TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Stuffing my big old hole…

(Sung to tune of ‘Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah’)

Sigh.  Yes, there is one hole more important than ‘my big old hole’.  And that be my pie hole.  It likes to get stuffed, too.

I love food.  Comfort food being the best.

I love making mashed potatoes.  And that is pretty much the extent of my culinary repertoire. Still, that has not prevented my delusional self from wasting expensive ingredients in the hopes of becoming a chef.  In my wake?  Lots of burnt, under-cooked food and a sink full of hard to clean pots and pans.

Still, I soldier on…

TMI QUESTIONS:

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

Link: http://tmiquestions.blogspot.com/

TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

How good of a cook are you?

Pretty average.  I aspire to be a bit more, but, sigh, am too lazy to actually do everything one needs to do in order to be a better cook.  You know, like take classes, pay attention to recipes, and, ummm… actually cook. As in, on a regular basis; familiarity breeds efficiency breeds well-prepared food.

There was a period of time when I was into meat and potatoes meals featuring heavy gravies (I thought I was Betty Crocker and that was the way to a man’s heart) but I took a lot of short cuts and hence don’t consider that actually cooking.

And that pretty much sums up my skill level in the kitchen.  If I put in a little more effort I might be better.  I certainly enjoy it and enjoy learning more about food preparation.  However, I do not consider opening cans and heating things or boiling water real cooking. 

Who taught you how to cook?

Self-taught.  And in the beginning I was not very smart about it at all. 

Frequently, with my theater schedule, I would eat things straight out of the can, usually late at night, lying on the floor with a tiny black and white television providing the only light in the room.  I would then use the can as an ashtray before falling into an anxiety-induced coma.

A collection of cans would form around my mattress on the floor… mostly pork and beans, or green beans.  The cigarette butts that filled them adding to the room’s ambiance.

If the gods be kind, at some point I would end up getting laid, and before the person I dragged home woke up in the morning I would tidy up the place and those cans would disappear.

Yeah, I was a pig.  And not the fun sexy kind, either.

Now the kitchen is my favorite room in any home.  And it doesn’t need to be much or very large.  But I have come to respect it.  It offers me a lot of comfort.

Who does the cooking in your home?

Me. 

Though, I actually spend more time preparing meals for my dogs than I do for myself.  Their food involves a sweet potato-based dry food which needs to be pulverized in a Cuisinart, before adding crushed cooked carrot, chunks of lean white chicken breast with a bit of broth, and a teaspoon of a special powder containing glucosamine among other helpful things.  Mix in a bit of hot water before microwaving for eight seconds, stirring occasionally.  Be sure to check the temperature before serving.

Yeah.  Kind of nuts when it comes to those dogs.

Me?  Boil a box of dry pasta, open and heat a can of sauce. Sit in front of television and consume.

Yeah. It’s a life.

Do you cook more or eat out more?

Currently eating out a lot.  Maybe, way too much.  (And thank God!)

But I’m in that whole ‘getting to know you’, ‘making an effort’ dating mode; which I enjoy immensely (I can’t stress that last part enough – I am a fortunate schmuck). 

But it is expensive. 

Still.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Restaurants are neutral ground for testing the ‘I can put up with that’, ‘that is not a dealbreaker’ kind of conversations. 

You know, like:

“I was a big slut before I met you.”

“Well, how big of a slut.”

“Umm.  Known in several states, big.  I sort of used to blog about it and kept an excel spreadsheet detailing my exploits.”

“Really?  Huh.”

“You want me to send you a link to the blog?”

“No, but… You can pay the check now. I have to go home.  I think I left one of my cats on the stove.”

Are you more of a cook or dessert maker?

Cook.

Not much into desserts.  Though I did go through a period when I was making these huge, multi-layered cakes with fruit fillings and the most awesome butter cream frosting made with Wondra flour.  They were delicious and frequently quite beautiful.  I even started a photo collection of them.

I began making them for other people – birthdays, anniversaries, mid-life circumcisions…

Then I got drafted for a wedding at this resort in Duluth.  The ceremony took place on the shores of Lake Superior.  The woman actually rented me a suite with a stove so I could bake her wedding cake on the premises the morning of the wedding. 

I made the mistake of bringing my OCD business partner with.  He’s a control freak and basically took over the actual cake creation after he’d obsessed about it most of the week and then peppered me with trouble shooting / what if scenarios the entire day before the actual wedding.  He took control of the whole thing and I just stood around wearing a Charlie Brown ‘life sucks’ moon face.

I sucked it up.  But that experience ruined cake baking for me, and I have never made one since.

What was your worst/funniest cooking moment?

Thank you for asking.

This was clueless, eat-out-of–the-can, me. 

