What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Thursday, April 27, 2006

   TRAGEDY IS EASY...

Jeff Whitty is a New York playwright and author of the hit musical "Avenue Q" -- a sort-of R-rated "Sesame Street." Last week, he wrote "The Tonight Show" host Jay Leno:

"I caught your show when you had a tired mockery of "Brokeback Mountain," involving something about a horse done up in what you consider a "gay" way. Man, that's dated. I turned the television off and felt pretty fucking depressed. And now I understand your gay-baiting jokes have continued."

Hence Whitty's letter -- a passionate defense of gay people and, as he explains,

"I wrote the letter above on a Friday in about 20 quick but intense minutes, sent it to three friends, who asked if they could forward it to their friends, it exploded within an hour, and by Wednesday I was appearing live on CNN. The response to this letter escalated so quickly, it got a bit alarming. Heartening, but alarming...This has put me in the uncomfortable position of feeling like a comedy nanny."

To me, this reignites an old but increasingly relevant debate -- where exactly is the line between humour and homophobia?

Jay Leno got targeted here because of his odd and relentless fascination with "Brokeback Mountain" but it's a bit unfair to single him out when we've spent the last few months steeped in 'gay cowboy' jokes. Ang Lee's stately, heartbreaking film got dumbed down into sniggering wisecracks about that one minute of sex in the pup tent because people seemed to have trouble reconciling the manly image of the American cowboy with homosexuals.

There's an old joke that goes, "What do you call a guy who sleeps with one hundred women and one man? FAG!" On the surface, it's obviously homophobic but the real target of the joke is our culture's belief (need, even) of a wide and strict line between gay men and straight men. In a time not-far-enough-past, a straight guy could get laughs simply by dangling his hand in front of him, speaking in a lisp and flouncing about the room; now, however, it seems that straight comics dealing with homosexuality are having to work a little harder to find the comedy (and, in the case of the second video, very hard indeed -- consider that a 'parental advisory' warning):



I've posted that first video before and I love it because the real joke isn't just that the macho football fans have 'gone gay' but that they're actually rather sweet and thoughtful about it. It kills me every time when the one guy earnestly asks, "Should we go to a....gay...bar?"

The second video is a variation on the same theme but a much more aggressive one. It's hilarious to me how far they're willing to go for the joke but it's also more than a little uncomfortable in the way they're clearly trading on their audience's presumed horror of anal sex. To paraphrase the old Jewish line, "Is this good for the gays or bad for the gays?"

Gay men are no longer an instant target for comedy -- this is obviously a good thing -- so homophobia has become more specific to the sex acts themselves. Even the Catholic Church now says they're perfectly fine with gay men so long as they never, ever have sex. Is that progress? People giggled over "Brokeback Mountain" to an irritating degree but they did go down to the theatre in big numbers and made it a blockbuster hit. Again, progress?

As Jeff Whitty wrote to Jay Leno, "I suppose that in the end I do prefer comedy that’s challenging, instead of regurgitating the same old well-masticated clichés for snack-size consumption." Are sketches like these two
a) truly challenging the drawn line between gay and straight,
b) merely creating an all-new set of clichés, or
c) sadly maintaining our culture's ongoing revulsion towards gay sexuality?

Discuss!

Heh Heh...he said "in the end"

-- Reply posted by  Pure Machismo at April 29, 2006

 

Well, as someone who lives in the U.S. I can tell you that this culture reviles sex - period! The gay kind is just seen as even ickier!

-- Reply posted by  Dora the Explorer at April 29, 2006

 

I think the world is waiting for gay Bollywood.

-- Reply posted by  Whisky Prajer at April 30, 2006

 

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James popped over last night, offering to buy me dinner. How can a boy say no? It's always great to see him and Tegan apparently agrees -- she was so excited to see him, she dribbled pee on my bedspread. The creaking sound you hear is my teeth clenching. As Janet says, "She's too old for excitement pee." Sigh.

After some food, a pint and much chat, I went home to work on a little plug for Felice Picano's reading next week (I interviewed him by phone on Monday and he was wonderfully fun, smart and chatty). James e-mailed a link to Bombay TV, a fantastic site that lets you put your own subtitles on clips from bad Indian television. Wackiness ensues.

