frozen pizza

if you grew up on Celeste frozen pizza (after the Elios phase), you know how important it is to neither overcook or undercook a frozen pizza. Undercook it by a mere 14 seconds and the center is icy (literally) and the peripheral cheese shreds take on a mooshy, dirty play-dough look, feel and taste.

over cook one of these pioneering frozen pizzas for a mere 23 seconds and your snack plate has become ground zero. no life for miles.

...and that's why I felt the need to take more pointless video tonight. frozen pizza that was just right. if you look carefully you can see the bubbling center.

Webelos aka We Blow

When you're done being a cub scout but before you're a boy scout...
you blow.
literally.
you're officially part of the Webelows, pronounced "we blow"
I blow
you blow
we blow

but if we blow, are we still allowed in the boyscouts?

My fifth grade history teacher, Miss Deane, laughed uncontrollably when we showed up with our red plaid necktie-scarf things that signify Webelow-dom.
"What are you guys called?" she asked, pants in a permanent khakis wedgie.
we blow
snickering
whats your real name
weblows!!!!

and so it went for a while...in abbot and costello style

I haven't googled this, and if I did, i'm sure I'd find a never ending string of ironic jokes looking at the "no gays" policy of a group in which the boys are officially called "webelos"

the reason I'm thinking about this now is that I overheard someone talking about being a Webelos yesterday.

Ubaldo...Milano's newest gay icon

Ubaldo is Milano's latest gay icon.
Straight men want to be him
Gay men want him
Straight women can't get enough of him
Gay women...well...the only person I ever saw resist his charms was the lesbian working the ticket desk at the museum in Milan with the Last Supper painting. He tried to weasle some passes out of her even though they were sold out for the entire week...it almost worked...but not quite...close but no cigar...perhaps it was HIS cigar that got in the way...or maybe that's just my phallic-centric lens colored in shades of Ubaldo green...

Happy Birthday Sarah

I'm going to try to call you tomorrow. I hope you're feeling good. And, as usual, I don't remember when your birthday actually is. January is an educated guess. Fill me in for the love of God!!!

Genoa Smell

Outside of Genoa, smell. Outside. The smell outside Genoa. Outside the smell of Silver Spring, Maryland. Outside smell. Genoa, Nebraska. Cow shit. On a gravel road between grandma's house and Genoa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YPBUn5nqtY

my first yoga video

lo-fi sun salution...taken the same day as the downpour in the video below!

yes, it rains in san diego

view from our living room...nobody playing tennis during a sunday night downpour. Got 15 seconds to kill (and I really mean kill...), watch the video...

bad facial hair day

kelly and heather...yeah you!!!

buon compleanno onelia!!!

maurie and vera are dead

Maurie and Vera are dead.
I didn't actually know either of them.
They are from the same patch of land in central nebraska as my mom.
They were friends of my grandparents, who are still alive.
Still alive and up to the task of going to the funerals of all their dead friends.
My mom says my grandma says that the funerals keep getting smaller.
Dead people don't go to funerals.

It sounds like a morbid life.
Once your ladies bridge club falls apart.
Once you don't have the energy to cook Christmas dinner
Once your gay grandchildren get too old to come visit and pretend they're straight.
Once you think you're too old to drive to Kansas City for your granddaughter's wedding
Even after all this, you're not too old to go to funerals in town.
Between church, the grocery store, the nursing home and the funeral parlor
You've been up and down main street and seen more ghosts and strangers than familiar faces.
but at least you're there.
at least you know when you're friends and acquaintances and cousins of cousins die
will i?
will we?
will social networking follow us to our graves?
will i get an email when my coworker from 1999 dies of heart attack?
when the guy i drove to school my junior year of high school dies of prostate cancer, will I have a clue?
Will I know?
Will i have the chance to feel blue?
will the geographical distances, the moving, moving always moving
what is it that we are proving?
will transient existences and transplanted Christmases change the human experience of outlasting most of your peers?
will zip code drifting sideswipe our tears?

