However, this is my blog and you’re still here voluntarily so I will beg your indulgence. This dream seems to revolve around elevators in an office building where I work. Some go to the floor I want. One however, goes to a much nicer floor than any of the ones I’ve been to. The doors open and I see a room I didn’t expect, with bright lights and important-looking people and lots of steel and modern design. However, I’m not supposed to be there – I don’t have the right badge or the right credentials or whatever and I’m nervous about being discovered so I jump on another elevator. Somehow (dream narrative!) I understand that I shouldn’t have got on the first elevator but I find out that the one I took refuge on is not much of a better option.

This elevator doesn’t go up and down, you see, but it goes all over, outside of the building on a horizontal path, and then up and over and swooping past plazas with lovely restaurants and shops (and at this point I’m often noting that I’ve been there before and sometimes I can even manage to move myself about in the narrative…more on that in a later post, you poor reader you). Eventually I have to get off the elevator and I notice with dismay that I’m a block or a mile away from where I work and I have to trudge along a wasteland of overturned earth and building materials to get there, where I shall be late.

I think this has to do with some of the times I left the nice safe haven of Fort Meade, Maryland, to go work ‘in the DC area’ – once by dint of a reduction in force, and then I bounced around more or less voluntarily. The first time I had to go there, I had to travel by car from Glen Burnie, MD, all the way to the Metro station and take two Metros to work. This was all happening during a very stressful period of my life, and after a much more stressful period of my life. It seems that the lack of control, the experience of being taken on rides to unpredictable or strange and new destinations, with some good outcomes (lovely shops and cafes) and some frightening ones (being where I Was Not Supposed To Be), and the idea that I could so easily make a mistake and wind up alone and far from home or at least some place familiar, have remained a theme in my mind and I am constantly going over that theme. Like I’m trying to iron it out, flatten it, fold it up, and put it away. But I keep finding pieces of my current reality that remind me of a wrinkle or a bump that I went through before, and so at night I’m back at my ironing board, trying to smooth things over so that I can put them away neatly.

Here’s hoping that I will manage that, folding it so the good things are on the top and the whole can be packed away and only taken out for pleasant reminiscing. Here’s to you doing the same with whatever things you go over, smooth over, and keep finding wrinkled in your life.

Maybe Michael Horta could lend us a hand in that. He needs to find something better to do with his hand:

I’d been staring at my site for quite some time, dissatisfied at it and how I’ve neglected it. But I also didn’t want to go back to feeling a bit burdened by posting so much, often late at night, wrestling with this pretty bad program I bought which promised (ha!) to make editing one’s blog easier but which wound up making a terrible mess of things, and looking a bit silly with all the gratuitous male flesh. So expect my updates to be shorter and there to be less men involved. I won’t say none of them though – perish the thought!

When last I left you we were discussing the Real Housewives of New York and their disasterous trip to Marrakech. I think that was when the rot set in which led to half of the cast (including my favourite, Alex) being fired. We went through a full season of New Jersey with hot sexy Joe Gorga, and we’ve started in on Beverly Hills and Atlanta. I’m watching Beverly Hills but only fitfully. See, I got so many good books for Christmas or for myself that I find I don’t have a lot of desire to watch my DVR’d episodes. I will try to get caught up on Beverly Hills and I will possibly be more dilligent with Orange County, but I think I’ll give New York and Atlanta a (continuing) miss.

Since the summer when my last post was posted I’ve had a lot of good times. C and I went to beautiful Litchfield, SC, for a week of pool-lying-beside and couch-lazing-on and not much else. We really enjoyed it. If anyone wants I’ll post a picture of the house and such. In October we took another mini-break to Bethlehem, PA, and started on our Christmas shopping. (See, last year we did nothing at all for Christmas and we were both a little depressed so this year we put up a beautiful tree and lots of decorations and had family over and it was 100% better. And we had Bubble Lights!)

