Forbidden love

Forbidden love/
Are we supposed to be together?/
Forbidden love/
We seal our destiny forever/
Forbidden love

Madonna (sweetie), "Forbidden Love," 2005

Before I delve too deeply into my New Orleans adventures, let's sidetrack for a mo'. "'Mo" as in moment--and maybe even "'mo" as in homosexual. (It's me, after all. I didn't go to the Big Sleazy and lose my voice, ya know.) Let's not allow the day to pass without acknowledging the celebrity gossip that's all over this evening's news, that's got everyone talking and gawking, and that has star-crossed-cultural appeal and conflict galore. Let's celebrate the ultimate forbidden love!

No, I didn't watch Larry King last night, just so you know. Besides, I already covered Star Jones in a previous post, so color me mauve--as in "I've mauved on." The ending of Star and Barbara Walters' nine-year affair is sad, true enough. Especially when there's a lovechild involved--namely, Al Reynolds. But could any of us expect such a star-crossed relationship to endure once Star started doing yoga (so she tells us) and surgery (so now she tells us), throwing her newfound lipstick lesbian style around town? Wasn't it inevitable that our Babs would fall into the loving arms and charms of Rosie O'Donnell?

Poor Joy Behar. Left to her own devices, once again.

Instead, I'm referring to a happier, more sweet than salty kind of celebrity supercouple currently expressing their forbidden love on the global stage. No, not TomKat nor Brangelina--they're sooo fifteen minutes ago. I'm of course talking about GeorJunichiro--the meeting of the minds, the melting of the hearts, the melding of the private parts of none other than U.S. President George Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Serenading one another with Elvis love songs . . . long walks on the grounds of the now historic landmark that is Graceland . . . admiring pink (pink! the color of gay love!) Cadillacs . . . and having coy photographs taken of themselves with their best galpals, the obviously lesbian mother-daughter bento box of Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley.

It's a decidedly retro, '50s-styled courtship, but it's the best pairing since canned party cheese and those sweet and savory soy crackers. (A delicacy enjoyed by a former college roommate of mine.) I'll let you guess who brings the Cheez Whiz to the relationship.

Be still my heart. My arteries. And my lunch.

But gay marriage proponents, rejoice! Our nonstop agenda and fabulous lifestyle have brought two more into the fold. Gentlemen and gentlemen, may I present to you the happiest couple of all--Mr. and Mr. Bush-Koizumi. Champagne--and toaster ovens--for everyone!

Southern decadence

I've often said that of major American destinations, New Orleans is the most truly decadent. Admittedly, I haven't been to Key West or spent a significant amount of time in Salt Lake City, but allow me to present my case.

San Francisco may have its perversions and New York may have its fetishes, but in those places, the deviants all have membership cards. They form committees, have fundraising drives, and carry around reference copies of Robert's Rules of Orders. Nothing like organizing decadence to make it deadly boring. Wanna stop spree killers in this country? Have them form a union. Wanna put an end to the Dennis Kozlowskis and Kenneth Lays and all their lavish, orgiastic spending? Tax 'em--and make 'em fill out the forms themselves. Wanna put an end to men having sex with one another? Let 'em get married. Let 'em adopt. Let 'em have to figure out health care plans for themselves and their dependents.

A case in point. One recent morning, I shared a table with a colleague from Washington, D.C., at a part-social, part-professional brunch. In passing and totally unencouraged, the colleague decided to share, telling me about how he'd convinced his social group back in the Nation's Capital, the Radical Faeries, to incorporate as a non-profit organization in the District of Columbia, for which in 2005 they received their federal 501(c)3 tax exempt status.

Woo, the rush of excitement over that news. Be still my mitral-valve-prolapsed heart.

I don't know a great deal about the Radical Faeries. Something about Wicca. Something about drumming circles--or was it crop circles? Something about getting spiritual with your brethren and sistren in yonder wood. When I knew a couple of members back in my D.C. heydays, these radfags seemed primarily interested in going out into the aforementioned yonder wood, wearing dresses, doing some mushrooms, and f*cking each other senseless, more or less in that order. Granted, it wouldn't have taken long. The senseless part, I mean.

Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I shouldn't begrudge anyone who's getting more sex and religion than me. I guess that the Radical Faeries' woodland hijinx could be spiritual if the moment and the moon were right, and I guess they might be considered radical in an old-hippies-at-Altamont kind of way. But it's hardly the Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army, is it? It's not like anyone's out there calling themselves Tania and holding up Talbot's for matching separates or overturning cold medicine vending machines for hallucinatory substances, shouting "Bring the war home!" as the contraption collapses to the floor.

Tell me I'm running dangerously low on whimsy (a claim I might dispute) or overflowing with cynicism (a charge I wouldn't deny), but mostly the Raddies just sound goofy to me--not to mention encouraging of the wrath of God in the form of a poison ivy rash in your errogenous zones.

New Orleans has always been different. Why I love and admire the Crescent City so much is because it's as if everybody crawled out of the swamps of the South, the bayous of below-the-Mason-Dixon Line, making their way to town to finally be themselves and live life on their own terms. Drag queens and debutantes. Creole and Cajun. Gays and the God-fearing. Jazz and voodoo. Paupers and princes. The oil and gas barons and the artists, as well as just the plain old and plum gassed. Separate but together. Unabashed. Unadulterated. Undeterred. The city that care and social censure forgot. That's my vision/version of New Orleans.

