Drinks With Doug Idea: Books With Doug...with drinks!

Thursday's weather: warm and dry, with the smell in the air of heat and humidity to come. Plants still basking in light and rain surplus, but this will not last. Disappointment: my Siberian Iris have not bloomed this year nearly at all.
Thursday's drink: I'm outta good summery booze. Down to whiskey and mixer.
Thursday's dream ticket: Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" tour. Sadly she's not coming to DC, which is a total mystery to me. Still, where-ever you are in the country, go and tell me what you think. Only if it was good.

All the hullaballoo about Scottie McClellan's book as me thinking. The Drinks With Doug family should know so much more about this, and more importantly other abuses of our government. So why not a book club?
Well, not so much a book club, with all the estrogen-laden potentiality. Not...that estrogen is a bad thing. It isn't. I've just never - ever - come across a guy's book club.
So let's start a book read that isn't a club or isn't guys or gals or anything other than the book, and what we learn.
At to that point, I propose a book no doubt all of us have heard of, many of us have referenced, some of us have seen the movie (sigh, Robert Redford's so dreamy) and few of us have actually read top to bottom.
I propose we read: "All The President's Men" by Woodson and Bearnbear. Or someone. The guy that Dustin Hoffman played!
I am going to the DC public library this Saturday to check it out. I ask you do likewise. And let's gather together back in a month.
That's pretty much it. Scott McClellan is a douche and his book is completely uneventful except for the cocaine revelation. And we yet to have the account of the abuse of this administration laid bare such that all can see it for what it is, and hold them accountable.

Drinks With Doug Reviews: #1

Saturday's weather: Sharp blue sky and clear cumulus clouds, dry and pleasant, mabye about 73 today.
Saturday's drink: McDonald's coffee, as it's morning and the coffee-pot has died.
Saturday's interest: the movie "Hunger", recently playing to big boffo at Cannes. Admittedly, leaning toward the IRA over the English in the Troubles. But timely, given what we have not been discussing regarding rendition, Guantanamo, and our never-ending troubles.

Drinks With Doug is, at its best moments, a chronicle of the thousand events that, together, comprise the events of a life. Or my life, specifically. Part of that life is food I make. Part of it is the work I do, the soap I use, the smell of my dog in the morning, the progress of my herbs, and the events I attend. Today I start DWD Reviews!, exclamation point included. My first stabs at thoughts on events/experiences I've had here that you can have where-ever you are. Movies, concerts, magazine articles, sex toys; it's all fair game. Except the sex toys.

Concert: "Drive - By Truckers" at DC's 930 Club, Saturday May 10.
DWD Rating: two Southern Comforts and a mess o' beers (out of five possible drinks.)
My friend DE suggested this a while back. I've been hearing D and J talk about the Drive By Truckers, and their songs, and their rock opera Southern Rock Opera for years...feeling at times a little left out of the loop of the 70's experience of southern rock concerts, weed, beer, long hair, Stars-n-Bars tees, and all the other whatnot that, I assume, accounts for the bulk of what we may call "southern culture." OK, I'm a little tight-assed Square-head; but the whole Doobie-rock thing always eluded me. Time to give it a try.
Glad I did. Although frankly, I'm not sure when I'll try it again. DBT hit the stage around 11:30pm; much too late for an old man like me. In the words of my friend D: "I love having gone out, I just hate going out." I agree. The opening act was meh, but DBT hit the stage hard and didn't let go until 1am. And that was BEFORE the encore, which lasted well into the wee hours.
At first the songs hit you in the gut - good rock!, you say. Light and dark, good riffs, swampy feel. And, looking around, I think I've never been less intimidated by a concert crowd in my life. On the other side, after a while their tunes meld one into the other. Swamp seeps into swamp, and it becomes a little bit of an endurance contest: you and the guys (and gal) actually making the music.
In the end they won my respect my sheer force (on their part) to make me like them. But they didn't win my icy northern heart.

DVD: "Primer"
DWD Rating: three gin and tonics, and a splash more of Hendricks
"Primer", henceforth referred to without quotes, is the 2004 sci-fi tech-punk mind-fuck that you'll never understand, and wish you did. The work of the intriguing Shane Carruth (he wrote, produced, directed and acted - one more than Orson Welles OR Ed Wood!), Primer charts the totally mundane discover of something shockingly new, and powerfully corrupting, in science. I'll leave it there...mostly because I don't really understand what or how or why or...well, yeah. It's pretty dense - but not in the David Lynch way of weirdness and incomprehensibility for its own sake way. In that 'I don't understand this, but it has enough coherence and internal consistency that I believe I could understand this' way.
Beyond the tech-blather and weed-hungering questions, it also charts the break-down of a very close friendship: something we've all experienced. Worth several viewings.

