CommuniKate: Blog Archives
January 04, 2008
Our State of Affairs is a Great State Fair
Though I was born in Buffalo, when I was ten we moved to Syracuse, “the home of the New York State Fair!” my mother chirped excitedly like some Central New York Booster on speed. I already hated summer fairs, having been dragged through the baby goat barn at the Erie County Fair. I always dreaded summer’s end, not because school was about to start up and I hadn’t lost ten pounds, but because the State Fair was about to begin.
That meant being unable to beg off attending, by claiming I was perfecting my jack-knife at the city pool. On thee hottest day, we would sit stuck in traffic, bare backs of legs stuck to the leatherette of our Ford Fairlane, park in an open scrub field, knowing that we would never see our car again, slog with other family pods to the long lines at the arching gates into a shadeless hell.
The fairgrounds were located next to the Bristol-Meyers plant and Crucible steel mill that everyone knew was dumping into Onondaga Lake. The annual spring regatta generally had the slowest times because no life-respecting coxswain wanted to win and get tossed into the lake. Supposedly the site has been eco-vacuumed, to make room for the Carousel Mall, but friends say that if you toss a cigarette butt, the parking lot will ignite. ‘Third eye’ takes on new meaning. That vision has prompted some local developers to expand and build “Destiny” a mall bigger than the Pentagon shaped mall in Minnesota.
On humid hot fair days the yellowish chemical air carried fried dough particulate from the Midway. The festival of junk food mocked the goody-two shoes Home Ec Pavilion. Even at ten, I pitied performers, squinting and sweating on the mainstage. Loser! Your career is over! Because of early gyroscopic, inner ear damage from spinning/falling down contests with my brothers, I hate rides. If you ever see a picture of me, hair blown back, in mid-Munch scream, elbows locked, it will be me on the stationary horse on the carousel. I loved the hostility of bumper cars, but that was just me blowing off steam.
All this to perhaps explain why I loathe Iowa. The Gateway to the Rectangular States. Not even three million people. All of them farmers who’ve got nothing better to do than pout if a candidate doesn’t have a meal at their house, wear their “I Heart Huckabee” button and pretend to be undecided so they can get face time on camera, and caucus endlessly.
The harvest is in and the fields are fallow. If they farm at all. The farm subsidy pyramid scam actually pays them not to plant. They feel terrible about it. Then when they’re done deciding the fate of the nation, the Children of the Corn State put on their mesh caps, hop in their giant mobile homes, at three bucks a gallon and head on down to some trailer parks for a few months on the Gulf. Jaw with their friends in the Iowa enclave about the sorry state of the world.
Hey, they make up stories about Manhattanites all the time. They hiss we are a Ssssssssanctuary City. We are Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, and the hotel room rates are too high. I resent America held hostage to Iowa. I hate the roller coaster ride of campaigns, especially because it starts in Iowa. Where are those bumper cars when I need them?
PS – Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons just like they don’t have gay people. I have it on the best of intelligence.
January 02, 2008
Happy 2008!
You’ll be happy to know that I have already broken my first New Year’s Resolution. I wanted to change my name to Plaxico Clinton, but my darling publicist nixed the idea. She’s all about the branding. Also my galpal was against it. And her name is Urvashi.
Some of you think I’d be better off changing my last name. Let’s hear it for those Americans freezing their caucuses off in Iowa for the sake of so-called democracy. Thank you. I wonder if Iowa goes into a deep depression on Friday when everybody decamps for other states. You know what? I don’t care.
We had our annual New Year’s Eve beachfire. Like bad-for-you snacks on Bowl Day, it’s a tradition. The winds were howling, the tide and surf were high, but the skies cleared a little before sunset and we went through with it. Thank god for duraflame logs. Two old Girl Scouts just fainted, but you try to lighting a fire in high winds.
We write down what we want to get rid of from the old year and toss it into the fire. Although the winds picked a couple lists up and blasted them down to Truro, we were able to tackle a couple of lists and get them into the fire. We were determined.
I burned up fear. I always do. Some say it’s an acronym for Forgetting Everything is All Right. Somewhere profoundly that might be true, but just to be safe I also burned up the Bush Administration and war. Let’s get this primary thing done and pick somebody already and get these monsters out of power.
I resolved that each one of you read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. It is a must read. Or listen to it on audiobooks. We did on our drive back to NYC and almost ran over a couple of mini-Coopers. Sorry. Get it. Read it. We’ll discuss.
Happy New Year!!
December 14, 2007
I Don’t Heart Huckabee
For my high school graduation, I asked for and received a doctor’s supervised diet. After the weigh-in and the weekly shot of “vitamins”, my doctor, who was later disbarred for amphetamine abuse, gave me a thought for the week. One week his homily was about the flames of hell. He told me that they burned very verily hot because of all the fat.
People have a grudging respect for Bush because he’s been able to maintain his weight for seven years. That’s all he’s been able to maintain. Remember all the hooting at the pictures of Bill Clinton in his jogging shorts? Now that he has a perfect body mass index, he is internationally beloved.
Primary voters can say what they want, but the reason they like Huckabee is that he lost one hundred pounds. You can never be too thin or too insane. On foreign and economic policy he is a lightweight, but the spirit of a fat guy is still in him. Not Santa. No. Jerry Falwell might have blowed up real good and died, but his ideas are alive and well in the reverend Huckabee.
Forget the homophobia once removed of the debate on gay marriage. The rev goes right for the gays. Though it pains him to say it, he must say that homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle. He’s dragging out that claptrap about love the sinner: hate the sin. And don’t kid yourself, he hates them both, the sinner and the sin. For him, quarantining people with HIV is not a matter of homophobia. It’s a matter of public health and safety. Don’t do me any favors, former fat boy.
One undecided voter in Iowa said that Huckabee lost her vote when he scoffed that there is no global warming in Iowa. She said they used to have snow, now they just have ice storms. Her business, Bees of Iowa, has been harmed by the global warming.
Although I am a secular fundamentalist, tonight before I go to sleep, I am going to eat two Twinkies and pray for a Huckabee Colony Collapse.
November 19, 2007
Gender Card – Poke her – Old Maid - War
Coming out for Hillary Clinton in one-on-one or small group situations still reminds me of coming out as a lesbian. I’m the lesbian, not Hillary, contrary to the sledge-hammer innuendos of Ann Coulter. Though we wish the best for everyone, Hillary may not be a lesbian. And that’s okay.
And, is it just me, or does Ann look a lot like the young, recumbent and recently unwrapped King Tut?
Approaching the declaration for Hillary is like approaching that triple-solcow moment in a skating routine. Have I got the strength, the torque, the momentum, the sequins to come out to this person? Since I don’t want my inner Dick Button murmuring disappointedly, “Aw, she only did a double,” I declare my orientation for Hillary and prepare myself for the inevitable Hilla-phobia blowback.
The other night at my study group dinner, it happened again. About eight of us meet monthly to discuss some dense, progressive policy book we all claim to have read. I’m generally seated at the kid’s table. Before we got into the book discussion, we were doing our usual recap of recent political events. Several members always end up moaning and thudding their foreheads on the table in the ‘dovening for democracy’ portion of the evening.
When we got to discussing the presidential campaign, my dear partner asked everyone to go around the table and announce who they were for, and cruelly looked at me to start. I took what I knew would be my last bite of mushroom risotto for the evening and declared I was for Hillary.
A fine expectorated Chianti mist was settling from my friend’s mouth, as she bleated in horror, “Why?”
“Other than the fact that I think she would make Bill O’Really’s head blow up and that she is the most qualified for the job. . ,” I started. “WHAT has she done?” my apoplectic friend silent screamed. I continued, “I support her just so that I can get into fights with people about the appalling levels of sexism in the world,” and daubed a small bit of mushroom off my neighbor’s cuff.
Full disclosure: at the gym I’ve been listening to the audiotape of Susan Falludi’s The Terror Dream on my IPOD. Falludi reports so extensively and bloodlessly on the uses of 9.11 to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage and maternity that she has gotten hysterical, vicious reviews which prove her point exactly. The men at the gym seem genuinely unsettled by my mirrored glowering at them.
It was as if I were one of those Dixie Chicks of Bridge and had held up a hand-made sign at an awards ceremony. Talk about gender card. I started to lay them out on the table. In South Carolina, a woman, perhaps Ann Coulter’s grandmother, called Hillary a bitch and John McCain didn’t cut her off. He has, no doubt, heard or even said worse. Maureen Dowd never met a woman she liked, making her a worthy NY Times columnist. Katie Couric can’t catch a break.
My friend rebutted from east, west, north and south. Perhaps I overtricked, when I endplayed her with, “Why do you hate yourself so much?” I’m not proud of it. Let the conversation continue.
November 13, 2007
Writers Strike
Please don’t tell anyone I’m writing. Let’s just say I’m journaling and then file-sharing. Otherwise there will be a huge inflatable rat outside my apartment.
