7:30 on a Friday

I've reached that point of the day where yes, I'm physically at my desk but I am in now way doing any kind of work.

Last night was an mixed bag. I stayed at work late then went directly to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant which from the street looked like Off-Track Betting but housed a banquet room in the back with wood-paneled walls and Ukrainian women serving drinks and kielbasa (of which I ordered a plate happily). I was there for cover Linda Simpson's Bingo-ski. I sometimes forget that Linda is a drag queen because she speaks so genuinely as a bingo hostess and with this down-home mid-Western accent that it sounds like somebody's Aunt Margey is up there at some points. What's hysterical is how she's able to get people in the audience literally standing on their chairs in excitement over a pink snuggie or a toilet-paper dolly.

There were no seats available in the actual room so I mixed, mingled, greeted and got some photos then grabbed a table solo for food. The girl brought over a basket of contraband carbs that I tore into like I hadn't eaten in weeks. The bread was stale and I was still shoving it in my mouth as she came to clear my plates and give me the bill. I guess I need to be a little more lax on that or one day my roommates are going to come home to me sitting on the couch surrounded by empty Pillsbury dough containers and cinnabon frosting all over my face...

Heading uptown, I headed to the Hudson Hotel for the Keith Haring by Patricia Fields Collection afterparty which was being held in their new basement space. I like the upstairs because it reminds me of a music video set (and was where Lady Gaga had her interview with Barbara Walters I believe) but the downstairs was a stark opposite in all black and looking more like a megaclub. The neon lights and large installations made it very unique and felt more like an open version of Happy Valley. I met Matt there (a boy I met on Tuesday at the Stonewall Quarter Share recruiting event and subsequently went on a date with that night) and we hung there for a while then walked down to the Renaissance Diner for tea. The MTA gods decided to transpire against me and it took me until after 4am to get home but I slept rather soundly.

Waking up later than I had planned, I rushed to get my write-ups finished which proved to be an uphill battle as my slow Internet seemed to have shifted to reverse overnight and it took me nearly 2 hours to get my posts uploaded correctly. Alas, I sit here at job #1 late before heading to Splash for the Escort of the Year pageant. The dichotomy this job at Next creates is really interesting, I'll be at the HRC Gala one night and a bingo game in an EV restaurant the next, sometimes those two polar opposites in the same night. Those, of course, are still more entertaining than my banal day job but I prefer to have the means of comparison or I feel I'd get very jaded, very fast with Next.

I'm hoping to sort of streamline this blog in the future so it's less of an overview of the day prior and speaks more personally, but that will come in time.

180 Degrees

I’m sure that I should write some long expositional piece about why I haven’t posted in over 1.5 years and what I’m up to but the skinny is that I’m working as the asst. editor of Next Magazine by night and at my old desk job by day. I’m going to segue this blog into the random thoughts I have that don’t fit into the goddamn 140 character limit on my Facebook status and perhaps develop a following (yea, right Jackie). Today’s news of the death of designing Alexander McQueen sent the fb status world into a tizzy which I wanted to talk about:

I feel the grief-mongering in the United States over the past year has almost reached the fevered pitch of the fear-mongering that took place post-9/11. Watching people mourn over the passing of someone they most likely did not know nor comprehend beyond the Bad Romance video is both entertaining & frightening as it seems to be becoming a trend. Day like this make me glad I don’t have cable. I can only imagine what exploits E! is rolling out.

I'm not even saying this as a reflection on McQueen himself, it's just really odd how this sort of thing snowballs.

I have a girlfriend of mine who is bbm-ing me about it and she's saying:
"I heard he might have hung himself. See, ya never know!"
Which prompted me to ask:
"Ya never know what? People die. Either naturally, via homicide or they kill themselves."

She responds by telling me how he would have had a show in a few weeks and instead now he's dead. It feels so TMZ, so E! True Hollywood Story. The only way she would even know who he was or that he had an upcoming show was because that was listed in all of the reports of his apparent suicide.

I understand that it's a part of the sensationalizing our media does, but the regurgitation of that information to justify mourning in Facebook statuses just feels really phony.