Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Lesbos


This just in: The Lesbians of the island of Lesbos are suing a Greek Gay and Lesbian group over use of the name "lesbian". "My sister can't say she's a Lesbian." reads one quote! This article is a gay fan's wet dream and great follow up to my last blog. I thought it was an article from a publication similar to The Onion, at first.

Friday, April 11, 2008

I'll give you gay


I love gayness. I love it in all forms. I love cheesy gay, silly gay, happy gay, lame gay and of course the mother of all gays, homosexual gay. Calling things "gay" was so big in high school and the word rolled off my tongue like nobody's business. So upon my first trip to San Francisco, I was worried I was going to get into a lot of trouble with my apparent misuse and seemingly derogatory use of the word "gay". Luckily I was not hanging out with uptight, PC San Franciscans, so I survived the trip without being called a homophobe or getting straight bashed. I find "gay" very flexible. Like "fuck", you can put that in almost anywhere and it's almost as good. Since the homosexual use is something that morphed from it just meaning happy, I don't know why I can't be free to morph the word to other meanings. When I see something lame and say "How gay." I'm not thinking "That's lame, much like sex between two consenting males." It has nothing to with homosexuality. It's just a good, fun word. Is this wrong? I don't want to be a pig-headed ass.


Gay times on my sister's wedding day. The photographer inadvertently made us do it with his cheesy motivations for poses. When they were signing the registry, he called the groom "tiger".

I have to say gayness was a huge point of bonding between Stephanie and I. Early in our correspondence we learned that we loved gays and also to be gay, and this has really kept the magic in our friendship. While this common interest was already established, I was delighted when some true cementing of this fact appeared. I was in Palm Springs in a card shop (a very gay one) and they had Liberace greeting cards. I must have laboured over my choice for Stephanie's birthday for about 5-7 minutes when I finally settled on one. This was December and her birthday wasn't until February, so I was going be holding it for a while. A couple of weeks later, I flew up to Seattle to visit with Steph and the family. At one point, the two of us were sprawled out on the bed, flipping through a Liberace book (as you do). I couldn't believe my ears and eyes when she stopped on one page and gasped with delight and paused to take it in. She found it more thrilling than any other picture in the whole book. It was the same picture from the card I had chosen. Soul mates.


This is the same picture, but the card I sent said something like "Wear something each day that scares you."

Not long after this, I was in a shop called Wacko and picked out a gay post card to slip in with a package to her. I forgot about it, so it lay around in a pile, and then one day, I received a gay postcard in the mail! It was another card in the same series as the one I had bought. I didn't tell her I'd received it, but just replied with the postcard I had waiting.


She sent me 'That Gay Way', I sent her 'Queer Beach'. Friends for life.

Other gay things I like are Richard Simmons and gay men singing show tunes in a piano bar. They are just SO into it. I love that passion. My new favourite gay thing is Project Runway. I was reluctant to get into it, thinking it was just another bitchy model type show, but instead it's just bustling with creativity and filled with great characters. My favourite designer in season one was Austin Scarlett. He won me over in episode one with his fabulous dress made of corn husks.


I'm not going to pretend I love everything gay. I don't like really over the top flamboyancy. It's just too much for me, but also I don't like excessive valley girl, hick or hipster either. I watched a gay sketch comedy show the other day which I didn't like, but then I remembered I tend not to like sketch comedy anyway and it that this show wasn't crippled by the gayness but probably helped by it. I tend not to like gay music. I'm not saying they all have bad musical taste, but the popular dancey stuff really, really depresses me. My upstairs neighbour sure likes to blast some of the most monotonous and horrendous dance shit I've ever heard but it sure makes him one happy gay. The only person I will forgive for this is Richard Simmons because he is the most awesome gay man who ever lived and I am always having the best time while he plays those horrible dance remixes of good songs at his classes. I love when he screams orgasmicly, though my response is more titter than orgasmic. The gay men singing show tunes is some redemption on the musical front, even if they sing them super gay.


