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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.
Lunes 09/20/2004
A play, a movie, a pride, and a bar, although not in that order
Things and events were actually accomplished this past weekend, so here it is:
Play
John and I convinced our friend Patsy to subscribe to the Geffen with us, partially as a way of forcing ourselves to see each other more often, partially cause our tastes are similar enough that we would be able to talk to someone who actually enjoyed the plays we liked, as opposed to our other friends who have subscriptions who seem to view everything we were even halfway pleased with with mild disdain.
Last Friday was the first play of the new season, the first time Patsy went as our subscription buddy, and the first time she�s seen a bunch of nude men parading around a stage.� I think she left the theater pleased with the evening. Aside form a good play, she also had a refresher course in male anatomy as she told us afterwards that she had forgotten �they all can look so different.� I will leave it up to your imagination what she meant by "they."
Take Me Out is the usual award winning well put together thing they do at the Geffen, is this case a story of a well beloved pro baseball player who publicly announces that he�s gay.� The pro sports and openly gay angle naturally leads to that big* issue of showering together, and of course showering leads to copious amounts of male nudity and floppy bits on stage.� That and the fact that �gay plays� must have male nudity in them, although to be honest, this is not a stereotypical �gay play.� At the very least, it doesn�t count since much of the focus is not on the openly gay pro ball player, but on folks surrounding him.
As presented, the presumed main character is very arrogant, which if this really were his story, would make it hard to identify with him.� Heck, he�s so pompous it�s hard to even half way like him.� The characters who are there to identify with are a straight white guy best friend who is an intellectual, and a nebbish white gay accountant who is a geek.� I guess the underlying assumption was that an audience member would be able to identify with one of the two.
Since I see previews, I tend to rarely mention things that could be considered spoilers, or at least serious ones (a sort of silly attitude for plays such as this which have already had previous productions in New York or London).� I do tend get google hits for plays I�ve seen, although it�s doubtful that this quite what the searchers had in mind when looking for reviews or information.� Having written all that, here an important must know spoiler: the arrogant guy doesn�t die.�
From intermission hubbub, I�m not the only one who was starting to worry that the way the story was being told, he was going to get himself killed.� This would have been incredibly annoying, not because I cared about the boob, but because does the world really need another fictional gay martyr?�
I would have disliked the play if it had gone in that direction.�� It didn�t, which had a large part in my enjoying the play, although there�s something I can�t quite identify which kept me from really liking it, that is, from thinking it was great as opposed to merely sort of good.��
Eh, I�m probably over thinking it all.� The thing had a large assortment of nekked willies, as a gay male theatergoer that�s all I�m supposed to have been paying attention to.
��������������
*sarcasm, �cause really, is there anything more annoying than a straight guys fearful of being looked at in a shower?
Movie
It�s been so long since I�ve seen Ghost in the Shell that I only sort of remember what happened in it.� I do recall that while I considered it technically good, it left me vaguely depressed.� I was already vaguely depressed when I saw the sequel Innocence, but for whatever reason, it didn�t make it any worse. Which is strange in that even if I was a chippy happy go lucky mood, a dark and violent movie of a distopic future based on questioning the very definition of human should have bummed me out a bit.�
My cheesy emotional state aside, the film is incredibly beautiful to look at. Even the violence is gorgeous, which is an utterly bizarre thing to write, but it was. Normally graphic images of violence tend to bother me somewhat, but with this flick far more disturbing to me was the idea that a relationship with a doll (IE �a sexbot�) would be perfect because it was a soulless corpse.� I�m poorly paraphrasing there, but that was the rough intent, that sex with a machine was desirable because there was essentially no one there.�
Extrapolating from a subculture of young men in Japan who have no social life and would much rather prefer to play with porn computer games than interact with real women, I can see where the idea of a perfect woman as soulless and artificial comes from, even if I personally find the idea really creepy.� Of course given that the story starts off with these sex toys murdering their owners, maybe masturbation taken to the extreme is not so desirable after all.
Anyway, the sequel is good, and from what little I recall possibly better than the first movie.� If I were still a young guy into Cyberpunk, I would have absolutely loved this film.� I�m not anymore, but I did like it, although knowing me, I�m going to quickly forget most of it, and the only things that will stick with me will be the idea of soulless as good, and breathtaking images of parades and birds.
Bar
I was in an odd mood after the flick and did something I haven�t done in ages.� I actually went to a bar, by myself.� It just seemed like a Saturday night kind of thing to do, despite being very out of character for me.� Not that it was that interesting of a night.� Essentially all I did was go to a local dive, buy a bottle of water, and then hold up a wall people watching for an hour before heading back home.�
The excursion did give me the chance to look at a couple of cute butts as a couple of guys played pool badly, and to watch an older man enjoying himself as he danced with his favorite lipstick lesbians to the amusement of their girlfriends.
There was an odd point when an inebriated guy told me that as it was his thirty-fifth birthday that night, his youth was gone.� I told him happy birthday and I didn�t bother telling him I was older than he was since that didn�t seem an appropriate response.
I wasn�t quite sure what to do when his shaking my hand hello turned into a gentlemanly peck of the back of my hand, but ultimately I had to do nothing, as just as suddenly turned and left to talk to his friends.� I ended up deciding that I was out of my element and that it was time to return to hearth, husband, and bed, and be the old boring man that I really was.
Pride
Sunday was the San Gabriel Pride picnic in the park, or whatever it is exactly that the event was named.� It was a quiet thing, smaller in numbers than last year, but it did give John and me a chance to chat with some folks we haven�t seen in a while.
I�m not sure if the relatively low attendance numbers were due to disinterest in such an event by the community, or if it was actually due to lack of knowledge of the event.� The only people I know who knew about it are on the same info e-mail list I�m on.� Then again, I�ve been so out of the community the past few years that for all I know there could have been a huge advertising blitz.� Although considering the numbers, I sort of hope not. anyhow, it was a pleasant time.�
OK, enough of this.� Assuming some free time to write �em, there will be some more vacation catch up entries again soon, although not too soon as there�s real life stuff to attend to, such as the birthday tomorrow, although I probably won�t have a chance to do anything to celebrate until the weekend or later.
More later,
nico