A theatre company that I was part of had a tightknit core of eight actors who selected the plays each season and were featured in all the shows imploded mid-season during our second year of production, due to personality clashes and creative differences.

Unfortunately, we had booked theater space for the remaining productions and that meant, not only was the company on the hook for honoring those rental contracts, but that meant the company would lose all that down payment money.  We’d also made a commitment to several other actors who had planned their theatre season based on our season.  So, I decided to host a tiny dinner party, inviting the two members I was most interested in continuing to work with (who happened to be gay and still speaking to me). 

Being a clueless clod, I decided that creating a salad bar would be the foolproof way to go.  Unfortunately (for my guests), my only experience with salad greens centered on iceberg lettuce.  I also had no idea how much three people could eat, so I bought three heads, just to be safe.  Celery, carrots, green peppers, etc.  Anything I could remember seeing at a salad bar I bought and chopped up.  I ended up with enough food to feed a small battalion or all the customers during a dinner shift at the local Sizzler.  If I’d had a sense of humor about myself at the time I would have laughed, but instead, of course I internalized the experience, ashamed of my lack of common sense. 

Fortunately one of the guys kind of knew I was a clueless oaf and he brought some wonderful weird beet-based soup.  He was also the only one interested in soldiering on, honoring the commitments the company had made.  He played George in my production of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and went on to be my best friend for twenty years. 

Then there was the lesson of ‘Never cook fish on a first date’. 

Turns out cooking a meal for someone you don’t know very well on a first date is a bad idea.  Number one, you are in your home, so there is potential for you to come off as a sort of tragic Tennessee William’s heroine, especially if you play cryptic ballet barre exercise music on an old phonograph while explaining why your Christmas tree is still twinkling in your bedroom mid-March.

Secondly, one tends to over-think one’s table settings, making for a Victorian age sense of propriety not normally associated with hoping to get a little something-something at the end of the night. 

Yeah.  Dude fled my apartment before dessert arrived.

Can you blame him?   

I think he said something about leaving one of his cats on the stove... or something.

What's your best dish?

Vegetable stir fry with brown rice, I guess.

I like making spaghetti, too, but cheat.

And grilled cheese with tomato basil soup (again, I cheat). 

I used to make a kick-ass chicken and dumplings (cheated).

And soups. Homemade!  The best.  (No cheating!)

Is revenge a dish best served cold?

I don’t believe in seeking revenge.  I simply offer up my experience to the universe and let karma take its toll.

Sometimes it works a bit too well.

I had a production of ‘Boys in the Band’ where the cast mutinied a week before opening (after all the hard work had been done).  It was based on greed and devastated me (also, I was informed that I had hurt their feelings). I ended up moving to the middle of Iowa for a year to recoup, before fleeing to L.A.  

During the three years that I was away?  Three of the cast members died – two of which were the biggest instigators of the coup!   (One of them hurled himself into the mighty Mississippi!)

And those were only the ones I heard about.  Who knows what happened to the rest?

That was proof to me that evil begets evil and that the universe has a way of taking care of these things. 

These days?  I am very careful not to wish people ill.  I may not wish them well, but know better than to wish them ill.  That shit will only come back and haunt you, baby.

Is the best way to a man's heart truly through his stomach? 

No.  That would be his anus.

Trust me on this.

It’s called a prostate massage.

Bonus

Have you made whoopee in the kitchen?

Yes.  And so what.  Fucking on a kitchen counter isn’t that big of a deal.

But being fucked while bent over a running dishwasher? 

Now that’s some fancy cooking.

Which foods have you used to spice up your love life?

Is Gin a food?

TMI Questions: Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude is an easy thing to forget.

So many of our emotions demand more room.  Gratitude is rather reserved, so it has a hard time competing with those flashier feelings.  But that’s what keeps us humble, and in touch with reality. 

So I think it’s great that we have a national holiday focused on giving thanks.  Sadly, few people get the true meaning of Thanksgiving – despite its somewhat too-on-the-nose name. We get caught up in the turkey and side dishes.  The football and family dysfunction.  Yep, been there.  Oh, so guilty!

This year, I hope everyone finds a moment for quiet contemplation in order to truly get in touch with what it means to be thankful and to count our many blessings. 

Here’s wishing you all the very best this celebration has to offer.

TMI QUESTIONS:

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

Link: http://tmiquestions.blogspot.com/

TMI Questions: Happy Thanksgiving

Do you travel or stay local? Family or Friends? Host or Guest?

It depends.  Typically, if one of my younger sisters and their families will come to the cities, then I will be elsewhere.  I don’t like my folks to be alone for any holiday.  Otherwise, if no one else can make it, I feel the need to be there.

