2006-03-14 - 12:56 a.m.
How bitter and cranky I am! If you could see me now, you would see me spitting venom, in precisely the same way that a cherub in an Italian fountain spews water from its pursed lips into a basin. For some reason I just can’t put my finger on, I am so consumed with rage and frustration I can barely see. When did I become so bitter? When did I become so full of hate?
My eyes are swimming with anger to the point I am almost seeing spots floating in the air. My mouth tastes of iron and salt, possibly from me gnawing the inside of my cheek until it bleeds. I can barely speak. Fortunately for you, it’s a darn good thing that I can type, or I would be rendered totally impotent.
Now, I wish I could tell you what precisely makes me ever so misanthropic today, but I am not sure that I can articulate it. Or, rather, I must confess to you, dearest Big Blue Blog- A-Roo, that my woes are much the same as they have always been -- to say them again is like repeating myself. Blah, blah, blah, I say. Blah, blah, blah.
A few hours ago, I met my mother for coffee at the Novel, and she pointed towards a young girl who was seated across the room. She was a beautiful girl, with flaxen blonde hair, a movie star’s nose, dressed in tight blue jeans and an expensive jeans jacked, covered with little rhinestones.
“Do you see that girl?” my mother whispered to me, outstretching one lean-fingered hand, jangly with amber-bead covered bracelets which made her jingle like some Gypsy queen. “I’ve been eavesdropping on her, as she talks to that gentleman! Did you know that that girl was hired to write the novelization of SUPERFIDO III? She has a five book deal!”
I glanced in the girl’s direction, and noticed that she was playing Tetris on her computer, a bit of spittle forming in the corner of her mouth. My mother continued: “I asked her how she got such a gig, and she told me that she isn’t even a writer – she used to be a photographer and someone just asked her to try writing the book. Isn’t that a nice story? And she’s only 26!”
This is the moment I wrenched the script I was reading in half, tearing it the long way. My mother, bless her quaint, wizened soul, didn’t catch on to my rage and distress.
No end to my fury, though. It is now some time later. I am sitting next to these folks at the Coffee Bean in Venice and I just want to pull my hair. There is this young couple – very mid-20s – she’s a big haired peroxide-y blonde with tan, cheerleader-girl shopping mall features, and her boyfriend, a six foot one Aryan type
“Everyone has a vibrational frequency,” this elfin-faced grandmotherly lady is saying, her cheeks round and pink and her eyes twinkling, resembling no one so much as Mrs. Claus. She’s referring to a discovery of the inner soul she made while touring Mexico. “And it is all about love. We are perched at a critical mass for the world, and we are all going to evolve into creatures of pure love.”
“Hell yeah, ma,” the young man is saying, while sharing a wink with his girlfriend, who simpers prettily and giggles into her hand. “I know all about what you’re talking about. Ya want another half decaf, nonfat latte?”
The older woman does not look like the sort of woman who would babble such gibberish. Indeed, she more accurately resembles a nice, middle aged, grey haired lady – anyone’s granny. However, as she speaks, it’s clear that she’s just an ole hippie hag, who has basically been mostly dismissed by her blonde-haired daughter and her totally sex driven son – both of whom are putting up with her ridiculous patter with smirks that connote both contempt and ill concealed impatience.
She stands up to collect her coffee drink, caparisoned in a baggy Mexican peasant skirt that’s covered with a bulky roll-neck wool cardigan. As soon as she’s away, the girl, in her tight, 400 buck designer jeans and sparkle-covered, v-neck T-shirt shakes her bulky breasts at the guy, who pulls out his cell phone and takes a quick phone-cam photo of her.
One thing that living in the West Los Angeles area has done is give me a total lack of sympathy with both shaggy old 60s relics, and their even more loathsome, soullessly materialistic offspring. I think I might just have been too long for LA in general: I find that any other place I go, my eyes open and a genuine sense of warmth towards the human race quickly reinstates itself, often in direct proportion to their level of white trashiness. Here in the so-called City of Angels, though, my default reaction to others is a rage and a barely concealed impatience.
Oh, I hate so many things, I am all but pickled with hate. It’s what keeps me young-looking, I spose, it being a little known secret that it’s hate not young that preserves. Love causes wrinkles, laughlines, jolly bouncing bellies, and balding. Anger freezes you. It puts that twinkle, that flash into your eyes.
And while I am on the subject of hate, can I tell you what I REALLY hate? Aside from the fact that I don’t seem to have the job prospects of even a 26 year old retarded girl – and aside from my sudden awareness that the tasks I have labored over for the past 15 years have all turned out to be a collossol waste of the best and most vital years of my life – here is what I REALLY hate. I hate blogs. Oh my god – I hate em. Blogs are disgusting, stupid, and idiotic things.
