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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.
wednesday 04/23/2003
Bar tricks, sexist pigs, and fey men in blue face:
There has been a lot going on in my life lately. Things that I don�t feel overly excited about writing about, which is a good thing since that would involve writing a huge meandering epic saga of an entry covering loads of stuff from glbt potlucks, trying to repair a collapsing retaining wall, comic purchases, dinner with friends, DVD planet, dinner with Kristen, familial angst, a different dinner with different friends, amusement parks, work angst, to occasional wispy rain. Most of which would have been deathly dull.
Instead of all that, here are a few hopefully not too boring cosas:
one:
ChrisX, giver of parties, and all around fun person, is a somewhat plain looking white woman in her late forties/early fifties. I mention this solely because as my friend Kristen phrased it, there are some things that only a 40/50-ish year old white woman could get away with.
ChrisX has a game that she plays when she goes to bars. After a certain number of drinks, she will ask the other patrons who they would want to have sex with if they were gay. Apparently this always leads to fun and hilarity as women immediately begin to answer without the slightest hesitation, while men tend to hem and haw for a while.
She has observed that the stereotypes of how the two genders choose their mates seem to reverse when faced with a hypothetical "gay situation". Women, who are supposedly concerned with personality and the ability of a man to be a good provider, concentrate solely on looks (�Oh that's an easy question, Halley Berry, she is sooo pretty!"), while breast and ass obsessed men suddenly start concentration on personality (�Uh, maybe Tom Hanks? He seems like a nice guy.").
There are exceptions of course, the last time ChrisX did this, two guys started arguing over which of them would be able to get Antonio Banderas.
As amusing all of this is, I think the real fun for her is that she gets to tease and heckle the men who are too uptight to answer, or to even think about the question.
two:
When ChrisX asked John and me a variant of the question, "what woman would you want to have sex with if you were straight", I turned into a sexist pig with my answer of one of the waitresses at an Ethiopian restaurant I once ate at back east. They were most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life.
John on the other hand, gave the gayest answer imaginable. Hmm, actually that would be Judy Garland, so he gave the second gayest answer possible.
three:
Teachers dominated one of the dinners John and I were at two weeks ago. The consensus that night was that it is not a great time for teaching. From the conversation, the implementation of no child left behind has become no child will get ahead. There were complaints about scripts, which literally involves a script to follow when teaching, and which allows minimal room for the needs of individual children. Everyone, regardless of ability is taught the exact same way, so if a kid doesn't get it, too bad, because a teacher can/will be reprimanded for not following the written dialogue.
Pink slips are being handed to staff in record numbers, teachers are being advised that they have to teach kids to pass tests as opposed to actually learning a subject; elective teachers are being fired in droves; and the stress placed on raising test scores favors ignoring overly poor and overly high scoring kids, since the math used to figure out all of this bruhaw devalues raising test scores that are already high, or those that are very low. In other words, it�s a waste of time and resources.
There was also griping about odd programs for teaching children to read that have been implemented in different school districts. Depending on the school system, kids will no longer learn that C is for Clock. Instead some children will learn that O is for cl-O-ck, while others will discover that T is for clock, since a clock goes Tick Tock.
Don�t bother asking me. Even after a half hour of explanation, I still didn�t get it.
One of the people at the party made the point that one of the main problems with public education is not that it doesn't work, but rather that everyone is convinced it doesn't work. This and the very low opinion and value the public places on education allows politicians and any complaining yahoo without the slightest training or experience in education, to meddle in everything and anything they can get their hands on.
The only good thing about this viewpoint is that politicians come and go, so in time things will change. It remains to be seen if it will be for the better, or for the worst.
four:
Dinner with old friends on the patio over looking the harbor over at the Redondo Beach Cheesecake factory is a pleasant way to spend the evening. Nice food, if overly massive portions. All made amusing when we realized that with all the heat lamps turned on, it was far warmer outside sitting next to the water at night, then it was inside the restaurant proper.
five:
The end of Buffy is coming, which has put me in a bit of a nostalgic mood of sorts, so I have been wasting massive amounts of time with the first season DVD, reliving the days when the actors almost sort of looked young enough to attend high school, when the buffy-speak humor was hugely funny merely because it was new, and when no major characters were having their eyes gouged out by evil priests in really gross scenes.
Of course, unless you are a buffy fan, none of that would make any sense. If you are one, I'm sure you also imagined a hoard of teenage fangirls (and a fair number of boys no doubt) screaming NO!!! during that rather gross eyeball eliminating scene. It's probably bad of me to think so, but I imagine that there are now a lot young fanfic writers who are secretly excited that they now get to play with a tortured and anguished eyepatched Xander.
six:
John had a free ticket for California Adventure, so being the wise men that we are; we decided that the Friday before Easter, right when most students were on spring break would be the perfect time to visit an amusement park. Well, actually it turned out logistics wise, that a potentially crowded day was the only day we would be able to make it, so we did.
