What a Drag

Tonight was a blast. Hit up the Annual High Heel Race on 17th Street with a few friends. What a fun night! Not too much to say other than that, so here are a random spattering of photos from the evening.

Most of the photos from before the race started are really bad because there was pretty much no light on the street and the flash wasn't remotely powerful enough to help me out.


I just like the composition on this one.



Nice ass.



The Washington Monument guy.



Ugly Betty.



You can't see it, but this salt bottle has legs. Of all my friends (and the people around me), I was the first one to figure out just what this costume meant. 'Cause I'm smart like that.



This is a very elaborate headdress. I was trying to get a shot of the guy along with the headdress, but he moved.


?


Gorgeous.


Not sure what this was.


Judy Jetson (we think).


Good times, good times. My friend Laura wants me to be in the race next year. I might actually consider it.

It's a Small World After All

I am often amazed at how small the world can be sometimes. Sometimes this is a good thing; more often, it's a somewhat awkward thing; from time to unfortunate time, it's a metaphorical herpes outbreak that just won't go away.

<><><>

Picture this, Washington, 1999. I'm in my mid-20s and in what I now realize to be the prime of my life. I have long come out of the closet and am comfortable with having gay friends and frequenting gay venues.

Meeting gay people is difficult for me, mostly because meeting people in general is difficult for me. I'm not naturally outgoing, and making lifelong friends with guys who just happen to be standing next to me in a bar just never seems to click for me. So in whatever diverse ways I meet people (usually on line or through friends), I end up developing several small networks for friends, none of whom I have ever introduced to the other.

And for (relatively) good reason: in the context that I meet these people, I am a different person at different times. Sometimes I feel like a social chameleon: I can be a party animal with one set of friends, and the quiet, brunch-and-International Coffee kinda guy with another group of friends. I can be pretty comfortable in both worlds. I think that as a result I developed several sets of friends, each one catering to one of my moods. Call me Sybil. "I ain't no slut!"

One night, I and some of my friends decided we were going to hit Nation, the warehouse dance club which was such a hit among The Gays in the '90s. I was looking forward to dancing, hanging out, staying up to all hours with this crew of friends...

... and as we were in the bar area waiting for the main dance hall to open, I bumped into another, complete distinct, set of friends. "Hi!" we greeted each other happily. I felt so popular, knowing so many people without even planning it that way.

Being the polite guy that I am, I (however grudgingly) introduced my one set of friends to the other): "Blah Blah, this is Blah Blah."

And, of course, they already knew each other. In fact, they were pretty good friends.

Here I was, thinking that I had given myself so many different options for my own personal gay posse, only to realize that really I was just cherry-picking from the same large group of friends.

<><><>

On Thanksgiving Weekend of 2004, I visited some friends from high school who have now moved to Seattle. Joining us was C.W.T., another high school friend. Sometime during the course of that weekend, C.W.T. -- who until then I had considered a friend, if only one who made cameo appearances in the screenplay of my life -- referred to me as "the most superficial person [he] know[s]," in absolute seriousness. In fact, when I made clear how taken aback I was at the characterization, he took pains to defend it.

I reflected on the situation for a long time after it happened, and I decided that I didn't want to remain friends with C.W.T. any longer. I was, and am, perfectly comfortable with the decision to voluntarily remove myself from the life of someone who thinks so little of me. I generally don't think of him much anymore. Were I to visit the metropolis that he lives in, I would not really be inclined to look him up.

We take you now to Provincetown, July 2007. I am standing outside of the Paramount Video bar with my friends trying to figure out our plans for evening when I feel a tap on my shoulder. Turning around, I find that the finger belongs to none other than C.W.T.

How, oh how, is it that of all the times and places for us to end up vacationing, we end up vacationing in the same place at the same time? Oh strange Fate!

We exchanged various pleasantries -- oh everything's good, I'm having a great vacation, there are my friends, we're going to go find more drinks now, bye! -- and I departed the scene. C.W.T. suggested that we catch up, but I definitely knew we would be doing no such thing, not if I could help it.

I flash you ahead now again to the events of these past two weeks. I had been itching to go see a play, so I contacted my friend David, with whom I have developed a theater-buddy relationship. It had been a while, so I just sent him an email rather than bug him on the phone.

He was too busy to respond to my email promptly (my bad anyway), but when he did, he included this P.S.:

P.S. I met two friends and former classmates of yours in New York
recently. One was Blah Blah,* who has been a friend of mine for years; the other was another gay Asian guy who was a classmate of yours (but I'm blanking on his name right now).

* It's shocking how many friends I have named Blah Blah. It's quite a common name. Sometimes I'm surprised I can tell them apart.

Knowing this Blah Blah as I do, there is no doubt in my mind that David is referring to C.W.T.

I feel like my world is becoming smaller and smaller. My worlds are colliding, and it scares me.

<><><>

It is, indeed, a small world after all. And now that damn song is going to be stuck in your head for the next 12 hours. Ha ha!

Wherein I Turn Strangely Catty About a Topic on Which I Know Nothing

Dear Fellow Metro Traveller Who Happens to be Waiting Next to Me the Platform This Evening:

OH HONEY. Those pants are atrocious. I mean, really. Is that flannel? Whatever the material is, it most certainly doesn't look comfortable. More importantly, though -- the stripes. What. The. Hell. Multicolor thin vertical stripes all the down the leg? Did I blink and miss my trip back to the 70s? Because if I have, it's terribly unfair that I somehow missed my opportunity to drop acid to see that. If I'm going to be subjected to those colors, I kinda want to be on a mind trip when it happens.

