Fabulous NYC.

I finally have a minute to sit and reminisce about my fabulous New York City vacation!

Highlights:

* Two Broadway shows -- Catch Me If You Can starring Aaron Tveit and Norbert Leo Butz and Priscilla Queen of the Desert starring Nick Adams' biceps and drag queens.

* Catch Me If You Can is a new musical based on the book/Leonardo DiCaprio movie about Frank Abagnale Jr, who was a con artist and millionaire by the time he was 20 by writing bad checks. The fact that he got away with it all is pretty astounding, really.
Aaron Tveit played Frank and Norbert Leo Butz was the FBI agent who was searching for him. The music is by the people who wrote the Hairspray musical, so it's still stuck in my head two weeks later. Very fun show with tons of lush colors and costumes. And the voices. Holy shit. Aaron Tveit is best known as the original Gabe in Next to Normal, and he did not disappoint. I started wondering if the role of Frank had been written expressly for his voice, because I recognized a lot of the power notes from my marathon listening/sobfests to the Next to Normal soundtrack. Also -- shirtless twice. Because let's face it, shirtless Aaron Tveit is a big reason to see a show.
(On a gay sidenote, Aaron is in Howl, the movie about Allen Ginsberg and the publication of the Howl poem and subsequent controversy, playing Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg's boyfriend. Allen Ginsberg is played by James Franco. Hot.)
And Norbert Leo Butz is amazing and sort of adorable. He was easily the shortest cast member at 5'7 but his stage presence and all around amazingness had me watching him in every scene he was in. His acting was the best of the cast as he morphed himself into the schlumpy Agent Hanratty. His Act I song "Don't Break the Rules" stopped the show; the applause went on for a solid two minutes. Phenomenal.

* Priscilla Queen of the Desert was another very fun show. Three drag queens in the Australian outback on a road trip to a show in a casino run by one of the queens' estranged wife. It's based on the 1994 movie starring Hugo Weaving, Terrence Stamp, and Guy Pearce (swoon). The songs are all recognizable camp drag queen karaoke hits, like "It's Raining Men," "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "Hot Stuff," "Material Girl," etc. At one point, I was moved to tears, which I was completely not expecting yet totally saw coming (one of the characters goes out into the Aussie hick town dressed in drag and kisses a guy, who rips off her wig. The subsequent bashing, as well as the fireside conversation of the queens that follows had me sniffling and feigning allergies to the lovely gay boy sitting next to me).
It's not a particularly groundbreaking show, or even an original show, but it's fun. One of the producers is Better Midler, and let's face it, I will love anything Bette Midler touches.

* On a related note, Nick Adams is my new gay boyfriend. Good god, that is one attractive man with killer glitter lipstick. Hello, lover.

*My friend and I went to the St. Patrick's Day Parade which was a clusterfuck. I had no idea what to expect but I know a bunch of drunk and disorderly teenagers wasn't it.

*We saw Celtic Woman at Radio City Music Hall on St. Patrick's Day. They have amazing voices and a violinist we dubbed "the fiddle ninja." Seriously, she was jumping all over the stage so much that I thought for sure she would hit herself in the eye with her bow.

* Of course, I had to wander around Christopher Street and Greenwich Village. A friend and I went to Stonewall Inn and Gay Street for the photo op. I can't resist a good touristy photo op. We also went to Marie's Crisis Cafe in the West Village. A gay piano bar that plays all showtunes. It was like I saw a vision of heaven. It was glorious.

* All in all, the trip was all about love.

N Y C.

I'm slowly recovering from a week spent living the high life with friends in New York City. A full detailed account is soon to come. Oh, the tales I have, girls and gays.

Including, but not limited to, a gay piano bar that exclusively plays showtunes, becoming a friend of Dorothy at Stonewall, falling in love with a drag queen, and explaining that chatting with boys on Grindr will not bring you closer to Jesus.

It was pretty much a typical week for me.

Spring broke.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about his Spring Break plans. His plans were to go to the beach with a big group of friends. Two of them are a couple and have hit a rough point in their relationship, so he began telling me about all of the drama that's been going on.

"So now we're not going to the beachhouse because they're going to spend some time to work on their relationship. But don't worry," he reassured me. I assumed he was going to say something about how he thought things would turn out with them.

"But don't worry. I'm still going to the beach!"

A gay and his UV rays are not soon parted.

Spandex alert!

For the past two nights, I have been immersing myself in culture and beauty. In the gayest way possible, of course.

