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It’s a proven fact (but don’t ask me to prove it) that more elderly people die in January than any other month. I’d imagine that many of them die right after a birthday, too. Folks hold on ’till they reach a milestone (e.g. the new year), then they let go.

So maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I like to imagine that when Brooke Astor heard Karl Rove was swinging on out of the White House, she decided to give up the ghost. I mean, c’mon: you’re 105 and you’re limping along and someone tells you that the Doughboy of Evil won’t be sitting on the president’s shoulder anymore, and you gotta think to yourself, “Wow, things oughtta get better from here. Peace out.”

Farewell, Mrs. Astor. You and your estimable, wisely vested wealth seriously, totally rocked.

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So…Sunshine.

It was a weird experience.

I waited until yesterday to see it–the day it closed at Canal Place Cinema. It’s a good thing, too, because I might’ve been tempted to see it again, and honestly, I don’t think I could’ve taken it. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Now, I’ll admit that Sunshine doesn’t have much of a plot, and what little there is wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. To paraphrase a friend of mine: anyone who’s read A Brief History of Time could knock it full of black holes. Goddess only knows what Old Lady Hawking could do herself.

I’ll also admit that the characters aren’t exactly fleshed-out. You don’t learn much about them, and you certainly don’t care about them. They’ve got about as much depth as a Benetton ad (which dates me pretty well, I guess).

On the other hand, I don’t think the plot is terribly important to Sunshine. All you need to know is that the crew is on a mission to the sun; everything else is gravy. And as far as character development goes, any movie that devotes the front page of its website to video clips of each crew member’s death…well, that oughta tell you that you’re not gonna learn about their messy childhood traumas (cf. the unbearable psychocrap of Twister). No, what’s important is how and when each meets his/her end. Essentially, the characters are placeholders, necessary evils. The director just needed a handful of human beings to move the plot along. Any eight reasonably attractive, slim humans would do.

To me, Sunshine is all about atmosphere (literally and figuratively). It’s also one of those rare movies that aims to discuss Big Ideas (e.g. Love, Commitment, Loneliness, Sacrifice, Compassion) and succeeds–not through dialogue, but action. The razor-thin story is propelled by stunning visuals and a relentless, densely layered soundscape. It speaks softly but insistently of isolation and desperation and the luxury of human companionship. To call it a really pretty, really creepy music video doesn’t do it justice, but maybe you get the basic idea.

It wasn’t until the credits rolled that I realized how intense my visceral reaction to the movie had been. My neck, shoulders, and stomach had been in knots since the opening frames, and as the credits rolled, it was…kinda like an orgasm, but without the sex. Which sounds bad, but it was very, very good–and weird. Don’t forget weird.

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Media Club! Media Club!

Good morning, and welcome to the bi-monthly meeting of the LGBTQ Media Club to Advance the Cause of Homosexualists and Their Admirers. I would like to place two items on today’s agenda:

Exhibit A–brought to my attention by Dr. Tyler “Meat” Curtain–which features the ever-fabulous, though sadly deceased, Gwen Verdon and three pantsuits which have no doubt outlived her:

Exhibit B–brought to my attention my two very gay eyes–which clearly features our fey Afghani sisters engaged in filming Hot Asses of the Caucasus, Volume 2. (Clock the white mules on the cameraman, ladies!)

And…discuss!

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Things that have happened in the last ten days:

  • I’ve run out of coffee. Twice.

  • I’ve lived almost exclusively on hummus, spinach, and the occasional Hot Pocket.

  • Despite that questionable diet, I’ve gotten within spitting distance of my pre-Katrina weight.

  • I’ve seriously contemplated buying a house for my mother. Or at least contemplated how I might go about procuring the funds to buy a house for my mother. More on that later.

  • I’ve rediscovered Oblivion and am now playing as–gasp!–a man, although my Xbox Live screen name remains “Queenzilla”.

  • I’ve run box office, sound, and half of the lights for six performances of The Titanic Adventures of the Love Boat Poseidon! (five of which sold out). If you haven’t seen it, you’ve only got two more shots…

  • I persuaded the entire cast of said show to participate in a painful, counterproductive, showcase performance of our “iceberg/tidal wave” scene for the ATHE conference, using some union sound guy who wasn’t fit to play 78s on my dead grandfather’s Victrola, much less handle fast-paced CD playback.

  • I’ve killed my computer and spent several hours imploring Dell to resurrect it.

  • I’ve wasted a lot of time doing absolutely nothing, least of all laundry, dishes, and other household chores. Screw it.

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STUPID THINGS

Stupid Thing #1: This promotion at Wal*Mart
Who, exactly, would purchase golf balls bearing the likeness of a child or grandchild? And why? As portraits, they’re completely inefficient: very small and poorly rendered. As golf balls, they’re problematic, too: how could anyone with a conscience take a five-iron to little Mary-Jo? (I mean, I totally could, but the kind of sentimental wuss who’d buy this crap? Forget it.) Hell, they’re not even keepsake items; anything that comes three to a pack is ipso facto disposable. If someone held a gun to your head and forced you to identify one thing that epitomizes the sappiest, tackiest, most conflicted human impulses, photo-embossed golf balls could seriously save your life.

Stupid Thing #2: United Parcel Service
It should come as no surprise that Jonno receives a lot of Fleshbot-related swag–sometimes as much as three or four packages a day. And over time, delivery men (and occasionally, delivery women) have grown lazy about ringing the bell. Perhaps it’s because Jonno doesn’t always answer the door, or perhaps it’s because the packages are marked “ADULT MATERIAL” and therefore seem unimportant, or perhaps it’s because we don’t really have a doorbell, but for whatever reason, they don’t even attempt to get a signature anymore. We just step outside to discover wee piles of filth stacked on the porch. It’s like getting visits from an X-rated Santa all year round.

