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Friday, December 31, 2004

I hate New Year's Eve. Most holidays encourage you to get out there and have some fun, dammit, but New Year's demands it. If you're not drunk off your nelly ass, covered in confetti, blowing noisemakers, and screaming for more by midnight in the middle of Times Square, then you're a...well, there aren't really words to describe the depths of your loserdom. You're a complete waste of perfectly good DNA. You might as well just stay under the bedsheets reading about string theory for the next 365 days and try your luck again.

Me, I don't respond well to such high-pressure pitches: not from telemarketers, not from used car salesmen, not from tweaked-out hustlers in toilet stalls of seedy downtown bars, and certainly not from the holiday gods. So for many years, I tried to avoid New Year's Eve altogether. This proved not so easy, and, right on schedule, I wound up feeling like a total loser. Mission accomplished, Dick Clark! Are you happy now, you old bat?

Last year, Jonno and I decided a change was in order, and we hosted our very own party. I think it went off pretty damn well, so we're having another one ce soir. Of course, you're invited: if you're around and don't know where the hell we live, just gimme a call or drop a line for directions.

One small change this year: just for kicks, we opted for a dress code. In homage to the late, great Jackie 60, we have provided our guests with the following sartorial options:

Miss Jane Hathaway Ornithological Expedition Realness
Cleopatra Jones Kung Fu Glamour Princess
Crocodile Dundee Pith Helmet Fisting Top
Amber Waves Coke Whore Effect
Audra Lindley Macrame Muu-Muu Couture
Aubrey Beardsley Neurasthenic Pansy Boy
Big Dick Cheney Drama Queen Leather Daddy
Harajuku Schoolgirl Super Lolita Now
Stevie Nicks Magical Suspension of Disbelief
Lindsay Wagner Ninja Showgirl Fembot
but jeans and a t-shirt will do.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Going back to Frank O'Hara for a moment: decades ago, he wrote a lovely piece intended for fortune cookies, but most of it can easily be read as New Year's predictions, which (a) makes it timely, and (b) means I don't have to tap my own dark powers of clarivoyance to divine prophecies for 2005. So, in my best Jean Dixon voice...

Lines For The Fortune Cookies
by Frank O'Hara

I think you're wonderful and so does everyone else.

Just as Jackie Kennedy has a baby boy, so will you--even bigger.

You will meet a tall beautiful blonde stranger, and you will not say hello.

You will take a long trip and you will be very happy, though alone.

You will marry the first person who tells you your eyes are like scrambled eggs.

In the beginning there was YOU--there will always be YOU, I guess.

You will write a great play and it will run for three performances.

Please phone The Village Voice immediately: they want to interview you.

Roger L. Stevens and Kermit Bloomgarden have their eyes on you.

Relax a little; one of your most celebrated nervous tics will be your undoing.

Your first volume of poetry will be published as soon as you finish it.

You may be a hit uptown, but downtown you're legendary!

Your walk has a musical quality which will bring you fame and fortune.

You will eat cake.

Who do you think you are, anyway? Jo Van Fleet?

You think your life is like Pirandello, but it's really like O'Neill.

A few dance lessons with James Waring and who knows? Maybe something will happen.

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.

I realize you've lived in France, but that doesn't mean you know EVERYTHING!

You should wear white more often--it becomes you.

The next person to speak to you will have a very intriquing proposal to make.

A lot of people in this room wish they were you.

Have you been to Mike Goldberg's show? Al Leslie's? Lee Krasner's?

At times, your disinterestedness may seem insincere, to strangers.

Now that the election's over, what are you going to do with yourself?

You are a prisoner in a croissant factory and you love it.

You eat meat. Why do you eat meat?

Beyond the horizon there is a vale of gloom.

You too could be Premier of France, if only ... if only...

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

If I were still in Mississippi, discussing world affairs and current events with my family across a kitchen island loaded with divinity and other Stuckey's delights, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that one of my ever-so-thoughtful, ever-so-Baptist brothers--probably the former missionary, but who knows--would credit God/Yaweh with this whole tsunami disaster thing. "Hallelujah!" he'd shout, a little too loudly. "This is a sign from the Almighty! God is tellin' them people to stop worshippin' monkeys and crocodiles and other such nonsense and get with the program. They have done brung it on themselves."

