Fucking Pterodactyls.

These are t-shirts designed by Jeremy Kalgreen available over at amorphia-apparel.com. Needless to say, I adore them. And shall, in the fullness of time, purchase some. When I have teh monies.

Dear Person from Sussex:

I know -- through the magic of Sitemeter, so don't get any creepy ideas of me stalking -- you're from East Sussex and this happened in West Sussex, but do you know anything about the GrannyKart Blowout?

I found this bizarrely, and maybe macabrely, fascinating. For instance, did happen at Tesco's or Sainsbury's or somewhere else? I don't know why that matters, but for some reason it does. What started it? I could see if it were over the last package of Chocolate Hob-Nobs.* Was either morbidly obese, and therefore have an unfair advantage? One was taken away to hospital, after all.

Update: Further research tells me it happened in a place called Crawley, (Really? "Crawley"? What's the next town over, Little Snivelling?) a new town which has Tescoses, Sainsburyses, and ASDAses and Icleandses.

*Mmmmmm. Chocolate Hob Nobs. Though my research has discovered a Milk Chocolate and Orange Hob Nob, which I would Kill to Get. Yes. Kill.

**Seriously, check out the site. It's angry! No wonder the grans were playing at MarioKart.

Why I hate NC, part 12,563

Senator Dole:

As one of your constituents, I wanted to inform you how appalled I was at your attempt to attach Jesse Helms name to the recent Congressional bill for AIDS relief.

Helms was a racist and a bigot, and I am sure -- whatever his late actions in office may have been -- history will confirm his legacy as little more than a rabble-rousing hate-monger, and a relic of a less progressive age.

Your attempt to attach his name to the bill was a flagrant act of partisanship and an obvious attempt to whitewash Helms' dark memory. Were you just not able to find the names of some actual victims of the AIDS epidemic to attach to the bill?

While I don't doubt this act will be popular with the majority of your electorate, I think it's important the strong minority make their voices heard.

--Jaylemurph

Dammit!

The day -- the very day -- I mention ER here, I find out next season will be the last one.

I'm not very torn up about it -- it jumped the shark a while back* -- but still, I had to find out today?!

And in other TV news, who's going to tell that Dayton kid from The Baby Borrowers** that he needs to go somewhere and do a solo stroke flick and/or a Peter Z Pan movie***? Oh come on. You know you'd watch it. And I refuse to believe he uses that much peroxide, Nair and fake tan without self-selecting to look like a twink.

Not that I'm convinced he hasn't already, but he is the sort of ammo that the US twink market needs against Eurocreme and the other leading companies from Eastern Europe. And something in me is adamant that the US can -- and should --compete in this market.

*I'm pretty sure it happened 'round about the time /every/ episode got promoted as "a very special/touching/can't miss episode."

**You should really, really hate NBC for thinking you need to be watch hours of TV to learn that teen-agers are stupid and shouldn't (successfully) breed. I say "you" because *I* watched it and can't personally bitch. Granted, I probably watched with a creepy leer (see above), but I did watch it.

***No? Oliver Twink? Betwinked?**** The Da Vinci Load*****? Tell me he doesn't belong in there, somewhere.

****Well, obviously you know about the dreadful mike problems in the last few scenes. Marred an otherwise lovely film.

*****The gay one. Apparently, there's also a straight porn title called "The Da Vinci Load." Who knew?

Ars Gratia Auctore

I think it's stupid to take your own photos at an art museum (doubly so at a gallery where you ought to be coughing up actual money for your gawping) , since there's practically no chance you're going to get a better image than has already be made for a post card, coffee mug or calendar.

But there were two I couldn't resist.

One should be obvious to anyone reading this.

The other is for anyone who's ever seen me.

I was also delighted by a Giacametti sculpture of the type I particularly love, and a really engaging Matisse I'd never seen before, "Laurette with a Cup of Coffee"

Trip Debriefing III

As in St Louis, I didn't actually stay /in/ Chicago, I stayed away in Lisle, a pretty distant suburb, but closer to Union Station than my place in Brooklyn was to Manhattan (timewise, on an express train, anyway).

Now, I may never have mentioned here, but I'm a big ER fan. As in "I have all 9 DVD sets and have watched all of them twice". So my biggest treat in being in Chicago was going to nose around ER locations. Consequently, my first trip was to try to find the Michigan Ave bridge, just down from where Cook Country General Hospital is supposed to be. Of course, I got lost. But I did see the Sears tower and the Chicago Opera House (Which is right on the river. I don't envy their damp problems...)

I went back the next day and found it. And took spent most of the day wandering around, taking some pictures. (And giggled a lot to myself -- "Look at me, I'm Dr Greene jogging by the Lake" or frowning and thinking "Now I'm all serious and moody like Dr Benton*)

I also got a pizza. I was sat next to -- literally -- the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. I use the word beautiful because it's more accurate than "hot" or even "cute". He was almost like a Botticelli youth, or a similar period cartoon** drawing to gage an artist's technical perfection rather than his talent at conveying actual appearance: his lips and eyes and colour were so perfect they had that look of being drawn on rather than have grown. His lips were literally pink. I've never seen that before on anyone, male or female, without make-up. I had trouble not looking at him. I hope I didn't come over as "creepy" rather than "interested" or, since I know what I can reasonably attain, "appreciative" since I know he caught me looking at him. And it's not like he was the best thing that happened to me there, so I don't know why he gets all these CIs. I guess it shows I've been swallowing the Twilight series virtually whole. In any event, this guy has Edward Cullen nailed better than Oliver-whatever-his-real-name-is-Wood.

I also went to the Art Institute of Chicago, on a Friday afternoon when it was free***. I enjoyed it. I also took a ride around the entire Loop, just to say I had written the El. One picture that I didn't post here was for the CCGH stop (Library-State/Van Buren). Yeah, it's pretty sad I know which one it is.

*Oh all right, Dr Luka probably is a better comparison. Not that chip-on-their-shoulder Docs are hard to come by on that show.

**Not that kind. This kind.

***Thank you, Target. A big box deal I can approve of.

Nerd Topicality: I Has It.

Yes, The Kings of Convenience were bump music on this week's rerun of This American Life.

Un-hunh. That's right: Jaylemurph has his finger on the pulse of Geek Life.

Dear Pastry Chef Mike from Charlotte on Chemistry.com

I'm sorry I'm too poor to actually afford to pay for things at the online dating service. You sound quite lovely, and I'm sorry if you think me ignoring your "nudges" is a personal insult. It isn't. Believe me, even if you were a hag -- and I'm not suggesting you are -- being a pastry chef makes you seem a lot sexier.

On a tangential note, I tried baking something calling itself "an old Southern recipe for Sundrop Pound Cake". If you don't know, Sundrop is a lemon soda from the Carolinas and Georgia, notorious for leading soft drinks in caffeine and cholesterol*. I like lemon pound cake, so I thought I might give it a spin. (I'm not going to shame the originator of the recipe with a link.)

It sucks. Even after a made up a lemon glaze for it, it still has no particular lemon taste and the texture is awful. Honestly, it was bad enough I thought I must have done something wrong, but if I did, I can't figure it out. At this point, I'm willing to concede that shitty soda makes shitty cakes. And besides, making soda pop-based baked goods is awfully 1957.

