Rock Center

Did anyone watch the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center last night? Well, if you didn't honey, you didn't miss much to be sure!! I mean the tree is beautiful and all, though how you can go wrong with all those lights I couldn't say. But the performers? My God, was NBC scraping the bottom of the barrel or what?

First of all, it's a CHRISTMAS SHOW, I don't think it would be too much to ask for a carol or two. Nobody wants to hear Christina Aguilera sing a song called "Hurt" in the middle of a festive celebration. Thank you Debbie Downer.

And if you are going to sing a carol, John Legend, please just sing the damn thing like it was supposed to be sung. We don't need the jazzy soul version of Oh Holy Night, we need the version sung by someone with a big enough voice to pull it off and at least pretend they mean it!

Now I love me some Better Midler, but honey, what the hell were you thinking with that hat? It was fine when you had white feathers on you coat collar, but somehow they morphed into a turban the likes of which have never been seen below the Artic Circle, and it was just too much! Also, do not go changing the worlds of non-holiday songs to try and make them sound Christmasy. "From A Distance" was a lovely, inspirational tune TWENTY YEARS AGO WHEN YOU FIRST RELEASED IT, but you need to get some new writers if the best you can do is "from a distance...it looks like Christmas Eve." Give me a break.

Y'all know back in the day, having ol' Hall & Oats as the house band woulda been quite the coup, but last night was not the kinda come back you write home about. Why can't aged rock stars just sit they asses on the couch and collect royalties? Why must they all insist upon relaunching themselves into the realm of popular music sans clue or capability? You should end on a high note, not any note you can still squawk out 25 years later.

As for Talyor Hicks, well, it's unclear what he's been doing with his time and American Idol's money, cause it sure ain't been writing good songs.

I tell ya folks, last night's tree lighting made me once again thankful for DVR. I just fastfowarded right on through the has-beens, the wanna-bes, and the totally inappropriates until I got to the good stuff.

The 2 hour program lasted about 5 and a half minutes.

Housekeeping 101

You know, when I first starting dating Sweetpotato, I'd go over to his apartment and he'd have a couple candles lit and I thought it was just so romantic that he'd fill the air with evergreen scent to woo me. Fastforward a couple years and I have discovered that the candles were not in fact an attempt at seduction, but more a disguise of the uncleanliness of my surroundings. To Sweetpotato, Pine Scent = Pinesol, hence the smell of Christmas trees is an adequate substitute for scrubbing the floor.

Now let us be perfectly clear on this - I DO NOT enjoy cleaning and were it in my budget I would have a cleaning crew on speed dial, but as I am now happily married under a mountain of debt, I have been reduced to scouring my own toilet. You can imagine that I do not welcome the Saturday-morning scrub, seeing as how Saturdays are meant for laying about, but when I can no longer stand the sight of my bathroom I will indeed pick up a scrub brush (with rubber gloves on of course!)

Any of my former roommates can tell you that I am far from fastidious in my housekeeping, but even my slack sensibilities were horrified to find that my husband's stray so far as to believe that lighting a candle and lifting a rag are comparable cleaning strategies! I listened in horror as he told his entire family how the right candle transformed his apartment from a pigsty to a palace. Oh dear God, what have I done?! I mean, if you're not gonna do something yourself, you should surround yourself with folks who will, and now look I've gone and married a man with less concern than me for the state of our house!

A tragic move on my part ladies, and I tell you all this as a warning - no matter how wonderful your new guy seems, you better just have a peek in his closest cause if shit tumbles out you're gonna have to be the one to pick it up!

Happy Pre-Turkey Day!

Y'all know I am so excited about tomorrow I can hardly stand it!! Thanksgiving, the greatest of all the eating holidays and the one with the shortest visiting allotment. Unlike Christmas, where the danger of being trapped in the livingroom with your dullest of relatives lasts at least 2 whole days, Thanksgiving is specifically designed to fit the between the hours of 2 and 7. Four of those hours will be filled with a football game because regardless of how little you care about sports the rest of the year, when faced with grunting or conversation, you'll be shouting at the TV in no time...especially the Y-chromosomes. The women, of course, will be discussing the essentials of gravy-making in the kitchen, where we belong apparently(please read with sarcasm, as you know I'd never subjugate woman-kind like that).

Fortunately, I quite like my family, and with the addition of alcohol which I described for you in detail last year, I can withstand the kitchen, the football game and even the dish washing without the slightest twinge of relative stress...relatively.

