A Morphin' Good Time

A lot people who watch television have a show that they really enjoy but are too afraid to admit to watching for fear of being ridiculed by their peers. It's called a guilty pleasure, and everyone has one. Some people like The Jerry Springer Show, some people are into Desperate Housewives, and there are even some thirty-something gay boys I know who absolutely love watching WWE Monday Night Raw. For those of you who don't know, it's a professional wrestling program and not a gay bareback porn film.

I picked up a new guilty pleasure this past weekend after spending so much time entertaining my four year old nephew. He turned my attention to a little program called The Power Rangers.



The Power Rangers have been on the air since the early 1990s and have been reinvented more times than Madonna and Cher. Kids absolutely love it, possibly because of all of the bright colors and cool sound effects. I was watching an episode of Power Rangers: SPD and got an eyeful of the blue ranger. I know that he's got a red uniform in the picture, so don't e-mail me about it. He becomes the red ranger later in the series.

It wasn't long before I was the one hushing everyone whenever they talked during the program because I'd become so taken with the red ranger and the other cuties on the show. He's got wonderful eyes, a cute smile, and a killer ass that the directors definitely know about because they're always finding situations where he has to bend over or reach something high up on a shelf.

I admit that the show itself is rather formulaic and poorly dubbed, but it managed to make its way into my Tivo's season pass manager. When you think about it, it's a great way to see amazingly hot and limber young men struggle to string sentences together without the hassle of making a trip out to a gay bar.

Toys vs. Clothes: The Gay Uncle's Dilemma

I don't think I've ever met anyone who has never shaken a gift as a child, hoping that a nice toy or electronic device was inside instead of clothes. Remember the disappointment when you lifted one of your gifts and you didn't hear a rattling of parts? Do you recall the malaise and slight anger you felt when you finally opened a gift and saw that it wasn't the Nintendo 64 you wanted, but instead turned out to be a box full of pants that didn't quite fit? Didn't you just want to strangle your parents with the tacky clothes that you knew would incite laughter and wedgies from the other children you went to school with? I held onto this clothes-gift animosity for years, well into my adult life. But recent events have changed my views on this matter and now I only give clothes to children for the holidays or birthdays.

I don't have children of my own (one of the many perks of not being able to get pregnant because I'm gay and not a woman), so I'd have a few extra bucks to spend on my sisters' kids during the holidays. One year, one of my nieces told me that she wanted a Barbie doll and another niece told me that she wanted a Fur Real Pet, so I braved the holiday madness at Toys R Us to get them those particular toys. Two hours and sixty five dollars later, I returned home from the toy store thinking that I was the super uncle and that toys equaled affection.

They opened their gifts the next day and the niece who got the expensive as hell Fur Real Pet simply shrugged it off and tossed it aside to see what else she got. The niece who asked for the Barbie was utterly appalled to find that I'd purchased a caramel-skinned Barbie instead of the Caucasian Barbie. Two months after that, neither of them knows where their Christmas gifts have disappeared to.

The three Christmas martinis that I'd consumed prior to the gift opening were the only things able to calm my disappointment that night. There's nothing worse than thinking that your hard work and time spent are going to score big with the little ones and later finding that it didn't really matter all that much to them. It's not really their fault because they don't know any better. They don't really care that you almost got into a fist fight with a person who cut in line in front of you at the toy store the day before. They don't realize that you could have spent that $65 on a month's worth of groceries or a week's worth of personal lubricant for yourself.

After that incident, I decided that I'd feel more comfortable purchasing things that I know my sisters' kids will use on a regular basis. It's actually a lot more personal to buy a cool outfit rather than a crummy old toy that any old schmo can pick up at a toy store because you need a keen eye and a sense of what works on the child in question. Those are things that come naturally to a gay man and I don't know why it took me so long to realize that. A gay uncle who gives toys instead of fashionable clothes is like a butcher who sells cheese instead of steaks. It just doesn't make sense.

The Yoko Syndrome

I've got a great network of friends, and I enjoy spending time with one particular circle. We get together every week while sipping wine and talking about the fun and exciting events of our lives. Sometimes we'll nurture our trashy sides and watch the a VH1 reality show (Rock of Love, I Love New York 2). Then we'll go out drinking or dancing at a bar where the drinks are moderately priced and the men are plentiful. Everything was wonderful and peachy, and I was one happy camper.