Some of you have reminded me that I’ve said that a campaign should only be six weeks long and that we’d be a better country if we used the fourteen billion saved to forgive all student loans. You also remind me, rather testily, that I’ve said that in those six weeks the only thing on television should be politics. And the air time would be free. Those of you who have run through your TIVOed backlog think that we are getting dangerously close to such a time. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t want my fella writers to be maligned.
This weekend in NYC, the stagehands went on strike and Broadway pretty much shut down. The traffic was horrific. No cabs were to be found. The New York Times covered the story of one family visiting from Virginia. Unable to see Monty Python’s Spamalot, they instead went to St. Patricks Cathedral. It was a natural substitution in their minds. No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Especially not Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer who were able to vote in favor of Michael Mukasey, who wouldn’t say torture if his mouth was full of bits of his own front teeth. “This country does not torture people,” George groused recently, “we outsource that to other countries,” he did not add.
This from our Sadist-in-Chief. And I beg to differ. I’ve experienced sleep deprivation. Listening to him try to talk is like taking blows to the head. FEMA waterboarded New Orleans and more.
I’ve got to stop writing now. I made a new resolution for my sixtieth year: I’m doing that four hour work-day regimen. I’ve got about three minutes left on my meter. Support the workers/writers! Entertain yourselves!
October 30, 2007
Pre-Collision Intelligence
On long flights, I like to watch movies with the sound off. When I get home, I watch with the sound on and compare the actual story with the story I’ve made up. I was so wrong about About a Boy. I hope they never show Snakes on a Plane on a plane.
I also like to watch muted ads to try to figure out what product is being shilled. Whenever I see an actor friend in a commercial, I have a clue, because she claims she specializes in the lower gastro-intestinal tract. So that doesn’t count.
During the World Series, [note to Red Sox: when you sober up, do not even think of hiring A-Rod, he’s a spoiled trouble making diva] between the interconnected beer and erectile dysfunction ads, I laughed every time that woman jogger ran into a parked car. Even when she got up, dusted herself off and slammed into the car again, I laughed. I still don’t know if the ad is for running shoes or lasik surgery, but my girlfriend is shocked at my low threshold for the pain of others. I thought I knew what the unsettling “pre-collision intelligence” ad was about, but it actually has something to do with a car.
Full disclosure: I suffer from the condition known as “pre-collision intelligence” and I wish there were a pill for it. It would have to be the size of a direct TV dish. When I’ve forced myself to watch the train wreck that is the president do a press conference, I have kept the sound off. He seems to have a little pal planted in the front row that he smirks at, like “Can you believe they’re going for this crap again? Whooee!”
First, is it my imagination or is my presidential profiling accurate in assessing that the mysterious hair area 41 between the presidential brows is growing? The area, on others known as ‘the third eye’ has a thatch of hair that now melds into his eyebrows making for a uni-brow that looks like a very wooly caterpillar. It’s going to be a long nuclear winter.
Let’s review: when we have weapons of mass destruction, they are called nuclear weapons; when other countries have nuclear weapons, they are called weapons of mass destruction. Everybody has caught on to the discrepancy. Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Putin, even Castro’s brother are laughing in our faces. We are the Rodney Dangerfield of countries.
As the Republican candidates sink further into a swamp pre-owned by the Democrats and now in foreclosure, my pre-collision intelligence tells me that while boy George jaw jaw jaws about working with other countries to spread democracy, he is fixing to bomb Iran, declare a state of emergency, and a third term. My friends think I’m being paranoid, but watch for the developing silly gism of: Katrina is to California just as Iraq is to Iran. Don’t just watch their lips move. Unmute. “California shows how much we learned from our mistakes in Katrina. [especially if we’re rescuing white people] We’ve learned so much from our mistakes in Iraq. We’re ready for Iran.”
He declared a first term and nobody stopped him. You tell me why not a third?
October 21, 2007
ENDA don't MENDA
On a scale of one to Betty White, the Ellen DeGeneres Iggy Custody Story, unlike the off-the-charts Michael Vick dog-fight gambling story, is about a seven. And this is not just me talking. The home office has run the story through a rigorous, impartial, sampling process that included the Mitt Romney “Irish Setter in the Dog Carrier on Top of the Family Car Going on Ten Hour Ride to the Family Vacation” Story. They’ve been very thorough. The needle on the meter never even brushed eight.
Thanks to YouTube, I caught up on Ellen’s story. When I first heard about the dogfight, the cynical me wondered if it was Sweeps Week. This despite the fact that I have been treating my cyno-malaise with drugs and hot rocks massage. On day #3 of the saga, Ellen delivered a deftly impassioned call for acceptance and forgiveness and let’s move on dog org opening monologue. She mentioned the death threats and violence toward the Mutts and Moms Dog Rescue Shelter and said flatly, “It’s not okay.”
Ellen’s reasoned plea for everyone to sit and stay, could be a blueprint for warring factions everywhere. Condoleezza Rice who is doing the traditional, end of term, desperate, diplomatic shuttling for a Mideast solution might have learned a thing or two. I hope Condi has Tivo.
Watching the intensity of the first day, when Ellen broke down, I marvelled that she had shared none of this intense emotion when she came out, lost her sitcom, and surely struggled with the consequences of coming out. But that’s a lot to ask and really none of my beeswax.
And, full disclosure: I am not a dog person. When I was three, a big German shepherd jumped in my stroller and scared the bejesus out of me. A year later I saw a Boxer tear another dog’s ear off in a dusty, adrenalized swirl in my otherwise placid neighborhood. Dogs know I’m not a dog person, and each one tries to prove that she is not like those other dogs.
For the last few months I have been advocating that the genuine outrage dog lovers and the people who love them evince in these stories should be harnessed for other events people don’t seem to care about at all. I tried to get Nancy Pelosi to use, “Puppies don’t have healthcare,” to override W’s veto of SCHIP.
Ironically, while this Iggy top story rules the week, in Washington DC, GLBTs are trying to pass ENDA, the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. Or actually, they are trying NOT to pass ENDA. How weird is that? The bill had languished around for years under the slobbying efforts of HRC, but suddenly gained a new leash on life, when Rep. Barney Frank tried to get it out of committee, minus the provision for ending discrimination against our Ts, transsexuals. And why now? I bet you can get ENDA with a T when W is gone.
On a scale of one to Renee Richards, it’s not okay.
Three hundred and two organizations have signed an endorsement to re-introduce transsexual protection to the bill. Wisconsin’s fearless Rep.Tammy Baldwin motioned to put trans protection back in the bill.
It’s a wicked mess. How about “Labradoodles need rights too!”?
September 27, 2007
The Unfortunate Fall
As you must remember, we’ve got an extra week before we fall ahead. Although we gain an hour of sleep, we have to start wearing miner helmets to work in the morning. The Bushleaguers say the time change was to save energy, but I think the red twizzler lobby is big. I bet they got daylight savings time extended to the week after Halloween so that the kids would have an extra hour to trick or treat. The dental lobby must also have been in on the deal.
The other morning, as we were reading the paper, my dear Indian girlfriend announced, as if I’d asked, that she had decided what she was going to be for Halloween. I was trying to make sense of the word jumble that is now a Maureen Dowd column and thought for a minute my galpal was talking about reincarnation. I asked, “What are you coming back as?”
She seemed irked that I had not been thinking along with her. “No, for Halloween. I’ve decided I’m going to be an Unconflicted White Man.” The straight was understood. And this year she gets an extra hour for it. Not that they need it.
In the midst of wartime, the UWM lives in complete peace with himself. Donald Rumsfeld demurs that he is ‘out of the loop’ on the war because he is starting an institute to restore civility to civic participation. Dick Cheney chugs along as head of the fourth branch of government, the Execulative. In the Vanity Fair issue, which finally chronicles the media goring of Al Gore, the gung-ho war ho Christopher Hitchens, blithely describes his spa makeover.
Some nights I lie awake in bed, jangled awake from a twizzler sugar high, and think, “They must have some remorse for what they’ve done.” It’s all pure projection on my part.
In China, when officials err, they have the decency to kill themselves. In the US, they go on victory lap, book tours. The rollout for Alan Greenspan’s preemptive saveface-book could be a model for a well-planned and brilliantly executed exit strategy. The retired head of the Federal Reserve was around like a bad penny – Jim Lehrer, Jon Stewart, Charlie Rose. The big party spoiler was Naomi Klein’s book, Shock Doctrine, about as popular in the economic discourse as an unclaimed backpack on a bus. If I Did It v. You Know You Did It.
The If-I-Didiot-in-Chief won’t move off Moveon.org. Somehow the Petraeus/Betray-us [and he did] ad with a really good/bad pun has set off the Grandmaster of UWM. Because absolutely everything else is in order in his world, the Nicknamer-in-Chief has to fixate on this ad.
