In the musical theater world, there is the legend of Carrie: The Musical. Yes, I said Carrie: the Musical. It was an ill-conceived piece that showed up on Broadway in the ‘80’s and didn’t make it out of previews. It left people agog, and theater queens to this day are still talking about it. Here’s a clip! Since then, theatergoers have been seeking out the next Carrie, for the lulz. Many people thought Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark was going to raise the bar for flops. That being said, what’s playing now at the Foxwoods theater isn’t a flop, and seems to have enough staying power to stick around, for better or for worse. Continue reading
Rowen
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Born This Way is NOT The Fame. For some of you, that’s the best news ever. For others, that the worst thing you’ve heard. And then there are those of you who don’t give a shit. Neither does Lady Gaga. Continue reading
Let’s say you’re walking past a Starbucks, or a whatever, and you decide, “Fuck man, I’m thirsty! Well, actually, not really thirsty, because if I was, I wouldn’t drink something that’s gonna dehydrate me. But, I’m going through withdraw and need something caffeinated, and probably loaded with sugar and carbs.” So, it’s time to go in and get yourself some coffee, or coffee-like beverages.
Before you do, though, you need to prepare. If you’re not used to this, it might be time to step to the side of the sidewalk and collect yourself. First thing, are you on the phone? Well, before you go inside, you might want to finish that conversation up. Why? Because you aren’t that interesting and the people inside don’t give a shit about what you have to say. Harsh, I know, but it’s true, and like Tania and Rhonda, I tell it like it is.
So, you’re done with your phone conversation and have hung up and are interested in entering the store. First, though, take a look inside. Is there a line? Can you see how many folks are working behind the counter? These all will affect how things go later on. Also, are you in a rush? We’ll get to ordering later, but if there’s a really long line and only 2-3 people behind the counter, chances are that no matter what you order, it’s going to take a while. Also, unless you’re sleeping with one of the baristas, your demands of being served first will only end in more time being wasted and possibly receiving a decaf drink.
Now open the door. Feel that nice breeze coming from the rush of temperature controlled air blowing past you to the outside. Isn’t it nice? Well, it’s not nice to us inside. Usually, the inside is nice and temperature controlled so that if it’s hot outside, then it’s cool inside, and vice versa. You, however, are standing in the doorway for no reason and screwing that delicate balance up. While there are times this can be excusable (aka, you’re holding the door open for a wheelchair bound elderly orphan with a puppy with sad eyes), sometimes, you’re just holding it open for no reason. Maybe you’re finishing up that phone conversation you should have finished up outside. Maybe you’re trying to decide if you left your vibrator on. Maybe you have temporary blindness and don’t realize that there are two doors to a set of double doors (though, in your defense, sometimes one door IS locked, even if it is against fire code). Either way, it’d be swell if you could just hurry up and get inside, instead of blocking other people and causing a general nuisance. Get in, or get out. Shit or get off the pot. Don’t be a dog in a manger.
You’re inside, now. Breathe. Relax. See, that wasn’t that difficult? It’s not like this is rocket science, righ. … wait, um, you seem to have something on your face. No, really. It’s around your eye region. What? You can’t see it cause it’s so dark? Here, let me help you with that. Yeah, I’m just gonna take those off… Better right? As Sister Mary Clarence put it, “There is no sun in this room. You will not get a tan. Take off those sunglasses. That goes for you too. If they’re not prescription, I don’t wanna see ’em. I want to see you. I want to look into your eyes. I want you to be able to look into mine.”
So, you’ve managed to navigate how to physically enter the store without being a total douche. Congratulations! Unfortunately, you have another hurdle. You have to place your order without being a total jerk, but we’ll deal with that next time.
Earlier this week, I was at a divey piano bar, and we were all having a good time. Until they showed up. A gaggle of girls/women. From Westchester. With their boyfriends. Everyone was drunk, and one girl was wearing a tiara (of course). They spent the time being obnoxious, loud, requesting Total Eclipse of the Heart, and then Grease when informed that this was a show-tunes bar. These are the types of women who have watched too much Sex and the City and usually have or crave their own Stanford Blatch to their Carrie Bradshaw. These women dread the phrase fag hag, because it tends to carry the association of being overweight, classless, possibly promiscuous, losers who don’t have anything better to do then hang out with their gay friends and discuss baby names for when they both hit 35, single, and their marriage compact kicks in.
No, these women will proudly let you know that they are NOT losers, and that their Bump-It™ and Prada bag informs you that they are a different breed of girl. There’s always some sort of stupid name they come up with whenever some drunken idiot comes up with “Hey, aren’t you Mikey’s fag hag?” “No, I’m not! I have a boyfriend! I’m wearing a tube dress and a tiara cause it’s my birthday!! I’m a fruit fly/fairy princess!!” Yet, I’ve noticed something missing about these women when push comes to shove. An inner strength that I found in every woman I’ve known who’s worn the badge “fag hag.”
