Name dropping? Me?

I drove up to Austin last night to celebrate the 80th birthday of Bettie Naylor. She's a great old friend and the mother of my sister's partner. I call her "my lover-in-law."
The party was cram packed with politicians, old friends, family and plenty of happy homos. Fabulous disco diva Hedda Layne was there and I swooned when she took my face in her two hands and air kissed me. She looks like the love child of Madonna and Lindsey Lohan.
Bettie, who co-founded the Human Rights Campaign, has more social juice than anyone I know.
The slide show of her life included shots of her posing with dozens of big shots, including Martina Navratolova, Phyllis Diller, Ann Richards and even those sons of bitches George and Laura Bush (we booed accordingly).
Leading the tributes on stage was the fabulous liberal Texas politician Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who praised Bettie to high heaven. He looks a bit like Abraham Lincoln and his heart is just as true.
Another highlight for me was getting to talk to an attorney who worked for the Los Angeles DA's office 10 years ago and participated in the prosecution of O.J. Simpson. As an amateur scholar of the trial, I swooned over him like a teenager gazing upon Paris Hilton. He was suitably chiflado.
Later, as I stood in the crowd schmoozing with friends, I spied across the room someone I dated last year, busily chatting up a naive 30-something bimbette who was hanging on her every word.
I said to my friends, "You know, I see someone I used to date but I can't be jealous because here I am, talking to a fucking movie star and his mother!"
The movie star in question was gorgeous young Daniel Ross who'll be featured in Ethan Hawke's new movie, "The Hottest State," coming out in August.
I've known Danny for about 10 years. His mama Marcy is the cousin of my sister's partner Sharron. She's an adorable Leslie Gore lookalike.
Hear me now and believe me later, her kid Danny will be a superstar before long.
When I spotted him last night, he was dutifully sitting at a table next to his mama. He smiled at me across the room and as I rushed over to give him a hug, I discovered his soft mop of hair smelled like botanical heaven.
A classic metrosexual who speaks fluent gayese, he told me it was some Aveda product.
The kid is a compact little hunk with modesty and charm that belies his youth. In fact, he spent the first five minutes of our conversation asking about me and my life.
He's got that one gift that will take him far in life...he seems truly interested in other people's stories.
Anyway, the party was a classic example of why I love Texas.
In the midst of red state insanity, the state that foisted George W. Bush on the world was the venue last night for the best in diversity and liberal philosophy.
With all the legislators in attendance, naturally two beefy Austin PD cops stood on guard on the patio. I walked up to them and said hello, trying to gauge their personalities in case later on some errant herbal smoke wafted past their noses in the evening breeze.
They were totally cool, said they knew Bettie and had the utmost admiration for her. I somehow doubted their claim, but the fact that they at least pretended to be cool with all the gayness and margarita induced debauchery at the party made me smile. Even their holstered 2-pound Glocks looked friendly.
One of the most touching moments of the evening was when I rounded up my siblings, Sharron and her brother, Hedda and her husband and a few adorable lawyer dykes and led them to a secluded grandstand of seating overlooking tranquil Lake Austin.
There in the peaceful sunset, we shared a paper wrapped herbal product known for its medicinal properties in many circles.
Eighties-era disco music serenaded us in the breeze, and as I looked around I saw a group of lovable, smart, tolerant, straight and gay middle-aged people who still understand the importance of innocent, victimless scofflawing.
While name dropping and rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful can be exciting, what struck me the most was how ordinary it felt.
Just another night in Austin, celebrating all that's right about Texas.

Tuesday Blog

I've got nothing much to say, except I should post something so the Spurs entry doesn't seem so dated.
Oh, I know...

There's a new show on HBO called, "Flight of the Conchords" that will appeal to anyone with a sense of humor who ever smoked a joint.
These two nerdy New Zealander guys are troubadours, I guess trying to make it big in NYC. They are kind of shaggy and creepy, yet their music is quite lovely in an Elvis Costello meets Prince meets Joni Mitchell kind of way.
It's not laugh out loud funny, it's more "how the hell did they come up with all this funny stuff?" funny. Very clever. Like Napoleon Dynamite funny...yeah, that's it.

I guess the only other thing I have to say is, never give your cat a haircut with $6 clippers bought on sale at Walgreen's. I had to give my fleabag baby Nick a cut after his fur became hopelessly matted. He's just now come out from under the couch after a week. Who knew he'd be so vain?

I Love My Spurs

Well, my home team won the NBA Championship tonight.
Probably nobody watched the series outside of Texas or Ohio because the Spurs and the Cleveland Cavaliers are small market, notoriously good sports and without much gangsta attitude.

It was a sweep but the final game got exciting into the fourth quarter because the Cavs perked up and had a big rally. They are a good team but not fully ripe just yet. They have a very talented guy named LeBron James who will be tomorrow's superstar.

Right now it's 11ish and the freeways are jammed toward downtown so the fans can congregate and scream.
It just started to rain outside. Nobody's all that worried though, Spurs fans just like to huddle together in tight crowds and scream real loud. They don't torch cars or tear down buildings. Hell, half of them have their toddlers with them amidst the crowd.

