Don't you love me anymore, Mama?

I suppose the fact that my mother hasn't called me about possible cougar attacks means that she's finally comfortable with me living in The Big City and Far Away From Home. Perhaps it's because when she said that she probably make a ton of parenting mistakes with me, I replied that I thought "she did things right 90% of the time." (I also think that's why she gave me forty dollars FOR NO GOOD REASON. Flattery, folks!)

But still, it'd be nice to get an email making sure I'm okay and safe from cougars. I suppose she assumes I'd just forward it to other bloggers or post it here.

The absence of any kind of potentially embarrassing missive could be for those reasons, or because I called her today in a panic because my tax returns were rejected for the second time and she knows full-well that I am absolutely safe and in my usual, neurotic state.

Oh, Mom.

She's still mad about this.

Comedy Gold.

My mother emailed me the other day to see if I had either Leap of Faith or Signs on DVD because she wanted to show one of them at a youth group meeting. When I forgot to reply, this happened:





In her defense, I should also share this:


Awww.

Wake-up calls

Some people get really nervous when they receive phone calls late at night, as such calls are harbingers of unsettling news. I, on the other hand, fear phone calls before 8:00 AM, especially those from my mother, and especially since my father has cancer. My mother's skewed mindset makes her wait hours to reveal important, serious, and upsetting information until the early morning, when she knows I should be awake and getting ready for work. This is how I found out about my grandmother's death, while she got the call several hours earlier.

Not only do I dread these calls because of what information they relay, I also freak out TEN FOLD because I'm usually still asleep when she calls me.

I have gotten two early-morning calls from her in the past week, but they were not of the bad-news variety. Last week, she called to ask if I knew anyone who went to Northeastern Illinois University, and I had no idea what she was talking about, because it was 7:10 and I had been hitting the snooze button on my alarm for an hour. When I told her no, she replied, "Okay! Just checking! Have a good day!"

This morning it happened again. I had asked her to Tivo the broadcast of Company on Great Performances last night (fag.) since I don't get PBS (seriously!). She called at 7:00 to tell me that she forgot until it was a half-hour into the show, and then she set up the recorder, figuring I'd be fine missing the opening, or something. Then she realized that she recorded the wrong channel. Ha ha ha!! Isn't that funny?! CLICK.

It's one thing for her to save me the emotional burden of waking me up in the middle of the night to give me terrible news, but it's quite another thing to set up some sort of pattern and then, in a weird Boy-Cried-Wolf sort of way, freak the hell out of me at seven in the morning when she's driving to work and wants to think out loud over the phone.

Instant Messages from the Mothership

Every now and then, my mom and I will be on AIM at the same time. It rarely happens, but when it does, it's magical.

First, in response to my post on This Recording:



She's talking about my buddy icon, which I find hilarious. She does not.



Apparently, she's trying her hand at ethnic cuisine:



...And is always quick to give out advice:



She told me to use this picture instead:





If she reads this, she will probs disown me.

Pottymouths

I brought two discs of Deadwood home with me, as I'm in the middle of the second season, and since we're all adults around here, I figured it as OK to watch it in front of my parents.

Wrong-o.

I don't think they've been more offended by a television show. And it's not because in almost every episode you see one of the prostitutes giving a BJ. Or because there's a lot of violence, seemingly without consequence. No, it's because they say "fuck" a lot.

Five minutes into it, my father says, "I don't think they said that back then. This show isn't realistic."

It's so goddamn typical that the language would upset them. And entertaining, in a way, since my parents have never been ones to watch their language around their children. Or aging parents. While they usually reserve the F-word for very special occasions (read: when yelling at me), they do say "shit" quite often. In fact, my mother has called me a "shithead" at least twice since I've been home, and it hasn't even been a week.

She's also quite fascinated with "cocksucker" now that she's seen parts of Deadwood. The other night I heard her asking my eighteen-year-old brother if he's ever heard anyone use that word.

Something tells me that by next Christmas, Momma is gonna have a new term of endearment in her vocabulary.

Eeek! My parents are coming!

My parents are coming to Chicago to visit me for the first time since I moved here over two years ago. They had been planning to come for a long time but there's been a ton of family crises (deaths, cancer, etc) keeping them in Virginia. I'm very excited, but now that they'll be here in two days, I'm rather nervous because I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH THEM.

