COSTCO

Imagine what a person from say, Ghana, would think if they were ushered through the halls of one of our Costco's. "Damn.", would probably be some of it. "What the..?", would be more. Mostly I imagine that they would be appalled by how much food we have at our disposal, at lot of which just gets THROWN AWAY when it's not purchased. Crazy.

Okay, further proof that the world REVOLVES around me. VHI aired a behind the scenes special on the Showtime program "Queer as Folk", a show I happen to LOVE. I think it's a really amazing look at how gay couples really interact. I have known many a gay man in my life (I went to a musical theatre school) and so often how they are portrayed on TV just doesn't ring true with me. But in this show and it's characters I recognize many of the men I've known, which makes it fun to watch. Nostalgic. Anywho, one of the characters, Brian, is the that super HOT gay guy with tons of male charm and charisma, the kind of guy that makes you wish he were straight. The cast of the show has been pretty closed-lipped about who is really gay and who is straight, and on this VHI special, they all revealed their preferences. No one really knew before if the actor that plays Brian, Gale Harold, was gay in real life or not. Well, he aint, and that upped his hot quotient a thousand percent. So I'm sitting there thinking, man...I could date that guy? Yummy. But in reality, I'd probably not meet the him, so it's a non-issue.
Yeah, so I'm at work TWO DAYS later, and guess who comes freakin' strolling in with his girlfriend? Yup. Thanks. Thank you to the gods of irony for poking me in the eye, once again. I never get star-struck (we get a lot of celebrities that come in to my work-place) but when he walked in I recognized him instantly, despite a full beard and stupid hat disguise, and I started giggling like a damn fool. I tackled the bartender on the way to his table and demanded he let me open their bottle of wine. He wasn't the warmest guy I've ever met, but he accepted the tiny praise I gave him about his show, and kind of clammed up after that. His chick was really nice, and she's all kind of normal looking, which makes it all the more maddening.

Fifty years ago, we sill had public division of the races, and that's all changed. Twenty years from now, it won't even be a story that there are gay characters on a TV show or that this guy married that guy, and a lot of that in-road has been started by shows like "Queer as Folk". All in good time, people. All in good time.

FAVORITE NEW SHOW THAT'S NOT NEW

I have become belatedly enamored of the show "The West Wing". I have been watching re-runs on Bravo, and I can't get over how smart and topical it is. I am on the border of obsession. I have yet to see a new episode because of freakin' American Idol, but it shall be mine.

TIME TRAVEL

Okay, here's what vexes me about the whole time travel idea. There are shows and movies based around the idea that if one could travel through time, they could go back and fix things that may have gone wrong in the past. But I think this is an unbalanced notion. If the course of history can be changed by one simple action, then everything around it must change as well, in an almost paradoxical fashion. Say you want to save your friend from dying, and you go back in time to help them make some change that keeps them alive. You couldn't go back to your time and expect anything to be how you left it. Hell, you might not even be able to go back to your time. Say that when you saved your friend, they were suddenly around on a day that they weren't there before, and they go to the bank on a day they weren't there before, and bump in to someone accident's, and that puts that person in a bad mood, pushes them over the edge, and that persons mood escalates in to road rage, and they cut another driver off, and that driver gets so spooked that they exit the freeway one stop too early, and exiting too early means they don't have the gas to get home, so the tow-truck that comes gets an extra bit of business, and that extra bit puts the company owner right where he needs to be financially, so he decides he can send his son to the east coast college he's been dreaming about, and that son ends up distracting the girl that was supposed to become a brilliant scientist and in her hours of tedious lab time invent the basis of the very time machine which you used to change the course of things. But she never did, because you saved your friend, and changed everything. There are too many variables in this world to allow for any changes in time. It's a ripple effect, similar to throwing a pebble in a pond...ever expanding waves of change. Long point short, I don't believe time travel is a viable thing. Let alone the parameters of the actual travel, the physical presence of a being that on the original timeline wasn't there before implies that every move would cause a (80's moment) "rift in the space-time continuum". I think time travel and the notion of it was something the human mind invented to place some sort of belief in our heads that even though we make millions of decisions a day, good and bad, the result of those decisions can be fixed or changed at some later date, thereby alleviating the guilt over having made the decisions. Anywho, just a theory.

I have recently become enamored with The Darkness's song "I Believe in a Thing Called Love". I have no idea why. When I first heard it, I remember thinking..."What the???" and dismissing it. But now I hear it everywhere, at work, on TV, and now...I LOVE IT. I prance about my sister's house singing it like a fool and making her laugh. My niece thinks it's pretty funny too, and she tries to sing it as well. Okay, so it's mostly just high-pitched squealing, but considering what she's trying to copy, it's a pretty good go.

ODD OBSESSION OF THE DAY

I find myself in love with The Rock. The Rock, you say? Surely not. Oh yes. I can smell what The Rock is cooking, and it smells good. I couldn't even begin to explain this current guilty pleasure...maybe it has something to do with him being a huge hunk of man meat, but that's not the only factor of my love. I guess I just enjoy a good Rock, and Dwayne, You are an excellent piece of Geology.