It’s · not · the · fall · that · kills · you, · but · the · sudden · stop.

Instead of the (to me) standard wall-o-text, downtime to digest and comprehend, then follow-up quiz, the programing scheme in the (hellishly expensive) textbooks that Shirley recommended go more like this: panel explaining something easy and an easy question regarding what you just read. Next panel: that easy building block plus something else imperceptibly easy, and a little question about that. Next panel: those two things, plus a little tiny something else. And so on. Like building a sundae. Or like lifting weights, with someone adding 1 gram on each rep. You don't even feel the burn, but the information gets in your head nonetheless. No pain no gain, my ASS! This is the easiest way complex information has ever been presented to me.

I mentioned this "panel" mode of teaching to Nathan who blinked and said, "Duh. It's called programing." Damn whippersnappers with their New Math.

After a couple of hours with this book, I can now diagram the diatonic triads in each scale degree in major and harmonic minor tonalities and identify each dominant, subdominant, mediant and submediant relationship to the tonic.

Which is pretty easy, common stuff, actually. Even if you have no idea what the previous paragraph means, I guarantee that your ear knows this stuff just from listening to music — any kind of music — your whole life. It's the terms, and the specific science behind it that I'm getting off on. The relationship of C to G and why they compliment each other so well.

Viz: I started parsing my “Executioner's Rag to see what I was up to without knowing it at the time, and, quite frankly, I impressed myself, quite unwittingly. The first strain has a dual switch from the tonic to the harmonic minor 7^th, then an iteration into the natural minor 7^th, which is kinda weird, but works well in this case. I had quite forgotten there were different minor scales to begin with, but, like I said, though I didn't know it factually, the ear knows it.

This is why this is fascinating to me. It's stuff that I (and you, even if you don't believe me) know intrinsically, but to see it mapped out in an exact science is a beautiful thing.

Music, like language, seems to reside equally in the right and left brain, which perhaps is why it's so moving to hear a beautiful piece of music which pleases the froufy right brain and satisfies the equation for the rigid left brain — or to read a good book that accomplishes the same.

Verse and rhyme in particular tickle both lobes. You know, there once was a girl from Nantucket…

I'm amazed at the admirable temperament of these little creatures, and more and more gladder each day that I chose a ball python. Sweetest disposition a limbless creature could have.

He slithered around sniffing everything, and actively sought out other people's extended hands and arms. Perhaps I'm projecting a bit too much into the strategy and whims of a baby snake, but I swear he seemed … happy about things.

He blended very well with the snake spine on Aria's arm:

For being such a good snake, he's getting an extra-big fuzzy for a meal today (still not quite big enough to eat an adult mouse, but he's getting bigger, and maybe I'm imagining it, but he seems girthier since his first shed last week).

He's working on the installation and networking of a bunch of web cams in the house so that when we're away we can watch the cats and, less frequently, the thieves.

Or, more usefully, in the case of the outdoor cam, we can decide whether or not we are At Home when the bell rings since our butler has disappeared without a trace. (In fact, he only lived in my imagination.)

Actually, I know the positive physical and emotional benefits harvested from exercise. The reason I don't exercise as often as I should is because it bores me oh my god it bores me so much kill me now meaningless repetitive motion that isn't sex-based jesus christ there has to be a way out of this hell how much longer oh god ten whole minutes I'm bored bored bored I screeeeam! (That's my inner monologue on the elliptical. It gets even worse with weights.)

But exercise doesn't have to live solely in the gym, or the bedroom (where I'm less bored, I should mention). I finally reclaimed my bike from the tenants at Clifford, and today decided to bike from the Quarter to the Fairgrounds for the last day of the last weekend of Jazzfest.

It's only a handful of miles round trip, but I hadn't been on my bike since last autumn, and it felt good to move like that again.

Note that I haven't actually been to Jazzfest in about eight years. I love Jazzfest in New Orleans, but more because of the stuff that goes on in my favorite bars and clubs than the main events at the Fairgrounds. Plus, I don't do crowds, dahlink. But today was so gosh-durned beeyooteeful, and the casino kicked me down some free tickets, I couldn't say no.

There was a whole mess of performers I've never heard of before, but one of the nice things about Jazzfest at the Fairgrounds is wandering around sampling all this previously-unheard stuff. Some of it sucks. Some of it doesn't. But the carnival atmosphere with the beer and the barbecue smells and the dancing and laughing and smiling makes even the shittiest band sound swell.

I caught most of Galactic and The Bingo Show (nofunangie, you looked SEW hääwt!^*). Ran around with Nathan eating crawfish (for him) and sausage/jalapeño (for me) cheeseybreads and drinking overpriced lite beer, which never tasted better in my life. After awhile, the crowds got prohibitively pressing, so I biked home, changed, then biked to the "BiH2O" (as I saw a sign denoting the Bywater today) to go swim at Country Club — swimming being another form of exercise that doesn't threaten to konk me into a boredom-induced coma.

Today I burned calories, I used muscles, I got some color, I talked a lot and laughed a lot — and all this in the midst of one of those annoying springtime colds. A bowl of phò at the crappy Chinese restaurant by my house (the one item on the menu which is good is the phò, thank god — not quite as good as Phò tau Bay, but 1.5 blocks = okie dokie) which helped clear my snotty, congested head, though I strongly advise against handling hot chili peppers then going to pee without washing your hands first. Let your imagination run with that one.

Several loads of laundry. Clean dishes. Some Cat Time, Snake Time, Nathan Time, Boyfriend Time, Piano Time and Me Time. And finding a great deal of money I had squirreled away in my sock drawer made today one of those days that makes life worth living.

I need to go to Country Club a lot more often. I have a membership, so there's really no good reason not to. Exercise mixed with cocktails surrounded by friends is the right recipe. I always run into old friends whom I haven't seen for years when I go there: today, Ramona, an art curator friend of mine with whom I did a show many years ago.

I didn't recognize her with her top off.

^* Addendum: Okay, when you're 100' away and suffer from nearsightedness and sunstroke, Veronica can look like Angie.

Things I don't like to wake me up: Insane neighbors. Around 5:50am, Schizobitch next door started one of her screaming fits … outside … as she always chooses a public forum to air her diseased laundry.