And on a note that's not even tangential: Dear Aaron, current Jeopardy! champion: I love you. You are hot, yet geeky; smart, yet awkward. And you're fooling no one into thinking you're straight by telling Alex stories about kites instead of significant others who are female. I would learn Japanese to please you.**

*For years, the single best thing from my hometown -- and yes, the point was debated all through high school and agreed upon buy Those Who Count(ed) -- was the appallingly-named but infinitely delicious Cherry Vanilla Sundrop at the local barbeque shack. Said shack created a controversy that rocked the town to its roots a few years after a left for college when it switched from Pepsi brands to Coke and had to eschew Sundrop (which is, after three or four removes, owned by PepsiCo***). People still spit on the ground rather than call it a "Cherry Vanilla Lemon Drink".

**And I loathe Japan and all it works and all its means.

***And that little reference, folks, was enough to get a mean virtual glare from the fine folks at PepsiCo. It wasn't even a mean reference to their crappy direct product. Pah. Pepsi. Fit only to be served hot to Turkish soldiers.****

****Very, very obscure reference to a Doctor Who work. Anyone (who is not the author) who recognizes it gets a prize!

Trip De-Briefing II

I was in St Louis for two days. Well, /near/ St Louis. All right, the St Louis airport. I did break out on Sunday to run over to the nearby Creve Coeur* park, the namesake for Tennessee Williams' late play A Lovely Sunday at Creve Coeur. Unfortunately the river was nigh-unapproachable.

My father wanted to go see the Gateway Arch, so as driver, I got to go too. It's located in an agreeable stretch of park surrounded by a disagreeable reconstruction of the "historic waterfront". For which read: scads of tacky tourist shops and tragic faux taverns in fake stone cladding.

If you didn't know it, you can ride to the top of the Arch. Alas, my fear of heights prevented that jaunt. There's also a museum under the Arch, complete with groovy (or creepy, take your pick) animitronic talking cowboys and indians. It's free to get in. I did go there.

I learned that the reverse image of the new(ish) nickel comes from the reverse of old Presidential medals given to Indian chiefs as a sign of "goodwill".

But my biggest occupation was gawking at the floodwater.

*My French isn't bad, so I've thought for years that it was pronounced "Crev" Coeur. It turns out -- and I have the assurance of Danni, the waitress at Pasta House, Inc. and the sales director of the St Louis Airport Hyatt -- that it's "Creeve" Coeur. Bah.

Trip De-Briefing I

I didn't take any pictures of Evansville, IN because there's just not that much picturesque there. They were busily involved with their annual (Ohio) Riverfront street fair called "Freedomfest" -- and yes, before you say it, a local told me it got changed to that after 9/11.

The third day, a local woman asked me to pay to get in (I walked in for free the first two). I wasn't trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?" When she told me how much she wanted, I was trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?"

Twenty bucks is a /lot/ to pay for the opportunity to pay to eat deep-fried fatty starches, get free samples of chewing tobacco or try to be recruited by all five of the armed forces.

Curiously, I did get to meet (one of) the people running for County Coroner. It suggests an odd and certainly creepy plethora of pathologists in your vicinity when there's at least enough for an election. To be fair, six people were murdered in the four days I was there, so maybe there isn't the overabundance of them I perceived.

I also stopped at the amusingly named Angel Mounds site, (fnur, fnur) the site of a Mississippian period city full of raised earth mounds. It was mildly interesting except for the ticket seller, who gave me a spiel at least ten minutes long about the State park. I suspect I was the only person she saw that day.

Po-Faced or Pie-Faced?

I'm a reasonably big fan of the Kings of Convenience -- of all the Bergen Wave movement, really* -- but it's been a while since I had a good listen to their Riot on an Empty Street album. And I had one today.

Is it just me, or does the song "I'd Rather Dance Than Talk to You" song sound uncannily like a Flight of the Conchords bit?

*Even if the bastards wouldn't let me into their country.
*shakes fist t Norway

Sigh.

I'm back. Unfortunately (and possibly unconnectedly, but I rather doubt it) I'm in a bit of a funk and don't feel like being awfully rakish or a la mode d'un raconteur.

That last, no doubt, stems from being right in the middle of Jane Eyre. Perhaps the rather Victorian bit of a funk is, too. That or being sucked out of the only culture I've been in for a while.

I also have pictures to post. Yes, I know. Whee and all that. Badly-made photographs. Fortunately, I'm not in any of them, so they aren't that hard to bear.

I'll end with this: I wasn't very, very impressed with Chicago. It was a nice city, but I think it's telling that long ago, Chicago self-selected to be America's Second City. It lacks a certain something*, a spark that New York has. There's a palpable feeling in New York that at any second something will happen -- good, bad, or awful. And it usually does. You don't feel that in Chicago.

Also, those fucking obnoxious Midwestern accents drove me out of my mind, in a way that never happened in New York, or even Durham.** I want to buy the entire state of Michigan elocution lessons.

*On further reflection, that something may just be New Jersey.

**I apologize to anyone who has such an accent. I don't think I know anyone who has one***, since I haven't hit anyone recently.

***Well, one girl I knew in college, who played Laura in The Glass Menagerie. As I recall, she seemed to spend at least some time fretting over her accent in the scene where Tom breaks some of the glass animals, but hers was never that bad, and I'm sure was even less noticeable by the time she graduated.

Yeah, I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, too.

I'll let you know when it happens. Sadly, the good folk of St Louis aren't nearly as happy in the Russian Velvet Mafia department, so to work off any abundance of what Natural Philosophers a century or three ago called Animal Spirits, I've spent a lot of time in hotel gyms. *

I may be the first person to come back from a vacation weighing less than when they left.

*My apologies to anyone reading this line a second time. I thought it was clever -- and true --enough to recycle.

...You are looking at the working week through the eyes of a gigolo

I'm a whore.

As I said before, I don't really want this to be a collection of tawdry tid-bits, as it were -- him over at Glitter for Brains will beat me out for that every time -- but I have been enjoying this sojourn to the Midwest a /lot/ more than I had anticipated.

It turns out (for some reason I can't even begin to fathom*) that there's a sizeable collection of Russians working in this hotel on short-term --4 to 6 month -- work visas. And my, uhh, conspirator** was about as subtle as I was about this morning.

So imagine my surprise and delight when a waiter from the hotel restaurant showed up at my door. Now, my sense of dignity rather impelled me to tell him to go, but quite frankly, he has the most incredible ass. I felt like it behooved me to entertain him at least for a while.

Now, I know you think this sort of activity is reprehensible, and very possibly stereotypical of Gentlemen That Can't Catch, but I think it's understandable. The past weekend aside, I've always been the model of if not strict monogamy, then monogamy as strict as my significant other at the time demanded (Ooh, that was a fun summer. And to think I spent /years/ with someone who thought getting a handjob while he was riding in a car was the wildest thing one could do...). And my one night stands have been few and far between.

The past few months have been literally no fun. And I've Turned Old within the past few weeks. And even though I've lost almost 30 pounds since March, I still have some measure to go before I feel more than sub-averagely attractive. So all this -- especially with no one coughing discretely and asking for cash when it's over -- has been a decent and probably-more-needed-than-I'd- like-to-admit boost to my ego. I am asserting my sexual identity, like a trashy women's studies professor from the late 1970s.***

And, guys being what they are, there's always a sign of a job well done, so I know I'm not being completely egotistical. It's almost a shame I have to leave for St Louis tomorrow.

*Well, the getting out of Russia bit I can fathom. The whole "picking Indiana out of the whole US to make money in" I don't.

**In the most literal sense. Look up the etymology.

***I'll take "Quotes I'll Regret in 10 Years", Alex.

It's All Go in Indiana.

While I clearly wouldn't like this blog to descend into nothing more than a tawdry report of my affairs de coeur, I am pleased to report that some scenes long cherished in the realms of porn may be true. Randy hotel maids /do/exist.

