Tommy Shaw at Mardi Gras

Here in New Orleans, Mardi Gras is in full swing. (Mardi Gras Day is this coming Tuesday. We've had parades almost every night for the past week or so.)

Last night, Carlos and I saw Endymion, one of the largest parades. Three musical acts rode in the parade: Taylor Hicks from American Idol, the members of Journey (of whom I took some very dark, out of focus pictures) and the members of Styx. I managed to get a couple of decent pictures of Tommy Shaw on the Styx float. I didn't recognize anyone else on the float so I concentrated on getting a good shot of him. Plus, I've always thought he was hot. He still looks good for 53 years old. (Trivia: He is from Montgomery, Alabama.)

While the Styx float was passing us, the speakers were blasting "Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)", probably my favorite Styx song. It was a great moment for me, but I can image Tommy Shaw couldn't have been too happy having to listen to their songs over and over for the duration of the four hour parade.

And The Nominees Are...

Carlos and I are trying to see as many Oscar-nominated movies and actors before The Big Night. (Oscar night is like the Superbowl for us Gays.)

About a month ago, we saw The Queen. Admittedly, he dragged me to the movie, but I really enjoyed it.

Tonight, we saw The Departed. Oh. My. God. It is such a great movie. It’s probably the best movie I’ve seen in a year.

If you haven’t seen it, go!


If Forest Whitaker hadn't been nominated for Best Actor, Leonardo DiCaprio would win. Maybe he still will.

Of the Best Picture nominees, that only leaves Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Little Miss Sunshine.

Stay tuned.

Plumbing Wars - Part II

Here’s a follow up to the below post.

I asked my sister Christine for recommendations of plumbers she has used in the past. She gave me three, including Jesus Is Lord Plumbing.

I really wanted to call them. I figured religious people have to be honest, right? But I called plumbers on January 15 – the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday so they were closed.

The plumber I did call came this morning. (I’ve been turning off the water at the source since Sunday afternoon. It’s really a pain in the ass to go out to my front lawn in boxers, a t-shirt and a robe at 6:00 in the morning to turn a valve.)

He had to knock part of the tile surrounding the bathtub to get to the leak. See the picture.

I did watch him as he worked to see if I could have done what he was doing. After he started blowtorching the pipes, I realized that I had made the right decision in calling a professional.

Here’s the email exchange my sister and I had today about this.

CHRISTINE: Hope your pipes are no longer leaky…
ME: I now have a big hole in my bathtub wall. They had to knock out the tile to get to the pipes.
ME TO PLUMBER: “So, are you going to replace those tiles?”
PLUMBER: “Oh, no. We don’t do that.”
CHRISTINE: You have got to be kidding. That is so mf’d up!! There must be another way. At least you don’t have a leak. I guess that’s the bright spot.
ME: That was the first thing I asked – if there was another way. Apparently, the leak was very far back and they had to replace pipes that could only be gotten to through the wall. I could have gone the way that I do whenever I buy a car – feeling like a sucker. But I just made my peace with it early on and trusted them.
CHRISTINE: I spend a lot of my life feeling like a sucker, too. They say we inherit the earth, but I’m not so sure that “they” are right! Glad you made peace. In a way, it’s a good feeling to know you now have new pipes. You could live in that house another 100 years before you have to do that again.


My sister, 13 months younger than I am, has always acted like an older sister and looks out for me. Thank you, Christine!

Plumbing Wars

Timeline -

About Six Months Ago: A small drip from my bathtub faucet begins.


About Three Months Ago: The small drip becomes a larger drip. I make a mental note to call a plumber.


About Two Months Ago: The larger drip becomes an even larger drip. I write myself a note to ask my cousin’s husband, a plumber, to come by and fix my problem.


About One Month Ago: Having lost the original note and procrastinated enough, I write myself a larger note. The larger drip is now a small flow.


One Week Ago: I see my cousin’s husband at a wedding, and ask him if he would look at my bathtub faucet. He says to call him next week.


Thursday, January 11, 2007: I decide to tackle the problem myself instead of calling a professional. I Google “bathtub faucet leak” and come up with some good websites.


