Bobservations

I have been having trouble sleeping lately. I wake up around 1:30AM every morning and then have trouble going back to sleep or have a fitful night’s sleep. And I’m a cranky bitch when sleep deprived.

The other night Carlos, who drinks hot chocolate nearly every night asked if I wanted some, and I thought the warm cocoa might help me sleep. Wrong. I was up at 2AM and then sleeping badly until 7AM. That next night, Carlos was making his chocolate and asked if I wanted some, and I said it didn’t really help me sleep any better, and he said:

“I thought you slept better, because you weren’t snoring non-stop.”

And that’s when it hit me. He feeds me the hot chocolate so I won’t snore and he can sleep better. It’s all about him. But I still had the cocoa and I did sleep better.

I swear, one of these days Tuxedo is gonna snap his neck with all the head shaking at the daily news.

And kinda on that same topic … if you’re a doctor or a nurse who refuses to get the vaccine then should be a fucking nurse or doctor.

Pope Frankie has announced that all visitors to the Vatican have to be vaccinated, so are Catholics gonna have to stop claiming a faith-based exemption?

I mean, that fits with the typical hypocritical Catholic ideology.

Remember when Thing 45 was in office and he was taken to Walter Reed Medical Center in the middle of the night and the White House refused to comment?

It was because he was having an "emergency" colonoscopy—and by the way, who has an emergency colonoscopy—and didn’t want people making fun of his ass on TV.

I think he was trying to remove Lindsey Graham from his ass.

Hello America …meet a prominent member of the GOP: Louisiana Senator  John Kennedy, who announced his run for re-election next year by saying he would rather drink weed killer than let his constituents down.

Seriously.

So, that wacky GOP, and their friends and allies spent months, and some $6 million, on an audit of the 2020 election to prove that Thing 45 won the state of Arizona and yet all they proved is that Biden got an additional 360 votes.

Nicely done, Arizona.

While the Pope wants to make sure the unvaccinated don’t come near him, he also wants to make sure that Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki, who hid a report about priests raping children, can take a “spiritual time-out” from his duties.

Yes, a  spiritual time out for aiding and abetting child rapists?

Fuck them all.

I don’t like Omarosa Manigault Newman, but this makes me smile.

Thing 45 has lost an effort to enforce a nondisclosure agreement against Newman for that tell-all book she wrote about serving in his administration. Even better is that Thing 45 must pay her legal fees.

Comedian Billy Eichner is making history with his upcoming gay rom-com Bros, the first explicitly gay romantic comedy from a major Hollywood studio, by casting LGBTQ+ actors in all the roles, both gay and straight, in the film.

Good on Billy.

In this week’s edition of Would You Hit It we have actor and fitness model Eric Guilmette. Eric has a rather beautiful face, and body, though the pec tattoo does kinda bother me because I prefer a clean work surface.

Still, the rules are Simple: Would You Hit It? Yes or No.

Last week on The View, with Vice President Kamala Harris set to appear, both Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro tested positive for COVID—later determined to be a false positive—and were removed from the show for the day.

And so Junior decided to come for Ana, a Republican anti-Thing 45 pundit, by making fun of her weight.

Trouble is, you don’t come for Ana unless she sends for you.

Architecture Wednesday: Chingaza Lodge

This is described as a lodge, but it’s a modern lodge, a small lodge, sitting roughly 10,000 feet above sea level in the Chingaza Moor about an hour from Bogotá.

You can’t get much further away, I think; and you can’t get more simple, more modern, more green and closer to nature.  In order to foster interactions between nature and the inhabitants of the lodge, the house is comprised of two modules connected by a glass tunnel which, at first glance is designed to give you gorgeous views of the hummingbirds garden in the east and an open view to the San Rafael reservoir to the west, but is also used  to collect heat energy from the sun to warm the spaces … perfect for a lodge sitting in an area that can get down to zero degrees at night.

With an eye toward creating a space of reflection and honest materiality, pine wood slats wrap the entire area from floor, walls and ceiling, making the interior cozy and minimalist. A large-scale window in each module complements the wooden-based interior, that not only captures daily sunsets, but also welcomes the thermal energy produced by the sun to bring warmth and comfort to those very often cold nights at this altitude.

