Being such a prolific blogger, I've decided I need access to yet another vessel in which I may pour my thoughts and links.

I was pleased to be asked to join this group and I said "yes." So now you can look for my failure to post in two different places.

Next up...learning how to have that list of blogs that runs down one side of one's own blog.

After a year's experiment, I'm giving up my cable tv. I like it but not $55/month worth and there are no presidential campaigns to obsess over this year (whew.)

But I really enjoy reading writers who have television as their beats. Dana Stevens in SLATE and, increasingly, Virginia Heffernan in the NYT who sift through the shows, looking for the golden moments.

I'm intrigued by the Flavor Flav/Bridgette Nielsen pairing but have no interest in watching the show. Thankfully, Heffernan is professionally obligated and writes in today's NYT about a song that appears in "Strange Love" the show that documents the pair:

Girl from Denmark, snowy white

Boy from projects, black as night

He's a jester; she's a fox

She likes smoking; he likes clocks

That's the flavor, that's the flavor of love

It's always so satisfying when a writer puts words to an idea I didn't even know I had. This is from today's NYT and it's from a review of the new season of ALIAS. The reviewer, Virginia Heffernan compares the show to a comic book and goes on to observe oh so accurately:

Let's be honest. Many of us don't like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little X-Men boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the Syndicate and the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive and the Plutonium Lance. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil. Zzzzz.

I hope that ’05 is suiting all of y’all. I’m in favor of calling this “Ought Five” but that’s just me. Still, if you agree, spread the word. Also, according to two calendars on my wall, it’s the year of the Rooster (that’s me!) so please consider, if not calling this “ought five” then perhaps, “Year of the big cock.”

First dance class in a few weeks and Boogie introduced me to another Drew or, as she put it, her two favorite Drews got to meet. He’s taller than me, around the same age, and did something in his life that involved building upper arm strength (which I, clearly, have not) but the key is that he’s about 4 inches taller than me. This means that when we are in class together, I can be identified as “little Drew”. How cool is that?

Between classes (not working today I attended the 6 pm class although next week I’ll be attending the 7:30 class obliging a Big Drew/Little Drew situation) I thanked Boogie for introducing the other Drew to me and asked, “he doesn’t play on my team, does he?” He has some “yes”es…he is taking a goddamn dance class, for instance, and he is wearing one of those earrings that look like a “U” with metal spheres on the ends but in his upper ear (left) and he seems to be chummy with a 30-something black woman who is also taking the class. On the other hand, he looks like a football dude and I’m inclined to think no.

Regardless, when I asked Boogie she pointed at my hand and said, “it doesn’t matter! You’re married!!!”

I am not, even in Canada, married even though two fellows can do that there if they are so inclined. We are calling this state “Novio” which is (Mexican) Spanish slang for “boyfriend” and, more literally “engagement”. The example I always use is Spanish-Language internet browsers…if you have a problem with the modem the message will say that you’ve lost your novio.

Marriage? Well, I’m inclined towards “yes” but that means we would have to be living, you know, in the same city and everything. So this doesn’t mean “engagement” as in “pre-wedding” but rather Novio-ness is, in and of itself, a respected state. I took some plastic rings, one blue and one red to Toronto for Xmas along with a poem (about red and blue making purple) but Alex managed to go to an actual jewelry store and buy some actual rings. Classy, stainless steel, with a tiny diamond (not vulgar but enough to know that I didn’t just disassemble a machine and stick it on my finger.) So married? No. But engaged, committed, intent of the give and take between these two points? Oh yes, yes indeed I am.

We spent the past 10 or so days together, and I was left wanting a lot more which seems encouraging. I mean I could have wanted him to get the hell out and let me get back to my things. However, I feel as though I have crossed two important thresholds of intimacy.

1) My CDs have been re-arranged
First of all, we should say that I was asking for it. My CDs overflow their shelves, they are organized not so much by genre or by alphabetization but by my internal whim. I know where things are, not because an outsider could ever figure it out, but because I know where every CD is in relation to everything else.
Alex has sorted them into logical categories (Spoken Word/Comedy, Xmas, weird CDs based on cartoon programs, etc.) and everything else alphabetized, sort of.
This drives me crazy way out of proportion. Partly because I disagree with the discs that have been suddenly elevated to “heavy rotation” (such as Fountains of Wayne which had been languishing in the “sort of rock based, don’t want to sell it just yet,” along with Husker Du and U2.) And partly because I don’t want the Alt. Country mixed in next to the Prince and, oh forget it. If I have to explain, there’s no use. So the old jazz, the country, the guitar based stuff, the R&B…oh dear.

2) I have received a major note about my wardrobe. I should say, in his defense, that Alex did this in the most gracious way imaginable, so gracious, in fact, that I didn’t even recognize that it was a correction until it was well underway.

The “well underway” part was when Alex mentioned that I seemed to have picked up a bit of Plumber’s Butt, that I didn’t have said butt before so this must be a recent change and that I should, perhaps, consider wearing my pants higher than I have grown accustomed to wearing them.

Here is where pants go—up, up up. The back of the pants goes well above the butt, the front goes under the bellybutton but not under the spare tire itself. The pants go *around* the spare tire, above the hipbones, the belt is tight enough to keep the whole shebang elevated, not so tight as to make it impossible to sit.

This is not bad, actually, and I wasn’t crazy about my butt crack being on display.

I wouldn’t want to call this the definition of intimacy but I do think it’s a killer manifestation of it. He’s already on board with being with me (what with the ring and all), and he thinks I could look even cooler. He said it and I heard it (and moved past the part of being secretly hurt that he doesn’t think I’m actually, you know, entirely flawless)

Eventually there we were, in the Gap Outlet, looking at some brown flares that went unpurchased but I got a tutorial in wearing flattering pants and he got a boyfriend who doesn’t inadvertently display his bootie cleavage.

Listening to “Rio Baille Funk: Favela Booty Beats,” which is amazing. Alex got it for me for Xmas and I listen to it a lot. It sounds sort of like Florida booty rap but with samples that have lots of accordion. It’s all in Portuguese which I don’t speak. But the liner notes say that this is party music. Anyway, I gave a copy to Boogie with these notes from her class.

-Be big, it’s easier to make it small than to do the opposite.

-It’s already perfect. Even that part. All. Ready. Perfect.

-Make eye contact with those you dance with. Endeavor to give good face.

Good face to all of y’all in Ought Five.

Okay, if this was in a tv show, it would be wildly implausible. However, it's in today's CHICAGO SUN-TIMES so make what you will of it.

Kids at YMCA swim meet run into cross-dressing ball

Several of the kids' angry parents clashed with participants in a transgender fashion show, which had been under way at the New City YMCA since about midnight, resulting in a chaotic melee that was eventually broken up by private security guards and East Chicago District police.
A YMCA member had reserved the entire facility, at 1515 N. Halsted, from 11 p.m. Saturday through 8 a.m. Sunday for a fashion show and ball, which featured cross-dressing and transgender models in a competition similar to the ones shown in the 1991 documentary "Paris Is Burning." But the facility had also been booked to host the youth swim meet, scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Sunday. When the swimmers -- mostly elementary and junior high school-age kids -- and their parents started showing up shortly after 6 a.m., many of the parents were upset to see the "House of Escada" fashion show and dance in full swing.

I got an interesting lesson in profiling tonight.

By "profiling" I mean making assumptions about a person based on their clothing or behavior. For instance, seeing young, black men wearing hooded sweatshirts one might "profile" them as being criminals.

Tonight was the "big gig" at the old town school of folk music. When we did this before, in April, it was all the dance students. The carribbean people, the banghra people, the flamenco people, we were all together. But tonight it was a bunch of people playing stringed insturments plus us hip hop people.

So basically, we were performing in front of the people who are totally opposed to hip hop and everything it stands for (sampling, djs, electronic toots and beeps, drum machines, etc.) So it was not an especially warm response.

Anyway, my friend Salah is in both dance and guitar. There were no other twofers, as far as I could tell. So he danced with us (we were 1st on the running order, after us they unrolled the oriental carpet on the stage for proper folkie effect) and then he was going to perform with his guitar class. All the other dance class folks left but I hung around to be supportive and everything.

Salah grew up in Tunisia and has lived in Paris and Stockholm before coming to Chicago. Next on his list is Sao Paulo in Brazil. Anyway, he has all sorts of interesting opinions. For instance, he is impressed with the Chicago police; how very fair they are. It's safe to say that no one who has spent much time with local cops would describe them as being especially concerned with fairness. But Salah, who earns his living driving a cab, is favorably impressed.

Anyway, it's "big gig" night so all the classes are getting up and, as a class, doing a performance. This goes guitar, guitar, guitar, guitar, then, to break up the monotony, they schedule a ukulele class.

The ukulele guys play and sing a bogus Hawaiian song about a princess who is overly willing to share her papayas...it's all "P" words and mildly double entendre and the audience chuckles agreably.

"They are jews?" Salah asked me, meaning the ukulele ensemble.

