How was your day, Dan?

LEARN SOMETHING

It's Winter Music Conference this weekend: 200,000 partying douchebags are wandering the streets of South Beach, their pupils dilated so wide from the drugs that their eyeballs are about to pop.  A few years ago, it was a fun event but now it's lame, a big date-rape waiting to happen.  I've mostly lived inside since Thursday: movies, shopping, staying home.  But tonight the cool breezes beckoned me out, for some fresh air and a stroll to the corner market where they sell those cookies I like, called something in Spanish which I cannot (nor does it matter if I do) remember.  The foster dogs just ate, they were in a food coma, they wouldn't notice if I left.

I took a different route than normal, walking straight instead of turning right, and I passed a street I never knew existed.  Four years of living here, and I never saw the street, two blocks from my apartment.  Huh.  I walked down and looked at the surprisingly large houses, windows open and voices rolling out with the goings-on of middle-class family life.  And on the sidewalk, with a collection of trash cans, was a nice office chair that was apparently no longer wanted.  I sat down on it, and listened as the family next door discussed a matter of some sort while watching "Hoarders" on TV.  I love that show.  And it was a good chair.  These rich people throw away good stuff, I swipe furniture all the time.

I made my way to the store, and wandered four aisles back to the sugary junk; on the shelves were packages of muffins, labeled "panqué."  When T.L. wanted a muffin, he would call them "pancakes," and ask "Bebecito I wanna sweet, let's get the pancakes!" and we'd go to Starbucks.  I accepted it as one of those cute phrases he translated for himself but didn't quite get right.  I loved his wacky language, it was a secret I kept just for myself and I hated correcting him.  But little did I know, he wasn't saying "pancake," he was saying "panqué."  For two years, he was saying it right and I had no idea.  Well.  You learn something new every day.  A walk to the market, and my list of newly-learned things was already at 2.  What an adventure!

I bought my stuff, no panqués as they looked dry, and walked home.  On the way I swiped the chair on the curb.  I'm sitting on it right now, as I type.  I have some cookies left, if you want them.

GLAAD PROTESTS AGAIN

Following the March 25 protest of indie film Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has announced a new protest of this video, featuring a sloppily-dressed transgendered person making a mockery of the song "Telephone" by Lady Gaga and Beyoncé:

Jarrett Barrios, President of GLAAD, issued a statement about the matter, saying he was upset not only because this protest proved his organization had completely lost its sense of humor, but he was sad that he could no longer use ChatRoulette because thought the service was "awesome."

"We had nothing else to protest today," said  Jarrett Barrios, President of GLAAD.  "The gay kid on Ugly Betty just hooked up with another boy, Modern Family has a gay couple raising a child, Ellen Degeneres is getting her own postage stamps. But all this good news sucks for us!  We need to keep protesting stuff so people will send us money."

The performer in the video, known only by his YouTube name "Dominator005," could not be reached for comment.

P.S.: I made this up. But the video is so funny.

MORNING NEWS

Good morning.  We have so much to discuss! Here we go:

1) It is with great sadness I tell you that I am successfully rearing only two of the puppies.  The male and the larger female are progressing as expected, plumping up nicely and learning commands such as "come here" and "no" and "stop chewing on my toes or I will cook you for lunch," etc.  However, the smaller female is being left behind; she's still tiny, despite my best efforts at helping her grow (I separate her at feeding times with her own bowl of food, which she can eat daintily at her own pace).  And she refuses to follow me anywhere—correction, she refuses to walk anywhere—when I put her down and walk forward, she just sits down and trembles until I go pick her up.  There's nothing wrong with her legs, she runs and plays when she thinks I'm not looking; she just insists on being carried everywhere.  Putting this dog up for adoption would be such a black mark against my foster-parenting skills, I don't think I'll be able to send her out into the world.  I may have no choice but to keep her.

