while you were out

 The weather finally caught up with us and the seasons first hard freeze hit, so Neil went out and picked huge bouquets of flowers before.

 Dinners are getting a little mixed up, this was ..... Thursday?

 Koda and his pal Toebie

 I just love this photo, love the colors

 They seem to make Toebie happy too

Koda called and got them a pizza.. just a chill day.

The Greatest Victory ever in the history of sport.

24 -20

If a tree falls in the forrest, and I do not blog about it... did it really even fall ?

Just damn!  So, this is what all of you do all day... IT MAKES YOU TIRED.

I did get some pumpkins done

I have for the last couple of days wandered off the reservation and have been actually doing stuff and things, with MORE TO COME. So, I have not been at my own computer for a while.. and not sure when I will have the chance for some blogging over the next few. Everything is fine, better than fine, things are good, I have just been that " B " word.
Plenty of photos being taken... I will update you all , asap. I know you miss your temple of moopah.

Happy Halloween

The Woman Who Would Be Queen

Bye-Bye Primogeniture

The process has been started to allow the first born child of the British Sovereign to become the next King/Queen, not just the male ones. Meaning we would be looking at a Princess of Wales these days....

From The the UK Guardian : " Commonwealth leaders will pledge to amend legislation dating back to the 17th century to allow daughters of the monarch to take precedence over younger sons in the line of succession.David Cameron will hail the agreement of the 16 Queen's realms, the Commonwealth countries where the Queen serves as head of state, to amend "outdated" rules that also prevent a potential monarch from marrying a Catholic. 
The prime minister will introduce legislation in Britain before the next general election to ensure that the changes will apply to any children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Officials say the changes will apply even if a child is born before the new legislation is passed.

Speaking before the opening of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Perth, where the agreement will be sealed, Cameron said: "These rules are outdated and need to change."
In a meeting in Perth this morning, to be chaired by the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, the leaders of the 16 Queen's realms will agree to amend rules that currently say"


Downing Street has noted what would have happened if the rules had been different at key moments:

• Margaret Tudor would have succeeded Henry VII in 1509, denying the throne to her younger brother, who became Henry VIII. That raises the prospect that Henry VIII would not have been responsible for the greatest example of Euroscepticism: the break with Rome in 1533.
• Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen of Bohemia, would have succeeded her father James I in 1625 instead of Charles I. The civil war, in which Charles was executed, might have been avoided.
• Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Victoria, would have succeeded in January 1901, rather than Edward VII. The new queen would have died less than seven months later, handing the throne to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Britain would have been ruled by the German emperor during the first world war.

I gave up, you did too.....

After the gay nightmare that was last night's Project Runway, I flipped over to watch the end of the WS , only to see TEXAS leading late late in the paid for game. Fear that I would have to see celebrating Bushs I just clicked right over to the news or something... bad Kyle.
The Cards came back with a walk off HR in the bottom of the 11th that led to some late night hoopla in St.Louis.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween

We are not at all a part of this, a coastal storm.. or at least hugging the coast, there was snow to the South of us last night, but nothing here. That pink swatch on the map is up to a foot of heavy wet snow, with a whole lot of leaves left on trees.... this is not going to be pretty.

walking in a....

This is not Mendon!

It's south of us , down in the hills/mountains around the Finger Lakes. The local ski area got several slushy inches. Nothing but a cold icky rain here. JMG is reporting that NYC is looking at some sticky wet snow this weekend. 

BOO!

HAPPY DIWALI

candles, fireworks and sweets!

ILOVEINDIA.COM

and

HUFFPO

Barack Obama  bows to Sri Narayanachar Digalakote, Hindu Priest from the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Maryland, after lighting an oil lamp in observance of Diwali

In Nepal the festival of Diwali is known as Tihar. On the second day of Tihar, dogs are honored and blessed. In this photo, Nepalese policemen pose with their dogs after applying vermillion to their foreheads and placing marigold garlands around their necks

Happy Birthday, HILLARY !!!

I in no way regret my dip into the baptismal font of Kool Aid that I took three years ago. If you are having a dull day, you can dig back into this blog and find the exact date. But that does not mean we can't from time to time stick our toe in the river  of what if. To quote the great Birnbach " they were the type of people that cried into their third martini when thinking of Adlai Stevenson " .

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY  Madam Secretary !!