Well, whatever one calls male hotel housekeepers.

What makes it all the more sweeter -- for those of you conversant with gentlemen's films of a certain stripe -- was that the young gentleman referred to is, in fact, from Eastern Europe. I am now forced to conclude that all those Eurocreme movies are really documentaries, and that watching them constitutes a form of international studies.

You know what?

I'd almost forgotten how much fun boys in bands are. I'm happy to report they are still an amusing way to pass a few hours. And then they go away forever. Very tidy.

Wrap-Up, Day 1

Miles Driven: 520

Hours driven: 9

States crossed: 4

No.of times my father drove off the side of the road listening to his new cheap navigation system: 6

No. of times cheap navigation system gave wrong directions: 3

No. of times I found the right way with an atlas: 3

Average driving speed of father: 60 mph

Fastest driving speed of father: 60 mph

My average driving speed: 80

My fastest driving speed: 93

Arguments over content of "Tigermilk": 3

Arguments over content of "If You're Feeling Sinister": 2

Heart attacks at content of "Savage Lovecast"played in retribution: 1

So, this trip started off rather swimmingly, eh?

Fan-boy Wankery*

Rumors of Davros returning to the new Doctor Who have been floating around for a while now, so the pictures of him -- looking surprisingly like his old-series self -- are not, in fact, very surprising.

What *is* surprising are images of new, red Daleks.

Red... daleks. I love red. I love Daleks. The effect of the idea of Red Daleks on my person is shameful to admit. But not quite as shameful as admitting just how much my imported, 18 inch, radio-controlled movie-version red Dalek cost.

And I will hug him as I watch the up-coming series finale.

*Literally. By all that's holy, did you see Colin Morgan in "Midnight"? It's a singing testament to RTD's writing I even noticed /a/ plot, let alone the greatest plot in new Who. Forget Edward Cullen when there are actual people who look like that.

Breezes and Surf. But the Wrong Kind.

I just found out I'm going to the Midwest for 10 days, starting next week.

Do I know anyone in Chicago besides Ross "I'm working a fecking cruise ship in the Med and the Baltic and hence unavailable till Fall" Bryant?

Pour Emily

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

You know, I've spent most of the past decade (or longer) thinking Rivers Cuomo is gay.

He's not -- although he does have an Asian girlfriend, so five years ago he could have been bi, since all those "bi-curious" hipster boys of a certain type have all moved on to Asian chicks. Although it is pretty generous to include Cuomo in the "hipster" category.

I'm trying to remember just what put it in my head he was gay, and for some reason I think I remember reading that in an interview in Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. But that makes no sense -- I never stopped to /read/ anything in one of those. I don't think anyone did.

All the Umbrellas of London

If I make it tonight, it'll be all right.
It'll make a good song or something
I've been trying to give myself reasons to live
But I really can't think of one thing

I drive around, I walk around in circles
'Cause I've got no sense of direction
And I guess I've got no sense at all

[chorus:]
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.
And all the dope in New York
Couldn't kill this pain.
And all the money in Tokyo
Couldn't make me stay.
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.

I don't cry anymore, I go out the door
And I usually keep on walking
I will sit in the bar where the cocktails are
But I really don't feel like talking

I lie around and let the darkness fall
'Cause I've got a sense of perfection
And nothing makes much sense at all

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship of lyrics to music, and I've come to the conclusion that, at least, in pop music, there's something odd about them. I think most people would be hard pressed to describe -- to even think of -- lyrics in situ as poetry. But they are.

I think the upshot of this is that that fact hits home every once in a while and get you get struck by this new appreciation of a song you've heard a thousand times. This has happened to me several times recently, and did again tonight when I heard the above song. I don't really know where to go with that, but it seems odd to me that music can have such a masking quality.

(Brecht, of course, was aware of the phenomenon, and used it to his advantage, making happy, cheerful tunes out of black deeds. "Mack the Knife" is a jaunty little tunes about child rape, murder, theft, whores and burning down occupied orphanages.)

In other news, I had a dream about Billie Piper last night. Well not /about/ her but with her in. Which is oddly appropriate as her series The Secret Life of a Call Girl premieres in the US tonight.

We were in a van with several other members of my family, crossing the Rocky Mountains when the van wrecked. There was more to it, involving a kitsch 70s-style hotel, but I don't recall that in detail. I do remember thinking, "How odd to be dreaming of a Doctor Who girl instead of the Doctor himself." I've only done /that/ once, when I dreamt I was racing along in Bessie with the Third Doctor. Even if it was the Best. Dream. Ever., it was still yonks ago.

All in all, I was just pleased it wasn't a tooth dream after last night's Britain's Worst Teeth doc.

For When "Big Mouth Billy Bass" is just *too* classy.

America Has Failed.

Don't get me wrong: I love the system of American government. It is an elegant tribute to a generation of men with wisdom, foresight and dedication to their ideals. It is a testament to even more generations that their system has grown and developed with a fervent dedication to the Enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy.

But this isn't about America as a political entity. This is about America as cultural institution. We have failed. Miserably. It's time to up stakes, wash ourselves clean and try a completely new paradigm.

Jingle Jugs: The Jugs that Jiggle to a Jingle.

This is why the rest of the world hates us: Jingle Jugs and Justin Long.

Note to self:

The person who consistently dreams of his teeth falling out, and who constantly worries the chipped tooth he can't afford to have mended probably shouldn't have watched "Britain's Worst Teeth".

Big-Head Want Dolly!

So, I have this irrational hatred of Justin Long. And I'm not sure why, really -- most people I hate, I know /why/. But he fills me with an inexplicable loathing. I would love to see him forced to participate in the most disturbing, degrading sex acts, of the type that women justly use to condemn the worst excesses of pornography. With John Hodgman, as payback for those damn Mac ads, even if Hodgman did include a humorous picture of the Cybermen in The Areas of My Experise, under the caption "Typical Cyborg Mischief".

Sorry. I watched Waiting this weekend and my anti-Long feelings have been percolating around.

Other than that, it's been a reasonably good birthday weekend. There were some nice touches from on high -- Tivo recorded (out of the blue, as far as I can tell) my favourite episode ever of Gilmore Girls ("Emily in Wonderland", if you're interested) and there was a question about Faulkner's Snopes trilogy on Friday's Jeopardy!

I spent Saturday night watching a little Doctor Who marathon -- this series is the best yet, by far, so I watched the three latest episodes over again. Alex King was the guest star for the recent Steven Moffat two-parter, so I was a little confused by having Charlotte Corday from ER sniffing around David Tennant. (For a little present -- the only present I got except for Laura Llew's books -- I got myself the DVD of "Timelash". "Timelash" is without question the worst episode of the series original run and should only be watched under the influence. And so I did. It helped immensely.)

The real treat was my trip over to the local Human Society. My father underwent eye surgery recently, turning me into a chauffeur. Which is nice, because I don't have a car and, consequently, don't get about much. On one trip, I took us over to see a basset hound they had at the Humane Society's huge new complex.

His name is Stetson. He doesn't look very basset-y hound-y in the pictures, but he does in real life. I was able to take him outside and play with him for a few minutes -- he was very active for a basset hound. Meaning, you know, he was actually in motion for a few moments. Like most bassets, he didn't particularly care whom he was with, as long as he could smell things, so he wasn't very interested in me.

Typical.

The day before my birthday is the end of the world.

My close associate, Noes the Apocalypse Kitteh, and I have decided to start drinking heavily at 5 pm and not stop till the end of the world, just in case.