"I'm gonna fucking bash your head in!!!" is all I lucidly remember her saying illucidly. If this were the first, second, or 48^th time, I might be alarmed by her sentiment. As it goes, I know her bark (her very loud, very frequent bark) to be a lot worse than her bite. I briefly entertained the idea of opening the bedroom window and saying over the fence, "Excuse me, could you turn the crazy down until around 10?" but she went inside to nurse her broken synapses in relative peace.

In the case of a thunderstorm, I can happily turn over and fall back asleep with a smile.

In the case of Schizobitch, once I am awakened by her broken brain I'm usually up for the day (or night, or afternoon, or evening — her Crazy strikes at all hours).

In this Fox News/agenda-toting western civilization, it can be a a chore to find unbiased reporting (or as close as is humanly possible), and doccos are often the way to go.

Not all of them, to be sure. Everyone's got an agenda, no matter how taciturn they seem to be, but you stand a better chance at finding a "Just the Facts, Ma'am" approach to journalism in an independent documentary. I'm not watching to hear the filmmakers' opinions — I don't know who they are and I couldn't care less. Please let the audience arrive at their own conclusions, and do your best to present all the relevant material from all sides, if you please.

Some recent ones of note that I've seen:

Inside Deep Throat: covers this seminal (huh-huh, so to speak) film and its impact on free speech, the progress of the sexual revolution, and that always-hard-to-pin-down line between porn and art. I remember hearing that Linda Lovelace talked to Donahue and anyone else who would listen in the late 70s/early 80s saying she had been abducted and forced to do the film and that every sex scene was, in essence, a rape. I, and so many others, thought she was being an absurd opportunist. What I didn't know was that later in her life she switched sides again, confessing that, yah, she did it of her own free will, but she sure would have liked to have made some money, and speaking out against it was the way to a buck. (The mob owns the film — no one involved with its creation is getting anything.) Overall, a good documentary, and the requisite shots of Ms. Lovelace performing that tricky little act that all faggots wish they could do so well was nice to revisit. (God damn this gag reflex!)

The King of Kong: In New Hampshire (of course!) there is a contest held annually to see who can beat the world record score at the video game Donkey Kong. I watched this as a sociological glimpse into the lives of people who would give a damn about such things. Vastly entertaining, in a sort of Ren Faire/Trekky way. And thank god the filmmakers took the issue seriously. If they had presented the story in a deriding way, the mean-spiritedness would have killed the show.

My Kid Could Paint That: The fascinating story about little Marla Olmstead in Binghampton, NY — the four year old girl who paints masterpieces of abstract art, and all the controversy around the 'what is art' conundrum, and did dad help? Few concrete answers were given to some of the pertinent questions, which actually made the film better, because its core subject matter is so up in the air that I don't think there can be a conclusive "so there you have it" moment.

Lake of Fire: The byline professed to take a non-partisan look at the abortion issue — clearly an impossibility, but the inclusion of Noam Chomsky raised my interest in seeing this since he, along with John Waters (weirdly), seem to be the only two people speaking today who are sane, intelligent, and have the clarity to approach issues from as close to a neutral position as possible. I've always wondered what Noam thought about abortion. Next I'd like to hear his take on 9/11 and Katrina. (After every Noam Chomsky bit, Nathan and I would yell out the window to the street, "Why can't there be more succinct, perceptive, intelligent people in this world!?")

I found this film really was about as close to non-judgmental journalism as anyone could hope to get on such a touchy topic, and I realized anyone who sees this film, no matter where they're coming from, will find all the evidence they need to be sure they're "right." Even I found that, and my stance is that there is no right since this is way too gray an area. (And, predictably, Noam said it better than I could have.)

If you're pro-choice, the raving fundies they film will make you squirm with hateful delight.

If you're pro-life, the graphic (though not gratuitous) scenes of actual abortions will incite you to speak in tongues and lick your bible.

But the filmmakers are clearly aiming for an audience with higher perceptive abilities than result in saying, "I'm right and you're wrong."

Aside from the wonderfully-presented philosophical arguments occurring in Lake of Fire, there were a couple I-didn't-know-THAT moments. Most notably: did you know that Norma McCorvey (Roe of Roe v. Wade) now works for a right-wing christian fundie group that lobbies to "Stop All Abortion"?

And we're back to Linda Lovelace waffling around.

scottynola

Right, so I'm at the Walgreen's off Jackson Square yesterday picking up some cleaning supplies. The queue isn't too long — two people ahead of me. The woman being helped is buying 27 voodoo coffee mugs. The woman at the register is spending about 45 seconds per mug, wrapping each in four plastic bags, then shifting them around the counter uselessly for a little while longer.

She calls for help, because at this rate, our next 30 year hurricane will come along before this transaction is completed.

Another woman comes to the counter and stands there picking her nose.

I mean that quite literally: she stood there, staring up at the florescent lights with her index finger digging around for magic nose goblins.

I watched this display — the retard slowly wrapping mugs and the nasal gold digger going at it — for about five minutes in complete awe. I think I was actually slackjawed. Ten minutes later, I quietly put my little basket down and walked out the door.

"Where ya be goin!" screamed nose-picker after me.

I don't remember Walgreen's being such a badly-staffed outfit in the rest of the country, but I think I'll be avoiding all their branches in New Orleans.

The one on St. Charles is a nightmare as well.

Retard Poker last night — perhaps a bit too retarded — with Liz, Wayne, Penguin and Mallory. But it was Manderley's first poker night, and I promised myself (and my poker-type friends) that I would hold more frequent poker nights when I moved to the Quarter. That vow was made in the fall of last year, so if you want to file a lawsuit against me for false advertising, take a number and email me for my solicitor's contact info.

I called the vet today to get the result on Harley's bloodwork. In the meantime, she's sprung back to her normal self; no more sleeping with poo or sulking under the house.

The doctor was cheerful. "Your fifteen year old cat has the blood of a two year old kitten."

"Well how did that get in there?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ummm…joke?"