Granted, I can have them do all of the tourist stuff like the Sears Tower and Millennium Park because I know they want to do that stuff. But at the same time, I don't want to limit it to the crappy stuff like going to the top of a big building and looking at that damn Bean. I'm definitely going to encourage that we make the trek down to Hyde Park to go to the Museum of Science and Industry, since my dad is obsessed with Discovery Channel type things, and the Field Museum since my mom likes dead, stuffed animals (especially elephants!).

I'm also trying to figure out where to go for dinner three nights in a row. My parents definitely aren't as picky as I am when it comes to food, but they are just as hesitant to unnecessary fancy meals. (We don't have an exotic selection in Montross, natch.) I talked to my mom online last night, and she started asking me if I'd heard of the restaurants featured in her Frommers' guide (from 2004). "Have you heard of North Pond? How about Italian Village? Ooh! A Rainforest Cafe!" I, on the other hand, am trying to find some places that have some character and do not have locations in other cities. And also feature hamburgers on the menu.

I've also come up with two rules that my parents will have to follow the entire weekend. The first is mostly for my father: DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE YOU DO NOT KNOW. When my father came with me to Chicago, every single bum and con artist on the street took him for the sucker he is, and I'll be damned if he wasn't handing out spare change to anyone who asked him for it, only to bitch about it later to me. He even paid twelve dollars for an unsolicited shoe-shine!

Rule number two is for my mother: DO NOT ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT MY NEW JOB. My mother has been driving me absolutely nuts since Monday by calling me at work multiple times a day with random queries about my new employment. Hell, this started on Thursday, the day of the interview, when she asked me three times if Northwestern offered benefits. The thing that really aggravates me is that she'll just look up the answers to her questions on the Northwestern HR site no matter what I tell her, so I don't know why she's bothering me with them in the first place. Yesterday was probably the worst of it, when she called to tell me that I shouldn't have formally resigned from DePaul because I haven't gotten the official offer letter. She's convinced that my new boss is trying to scam me into working for free, I think, and she's terrified that I won't have a real job in two weeks. She also told me not to burn my bridges at DePaul "just in case of an emergency." I guess she expects that on Friday I'll be so excited to leave that I'll be throwing out Fuck-yous and c-punches and lighting my farts on fire.

I mean, it's not like I haven't thought about it, but come on - I'm an adult now.

Robert Goulet is Dead, a Nation of Moms Mourns.

Adam told me recently that whenever I tell stories about my mother, I make her sound like a bitch. I don't mean to; I admittedly tell the funnier ones about her which probably don't make her sound like a really terrific person, but she totally is! She sent me a care package full of Halloween candy the other day! And sometimes I think she actually does love me, even though she's only required to say that. It's almost enough to forgive her for complaining about my cat, which she now has to take care of now that both of her kids are out of the house. (She confessed recently that she only agreed to getting the cat twelve years ago because she was sure it'd be dead by the time David went to college. That's a burn, Tex.)

Anyways, my mother is capable of love, and I think the best example of this is her long-time love for Robert Goulet, for whom she's had strong feelings since she first listened to the original Broadway cast recording of Camelot, oh, a hundred years ago. And I'm sure she's terribly upset today now that Mr. Goulet has passed away. To celebrate the man, the myth, and legend of GOULET, and only because now my mother knows how I felt about Charles Nelson Reilly* (when I called her to tell her that CNR died, she replied, "Good."), here's a tribute I found on YouTube.



Now, I like musicals and shit, but I can't even deal with more than a minute of that video. So here's how I prefer to remember Robert Goulet**:



You'll be missed, sweet prince.




*I never actually loved Charles Nelson Reilly, by the way.
**It took a lot of effort to not write his name as "GHOULET." Get it?!

Shocking revelations.

Sometimes my mom and I email each other while we're at work, none of which are very informative or worth sharing unless she tells me something specifically kooky. I thought that we had reached that point this morning when she told me that she also had that Klute haircut in college, but it went to a whole other level this afternoon. I'm including screen caps to show you I didn't make this up, and I apologize for what you're about to read.





Excuse me, but not until college? I assume that means she didn't choose to blow her nose until college, but still, that kind of baffles me. And I guarantee that she told me that if I didn't blow my nose I'd get ear and throat infections, as no one else would give me such health advice. Either that, or she was just trying to frighten me into blowing my nose so my sniffling wouldn't annoy her.

To say that I'm living a lie cannot begin to aptly describe this Earth-crashing information.

I spent my Saturday night watching a naked tranny lip-sync.

I don't have anything against drag queens, but I don't particularly have anything for them, either. For someone of the generation that came of age while the general attitude toward homosexuality became slightly more accepting, and a dude in a dress is no longer a shocker, I've never really been all crazy about transvestites. I mean, I find them generally entertaining, I suppose, but I've never been to a drag show or really sought out any environment wherein I'd be exposed to men in taffeta. Also, having lived in close proximity to Boystown for two years, I've become pretty accustomed to passing a few trannies in the street on any given weeknight, which is fairly desensitizing.

Having said that, I was fairly stoked to see Amanda Lepore on Saturday night.

[Disclaimer: I understand that Amanda Lepore is not a drag queen. Rather, she's known as the most successful transsexual (a title, I assume, which bases success on fame and notoriety rather than commercial success), but because her act is based on the fact that she used to be a man, I'm lumping her into that whole scene. Just bear with me here, K? Thx.]

I heard from John that Amanda Lepore would be at Hydrate, and I really wanted to go despite hating Hydrate. For those not in the know, Hydrate is a gay bar in Chicago that's fairly disgusting in the sense that you have to pay to get in and you'll leave with the smell of smoke and desperation all up in your clothes. There was apparently an open bar from ten to eleven that night, and they weren't charging cover if you went before ten, but "Hydrate Before Ten" sounded like a level of Hell I had yet to (nor did I wish to) experience, so I drank a lot of vodka beforehand and figured a five dollar cover wasn't too painful.

And, as an aside, I'd like to express why, exactly, I think Hydrate is particularly disgusting. Two bits of information: A. I knew someone who was roofied there, which doesn't surprise me because the place has a very strong sense of somewhat willing date-rape going on, and B. There's a sign in the bathroom that says (and I'm only slightly paraphrasing here), "Don't do meth." Not "Don't do drugs;" it specifically warns that users of crystal meth will be removed from the club. Classy!

So anyway. As John, Leah, and I approached Hydrate, I saw that at the front of the thankfully short line in front of the entrance there was a slender young man wearing big shoes, tiny shorts, and black and white body paint all over his chest and face in a pattern to make him resemble a court-jester, and I started to realize that I'd made a big mistake and was headed straight into Party Monster. Then we had to stand around for an hour and a half, since Amanda Lepore wasn't slated to go on until one in the morning (and the bitch was late, natch), listening to the repetitive beats of house / trance (whatevs) blast in our ears as we watched men in platform shoes wander through the crowd. Finally, around one-thirty, a haggard-looking transvestite to the stage to do an introduction, which was fairly muffled over the crowd's impatient chatter. Then Amanda came out to "perform" her "hits": "My Pussy (Is Famous)," in which Ms. Lepore repeated the p-word over and over; "My Hair Looks Fierce," which contains the lyric, "The party starts as soon as my dress drops," (um, and it did); and "Champagne," which is a clever little number about champagne. And she was completely naked on stage. Thankfully, I was too far back to see any fake vag*, but I did see some big old fake titties (but really, I was expecting that, since you can't Google Amanda Lepore without finding pictures of her chest).

Unfortunately, we skipped the meet and greet.

You may be asking yourself, "Why, Tyler, did you partake in this event if you kind of knew how bad it was going to be?" Well, Internet, it's because I do enjoy a good train wreck** every now and then. It's refreshing to experience all of the low-brow culture our society has to offer, since it makes me feel like a goddamn Proust scholar in comparison. Sometimes watching a tiny, plastic human prance around on stage while lip-syncing to a song about her fake genitalia makes one feel more alive and, honestly, distinguished. People like Amanda Lepore get all coked up and act a mess so us normal people don't have to. Plus, they make stories on Gawker possible, which in turn gives me something to read at work.



*Luckily for me, John found pictures from the evening on that gossip blog. (Link NSFW.) (But seriously, don't click it.) (I'm serious, you guys, don't do it.)
**Speaking of train wrecks, I've considered downloading I Know Who Killed Me. Can you really call that a wasted hour and forty-five minutes if you get to see someone hit LiLo in the face with a shovel? I call that a reward.

I have a confession to make.

I just spent $71.40 on underwear.

