Lily Burana

Christmas Wish

Totes want this little guy, or one just like him.

5! 5! 5! 5! 5!

On this day five years ago, on a blustery day in Ole Baltimore Town, I got married! What can I say? We chose the date deliberately and with great care, in other words, homeslice was about to be booted into the Early Adapter phase of the War on Terror (he's so avant EVERYTHING!) so we knew we had to get hitched. Is there a more romantic spot than your local City Hall? I think not. Keep your string quartets and espaliered pear trees bedazzled with twinkly white lights. We kept it real with a metal detector and a "sign here, here and here" nuptial efficiency.

Since then, we've kept busy. Stuff that's happened:

One deployment.

One redeployment.

One PCS.

Several TDYs.

Two Presidential Photo Ops.

Countless pet names that would make the masses gag.

Lots of opportunities to wear fancy clothes and eat butter shaped into crimped, frigid spheres.

Road trips all over this great land of ours, including a camp-out where we left the tent unzipped. Rain and hilarity ensued.

Adopted a really big, incredibly hairy Labrador who we love with the white hot intensity of a thousand fuzzy suns.

What can I say? I love my dude more than my own heartbeat, and I just had to yell that out--all girly and stupid-like--to the whole damn world.

HAPPY FIVE, WunderDude!!!!!!!

Since I know you're all dying of curiosity, here's a pic. So amazing is he, he can assume various forms of mythical creatures. Here he is as the almighty jackalope. What can't this guy do?????

Punk's Not Dead, Oh Noes.

Dang, I'm sorry this page seems like a running alt.obit column, but if there's anything I can't stand, it's an utterly decent, creative person being unheralded or poorly remembered. Or not remembered at all, which certainly won't be the case here.

Anyway, very sad to hear that Hawaii Punk Lance Hahn, situationist stalwart and all-around nice guy, died after a lengthy illness. Here's the OBIT. Lance was talented and very, very nice. My One! Big! Lance! Memory! is that he was one of those guys who laughed after almost every sentence when you were in coversation with him, which made you think that either he was very well-amused by life, or you were, in fact, a terribly clever funny person. A very clear, very good memory.

He was an active part of the Maximum RocknRoll/SF punk scene, and will be missed by skillions and skillions of people.

Hopefully, Tim Yo has already guided him to the great record swap in the sky.

ROCKTOBER!

TODAY is Rocktober 1st! w00t w00t!

I would just like to take a quick moment here to wish everyone a very happy
Rocktober.

Yes, kids, it is that time of year again-- the time of year when the leaves turn hues of yellow and brown, when Mother Earth blesses us with her sweet harvest and children of all ages from around the world don KISS face-paint while moms, dads, same sex life partners, babby daddies and stoner cousins teach them HOW TO ROCK!!!!!

Rocktober has no figureheads. Nary a Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Turkey Made from A Tracing Of Your Hand, St. Patrick or Great Pumpkin to be found. Why is this? Because Rocktober comes from you. It is about you not being a square from Delaware, wearing clean underwear, and throwing your hands in the
air as if you had not a care in the world. It is about being caught up in a mosh. It is about passing the dutchie--on the left hand or right hand side, it doesn't really matter. (Randy is a hippie. haha--LB) It's about getting the band back together for just one more show. It's about practicing your scratching technique for hours on end and then making it look simple during a show.

Roctober is about Mandatory Metallica Monday, Two For Tuesday, No-Repeat Wedneday, All Request Thursday and The Friday Top Five At Five. It is the All 80's Request Lunch Hour, the All Old School Weekend and the Top 1000 Oldies Memorial Day Weekend Countdown. Rocktober is about watching "This Is Spinal Tap" for the millionth time and still laughing. It is about latching on to a band early in their career and then complaining about the new fans who come along once they sell out to The Man.

Speaking of The Man-- Rocktober is about sticking it to The Man while sucking up to his corporate teats.

Keep on rockin' in the free world.
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.
We will rock you.
Rock n' Roll is alive (and it lives in Minneapolis)
You can't stop the rock.
--(courtesy of Randy Reiss, the Great Pumpkin of Rocktober)

Personal from LB: When it all gets to be too much, remember: God gave rock and roll to you. If he'd wanted to you be an accountant or a professional sob-sister, you'd be one. Horns up. Horns up 4 Life.


Happy Rocktober, Everyone!

ROOT CAUSE

Even hair-don't slovenliness has cycled back in as chic. Can flannel shirts be far behind?

Way ahead of ya, VOGUE.

Waaaaaay ahead of ya. (Obvs, skipping undereye concealer is the next, next big thing.)

2 Gud 2 Be Tru

Will it ever get old?

No. No. It won't.

As long as there are cats. As long as there are secretz.

Mrowr.

OK, Now You're Just F*cking With Me.

Another Emmy show gone by, another sub-par thespian taking home a statuette while Hugh Laurie grins and bears it. This is crap, bordering on conspiracy.

Why is this happening? Is growly bear James Gandolfini really showing that much range with his Tony Soprano? It's not like he flips over from stuttering, palsied Inuit to beef up and show out as our beloved Tony S, family man and benefactor to venal Russian go-go girls. Is this James Spader business memorable in any way, shape, or form? Spader won a place in our hearts as the pre-Web voyeur in "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" back before "http://" was a glimmer in Al Gore's eye, and I'm sure he's a swell cat, but...