THIRTY PLUS YEARS OF HILLARY 

From HUFFPO.

high point

I wish there was smellavision or that I was just a better writer.
I want you to know this perfect fall smell that we had today. This was the first truly CRISP day we have had. The rain from yesterday swept east, and this new fresh clean air sweeping in. When you breath , the air goes higher in your nasal cavity... hitting different places, spreading the smell around. Not a bogged down summer smell rooted in humidity, but the cleanliness of dry pre Winter air.
It all comes to an end soon.... and in one of these photos, Koda is chasing a ghost...

It's the little things you do together, Do together, Do together, That make perfect relationships.

or as my pal Tommy down in B'ham put it :

 Politics by Salvador Dali.

A couple of videos for you, I posted them on the facebook, but do not want them on my blog, so we are going to go with links.

Watch, then we will discuss.

#1

One of the top ten ( top five ) strangest/weirdest

campaign ads you will ever see. From Herman Cain

A wtf for the record books. So much..... #1 of #1.. there is no CAIN campaign. No real organazation that .. one would think that a serious canidate would need in Iowa, New hampshire and South Carolina. So, who is this Willy Loman guy in the ad and what the hell is up with the Mad Men drag  ? From Huffpo : "The Buffalo Beast's Ian Murphy speculates that Block, who "was, until recently, the Wisconsin State Director of Americans for Prosperity," is just giving a shout out to AFP's generous funders from the tobacco industry. Cain has also worked closely with cigarette manufacturers in the past. As the head of the National Restaurant Association, he lobbied against higher cigarette taxes and smoking bans in restaurants."

So its like some weird shout out to Phillip Morris that " we have got your back" ??? A known puppet of the Koch Machine as his lead person and spokes head ? This HAS to be from The Onion, right? But its not.. it is the state of the state of GOP politics in Late October 2011... ONE year out..

#2

From the King of Blood Diamonds

and serious all out Loony Tune,

Pat Robertson we get this:

THE RIGHT IS WRONG

or up is down.. black is white,.. something weird.

Over the years, Pat Robertson of 700 Club fame, has come out with some of the most cringe worthy, batshit crazy , incendiary statements EVER. Gays are from the devil, spaceships, you name it, this man has taken it, put a coat of crazy paint on it and made it his own. And now , in the most Pot/Kettle moment in recent US political history, Pat Robertson is calling out the 2011 class of GOP wanna bes as too extreme....

you have it coming....

From the Huffington Post

HOW TO SPEAK REPUBLICAN

( read it )

John Grant - I wanna go to marz (on Later...)

first comes love, then comes marriage

The one where Kyle and Neil leave their bubble and go downtown.

I've known about this little movie for a while, as it zigged and zagged its way from gay movie festival to gay movie festival, finally making it to the art house here in ROCHESTER, The Little Theater. Our much closer more mainstream  dollar popcorn Wednesday theater is pretty good about getting your art house movie, but I did not want to risk missing this one.

They have home made treats as well as popcorn, and little tiny 1940's butt sized seats. Small stage in front of the screen.. ATL folks think Garden Hills.

Andrew Haigh's 

WEEKEND

Love in the time of .....post gay England. This movie is digging into my brain... I can't shake it. It is totally "My one night, coked out dinner with Andre'" , nothing really happens. Boy meets boy, boy has drunken sex with boy.... spends the rest of the weekend together. In one of the most realistic honest looks into modern life that you will find. These are not cartoon gays... not Modern Family or Rupaul, not  some kinky ass Mapplethorpe photos. Real messy lived men... trying to define what is is to be where we are. This is, I am sure a way to Kyle and Beth moment, and I am just thinking about this WAY too much, but it IS a different universe than the one I grew up in.

I have written about this before, When I was young was no a,b,c to my life. The vast majority of you reading this had that.. Life was laid out for you, no matter what path you took to it, cradle to grave, for the most part A,B,C,D. First crush, first love, first kiss, high school, college, life... marriage, baby, 3.2 babies,  golden retriever named Brandy, high school all over and grand babies...Or the Army and a trailer park, what ever- it was mapped. Gay men my age and older did not have this , at all. Blank slate or brick wall.... for ever they ran to big cities and lived in ghettos, that had changed at least for me.
It is not like that now, your average horny gay teenager gets it all,with a big dose of FUCK YOU to anyone in their way. NOT all, there is still a ton of work to be done and horror stories abound... But Glee is Glee.

