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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Thursday 03/27/2003
The entry titled The lack of lust instead of the more obvious and campy Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my.
One:
I saw a teaser ad for a new updated version of Battlestar Galactica. I've no real comment about this, other than that I huge baby fag crush on Dirk Benedict back in elementary school. Hmm, he may just well be the 'root' of my
Two:
The war continues, people are dying, the airline industry is beginning to layoff people in droves, gas prices are rising, and the American public is acting really wacky in vilifying anything French. I haven't heard anything about mass protests against French's Mustard, but at this point, it wouldn't surprise me.
One thing that has surprised me is the tone of disbelief in some reporter's voices whenever they mention fierce resistance met by our troops. It seems that they have fallen for their own propaganda that as soon war started, practically every single Iraqi soldier was bound to surrender and give up. While some have, no rational person could have possibly believed that the majority would. Then again, in an age of beauty before brains reporters and flash before facts reporting, rationality is probably not a major requirement for this field anymore.
Three:
I spent a day helping some of my staff in the field this week. While we worked, folks were angry and swearing at us in English and Spanish, calling us, well, calling us all manner of unpleasant things. One young hoodlum wanna be in his mid-twenties spent a lot of time maddogging me and angrily telling me over and over that he wasn't afraid of me. This was his way of attempting to intimidate me. I wasn't.
He reminded me of a young strutting rooster or a growling pup trying and wanting to be the alpha male. Thing is, he wasn't. The alpha male of his pack was his dad, a man who calmly watched as we did what we had to do, and didn't swear, yell, intimidate, or threaten violence. He didn't need to. He knew he was a 'man.'
Four:
John and I were out at the Mark Taper again, this time for Ten Unknowns by Jon Robin Baitz. One of them stories about art, morality, and such, with Stacey Keach as an older artist who after decades of hiding out in Mexico may be the next big art thing, if an art dealer can actually get him to finish a series of new pieces that is.
The plot was maybe a bit unsurprising, although I totally misjudged when the story was actually going to end. A dramatic scene ended, the lights went down, the audience applauded, the lights came back up and the next and truly final scene started, and half of the audience, myself included was left wondering why are we still going?
The final scene resolves some questions, and if not exactly super upbeat, at least ended on a hopeful note. If the play had ended were I thought it going to end, there would have been many unanswered questions and it would have been up to the audience to figure out if the artists were going to do the "right" thing, instead of the easy thing, which of course, would lead to money, celebrity, and the usual possible losing of your soul and the like. With everything going on in the world, I guess I was subconsciously pushing the play to be darker and more conflicted than it really was.
Most of the works we have seen lately have had very bare and minimalist sets. This one, of the older artists studio/home in Oaxaca, was an exception. This set was huge and glorious in details. Despite my somewhat negative sounding remarks about the story, it does say something that the plot was strong enough to not get overwhelmed by the set.
Mr. Keach was pretty cool as the older artist Malcom, only once did I expect him to throw on a trench coat and start acting the detective.
Five:
Aside from war, work, and the usual stress of life, there is also the entire issue of the Texas sodomy case being dealt with by the Supreme Court.
Reading remarks to the effect that sodomy laws don�t discriminate because it�s Ok for homosexuals to have sex as long as it�s with a member of the opposite sex (badly paraphrased), are leaving me with a sense of dread. What if it is found that the Texas sodomy law is constitutional and that states do in fact have the right to go charging into citizen's homes on the fear that people might be engaged in icky, nasty, homosexual, nonprocreative sex?
Probably every single argument I have ever had with someone (both queer and straight) that it does matter if the president is a democrat or republican, because it directly effects the makeup of the supreme court, only to have them look back at me with a blank stare, will all replay in mind simultaneously and I will have a brain seizure.
While I'm flopping around on the ground convulsing like a half dead fish, folks will be out in the streets marching and protesting, but will any of that reactive emotion amount to much unless the resultant anger can be poured into proactive (and therefore far more difficult) action to change things in this nation?
Then again, maybe I am too much of a pessimist. Maybe things will go well for once. Maybe it will be decided the government has no business in our private lives. Maybe we won't end up having the government policing not only the entire world to protect it's interests, but our bedrooms as well, to ensure that American citizens ONLY engage in sexual activity to produce the next generation of soldier boys and breeding girls. Argh!!!
Six:
I have been reading Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. Basically, the book version of his food network TV show where he runs around the world eating things both good and foul, playing the gonzo foodie. The chapter dealing with Portugal described a celebration held in his honor, where a pig was slaughtered and pretty much every single scrap of skin, flesh, and bone was used for the feast, except for the bladder, which was blown up with air, and used to play ball.
When I described this to my father, it made him laugh, because he remembers similar parties happening in the small pueblo where he grew up. He remembers playing pelota with a ball made from a pigs bladder with the other kids when he was a young boy.
To the squeamish and very far removed from the source of his food American part of my mind, this was gross, but to a larger and more important part of me, this image of my pop as a boy is charming.
It's cool that I am still discovering and learning things about my pa.
Seven:
John and I spent last Saturday at a seminar by Hollywood Animals, hence the jpeg of a scary looking me feeding milk to a leopard. The point of the day, besides providing photo 'ops, was to demonstrate how positive reinforcement is used to train animals for shows. That and to explain that elephants are in big demand for music videos right now.
Getting to the thing involved a long drive through freeways, surface streets, residential neighborhoods, and a very bumpy rock strewn dirt road that doubled over a dry riverbed. Luckily it was not the previous weekend when storms had been dumping water like mad all through the Southland. My poor little car was not having a fun time with all the rocks, and there was no way I would have tried to drive through an actual river. OK, temporary stream, but same difference considering the floods we have whenever it rains hard.
We (read John) overestimated how long the trip would take, so we ended up with plenty of time to pull over to side of the dirt road and eat breakfast while taking in the hum of bees, a sight of hawk riding thermals, and the surrounding hills, covered in the dusty greens of chaparral and yellows and blues of wild flowers, all flush from the recent rains.
Ignoring the pieces of a wrecked car scattered across the river bed, and other signs of "civilization," it was possible to maybe believe that we weren't minutes from a huge metropolis.
It's sad that there are fewer and fewer places in Los Angles that are still wild. So much of the scrublands are gone now, covered in housing developments, fast food joints and strip malls
It's all happening relatively quickly. A co-worker who is my age, used to hunt rabbits with his father in the hills surrounding their home when he was teenager. That was less than twenty years ago, and those same hills are now covered in nearly identical, overpriced, walled in, townhome and condo developments, all designed so that it is near impossible to walk anywhere.
Eight:
A few weeks ago, I committed to writing something about lust before the end of the month. Well, there are only a couple of more days left to March and my lust entry is just not going to happen. Scold me if you would like, but I'll see about getting something up during April. Unless of course, everything goes to crap next month and the idea of writing something about hormones and sex is too idiotic to even contemplate.
More later,
nico
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