Unfortunately, I doubt that'd be the first Pat Robertson-esque discussion of the matter. In fact, chances are that conversations just like that are taking place in countless breakfast nooks and Waffle Houses across the country as we speak. Er, type.

On a more compassionate note, Tyler has written a touching elegy to the late, great Susan Sontag. The author may be gone, but her work survives, giving thousands upon thousands of future graduate students great ideas to misinterpret.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Lessons Learned This Holiday Season

1. Paying a surprise Christmas visit to your boyfriend's family, who live thousands of miles away, can be great fun, as long as you put aside concerns about calorie consumption, cold weather, and your checking account.

2. If you're in the market for high-end threads on a low-end budget, a trip to Macy's Herald Square on December 26 really is worth all the trouble.

3. American Airlines is clearly a force from the dark side of the negaverse, run by Satan, a bunch of evil elves, and eight tiny reignofterror deer.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Three Poems by Two Men and One Woman Who are Clearly Wiser than I

At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle,
The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you're single.

-- Wendy Cope

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

-- Frank O'Hara

White Dwarf
One day when our sun runs out of fuel and collapses inward under its own weight, then picks up enough mass from its neighbor to explode outward, the blown debris approaching a good fraction of the speed of light, then, then you'll be sorry. Oh, relax: we have five billion years, give or take a few million, to prepare. Meanwhile we go on believing the universe has our best interests at heart. The dock down at Groton Long Point throws a lovely wood skeleton fifty yards out into the Sound. There we rest, after a bike ride, and the winds rise by our witness and the waves build, and the paper-white sails and hulls of pleasure boats cut scimitars into the bay. We sit close-pressed and watch without speaking, wanting to live here, in this model galaxy of islands and peninsulas and rock borders where earth, water and air meet in the small fires of our blood. Oh, why not. We watch a long time. I whisper to you. It is the middle of the day but your hair has that scrubbed protein smell once locked in the center of a star. Why not here? This is what I whisper. Even as we speak, close galaxies are speeding away, faster than more distant galaxies, which are also receding. Groton Long Point, Milky Way, heat of your body next to mine: this is where we live, now. Lovely little islands of matter, surrounded by the blank of space. And the dark taking over more real estate even as we speak. Encroaching zero of the infinite, white dwarf, my breath on your neck: even as we speak.

-- Jeffrey Skinner

Friday, December 24, 2004

A former housemaster of Uppingham School is quoted as saying that a 16-year-old gave him an Omega Watch and a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon. The headteacher of Annemount prep in Hampstead Garden Suburb noted that this year’s haul had included Selfridges vouchers, caviar and vodka.

There were no reports about what teachers at the very top schools, such as Eton, received this year — presumably because they were busy whizzing downhill in Klosters in a scree of powdery snow, screaming: “I can’t believe this is all free! Thank you, Fig-Stotton Minor!” at the time.

-- The Times Online

Hmmm. My teachers always seemed content with the Holly Hobby coffee mugs my mom sent in (which, frankly, I found a tad lavish). You think maybe they were just humoring me?

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Nearly two decades ago, in a tiny town in middle-of-nowhere Mississippi, I packed all of my worldly possessions into a then-new Mustang, backed down a driveway buckling in the August heat, and left.

Lots of people who've done such things--who've left behind lives and families in Middle America to pursue careers or education or dreams in cities across the nation--will try to convince you that they'd give up everything to return to their roots. They'll be tossing back an $18-a-glass Beaujolais, waiting for their edamame to cool, and then bust out with statements like, "Hell yeah, I'm just a country boy at heart!"

Ladies and gentlemen, those words will never cross my lips.

I mean, sure: I spent a good chunk of my childhood fishing and running through woods and planting vegetable gardens, and I look back fondly on all that, but I'm pretty good and distinguishing between nostalgia and straight-up yearning. I wax nostalgic when I remember riding four-wheelers for hours in the cold, then shuffling into my grandmother's house and smelling her incomparable blueberry cobbler, fresh from the oven; I yearn for a personal assistant who can draft a decent thank-you letter and for a computer that doesn't groan every time I try to run InDesign and Photoshop at the same time. Which basically means I understand that my hometown is a great place to visit, but until they 86 the fagbashing and build a good Thai restaurant, I wouldn't want to live there. Again.