In November for my birthday we went to Tucson, AZ, to meet Ryan Hickmott whom some of you will know from an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s show 30 Days. To refresh your memory you can go check out the first post I made about him. We’ve gone from being Facebook friends to what I hope is ‘real’ friends; he has shared various very personal good news and bad times with me. It was really good to meet him and his lovely wife Angela. We went to Tombstone where I fired a pistol for the first time in my life. I thought it was great! We had dinner together – it was his anniversary weekend and we visited him at his home. We also enjoyed some of the sights of the Tuscon area and some great restaurants too. I’ll try to upload a few pics from it if anyone would care to see them.

So what’s on my mind now?

• The state of national and international affairs. Which basically suck. We’re all broke and going to China for money. Obama is looking less and less viable unless this recession ends and people can get back to work.
• My weight. Please see my other blog for more on that.

What’s on your mind?

Now the gentleman whose torso is above is model Michael Horta, an American who moved to Brazil when he was 11 years old. Here he is, head on. 

What a boiling mess this last eppy was.

First off, we see Tess bringing home baby #4. Apparently she’s tired of all this baby-birthin’ because she wants the Italian Stallion gelded and quick. Joe, the aforementioned stallion, proceeds to demonstrate a rather amazing lack of knowledge of his own anatomy. Joe: She doesn’t want to castrate you. Well, not yet at any rate. Or not openly. Juicy Joe gets the forth little Giudice’s name tattooed on his meaty arm underneath the three others’. Now don’t you think it’s a good idea to not just spell out but write down the name or phrase you want added? Anyway they all went home to the Stone Temple of Teresa, the marble’s hard unyielding surfaces reminding Joe of the hard body of this one guy when he was drunk and … and anyway it was little Show Giudice’s birthday.

But Show Giudice only liked, not loved, her quad (after all what girl doesn’t want a pink fluffy dirt bike?), which made her mummy frankly not give a damn whether or not she fell off it, or killed her squalling sister. Tess’s only concern was that Show not drive the thing through the ‘water of puddles’ or whatever, so it wouldn’t have to be cleaned when she took it back. Remember Mommie Dearest and Christine having to choose one present to keep and the rest to give away? Little Show made her choice. Oh, yes, without knowing it, she made her choice.

Then there was a pink limousine and some screaming girls and Tess boasting about alla da cash she dropped on this kid. And I was reading Twitter on my iPhone so I have no idea but since screams seemed happy I didn’t care what they were up to. Apparently getting training for future days of vanity. Who knows?

Jacquay learns what we all suspected, that her daughter Hashly is shacked up with her video store jockey boyfriend when she goes over and gets a little bit tipsy with said boyfriend’s mummy in their tiny house (tiny compared to Jacquay’s pile of bricks at least). Jacqay gripped her wine a little tighter and knocked it back a little faster when she thought about how the lazy thing couldn’t clean her own clothing explosion (room) at home, but apparently initiates whole house tidying in the bf’s house where she doesn’t even live. We all agree to keep the faith and the fiction, right? Right.

Back at the Palazzo Manzo, Chris (oh, overlooked sexy cute funny lickable Chris)’s best friend Forgettable-with-a-Mom appears and we get this convoluted explanation from Queen Quaroline about how she really didn’t snub Forgettables’ Mom, only refused to socialize with her because <gasp> Mom’s friends with Dastardly Danielle. Cripes a plenty! Anyway, it’s nice to see Chris (mmmmm so hot) interacting with his family, he always makes people laugh even though he seems somewhat unhappy (and in need of a big AngloAmerican hug).

Albie nicely takes Chuckie-waxer sister Lauren, Ashley and her bf to dinner to tell them that Ashley is too young to know her own mind. And that he doesn’t want bf to get his leg over and take advantage of the dimwitted thing. Ashley tries to make a protest but there are so many words she has to marshal and string together that she just slumps back into her chair, exhausted. Bf as usual is smart and says nothing to the attorney in waiting.