None of this may fly with the Chamber of Commerce or some of the local residents, but it is indeed a compliment, the highest praise, and most heartfelt. In a world where the Olive Garden tries to pass itself off as the restaurant you'd take your relatives from "the old country" to dinner; where fake tans, fake teeth, and fake body parts represent the highest forms of human accomplishment; where scripted TV shows about alliances, loyalties, immunities, and tribes pass themselves off as reality-based--well, the Big Easy ain't all pretty, but it is at least all real.

* * *

Little made me sadder in recent years than when New Orleans flooded in August 2005, the result of Category 5 Hurricane Katrina, its strong storm surge, and an overwhelmed levee and pumping system--which, despite the claims of our fearless leaders, was known for years to be unable to handle anything stronger than a Category 3 storm. (Editor's note: I know I read about this in the Times-Picayune on a visit to New Orleans in the late 1990s. How you like me now, Brownie, Chertie, and Georgie?) Despite its dangers and its decadence, New Orleans always made me feel safe and comfortable, as if there was a Southern urban center that was truly liberated, livable (despite the humidity and crime rate), and welcoming to all. Atlanta it ain't--and thank heavens for that.

This past week my job took me to New Orleans once again, the fourth time in my life. Being that it is, was, and may be again a major center for conventions and conferences, it's perhaps inevitable that I would end up there at some point. Although after Katrina, I wasn't so sure. Last summer, as I watched the horror show unfold on CNN along with the rest of the world, I began to wonder if anyone would ever inhabit New Orleans again and, selfishly, if my plans to visit the city for something other than work would ever materialize.

I'm happy to report that New Orleans is alive, if not perhaps quite well. While there, I only got a slight taste for the destruction and change wrought by Katrina, spending too much of my time going to meetings and vendor demos, running my mouth with friends and colleagues (who me?), and overindulging in the rich food on offer everywhere. The scent of rot in the French Quarter--had that always been there? The lack of cabs--because many of the taxi drivers evacuated and haven't returned. The rushed-off-their-feet restaurant and hotel workers--again, many haven't yet returned. FEMA trailers downtown. Boarded-up windows, closed down shops, areas off-limits. Dumpsters overfilled with discarded, damaged building materials. Blue tarps on roofs in the neighborhoods and nary a street without at least one camper trailer or van parked next to a house, either a home for the family or their friends and relatives. The Morial Convention Center and the Louisiana Superdome, now seemingly benign public structures but only a few months before the scene of barbarism, neglect, and tragedy. This is some of what I noticed in the six days I was there.

It felt decadent--for all the wrong reasons--to have too good of a time in New Orleans. But at least by being there I was witness to some of what had happened in the recent past and some of what is occurring now to rebuild the city. And at least by spending some money--and lord knows I did, on food, accommodations, cabs, clothes, and books--I helped the local economy, however slightly. Over the last year, I've made some charitable donations, too, and attended some Katrina-related benefits. I've even had this long-suppressed fantasy of taking a week or two off from work and going to New Orleans, not for fun, not for discovery, but simply to help clear debris.

For a brief moment, as I was on the bus heading out to Louis Armstrong Airport, it occurred to me not to return to Pennsylvania, but to stay in the Crescent City. To play footloose and finance free for a while, existing on the edge of the economy as a waiter or a bartender (neither at which I have any skill) and helping in some small way get the battered and bedraggled grande dame of the South up on her tottering, gladiator-laced stilletos and back out on Bourbon Street, earning a living any way she can.

Instead, I came home.

So what happens now? Do I just forget and move on, something we are all too quick to do in this world? If so, how so? Can you easily forget a city of half a million displaced persons? A city where more than 1,300 died in the storm, the flood, and the botched emergency response? A city where a 91-year-old woman named Ethel Freeman-- who survived the hurricane and the flood, made it to higher ground in a boat with her son, only to die waiting to be rescued--was left covered in a blanket in a wheelchair on the convention center grounds, the same convention center grounds I trod in the name of commerce, scholarship, and professional duty? I know I had forgotten about Mrs. Freeman until I heard Anderson Cooper mention her in a speech he gave at the conference I attended. When Anderson asked if anyone recognized the name of Ethel Freeman, only a handful--out of room of hundreds, if not thousands--clapped. I'm not alone in my short-term memory, it would seem.

Yet how can we forget? What happened in New Orleans last August was unforgettable--and one might even say unforgivable. True, shit and disasters happen. We can't control everything in our world--we can control very little, in fact, despite the pretense otherwise. Not even George Bush, Michael Brown, and Michael Chertoff can control everything in our world--despite the president and his Gang of Four's (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Rove) best efforts otherwise. Thus, as much as I would like to, I can't even completely blame them for what happened in New Orleans after Katrina.

For they alone are not responsible for generations' worth of disregard for public transportation, neglect of the needs of the poor and aged, good-enough-but-not-that-good urban planning and civil engineering, and constant underfunding of social services.

Instead, we've got our history, our culture, our ancestors, our politicos, and even ourselves to blame for such a laissez-faire, without-a-care approach to life and well-being. Could anything be more decadent?

Go away for a week . . .

. . . and the whole world changes on you.

Israeli forces fire on Gaza and buzz the Syrian president's house.

Pennsylvania floods.

The Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup.

