radiopeter

I am disgusted. But I watched the whole thing and laughed my ass off. The Queen of the Queef. This is NOT work safe.

I never knew you could blow out a candle like that.

I did.

Last night Jonathan and I saw Joan Collins and Linda Evans in Legends at the LaSalle Theatre. And I have to tell you, Tonye Patano, better known to some as Heylia from the Showtime hit Weeds, stole the show.

The story is about two rival divas that are offered a part by a second rate producer. Lots of antics ensue and much of the show is predictable. But where else are you going to see Joan Collins and Linda Evans on stage? If there was a fault with the production, it was with the writing and not necessarily the acting. But again, seeing the two of them on stage was a once in a lifetime kind of thing.

I’m glad that I had the chance to see it, and for those of you in love with the duo of Collins and Evans, get out to see it right now ’cause it runs only through March 4th in Chicago.

After the show we decided to feast (which seems to be our usual pattern post theatre) and stuffed ourselves at Rock Bottom Brewery. I recommend the Texas Fire Steak for anyone who loves a good slab of cow. Choose the sirloin option. It comes out on a sizzling platter with a scoop of jalapeño butter on top. Upon arrival at the table the waiter flips the steak over, dumps the butter into the sizzling pan, swirls it around, plates the steak, and pours the hot and spicy foaming butter over the top. If you aren’t drooling, you’re either a veggie or dead.

My new dining room table and chairs arrived today from Crate and Barrell. They look delightful, but it’s making me feel like I need to urgently decorate my house.

But I had my first lunch at said table in said chairs. And it was delightful.

Last night in honour of Mardi Gras I headed to The Spot with my friend Ken to drink a hurricane and listen to Johnny Stax’ band. Their name has something to do with balls and corsettes, but they were phenomenal. And of course, my girl Cheryl from the cast of Caged Dames got up and sang her behind off.

The gurl has power in her lungs. Power people. Not the kind of wailing you hear in pop music. She’s just got power. Bam.

After much drinking and loads of laughs, David was kind enough to drive my boozy behind home.

Truly, let the good times roll.

If you have a PC handy, you can bust the iTunes DRM wide open using QTFairUse. The software can be downloaded from http://hymn-project.org/download.php.

I installed it yesterday on my Dell laptop after transferring the 3 gigs of protected tracks from my PowerBook over. In a few hours, it had plowed through all 3 gigs and turned them into AAC files. I moved them back to my PowerBook and let it rip them to mp3.

And now, anything I’ve ever purchased through iTunes is mp3. Ba-bam. You can find support forums and such via that link above.

I love computer people. They always find a way.

That is a direct quote from the Brown line conductor this morning on the train. He prattled on about how more trains will be running during rush hour and then dropped that bomb.

Arrested? Are you serious? Are they going to pay cops to stand on the platforms and watch who is holding the doors?

That will be the day…

The CTA is planning to do what it can to mitigate the problems with the work on the Red/Purple/Brown line trains. As far as I know, the three-track-only plan (down from four) hasn’t gone into effect just yet, but it soon will be. As will an increase in the number of buses running.

And what the hell will my commute look like then?

I’ve always been a train person. In 1990 when I started riding the train to Whitney Young every day, I lived on the Blue line. A swing down through the loop from Harlem (near O’Hare), exiting at Racine was all it took. Then in 1994 when I went to UIC for a bit, it was more of the same because I was still living at home.

The I dropped out of college and moved to Palatine. Eurgh. I learned a lot, but I lived with a car. Double eurgh.

Soon I moved to Rogers Park while working for Walgreens. Shortly after I changed jobs and made it to UBS Investment Bank (Warburg Dillon Read when I joined), I got rid of my car and haven’t owned one since. I have i-Go, and I like it. But Rogers Park and now where I am in Lakeview mean I use the Red/Purple/Brown a lot.

Brown to work in the morning. Purple to get home. Unless I feel the urge to spend money on State, in which case I take the Red home.

This train project is going to heavily impact my commute. I’m a touch bitter, but in the name of progress I’m going to set the bitterness aside and focus on the positive. The trains WILL be better.

I hope.

