leftovers

The big day is here (how many times have I started a blog like that)? It's Halloween - my favorite holiday/time of year! Since I was a kid, I've loved dressing up for Halloween, I love all the spooky stuff associated with it, and of course - THE CANDY! I've always been a candy monster. I've already blogged about Halloween years past so I'll just stick to the here and now. I decided to have an "early" Halloween party this year - beginning at 1pm. Of course, no one actually arrived that early, but I wanted people to have the option of coming over to hang out, work on costumes, eat, watch scary movies, listen to Halloween music, etc, before the parking gets too difficult - which it always does. West Hollywood puts on the annual Halloween Carnival which is one of the biggest Halloween parties in the world - hundreds of thousands of people show up to walk up and down the Boulevard, checking out costumes, taking photos, and enjoying the entertainment at th...

So the Halloween festivities continue! Today, I mainly went shopping to find all the stuff for my "real" outfit tomorrow, which I only decided upon last night when I was at the museum and it came to me - Boy George! He is such a hero of mine and I have loved him since I was in junior high, despite all the flak I took for it. I would always say "he's not gay, he's just really into fashion!" So I walked down to CVS and stopped at some other stores along the way, finally going in to Out of the Closet on the way home where I got the bulk of what I hadn't found elsewhere. Dylan was not too excited about going out, but I like going to the bars in WeHo around Halloween, before the actual day, which is so crowded. The few days before are usually festive but you can still actually walk around and get inside the bars and get a drink. We met Brad, Alf, Kristen, Rob, and Mike at Mickey's. I wore my Cheshire Cat costume that I had worn for the Demented Disn...

Halloween weekend has officially begun! I didn't wear a costume to work since Halloween isn't actually until Sunday and I knew no one else would wear one, although I did want to. Brandon and Angie came and picked us up after work and we went to the Hammer Museum over by Westwood for this event they were having called Tranimal Workshop. These local cutting-edge drag queens like Squeeky Blonde and Phaedra (sp?) were doing this thing where they would make people over in their style, which is really a freaky style of drag with like fishnets over the faces and lots of scary/weird accessories. Then, the amazing photographer Austin Young would take photos of those who got madeover. Dylan was really excited for that and he ended up being the only one of us who got a makeover because when he went to sign up, they told him he was the last one. Kristahn was there - she was actually the person who told us about the event. She was dressed up like Dolly Parton and she looked really good...

My computer wouldn't start at work, which really sucked and freaked me out. We had to call our computer guy, Mark, in to take a look at it and he couldn't get there until the afternoon so I had to work on the computer in the intern's office (we don't have an intern right now so we all just use it when we need to use the graphics programs since they are only on that computer). Because I didn't have my Outlook Express, I totally forgot that I was supposed to go to a Visit Hollywood meeting. Oops! After work, Brandon and Angie came over and we had dinner and watched some TV. Dylan had made this Jib Jab animated e-card using photos of all of us, which were pasted on bodies of famous monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman and it was so funny! We had all watched it earlier separately but we all watched it together and laughed so hard! We were laughing so hard that none of us heard Elene trying to call us because she was outside! Finally I went out to g...

This morning I had my marketing committee, which was great because I had a lot of stuff to report, and we had a lot more people than we did last time. We had a couple guest speakers which was good, and I got to report on my meeting with Cirque yesterday. After work, Sarah and I went to an event at the Kress which was the HBT annual shindig, and this year was honoring Captain Girmala with LAPD. The comedian Paula Poundstone was supposed to be the MC, but she was running late in traffic, along with several other people involved in the event, so she didn't get there until the end of it, but I thought she was really funny. Thad, our board president, also spoke and he was really funny too. He is such a great supporter of the community. There were quite a few people from the Media District there too, including Susan and Jim, so it was nice to visit with them. Sarah and I decided to go to Musso and Frank's afterward and I ordered the Jellied Consomme because it was featured in LA...

