WeHo Mark

I'm heading off to Richmond on the red-eye tonight. Joey and I will be celebrating with my family this year and we'll all be there: brother (and wife), sister (and husband), four nieces and nephews, my parents and even one set of grandparents. Have a very merry Christmas everyone!

Wouldn't you know it? Yesterday Joey's company gave out nice, carry-on suitcases to everyone on staff. That was one of the presents I had gotten him, a fabulous green (to stand out among the sea of black luggage) carry-on (his huge current one is, to say the least, pushing it when it comes to fitting into the overheard compartment) that has four wheels on the bottom so you can roll it sideways through narrow airplane aisles. Oh well.

Did I ever mention the Great Showtunes Project of 2004? Beware, this is as gay as it gets. I have an enormous collection of showtunes CDs, and I realized that I've either never or rarely listened to many of them. In February of this year, I started loading up my car's CD player with showtunes, in alphabetical order, starting with The Anastasia Affaire (never heard of that one, I bet!) and proceeding right through at an average of about six CDs per week. All these many months later, I'm still only at S. This week's offerings included two recordings of "The Sound of Music," "Showboat," "Side Show" and "Song and Dance: The Songs." I will confess to singing along with "Climb Every Mountain" several times as I head home in the evening. The end is near; maybe I'll finally have to pick up the "Zorba the Greek" cast recording for a nice sense of completion. Some of them I truly hated (the dreadful King of Hearts and the truly odious Prettybelle (which does contain my theme song, "When I'm Drunk I'm Beautiful"; no wonder I never listened to them) and some were delightful surprises, like Greenwillow (what a lovely score!). I did get bogged down by my six different recordings of "The Phantom of the Opera" (London, Canada (fabulous!), two in German, one in Dutch, and a dreadful studio recording with John Barrowman, sounding 15 years old, and a distressingly lisping Claire Moore); despite that, I feel honorbound to point out that I'm not the biggest Phantom fan out there, although I do like the show just fine. I still have four "Sunset Boulevard"s to look forward to, and there are some that I've picked up since I started that I'll have to lop together at the end. I suppose I'll move on to going through all my "normal" CDs after that.

Hello, all. Very busy week at work, with deadlines looming ahead, so I've been trying to get as much done as possible before the holiday break.

Deranged homeless man kept me up much of the night with demented laughter (sort of an extremely loud combination of laughing and coughing) seemingly coming from the back yard of the empty house next door, which means, if you're not familiar with WeHo, that he was only 15 or so feet away from our bedroom windows. At 3:15am, I finally called the cops, but by the time they arrived 15 minutes later, he had apparently moved on. I'm sure he's harmless, but when it's dark and you're trying to sleep, it's much easier to picture a madman slobbering over his bloody ax in the dark waiting for his next victim.

I had a fairly respectable alcohol tally for the weekend and it was gorgeous here; warm and sunny. Sunday afternoon at the Abbey drinking VBCs outdoors with a big bunch of friends, old and new, was West Hollywood at its very best. Saturday night we went up to have cocktails with the Hill Boys and they had invited a new neighbor who is sorta famous and very nice. Friday night was a marvelous night at the opera.

Based on his very "dude" conversation with someone else, I decided today that Handsome Inordinately Hirsute Gym Guy is straight after all. Oh well.

Weight: 169

It is 3:25pm on December 17 and I am officially finished with my Christmas shopping. This is the readiest I have ever been.

My little angel is under the weather with some sort of stomach flu-type illness. Devoted spouse that I am, I dashed out to pick up his Cipro, ginger & peppermint tea, Pepto-Bismol, etc. His doctor is our friend Dr. T, so she called in his prescription at his bidding last night, and I picked it up an hour later.

And I've got a strange sort of tickle thing going on in the back of my throat...I may be next.

I came back from the gym today at lunch to find a giant four-pound box of See's Chocolates on my desk, a gift from a business associate. Did you catch that? FOUR. POUNDS. OF. CHOCOLATES. On my great day of resolve! I've propped it up in my visitor's chair and it's staring at me, taunting me. As long as I can refrain from opening it, I'll be okay.

Handsome Gym Buddy Who Runs revealed to me today that he's an actor who recently appeared on JAG and NCIS. And that he is the biological father of a one-year-old daughter, with a lesbian couple. I'm not sure which factoid surprised me more. I should set him up with HGH, another "single gentleman" whose kid is due this summer. Happy, handsome gay daddies. It makes the heart leap with joy. Anyway, we were commiserating on our respective weights, which is why I've managed to avoid tearing open the box of you-know-whats. HGBWR has a particularly nice butt.

Handsome Inordinately Hirsute Gym Guy was there in the locker room today as well. I've actually never seen him in the gym itself, as he's always leaving as I'm arriving. I'm certain he has got to be gay. Damn, he sure is furry. You'd never know, seeing him all dressed up in his nice little suit and spectacles that he is quite the gorilla under there.

I'm beginning to suspect that SCSC (Sorta Cute Straight Coworker, you remember him, with the really pretty hair) is having not exactly an affair, but a "special friendship" with one of my female colleagues. I see them together all the time, and their respective work areas don't overlap at all, as far as I know. How interesting...

Weight: 171. Despite all my bitching here, I really don't care what I weigh as long as I hover between 165 and 170. (Point of reference: I'm six feet tall. Lanky boys like me gain all the weight in one very visible place.) But this is unacceptable. I look ahead with great trepidation to my trip home for the holidays, during which there will be little to no exercise and even more food and drink that I won't be able to avoid.

