Editor's note: In a previous post, I mentioned my lack of success in getting my review of the BBC America show, Footballers' Wive$, published locally. Thus, I've decided to bring it out into the light of day, revising it slightly from the original (I'm going for 750 words or bust!) but still hopefully making it an enjoyable read.
* * *
Sorry, temporarily deleted! I think I've found a publisher for a revamped version of the article.
Oh, bless you, David and Victoria Beckham, for fomenting interest among Americans in all things World Cup.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
And speaking of celebrity, which I so rarely do . . .
My good friend Snappymack recently introduced a few of her devotees to this blog-esque site, 5ives. I cannot begin to do it justice, yet aspire to emulate its clever, observational style--in five phrases or fewer, no less.
The recent post on Britney and Kevin is indeed a five-faceted Scandinavian snowball ring of trenchant social commentary and deep-from-the-belly chuckles. What more could one want in a blog? Other than fewer words?
* * *
Oops, I did it again! My friend The Escape Artist, a regular reader and supporter of this blog, reminded me that she had told me about 5ives some months ago. I really gotta read my email more carefully. Sorry 'bout that, chief!
The point is, though, that any blog that regularly makes sly and funny references to Morrissey and the Smiths is worth the bits and bytes it's written on.
For example, "How Soon Is Now?" as a drunken sing-a-long--
Hee hee hee. I can't wait until Britney and Kev's baby (erm, babies) starts to request that little nursery rhyme.
The recent post on Britney and Kevin is indeed a five-faceted Scandinavian snowball ring of trenchant social commentary and deep-from-the-belly chuckles. What more could one want in a blog? Other than fewer words?
* * *
Oops, I did it again! My friend The Escape Artist, a regular reader and supporter of this blog, reminded me that she had told me about 5ives some months ago. I really gotta read my email more carefully. Sorry 'bout that, chief!
The point is, though, that any blog that regularly makes sly and funny references to Morrissey and the Smiths is worth the bits and bytes it's written on.
For example, "How Soon Is Now?" as a drunken sing-a-long--
There's a club, if you'd like to go/
You could meet somebody who really loves you/
So you go, and you stand on your own/
And you leave on your own/
And you go home, and you cry/
And you want to die
Hee hee hee. I can't wait until Britney and Kev's baby (erm, babies) starts to request that little nursery rhyme.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Oh heavens, oh hell, O'Hare
I swear, it's not just a belief. Evidence suggests that my incredibly bad travel karma continues.
I thought perhaps I might have gained a little cosmic redemption, my last horrible airline outing having occurred this past January, five months ago. (Co-inky-dink: I realize as I write this that I haven't traveled by plane or train since that time, either.) But no. At 6:44 p.m. on Wednesday, May 24, the great and powerful Travelocitus, multi-armed (and thus far-reaching), multi-legged (and thus ensuring a visit to at least one major airline hub for even the shortest of trips) god of online travel, saw fit to cast my most recent travel itinerary upon the funeral pyre of glitchless flying.
It's totally my fault, of course. You see, I failed Travelocitus by not paying proper tribute--I arrived at the check-in counter at Harrisburg International Airport only 65 minutes ahead of my scheduled flight rather than the currently recommended three months. Never mind that it only takes a scant 2 minutes to check-in at HIA and another 30 seconds to clear security, so under-utilized is this airfield (not that I'm complaining about the lack of crowding). One must obey the rules, no matter how changeable and byzantine they may be.
So shame on me. Therefore, ol' T'citus saw fit in his fickleness to rain down cosmic ca-ca on my departure from Harrisburg to Kansas City via Chicago O'Hare. In normal circumstances--in other words, ones that don't exist in our currently envisioned universe--from first take-off to final landing, the trip should have taken 5 hours and 51 minutes, or, if you want to be all picky and specific, about 9 hours from the time I left my house until I arrived at my parents' in Lawrence, Kansas.
Instead, to more or less quote ABBA from "The Winner Takes It All," Travelocitus
That something dear being 18 hours of my life, not to mention scads of dignity, neither of which I will ever recover. Thanks, T-cite!
Like a State of the Union address by our current jefe, the scenario stuck strictly to the oft-repeated script. The flight from Harrisburg was delayed for more than two hours awaiting the arrival of the flight from Chicago; repeated storms in the Chicagoland area prompted the diversion (such an odd, ironic, choice of words) of our plane to Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Woo hoo! Ain't we livin' now!); we arrived in Chicago after 2 a.m. local time, a full 3 hours and 45 minutes after our connecting flight was due to take off from O'Hare; nonetheless, we were directed to gate H15 to catch our connecting flight, a brisk, 10-minute trot from the landing gate; we arrived at the proper gate, but the connecting flight was nowhere to be found, nor was any helpful human being, just an electronic sign encouraging us to "enjoy [our] flight!"
But which flight would that be? And would "enjoy" be restricted solely to the realm of fantasy or might at some point the reality of enjoyment enter the airspace?
We (I say "we" because by this time I'm leading a parade of squeaky, cranky mice through O'Hameln International Airport, who are desperate to pay [back] the piper and get the hell out of this town) found the rebooking center and were rescheduled on the next available flight, which was to leave for Kansas City at 7:45 later that morning. We do get upgraded to first class, at least, so for the brief hour that we're airborne, free orange juice and ice water for everybody, while the great unwashed in steerage enjoy . . . free orange juice and ice water for everybody.
So . . . things to do in Chicago when you're nearly dead from fatigue, your butt is benumbed, and your back is practically broken by the passive-aggressive comfort of airline seating? Not a lot, actually.
Being that O'Hare is one of the country's major airports for both domestic and international flights, I figured surely there would be food everywhere . . . somewhere . . . at least maybe in the form of a vending machine, if nothing else.
Instead, I found every restaurant or food stand in Terminal 3 (which is gi-normous, by the way, housing a partial alphabet soup of gates G, H, K, and L) closed with a cheery "We start serving breakfast at 5:30!" greeting me and several hundred travelers who kept deplaning, boss, deplaning, up to at least 3 a.m.
The only comfort offered--and cold comfort at that--was a lone drinks trolley parceling out icy, caffeinated beverages. Just what I needed in the Tundra-attuned Terminal 3, freezing cold beverages in the Arctic climate of airport air. Coupled with my sleep deprivation, I envisioned a miserable permafrost passing for myself, a Greenlandic grinding to a halt of my circulatory system. Like so many Jack London characters in an Alaskan winter wonderland, I'd get cold and fall asleep, awakening in heaven (or hell, take yer pick)--or at the very least alongside of Walt Disney's head in an Arizona-based cryogenics lab.
This scenario (the Jack London one, not the Walt Disney) may explain the late night inappropriate dispensing of caffeine, however. The airlines want to keep you tanked and revved to prevent your early demise and yet another unpleasant pile of paperwork having to be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration. As if keeping up with all the reports on travel delays and customer dissatisfaction wasn't enough hassle, heaven forfend the airlines should have to explain the Third World refugee camp status of America's air transportation system.
The caffeine pushing is something of a vain effort, however, for there are a stockyards' worth of carcasses strewn about the gates. (I counted 150 in the G area alone.) While most appear dead to the world, some actually bleat a chorus of approval/disapproval through the medium of unbridled snoring at the grim, London during the Blitz accommodations. For you see, some lucky travelers perturbed Travelocitus even less and were stranded early enough to discover a military-issue cot tucked away in a darkened corner of the terminal.
Others, though, have shoved together rows of seats, making makeshift Craftmatic beds for themselves, or have given up any semblance of class or dignity by falling down in a dead stupor of sleep on the carpeted terminal floor.
Hungering for a pack of Nabs, yearning for an intimate encounter with some Colgate and a toothbrush, craving the electrostatically charged thrills of a night spent entangled in the thin, acrylic embrace of a cheap airline blanket, I didn't know how the evening--rather, morning--would turn out, whether I would actually be on that 7:45 a.m. flight, along with my luggage. But I knew one thing for sure--I was NOT going to sleep on the grime-encrusted ground of Terminal 3, like some daggy ol' sheep at the Pennsylvania Farm Show! No, siree, not me. Ain't gonna happen. Unh-unh. I've put up with a lot of crude crud in my years on this planet, but I'm an American, goldarnit. I don't do refugee camps!
* * *
I awakened at 5 a.m. in time to hear the hordes queueing for coffee and breakfast McGriddle sandwiches at the Terminal 3 McDonald's. Well, smack my Superdome and call me Katrina. I had been asleep on the airport floor for about two hours, having used as a pillow my overnight bag full of books (Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, White Teeth by Zadie Smith) and three-and-a-quarter 1/2-pound Hershey chocolate bars (formerly four 1/2-pound bars, but I got hungry around midnight somewhere over Indiana) for the home folks. I awoke with a minimal amount of drool on said bag but that scratchy throat feeling that bespoke of my spending the last couple of hours snoring my head off to god and country and everyone else burning in the eternal h-e-double-hockey-sticks of Gate K3 at O'Hare International.
Thus, 4:55 a.m., Thursday, May 25, marks a sort of beginning-of-the-end moment for me, a new low watermark in my neverending, always offending quest for mishap and misery.
As if my previous travel misadventures weren't bad enough, as if my efforts at dating and poor gaydar performance weren't depressing enough, as if my aim to be the next Susan Sontag crossed with a sober Brett Butler weren't tragic enough, now I'd hit something of a personal, carpet-on-concrete rockbottom by joining the hoi polloi on the airport groundcover of human degradation.
Where does it go from here? Where will it all end up for poor, poor, pitiful me? Once you've savored the intoxicating elixir of weak carpet cleaning agents and old shoes, once you've explored the alternative meaning of airline gate crashing, once you've slept with hundreds of nameless strangers and gone all orgiastic (or at least ballistic) over their deviated septum vocalizations, how long before you find yourself sloshed and slurring your words on Skid Row? How long before the champagne socialists of San Francisco tsk-tsk-tsk you as they step over your torpored torso in the Tenderloin District? How long before you find yourself double-strawing a methadone-laced chocolate malt with Courtney Love in the soda shop at the Hotel La Rut?