Am I destined to become a bus person? I suppose I could trudge a few more blocks to pick up the Belmont bus at LSD and take it downtown, but that isn’t the way I’ve lived for so long, and not the way I’ve gotten used to timing things. I could take the Clark bus. I could prolly work out some Halsted Bus something or another to somewhere else and make my way downtown too.

Buses. The mode of transportation I don’t use very much, but when I do I tend to add an extra hour to my commute in my head. An extra hour. That’s a long time when I’ve been used to arriving home in less than 30 minutes after leaving the office.

We shall see. Me & CTA. I hope we don’t have a big fight this Spring.

As I fired up Firefox this morning, I noticed that Chicagoist is hiring.

As one door closes, another opens. I quit my DJ gig to free up some time to do more, and maybe maybe maybe, this will be something ‘more’.

I wonder if they have queer people on staff. I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed too many posts about queer stuff on their site. Maybe I can help with that.

I’m not usually the kind of person to follow a pithy holiday like Valentines day. But some of the lore is pretty interesting.

• One of the biggest things to note is that up until 1969, St. Valentines Day was indeed part of the Roman Catholic holiday calendar. But then in 1969 Saint Valentine wasn’t de-canonized, but the holiday was removed from the official listing.
• St. Valentine isn’t actually one person either. There are three possible men, a bishop, a priest, and a Northern African man (Doesn’t that sound like the beginning of a joke?) who could be identified as the Saint in question. Somehow the martyrdom of one of them gave rise to the canonization during the late third century.
• In Roman traditions of the fifth century, there was a much celebrated holiday in mid February called Lupercalia or Februatio from the latin februare which means ‘to purify’. Maybe somehow the Church wanted in on the action.
• Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporaries in England helped associate the themes of romance with Valentines Day in the fourteenth century, giving rise to many of the traditions we follow today.

My DVR has been quietly sucking as many movies as possible from my cable connection. I suspect at some point it’s going to burst with the gigs of data that I’m insisting it hold.

One of these, a movie from 1971 called The French Connection, happens to be one of my favorites. It’s a gritty movie about NY cops trying to bust the infamous heroin connection between the states and France.

Early in the movie, Gene Hackman (who won the Oscar for his role) enters a nightclub and on stage performing are the Three Degrees, singing this insanely good song called Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon. You most likely know one of their other big hits called When Will I See You Again.

I can’t remember how old I was when I saw the movie on VHS. It was summertime and I was trying to go through as many of the films as I could find that received the Oscar for best picture. Call it a little bit of film education if you will. This was way before the internet, so I had to hit the library and dig into volumes of reference material to figure out who won. Must have taken me hours to put the list together. Today you can do it in about 30 seconds with an internet connection.

So I’m sitting in the living room watching this movie and when Gene Hackman enters the club, the music starts. These bright horns were blasting, a happy rhodes keyboard was playing, the bass line was thumping, the hi-hats were in full force, and there were these three beautiful voices singing some of the best lyrics I remember hearing as a kid.

The song was about going into space. I was a complete NASA nerd at the time. I also loved R&B girl groups a bit too much, making time to choreograph as many songs as possible in my basement.

It was like two worlds were colliding. Absolutely mesmerized, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Their dresses, their hair, the music, their eyelashes, it was almost too much late 60’s goodness to be believed. I watched the nightclub scene over and over until I knew all the words and most of the choreography. The energy is infectious. It wasn’t until many years later that I’d own the whole song.

The movie is amazing. But that scene forever changed me. I recommend renting the film just for those three minutes. And look for the song on iTunes because it’s beyond worth the 99 cents. This is THE best song Jimmy Webb has ever written, and the best the Three Degrees ever recorded.

“Everybody Gets To Go To The Moon” by Three Degrees
written by Jimmy Webb

how many times have I been downhearted
looked up and see him smiling like a shiny dime

and hoped that he would stay and tell me
why he was so happy if he had the time
oh I wish there was a way to race him
catch a flying horse and chase him

everybody’s going to the moon
everybody’s going in a weird white suit
it’s customary songs like this
use a word like spoon

by the light of the silvery
take a flight to the silvery
you know everybody’s going to the moon

how many times while looking down
has he heard us singing songs
he wondered who we were
and envied us because the lady in the moon is gone
and now he misses her

and then he wondered to himself
now why is it
we so seldom pay a visit

everybody gets to go to the moon
everybody’s got to go in a weird white suit
now it’s customary songs like this
use a month like june

by the light of the silvery
take a flight to the silvery
you know everybody’s going to the moon

