Yes, actually, it is.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
State of shock
Yes, indeed, I am so way overdue for some comments on the death of Michael Jackson. And if you know me and follow my status updates on Facebook or listen to me braying loudly after a few too many Long Island Iced Teas, you would know that I do have quite a number of comments to make.
I have a draft in the works of something longer and more barbed (now, now). I'll get to that . . . eventually.
But I had an encounter today with a friend that got me thinking about Michael Jackson in a completely different way than I have over the last (please, god, when will it end?) two weeks of national and international mourning.
My mental trajectory so far has been along these lines: Overindulged pop star, psychological mess, alleged child molester, inadvertent social activist, superstar, drug-addled parent, and expert media and image finesser--which, frankly, is a lot more thoughtfulness than I've gleaned from 24/7 TV coverage on CNN, HLN, and MSNBC.
Today, however, I had what I think can best be called a paradigm shift. I was talking with a friend of mine, Rocky, about the whole MJ hullabaloo. Sort of a "where were you when the King of Pop's lights went out, and how did the people around you (over)react?" if you will.
We got onto the topic of what the story of Michael Jackson says about American life. "Not anything good," laughed Rocky. "Money can't buy happiness," I added, "nor necessarily good plastic surgery."
Rocky, who identifies as transgendered, seeing himself more as a woman in a man's body, chuckled over this statement, but then added, very subtly, "You know, I sympathize with Michael Jackson to some degree. I empathize with him in many ways, it's just that . . . ."
"He was so out there," I offered.
"Mm-hmm."
We moved onto other points, grabbed our coffees, and got back to work.
But later in the afternoon that term "empathy" kept needling my consciousness. Empathy. Why would someone like my friend Rocky feel empathy for Michael J--?
Oh. My. Goodness.
What if the way to understand Michael Jackson, at least in part, is to view him as a transgendered person, a woman ensnared in a man's body? What if all the surgeries, the hair, the light, feminine voice (something that he didn't have as a child), the makeup, the garb, the persona--what if all of this was an attempt by Michael Jackson to reconcile his true female self inside the shell of his maleness? And to attempt to do so in full public glare?
This has kind of blown my mind, to say the least, and caused me to feel a lot more sympathetic to MJ than I had previously. Despite Michael Jackson's increasingly female persona over the years, despite (now) it being so obvious, it just never occurred to me to think of Michael Jackson as anything other than weird or freakish. It never occurred to me to think of his behavior or appearance in terms of transgenderism or transsexuality. Yet, in many ways, at least on the surface, it makes some sense to do so now.
This isn't something Rocky told me--in fact, savvy, intelligent person that he is (and I continue to say he because he presents as a man in daily life), he led me up to it by being who is he is, dropping a couple of subtle hints, and letting me figure out the rest on my own. I'm grateful to him for that; I am happy to know him, at least in the little ways that I do.
I don't think transgenderism is an easy concept for a lot of gay men, myself included. Oh, Logo may have a TV program on transgenderism and transsexuality every other hour, but talk directly with a lot of gay men and most will claim not to get it and to in fact have some issues with it, even some hostility toward it.
I would have included myself in that group up to even a couple of years ago, prior to knowing Rocky. I wasn't comfortable with the concept (as if I needed it to be all about me!), in part because I think as a gay man, at least a gay man of a certain age, you grow up having to defend yourself from accusations that you really are a woman or want to be a woman or woman-like. You're not even feminine--you're effeminate--and worthy of scorn for not being a "real" man. (By the way, what this says about society's view of women I'll leave to your own judgment.)
It's hard not to internalize this and some of us react by becoming more stereotypically masculine, while others react by becoming more stereotypically feminine. To each his own.
But taking on the feminine doesn't get you a lot of respect in the gay community these days because it is viewed as very old school and self-loathing. For years we've told ourselves we don't have to be "sissies" anymore, we're real men, and we're worthy of equal rights under the law. But we've often done this by conforming to certain ideals or expectations, at the exclusion of other types of gayness or sexual/gender expression. On the one hand, wouldn't we all like to fuck everything that moves? On the other, wouldn't we all like to get married and have children just like our heterosexual brothers and sisters? (Assuming a lot--that they would like the same for themselves, too.) Of course, we would! To both!
Because of this legacy, as gay men perhaps we view transvestism, transgenderism, and transsexuality as something of a cop-out. Add to all this the question of life on the downlow--"I'm not really gay, I'm bisexual" or worse, "I'm not gay, I just occasionally like to fuck guys"--and it can be challenging as a modern, right-on type of gay man to accept much deviation from "the norm."
But who are we denying by doing so? And what understanding and ways of being and consciousness are we denying ourselves?
I've got no answers here. I still think fame, fans, and family warped Michael Jackson in ways we've yet to comprehend, in ways that are totally separate from any question of his possible transgendered identity. I do think there are serious questions about him and his behavior--the child sexual abuse allegations, the manipulation, the victimhood, the excessive amounts of plastic surgery, the physical manifestation of his intent not to spend "life just being a color"--that warrant thoughtful analysis, understanding, and sympathy.
I would not, however, consider the transgenderism part of that warping. Not at all.
There's been a lot said about Michael Jackson these last couple of weeks--some of it excessively critical and caustic (who me?), some it excessively laudatory. Despite the fact that for a while he was the world's biggest music star and pop cultural icon, despite the fact that Michael sold millions of records, I'm not thoroughly convinced that he was the civil rights leader and cultural innovator that now many are quick to label him. He has his place, but does he have more social impact or cultural import than Martin Luther King, Jr., Lena Horne, Bill Cosby and the Huxtables, Rosa Parks, Barack Obama, Wilma Rudolph, Shirley Chisolm, or Prince? I just don't know.
If, however, Michael Jackson was trying to figure out who he was and how he should live as a woman inside a man's form, and attempting to do so in the brightest of limelights, known by nearly every person on the planet, that could well be the most important, impactful thing about him.
Rest in peace, Michael.
I have a draft in the works of something longer and more barbed (now, now). I'll get to that . . . eventually.
But I had an encounter today with a friend that got me thinking about Michael Jackson in a completely different way than I have over the last (please, god, when will it end?) two weeks of national and international mourning.
My mental trajectory so far has been along these lines: Overindulged pop star, psychological mess, alleged child molester, inadvertent social activist, superstar, drug-addled parent, and expert media and image finesser--which, frankly, is a lot more thoughtfulness than I've gleaned from 24/7 TV coverage on CNN, HLN, and MSNBC.
Today, however, I had what I think can best be called a paradigm shift. I was talking with a friend of mine, Rocky, about the whole MJ hullabaloo. Sort of a "where were you when the King of Pop's lights went out, and how did the people around you (over)react?" if you will.
We got onto the topic of what the story of Michael Jackson says about American life. "Not anything good," laughed Rocky. "Money can't buy happiness," I added, "nor necessarily good plastic surgery."
Rocky, who identifies as transgendered, seeing himself more as a woman in a man's body, chuckled over this statement, but then added, very subtly, "You know, I sympathize with Michael Jackson to some degree. I empathize with him in many ways, it's just that . . . ."
"He was so out there," I offered.
"Mm-hmm."
We moved onto other points, grabbed our coffees, and got back to work.
But later in the afternoon that term "empathy" kept needling my consciousness. Empathy. Why would someone like my friend Rocky feel empathy for Michael J--?
Oh. My. Goodness.
What if the way to understand Michael Jackson, at least in part, is to view him as a transgendered person, a woman ensnared in a man's body? What if all the surgeries, the hair, the light, feminine voice (something that he didn't have as a child), the makeup, the garb, the persona--what if all of this was an attempt by Michael Jackson to reconcile his true female self inside the shell of his maleness? And to attempt to do so in full public glare?
This has kind of blown my mind, to say the least, and caused me to feel a lot more sympathetic to MJ than I had previously. Despite Michael Jackson's increasingly female persona over the years, despite (now) it being so obvious, it just never occurred to me to think of Michael Jackson as anything other than weird or freakish. It never occurred to me to think of his behavior or appearance in terms of transgenderism or transsexuality. Yet, in many ways, at least on the surface, it makes some sense to do so now.
This isn't something Rocky told me--in fact, savvy, intelligent person that he is (and I continue to say he because he presents as a man in daily life), he led me up to it by being who is he is, dropping a couple of subtle hints, and letting me figure out the rest on my own. I'm grateful to him for that; I am happy to know him, at least in the little ways that I do.
I don't think transgenderism is an easy concept for a lot of gay men, myself included. Oh, Logo may have a TV program on transgenderism and transsexuality every other hour, but talk directly with a lot of gay men and most will claim not to get it and to in fact have some issues with it, even some hostility toward it.
I would have included myself in that group up to even a couple of years ago, prior to knowing Rocky. I wasn't comfortable with the concept (as if I needed it to be all about me!), in part because I think as a gay man, at least a gay man of a certain age, you grow up having to defend yourself from accusations that you really are a woman or want to be a woman or woman-like. You're not even feminine--you're effeminate--and worthy of scorn for not being a "real" man. (By the way, what this says about society's view of women I'll leave to your own judgment.)
It's hard not to internalize this and some of us react by becoming more stereotypically masculine, while others react by becoming more stereotypically feminine. To each his own.
But taking on the feminine doesn't get you a lot of respect in the gay community these days because it is viewed as very old school and self-loathing. For years we've told ourselves we don't have to be "sissies" anymore, we're real men, and we're worthy of equal rights under the law. But we've often done this by conforming to certain ideals or expectations, at the exclusion of other types of gayness or sexual/gender expression. On the one hand, wouldn't we all like to fuck everything that moves? On the other, wouldn't we all like to get married and have children just like our heterosexual brothers and sisters? (Assuming a lot--that they would like the same for themselves, too.) Of course, we would! To both!
Because of this legacy, as gay men perhaps we view transvestism, transgenderism, and transsexuality as something of a cop-out. Add to all this the question of life on the downlow--"I'm not really gay, I'm bisexual" or worse, "I'm not gay, I just occasionally like to fuck guys"--and it can be challenging as a modern, right-on type of gay man to accept much deviation from "the norm."
But who are we denying by doing so? And what understanding and ways of being and consciousness are we denying ourselves?
I've got no answers here. I still think fame, fans, and family warped Michael Jackson in ways we've yet to comprehend, in ways that are totally separate from any question of his possible transgendered identity. I do think there are serious questions about him and his behavior--the child sexual abuse allegations, the manipulation, the victimhood, the excessive amounts of plastic surgery, the physical manifestation of his intent not to spend "life just being a color"--that warrant thoughtful analysis, understanding, and sympathy.
I would not, however, consider the transgenderism part of that warping. Not at all.
There's been a lot said about Michael Jackson these last couple of weeks--some of it excessively critical and caustic (who me?), some it excessively laudatory. Despite the fact that for a while he was the world's biggest music star and pop cultural icon, despite the fact that Michael sold millions of records, I'm not thoroughly convinced that he was the civil rights leader and cultural innovator that now many are quick to label him. He has his place, but does he have more social impact or cultural import than Martin Luther King, Jr., Lena Horne, Bill Cosby and the Huxtables, Rosa Parks, Barack Obama, Wilma Rudolph, Shirley Chisolm, or Prince? I just don't know.
If, however, Michael Jackson was trying to figure out who he was and how he should live as a woman inside a man's form, and attempting to do so in the brightest of limelights, known by nearly every person on the planet, that could well be the most important, impactful thing about him.
Rest in peace, Michael.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Palmetto Road
Now what was that I was saying about almost feeling sorry for Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina? Hmmm, lemme think. It all seems so long ago.
His recent announcement that he had found his "soul mate" but was "trying to fall back in love with his wife" (thus, Mrs. Sanford, is his cell mate?), however, brings my cynicism back into clear focus.