I had a meeting this morning with the marketing and PR person for the new show that Cirque du Soleil is bringing to Hollywood. It's going to be a very big deal! It will be at the Kodak Theatre all year, except for during the time that the Oscars will be using it. Kerry and I are wanting to make sure the BID and Cirque can work together, and we're talking about collaborating on some promotional campaigns. I went to Amoeba on my lunch break and ended up getting "Made In Sheffield," this documentary about Human League, ABC, and other bands that came out of that scene in the late 70's. I already had it on VHS but I'm trying to upgrade everything that I really love to have on DVD, and it was only $8 since it was used. Dylan and I met Rob and Steven at Silver Spoon tonight for Glee Club, the first time we have gone this season! But, it was the Rocky Horror Glee Show episode so we couldn't miss it. It was really, really fun and I am back to loving the show.

It was a pretty slow day. Brandon and I just chatted about the video shoot yesterday and how much fun we had. I'm looking forward to seeing it. At home I cleaned house and worked on some music. It was a really non-eventful day!

I got up really early and loaded up my car with the stuff for the Alien Nation video shoot. I drove up Laurel Canyon and picked Elene up on my way, and then we met Brandon and Angie, and Shawn, at a Starbucks up in Santa Clarita, near where Dylan’s mom lives. I got a cup of coffee and we talked briefly about what the plan was. I wanted to get a video tape for my camera in case Shawn wanted to use it, so after a brief wild goose chase we finally found a Walgreens that had them. Then we drove up to Vasquez Rocks, the filming location. We knew it was going to be a guerilla style shoot because we didn’t have permission or any kind of permit to film there, and anywhere near LA it’s always difficult to film things illegally. Also, Vasquez Rock is a very popular filming site - it’s been used in tons of sci-fi movies and television shows. I know it from Roswell, the show about alien high school students that was on the air back when I first moved to LA. It’s a county park,...

I slept in so late I couldn’t believe it! I meant to get up early, go shopping for fabric for my alien costume for tomorrow’s video shoot, and make brunch, all before Dylan woke up... but seeing as Dylan woke me up at 1pm, obviously none of that happened. I went out and my first stop was the Goodwill on Beverly, since I’ve always had pretty good luck there. I had a few different ideas when I spotted this dark green body suit, maybe it’s for snowboarding or something - it’s not really particularly heavy, though. It’s got lots of cool pockets and zippers and I thought I could make it into some sort of alien-looking costume. I tried it on and it was really tight - I couldn’t zip it up all the way - bought I thought it could work. Then I went to the 99 cents store on Wilshire and got a metallic windshield sun visor thing, and a few other items. My last stop was the shopping center on 3rd and Fairfax. I went into the K-Mart hoping they would have the alien antenna ball ...

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about Halloween (although it’s also that time of year) - it’s Electric Six time! I first heard of the E6 from this dumbass guy who managed a bar somewhere near the beach where I was trying to score a DJ gig after Gold 9 closed. I don’t remember anything else about that whole experience other than him asking me if I knew who Electric Six was. At the time, I felt like it was a test - and that I failed - because I had never heard of them. So of course I had to look them up, discovered their song “Danger! High Voltage!” and that supposedly it was Jack White singing the guest vocals. Since Dylan is a huge White Stripes / Jack White fan, I played it for him and he loved it. Some weeks later, we found out White Stripes were playing some show that we tried to get tickets for and it was sold out. I found out that Electric Six happened to be playing the same night, so we bought tickets for that instead. At some point, Dylan...

We had a board meeting for HED, and Thad brought in all kinds of treats - Pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bark, Ed Hardy sangria, pumpkin ale, and lots of cookies and candy! The meeting itself went very quickly. I reported on my upcoming Marketing Committee meeting and the things we’re working on. After the meeting, Sarah and I went with one of our board members down to Delphine’s for Happy Hour. I hadn’t actually been in there before, and I’m always glad when I can get the chance to check out another business in the BID. They have a really good happy hour there so I will have to go back again soon. I just ended up having a couple beers and then Kerry and some of our other board members came down, but by that time I was needing to go home. I had forgotten that Dylan was working late, so I just had chili dogs that I made from the leftover chili and tofu dogs, they were good. Dylan got home later and we watched our Thursday night shows.