I need to take an angry nap.

My phone stopped working last night, which is great timing. The weekends are totally the best time to not have a phone, especially when last weekend I spent my days alone, reading at coffee shops because I had no one to make plans with.

I talked to my mother several times last night on AIM and on Christina's phone as we tried to settle the tricky business of buying me a new phone. Now, I don't particularly think it's very difficult to just get a phone, especially since I emailed her two weeks ago with the phone I'd like. Unfortunately, my mother thinks getting a free phone is kind of like buying a computer. She called and asked if I had checked the "specs" and they looked okay. She asked me this in 2007. Of course I didn't check the specs. I saw that it makes and receives calls, which my phone currently does not. It seems okay to me!!

Then she called and said, "Did you know this isn't a flip phone?" "Really?? I COULDN'T TELL. THANKS FOR CHECKING THAT FOR ME."

THEN she called again and said, "This phone doesn't have an antenna."

My mother is a SCIENTIST. She programs computers. Yet she lives in a world where AT&T would sell their customers phones that "don't have antennas."

She also decided that it was a great night to berate me for texting too much. It's very ironic that I can only communicate through text messages now, and my new phone won't come for another five days. What can you do?

ANYWAY, moving on. I'm exhausted this morning because I didn't get a lot of sleep and had crazy dreams which may be the result of watching the 1985 TV miniseries version of Alice in Wonderland, which I current have from Netflix. I'm tired, and I got to work an hour late, and I just want to go home and nap / die, but I can't because we have a shitload of work to do. And then I have a shitload of things to do this weekend. Tonight I'm going to see Stomp the Yard for free in Grant Park (drunk, natch) with Couch, which will most likely be awesome. And it's gay pride weekend, which means I'll be weaving through throngs of eight-foot-tall drag queens and armies of assless chaps on Sunday since the parade conveniently passes within a block from my house. I guess I'm going to go because, as Adam said earlier this week, you rarely get a chance to get drunk in the street. And I also decided that it'll be fun to see how many free condoms I can get. It's like when I was in college I'd see how many Gideon Bibles I could pick up in a day. It's a fun game. Really.

And I'll tell you what I'm definitely not doing this weekend: going to see Angelina Jolie's black-face movie. Fuck Jolie. I find it deliciously ironic, by the way, that she's going to star as Dagney Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. She's perfect for the role, and her political beliefs are the antithesis of Ayn Rand's, which proves that she's a goddamn retard.

Thanks, Mom.

I got an email this morning from my parents with the subject line, "Another picture of you published."

The body contained a link to a CNN.com article. When I clicked on it, I found this:


I showed it to Christina and she said, "Wow, you have really nice pecs. Also, you look like Gay Harry Potter."

This is really just a test to see if she checks this again.

I remember watching this documentary about John Waters where he said something about his parents not being allowed to watch his movies. He also said that Divine's parents were also banned from seeing them, and that after Divine's death Waters reminded them that they were still not supposed to see them. I think it's amazing that their parents had such self-control, although I suppose one wouldn't particularly want to watch their son dress in drag and eat dog shit.

Yesterday the Chicago Reader posted the picture of my cat reading Lolita on the homepage and, because I was so excited, I emailed my mother. Of course, the website included a link to this blog, and of course my mother CLICKED ON IT, thereby breaking our unspoken agreement that such an invasion of privacy is off limits. It's not only because I don't want her reading what I have to say; it's also for her benefit. She doesn't really want to know what I'm doing with my life either. I bet she wasn't pleased to know that I use "fuck" regularly in my vocabulary, and not just when I'm fighting with her. (For the record, the f-word slips out only in extreme cases, and don't think I'm the only one to use it.)

Anyway, I received an email this morning with the subject line reading, "blog," and immediately after I saw it in my inbox, I thought, "Hmm, I'm not going to be happy in twenty seconds." Luckily, it was short and to the point, and she basically said, "I can't believe the personal stuff you put in your blog. Now don't go write about my saying that." (Sorry.)

My response was that my blog isn't THAT personal, as I keep my heroin abuse secret, and I also sent her links to a few blogs I read that are incredibly and irresponsibly personal, just so she'd see the difference. I think, though, that she's more upset that I called her gay.

If only Bob Seger sang with the Muppets...