Here is a sad something your dear Uncle Johnny Darling has to say to you: Just because you have a blog does not make you interesting, dear hearts. Folks do prattle. They do prate! And the type of blogs I hate most? Gay blogs. I swear to Jesus that the existence of gay blogs are reason enough make me want to toss all the queer boys onto a fire and burn them alive while they shriek.
With one or two very rare exceptions – gay blogs that are just by someone who happens to be gay, but are not about BEING gay -- gay blogs are enough to make me turn into a chewing tobacco-spitting flyover freak to the right of Jerry Falwell.
You see, via the website of a fellow whose perfectly decent blog I read all the time – and none of this tirade should be taken as a rant against his blog, which I consider sprightly and insightful – I discovered this round up site of gay blogs (I do not appear on it). This site is called the Best Gay Blogs! What a dreadful, self important, motely crew of demons! I almost wanted to cry reading them, they were so bad. And I am talking about the blogs that were listed as “the best gay blogs of 2005,” too.
The problem with gay blogs is that they have finally been discovered by precisely the same horrid and detestable gay clones who represent the gay Brahmin Class and who fancy themselves great intellectuals just because folks enjoy fucking them after a night of Tina and lousy disco. Why on earth would I want to read a blog by the same folks who have spent 30 years sneering at me at Mickeys, Rage, and the Abbey?
What a bunch of screeching, howling, teenage girl ninnies! I want to read blogs from folks who do stuff that I haven’t done – or who evidence personalities that I would be interested in. Why would I want to read blogs by the same idiots who are dancing with their shirts off on the dance floors every Friday night?
There was this frightful blog that was written by this odious 22 year old coat check boy at a New York dance club. He had less than nothing to talk about, but had plenty of photos of himself in his American Apparel underpants. Now, I approve of the photos and believe there should be more amateur porn, not less – but of his skills as a writer, well, he had no reason to exist.
And then there is the blog by the 25 year old Go Go boy who flies hither and thither on dancing gigs, but really has no inner self – his blog is the most dreadful of laundry lists, recounting “I did this, and then I did that, and then I did that.” Well, what did you FEEL about what you did? Eh, who cares. It’s not as though you have anything INTERESTING or FRESH to say about the things you do or the things you feel.
Worst yet are the dreary blogs in which folks just upload photos of hot guys that they’ve come across on the net. What on earth is the point of this? I seriously don’t get it. It’s not as though these dopes find photos that everyone else hasn’t seen and uploaded onto their blogs as well. If I see one more blog showing the photos of that boyband rock star whacking off using his phone cam, I might just pull out my own eyes so I can’t look at the computer any more.
Doesn’t anyone have a unique thought any more? Believe me, I understand: When you write a blog you are The Star. I myself recognize that this blog is itself an act of supreme narcissism that exists to compensate for the lack of power I feel in the rest of my life. But I honestly haven’t read a blog that is like mine: Most blogs exist so the writers can convince you that they are hot and hip and with it and trendy. This blog, I venture to say, tries to do the exact opposite: I want to assure you that I am evolving downwards, and am providing a compelling portrait of just that.
And yet, what gay blog would be without an opinion on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN? I finally got around to watching it, and I must say, well – I don’t have an opinion. For sure I didn’t think it was The Most Powerful Movie About Gay Life Ever – I watch gay movies day and night for the New Paper, and it wasn’t even in the top two thirds in terms of quality, I’d say. The films of Bruce LaBruce are far more effective at navigating the complex balance of gay lust and desire for mainstream acceptance.
I found it loathsome and tedious that both of BROKEBACK’s gay lovers were played by straight actors who seemed incapable of finding their characters subtexts, except by the most broad strokes. Still, I must admire Ang Lee’s filmmaking: As a director, Lee is fabulous at filling the space between lines so we know what characters are thinking and feeling, without them having to say a word. He did the same thing with THE ICE STORM, which is BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’s predecessor more than anything.
That said, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’s gay issues are ultimately an irrelevance. It is NOT the Great Gay Movie. The movie is actually about adultery and how it’s a virus that ruins marriages. If Jack Twist was a girl, I venture to say that we would have had a totally different view of the affair.
Believe me, as a gay man, I totally understand that we must go where we love. And in truth, if that love is outside of a marriage, we must break up the marriage to get to it. If you value love more than commitment and obligations, then adultery is a necessity and probably a positive thing. But that is not a gay issue. And I was not swooning, nor did I burst into tears of recognition when I watched the film. Why would I? I just kept thinking that those two boys were just dopes for not going right to San Francisco so they could do the rumpy pumpy without worrying about it.