Saturday, January 13, 2007
11:00 am – I go to Home Depot with my printed out instructions and look for tools. I buy $35.00 worth of tools.

Noon – I can’t complete Step One of the “easy to follow” instructions that I had printed out because I have no idea where the water shut off valve for the house is. After turning every potential knob in the house, I call my sister, the former owner of my house.

12:10 pm – Christine tells me that the water shut off valve is under a grate in the front lawn. She says that she has a special tool that will turn the valve off.

12:15 pm – I drive the half block to my sister’s house to pick up the tool. She tells me that the valve is very hard to turn.

12:20 pm – I discover she is right.

12:22 pm – I give up and take a break to smoke a cigarette.

12:25 pm – I think that loosening the valve will help. I don’t have anything that will potentially work except maybe vinegar. After putting on some gloves and pouring vinegar on the valve, I try again.

12:26 pm – The valve turns! The water is now shut off.

12:58 pm – After struggling with Step Two, I realize that all I have to do is turn the bathtub knobs for them to come off. I put the $35.00 worth of tools aside, unused.

1:27 pm – Figuring out that I need more tools for Step Three that I don’t have, Carlos and I go to the local hardware store.

1:40 pm – I put the $28.02 receipt in my pocket as we head back to my house.

1:47 pm – I realize that I didn’t buy one tool that I need to tackle Step Three. I decide that Step Three can be skipped, hoping that the problem can be fixed by changing out the O-rings – Step Two.

1:54 pm – Carlos gets into bed to take a nap, having watched me curse at the bathtub problem for long enough.

2:03 pm – I return to the local hardware store with a sample of the O-rings I need, buying four new ones.

2:10 pm – The O rings don’t seem to fit correctly so I force them in, breaking one of them. Since I need two for the hot water faucet and two for the cold, I don’t have any extras. I use one of the old O-rings. I reassemble the faucets.

2:28 pm – I turn the water to the house back on, hoping I have fixed the leak. Carlos monitors the bathtub.

2:29 pm – Carlos’s face reveals all: The leak is worse than before I started this project. I close the bathroom door so I don’t get more aggravated about the now heavily flowing water and call my cousin. She says that her husband is off fishing, but will call me in an hour.

11:00 pm – My cousin’s husband never calls. I go to sleep.


Sunday, January 14, 2007
12:30 pm – I go back to Home Depot, returning the $35.00 worth of unused tools. I buy an entire pack of O-rings.

1:15 pm – I undo all that I did yesterday.

1:30 pm – The instructions say that I need plumber’s grease. I didn’t see that at Home Depot so decide to use either olive oil or Pam. Testing both, Pam seems to work the best at lubricating the O-rings.

2:00 pm – I reassemble everything and hope for the best. I turn the water to the house back on.

2:02 pm – The water is flowing as much as earlier this morning, if not more. I call my sister to ask her which plumber she uses. I write myself a note to call the plumber in the morning.

2:03 pm – I cross off my personal To Do list the following: install new gutters, patch roof, paint house, and fix leak in front of house. Next time, I’ll call a professional first!

Mauled Lang Syne

Thank you Julie for caputuring this moment in my life - and for the title of this blog post.



That is me (left) and Ron singing in the New Year. Turn your speakers waaaaaaaay up!

Onion Head Hat

Here's a cool video for one of my favorite songs:


The song is called Comfort Eagle, by the band Cake.

And here's a live version...

Corn Mazing

Yesterday, Carlos, Jason, Julie and I made our annual (but last year interrupted by Katrina) journey to the Corn Maze.

I really love these life-size mazes, and the company was perfect. No drama.

Michael Vartan, Laura Bush and Hal Sparks Walk Into A Bar...

I read about this site in a magazine recently. It has face recognition software and a database of celebrity faces. It'll compare your uploaded photo to celebrities and tell you who your face most closely resembles. I uploaded a picture of myself, one of my mom and one of Carlos.

My face most closely matches Michael Vartan (2nd place was Rick Schroder), my mom's Laura Bush, and Carlos's Hal Sparks (2nd place Gael Garcia Bernal).



Imagine the three of them hanging out together!