And, worst of all, Star Jones gets booted off The View.

I mean, really.

To keep you entertained through all this tragedy (chin(s) up, laughter through the tears, let the sunshine in) and to allow me a moment or two of peace while I recover from falling off the healthy-diet-and-eight-hours-of-sleep wagon on my recent sojourn in the Crescent City, I present you with this recent discovery--Cats that look like Hitler.

Please, thank me later. I'm due for a high colonic and a nap.

Glory! Hallelujah! Jubilee!

Today was Jubilee Day in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. As best as I can tell, despite the religious and patriotic feeling conjured by the event's name, Jubilee Day actually has nothing to do with faith or fervor. Not in the strictest, most narrow interpretations of those words, at least. Apparently, Jubilee Day actually got its start as a way to encourage area residents to come downtown and shop--and for the merchants to thank them for doing so.

So, instead, Jubilee Day commemorates the real religion of this country--commerce. Jubilee Day celebrates the real patriotic victory of our righteous nation--highly unfettered capitalism, at which we're number 1 [raise fist in air and whoop like a redneck].

But I'm not bitter . . . or judgmental . . .

I made use of some extra vacation time and the pleasant weather (blue skies, 70s F, low humidity--a rarity, I fear, for Pennsylvania in mid-June) by enjoying some of Jubilee Day's attractions.

Hmmm, but what are those attractions exactly?


Fine dining

Unfortunately, food wasn't one of 'em for me. All of it--crabcakes, roasted corn, barbecue, cheesesteaks, chicken corn soup, fried veggies, funnel cakes, and more--looked tasty and smelled greasy. Usually, these are my cues to indulge, but nothing appealed to me at the time. Yeah, like, I know! Shock!

For one thing, I was sorely disappointed about the lack of more traditional Pennsylvania fare on offer. There was, yes, chicken corn soup and cheesesteaks. But where were the chicken and waffles I'd seen advertised for weeks by one of the local churches? Where were the brats? The kraut? The salty and sweet pretzels? Good heavens, man, where were the whoopie pies?

For another, I was perturbed at the lack of fried-food-on-a-stick at Jubilee Day. Maybe this just isn't done north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Maybe the deep-fat-frying technology hasn't cleared customs at the border. Maybe they ran out of sticks. Whatever the reason, Pennsylvanians, with their love of sugar, pork, salt, bread, and fat (usually featured all together in one dish), seem like prime targets for the type of supersized fair food you find in North Carolina and Texas. After all, who can resist the siren wail of fried Snickers on a stick, fried Twinkies on a stick, and fried banana pudding and vanilla wafers on a stick?

Oh wait. That's an actual siren wailing. Somebody called 911. You're dying, you poor bastard.

However, I didn't overindulge. In fact, I didn't eat anything at all. For, you see, I've determined that the solution to not overindulging at town, county, and state fairs, and the like, is simply to overindulge at home before heading out the door. Usually a few handfuls of butterscotch chips and a half bag of slightly stale Martin's waffle barbecue potato chips are all one needs to surpress one's appetite. "No, no, I couldn't possibly have a funnel cake and a brat! I filled up on fat, sugar, and salt at home. Thanks all the same!"

I'm surprised that this diet regimen hasn't caught on. Maybe I have a book in me after all.


Fine art

Three words to live by when attending street fairs--including "the largest, one-day street fair on the East Coast," as Jubilee Day is billed:

"Juried craft show."

Accept nothing less, and you'll be less likely to suffer from the kind of aesthetic whiplash I experienced walking along Main and Market Streets today.

There wasn't anything as bad as the lime green, crocheted, hoop skirt-wearing Scarlet O'Hara dolls made out of Clorox jugs that I used to see for sale on the roadside in (where else?) North Carolina in the 1970s. Over the last few years, we may have had to endure the resurrection of hiphuggers and ponchos (we know who you are, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, and we know where you live), but that's one craft crash-and-burn we've escaped the reintroduction of, so far.

Still, no one in Pennsyltucky should feel too proud of its artistic production. Bad art ain't just a Southern thang. No ma'am.

For ya got yer dumb t-shirts, tacky coffee mugs, ugly tea towels, ghastly crazy quilt combinations, and misconceived earthenware pottery designs in these here parts, too. Ya hear?


Fine company

But being visually terrorized by hideous "kountry kit(s)chen"-patterned toaster covers and Precious Moments memorabilia was only part of the cause for today's aesthetic whiplash.

This Commonwealth--at least this part of the Commonwealth--lacks, shall we say, a certain aesthetic panache among its populace.

Tattoes. Doo-rag-covered heads. All-over body tanning. Chain smoking. Ned Kelly-fashioned facial hair. Mismatched couples of "wide loads" and "narrow gauge railways" (if you catch my drift) and their cranky, full-diaper offspring. And all of them passing you by on their Harleys, which, next to the Volkswagen Jetta and the Mack truck, is the Keystone state vehicle.

Or worse, hogging the road with their strollers, which are truly the spitting, stubborn camels of this hemisphere.

*Oy.*

I try, I try, I try never to be a snob. I mean, I'm from North Carolina, for land's sake, where former Nascar drivers insist on running for political office every couple of years. I spent nine years of my life in Texas, heaven knows, where the monster truck rally has replaced opera and ballet as a cultural highmark. I live in Central Pennsylvania, god hep me, where zoning and land-use policies are as rare and alien as ethnic diversity and cultural sensitivity at a Klan rally--or a country club.

