madness

i'm sorry, but i cannot take it any more. i'm all for people expressing the affections in the privacy of their own homes, but you don't have to flaunt it in public where unsuspecting people are exposed to your depraved behavior. it's just sick and disgusting and does not belong in public.

i'm talking about, of course, basketball.

now, i suppose i fit the stereotype of the gay man who can't throw a ball (but i'm very good with a racket and shuttlecock). and while i enjoy tennis and volleyball and some other sports, i've never been that into the big three.

which is fine, except when the whole world goes gaga for the finals and everywhere you look, there's a tv devoting all day and night to b-ball and everyone is talking about who's gonna make it to the final four. i've had to endure it at the office, on the subway, in restaurants and bars--i mean, they were playing basketball on the tvs at the abbey last night. there is no escaping it.

i know i'm being a bit whiny about the whole thing, but it's not like i force my officemates to discuss ad nauseum the broadway season or the cross-cultural time experiences of the japanese versus the french.

white elephants in larchmont

now, some people come to los angeles for the weather. some for the vibrant ethnic enclaves. some to make it big in the world of entertainment.

as for me, i'm just happy to be able to buy the castoffs of those recently touched by realitydom.

des tailles

like many gay men in this country, i received my copy of this month's details in the mail this week. and, while flipping through the flippant articles (is there ever an article that lasts more than 5 columns of text?), i pondered like always why i even bother with this magazine.

normally, it's just little annoyances, like the style column. every month it can be boiled down to this: "don't wear X, you'll look like a wannabe/immature frat boy." be it cuff links, untucked shirts, hoodies with jackets, you can't wear it because we're all supposed to look like brooks brothers clones.

but this month, i was surprised to read a feature article (and by article, i mean about 6 paragraphs with some lovely typesetting to take up more space) on why using gay in the pejorative is okay. i don't want to project a personality onto the author, so i can't really say what his life experiences have been with minority discrimination and the politics of language (and since the author ostensibly wrote under pseudonym, i can't even do any research). but the author acted as if it were instictive to call things tacky and socially awkward gay and to in any way attack that usage was attacking nature. he (or she) didn't even bother to really address the issue of using the name of a historically oppressed minority as an adjective for this you don't like. most of the supporting data comes from asking a few friends of things that are gay in the lame sense.

now, i could be convinced by a good argument that such usage is okay generally, and certainly within context. but it is less the gist of the argument than the manner of its delivery--it was so slap-dash and matter-of-fact that i doubt that the author even cares to discover whether it's offensive or not.

out of the bleu

sometimes, you just have to fade away and disappear for a while. much like those flannel shirts you wore all the time in the early nineties that eventually made their way to the back of the closet and then into rags for polishing the silver, things of value just sorta slip away. there is a season, blah blah blah and all the rest of that crap.

yes, i've been gone. and yes, i am returning. will anyone care? i dunno, but more importantly, do i give a fuck?