Nobody Writes Them Like They Used To, So It May As Well Be Me

I should mention that I finished the first draft of my play last night. I should be far more excited about it than I am, considering how long and how hard I've worked on it, but it's almost exactly as long as it should be (110 A4 pages) and actually hits the mark I wanted to set for it -- beginning with normal dialogue and slowly changing into the iambic pentameter of the source.



There aren't any songs (except one) beyond the first act, but I have a fair idea of what songs I want and where they need to go. It needs lots of work, but it's off to exactly the sort of start I wanted.

I need to get people to read it. I'm not ready to post all of it here, but I did want to post some pictures. They're snagged from all over the internet, and I used them -- provisionally as scene backgrounds. They're in no real order.

Clockwise, from top left: The Dungeon where Daniel is executed; castle interior 1; the forest where Michael is killed; the meeting-place of the barons.

I have a few more I might post.

Today's Episode in One Act.

No. 4 in my list of possible birthday presents: Ira Glass.

Ira is the host of NPR's This American Life with the velvety-smooth voice. That alone is a selling-point; the fact that he's reasonably hot is secondary.

Actually, his response from his show getting named-checked on The OC -- I believe the quote went something like "Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? -- is more than enough to swoon over.

Best. Doctor Who. Companion. Ever.

No. 3 in my list of possible birthday presents: Philip Olivier.

Since the last two pictures haven't been that exciting, I figured a little beefcake never goes awry.

Olivier was on Brookside and Bo Selecta. He also starred in several of Big Finish's Doctor Who audio plays, though it seems to me that most of his obvious talent didn't get used.

In the productions, anyway.

And if they weren't used at all, then the people of Big Finish have a lot to answer for to the rest of Doctor Who fans who boldly live up to 90s stereotypes.

As an aside, there are very, very few people out there who inspire in me the same pillow-biting, immediate lust to get...

[cut scene of Roger Moore waving]

... uh, busy as Phil does.

I'll take "The Question is Irrelevant", Alex: Get to the Skin!

No. 2 in my list of possible birthday presents: Jon, from the Jeopardy Clue Crew. We'll just glide over the fact he's married and has kids. Oscar Wilde did, too.

[I reckon KJZZ is a joke unto itself here, and needs no further elaboration.]

[Later: It turns out KJZZ is in Salt Lake City, which is even more of a joke...]

Wrapping Not Necessary. Well, not all over.

Since I've made up my mind I'm not getting anything for my birthday Friday*, I have decided, O anonymous-silent-but-hopefully-still-extant audience, to give you a selection of appropriate gifts over the next few days. (If, that is, I don't decide to suppress any suggestion of celebration, which I have half a mind to do.)

No. 1: Nathan, from the Speaking of Sex Podcast. Yes, the picture is bad (it's the only one I could find at all). Fortunately, they're wrapping up a series of video podcasts to accompany their tour of the US, so you can download those and see better images. He's cute, smart, and funny. And I'm willing to bet (if he's retained even a tenth of what goes out in his podcast) one fine roll in the hay.

*I did get a package from Laura, though, so I did receive something. I'm just betting on nothing else.

Retraction

Yes, I know it's the middle of the say, so it must be a little disconcerting to see anew post pop up, but I thought the ending to that last post was a little mis-leading. On a little further reflection, I remembered one time recently I was quite happy, and -- truth be told -- I feel a little hangdog for skipping over it.

Probably the day or the day after the last hiatus here, I went to an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathon at the home of Miss Laura Llew. That was a legitimately happy time, but the moment that stands out comes a little bit later.*

After getting terribly lost in upstate SC and narrowly avoiding a lynch mob down Bob Jones University way, I didn't get started back home till late -- late by my standards, which meant 3.30 am or so, I started back home. The sun rose about 15 or 20 miles from home, and by then I was punchy from lack of sleep and the last effects of some particularly good bourbon. My voice was a little scratchy from singing aloud various Belle and Sebastian songs.

But that moment reminded me of many, many other very happy moments, and not a few of them were under nearly identical circumstances, so it reminded me of an earlier period when I was quite happy, quite often.

Like times when I had to avoid a head-on collision with another car because the highway on-ramp and exit ramp were one and the same in this little town, which sounds terrifying (and was at the time), but now strikes me as hysterically funny, if not pointlessly symbolic.

Or like any number of occasions when I had to drive back from the Outer Banks or elsewhere and wouldn't leave till after dark and still faces a 6- or 8-hour drive.

So there. Happy.

*Anyone else and I might think that would be the suggestion of a poor hostess and not mention it, but I'm reasonably sure Laura understands.

More Hardy than Wolfe

You know, after last night's post, I went digging through my boxes of books (all 1440+) to find my copy of The Web and the Rock. I remembered that it started out with a reference to Old Catawba, the name of the river that runs by here. Turns out I was wrong, incidentally.

In the midst of rooting around in all those books, I found a journal I kept from my last vacation. I bought because it was a cute, recycled children's and I knew I would be online for the duration.

It wasn't in with my other journals. It had been tossed in a box with some other books from my bedroom, mostly Southern lit -- Faulkner, Judge Whedbee's ghost stories, Capote.

I made the mistake of leafing through a few pages, just skimming it over without taking much in, when I realized it was exactly a year ago. I didn't think it would bother me much, and I don't think it per se did. Well, not per se. Maybe ipsa re. It did eventually make me pretty sad as it made me reflect on my life then, as opposed to now.

I haven't been out of the house in... well, the last day of Forum, which was the 18th of May. And I literally can't remember the last time I was legitimately happy about anything. That shouldn't make me want to die, but it sort of does.

I suppose you could. It'd be very Faulkner-y, "The Snopes done come to meetin' "looking, though.

The above quote was from a discussion I had with Ms Llew about wearing China Doll Dresses and petticoats. If pressed, I'd probably say specifically from Sanctuary. I hardly ever quote myself for a title, but I thought it was funny.

I can't believe it's been over two months from my last entry. I was in a local community theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for much of it. It was just as pointless over-dramatic and fraught with disaster as you think. I may well get around to discussing it more (there were some legitimately funny things in it) but not now.

One of the reasons that I started with a Faulkner mention is that something about this time of year always makes me pick up one of his books, and then read several more. I started out this year with where I left off with The Hamlet last year*. That doesn't really work, so I started off from the beginning of it again and finished it within two days. I want to finish The Town and The Mansion before summer gets too far along.

I decided to hold back a bit and try something else. This may (appropriately enough) be the Summer of Southern Writers. Before moving on to The Town -- which I could only ever find in the last volume of the Library of America series, although Wikipedia shows that somewhere there's version to match the old school Vintage editions -- I decided to read Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, especially since it's roughly contemporary to Faulkner on a few levels.

But it's far harder going that Faulkner. I don't want to say it's clunky, but... it lacks a certain evocative economy when compared to Faulkner. Wolfe is into minute detail and laborious description. Most strikingly, he tries to affect something akin to a literary montage -- an early-ish chapter on morning in Altamount comes to mind -- that attempts to pile incident upon incident to evoke morning. In purely visual terms, it would work. But a picture being worth a thousand words, the result in a novel is long-winded description for its own sake that doesn't achieve a lot. Stylistic masturbation?

I wouldn't be surprised. Wolfe himself was never one to decry his own talent; it's hard not to see that kind of ego in the prose and what it asks of the reader. It isn't quite so bad as to make me throw the book down (yet), but it requires of the reader a certain dedication that I'm just not sure is warranted.

What's really scary is that this is the /edited/ version of Wolfe's work. When he died, he left hundreds of manuscript pages that his editor just sort of hacked into his last two novels. I read bits of The Web and the Rock in college, and what I recall of it corresponds to my worst fears.

