ray stevenson - a reason to watch "rome"

Ray Stevenson! Total reason I'm watching HBO's series "Rome." Okay...and I'm learning a little faux history while I'm at it. Actors Kenneth Cranham and Lindsay Duncan are also noteworthy. But Ray's the man for me to watch. His sex scene upon returning home from war in the first episode has been replayed in our house several times since through HBO on Demand. (Technological advances--from ancient Roman times to the present--have always been reduced immediately to a medium for viewing sex.)

My only critique of the show: British actors as Italians are kind of disconcerting.

When Caesar's niece Atia of the Julii (Polly Walker) bathes in bull's blood to the beat of drums and naked satyr's hooves as a ritual to protect her son, it seems very raw and very Roman. But then the scene changes quickly to the next and she's all cleaned up and speaking as clipped and snippy as a Merchant/Ivory governess.

I'd love to see this directed by Felini or Zeffirelli. Woof. We'd see a lot more furry male butt, if you know what I mean.

buzzed

Each day this week I have come home to find Bob bouncing off the ceiling, tail wagging, bright eyed and talkative. This would be delightful if it weren't that I've also found him wide awake in the middle of the night.

We bought a new coffee maker this past weekend. I will not tell you what brand or model because I don't want anyone to know the ridiculous amount of money we spent on it. When we spent $125 on our previous coffee maker three or four years ago it felt so extravagant. I now realize that was kid's play. Programmable on and off? Pheh! Move over Cuisinart. There's a new kid in town and he's making double-shot cappuccinos, from bean to froth, at the push of a button.

The problem (well, besides the additional credit card debt) is that we can't stop playing with it. It's way too easy to make any kind of coffee we want without grinding or tamping or moving the cup back and forth from one hot spattering nozzle to the next. We try lattes. We try various strength Americanas. We change the grind settings incrementally and attempt the perfect espresso.

But I also find myself calling home during the day to check how many coffees Bob has had. I'm worrying about the addictive quality of easy caffeine. I've considered taking a crucial piece of the machinery, like the water tank out and hiding it as I leave for work.

Is there a 12-step group for this?

i can do that for you, part 3

The smart young construction brothers, Adam and Aaron, have started the process of finishing the renovations in our new apartment and it's bitter-sweet. Adam and Aaron are great guys, from what we can tell, and at every turn they understand what we need and are excited to do the job well.

At every turn, however, they are also finding problems that were created by the previous crew whom we fired over the Labor Day weekend. (See the previous installments of the renovation saga: "i can do that for you, part 1" and "part 2.") I refer to the current phase in Adam and Aaron's work as "the exorcism," as they drive out the evil spirits of Diane, Mahesh, and the rest of the "I Can Do That For You" crew.

Today, Aaron worked with a couple of licensed electricians to undo some of the lame-ass mistakes that Mahesh left behind in the house. Keep in mind that electrical was supposed be Mahesh's primary skill; it was what he was supposed to be best at. However, having experienced his sub-par carpentry, plastering, tiling and construction skills, I had my doubts about his electrical as well, despite how much Diane swore by them. Even still, I begged her time and again to schedule the licensed electrician to check his work. Time and again she promised she would. Meanwhile, her crew worked in the apartment with half the rooms in the dark, most of the outlets dead, and the great scheme of dimmers and speakers as nothing but dark theoretic holes in the walls and ceiling. And we never saw the licensed electrician. Not until Aaron's guys today.

I spent the morning at the apartment, terrified at what they would find and how they would fix it. The first two hours were spent trying to find the fault in the living room ceiling lights. There were scary moments, a lot of head shaking and uncomfortable grins (electricians don't like to speak poorly of each other). The most disturbing discovery was that Mahesh had install 220 amp air conditioner sockets on 110 wiring. I will have nightmares about the kind of wiring hazards this ass may have left us with. But in the end today's guys undid Mahesh's mess without having to do too much demolition. I'm grateful for that.

