Chapter 156: Cover Girl

Today was a pretty uneventful day on paper – I sat at home, I watched some TV, I practiced piano and I played around with makeup looks. However, taking a deeper look at all of these things there is actually plenty to share. Let’s start at the beginning. I woke up at 10:30am, which was kind of the perfect time considering I wound up going to bed at around 2:30am last night. I felt like I could have easily gone back to bed for a while but I forced myself not to. I got up and made myself some breakfast, (Spaghetti-O’s,) and figured I’d go ahead and start catching up on some of the stuff from TV this week. The first thing I decided to watch was Oprah’s episode with the cast of the best show on television at this point, “Glee.” I am completely obsessed with “Glee” and really cannot wait for the show to return on Tuesday night, after an extended winter break. It’s been far too long since the show was on and I can’t wait to see what happens next. I just think the show is completely genius because it has taken this cast of relative unknowns with incredible talents and made genuine superstars out of them, in particular Lea Michele. Lea Michele is quickly becoming one of my favorite people in the world. She has one of those “one in a lifetime” voices, as put by the creator of “Glee,” Ryan Murphy. She reminds me a lot of one of my all-time favorite singer/Broadway stars, Idina Menzel. She is just an incredible talent and I am expecting very big things out of her in the future. Her character on “Glee,” Rachel Berry, reminds me so much of a younger version of myself it’s not even funny, except that she has a much more clear cut idea of how to get what she wants than I ever did. In that way, she kind of reminds me a lot of myself now. Anyway, I just think it is absolutely brilliant what they have done with this show – they took what Disney figured out with “High School Musical,” but made it much more contemporary and edgy and have kind of revolutionized the way TV can be made. There is an immense amount of money being made by this show, in ad revenue, merchandise and, of course, the music from each episode being sold every week on iTunes. Aside from that, it is an awesome thing for the viewer to be able to get new music from their favorite show every week. I particularly enjoy, as a music lover, that it basically gives me a brand new EP-length record to look forward to every week. Ryan Murphy really had a stroke of genius when he came up with this concept. It is, like I said, the best show on television right now. The cast on Oprah was adorable and Oprah even featured a high school show choir from Burbank performing an amazing mashup of Madonna’s “Vogue” and “4 Minutes.” I have always loved that about Oprah – she really goes out of her way to showcase everyday people who do extraordinary things. I also watched Oprah’s special “funny people” episode, which featured Tina Fey & Steve Carrell, Tracy Morgan and Betty White. It was pretty awesome, as well. I adore Tina Fey and have the utmost respect for her work – she just has a way of creating humor that is intelligent and interesting and not the same old dick and fart jokes everybody else is doing. I also love the fact that Betty White has had such major career resurgence lately. Apparently, based on her interview with Oprah, she is pretty happy about it, as well. It is really inspiring that a random Facebook group could get big enough to get her a hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live,” at 88 years old and with nothing really major to promote or anything. It just goes to show that if enough people gather in even the simplest way they actually have the power to really make a difference. Sure, it would be nice if people organized in that same way to do something more substantial than getting Betty White a gig on “Saturday Night Live,” but at least it’s something.

I also spent a little chunk of time this afternoon making ringtones from RuPaul’s album, “Champion.” “Champion,” and RuPaul herself, has been a really big inspiration to me lately. I just love the fact that RuPaul puts such an emphasis on trying to empower and inspire people to figure out how to love themselves for exactly who they are. It is one of the most important messages one can spread in this world because it means more to each and every one of us than anything else ever possibly could. The magnitude of what it means to genuinely love yourself is immeasurable. It really seems to be the focus of the album, “Champion,” as well, and it is done in such a fun, positive, offbeat and, at times, hilarious way. This is, like all of RuPaul’s other albums, a dance record and features some really hilarious gay anthems, like “LadyBoy,” “Tranny Chaser,” “Devil Made Me Do It” and the album’s first single, “Cover Girl (Put The Bass In Your Walk.)” All of those songs have a very positive, feel-good message to them about celebrating who you are. There are also some really inspirational disco style tracks, like “The Main Event,” which is a song about not letting your troubles show, “Champion,” which is a song about always recognizing the champion that you are, and “Never Go Home Again,” a song about breaking away from the dramas of a bad childhood and moving forward. The entire album is full of really positive messages with a fun spin to them. My favorite tracks are, “Let’s Turn The Night,” which is just a gorgeous disco-tinged love song and another gay anthem, “Jealous Of My Boogie,” which is just completely over the top in all the best possible ways, with a chorus of, “Don’t be jealous of my boogie, Don’t be jealous of my boogie, You can say that you are not but I always see you looking.” I can relate to that. Ha. This is a really fun, very gay album but I still recommend it to pretty much anybody – it’s a lot of fun.