Time to take action. In addition to being powerless to resist all the holiday treats pouring into the office these days, I have been taking a sabbatical from my thrice-weekly cycling class (as I try to recuperate from my recurring knee problem) for the last couple of weeks. Although I've been swimming at lunch time (yes, that's right; I belong to two gyms), I'm still taking in way more calories than I have been working off.

This morning I returned to spinning class and I have vowed to avoid anything chocolate.

Last night's alcohol tally: one festive manhattan while wrapping two more Christmas presents for Joe, a glass of red while making New Year's Eve party plans with MM/DM. (What, are you crazy? I'm certainly not going to stop drinking.)

Joey's company holiday party was last night, conveniently held at the fabulous La Boheme just a few blocks from the house. Since he works for a television production company, there were a few TV celebs there including Beloved Game Show Host, Pocket Sized Pop Diva, and "the panel" from one of the most controversial reality shows currently on the air, one of whom I got to meet. The crowd was festive, the restaurant was (as always) beautiful, and the food was incredible. There were the requisite hunky straight boys as well as the fabulously dressed gay television mafia. Alcohol tally: one apple martini, two glasses of red, two glasses of champagne.

I'm utterly unable to resist the holiday chocolates, cookies and various other treats that have been pouring into the office lately. I'm avoiding the scale.

Got the car back this morning. Total charge: $180, which was less than expected.

Catching up on last weekend's activities, we finally caught up with "Caroline or Change," which featured basically the entire New York cast. Terrific show.

I'm almost done with Christmas shopping. What on earth did people do before the internet? I've bought pretty much everything (except for some of Joey's things) online, and having everything shipped out to my parents' house. Too, too convenient.

I just heard from the mechanic who is taking care of the Great Car Disaster of 2004. It seems that my clutch problems are due to a faulty slave cylinder (the master cylinder was replaced in 2002). I had no idea that there were such racy names for car parts.

Estimated cost for disciplining my rebellious slave: about $250

I peeked into the recycle bin this morning...

Sunday alcohol tally (for the whole group): five bottles of champagne, five bottles of wine, one bottle of creme de cassis (only a quarter full to begin with), one regular and one extra large bottle of vodka.

A great weekend, a great party on Sunday, and a fairly disastrous Monday morning, during which my car's clutch went out. Fortunately, this happened just a couple of blocks from my house while I was still in a residential neighborhood, so I pushed it into a legal parking spot (with the much appreciated help of a very nice and kinda attractive fellow happening by) and quickly hopped a bus to work.

Grrrr.

Paula Deen's Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake? Check. (Joey's baked it; I take none of the credit.)

Dates stuffed with pecans? Check. (They'll be wrapped in bacon tonight. Orgasmically good.)

Porn star spotted at gym? Check. ( Matthew Rush. As always, I have not seen his body of work, but all the porn stars in town advertise their off-screen services in the local HP (see glossary) so I know many of their names.)

Sorta-celeb spotting at gym? Check. (Franklin from "Boy Meets Boy," who is now enough of a regular that I won't mention him again here...unless we become bestest friends.)

Christmas shopping begun? Check. (I'm about halfway done.)

Ready for tree-trimming party on Sunday? Check.

Gingerbread boys baked: check.

Food, vodka and mixers for Sunday: check.

Two Christmases ago, my then four-and-a-half-year-old niece helped my mother make a batch of gingerbread men, which she dubbed "gingerbread boys." I liked that term, and it somehow seemed appropriate for West Hollywood baking. Please note that it will never be spelled "boiz." My guys aren't twinkies; they're quite manly little fellows.

Friday: went to see a friend's boyfriend in an improv show. Picking up our friends on the way there, a bizarre and sudden theft attempt on Joey's car was thwarted since we were all standing across the street. Alchohol tally: one glass of wine before the show.

Saturday: Dinner at Velvet Margarita and "The Incredibles" at the fabulous El Capitan in Hollywood(complete with cheesy but cute theme-parkish show beforehand) with the Valley Boys, their two daughters and two of the daughters' friends. (Quite the red state nightmare!) Best movie I've seen this year. Alcohol tally: one and a half margaritas.

Sunday: When Joey went to the gym, I jumped out of bed, got dressed and got busy. Home Depot, a little holiday shopping, some wrapping. Made dough for butter cookies and gingerbread boys to be baked this week for next week's party. Finally! Then we went to a friend's brunch. Did your faithful WeHo Mark remain steadfast in his alcohol moderation? Drumroll please. Alcohol tally: spread out over eight hours or so, six or seven champagne cocktails (mimosas, kir royales, etc.) and two glasses of red. Oh well. What else are you going to do on a rainy Sunday?

The Christmas tree is up but we only put the lights on. Although it kills me to wait so long, the ornaments won't come on until next weekend's tree-trimming party. Oh, the anticipation!

I know that I have claimed before to live in a house with no heat. It's not quite true. We do have something called a gravity heater (which must be a west coast thing; I'd never seen or heard of it before). It's an ancient-looking gas contraption in the basement, located in one of the front corners of the house, directly under a single large-ish grate in the living room floor that emits heat. It actually works quite well...for the front room. The rest of the house -- kitchen, dining room, bedroom -- remains largely unaffected. It never seems quite worth turning on, as I usually like to think I can tough it out on those rare occasions when it might be needed, which are seldom indeed. Plus it puts out a fair amount of dust, which it collects all year around. (Southern California is an extremely dusty place because of the lack of rain.) No more. With a low of 39 last night, it had to go on.

Our bed is set up right under a big uninsulated window, so nights remain quite frosty. I shall catch pneumonia; that is what I shall catch.