Party Monster… Party Monster… Party Monster….

It’s a funny thing to watch. Not, like, funny-ha-ha. More like: hmmm. Curious. At least that’s the way it was for me.

The film hits close to home if you’re a gay man of a certain age–my certain age, to be precise. I mean, not like I was ever really part of that world (though oddly, I did wind up with Freeze’s dog after the whole thing was over), but I remember it vividly–the clothes, the music, the parties. Back when ecstasy was new and exciting. Back when we thought things could still be shocking. Back when Brittney was just a hot pink twinge in her mom’s Zena jeans… That era, that moment was a zenith (one of several) of our queer generation’s rebellion, and the movie does a good job of recreating it.

Additional selling points include dozens of beautiful shots, great colors, numerous disturbing moments, and an ending sprinkled with moral ambiguity. (Imagine a homo/clubkid, less tidily resolved version of Requiem for a Dream and you’re on the right track.) I was concerned about the use of McCauley Culkin–for whom I have a remarkably low threshold of tolerance–but Seth Green helps compensate. And let’s not forget the best part of the entire film: when Green starts twisting and mincing his way around the living room doing a supergay, high 80s dance. Take it from someone who was there: it’s spot-fucking-on.

My one complaint about the flick is that it feels like a lot was left on the cutting-room floor (to use an antiquated expression). It’s a big, sprawling story about a big, sprawling social circle, but the only characters given room to develop are the ones played by Culkin, Green, and hunkahunka Dylan McDermott. I mean, Chloe Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne seemed totally wasted (and not in the good way). But then, I guess, the movie would have been about three times as long…

I wanna see the director’s cut.

I’m feeling a little schizo.

See, part of me thinks, ‘Wow! First we get a moderately kick-ass ruling from the Supremes last week, and now we’re officially accepted adored acknowledged in the marketplace of the Moral Majority. The moon is in the seventh house, let the good times roll, we’re entering a new era of queer equality!’

And then I stop to consider: the Fourteenth Amendment, which was intended to provide legal equality for people of color, was passed in 1868–a cool 100 years before I was born in a state still racked with racial tensions. And race relations remain so dicey that the same Supreme Court that handed us a victory also found Affirmative Action programs still necessary to ameliorate social inequalities. All of which is to say, as my grandmother might put it, “We got a long row to hoe.” I mean, sure, we can knock boots in the bedroom, but there are bazillions of other rights we don’t have yet–and unlike people of color, homos don’t even have an amendment to constitutionally guarantee the ones they’ve been given by certain forward-thinking states, municipalities, and corporations.

And there’s something even more troubling in Wal-Mart’s decision–something that offers a glimpse into the distant-but-conceivable queer future. In choosing to (a) provide blinders for “provocative” magazines like Cosmopolitan (Reese Witherspoon is now provocative?) and simultaneously to (b) prevent discrimination against homos, Wal-Mart is folding the queers of this great nation into its own insipid morality scheme–a scheme which says, in essence, what we’ve known all along: that most homos are as dull and boring as any bourgeois, mall-walking heterosexual. And that’s fine, I guess…but it’s also very, very depressing. A nation of “we’re-just-like-everyone-else” Log Cabin Republicans isn’t exactly what I had in mind… But then again, it might help cut down on some of the bad Judy Garland impersonations.

Sorry to get all Cassandra on your ass. It’s just the way I’m wired.

I know she’s sometimes a little harsh. A little flip. Dare I say, glib. But Ms. Maureen Dowd nailed this one on the head. Now if we could just pull Antonin Scalia away from that cross he loves to bear and nail him to the goddamn wall instead…

So, what’s the deal with talk shows? Why is it that hosts invariably sit on the right and guests on the left? Is it a phenomenological thing? Or are the set designers just lazy, content to keep riffing on the old Tonight Show layout?

‘Cause, like, I really wanna know.

Okay, I’m a little concerned.

Yes, we won today. Yes, this ruling effectively invalidates sodomy laws currently on the books (including the one in our fair state). Yes, we’re feeling, as the kids say these days, groovy.

Note, however, that we won on a 6 to 3 decision–and Lady Day O’Connor could’ve gone either way. (She agreed with the outcome, but disagreed with the rationale behind the majority opinion, so in the end, she essentially wrote her own opinion.) Ergo, we might as well have had a 5-4 win, which is much less heartening–especially in light of Damien Lucifero Antonin Scalia’s vehement use of terms like “homosexual agenda” in his dissenting opinion. In short, Lambda’s assertion that this has “closed the door on an era of intolerance” is specious, at best.

I’m not making myself clear. What I’m getting at is this: we’re at the top of the heap today. We’re right-on brothers and sisters marching in disco rhythm to the gates of the Emerald City. But if we start slacking up now, we’re sunk. Not only does Scalia hate us, but with the spectre of gay marriage lurking at the very doorstep of America (i.e. Canada, for the metaphorically challenged) and the US’s record low birth rate making headlines, the Redneck Right is bound to launch a frontal attack the likes of which we haven’t seen in years–maybe ever. And with our martyrs–Harvey Milk, Rock Hudson, Matthew Sheppard–long dead and mostly forgotten, we’ve got nothing warm and fuzzy to hide behind. Unlike the current slate of wuss-ass Democrats, we’d better be able to mount an offensive.