He warned against an almost imperceptible anemic blip on the radar, probably caused by fleas, which have since been removed thanks to Revolution™. God that stuff is great. Well, except for the couple days after you put the goo on your cat. All the fleas are psyched out thinking they're not riding on a cat, so they hop off looking for greener pastures. Which means for a few days, you've got a lot of hungry, confused fleas bouncing around your house and biting your feet. They seem to have bounded off elsewheres now.

And I'm still riding the high from talking to Shirley the other day. She's now emailing me little things, and I can tell we're going to be in much better contact from here on out.

No one else from my youth encapsulates so many, many good memories, and so much wonder. Even my not-insignificant frustration with trying to learn the more ambitious Beethoven and Bach she would throw at me floods back with fondness, for even at the time, and despite the difficulties of learning a complicated instrument, I felt my wee mind stretching and expanding. I really was a glutton for education, but I wanted it to be on my terms, not like boring ole' school. Shirley presented the information appealingly and I gobbled it all up.

And this is a witty closing line.

Oh my. Did it ever.

I was on the phone for 1.5 hours, and would have happily kept talking for another 4 hours, but she has an early morning.

My childhood piano teacher, whom I haven't seen nor heard from in nearly 30 years. But she was so much more to me than a piano teacher. In my 11 year old mind, we clicked. With hindsight, I'm tempted to say she was just being polite to her student, but then she said it herself tonight on the phone: "My god. How we clicked!"

How much do you remember from those years of your life? 10-12 isn't so young that it's a complete blur, but honestly? Most of it really is, innit.

She quizzed me on things that I should remember. "Were you around when I had Mr. Greenbean?"

I hadn't thought of her parrot in 25 years, and perhaps in another week that file would have been erased from my hard drive entirely, but YES, now that she mentioned it, I DO remember Mr. Greenbean, and how he would hang upside down on his perch singing in that weird parrot/human voice, "La-la-la-la!" along to the music.

"Do you remember having braces?" she asked.

Yes of course I remember having braces. Because they sucked in 1979 — no apples, popcorn or steak — huge, chunky headgear — sportin' that Jan Brady Look that's all-not-the-rage.

"But do you remember getting your braces lodged in my piano?"

"Uhhh, noooooo, I most certainly do not!"

"We were talking, and you were laughing so hard you banged your head into the piano and your braces gouged into the wood. I had to pry your face off the thing with a knife. There's still a dent in my piano to this day."

"You still have that piano!?"

What I learned, aside from the Catching Up biz of exchanging pertinent information from the last 30 years, was that my fuzzy hindsight take that we 'clicked' was not the skewed fantasy of an awe-struck pre-teen. "You were the most interesting kid I knew," she said. "We used to talk about everything!"

And I told her that she was one of the wee handful of people in California who didn't act all … California … and led me to believe that there might be another way to go about one's life if I were to take her as an example, for I didn't have many other role models who made sense to me.

She did so much more than just introduce me to music (an invaluable feat in itself); she gave me Hope. I'd forgotten just how much Hope she had given me.

In a cultural desert, she was an oasis, and talking with her tonight brought so many recessed memories to the foreground. The phone, the hand holding the phone, and the arm connected to the hand, felt electric and alive.

I am absolutely floating tonight.

I found Shirley again!

I made her three CDs of my music today, and I'll ship them off tomorrow with one of my Beethoven paintings.

In the midst of my own awe, I think I awed her silent by telling her that the one tattoo on my body is of the first few bars from Chopin's Étude in F minor, which she used to play back then, and which was the one piece of music that really opened up the intricacies and complexities of real music to me.

I found Shirley.

So at his most recent show there's this one in the window:

It is, of course, my very own Manderley. And that black silhouette on the stoop is … yours truly!

These "little" tidbits about the painting make me drool with desire. We have another painting by Chris of Clifford, with my little Ghia parked in front, done in quite a different mood and manner, and I love both of these paintings for entirely different reasons.

He's offering me the Friend Price, which is very sweet of him, but I'm having a hard time justifying the expenditure.

Oh fuck it. Who needs clothes from Sak's and brunch at Palace Café? I'll eat ramen for six months to get this thing.

1. Slept in. No insane neighbor screaming her schizophrenic head off out my window to act as my 7am alarm clock. 'Cos once I wake up from that crazy bitch's shrill voice, I can never get back to sleep.
2. Brunch with matel and Wayne at Palace Café for turtle soup and pork debris Benedict, which is my favorite sploogey food in the world (sorry, docbrite).
3. A girly outing to faire les ménages at Sak's with matel who had a 25% off card, and I had gift cards to burn. I ended up with a couple dress shirts — amazing how hard it is to find one that fits properly. As I was sifting through a line of tent-like, boxy shirts, a guy ten feet away was doing the same, muttering to himself, "Fat, fat, huge, obese. Why can't they offer Americans tailored clothes?" And these were the high-end Italian designers at that. Sing it, sistah.
4. Uptown to see Liz and Wayne's progress on their house and pick up frozen mice for Scully/Fluffy. I was going to feed him today, but Liz asked me to wait until tomorrow when I'm having a few friends around. She wants to watch. Here's a nice triptych of the ten minute consuming process:
   ( Behind here, for snake-weary people. )
   
5. While at brunch, a weird little venture of mine paid off. For about 15 years now I've been looking for my piano teacher from when I was 11 years old with very little success. A few weeks ago I googled her name and came up with a bunch of hits — too many — too common a name. I found an invasive website designed for creditors to track down their prey, giving names, birthdates and lists of addresses, for a $2.95 fee. I paid it and got a bunch of addresses and ages that helped narrow down the search. I wrote a "Hope this is the right Shirley" letter and mailed it to about ten different Shirley's around the west coast. One of them was the right one because today, she called me. This woman had such an immense impact on my life, though I never realized it till many years later when music became my best therapy. I've wanted to thank her and catch up with her for a long, long time. I couldn't talk at brunch, so we have a phone date in a couple of hours. My hands are shaking with excitement just thinking about it.

poisonpen

I really want to read that again, but I can't find it anywhere.

A link will do, if it's still extant.

Cheers, dahlink.

While spending hours this morning going through all these pix, there were a few that jumped out at me that I would like to share with you, if I may.

