Kiss My Benchmark
Last weekend I was sitting in my old Jeep in a parking lot at a seafood stand in Ptown, waiting for a friend to get the world’s most expensive, smallest lobster roll. The place was packed. The lobster roll was not. I was listening to “A Prairie Home Companion” and their special Memorial Day Show from Wolf Trap outside Washingtoons, DC. Ever since Garrison Keillor tried to blog funny about gay men adopting children, I’ve been a little reluctant to listen. And sometimes his breathy voice is a little too pervy for me.
But the music was the heartbreakingly, tender ballads of leaving loved ones behind to fight the great, big, last war to end all wars. The finality of those separations is contrasted with the global connectedness of this war through emails, podcasts, and skype phones. Yet the pain of physical separation – “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.” “What’ll I do when you are far away?” – is just as real now for young soldiers and their families.
As I listened, absent-mindedly watching all the sunburned people returned from the beach, I got all choked up, went home and called my oldest brother He had been drafted, learned Vietnamese at Ft. Bliss [!]. Texas and served a year in Vietnam. His job was interpreter with the pacification troops who went into towns and villages to help with rebuilding. He didn’t talk about it when he got home except for one story about almost falling out of a helicopter making a quick exit out a village that wasn’t quite ready to be rebuilt. We caught up a bit on their Memorial Day picnic plans and then I thanked him for serving in Vietnam. He was quiet, then said, “That is so weird. You’re the second person to thank me. Back then, no one thanked us.”
Sometimes it’s surreal to be in a vacation town as the world goes to hell around us. Like during this dirge of a surge. Just a few streets away on Commercial, the town was filling with fabulous young lesbians from colleges all over the Northeast on one last huge fling. It’s an unofficial party stop on the unofficial lesbian party circuit. I interviewed some of them, that’s what I’m calling it anyway, and they said it’s all word of mouth. And a lovely mouth it is.
Speaking of mouths, I will miss Rosie’s mouth on The View. There are certainly different ways of fighting the war and she chose to be outspoken and unwilling to swallow the extraordinary renditions from the Bush “administration” about what is happening. For that she was treated as a big hysterical lesbian. Interesting how the other side does an operation distraction and focuses on the girlfight and not the war. I hope she has a good summer rest and comes back on her own late night show.
Midst the constant coverage of Lindsay Lohan’s last fling, I saw the story that Cindy Sheehan, mother of a son killed early on in the war, announced that she is depleted from fighting the administration and her so-called allies. She’s going home. She should rest and come back as Rosie’s sidekick. Let’s all rest up this summer, because come September, they can kiss my benchmark.
Ding Dong
I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Jerry Falwell had died. I had just landed from a cross-country flight and was in a taxi, trying to preserve the pleasure of a six hour newsless cocoon, when I heard on the radio, “delays still on the upper span of the George Washington, the Nets won one at home, and Reverend Jerry Falwell is dead.” My cabbie did not know the words of “Ding, dong the witch is dead,” and seemed mystified when I abruptly stopped my caterwauling rendition and apologized to him for the insult to those good women.
As more of our homophobic nemesi die, and not a moment too soon, I don my Miss Gay Manners pince-nez and humbly recommend one gay etiquette guideline about how best to respond. The old, gray-haired, white guys with the surnames “Reverend,” “Pope” and “Billy” are aging out, dying off, happily
disproving the theory, “He’s just too mean to die.” Like George Bush, they are all concerned about their legacy, and seem to have left sons and scions, mini-me’s
of meanness. Before the next gen of ex-gay proselytizers assume the position, let’s have a moment of silence.
Okay that’s enough.
Reactions to the news of Falwell’s death varied wildly. Some went scurrilous.
Faster than you can say Tinky-Winky, those reactions were quickly spotted in the deep blogosphere. One suspects they were pre-written. Apparently everyone had archived the video of Jerry rocketing down the water slide at the old PTL park. The “What would Jesus Douche?” comments were unnecessary.
Some went nice. Those columns were granted syndicated sanction, as Falwell’s
former foes tried mightily to say the good things they had learned from jousting with Jer. We can love the sinner and hate the sin better than you can any day, etc. They seemed in their own polite way to be trying to adhere to the caution of Moms Mabley, “You have to say good things about the dead. He’s dead. Good.”
Though they tried mightily, their comments were quickly countered by the army of Jerry’s kids claiming that their dear leader didn’t hate gay people. No, see, he was trying to save us from acting on our gayness and going straight to hell. Except for Anne Coulter. She hates everything.