Admittedly it is “Sticks and Stones Week” here in Manhattan. Whenever the U.N. Security Council meets in mid-town, the city becomes a parking lot. And it’s as if the parking lot is used as a playground for recess by a local elementary school. In addition to the screeching good fun of “Red Rover, Red Rover let Karl Come Over, He Can’t, He’s Spending Time with the Family” [which is secret code for “going to advise the Giuliani campaign” – hey, they didn’t get rid of all the gay translators], there is plenty of good old fashioned name calling.
‘Evil one’, ‘nut job’ ‘fruitbat’ and more epithets echo throughout the canyons. Good thing the Red Sox aren’t in town. Good thing what’s his name isn’t on the radio anymore. Oh yeah. Don Anus.
September 14, 2007
TGI9.12
Thank god it’s 9.12. This morning we commemorate that morning six years ago when we all woke up, if we had slept, or slept fitfully, and for a waking breath everything was the same. Coffee, paper, jump in the shower. Then, say it isn’t so, it hit. Despite groggy hope, we remembered what had happened the day before, 9.11.2001, our national Alive Day.
Nine-eleven, is now a very real quatro-syllabic number, a fulcrum of before and after, that second when the tide does shift. The day was excruciating this year, the new longest day of the year. The day was tropically muggy and on TV all day the military junta was laying out the fantasy league so-called surge. A dirge.
In other years, before the anniversary of 9.11, I had prepared, steeled myself to the sadness, made plans to be with a neighbor whose firefighter husband had been killed. This time, like soldiers in Iraq, I was unarmored; I had let my guard down. By 2p, I was restless and sad, claustrophobic in our apartment across the hall from new neighbors. I could not read one more tediously brilliant article about how bad it is. The war, the sub-prime mortgage rolling disaster, the trifecta of hypocrisy – Foley, Vitter, Craig. Such as.
That was when I remembered a small notice in the Sunday paper of a memorial service for Molly Ivins, at the Ethical Culture Society Hall scheduled for 4p on, of course, 9.11.
Never have I been happier to go to a memorial service. The soggy, sad crowd slogged in while a montage of photos of Molly – a long leggy sailor; smiling aunt hoisting a gleeful niece; wide-mouth, head back laugher; placard-carrying, hell-raising protestor; wheelchair bound, bald and mugging in a FOX news cap, receiving an award – looped on a screen onstage.
Calvin Trillin, Maya Angelou, John Leonard, Gail Collins, Kathleen Chalfant, and Lou Dubose, spoke of Molly as friend, writer, editor, story-teller, river rafter, partier, bawdy Texas babe and activist. They all quoted her hilarious lines. It was she who, Cassandra-like in The Texas Observer had warned of being bushwhacked by the Shrub from Texas. She wanted to live to see George Bush out of office, but she died from the breast cancer she had lived with for years.
There are memorials and there are memorials. As I shuffled out into quagmire of New York, I felt re-energized by the buoyant life of Molly Ivins, my co-columnist at The Progressive magazine for twelve years. She practiced the power of political satire and activism. Thank goodness for Molly Ivins.
August 31, 2007
Restless Craig Syndrome
As Senator Larry Craig revealed on the police tape, (and why was that police tape revealed?) he is not gay and he doesn't do that sort of thing. No, no, no. Obviously, he suffers from restless leg syndrome. And the side effects of the new drug he is on are an increase in gambling and sex addiction. I bet he will use the RLS Defense for that toe-tapping.
August 30, 2007
Dog Days of Summer
Have you tried the three dimensional thesaurus? You probably have been using it for years, but I just recently discovered it. To find a synonym, you type in the word you need some others for, press “enter” and faster than even Google can congratulate itself, a very space age, beautiful floating word map appears like an answer in an upended eight ball.
The 3-D thesaurus looks like a word tinker toy with the key word on the center sprocket with spokes to other words. But I think there might be lead paint on it. I already had to ditch my Lead Barbie by Mattel. That kind of word-centric architectural construct is what it would take to diagram the recent events of the summer. I’ve tried a linear description to make sense of it, but it looks like one of my grade school sentence diagrams with adverbs dangling off adverbs like some mutant creeping vine.
The word at the center of the construct you’d need to Venn this late August is “dog”. As in dog days of summer. Off that would be the Michael Vick dogfighting/gambling spoke. Barry Bonds must be relieved to have the spotlight off him. Vick admitted running dogfights and inhumane treatment of dogs in his care. In a dyslexic moment of atonement, he said he’d found god. He could go to jail and his days of dogleg right quarterbacking for the Atlanta Falcons seem to be numbered. He would have received no time if he had just modeled himself after another football player and killed his ex-wife. He might even have gotten a book deal.
The understandable revulsion over the canine mistreatment suggests that news coverage of the war, floods, scandals should focus on dogs to get people riled up. Dogs are dying in Darfur! Dogs don’t have basic healthcare! Dogs were disenfranchised in Florida! The dogs of war are fighting a losing cause in Iraq! It seems to get people’s attention. Mitt Romney’s family vacation saga and mistreatment of the family’s beloved Irish setter would be a way into the story of his former Idaho campaign manager, the foot-tapping, non-gay Republican senator, Larry Craig.
Just as the Dick Cheney Buckshot Lunch incident had lost its absolute last shred of funny, along came Craig’s list of hilarious hypocrisy. During June, AKA Gay Pride Month, Senator Craig was picked up for lewd behavior in a bathroom at the airport in Minneapolis, the site of next year’s Republican Convention, if they have one. In our house, we think Dick Cheney is just going to declare himself the candidate. Larry Craig’s version of Dick’s Cheney’s famous line, “I just had a beer at lunch,” is “I’ve got a wide stance in a bathroom and my foot might have grazed the officer in the stall next to mine.” Ooftah! P.S. Larry’s drag name is “Miss Construe”.
Another spoke off “dog” would be the Alberto Gonzalez resignation. Although he submitted his resignation on a Friday, the story was released during Vick’s Monday press conference. Gonzalez, described as “the dogged defender of Bush”, wrote the rules of torture, some involving dogs on leashes, and was Bush’s lapdog at the Justice Department. Gonzalez’s hangdog announcement was in contrast to Karl Rove’s. With his master smiling his unconditional love behind him Rove, top dog, announced he was leaving to spend more time with his family. Which was last seen running from the house. Chinese Dog Food inspectors at least have the decency to kill themselves when things go wrong. Rove took a victory lap on the Sunday morning Kennel Club shows. He said he was like Moby Dick. The Moby is silent.
Your president George Bush once said that his is a lonely job, that at the end of the day, all that’s left is him and his little black dog Barney. Where is Laura? Has she left the family to spend more time in politics?
August 15, 2007
You LOGO, Girl!
Could I possibly be more jaded? The Democratic presidential candidates made time in their multi-formatted debating/campaigning/fundraising schedules to debate on, as the other cable-anchorites called it, “LOGO, the gay-themed cable channel.” And I was all ho-hum.
It took me an ungrateful minute, but that was awesome! Holy Yes I Am, Batgirl! It’s 2007 and there’s a ding dang gay channel and the Dems debated on it. We took our rightful place with YouTube questioners, blogging conventioneers, whooping AFL-CIOers on steaming hot Soldiers Field. Next stop: The Food Channel. Would you ban transfats in Oreos? Discuss.
Despite dire, bogus FOX warnings that it’s a known fact that candidates who align themselves with gay groups don’t do well in elections, develop hardened facial boils and a propensity for lattes, those otherwise chickenshit-can’t-defeat a wiretapping-bill-before-recess Democrats did due diligence and appeared on LOGO. They did not return our calls. Their lowly staff minions, often closeted gay preppies, didn’t sneer “As if. . . ,” at the invitation to participate. They saved that for the Republicans.
Not only did the Dems debate, they struggled with their answers. It was painful/fun to watch them twitch and spin their desire to get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, their love for their gay friends and family, their support for workplace non-discrimination and, then try to square all that good will with their logic-defying lack of support for gay marriage. We’re used to the liberal, secular version of love the sinner, hate the sin. I do hope some straight folks were watching. Some candidates, okay Hillary Clinton, seemed much more cautious and aware that anything she said would be an ominous tagline in a Republican campaign ad in about ten minutes.
We’ll see if the candidates are as gay-forthcoming in non-gay formats, but I wish one of the gay inquisitors, [we had gay inquisitors! Oh how our place at the table has turned!] had asked them if they thought heterosexuality was a choice or biological. I didn’t mind Bill Richardson’s answer at all. I’m pro-choice all the way. Being a lesbian is the choicest choice a gal can make.
As I redden at my own jaded, ho-humming this morning, I’m receiving excited e-mails about the departure of Karl Rove, who announced that he is leaving his post as presidential advisor to spend more time with his family. Which was last seen running screaming from the house. Some posit hopeful scenarios that finally the Dems are going to nail him. Oh please. They are hapless. And Dick Cheney is still running things, getting ready to declare martial law and his pre-emptive presidency. Karl Rove is figuring out how to spin that scenario right now. I think I’m beginning to identify the source of all my jade.
But that night on LOGO was still gob-smacking awesome. And not just because it wasn’t a rerun of Prisicilla, Queen of the Desert.
