Did I Say That???

In light of the fact that there is nothing terribly interesting going on in my life at the moment, and since the Olympics are the center of everyone's attention, I offer these Olympic-sized slips-of-the-tongue for your amusement.



Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so far during the Olympics - that they would like to take back:

1. Weight-lifting commentator: 'This is Gregorieva from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing.'

2. Dressage commentator: 'This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.'

3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: 'I owe a lot to my parents, especially my
mother and father.'


4. Boxing Analyst: 'Sure there have been injuries, and even some
deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.'

5. Softball announcer: 'If history repeats itself, I should think we
can expect the same thing again.'

6. Basketball analyst: 'He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't
like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.'

7. At the rowing medal ceremony: 'Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the
IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew.'



8. Soccer commentator: 'Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've
got eleven Dicks on the field.'

9. Tennis commentator: 'One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is
that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses
them... Oh my God, what have I just said?'

Simply the BEST...

I love this man. He is unstoppable. I have rarely felt such pride as I have when watching him accept his medals so humbly. Seeing the way he loves his family and his team...WOW. He has truly done the United States proud. And I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers in it... I'm just sayin'...

My 15 Minutes...

Ok -- I have to tell on myself now (and brag a little)... A couple of months ago, Instinct Magazine came thru Memphis to do a feature on the gay scene here in teeming metropolis we know as Memphis. They interviewed a large group of people at one of my favorite hang outs - Mollie Fontaine Lounge. Long story short - I made the cut!! YAY, ME!! I never thought in a bazillion years I would have been picked. Page 33 -- look for the fat, old, bald guy... All things considered, the picture wasn't as bad as it could be... Look for the August issues(pictured here)...If I look ridiculous - I don't want to know.

Paula Deen Has Done Had Her Way With Me...

First of all, Kelly Stern - this post is for you. This past weekend, a friend of mine is in the process of celebrating her month long birthday. So she gets a wild (gray) hair and suggests that we go down to Paula Deen's Buffet at the casinos in Tunica. Now I just LOVE me some Lady. So we pile up in the car (just the two of us) and head to points south. Now, for all you non-Southerners, let me explain about the casinos. They are located in and about Tunica, Mississippi - in the Mississippi Delta. The Delta is very flat river land that, according to the legend, begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Well, we were considerably south of the lobby. We were in kudzu land. If y'all haven't seen kudzu, you have missed a sight. Kudzu is a vine that takes over everything it touches. You will see fields of it covering trees and telephone poles. I swear it will come in your house at night and choke you in your sleep. (Which makes me want to go right this instant, pinch off a sprig and toss it into one of my neighbor's yards. Hmmmmmm...)

So, we get to Harrah's, where the restaurant is located. Incidentally, due to some outdated law, the casinos have to be on the river. Or rather IN the river. Peeps, these are floating casinos. Yup. Out in the river. They're anchored and all, but you have to walk across something akin to a large gangplank to get in. Now, I am not all that big on casinos. I am not against gambling - It has just never appealed to me. I can count on one had the times I have been down to the casinos during their 20 year existence. So there we are. It is amazing to watch the people that go there. I'm serious. The vast majority of gamblers were around 55 years of age. Looking either desperate or determined, these were exactly the individuals that DID NOT need to be there gambling their retirement or paychecks away. My friend pointed out that the cane of choice seemed to be a four-pronger. I saw an oxygen tank or two... I cannot tell you what a self-esteem boost it is when I go to down to the casinos.



We finally work our way to the restaurant where, I kid you not, there is a line like Disney World JUST TO PAY TO GET IN!!! Now I have seen the Lady herself and did not stand in a line anywhere close to this long. Pay attention now - if you find yourself at Paula's kitchen in Tunica, DO NOT STAND IN THIS LINE. There is a little self-pay kiosk hidden away that you can get you own tickets and not have to stand with all the trash, I mean people, in that line.

Then you go stand in line to be seated. Now, the restaurant is a replica of Paula's home in Savannah. It has a front porch and everything. We finally get seated and go to the trough - I mean, buffet. People have asked me what I had. It would probably be more expedient to tell what I DIDN'T have. Let's see... I started with crab legs, followed by some raw oysters and boiled shrimp. Then I had the most wonderful cheesy meat loaf, mac and cheese and cheese grits (a theme, perhaps). Fried green tomatoes, friend shrimp, and wet ribs. OH and the cheese biscuits were to slap yo mama over. Plus we had hoecakes. The inevitable punchline being that I liked the hoecakes because I was ...wait for it ... a ho. (Insert appropriate giggling here). For dessert I have a wonderful strawberry cheesecake and two macaroons. I felt like a big fat tick about to pop.



After dinner, we walked around to settle our stomachs. We had a glass of wine to help us digest what we had just ingested. At that point we were pooped and decided to start the haul back to Memphis. We got outside and I am here to tell you it was hot and humid. I'm talking 95-97 degrees at 11:00pm. You could cut the air with a knife it was so wet. It was lightening something fierce. The sky looked like a strobe light. And the thunder... It was so sultry and humid that just walking to the car, the sweat started pouring down through the course, dark hairs of my heavily muscled chest, just waiting for Mr. Right to come along and lick it slowly off...but I digress. It was hot.

So we made it back to Memphis fat and happy. My only regret was that out of ALL those hundreds of people everywhere in that casino, I only saw one guy that I would have bent over. Sigh... Now -- back to the diet.

