Tragica Revisited

There's this drag queen that lives in Salt Lake City. I think she calls herself Stacey. But the rest of us call her Tragica. In fact, one time my friend Spencer ran into her in the men's room of a club and, in his drunken stupor said "Oh, hey Tragica. Wassup?" If I remember right, she did a double-take, spinning on her 4 inch heels, blowing the bleach-burned, rat-nest hair out of her mascara-smeared eyes and looked at him like she wasn't sure where that name came from. Then she staggered off to continue her performance on the dance floor, much to our delight.

One thing about her though, she doesn't give a shit about what people think. At least it seems that way. Why else would a construction worker by day - slash - transexual by night wear fish net stockings, pink poodle halter tops and a faux vagina under her miniskirt and wag her tail on top of the box like there's no tomorrow. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere. I think sometimes we spend too much time worrying about what other people think rather than living our lives in a way that makes each of us happy. You go Tragica!

Zoser, Chief Minister and Child of Satan

It's been a couple of weeks now. Sufficient enough time that I feel like I can talk about it. Yes, my Broadway debut is over. I'm a has-been. It was a short-lived dream come true, but doggone it, it really happened, I swear.

Okay, I'm being a dork. It wasn't Broadway but a close second -- Utah community theater. Yes, I had my moment in the spotlight. One month of four-times-weekly performances playing the Disney villian in Aida named Zoser. The truth is, I had a blast. And I was good being evil, damnit! Just see for yourself. That's me in the middle with all my little minions (some of them *really* little). Don't I represent pure, unadulterated evil? And you'd never know I was naked under that coat.

In a nutshell, Zoser's son Radames, who's just returned from 6 months in the Egyptian bush waring against the Nubians to the South, is betrothed to marry the Pharaoh's daughter Amneris and in turn, become Pharaoh when her old man kicks the bucket (which I of course am facilitating with regular doses of aresenic in his wine -- "Die you fool! Die, so my son can be king!"). The problem is, Radames falls in love with a slave girl named Aida who just happens to be the princess of Nubia (but he doesn't know that until the end when he's attempting to help her captured father escape Egypt). They're caught and Amneris, the princess and fiance of Radames sentences them to be buried below the sands of Egypt, in one tomb, together. Such mercy! But not until I kill Radames' servant Mereb (played by my own roommate, no less!) and escape into the wilderness as my plans are foiled.

Such DRA-MA! But seriously, community theater is fun. Try it, you might like it. =)

My Picture, Finally!

This is a test of the emergency picture posting system. This is only a test.

Could it be possible that I figured out how to do this finally? I'm so tech-saavy, it's staggering.

British Drama vs American Fluff - An Introspective

Yet another invention of our modern days that I'm loving at the moment: Netflix. I pay something like $17 a month for this online DVD rental service. It's great because I can load up my rental queue with movies I've always wanted to see but never had time to when they were in theaters. They have a gazillion titles, anything you can think of, and the best part is you can sit down and load up your queue then forget about it for a while. You watch one, send it back and in a day or two, voila...the next one arrives.

So imagine this. A nice long weekend with nothing planned but rest and relaxation and a couple of DVDs to watch and return so the next ones that have been on my queue for months finally get here. I like to peruse the Academy Awards section. I can add movies to my list that were nominated or won awards that I never got to see. One such movie was from last year called Vera Drake. It's about this woman in 1950s London who's the sweetest little lady working as a domestic servant and oh, by the way, helps women abort their unwanted fetuses. At the time that was against the law in England. Well to make a long story short, she gets caught, is tried and convicted. The end. Heavy stuff.

Contrast that against...yes, I am quite ashamed to admit...Sponge Bob Square Pants: The Movie. I thought the previews looked hilarious, with that whole David Hasselhoff cameo. And with 5 Academy Award nominations, how can you not be curious?! haha

Needless to say, both were snoozers. Yawn. At least I got some restin and relaxin in.

Rare Woods and Tonka Beans

Sometimes I see things that just make me laugh for their absurdity. I saw such a thing today, and realizing I hadn't posted in a while I decided, "What the heck, I'm gonna write about it."

I found this great skin care line for men called Zihr. It's expensive as hell but if I can get this old naugahyde skin looking good, it's worth it right? (Okay, I'm only 38, so I'm exaggerating about the naugahyde skin. And what's wrong with being a metrosexual??) I get occassional marketing messages from them in my email, which I usually delete, especially lately since I'm trying to budget more. You can't just drop $50 every day for a small tube of men's moisturizer!