My time at the piano today felt very productive. It was definitely more than 15 minutes, first of all, considering I went back to it multiple times throughout the day and probably spent at least 15 minutes there each time. I feel like I’ve gotten to a really good point with the piece I am working on and know both the left hand and right hand parts like the back of my hand at this point. I am slowly starting to work on trying to put the two together. It is taking a little time but progress is progress, now matter how fast or slow it may come. I am pretty impressed with myself, I must say. The piano is awesome, basically, and I am really excited to continue watching myself make progress with it. I am making it a point not to allow myself to get frustrated with it or with myself for not progressing as quickly as I would like. Viktor told me on Wednesday that typically the people who start off slower tend to be the ones who make progress and really learn it much quicker. That really stuck with me and I am trying really hard not to try to go too fast. It‘s just kind of difficult because I am putting so much stock into this. Honestly, I am counting on this to work out for me – I am counting on myself to learn this and make it work for me. I need this to work for me so that I can make a real, honest attempt at trying to pursue my dreams before I get too old and just give up. I have to make this work. I WILL make this work. It is already working – I just have to be patient with the piano and patient with myself. It is going to work out for me. I am going to make sure of that.

Now, let's get to the fun stuff... makeup. I tried three different looks today, using the NYX S104 Eyeshadow Palette. I'll call them the good, the not-completely-perfected and the ugly. Let's start off with the good. This is a look using simple whites and blacks, using the NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencil in Milk as a base and covering it up with a shimmery white color. This look was inspired by my favorite drag queen on this season of "RuPaul's Drag Race," the most recent one to "Sashay away," Miss Pandora Boxxx. She had a tendency to do a much more subdued, natural look that really emphasized the eyes. This is basically an exact recreation of her most frequent eye look on the show.





I am kind of in love with this look and plan to work it into my everyday looks. It is really simple and pretty, and doing the light color on the inside with the dark on the outside is really good for making the eyes appear larger and more open, which is definitely something that I need help with. I like that one a lot. The next look is the one I talked about in yesterday's blog, initially inspired by the song "Birthday" by Leighton Meester. As I put this one on, though, I kind of got this idea to go for kind of a high fashion look and the inspiration wound up coming much more from a very different song, about a very different kind of birthday - "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore. I am a huge fan of Lesley Gore's music and "It's My Party" is such an iconic, classic song it just naturally came to mind as I was putting this look together. This look is the "not-completely-perfected" one, because I definitely think it could work out really well if I used a few different products aside from the ones I did use. This look was put together using a turquoise looking blue from the NYX S104 palette, as well as the hot pink and a gold color from the same palette, and a cream-based silver eyeliner. I think the NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencils in Pots & Pans for the silver and in Hot Pink would have worked much better for the bottom parts. The top of this look, though, is pretty great and is something I will likely wind up doing on it's own without the bottom part.





Like I said, using a few other products that I simply didn't have on hand today I think this look could work out amazingly well. I know it's not exactly an everyday, wearable look but I am already pretty well planning on wearing this look for my birthday this year. I'm just in love with the concept and even the look of this "rough draft" version of it is very much appealing to my personal tastes and senses. I am really excited to try that once I have picked up some other products that will work better with it. The third look I tried today was inspired by Adam Lambert. It is actually the look that I discussed in a few recent blogs, (I believed I even linked to a picture of it,) when he was on some TV show in Tokyo. This look consists of red on the lids, gold in the inner corner and black going outward in a "cat's eye" type of arrow shape. Trying this on myself didn't work out nearly as well as it did for Adam. It looks kind of ugly, honestly. I think I could sort this look out on myself with a little more work but I'm certainly not happy with how it turned out on the first try.





It just looks kind of ugly, honestly. The black part on the outside of the eyes just looks kind of ridiculous. The blending just didn't happen at all with this look. It basically sucks. Like I said, I think if I worked at it a little more I could manage to pull it off well but in these pics it looks a hot tranny mess. I hate it.

Anyway, it is 2:19am and I should probably get to sleep. It's been a pretty long day, in spite of the fact that I really didn't do a lot. It was a pretty decent day, complete with some very interesting email correspondence this evening with my old friend Stephanie, who I mentioned commented on the blog the other day. I am kind of hoping to try to reconnect with her - it's been a really long time and we could definitely stand to catch up. We'll see how that goes, though. In the meantime, what I need to reconnect with right now is some sleep. Here's hoping tomorrow is just as good and relaxing as today was. It is the last day of the weekend, after all. Fortunately, it is the last day of the weekend before a 4 day work week and a 3 day weekend next week. Plus, I get paid on the first day of my 3 day weekend, so that definitely adds an element of awesomeness to the whole thing. For now it is off to bed with me.