Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Isn't this a lovely winter wonderland? Right. This picture was taken today from my front door. That's Tony out there shoveling the sidewalk. (He also shoveled the next-door neighbor's sidewalk although they have never, ever done anything like that for us. And they have a damn snow-blower. But, God Forbid they should ever go a centimeter past the lot line when they snowblow.) It's two days before Easter and we just got 7 inches of frickin' snow. What the hell? I think today was the official "First Day of Spring" too. And it's Good Friday. Usually on Good Friday morning, the people of my church do a 'cross-walk'. I mean that literally. We have a huge wooden cross in the church basement and every Good Friday morning the people in my church lug it through the streets of our town like Jesus did when He was going to be crucified. Now, when I say the "people of my church" I mean everyone but me. I have never been to the cross-walk, so I don't really know how it's done. I know that only one person carries the cross, but I don't know if it's the same person the whole time or if lots of people get the chance to take a shift or what. It's probably blasphemous to say this, but I just don't think it would be particularly meaningful to me. Unless we give the person dragging the cross 40 lashes and put a crown of thorns on their head I don't really think we are "reenacting" anything. I mean, the cross used has wheels on it for crying out loud, so you just kind of drag it along behind you like a scooter. Now, I'm not suggesting that we actually flog someone to make this a more meaningful experience. I get it...it's symbolic. However, I am just saying that it has never held any particular appeal for me. I don't think I would get anything out of it spiritually. I think it's swell that some people do.

However, this year my point is neither here nor there because....the cross walk was CANCELLED because of the snow! I bet this is the first time EVER that this event was cancelled. However, this year the cross couldn't be walked because it is a SNOW DAY! I'm telling you, I bet Pontius Pilate would have cancelled the entire crucifixion if he had been faced with this weather. Everyone would have just locked themselves up in their little houses and we would all be Jewish today.

So, I would like to just have it on the record that I hate the fucking snow. I am so tired of snow and slush and salt and snowplows and mittens and scarves that I could just scream. It's almost April and my neighbor has a 6 foot snowman in his front yard. I would like to just go over there and kick it over and then stomp on it and fucking smash all the pieces of coal he and his son used to make the smiley face on it and rip the jolly striped scarf they jauntily tied around it's neck into eight thousand little pieces and then have my dogs pee on it! However, I know this would be inappropriate and not just because this particular neighbor is a pastor.

My point is, if the sun doesn't come out soon I am going to take my friend Jim's suggestion and make a big snow hand in my front yard with the middle finger sticking straight up towards the wretched sky that keeps dumping all this stupid snow on us.

Next time I promise I will write about my fabulous St Patrick's Day party, but I just had to get this off my chest.

Come on, Vogue!

Look! It's the cover of Madonna's new album. There's only one word for it: CLASSY. Nothing says class like a nice crotch shot.
Now, I like Madonna. I went to her concert last year with my darling friend LL. It was so much fun. I have never seen so many freaks in all of my life (in the audience, I mean). Madonna looked good, put on a stellar show (although I do think it was divine retribution when her microphone went dead when she was singing while being crucified on a mirrored cross. I was not amused by the imagery, especially since she was wearing a crown of thorns at the time...and I bet she was fit to be tied that her mic went out) and made every gay man in Chicago itch to buy one of her commemorative riding crops after she whipped her half-naked gay back-up dancer with one. It was a fun show, but I didn't go to it to be blown away by her extreme talent or anything like that. C'mon, her extreme talent is for marketing herself so that she is still a money-maker 25 years after she warbled "Like a Virgin". All in all, that's a good talent to have when you aren't that great a singer, actress or dancer. Britney Spears should have watched Madonna's career more closely and taken notes, because (except for the mental illness thing) they have a lot in common!!

Strangeways Here We Come

I very rarely have a night with nothing to do. There's always a class I want to take at the Y, or a church meeting, or a kid to be driven to some miscellaneous class or something. However, a couple of weeks ago I had a Saturday night where I literally had NOTHING to do. So, I thought it would be fun to lounge around and watch a movie with my kids and eat popcorn and Chex Mix. However, the cosmos always seems to find a way to tempt me out of the house when I have a free moment. This particular Saturday night I got a phone call at 5:30 from my friend. Okay, now I have to come up with a pseudonym for my friend because I know she probably doesn't want me to say who she is. Hmmm....let's call her Mandy. (Are you humming the fabulous Barry Manilow song by the same name now? How about now? Now? Did you know that he wrote that about his DOG? That's right. He wouldn't have written it about a girl because he is gay. I don't think he's ever admitted it, but he is. Totally.) Anyway, so Mandy calls me and asks me what I am doing. I told her the truth and she said that she had an extra ticket to this school fundraiser where there are skits and liquor. She had this ticket because her friend, for whom the ticket was intended, was blowing her off to go to her son's Guitar Hero championship round at his school. Sounds like the lamest made-up excuse in the world to me, but my friend Mandy bought it so who was I to say otherwise? In any case, at the time it didn't bother me to be the last minute stand-in who wasn't good enough to be invited in the first place...but now I'm wondering why I WASN'T invited in the first place. What the hell?