This first one does weird things to my stomach. If I had one last care-free moment in my life, it would be this picture at my lakehouse in Upstate NY, 24 hours before the word "Katrina" meant anything more to me than some high school bitch's name.

I study it with the morbid fascination of watching the Cadillac drive down Dealy Plaza, or reading a newspaper from 9/10/01.

( A few more... )

For some reason, they didn't help cheer me up. Go figger.

Here are a couple pick-me-ups that I just banged out. I could be happier with the tempo, but it's a first effort. I'm so god damned jolly right now I think I might throw up. In my pahhhhnts.

James Reese Europe & Someone Else — “Ballin’ the Jack” [2:16, short n' sweet]

And on the more challenging side…
Eubie Blake — “Fizz Water” — 1914 [3:22]

Home around 3:30am (my bad) and awake at fuck-me-in-the-pancreas o'clock this morning to take Harley to the vet. I went to the Southern Animal Foundation on Mag/Felicity which, incidentally, is where Harley had her girly bits removed 12 years ago, though it was another practice back then. I think it was simply called "The Animal Clinic." It was next door to "The Cat Practice" who wanted an extra $60 for the ovariectomy. I don't think Harley's been to the vet since 1996. She's like Timex.

There was a kitten cage in the waiting room with four romping balls of fluff. The receptionist asked, "Can I help you?"

"Yah, I'd like to trade this one in for a newer model," I said, motioning towards the kitten cage.

The doctor came into the exam room.

"So what are we looking for?" asked the cute young doctor.

"I'm hoping you'll just think I'm a clucking hen of a mother. She's just acting … weird. Sleeps in the cat box. Seems sluggish. Doesn't like being in the house. If she's not in the cat box, she's sulking underneath the house."

"Eating, drinking, pooing, peeing disorder?"

"None that I've noticed."

He felt her kidneys: normal. Phew. Kidneys are the first thing to go on old cats.
Thyroid: A little lumpy, but not alarmingly so.
Heart: beating.
Lungs: Breathing.
Poo: Charming and aromatic.
Urine: Could be bottled by Calvin Klein and sold as perfume.

"Everything looks good," said Dr. Cutiepie. "Amazingly good for a cat this age. Do you want me to do bloodwork?"

"Yes please."

I'll get the results this weekend.

Lord, I hope I'm being paranoid. It's just that when you've had a cat this long, and you know her every movement and mood swing, when the pattern is broken you have to raise an eyebrow.

I cleaned them out of Revolution, a hideously-expensive flea goo that's worth its weight in chemicals. The instructions say to use it once a month. I find that once every three months, even during high flea season in the south, rids animals of fleas, ear mites and a mess of other parasites. Kicks Frontline's and Advantage's ass.

Bottom line: $332.45. Yeek! But that includes the bloodwork and a year's supply of Revolution for three cats.

Harley was, as always, a perfect little lady on the excursion, mewling piteously for about five minutes in the car, then curling up on my lap purring. I didn't bother going into the attic for the cat jail because she's just so damn well-behaved I knew I could hold her in the vet's office without spazzy incident.

Of course everyone in the office was cooing over her. "Oh, so pretty! How well-behaved! What a marvelous cat!" But then I guess they're paid to say that.

You never hear the receptionist opine, "DAMN! Dat be one butt-ass-fugly cat!"

Have you met my friend gin? Hendricks from Scotland is the best gin in the world, but that was hardly good reasoning to consume so damn much of it on Saturday night! Ginny Hendricks is a bitch-goddess — she giveth, and she taketh away.

There arrrrrr lots of pirates in New Orleans at the moment. Brocade coats, billowy peasant blouses, pewter drinking mugs, muskets-a-go-go, and a proliferation of unconvincing Johnny Depp English accents. My old chum Pamela is in town, and what a luxury to get to see her twice in the span of six days, in two time zones! I am reminded of a night last year when she, nofunangie and I went pirating about town, the ladies in fashionable, creative garb, and myself gayed-out to the max in pink, pink, pink, with pink eyeshadow, sash, hat, et al. Pamela had to remind me of my gay pirate name: Jack Swallows.

Flying home from Reno the other day (and check out my pimped out ride to the airport! Because two bars in a car isn't enough; I need three), the handsome steward asked me if I'm connecting in Dallas. (Is that a proposition, you dreamy thing you?) "Yes," I replied. "I'm going to New Orleans."

"Oooo!" he squealed like a big girl, "All those pirates this week! I've seen a lot of 'em on the plane yesterday. So much Johnny Depp; so little time." Sing it, sistah.

I wasn't feeling the pirate vibe, despite my constant appreciation for the eye candy that the costumes provide, but when I came home one night and found that Pamela had set out a special velvet and brocade coat for me, I rifled through my closet looking for the rest of an extemporaneous ensemble and went cavorting with those scandalous rakes of the sea — or at least people dressed like rakes of the sea.

Pirates flock to (where, class?) Pirates Alley, of course!

We ended up at Skull Club, and after having been gone so long (time stretches threefold when I'm in the PST time zone) it was like a huge hit of oxygen to see all my NOLA peeps in the same room — many of which I hadn't seen in years, dahlink.

But, as I said, Ginny Hendricks soon wrought her wrath, and I spun home in a cab to be awakened by the second most glorious spring day I've ever seen in New Orleans — the best day being today.

I baked out my hangover with bloody marys with marrus at her stretch of art-fence on Jackson Square, quizzing her about the absurd bluebloods Uptown who have misprioritized what New Orleans needs to the extent that they're attacking artists on the Square who have the temerity to sell lithos and prints of their work instead of originals. Those levees, murders and gay-bashing Republicans will have to wait until this scourge of art is taken care of, I guess.

Marrus and I played a lovely little game where you come up with a question and you must find a passerby who can answer it, judging the contestants solely from their clothes, gait and general deportment.

The question was, "What was the sequel to Madeline l'Engel's 'A Wrinkle in Time'?" (I recalled the answer about five minutes into the game, but the answer wasn't important — finding someone in the crowd who knew the answer was the game.) Marrus did rather well, picking a number of people who vaguely recalled there was a sequel, but couldn't name it. I did a little worse, picking a couple of people who'd never heard of 'Wrinkle'. Finally she won, tapping a girl who glorified that Nerd-Chic look that always ties up my stomach in love-knots. (Hi, Lees™!) And she answered correctly: "A Wind in the Door."

