I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together

Harvey Korman has passed away. He was 81.

I was just thinking of him, earlier this week, as I always do whenever I see a flagpole.

He had been asked in an interview, once, if he used Viagra.

"No," he replied. "That would be like putting a new flagpole in front of a condemned building."

Thank you for literally decades of laughter, Mr. Korman.

Gotta Go-Gotta Go-Gotta Go Right Now

I used to wet the bed.

It tapered off as I got older, but I was still wetting the bed now and then by the time I was 10-years-old.

As much as I've complained about my parents making me feel inferior about other things, usually school grades, I have to give them full credit for never once making me feel bad during all my years of bed-wetting.

My youngest brother was also a bed-wetter, beyond the age of ten, into his junior high school years, I think. I had already moved out of my parents' house by the time he was 11-years-old. It was during that time my parents bought a device with an alarm to try to help my brother. The alarm would go off when the sensors, placed underneath the bed sheets, would get wet.

I don't think it ended up helping my brother, but bed-wetting wasn't too much of a problem for him, either. He managed to keep dry all night whenever spending the night at a friend's house or when he went away to church camp.

I like to consume vast amounts of liquid. It hydrates the skin, it helps digestion, and it curbs appetite. Ideally, I'll have two cups of water when I first wake up, to chase down my multi-vitamin. Then I'll have a serving of milk, half regular and half chocolate soy. Then I'll have my morning coffee to wake up. That's six cups of liquid before my day even starts.

That's only on days off, though, when I can stay close to a bathroom. I've had to cut down to four cups of liquid in the morning since I've started working full time. I'll have water or milk, but not both, before having coffee. My scooter ride into work takes about thirty-five minutes. I've learned the hard way that I can last for that half hour or so on four cups but not six.

I'll drink water and tea after dinner, and before bedtime, too. I will get up two or three times in the middle of the night, usually. How long will I have that ability, though? How many years do I have left before I have to either decrease my liquid intake or start wearing Depends? Or both?

My scooter is in the shop this week, waiting for a new tire to be delivered so it can replace the flat. It takes ninety minutes or more for me to get to work by bus and train. That's not including the walking time to the bus stop and from the train station. I wait until I get to my desk to start pounding H2O and coffee.
While my scooter has been in the shop, I have not been drinking any liquid at home in the four hours between waking up and arriving at work.

No way am I taking any chances!

Vocabulary Lesson

I used to work for an entertainment company on weekends, dancing at parties in Beverly Hills. In addition to performing choreographed numbers, our main duty was to ask guests of the party to dance with us, to get them up on the dance floor and help get the party going. Easy-cheesy work, good pay, and usually we were served the same food as the guests.

"Bloussant your shirt," Chris told me one night as we were backstage getting dressed for the conga number. Chris was our choreographer, director, and stage manager for these party gigs.

"What?" I asked him. I had my shiny, yellow conga shirt rammed ruler-straight down the front of my pants.

"Bloussant your shirt," he repeated.

"What?" I asked again.

"Pull your f#@*ing shirt out a little!"

Oh. That I understood.

I think about that moment and laugh every time I see the commercial for the breast enlargement product with the same name.

Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?

Holy crap!

Univeral Studios just opened up a new Simpsons Ride, both in Orlando, Florida, and here in California.

I just love when anything 2D and cartoony is brought to three dimensional life (such as the new Speed Racer movie)!

For more info about the Simpsons Ride go here.

Bittersweet

This past weekend I drove out to Palm Desert to see a dinner theater revue. There were reasons not to go, including the fact that I do not own a car, right now, and a round trip of over two hundred miles is not something I wanted to do on my scooter.

Domestic Partner kindly allowed me to borrow his car for the evening, which I was grateful for because there were reasons to go, too. The first reason: the show was performed right in my Aunt Pat's retirement community. She loves live theater as much as I do, and even volunteers as an usher at a local theatre. Aunt Pat and I will spend small fortunes on each other for good seats when a national tour comes through Los Angeles.

This was not traditional dinner theater in the sense that the audience watches a performance of a play or well known musical. This was a cabaret type performance, or a musical revue, in which the singers and dancers are also the serving staff. It is a specific style of dinner theater that the Young Americans had done for many years, a while back, here in Southern California.

The second reason: it is also the same style of dinner theater that I had done at Tibbie's Music Hall in Huntington Beach. It was my first paid gig as a performer, shortly after being fired from Disneyland almost twenty years ago. So, I was anxious to relive some good memories by attending this performance.

My main reason for wanting to go, I must confess, was that the entire production was directed and put together by an ex-boyfriend, Mr. Heartbreaker. I had worked with Mr. Heartbreaker in Japan and discovered that he has an absolute gift for arranging music, both instrumentally and vocally. During our brief time together as a couple, it was sheer joy to be in one of his vocal groups and sing four part and even six part harmonies. His talent and genius made me fall harder for him than I already had.