Gay folk my age + or - a few have this debate constantly. You have no idea this is going on , its fine.. you have a life. Do we take the brass ring and the labels that come with it, go for the WPF in smiling suburbia that has culture, but not GAY culture, or do we buck the trend screw the hetronormists and live life as the libertines that we are lucky to be. You have to understand that my ,at the time ,INTENSE fear of Aids is not a part of the 20 something brain now. It is a pill... they are close to wrong, but that is the mindset. The gay high school senior today takes his boyfriend to the prom in his parents Volvo and dreams of a white wedding...

That is the underbelly of this movie.What is our path... what is gay identity, loud or quite. Happy is what ever you make for yourself.... No questions are answered, at all.. and part of it is just ( to me ) a very sweet love story. It is a brave new world out there , as gay men and lesbians get to define themselves for the very first time in history. It is a good " film " as well, odd, arty brush up on your DEEP English accents, but well worth seeing.


NYT REVIEW
Metroweekly Review

broken ice

 The ice was broken tonight

6:18 pm the weather person 

said the " S " word......

 as you can see we have not had any frost at all yet

 but I guess it is coming this weekend...

It's pretty wild that things have lasted as 

long as they have.

color check

 Fall is hanging on by a thread.

 Pretty grey day and no one

on the trail..

 so Koda was having a Buck day.

Things are looking up....

NEWEST BCS:

1. LSU (8-0) 
2. Alabama (8-0) 
3. Oklahoma State (7-0)
 4. Boise State (7-0)
 5. Clemson (8-0) 
6. Stanford (7-0)
7. Oregon (6-1)
 8. Kansas State (7-0)
 9. Oklahoma (6-1)
10. Arkansas (6-1) 
11. Michigan State (6-1)
 12. Virginia Tech (7-1)
13. South Carolina (6-1) 
14. Nebraska (6-1)
 15. Wisconsin (6-1)
16. Texas A&M (5-2)
17. Houston (7-0)
18. Michigan (6-1)
19. Penn State (7-1)
20. Texas Tech (5-2)
21. Arizona State (5-2)
 22. Georgia (5-2) 
23. Auburn (5-3)
 24. Texas (4-2)
25. West Virginia (5-2)

Dinner Party

Roast Chicken

Roasted sweet and golden potatoes

Cauliflower

Green Beans

Butternut squash

Banana Pudding

Pumpkin Stand Update

Pure happiness driving there.

Homecoming in Bainbridge!

Eli, Quest and Jodi

Friday Tourists!

Our pal Chap is in town for some Jesus something or the other, and we were all over town doing this and that on Friday .. his first trip here.

 I forgot my camera, 

so not many pics, 

this was from the cell phone.

 NOT a blooming onion, because we were at Bugaboo steak house, not the outback!

We all has prime rib dinners

this is Neil's, mine was cooked more.

dinner Thursday... ( I've been busy )

Red Beans and Rice

Sausage

WATCH THIS...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hey, Kyle.. you are a gay man who- other than what they wear on a red carpet -thinks that 99.9% of the girls on the planet are icky, why on earth do you give a fuzzy rats about this topic ?
Control. The GOP wants to control/ban/outlaw my marriage/social life/sex life.
Control. The GOP wants to control/ban/outlaw when a woman has a baby....
Neither of which are anyones business.
I'm sure there is not one vote out there that is hard core anti abortion/birth control and PRO same sex marriage..... We share a common enemy.

and .. you know, you cant really call me a for real misogynist, because OMG! how I do love Rachel....

I'm all the glad

Today was GLAAD's anti bullying

SPIRIT DAY

When you were supposed to wear purple to show that you support ..not beating up kids. A good cause... rally the troops and all. BUT the coolest thing was :

THE WHITE HOUSE 

went purple for the day on all their twitter and facebook messages!

We love our White House!

Too much in the news today....

So lets just borrow from the boys and look at some pretty fall boots!

TOMANDLORENZO

My Winners:

Viktor and Rolf

Pucci 

and 

YSL

My least favorite :

Ralph Lauren 

Jimmy Choo

(unless you are dating Greg Allman )

Dollar Popcorn Wednesday is back!

George Clooney wrote , directed, produced and acted in this one, and I think did a bang up job in all four! Some time in the near future or past, the Ohio Democratic Primary is about to pick the candidate for the party, and we are told the GOP has nothing to offer, so this is it. Enter bright eyed kool-aid lover Ryan Gosling, who is the press director for " Governor Clooney"...

I really enjoyed this movie, as did Neil and Don. There is not a whole lot I can say, with out giving something away, that you don't need to know. Lets just say that I too was once at that fresh faced kool- aid drinking guy, not unlike all of the folks for hope and change last go round ( mine was the man from hope).. Everyone should be that innocent at some point in their lives.....

but we learn....