Concert: "X" 13X31 Tour, Wednesday May 21 at the aforementioned awesome 930 Club.
DWD Rating: four straight scotch (and whatever you can find on the floor.)
What can be said that hasn't been of X over its history? Four amazing musicians - who we know not just by name or face or style but by expression - who together welded the mayhem of LA's punk scene into lasting fierce on-your-fucking-toes musical cocaine. (Not that I know what cocaine is like. Ahem.) C, our friend G and I went, passing (now regrettably) on the Detroit-based opener The Detroit Cobras. Billy Zoom (Paxil-man), Exene (former of King Aragon!), DJ Bonebreak and the aging-but-ageless John Doe: as a set they are history. My history, American music history, our history. I can't say enough.

Event: Art-O-Matic, Friday May 23
DWD Rating: Two sloppy martinis. That's it.
AOM is a somewhat yearly event that I fully support. Heck, I leap up and down at. Hurrah! Art-O-Matic!
It's an un-judged, non-judgemental collection of DC artists' work - often taking over abandoned office buildings and/or intimidating neighborhoods to display the creative output of our area.
No tsk-tsks. No smug chin-scrubbing. No art talk.
It's sappy and sassy and dirty and goofy and provocative in every way creation should be (see previous post!) Walk one floor or eight. Stare or breeze. Laugh - please - and mull. Be yourself.
Art-O-Matic. Why didn't I thing of this?

It's The Arts

Monday's weather: 60's and dry, partly sunny like September, and rather windy (like me.)
Monday's drink: Not having one, but if I were, I think I'd fancy a White Peach Bellini. Fizzylicious.
Monday's adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." (from Al Gore's 2008 commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University.)

This last weekend was chockablock with art in my hood. Art-O-Matic continues apace (C, D F and I will be going this coming Friday) and the now-empty jumpin' Jesus church that occupied a former garage at 14 and T has been converted into an 'edgy' downtowny-artist gallery that Transformer has occupied for the time. It was also Mid-City Artists' weekend whatnot to boot, with two of my neighbors exhibiting. I didn't get out to experience a single one of them, natch.

I did experience, side-note-wise, the new Harris Teeter store up at Kalorama and 18th, the one in the old roller rink. And I feel confident I can state for the record that it is the gayest grocery store, ever, in all of existence. Quite a statement I admit, but empirically true.

Back to art. The weekend, and the work of my friend J*who writes for The Art Newspaper set my mind to art recently. I've always had an uncomplicated relation with much of it. And generally speaking, I prefer more than less, perhaps mostly because I don't expect much from much of art. Not at least on our shared cultural level. The personal: well that's altogether another issue.

Art-O-Matic is a great example. Floor after floor of...what is that? Who did this? WHAT is that supposed to be? Lots of questions cast into the air for us to play with. The questions - the playfullness of it all - and not worrying about answering them is, for me, very stimulating. But then rarely I happen on something that is not playful at all. No predicting what it is or where I'll find it. But it's a something that...not that it demands attention, for I willingly give it. It's something that seeks somehow to come into me and fill me.

I know the language is a little fruity here, so let me try an analogy. Faith is a mutli-level experience for me. Most of it - the theological questions, the existential wandering, the poking about in that cloud of ideas apart from the quantifiable - is for me just fun. The more questions the better: I wish lots of people were asking lots more questions publicly, inviting the rest of us to trade answers back and forth, free from the weight of whether we're getting it right. Like those rainbow beach-balls that get popped from one to another at bad outdoor concerts. It just bumbles along, no direction, free from direction, existing just for us to bop it to someone else, something fun that we share and joins us together.

But then there's the personal layer. Wholly other than the diverting ponderments about abstractions, these are the deep questions of what my life's work is and should be, how I engage with those I love, and whether I allow my spirit - the spirit - to fill me as it should or if I fight it and keep it from its - and my - work. These are the rare moments I open to the fuzzy pink cloud of theology so that it can pour into me - to what end, who knows.

These are profound and scary moments, but at the essence of life. "Sitting with spirit," I refer to it with my shrink. So it is with art. There's a great jumbly mess of ART floating around in which I am perfectly comfortable moving through. It's just fun, and meant to be swatted up to someone else. But there are - rarely - works that I open to and try to come to live with as they fill me. Perhaps I'll share one or two of these in posts to come.