Moderation, as always, is key in these situations. Before the whooping cries of relief and glee, the backslapping congratulations, the celebratory bonfires, I recommend a three day waiting period. This is a quiet time perhaps used for purchasing rainbow bunting. This valuable cooling-off period, seldom used when purchasing a gun in Virginia, for example, is essential to avoid embarrassment. What if you are in the midst of a dancing-on-his-grave performance piece and get word that miraculously Jerry has come again, rolled back the stone, seen his enormous bulbous shadow, and it’s 73 more years of gay-bashing? What then?
But by my calculation, three days have passed and I just finished blow-drying my papier-mâché Tinky-Winky with the big Jerry Falwell head! Good.
All's Falwell that ends. . .
We are holding down the partying until three days pass,
just in case Jer comes back rolls back the stone,
sees his shadow and it’s 73 more years of torturing gay people.
So no singing of Ding dong the Witch is Dead
[which is an insult to those good women] just yet.
And at the party, no Teletubbies will be harmed.
What a Swell Party it Was
Good thing I don’t drink any more, or I’d just be sobering up from the from the NCLR 30th Anniversary GayLa Weekend. It was, as Lily Tomlin used to say, jam-packed and fun-filled.
You’ve got to give it to those San Fransisters at NCLR. They pulled out all the stops. The Friday night dinner for the major donors was held at the Merchants Exchange Building. After a cocktail party in the cavernous reception area, we all took the world’s oldest elevators up to a beautiful, wood paneled room that was decked out for 350 for dinner. As K. J. Denhert entertained with her jazzy riffs, everyone mingled and yacked. It was the family dinner you have always dreamed of.
The wonderful board of NCLR was all there and did a delightful roast, okay light poach, of the executive director, Kate Kendell who has led the organization with a fine fierce fun for ten years. She is a great story teller and told about a panel she was on with Gloria Steinem and Harry Belafonte. Kate does an excellent imitation of Mr. Belafonte and ably conveyed his rousing commitment to GLBT human rights. At dinner we also got a sneak preview of the wonderful new informative NCLR video. I encouraged everyone to get home early to get rested for the next night’s party.
Late Saturday morning, I went to Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club. Not to work out, but to attend the tennis clinic that this year’s Voice and Visibility Honoree, Martina Navratilova generously conducted for ten lucky auction winners. Martina worked on the basics and then played doubles with the players, all the while giving running commentary and corrections on her pesky headset. I did my best imitation of a young Wimbledon ball girl. I’m sure the BenGay will kick in any minute. We all had lunch together after and then it was off to some industrial fluffing and primping for the party.
Because 3,500 were expected, the event had outgrown the usual location of the Moscone Center, so the Gala was held at The Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason. The irony of all those lesbians asking, telling and kvelling at an old army base was not lost on many. The huge arching Pavilion had been transformed into a bacchanalian bash with food areas, seating areas, raised stages for break dancers and feather dancers, women cirque du soleiling, suspended over the crowd. Don’t try that at home. Or do. It was a throbbing moveable feast of music, dancing and feasting – an apt celebration of thirty years of NCLR.
The honor of emceeing was mine again, though it was more ringleading at a three ring circus. The program honored out NBA player John Ameiche and Martina Navratilova. I ran the live auction and we raised some more cash for the cause! It did get a bit out of hand. And I would like to apologize to the Victoria’s Secret people who never intended that my new hi-tech underwire be used to stuff twenties from the crowd, but a fundraising gal has to do what a gal has to do. Martina and Kate tucked the green too. After the short program, the DJ cranked up her turntable and the huge checkered dance floor was jammed until the wee hours. Later that night, I found an errant twenty dollar bill stuck to my stomach. I promise to send it to the NCLR development gals. I am claiming it. It was the most tax deductible fun I’ve ever had.
Tant P U.
In France, Monsieur Sarkozy defeated Madame Royal and I’m trying not to read into that defeat the defeat of Mme. Hillary Clinton. Just in case I was having an easy time keeping them separate, along came Maureen Dowd to re-link the two. Apparently Maureen, who never met a powerful woman she didn’t like to slice and dice, had been going a little too heavy with her Hillary-hating, so went to France to find a stunt double. Voila Royal!
No one has ever damned a woman with such faint praise so cleverly as that nutty New York Times redhead who, when it comes to keeping women down, answers her own book title question, “Are Men Necessary?” To keep women down? No need, answers Maureen, I’ll do it for you.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the feisty, energetic son of an immigrant which entitles him to call other immigrants scum, wants to reinvigorate France’s economy and restore its alliance with America. To do the economy part he has to get the giant airbus of their economy off the ground and that means getting the French off the 35 hours- a-work-week dole. The French voted not only for a longer work week but also for le petite’s Napoleonic manliness. And you thought only Kansans voted against their own interests.