So now I've arrived at the yearly struggle that precedes any holiday gathering...what to bake. My mother-in-law (can you believe I even have one of those!), she insists upon trifle for her Thanksgiving dessert, which I find both delicious and odd. I mean, everybody knows Thanksgiving was made for pumpkin pie. Sweetpotato says the first Thanksgiving probably did have trifle, seeing as the settlers were English and all, but y'all know the Indians had the pumpkins and even they knew not to let the Brits do the cooking!! I'm actually considering pecan pie (pronounced pee-can, not pi-cahn, and that's not Southern, it's Webster's) but y'all know I don't really prefer nuts in food where a perfectly good chocolate chip could be hiding, but we'll see. If anyone needs me I'll be browsing recipes online for the remainder of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving...pass the cocktails and carbohydrates!!!

If you can believe it..

Oh praise the Lord, I am back in the Big Apple!!! I have never been so happy to step foot on the smelly cement of the City in my life! Of course I have to leave again soon, but every little moment here counts. Y'all just imagine what my trips must be like if New York City seems to be my only bastion of sanity!!

And speaking of sanity and the lack there of....Tom and Katie are Mr. and Mrs. Cruise!! Can y'all even believe that nonsense!! (By the way, I was thinking over the weekend, as I read about the affair on Pink is the New Blog, that y'all probably think I'm awful late on the draw most of the time, and I just wanted to point out that my role here is not necessarily to impart the news upon you, but merely to commentate on the stupidity thereafter.)

That being said, I personally am not convinced it was a legal dealing in the first place, seeing as the laws of Scientology have yet to take hold on a governmental level (thanks be to God). So, you read about the gown and the tux and the castle and the flowers and all that other excessive waste of money, but the real issue for me was the guest list. I mean, am I going crazy, or did Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields just have a very public war over prescription medication? When did they become friends again and why? You know I wouldn't be hauling my cookies across an ocean to watch a brain-washed lunatic and he's mindless bride tie the knot, after he'd called me a weak psychopath!

And you know, I really want to like Will and Jada Smith, but then you see them supporting this unholy union and you think, hell, maybe they be crazy too! Then there's folks like JLo...how the hell do they even know each other? I mean, Tom might not be winning an Academy Award any time soon, but I don't see him starring in any of JLo's C-level films either? I guess Famous folks have some sort of famous folks club and meet backstage at award shows and decide to be BFF's when there are photographers around.

It is not, however, a stretch to understand what Victoria Beckham is doing at the wedding. You can see this girl's issues a mile away. Just look at her outfit...bitch got prob-lems. Check her out on Getty Images.

So all that's left now is to stay tuned for the divorce proceedings, I'm so ready for catastrophe I can hardly stand it!!

Where's Queenan?

Alright y'all, here's your clues... I'm in city whose skyline is filled with buildings and whose streets are filled with culture and bums. But before you go screaming Manhattan, know that this city has more Walgreens than New York City Starbucks, and more hills than the Appalachian Trail.


That's right folks, I'm in San Francisco!!!

Really this is a luuurvely town, and I am just having a ball...well despite the facts that I have to stand in a department store all day trying to sell overpriced stuff to ridiculously rich folks and that my Sweetpotato is on the other side of the country all alone with only the company of a very bad dog.

This town is really quite nice but I'll tell you, something has got to be done about these hills! I mean can't they get a bulldozer out here and level this place off? Everyone here seems to think it's part of the charm but honey, let me tell you, heels and hills DO NOT mix! I'm trudging all over this damn city just trying not to break my ankle and it's a damn good thing those trolley things move about 4 miles an hour or I'd be a dead woman.

So far, just as you'd expect, I've eaten sushi two nights in a row and basically conversed with only folks of Asian descent, all of which have been lovely. Tomorrow I plan on eating Rice-A-Roni with a group of homosexuals, thereby fulfilling every stereotype I could possible handle in one trip.

Of course, in my rush to pack my flatiron and seal my liquids in a clear quart bag, I forgot to bring my camera, which is really a shame cause I'd love to show you how Queenan rolls on the west coast. But then I realized it'd be the same as She rolls on the east coast - on a two-wheeled suitcase that fits in the overhead bin! Look honey, I fly coach, it's all I can do to get my freakin bag on the plane, let alone in the main cabin.

So y'all stay tuned for more from the Where's Queenan series...so many un-fabulous places to see, so little time;-)

Pumkin Season

It's that time of year friends, oh yes, it's Pumpkin Time!!! Now I guess pumpkin time really starts back in October but as I wasn't around last month I've had a bit of a delayed start.

I've already made pumpkin muffins and have now moved on to pumpkin roll. I was gonna share that recipe with you today, but then I realized it's already in my Cocktails and Carbohydrates cookbook, in fact I have an entire chapter dedicated to holiday treats which I highly suggest you peruse in your spare time.