But not now. Life, Gordon Ramsey, and C all call me away from the dread blog. And none too soon.

*I have to give a shout-out to the work the J does, and the better thoughts he has on art that often don't make it to print. The Art biz - meaning the incredibly high-priced, stratospheric world "real" artists inhabit, opposed to those doing good work living down on this plane with us mortals - has become, I perceive, a sham: little else than oddities put out by no-talent ego cases with mendacious sales pitches, work that exists solely to be commoditized where "value" means exactly and only the price it fetches at auction. People who adopt the surface and trappings of real art before them but have nothing to say or, more charitably, little interest in conversing. I won't characterize J's thoughts on this, adding only when I say these things to him, he has a good chuckle. While you're at it, check out the Art Newspaper. Read it for a month, and write back what you learned about the arts world.

Victory and Defeat

Thursday's weather: Sunny this morning, near picture-perfect in the afternoon, with a reddish-grey haze over the sky now in evening. You can stare directly at the sun, though I don't recommend it. 70's, moist, and eerily still - not a leaf moving.
Thursday's drink: a moderate T&T; no need for me to be too tight, especially when that makes me a bad boyfriend.
Thursday's wish: A Day With No News. Perhaps, maybe, someday.

My friend RL phoned me this afternoon from San Francisco. Or Oakland, somewhere in the Bay; whatever. I thought it odd she would be phoning in the early afternoon, no doubt knowing I would be at work. Something bad, I thought; oh dear earthquakeaccidentbabyfalljobearthquakedeathtemblor... Earthquakes and other natural disasters, no surprise, have been very much in the forefront of my thoughts lately. A hazard of my job.

I answered, "B....?", and could tell immediately this was not a bad call. It was, contrarily, a good call. "I just heard, the California State Court ruled that gay marriage is legal! Everyone's talking about it all around me, it's quite the thing. Isn't this great?," she asked. While I was at work.

I should explain. I don't work for an open-minded organization. I don't work for a company that has liberal spousal recognition, or bring your dog to work policies. I don't work for an employer that wants in any way to know I'm gay and happily so. I doubt they ever will - the culture there is just far too insular, set, comfortable with itself and only itself.

This is a problem. A large problem; one that probably hurts me more than I admit and affects me more than I understand. Imagine for a moment: you go to work. Coming in, some of your colleagues are standing around, talking of their vacation. Or holiday, or episode last night while drinking and watching "American Idol" - it doesn't matter. A part of you is immediately on notice: you twitch (imperceptibly so, hopefully) and monitor your words that you don't let something of yourself (your holiday, your vacation, your drunken night in front of the TV) slip. Mostly people are polite: they learn to stop asking after you evade several queries. ("queries", ha!) You're not part of them - you're different. Cool, aloof. Different. Colleagues stop asking things; you stop answering. You're a ghost.

I realize the blog is often over-done. Like a stew with too much going on, or a bad press release with too many editors - too ornate...rococo. But I'm not overstating. In an environment like this - and they are far more numerable than just this oppressive spot described - you're apart and alien from the very well-spring of civics...and civility.

Why do you think I was an in-your-face faggot in the 90s? (Well, not really so much, but perhaps we could say around-your-face fag.) But that's another story. Well...a lot of other people's stories, but that's again, that's something for another time.

So the victory - gay marriage! - was set off by my immediately scurrying to find a 'safe' place to talk on my cell phone. I found myself even censoring what I would say, that someone would overhear and put 2 and 2 together and figure it out. In the tiniest moment of courage I pushed that aside, saying loudly "California here we come!" My victory undercut by the knowledge that I was in a side hallway, out of earshot to most.

Victory and defeat. I'm not sure which won out in my personal little wars today. But mostly I'm heartened by the phone call. Perhaps that there is the victory. Not the ruling, not whatever follows. Not whatever I may say about it. That someone would hear of this and think to immediately pick up the phone and call me. As I think on it, that is (in the parlance) the game-changer.

Tonight I'm feeling quite the victor.

Drive-By Blogging

Monday's Weather: Upward of 4 inches of rain these last 24 hours and cool, like a Michigan Spring. My herbs are doing aerobics in the front.
Monday's Drink: Sorry, but it's left-over Woodbridge Pinot Grigio, which isn't really as bad as all that, but you know...it's Woodbridge.
Monday's Forbidden Link: photo-bombing. Tsk-tsk.

