by JMazzolaa

Lots of fun, boobies everywhere, imaginative costumes, more trannies than you can shake a stick at, and a sizable contingent of BP-oil spill-related costumes, as was to be expected.

by Bob Jagendorf

I took a small video of the proceedings, near the end.. my apologies for the horrible angle, I was holding the camera up above my head and couldn’t really see what I was shooting at, alas.

And here’s the stuff from the Zoo:

Not my poached eggs, mine were prettier, but screw it. I ate mine before I could snap a pic.

Victory! My faith in my cooking skills is restored. To celebrate, we’ll be doing housework and laundry, and if time permits, going to the Renegade Crafts Fair in Brooklyn. Keep an eye out for that!

Crafty!

Yes, that’s right. I, with all my puertorican heritage and vaunted cooking skills, was left feeling empty, drained, hopeless, by these little green monsters. Jo shows up at the apartment this afternoon, a big smile on her face, that twinkle in her eye that says ‘I brought you something special!’, and soon I see them there: plantains. I’d never really cooked with them before, but lots of people do, I had a cookbook full of puertorican recipes, and, really, how hard could it be to make mofongo?

That was my first mistake: underestimating my opponents. My second one was not slicing them diagonally: this was my first time, the cookbook said to slice them diagonally, but I forgot to, and, really, how much of a difference could it make, right? … right. 15 minutes later, after being fried in 350 degree oil (maybe I should have stuck to 300 degrees?), I had a whole bunch of tough-skinned, fried plantain chunks. No big deal. I was going to mash them anyway, with some oil and garlic and bacon and.. ooh, what’s this?

Mistake Number 3. I tried a bit of it on my finger, and while it was hot, I had no idea that its power was so great: 3 drops. 3 drops is all it took to render 3 plantain’s worth of mofongo nearly inedible. Holy crap is this stuff powerful. The heat gets into your mouth and refuses to leave, and the lightest touch spreads and infects an arbitrarily large amount of food. 3 drops, into my dry, too-cooked, un-mashable mofongo, and I needed a glass of milk to quell the heat.

Then again, calling the end result mofongo is being generous: Instead of a mash of plantain, spongy and sticky and delicious, what I has was a series of dry, mashed plantain flakes, too spicy to eat, too dry to enjoy… Gah. But it’s not over, not by a long shot. There’s two plantains left.. and they will be turned into something edible tomorrow. This I swear.

No longer. My main fear was my health: while it’s currently under control, I don’t know if or when out could get worse. But I’m done hiding. There are programs, services, things I can sign up to for free, that will help me not be much of a burden while I hunt down a job, and I’m tired of being too proud to beg. So this weekend I’m stepping out. Going to talk to my boss, explain that I’m leaving, and work something out with him. And hopefully by the end of next month, this little adventure will have begun in earnest.

Personal Effects: Dark Art Signed Copy Unboxing

Originally uploaded by Katsushiro

My signed copy of Personal Effects: Dark Art, the new supernatural thriller from one of my favorite authors, J.C. Hutchins. I won the signed edition during a contest to help promote the book, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Now, my copy of the book has finally arrived, and I couldn’t help myself. Go see the full Photoset over on Flickr.

“Hey, baby, what’s yo name?”, the greasy little snot says.

I sneer at him. “None of your business.”, I reply, turning my body a bit so he’s talking to my shoulder now.

“Ow! Hey, baby, you don’t gotta be so cold! Hey, hey, what’s yo sign? I bet you’re like a Libra or somethin’, right? Am I right?”", the kid says, eyeing me up and down hungrily.

“My sign? Read it loud and clear, jerk, it’s STOP.”, I say, and turn my back completely to him.

“Oooh! You fiesty! Baby, you an’ me, we gonna hav ourselves a good time. You stay right there, lemme get us some wine, and I’ll be right back, a’ight?”, he says, and somehow interprets my cold silence as a yes. They always do.

I’m sitting there, wondering if I should just try and get the hell out of the club, when I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You know those moments when you suddenly just know someone’s standing right behind you, watching you? I shivered a bit, and then slowly, began to turn to see who was there.

