MUGWUMP

I have a crush on Avi Bieber

He ended up getting 56 days in jail for disobeying orders and 'unbecoming behavior'.

.

My chat with Tom:

kerry: Avi Bieber is soooooo hot.
Tom: i don't know who that is
kerry: he's that Israeli soldier...
Tom: what israeli solder?
kerry: he refused to drag jews away from the Gaza settlements on Sunday
kerry: they ended up giving him 56 days in jail
kerry: it was on the evening news here.
Tom: hm. and that's good?
Tom: sounds dodgy to me
kerry: he put a big snit in front of journalists
Tom: I thought Israel had decided to pull back out of the occupied Gaza strip?
kerry: well... I'm not saying he's right.
kerry: he's just really really hot
kerry: [sends picture link]
Tom: so you fancy a 19 year old zionist soldier
kerry: ummm.... yeah?
Tom: fair enough
Tom: he is pretty

Will to Fight

I went to a birthday party this past Saturday night and just as I was arriving, several of those in attendance were sweeping up the back patio area of broken beer bottles and ash and soot. It seems that I'd just missed a fight that ended up overturning the barbeque grill before the guys headed into the back alley to finish the tussle and then make their peace. Frankly, I was happy to have avoided the thing. I just don't understand people who fight... or people who WANT to fight.

I've only been in one real fight in my entire life. When I was 13 or 14-years-old my brother and I were over at our friend Chris' house playing Marco Polo in his pool with a few other kids from the neighborhood and when I was "it" Chris kept egging me on -- pushing and shoving me harder than necessary when my eyes were closed. After he'd dunked me a few times, I'd had enough, so I made a move towards him and told him to 'back off'. I had hoped that this simple threat would suffice and we could all continue playing the game, but he viewed it as an invitation to fight so he jumped towards me with fists flying.

It didn't last very long at all... maybe 10 seconds tops... and while he never connected a punch, I hit him hard in the face 2 or 3 times and it was enough to end it. Even though I'd 'won' the fight, I pulled myself out of the pool and went home, humiliated. It was HIS pool after all.

That night when Mom got home from work I overheard my brother telling her that I'd kicked Chris Hardy's ass and although it made me feel good that he was proud that I'd stood up for myself, I didn't really feel like I'd done much good overall... since there was now this weird vibe between Chris and me that would take weeks to dissipate. Through apologies and massaging egos (and with a good word from my brother), I finally got invited back to swim in the pool before summer was over.

Since then, I've always felt as though fighting is an utterly stupid waste of time. I've come close to being in fights since but I've ALWAYS been successful at circumventing them through talking through the conflict and solving the problem. And if you think about it, that's the step in the process that has to eventually happen ANYWAYS. Fighting is just procrastinating the actual "talking through" and "solving the problem" part that must come afterwards if any real progress is to be made. I mean, when we're really, REALLY done with military operations in Iraq, don't we still have to go through a process of diplomacy and negotiations before the issue is finally resolved? And if I seem to remember correctly, 'diplomacy' and 'negotiations' were on the table as options for resolving the conflict BEFORE we pre-emptively declared war and lost 1,700 young men and women. But it seems that some people are just hard-wired to WANT to fight no matter how pointless the exercise or how bad it makes them look in the end, since the aggressor never looks good during a fight. Win or lose, you come across as a moron who has to resort to thuggery. (As an aside, I'm only talking about Iraq here where there was a definite "WANT" to fight -- rather than in Afganistan, where we were working to protect ourselves, just as I had protected myself in the pool against Chris.)

On Saturday night, both guys at the birthday party ended up coming around to everyone afterwards and apologizing for allowing the disruption to happen. They'd argued, then fought, then talked through their disagreement and then reached some sort of resolution, but really, the only thing the fight had accomplished was putting a damper on everyone else's evening.

The Plight of Weblogger Zach

Zach is a 16-year-old gay blogger from Tennessee who bravely came out to his Mom and Dad in May. Their first reaction was to tearfully tell him that they'd obviously failed as parents.

Their second response?

Zach (from his blog): "Well today, my mother, father, and I had a very long 'talk' in my room where they let me know I am to apply for a fundamentalist christian program for gays. They tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me, and they 'raised me wrong.' I'm a big screw up to them, who isn't on the path God wants me to be on. So I'm sitting here in tears, joing the rest of those kids who complain about their parents on blogs - and I can't help it.