By contrast to the wooden interior, the exterior aims to be an austere body, clad in black metal, that blends in with the gray tones of the moor sky; better still, is night, when the lodge seems to disappear because of the black façade leaving only the large windows, wood and artificial lights creating the illusion of two floating lights on the side of the mountain.

Finally, the value of the project not only in the design and an understanding of the natural habitat in which is built, but also to foster diverse encounters between its human and non-human inhabitants; the garden of hummingbirds in in the center of the two spaces, a window that offers a sunset in the moorland landscape, a west window that frames the mountains of Chingaza.

It's all about the experience. The simple lines of the space and the beauty of the mountains and the sky all through the day. I don’t think I’d ever leave.

As always, click to emBIGGERate …

Arch Daily

When I Was a Kid ...

My parents wanted me to take up an instrument and I chose the squeezebox. I was so bad at it, that I turned them into pants and now, I'm a newly elected member of The Lollipop Guild.

Not Quite The Look I Wanted ...

I was going for a Carmen Miranda look, but all I had in the house were overripe bananas. 

Caption This

My friend Laura posted this picture to Facebook and tagged me in the post because she knows two things I loathe most in the world are Dancing with the [Not] Stars and Tyra 'That ain't a forehead, it's a fivehead' Banks.

A Couple of Mom Stories For Today...

As happens, I have been thinking about my Mom a lot today and I will share two stories of what she was like …

My Mother did not swear. Ever. My Mother once said the word ‘Crap,’ and followed it quickly with, ‘Pardon my French.’ How she raised a son that swears like Cher, or a longshoreman, is a mystery, and yet I never cursed in front of Mother except one time.

I was living in California, about ninety minutes from my parents and Mom called to see if I would dog sit while she and my Dad took a long weekend away. Of course, I said; happy to di it, I said;  Just get me the dates you need me, I said.

One Friday afternoon, Mom called me to say she and dad were getting ready to go and when was I going to arrive. She had never given me a specific date and we went round and round:

I know I’ll told you the dates.

No, Mom, you didn’t.

I’m pretty sure I did.

Mom, I asked you for the dates and you said you’d get them for me,

And I got them for you.

No, Mom, you didn’t, and I need to change my schedule now, if I can—

Well, I know I told you!

Mom. That is a fucking lie.

:::click:::

I stood in my house and panicked thinking I’d just cursed in front of my Mother—and I was a grown-assed man at the time, but still—and as I freaked out, my phone rang again:

Hello.

You said the f-word to your mother?

And that was the only time I ever cursed in front of her.

 

A sweeter story without swearing … when my Mother called me or I called he, we’d always chat for a good long while, and then she would say:

All right, I need to get off here, Your Dad will be home soon.

And she’d keep taking, until:

All right, sweetie, that’s it for me. I’ll talk to you soon.

And she’d keep talking. And talking. But, when she was actually, truly, finally finished, she’d always say this:

All right, then, Goodbye sweetie, I love you.

And then she was off.

I still miss that send off.

PS That's a picture my Dad took of my Mom when they'd gone down to an inn by the sea for an anniversary weekend.

Mom's Birthday

Today is my Mother's birthday. She would have been 84 if...........

I remember many things about my Mom.

The Mom who baked things for school.

The Mom who made the best Clam Chowder on rainy winter days.

The Mom who painted.

The Mom who laughed.

The Mom who loved you no matter what.

The Mom who, as soon as Carlos and I moved in together, would introduce him as her son-in-law.

The Mom who was married to my Dad for over 50 years.

The Mom whose greatest day every year was Thanksgiving and her whole family was near.

The Mom who was a Nurse.

The Mom who loved to travel.

The Mom who taught me to love books.

I love my Mom.

I miss my Mom.

Every day.

PS That top photo is one of my favorites, taken by my father when he and my mother were dating.

The bottom photo was taken of my mother in front of the trailer they bought while my Dad was stationed at Keesler AFB in Mississippi. 