Dastardly Danielle and this strange friend of hers, Forgettable’s Mother, meet in a bar someplace in Franklin Lakes (not in Miseryville where Danielle has always lived) and Danielle engages in some pretty revolting suck up behaviour. I don’t know why this apparently wealthy woman is Danielle’s chum except to relieve the boredom of always being around proper people. Danielle and her craziness is entertainment, and she can always hop back into her chauffeured Bentley and zoom back to Megabux Mansion if things get too too real. Danielle spins her story about “da sick baby” and I guess ForgettaMom agrees to pay for Danielle to go to the fundraiser over at Dom Manzo’s Den (er, the Brownstone).

Queen Quaroline, Jackay and Tess meet to agree that Danielle is garbage, no good, calculating and a liar, and up to something. So that was a nice new change of conversation, right? Dina’s not going despite being a charitable sort, and Queen Quaroline decides not to go. Jackay is told she’s not going and Tess was never asked. Perhaps it was her time of the month? Those connected to the Den fall all over themselves to assure us that Danielle, despite being so dastardly, is as welcome as any other cockroach would be. This becomes important, later. Dastardette is not the only calculating one…

But she may be uniquely insane. As the big event approaches, Danielle makes sure that we, you, our cousins, the paper boy and all the people in China know that she’s terrified to go to the Den of her Enemy (er, that is, a big public building full of the public and television crews) because something unspecified but very sinister will happen to her, courtesy of Queenie and Qrew. To deal with this clear and present danger, she recruits Danny the Ex Con, world authority on knuckledusters, knuckle sandwiches, and everything else the decent people of New Jersey would prefer that we not associate with them.

For his part, Dannyboy collects a real mob of mooks, including the freaking Hells Angels chief, as muscle. WTF is this crazy b*tch thinking – that she, ForgettaMom, Dirty Dan and the mooks will crash the Dom’s Palace? No, nobody could be that stupid or low-class.

Oh but they could be. As God is my witness they could be….And that is exactly what Dastardly Danielle, ForgettaMom, Dirty Dan and the mob o’mooks have in mind.

Up they show to the Brownstone, where Chris (oh, so gorgeous polite sexy patient funny charming) gives them a well-advised wide berth. But this isn’t enough for Danielle, no, she’s not destroyed any pretense she has to being a civilized women yet. She’s got to go over to Chris and faux-graciously thank him for welcoming her to his house. Then she tells us, the horrified viewers, that this was nothing more than a big “F.U.” to … to whom? To poor Chris who was just being polite? To Queen Quaroline, miles away at home? Who the “F” knows? The only thing I did know from that is that Danielle lives in cathedrals of make-believe in her own head, in which angels and demons do battle with each other and she reigns, supreme Princess of it all, alone and misunderstood. Sad, really.

Danielle sweeps in at the head of the mook army and Forgettamom goes to Chris and is all fake-nice and such and Chris lets her know that she’s in for a big surprise. And then we’re told, via subtitles, that Chris said that she was well overdressed (“no lie!”). Which she was, let’s face it, although the mooks were well under-dressed, or awfully dressed, or thuggishly attired, take your pick. Somehow, some way, Danielle without being there knows that Chris said this in a ‘sadistic way.’ She’s out Kelly-ing Kelly here, her angels are singing and her demons dancing big time. Sigh.

Now. This is where it gets important to know exactly what happened. Danielle says that despite her being responsible for half of northern New Jersey being there, and in possession of ForgettaMom’s 20 seats, the Manzos meanly refused her even a table. The Manzos say that half her crew weren’t paid for and that they know nothing about any seating problems because they seat according to what the event organizers dictate. (The poor girl’s poor parents are naturally mortified that Danielle’s drama has galvanized the room’s attention to herself. And that Danielle insists on speaking to hem.)