I don't get it.

The only upside of tonight's show was the visual of Lisa "North Jersey Homegirl" Edelstein and Hugh sitting side-by-side, in perfect visual harmony. Of course, I'm on Team Cuddy, but I'm also on Team Lisa and feel that a Lisa/Hugh pairing would be even better than Cuddy/House, if we're playing Fantasy Football, Romance Edition (in real life, there would probably be a 29 year-old Creole ballerina edging her out, but this is Fantasy Land here). I mean, Mrs. Laurie is probably ready for some time off for excellent behavior, right? She can take up with some scruffy young Classics professor, and Hugh can start hitting the Ashtanga mat with Lisa. Or sit outside in the car smoking Camels while L.E. flips up into Scorpion pose. Cuz you know the betch can touch her toes to the top of her head while standing on her forearms. She just CAN, as easily as she can work the mercenary curves of a pencil skirt and clackity-clack heels. Of this I am certain. If she can conquer the Willowbook Mall (if she was stuck in N. Jersey as a teen, you KNOW she did...), she can asana herself into an East Village club kid emeritus pretzel.

Maybe next year justice will be served. Award show results continue to confuse me. Color me mystified. New season starts next Tuesday. Critics, take note.

How Wide Is YOUR Stance?

Oh, the Craig's List jokes one could make!

Yet another holier-than-thou Family Values-touting politician has fallen on his own sword (I know. I'll be here all week!). This time, it's sporty Idaho senator, Larry Craig, who is, he will have you know, NOT GAY, yet was arrested for cruising a Minneapolis airport men's room.

The corker here--and there always is one when such a fellow is assiduously NOT GAY--is that he said he wasn't cruising using are-you-game? foot signals under the stall partitions, but rather, he simply has a "wide stance" when he uses the bathroom. Bitch, please, you've already made it perfectly obvious that your balls ain't that big.

I really get having a split between one's identity and one's actions when it comes to sex, and to a point, most of us have at least a little touch of compartmentalization that presents a more vanilla face to the world than we might show if life were less about appearances and middle-of-the-middle assumptions. And he may truly love his wife and desire women more than men (doubt it, but let's advance the Bi Agenda here for a spell, just 'cuz, m'kay?), so he could believe in his heart that, affectionally speaking, he is NOT GAY. But even if that's the case and he's 99.999999% percent straight, most of the time, at least for ten minutes every other Tuesday, then he still has no business working the Family Values/anti-gay angle. Damn, will this crap never ever ever ever ever end?

My stance? Big as my heart--there's room for every consenting adult if he or she can just own who they are, and not slam the goddamn door on the fingers of every "differently sexual" person who is reaching for basic human rights.

The upside to all this? Now that Craig is crying "witch hunt," he and others like him may be less likely to order their own flaming torch marches. Yeah, I said it, Mary: flaming. Dang, Craig--there you were, broadcasting GAY GAY GAY all along.

Since we know there will be another horny hypocrite along presently, who wants to create a Dorothy Pool and guess who's next? Winner gets their admission to the White Party paid.

That's the view from the "I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused" corner.

PS: Look, I try to be understanding about various kinks and things, but the whole public lewdness deal? Intellectually, I get it from a oooh-naughty-naughty perspective, but I think it's rude and I'm not at all averse to arrests for it. You have a deep longing to get it on in close proximity to subway tile and a dispenser full of tissue paper seat covers? Let a thousand lavatory flowers bloom, kid, but do it at home. The other guys just want to take a quick whiz before catching their connecting flight to Topeka.

And it's not just a Boy Problem. To the cow who was flashing people from beneath her mini at the county fair a couple years ago? If I see you pull that sh*t, instead of hearing about it FROM MY FAMILY after the fact, I'll report you to the police myself. I'll be dragging you by your ear, so don't get any big ideas about some great pay-off for your indecency. Upskirt THIS.

Hey, Barb.

I don't have anything interesting to say, so I'm just sending a shoutout to my bf from freshman/soph year in high school. Since I know she's reading.
And waiting.

Dog Days

I'm no Jon Katz, but I do love the pups. We've been trying to find a suitable companion for our gelded giant, Chief, the Labra-horse, but it's been tough. One girl, a chocolate volcano, was a jumpy, nippy baby who saw Chief as little more than a suitable opponent. The constant sparring brought her foster period to a quick halt. Then we got little Chloe Darlin', who is a sweet, dainty Southern miss, but too much puppy for Labra-horse, who has the general swiftness and demeanor of a platypus on Valium.
So Chloe Jo's now doing backflips and pretty sit-stays for a young family.

We're hoping the pup-karma improves. Maybe we've just got a confirmed bachelor on our hands. I don't know.

I do know that the nice people at Orange County Labrador Rescue are possessed of saintly patience, as we work it out. Now, for what I'm sure will be just a nanosecond, they've got not ONE big beefy yellow girl Lab but TWO, coming in from Texas, and of course, I want to foster them both (which is code for: let them in my house until Chief falls in love and we have a cheery blond doggy-troika). Look at their sweet faces while they're on the site and weep from the cute!

::sniffle::