In college, I knew two women who were loud and proud to be fag hags. One of them had the most active sex life I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot. Low self esteem has its perks). One of her specialties was to go out and find a big hulking red-neck and first introduce him to her gay friends, then the gay clubs she hung out with, and rock his world with things he never thought he’d allow himself to do/have done to him (we’ll just leave it at that). The other one I knew was one of the sweetest humans I’ve ever met. She always had a smile on her face, and a kind word. She’s the type that will grow up to be Sharon Gless on Queer as Folk. And that’s a good thing, folks.
Later on, I meet a young woman at a music conservatory who knew how to treat her gay friends. She was pretty, just out of the armed forces, and studying musical theater. She abhorred these bridge and tunnel bitches that come into the city and try and instigate Straight Night at Splash. As she put it, “As a straight girl at a gay club, you’re like the puppy someone walks in the park; you’re there for conversation starters and not to be the center of attention.” I might not completely agree, but I do appreciate that she was willing to recognize that she wasn’t in “straight world” and therefore, tiaras and annoyingly drunk behavior weren’t cute, nor were they wanted. As a gay man, I barely like that in guys that I’m interested in, so when Miss Jersey Ego shows up, it’s just insufferable.
On the flip side, I spent a few months being one of those folks who stop you on the street going “Hi!!! Do you have a minute for gay rights?” (we can talk about that later) Numerous times I stopped a young (or a youngly dressed woman), often carrying an armful of bags. I would proceed to get an earful about how they supported their gay friends (with whom they were having lunch with this weekend, even!!). And they vote for gay friendly politicians! (only, like, every 4 years, when it’s a choice between the Anti-Christ and a hard place) But, as I could see, they were broke (since they just spent WAY too much money on shoes) and they’d love to help, and couldn’t they volunteer or something? (do you have a law degree? No, well, we don’t really need any envelope stuffers, thank you.)
The girl I used to sublet from was one of these girls. Drowning in credit card debt (thus she was trying to sublet her studio apartment for double what she was paying), thought her Snooki hair poof was the shit, wore a hounds tooth patterned coat, dated a total jerk, thought I was super awesome for being gay, but quickly turned into disgust as it turned out that I wasn’t the type to fawn over her. Things got ugly VERY fast. And then she got hit by a car while out on tour, but that’s neither here nor there.
For a long time, I wanted to be liked by these girls (of course, I also wanted to be liked by a hot rich, hung 35 year old millionaire with light chest hair and a . . . I’m sorry, I’ll be in my bunk.). I thought it would mean that I had achieved some sort of level of social acceptance, like I finally took off the glasses and braids and put on a cute slinky dress to find that people really liked me. Only it took me a while to find out that when Josh finally asked me out to the Non-Denominational Winter Dance, that he was just using me for free publicity. While plenty of folks might be nice to that person’s face, at best, we’re all just waiting for her to end up as a Real Housewife, only without people being interested.
So, here’s to the fag hags, the girls who are a gay man’s true friend. The ones who will be there when you’re drunk and high, and can’t find your pants.
Welcome to Rowen’s Coffee House! Feel free to pull up a chair, enjoy your free range/shade grown peppermint chocolate cappuccino, and chill out to the groovy lounge jazz!
I’d like for this to be a place to discuss the trials and tribulations of working in the customer service industry, especially the coffee industry, which is where I work now. I’d like to keep this scathing, but I’d also like to not have this turn into Barista Rant. So, let’s get started. Many people out there have no clue what’s in their cuppa, so here’s a quick intro to just what you’re drinking (and you can impress your friends with your esoteric coffee knowledge!!)
There’s quite a lot of ways to grind and prepare coffee, but unfortunately, your local Starbucks doesn’t serve them, so, in the interest of not confusing the hell out of you or allowing you to sound like a total douche, I’m going to keep it simple. Please note that I WON’T be covering crap like the frappucinos and the chai-teas, since that would be like including a Strawberry Sunrise Surprise Frozen Martini in an article about whiskey.