All of this was thrown into sharp relief two days ago when I walked into my daddy's house and the first thing he said to me was, "We're gonna have to wait dinner on your brothers. They went up to the farm for some deer hunting and probably won't be back for another hour or so. I got some ambrosia in the fridge if you're hungry, though." It all sounded so completely foreign to me--but not in an attractive, exotic way. Just foreign. Like, "Oh, yeah, that's what it's like here." Later, I tried to have extended conversations with my family without bringing up politics, religion, or social issues, which basically left us with cars, golf, and my estranged mother (who merits a post of her own). I've never been so happy to see my grumpy boyfriend or my incontinent dogs as I was when I returned last night.

So, yeah, I freely admit that I've lost touch with Middle America. But then, they've lost touch with me, too, so I'm not taking all the blame.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

As a footnote to the boyfriend's recent post about Tokyo-based entrepreneurs who rent high-end [ba-dum-bum!] sex dolls to company men looking to blow off some steam after the 16-hour workday, here's a bit from the ever-popular Wai-Wai section of Mainichi Daily News:

Several companies are involved in the bustling trade supplying customers looking to slip it into some silicon, with lifelike figurines that set back buyers something in the vicinity of 600,000 yen as opposed to the simple, blow-up types with the permanently open mouths that can be bought from vending machines for a few thousand yen [emphasis, like, totally mine].

Excuse me? I mean, I knew about the various automats for eggs, beer, rice, toilet paper, and porn, but love dolls, too? Is nothing sacred?

Suddenly Mississippi--where I'm heading today for a pre-holiday dinner with the family--doesn't seem so odd.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

So, around 4:00 this morning I found myself in an emergency room in the Bronx, surrounded by skateboarding orderlies and holiday shoppers in Christmas sweaters. Things didn't get officially weird, though, until Janet Jackson walked in, sporting that cheap-looking, malfunctional PVC Superbowl getup and pushing someone in a wheelchair that looked suspiciously like Mahatma Gandhi. Ms. Jackson (as I call her because I, of course, am nasty), leaned over her patient and gave me a creeptacular Cheshire grin, causing every wrinkle in her prematurely aged body to stand out like pleats in a Balenciaga ruched silk ball gown, only not as pretty. It was shocking, awesome, and inspiring--well, in that it inspired a petit haiku:

Lips like fat earthworms,
Sharp Chicklet teeth and lifeless brow:
Bitch has had work done

That's the last time I down a family-size bag of Zapp's and a six pack right before bed.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Okay, as per your suggestions, I'm starting my epistolary novel. Here's chapter one:

Dear Fairy Godmother,

I'm sorry to bother you and all, but, like, some serious shit's gone down in the past couple of months, and I'm gonna be busting some heads if things don't change soon.

See, mom had this thing she was complaining about. We all thought it was just her herpes acting up, but really, it was cancer. I won't bore you with all the details, but, long story short, she died, and at the funeral, dad hooked up with this bimbo he'd hired to be a mourner, and now she's moved in. I'm not sure if they're actually married or anything--I mean, there was never a wedding, so far as I know--but now the bitch is living here with her two squealing tweenage daughters, and I can't talk on the phone or get any sleep because their door is always open and they're listening to Disney radio at, like three bajillion decibels or something.

Still, everything was kinda fine until last night. It was a Friday, so, you know, I invited over Kevin to watch some movies and maybe a beheading or two. Nothing big. Anyway, we'd just finished watching that Princess Diaries thing when Kevin started feeling me up--which is fine, 'cause, I mean, we've gone all the way to third, so a little breast jiggle is no great shakes.

About that time, Poppy and Pansy (my stepsisters are fucking twins, if you can believe that) jumped out from under the bed, screaming and yelling and making faces. Well, I was all like crouching tiger and shit, ready to go ballistic on their skinny asses, but Kevin got all freaked and--get this--he jumped out the window! I don't know if you remember my room, FG, but I'm on the third floor, and there ain't nothing below me but moat and crocodiles. So needless to say, I'm out one very foxy, hung boyfriend--all on account of the goddamn Herbalife twins!

