The List

(Oh why not let's just go for three list posts in a row?)

I'm back in Mequon for the next fortnight. It promises to be an interesting two weeks full of chiropractor's appointments, testosterone level checks, and...not as much drinking, because I have to drive. (Fun supposed fact: Milwaukee is a popular lesbian town, who knew?)

As I was searching for an electric blanket to put on my bed in my old childhood room, I noticed the old mid-nineties pinup I had of a bloated Robbie Williams I had on my wall. (My old room is stuck in 1997. I'm not here that frequently and there's really no need for anything else to be done to it.) Remembering his nice little gesture to the gay community recently triggered an idea for a post. All the people--in no particular order--who will need to make a serious mea culpa to get kind treatment on here (like they care, but what the hey?):

1. Michael Bloomberg
2. Robbie Williams
3. Brian Ellner/Jonathan Capehart
4. George W. Bush
5. James Sensenbrenner
6. The major contributors to the GOP from my New York zipcode
7. Elizabeth Vargas (Is it that hard to just say you messed up?)
8. GLAAD under Giuliano
9. Chris Crain and Windows Media
10. Stephen Harper

Splash-Stonewall-The Hangar-The View Post-Mortem: The Last Gig of 2005

I barely remember a thing. I know I was at these places, and I can still taste the cheese fries, but the memory is very sketchy. I don't like to do lists too often, but there's no way I can string sentences together composed of completely unrelated subjects. So here it goes.

• Splash had another antipodean bartender tonight. For some reason he thought I looked so serious and down. I get this a lot, and I do not know why. I'm not a smiling person, but still...
• The Stonewall apparently had a black leather night. "Black" as in the skin colour as well as the colour of the clothes. It was not as bizarre as I thought it would be. (I want my $5 back!) I have always wanted to fully participate in a leather night, but the cost of the clothes and my low pain threshold probably will keep me on the sidelines.
• The Hangar was not as psychotically crowded as it normally is. Who knew The Hangar had go-go boys. Crappy go-go boys, but go-go boys nonetheless. Nothing else I can remember there, except that the only reason I went is because it's a December tradition with me.
• At The View the bouncer thought I was drunk. I quite possibly was, but courtesy of my mp3 player I was able to blame my stumbling on trying to take my headphones off. I did take it as a sign to wrap up my night after two Twisted Teas.

And that was that. The 2005 New York drinking season went out with not quite a whimper, but with a very average cast of characters: an overly perky Australian (I hate perky in general), black leathermen, crappy go-go boys, and a kind bouncer.

The Challenge to Say Something Nice

Once every sowhile, I realise I'm a mean son-of-a-gun and try to balance that out by saying something nice. Nomrally, I do this in person, but I reckon, why not put it out there for public view? I'm also writing this right after I have woken up and am still a bit groggy--which makes it easier for me to not hem and haw. Let's get this started shall we?

• Westin Hotels' Smoking Ban: It's very daring, perhaps it's good for those who are allergic to smoke. Granted, I'd say just invest in some filters for your overpriced rooms, but I understand the sentiment.
• Mayor Bloomberg: He's not Giuliani. He's more like Giuliani-medium. (That's the best I could do.)
• Penile piercings: (I'm not referring to prince alberts, but the other kind that goes through the head.) They certainly are a test of strength and pain endurance.
• FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) Students: Clearly you guys have talent. You can't stop capering about in public with ear-piercing shrieks, but you have talent. Fortunately, not all of you are prone ear-piercing shrieks about inane topics.
• Dancers/Chorus Boys: Physically, I wish I had your agility, despite the fact that what I said about FIT students and their ear-piercing shrieks also applies here.
• Steroid Users: For all the attending medical problems, they do make you look imposing and it's always good to be admired.
• Neil Giuliano, GLAAD President: You may be asleep at the wheel 90% of the time, but at least your highlights are always well-maintained. I'd sleep with you too. (I wouldn't necessarily talk to you afterwards, but I'd sleep with you.)
• Yuppies: You dress well and have probably saved a few stores from closing.
• Free Language at the Eurovision: The fun of hearing mangled pronounciation like "Ladies and Gentlemens."
• The Eric Braate Referral Brigade: Eric Braate should know that he's apparently quite missed in Milwaukee.
• The Current Crop of Broadway Shows: Chita Rivera's show and the revamped Sweeney Todd as set in an insane asylum.
• James Sensenbrenner: I'm not even going to try, even in my groggy I-love-all-humans state this morning.

