mrpeenee Rocks Out

Oh, my sweet little potatoes, life's just been a whirl, a mad gay whirl around here. Diane von Ausitnberg was here last weekend, fomenting like mad, putting up with my sullen attitude and mostly just glad to get away from the fires of Central Texas. She seemed terribly impressed with my dedication to watching hours of crappy TV.

Plus, this weekend is Folsom Street Fair, a festival celebrating fat men's unwise decisions to appear in public wearing their ill-fitting fetish wear. The city is wild for this, for example, the naked guys who hang out in the little park on Castro street decided to have a Nude In to warm things up.

Also, they're protesting a local ordinance that has been proposed that would require people to spread a towel on seats before they plop down on them, should those people be less than covered in their butt-chop regions. I support the naked guys who point out wandering around nude is not against the law here, but I also think simple courtesy leans towards "the towel on the bench" argument. Do I know you well enough to come in contact with your cooties? No, I do no think I do. Therefore keep them and your buttsweat to yourself.

Even though I avoided the Castro today in order not to bump into the naked guys and I will also be missing from the rounds of leather, flagellation, and fajita stands at Folsom tomorrow, don't think that I haven't been celebrating. Tonight I went to a concert with friends where the orchestra played a charming version of the opera Carmen. Some crazy ass Russian composer put this together in the mid-60s as a ballet for his wife. He took the pieces of the opera and reassembled them and then amped it all up with a wacky percussion section. This is the answer for people (like me) who have always thought all Carmen needed to be better was bongos and marimbas mixed in. It was brilliant.

Plus, during the earlier, staler part of the show (Mendelssohn. Like eating a stale cookie.) I was able to distract myself by staring at the very cute bass player and imagining his nipples.

One felt sure they were medium large and firm, possibly perky. I'm sure I don't have to explain chamber orchestras are not normally equipped with men who lend themselves to this line of thinking, so I was plenty glad to see him there.

Speaking of nipples, here's a couple, prime example of the Gum Drop metier.

Ah, the Baroque

We’ve had a very culture-happy week around here. On Wednesday we went to the symphony and on Thursday night you would have found us at the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. PBO is one of the great joys of living in San Francisco, they focus on early music performed on period instruments. We had been subscribing to their seasons for the last couple of years and decided this year to try the symphony instead. Who knows why, the symphony here is well regarded and we thought it would be interesting. Instead, it was just sort of dull. The symphony is very solemn performances of mostly romantic composers, all very Mahler-esque and Brahmsian sweetness. Yawn.

PBO is a much more quirky affair, with weird instruments you’re not quite sure of (Sackbutts! Yay! Theoboros! All right!) and it’s in a amuch smaller, more charming hall. Unlike the sweet tinkling of the symphony, PBO is, in the words of our friend Anne, “screechy scratchy” and we love it. The audience, too, is more…uhm, individualistic. They all seem like elderly hippies taking a break from some right-on kind of consciousness raising to groove on Handel oratorios for a while. All the gay men there are futzy old Marys who wear big brooches pinning their shirt collar closed and huge ass rings on their index finger. Sort of a down market Karl Lagerfeld. I’m taking close notes for when I adopt their style for my own.

Anyway, we’re planning on abandoning our fling into symphony land to return to our people in the Baroque. Handel and Bach, open you golden gate, I’m coming home.

A Night at the Symphony, Take One

R Man and I and our good friend Anne went to the symphony last night, the first performance of our series for this season. They played Mozart and Mahler, either because they wanted to offer a thoughtful contrast between two vibrantly different composers or because they're working their way through the alphabet. Who knows.

R Man and I both love Mozart, but this was a terribly dull piece, plus the San Francisco Symphony always plays with a sweet rich sound and I like a more brisk, butch little Mozart. Mahler bores us both and this was very Mahlery, meandering along, never reaching a conclusion and sounding much too influenced by Wagner. It was based on 12th century Chinese poetry and had some lovely exotic parts, but all in all, it was Mahler. Tragically, the SF Symphony specializes in him, so this might be a longish season.

Also adding to my season long concerns, the woman in front of us seems to be one of those hags who loves to glare at people at performances in order to emphasize how sensitive she is. When we were getting settled in our seats, I picked up the programme and, pretending to be outraged, said to Anne "I thought this was Blue Man Group. I've been cheated." Haglady immediately turned to give me a three-quarter Evil Eye. I have to admit, it was very well done, I commend an artist when I encounter one. Just enough of a turn in her seat to let me know she was on to me, just enough of a stiffening of her posture to imply her disdain, not quite meeting our eyes, but telegraphing her distaste never the less. "Just a joke," I said, which brought on another round of turning, stiffening, and telegraphing as if to say she was too much of a lady to know what I was talking about. Good thing I hadn't addressed her as "honey" as I so often do.

She also got in a good glare at some poor schmoe who succumbed to a coughing fit towards the long delayed end of the Mahler. Maybe he was snoring, maybe he was just hatching an excuse to flee, I don't know. Anyway, he very thoughtfully got up and left. She glared. Shortly after that, his wife left to join him, understandably, and the Glaring One was able to unleash her full arsenal. She turned around, aimed at the departing woman's back and RAISED HER EYEBROW.

Oh, the bitch is in for it now. I shall remember that eyebrow and she will regret it. I don't approve of people who chat in concerts, but I also don't think you have to sit there in unbroken reverential stillness. Making such a huge deal out of the normal trespasses of being an audience member pisses me off. Should this stiffed out bitch continue to do so, I will have no choice but to put spit wads in the back of her fussy little page boy hairdo.

She will have brought it on herself.