Dirty Dan goes downstairs to bust some heads and use bad language and the Brownstone people try to set up a table for the assorted low-lives. Dan and Danielle trundle about the room talking to everyone about the poor sick baby and how wonderful it is that this money is being raised to help out with the medical bills and…

THE HELL THEY DO. They go around decrying the Brownstone, the Manzos, in this horrible Joizey ex-con gutter language, fake rage (ya gotta be f*cking kidding me) and veiled threats (just spare the baby’s family but f*ck up everyone else) spewing, choking on their own bile and thuggishness and general lack of class. Eventually, having ruined the start of the evening, Despicable Danielle and her nasty army are asked to leave and they do, with lots of impotent posing and insults to all concerned on their part. I know that the Countess (RHONY) and Emily Post and Miss Manners have made careers out of explaining the finer points of etiquette but I have to say a two-year old, a pack-wolf, or an amoeba on the pack-wolf would be appalled by the antics of this woman and her hangers-on, and would know better. Danielle took the title of lady and any respect I may have had for her and basically wiped her a** with it.

Her poor poor poor children when they see this. When their friends see this. When they are older and reflect on seeing this. Bah.

Oh, and I think Chris Manzo’s kinda cute. Could you guess?

Bit nervous about 10 May (Ed.: the next day!) – I have to go talk to Dr. Armstrong (my GP) about the ‘event’ with Dr. Long (who is to do some medical work for me). See I was in a google group set up by her (Dr. Long’s) office and apparently I wasn’t a very nice young man and said some things she didn’t like. Not that I knew that she would be going over everything I said so closely, nor that certain topics were off limits. Her staff had just gone through a 100% turn-over (says something about her management) and frankly I couldn’t get answers to my questions. I hate when people answer specific medical questions with “probably” and “maybe.” Anyway, I noticed that after a note was posted saying, in very general terms, that ‘change is good’ etc., that suddenly there were no more e-mails from the group.

Well, at my recent (last Thursday) appointment, Dr. Long basically told me off and accused me of ‘bad-mouthing’ her staff. She didn’t listen to me but let me know that she was angry with me. Which I found (a) humiliating since Christopher was right there, and (b) annoying. I also found out, by dint of some not special detective work, that she’d booted me off the group. Not nice. Not nice at all. And now I don’t know if I want her doing complicated medical work for me, which should be (a) a privilege for her and (b) something I only allow people I trust very much to do. I realize I don’t have to love or even like her, but I need to know that I can talk to her about anything and that my care won’t suffer because she’s pissed off at me.

But maybe I’m histrionic, although my friends don’t seem to think so. In any event, I’m going to ask Dr. Armstrong tomorrow and also my counsellor and see what they say.

I feel so fat. We took mum and dad (with my brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew) to a brunch buffet today for Mother’s Day. It was okay but so crowded. At least by the end though I’d calmed down.

Watched Bear Grylls’s new show “Worst Case Scenario” and really enjoyed it, and not only because Mr. Gorgeous himself was in it. But then I always like things that can explain what to do and how to survive in odd (but likely) situations).

Oh, let’s turn our attention to the current obsession. Here is some more of the Alaskan baby-daddy Levi Johnson…starting quite innocently:

But as everyone knows, staying that way – Mr. Johnson’s Johnson stayed shyly and demurely hidden in the Playboy photoshoot. Is he preserving himself for a future porn career? I figure unless Sarah does something outrageous he’s already lost his fifteen minutes of fame in the legit world so…if he wants to be on screens he’d better strip down and work hard……

Not a bad thriller with Steve Guttenberg, young and sexy, and Elizabeth McGovern. Basically, a man is having an affair with his boss’s wife, who witnesses an attempted murder. To keep his job and her cover, he agrees to report it, but things go wrong and he becomes a suspect. To clear his name he and the the woman how was nearly murdered, must help the police catch the real serial killer. It was filmed in Baltimore, if that is of interest to you. Quite a good movie really, the whole thing is plausible and especially the courtroom scene shows a lovely and well-calibrated increase in menace and danger to both Steve and the woman he is shielding.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092627/