Because I love destroying my body for the sake of fun, I spent the entire weekend feeling either drunk or hungover. Oh, and hungry, because when I was hungover I spent twelve hours in my bed watching YouTube videos (I'll come back to that). And because I didn't particularly eat a lot this weekend, I got even drunker than usual.

On Friday night, I managed to get an extra ticket to Neko Case for Julia. I was really excited because the show was great. We were really close up front - so close I had a great view of Neko's unshaven legs. Afterward, I met up with coworker Adam and Company at some divey-as-balls bar on Lincoln and drank a lot of Old Style and smoked a lot of cigarettes until I got so sleepy I considered clearing off a space on the bar to take a nap. Figuring that would be a bad idea, I instead walked a mile home. Makes sense!

After laying around all day on Saturday, I ate some Chipotle and thought, "Hey, why NOT drink a lot of gin tonight?" I went out with Eric and Julia for Eric's friend's birthday celebration, and then I met new friend / name doppelgänger John Tyler. And then I had one of my fun little "spells" where I get all hot and sweaty and then pass out. (Remember?) Luckily, I revived myself really quickly and wasn't too embarrassed because the people near me seemed more concerned that I landed on cigarette butts, rather than thinking I was too drunk or was about to go into a diabetic shock. Clearly, passing out should replace quoting Steel Magnolias and coming up with lewd phrases ("cunt hands," anyone?) as my new party trick.

OK, now back to the YouTubes. About a week ago I bought this shirt at a vintage store. It's navy blue with a big key in front of a city backdrop. At the top it says, "Promises, Promises," so it's clearly a t-shirt from the Burt Bacharach musical of the same name. My only frame of reference about the musical was that the horrible, horrible song "Turkey Lurkey," which is in a scene from Camp, is from the show, but upon researching the show (on Wikipedia), I learned that it's actually a musical version of The Apartment (hence the huge, phallic key). It's the gayest shirt ever. Anyway, here's a video of Seth Rudetsky discussing the song at Obsessed with Julie and Jackie:


Also, on Friday night Adam played "Night Moves" on the jukebox for me, solidifying our BFF-status. Then Alissa and I discussed the awesome video starring Matt LeBlanc and an actress from Melrose Place; we couldn't remember which one, but we knew it wasn't Heather Locklear or Courtney Thorne-Smith. I found the video. It's DAPHNE ZUNIGA!


And, for no particular reason, I started searching for videos from The Muppet Show, and I think this is the best one I found. Drug-induced puppet dramatizations of Nilssen songs clearly win every time:


What? You'd rather see Leo Sayer sing "When I Need You" while being attacked by bears? Fine.

Don't worry. She's a scientist and does pretty well for herself.

I spent most of the morning updating my resume (thanks to Megan and Kristel for helping me revise and providing feedback). After I finished, I sent it to my mother to look at. Not that she has any expertise with resumes; for some reason, I usually give her a call just to let her know what I'm doing. Constantly. This is why we get into fights over the phone. I call her to tell her I'm taking a class or am looking for a job and she confuses my need for someone to talk at with a need for someone to talk with.

Anyway, when I sent her my resume, she responded with:

very nice. change "oversaw" (not a word, or at least not a good one) to "oversight of" or "provided oversight for", something like that

Uh, ok. I replied with the following definition, copied and pasted from Dictionary.com:

o·ver·see –verb (used with object), -saw, -seen, -see·ing.
1. to direct (work or workers); supervise; manage: He was hired to oversee the construction crews.
2. to see or observe secretly or unintentionally: We happened to oversee the burglar leaving the premises. He was overseen stealing the letters.
3. to survey or watch, as from a higher position.
4. to look over; examine; inspect.

Thinking I was being a smartass with her, she replied,

notice that none of the examples actually use the word "oversaw", because it's not a good word.

I emailed her back.

yes, but also notice how "oversaw" is included as the past-tense form of the verb.

To which she replied:

stub·born –adjective
1. unreasonably obstinate; obstinately unmoving: a stubborn child.
2. fixed or set in purpose or opinion; resolute: a stubborn opponent of foreign aid.
3. obstinately maintained, as a course of action: a stubborn resistance.
4. difficult to manage or suppress: a stubborn horse; a stubborn pain.
5. hard, tough, or stiff, as stone or wood; difficult to shape or work.

So I sent this to her:

fat·head –noun
1. a stupid person; fool.

She hasn't written me back.