Two more Fat Tuesday pics, courtesy of our pal Rakia (last seen chez nous at the far left of a ratty Duncan-Phyfe on New Year’s Eve):
MISCELLANY
The future of our nations and the future of the Middle East are linked and our peace depends on their hope and development and freedom.
Lasting successful reform in a broader Middle East will not be imposed from the outside. It must be chosen from within.
I’m sorry, could you repeat that? That bit about “from within”? …No, I heard it just fine. I think some folks may have missed it, though. Rummy, are you listening?
How’s that for a half-hearted, knee-jerk, lackluster critique of the war in Iraq? I suppose I just don’t care anymore.
Besides, 2005 is all about Syria, baby. And PDA hacking. And roller derby. Think Paris Hiton on skates, elbowing her way through Damascus. Totally on fire.
I’ve never really understood why women are so timid. For me, only someone with a powerful look — Diana Vreeland, say, or Minnie Mouse — is a person worth emulating. Because — and here is a big secret — if you construct an eccentric look and make it your own, you will be forever insulated from the world of fashion, a place where, let’s face it, you can never be lissome enough, your hair never curly (or straight) enough, your chest never full (or flat) enough. And here’s an added bonus: Truly wacky style doesn’t date, so all those worries about wrinkles leave you blissfully unaffected.
Mario’s bold glasses are the remaining emblem of his wild youth. “I got to a certain age and realized that I didn’t need to look crazy,” he says. “What was inside my head was enough.”
Two freshwater pearls of wisdom (on platinum chain with bezel-set amethyst pendant and a surround of 12 peridot, lobster-claw clasp, Van Cleef & Arpels, $3760, at Van Cleef & Arpels boutiques) from the current edition of T, the New York Times’ style magazine.
Wow. I’ve been talking a lot of crap, haven’t I? How’s about some good old-fashioned [mostly] gay pornography, just to remind ourselves what’s really important in life? Let’s see, there’s…
Token straight pornstar biographical smut
Did I mention that none of those links are worksafe and that popup blockers are wonderful things? I mean, I shouldn’t have to, but, you know, responsible person that I am…
If you want more, of course, you can visit the boyfriend, whose stuff is–need I say it?–also, like, totally NSFW.
Obviously, I Have Too Much Time On My Hands
Inspired by the whole Gannon-snooping thing, I started clicking around, and you know what’s funny?
Not that Men’s News Daily is one of only two documented subscribers to the Talon “News” service (scare quotes mine), which, as we now know, is the sister site of GOPUSA.com, both owned by Texas Republican activist Bobby Eberle (aka “Robert R. Eberle, Ph.D.”).
Not that its title, when considered in tandem with its far-right-leaning viewpoint, makes it sound like the mouthpiece for retro-thinking Archie Bunkers, who’d prefer their women barefoot in the kitchen and confined to “scourge huts” during their menstrual cycles.
No, what’s funny is that Men’s News Daily features run-of-the-mill homophobic vitriol like this and this and this (not to mention some confusing apocalyptocrap), while on the righthand border of every single page, there’s a very prominent link to GayPatriot.org.
Now, I’m a moderate-to-slightly-leftish Democrat, and I probably always will be. (Though, truth be told, it’d be nice to have another option besides Ralph freaking Nader.) Still, I can understand some of the positions held by gay Republicans. I understand how some of them–especially the ones who live outside major metro areas and their established queer communities–dislike the urban, flamboyantly gay lifestyle. I was born and raised in a town like that, and the homogeneity is kinda stifling: at Wal-Mart, at church, everywhere you go, folks are screaming “follow the President” and “defend marriage,” and after a while, you have little choice but to buy in. And hell, for folks who live in places where a lingering glance in a locker room can result in a bloody nose (or worse), the idea of a community where GLBT people walk around holding hands is more than a little foreign and scary.
Still, I find it hard to believe that even the rightest of right-wing homos could agree with some of the piffle on Men’s News Daily. I mean, even the Log Cabin Republicans pulled their support of Bush in the 2004 election because he got so extreme, right? So why the link? Who put it there? Who keeps it there? Is it meant to give some kind of credence to the right-wingers’ arguments, so they can say, “See, we’ve got some gays on our side, too”? Or is it a fluke of serendipity?
Curiously enough, the owner of GayPatriot.org, “C. M. Grantham,” has the same contact phone number as Outlet Radio, which lists a “Christian Grantham” on its masthead. Mr. Grantham’s articles feature a byline that states he “was a consultant to domestic policy forums for the Clinton Administration as well as events for HRC and GLAAD”–not exactly the sort of credentials you’d expect from the owner of a site that claims to be “the blog home for the more than one million gay [sic] and lesbians who support President Bush” and which “ravishes the Left and has fun doing it!”
After digging a little more, it seems Grantham’s positions on Outlet Radio and on his personal website are a fair bit more liberal than his posts to GayPatriot.org. (In fact, he doesn’t even identify himself on the latter, but it’s safe to assume that he’s the poster who calls himself Gay Patriot and who has the same email addy as “C.M. Grantham,” the registrar of the site.) Still, that’s all fine. I mean, I was on the debate team in high school–I appreciate someone who can argue both sides of the coin.