One day, fate decided to shake things up by introducing a new face into the group. I'm always suspicious of new people, so I didn't get too attached. Since I don't have his permission to use his real name, let's call him "Ezekiel." Ezekiel is a saucy young fellow, and a bit cheeky when he's got a few drinks in him. His roguish good looks and mysterious ways had no effect on me like they did with everyone else... at first.

Long story short, Ezekiel and I started spending more time together. Then my friends started acting weirdly, not showing up for drinks at the appointed places and not returning my phone calls. A couple of them have voiced their refusal to be in the same room as Ezekiel because he allegedly said something bad about one of them after he'd consumed enough alcohol to put Peter O'Toole to shame, and me because I'm a slave to Ezekiel's massive penis and can't make my own decisions.

This came as a complete shock to me because I've always put my friends first. I always call them, include them in my plans, offer to buy drinks, and put money down for a deposit for our annual weekend trips. I'd never give my friends the shaft just because a man influenced me to do so. It's like the Spice Girls always say:

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends,
Make it last forever. Friendship never ends.

I'm still scratching my head as to why things with my friends resulted in such discord, but then I remembered an interesting phenomenon that occurs in groups of friends from time to time. It happens when harmony in a group is interrupted by a new person who sometimes pairs with an existing member of the group. It's affectionately referred to as "The Yoko Syndrome," referring to Yoko Ono's alleged contribution to the destruction of the Beatles. Poor Ezekiel is afraid that he's Yoko-ed us to the point of no return.

If there's any truth to this Yoko thing, that would make me the John... which is much better than being the Ringo, believe me! But my group of friends is hardly the Beatles and it's not really fair to blame the new guy for problems that arise as a result of his influence.

It's very easy to make your true feelings known by using the new guy as a scapegoat. By using someone else's recent inclusion as a smokescreen, you're free to cast aspersions as you see fit. I can't help but wonder if these feelings had always been there inside them. What really bothers me is that people quickly turn things into a battle with sides to be chosen. I suddenly have to choose between my friends and a guy, which doesn't sit well with me.

I'd never choose a man over a friend, but I will always choose a non-dramatic situation over the situation where I feel like I'm in high school and Susie Jenkins turned everyone against me by spreading a nasty rumor about my sexual proclivities because I stole the captain of the football team away from her.

Foul Disclosure

I missed the selection phase for this year's Gay Bloggie Awards. Boo! I still am extremely honored to have been nominated for best individual blogger in the 2007 Weblog Awards, but I really wish I could have participated in the Gay Bloggies. It seems like a lot of fun. The format this year is similar to an elimination type reality show, where each blogger is presented with a writing challenge and one person gets eliminated each week.

Rather than just let things go like the normal and well-adjusted young gay man that I work so hard to lead people to believe that I am, I decided to run some of my blog entries parallel to the Gay Bloggie competition. Is this healthy? No. Is it fun? You bet your sweet patootie!

Gay Bloggie Challenge #1: Confess something you've never written on your blog

The gods of Mount Olympus consumed only one thing during their reign over the hearts and minds of humankind. It was called ambrosia, and it was highly sought after by men seeking immortality. If Zeus had influence on midwestern restaurant chains, he would have shaped ambrosia into something that fits into the palm of your hand and fills the air with a certain intoxicating fragrance that no one can quite identify. My ambrosia is none other than the White Castle Burger, and I confess that I absolutely love them.

They're probably made from grade R meat. Each burger probably has more calories than a tub of lard. It makes your sweat smell like grilled onions. You feel extremely gross after consuming large amounts of it. But for one brief moment as you sink your teeth into one of them, every one of your taste buds dances with delight.

Whenever I walk past a group of people while carrying a crave case (30 white castle burgers), I find myself clutching it as if it were a suitcase filled with a million dollars. I see the look in peoples' eyes as they notice the forbidden foodstuff in my hand. It's a mixture of jealousy and rapture, but they often try to hide it by acting repulsed by the sight of such gluttony.

Liking White Castle burgers is a lot like masturbation. Ninety nine percent of the population admit to it and the other one percent is lying about it.

A big thank you goes out to Joe, who pointed out my misuse of the word "Fowl" versus "Foul" in the title. Originally, I intended to include the White Castle chicken rings into the discussion but they never made it in. Oopsie!