I love the Spurs because they are really good fundamentally, they aren't ball hogs or big mouth braggarts.
We have this little guy, Tony Parker, who was voted MVP tonight. He's French, really cute and engaged to Eva Longoria, who is in ABC's "Desperate Housewives."
She is hot, funny, rich, famous and kind of sexy in a trampy kind of way. He is talented, rich, cute, popular, famous and the biggest star in the NBA tonight. They will wed next month in a castle Tony rented in France. It'll be like the wedding of Charles and Diana, except theirs will probably cost more and have cooler guests.
Robert Horry won his 7th NBA Championship ring tonight.
Michael Finley left a starring spot in Dallas over a salary dispute and went for a lesser role in San Antonio because he wanted to be on a championship team. And now he is.
Bruce Bowen and his wife just had a baby girl five days ago.
Manu Ginobili is a superstar in Argentina and the whole nation watches him play for the Spurs. He had to hire 24/7 armed guards for his parents in Buenos Aires because his fans smother them and kidnapping for ransom is a cottage industry in Argentina.
A tiny little guy names Jacques Vaughn who had to suffer for years in Utah with his team getting their asses kicked by the Spurs every year won his ring tonight. It's his first and he's been around forever.
And then there's Tim Duncan. He's just a helluva player and a good man in general. He and his wife Amy are the types who'd bake cookies and take them to orphans on Sunday afternoons.

We just won by 1 point tonight, but it was a series sweep and that's real good. The scofflaw in me sort of cringes that the Spurs are such goodie goodies, but you gotta admit it's takes some real ass kicking skill to win an NBA title. Especially four times.

I think I'll buy a T-shirt tomorrow.

Goodbye, Sopranos...for now

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the ending was a blank screen and none of the main Soprano family got whacked.
So what if David Chase left it open for a feature film or a mini series? I'm glad he did, because I'd sure watch it again, and so would any of the millions of people who found the characters and story lines irresistible.
The thing about Tony Soprano was that he was a lovable sociopath, just like the character Hannibal Lecter.
After all, neither of them really killed anyone who didn't kind of have it coming.
We Americans like our characters big, just like we like our hamburgers, TV screens and media personalities.
We could all feel like we were better people than Tony and his crew. So what if Tony was richer and more powerful than most of us? He still used horrible grammar, needed to lose weight, was balding, had a couple of goofy teeth and a penchant for womanizing, so that made him not as good as us in at least a few categories.
Like most of us, he tried to evolve in his own caveman ways. Therapy? For a made guy?
In his own crude way, Tony showed all the he-men of this world that it's okay for even a guy with a huge set of balls to reach out and try to make sense of the insane world his parents dragged him into.
He made all our dysfunctional families seem somehow less fucked-up.
But it wasn't just Tony who showed us his archetype and made us feel better about ourselves.
His mother was a bigger bitch than most of our moms. I never wanted to slap my sister as much as I wanted to slap his. His son A.J. was ten times the asshole of either of my nephews. Uncle June was a bigger dick than any of my uncles. Paulie was stupider than any of my father's pals. Christopher was more grandiose and delusional than *most* of my cousins. Carmela was more gauche and nouveau riche than any of my aunts-made-good, and the extended Italian families were as loud and tacky at gatherings as any of my extended Mexican family members. Even Meadow could be kind of a snobby, intellectual wannabe.
The Sopranos said and did the things we wanted to do, save for our collective lack of sociopathic personality disorders.
They behaved like animals on our behalf. We got to root for imaginary bad guy characters because our collective consciousness doesn't allow us to root for real life criminals.
I'm glad none of the main characters got killed off.
It gives us hope for another burst of feeling smug and superior.
And that's the American way.

Here, Have Fun

Fun

courtesy of TofuJu

Oh, For God's Sake!

In, out, in, out, in.
Paris Hilton's recent jail drama has started to mimic her sex video.
First, she was sentenced to 45 days for breaking DUI probation by driving with a suspended license.
Then a few days into her jail time, a sheriff released her to house arrest because of some "undisclosed illness."
Then the DA and a few other bigwigs rightfully pitched a fit, had the cops pick her up at her home and drag her back to court, where the presiding judge ordered her back to jail.
Upon the judge's decision, she was said to have started screaming, "It's not fair!" then she screamed for her mama like an 8-year-old. She literally had to be dragged off to jail.
The trouble with today's young celebrities is they can't handle their booze and dope.
Back in my day, we could drop acid, drink a 12-pack of beer or a box of wine, smoke a few joints and conduct ourselves like ladies-- behind the wheel or not.
These pussies today can't handle their substances; it's as simple as that.
And once they prove they can't handle their booze and dope, then they can't handle the consequences.
We all know Paris Hilton will end up turning this episode in her life into some kind of money making scheme.
We all know this will do nothing to tarnish her image.
When her image is that of a dim-witted, rich party girl, a little pokey time will just add to her street cred.

So, Paris, quit your bitching, do your skimpy month and a half of time and get over it. You'll emerge from jail skinnier, pale and wan-- just like you have to work at being all the time anyway, stupid.

The Sopranos Next to the Last Show:

HOLY SHIT!

How do you think the last show will end? Talk to me.