Diving Deeper

I made some cosmetic changes and expanded my links. Easy enough. I have one more picture to try and get into the box above and then I will be cooking with gas.

It took long enough to do all that I have already done.

PS
Added Andrew Sullivan to my lists of links because he made the observation that it is impossible for the religious right and the pro-gay-rights-Republican-gays to be in the same party. Reminds me of basic physics. Two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Though there is probably a theory I have missed from the past 60 years that may say otherwise. Something about bisexuals and two-spirited folk. I am very sure of that.

A Stranger Rings Twice -- A Disjointed Love Letter

OK. It is Das Experiment again. Not sure what I am suppose to do. He called while I was trying to fill out a xxx application that I could not bring myself to do. Not that I am above the xxx, but this job is 2 buses and 2 hours away. It is already going to be a cold weekend and something tells me it will be even colder this coming up winter. The other thing about this stupid job is that Xxxxx Xxxx Xxxx is where I worked before xxxxx xxxx xx Xxxx Xxxxxx and in a way it was a great experience and in others it was not.

Anyway, Das Experiment called to tell me he was going to go to New Zealand as soon as he got his money straight for the degree. He is going to get a MBA, he just finished his PhD about 2 years ago. This need for constant education is a whole different story.

I guess the thing that bothers me is that I am in the middle of trying to get some interviews, find some Christmas work, contemplating a move to Augusta, Georgia, eyeing what is going on in the Black Academic world (X xxxxxx xx xxx xxxx xx xx xxxxx xxx my heart, xxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx, xx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxxx xxxx xx, but my mother told me not to say anthing if it ain't nice), and filling out applications. I don't have time to deal with Das Experiment and his world. He asked me once to go to New Zealand with him, but what am I going to do in New Zealand? He asked if I wanted to go to Morocco with him and his son if I come during Christmas. I am will be lucky to get money to cross the pond, how am I going to be able to get to North Africa?

I am rambling, I know. As a female friend once told another female friend after some really questionable grossed out sex with a guy who had a pierced penis -- "This is my life, Xxxxxxxx."

Last night I started to think of a poem about Das Experiment. It is about sleeping alone, looking over into the other spot and not seeing that person there, but you feel their presence. From one lover X xxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx, and from another I never got my xxxx xxxxxxxx in terms of longevity. Now, I am xxxxxxx sombody else and we are doing it well.

Talking to him it felt like I was talking to someone else. He wanted to know what was going on in my life. I couldn't bring myself to tell him the whole thing, everything. It is not really about the job it is about all the things in terms of family -- xx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxx, X xxxx x xxx, xx xxxxxx xx x xxxxxxxx xxxxx -- and introspection that we all refuse to put forward to those that are not thought of the best intimates. Das Experiment was my best mate. I guess I just did not feel like telling him what is really going on. He is really far away and is moving farther. I am here in the muck of the life after us.

Oi! In such beer indulged hyper-masculine hiking and swimming romances who turns out to be the bitch. Is it me because I am writing this letter or him for calling?

He said he would call tomorrow.

I told him sure.

I might be in a better mood.

X

Distractions from the Holy Rollers

I guess I am a bit done with the television news. I mean what does this North Korea thing mean in the end? I am not talking about the lava shits that many in the diplomatic community get when a “third world” country gets the bomb. I am not even talking about a militarized Japan, which I personally am all for becomes times have changed; and, they should never have been demilitarized to the point of almost being castrated with China and her many reincarnations spinning to the North. Not that China will attack Japan, but China does effect so much that goes on around her who knows what their influence may bring. When I question what this all means, I am not talking about non-aggression treaties and pacts or the current “do nothings” and oval office eggheads. I am talking about this collective hysteria. The pundits are saying that the sky is falling. It is not like we can invade, and any humanitarian mission is going to dwarf what we are doing in Iraq and what we have failed to do in Dafur. We don’t even know how bad it is. Are we really ready? Has it ever been really a problem we could solve realistically? Alone?