Got any change... FAGGOT?!?!

"At least I don't pee behind dumpsters!"
"I'd rather be a faggot than smell like shit and body odor!"
"Go back home to... oh wait, you don't have a home!"

You're probably wondering what all that mess is about. Those are three things that I wanted to say to someone today but I was too upset to think of anything witty like that. Today I was accosted by an aggressive homeless man sitting outside of the Starbucks on Clark and Belmont. I assumed that he was homeless because he had a huge duffel bag full of random stuff, but I will use the term 'panhandling derelict' in this blog entry for the sake of clarity.

He's always there, talking to himself and shaking his cup with one hand while wiggling the other as if he's trying to wake an imaginary person who fell asleep listening to his rant about why trees are evil. I usually walk past and make no eye contact, but today he stuck his leg out across the sidewalk as he shook his cup at me. As I maneuvered around his attempt to stop me, I held my hand up and said "sorry" and walked past. Then he yelled at me: "YOU FUCKING FAGGOT!"

I will give him a little credit for figuring out that I was gay and that gay people don't like to be called faggots. Maybe he didn't even know that I was gay and threw out the F word just for kicks. Who knows?

Sometimes when I walk down the street, I notice peoples' facial expressions as they put money in a panhandling derelict's cup or filthy hat. They always have a solemn smile that says "Keep your chin up, buddy! Things will get better!" mixed with a tacit "I just did something very good for humanity and I'm sure to get into heaven now! Everyone should be as virtuous as me!"

I think that people are fools for giving money to panhandling derelicts because it only encourages them to keep begging for it. It's a lot like pigeons in the park. You give them a little bit, then you get mobbed by more of them and they start expecting you to give them food. I've seen pigeons actually fly up next to food, expecting to get a piece of it. Derelicts are the same way.

You're not doing something worthwhile by donating your change to a derelict for two reasons.

1. You don't even know if they're actually homeless.
2. You don't know where the money will be spent.

If you need another reason to never patronize a panhandling derelict, then the fact that a South Park episode was written about the subject should be good enough. It was entitled "Night of the Living Homeless." Watch it. If the topic has been discussed on either South Park or The Simpsons, then it has to be valid.

I'm not a heartless person. I just hate when dirty people call me 'faggot.'

Lofty Aspirations = Future Aggrivation

My friend Patrick has been pushing me to audition for the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus' spring season. Every time I see him, he reminds me about the auditions and how I'd have no problem getting in. He goes on and on about how it's a fantastic group of talent and it's full of attractive and single young men. I don't really have problems meeting young and attractive single men, but I appreciated the heads up. I was definitely intrigued.

As a child, I used to sing along to a lot of songs on the radio and on MTV. I'd grab a hairbrush and sing Kylie Minogue's rendition of The Locomotion. Now, almost twenty years later, I had the support of an existing chorus member to bolster my existing passion for singing and dancing. There's just one problem: I can't sing.

Imagine the worst American Idol auditions ever, then understand that I aspire one day to be THAT good. But does it matter? There are over 150 members in the chorus. Surely I could just wing it if I had enough desire to belong. All I'd need is an intense fervor and a basic understanding of music and everything would just fall into place, right?

Wrong. This is a recipe for disaster, much like my eagerness to join a drum and bugle corps when I was in high school.

I was a member of my high school winterguard and my friend James, who marched with a world class corps in the area, begged me to audition for his corps so I could be his travel buddy. He filled my ears with honeyed words, telling tales of hot and horny young men going at it late at night after practices and traveling to other countries to perform. He told me that it would be the most memorable experience of my life. He was right.

The audition was a nightmare from the first moment I stepped onto that field. People with years of color guard experience had come from all over the country to audition. Their lithe bodies moved with such grace and they handled their flags with such finesse that I looked like a bull in a china shop. I couldn't dance, I kept dropping my flag, and my body wasn't used to practicing more than three hours in one day. I was so bad that the director yelled at me to get off of the field. I saw him point to me as he talked sternly to the color guard director, who shrugged and probably said "I hardly know him!"

James was right about one thing. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Years of motivational conditioning from teachers and prime time sitcoms seem a lot like bullshit when you go through experiences like that. Remember hearing the phrase "you can do anything if you put your mind to it?" Tell that to the color guard director who suddenly disavowed any knowledge of your existence once he saw that you didn't know the difference between a pas de bourree and a grande jete. Tell that to the scads of cute gay boys in the color guard who laughed at you as you hung your head in shame on your way off of the practice field at a world class drum corps.

