Utah Pride Festival: Saturday

Brian and I thought it would be fun to go to the Utah Pride Festival this year.  And in my desperation for some kind of vacation, I thought we could make it an overnight trip and stay in a hotel even.  Salt Lake City is only an hour away and feasibly we could have driven back and forth, but where's the fun in that?  And what could be more fun than getting friends together to go?  So we invited our friends Brett and Wes along to join us in the festivities.

All four of us had to work on Saturday, but as soon as we clocked out we threw our bags into the trunk of Brian's car and headed up the freeway to our weekend of gay frivolity.  We checked into our hotel room at the Sheraton at about 7:00 PM, freshened up a bit, and then headed to Washington Square where the festival was being held.  We got there just in time to see the talent provided by the Utah Pride Center this year: Prince Poppycock of America's Got Talent fame and Frenchie Davis who appeared on both American Idol and The Voice. 

Prince Poppycock was a hoot painted all in gold with a fabulously shiny wig.  He sang a variety of numbers, beginning with the operatic "Marriage of Figaro" and ending with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."  His performance was campy fun and the audience ate it up.  Frenchie Davis performed next and she was phenomenal!  A large woman with a shaved head and a big voice, she belted her heart out on numbers from Cee Lo Green to Lady Gaga to her own single "Love Has Got A Hold of Me."  She was so fantastic the audience cheered her on for an encore.

I wasn't cool enough to record any of the performances, but luckily other people did.  Here are some vids that I found on YouTube from the festival:





After the performances, a Latin dance party commenced so we moved to the front of the stage and danced our little hearts out.  With the awesome lights, pumping music, and hot dancers shaking their booties on stage it was a pretty exhilarating night out.  Exhilarating and hot.  And by hot I mean sweaty, and not in a good way.  Eventually we had to get away from there and head back to our hotel room.  None of the hot Latin dancers wanted to come home with us, so we spent the rest of the night playing cards and... well, what happens in Salt Lake stays in Salt Lake.

Chihuahua Comics 2012:1

Goodbye May, Hello June

May was a pretty decent month.  The best part of it was that I wasn't in school!  I almost took a Spanish course over the summer, but I was unable to obtain summer financial aid and the class would have cost me $1000 out of pocket.  No thank you.  So instead I'm just working and when I'm home I have time to clean the apartment, hang out with Brian and work on personal projects.

Apart from working on the upcoming Chihuahua Comics (the first month and a half are already scheduled to post), I've been doing some writing.  At first I was combing over the first draft of Jacky Boy and improving upon it, but it wasn't really working for me.  So then I decided to start completely over and I'm enjoying this version a lot better.  It's the same story, but I'm approaching it in a different way.  I thought my first draft said too much at the beginning, so I'm withholding more information to be more mysterious.  It's been fun to do.

Here are some other highlights from May:

• We threw a Cinco de Mayo Party at the beginning of the month and invited a random grab bag of people.  Some friends from my old Cinemark job, some Zales coworkers, Brian's family, and an old mission companion came over to eat shrimp tacos and converse with one another.  It was pretty low-key, but it was fun.
• My friend Wes came home from school and we caught a movie and had some lunch.  We even looked at some scooters because he's thinking of buying one.  I'm starting to wonder if I should get a scooter... or a car... or hell, a broomstick even if it will fly me to work!  Brian's sister Amy just got a new car and I'm jealous.  Sometimes relying on the bus or organizing rides with coworkers gets annoying.
• Mother's Day was enjoyable.  I called and spoke with my mom and my stepmom, which was lovely, and then we had dinner at Brian's parents' house.  Brian's mom loved all her gifts, including The Help on DVD which we all watched with her.
• Brian and I had a particularly enjoyable date night.  He wanted to surprise me so I didn't know what we were doing.  He took us to Macaroni Grill and then we went to paint pottery at Color Me Mine!  It was so fun!  Brian painted a sundae dish and I painted a mug.  They both turned out really great.  However, I must say that dating these days is really expensive.  Between dinner and the pottery, we spent $100 on one night out!
• Jenny's sister just had a birthday and closed on her new house around the same time.  Congrats!  May brought other moves as well.  My brother moved into an apartment with his girlfriend, which is a big step for them.  Now that they have an empty nest, my dad and stepmom moved into a new apartment as well.
• My sister found out the baby is going to be a girl.  She's naming her Amaya!
• Brian started taking art classes on Wednesday nights with a friend of his named Renae Bonsteel.  He's really been enjoying them.  One night after his lesson, Renae and her sister Candace came over to watch Spirited Away.  Brian popped some Parmesan and black pepper popcorn and it was a lot of fun.  Renae had once been to Japan so she had a lot of insight into the movie.
• Speaking of Japan, Brian has been obsessed with Japanese cuisine lately.  He's been poring over a Japanese cookbook and watching this crazy internet cooking show called Cooking With Dog.  A new Asian Market opened up in Provo recently and Brian spent a sizable portion of our grocery budget there!
• May didn't come without its share of drama.  My friend Michelle and I had a falling out and are no longer on speaking terms.  Brian's family is going through some stuff as well.  And at work, I missed my monthly sales goal by a measly $65 or so.  I was so close!!  Oh well...

Now I'm ready for June, which is Gay Pride Month!  To start it off, Brian and I are going to Salt Lake City's Pride Festival tomorrow with our friends Wes and Brett.  I'm hoping for a fun weekend.

The Boys Are Back SUNDAY!

This is just a reminder that the brand-new 2012 edition of Chihuahua Comics are returning on Sunday.  That's really really soon!

My friend Wes said, "The anticipation for June 3rd is killing me!  I'm more excited for the comics than I am for The Dark Knight Rises."  Have no fear, Wes!  June 3rd is right around the corner and you can bet your ass it's better than anything Christopher Nolan could come up with.