We now have to move on to everything else. My hope is that by the end of next week the exorcism phase will be complete and we can get on to the fun part. There will be at least one more installment of the "i can do that for you" saga, as the previous posting ended before I could tell the worst of it, and I just can't let the rest of the story go untold.handy helper, Diane, Diane Engel, Engle, Mahesh Pershaud, carpentry, carpenter, construction, painting, painter, kitchen, bathroom, tile, electrical, electrician, plumbing, plumber, wall, ceiling, patch, plaster, cement, brickwork, masonry, hinges, cabinets, air conditioners, ceiling fans, shelves, closets, bookcases, closet, kitchen, organization

nbc tuesdays get furry

Jason Lee's new sit com "My Name is Earl" premiered last Tuesday night on NBC and will be on again tonight. It's followed by last year's quirky comedy "The Office" starring Steve Carell of "40-Year-Old Virgin" fame.

Between these two men there is so much chest hair pouring up over shirt collars in just one hour of network television that I may have to watch with a bib on.

In a world where plucking and waxing is en vogue, I'm happy to see at least a couple well-known actors go au naturale. Mooch over at Live Journal has a lively discussion going about Jason Lee and the show.

profile

I bought a new camera bag a couple weeks ago. It's a giant backpack really. I bought it because the camera fits safely in a nice protective pocket, and I also have room to put full size 8.5-by-11-inch photos, documents and envelopes flat in the other compartment. But it's almost too big. I nearly look like I'm going camping with it on. I'm considering taking it back.

This morning as I came down the steps into the subway station there were a half-dozen cops set up at a folding table outside the turnstile with a sign announcing random backpack checks. There I was with my big camera backpack, certain that I would get stopped. I wondered how long it would take. I tried to remember if I had any nude photographs with me. I even imagined teasing the big furry-forearmed officer at the far end of the folding table about the additional cavity check I needed him to perform. But I pulled out my MetroCard, swiped it, and passed through the turnstile without as much as a word from any one of the cops on duty.

Okay, so I'm a 5'4" redhead in my late 40s and flat-front Dockers. There's a good chance that I'm not carrying any fundamentalist religious grudges against the United States to the point that I'd blow myself up with the rest of my fellow passengers. But I was surprised that the size of my backpack alone didn't attract some attention. If you think about it, someone who looked like me would be the perfect decoy for a surprise attack by terrorists (are they really going to look Middle Eastern next time?), but also I could have been used as a pretty good example by the NYPD if they wanted to prove that they didn't racial profile the people they stopped at the bag check. But I glided through.

I'm not one to take a big loud clamoring stand on racial profiling either way. I hate that racial profiling has hurt, offended, even killed so many people at so many times in history, and it always saddens me in all cases that it happens at all. And yet I know that after September 11th, the Islamic stores and mosque in my neighborhood in Brooklyn (which was home base for many involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center) seemed less exotic and more menacing. And after the Oklahoma City bombings I myself racially profiled the redneck, mullet-coiffed, itty-bitty-mustache-wearing members of the trailer-court extensions of my own family in the Midwest, watching for any signs of unrest and chemical fertilizers.

This morning, after I passed through the turnstile, the Army lieutenant who was giving out enlistment fliers to each of the young Latino and black men ahead of me in the passage way completely overlooked me. Above ground the newspaper vender, who was chanting "Daily News...25 cent" as everyone else lumbered past, offered me a New York Times. And the young gay Starbucks baristo asked me if my partner and I were moving to Chelsea. I was profiled more times this morning between my home and the office than I have ever noticed. And yet today was much like any other day.

the Q train on the manhattan bridge

Evening subway rides home are usually somber and quiet. The noisy after-school crowds are typically long since home and the rest of us working schmoes slump in our seats or hang from our poles in exhausted silence--centimeters from each other, yet lonely souls apart. Only the Q train's stretch over the Manhattan Bridge brings a touch of humanity to the sober voyage with a dose of sunlight or a view of the Brooklyn Bridge twinkling against the harbor and the financial district. Riders quietly turn toward the light of the windows like houseplants toward the sun, if only for a few minutes of quiet solace.