It's late and I haven't blogged in a week. Frequent commenter David has already observed such.
But I realize that often posts should be short, without literary effect; something only slightly more than a Twitter tweet or a scrawled note in high school class.
So here's short, until I'm with enough time, to write something meaningful. Last weekend was punctuated by three events: several hours of gardening on Saturday (in which I moved a full-grown lilac, several established plants, and other mucking about), the Drive-By Truckers' concert late Sat/early Sunday morning at the 930 Club (the coolest rock-n-roll club in the U.S.), and making chicken marsala Sunday afternoon for dinner.

The gardening was great, and perfectly timed. Basil in the ground now, lilac in new home, workin' the dirt in the front yard. Fotos to follow soon. It's a perfect break from stupid work or confused home to plunge a spade deep into the brown soil and turn it over, and then better plant something that will grow, be green, take space, make flowers or become yummy; all in weeks. And of course the smell. The smell of turned earth. Nothing else smells like that.

Drive-By Truckers were a slab of BBQ'd possom all right. Good music, long fucking concert. And you know: even if you're like me (not so inclined to own a DBT CD), they just worked so hard on stage (hitting around 11:30, encore around 1:15, getting home around 2:20) that the just MADE you like them. Which I do.

The marsala...well, you know. Dudes, I'm occasionally brilliant in the kitchen, and made that chicken and noodle dish leap from the pan to the dish. I should elaborate on this, and more more, later. But I'm s'posed to post more and write less. So here's your take-away: 930 Club: amazing.
Oohs and Aahs in DC: you'll never find better soul food. Drive-By Truckers: damn you work hard, boys! I love you for that. My dreams: who was that long-haired charmer who sidled up to me on the couch? My friend DE: let's golf soon. My friend DG: I need to compose less and write better. My partner C: you're my hero. Bro in Spain: keep the info coming, and I'll blog more!

11:1opm, time to post. Will update site with friends' links and more soon. Will also post part 1 of letter for former bf and still beloved J soon.

Derby Denouement

Sunday's weather: cloudless sky though it's less blue and more slate, fresh breeze from the west and perfect 75 degrees.
Sunday's drink: well, yesterday's actually; a Mint Julep, heavy on both the mint and julep
Sunday's ingredient: limes! Good heavens I have so many limes in this house. I need lime recipes, people!

The first Sunday of May invariably is a slow day. That's as it follows the hubbub and excitement of the first Saturday, which of course is the running of the Kentucky Derby. Today's no exception.

134 years they've been running the Derby down in Louisville. 7 years C has been throwing a Derby party. (All good traditions have to start with small numbers.) No doubt he's actually been doing a Derby-do for longer, but 2002 marks the year he had both the house to hold people, and the gambling account to take their money. Both are good things.

As Derby Day's grew in number they also grew in size. 2007 was probably the peak with about 75 or 80 people in and out the door. Even with three floors of entertainment, juleps, TVs to watch the race and gaming options, that's a lot of people. Parties that large need three things: a good guest list, a brigade of friends to help, and - during the party itself - the ability to talk to four people at the same time. The friends have been key: in years past they have saved our bacon: making juleps, moving food out of the kitchen, greeting at the door, supplying the bourbon, handling wagers, unclogging the clots of people that form in the tightest places, making desserts, keeping the riff-raff away. But the parties have required a great deal of work - printing programs, coordinating food prep, staffing the...uh, gaming entertainments. Managing the money. Keeping your cool. They have been big parties.

A funny thing happens at big parties. I'm thinking back to Tammy's pre-WHCA dinner garden brunch last weekend...and to david's comment. When you're the host, people naturally want to see you: say hello, shake a hand, thank you for the invite, trade a pleasant comment or two. And when you have 80 people all trying to get just one minute with you, well you begin to feel a little special. You can see it in people's eyes - as they follow you from task to task, watching to see who else may be in line, calculating the right moment to strike. You become a little more desired, a little more important. At least then and there. (Thinking back to Tammy's party, I get that a little more. But there of course it isn't just the host people are circling around, it's big fish that swim in and out. They, too, can see the looks in other's eyes, and they begin to feel ... well, a little special. Or more special, in their case.)

I'll admit I missed a little of that yesterday. But what I got in its place was an ideal number and range of friends and zero stress. People didn't need to yell to be heard, everyone had just as much time with anyone else as they wished, no-one was in demand and thus no-one was demanding. We opened the door at 4 and that was it. Like the gates opening at Churchill, it just goes of its own motion.