Well, maybe not better.  But definitely right up there.  Okay, maybe second best.  I wonder if it's too late to give us superpowers...  Batman doesn't have superpowers either though.  Just a really cool suit, car and crime-fighting gadgets.  Brian and I could fight crime.  Maybe not.  I cried the other day over a hangnail.

No need to choose though.  Check out Chihuahua Comics on June 3rd and see The Dark Knight Rises on July 20th.  I'm premiering a whole month earlier so it's not even a contest really.  Apples and oranges.

To reiterate, just read the comics.  I work hard on them.  These are hand-drawn, people.  None of this computer crap.  I even color them with Crayola colored pencils.  I'm hardcore.  I bet Chris Nolan can't do that.  What does he have that I don't have?

Just millions of dollars.

Chuck E. Cheese

Sylvia and Stasha on a ride at Chuck E. Cheese's.

When I was a kid, Chuck E. Cheese's was the coolest place ever.  It was where a kid could be a kid.  I remember a massive stage where Chuck and his pals would sing and dance.  It was so awesome!  Then Chuck himself would run around and say "hi" to all of us; high-fiving my friends and me as we stuffed our faces with pizza and played arcade games.  Finally, with fistfuls of won tickets I would select my prize and go home happy.  Chuck E. Cheese was so cool, he made Mickey look like some boring mouse.

That, of course, was years ago.  Many, many years ago.  All of my memories of Chuck E. Cheese's are from California and my family moved to Colorado when I was seven.  So we're talking a long time here.  Brian and I went to the Chuck E. Cheese's in Orem, Utah yesterday for a birthday party.  My little cousin Stasha turned four years old and I'm sure to her the place still had charm.  But for me, it was kind of a letdown.  What happened to my totally rad pal named Chuck?

You know those guys who were studs in high school but somehow never seem to amount to anything afterward?  They stay and "hang out" with all the high school kids and talk about how awesome they used to be and yadda yadda yadda... constantly living in the past.  Well, that's what Chuck E. Cheese reminded me of.  That guy.  You go in, and it's like you've stepped back into the late 80s/early 90s when Chuck used to be cool.  He's got really cheesy-looking photos up of his glory days.  There's Chuck posing with two little girls with side pony-tails and scrunchies! There he is kicking a soccer ball!

And he doesn't even look cool anymore.  He came to our table to greet the birthday girl and he just looked shabby.  He even had a handprint embedded in the fur on the back of his head... poor guy.  Somebody should tell him.  And it's crazy to me how I was once fooled by his costume.  It's so unappealing.  And the animatronics show?  Wow.  Horrible.  I'm pretty sure the singing chicken's mouth movements were still set to whatever Madonna song she had originally been singing, they just play Taylor Swift's "Love Story" over it.  That's about the extent of the upgrades.  There's also a dance performed to LMFAO's "I'm Sexy and I Know It" (sans lyrics obviously... a chicken and a mouse can't be sexy).

Although, there was a vaguely sexual animal documentary that played on the TVs for a good ten minutes or so.  It was a series of animal photos with captions played to weird porn music.  The captions said things like "Check out that goat over there" or "You're smooth, Mr. Moose" or "Oh yeah, eat that grass."  When that ended it turned into an 80s pop music video with flashing, strobe-like images of kids in neckties playing the guitar and singing "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung.  That was followed by a skit with puppets teaching kids the importance of proper ventilation while painting indoors.

I couldn't handle the entertainment anymore so I just focused on the pizza... which is probably the worst pizza ever.  I've microwaved pizza rolls more delicious than that stuff.  And the pizza is freaking expensive!  My Uncle Greg spent an arm and a leg buying pizza and drinks for ten people when I know he could have baked a much better one at home with his own ingredients.  Oh well.  The games were still fun and Stasha and her little sister Sylvia had a good time winning tickets and riding rides.  Brian and I did the noble thing and gave our tickets to the girls.  We could have cashed them in for a star-shaped eraser or something, but we figured the girls would put them to better use.

Not like Stasha needed more prizes.  You should have seen all the presents she got!  Brian and I got her a stuffed Ty teddy bear which made her face light up.  I was surprised actually.  She just squeezed it close to her with this big cheesy grin, even bigger and cheesier than the ever-smiling Chuck E. Cheese who came over and frightened little Sylvia into tears before he scampered away to his aging electronic friends and the pizza that only the Teenage Mutant Turtles could appreciate.

Craft Time! Frames as Wall Art

I'm feeling crafty lately.  And not the devious, scheming kind of crafty... I mean the kind that makes crafts.  Not long ago I posted a project making storage boxes, and today I've got another little project.  This one is much easier.  All I needed were some frames which I bought really inexpensively at Deseret Industries (a thrift store).  Each frame cost a dollar or less.

Then I sanded them down a little and painted them a new color.  I used various shades of blue and a pop of red.  The acrylic craft paints I got from Hobby Lobby and they were about 60 cents a tube.

Once they were all painted to my liking, I used the sandpaper again to distress the frames a little bit.  I roughed up some corners and accentuated the ridges in the framework.

Then I hung them in a pattern on the wall of my bathroom!  Don't they look great?  Instant wall art!

Pitter Patter

by Jack Garcia

The sound of rain, like gunshots in the night,

lashed liquid whips against the window pane.

But all the water could not drown my fright.

Or wash her wounds.  Or cleanse her of her pain.

“I would have killed myself were you not there”

was all she had to say for me to cry,

and though my tears joined hers in wet despair
I didn’t hurt enough to want to die.
The pitter patter of the rain like feet

reminded me of tiny children, scared,

running to their mothers—a safe retreat

—to plead with watered eyes they will be spared

the cruelties of the closet monster.

I’ll never know how the rain still haunts her.