The other evening something different happened. From one end of the train car to the other, as the Q rose above the East River, cell phones emerged and one phone conversation after another began.

"Where are you?" They each started with a greeting no one would have used ten years ago. ("You called me at my work number, where else would I be?" would have been the reply before cell phones.) By mid bridge, the normally silent car was full of animated voices sharing commute status, work anecdotes, shopping lists and sundry other topics--one-sided conversations that told entire stories while the train rattled on through the air. Then one-by-one the voices slowly faded and shut down as the train descended at the other side of the bridge and the riders returned to their solitary silence.

rita's path

Watching hurricane Rita churn her way towards the coast of Texas just a few weeks after Katrina ruined so many lives in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, I'm praying for two things: the safety of the people in Rita's path; and that religious extremists, like Repent America's Michael Marcavage, do not use this as yet another opportunity to preach that God is punishing the victims. In times of devastation and pain, wise and caring men and women offer only comfort to those in need, not the one-two punch of "sorry about your loss, but God's a bully and you accidentally got in his way."

I hold my breath and hope for safety...and compassion.

vatican witch hunt

A friend sent me a link to Laurie Goodstein's article in the New York Times (September 15, 2005) on the Vatican's current witch hunt for "'evidence of homosexuality' and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching" in Catholic seminaries. Hearing of this was the second opportunity I have had this year to call home and thank Bob for changing my life 16 years ago. The first occasion was the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope on April 19.

I was a Catholic seminarian and priest in the Jesuit religious order for 13 years until I met Bob, and if I were still a priest today, I might feel as though I had wasted my life. Most of the forward-thinking Catholic men and women that I know have waited out Pope John Paul II's reign hoping that the church would finally move forward on matters, such as married and women priest, when he was gone. Ratzinger had hung like a specter over the changes of the Second Vatican Council for the past 40 years, but no forward thinking Catholic imagined he would become pope. Had I waited until I was almost 50 years old, as so many of my friends have, for post John Paul change, only to be saddled with Ratzinger at the lead, I would have been left worried and uncertain about the remaining years of my life; a life I had dedicated to ministry and the solitude of celibacy.

Now the other shoe has dropped. I need to say up front, in all my years in the Jesuits, from novitiate (the first two years of seminary), to the schools and parishes where I worked, to my graduate studies, at least half of the men in my communities were gay. At least half. Whether they were dealing with it or not. In graduate theology studies in Berkeley, two out of 12 guys in my immediate community could honestly say they were straight. The Jesuits were not alone in this. Other religious orders (Franciscan, Dominican, Holy Cross) appeared to have similar ratios of gay and straight members. Numbers and percentages get thrown around, but my experience tells me they are usually low.

It's also important to note that most of these men in these communities, almost all of them in fact, were living their vows of chastity. In the healthier communities, many were trying to understand their sexuality (gay, bi or straight) so as to become healthier human beings and better ministers.

So many questions are raised by the Vatican's new witch hunt for homosexuals in their seminaries. Is the Catholic Church prepared to lose more than half of their already dwindling ministry? Clearly the Vatican doesn't recognize the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, but are they prepared to deal with more cases of inappropriate sexual behavior of all kinds as their priests bury their sexual feelings more deeply in secrecy and fear? And have they considered why so many of their seminarians are gay?

For me, I joined the Jesuits fresh out of high school in 1976. The Jesuit priests that taught at my high school were funny, intelligent, socially conscious, creative thinking men. Yes, I felt a calling and imagined I'd be a priest my whole life (as much as any 18 year old can). And yes, I wanted to do good things for people. But I also know that on a subconscious level I was attracted to the safety of religious community. No one, not my friends or my family, would ever have to know that I was gay. And everyone, especially friends and family, would regard my life choice with the same respect (maybe even more) that they gave to my brother and sisters who were married with families. Being a priest is about the only respectable option for a gay Catholic boy. The bachelor uncle doesn't receive the same esteem, and the life of a closeted married man is a nightmare most would not consciously choose.

