radiopeter

I just saw this on IGN.

Guitar Hero for Wii!!!

Somehow, I feel vindicated that I signed up for guitar classes just a few days ago…

I’ve started a Twitter account because, well, just because. Alex King is a brilliant WordPress developer and has created a great plugin to show tweets. You’ll see them in the sidebar just to the right of my blog.

This is one of the funniest lolcats I’ve ever seen. I giggle every time I read the caption and look at the picture. It’s SOOO a cat expression… OMG! WARE HIS EYE GOES?

I start guitar lessons on September 8th.

See, here’s the deal. I REALLY want to learn how to play Bouzouki, but I’m having a bit of difficulty deciding what kind to buy. There are tons, and the price range is crazy. But since I’ve never learned how to play a stringed instrument before, it is time to learn.

And what better way than guitar, right?

The Old Town School of Folk Music isn’t too far from my house, so I gave ‘em a ring (based on good advice from my friend and former Windy City Gay Idol JudgeAndrea Bunch), and I’m registered.

The course is $135 and runs for 8 weeks on Saturday mornings. Yeah, I know, Saturday mornings aren’t ideal, but hey, I wanna learn.

Let the strumming begin.

You have to watch this to about two minutes in when Rev. Shirley Caesar comes out. Eventually a choir comes out behind her and she lets loose. Everyone in the audience gets up and starts clapping. The song she sings is a track that Aretha recorded called “How I Got Over”. It’s a popular church song.

I wish I grew up in a church where they sang like this. Wouldn’t you go every week simply based on the promise of music like this?

This is mislabeled as Dorothy Love Coates (my favorite singer EVER), but instead it’s the legendary Bill Moss & The Celestials. Bill Moss is the brother of Mattie Moss Clark, who is the mother of my Gospel idols The Clark Sisters.

I am in love with the vocal harmony. This is great call-and-response Gospel. And listen to the wah-wah on the electric guitar. How BRILLIANT!

Growing up I never ate meat that was even slightly pink. It always had to be well done. Grey meat, mostly beef, slathered in A1 sauce was the stuff I liked best.

Around my 21st birthday I took a chance and ordered a strip steak medium. GROSS OUT! The meat was red and fleshy and tasted strange on the center.

I headed back to grey.

A few years later I was at the now closed Okno in Wicker Park. They had lamb chops on the menu and I decided to order them with some sort of exotic veggie dish. When it came time to order, I said I wanted the
chops well done. From the look on the waiters face, you’d think I’d just laid a steaming load on the floor.

“Sorry sir. We do not serve the lamb chops well done. They only come rare.”

For a moment I considered ordering something else. But eventually I went ahead with them rare, with considerable trepidation.

When they arrived, I thought there was a mistake. They were heavily browned and the bone showed some charring. I thought they were indeed well done.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

As I slice into the first chop, a bit of pink juice escaped. They were fleshy pink in the centre, easing into a very thin layer of grey just below the surface. Indeed they were rare.

For a moment I went squeamish. Pink fleshy meat seemed like a disgusting proposal. Did I really have to eat this? I loaded a dallop of salty-cheesy mashed potatoes on my fork, along with the small bite of pinkness and popped it in my mouth.

It wasn’t half bad. By the end of the first chop I was eating the rare meat straight. It actually tasted good!

Since then I’ve learned to order my steak / chop / etc. at medium to rare. Certain cuts take rare better, like NY Strip, but I prefer Filet Mignon medium. Skirt steak and hangar also taste better medium. But the lesson was that if it looks gross, try it once. Then try it again. Just because something doesn’t taste good the first time doesn’t mean it’ll taste bad the second.

Open your mouth and taste the world.

The Grecian Plate just arrived at my desk. It’s a Greek Cookbook said by many to be one of the finest produced in America. Compiled by “The Hellenic Ladies Society St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church Durham, North Carolina” it’s written by Greek-Americans.

I’m excited to add it to my collection!

Somehow I was at Spin Friday night. Don’t even remember it.

Lovely. Just lovely.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a more quiet weekend. I barely left the house, and barely did much above napping and watching far too much television.

Those of you on the podcasting tip know that Skype had a major outage. It caused me to reschedule one interview for Windy City Queercast, but it wasn’t much of a big deal. I feel bad for the folks who depend on it for a major part of their shows. Gotta be rough I’d think.

I still haven’t gotten around to doing a podcast of my own. I’m not sure why I don’t have the drive to do it, but I’m seriously lacking the desire to sit down and record. I should prolly just hang out with my iRiver and record some random musings. I’m sure that would work out ok.

David Cerda pinged me about doing Rudolph The Red-Hosed Reindeer this year, and I said I’m in. For a brief moment I debated if I wanted to be a part of it. I had that devil-and-angel on my shoulders moment where I couldn’t decide what to do. But in a flash, a scene from Pedro Almodovar’s High Heels flooded my brain.

There is a scene where Becky del Paramo (Marisa Paredes), an estranged super star singer / actress / mother, is lamenting how her daughter, Rebecca (Victoria Abril), has recently been put in jail. When asked if she is going to cancel her opening show because her daughter is in the slammer, she turns to the questioner and says that the reason she lives is for one thing…

“Actuar” To Act.

Now I certainly don’t live to act. But you know what, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a long time, and it certainly was the high point of last year. So in the seconds it took to have that scene wash over me, I knew I wanted to be a part of Rudolph once again.

Side note: If you loved All About My Mother, a very publicly acclaimed Almodovar film, you MUST see High Heels (Tacones Lejanos). Tacones is truly the better of the two films, and you can see how it represents the seed of Todo Sobre De Mi Madre. But the musical number in the jail is what sold it for me. When las mujeres in the jail begin dancing to an incredible song called “Pecadora” which means “sinner woman”, I nearly lost my mind. Especially the front dancer Bibi Fernandez, the GORGEOUS trans actress who plays Chon.

I SOOOO want one of these and the software to go along with it!

Imagine the virtual orchestra…there is a clip of one of the pieces.

I’ve argued with countless people about this. Over and over again, they strike me down, and over and over again I refuse to use their antibacterial soap. It’s even come to me bringing my own alcohol gel in my murse (my man purse) so I don’t have to use antibacterial soap.

This is why I don’t use it.

Do you KNOW how hard it is to find non-antibacterial soap in the stores?!?! I have to look far and wide most times, and I’ve been using a form of Ivory for a long time. It’s all the advertising folks. They make you THINK you need to use AB soap, but you don’t.

Fight AB soap. Don’t use it. The proof is above.

Okay okay, so I’ve been lazy and JUST started to do some HDR with my London photos. Here are the first four. Click them to hit my flickr where they get bigger.

So here I am, with blog-by-email finally on my wordpress blog.

Huzzah!

Now I’m ret ta moblog. Let the games begin.

Sent from my iPhone

I wasn’t. But thank god for online video.

You MUST watch this if you are queer or support the queer community.

It is history in the making.