The Jon Blog

Happy Halloween! Part Deux

What Scares Me?

Well, it's Halloween time, almost, so we should talk about what we're scared of, right?

Well, I'm scared, very scared, of the idea of Bush getting reelected. And so I celebrated Halloween today by spending the money I would have spent on candy or costumes or any of that stuff, on donations to MoveOn and to John Kerry. Hopefully, these donations will help, and Kerry will win, and I'll be able to count it as an investement in the future.

Hopefully.

Happy Halloween!

The Trouble with Time Warner

OK, it really pisses me off when my cable box spontaneously turns itself off.

Because, you see, TiVo has one flaw. TiVo can't tell if the cable box is on or off. So TiVo merrily records along, no matter that the cable box is off, until I realize that the cable box is off. It happened last week, causing me to miss "Will & Grace" and some other stuff. And I just now realized that the cable box went off sometime after the end of the Yankees/Red Sox game on Wednesday... thus not recording any of Thursday or Friday's TV shows.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn...

I Should Know Better...

...than to answer the phone at 6:52 in the morning. Especially when it's work calling, on what would have been my day off.

Bronxian Controversy

I was at Game 6 tonight. Now, if you read this blog reguarly, you know I'm not much for sports but I had a decent time tonight, aside from the fact that it was cold and that the umpires appeared to be on the Red Sox' payroll.

It's always incredible to me to watch how people act when you put them all together in a big space - like a stadium. Everyone acts the same, hooting, hollering, carrying on. And they sing "YMCA."

Except for one young kid, probably 10 or 12, in the row behind me, who made up his own lyric. "Why Are You Gay?"

"Because I am," I replied. "Just like Mary Cheney." OK, well, I didn't say that out loud, but you know what I mean. I can't believe that this Mary Cheney thing is becoming an "issue." It's so much of a non-issue that it's offensive to me that it isn't a non-issue, you know what I mean?

Anyhow, back to something that is an issue. Why do straight people love "YMCA" so much? I mean, here's a song by a band full of homos about homos going to what was essentially a bathhouse to have public sex. Sure, it's a catchy tune, but listen to the words, people. I thought you were offended by shit like this.

Fucking hypocrites, aren't you?

Anyhow, the game was fun until the umps turned out to be Boston fans in disguise. It was really weird so be sitting there watching beer bottles fly down from the upper levels onto the field. I thanked the powers that be for the fact that my seats were under a roof-y thing. And then they brought out the riot police which was really rather freaky. I called my dad on his cellphone, in a generally "Can you tell what the fuck is going on?" tone... He said "They want the riot police on the field."

"I can see that, dad. Why?"

He didn't know. So we all sat there in the wet, cold night, and booed.

And I kept humming "What A Game" from "Ragtime" in my mind... That, young man, is why I am gay.

Only Two Weeks

At this point, I'm so sick of hearing all the election related spin (aka bullshit), that all I can say is this:

This nation was founded as a place for freedom against reactionary fuckers like this.

Oh Hell, just read the Times' endorsement of Kerry again.

Aren't you glad this will all be over in two weeks? Then we'll get to listen to them argue again about who really stole the election won this time.

If It Were You.

If you were Mary Cheney, who would you vote for on November 2?

Hey, Big Spender!

So I went to see Cy Coleman perform last night at Feinstein's at the Regency. He was great, and it was great fun, as was the company, but man was it expensive. Show, dinner, wine, etc. All told? An over $400 evening. And I guess were we to have paid for good seats to a Broadway show and a reasonable dinner, it could have been around the same amount of money.

The problem was, though, that the food at Feinstein's is not all that great, but is very expensive. We both ordered this beef tenderloin which, while decently prepared, was not substantial enough or outrageous enough to be worth its $40 price tag. The only bargain in the food department was the $61 bottle of Marques de Cacares Rioja 1995. Which isn't too much of a bargain now that I realize it's priced at $23.99 at wine.com. And although it was $12, the pumpkin cheesecake was quite the delicious diversion.

Which brings us to Cy. Sigh. What a great composer, and what a wonderful pianist. Not an incredible singer, but then he doesn't have to be. It was such a treat to get that perspective of his songbook. I'm sure that Mike will blog about it much better than I ever could; he's a much better writer about music than I am.

It's No Secret

I think everyone who reads this blog knows that I watch a fair amount of porn. (That's what the internet is for, after all!).

So I know the difference between good and bad. And also, the things that really shouldn't be said in porn videos.

But this quote which I just heard in a video I was watching on Naked Sword really takes the grand prize among porn quotes which shouldn't be out there.