In other words, I don't warrant a place on the too smug dais at the cultural geography bee. I tell you whut.

But let's do get real. I named this blog "Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered in Blogtucky" for a reason--and "bewitched" was a give-away, a freebie, just my being generous. Instead of "bewitched," I should have probably said "bedazzled," as in the "Bedazzler," that Ronco/Propeil-esque product that lets you literally draw a bead on your world, so that you walk around looking like a Cockney in a pearly suit. Sometimes it's just that flashy and trashy in these parts--but without the legitimacy of tradition and class of culture. There's a great deal that the area has going for it--hiking, restaurants, scenery, quaint towns and inexpensive housing, and even a decent amount of cultural opportunities for a city of this size.

But there are other times . . . .

So it's probably too much to ask that the borough government organize Queer Eye for Every Guy and Gal bus tours of Lower Manhattan for stylistic inspiration for the masses, giving each guest a FEMA disaster-preparedness debit card redeemable at any Garment District back door for cheap, famous label "stock overruns."

It's probably a bit OTT (yeah, you know me) to require that every resident of the Commonwealth attend a style reeducation camp presided over by Trinny and Susannah from BBC America's What Not to Wear.

And it's probably too "creative management" (not to mention socialistic) to ask that all workers in the region be given season tickets to the Harrisburg Symphony, free passes to the Susquehanna Art Museum, reduced admission to the Jewish, Palestinian, Asian, gay, whatever, film series at the Midtown Cinema, and/or free appreciation classes in the art of Kabuki theater or Russian opera just for the hell of it.

If I ruled the world, the trains would never run on time, but everyone would look marvelous.

But what a wonderful world it would be if we did indeed ask for these new social services--asked and received.

Glory, hallelujah, amen to that.

I'm like a stupid, promiscuous bird

Continuing on the theme of pop music for a while, have you had a chance to hear Pink's song, "Stupid Girls" yet--or see the video? It's a lot of fun and more proof that pop music can do more than just pop, hiss, fizz, and fade--that is, become an earworm for a while as you can't get that song out of your head, then quickly disappear from your consciousness.

In "Stupid Girls," Pink sings about the poor role models for girls and young women out there these days:

Go to Fred Segal, you'll find them there/
Laughing loud so all the little people stare/
Looking for a daddy to pay for the champagne (Drop a name)/
What happened to the dreams of a girl president/
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent/
They travel in packs of two or three/
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees/

Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?/
Oh where, oh where could they be?/

Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back/
Porno Paparazzi girl, I don't wanna be a stupid girl/
Baby if I act like that, flipping my blond hair back/
Push up my bra like that, I don't wanna be a stupid girl/

"I'm a Slave 4 U" this ain't.

While Pink makes her points, and makes them strongly, she manages to do so with a sense of humor.

In the video, she has even more fun--and gets her message across in an even less didactic, more outrageous way by parodying some of the ilk who pass for role models these days--namely, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, Nicole Richie, and several other A-, B-, and C-list celebrities. I think it's no revelation that these six chicks, the mean girls of the new millennium, represent the anti-Christ and his/her crafty minions. It's just that none of us wants to get close enough to any of them to find out which one has 666 tattoed on her scalp.

Many of the scenes in the video are edgy and in-yer-mug--as well as quite hilarious. In one, Pink drives down a crowded street, latte in one hand, cellphone in the other. She manages to run over a couple of people on her way--bodies flying up and over the hood and windshield of her convertible--and screams in horror at what she has done . . . only to be distracted by her own reflection in the rearview mirror, checking to see whether she has lipstick on her teeth.

In another, more graphic scene, she strolls into a ladies room with friends, complaining in a lah-di-dah, Valley Girl voice about the fact that she "totally had more than 300 calories today . . . that was so not sexy!" Then she borrows a toothbrush from a friend, using the blunt end to, let's say, "encourage a purge." She ralphs into the sink, groaning between technicolor yawns, "I . . . WILL . . . BE . . . SKINNY!"

And in still another scene, Pink's character is "caught in the act" of making a homemade sex tape, but she's so interested in showing off for the camera that she doesn't care that she's being filmed for posterity--or, said another way, that her posterior (and other body parts) is being filmed. Heck, she isn't even interested in the guy she's with--she just wants to show her stuff on camera. Is Paris burning? Yeah, but it's probably just from an STD.

So both the song and the video are funny, crude, and maybe even vulgar in parts, but they've got a healthy message to convey--that maybe women (and I would argue, by extension, all of us) might aim for something more than to be constantly noticed and remarked upon for their bodies, clothes, and lifestyles. This is some of the same fertile ground that Maureen Dowd tilled in Are Men Necessary? Not bad company to be keeping for a twenty-something pop star from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who's gone through musical styles like she's gone through hair colors.

It may be overstating the case to say that pop music can change the world. Nonetheless, there recently was a song on the top of the British charts, Sandi Thom's folky-rocky, "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker," that made that claim by paying lyrical patronage to the songs of the late '60s and the late '70s, when pop music and pop culture seemed intent on changing our perceptions and behaviors.