Today I got an ad from them for their new fragrance called "Corduroy". Now here's the absurd part--the description of the fragrance:

CORDUROY -- timeless and distinct. A fresh burst of mandarin and lavender that flows smoothly into a warm heart of soft-brushed suede wrapped with rich spices and completed by a sensual background of rare woods, vanilla and tonka beans.

WTF? I know its hard to describe things sometimes. Like, how do you describe what "salt" tastes like, other than saying "salty"? But a "warm heart of soft-brushed suede wrapped with rich spices"? Get real people! Are the woods rare because they're undercooked? And what the hell are tonka beans? Are they from Tonka Land where they make Tonka Trucks? Makes me wanna rush on out and buy Corduroy. How about you?

Damn that George Walker Bush!!

Tivo is the greatest invention of mankind in my pop-culture, TV-addicted point of view. If you love a show and are too busy to watch it when it airs, just set your Tivo to record every episode and voila, when you have time to catch up, they're all there waiting for you.

Well, last night was the season opener for Survivor: Guatemala. Yes, I'm a Survivor junkie. The show is pretty formulaic and once you've seen one, you know how each one will play out. But the interesting part is seeing how the people interact, wondering in my mind how I'd play it if I were there, etc.

So last night, Tivo is set. I'm not home because I'm singing at the top of my lungs in my Muffin Top Target Slacks (see previous post) at the local community theater. When I get home, I'm all excited about watching the first episode of Survivor 11 and what do I find? Program preemption! George W. spewing more crap about how sucky the Feds were in responding to Hurricane Katrina. Okay, we get it already. Get over it and help those people, but stop whining about it. Damnit, you screwed up. Get FEMA down there, install some TVs in the Astrodome or wherever and get out of the way so those poor people can pass the hours living in a football stadium with some joy by watching quality entertainment, like Survivor, and so my Tivo captures it all and I don't miss it because of a Prime Time Presidential Address. Sheesh! =)

Muffin Tops

I'm in this play at the local community theater. It's a musical. Aida. I play the evil, Disney villain named Zoser who's poisening the Egyptian Pharaoh so my son who's betrothed to the pharaoh's daughter will become the next king of Egypt. Anyway, it's been a lot of work and hard nights of rehearsals for the past month or so and I'm glad it's finally underway.

My costume is a long black coat. Wool. Hot as hell. Underneath I'm supposed to wear black slacks. When I was speaking with the costumer early on, I told him I had several pairs of black pants at home and I could just wear one of them. Well, (this goes to my earlier Bloody Bunny post) over the past, oh, year or so I've been a lazy ass and have gotten a bit pudgier, especially in the mid-section (damnit!). So needless to say, when I tried on each of the three pairs of black pants I have in my closet at home, two were impossibly small...to the point of a two inch gap in the zipper. There was no way those babies were zipping up! And the other pair, one size bigger in the waist, would just barely close. But what resulted was a serious muffin top.

Preview

You know how the top of a muffin spills slightly over the edge of the paper cup, creating this oh-so-attractive lip of muffin? Well, that was my gut. Hanging over the edge of those pants. A real all-season radial, steel belted and all. So I threw in the towel, so to speak, drove to Target, swallowed my pride (clothing from Target!?) and bought a cheap pair of black pants for $20 that were 3-4 sizes larger in the waist than I'd actually ever admit to. I figured, hey, why spend $65 or more on a nice pair of pants from Banana Republic that I'm just gonna be drowning in in what, a couple of months down the road? So I saved a few bucks and now I'm budgeting for this.

Crullers and Coronaries

A word of advice...Krispy Kreme Crullers aren't the best energy food when you're climbing a 12,000 foot peak.

Okay, so I didn't climb to the very top of that peak, but still. A third of it maybe? Yesterday I got up early and went with a friend to climb Mt. Timpanogos here in Happy Valley. This has to be one of the most beautiful and majestic mountains I've ever seen. At the beginning of the summer, we decided we'd set a goal to climb it before Fall arrives. Well, yesterday was our attempt. So after dragging my ass up at 7:30 am (on a holiday, no less!) and rushing to meet her, I didn't have time to eat a proper breakfast. So I threw whatever I could find around the kitchen into my pack...including those damn crullers! You know, those spiraly little cake donuts with about 3 lbs. of sugar on each one. I think they're something like 140 calories each. I thought it'd be a good idea for a quick energy blast. Not so much.

