Robert Manners

Would you like some Catch-Up with that?

Another great echoing blogless emptiness has infested my page here. Can it be four days since last I blogged? No wonder I'm getting that anxious, pent-up, blue-balled sort of feeling. So now is the time for sweet catharsis, when I can update you on my endlessly fascinating doings over the weekend.



Friday, if you remember, was a bit dull (see below). But after I left the office, things got more interesting: my sister called and asked me to go with her to our father's place in Concord, there to make dinner for him and indulge in a spot of familial hanging-out. Well, I had planned to take the Grandmother shopping that evening, but I figured she wouldn't mind (turns out that she did mind...not that I was changing plans and having dinner with my daddy, her son, but that I neglected to tell her of the change of plans...so rude of me). We drove out to Concord with my niece and nephew in the back seat, the former complaining ceaselessly (as is her wont), the latter teasing the former whenever he could get a word in edgewise (as is his wont). Upon arrival we began the fruitless (perhaps even bootless) Quest for the Rack of Lamb. Seems Albertson's doesn't carry rack of lamb, just chops and legs; Safeway doesn't carry it either; Trader Joe's had it, but it was frozen...and cost around $20 (not that we mind frozen food, but we were already well past 'peckish' and the defrost time would have killed us). So we decided on a nice leg of lamb, which came with instructions, and arrived late, but whole, at Daddy's fashionable prefabricated home in the heart of leafy Concord. We ate lamb, and artichokes and mashed potatoes, and talked of this and that, then I played a rousing game of "Life" with the kids (I lost...badly) while Sister and Daddy hashed over their disparate versions of our communal past (as is their wont).



Well, a good time was had by all, but it was a long night on the end of a long day, and I was quite glad to get back into bed. Come Saturday, I managed to get up in time to catch the Saturday viewing of The Beastmaster (my favorite guilty-pleasures show); then Caroline came over with a big box of Krispy Kremes (she still hasn't dumped the boyfriend whose home puts her on the Krispy Kreme path...the only one in the East Bay lies halfway between Fremont and Oakland); later we went out to pick up a prescription and some groceries for the Grandmother, and while there stopped and shopped a little on Piedmont Avenue (I got a new dress, the cutest purse in the world, a pair of earrings, a large slice of Cotswold cheese, a loaf of rosemary-walnut sourdough, three cocktail rings, and a fashion magazine...at different stores, of course). The rest of the afternoon, I worked my way through the rest of the Krispy Kremes and watched a lot of mindless television.



Just as I was settling in for the night, Shiloh called and invited me out to see Gosford Park. It just shows how dim I got by the end of last week, that I had quite forgotten about wanting to see it. Well, needless to say, I absolutely loved it! There was no way I couldn't. I think the thing that I enjoyed most was the way film managed to take in so very many characters...some main, some secondary, but none without a role, none without a presence, none without a need to be included. There were no extras: there were just character after character after character. The writing was truly refreshing; I'm not a connoisseur of directing, but I didn't see anything wrong with it; the costumes were absolutely to die; the sets and art-direction superb; the acting...oh, what can I say about the acting? It was almost seamlessly low-key. There were no major emotional performances, nothing that made one character stand out as more well-acted than another. It was really great. Really. I mean it. I do!



So then came Sunday, and I spent most of the morning in bed sleeping. Dozing, really, with a magazine and a book and some CDs, while mentally preparing for the show that night. It was going to be particularly challenging for three reasons: first, I hadn't really memorized the songs I was going to lipsynch, and one of the numbers I didn't know at all, having chosen it the previous afternoon ("South of the Border" by Keely Smith, from the Keely Sings Sinatra album); second, I had three numbers to prepare outfits for, instead of the usual two; and third, the last number was of a style that I had never before attempted in public: elaborate whorishness. The number was "Lady Marmalade" from the recent Moulin Rouge soundtrack, and the part I played in that song was Lil' Kim, that foulmouthed, deep-cleavaged, very short rapstress of current fame. So I dolled myself up in a white lace teddy and a graphite satin corset with knee-high white cha-cha boots and thigh-high white lace stockings, white lace gloves, as many rhinestones as I could get on and still stand upright, and the biggest, curliest, reddest wig in the free world. I looked an absolute sight. And the audience, accustomed to my demure elegance (my other two outfits of the evening included the she-tux I wore on New Year's Eve and later a grey jersey sheath with silver lace overlay and silver lace pumps, both worn with my short matronly Paula Young wig), was absolutely floored...and I will never as long as I live forget the looks on the faces of my friends in the audience who gaped, goggled, and gasped when I shimmied down to the stage floor with my knees pointing both east and west at once. It was definitely a night to remember.



But all such nights must eventually come to an end, and I went home and died into the bed (yes, I meant died...it's not a typo, it's a pun). Monday I had off for Martin Luther King Jr Day; it was also National Hugging Day. But rather than participate in any activities to celebrate the life and accomplishments of one of human rights' greatest advocates and one of the world's greatest orators, or even running around hugging people, I spent the entire day in front of the television watching intensely stupid films starring Brendan Fraser and Patrick Dempsey (both great hotties, and fairly good actors I suppose...but oh, how often I regret remembering the 80s!).



Which brings us up to today. Nothing good happened today. Nothing bad happened, either. Just a nice day...a day full of reading and writing as I frantically try to catch up with all the blogs, email groups, and message boards I neglected over the weekend.



Well, darlings, have to dash: Queer as Folk is coming on, and I have to go see some nekkid man-booties. Ciao!