But before I get too excited over the coming Pop Cultural Revolution, comrades, working out an earnest dance routine for my disco version of "The Internationale," donning my psychedelic Mao jacket and matching cap, let me tell you what knocked Sandi Thom off of the top of the pops--the new stupid girl national anthem, "Maneater" by Nelly Furtado:

Everybody look at me, me/
I walk in the door you start screaming/
Come on everybody whatchu here for?/
Move your body around like a nympho/
Everybody get your necks to crack around/
All you crazy people come on jump around/
I want to see you all on your knees/
you either want to be with me, or be me/

Maneater, make you work hard/
Make you spend hard/
Make you want all of her love/
She's a maneater/
Make you buy cars/
Make you cut cords/
Make you fall, fall in love/
Wish you never ever met her at all/

"Move your body around like a nympho?" Whoa, Nelly. You're stepping dangerously close into Stepin Fetchit territory--without benefit of the latent street cred.

I'd like to think that La Frittata is getting the joke--and is under the watchful eye of a chiropractor for that "neck cracking" problem. But being that her first U.S. release from her new album, Loose (yes, Loose--why not just call the album Ho Bag or Skank and be done with it?), is a little ditty called "Promiscuous Girl," performed recently on Saturday Night Live with the ubiquitous stupid girl accessories (a bare midriff, a gyrating booty, and a rap star), I'm not even sure Nelly can read a newspaper, let alone locate the funny papers. The joke is lost on her. It probably fell down her top. Oh wait, tee hee, she forgot to wear a top.

The Misguided Miss F., as you may recall, did a good imitation of hip-hop/hippie glamour a few years ago, twirling up the charts in jersey dresses, dangly earrings, and oversized sneakers with the supremely annoying, musk-laden, "I'm Like a Bird." Then she did some other equally irritating songs. Then she went quiet for a while.

But now it's 2006 and . . . she's baaaaaaaaaaaack. And she's now apparently a slut.

It might as well be 1979, with Nelly Furtado acting like a "Let's Get Physical"/"A Little More Love"/"Make a Move on Me"-era Olivia Newton-John. Way back then, Livvy tried to prove to everyone that she was no one-note, Sweet-n-Low songbird. Even if she was in her thirties, even if her grandfather had been a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, even if she was famous for songs with titles like "Have You Ever Been Mellow?" and "I Honestly Love You"--she could tramp it up with the best of 'em. You go (away), girl.

Tune in today, and you'll find Nelly trying to prove to everyone she's not your average, one-note, Grateful Dead (or for you moderns, Phish) camp follower-songbird--but a blow-up doll come-to-life! One that sings and dances in the video with Fifty Cent . . . erm, Timbaland! And, under the right circumstances, one that might put out for you! So, guys, like, buy my record already!

It's all not-so-vaguely reminiscent of Mad TV's Debra Wilson's take on a crazed, boobs-out-in-front, rappers in the back, Mariah Carey in the fake music video, "Love Muffin." (Editor's note: Unfortunately, I could only find an edited version of the parody on YouTube.com; the full version is worth seeking out on Mad TV reruns on Comedy Central.) And that parody was made way back in season 5 in 2000 or so. So Nelly Mae can't say she wasn't warned--but clearly she was too busy at that time drenching herself in essential oils and trying to make sure her tanktop showed the right amount of cleavage to pay attention.

None of this is to say that I think all female pop stars and "it" girls must start acting like characters from a Mother Angelica-penned romance novel, nor do they need to dress in "compound chic," all braided hair, calico prints, and ankle-length denim skirts, like Chloë Sevigny's character in Big Love. (Nor, I should stress, do they need to become polygamists either.) I'm all for flirtation. I'm all for a little skin every now and then. I'm all for sexiness and sexuality. I'm all for Kylie and Dannii Minogue.

I'm all for everyone being able to express and enjoy themselves . . . within reason.

Within reason because I'd like to be able to walk through a mall or across a college campus, watch TV, read a newspaper, enjoy my share of oxygen, or do or not do just about anything you can think of without having to endure the megaphonic mating cry of the perpetually under-dressed and over-sold.

At times in this culture it's like living on the set of that Volkswagen Passat commercial about ego emissions:

"Look at me--Daddy never hugged me!"

"Look at me--my parents make more money than yours!"

"Look at me--the more people notice me, the more I love myself!"

"Look at me--I'm compensating for my shortcomings!"

"Look at me--isn't my hair fabulous today? Don't you just love this outfit I'm wearing? Am I not sooo hot?!"

Where, oh where, have the smart people gone? Oh where, oh where could they be?

Hopefully, they're not spending too much time listening to--or writing about--Nelly Furtado's oeuvre.

Shall we dance?

I hate being a shill for pop groups--if I had wanted that role in life, I might have become a magazine editor after all--but I'll make an exception in the case of "I'm with Stupid," the new release by the Pet Shop Boys.

The video features a sort of bad amateur theatrics review starring David Walliams and Matt Lucas of the TV show, Little Britain, on BBC America. (Click on the link by the three dots in the title of this post to see the video on the PSB's website.) And no, David Walliams' teeth don't normally look that bad. It's called comedy, folks. At least in Britain, it's called comedy.

The video's funny all on its own, and by watching it and listening to the lyrics of the song, you might think, as I did initially, that the tune tells the tale of an unsatisfactory transatlantic love affair between members of the cool-gnoscenti. In other words, a fairly typical Pet Shop Boys song.