That's about all I could squeeze out at this moment in time, and yes, it was a challenge.

Ellner: Still an opportunist uber alles

Brian Ellner, that Will Truman-esque turncoat of Chelsea, has now gone and gotten his pretty little Alfred E. Newman self a job in the Bloomie's administration. What's more, I don't quite understand why he felt the need to sling mud at fellow turncoat Margarita Lopez. That'll make for some very interesting meetings.

Does this all seem a bit too similar to The Picture of Dorian Grey to anyone else?

(Offtopic, my sympathies to both the workers and those affected by any MTA strike today. As of this writing, it appears that the formerly private Jamaica and Triboro lines will be affected immediately, with a full all services strike deadline now moved to Monday night/Tuesday morning.)

Thursday Jukebox Thinks You Are Wonderful

I had previously made note of the song "Alomszep" as a great song to stumble home drunk to. Well, here is the video.



Also, here is Simone de Oliviera's performance of "Sol de Inverno" from the 1965 Eurovision. Previously mentioned as a song with the best break up lyrics ever ("Without you my life has no colour"). They don't do ballads like this anymore.

Wednesday Jukebox Strikes Back

THE ballad of the 1979 Eurovision.



Alcazar, La Podolskaya, and maybe Julia Savicheva manage to sing "This is the world we live in" without knocking each other down and ripping hairpieces off.




Afro-Dite's performance at Tallinn 2002, notable for the high amount of growling ("WE'LL BE SHAAAKIN'!") and the fact that they didn't collapse afterwards.



And finally, some butch political camp from the 2004 German Final: Westbam & Afrika Islam (featuring dancing riot police no less).

Nowhere-Phoenix-Stonewall Post-mortem: Passivity has made a failure of our home

Nowhere-Phoenix-Stonewall-The View Post-Mortem: Passivity has made a failure of my home

Perhaps I should stop thinking ahead of time. I mean, I should stop thinking with preconceptions or hopeful assumptions of what a night out should be.

As previously mentioned, I started tonight out in the East Village, a place where I have always felt a tad bit uncomfortable because I never see anybody who looks like me around. Well, that was true. At Nowhere, I was the only person in the bar. Fortunately, the bartender was very affable and great to be around. Anyplace that has Pabst for $2 a can during happy hour is good in my book.

Next was (the) Phoenix. Here’s where things started to go awry. Phoenix is a place that is in one hand hospitable, and in another tacitly hostile. It’s a bit hard to explain, but the clientele lived up to my preconception of what the stereotypical East Villager is like: seemingly very bohemian, but the more you look underneath, still the snob from the suburbs. Now, in their defense, I will say that these are my opinions based on a random Tuesday night with 17 degree weather, but that is what I took away. The bartender was at least pleasant and welcoming.

I was intending on going to the (in) famous Cock, but I couldn’t find it based on the listing I had. I know it has moved, but perhaps the address I had was the old one. Either way, I needed some sleaze. I found it, in of all places, at the Stonewall which had some sort of special night going on upstairs. Whatever this night is called (Buff Boyzz, maybe), it seemed to involve a lot of go-go boys. For once they were actually good looking. Good looking enough to make me pay for lap dances. That’s where I had my internal meltdown. Somehow, I really was taken in by one of the dancers who took me to the equivalent of their champagne room and showed me a very good time. Such a good time that my rational mind went out the window, and I started to believe that he was interested in me sexually. For his sake, I’ll keep the acts to myself, but I think that what he/we did was above and beyond the normal call of duty. Something seemed strange and I couldn’t put my (metaphorical) finger on it.

Drunk enough for another round of dances, I eagerly went for him again. This time, it turned into talking amidst all the grinding. I found out that he was almost 30, still in love with his 20 year old ex-boyfriend (whom he left his “girlfriend”—let’s not go to that issue tonight—for). Yes, on some level it was demystifying the fantasy, but on another level it was it was taking me out of the carnal and into the cerebral. I guess to some extent I should feel flattered, but honestly, I just feel used.