So you see, you gotta help me. Get me out of here. Take me to Tahiti or Siberia or wherever it is you live--it has to be better than this. Or if that's too much trouble, just kill the twins. And make sure to shrivel stepmom's ovaries: she and dad are so busy boinking in every freaking corner of the castle, it'll be just my luck that she'll drop triplets nine months from now.

Please help me, Fairy Godmother. You're my only hope.

Love always,
Snatcherella

P.S. I know where you live, bitch.

I think it's a little over the top myself, but the editors over at Pengiun, that's how they like 'em these days....

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Five things I'm so totally not thinking about this a-to-the-m:

1. Does black belt-wielding, former CNN temptress Lynne Russell really need to hawk lipstick and blush to make ends meet?

2. What am I supposed to wear under this kilt?

3. Does Britney really have a prerogative?

4. If I were a wombat, what species of wombat would I be?

5. Should I follow through on my plan to single-handedly revive the epistolary novel as a vital, relevant literary form, or should I just stick to haiku?

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

So, I have this eating problem. Well, maybe "problem" is too strong a word; let's just call it an "issue."

Up until about 7th grade, I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and as much as I wanted. Then I started playing tennis and swimming and noticing Calvin Klein's new breed of overtly sexualized male models, and things changed. I noticed that, unlike such models, my stomach was kinda flabby. In fact, when I put on my shorts, little ridges of skin rolled over the waistband. My chest and arms were nothing to write home about, either. So I started dieting.

Unfortunately, I didn't really understand the basics of nutrition. Hell, where I grew up, no one did--least of all my mother, whose idea of fixing dinner was ordering pizza and cracking open a tub of ice cream. Not surprisingly, my version of dieting became the classic Tab-and-a-Snickers-bar routine. I'd starve myself half to death, then play tennis for four or five hours under the brutal Mississippi sun; afterward, if I hadn't passed out, I'd gorge myself on whatever was in the fridge when I got home (usually leftover pizza and more ice cream). I was a mess.

Decades later, my eating habits are still awful. Most irritating--especially to the boyfriend--is my tendency to gorge before parties so that I won't look like a total pig in public. Jonno says it's unforgivably rude and really unhealthy, but I can't help myself. I'm turning into one of those little old society ladies that John Currin used to paint: neurotic and obsessive, with a stash of Twinkies in the butler's pantry. Only difference is, I'm rounder and not as wealthy.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Unrelated Dispatches from Tehran

Funny, this didn't make the New York Times:

A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys to form his image has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests over freedom of expression.

--Tehran Times

But then, neither did this:

An official said the Iranian tourism industry suffers from lack of publicity and called for advertising Iran's tourist attractions worldwide.

...

The official pointed out that according to a World Trade Organization report, mistreatment of foreign tourists has been acknowledged by 70 to 80 people whereas satisfactory treatment of tourists is only endorsed by 10 people.

--Iran Daily

Perhaps said official should be less concerned with advertising than with entertaining the handful of tourists he's got. Put the fatwahs and the genital mutilations on the DL, ixnay the public stonings, and then worry about building display ads for Conde Nast Traveler.

Monday, December 13, 2004

Good news: Julian has finally finished futzing with Kiki & Herb Will Die For You at Carnegie Hall, meaning that this holiday season, I have the opportunity to broaden the horizons of my straightlaced Mississippi brethren (and I do mean brethren) through the miracle of modern music.

Bad news: The final performance of Around the World...or Bust! is this Sunday at 9:00pm, so see the damn thing already!

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Maybe I watch too much web porn. Maybe I read too many t-shirts. Maybe, just maybe, I've just got a dirty mind. But the first time I saw the ads for the Dellf campaign, I thought to myself, "What the hell is going on here? Folks complain about Nicolette Sheridan and Terrell Owens' tongue-in-cheek hijinks, but no one raises an eyebrow over 'Dellf'?"

