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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Mon 05/13/2002
Artificially Stupid
My weekend was spent working out back tearing things up. I planted a persimmon and a pluot in one of the middle planting areas last year, which unintentionally added a sense of symmetry. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite working with the preexisting haphazard arrangement of lavenders and rosemarys, so I moved the shrubs around a bit to strengthen the arrangement.
The shrubs are now in the back, lining the edges of the space, and the trees are now visually stronger. My normal chaotic sense of planting as been preserved with a not as wild as it looks arrangement of assorted flowers and small annuals which will fill up the space between shrubs and trees. Hopefully it won�t look too bad since none of them will get too tall or overpowering.
Except for the young artichokes that I didn't bother to move that is. Assuming they survive, they will soon get very large, but I think that the overall effect will still be ok. Maybe.
The next majorish outside project will be to tackle the olive tree planter level. It's almost nothing but weeds and overgrown vinca right now. Considering that half of it's sun baked, while the other half will be in full shade as soon as the older walnut leafs out, figuring out what will be able to survive there other than the weeds and vinca won't be simple, but I'll work it out.
When I wasn't out back, I was involved in Mother's day activities. I had lunch with my parents on Friday (05/10/02), which was Mothers day in Mexico. When I offered to take my mother out wherever she wanted, I wasn't expecting her to choose Hometown Buffet, but she did, and so we went.
I'd never eaten there before, and it was kind of odd. Members of a senior citizen square dancing group were there en masse and in costume no less, so elderly women in peach petticoats and men in matching colored shirts were wandering around the buffet trying to decide which was the best piece of fried chicken. The friendly chattering of the square dancers was only slightly overwhelmed by a sixish year old English boy having a hissy fit because there was no whipped cream to put on his ice cream.
The Westernish costumes went along smoothly with the concerted effort in the decor to make the place feel as if it were some generic middle America square state restaurant. Despite all the work, this was still Los Angeles, so the customers were largely a mix of Latino, Philipino, and African American folks. We didn't quite look like the all white cast Norman Rockwell prints hanging on every single wall.
Mother's day itself was hot. After weeks of pleasant weather, the temps suddenly shot up into the 90's. Quite warm for this time of year. There was BBQ at John's folks that day, but we all spent more time inside than out.
After a day of baking heat, the wind picked up and cooled things down quite nicely. Pleasant, except that John and I didn't enjoy it since we were inside the house being bums watching TV. Specifically Six Feet Under and Queer as Folk. Six feet is my favorite show of the minute, and QAF is, well QAF is just goofy.
I've regarded the show as mindless entertainment and as such, have forgiven it a lot, but that's proving to be a bit to difficult lately. The proverbial straw was the scene in which twinkie boy Justin sketches his new young lust interest during a concert. I did not feel whatever emotion or interest the scene was supposed to invoke, since I was too distracted by the sudden, miraculous curing of twinkie boy's nerve damaged "oh woe is me I can't draw anymore," hands.
It's not quite enough to make me give up on the show, although, I now realize I'll have to watch it with most of my brain turned off to keep from getting distracted from glaring continuity glitches. Besides, there's only a few episodes left until Justin and Brian (temporarily) break up, accountant guy has some sort of (short lived) moral crisis about his porno site, and Michael's beau gets (conveniently) deathly ill and/or croaks in the season finale, so I won't have to feign brain death too much longer.
Then again, I missed the first half of the season, so I may have to be artificially stupid for a bit longer.
That was about the extent of the week. Except that I went to the local LGBT group's monthly potluck dinner Wednesday night (05/08/02). The night was spent eating, catching up with friends and hearing the latest community news. I've been so out of touch that I didn't even know that wasn't going to be a Claremont, or Orange County pride festival this year.
Southern California is saturated with several almost identical pride events, so maybe it's not surprising that some of the smaller ones have faded out of existence. It's sad in way, but then again, maybe it's an opportunity for something different to take their places. There has to more to gay pride than beer booths, dance tents, and half naked drunk people. Doesn't there?
more later,
nico
Music:
Old Brian Eno
Want:
For the lock on the Men's restroom door at work to be fixed. I know there are jokes about government inefficiency, but come on, it's been a week already.
Elsewhere:
people I seem to be having trouble contacting lately.