You see, men that I am quite strongly attracted to are rare. Quite likely this is me thinking with my crotch, but I wanted to go have hours worth of animalistic sex with him. I didn’t really care about his problems, because he never inquired about mine beforehand. This was meant to be a sexual situation and it wasn’t.

That aside, what gets me more than that is that I have no self-confidence. I really wanted to see if my Pollyanna thoughts had some substance and I could snare him in my bed for a few hours. Did I try? No. I was too chicken. I am my own worst enemy. Who knows what could or couldn’t happen if I had taken the risk?

My resolution for next year? Kick this doubting Thomas to the curb by next January.

Another quote of the day

Tonight, I'm bringing my weekly booze-athon to the East Village, and I can't help but think of this quote from Dwight A. McBride's Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch:

"I am reminded of a trip that a close African American gay friend and I took while in graduate scholl at UCLA to a conference just up the coast at UC Santa Barbara. The first evening we spent in Santa Barbara, we decided to go out to a gay establishment to check out the local nightlife. We found ourselves at a bar with thrity-five to forty men--all of them white except the two of us. We had a cocktail, enjoyed each other's company, traded comments about the obvious stares we were receiving (trying to determine whether this was because we were new meat or because we were black). Finally, my friend pointed out to me that practically every video that had been played on the large screen television at the bar since we had arrived had been of black performers. After making this observation he quipped, 'I guess virtual blackness is okay, even unremarkable for white folks in a context like this, while our presence is an entirely different story.'"

More Selections from The United Burger States of America

(My revenge against Abacus for not making Peter Biddlecombe's books easily available in the US continues...)

On Florida (for Pookie and Dondon):

"North Florida is nothing like south Florida. It's more Montgomery, Alabama than Miami. Jacksonville, way up near the border with Georgia, I know quite well. Some people rave about it. The airport, they say, is one of the best in the world. The town is one of the nicest in the world and the beaches ditto. If this is true, they must be talking about a different Jacksonville from the one I know. But my opinion of it might be coloured by the fact that I once spent the night at the sheriff;s ofiice. In other words, the local Holiday Inn. The sheriff's office is located right in the middle of reception. I can only assume that the best parties in the United States take place in the Holiday Inn, Jacksonville, otherwise why would they have a sheriff's office on the premises?

"Tampa is one of the most important towns in the whole history of the States: it was here that, in 1938, on the eighteenth hole of the campus golf course of the Florida Bible Institute, Billy Graham received the call. Unlike poor old St. Paul, who had to make do with a scrap of desert on the outskirts of Damascus...But in the time it took poor old St. Paul to descend the city wall in that basket all the members clubbed together to send him off to Wheaton Theological College, Illinois. They say it was to study the bible. I reckon it was to get him off the golf course so that they could enjoy a decent round of golf, swear and retell all those old stories about Jack Nicklaus playing golf with God and you-know-who losing without having to listen to Billy going on all the time."

On North Dakota:
"I'm not saying that North Dakota is the dullest, most boring place on earth, it's just that given the choice between a trip there and an uncontrollable nosebleed, I'd take the nosebleed."

On Tennessee:
"I'm worried about Tennessee. I think it must be the cured-oak water. First there is a ducking stupid hotel, the Peabody, the best in Memphis, which is decorated from floor to ceiling with ducks. There are duck doorstops, duck bars of soap and duck designs all over the place. And at eleven o'clock every morning, you've got it, five ducks waddle into the lobby and up the red carpet and clamber into the fountain, where they splash around until five o'clock, when they up and waddle out again. The Americans, of course, go quackers over them, but it was all too much for me. I dragged myself into the bar--called, inevitably, the Mallard--sank a couple of bloody marys, staggered into the restaurant and to get my own back, ordered duck a l'orange which, of course, they didn't serve.
"Tennessee is the only place I know in the world where it's legal to take home and eat roadkill, in other words any animal you knock down and kill on the road. Deer, skunks, racoons, squirrels, opossums, rabbits, anything."