Yet, while this may have been a strong subconscious motivator for my "vocation," I also wanted to be one of those funny, intelligent, socially conscious, creative thinking men that had taught me, and had I stayed, the current church would have made being any of those things very difficult, even suspect and dangerous. Gay rights in the church (my own or others) were important to me, but not as important to me as Catholic women's rights and the rights of married Catholics to minister, poverty, ignorance, and social injustice. I often wonder how much of a "problem" homosexuality would be for the Catholic Church if they dealt with any of these other issues more consistently, especially opening the priesthood to women and married men.

It will be interesting to see what the effect will be of the current inquisition. My guess is that it will reduce the number of Catholic priest significantly and cause more unhealthy behavior among those who remain. Maybe it will motivate more gay Catholics inside and out of the church's hierarchy to speak out, but I doubt that. Yet, certainly we may be witnessing the beginning of the end, the end of the Catholic Church as we know it, because a church cannot survive with a clergy that excludes women, married men and homosexuals.

men i would like to photograph - angelo peruzzi

I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night last night and so, as I often do, I turned on the Fox Soccer Channel. After midnight this cable channel runs foreign soccer and, even better, rugby and Australian football.

Rufff... I can watch these sports with the sound turned down the way straight guys watch women's volleyball with the sound turned down. I don't care whose winning, I'm watching for something else.

Last night Italian Soccer was on: Lazio verses Treviso. I fell in love with the Lazio goalie Angelo Peruzzi, pictured at left. You can see more of him on his own web site at http://web.tiscali.it/angeloperuzzi/. The text is Italian, but who needs text? Check out the photos in the "immagini" section.

So, I'm starting a regular entry here with Angelo. When I see a guy from time to time that I would like to photograph, I will post his picture here. Anyone who knows Angelo (or someone who looks like him) should let him know he has an open invitation to sit nude in front of my camera. I'm serious! Have Angelo (or a close facsimile) contact me through my web site.

I'll be waiting.

no-vacancy corporate nonsense

Bob and I decided to run away this past weekend. We skipped out on all the renovation and moving craziness we've been dealing with around the clock and escaped down to Adamstown Pennsylvania to look for an armoire. Adamstown is a quiet little town built primarily around antique malls, flea markets and Amish motels. We've gone there many times on weekends in the past to hunt for Christmas ornaments, old photographs and furniture and each time we've been able to find a motel room at the last minute without any problem.

So early Saturday morning, while we were rushing around the house quickly showering and packing our overnight bag like two kids who had decided to play hooky, we never once thought about calling ahead to get a room. That was our first mistake. Our second mistake was not bothering to check for rooms when we got into the Adamstown area. We took our time visiting a furniture vendor's warehouse north of town, then having dinner in the bigger city of Reading, and even going to see a movie, comfortable that we'd find a room easily when we got to Adamstown.

But as we drove into Adamstown we noticed that the small Amish motels, even the one without air conditioning, all said "no vacancy." Still no alarms in our heads, there were bigger franchise motels like Holiday Inn and Days Inn just down the road. The Holiday Inn didn't have a sign to indicate whether they had a vacancy or not, so we pulled into the lot confidently, parked the car and walked up to the desk where a little blond girl in a suit jacket kept her head down until we reached the desk and asked her about a room. "Sorry, we're all booked up," was her response. I asked why there was not a "no vacancy" sign and she mumbled that Holiday Inns were not allowed to have "no vacancy" signs. I thought it strange that Holiday Inn would have such a policy until the Days Inn, Econo Lodge, Comfort Inn, Travel Lodge, all were booked solid without any indication from the road. Instead of simply driving past "no vacancy" signs until we could find something, we had to drive into the parking lot and go into each motel to find out that they couldn't help us. A half-hour search took almost two hours.

Finally, I asked the little Poltergeist woman at the Travel Lodge why no one had "no vacancy" signs anymore and she informed me that franchise motels no longer have these signs so that their reservationists can send you to their affiliates down the road. The funny thing is, she was not offering me that service, nor had anyone else. From the little blond girl at the Holiday Inn to the surly slacker with the leather wrist band at the Comfort Inn to the 40-something that looked at me like a beat-dog at the Days Inn, they all just mumbled "we're all booked up." The little woman at the travel lodge even snidely remarked that I should have made reservations.