Then, of course, I realized not everyone thinks like I do. Maybe no one else understands that "Dellf" is merely an acronym for "Dudes Enjoy Lucy Liu's Fuzzbox." Or possibly "Dame Edna Likes Lanky Footballers." Or, in some quarters, "Dames Emmanuel Lewis Lately Felched." The boyfriend thinks I'm making too much of this and assures me that it really stands for "Doctorow, E. L., Liberates Ferrets," but I think he just made that up.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Speaking of franco-punko-homo graphic novels, it looks as if volume #1 of Logan's Porky series has finally hit the shelves, and just in time for the holidays, too. In page one of the preview, it appears that our protagonist, Porky--a chubby Midwestern sex fiend (as if there were any other kind)--pays a homeless man in a Santa hat $5 for anal. I haven't seen page two, but, you know, that's what I'm guessing.

I'd planned to order up a batch to hand out as stocking stuffers [insert fudgepacking innuendo here], but, well, the dollar's kinda weak against the Euro right now, so instead, you'll all be getting Playtex living gloves and a set of colored pencils. Which is sorta the same thing, except you'll have to do the drawing yourselves.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Well, I was going to post a couple of curious and titillating tidbits this morning--including a story in the India Times that reports a link between laptop usage, scrotal temperature, and infertility in men (which mom and dad would prefer as the reason behind my childlessness instead of my penchant for boy-kissing). But then, something came up.

See, this past Monday, Governor Blanco issued an Executive Order banning discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, etc, etc, and sexual orientation in the state government. (A PDF version of the Order is available here, if you're interested.) Now, of course, the American Family Association and the rest of the right-wingnuts are in a tizzy and are urging their constituents to pelt the Governor with hate email so she'll rescind the Order.

Obviously, thwarting their efforts, even slightly, is enough to make my day. My week, even. So I amended the text of the AFA email to voice my support of our inclusive (if inarticulate) governor, then sent it in. How's about you do the same? Even if you're not from around these parts, you're a potential tourist--which may make you even more valuable in Governor Blanco's eyes. Talk about wanting to vacation in a tolerant atmosphere. Talk about GLBT contributions to Louisiana's cultural economy (a big buzz-term with her these days). Talk about the faboo day spas we run. Whatever.

Anyway, here's how you reach her

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Governor
Louisiana Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 94004
Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9004

Primary Phone: 225-342-0991
Secondary Phone: 225-342-7015
Fax: 225-342-7099
E-Mail: Kathleen Babineaux Blanco

And here's the letter I wrote. Feel free to use it in whole or in part, if you like.

Dear Governor Blanco,

I would like to thank you for your recent passage of Executive Order KBB 2004 - 54, banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the Louisiana state government. As someone who has witnessed a great deal of homophobia and discrimination over the years, I can say that I have often been tempted to leave Louisiana in favor of someplace more tolerant. Thanks to your foresight, future generations of GLBT residents won't need to ponder such a move because their fellow Louisianans will understand that such discrimination is simply wrong. Your Executive Order will undoubtedly have positive economic impacts, too, as businesses are much more likely to invest in states that foster environments of tolerance.

Again, I thank you for your thoughtfulness and commend your leadership and business savvy. You will, indeed, get my vote again--and that of my friends--in the future.

So, what are you waiting for? Go to it! Santa's not the only one who's watching your ass...

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

So, a village in Japan has discovered that the best way to prevent tourists from leaving trash along the roadway is to replace "No Littering" signs with little statues of the Buddhist divinity Jizo. It's a kinder, gentler alternative to posting, say, bloody, lifesize crucifixes fitted with eerie glass eyes or photos of nuns with captions like "Littering makes the baby Jesus cry!" but it makes a similar point, even among non-Buddhists. I guess the American equivalent would be that crybaby of an Indian from 70s TV commercials.

All of which makes me wonder, if it works in Japan, why couldn't it work in New Orleans? I mean, if our beloved mayor really wants to clean up the city, why not post images of Marie Laveau throughout the Quarter with some snappy catchphrases like, "Use the garbage can or I use the gris-gris" or "Litterers don't get laid." Maybe that would get the attention of all those horny, slovenly frat boys and businessmen on Bourbon Street, swilling rotgut booze in their search for girls who have allegedly gone wild.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Some time ago, I put forward the idea that being a Halloween costume model would be the worst job in the world.