“WHAT YO INTERESTS ARE?!”, the great beast behind me bellows, nearly knocking me off my barstool. I gape at it.. no, him. For now I can see it’s not some nightmare monster, but a man, though, certainly, a truly massive hulk of a man. Dressed in black, such is his mass that all the light in the room seems to bend in towards him, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I opened my mouth to reply.. I don’t know what I would have said, I barely understood his question. Maybe I was going to ask him to repeat it? Either way, I didn’t get the chance to say anything more, as the great beast opened its mouth again to speak.

“WHO YOU BE WITH?”, comes the question, and I can’t help but squirm a little in my seat, wondering how such a massive man managed to creep up behind me.

“N-no one..”, I stammer, feeling the need to at least try and answer one of his questions, thinking perhaps if I satisfy his child-like curiousity, he will leave me alone. Unfortunately, my answer only served to encourage him.

“THINGS THAT MAKE YOU SMILE!”, he bellows, an idiot grin splitting his huge head nearly in two, and I can see the hunger in his beady little eyes. I instinctively move away, but there’s nowhere for me to run, nowhere to turn, his girth such that all by himself, he’s covering every possible escape route I might have had.

“WHAT NUMBERS TO DIAL?”, the hulk before me shouts, a quizzical lilt added to the deep bass tones that emanate from his gaping maw. At least, for this, I was ready. I tried to smile, and began to scribble a number onto a napkin. Fake, of course. I handed him the napkin, and the creature’s joy was obvious and immediate. He suddenly burst forth in a torrent of shouted, sing-song words.

“YOU GON’ BE HERE FOR A WHILE? YOU GO CALL YO’ CREW, I GO CALL MY CREW, WE CAN RENDEZVOUS AT THE BAR AROUND TWO.”, he says, and I just nod and smile. Nod and smile. Must not let him see the fear in my eyes.

Apparently satisfied by this, the man slowly turns his massive bulk, that sing-song voice continuing to utter nonsense words, as I just sat there, shivering, trying to comprehend what had just happened. As he made his way out the doors, I caught his voice rising above the din of the music, still speaking to no one in particular “… T-BONE STEAK, CHEESE, EGGS, AND WELCH’S GRAPE…”

“Hey baby! I brought the wine, let’s get this party started!”, comes an all too familiar nasal voice to my left suddenly. I don’t know why I even come to this club anymore.

I’m having no second thoughts: I’ve wanted to leave the island for a long, long time, and this really does seem to be the time to finally set out and do it. But there’s no shame in admitting that there’s a few little things I’ll miss, and foremost among those are my friends, and the nights spent in warm camraderie around a few pitchers of amazing sangria, sharing food and laughs. And I sit, and I wonder if I’ll find a place like that over there, a place where the owner greets you by name when you walk in the door, where they have your table waiting, and there’s your friends, and your first glass of sangria is on the house. I hope I do.. and I hope I can invite my friends, both the ones I have now, and the ones I’m yet to make, over for a few drinks, and a few laughs.

“May not look- may not look?”, I sputtered, indignation making my face flush red and my cheeks puff into a parody of my normal staid expression. “You don’t look a thing like Jesus!”

He winced at my words, blue eyes dropping down to the floor in shame. It filled me with a certain dark glee to know he was ashamed. He deserved it. But then something seemed to come over him, his face becoming very still, his hands balling into tight little fists.

“But you have to give me one thing.”, he muttered, voice so low it was barely above a whisper.

“Oh? And what in the world could that be?”, I scoffed, my lips twisting into a harsh sneer.

“You have to admit…”, he began, and raised his gaze to meet my own. When our eyes met, I was transfixed: I no longer saw the cut-rate Jesus-imitator who had dared charge me a hundred dollars to come entertain at my great-aunt’s birthday party. What stood before me was something far more than that, something older, and deeper. Something that tugged at memories from my long-forgotten youth.

“… admit… what?”, I stammered, taking a step back, suddenly nervous before this man, trying to find a place to hide from that piercing gaze. But there was nowhere to hide. Not for me.

“I talk like a gentleman!”, he shouted, and the force of his words nearly brought me to my knees. I tried to summon up my strenght, to somehow stand up to him, but in the face of his pure truth, I was as naked and weak as a newborn babe. It was true. I could not deny it. He talked like a gentleman.

Like I imagined.

When I was… young.