Long story shortened, the Best Western in Lancaster, about 15 miles (and two hours) down the road, had a few vacancies because a wedding had been cancelled. Thank heavens for cold feet! And the cause of the sold out status in the "Antique Capital of the USA" as they call themselves: some race-car event just north of Adamstown. So Bob and I and the blue-haired crowd had the antique malls to ourselves the next morning while everyone else went to the races. And Holiday Inn continued to welcome weary travelers, at least to their front desk, vacancies or not.

tall skim no-whip corporate nonsense

Let's take a break from the "I Can Do That For You" saga for today. Bob and I both have said we can't wait until we no longer have any reason to say Diane or Mahesh's name again, which we hope will come soon enough. I'll finish that story off the next time around.

But for today, I just came back from Starbucks. Yes, I support the behemoth because they're the only ones that can make a cup of coffee to my tastes. Like it or not, it's fresh, it's dark, it's rich and there's no cheap-ass French Vanilla sneaking in through the grinder or the drip basket. Believe me, I try little independent coffee shops as often as I can, but I never get the cup I want. So, please don't hate me, Dorothy! You know Dunkin' Donuts is just as corporately menacing and the stuff at the sidewalk cart will never suit me.

At any rate, there has been a goofy development over the past couple summers at Starbucks that I've been meaning to address. Years ago when I ordered my first small Frappuccino with some chocolate syrup, no whip cream and low fat milk the server hollered out "tall skim no-whip mocha frap" and the barista chanted back "tall skim no-whip mocha frap!" I know some may find the Starbucks code pretentious, but I kind of like it in a pragmatic way. It's concise, it's exact, it sounds like what it is: a caffeine rush, a cup of kick-ass. It's a no-nonsense version of something that could be considered nonsense. The first time I heard it I decided to memorize it for the next time, and every time after that. Forget how geeky that may seem, it was efficient and the servers gave me free things for being a regular.

But sometime last summer, when I ordered my "tall skim no-whip mocha frap," the server hollered an unexpected mouthful: "Can I have a tall skim no-whip mocha Frappuccino blended coffee beverage." What was that? At first it felt like just an awkward mistake. Then it happened on my next visit, and the next. After a while it began to disturb me, the way singing and dancing waiters in retro-burger joints disturb me. "All this AND minimum wage" goes through my mind. I'm surprised the poor servers don't have to make little parenthesis with their hands and murmur "trademark symbol" somewhere in the middle.

So, when did the corporate types decide to force their employees to say a completely unappetizing mouthful every time I order a drink? "Blended coffee beverage?" Can I get that with a side of monosodium glutamate? Not only does it NOT sound like something I want to drink, I have been so embarrassed to make the poor employee repeat the refrain, that I've stopped ordering fraps all together.

Make that a "tall skim no-whip red eye" instead.

i can do that for you, part 2

When people hear our renovation story, many want to know how we ever got involved with this useless crew to begin with. Friends of ours had actually referred us to a much larger contractor than Diane of "I Can Do That For You." A very nice, well-meaning man named Fred, with a contracting company that completes entire jobs on $8-million brownstones top to bottom (from the dormer playroom to the climate controlled wine cellar) in just under three months, gently patted us on the head and let us know that our job was too small for him. He referred us along to Diane with the thought that she and her crew were better suited to the renovations we needed in our little 900 square foot apartment.

We met Diane and her guys soon after we closed on the apartment in late January. She and Fred came to the apartment for an estimate and brought along the two college-educated workmen Charlie and Scott, and Nagy the licensed electrician. While we already sensed that Diane herself was inexperienced with larger renovations (her brochures focused more on gardening and air conditioner installation), the former clients of Fred, Charlie, Scott and Nagy that we called for references were all very positive and Diane at least seemed good at follow through, like writing letters, contacting us, and communicating with our co-op's managing agency.

