A Giant Pot of Gumbo
My annual brunch is now a small fundraiser for HATCH (Houston Area Teens Coalition of Homosexual). This event was to raised money to buy gas cards for the members. $200 was raised for HATCH.
My good friends, Carl Mc and Khoi’s new house was the location for this wonderful brunch. The weather was beautiful as the guests enjoyed a brunch that was Louisiana inspired. There were also plenty of mimosas and champagnes for the guests to drink.
I cooked a twenty quart pot of seafood gumbo, a big pot of red beans, penne pasta with alfredo sauce, andouille sausage, salad with cranberry salad dressing and banana foster. Friends also brought desserts. This included a delicious flan made by my friend Noel. I want to thank everyone who came and donated to HATCH. Special thanks to Fawn, Julie, Maria, Gary, Carl MC, Khoi and Chris for helping me with the food and the party. I also want to thank you Jacqueline and Chuck for their contribution to the party despite not being able to come. Chuck also donated a book to the HATCH’s library.
TWO CITIES, THREE DIVAS
Diva Kathy
Gary and I started our “Divas’ Tour” on November 8 by seeing the currently most successful commediene, Kathy Griffin. She sold out two shows on that night at the Verizon Theatre in Houston, Texas. Kathy caters to the GLBT community and her “GAYS” were out and proud that night. No subject was safe as she lashed out at newsmakers ranging from Sarah Palin to Michelle Obama’s election day dress gone wrong (Michelle had a “Bad Gay” ).
It was fun for us to leave our suburban life and traveled to downtown Houston to see her show. I just found out recently that Houston is second only to New York City in the number of concert/theatre seats in the downtown area of any major city. There are around 13,000 seats in a walking distant area. This is amazing since it does not even factor in the Toyota Center which can have up to a maximum of 19,000 seats for a concert and the “ginormous” Minute Park which can have more than 40,000 seats.
On November 11, Gary, my mother, my brother’s mother-in-law and I traveled to Dallas for a short two nights get away. We had two rooms at the Sheraton Downtown Dallas hotel which I got through priceline.com for only $75 a night for each room (total including tax). The hotel is located in the Arts District of the downtown area. We had purchased tickets to see the King Tut Exhibit. It was nice to walk from our hotel to the museum in less than five minutes. The four of us spent a whopping 45 minutes looking at the priceless artifacts and then waddled through 1 & 1/2 hours in the gift shop looking and buying replicas of the priceless artifacts.
THE MAIN reason we went to Dallas was to to see ” Diva” Sarah Brightman. Diva Brightman secured her diva title by presenting what I consider to be one of the best live act I had ever seen. The state-of-the-art visual effects were out of this world. Despite all of the extra, it was Sarah Brightman’s soaring soprano voice that was her greatest asset. Her Phantom of the Opera duet with Mario Frangoulis brought the crowd to its feet. This hunky Greek tenor will be a superstar. She also had a very special guest, Fernando Lima, touring with her in her North American tour. The Argentinian superstar is gaining world wide popularity with his duet with Sarah Brightman on two songs, Pasion & Ave Maria.
DIVA Madonna
On November 16, my family, Gary and I went to Houston’s Minute Maid Park to see the recently separated Ms. Madonna.
Madonna is one of the very few superstar that can sell out a stadium. The whole entire world was there. The Gays, the Hispanics, the Italians, the African Americans, the Asians, the young, the old and the furs packed the stadium. Gary wore his 20 pounds full length faux fur coat. The weather was actually cold that night so faux fur was the most appropriate thing to wear to this vegan Diva.
The show was supposed to start at 7:30 PM, but Diva Ms. M finally made it on stage at about 10:00 PM. For the next two hours; she pranced, posed, played the guitars and danced up a storm. I lost weight watching this extremely fit diva moved around all night. It was quite exhausting.
The show was fast paced and energetic. She really did an incredible job of keeping the audience excited and on their feet. However, I prefered Diva Brightman’s show more. To witness an artist who can hit the highest of the high note while wearing sequinced thigh high boots and surrounded by high tech visual effects was beyond entertainment. It was a feast. In fact, I hope Sarah Brightman will extend her tour because I want to see her again.
Santa Carl
I have been playing Santa for about 16 years at the annual Asians & Friends Houston’s Christmas party which also serves as a food drive for the Stone Soup Foundation. The guests arrived with gifts to be exchanged and items to be donated to the Stone Soup Foundation.
The gift exchange was festive and fun as always. I must say that we are all going through an economic crisis since many gifts did not meet the $10 to $20 range requirement. Among the bad was a penguin pooper candy dispenser which I donated myself since the holder of this gift was able to trade it in for Santa’s real gift which included, champagne, champagne glasses, 4 dvds, popcorns and a bottle of wine. Another bad gift that was a set of “tire pressure gauge caps”. This may be of value to a straight man, but this was a party full of gay men who takes their cars to the hunky mechanics. Therefore, Santa Carl declared this gift as one of the worse. There were several radio alarm clocks that did not have cd players, and I am not even gonna comment on them.
We are getting ready for our annual road trip. I will update soon.
Carl