July 20, 2007
Hairspray
Bear Week is over in Ptown. So if you go down to the woods today, you’re going to be on your own. I am one sad Lesbruin.
I took to my bed and that’s how I happened to watch Rene Zellweger in one of those Bridget Jones Diarrheas, in her real-life, form-fitting fat suit pre-dating Edna Turnblatt in Hairspray and Eddie Murphy in his Norbit suit, so offensive it lost him the Oscar. Hey, it was raining, Netflix doesn’t come out this far and our one movie theater in town has been turned into a Crepe Place which I attacked on Bastille Day just because. And since when did weight gain mean acting? Thanks a lotta, Mr. Lamotta.
Since it was so excruciating to watch Zellweger/Jones desperately seeking suitors, I flicked between her and Tom Cruise, the sofa-hopping Scientologist, in The Minority Report, a sci fi flick in which Tom plays a DC cop in a pre-crime unit. Based on intel from pre-cogs floating in a sensory deprivation tank, Tom arrests people before they commit a crime. How to try them if they didn’t commit a crime? Now you know where Gonzo got the idea for Guantanamo.
That filmic afternoon gave me the idea to write a review of the trans-genre Hairspray, the-movie- based-on-the-Broadway-play-based-on-the-movie, [Dramamine drip, please] before I leave the country for ten days. . But I refuse to watch it on a blueberry crepe, so I decided I would pre-review it. Pre-reviewing is a time honored tradition among right wing conservatives. They write reviews without the inconvenience of actually having to see the movie. Think pre-crime.
I could hardly get across the huge picket line. Kidding. The Washington Blade has called for a movie boycott because of John Travolta’s membership in the “Church” of Scientology. The Blade said that because of L Ron Hubbard’s rhubarbs of opposing homosexuality and of funding reparative therapies for gays, that we should boycott the movie. I remember no call to boycott The Minority Report, or I never would have watched. From what I remember of the play, the KKK, not gays, should boycott based on Tracey Turnblatt’s passion for integration. She would be undeterred by the Supreme Court’s back to segregation decision.
In most press junkets interviews, Travolta has said that he is not playing a gay character and Scientology is not homophobic. Therefore it is so. He said he wanted the challenge of playing Edna so that the audience would just see Edna, a vulnerable, voluptuous housewife gone to flesh, not John Travolta being amazing. And unlike Rene Bridget, you wouldn’t have to worry about the long term effects of yo-yo dieting. She ate so many yo-yos. And Travolta pointed out that he was not like Robin “he’s such a bear” Williams playing a guy playing Mrs. Doubtfire who actually looked like Glenn Close in the Greta Cammemeyer story. Nor Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. You could tell Hoffman, Williams and Travolta think they make better women than women ever do. Mary Martin in Peter Pan was my first butch role model.
The whole pre-pre-review process made me have one of those trans-anxiety attacks where you practically have to get out a chalk board and diagram: Okay FTM, that’s female to male, Mary Martin, flies out long, and MTF that’s male to female, Travolta, does a quick in and out pattern. I hate my pronoun slurring embarrassment despite the patient, amused reassurance of my trans friends. That and my ursine grief or the fact that I have to go pack for India, made me so tired, I just decided to watch Napoleon Dynamite for the nth time. I’m learning his “Vote for Pedro” dance. FYI: you can’t do that Saturday Night Fever disco thing in moonboots.
July 10, 2007
"If you go down to the woods today. . ."
Let’s review: if it’s three let it be. I just had to pull up a few sprouting milkweeds by the side of the house, didn’t I? Gloveless, of course. It’s not a rip-roaring case of poison ivy. It’s more slow-moving, popping up along the veins of my right hand, like it’s on a lazy summer rafting trip. Who knew I rested my face on my hand so much? I’m working the Caladryl, getting everyone’s trusted remedies, and bandaging where appropriate. Comparatively, it’s a lovely first world problem.
If, however, those three are one, as in triune, as in God, well, I can’t let that be. God’s Prod, the Widow Ratzinger, that old Prada-wearing Devil, can’t let it be either. He is bringing back the Latin Mass. And not a moment too soon. No more hootenanny masses with guitar strumming “Let it Be.” I for one could not be happier. When we were little, while my dear brothers were all trying to learn their few altarboy Latin lines, I learned to say the whole Mass in Latin, do the hand signals, light incense and swing a censerium. I am so ready. Oh wait, I forgot. I’m a woman. Never mind.
Pope Ed “Good Driver” Rimer, also issued the top ten commandments of driving: Thou shalt not use thy cellphone whilst driving. Thou shalt not flip thy bird. Thou shalt not make assumptions about a fellow driver’s mother’s genetic lineage. At least I think that’s what they said. Again the Latin. What’s next? Bringing back s/m martyr worship and second degree relic fetishizing? I personally am looking forward to buying a couple of indulgences. Although I guess I could just buy some carbon offsetting points and go right to heaven.
It’s Bear Week here in PTown! They’re lots of fun, hairier, larger, and way less tweaked than the Circuit Party boys. The only downside of the week is that it’s hell on the drains. Upside: their pool parties are a blast. They run water down a turquoise waterslide, send salmon up the slide and the bears bat them away. I hope this year they will make me an honorary She-bear. Remember, don’t keep any foodstuffs in your tent.
Speaking of She-Bears, I’ve decided to throw my support to Hillary Clinton. I actually notified the LGBT for Hillary people and was told that I needed to get security clearance and I haven’t heard anything back. It’s taking so long, I’m a little worried. The problem is that there is way too much tape on me in the public record. I can’t just refuse to turn over information. Who do you think I am? Dick Cheney?
I’m just the kind of support Hillary needs. I support her despite the flak I am taking for it at home and at dinner parties. I support her despite her despites. That she voted for the war. That she took three days to clearly rebut Peter “homosexuality is immoral” Pace. That she is mush mouthed on gay marriage. That it will once again be a woman’s job to do clean-up after the boys.
Perhaps her people have heard that so far I only have seven “Top Ten Reasons I Support Hillary Clinton.” She has the most experience. Yes, she’s a hawk, but she’s our hawk. And she comes with a pale male. She will cause Bill O’Really and Maureen Dowd to blow up. Only women bleed. At this point I’d rather be screwed over by a woman. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, (sorry) “You go to the polls with the candidate you have, not the one you wish you had.”
If I don’t get clearance, I will be the head of the distaff “She-Bears for Hillary 2008” We’ll have great pool parties. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to shake my paw.
July 02, 2007
Curb Your Mitt!
It’s a known fact that there is nothing more difficult than trying to do political organizing in a resort town. You call for an evening meeting and the response ranges from “And miss the sunset?” to “Sorry, low tide, goin’ clamming.” In that spirit, it’s hard to get oneself, i.e. me, organized to answer the blog gotta make the donuts imperative. Especially when the day lilies are giving it their orange- alert all one day at a time. I just don’t want to miss it.
Dear blog-reader, stuck at your computer, I’m sure you are hearing blah blog blah, the dog ate my homework. But then, speaking of dogs, along comes Mitt Romney, and I practically broke a nail getting to the keyboard. Seems the terminally handsome Mormon, [that’s two Ms] was driving the family to a summer vacay, and the car was packed to the gills. It’s a new fuel economy thing. The family dog was apparently treated as a Monty Python after dinner mint. Mitt couldn’t possibly fit it in the car.
So Mitt, who is making a bid to be chief caregiver of our nation, had the bright idea to put the beloved Irish setter in a car tote and put the tote on top of the car for the ten hour ride. Neither the dog nor Mitt was wearing an astronaut diaper. The terrified dog terrified got car sick, or it could have been unrecalled dog food from a certain large soon to be Olympic host country. Mitt’s best friend let go a stream of dog poop so voluminous, they had to pull over to a car wash, hose down and resume their trip. The dog was still up top.
The story has been in the local Cape Cod papers and I can tell you that Mitt has lost the dog-owner vote. The incident has even cut into the man-on-dog sex homophobe theorist vote. The car wash bloc is also a bit swayed. The story does not have as many comedy possibilities as Old Number Two shooting his friend in the face, but good enough on a slow summer news day.
It’s circuit party week here in Ptown – when guys from all over the country come to town to party on down for four days. The testosterone levels have totally cancelled out the estro-swarm of Memorial Day weekend when all the young college girl grads from all over the Northeast come to town. But I swear to god, I think I saw Vlad and George drive George’s Dad’s cigarette boat up to the pier and hop on the all night orgy party boat before it left for a night of carousing on the very high seas. I’ll let you know what I find out.
I’m off to help the talented people at my summer place of employ – The Crown and Anchor – get our float ready for the Independence Day parade. Each summer we have a Co-Dependency Float. There’s nothing on it. We pull it ourselves. And en route we ask caring questions of parade watchers. “Do you need a sweater? You look cold. Here take my sweater.” Maybe this summer we’ll wear Co-Depends and ask Mitt to join us. Once a Gland Marshall, always a gland marshal. Don’t forget to pack the dog.