When Wolfe died, Faulkner called him the best writer of their generation. I just don't see that. Maybe by the time I finish LHA, I will.

*I think I started Absalom, Absalom! at least eight times before I finished it.

The Surviving Things

I wondered around the city for some time. I noticed the doors were quite small and rounded, not shaped for a human. After a while, I began to realized I was being guided. Doors were sealing off. Eventually I was bundled into a room that converted into a lift. I plummeted several stories. When the door opened, I went through, heavy with foreboding.

I knew I was being watched. I turned around. There, in front of me, coming towards me was... was...

I could only scream...

The BBC -- the Basset Broadcasting Corporation -- continues its new serial, the adventures through space and time of Poochles Poo.


Meanwhile, at the edge of the city, Poochles and I were growing tired of waiting for Ms. Daisy. "We'd better go look for her," I said. Poochles dabbed a handkerchief to his forehead. He was panting quickly and shallowly. "Yes. Yes, that seems best," he agreed.

We went through the door and into the corridor I investigated earlier, and found what looked to be a small lab. "Look at this!" Poochles exclaimed. "It measures something; look at the drum." I agreed, but wondered what it measured. "But, sir, it means the people who built this city were intelligent, scientific!"

"Well, clearly, Poochles..." I said as we continued to nose around the room. I heard an odd clicking noise and followed it over to a huge bank of computers. I quickly realized it was a Geiger Counter. "Uhh... Poochles? I found a Geiger Counter. And it's all in the 'Danger' zone."

Poochles trotted over to it and peered down. Almost conversationally, he said "Yes, that would explain quite a bit, quite a bit. We've got Radiation Sickness. But... Oh No! Look at this!" He was pointing to another read-out just below the Geiger Counter.

"This is a Ham-Detection Unit! And it's reading zero. We must leave -- leave at once. There might be no ham on this whole planet!" he looked at be a bit wall-eyed and marched towards the door.

I grabbed his arm. "But Poochles, what about Daisy? We've got to find her! And what about your fluid link? Don't you still need Mercury?"

"About that... I have to admit, that was a little sabotage on my part," he said sheepishly.

"I know. I watched you, remember? I asked you why you did that. And you ignored me!"

He again moved towards the door. "So I did. So I did. Well, I'm going back to the BASSAT. You can find Daisy if you like but..." As we crossed through the door, we saw Them.

Four of them glided over to hem us in, their noses twitching. Imagine a pink pepper-pot that someone put bunny ears on, and a little plastic bunny nose. From the top dome, an eyestick stuck out, and two appendage stuck out about half-way up the pot, one a pointy stick and the other a gun. I briefly wondered what the pointy stick was for, but then noticed the bottom half of the things were covered with parti-coloured Easter Eggs.

They looked... oddly festive. And aggressive. Like they were going to foist an Easter Egg hunt on us, whether we wanted it or not.

"Stop!" one of them said. "You-are-our-prisoner," they told us in a matter-of-fact way. Its voice was synthesized, harsh and metallic and irritatingly high-pitched. Its ears glowed with each syllable. "Follow."

This, I thought, was increasingly stupid. I walked towards the door. One of them glided over to me very quickly and poked me with its stick. "Ow!" I said. "That kinds hurt!"

Apparently, they thought this took all the fight out of me, and they shepherded Poochles and me into a bare room they seemed to be using for a cell. Inside, Daisy was lying on the floor.

" 'Lo," she said, not looking up.

The creatures left.

"So here we are again, imprisoned." I said, fingering the place where I was poked. "I do hope this doesn't become a regular thing."

Poochles looked dubious. We sat there for a while, playing 20 Questions and growing sicker. Eventually, one of the things came back and took Poochles out of the cell.

Poochles later told me they dragged him into their pastel yellow headquarters. Muzak version of "Your Easter Bonnet" and "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" endlessly piped in. Four of the creatures interrogated him, asking him if he was a Thrall.

He wasn't. He didn't even know what one was.

"Oh." said the thing. He then launched on a long speech how how he was a Bunlek, and how the Bunleks had been at war with a group of Christmas elves called the Thralls. The war had gone nuclear, and the Bunleks, who originally were Easter-loving bunny-suit furri enthusiasts, built the metal suits they wore for protection and retreated into their city. The Thralls stayed out in the open, no doubt to become hideous mutants. But they had a nifty anti-radiation drug.

"Oh," said the Poochles. "Yeah, they gave us some, I think."

The Bunleks gave him a few menacing pokes with their sharp sticks and told him he had to go get some. He agreed, but pointed out he was too sick to go.

He told me all this back in the cell, as a preface to my own trip back to the BASSAT. The Bunleks were getting antsy; one poked me right in the butt and said "Get-going. Bring-us-the-drug."

So I went. The trip back wasn't that long, so I ran around in circles several times through the woods. I even ran in place for a while, and let some floor technicians hit in the face with some branches. The forest wasn't that large, and it was difficult not to run into the shirtless guy following me.

When I got to the BASSAT, it had just started to rain. When I had grabbed the box of vials from inside the console room, I opened the double doors to a roll of thunder. It wasn't very scary,
but I had noticed almost 24 minutes had elapsed...

Next Week: Escape to Danger

Dreams of Lost New York

I'm coming to the end of another cycle of insomnia: that is, I've spent the past two weeks or so getting by on two or three hours of sleep, so tonight I'm going to swallow three or four sleeping pills and crash. Well, have taken, so if I begin to become incoherent, that's why. And if problems ensue, I'm saying the only reason I did it was because I heard it on Stephen Fry.

If there's anything good that can be dragged out of sleepless nights, it's that the dreams I have are proportionately more vivid. Some people claim to only dream in black and white; not me. I always dream in colour, and insomnia seems to guarantee Technicolor and extra vividness in recollection.

About a week ago, I dreamed I was coming home on the subway, but for some reason, I missed my stop. I was going to get off at the next stop and catch a train in the opposite direction to get back. But for some reason the next stop was Coney Island. Now, since I lived on the D line, my stop was the Ninth Ave. station at 39th Street: Coney Island was another 12 stops away. (To put this into perspective, it was 10 stops to work in Manhattan, and a lot of those were short Manhattan skips apart, like between 50th Street at Rockefeller Center and 53 St at 7th Ave. Brooklyn stops are much further apart.)

And this wasn't the fancy new Stillwell Ave terminus. In my dream, the Coney Island station was on a huge pier: at leats a mile wide and quarter mile across. The pier was made of blond wood and the two tracks (The Stillwell Ave station ends three lines, so there must be tracks in real life. I wouldn't know for sure since I've never been there) that were right in the middle of the pier, leading down into the water. There was also a ferry service back into Manhattan. The sea water was a brilliant turquoise of far warmer beaches.

There were kiosks like arcades and food booths all up and down the pier, and a few rides, like a ferris wheel, and a roller coaster. I was shocked to see the kiosk nearest me was some sort of Dalek game, with them painted garishly all over the stand, and a row of prizes that included pint glasses with daleks stencilled on. I don't actually remember the game you played.

It made me very sad to be there, I remember, and I was grateful to the daleks for making me happy. I decided to leave, and thought about taking the train back. There were two in the station, but they were both N trains, parked and waiting, just like at the other end of the line in Astoria, and they didn't stop near where I wanted to go. I decided to take the ferry instead, even though that went into Manhattan.

