upper-east side of Manhattan, of course. How "ladies who lunch" is that?

Eight of us played until Ilan had to leave and threw us out. Then four of us went to a Starbucks and played until the place closed and they threw us out. On the bus and subway going home, guess what game I played on my handheld computer for an hour?

So I played bridge for 11 hours straight yesterday. When I got home there was no one left awake on this continent to play bridge with me. It took every ounce of what little self control I possess to keep myself from inviting my friend Ron, who lives in Japan and was therefore awake, to play Bridge Base Online Internet bridge with me.

Does the Betty Ford Clinic treat bridge addicts?



So that was going to be the end of this post ... until I read the message from Betty on the home page of her clinic. "I’m also fortunate to know first hand the power of intervention, the process
that took me to the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center where my personal journey of recovery began. Sadly, there is still very little assistance available for those whose lives have been touched by this disease."

What?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? "Very little assistance"?!?!

According to the Alcoholics Anonymous "Fact File", there are over 100,000 AA chapters with over 2,000,000 members. Any drunk who can fall down a flight of stairs into the basement of any church can find help ... usually three times a day, seven days a week.

Wake up, Betty! Americans are the most self-helped, therapized, head-shrunk, support grouped people in the world.

"Very little assistance."

What a crock.

Luscious

I was thinking my blog needed more tits.

Mirelly performs ...

... the dance of a thousand ... uh ... boots?

Oh, Ed, you're so fucking street.

Partners In Crime

Kelli, Bevin, Brian, my comic buds from last night's show, suck down their first caffeine of the day, the morning after our "sleep over".

I'm so happy to have my very own "Bevin-makes-her-Muppet-face photo." Everybody who's anybody's got one.

The Art of Collecting Photons

My friend and fellow photographer, artist, nerd Murray Williams has published a stunning beautiful slide show of his photography.

Let's Beer!

My friend Ron, aka Tarzan Boy, has just arrived in Japan for a year stint teaching English.

Which reminds me what a kick I get out of Engrish, the Japanese habit of making products, signs and stores with badly mangled English.

I took this photo in Japan four years ago. (Click for a closer look.) The box reads, "Let's Beer! Any time, any where, all friends come together and drink beer with fun. It's excellent to drink beer with all the people!"

Yay! I couldn't agree more!

For more mangled English fun, check out www.engrish.com.

Blogosphere

I've added links to friends' blogs to the panel at the right. These are intelligent, funny folks whose musings I enjoy very much.

If you're using Windows Explorer you'll have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see them. (I'm having a template issue I can't figure out. Help! Murray? Are you there?)

And if you're still using Windows Explorer, for fuck's sake, go download Firefox right now! It's free and will keep you from getting infested with spyware. Which, if you're using Windows Explorer, you probably are already.

Piggy!

What's for dinner on Friday night? 9 out of 10 Jews recommend pork on the bone.

Consumption vs. Creation

Last night I spent 9 hours helping my friend Ilan assemble the home theater system we designed together. I drilled. He hammered. I sawed. He cleaned. We lifted, plugged and crawled around on the floor for hours stringing cables (my favorite activity in the whole world.) When we were done we'd created an elegant, sophisticated system that makes a nice center piece to the living room of his new apartment.

We had a custom cabinet made at Gothic Cabinet. I love that place. Don't let their shabby-looking showrooms fool you. They do amazing work. You can walk in with a sketch on a napkin and they'll render a precise diagram and build a beautiful piece of well-crafted, solid-wood furniture and stain it to any color for less money than a lot of the fiberboard crap from Ikea.

When we were done, to christen Ilan's new system, we watched Butterfly Effect. This is a favorite movie of mine, and not just for the Ashton Kutcher prison sex scene.

It's about a boy with troubled childhood who later, in his early 20s, discovers he can change the past. He does so with the best intentions, hoping to fix the mistakes of his youth and improve his life and the lives of those he cares about.

But, as you'd expect, it all goes horribly wrong. Each change for the better also comes with side effects for the worse. And each subsequent attempt to fix these complications continues a downward spiral until he finally concludes he'd be better off dead.

I won't spoil the ending for you. But I will say that if you see it, be sure to watch the Director's Cut! The theatrical release has this crap Hollywood ending the studio made the creators put on it that totally ruins the message of the film. The Director's Cut has the ending the creators originally envisioned. It's a dark ending to a dark film, as it should be. (Why do Americans need everything to have a happy ending? How very sad and shallow.)