"I wish I had never told them. I wish I just fought the urge two more years... I had done it for three before then, right? If I could take it all back.. I would, to where I never told my parents things and they always were mad at me-- It's better than them crying and depressed cause they will have no granchildren from me." (May 29th,2005)

Scared and upset at the possible punishments and brainwashing techniques in store for him, Zach posted his thoughts and fears about the Love In Action conversion center in Memphis they'd signed him up for, whose 'Refuge' program attempts to 'straighten out' adolescents who are gay. He also posted Refuge's rules and regulations that had been e-mailed to his parents. Because of his weblogging, Zach was able to read many messages of support for him to stay strong and to know that there was nothing wrong with him before he was cut off from all outside communication.

His last blog entry on June 3rd (3 days before entering the program) expresses his growing desperation. Zach: "I pray this blows over. I can't take this... noone can... not really, this kind of thing tears you apart emotionally. To introduce THIS subject... I'm not a suicidal person... really I'm not.. I think it's stupid - really. But.. I can't help it, no im not going to commit suicide, all I can think about is killing my mother and myself. It's so horrible. This is what it's doing to me... I have this horrible feeling all of the time... I wish this on no person... I'm so satisfied--happy's too strong of a word the state I'm in-- that everyone's taking the time to email and write letters in complaint to these people. I dont know if it will do anything, but if something did happen it would be -- awesome."

The good news is that something HAS happened. A group calling themselves Queer Action Coalition rallied together for days outside the gates of Love In Action to protest both what was happening to Zach and the whole notion of 'Ex-gay' conversion. Their presence and determination helped to spread Zach's story across the internet (Zach was even sent a letter to 'hang in there' from comedian Margaret Cho) and yesterday it was reported that the state of Tennessee began an investigation in response to allegations of child abuse at Love in Action. It turns out that Love in Action is not licensed by the Tennessee Departments of Health, Mental Health, Human Services, Child Services or Education.

The bad news is that we have yet to hear from Zach.

UPDATE 6/28/05: ABC News reports that the investigation into allegations of child abuse are being dropped due to a lack of evidence.

The Stranger's Queer Issue 2005

Once again it's time for the excellent yearly pullout section to the best alterna-weekly paper in the U.S., The Stranger.

Missed Cross-Promotion Opportunity

Spielberg's new film, "War of the Worlds", and Taco Bell's new product, the Crunchwrap Supreme.

When 15 Minutes is 14 Too Many

This weekend, Tom Cruise got squirted in the face with water by a fake journalist and Leonardo DiCaprio got hit in the face with a bottle thrown by a belligerent woman at a party. Lindsey Lohan was recently involved in an intentional car accident caused by a photographer and everyone is saying to Katie Holmes, "Yo, Katie! WTF???"

It seems as if our celebrities are no longer the American Royalty we once deemed them to be and the kid gloves with which they've traditionally been handled have come off. Why? My theory is that it has something to do with the over-saturation of 'famous people' in our current pop-culture psyche, thanks to things like reality t.v., Paris Hilton, and our nation's newsmedia placing priority on covering items like 'the runaway bride' rather than the far more important Downing Street Memo.

This hit home to me on Saturday night when I went with some friends to Shane West's birthday party up in the Hollywood Hills. It was one of those events where a valet took our car at the nearest intersection to the party and then whisked it away to some far off parking space, and then we had to have our name on a list in order to get a green bracelet, and then the green bracelet allowed us to enter the party, past a red-carpet celeb paparazzi area, and then we went into the party proper, where there were 3 alcohol bars with products that appeared to have been donated to the party in exchange for prominent signage placement. There were plenty of recognizable faces in the crowd. Lance Bass and J.C. Chasez from 'N Sync, Lukas Haas, as well as a host of others who I had NOT A CLUE who they were.

Everyone there, it seemed, was 'somebody' and it wasn't long after Kato Kaelin made his mingling way past us that we decided to depart for a more down-to-earth party down the hill where everyone (including ourselves) was a much-appreciated nobody.

Don't get me wrong... I'm all for someone being famous if they've got a particular talent to be celebrated for, but in today's day and age when all it takes to get on the cover of People magazine is a mental defect and a fear of commitment, we're doing a disservice to those who deserve to be celebrated.

To paraphrase Syndrome from The Incredibles: "When everyone is special, no one will be."

Batman Begins

Went to see the movie last night and absolutely loved it and definitely the best Batman movie out of any so far. As a word of advice, don't sit too close to the screen or it'll be so muddled you won't be able to make out what's going on.

To digress, I think this is a real problem with the way movies get shot these days. In the "olden days" a director would frame up a shot by looking through the camera and his director of photography would shoot it for him and somehow, it made it to the big-screen with all of the important story-telling details entact. Over the last couple of decades, directors have come from the world of music videos where their shots are designed for a smaller (television) screen. Most every director nowadays even watches a miniature video screen as each shot is captured. Then when they move to post-production, thanks to digital video editing, the entire picture is cut while watching small video screens. The end result is a movie that looks fantastic on your home t.v. set, but macro'd out, disjointed, and crammed full of jump cuts in a proper movie theater. (It was exactly this problem I had with The Bourne Supremacy, which I hated in the theater but loved at home.)

