Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Happy Halloween & Happy Birthday to Me!
Yes I know it's a shameless self birthday promotion, but I think I've earned the right for shameless self-promotion, and this time have a little bit of a story to tell.
I guess I was spoiled early on since my birthday coincided with Halloween and Trick-or-Treating. It was always such a big deal for me as a child and it was fun growing up having a Halloween birthday complete with party, cake and going out with my father to bug the neighbors for candy. What more could a child want on his birthday? I was fortunate.
As I finally grew up and left home for University, my 21st birthday was the last real birthday that ever meant anything special to me. I was one of the first of my circle of friends who turned 21, so some of the older guys in my fraternity took me out for shots and a drink. It was a fun night bar hopping from bar to bar, taking in all the different Penn State watering holes, and getting drunk from the free shots and drinks. It was my introduction into the college bar scene and a special night to finally turn 21.
The one thing I've never actually told anyone before this post is that on the night of my 21st birthday, I snuck out of my fraternity house and had one of my first 'gay' experiences at Penn State. After I returned home drunk with my fraternity brothers, they put me to bed and retired to their own rooms. To this day I still can remember how drunk I was that night. I don't know if it was just the alcohol but I finally got the guts to sneak out of the fraternity house and walk over to the Old Main building, notorious for being a very 'cruisey' gay area at night, and a place I had always avoided because of my fear and denial of being gay. Almost immediately after getting there I was approached by a cute, young grad student who lived alone and asked me if I would like to go home with him. I remember walking back with him to his studio where I proceeded to first get sick all over the place and then after he took care of me and cleaned me up, I spent the night with him. To this day I've never told that story or talked about what happened that night to anyone. I never did see that boy on campus again after that night.
So my 21st birthday was really it for me. After a string of several miserable milestone birthdays, I really stopped caring much about celebrating my birthday. I've just grown accustomed to not doing anything special for it. On my 25th birthday I sat alone in the hotel restaurant in Laurel, Maryland where I treated myself to a steak for dinner and then went up to my room and to bed. On my 30th birthday, I had just moved to San Francisco just 18 days before my birthday and didn't know anyone, so I left the office, went home, played with the dogs for a bit in the living room, watched some TV and then went to bed. I realized on that day that I had no real friends in my life and I also realized that I didn't care about my birthday anymore. Little did I know, immediately following my 30th birthday was going to bring forth one of the most emotional years of my life, and the start of my life as I know it today.
So anyway, I don't make a big deal of my birthday anymore, but I'm very content these days knowing that I have a loving partner, some very dear friends who care so much about me, a good career, and a damn good life. I've always said life is all about the journey, not the destination, and so far it's been a good one. I'm looking forward to this new year, where it takes me and the new experiences it will bring.
Facebook. Are you familiar with it? You should be, it the next generation of community social networking sites developed as a direct competitor to Friendster and MySpace.
As most of you know, Friendster blew it with poor system stability and MySpace swooped up the market to become the leader in the Social Networking sites. Over the past year or two, MySpace has started to get out of hand. It's an alley for preditors, it's over customized by the users, system stability is starting to suffer, and you're bombarded by way too much advertising on every page.
At the request of some friends I joined the Facebook a month or two ago but never really got into it or used it. At first use it seemed a bit more clunky then MySpace and a little difficult to get use too, but that's all changed now. Ever since talking to a few people on the 2007 Atlantis Mexican Cruise, it's apparent that many people are actually making the jump from MySpace over to Facebook, since it's being viewed as the more 'Adult' application of the two and more widely used and accepted outside of the United States.
Facebook really is more of a portal application with limits to the amount of customization that can be done, which I've always thought was a good thing anyway because the way people customize their profiles on MySpace has gotten completely out of hand.
After playing around with Facebook this week, sending messages back and forth to my friends, and trying out some of the add-on widgets that are offered, it's starting to really grow on me. I'm finding that over the past few days, I've enjoyed logging into Facebook to communicate with my friends and see what's going on more then MySpace. I've also been happy to find that there are already a lot of groups that have been created for the events and activities that we're participating in, such as the cruises, parties and etc.
Anyway if you haven't joined you should before you get left out. I believe Facebook has a ton of potential, not nearly as much upfront advertising as the other sites, and it really is easy to use.
Have you seen my man lately? Mmmm, dosen't he look simply fabulous standing there all tan in his new DolphinWear square cut bathing suit on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. That's right he's mine, but it's alright, I'll give you permission to gawk for a few minutes if you want. ;-)
OK, times up, you've been staring long enough! You can browse to another site now!
Ok, I should seriously be checking myself into rehab after this last week of debauchery. I'm tired, run down and seriously depressed to be back in hetro-land again. Spending an entire 9 days in a floating gay city is enough to make any gay man not want to come back to reality.
