Dear Faithful Readers...

Dear Faithful Readers...

I know it's been a while since my last post, and never fear, I shall return. At the moment I am in Indiana visiting family and friends. Tomorrow I take a side trip to southern Indiana to go on a ranch trip with my sister and the rest of the MacNivens crew. It should be fun, though a karaoke contest was mentioned and no good will come of that. It's inevitable that before the weekend is out my sister and I will have sung "Harper Valley P.T.A." and I will be forced to warble my way through the Green Acres theme song at least once. The trip should be fun though and then Monday I am going with my family to the horse races at Indiana Downs. I have a slight problem with this being the owner of two former racing greyhounds, but racing horses are treated very well all things considered, unless you count that whole putting them down if they break a leg.

Anyway, I will be back soon and will have many posts to write. We have topics to cover, including the very disappointing election, second line parades and the end of my baby Einstein moment not to mention the trip I am on right now which includes a near run in with a make-a-wish child.

In the meantime of my awaited posts, I encourage everyone to run out (or log on) and get yourself a copy of Augusten Burroughs new novel "Possible Side Effects".

The other new book on my bedside table is the new in paperback "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. He is the author of Fight club and several other fantastic books that I have mentioned and/or raved about on this site. If you enjoyed the story line of fight club, then I suggest checking out his other books.

That's all for now, Ciao!

Update on a queen...

I wanted to update the fur track suit story. The boy came in again on Wednesday night. I will be able to tell when he's coming next time as the overwhelming stench of a very cheap and flowery perfume nearly knocked me down. He asked me if a certain boy still worked at the pub. This boy hasn't worked there in years but queenie was not deterred, he launched into a new tirade. Now remember his claims of being abused by his boyfriend? Something must be up because he had a black eye (Okay, I'm going to skip the obvious jokes about spotting a black eye on a black boy) but it didn't look that bad and there were scratches on his arms. He told me the boyfriend had "done gone crazy" and beaten him when he was high on crack. Then he went into what I am quickly beginning to recognize is his trademark fever pitch squeal as he informed me that the boy has been addicted to crack since he was 12 AND that it was his momma that got him started. He said "how you think she feels lookin' at her baby now, all addicted and everything."

Why do I think that he will be making several appearances in these pages?

D-list celebrity sightings in New Orleans

My friend Richard sent me this link to a story about a recent visit that comedian Andy Dick made to New Orleans. Read it here.

In other D-list celebrity sightings, Dan Renzi, who you might remember from the Real World Miami also visited New Orleans. He sent me a note on myspace asking questions about New Orleans for some promotional tour he was doing. I didn't realize he was "that" Dan until much later but we exchanged several notes back and forth and he asked me to arrange a guest bartending spot for him at the bar. I can't just tell him, sure, so I gave him the managers numbers and promised to pre-present the idea and who he was and all that, which I did. Someone else piped up a warning that Dan was "quite a drinker" and that we might want to re-consider. He wrote to me the next day asking if I had talked to my bosses and I assured him that I had and then never heard from him again. A few weeks later (in fact the same weekend as the Andy Dick story) I heard Dan was in town and guest bartending at Oz. He came into the pub and I saw him standing at the bar. I walked over, got as close to him as I could and called his name out. Eventually he reared his booze swollen, bleary eyed head my direction and I said "Hey Dan," and extended a hand to shake his. He gave me a no, no, no finger gesture and then a you-come-closer gesture and turned back to his friends. I said "I'm behind the bar, you can step over here." Begrudgingly, he did and I introduced myself as the Lawrence he had been speaking with. Dan made some comment about "oh yeah, you" but he was so intoxicated it was difficult to make out what he said. Keep in mind that the entire time he spoke to me, which was about 20 seconds, he never made eye contact. He put his limp hand in mine for a sad little handshake, all the while swinging his head side to side looking for anyone else who might recognize him or maybe suck him off in the bathroom. Now I wasn't expecting a hug and a kiss and I do have a history of being overly excitable around minor celebrities but this guy was just an ass. Suffice to say that my encounter with the booze soaked D-list former MTV "star" left much to be desired...

Now to make this all seem more bizarre, the article about Andy Dick appeared on the website Queerty which is edited by none other than, yes you guessed it, Dan Renzi. I guess he would be the one in the know about miniscule celebrities making an ass of themselves in public.

Golden Gaffes

Okay, here are your Golden Gaffes for the day:

In the episode where Rose thinks she's died and gone to Heaven the girls are all sitting around in the kitchen and decide to have their "usual snack." Cheesecake, right? No no no...They have ice cream sundeas. At the end of the same episode they have the same snack, what happened to cheesecake? Oh, interesting trivia note, Bea Arthur hates cheesecake.

This isn't so much of a gaffe but a silly thing. Okay, so the layout of the house isn't correct and find a house in Miami with four bedrooms that large and only two bathrooms. Think how big those bedrooms are, everyone has a sofa or chairs in their room, walk in closets, they are huge. Let's not forget the biggest one, the doorway in the kitchen that goes to the garage and Lanai though they are on opposite sides of the house. Anyway, there are only two phones in the house, one in the kitchen, one in the living room. Two phones. One huge house with four huge bedrooms and only two phones. Right.