Not to be all gloom and doom, but dude, watch your back.

You know what bothers me? Stupidity. Stupidity and short-sightedness. Stupidity and short-sightedness and self-centeredness and empty

corporate speak–all of which are beautifully embodied by the ill-conceived <a

href=”http://www.neworleansmediaexperience.com/main.html&#8221; target=”nome” title=”goddamn, what an ugly site/sight”>New Orleans

Media Experience.

As I see it, the project has five major problems:

1. Poorly conceived doesn’t begin to describe it. On the website, our mayor–whom I generally like–describes the event as “an

unprecedented annual extravaganza, celebrating the rapidly converging worlds of film, advertising, music and interactive media.” What

the #%$@ does that mean? Outside of a grant application, I’ve never seen such a bilious load of buzz-word-filled crap. “Convergence,”

“synergy,” “interactive”–they mean nothing to me or anyone else… And on a side note, what if I don’t want the worlds of

music and advertising to merge?

2. The event is obviously designed to compete with <a href="http://www.sxsw.com/&quot; target="ss" title="at least their site's a bit

cleaner”>SXSW, but NOME’s organizers don’t seem to have the foggiest idea how to go about stealing thunder. Several of the folks on

the founding committee are from an ad agency in Los Angeles, one’s a fledgling actor, two are government officials, and none, I’m afraid,

understands what it’s going to take to put together an event of this ludicrous, illogical magnitude.

3. In case they haven’t noticed, there’s already a <a href="http://www.neworleansfilmfest.com/&quot; target="noff" title="the best

design of the three”>New Orleans Film Festival. Granted, it’s not as big as, say, Toronto or Berlin, but it’s respectable. And yet so far as

I know, the schmucks at the NOME never even bothered to contact them. Apparently, the people behind NOME are out to re-invent the

wheel, destroy the existing film festival, or both.

4. Far be it from me to call anyone a carpetbagger, but if nearly half the people planning the NOME event are from one

advertising/production firm in Los Angeles, I’m guessing this so-called extravaganza is more likely to devolve into a monotonous,

one-company trade show shilling products to the rubes.

5. The NOME web design sucks. Granted, I’m not winning any prizes over here, but at least I respect you all by using HTML

instead of that craptacular Flash crap. And at least I double-check my goddamn pages for spelling and grammatical errors…

But then, of course, they didn’t ask for my input, did they?

Just heard on The Writer’s Almanac (and posted here for my boyfriend):

Why I Take Good Care Of My Macintosh Computer

I don’t know which is more disturbing: thoroughly offensive racial remarks from a New York judge who may (or may not) be losing his marbles, or the fact that the Mississippi university from which my father and several of my brothers graduated–and which might have been my own alma mater, had I not been paying attention–has fallen victim to facile, vacuuous political correctness.

I have things to say. Really, I do. But I’m happy at the moment and there’s nothing worse than a happy writer–unless, of course, it’s a formerly-angsty-now-happy chanteuse (case in point).

Like, if I mentioned the corny sentiments I felt yesterday as I drove away from New Orleans, looking at a perfectly bright blue sky that had only an hour before been pitch-black with clouds, thinking that nothing on earth was as beautiful as that sky, except, perhaps, the sight of my boyfriend’s face–I mean, you’d wretch, right? Slap me in a pinafore and call me Miss Goddamn Ingalls-Wilder.

Sorry, but that’s the mood I’m in right now. I know anger and sadness are much more interesting–without ’em, you might as well just move to upstate New York with all the other ex-performance artists and raise a family–but hey, I don’t claim to have any control over these things. Like when I’m talking to someone–a co-worker, an elderly man on the street, a bellhop–and I get the sudden, nearly irresistable urge to grab the hottest cup of coffee I can find and throw it in his/her face? I can’t control that either…

Hi, I’m Martha (cue fresh, happy, New Age-style technorock music). I’m good for you. I’m good for your home. How can I be bad? Just because I’m blonde and have lots of money and I’m always surrounded by great orchids, everyone thinks I’ve got to have an evil side. But I don’t! I swear! I was just following the advice of my very hot, very gay stockbroker.

Here, read this letter I wrote just for you. You’ll see how sincere I am…. I mean, look at my highlights: how could anyone with highlights this subtle be obliquely pragmatic like they keep saying I’ve been? Gosh, I don’t even know what that means!

…You know, I’d love to hear from you (cue Enigma’s “Sade [Dis-Moi] 2003, DeepFreakLove Mix”). Why don’t you drop me an email, cutie-pie? Let me tell you about my innocence in person. You know you’re gonna love that…

What? You still don’t believe me (cue track #2 from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste)? Then maybe you’d like to read a statement from my goddamn attorney!?!