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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.
Monday 03/29/2004
Communist pickles, German bloomers, seal shaped sexual enhancement devices, and a couple other items of possible interest
I dreamt that my wife left me after she caught me peeing while taking a shower. Her demanding a divorce, the house, and all our assets should have bothered me, but in truth I was somewhat relieved, because I had been feeling guilty over an affair I was having with Steve Watson, the host of Monster House.
Sadly, the focus of the dream was not fornicating with hunky TV personalities, but my standing alone in a strange room in a strange house, after my physically vague, unnamed wife stormed out angry yelling to the world what was it exactly she had done to deserve marrying such a pig.
I�m not sure what was going on with my mind with the wife thing, but the affair part is simple enough to explain. I don't know if certain online physical attraction tests would approve of my lustful thoughts regarding Mr. Watson, but I don�t care, he�s hot.
Anyway, here are several weeks worth of events told in a manner meant to be humorous:
The results of attraction:
After telling a friend about my results at Match.com, she decided to check it out. She was surprised at how many Asian women she ended up picking as attractive (she officially has a �thing� against dating women that even vaguely resemble her mother). Despite this, according to her results, she doesn�t have a thing for Asian women. This was funny because the majority of the photographs used as examples of particular features she is attracted to (hair length, shape of the face, and such) tended to be of Asian women.
Ahh race, what a laugh.
Communist pickles:
In Goodbye Lenin, An East German woman suffers from a heat attack at the sight of her son being beaten by solders during a demonstration and she falls into a coma. During her 8 month sleep, the Berlin wall falls, Communism begins to crash, and the two Germanys move towards reunification.
When she finally wakes up, the doctors warn her family that any further shocks could result in another heart attack and her death, which starts an elaborate ruse to hide the truth form her. Her son becomes more and more obsessed with recreating a lost German socialist state, a feat made more and more difficult as reality continually insists on intruding into his fantasy. With Coca Cola banners appearing everywhere and West Germans moving into her building, his ruse becomes convoluted to extremes.
In a weird way, his quest to maintain the continued existence of East Germany is summoned up in his efforts to find a particular brand of pickles no longer carried by local stores now obsessed with all products western. Both were apparently unobtainable, and seemingly existing only in idealized memory.
I had read in the times that the movie wasn�t expected to do very well in the States, because it was saddled with two major problems. First it was a foreign film, and worse, it required the audience to have a vague knowledge of recent German history. Essentially, reading subtitles and assuming some knowledge of the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany was too much to expect of the American movie going public.
We�d just sit sit there confused, lean over to the person sitting next to us and ask in a loud stage whisper �Hey, what�s going on? Is that Ben Stiller? Why is he talking funny? Isn�t this Starsky and Hutch? What? Germany is a %^$#! Communist country? No wonder we beat their asses in Double U Double U Two! �
Obviously the idea that we are a nation of blissfully ignorant dufus�s bothers me... mainly because at times I can�t help but wonder if it is true.
Um, I�ve lost my point, which is that Goodbye Lenin was a very good movie. There was good acting, an engaging story, not all the plot points were tied up neat and tidy by the end of the flick, actually inviting discussion and conversation. A most unusual situation.
An actual summer vacation that does not involve staying at home and painting the house:
The details aren�t finalized yet, but it looks as if there is a very good chance that John and I may be visiting friends in Chile this summer. If it works out we�ll be hanging out with Carlos, Tina, and their kids in their new home (he was transferred from Japan to Chile last year), and hitting Santiago and Buenos Aires in high winter, what with that reversal of seasons and all. I�ve already warned John that the first person who starts singing anything Evita related will be heavily fined.
So, any suggestions on what we should do when we�re down there?
German bloomers
The previous play at the Geffen had people walking out, the newest one didn�t have this problem. In fact, Steve Martin�s The Underpants had it�s run extended while still in previews. Basically, it seems that a couple of years ago Mr. Martin took an obscure early 20th century comedic/political German play that examined the middle class (not very kindly?) and rewrote it into a comedy examining fame.
In it, a bored, middle class German housewife has an accident while viewing a military parade, where her underpants fall off, and hilarity ensues. This would have seemed too convenient with the Janet Jackson thing, but the play came first, which I guess can be seen as proof that there is nothing new under the sun, um, so to speak.
The house wife�s husband, a square, stiff man obsesses how the incident will adversely affect him, while the wife gains a couple of potential suitors. Of the two �ethnic� men running around on stage proclaiming their love for the housewife for the mere sight of her bloomers, the more interesting may be the Jewish barber. He�s a hypochondriac, a weakling, a coward, and with the audience�s knowledge of history, a troubled character with a potentially dark, if not deadly future.