This year will be an exception.  I will be driving a friend of mine to his mother’s house.  He recently had one of his feet reconstructed and cannot drive.  His mother is 84 years old, so I think it’s important that he be there. 

Unfortunately, neither of my younger sisters or my other siblings are making the trek to my parents’ house – and this could be my Dad’s last holiday season (he is not doing well).  So, while it pains me to leave my folks alone, my Mother pretty much demanded that I drive my friend and celebrate Thanksgiving with her and my father on the Friday after the holiday.

I consider my friend part of my family, and my family is on board with that, too.  He’s the business partner that I had a 17 year open relationship with.  He’s been a part of all our family functions forever.  He only has his mother, and she has been a part of most of my family’s gatherings, as well.  Family is very important to my friend, (he is my Mom’s adopted son, and a brother to all of us) so I will honor that for the rest of my life.  His mother is not very mobile, so that is why we are travelling to her neck of the woods this year.

Since my Dad has been diminished by Alzheimer’s, it has typically been me and my folks, plus my friend and his mother.  Christmas, my youngest sister and her husband will typically join us.  But, in light of my friend’s mother and her immobility, I am not sure what we will do this year for Christmas.  One holiday at a time…

I have hosted only one Thanksgiving.  It was a gas.  I crammed my parents, my friend and his mother, and my three sisters’ families into my basement – which has this room that looks like a church basement, complete with the 1950’s style linoleum.  It was hectic and crowded (six small kids, eleven adults, and two Chihuahuas).  The food was your basic Thanksgiving fare and went off without any snafus.  I did a drawing at the end, giving away prizes for the kids (all toys).  So whenever the kids started to act up I simply reminded them about the prizes at the end of the day. Worked like a charm.

Parade: Love it? Leave it? Never let it go?

Leave it. 

It was a distraction on the tube when I was younger.  Holidays always brought the worst out in my Mother, so she was usually seething about something or other the morning of.  If you were smart, you stayed out of her way and kept a low profile.  That wasn’t always possible.  But that televised parade sure served as a diversion.

When I was in L.A., it was tradition to go and look at the floats up close, at the end of the parade.  It was so cool.  I had no idea the floats were made out of flowers.  The amount of work that went into those floats boggled my mind.  I also thought it was an incredible waste.  But it sure makes a lot of people happy, so who am I to judge?

It sure made my life a little more bearable when I was young. 

Favorite Food?

Squash.  Love it.  Bake it, and whip it up with a tiny bit of butter or make soup with it.  And yams, too, but no brown sugar or marshmallow crap.  I like my veggies fairly straightforward.

Second favorite food is mashed potatoes.

This will be my first Thanksgiving minus Turkey – so I am not sure what I am going to do.  Fortunately, we are going out on the actual holiday (Asian food or Perkins), so I will have some choices to make. 

As for the day with my folks?  I will just fill up on the potatoes and squash.  Maybe bring some hummus for protein.

Or a nice grilled cheese.

Favorite holiday movie or do you watch football?

I don’t watch football.  I was addicted to watching it live when in high school.  It was fun then, because you actually knew the players.  But televised sports bore the crap out of me.  Too much commentary, too many commercials, too many pauses during play.  I’d rather wash the dishes or sit in the kitchen and gossip about our extended family members (lots of skeletons in those closets).  And the gossip goes both ways, I am sure (lots of skeletons in our closets, too).

Movies?  My favorite?  I take a particular delight in watching ‘Home for the Holidays’, starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, and Robert Downey, Jr.  Directed by Jodie Foster (!), this ensemble production about a Thanksgiving celebration in the life of a wonderfully dysfunctional family is a hoot.  There are wicked laughs galore to be had, but the heart is there, too.  Cynthia Stevenson delivers the best performance, but the whole cast is top notch.  I totally recommend checking this one out.

But, honestly, I would rather take all the dogs for a walk.  I like the cold air.  And there’s something about walking past all those houses full of family cheer, dysfunction, food and alcohol that make me sad/happy. 

That’s me.  Always enjoying things from a distance.

If you do holiday decorations, for which holiday and when?

                                                                                                                     

Gosh, I have kind of kept things to the bare minimum for years now.  Even Christmas. 

I have this tiny tree with the lights and decorations on it that sits in a garbage bag in a store room for most of the year, only to be plucked out to sit on an end table in my living room for the season.  Other than that, there is this rather baroque looking angel/tree topper that sits on atop of my grandfather clock year-round, looking down upon me, passing judgment throughout the year.  She’s so pretty (if a bit of a prude).

And then there’s the yard décor.  I have a plastic snowman that sits in my front yard until spring.  I just like him.  Sometimes he is joined by a little tin soldier and a tiny, fat Santa.  I don’t plug any of them in.  And the soldier and Santa always go away the day after New Year’s.   