I personally think this cruise was one of the best vacations I've ever experienced in my life. The entire trip and everything about it was amazing, and all of us had a great time. Aside from the off-the-hook parties, friendly people, all you can eat food, and strong drinks, the best part of this trip was meeting so many new & diverse friends and having some really great quality time to spend with my very best friends in the world. I couldn't ask for anything more.
This was our first Atlantis Gay cruise and I would highly recommend this cruise to anyone. With a general age range of people from 18 up to 80, and open minded staff and guests from all over the world, these cruises have something for absolutely everyone. All my friends, including Justin and I, enjoyed the trip so much that we all booked it again for next year. Woo Hoo! Five balcony rooms on deck 7 here we come!
I'll write more about the cruise and our adventures later, but for now I'm tired and I'll keep it brief. Here are a few photos we had taken from the ships photographers ...
Some great photos of Justin and I from the Dog-Tag T-Dance (left) and White Party (right)
The Tribu Party Left to Right: Tony, Tim, Justin, Jerry, Bernard, Rich, Jeff, Justin
The White Party Gang
The White Party Gang Top Row / Left to Right: Tim, Justin, Jamie, Jerry, Rich, Justin Bottom Row / Left to Right: Bernard, Philip, Tony, Tracy, Sean
This is it, we're officially headed out to Los Angeles this evening to set sail tomorrow on the 2007 Atlantis Mexican Celebration Cruise. It's an Atlantis Events Gay Cruise on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas Ship consisting of over 2000 gay men.
This cruise is known as one of the bigger party cruises that Atlantis throws. We'll be out for a total of 8 days and 7 nights and we're all extremely excited for this adventure. All gay cruises are the hottest thing right now and many of the traditional circuit party goers are now turning to these all inclusive Atlantis gay cruises as an alternative to the circuit parties. There are 8 of us going, however we know several other people from Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The 8 of us are cruise newbies and are extremely excited about taking our very first cruise together. We have four ocean view rooms on the 3rd desk for the 8 of us, with two sets of adjoining rooms.
This is the first "real" get away / relaxing vacation I've taken since Justin and I spent 15 days in London and Paris in 2005, so I'm sure this is going to prove to be a blast us. If nothing else, I get to spent time with Justin and my friends, and enjoy the relaxing atmosphere away from computers, work and the Internet. I'll be sure to take plenty of photos! Cheers!
I know, I know, 2 annoyance posts in a week, what is the world coming too over here. This is going to be short and sweet. Why in god's sake does everyone just assume that the entire world is up and awake at 8 AM. I mean seriously, I work from home, I roll out of bed around 9 AM and start working. Three times this week I had people stop by, ring the door bell multiple times shortly after 8 AM. Now since Berger goes absolutely bonkers when someone rings the doorbell, this usually startles me awake before I'm actually ready to get up. It's completely the worst way to start the morning, startled and annoyed. I'm thinking about disconnecting the door bell after I get back. It's really a toss up for me which is more annoying, people showing up at my house in the morning or 7 AM calls from people on the other side of the country asking me stupid questions. At least with the calls I was able to turn off the ringer of the phone in my bedroom so that I don't get disturbed anymore. LOL. Ok I know this makes me sound like a grouchy person, I'm really not I swear, I just hate to have my sleep interrupted. Cheers.
Saturday night was the Gold Party, the Official Rainbows Festival After Party. We didn't make it to the Rainbows Festival because Justin and I both had to work, but we did make it over to the party that evening.
Hosted at a brand new event space location called Area Phoenix, the party turned out to be a pretty fun night. Justin and I, accompanied by Jerry, Jerry, and Jason arrived around 10 PM. It gradually started to pick up around 11 and we ran into Bruce & Tracy and tons of other Phoenix friends. The strange part of the night was that in addition to our Phoenix acquaintances, we also ran into a couple we met at One Mighty Weekend in Orlando this year who were in town for the Gay Softball Championships from Minnesota and our good friend Lawrence who was also in town from Los Angeles. It's a really small world in this community.
Anyway we had a bunch of fun, danced until around 4 AM and then packed up and headed home. I'm glad we went, I'm excited about the new party / event space and I'm happy to see Phoenix is finally growing up a bit with the party circuit. Cheers!
This is one of my new swim suits for the cruise. It's hot, and so is the model. All the AussieBum models are hot for that matter. Now if I can only find a place to buy that body too. ;-)
Seriously though, I'm like a walking advertisement for AussieBum. I swear by their underwear and clothing, it's top notch and I'm totally hooked. Check em out at http://www.aussiebum.com/
I don't usually rant much around here, but something which is a huge annoyance to me actually happened twice today so I need to rant.