The Funny Papers

Mike Smith, Bill Bramhall, Nick Anderson, Marc Murphy, Adam Zyglis, RJ Matson, Darrin Bell,  Michael de Adder, Drew Sheneman, JD Crowe, Steve Sack, Mike Luckovich, Ed Wexler, Scott Stantis, Deb Milbrath,

I Ain't One To Gossip But ... And It's JLo-Themed

Clearly the JLo pandemic is running rampant in Hollywood because Katharine McPhee has come down with The Thirsts. This past week McPhee took to her Instagram Story to share her husband David Foster’s reaction to a here-to-fore private photo she sent him:

Gosh, I long for the days when thirsty celebrities didn’t post underwear pictures they sent to their spouses in an effort to try and make everyone believe their marriage is all sexy and lovey and perfect and shiz. Cuz, in case anyone forgot, David Foster is on his fifth marriage; he was married to BJ Cook from 1972 to 1981; the next year, 1982, he married Rebecca Dyer, and divorced her in 1986, after which he stayed single for five years until marrying Linda Thompson in 1991 and lasting until 2005; he married Yolanda Hadid in 2011 and divorced her in 2017, at which time he began dating Katharine, and married her in 2019. David’s longest marriage lasted just 14 years, while his shortest lasted six.

Tick tock, Katherine.

PS Of note is that Katharine McPhee was born in 1984, right in the middle of David Foster’s second marriage.

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When you’re Gerard Butler, who was hot for a hot minute ten years ago, what else have you got to do but beef? See, during an interview to promote his new movie Copshop, the interviewer brought up how Gerard’s 2009 movie Gamer has been compared to Ryan Reynolds’ new movie Free Guy. Butler went all Mariah Carey “I don’t know her” on the interviewer and said he hasn’t heard of Reynold’s new film because he doesn’t watch Ryan Reynolds movies.

Reynolds saw that and raised the ante with this:

“Can you believe Gerard Butler doesn’t know what Free Guy is? Also, can you believe that the challenges to democracy have never been greater and that Blake and I will match your contributions to the @aclu_nationwide and @naacp_ldf?”

Free Guy over Gamer.

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Third time’s the charm they say, and HGTV’s answer to Jennifer Lopez, Christina Haack, formerly known as Christina El Moussa and then as Christina Anstead, is trying to prove that to be true. It appears that the twice-divorced “Flip or Flop” star is engaged, again, to boyfriend Joshua Hall just three months after finalizing her divorce from the oddly named Ant Antstead.

Haack was previously married to her “Flip or Flop” co-star Tarek El Moussa from 2009 to 2018 when she divorced him and married Anstead until 2021, when she found herself engaged again.

If she wants to be JLo can we call her CHa …. Hahahahahahahahaha.

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Poor Erika Jayne. No, I literally mean poor Erika Jayne. It has been revealed that she ALLEGEDLY spent some $25 million that her husband Tom Girardi deposited into the bank account of her LLC and she had no idea it was there until it came time to spend it.

But those coins are all gone and this week Jayne was spotted at TJ Maxx looking sad and poor. Good.

Oh, and she lied again on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills when she told a story about Tom’s house being broken into, and how he confronted the burglar, and was then taken to the hospital, and she sent her son to check on him because she couldn’t go and then her son rolled his car on a snowy road coming home from the hospital.

Rolling cars is a thing in her family because she also claims Tom rolled his car off a cliff six years ago.

But here’s the lie … in January, authorities confirmed that officers responded to an ALLEGED forced entry through a broken window at Tom’s home but there was no report of Tom confronting said burglar.

Maybe it was Erika trying to clean out one of the safes?

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Oh, JLo, my heart bleeds for you.

In between parading current fiancé Ben Affleck around the world for photo shoots and make-out sessions, Jennifer Lopez announced that she feels like an “outsider” in Hollywood. In fact, even though she’s such an outsider she has, according to her IMdb page, some six projects lined up, JLo took part in Sephora’s “We Belong” campaign to talk about being an outside in Tinsel Town because … wait for it … she felt snubbed by the Academy for not getting a Best Supporting Actress Oscar last year. In fact, she even whined to Oprah about it:

“I felt like I let everyone down a little bit. I was sad. I was a little sad because there was a lot of buildup to it. There were so many articles, I got so many good notices — more than ever in my career and there was a lot of: ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar, it’s going to happen; if it doesn’t you’re crazy.’ I’m reading all the articles going: ‘Oh my God, could this happen?’ And then it didn’t and I was like: ‘Ouch.’ It was a little bit of a letdown.”

Snubbed for a trophy and she feels like an outsider? I have an idea, JLo, get out of Hollywood, and then you might really feel like an outsider.

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