Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Good day, sunshine....

The middle of November, and it's a glorious day out... the boys are probably all at the beach, seeing as how deserted the streets of WeHo are. I was so sluggish getting up, that now it wouldn't serve any purpose to head out there. By the time I got to the gay beach, everyone would have already left. Maybe after the morning meeting tomorrow, eh? Ah, Los Angeles... perhaps it got a few well-aimed zings in last night's SINC, but this is the place to be...

Last week, on Gilmore Girls, the scene between Jess and Logan was so fierce, I wanted them to end up making out together. Alas, since in real life Milo Ventimiglia is dating Alexis Bledel, slight chance of a menage a trois there.

Wish I'd remembered to bookmark the site where someone had an animation of Jake Gyllenhaal shaking his butt... I wasn't that into him before, but with his buffed torso from the impending Jarhead everywhere around town and all over the tube (unlike the extremely chaste and demure ads for Brokeback Mountain... hmmm; what could be behind that, I wonder?) it's kinda hard not to get, well, hard thinkin' about him. If only most of the real life Marines were as built--or articulate.

At the Brewery Artwalk last weekend (part of what has kept me away from the computer) there was a video/mixed media artist whose studio was almost entirely given over to his sentiments on the war in Iraq. One piece featured an everchanging montage of portraits of actual military casualties, with their hometowns and ages. They're all so fucking young. Too young--most were 18 to 27. I left the studio choked up and in need of air. We need something like that for December 1 (World's AIDS Day) to remind ourselves of another group of lost souls --especially since people seem to be oblivious to the actual human cost of HIV. I'm glad young people don't have address books full of dead people in them, but the complacency is unnerving for those of us who were surrounded by the epidemic in the 80s and 90s. We don't need to relive the loss of more than 20 9/11s so much as to make sure people will someday have the luxury of having to ask what life was like then while paying tribute to the very real lives cut short. By the same token, I get a deep-rooted resentment everytime I see one of the ads for the frou frou benefits of the Hollywood cognoscenti for any of the countless children with AIDS organizations. There is an unspoken subtext to these events, that these were the innocent victims of the epidemic, as opposed to those other people, who brought it on themselves somehow. Actually, it pisses me off. Yeah, many of the same folks go to all the local events supporting local HIV organizations, but the demonization factor--even if unmentioned--is louder than organizers of such soirees are aware.

If I hadn't read that excerpt from Andrew Sullivan's blog about the impending end of a gay community, I might not be as pissed. I was always polite when I spoke to him when I hosted his book signings back in the day, but sometimes that boy is off his rocker. He usually has a decent premise for his essays, yet he's such a self-hating homosexual who won't acknowledge it --with disproportionate influence among the straight literati-- that his Vichy-esque betrayal of his own people to go unchallenged is unfathomable. Betty Berzon stood up once at one of his readings, and gave him Hell--in a civilized, appropriate, respectful manner, of course. Michelangelo Signorile was the only person who took him on with any regularity. The way those two sparred I once joked that in a Hollywood movie they'd end up lovers by the final reel. Nobody pulls the goddamn mike on Andrew these days, that I see, with the same degree of public profile as ten years ago. The cap of it is, that if Sullivan got what he wanted, he should've been booted out of the country, since he championed the very people that made it illegal for him to have entered the US (much less become a US citizen) in the first place. Nobody every called him on that. He's one person I suppose I wouldn't mind our sending back to England in a pine box. Frankly, I don't care how he leaves, as long as he just goes away.

Okay, got that out of my system. It is far too beautiful of a day to get riled up over the likes of him. Off I go, to enjoy what there still is of the daylight out there. Guess I made up for lost time with this post, eh?


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