163. The Week in Me
Hello! This week wound up being very, very busy!
The Gay Dog Parade I organized as co-chair of the Hoboken Pride Council had a lower turnout than last year, which I assume was due to the rain. It made me very sad - I wanted to see doggies - but I am hopeful for a sunnier 2026 parade with even more (and gayer) dogs. Leather doggies. Dogs of Finland!!! My mother very sweetly ordered my sister Bailey a beaütiful rainbow outfit to support this project of mine which let me leave the event grateful.
Orli hosted a Tony Awards watch party in Brooklyn, which secured a bar full of very gay people cheering for Cole Escola’s Bernadette Peters cosplay and win:
Had a blast, now very sad I did not see Boop! on Broadway, someone go see Boop! with me on Broadway…
On Tuesday, I saw BILLY IDOL. Thanks to my cousin Nicole, I was given free tickets to attend the Tribeca documentary premiere of Billy Idol Should Be Dead. Not knowing who to ask, I opened Billy’s Instagram profile and texted one of our mutual followers, my Internet buddy Zena. It was so nice to bring a pixelated friend into the real world that I waited on a 20-minute bathroom line just to keep her company, because I am notoriously a camel.
I clearly did not know anything about Billy outside of his appearance in The Wedding Singer and a scant few of his songs. His life story is not one that would shock you - a father who didn’t get him, a secret groupie love child, an overdose or 12 - but of all things my heart broke learning that he lost the part of T-1000 in the Terminator series because the accident that nearly stole his leg left him unable to comfortably run, and James Cameron (dick) wouldn’t engineer a way around this. That lost opportunity seems to be a true regret for Idol, who appeared in a few film projects but clearly wondered if he could have become a star in yet another realm. The documentary deploys a few aesthetics: a hard black and white for the talking heads (including Miley Cyrus, Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump wearing a baseball hat of a band whose guitarist I used to flirt with during the pandemic, Duff McKagan, Nile Rodgers, and Billy’s late mother Joan, who wears a killer cross I the magpie eyed throughout) and Akirafied
animations depicting Billy’s growing drug habit, turning him into a cocaïnaed Reptar storming through the city streets, growing spikes like those found on his shredded vests and zonking out in an elevator in front of literally Mel Gibson, whose animated cameo got a huge laugh from the audience. It’s a stale documentary format, and the story of his relationship with his father is told a bit out of order, but god the photos of him in his youth, his off days palling around with his tiny son Willem, wearing leather jackets studded with aviator sunglasses epaulettes, sneering through his cyberpunk era with a peroxide Caesar bang…the biggest takeaway from this film for ME is that Billy Idol is the hottest man that has ever lived. Mein Gott in Himmel, I finally understand the appeal of blondes!
After the doc, Billy changed out of the VERY cool skirt ensemble he wore to introduce the screening and into an Ed Hardy ass jacket to perform an acoustic set of his biggest hits (and a new song) with guitarist bandmate of forty years Steve Stevens, whose 1980’s visage looks shockingly like my mom before her nose job.
My mom has the best rhinoplasty I have ever seen which is a marvel considering she got it done in maybe 1987, after being mistaken for Bette Midler one too many times. I don’t see why this was an issue for her. Bette Midler is my second-favorite Dolly Gallagher Levi!1
I wish I had inherited either of my parent’s impressive schnozes. I LOVE a nose. My brother has a real nose. I have like a boop. It’s just there. I love a nose on a MAN. I lamented more than once during my marriage that I was betrothed to a man with an unremarkable honker.
And that is my experience seeing one William Idol fling his shirt off in the same auditorium my shul uses to host high holy days (I’m NOT kidding).
I saw this VERY cool car on the way home - had to stop and take a video while the pedicab driver behind me leered at my ass.
I didn’t yell at him. He was so obvious about it that it made me laugh. Him:
My cousin Jenn told me I looked like a goddess at Marlena’s 40th birthday, which was very sweet. Considering I wear almost exclusively onyx, neon onyx, pastel onyx, it was fun to be a different person for an afternoon:
I impressed the hell out of my cousin Nick (the most tattooed person in my entire family) by leaping to the title of second-most tattooed person in my entire family in just six months (which means I have two tattoos - literally my cousin Janine has one, Nick has like 23, and NO ONE ELSE ON EITHER BIG ITALIAN SIDE HAS ONE). Nick had a pet snake as a teenager and a ponytail and a girlfriend who wore JNCOs and Korn posters in his very dark bedroom so getting the metalhead nod of approval ruled. He said my foot tattoo makes me essentially the badass of the family. I loved that.