So, with that and Foleygate I started to read Little Joe Superstar, The Films of Joe Dallesandro by Michael Ferguson. Not a bad read at all. I want to explore it a bit more because there are some very interesting encounters with black people in the telling of Joe Dallesandro’s life. Granted I have not seen one of his films, only the iconography of his photographic history. And in the end, I have not really thought much of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. It simply was not a reference for me; I have never understood anything about it. From Nashville, Tennessee, we looked for our information about the world in New York boroughs and DC go-gO. And when I got to Hampton, that was re-enforced, probably in ways that were not too positive for its cloistered views of art and sexuality, but not its Brownstonepolitik and innovative uses for Philly Blunts.

Lately, I have been thinking more about Andy Warhol’s Factory and its effect on the New York art scene because I know that I did not know what New York City really was when I arrived in 1993. I was one of the first sets of interns to work at Vibe, and when I was there I was surrounded by a whole group of kids from the East Coast, and Seven Sisters schools. All of them thought of the Beats as ancient and Frank Zappa as god. And there I was at a hip hop magazine surrounded by these confident somewhat privileged fresh from college former Bostonians or Vassar sojourns and I could not tell you one Grateful Dead song (I thought they were some venomous devil worshipping band) nor did I think Lou Reed anything special. Talking Heads and Blonde were additives to UTFO and Roxanne Shante. White folk in a hip-hop magazine soon proved to be less odd as contributors to the glam. I soon was to wonder how to get the oh so Hilton Als of it, to be more New Yorker than New York Magazine, more club kid than house, more innovative anthropologist of Negro norms than grassroots. Soon, my true self would betray me and the lesson of what you imitate must be eventually learned became my capital life lesson of the 90’s. Till this day I look at Andre Tally and think what a flux, what a beautiful project, what a New Yorker. The sin is that I have not read anything by him.

Anyway, I have come to the realization that I missed something vital by not becoming fluent in signs and parole of 14th street to Houston, 6th Avenue to Thompson Square Park. As a friend of mine used to say in Harlem psycho-faggot speech, “That’s the piece that's missing.” Because I did not know anything about that world I was unable to communicate with the members of the intelligentsia that were talking and writing about rock and rap music. I don’t think that it helped or hindered things concerning my career, I believed that the people at Vibe were a little of their rockers. Time and assassinations would unfortunately prove that to me and other writers. I just could have understood my surroundings better and a certain tradition that I did not understand when I first came in. I could have been enriched by it a bit more if I was not so segregated in my thoughts concerning race and what was useful (and little did I know, the nefarious term “useful” was soon to be transformed into canonical catatonic mantras of theoretical truth and consequences for those that could utter it and the heretics that didn’t bend it like Homi Babba at NYU).

Fresh from a HBCU, my college experience was devoid of such mentioning. Warhol was a heretic. A white gay man that looked like death warmed over was one thing, the fact that he was not connected to the Great Debates nor was he seen as advancing black folk was another. Were there any black folk in his gaze? I am sure there was one or two in an early movie. I am sure that there is a black ass poking out of some Polaroid, expose and glistening against a burnt orange back drop bright like a gum drop or Diana Ross in Central Park. I am sure that Grace Jones and Andy got along well. But the truth of the matter is that my kind of black folk at that time dismissed Diana since she killed Flo (well before the umpteenth white man she dated caused Ebony to shiver) and Grace was OVAH regardless of that little frigidity mop head monster that seemed to prance his kind of ugly like a goddess. In the mist of all this gazing at the image I missed the point somehow.

I walk down the East Village now and mourn its demise. I remember when it was a scary place, and I remember when I and my friends hung out there. We could afford to live there if we were willing to eat peanut butter and crackers. Now we can’t even afford that. I have an old mentor that is there, but she seems to be sadder and harder. Part of it is the profession of writing, working and teaching. The other part of it is the world that she sees around her in her rent controlled Manol Bonik riot. She commented once that during the last blackout there was not one broken window, just yuppies sitting on steps with light candles and sipping wine. It broke her heart, and maybe as a child of the city who has matured into a lioness of esteemed and delicate intellectual certainties this broken city is sliding away block by block is turning her into stone. In my mind she is becoming the angel Bethesda meandering on where to bury the oracle in St. Mark’s.