To grow old and grow melancholy in two thousand forty something...
I hope the sadness is for losses I can see,
and not unannounced losses that must surely be.

ciao flavio!!!!!!

Flavio, where were you last Sunday? We waited at the Starbucks in West Hollywood for like an hour...but you never showeded up...so we went to the Banana Republic on the 3rd street promenande in Santa Monica without you. There was a super sale, and we bought and bought and bought. So, if we do end up in a recession, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT. We bought sweaters, shoes, shirts, pants, tee shirts. We even got the "honeymoon suite" to try on our clothes together...which per se is not a big deal...but when you've shopped for clothes with a same-sex "buddy" in a store that is not gay friendly, then the touch of overt acceptance is nice...even if it is just a marketing ploy... I added up the prices of just my stuff because I wanted to know the difference between what we paid and the original price... are you ready??? (updated on sunday jan 26) what we paid: 182.94 original prices... 709.58 Ivano's original price: 460 his sale price... 118.00

I miss you blog

Note to self:
-post on your blog
-tell friends to watch "Gloria"
-keep wondering why heath ledger is dead
-watch Gloria again
-go see There Will be Blood
-tell Kelly how absolutely fabulous she looks in the pics she recently posted

Pointsettia Death

This was taken two days before we left for Italy at a freaky professional office park near the mall that is near our place. You can see the perils of pointsettias as landscape features.

happy birthday martin

so...photoshop is not installed on my new computer yet...but what did they do before photoshop? well...for one thing, they said things like, "Oh my god, I was on my way to 7-11 and it started snowing like hell, a freak blizzard. I'm so glad I had my camera with me. I took a picture of it. the picture is attached below. there is so much snow that...well...all you can see is the snow. I hope you like it!!!!












cool huh?! If you squint really hard you can see 7-11 in the background.

and then, I was walking down the street with a birthday cake for you...but then a huge wall of fog rolled down the street...I tried to take a picture of the birthday cake, if you squint really really hard, you can see the candles through the fog.













and then, once the fog lifted, I couldn't find the cake. So I walked to Whole Foods to get a fresh pizza for you. I walked into the store, and a little kid threw a volley ball into the milk section and all the milk cartons fell over and broke open. A tidal wave of milk flooded the store. I took a picture of it for you.













and then I took a picture of a fresh new volleyball for you.









I hope you like it.

the pasta is cooking

the pasta is cooking and i've got about 7 minutes until it reaches "al dente perfection" as the barilla box says.

and how do I fill the time?

good idea!

i'll tell you how i tried to kill darth vadar last night in a dream. I had the gun version of a light saber...but it was much too weak, and good ole darth just kind of laughed it off...but he never did catch me, cuz last night I had the power to fly!

and then I woke up, and was totally out of it and a little ditty came to mind:

"twinkle twinkle little slut

how I want to bust a nut"

squash soup take 2

My first hot meal of 2008 was squash soup that Martin made for Peter and I in Amsterdam. We had just returned from a walk along the North Sea and I was cold and fighting a cold. In the time it took me to pack up my bags and take a shower, Martin made an amazing squash soup that he served with whole wheat bread that he'd thrown in the oven to warm up.

I was blown away by the soup and asked him how he made it.

Just like every other good cook in the world, he was like, "it's so simple you just blah blah blah..."

But this time, I actually tuned in and remembered most of what he said (I think).

The following Sunday, the first day back in San Diego, I was so jet lagged that I was like "If I don't cook, I'm going to fall asleep."

So I tried the soup. The problem is that I fried too munch onion in too much oil for far too long. The soup felt heavy and oniony and was hard to digest. But edible nonetheless.

Last night, after an afternoon at the beach, I cracked open a beer and tried again. This time, I used much less onion and fried the oil/onion/potato/squash combo for less time. Then, like the first time, I added water, veggie bullion, salt and pepper and cooked till tender. Then I threw the hot mess in the blender for a sec, returned it to the pot and added a cup of milk, stirred and served.