They posed for a family photo—after I finished my laundry and pulled it from the dryer, they found a warm pair of shorts I dropped:

 

The little runty girl is the one in the middle. You can see her underbite a little bit.  The one on the right of the photo, who is moving, is the male.  It's always the boys who can't behave.

~~~

2) I am so good at setting up my friends with each other, they forget I am even in the room.  One unfortunate incident years ago involved two gentlemen I had briefly dated (at different times).  The second beau was an out-of-town summer romance; months after I moved back home he came to town for a visit. I thought he would enjoy meeting my previous paramour, with whom I was still friends, so I set up a casual lunch.  They instantly fell in love and started dating each other that afternoon.  Their long-distance relationship blossomed, and they left me in the dust.  I barely saw either of them again.  It was a nightmare, I was a jealous mess for weeks.

Last night I introduced two of my friends; they are at opposite ends of the personality spectrum, and I thought they would get a kick out of each other.  I was right.  They didn't shut up for a minute.  I was done with my dinner before they barely touched theirs, just because their mouths were too busy talking and they didn't have time to eat.  When I commented on this, the noisier friend made a reference to how I would still have food on my plate if I wasn't "Hoovering it in like a pig," which of course made the quieter friend laugh at my expense.  I'm glad they bonded with their mutual appreciation of ridiculing me.

~~~

I am counting down the days until I get my first butterbeer:

http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/

I heard a rumor that it's going to open earlier than June 18, but that could be wrong.

TONIGHT

I just arrived home, after spending the evening out and about.  Chatted up various people, struck out, game over.  (sigh)  Then when I came home, I walked in the door and the puppies just looked up and blinked their eyes a few times before going back to sleep.  Even they can't be bothered to get excited. 

I'm 35, and I'm single.  Single.  I have to go through all this again.  This process feels like scraping gum off the bottom of my shoe—It's mildly unpleasant, I would rather not be obliged to go through with it, but I have to get through the drudgery before I can move forward.  So I go out and chit-chat with people as if I really want to be there. "Hi, how are you? What's your name? Blah blah blabbity blah? That's great. Do you have a gun? I'd like to shoot myself in the head.  Great, thanks."  Click.  Meanwhile, I'm just thinking about how long I need to force myself to stay out so it feels like I accomplished something, when really I want to go home and watch reruns of "The Golden Girls" on TV.  But I've already seen every episode at least 3 times, I can recite all the words by heart.  Missing one now and then won't kill me.

At least this keeps me young. I feel like time never passes, I'm still stuck in the same day, doing the same things round and round.  Imagine if my life was progressing, how old I would feel!  Luckily I am in the same place as I was 10 years ago.  I'll stay young forever at this rate.

As was mentioned in the earlier post, there are three puppies this time.  Usually I limit the operation to only two, as I have only two hands, but these dogs are so small I can smush three together and still have room in my hands to maneuver my apartment/car keys.  They each weigh perhaps 1.5 pounds, and they love to lay on each other in complex Twister-like knots.  Again, see previous photo for an example.

We stayed in tonight, the dogs and I, to watch the Harry Potter marathon on ABC Family and partake in some belly rubbin'.  Two of the pups are female; the third (male) is smaller, but feisty, and when he walks he kicks his legs out like a high-stepping soldier.  And wherever I go, he follows about 5 seconds later, just to see what's going on.

The females are very meek, although if I put the two of them down and walk away the larger one will bound after me.  The smaller one just sits down and cries until I go back and pick her up.  She runs and jumps when she's playing, so physically there's nothing wrong that hurts her to walk.  She just doesn't like it.  I can appreciate that preference.  After two weeks with me I predict she will be spoiled rotten, and will have no choice but to live out the rest of her life getting toted around town in the handbag of a lovely Bal Harbour society wife. PS: As a bonus, she has a little underbite. It's the cutest thing ever.

Today, the other two dogs and I practiced coming to me when called.  I don't think they can see well yet, they bumped into walls, but we're making progress.

PUPPIES

Oh no.

Trouble comes in pairs threes.*

* originally I thought I uploaded a different pic, with only two of them. I'll keep this one anyway, it's just as good.

RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE

I must discuss RuPaul's Drag Race.  Shall we take a look at the remaining contestants? Let's break it down:

Name: Tyra Sanchez

Pros: Killer instinct.  Brings the drama.  Treats life like a stage, and she is ready to perform.

Cons:  Not emotionally generous.  Does this make her a bitch? Perhaps it's just a defense mechanism.

Pastimes: Building wigs, cutting bitches, watching Beyoncé videos on repeat

Outlook: On stage, Tyra Sanchez is charming and beautiful, but her tendency to fight everyone who crosses her path clouds her performances with bad energy.  Her stubborn nature makes her strong on the street, but on stage she is unable to adapt to different challenges—and her insistence on doing "her own thing" from week to week seems disrespectful to the competition.

Prediction: Tyra will be told to "Sashay, away," with her head held high, and will enjoy a bountiful career on the drag club circuit.  People always love the bitch of the show. 

~

Name: Pandora Boxx

Strengths: Creative.  Legitimately talented character actor.  Superb comedic timing.

Weaknesses: While she plays other characters well, who really is Pandora Boxx herself?

Pastimes: Dressing up as celebrities, puttering around her upstate New York home with her husband, giggling with glee every time a web site pops up with her name on it

Outlook: Pandora Boxx is not only talented, but so humble that you can't help rooting for her.  She has the wit and the personality to take over the stage, but she doesn't have the killer instinct to push everyone else out of her way. 

Prediction: If Jessica Wild gets kicked out, then Pandora Boxx will be in the final two.  But while she has the talent, her star power shrinks in the presence of queens such as Raven. 

~

Name: Raven

Strengths: An artist with a makeup brush. Confident. Glamorous.  Gorgeous.  A star to her core.

Weaknesses: Zero sense of humor.

Pastimes: Stepping on homeless people with her stiletto heels, spoiling her tiny little fluffy dog, contouring her cheekbones with 17 different shades of shadows, judging everyone else

Outlook: With her beauty and poise, Raven has all the goods to win this competition. RuPaul is openly rooting for her to rise above the pack, and tends to put more pressure on her than some of the other contestants.  But Raven is her own worst enemy: her lip-syncing is too restrained, and she fears failure to the point she can't let herself go in the moment on stage.  As Tyra Banks says on "America's Next Top Model," sometimes "you got to get ugly to look pretty."  Raven can't get to that place yet.

Prediction: Unfortunately, the final competition is a lip-sync, and the other contestants have shown more spark in that field than Raven, who can come off a bit stiff.  But week to week the competition is breaking through that wall—if she can let go of her inhibitions by the final round, she will be the one to beat.

~

Name: Tatianna

Pros: Beautiful.  Gives feminine realness.  Plays the "victim" to trick others into underestimating her.

Cons: Seems to really think she is a victim.  No self-confidence.

Pastimes: Looking in the mirror while crying, listening to Taylor Swift songs, coercing older men into buying her dinner

Outlook: Poor, sad Tatianna.  She has proven herself to be entirely worthy of this competition—he's gorgeous, she dances well, and she has had flashes of creativity.  Her star-turn as Britney Spears in the "Match Game" was fantastic.  Unfortunately, at this point Tatianna can't handle the pressure and is just waiting to be eliminated.  

Prediction: One more week.

~

Name: Jessica Wild

Strengths: Fearless on stage. Funny. Lights up a room.

Weaknesses: Could use a more glamourous wardrobe, and she isn't confident when speaking.

Pastimes: Singing karaoke, shopping for enormous hoop earrings, filling her heart with love and sharing it with the world

Outlook: Jessica Wild is undeniably fun.  She dives head-first into any chance to perform, she treats every audience like it is a sold-out house, she gives everything she's got—all because she loves you, whoever you are.  Her positive spirit is infectuous; unfortunately, her language barrier gets in the way.  Compared to Nina Flowers in Season 1, who worked her unique Latina dialect as part of her charm, Jessica Wild gets nervous when speaking and she deflects the situation by turning it into a joke.  This tends to sacrifice a little glamour sometimes.  She needs to harness her on-stage bravery and become more confident when the music isn't playing.