All that said I want to save my observations concerning black folk and Joe Dallesandro (D’Alessandro). He was poor and grew up a foster child until he was re-united with his father at the age of 14, but his descriptions of black folk is an interesting study. This hidden world is nondescript in his confessions. Black folk seem flat and almost like adornments. Kind of like “And the black girls sing/ Doooh-Doo-Doo—Doo-Doo—Doo-Doo-Dooh” Or however it goes. <BR>“This Hidden World”, it sounds like a song to me. Something torchlight and Dinah Washington.

This is to be continued.

Multi-Tasking Sunday

Not much time to blog.

This morning I watched a bit of talk Sunday. I think the Mark Foley legal thing is about to blow over soon, it can go on but for so long because he did not do anything wrong that we know of yet. It is all just talk on message services and cell phones. And jacking off on the the other end of your telephone or broadband brings up certain legal issues that I hope I (and about 70-something million other web surfers)will never have to face in public.

No one goes to jail for foreplay. Especially self inflicted foreplay.

So, that is that for Mark Foley. He will be in Siberia for a while.

On the flipside . . .Gays, pedophiles, sexual predators, and Republicans . . . that is a whole different conversation.

This is karmic payback for the Republican Party's symbolic gay bashing of the gay marriage issue with a faux George Washington wig, rogue and powder. Plus!, they pissed on the Log Cabin Republicans by not excepting their money or formally inviting them to the ball. We got a tongues untied situation concerning what Republicans desire against the backdrop of the policy they uphold. It is uncertain whether the conservative powers believe in the theology and morality of their populace; but, it is for certain, many may not practice these beliefs in bed.

This conversation will mutate more concerning closeted behavior; there are whispers concerning the other shoe dropping in the congressional halls on the page issue. I wonder if any are democrats.

Had dinner with Mendi and Keith 2 nights ago. It was really nice. Saw R and his "ex" A. We had a great time. Talked about graduate school versus writing, America versus Germany and all the variations of those two questions.

I am going to make the transition to NYC pretty soon, or maybe just closer to that area. There are a lot of artist around and I am finding that I am gaining greater support from those communities than from my immediate family. Not that family is bad, but I think that you can guess the situation. Accountants, Biologists, Engineers, white suburbs, sidewalks, mall rats and me. Which one does not belong?

OK. I am doing research for pitch letters, reading Keith Boykin's interviews with the cast of Noah's Arc (among other articles) and doing more applications.

Ciao for now.

PS
What if this pushes the ultra-conservatives to forming a 3rd party? They very well could do that. Then we will be off to coalition based politics where several parties try to gain the majority by getting in bed with their neighbors. Could be positive in that people could show alligence to their "politcs" and not rely on a party to express them. I would start the Universal Health Care Coverage Party and then Sleep with the Gays and the Greens.

Brave New World

OK.

I have looked at all of my backed up postings and just decided to post everything as is. I have been away for a while because of life. In the meantime I have watched a bit of UFC (interupted by sister's German assignment, she actually came into the room and began to talk to me in German . . . she is doing very well), saw Project Runway (I know what the controversy is all about, will wait to see it unfold), and saw the season finale to Noah's Arc (predictable, and I can learn a bit from this bitch Noah about dumping boyfriends, he seems to do it like changing underwear . . . but isn't that gay life? Well, sort of? I feel like Noah is caught between the real gay world and something completely unreal. All the other character's have a life that is more varied than Noah's. More on that later. The ending was so predictable that I started to feel like there was not much hope for it at all.)

So, I might go to Princeton tomorrow for an event, and I might not. I have an assignment that is due at the end of tomorrow and I just don't know. It is late (3:00 am) and I am going to sleep for a little while longer than usual. I am pretty sure.