People need to be more specific when they're trying to build your confidence. They should really be telling people that "you can do anything... as long as you're already very good at it or if you have an abundant amount of time and patience to become very good at it."

I guess this means that Patrick won't be seeing me at the Gay Men's Chorus auditions next season. In the mean time, you can find me in the venue that best suits my vocal quality: The karaoke bar.

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VOTE FOR RICHIE!

Homo for the Holidays

In about two weeks, people all over the country will be scrambling together for the Thanksgiving holiday. It's a great time for families and friends to meet up after being apart for long periods of time, but it can also be a source of major apprehension for some of us. If you're the only gay person in your family like I am, the holiday season can be pretty rough.

Aunts and uncles with horribly decorated homes will hound you for interior design ideas. Sisters will try to set you up with one of their weird gay co-workers because they think that you're completely devoid of social appeal. Mothers who think that homosexuality is a phase will corner you and ask when you'll produce an heir because it's your responsibility to carry on the family name. It never ends. Fortunately, I've gathered a list of helpful tips to help you get through it.

1. Don't go at all - My friend Joe suggested this one, and it makes a lot of sense. You save on airfare and therapist fees for after you get back

2. If you have to go, don't stay too long - Get in there, do your thing, then get the hell out of there. The more time you spend with your family, the more likely you are to fall victim to one of their mind games. Benjamin Franklin said that "Guests and fish stink after three days." That really doesn't have a lot to do with this line of thought, but I'm hoping that quoting Benjamin Franklin is going to make me look cool.

3. Have a drink - I find that a nice cocktail takes the edge off. Traveling on an airplane with liquor is out of the question, so you'll have to make a trip to a liquor store. Exercise extreme caution if attempting to hook up with someone while at the liquor store. They're usually lonely or bitter and you don't need them clinging to you after you throw some pity sex their way.

4. Spend time with the kids - This one is more of an investment for the future. If their parents haven't completely messed up their child's mind, then it'll be easy to shape their perception of the normalcy of gayness. Do some magic tricks for them, play some video games with them, and never let them forget that you're gay. They'll eventually grow up without society influencing them about the dangers of homosexuality and you'll be doing a good deed for the community.

5. Set your cell phone - I learned this trick by watching the Young and the Restless. The guy had a switch on the floor of his desk that he pressed with his foot to make his phone ring whenever someone was bothering him. I modified this technique by setting my cell phone's alarm feature to ring every fifteen minutes. You can get out of many sticky situations by receiving phony emergency calls. It'll also make you look like mister big shot!

Hookie McSkipper

All of the cool kids are gearing up for the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week and I won't be attending. I didn't think that I'd be nominated, so I didn't bother requesting time off from work. At this point it's pretty much out of the question unless I come up with a dire emergency that requires my absence from the illustrious world of interior design, but I've had enough past experiences to know not to lie about stuff when I want to play hookie.

Fifteen years ago, all of the cool kids were playing a little arcade game called Street Fighter 2. I never got a chance to practice in the afternoon because all of the other kids would be there waiting to play it, so I got out of going to school by sticking my finger down my throat and vomiting in the living room to fake a stomach flu. After my grandparents left for work, I poured all of the coins out of my coin jar to get all of the quarters and I made my way to the arcade.

Things were going well until I received an intense tap on the shoulder from my grandfather, who had come home during his lunch break to bring me soup. He'd seen the coins on my bed and realized that I'd gone to the arcade because the quarters were gone. As he scolded me, the game kept going and I heard the machine say: GAME OVER! Game over, indeed!

Years later, during my time working as an operations coordinator at a movie theatre in Houston, I got word that all of the cool kids were taking the weekend off to drive to Mexico. I quickly told my boss that I won tickets to the Vans Warped Tour and that my favorite band, Less Than Jake, would be performing there. I'd never heard of Less Than Jake, but I did remember that one of my emo friends was going there to see them, so I just went with it. Before I had time to bask in the warm glow of the perfect lie that I wove on the spot, my boss remarked that he was sad that he would be missing it this year because he'd just seen them open for Blink 182 and he really enjoyed them.