Meh. I mean the movie is well-meaning, and somewhat sweet, but really, the whole thing could have been wrapped up in about twenty minutes. Especially since the director, Stewart Wade gave a reason for making a feature-length movie that frankly didn’t come across in the end. The basic story is that a straight guy is unwittingly set up on a blind date with a gay man (tee hee), and spends the rest of the movie trying to convince himself and everyone around him that just because he becomes good friends with said gay man, that doesn’t mean he’s gay. Nice idea, easy to sum up. Jonathan Bray (the straight guy) and Wilson Cruz (the gay one) are pretty good, actually, but surrounded by terrible overactors.  Jonathan Silverman is cute but would be funny if he wasn’t one big stinking slice of ham. The shtick that nobody really listens to Todd protesting his straightness grows first unbelievable, then old, then annoying. The DVD had the usual extras except a commentary.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473174/

I actually liked this film, but I can see why other people wouldn’t. It’s about a man who somehow manages to be married to an angel of a woman, and to have an affair with a hunky doctor, who can’t make up his mind what he really wants (or is). It is quite soap-opera-y with lots of somewhat obvious plot devices and stirring music, but what made me enjoy it was the passionate love making scenes between Alberto (Jordi Mollà) and Diego (Javier Bardem) and between Alberto and his lovely wife Elena (Ariadna Gil).

The ending was a bit far-fetched though, after basically being an utter asshole to everyone around him  (both Diego and Elena really do love Alberto) Alberto breaks down because he can’t decide between paradises. In the end Diego and Elena becomes friends, sort of, in a ‘lets get everything wrapped up way.’

The love making is passionate, and I find Jordi Mollà actually rather good looking (check out those ice blue eyes) especially as he seemed such an ‘every man;’ a type I find very erotic as it opens one to the idea of the eroticism of people all around one (me), but the only full-frontal nudity in it (of Elena and one man Elena takes as a lover) to be forced, as some (many) of the other aspects of the film. I did like the Spanish settings and the DVD transfer was clear. The DVD was a bit thin on extras.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0232611/

Not sure what to say. The story is a challenge, first. A German occupation soldier (Rolf) in France has been shot by the French resistance and becomes separated from his unit. He is rescued and nursed back to health by Guy, who’s recently escaped from a mental institution. Rolf stays with Guy and we find out that he’s horrified by war and is attracted to Guy. Guy is very lonely but a bit afraid of Rolf because he’s heard that German soldiers kill people from institutions.

Slowly they fall in love, which surprises Guy as he also has and is fond of a girlfriend, Jeanine. Jeanine eventually betrays Rolf to the resistance who take him away, leaving Guy to be yet again, alone. Before that, there are some scenes which celebrate Rolf’s and Guy’s physicality (in strength contests, in frolics and in bathing) and a final, very tender and passionate love making scene.

Guy goes to rescue Rolf with Rolf’s pistol he’d hidden, but mistakenly (?) shoots him instead, takes his body and plants it in a grave, and jumps in with it.

Some things really struck me:

1) It reminded me a lot of Douglas Sirk, the melodramatic and lush cinematography, the gathering strings, the filler.

2) I loved how Rolf at first was quite nonchalant about killing les fous, saying they were useless, and yet wound up falling in love with one. Guy eventually confesses that he was a ‘madman’ and Rolf realizes what an awful thing the military machine that he’d served really was.

3) The film seemed a bit to be like the movie that Molina ‘tells’ in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman.’ The German is nice and honorable, even though he becomes de-Nazified, but the agents of unhappiness and distress are the French resistance, which is exactly the same as the move in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman.’ It must have been quite brave to make this film in post-collaborationist France, or I have to wonder was the rather explicit sexuality (for 1979) placed on a German and a mentally deficient person in order to allow some deniability to the audience and to cater to homophobic feelings more prominent in the France of those days?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082829/