Go see it if you can, really.

What F*****G year does he think this is ?

Frothy Mix came out AGAINST CONTRACEPTION today.. ( maybe it was last week, who the hell cares.) I told you all this was where all , every single, anti gay/homophobe would end up. It is only logical... you cant tout your Bible about the homos and NOT be a water boy for the OLD SCHOOL Roman Catholic church. There is ONLY one way to have any sex and the GOVERNMENT needs to be in charge of where where and how you do it?

Got this shit... SMALLER GOVERNMENT?

Smaller when it is the ultra rich paying less taxes [see 999 ] and the Koch bothers doing what ever they want to the enviorment  ( they wont live where the pollution is ) but HUGE OVER REACHING INVASIVE when it comes to you as a couple, or a woman - or a man for that matter deciding when you want to have , start and stop having babies. 

WHY IS THIS RELIGIOUS FANATIC allowed on the  main GOP Stage?

• JMG LINK
• Think Progress Link
• the long dull ass smug video where I guess he says it.

We Are All Sexist Now

Not since Hillary's headbands have we gone down this road

I took the cheap and easy shot and went

all Andrew Lloyd Webber

on the facebook.

The " twitter trending topic" of last night? Not the fisticuffs between the boys but the  Gilbert and Sullivan on Ice inspired jacket that Mrs. Bachmann chose to wear.

Thanks JMG

Michele Bachmann's 

top 20 jacket tweets.

It's been pretty simple so far....

vacation in Athens is calling me....

Hugh Acheson , Michael Stipe 

and Mike Mills tip and tail a 

bag full of beans.

( my heart is full )

Really good story from November issue of

 FOOD AND WINE

along with what looks like a kick ass 

recipe for pickled shrimp.

( thanks to the bitten word boys )

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp. Old Bay seasoning
1 lb. (26–30 count) medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
½ tsp. celery seeds
¼ tsp. allspice berries
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
⅓ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup packed flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. crushed red chile flakes
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
12 dried bay leaves
½ medium yellow onion, thinly sliced lengthwise

DIRECTIONS

Bring Old Bay and 8 cups water to a boil in a 4-qt. saucepan; add shrimp, reduce heat to low, and cook until shrimp are pink, about 2 minutes. Drain and transfer to bowl of ice water to chill; drain again.
Finely grind celery seeds and allspice in a spice grinder; transfer to a bowl and stir in oil, juice, parsley, salt, chile flakes, garlic, and bay leaves. In a 1-qt. glass jar, layer shrimp and onions; pour over oil mixture. Cover with lid; chill overnight before serving.

Music to pickle by:

Maria Callas sings O mio babbino caro

The more things change....

The Never Ending Debate

The one that was so bad, 

Newty looked human.

Real World Las Vegas, baby!

My pals Barack and Michele sent down to the cellar for the good wine tonight as the clown college that is the GOP 2011 decided to go all Jerry Springer tonight. Or as Joe Jervis put it : 

"Girl, Hold my gold

Mitt Romney and Rick Perry came thisclose to ripping out a bitch's weave tonight. Definitely not your standard boring debate."

I just don't get it. NOT that I would, I mean, I am as far from this target audience as they come. But this is the best yall have got? 

• Frothy : This years Rudy Giuliani, but instead of noun + verb then 911. Our little stain goes noun+verb then I hate the gays more than everyone else. 
• Crazy McCrazy aka Ron Paul : Cut everything and if you get sick , die, house catches on fire, break out the garden hose. Did call our Saint Ronnie for trading arms for the hostages.. something Jimmy Carter did not do. 
• Herman Cain : ooops, that spotlight is melting him.
• Mitt Romney...... I am going to let Calvin Trillin sum it up for me:

MITT ROMNEY AS DOLL

by Calvin Trillin

Yes, Mitt's so slick of speech and slick of garb, he

Reminds us all of Ken, of Ken and Barbie-----

So quick to shed his moderate regalia,

He may, like Ken, be lacking genitalia.

• (P)Rick Perry : Is he the anti Romney ? Everything that the GOP faithful hate about him, are the ONLY things that are acceptable about him. Texas Dream Act....He is sitting on a mountain of money , and I think tonight may put him back in the race.
• Face of Boe... why is he still here?
• Michelle Bachmann : noun + verb and I AM A WOMAN..... screen door on a submarine. Her money quote of the night was : " Obama put us in Libya, and now he is putting us in Africa."