That was January. She had far less to do in January. By the time the co-op's engineer finally approved the job in April, she had taken on far too many other jobs and had lost her men. As yesterday's post described, we were not informed that Scott and Charlie were no longer with her. Unlicensed Mahesh and his aging father Zai showed up on the first day as our crew of two, which soon dwindled to a crew of one for a few hours each day, to a crew of no one on some days.
When we complained, Diane sent two lesser guys: Mahesh's brother Sat (another ironic name as Sat was always on his butt and on the phone whenever we walked in) and a well-intentioned plasterer named Danny, who received no instructions or supervision. Poor Danny would plaster diligently each day...right over things that weren't supposed to be plastered. When Mahesh and Zai returned they had to rip out his mistakes and redo them.

May became June, June became July, and bigger problems began to become apparent. That's when the variations on Diane's company name were born, like "I Never Said I Could Do THAT For You," "I Can't Take Criticism From You," and "I Can't Even THINK Straight." More in the next installment.handy helper, Diane, Diane Engel, Engle, Mahesh Pershaud, carpentry, carpenter, construction, painting, painter, kitchen, bathroom, tile, electrical, electrician, plumbing, plumber, wall, ceiling, patch, plaster, cement, brickwork, masonry, hinges, cabinets, air conditioners, ceiling fans, shelves, closets, bookcases, closet, kitchen, organization

i can do that for you, part 1

So the name should have tipped us off. We should never have put detailed, stylish apartment renovations in the hands of a contracting company called "I Can Do That For You." Even if we didn't heed the initial cheese factor of the name, the irony factor kicked in only a few weeks into the renovations and redoubled again and again until the end. In no time we were dubbing the company "I Never Said I Could Do THAT For You," "I Can't Take Criticism From You," and "I Can't Even THINK Straight." By the end it was "I'm a Friggin' Idiot Lying Trollop" and things far more foul.

Actually joking was a survival technique during this project that only helped to a point. Truth be told, the experience was emotional torture. Diane, our project manager lied to us from the start when she introduced us to two college-educated workmen, Charlie and Scott, and a licensed electrician named Nagy. She gave us references to call specifically for the three of these men, and then never brought them back into our apartment again. It was a classic bate and switch. The first day of construction in April, I met Mahesh and Zai, who I thought were a West Indian teenager and his grandfather (they turned out to be a 25 year old and his father). I presumed they were there to do only the demolition before Charlie, Scott and Nagy arrived.

But days past and Mahesh and Zai began to do the electrical and the constructing. We were promised that licensed Nagy would come back to check unlicensed Mahesh's electrical work, but that never happened. Charlie and Scott were busy with another project at first, and then the next time we asked, they were no longer working with Diane. When we expressed our concern to Diane about the entire job being handled by just these two guys, she said she thought of a work crew as two men. No apologies; no sense that we might feel otherwise. Never mind that she had introduced us to three men when she bid for the job. Never mind that we never had the chance to check references on the new guys before they started the job.

Then a couple weeks into the project even Mahesh and Zai stopped showing up daily. Or they'd be there working whenever they thought we would be in the building, then disappear soon after if they thought we weren't coming back. For three weeks in May, they abandoned our job for other jobs with drop-dead completion dates in the contracts (something we didn't know we should have had in ours). Of course Diane didn't admit to us that she'd removed the guys for other projects until much later when we pressed her on it. At the time, she simply told us she'd have a full crew in our apartment for the day and then she would take them off somewhere else. To her it wasn't a lie. We just weren't supposed to notice that what she said didn't match the actual situation. Each time we caught her lying about her work crew, she accused us of being unnecessarily suspicious.

We should have been way more suspicious. I'll explain further in the next installment.

renovation woes

Boy, did I pick a bad time to start a blog! My partner Bob and I have been renovating a new apartment in Manhattan since January, yes January, and the slow progress, ineptitude and arguments with the project manager for the renovations reached a head the next day after my last post of August 22nd. Check back, because I’m writing a report for the department of consumer affairs on these bums, and I may just try it out here on my blog first. It promises to be entertaining to say the least. I've got 8 months of frustration and anger stored up, ready to unleash.