Worse still, how long before you find yourself forced to endure an endless loop of Access Hollywood segments on celebrity procreative activities as air traffic stacks high above the clouds and the cozy, comforting charms of the Midwestern U.S.?
So close to heaven, yet, seduced by the oleaginous charms of Pat O'Brien into caring about the birthing rituals of Brangelina (the couple, not the breakfast cereal), so very far away.
I thought perhaps I might have gained a little cosmic redemption, my last horrible airline outing having occurred this past January, five months ago. (Co-inky-dink: I realize as I write this that I haven't traveled by plane or train since that time, either.) But no. At 6:44 p.m. on Wednesday, May 24, the great and powerful Travelocitus, multi-armed (and thus far-reaching), multi-legged (and thus ensuring a visit to at least one major airline hub for even the shortest of trips) god of online travel, saw fit to cast my most recent travel itinerary upon the funeral pyre of glitchless flying.
It's totally my fault, of course. You see, I failed Travelocitus by not paying proper tribute--I arrived at the check-in counter at Harrisburg International Airport only 65 minutes ahead of my scheduled flight rather than the currently recommended three months. Never mind that it only takes a scant 2 minutes to check-in at HIA and another 30 seconds to clear security, so under-utilized is this airfield (not that I'm complaining about the lack of crowding). One must obey the rules, no matter how changeable and byzantine they may be.
So shame on me. Therefore, ol' T'citus saw fit in his fickleness to rain down cosmic ca-ca on my departure from Harrisburg to Kansas City via Chicago O'Hare. In normal circumstances--in other words, ones that don't exist in our currently envisioned universe--from first take-off to final landing, the trip should have taken 5 hours and 51 minutes, or, if you want to be all picky and specific, about 9 hours from the time I left my house until I arrived at my parents' in Lawrence, Kansas.
Instead, to more or less quote ABBA from "The Winner Takes It All," Travelocitus
Rolled the dice/
his mind as cold as ice/
and someone way down here/
lost something dear
That something dear being 18 hours of my life, not to mention scads of dignity, neither of which I will ever recover. Thanks, T-cite!
Like a State of the Union address by our current jefe, the scenario stuck strictly to the oft-repeated script. The flight from Harrisburg was delayed for more than two hours awaiting the arrival of the flight from Chicago; repeated storms in the Chicagoland area prompted the diversion (such an odd, ironic, choice of words) of our plane to Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Woo hoo! Ain't we livin' now!); we arrived in Chicago after 2 a.m. local time, a full 3 hours and 45 minutes after our connecting flight was due to take off from O'Hare; nonetheless, we were directed to gate H15 to catch our connecting flight, a brisk, 10-minute trot from the landing gate; we arrived at the proper gate, but the connecting flight was nowhere to be found, nor was any helpful human being, just an electronic sign encouraging us to "enjoy [our] flight!"
But which flight would that be? And would "enjoy" be restricted solely to the realm of fantasy or might at some point the reality of enjoyment enter the airspace?
We (I say "we" because by this time I'm leading a parade of squeaky, cranky mice through O'Hameln International Airport, who are desperate to pay [back] the piper and get the hell out of this town) found the rebooking center and were rescheduled on the next available flight, which was to leave for Kansas City at 7:45 later that morning. We do get upgraded to first class, at least, so for the brief hour that we're airborne, free orange juice and ice water for everybody, while the great unwashed in steerage enjoy . . . free orange juice and ice water for everybody.
So . . . things to do in Chicago when you're nearly dead from fatigue, your butt is benumbed, and your back is practically broken by the passive-aggressive comfort of airline seating? Not a lot, actually.
Being that O'Hare is one of the country's major airports for both domestic and international flights, I figured surely there would be food everywhere . . . somewhere . . . at least maybe in the form of a vending machine, if nothing else.
Instead, I found every restaurant or food stand in Terminal 3 (which is gi-normous, by the way, housing a partial alphabet soup of gates G, H, K, and L) closed with a cheery "We start serving breakfast at 5:30!" greeting me and several hundred travelers who kept deplaning, boss, deplaning, up to at least 3 a.m.
The only comfort offered--and cold comfort at that--was a lone drinks trolley parceling out icy, caffeinated beverages. Just what I needed in the Tundra-attuned Terminal 3, freezing cold beverages in the Arctic climate of airport air. Coupled with my sleep deprivation, I envisioned a miserable permafrost passing for myself, a Greenlandic grinding to a halt of my circulatory system. Like so many Jack London characters in an Alaskan winter wonderland, I'd get cold and fall asleep, awakening in heaven (or hell, take yer pick)--or at the very least alongside of Walt Disney's head in an Arizona-based cryogenics lab.
This scenario (the Jack London one, not the Walt Disney) may explain the late night inappropriate dispensing of caffeine, however. The airlines want to keep you tanked and revved to prevent your early demise and yet another unpleasant pile of paperwork having to be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration. As if keeping up with all the reports on travel delays and customer dissatisfaction wasn't enough hassle, heaven forfend the airlines should have to explain the Third World refugee camp status of America's air transportation system.
The caffeine pushing is something of a vain effort, however, for there are a stockyards' worth of carcasses strewn about the gates. (I counted 150 in the G area alone.) While most appear dead to the world, some actually bleat a chorus of approval/disapproval through the medium of unbridled snoring at the grim, London during the Blitz accommodations. For you see, some lucky travelers perturbed Travelocitus even less and were stranded early enough to discover a military-issue cot tucked away in a darkened corner of the terminal.
Others, though, have shoved together rows of seats, making makeshift Craftmatic beds for themselves, or have given up any semblance of class or dignity by falling down in a dead stupor of sleep on the carpeted terminal floor.
Hungering for a pack of Nabs, yearning for an intimate encounter with some Colgate and a toothbrush, craving the electrostatically charged thrills of a night spent entangled in the thin, acrylic embrace of a cheap airline blanket, I didn't know how the evening--rather, morning--would turn out, whether I would actually be on that 7:45 a.m. flight, along with my luggage. But I knew one thing for sure--I was NOT going to sleep on the grime-encrusted ground of Terminal 3, like some daggy ol' sheep at the Pennsylvania Farm Show! No, siree, not me. Ain't gonna happen. Unh-unh. I've put up with a lot of crude crud in my years on this planet, but I'm an American, goldarnit. I don't do refugee camps!
* * *
I awakened at 5 a.m. in time to hear the hordes queueing for coffee and breakfast McGriddle sandwiches at the Terminal 3 McDonald's. Well, smack my Superdome and call me Katrina. I had been asleep on the airport floor for about two hours, having used as a pillow my overnight bag full of books (Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, White Teeth by Zadie Smith) and three-and-a-quarter 1/2-pound Hershey chocolate bars (formerly four 1/2-pound bars, but I got hungry around midnight somewhere over Indiana) for the home folks. I awoke with a minimal amount of drool on said bag but that scratchy throat feeling that bespoke of my spending the last couple of hours snoring my head off to god and country and everyone else burning in the eternal h-e-double-hockey-sticks of Gate K3 at O'Hare International.
Thus, 4:55 a.m., Thursday, May 25, marks a sort of beginning-of-the-end moment for me, a new low watermark in my neverending, always offending quest for mishap and misery.
As if my previous travel misadventures weren't bad enough, as if my efforts at dating and poor gaydar performance weren't depressing enough, as if my aim to be the next Susan Sontag crossed with a sober Brett Butler weren't tragic enough, now I'd hit something of a personal, carpet-on-concrete rockbottom by joining the hoi polloi on the airport groundcover of human degradation.
Where does it go from here? Where will it all end up for poor, poor, pitiful me? Once you've savored the intoxicating elixir of weak carpet cleaning agents and old shoes, once you've explored the alternative meaning of airline gate crashing, once you've slept with hundreds of nameless strangers and gone all orgiastic (or at least ballistic) over their deviated septum vocalizations, how long before you find yourself sloshed and slurring your words on Skid Row? How long before the champagne socialists of San Francisco tsk-tsk-tsk you as they step over your torpored torso in the Tenderloin District? How long before you find yourself double-strawing a methadone-laced chocolate malt with Courtney Love in the soda shop at the Hotel La Rut?
Worse still, how long before you find yourself forced to endure an endless loop of Access Hollywood segments on celebrity procreative activities as air traffic stacks high above the clouds and the cozy, comforting charms of the Midwestern U.S.?
So close to heaven, yet, seduced by the oleaginous charms of Pat O'Brien into caring about the birthing rituals of Brangelina (the couple, not the breakfast cereal), so very far away.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Two thumbs up
At a certain age, it happens to every man. I'm not referring to love, marriage, a speeding ticket, or even impotence. I'm referring to the dreaded prostate exam at the doctor's office.
Most recently it happened to my friend Jean Naté, and he telephoned me to tell me all about it (within reason).
Now it's not like we're a couple of schoolgirls who have to share everything. No, really.
"I think Doctor Faustus is hot!"
"So do I! And he gives a mighty fine prostate exam, too!"
Nothing like that, I can assure you.
You have to undertstand the context: Being that I am a few yea--months older than Jean, I have had more experience with prostate exams. (Although when I'm feeling blue, I just think about my friend the Gladman who is a few yea--months older than I; thus, he's had even more experience with prostate exams.) For a while, among our circle of friends in San Antonio, my repeated experience with prostate exams was a source of great amusement. Because pretty much from the age of 35 onward, as part of my annual physical, I received the "gift" of a latex-encased finger or two up my backside and a crack full of cold KY Gel, all in the name of checking to see if I had an enlarged prostate, a sure sign of . . . I dunno, an enlarged prostate, I'm guessing.
