Month: April 2012

Girl, Please. (A GIF Is Worth a Thousand Words)

NYC GAYS is hands-down the funniest thing I’ve seen online lately. While it helps to have some familiarity with NYC gay nightlife (he says smugly), it’s certainly not a necessity… I will tell you this: Splash is a terrible, terrible bar that appeals to out-of-towners and NYC neophytes; there are go-go dancers and the crowd skews young and cheesey. That’s my recollection, at any rate. And apparently, it’s still true, since the NYC GAYS site uses this gif under the headline When You Get Invited to Splash:

Oh, Whitney – we miss you… And I will never ever tire of this gif. Or this one.

Also, here’s How Being at Splash Makes You Feel. I am adopting this as my new catchphrase (though I’ll have to adjust the age – only slightly, yes, but I’m going to savor the next 4 1/2 years of being not 52…)

Oh for the good ol’ days…

Ross Douthat, the NYT’s resident conservative columnist, has written a book about “contemporary American Christianity” – and, if this review by Mark Oppenheimer in the paper of record is to be believed, it sounds HILARIOUS!

“Both doubters and believers have benefited from the role that institutional Christianity has traditionally played in our national life,” Mr. Douthat writes, referring to the Eisenhower era. He cites the old Christianity’s “communal role, as a driver of assimilation and a guarantor of social peace, and its prophetic role, as a curb against our national excesses and a constant reminder of our national ideals.”

Yes, the Eisenhower era. Everything was perfect then!* Let’s check in with the blacks, the Jews, the women, the gays, the Koreans, the commies and all the other non-white, non-male, non-Americans from that era and ask how things were working out for them and what Christianity was bringing to their lives.

Mr. Douthat’s portrait of mid-century religiosity is too idyllic.

Ya think? Stop it, you’re killing me! Seriously, you ought to take this act on the road…

*OK, OK, I’ll grant that the 92% tax rate on the wealthy back in the day was super-cool…

from NYTimes

Disgusting!

People should have the freedom to do what they like with other consenting adults – but do they have to go around flaunting it? No one wants to have to see this in public. Gross.

Is there any appropriate response to this other than “Go fuck yourself”?

Someone I know recently posted this on Facebook – and it was all I could do not to immediately unfriend this person.

“Oh, Eric,” I’m sure  you’re saying, “Don’t be such a crab. In fact it might do you some good to be a little happier about your life.” WELL!

First of all, I am quite happy with certain aspects of my life. One that pops immediately into my mind is that my cat is over his recent illness and is back to his delightful and cuddly self. And I just made plans to spend two-and-a-half weeks on the Continent this fall. This is exciting and serves as a reminder that I am very lucky to have a job that gives me sufficient paid time off and pays well enough to take such a trip. This is a good thing!

But then there are components of my life which make me unhappy. Being single and pushing 50 is not exactly a bed of roses – and since being not-single generally requires input from someone other than myself, I only have a certain amount of control over making this “change.”

I think what galls me the most about the underlying idea of this “unhappy? then change” message is that somehow every aspect of one’s emotional life is controlled internally. Certainly, some of it is – but would anyone print up this noxious cartoon and hand it out to parents visiting their kids in the cancer ward? Or to workers punching out of the time-clock for the last time after being laid off from the job they’ve worked for 30 years? Or a child who just got beat up by a parent? Or the retired secretary who has to choose between taking her heart medication or buying groceries? Or the Iraqi War vet suffering from PTSD who can’t get an appointment at the VA for six months? “Oh, come on! Turn that frown upside-down! Just engage in some magical thinking and everything will be fine! And if it’s not, well, then, it’s your own fault for not changing!” Ugh. Vomit. It’s the same bullshit spewed by that horrible book The Secret.

Of course, I also take great issue with the idea that happiness is somehow the “norm”; that being sad or angry or fearful or experiencing any other “negative” feeling is somehow pathological, something to be cured or avoided. Certainly, those suffering from clinical depression or other neuroses should seek out and get treatment. But I’ve always firmly believed that, in order to experience the entire spectrum of human emotions, from despair to joy, you have to embrace them all. Suppressing or ignoring the more difficult emotions such as unhappiness, hopelessness, dread makes for an emotionally-stunted person, someone who can’t feel compassion for others – and probably can’t experience the heights of joy and happiness.

My life has seen plenty of changes, some of which I chose, some of which were chosen for me; some good, some bad; some made me happy, some made me miserable. And I have much to be happy about, though probably nearly as much to be unhappy about. And if you’re advice to me is to “change something”? Well, then, I say again – go fuck yourself.

“Roll the cameras.”

Not sure why this song popped into my head today – but pop it did. And I’ve decided I need to incorporate it into my life in one of two ways… Either this needs to be played every Monday morning as I enter my building and continue as I ride the elevator up to my office, sit down in my cube, start up my computer and log in to Facebook respond to the many highly-important emails I’ve received.

The second option would be to keep this song in reserve and have it played on my last day in the office when I retire, as I head out of the building one final time. Though since I’ll likely be making that trip in a pine box, maybe I’ll stick with option 1…

I See What You Did There! Or Do I..?

The Chron had a little write-up on “the Village, a Thomas Kinkade Community” – a subdivision of shoddily-constructed McMansions modeled after the Painter of Light’s™ favored subject matter (I KNOW!). In other words, fake Tudors, ersatz Victorians, faux French Provincial, etc. So charming!

I’ve read and re-read the last sentence of the following paragraph over and over again. And I remain completely unable to determine if it is simply an example of a writer who is unfamiliar with the actual definition of  a particular word she uses – or whether it is a subtle and ingenious dig at both the deceased and those who collect his works and live in this “village”.