Missing You - John Waite

Signing out to Missing you by John Waite. I have been in serious eighties music mode for weeks.

Tzarist Russia/Soviet Russia

I can't help but think about 20th century Russia in these strange days of capitalist dominion. This video reminds me of the Rasputin/Empress Alexandra pamphlets from the turn of the 20th century implying that they were having very special sorts of spiritual and governmental consultation sessions (or maybe not so special). Many people have talked to me about Condoleeza and Bush in this way, especially after she called him her husband in a televised interview. Who knows? Their similarities are not found so much in the idea of counsel and ruler being involved in carnal knowledge as it is the people being feed up by the acts traditionally decreed by inner courts and sanctums. Declarations of war and assessments of the economy being done by one ruling class is pretty primitive; yet, we assign sexual acts to our rulers' blunders and follies. It is such a base response, not to mention predictable. War should be declared by referendum, but something tells me we would still select this war under the information that was given so that is no safety net. If the masses of people are not discerning, then the masses are gullable . . .

OK, enough, I am starting to sound like an old Marxist that needs a good shag . . .


I could be making a stretch cause this cartoon is pretty gross. I hope you didn't open it at work or around the kiddies. But my inner teen, which I have been listening to more often, loves it.

Then there is this former congressman Mark Foley in rehab thing. It is very Soviet Russia no? You remember when the leaders used to all get pneumonia and about 2 months later we got a new party leader to loath. I am just old enough to remember dem days. It is like we send these guys off to some secret place surrounded by shrinks and lawyers, where they are resigned to taking the steps needed to make their professional lives viable again. The things that make this political Siberia particularly American are:

1. The protestant form of confession known as testifying. This can be anything from what one has done wrong to what others have done to you. Foley has come up with tree tings: he was molestated by a clergyman, he is gay, and he is an alcoholic. Two are his fault, one ting is not.

2. He has gone to rehab for self help, implying that it is of his own accord in order to conquer inner demons.

3. He says that the molestation thing is not an excuss, but it is a very passive agressive excuse. I guess the next thing will be an act of atonement. I don't believe this to be bad. I still love McGeevey and I do love Mel Gibson in the big wide exspansive Christ like version of adoration to all (the guy is a cheap tragic figure in a certain way though, a little bit of down under machismo and a touch of egotistical self-grandizement, topped with a big scope of divine calling, chased with 4 shots of Meyer's Rum).

I am really into all this. The Woodward book is on my list (I should really make an Amazon.com wishlist at this point). The Dow is up, home prices are falling, Iraq is off the chain, Afghanistan is boiling without a watchful eye and the economy is slowing.

I interviewed twice today. Both good responses. I wonder what will be next.

I Can See White Water From the Malibu Balcony (The Lost Tapes, Part .125)

From September 17th
--------------------------------------

OK. This is going to take a second. I was having an easy weekend more or less waiting for a marketing research project for a real grassroots artist, trying to hook people up (job referals), people hooking me up, and all the stuff surrounding the tri-state makers and shakers. All this buzz has put me into a highly introspective mood. My little Willy Wonka chocolate shell and introverted behavior has been usurped by a need for a little political re-education. I gotta a couple of blind spots.

1st. Bill Clinton gave an all white lunch for influential bloggers in Harlem. Jstheater.blogspot.com and blackprof.blogspot.com have given attention to it with links to other bloggers. I am about to read a good amount of Gillard's stuff first and then move to the others listed by J. Interestingly enough, I came upon Gillard's blog through a family tree search.

I have gotten into a discussion with J at jstheater.blogspot.com in his September 15t comment section concerning my contempt for all this need to be recognized by white folk. But, there is a history behind this Harlem blogger story that was not so evident to me, and I am going to delve into it. I am currently engrossed in the Ford/Frist fight in Tennessee. Not really engrossed, I simply want to give Ford a chance and my vote.