1) Brewed (non-espresso) – This is the type of coffee Americans think of when they think of coffee. It’s the acidic shit that the bitchy waitress serves you at IHOP, and gives you a glare whenever you request a refill. Variations include
a. Black Coffee – Just What It Says on the Tin, you idiot.
b. White Coffee – I’ve never heard anyone say this, but Wikipedia claims that this is coffee with cream. Or, ya know, coffee.
c. Café au Lait, Café Ole, Coffee Misto – Equal parts coffee and steamed milk. The poor man’s latte.
d. Red Eye –Black coffee with a shot. Two shots is a black eye. People have stupid names for more shots (Blue eye! Green eye! Brown Eye!) but that’s, once again, going into douchebag territory.
e. French Press – This should get its own section, but since it’s so rarely done, I figured I’d put it in the brewed section. French press coffee is more coarsely ground, and then scooped into a French Press. It’s allowed to steep for a few minutes, after which you press down on this plunger thing which pushes most of the grounds to the bottom. Personally, I find this to be the best tasting style of brewing coffee, as it has much more flavor then drip style. You can get a French Press for about 20 bucks and it doesn’t require a filter.
2) Espresso – This is a dark roast coffee that’s been ground much finer then your regular mud, and then packed into a small little puck called a “puck” which is then inserted into one of these magical espresso machines where hot water is forced through the coffee, to slowly dribble into a tiny cup. It’s a very sexy drink. . .
a. Espresso – This is your basic espresso with nothing added. True snobs will tell you that it’s supposed to be drunk almost immediately after being brewed , before the sweeter small topping, or crema, dissolves. However, this person is usually the dickhead “experiencing” their espresso right at the coffee bar, blocking everyone else from getting their 2/3’s caf, venti, 3.4 pumps no foam skinny vanilla latte. You can get regular espresso or you can have it in one of these two styles”
i. Long (or Lungo) – More water is added to the espresso, but it’s added as it goes through the espresso machine (compare to the Americano). This allows more of the bitter flavor to come through.
ii. Ristretto – Less water is used, making the drink smaller in volume, but sweeter in taste.
b. Café Americano – This style came from Europeans trying to mimic American drip coffee during WWII. Hot water is added to the espresso (destroying the crema).
c. Long Black – The inverse of the Americano. Hot water is poured first, and then the espresso is added, thus preserving the crema.
d. Espresso Macchiato – The espresso shot is topped off with a scoop of foam.
e. Latte – The espresso mixed with mostly steamed milk, and a topping of foam. Some places, not Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, teach their employees how to make shapes with the foam, which is cute in a ceramic cup in Snotty McCoffee Bar in Williamsburg, but who really has time for that?
f. Cappuccino – After the espresso, this drink has equal parts steamed milk and foam, meaning it’s supposed to have a thick layer of foam in it (yes, I have had people order a cappuccino and then bitch about the presence of foam. Please don’t be that person.)
So, there you have it! A quick list of what the hell is being served at your local Starbucks. Until next time, enjoy! And remember, if we didn’t make your drink right the first time, then fuck off.
Earlier this week, we discussed the Duggars on Crasstalk, and their very interesting Tater Tot Casserole recipe was mentioned. Never one to back down from a challenge, I decided to see what made this so special that it was “One of Daddy’s Favorites!” Here is the recipe in its entirety:
DUGGAR’s TATER TOT CASSEROLE
- 2 lb ground turkey cooked, seasoned, drained
- 3 2lb bags tater tots
- 2 cans cream of mushroom
- 2 cans evaporated milk
- 2 cans cream of chicken
- Brown meat and place in large casserole dish.
- Cover with tater tots. Mix soup and milk together.
- Pour over top. Bake at 350 for 1 Hour.
- (One of Daddy’s Favorites!) Makes two 9” x 13” pans
Tres chic, no? Time to get ingredients. Don’t be fooled by the exotic components, most of these items can be found at your local grocery store. Since I’m not feeding a family of 20, I decided to half the recipe. When I bake, this is a bitch to accomplish, but this recipe is so elegant in it’s simplicity that halving it was a cinch. So, with my ingredients gathered, it was time to begin.
1) Brown meat and place in a large casserole dish – Simply enough. I decided to take a big risk and add some dill, oregano and bay to the mixture, since I’ve had Midwest cooking before.
2) Cover with tater tots – Being lazy, I just dumped everything in the pan. I’ve seen pictures where the tots are lined up in rows. Sorry folks, but that’s too much for work for this dish.
3) Mix soup and milk together and pour over top – I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough of the gloopy mess to cover all the tater tots, but I managed to make it work. The middle *was* a bit thicker then the edges, but I hoped it would settle in the oven.
4) Bake at 350 for 1 hour – No prob! I watched TV while the casserole baked. This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven! My roommate commented on the scent (smells good!) when it came out of the oven, but since he’ll eat anything, I didn’t think much of it.
Finally, the taste test! I wanted to pair this with a smooth chateunfeuf D d’Soleil, but I had to settle for Cherry Limeade. Unsurprisingly, this was completely bland (like some of the men I date!). The meat mixed effortlessly with the tater tots until I couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended, held together by the soup/milk mixture. I believe that the Power of God must have been a part of the recipe since not even the dill could inject flavor into this dish. It was truly a recipe for those who need nothing more then the love of God in their lives.