This was, of course, a terrible thing for James to do as it was quite late already. He made me this movie, which I had to respond to with this saucy movie, and soon we were up till two a.m. laughing on the phone and creating idiocy.

But don't just read me going on about it -- check out Bombay TV for yourself (just do it early)!

Labels: friends, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist

Jane Jacobs died this morning. The economist, urban philosopher and author of "Dark Age Ahead" once wrote:

"I think I’m living in a marvellous age when great change is occur ring. We now see that there is no straight-line cause and effect; things are connected by webs. This understanding comes from advances in the life-sciences, and it opens up the possibility of understanding all kinds of things we haven’t understood before. I think it’s very exciting."

A brilliant thinker and beautiful human being. She'll never be forgotten.

That quote was neither brilliant nor beautiful.

-- Reply posted by  Pure Machismo at April 28, 2006

 

Go read a book.

-- Reply posted by  Scott at April 28, 2006

 

Book? I think I've seen those on TV before...

...wait, no...I'm mistaken.

-- Reply posted by  Pure Machismo at April 29, 2006

 

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Less than a year after his excellent "Devils and Dust" album, Bruce Springsteen has slapped together his latest CD, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." If "slapped together" sounds disparaging, it shouldn't -- I'm only referring to the speed it was made with because the album is a lovely, lively tribute to Pete Seeger's timeless folk music.

A piece on Seeger in the Globe today mentions how

...Springsteen has cast himself as a populist, politicized troubadour in the mould of Guthrie and Seeger, especially so in 2004 when he performed several concerts in support of John Kerry's candidacy against George W. Bush. The failure of that effort reportedly put the Boss in a depressive funk for several months.

Oh I hear ya, Boss. But, as the piece quotes Seeger in 1972: "It's a very great mistake to let pessimism get you down," and it seems like Bruce listened. His new album is the sound of a man gathering a bunch of friends together and having a whole lotta fun.

Perhaps not MY kind of fun -- I'm still getting used to the banjo-and-washboard twanginess of it all -- but it's got the delightfully-peculiar sound of people partying like it's 1899. Oh, and the new version of "We Shall Overcome" does just what it says on the tin. Compare this album to the lost and lonely Bruce in "Tunnel of Love" and it glows all the more.

As for Seeger, he'll be at Toronto's IdeaCity conference in June and says, "A wonderful country, Canada. And to have survived so near Uncle Sam." Seegar's speech promises to be as inspiring as his songs:

"Without giving too much away, I'm gonna be a devil's advocate in a kind of way. I'll not be presenting ideas for toys that rich people can spend their money on, but talking about how we can save the world from collapse in the next 50 or 100 years."

If that sounds heavy, well, Seeger insists it won't be. "You see, if there's still a world here in 100 years, it's not going to have been saved by One Big Thing. One Big Things can be co-opted and corrupted and turned to mush...All my life I've been aware that there's a whole class of very rich people who control the country and this has been going on a long, long while...But what are they going to do about tens of millions of little things, good things? Like maybe some mothers or teachers and children who start growing a healthy garden in a vacant, ugly inner-city lot..." Or his brother John, a former high-school principal and pacifist, still alive at 92, who likes to ponder the question: "How can I cure a kid of being a bully?"

The entire interview with Seeger is terrific --you can see why Springsteen staged a hootenanny to honour him!

Labels: Bruce Springsteen, Canada, George W Bush

Yes, I promised no more Bush rants and as we enter the final thousand days of his criminal and incompetent tenure, I'm considering it a very long period of Lent!

I think this whole eight-year nightmare can (and will) be summed up by this hissy-fit video and by the opinion of men like historian and JFK advisor Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (the bold type is mine):

This is precisely how President Bush sees his prerogative: Be silent; I see it, if you don't. However, both Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, World War I veterans, explicitly ruled out preventive war against Joseph Stalin's attempt to dominate Europe. And in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, JFK, himself a World War II hero, rejected the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union in Cuba.
...
The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to destroy the planet. Had there been exponents of preventive war in the White House then, there probably would have been nuclear war. It is certain that nuclear weapons will be used again. Henry Adams, the most brilliant of American historians, wrote during our Civil War, "Some day science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race shall commit suicide by blowing up the world."
But our Cold War presidents kept to the Kennan formula of containment plus deterrence, and we won the Cold War without escalating it into a nuclear war.