Four hours later with an ache in my belly, 3 inches of dust around my ankles, a sore knee and a sunburned neck we made it back to the car, exhausted but exhilerated. Timp won this time around, since we didn't summit. But I think I at least burned off the donuts.

Happy Valley Humdrum

Sometimes it's easy to complain about living in a place that's considered one of the most conservative and most Republican congressional districts in the entire country. This place (home to Brigham Young University) is seriously one happy valley, on the surface anyway. Ever one is uber-sweet (and at times uber-judgmental...perhaps another post on that in the future). Last year when Michael Moore came to speak at a state college nearby, I was entirely amused sitting back and watching the rabid reaction of many in the community... "How DARE you invite the Spawn of Satan to speak in our happy little valley?! HOW DARE YOU!" I could go on and on, but I won't.

I've decided to focus on the positives in this post, particulary in light of what's happening right now in the Gulf Coast. 1) It's beautiful here in Utah. The mountains are fantastic, and are so close! In 20 minutes I can be in the thick of them, skiing or hiking or whatever. 2) It's pretty cheap. While I like to complain about how much my mortgage is, I could be living in San Francisco, paying the same amount or more per month for a one-bedroom apartment instead of my three-floor townhouse. 3) No hurricanes! We did have one tornado in the state a few years back which wiped out a gay club in Salt Lake City, among other damages ("Those damn gays had it coming!").

So, at least today, I'm happy to be here and grateful for what I have.

Wag the Dog

Speaking of war...

I'm reading this book about the National Security Agency. It can be boring sometimes, but really interesting at others, in a nerdy sort of way. I was reading about the era of McCarthyism (sp?) when our country was so wrapped up in hating communism and anyone that professed to believe in it that people were blacklisted left and right as being communist sympathizers. In the heat of this (late '50s, early '60s), Castro was King Pin in Cuba. And America hated him. The author, after seeing recently declassified military documents, explains how the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time (the biggest of the big wigs in the armed forces) had concocted numerous game plans for creating a war with Cuba, just so US Forces could invade and overthrow his government. One of the suggestions was to shoot down an American commercial airliner over Cuban airspace and blame it on Cuba. Scary what can possibly happen when people with righteous indignation put their heads together. Thank God in this instance that they didn't get their way.

I wonder how our future will see our day and some of the controversial decisions made by our government. Only time will tell.

If you're interested: Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford; published by Doubleday.

Dem Bones

I never thought of myself as a writer. I guess if there's anyone out there reading this, you are probably nodding your heads about now, agreeing. I have this friend I work with, she's amazing. She has a blog. And the things that woman writes! Where does that come from? (You can read it if you'd like here.)

I got home tonight after a long day and remembered I created this silly thing a few days ago. Decided I'd better write another post. Maybe if I practice some, I'll actually start getting better formulating my thoughts, writing something that might actually be interesting.

But for now, the simple things dominate. So..... crock pots. They're the best invention, in case you've never used one. I put some baby back ribs in mine today at lunch, a little bit of sauce from a recipe by my latest find on the Food Network (Dave Lieberman), turned it on low and headed back to work. Eight hours later when I returned home, voila. Damn, those things were good. Love dem bones.

Bloody Bunny

I bought this new T-shirt last weekend. Had to get a large because the mediums are starting to show off my gut too much (that's fodder for another post). Anyway, it's kind of trendy and has this bunny on it. It says "Unlucky" above the bunny. I didn't get what it meant, but thought it looked cool so I purchased it. So today I wear it to work and as people are checking it out, I realize why the bunny is unlucky. It's foot is missing, replaced with a bloody bandage. Someone stole his luck. That sucks for the bunny.

Chilipepper?

I have this friend who thinks he's cool because he recently set up his own Blog. So, in the spirit of me thinking that I must be cool too, I have to jump on board. Let's hope that I actually remember that I created this thing and come back from time to time to post shiz.

My initials are TCP. A few years ago, when I lived in Texas, my friends called me Texas Chili Pepper. It kind of stuck -- better than what my father calls me: Tom Cat Piss.

Peppers over piss anyday.