We didn't have the gaming options (thank you U.S. Congress) as in years past, and of course there was the heart-breaking end for Eight Belles which, thankfully, I didn't see. (By the way, check Sally Jenkins' take on what's really going on here; I think it's not said enough.) But cleanup was done by midnight, everyone left with a smile - at least I think they did - and you would never know any different this morning. Except for all the new bourbon. Thanks, guys. Now I need to start finding bourbon drinks.

Well we all have sacrifices to make, I guess. So here it is, 3pm Sunday afternoon. Soon I'll take STG out for a little run of her own outside. Go buy some eggs, make find a lime bar recipe. Listen to the birds and the children and the brunch-crowd and the power-saws of DIYerselfers. Wag a finger at myself for not hitting the gym.

And lay on the couch and let the memories of another Derby Day past slowly simmer and settle back somewhere into my brain. Thanks for the company, the pies, the booze and the fun. Let's do it again next year.

Except next year, how about I pick the winning horse for a change?

Odd Ends

Thursday's Weather: wet this morning with sprinkles, which the herbs drink up; sunny and most righteous this pm. Can't wait to take STG out for a walk.
Thursday's Drink: I drank too much last night, to my discredit. One glass of Tanq and tonic, and then to seltzer.
Thursday's Link: What?! Boomerangs work in space?!

A little less lofty tone tonight. Back from work, STG fed and walked, the dishes from last night's macaroni & cheese scoured, lists made of what we need for Saturday's Kentucky Derby party. Quiet, save for the sounds of kids on the street here. Whooooo, whaaaaa, "Oh my God, he's doing Great! Eight weeks old on Tuesday!" My little piece of Sesame Street.

Here's something you may not know. I'm told (I don't remember much, if anything, of my childhood) when I was just a boober I wanted to run away and live with Mr. Rogers.

Yeah, Mr. Rogers. He of Pittsburgh and PBS fame. Perhaps this is something we of our generation share; perhaps this is far too intimate a revelation. TV was still something odd and special growing up - certainly as a child. I still was lucky enough to have yards and fields and neighborhood candy stores (Pucksty's!) and a school close enough to walk to (which no longer exists save for Friendster searches.) I remember snow storms and milk delivery and Halloween and the scary lady who lived at the end of the block by my brother S always used to tell me she wasn't scary at all and mostly the smell of leaves. Leaves in the Spring, the Summer and the Fall. My sensory memory.

Anyway, I was just a niblet and, I'm guessing, not terribly happy at home. The whys to that are why I pay a therapist $165 an hour to niff-naw around the issues there. Regardless, I'm told that sometime around 4 or 5 I wanted to run away and live with Mr. Rogers. Apparently I had my mind made up: I was going to pack my bag and go outside (the world will protect me) and hop a bus or something and end up on that street Mr. Rogers lived on - the one us'uns of a certain age all remember: the T-Street, the cars and buses, the celesta banging out the familiar welcome. I don't know what he was to me, but obviously I wanted more of it and was ready to leave mom and dad and brother and Heidi-dog to get it.

I was only dissuaded from my adventure by mom, or so I'm told. By mom. Apparently she tried reasoning with me, which didn't work at all I guessing because what could be more real than TV? In the end, as she tells the story, she told me "...Mr. Rogers isn't real. He's only make-believe." I'm also told at hearing this I cried for a day or more.

Like so much of my youth, I have no memory of this. (That's why I'm in therapy, folks.) But it seems more than plausible. I was a soft child: a goopy, sensitive, emotional thing who as prone to crying or throwing up as to running about and pinching the girls and sharing my building blocks at school. All to the aroma of vegetable soup, which I think they made every day. Still to this day I can't smell vegetable soup without flying back to Paul L. Best Elementary School.

These days my neighborhood is more likely to smell or Ethiopian or Greasiopian or just plain gutter-booze-alkies. But there are trees and lamp-lights at night; little gardens out front and colorful townhouses all 'round. It's really quite cozy. My tiny bit of what I imagined Sesame Street would be...and here it is.

Thursday night and already the bar traffic hoping. Maryland-douches and Virginia-blobs prowling for parking so they can spend LOTS of money at one of my neighborhood trendy bars. (By the way: the bars are douches, too and the waiter hate you and the bartenders water your stupid drinks down, and you're better off saving your money and going to H Street NE.) I hear sirens, again, off to the east it sounds - Howard University area. C is downstairs unwinding. Coffee's made to start at 5am, and the kitchen is more clean than dirty.

I'm very happy with this life.