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Over the last couple of weeks I've [hosted both Mike and his brother Jimmy at my place and through them] learned something truly horrific about myself... I snore. Not only do I snore, but apparantly I snore all night long and loud enough to wake sleeping people up.

The reason this distresses me so much is because while I'm generally an extremely tolerant person, there are only a couple of things that I cannot stand. On this list of my pet-peeves, snoring comes right behind morbidly obese people. If I'm sleeping next to someone who snores, I have no problem poking them in the ribs with a sharp stick and announcing "Roll over. You're SNORING, you selfish twit." It appears now that karma is circling round my bed and the selfish twit is me.

Unlike a morbidly obese person who shrugs their shoulders and blames their situation on "genetics" (while eating a Big Mac and fries), I'm trying to be proactive and bring this situation to an end. I've done the adhesive nose-strips thing.... no good. Last night I tried an oily nasal spray called SnoreStop. Better luck but still no-dice. The fretting about it is having an effect because I've discovered that I've become aware of the snoring in my sleep and when it starts to get really out of control, I awake with a start and force myself to turn over. While you'd think that this is a positive result, it's made me feel completely haggard and not well rested at all over the last couple of nights.

The good news is that I've had a low-grade sore throat since flying back from New York (thanks to some persistant smoking and partying since) and that as soon as I kick it, the snoring might cease. The bad news is that I might indeed be a snorer -- a snorer who is currently single and hoping to one day share his bed on a permanent basis.

I'm gonna be SOOOOOO pissed off if it turns out that the only person that wants me is a morbidly obese snorer.

Texas is For Lovers... sorta

At least once a week, without fail, my head reels when I see a story like this one. In this case Texas' Fetal Protection Law is put to mind-numbing use.

I feel like I'm being failed by this country, this government, and half of the people of this nation as we move further and further backwards on the sociological yardstick of progress. It's infuriating to feel so helpless and yet know that there are so many others out there that feel exactly the way I do about governing for the future today.

It makes me wonder if George W. Bush is a fan of Star Trek, in which the earth has one government, one monetary system, no poverty, no war, and medical technology that you can be sure was based on stem-cell research. I want to ask if he believes we might someday attain such a utopian existence, and if so, shouldn't we be taking steps to move TOWARDS such a thing instead of constantly moving away from it?

Who knows? Maybe he'll tell me that I'm the one who's got it all wrong and this future worldwide utopia is already here... lying in wait in Texas... ready to metastasize.

Maybe THAT'S why they're so against stem-cell research!

Music Education

I have pretty lame taste in contemporary music. That's not to say that my taste in music sucks overall, because it's based in large part from watching the guest performers on THE MUPPET SHOW when I was a child. (Just TRY to diss those greats... go on... I dare you.) but as far as contemporary music goes... I'm pretty lost.

In my formative years (standing in the barn stripping tobacco in Kentucky) while others my age in other states were listening to The Violent Femmes or The Smiths or Morrisey or The Grateful Dead, I got a choice between country music (like Hank Williams, Jr., and Emmy Lou Harris, and Conway Twitty) or pop music provided once a week by Casey Kasem on American Top 40. I chose Casey. Don't get me wrong..., at the time I didn't know that I was missing out on hearing English New Wave or punk or even old Beatles albums, so it didn't really bother me. I was going to concerts, but the concerts I went to see as a teenager were Amy Grant, The Jets, Miami Sound Machine, and The Pointer Sisters (on more than a few occasions). It wasn't until I got to college and my roommate started making fun of my vinyl LP of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band as performed by The BeeGees that I realized that I was an idiot about music.

Although I've done a pretty good job (in the years since) of making up for lost time and searching out those groups I should have heard of long before I ever did, I think the damage incurred during my teen years is having a lasting effect to this day. I still don't know shit about what makes some current bands great and others merely pedestrian. I don't get Radiohead or Interpol. I'm still a sucker for a big pop tune even though most of the time I know it will lead to derision from others. (to my credit, I've NEVER liked Madonna... and I'm a gay man!)

So imagine my delight on Friday night, when I went with friends to see Of Montreal. They were fun, hip, poppy, sexy, and a real crowd-pleaser and EVERYONE loved them; me, my music-junkie buddy, the myriad of 20 somethings in the crowd, and a few other friends I bumped into unexpectedly at the show. Now I'm not naive enough to think that I've suddenly got my finger on the pulse of the new music scene, but that night I felt like I was 'in the know' and it was a real fun place to be.

Check 'em out.