I was wrong.

Last night, while watching an unsatisfying, commercial-ridden TV show about Ramses the Great, I realized that the worst job in the world is really that of an actor in a schmancy, over-the-top historical documentary. One week you're playing an Egyptian slave, the next, you're a colonial goodwife accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, and the week after, you're a bawdy-house tart afflicted with the plague in 17th century London. And for each of these roles, since you have no lines per se (which means your pay is pretty crappy, adding insult to injury), you have to spend painful hours in hair and makeup, then gesture your little heart out on camera to tell your story through mime. Jeez, Theda Bara had it easier...

So, while I was trying to focus on the recent "discoveries" of "archaeologists" (most of which were bemoaned by Jonno, who, you may or may not know, is an amateur Egyptologist himself), all I could think of was, "Damn, I could never seriously smite a Canaanite in a wig like that."

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Something's afoot. Something's changed.

Once upon a time, I'd spend my spare moments reading or playing video games or hanging with the hounds. Now, however, I have a curious hankering to acquire new skills--namely, baking, quilting, and needlepoint.

I knew I was getting old, but I had no idea that I was turning into an old woman.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Many of you might not immediately recognize what's going on in the photo above, but to New Orleanians, the meaning is obvious: it's Carnival time.

Yes, folks, here we are on December 4, in the midst of the Chriskwaanzukkah festivities, two months and four days before Fat Tuesday, and the City of New Orleans has already set up the reviewing stands for Carnival parades. These particular stands are positioned in front of Gallier Hall, our erstwhile city hall and the site where the mayor toasts various parades on the St. Charles Avenue route. And I should point out that these weren't just constructed today: they've been up for several weeks, I just kept forgetting my camera.

As someone who genuinely loves Carnival, I always get a geeky little frisson when the stands go up. It gives me something to look forward to--unlike, say, Christmas, which oftentimes seems such a chore.

Friday, December 03, 2004

To the 27-year-old riding his bicycle on a French Quarter sidewalk yesterday afternoon at 5:35pm:

Dear Sir,

I write today to ask a favor of you--unusual, to be sure, since we have never been formally introduced, but it is such an important matter, I feel the breach of decorum is warranted. You see, yesterday, as you rode your bicycle down the Toulouse Street sidewalk, you inconvenienced quite a number of pedestrians--myself included--by forcing them into the street to avoid colliding with you and your low-rent, BMX-style Huffy. This in itself would not have been so bad, except that there was a great deal of construction going on at the time, and the street was lined with various obstacles--one of which was a very deep, very dark pit, the bottom of which I could not see, but from which I heard a fair amount of hissing, which I presumed to be the sound of several dozen poisonous asps. Had the five-year-old girl before me slipped and fallen into said hazard, I feel certain those asps would have had their way with her, which, I think we can agree, would have been extremely unfortunate.

In the future, therefore, I beg of you not to ride your "bike" on the sidewalk. There are many reasons for you not to do so. For one, I believe it is illegal. There are several be-wheeled means of conveyance acceptable on the banquette--wheelchairs and motorized scooters being the most obvious examples, and perhaps the Segway (though the jury is technically still out). Bicycles, however, are well beyond the pale. Unless walking the bike at your side, you are not considered a pedestrian and should therefore limit your velo-aerobic activities to the street proper.

It is not only I who implore this of you, but also our beloved Officer Friendly. I'm certain you had many classroom visits from Monsieur Friendly as a youth, and that you, as I, remember fondly your special private time with him: his soft caresses, his warm kisses, his gentle thrusts. How disappointed he would be if he were to discover that you were breaking one of his laws! What punishment he would wreak!

However, if our city laws and the twin entreaties of Officer Friendly and I do not provide ample reason for you to avoid sidewalks in your future bicycle-based ramblings, consider this: if I see you do it again, I'll kill you. To be precise, I will beat the motherloving shit out of you and leave you lying face-down in an alley in a pool of your own blood, with your pants around your ankles so the rats can rape your filthy, smacked-up, gutterpunk ass.

