Category Archives: Queer stuff

Bears, Queens, Fags, Twinks, Dykes, Trannies, Transexuals, the whole nine inches.

Red Leader, I’m Going In

Queer stuff

On Friday, I scooted into my local pet store for some food for George Hamilton. We go in every so often to get toys for the cat and on the odd occasion shuck out a couple hundred dollars for a cat condo. Our shopping experience there is always made better by being served by my favorite clerk. The guy has two major attributes that I find really hot in a man: he’s a red-head (1) who always has a tuft of hair sexily (is that a word?) sticking out of his collar somewhere (2). Oh, he has a lot more attributes I find sexy, like his smile and manner, but I won’t bore you.

I’m wearing my deconstructed Millennium Falcon shirt, an “arty” (rough lined), one colour line print of the Star Wars ship as seen from above. It takes a non-fan a couple seconds to get it. Anyway, I was in a rush and they were out of the food we needed so I grabbed a small can to tide us over. It was a fast transaction. Cat food, money, smiles, bye!

The next day I go back with Sharkboy to get a proper bag of food and kitty litter. This day, I’m wearing my “Red Leader” helmet t-shirt: a line drawing of the helmet the rebels wore in the first (fourth) movie. I wasn’t trying to go for a theme or anything, my t-shirt wearing is usually more random than that. Red Otter is there again.

“Are you a fan of Star Wars?” he asks while we’re paying.

“I liked the movies, yeah!”

“That’s weird! That’s like the second Star Wars t-shirt I’ve seen in a day!”

“That was me, yesterday,” I say, a tad bit hurt he didn’t remember me.

His eyes go round and his mouth drops. He’s put his foot in it. Granted the guy is in a busy store but dang, am I that forgettable?

Regardless, we all laugh. Two of us out of embarrassment.

Pride Toronto 2007

Queer stuff, Toronto

This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they’ll have finished the greatest novel known to man. (Reads a page) All right, let’s see…”It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?” You stupid monkey.

–Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons – Last Exit to Springfield

Here’s my multimedia of the weekend! Please note, not all pics are safe for work. One dick shot, a couple boobies.

The Best of Times: Pictures of friends, fun shots and fabulousness.
The Bears of Times: Self explanatory. Bears!
The Blurst of Times: Stay home. No, really.

Watch as SharkBoy and Scoundrel show us how great they move after a few beers…

This was a great Pride for me. I didn’t feel pressured to do anything other than people watch, which I loved. Thanks for the Photogs for letting us tag along on their Photo Safari Sunday!

Pride Smash and Grab!

Queer stuff, Toronto

Saturday, Sharkboy, The Mailman, Photog #1 and the Busdriver and I went to O’Greedy’s for dinner. Sorry, I mean O’Grady’s.

Okay I know it’s Pride weekend and they’re busy. But the service was the only good thing about the meal. Everything else was a nightmare.

First, sitting down, we were assaulted by music from the beer garden next door. No biggie. It was loud but hey, it’s Pride. But someone within O’Grady’s brain dead staff thought it was a good idea to try to compete with it by blaring their classic patio music overtop of the beer garden’s techno. So we had a thumping back beat set to Shania Twain competing at a volume level set at “shouty conversation”. Nice! When asked, twice, the server seemed really put off but eventually 2/3rds through the meal, it got turned off.

almost no friesSecondly, they upped their prices and axed the portions. Not by a measley couple of bucks. A burger and fries and a pop was $22. Actually I should call it A Burger AND A FRY. See the picture? Revel in the vast amounts of potato slices! See the BROWN LETTUCE GARNISH? Yummy!! Sharkboy’s serving of fries amounted to about less than a handful. A glass of fountain diet coke was $2 less than a bottle of beer and it costs the bar about $0.30/glass for pop. The Busdriver had main course of salad that had maybe a teaspoon of dressing on it. The Club sandwich was a one level chicken breast with some bacon and tomato tossed on top. No mayo. The Mailman didn’t bother asking, he’d be done it by the time it came.

Thirdly (and this made us tip less than 8%), as we were getting up to leave, the manager saw us rise and asked: “Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” SharkBoy says.

“Oh thank god!” he blurts and walks away.

Huh? We look at each other. Were we just insulted? Suddenly before we can all collect ourselves after that curious comment, our table is overrun with a large group that had made “reservations” that only then had got half their group seated. That certainly made us feel “unrushed”.