I received my Citibank Visa the other day in the mail and since it's not a card that I usually use, I didn't get around to calling the number plastered on the sticker stuck to the front of the card to activate it. I called the number and entered the information as prompted. Card number, number of cards received, etc. I was told by the automated system to please hold while my card was being activate. Within about 10 seconds a customer server representative picked up the call. By the sound quality of the line and the accent of the representative it was apparent the call had be transferred most likely to India. I was asked the same questions, number of cards, etc. I was then told my card was activated and then was give the hard sell. First about transferring balances to my Citibank Visa. I immediately said no I'm not interested. Then the representative proceeded to explain to me the benefits of why I should enroll in the Citibank Credit Protection Program. I again immediately said no I'm not interested cutting him off. He started down with another speech and I immediately cut him off with only a few words and said "Thank you I just wanted to active my card, I don't need anything else, goodbye!" and hung up.
This not only hit one of my major peeves, the outsourcing of customer service to another country, but also my second major peeve, the hard sell from my own credit card company. I don't believe that when I call to ask a question or activate a card I should be immediately thrown into a hard sell pitch for more services. It's frankly annoying.
About an hour later I remember Justin had asked me to call in and activate his American Express card for him. I called the number, entered the information and waited. The automated system told me to please hold while my card was being activated. Another automated message came on to inform me of another Account Protection service from American Express. This time I just had to press 2 to proceed without enrollment. I was then told my card was activated and the system hung up on me.
Now see this is actually why I love American Express. While I still despise the attempt to sell me something when I'm activating my card, the automated system is a little better then actually having to talk to someone about it. If the credit card companies are going to ask if you want a service, at least do it like American Express and automate the damn thing, don't transfer me to India where the person on the other end of the phone is clearly reading from a script can barely explain what they are selling anyway.
Coming from working with Bank of America Card Services, I'm clearly aware of why they do this. Because if the banks can enroll more existing customers into programs and services it obviously is beneficial to profitability. I just personally think as a customer it's incredibly annoying to deal with every time you call customer service for something. Instead of "While we have you on the line let me tell you about his great program... blah... blah", what ever happened to "Thanks for choosing us, have a good day, goodbye!" Cheers!
Looks like Phoenix is finally starting to have a bit of a party scene.
Gold Party Saturday October 6th, 2007 The annual post-rainbow festival, fall party at Area. Featuring DJ Joe Gauthreaux from NYC & Phoenix resident DJ Juan Roca.
Monster Ball Saturday October 27th, 2007 The Official Phoenix Halloween Party. Featuring DJ Lee Thornhill from Boston & Phoenix resident DJ Doom.
Trade Superheroes Saturday November 10th, 2007 The 2nd Official 'Trade' party hosted at Burn Nightclub. Featuring producer/remixer DJ Alexander with a speical performance by FLAVA.
I've been thinking about doing this for a while, so today was the day. This is my very first video blog entry. It was fun to make and I'm deciding if I would like to continue doing more of these, so check it out, and give me a little feedback as to what you think. Cheers!
I can hardly believe it's October already, but then again I think I say that ever year at this time. It seems like it was just a few days ago that the summer heat really kicked in and the ASU students headed out of town for summer break, but here we are entering fall, everyone is back in classes and the temperature cool down has begun. It's my favorite time of year here in Arizona and I'm certainly looking forward to the cooler temperatures.
Justin and I are just hanging in there trying to get things done and get ready for our Atlantis Mexican Riviera Cruise aka "The Big Gay Cruise" It seems like all we've been doing is shopping, shopping and more shopping. It's been fun getting ready and planning everything out. We're already so excited we can barely contain ourselves.
In preparation for the cruise, Justin and I have been pushing ourselves harder at the gym then ever before. I regret not going a little harder earlier, but we've seen some great results in just the past two weeks. I'm completely content and happy with the way I look and where my body is at the moment.
Aside from all that, everything else has been pretty good. Life is just moving along, we're making new friends and still enjoying ourselves in the Valley. Justin decided to go hiking up Camelback mountain with the other Justin and Travis on Saturday morning. While it sounded like it was going to be a fun time, I personally opted out of the hike because I was trying to take it easy on my back and Saturday is really the only day I get to sleep in, so I was all set and ready to enjoy a morning spent in bed.
After Justin's hike, Jerry, Justin and I headed out to Phoenix to do some last minute shopping for the cruise. We managed to finalize some of the outfits we needed for the theme parties such as a 70's party and Mardi Gras.
Saturday night, Justin was tired from his morning hike so he decided t stay home, but I was not in the mood to stay home, so Jerry and I decided to go out to Burn Nightclub and then on to Charlie's for after hours. It was an interesting night to say the least. You can read about some of what happened here on Jerry's Blog.
So that's a quick overview as to what's been going on here in the desert. I'm looking forward to our upcoming cruise and much needed long vacation. If anything the month of October should prove to be very interesting. Cheers!