Wow. I mean, WOW. First of all, who among us in the sentient being class, doesn't already try to avoid describing our loved ones and life partners in language other than that used by the desperate twenty-something bimbos who inhabit the landscape of The Bachelor? Second of all, you might think something like that--I love my girlfriend but will take my wife, puh-leez--but no sensible, life-valuing person would ever say that in earshot of anyone he ever claimed to love, the children they hold in common, or a reporter from the Associated Press.
But, then, I'm no expert at assignations, political or otherwise. I know that there must be some advantage to issuing dueling press releases in which one tries to outdo and over-the-top the other with Bible verses and religious imagery. I can't imagine them both being so vacuous that they would keep doing so, with their children and at least two nations in tow, merely to salve their own egos. Surely not.
All in all, though, the whole affair reminds me less of a Bible-thumping melodrama and more of the early '80s nighttime sudser, Flamingo Road. Lots of philandering real estate developers with political aspirations, tired of their wives and taking up with señoritas from the wrong side of the hemisphere. Add some outré plantation imagery and voilá! Grande éxito!
We are still in serious need of a ruthless, small-town sheriff/bubba (c'mon, South Carolina, I know you've got it in ya) and a Morgan Fairchild-like character to sauce up the spot, but, all in all, it's got great potential.
* * *
As I mentioned in my previous post, for one brief, tiny moment, during the first rambling, Harlequin Romance-meets-Nicholas Sparks novel of a press conference, I kinda felt sorry for this schmoe Sanford. Life is way too short to be unhappy and not to be with the one you love. Yes, you need to attend to your responsibilities and adhere to your commitments, but no matter how much you believe in a wrathful, vengeful God, I just can't believe He or She or It would want Us to be so miserable. So why not come clean with your wife earlier in the game, serve out your term, stay close to your children as best as possible, and beat a regular trail down Argentine way as time and income allow? Surely, there is real estate that needs developing in Mar del Plata or Bariloche. Surely, there are possible TV gigs for your girlfriend stateside. Just tell her to dye her hair blond and head over to Univisión.
Just make sure this flavor of en-tango-ment is the one you want, chavo. We know that "hiking the Appalachian Trail" is a euphemism for having an affair with Our Lady of the Pampas. But what exactly is "going down Argentine way" a euphemism for? All I can see from here is that however enjoyable the love, the sex, the whatever may be, you end up crying for five days in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. This can't be good.
In my mind, once I got past the sheer schadenfreude of the moment (the loudest naysayer to Obama's stimulus package has a bit of a problem with an overstimulated package, as it were), I started to wax eloquent about the awfulness we visit upon ourselves in this country by being so binary and rigid, wrapping ourselves in the Shroud of Turin only to end up soiling ourselves in it. We whip ourselves into a frenzy over flag, country, Mom, children, baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet, only to realize that Dad fed the children some poisoned apple pie, whacked Mom over the head with a baseball bat, loaded them into the family Impala, then drove 'em all straight into the Grand Canyon while singing "God Bless America," while wearing his favorite Kate Smith gown.
But then, when asked some innocuous question about the affair, Sanford actually *whimpered* before responding. Whimpered. Like a 49-year-old lovesick Republican teenager with a penchant for the cheesiest romantic imagery in emails ever. At that moment, all bets were suddenly, irrevocably off. Jeez, Marky Markdown, whimpering's for . . . well, no, not cats or some other pseudonym for the feline persuasion. Whimpering's for dogs.
Specifically, a dog named Bucky.
This whimpering, unfortunately, reminded me of a childhood pet, our ugly terrier mix, Bucky (short for Buckshot, which described the color and style of his fur), the homeliest, horniest little mongrel you could imagine. Way back in the '70s before we gave too much thought to Bob Barker's admonition to spay and neuter all creatures great and small (except ourselves, right Bob?), Bucky ran rampant through our neighborhood, pretty much impregnating anything momentarily stationary--animal, mineral, vegetable.
Nonetheless, Bucky was a sweet dog, so fugly that he was cute as my grandmother used to say (except she didn't say fugly), a good companion, and noteworthy for his obedience. For example, if a female dog passed by and you commanded Bucky to stay put, he would do so.
However, he would also whimper, quiver, and, um, "react" the whole time, until the female dog was out of sight and smell.
It was, to say the least, pathetic. I mean, my goodness, you felt sorry for him, just wanted to set him free and let him fertilize the world--at least until the next-door neighbors came to complain that Bucky had just knocked up their AKC-registered poodle.
Again.
* * *
So Mark Sanford, no sympathy for you, I'm afraid. Once you've got an image of a scruffy, horny mutt in your head, whimpering and crying because he can't be with the one he loves but will try to love the one he's with, well, it's hard to let it go.
When I made this comparison to my sister, recently, she protested: "You're doing a disservice to the memory of Bucky."
Alas, I suspect she's right. Bucky at least knew when to sit down and shut up, a trick that an old dog like Mark Sanford has yet to master.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
What's new, Buenos Aires?
Editor's note: Why, yes it is almost 5 am on a workday when I am writing this. How kind of you to notice! No, I don't know why I can't sleep. A stomach ache from that turkey sandwich I had at 10 last night? Breaking my new rule and having a healthy serving of caffeine yesterday afternoon? The fact that my air-conditioner has been running constantly since early Wednesday evening and yet can't seem to cool off the place? All of the above? And maybe this, too . . . ?
* * *
Woo, what a day Wednesday was! At least if your name was Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina, and you were met at the airport by a cub reporter from The State newspaper in Columbia, asking about your recent disappearing act to hike the Appalachian Trail--while you're exiting the plane just arriving from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Yeah, perhaps you should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
It was quite a day for me, too, especially as I had to ignore the rest of my life and pay rapt attention to this story from Monday on (admittedly, a shallow distraction from the mesmerizing events in Iran of late) and then watched the climax unfold live on CNN in the form of a rambling, disoriented soliloquy from Governor Sanford, succinctly summed up (eight minutes into it, mind you) with the phrase: "I have been unfaithful to my wife."
At least this one time, god bless cub reporters and 24-hour news channels.
In some ways, the revelation that the Gov in Love had had an affair with some Argentine Firecracker named Maria was a bit of a letdown. The tearful big reveal on the steps of the South Carolina State House? Feh. I've seen episodes of The Bachelor with more shocking conclusions. (Actually, I haven't--I can't bear to watch that trash. If I wanted to see vapid, desperate women throw themselves at narcissistic jerks, I'd . . . well, I'd just watch these press conferences. And goodness knows, there's been a slew of 'em of late.)
I mean, who couldn't figure this out? Who couldn't see this coming? Connect the dots, please. No one knew where he was, even his staff, even the state's Lieutenant Governor, even his wife (or so she claimed), who mades it very clear she hadn't spoken with him for several days, had "been at home with his sons on Father's Day" (to paraphrase) while he was off the gods know where.
Never mind that officials had received a ping from his cellphone in Atlanta, then nothing more. That statement alone was to me the most damning. Because, you see, what the wife said was Southern code for "he's boffing some bimbo in Buenos Aires!" It's as if she was screaming it into a microphone during the halftime show at a Gamecocks game. How could you not hear it? Any good (relatively speaking) Southerner knows you can say all you need to say subtly, pointedly, snidely, and anyone who is paying attention will get it instantly, and those who don't, well, they're Yankees and are pretty much hopeless anyway. You see, Southerners understand the difference: It's not so much the wearing of white after Labor Day--it's that you're wearing white with gold medallions and bad dye jobs. That's the dead giveaway that you clearly don't get it.
I almost feel sorry for the Gov. (Almost.) Once Mrs. Sanford uttered those lines to the press, the undertakers started measuring him for his pinebox at Boot Hill. He was doomed.
All the claims that the Governor needed his quiet time, was off somewhere writing, was keeping fit by hiking--despite the fact that it was "Naked Hiking Day" in the U.S. (honestly, who thinks up these things? The chaffing alone . . .) and admitting that you were hiking the Appalachian Trail on Naked Hiking Day was tantamount to saying "Hello, my fellow conservative Palmetto Staters! I love showing my naked, skinny ass to the world! And look forward to seeing yours out there as well!"--liked to "drive his tractor" (or euphemism? You decide!) on the "family plantation" (jeez, only in South Carolina in the 21st century . . .), enjoyed driving along the coast of Buenos Aires--despite the fact that BA doesn't have much of a coastline and who would want to drive along it in the Argentine winter, anyway?--all of it came to less than nothing once Mrs. Sanford said, "I don't know where he is; I'm here at home with the children on Father's Day weekend."
Cue chilling Law and Order style sound effect.
While we're at it, cue the music from the shower scene in Psycho, though, once you get a glimpse of the statement from Jenny Sanford regarding her husband's affair.
Goodness, how many Biblical figures can she compare herself to? What, no references to the fishes and loaves, the burning bush, the Ten Commandments, or the Lil Engine that Could? (That was in the Bible, wasn't it?) Jenny, you clearly took God's word to heart 'cause you're practically hanging off the cross.
Turns out Mrs. Sanford is from Illinois originally, by the way, so she gets her Southern She-Wolfness through conversion, not (in)breeding. Still, obviously, she's taken to Southern spleen like a rather taciturn duck to pond-scum-covered water. No one expects the South Carolina Inquisition, but, man, oh man, Mark Sanford, you're gonna get yours, especially now that you've "earned the right" to "resurrect" their marriage.
* * *
Woo, what a day Wednesday was! At least if your name was Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina, and you were met at the airport by a cub reporter from The State newspaper in Columbia, asking about your recent disappearing act to hike the Appalachian Trail--while you're exiting the plane just arriving from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Yeah, perhaps you should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
It was quite a day for me, too, especially as I had to ignore the rest of my life and pay rapt attention to this story from Monday on (admittedly, a shallow distraction from the mesmerizing events in Iran of late) and then watched the climax unfold live on CNN in the form of a rambling, disoriented soliloquy from Governor Sanford, succinctly summed up (eight minutes into it, mind you) with the phrase: "I have been unfaithful to my wife."
At least this one time, god bless cub reporters and 24-hour news channels.
In some ways, the revelation that the Gov in Love had had an affair with some Argentine Firecracker named Maria was a bit of a letdown. The tearful big reveal on the steps of the South Carolina State House? Feh. I've seen episodes of The Bachelor with more shocking conclusions. (Actually, I haven't--I can't bear to watch that trash. If I wanted to see vapid, desperate women throw themselves at narcissistic jerks, I'd . . . well, I'd just watch these press conferences. And goodness knows, there's been a slew of 'em of late.)
I mean, who couldn't figure this out? Who couldn't see this coming? Connect the dots, please. No one knew where he was, even his staff, even the state's Lieutenant Governor, even his wife (or so she claimed), who mades it very clear she hadn't spoken with him for several days, had "been at home with his sons on Father's Day" (to paraphrase) while he was off the gods know where.
Never mind that officials had received a ping from his cellphone in Atlanta, then nothing more. That statement alone was to me the most damning. Because, you see, what the wife said was Southern code for "he's boffing some bimbo in Buenos Aires!" It's as if she was screaming it into a microphone during the halftime show at a Gamecocks game. How could you not hear it? Any good (relatively speaking) Southerner knows you can say all you need to say subtly, pointedly, snidely, and anyone who is paying attention will get it instantly, and those who don't, well, they're Yankees and are pretty much hopeless anyway. You see, Southerners understand the difference: It's not so much the wearing of white after Labor Day--it's that you're wearing white with gold medallions and bad dye jobs. That's the dead giveaway that you clearly don't get it.
I almost feel sorry for the Gov. (Almost.) Once Mrs. Sanford uttered those lines to the press, the undertakers started measuring him for his pinebox at Boot Hill. He was doomed.