How this topic came up in polite conversation is a mystery to me--until I realize that none of our conversations was ever especially polite among our circle of friends. As you can imagine (or perhaps you'd rather not), the discussion on this important matter in men's health focused on wisecracks (do pardon the pun) about how may times a year I went in for my annual physical, just for the prostate exam. Did I get dinner and drinks first before the exam and maybe a cigarette afterwards? Wasn't I supposed to wait until I was at least 40 to receive my first exam? Or was I putting in special requests every time I visited my physician?
Yuk yuk yuk. We slay us.
But Baby's First Prostate Exam is a funny experience, engendering the kind of laughs that only absolute humiliation can provide. I'm not alone in thinking this--straight stand-up comedians have made a mounting out of a mole hole in joking about this very intimate medical procedure. Sometimes there is even the suggestion--either plainly or surreptitiously expressed--that this procedure is incredibly humiliating for heterosexual men, but probably isn't that bad for gay men. In fact, some joke, it might even be a welcome overture.
Please let me clear up this point for everyone once and for all: While certainly gay men have had more experience with "neighborly visits at the backyard fence," the prostate exam for a gay man is every bit as humiliating as it is for heterosexual men. Maybe even more so.
The jokes our circle made about my experiences alone should indicate to you the mix of embarrassment, humiliation, and discomfort prompted by a prostate exam for a gay man. Add to this that gay men have the reputation of, uh, copulating with anything that moves--a not altogether incorrect assumption for many gay men but for many straight men as well--and the experience is made even weirder for all parties involved. Does my doctor know I'm gay? Should I tell him? Does he think I'll enjoy this procedure? Would he skip performing it if he knew? Or would he get a perverse thrill out of my humiliation of his performing it really well?
Such are the worries that occupy my mind when I hear the snap of that rubber glove on the doctor's hand.
Clearly, I'm a bit old school if I'm not immediately revealing my sexual orientation to my physician. Early on, when I was a freshly out-and-proud gay man, I did so, but oftentimes it just seemed to embarrass or disquiet my doctor and based on that reaction, it would embarrass or disquiet me. In addition, the medical examination would then automatically switch to a discussion of HIV and AIDS and before long, everything that was wrong with me could possibly be related to "a compromised immune system."
Well, no shizzle, Sherlock Holmes. Here's something for your case files, doc: All symptoms you suffer from might relate to a "compromised" immune system--that's what happens when you're sick, your immune system goes wonky on you and you get symptoms! I know I'm not a doctor and don't play one on TV, but, at the risk of being called uneducated, I would imagine that being allergic to tree pollen and having the occasional ingrown toenail are probably not indicators of HIV/AIDS.
As a result of that reductionist approach to my healthcare, as well as the need for insurance companies to keep their risks low and profits high at my expense, I've tended to keep my sexuality to myself (a really dumb solution to the matter, if I do say so) and dealt with any periodic HIV testing issues with the proper authority of an AIDS service organization.
But I digress . . .
The exam, no matter what floats your boat off the bottom of the Finger Lakes, is just not a pleasant experience. If truth be told, it's more uncomfortable than painful, more embarrassing than shocking or offensive. But only the most perverse and masochistic among us would actually look forward to the procedure.
And I'm sure you're out there. But I don't want to know you.
Basically, it works like this (squeamish readers turn away NOW): You lay on your side on a medical exam table in a very cold room in a barely there paper gown that wouldn't provide adequate coverage for a plate of pasta in a microwave, let alone your important body parts in a doctor's office. Having snapped into place the rubber glove and abundantly lubed up an index finger (or more, but never a thumb, at least as far as I recall) with KY (which, if to be judged alone by its frigidity, is the stuff that replaces blood for those who want to be cryogenically frozen in the afterlife), the doctor swoops up behind to your vulnerable, exposed "service entrance." He (and I dare not imagine it any other way than a he doing this) moves quickly so that you don't have time to clinch anything shut, which would just make the experience painful and more humiliating (as if the latter were possible). Swoosh! The doctor is in! Schwuck! The doctor is out! "Everything seems in order," he says in a robotic monotone.
Clearly, he's getting no thrill from this either. Although, to tell the truth, I was never so sure about my last physician in Texas who seemed vaguely pleased whenever he could unnerve me with any medical procedure. His favorite was that thing doctors do to test your reflexes, scraping the bottom of your foot to get a reaction. But paranoic that I am, I ever so slightly suspected he relished my discomfort at any medical procedure, including *that* one.
It's all just very Little HMO of Horrors after a while, isn't it?
As my friend Jean noted after his exam, there wasn't nearly enough foreplay involved to make it a pleasant or welcome maneuver for any of the parties involved. Always being a bit more reserved (OK, have it your way, uptight) than my friends, I'd still argue that someone owes me a nice dinner and some drinks before I let them examine me like that.
And he sure better send flowers the day after.
But cheap date that I am, I'd settle for a lollipop from the nurses' station.
Most recently it happened to my friend Jean Naté, and he telephoned me to tell me all about it (within reason).
Now it's not like we're a couple of schoolgirls who have to share everything. No, really.
"I think Doctor Faustus is hot!"
"So do I! And he gives a mighty fine prostate exam, too!"
Nothing like that, I can assure you.
You have to undertstand the context: Being that I am a few yea--months older than Jean, I have had more experience with prostate exams. (Although when I'm feeling blue, I just think about my friend the Gladman who is a few yea--months older than I; thus, he's had even more experience with prostate exams.) For a while, among our circle of friends in San Antonio, my repeated experience with prostate exams was a source of great amusement. Because pretty much from the age of 35 onward, as part of my annual physical, I received the "gift" of a latex-encased finger or two up my backside and a crack full of cold KY Gel, all in the name of checking to see if I had an enlarged prostate, a sure sign of . . . I dunno, an enlarged prostate, I'm guessing.
How this topic came up in polite conversation is a mystery to me--until I realize that none of our conversations was ever especially polite among our circle of friends. As you can imagine (or perhaps you'd rather not), the discussion on this important matter in men's health focused on wisecracks (do pardon the pun) about how may times a year I went in for my annual physical, just for the prostate exam. Did I get dinner and drinks first before the exam and maybe a cigarette afterwards? Wasn't I supposed to wait until I was at least 40 to receive my first exam? Or was I putting in special requests every time I visited my physician?
Yuk yuk yuk. We slay us.
But Baby's First Prostate Exam is a funny experience, engendering the kind of laughs that only absolute humiliation can provide. I'm not alone in thinking this--straight stand-up comedians have made a mounting out of a mole hole in joking about this very intimate medical procedure. Sometimes there is even the suggestion--either plainly or surreptitiously expressed--that this procedure is incredibly humiliating for heterosexual men, but probably isn't that bad for gay men. In fact, some joke, it might even be a welcome overture.
Please let me clear up this point for everyone once and for all: While certainly gay men have had more experience with "neighborly visits at the backyard fence," the prostate exam for a gay man is every bit as humiliating as it is for heterosexual men. Maybe even more so.
The jokes our circle made about my experiences alone should indicate to you the mix of embarrassment, humiliation, and discomfort prompted by a prostate exam for a gay man. Add to this that gay men have the reputation of, uh, copulating with anything that moves--a not altogether incorrect assumption for many gay men but for many straight men as well--and the experience is made even weirder for all parties involved. Does my doctor know I'm gay? Should I tell him? Does he think I'll enjoy this procedure? Would he skip performing it if he knew? Or would he get a perverse thrill out of my humiliation of his performing it really well?
Such are the worries that occupy my mind when I hear the snap of that rubber glove on the doctor's hand.
Clearly, I'm a bit old school if I'm not immediately revealing my sexual orientation to my physician. Early on, when I was a freshly out-and-proud gay man, I did so, but oftentimes it just seemed to embarrass or disquiet my doctor and based on that reaction, it would embarrass or disquiet me. In addition, the medical examination would then automatically switch to a discussion of HIV and AIDS and before long, everything that was wrong with me could possibly be related to "a compromised immune system."
Well, no shizzle, Sherlock Holmes. Here's something for your case files, doc: All symptoms you suffer from might relate to a "compromised" immune system--that's what happens when you're sick, your immune system goes wonky on you and you get symptoms! I know I'm not a doctor and don't play one on TV, but, at the risk of being called uneducated, I would imagine that being allergic to tree pollen and having the occasional ingrown toenail are probably not indicators of HIV/AIDS.
As a result of that reductionist approach to my healthcare, as well as the need for insurance companies to keep their risks low and profits high at my expense, I've tended to keep my sexuality to myself (a really dumb solution to the matter, if I do say so) and dealt with any periodic HIV testing issues with the proper authority of an AIDS service organization.
But I digress . . .
The exam, no matter what floats your boat off the bottom of the Finger Lakes, is just not a pleasant experience. If truth be told, it's more uncomfortable than painful, more embarrassing than shocking or offensive. But only the most perverse and masochistic among us would actually look forward to the procedure.
And I'm sure you're out there. But I don't want to know you.
Basically, it works like this (squeamish readers turn away NOW): You lay on your side on a medical exam table in a very cold room in a barely there paper gown that wouldn't provide adequate coverage for a plate of pasta in a microwave, let alone your important body parts in a doctor's office. Having snapped into place the rubber glove and abundantly lubed up an index finger (or more, but never a thumb, at least as far as I recall) with KY (which, if to be judged alone by its frigidity, is the stuff that replaces blood for those who want to be cryogenically frozen in the afterlife), the doctor swoops up behind to your vulnerable, exposed "service entrance." He (and I dare not imagine it any other way than a he doing this) moves quickly so that you don't have time to clinch anything shut, which would just make the experience painful and more humiliating (as if the latter were possible). Swoosh! The doctor is in! Schwuck! The doctor is out! "Everything seems in order," he says in a robotic monotone.