Sales of Kinkade’s paintings and reproductions have gone through the roof since the artist, who lived near Los Gatos, died April 6 at age 54. That’s typical after an artist dies; fans and speculators bet that prices will rise because no more originals can be produced. Whether that holds true in Kinkade’s case is debatable because of the sheer enormity of works produced during his lifetime.

Considering it’s the Chron, though, I’m inclined to believe that she thinks “enormity” is a synonym for “very large amount.” But for all intensive purposes, this really just makes the whole thing even better… I literally died laughing.

I’m Too Sexy

Coincidentally, this is what I was wearing last time I walked home.

My usual and preferred method for getting to and from work is astride my wonderful bicycle, La Nuit Verte. There is really no finer way to start or end one’s work day than with a delightful ride through downtown SF (the exception of course being those rides that include either mowing down a jaywalking pedestrian or being hit by a car, followed by a trip to the ER – but those are thankfully few and far between…)

With all the rain we’ve had over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been relegated to taking Muni to and from work, an experience that is at the complete opposite end of the commuting spectrum from biking. In fact, I would venture to say that spending time in Dante’s Third Circle of Hell would be like a vacation in a tropical paradise compared to riding Muni.

Of course, if it’s not actually raining, I could walk – though due to my Baron-Harkonnen-esque girth and monstrosity, I typically eschew walking if the Next Bus indicator tells me a 2-Clement is arriving within five minutes (though, this of course is a crap-shoot, thanks to the high percentage of ghost buses on this line…). But since Muni apparently thinks it is acceptable to have a 25-minute wait between buses at 5PM on a Friday (seriously – the Next Bus indicator as I left the office showed one arriving in 50 seconds – and the next scheduled to arrive in 24 minutes and 30 seconds), walk I often do.

This is really all just quite a long introduction to a discussion of walking in the City. It is something I do regularly – though walking to and from work is really the only time I combine walking with listening to music on my headphones. And I’m just wondering: am I the only person who uses this as an opportunity to practice my sexy walk for the fashion catwalk? I mean, the lines in the sidewalk really help with the footwork (heel-toe-heel-toe, in a straight line to get those hips swinging…), turning a corner gives me practice with my pivot and stopping for a red light allows me to brush up on my hand-on-hip-with-surly-gaze-into-an-indeterminate-point-on-the-horizon look. Currently, this is the best song on my playlist for my “rehearsals”…

(crickets)

Um, so it’s just me who does this? Well, OK… Gosh, this is awkward. Eh, whatever. It looks something like this. And no, I’m not the wobbly one – I’m the one who walks past her, muttering “Outta my way, bish.”

J’aime Jean Paul Gaultier

J’ai besoin des botteilles… Ces sont fantastiques. Mais je deteste le Diet Coke – je bois le Coke normale seul. N’importe. Je les veux… Regardez les autres photos ici.

from Selectism

Belko Royce

Belko Royce

I swore I wasn’t going to watch The Killing (a.k.a. Red Herring Weekly) for its second season. With each episode of season 1, I’d become more and more irritated – with the characters and their farfetched motives, with the story and its nonsensical progression, with the false leads and clumsy plot twists. It was just annoying…

But during my visit last week to death’s door, I spent a lot of time on the sofa watching TV and Law & Order marathons were only running half the time (why there isn’t a L&O channel at this point in time, I couldn’t tell you. But I digress…) and AMC was re-running the shit out of the premiere episode of The Killing season 2. So, I watched. Frankly, it was unwise. The show remains as annoying as ever and the plot twists and turns have become even more impenetrable and difficult to follow (even more so for viewers with a high fever, apparently). Yet I find myself drawn back into the plot – and will likely be reluctantly and eye-rollingly watching season 2.

But one thing I did still like about the show? Belko Royce, Stan’s colleague and close friend to the the Larsen family, who is endearingly creepy and/or creepily endearing – but more importantly, he is a sexy little bear and I just wanted to hug him. Too bad he (SPOILER ALERT) gets his head blown off in episode 2.

I was curious about the actor who plays Belko, Brendan Sexton III – and it turns out he made his acting debut in Welcome to the Dollhouse as Brandon McCarthy, Dawn Wiener’s charming “rapist”. Well!

Anyway, this was really all just an excuse to post this picture of Mr. Sexton that I stumbled across during my research. Humuhnah humuhnah humuhnah…

Brendan Sexton III - photo by Adam Fedderly

The Nuance of the Japanese Language

So, I’m back, I guess? Between traveling, my recurring battle with SARS and a life that is, to be kind, completely tedious and repetitious, I’d kind of fallen off the “post every weekday” wagon. I’m doing my best to remedy this…

At any rate, I’m reading and quite enjoying Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries by Tim Anderson. He’s an American (and fellow gay) who went to Japan to teach English and this book recounts his trials and tribulations. I was reading in bed the other night and had a hard time sleeping, since I kept cackling over this particular observation about learning to speak Japanese.

I read in one of Ewan’s books that the syllable “o” is an honorific, placed in front of some words to make them softer or more polite. I’d omitted it in front of the word “money,” and this omission had drastically altered the sound of the sentence, judging from Yoko’s reaction. So instead of saying, “Thank you so much for the books. I’ve brought some money,” I’d actually said something like, “Here’s your money, you greedy bitch. Thanks a fucking lot.”

Caine’s Arcade

Are you like me? Do you hate people? Sure, we all do. But every now and again, I see something that penetrates my crusty and wizened exterior to my schmaltzy and gooey interior – and this short film certainly qualifies.

Seriously, though, this kid is amazing. And the college fund that the filmmaker set up for him already has nearly $75K in it. Though I suspect young Caine will go far, college fund or no.

from The Awl