We had a BID renewal meeting for Sunset & Vine at the YMCA and after that, Sarah and I went to Larchmont to get coffee at Peet’s. I also got a tin of tea leaves for my ice tea maker. I told Dylan that if anyone asked what I wanted to Yuletide this year, to just tell them I want good loose-leaf teas. If I could get enough tea to last me through 2011, I would be happy! Angela and I decided we would have a chili night, so I texted my mom to get her chili recipe. As a kid, my mom used to make chili often in the fall and winter, and it was usually one of the first signs of fall. Back in western Kansas, chili soup is traditionally accompanied by cinnamon rolls - even in the schools - but apparently people in LA have not heard of that, so we decided Angie would just be in charge of some type of bread to serve with it and I would make the soup. As I was leaving work, I told Kerry about my plans so she asked to look at the recipe and she suggested I add cumin to it, whi...

Had lunch at Chicken Dijon again. I really like that place and it’s so convenient. After work I went home and quickly loaded up the car for Invisible Material rehearsal, and then went to pick Jared up. We rehearsed in the space on 6th street again and still didn’t have any way to amplify the vocals. Hopefully next time we’ll be able to. After I got home, Dylan had ordered pizza (again) so I had a few slices and we watched “It’s Always Sunny” from two weeks ago that I’d already seen but Dylan hadn’t, and then we were about to watch “Mad Men” (which we eventually did watch) but then I got an update from Facebook and looked and it was a very long, emotional message from someone who was one of my closest friends many years ago that I’ve barely talked to since. It took me by surprise so I had to read it a few times, and I started to write back but I really wanted to make sure my response was what I wanted to say, so I wrote back briefly just to say I would write more tom...

It’s rainy and grey here still, which as you know, I love. A whole bunch of people brought treats into the office. First, Joe brought cinnamon rolls, then Thad brought donuts (I had an apple fritter) and then Kerry brought in homemade scones! It was ridiculous. Kerry and I met with a representative from a couple big buildings in the Entertainment District who is looking for tennants. We told him a restaurant probably wouldn’t be the best thing at the moment as so many of them have opened recently. After work, I tried to finish putting up the Halloween decorations but I didn’t end up finishing it. Instead, Dylan and I watched the movie “Whip It,” Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut about Roller Derby girls, wherein Ellen Paige (Juno) becomes the nemesis of Juliette Lewis. Great flick that got panned undeservedly.

It was definitely an early rise and shine in Camp Lesbo, which surprised me considering how late everyone (except me) had stayed up, and how hard they partied. But I guess everyone wanted to pack up and get home so we could shower - there was no running water near where we camped, and some people had gotten there on Thursday. Dylan and I packed up after we had breakfast (this time we just ate what the girls had cooked), and we packed up the tent - which was quite a challenge - and gave it back to Chris and said goodbye to him and Dylan’s nieces, Caitlyn and Codi. Finally we were on our way home around 11:00am. Dylan wanted to drive around more in the park, but we had a low tire so we had to get to town and air that up. We stopped to get gas on the way home and at lunch at Taco Bell somewhere out in the suburbs, so I texted Andy to let him know we were on the way home. I don’t think they were expecting us so early, because when we got back to LA they were both freshl...