Pub Stories...

The last two nights at the pub have been odd but with some great moments and stories. Tuesday night I was off but went out to meet a friend for a few drinks. I ended up watching the drag king show upstairs for lesbian night. First of all, it's a very confusing night to me. I'll see a beautiful boy and have to look twice to make sure there are no small bumps on his chest thus revealing his true identity as a boyish lesbian. The show is pretty silly. There were one or two good performers but the majority of them were just lesbians dressed in bulky clothing, doing some kind of a hip-hop song and doing their best gangster moves. It was late and I was still upstairs talking to one of the bartenders. Security was throwing out a little spikey haired lesbian for getting into a fight. She came over to the bar to plead her case with the bartender (which is never a good idea...If security throws you out there is not much of a chance that a bartender will override them) and from out of nowhere comes a boy who was, from what I gather, a friend of the the girl that was hit by the spikey haired girl. Whew. Anyway, he runs up and grabs the girl by the back of the head, jerking her head backwards and nearly pulling her off the stool. Security and other bartenders and I jumped in and got him off her, she was taken downstairs and then him and both were told to leave. (Personal note to Mattie - the boy was Erik with a K, back from the military, very bulked up but he assured me he can still do the splits)

Last night was fun. I worked with Paul which I haven't really done since he came back from Houston. Before work I had dinner at Yo Mamas Grill on St. Peter Street. Their burgers are delicious and if they weren't so messy they would rival Port of Call. My friend Justin, who recently moved back from New York, came to meet me and we had time to chat and have a drink before I had to work. At one point during the night I happened to glance outside to see a small Hispanic man trying to mount a bicycle that was much too big for him. I thought, "I wonder if he's stealing that" as I watched him trying to hurry down the street and jump on top of the bike at the same time. He finally got on the bike but wasn't able to reach the pedals very well nor was he able to operate the bike very well. The bike was wobbling down the street and the real owner of the bike took chase. He knocked the guy off his bike and the two of them started fighting in the middle of the street. The owner of the bike was a black man, about 6'5 (thus the difficulty of the little guy to ride away swiftly)and it sure made the fight look funny. The Hispanic man went down into a crouching tiger, hidden dragon pose and the black man was hitting him with his bag. Eventually someone intervened and the bicycle was recovered. Funny stuff.

The other item of interest...At one point there were four of my friends sitting at the bar side by side. I think I'll leave out names here, but I know each of these boys to be particularly "gifted" below the belt though I have not hooked up with any of them. When I realized they were all sitting together I couldn't help but think "There is nearly 40 inches of cock sitting at my bar right now."

A New Feature - Golden Gaffes

I have decided to add a new feature to my blog that I will call Golden Gaffes. Some of you may be unaware of my addiction to watching "The Golden Girls" on a daily basis. I own season 1-4 on DVD (note: season five will be released May 9th) but I still watch it daily. After all these years of watching the thing that gets me is how many gaffes are in the show. I realize that as these shows go on it's hard to do things like introduce new characters without some explanation or counting on the viewer to allow some artistic license. Some artistic license, not a continuous stream of unchecked facts and hapless editing.

I haven't decided if I am going to list several at a time or just catch them as they air and put them on then, but here's a couple to get started.

In the first episode Dorothy says she is from Queens, but for the rest of the show she is from Brooklyn.

In the episode where Blanches old nanny comes to visit she calls Blanche by her full name, Blanche Marie Hollingsworth (Her maiden name) but in every other episode her middle name is Elizabth and her married name is Deveraux, thus making her initials spell out the word BED.

Perhaps to a 5K Run benefiting PETA?

Last Friday I worked happy hour, a rarity indeed. It wasn't very busy but I was working with Matt and we had a lot of fun. The two bartenders in the front had customers and eventually Matt and I decided that all the customers hated one of the two of us and so they were just steering clear of the whole area. Three young black men came in early in the afternoon. One of them looked familiar and eventually he told me that he used to work at the bar and then I remembered him. He's young, tall, skinny and VERY VERY queeny. If memory serves he was fired, but I can't remember if he quit prior to being fired or what, regardless he did not part on good terms. On his way out he threw a royal fit and tried to "read" our general manager. Now whatever anyone may think of him, this is not a man who is going to take being yelled at by some snippy little queen who just lost what has to be one of the easiest jobs in the world. All the kid had to do was sit behind a counter and sell breath mints and chips and occasionally answer the phone. Like many of the people before and after him he used his time at work to put on his own personal drag show to every song that was played. I find it maddening to try to go through this area or god forbid buy some mints) and have to shuffle through what appears to be the ill-fated front line from the ill-fated movie version of "A Chorus Line." Anyway, he and his two friends (both of whom were very nice) are getting ready to leave and discussing clothes. The queeny boy must have gotten a burst of estrogen (picture The Lady Chablis in "Midnite in the Garden of Good and Evil") because he hit a full tilt boogie queen-out as he described the outfit which would he would be gracing us with that night. If you feel like reading this to yourself in a voice much like Oprah used in the film "The Color Purple," please be my guest..."All my life I had to fight, I had to fight my daddy, I had to.."

