For Frying Out Loud Read online

So for all the progress, I still sometimes long to turn on the TV and see a grainy shot of a half-nekked gal with a Harley between her legs. I hope the networks still humor us once in awhile.

  January 2008

  OH COME ALL YE FRUITCAKES

  This holiday season took the cake (that which wasn’t in my mouth) for the most calorie-laden, liquor guzzling, refluxinducing stretch of bad gustatory behavior I have ever been a party to. Or to a party. Dozens of them.

  I’m not complaining. Rehoboth is such a geographically small spot and there are so many community events it’s possible to enjoy several in a day.

  Calculate a trio of buffets times two and a half weekend days, times four weekends in the season, and the magnitude of cookies, eggnog, red and green M&Ms, spiral hams, and Swedish meatballs I consumed is staggering. Don we now our big apparel.

  In our house, the holidays started with Hanukkah Matzoh Balls and potato latkes to launch the December bloat period. Fast away the old gas passes, fa la la la la, la la la la. On Thanksgiving weekend we bought a recumbent exercise bike, vowing to start our regimen immediately to keep pace with Christmas cookies.

  The first thing Bonnie did after plugging the thing into the wall was trip over it, breaking two toes. Exercise out, comfort food in.

  As for me, I view exercise like drinking – not something to be done alone. Bring on the figgy pudding.

  So there were cocktail parties, Wine tastings, Christmas dinners, and Harry & David goodies. See the grazing fool before us. Fa la la etc.

  And of all the wretched holiday excess I subjected myself to this season, a pair of events, like my thighs, loom large.

  One Sunday we enjoyed a fantastic brunch at a friend’s home with Mimosas at noon, Mimosas and entrees at 3:30, and more Mimosas well into the evening. Following this alcohol marathon, I’m proud to report no hangover at all from the eight hour champagne binge. I did however have a raging case of Acid Reflux from the f-ing orange juice. It’s a sad commentary about aging.

  A second memorable holiday event was the Apple Pie Throw Down. Not being a Food Network foodie, I figured we were going to throw apple pie down our throats, not unlike the rest of our seasonal meals.

  Turns out a Throw Down is a pie baking contest. At a party of about 25 people, four contestants took the challenge. As someone not domestically partnered with a baker, I was included among the judges.

  Lobbying us, Baker and the Sous Chefs performed a cheerleading routine. A second baker noted her rich familial history among pastry chefs. Still another bragged she hadn’t baked a pie in two decades (would that be humble pie?). The fourth claimed home field advantage.

  All to no avail, of course, as the pies had been whisked from their makers and labeled alphabetically for a blind taste test. Wine withstanding, some judges were blinder than others.

  To universal shock and awe, the winner was the person who had not had her paws in pie dough since 1988 and whose culinary repertoire consists of assembling field greens. In fact, there was suggestion of a vast right wing conspiracy, finally debunked, suggesting grocery store collaboration.

  Following the pie throwing came New Year’s Eve (O’er the fields we go, eating all the way) and more gluttony. Should old intentions be forgot and never brought to mind? Just how many Tums can a person take without calcifying? 10? 9? 8? 7?

  Happy New Year! Let’s drink a cup of Maalox please and sing of Auld Lang Syne.

  Bonnie and I resolved just about the same thing everyone else in town resolved: back to sensible food and drink consumption. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. We hope.

  And our vow was strengthened last week when were up in Philadelphia. Leaving an appointment, we stepped in front of a bank of elevators, pushed the DOWN button and waited. Soon, the wide doors opened to reveal several people already aboard. We stepped in.

  As the doors closed, a booming recorded voice warned: “The elevator is now full.”

  Now THAT was humiliating.

  I’ll get back to the stationary bike and lean cuisine after we get back from the cruise we are about to take. Of course, that’s right before Valentine’s Day, followed by the Chinese New Year buffet and then the Rehoboth Chocolate Festival and let’s face it, I should really have my jaw wired shut. The only Throw Down I should enter is if it’s my fork.

  Well, the season of excess is over. Thumpety Thump Thump o’er the bills we go.