Prediction: Jessica Wild should make it to the final two, but needs a little more experience and polish to pull of a win.

~

Name: Jujubee

Strength: Powerfully charismatic.  Stunningly beautiful.  Articulate and smart.

Weakness: Performance anxiety!

Pastimes: Communicating with the spirits of deceased relatives, beating away Rice Queens with a stick, applying false eyelashes

Outlook:  We were rooting so hard for Jujubee!  But despite her natural charisma, when the spotlight shines on her she shuts down. Look at her track record: singing in the Rock and Roll Challenge she froze.  In the Match Game Challenge she looked flawless as Kimora Lee Simmons with her painted rolls of neck fat, but while the other girls were firing out one-liners, Jujubee was shooting blanks and couldn't think of anything clever to say. 

Jujubee has fantastic wit in her somewhere; her hilarious comments fly in her interviews.  Too bad she can't translate that to the stage.  A drag queen with performance anxiety is like a gay porn star with a short gag reflex: no matter how good you look, when it's showtime you need to be able to do the job.

Prediction: She will fight on a few more rounds, based on the fact that everyone loves her, but after her disastrous performance in the Rock Challenge her days are numbered.

Dear President Obama,

It is hard to see how you've deflated.

You talked a big game when you entered office, but then when the health care debate got sticky you disappeared from the media.  You're trying to come back now and fight, but it's probably too late, and the entire situation seems to have stolen your mojo.

For someone who plays so much basketball, you've certainly dropped the ball.  Our military is still wandering through Iraq and Afghanistan, largely unaided by the rest of the world due to their general disinterest in getting involved in these ridiculous situations. 

Yet on our own borders, the U.S./Mexican drug wars rage on, with close to 10,000 people officially dead in drug-related violence: http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war  And of course the real number is MUCH higher.  Allow me a moment to focus on this particular issue, and use it as an example.

You have done virtually nothing about this problem, perhaps shrugging it off as (a) a problem in another country, and (b) of less importance because it's drug gang violence.  However, I don't see the difference between invading a country half a world away, versus stabilizing a country along our own border and is our, what, second largest trade partner?  (What's first, Canada? China? Whatever, Mexico is up there.)

Then for the sake of this argument, let's say these drug gangs do deserve to die.  Let them shoot it out, kill each other off.  But what about the family members who are kidnapped for revenge?  What about drive-by shootings that hit the wrong targets?  What about American workers in Mexico who are shot in retaliation?  These are brothers, sisters, children of drug dealers who are being targeted, it's really nasty.  And you may say "This violence is happening among the Mexican people, not Americans."  But, hmm, the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't against Americans either, is it?  So why are we there? 

And there's also the fact that much of this violence is not actually happening in Mexico.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P1dmnjAEPA Watch 30 seconds of this, and be shocked.  This is MUCH more of a threat to Americans than anything coming from Iraq or Afghanistan. 

I could go on, but this isn't a letter about violence along the Mexico/US border.  This is about you, Mr. President.  You've become so bogged down by the healthcare clusterfuck, and these stupid wars in Asia, there are all these other issues happening that we can't begin to address. 

You are about to get your ass handed to yourself by your biggest enemy, the Republican Party, because you are sitting still like George W Bush sat in that classroom the day the World Trade Center was destroyed.  Are you just overwhelmed?  All the people who voted for you had big expectations, but it's been depressingly "business as usual" in Washington for the past year.  What have you changed?  Besides some good policy decisions, like the Matthew Shepard Act and such, what is really different?  I don't see much.

Sadly, you've changed your mind on the Middle East, presumably convinced by well-meaning military officials, and kept us wrapped up in wars we care very little about.  If the majority of America thought those wars were a priority, we would have voted for John McCain.  And we didn't.  CHANGE YOUR MIND BACK.