But if you happen to stumble across the interview Neil Tennant (the singing member--so to speak--of the PSB) gave to Trust the DJ, you would get a very different picture of the song. Tennant describes the song as being "inspired by the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush."

So the track becomes even funnier when you digest lyrics like these:

See you on the TV/
Call you every day/
Fly across the ocean/
Just to let you get your way

And

I have to ask myself/
like any lover might/
Have you made a fool of me?/
Are you not Mr. Right?/

And still further

Is stupid really stupid/
or a different kind of smart?/
Do we really have a relationship/
so special in your heart?

Well, during a week of still more tedious and inflammatory debate over constitutional amendments (both nationally and here in Pennsyltucky) against same-sex marriage, the thought of a codependent love relationship between the Adam (Smith) and Steve (aka Saint Stephen) of our times made me chuckle, when little else did.

Significantly, Tennant goes on to say in the interview that

I feel "I’m with Stupid" is more of an effective political song . . . because "I’m with Stupid" is funny . . . and I think laughing at politicians and all the rest of it is quite a good way of neutering them slightly.

So at least I'm not as alone in using the un-heavy, un-deep, and un-real approach to dealing with social and political strife. Given the Murphy's Law version of of reality we're all living in these days ("whatever can go wrong, will"), sometimes you just gotta laugh instead of cry. Or laugh instead of gnash your dental work. Or rend your on-sale-50-percent-off-at-Boscov's garments. Or scream. Or lead a coup d'etat. Which does seem to be an appealing consideration these days.

Now little sets me off more than Europeans sneering at Americans--I've heard it all before, and repeated references to our dim-witted, calf-ropin', bull-ridin' method of handling international matters just aren't that interesting after a while. So we may try to homestead on too many holy sites, or Claudine Longet a few too many civilians, or give too many free--but oh-so-expensive--rides to that oil monkey on our backs. But none of us is perfect, right Europe? I mean, why take your dirty laundry to the drycleaners, when you can just do some ethnic cleansing in your own back yard?

Having said that (rather flippantly, I'll admit), certainly as a nation and a people, we Americans have a lot to answer for, domestically and internationally, currently and in the past. (Oh, and in the future, too, I suspect.) There's nothing particularly liberté, egalité, fraternité, about our current Freedom (no longer French) Revolution. But there sure is plenty of la mort!

Nonetheless, what I like about the lyrics to "I'm with Stupid" is that it makes the point that the BBC News often seems unable to grasp, that both Blair and Bush have taken each other up as partners in this geopolitical dance. Granted, it's not ballet. It's not even jazz, tap, or free-form interpretive. It's as if C-SPAN just starting showing season 3 of Dancing with the Stars: Baghdad Nights. Our Mister President stars as the too-tanned, two-left-footed George Hamilton, while the Honorable Prime Minister gives him a run for his fool-hardiness as the kewpie-doll-cute Drew Lachey (yes, one of those Lacheys), desperately trying to sashay his way out of pop obscurity.

Or is it the other way around? Or maybe one's Lisa Rinna and the other, Kelly Monaco? I'm confused.

Regardless, it takes two to cha-cha-cha, and while Tony does his darnedest to keep the rhythm and chant the rhyme, George steps all over his toes and insists on jitterbugging while Tony's trying to work on his waltz. And in dance as in much of life, you're only as good as your partner.

Of course, it's not like George would suddenly stop dancing if Tony left in a huff and went off to powder his nose. Showboater that our John Travolta of the Global Dancefloor is, he'd be happy to keep on stompin' at the Savoy, solo nolo contendere, while Donnie, Dickie, and Condie keep on clappin' and jivin' to that funky beat.

Meanwhile, the rest of us, the wallflowers of American Bandstand's "Rate-a-Presidential Record," stand around shuffling our feet, staring blankly into the lights . . . camera . . . inaction.

When Dick Clark finally sticks the mic in our faces for some pithy impertinence of Deney "Dubya" Terio's latest number, the best we can do is rate him a 78, no wait, a 45, no wait, a 33-1/3rd. (This rating is of course based on the one-thousand-points-of-lights scale Dubya's daddy perfected.)

He's not got a good beat, we mutter. And he sure ain't easy to dance to.

"Pops" goes the weasel

I was walking back to my office from lunch the other day, minding my own and feeling pretty good about myself--despite the fact that I had just consumed a hot dog, "one with" everything but onions, a BLT (I had skipped breakfast; I was hungry; so shoot me), and a Diet Coke (because I appreciate irony) at Ernie's Texas Wieners on Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg.

I have been walking a lot more lately and exercising fairly regularly as well. Could it be that with the increased cardio and addition of weights to my exercise routine, I might have just managed to lose a pound or two, even with factoring in the excessive, conspicuous consumption?

Well, no matter. I was still feeling good about myself. Best not to think about it too much and just enjoy the moment.

But there's always someone just around the corner--say, a Gavrilo Princip with a derringer--to assassinate your ego--an overly confident Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary--with some armor-piercing bullets of reality whenever you're feeling too good or too proud.

In this case, our assassin was riding shotgun in a moving vehicle on Washington Street.

As the vehicle approached, I made eye contact with a handsome, young man from the passenger side of the vehicle. "Woo boy! I am doing alright if the 20-somethings are paying attention to me!" I thought to myself. Still, I'm enough of a realist to know that the light shining off my head and the too-colorful shirts I sometimes favor are often enough to get the attention of the inordinately curious, the less socially sensitive, and the loud and drunken. So I felt grounded but flirtatious, offering up a timid smile to the youngin'--and to the heavens.