But wait... are those SNEAKERS? RED sneakers? Woah, those pants don't look good to begin with, and you pair them with THAT? They're not even remotely stylish! Ugh. Oh Lord I wish I could take a picture, but my phone has horrible resolution and the lighting in here sucks. It would be horribly rude of me to try to use an actual camera camera.

But... well, wow.

At least, I suppose, your pants (and shoes) aren't half as bad as this guy I snapped a shot of in Amsterdam last May.



Horrific. You lose a sense for it from the back, but take my word for it; they looked HIDEOUS from the front.

A&F Got Pwned!

Okay, I'm not a huge fan of Abercrombie and Fitch to begin with -- it's pretty body fascist, in my opinion.

But apparently in the old-school style of Flash Mobbing, a group called Improv Everywhere put together a little prank on the A&F store in NYC.





Sorry about all the random video posts lately. But come on, it's some funny stuff.

Oh, and hat tip to QueerClick [NSFW!].

Uh... No.

My office rents out part of our office space to a solo practitioner and his assistant (who's also his wife). They're this older Chinese couple, and the woman has basically taken to treating me like a surrogate son because she feels bad that I'm so far removed from my own Chinese family. From time to time she brings me some leftover food, either stuff she's made or stuff they had at some restaurant. She's very traditional Chinese.

One afternoon, my office was having lunch in the conference room when she wandered by. I had made a rather large recipe of pasta and vegetables the night before, so we were all eating my food which I had shared with the others.

"So what are you eating?" Chinese Lady asked.

"It's pasta with vegetables. Dennis! made it," one of my colleagues told her. We have a makeshift kitchen in the office (consisting of a rather large toaster oven and a microwave) so oftentimes there are rather impressive cooking projects going on for lunch. Even salads are a big production sometimes. I usually buy my food, but sometimes I bring leftovers.

"You should cook more often!" Chinese Lady tells me. "See, that looks good!"

"I know, but it's hard when you're single," I tell her.

Chinese Lady stopped for a while... then piped up again: "You know what you need? You need a girlfriend to cook for you." Have I mentioned that she makes her husband his lunch every day?

My colleagues and I each looked up and kinda chortled. Really, how does one respond to something like that tactfully?

Have I mentioned how traditional this woman is? On top of that, she's very religious; her church creates a large part of her social life. Once I remember a number of us sitting around at lunch chatting and the subject veered to same-sex marriage. "What's your opinion?" my boss asked her. I think she was caught off guard, because the first things out of her mouth were words to the effect of how "those people" are "sick." (She then slightly changed her wording but it was clear what her position was on the subject.)

The conversation just got more bizarre after that: You could almost see the light bulb go "ding!" over her head as she suddenly said, "Oh! I know! You should meet my niece! She's in New York now, but I think she's coming down to visit!"

I couldn't hold it back. Almost immediately after she finished, I responded: "Uh, NO."

She persisted though. I'll give her her perseverance. "No pressure, really. Just a relaxed evening. We'll all go to dinner. Really it's just you guys meeting each other."

My boss tried valiantly to extricate me. "I think Dennis! is really quite the happy free-wheeling bachelor...."

And yet she insisted that it would just be dinner, no big deal, no pressure, just a fun night out. She insisted that I give her my cell phone number so that she could set it up.

That was about two weeks ago. I thought it had all blown over, but apparently he niece is coming into town this weekend and she wants me to join them for dinner.

Short of telling her that I'd rather stick an iodine-dipped dinner fork in my eye, I can't imagine politely declining for no reason.

So I'm going to tell her I already have weekend plans. Maybe I'll be going out of town.

To New York.

Color Me Skeptical.

Today's WaPo proclaims:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

"Devastating" and "irreversible" blows? How convenient, given that public support for our occupation of Iraq has steadily declined for months now. Someone somewhere seems to have decided that the American public needs to be fed some good news out of Iraq as the casualties mount and the stagnation of any progress continues. So they decided to tell us that Al-Qaeda is "crippled."

This strikes me as a demure version of "Mission Accomplished." Instead of a press conference with a huge banner, they'll just let the headlines do the work.



I, for one, am skeptical. With more and more of our citizens coming home in flag-draped coffins, I really don't think the resilient terrorist network has really been "irreversibly" "crippled."

Hand Job

Oh my.

SNL on Craig

I'm stealing this from Scott-O-Rama.



My fave lines:

- "You opposed gay marriage. What, do you think marriage takes the sizzle out of it? Really. Or are you just afraid that if gay marriage is legalized there will be fewer single gay guys trying to have sex in airport bathrooms? Really!"

- "So, in conclusion: You're gay, but a married Republican, you're going to vote for anti-gay legislation but you'll solicit sex in an airport bathroom. Wow, you really do have a wide stance."

Gallon Challenge

While doing an image search for this post, I came across this site which somehow I just had to share. (I decline to share, however, the links for puke sex-fetish sites.)

The Gallon Challenge is apparently some ritual that involves drinking an entire gallon of milk in one hour (2% or greater, it says, and no chocolate milk allowed), and then trying to keep it down for another hour. They say the "keeping it down" part is well-nigh impossible. Hence, the photos. Lots and lots of photos. Of puke. Lots and lots of puke. Very, very white puke.

I have no idea how long that site's been around, so those poor kids in the photos might be professionals in their late 20s by now, but still.

I can't imagine that much regurgitation is good for your body in any way, but I have to admit, I think I'd laugh my ass off if I were around to watch this.

Sloppy

I submit to you that anyone who actually has a strongly negative opinion of this GWU policy is a serious lush in need of some intervention. "It's just a little puke" is just... not a sentence that should ever be uttered.

**Aside: I did a google search on "puking" to find that picture. Never, ever, ever again.

Wish Me Luck

Hopefully my Tuesday night training will get me somewhere this time!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7861445