Foot In Mouth Disease

This past Saturday night, in an attempt recover from my unfortunate discovery about the fake neurologist, a few friends of mine and I went to a particularly nice Italian restaurant in East Memphis for dinner. One friend in particular I had not seen in quite some time, came in and sat down next to me at the bar. I shit thee not - she had not been sitting next to me for one minute when I said "You got your haircut. And you have a mullet." Of course, she does not have a mullet. I just saw that the back of her hair was straight and from that angle that's what it resembled. Further inspection revealed that she did not, in fact, have a mullet. Her haircut was actually very nice. But, alas, the damage was done. She was shocked and appalled that I would even consider that she had a mullet. I don't know why things like this just seem to jump out of my mouth. This is not the first time something like this has happened and more than likely, it wont be the last. I was duly mortified and apologized like the dog I am, but I still don't think I'm in the clear. On top of that, another friend called my to say that she and the offended went to have a couple of beers to help her get thru her hard time. What hard time, I ask innocently. Being accused of having a mullet, was the reply. I have a feeling this one will be hard to live down. The general consensus amongst the privileged few is ... "well, that's just him." I hate that -- the implication being that I'm autistic or something when the truth is I just don't think before I speak. In my defense however, I can think of numerous occasions when there must have been divine intervention keeping my trap shut that could have resulted in very real and lasting damage. Get out the duct tape, peeps. You never know what is going to come out of this mouth...but you can bet you sweet,twinky gay asses its gonna to be low-down and dirty ... :-)

What Kind of Fool???

Oh boy do I have a post for you. I have done it this time...Try not to laugh at my ignorance as the story progresses. In honor of the lovely and late Estelle Getty (no snarky comments, cb)... Picture it...Lido Key, June 2008... A young man on a beach meets another man who asks him out. He goes and has a good time. That young man was me. For my two readers out in cyberland, you will remember that I went on a two week vacation to Sarasota. Despite the fact that I have been going to Sarasota for twenty years, I did not know that there was a "gay" beach until this visit. So I traipse my happy ass out to the beach where there was not a lot of people, gay or otherwise what with it being out of season and all. I met a man on the beach that struck up a conversation with me and we hung out, just floating around in the water and shooting the breeze. It appears that this man was a neurosurgeon/neurologist in New York City and lived in the Hamptons. He was 64, which I thought he looked great for 64. Well, he asked me if I would like to have dinner with him that night and I said yes.

Turns out, we go to a nice restaurant and back to one of his six condos on Anna Maria Island. He also has a big house on Longboat Key and a house in Big Sky, Montana. He told me he did not bring his cell phone on his vacation since he didn't want his work bothering him. Ok. Since then he has called me a few times from a restricted number. Jump forward to this week. I mentioned to my best friend that I talked to dude for an hour last Sunday and my friend started in on my ass about checking him out. Googling him. I said I didn't need to because I trusted him. My friend is somewhat cynical. He actually got real mad at me for, as he put it, sticking my head in the sand. What I didn't tell him is that I Googled him the day I got back. I didn't find anything, but I chalked that up to not being sure of how to spell his last name, and promptly forgot about it.



With all this renewed interest by others in my bidness, I decided to investigate further when I got back to work. I still came up short, so I decided to look up the property assessors public records for Manatee County. What I discovered is that my friend has one condo in Bradenton. ONE - not six. Nor does he own a home on Longboat Key. I did find an address with no city and state on the assessors page. I checked all of Long Island and that address does not exist there. I located it in Hatboro, PA -- a 1,000 square foot house that is smaller than my own. Using some other resources at my disposal, I discovered the he is not licensed as a physician in any state. Turns out that everything he told me was a complete lie. Everything. I mean, this man painted a ELABORATE picture and I fell for it ALL. I mean I had no reason not to. I am on a semi-private beach in Sarasota with huge-ass mansions behind me so it would not be shocking to meet someone walking in tall cotton. He told me all about his kids...four or five of them. Turns out he has ONE. Oh --- AND a wife, whom he told me was deceased. She is more than likely quite alive and well...



The thing that kills me is that all of this was a lie. I keep wanting to believe there is some logical explanation for all of this despite all the black and white evidence to the contrary. Because the other option is that I have been a complete fool. I feel stupid enough as it is. Generally, I feel that I am pretty good judge of character. I have worked in a law enforcement capacity for the past 14 years and see the dregs of society on a daily basis. I automatically assume that everyone is lying to me because, quite simply, they are. With the majority of people I deal with, I assume they are lying and try to determine what the polar opposite of what they are saying is and figure out what they are trying to get out of me and the system. Granted that is very cynical, but in my business, one gets jaded very quickly. I have just never been that cynical in my personal life. Unfortunately, that has changed.

In the almost two years I have been out, I have come across several people of shady character. Some of these people, I am fond of saying, are like dogs that should be put down. This guy is definitely one of them. Now comes the question of how to deal with him when he calls me back. I am inclined to say that I just started dating someone and want to be very committed to him, so I don't think it is appropriate to keep talking to him. Hopefully, that will get rid of him. My friend is pissed at me because I wont find out his story and put the squeeze on him before confronting him with the truth. My thing is, that will just invite more dialogue and lies and I just want hell and him gone from me.



Of course, all of this has not exactly built up my faith in humanity. I am at the point that if my best friend says the sky is blue, then I will go outside and see for myself. I don't want to be distrustful of people. Assholes like this definitely make it harder to take people at face value. Like I told a friend the other night, this is enough to make me go to bed, throw the covers over my head and eat Velveeta out of the box...with one of these boys.

Thank You for Being a Friend...

1923-2008

You made me laugh.