He went on to tell me about the history of the Vans Warped Tour and later asked me how I was able to snag tickets, but what he was really doing was attempting to unravel my seemingly perfect lie. I made up another lie to cover it up and before I knew it, I was telling him an intricate tale about how I was frat friends with the son of one of the guys who works at a radio station. The final nail in my coffin would be his request for me to sing anything that Less Than Jake ever performed. Needless to say, I didn't get to go to Mexico and my dishonesty was met with two months worth of night shifts and long weekends.

It's cute when you're a pre-teen wanting to get his game on or a young adult who wants to party with his friends, but I'm 28 and now there really isn't a clever and sophisticated way for me to get out of working just to attend this blogging convention... which is just my luck because Southwest Airlines is having a great deal on flights to Las Vegas. Before anyone calls me out for calling in sick the day after gay pride weekend and Labor Day weekend, let me just say that those are compulsory gay holidays. We're supposed to take those days off.

For Your Consideration

Voting for the 2007 Weblog awards has started and I am deeply honored to be nominated for Best Individual Blogger. I've been reading the other blogs in my category and words can not describe how fantastic it feels to be grouped with such talent. That's not a heaping pile of shit, either. There are seriously fierce competition. I went in hoping to be nominated in the Best LGBT Blog category because a majority of my writing is based on my experiences as a gay man in Chicago, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw my blog in the same category as Glenn Reynolds.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the only openly gay blogger in this category who discusses certain gay issues and that makes this even more special for me, a virtually unknown little gay man with a few quirky things to write about and access to the internet (on days when my bills are paid).

My goal has always been to do something positive for the gay community in the most obscure and surreptitious way, and I think I've taken a step toward that goal today... thanks to the support of all the readers and the good people behind the Weblog Awards.

In television, networks consider the month of November to be a sweeps month. That's when they put out their best programming in order to grab viewers' attention. I decided to do something similar by posting some of my favorite blog posts from this year. Enjoy!

• Replay Value

• Someone You Know is a Harry Potter Fan

• Defending the Oldest Profession

• Memoirs of a Dehydrated Marathoner

• Ten Reasons Why Bacon is Better Than a Boyfriend

You can vote for my blog by clicking here and selecting my blog (RICHIE).

Tough Ruv

One of my Asian acquaintances, "Tuan," recently announced that he'd found a new boyfriend, further strengthening the idea that I'll be the only single guy in my circle of friends and inciting a new level of pity from them as well. He went on about how they're such a good fit and I tried my best not to choke on the maraschino cherry I was eating. I am by no means a bitter person. I just hate hearing people gush about love.

My ears perked up when I heard that Tuan's newest love interest was a notorious rice queen who'd constantly tried to get a slice of my pie a few months ago. Rice queens are men who love Asians, and self-proclaimed rice queens rank extremely low on my priority list of types of people I would save if I knew that aliens were going to destroy the human race and I had a chance to do something about it.

This guy threw a party a few months ago and I had the pleasure of viewing his extensive gallery of past boyfriends who just happened to be small-framed, smooth Asian boys. It wasn't until I saw the rice cooker in his kitchen that I was officially freaked out.

You're probably wondering why I feel so strongly against rice queens, considering how hard it is for gay Asian males to get dates in Chicago because of negative stereotypes (insert pinky finger gesture here). But how can you be with someone in a romantic sense, knowing that the only reason why they're with you is because you're Asian. That's something over which you have no control. It's something that you didn't work hard to cultivate or polish, so snagging someone just because you happen to fit a certain racial criteria isn't something you should be proud of.

Imagine going on The Newlywed Game and it's the part of the show where Bob Eubanks asks your husband what first attracted him to you and he says: "I loved the way he resembled a twelve year old boy when I had him on all fours, even though he's thirty years old." or "I loved his slanted eyes and his fondness for Kimchi." I'd much rather have a guy who tells a funny story about how we met at a street corner and fought over the last issue of The Onion in the newspaper box. I want a guy who is a self-proclaimed "neuron queen," attracted to my intelligence.

I don't know Tuan very well, and maybe he's happy living in his tapioca bubble. Maybe it's none of my business and I shouldn't say anything to him. He'll be at a cocktail party next week with his new man and I could go and be a silent witness to the beginning their doomed relationship... but drunken tirades that reveal embarrassing truths about others are so much more fun!