Tom Heald's simple WNN sites of the day & dots....

BRACH'S CONFECTIONS NSYNC FRUIT SNACKS Brach's Confections is now offering a brand-new "Hot Hits" Fruit Snacks product featuring *NSYNC. Each package of *NSYNC Fruit Snacks will contain a collectible replica backstage pass. The fruit snacks' shapes themselves will include juice-filled hearts with one *NSYNC band member's name on each heart.

And now, your moments of Zen

11-04-01 Okay, you'd think I would have had more time to write with my parents gone for a week to Hawaii... but I cleaned house, rearranged furniture, went to the last of the card games for a while.

Reason #287 it's good I'm not a parent : Know how I figured out the dog needed water in his dish? We went out for the nightly walk after the rain ended, and he was licking the suburban gutters. Which I later learned he seems to enjoy doing whether he's out or water or not. Anyway... The walk was cut short. The bowl was refilled and a second one put out.

Finallly found a fortune cookie recipe, haven't used it yet. Believe I have most of the recipe's ingredients.

The parents are home now, thus I got to have this conversation :

Mother : "We saw this hideous dreadful movie on the plane flight... she didnt have the headsets on but it had these japanese people flying... and something about a magic sword it was absolutely awful .... do you know anything about it?"

Me : "You mean the 9 nominee 4 win Academy award nominated crouching tiger hidden dragon?"

Mother : "that was nominated for awards? Oh it was creepy"

and I now have a KAUI however-it's-spelled baseball cap (thrilling), a big ole rayon "Hawaiian" shirt (not bad), and what appears to be a decent quality ukulele....

And now, your moments of Zen

There was another card / Oscar watching party Sunday, Column showed, we enjoyed conversation on the ride back in to Rapid, I bought a couple bucks gas to pay for the ride.

Says things are getting a little hinky with his in the process of purchasing house in Hot Springs -- future inn / B&B / boarding house. Bad furnace, and foundation troubles.

He's off the crutch, and can walk about now, though still using a hand made cane. Cast off soon.

Exciting stuff, huh? It's still an infancy of something or who knows, maybe not. Still orbiting one another perhaps.

The Top Fives (to borrow a concept from Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Examiner) : videos I've been seeing on MTV2... 1. "Weapon of Choice" - a truly amazing Fatboy Slim video with a dancing and flying Christopher Walken, straight out of the old Stanley Donnen musicals. 2. Uncle Cracker "Follow Me" with cameo by Mark McGrath - catchy tune 3. Robbie Williams - Rock DJ. The good version of Eminem. A nice arrogant tattooed punk. 4. Men Without Hats - Safety Dance (sorta). Never saw it in the 80s, didn't have MTV. Have been seeing bits and pieces on "Remember the 80s" style Time Life Ads, and again last week on Friday's "Name That Video" on VH1. (So it still technically counts.) 5. Jill Scott - can't think of the name of the new video, but another performance proves it wasn't a fluke. She's got a great set of pipes, personality, and sense of herself.

And now, your moments of Zen

23-Mar-01

"You haven't been writing, Tom." Not true. I just haven't been writing here. In addition to he other regular gigs, I've been helping whip a new gay community newsletter into shape. Fighting with a bunch of paranoid "progressives" that the Democratic Party is not dead as we know it. Rewriting the Kip memorial, and admitedly playing too damn much solitaire and/or Freecell.

The Kip story ended with a good sounding but acceptable fib. By the time I finished, it was 6 AM. No stars, no toast. It does happen tonight.

Column and I had lunch last Saturday (original plan a movie, but we didn't connect at a newsletter design meeting downtown in the morning), and I got to do the gentlemanly thing of opening the door as he made his way through on crutches (broken foot in January) into the Pizza hut, which had been "certified to sell the Big New Yorker Pizza," read a sign on the door (By whom, the EPA?.) MOre found humor... the Jukebox had Pink Floyd's The Wall... albeit 13 highly selected tracks.

After discussion (perhaps overly), helped turn him on to a new food cooperative (mostly organic) in what i think passes for Victorian house around here (possible boarding house too). Bread Root

The owner seems to have set off Colum's gaydar but not mine. Colum found some spices and assorted odd bulk grainish things (Takini?) while i followed him around recycled box in hand like a lost puppy probably.

Found a habit I may need to learn to control more around him. explaining a joke too much. at least twice he seemed to know how lame a reference was, and probably just did a low chuckle or smile where I was waiting for a guffaw. (always in performance mode in real life with him. even now we've only seen one another 3 real days)

Radio station manager (a vegan) was there shopping briefly and I wheedled out of her that gee, there was to be a radio meeting tonight and our fundrasing dollar is officially $15,000. (whoopie.) The school might give us 10 grand but the managerial presentation wasn't good enough, and they worry about giving us that much at once.

But for now, your moments of Zen

08-Mar-01

Gay + GOOD reason # 634 : unless they're in an all-male prison, I know better than to care about someone's "naked wife." And recognizing a porn advertizement comes easier just being on AOL.

Brother has finally gotten a job. Mother hates it. It's as a convenience store cashier. $7.50 an hour and all the slurpees you can carry to your car without using your hands. 2 security camera, rent-a-cops on call, and they're there to take you to your car. Naturally he'll have to take a course on spotting fake IDs... but since he may have had prior experience, it'll be easier than the slice of pie that's been next to the store's microwave for the last several months.

He'd applied at both the convenience store and a DodgeTown parts department at the same time, and the E-Z Mart called him back with the job offer an hour before the car co. Mother wishes he's taken the second job. I prefer he honor his word to the first one. But give mom a reason to worry and she will.