At this moment, the young man leaned his head further out of the passenger-side window and shared this helpful tidbit of reportage, in a loud voice for all in the vicinity to hear:

"YOU LOOK JUST LIKE MY FATHER!"

Ah well, so much for nurturing my rich fantasy life.

I mustered a weak, bitter smile and murmured out of earshot, "Well, thanks for that, dude."

Why guys think that yelling out the window at strangers is an effective form of communication, I'll never understand. Over the years, I've had everything yelled at me from "WOO HOO! PAR-TAY!" to "HEY FAGGOT, I'M GONNA KILL YOU" to "HI! YOU'RE CUTE! WANNA GO FOR A RIDE?" I've rejected or evaded each offering. I have to wonder if anyone ever has accepted any such offering, but, come on, "Wanna go for a ride?" Who among us is strong enough to resist the mating call of the Serial Killer Casanova of the Wal-Mart Parking Lot?

Why anyone thinks that pointing out your age status is a conversation-starter either is a bit beyond my grasp as well. My interlude with the wry, observational stylings of the Henny Youngman of Gettysburg ranks right up there with the time an order-taker at Roy Rogers in Thurmont, Maryland--aged 65 if she was a day--asked me, "I don't suppose you qualify for the senior discount, do you?"

"No, bitch, I don't," I replied to her. Except, gracious (and chicken-shit) Southern gentleman that I am, I left out the bitch part. Just call me Foghorn Leghorn in a tutu.

Similarly, what I wanted to say to the father-fixated young man was this:

"WOW! WHO KNEW YOUR DAD LOOKED LIKE A MIDDLE-AGED C--KSUCKER!?"

Consider it my homage to the "I'm older and have more insurance" line from the movie version of Fried Green Tomatoes.

I kept that thought to myself, though, as well as another rude reference to "daddy's little boy" being in need of a spanking. Both declaratives are better left unsaid in public, I suspect, as once uttered, they would just further add to the ugliness of the world--much like Sonny did by sharing with me.

Besides, I can't run from the scene of a queer-bashing with a stomach full of hot dogs and bacon. And while I'm feeling so full and bloated, why not skip today's trudge on the elliptical as well . . . ?

There we go. Pow. Right between the eyes. Sniper attacked by reality once again.

The love that dare not hold hands in public

I spent a good portion of the week in State College, the generically named home of Penn State University's main campus (the equally generically titled University Park) in the center of the Commonwealth in, appropriately enough, Centre County. You other Commonwealth types rejoice! The quaint form of English orthography used by Brits, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Australians, et al., still lives in America. Although Centre County and the occasional High Street in small Pennsylvania towns are the only examples I can deliver at the mo' . . . .

State College feels so remote from the rest of the Commonwealth, at least by the route I drive from the Harrisburg area. The sometimes two-lane, sometimes four-lane blacktop swirls around the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers, curves among an overgrowth of trees, and wraps itself around mist-shrouded hills and mountains. After the long drive, when the mountains part long enough to let you enter the verdant "Happy Valley," the comparison to Shangri-La is perhaps a bit overwrought (given the proximity to Altoona), a might inexact (given the close-by-ness of Johnstown), but not entirely inaccurate, at least in feel, at least to me.

A small moment made the visit seem a little more mystical, a little more epiphanic, this time around.

When walking back from downtown after a delicious dinner at Zola's (seared tuna with mango salsa--just like the Caveman on that Geico commercial, as my friend EcoGal pointed out--corn grits stuffed into a roasted chile, pear and gorgonzola salad, and a lovely glass--or two--of Viognier) on a warm, spring evening, some colleagues and I passed through a little park on our way to the Nittany Lion Inn. In the park sat two men, relaxing comfortably with one another on a bench. They were in their late 30s or early 40s perhaps, attractive and nicely dressed, but no fashionistas, no male models on a break from a photo shoot for some designer who uses jagged-edged cheekbones and heroin-gaunt eyes to sell Italian shirts or German cologne. They were just adorned in the usual Gapwear that the rest of us find ourselves in most days. And they were holding hands, which they continued to do as our little group passed by.

I don't know why, but I was nonplussed on seeing them holding hands in public. I was in mid-sentence with a colleague and lost may way in the conversation, and it took me a few beats to remember where I was and what I was trying to say.

There was nothing out of the ordinary in the moment, other than the fact that two men were holding hands in a park in State College, Pennsylvania. They weren't defiantly, silently screaming, "We're here, we're queer, get over it!" They weren't so in love, so hand in glove, that the sun was shining out of their behinds (another Smiths reference or two for you) gazing glassy-eyed into one another's souls. They weren't ashamed, either, acting like 'possums caught in headlights on a nighttime drive, who felt the need to run away or be run over upon the approach of others. And they weren't using hand-holding as a prelude to anything else that some people might get up to in a park at 10:30 on a sultry night.

They were just like us, just minding their own business and enjoying the night and each other's company.

I felt torn. I wanted to look at the guys, just to take in the moment, and I wanted to smile at them as a way to say, "Good for you!" Instead, I didn't do anything at all--which is probably fine; it was their moment after all--except bumble along in my conversation, failing to acknowledge their presence, except through my discomfiture.