  February 2008

  ANCHORS AWEIGH, IT’S GAY

  I do not work for Olivia (the all-women travel company) and this article is not being written at the behest of Olivia Cruises. In fact, it’s an article I would have bet my Schnauzers I’d never write.

  And that’s because I was stupid.

  All these years I wrongly thought that an all-gay cruise was great for red state closeted gals and others without the freedom to live like we do here in Gayberry RFD. Fun, yes, but Olivia cruises cost more than “regular” cruises to the same ports, since Olivia is the middle-womyn. I mega-stupidly dismissed it as a luxury I didn’t need.

  Wrong, The Earth is flat wrong. You can’t put a man on the moon wrong. George Bush wrong. That wrong.

  So why did I go? Fifty-two Rehoboth area women were already signed up and we got a last minute half-price deal, plus a discount for an obstructed view stateroom. “Do you mind a life boat blocking your view?” asked the sales rep. “Um, let’s see, the ocean this way, and 1800 women are the other way. I can see the ocean at home.”

  So from the minute I walked up the gangplank onto the gigunda ship docked in Ft. Lauderdale, I started learning just how criminally insane I had been.

  With Men’s Room signs covered with temporary letters marked Ladies, and the loudspeaker booming “Attention Women of Olivia,” the party commenced.

  Mandatory life boat drill, Mai Tai cocktails, unpacking. Half the ship dined early and saw kd lang in the theatre, while the other half of us saw Margaret Cho first and dined afterward. Margaret Cho was hilarious but over-the-edge filthy. I don’t know whether she would have been better before or after dinner. Both headliners dazzled and outshone the one entertainment I remember from a “regular” cruise – a man playing “Oklahoma” on a saw. No kidding.

  On that first night, we celebrated Olivia’s 35th Anniversary with a deck party. My eyes just drank it in – young hotties, older hotties, black, white, brown, abled, disabled, thin, not thin, singles, couples, drinkers, non-drinkers and a whole lotta Rehobos. I loved the music, laughing and sights – two women dancing in wheelchairs, lovers looking out to sea, partners rocking the dance floor, singles meeting and greeting, waaay gay waiters delivering Piña Coladas, inked and pierced dyklets holding hands and middle-aged mamas stealing Anne Murray kisses in the moonlight.

  I don’t know what hit me, but it was like walking into a ‘70s gay bar for the first time or seeing a hundred thousand revelers at my first pride march. Steeped in community, feeling freer than ever, I finally experienced what it must feel like to be straight in a straight world. On the Holland American Zuiderdam, radar was gaydar and the whole damn world was the L word.

  The next morning, a day at sea, sealed the deal. Comics Kate Clinton and Karen Williams hosted a film about the 35 years of Olivia – not coincidentally, the history of the entire women’s movement. We laughed, cheered, met the staff, heard from entertainers Cris Williamson and Holly Near, and applauded for Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer who took on the military after they asked and she told.

  Bonnie, also a long-time skeptic, hopefully clutched her door prize ticket for the two-for-one cruises they would be giving away.

  There were art auctions, spa treatments, hot tubs, casino madness, singles parties, couples massage, the requisite newly-wed, oldy-wed games, rainbow trivia in the lounge, barbecues on the deck and food, food, food, drink, drink, drink.

  Sometimes we dined with our posse, sometimes with folks who started out as strangers. Every elevator ride, cluster of women in a shop, or folks in rows in front or behind us at the thea
tre provided “Where you from? What do you do?” opportunities. Everybody smiled. Everybody had restless mouth syndrome.

  While most of the fun took place on board, there were Caribbean ports.

  Grand Turk is a small island with a lot of jewelry stores for tourists. But Bonnie convinced me to ride a dune buggy. I’ve been out of the closet over thirty years but that day I actually earned my dyke card. Bonnie (driving) and I (in my helmet and visor) took off speeding in the open frame buggy. Did I mention rain? We rode through puddles and ruts, getting splattered and speckled with clots of mud the size of chicken fingers. After two hours I looked like a Jackson Pollock canvas.