June 13, 2007
Incoming!
Psssst! I won’t tell you what I had to do to get it, but I finally secured the secret formula for the Gay Bomb! And just in time for Gay Pride Month! Okay, I’ll tell. It involved a bunch of tequila and a recent visit with some fly-girls from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. That’s all the freedom of information you’re getting.
Apparently the military has a program to develop non-lethal weapons: e.g. mega-ton tasers, stare-downs from Mr. Karen Hughes, what not. Non-lethal weapons are so thoughtful, if a tad late for thousands of Iraqis. The Air Force requested $7.5 million from the Pentagon to develop a so-called “gay bomb” which would release a chemical aphrodisiac to turn enemy forces gay, causing them to become more interested in sex with one another than in fighting.
Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain the formula, also proposed at the time by the Air Force, to make bees angry enough to attack enemy forces. It was not clear if those attacks would come while the enemy lovers were having sex. Which is just plain mean. As you know, the Air Force Academy is located near Utah, the Beehive [not hair] State There must have been concern that the bees would flee their collapsed colonies, illegally migrate across borders and attack some yummy Mormon sister-wives.
The Gay Bomb proposal, per usual, has nothing to do with women. Because it takes a bit more than an incoming canister of eau de Tom Ford, a soupcon of Rufus Wainwright qua Judy Garland and some K elixir to flip women soldiers into lesbians. Hint: if you leaflet U.S. women with promises to pay their full student loans and faster than you can say “Private Benjamin”, you’ll have a lean, mean fighting lezbeen machine. Turns out everyone loves multipocketed camo pants.
News of the Gay Bomb had surfaced back in 2004 and has resurfaced in tandem with the renewed political need for a gay wedge [AKA get-out-the-base-vote] issue. Tired old Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is the new Gay Marriage. It is so 2004. And so desperate.
The tide might be turning. Under the carpet bombing of “I Love Paris in the Slammer” coverage, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the contract for General Peter “Homosexuality is Immoral” Pace would not be renewed, though he could still pitch for the Yankees. In our house, we believe that Paris Hilton works for Karl Rove.
Military recruitment goals are not being met. Five rabidly Catholic Supreme Men who never served in a war, ruled that pregnant women must deliver children [AKA soldiers], even if it is a threat to their health or it is against their doctor’s counsel. It’s a perfect storm of a long war. Would somebody ask Dick “Granpa” Cheney where I can find some aluminum tubes for my Gay Bombs? I’ll need some rainbow decals too. I want to lob one into Congress. Then the Supreme Court. Not the White House. Maybe Pierre, South Dakota.
May 19, 2007
Ding Dong
I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Jerry Falwell had died. I had just landed from a cross-country flight and was in a taxi, trying to preserve the pleasure of a six hour newsless cocoon, when I heard on the radio, “delays still on the upper span of the George Washington, the Nets won one at home, and Reverend Jerry Falwell is dead.” My cabbie did not know the words of “Ding, dong the witch is dead,” and seemed mystified when I abruptly stopped my caterwauling rendition and apologized to him for the insult to those good women.
As more of our homophobic nemesi die, and not a moment too soon, I don my Miss Gay Manners pince-nez and humbly recommend one gay etiquette guideline about how best to respond. The old, gray-haired, white guys with the surnames “Reverend,” “Pope” and “Billy” are aging out, dying off, happily
disproving the theory, “He’s just too mean to die.” Like George Bush, they are all concerned about their legacy, and seem to have left sons and scions, mini-me’s
of meanness. Before the next gen of ex-gay proselytizers assume the position, let’s have a moment of silence.
Okay that’s enough.
Reactions to the news of Falwell’s death varied wildly. Some went scurrilous.
Faster than you can say Tinky-Winky, those reactions were quickly spotted in the deep blogosphere. One suspects they were pre-written. Apparently everyone had archived the video of Jerry rocketing down the water slide at the old PTL park. The “What would Jesus Douche?” comments were unnecessary.
Some went nice. Those columns were granted syndicated sanction, as Falwell’s
former foes tried mightily to say the good things they had learned from jousting with Jer. We can love the sinner and hate the sin better than you can any day, etc. They seemed in their own polite way to be trying to adhere to the caution of Moms Mabley, “You have to say good things about the dead. He’s dead. Good.”
Though they tried mightily, their comments were quickly countered by the army of Jerry’s kids claiming that their dear leader didn’t hate gay people. No, see, he was trying to save us from acting on our gayness and going straight to hell. Except for Anne Coulter. She hates everything.
Moderation, as always, is key in these situations. Before the whooping cries of relief and glee, the backslapping congratulations, the celebratory bonfires, I recommend a three day waiting period. This is a quiet time perhaps used for purchasing rainbow bunting. This valuable cooling-off period, seldom used when purchasing a gun in Virginia, for example, is essential to avoid embarrassment. What if you are in the midst of a dancing-on-his-grave performance piece and get word that miraculously Jerry has come again, rolled back the stone, seen his enormous bulbous shadow, and it’s 73 more years of gay-bashing? What then?
But by my calculation, three days have passed and I just finished blow-drying my papier-mâché Tinky-Winky with the big Jerry Falwell head! Good.
May 16, 2007
All's Falwell that ends. . .
We are holding down the partying until three days pass,
just in case Jer comes back rolls back the stone,
sees his shadow and it's 73 more years of torturing gay people.
So no singing of Ding dong the Witch is Dead
[which is an insult to those good women] just yet.
And at the party, no Teletubbies will be harmed.
May 12, 2007
Tant P U.
In France, Monsieur Sarkozy defeated Madame Royal and I’m trying not to read into that defeat the defeat of Mme. Hillary Clinton. Just in case I was having an easy time keeping them separate, along came Maureen Dowd to re-link the two. Apparently Maureen, who never met a powerful woman she didn’t like to slice and dice, had been going a little too heavy with her Hillary-hating, so went to France to find a stunt double. Voila Royal!
No one has ever damned a woman with such faint praise so cleverly as that nutty New York Times redhead who, when it comes to keeping women down, answers her own book title question, “Are Men Necessary?” To keep women down? No need, answers Maureen, I’ll do it for you.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the feisty, energetic son of an immigrant which entitles him to call other immigrants scum, wants to reinvigorate France’s economy and restore its alliance with America. To do the economy part he has to get the giant airbus of their economy off the ground and that means getting the French off the 35 hours- a-work-week dole. The French voted not only for a longer work week but also for le petite’s Napoleonic manliness. And you thought only Kansans voted against their own interests.
Obviously the Starbucks Enterprise has landed in France and has caffeinated everyone into ma vie en venti sized guilt. When history is written, it will be revealed that Starbucks was a corporate conspiracy to get everyone to work longer hours. I have friends who wearily proclaim, “I worked 87 hours last week.” C’est pathetique. In Japan overwork is now a felony.
The same week Sarkozy and his right-to-work-long-hours won in France, Ellen DeGeneres did a week of shows from her hospital bed on set. It was not even sweeps week. DeGeneres had reached down to pick something up at home and torn something in her back and was doctor-ordered to complete bed rest. Her work ethic made her go on with the show. The pain-killers helped.
It was also about job security. In case you were wondering if women on TV are worried about their hard-won jobs, even Ellen DeGeneres seemed insecure about her job if she were out for a week. I bet Johnny Carson never worried that someone sitting in for him would take over his job. Joan Rivers looked too eager and they squashed her like a bug. How do you say ‘re-runs’ en Francaise? Ellen could have called a number of other women comics to sit in for her. I can dance.
It was a plucky performance but a little sad to see. The good news is that it inadvertently demonstrated that Americans really don’t care what lesbians do in bed. As long as they do their job.
April 21, 2007
Buzzkill
I don’t know about you, but it was a tough week at the office. Here’s a story I’d been following: on the West Coast, 60% of the bee population is missing. Here on the over-achieving East Coast 70% has gone missing. It’s called CCD – Colony Collapse Disorder when a bee hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and few immature workers. Sounds like a Gay Pride planning meeting I attended once. Theories about the disappearance involve mites, pesticides, genetically altered foods, global warming and cell phone radiation. I blame everything on this year’s premature time change. In the longer light, the bees busied themselves to death. Also Starbucks.
Albert Einstein, and he’s one Alberto we can believe, once said that if the bees disappear mankind would have only four years of life left. I’m hoping that CCD will turn out to be an urban legend like that one about the counter clockwise toilet flow south of the equator. I think what we are really witnessing is the collapse of the white male colony. As predicted, it is not pretty.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart to support the ban on partial birth abortion partially paralyzed me. Judge Anthony Kennedy, a man who recently judged a mock trial of Hamlet, a disturbed young man with a sword not a glock, fancies himself quite the writer, and wrote floridly for that damnable 5-4 majority. Next up: honor killings.