So, even though I thought it sounded like kind-of a stupid thing to do...I mean, a school fundraiser with skits? Sounds retarded. BUT, she did mention that there was going to be liquor so I figured I would give it a shot. So, I took a shower and drove over to her house at about 6:15 figuring that I would be home by 9:30 EASILY. Well, I was wrong. This particular fund raiser was at a Catholic high school and I guess it is pretty famous for this event which is called "Street Scenes". I knew it was a bigger deal than I had anticipated when I saw the traffic cops directing cars to auxiliary parking and school buses shuttling people from "remote parking". Apparently, this school has been doing this for 34 years and it is a really, really big deal. The tickets were $25 just to get in and then you had to buy a ticket book for drinks and food. When you walked in you got a booklet which told you about all the "lounges" and the attached room where a show would be staged. For example, there was a classroom/lounge (and don't picture your average classroom here, either. All the desks were cleared out, the walls and ceiling covered with fabric or Mylar or something and there was a stage in every room with a live band while at the back of the room was a bar. Seriously. Nobody parties like the Catholics. They advertised complimentary taxi rides home because they assumed folks were going to get shit faced...which they did. More on that later.) that was called Carmine's Hideaway which featured a martini bar and band called "The Red Eye Express". Once you got in, you were given a ticket to the corresponding skit called "Bada Bing Bada Boom, The Sopranos Graduate" which was in a different room that was all tricked out too. Get this--there was a fucking LINE to get into Carmine's Hideaway. I looked at my friend Mandy and said, "You're kidding me. I'm too old to wait in line to get in a fake bar," so we moved on. The one lounge we did go into was called "The Poorhouse Lounge" and when we walked in the band was getting ready to play another song. A blond chick in her late 20's was holding the microphone and bopping around the stage in white go-go boots, black spandex pants and a back and white striped top that was long-ish and belted...but it was not long-ish enough because her fairly sizable ass was WAY too visible for me. In any case, I figured she had to be the band's singer in a get-up like that so I prepared myself to see what she could do. The band started to play "Dancing In The Streets" and she drunkenly sang/yelled the words, "DANCIN' IN THE STREETS..." upwards of 200 times. I don't think she knew any other words, although I do think she tried to sing some of them at one point. When the song was over she handed the microphone over to the actual singer for the band and returned to her group of equally dismally dressed drunken friends. Seriously, I think this was the pinnacle of her singing career. I can't believe the band let her get up and sing...I hope someone got laid out of it.
Anyway, I kid you not when I say there were about 15 or so different "lounges" with various rooms attached where parents and alumni put on skits. We wandered into the Margarita Lounge and listened to some Jimmy Buffet wannabe band. We went into the Irish Pub and heard some "Danny Boy" (not really, but they were playing Irish music) and we hit the Mardi Gras, which was the entire cafeteria with a whole bunch of tables, a bar as long as the entire back wall and a huge stage with a 8-10 piece band. It was here that I heard the funniest and saddest conversation of the night. Mandy went off to the bar to talk to someone she knew and I declined to join her because I loathe small talk with people I am never going to see again (unless it's a bartender or someone at a concert). So I sat down at a big table all by myself and pretended to listen to the band while I was actually waiting to overhear something really good. Well, I didn't have long to wait. This really skinny drunk blond girl came stumbling over with a not-so-drunk guy. He disgustedly plopped her down on a chair and she was whining about how he didn't love her and he was mad at her because she was drunk. He was obviously disgusted but he just said something like, "Don't worry about it. It's okay," and all those other things you say to emotional drunk people. Then she really pushed his buttons and said, "I bet you don't treat your wife like this when she's drunk," and he said, "Shut up!" At this point he sort-of nodded to this other guy who was loitering around us and said something like, "Hey, Paulie. Get this bitch a cab and make sure she gets home. "
Okay, the other guy's name wasn't really Paulie. I put that in for dramatic effect. However he did tell this guy to put the "bitch" in a cab etc. In the meantime, the "bitch" said something that really told me a lot about the whole situation...she said, "What are you going to do, go back upstairs to your wife?"
Now, when she said "upstairs" she literally meant upstairs from where we were sitting because all the "lounges" were on the second floor of the school. I almost died laughing. That guy got so red in the face with anger I almost thought he was going to hit her. It made me wonder what transpired before this little conversation. I imagine this guy and his wife were hanging out in Carmine's Hideaway having a couple of cocktails and in staggers the drunk mistress. Before the wife figured out anything, the guy grabbed his friend Paulie and maneuvered the drunk mistress out into the hall where she proceeded to tell the guy she loved him and she just had to come and see him and how she didn't care about his wife being there, blah, blah, blah.
All this drama at a high school fund raiser!!
At one point Mandy and I were at a table right in the middle of the main thoroughfare and I saw more drunken people lookin' to get laid than I have since college. I'm telling you, there were hundreds and hundred of people there. I bet they raised $250,000 just that night alone. (Did I tell you that they do this for two nights in a row?)
The big question is....how did they clean all the puke out of the bathrooms in time for the second night?