Gee Golly and Gosh

Between the forthcoming premiere of Lipstick Jungle and Clay Aiken’s announcement that he’s gay, this is an exciting time to be a queer.

A Shallow Glimpse Into the Near Recesses of My Dark Heart

So sometimes I play the lottery. Or the lotto. Whatever you might like to call it. I, myself, refer to it as the last, best hope for the desperate. Am I desperate? Sometimes, sure, I feel desperation. A desperation to buy a lot of stuff and truly tap into the ultimate spring of well-being: American Consumer Capitalism.

Except I always lose. Today, scratching off a Win for Life ticket, I was thinking about how an extra $52,000 a year would improve my life. It’s not as if I could afford to buy property (at least here in this fair city of New York) but it would certainly blunt some edges. I lost in the top game but was consoled by the fact that the top game is always for chump change. Sure, you could win $2,500 but comparatively that’s nothing. I imagined not worrying about my bills or being able to buy my Mom new snow tires without having to eat Ramen for two weeks. I thought about freelancing less or even not having to augment my full-time job at all. They were nice, these imaginings, but proved for naught when I scratched up the thin layer of scud on the bottom game to reveal I had, again, won nothing.

I will admit to a moment of disappointment. I looked up and into the bathroom mirror (I was scratching the ticket over the sink so as to avoid having to vacuum lotto scratchings) and I thought, Well, I guess this character building experience will continue. Then I washed my hands and poured a glass of wine.

Sarah Palin’s Tanning Bed

Apparently Sarah Palin spent some $30,000 of her own money to install a tanning bed in the Alaskan Governor’s Mansion. I might discuss just how it reflects on the character of our nation that we might well be electing a person who owns and uses a tanning bed to the Vice Presidency, but I won’t. I could wonder where she came across that thirty grand, posit perhaps about some oil or timber lobbyist lining her pockets, but really that doesn’t interest me. I could even talk about how vanity and politics are so intertwined that every election is reduced to a popularity contest devoid of substance, but everyone already knows that and apparently is pretty okay with it as well. What interests me here is this: did Sarah Palin tan in the nude?

Seriously. While Governor of Alaska, did Mrs. Palin disrobe, engage the ultraviolet bulbs on her high-end tanning bed, and bronze her naked flesh? The thought is about as sexy as my cat giving Ron Jeremy a blow job, but in my opinion this is what we should be thinking about on Election Day. Sarah Palin’s vagina cooking in the purple glow. Go ahead. Try it. Now imagine voting for her.

Some Bad News

You can’t identify as straight-acting when you suck dick. They’re mutually exclusive.

David Foster Wallace, Dead at 46

I just don’t have anything to say. Here’s a passage from ‘Infinite Jest’ that I posted on Gawker that once made me cry on the subway when I was reading it.

…but finally she got to where she had to, she says, swallow it, the responsible truth; how she quickly drank her way to the old two-option welfare-hotel window-ledge and made a blubbering 0200h. phone call, and then so here she is, apologizing for going on so long, trying to tell truth she hopes someday to swallow, inside. So she can just try and live. When she concludes by asking them to pray for her it almost doesn’t sound corny. Gately tries to think. Here is no Cause or Excuse. It is simply what happened. This final speaker is truly new, ready: all defenses have been burned away. Smooth-skinned and steadily pinker, at the podium, her eyes squeezed tight, she looks like she’s the one that’s the infant. The host White Flaggers pay this burnt public husk of a newcomer the ultimate Boston AA compliment: they have to consciously try to remember even to blink as they watch her, listening. I.D.ing without effort. There’s no judgment. It’s clear she’s been punished enough. And it was basically the same all over, after all, Out There. And the fact that it was so good to hear her, so good that even Tiny Ewell and Kate Gompert and the rest of the worst of them all sat still and listened without blinking, looking not just at the speaker’s face but into it, helps force Gately to remember all over again what a tragic adventure this is, that none of them signed up for.

So, yes, here is our tragic adventure and it saddens me greatly that I’ll never read what DFW had to write about it ever again.

A Question.

Starship’s We Built This City on Rock and Roll. The most important piece of recorded music ever?

Something That Just Occurred to Me, Fourteen Years Later

I was sixteen years-old and watching a video for The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get, a Morrissey song from Vauxhall & I (I think. I could check but I don’t want to). My mother came over and asked me who the intense looking man with the pompadour was. I told her it was Morrissey. Her response:  He kind of looks like you. I just realized that this is just another reason as to why I like my mom so damn much.

Jesus Christ on a Hand Cart

Why on earth am I watching The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert for the second time in as many days?

Oh wait, that’s right. I’m a bored homosexual.

Kids, These Days

All the black kids on Lower Broadway today look like Kanye, skinny jeans with graphic tees, Nikes, and neck scarves. All the European tourists were wearing Capri-length shorts in white or khaki with brown t-shirts, again mostly graphic. The NYU kids were wearing plaid shorts and dark, plain t-shirts.

Meanwhile, the guys in Queens all have triceps larger than their calves.

I was wearing a wifebeater and a pair of ridiculously light jeans and I felt old, my jeans were too tight and my shoes, white Repettos, seemed comical. I wasn’t sure what I was going for. I’m never sure what I’m going for and quite often I don’t care. Today I did.