Perhaps Kennedy was working out some problems he’s been having at home with a regretful woman. Perhaps his wife didn’t get her bid on a pear-shaped finial she wanted on e-bay and was horrible to live with for weeks. You know how we get when we’re regretful. He’s not going to put up with that again. In a co-dependent crisis moment he decides it’s the man’s job to protect the little ladies from our emotions around abortion, so he won’t have to cop to the fact that he’s the one who can’t deal.
And I can blather like this because it has been The Festival of Amateur Analysis Week from Dr. Sean Hannity to Tucker “With A T” Carlson to Good Grief Counselor Paula Zahn.
Of course I am reviewing my memories of the excitement I felt at Kennedy’s lofty writing in our favor, in the Lawrence v. Kansas case, decriminalizing sodomy and overturning Bowers v. Hardwick. Has Kennedy changed? Could it have been all the henpecking he’s been getting from that regretful woman at home? More piling on of the amateur analysis. Don Anus must have been relieved this week that the spotlight was off him. That whole sorry episode killed Don Ho.
And thank goodness, empty-headed, incompetent cronyism is confined to the workings of the Justice Department. It is, isn’t it? Again I review my memories of other hearings – Watergate, Iran-Contra, Anita Hill, Guantanamo, no wait, did we even have one? – and I have never seen more evidence of white male colony collapse. Perhaps the ban on abortions, combined with abstinence only sex education, is the new army recruiting plan. Brilliant! It’s going to be a long war.
Gonzales is the hapless tool at Justice who makes you long for the good old days of Ashcroft. He was called before the Senate committee to answer questions about the possibility of politically motivated firing of eight federal prosecutors. Republicans are worried about voter fraud! That there is not enough of it. The Gonzales hearing was no Mind of Mensa Show. It was like Reagan, the Iran-Contra years. I’m going to try that Gonzales maneuver next week at work. George W gave him a “heckuva job” performance review. If I premember correctly, Alberto will be gone next week.
April 13, 2007
Amazing Grace
In March of 1989, pre-full-blown March Marketing Madness, I was traveling through the old Denver airport and surprise, surprise was delayed by a weather event of some sort and had hours to kill. I had been hoping to get home in time to watch the Women’s NCAA basketball finals with some raucous friends. It didn’t look good.
After I resigned myself to a long delay, I found a smoky airport bar, ordered a beverage and thus felt entitled to ask the bartender if he would turn one of their TVs to the women’s final game. The what? The women’s basketball finals. You sure it’s on? After much cajoling, he finally sighed and all put-out, reached up and changed the channel. Although it was a Tennessee rout of Louisiana Tech, it was a pleasure to watch the women athletes.
It was not a pleasure to have to sit and listen to the men and some women in the bar wonder why that game was on instead of hockey, who those Amazons were, and other pre-Imus idiocies. I glared at any complainer, dared the bartender to touch the dial, and marvel to this day that I did not get into a barroom brawl. I was ready.
On this 35th Anniversary of Title IX, an equal opportunity measure which still must be defended from Bush late night signing statement shenanigans, the Women’s final was another Tennessee win, this time over the scrappy Rutgers team coached by the eloquent, inspirational C. Vivien Stringer. We in the Northeast, suffering through the insufferable Nicks and Nets season were cheered by the improbable success of our local Rutgers varsity team with all their talented freshmen athletes.
As the Scarlet Knights were settling back into mid-terms and dreams of next year, Don Imus launched the word bombs you’ve heard a million times and all hell broke lose. For anyone who has chanced on the doubly formatted Imus in the Morning show, this was not new behavior. The I White Man show has for years been a clubby, chummy safe place where mostly men correspondents, politicos and celebrities could josh and mix it up with the curmudgeon in the cowboy hat.
Perhaps it’s was Obama effect, or the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball that tipped Imus’ behavior into the last straw category, but enough was finally enough. The 24-7 drama has been about sexism, racism, free speech, the market etc. You’ve heard it all. I trust Pat Summit has sent a note.
I head off to Pennsylvania this weekend to watch my niece, a freshman on the Gettysburg College Women’s Varsity Lacrosse team, a strong contender to win their Division Three and to go onto the finals. Her name is Grace. She’s fierce, fast, has great hands. I will be the fan in the stands whooping inordinately with all the pent up fire I didn’t get to vent in that Denver airport bar. It will be for Grace and her team, of course, but it will also be for the double unformatting of the I-White-Man and all that it means. I am so ready.
April 05, 2007
DC 911
Quick! Is the line, “No one does a better job of not doing their job better,” a description of the Bush “Administration” or an ad for Reno 911? What’s the matter? Having a hard time with the image of Karl Rove in tight tight state trooper short shorts? Or Harriet Miers, pointing her glock and squawking “Fire ‘em all”? Or Alberto Gonzalez, who always looks like he’s laughing at us, behind his mirrored trooper sunglasses, snarling, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.”
If you guessed Reno 911, you would be right, but there was that nano-sec of doubt, wasn’t there?
Comedy Central’s hilarious updated version of the Keystone Cops actually seem competent by comparison. The private firm that was hired by the feds to erect the seven hundred mile border fence was recently busted for using illegal immigrant workers. If I were in charge, I would build a sixteen lane highway along the border with lots of on and off ramps. On patrol, I’d be wearing knee-length multipocketed shorts, driving a Prius and I’d be dragging Lou Dobbs. Could we just put the fence around the White House?
If the presidential election were held tomorrow, we’d save a lot of money. The first quarter results of the big obscene presidential money race are in and if you combine the amount the Democrats and Republicans have extorted, we could pay off a year of student loans for everyone, start to rebuild the Katrina ravaged south, and still have some cash left over for that big victory celebration, Bush/Cheney are planning in Iraq.
The election is nineteen months away and the whole thing sounds like some tiresome fantasy sport race. Let me know when it’s over. The Bush Legacy is Clean Up on Aisle 5. After eight years of the Bush mess, everybody has to work.
I’ve got dibs on a job already. I’ve called all my woo-woo galpals, bundled up the necessary herbs and written a ritual modeled on the recent Mayan saging of Machu Pichu. If and when Bush leaves we will be ready to sage the White House. We call it Macho P.U. We serve at the displeasure of the president.
March 16, 2007
Happy St. Patty's Day
And a Happy St. Patrick’s Day Bog to you! Christine Quinn, NYC’s openly lesbian City Council president is not welcomed to march in New York’s St. Patty’s parade. She’s been invited by the mayor of Dublin to march in their parade. Good on her!
This just in:
Brrrrrrrrrring! Brrrrrrrrrrring! Another late night drop-off to a Slur Rehab located at a secure, undisclosed location somewhere in the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota. Open 24-7. An admissions counselor who requested anonymity because of the incredible stupidity of his job, said it has been very busy lately. “We’ve had Michael R., Mel G., Isaiah W. and Tim H. here. They were all treated and released. Joe B. was treated on an out-patient basis during Articulate, Bright, Clean, Good-Looking Black History Month. We welcome the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter P.”
Last week’s admission, Ann C. was a hopeless case, not because her homophobia was untreatable, but because it was misdiagnosed. While there were traces of homophobia, said a counselor who requested anonymity because it was so mortifying to work there, “For her, bigotry is just good business. Truthfully? I don’t think she believes half the crap she says.” Although court-of-public-opinion-ordered, C. was not admitted to the facility because she arrived with seventeen camera crews to document her anonymous treatment. Other patients wore their Slur Rehab hoodies low just to get to their mid-morning session entitled, “How to get the Mea back in your Mea Culpas.”
The presiding counselor, who requested anonymity due to his own sexual preference, said “Peter P’s case poses real challenges. He has no remorse for his statement and in fact feels victimized for his deeply held opinion of the immorality of homosexuality.” In a radio interview, Major P. who oversees the daily conduct of an immoral, five year old war, had opined that homosexuality is immoral, much like adultery. “Adultery! Which we can’t do because we can’t get married either,” added his fuming case worker who requested anonymity because he had been a partner of the presiding counselor for years.
In a separate news item, it was announced late this morning that Major Peter Pace has been nominated for the Golden Slurpee for “Gay Activist of the Year”. “It’s early in the year, but we haven’t seen gay people this organized since Anita Bryant tried to get gay teachers tossed out of Florida public schools,” said the owner of the highly profitable chain of slur rehabs, who nonetheless asked to remain anonymous due to the high rate of recidivism in his programs.
March 09, 2007
Happy International Woman's Day
And three cheers to the national Concerned Women for America for putting out a press release defending Ann Coulter, claiming that she had said “bag it” not “faggot”. Yes, that’s right, John Edwards is a big ole bag it. They did not specify paper or plastic.
Methinks Girl Gone Wild Coultermania has Karl Rove all over it. Hey, one woman’s conspiracy theory is another man’s history. While cable heads debate 24-7 curtailing the use of the F-bomb and the N-bomb, without a mention of free speech, our eyes are turned from I. Lewis Libby and the more inconvenient truth about death-defying Dick Cheney. I, Kate Clinton, say it’s no coinky dink. I want Libby to do his time in Gitmo. I want him to have the same habeas corpus delecti as those detainees. He’d look great in an orange onesie.
