04.22.06
Posted in social, adric, alcohol, andy, badlands, birthday, cold stone creamery, dkny, express, karaoke, kelsie, nate, rocky horror, shopping, the mint, youtube at 4:06 pm by admin
Ah, another birthday! This is a big one too, since I can now apparently get cheaper car insurance and rent a car without having to pay an exhorbitant and unreasonable amount of money!
My birthday morning started with a 7:30am phone call from Kelsie, which I promptly ignored and silenced since I was trying to sleep in. She insisted later that she was only calling so early because she wanted to be the first one to leave me a birthday message, but sometimes I think that she forgets the Central-Pacific time difference.
With the amount of work I’ve been doing lately, I decided that I should at very least take one day to treat myself to some of the finer things in life — namely clothes shopping at Express, cake batter ice cream with almonds, caramel, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from Cold Stone Creamery, and a fancy-schmancy clay mask and some DKNY Be Delicious cologne from Sephora.
After my self-indulgent day of shopping and ice cream, I spent the evening consuming excessive amounts of alcohol (in the form of lemon drops, kamikaze shots, and Long Island iced teas) and singing my ass off at The Mint in San Francisco with friends and co-workers who went out of their way to make sure that I had a good time. Thanks to Nate, I had a drink in my hand for the entire night, which certainly kept things interesting.
The first (and only) member of my group (besides me) to go up to the mic was Andy, who did a stunning rendition of Sweet Transvestite from Rocky Horror. I had only heard about the magnificence of Andy’s well-rehearsed stage act, but finally getting to see it in person was quite the experience.
Thankfully, I had the forethought to capture part of his ground-breaking performance for all eternity so that I could present it here:
My songs were It Must Have Been Love by Roxette, and later in the evening, a very drunken rendition of Higher Love by Steve Winwood. What I remember most about the second song was that the words on the screen were highlighting a bit too fast for me to actually keep up with. I also could swear that a whole group of “fans” were clapping to the beat in the front, but I might have been having some sort of rock-star fantasy. Isn’t it sad that I would choose to have my rock star fantasy to a Steve Winwood song? … *sigh*
As the evening of karaoke tapered off and the posse began to leave, eventually only Andy and Adric and I were left. Someone had the clever idea to go to Badlands, so we stumbled for a few blocks to get there. I only really recall a few things:
- Andy meeting some Southern boy whose number he was upset that he didn’t get
- Adric wandering off to dance with someone he knew
- Discovering that there was a second bathroom at Badlands that I never knew about
- Feeling tired and wanting to leave (which Adric later described as me being “pouty”)
Andy drove us back to his place, where Adric & I crashed on his sofa bed and were awakened in the morning by Andy’s obnoxious roommate and his boyfriend, who felt the need to use every loud appliance possible while we were attempting to sleep. Before leaving, Adric and I had a lovely time trying to psychoanalyze the disfigured characters in the ugly art Andy’s roommate chose to hang above their television in the living room. The martini-holding, poorly dancing party-goers in the photo each had stories of their own — from the Romanian woman in the black dress who clearly was a manipulator, to the gay guy in the middle who was clearly the fifth wheel, to the subservient Asian girl in the red dress who would do whatever her Romanian friend told her to.
The burning question that everyone seems to ask at birthday-time is whether or not I feel any older. Honestly, I really haven’t had time to process it. I know that at this point I’m halfway through my twenties, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. I keep telling myself that thirty isn’t nearly as old as it used to be, but as I continue my march towards 3-0, we’ll see if I continue to feel that way. One of the things that I’ve learned from my father (who still looks great in his fifties) is that you’re really only as old as you allow yourself to be.
As long as I keep on singing, winning stuffed animals from claw machines, and watching cartoons, I don’t think I’ll grow up.
And that’s okay with me. Seriously. 
Tags: adric, alcohol, andy, badlands, birthday, cold stone creamery, dkny, express, karaoke, kelsie, nate, rocky horror, shopping, the mint, youtube
Permalink
02.23.06
Posted in life, karaoke, introspective, ADD, cleaning, organization at 7:13 am by admin
I spent most of my three-day weekend cleaning.
After brunch on Saturday, and taking Josh to the airport, I headed home to try to sort through the human disaster area that was my apartment. I continued to clean non-stop until 2am, and the next day, I cleaned from 11am until 7pm, all in preparation for company — Andy and Dominic were coming to my apartment for the first time for some Karaoke Revolution and Hangar One lemon drops.