I felt disconcerted in part for stumbling onto a private moment, in part because of my long-standing battle with an undiagnosed variety of social anxiety disorder that makes me secretly uncomfortable and nervous whenever I'm in a situation that I think might make others uncomfortable and nervous (which it didn't and rarely does), but also--let's face it--because of the whole "gay thing," the display of affection between two men en plein air, en plein nuit.

* * *

My reaction was more than a little pathetic when you consider that I, too, am a gay man and have certainly witnessed PDAs by other men. I've even on occasion carried them out myself--furtively, surreptitiously--with a willing partner. Holding hands in a movie theater with a former significant other, a quick kiss on the lips with a new boyfriend in front of a coffeehouse I used to frequent on the St. Mary's Strip in San Antonio, a warm hand resting on top of another with a potential suitor in a Buckhead bistro a few years ago, probably the last time I was truly excited by the possibility of dating someone.

Not the boldest of gestures, I'll agree. Admittedly, I'm hardly the Che Guevara of Gay Love.

Outside of New York and San Francisco, Chicago and Boston, maybe Philadelphia and Seattle, or any number of A-gay watering holes (Provincetown, Fire Island, Key West, and Palm Springs, to name but a few), it's still a very rare thing to see two men share any public affection, however innocent, however neutral, especially in a small city or town. Rarely, too, is man-on-man affection viewed as innocent or neutral in our culture. Look at the reaction to Brokeback Mountain, even before it was released. Lots of squirmy men, lots of nervous jokes, lots of abject discomfort over the thought of sex and affection between two cowboys, the icons of the American West, the archetype of American manhood.

And the squirming, the jokes, the discomfort weren't experienced only by straight guys but even by some gay guys. Including this gay guy.

It took me two viewings to "get" Brokeback, to fully appreciate it. I don't know what my reluctance to, ahem, embrace it in public was due to exactly. I had loved the original story by Annie Proulx and had, in fact, been haunted by it for days on end after reading it. But I was disappointed by the movie when I saw it in a theater upon initial release. I kept saying that I found it a workmanlike production, a too literal retelling of the story. I was bored by it. And I was aggravated by the somewhat self-pitying attitude (at least that's my perception) of Director Ang Lee upon losing the Oscar for Best Picture to Crash, in part because Ang Lee seems like such a closet case to me.

One of his first major films was The Wedding Banquet, a cross-cultural tale of an American-based Taiwanese-Chinese man who arranges a marriage of convenience with a Chinese woman in Manhattan for the sake of family unity and respectability, all the while being in love with an American man, who more or less is part of the wedding party and the marriage.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere (lost to me now) that Ang Lee has said he could understand the story because he was a Taiwanese-Chinese man living in America between two cultures. But, suspicious bugger that I am, I just don't know that I'm convinced that that's the whole story. Two influential gay films under your belt, and you claim that you understand same-sex love and relationships and the prejudice against them because you grew up eating with chopsticks instead of a fork? Pardon the gross oversimplification of cross-cultural differences, but while you present an interesting theory and perhaps you are a highly evolved, sensitive, heterosexual male of the species, I'm not sold, Mr. Lee, that the wedding ring on your finger isn't just part of your own Wedding Banquet sleight-of-hand.

As part of my own closet case mentality, though, I even went so far as to claim in these pages that Crash didn't rob Brokeback of anything. It was only when both my mother and sister watched Brokeback separately over a weekend, then were haunted by the movie for several days afterwards themselves, that I decided to give it another go. And then I, too, was haunted by Brokeback for several days as well--and still am even to this day.

Perhaps it was the hype or the repeated claims that Brokeback was a "universal love story," made no doubt in order to "sell" the film to a wary public. Two men find love herding sheep one summer in the early 1960s and end up having a lifelong affair woven through a mesh of marriages, children, divorces, fear, self-loathing, frustration, unrequitedness, missed opportunity, loneliness, and sadness. Love story? More like a love tragedy.

Perhaps what put me off were the endless accolades that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were so "brave" for doing this movie. But how tough is it to play act emotional or physical love with someone of the same gender? Gay and lesbian actors have been doing it for years with members of the opposite sex, and yet there's no Oscar for Best Performance by a Closeted Homosexual in a Romantic Comedy or Academy Award for Best Fake Orgasm Opposite Harrison Ford by a Known Silverlake Lesbian. Thus, can it be that much more difficult to play gay-for-pay than pretending to be a ghost-bustin' version of one of the Brothers Grimm or faking your way through a laughable global warming disaster in The Day After Tomorrow?

Perhaps, though, I resisted the movie because of my own discomfort with seeing two men trying to express their love in words and deeds on the big screen.

It's hard for me to know for sure. I'm good at self-therapy, so I can go on for pages (obviously) about stuff that would be readily aparent to others and thus quickly dealt with, expressed, and dismissed. But at times like these I realize, despite my seeming openness, despite my nearly quarter century of outness, I'm not as free or as brave as I would like to be.

So if you're looking for bravery, don't look to me. For pity's sake, don't look to Hollywood actors, either. And certainly don't look to Hollywood period because it never made an "edgy" choice without both eyes on the bottom line. Guess who's coming to dinner? The producer, the accountant, and the studio exec, that's who.

Instead, if you want bravery, look to two men holding hands with one another in a park in State College, Pennsylvania, on a sultry night in June.

Now that's brave.