  In Tortola we took a ferry to another island, Virgin Gorda, where we went swimming amid glorious boulders, caves, and rock formations. The surf was so rough (how rough was it?) that on my first foray into the ocean I got sucked up and surfed back onto the beach at 50 mph, flat on my ass. Of course, being a lesbian group, girls came shouting. “I’m a nurse! I’m a nurse, I’m a nurse!”

  None needed. Even the injured pride was fun. And the water was paint chip blue.

  We sampled legendary Pain Killer shots at Pusser’s Saloon with a couple of young gals we met, for an evening of splendid cross-generational story swapping. Luckily, the ship’s crew lined the way back to the boat, so we didn’t stagger off the pier.

  What would a gay cruise be without a theme night? Prior to launch our Rehoboth contingent learned of the Mad Hatter Party. Okay, we’d all need matching hats with a Rehoboth-like theme and which packed easily. One of us found perfectly silly, flat-packable fish hats. We also had matching t-shirts announcing Women of Rehoboth on the front and “what happens on the cruise, stays on the cruise” on the back. While I am telling tales here, my lips are sealed with the really juicy stuff.

  Suffice it to say, that the 1746 other women on the boat took notice of the women of Rehoboth and they all now know of the fantastic gay resort on the Delaware coast. We posed for a group photo out on deck one evening and did a 54-woman strong fish-hatted conga line in the disco on Mad Hatter Night.

  I hated to dock back in Florida. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. We would have gotten our money’s worth at more than twice the price. Olivia is in the hospitality business and they do it well. So there. I was so very wrong.

  And if you call Olivia and book a cruise, be sure to bring Visine. There’s only so much eye candy you can take without back up.

  March 2008

  SHREDDING SOME LIGHT ON IT

  I want to talk about something nobody ever talks about in public. And it’s a dark, messy and dangerous place.

  Get your mind out of the gutter.

  I’m talking about your personal document shredder.

  Right now, mine is upside down, unplugged and glaring at me with an unwanted credit card solicitation stuck in its teeth. I hate my shredder.

  Remember the days when you’d get mail, read it and throw it away? So simple, so Twentieth Century.

  Now that the credit pooh-bahs have convinced us that every unshredded missive is an open invitation to identity thief, I have become a slave to my shredder. I fight with it. I shriek at it. I have been known to wish it was dead. When my first shredder actually died, I had Jewish guilt.

  It wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, when I first took up shredding, I loved my shredder. What fun it was watching unwanted bank statements and old tax returns disappear into the maw to become confetti.

  It was pretty easy, too. Three piles: file, shred, toss.

  Now it’s file, shred, toss, recycle. If the dollar sinks any lower it will be file, shred, toss, recycle or save for toilet paper.

  How did this happen?

  We heard about shredders for years, with our national security agencies using them to protect covert operations and corporate accounting firms using them to hide major fraud. Shredders let them get away with murder, both literally and figuratively.

  But a shredder at home? What for?

  Then came the credit police, along with cable newscasters eager to fill up that 24-hour news cycle, warning of terrifying identity theft tales. They convinced us that bypassing the shredder with a single envelope with our names, never mind an actual invoice sporting an account number, means you might as well be selling your identity on eBay.

  So I got into shredding. My latest shredder (that I’ve owned the same number of shredders in my lifetime as I have owned coffee pots is scary) is a Professional, Heavy Duty, Cross Cut Paper Shredder with auto reverse, steel gear construction and the ability to destroy CDs and Credit Cards. I so wish I had destroyed the credit cards before I abused them.

  As for the destruction of CDs, I have to admit great pleasure in trying out the machine with old Barry Manilow albums. I shred the songs the whole world sings.

  But the truth is, it’s tricky business this shredding. Last week I accidentally sent a CD through the paper slot and the shredder ground to a halt like a politician caught with a call girl. I spent the better part of that afternoon extracting CD shards from the shredder with a tweezers.

  I’d like to calculate how many hours a week I spend shredding bank statements, credit reports, charge receipts, insurance forms and old checks. And we can’t forget about all the pre-approved credit card applications with their tempting pre-approved checks.