The rest of the day was spent pleasantly frittering away time, enjoying the clear, chirpy day, and the slight chill of the evening. Lots of Snake Play yesterday, and Scully/Fluffy was in an especially curious, active mood. A few Woody Allen movies that are like comfort food to me. ("What's Up Tiger Lily", "Celebrity," "September") And finally snuggling and talking with Ben as we drifted off to sleep.

Wishing my cat would sleep on the bed with us instead of curling up and snuggling with the poo in her cat box.

Thinking a visit to the vet might be in order. It will be her first in her 15 long cat years, not counting vaccinations and general upkeep.

On a day this beautiful, I can almost pretend to ignore the pollution of our illustrious president sullying the CBD on some self-serving press tour.

I think she's gone deaf. I reclaimed my statue of St. Francis from docbrite to see if this magical talisman could help her restore her hearing. He hasn't accomplished his task, and now he's back with The Doc for more severe cat health reasons.

Deaf is one thing. She's 14 or 15 or something. Not all that old for a torte, which live forever it seems. But this new thing — it's got me really worried. She has her usual places she hangs out in in the house, most recently on the laundry hamper, but it just took Ben and I 20 minutes to find her, sleeping in the cat box in the shitshack. This is new behavior. I am alarmed.

Now she's on the back of my chair, purring and licking herself like normal (but not responding to anything I say, which is not normal, but she's deaf, so it is normal.)

She doesn't seem ill. But why is she sleeping in the cat box? That's just retarded.

If she were doing that cats-die-alone thing, she should jump out a window and crawl under the house, right?

I don't understand the cat box thing.

Stupid cats.

• Friday, 11 April: Flew to "The O.C." In Vegas, shuddered when they announced at the gate that the flight to "The O.C." was boarding. Upon arrival, luggage = lost. It showed up a few hours later, with a $50 "sorry bout 'dat" voucher. Dad picked me up from the aëroport. We hung out at his house with New Stepmom (still feels very odd to call her Stepmom, though I'm glad to do it). Worked on her website. To Long Beach for cousin Janet's wedding rehearsal dinner. Family from all over the country flew in. Great dinner in our sequestered-for-30 nook. To mom's, late. She was awake long enough to set me up in her guest room.
• Saturday, 12 April: Mom and I brought sandwiches to the beach and walked around in the sun. Lots of people swimming. In April. I put my foot in the water. 52°f. People are insane. Or just have a better metabolism than I. Picked up my brother and my sister-in-sin. Wedding in Long Beach. Perfectly planned and executed. Classy. Chic. As I would expect from Janet. The bartender said, "I've done thousands of these things, and they're usually boring, but when I saw the dress your cousin is wearing, I knew this wedding would be a good one!" I schlepped a large lithograph and a small refrigerator for wine from New Orleans as wedding gifts. I've never flown with appliances before. Back to mom's, late again.
• Sunday, 13 April: Hung out with my brother at sister-in-sin at mom's for the afternoon. Lunch at Del Taco. The best not-in-anyway-Mexican Mexcian fast food. Kicks Taco Bell's nalgas. Chris drove me to Elluh?. Dinner for ten at Velvet Margarita. Many circles of my life tangenting. London, Philly, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York. Pamela, Dimitri & Melanie, Patrick, Rachel, Will. A sense of my life flashing before my eyes, largely because this many people from different chapters in my life would have that effect. To Weimar NY show. My aunt and her friend drove up from The O.C. to Elluh? for the show. Fabulous pre-WWII-era drag cabaret. Excellent performance. Amazing music written and performed by the (absurdly hot) guy who wrote the music for "Hedwig." Started feeling a little jittery about being in California. The glut of spurious rules and the cell phone usage began creeping under my skin. To Rachel's flat in downtown Elluh? with Patrick, his biz associate Tony, and Will. Drinks and falling asleep to old movies.
• Monday, 14 April: Patrick and I took Tony to LAX, then drove around Venice, looking for a flaky friend and having a politically-correct lunch. To Hollywood for a picnic with Pamela and Steven. Prosecco, prosciutto, olives and other delicious things on a blanket on a cliff on Mulholland Dr. Sunset with a view. Wine tasting with Pamela and Steven, then drinks in Hollywood with them, Rachel and Dimitri and Melanie again. Melanie announced that she's pregnant. A rock-n-roll baby. She's inclined to stop touring after the 2^nd trimester, though I remember seeing Kristin Hersh perform with Throwing Muses in 1989 at what looked to be 8 months. I still can't get over the great number of my peers marrying and spawning. I know I'm nigh forty, but I don't feel it, y'know, until all my friends start squeezing out puppies.
• Tuesday, 15 April: Breakfast in downtown Elluh? with Patrick and Rachel. Patrick and I drove to Beverley Hills to meet up with the Hong Kong suit maker who I've been trying to catch on one of his nation-wide tours for about two years. Looked at thousands of swatches of fabric. Got fitted, and chose three suits: A red silk brocade, an outrageous shiny blue/silver David Bowie tinsel fabric, and a more subdued, but really sleek Versace wool. And four dress shirts. The total for all this once translated from HK$ was a fraction of the cost of just a Versace custom-tailored suit in any other country. Four weeks until delivery. Patrick bought a suit and a couple of shirts as well. Back to Rachel's flat. Hot tubbing on the roof of the Eastern Columbia building. Dinner in Echo Park with the Weimar NY people. Trying to get them to come to New Orleans. The show would fit in perfectly at One Eyed Jacks.
• Wednesday, 16 April: Up at 8:30 due to an anxiety dream. Something in me has snapped. I've surpassed my quota of days I can stand being in California. Nothing bad has happened — on the contrary, the time I've spent with family and friends has been amazing and wonderful, but just being in California, and specifically Elluh? has eroded away my patience. Just in time, Patrick is taking me to LAX in an hour. Meeting Ben in Lake Tahoe for a couple of days. I miss my boyfriend very much.