Last Friday, I emerged to discover not only a minor cachet of pornography waiting patiently on the doorstep, but also this ginormous box containing a very expensive piece of musical equipment that our theatre company ordered for an upcoming show. I guess the UPS man felt that a 100-pound keyboard was about as worthless as an eight-ounce Chi Chi LaRue DVD. I’m happy to say that both survived the ordeal, but wow: that’s pretty freakin’ stupid.

Stupid Thing #3: FedExKinko’s (née Kinko’s)
This particular photo shows a view of the front counter at the St. Charles Avenue store–a parched, barren landscape I endured for TEN FULL MINUTES before any of the incompetent FEK-drones even acknowledged my presence. Not that this is the only location full of ‘tards. Apparently, idiocy runs so rampant throughout the chain that video games have been made about it. (Or at least one, anyway.) In the nearly 20 years I’ve lived here, I’ve found two responsible, rational islands of sanity in this sea of corporate nonchalance: one now lives in San Francisco, and the other I haven’t seen in a while. If this keeps up, “going postal” could potentially be replaced with “going FedEx”.

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You know how sometimes you read something so utterly ludicrous and stupid that it’d probably be easier to drag the author out of his/her office, down the block, and shove him/her in front of an oncoming bus instead of penning a cogent rebuttal? Well, that’s how I’m feeling after perusing today’s missive from the ever fearful American Family Association:

On Thursday, a Hindu chaplain from Reno, Nevada, by the name of Rajan Zed is scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. Zed tells the Las Vegas Sun that in his prayer he will likely include references to ancient Hindu scriptures, including Rig Veda, Upanishards, and Bhagavard-Gita. Historians believe it will be the first Hindu prayer ever read at the Senate since it was formed in 1789.

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto “One Nation Under God.”

“In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods,” the Christian historian explains. “And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator — that’s not one that fits here because we don’t know which creator we’re talking about within the Hindu religion.”

Barton says given the fact that Hindus are a tiny constituency of the American public, he questions the motivation of Senate leaders. “This is not a religion that has produced great things in the world,” he observes. “You look at India, you look at Nepal — there’s persecution going in both of those countries that is gendered by the religious belief that is present there, and Hindu dominates in both of those countries.”

— AFA.net

I mean seriously: where the $@#&! do you begin?

And BTW, I know that it seems hypocritical to respond to censorship with threats of censorship and/or bodily harm. But c’mon, the AFA is clearly a bunch of ‘tards.

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Falling for Jonno was a great move on my part. Not only did I get a loving boyfriend out of the deal, but I also quadrupled the size of my family, enlarged my circle of friends, and gained a much-needed appreciation for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which had previously given me headaches). I also got a cat.

I’ve never been much of a cat person. I was raised in a dog family, and frankly, I never really understood the feline allure. Nevertheless, I was prepared to give it a go with Lola. After all, when you love someone–really love them–you accept them cats and all.

That said, Lola did not make it easy. Not by a long shot.

Things got off to an inauspicious start. The effort Jonno and I expended loading Lola into her kennel the day we left New York was overwhelming. In fact, I don’t think we let her out once on the drive down, ’cause neither of us wanted to have to put her back in. (NB: This experience was ultimately responsible for the worst decision Jonno and I have ever made.)

Upon arriving at her new home in New Orleans, Lola proceeded to be downright mean to my dog, Gaston. I could understand some skittishness for a couple of weeks–months, even, given the stress of the move–but she kept at it. Lola was somewhat friendlier to the other hounds as they joined the family, but she was never sincere about it. Not that cats ever ooze sincerity, mind you.

Then, too, there was Lola’s restlessness, which was beyond frustrating. She always wanted to set up shop in the most inconvenient spots: on the kitchen table, in the middle of the bathroom floor, on a shelf full of books. Then, just as Jonno and I would relent and sigh and say, “Okay, fine, have it your way,” and move stuff to accommodate her, she’d change her mind and move someplace even weirder.

Despite all this, I tried hard to love Lola. I talked to her, sang to her, rubbed cold things on her head (something she seemed to enjoy). I snuck her spoonfuls of ice cream when Jonno wasn’t looking. And of course, I slipped back into our flooded city to get her out.

Lola hadn’t been feeling well the past few days, I could tell, but that was pretty common. Every six months or so, she’d get lethargic and lie around, just kinda moping. But then as now, she was mobile, she was responsive, she was eating, she never meowed as if she were in pain. Yesterday I picked her up and walked her around the house, and she batted softly at my face. Same old routine.

When I awoke this morning, Lola was laying in a patch of sunlight on the bedroom floor. I absolutely hate it when people, upon looking at dead friends and relatives, say things like, “She looks so peaceful,” but I have to say, Lola really did. I called her to see if she was hungry, but she didn’t budge. I walked over and looked at her to see if she was breathing. I kept looking for a very long time. (She had the ability to go into near-hibernation, which could be really disturbing.) In the end, though, she didn’t move at all.

Lola: I know you lived a lengthy life of nearly 17 years, and I know we were never the best of friends, but still, I’ll miss you.

Jonno: Let me reassure you that Lola died quietly, in her sleep. Also let me reassure you that I do not wait for you to leave town for the summer before killing off our pets. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.

And to the rest of you: Thanks for the concern you’ve expressed for Lola over the years. She may not have appreciated it, but Jonno and I certainly did so on her behalf.