Tawdry Talk

What do “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Love for Sale,” and “Begin the Beguine” all have in common?

Well, the first was written by Ellington, and the other three by Porter, but as I was sitting listening to the gifted Tommi Rose sing at Wednesday night’s performance, I realized that I had unconsciously ordered these songs in such a way as to tell a story of love found, lost and avenged, fallen off the deep end, and fondly remembered. So, I relaxed a bit about what to say to the audience before and between songs.

Of course, staring out into the audience of 50 or so patrons, many of whom I knew fairly well, after having not sung in public like this in several years, didn’t help me remember the opening note to the first song, and I floundered about like a wounded moose on-stage until I suddenly caught the melody again, and my voice came back strong and clear. I recovered that song, and went into the next three songs with more confidence, and ended Begin the Beguine with a long sustained note that lasted a heck of a lot longer than I thought I could hold.

The evening’s entertainment consisted of Carla Ozard, a professional theater and cabaret singer, Tommi Rose, who was the Mistress of Ceremonies at the famous Finnoccio’s club in North Beach for 15 years or so, Donna Sachet, who doesn’t need much of an introduction, me, and magician Scott Alcalay, who’s on LJ as scottasf, I think. And the headliner, the dance/hiNRG diva recording artist Vicki Shepard, who did a lovely jazz set for us.

Ann Walker, who plays Lavonda Dupree on Logo TV’s hit series Sordid Lives, was our host for the evening, and she was as charming and funny as you’d expect of someone who’s been in show business for a long time. I fell in love with her instantly! And for some strange reason, she was enjoying my company as well, so we chatted about politics quite a bit, and other things. I don’t really know much about the TV show she’s on, but apparently everyone else in the place did, as people kept coming up to her and gushing about it. I know the movie upon which the show is based, though, so I’m not a complete moron.

After the show, a bunch of us headed across the street to Martuni’s and sang a few more songs and had, of course, martinis. But we were hungry, so Tommi, Matt Consola, Ann, and I piled into Tommi’s car and headed up to Sparky’s, where we had a late supper. Finally, though, it was time to go home, so Tommi gave Matt and I a ride home, and I assume dropped Ms. Walker off at her hotel.

So, despite the embarrassing start, a lovely evening!

My table will arrive in Oakland on Friday, and then sometime early next week, it will be in my office! Hooray!

I’m performing TONIGHT at OCTAVIA LOUNGE for CA(BEAR)ET. The dinner show starts at 7pm - hosted by ANN WALKER (LAVONDA DUPREE of LOGO TV’S SORDID LIVES), and featuring live performance by DONNA SACHET, TOMMI ROSE, magician SCOTT ALCALAY, and surprise guests (I’m thinking that’s me).

Gary and Steven threw yet another fabulous holiday party last night. Steve, official LJer sighting scribe, did an awesome job at listing the LJers in attendance. I had a great time, and thank Gary and Steven for their wonderful hospitality. Especially nice was getting talk to Bill and hearing him sing.

I wrote this posting to the Bears’ Mailing List, http://www.queernet.org/, for details. Someone had written a post talking about their potential move to either Long Beach or Sacramento, so I wanted to describe Sacramento from a native’s perspective.

Howdy, Bears, et al,

As someone who was born and raised in Sacramento, I think I can comment
fairly authoritatively on the subject of its friendliness, and the bear
scene here.

Sacramento is a mixed blessing. Its proximity to Mecca, San Francisco,
all of 89 miles, is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because it’s
so close to all that San Francisco has to offer: tons of men, lots of
bars (if you like that), so much other good stuff. On the other hand,
it’s somewhat cursed since it is so close to Frank-baby (my pet name for
San Francisco), it makes it difficult for gay-oriented businesses to
make a success of it, when a 90 minute drive can take one to what is in
many respects the cultural center of the gay world.

On the other hand, as Time Magazine has recently reported, Sacramento is
the most ethnically diverse city in the country. So, if you like being
able to get just about any kind of cuisine in the world, Sacramento is a
great place for that. Vietnamese, Thai, Ethiopian, Italian, Mexican,
Japanese, Hmong, Panamanian, Russian, Greek, German, and all forms of
Chinese are just among a small sample of the great food styles available
here. Personally, I think that the Vietnamese restaurants here are
better than just about anything offered anyplace else.

The bear scene is strong here. The Sacramento Valley Bears celebrate
their 10th anniversary this year. http://www.sacvalleybears.org/ has
their active calendar of events. SVB staffs Lazy Bear Weekend, and
produces Bears in the Sac, both popular and successful bear runs. The
club is very friendly, made up of a diverse group of men, and puts on
lots of opportunities for socializing.

The bar scene is not so strong here. There is one bear-facing bar, The
Bolt, but if you like the bar scene, the Lone Star is just 90 minutes
away. Personally, I’m not a big fan of bars, preferring to socialize
with friends in non-bar atmospheres, but there are a number of bars
within blocks of each other in Downtown’s gay district, sometimes
lovingly called Lavender Heights.

Sacramento is also an urban forest. It gets hot here during the summer,
so the beautiful mature trees provide welcome relief from the heat of
the day. The county and various city governments have very stringent
requirements about tree plantings with new development, which is going
to maintain the green. I love that about Sacramento, its greenness.

Of course, this city has had and continues to have an agricultural bent.
Sacramento County still has acres and acres of farmland and orchards
and vineyards and it seems like the leaders are starting to find the
balance point between competing interests of developers and our
agricultural heritage.

The art and music scenes are thriving and growing all the time. I help
produce a film festival, the Trash Film Orgy,
http://www.trashfilmorgy.com/, now in its third year, and there are
plenty of other film and music festivals to entertain, including the
Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, one of the world’s largest traditional jazz
festivals.

Anyway, there is lots of fun stuff to do here, like political activism,
since Sacramento is California’s capitol. There is boating and fishing
and camping and we sit on the doorstep of the Sierra Nevada mountain
range. So, it’s got its good points, and some not so good points, but
on the whole Sacramento is a pretty darned nice place to be.

Tonight’s Soulmotor show at the Roadhouse was great! Since I had recently run lights, and attended this week’s rehearsal, I was much more familiar with the set and the songs’ arrangements. The moisture was just flowing from my fingertips and I shifted the two main scenes the house lighting guy had already programmed in, accented with pulsing a
nd blasting colors jammed out to accompany the songs. The weird single green light that kept staying on was a short-circuit in the board, alas, but everything else was moving and swaying and hypnotizing.

The band that appeared after us had brought in some strobes and other lighting effects as well, and they did some interesting things, too. It makes me want to get a bit more invested in designing a kick-ass lighting show for the band.

My massage exchange with Kip was a bit odd. He had told me that he hadn’t wanted to schedule any massages, but then he told me that he had done three, but he didn’t tell me when the first one started, so we didn’t have enough time to spend as I wanted, and we are going to have to schedule another time so finish up.

It’s late and I need to sleep. Massage, TFO week three, and then off to Frank-baby to sing at a baptism service where the relatives are coming from Greece!