Clearly, he's getting no thrill from this either. Although, to tell the truth, I was never so sure about my last physician in Texas who seemed vaguely pleased whenever he could unnerve me with any medical procedure. His favorite was that thing doctors do to test your reflexes, scraping the bottom of your foot to get a reaction. But paranoic that I am, I ever so slightly suspected he relished my discomfort at any medical procedure, including *that* one.
It's all just very Little HMO of Horrors after a while, isn't it?
As my friend Jean noted after his exam, there wasn't nearly enough foreplay involved to make it a pleasant or welcome maneuver for any of the parties involved. Always being a bit more reserved (OK, have it your way, uptight) than my friends, I'd still argue that someone owes me a nice dinner and some drinks before I let them examine me like that.
And he sure better send flowers the day after.
But cheap date that I am, I'd settle for a lollipop from the nurses' station.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
What is the sound of one hand slapping? Part I
Professionally speaking, it was a week where one hand patted me on the head while the other boxed my ear. The work week started out reasonably well with some good feedback, nice praise, and enjoyable conversation at my regular meeting with my boss. Despite my on-the-job frustrations from time to time and my generalized whining about having to work for a living, if I stop moaning and groaning long enough to count my blessings, I have to admit that I do have a few. And one of those is a sane, intelligent, fair, and fun boss for a change.
And, no, by the way, my boss hasn't started reading this blog, as far as I know, nor am I playing at being Pollyanna. (I look terrible in gingham, if truth be told.) While I'm being honest in my appraisal, it never hurts to protect one's posterior, to defend one's derriere, to cover one's commode-loader, if you get my meaning. And how could you not?
As part of our conversation, my boss noted how much I had on my plate, how I was already stuffed to the gills, wasn't I? And no, no, I really couldn't eat another bite, could I? How could she help? How could she ease my bloating and discomfort? What was the administrative equivalent of Pepto-Bismal? How could she provide even better buffet line for the future and instill in me a sense of not-all-you-can-eat?
This is a radically different approach to staff nutrition from the feast-or-famine starvation diet provided by one previous boss, Curly Squirrelly, who oversaw the office as if she were the Tsarina of Ptomaine-Laced Toast Points. In short, she was regal, she was stingy, and she was hazardous to your health.
Curly Squirrelly is the kind of person who you see on the local news every so often, with wild, frizzy hair, wearing a caftan that hasn't seen a wash cycle since 1970. The crazy lady you see being interviewed by the TV crew has just been arrested for having 3,657 cats in her house, most of whom she's not fed for months on end. As a result, the cats have all gone feral and have wiped out the bird, rodent, and pet population within a 10-mile radius of Casa del Cat Pee. The smell, the mewling, and the abundant fertility have brought out the police, Animal Control, and a HazMat team, the endeavors of which the Live at Five Eyewitness Action News Team is dutifully recording for the 6 o'clock broadcast.
Crazy Cat Lady wasn't trying to kill off her cats by starving them to death, nor was she trying to put herself forth as Amateur Pet Breeder of the Year by letting her feline population expand beyond the bounds of decency in a sort of Caligula-styled kitty sex club, nor was she attempting to establish herself as an independent contractor for homegrown fertilizer and ammonia products. Not at all. It's just that our new-found reality TV star was "distracted" and "forgot" that she had 3,657 cats to attend to. Oh wait. Make that 3,658. "Mrs. Whiskers" just dropped another one in the overgrown azaleas.
For you see, Crazy Cat Lady was too busy trying to organize the grain silo's worth of kitty kibble she has stored into her basement into perfectly uniform, nutritional nuggets, classified by color, texture, flavor, and brand. Plus she was aiming to determine which type of Meow Mix is each kitty's preferred food, for which she has created a database, organized unalphabetically by each cat's coloring, personality, and name, which she'd be happy to show you if you have some time. Say twenty years or so.
This, in a nutshell (emphasis on nut), is my former boss, Curly Squirrelly. Like our crazed amateur shelter worker, Curly Squirrelly wasn't cruel or heartless; it's just that she was quite easily distracted by attempting to examine, organize, and fix the smallest detail, so much so that the biggies escaped her attention entirely. Curly Squirrelly apparently suffered from an odd cross-pollination of anal-retentiveness and Attention Deficit Disorder. Thus, she had to fix everything, make it right, perfect it to her exacting personal NISO specifications, but she couldn't spend more than a nanosecond on each problem. And there were squillions of problems to resolve, each one deserving her undivided nanosecond of attention.
For the nanosecond she gave, she was brilliant. It's just that with so many problems and so little time, you wouldn't get her attention for another eon. The polar ice caps would come and go, whole species would evolve and die off, and the Grand Old Party might move slightly to the center before she returned her focus to you and, oops, then she was off again.
In other words, not only did she fail to see the forest for the trees, she couldn't see the trees for all the leaves, the leaves for all the veins on the leaves, the fact that the veins on the leaves weren't perfectly symmetrical, the fact that the word symmetrical isn't even symmetrical, the fact that the English language really should be restructured orthographically, and while we're at it, wasn't it strange that the Japanese and Chinese and several other peoples (which peoples? could I look that up and give her a report by 5?) didn't have an alphabet, at least not like we do, and shouldn't someone rewrite their languages into an alphabet that would be universally intelligible? And didn't I think that was a great idea? And could I start on that project right away?
Um, which project? And sure, I'd be happy to do your bidding, as soon as I finish the last project you gave me--polishing, weighing, measuring, classifying, cataloging, and filing all the coal you've CRAPPED into diamonds while I've been standing here in your office waiting for you to SHUT UP and listen to me while I tell you why I'm resigning.
All I can say is I dare not think about her toilet training too much.
So Life with Crazy Curly Squirrelly Cat Lady is a far, far cry from my current employment situation. I still have too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it, but, for the most part there is support, encouragement, and understanding.
Oh, but wouldn't you know it? I'm still never satisfied . . . .
And, no, by the way, my boss hasn't started reading this blog, as far as I know, nor am I playing at being Pollyanna. (I look terrible in gingham, if truth be told.) While I'm being honest in my appraisal, it never hurts to protect one's posterior, to defend one's derriere, to cover one's commode-loader, if you get my meaning. And how could you not?
As part of our conversation, my boss noted how much I had on my plate, how I was already stuffed to the gills, wasn't I? And no, no, I really couldn't eat another bite, could I? How could she help? How could she ease my bloating and discomfort? What was the administrative equivalent of Pepto-Bismal? How could she provide even better buffet line for the future and instill in me a sense of not-all-you-can-eat?
This is a radically different approach to staff nutrition from the feast-or-famine starvation diet provided by one previous boss, Curly Squirrelly, who oversaw the office as if she were the Tsarina of Ptomaine-Laced Toast Points. In short, she was regal, she was stingy, and she was hazardous to your health.
Curly Squirrelly is the kind of person who you see on the local news every so often, with wild, frizzy hair, wearing a caftan that hasn't seen a wash cycle since 1970. The crazy lady you see being interviewed by the TV crew has just been arrested for having 3,657 cats in her house, most of whom she's not fed for months on end. As a result, the cats have all gone feral and have wiped out the bird, rodent, and pet population within a 10-mile radius of Casa del Cat Pee. The smell, the mewling, and the abundant fertility have brought out the police, Animal Control, and a HazMat team, the endeavors of which the Live at Five Eyewitness Action News Team is dutifully recording for the 6 o'clock broadcast.
Crazy Cat Lady wasn't trying to kill off her cats by starving them to death, nor was she trying to put herself forth as Amateur Pet Breeder of the Year by letting her feline population expand beyond the bounds of decency in a sort of Caligula-styled kitty sex club, nor was she attempting to establish herself as an independent contractor for homegrown fertilizer and ammonia products. Not at all. It's just that our new-found reality TV star was "distracted" and "forgot" that she had 3,657 cats to attend to. Oh wait. Make that 3,658. "Mrs. Whiskers" just dropped another one in the overgrown azaleas.
For you see, Crazy Cat Lady was too busy trying to organize the grain silo's worth of kitty kibble she has stored into her basement into perfectly uniform, nutritional nuggets, classified by color, texture, flavor, and brand. Plus she was aiming to determine which type of Meow Mix is each kitty's preferred food, for which she has created a database, organized unalphabetically by each cat's coloring, personality, and name, which she'd be happy to show you if you have some time. Say twenty years or so.
This, in a nutshell (emphasis on nut), is my former boss, Curly Squirrelly. Like our crazed amateur shelter worker, Curly Squirrelly wasn't cruel or heartless; it's just that she was quite easily distracted by attempting to examine, organize, and fix the smallest detail, so much so that the biggies escaped her attention entirely. Curly Squirrelly apparently suffered from an odd cross-pollination of anal-retentiveness and Attention Deficit Disorder. Thus, she had to fix everything, make it right, perfect it to her exacting personal NISO specifications, but she couldn't spend more than a nanosecond on each problem. And there were squillions of problems to resolve, each one deserving her undivided nanosecond of attention.
For the nanosecond she gave, she was brilliant. It's just that with so many problems and so little time, you wouldn't get her attention for another eon. The polar ice caps would come and go, whole species would evolve and die off, and the Grand Old Party might move slightly to the center before she returned her focus to you and, oops, then she was off again.
In other words, not only did she fail to see the forest for the trees, she couldn't see the trees for all the leaves, the leaves for all the veins on the leaves, the fact that the veins on the leaves weren't perfectly symmetrical, the fact that the word symmetrical isn't even symmetrical, the fact that the English language really should be restructured orthographically, and while we're at it, wasn't it strange that the Japanese and Chinese and several other peoples (which peoples? could I look that up and give her a report by 5?) didn't have an alphabet, at least not like we do, and shouldn't someone rewrite their languages into an alphabet that would be universally intelligible? And didn't I think that was a great idea? And could I start on that project right away?