Obviously the Starbucks Enterprise has landed in France and has caffeinated everyone into ma vie en venti sized guilt. When history is written, it will be revealed that Starbucks was a corporate conspiracy to get everyone to work longer hours. I have friends who wearily proclaim, “I worked 87 hours last week.” C’est pathetique. In Japan overwork is now a felony.
The same week Sarkozy and his right-to-work-long-hours won in France, Ellen DeGeneres did a week of shows from her hospital bed on set. It was not even sweeps week. DeGeneres had reached down to pick something up at home and torn something in her back and was doctor-ordered to complete bed rest. Her work ethic made her go on with the show. The pain-killers helped.
It was also about job security. In case you were wondering if women on TV are worried about their hard-won jobs, even Ellen DeGeneres seemed insecure about her job if she were out for a week. I bet Johnny Carson never worried that someone sitting in for him would take over his job. Joan Rivers looked too eager and they squashed her like a bug. How do you say ‘re-runs’ en Francaise? Ellen could have called a number of other women comics to sit in for her. I can dance.
It was a plucky performance but a little sad to see. The good news is that it inadvertently demonstrated that Americans really don’t care what lesbians do in bed. As long as they do their job.
It's Come To This! DVD
Keep an eye out for the Premiere of Kate’s latest film.
The film will have it’s World Premiere at Newfest: New York Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on Thursday, June 7. It will then screen at the Provincetown Film Festival on June 14. In July, you can catch the Premiere at Outfest: Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival Check the film festival schedules for additional information.
www.newfest.org – www.ptownfilmfest.org – www.outfest.org
Edible Equality
It’s Dinner Season!! Instead of proms, we gay people have dinners and I for one can’t get enough uh, I guess that’s chicken. Yes! It IS chicken! Often the dinners are in the same hotels as the proms the younger [than-ever] people from local high schools are having and that is always a lovely, amusing mix in the lobby. Even the tuxedos seem confused.
In Boston, I had the great good pleasure of emceeing the 16th Annual Fenway Women’s Dinner. More sweet sixteenness. The Westin Copley was awash with lovely ladies in black cocktail dresses and gorgeous tuxedo variations making a lot of noise in the silent auction area. Mayor Menino was there in a feisty mood about the Legislature and the Gay Marriage Initiative. The new governor, Duvaul Patrick was there saying the right things with neither note nor hesitation. He mentioned that his wife was complaining that they had to leave and would miss the dancing after. He promised next year they’d stay to dance and celebrate.
In Atlanta, I emceed the 20th Annual HRC dinner. Winston Johnson, a wonderful Atlanta activist, reminded me that I had been at the first Atlanta dinner. He also teased me that back then I had made a dildo joke even though Coretta Scott King was in attendance. I got carried away. But when I apologized to her after, she looked me right in the eye and said, “Don’t’ be silly. I’ve seen it all.” Twenty years ago I met the humble, ferocious Representative, John Lewis. He’s that and more now and he was at the dinner. At desert, we all bit and turns out the trademark blue and yellow HRC equal signs were edible! We all feasted on equality.
A girl needs a rest between dinners and I took my R&R with the Oliviettes at a huge sprawling Club Med in the Dominican Republic. From a formal black crepe suit one night to a sarong and SP45 the next day! It’s a wonder, I don’t just split down the middle. I hung out with my comedy galpals – Michele “Next to the Last Comic Standing” Balan, Karen Williams and Rene Hicks who ably handled the “nappy headed ho” thing and Miss Victrola Shaw who once again allowed me to apprentice with her on the Oldywed/Newlywed Game.
Next stop on the dinner circuit is the NCLR bash in SanFransisters celebrating their 30 years of work for our lesbian rights. They’re expecting 3,000. I hope the cocktail dresses are edible.
Buzzkill
I don’t know about you, but it was a tough week at the office. Here’s a story I’d been following: on the West Coast, 60% of the bee population is missing. Here on the over-achieving East Coast 70% has gone missing. It’s called CCD – Colony Collapse Disorder when a bee hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and few immature workers. Sounds like a Gay Pride planning meeting I attended once. Theories about the disappearance involve mites, pesticides, genetically altered foods, global warming and cell phone radiation. I blame everything on this year’s premature time change. In the longer light, the bees busied themselves to death. Also Starbucks.
Albert Einstein, and he’s one Alberto we can believe, once said that if the bees disappear mankind would have only four years of life left. I’m hoping that CCD will turn out to be an urban legend like that one about the counter clockwise toilet flow south of the equator. I think what we are really witnessing is the collapse of the white male colony. As predicted, it is not pretty.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart to support the ban on partial birth abortion partially paralyzed me. Judge Anthony Kennedy, a man who recently judged a mock trial of Hamlet, a disturbed young man with a sword not a glock, fancies himself quite the writer, and wrote floridly for that damnable 5-4 majority. Next up: honor killings.