On another, purely sartorial note, I would like to suggest that, in the future, you avoid wearing your visor backwards and upside-down. Doing so is not only years out of fashion, but it signals to the casual observer that you are either (a) retarded or (b) a "hustler" (i.e. a male prostitute), both of which are also, unfortunately, quite illegal. Of course, you're welcome to be a 'tard and/or a 'ho if you like, but I think signaling that to the authorities rather unwise. I'd hate to see your already dismal future fraught with any more obstacles.

Thanking you in advance for your consideration of my request and reminding you that I will, indeed, seriously fuck your skinny ass up if you disobey me, I remain,

Sincerely yours,
Richard

Thursday, December 02, 2004

I love: images of morbidly obese people jiggling down city sidewalks, shot from the neck down for dieting and health segments on the evening news. I imagine most people would be filled with shock and awe and utter embarrassment if they were ever to catch the tail-end of Peter Jennings' report on chronic obesity and see their own torsos used as evidence. Not me. When I glimpse myself on one of those stories--as I must, someday soon, sporting my favorite Pucci-print, form-fitting lycra chemise and a pair of crushed velvet stirrup pants--I'm going to think to myself, "Damn, I got a whole lotta jelly up in my trunk, and it looks some kinda good! Yes, indeed!"

I hate: the word "couch." It screams sedentary, lazy, dirty. Couches are soiled. Couches have bits of Cheetos caught between the cushions. Couches are where sick people sprawl while watching Jenny Jones. Sofas, on the other hand, are for conversation and cocktails. On a sofa, I can read Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh, but on a couch, I'm limited to Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy. I use the word "couch" myself sometimes, and I hate myself for it. John Guare would hate me, too.

I love: the way my oldest dog, Gaston, parks himself on the bed at night and stubbornly refuses to move or even change positions, no matter how much I toss and turn.

I hate: people who refer to "the 1700s" or "the 1500s" instead of "the eighteenth century" or "the sixteenth century." The former is inexact, generalized, whereas the latter simultaneously pinpoints the time and the zeitgeist. People who say things like "Romanticism was big in the 1800s" not only prove that they don't understand Romanticism, but they sound like idiots, too. I bet they move their lips when they read.

I love: Chisenbop, a snazzy Eastern way of doing math on your fingers. It's the only acceptable way for anyone over seven years old to count on her hands. When I was a kid, Chisenbop was hot hot hot. For about a week, everyone thought it was going to change educational paradigms. Then we all got bored and moved on to Shrinky Dinks.

I hate: the way friends "miss you, miss you, miss you" when they move away, but three days after their inevitable return, you can't find them to save your life.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

It's a beautiful day here in New Orleans. The sun's bright, my house is warm. If I were the kinda guy who liked sleeping 'till noon, I could easily crawl back into bed and do so.

Eight years ago to the hour, things were exactly the same: beautiful, bright, and warm. And then everything changed. As a gay man, December 1 should have particular resonance for me. And it does. But unfortunately, it doesn't get my full attention.

And so today, while I should be feeling hope or anger or some other productive emotion, I'm caught up in dead-end reflection. And, not to get all heavy or anything, but it seems to me that death is ultimately the result of giving up. Some folks don't have much to live for, so it's easier for them to let go. Others are more tenacious and hang on till the bitter end. I've seen it, you've seen it.

If that's the case, then it would seem theoretically possible to survive almost anything, even serious bodily injury, through sheer force of will, but so few people do.... Which means that even for the toughest, orneriest of us, there eventually comes a point of such pain or weakness or something else so extreme that, even though we know we could go on, we could live if we had the will, we choose not to. We decide there and then, in a hundredth of a second, a thousandth of a second, that we have to let go, and in that impossibly brief span of time, we say a mental goodbye to everyone we know or knew and everyone we love or loved and will never see again. It's liberating, but like all liberations, it's overwhelming and terrifying.

As for World AIDS Day, I'll say this much: Randall Tobias is perhaps the most bumbling, mumbling, unmotivating speaker I've ever seen. How on earth Bush expected him to be an effective "Global AIDS Coordinator," I don't know. Maybe he should resign, too.