But what’s strange about all this is that when Grantham refers to Gannon’s former employer, Talon News, in his GayPatriot post, he uses scare quotes, implying a highly skeptical opinion of Talon. Is he not paying attention? Does he not realize that he’s advertising (the banner’s a little too prominent to be just link swap) on the website of one of Talon’s only subscribers?
No, I don’t know what it all means. Frankly, I think I’ve confused myself. But something’s weird.
Update: Great minds, dearie…. Lucky for you, he’s far more articulate than I.
Back in the day, I used to drink gin. Lots of it. This was during my undergrad years, after I’d gone through the 50-cent-draft-beer phase and the girly liquor phase (mostly rum), and long before I discovered the simpler, more subtle joys of vodka, wine, and really good beer.
Now, I don’t know how many of y’all are gin people, but lemme tell ya: Miss Tanqueray is a cruel, cruel mistress. You party with her more than a couple of times in a couple of hours, and the next thing you know, you’re waking up in the bathtub of a strange apartment sporting a fat black eye and the business end of a horse costume. In fact, there are vast expanses of my early 20s that I can’t remember at all, simply because I was going out every night and swilling g-and-t’s (i.e. gin and tonics, for those who’ve never tended bar) like H2O. Luckily for me–not to mention my friends and the howevermany millions of people who drive automobiles in this country–I put away the gin years ago, and I haven’t looked back.
Which is not to say that I don’t occasionally get tanked. I do. It’s rare, but I do. And when I do, I tend to kinda black out. The next morning, I’ll think back on the night before, and it’s like watching a slide show without my glasses: blurry, and somewhat unsettling. I just have to hope and pray that I didn’t do anything too embarrassing or offensive to anyone I know or anyone who works in the Mayor’s office (’cause you never know when you’ll need to call in a favor, I say).
I mention all this because in the not-too-distant past, I had one of those episodes, and for weeks, I’ve been biding my time. I haven’t specifically asked anyone for an account of my antics, I’ve just been waiting for fallout.
I’m happy to report that as of last night, I’ve seen everyone on my list who I might’ve offended, and they’ve all hugged my neck and given me a kiss like nothing happened. So, I must’ve behaved–something I didn’t always do when I was younger.
I’m becoming a genteel old fogey of a boozer. Even my downward spirals are dull and lifeless and uneventful, just like my hair. How depressing.
File under: “I’m Always the Last to Know”
Remember a couple of weeks ago at that press conference when a “reporter” asked W how he was planning to garner bipartisan support for Social Security reform when, as the reporter put it, Democrats had “divorced themselves from reality”? It made, like, national news because it was so obvious that this guy was a shill for the Bush administration? My gay-lover-on-the-DL Jon Stewart even did a piece on it? Remember?
Well, even if you don’t, several folks did, and luckily for us, they did some snooping. Turns out that until recently (May of 2003), this reporter, Jeff Gannon (née James Guckert), may have had a lucrative hobby as a male prostitute. I can only hope that his probings in the boudoir were more convincing than those of the press room.
And yes, I know that thanks to the boyfriend and his colleagues and every other media hound in the world, this is old, old news, but hey, ask anybody: I’m always late to the party.
UPDATE: Maureen Dowd has now joined the fray, as well as my hero, Frank Rich!
So, I think it was Freud who basically said that everything comes down to desire–desire propels us forward, makes us move, change, whatever. According to him, the process goes something like, we want X (food, sex, a complete set of lobby cards from Strait-Jacket), we get X, we’re fine for about five minutes, then we want Y (more food, more sex, a complete set of lobby cards from Imitation of Life).
I thought of that this weekend when I drove up to see my friend Lesley in Jackson, Mississippi–home base for my undergrad years. Now, I had some very good times in Jackson, and unlike some of my buddies, I wasn’t counting the days ’till I could sing “Jackson in my Rear View Mirror.” That said, I never really had an attachment to Jackson like the one I have to New Orleans. The affinity just wasn’t there. And that’s why I left: not to get away from something, but to get to something else.
There are parts of Jackson that I miss, though–the most obvious being its architecture. Jackson really started to hit its stride after the turn of the century, after the popularity of Victorian architecture had begun to wane. As a result, many of the homes there–the ones in the really interesting, green, walkable neighborhoods–are of the Arts & Crafts style: bungalows with intimate, woody living areas, like warm cocoons. Very Riven. It’s something we don’t often see here in New Orleans, where homes in much of Orleans parish (i.e. Orleans county) often date to 1900 or earlier.
Lesley’s pad definitely isn’t of the Arts & Crafts style–it was built in the late 1950s and looks like it might have been an early prototype for the Brady Bunch house. Still, on the inside it has many bungalow-esque qualities: lower ceilings, built-in fixtures (note the countertop and lighting fixture in her kitchen above), curious geometries, multiple levels. And as nice as our house in New Orleans is becoming after nearly five long years of renovations, it’s a little…austere? Simple? Something. I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I don’t want to move back to J-town. I just forget what it’s like to be in those cozy spaces, you know? It’s an environment I enjoy but have forgotten.
We always want what we don’t have.
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