The ferry was sort of a sub when I got in, and launched itself under the water, with lots of bubbles floating up to the surface. There were two bubble-shaped window at the front, where two pilots were, and maybe about a dozen other people in the car. The interior was dark brown, more like a helicopter than the ferries or train cars. There were also rows of windows down the sides, and through them, we could see two or three Orcas swimming and playing. I determined that I was going to go to Jim Halliwell's Comic shop on 33th Street, which is across the street from the Empire State Building, and where I used to get some Doctor Who books.


And then I woke up.

I also had another dream about having a rent boy, but I was living in my grandmother's (now vacant) house. I will not go into torrid details of the first part, but later on I was worried because I had spent more time than I thought -- three hours -- and it was more than I could afford. The bill was $379, and I was worrying if I could cover than AND a tip. In the end, I think I could.

I pushed the poor guy into a bathroom because other people were coming in. Family, I think. In the end, he came out and I introduced him as my boyfriend, and he totally went with it. I really remember the guy, though: all tall, dark and curly and more built than I usually like, but not anybody I had ever seen before.

Oh well. The pills are really kicking in now, so I 'm going to scoot.

Where did I pull that title from? I googled it, but it doesn't come up, and I'm pretty sure it's not one of my own terms. Conjures up sort of a sub-par version of Benet's By the Waters of Babylon.

Beat the Qu... Heat. The Heat.

It's hard not to view this place as a backwards hell-hole sometimes. And by this, I mean not this lovely blog, but the place where I currently... abide. Endure? I hesitate to say "live", since that suggests some non-existent complicity in the matter.

It's not there aren't some nice people; there are. Somewhere. I think. I'm frequently reminded of -- and no doubt shall be greatly again in a few weeks -- of Margaret Cho's crack about the South: "It's not the hate, it's the stupidity."

They still beat queers here, you know. And while /obvious/ support of this is on the wane, clearly the undercurrent that's it's okay to do so is clearly alive and well, as this week's news proves. The local "big" city's school system Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools passed, with great controversy, a no-bullying policy.

Why the controversy? It included a clause that listed homosexuality specifically as something protected (along with other things like race and religion).

The local Christian fundamentalists turned out to decry this as an advance of the mythical-yet-deeply-cherished concept of The Homosexual Agenda. I hope, dear reader, you could hear those capital letters. People apparently think that the school merely admitting gays exist is ripping all sexual education out of the hands of parents and is tacit support of a menacing political agenda.

The upshot that can be gathered from this? Apparently, the people who oppose the bill want to put out that either gays don't really exist, and if they do, it's okay to beat them at school.

Fortunately, the anti-bullying program passed through the CMS school board, but the local newscasts all made sure to show various people shaking their fists, vowing to continue fighting for the children's right to beat up people. *That* wouldn't be an approving, subtle little nudge to the viewing audience, at all, would it?

In happier news: Diesel Sweeties is coming up on its 2,000th strip, and is releasing all the strips in torrent collections for free! Yay! As a part of the general celebration, a few of their classic t-shirts are on sale for $10. I love all their stuff, but right now, it's just too pricey. While none of the reduced shirts are my favourites (Herschl the Hook-Up Hare!), I couldn't resist the opportunity to pick one up. Though the "It's fun to use learning for evil" was a contender, I eventually went with the "We Are Not All Jerks" one. It's a mark of my utmost respect that one of the characters in my play wears Red Robot Pixel Socks in the first scene. Not that anyone would notice that, but it's a character point, dammit. (In related news, the fine folks over at Octopus Pie -- well, Meredith Gran to give credit where it's due -- has come out with a Brooklyn Spring shirt I pine for, too.)

Also in happy news, Stephen Fry has started his own podcast. The first one, detailing how he broke his arm, was done under the influence of sleeping pills and was 25 uncut minutes of him complaining. It was better than 99% of, well, every other media, and personal proof (yet again) that there's no pointing in me whining on when there are others so very much better at it.

Show Me Some Skin. Or Don't.

You may know they've started showing Newsnight on BBC America. It isn't the proper, week-nightly one, but a cobble-together of Monday to Thursday's most interesting
or important stories, aired here on Friday nights. So while it's not as comprehensive, it is more Paxman-intensive, so you can see him tear into more people per episode. Which is part of the fun, really, and since everyone falls equally under him, it's much more balanced than 99% of American news. And almost equally more intelligent. Katie Couric *is* a perky little thing, and we all like to watch her over on CBS, but her idea of hard-hitting question does tend to be: "Is it as hard as I think it is to be so busy, Mrs Obama...

Anyway, Madeline Holt, the Culture Correspondent for Newsnight did a story last week I can't imagine getting aired here. It was about gay porn models (I'd love to call them actors, really I would, but thankfully enough reality has set in in the industry that they all are supposed to be called models now. I think that's much better. I mean, these are trained professionals working under uncomfortable circumstances. Calling them actors makes them sound like ought to be "ferrying hamburgers somewhere on the North Circular Road"*...) porn models, as I said, contracting HIV whilst making bareback videos.

Apparently, three videos have been pulled from shops because they feature a scene made by Icreme productions (of which I can find no web presence) and featured in at least one Eurocreme movie. They never said which ones, though, although I was surprised to see to see Bareback Thrill Ride** zoom across the screen at one point. Although I have to point out it was during a film segment which was probably just about the popularity of bareback titles.

Then they chuffed out some PSA with Chi Chi LaRue talking about how much the gay community has gone through and now people are getting AIDS for porn. Don't get me wrong, I agree with him completely in theory. ( I was going to post the ad here, but I just can't bring myself to foist Chi Chi LaRue on potentially innocent victims, gay or straight...)

But it's complicated.

Are people who watch bareback porn complicit somehow in these boys' getting HIV? To a degree, I think they are. They create a market where bareback videos have a demand, certainly, and without that demand the videos wouldn't flourish. And porn producers (sadly) are not always not known for their virtue.

What wasn't touched on at all, really, in the newscast was that a lot of this bareback trend can be traced back to really scummy producers taking advantage about a decade ago of very poor, very desperate boys in post-Communist Bloc (there's a pun for you Eurocreme fans) countries. A lot of the current crop still takes advantage of under-privileged young men from Central and Eastern Europe. Knowing a bit about the history of bareback, the net effect of this newscast's was "OMG, now it's happening to good English boys".

That's not to say there aren't thoroughly decent porn producers and production companies, who take care of their models. The crux of the Newsnight story was that the particular company mentioned wasn't meticulous in keeping up with their models' blood-tests and their laxity in enforcement directly led to the models' HIV status. Presumably -- hopefully -- most companies do keep up being meticulous.

But... just how responsible are these companies, anyway? Don't their models have enough sense not to have unprotected sex? Aren't they responsible for themselves? How can you grow up after 1985 or so and not know the dangers of unprotected sex (and not be from the South)? For me, anyway, it's hard not put some blame on the models themselves.

What really smarted was the one of the boys they got to go on camera. When Holt asked him what he felt about the repercussions of his actions -- and remember, in the UK, one of those repercussions is that the general public is footing his incipient treatment and (not to be coy about) protracted, messy death -- he grinned a self-satisfied grin and said "Dunno". A nation of queers over the age of 23 or so rose up as one with a desire to smack him.

Another point in the articles was "Are people going to do this at home?" And many of the same questions apply. And most of the "how stupid are you to fuck bareback" retorts apply. And all these videos, to be fair, are rife with "This is well dangerous" labels.

To be honest, one of my concerns with this is personal. I've got a bareback video on my PC. I watch it. Am I indirectly supporting this side of the industry? I'm not actively supporting it: my choice for a video has never yet been determined by whether or not condoms are used. It's virtually immaterial to me. But I am looking at the videos, so I am influencing things. In the end, I probably won't watch any more bareback films to ease my own conscience. But questions about how responsible each boy is for himself will still be around.