I'm leaving in a minute to catch a flight to Southern California, which is 1000x worse.

Happy occasions: my cousin (whom I love a lot) is getting married.

My Philly friend's NY drag cabaret is on the road and will be in L.A. this weekend.

I'm joining up with old, old, ollllld friends: Patrick, Rachel, Dimitri and Melanie, Pamela, Kat, and a cast of thousands, for catch-up time and to go see the show. These are people who have been in my life so long that they're family now, not just vestigial college chums.

I get to see most of my Wrong Coast family, including mommy. I'm a momma's boy and relish every opportunity to hang out with her.

And still, the mere geography of where I'll be in six hours is giving me the panicky shivers.

My contempt and loathing of California is half based in sound reasons I can argue well, and half based in irrational hatred from, I'm guessing, spending too many formative years there. Or maybe it's just because I have a soul, and an appreciation of architecture. Or maybe it's because I'm just a snide bastard. Whatever the reasons, they stand, and stand firmly.

A farmhouse in Iowa can be a beautiful thing.

A stucco box in CA is an affront to the senses.

Bon voyage, me!

(Where my Vikes at?)

On this trip I got to spend a lot of time with my old NOLA friend Patti. I often see her when I'm out there, but it's for a dinner, or cocktails, or some other thing which ends. Rarely do I get to drag her out clubbin' and hang out raiding the minibar in my room until dawn, legitimately catching up beyond the mere exchange of vital information, then send her to my Cæsar's room and spend the morning with her again, shoe shopping at Macy's and buying her lipliner.

I need a lot more Patti Time in my life. And I think she needs the distraction from her very real hardships as well. I don't seem to have the time to make reconnections, no matter what city I'm in. This is a problem that demands my immediate attention so it can be remedied. My friends are my family, and I do not like drifting apart from them as I have been doing for the last several years. It's criminal, and nothing short of it.

Sure, I see friends, but I don't just hang out for hours and hours at a time any more, letting the night (or, more rarely, the day) toss adventures our way that we can share and store in our memories. As far as mutual stored memories go, Patti and I share an ocean of them. Distance and responsibilities seem to have curtailed our further explorations.

Except for this weekend. Good weekend.

Little petty questions however.

This one is nagging me the most: I know you can take a lift to the crown of the Statue of Liberty and walk around her cranium, although I've never done it. The closest I've been to the Lady is a view from the Staten Island ferry.

Question: Could the head of the Statue of Liberty fit on a Lower Manhattan street — not Delancey or Houston, but something smallish like Rivington — without touching any buildings or sitting on the sidewalk?

Thank you gritsnyc in advance for your input.

Sometimes such aerobic exercises fail, but when they succeed the result can be delicious.

I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" right now, for example, which intersperses its chapters three ways. 1)1^st person. 2)A poem. 3)A short story written by each of the characters in the book. He's an innovative and weird enough author to pull it off flawlessly, and I can't say I'm surprised that it's working. I've come to expect success from him.

Nadine Gordimer's "Burger's Daughter" is presented in 1^st person, 3^rd omniscient, and there are chapters written in the clunky, difficult 2^nd person as well — the literary equivalent to writing music in 5/4 time. 2^nd person narrative is, I think, the most difficult to pull off convincingly. It can very easily read like a churned out self-help book, or sound like a lecture. It can be patronizing to hear the narrator call you "you." (Nadine pulls it off, of course.)

The list can go on and on. One of my favorite successful narrative-benders is "Carrie" which blends newspaper clippings, interviews and the occasional 3^rd person omniscient bit to tell a compelling, multi-layered story. Hard to believe Stephen King tossed this one into the bin to be fished out by his wife. (Or so urban legend tells us.)

Oh, and of course my favorite book ever eked out, Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," which is written in epistolary format, which can be so effective, but extremely difficult to get the nuances of writing from different characters' own voices down pat, removing a common narrative voice altogether. Every time I reread this classic (which is about once every year or two) I'm always amazed at the uniqueness of the writing styles of his characters, from Merteuil's understated evil genius to Cécile's 15 year old dippy, idiot ingenuousness.

Film sometimes plays with narrative style, to even more disparate degrees of success or failure.

I loved "Blair Witch Project," for example. Granted, I saw it before it was hyped up into something that forced you to make an opinion about it before seeing it. Film is 99% 3^rd person narrative, as necessitated by a camera pointing at a thing or a person. "Blair Witch" was the first successful film I'd seen executed in 1^st person, and it worked very well.

Last night Ben and I watched "Cloverfield," with a similar narrative format as Blair Witch, but even more successful.

"Do you want to watch this kinda Escape From New York/Godzilla-type movie with me?" asked Ben.

"Oh, I guess," I said, only because I had finished reading my book and was bored. I wasn't really looking forward to yet another rehash of Manhattan-Island-As-A-Prison.

"Cloverfield" worked — excelled even — because of the 'lost footage' aspect of the story. The gritty, low-budget, Hi-8 look made the special effects punch home. When the shit starts to hit the fan, you really are shocked and drawn in immediately because until that point (15 minutes into the film) you're watching a non-descript, unedited, crappy home video of a party. And as things heat up, the realism gives it a gravity that would be lacking in any sort of 'conventional' film perspective.

The small detail that the tape in the camera was being erased over, with the original footage a month before popping in here and there for a few seconds, lent to the realism of the experiment, and effectively created a creepy dichotomy of before-after, like looking at a picture taken moments before a disaster — Kennedy driving past the book depository or that picture my cousin took of me floating on a raft on a lake in Upstate New York, reading a book, looking (and feeling) completely serene and at peace with the world, 24 hours before the news of Katrina came into my life and altered me forever. That photo fascinates me in a morbid way. I look at it and want to yell at the person on the raft to wake up! Make some calls! Save the cats!

I think I'm going to have to Netflix "Cloverfield"; it merits a repeat viewing. It's been stuck in my head since I saw it, and I actually lost sleep between being freaked out by it (looking out my top-story hotel window, I half-expected to see any number of horrible things flying at our room), and between pondering the narrative style of the film, and why it worked so well, when I've seen other 1^st person mockumentaries that are pathetic at best.