Everyone woke up pretty early and in Camp Lesbo we had quite the breakfast spread going on. We had brought our own stuff, so I had a couple pop tarts and then cooked some eggs and sausage on one of the camp stoves the girls had brought. Dylan was in a huge hurry to get to the rock climbing site, so we ended up forgetting a few crucial things (the cooler, our food, etc) but it was fine. We all staked out this nice shaded area to set up in, and I ended up reading a lot in my book, “Blown for Good,” a Scientology expose which I ended up finishing later in the day. Chris, Dylan’s brother in law, had set up the rock climbing ropes with his friends and people were climbing all morning. Dylan finally decided it was his turn so I went with him and took the camera so I could capture the action. He did a really good job scaling a really steep rcck! There was also this little girl, couldn’t have been more than 3 or so, who climbed and it was so cute, she laughed and smiled the...

We stayed up too late last night so it was really difficult to get the day started today - I meant to get up early and go into work so I could leave a little early, but it just didn’t happen. Also, I had to load the car up before I left so that took a couple trips up and down. It was a slow, quiet day at work - most everyone was out of the office much of the day. Brian and I went over to 6464 Sunset Blvd. for their annual fire drill BBQ, but we were late and by the time we got there almost everyone was gone, except Councilmember LaBonge and his staff, who got there at the same time as we did. The food was good, anyway. Finally, the end of the workday came so Dylan rode the subway down to Hollywood. I circled the metro station and talked to my mom on the phone while waiting for Dylan to emerge from the subway. We were on our way by 5:30 which was pretty good timing. We hit some traffic east of downtown, which was expected, and then after a stop in Alhambra we stopped...

I made “Indian Summer Soup” for dinner, which was my own invention involving butternut squash soup with tomatoes, corn, and white beans. It was pretty good! Dylan and I were frantically trying to pack for our camping trip to Joshua Tree this weekend. We are leaving tomorrow directly after work so we had to get everything packed up tonight. I had hoped to go down to our neighbors, Dominic and Andrea’s, for their “Scary Movie Night” but I was so far behind on getting ready for the trip that I just couldn’t fit it in. In addition to packing, we also watched as many of our Thursday night shows as we could (the live 30 Rock was especially good!) and cleaned the apartment too, since Luther and Andy are house-sitting for us while we’re gone.

"Grown Man Cries" was featured on another blog today - again, through my promotional efforts! It was on the Paradise Educated blog, ran by a lady named Onnalee who I have become friends with, even though I never knew her when she lived in Paradise because she left before I was born. It was nice to get some recognition there for my hometown folks to see. I rode the subway up to North Hollywood after work to meet Dylan, Brandon and Angie at the TV Academy to see “Let Me In,” which is an American remake of “Let the Right One In,” a Swedish film Dylan and I had gotten from NetFlix a year ago or more. I really liked the original film, although the version we saw was dubbed in English, which didn’t bother me that much but was a little distracting at times. I was really happy with the new version, despite my initial misgivings. The lead actress, Chloe Moretz, had also played “Hitgirl” in the movie “Kick Ass” and I really loved her in that, so I was excited to see her i...

Today we had the Sunset & Vine meeting, which went really well. Afterward I came back to the office but I was the only one there so I just tied up some loose ends and then locked up. It was a pretty exciting afternoon because the video for "Grown Man Cries" was featured on Towleroad.com, this gay men's blog that I've been reading religiously for a couple of years now. It's a pretty popular site, so hopefully it will get some great exposure for Invisible Material. I was so thrilled when it was finally put up, as part of the music news, even though I knew ahead of time because. Dan, who writes for Towleroad, Modern Tonic, and Frontiers, had reviewed the Shitting Glitter CD "Open For Business" and so I've been keeping him up to date with all my musical projects. He really liked the video for "Grown Man Cries" and told me he would be including it on Towleroad but I always wait to see things before I allow myself to get excited! Wel...

No one was at work when I got there. Turned out Joe and Kerry were at a meeting with the Sherriff downtown. Sarah and I took the subway to meet them at Phillippe’s for lunch. Worked on the websites and an ad for the HBT fundraiser dinner. Stayed until after 7 and then went home, Dylan had a new book so he was reading that while I read “Blown for Good,” the 2nd Scientology expose I’ve been reading this year. I made baked Salmon and roasted veggies for dinner and then we watched SNL with Jane Lynch and Mad Men. Worked on importing video from the show on Saturday and editing “Digital Representation” for Vimeo.