But it's not like I'm going to fuck bareback, but then I'm not really given much option, either.

*Quote taken from Robert Holmes, beloved Doctor Who writer, from one of Peter Haining's virtually identical books on the series... probably the one in The Doctor Who Files and probably the article about his wife perforating an ulcer in Germany.

**I really hope my conscience won't stop from watching this hot -- hott -- movie.

First, a few questions:

1) Am I the only one who had to look up what an Oxford Comma was?

2) Who are you people? I have a few repeat customers, as it were, of whom I have little knowledge. For instance, person from Louth, who are you? Person from Tempe, AZ, who are you? The people streaming in from various Middle Eastern places to look at (presumably) soft-core boy-kissing because their web-nannies ward them off from real porn -- this I understand. People looking for Furri porn -- this I *don't*understand, but I'm too lazy to track down one errant image that summons ye as hogs to slaughter-blood. Regular hits from other places (including Ile-de-France) confuse me. Identify yourself. Cookies may ensue. Actually, I fear that you are someone I know and haven't recognized moves me, so sing out... Feel free to use the nifty Guest Map.

Next, an observation:

I saw a coyote the other day. At least, I'm reasonably certain it was. My first though was that it was a wolf -- having spent more than my fair share driving through the swampy woods of NE North Carolina, I have seen Red Wolves -- typically dead on the side of the road, to be fair -- and I have seen Gray Wolves, and this was not a wolf. Nor was it a dog.*

Next, an exultation:

I got a random check from my (ex-) health insurance company. I used it to get a DVD set and book I've wanted for months. The local Barnes and Noble (and before you give me crap, it's the only bookstore with 30 miles. Yes, the only one. ) has a copy of Stephen Frye's The Liar. Judging from its shelfware, it's roughly contemporary from its 1992 publishing date, and certainly no-one else in these parts would read it. And it is lovely. It's literally hard to put down: erudite, cheeky and quite queer. The first part is -- deliberately, I'm sure -- like a cock-eyes Another Country, so clearly I'm enamored of it. I burn night-light praising it now rather than reading it.
The DVD set was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- a returned-to-the-store copy and consequently cheap, but I've yet to find any problems with it.

Progress of the Rake?

You're the Tortured Intellectual!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You're sensitive, you're emotional, and you wonder why everyone else in the world exists on a different plane. You cannot eat, breathe, or sleep without analyzing each action to death. You're usually sombre, depressed, lethargic, but you can be nearly glad from time to time. You wear whatever you can find on your cluttered bedroom floor. You carry books, notepads, reading glasses with you wherever you go. You have friends, but only a few who truly get where you're coming from. You frequent coffee shops, libraries, and the less crowded bars. You're obsessed with past people, past ideas, past lives. You wish you could die and be reborn as Jack Kerouac.

A) I'm not a hipster, but I'd sure write over-wrought prose to get between that model's pages.

B) Except for the Kerouac thing, it's pretty right-on. Compare this to a few years ago.

I haven't got a clever name for this one

I'm not sure exactly what's up with the spate of youtube videos lately, other than it's nice to have some video content to back up whatever I'm on about. This'll be the last for a while, hopefully.

You may notice I hardly ever talk about my personal life right now. Quite frankly, it's not entertaining in the deeply venial, mostly-comic style I usually evoke. And one of the... well, not benefits, really but... results... of thinking about and writing about tragedy as a genre is the sure knowledge that however pathetic your personal life is, the cards are stacked against you that it will ever rise to the level of tragedy. And if perchance does, the US will never appreciate it.

Which is just as well -- it' a bit harsh, but it keeps you wallowing too deeply in self-fear and self-pity. (Heh heh. *That* is a little criticism joke for you!)

But in contradiction to what I just said -- and without going into particular detail -- the past few weeks have been the worst of a bad time. Insomnia doesn't help. I've never really suffered from it before, but over the past months, I've developed a healthy respect for it. I'm sure it's stress-related, but I haven't gotten more than 3 or 4 hours a night for ages. Generally, after a week or two of listening all night to trains whistles from miles away*, I get desperate enough to swallow a few sleeping pills, and that's where I am right now. It this post disappears tomorrow, you'll know that it didn't pass the right-mind test. Heh.

Anyway, the point of the post is this: music helps the soul. There's nothing better than hearing a song someone else sings that describes the way you feel. The above song is mine right now. And yes, purists, I know it's his uncle who wrote the song, but I like Rufus' version better. I like that extra little bit of frisson his sexuality gives it, and I just think he's lived it better. It's one of the few songs he sings that I can forget how... slimy he is personally (yes, I have met him so I can say that with some level of authority) and just for once go with the song. Since I always like something to look at while I watch videos -- closed captions and subtitles, how I love thee -- below are the lyrics.

One Man Guy
Rufus Wainwright
from his album Poses (Dreamworks, 2001)

People will know when they see this show
The kind of a guy I am
They'll recognize just what I stand for and what I just can't stand
They'll perceive what I believe in
And what I know is true
And they'll recognize I'm a one man guy
Always was through and through

People meditate
Hey that's just great
Trying to find the inner you
People depend on family and friends
And other folks to pull them through

I don't know why I'm a one man guy
Or why I'm a one man show
But these three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are all I love and know

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune

One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

I'm gonna bathe and shave
And dress myself and eat solo every night
Unplug the phone, sleep alone
Stay way out of sight
Sure it's kind of lonely
Yeah it's sort of sick
Being your own one and only
Is a dirty selfish trick

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune
One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

*Yes, it is very "Blues in the Night". The nearest trains tacks are 4 or 5 miles away, but the whistles come in clear and low. Oddly, it's much more depressing a sound that the ships' horns from Upper New York Harbour I could hear in Brooklyn.

Survey Confirms...

...What we all knew anyway. Go get a haircut, Justin Long. Or a blowjob. One or the other.

I Feel Bad...

that no-one told the producers of Never Back Down that gay porn typically has a crappy techno soundtrack.

The Kid's All Right

The problem of youth has one other sort-of-tangential problem for me: class.

My first thought is to make the Edward figure (Daniel, from here on out) to be the son and heir of a CEO of a big company who dies early on in the play, or even before it begins. But that gets rid of lots -- lots -- of the weighty material of Marlowe's work. Actually, the more I think of it this way, the less I like it. I think Daniel will have to be a young king. I mean, there /is/dramatic precedent for that (cough cough Henry IV 1, Henry IV 2, Henry V cough cough). And it does give a certain frisson in the relationship between Daniel and some of his nobles: in Marlowe's version, I think there's a certain petulance and conception of Edward's inexperience by the nobles that's difficult to respect in a man the age of the historical Edward II, but completely in keeping with someone 18 or so.

After all, it has been argued that this kind of generational conflict is a big theme in the work (I think the editors of the New Mermaids version [the 2nd edition] of the play bring that up), and I kind of like the idea of the older generation of rebels (Mortimer Senior, Warwick et al.) being infirm in some way: morbidly obese, with an oxygen tank, in a wheelchair... Remember, the characters aren't on an even playing field, so of course these lot get the short end of the stick.

Which leaves the problem of the Gaveston-character's age (Michael, from here on out). Gaveston is a well-written character in Marlowe, so there are several ways he can be played by an intelligent actor. Very often, he gets played as an opportunistic schemer who takes advantage of Edward (Derek Jarman's Edward II film shows this to a degree); this usually shows Gaveston as older and wiser than Edward. There are also versions (like Brecht's play) that show him as the object of Edward's unreasoning passion, where he often is shown to be younger than Edward.