Time – 5 out of 5 Guys. Actually work was 15 minutes, though, you still have to wait an hour for it to bake.
Prep – 4 out of 5 Altons. The prep was pretty damn easy. Mac and cheese is probably harder.
Taste – 1.5 out of 5 Paulas. Utterly boring. Lacked cheese, or salt or pizza.
Overall – 1 out of 5 Julias. Sure it was easy, but it was boring as hell. Completely inoffensive in a forgettable way (until you get a heart attack).
With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, this started out as a diatribe about how everyone who drinks green beer is going to a special hell. However, I realized, why not actually use this as a time to inform everyone of the things that I find great about my culture! That seemed much more constructive then yelling at you kids to get off my lawn. So, let’s start out with the part that I’ve always loved: folklore, legends and myths. Of which there’s a lot, so I’m gonna give you the Cliffs Notes version of what are referred to as the Three Sorrows of Storytelling, high edited and condensed by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant storyteller.
The Fate of the Sons of Tuiren
The father of the sun God, Lugh, was walking down the road and came across three boys who didn’t like him, like boys do. So they stoned him to death. Lugh found out and was pissed, and demanded a blood debt. He asked for three apples, and the skin of a pig, and a spear, and two horses, and a chariot, and seven pigs, and a dog’s whelp, and a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a hill, and then proceeded to mock them saying that if they were too weak, he’d take some of it off. The boys quickly fell into the trap, and accepted, only to find out that the apples were from the Garden of the Hesperides, the pig skin was a magical skin that could heal any wound, the spear was a poisoned spear belonging to the King of Persia, the horses can travel on land and sea . . and I think you get the idea. The boys set out and actually went made good on their promise. Adventures were had, until they got to the hill, where they fought the warrior who was set to make sure NO ONE shouted from the hill, the boys were gravely injured, though still managed to yell off the hill. They brought the stuff to Lugh, and asked him to heal their wounds. He told them that it would be better for them to die a heroes death, now that they’ve acquired all this swag for him, and let the boys die. When their father heard that his sons had died, he died of grief as well. Fin.
The Children of Lir
Sometime after this, the tribes were trying to decide on who should be High King over Erin. The God Lir realllllly wanted it, but they went with some other guy. In return, however, he got to marry the guy’s daughter, Eve. For a while, the two were happy, and Eve bore Lir two sets of twins, but died giving birth to the second set. The High King felt that no man should be alone, so he sent is second daughter, Aoifa, to console her sister’s widow. However, as Sondheim wrote, you can never love someone else’s children the way you love your own, so Aoifa started getting jealous, and eventually turned her step-children into swans, and cursed them for 900 years. When Lir found out, he turned her into a demon of the air, even though she was REALLY sorry for what she did. The four kids had to stay at a pond near their father’s house for 300 years, which was cool, cause they could talk and sing, but eventually, they had to trek out to the sea between Erin and Alba and spend the next 300 years there. Afterwards, they came back to Erin, happy to see their family, only to find out that everyone went and died on them, and that Christianity took over everything. The pond they were at was near a church and the priest befriended them. They became somewhat famous, and finally a pricness of the North married a Prince of the south, and wanted to do it in the church of the swans, which ended up breaking the last part of the curse. The 900 year old children were restored to their humanity, only they were 900 years old and died on the spot. The priest buried them and everyone was sad.
Deirdre of the Sorrows
A man and a woman had a beautiful daughter. She grew up in peace and happiness, but her parents knew she was doomed to fuck some shit up. Eventually the king saw her and fell in love, and took her back to his castle to foster her, and as soon as she became legal, get it on. She had it in her mind that she’d only love a man with hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow and lips as red as . .. well, I think we’ve heard that elsewhere, and you get the picture. There was only one such man, named Naoise, and he had two brothers. They met and fell in love, and the three brothers ran away with Deirdre. Furious, the king followed them, disrupting their happy life and what I would imagine would be the two other brother’s sexual frustration. He eventually caught up with them, and there’s a bunch of different version of how, but eventually everyone dies. (no, seriously, there’s a bunch of versions. In one, the brothers die by tripping on poisoned rocks and Deirdre dies from grief. Another, the boys die in battle and she dies after the king insults her after forcing her to have sex with another man.)
So, there you have it! Think of the long tradition of Irish storytelling this weekend, while you’re downing your green bud light, or your car bombs, or trying Guinness for the first time. And as Londonderry Aire (aka Danny Boy) plays for the 500 millionth time, and the drunk next to you starts singing the wrong worlds to When Irish Eyes are Smiling, think back on these stories, and on the Ireland that was before all the shamrocks and leprechauns.