Author: Richard

Standard

I’m sure that other people have said this better, but: the downside of love is having something else to worry about.

Standard

Oh, summer. Full of strawberries and handkerchiefs and ceiling fans and these:

I hate to say it, but there’s something comforting about that image. Not the storm, obviously, but the graphic. For folks along the Gulf Coast, those particular shades of blue and green–garish and jarring–they’re the look of summer. From now through October, they’re what we see first thing in the morning and what we look at all day long. They’re like the curtains at your grandmother’s house: dated and kind of ugly, but pleasantly familiar.

Dude. Am I getting nostalgic about hurricanes? Holy crap.

Standard

Okay, I find this kind of offensive:

Not for any predictable reason, like, you know, talking about sex on TV or the ridiculousness of the scenario or even the fact that the attractive folks in bed are too covered up. (Though they are too covered up.)

No, I’m hating on it because the ad purports to be all ludicrous and naughty, but it ends with the number for a hotline that addresses the very problem discussed in the spot. So, as bizarre as it seems, the set-up leads to a logical conclusion. It is painfully literal. If this were an ad for pizza or hot wings or the latest in an unnecessarily long line of Swiffer products, I’d be much, much happier.

[via TheAwl]

An Open Letter Re: Cargo Shorts And The Hideousness Thereof

Standard

Fellow Gays:

Please stop. In the name of all that is good and holy and Judy Garland, I beseech you. Please.

Please stop wearing cargo shorts.

I know that there’s a lot going on today. I know that there’s a ruling on Prop 8 due in California, I know that Hillary Clinton is pushing to acquire benefits for same-sex partners of diplomats, I know there’s a big move to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, I know there’s a lot of really important stuff on the burner. However, this is also big.

Let me repeat: please stop wearing cargo shorts.

You want to wear shorts? Fine. You want to wear cargo pants? Fine. Well, possibly fine. But miscegenation of the two sartorial strains has resulted in a godless hybrid that makes any wearer look like an eight-year-old in hand-me-downs. And I understand that many of you would like to look eight years old again, but this is not the way to do it. No, this is classic Peter Pan Syndrome.

But that is not all. Please note this:

Do you see who that is? Can you make it out? It’s David Beckham. Normally smokin’ hot David Beckham. But look closely. Is he hot here? From the waist down? No. In fact, he looks like a douchebag–a douchebag who’s suffering from that Lily Tomlin/shrinking woman syndrome. Under normal circumstances, normally smokin’ hot David Beckham should not look like a douchebag. And yet, here we are.

So please: do yourself a favor. Do our great big sparkly unicorn rainbow community a favor. Put down the cargo shorts. Put them down into a very big Hefty bag and high-tail it to Goodwill.

If none of that has persuaded you, here is a list of ten people who never, ever wore cargo shorts:

  1. Marlon Brando
  2. Jimmy Carter
  3. Jean Cocteau
  4. John Hodgman
  5. Gene Kelly
  6. Karl Lagerfeld
  7. Colin Powell
  8. Vincent Price
  9. Frank Rich
  10. David Sedaris

You are not alone in this. I, too, have sinned. But together, we can make it through. Amen, sisters.

Standard

I’ve said so much about the Times-Picayune over the years that I doubt I can add anything more to the discussion. Let’s just say, what was once a moderately interesting newspaper that seemed to me a tad exotic–mostly because of my Aunt Doris, colloquially known as “Aunt Tiny”, who preferred the Picayune to that dull sack of twigs and ink known as the Clarion-Ledger–has now become shadow of its former self, in line for serious changes or brutal death.

The biggest problem: the company’s online strategy (i.e. outsourcing to the craptacular C-list template factory Advance Internet). That may have been convenient ten years ago, but it’s seriously dated now; the folks at 3800 Howard Avenue need to ditch AI and hire an 8th grader–any 8th grader will do–to install WordPress and give the Picayune a nifty, pretty web presence, ideally one with an archive of permalinks. Otherwise, the citizens of Greater New Orleans are going to be left with a museum piece of a daily whose only readable sections are its two society pages. (NB: I love the society pages. Awesomeness abounds.)

That said, the Picayune has cranked out some great stories in recent weeks. I was just catching up on my RSS feeds (which I’m always surprised to see up and running at NOLA.com), and stumbled across these sweet headlines:

  • Little-known legislator pulled ‘rookie-doo’ on state House
  • Man with knife threatens to eat girlfriend and her grandchildren, police say
  • House defeats equal pay for women bill

    • Such hilarity. Daily, even.

    Just for the record, I sincerely hope that the Picayune survives. Even though the stories from the inside sound awfully grim–it’s like Survivor in there, complete with mutiny, cannibalism, and poisoning the water cooler–I’d like to see the paper hang around in some form. Otherwise, we’re stuck with getting info from the alleged “evening news” and Norman freakin’ Robinson. May the great green goddess have mercy on our soulless souls.

    Standard

    “In 1966 and again in 1968 a man heads to the roof of a YMCA to model dozens of pairs of women’s bikini bottoms. Then in 1969 and 1972 he heads to the beach to model some more.” — The Man on the Roof

    Standard

    “Faggot!”

    He despised the officer. He kept on smiling, allowing himself to be lulled by the monstrous and ill-defined notion of “faggot” sweeping back and forth inside his head.

    “Faggot, what’s a faggot? One who lets other guys screw him in the ass?” he thought. And gradually, while his smile faded, lines of disdain appeared at the corners of his mouth. Then again, another phrase drifted through his mind, inducing a vague feeling of torpor: “Me, I’m one too.” A thought he had difficulty focusing on, though he did not find it repulsive, but of whose sadness he was aware when he realized that he was pulling his buttocks in so tight (or so it seemed to him) that they no longer touched the seat of his trousers. And this fleeting, yet quite depressing thought generated, up his spine, an immediate and rapid series of vibrations which quickly spread out over the entire surface of his black shoulders and covered them with a shawl woven out of shivers. Querelle raised his arm, to smooth back his hair. The gesture was so beautiful, unveiling, as it did, the armpit as pale and taut as a trout’s belly, that the Lieutenant could not prevent his eyes from betraying how very weary he was of this state of unrequited passion. His eyes cried for mercy. Their expression made him look more humble, even, than if he had fallen on his knees. Querelle felt very strong. If he despised the Lieutenant, he felt no impulse to laugh at him, as on other days. It seemed unnecessary to him to exert his charm, as he had an inkling that his true power was of another kind. It rose from the depths of hell, yet from a certain region in hell where the bodies and the faces are beautiful. Querelle felt the coal dust on his body, as women feel, on their arms and hip, the folds of a material that transforms them into queens. It was a make-up that did not interfere with his nakedness, that turned him into a god.

    –from Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest (Amazon link here)