Perhaps Kennedy was working out some problems he’s been having at home with a regretful woman. Perhaps his wife didn’t get her bid on a pear-shaped finial she wanted on e-bay and was horrible to live with for weeks. You know how we get when we’re regretful. He’s not going to put up with that again. In a co-dependent crisis moment he decides it’s the man’s job to protect the little ladies from our emotions around abortion, so he won’t have to cop to the fact that he’s the one who can’t deal.
And I can blather like this because it has been The Festival of Amateur Analysis Week from Dr. Sean Hannity to Tucker “With A T” Carlson to Good Grief Counselor Paula Zahn.
Of course I am reviewing my memories of the excitement I felt at Kennedy’s lofty writing in our favor, in the Lawrence v. Kansas case, decriminalizing sodomy and overturning Bowers v. Hardwick. Has Kennedy changed? Could it have been all the henpecking he’s been getting from that regretful woman at home? More piling on of the amateur analysis. Don Anus must have been relieved this week that the spotlight was off him. That whole sorry episode killed Don Ho.
And thank goodness, empty-headed, incompetent cronyism is confined to the workings of the Justice Department. It is, isn’t it? Again I review my memories of other hearings – Watergate, Iran-Contra, Anita Hill, Guantanamo, no wait, did we even have one? – and I have never seen more evidence of white male colony collapse. Perhaps the ban on abortions, combined with abstinence only sex education, is the new army recruiting plan. Brilliant! It’s going to be a long war.
Gonzales is the hapless tool at Justice who makes you long for the good old days of Ashcroft. He was called before the Senate committee to answer questions about the possibility of politically motivated firing of eight federal prosecutors. Republicans are worried about voter fraud! That there is not enough of it. The Gonzales hearing was no Mind of Mensa Show. It was like Reagan, the Iran-Contra years. I’m going to try that Gonzales maneuver next week at work. George W gave him a “heckuva job” performance review. If I premember correctly, Alberto will be gone next week.
Amazing Grace
In March of 1989, pre-full-blown March Marketing Madness, I was traveling through the old Denver airport and surprise, surprise was delayed by a weather event of some sort and had hours to kill. I had been hoping to get home in time to watch the Women’s NCAA basketball finals with some raucous friends. It didn’t look good.
After I resigned myself to a long delay, I found a smoky airport bar, ordered a beverage and thus felt entitled to ask the bartender if he would turn one of their TVs to the women’s final game. The what? The women’s basketball finals. You sure it’s on? After much cajoling, he finally sighed and all put-out, reached up and changed the channel. Although it was a Tennessee rout of Louisiana Tech, it was a pleasure to watch the women athletes.
It was not a pleasure to have to sit and listen to the men and some women in the bar wonder why that game was on instead of hockey, who those Amazons were, and other pre-Imus idiocies. I glared at any complainer, dared the bartender to touch the dial, and marvel to this day that I did not get into a barroom brawl. I was ready.
On this 35th Anniversary of Title IX, an equal opportunity measure which still must be defended from Bush late night signing statement shenanigans, the Women’s final was another Tennessee win, this time over the scrappy Rutgers team coached by the eloquent, inspirational C. Vivien Stringer. We in the Northeast, suffering through the insufferable Nicks and Nets season were cheered by the improbable success of our local Rutgers varsity team with all their talented freshmen athletes.
As the Scarlet Knights were settling back into mid-terms and dreams of next year, Don Imus launched the word bombs you’ve heard a million times and all hell broke lose. For anyone who has chanced on the doubly formatted Imus in the Morning show, this was not new behavior. The I White Man show has for years been a clubby, chummy safe place where mostly men correspondents, politicos and celebrities could josh and mix it up with the curmudgeon in the cowboy hat.
Perhaps it’s was Obama effect, or the sixtieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in baseball that tipped Imus’ behavior into the last straw category, but enough was finally enough. The 24-7 drama has been about sexism, racism, free speech, the market etc. You’ve heard it all. I trust Pat Summit has sent a note.
I head off to Pennsylvania this weekend to watch my niece, a freshman on the Gettysburg College Women’s Varsity Lacrosse team, a strong contender to win their Division Three and to go onto the finals. Her name is Grace. She’s fierce, fast, has great hands. I will be the fan in the stands whooping inordinately with all the pent up fire I didn’t get to vent in that Denver airport bar. It will be for Grace and her team, of course, but it will also be for the double unformatting of the I-White-Man and all that it means. I am so ready.