My Hurricane Katrina Story - Part II (U2 & Green Day)

The Saints (our football team) have definitely helped bring New Orleans back. Having the Saints playing in New Orleans again really brings a sense of normalcy back to us - and for the first season EVER, the Superdome is sold out with season ticket holders.

U2 and Green Day played at the first Saints game held in the Superdome since The Storm. We've hosted nine Super Bowls - more than any other city. Around the city that day, and the weekend right before that Monday night, New Orleans had the feel of hosting another Super Bowl. Plus, since I work two blocks from the Superdome, I was let out of work at 2 pm so I could avoid all the traffic. Go Saints!

Personally, things are relatively back to normal.

My house had sustained minor damage: the large tree in my front yard came down - taking my gutter with it, most of the wooden fence around my house was blown down, my roof lost about 15 shingles, the entire roof of my carport was torn away, my garage had around 3 inches of water in it for about a week, and my hot tub's motor flooded. My area of town thankfully didn't have any serious flooding. (Compared to friends of mine who had 17 feet of water sitting in their house for two weeks, mine was definitely minor damage.) I have fixed everything around my house that I want to for now, but it's an on-going project to finish.

Carlos and I both have our jobs. He's a school teacher and was back to work by October 2005. I work at a local university and went back around the same time. Our department had 179 pre-Storm employees. As of today, we're up to around 40. (My immediate department went from 20 to 3 employees.) We had to lay off the most of the rest because of lack of business, but some just couldn't get back to the city after evacuating because they had no place to live. I'm very lucky!

There are, of course, many areas of the city that will take years to be fixed. Imagine if your house and EVERY house within 10 miles of you had 5 to 17 feet of water sitting in it for two weeks. How long would it take you to recover?

Plus, these people are faced with questions like:
If I return, will I be the only one on my block or in my neighborhood?
What if the levees break again for the next hurricane?
In my area, will there be any schools or playgrounds for my kids? Any grocery stores for me?

We do have some humor about all this. A local organization has an on-going campaign consisting mainly of ubiquitous bumper stickers around the city that say "New Orleans: Proud To Call It Home". Pre-Storm, some clever residents parodied the statement with the bumper sticker "New Orleans: Proud To Crawl Home". Post-Storm, the new one "New Orleans: Proud To Swim Home" immediately started appearing on the bumpers of cars.

I took 100 pictures around the city in October/November 2005. I am narrowing them down to the best 50. Carlos and I are going to go to those same locations in the next couple of weeks to take pictures of the exact same locations one year later. I'm working on a slide show which I'll post to YouTube soon. I'll send a link once I'm finished.

Marshall

Stalking Ryan Phillippe

Carlos and I made a rare Sunday outing today. (I try to spend Sundays alone, mentally preparing for the coming week.)

The blurb in Friday’s Times-Picayune said:
Actors Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford (and reportedly other stars, yet to be named) are expected to walk the red carpet Sunday afternoon at the National World War II Museum’s invitation-only reception in honor of the upcoming release of Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers”…. The public is invited to line the red carpet as the stars arrive.

Ryan Phillippe is one of my Top Ten Favorite Actors* so we had to go.

We arrived at the red carpet about an hour early. There were four quite old people there, probably waiting for Clint Eastwood, so we walked around The Warehouse District, coming back around 3:30 pm. By then, the old people had left, replaced with five girls and, Carlos’s guess, one gay guy.

There was no large crowd. There were no stars. There were no limousines. Maybe it was because of the rain, or because there was a Saints game at the same time.


We ended up leaving, but not before Carlos took these two pictures. The first one – taken while I was driving about 30 miles per hour – is of the red carpet from one street perpendicular to the front entrance to the museum. The other is of the red carpet from a second street.

For those of you who came here for a picture of Ryan Phillippe, here ya’ go.






*The entire list – concentrating only on living actors – in order from most favorite down:
1. James Duval
2. Stephane Rideau
3. Ryan Phillippe
4. Tommy Kirk
5. River Phoenix
6. William McNamara
7. Kevin Zegers
8. Ethan Embry
9. Steve Antin
10. Peter Facinelli