I just like the fact that in all likelihood he'll have his name sewn to his uniform. Just one of those a measurement of where you are in life.

Your moments of Zen for...07/08-Mar-01

06-Mar-01

Scott, a classmate recently connected with via last Decembers Solstice tells me in an email : "I never did make that trip to San Diego. Things came up here, and I didn't even hear back from two of my friends. I have decided that from now on my three-day weekend plans shall not involve other people.

So the school shooter "Andy Williams" had gone nuts after deciding what to do at the Christmas spectacular at his theatre in Branson. Frankly I'd be more likely to kill myself if I had the same name as Anson Williams.

There's weirdness afoot this week on Nick at Nite : "Revenge of the '80s."

Last night I saw Mr. T, Peggy Hammil, Muhammad Ali and Janet Jackson meet Gary Coleman on "Diff'rent Strokes," Tonight it was Ricky Schroeder in a black leather zippered Michael Jackson-y leather jacket, later meeting Whitney Houston.

In retrospect, both nights of these shows have really sucked. "Revenge" is an apt title. And as bad as the Very Special episodes seemed, the Very Special Guest Star episodes are even worse.

"Silver Spoons" does not hold up well at all, with varying heights of Ricky Schroeder offering different levels of pedophiliac weirdness. He's unnaturally weirdly young. From just out of grade school to a barechested (but bath-toweled) teen who knows better than his father 99% of the time, but still. everyone hugged at the end of a show. It seems I tuned in to late for Icky Schroder meets Mr. T. "Square Pegs" seems the only one of the shows in the marathons immune to him

Coming up later this week in 9-episode marathons are: Wed.: Alien "ALF" hosts "The Tonight Show." (Okay, he's attempting a comeback. I'll run a tape for it.)
Thurs.: Peewee Herman and Run-DMC strut their stuff on "227."
Fri. New-wave rockers Devo whip it up on an episode of "Square Pegs."
More details at: http://www.sitcomsonline.com/revengeofthe80sweek.html

And now, your moments of Zen...

02-Mar-01

A new pre WNN ritual, just a letter's difference. TNN -- the National Network. Yes, it's mostly redneck/heterosexual jock fare - rasseling, Miami Vice etc. I have found myself enjoying "The Rockford Files," (which I was too young to enjoy the first go around), and the newly scheduled hour that's on right before I switch over to the already-in-progess feed of ABC's World News Now -- "The Dukes of Hazzard." It's one of the few tv shows both my brother and I liked as kids. He liked it for the car. I may have had a case of "Enos" envy.

After the card game Sunday I called for a ride home, and met my brother/ride at the local former head shop (which still sells incense) now a new and used CD shop, Ernie Novembers. As I head back to the bargain used bins, [picking up among other things both cds of RENT, the Austin Powers scores, original SHAFT! (Damn right.), Doris Day in Pajama Game & Calamity Jane, and an XTC disc] brother finds a novelty shirt he'd really like (if he had a job to buy it, instead of living off mom's wages post-prison). It's the ever popular "I'M HERE FOR THE BLOW***" design which I assume is just a smidgen less offensive on a straight redneck than it is on a reasonable respectable gay man such as myself. (I may have seen it with better lettering on "Queer as Folk."

Also on the new front : the friend-who-is-a-boy has another nickname for me besides "Buckwheat" which he tagged me with the second time we saw one another. The new nom de Tom is "Boogerhead," which Colum tossed my direction at the beginning of an ICQ conversation on Wednesday. Naturally I wonder what I've done wrong. But he tells me "that 'Boogerhead' is just about as high up on the list as one can get with me." My mother never bothered to tell me that the way to a man's heart is through his nostrils. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

If you're using Internet Explorer, you'd possibly be interested to know that Colum took the time recently to translated the lyrics to today's background MIDI from German into English. Hey, I was impressed. E-mail me if you'd like a copy.

And now, your moments of Zen...

01-Mar-01

Another monthly (well, planned monthly ... but it would seem different planners are making it 2-3 times a month) card game ... low turnout ... but what started as 2 playing cribbage and a solo tribute to solitaire became a lesson in the dark arts of Canasta...

Customer service tip from Tuesday night: don't try too hard if you're not that good. Two weeks in a row, the girls and I have been served by "Jason in Training." Meanwhile: Customers in Hell"...

Hope you had a Happy Mardi Gras by the way. Not being that religious I don't particularly give up anything for loaned ... and/or "lent." Perhaps some feelings of negativity, inadequacy, poor self esteem for 40 days...

I won a $20 gift certificate for an online movie seller on a nationally syndicated "The Movie Show On Radio" over the weekend ... identified a movie clip from Woody Allen's "Bananas" which... I've never seen. The Internet is a great place to cheat on trivia when you have more than one line. May use the GC to finally buy "Pink Flamingos"...

The gay team member was neither the Mole or the Winner ... the legacy of Richard Hatch?...

I cannot tell you just how much I hate these ads for Christian "rock." Now there are competing compilations with ... amazingly... 90% of the same modern hymns (and/or hers).

And now, your moments of Zen...

22-Feb-01

Learned something new about Dad.... Friday night on "Millionaire," a question about an accomplishment being a "feather in your ____ (cap)," one answer is "boa." Dad has never heard of a feather boa. But he knows it's a snake. But then, Dad's never been big on broadway musicals, hookers, or Liz Taylor.

More sleep of late, various days of the past week, I've gone from 6 hours of sleep to 10. Good for the body, bad for the projects. Like this.

And now, your moments of Zen...

Copyright © 1999-2001 Tom Heald.