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I’m still not sure how I feel about this Sordid Lives business. For those of you who don’t know the play (or the movie), it’s basically a black comedy about a one-step-above-white-trash Texas family mourning the loss of its matriarch–a woman of a certain age who dies during a tryst in a seedy motel room after tripping over her adulterous lover’s wooden legs.

Yes, I know it sounds funny. And we’ve got a fantastic cast who really excel at Southern parody while still managing to find the realness of the story so that it’s not a two-hour-long cartoon brought to life.

The problem is that the show is framed by the story of the dead woman’s grandson–an actor living in New York who’s having trouble coming out, especially to his family. He has these endless monologues about being closeted and his fears, and frankly, I don’t give a shit. I mean, maybe when the play was written a decade ago–back when everyone was writing her/his coming out story–these were seriously pressing concerns, but in the era of Queer Eye and Queer as Folk and Gay Sex in the Gay City and The Simple Gay Life and everything short of Matt Lauer buttfucking Al Roker on national TV (now there’s something I’d pay money to see), does anyone really care? Especially audiences here in New Orleans, where there’s a huge, highly visible gay population? Maybe if we were doing this in my hometown in Mississippi, it’d be a little more meaningful and political and stuff, but here…. Personally, I think it distracts from the bust-ass funny other parts of the script. Note: you may want to consider some revisions, Mr. Shores, given the current political climate.

I know I’m speaking from a position of relative priviledge. I know that I’m a well-educated white male who lives in a gay ghetto and who’s had the luxury of being out for some time and who’s never really felt any repercussions from it. I know there are other folks in other parts of the country to whom this play would speak profoundly. Unfortunately, they’re not the folks who are going to be buying tickets to the damn thing.

Not that I’m worried about ticket sales, per se. We’ll do fine. The show will make money. We haven’t even opened yet, and we’re selling well. Still I’ll be glad to get back to the really fun stuff.

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So I’m reading last night–The Stepford Wives, the latest in a series of light reading endeavors–and I get to the climax of the novel, and I think to myself, “Damn! That’s a lot more interesting and poetic than that nearly unwatchable movie with Tina Louise and whatserpuss. Someone should put together a remake…”

And that’s how dizzy I’m getting in my dotage.

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Everyone’s Life Is More Glamorous Than Mine

My boyfriend gets to hang out with Belladonna and her naughty ilk at the Adult Expo in LA.

My sister gets to doll up like Virginia Madsen-on-smack and make out with cuties on the banquettes of sleek Euro nightclubs under the watchful eye of Mongolian guardian angels.

Meanwhile, I get to sit at my computer and crank out crap websites for sleazeball half-wits who consider Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman engrossing TV drama.

In my next life, I wanna be a space stewardess on interplanetary commercial flights. I deserve it.

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Okay, maybe I’m not as much of an Uncle Tammy as I thought, cause Sumner Redstone’s “the people” is sounding an awful lot like Ross Perot’s infamous “you people”.

Yes, Redstone is speaking of a marketing demographic and Perot was speaking of (and to) African American voters, but the distinction between the two is minimal at best: in each case, reasonably identifiable minority groups subject to serious discrimination are being wooed by (allegedly) straight white men whose interest in their socio-political well-being is dubious at best. Of course, Perot was just being ignorant, while Redstone seems more willing to call a spade a spade (pun intended), but still…

Am I having a bitter day? Or is there something to this? Tell me, ’cause I’m not in the mood to think today.

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Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, here, but Trent Lott is a frustrating man. Not just because he’s smug and pious and wants to marry Strom Thurmond’s corpse and have, like, 10,000 of his white, white babies. Not just because, like many Republicans, he’s got a cavalier, bullyish attitude on foreign policy. Not just because of that alleged “hairdo.” But also because he’s kinda–dare I say it?–reasonable and likeable at times.

Case in point: a brief interview with him currently running in the NY Times, in which he lauds the military’s work in killing Iraqi “terrorists”:

Reporter: We can’t kill everyone who hates America!

Trent Lott: We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

Okay, I don’t need to explain what’s wrong with that, do I? (If I do, perhaps you’d be better served by some different reading material.)

Then, just a few inches down the page, Lott shows signs of tolerance and reason:

Reporter: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children?

Trent Lott: It’s so important that children have parents or family that love them. There are a lot of adopted children who have loving parents, and it comes in different ways with different people in different states.

Now, part of me–the skeptical, political part–is wary of such talk. I mean, I think we’ve all heard stronger statements in support of gay adoption. And frankly, he sounds like he saying it’s fine for homos to have children–just not in Mississippi. And then I start to wonder if maybe I’m becoming an old, queer Uncle Tom, happy with any bone of compassion thrown to me. (I said “bone.” Hee hee.)

Another part of me–the part that’s very familiar with white men of the Deep South of my father’s generation–knows that given this particular man and his milieu, those words constitute a pretty ringing endorsement.

Like I said: frustrating.

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Things of Note

  • Was it just me, or was Miss Ron Reagan, Junior’s eulogy at his daddy’s gravesite just a little too…too? Methinks someone was looking for a career bounce.
  • The Fiery Furnaces were INSANE in performance–like, they performed their entire oeuvre as one big, 45-minute-long medley–but they need a better website.
  • After the show, Drew and I wondered (a) why the band’s drummer wasn’t skinnier (since he was rockin’ like Dokken the entire time), and (b) what he’d look like if he weren’t getting so much exercise.
  • If you’ve emailed me in the past couple of months and I haven’t responded, please don’t take it as a slight. I mean, it very well may be, but it could also be the result of crappy spam filtering courtesy of the less-than-optimal Knowspam (which I’m not linking for good reason).
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    Yo, like, what hath goddess (or some Flash artiste with too much time on her hands) wrought?

    If anyone speaks Korean–at least, I think that’s Korean–by all means, feel free to translate.

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    I understand that people mean one thing to those who know them and other things to those who don’t.

    I understand that some people who seem to me devoid of redeeming qualities can seem to others loving, thoughtful, and magnanimous.

    I understand that losing a loved one is not pleasant.

    I understand that it is a matter of human decency to respect the fragile feelings of those in mourning.

    I understand all these things, but it’s not enough: I want to gloat over Reagan’s death. I want to steal the rhetoric of George W, the man-who-would-be-Reagan, and shout to the world that a wellspring of evil has been finally capped off. I want to see the man who refused to utter the word “AIDS” laid to rest on the floor of the rotunda in a clear, glass coffin so the entire nation can watch him rot away to nothing and be sure that he’s gone.

    At the other end of the spectrum, others are no doubt working to canonize him.

    To Nancy, Miss Ron, and all the other Children of Reagan, genetic and otherwise: I’m sorry you feel bad, but this was not a nice man. I guess I’m not either.