Enter President Bush as the great exponent of preventive war. In 2003, owing to the collapse of the Democratic opposition, Bush shifted the base of American foreign policy from containment-deterrence to presidential preventive war: Be silent; I see it, if you don't. Observers describe Bush as "messianic" in his conviction that he is fulfilling the divine purpose. But, as Lincoln observed in his second inaugural address, "The Almighty has His own purposes."

There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

Thanks, Arthur, that about sums it up.

Labels: George W Bush, Middle East

Looks like it's TV Day here in Scottland but how could I resist passing along a clip of the incomparable Sam Phillips performing one of my favourite songs? "One Day Late" makes me feel joyful and melancholy simultaneously. Alive.

The return of "Doctor Who" last year was like having my childhood returned to me in a delightful shiny box. Even though the first few episodes (currently -- finally! -- airing in the US on the Sci-Fi Channel) were a bit wobbly, the last five were thrilling TV -- funny, sad, scary and everything we'd all loved about the show as kids.

Now comes Series 2 -- along with a swap of the lead actor! -- but, based on this press trailer, the old magic is still there:

Labels: Doctor Who

Dr. Who sux. Anyone who likes it is a poopoo head. You smell like doggy weewee.

-- Reply posted by  Dora the Explorer at April 22, 2006

 

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Hurrah! The Pet Shop Boys are back to save modernity! Their new album hits the stores on May 22 and the new video features David Walliams and Matt Lucas from the brilliant sketch comedy show "Little Britain." And by the way, "I'm With Stupid" is NOT about Tony Blair -- no, no, no:

Labels: Pet Shop Boys

An anti-gay-marriage website from Colorada has a page entitled "Great Things About Marriage." Unfortunately, it confirms my quiet fears...

Catching up with last Wednesday's Globe and Mail:

The votes of 40,000 Canadian citizens who qualify as "Italians abroad," some of whom have never set foot in Italy and many of whom don't speak Italian, played a pivotal role in the defeat of billionaire Silvio Berlusconi in Italy's election yesterday, according to poll results released late last night.

For the first time in history, a country's political fate appears to have been determined by citizens of other countries, after Mr. Berlusconi introduced a scheme in 2002 that defines eligible Italian voters by blood lines rather than residency.

As it became apparent yesterday that he had been defeated by this system, which provides 12 deputies and six senators to represent Italians on foreign soil, the Prime Minister and media magnate reacted with outrage...Mr. Berlusconi's anger and scrutiny is now focused tightly on these votes, especially in the riding that represents North and Central America, in which Canadian votes proved decisive.

Buona notte, Mr. Berlusconi!

Labels: Canada, Italy

Ever since the summer of 2004 -- That Certain Re-Election Campaign -- my friends in-person and here on-line have quietly endured my transition from Rambler to Ranter. I had been driven nearly insane by the lack of any mass political response to the horrors of the Iraq war, the tortures at Abu Ghraib, the illegal wiretapping of US citizens and the outrageously-inept handling of Hurricane Katrina. I've clung to the tiniest shreds of hope that America -- the elephant in the bed -- would regain its sanity. And then, this week, I read this article from Sy Hersh, the New Yorker writer who broke the news of the Abu Ghraib scandal:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’"

The bombing campaign against Iran would involve "tactical" nuclear strikes. And everyone shrugs. That's how inured we've become to post-9/11 doom-mongering. Blogger Steve Billmon neatly summed it all up:

The U.S. government is planning aggressive nuclear war (the neocons can give it whatever doublespeak name they like, but it is what it is); those plans have been described in some detail in a major magazine and on the front page of the Washington Post; the most the President of the United States is willing to say about it is that the reports are "speculative" (which is not a synonym for "untrue") and yet as I write these words the lead story on the CNN web site is:

ABC pushes online TV envelope
ABC is going to offer online streams of some of its most popular television shows, including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," for free the day after they first air on broadcast TV.

