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In response to recent emails….

• I don’t know how the Yoko Ono thing came up. Maybe she’s been on my mind because our new housemate used to work for her, and I can’t imagine the crap he had to put up with. Or maybe it’s because I’ve recently had run-ins with screeching, needy, uninspired artists who’ve reminded me of her somehow. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been secretly programmed to kill her. Who can say, really?
• If Matthew McConaughey is gay, he manages to keep it to himself. Although there was plenty of male eye-candy on the set the other day, Matty wasn’t interested in anything but the ladies–and not, like, in the “Oooh, I love your sports bra” kinda way.
• Of course we’re all going to see the Biloxi Little Theatre’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch next weekend. It’s an odd but distinctly right-on choice for the theatre, and it deserves some support. Plus, an insider tells me the show’s damn good. We’ve got 14 in our party right now–anyone else wanna tag along?

I have seen the future and it is crappy.

By “future,” of course, I mean a new film being shot in New Orleans, and by “crappy” I mean not worth the 75 cents I just spent on some stale-ass vending machine pretzels.

Seriously: Matthew McConaughey, I don’t understand your success. You’re an overly tanned, long-in-the-tooth Ashton Kutcher. Given the abundance of younger, more talented stoners in H-wood, I can only assume that you keep getting work because you’re hung like Milton Berle.

And what the hell are you doing in this milquetoast mishegas, little Miss Carrie Bradshaw? Come back to the five-and-dime, SJP, SJP. I mean, I’m sorry about the whole Joss Stone/Gap conflamma–I know it was a big pastel-colored blow to your ego–but now you’re just being silly and self-destructive.

Let’s get one thing straight: I do not hate Yoko Ono because of her music. I mean, yes, it’s lamentable. Yes, it’s laughable. But it’s not her most grievous offense.

No, I hate Yoko Ono for her participation in one of the art world’s worst movements: Fluxus. Fluxus was allegedly Dada for a new generation. On paper, it was free-wheeling, free-thinking, and free-spirited. But in reality, it was just untalented, stinky hippies making bad, sloppy art that museum preparators would grow to loathe. And Yoko Ono, not surprisingly, was the Fluxus poster girl. (Well, she would have been, if she’d gotten her act together and had posters made.)

So the next time you ask your mother or father or aunt or cousin to visit the museum with you and they respond “No, I’ve got better things to waste my money on than watching saggy-breasted women roll around in paint,” you can thank Yoko. She and her cronies have ruined it for the rest of us.

On a sunny Sunday two weeks ago, a man wearing only a condom leaped out of the bushes along a nature trail in New Jersey and accosted a woman jogging. The jogger turned out to be a police officer and, officials said yesterday, the man turned out to be a vice president of J. P. Morgan Chase.

— New York Times

And there you have it, folks: the best lead paragraph in the history of journalism.

Friday Faggotry

• Okay, here’s a news flash: I’m gay. How gay, you ask? So gay that while I stood in line at the coffee shop this morning, waiting for my fourth cup of hot, steaming caffeine, my bloodshot eyes were riveted on the woman in front of me. Obviously, I wasn’t checking out her heart-shaped ass or her perky breasticles; I was thinking to myself, “Goddammit, I know that ‘ho from somewhere.” Was she a former classmate? An erstwhile neighbor? A bartendress at one of my favorite haunts? After she left, it came to me: girlfriend looked exactly like one of my favorite appraisers on Antiques Roadshow…. An appraiser on Antiques Roadshow, ladies and gentlemen. That’s how gay I am.
• Still, I may be the biggest cakeboy on the block, and I may watch a helluva lot of TV, but apparently I missed a fascinating documentary on Thai ladyboys. How can such an obsessive-compulsive queen be so clueless?

If you’re one of the three people who’ve heard me sing (hey, I thought I was alone in the house), you may find this hard to believe, but my sister has landed a record deal! Don’t believe me? Check her short list of music samples, her interview in MookyChick, or her kickin’ animations. Catch her now before she completes her ascent to the top of the Top-40 food chain….

Apart from putting on their make-up at [subway] stations, young Japanese have adopted such “vices” as swinging umbrellas, eating in public and crossing their legs on the subway. While these are minor sins elsewhere, in Japan they are being taken with the utmost seriousness.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has taken the step of convening a commission of eminent experts known, without a hint of irony, as the Study Group Relating to the Prevention of Behaviour that Causes Discomfort Among Numerous People in Public Places [emphasis totally mine].

— The Times Online

For the record, I’m not a Star Wars fan. I mean, yes, when I was a kid, I went to see the first one–knowing absolutely nothing about it–and I had a good time. I was even inclined to plunk down the five or six bucks to see The Empire Strikes Back when it came out a couple of years later. Since then, though, I’ve steered clear of Monsieur Lucas’ saccharine, moralistic oeuvre, and unless I’m hungover on the sofa and the remote stops working just as I’m clicking past Attack of the Clones or whatever, I have no intention of sitting through his work in the future.

That said, my friend Jim did come up with an amusing list of names you’re unlikely to see in a Star Wars film. My favorites:

• Darth Crabby

• Darth Finicky

• Darth Nauseous

• Darth Twinkles

• Darth Jeff

• Darth Tubby (“Um…I ate it….”)

• Darth Jemima

• Darth Dennis

• Darth Studious (“Love to join the boarding party, fellas, but it’s a school night.”)

To which I’d add:

• Darth Betty

• Darth Yolanda

• Darth Shequida

• Darth Boom-Boom

• Darth Julio

• Darth Britney

• Darths Ira & Gladys Finkelstein

• Darth Natty Bumpo

• Darth Cuddles

• Darth Foxy

• Darth Rod

• and of course, Darth Pussy Terwilliger

Sex offenders get Viagra paid for by Medicaid

— CNN

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

• I went four for four on my grant applications. I ain’t the Chosen One, but apparently, I’ve got some talent in the technical writing department. Not exactly what I’d envisioned–I mean, I would’ve prefered the talent of writing fiction or jingles or tag lines on movie posters (e.g.”It was a far out romance, until he went too far!”), but whatever. Gift horse, mouth, et cetera, et cetera.
• My work-work is done for the moment. Now if I can just get that play-work under control….
• Vacation planning has officially begun. Do y’all have any interesting suggestions for getaways, or am I going to be stuck with the usual faggoty-fag-fag faggotry of Provincetown?
• My ass is killing me.
• Lavender is the new orange.