Archive: March 2007
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Mar 29 07: ny moment #41,842
Ah, New York.
I just got a phone call from someone who has at last found an apartment that she and her husband are excited about renting. Great location, the whole thing. They even bargained a couple hundred off the monthly rent.
Was she thrilled? No. She was guilt-ridden, bewailing the damage she’d done to her immortal soul, her karma, and her good name. Because taking the apartment meant a bad break-up with her broker, who had not helped them find the place. She sent the broker ‘a nice gift’ after breaking the news—and no, I don’t know what it was—but the awful feeling persists.
What this town does to rational people sometimes, I swear.
Mar 21 07: </sarcasm>
Pursuant to the whole Garrison Keillor thing: apparently it was all a misunderstanding, an attempt at satire that fell entirely flat. Another victim of the dreaded On The Internet No-One Can Hear You Wink syndrome.
Although Dan Savage is underwhelmed—or, at best, whelmed—by Keillor’s apology, I’m glad to hear this, because I would have missed GK. I am obliged to stress, however, that if this many people fail to recognize your satire as satirical, it should be taken as a sign of weak writing, not of an overtouchy audience.
Anyway, thus endeth the scandalette.
Mar 16 07: bile
I have not been in the best of moods for the last few days. Not because I lose my job tomorrow, and have not yet managed to replace it, although this is entirely true. No, I blame the norovirus. For the second time in a single season, I have managed to catch the stomach flu. Not nearly as bad a case as the one back in January, but still: my temperature has gone up and down (and up and down and up and down) enough times since Sunday evening that I think my moodiness is entirely justified.
However. The stomach flu has nothing on the kick to the gut I took this evening, when I read Garrison Keillor’s new column in Salon:
The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men — sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.
Perhaps, Mr. Keillor, you are trying to draw a line here between the gay parents you seem to know and the ones I know, who are not flaming queens straight out of Lowbrow Sitcom #317. But you never mention anyone like the folks I know. You don’t really even acknowledge that they might exist. So I can’t tell if you’re against all faggots being parents or just the swishy ones. (I will go out on a limb and assume that attention to décor would be a point in the favor of dual-mommy families; and that in such cases too much sportsy outdoorsy flannel-wearing solidity would be the step across the line. Feel free to tell me otherwise.) But either way? Fuck you.
The last time I was sick with this flu, I vividly remember lying in bed and listening to your radio program on Sunday morning, and how much I enjoyed it. Your radio program has long been, for me, one of the great joys of a Sunday spent lounging in bed. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do that again for a while. Right now the idea of it turns my stomach.
For longer and better-argued meditations on the above — for instance, I didn’t even bring up the breathtaking hypocrisy of a serial adulterer’s preaching on the sanctity of man-woman monogamy, and that’s in here too — see PZ Myers or the incandescent Dan Savage.
Mar 6 07: bookings
Got a lovely piece of work-related news this morning. See, I told the boss last week that unless I could expect a raise soon it was completely impossible for me to stay with Megacorp. We were promised a staff review around mid-February, and without it my financial situation is rapidly becoming untenable. She told me that Megacorp wouldn’t be throwing anybody any ropes—there’s a re-org going on at work, in fact, to cut back on expenses—and that I should start looking for a new gig.
Anyway, this morning’s news. Sometime yesterday Boss told Big Boss my situation. Big Boss, for her part, wants to firm up the budget numbers as much as possible. So she asked Boss to give me a firm departure date. I have, after all, “volunteered” to be made redundant.
If I haven’t already left, my last day at Megacorp will be March 16. I guess I’ll be looking for work that much harder and faster at this point.
So how do I take my mind off the crazitude? I learn things. For instance, there’s that great article in last week’s New Yorker about the arachnologist sampling the ultravenomous spiders at the Goodwill store in Los Angeles. Or, equally fabulous, a five-part history of bookbinding that recently went up on Making Light. Abi Sutherland wrote it. If you think it sounds interesting, then you’re the sort of person who will find it interesting. If you don’t, you might be anyway. Start with Part I and keep reading. (The comment threads at Making Light often contain all kinds of cool stuff. If you don’t already wander through its halls every now and then, consider doing so.)
Mar 4 07: ooh
Weekend of glorious hedonism. Am completely knackered. Going to bed very soon.
However, it would be unfair of me not to briefly discuss the Scissor Sisters show last night at the Madison Square Garden Theater, at least in a few easy-to-digest bullet points. Ergo:
- I wore the gayest t-shirt I own, because, well, how could one not?
- We got there in the middle of the first opening band’s set. I never got their name: it was two guys, a keyboard, and a couple of mics. Plus several bottles of beer. The guy at the keyboard didn’t have much to do: he would punch a button every now and then to tell the preprogrammed music to change from Riff A to Riff B, and such. Beyond that he just sort of danced. They were… um…
You know what? Words fail me here. I mean, there are phrases that could be used—incoherent, drunk, inappropriate lycra bodysuit, bad hair, flail—but they don’t come close to describing the overall effect of being present for the set. In a way, it was like the Sisters were presenting a gift to the crowd. Did you forget your drugs? Here, let us alter your brain chemistry before the show really gets moving. - Second opening band: Wigs on Sticks. They were great, and unquestionably superior to the first bunch, but should have trimmed their set by maybe two songs. When they get a website of their own (apparently coming soon) I’ll point ‘em out.
- Third opening band: DJ Sammy Jo, who made me really really miss Black Rock City. He rocked.
- The Sisters were great. Full stop. Just as fun as I always knew they’d be.
- We finally learned the answer to the burning question “What does Ana Matronic do?” It’s not like she does much of the singing on the albums, and she doesn’t play instruments beyond the tambourine or the maracas or the shooka-shooka egg thingy, which don’t count.1 But onstage she handles secondary voice parts that Jake multitracked on the albums. And she is also the—what, hostess? Den mother? Mistress of Ceremonies? Mouthpiece, maybe, providing wry commentary and general foul-mouthed fabulousness. In a short silver lamé dress that made her look, in her words, “like a big ol’ drag queen,” in the best possible way.
- Although the show attracted an unexpectedly diverse crowd, this was definitely an Event for the NYC homorati. Sitting within six seats of us: Fred Schneider of the B-52’s2 and Justin Bond, better known as Miss Kiki DuRayne.
- Jake Shears really can go in and out of that kick-ass falsetto for an entire show. (Although I felt that he often needed to be mic’d better than he was during his higher passages. My one complaint about the concert was that the sound was sometimes muddy.) I hope he has a really good voice coach backing him up. He must. Surely he must.
- Man, was that fun. Oh my god. And Different Bob was, as ever, excellent company.
1 Just ask Jennifer Kimball.
2 [sic]. That apostrophe causes me physical pain every time, but there it is.
Mar 1 07: in which the cry goes out
I am sad to say that I’m looking for work again. I’m still at the Cool New Job, but: as cool as it is, and as much as I enjoy both the work I do and the people I do it with, I can no longer afford to do it. When I took it, it was with the expectation that there would be opportunities to move up the staff ladder by now, but those opportunities are still a good ways off. I can no longer wait around.
I can write. I can edit. I can proofread. I have experience working in print and online. I enjoy working on things that educate and inform people. I have many other skills and interests which I can discuss at length with anybody who’s curious. I live in New York City. If you know of anybody who’s looking for somebody like me, please let me know.