It was Robbie’s b-day so we got up and drove to Valencia to her new place where she is living with Chris again, but just renting a room from him. The place is nice, and he has a new dog named Winston who is a 12 yr old rescued Dachtsund. We had brunch (Robbie made frozen taquitos) and watched TV, took the dog for a walk, went to the jacuzzi, and then took her out to Claim Jumper for dinner. It was sort of amusing because, it was such a process to find the Claim Jumper and figure out how to drive to it, and once we sat down, Robbie said she had told Dylan she wanted to go to Outback! When we got home, Brandon and Angie came over to pick up her makeup bag that she had left last night.

I woke up as early as I could since I had so many things I wanted to get done. I didn’t have anything for my costume yet except the pants. First I went to rite-aid and got a pink and purple wig, fingernail polish, and stuff to make breakfast (milk and eggs). I went back home and we had breakfast and then I went back out shopping. Drove to Hollywood, starting at the Giant Dollar and the special store where I got some accessories for my outfit including a necklace, scarf, kittie cat ears, and the little animal collars to wear on my arms and leg. Then I went to Out of the Closet on Sunset but couldn’t find anything there. I parked on Selma and went to Hollywood Toy & Costume - they didn’t have anything I needed so i walked up and down the Blvd. and found a little wig shop which had the purple and pink extensions I had found the other day, and also picked up some yellow and red cat-eye contacts lenses there and a tube of purple lipstick. Went to Iguana but couldn...

Today was the 8th anniversary of the day Dylan and I met - which we just adopted as our “anniversary” since there was never any official day that we ‘began’ dating. We met at LA Valley Pride in 2002 when I was DJ’ing at Gold 9 in Sherman Oaks. He and his ex, Chris, had come in for a drink after the parade and they were the only customers we had at the moment. So when he went to the bathroom, I went over and told James, the bartender, to give Dylan his next drink and say it’s “on the DJ.” That got Dylan to come over and introduce himself to me, requesting a song - “Come On Eileen” - which has now unfortunately become the de-facto “our song.” Then he gave me his phone number and a few days later, just after he had given up on me ever calling, I did just that and we set up a time for our first date. Eight years later and we have been together ever since, through good times and bad. Not legally recognized of course since we’re second class citizens in this country, bu...

I had a street closure committee meeting this morning at 9am over by Sunset and Western. I avoided parking in the shopping center garage because I found a spot on Western, but then I was paranoid because the meeting ran long, and I parked in a 1-hour spot. It ended up being fine. The office was all abuzz today as we were getting ready for our Man Men-themed open house, celebrating our new offices. We invited all our stakeholders and we had a 50's/60's themed slideshow on the new plasma tv in the conference room. We set up a bar in the kitchen area (which we would all take turns bartending) and had food catered in the conference room. The open house started at 4pm and people slowly started arriving. It was a lot of fun. We all dressed up like Mad Men (the TV show about Advertising executives at the end of the 1950's) but Kerry really went all out to dress up like Joan, the head secretary on the show. She looked fantastic! The party went by really fast. Dylan showed u...

{this part was edited out per the request of the person it was about - however I promise you it was nothing salacious or worth trying to figure out} I had to run over to CVS to have some photo prints made for our office in preparation of the open house we are having tomorrow, and on the way, I happened to look right up at one of the video cameras on the Scientology building and gave a funny look, just to mess with whoever was monitoring it on the other side. Well, I ended up being the one who got freaked out because about 15 seconds after that, an Asian lady approached me and handed me a card for free admission to the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition. That was the first time any of them have approached me since I've been working here.