All the claims that the Governor needed his quiet time, was off somewhere writing, was keeping fit by hiking--despite the fact that it was "Naked Hiking Day" in the U.S. (honestly, who thinks up these things? The chaffing alone . . .) and admitting that you were hiking the Appalachian Trail on Naked Hiking Day was tantamount to saying "Hello, my fellow conservative Palmetto Staters! I love showing my naked, skinny ass to the world! And look forward to seeing yours out there as well!"--liked to "drive his tractor" (or euphemism? You decide!) on the "family plantation" (jeez, only in South Carolina in the 21st century . . .), enjoyed driving along the coast of Buenos Aires--despite the fact that BA doesn't have much of a coastline and who would want to drive along it in the Argentine winter, anyway?--all of it came to less than nothing once Mrs. Sanford said, "I don't know where he is; I'm here at home with the children on Father's Day weekend."
Cue chilling Law and Order style sound effect.
While we're at it, cue the music from the shower scene in Psycho, though, once you get a glimpse of the statement from Jenny Sanford regarding her husband's affair.
Goodness, how many Biblical figures can she compare herself to? What, no references to the fishes and loaves, the burning bush, the Ten Commandments, or the Lil Engine that Could? (That was in the Bible, wasn't it?) Jenny, you clearly took God's word to heart 'cause you're practically hanging off the cross.
Turns out Mrs. Sanford is from Illinois originally, by the way, so she gets her Southern She-Wolfness through conversion, not (in)breeding. Still, obviously, she's taken to Southern spleen like a rather taciturn duck to pond-scum-covered water. No one expects the South Carolina Inquisition, but, man, oh man, Mark Sanford, you're gonna get yours, especially now that you've "earned the right" to "resurrect" their marriage.
Well, praise Jesus! Praise Jenny!
How do you solve a problem like Maria? Gov, that's the least of your worries now that your wife's on to you. The shame and wrongness of leaving your wife and sons and career behind in Columbia and running off with another woman down Argentine way will be nothing in comparison to what you're about to face next at home from your "loving" wife and family.Just ask John Edwards--after you read Elizabeth Edwards' recent New York Times bestseller, Resilience.
In your case, though, I suspect Mrs. Sanford's book will be titled, Excoriation.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Haiku you
Editor's note: Oh, I know, no one's fooled. It's actually June, and I'm just getting around to a May blog posting--and a lame one at that. Please do suck it up.
* * *
When the going gets tough, the tough start writing . . . haiku.
Yes, I have been abnormally quiet of late. Chalk it up to my usual strained relationship with endless Pittsburgh cloud cover (a very rainy spring so far) and my affair-gone-all-lemon-sour with the pothole obstacle course that is the Pennsylvania Turnpike this time of year. It pretty much all comes down to these things.
Plus one more--let's not forget the fact that I detest most politicians and news commentators and feel that, four months after the inauguration, we're back at a very hostile, churlish, square one in America, with non-stop sniping and inertia-a-no-go.
No, the bloom isn't off my Obama American Beauty rose. I love him (sometimes), I love him not (sometimes). But mostly I'm quite happy with him and his administration. It's just that everything else in the rosebush (or should I say, "roseBush"?) of American politics smells like horseshit.
So to salute those who have in the past and continue in the present to oppress us and to vent a little venom lest I poison myself from the backwash, a couple of weeks ago I started to write haiku, the 5-syllable/7-syllable/5-syllable form of Japanese verse, usually dedicated to nature, but in the case of the following public figures, it all comes down to our baser, animal instincts. And the aforementioned horseshit.
I've done this periodically, put my snarkiness to meter, usually writing my formulaic Asian doggerel about ridiculous professional issues, stuff to keep my colleagues chuckling. There is, in fact, a long tradition (long as in a decade's worth) of haiku-penning in my chosen profession; just go to Google and type in "library" and "haiku," and you will be amazed at how much there is and overwhelmed at how dorky most of it reads. Only librarians could get their groove back over haiku about cats and cataloging.
My friend Kangaroo was the most recent inspiration for my haiku-itribe: She challenged several of her former colleagues to write haiku about people we had worked with and still, years later, disliked. A fun idea, an especially good way to while away work hours on Facebook, but I could get only so far with this. Not that there aren't simply squillions of former colleagues I could trash through minimalist poetry, of course. There's just not much of an audience for it, outside of our immediate circle, and vainglorious pimp that I am, I want an audience for my audacity.
So, instead, I concentrated on coming up with horror movie titles to describe former colleagues. I Know Who You Screwed Over Last Summer, for instance, all the while secretly thinking up Scream or Saw scenarios.
But politics, especially American politics, seems like the perfect venue for haiku-ranting. Short, not so sweet, but definitely to the point.
You tell me if I've been successful.
Sarah Palin--
Oh, if only.
* * *
When the going gets tough, the tough start writing . . . haiku.
Yes, I have been abnormally quiet of late. Chalk it up to my usual strained relationship with endless Pittsburgh cloud cover (a very rainy spring so far) and my affair-gone-all-lemon-sour with the pothole obstacle course that is the Pennsylvania Turnpike this time of year. It pretty much all comes down to these things.
Plus one more--let's not forget the fact that I detest most politicians and news commentators and feel that, four months after the inauguration, we're back at a very hostile, churlish, square one in America, with non-stop sniping and inertia-a-no-go.
No, the bloom isn't off my Obama American Beauty rose. I love him (sometimes), I love him not (sometimes). But mostly I'm quite happy with him and his administration. It's just that everything else in the rosebush (or should I say, "roseBush"?) of American politics smells like horseshit.
So to salute those who have in the past and continue in the present to oppress us and to vent a little venom lest I poison myself from the backwash, a couple of weeks ago I started to write haiku, the 5-syllable/7-syllable/5-syllable form of Japanese verse, usually dedicated to nature, but in the case of the following public figures, it all comes down to our baser, animal instincts. And the aforementioned horseshit.
I've done this periodically, put my snarkiness to meter, usually writing my formulaic Asian doggerel about ridiculous professional issues, stuff to keep my colleagues chuckling. There is, in fact, a long tradition (long as in a decade's worth) of haiku-penning in my chosen profession; just go to Google and type in "library" and "haiku," and you will be amazed at how much there is and overwhelmed at how dorky most of it reads. Only librarians could get their groove back over haiku about cats and cataloging.
My friend Kangaroo was the most recent inspiration for my haiku-itribe: She challenged several of her former colleagues to write haiku about people we had worked with and still, years later, disliked. A fun idea, an especially good way to while away work hours on Facebook, but I could get only so far with this. Not that there aren't simply squillions of former colleagues I could trash through minimalist poetry, of course. There's just not much of an audience for it, outside of our immediate circle, and vainglorious pimp that I am, I want an audience for my audacity.
So, instead, I concentrated on coming up with horror movie titles to describe former colleagues. I Know Who You Screwed Over Last Summer, for instance, all the while secretly thinking up Scream or Saw scenarios.
But politics, especially American politics, seems like the perfect venue for haiku-ranting. Short, not so sweet, but definitely to the point.
You tell me if I've been successful.
Sarah Palin--
Sarah, Plain and Tall--Todd Palin (inspired by a friend of mine who considers Todd a *gag* "husbear")--
Romantic! Sarah Palin?--
Small and bombastic
Todd Palin sexy?Rick Perry (aka "Governor Goodhair," the Governor of Texas, who a colleague of a colleague recently decried as a "liberal" because he had spent too much state funds on, I dunno, mousse or mass transit or something. It's that same argument I've heard before--"George Bush is a secret Democrat" because a) he burned through money like he was clearing brush and b) the right wing has to discredit him in the worst way possible, "so let's call him a liberal!")--
Hmmm--but wasn't Eva Braun
considered cute, too?
A hypocrite? Yup!Antonin Scalia (inspired by his recent interview on 60 Minutes, where he excelled at being an obtuse, self-serving douchebag of the first order)--
But liberal? Rick Perry?
Only in Texas!
"Activist judges"--Rush Limbaugh--
No more! Time to say goodbye,
"Justice" Scalia
Like Wanda Sykes said,George "Dubya" Bush--
"I wish his kidneys would fail"
Rush Limbaugh--piss off!
Dubya celebratesGlenn Beck (based on my belief that Glenn Beck was the Eric Cartman of his time. I'm sure he was picked on endlessly at school. And I'm equally sure he deserved every minute of it)--
Memorial Day like so--
Memorizing stuff
Teachers worried soDick Cheney (last and definitely least, the man who will not shut up)--
Glenn Beck, friendless 6th grader
Ev'ryone loathed him
Council has spoken:
"Face-shooting is illegal--
Dick Cheney must die!"
Oh, if only.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Hang in there, kitten!
OK, admittedly, my recent morning soundtrack might have been too much for some sensitive souls.
As my friend the Gladman put it, after listening to Portishead:
The excellent hosting duties and superlative cuisine made up for Aural Assault by a Deadly Kenny G, but, alas, I'm still scarred in many ways.
Nonetheless, when I posted on my Facebook profile that perhaps listening to Portishead on the walk to work on a gloomy Monday morning might have been a bad idea, one work friend responded to the post, "I'm surprised you made it at all!" And this from a soul who wouldn't be caught facing the Dark Side without wearing a fitted cap, Doc Martens, and rolled-up dungarees, with his wallet held in place by a very long chain. Plus he grew up in McKees Rocks and is a philosophy major. Not to be trifled with!
So as penance--and because the second morning of snow quickly dissipated and, instead, the sun shone most of today, thank you very much--I'm now on a mission to raise the human spirit through song, 3 minutes and 30 seconds at a time.
Please give these a try and let me know if you still need the Xanax.
Basia Balat, "In the Night" (and, no, it's not *that* Basia):
Ayo, "Help is Coming" (I used to hear this on RFI Musique all the time, and now it's been released stateside):
Amadou et Mariam, "Dimanche a Bamako" (yes, as heard on NPR, just another example of my liking stuff that other white people like):
And the aforementioned "Happy Up Here" by Röyksopp, which, really, if that doesn't get your spirit moving, then it's too late, you're already dead:
But wait, only four songs about happiness and twenty songs to kill yourself by? And one of the four is a retread? Isn't that a bit out of balance?
Yes, exactly.
Welcome to my Dark Side, kitten.
As my friend the Gladman put it, after listening to Portishead:
I don't understand most of your musical postings, but the part of your blog clip that I played sent me running for the Xanax. Tipper Gore was right about warning labels on music, she just didn't go far enough.Hmmm, well, not everyone's musical tastes are the same or even in sync most of the time, and I shall remain mostly silent on the detriment to my well-being of hearing "lite jazz" played in heavy rotation at a holiday brunch the Gladman threw several years ago, an event I endured on a morning when I had had . . . well, let's just say, too much fun and too little sleep the night before, celebrating the Birth of Our Lord in a less than holy (but more than spiritual) way.
The excellent hosting duties and superlative cuisine made up for Aural Assault by a Deadly Kenny G, but, alas, I'm still scarred in many ways.
Nonetheless, when I posted on my Facebook profile that perhaps listening to Portishead on the walk to work on a gloomy Monday morning might have been a bad idea, one work friend responded to the post, "I'm surprised you made it at all!" And this from a soul who wouldn't be caught facing the Dark Side without wearing a fitted cap, Doc Martens, and rolled-up dungarees, with his wallet held in place by a very long chain. Plus he grew up in McKees Rocks and is a philosophy major. Not to be trifled with!
So as penance--and because the second morning of snow quickly dissipated and, instead, the sun shone most of today, thank you very much--I'm now on a mission to raise the human spirit through song, 3 minutes and 30 seconds at a time.
Please give these a try and let me know if you still need the Xanax.