On Minnesota:
"...to Minnesotans, [Garrison] Keillor is God. No, that's not true: he's more important than God. He captures their shallow personalities, their inadequacies, their unimportance and the wide range of two subjects they don't talk about: winter and winter."

On Kansas:
"The trouble with Kansas is that it has not only not evolved, it still doesn't believe in evolution, either."

On New Hampshire:
"New Hampshire is in the wrong place. It should be in the south. Say between Oklahoma and Texas. It's slow. It's rural. It's old-fashioned. It's very, very conservative. While the rest of New England pretty solidly votes Democrat, it is strongly Republican. It should be called Old Hampshire instead of New Hampshire, because as far as I can see, there's nothing new about it."

Book Quotes of the Day

From Peter Biddlecombe's spelling error filled (but still hilarious) The United Burger States of America:

On Philadelphia:
"Now I know all about this Philadelphia and city of brotherly love business--it means that if the police beat you up in front of a video camera they will immediately take you to a hospital afterwards--but I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't call the place Franklin, or even Franklinville or, I suppose, given the American genius for yukky (sic) names, HappyBenjyFrankyVille. Rather than the cradle of American Liberty, it's more like the Cradle of Benjamin Franklin, the short-sighted harmonica-playing son of a man who changed shades and colours every day of his life (he was a dyer)."

On Milwaukee:
"For all the hype about Wisconsin being the beer state of America, the capital (sic), Milwaukee, is pretty dull, flat and insipid.* A bit like most of their beers.** In fact, given the size of their dairy industry, it should be called Milkwaukee instead.
* It is.
**Except for Miller.
"Before I went there I thought it was going to be all bierkellers the size of baseball pitches, beer flowing in the streets and hearty, thigh-slapping, strapping, 20-stone Americans in their designer lederhosen getting schlossed out their tiny minds...Instead it's like a small town; a very small-town Chicago."***
***It is a small-town, but you never ever say Milwaukee is like Chicago. If we could, we'd declare ourselves in a different time zone.

On New Jersey:
"New Jersey is like Michael Jackson's nose. It's for ever changing, updating, and reinventing itself."

On Boston:
"As for the whole 'no taxation without representation' business, Massachusetts and all the others broke away from the UK because they believed so fervently in no taxation without representation. Right? OK, try asking a Boston barman or cab-driver to deduct the Massachusetts sales tax from your bill because you're not entitled to vote in the US, and you'll soon see how much they believe in no taxation without representation. If, that is, you get out alive."

On New York:
"Now that wandering the streets is no longer fraught with danger, the excitement has gone. There are people around at all hours of the day and night, taking cabs, riding the subways--where you can watch the weirdos, spot passengers on the fiddle as well as on the violin and shrink with fear as way-out rappers leap into the carriage at the last-minute, boom box in hand, to serenade the world--or risking their lives on the Staten Island ferry."

On Detroit:
"Not just one derelict office building; not just one street of derelict office buildings, banks, and stores, but whole blocks of derelict office buildings, banks, stores, hotels, and theatres. Welcome to Detroit, originally named by its founder, Antoine de la Mothé Cadilliac, as far back as 1701 as Ville d'Etroit, or City in a Right Mess. Which at least proves one thing: the French are not always wrong."

A Poem for Jim Castillo

Oh Jim, 'tis cruel how you were given the boot

Having worked so hard thanklessly

Alas, no one knows the song of the second banana on the midday shift

The one who does all the drudgery while the stars get all the credit

You were like Jan Brady, Joe from Gatchaman, Max from Macross/Robotech, George Constanza (I could go on and on)

But you soldiered on even without a contract

Cute and airbrushed weren't your style

Nor overly muscular and perky

You weren't saintly and wise

You were just you

And sadly, Newscorp didn't think that was enough

But cheer up, Jim

For surely as perkiness gives way to embittered cynicism

The second banana always has the ultimate laugh

Goodbye to an icon

RIP Richard Pryor.

Bloomie, Please...

So Marie Antoinette up in Gracie Mansion is now calling for legalised gay marriage?

Isn't this just ducky? You wait until the circumstances are such that you could be portrayed as the saviour. I offer this little kernel of wisdom to the closet case of the city: If you knew it was the right thing in February, then you should've gone then and there and fought for it tooth and nail. Perhaps waiting may give you brownie points at the polls. Perhaps waiting until you were re-elected may have made your advisors (certain ones who I have addressed on here ) more content.