Um, which project? And sure, I'd be happy to do your bidding, as soon as I finish the last project you gave me--polishing, weighing, measuring, classifying, cataloging, and filing all the coal you've CRAPPED into diamonds while I've been standing here in your office waiting for you to SHUT UP and listen to me while I tell you why I'm resigning.
All I can say is I dare not think about her toilet training too much.
So Life with Crazy Curly Squirrelly Cat Lady is a far, far cry from my current employment situation. I still have too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it, but, for the most part there is support, encouragement, and understanding.
Oh, but wouldn't you know it? I'm still never satisfied . . . .
What is the sound of one hand slapping? Part II
On the slap-but-no-tickle side of life, however, I have been struggling with writing lately, something I really enjoy doing but which, like physical exercise and good nutrition, has not appealed to me much recently.
I set out at the beginning of the year with two articles being published back-to-back, writing another review which was set to be published this month (or so I thought), and having another query accepted for an article due in July. For one shining moment, I felt as though I might actually get back to regular creative writing, something I hadn't done seriously for ten years or so. This time, though, I would be more consistent, publishing something every couple of months, and cleverer, even getting paid for what I wrote instead of giving it away for free. No whore I, I'd work my way into a self-pimping literary prostitute before long.
But it feels like it's all going wrong now. For one thing, I'm bored by the idea of the article I pitched for completion in July, and even though there's money attached to its successful publication, I just can't be bothered to do the research at the moment. The proposal also involves talking with people to get information out of them. Now I can talk with anyone, but I always feel a little dishonest in trying to glean information from someone for my own benefit. It somehow seems rude or unseemly. Very un-Southern. Don't ask, don't tell.
So I have pretty much decided to postpone the magazine piece for July, instead concentrating on reviews, the blog, and some creative think-pieces I might somehow work into a regular column or an occasional personal essay for some (paying) little magazine or website. When I fantasize, I fantasize big and literate.
The review I completed in April, on the BBC America TV show, Footballers' Wive$, was easy enough--I just had to write what I thought ("It's camp! It's tawdry! It's fab!") and contact the BBC for some photos. No problem.
I thought the review turned out well. It was a little overwritten, a little overly alliterative (who me?), but still, it was good, solid, entertaining, and under 750 words, which seems to be the criteria for the editor of the gay publication for which I wrote it. Said editor told me he'd publish it in May, and I thought, whew, I'm still on schedule for publishing something every other month, even if I don't get paid for this piece. However, with a couple more clips under my belt, I can use those to bargain for a better assignment for a more up-market publication.
Imagine my surprise and disappointment then when I received the most recent issue and failed to find the article within its pages. And because it's a fairly time-sensitive review and the publication is only issued bimonthly, I think it's doubtful that it will be published at all.
Pooh.
Now I've had issues (if you'll pardon the pun) with this publication before. The first article I wrote, a review of the gay cable channel Logo, originally came in at a little under 800 words. The editor, however, cut it back to 650, noting that the article wasn't in "newspaper style," which apparently means he would add in subheadings (fair enough) but also recast the original premise of the piece and edit it so that it not only didn't make a lot of sense but was factually inaccurate.
I'll grant you that I don't know a lot--I don't give a rat's patoot about the sciences, I'm not sure I get the point of the major philosophers, and I struggle with figuring out the tip at a restaurant on a regular basis, even when I'm the only one paying the bill. But as a life-long homosexual, I'll be damned if I don't know about the appeal of an all-gay TV channel and, thus, I can surely string together some entertaining sentences about it. I'm not often confident about much of anything, nor do I insist on my way too many times, but this much I know.
So I re-edited and corrected the piece, getting it back up to 700 words. I wasn't happy with the results and haven't shared it with many people because of this, but still, it was done, it was published, and my figurative foot was in the door.
I pitched a few other ideas to him, film, music, and TV reviews, mainly, but he didn't go for them. Instead he came back to me to ask whether I would do a 600-word, "investigative" piece on coal mining's effect on the environment in Western Pennsylvania.
Uh, dude, do I look like Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein? Or even Alfre Woodard or Carl Sagan? If anything, I resemble an odd combination of Bob Barker and Karl Marx with a heavy dose of Jack McFarland and Karen Walker (from Will and Grace, R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure. Hard-hitting facts and environmental analysis ain't my thang, especially when only 600 words and no money are involved. But TV, campiness, bitchiness, and some opinionated (although incompletely formed) political and economic commentary most definitely are. Go with what you know.
Unsurprisingly, I'd have a hard time keeping an introduction to such a piece to a mere 600 words. I explained this, told the editor about the Footballers' Wive$ review (which kind of says everything you need to know about my intellectual interests), and he accepted the idea. I submitted the finished piece on time, clocking in at around 730 words.
But now I've gone from Logo to no go, apparently.
I thought perhaps I misjudged my audience. Am I too camp? Too obscure? I pitched more "approachable" pieces earlier on, but when they were rejected, I went for something a bit different, something I would consider enjoyable to know about and entertaining to watch. Plus the show I wrote about has a bit of a buzz behind it, has been covered by some other mainstream mass media, and has identifiable (if scandalous) gay and lesbian characters.
Still, in the same issue of the paper, there was a review of recent Marilyn Monroe releases on DVD and current club-kid-interest-only releases from obscure dance labels. So . . . maybe I'm not too obscure or too camp. Maybe I just suck as a newspaper writer.
Or maybe newspaper editors suck.
When I first graduated from college, I worked as a newspaper reporter in a small North Carolina town, eventualy fleeing after several months for life in the big city and more than $9,000 a year income, which even in 1983 was paltry. The editor for the "Scum-Urinal," as we reporters nicknamed our paper, put me, the least qualified and least interested, on the cops and courts beat, where I spent all my time trying to cajole one particularly asshole-ish police officer into letting me see the daily log (a legal requirement under North Carolina law) and fending off another from showing me the latest grizzly crime scene photos from child abuse and murder cases. He put another reporter, a young woman who really wanted to be the cops and courts reporter and had the wiles and testicles to handle it, on the features desk. Talk about being blinded by gender. Stacy could've whipped those cops into shape in no time, and I could have made the features section more fabulous than anything anyone in Hooterville had ever seen. Their loss. But it meant that my full-time writing career came to a premature end.
Not getting published and not getting paid for a goofy little review bothers me, obviously. But I think what troubles me most is it means I have to--once again--rethink my future goals and secret dreams. You see, lately, I've been taking intelligence and career satisfaction tests, and they all point me to a different line of work. While my present line isn't completely unsatisfactory to me or to my abilities, at the moment, I feel that I'm a bit out of sync with my profession and my interests. My career tests point me toward being an ill-defined artist of some sort, a creative writer--or maybe a recreational or psychotherapist, or even a minister. (Is there by chance a Church of Secular Humanism? Other than the Unitarian Universalists? No?)
My results sound like those biographical sketches of bubble-headed contestants from the Miss USA pageant, who vow they'll either be an opera singer or breastfeed the children of Africa one-by-one, then go on to showcase their talent at ventriloquism or tap dancing. Or it's like the time I opened a fortune cookie as part of a Chinese take-away, and it told me I should be a political leader--or a hairdresser.
Cheese and crackers, folks. Careerwise, I am all over the freaking mental map.
But then maybe this is nothing new. It just indicates that I desperately need to rethink my original plan: To retire in the next year with the goal of building a time machine to return to 1980s and '90s Britain and take over the editorship of the entertainment section of The Face, Q, Select, I-D, or some other hip, trendoid magazine. For you see, despite the fact that Kurt Loder's sagging face and heaving carcass are still flogging music news on MTV, editing a trendoid British magazine for twenty-somethings is really a young man's game.
At times, I'm not sure I have a lot going for me--although there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I have a great apartment, some very good friends and family members who I care about and who care about me in return, reasonably good health, a functioning automobile, a sufficient amount of income, wonderful colleagues, an engaged boss, and a lot more control and flexibility at work than most. And then there's this blog, which gives me a lot of pleasure, more than I can say. That should be enough, shouldn't it? Yet like a slow leak in a raggedly Michelin tire, still I whine as I travel down life's road.
Thus, perhaps the sound of one hand slapping is the cold, hard smack of reality against my cheek. A smack that says wake up and smell the midlife crisis and the need for counseling, bucko.
As Cher told Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck as she smacked him across the chops, "Snap out it!"
Goodness knows I need to.
I set out at the beginning of the year with two articles being published back-to-back, writing another review which was set to be published this month (or so I thought), and having another query accepted for an article due in July. For one shining moment, I felt as though I might actually get back to regular creative writing, something I hadn't done seriously for ten years or so. This time, though, I would be more consistent, publishing something every couple of months, and cleverer, even getting paid for what I wrote instead of giving it away for free. No whore I, I'd work my way into a self-pimping literary prostitute before long.
But it feels like it's all going wrong now. For one thing, I'm bored by the idea of the article I pitched for completion in July, and even though there's money attached to its successful publication, I just can't be bothered to do the research at the moment. The proposal also involves talking with people to get information out of them. Now I can talk with anyone, but I always feel a little dishonest in trying to glean information from someone for my own benefit. It somehow seems rude or unseemly. Very un-Southern. Don't ask, don't tell.
So I have pretty much decided to postpone the magazine piece for July, instead concentrating on reviews, the blog, and some creative think-pieces I might somehow work into a regular column or an occasional personal essay for some (paying) little magazine or website. When I fantasize, I fantasize big and literate.
The review I completed in April, on the BBC America TV show, Footballers' Wive$, was easy enough--I just had to write what I thought ("It's camp! It's tawdry! It's fab!") and contact the BBC for some photos. No problem.
