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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.
12/17/2003
This is where the title would be if I had bothered to think of one (part two):
Each time it came to writing something for this site, I quickly found something else to do, even if that something else was nothing more than lying semicomatose on the couch watching reruns on TV. I have had the same problem with returning correspondence. So for the couple of people I�m late in responding to your e-mails, it�s not a purposeful snub, merely a grand and debilitating case of procrastination.
I�ll be a good boy and get back to you, soon... maybe�I think. If I don�t, go ahead and think of a good punishment. Maybe that�ll get me motivated enough to quit being so rude. Anyway, the entry:
Like a musical: The newest show at the Mark Taper is a new kind of musical, Like Jazz. That�s what it is being billed as, a new kind of musical, one which uses jazz music to explain it�s emotion, it�s heartbeat Even after having seen it, I am still not quite sure what all that really means, other than the show consisted of songs, and some introductions to songs. There was no plot, no story, just songs. Press for Like Jazz point out that there are famous �names� associated with this thing, but me being me, I didn�t recognize any of them.
I was clueless to the talent on stage because I am not a huge jazz fan. Embarrassingly, the only person I recognized was the man who used to be the evil mayor from Buffy. Even with my lack of musical knowledge, I did enjoy most of the songs. A couple of numbers weren�t too interesting for me, but many others were good, some were fun, and a couple were�interesting.
There was a number that was meant to show the heat and sensualness of the saxophone, that is, the sex of the sax. As a woman sang of seeing a cool, cool man play his sax, a cool, cool man danced on stage, mock playing a prop sax. The mock prop being a large, white wire saxophone shaped thing he danced with, repeatedly bringing the tip almost but not quite to his lips as he writhed on the stage floor. I sat there watching the dancer roll around with this large white pointy thing inches from his mouth and I couldn�t help but think that the cool, cool man was a big tease. I also couldn�t help wondering if I were the only person in the theater thinking that the female singer was barking up the preverbal wrong tree.
There was also a more traditional dance free number about Billy Tipton. It would appear that according to the song, decades of cross dressing, several marriages to several women, and fatherhood, were all done solely out of a love of Jazz, and not because of any L or T words that were conveniently not mentioned in the song.
During the final song, folks in the audience were moving about to the music, and as I looked down towards the front center section, I saw a mass of older white haired women and men, bopping their heads and snapping their fingers. Maybe that�s what the definition of a new kind of musical is.
The saga of the mochi and the bandage: The Mochi kitten is old enough now that she was neutered a couple of weeks ago. The procedure involved an overnight stay at the vets and when John went to pick her up the next day, they brought her out with her front leg bandaged. During the night, she had fussed with, and managed to pull out the catheter attached to her leg.
The vet stressed to John that Mochi was not allowed to run, jump, or play rough for the next week. Before John could even begin to answer back, the vet looked at him and said that she realized that Mochi was a very �active� cat, and to do merely his best.
Despite my continually describing her to people as a tiny, prissy, princess of a kitten, she is actually a fast growing rough and tumble tomboy of a teenage cat. She spent most of her first day back from the vet sleeping, but the next day she was back to her old rambunctious self. Stitches, and a stapled and bandaged leg was not going to keep her from her fun, so she spent her convalescence running, jumping, tearing through the house like a maniac, and fighting/playing rough with Spanky. Investigating a strange noise, John even once found her playing mountaineer, trying to climb the back of a cabinet by shoving her back into the cabinet and pushing against the wall with her legs.
When not being the wild adventurer, she was merely wild, spending a fair amount of time trying to remove her bandages. She even succeeded a few times, which necessitated a few wrestling matches with her trying to get her to hold still long enough to get a replacement bandage on. She struggled and cried bloody murder each time we went through the process. The worst being the first time when she screamed so loudly that Spanky came running the room and started hitting me. Fending off an attack from the older sibling while keeping a young beast from squirming out of my hands, I joined in with the noise making and started screaming for John to help me with HIS Cats.
The staple and bandage are now off, the dissolving stitches have dissolved, and both scars are healing nicely. I just hope Mochi calms down a bit now that she�s back in good health.
Was there significance to Prior being told to Stop Moving by both Emma Thompson and Emma Thompson?: John and I got to see the Angels in America preview held at UCLA a few Thursdays ago. We barely made it. Traffic was horrible that evening, and it took over ninety minutes to drive a measly 24 miles. It was a very aggravating, angry, annoying, and testy ninety minutes. Part of the problem was our own fault (not a big part mind you), in that when we decided to abandon the freeways, we made some poor street choices that were just as bad as sitting in freeway traffic, inching along at barely 5 miles an hour.
We arrived at the theater late enough that we missed all of the preshow reception, and most of the speeches. We did however get to our seats a whole two minutes before the preview, which ultimately was fine.
I�d only had a vague idea of what to expect with the movie since I�d neither seen, nor read the plays. I was really impressed. Especially with Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. As he demonstrated with Homebody/Kabul, Kushner is skilled enough of a writer that even though you realize that a long time is passing; the story is engaging enough that you don�t care, although maybe that also had something to do with the theater. A good sound system and comfortable seats certainly helped seeing something that long.