No strong conclusion to these mental perambulations. Just thought I'd tip my hat to writers who successfully bend the rules. And, as always, whether in writing, music, painting, or any other creative art form, you have to know the rules to break the rules. Weird for the sake of weird belies the fact that you're a clueless hack.

When the next baggage checking kiosk opens after you've been waiting in line for 20 minutes, USE IT! The reason you (and I) have been waiting so long is because of people like you standing there waiting to be told what to do. No one is going to tell you what to do. The two whole people employed by this airline are busy dealing with … luggage!

When the TSA Nazis post a sign saying "all shoes must be removed," something that would fall into that category would be … YOUR SHOES! Hey, I bet I'm the most pissed off person in this queue about the TSA crap and the rescinding of taxpaying citizens' 4^th Amendment rights. I'm not championing their petty, insulting cause. But I would like to get to my gate before the flight leaves please.

And while we're making useless, spurious laws about travel that treat American citizens like either children or criminals (or both), then I've got a few of my own to add. While we're up.

New Laws: —Passengers may not travel with golf clubs. In fact, golfers may not travel by air. (They're too boring and large to sit next to.)

—Children must be gagged and anesthetized until you have retrieved your luggage at your destination and left the aëroport.

—The opposite applies to kitties. They should roam free in the aisles of the plane for everyone to enjoy.

—Seasoned travelers should receive incentive rewards for getting in and out with the least amount of fuss. A goodybag of nicotine gum, tiny bottles of Baileys and a bonbonnière of Vicodin seems appropriate.

Speaking of, mine is kicking in. Clearly I should have taken it 20 minutes earlier. It's really best for all involved if this particular cat is more occupied with his high, thus giving less attention to the stupidity and injustice of Security Theatre.

As I mentioned earlier, I took St. Francis over to Poppy's to aid in the recovery of her adorable little white kitten. I had a Confirmation gift to deliver as well, but I've been tearing up the house looking for it for months. I mean, I scoured the dusty boxes in the attic ferchristsake. Finally last night I thought, "Oh, what about that crawlspace I need a ladder to get to?" Sure enough it was up there in a box of old photos.

The photo I was looking for is a shot I took of the same St. Francis statue where he resided from 1933–1999 in my grandmother's garden in Virginia. I seem to recall taking the picture when I was visiting her on a break from college, so that would have been 1990 or so. A few years later when I had a darkroom in my Oakland warehouse, I printed the shot, then used it as an experiment in sepia toning, which I was then getting into. It was a bit washed out and the contrast wasn't perfect, but I guess I liked the shot well enough to keep it all these years.

But with 20 cats, a snake and a husband, I thought the portrait could serve more purpose at Poppy's.

The sepia misadventure gave him a spooky blue tear coming from his right eye.

I was going to pop by Walgreens on St. Charles for a frame (then shuddered thinking of scottynola's horror stories about that particular ghettolicious branch). Instead I went to Poet's Gallery on Magazine where Jeanne just happened to have the perfect pre-fab frame for St. Francis. Chris Slave cut a piece of glass and voilà, St. Francis in a box. (They both send well-wishes to Augie by the way Doc.)

While at Jeanne's I mentioned I was going to see our mutual friend Patti in Vegas tomorrow. Patti's 18ish month old daughter has lived her short life stricken with uterine cancer, and while Ruby (the baby) is a giggling, happy little thing, the year and a half of doctors, traveling, fighting the health care system, more doctors, biopsies, tests, crushed hopes, smashed optimism, etc. — well that's played havoc on my old friend Patti.

"Can you wait a minute while I go pick something up that you can take to her?" asked Jeanne. She got a squeezy rubber ducky for bath time and wrote a little note to Ruby and wrapped it.

Now laden with two get-the-fuck-well-soon items, I went to Poppy's, had some coffee and a nice chat, then drove chefcdb to work. On the way there was a huge branch down on Prytania. Without stopping our conversation, I pulled over and we flung the debris out of the street. It's just a do-gooding day, y'hurd?

Came home and reheated some chicken noodle soup I made for my sick self and my sick boyfriend last night. I've never made chicken soup from almost-scratch — in fact I've never even baked a chicken breast before — usually use pans — and the thing turned out really well, despite the 'medicinal' slant of my recipe. (About 1/4 lb. of garlic, an entire onion, curry, and a bunch of other stuff to knock out the flu.)

Now Ben and I are talking about what we can do for the Chris and Otter Fund.

So, yah. That's "Flo" to my friends.

( Some unrelated snake and cat pix. )

chrisandotter.com has been published as a news resource on their progress, and a funneling for financial aid. (I have no answer if the unfortunate driver had liability insurance. I'm guessing no, and even if he did, he must have been underinsured, as we all are.)

My primary wish of course is that they recover their health, which is beyond any friends' control. In the meantime, Ben and I will be doing our little part to help them via donations and supporting their businesses.

You can do a little something too, and even benefit from it. Simply buy your wine from Bacchanal on Poland Ave. Or go to the benefit show at the Backyard Ballroom, which is one of the most interesting new performance venues in New Orleans in its own rite. Unfortunately, I'll be out of town for that performance. I really did want to be there. "Oh I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in…" and all.

If you've got some spare change lying around your Paypal account, or care to make a little credit card donation of any size, this function has been set up for you:

Now I must package up my grandmother's magical St. Francis statue and deliver him to docbrite whose cat is very ill.

And Ben and I have to get on an aëroplane tomorrow, both of us with annoying flu-like bugs.

April, as I believe I've said time and time again, is the cruelest month.

Thank god for Spam Arrest, of which I am a customer for life.

It's a simple blocking function, a tad annoying on viable senders of email. The first time a new person tries to email me, they get a bounceback message saying, essentially, "Prove you're human. Type in this code." Once that is done, they are forever okay'ed as senders and I get the email.

Because of this slightly annoying, but very effective step, I have received not one single piece of spam in the two years I've been using this site's services.

Today I wasn't getting any legitimate email either, so I went into my dump box at Spam Arrest (you can, at any point, see all the stuff that's being filtered out. Handy if you buy something from an online shop and the confirmation is robot-generated, for example, so no human will be there to type in the code. You can hand-authorize whichever senders you choose, as well).