Please pull yourself together, take a big cleansing breath, and remember why you are in that office.  I realize the Taliban is coming back, but that is not our only problem.  Make some tough choices, man.  The definition of "insanity" is, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  And things are starting to look a little crazy around here.

I'm rooting for you, my Prizzle Obizzle.  Get back in the game.

Sincerely,

Dan Renzi

~

PS: Note to people who do drugs: where do you think it comes from?  Unless you are growing pot in your basement or you have a prescription to by medical marijuana, you are part of this problem. 

911 TO MIAMI BEACH POLICE

"911, what is your emergency?"

Hi, I'm standing on the corner of 15th Street and Jefferson, and there is a woman lying in the intersection with a bloody face.  I don't know what's wrong with her, I think she fell.

"She's lying in the street?"

When I found her she was lying in the middle of the intersection, but now she got up and she's trying to walk.  She has two dogs with her, and they are running all over the place, cars are swerving around them.

"Did you see what happened to her?"

No.

"Do you know this woman?"

No.

"What is she wearing?"

Black pants and a pink shirt.  The dogs are both white.

"Okay."

Now she's waving her hands at me saying "No no no," she sees me calling you, but there's obviously something wrong with her.  She's bleeding pretty bad.  I think she doesn't want me to call because she's on drugs.

"What is your phone number?"

(I give her my number.)

"Okay. What is she doing now?"

Now walked over to the corner, where Jefferson street is a dead-end.  She crouched down and she's hiding behind a car.

"Why is she hiding behind a car?"

I don't know. But it's pretty obvious something is wrong with her.

"What is she doing behind the car?"

She's just sitting there I guess.

"What car is she hiding behind?"

I don't know, it's a blue car.

"Can you see the license plate on the car?"

No.  But the police will see her before they can read the license plate on the car.

"What was she doing when you found her?"

She was laying on the street, face down, and her dogs were running around. 

"You didn't see what happened to her?"

No, she was already laying there.  So I asked her if she was okay, and she got up but she staggered around for a while, her face is pretty bloody, so she got up and she couldn't walk very well, I don't know if she's high or what is wrong with her, and she keeps saying "No no no," and now she's just sitting on the street. (take a breath) But I'm repeating myself, I'll stop.

"I'm not asking you to repeat yourself, sir, I just asked you a question."

(pause)

Did you just snap at me?

"Um, uh—"

Are you a 911 operator? Are you supposed to give people attitude?

"What direction is she headed now?"

She is hiding behind a car in a dead-end street, she isn't headed anywhere. Why are you being rude? I'm trying to be nice by calling this in.

"Now what is she doing?"

Look, there is a bloody woman sitting on the street at 15th and Jefferson. You can send a cop if you want, it's up to you. I'm hanging up.

"Sir—"

(click)

SELL YOURSELF

Good morning everyone.

After much thought and discussion with myself, I have decided that I will willingly participate in the day today.

It was a decision not made easily, mind you.  There was much hesitation from certain aspects of my persona, namely much of my body, that wished to spend the day in bed watching television.  But then I realized there was no logic in doing so.  Why must I hold myself back?  We must learn from the Republicans.  Saying "no" just for the sake of saying "no" to thwart one's adversaries is not always in the best interest of everyone.  So I got out of bed.

...and I walked over to my computer and sat down again.

But it is progress nonetheless! A step taken in any direction is a step forward from standing still. 

I have mentioned before my interest in selling some of my belongings.  After my friends threatened to put me on the show Hoarders, they convinced me that amassing furniture for a 2-bedroom apartment was a mistake, as I still live in a studio.  Armoire: sold.  Lamp: placed on curb, and taken within 10 minutes.  Chair: thrown into construction dumpster down the street.  Now I'm turning to eBay: how do I place my eBay listings on my blog? Is there such a widget? 

Was I really just in Sweden? Dogsledding is fun: