Citysqwirl

Review: Brayden's Sweet Revenge

2012-01-26T12:03:00.001-05:00

Brayden's Sweet Revenge by Justin Luke Zirilli

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This short novel is as well-written and as energetic as the author's previous work, Gulliver Travels, but Brayden isn't nearly as likeable as Gulliver . . . in fact, Brayden is a horrifying sociopath. This is a rather unpleasant tale of confused revenge.

View all my reviews

Review: Ready Player One

2012-01-26T11:57:00.001-05:00

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating jump into the future to look back with nostalgia into the past. If you had any geeky interests in the 1980s (as I did, in spades), you'll very much enjoy the glut of gaming, music, movie, TV, and technology references in here. Particularly impressive is how well the story's complicated and virtual visuals are rendered so cinematically. And although this book is a geeky technophile's dream, the characterizations and emotion aren't significantly short-shrifted. Highly recommended for any gamer, as this novel comes closest to any literary equivalent I've ever read.

View all my reviews

Favorite Books: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

2012-01-08T08:03:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite books of all time is Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig. It was published in 1969, and won the Caldecott Medal in 1970. I was born late in 1969, and I don't remember the first time I was read this book, so my mother must've gotten it pretty early on. I still read it regularly, and it's become my standard favorite children's picture book, up there with Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is a frightening, magical story about a young donkey named Sylvester who likes collecting unusual pebbles. One day, while out walking alone on a rainy day, he finds a shiny red pebble, and while holding it, offhandedly wishes the rain would stop. The rain CEASES, and after a few tests, Sylvester realizes that the pebble grants wishes as long as he is holding it.

Thrilled about his discovery, Sylvester heads home with big plans for the pebble's magic, but on the way, he is spotted by a hungry lion. In panic, Sylvester doesn't think clearly, and to protect himself, wishes that he was a rock. And so he turns into a rock, safe from the lion, but with the pebble lying beside him, not quite touching him, Sylvester can't turn himself back into a donkey.

So Sylvester is stuck as a rock, unable to get home to his loving parents, unable to do anything but lie there and wait, powerless. That's the stuff of childhood nightmares -- being separated from home, transformed into something unrecognizable and immobile, with all the power in the universe lying right beside you but unreachable. By acting quickly without thinking, Sylvester traded one danger for something even worse.

I always found the worry on his parents' faces so touching as they start searching for him. It's wrenching how they slip into despair as Sylvester is nowhere to be found, even after asking all the kids in the neighborhood, the police, and sniffing dogs to search him out. And all the time, Sylvester is just less than a mile away, unable to return home. It hits home with every child how sad his parents felt. As Steig writes, "They were miserable. Life had no meaning for them any more."

The seasons pass, and Sylvester slips into the ennui of being a rock, sleeping so he won't feel "hopeless and unhappy". There's one snowy winter scene in which a wolf sits on the Sylvester-rock and "howled and howled because he was hungry." I always loved that so much -- the wolf crying out in hunger mirroring Sylvester's endless desire to return home. The illustration is white and cold, and just heartbreaking.

Finally, in Spring, Sylvester's parents go have a sad picnic, and through sheer coincidence, set up their umbrella and basket next to the Sylvester-rock, and eat right on top of him. They talk about him, but he can't respond, which is maddening. His mother even has a feeling that he is near. His father finds the red magic pebble, and puts it on top of the rock, saying how much Sylvester would have loved it for his collection.

Sylvester wishes he was "my real self again" and presto!, he returns to being a donkey. They rejoice in surprise, which will still reduce me to tears on occasion. Then they go home together, and have no need to use the pebble's magic, because, "for now, what more could they wish for? They all had all that they wanted."

In simple, direct language, Steig weaves a emotional, psychologically and philosophically complex tale that has never stopped resonating with me and millions of others. The story is deeply sad and quite terrifying, really, but the drawings have lots of humor, too, like the ducks in the river looking up in surprise when Sylvester wishes the rain away, the consternation on the face of the lion when Sylvester turns into a rock, and the dishes falling off Sylvester's back when he transforms back into a donkey.

Even as a child, I also knew it was funny that the police in town were drawn as pigs, but that's also caused the book to be banned in various places. Whatever -- it's a tiny subversive touch that only makes me love the book even more.

I've loved William Steig as a New Yorker cartoonist, too, and I've enjoyed some of his other picture books, but nothing comes close to the pure emotional wallop Sylvester and the Magic Pebble delivers with its short, delightfully illustrated story. Yes, Steig also wrote the book Shrek!, which the popular DreamWorks movies were based on, but for me, Sylvester's story is the one that really hits home.

It's a perfect children's book, and will always be one of my all-time favorites.

Gripe: Entropy

2012-01-07T15:08:00.000-05:00

Entropy
noun
1.Thermodynamics.
a.(on a macroscopic scale) a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy.
b.(in statistical mechanics) a measure of the randomness of the microscopic constituents of a thermodynamic system. Symbol: S
2.(in data transmission and information theory) a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted signal or message.
3.(in cosmology) a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain a state of maximum homogeneity in which all matter is at a uniform temperature (heat death).
4.a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration.
(from Dictionary.com)

Bear with me on this. While I did study the basics of Physics, it was in my senior year of high school about 25 years ago, so my understanding has become metaphorical over the years. Actually, my understanding probably started out metaphorical and generalized into inaccuracy. I love Physics and all the sciences, but I hit the Math wall hard, so this will be wonky at best.

I hate Entropy. As a control freak and perfectionist, uncertain, random, unusable energy is anathema. My tendency is always to specify and order as much as possible, to notice, classify, and remember, and Entropy, metaphorically at least, is an opposing force. It seems to be in league with chaos and dissipation, my sworn enemies.

It's the phrase "a measure of the energy that is not available for work" that really singes my short hairs, and makes me wonder how the energy of mental concentration and focus are quantified. Work is an applied transfer of energy, but it only counts as work if some change is made. As someone chronically short on energy -- I'm even an introvert, someone who social interactions drain of energy rather than stimulate -- the idea that there are physical forces withholding power built into the system just makes me feel exhausted.

Yes, I use the concept of Entropy as a rationalization of procrastination. When I cannot finish my work in a timely manner, I blame Entropy. Yes, that's probably illogical to the point of insanity, but that's what's going on.

The forces of Entropy are winning.

Retro Ad: Enjoli

2012-01-06T18:49:00.001-05:00

This was my favorite ad during my childhood. I loved it dearly when it first came out in 1978, and I've had the song (based on a Peggy Lee tune, I just found out) stuck in my head at some low simmering level for my entire existence since. I don't even know what the perfume smells like, and I don't care. My attraction for the ad was never about the perfume. I don't give a shit about perfume. In fact, I actively avoid smelling it. What the ad did was inculcate what I heard as rules for getting and keeping a man into my impressionable preteen gay boy brain.

With one lyrical stanza.

You know it. Go ahead, sing along.

I can bring home the bacon,
fry it up in a pan,
and never, never let you forget you're a man.
Because I'm a woman.
Enjoli.

There we have the supposed eternal triumvirate of how to please a male: working, cooking, and fucking. At least according to Madison Avenue in the 1970s. The message is both progressively feminist and retrograde paternalist simultaneously, and horrifically fabulous.

Of course I didn't consciously realize the effect this commercial had on me until years later, when I started attending a gay youth group (GLYNY) on Saturday mornings in NYC at the age of 16. One morning as we all sat around in a large circle in the gay community center, one skinny teen drag queen, apropos of nothing, suddenly stood up and slowly recited the lyrics. He was wearing a gold lame gown and a gold headband. We let him have his moment in the spotlight. The noise the surrounding group of young gays made was my first introduction to our communal gay gasp -- that sound of approving shock followed by a roar of laughter. The baby queen calmly sat down again, and I understood that we'd all been brainwashed and there was probably no undoing the damage.

It had been done.
Enjoli.

Michele Bachmann Hoisted by Her Own Petard

2012-01-05T14:29:00.002-05:00

Ding, dong, the witch is dead.

I'm deeply thrilled that Michele Bachmann had a poor showing in Iowa and had to drop out of the presidential race. Just looking into her crazy eyes always flooded my mind with sudden images of concentration camps, nuclear fireballs, and being forced to have sex while sitting on top of Faye Dunaway. So good riddance.

While I would love to believe that the Iowans rejected her pandering, retro religiosity, outright lies, and hate spew, that doesn't explain why Rick Santorum did so well with the same voters. After all, he preaches nearly the same closed-minded God-buggered inanity that she does. So why embrace the Frothy Mix and reject Crazy Eyes?

Michelle Goldberg over at the Daily Beast has an excellent article, Did Sexism Do Michele Bachmann In?, that offers a partial explanation. Basically, Goldberg suggests that the religious zealots Bachmann courted with her anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-reason, anti-progressive line of bullshit actually believed her . . . and sent the uppity woman packing back to the kitchen where she can support her obvious homo of a husband and not try to run the country. I'm paraphrasing.

While I nurture my own misogyny (don't get me started on girls in gay bars), I would have voted for Hillary Clinton for president in a heartbeat. And I'm really impressed with our senator in New York, Kirsten Gillibrand. Because they are rational, forward thinking human beings. Hillary gave one of the best gay rights speeches I've ever heard. Not that that's enough of a reason to vote for her, but it helps.

My first thought on reading the headline "Did Sexism Do Michele Bachmann In?" was OF COURSE NOT. It was her madness that did her in. But after reading Goldberg's article, I realized, yes, yes, ultra-conservative voters would indeed follow the sexism that Bachmann herself championed.

Ahh . . . karma's a bitch, ain't it?

Celebrity Crush: Ian Somerhalder

2012-01-04T13:09:00.001-05:00

Ian Somerhalder (born December 8, 1978) has been one of my main celebrity crushes for a decade now, since his role as the snotty gay rich kid Paul Denton in the 2002 movie The Rules of Attraction. I fell for his amazingly symmetrical features, intense blue eyes, and of course those arched eyebrows. I love his slender, muscular body, too, but it's his attitude that really gets me, that beautiful troublemaker's intelligent rebellion with a cocky assurance despite obvious interior loneliness and insecurity.

Plus, in Rules of Attraction, he dances around in his underwear. Irresistible. I'm not made of wood, people!

He was also cute playing against Hayden Christensen in Life as a House.

Then, in 2004, Ian was cast as Boone in the TV show Lost, and I watched avidly . . . until Boone was killed in the 20th episode. I gave up on that show immediately.

Happily, Ian is now on The Vampire Diaries, where I can watch his sexy cockiness as the undead Damon Salvatore to my heart's content. It's also a good show, with breakneck plotting and complicated, likable characters.

Even if Ian does overuse his devastating smirk occasionally.

Ian's also a supporter of the LGBT youth group, The Trevor Project. But supposedly dating his Vampire Diaries co-star, Nina Dobrev. I heart Nina on the show, but if he ever gets sick of her . . .

I'm here, Ian. Call me!

Fabulously Magical Biblical Moment: The Crow of the Cock

2012-01-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

And he said to him, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death." He said, "I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me."
LUKE 22:33-34

Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. Peter followed at a distance; and when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a maid, seeing him as he sat in the light and gazing at him, said, "This man also was with him." But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know him." And a little later some one else saw him and said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not." And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, "Certainly this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are saying." And immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly.
LUKE 22:54-62

Grammar Lesson: "Over" Versus "More Than"

2012-01-02T15:38:00.001-05:00

While decrying the distinction in usage of "over" to mean "more than" is perhaps a losing battle (even a lost battle), I will never succumb to such imprecision in language. They are both widely used interchangeably to signify "in excess of," but, simply put, "over" is a spatial term while "more than" is a term of quantification. That is, "more than" is an expression of extra countable amount, while "over" expresses the concept of being relatively higher in physical space.

For example, these are correct:

Wendell owned more than two hundred My Little Pony collectible figurines.

The dark cloud loomed ominously over the head of Lourdes.

NOT:

There are usually over twenty ingredients in mole sauce.

It's MORE THAN, people! MORE THAN! There are usually more than twenty ingredients in mole sauce!

Using "more than" instead of the erroneous "over" to signify a greater quantity has become popular because it is shorter, but rarely does using the correct "more than" make a sentence sound awkward.

When I was a children's book editor, I ended up specializing in coloring books, and often we would need to include a sales burst on the cover trumpeting our inclusion of stickers or temporary tattoos or window clings or an iron-on or whatnot. Because of the smallish size of the burst (in a star shape), there wasn't room to fit "MORE THAN 50 FUZZY STICKERS!" comfortably. However, I absolutely refused to let a book I worked on be released with "OVER 50 FUZZY STICKERS!" emblazoned on it. We compromised by putting "50+ FUZZY STICKERS!" on instead. A poor solution, but at least the burst text was still in the realm of quantity.

Yes, I understand that often "over" can be seen as a metaphorical usage, such as in these incorrect examples:

The temperature in India is over three hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Mt. Washington is over 6,200 feet high.

In both examples, "more than" would still be correct, even though temperature climbs higher on a thermometer, and mountains rise into the sky. We are still talking about quantity, not direct spatial relationships. Mt. Washington is NOT over 6,200 feet high, or the mountain could be misread to start at 6,201 feet above sea level.

Yes, I realize that most books on grammar and style accept both usages. They are wrong. And they are pussies.

So, to recap:

"Over" = comparitive spatial relationship signifying "above".

"More than" = quantitative expression meaning "in excess of".

Get it right, people. Get it right.

Recipe: Soft Ginger Snap Cookies

2012-01-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

I was told to bring cookies to a New Year's Eve party last night, and there's really no bakery in my neighborhood that I know that makes good cookies. So I decided to bake some. I wasn't in the mood for my usual standbys, chocolate chip, basic butter cookies, or peanut butter cookies. I thought about making cookies with a jam center, but they seemed a little precious to me. After a search online for cookie recipes, I found something on AllRecipes.com, instructions on how to make soft ginger snap cookies.

The plan was to drink martinis at the party, so I figured ginger would go well with those cocktails. And I was intrigued by the "soft" part of the description. So the plan was a go.

Here's the basic recipe from the site:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup molasses
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Additional sugar

Directions

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in molasses. Combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, salt and nutmeg; gradually add to creamed mixture. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until dough is easy to handle.
Roll into 1-in. balls; roll in sugar. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 8-12 minutes or until puffy and lightly browned. Cool for 1 minute before removing to wire racks.

However, the recipe as listed makes 66 cookies! Happily, AllRecipes has a handy-dandy portion calculator that allows you to put in the amount of servings you'd like, and it recalculates the ingredients for you. I put in 25 cookies, and it spat out the new amounts. This led to some strange sizes, like 7/8ths of an egg. But I figured it was close enough for my limited baking skills.

I also didn't know what "cream butter and sugar" meant, so that took a little research. It turns out that "cream" just means blend and aerate the butter with a mixer, and add the sugar slowly. Okay, I could do that.

So I went shopping. My crappy supermarket up here in Washington Heights didn't have any small bottles of ground ginger for sale, and I ended up having to buy a 10 OZ container of ginger! That's enormous. I'm set for ginger for life. I may have to search out other ginger recipes now because I am swimming in ginger.

Back at home, all the steps went fine, although I read "teaspoon" as "tablespoon" in my hurry and added too much baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg. I scooped out as much as I could once I realized the mistake, but I was now deep in inexactitude. Baking is a science!

I didn't have time to wait the full hour to refrigerate the dough -- I only had about 25 minutes to spare. But the semi-chilled dough was easy to manipulate, rolling it into balls and coating them with sugar.

The actual baking went fine, too. The trick, apparently, is to wait until the surface of each cookie cracks. I think I did this right.

This is what they're supposed to look like (from AllRecipes):

Mine looked more like this (also from AllRecipes):

Oh, well. I don't know why mine didn't flatten out. The recipe says to cook until they're cracked and puffy, but mine stayed puffy. Perhaps that was because of my error with the baking soda.Anyway, they tasted good. Too much spice in them -- kind of a wallop of spice, actually -- but otherwise pretty tasty. If I ever try them again, I'll be more exact with the spice measurements!

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all this ground ginger.

Review: The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

2011-12-27T17:42:00.001-05:00

The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazing, fantastic, stunning, and yet still a bit of a shaky start to the groundbreaking Sandman series. Gaiman had to give a lot of backstory and step out of the DC roots (and overcome a Frank Miller influence) before the series really takes flight. Still, there are fabulous moments throughout, the art is gorgeous (especially the breathtaking scenes in Hell), and the final conversation between Dream and Death is one of the highlights in comic history. Even with its flaws in narrative pacing, this, like any of Gaiman's Sandman titles, is exquisitely inspiring and generates awe of the power of storytelling.

View all my reviews

Review: Gulliver Travels

2011-12-27T04:35:00.001-05:00

Gulliver Travels by Justin Luke Zirili

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An enjoyably energetic peek into the life of a contemporary, early-20s gay guy who has just moved to NYC and his struggles and triumphs while he navigates the difficult job market and wild nightlife. Some of the characterizations are a little slight, and some of the plot twists are a little unsatisfying, but I can't fault the entertaining rendering of a specific and exciting world.

View all my reviews

Review: Let the Great World Spin

2011-12-15T12:37:00.001-05:00

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The prose is exquisite and sensitive throughout, with wonderful insights into the humanity of all the well-delineated characters, but the story creeps along, and the whole book is seriously slow-moving.

View all my reviews

Blast from the Past

2011-11-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

Ah, New Order. Still my favorite band after all these years. This is a live version of "Temptation" performed in 1984 at the BBC Radio 1 studios. Something was wrong with the headphone feedback or sound levels, I think, because Bernard Sumner seems quite irritated. He's still adorable and amazing, though, and I LOVE those shorts. I had such a crush on Bernie back then -- I've even named my new kitten after him now!Something has always fascinated me about Gillian, too. She always seems so matter-of-fact about the wash of gorgeous synth she's creating back there. I think the band's sound suffered when she left to take care of her and Stephen's kids. But now I've heard she's back with them, at least for a few concerts in Europe. Although Peter Hook left, so that's certainly a major component missing. Which is more important to the overall New Order sound -- the synths or the bass?

Bernard

2011-10-28T06:05:00.000-04:00

So, a couple of months ago, I got a new kitten and named him Bernard. Mostly he gets called Bernie. Or Boogie, as he seemingly never stops running and jumping around. He's a sweet little guy, really, with gorgeous topaz eyes, but he's also a pain in the ass right now because of his completely reasonable kitten hyperactivity. My most common utterance to him is "NO!"

My older cat, Mabel, officially hates his guts, but Bernie chases her around and it's good that she's getting some exercise. I also think she secretly likes him a little, certainly more than she liked my previous old cat, Gladys, who died in July. Mabel loathed Gladys for nearly a decade, and couldn't walk past her without whacking her in the face. I pulled claws out of Gladys's chin on a weekly basis. So far, Mabel hasn't clawed Bernie seriously, and I've even spotted them sniffing one another's noses in relative calm. This gives me hope that perhaps they will one day get along, maybe even cuddle when it gets quite cold. I think it helps that he's a male kitty, and so the female feline dominance struggle doesn't apply like it did with Gladys.

So Bernie's a cute, sweet kitty, very smiley and loving, although part of me wishes he'd grow up and calm down already, while another part of me is sad that he won't be a kitten forever.

Here are some videos I made of Bernie, with a special appearance in the second one by mean ol' Mabel.

Meet Bernie

Bernie and Mabel Share a Moment

Bernie Dance

Review: The Marriage Plot

2011-10-27T02:49:00.001-04:00

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A day after I finished this, I'm still not sure about my overall reaction. There was much to like, but also a lingering letdown in the aftermath. First of all, The Marriage Plot is about real, believable, recognizable people, with realistic concerns and emotions. That's rare enough to recommend the book. The East Coast settings in the 1980s were also well handled, with appropriate details given but not too much as to overkill or sound like a research project. The story is engaging, with a strong narrative sense throughout, and anyone who studied English Literature, as I did, will recognize the academic, critical attitudes and follow the references. If you don't enjoy the intricacies of literary criticism, and don't have a grasp of semiotics, you may be lost for large sections of this novel. But I was happy, since I agreed with the literary character's approval of stories for people rather than books about books.

While this novel is more of an emotional study of relationships and self-actualization than an intellectual exercise, the characters are all intellectuals, and that may be off-putting for some, but I felt right at home with these (young) people. And while I can sympathize with the difficulties of maintaining a relationship with someone who is manic-depressive, the sections focusing on the vagaries of mental illness did feel tiresome after too long.

I also could relate to the religious journey one of the character undertakes, to an extent -- the quest to find meaning in some spiritual realm is one of the true tropes of the novel, perhaps even more than "the marriage plot," the search for a soul mate. So I could see where Eugenides was going, trying to have these two main thrusts of literature converge, but I'm not sure it was satisfying. Perhaps, of course, Eugenides is saying that our modern condition IS dissatisfaction, and our literature should reflect that, but I'm not convinced that's why I read novels. Also, the section focusing most strongly on the religious quest, the period taking place in India, was excerpted and revised as a short story in the New Yorker, which I read previously. While I enjoyed the story in the magazine, and it certainly whetted my appetite to buy and read this book, I was surprised to find myself disappointed when encountering the same section again in the novel. It was distracting to try to remember the discrepancies between the two versions, and the retread unfamiliarity dulled that section's effect.

Perhaps what prevents this from being a quite excellent book is simply a lack of cumulative potency. I was engaged by the characters and their stories while reading, and I was never bored, but I didn't take the narrative to heart. In its search for a contemporary version of marital or spiritual fulfillment, instead settling for a deconstruction of those novelistic conventions, I think it misses some archetypal power that sustained the original literature it strives to reinvent or comment on. Yes, our modern lives may not be epic, and so religious conversion or a marriage of love and fortune may no longer fully apply as a happy ending, but that doesn't stop us from craving personal mythos. If you want to deconstruct the romantic dream, another must be supplied, or we're disappointed, and perhaps bereft.

View all my reviews

Review: Containment

2011-10-21T17:22:00.001-04:00

Containment by Christian Cantrell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Containment is a rather nifty science fiction novel, rife with fascinating ideas and twists. It's heavy on the science, and engineering geeks should get a big kick out of it, although environmentalists will get just as much from it. The best part is how well-thought out all the concepts are -- the science is believable, and intricately detailed but rarely boring, with some very difficult explanations boiled down to easily-digestible nuggets. The biggest problem is the characterizations, which are very slowly and minimally delineated, so that the emotional content of the narrative is buried under the hard science and ideas. The story does build to some feeling, but not nearly as much as would have been possible if the characters weren't so lightly sketched-in. It would have helped if the novel hadn't been written in such a flat narrative style, with so little dialogue, but readers (particularly young-adult readers) will find much to enjoy in the cool scientific concepts and well-described setting.

View all my reviews

Review: The Hangman's Daughter

2011-10-18T11:10:00.001-04:00

The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While the meticulously-researched historical milieu of 17th Century small-town Bavaria is impressive and a fascinating window on the time, especially regarding the cultural, religious, and professional lives of its citizens, and I personally love a good witch trial investigated by a progressive executioner and aspiring doctor, the narrative itself is pretty poky through most of the book, with a long, slow middle, and with a solution to the mystery that's telegraphed hours ahead of time. Yes, the story picks up some nice suspense in the last acts, with all the threads coming nicely to an exciting boil, but the payoff is limited. Besides the excellent setting, the best part of the book is the characters, with likable main figures and a hissingly despicable villain. However, those characters are let down with some stiff dialogue (perhaps an issue of the translation), and quite a lot of dragging, repetitive narrative. Descriptions are decent throughout, with solid narrative prose, but it was definitely a long haul getting through the investigations and waiting in the middle of the story to get to the more involving final set-piece.

Luckily, some nicely bloody and viscerally violent moments perk up the story, resuscitating it when it drags -- the book does star an executioner, after all, who is also a torturer (and, straining belief slightly, an educated herbal healer).

While difficult to recommend because of the story's pace and success as a mystery, nevertheless I enjoyed the well-rendered and researched environment.

View all my reviews

Review: Numbers

2011-09-29T12:22:00.001-04:00

Numbers by John Rechy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dated, rather repetitive, and with a character who comes off as more emotionally stunted, psychologically backward, and depressing rather than engaging, Numbers nevertheless has some lovely descriptions, and certainly serves as a fascinating historical record of the pre-AIDS era. The sex is more perfunctory than titillating (as supported by the plot and characterization), but there's a lot of it, and its honesty and directness still feels fresh. My favorite part of the book was the naturalistic and believable dialogue -- Rechy is extremely talented at rendering character through offhand conversation. It's a quick read, but ultimately more important as a document than as a relevant, enjoyable entertainment. I rated it an extra star for its frankness, dialogue, and significance in the gay fiction canon.

View all my reviews

Review: Habibi

2011-09-24T15:02:00.001-04:00

Habibi by Craig Thompson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh My God. Gorgeous. Almost more like an illuminated Islamic manuscript than a graphic novel, Habibi has a wonderful, meaningful, and difficult romance at its center, but it encompasses so many aspects of creation -- of narrative, of the universe, of language, of art, of life -- that it echoes over all the waters. A leap forward in comic art.

View all my reviews

Review: A Visit from the Goon Squad

2011-05-21T11:19:00.002-04:00

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An intricately-constructed, resonant, and dreamlike read, about believable people in real places and times (even when stepping into the future). Very impressive and immersive.

The Night I Met Gianni Versace

2011-02-18T19:11:00.003-05:00

Oh, memory -- you're so random.

I was walking in the general direction of home along Bleecker St. this week, and as I passed Broadway heading west, I saw the odd triangular awning above the entrance to the condo complex at 77 Bleecker. A wealthy ex-boyfriend of mine had lived in there during my senior year at NYU, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with remembering a moment that took place in that building that hadn't resurfaced in decades.

I'll say my ex-boyfriend's name was Jarad, because that's the first name that pops into my head. Jarad was beautiful, tall, snobby, fashionable, Jewish, exceedingly well-hung, and idle. He would have cigarettes delivered from the corner deli. I'm not sure he ever went to class, and I cannot remember his major. Art History? Hotel Management? It didn't really matter, as he had enough money to ensure he never had to work a day in his life, although to his credit, he had learned from his father's suicidal depression as an aimless heir that some kind of purpose in life was necessary. Jarad never had pocket cash -- he would buy $40,000 works of art on a whim, but I had to buy him drinks at the bar.

What else about Jarad? He drank a bottle of vodka -- in tumbler glasses, neat -- every two days. I learned to drink it that way, too, and soon I could distinguish between the tastes of vodka brands with my eyes closed. Only the first sip burns.

Jarad probably had had a nose job as a teenager, as it was a little too perfectly formed, but I never got him to admit this. He would concede that he'd had his ears surgically pinned back, but he couldn't very well deny that, since the scars were visible behind his ears, usually hidden under his curls of soft black hair.

He and I lasted together no longer than three months; it may have been merely two. Our intense relationship flared up in late winter of 1991 and we barely made it into spring. At the time, I was extremely hard-working and decidedly unfashionable, even crunchy. I suspect he was only into me at all because I was a writer and was going through a mystical, spiritual phase that intrigued him. Early after we met, he got me drunk, and had a friend of ours shave off my beard, but there was little he could do about my fashion sense. It takes serious money and interest to be fashionable, and I had neither -- I was making pocket money interning at a publishing company, and I didn't see what was wrong with wearing patched jeans and an untucked button-down over a t-shirt every day.

Before we burned out, though, I spent many nights at his spacious, modern condo, which was a ground floor duplex with a lower garden level. Jarad's roommate lived downstairs -- she was a compact, snidely sarcastic, busty woman our age named something like Astrid who didn't go to school, but was as wealthy and fashion-oriented as Jarad was. I only saw her in brief glimpses as she passed through his upper level to take the stairs to her own lower floor with its own amenities.

Astrid was sort-of dating a tall, perfectly muscular, stunning black dude who was a model and dressed like a rock star. I say "sort-of" because he was semi-gay. I think mostly they did coke together downstairs and then attended fabulous parties. Anyway, one evening as Astrid and her model passed through the upper level, Jarad and I were in the kitchen, and the model bragged to Jarad that he was walking in the fashion show of someone named Gianni Versace.

"Who's that?" I asked.

Astrid gave me the most withering look I'd ever experienced. "Oh, Gene," she moaned, as though my question summed up every quality she'd ever suspected I lacked. Jarad and the model laughed, and I felt stupid, but also self-righteous.

"Well, how should I know?" I asked.

Still laughing at me, Astrid and the model vanished to their own quarters, and, stinging from the snub self-importantly, I pushed it out of my mind.

A night or so later, Jarad and I had the apartment to ourselves all evening, and after fooling around, he went to bed. I've never slept well, and I was freaking out a little over Jarad's offer to "keep me" after I graduated, which I'd refused, needing to be my own man always, so I got up in the wee hours to go sit on the couch in the living room and smoke and read a book. I think I was reading Tom Robbins at the time, maybe Jitterbug Perfume. As I thought we had the place to ourselves for the night, I was only wearing a t-shirt and baby-blue briefs.

It was probably around 3AM when the front door suddenly opened and Astrid, the model, and a short, grinning, portly man burst in the condo. They were all smiling the too-wide smiles that are only instigated by that particular combo of booze, coke, and the experience of an absolutely fabulous evening.

I sat up straight on the couch, suddenly remembering that I was not wearing pants.

"Gene, this is Gianni," Astrid said.

"Hi," I said.

"Ciao," Gianni replied. He took in my package bulging in my underwear and grinned even wider.

Then the trio breezed downstairs and I went back to reading my book, feeling both flushed with odd titillation and terribly embarrassed.

And that was the night I met Gianni Versace.

Review: Lost Treasure

2011-02-02T15:13:00.003-05:00

Lost Treasure by Kate Sherwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lost Treasure is a very nice gay romance, which is both its strength and its weakness. The story of childhood sweethearts reuniting in a beautiful location (a lake house in Canada) decades later is familiar and effective enough, and I admit that I got a little teary when they finally get together. I'm revealing that as a spoiler, but it's not a surprise, and neither is the life decision the main character Kyle/Casey makes at the end of the book. Even with the major plot points telegraphed very early and the predictable twists (I thought things like, "Third act difficulty in the romance coming now..."), I was involved enough in the characters and story to be moved.

It helps enormously that Kate Sherwood has a crystal clear and lovely smooth writing style, and that she's adept at dialogue, characterizations, and descriptions. Some of the "meaningful" metaphorical layering is clumsy, but the writing is vivid and soothingly comfortable throughout. Because the voice is so effortless, there's a lot I relaxed into and accepted easily rather than being jarred by clunky exposition.

The characters and their relationships are often too perfect, to the point of making them dismayingly idealized, but I also swallowed the romantic fantasy and allowed myself to dream of experiencing such an idyllic situation: settling down in a gorgeous location with a hunky carpenter and his charming son. It worked, I was touched by the fantasy, but I felt a bit suckered afterward.

Squirrel Appreciation Day

2011-01-21T16:52:00.000-05:00

Appreciate me.

Hey, everybody, today, January 21, 2011, is Squirrel Appreciation Day! How will you celebrate?

Not everyone appreciates squirrels, for sure, but I've got a deep fondness in my heart for my little fuzzy totem animals. A totem animal is the creature that you, for whatever reason, believe best represents your spirit self, and perhaps acts as your animal guide. Your totem animal is generally discovered by some close encounter with said animal, or perhaps it's representative of where you were born, or expresses some intrinsic inner truth about you.

They also make excellent photo-bombers.

I'm from NYC, so there aren't too many animals to choose from: cats, dogs, rats, roaches, pigeons, sparrows, mice, squirrels, the occasional lost coyote and nesting hawk; that's about the extent of our fauna around here. I'm also smallish, furry, nervous, twitchy, sly, bitey when cornered, and extremely storage-oriented. And I like nuts. Alas, I don't have a big fuzzy tail, but we can't have everything.

I appreciate squirrels for their tenacity, adaptability, survival instincts in all weather, ability to scale trees and buildings, and tireless preparation, even if they sometimes forget where they stashed their nuts and seeds. Also for their adorable cuteness and their humor. Squirrels are funny. They look funny running around, loping in undulating strides. They run up trees head-first and come down again head-first. They easily look amusingly shocked and surprised. They chitter in alarm and yet sometimes can be so friendly, running over and peering up at you with their curious eyes.

Oh, I'd nom you so hard. . .

It's also quite amusing how squirrels drive my cats absolutely bonkers when they visit the fire escape outside my bedroom window.

Yes, the only thing that really differentiates them from rats is their big plume of a fluffy tail, but what a tail it is: graceful, expressive, festive, and excessive in ornamentation. Gorgeous.

Mystery meat.

I've never eaten squirrel (that I'm aware of), but I'm told that it is quite flavorful, more like duck in its gamy fattiness than chicken. I can't imagine that there's a lot of meat on these little beasts, though.

I'm the owner of many squirrel keepsakes and stuffed animals and tokens, mainly because I've identified with the squirrel for so long that people often give me squirrel-related objects as gifts. Which I love, and will keep forever. (See storage-oriented above.)

Most obviously, I have a small tribal-type tattoo on my forearm of a squirrel. It's the same image you can see above in my blogger photo. Sometimes I forget it's there, but when I do remember, I very much enjoy looking at it.

Too much appreciation!

So next time you're in your backyard, strolling through a park, or wandering in the woods, take some time to chitter back at the squirrels and say hello. I've noticed that most of the time, the squirrels will stop short and return your greeting with a curious gaze, before returning to their busy, laborious lives.

Squirrels, I appreciate you. Rock on!

Review: Shantaram

2011-01-19T16:19:00.005-05:00

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Shantaram was given to me as a gift from my youngest brother for my birthday -- the first Kindle book I've gotten as a present!

It's an amazing, vividly-rendered journey through the gangster underworld of Bombay, India in the early 1980s, with a scary detour into Afghanistan during the war with the Russians. It's VERY long and intricately detailed, with poetic, purplish prose, but, despite the rough and tough sections (the protagonist's stints in prison are brutal), it's ultimately a quest for redemption, forgiveness, and love, with exquisitely-rendered settings, true-sounding dialogue, fascinating philosophical debates, and prickly humor.

Butt Johnson Solo Show!

2011-01-07T18:48:00.002-05:00

Starchitects

Butt Johnson, one of my favorite artists in the world, both personally and creatively, is having his first solo show, entitled The Name of the Rose, at the CRG Gallery in Chelsea, NY from January 14, 2011 to February 19, 2011, with an opening reception on January 14, 2011 from 6-8 PM. I'm definitely going to be there.

Butt Johnson's current medium is ballpoint pen on paper, and both his small- and large-scale drawings are intricately detailed (some would say to the point of obsessiveness, recalling the almost lost art of engraving) and gorgeous. Quite a few of them reference the works of Old Masters, but with modern pop-culture content, raising the commonplace subject matter to iconic status, or re-contextualizing the familiar objects as historical, even archeological remnants of a lost society. Playing with the nostalgia of the near past, Butt Johnson sometimes pushes the objects into the distant past, where they resonate with longing (and humor) and elevate the detritus of our disposable culture to momento mori.

Et in Arcadia Ego

These illustrations work as the darkest kind of joke, even more bleakly evocative and hilarious because of the intense formalist craftsmanship on display.

Other works showcase culture clashes in fragmented still lives, blending Islamic flourishes with French, Spirograph, and Victorian patterns and gorgeously rendered flowers to create a disorienting, shifting blend that reflects our increasingly global worldview, while also tackling the bloody, violent, and explosive acts of terror that attempt at melding has fomented on the world stage.

Untitled Floral Pastiche IV (Rose)

The most common first question first-time viewers ask when viewing Johnson's work is, "How long did that take?" A big part of the charm and impressiveness of the drawings is the obvious painstaking effort that has gone into creating these unique and beautiful objects -- the degree of difficulty of the work only increases the art's potency, drama, and, perhaps especially, humor. That so much time, care, thought, and art-historical context have gone into these representations suffuses each illustration with the bejeweled shimmer of significance, despite and also because of the contrapuntal mundanity of some of the subject matter.

I adore it all. Go see the show.

Published Poetry!

2010-12-27T11:54:00.001-05:00

Two of my poems, a longer one called Five Dead Women, and a shorter one entitled Taliesin, have been published on the Caper Literary Journal website.

They did a terrific job with layout, and I'm very pleased with the way they look on the site. Caper Literary Journal is also just a cool site in general: check it out!

Project Runway Season 8 Finale -- a Defense of Gretchen's Collection

2010-10-29T03:12:00.003-04:00

Wow, shocker on the Project Runway finale tonight, eh? The boards all over the internet are abuzz about how our beloved Mondo was robbed, and how Gretchen is an evil, manipulative bitch who paraded out a line of shit-colored, cheap clothes only suitable for second-hand stores in some small prairie town.

But I must disagree.

I'm a huge Mondo fan, and he was my far-and-away favorite when I began watching tonight. All throughout the season, I've been deeply impressed by Mondo's use of contrasting colors and patterns and his cool, fun, happy aesthetic that often made me grin just looking at his clothes coming down the runway. His clothes seemed alive and electric.

And of course, his revelation that he was HIV+ was one of the most emotional and powerful moments ever on Project Runway. I have no problem admitting that I sobbed and keened during that episode, overwhelmed with feeling for that strange young man who made such gorgeous fashion.

Gretchen, on the other hand, only filled me with antipathy all season long. She was nosy, bossy, insulting to all the other designers (and TIM!) in a thoughtless, offhand manner, and she appeared over-confident in a way that can only mask deep-seated insecurity riddled with jealousy. I wasn't so impressed with her clothes, either -- during the season, so much of it was messy and drab and simple in a way that didn't impress me at all.

All throughout this final episode, I was worried about all three designer's collections when they showed the pieces in closeup. Andy's felt too old and safe. Gretchen's patterns looked ugly and flat. Mondo's whole line just looked messy. I didn't know who to root for anymore, although Mondo remained my favorite.

But then, during the final runway show, I was surprised to actually have a positive reaction to Gretchen's collection's earthiness. There was a Taos-type spirituality there that I felt strongly and clearly. The new-agey music helped, as did the sun-kissed styling. Overall, this seemed like a new kind of crunchy -- a dynamic illumination of that strangely purified presence one feels in a desert on a spirit-guide quest -- but mixed with an urban hipness that made it feel modern and current.

No, of course I didn't love her granny panties. But the patterns and fabrics and colors suddenly came to electric life with the models' movements, and there was a through-line of spiritual power that I couldn't ignore.

Then Mondo showed his collection. And I was disappointed. His collection seemed predictable and stuck in some familiar pop-art aesthetic. It didn't sing on the runway, but stayed confused and heavy. He did himself a disservice by sticking to low-res Atari houndstooth patterns and mismatching them in a way that went past "fun" and into "goofy". I loved his combinations of colors and patterns throughout the season, but I didn't see that kind of play in this final collection. And dragging in a tired Day of the Dead feel didn't help, either. Yes, I realize that he was influenced by his heritage, but I've seen edgier and more interestingly colorful Day of the Dead designs in tourist trap stores in Mexico. It pains me to say it, but it was kind of a flat mess of a collection.

In a completely unexpected way, I had to agree with Nina Garcia and Michael Kors in feeling that Gretchen's collection added something new to this moment in fashion -- a spiritual, earthy emotional resonance -- that Mondo's lacked with his overly-familiar and forced pop edge.

I hate to admit it, because I was rooting for Mondo wholeheartedly up until tonight, but Gretchen won.

Review: Angel Time

2010-10-04T10:58:00.005-04:00

Angel Time by Anne Rice

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love reading Anne Rice'sbooks, but I'm not unaware of her faults, especially in the books written in the past decade. Like a great many of her books, Angel Time starts off painfully slowly, and I almost gave up during a long, boring flashback to the protagonist's past, which was written (purposefully, I believe) in the most generalized and impersonal manner possible. The first half of the book was a tedious slog, first detailing the alienated life of a young, successful hitman (written as an account of intense loves and hates like those of a cocaine addict's), then nearly coming to a screeching halt in the neutral recitation of his history from the POV of an angel. I cannot emphasize enough how boring this flashback is -- it's pure exposition, while seemingly constructing an idealized, somewhat unbelievable character off the cuff.

But I kept going, because I've come to expect from Anne Rice that she will make something of her tiresome setup and suddenly soar. She's done this many times in previous books, particularly in her novel The Tale of the Body Thief. . . she drags the reader through seemingly endless fictional apparatus, and then open up into a fascinating tale of something ecstatic and otherworldly. Which is what she does here, too. The protagonist reconciles with a visiting angel, and becomes his human vessel on Earth, whenever he's needed in time.

So suddenly the protagonist has a religious conversion (naturally, given Rice's own return to Christianity this decade), and is sent back to Norwich, England in 1257 AD to come to the aid of the town's persecuted Jewry while disguised as a Dominican friar.

This tale has legs. Rice excels at breathing life into historical eras, and her Medieval England is awash in fascinating detail and vivid scenery. Suddenly there is a real plot, with dangerous consequences for the historical present and our future. (It reminded me a bit of A Swiftly Tilting Planetby Madeline L'Engle.) I was fully engrossed and invested in the story and characters.

So much so that the return to the present, and to the protagonist's internal whining, was a letdown. Subsequent sequels are supposed to tackle other historical sojourns, so that's good, and will keep me reading the series.

The writing throughout is in Rice's usual overheated emotional style, both the boring and interesting sections, although she's simplified the prose, as she did in her Christ the Lordseries. When she soars, she really does reach rapturous, rhapsodic heights, but this book stayed dully earthbound for far too long.

Review: Lord of the White Hell - Book Two

2010-09-23T17:39:00.006-04:00

Lord of the White Hell - Book Two by Ginn Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is definitely Part 2 (as opposed to Book 2) of the Lord of the White Hell story, since the beginning of this book doesn't even recap anything that happened in the first book (review here) -- it just jumps right in where the first book left off.

And I got absorbed into the story again very quickly. The details and setting were again vividly and cinematically rendered, and the characters were as relatable, with even more complexity added to their personalities.

Best of all, the fantasy magic grew in importance and scope in the second book, becoming a lot more imaginative, complicated, and significant to the story with personalized, individualized powers. There are magical training scenes in this part, too, which I almost always love to find in fantasy novels.

There's much less should-I-or-shouldn't-I waffling about the gay romance at the story's core, and the romance settles down to deal with the complexities of a relationship, with the drama coming from a culture clash rather than pretend diffidence for the sake of self-preservation. The sexual content leaps forward, too, with believably intimate scenes that comfortably straddle the line between too graphic and too demure.

While the sense of danger and tension about truly high stakes for the characters has been amped up potently for this part compared to the first book, the conflicts could still have been ratcheted up even higher leading to the climax, which would have made the final scenes more satisfyingly emotional. The conclusion was fitting, but not surprising.

And this book's cover is distractingly ugly, too.

Overall, the two books that make up Lord of the White Hell are highly recommended for anyone who would enjoy a well-written gay fantasy novel. Books in this sub-genre are rare enough that I usually even recommend the poorly-written ones, and it's a relief to be able to finally recommend one as simply good.

Review: The Hunger Games

2010-09-09T16:32:00.012-04:00

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, what a rollercoaster of a book. In clean, simple prose, we're drawn in quickly to the characters and sympathize with the protagonist effortlessly, and become involved in the twisty, headlong plot. The writing is a little TOO vernacular -- it's a bit strange that teenagers of a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, especially an underclass, don't have their own pervasive slang -- but it's immensely readable.

The plot moves so breathlessly that it's easy to overlook how well-plotted The Hunger Games is. The events and twists come so fast that they become expected, even inevitable.

The most impressive thing to me was the setting. The world of Panem, and the interior of the arena, are clearly drawn with specific details and never lose their credibility. The same goes for the rules of the Hunger Games -- everything is fully believable and quickly sketched in, answering almost all questions before they arise. It seems easy, even offhand, but it takes an incredible amount of planning and plotting and consideration to make the final product seem so coherent.

My biggest criticism has to do with the originality of the story. The book reminds me of The Long Walk by Stephen King (under the name Richard Bachman), with some of Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood mixed in. They're both excellent books, so the source ideas are more than solid. While Suzanne Collins certainly adds her own take on the ideas of a competition to the death in a dystopian future -- and runs with it -- it's hard to shake memories of those stories and the references linger.

I'm not complaining, really -- I read The Hunger Games overnight in one great gulp, and I'm ready for the sequels. The book is fast, entertaining, frightening, philosophical, psychological, edgy, and suspenseful. In all, a great read.

Review: Lord of the White Hell

2010-09-05T02:43:00.005-04:00

Lord of the White Hell by Ginn Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My quest to find quality gay fantasy novels leads me to suffer through a lot of small-publisher dreck, rife with awkward, overwritten prose, cliched characters, terrible covers, amateurish typesetting, and many, many typos. While Lord of the White Hell has terrible cover art and its share of typos, it's actually quite well-written, with a strong novelistic voice, complicated, interesting characterizations, and a strong sense of setting and sensual detail.

The book follows the basic trope of the fantasy academy, except with college-age students who are fully sexualized. The story is set in the POV of a 17-year-old mechanical genius named Kiram, who is attending an elite military academy in a country called Caledonia, which has religious, political, and ethnic tensions with his home country of Haldiim. So you get the general fish-out-of-water tale, with the added bonus that Kiram is gay, which is accepted in Haldiim but greatly frowned upon in Caledonia.

Anyway, Kirim is set up in a room with the hottie upperclassman Javier, who is Caledonian and a Duke, but also ostracized because everyone is scared of him, since he apparently has a "white hell" inside him, which gives him some very simple powers. Kirim thinks this is superstition, but he's still wildly attracted to Javier, and it's pretty obvious from the start that the feeling is mutual. Their personalities don't mesh easily, but they do become friends . . . and more . . . as they struggle together to figure out who is casting a curse that's killing off Javier's family.

This is barely a fantasy novel, beyond the semi-medieval setting and Javier's seldom-used powers. It's much more of a romance, even falling into that genre with some purplish emotions, although I welcomed a gay romance with a semi-fantasy setting while still feeling disappointed that it was more romance than fantasy. The challenging characterizations carry the story relatively well, keeping interest up even when the plot digresses and loses earlier, potentially fascinating threads.

Finally, the story feels incomplete, without a full arc and climax -- there's already a sequel available, and I'll bet that one feels more like a Part II than a true second book.

Review: City of Glass

2010-09-01T12:39:00.006-04:00

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This excellent, satisfying ending to the Mortal Instruments trilogy never lets up on the pace of its breakneck action, while still finding time for interesting characterizations, terrific humor, and fascinating revelations. I was very impressed how much Clare's writing gained in confidence and skill over the trilogy, to the point where City of Glass is a seamless, engrossing whole. All the themes, ideas, and storylines of the entire series come to fruition, and here the villains are noticeably more fearsome. My only quibble is that some of the characters tend to overly speechify near the end, especially about subjects that we as readers had already heard or figured out for ourselves·

While never less than captivating, throughout the series, the plotting and settings seemed rather familiar, and the resolutions a tad pat. There are some good surprises, but there are just as many scenes where some original twists could only have helped. That said, the characterizations and easy clarity of the writing carry the reader through whatever weak spots with speed and humor. I missed this world as soon as I closed the back cover.

Review: City of Ashes

2010-08-30T14:37:00.004-04:00

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With all the slow setup from Book #1 out of the way, this sequel latches onto its plot and roars forward with humor, romance (even if a bit sqwicky), terror, and engrossing twists. I love all the characters, except perhaps for the villain Valentine, who doesn't seem as scary as he might.

Review: The Cat in the Cradle

2010-08-30T14:35:00.016-04:00

The Cat in the Cradle by Jay Bell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While obviously a first novel that needed extra editing and proofreading (and professional type design), this fantasy book gets an additional star for having a gay main character. The writing starts off awkward and stilted, but gains confidence as the book progresses. The modern slang of some of the characters seems anachronistic at first, but eventually charms through consistency. While some POV jumps mar the plotting a bit, the story is strong enough, with twists and turns to keep it engrossing. The magic is well-described throughout.

Review: Dead in the Family

2010-08-30T14:35:00.015-04:00

Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that our Sookie's becoming frighteningly bloodthirsty and jaded, given everything that's happened to her, but it's still a bit disappointing, and I felt a lessening of her enthusiastic innocence and forthright humor. Still, the amount of plot, event, and detail Harris jams into this book makes it an absolute pleasure, and I'm very sad that there are no more completed books waiting for me to read.

Review: Dead and Gone

2010-08-30T14:35:00.014-04:00

Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sookie soldiers on, with much humor and bloodshed, especially among the fairies. There's a very hot sex scene with Sookie and Eric, too. Nice.

Review: The Long Shot

2010-08-30T14:33:00.004-04:00

The Long Shot by Monette Paul

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While Monette can definitely write a pretty sentence, the density of the language gives the book a hazy, turgid atmosphere that sometimes obscures the decent Hollywood murder mystery at the book's core. Still, it's an insightful, human story, with much to say about the nature of fame and fortune. I wished the book had been sexier, though -- the main characters are all widows or aged, who seem to have abandoned hope of sexual or romantic redemption. Ultimately, it was a sad and chilly read, rife with a kind of agoraphobic fatalism, although the offhand mystery kept me reading through the over-literary, downbeat thickets of language.

Great Pleasures: Beauty

2010-06-01T16:23:00.007-04:00

Glittering desire for the pretty stirs cold covetousness and the pomp of protective jealousy. My butterfly pins are sharp, poised for possession.

Soft, elegant, smooth symmetry can stay the rapacious, a pang of the cute, a taste of the tender underbelly, a sensual incentive to care.

Idol of potential, the river reflection ripples your potency, shifting sandbar standards fused into glass.

The metaphysical shudder that sudden beauty may spring topples the strongest of us to our knees in weeping awe.

The capacity to recognize loveliness elevates us from the primordial ooze, craving intensity enough to overlay a gorgeous, illusory world, embellished with veils of sufficient detail to be mistaken as truth.

Jedi Squirrels

2010-04-16T16:28:00.004-04:00

I'm sure I'm late to this Jedi Squirrels party, but that doesn't mean I still can't find them funny.

Great Pleasures: Eating

2010-04-03T12:58:00.001-04:00

Hunger hollows the body as it screams its intrinsic addiction to recyclable organic matter.

Easy enough to fix in a land of supermarkets, chicken satay cocktail parties, outskirt orchards of ripening pluots, and delivery menus teased under the door.

Uncontrollable electroshock cravings for pure sugar and fat, for the triumph of satiety, for the composition of presentation: Chinese, Mexican, French, Italian, Thai, sandwiches, sushi, a chef's salad, a dripping burger and crispy fries.

Bread and cheese, the hard won compromise of the ascetic, or the pastoral poor.

The anorectic's controlling intake of Diet Coke, popcorn plain, cudded wads of sugarless gum, the stimulation of chewing simulating sustenance, delineating cheekbones with a pinch of delicious misery.

The organ of smell prepares the soul for taste, the salivary wash of sweet and sour, bitter and savory, in an infinite range of intensity, while the complex drift of varied morsels unfold their flavors in an ecstatic temporal display, a drama of sunrise color splashed on clouds.

Feeding foreigners as a responsibility of hospitality, turning a spit of sacrificed life.

Original circle of ceremony, blessed the corporeal wafer of nature, holy the gift of substance.

Only the betrayer pretends to disarm at the breaking of bread.

Great Pleasures: Understanding

2010-02-15T03:07:00.006-05:00

Oh, praise thee, most awesome and enormous unknowable, an elemental allegory I call God.

The hot air of destiny and the chill wind of fate keep us huddling in the darkened caves, fearful of the caprice of improvidence.

An irritating itch: a mosquito bite of curiosity, scratched by the passionate precision of inquiry, perhaps followed by a resonant satisfaction of comprehension, even if it fades to dawning horror.

I see how small I am, and how order consistently flings toward entropy.

The constant of consensual uncertainty is insufficient to assuage the spire-builders, ever in defiance of the weathered rubble dissipating under the hot sands, vanishing beneath the tangled roots of jungle vines, or fusing within the tortured heap of war-twisted steel.

The false solace of our import and permanence is an enabling elixir of fortitude, a vote of confidence in permission, a method of navigating the pitfalls of dwindling compassion, although so easily corrupted into the fanatical fundamentalism of true believers.

The monkey of factual knowledge clings to its unreachable treetop, chittering mockingly, daring us to test the weakest limbs in pursuit.

I am never pleased to be proven wrong, but that razing is acceptable, even expected. I have often crafted ornate castles of sand along the line of the incoming tide.

How I crave thee, small, quiet voice of certainty, the forgiveness of repression, and however battered, the belief in a meaningful life.

The Princess and the Frog review

2010-02-07T08:25:00.007-05:00

Great characters.

Last Tuesday, Emma, my cleaning woman, was taking over my apartment for the afternoon, so I went to see two movies to pass the time. First I saw Up in the Air, which was disturbing, upsetting, mature, and enjoyable, and then I saw The Princess and the Frog, which I adored.

I've always been a Disney queen. I was obsessed with Disney movies as a child, and even lugged around a Mickey Mouse doll everywhere. (He was a largish doll, plastic and plush, with "walking action" that moved his legs when you squeezed his hands.) My parents would take me to the first runs or revivals in the theaters, and there I saw Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Dumbo, Pinocchio, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, The Sword in the Stone, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, The Three Cabelleros (at a drive-in), The Jungle Book (creepy), Song of the South, and Robin Hood. The disappointing, boring Robin Hood was the last movie I saw in the theaters with my parents, as I was getting older, and none of us liked the Don Bluth ickiness and awkward storytelling that was taking over. Disney entered a dark age then -- a fading of the magic that I'd loved -- with such wan "realistic" offerings as The Aristocats, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company. Those I didn't see in the theaters -- I saw them later on video, and was saddened by the cheap-looking animation, annoying characters, and denial of the animated movie musical form that Disney had perfected. These weren't fairy tales -- they had none of the archetypal power of romantic American myth that I'd loved so dearly. They had lost their magic.

Underwater wonders.

Then, when I was already in college, Jeffery Katzenberg took over the animation studios at Disney, and hired Alan Menken and Howard Ashman to write a proper musical. The wonderful The Little Mermaid heralded the Disney Renaissance, and two terrific movies followed -- Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, both glorious with all the mythological fairy tale power I craved. Sadly, Howard Ashman died during the making of Aladdin, taking some of the lyric magic with him. The Lion King was a huge hit, but I didn't love it. The anthropomorphized animals were creepy with their flapping mouths, and the movie reminded me more of a National Geographic special than a archetypal folkloric narrative. I admired its retelling of Hamlet, but the pure power of the story seemed missing.

Katzenberg left Disney, and a new dark age followed. The list of movies from 1995 to 2006 is pretty pathetic, with the only bright spot being the sweet Mulan in 1998. I saw all 14 of the movies during this period, and an unfortunate uninteresting modern or historical realism mars most of the movies. They'd moved away from magic. During this time, Disney lost animation primacy as DreamWorks (with Katzenberg) made some good and some great movies, and Pixar (with John Lasseter and Brad Bird) ascended to wear the mantle of excellent animated storytelling.

In 2006, Disney bought Pixar, and John Lasseter took over the Executive Producer role spanning both Disney Animation and Pixar movies. I haven't seen Meet the Robinsons or Bolt (both of which he executive produced), but under Lasseter's guidance Disney Animation has come alive again and made a complete return to form with The Princess and the Frog.

Of course, it helps enormously that the movie is based on a classic Grimm's fairy tale, with all the freighted weight of their primal narrative. It was also a wonderful idea to set the movie in New Orleans in the 1920s. We're already starting off in a world that has a certain nostalgia quotient -- a jazz age setting in a city that was recently destroyed. That it's a unique city known for its frightening voodoo as much as for its musical culture makes it the perfect setting for a magical musical adventure. Factor in New Orleans' French Quarter architecture, bayou landscape, swamp animals, recognizable accents, and fabulous food and the ante is upped considerably.

Then there are the characters. Much has been made of Tiana, Disney's first African-American heroine, and her race seems appropriate (and overdue) in this Obama era. More interesting is her hardworking, no-nonsense nature, her talent for cooking, and her ambitions to open a restaurant, and her sturdy values instilled by her loving parents. She's a perfect Disney heroine, one of my favorites, and deserving of her ascension into the pantheon of Disney princesses.

Tiana's not a princess in the beginning -- we first see her wearing a toy crown as she plays in childhood with the fabulously silly Charlotte, her rich (white) friend. Charlotte's outrageously spoiled, but friendly, happy, and cheerful enough to still be likable. Their friendship endures into their young adulthood, even though Tiana works several jobs and Charlotte's been given everything she wants by her father, Big Daddy, a wealthy Fat Cat running New Orleans. Tiana's own father, who encouraged her ambitions to own a restaurant (as they were his own), has died before realizing his dreams.

Maldonian charmer.

Then Prince Naveen of Maldonia strolls into town. He's a handsome (um . . . very, with a cute Brazilian accent) but poor royal, cut off financially by his parents because of his lack of direction and wayward extravagances. He's more interested in music and revelry than responsibility, and his gleefully enthusiastic charm makes everything too easy for him. He's brought along a valet named Lawrence to help him find a rich wife to finance his outrageous lifestyle.

Charlotte's got everything she wants except a royal title, so her desires and Naveen's predicament align nicely. They'd be married in an instant if it wasn't for the evil machinations of Dr. Facilier, a dark voodoo master, who twists Naveen and Lawrence's desires for his own purposes, to take over New Orleans from Big Daddy. Naveen is transformed into a frog and Lawrence is glamoured to look like Naveen.

While catering Charlotte's masquerade party, Tiana learns that her dreams of opening a restaurant are dashed, and she meets up with Naveen, who is pretty charming even as a frog. Naveen convinces Tiana that he'll finance her restaurant if she kisses him so he can marry Charlotte. So Tiana reluctantly agrees, and . . . is turned into a frog herself.

The two frogs escape into the bayou, where they enlist a bunch of friends (Louis, a human-loving alligator trumpeter; Ray, a Cajun firefly in love with the evening star who he calls Evangeline; Madam Odie, a blind voodoo queen) on their quest to regain their humanity.

Shadow man.

The best part of the characterizations is how clearly each character's desires are delineated and easily-understood. Tiana wants her restaurant. Naveen wants money to finance his musical slackerdom. Lawrence wants money to stop being a servant. Charlotte wants to marry Naveen to become a princess. Dr. Facilier (an excellent and terrifying Disney villain) wants to rule New Orleans and repay his debt to his horrifying "friends on the Other Side". Louis wants to become human to play trumpet with a human band. Ray wants to be with his impossible love Evangeline. It's all so clear, it's almost as primal as the desires of the characters in The Wizard of Oz (which is my touchstone for clearest and most archetypal character desires). In fact, the desires are so clear in The Princess and the Frog that Madam Odie even sings a song ("Dig a Little Deeper") about the difference between what the characters want and what they need. The narrative confidence in including a song like that is breathtaking -- yes, the dichotomy between want and need is one of the cornerstones of character development, but the writers of this movie were so secure in their characterizations that they could baldly reveal this narrative technique with postmodern flair.

The music is lovely throughout. Randy Newman did a great job writing songs that advance the plot, and he composed catchy tunes in a wide range of funky New Orleans styles. The basic Disney song formula remains intact: there's a setting introduction song ("Down in New Orleans"), a striving song for the heroine ("Almost There"), a villain's mission statement ("Friends on the Other Side"), and an achingly sweet and deluded love song ("Ma Belle Evangeline"), among other great tunes. The jazz and blues compositions add a new flavor to the typical Disney Broadway-esque score.

Beautiful animation.

Of course, I wouldn't have loved the movie quite so much if the animation wasn't totally gorgeous. The French Quarter of New Orleans in the '20s is brought to life completely believably, the bayou is deliciously murky and squishy. The dream sequences are created in a more stylized animation style that feels just right. And best of all are the magical scenes, both the voodoo sequences and the romantic ones. They're . . . magical. They're frightening and colorful and alive with demonic shadows and lovely flickering firefly light. They lifted me out of the mundane and got my heart racing and tickled all the spots where wonder and awe flirt with ecstasy. I teared up, completely lost to the magic.

Then, in the rollicking adventure of the story's climax, what happens with Ray the Cajun firefly had me stifling sobs, with hot tears trailing in streams down my cheeks. I'm such a sucker for the sidekick, and I abandoned myself to childlike emotional wonder.

I wiped my eyes to enjoy the happy ending, sniffling at the completely satisfying conclusion.

As the credits rolled, I saw John Lasseter's name as Executive Producer, and I thought, Of course. That's why the storytelling was so flawless. I want to work for him. Can anyone out there make that happen? Seriously, I'm thinking of sending him a letter and seeing if I can get a gig writing for him, something, anything.

I loved The Princess and the Frog. Now I can't wait for the next Disney animated movies on the docket: Rapunzel, this November, and King of the Elves in 2012.

All you Disney queens out there -- our time has come again!

Citysqwirl's Bedtime Stories: SPUN PINK

2010-02-02T11:45:00.005-05:00

So I tried this experiment: I took an old story called Spun Pink that I'd written ages ago, revised it somewhat, and recorded myself reading it on my netbook's webcam while I was lying in bed. Because YouTube only allows 10-minute videos, I had to break it up into three parts. I connected the parts through annotation notes embedded at the end of each video, but they're all posted here so you don't have to jump back to YouTube to watch the subsequent sections.

Part Two has descriptions of a teen sex scene, so that might be considered NSFW.

Enjoy!

The Ozzard of Wiz

2009-11-17T14:55:00.004-05:00

My friend Jason and I, while we were at NYU many years ago, used to write and record very silly songs, which we collected under the band name Booz. Most of the songs aren't fit for human ears, unless those ears are attached to a human in a preposterously ridiculous mood, but a few of the songs turned out okay. One is a electro-ditty embedded with audio samples from The Wizard of Oz, which we called Ozzard of Wiz.

For my birthday this year, Jason made me MP3s of our old Booz songs, ripping them from cassette tapes I'd saved all this time. So I thought I'd practice my Kindergarten-level video editing skills, and make a compliation of Wizard of Oz clips to go along with Ozzard of Wiz. And here is the goofy fruit of my labors:

40

2009-11-12T16:22:00.003-05:00

I turned 40 years old today.

Happy birthday to me!

That is all.

The Magicians

2009-10-30T11:56:00.008-04:00

Click to jump to Amazon.

I finished reading Lev Grossman's new novel, The Magicians, a few days ago, and I've been mentally revisiting it since. The book is like nothing I've read before -- a modern examination of the tropes of childhood fantasy, while still dramatizing the fantastic adventures being deconstructed.

That makes The Magicians sound far more dry and academic than it is. But it works foremost as a magical fantasy for those who are already aware of fantasy, who might have spent time considering their reactions to how they'd cope with being thrust into a separate magical world. It's as if Dorothy Gale, the Pensevie children, and Harry Potter weren't surprised by their relocation . . . Quentin, the main character in The Magicians, already in his late teens, steps past awe and wonder and gets down to the hard, tedious, fascinating work of studying and practicing to become a proper magician.

The first part of the novel concerns Quentin's magical education, and while I was riveted, some sections of the education itself are sketched in briefly or elided, although a sequence in Antarctica fulfills the potential of a wizardly indoctrination. This school for magic is not Hogwarts -- it's college, with honestly described miseries and sexual longings and modern dialogue and wonder without treacly whimsy.

After Quentin's graduation, the book takes a more difficult path, but one that resonated deeply with my own background of obsessive reading of fantastic literature. The titular magicians journey to a magical land called Fillory, an obvious Narnia stand-in. There Quentin is surprised to not be swept away by heroic deeds and fantastical adventures . . . he carries much of his jaded, compromised, arrested adolescent, and disappointed attitude with him into this enchanted realm. This combination of cynicism and phantasm reminded me greatly of my own approach to fantastic literature in my middle years; returning to the sources of childhood wonder, the breathless hope for real mystery has been pushed to arm's length, a dulling of my capacity for belief, perhaps. The mixture of tarnished hope and actual, vividly-rendered adventure makes for a wonderfully honest approach for elucidating the charm of heroic fantasy at an age when magic dances stubbornly out of reach.

All adult fans of children's fantasy should read this book immediately; it travels far toward repairing the divide between the mundane and the extraordinary. This is what Narnia, Oz, and Hogwarts would be like if we somehow could go there as adults.

Disney Princes

2009-10-29T12:17:00.020-04:00

Pose, Prince Eric, pose!

Okay, since most of my hits to this site seem to come from Google searches for naked gay cadets or through links to pictures of Disney mice, I thought I'd blend two of my obsessions and feature these lovely fan art images of Disney Princes by David Kawena that have been making the rounds on horny, creepy blogs like mine.

First up there is Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid, who is widely considered the hottest of the modern Disney princes. I have to agree -- there's something about his rangy, jocky body language that speaks of a comfort with himself, and of course there's his black hair and bright blue eyes, always a favorite combination. No surprise Kawena portrayed him in the typical current underwear model pose, very Justin Gaston.

Funny story about Prince Eric -- in grad school I was rather obsessed with him, or finding his real-life doppelganger -- and I hatched a fantasy plan to buy a Prince Eric blow-up doll. This amused me and my friends greatly at the time, to the point where one day in the mall, spurred by my friends' horror at the idea, I went into a Disney Store and actually asked the counter girl whether the Prince Eric blow-up dolls were available yet.

So handsome when he's brainwashed.

"For sex?" she shrieked.

We still giggle over her reaction, fifteen years later.

The interesting thing is that The Little Mermaid is all about sex, really. Why does Ariel want legs? So she can spread 'em, basically. It's actually a freaky story, with a fish woman trading her voice in order to be sexually available to a man. I particularly enjoy the finale, in which, after Ursula the Sea Witch (who can be seen as a Mother Nature vilification) dominates the patriarchal and overbearing King Triton and captures him under her control, Prince Eric saves the day by stabbing Ursula in the womb with the mast of his ship. Um, wow.

Prince Phillip Unzipped

My second-favorite Disney prince would have to be Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty, but I think that has less to do with Phillip himself than with the overall quality of the movie, which stands up there as perhaps the best classic animated Disney movie of them all. It's got one of the most interesting mythological fairy-tale storylines, along with the adorable Good Fairies, and a truly scary villain in Maleficent. One of the big problems is that Aurora, Sleeping Beauty herself, is asleep most of the time! But otherwise it's a funny, touching, exciting movie that says something intrinsic about Western attitudes toward romance.

Apparently, Phillip also has an awesome ass.

Little Phillip Riding Hood

Sure, the animated Phillip is cute, in his blond, fey blandness.

I know you.

I've always dug Once Upon a Dream, his duet with Aurora, and his horse Sampson has loads of personality.

Prince Phillip Beckham

But of course it's his battle with Maleficent, after braving the thorns, when he defeats her in her dragon form, that really made me swoon as a young gayboy. Yes, I realize that I'm buying into all kinds of patriarchal damsel-in-distress fantasies . . . so?

Prince Phillip Efron

I'm just adding this picture of Zac-as-Phillip and his beard because it exists. I think he's supposed to be Phillip, anyway . . . why else would Vanessa be sleeping? Or maybe he's supposed to be The Prince from Snow White, after Snow White has eaten the apple. Wouldn't there be some kind of half-eaten apple in the picture, then? Or maybe a dwarf lurking nearby? It's really a surprisingly generic prince image.

The Prince. Yawn.

The first Disney prince, from Snow White, doesn't even have a name. Still, I found him intriguing as an ur-suitor, but man, other than his duet in I'm Wishing, there's not much to him. But he's the object in the song Someday My Prince Will Come, and his importance in the canon cannot be ignored.

Prince Charming. Yawn, again.

Similarly, Prince Charming in Cinderella doesn't have much personality (he barely moves), but he's Prince Charming, duh.

Erotic Aladdin.

I admit to having had a full-blown crush on Aladdin, and I was haunted by dreams of him after seeing the movie. His exotic Arabic adorableness was combined in the animation with the features of Tom Cruise, an extremely potent mixture at the time. (Before Tom went insane.) Plus Aladdin is active and charming and funny.

Humiliate the Boy.

One of the scariest things about Aladdin is his opposition by villainous Jafar, an obvious homosexual, who nevertheless wishes to marry Jasmine (for political rather than sexual gain). I'm hoping that Disney stops making their worst villains gay-acting. I find it fascinating that the lyricist Howard Ashman, who was dying of AIDS at the time he was writing Aladdin, originally planned a song called Humiliate the Boy for Jafar. Disney cut the song, as perhaps that gay subtext was pushed up too far into text.

Bad Aladdin.

Jennifer Lopez makes a fine Princess Jasmine, but Mark Anthony as Aladdin? Ew.

Fetish Edward

Prince Edward from Enchanted is a doofus, but at least he's a handsome doofus. Assless chaps seem appropriate for a prince of such unbridled earnestness.

Actual Edward.

James Marsden was born to play a Disney Prince.

Sexy Beast.

My favorite modern Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast, but that has little to do with the disenchanted prince himself, and much more to do with the songs and the heroine and the stunning functionality of the story.

Turn around, bright eyes.

The reveal at the end of the movie when the Beast transforms is deeply disappointing.

Or maybe I'm just not that into redheads.

No, it's disappointing.

More appealing as the Beast!

After all, the entire movie is a motion toward Belle falling in love with a beast, and making a monster seem cute and cuddly. His transformation back into a human was a letdown, and when he turns around, I remember thinking, ugh. Even Belle herself doesn't even bother to hide her disappointment, and she visibly settles for a prince who was weirdly less attractive than he was when he was under a supposedly terrible curse.

Especially good at expectorating.

Of course, the movie twists the notions of attractiveness by making the villain, Gaston, a total hottie and a major douchebag. This image by Laurent Chatry illustrates both qualities of Gaston nicely. Plus I just adore Gaston's ode to his own braggadocio, Gaston.

Minor God.

Sure, Hercules is hot. It was kind of a dull movie, though, despite Eddie Murphy's best efforts.

Any different?

Tarzan swoops around in a loincloth anyway, so seeing him in his underwear isn't exactly an erotic shock.

Geek chic.

I thought Milo was pretty cute in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but boy-oh-boy did that movie barely make any sense whatsoever. It's criminally boring to boot.

Capt. Smith in panties.

Speaking of boring Disney movies, here's Captain John Smith from Pocohontas. That movie had no magic at all. Besides, he's voiced by Mel Gibson, who's also gone insane.

Kocoum?

I didn't even remember Kocoum in Pocohontas. Maybe I was nodding off at that point.

Not the hunchback.

Here's Phoebus from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, another Disney snoozer from their earnestly historical era.

Barely wearing a stitch.

I find Lilo and Stitch a crazy, creepy flick, and I certainly didn't lust after the square David in it. But here he is in his undies.

Really?

Ha! Ha! HA! I can honestly say I never wanted to see Captain Hook in his skivvies.

This image is also by Laurent Chatry.

Once a frog.

This is Naveen, the Prince in the upcoming The Princess and the Frog. I'm guessing this is after he has been transformed back into a dude. Apparently, he's voiced by the Brazilian Bruno Campos, and he and the Princess Tiana share the first interracial Disney kiss. Which, of course, is only possible since Tiana is the first princess to be any race other than, um . . . snow white.

UPDATE!

Damn, Naveen is hung.

Here's the newest Kawena portrait, of Naveen from The Princess and the Frog. It's just about NSFW, isn't it? Naveen is just adorable in the movie, but this portrait takes his sexiness to a new level. That's no little frog in his wet undies! It's a bullfrog!

Before the orgy.

The above image embiggens greatly.

Who's your favorite Disney prince?

Chickens

2009-09-27T17:41:00.004-04:00

Inspired by Susan Orlean's fascinating and funny article on raising chickens, "The It Bird", in The New Yorker this week, I dug through my personal archives and pulled out a short story I wrote in the early '90s that was also part of my Master's thesis. It was inspired by a true encounter with a neighbor's chicken in my suburban childhood, although the story's been heavily fictionalized to fit in with my planned story cycle, The Betty Stories.

Enjoy!

Chickens

My name's Jeff -- I'm eleven, almost old -- and I'm telling this story. My frenemy Betty, who lived right down the street, had a chicken named Victor who lived on her front lawn, running around back and forth like he had nothing else better to do. He was funny, so white with that red wattle thing hanging under his head, running across the completely green lawn. I always wanted to dance with him, jumping over Victor, wiggling my legs, listening to him cluck as he ran. But Betty wouldn't let me; she thought it was stupid.

A couple of months before, before Victor showed up on Betty's lawn, I tried to hatch chicks for a science experiment for fifth grade. I built an incubator out of a big Styrofoam beach cooler. I cut out a front window and covered it over with Saran Wrap, and in the Styrofoam cover I hooked up this light bulb and cord I broke an entire lamp for. There was a long thermometer on the bottom that I took from my school's science lab so I always knew the temperature was right. It took two whole days to get the temperature right. Ninety-two degrees exactly, or the chick embryos would turn black and die in the shells.

My mom drove me upstate to this little farm to buy fertilized eggs, from a really tired woman in a cloth dress with a son who watched us the whole time and refused to say anything. We bought twelve, and they weren't expensive, but I don't remember exactly what was the price. For two weeks I turned the eggs over two times a day, watching the temperature. I read everything there is on raising chickens. If you held an egg right up close to a light, but it had to be bright, you could see everything inside. It looked sort of like a red spider web inside, like a red wooden wagon wheel, until they started to grow.

Only one of the eggs made it all the way to hatching right. This little brown chick took four hours to peck and crawl out of the egg, and he made so much noise, peeping like crazy. I held him, petting him, the whole day after he hatched, feeding him mashed-up popcorn and water. He was the best thing, friendly and funny, with a black head and white wings, but the most important part was that he imprinted on me, thinking I was his mom. That was the part I most looked forward to after reading all about in the books. He would try to hide in my hand or under my leg for protection. Instinct!

He was still peeping in the incubator when I went to sleep that night. The next morning he was too quiet. He was dead, curled up stiff. Goodbye, Stanley, in heaven. I hoped it wasn't because of how much I held him.

I guess Victor really belonged to Betty's mom. I didn't like Betty's mom too much. She made Betty go to the doctor to check for bronchitis any time she coughed at all, and she never let us be inside playing Lego when it was sunny out. My mom said Betty's mom soaked Betty's socks in bleach all day, that's why they were so white every time. But Betty's mom fed Victor bird seed every morning, and it was mainly because of her he stayed after he showed up on their lawn.

One day after school I went over there and Betty was out jumping rope in the driveway like she always does, forever and ever. She wants to be famous, a famous Olympic jump roper. I didn't see Victor on the lawn like usually. "Where's Victor?" I asked.

"We played Whack the Chicken and now he's hiding," Betty said. She jumped the rope, skipping, and counted, "600!" Whack the Chicken was this game Betty and her sisters Heather and Doris made up where they get this huge yardstick and chase Victor around trying to hit him. A very mean game, in my opinion.

Looking around the corner of Betty's house, I saw Victor hiding behind the pine bushes. He kept tilting his head sideways and making nervous clucks, taking a step backwards.

I got some seeds from Victor's bowl on the front steps and pushed my way behind the bushes, avoiding the totally poisonous mushy red berries, making clucks to keep Victor calm.

When I brought the seeds up to him, he tilted his head sideways at them, finally making up his mind to take some. His beak felt strange and hard digging into my hand when he went for the seeds. I smoothed down a patch of feathers that were sticking up on his back, feeling the layers and layers of the alive softness. When I ran out of seeds I went back out to Betty.

The jump rope was alone on the lawn at the side of the driveway. I guessed Betty went inside. I walked around the back to see if she was on the porch, but I saw their yardstick with this huge wad of mud on one end. I went back to the bushes and picked up Victor, my arms around his stomach. He was sideways in my arms and I couldn't believe how warm he felt.

Somehow I got him home without anybody seeing anything, every minute expecting my mom or Betty or Betty's mom to be there when I took the corner up the stairs to my room. But I was sure nobody saw.

I laid Victor down on a pile of my clothes in my closet. I moved my good Sunday shoes over to the side to make room for him, so he wouldn't be all cramped up.

As I eased the closet door shut, I watched how Victor became grayer as it got darker, but he didn't make any noise. He was a fat baby angel, picking at the feathers on his back. Right then someone was at the front door. It had to be my mom. She was right on time for coming home.

I waited for her at the top of the stairs, leaning back, pulling the black metal banister. She smiled at me when she came up. "Hi," she said. "How was your day? How was school?"

"Fine," I said. "Good."

"Learn anything? And don't say 'nothing.'"

"We did math a lot. Just math all day." I walked after her into the kitchen.

"Sounds awful," she said, putting her work briefcase down on the table. She looked at the clock, then she looked at the refrigerator. "What should I make you and your father for dinner? What tonight?" She dug into the freezer, moved things around, and pulled out frozen meat for hamburgers.

Later, after dinner, I took hamster food from our pantry which used to be for my hamster, Johnson, who was dead more than a year but we still had the food. It was seeds and green chunks of mashed-up cereal stuff and I figured it would be good for Victor. I spread it on the floor, in my room. I shut my door and set Victor free from the closet. He walked right out and I moved to the bed to give him space, and so I could watch. I saw he'd gone on my Sunday shoes in the closet, but I didn't care. He circled the food, looked up at me, and then started to eat. I just watched from my bed, rocking back and forth, staring at him as he cleaned the sunflower and mixed-up seeds off the brown rug in a big hurry.

"Jeff!" my father called from my parents' room. "Telephone!"

I sort of threw Victor into the closet and shut the door before he had any chance to settle his feathers down. "Sorry," I whispered. "I'll be right back." He was angry at being stopped from eating.

"Hello?" I said, on the kitchen phone.

"Jeff?" It was Betty.

"Yeah," I said. "Hi."

"My mom wants to speak to you. You're so dead. Wait."

I heard them switch places on the phone. "Jeff? This is Agnes."

"Hi."

"Hi. You know our pet chicken, Victor? You wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you, honey?"

"Why? Is he missing?"

"Well, yes, actually. Have you seen him? Betty said you were the last to play with him."

"No," I said, changing ears on the phone. "He was behind the bushes when I left. I left him back there."

"Are you sure? Betty said something about seeing you carrying him to your house this afternoon."

I couldn't call Betty a liar, not to her mom, but there was no other way. "It's not true," I said. My tongue was all tied up.

"That may be," Betty's mom said. "May I speak to your mother?"

"She's not home," I said. I hoped my parents weren't listening to me from their room. The walls were not fixed sound proof.

"Where did she go?" Betty's mom asked. "I can see her car in your driveway from my window. May I speak with her?"

"No." I hung up the phone.

My heart was beating too much so I pushed on my chest. I moved fast to my room, putting up the chair behind the door. The phone rang again and I thought, who will answer? My mom or my father? I shut the light off, dropped to the floor, and crawled over the seeds digging shapes into my hands, over to the closet.

I shut us in the closet, me and Victor. I pulled shirts, sweaters, and coats down from the hangers on to us in the dark, moving them around into place, getting them right.

Victor was making these scared clucks and I petted him and petted him, feeling his fluffed-out feathers, breathing in the wool of the sweater on my head covering us, touching the edges of his feathers, their pointy parts.

Victor was calming still but I held him. I held him close. I heard his heartbeats, soft, like a drum from far away.

E. Lynn Harris

2009-07-25T19:49:00.011-04:00

Author E. Lynn Harris died this week at the age of 54. In his memory, I'd like to post a review of his book Abide with Me that I wrote in May of 1999.

Focusing on the trials and triumphs of both gay and straight relationships among upscale African-Americans has made E. Lynn Harris a runaway success, starting with his self-published debut, Invisible Life, in 1992. That book was sold in beauty salons and black-owned bookstores before it was picked up in trade paperback by Anchor Books. Rabid word of mouth floated Invisible Life on the Blackboard Bestseller List of African American titles for 11 months, and each novel Harris released has performed even better. His book, And This Too Shall Pass, spent 9 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. That's a whole lot of love. And any negative criticism of Harris's books just seems, well . . . mean.

Abide with Me, the latest installment in Harris's soap opera of continuing characters learning the rules of devotion in Chicago, doesn't present many reasons for such meanness. Raymond Tyler and Trent Walters (old friends to fans familiar with the previous book If This World Were Mine) have been together for more than five happy years, until Raymond gets nominated for a federal judgeship.

The painfully in-depth screening process reveals that Trent hasn't been the faithful partner Raymond thought. As Trent, unaware of Raymond's knowledge, heads off to South Africa for an architecture project, the uptight Raymond falls into a tizzy of lacerating self-analysis. How could he have been so stupid to trust Trent? Should Raymond publicly denounce their relationship as directly as he once celebrated it in order to save his dream of becoming a judge, even though "being in a stable relationship with Trent has helped Raymond a great deal and it's given him a sense of peace and security"?

Meanwhile, Raymond gets involved again with Basil Henderson, who fans of the series will recognize as the conflicted bisexual ex-football player with a body that won't quit and incredible gray eyes whose "each stare felt like a sexual encounter." Basil is a major player in Abide with Me, as he's going through analysis of his own with a psychiatrist, dealing with rather pedestrian abuse issues and self-lacerating homophobia.

Raymond's growing interest in renewing his earlier affair with Basil forms the slight tension that helps propel the book. Is "an eye for an eye" a functional philosophy when dealing with equality in the messy world of relationships? Raymond's uncertain path toward forgiving Trent forms the ambiguous moral core of Abide with Me.

Intertwined with this is the story of Nicole Springer--a woman who used to date Raymond in his pre-gay days and who now is blissfully married to Raymond's best friend, Jared. Nicole joins the national tour of Dreamgirls as the lead. The backstage world of a touring musical is evoked colorfully, if casually, and with some verisimilitude, if the thanks to various Broadway luminaries in the opening acknowledgments is any indication. But when the two-faced Yancy Braxton is introduced as Nicole's understudy, the story, while still engaging, borrows far too heavily from the movie All About Eve. That tour has been traveled before.

This dense plotting is only the tip of the iceberg, and it would be annoyingly complex if it wasn't for Harris's main talents -- he's really easy to read, and he truly cares for these characters with such warmth, it virtually emanates off the page. Raymond and Nicole get the full force of Harris's all-encompassing affection. They are recognizably human, even in their melodramatic lives.

Unfortunately, Harris's glancing, skimming writing style allows only the main characters to be so fully fleshed out. Trent suffers worst of all -- his reasons for cheating are never believably presented -- but Basil gets shafted, too. True, Basil's not exactly the contemplative type, but it seemed as though Harris was as blinded by Basil's oversized sexuality and attractiveness as the "honeys" who Basil uses and scorns for wanting him only for his exterior.

That E. Lynn Harris has so successfully crossed over into the pop culture mainstream is a reason to celebrate. His writing can be awkward, his analyses may seem like surface exposition, but his emotional warmth, spiritual surety, and love for humanity makes reading Abide with Me and his other novels feel like a balm of understanding.

Calder Mobile

2009-05-17T11:10:00.004-04:00

Here's a short video I made of an Alexander Calder mobile in motion from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Adam Lambert Singing "Mad World" on American Idol

2009-04-07T22:47:00.014-04:00

Okay, Blogger won't let me embed the video, because the file size is too big, but you can go here to see Adam Lambert singing "Mad World" on American Idol.

Go, Adam! He kind of biffs the final high note, but the melodic progression UP to that high note was just gorgeous. Plus I've adored this song since . . . um . . . well, since when it originally came out. I love the Tears for Fears version, and I love the Donnie Darko version almost as much.

Not thrilled to discover that Adam's an Aquarius, but I can't have everything.

America's Next Top Model Fierce Guide to Life

2009-03-15T11:38:00.006-04:00

A video of frightening model madness, picked up from the site Joe. My. God.:

Screaming as they ran for their lives, hundreds of hotties in heels toppled over barricades along W. 55th St. after several people in the crowd started yelling, "There's a bomb!" By the time the model madness ended, two women were hospitalized and two others and one man were busted for inciting a riot, authorities said. "The girls were running like it was 9/11 part two," said Jennifer Brown, 27, of Kensington, Brooklyn. "I feared for my life." The audition for the The CW show, which for the first time was open to women under 5-feet-7, was doomed from the start, several said.

Scores of aspiring models slept overnight outside the Park Central Hotel, hoping to be the first to sashay before the hit show's casting agents. But shortly after the sun rose, women began arriving and lining up indiscriminately. Tensions quickly boiled over. Things only got worse when the dolled-up ladies were told if they stepped out of the line, they couldn't come back in. "I had to pee in a cup and change my clothes in the street," said Mona Knight, 18, of the Bronx, who slept on the street. "There was no organization whatsoever." Cops arrived and placed barricades along the street. But by that point, there were already several thousand women lined up. A handful of women started fainting after getting pressed up against the wall, witnesses said.

I figured this was a great moment to hawk a new book written by J. E. Bright, America's Next Top Model: Fierce Guide to Life: The Ultimate Source of Beauty, Fashion, and Model Behavior, being released in April.

SoHo Windows

2009-02-10T14:52:00.004-05:00

Arcadia Fine Arts Gallery in SoHo

Visit SoHo Windows, which is taking up most of my blogging time right now. The site is a photographic peek into the storefronts of the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, the world's most fashionable and expensive outdoor shopping mall.

I'll be continuing to update this site, too, about as frequently as I always did . . . which is to say, infrequently.

Zombie

2008-11-11T02:08:00.003-05:00

Staring. Staring. Staring.

So I started taking the anti-smoking drug Chantix last Wednesday, for a quit date of November 13th, the day after my 39th birthday. So far, the drug has left me feeling listless, confused, disoriented, fatigued, and vacant -- quite zombified all-around. I find myself staring absently into space for hours at a time. I certainly hope these side-effects settle down soon!

As I understand it, Chantix is supposed to work by blocking the nicotine pleasure receptors, while giving you a burst of dopamine to even you out. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to block other pleasure receptors, too, I've heard, so tasting food, having orgasms, or enjoying basic social interactions seem unimportant. These negatives have only been reported in a certain number of takers of the drug, but I can see how pleasure in general could be drained from life if these chemical effects persist. I'm hoping that my body chemistry adjusts to the drug chemistry and evens out a bit over time, while still lessening my urge to smoke. At the moment, though, I feel like an awkward zombie, while my smoking cravings have seemed to double or even treble. (Although that might be from my desperate terror of the impending quit date approaching rapidly.)

And DOPAMINE! I've been getting flashes all week of scenes from Awakenings -- Robin Williams throwing rubber balls at zombified wheelchair-bound seniors who snap to attention to catch the ball suddenly. Will I become Robert De Niro in a bad suit and bad haircut?

Other people online have reported only being able to sleep three or four hours a night; eerie, vivid dreams; extended effort in ejaculation; social anxiety, including agoraphobia; fatigue, and an avoidance of volition; and difficulty separating the boundaries of reality and imagination.

So how would that be greatly different from the way I live now?

I've always found myself rather tolerant of psychosomatic drugs, and adjust to them easily. Certainly things never leave, no matter how fucked-up my brain is processing perception: reading comprehension, sense of direction, an ability to compose sentences. And here I am, otherwise zombified, but this post is flowing easily, without struggling for words. The words I do struggle for are the spoken ones -- my ability to talk and form speech is easily upset, and I have found myself wrestling with the next word in conversation.

The worst side-effect Chantix users have reported is "suicidal ideation" -- considering offing yourself, often with endlessly repeated loops of inner voices reiterating your general worthlessness and urging you do just end it all. So far, my inner voices are the usual demons and angels with their endless chatter and backtalk, but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm not that worried about potential obsession over suicidal consideration; I've got too much shit I want to do: books to write, orgasms to have, conversations to struggle through, movies to criticize or to make me cry, cats to pet, chocolate to eat.

And it's been suggested endlessly that smoking is a form of slow suicide. I must not want that, either.

So if it takes a little zombification to quit smoking, then so be it.

Chained to a Velociraptor

2008-10-18T18:43:00.001-04:00

They didn't ask about the gun in my nightstand.

1 minute, 9 seconds

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

Art!

2008-10-16T09:59:00.008-04:00

Bland?

So after surviving a three-month run finishing writing four books, barely leaving my apartment the whole time, I had become heartily sick of staring at the wide blank wall on the other side of my living room, directly across from my computer desk. There's a weird three-pronged crack branching out in the middle of the wall that kind of reminds me of some sort of spirochete, but focusing on that while in the throes of a writing fugue state is more depressing than inspiring. That wall's been blank since I moved into the apartment, just about seven years ago. For a long while I was thinking of hanging a giant poster of Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in that space -- it's the scene when they're on a motorcycle together from My Own Private Idaho. But, 1: TOO GAY; 2: Perhaps it's too depressing to hang posters of dead idols in your living room; and 3: I don't really want an image of Keanu in such a prominent location in my life.

So I decided to buy art! My apartment living room is extremely honey-colored, with shades of woody brown everywhere, plus a sepia staining on everything due to cigarette smoke. The only brighter color accents are a blue curtain and a blue pillow on the espresso-colored couch. So I wanted to brighten up the room a bit with a lighter hanging print, and hang an image that I wouldn't get thoroughly annoyed by in the coming years. So this picture seemed to fit the bill -- it's whitish and blandly inoffensive without being totally boring, it has blue accents and a blue frame, and it adds a little soft roundness with the front vase to an otherwise extremely angular room.

Now I'll have something else to stare at while I'm writing other than a spirochete-shaped crack.

And I'll leave the River and Keanu poster rolled up in a tube in my closet.

Listen Up, Chickens!

2008-10-03T15:02:00.001-04:00

Today I was informed that chickens with red earlobes produce brown eggs, while chickens with white earlobes produce white eggs.

Chickens have earlobes?

Thought

2008-09-28T20:58:00.003-04:00

I thought maybe I would be more likely to post on here more often if I didn't have huge expectations of writing brilliant in-depth essays studded with pictures with hilarious captions, and instead just wrote interesting (to me, anyway) text updates.

I've been letting so many things in my life slide lately, since I've been completely sequestered getting a bunch of books written -- I'm in the middle of a run of five back-to-back books, which of course are all bumping into each other because I'm so awful with deadlines. I shouldn't complain about having too much writing work -- so many other freelance writers I know are complaining about the exact opposite -- but man, I'm tired.

Reading my ancient (and neglected) journal last week, I noticed this post from November 8, 1997:

Circumscribed, limited, four walls and a cat. A boyfriend who visits occasionally, sends me electronic notes filled with semicolons, and sometimes calls on the phone. But mostly it's just me in here, dancing on the head of a pin.

Which is a notoriously slippery surface.

Damn, I thought, nothing has changed.

Except I have two cats now.

Question

2008-06-16T19:37:00.006-04:00

Okay, for the past two weeks I've been getting double or triple the amount of hits to this site I usually get . . . and it's certainly not a measure of my success at updating this thing regularly.

Also, these hits are apparently all new visitors.

My statcounter information is basically useless at telling me where all of you are coming from, so now I want to know . . . where are all of you coming from?

Do be so kind as to leave a comment and tell me who you are and how you got here.

I promise I will not think less of you if you're just here to see pictures of naked cadets making out or a baby squirrel in repose on a log or whatever pulled you into my tiny corner of cyberspace -- I'm just honestly curious.

Thanks!

Trump Is Stealing My Sky!

2008-03-10T09:52:00.020-04:00

New backyard view, March 2008

A week or so ago, I opened my curtains for the first time in a long time, and saw that Donald Trump's new SoHo condo/hotel, on Spring St. and Varick St., had eaten a big chunk of my visible sky.

When you live on the second floor facing a courtyard, sky is a valuable commodity. I get barely any light in my apartment anyway, and the little patch of blue I used to be able to see was pretty minimal as it was. Now it's going to have a new glass tower blocking a big chunk of it. Bummer.

My view in October 2006.

I wonder how this is going to affect my light levels in the spring and summer. I generally lose any direct sunlight in any season except winter, because the tree canopy gets so thick that it filters all the light. In deep summer, the leaves are so dense that the light I get is a dim green color by the time it reaches me. I hope this tower doesn't make that even worse. The trees are gorgeous, especially in autumn, but nobody would call my place "bright" as it is.

An artist's rendering of the completed tower.

The condo/hotel probably will be a good thing for that stretch of Varick St., which was rather dead and forgotten, and even a little sketchy a night. It's the fact that Trump built a glass tower that unnerves me. One of things I like best about SoHo is the human scale of this neighborhood, the old-world European feel of this small town within a city, the beautiful masonry and antique iron, the cobblestone streets and rough-hewn cornerstones. Glass and steel is a new flavor, and not quite welcome. This isn't midtown. This isn't Dallas. This is SoHo.

My view in December 2005.

A wide swath of Spring St. and Prince St. are already taken up by the world's most expensive outdoor shopping mall, filled with flagship designer stores and thronged with hordes of tourists on the weekends. My section has been a lot more low-key, just old tenements and Italian restaurants, with the occasional dog grooming salon and dry cleaner. I'm hoping the mall doesn't extend further west to connect to Trump's hotel. But it sure might.

When discussing your living situation in NYC, one of the big questions is, "Do you have a view?" Yes, I had a view of a cute, tree-lined courtyard, and a small slice of sky. Now I also have a view of a basic glass tower.

Trumped.

I wonder if the inhabitants of the condo/hotel will be able to see me.

Maybe I should invest in a telescope so I can spy into this new wealthy aerie. Hmm... now there's a thought!

Late Night Excursion

2008-02-29T07:30:00.011-05:00

Justin Bond and Nathan

Wednesday evening, I was cruising around online and I saw an interesting posting on one of my favorite sex & gossip blogs, The Ashton Cruz Zoo (site completely and utterly NSFW), an electronic flier proclaiming that Justin Bond was going to be performing at The Cock late that night. I had just finished a writing project that had taken all of my concentration for the past three weeks, so I thought I would go. After all, I'd seen Justin Bond as Kiki DuRane in Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway, and in Kiki & Herb: The Second Coming for $80 at Carnegie Hall . . . for sure I'd enjoy paying $5 at The Cock to see Justin sing up close.

So I napped and ate and watched American Idol and part one of the Project Runway finale on DVR, waiting for it to be late enough to go. Funny thing about Project Runway and Kiki & Herb -- the night I went to see K&H at Carnegie Hall, Chris March had just been eliminated from the competition the previous week, and he was at the event that night. At Carnegie Hall, I ended up standing next to Chris for a little while on the drink line, and I wanted to say something about how I'm sorry he had been eliminated then. It was a good thing I didn't say anything, because the exact episode that my DVR was recording while I was at the Second Coming show was the one where Chris was brought back on.

Tonight, Chris had been eliminated in the final round the same night as I ventured out to see Justin Bond at The Cock. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But it was on my mind, and I idly wondered if Chris would be in attendance again, and if I would talk to him this time. Or maybe someone else cool would be there. Like I'd run into Ashton Cruz himself, or Anderson Cooper, or Jake Shears, or perhaps Justin Bond and I would find each other wonderful company and we'd be best friends or lovers for life.

Honestly, I'd probably have issues with dating someone who makes his living as a female impersonator, even one I greatly admire. But these fantasies flicker by, you know how it goes?

So I started getting ready about 11:45 PM, shaving and showering, and I pulled together reasonably well, despite still disliking my current haircut that has been horrible for the past six weeks and still hasn't grown out successfully. If it ever will. Anyway, I looked okay, dressed in a red Banana Republic thin sweater from about 5 years ago that I'd recently unearthed from the bottom of my clothes closet, washed, and was complimented on at the Phoenix a few weeks ago. Bundled up in my thick coat and a scarf, I set forth into the cold February night around 12:45 AM.

It was frigid outside, around 23F, and I didn't disagree with Yahoo Weather's assessment that it felt like 11F out there. So I hailed a taxi, and grumbled to myself the whole way over to Second Avenue that the cabbie should have taken Houston at 1AM rather than hit all the lights and bottlenecks on Spring St.

I got out at Houston and 2nd Ave, and smoked a cigarette on the short walk from there to The Cock on 2nd Ave between 1st St. and 2nd St. I knew I would have to check my coat in the very cramped black box that is The Cock, and that I couldn't come back outside in only my sweater to smoke. So I puffed away before I entered. That's one of my least favorite things about smoking -- the pre-planning, the necessity of always knowing when my next fix will come. If I'm trapped someplace indoors where I can't smoke for any length of time, I will actually panic.

After paying my $5 entry fee and getting stamped on my wrist, I enter the darkness of the bar and the first thing that hits me is a strong whiff of B.O. -- the scent of sweaty boys up all night on a Wednesday, many of them on drugs, along with the odor of drag queens. Dude, drag queens get hot under those wigs and clothes and makeup, and often they can be quite pungent.

The bar's long, narrow room is about half-full. On weekends, it's so crowded in there that everyone ends up leaning against each other or bumping hips and groping is more common of a greeting than shaking hands. Tonight there's some room to move around, and I wonder if I've missed the show. There was no time listed on the electronic flier, just a date. I get a drink, Dewar's and 7-UP (they were out of ginger ale), and stand by myself for a while. Then I realize I'm standing right next to Justin Bond, who's wearing a silvery flapper-type dress. He's surrounded by a few guys, chatting, including one very skinny and sexy young guy wearing only a silk pashmina as a rudimentary loincloth. From the bulge in the pashmina, he must be hung like a bull.

I pretend not to be hovering nearby, and peer through the dim light at the other guys in the bar -- some cuties, not that many; some trolls; a lot of in-between -- and watch as a handsome, balding guy with a banjo arrives and hugs Justin.

I want to say something to Justin. Something like, "I've listened to your version of 'Temptation' and 'The Thin Ice' on heavy rotation for a year now," or simply, "I'm such a big fan," or something, but I haven't been social lately and I'm out of practice jumping over my self-consciousness fence. I pride myself on not being a star fucker, but sometimes I am a star fucker, or would like to be, and I freeze up. Plus I can't think of how to address Justin, especially as he's wearing a dress. Does one refer to drag queens as their masculine selves when they're in full dress? I didn't think he was being Kiki, either, though, so I couldn't start off with, "Kiki . . ." "Ms. DuRane?" "Mr. Bond?" "Justin?"

Anyway, the opportunity was taken out of my hands as the crowd shuffled around and I was pushed away from Justin's knot. I waited around a while, sipping my drink until it was almost gone, trying to figure out from the silhouettes around me who was attractive and who was not. It's quite amazing how much you can tell about the shape and personality of a man just from his shadowy outline -- his mien, body language, carriage, affect, chiaroscuro profile, voice, and smell all add up to a lot of information in the dark.

My drink depletes and I get another, and return to my spot near the small stage against one wall in the back area of the bar. More and more guys jostle for position in the first two rows around the stage, but the lights are still dim and Justin is still in the crowd. He and the banjo player shift closer until they're right behind me. I smile at the banjo, but still cannot think of anything good to say. Justin even looks at me a few times, with a blank, questioning expression on his sharp, painted features, and I only give a tight Mona Lisa smile in reply, averting my eyes.

Then Justin and the banjo player are kissing, sensually smooching, right behind me. It's quite tender.

The crowd jumbles up a bit again, and now I'm directly to Justin's right, with the banjo player on his left.

Linda Simpson, the tranny who runs Wednesday nights at The Cock -- the party is called Slurp -- announces that the performance starts in two minutes.

The crowd tightens in front of the stage, but I figure I can get closer by taking Justin's spot when he goes on. I'm really close to Justin now, who seems a little anticipatory, but calm. He bumps me with his neat black patent-leather purse hanging from his arm. I make a slightly bigger deal of the bump, just a touch of theatrics in my tiny reaction.

"My apologies," Justin says kindly.

"It didn't hurt," I attempt to joke. He turns to face me, eyebrows raised. "It didn't hurt," I repeat. "No damage done."

"Good," Justin says. "These purses can be used as deadly weapons."

I laugh at that and reply with something lame like, "I'll bet."

Linda Simpson waves to Justin. Justin tells me, "Excuse me, the performance is about to begin." As though I didn't know he was the entertainment that evening.

"Break a leg," I say.

Justin replies, "Thank you."

An unusual Appalachian-inflected trio.

Linda Simpson introduces Justin with fanfare and the crowd cheers and Justin and the banjo player and the skinny cutie in the pashmina all climb on stage. There are some technical issues with one microphone -- it must be held up to the banjo by hand, and the holder also has to hold the battery pack in place. Luckily, the guy in front of me is familiar to Justin, and he's recruited to hold the microphone up to the banjo, and I get to take a step closer to the stage, just one row back.

After some funny patter about where Justin should put his purse onstage, and the pashmina guy is introduced as Nathan, and the banjo guy is introduced with some common name that I forget, the three sing a strange and wonderful Appalachian-inflected, twanging song to banjo accompaniment. They sing three songs in all, more like a jug band trio than the dramatic Justin Bond performance I expected, and it's fun and funny and rather toe-tappingly entertaining. I still certainly prefer Justin's overwrought, hyperbolic covers that invest new emotion into old chestnuts, and the ones that recontextualize current hits, but I enjoyed the show.

You don't have to turn on the red light.

At one point between songs, Justin took a brief break to reapply lipstick . . . cursing the red light in the bar that washes it out. I wondered if some of the lipstick had worn off during his earlier kissing event with the banjo dude. I wondered what my red sweater looked like under the red lights. Justin called for everone's attention as he applied lipgloss, which was more noticeable under the lights. Everyone applauded his sparkling lips. "Lustre," he intoned, which just happens to be the name of his current show at PS122, where he'd performed earlier that night.

After the show, the crowd thinned out quickly, and Justin never again came back into the center of the room. I idly cruised guys for a short while, but I knew I wasn't going to have the personal wherewithal to approach anyone; I didn't see anyone who gave me the overwhelming urge to approach, and nobody approached me.

I finished my second drink, got my coat, and walked home in the dark cold night, smoking, with little Appalachian ditties tripping through my head.

Urban Palimpsest Again: Baby Ruth

2008-02-29T00:23:00.006-05:00

Bye, bye, Baby.

I found this old picture on my phone from September 2007 of the new 20-story SVA dorm on the corner of Ludlow and Delancey, as it quickly grew to cover that old phantom of a Baby Ruth candy bar ad sign.

I love those old advertising phantoms around the city, and I figured I'd better take this one's picture before it's forever trapped between two walls like an ancient frieze of a forgotten god.

Do you ever wonder what demolition crews or archaeologists in the distant future will think about Baby Ruth if it ever again comes to light? Who was she? Someone quite important, no doubt.

I doubt they'll figure out that Baby Ruth was officially named after Grover Cleveland's daughter, but that the candy bar's moniker probably was also devised to cash in on the popularity of Babe Ruth upon its original marketing release.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, "The trademark was patterned exactly after the engraved lettering of the name used on a medallion struck for the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and picturing the President, his wife, and daughter Baby Ruth."

It's this famous candy bar trademark that's being swallowed by a new dorm for The School of Visual Arts. That barely rates as irony, but it's interesting.

My Superpower

2007-12-10T13:16:00.001-05:00

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive.

You understand people better than they would like to be understood.

Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details.

You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on!

Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done.

Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now.

What Should Your Superpower Be?

Sigh. I was hoping for something more butch, like super-strength or the ability to hurl fireballs, but this does seem depressingly accurate.

Is it just me, or does the Elastigirl image seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with mind reading? I mean, what's up with the mask, cape, and panties on the outside of the tights? Somehow it just doesn't read as "brilliant, insightful, and intuitive," but rather, "I'm a cheap Supergirl knockoff from a third-rate comic you'd find in a cereal box."

This image isn't ideal, but closer to what I had in mind:

Great Pleasures: Sex

2007-09-23T15:00:00.004-04:00

The pulled pellet lever of the orgasm -- sometimes as mechanical as blowing the nose, sometimes rippling with the revelations of communion.

Of objects the universe offers to touch, the skin, hair, membranes, and fluids of the beloved glide superlative under fingertip with a shared complexity of ecstatic intention.

Primal symphony of sensation, in the moonlit tangle of white sheets, each limb, each patch of tingling pelt, each foreshortened feature sounds its singular timbre, acing its solo before fading back into the homeostatic sonata.

Await the moment when the solitary veils of flesh can waver in an enmeshed filter of consent in spurts of I am noticed, I am seen, I am not an invented self but merely another solidified, dissipating soul aching to contact the nigh-forgotten all.

Any summary of intercourse's fancy must include the transgression of taboo, imposing sanctimonious sanctions on sex in a holy ritual of Tantric denial, withholding release to exponentially increase absence eventually fulfilled.

Or perhaps merely a necessary cathartic sigh of daily tension, craving the laying on of hands in a bower of physical security.

And often too easy, I'm easy, wasting broken connections of unshared fluids, tomcatting through the crypts of the night, yowling at the moon.

The comfort of the familiar or the virgin inspiration of the new, the resonances are greater than can be conceived.

Urban Palimpsest

2007-09-07T12:09:00.001-04:00

palimpsest
"parchment from which earlier writing has been removed to clear it for new writing," 1661, from L. palimpsestus, from Gk. palimpsestos "scraped again," from palin "again" (see palindrome) + verbal adj. of psen "to rub smooth" (of unknown origin).

--Online Etymology Dictionary

Summer gals.

This blurry phone picture shows the mural on the back garden wall of the chi-chi restaurant Barolo in SoHo, which is directly across the street from my apartment building. The picture was snapped last summer, soon after the mural was completed. I greatly enjoy the mural's stylized 1940s aesthetic, the devil-may-care attitude of the winking, posing bathing beauties. What's not to love about happy women in brown bathing suits wearing chunky high heels on a wall on an urban street in downtown New York? Part of the appeal for me is certainly the surprise of the vision, the out-of-place context of this city swimsuit competition, and the sheer cheek of putting it up in the first place. Plus the women are floating a few inches above the sidewalk.

Winter decrepitude.

Last winter, when Barolo's swank garden was closed for the season, garbage accumulated in front of the mural, and graffiti vandals defaced it, scrawling tags, skulls, and skanky words across it. My favorite graffito was the phrase, "It's a lush life, bitch!" written off to the side of the ladies (not shown in these pictures). I figured that when summer returned, the owners of Barolo would wash the entire wall yellow again and keep it blank, or have a new mural commissioned, since the cheery women seemed beyond repair.

To my delight, this summer, Barolo did indeed repaint the wall yellow, covering the graffiti, but they let the women remain where they were, and just painted around their outlines, leaving in place whatever scrawl actually traversed the ladies.

A second summer skin.

The result was a strangely intriguing palimpsest, a record of the artwork and its off-season environmental interaction with the neighborhood, only scored against the women's skin like wrinkles, cellulite, or tattoos.

It strikes me as a neatly accurate representation of the aging process, the way our world covers us with indelible impressions of experience.

The winter here can be rough, man. Come summer, we can shore up our outlines, but the weathering events of rude improvidence cannot be fully erased.

I particularly like that the word BOOBS on the leftmost lady was not entirely obscured in her armpit.

Phone Pictures

2007-09-04T22:15:00.001-04:00

Lubka, off tha hizzook, as always.

Tonight I decided to clean out the backlog of photos on my cell phone. Most of them I just deleted, but four of them were unusual enough to share. I have to say, though, that my phone takes very . . . impressionistic photos.

The first dates all the way back to early January when I went to see Margaret Dodge host her sadly now-defunct comedy night Dodge City at the Parkside Lounge in the deep East Village. Imagine my pleasure when I found the night was actually to be hosted by Lubka Bubkova, the renown cosmetologist/professor/pageant coach/swinger from Minsk! It was a fabulous, hilarious evening, and I even won a commemorative tampon for answering one of Lubka's quiz questions correctly.

Old New York

Our second phone photo this evening is of a plaque that hangs on the front outside wall of the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library. If you can't see the name of the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works, click the plaque image to enlarge it.

The commissioner's name is Eugene E. Hult.

He was my grandfather.

My library.

My full name, rarely used, is Eugene E. Hult III. I think it's particularly poignant that the renovation of this gorgeous building, rescued from the wrecking ball to be reinvigorated as a public library, was completed in 1967, and my grandfather died of a heart attack in 1968. He was only in his early 50s when his heart gave out on stage while he was giving a speech.

I never met Eugene E. Hult, Sr., as I was born in 1969.

So I've always viewed this library, which is very close to my apartment, with a certain amount of pride and ownership. To me, the library stands as a reminder that my name can be used for worthwhile things, and I'm very pleased that a few of the books I've written can be found in the stacks in the Young Adult section inside the library.

Danger!

I snapped this third picture back in early June, returning from a visit to Denver, while I was waiting for my luggage to toddle around the baggage carousel at LaGuardia Airport. It's quite graphic, no? I was personally afraid to put my hands anywhere near that rickety conveyor belt. Although the blood drops are artfully arranged, somehow I think there would be considerably more blood spurting out, and I doubt that your newly-discrete fingertips would be arrayed so precisely.

A chicken, perhaps?

Keeping it gruesome, in mid-July, I was walking along Washington Square West in the early AM on my way home from a particularly bad (and abortive) tryst, and I spotted this fetal bird on the sidewalk in front of the NYU dorm Hayden Hall, where I had lived during my Senior Year. There weren't any eggshells nearby. Why was a bird fetus dead by the park? Had it fallen out of a tree? Off a truck? Had some student found it in a sandwich? Quite mysterious and disturbing.

Taliesin

2007-07-24T12:18:00.002-04:00

At night magic is most often abroad.

Listen to the glimmering source of feeble rushlights while above the ordered
patterns wheel silently.

The moon herself rests upon the tangled branches of the trees -- stout vows, arguments, sighs and threats:

oak, wailing when cut; hawthorn, fairy dominion; Northerners say ash holds up the sky; and always, a willow, shuffling to grab travelers to encase within a dense trunk.

The name of the old man has been rendered unimportant in this story. His eyes are a boy on a winnowing floor surrounded by similarity.

A moment all is still the name spoken under the sun when words float cheap thistledown in a daybeam -- with only distant echoes of the power they once possessed.

Lasting perhaps only a night, words gave shape. Knowing a name of a thing was essence perception, therefore a moment's mastery. Name the thing of absence -- a summons of being, encased alive in words.

"I am a musician, an artificer like the wren. I was many things before I was released, I was a word in letters."

This night sings, faint in falling mists. The ground dampens thick with wet under a canopy of trees. Before the sun rises with bursting light, listen:

Mouse

2007-07-10T00:10:00.001-04:00

Mabel performs the feline drive-by maneuver.

Last week, I sequestered myself in my apartment for three days, working on a preteen copywriting project. In this rarefied, heightened, and deeply internal state of being immersed in putting exciting, upbeat, and informative sentences together, I become hyperaware of everything occurring in my tiny apartment as though I were working from inside an echo chamber.

I saw the mouse for the first time on Saturday afternoon. I was watching TV, feeling itchy because I should have been at the computer instead of on the couch, and a brownish blur zipped along the baseboard in my peripheral vision. Even though the blur had barely registered, my internal mouse alarm went off.

Lost for the second time. Bad Gladys!

As the breadwinner primate, it is not my job to deal with vermin. I went into the bedroom and gathered my cats. Gladys, the fat gray marshmallow one, protested as I lugged her off the bed. But she seemed to get the idea as I placed her in the middle of the living room -- something was up. As I figured, Mabel, my skinny, hot-tempered cat, also followed us out to investigate the commotion.

The mouse did not re-emerge, but I told the cats that they should be on high alert and that mouse-hunting was their reason for living in such pampered conditions. Really, I assume that I'm responsible for everything in the apartment over a certain height, but their duties concern what occurs on the floor. I went back to watching TV, and after a few moments of sniffing around, Gladys returned to the bed where she stays 95% of the time, and Mabel took up residence on my desk chair.

I flushed out the mouse.

Usually I'm annoyed if Mabel sits in my desk chair while a writing project is on the front burner as her presence there seems a rebuke that my own ass isn't in that chair, and it also seems to block instant seating if the lightning of an idea should suddenly strike, but there was a mouse loose and the chair was certainly a better vantage point for Mabel.

A few hours later, the mouse popped up again, zipping between the rarely-used stools that flank my kitchen island counter. Mabel did not react, so I swiftly stood and grabbed her and flung her at the mouse. The mouse ran, and Mabel hopped into action, chasing it into the kitchen. She appeared around the island with the mouse in her mouth. "Good kitty!" I cooed. Then she batted it around a few times, leading it into the bathroom, and I figured death for the rodent was imminent.

No hope now.

Gladys sauntered up the hall to the bathroom to partake in the death scene. Now, I have to tell you that my cats do not get along. In fact, they hate each other, and have violently reacted to each other's proximity since the day Mabel arrived, nearly six years ago. I heard hissing in the bathroom, and Gladys came out with the mouse. She dropped it, chased it a little way down the hall, and then stopped. The mouse zipped behind the litter box, which abuts a bookshelf, my desk, and a filing cabinet.

"Gladys," I groaned. "You let it get away."

Mouse? What mouse? Did it move yet?

Gladys seemed ashamed by this -- as ashamed as cats get, anyway, which isn't very -- and Mabel was bewildered by this turn of events. I moved the litter box so the cats could get access to the back of the bookshelf, but the mouse had taken secure shelter. This is an overladen bookshelf, triple-shelved with books, and moving it would necessitate taking all the books off of it, which would take hours. I tried to smoke out the mouse, using an old incense stick, but eventually it seemed like a bad idea to be jamming a lit ember into the dust bunnies under my bookshelf and I quit that. Mabel took up sentry atop the litter box, but there was no action for the next day.

Every time the cats came out to eat or rub against my feet, I asked them, "Catch that mouse yet?" We were all at Orange Alert.

I've got it locked in my high beams!

Sometime AM or PM on Sunday (time loses meaning for me when I'm writing), I was watching TV again and the cats were on my bedroom windowsills. The big brown mouse climbed up my desk chair, rooted around in the papers on my desk, and then zoomed back behind the bookshelf. This was untenable. Mabel on my desk chair is one thing, but a mouse in my paperwork? It is a violation, highly verboten, and punishable by death. I went and grabbed Mabel and told her to catch that mouse -- now!

Mabel hung out by the bookshelf for a long while, reaching in occasionally across the computer wires behind the desk. About an hour later, she made a sudden move, and came out with a mouse in her claw. Gladys entered from the bedroom, waiting by the doorway. I pulled my feet up onto the desk chair while Mabel smacked the mouse around under the desk, then I moved over to the couch to watch the murder.

Mabel poses proudly with her prey.

My cats have never actually eaten a mouse (that I've seen) -- they just slam it around like a toy until it dies and then they lose interest and I flush it.

So Mabel toyed with the mouse, whacking it, and then lounging next to it until it gathered its breath and made another break for escape. Under the desk chair, Gladys reached for the mouse, pulled it toward her, and then stopped again, allowing the mouse to zip behind the filing cabinet. I groaned, and Mabel smacked Gladys in the face. Usually I yell at the cats when they fight and tell them, "Be nice!", but after Gladys had let a mouse escape for the second time, I told her, "You deserved that!" and I let her slink off into the bedroom, sulking. She used to be a great mouser, especially when the restaurant was still open in the storefront underneath me. I couldn't help wondering if she was getting old.

Alien kitty loves her battered mouse!

Later, concerned, I even checked a website about how to tell the age of adult cats -- it had been estimated that Gladys was approximately five or six years old when I adopted her six years ago, but nobody at the shelter really knew for sure. So now she could be anywhere from eleven to fourteen or so, which is getting up there for a cat, although she generally seems in good shape, or content with being entirely out of shape.

Anyway, I decided that my cats needed help, so I grabbed the cat toy that consists of long plastic rod that has a string and a fake mouse dangling from it, and I used to rod to root around behind the file cabinet. Lo and behold, the mouse ran out from behind the cabinet and darted beneath the couch. Mabel was on it. She snagged the rodent again, and continued with its torture. Gladys came out to watch, but I warned her not to get involved, and she didn't.

It's not dead yet!

Mabel smacked that mouse around for a good hour, and I went back to writing. Eventually, the chasing sounds and slamming into walls subsided. The mouse was dead. I got up to pick it up.

Holding a paper towel and faced with the crumpled brown ball of fuzz, I felt sad for the mouse. I don't want mice in my house, for sure, but I'm trained by a lifetime of Disney movies to root for the mice and vilify cats. Mickey Mouse was my first beloved licensed character, and in movies like Cinderella, the mice are the heroes and Lucifer the cat is the one to avoid. As a child, I had white mice as pets, along with hundreds of hamsters and gerbils. My moniker, personal totem animal, and tattoo is also a rodent. How did I get to this side of this equation of these natural enemies? Why are mice the ones we root for, when nobody wants disease-carrying pests in their home? Our mouse-hunting for shelter compact with cats dates back to Ancient Egypt. We have no such Magna Carta with mice.

Oh, I get that mice are cute and small and the underdog, but I'm not sure that explains their prominence in the pop culture pantheon.

I flushed the dead mouse down the toilet with no fanfare and once again returned to writing.

French

2007-06-28T03:49:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday night I attended B Bar and Grille (known in the past as Bowery Bar), their gay night that for as long as I can remember, at least since the mid-90s, has been called Beige.

It has a reliably high rich, pretentious, and attractive boy factor, as though all the well-dressed patrons had just jetted back into the city from the Hamptons and are only deigning to mingle downtown for a moment, slumming in the Bowery, although in the cutest courtyard.

Now that I'm not reporting to an office in the mornings, I am able to go out late on a Tuesday night.

This Tuesday night, I met an adorable guy whose family owns a vineyard in Bordeaux, France. He's far too young, but ridiculously cute.

I think I gave him my card, but I'm kicking myself for not having gotten his info . . . rather than trying to piece together my scotch-soaked memories of random things he said in his outrageous French accent and searching for him ineffectually the next morning on MySpace.

Is this someone I need in my life, a gorgeous and fussy 22-year-old Virgo who appears intrinsically, overwhelmingly French?

He was tall and skinny and impeccably dressed in straight-leg slacks and a open-neck striped Oxford rolled up squarely cuffed at the elbows. Such a classic Gallic face, long nose, tousled schoolboy black hair, the blush on the yellow skin on the cheeks, the downward, morose cast of the eyes, the rueful lilting drawl of the accented vowels. He smoked with his long fingers and his wrist at an angle that seemed more European, cocked inward with studied insouciance. Sweet and young, but already pickled in tangy cynicism and fatalistic haughtiness. French.

He so sweetly asked if he could sleep with me.

I cannot stop thinking about how he felt.

Mostly I'm stuck on our kisses, and on the texture of his balls. They hung low, with some sparse hair that had that coarse Mediterranean darkness to it. I could raise up his balls and feel that his very long, skinny erection continued submerged and turgid into his taint. I'm fixated on the throb of that point of contact, and the ashy aftertaste of his nicotine kisses.

I can't remember if I gave him my card or not. He left bleary and confused this morning at 7AM. All I remember about his departure was that I roused to locate a sock for him and then let him out the door.

Around the World

2007-05-07T14:54:00.002-04:00

I really haven't seen much of the world, have I? I need to get out more.

The Magician

2007-05-06T17:00:00.001-04:00

Years ago in college, when I was first learning about the Tarot and Astrology, I read somewhere that once in your life, with great ceremony, you should flip over a single Tarot card and that card would represent yourself and indicate your direction in life.

So I turned over a card and it was The Magician.

This afternoon I saw a Which Tarot Card Are You? quiz link on someone's MySpace page and so I took the test to see if The Magician was still accurate for me.

Sure enough, that's exactly what turned up.

A nice bit of description from yhwh.com:

What is a magician? A magician is one who, with the strength of his word, manifests and manipulates the physical world. That has come into ill repute, because the power of the magician has been used for very dark, evil purposes. However, it was not always so, and in its purest form, magic is religion.

Now I have to get back to creating fantasical, manipulative worlds of imagination.

The quiz result:

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Concert Rapture

2007-01-04T23:45:00.001-05:00

Can you guess at which fey indy rock icon's concert this was taken?

He's a seminal favorite of mine, going back to my 16th birthday when I was given my first LP of his former band.

That album made me truly love guitar, and for the first time I felt that lyrics had been written about the honest particulars of my life.

Click on the picture for the answer and photo credit.

I think this is one of the most beautiful and intimate photos I've ever seen of the communal mob bliss and adulation that descends on a crowd during a particularly memorable rock concert.

Imagine looking out from the stage and seeing those expressions on the faces of the people there to see you perform? What would that do to your head?

Cute Overload!

2006-12-29T14:15:00.002-05:00

baby ~~orangutan~~ sqwirl!

I'm not made of stone here, people.

What Did You Get for Christmas?

2006-12-27T01:11:00.001-05:00

stocking stuffer

Remember when you were little, and after the bloodbath of unwrapping and whatever other traditions Christmas morning demanded, the first thing you did was ask your friends what they got for Christmas, and then you told them exactly what you got? I haven't done that in a while, so let's do it now.

In the materialistic, greedhead spirit of the holiday, let's play . . .

What did YOU get for Christmas?

And fuck this Happy Holidays shit. Your PC hypersensitivity makes Baby Santa Claus cry. Merry Fucking Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho! Motherfucker. Christmas under siege, my ass.

A bunch of writers and illustrators got me chocolate and popcorn and stuff at work.

My grandmother in Florida sent the first gift to arrive at my apartment -- two weeks ago! -- with a card and a check for $50. Rock on, Nana!

On Christmas Eve, one aunt gave me a $50 bill and a big, paper bookmark that has a porcelain bead of a cat hanging from its tassel. On the bookmark is a picture of a tan tabby with a semi-alarmed, quizzical expression on her face, with one ear cocked slightly. It's cute. Underneath that is the phrase:

Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.
- Sir Walter Scott

Centered on the back of the bookmark is this phrase in big letters:

CAUTION: This product is not recommended for very young children as beads can present a choking hazard.

I really do think stupid children should die of ingesting cat-shaped beads on bookmarks. It's Darwinism at its finest.

tourist at home

Another aunt gave me a 2002 DK Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide to New York. YOUR GUIDE TO THE 10 BEST OF EVERYTHING!

#1 under "Gay and Lesbian New York" is Stonewall Pub. Here's an interesting Observer article from 8/28/06 about this bar.

I like guidebooks, and I feel fond of out-of-date ones.

At my aunt's Christmas Eve party, I drank too many gin and collins and I had to sneak away during dinner and nap for a few minutes on my aunt's guest bed in-between giant stuffed dolls of Santa and Mrs. Claus.

In the morning on Christmas Day, I opened the boxes from my brother and my parents which had been cluttering the middle of my living room all week. My cats had taken to using one big box as a perch, and so they freaked out and zoomed about as I cut open the boxes with a razor.

Everything from my middle brother and parents came directly from an Amazon Wish List that I set up.

My middle brother either got me this shirt:

this one?

Or this one (the top blue one):

or maybe . . . ?

I'm not sure, since my parents also got me a dress shirt and neither one came with a card or any indication who it was from. Later my brother told me that he'd gotten me one of the shirts, but I forgot to ask which one.

I like them both a lot anyway. It's too bad that they have to be dry cleaned before I can wear them.

so soft

My parents also got me these blue flannel pajamas. I love them. They're so incredibly soft and comfortable. I'm wearing them right now. I love Nautica.

nice pants

Check out how cute their model is in these pants!

I will be a chef!

Then, my big present this year from my parents was this cookware set. I've been using my grandmother's old pots and pans that I inherited when she died. While there is magic in the old tomato sauce stains encrusted onto the bottom of the pots, the handles are broken, and they're generally in terrible shape. Really, they're wrecked.

This is the first set of new cookware I've ever gotten. Very exciting! Now I just need someone to cook for on a regular basis. Someone who will be forgiving of a culinary learning curve.

Also, a decent kitchen would be helpful.

Meg and Jack

Later on Christmas Day, I went up to my middle brother's new house in Darien. It's a great old country house in a lovely old neighborhood. I took the tour of it twice and had a whisky sour with my sister-in-law and then my niece (Maddy, almost 3) and nephew (George, almost 5) woke up from their nap and showed me, my youngest brother, and my aunt (the guidebook-gifting aunt) the rundown of all their Christmas morning gifts. Which were various and sundry and pretty fun. My favorite thing was the drum set my niece got and the ukulele my nephew got. It was so cool to see them pretending to play together. Like the White Stripes!

back in black backpack

Anyway, my aunt also gave me my birthday present (a funny framed photo of my nephew and me laughing).

My youngest brother gave me a new JanSport black "Right Pack" backpack, which I totally needed and wanted and asked for. My aunt also gave us some chocolate truffles.

Lu lulu lu lu lu

My gifts to myself were the CD of A Charlie Brown Christmas original soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. It's excellent -- read the review at Pitchfork that reminded me to get it for myself.

Oh, and also I gave myself the gift of a huge, life-altering decision about my future.
That was the end of my gifts for the year.

I did pretty okay, I think.

What presents did YOU get?

Blue

2006-12-19T01:59:00.001-05:00

blue blind breakfast

I feel so sad lately it is hard to breathe.

How long can this emotion endure? How long can I endure this emotion?

My shoulders ache with the soreness of sadness.

I need a new reason for existence.

What do Queen Elizabeth and Picasso have in common?

Ak! Ak! Ak!

2006-12-11T22:36:00.001-05:00

My cat Mabel has decided to torment me by making the exact sound the Martians make from Mars Attacks!

She makes this sound first thing in the morning when she wants me to wake up so I'll feed her, and she makes it when she's prowling around the apartment, bored, while I'm trying to work on the computer.

Honestly, this noise may make me burst into flame.

How can I make Mabel stop?

Pros and Cons

2006-12-09T12:07:00.001-05:00

wake up!

Because it's cold here now and I have nobody to nest with and so I'm feeling crazy and alone, I made up a list of pros and cons of my relative personal desirability.

This is the kind of thing you should never share with anybody, because such brutal insecurity is definitely on the list of cons.

So why am I sharing it with you? See "crazy" above.

CONS
1. Balding
2. Fat stomach
3. Often mean and nasty for no discernable reason
4. Yellow teeth
5. Distant and usually anti-social
6. Proximity to giant sucking hole of nihilist vacuum of soul
7. Already 37 years old
8. Agonizing hyperawareness of relative self

PROS
1. Talent, skill, and experience at making stories and books
2. Talent, skill, and experience at sexual expression
3. Relative intelligence
4. Some cute days
5. Independent: self-reliant and self-sufficient
6. Sensitive analytical acumen
7. Honesty
8. Sense of humor

I thought up eight of each. Does that mean they even out?

Why must the good side be so much more soft and subtle than the intense viciousness of evil?

Blood Diamond

2006-12-05T23:54:00.001-05:00

he grew chest hair!

Is it so very wrong if Leonardo's weird Rhodesian accent in the trailer for this film kind of gives me a woody?

His accent might be described as "plummy", but I fear that word only has negative connotations of overripe British accents.

I'm never sure if I notice Leo's acting and see through it or if he convinces me.

It's a little of both, sometimes, like Meryl Streep's work.

The pills!

Ever see Marvin's Room, starring Diane Keaton, Meryl, and Leo? It's a downer flick, but an amazing showcase for the skills of those three actors. Diane wins. During the climactic moment, her eyes start glowing from within with a kind of scary, trancendent intensity and even Meryl looks frightened acting opposite her.

On the other hand, of the three, Leonardo's the only one I really want to see naked.

The Comics Curmudgeon

2006-12-02T22:23:00.001-05:00

I basically learned to read by poring over comic strips. My father is a comic strip fan, and he had books of Peanuts, Doonesbury, and Pogo collections in his library, all of which I adored. I read the Sunday comics supplement from top to bottom (skipping only the soap opera comics), and for the entire time I lived with my parents, I read the daily comics religiously, too. I got the foundation of my knowledge of late 20th Century political and social history from Doonesbury.

My preteen and teen years were in the heyday of modern comics: Garfield, The Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes actually made some kind of cultural noise and impact.

In college, I was obsessed with the classic comics (Krazy Kat), sought out underground comics (Raw), worshipped Life In Hell and Ernie Pook's Comeek, and I wrote and drew my own comic strip, Aspects, which ran five times a week in the NYU student paper, The Washington Square News. Writing a daily comic strip is a career ambition that has yet to fade entirely .

Since the rise of the Internet, I don't subscribe to a newspaper anymore, and I get my news from my My Yahoo page every morning. Yahoo allows three comic strip feeds to my home page, but I could only justify reading two daily: Doonesbury and For Better or For Worse. I would have chosen Get Fuzzy as my third, but for some reason Yahoo's Comics Module doesn't carry it.

Doonesbury is simply the best comic strip ever created, arguably better than Peanuts, mainly because in its last 15 years, Peanuts was softened and sanitized into emptiness by the success of its own global licensing program. The same thing happened to Snoopy that happened to Mickey Mouse -- he stopped being a character and instead became a symbolic corporate icon.

For Better or For Worse has some serious goofiness issues, but I'm also emotionally invested in the Patterson family in a way I'm frightened to admit. At last year's Licensing Show in NYC, I was wandering around alone when I spotted a booth peddling FBOFW licensing. I went up to discuss possible FBOFW tie-ins (I make licensed books for a living), and someone handed me a large printout of a FBOFW strip and told me to step up to the counter. I did this sort of automatically, because Licensing Show at the Jacob Javits center is an overwhelming experience that makes one quite loopy. It took me a few moments to realize that Lynn Johnson, the creator, illustrator, and writer of the strip was sitting right in front of me.

I'm mortified to admit that I completely lost my shit. Really, I've met my share of relatively famous people, and I'm no starfucker. Never have I geeked out as badly as I did in front of Lynn Johnson. I started gushing about how Farley's death saving April made me weep. It was totally embarrassing and she seemed a bit frightened at my reaction, honestly, but she signed two large strips for me and placed them in protective tubes and I walked away feeling ridiculously thrilled.

I can't imagine what I'd do if I met Garry Trudeau. I'd probably have a heart attack.

Anyway, a month or so ago I found myself really upset about the direction For Better or For Worse had taken with it's horrifying Elizabeth/Anthony storyline, and I did a Google search to find out if anyone else on the Internet was equally freaked. That's how I found The Comics Curmudgeon site. (All strips and text quote blocks -- in blue -- were lifted directly from The Comics Curmudgeon. Click any strip to make it larger and readable.)

For Better Or For Worse, 11/28/06

No, you see Ellie, in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the strong, handsome, interesting police, who investigate crime; and the witnesses, who mumble testimony through their cinnamon-bun-crumb-laden mustaches and try to avoid mentioning their total contempt for the niceties of fair trials in a common law jurisdiction. This one’s already out of Paul’s hands, I’m afraid.

Seriously, though, this is the worst thing ever. I hate all of you, die, die, die, die.

Written and maintained by Joshua Fruhlinger, The Comics Curmudgeon site has had me cracking up and feeling a wonderful sense of comics community since I discovered it. Josh is quite clever and funny about the wackiness, inconsistencies, craziness, obsessiveness, and stupidity of the current comics medium, and his interest in the soap strips (those slow-moving serial strips that seem so boring) has broadened my horizons, or at least broadened my arena of mockery.

I never paid much attention to Mary Worth, Apartment 3-G, Rex Morgan, M.D., Mark Trail, or Judge Parker -- those were pretty much the only strips I skipped as a kid. They were the comic dramas in the world of comic sit-coms I loved. Even Spider-Man was interminably boring, I thought.

That is, until you find a site dedicated to cleverly deconstructing them.

Mary Worth, 11/9/06

Mary Worth has of course been delicious all week, as Mary seethes inwardly at her coming obsolescence. Panel two may be the moment at which anger turns to self-doubt, the moment when Mary’s steely self-confidence began to soften just a little. More interesting, though, is panel one, in which she appears to be shoveling off-white glop out of bucket onto a cookie sheet. Many of you have wondered why exactly Mary has a thigh-high bench in the middle of her kitchen; the fact that she needs to drop her … food … from about a foot above its target would seem to illustrate how impractical this arrangement is. But I’ll bet she just likes the sound it makes.

The Comics Curmudgeon is a very popular site -- I've never seen so many comments on single posts. Hundreds of comments are put up in hours. Because comics are a medium with a language almost all Americans understand on a deep, intrinsic level from the exposure we've gotten to them nearly accidentally from birth, everybody's got something to say about them. For a long time, comics were considered America's most popular medium -- more people read them daily than any other printed media. Since newspapers are in such serious decline, though, the strips may be dying, too . . . unless syndication on the Internet somehow saves them.

How do you monetize that, though?

Ziggy, 11/9/06

See, “diversity” used to be code for “black people,” but now it’s code for “gay people.” This represents the new PC horrorshow that awaits us under a Democratic-controlled Congress. Marriage is between one man and one woman, not a cat and two mice. Sickos.

Mark Trail, 11/27/06

Yeah, Mark, I’m sure he’ll be very excited to learn that Molly’s safe, especially considering that he had no reason to believe that she wouldn’t be safe, since he left her in the hands of an experienced outdoorsman and all. It’s like the time I took care of a friend’s cat when she was out of the country, and the cat had some pretty disgusting gastrointestinal problems, but I didn’t tell her about it until after I took the cat to the vet and got it all worked out. Except I sought medical attention for the cat as soon as I realized he was sick instead of leaving him in the back of an open jeep so that he could be kidnapped by morons with stupid hair. So, my point, Trail, is good luck casually playing this bearnapping incident off when you go see Buck in the hospital.

Yes, that moose is talking out of its butt in the second panel. No, I don’t know why that’s happening or how to make it stop.

This is the post on The Comics Curmudgeon that made me laugh the hardest so far:

B.C., 10/9/06

Things this deranged B.C. might possibly mean:
1. Columbus’ actions upon his “discovery” of Hispaniola began a legacy of enslavement and genocide that forever tainted the European colonial enterprise in the Americas.
2. What we need are more leaders like Columbus, who don’t let considerations of “political correctness” prevent them from getting done what needs to be done.
3. Them colored folk sure are good at the ball games.
4. MADNESS MADNESS MADNESS

The comic strip form is part of our American heritage, people. Yes, as William Carlos Williams says, "the pure products of America go crazy," but we must cherish our authentic, homespun insanity.

Or what will we have left worthy of celebration and mockery?

The Murky, Murky Woods

2006-11-18T17:01:00.002-05:00

When I was maybe five or six years old, sometimes my father would enter the darkened bedroom I shared with my brother and he'd tell us a bedtime story.

My mother read many bedtime books to us, but the stories she told (as opposed to read) were usually familiar plots with my brother and myself as the thinly-disguised protagonists. I found these recognizable plots faintly embarrassing and I didn't want to imagine ourselves in the roles. She was an excellent reader, though, and we made it through countless books together, even past the point when I was entering books on my own.

Around that time, my father had taken a year off work to write a mystery novel, and his invented bedtime stories in the dark had atmosphere and texture and allowed escapism. The one I remember best was perhaps the only serialized one -- he continued it over several days or maybe even weeks, in short chapters with cliffhangers.

I don't remember the main character's name -- a young boy who was officially neither me nor my brother --

star mole

but I do recall that this character was very, very small and he lived with his tribe who had been kicked out of their ancestral home for some reason I've now forgotten. This wandering people, approximately mouse-size I imagined, were constantly threatened by the neighborhood cat, and so they held a meeting to decide whether to live up in the trees like the birds, or down in the earth like the ants. They voted on living underground, and there they befriended a star mole who helped them dig their tunnels.

The cat still snuck up on the people and ate them occasionally, though,

tinkle, tinkle

and so the boy and the star mole were given the terribly important task of belling the cat -- slipping a bell on a rope around its neck so they could always hear when it was coming. I found out years later that this quest was based on an Aesop's fable.

I'm assuming they were successful in belling the cat and survived their mission, but unfortunately I don't recall that particular climactic episode.

Before beginning each night's serialized adventure, my father would tease us with the title of another story.

"What story would you like to hear tonight?" he'd ask. "The Murky, Murky Woods?"

"The Murky, Murky Woods!" I'd reply.

"Are you sure?" he'd push. "That's a really scary story, probably too scary for you . . ."

errand into the wilderness

"The Murky, Murky Woods," I'd say definitively.

"No, you're not old enough for that one yet," decided my father, and he would pick up the thread of the boy and the star mole story once again. That was okay, then, because my brother and I loved the tale of the underground people, which had echoed in our dreams for weeks.

When the star mole saga was complete, I knew I was old enough to hear The Murky, Murky Woods. It took much begging for my father to begin it.

It turned out to star my brother and myself,

lost

thinly-disguised as errant knights on a fantasy adventure. It wasn't particularly scary -- certainly not as deliciously evocative as the title -- and the telling of it fizzled out through lack of interest on everyone's part.

I'm still seeking the true story of The Murky, Murky Woods.

Do you know it?

Infectious

2006-11-15T23:36:00.003-05:00

Buried in parcels encased by moist, membranous stuff is the angle of the sun warmer than early risers.

My mother walked stiffly in a ski suit leaving 118 lb. footprints when she was twenty one. She had my arms and cried a Cherry Blossom Queen.

Dad ran the committee.

Crepe paper hovers above the mud. Fuck it, I flamed virginity at 12, although as much a nail biter.

Joke
Q: How do you fit additional fags into a crowded bar?
A: Turn the barstools upside down.

While I have something exterior to protect, who will it be? Tumbling down a pit into the arms of Pluto. A brown ring of tooth marks, on display in a decorative planter.

Belief in people's sincerity is a fountain basin, or the angel has not yet been swallowed.

My particular gender pulls at the meat of my face, stretching, unsettled beneath a reflection veiled by floaters. Under a gun I will admit all, I'm safe, I'll sign anything put before me.

Something, something up for undifferentiation. A battle isn't an anomaly, and all forgot the seventh deadly sin banners itself anger. All that smarts.

How to fight what is a Japanese melody for flute by alignment, to celebrate when called for. I held a broken plastic token in my hot hand and radiated enough for one night and the German on the bed I named celebrator. In the larger room people turned touched and pleased, adopted.

The factors refuse change but to metamorphose when counting grains of top-heavy grass. My arms wouldn't lift the world and I made manager, staring up tall stalks from the lawn gone to seed. More to the story demands a snow white flutter, and the season has passed.

I have a cease fire with my father but he won't tell if he swallowed a nail.

Who looks busy in that corner?

I loosened something, a screw standing upright.

I'll kill to hold it safe.

Enough Light to See by, Benjy

2006-11-15T23:10:00.002-05:00

In time theology is inhaled from the hookah and exhaled out the mouth of the philosopher puppet.

A dream of my ancestors shatters in a broken bottle and refracts the fact that I am a broken link in the daisy chain and had better blossom mightily.

Returned to me on Judgment Day: favorite pens, a few socks, garbled text messages, keys, and the name of the boy kissed in the soccer shorts.

In this case, fear is not a response to danger. Fear relies on such possibility. His wife hung from his toes Harry Truman with a rope.

I lied: I wore the soccer shorts and made up his name.

New difference is not a sound alarm. Waves of flame spurn ideology, spurt. Major angel disbelieves occurred. To the firebird, ashes he stirs.

Fast car, babe, all want: sit in winter in shirtsleeves, puzzling bonging koans. Ka-chunk! Pressed hope, a beaver's dam of consciousness. Tomorrow I will work the names of tomorrow.

Is the Alamo yet forgotten? Unsure to rally, unsure what oppress. Bowie had a big long knife. Throughout history, a centenarian has been an uncommon centenarian, and a centurion suffered slings and arrows.

I mourn eventually loss of soccer shorts. Unbuttoned, a similarity differs from actual itself. This is a historical moment.

Pointlessness: timeline in knots of who drinks eternity as pass it comes.

I had a balogna sandwich for lunch today. Oops, I forgot my Coke and lettuce and mayonnaise. On what bread, on a roll? Then I ate something else.

Why ignore that cornflower because the field filled? Sky blue, a missing leaf, on the field fills.

An amalgam: well-muscled calves, bare, used to kick a ball. Chart wandering imagination as it tumbles into comparative resemblance.

Ritual: there is comfort and endless unfixable nuance.

Play the game, don the shorts, and let someone else keep score.

Birthday Pictures

2006-11-15T01:33:00.001-05:00

A few photos from my 37th birthday party, taken rather late in the evening on Saturday, November 11, the night before my birthday. My apologies to those not represented here, including Andra, Paul, David & Dan, Steven & Morgan, Mark, David, Tarik & roommate, Mary, and Judith. My apologies if I've forgotten anyone -- you kept buying me shots all night, so much of the evening is a fun blur. Thanks to everyone for coming and celebrating with me at Madame X.

Foreground, left to right: David, me, my brother Rob, Colin, and the back of Warren's head. In the background is Jamie Scandal's hand as she gestures to her brother behind me. Almost completely behind me is Jamie's sister-in-law, who shares the same birthday as me!

A wider shot of the area we had at Madame X -- four couches to ourselves, with direct access to the garden for the smokers. To the far right are Dana, Judith, and Brooke.

Jamie Scandal, a friend from way back to Freshman Year at NYU . . . 20 years ago!

My friendly ex Colin, and some of his oldest friends: Dana, Judith, and Brooke.

Lovely Sarah, making me laugh.

Now it's David's turn to crack me up. Plus the alcohol is kicking in. More shots anyone?

Posing with David. Was it really 1996 when we first met?

Hi, Sarah and Warren! The night was definitely blurring by this point -- I didn't take any of these pictures.

Uh-oh, Rebecca! Drama! Perhaps it is time to relocate the party.

The festivities continued at my apartment a few blocks away from Madame X. I don't think I've ever had that many people in my apartment at once. The cats were suprisingly calm. Here's Rob, Rebecca, and Lori in the kitchen area.

Rebecca works that sassy hat.

At this point, I needed the door jamb to prop myself up. That's Warren's arm on the other side of the couch from Ethan, and I think Lori is pulling up her pants.

Tia looks cool when she smokes. I want a cigarette, too, Tia! Alas, no cigarettes for Gene even on his birthday.

Ethan snaps his Mork suspenders in the smoke while Warren and Kafka watch.

Do not stare too long into the abyss, Tia. The abyss stares back at you.

I do not have enough seating in my apartment: a wee movie.

Ethan and Lori made sure I was completely pickled before calling it a night.

Thanks again to everyone who came to the party. I had a fantastic time, and barely saw any of Sunday, which was my actual birthday -- that whole day was spent moving slowly in recovery from a wicked hangover . . . one of those headaches where it feels like your brain has sloughed loose and is slapping wetly against the inside of your skull. What was I thinking, accepting all those raspberry vodka shots?

They were so tasty.

Barber Fight

2006-11-02T02:04:00.002-05:00

mighty contests

Two and a half weeks ago, after my London trip, I got a much-needed haircut. Rocco, my favorite barber at my neighborhood barbershop (the Hair Box) is an old, tiny Italian man probably edging up on 70. He has to tilt my head down sideways in order to cut on top, but you can just tell by the way he holds his scissors that he's incredibly experienced and sure. Rocco only works three days a week now, since he's closing in on retirement.

That last haircut looked GREAT -- short and tapered on the sides and in the back, with the top long and the bangs almost down to my eyebrows. For three days, everyone complimented me on that haircut, and it did look cool . . . almost like the excellent haircut I'd sported in my senior year of high school. Except not bleached blond.

devil's haircut

Anyway, after three days, the extra length on top and in the bangs started to clump together oddly, and I started pushing it off to the side in a weirdly greasy swoop. I looked like Hitler. I had Hitler hair.

People were actually coming up to me and saying things like, "What happened to your hair? It looked so good when you got it cut," or, "Damn, boy -- how fast does your hair grow anyway?" It grows fast, I guess.

This evening I couldn't take it anymore, so I thought I'd stop by the Hair Box and see if Rocco was working. He wasn't, but I figured since I was there, I'd get a haircut anyway.

There were three barbers in the shop -- two older guys sitting in their own chairs, and a woman in the middle, busy cutting the hair of a man in her chair. The TV was on to some trivia game show. Both male barbers had cut my hair previously -- the nearest was Russian, I think, with dark hair and a moustache, all of which looks Grecian Formula'd. Last time he cut my hair, he yelled at me about trying to shave the back of my neck myself, and had gotten really annoyed when I'd made him cut the sides of my hair shorter. The tall, skinny guy on the end has wispy white hair, and he's probably Italian, perhaps in his early 60s. He's quiet, and I barely remember the last haircut he gave me, although I think it was fine but not as good as Rocco's cuts.

There's one guy sitting in the waiting-chairs, but he's an older Italian man who looks familiar, reading a magazine, and I think he's just hanging out.

I enter and nod at the Russian guy because he's closest and I say something inane like, "Ready for me?" He stands up and I move toward the coat hook to hang up my leather jacket and put down my satchel briefcase.

The skinny barber on the end stands up, too. "It's my turn!" he insists firmly.

The Russian barber turns red and glares. "He spoke to me!"

"It's my turn!" the skinny barber says. "It doesn't matter who he spoke to."

"Tell him!" the Russian barber yells at me. "Tell him you spoke to me first!"

I put my hands up. "It doesn't matter to me. I don't want trouble," I say.

The skinny barber ushers me toward his chair. "It's my turn," he repeats. "Don't steal my customers."

quite a handshake

The Russian barber lunges across the shop so he's in the skinny barber's face. They start jabbering angrily at each other and I take a step backward to get out of the way of their anger. They're spitting now, really heated, but with basically the same phrases over and over again: It's my turn. vs. He spoke to me first.

For a minute there, I thought scissors were going to be weilded. I envisioned stabbings, razor slicings, combs to the face. Barber fight! Barber fight!

I make a silent plea to the woman barber, but she shrugs. "You could wait for me to finish," she suggests, and I laugh, realizing that would just make everything worse.

Finally, the skinny barber has pulled rank or seniority or something and so I'm led into his chair while the Russian barber goes back to watch TV and sulks for a few minutes, until another customer enters.

The skinny barber gives me a perfectly adequate haircut -- maybe even good; we'll see how it cleans up tomorrow morning -- while muttering "It was my turn" to himself the whole time. The sides and back of my hair are now really short and neat, and the top is more layered. The bangs are much shorter and not so crispy-looking.

On the way out of the shop, I have to pass behind the Russian barber where's he standing, cutting his next customer's hair, and he glances at me.

"No hard feelings, right?" I say.

"No, none," he says. "We're good."

So much barbershop drama for $16.

Bionic

2006-11-02T01:36:00.001-05:00

My eye!

Last year around Christmastime, I had Custom Vue LASIK eye surgery at a company called DiamondVision ("See all that you can see"). It was a scary, smelly procedure, and it cost me about $3,000, which is the price less a 20% discount from my health insurance.

Best $3,000 I ever spent.

No more glasses or contact lenses. I have peripheral vision again. Soon after the surgery, I was tested as having 20/15 vision, which means that I can see clearly at a distance of 20 feet what most people can see 15 feet away.

Today I went for my one-year checkup. I could read the bottom lines of the charts clearly on the 20/15 slide . . . I've experienced no lessening of vision so far. Just for shits and giggles, the doctor tried me on the 20/10 slide, but that was just a row of little black dots. "It was worth a shot," she said.

"Oh, well," I replied. "I'm not bionic."

I'm the $3,000 man.

She didn't laugh. Probably she's heard variations on that joke thousands of times.

Then the doctor inspected my eyes through her microscope apparatus. "There's absolutely no sign that you had surgery at all." She sat back and frankly looked a little surprised. "You've had a great result," she said, oddly thoughtfully.

"Great!" I said.

Really -- best thing I've ever done for myself physically.

Bachelor Meals: Butternut Squash Ravioli with Onion Cream Sauce

2006-10-29T22:31:00.002-05:00

Here in the approach of Halloween, I've been having a pumpkin ravioli craving all week, but the first time a week ago that I stopped by the Ravioli Store on Sullivan St., they were out of pumpkin, and when I tried Wednesday night, they were closed -- to be expected, given that I'd gotten out of work after 8PM. On Thursday I got off work at a reasonable time, and I walked home from the West 4th St. subway station (instead of transferring to the C or E train one stop to Spring St.), because I had to do a few errands on the way.

mom & . . . opop?

So I picked up kitty litter, litter box liners, and cat food at the Pet Bar, and then stopped into the tiny, ancient, M&O grocery store to buy butter and hamburger buns (I had ground beef at home . . . hamburgers were my backup plan).

It was fully dark and my hands were hurting from lugging grocery bags by the time I got all the way to the Ravioli Store -- at about 6:45 -- and I was pleased to see the store's light was still on as I approached. The handle of the door was locked. The wan, dark-haired woman behind the counter was counting money and she looked up at me as I jiggled the handle.

house of cravings

Still open? I mouthed. She drew the side of her hand across her throat in a motion that can sometimes mean I will kill you in a different context. I made a sad face at her and she went back to counting the money from the register. Begging might have been an option, but I didn't want to seem all that desperate for pumpkin ravioli. As I trudged around the corner to my apartment, I wondered what I would have said if I'd begged. Please, I love those pumpkin ravioli and I promised my girlfriend I'd make them for her tonight . . . I told her how much she'd love them . . .

Ah. I'd unearthed a little nugget of internalized homophobia there, hadn't I? Some stupid residual fear of discovery. The ravioli lady wouldn't blink if I said boyfriend. No need to lie to her. I could say boyfriend to the ravioli lady . . . if only her store were open later or if I were the begging type. Or if I had a boyfriend and wasn't just planning a nice dinner for myself alone.