Or perhaps the I. Scoot could exchange it for a candy-striper onesie and do some community service at Walter Reed Hospital? Talk about Notes on a Scandal. [Sidebar: I just wanted to say to Judi Densch, “Judi, Judi, Judi, watch Cybil Shepherd on the L-Word; see how it’s done.”]
Support the troops, indeed.
What were we thinking? After WOMD lies, Katrina “rebuilding”, Mission Accomplished - that the VA was being run right? Heckuva job, Surgio, heckuva job. I used to whine that these last months of Bush felt like the longest of my life, but they are nothing compared to the hospital time that our dear wounded veterans are enduring. For them, the yellow Support the Troop ribbons really are infinity symbols.
Bush and Cheney give new meaning to the Year of the Pig. They keep giving us completely extraordinary renditions of the world. This International Women’s Day I’m having a big bonfire with the obscene number of Bush bashing books I’ve bought over the years. You know what porcine pair I’d like to put on a spit over the pit in a lulu of luau. Enough. I’m making room on my shelves for the post-Bush stories we all better be ready to write. The Bush Legacy: Cleanup on Aisle 5, etc.
February 05, 2007
Stupor Bowl
Truth be told, and it so rarely is, I generally do the crossword puzzle while my gal pal is watching Sunday football. It’s good for my brain. Until I have to Google my inadequacies because I'm really not up on my lakes in Australia. But the Super Bowl is different. It’s all about the snacks and a chance to wear black Capri slacks around the house. And dance to Prince.
Our company was a raucous gang of gals and one guy who left after the first play, and some snacks. As I was trundling platters back and forth, I heard shrieks about the Bears quarterback, “How did he get this far? Why can't they get rid of him? Oh no! He fumbled it! What is he thinking? He’s terrrrrrrrrrrrible.” It reminded me of the screams during the State of the Union blather. Without benefit of Madame Speaker.
The world might being going to hell in a lovely hand basket, but the story in the Sunday NYT Magazine was on Designer-Dog fights. The article was to get folks fired up about the annual February Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. People with way too much time on their hands are getting pugs to mount Yorkshires, begetting pugshires; beagles to mount bassets, begetting bagels and Labradors to mount poodles, begetting labradoodles. In the article, poodles come off like slutty, species-traitors.
Luckily there was no mention of that anti-gay marriage trope that same sex marriage leads inevitably to man-on-dog sex. Ex-senator, Rick Sanctimoron loved to bring that one up a bit too often. I admit to quickly scanning the article for any references to Gayshires, fagadoodles or, if it were a pug top – Puggots. As usual, lesbians were completely left out of the story, so there were no lesbidoodles or dykeadors. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the cat show.
May I offer you some Kibble?
January 30, 2007
I Wish I Could Quit Ewe
Reading the New York Times in the morning at our house is a contact sport. The day after the State of the Union speech always promises lots of body and paper slamming. George’s SOU speech invariably has a Ground Hog Day, déjà vu quality about it. He appears in late January and there’s 20 more months of nuclear winter.
Before we could even get to the re-cap, rehash of his “If I Did it Speech” a headline caught my eye: “Gay Sheep: Science and the Perils of Bad Publicity”. It didn’t take much and I was off and running. “How dare they call us sheep? We’ve done more courageous things in one year of our lives, than they could ever dream to do in their whole lives! You just try to come to your parents! You go to your church and hear yourself described as sinner, abomination! You try being out at work. You’re the sheep. When you’re not being chickens. You’re so sheepish, you should all be drinking Woolite Cosmos down at your special cafes! Last year it was Brokeback jokes, now this.” Coffee was flying. I punctuated each question by slamming the paper on the comforter.
My girlfriend let me run on a bit and then pointed out, her Jane Curtain to my Roseanne Roseannadana, that the article was about a study of actual gay sheep. Oh. Well. Never mind.
The article was about a researcher from the University of Oregon who was looking for physiological factors to explain the 8% of sheep who are gay. I would just look for that Abercrombie and Fitch orange tag on a gene. The researcher postulated, as scientists are wont to do, that the mechanism in gay sheep might have human implications. That set the PETA people to worrying, blogging and gang-emailing that the science would lead to breeding out homosexuality.
If that were true, the Bush “Administration” would already have made a Manhattan project out of it. Go ahead. Research away. Need more money? Better equipment? Are you sure that microscope is big enough? How about an institute? Here use this stem cell money we’ve got lying around.
When I have a big reaction to something, it’s usually a sign that there is some truth somewhere in it. Sometimes I do think we are more sheepish than gay. That we have made very safe little pens for ourselves and we bathe in the sheep dip of conformity. I’ll stop this metaphor before it gets really baaaad. No wait, that’s lamb. Okay, I’m off to practice my sheep bleat with an ironic gay accent.
January 22, 2007
We’ll Always Have Paris Hilton
At first I was really excited about Our Chart, the social networking venture touted on the L-Word season premiere. But after a week when George announced that he’s decided it’s okay to open people’s private mail, I’m nervous. What’s to keep him and his pencil necked little pal at the “Justice” Department from hacking in and getting a copy of where the girls are and handing it off to some Ex-Gay Ministry. “Here’s your project for the next couple years. Get back to me.” I’m trying to remain optimistic here.
I’m not just a Stonehenge Lesbian, I’m an Old Testament lesbian. These guys really don’t like women. You can watch it roll out in their demeaning coverage of Nancy Pelosi. No one ever said Dennis Hastert looked like a fat slab of a junior high football coach, but he did. Their coverage of Hillary Clinton. How dare she? Well, I for one hope she dares to, hope she gets the nomination and becomes president. I’ve already had fights with my friends, men and women. She’s a centrist, a hawk, a carpetbagger. Puleez. Now is the time.
As we approach another contested national election, it’s like people are playing fantasy football with their dream match-ups. Mine is Hillary and Obama, which actually equals Condoleeza in Republican circles. The old white guys and the guys from my boomer generation are done, time to get out of the way, go be a literacy volunteer, make a Habitat house for Angelina and Brad in New Orleans, but make way for some new ideas. If this is the best you can do, and it’s the worst, have the decency to get out of the way.
For days, the New York Times covered the story of the young man shot leaving a stag party. Fifty bullets were fired by the police. The Times should have covered the story. Mayor Bloomberg was on it immediately. I remembered Giuliani, who would not have showed up, sniping about certain communities. At the same time however, the story rolled out of four young prostitutes found murdered in Atlantic City. The story lasted two news cycles.
You know this but there is actually a movie called Perfume about a young brilliant perfumiere who makes a fragrance out of eleven parts dead virgin and one part something prostitute. I was railing about it at a party, and the man I was talking to wanted to talk about how the book was better! I might just start taking my bra off in such situations and firing it up with a bic lighter and wave it around the room.
For days the media has been fixated on a video of some young teenage girls beating up another girl. Would that they put the same energy into analyzing the war.
You want a surge? I’ll give you a surge. We’re way past surge protectors.
January 16, 2007
Don't Get Me Started
The average American consumes ten hours of media a day - through print, TV, radio or internet. "The internets," as W likes to call them. His phrasing could catch on. I'm not really sure how to say "nuclear' any more. People watch 65 days of television a year. My girlfriend - and we're so pissed about MA and gay marriage, we've decided to introduce each other as "my ball and chain" - asks me where I get my data. I say NPR. And though it wasn't from Sylvia Polgoli, it must be true. For some blessed reason in this new year, so far I have been off the grid, off my media feed. It hasn't been intentional, but it is lovely. So I've missed some news, but I was just wondering, since we are at war and about to surge into an even war-ier, and since more than 3,000 American troops, AKA people, have been killed, and 36,000 Iraqis were killed and 34,000 injured in 2006, let me ask you, did they cancel the Golden Globes?
January 09, 2007
L-M-N-tary
Get out your old fuck charts! The L-Word gals have hooked up with some divine webmistresses and they’re putting together an uber—user chart, called OurChart. They’ve explained how it works to me, but since my new year’s motto is, “I couldn’t care less. No wait, watch me. I’m caring less!” I don’t need to know how it works. Let the kids have their fun. I’m just glad they’re doing it.
It’s as if they are mapping the human genome series. They’re sequencing lots of little Ls,and Ds, Bs and Fs, Ts and Bs. Near as I can tell, everybody is supposed to dust off their old charts and the lovely social anthropologist types on the new site are going to do their version of taping the whole thing together. Excellent!! For one thing, we’re finally going to be able to trace some of those so-called ex-gays. For years I asked audiences if anyone there had dated Ann Paulk, the ex-gay poster child. No one ever had. I figured if we didn’t know her, she wasn’t a lesbian. Now we can fire up all twelve cylinders on our search engine, mine our data and get some answers. Think of it as Lesbian Connection without the staples and the tetanus shots. Actually LC is the mother board of Our Chart.