Basia Balat, "In the Night" (and, no, it's not *that* Basia):
Ayo, "Help is Coming" (I used to hear this on RFI Musique all the time, and now it's been released stateside):
Amadou et Mariam, "Dimanche a Bamako" (yes, as heard on NPR, just another example of my liking stuff that other white people like):
And the aforementioned "Happy Up Here" by Röyksopp, which, really, if that doesn't get your spirit moving, then it's too late, you're already dead:
But wait, only four songs about happiness and twenty songs to kill yourself by? And one of the four is a retread? Isn't that a bit out of balance?
Yes, exactly.
Welcome to my Dark Side, kitten.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
April in Pittsburgh
Happy up here, my ass . . .
This is what I woke up to this morning, an inch or so of snow on the ground, still more coming down from the sky, and a temp of 30 F--just two days after a glorious, sunny Sunday, when the high reached 70 F.
Further proof that hell has frozen over? That stinkin' Carolina won the NCAA.
Harrumph.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Happy up here!
On my walk to work this morning, I started out listening to the latest Portishead album, Third, on my iPod.
Here's a sample, their single, "Machine Gun."
Ugh.
"Single" sounds like such a frivolous term for a song so dour. While certainly a fine example of musical creativity, I generally would not recommended anything called "Machine Gun" (except by the Commodores, which is probably more my style than I care to admit) for easy listening on a dreary, damp Monday morning. I did feature Portishead in my list of twenty songs to kill yourself by ("All Mine"--icy despair, retro style--and you can dance to it!). So I should have known better, but Third even outmiseries the misery of an April Monday with snow in the forecast and a bitter chill in my disposition.
Gone are Sunday's sunny 70s; hello, 50s, 40s, and 30s, and the desire to throw myself under a passing Port Authority bus. Remind me now why I decided to limit my caffeine intake to one cup of coffee a day? And reduce my consumption of chocolate to practically nil? Health concerns? Well, the wheels of the bus go 'round and 'round and seem to have a road-gripping retort to that theory, now don't they?
So, Monday a.m. and Portishead shall never meet again. Instead, for quick relief and a desire not to tie up traffic on Penn Avenue, I turned to a little "Melody a.m.," or at least a Melody a.m. revival in the form of Röyksopp's new single, "Happy Up Here."
So enough of the depression and alienation! There's plenty of time for that in the future--tomorrow will probably be worse anyway! Let's dance and sing and play Space Invaders. I'm sure Torbjørn and Svein would want it that way.
Here's a sample, their single, "Machine Gun."
Ugh.
"Single" sounds like such a frivolous term for a song so dour. While certainly a fine example of musical creativity, I generally would not recommended anything called "Machine Gun" (except by the Commodores, which is probably more my style than I care to admit) for easy listening on a dreary, damp Monday morning. I did feature Portishead in my list of twenty songs to kill yourself by ("All Mine"--icy despair, retro style--and you can dance to it!). So I should have known better, but Third even outmiseries the misery of an April Monday with snow in the forecast and a bitter chill in my disposition.
Gone are Sunday's sunny 70s; hello, 50s, 40s, and 30s, and the desire to throw myself under a passing Port Authority bus. Remind me now why I decided to limit my caffeine intake to one cup of coffee a day? And reduce my consumption of chocolate to practically nil? Health concerns? Well, the wheels of the bus go 'round and 'round and seem to have a road-gripping retort to that theory, now don't they?
So, Monday a.m. and Portishead shall never meet again. Instead, for quick relief and a desire not to tie up traffic on Penn Avenue, I turned to a little "Melody a.m.," or at least a Melody a.m. revival in the form of Röyksopp's new single, "Happy Up Here."
So enough of the depression and alienation! There's plenty of time for that in the future--tomorrow will probably be worse anyway! Let's dance and sing and play Space Invaders. I'm sure Torbjørn and Svein would want it that way.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Trader Woes
First, let me say, right off, that while this rant/posting is about Trader Joe's, the chi-chi supermarket chain, coming soon to a high-income neighborhood near you, I do not have a problem with Trader Joe's, in and of itself.
In fact, generally, I like it, at least in concept. You get high-end food at, admittedly, high-end prices. (Four cloth bags of groceries for $91.58--such a bargain!) The staff is often quite friendly and helpful, with no exceptions being all that exceptional--excepting maybe the one check-out clerk who insists on wishing me a "blessed day" through gritted teeth after every transaction. I keep feeling like she's doing field research for her church. "Befriend the goofy homosexual and report back to us on what he purchased, so we can boycott those companies. Praise the lord!"
And what is not to like about chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, Marcona almonds with rosemary, and the TJ-brand mac 'n' cheese? Good, waist-wasting eats.
Compared to the local mega-chain Giant Eagle (nostalgic for the dark days of bread lines, grim decor, and surly service of the Soviet Union? They live on at Giant Eagle), Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are making-glorious-people's-revolution for Pittsburgh foodies.
I still wish we had a Wegman's for comparison and contrast. I can see how that would be a tough sell in town, with both TJ's, Whole Foods, and the Gucci Eagle Central Market covering the Oakland-Shadyside-Squirrel Hill-East Liberty 'hood. But surely Mount Lebanon, Fox Chapel, Wexford, or Oakmont could support a Wegman's. Heck, Erie has a Wegman's--and several Tim Horton's, too. Yet Pittsburgh has got bupkus to show for New York-based megamarts and Canadian doughnuts.
Second, I'm not saying I want to move to Erie anytime soon. In addition to Tim Horton's and Wegman's, Erie also had 129 inches of snow in January alone this past winter. I'm sure it's lovely in a certain light during a certain time of year, but if I were living in Erie, I'd be thinking of something other than 20 songs to kill yourself by. I'd be thinking of 20 ways to do it.
I do have my quibbles with Trader Joe's. The Pittsburgh store seems a bit undersized compared to some other TJ's I've been to (as does the Whole Foods, and as did the late, lamented Filene's, may it rest in peace). And there are times when you just can't get what you want. You go one night and they are completely out of parsley, flat-leaf for curly. You go another, and there's been a run on toilet paper or pineapple. You go yet another, and that Applegate Farms free-range Amish sandwich meat and cheese I like is nowhere to be found. Nor is the bread. Or the fat-free milk.
So, from time to time, the Trader Joe's experiene can be a bit frustrating merchandise-wise. But, really, the crux of my bittertude toward TJ's is not TJ's itself. It is with those who frequent Trader Joe's.
Excepting yours truly of course.
Really, I'm talking about a certain type of denizen of Trader Joe's. The Trader Schmoes. The Trader Slows. The Trader Foes/Fauxs.
Oh, c'mon, don't play all goody-goody. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There are the Trader Schmoes--the posh, East End of Pittsburgh types, with one foot in Shadyside and one foot on the gas pedal of their Lexus SUVs as they plow you under in the parking lot. They swear Trader Joe's is the absolute only place they shop for groceries anymore. They can't deal with the hoi polloi at Giant Eagle in North St. Clairvale East Versaillesport West Millquense any longer! Trader Joe's is all that's standing between them and starvation--and they are of course already beyond fashionably thin, so they can ill miss the calories.
This type worries me. Deeply. I mean, god forbid we should have a Day After or a Day After Tomorrow scenario play out in this country. These poor slobs won't know how to forage for groceries at Shopper's Food Warehouse, let alone be able to gather enough nuts and berries to survive on in a nuclear wilderness.
Then there are the Trader Slows--and like the poor, red lipstick, and spiteful Republicans, the Trader Slows will always be with us. Moving at a snail's pace through the aisles of TJ's, slowly picking up each item of produce, examining it with microscopic movements, and slowly returning it to the bin . . . only to pick up yet another item of produce, indistinguishable from the last, ever so slowly . . . .
These are the ones who leave their carts higgledy-piggledy in the aisles and common areas. The ones who have to chat extensively about their food purchases with everyone in line, everyone walking through the door, and everyone in the parking lot. These are the ones who see shopping at Trader Joe's as An Experience that no one has ever felt quite like they have.
The Trader Slows are to be avoided at all costs. Especially when you are in a hurry and/or have low blood sugar, which is really not the way to experience Trader Joe's. So maybe the Slows are on to something and get the TJ experience much more than I do. That or they need their own special-needs-themed store, with their own very special check-out aisle.
One variant of the Trader Slows type is the aging hippie type--Trader Cornrows, perhaps?--with wiry gray, overly long hair, and wearing nothing but organically dyed hemp fibers picked up from their last grant-funded research/shopping trip to [insert Third World country name here]. Where do these people work? Other than in academe, I mean? Goodness, it is obvious they stopped watching TV and reading magazines sometime before 1978. Instead, all their spare income goes to Trader Joe's, Moveon.org, and to periodic tune-ups of their "classic" Subaru wagon, the one in the lot that is more bumpersticker than paint job at this point.
And then there is my favorite (at least to make fun of) type--the Trader Fauxs, who are indeed my foes and the source of all my woes. You know them. They live among us. And they breed like rabbits. Fine, pampered, angora rabbits, but rabbits all the same.
They come to TJ's with an entourage, generally consisting of children, either worn en papoose, like pendants or designer gear, or, if the child is beyond the larval stage, then the child is encouraged to freely express his creativity and independence, primarily by dodging among shopping carts and around the legs of other shoppers with their own entourages, mostly of the adult variety, who insist on doing all their shopping at Trader Joe's (see Trader Schmoes above).
There is so much to loathe about the Trader Fauxs, so very very much. Nonetheless, they make me giggle to myself for one very simple reason: Is it me or have the Trader Fauxs made the mistake of naming all their offspring after humble, pre-20th-century professions? There are Porters, Tanners, Carters, Taylors (Tailors), Hunters, and Coopers to name but a few. Can Farrier, Gatherer, or Lumberjack be far behind? Is it an attempt to sound chic? Or is it an effort to make their kids more downwardly mobile, jealous of any potential success they might have, despite the incessant efforts to give them all the advantages they never yadda yadda yadda?
I chuckle further when I start to wonder if the White Trash--er, the Anglo-Saxon working poor with TV sets and Us Weekly subscriptions--will eventually toss aside all those soap opera names (Krystal with a K, Alexis, Marissa, Schuyler, Nash, et al.) in favor of naming their children after upwardly mobile professions. Little Surgeon Marshburn. Sweet Attorney Tyndall. Darling Civil Engineer Stroud. Adorable Hedge Fund Manager Jarman.
Well, OK, maybe not Hedge Fund Manager Jarman. The working poor may be poor but they are smarter than that.
And probably way smarter to stay out of Trader Joe's when they are in a hurry and have a bad case of low-blood sugar.
Just call me Trader Doh!'s.
In fact, generally, I like it, at least in concept. You get high-end food at, admittedly, high-end prices. (Four cloth bags of groceries for $91.58--such a bargain!) The staff is often quite friendly and helpful, with no exceptions being all that exceptional--excepting maybe the one check-out clerk who insists on wishing me a "blessed day" through gritted teeth after every transaction. I keep feeling like she's doing field research for her church. "Befriend the goofy homosexual and report back to us on what he purchased, so we can boycott those companies. Praise the lord!"
And what is not to like about chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, Marcona almonds with rosemary, and the TJ-brand mac 'n' cheese? Good, waist-wasting eats.
Compared to the local mega-chain Giant Eagle (nostalgic for the dark days of bread lines, grim decor, and surly service of the Soviet Union? They live on at Giant Eagle), Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are making-glorious-people's-revolution for Pittsburgh foodies.
I still wish we had a Wegman's for comparison and contrast. I can see how that would be a tough sell in town, with both TJ's, Whole Foods, and the Gucci Eagle Central Market covering the Oakland-Shadyside-Squirrel Hill-East Liberty 'hood. But surely Mount Lebanon, Fox Chapel, Wexford, or Oakmont could support a Wegman's. Heck, Erie has a Wegman's--and several Tim Horton's, too. Yet Pittsburgh has got bupkus to show for New York-based megamarts and Canadian doughnuts.