I thought the review turned out well. It was a little overwritten, a little overly alliterative (who me?), but still, it was good, solid, entertaining, and under 750 words, which seems to be the criteria for the editor of the gay publication for which I wrote it. Said editor told me he'd publish it in May, and I thought, whew, I'm still on schedule for publishing something every other month, even if I don't get paid for this piece. However, with a couple more clips under my belt, I can use those to bargain for a better assignment for a more up-market publication.
Imagine my surprise and disappointment then when I received the most recent issue and failed to find the article within its pages. And because it's a fairly time-sensitive review and the publication is only issued bimonthly, I think it's doubtful that it will be published at all.
Pooh.
Now I've had issues (if you'll pardon the pun) with this publication before. The first article I wrote, a review of the gay cable channel Logo, originally came in at a little under 800 words. The editor, however, cut it back to 650, noting that the article wasn't in "newspaper style," which apparently means he would add in subheadings (fair enough) but also recast the original premise of the piece and edit it so that it not only didn't make a lot of sense but was factually inaccurate.
I'll grant you that I don't know a lot--I don't give a rat's patoot about the sciences, I'm not sure I get the point of the major philosophers, and I struggle with figuring out the tip at a restaurant on a regular basis, even when I'm the only one paying the bill. But as a life-long homosexual, I'll be damned if I don't know about the appeal of an all-gay TV channel and, thus, I can surely string together some entertaining sentences about it. I'm not often confident about much of anything, nor do I insist on my way too many times, but this much I know.
So I re-edited and corrected the piece, getting it back up to 700 words. I wasn't happy with the results and haven't shared it with many people because of this, but still, it was done, it was published, and my figurative foot was in the door.
I pitched a few other ideas to him, film, music, and TV reviews, mainly, but he didn't go for them. Instead he came back to me to ask whether I would do a 600-word, "investigative" piece on coal mining's effect on the environment in Western Pennsylvania.
Uh, dude, do I look like Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein? Or even Alfre Woodard or Carl Sagan? If anything, I resemble an odd combination of Bob Barker and Karl Marx with a heavy dose of Jack McFarland and Karen Walker (from Will and Grace, R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure. Hard-hitting facts and environmental analysis ain't my thang, especially when only 600 words and no money are involved. But TV, campiness, bitchiness, and some opinionated (although incompletely formed) political and economic commentary most definitely are. Go with what you know.
Unsurprisingly, I'd have a hard time keeping an introduction to such a piece to a mere 600 words. I explained this, told the editor about the Footballers' Wive$ review (which kind of says everything you need to know about my intellectual interests), and he accepted the idea. I submitted the finished piece on time, clocking in at around 730 words.
But now I've gone from Logo to no go, apparently.
I thought perhaps I misjudged my audience. Am I too camp? Too obscure? I pitched more "approachable" pieces earlier on, but when they were rejected, I went for something a bit different, something I would consider enjoyable to know about and entertaining to watch. Plus the show I wrote about has a bit of a buzz behind it, has been covered by some other mainstream mass media, and has identifiable (if scandalous) gay and lesbian characters.
Still, in the same issue of the paper, there was a review of recent Marilyn Monroe releases on DVD and current club-kid-interest-only releases from obscure dance labels. So . . . maybe I'm not too obscure or too camp. Maybe I just suck as a newspaper writer.
Or maybe newspaper editors suck.
When I first graduated from college, I worked as a newspaper reporter in a small North Carolina town, eventualy fleeing after several months for life in the big city and more than $9,000 a year income, which even in 1983 was paltry. The editor for the "Scum-Urinal," as we reporters nicknamed our paper, put me, the least qualified and least interested, on the cops and courts beat, where I spent all my time trying to cajole one particularly asshole-ish police officer into letting me see the daily log (a legal requirement under North Carolina law) and fending off another from showing me the latest grizzly crime scene photos from child abuse and murder cases. He put another reporter, a young woman who really wanted to be the cops and courts reporter and had the wiles and testicles to handle it, on the features desk. Talk about being blinded by gender. Stacy could've whipped those cops into shape in no time, and I could have made the features section more fabulous than anything anyone in Hooterville had ever seen. Their loss. But it meant that my full-time writing career came to a premature end.
Not getting published and not getting paid for a goofy little review bothers me, obviously. But I think what troubles me most is it means I have to--once again--rethink my future goals and secret dreams. You see, lately, I've been taking intelligence and career satisfaction tests, and they all point me to a different line of work. While my present line isn't completely unsatisfactory to me or to my abilities, at the moment, I feel that I'm a bit out of sync with my profession and my interests. My career tests point me toward being an ill-defined artist of some sort, a creative writer--or maybe a recreational or psychotherapist, or even a minister. (Is there by chance a Church of Secular Humanism? Other than the Unitarian Universalists? No?)
My results sound like those biographical sketches of bubble-headed contestants from the Miss USA pageant, who vow they'll either be an opera singer or breastfeed the children of Africa one-by-one, then go on to showcase their talent at ventriloquism or tap dancing. Or it's like the time I opened a fortune cookie as part of a Chinese take-away, and it told me I should be a political leader--or a hairdresser.
Cheese and crackers, folks. Careerwise, I am all over the freaking mental map.
But then maybe this is nothing new. It just indicates that I desperately need to rethink my original plan: To retire in the next year with the goal of building a time machine to return to 1980s and '90s Britain and take over the editorship of the entertainment section of The Face, Q, Select, I-D, or some other hip, trendoid magazine. For you see, despite the fact that Kurt Loder's sagging face and heaving carcass are still flogging music news on MTV, editing a trendoid British magazine for twenty-somethings is really a young man's game.
At times, I'm not sure I have a lot going for me--although there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I have a great apartment, some very good friends and family members who I care about and who care about me in return, reasonably good health, a functioning automobile, a sufficient amount of income, wonderful colleagues, an engaged boss, and a lot more control and flexibility at work than most. And then there's this blog, which gives me a lot of pleasure, more than I can say. That should be enough, shouldn't it? Yet like a slow leak in a raggedly Michelin tire, still I whine as I travel down life's road.
Thus, perhaps the sound of one hand slapping is the cold, hard smack of reality against my cheek. A smack that says wake up and smell the midlife crisis and the need for counseling, bucko.
As Cher told Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck as she smacked him across the chops, "Snap out it!"
Goodness knows I need to.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Nick Lachey's ear hair
You know that you've completely and dangerously o.d.'ed on Extra!, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, People, O.K.!, In Style, and Hello!, when you start having dreams about Nick Lachey. Especially his ear hair.
I r.e.m.'ed that moment earlier in the week, a quick snippet of a dream that involved my watching Nick Lachey perform on something akin to American Bandstand. I was standing behind ol' sinner Nick, on a platform slightly above him, which afforded me a view directly into his eustachian tubes and thus was able to spot the offending ear hair. After he did his big number--which the gods in all their mercy have prevented me from recalling one note of--I pulled him and the director aside and told them that Nick would need a trim before the show could go on. They obliged and thanked me for the keen observation. And then my mind moved on to another dream.
Why I would dream about Nick Lachey of all people is kind of a mystery to me. I'll admit, he is cute in that button-nosed, pretty boy, Ken doll kind of way, the kind I always fantasize will look totally ridiculous at 50 or 60 with his plastic boytoy looks, but who will, in fact, still look fabulous, even as a corpse. He'll have his perfect, fawn-colored curls; he'll have his pearly, porcelain teeth; he'll have his desiccated and decaying portrait in the attic. "Our limbs fail, our senses rot . . . Youth, youth, there is absolutely nothing in the world but youth."
The bastard.
Nonetheless, Dorian . . . erm . . . Nick and Jessica Simpson have been in the news constantly for weeks, nay, months, nay, years! So perhaps it's inevitable that I would dream about him at least once. As a child, I occasionally dreamed about being lost and having to find my way home. As a college student, I dreamed about forgetting to show up for exams and failing to graduate on time. As a twenty-something during the Reagan era, I dreamed about the Soviet Union invading Washington, where I lived at the time, and how my colleagues and I had to prevent nuclear war from starting at the Smithsonian Castle. Also during the '80s I dreamed more than once about being friends with Madonna and advising her on selecting the best Ethiopian restaurant when she visited the Adams-Morgan neighborhood.
So it really does stand to reason that I would be haunted in my dreams by other cataclysmic, psychologically scarring events--ergo, a dream about Nick Lachey's ear hair and its possible detriment to his career. My ear hair is frightening enough, growing and curly-cueing more than an Eva Gabor wig during a rainstorm in New Orleans. But the ear hair of the otherwise plucked and pruned Darling Nicky? *Shiver.* That is indeed horrifying to imagine.
I have this theory that everything anyone in Celebritydom does--whether good, bad, or indifferent--is all consciously and purposefully designed to draw constant attention to themselves, to make we mere mortals tune into every action, every thought, every moment of their public and private lives--at least the part of their private lives they want us to witness. No one in Oprah's entourage can tell time, so they show up late to a boutique in Paris and get locked out--let's debate it on Anderson Cooper 360. J. Lo sleeps with pretty much anyone who's ever appeared in front of a camera (including a Brownie and a Polaroid)--let's chronicle each sweaty interlude in the pages of the National Enquirer. During yet another inquiry into child molestation allegations, Michael Jackson jumps on top of a car to wave to his adoring fans (a group who've never mastered the concept of "where there's smoke and the desire to remake yourself to look like Diana Ross's Silk Electric album cover, there's fire")--and it's covered on websites and news broadcasts around the world. Tom Cruise argues with Matt Lauer over the merits of psychotropic drugs, totally not getting the irony, and it receives plenty of play on the next day's front pages.
No news is just that, no news. But even bad news is good news on the global stage upon which celebs appear.