  Those damn things just beg to be stolen so some low life can charge you for a trip to Vegas. I know that what happens in Vegas stays there, but I don’t want it to be my credit rating. I’m telling you, worrying about this stuff can turn you into a paranoid nut job wanting to cancel all your credit cards, close your savings accounts and start hiding your money in tomato cans in the back yard.

  Remember the promise of a paperless society? This isn’t it, unless we’ve traded an eight-and-a-half by eleven society for confetti world. And speaking of tiny speckles of paper, yesterday, I failed to put the plastic storage bucket back into the shredder properly and came home to discover two sheepish Schnauzers and a den floor that looked like a parade route after the Red Sox won the pennant.

  So now I’m looking at my upended, constipated shredder, wondering if I have to purchase yet another anti-identity theft device. By the way, my 1997 coffee pot is still brewing just fine.

  I go online and read the ads for shredders. I can choose from The Shredmaster, Powershred Plus, Destroyit Heavy-Duty, Intimus (what does it shred, Hustler and condoms?), and my personal favorite, Intellishred. If it were truly intelligent it would have figured out a different way to deter dumpster divers by now. They also offer machines with child locks, which, I assume, double as Schnauzer locks.

  I have learned that the average heavy-duty shredder feeds 26 - 30 sheets at a time at 30 feet per minute. I imagine that will be useful to clean up after the Bush Administration. And I loved the ad for a continuous shredding heavy duty model for nonstop shredding 24-hours a day. What kind of business needs round the clock shredding now that Enron is gone?

  But here’s the really frightening truth about protecting your identity and the sanctity of garbage: there has now been a documented rash of scams taking money from frightened consumers for Identity Fraud Protection.

  It’s probable that some of the shady characters who dove in dumpsters to steal identities in the first place may now be going door-to-door selling phony protection against such despicable acts. Unscrupulous companies are all over cyberspace selling identity theft protection for a mere $14.99 per month.

  These services, with names like Trusted I.D., Privacy Protector and LifeLock (heck, I’d subscribe to Jaw Lock if they would stop sales calls at dinner time) are lurking everywhere, ready to sell us our privacy back.

  Well I don’t want it. Take my identity, please. I’ll forward the bills.

  As for replacing my shredder, the jury is still out. After all, every day I send out dozens of pieces of correspondence with name and address all over them, even as I spend time feeding the shredder with similar information.

  Face it. It doesn�
��t make a shred of sense.

  April 2008

  GET YOUR HISTORY STRAIGHT AND YOUR NIGHTLIFE GAY

  I’ve discovered Philadelphia.

  Until recently, when I thought of Philadelphia it was all about cream cheese. No longer.

  I’ve returned from an immersion tour that included the best food experience of my life (and that’s going some), watching rainbow flags go up literally and figuratively, and being asked the quintessential “Provolone or Cheese Whiz?” It doesn’t get much better than that.

  On the pretense that lofty topics like history and culture were tour highlights, we’ll start with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist Frida Kahlo’s birth, there is a massive exhibit of her most important self-portraits and still lifes. Known for painting herself with that alarming unibrow and mustachioed upper lip, Kahlo was actually more attractive than her self-portraits – as noted in the fabulous photos from her personal albums along with the exhibit.

  If you can’t get there to see it in the next month or so, rent the film Frida, starring Salma Hayek – not only is there an unforgettable scene where Frida tangos with Ashley Judd, but you get a great look at Frida’s canvasses, too.

  Bonnie and I did not jog up the museum steps humming the theme from Rocky, but you knew that.

  For history, I checked out Independence Hall. The room is tiny, with tinier windows. And July 4th, 1776 was reportedly a scorcher. Let’s face it, our forefathers didn’t wear cargo shorts and crocs. John Hancock and the others may have scribbled their john hancocks on the parchment just to flee the sauna.

  Over at the new Constitution Center I walked among the lifesize bronzes of the document signers and a cerebral film exhibit charting our nation’s quest for equality for all. I started to nurture a bad attitude, figuring that the equality quest would exclude LGBT Americans. To the curator’s credit, the march toward gay equality is noted and given weight, even if there is no resolution yet. I hope I get back in my lifetime for the last reel.