In the lobby afterwards, I walked by a group of people laughing because one of them said that he hates Al Pachino, which made him a good choice for playing Roy Cohn. Taking a quick look through the dessert spread a few minutes later, I stood next to group of people who were amazed that the scene involving the decent of the angel was �just like it was at the Taper.� From their noise, I�m guessing that they saw the play and approved of the translation into film.
Seeing it a couple of days later at home was a bit less impressive (big screen verses little TV), but it was still engaging, and unlike the folks who had seen it in the theater, who had to wait a few years for the second half of the story, I only had to wait a week for Perestroika.
In 1979 I was eleven and wishing I was best friends with Starbuck (part two): One of people I need to catch up with in my correspondence is an old friend who sent me some of his thoughts on the new version of Battlestar Galactica that aired recently. He mostly liked it, which if you wander through some sites devoted to the series amounts to a heresy so severe; it is punishable by torture and death. From what I�ve seen, there is a small herd of die-hard fans that were prepared to hate the new version sight unseen. I was a fan of the original series (TOS), but then again, I was also just a kid when it aired. My prepubescent crush on Dirk Benedict notwithstanding, I was willing to give the new version (TNV) a chance. If I can get used to the constant reimagining/revamping of comic book characters (at one point it was decided to turn Aquaman into an underwater Tarzan??), I could get used to new grittier version of Galactica.
Besides, It�s been a while since I�ve seen any of the episodes, so it�s not exactly as if I were that committed to the �true concept� of the show. While I imagine that I would still enjoy TOS, I also believe I would look at the thing in its full 70�s television glory and wonder what the heck the creators were thinking. The original star trek may have that space hippy episode that makes die hard fans cringe, but Galatica has monkeys in robot dog suits and destitute refugee ships with groovy discoth�ques where people danced to synthesizer heavy outer space disco while holding up light cables.
Having now seen TNV, I thought it was not too bad, although mostly boring. More heresy I guess. My main problem with it was it seemed to plod along so slooooowly. In TOS, it took three hours including commercials to introduce all the characters, for the cylons to destroy humanity, for Adama (don�t call me Moses) to put together his �ragtag� fleet, and for the fleet to fly into and escape form a cylon trap. It seemed to take TNV a lot longer to do the somewhat the same. The new versions of the characters are supposedly more complicated (TOS�s �Hi, I�m Apollo, I�m perfect and have a stick crammed up my ass� vs. TNV�s �Hey, I�m Lee (don�t call me Apollo) Adama , I�m deeply troubled and I also have a stick crammed up my ass�), so that could have been a reason why it took so long, but it isn�t. In truth the characters are not that more well rounded, merely much more depressed. Depressed and troubled does not necessarily make for more complicated.
My friend mentioned that it was amusing at how serious the new version was taking itself. So serious that it sounds odd, if not out right amusing whenever some straight laced military figure starts talking about the lords of kobal, or curses by saying frak.
He has a point, but there is more to it than the show having a �this is realistic science fiction, not sci-fi� attitude. Part of the oddness was that unlike the TOS, which at least tried to pretend that these were alien human cultures, these new people are merely Americans in outer space. Nothing kills suspension of disbelief quite like having your extraterrestrial male background characters running around in ties and jackets. The other big tip off that these guys are Americans and not �Colonials� is that the human traitor Baltar has an English accent. Rule of thumb in American Science fiction shows is that English=villain. Because Baltar is a foreigner, he gets to keep his funky TOS name. Americans (who are not English and therefore are the good guys) don�t have names like Apollo, or Boomer, or Jolly, or Cassiopeia, which is probably why nearly everyone else on the show got a name change, at least everyone who survived the transition that is.
It seems that the thing many people (men?) object to the most is the �Politically Correct� attitude that resulted in Starbuck being changed into a woman. I think they�ve missed the point, or at the very least, I don�t think that PC attitudes had anything to do with the changes. There are tons of �Starbuck is a chick, that sucks!� comments online, but I haven�t read a single objection to ALL of the TOS female characters being dropped. No one seems to care that there is no Athena, no Cassiopeia, no Sheba, or no �she�s going to die as soon as she marries Apollo� woman. Granted there are now two new female characters, the breast cancer subplot president and the sex vamp/fembot/female terminator villain, but it still seems to me that with the drastic paring down of cast, if Starbuck and Boomer hadn�t changed genders, Galatica would have had an all male crew and well, that�s just dull.
when I walked in to the theater, I passed folks speaking French: One of the many things that have been left off the journal is that I saw the Triplets of Belleville at the Rialto theater in South Pasadena a few weeks ago. I had a good time with it. Despite a near total lack of dialogue, there was no confusion in storytelling, and no sense of anything lacking. The story of a woman rescuing her bicyclist grandson was engaging and the entire movie was overflowing with sound and music.
It�s been a while since I have seen a movie that got a round of applause at the end.
Ok, enough of this. There will be even more catch up next time, since I�ve left out some holiday parties, potlucks, and the like.
More later,
nico
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