On the way home, I passed my nearest liquor store and I remembered that I was out of booze except for some cherry brandy that got me drunk too fast and burned my lips with essence of isopropyl. I couldn't stop for booze now, though -- with my soft leather briefcase satchel over my shoulder, a bag of kitty litter and cat food, and two plastic grocery bags, I would be a bull in a china shop in the narrow liquor store . . . and how would I manage to lug the bottles home?

At home, after I'd put away the groceries, I realized I still wanted booze. Wine, specifically. It seemed like a lovely evening to put in March of the Penguins (which had just arrived from Netflix), cook a cheeseburger, and settle down on the couch for dinner and a movie and some wine. I'd go to Vintage and get some sweet wine.

always forgotten

With the really cute and friendly guy who works at Vintage in mind, I got dressed in jeans and a baby blue hoodie and set out for the store. It was a lovely autumn evening tonight, brisk and smelling faintly of sweet decay from the molting leaves. Halfway to the store I realized that Gourmet Garage, a large organic and health food supermarket that I always forget about, was only another block up . . . and they might have pumpkin ravioli. I could picture it in their bright refrigerated bins (which always remind me of sarcophagi) of fresh and frozen pasta. I'd hit Vintage afterward so that I didn't have a clinking bag of wine bottles with me in the supermarket.

gourd goodness

It turned out that there were many kinds of frozen ravioli in Gourmet Garage's pasta sarcophagus -- lemon pepper, mushroom, Florentine, four cheese, lobster . . . but no pumpkin. Then I spotted the butternut squash ravioli. Close enough, maybe even better with a butter sauce than pumpkin. Hooray for gourds!

While I was at Gourmet Garage, I also picked up a mixed container of olives from their serve-yourself olive bar,

bitchy sister

some fancy crackers, organic baby carrots, and Annie's Whole Wheat Pasta in Alfredo macaroni & cheese. The mac & cheese box had a picture on it of D.W., the sister to Arthur the anteater. D.W. amuses me.

At Vintage, the really cute guy wasn't working, so instead of my usual pathetic attempts to ask him leading questions so he'll tell me about wine, I just pick out a bottle of port, a bottle of Riesling, and a bottle of late-season dessert wine that sounds delicious from the descriptive card.

click for interior shot

The normal-looking and probably straight counter guy barely speaks to me while he rings me up, although I have to admit that I act distant because he is not the cutie I was hoping would be there.

Back at my place, I had to do dishes, so I set the pot to boiling while I cleaned the kitchen. My kitchen counter island is getting cluttered with books I've dragged home from work -- I'm out of bookshelf space again. Doing the dishes is always improved by a quick hit and groovy music. Someday I will have a dishwasher, but I've lived without one for so long that I'm used to doing dishes. If I fall behind, the nice woman who comes to clean my apartment every two weeks will empty out the sink.

The ravioli comes in a flat box that has two levels of connected pasta, the layers kept separate by wax paper and a thin cardboard tray. I gently pull apart the squares of ravioli in the top layer and slide them one-by-one into the boiling water, and then put the bottom layer back onto the top rack of my mini-fridge, which is the closest thing I have to a freezer, given the ice-block state of the pathetic metal icebox attached to the ceiling of the fridge. Someday I'll have to clear out the fridge and unplug it so that I can defrost that stupid icebox and free the ice cube trays that have been embedded in the ice for the last few years. I haven't done it yet out of laziness and fear of the mess it will make when that iceberg melts and the ocean levels in my apartment rise in a moment of inconvenient truth.

come to flavor country

Recently I accidentally discovered that putting a few spoonfuls of butter in a mug and adding chopped onions in the mug, too, actually fries the onions when its microwaved, while also infusing the butter with onion flavor as a bonus. So I dice two slices of onion, and add a few slivers of fresh garlic, too. Then I drop in a few berries from the jar of capers I have, and splash some of the juice in the jar into the butter mix, too. I cover the mug with a paper towel and zap it for two minutes.

It didn't work this time. The butter boiled over a bit and sloshed down the sides of the mug, and the onions are still white and opaque. Then I remembered that I'd added a drop of olive oil to my concoction when I'd accidentally discovered this method of quick-frying, so I added a splash of extra virgin and zapped the mug for another two minutes. The kitchen filled with the sound of sizzling and angry vapors filled the microwave's chamber.

The butter had boiled over again, and now the onions, garlic, and capers were dark brown, nearly burnt. Maybe I'd gone too far. Oh, well, I added more butter to replace the bit that had boiled over, and I splashed in a little skim milk to thicken it somewhat, too.

mmm .. . subtle

I drained the ravioli and set the dozen squares of pasta on a plate. Then I drizzled the butter sauce from the mug onto the ravioli. The cream was dark yellow, streaming brown around the burnt onions.

The sauce was delicious. The onion flavor was surprisingly subtle within the butter, with the savory accents similar to a buttered, toasted onion bagel. The burnt capers detonated with a tiny squirt of slight brine when bitten. The butternut squash ravioli supplied a lovely, understated base to the butter sauce. It was the first sauce I'd ever made myself that I wanted to lick off the plate after I had eaten all the pasta.

Post-meal, I curled up on the couch with a glass of the Riesling (as sweet and tart as an autumn apple) and felt perfectly content.

rich, creamery butter

Unfortunately, two nights later I attempted the same recipe again and I think I added to much milk to the sauce and it came out watery and bland, not nearly as balanced, and this time I hadn't burned the onions as badly and so that delicious carbonized flavor was absent.

Of course I realize that due to concerns about my weight I shouldn't be eating butter sauces at all. But I also went to the gym twice last week so perhaps that helps it even out.

I wish you existed, my love, so I could cook for you, so we could cook and eat together.

Funniest Lines Ever

2006-10-21T12:29:00.002-04:00

EVELLE
These blow up into funny shapes at all?

CASHIER
Well, no. Unless round is funny.

-- Raising Arizona

FRANCIS FLUTE AS THISBY
Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove?

-- A Midsummer Night's Dream

London Pride

2006-10-17T23:55:00.002-04:00

Soho, London

A week ago yesterday I went to London on a business trip. It was a particularly interesting and successful trip for me professionally, and a rather disastrous one emotionally.

I wasn't looking my best on the trip. It had been tiring preparing to leave work for a few days, and I hadn't had time to get a haircut before I left. Also I was up near my maximum weight (I hope that's my maximum weight!) and I had a stubborn, eerily glowing zit on my right cheek that I could minimize with makeup from head on, but from any other angle became an alp of a pustule.

Still, I had gotten my laundry and dry cleaning done (it was down to laundry or haircut on the last day before I left and fresh underwear won out) so at least I was dressed well for my business meetings.

Unfortunately, I should have stayed dressed in my slacks and blazer when I left my boss at the hotel in the evenings and went out to the London gay bars alone. The men were outfitted almost formally in the bars in Soho, all smoking cigarettes in fitted jackets and skinny trousers. They appeared quite stylish, really, and I felt shlumpy in the gray cable-knit sweater and jeans combo I was wearing. It had looked cute in the hotel mirror, my outfit, and would have been cute in a dark East Village bar, but with my overgrown bowl cut and zit and sweater draping badly over my stomach, I looked like an aging, derelict Beatles fanatic with something to hide.

That was Thursday night and I was horny but stood around awkwardly in a bar called Rupert Street, where none of my conversational gambits were met with any interest, and then I moved on to a place called Barcode, which was more of a rougher, older, craggier crowd. I was cuter there, but not interested in the only attention I got, which was from a beefy Brazilian with a weirdly thick neck who kept grabbing his crotch to show me how big his dick was. (It was probably quite big, given the lump his grab formed.) He gave me the heebies, especially after he clutched my neck with his fat grip. I hate when guys seize my neck in that possessive, dominant way. I become immediately mean when a guy makes that move and I shrug and twist to escape. He finally got the hint and left me alone, muttering in annoyance, "I hope you find what you're looking for." Which instantly made me want to succumb to my horny desperation and take him back to my hotel, but I stayed strong and picked what was behind Curtain #3.

I moved on to a club called The Shadow Lounge, which was a small, upscale club with a mid-80s VIP vibe. The guys were sleek and sexy there, and I was happy to be in that club, even after the bartender gave me attitude and I slunk into a skinny corner between a curtain and a full-length mirror to lurk there and glare out on the dance floor.

Eventually, after about an hour of standing alone, a hot, slightly older, Libran, American lawyer found me and hung out, along with his chunky Leo friend. The Libra dude was wearing a maroon t-shirt that accentuated his pecs and flat stomach. He was quite friendly and was having a good night, with guys hitting on him every few minutes. It was fun, being part of that small circle, chatting up the guys he lured in and scaring away the riffraff. When he offered me a small bag of something-something and told me to bring it to the loo, I took it and headed straight there.

In the men's room, an Asian-ish guy was queued up in front of me for the stalls, and when he leaned over to the mirror and started messing with his goatee, I asked, "Are you braiding that?"

twists and turns

"Are you braiding that?" he mimicked back, rather expertly imitating my nasal New York accent.

I laughed and he explained that he was indeed braiding his goatee, but that in the UK they called it plaiting. Also he told me that he was half English and half Hawaiian before two stalls opened up and we separated into them.

After peeing, I did a quick bump off the side of my hand and immediately felt rushy and queasy -- that shit was strong, especially on top of the five Southern Comforts and ginger ale I'd already imbibed. Whoo. I made my way back to the Libra and Leo and returned the baggie with my gratitude.

The something-something made me hornier, and I asked the Libra if he wanted to come back to my hotel with me. He seemed alarmed at my question, and demurred, saying that he had to get up early for work the next day.

We hung out a while longer, and it was fun, but not the same. Some nights you can just tell that the gods of sex are not smiling down on you and any inroads I made without their blessing would be unsatisfying, icky, and even dangerous.

So when I'd come down a bit, I took a taxi back to the hotel and did my best to sleep before my meetings on Friday morning.

After another honestly fascinating day working on Friday, I napped at the hotel, and then went out to a lovely restaurant with my boss, and the president of the UK company and his sister, the company's creative director. I had a glass of tart Riesling with dinner. The food was spectacular -- a ham and foie gras terrine for a delectable appetizer, followed by a succulent and airy slice of halibut, and finished with coconut tiramisu for dessert. The conversation was entirely adult and professional, but congenial, and I felt smart and lucky afterward.

At the restaurant, I'd been wearing a dark blue shirt and dark purple slacks with a black corduroy blazer that has a rich tone and a fine, soft weave. I looked neat, I knew, put-together, but I'd been wearing that outfit all day and when I got back to the hotel I decided to change before going out. After trying on a few outfits, I decided on jeans and a blue t-shirt and a green leather jacket. My hair and zit were still stupid, but I thought I looked passable in the getup, maybe even a little tough-looking. The open sides of the jacket hid my stomach, I conjectured, although they probably didn't.

It took me a while to find a taxi, it being Friday night and all, but finally I flagged one down. I got a little drowsy during the slow trip into Soho, and was a little shocked that the meter had rung up nearly fifteen pounds (almost $30!) by the time I arrived at a club called G-A-Y.

whatever, Mary

I got on line outside G-A-Y and was pleased when an Asian kid in front of me handed me a free pass. He and his two girlfriends slipped past the velvet rope when we reached the entrance, but then the woman at the door latched the rope in front of me. I nodded at her, figuring that she had to pause for a bit to let the crowd thin out.

"Have you been drinking, sir?" she asked me. "How much have you had to drink tonight?"

"Nothing," I replied, looking her in the eyes. I figured the glass of wine with dinner two hours ago didn't really count.

"You appear to be intoxicated, sir," the woman said. "Are you sure you haven't been drinking?"

"No," I answered, feeling awkward now. "I'm not drunk. Really."

She gestured to a male bouncer nearby and he beckoned me over. "Had too much to drink tonight, sir?" he asked me.

"No," I said. "Really."

It is very difficult to look completely sober even when you are completely sober. What posture and expression do you strike to signal a total lack of inebriation?

"I can't let you in," he said. "You're intoxicated. Go get a coffee and come back in an hour."

"I'm not drunk," I said again. "An hour?"

"If you're not intoxicated, sir," the bouncer replied, "you won't mind waiting an hour, now, will you? Go get a coffee and come back in an hour."

Then I was back out of the velvet ropes and on the sidewalk, completely bewildered about what had just happened.

I stood on the sidewalk, watching other groups of kids -- Indian or Pakistani kids, mostly, a party of one gay guy and three pretty girls, all dressed in sparkly clubwear -- standing nearby feeling sad because they hadn't been allowed inside, either. They weren't drunk.

The bouncers had known I wasn't intoxicated.

They just hadn't wanted me to go inside.

I wandered down a side street deeper into Soho, planning to hit another gay bar, but as I circled the maze of blocks, I started to feel more and more insulted and couldn't stop fretting about being bounced.

It was because I was too old. Too fat. With bad hair. And a zit. What was I doing, trying to get into a London gay club with the cool kids? I'm too dumpy for that. I should have insisted to the bouncer that I wasn't intoxicated, but I didn't want to sound crazy or pushy. I should have said that I wasn't drunk, I was bewildered by London. Didn't he realize I was an American? I should have mentioned that I paid fifteen pounds to get to the club. Wasn't my leather jacket cool enough? Maybe it made me look like too much of a roughneck. That was ridiculous. A portly, middle-aged, mop-topped roughneck? No wonder they bounced me. I should have been able to explain that I was not pickled. Somehow, there must be a way.

About fifteen minutes later, I had circled back to the velvet rope and I went up to the bouncer, ready to talk my way in.

"I know it hasn't been an hour yet . . ." I began, stupidly reminding him immediately of disobeying his requirement.

"That's it, man," he said. "Go get a coffee and come back in an hour."

"I'm not drunk," I said.

I wanted to ask for clarification about whether he meant an hour from now or an hour from when he had first told me to get a coffee, but he didn't care and he turned away to give somebody else a hard time.

I didn't know what to do. Going to the G-A-Y Club had been my only plan for the evening -- I didn't want to return to any of the places I'd been to the night before. I'd taken a fifteen-pound taxi ride to get there! It had been so long since I'd been barred from a nightclub, I didn't know how to react. No . . . I'd never been denied entry from a nightclub before! This was the first time.

Not having any other agenda but definitely not wanting to go back to the hotel yet, I went back into the warren of Soho and ended up in a dingy, sad bar called The Village, which was obviously past its prime.

Like me.

Come back to my hotel, Solo?

I got another drink, with more attitude from the bartender -- even there, in Loserville -- and I wandered the four floors trying to find a good place to stand and survey the scene. I hovered near some skinny European guys, but they were too young and cute and I was a vile blob of revolting repulsion by that point. I tried not to stare at a ogreish fat man who stood alone on the opposite side of the pack. He had manboobs that quivered nervously beneath his too-tight polo shirt, with depressions in the cloth for his silver-dollar-sized inverted aureole. When he met my stare, and his mouth twitched as though it was working up into a desperate smile, I looked away, tense with my own sense of my tier within the lame bar. New York is similarly leveled in gay culture, but I know my strata there and I know where to go so that I don't feel out of place. It was actually a relief when the lights came on about an hour later and I hit the streets in search of a taxi to take me back to the hotel.

The next morning, after enduring endless suspicious security queues in Heathrow, I flew back to New York.

As soon as I got back to my apartment, I changed clothes and ran to my neighborhood barber for a haircut. It was a vast improvement.

My trip to London?

Professionally it couldn't have gone better. I'm proud of myself for how I've been excelling at my job.

Romantically it was awful. I'm tired of putting my body, my face, my heart out there in the bitter scene. It makes me feel vulnerable and it hurts and I'm entering an era of severely diminishing returns. My pride suffers terribly.

I can't do it anymore.

I can't keep up.

I want my husband to show up now so I can slow down and get fat in fancy restaurants with him and concentrate on settling down and shining in my careers. No more appearing intoxicated alone outside London nightclubs, wondering what's so horribly wrong with me.

I want the reassurance of a relationship.

Will someone tell him I'm here waiting, please?

World of Warcraft

2006-10-08T19:47:00.001-04:00

I know the feeling.

I'm glad I cancelled my World of Warcraft account before this South Park episode aired -- it hit way too close to home and made me alarmed about how I spent most of the past year.

Man, I loved that game. At my peak, I was playing six hours a night and straight through the weekends. It didn't feel depressing because I hung out with the same people in my guild (Aurum, on the Graymane server) every time I logged on. It was friendship, there was common purpose and accomplishment, however virtual. For my birthday last year, one of my guildmates bought me a horse in the game. This horse would have taken me weeks to save up enough money to buy.

thoughtful gift

It was the best birthday present I received that year.

Aurum, under new leadership, decided to transfer to another server and I had hit a ceiling of advancement so I declined to move my character along with them. After they left, I couldn't sustain interest in playing any longer. It seemed too difficult to begin again with another circle of friends, and I couldn't devote another year to honing a new character. Something finally clicked inside me and I realized that the problem with virtual accomplishment is that it is ultimately meaningless.

For this I had defaulted on a contracted novel, let my body get fatter, taken easier routes of quick sexual encounters rather than devoting solid time toward building a new relationship?

I had broken one of my personal cardinal rules: I had focused my energies on a project that ultimately had no practical satisfaction.

kill it!

Do I regret playing World of Warcraft with such obsession? No. The game is an enormous progression toward full virtual immersion -- the skills I learned there will be very useful in the next step of virtual evolution.

Also, it was fascinating to see my own personality distilled to its essence. Even in the pixilated skin of a buff level 60 human mage named Septing, able to hurl bolts of ice that could freeze a dragon and kill it across a desert valley, I was still myself, with all my petty personality flaws and weaknesses, as well as my strong, severe, solitary integrity that has accompanied me since birth.

a wise man

As Buckaroo Banzai says so pithily, "Wherever you go, there you are."

Even when riding on a black horse across the virtual, sumptuously detailed plains of Azeroth.

It exists.

Sea Stack

2006-10-01T23:40:00.001-04:00

Rialto Beach

I hope you'll meet me in a moment of saline lucidity.

When I'm not depressed by the distressed furniture hulking on these sandy floorboards like flotsam tumbled and spat ashore by history's turbulence.

Ice-spun mist flows and ebbs like nutrient-rich tides, lapping at my sudden transparency.

It may mean a fight if I'm to admit that an insoluble boulder could describe the surge of my current.

Equipped with parasitic seed pods, I strew my children of espionage into the wet wind. They report to me with deep sea sonar and a huge margin of error.

I peer into what happens next, a sailor's prayer for a red moon tonight, and wonder how many regrets about the unfinished are required for advanced placement in the afterlife.

I agree it's unfair to pose scenarios with pre-projected outcomes -- skewing toward a rocky outcropping of self-fulfilling prophecy, no matter how grotesque the shaping desires of my ocean.

I want to camouflage the sinkhole entrance to this surging wound with bleached tree branches and detached fronds of seaweed in the hope you'll fall in.

Punctuation Lesson: the Apostrophe

2006-10-01T11:04:00.001-04:00

OK, people, listen up.

People!

I am fed up with the worsening frequency of incorrect usage of apostrophes to indicate pluralization.

Stop it right now!

Stop it!

This sentence is very wrong:

What shall I do with this sack of cat's?

If I see such pluralization travesty again, I will scream.

The only time an apostrophe indicates plural is when it refers to a letter or word itself.

Example:

There are two u's in vacuum.

If you left out the apostrophe there, it would be a very confusing sentence.

Such a rare instance is the only time an apostrophe is used to pluralize. Even plural words like TVs, CDs, Baby-Ts, etc., do not get apostrophes.

Again, an apostrophe does not signify plural. Quit using it that way. I am entirely sick of this unacceptable mistake and if you continue to err you will be severely punished.

An apostrophe signifies possession or omission.

On the possession side, an apostrophe is used to indicate ownership: John's testicle, the cat's boil, the baboons' butts, the Joneses' desires, Fish's Eddy, cacti's phallicity, chess's complexity, Congress's mistakes, Dennis's slingshot, Jesus' virginity.

Yes, there are funky exceptions in there, but no usage of the apostrophe to indicate pluralization.

A singular word that doesn't end in an s gets a normal 's to show its ownership (to show that it's the owner).

John's testicle

the cat's boil

A plural word just gets an apostrophe without another s.

the baboons' butts

the Joneses' desires

That is, unless it is an irregular plural word that doesn't end in s and in that case it does get the apostrophe and an s.

Fish's Eddy

cacti's phallicity

If a non-plural word ends in an s, it gets the whole apostrophe and s added on.

chess's complexity

Congress's mistakes

Dennis's slingshot

The exception to that last rule is historical names, which for some reason do not get the extra s.

Jesus' virginity

Perhaps adding the extra s seemed vaguely blasphemous and therefore was stricken.

The biggest exception to the possessives rule is the one that seems to trip up everyone most often:

Possessive pronouns do not get an apostrophe.

These include: her, hers, his, their, theirs, your, yours, and its.

The only personal possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is one's.

Indefinite pronouns such as anyone's do get an apostrophe.

The worst culprit here is its. Its is a personal possessive pronoun and does not get an apostrophe.

It's means something else.

In the case of it's, the apostrophe signifies omitted letters. It's is a contraction of it is or it has, with the apostrophe sitting there as a placeholder for the truncation. This has absolutely nothing to do with possessives -- it is a different usage entirely and should not be confused.

Its works the same way as his.

It's (it is) works the same way as she'll (she will).

Other common usages of the apostrophe indicating omission are truncated dates ('06), dropped endings to words (hangin'), and weird absences for poetic rhythm (o'er).

Now that I've explained all this, no more apostrophes in pure plurals, yes?

If you do not shape up, I will lecture you until it hurts.

It's my duty.