Second, I'm not saying I want to move to Erie anytime soon. In addition to Tim Horton's and Wegman's, Erie also had 129 inches of snow in January alone this past winter. I'm sure it's lovely in a certain light during a certain time of year, but if I were living in Erie, I'd be thinking of something other than 20 songs to kill yourself by. I'd be thinking of 20 ways to do it.
I do have my quibbles with Trader Joe's. The Pittsburgh store seems a bit undersized compared to some other TJ's I've been to (as does the Whole Foods, and as did the late, lamented Filene's, may it rest in peace). And there are times when you just can't get what you want. You go one night and they are completely out of parsley, flat-leaf for curly. You go another, and there's been a run on toilet paper or pineapple. You go yet another, and that Applegate Farms free-range Amish sandwich meat and cheese I like is nowhere to be found. Nor is the bread. Or the fat-free milk.
So, from time to time, the Trader Joe's experiene can be a bit frustrating merchandise-wise. But, really, the crux of my bittertude toward TJ's is not TJ's itself. It is with those who frequent Trader Joe's.
Excepting yours truly of course.
Really, I'm talking about a certain type of denizen of Trader Joe's. The Trader Schmoes. The Trader Slows. The Trader Foes/Fauxs.
Oh, c'mon, don't play all goody-goody. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There are the Trader Schmoes--the posh, East End of Pittsburgh types, with one foot in Shadyside and one foot on the gas pedal of their Lexus SUVs as they plow you under in the parking lot. They swear Trader Joe's is the absolute only place they shop for groceries anymore. They can't deal with the hoi polloi at Giant Eagle in North St. Clairvale East Versaillesport West Millquense any longer! Trader Joe's is all that's standing between them and starvation--and they are of course already beyond fashionably thin, so they can ill miss the calories.
This type worries me. Deeply. I mean, god forbid we should have a Day After or a Day After Tomorrow scenario play out in this country. These poor slobs won't know how to forage for groceries at Shopper's Food Warehouse, let alone be able to gather enough nuts and berries to survive on in a nuclear wilderness.
Then there are the Trader Slows--and like the poor, red lipstick, and spiteful Republicans, the Trader Slows will always be with us. Moving at a snail's pace through the aisles of TJ's, slowly picking up each item of produce, examining it with microscopic movements, and slowly returning it to the bin . . . only to pick up yet another item of produce, indistinguishable from the last, ever so slowly . . . .
These are the ones who leave their carts higgledy-piggledy in the aisles and common areas. The ones who have to chat extensively about their food purchases with everyone in line, everyone walking through the door, and everyone in the parking lot. These are the ones who see shopping at Trader Joe's as An Experience that no one has ever felt quite like they have.
The Trader Slows are to be avoided at all costs. Especially when you are in a hurry and/or have low blood sugar, which is really not the way to experience Trader Joe's. So maybe the Slows are on to something and get the TJ experience much more than I do. That or they need their own special-needs-themed store, with their own very special check-out aisle.
One variant of the Trader Slows type is the aging hippie type--Trader Cornrows, perhaps?--with wiry gray, overly long hair, and wearing nothing but organically dyed hemp fibers picked up from their last grant-funded research/shopping trip to [insert Third World country name here]. Where do these people work? Other than in academe, I mean? Goodness, it is obvious they stopped watching TV and reading magazines sometime before 1978. Instead, all their spare income goes to Trader Joe's, Moveon.org, and to periodic tune-ups of their "classic" Subaru wagon, the one in the lot that is more bumpersticker than paint job at this point.
And then there is my favorite (at least to make fun of) type--the Trader Fauxs, who are indeed my foes and the source of all my woes. You know them. They live among us. And they breed like rabbits. Fine, pampered, angora rabbits, but rabbits all the same.
They come to TJ's with an entourage, generally consisting of children, either worn en papoose, like pendants or designer gear, or, if the child is beyond the larval stage, then the child is encouraged to freely express his creativity and independence, primarily by dodging among shopping carts and around the legs of other shoppers with their own entourages, mostly of the adult variety, who insist on doing all their shopping at Trader Joe's (see Trader Schmoes above).
There is so much to loathe about the Trader Fauxs, so very very much. Nonetheless, they make me giggle to myself for one very simple reason: Is it me or have the Trader Fauxs made the mistake of naming all their offspring after humble, pre-20th-century professions? There are Porters, Tanners, Carters, Taylors (Tailors), Hunters, and Coopers to name but a few. Can Farrier, Gatherer, or Lumberjack be far behind? Is it an attempt to sound chic? Or is it an effort to make their kids more downwardly mobile, jealous of any potential success they might have, despite the incessant efforts to give them all the advantages they never yadda yadda yadda?
I chuckle further when I start to wonder if the White Trash--er, the Anglo-Saxon working poor with TV sets and Us Weekly subscriptions--will eventually toss aside all those soap opera names (Krystal with a K, Alexis, Marissa, Schuyler, Nash, et al.) in favor of naming their children after upwardly mobile professions. Little Surgeon Marshburn. Sweet Attorney Tyndall. Darling Civil Engineer Stroud. Adorable Hedge Fund Manager Jarman.
Well, OK, maybe not Hedge Fund Manager Jarman. The working poor may be poor but they are smarter than that.
And probably way smarter to stay out of Trader Joe's when they are in a hurry and have a bad case of low-blood sugar.
Just call me Trader Doh!'s.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Southern discomforts: The final feh
The scene: Lunch at a bistro (no, really) in Morgantown, West Virginia, 3 April 2009. The topic: The NCAA Final Four.
"I can't stand Carolina!" the Virginian said. "I hope they lose!"
"I can't stand them either--and I'm *from* North Carolina!" I said.
"'If God isn't a Tarheel, then why is the sky Carolina Blue.' Goodness, I hope I never hear that again!" she said.
"Or those stupid blue heels painted on every surface, whenever they win. And, god, don't get me started on all the hugging that happens after a win, with everyone acting as if it were a validation of their fabulous lifestyle!"
"I can't believe that Pitt lost. I was hoping to see them beat Carolina," she noted. "Now I just hope Villanova brings 'em down," she added.
"Anybody but Carolina!" I said.
"I'd just as soon see the Red Chinese beat Carolina!" she exclaimed.
"Heck, I'd just as soon see the Taliban beat Carolina!" I snapped.
Truth be told, what's even worse, I'd even take a team made up of Osama bin Laden, Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, Simon LeGree, *and* P. W. Botha to beat Carolina. Maybe throw in Mussolini, Lisa Rinna, and Jessica Simpson as substitutions.
However, I would probably draw the line at a team made up of Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, and Lindsay Lohan, with Karl Rove, Dane Cook, and whoever is responsible for the Pittsburgh-area highway system as subs. Even they would deserve to lose to the unsavory likes of UNC.
* * *
My hatred for Carolina is intense. It is visceral. It is innate. I cannot fully explain or fathom its depths--at least not without foaming at the mouth and wanting to kick puppies.
Yet, for the love of Mayberry, those Carolina mo'fo's are in the freakin' NCAA Final Four again--led by a guy named Tyler Hansbrough. No, shit. Tyler Hansbrough. That sounds like the name of a guy who has an unnaturally close relationship with his mother. (I am reminded of a guy from high school whose mother still referred to him as "Chrissy," while barely acknowledging that she had two other children, just as capable and competent as The Anointed One with the sissy petname.) Tyler Hansbrough sounds like the name of Barbie's new rebound boyfriend, whom she no doubt took up with after finding Ken in bed with Big Jim. (That Barbie. She'll never learn to avoid the closet cases.) That sounds like the name of a guy . . . who would play basketball at Carolina (even if he is from Missouri--which is almost as bad).
Admittedly, maybe I would feel differently if I had actually gone to school at Carolina, for either undergrad or graduate, instead of to two of the lesser, indifferently funded, lights of the University of North Carolina System. I didn't really consider going to Carolina as an undergrad--a weird combination of NOCD ("not our class, dear," meaning I wasn't of their class, y'all) and the Gobi Desert of guidance counseling that was the working-class kid's experience in North Carolina public education, circa 1979. If you were one of the first families in town--even if your Dad was postmaster general or a furniture salesman, such was the how-low-can-you-go limbo bar of achievement in our little community--you were encouraged. If your grades were on par with the rest and your Dad was enlisted military (i.e., not a townie), well, to the back of the line with you, peasant.
Not that I'm still bitter, 30 years later, or anything . . . but it is still the case that, in the latter part of my 40s, I get judged by others (all North Carolinians, naturally) on whether I went to "Chapel College" and what it says about me that I didn't.
I did apply and was accepted for grad school at Chapel Hill, but chose not to go when I got a better scholarship offer at another North Carolina school, received no real response regarding funding (or even campus jobs) from Carolina, and realized I had very little desire to incur major debt in my early 30s. Maybe it would have helped me in my career path to have gone to a "name" school--or maybe not. I felt more nurtured where I ended up going and haven't done too badly for myself, all things considered. Perhaps it took me longer to get where I was trying to go--but that's assuming that I ever really know where I'm trying to go, more than a couple of years out from the destination.
But my loathing for all that is Carolina runs deeper and is more long-standing than any slight/sleight Southern discomfort over what might have been. I think it's that Carolina and the whole "Chapel Hill attitude" just grates against my sense of what life--and especially North Carolina life--is supposed to be about.
How I remember North Carolina as a child is as a community of small farmers and millworkers, good-hearted folk with simple aspirations, trying to live their lives well and let others do the same. Going along to get along, perhaps, a little boringly pleasant, maybe, but essentially salt o' the earth types.
Just hold the salt. And the pepper.
This is more like the Mayberry Snappy Lunch blue-plate special view of the world. Everything is in black-and-white (well, mostly white). Barney Fife is on the menu, and there are extra helpings of Thelma Lou, if you ask nicely. Andy and the Darlings provide the floorshow. But they are plum out of Helen Crump. And good god, please no sides or entrees of Emmit, Howard, or Goober.
Yes, it is possible to have seen too many episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. My bucolic, harmonious, tender-hearted memory, all sleepy small-town and "lord, it's just like livin' in a poem," doesn't jibe with the cold-water reality of racial discrimination and social inequality, the big sticks of god-fearing religion and law-and-order until death do us part, or the festering divide between malingering, manipulating aristocracy and crazy cracker populism.
If truth be told, North Carolina life is less Frank Capra-meets-Norman Rockwell, and more Franz Kafka-meets-Norman Rockwell. I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit turning into a cockroach before your very eyes.
Or perhaps it's not Kafka after all; perhaps it's strictly David Lynch-ian in nature--Blue Velvet intertwined with Twin Peaks strangled by Wild at Heart. In this alternate-universe Mayberry, Helen's a hooker. Thelma Lou is an axe-murderess. Andy cross-dresses. Instead of cooking up kerosene pickles in the kitchen, Aunt Bea runs the town meth lab, and Opie's her number one customer. Barney's a deaf mute midget who only speaks in Otis's dreams. And being that Otis is now sober and sane, nobody believes a word he says.
Well, OK, it's not quite like that either--'cause that would make it at least interesting. Besides, that would make it Louisiana.
Instead, North Carolina feels worse in a particularly stingy, mewling, bitter pill way: It is classist, it is mean-spirited, it is jealous, it is condescending, it is judgmental, it is passive-aggressive, it is clannish, it is suspicious, and it is holier-than-thou. It is essentially English in culture, except with better home-cooking and nicer weather.