Lest you think that I am dismayed by your announcement, Mr. Mayor. I am quite happy that you are doing the right thing. I just wonder why your motivation to do it took 10 months, particularly since you were already aware that giving same-sex couples the right to marry was indeed the correct thing to do.

The sooner you and your hollow opinion poll-based heart leave office, the better off the rest of us will be.

And now a message from our sponsor...

Americanwyr , paham mo gwna Cymraeg 'n 'n genedlaethol dafodiaith? Dybia bai 'n ardderchog a ni d pawb blymio choelbren 'n llyfnach.*

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It may look daunting, but try saying it and you'll feel like Richard Burton and Tom Jones in no time at all.

* "Americans, why don't we choose Welsh as our national language? I think it would be excellent and we'd all sound a lot smoother."
**And yes, I know I'm grammatically incorrect, but it's not too shabby for my rudimentary Welsh...and you have to admit, it sounds and looks pretty cool.

Some Things Will Never Change

I was in my kitchen today when I spotted a couple touring the vacant apartment across the street. Without thinking about it I yelled "GO AWAY YUPPIE SCUM!"

Of course given that it's 30 degrees outside I didn't open the window, but I felt good.

Oh, Robbie...

What tales we weave when we sue in order to deceive.

Comrade, ain't nobody buying this. I didn't buy it when you started out. I didn't buy it when I read Feel. I didn't buy it when you were gobsmacked over Nicole Appleton...and it was completely plausible that you are in puppy love with Jonathan Wilkes.

Just. Come. Out.

Lest we forget, Liberace also won a lawsuit that alleged that he was gay and we all know what the final story was on that.

Ah...hockey

Five reasons why I watch hockey:

(Top row: Bryce Salvador, Pavol Demitra, Marc Bergevin; Bottom row: Manny Malhotra, Mariusz Czerkawski)

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Well, I finished my work (well 75% of it) so normal posting is back.

To celebrate its completion, I watched March of the Penguins.

I cannot believe they are marketing this film to children. It is just full of death. I'm not going to go into detail here, but it was like watching Bambi all over again (a film that I have only seen once since it was too traumatic to me as a child when Bambi's mother was shot). I'm just envisioning children unwrapping the DVD over the Holidays, putting it on and just crying their eyes out. I didn't cry myself, but I certainly winced a lot.

Maybe the current crop of children are harder souls than I.

A Pause for Praise

My sabbatical is still not over, but I wanted to just quickly praise two things:

1. Dwight A. McBride's book Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch. Absolutely fascinating and engrossing. McBride makes an excellent and none-too-surprising connection between Abercrombie & Fitch's marketing and Nazi propaganda. The company's "Look Book" comes across as a modern day Mein Kampf. I'd write more, but I'm trying to keep this post short.
2. The film Brother to Brother. I seriously was not expecting to like this film, but it really sucked me in on a personal level. Rarely have I felt so close to a protagonist as I did with Perry in this film. Shock of all shocks, the cast is relatively good. (Anthony Mackie went on to do Spike Lee's She Hate Me, and Daniel Sunjata goes without saying to anyone who saw Take Me Out several seasons ago.) Two scenes especially stand out (I do not think this is a spoiler): The first is where Perry bolts out of a post-coital embrace with Jim (who is white) after Jim says that he has "the sweetest black ass," unaware of how loaded and unintentionally offensive that comment is (very relatable); The other is a conversation between James Baldwin and Eldridge Cleaver which puts the aforementioned scene in perfect sociological context, if you ask me. Rodney Evans did an amazing job with the script and direction. Generally, I'm against directors writing and directing their own work, but he's a notable exception. I hope to see more from him.

And for the record, I am receiving no kickbacks.

"Holy Smokes!"

I'm still on sabbatical, but last night I was talking with another ex-Milwaukeean about the Hoan Bridge cracking up several years ago. It's quite a hilarious story.



The Journal-Sentinel is telling the truth, no one thought that the bridge was seriously in need of repairs until somebody called 911 after driving over it and feeling it come apart.