Our fuck chart of Provincetown, 1978-present, is tucked in our kitchen cookbooks between Madher Jaffrey and the gals from The New Basic Cookbook . We started to work on our chart after dinner one night about eighteen years ago and have inputted information ever since. Patterns developed. Certain “hub-women” emerged. These are women who were the anchor in many overlapping clusters. For one impressive lesbian, we had to tape on an entire new page, her own wing. She’s a booth operator at a parking lot now and I admire her from afar.
Can’t wait to get back to Ptown to dig out the chart and send it in and do my part for this great lesbo-science project. You’ll see. Eventually we are all connected.
January 05, 2007
Don't Get Me Started
Happy New Pelosi!!
Just try to picture that bearlike slab of a Dennis “We didn’t want the appearance of gay-bashing in the Mark Foolery case” Hastert, former Mister Speaker, inviting all the kids in the chamber up to the podium for his swearing-in. Well he couldn’t and you can’t. It was pandemonium! Madame to be Speaker Pelosi trying to raise her hand in the oath portion of the ceremonies and knocking her grandson in the head; disembodied hands reaching into the frame trying to wrestle the boss’s script from the granddaughters; grandsons trying to grab the gavel from Grandma Pelosi to try it out. Hey kids! It’s time to play the House version of Wack a Mole. It really is. If the next 99 of the first 100 Hours of the Democrats back in control of the House are like the first wild glorious hour, I’m hoping that old Newt Grinch’s “Contract on America” will finally be cancelled.
In the coming days watch as the media midgets stumble over themselves trying, for the first time, to cover a woman in power. Watch for men whining. They better get used to it.
December 22, 2006
Solstice
I'm practicing celebrity abstinence in the fortnight between Solstice and the New Year - i.e. no People, no blogs, no ET. I need to detox. Pardon my paraphrase of that Britney Spears before she started seeing Paris Hilton: oops, I did it again. I'm so mad at myself. I fell for it. I forgot that despite the mid-term election, the Iraq Study Group Report, democracy whatever, your president George Bush does not give a shit. Oops. When Bush was first Supremely selected, by the guys and gals in the black robes, not the one who has a celebrity birthday on Monday, the story goes that a gay man went through the Inaugural receiving line and told Bush that he was very upset by his homophobic positions and positioning during the campaign. Bush smiled and through clenched teeth, said, "Why don't you tell someone who cares?" The people have spoken. The people have been ignored. I was thinking democracy. They're thinking third term. I forgot. In the space I've cleared out from my celebrity detox, I've resolved to think about what very targeted direct action will snap this Bush's head around. Or off. I'll let you know what I come up with.
November 16, 2006
Hilarity Clinton
People ask me all the time if I’d ever run for president. My last name and all. I would always say I’m just not that competent, smart or diplomatic enough. Who knew I’d be perfect for the job? But if I were president, I’d make it illegal to campaign for any political office more than two weeks. I’d black out all television programming during that time and the only thing on TV would be political debates, campaign highlights and bloopers, reviews of the constitution, proposition explanations and personal promos. No sports, no soaps, no reality shows. All air time would be free. Basic and cable. Voting would be mandatory and the polls would be open for six days. We all need a rest on that seventh day. Instead of motor voter, we’d have remoter voter and you could vote with your TV remote. The technology is there now. If I can vote whether or not some freaky voiced singer can be voted off the island, or if Lindsay Lohan should lay off the sauce, I should be able to select my candidates. If we did this, we would save 1.2 billion dollars which was the cost of this year’s midterm election ad buys. That would cover the student loan amnesty which would be my next order of business. Vote for me, Hilarity Clinton, in 2008!
October 20, 2006
Don't Get Me Started
The first 15 minutes of Jon Stewart have saved what's left of my political mind many a night. I watch and I sleep a little better. So I was excited to watch Stewart emcee Comedy Central's "Night of Too Many Comics". Wrongo bongo. There were only two women comics - Amy Sedaris and Amy Poehlert - both allowed to sit pretty at the phone banks and both misidentified. The only other woman was Kristin Chenoweth, a fabulous Broadway singer and comic actress who did a number with the insufferable Martin Short. She sang about three bars, he clocked her, she fell to the stage and stayed there for the rest of the bit. It should have been called "Night of Too Many White Male Comics". I couldn't sleep that night.
The next morning I read Bob Herbert's wonderful column, "Why Aren't We Shocked?" in the New York Times, "Degrading women is the rule, not the exception." For days the press is agog and aghast about a Florida representative's inappropriate advances to Senate pages and practically yawns through men's new open season of rounding up schoolgirls and shooting them down. There's only one woman on the Supreme Court. If you look at the sports pages, no women ever play sports. According to the obit page, not many women even seem to die. "Boy crisis"? my feminist ass. Wars everywhere, nuclear threat unleashed, environment deteriorating. If this is the best that guys can do, then it's time for them to get out of the way. The only reason Hillary Clinton could not get elected in this country is sexism. Pure and simple. I tell people I'm for Hillary. Then I like to bust their craven, unquestioned sexist chops. Try it. Mae West's said it best, "Most men want to protect me. Can't figure out from what." Challenge the dominant paradigm. Get hysterical. You'll feel better.
October 10, 2006
Don't Get Me Started
This week we celebrate National Coming Out Day. Started in 1988, it is a day on which you take another step in coming out. After eighteen years of Coming Out Days, I'm almost out of come outs. Every year I come out to my older brother. It doesn't help my totals but it is good practice. Since I moved to New York City from Provincetown, there is a wider pool of random people to come out to. This year I've got my sights set on the unflappable guy at my tiny dry cleaners. Starch? No starch? I'm gay. But after witnessing last week's Mark Foley flame-out and the vertiginous spinning from both parties, the crisp, clean honesty of unambiguous coming out is more important than ever. We have seen the corrosive, confusing effects of the closet on those in and out of it. When we come out, we are no longer willing conspirators in talibanic, puritanical sexual repression. The good news is that sometimes messy coming outs can change the House of Representatives! But does anyone thank us gay people? Nooooooooooooooo. See you OUT there!
October 02, 2006
Don't Get Me Started
Whenever I'm in danger of political paralysis - and believe me that's just where they want us - I have to laugh to save myself. As you know I've been talking about being a faith-based comedian for the last, oh say, six years. It's time to make it a part of your daily non-violent political practice. The sit-in was a brilliant political strategy of the civil rights movement. The die-in was a brilliant strategy of ACT-UP. It's time for the Laugh-in. Next time you hear of a pompous lecturer coming to town, have dinner with four or five friends, pick numbers one through five and then go to the event. As yet, security is unable to detect your dangerous weapon. Don't sit together. About five minutes in, at some outrageous statement you hear, the first of you should let go with a whooping large, bend at the waist laugh. Really laugh for a bit, then with a wave of your hand that you are recovered. Five minutes later, the second co-laugher should let it rip. Apologize politely. Repeat. It really gets them off their game. It feels great. You'll be surprised how many people will join in.
September 18, 2006
Don't Get Me Started
Ann Richards dies and Dick Cheney lives - there is absolutely no justice in the world. Dick, who lies out of the side of his mouth lives. Ann Richards, who brought real salty Texas talk to the national stage dies. In her keynote address to the 1998 Democratic Convention in Atlanta she described Bush I as "Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Those words coming out of the mouth of a white haired older woman [not his mother] did almost more to fire up his vindictive son, George II, than the Time magazine cover discussing his Dad and the Wimp Factor. We are still living through their bizarre father-son psycho-drama. Go to therapy and leave us out of it. But thanks to Ann for her courage to give as good as she got, for talking about her alcoholism and for always being there for people of color and for gays and lesbians.
August 27, 2006
Don't Get Me Started
Karl Rove is fixing to use that darned Mad Vow Disease again to get out the vote. Many states are putting the Gay Marriage question on their mid-term ballots. Though some of your finer Christian fundamentalists, both of them, really are nutted up about the sanctity of same-old-sex marriage, the twice and thrice married are not wearing their hypocrisy well this time around.
Let's refuse to be used. We will not be the wedge issue again. We are not your father's wedgie. We will not be the butt-thong between the cheek of church and the cheek of state again.
Speak up. Talk to your family. Your friends. Your teller, your oil change guy, the woman on the treadmill next to you. If anyone says gay marriage, say Katrina. Say it again. Gay marriage - the pointless whimsical war of W. Gay marriage - an inconvenient truth. Gay marriage - Guantanamo. Gay marriage - Abu Ghraib. Gay marriage - women's choice.
I would not put it past Karl Rove to have revived the Jon Benet Ramsey story. But I live with a conspiracy theorist. No wait, that one was mine. LIke the marriage issue, it is Operation Distraction.
After you get back from your Labor Day vacations - find something to do for the mid-term elections. Make it local. Something you care about. Something not on line. Get your feet on the street. Put a sexy thong over your gas mask, dust off your bull horn and make some noise.
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