Cirque du Soleil's OVO show is in Houston. The show opened tonight at Sam Houston Race Park, but a friend of mine works for a web marketing company and runs the website for the park, so she scored free tickets to the invited dress rehearsal preview (tickets that, we overheard at the show, were going for $200 through the local PBS telecast sale). She was unfortunately out of town on business, so her boyfriend gave me the extra ticket. Far be it from us to let something free go to waste.

I had never been to Cirque du Soleil and didn't know what to expect, other than a vague idea of ridiculous acrobatics. And OVO definitely delivered. The very first act involved a man holding himself up with one hand upside on a pole and then contorting himself around and slithering to the ground. There was also an act involving a rock wall and my mind is still completely blown.

The story of the show is "an immersion into the teeming and energetic world of insects." The costumes were bug-ish, which made them all rather androgynous. They incorporated the bug costumes into the act only slightly; one act has a group of five girls dressed as ants who juggle plastic food pieces with their feet. And also, they toss and catch each other. WITH THEIR FEET. The interlocking plot, however, involves two bugs that are falling in love. I guess. I don't know, I honestly wasn't paying much attention to the parts that didn't have people bending their backs in half or doing a trapeze on their head.



Tonight was the opening night of Houston Ballet's "The Sleeping Beauty". I love Sleeping Beauty. It's possibly my favorite Disney movie and one of the main reasons is because of Tchiakovsky's score. I love the music and really wanted to see the ballet. Tonight was the only night I could see it due to Spring Break plans, so my friend Aerin braved the nosebleed seats with me (for $18 I will sit anywhere).

It was gorgeous. I'm pretty sure I annoyed Aerin with all of my excited faces and gasping, but I truly loved it. The dancing was incredible, the music was wonderful, and the ballet had wonderful visual effects -- there was a scene where the evil fairy Carabosse disappears from the stage and I still don't know how she left but I'm pretty sure there had to be magic involved. And honestly, ever time I heard a piece of music I recognized from the Disney movie, I turned into a five year old.

Both events had me marveling at the levels of athleticism and talent that they all possessed. I mean, I can't even complete a whole push-up. I push down, but then I can't really get back up, while Cirque du Soleil has people doing handstands fifteen feet in the air on a trapeze. And, though I danced for 13 years as a child, I almost twisted my ankle tonight as I was flitting around the lobby, looking more like the hippo from Fantasia than Aurora.

Lesson learned -- men are good. Flexible men in spandex are better.

Throwin' Shade.

This is the story of how I got my amazing sunglasses.

I had a pair of funky Target sunglasses and I was in love with them. They went everywhere with me. They were $5 Rayban knock-offs with this weird zebra printing and they were phenomenal.

I went home one weekend and my brother was home from college. He asked me if I wanted a pair of aviator sunglasses. Apparently a friend of his gave them to him but then he found out they were women's glasses so he was paying them forward.

I was hesitant to take them, as I was already in a committed relationship with my Target glasses, but who am I to refuse anything that's free? So I took them and they languished in my room for a few months.

My Target glasses eventually reached the end of their journey (I'm pretty sure I sat on them). In Texas summers, sunglasses are a necessity. I dug up the glasses my brother gave me and wore them around.

Then, one fateful day, I was out shopping with one of my gays when he suddenly let out a gay gasp.

"Are those......Chanel aviators?!?!?!?!?!" he asked, clutching his chest.

I took them off, and sure enough there was "CHANEL" imprinted on the frames.

"Of course they are! What do you take me for?" I replied. I probably gave a hair flip for good measure.

And I have worn them ever since.

The Feminine Mystique.

Ladyparts. A mystery to some, an inconvenience to others.

I was able to talk to my best girl friend today and she regaled me with a hysterical story of getting an IUD birth control placed. It made her decide then and there to never go through the miracle of childbirth because, according to her, "it was like there was a rabid squirrel clawing inside my uterus." It involved internal organs having to move around in positions that were not what God intended. She's pretty sure that she was moments from death.

When she told me the story, I thought some of my internal organs would burst from laughing so hard. My appendix for sure will never be the same. In the end she's the true winner, because not only does she not have to pop a pill every day or get a shot every month, but she's not going to have to worry about unplanned pregnancy for five years. Not to mention that she's not going to have a period for YEARS. Lucky bitch.

So sleep well tonight, gays, knowing that you will never have to know the pain and suffering that we go through to insure that we are doing our part to not irresponsibly populate the planet. We do it because we care -- but it hurts so much, you're lucky we do it at all.