I've written about the TG&Y (originally I had typed  KG&Y, apparently for a short time in the aughts I thought that was the name of it) tapes before. Back when I was just a music-obsessed kid growing up on a farm in rural Kansas, I didn't have much money and I certainly didn't have access to seeing live bands or having a cutting edge radio station, although I did have MTV before almost any of my friends. I loved music, and there was a variety store in Russell Kansas called TG&Y (it may have been called McCrory's at this point). According to Wikipedia, people used to call TG&Y "Turtles, Girdles, and Yo-Yo's" although I don't remember anyone I know ever calling it that. Anyhow, they had a small selection of cut-out records and tapes. Cut-out bins are where albums end up that don't sell well, and the record company needs to get rid of the overage. Also, sometimes with really big albums, they end up in the cut-out bin because they...

It was a rainy day in LA but I was excited because it was the first ever show for Devin Tait & the Traitors! We actually weren't all ready to perform, since we had only had one rehearsal, so Elene just came to watch and support rather than joining us on stage. Marc came with me and we got their first, but Brandon and Angie drove up right after we had parked. The club was called the Airliner and it was in Lincoln Heights, which is a BID that I'm familiar with because I know Misty who runs it from the LA BID Consortium meetings. It's kind of a run-down looking place and there weren't too many people there. The promoter was working the door and he didn't really want to commit to telling me whether I would be performing upstairs or on the main floor, asking me how many people were coming to see me rather than answering the question. I told him I didn't know, so he said we'd play it by ear. Besides the main area and the upstairs, there is also a big open a...

Since we were at Brandon and Angie's when we woke up, we stayed and had brunch and watched True Blood - now we're caught up except for the very last episode. We went home and then we went back to Hollywood to Kitchen 24 for Happy Hour. We meant to go to our friend Rafael's fund raising event for gay and lesbian elder housing. Triangle Square, the apartment building for LGBT seniors, is right next to my work's parking lot, and we thought the fundraiser was there, but when we got there we couldn't find anyone. Turns out the event was down in Hancock park at a private residence. Since we were already in Hollywood we just decided to hit the K24 Happy Hour. Gary, Dylan's co-worker, was meeting us for drinks before the Belle & Sebastian show that we all had tickets to at the Palladium. So we hung out there and then Gary's friend came and met us too. We all walked over to the Palladium together but soon after that we got separated. The crowd was really bi...

What an exciting day for me - the first rehearsal for my new band, Devin Tait & the Traitors! I decided to have rehearsal at a studio I've never been to, MDM Rehearsal, near Brandon and Angie's place. It's a really nice place and they gave us a bigger room for the price of the smaller room I had booked, since they were not busy while we were there. For this rehearsal, it was me, Brandon on guitar, Elene on keyboards, and Angie on backing vocals. We set up another keyboard for Angie and Dylan also played the xylophone on one song. Time went by really quickly - much too fast! I wanted to get through every song on the set list a couple times and in the three hours we were there, we actually ran out of time before making it through every song! Here was my setlist: 1. Tape 2. Get Outta My Way 3. Bridge to Nowhere 4. Alien Nation 5. Digital Representation 6. Not in a Million Years 7. Sleepytown (didn’t get to) 8. Ordinary World (didn’t get to) I forgot to bring the sheet...

It was a Friday night so Dylan and I decided to go out in Hollywood. We really wanted to try having dinner at Kitchen 24, which is in my BID, so we went there but they charged to valet so we parked at the ArcLight and walked instead. Dinner was good, but we decided we really wanted to come back for happy hour sometime. After dinner, we went next door to Citizen Smith. They were supposed to be having this big fundraising event for the AIDS LifeCycle or something to benefit the gay and lesbian center, but it didn't seem like it was really that well organized. We did run into a friend (more of a friend-of-a-friend) there so we hung out and had a couple drinks. I also ran into quite a few people I know from work, including the owners of the building. We hung out back in the alley bar area for awhile and talked to the bartender who was really friendly. Ongina, from RuPaul's Drag Race, was supposed to be the host of the event but she wasn't there and we got tired of waiting...