Today's filtered in box contains, at 7:30pm, 5,791 pieces of spam, with another 50 coming every minute.

The load is so huge that legitimate email is being lost in the tidal wave of crap the filters are having to deal with today.

Point being, if you're trying to email me today, try my marquis_dd at yahewdotcom address until this shitstorm has abated.

There was a day, before Spam Arrest was in my little life, when I would spend hours a day hitting delete-delete-delete-delete — now it's handled automatically. Like my cat box. You just plug it in, and the shit goes away. Ah, technology.

This morning I laid in bed not because I was exhausted, but because for once it was so damn pleasant! My boyfriend is finally home, breathing comfortingly next to me. The windows are open, and this is one of the most indulgent luxuries there is on earth, and especially in New Orleans where we get so few weeks of open-window weather.

I can (and did) spend two hours lying in bed watching the breeze play with curtain, and the cat play with the breeze and the curtain, birds chirping, the calliope on the river singing its off-key songs. My mantra: "This is a good day to be alive and healthy."

When I finally did drag my happy, lazy carcass out of bed, I picked up my camera and started fussing with its higher functions. I was getting nowhere so decided that the ole RTFI^* approach might be appropriate. I'm ashamed I've only used this camera for its snaps function when it's got all sorts of manual, pro goodies to offer.

Here I am messing with depth of field, contrast, sharpness, shutter speeds and monochrome filters. I need to do a lot more of this so the right buttons to push will become second nature.

I also need to choose a different subject matter, but the cats are just so convenient, y'know? Always there striking some sort of Voguish pose.

My cats are totally gay.

^*“Read The Fucking Instructions”

Then a very odd thing happened very suddenly last night. One minute I was somewhere between Twisted Agonized Animal In Throes of Hell and Zonked-Out Junkie Zombie (as I have indeed lived this whole last week). With the exception of the three-alarm fire of pain below my tooth, nothing felt amiss.

The next moment, the pain receded, and there was a large puffy blister in my gums. Like the poison had been, not so much expelled from the bed of the tooth, but shifted over to the side.

This was preferable since pressure on the top of the tooth (i.e. "chewing") no longer caused a reenactment from the film "Hostel."

Also, I could get at the problem now! Home surgery is one of my hobbies. And hold your tongue about how that's a bad thing; I've lived this long with my knives and tweezers.

This time I took a sewing needle and lanced the white pocket of horror at the top of my gums. My mouth filled with pus-tinted blood, which is really one of my favorite things to happen. Well, it is when the execution of said dubious practice opens a sluice of pressure that's caused me to seriously consider taking pliers to my mouth for the last six days.

I spit the vile goo out and rinsed with hydrogen peroxide. Trusty ole H.P. could finally get at the problem, no longer hidden in the bowels of my tooth. The stuff foamed up so much it was like sucking on the nozzle of a can of Redi-Wip. I repeated the exercise until the foam was less violent.

Today the pain is a faint soreness from the ordeal, and a little throbbing in the area that was distended and poked with a needle. This is good, healthy, healing pain — the kind I welcome at this point.

I'll keep on with the penicillin till it's gone, despite my urge to miserly stockpile it for the next episode.

And I thank you for putting up with yet another dullllll episode in this tired saga. At least you have the option of skimming or ignoring this nonsense. I wish I had the same luxury this lost week.

I've been living in two states: I'm either a)in agony or b)doped up and zombified. (Going from B to A at the moment, about ready to jump back into B.)

Add to the stupid tooth problem a generic "the-weather's-changed-three-degrees" cold I always seem to get when spring springs. The timing is pretty shitty since I clearly need every white blood cell I can get my hands on to focus on the mouth problem. Perhaps that's why after four days of penicillin I'm not noting any improvement. If I don't see any progress by Monday, I'll fucking go to that endodontist like I promised Dr. Taryn I would six months ago. Gah. Please spare me that hellish and expensive chore.

The upside is that being broken means lots of reading and movies, neither of which I ever seem to have enough time for.

Stephen King's "Duma Key" is turning out quite nicely. I was a bit worried since I was so disappointed by his penultimate "Lisey's Story." I'm not one of those narrow-minded folks who think a 'genre' writer should stick to what made their career. On the contrary, I love it when a skilled author branches out and tries new things. "Lisey's Story" is one of his more character-driven novels, and unfortunately, I just didn't care for any of the characters, so whatcha gonna do? Dull, trite, transparent. If I were a third grade teacher, I would write an encouraging note on his test and hand it back: "Good try! But we know you can do better! Don't give up!"

So I'm glad to find "Duma Key" is populated by many more characters that can hold my interest.

I just finished the last episode of the last season of "Rome," which is bittersweet because now it's over, and series like that just don't come along too often. The good news is that I can pick up pretty much where they left off (okay, 40 years later) by busting out my trusty ole' "I, Claudius" box set, which I intend to do tonight.

Nothing says "Get Well Soon" like entire seasons of costume dramas.

Scully is acclimating very well to his/her new home and responding favorably to being handled. We just spent two quality hours together watching "Rome" as Scully crawled around my hands, up my arms, into my hair, around the bedspread, and finally took a 'nap' (do snakes nap? Hard to tell when creatures don't have eyelids) coiled around my fingers for 40 minutes.

I gently dropped him back into the aquarium and he slithered down to the water bowl, sniffed the water, then stuck his nose in and drank while his hindquarters were still coiled around my fingers. It's hard to read the emotions of a snake, but I'm guessing that if he felt comfortable enough with me holding him to stop and take a lingering drink of water, then we're getting on pretty well.

I really dig this snake, and thank docbrite once again for passively and unwittingly inspiring me to get one. (Which is, of course, the best way to inspire anyone.)

I wonder if you can train a snake to do tricks n' stuff. So far we've got the game "Cleopatra's Bracelet" down. I can walk through the house, rummage around in the fridge, fix a glass of fizzy water and go back to the bedroom while Scully acts as my Chanel accessory. ("Is that real snakeskin?")

Next maybe the Hoop o' Fire or spelling out his name by morphing his body into the individual letters.

Nurse, more Vitamin V please.