The Gang Was Still All There, March 1987

(L-R) Leo, Dennis, Your Host, Alan, Lee, Bernie, Steve

Yeah, I’m posting a lot of old photos today. It’s nice to be reminded that the world wasn’t always falling apart with a madman at the helm, still threatening nuclear annihilation.

People have always given me a hard time for taking so many photos, but as I enter the winter of my life, I’m so glad I did. (The same goes for the two decades of journals I kept, even if I can’t place a single face to the men I seemed to always be gushing over.)

Welcome To The Castro

May 1985. This was our first trip to The City, a whirlwind adventure of only one weekend. We had so many places we wanted to visit, and a very limited time to do so (especially since we were without a car). We weren’t sure we’d have time to visit the Castro, but managed to fit it in that Sunday afternoon before heading to the airport.

But it was enough. We’d been bitten. We returned in November, at Christmas, and again in April and June of 1986 for longer stays. By the time August ’86 rolled around we’d all (myself, Bernie, and our friends Lee and Alan) relocated there. In the interim Bernie and I had split up but remained friends, and rented a flat together for the next year while we got our bearings.

I have long held that Prince and David Bowie were the glue holding our reality together. It seems it all started going to hell after their departure from this plane…


Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Life.

And getting through is a heartbreaking slog right now.

Now, I can’t quantify it, but I’m a firm believer that things really went to hell here after Prince died. A decade ago, losing both him and David Bowie within a couple of months was a collective gut punch I don’t think we’ve ever fully recovered from. I know I haven’t.

Over the past year, watching this fascist regime’s relentless assaults on his beloved Minneapolis, I’ve often thought to myself, “Prince wouldn’t have stood for this shit.” I wonder how he would be using his platform right now, and pulling his community together, and singing truth to power. He damn sure wouldn’t be silent.

A year before his passing, the Purple One released ‘Baltimore,’ a song lamenting the murders of Freddie Gray and Michael Brown by police, and the escalating violence and unrest in America, writing:

Nobody got in nobody’s way
So eye guess u could say
It was a good day
At least a little better than the day in Baltimore
Does anybody hear us pray?
4 Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?

While it’s been a beautiful thing seeing Bruce Springsteen, U2, Florence and the Machine, The Strokes, and so many others making art and launching tours to confront corrupt power, oppose violent bigotry, and call Americans to a higher level, Prince would have hit different. He always did.

I had the good fortune of seeing Prince close to a dozen times. These were, for me, spiritual experiences in the truest sense of the word: joy, liberation, unity, love, euphoria. It was baptism in blistering guitar, heavenly choirs of strangers, holy ground as a dance floor.

As he sang, Strangely beautiful, beautiful strange.

The first time I saw Prince at Philadelphia’s Tower Theater, I can remember standing wedged inside a sweaty, pulsing, kaleidoscopic mass of humanity, thinking: “These are my people!” I’d found my place.

Among a myriad of gifts, this was the solitary magic of Prince. He brought completely disparate groups of people together and made them feel they fit. He transcended musical genres, broke through color lines, and challenged gender roles. He boldly declared the dance floor big enough for all of us. And in that free and joyful place, we all danced.

When you were at a Prince show, you belonged. You were the right color, the right shape, the right religion, the right you. And in that space, you felt at home in your own skin and connected to those around you in ways that defy explanation. As much as anything right now, America could use those joyous nightly reminders of how many good people are still here and what we can still do together.

Prince gave me much more than hundreds of songs that altered my path and lifted my spirits.
He showed me that masculinity and femininity could inhabit the same space and be embodied in people simultaneously.
He made me realize that I could love God while being a complete contradiction.
He showed me that spirituality and sexuality weren’t divergent endeavors, but equally beautiful experiences of the Divine.
He taught me that friends don’t let friends clap on the two and four.
He showed me that humanity’s differences are where the glorious stuff is.
And he showed me that sometimes all you need is a funky beat and some friends who set you free.

Ten years after his passing, Prince’s artistic absence is palpable. As a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, and dancer, he will forever be without peer; an artistic force of nature, the likes of which we had never seen, and will never see again. The talent, creativity, passion, and light that he left this planet with cannot be measured.

Prince gave me more joy than I can properly express. His music provided me with a place that felt like mine, but never made me feel alone. His shows gave me an occasional three-hour experience of Heaven coming down. As he sang in Uptown: “Black, White, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin’…good times were rollin’.” I miss standing in that space; that one where the world could sing one beautiful song together.

Yeah, the threats we’re facing are more complicated than a pop song, and no, life isn’t like a Prince concert, though maybe it should be. There is something defiantly subversive about collective joy. Prince reminded us that we need to fight hatred, but we couldn’t stop dancing.

To all my fellow freaks who are grieving the place we call home and feeling devoid of joy; to all the misfits, outcasts, and weirdos out there who find solidarity in their oddness and who want to make sure everybody gets to join the party:

May all your berets be raspberry.
May all your corvettes be red.
May all your rain be purple.

And if De-elevator tries to bring you down,
go crazy, punch a higher floor.

Monday Tiedrich

Donny Convict is bugfuck nuts.

you know it, and I know it — but do you know who else knows it? all the president’s flunkies. they have to continually come up with new ways to deal with his crazypants shit on a daily basis.

here’s a perfectly normal thing that happened with our perfectly normal president.

recently, Donny was acting so erratically while military leaders were planning a rescue operation in Iran, that big strong aides with tears in their eyes had to go up to him and say, ‘sir! sir! why don’t you go play in traffic?’

I shit you not. according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Donny actually got banned from the command room.

Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said.

that’s right: Donny’s handlers had to keep him far away from what was going on, because he was so out of control that they were afraid he would fuck everything up.

can you imagine any other president in recent memory getting eighty-sixed from the center of operations? no, you can’t. it’s practically unthinkable.

here’s how that shit went down. remember that Good Friday incident, when Iran shot down an American jet, and nobody knew what had happened to the pilots? it turns that when he was given the news, Donny shat a massive brick

It was Good Friday afternoon in a nearly empty West Wing soon after the president learned that an American jet had been shot down in Iran, with two airmen missing. Trump screamed at aides for hours.

because everyone knows that the best way to motivate your staff is to get right up into their faces and just fucking unload on them for hours on end. Donny really is the boss from hell.

am I the only one getting ‘Hitler in the bunker’ vibes from Donny’s meltdown?

oh my god, can you imagine having this colicky piss-baby screaming at you for literal hours? no amount of money in the world could be worth having the rancid fecal-breath of that malignant toad being blown in your face as you endured the latest in an infinite series of dressing-downs — not to mention all the hurled ketchup bottles one would eternally be ducking.

seriously, you couldn’t pay me enough. if it were me on the receiving end of one of Donny’s tirades, I’d be all ‘how about you go fuck yourself, Shouty Boy?’

do know why Donny completely lost his shit? because he was worried that news of a downed jet would make him look bad.

“If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter…with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,” Trump had said in March. “What a mess.”

picture it: generals with actual combat experience are trying to figure out the best way to bring pilots back from behind enemy lines, and this fucking lunatic is screaming about Jimmy Carter and the price of gas, as if an entire rescue operation was all just some big plot to inconvenience him — because Donny always has to make everything about himself.

oh, and get a load of this.

At one point he even mused he should award himself the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.

FOR WHAT? my god, everyone who had to sit there and eat Donny’s shit while he screamed at them without end, they’re the ones who deserve the Medal of Honor.

sorry, Donny — you don’t get a Medal of Honor. what you get is the Four Seasons Total Prancing About Like A Complete Unhinged Fuckface Prize.

just to remind everyone, here’s how a president is supposed to act during a critical military operation.

that was Obama, in the Situation Room while Osama bin Laden was being taken out. notice how he’s not screaming in anyone’s faces about GET THIS FUCKING THING DONE ALREADY. nor is he ranting and raving about how bad he’ll look if shit goes sideways. he’s just a calm, rational dude.

but now we’ve normalized crazy. Donny pulls this childish crap on a daily basis, making a mockery of sane governance, and everyone is all just ‘well, okay. that happened.’

here’s a fun thing for All The President’s Toadies to consider: if you can ban a president from a command room for being too much of a raging lunatic, you can 25th Amendment him from the presidency for the exact same reason.

this deranged fucking maniac is back to calling for the complete destruction of Iran’s infrastructure.

“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

no more mister nice guy? when was Preznit Fuckwit ever a nice guy?

and oh look, now Donny’s doing his usual Sunday afternoon market manipulation, claiming out of the clear blue that he’s on the verge of another deal with Iran — and, once again, the press dutifully reports it without first bothering to ask Iran if it’s true.

spoiler alert: it’s not true.

all of this is bugfuck nuts. in the span of hours, Donny pinballs from threatening to blow everything sky high, to calmly announcing another imaginary deal.

none of this is normal — and all of it is insane.

here’s a serious question for Donny’s handlers: what’s the plan here? for everyone to just cross their fingers and hope Donny doesn’t eventually call for nukes? are they just hoping Donny somehow magically gets better?

free clue: Donny isn’t going to get better. dementia doesn’t magically cure itself overnight. neither does malignant narcissism, or delusions of grandeur, or compulsive lying, or the need to be worshiped, or any of the thousand pathologies and personality defects that Dear Leader suffers from.

he’s just going to get worse. today, it’s banning Donny from the command room. what’s Dear Leader going to need to be prevented from doing tomorrow?

so let’s go. 25th Amendment now. it’s the only rational solution to the problem of an insane chief executive.

we’ll take our chances with the furniture fucker.


happy Kash Patel is Suing The Atlantic Day to all who observe.

here’s Two-Drinks-Minimum Kash yesterday, shitfaced as usual on Maria Bartiromo’s show.

Maria Bartiromo: “the Atlantic Magazine is alleging that you have a drinking problem. what is your response this morning to this article?”

Krazee-Eyes Kash: “the results, I say, speak for themselves. if the fake news mafia isn’t hitting you personally with baseless information in Washington DC, then you’re not going you job. and it’s louder than ever, because this FBI, under President Leadership …”

Kash goes on to filibuster Bartiromo’s question for a solid two minutes without ever actually denying that any of his ahem alleged blackout-drunk escapades happened.

nice job of deflection, bro.

Kash says he’ll be filing his defamation suit against The Atlantic today. here we have some file footage of a definitely sober Kash, strategizing with his ace team of lawyers.

whoops! wrong footage.


and now, here’s your hero of the day: this fucking duck.

I have no idea what the duck did to deserve this, but remember: if you can 25th Amendment a duck from a store, you can 25th Amendment a lunatic from the presidency.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

Why Do They ALWAYS Look Like This?

You always seem to encounter them when you’re at your absolute worst. I can’t tell you about all the hot male nurses I had providing my care when I was in the hospital a couple weeks ago.

OMG…

I thought for a brief moment this was my late friend Jeffrey. 😳 😢

Jeffrey is second from right in this photo from my 42nd birthday in 2000.

I’d Knock Out The Dedicated Pantry…

…and get rid the Maid’s Room, pushing the kitchen wall to line up with the Maid’s Room.. I’d then turn the Maid’s Room into a Den/Office.  I’d also turn the Mud Room into a laundry and close off its access to the Maid’s Room bath.  I’d then turn that bath into a half bath accessible from the Den/Office.