I feel torn, to say the least--a queasy mix of pride over my culture (the food, the music, the landscape, the literature), yet full of anger over what many of us have had to live through to hold on to it, to make it our own. Despite the guns-and-religion, we're-all-in-lockstep-toward-the-promised-land reputation, Southern culture has its share of queers (sexual or otherwise), working-class types, non-joiners, rebels, independents, loners, crackpots, revolutionaries, and individuals.
And only some of them resorted to firearms. I would imagine quite a few just picked up a pen and shot off their opinions in letters to the editor or in articles and books, both published and unpublished. Still others packed it in, picked up a suitcase, and moved on and moved out. Yet try to get a little respect for that.
* * *
During Friday's visit to Morgantown, a mountain town in an Appalachian state, for a moment I felt a resurgence of pride--of the culture, the accomplishments, the bounty of life created on a shoestring budget. But this was pride for my Dad's Kentucky Appalachian heritage, not for my native North Carolina one.
The story of the creation of West Virginia is that it seceded from Virginia during the Civil War, not feeling well served by mainline Virginia interests and not content to be separated from the rest of the United States due to the handiwork of a few chivalrous, racist hot-heads too much into dressing up to play at being soldiers. Perhaps, too, West Virginians hated that peculiar institution of slavery and the feel of upper-class Virginia elitism chafing against its rough-and-tumble, working-class hide.
Kentucky was and often still is considered a Southern state, but it, too, refused to secede from the Union, despite having a decidedly mixed approach to the planter class and slavery. I wonder if that split personality, that feeling of being part of a culture, yet feeling removed, even alienated from it, is ultimately what I'm about. 'Cause that's what I feel these days, simultaneously very Southern in Pennsylvania and very un-Southern in the South and among my fellow Southerners.
Still, Andy Griffith went to UNC and Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky--and even snippy, whingeing England has good music and quirky-quaint towns. There is just good and bad in everything, I guess, and I would imagine it's best to make peace with it as well as you can.
But hey! In the meantime, tonight I'd still like to see Carolina go down in flames! Big, huge, conflagratory flames! The Great Chapel Hill Fire of 2009! Bring a spit--we're gonna have a barbecue, y'all!
So, Villanova, if you're listening, please barbecue some Carolina (pork) butt for me this evening. And if you can't, then (egad, how far I've fallen!), please let Connecticut or Michigan State do the roasting.
"I can't stand Carolina!" the Virginian said. "I hope they lose!"
"I can't stand them either--and I'm *from* North Carolina!" I said.
"'If God isn't a Tarheel, then why is the sky Carolina Blue.' Goodness, I hope I never hear that again!" she said.
"Or those stupid blue heels painted on every surface, whenever they win. And, god, don't get me started on all the hugging that happens after a win, with everyone acting as if it were a validation of their fabulous lifestyle!"
"I can't believe that Pitt lost. I was hoping to see them beat Carolina," she noted. "Now I just hope Villanova brings 'em down," she added.
"Anybody but Carolina!" I said.
"I'd just as soon see the Red Chinese beat Carolina!" she exclaimed.
"Heck, I'd just as soon see the Taliban beat Carolina!" I snapped.
Truth be told, what's even worse, I'd even take a team made up of Osama bin Laden, Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, Simon LeGree, *and* P. W. Botha to beat Carolina. Maybe throw in Mussolini, Lisa Rinna, and Jessica Simpson as substitutions.
However, I would probably draw the line at a team made up of Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, and Lindsay Lohan, with Karl Rove, Dane Cook, and whoever is responsible for the Pittsburgh-area highway system as subs. Even they would deserve to lose to the unsavory likes of UNC.
* * *
My hatred for Carolina is intense. It is visceral. It is innate. I cannot fully explain or fathom its depths--at least not without foaming at the mouth and wanting to kick puppies.
Yet, for the love of Mayberry, those Carolina mo'fo's are in the freakin' NCAA Final Four again--led by a guy named Tyler Hansbrough. No, shit. Tyler Hansbrough. That sounds like the name of a guy who has an unnaturally close relationship with his mother. (I am reminded of a guy from high school whose mother still referred to him as "Chrissy," while barely acknowledging that she had two other children, just as capable and competent as The Anointed One with the sissy petname.) Tyler Hansbrough sounds like the name of Barbie's new rebound boyfriend, whom she no doubt took up with after finding Ken in bed with Big Jim. (That Barbie. She'll never learn to avoid the closet cases.) That sounds like the name of a guy . . . who would play basketball at Carolina (even if he is from Missouri--which is almost as bad).
Admittedly, maybe I would feel differently if I had actually gone to school at Carolina, for either undergrad or graduate, instead of to two of the lesser, indifferently funded, lights of the University of North Carolina System. I didn't really consider going to Carolina as an undergrad--a weird combination of NOCD ("not our class, dear," meaning I wasn't of their class, y'all) and the Gobi Desert of guidance counseling that was the working-class kid's experience in North Carolina public education, circa 1979. If you were one of the first families in town--even if your Dad was postmaster general or a furniture salesman, such was the how-low-can-you-go limbo bar of achievement in our little community--you were encouraged. If your grades were on par with the rest and your Dad was enlisted military (i.e., not a townie), well, to the back of the line with you, peasant.
Not that I'm still bitter, 30 years later, or anything . . . but it is still the case that, in the latter part of my 40s, I get judged by others (all North Carolinians, naturally) on whether I went to "Chapel College" and what it says about me that I didn't.
I did apply and was accepted for grad school at Chapel Hill, but chose not to go when I got a better scholarship offer at another North Carolina school, received no real response regarding funding (or even campus jobs) from Carolina, and realized I had very little desire to incur major debt in my early 30s. Maybe it would have helped me in my career path to have gone to a "name" school--or maybe not. I felt more nurtured where I ended up going and haven't done too badly for myself, all things considered. Perhaps it took me longer to get where I was trying to go--but that's assuming that I ever really know where I'm trying to go, more than a couple of years out from the destination.
But my loathing for all that is Carolina runs deeper and is more long-standing than any slight/sleight Southern discomfort over what might have been. I think it's that Carolina and the whole "Chapel Hill attitude" just grates against my sense of what life--and especially North Carolina life--is supposed to be about.
How I remember North Carolina as a child is as a community of small farmers and millworkers, good-hearted folk with simple aspirations, trying to live their lives well and let others do the same. Going along to get along, perhaps, a little boringly pleasant, maybe, but essentially salt o' the earth types.
Just hold the salt. And the pepper.
This is more like the Mayberry Snappy Lunch blue-plate special view of the world. Everything is in black-and-white (well, mostly white). Barney Fife is on the menu, and there are extra helpings of Thelma Lou, if you ask nicely. Andy and the Darlings provide the floorshow. But they are plum out of Helen Crump. And good god, please no sides or entrees of Emmit, Howard, or Goober.
Yes, it is possible to have seen too many episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. My bucolic, harmonious, tender-hearted memory, all sleepy small-town and "lord, it's just like livin' in a poem," doesn't jibe with the cold-water reality of racial discrimination and social inequality, the big sticks of god-fearing religion and law-and-order until death do us part, or the festering divide between malingering, manipulating aristocracy and crazy cracker populism.
If truth be told, North Carolina life is less Frank Capra-meets-Norman Rockwell, and more Franz Kafka-meets-Norman Rockwell. I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit turning into a cockroach before your very eyes.
Or perhaps it's not Kafka after all; perhaps it's strictly David Lynch-ian in nature--Blue Velvet intertwined with Twin Peaks strangled by Wild at Heart. In this alternate-universe Mayberry, Helen's a hooker. Thelma Lou is an axe-murderess. Andy cross-dresses. Instead of cooking up kerosene pickles in the kitchen, Aunt Bea runs the town meth lab, and Opie's her number one customer. Barney's a deaf mute midget who only speaks in Otis's dreams. And being that Otis is now sober and sane, nobody believes a word he says.
Well, OK, it's not quite like that either--'cause that would make it at least interesting. Besides, that would make it Louisiana.
Instead, North Carolina feels worse in a particularly stingy, mewling, bitter pill way: It is classist, it is mean-spirited, it is jealous, it is condescending, it is judgmental, it is passive-aggressive, it is clannish, it is suspicious, and it is holier-than-thou. It is essentially English in culture, except with better home-cooking and nicer weather.
I feel torn, to say the least--a queasy mix of pride over my culture (the food, the music, the landscape, the literature), yet full of anger over what many of us have had to live through to hold on to it, to make it our own. Despite the guns-and-religion, we're-all-in-lockstep-toward-the-promised-land reputation, Southern culture has its share of queers (sexual or otherwise), working-class types, non-joiners, rebels, independents, loners, crackpots, revolutionaries, and individuals.
And only some of them resorted to firearms. I would imagine quite a few just picked up a pen and shot off their opinions in letters to the editor or in articles and books, both published and unpublished. Still others packed it in, picked up a suitcase, and moved on and moved out. Yet try to get a little respect for that.
* * *
During Friday's visit to Morgantown, a mountain town in an Appalachian state, for a moment I felt a resurgence of pride--of the culture, the accomplishments, the bounty of life created on a shoestring budget. But this was pride for my Dad's Kentucky Appalachian heritage, not for my native North Carolina one.
The story of the creation of West Virginia is that it seceded from Virginia during the Civil War, not feeling well served by mainline Virginia interests and not content to be separated from the rest of the United States due to the handiwork of a few chivalrous, racist hot-heads too much into dressing up to play at being soldiers. Perhaps, too, West Virginians hated that peculiar institution of slavery and the feel of upper-class Virginia elitism chafing against its rough-and-tumble, working-class hide.
Kentucky was and often still is considered a Southern state, but it, too, refused to secede from the Union, despite having a decidedly mixed approach to the planter class and slavery. I wonder if that split personality, that feeling of being part of a culture, yet feeling removed, even alienated from it, is ultimately what I'm about. 'Cause that's what I feel these days, simultaneously very Southern in Pennsylvania and very un-Southern in the South and among my fellow Southerners.
Still, Andy Griffith went to UNC and Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky--and even snippy, whingeing England has good music and quirky-quaint towns. There is just good and bad in everything, I guess, and I would imagine it's best to make peace with it as well as you can.
But hey! In the meantime, tonight I'd still like to see Carolina go down in flames! Big, huge, conflagratory flames! The Great Chapel Hill Fire of 2009! Bring a spit--we're gonna have a barbecue, y'all!
So, Villanova, if you're listening, please barbecue some Carolina (pork) butt for me this evening. And if you can't, then (egad, how far I've fallen!), please let Connecticut or Michigan State do the roasting.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Allergic to latex
Dateline, Yaounde, Cameroon, 17 March 2009:
Well, who would have ever imagined that Pope "Fertilized Eggs" Benedict XVI would come out in support of bare-backing?
Still, I just don't know about taking advice on sexual health and family planning from a man who probably has never kissed a girl (or perhaps not even a guy)--or from one who attended a summer camp organized by one of the world's best-known "pro-eugenics" organizations.
Perhaps we should abstain from listening, too.
Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
Well, who would have ever imagined that Pope "Fertilized Eggs" Benedict XVI would come out in support of bare-backing?Still, I just don't know about taking advice on sexual health and family planning from a man who probably has never kissed a girl (or perhaps not even a guy)--or from one who attended a summer camp organized by one of the world's best-known "pro-eugenics" organizations.
Perhaps we should abstain from listening, too.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The lusty lady luck of the Irish
Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone! Please celebrate appropriately!
(Photo taken outside the Lusty Lady "Liveshow" Theater, Seattle, Washington, March 2009. No, I did *not* go in. I went shopping at Nordstrom's instead.)
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Twenty songs to kill yourself by
It's still winter outside in Pennsylvania--but in my heart it's . . . still winter.
And it has been winter in fact since November, maybe even October, when we had our first snow of the season before Halloween this year.