This was the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. As long as there was music--and with him, that was practically guaranteed--I felt that we would always be happy together. We were together for only a short amount of time, much shorter than I would have liked. After leaving Japan, he continued on with his music, as did my feelings for him.

So, I was anxious to attend this show. A small, permanent part of me will always carry the torch for Mr. Heartbreaker, for the rest of my life, even if we are not meant to be together. It only took about a decade or so for me to accept that fact and learn to live with it, peacefully.

Domestic Partner knows about Mr. Heartbreaker. I give Domestic Partner extra points for being secure enough to let me borrow his car for the purpose of seeing an ex-boyfriend's show.

Typically, I felt I understood all of the sad love songs more acutely after being dumped by Mr. Heartbreaker all those years ago. I made a two hour mix tape for him, then, full of all the torch songs that expressed my sadness and continuing yearning for him. I ended up not giving the tape to him. Instead, I crushed it under my heaviest work boots, attempting to symbolically pulverize the lingering heartache away.

I couldn't even stay friends with Mr. Heartbreaker, at first. It hurt too much every time I saw him with someone new. It was a few months after parting ways with him that I met Domestic Partner. It was Domestic Partner that helped me to truly move on, and I will always be grateful to him for that.

A dozen years later, the same torch songs still make me think of Mr. Heartbreaker. Fortunately, I can think of him in a more peaceful way, now. One of the saddest parts of my life is over and done, and I am immensely relieved. I can only pray that I will never feel that heartbroken again.

The show was good. It was full of upbeat numbers and the energy of the youthful, talented performers. It took me back to my own dinner theater days as I had anticipated. I was not disappointed. The show also included some of the very same songs that make me think of Mr. Heartbreaker: 'On My Own'(Les Miserables), 'For Good' (Wicked), and 'Touch Me in the Morning' (Diana Ross):

"We don't have tomorrow
But we had yesterday . . . Let's just be glad for the time together."

From the darkness of the audience, I watched Mr. Heartbreaker playing the keyboard among the other musicians while the sad love songs were being sung, admiring and adoring him as much as I had when I first met him. These were his musical arrangements and vocal harmonies I was hearing once again. It was his choreography and staging we were all watching.

"You son of a bitch," the Gwen Verdon-esque character says to the Bob Fosse-esque character in the film, "All That Jazz," after watching a workshop rehearsal of his genius choreography. Despite being divorced from him, and despite his former mistreatment of her, she still loves him, mostly because he is amazingly talented.

Mr. Heartbreaker is not a son of a bitch, much as I may have wanted to think of him that way at one time. But he is amazingly talented, and that small, permanent part of me will always love him as I had told him so many years ago.

I still fantasize about the could've-beens, now and then.

Celebrity Ching-Chong

Deb was my idol. For years she was the darling of East West Players, "the nation's premier Asian American theatre organization" in Los Angeles. So, imagine my thrill when such a well-established performer accepted me under her sisterly wing in my first production with the 99-seat theater, more than a decade ago. She is also half-Japanese, like me, so we had an almost immediate bond.

We had both been cast in "Cabaret" at EWP, a production with a few gender-bending elements. Deb had been cast as the MC and I was one of two boys cast as Kit Kat girls. In our mutual delight of each other we were like gremlins hopped up on Pixie Stix every night, both on stage and off. One of her most frequent sayings was, "I just love us," usually said after a fit of giggles.

The director of the show, Mr. David Galligan, had recruited some of the Cabaret cast members for one of his annual AIDS benefits, P.A.W.S. (Pets Are Wonderful Support).
Dressed in a gorilla costume, I was paired up with Charlotte Rae, AKA Mrs. Garrett, for her solo number. Mr. Galligan introduced us to Miss Rae in rehearsal, explaining that we were some of the cast members from the show he was directing at East West Players.

"David," she gently chided, "why didn't you cast me in that show? I could play . . . "

She didn't finish her sentence. Instead, she used her index fingers to pull up the corners of her eyes. She stopped when she noticed the silent stare of daggers coming from Deb.

"I can't believe it," Deb said out in the hallway, later. "I just got ching-chonged by Mrs. Garrett!"

I just love her. Deb, that is.

Put a Hat On!

I had taken more than five years of Spanish in school, from the eighth grade to my first year in college.

I learned more Spanish--actual Spanish used in real conversations--when waiting tables for so many years, from my Spanish speaking coworkers.

"Por favor, mantenga sus piernas cerradas," which means 'Please keep your legs closed.' You never know when that's going to come in handy.

Today, I learned that the Spanish slang for condom is "sombrero."

Well, it looks like a little hat, at first, when you put it on, before rolling it all the way down.