NYCweboy

Song For Mama

I am not unaware of the fact that I am very lucky to have come into the world to loving, supportive parents.

Jim and I have talked - a lot - about folks we've known, friends and acquaitances, who've struggled to find acceptance once they've come out.  You don't have to go far in the gay world to find people who've been rejected, thrown out, turned away, or even just held at arm's length because of sexuality.

My friends, almost all of them, are marked by a closeness to their mothers - Jennifer, Leigh, J, even Dr. T, come to think of it.  They guide us, support us, believe in us. I'm not sure any of us quite understand the situations faced by people who don't have that. I can see, even now, in the Most Adorable Nephew in the Universe, a devotion to my sister as his mother.  As I watch her, I think this is something she's always wanted to be (not least to be the all knowing, center of existence for something she can raise). And I want to tell him - I will, someday, "you are a lucky kid." (And I am a lucky uncle, especially since I will have two, soon.)

It would be easy, and a bit reductive, to say that I'm writing this post because of the help Mom gave me to be able to write this post.  The wonder of itall, to me, was having her say "I can see that you are trying very hard to make a go of this writing thing, and I support it." It means the world to me.  You can't imagine. Now if we could just get her to post more comments.  Come on mom - Garance's mom writes for her blog. :) In any case, thanks for believing.

Dancing With Tears In My Eyes

Well, those were the worst 30 hours of my life.

The one thing to say is that not being able to blog was, in one sense, incrediby freeing - the pressure I'd been feeling to produce was reduced considerably knowing that there was essentially nothing I could do; I sort of held fast to the thought that you, dear readers, would continue to read and bear with me (I was helped, to some degree, by this link from a group discussion blog in Kansas City). (I also just discovered this link, which explains why so many people seem to come to my Jake Ryan picture.)

If you need me to tell you the importance of backing things up, then you're probably already in bad shape - we've been in this modern computer age too long, and everyone has had the experience, I think, of at least the lost document, or the funny crash of your pooter that causes unexpected damage... if not the total meltdown I just had. In fact, I'm better now than I was last time, and the times before that - I have a couple of portable drives that were serving as repositories for various pieces of data (though not, again, my iTunes, which will mean reconstructing it from my iPod for the second time).

Oddly, for such a crisis, I feel like I was pretty serene - I was helped by the fact that what appeared to be an overlong day at work opened up when the trainee I was supposed to mentor didn't show... without that, I wouldn't have had a moment to get to The Apple Store and try to cobble a solution together. But basically, I knew the drill. Once your pooter can't find the folder to open itself, you're basically done - especially on Macs.

And yes, I am still a Mac. I don't blame my iBook for its own death; it had melted down once, the warning signs were there - things running slow, glitchy moments with various programs. I honestly just thought I'd have more time to back things up. But you don't and it just has to be a forced ritual. If anything, I am grateful that pooters - especially Macs - are so plug and play that I am back up basically after taking it out the box and plugging in; one easy reroute back to the net, and hear I am (and this new Safari seems better equipped to manage my TypePad, so I may not need Firefox back. But I will probably still go back to it).

Am I sad? A little. If there had been more time lag to getting back, I'd be more frustrated, less even keeled. There are a couple of things I'm pretty sure I lost that I wish I hadn't (which was true the last time too, including the start of a novel that I really regret; which kind of happened again, but I was less further developed this time). Mostly I am relieved, and very grateful (I'll get to that part in the next post).

So yes, I am back. Miss me? I missed you. All of you. Honest. :)

Testing... Testing

Checking to see if the new pooter lets me post...

Please Stand By

Hi - My computer has died. I am literally standing in the Boston Apple Store, working out how to get a replacement. Hopefully, down time won't be too long, but I will be offline for a bit. Bear with me.

Thanks :)

If We Were A Movie... You'd Be A Stalker...

Okay, I freely admit this one is kind of as ditsy as it looks:

One of the reasons I was actually kind of relieved to flee my old job was the annual "summer team outing" for our group, which consisted of sitting around on the beach, having refreshments and chatting.  Now, don't get me wrong: I'm all for lying on the beach.  Indeed, I think the world would be a great place if we all had a beach within walking distance and plenty of sunny days that required laying out.

But I didn't feel really connected to these people, a lot of the day was focused on drinking alcohol, and a lot of it was about "girly" stuff like reading gossip mags and talking about Lindsay Lohan... and while I like gossip - up to a point - and consider myself in many ways a big girl, this was just too much. (Also, a lot of talk of home renovation, and preppy vacation summer weekends spent at Natucket and Block Island, which is SO not my scene.)

So while I'd like to call out Ezra's trip talk of "beach reading" of Seventeen and their ilk, I think... oh, ick. I'm much more of a dog-eared Elizabeth George novel, music on the iPod, scoping the cute boys type of tanner (oh J, just talking of this makes me miss u).  But Ezra tries to spin something semi-serious out of this NY Times piece on the teen books, so I'll bite.

Ezra references the "how to meet cute boys" article in the new Seventeen, noting that "blogger" has made the list, and reprints:

Reprieve!

I just switched shifts for tomorrow!  Yea!  Now I can stay up late (and get some laundry done! :)

Oh, and just to make this, you know, sort of about something (more than me me me) if you get Logo - the gay cable channel - check out The Big Gay Sketch Show.  I am finding it high-larious. And now, I can watch it tonight without feeling guilty about having to get up in 6 hours! Yay! :)

2008 Candidates: For The GOP, Blame It On Dick (Or The Lack Thereof)

Before jumping into the mishmash of GOP candidates and their attendant problems, I think it’s worth considering the one candidate who will never get in: Dick Cheney. While many have mentioned the historical nature of this election – the first in more than fifty years to not have an incumbent President or Vice President running – few have mentioned what this would mean for the party in power. And I think the problem for Republicans is pretty significant, because they need, well, a Dick to run against.

I’m being only slightly sarcastic – the challenge, it seems to me, is that no one on the GOP side is running as the “continuation of Bush policies” such as they seem to be.  While such a candidate might only have a snowball’s chance in hell, America – especially America’s conservatives – need the argument laid out in a comprehensible form, if only to understand what needs to change.

Instead, conservatives – the 29% that still heartily support the President and his policies – have no one telling them, frankly, that to stay the course is a loser option.  Bush’s policies have torn apart the Republican coalition, in ways that only insiders so far can see; never mind presiding over an unpopular war, allowing federal spending to spiral out of control, and taking hardline negotiating positions that only exacerbate partisan divides.

In the face of this, afraid of alienating the core GOP voter, the main Republicans have hedged on outright separation from Administration policies. Realizing that any Republican candidate will have to attract moderates who, clearly in 2006 if not before, moved away from the party’s main representative, they all founder concocting bizarre, painful mixes of status quo conservatism tinged with softer middle grounds that appeal, ultimately, to no one.  No candidate – not one of them – is making this transition well.  In looking at the candidates, rather than looking exactly at top contenders vs. outliers, I thought it made more sense to look at the ones who stand any hope of pulling a coalition vs. the single issue types (and outright liberal Republicans) who don’t.  It’s not a pretty picture, but then, that’s the way I kind of like it.

And Then He Put His Hand In The [Blank]

Well, it appears to be the year we start losing Game Show Panelists.

They don't do game shows like they used to - The Price Is Right was a real category killer in daytime, and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune changed the nighttime landscape, and everybody thinks celebrity gossip is what sells these days (though I get the sense that the whole gossip industry is due for a shakeup soon; too many outlets, too few real stars).

But when I was a kid was the last gasp of the "celebrity" panel show.  To Tell The Truth, Match Game, Hollywood Squares (and Jim would kill me - I almost forgot Password)... these were the remains of a vibrant industry that started in the fifties, and included What's My Line and I've Got A Secret.  In those olden days, the celebrities were just that - celebrated people with a bit of class.  By the seventies, they were ... well who knew who they were.  Outside of the shows, I'd never heard of Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass, Lola Falana, Nipsey Russell, Brett Sommers, Paul Lynde... and many more.  Some were Vegas (Charo!), some were theater vets with time on their hands, but they all seemed to know each other, and came off as classy and witty (scripted banter and some bugle beads can take you a long way.  Just ask Cher).  

Which is to say I will miss Charles Nelson Reilly.

More than Paul Lynde, Charles was undiluted open gayness on TV - witty, well dressed, someone who implied "keep up" with everything he said (with a wink) on Match Game. Gene Rayburn and others gave scathing comments years later about how desperately they had to try to turn a largely dumb game format - match the fill in the blank word with the celebrities - by basically making the whole subtext sex. And there Charles was on the dumbest show, making it seem classy.

So much of who I am - so much I discovered of what gay men my age saw as well - was built on seeing Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde; they brought a gay persona into our homes under cover of humor, and let us know what we could get away with, and how. My gay life was built on wanting to be a New Yorker, on devouring old movies and bios of the old stars, and trying to learn to be as witty as Charles and Paul (which I later figured out, was also about trying to emulate Noel Coward and Cole Porter).  It's easy to dismiss all of this as "what it takes to be queeny", but it wasn't that simple.  You work with what you had, and you learned more along the way. I'm not the queen I once was, but I think my wit has only gotten sharper.  Practice, practice, practice.

Charles Nelson Reilly was, in actuality, a talented actor, teacher and director, who earned a Tony nomination directing Julie Harris in The Gin Game (with Charles Durning; he also directed Harris in the original production of The Belle of Amherst). He lived with his lover until he died, and never pretended not to be who he was, even to the detriment, to some degree, of his career. He may not represent the "gay pride" that sells magazines these days, but I couldn't have survived without his example.  May he rest in peace.

Cause I Was A Bit 2 (Arts And) Leisurely

This may seema little late, but what the heck - it's stuck with me.

Around the time I graduated college, The New York Times went through something of a sea change - partly it was the changing of the guard at the top of the paper - Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr. replaced his father as Chairman of the Board in 1992.  But part of it was a realization that the "grey lady" was just... too grey. Too old, too stodgy, out of step with the times (the eighties, really, were about a lot of this - shaking things up for "the new."  I see that now).

The effect, which you could see especially in Arts & Leisure, was that newer, younger voices emerged and they were supposed to be more "hip" and with it ("hip" - in quotes - covers a lot of what was so wrong with all of this). Im practical terms it meant that a slew of extablished writers, especially longstanding critics - Vincent Canby in film, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in books, among others (Frank Rich, well ensconced, would last through this; but they added a "Sunday critic" to at least give the appearance of sensitivity to charges that Rich exercised outsized influence over the New York theater world).

But these younger voices were not necessarily better; they tended to underline the Times real flaw - a wealthy patrician (i.e. "grey") approach to New York's complex ever-changing scene, especially in the Arts.  Late to notice rap and hip-hop, the Times struggled with how to fit modern changes in pop music with its traditions of enshrining classical and opera (and even there, wrapping classical music and opera in a cocoon of stodginess that resisted newer, experimental work in the field).

J and I bonded, in Baltimore, where I lived after graduating from college, over a front page Sunday Arts article by Bret Easton Ellis.  By that time, Ellis had blown away the intial hoopla created by Less Than Zero with The Rules of Attraction, a limp, dreadfully told saga of college age anomie at a school that looked suspiciously like Bennington (Ellis' alma mater). Ellis wrote an article describing the new "Generation X" - young people, fresh out of college, who were rejecting the values of the "Baby Boom" that had come before them.  I can't begin to describe how stupidly fatuous this article was; it made J and I embarrassed to be in the same cohort, so much so, we collaborated on a brilliant (if I say so myself) long (deadly for getting published) letter to the editor.  Even though nothing happened with it, I loved the process of creating it (and still, discussing things like it with J).

But I digress (regress?). The selection of Ellis smacked of so much misunderstanding - an Upper East Side notion of "get me someone who's up on the youth of today," and in hindsight, I can see the flailing more clearly now than I did then.  Because the Times, still, suffers from this.  And the reason I bring all of this up is that the Times has never recovered.  I realized, reading the Arts section on Friday, that the Times is devolving into incoherence in the Arts - saddled with critics who are, several of them, poor writers, and most with critical outlooks too attuned to the faddish and the flashy and less about good, established critical standards as a base for looking at new material. In short, the Times has gone from a distant, reserved patrician Upper east Side approach to the worst of the Upper West Side - where what's fashionable is accorded undue seriousness, and yet a snobby superiority to anything "common" (e.g. "Middle American") continues to rule the day.

Mo Money, Mo Problems

I am hoping that some of you - particularly if you're angry - will answer this question for me (and give some detail): Are you angry about the Iraq funding bill that got passed? Are you mad at Democrats?  And how seriously?

Here's why I ask - and really why I haven't commented on this whole Iraq debate until it played out - because I think what we wound up with was pretty much the outcome one could expect.  And while I think Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid didn't do enough to set expectations at a reasonable level, I don't think the net result was especially surprising.

Lots of people, from what I gather, are very angry - especially the "Netroots" and far left progressives, who think Reid and Pelosi could have done more (or played some sort of high stakes game over not funding the troops).  I don't see it.  I don't think it was ever realistic to expect this Congress to say that "timetables or nothing" would fly.  Failure to fund the troops would have brought a "government shutdown" type reckoning that would not have helped the Democrats.  Not now, not for 2008, and nothing, really, would have stopped the war as dead in its tracks as some would like it to be.

Because the reality is, even with a "timeline", it's going to be very hard to leave Iraq.