From some vague comments in the playbill, it seems there is an unanswered question if in the original play he was a one note anti-Semitic joke, or if the character actually served as a stab/critique of �real Germans.�
From reading all this, it seems that I may be making more of the story than there really is, because when you get down to it, it�s really just a play where when you walk into the theater, you immediately notice two melons carefully placed on a table on stage, and know exactly what one of the first jokes will be.
Women singing, acting, and otherwise performing
Last Sunday afternoon was spent with Kristen at a preview performance of All the World�s a Stage, a Vox Femina concert thing/deal/performance done in conjunction with the L.A. Women�s Shakespeare Company. The performance was at Plummer park in West Hollywood, so Kristen and I had lunch at a nearby Cuban restaurant (disappointing Salmon w/tamarind sauce for me and pretty good roasted chicken for her), then made the trek out to Weho, to a park with a substantial lack of parking, and an abundance of chess playing Russian senior citizens.
The performance consisted of songs intermixed with various scenes form different Shakespeare plays, all tied together by various themes; love, fairies, nature, and the like. Although some of the choices could be debatable I guess, at least by strange people like me who view Romeo & Juliet less as a great love story, and more as a morality play about two dumb kids getting exactly what they deserve for disobeying their parents and society, but hey, I�m a weirdo.
Although there were a couple of songs I wasn�t overly impressed with, overall Vox Femina did their usual good job, as did the LAWSC people. I was told that the summer production for LAWSC may be an old west version of one of the Henry the something, part something plays. Regardless of which play it was exactly, and even keeping in mind the substantial amount of �wacky� staging for Shakespeare, I�m not sure I can picture that. Eh, if I�m here, I�ll more than likely end up seeing it anyway.
Seal shaped sexual enhancement devices:
Wandering through isles of interestingly shaped rubber sounds as if it should be interesting, but somehow it was only mildly so. A few weeks ago I went with a friend (on the spur of the moment) to a store that she had heard about in South Orange County. It was a small place, and strangely (for me at least) a predominately hetero perv store. Not that I make a habit of hanging around kinky stores, but the few I have been in tended to cater to, or at least acknowledged their gay male clientele.
The only signs of gayness here were a small stature of two nude men half hidden in a corner of a small display case, and a couple of gay porn DVD�s with covers of awkwardly posed men standing next to, but not actually touching each other. There was also one questionable looking male employee and myself of course, but that was about it. As for lesbians, there were plenty of woman on woman imagery scattered throughout the store plastered across assorted products, but they appeared to have more to do with straight male fantasies than they did with real life.
We wandered through the store, walking among groups of giggling women laughing as they searched for the most embarrassing bachelorette party gift possible, het couples looking for �toys,� and three frat boys who were way, way too amused by the selection of bad taste greeting cards. �Dude, she�s a porker! Hahahahaha!�
I spent a while standing next to an erotic jewelry display quietly observing couples perusing the sex toy selection. The women would look around, pick up things, compare features, and try to get their men�s opinion, but the guys for their part seemed to uniformly be put off by anything remotely phallus shaped, saying things like �Honey, I don�t want to look at that.� In one case, �That� being a small, friendly looking, purposely cute, psychedelic flower patterned, nonthreatening as humanly possible vibrator.
I wonder what would have happened if that particular woman had grabbed the oversized 12 inch black dildo �with realistic details including veins.� The man would probably have ended the relationship right there and then. Even abstract or vaguely animal shaped rubber items that had nothing remotely to do with the male anatomy tended to garner disinterested grunts and eye rolling from these guys.
There was only one man who didn�t seem threatened by the interestingly shaped plastic and rubber. He and his wife/girlfriend/partner were actually talking about the various stuff they were looking at. He even went so far as to ask her which toy she thought she would enjoy the most.
Interestingly, besides being the only couple having an actual conversation, they were also only ones I saw kissing as well. They left with a multi-pronged thing apparently designed to stimulate a variety of organs at a variety of speeds, both when used solo and in tandem with a partner. I�m thinking that they probably had the best sex life of everyone in the store.
More later,
nico
Oyendo: the soundtrack to a fan musical based on Revolutionary Girl Utena, that I bought used at a Japanese bookstore in Costa Mesa a couple months ago
Want: a salad made from very thin slices of an under ripe mango, some jicama, green onions, and two asian pears, with a healthy shake of some chilie powder and a couple of squeezes of a ripe lime or two.
Elsewhere: Loads of loads of Simsons information, including nearly every queer thing that Smithers has ever done.
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