It appears our long national journey towards complete idiocy is over. We've arrived...We’ve already seen a lengthy list of war crimes and dictatorial power grabs sink into that electronic compost heap: the WMD disinformation campaign, Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, the de facto repeal of the 4th amendment. Again, why should a nuclear strike be any different?

Maybe it's just too big an issue. Maybe people can deal with all this foreign policy incompetence as long as their children are safe at home. Oh no, wait -- the Republican clan has screwed up there too, in the most horrifying manner: there's a massive list wandering around the Internet that's a "family values" nightmare:

President of the advocacy group Faith and Family Alliance Robin Vanderwall of Virginia was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the Internet.

Rev. Stephen White a Pentecostal minister in West Chester, Pennsylvania, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling of Anderson, Indiana was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay man from adopting her.

Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter of Boothbay, Maine pled guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy during the Republican State Convention.

Yeah, I think that's quite enough for now but it's only four examples. This site has over FIFTY more examples of child sexual abuse by conservative Christians (three of them Mayors!) who blame gays and lesbians for all the ills of society. I'm not saying that all conservatives are evil or that all Christians are bigots but I wish, fervently wish, that they would look to clean up their own backyard before attacking others. I don't want to keep hearing about how gay marriage is a massive threat to society while child molesters are left to roam free because they say they're Christians and shriek about 'protecting the family'.

And it's not as though this story is new, either (check out this newspaper) -- Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman of Maryland was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old he picked up at a gay bar in 1980, for pity's sake.

No, if there's one thing that ties all this together -- Bush, Iraq, Republican paedophiles, nuclear weapons -- it's the depressing notion that people don't learn. They do what they want to do, believe what they want to believe and the wheels of the bus go round and round. I grew up in the ever-present shadow of a nuclear war between the US and Russia; now the next generation will do the same with the US and Iran.

Ten years ago, I quit a job I loved because the bookstore wanted to carry art books with photos of naked boys in them. I never said a word to the men who bought these books (that would cross a line I agreed to as a sales clerk) but I knew I had to decide what I would willingly be a part of or not. I argued with the buyer, I wasn't listened to, I walked away.

And so it is with this. There's not a whole hell of a lot a thirtysomething Canadian gay man can do to influence a country as insane as America has become. I leave it to more capable people while I go off and tend to my friends, my family, my community -- the people and places I can help. This is me learning.

Labels: Canada, George W Bush, Middle East

How cool is this??? The discovery of a fossilized missing link from fish to land animal:


The BBC explains, "The team found three near-complete, well-preserved fossils of the new species, Tiktaalik roseae, in an area of the Arctic called the Nunavut Territory. The largest measures almost 3m (9 ft) in length." Model restorations of the creatures look like fish/crocodile hybrids, with the beginnings of a neck and rudimentary joints in their fins -- the beginnings of wrists and ankles!

Professor Jennifer Clack, from the University of Cambridge, said that the find could prove to be as much of an "evolutionary icon" as Archaeopteryx - an animal believed to mark the transition from reptiles to birds. "The discovery of the Tiktaalik gives hope of equally ground-breaking finds to come."

About a decade back, writer Warren Ellis took over the dull comic-book "Excalibur" (the British X-Men) and suddenly made it fun and clever. Then, along with writers Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis, he did nothing less than transform the entire industry by creating brilliant and subversive mainstream comics that exploded the superhero limits imposed on them. Ellis' "Planetary," "The Authority" and especially "Transmetropolitan" permanently erased the notion that comic books are merely for kids and made him a geek icon.

In his regular column "The Ministry" last week, Ellis explains that

...Vertigo books from the '90s -- INVISIBLES, PREACHER, TRANSMETROPOLITAN -- were books about ideas. The three of us were writing about our discrete areas of interest, and, in large part, we were telling you about the things we knew. Which isn't a bad thing. Some people balk at writers having any opinion, interest or intent beyond banging out a neutral yarn, but, you know, fuck that noise. Comics are an educational tool, used for anything from instructional pamphlets for civil disobedience to workplace hygiene. The best fiction, like the best reportage, is about the writer telling the reader where they think they are today, and what they think it looks like.