But that snowman?  He’s there for the whole of winter. 

He makes me smile.

Black Friday. Thoughts?  Feelings?  Soapbox?

I don’t participate.  I don’t care. 

I figure this is something that corporate greed and the breeders have born out of a need for ‘more’.  I could care less.  I no longer see Christmas / The Holidays as a reason to spend a great deal of money.  Possessions don’t make us better people.  And giving the perfect gift does not buy one love or excuse all our lousy behavior the rest of the year.

And Black Friday does bring out the worst in people.  Just read some of these stories: http://thoughtcatalog.com/charlie-shaw/2013/11/35-retail-workers-share-their-their-most-wtf-black-friday-horror-stories/

All of which I believe actually happened because… I read it on the internet.

I think it’s madness.  But it’s not for me, so what I think doesn’t matter.  Much.

I know this is wrong, but I do get a kick out of reading all the horror stories about people getting trampled on their way to getting an $11.99 kitchen gadget or stupid popular toy.

Does that make me a bad person?

Probably.

Bonus

People traditionally give thanks on Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for?

A lot this year.

Second chances, in particular.

My recent rebirth has shaken my life to its core. I’m sort of amazed that I did not require a 12-Step Program or numerous sessions on a therapists couch to turn myself around, but I didn’t.  And while I am still scrambling to put things back together and still trembling in the aftermath, I am doing really fucking great.   

I haven’t been myself for well over twenty years. Some of my early interactions with humans had left me so fucking damaged that my soul had turned sour and I stopped believing in the promise of hope and the power of love.  I tear up just writing about it. 

I’ve been numbing myself for so long – not with alcohol or drugs, but with sex.  This blog is sort of a testament to that part of my life.  I frequently have joked about my multiple personas, but the fact is, I have been living a dual life for so long, one robbing the other of any pure joy to be found in any situation, that I’d forgotten who I really am. 

Instead, I put on a brave face and tried to reconcile the dichotomy that my life had become.  It was a constant battle – robbing Peter to fuck Paul.  I’d become so dishonest, so untrue to myself.

So, to have a second chance, to reclaim myself… that is the greatest gift the universe has ever given me.

And the amazing thing?  I know deep in my heart that I am worthy of it.

I will spend the rest of my life honoring it. 

Since the day the scales fell from my eyes?  I have never been happier or more joyful. 

October 26^th will forever be a very special anniversary for me.

And if this all sounds like some kind of religious transformation, well, it’s not.  I don’t believe in any of that stuff.   I’m pretty much an agnostic or an atheist at this point. 

Nor do I really believe in judging the actions of others.  We all have our own paths to walk and to quote my beloved Melissa Manchester: “We need gardens to grow in.  And there must always be room enough for all of us.”

So, no worries. 

I still stand in awe of the many sexual warriors I have met in person or via blogger. I will still enjoy reading of your exploits or looking at the pics you post.  Those of you who enjoy sex for the sake of sex?  You fucking rock.  You’re helping to tear down the walls of sexual oppression that have ruled Western civilization for far too long.  So rage on.  Shine on.

But, for now, I need to explore something else.  Something more. 

I’m super excited about all these changes and I have no idea what’s to come.  I have hopes, for sure.  But if things don’t work out the way I want, I am sure that something wonderful is waiting for me to arrive.

I have been waiting my whole life for ‘me’ to arrive.

And I can’t wait until all this turmoil that I’ve created in my wake calms.

It’s going to be a good, good life.

As always, thanks, Sean!

Kristine W’s Latest, ‘So Close To Me’, at #21!

Kristine W’s latest single, ‘So Close To Me’, moved to #21 on Billboard’s Club Play/Dance Chart last Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), after having bowed at #39 as the Hot Shot Debut on that chart the week before.

‘So Close To Me’ is the second single off her 2012 release, ‘New & Number Ones’.  

The first, ‘Everything That I Got’ peaked at #4 on Billboard’s Club Play/Dance Chart last year.  

Will ‘So Close To Me’ top that?

When I first heard ‘So Close To Me’, I sort of dismissed it as filler, but with the new remixes out I’m starting to feel where Ms. W is coming from.  

It’s hella fun on the dance floor.  So check it out below and then visit her website to check out all the other music she has available for purchase.

Kristine currently has had 16 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart and has more consecutive number one dance hits than Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson.

In 2010, Kristine W was voted by Billboard Magazine as ‘Dance Artist of the Decade’, behind Madonna and Beyoncé!

Kristine is a huge supporter of gay rights and equality for all.  The lady works hard and puts on a hell of a show.  If you ever have the opportunity to go see her in concert - do it!  

Support those who support us!

Check out her latest below: