800 words on Priscilla Queen of the Desert

It's a rainy Southern California weekend. I watched WANTED this afternoon, and one of the small players in the film is "Bernadette" from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It reminded me of this post I wrote almost 3 years ago.

"Why don't you light your tampon on fire and blow your box apart, because that's the only bang you're ever gonna get."

I think it was my junior year of high school. I had a tight group of friends, mostly from the swim team. Suzanne, Steve, Jill (the three I still see regularly), Troy, Katrina, Shawn... there were others. I don't want to spend time remembering names. We would hang out most Friday nights together. Usually pretty innocent, up until senior year when occasionally we'd have a cocktail or two. Interestingly enough, I can't think of one time any of us drove after drinking during that time. At least I know I never did. We seemed to be pretty responsible, irresponsbile kids.

One night, again, I think during junior year, we were hanging out at Steve's house. Or maybe, Steve just brought the movie. His parents had rented it and loved it. We might as well watch it: The Adventure of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert!

A little indy flick from Australia. Amy knew about because she liked fashion, and it won an Oscar for costume design. Others may have had a passing familiarity with it. We watching the film.

"Me no like you anyway, you have little ding-a-ling."

You should know about it now. It was about three Australian drag queens crossing the outback. They're bringing along a ton of frocks, enough make-up for a Tammy Faye convention, and a beautiful lesson in love, tolerance, and human dignity. Apparently the actors were relatively big names in Australia, including Guy Pearce (LA Confidential, Memento) and Huge Weaving (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta) who ended up big names in the States, too.

We watched that movie that night and loved it. We watched it a lot more. For Christmas senior year, Jill bought me a copy and we watched it more. It broke down barriers to enjoy other drag films, like To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and Victor Victoria.

The whole group embraced it. They embraced me -- maybe not knowing it. I was still "closeted". I don't really know when they knew. I did a crappy job coming out. I never really officially told my best friend, a decision I regret to this day. Hell, I didn't come out to Steve and Jill until this past October when I brought a boy to my High School reunion. They still embraced me!

When we watched that movie, and everyone laughed, and sang, and even cried a little, I felt like they were telling me it was okay. No one cringed when the trannie kissed the burly mechanic. No one looked away as Guy Pearce pranced around in skimpy underwear or a revealing dress.

"Just what this country needs, a cock in a frock on a rock."

I didn't grow up in the most progressive part of Southern California, but I had it easy. I think I was only called a "fag" once or twice, and it was always an isolated situation. No one ever jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged the abuser -- both times I recall he was left to wallow in his bigotry alone. (One offender later apologized and laughed about it. The other never said anything to me after he graduated and today he's involved in Christian ministry. Surprised?)

But I had progressive friends.

I had used the conservative area to build up my closet around me. I put on the appearance of the most conservative of the group, even starting a Young Republican club on campus. (I started it but only went to one meeting. It was LAME!) I think that these friends helped me become who I am today. Their celebrating the differences of that movie was an endorsement of how very different we would all become in the future.

Adolescence is time of conformity. We do everything we can to fit in. We form life-long relationships while acting as someone we aren't. Eventually, we'll spread our wings and change. And hopefully the love and belonging we experienced when we "were just like everyone else" will shelter and protect us when we no longer fit in. I don't always fit in. But I remember when we watched that movie -- when only I knew I was different -- that those three drag queens, Bernadette, Mitzi, and Felicia, were part of our group. If they could belong, so could I.

The movie was on television the other night. I laughed as hard as ever, having seen it nearly 100 times by now. And I went into my room, thanked God for the people in my life, and cried a little.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "No more fucking ABBA!"

Oh, and did I mention for my 17th birthday my friends chipped in, sent me on scavenger hunt, and bought me ABBA's boxed set, Thank You for the Music? Yeah, I'm sure they had no idea!

500 words on Gilda Radner

What to think of a Candadian production of Godspell starring Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and Victor Garber? Now I understand how to visualize what an acid trip must be like. I just saved my self $15 and thirty years of flashbacks. In reality, you’d be watching the professional acting debut of Gilda Radner.

Because Gilda Radner left Saturday Night Live before I was watching television, probably still unaware what a television was, I was only introduced to her through re-runs on cable. Her parody of Barbara Walters (as Baba Wawa) confused my 10 year-old self. Why was this newswoman talking like Gussie Mausheimer from An American Tail? (Perhaps Gilda and Barbara Walters were Madeline Kahn’s inspiration.) In high school, sneaking television late at night, I was really introduced to the brilliance and subtlety that was Gilda Radner.

I know it’s cool at about just any given time to think Saturday Night Live is not cool. I don’t really buy into it. I think the show only loses when the players become stars and are as big as the hosts. These quirky characters are best when you really don’t understand the person who is delivering them. Gilda Radner is perhaps one of the best of that age.

However, as funny as Gilda was, I think her love affair with Gene Wilder and her brutal confrontation with ovarian cancer are as strong of a legacy. My grandmother died of ovarian cancer less than a year before Gilda. While I didn’t understand what killed my grandmother at the time, and I certainly wasn’t following the career, disease and passing of a comedienne at 10 years old, I’ve later connected the relationship and have strong feelings about the work done by Gilda to raise awareness and comfort families facing ovarian cancer.

Twenty years after her death, most people have probably forgotten about the ovarian cancer, bulimia, or her refusal to do cocaine in late 70s New York. How strong of a woman she was. People do remember her marriage to Gene Wilder, especially as he still claims her as the love of his life. In an interview I saw a few years back, his eyes instantly welled up when the interviewer just mentioned Gilda.

I’ve never felt that kind of love, the kind that lingers for 20 years like a slight breeze slipping through a cracked window, always present and slowly filling a room reaching everything and touching everything. I aspire for that and see the contentment in Gene Wilder’s eyes having had his life enveloped in it. Her influence is strong.

Gilda died twenty years ago, and in the year of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson personalities’ like hers fade from our memories. Her last days were traumatic, as she fought doctors giving her a sedative before a CT-scan. She feared she’d never wake from it, and she didn’t. Her legacy, the humor and the rich love of her husband, keeps me awake, aware, and alive whenever she slips into my thoughts today.

500 words on LA Traffic

It will rain tonight. It is supposed to rain for most of the weekend. Since Los Angeles averages about 11 inches of rain annually – with as little as 3 ½ in 2007 – you can bet that the impending “storm” will make a big splash. It will affect nothing more that traffic.

Living in Los Angeles, I bore quickly of the “Angelenos Can’t Drive In the Rain” stories. We don’t drive as well as Seattleites but we don’t need, too. Last year, we got 10% of the rain of Seattle. We don’t get much weather here, so it makes sense that we don’t drive as well in the little we get.

But the phenomenon isn’t limited to rainy days. The media and culture have us convinced that Los Angeles is the worst place to drive in the world. Clearly they’ve never been to Medford, Oregon. (At least we get to pump our own gas!)

Living in Los Angeles means we talk about traffic a lot. We discuss different routes and reveal secret streets to our friends. (My commute to work has me cutting through residential neighborhoods and weaving among minivans and full-length skirted Jewish women outside of four Orthodox temples and schools, but it saves ten minutes from the big streets.) Hybrid car technology has us bragging about our MPG-maximization. We love, no, live to talk about our driving. And with all the talking we do, did you know that less than a quarter of all Angelenos have a commute of more than 35 minutes? According to the 2000 Census, 71% have commutes under 35 minutes and another 5% work from home. A full third of us commute less than 20 minutes. We might spend more time in our cars than the denizens of any other American metropolis, but not much longer.

Our average commute time, according to a 2006 study, is 28 minutes, but according to the Texas Transportation Institute, we spend about half of the time -- 16 minutes a day -- sitting in congestion. Those 16 minutes can be aggravating. If only we lived in a transit option-rich environment like New York. Imagine all the time we could save? Not much, apparently. The average New York spends 6 more minutes a day commuting. But the money, we can save the money? Driving about 12,000 miles a year (some people drive more) in a 20 mpg vehicle (most cars today get more) and your daily commute drive in Los Angeles costs around $3.00. In New York, you’ll spend about $3.00 a day on your unlimited MetroCard.

Is Los Angeles traffic great? Absolutely not. My argument is that Los Angeles traffic is about what you can expect in comparable metropolitan areas. Yes, you could live in Grand Forks, North Dakota or Asheville, North Carolina and get hundreds of hours of your life back. But you’d be living in Grand Forks. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a vibrant food truck community, active theatre scene, or Getty Center in Grand Forks.


This interchange downtown is guarenteed to be congested just about any time of day. On LA freeways, usually Saturday or Sundays mornings bring a little reprieve, but not here.

500 words on Miller's Field in San Diego

Today's post violates my rules. It's a topic I submitted after an experience this weekend. I need to write this post because I feel there are few other things I can do. I hope this is cathartic. I hope you find it insightful.

I became a football fan a few years back, but it wasn’t until I freed up my Sundays this season that I really got to start following my team. It been a treat that we’ve had an undefeated season, and I wasn’t about to miss the game against the Redskins this past Sunday. Despite being in San Diego for a dive trip, I’d make it work. Fortunately my Saints often play early games and, as we were on the way to a 12-0 record, the game was being broadcast on Fox allowing me to watch most of the game before leaving the hotel.

As luck would have it, our diving on Sunday was cancelled. After a detour to pick up our dive gear, my dive buddies and I were able to grab the end of the game at a San Diego sports bar. We drove through Pacific Beach, surrounded by sports bar options and chose the first one to stand out: Miller’s Field. I ran from the car with 2 minutes left in a tied game and my friends parked the car.

There aren’t a lot of gay football fans, compared to say gay fans of oral sex, but there are plenty of us in just about any major metropolitan area. This season, I’ve caught most of the Saints games in your typical, straight male-dominated sports bars and always had a crazy fun time with straight strangers and friends enjoying the game. The one time I tried to check out LA’s new gay sports bar, GYM in West Hollywood, I learned quickly that it’s just a fetish bar that doesn’t take sports seriously. (It opens 2 hours after Sunday football starts.)

The manager at Miller’s Field in Pacific Beach, Ray Corallino, managed to do something that a divey Mo’s in Playa del Rey or the trendy Big Wangs in North Hollywood never came close to: he made me feel horribly unwelcomed, cheap, and threatened.

Corallino is apparently a Giants fan and as the Cowboys ran a play against the Giants, he stood behind the bar screaming, “Get him faggot. Get the faggot. Get the faggot. Faggot.” Please that the Cowboys fell to the Giants defense on that play, he followed his last screed with, “Yeah, Tony Homo. Take that Tony Homo. Stupid homo.”

My two (straight) friends immediately wanted to leave. I couldn’t because the Saints were in overtime, but I couldn’t believe what just happened. They were repulsed that a display like that could go down in crowded bar. I could believe it but never expected it.

I consider myself lucky. There’s really no point in pursuing this with Miller’s Field. After all, owner Glenn Miller hired this man as his lead manager and I’m not a local who would ever consider going back. I consider myself lucky because I’m surrounded every day by people that respect and love me, and I get to stand up an cheer loudly, proudly, and pretty friggin’ gaily for Saints of New Orleans.

500 words on Die Hard

Yippee kay-ay, Mother F*cker!

My favorite discovery of my freshman year of college, after moving to West LA, was hitting a shopping mall in the shadow of Nakatomi Plaza. Of course, on the first trip I feared the corpses of German terrorist thieves falling from the sky. But I soon realized that the mall had an indoor parking garage and no roof, so I could shop beneath and glimpse up at Nakatomi but my car’s hood wouldn’t meet the fate of late-80s LAPD cruisers.

I love Die Hard. John McClane is one of the greatest flawed heroes of all time and I love how throughout the series his personal failures make him a stronger hero. Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber is one of the best non-singing, non-cartoon villains of all time, challenged probably by Jeremy Irons’ portrayal as his brother Simon Gruber in Die Hard with a vengeance.

It’s the little things I love most in this film; from the sassy and irreverent limo driver to the juxtaposition of a beat-down New York City cop getting in a limo in the first place. You’ll cheer out loud when the mousy but innocent Harry Ellis is shot while trying to negotiate on behalf of the hostages and tear up when the relatively unknown Joseph Takagi is assassinated by Gruber.

The entire series is great because its villains aren’t just thieves, but terrorist thieves with grudges to settle. The motivation of the bad guys is never quite clear but never too confusing to get lost in an action flick or their interesting accents. Those accents – the German ones of con-brothers Hans and Simon Gruber – are a story in their own. In the German dubbed version of Die Hard, the heritage of the terrorist mastermind and his flunkies is swapped from German to English.

If anything, you know that Die Hard will take you farther than most action films. In the non-CGI age of 1989, when Die Hard was released, the film was still rich with explosions, elevator shafts, and tv-dinner-esque journeys through ventilation systems. The excitement and feats only continues through the series, climaxing with a little fighter jet surfing along California freeways.

But really, as you can already tell, the single best reason I love Die Hard is because it launched the only movie franchise in which I like all of the films. Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and even Live Free or Die Hard, all are worthy successors to the formula created in the first Die Hard film.

I love when something I grew up with is only made better with each new vision. Hollywood so rarely treats its history with respect, let along artistry. The Die Hard films demonstrate this excellently. While there may be weak points across the four films, the series holds up and I look forward to sitting down with my kids – okay, my nieces and nephews – and helping them appreciate John McClane and company as they blow some stuff up and kill Germans!

500 words on Erosion

With the first winter rain, come the fears about mudslides, high surf, and erosion. Property owners feel imperiled by the slipping slopes above their homes, but what about the wildlife who have their nests and burrows wiped clean from the earth by rushing waters, or the fish that have their homes turned into salvage pits? This week, as strong (by California standards) winter storms sweep into Southern California, erosion will nudge Tiger Woods from the headlines for at least a couple of days.

The first evacuation orders have been ordered in the “burn zone” of the Station Fire. The landscape is left desolate and unprotected in the wake of a brush fire. Without roots of chaparral clinging to hillsides to keep them in place, the slopes will flow down with the rushing water. These hillsides on the crawl will threaten the homes and structures that get in the way, leading to flooding, mud damage, and hazards created as heavy objects get pushed down the mountain.

Water has to flow somewhere, and while a few inches of mud in the living room might be devastating to homeowners, the thousands of gallons of now-toxic sludge flowing “downstream” is devastating to us all. Rain water picks up a lot: oil drippings from cars and trucks which have rested as black spots on the pavement; excess fertilizer, chemicals and poisons we dump into our gardens, lawns, and parks. Rough surf slams into the retaining walls we build to prop up and protect our multi-million dollar beach homes, stripping the beaches that give these glass palaces their value.

The mudslides in the hills get all the attention, but the flow of pollution which picks up steam in the flats can have much longer term damage. The harm of oil and chemicals is obvious to most with an elementary education, but did you know that over-fertilized farmlands and lawns in the middle of the country can lead to dangerous and devastating algae blooms hundreds of miles away killing millions of fish and permanently threatening marine life? The nutrient rich flow fuels the growth of algae and can have a long-term impact on our own fishing and diving industries.

But what danger can a retaining wall along the beach do to the ocean? As the surf hits the coast, it rolls up onto the beach. And as the surf retracts, it takes with it a top layer of sand, incrementally placing it back along the slope of the beach. The next wave comes in and picks up some sand from deeper water and puts it back along the beach. Those walls, and really almost any building close to shore, interferes in the process and causes the beach to disappear as the crashing surf hitting the wall strips the beach of its valuable real estate.

I recommend spending the extra time you will spend in traffic this week thinking about erosion, the role this rain will play, and what you can do to mitigate some of the devastation.

500 words on Tattoos

Is there supposed to be a crucifix hanging on the wall? Is carpeting a good idea in this kind of place? The table that I was laying prone on appeared to be from a doctor’s office, before I was born, and well used. The building appeared to be a roadside house, but it came highly recommended. I am sure this is a good idea. Gary learned and mastered the trade in the gritty but artistic San Francisco tattoo scene.

For millennia, man has been altering his flesh with ink. The tattoos of the Polynesian and Pacific people encountered by Western explorers in the 1700s may have engrained the art into our modern culture, but tribes and cultures bearing tattoos span the globe and the centuries. From the Germanic and Celtic cultures of Europe before Christianity spread across the continent to the Paleolithic era of Japan 10,000 years back.

After years of wanting, and months deciding where to place it, I was finally getting a tattoo. On a Christmas trip to Portland, to visit my brother and his family, was when the final decisions were made. My brother and I were getting matching tattoos. More permanent than last names and resemblance, we sought a simple, affordable design that spoke to our family, heritage, and faith. For us this was one of our greater and richer moments and every day I am reminded, with warmth in heart, of what lead to the Celtic cross on my leg.

But tattoos have a dark history. They have not always adorned the flesh as tributes and honors, or been picked from a board during an alcohol-lathered trip to South Padre Island. They been used to label property and shame military deserters. Without regard to the Jewish prohibition on tattoos, the Nazis used tattoos to identify and track prisoners of the concentration camps, perhaps the most tragic victims of subdermal ink.

On my back, with the needle pressing into my skin and the art taking shape with each minute, the pain shifted. I’d read of the euphoria that take over when the human body is pushed, in pain or sport or ecstasy. The high that came with the tattoo made the colors richer, the sounds deeper, and the stories more sane. Like the strangest tattoo, when Gary “scaled” a man’s balls before his religious conversion. Under the spell of the tattoo needle, the crucifix and funky carpeting in the lobby seem perfect.

Recent surveys demonstrate the revival and prevalence of tattoos. A 2008 survey by Harris Interactive estimates that about 15% of all Americans have at least on tattoos. Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center and the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that more than 30% of young people, men and women under 35, have tattoos.

Regardless of the wishes of those drunken teenagers in South Padre Island – and likely their parents – tattoos aren’t going anywhere. Few trends among mankind have the permanence of tattoo, despite the best efforts of Dr. Tattoff.

500 words on Superfans

I’ve been a football fan for fewer years than I’ve been SCUBA diving but I know the chants and songs of three NFL teams. Football came late for me. It wasn’t until my nephew took an interest in the sport at four or five years-old that I, his twenty-something uncle, started paying attention.

I went to my first few games in the Superdome when my brothers lived in Louisiana prior to Hurricane Katrina. These games really were my first professional football experiences, despite an adolescent foray into a Raider’s game in junior high school. Following the storm, I shared some season tickets to the San Diego Chargers when the nephew (and his family) moved out west. When SCUBA diving and football would compete for my attention, diving would typically win.

Today, I’d rather watch a New Orleans Saints game then do just about anything else on a Sunday. It’s in these last few years that I realized: I’m a novice Superfan.
While watching an early game with experienced-Superfan Amy, we sat next to two scraggly young men. Since clearly American Eagle Outfitters has yet to secure an NFL expansion team, their loyalties’ were harder to decipher. (Any Philadelphia Eagles fan would be decked from cap to socks, so they clearly weren’t being coy.) It wasn’t until the final moments of the Redskins-Lions game, in the mix of a number of games being broadcast in the bar, that we realized that these two young men were heartbroken Detroit Lions fans. It takes a superfan to hang in with the Lions, especially after their winless season last year (the only NFL team to ever spend an entire season losing) and 19-game losing streak. That Sunday, the greatest Sunday in 19 games and 18 months, these boys could hold their heads high and cheer for their winning team. Finally.

What makes a sportsfan a superfan? Is it when he books work trips around a team’s road schedule? Will postponing your wedding until February qualify? Does a family need to pass season tickets down for generations, or can you have never stepped foot in the home stadium?

We spend our lives looking for a tribe. When it’s easy, we find our tribe in the home. Some folks cling to religion, or their jobs. At church or at work they found their tribe. For millions of us, our tribe is easy to spot because we are wearing the same colors.

Sport is a tribute to our simplest origins. Football mimics the battlefield, basketball the hunt. Speed, agility, form, and strategy rarely fit into our modern, convenient lives. In sport, we find a place for our mind and our bodies. While not every individual can excel in sport, anyone with some poster board and an air horn can be a Superfan.

I find that there are very few things that make me scream out loud with joy in my thirties. Watching the Saints with friends and strangers; drinking beer and eating fried food: these things do.

500 words on Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is an idiot!

Glenn Beck is not an idiot because he’s conservative. There are a lot of very intelligent conservatives in the media, and plenty more in government, academia, and business. Glenn Beck is an idiot because he says he’s a libertarian despite his positions on abortion, gay rights and marriage equality, and the role of the family which belie libertarianism. It’s cool to be a libertarian; Glenn Beck is not cool. Your grandpa is a conservative, and so is Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck is not an idiot because he’s struggled with addiction. It is interesting the number of law-and-order conservatives who have a hankering for booze and pills. Addiction is a disease and I believe that a person should not be judged or mistreated because of it. However, a person who has overcome addiction and moved on to recovery should be able to recognize how difficult it can be for others. Glenn Beck is an idiot because he’s a law-and-order hypocrite who has no sympathy for others who have been beaten down. He follows a well-tread path laid out by many conservative activists before him.

Glenn Beck is not an idiot because he doesn’t have a college education. I think the biggest mistake the American education system has made over the last thirty years is to push everyone to college and cheapen the hard work of non-college educated men and women. You don’t need to have a college degree to be smart or have an opinion. Glenn Beck is an idiot because he buys into and promotes the idea that Hollywood celebrities and other liberals have no right to espouse their beliefs because their acting credentials and other primary careers hardly speak to their political qualifications. Famous liberals like John Stewart, Sheryl Crow, Denzell Washington, and Natalie Portman all did more than on class at Yale’s alternative-students program: they graduated. Idiots like Beck love to bemoan liberal celebrities, convinced that they have no right to mouth their opinions when they are singers or actors or artists. Well, what makes the Glenn Beck-Rush Limbaugh-Sean Hannity types any more qualified? None of held elected office, worked in government, or graduated from college.

Glenn Beck is not an idiot because he’s patriotic. In the wake of September 11th, a lot of Americans shifted priorities and learned to be patriotic. We took our American flags out of the garage and proudly displayed them outside our homes. Liberals and conservatives can all be patriots. Glenn Beck is an idiot because he co-opted the “September 12th” message, from when Americans were more united than ever before, to create an “us-vesus-them” state where liberals hate America and don’t deserve the freedom and protection of the US Constitution. Glenn Beck is particularly craven because he’s made millions of dollars with this effort, dividing our country and serving only his interests.

Glenn Beck is really an idiot because he is so politically deaf that his brand of conservatism will only hurt America and the Republican Party.

Sick.

Apologies for the missed post. I was sick over the weekend.