If you missed my blog about working out with Richard Simmons, here it is again.

I hate homophobes, I can tell you that. Fuck those people. Do you know what kills me about them? How obsessed with anal sex they are. Like, if you introduce a couple "Nancy, this is Jimmy and Amanda", I don't supposed Nancy immediately imagines her new acquaintances in coitus. But if these miserable people get a whiff of an Adam and Steve, they are "disgusted". What is to be disgusted about unless they are instantly thinking in graphic detail about some serious butt-fucking? If God finds this act such an abomination then I think he dropped the ball on his little creation. I swear to you, if I was a creator, I would go to great lengths to ensure wet bread never happens. THAT'S an abomination in the eyes of Simone.


God might hate fags, but this bitch in the middle loves to think about packin' fudge.

Ugh, I've run out of things to say and the last thing I talked about were those asshole homophobes so I'll end on something positive. A gay couple I know are having a baby with a surrogate and I am so excited about it. I only know one half of the couple, but he's awesome and so must be his boyfriend. They are expecting twin girls. I also know a someone who got knocked up by accident and wasn't immediately sure who the father was, is not with the father and is now raising the baby by herself which is dangerous considering she is insane. Talk about misplaced priorities when people will come after a gay couple for having kids and not a psycho hose beast. Those girls to the gay couple are going to have a great family waiting for them.

So I guess this has been a salute to all things gay and how much I enjoy them. Bottoms up!

OH MY STARS! I nearly forgot to include the best thing! Here's one of my favourite articles ever in The Onion. Click here to read the whole thing. Hopefully the image below will leave you wanting more.


Monday, April 07, 2008

The Digital Dilution of Experience (or 'How I Replaced My Brain With A Camera')



I'm proud to say I never liked New Kids On The Block, even as a ten year old, so the recent announcement of their reunion was only met with morbid curiosity. I watched a video of the big announcement on the Today show only to see the women aged 30+, faced with this exciting reunion, decide to view it all through their cameras, rather than bask in the faded glow of Jordan, Donny, Jon, Joey, and the ember that is/was Danny Wood.

The moment the Old Kids were unveiled...


Their fans chose to observe digital recreations of them.


It only highlighted what I've recently been catching myself doing which is to pass up complete surrender to a once in a lifetime moment, to instead capture it on a camera. It's a sad state of affairs, especially when you see people opting to spend their favourite song at a concert with their arm held up, as still as possible in order to capture some crappy video with wretched sound quality, rather than rocking or bopping out as the song intended they do. I do remember a time when not everyone fancied themselves an amateur photographer and was not toting low grade photographic equipment in their pockets or handbags. People simply soaked up what was on offer with their actual senses, as opposed to a digital recreation of them.

Occasionally you'll get a decent picture like this...


But more often, they are worthless, like this.

(If you think you have something to tell me about the Foo Fighters stinking, I already know)

And good luck to you if you can even tell who this is.


Of course I still like to capture things with my camera, but I'm trying to break free of this twisted logic of putting capturing and remembering over the actual experience itself. It's a very hard habit to break. I know as I stood poised to see Gene Wilder enter the book signing I was at a few weeks ago, I couldn't help but be ready with the camera for it. All it did was add fluster which resulted in one not very good picture and me not really enjoying his wave at us. It was dumb because they said we could snap photos from the line, so why did I feel compelled to do this?


My misplaced priorities captured this rather than soaking in the grand entrance of Mr Willy Wonka, himself.


And for what, since I would soon get this!

The fact is, if you hide behind a camera through all the best bits, you aren't capturing a spectacular memory at all because you weren't really there. You might as well have been at home watching a fuzzy clip on YouTube than at the concert or event if that's what you're going to do and Lord knows how unrewarding watching those videos and viewing those photos usually turns out to be. Don't even start me on the camera phones! We need to put the camera down and bring back the human experience back to these experiences. Or at least don't pull it out until a shitty song you don't like very much is on.