This fascinates me. After I told him no, they aren't jews (like I have the foggiest idea but on principle which is to say right there, on the spot, I feel like I should vouch for their non-jew-ness since I was guessing that him declaring them to be jewish wasn't, you know, a compliment and I should speak up for them being, uh, just plain American?????) I wondered...is there something about seeing men singing corny songs with ukuleles seems, somehow, jewish?

I was into all that vaudeville stuff when I was a kid...Marx brothers, Fanny Brice, etc. And, when looking back on that, I suppose that many of those entertainers were, indeed, Jewish.

So is that something that some households learn? In Tunisia, say, seeing a corny comedian, to make it clear "He's a jew, you know." In the same way that a bigot in the U.S. might think that Nat King Cole is a very classy acting colored fellow but, at heart, nothing more than a colored fellow.

I also thought that, as far as stereotypes go, if I had to choose one for myself, I would choose "he just wants to make me laugh." Sadly, as I am not jewish but rather tennesseean, the stereotype I end up with is "doesn't he spell well?"

I am reading "Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church" by James M. Ault, Jr. Really, I recommend this book. I am reading it as background material but really, it is quite riveting and surprising and overall fascinating in the tradition of the very best storytelling.

I had told my Magazine instructor that I wanted to do my final project on gay Nascar fans and she excitedly agreed. Gay Nascar has been a conversational showstopper of mine for some time now and every time I trot it out the response is always "Dude! You gotta write that!"

But, you see, it's a trick. I met a gay Nascar fan (and corresponded with a few online) and I learned about the sport itself. So here's how it works...I say "Gay Nascar!" and, after pausing appropriately in the stunned silence, I go into my 5 minutes about Nascar and why it is, in fact, fascinating and full of drama rather than just boring-ass driving in circles around and around.

My explanation of why Nascar is kind of cool is fairly compelling, I think. But saying "gay Nascar" is just a trick to get my foot in the door. I perk up the ears by saying those two words "gay nascar" thereby earning the right to go on for a bit about what Nascar itself is.

This is the problem, gay people participate in Nascar pretty much like everybody else which is to say that they watch it on television. They don't do it gay-ly. They do it alone or with roommates or family members but they don't wear pink boas or dish or otherwise carry on in a way that lends itself to contemporary journalism. Ultimately, saying that there are gay Nascar fans is like saying there are gay customers at Wal-Mart. And what do those gay customers do??? Why they get a cart and they...

Yawn.

Anyway, while googling-away on Gay Nascar, I tried all sorts of other searches (Gay Blue Collar, Gay Red State, Gay Rural) etc. And "Gay Evangelical" returned a motherlode.

There seem to be two sorts of gay evangelicals...there are the "Ex Gay" sort. This school of thought says that we are all sinners (although sodomy is especially horrible as a sin...if you had the choice between murder and sodomy, you are better off going with the murder, at least per. this crowd) and that homosexuality is a sin of choice, like alcoholism. And, like alcohol, someone might always feel the urge but, with enough prayer, etc. the urge can be overcome.

The second sort is the openly gay, openly evangelical sort. Which says that they don't have to be cured, they are just fine. Which I find fascinating.

Anyway, I'm doing some background reading. Although I grew up around fundamentalist Christians in Tennessee, my understanding was limited to "those people are weirdos." Which is not a very satisfactory explanation of anything.

Indeed, as author Ault makes clear, urbane people have been insisting that fundamentalism is on its last legs forever...that surely modernism will wipe out these backwards people.

In fact, fundamentalism is a response to modernism.

One of the key ideas in the book is that fundamentalists operate on a model of community reciprocity. Think of a village...I help you get in your crops, you, in turn, share some of the butchered hog. Part of the element is that we share with each other, all the time and without being asked, and the other part is that we didn't choose to be this way with one another. We have to be this way, we are in the same village. It's like an arranged marriage.

The modern world, on the other hand, is not like an arranged marriage. It's like a love match. In the modern world I might labor in a factory while you work in a bakery. Maybe we can meet each other's needs but maybe we just need to stay out of each other's way. The people who help me, the people who watch my children or the ones I bring dinner, those are people that I chose and they chose me back. They are my friends, not my family.

Arranged marriages sound kind of appalling but they have an advantage...you don't get left out of the system. Out there on your own? You might make a love match but you might choose poorly or you might be left out altogether.

This system of reciprocity gets lost in contemporary society. Fundamentalism is a way of recreating the system.

Part of making such a system work is that there is considerable pressure on individuals to conform to the desires and needs of the group. In the city, your choice is your choice, whatever. But in the village, your choice indirectly becomes my choice as well. Your morals become like cigarrette smoke, second hand exposure to them can be dangerous.

So if you are gay and call your relationship a marriage, that does actually feel like a real threat to these Christians. Because then how does the reciprocity work???