This week, he carried that theme forward, along with a challenge:

But, certainly, when I look for something to read, I want it to be something from someone who's aware of their world and is telling me something new about what's in it and how they perceive it. "Public intellectuals" is a clunky term with lots of weird baggage. But it'll do for this minute. Quit muttering and tell me where you think you are today, and what you think it looks like.

Reading that struck me, since it's what I'm attempting (and perhaps failing) to do with this blog. I'm telling you who I am, what I see, what I think and do, but I'm not sure how much of it is "new." I don't feel filled with bold revolutionary new ideas but rather carrying on solid, time-honoured wisdom that I don't see a lot of right now. I'm struggling with my own sense of impotence in the world right now and Warren shames me.

But then he goes and puts this on this website today:

He's a complicated guy, that Warren, and wherever he found that photo, it's just nine shades of wrong! I laugh, I feel better, I get a move on...

Labels: comic books

"Quit muttering"? But how does one decide what qualifies as "muttering" vs. what is a precise evocation of one's place and time -- particularly in the blogosphere? I'd ask Ellis for a little more direction, but I'm afraid of what scenarios he might cook up for The Hulk and Wolverine.

-- Reply posted by  Whisky Prajer at April 08, 2006

 

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Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has the Quote of the Week:

If you look at the rest of the world and the struggles they are having, particularly in Western Europe, who just completely abandoned faith, completely have gone to a secular society...Its cultures are dying. People are dying, they're being overrun from overseas, and they have no response. They have nothing to fight for. They have nothing to live for.

Thanks, Rick! My boyfriend is all set to visit Amsterdam in May but I'm cancelling my passport right now!

Well, at least they had a culture to begin with. When the best we can muster is "pop" culture, I'm not sure it does us any favours to so quickly sound the alarm on someone else's behalf!

-- Reply posted by  Whisky Prajer at April 07, 2006

 

Zing! That right there is why you've been so missed around here this week.

Did you follow the "quote" link to the video? Santorum's delivery is priceless: so solemn and dramatic that it becomes hilarious.

-- Reply posted by  Scott at April 07, 2006

 

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No, it's not another 1970's Irwin Allen disaster flick. There's no Steve McQueen or Paul Newman around to rescue me and this week has been one of those rare times when I wish Charleton Heston would show up, waving a gun around. Instead, I'm recovering in the aftermath of my first big project in my new 'adult job' -- the graphic design and editing of a Proposal for consulting services for a hospital in Tillsonburg, ON. I finished printing the 50-page books last night around 9:30 and the courier took all the copies away with him this morning to meet the 2 pm deadline.

If three days of non-stop pressure, computer glitches, late-night headaches and deadlines dropping like dominoes constitute an 'adult job' then get me back to the record store! Sure, as a writer, I've faced all the above (and, as a retail clerk, personal abuse besides) but never before have I worked with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. It's a very creepy feeling -- my first taste of why too many Bay Street types seem so soulless. Obviously, the real victors in the business world are the ones who can endure to the finish line without losing their humanity during the struggle. It's the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (and who do you think is winning?)

Stupidly, I spent my weekend reviewing the software, cleaning house and working at the bookstore. The lack of rest has left me feeling a bit dead inside today but a morning of gentle praise from everyone concerned with the Proposal is keeping me afloat. They all freely acknowledge that I was thrown into the fire on this one but came through it barely singed. It's nice of them to say, especially for the first time out.

Sadly, the real victim here is Darcy, who was forced to babysit my dog last night. I arrived at his place from work at 11 pm(!!) and was greeted with a sour expression. "Oh no," I said, "where'd she poop?" "She didn't," he said, "She was just Puppy of Destruction!" Sigh. We were already disappointed that I wasn't able to come for dinner and watch "Lost" (it's our Wednesday 'thing') and 'the Little Miss' didn't help. Between this and her crapping all through Janet's house a couple Sundays ago, I'm running out of babysitters!

Uh-oh -- it's true: office stress, Proposal meetings, babysitters...I'm an adult!

Labels: oh l'amour