The message of the film with its original ending restored is ... be happy with who you are and your past including your mistakes, including the bad parts, especially the bad parts. Accept your past and know that your failures and tribulations are as responsible for your identity as your successes and happy times.

On my way home from Ilan's at 4:00 a.m., tired and sore from all the manual labor, I had a little smile on my face. Which brings me to the title of this post. I created something yesterday ... something functional ... something beautiful. I envisioned it, planned it, built it, executed it through to completion and enjoyed the fruits of my labor .

And I realized something. (I've been doing that a lot lately.)

Creating makes me happy.

Consuming has never made me happy.

Consuming may amuse me, entertain me, distract me, relax me or stimulate me. But no manner of consuming in life has ever brought me anything more than passing enjoyment.

Creating is the only thing that brings me any satisfaction and happiness in my life. So I'm fortunate to have so many opportunities to create: writing, performing, dreaming, designing, planning, building, love making, photographing, campaigning for change, building communities, learning or even just cooking.

So excuse me, please. I need to go create something.

Got Blog?

Uber babe, Paula Dixon, has launched her new blog.
It's already got me laughing.

Dale Finally Cracks

After hours of fierce battles, the competitors finally crack. Hoping to forge some sort of peace between them, Dale makes a pass at Andy in a vain attempt to not have his empire destroyed. But alas, Dale finally learns that putting out won't get him anything in return.

-- Entry by Ron Fenolio

Macedonian Assault

Ron executes his devastating European invasion ... of a bratwurst hut. Noooo! Not the sausages! Oh, the humanity!

Conquest 'Till Your Eyes Bleed

I'm playing 7 Ages with friends this weekend ... all weekend. Here, Andy (L) and Tedd (R) consider their next brilliant moves. Get 'em, boys!

NYU Grads Need Food, Badly!

Ron & Claudia at Rice, waiting for their dinner, crashing from low blood sugar. Poor skinny little things!

Missing Lesbians

I miss lesbians.

The irony of the diversity of NYC, is that the city is so large that each demographic group has the luxury of having its own ghetto, its own neighborhood. Many people in NYC don't mingle outside their own kind. So even if you want to meet people who are different from you, it's difficult.

I had a much greater diversity of friends in Utah, one of the most homogenous states in the country, than I do in NYC. Oh the irony!

And more than any people, in my 10 years in NYC, I have really missed lesbians.

Kelli Dunham recently posted in her blog about me, "It makes me quite pleased that-- thanks to performing--I finally have gay male friends again. I had a bunch in Miami, but they all died and then I never replaced them. You know how it is."

I was quite touched by this ... and, of course, a bit saddened. (Thanks, Kelli, love you too!) And it made me realize why Kelli and I have bonded so quickly.

At the moment Kelli and I met, she missed gay men and I missed lesbians. Add to that, how much we have in common as comics and political queers, and it's a match made in heaven.

I'm so privileged to have Kelli Dunham as my friend and creative partner. We're going to do amazing things together.

More about our project very, very soon.

Algebra Tells All

Recently I was hanging out with Kelli, Brian and Bevin.

I'm a big fan of Bevin's. Any lesbo babe who seeks refuge from bad lesbian poetry by whipping out a Game Boy is awesome in my book.

We were really bored at this spoken word event, so Brian was telling me about his theory that urine smell and crazy are directly proportional and illustrated this with an equation.

I like this idea of describing everyday phenomena using math and was inspired to create this.

PROBABILITY THAT DALE WILL LEAVE THE HOUSE

P = Probability I'll leave the house.
Mb = The number of Megabytes of Unwatched Programs on my Tivo
JO = The number of times I've jerked off in the last 48 hours

That is to say, the probability I'll leave the house equals ten over the number of Megabytes of Unwatched Programs On My TiVo to the power of the Number of Times I've Jacked Off in the last 48 hours.

So, for example, if I've jerked off 3 times and have 80 Megs of programs to watch, the chance of me leaving the house is only 10/80^3 = 0.16%.

If I've only jerked off once and have only 20 Megs of programs to watch, it goes up to 10/20^1 = 50%.

But remember, that any number raised to the power of zero, is one. So if I haven't jerked off at all, it doesn't matter how full my TiVo is, the probability I'll leave the house is 1,000%.

So you see? High school algebra was useful in daily life after all.