As I was sorting through the mess, I really started to wonder — does anyone else have to spend so much time preparing to have a few guests over on a casual evening? What if I needed to have unexpected company? Being embarrassed of the way that I’m living is a total drain on my psyche, and I’ve tried to get past this issue countless times, all to no avail.
It’s not just my apartment. My Jetta’s trunk is full of things from July when I moved here that I haven’t bothered to unpack yet. I have a box full of unopened mail. A box. This isn’t just any box — it’s the box that my new 20.4″ Samsung LCD monitor came in — the same monitor I was setting up when I should have been cleaning my filthy apartment. That’s a lot of mail. It has piled up so much that I didn’t realize I had received a new Chase MasterCard until I got an email about it. Then, I had to dig through the mounds of mail looking for the one envelope with the real credit card in it (not the one with John Q. Public’s name on it).
I’m happy to say that my social gathering was a success, and that my apartment was immaculate by the time Andy and Dominic arrived, save a few tiny details that I didn’t have time to get to. They had never seen my apartment before, so they couldn’t possibly know the extent of my madness, and thanks to the lack of photographic evidence, they will never have to.
Staring around me from my desk, there are a few tiny things amiss, but Mom was right — it really does feel so much better to work and live and play in a clean space. So why is it that I have such a hard time? I’m a successful web developer with a good job, a nice car (apart from the trunk), and a nice apartment.
Why the self-sabotage?
I used to think it was a lack of motivation. I simply can’t get motivated, I would tell myself. But believe it or not, it all comes back to those three letters: ADD. It’s not that I don’t feel like doing anything — it’s that I have too much that I want to do. Sitting here, concentrating on writing a blog post after over a week of silence is such a relief. Although there are 1,200 different things that I could be doing right now, such as putting away jeans, or watching Sunday’s episode of Charmed, or starting the dishwasher, or folding laundry … the list goes on … I’m focused on something. That’s the sign of a fantastic night.
Tonight was one of those nights. I came home and ate my steak & chili bowl from Quizno’s, and immediately got to work cleaning up what was left of the mess left from last night’s dinner with Dominic. I did what seemed like hours of work but looked at the clock on the microwave and it was barely 10pm. In hardly a blink, my place went back to being almost acceptable.
It’s so incredibly cliché when I think about the concept of “taking things one day at a time” but it seems to be the only thing working for me at the moment. I’m taking inventory of the successes and failures, and if one more thing is gone from my enormous to-do list of life by the time I collapse into bed at night, it should be a mark of success. It’s just hard to keep that in perspective some days.
When there are so many things that I want to do, how can I ever feel fulfilled without finishing them all? And how can I keep that discouragement from preventing me from finishing anything?
Tags: ADD, cleaning, karaoke, life, organization
Permalink
02.03.06
Posted in music, gay, karaoke, introspective, josh, american idol, drag, drag queens, jenny, karen carpenter, king of clubs, mountain view, simon cowell, the carpenters, wilson phillips at 10:39 pm by admin
Last night I went with Jenny and Josh to King of Clubs in Mountain View for the first time to enjoy a lively night of karaoke. I’ve never actually been able to get anyone to go to a karaoke bar with me, because all of my friends back on the east coast were a little bit too… polished… to be caught dead in one of those places.
Thankfully, out here, it seems that people are a little more shameless. Case in point: a lovely anonymous drag queen that decided to wow us with her rendition of Superstar, by the Carpenters. Can you see her uncanny resemblance to Karen Carpenter?
Of course, it would not be fair for me to embarrass some poor drag queen on my blog if I didn’t take a little bit of time to embarrass myself. Josh sang Maybe This Time, by the lovely Liza Minnelli, but I was warned by Josh that if I were to place the video on my blog, he would never speak to me again. Hardly seems worth the risk.
So now, for your uncomfortable viewing pleasure, here is my karaoke performance of Hold On, by Wilson Phillips. This is a lovely motivational song, but for some reason the karaoke video features Jesus and the crucifix and the Virgin Mary. If there is some sort of religious undercurrent in what I thought to be a secular pop song, I would love to hear more about it. Anyway, feel free to leave your best Simon Cowell American Idol comments on my blog. Here we go!
Tags: american idol, drag, drag queens, gay, jenny, josh, karaoke, karen carpenter, king of clubs, mountain view, simon cowell, the carpenters, wilson phillips
Permalink