(from Tim)
Michael Dale took me to a Mets game, so I now know the name of one player (Jeff McNeil, who I only call, all-caps, JEFF). The Mets won but the true winner was, as Michael dubbed him, Horn Guy:
I spent part of the game and about 23 of the 24 hours of Wednesday in a group chat with Jason and Mike, where Jason broke the death of Brian Wilson and we spent the day sharing Instagram tributes, fun facts, memes, and songs. These two are two of my BEST friends and I have been wanting to introduce them. Every interaction plucks my heart, a Wilsonian orchestral swell, from that chat being the reason I came up with The Worst Song to Fuck To to Wednesday’s flurry of activity. My two nerds. I love them so much. And learn so much.
The only, only artist on my bucket list that I never got to see, which has vexed me - and will vex me now - all my life. Music was never the same. Aren't we grateful.
Deadass think people were waiting here for five hours before the start of the Great Hoboken Sinatra Sing Off so they could get the good seats, unlike me. The judges were BRUTAL. Like five Simon Cowells. They ripped these guys apart on the loyalty to the original crescendos. The third-grader DID NOT MAKE FIRST, SECOND, OR THIRD.
TWO contestants flew up from Florida.
Here is a notable act of good we can all do, if we happen to live near turtles:
Sans turtles and sans any easy fixes: "Maha… A Little Angel Burned, Family Gone — Save Her.” Please donate to this baby’s care. We all know I believe in a free Palestine and hope you do too, but regardless of your views, this is a child and she deserves to be covered in our care.
To read:
My perfect darling sweet, sweet children were featured on
’s Meowstack! Thank you for suggesting I nominate them.
Mosquitos are my nemeses. They love me but their love is very toxic!!! They’re always like “YASSSSS MOTHER, COME TO BRAZIL!!!” as they’re feasting on my small dainty little knees. I learned about the World Mosquito Program through reading about Walmart heiress Christy Walton in a
piece and this organization may become my life’s work. Mother Theresa with a mosquito swatter.From
. Some of us are still not over our four-month long-distance things, and so thank you Margeaux.
AND from Margeaux also, a list of symptoms of my trauma I didn’t even know were clockable symptoms and not just me being an asshole and a mess:
“For me, this looked like reenacting the traumatic event (continuing to have sex with boys while high, drunk, or both), self-injury (the dull razor in my bathroom when I am eighteen); suicidality (I told myself I wasn’t suicidal because “I could never kill myself” and leave my family to lose another family member. Such thoughts, it turns out, are called suicidal ideation); risk-taking (stealing, hanging out with people in gangs, staying out all night, having unprotected sex); caretaking and self-sacrifice (“let me put your needs before mine, always”); revictimization (experiencing assault after assault, abusive relationship after abusive relationship); and addictive behavior (using substances every day from ages fourteen to twenty-three).” I mean, literally the only thing I haven’t done here is substances, the one decision of good judgment I have ever made.
Two pieces from Bestie Mike: one an interview with songwriter Gary Clark of the band Danny Wilson and, dear to my heart, the tracks that comprise the soundtrack to Sing Street. When my grandmother died on Valentine’s Day of 2021, the first thing I did after my father’s call was open Apple Music and play the film’s closing song, “Go Now,” as my way of opening the windows to let her soul free. Those songs are dearer to me than nearly any others. The second, an exploration of the Ford Audio Systems Demonstration tape that came as a promotional gift with new (in 1996) Windstars.
“It was like a never-ending treasure hunt filled with amazing and random goodies. Because the internet wasn’t just a fancy tool to learn important information for school or work, it was a living, breathing ecosystem. It was a place. And it was my favorite place on earth.” The Internet Is Dead—and You Killed It, by
for Vice.This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Lugosi:
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
Sometimes when I leap over a puddle my ass cheeks clap a little and it makes me feel as confident as this woman:
I do not like AI but…I am gagged over Yetta in that Vivienne Westwood cropped corset number. Run one to me thanks.
Me comma who:
Me having nightly two-hour anxiety attacks about my upcoming (?) vacation (?).
I hope you are someone’s needy but much-loved, stylishly accessorized house quail:
Love you quails,
TG
Donna Murphy. I saw that damn revival SIX times and I wish I had seen her five of those six.
"William Idol" I lolled
I've been convincing myself to drink more water by rinsing out my soda cups after they're empty and drinking the same amount in water. Great way to balance everything out and garner a few extra breaks at work.