"I'm not gonna suck on it because I don't know what that cold sore is."

And about 15 seconds later, well... you don't want to know. Suffice it to say that I "changed the channel."

No Friends in Low Places

I don't know if this will mean anything to most of the people who read this blog, but I was playing around with iTunes this evening and was astonished to find that there are only 5 Garth Brooks recordings on there, all duets, and four are different albums but the same song.

How weird is that?

(Apparantly, not much. Madonna, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and others have held out, too...)

Aching Voids of Unrequited Need

This is news.

Madams, whores, and johns are news. Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

God Forbid Anything in this City Should Be Normal

I was walking across CPS this afternoon and saw one of those bike taxi guys. No big surprise, right? But he was wearing a full Spidey-suit. Complete with head.

Weird.

Study Art History Much, Did We?

Holy shit, this painting is hysterical. Maybe because I studied Manet's "Olympia," on which it is based, in a ton of college art history classes. And maybe just because it's fucking brilliant.

As Homer Simpson said, "It's funny because it's true."

BTW, here's the news article where I found the photo. I'm still laughing, I tell you...

What You See is What You Get.

I noticed this frequently on my recent trip to Ohio, but Scott Dadich, a creative director at Texas Monthly, describes the Bush v. Kerry logo battle much more succinctly than I ever could.

A Truly Pretty Picture.

Because sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

At The Copa!

Hello. My name is Jon, and I like Barry Manilow.

Seriously, I spent this evening screaming like a little girl at the Garden. Mr. Manilow put on quite the show, I must say. And the audience loved it. Mostly fags and middle aged women, of course, but we had the best time.

Even the guy who came with me. I called him up this afternoon and asked if he wanted to go.

"Barry Manilow? I don't even like Barry Manilow."

"C'mon, it'll be campy and fun."

"Oh, allright."

He ended up singing along and dancing and having almost as much fun as I did. He was only disappointed that there was not a reprise of "Mandy." And he said he didn't like Barry. Yeah, right.

The Sad Thing Is...

So the Shuberts are renaming the Plymouth and the Royale Theatres. OK. But who can even pronounce Schoenfeld? The Schoenfeld Theatre? Just doesn't work on the tongue the way that Plymouth does.

Anyhow, the thing that I'm really rather perturbed about in the news coverage is that three major theatre websites have each run a story on the renamings (1, 2, 3) but not a single one mentions why the theatres were originally given the names that they had. I assume there was not a Mr. Royale, but who was Plymouth? I want to know... If you tell me, maybe I'll take you to see a show there...

No, I Ordered Cute and Smart

So I was out today and there was a really cute guy. And I had a big lust moment. Until he didn't know how to spell "interval."

Egads.

Sex Toy Closes Airport

Seriously.. No, seriously.

He Doesn't Know It

I have decided that I have a crush on a blogger.

There's no way he could know this, even though I know he reads my blog.

Anyhow, it'll never go anywhere for two reasons.

1: He's way outta my league and
2: He lives like 800 miles away or something stupid like that...

Eh... like I should ever actually have a boyfriend anyhow. I figure, hey, everyone else does; this should be my satisfactory way of being a non-conformist. Now, if I could just get laid...

Did You Ever Notice...

...that when you hear your neighbors having sex through the walls, you just end up having to jerk off, even if you spent the last hour jerking off watching a porn film?

It's Only the News. It's all Made Up Anyhow.

So says Rachel, played wonderfully by Mary Louise Parker in MTC's current offering, "Reckless," by Craig Lucas.

Suffice it to say that this is a weird play. Great performances all around, and what a treat to get to watch Miss Parker in the theatre, rather than just on "The West Wing." And if I had to pick a diversion from the debate, I do think this is the one I would have chosen. Particularly after watching much of both conventions, I really thought I had a pretty good handle on what would happen, and on the fact that I wasn't going to like it no matter what.

Why? Well, I'm really pissed that 80% of the Democrats I know seem to have already resigned themselves to four more years of The Blumbering Idiot. We have to fight in order to win this election. I was telling my mother this, after she mentioned that she's contemplating volunteering. "Mom, you live in a battleground state. (Ohio) You have to do something."

Because if we go down without putting up a fight, then do we really deserve anything? And if we put up a good fight, I think there's a chance that Kerry/Edwards can win. I mean, the current CNN.com online poll says that 80% think that Kerry beat Bush in the debate tonight. Hopefully that translates into a major jump in the polls and an end to the lackadasical attitude too many folks seem to have.

Anyhow, how did I get onto this from starting out by talking about a play about a woman whose husband has taken out a contract on her life?

Well, I guess we might never know.