Queen: "I'm gonna look so good tonight, I'm wearing my fur..."

Me: "Isn't it too hot for fur?"

Queen: "Nuh Un, no ma'am, you see it's not all fur, it's a track suit with a
chinchilla collar."

Me: mouth agape, unable to say anything...

I perched on the edge of the bar in utter dismay as he wound through the details of this outfit, down to the shoes he planned to wear with it and the exact cost of how much everything cost. Evidently he didn't get the props he was searching for as he then went on to tell us the cost of everything he had on and was well into the cost of his entire wardrobe when he stopped to pull me aside and tell me that one of the boys with him was his boyfriend and that the boy beats him but he doesn't mind because he knows he loves him and he knows he loves him because the first night they ever went out that boy spent money on him. Now I know you'll pardon my extreme run on sentence but that was precisely how it was said to me, rapid fire machine gun admissions of domestic abuse. I must have seemed horrified so to make up for it he told me he didn't need this boys money as his father owned VooDoo, a local gay bar. He gave me a few snaps up for measure and was gone. Before he left I begged him to come back in and show me his outfit, all the while wondering if the camera on my phone would suffice or if I needed to go home and get the digital camera. He promised that he would come back but I didn't put too much stock into it and I was right, I didn't see him again. I wish I had, the idea of a chinchilla collared track suit on a nelly drunk beaten up silver spooned black boy would have kept this blog going for a good long while.

Incidentally, when I saw the person who really does own VooDoo last night I was happy to give him my congratulations on having sold his establishment. He's used to these kind of rumors (you have no idea how many people, including employees, claim to own the pub) and we shared a good laugh.

On a completely different note, I have been watching "Nashville Star" while I was writing this and I have to wonder who does the make-up for Wynonna? She had that big come back kind of thing last year with her crying fit Oprah appearance and singing "I wanna know what love is" and now she's on the USA network, bigger than ever and I swear I saw blue eye shadow.

It's down to the last two contestants, one a cowboy hat wearing traditional voiced singer and the other one is bug eyed and looks like he's a bit touched...

Oh, thank god, the boy with regular eyes won.

Late Night Thoughts...

Dear Gentle Reader: This post if not one of my amusing bon-mot filled attacks on humankind, simply some late night thoughts...More soon.

Laying in bed, unable to sleep, I was thinking about my friend David in New York. He's stopped speaking to me, upset at my negligence with our friendship. The last time I saw him was in June of last year when I visited New York with friends. I stayed on a few extra days at Davids house and we had a blast hanging out together. The storm, the evacuation, the four months in Indiana and a heart attack have taken up quite a bit of my time. In reality though I have no excuse for myself. You see, David would call me and those that know me know I rarely answer my phone. I have a continuous debate with my friend Scott over this very issue. He berates me for my attitude, which is simply that the phone is for my convenience, not to be served as a tracking device so that people can reach me whenever they desire. Incidentally, does anyone else find that OnStar thing creepy? I'll risk the locking of my keys in the car in exchange for the government not being able to track me down at a moments notice. I digress...I am often not in the mood to talk on the phone, and thus I don't answer. My friend David would leave me messages and I, rudely, would often not return the call. It's not that I don't enjoy talking to him, I adore talking to him. He's one of the most invigorating people I know, full of more energy than I've ever possessed, incredibly smart and just a hell of a conversationalist. The only issue I ever had about talking to him on the phone is that we would talk forever, an hour or two at times. It's a strange thing but sometimes when I haven't talked to someone for a while I hesitate in calling them, simply because it's been so long. That's probably very stupid, but it makes sense in my head. I talked to David after the storm while I was in Baton Rouge and then only a few times while I was evacuated in Indianapolis. When I switched my phone back to a New Orleans number I sent out various text and e-mails to folks advising them of the change and I received a rather terse text from David, "Who is this?" We had a few quick exchanges and then finally "All this communication is too much for me, try me again next year." Though I sent a few replies, it was silent on his end. I haven't tried to call him, I think I am afraid that he won't want to talk to me. It seems I have lost a friendship due to my inability to return phone calls, but it's really much more involved. I shut myself away from people a lot. I am a loner by nature, a trait I share with my mother and sister. I sink into depressions that last a few days, a few months. Usually I don't even know it's happening until I realize it's been a week since I've left the house to do anything other than walk the dogs or work. E-mails go unanswered, voice mails pile up. Eventually I snap out of it and am happy go lucky for a while, I am social, I make plans, I answer the phone but sometimes the damage is done. In the time it's taken me to write this I could have called David (who is probably still awake, I'm convinced he doesn't sleep) and apologized. Maybe tomorrow, I'm tired now and one has to keep their wits about them to keep up with David. Enough emoting for me for one late night...ciao!