Now I have found a new recipe for a pumpkin treat that reminds me of Blueberry Dump done pumpkin style, so I'm gonna try that out this weekend on Sweetpotato and let you know if it's worth makin'. Sweetpotato just loves being my guinea pig this time of year, but only for desserts. In fact, he prefers I not attempt any recipe that does not involve an oven cause to be sure it won't end well otherwise. In my experience, cookers don't bake and bakers don't cook. Personally, I have no interest in standing over a stove, stirring steaming pots, hoping that the ingredients come out tasting like something you'd wanna eat. At least with baking, for the most part you're pretty sure that no matter what the condition of the confection, if it's made of sugar, flour and eggs, it's probably gonna taste okay. Sunken cakes taste just as good as risen ones, and with a little icing who can tell the difference? Not so with cooking. I mean, you walk away from your risotto for even a minute and you're serving glue with a burnt aftertaste that no amount of cream cheese frosting can disguise.

hence, I have ceased all stove-top endeavors and am only allowed to operate the oven and the mixer unsupervised. You see, baking is my one and only domestic skill and I intend to cultivate no others. There are women who enjoy ironing and who can't sleep in an unmade bed. I am clearly not one of them. In fact, I think those women should undergo psychological evaluation immediately. Again, I have to go back to, why do something you can pay someone else to do for you? Right now I'm simply trying to survive until I win the lotto and can hire a full-time made because housework simply does not become me. Besides, I wanted Sweetpotato to love me for my body not my housekeeping abilities. Clearly I have succeeded;-)

So Long Spederline!

Okay, okay, I know I'm late on the comment here, but I've been out of town (which I will be a lot this month so just calm down!)

So Brit's accountant finally talked some since into her I guess. You know I really couldn't give two shits if they stay together or break up or fly to the moon and back, they simply do not occupy that much of my cognitive time. However, I do enjoy watching bad things happen to bad people and celebrities going all white trash, so I am sad to think my fodder might be thinning.

But from the looks of the latest pictures, it looks like ol' Brit is thinning as well. Now that really bursts my bubble cause you know I was convinced her snake charming days were over. Now it looks like she might be writhing around on the stage in no time, which, while totally inappropriate for a mother of two, is quite a feat for someone who has spent the past 3 years with her bare feet propped up on the dashboard of her SUV. I have heard rustlings that while she was delivering this latest little bundle that she may have had a little nip and tuck on the sly. To be sure a woman living on 800 calorie Starbucks drinks and fried chicken does not emerge from the delivery room a size 4. And please don't give me any diet-and-exercise crap cause you know as well as I do it takes more than 2 weeks to sculpt a flat tummy outta an inflated one (hell, I've been working for 2 years and have barely a glimmer of abdominal muscle, if I suck in and turn sideways!)

So everyone's calling a comeback and I hate to be the one to ask, but in all this preparation for her re-birth into pop-stardom, do you think she's learned to sing? I'm serious. I mean, if you're gonna be a "singer" shouldn't you be able to produce a single melodic sound without the aid of a synthesizer? Fortunately, her fans are just about as dumb as she is and probably don't even notice that her microphone is merely an accessory.

Oh well, one more talentless idiot making a fortune while I waste away behind a desk, c'est la vie. At least I'll have the divorce proceedings to keep me warm at night. Here's hoping it's a long and ugly battle;-)

Pet Peev of the Day

You know what irritates the hell out of me...Cell Phone Ring Tones. I mean really. What kind of moron wants a rap song to play every time someone calls him. Look honey, just because your phone plays "Big Pimpin" don't mean you're shit.

Come on now folks, cell phones have like the world's smallest speakers and no matter what song you carefully select and pay $.99 to play, it's gonna sound like "gurglesqwakrumble" anyway.

And the worst are those folks who have different songs for different callers, I mean...Get a life! What the hell do you do all day that you have time to surf around on line trying to find the perfect melody for your boyfriend, your momma, your dealer and your babydaddy? I can guaran-damn-tee you you're the same person who's paid $10 dollars to buy ringtones and is 2 months behind on the phone bill. And really now, if you're gonna have a song (and of course I STRONGLY suggest you not) at least pick something funny or entertaining. The woman on the elevator with me this morning had some early 80's love song a la Peter Cetera playing when her honey called. I mean if you're a sap, alright, but gag us behind closed doors would ya? Don't go all out in public with that mess.

It will be a cold day in hell before you hear ol' Queenie's phone humming "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend," I don't care how appropriate the lyrics. Now y'all just go find yourselves something worthwhile to invest your energy in, like finding a $7 champagne that taste like Veuve Clicqout, and leave the ringtones alone!