It wasn't as good as martin's but it's getting better. I think i undercooked the squash a bit.

Emilio my farmer's market buddy and mexican equivalent of Ivano's dad grew the squash.

Red Thread Diaries

I bought these pants in February of 200X. I don't remember what years. It was probably 2003 but I'm not sure. I remember going into H&M after work in DC and looking for pants to bring to the AAAS Annual Meeting that I would be staffing the following week. In the changing room, I ran into a woman from my office who was also looking for new clothes to wear to the meeting. I told her I was looking for pants that "actually fit me."

A nobe effort, especially since Martin once asked me why I wore "grand pa" pants ie: pants with a saggy butt. I didn't have an answer except that I didn't realize I was wearing grandpa pants.

These pants were an effort so stray from the grandpa phenomenon. Naturally, I failed miserably. They are still to baggy. But I keep them around anyway because I'm attached to the red thread I once used to sew on the two front buttons back on to the pants.

I called this "red thread diaries" in honor of Matt. Remember Red Shoe Diaries? The show we used to watch late at night freshman and/or sophomore year of college. A little soft core porn never hurt anyone.

deodorant

I'm pretty sure that yesterday, I only put deodorant under one arm.

How might I come to such a conclusion?

Easy. When I was smelling the shirt to decide if I could wear it again before washing, I found that one armpit smelled like my sweat and the other did not.

I know this post fits into the "TMI" category, but that's cool.

I used to think it was gross to smell your clothes to decide if you can wear them again, but overwashing your clothes is a waste of water, energy, time and makes your clothes wear out faster.

A year ago, it would have grossed me out to say this, but I now generally wear my work socks two days in a row before I wash them. They don't smell after a single wash.

This is Illegal in the US of A

Un pasteurized milk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For real, dude!

This is the stuff that you can only find in back road black markets off country road in Amerika. The land of the free, but you're not free to drink milk that hasn't been pasteurized.

Back from Montova, we turned up at Ivano's parent's house (it's an apartment, but I still call it a house...just like I call our apt a house in some contexts...). I was all excited to show the milk to Ivano's mom, Rosaria. She immediately opened the top and smelled it and agreed that it had not been flash cooked. I was was like, how cool are you? You smell milk to determine pasteurization! Everyone needs an old-school Italian mother in their life.

buon compleanno rosaria

Happy Birthday Rosaria.

It's true that you had to make your own birthday cake but who else can make a rice and ricotta cake as well as you??? grazie mille per la torta e la cena.

i bought the flowers on the street in Holland yesterday afternoon. When I went through security at Schipol last night, the guards were super careful with the flowers. The cute security guy who hand carried the wrapped up flowers to me so they wouldn't get hurt on the conveyor belt pretended that I had to pay a 5 euro "flower tax." Then, after that joke, he moved to joke #2. He handed me the flowers, said "Good luck tonight" and gave me a knowing smile...perhaps he is used to guys buying flowers out of guilt before leaving Amsterdam.

In Dutch, how do you say, "These are for my mother-in-law!"

dentists should learn from gay fireworks

This post is dedicated to all the dentists around the world who try to help their patients decide if they should go for the tooth-colored porcelain fillings or the silver fillings.

In Amsterdam for New Year's Eve, I personally chose this firework at the hardware store turned retail firework mob scene. The photograph of me trying to eat the firework provided a completely plausable and relevant argument for why you would want your molars filled with porcelain rather than silver fillings.

When I asked if there was any reason to pay extra for the porcelain fillings for my back teeth a few months ago, I wish my dentist had said something like:

"Well. If you ever pretend to participate in lewd acts with a golden globe firework, your silver fillings will be quite visible. I don't know about you, but I don't think gold and silver go well together at all. It's up to you, but that's my professional opinion."

The bottom photo shows the explosion that came out of this very firework.