So congratulations, Nick. Like a river parasite in a Third World country, you've entered my body through some undetermined orifice--perhaps an earhole?--and have burrowed yourself into my brain. Now, literally and figuratively, I can't get you out of my head.
That's the measure of success. For you.
For me, it's the measure of a slow and painful death through a brain-wasting disease.
I r.e.m.'ed that moment earlier in the week, a quick snippet of a dream that involved my watching Nick Lachey perform on something akin to American Bandstand. I was standing behind ol' sinner Nick, on a platform slightly above him, which afforded me a view directly into his eustachian tubes and thus was able to spot the offending ear hair. After he did his big number--which the gods in all their mercy have prevented me from recalling one note of--I pulled him and the director aside and told them that Nick would need a trim before the show could go on. They obliged and thanked me for the keen observation. And then my mind moved on to another dream.
Why I would dream about Nick Lachey of all people is kind of a mystery to me. I'll admit, he is cute in that button-nosed, pretty boy, Ken doll kind of way, the kind I always fantasize will look totally ridiculous at 50 or 60 with his plastic boytoy looks, but who will, in fact, still look fabulous, even as a corpse. He'll have his perfect, fawn-colored curls; he'll have his pearly, porcelain teeth; he'll have his desiccated and decaying portrait in the attic. "Our limbs fail, our senses rot . . . Youth, youth, there is absolutely nothing in the world but youth."
The bastard.
Nonetheless, Dorian . . . erm . . . Nick and Jessica Simpson have been in the news constantly for weeks, nay, months, nay, years! So perhaps it's inevitable that I would dream about him at least once. As a child, I occasionally dreamed about being lost and having to find my way home. As a college student, I dreamed about forgetting to show up for exams and failing to graduate on time. As a twenty-something during the Reagan era, I dreamed about the Soviet Union invading Washington, where I lived at the time, and how my colleagues and I had to prevent nuclear war from starting at the Smithsonian Castle. Also during the '80s I dreamed more than once about being friends with Madonna and advising her on selecting the best Ethiopian restaurant when she visited the Adams-Morgan neighborhood.
So it really does stand to reason that I would be haunted in my dreams by other cataclysmic, psychologically scarring events--ergo, a dream about Nick Lachey's ear hair and its possible detriment to his career. My ear hair is frightening enough, growing and curly-cueing more than an Eva Gabor wig during a rainstorm in New Orleans. But the ear hair of the otherwise plucked and pruned Darling Nicky? *Shiver.* That is indeed horrifying to imagine.
I have this theory that everything anyone in Celebritydom does--whether good, bad, or indifferent--is all consciously and purposefully designed to draw constant attention to themselves, to make we mere mortals tune into every action, every thought, every moment of their public and private lives--at least the part of their private lives they want us to witness. No one in Oprah's entourage can tell time, so they show up late to a boutique in Paris and get locked out--let's debate it on Anderson Cooper 360. J. Lo sleeps with pretty much anyone who's ever appeared in front of a camera (including a Brownie and a Polaroid)--let's chronicle each sweaty interlude in the pages of the National Enquirer. During yet another inquiry into child molestation allegations, Michael Jackson jumps on top of a car to wave to his adoring fans (a group who've never mastered the concept of "where there's smoke and the desire to remake yourself to look like Diana Ross's Silk Electric album cover, there's fire")--and it's covered on websites and news broadcasts around the world. Tom Cruise argues with Matt Lauer over the merits of psychotropic drugs, totally not getting the irony, and it receives plenty of play on the next day's front pages.
No news is just that, no news. But even bad news is good news on the global stage upon which celebs appear.
So congratulations, Nick. Like a river parasite in a Third World country, you've entered my body through some undetermined orifice--perhaps an earhole?--and have burrowed yourself into my brain. Now, literally and figuratively, I can't get you out of my head.
That's the measure of success. For you.
For me, it's the measure of a slow and painful death through a brain-wasting disease.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Lucky number
Here it is May, and I realize once more that another couple of months have gone by, and I forgot to meet Mr. Right--or even Mr. Right Now. I haven't even gone on a date since February. And I haven't dated someone regularly since the Supreme Court overturned the sodomy laws in the U.S.
That was in 2003. Erp.
Nothing like making sodomy legal to make it less interesting, at least to some of us. "Oh sodomy, that. I can do that any ol' time now." And next thing you know, you're no longer doing it. Religious Right 1, Raplicious minus 69.
So to speak.
Certain times of the year--Valentine's Day, summer holidays, the annual renewal of my gay.com membership--I spend more time thinking about why I've had paltry win-place-show positions in the Blogtucky Derby of Gay Romance. While I don't focus on it constantly--and perhaps the lack of effort begats the lack of success?--there are times when I feel it would be quite nice to have someone special and significant in my life.
Nonetheless, despite this blog and the occasional need to express my fabulousness in public, I'm generally happy to stay by myself. I enjoy my own company and actually thrive on the solitude. As my mother, Vivien Leigh, notes, I was perhaps the only child ever born who cried to get back into his playpen, rather than to be let out. What can I say? I like my space. It gives me time to write (poor you), to rejuvenate, and to recover from my stark, dark visions of an America on the verge of apo-calypso. Day-oh. Day-oh. Come Mister Boogey Man, boogey me jihad-a.
You see, in my mind, there's something very torturepalooza-at-Abu Ghraib about modern love and dating. There are lots of hunky young recruits on the scene (good), but upon closer inspection, they all resemble Lynndie England (bad). If you're lucky, the new recruits are 
dressed smartly; if you're unlucky, they all look like they're donning evening wear as modeled by members of the Klan (bad). If things progress, there might be some some nudity involved (good), but as long as it's part of a poorly devised plot to further destabilize the Middle East (bad), then count me out. At a more intimate level, there's dirty talk (potentially very good), but it's all enunciated by a squinty-eyed Donald Rumsfeld (unequivocally very bad).
I didn't arrive at this catastrophic version of the Dating Game by being merely a malcontent or a cynic. No, really. It's experience that has taught me well. For you see, whenever I put myself out there in the marketplace for love, marriage, or even just a good time, something--and someone--strange happens.
I seem to attract the weirdest population of freaks and losers in the Western Hemisphere, and I'm sure if I traveled more outside the West, I'd get the rest of the world's freaks as well. My charms, such as they are, almost always appeal to people I'm not particularly interested in for either aesthetic or biological reasons. You might say I'm a little picky, but you would be, too, if your options involved snake handlers, pig farmers, biker chicks, boyfriends who get p.o.'ed if you don't serve real butter, and guys looking for father figures, or more accurately, sugar daddies.
Let me explain . . .
* * *
It all started to go wrong from a very tender age. Two years into my outness, at the ripe age of 20, I went to Washington, D.C., for the summer to work. Ah, nothing more Mary Richards-tossing-her-hat-into-the-air than a nascent career guy loose for the first time in the big city, perky, righteous, and serious. And nothing like a chance encounter at a bus stop with a gold-toothed Romeo to blow it all to smithereens.
How I ended up talking with this guy, I can't even remember now. Consider it psychological blockage--and I'll pass on a heaping helping of mental fiber (or even some Heavenly Desserts) to turn it loose, thanks all the same. What I remember is this: On a warm June day, while waiting for a bus to take me from Silver Spring Metro to White Oak, I was having a normal conversation with a human being of the male species (and I use all the preceeding terms very generously). I'm sure the nature of the conversation was something innocuous--"Wow, it's humid today" or "Gosh, is it always this humid in the summer in Washington?" or "No, really, I mean it, is it always this humid?"
I'm good at talking with people, anybody really, but sometimes only too late I realize that I've chosen the wrong person to talk with. (Remind me to share with you another day the time I mistakenly asked a flasher for directions in San Francisco's Union Square. Thank goodness I didn't ask him to point which way to go.) Because out of the blue, the man asked me if I was gay, and while nervous to answer in the affirmative, at that point in my life, I was determined to be out and proud, holding nothing back, no longer content to stand in the shadows of love and life. I was here, I was queer, I wanted everyone to get used to it! After all, it was 1982. What's the worst that could happen to gay people from here on out?
So I answered him and received this as a response:
"That's cool, man. You know, I'd [copulate with] a snake if I had the chance. Maybe we could get together sometime."
Well. Hmmm. Hadn't expected that. Here I was all geared up for a lecture on gay rights and all I got was this lousy, sordid, disgusting come-on.
I declined the gracious offer, probably with a polite flinch and shudder, apoplexy, and a crimson-hued face. Luckily the bus came along soon after or I would have been treated to this Casanova Brown's X-rated version of Night of the Iguana.
* * *
Flash forward to Texas nearly 20 years later, and my version of the old Mystery Date Game ("I got a dud!") hadn't improved a great deal. There were lots of bad moments--guys who wanted to marry me ten seconds into the evening, guys I might have wanted to marry but who couldn't take their eyes off who might walk into the restaurant next, guys who are looking for financial support ('cause it's too late for moral support), guys who want nothing more than, shall we say, "athletic support"--with me as the jockstrap. And lots and lots of narcissists of the "Well, enough about me, let's talk about you--what do you think about me?" variety.
I'd like to think my lowest point was the night I met the pig farmer from Del Rio.
Now I've got nothing against the working man--in fact, they can be quite appealing--but I'm from North Carolina, and I know pig farms. The smell greets you several miles before the farm, and while Bob smelled fine from where I was standing, I just thought it best not to take any chances--especially if he couldn't spin his career any better than "oink, oink, I work on a pig farm." Even a simple "I'm into pork belly futures" would've worked.Him: "Hi, how are you?"
Me: "Good and yourself."
Him: "Very good, but very tired. I worked so hard all day. And I drove in from Del Rio tonight."
Me: "Hmmm, that's a ways off."
Him: "Maybe you would let me stay with you tonight? I would make it worth your while [begins rubbing my shoulder]."