I love how Bush is going to Halifax to thank those who helped out U.S. travelers on 9/11.
First of all I like the idea that you can just mention 9/11 and everyone will be so distracted they will forget that they loathe you. And secondly, I like the absolute sincerity of the gesture...after all it has only been, what, like 38 months since that happened? Since that part of Canada is soooooooo far away, you can see why it took him so long to get around to being appreciative.

Jesus, but I haven't posted anything in a long time.

Alex has a note on his blog asking why some people target winners (the longtime Jeopardy champion as a case in point)

Which, in turn, reminds me of a great piece in the NYT about the inventors of the board game Cranium.

Most classic board games are all about winning and losing. When you play Monopoly or Risk or Sorry! there is always someone crowing in triumph while others quietly sulk in defeat.

in contrast, the philosophy behind game design at Cranium is to produce games "where everyone has a moment to shine"

(they) design games that no single player can dominate; at some point,every player will be the hero. ''And then they have that moment of glow, that moment of shine, that moment where everyone celebrates them,'' (co-founder Richard Tait) says, speaking practically in the cadence of a preacher.

That makes the games particularly appealing to young children, who can be unhinged by the sting of losing. And for parents, it means that playtime is unlikely to end in tantrums. You can win a Cranium game, but no one really cares. It is, as one Cranium designer delicately puts it, ''a softer win.''

The article states that sales of "Legacy" games (Battleship, Clue, etc.) are to Baby Boomers or Gen Xers but that kids don't request these games. If they want to play a win/lose game, computers are more satisfying.

If, on the other hand, the point of playing a game is to spend time with one another, then indeed why NOT have a game that emphasizes strengths, that lets everyone feel a sense of accomplishment?

With thanks to Wonkette, I bring this news from our neighbor, Indiana:

John Hostettler, the Congressman representing the 8th district of Indiana, has been convinced by local religious groups to introduce legislation in the House that would change the name of an Interstate 69 extension to a more moral sounding number.

There are plans to extend the interstate from Indianapolis through southwestern Indiana all the way through Texas into Mexico in the coming years. While most believe this highway will be good for the state’s economy, religious conservatives believe “I-69” sounds too risqué and want to change the interstate’s number.

Hostettler, a proponent of the interstate extension, agrees. “Every time I have been out in the public with an ‘I-69’ button on my lapel, teenagers point and snicker at it. I have had many ask me if they can have my button. I believe it is time to change the name of the highway. It is the moral thing to do.”

I suppose there's no point in pretending that I'm working right now.

What I am doing is reading an amazing story in Willamette Week (Portland Ore's alternative newsweekly) about Tonya Harding-10 Years Later.

To recap...Tonya's Boyfriend, Jeff Gillooly recruited a friend, Shawn Eckhardt to bang up figure skating rival Nancy Kerrigan, thereby improving the chances for Harding.

Tonya herself is just depressing, however Gillooly and Eckhardt rock.

Asked about the thwacking, (Gillooly) says Americans just don't understand the skating world.

"Figure skating was a very political sport," he explains. "That was our way of trying to level the playing field."

"There was never supposed to be an assault," he continues. "Originally it was just supposed to be a death threat."

and the sidekick...

As the owner of World Bodyguard Services, Eckardt boasted of private investigation work in Costa Rica, demolishing Peruvian pipelines and guarding celebrities. In reality, the 28-year-old drove a '76 Mercury, lived at his parents' house in Lents, and collected Star Trek videos.

The artist formerly known as Eckardt no longer exists--because he changed his name to Brian Sean Griffith.

State records list Griffith as the owner of Applied Information Systems Inc. (www.appliedinfosys.com), a network company whose motto is "Imagineering the future."

The company's suite turns out to be a third-floor walkup in a seedy Gresham apartment complex. When WW visited, a few men were tinkering with the greasy innards of an aging Oldsmobile, a couple loaded an old mattress into a '70s Ford, and half-dressed kids ran screaming all around the place.

Though the shades were still drawn when we knocked on the door at 1 pm, it was answered by a bald, portly 37-year- old with long sideburns, clad only in green running shorts.

Are you Brian Sean Griffith? we asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Are you also Shawn Eckardt?

"Go away!" he yelled, slamming the door.

D	Delightful
R	Respectable
E	Explosive
W	Weird
R	Realistic
E	Exquisite
Y	Yum
N	Noisy
O	Organic
L	Legendary
D	Delicious
S	Sweet

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com
***

Thanks to Josh for suggesting the above. I'm pleased that two of my letters reference how tasty I am, while a 3rd ("sweet") could also be interpreted that way as well.