Holiday Tales…and btw, the Hong Kong Grandmother Thinks I’m Christ
Posted on December 27, 2007
The holidays have been a wee bit crazy over here, so I apologize for not sending out a mass bulletin. Hopefully everybody had a terrific Christmas, holiday celebration or whatever it is you do or don’t practice per your beliefs. I believe that’s the PC way of putting it. I gave some very nice gifts out and received some pretty awesome ones, too. The only thing on my list that didn’t find its way to me is the Intrada Limited Edition of the “Jaws 3” Soundtrack. Not to worry since I’ll be ordering it. (heh heh)
Ralph has been home almost a week now and I’ve been loving every bit of it! Almost. Well, mostly. The majority of it anyway. Everything but one little hitch. It’s been tricky with my weekly shopping trip to Best Buy this week:
Ralph: What do you need? How much is it going to cost?
Okay, I don’t need any of it. It’s so not the point! I want it. Therein lies the issue. Crazy, right? Besides, I have a gift card for Best Buy.
Ralph: Why don’t you save it?
He saves gift cards for 2 years+ and then complains when he discovers the store has started to deduct funds from it due to non-usage. I never have that problem, which is a problem for him. It’s not so much that he couldn’t find something at the store where the card is from is that he has the opportunity to go and get something from there with said gift card whenever he wants…which is never. The whole logic becomes very circular after this.
Ralph: But, if you use it, it’ll be gone.
Grr… And yes, he really says things like that.
In an effort to keep the peace, I sent his grandmother the new Josh Groban CD. She in turn sent me a Christmas card addressed to “Christ.” Yup. Christ. My non-author name doesn’t even begin with a “Ch” nor does it end with a “t”, yet she somehow manages to write my name that way at least once a year.
Speaking of typos, the publisher and I have been working on eliminating a few remaining typos in the new book and I’ve found a few embarrassing references to scenes I’d cut out that had to be smoothed over. The ball is now in their court and the release date I saw for next year puts it out tentatively in June. It’s gonna be cool!
Quick aside here: Does anybody know anyone who uses the phrase “Gouda…like cheese”? Ralph picked this little gem up in Kansas City and I can’t seem to break his habit of using it. I gave up trying to show him the difference between how we drive in the rest of the universe versus how Chicago drivers do, but this saying is just grating on my last damn gay nerve.
Oooohhhh, and speaking of gay nerves, we were surfing YouTube last night and came across this guy named Johnny Chen who was on Tyra’s talk show with his white boyfriend. Watching this guy was almost as amusing as hearing him talk. Can we all say “nelly bottom”? He’d been with his boyfriend 3 years, which we thought was terrific, until we heard the boyfriend talk. They were both nelly bottoms! Three years together and neither of them figured out they weren’t having sex? Another gay Asian guy in the audience named Andrew stood up and asked Johnny why he hated himself for being Asian (Johnny professed his desire for his white men). I took the opportunity to look over at Ralph and ask him “So, do you hate yourself?” Suffice to say that it’s a good thing we weren’t on that talk show because Andrew would have been crying after Ralph was done with him.
One last amusing bit is a blurb at the end of the segment that stated Johnny and his boyfriend were no longer together. See? Andrew, who was a bit more butch, must have showed Johnny what he was missing…which is probably posted somewhere on XTube.com. Look for it.
We also learned a valuable lesson this holiday. When somebody you didn’t anticipate buying for tells you that she has something for you, don’t panic and go overboard trying to make up for it. If you didn’t budget for it, see what it is you are getting first not so you can see if it’s cheap or not, but so that you don’t go and spend $50 on wine only to find out she’s giving you a card and two gourmet pretzel sticks. Ralph and I had that discussion.
By the same token, when somebody else you didn’t budget for hands you $200 in gift cards…what do you do? We’re still mulling that one over.
Hmm. Wonder if he’d like a copy of that “Jaws 3” Soundtrack…
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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.
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