November was rough, December was no peach, but January was brutal, with snow everywhere, bitter temps, and potholed roads and snarly moods to navigate. Because I love irony and melancholy, to celebrate, I went to Breckenridge, Colorado, in February just to get away from all the snow and cold for even more snow and cold (and skiing and snowshoeing)--just at 11,000 feet above sea level with moose and the Rockies as a backdrop.
Upon my return to Pittsburgh, February proved itself to be slightly menopausal, up and down and all over the weather map, with warm days, rainy days, sunny days, snowy days, cold days, daze, daze, daze, 28 days of daze.
Who can say what March will bring?
To help us not get through it (because, sometimes, this time of year, I just have to ask why, why, why I do this to myself, live in the bottom of dark well with a soppy, gray blanket covered over me), I present my latest, YouTube-facilitated, video montage of winter melodies, "Twenty Songs to Kill Yourself By."
Not that I'm depressed or anything . . .
Enjoy (?).
Sunday, February 22, 2009
By midnight, maybe they'll have given out the Oscar for Best Mug Shot
It's 11:13 pm on Sunday, February 22, 2009, and at present, while I clean house and figure out what I'm going to wear to work tomorrow and regret not having called my brother and feel a little peckish but am trying to avoid eating late, I have the Academy Awards on as a soundtrack to my evening full of dust mites, ennui, and regret. They are just getting to the montage of who croaked it this past year.
God, why do we torment ourselves with this every year? The mind-numbing pacing, the ponderous staging, the obscure references in acceptance speeches, and, kill me now please, the Jonas Brothers ('cause lord knows they're all about the H-town glamour), three boys who seem intent on dressing like wait staff at Farrell's Old-Tyme Ice Cream Parlour, circa 1896-meets-1976.
Vests. Freaking checked vests.
Then, even after the Jonas Brothers, when you think it couldn't possibly get even more why-don't-I-force-knitting-needles-into-my-temples-just-for-laffs?, they trot out the f**king "comedy stylings" of Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman, ferchrissakes. I mean, Ben Stiller wasn't even a funny zygote. Delivery didn't even improve his delivery--ba-da-bing! Ben, the best you got is a lame imitation of Joaquin Phoenix on the David Letterman Show? Dude, I've seen better comedy come out in the form of milk through a junior high kid's nose.
The only good moment I saw tonight was when James Franco's character from Pineapple Express put his arm around Seth Rogan while watching his character in Milk kiss Sean Penn. I do love me some James Franco. Say what you will, but I don't think we'll be seeing *him* swapping spit with Reese Witherspoon anytime soon, in some ill-advised effort to affirm his heterosexuality. Nor do I think he'll go the traditional route, a la Kevin Spacey, and bring his mother or a heretofore unknown girlfriend to the ceremony next year.
Essentially, this is an industry event, not the great public spectacle of tradition and glamour everyone seems to think it is. Oh, you may put on display the mannequin that is Nicole Kidman or let Hugh Jackman and Beyonce strut their stuff (what, Rihanna and Chris Brown weren't available? Sorry, I haven't been paying attention to the headlines lately . . .), or pay endless tribute to Heath Ledger, Star and Accidental Overdoser (what is it? Australia Night? The movie tanked faster than British ships in Darwin harbor during a raid by kamikaze pilots), but for its actual import to the rest of the world, the Academy Awards might as well be a celebration of the Best Independent Insurance Salesperson in America, or the HealthSouth Top Earner in Pharmaceutical Kickbacks, or the Wells Fargo Spirit Winner for Banker Most Likely to Choke on His/Her Caviar While Enjoying the Fruits of a TARP Bailout.
There was a couple of weeks post-9/11 when there were all these wonderful predictions that celebrity would fade, that people would want something more meaningful and serious in their lives after what was one of the most horrible, sea-changing moments in modern history. And then Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Friends did a g-dd--ned telethon for 9/11 victims and survivors, and, well, we just never took our eyes off the Silver Screen, large or small edition, after that.
I just do not get the appeal of this culture and especially this awards show. At this moment, I'm only sorry that more Hollywood types didn't bite the golddust this last year--but, then, that would only make the montage to Hollywood's fallen heroes even longer.
Stay safe throughout the year, James Franco. But Ben Stiller, feel free to submit your photo early for next year's Montage of Death.
God, why do we torment ourselves with this every year? The mind-numbing pacing, the ponderous staging, the obscure references in acceptance speeches, and, kill me now please, the Jonas Brothers ('cause lord knows they're all about the H-town glamour), three boys who seem intent on dressing like wait staff at Farrell's Old-Tyme Ice Cream Parlour, circa 1896-meets-1976.
Vests. Freaking checked vests.
Then, even after the Jonas Brothers, when you think it couldn't possibly get even more why-don't-I-force-knitting-needles-into-my-temples-just-for-laffs?, they trot out the f**king "comedy stylings" of Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman, ferchrissakes. I mean, Ben Stiller wasn't even a funny zygote. Delivery didn't even improve his delivery--ba-da-bing! Ben, the best you got is a lame imitation of Joaquin Phoenix on the David Letterman Show? Dude, I've seen better comedy come out in the form of milk through a junior high kid's nose.
The only good moment I saw tonight was when James Franco's character from Pineapple Express put his arm around Seth Rogan while watching his character in Milk kiss Sean Penn. I do love me some James Franco. Say what you will, but I don't think we'll be seeing *him* swapping spit with Reese Witherspoon anytime soon, in some ill-advised effort to affirm his heterosexuality. Nor do I think he'll go the traditional route, a la Kevin Spacey, and bring his mother or a heretofore unknown girlfriend to the ceremony next year.
Essentially, this is an industry event, not the great public spectacle of tradition and glamour everyone seems to think it is. Oh, you may put on display the mannequin that is Nicole Kidman or let Hugh Jackman and Beyonce strut their stuff (what, Rihanna and Chris Brown weren't available? Sorry, I haven't been paying attention to the headlines lately . . .), or pay endless tribute to Heath Ledger, Star and Accidental Overdoser (what is it? Australia Night? The movie tanked faster than British ships in Darwin harbor during a raid by kamikaze pilots), but for its actual import to the rest of the world, the Academy Awards might as well be a celebration of the Best Independent Insurance Salesperson in America, or the HealthSouth Top Earner in Pharmaceutical Kickbacks, or the Wells Fargo Spirit Winner for Banker Most Likely to Choke on His/Her Caviar While Enjoying the Fruits of a TARP Bailout.
There was a couple of weeks post-9/11 when there were all these wonderful predictions that celebrity would fade, that people would want something more meaningful and serious in their lives after what was one of the most horrible, sea-changing moments in modern history. And then Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Friends did a g-dd--ned telethon for 9/11 victims and survivors, and, well, we just never took our eyes off the Silver Screen, large or small edition, after that.
I just do not get the appeal of this culture and especially this awards show. At this moment, I'm only sorry that more Hollywood types didn't bite the golddust this last year--but, then, that would only make the montage to Hollywood's fallen heroes even longer.
Stay safe throughout the year, James Franco. But Ben Stiller, feel free to submit your photo early for next year's Montage of Death.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Totally furked up
My experiences--sometimes indifferent, occasionally negative--with "alternative grocery stores" are one of several recurring themes here in Blogtucky, a theme that we'll turn to again as I present you, dear reader, with another close encounter of the texturized vegetable protein kind.
It went down like so:
I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.
Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.
Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.
"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.
"An odd expression? Really, it's pretty common . . . ."
Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.
Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.
So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.
No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.
Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"
Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.
But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.
Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?
Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.
Oh dude, I feel a poem coming on.
It went down like so:
I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.
Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.
Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.
"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.
"An odd expression? Really, it's pretty common . . . ."
Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.
Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.
So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.
No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.
Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"
Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.
But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.
Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?
Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.
Oh dude, I feel a poem coming on.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
B.T., phone home
"Hello?"
"Good day, Mr. Winni, this here's the secretary for Elizabeth Windsor, better know to you lot 'cross the pond as HRH Queen Elizabef Numba 2 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Sometimes Northern Ireland. Please 'old the line for ol' Bess, Guvnor."
"Hello? Mister Winni? Is this the correct party?"
"Uh, yeah, yes, I think so."
"Oh marvelous! We are so pleased to make your acquaintanceship, Mister Winni. We are enchanted to have this opportunity to chat with you."
"Um, is this for real?"
"Oh dear. I would have thought the secretary would have explained everything already. Oh, well, one just can't get good work out of the working classes these days since Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Blair turned the class system all topsy-turvy. I can assure you, Mr. Winni, that this call is indeed 'for real,' as you Americans so quaintly put it."
"Listen, your royal highness, or whoever you are, how did you get this number?"
"Well, you see, Mr. Winni, that is precisely why we called you today. Are you familiar with a Mr. D_____ of L____, East Sussex, England?"
"Yeah, uh, yes, he's a friend of mine. I've known him for something like 15 years."
"That's right, we have that right here in our file on you, your companions, and your travels, so generously provided to us by your . . . erm, let me see . . . ah yes, here it is! Your Department of Homeland Security. Quite a helpful lot that is. Very eager to provide all sorts of information on our former loyal subjects!"
"Homeland Security?"
"Yes, it's all right here in black-and-white, or rather bits and bobs, oh pardon me, we mean bits and bytes, we can never quite keep up with you Americans and your very clever aberrations toward our language. Well, we are glad to see all the information is correct, that you are indeed familiar with Mr. D_____. That might shed a little more light on the minor international telecommunications crisis that you plunged Great Britain and America in over night."
"I did what?"
"Oh, it's nothing really, nothing at all, except that it did bring down our nation's entire electrical and telecommunications grid for a short time, at least until we were able to pay a huge ransom to Russia to turn everything back on again. You see, it appears that sometime between the hours of 1800 Monday and 0700 Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time (that would be 2300 and 1200 GMT, we believe), you sent a series of text messages to Mr. Dougan, in quite rapid succession."
"I did? I don't think I sent those. I think you got the wrong guy, lady."
"Yes, we are afraid you did, Mr. Winni. The odd thing is that all of the messages were completely void of content. In other words, they were, if you're pardon the rather colloquial expression, blank."
"Hmmm, well, I think I'd remember sending that many text messages, if I indeed in fact did send them."
"Oh, well, Mr. Winni, documentation and video footage do not lie."
"Video? You have video of me . . . doing what exactly?"
"Why shopping at IKEA, naturally! It seems to be what you do best these days."
"Well, yeah, I was shopping at IKEA, but I wasn't shopping the whole night. And, besides, if I was shopping, how could I be texting at the same time."
"Too true, Mr. Winni, too true. Nonetheless, the footage clearly shows you rather cavalierly tossing your Blackberry into your--I believe you across the pond call it a manbag--then rather ungraciously slinging said manbag over your shoulder and sashaying rather gaily (no offense intended, of course--our grandchildren may use epithets, but we do not) into the IKEA entrance."
"Yeah, I did all that, but I still don't see--"
"Did you perchance have your mobile telephonic device in the on and active position, Mr. Winni?"
"Sure, yes, I often leave it--"
"Well, at the risk of sounding like the detective in a bad adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel (and, dear me, aren't they all bad?), we shall say, 'Aha!'"
"Aha? Aha what?"
"'Aha' as in 'Eureka, I have found it,' Mr. Winni. I believe that explains how you were able to text while shopping while having no knowledge of such texting."
"How does that explain anything?"
"Well, Mr. Winni, you seemed rather excited to promenade around IKEA, bending and stooping to investigate that rather amusingly named, moderately priced furniture you prefer. Really, after all what is a 'Poang' exactly? And please do explain to us what this creature named 'Billy' is and why should anyone want to 'shelve' him? We must remember to ask Sir Elton, Sir George Michael, and Sir Ian McKellan when they are next over. According to Prince Phillip, if anyone knows anything about shelving billies, it would be the three of them--"
"Well, I did move around a lot. I was pressed for time."