I think, though, there are problems with both interpretations. Each version gets played by reducing the agency of the opposite lover: the more manipulative Gaveston, the less canny Edward and vice versa. I think the best path is to go in between. There's a great scene in Brecht's version where Gaveston runs away from a battle that really doesn't work in his vision of the relationship. It's a scene that's touching on its own, but doesn't ring true for that mise-en-scene. (My thought is that it's some unadulterated Lion Feuchtwanger, but I've got nothing at all to back that up.)

All in all, I think Michael should be a little older than Daniel; the real Gaveston met Edward when Edward I was impressed with Gaveston's character and recommended him to Edward II as a companion. Being a little older keeps that idea going, but also helps play up the historical idea that Edward I later repented himself when Gaveston turned out to be a bad influence. And I think bad influences are sexy.

The Problems of the Youth

I believe (at times, anyway) very strongly in the idea of "give the people what they want". In the past few hours, I've had three people wend the Jaylemurph way under the Google Search "hunter brown gay jeopardy", which is comforting. It's not just me who thinks it, then.

Sadly, he will not be going on to the Finals round. And to be fair, he was legitimately beaten in competition, although I do invite humorous "spear carrier" comments. [Alas, he is not technically in my dating pool* since he only measure up to 5'11"...]

Anyway, I feel like I've been unduly beating around the Edward II bush the past few days. God -- how many mixed metaphors is that? Anyway: topic the first -- the central conceit of the work.

It's a version of Marlowe's work as envisioned by a 17 year old. A smart one, and a gay one, obviously, and one of the Kids. Right now, my vision is that he's a fairly regular high school student who projects himself and the people around him at school into the world of the play. He becomes Edward, his crush becomes Gaveston, and so forth. Also currently (and I admit this might change), I'm really into the idea that as the play progresses, it becomes more and more Marlowe's play and less and less the vision of the reader. The idea being that early on, you can have scenes that show Edward and Gaveston meeting and falling for each other, which are completely absent in Marlowe but end up in roughly the same place. I'm not going to be coy about the ending; it will be different. Sort of.

I think that almost the same sequence of events can happen, even with Edward being murdered, but with it not being about giving up dignity and pride. I think, for instance, that Edward can give up his crown without giving up his sense of self, or his sense of desire. (See what I will later say for my idea of the last scene.) But I get ahead of myself.

For me, this immediately brings up two problems. The first one seems to me the lesser of the two. If it's handled intelligently, I can't help but feel, it will ultimately be a positive point rather than a liability. It's age. The age of the characters.

There is something adolescent in the writings of Marlowe. I don't see this as a fault, but it seems hard to me to describe it as anything else. Read his plays: in the cockiness of his heroes (Tamburlaine, Faustus, Edward) is something undeniably so. I have two theories about this.

Theory One, part one: A big part of me thinks that Marlowe never reaches an emotional level of maturity. Maybe because he was never able to. And yes, I'm well-aware of the dangers of reading into the author the passions of his works. But I don't think that someone in his period so strongly identifying with same-sex desire could come to an adult understanding of emotional or sexual maturity -- he never even had the opportunity (or so it seems) to be in a deeply committed, long-term relationship. If that's the case, it does seem unlikely he produce a fictional version of one. What he can -- and does often and well -- is convey the fleeting, conflicting passions of an infatuation: the pursued and the pursuer, the frustrated and the victor.

And to his credit, he doesn't ever really supply the goods of a purely heterosexual relationship. As far as I know (and I'd love to hear a dissenting view) the closest he gets is Hero and Leander -- and the guy Leander is practically raped by Poseidon while swimming.

Theory One, part two: the basic element of his dramaturgy doesn't support this. Marlowe's plays are, in some sense, always about people who get what they want and then suffer. Compare this to Shakespeare's characters, who dither about getting what they want (look at Hamlet). This idea of going after and getting what you want without considering the consequences strikes me as adolescent in a way Shakespeare never is.

*Let us not forget Laura's idea of a Hallowe'en costume: a post note above my head that says you must be "6' 0" to ride this ride".

Hold onto your Package, Hugh

It seems the news is allowing me an unprecedented level of topicality.

What's likely to be the body of Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger -- better known to Edward II fans as Spenser Junior-- has been identified.

It seems like the body is an appropriate age; the carbon dating roughly confirms its period; and it was found on what was family property at the time. The body also bears evidence of having been drawn and quartered. The title for this post comes from this: part of the elaborate process of drawing and quartering involved castration and burning of the genitals in front of the victim.

Now, I would've written more, but I got distracted by being the one to update Wikipedia's article on Despenser with this information. (To answer the question, just this update and the first version of the article on Ingram Frizer, Marlowe's murderer.)

Dogs, Cats and NPR

So it probably comes as no surprise I listen to NPR. It might be marginally more interesting that my current little slice of heaven has it's own NPR station. (Actually it doesn't, really. There is a transmitter that repeats the signal from the Charlotte NPR affiliate, WFAE.) I'm sure I'm one of literally dozens of people in the area who listen in.

For instance, two weeks ago, they re-broadcast my favorite ever This American Life story, which includes the story of Roger Dowds on the Irish version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's the best piece of radio, ever. This is a picture of him from the gameshow. There's another picture of him floating around teh internets that I'm not convinced is really him, for my own vain reasons.

Yesterday, however, I caught something new. It was a story on Weekend America about Abraham Lincoln as a fag. Not that that of itself was that odd, but the slant the story, and the place it ended up was very much like my own current research. Which was odd for me; it's not like I think my topic is particularly abstruse or irrelevant, it's just that it doesn't get a lot of popular exposure. And okay, it /is/ NPR, but still...

Basically, it had two historians on who said: "He couldn't have been a homosexual because that kind of sexual identity hadn't been created yet." Which is true; the word 'homosexual' wasn't coined until 1869, so it could never have been chosen my Lincoln to describe himself, even if he was frequently sharing beds and swapping night-attire with his umm, "bodyguard."

It briefly touched on gender stereotypes and how they change, as well, even if it didn't use the terms. They did point out that it wasn't that odd for men to exchange fairly intimate compliments. They even went so far as to point out how the first decades of the 20th Century changed this.

What they didn't really expand on was the sort of pre-1869 default setting for what we would call "same-sex attraction" got lumped in the category "sodomy" along with (depending on exactly where and when, but generally) sorcery, treason, marital infidelity and blasphemy. The real horror of sodomy, since it wasn't a particular way of defining one's self, was that it could happen to anybody. (Cue the ominous chords...)

Another part of that is that the whole modern conception of sexuality as a polarity between strictly homo- or strictly heterosexual (with, of course, the complete amelioration of one at the expense of complete peiorization of the other) is a fabrication. People's desire generally is on a continuum that intersects with a contemporary society's mores.

Anyway, these generally are the assumptions that underpin what is called the New Historicism, and the starting point for my thesis on Marlowe. And, consequently, my writing project on Edward II. If you anything about Marlowe, then you know he fits poorly at best in the modern conception of either "straight" or "gay" and just as poorly into Elizabethan attitudes towards sex. Choosing to understand sex and desire as a meeting point personal identity and socio-political pressure (I hope. I really hope.) offers a new way of evaluating his works.

...Also, I feel like pointing out that I found out while listening to the above story that there is a basset hound who lives on the way to the local BBQ shack. He lives about two or three blocks from the house where I grew up, and it was all I could do not to pull over and pet him.

For some reason, he reminds me (maybe in the set of emotions he rises up in me) of my first friend in New York, Sniffle-Kitty.