Me: "Hmmm, well, I don't really know you . . . "
Him: "Well, what would you like to know?"
Me: "Ha, OK, your name first! Then maybe what kind of work do you do?"
Him: "Bob. I work on a farm."
Me: "Hi, Bob-who-works-on-a-farm. What kind of work do you do on the farm?"
Him: "I work with the pigs."
Me: "Excuse me?"
Him: "Pigs. You know, oink, oink, I work on a pig farm."
Me: "Ah, I see. Oh, hey, I see my friend Fouchat over there, let me go say hi . . . ."
But no matter. That whole "squeal like a pig" scenario would have popped into my head, regardless of whether he was investing in pork or calling it to supper.
In retrospect, though, that was nothing. My truly lowest point, the Death Valley on the geological map of love, was when the one potentially strong relationship I had going fizzled out in the space of a week because of Dr. Pepper and Brummel & Brown yogurt/butter spread.
It all started out great with Egoslavia. It was one of those friendships that caught on fire, turning into the kind of relationship I had wanted for years, someone with whom I shared a worldview and some social and cultural interests, who had a sense of humor, who could be a lot of fun, got on well with my friends, was intelligent, thoughtful, sexy, and . . . oh wait, what happened to kind?
I forgot to look for kind. And kindness counts, because if you spend your time bitching out a waitress because the restaurant doesn't carry Dr. Pepper, just Pepsi products, how far do you have to travel to be mad at me for not having any real butter in the house for your morning toast?
Not very far at all, it turns out.
So it was Rumble in the Dairyland: Brummel & Brown vs. Land o' Lakes. All told, I'm sure it was much more than that. My car was giving me grief, and I needed a new one, so I was preoccupied with and distraught by that major financial decision. I was carrying some debt, which I and I alone was responsible for and intended to keep that way, but which made the jet-set take off and land no farther away than Houston for the weekend. I probably complained about my job a little too much, something I'm still doing--and I've changed jobs twice since then. (So caveat potential suitor there.)
I figured it out all too late--that I was supposed to be the daddy figure in the relationship. The sugar daddy. And for pity's sake, please make sure it's pure sugar and not some vile substitute.
I finally caught on when I met my predecessor at a party, his previous long-term relationship, all 350+ over-trust-funded, highly opinionated, snobbish and decaying pounds of him, who had lavished Ego with a new iMac (after they broke up, mind you), paid off his school loans, took him on trips wherever he wanted to go (hell, took his family on trips, too), bought him clothes (although, oddly, they never seemed to venture too far from the Nautica outlet store), catered to his every whim. So on and so forth.
Sorry, I guess I just lack the income and the interest to compete with that. Nor would I want to or even know how to. Although that doesn't make the disappointment and hurt any less real.
* * *
Will it be better in Central Pennsylvania? Too soon to tell. But among the pig farmers, heartbreakers, and snake handlers, I'm left wondering who my audience is? Who do I appeal to? If I were a TV show, would I be on basic or digital cable? Would I skew so freaky that I'd be canceled in the first 5 minutes and immediately be replaced with reruns of America's Favorite Tractor Pulls? Would anyone TiVo me? Would anyone trade me as a cult classic, bootleg DVD on eBay?
On the way home from work the other day, I stopped off at the Distelfink drive-in north of Gettysburg to drown my troubles in a birch beer and some french fries. In the space of the 10 minutes it took to get my order, I got flirted with twice. Pretty good odds, if I do say so, but the key word here is "odd."
The first flirtation was from a biker chick in short shorts, boots, a death metal band t-shirt, and wild, wild hair. Her hair reminded of that witch from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the one who flies off leaving behind a trail of hairpins in her wake.
I have had women flirt with me before--and there's the infamous moment, which my friend Jean Naté loves to remind me of, when I was stopped at a traffic light in San Antonio and a young woman decided to flash her rather ample breasts my way, as a way to strike up a conversation (I'm guessing). I'm always caught by surprise at these times--both by the boob sharing and by women hitting on me in general. I feel like already I have a big sign over my head that says "WRONG TREE," but maybe we all enjoy a challenge every now and again.
Anyway, Biker Barbarella kept eyeing me, trying to get me to look her way. Paranoic that I am, I half-feared that at any second she was going to yell out, "Next to the Subaru! Richard Simmons in dress clothes! Smear the queer, fellas!" And then she and her biker friends would hurt me in like a totally Angels Hard as They Come way.
But no, apparently my imagination is as overactive as my gaydar is misguided. She merely smiled coyly, flicked her eyebrows my way, waved, and climbed on the back of her hog--that is to say her huge boyfriend/paramour, as well as the motorcycle they rode in on. Then they both sped off into the sunset.
Almost immediately afterwards, a not-unattractive mejicano in a pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot, walked up to the counter to talk with a friend, then came back toward his vehicle.
I noticed a rainbow-colored strip of dancing bears on the back glass of the cab and thought, oh ho, even way out here in Bumf**k, Mason-Dixonia, we've got ourselves some gay boys. Some *other* gay boys, I should say.
As he neared his truck, he tipped his cowboy hat at me, dazzled me with a brilliant smile, a friendly "hi there!" and before I knew it he was off toward the horizon without me. Probably heading home to his husbear.
So maybe just maybe I've still got a certain something that might appeal to someone, somewhere out there.
It's just that I have the sinking feeling that that someone is a truck-driving, hog-riding vaquero/biker chick, who handles snakes, prefers real butter and Dr. Pepper and will accept no substitutes, and slops the pigs on a ranch 150 miles from anywhere.
* * *
I've been listening to an old Lene Lovich tune from the '70s lately, a punkish dance tune called "Lucky Number." You can read the complete lyrics here (although I'm not sure they've got them exactly right), but the first part goes something like this:
I've everything I need to keep me satisfied/
There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind/
I'm having so much fun/
My Lucky Number's one
And then toward the end, the song goes:
This rearrangement suits me now I must confess/
The number one was dull and number two is best/
I wanna stay with you/
My Lucky Number's two
I'm not quite convinced that number two is best for me, that number one is all that dull, "the loneliest number" that I ever knew and all that. One may be who I am; that may be the arrangement that suits me best.
Still, I don't know that I'm quite ready to quit looking for my Ennis Del Midstate or my Jack Twist-and-Shout--and for the record, I'm ready for a Jack, who wants to be in a relationship, rather than an Ennis, who isn't sure and can't handle it. Whether my lucky number is a one or a two, whether casinos come to Pennsylvania or not, and whether I'm ever able to win more than $10 from a Vegas slot machine, I find that I still have a taste for gambling.
Here's hoping for lucky numbers from here on out. Here's hoping for a sure bet coming my way soon.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Another day, another Kennedy with a substance abuse problem
Pithy title, no? I don't know that I have much more to say than that, but it has been a while since I posted, and I figured I had to start somewhere.
Actually, I have drafted about three "serious me" posts of late--part of the Many Moods of Raplicious series. But, hey, c'mon, when another Democrat makes a butt of himself in public, it's stop-the-presses time. Just ask the folks at Fox News, the home of unfair and imbalanced reporting.
Please don't let me be misunderstood, to quote Santa Esmeralda featuring Leroy Gómez. (I know the Animals did the song originally, but Shallow Hallieberry that I am, I always have preferred the flamenco disco version.) Despite the occasional nod at the polls to an Independent or Libertarian candidate, I have been a lifelong Democrat, at least up until I moved to Pennsylvania, where I registered with the Green Party. Consider it my little flourish of pixie dust and taste-the-rainbow Skittles-exotica in an otherwise dreary political landscape.
But let's face it--the Democrats seem deader in the water than the unconscious passenger in a Kennedy-driven vehicle. And this despite a president who hasn't had an original idea since the phrase "9/11" first parted his speechwriter's lips. Yet the Dems remain more poorly organized than a two-car white trash funeral procession.
Lordy, even the Democrats' scandals lack originality and creativity. Why, Rush Limbaugh, the Right Wing's mouthpiece (through which he apparently takes 20 illicitly acquired pain-relief tablets with plenty of water, repeating when necessary or the mood strikes him) and GlaxoSmithKline's new spokesmodel, got busted and headed into rehab just a week ago.
So come on, Green Party, you can do it. I know you can deliver a tofurkey loaf in every pot and an ethanol-sipping hybrid in every garage. Now that's what I call the good life.
Actually, I have drafted about three "serious me" posts of late--part of the Many Moods of Raplicious series. But, hey, c'mon, when another Democrat makes a butt of himself in public, it's stop-the-presses time. Just ask the folks at Fox News, the home of unfair and imbalanced reporting.
Please don't let me be misunderstood, to quote Santa Esmeralda featuring Leroy Gómez. (I know the Animals did the song originally, but Shallow Hallieberry that I am, I always have preferred the flamenco disco version.) Despite the occasional nod at the polls to an Independent or Libertarian candidate, I have been a lifelong Democrat, at least up until I moved to Pennsylvania, where I registered with the Green Party. Consider it my little flourish of pixie dust and taste-the-rainbow Skittles-exotica in an otherwise dreary political landscape.
But let's face it--the Democrats seem deader in the water than the unconscious passenger in a Kennedy-driven vehicle. And this despite a president who hasn't had an original idea since the phrase "9/11" first parted his speechwriter's lips. Yet the Dems remain more poorly organized than a two-car white trash funeral procession.
Lordy, even the Democrats' scandals lack originality and creativity. Why, Rush Limbaugh, the Right Wing's mouthpiece (through which he apparently takes 20 illicitly acquired pain-relief tablets with plenty of water, repeating when necessary or the mood strikes him) and GlaxoSmithKline's new spokesmodel, got busted and headed into rehab just a week ago.
So come on, Green Party, you can do it. I know you can deliver a tofurkey loaf in every pot and an ethanol-sipping hybrid in every garage. Now that's what I call the good life.
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