"We have no doubt, Mr. Winni, but we don't know if we would quite describe your manner as being indicative of someone who is pressed for time. Perhaps puzzled by the difference between birch and beech veneers, perhaps consternated over the excessive use of Allen wrenches, perhaps using shopping at IKEA as a subterfuge for admiring the male members of happy couples--"
"You just leave my admiring of male members out of this, queenie."
"We shan't give it another thought, Mr. Winni. But we would like to suggest, if we may, that one should remember to take care not to exercise one's manbag too agitatedly in the process of admiring attractively priced Scandinavian furniture. As with the owners of such conveyances, these manbags are excitable animals, prone to fits, humors, and conniptions. And, as a result of such ill-advised physical culture, one is likely to discover the following morning that one has sent twenty (20) blank text messages to one's friend in England, quite by accident."
"Duly noted," I said.
"While one is sure that Verizon Wireless and British Telecom (B.T.) will appreciate one's extra commerce, one will be left holding the (man)bag, as it were, when one's phone bill arrives at the end of this month."
"You're really pleased with yourself over that joke, aren't you?"
"We are amused, Mr. Winni, we are amused, indeed."
"Well, good, 'cause you sure went a long way to get to it."
"Be that as it may, we do hope one is willing and able to use this genial advice. If one requires further education, please do text us, remembering that international rates may well apply. Good-bye, Mr. Winni!"
"Ciao, Bess."
"Good day, Mr. Winni, this here's the secretary for Elizabeth Windsor, better know to you lot 'cross the pond as HRH Queen Elizabef Numba 2 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Sometimes Northern Ireland. Please 'old the line for ol' Bess, Guvnor."
"Hello? Mister Winni? Is this the correct party?"
"Uh, yeah, yes, I think so."
"Oh marvelous! We are so pleased to make your acquaintanceship, Mister Winni. We are enchanted to have this opportunity to chat with you."
"Um, is this for real?"
"Oh dear. I would have thought the secretary would have explained everything already. Oh, well, one just can't get good work out of the working classes these days since Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Blair turned the class system all topsy-turvy. I can assure you, Mr. Winni, that this call is indeed 'for real,' as you Americans so quaintly put it."
"Listen, your royal highness, or whoever you are, how did you get this number?"
"Well, you see, Mr. Winni, that is precisely why we called you today. Are you familiar with a Mr. D_____ of L____, East Sussex, England?"
"Yeah, uh, yes, he's a friend of mine. I've known him for something like 15 years."
"That's right, we have that right here in our file on you, your companions, and your travels, so generously provided to us by your . . . erm, let me see . . . ah yes, here it is! Your Department of Homeland Security. Quite a helpful lot that is. Very eager to provide all sorts of information on our former loyal subjects!"
"Homeland Security?"
"Yes, it's all right here in black-and-white, or rather bits and bobs, oh pardon me, we mean bits and bytes, we can never quite keep up with you Americans and your very clever aberrations toward our language. Well, we are glad to see all the information is correct, that you are indeed familiar with Mr. D_____. That might shed a little more light on the minor international telecommunications crisis that you plunged Great Britain and America in over night."
"I did what?"
"Oh, it's nothing really, nothing at all, except that it did bring down our nation's entire electrical and telecommunications grid for a short time, at least until we were able to pay a huge ransom to Russia to turn everything back on again. You see, it appears that sometime between the hours of 1800 Monday and 0700 Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time (that would be 2300 and 1200 GMT, we believe), you sent a series of text messages to Mr. Dougan, in quite rapid succession."
"I did? I don't think I sent those. I think you got the wrong guy, lady."
"Yes, we are afraid you did, Mr. Winni. The odd thing is that all of the messages were completely void of content. In other words, they were, if you're pardon the rather colloquial expression, blank."
"Hmmm, well, I think I'd remember sending that many text messages, if I indeed in fact did send them."
"Oh, well, Mr. Winni, documentation and video footage do not lie."
"Video? You have video of me . . . doing what exactly?"
"Why shopping at IKEA, naturally! It seems to be what you do best these days."
"Well, yeah, I was shopping at IKEA, but I wasn't shopping the whole night. And, besides, if I was shopping, how could I be texting at the same time."
"Too true, Mr. Winni, too true. Nonetheless, the footage clearly shows you rather cavalierly tossing your Blackberry into your--I believe you across the pond call it a manbag--then rather ungraciously slinging said manbag over your shoulder and sashaying rather gaily (no offense intended, of course--our grandchildren may use epithets, but we do not) into the IKEA entrance."
"Yeah, I did all that, but I still don't see--"
"Did you perchance have your mobile telephonic device in the on and active position, Mr. Winni?"
"Sure, yes, I often leave it--"
"Well, at the risk of sounding like the detective in a bad adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel (and, dear me, aren't they all bad?), we shall say, 'Aha!'"
"Aha? Aha what?"
"'Aha' as in 'Eureka, I have found it,' Mr. Winni. I believe that explains how you were able to text while shopping while having no knowledge of such texting."
"How does that explain anything?"
"Well, Mr. Winni, you seemed rather excited to promenade around IKEA, bending and stooping to investigate that rather amusingly named, moderately priced furniture you prefer. Really, after all what is a 'Poang' exactly? And please do explain to us what this creature named 'Billy' is and why should anyone want to 'shelve' him? We must remember to ask Sir Elton, Sir George Michael, and Sir Ian McKellan when they are next over. According to Prince Phillip, if anyone knows anything about shelving billies, it would be the three of them--"
"Well, I did move around a lot. I was pressed for time."
"We have no doubt, Mr. Winni, but we don't know if we would quite describe your manner as being indicative of someone who is pressed for time. Perhaps puzzled by the difference between birch and beech veneers, perhaps consternated over the excessive use of Allen wrenches, perhaps using shopping at IKEA as a subterfuge for admiring the male members of happy couples--"
"You just leave my admiring of male members out of this, queenie."
"We shan't give it another thought, Mr. Winni. But we would like to suggest, if we may, that one should remember to take care not to exercise one's manbag too agitatedly in the process of admiring attractively priced Scandinavian furniture. As with the owners of such conveyances, these manbags are excitable animals, prone to fits, humors, and conniptions. And, as a result of such ill-advised physical culture, one is likely to discover the following morning that one has sent twenty (20) blank text messages to one's friend in England, quite by accident."
"Duly noted," I said.
"While one is sure that Verizon Wireless and British Telecom (B.T.) will appreciate one's extra commerce, one will be left holding the (man)bag, as it were, when one's phone bill arrives at the end of this month."
"You're really pleased with yourself over that joke, aren't you?"
"We are amused, Mr. Winni, we are amused, indeed."
"Well, good, 'cause you sure went a long way to get to it."
"Be that as it may, we do hope one is willing and able to use this genial advice. If one requires further education, please do text us, remembering that international rates may well apply. Good-bye, Mr. Winni!"
"Ciao, Bess."
Friday, January 09, 2009
Out in the open
Well, thanks once again to the crack reporting team at The Onion, the feline-like animal is finally out of the Bloomingdale's Big Brown Bag--
When I first read this article, I have to admit I winced a bit. (Editor's note--winced, not minced.) My gay pride gets in the way of the joke every now and again, especially when someone who isn't gay is labeled gay as a way to discredit him or her or when "gay" is used as a substitute for "stupid" or "dumb." Not the case here, but . . . hey, wait a minute . . . .
Anyway, I got over it, much in the way I did when one of my female employees in Texas kept using the phrase, "That is so gay!" in front of me to drive home the point that she thought something was especially ridiculous, like her job, her school work, her husband, her mother, etc. I just thought to myself, "You are such a stupid skank!" and felt all the better for it.
Instead of getting my rather fabulous feathers in a ruffle, I focused on the things in the article that made me and several others I shared it with on Facebook laugh out loud--such as the reference to Dubya's overcompensating for his feelings of inadequacies "by carefully cultivat[ing] his image as a masculine, simple-minded, heterosexual male." Tee hee.
At least we're being honest about it now. Still, my favorite part has to be the characterization of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as a flaming gaddabout, sort of the Gelman of Official Washington.
But, please, to my hetero friends out there, Karl Rove is all yours. Haven't we gay people suffered enough with George W. as our poster boy for what happens when middle-aged Texas men lose their way late at night somewhere near the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer?
I can see it now: One night, the future president's Cadillac breaks down outside a club called Encounterz or maybe Dimensionz. A little drunk and disorderly, he is annoyed by the sound of the disco beat from within and heads toward the door to put a stop to it. But it is a siren's call. The crowd, recognizing a closet case when they see one, eggs him on, pushing him toward the dancefloor. In a haze of cigarettes and amyl nitrite, he feels compelled to move. He breaks into a fevered sweat, caught up in a dissociative whirl of mirror ball and tribal chanting. Suddenly he finds himself shirtless, with a tambourine in his hand, banging it wildly, and dancing dervishly. And in a few years time, the whole world suffers from the shame of his transgression.
Oh dear. I think I've just plagiarized Sandra Bernhard from Without You, I'm Nothing.
* * *
We want you as a new recruit: President Bush entertains the crowd, appearing with his old band, The Village People, during Houston Gay Pride 2004.
America's First Gay President Concludes Historic Second Term
Shocking I know!When I first read this article, I have to admit I winced a bit. (Editor's note--winced, not minced.) My gay pride gets in the way of the joke every now and again, especially when someone who isn't gay is labeled gay as a way to discredit him or her or when "gay" is used as a substitute for "stupid" or "dumb." Not the case here, but . . . hey, wait a minute . . . .
Anyway, I got over it, much in the way I did when one of my female employees in Texas kept using the phrase, "That is so gay!" in front of me to drive home the point that she thought something was especially ridiculous, like her job, her school work, her husband, her mother, etc. I just thought to myself, "You are such a stupid skank!" and felt all the better for it.
Instead of getting my rather fabulous feathers in a ruffle, I focused on the things in the article that made me and several others I shared it with on Facebook laugh out loud--such as the reference to Dubya's overcompensating for his feelings of inadequacies "by carefully cultivat[ing] his image as a masculine, simple-minded, heterosexual male." Tee hee.
At least we're being honest about it now. Still, my favorite part has to be the characterization of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as a flaming gaddabout, sort of the Gelman of Official Washington.
"Believe me, sister, he overcompensated with a capital 'compensated,'" Fleischer said. "But when the cameras stopped rolling and the podium was put away, he was just fabulous. We had a fabulous, fabulous time."I've always had my suspicions about Our Miss Fleischer (oddly cute but oh-so-evil), and I'm glad to finally have them confirmed in an official news source like The Onion.
But, please, to my hetero friends out there, Karl Rove is all yours. Haven't we gay people suffered enough with George W. as our poster boy for what happens when middle-aged Texas men lose their way late at night somewhere near the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer?
I can see it now: One night, the future president's Cadillac breaks down outside a club called Encounterz or maybe Dimensionz. A little drunk and disorderly, he is annoyed by the sound of the disco beat from within and heads toward the door to put a stop to it. But it is a siren's call. The crowd, recognizing a closet case when they see one, eggs him on, pushing him toward the dancefloor. In a haze of cigarettes and amyl nitrite, he feels compelled to move. He breaks into a fevered sweat, caught up in a dissociative whirl of mirror ball and tribal chanting. Suddenly he finds himself shirtless, with a tambourine in his hand, banging it wildly, and dancing dervishly. And in a few years time, the whole world suffers from the shame of his transgression.
Oh dear. I think I've just plagiarized Sandra Bernhard from Without You, I'm Nothing.
* * *We want you as a new recruit: President Bush entertains the crowd, appearing with his old band, The Village People, during Houston Gay Pride 2004.
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