(spoken) now don’t you think it’s a miracle
that we’re the generation that’s going
to one day populate the moon
and that’s going to be fun

and it’s got to make you glad to be alive
yes it’s got to make you proud to be alive

everybody’s going to the moon
everybody’s going to the moon

well how many times have I heard a cynic say
I was a fool to try and reach for him
or heard a dreamer say ‘the skies the limit’
and just had to laugh at each for him
oh I suppose the point is only
that in orbit is no longer lonely

everybody’s going to go to the moon
everybody’s going in a weird white suit
now it’s customary songs like this
use a word like spoon

by the light of the silvery
take a flight to the silvery
everybody’s going to the moon

…something wicked this way comes. This whole Anna Nicole media frenzy is not good. A friend of mine suggested that perhaps her son = her babydaddy. Which could, in part, explain his death, her refusal to submit to DNA tests, and the whole running to the Bahamas scenario.

It’s ugly however you slice it, and I suspect soon it’ll get even uglier.

Last night at Spin was my very last night as a resident DJ there. I’d decided I was going to quit my gig permanently a week or two ago, but I wanted to mull it over in my mind to be sure it’s really what I wanted.

And indeed, it is.

In many ways, I will miss the gig. The camaraderie of the bar staff, hanging out after the bar closes for a drink, and all the inside things that happen when you are a regular part of ‘the crew’ of a nightclub.

So many people asked me why I decided to quit last night. And my only answer was that it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The money, while nice, has never been the motivator. I have a day job, and I get P A I D. It was the experience I enjoyed for so many years. But lately it’s been fading, and I needed to make a change. I’m not one to stick with something that I don’t enjoy. Too much to do, too little time.

I’m not going to say I’ll never DJ again, because in all likelihood, that isn’t true. For now, I’ve left Spin. I hit the top DJ spot there, and it was great to have the experience.

Now it’s time to move on.

My stage manager for Caged Dames asked me to knit her a scarf for her birthday. Since it’s been bitter cold, and since my DVR was loaded up with hours and hours of History, Discovery, and PBS in hi def, I’ve been able to curl up with the cats on the couch and knit my worries away.

It’s totally therapy.

I’ve been knitting for a while now and have made some pretty fantastic things. But I prefer to give them away and let someone else enjoy them. It’s sort of like magick, each stitch I knit is a way to release a little something. By the time I’m done knitting, I don’t need to be reminded of everything I’ve been winding into the project. I just need to let it go.

That’s why nearly everything I’ve knitted I’ve given away. And this scarf for Jodi is quite beautiful if I do say so myself. It’s a checkerboard knit (the pattern is the subject of this post) in 9 panels; brown, olive, and heather. It ended up around 90 inches, done in Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick which is one of my favorite yarns for gift projects to work with. It’s perfect for scarves because it’s warm, soft, cheap, and it’s bulky so it knits up quickly.

I finished the main scarf last night around 12:30, after watching a fabulous documentary on Emperor Hirohito. This evening I have to add the tassels and it’ll be completed. I’m a fan of tassels along the entire length of the scarf, and since the panels are knit in checkerboard stitching, the joins are the perfect place to set each tassel.

Should have photos of it up later on tonight.

Yesterday evening was full of good company. Mom and Dad fed me until I nearly burst. And afterward, I hung out for a bit with him. He, who likes spending time with me but either isn’t ready or is afraid to take this to the next level. In the mean, whatever time I have with him, I enjoy.

I’m afraid too. Nothing right now would be better than finding myself able to spend more time with him. But inside my head, I’m still trying to piece together why I’m so head over heels. This vulnerable person isn’t me.

Or at least it wasn’t me until now.

I’m not afraid of being rejected. That’s not an issue because falling off the horse a few times is good in my world. I’ve been there and done that, so I’m good at falling safely.

What am I most afraid of? All the reasons my previous relationships didn’t work out. Cheating, deception, using intimate details against me. I can’t see how he is even possible of such things because frankly, I’ve never met a guy who could hold up a shred of goodness to his. But those are my fears and I intend to conquer them.

With any luck, we’ll be battling our fears together.