California Adventure is not as popular as Dizzyland. For whatever reason though, it costs the same amount to get in to either park ($47). Although if look at it from a most bang for your buck viewpoint, it C.A. costs more, since (at least for now) Dizzyland not only has more to do, it is also open four hours longer each day. Paying more for less doesn�t entirely seem right. It also seems weird that a single two-day pass for both parks is more expensive than two individual day passes would be, but hey, whatever, I'm sure it makes sense to someone.
This was my first time to this park, and I now see why it's not overly popular. The idea of the park being a way to explore and celebrate California is there, but it doesn't seem to be fully developed. For example, there is a small area with a desert/test flight/rocket/aviation theme. I would think that the theme would lend itself to multitudes of rides and attractions, but apparently it doesn't, since the only thing there is a restaurant, a gift shop and a hand gliding simulation ride. I am not an expert on such things, so like the ticket pricing, I�m sure there�s a real good reason for this.
Besides the desert, there is also a Cannery Row area, a mountainous area, a Hollywood/movie area, a winery, an "old" amusement pier, and a bugs life/farm area which I guess could make some sort of sense if you think about it a lot, but I didn't bother to.
As far as parks go, it's not too bad, it is after all a Disney thing, and they are usually good at what they do, but had I paid full price to enter, I think I would have been vaguely disappointed. Anyway, some random points I don't feel like working into proper sentences and paragraphs:
-If you ever go there and want to see the Aladdin show, make sure to the theater and get some tickets (equivalent of a fast pass) as soon as you get in the park. Even with the tickets you'll end up standing in line for a while, but the standby line was way worse, and I�m not sure if there was a guarantee of entry.
The show is a live, musical version of the movie. A condensed milk version of the movie as it were, shorter, syrupier, and much, much sweeter. It's an ok thing, filled with stuff to make the kids in the audience ohh and ahh. Things like people dressed as animals walking through the aisles. Presumably a trick they learned from Lion King. For adults, the genii has been given some topical lines, although the actor's delivery was not so much Robin William as much as Rip Taylor.
-California Screaming is a goofy name for a roller coaster, but it is a very good ride. One that conveniently spills the riders out next to a stand selling overpriced photos of you screaming your head off. The Sun Wheel on the other hand, is a cute name, but a rather nausea inducing ferris wheel, since it has loose baskets which roll and swing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on a set loop track as the entire wheel moves. I rarely get sea sick, but that thing was threatening to turn me a nasty shade of green.
-The Muppets 3D movie was cute, but the 3D glasses were starting to give me a headache. The screaming kids in the Bugs' Life 3D movie pushed that headache over into migraine territory. A blast of air from a hidden spigot in your seat plus the word maggot, and every preteen girl in the audience was screeching at the top of her lungs in that hypersonic bone shattering way that only preteen girls can do.
The waiting lobbies for both things were filled with movie and �broadway� posters with kitschy, satiric names like Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Tiffanies (staring Miss Piggy), and A Cockroach Line. All I could think was that some gay men were having a grand ol� time designing both attractions.
-On the car ride down to Anaheim, John read the paper, including an article where public health officials and "gay leaders" were concerned that the White Party in Palm Springs that weekend was going to turn into Syphilis Fest 2003. It was not an overly positive article.
I mention this because one of the rides is a simulation were you supposedly soar over the entire state. It felt as if the state tourist board had built the thing. From the ride you find out that California is a state filled with energetic, athletic people who spend every possible moment outside with sports and activities. I liked the ride, but yeesh, it was essentially just a massive pro California commercial.
A commercial that soared over Palm Springs at one point, but instead of partying gay boys flinging venereal diseases at each other, there were white folks playing golf.
-When we walked into the park, I noticed a NYU t-shirt wearing blond woman with her hair done up in cornrows. I thought nothing of it, until I started noticing more and more cornrowed women and men. Young, middle aged, slim, heavy, New York, or thick midwestern accents, there was no connection other than they were all white, all blond and they all looked dumb.
So as a public service announcement for white folks, STOP THE MADNESS!
You will not look good with your hair like that. No white person does. DON'T EVEN TRY! Heed the warning and spare yourself the pain and suffering of bright red sunburned scalps, and people snickering and pointing fingers at you behind your back.
Remember, only you can prevent hair abuse!
More later,
nico
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