As we were exiting, pushing past fighting waitresses and bus staff, I overheard the same manager in a bitter, passing comment to persons unknown: “Oh great, another $20 table!” Oh I should jump back here and mention that all of O’Greedy’s “Pride version” menus had “Minimum $15 order per person” on them. So damn you for ordering $5 over their minimum! Damn you!

Happy Pride, O’Gradys! I hope you put all that money you made this weekend towards something useful, like a copy of “How to Run a Restaurant for Dummies”

Distancing Myself

Queer stuff, Toronto

Oh lord. My old Black Eagle website is long gone (somewhat unsafe for work… guys in jocks, leather imagery, no nudity), replaced by a site I am sure was made in Frontpage. No, a pirated copy of Frontpage and MS Paint.

I don’t even know where to begin to be cynical. The riot of colour? The beveled or incredibly pixelated fonts? The broken image on the staff page? The horrid resizing of web images to hundreds of times their original size without apology? Or resizing by HTML? My original artwork heavy handedly ripped apart and overdrawn to shit? Typos galore?

Wood grain?

Did the designer make the site with boxing gloves on?

Sigh. I knew this day would come. If the site were better than my original design (since it was 3 years old, that would not have been hard to do), I would honestly be congratulatory.

I know I sound bitter.

But it’s like seeing a boyfriend who you liked a lot, who dumped you, and is now hanging around crack heads and accountants.

Before you comment, go look at NYC Eagle and compare it to BET. Arresting opening page. Tight layout and easy navigation. One style throughout. My only complaint is that it’s Flash.

Mixing Business With Pleasure

Celebs and Media, Queer stuff, Toronto

Saturday is your last chance to go see Kids On TV at Buddies at Bad Times Theatre.

What are they like? Imagine if Nina Hagen had been a hot muscular male lead singer who could sing and break dance. Or if Hedwig and the Angry Inch did punk/new wave fusion, instead of glam rock. Or if Devo were cross dressers. Or …well you get the gist. They captured the 80s in their dayglo cobra outfits, wolf heads and writhing break dance break downs. I’m loving their rift of Keith Cole and his pee faux pas.

Go see them. Buy their CD ($10 cheap! But not cheap in production values!) too. Here’s a YouTube of one of their fun songs that get SharkBoy and I cheering along. I KNOW SO!!

Montreal

Personal Bits, Queer stuff

We used up some of my Aeroplan miles this weekend to visit with my in-laws at St Jean sur Richelieu. While my knowledge of French is slightly greater than your average Fijian’s and Sharkboy’s parent’s English is slightly better than my French, we managed to communicate well enough:

“Teaad! Beer?”

“No, mare see!”

I do love them. They’re great people.

We stayed in Montreal proper, at the La Conciergerie which did have a certain degree of sticker shock when it came to the price, but the images below show that shucking out $45 per person more than the non-descript Comfort Inn we’ve stayed at in the past, was worth the extra dosh. The manager we dealt with our entire stay was a bit of a character. Strikingly good looking, he came to the door shirtless and tattooed and was chatty enough. However every encounter with him would get us a comment or two regarding how “exciting” our life was because we were married and visiting in-laws for the weekend. He came off a bit bitter. Thank god he had his looks.

Our room
Our room came with lay-about already installed!

exterior
The room had French doors opening onto a lovely courtyard. Trez jolie!

balcony
Look straight up when you go outside and you see one of these crazy flying staircases that gave me quite the dizzy spell to get up to the roof top deck. But it was worth it.

disrepair
The only imperfection with the room.

And to top off our weekend, we experienced our third flat tire in a span of one year. You think I’d be use to the sluggish feeling of the car and the noise a tire shredding to bits on it’s rim makes, but no. We rode that tire for at least 5KM before deciding to stop to see what was drowning out our driving disco music.

We were told by an Avis official that we could pay for a new tire and get reimbursed so we went to the nearest Wal-Mart in Brockville. My old home town. And now I am going to say something racially charged. Wal-Mart in Brockville at 11am on a Sunday is the biggest pile of steaming white trash I have ever encountered. Simcoe, Ontario is New York City in comparison. Fat toothless people wander it’s isles like zombies and look outsiders like us as if we’re a threat. I kept whispering to Sharkboy “I’m frooooom heeeere!” Sad.

We got home after $150 later. Hopefully we can get that money back.