2nd. I want to read the Pope's whole speach. My friend Jonathan in Reutlingen said that the pope was trying to make points about hatred and religion with scholarly references. I believe his quote was taken out of context. There is some admission by everyone that the Pope was a bit unaware of how his comments would be taken. I want to read the whole speech and figure this out myself. There has been many a time when such patriarchal declarations are decreed by the West under the guise of Prime Ministers and pontiffs, but these are dangerous times and this calls for a bit more mental presence concening our current state of affairs. And this stuff has been going on so long that 14th and 15th century utterances still carry weight. Proof positive that ahistorical countries like ours may have a problem with cooking up a diplomacy that works. We want all things solved in 4 to 8 year intevals, and have the audacity to talk about the Clinton legacy before he walked out the oval office.

But is the press to be blamed too? How was the quote selected? Why was it given out of context and who perpetrated this naked quote as a summation of the popes opinion? Did the journalist or observer even understand the whole speech?

3rd. Afghanistan. I am so sorry. This is a sleeper that I have been concerned about for some time. Most people became preoccupied with Iraq, mortgage bubbles and gay marriage after the election of president Karzi. I am going to say it again. Occupying Afghanistan is not the same as occupying Kabul! Has it occured to anyone in the press or the legislation that we did not occupy that whole country and in the midst of a poppy flower explosion the Taliban has reassembled itself and is ready to go back to war. Who has been managing this war? We are awake now! And since we are, I am going to tell you what the current sleeping giant is, Lebenon and Syria. That 4 week war is already being talked about and covered by the media as something in the past. That story is still going on I am sure.

4th. Tampering with the Geneva convention? What the hell! Black folk told the rest of America that Bush was no good when they took Florida. Did anyone listen? No! It was just black folk complaining again. Then, people got distracted by chads. I will never forget these bearded and slightly overweight and sunburned good citizens flipping the cards over once or twice in the name of civic duty. Table after table of hands holding punch cards in the sunlight and peering into oblonged oval holes with one measured eye. The true image of our democracy -- styrafoam cups, non-dairy creamer, and punch cards that look like they could program a 1967 super computer. I am wondering how many people are for the President's proposal concerning the trial of terror suspects. He flops through Congress now only because the Supreme Court put some checks and balances of Dick Cheney's ass, and the vice-president's reprobate idea of restored presidential power.

5th. Tony Blair. I think he may be kicked out of office by the end of the year. The Brits are watching this Geneva convention thing, and I am sure that this is an embarrassment to Parliment. To be aligned with such madness has to be getting under the queens skin too. I bet you that Elizabeth Windsor can hardly get out of bed in the morning. According to the New York Times 14,000 detainees are in a legal vaccum with 90 percent of those captured in 2003 being mistakes.

So that is that. All the madness that can be mustered under the name of Harlem, the Democratic Party, the papalcy, this Republican presidency, and good neighbor (special friend) diplomacy.

It is a real circus.


OK. That is my homework. I could write more about Harlem Blogging, the Pope's gaffe, Afghanistan and the Geneva Convention but I should look into them all a bit more. And I should look into Hillary a bit more. Her finger touches three out of the four issues mentioned.

On Amy Irving (The Lost Tapes, Part .25)

From September 18th
--------------------------


Good day. Was finishing up the last bit of editing on the last application in the stack. Now I have to go look for more. It is like I am a scavanger or something, or maybe more like some broken spirited, handicapped and poor fisherman or woman that is waiting for the village's boats to come back so they can collect the scraps, beg to prove their worth on the open sea, or negotiate their pay.

The war is getting me down I must admitt. It is endless as the reality of the situation starts to sink in on me and the American population I suspect. There is no road map on how to fight this war and the facts concerning our dealings with all of the extreme factions in the past are truncated and fragmented. How did this all begin?

Interestingly enough I saw the beginning of The Fury with Amy Irving, John Cassavettes and Kirk Douglas. It takes place in the 1970's and starts off with a seen on the sea somewhere in the Middle East. This film was made in 1976! I watched a bit of it because I had a big crush on Amy Irving. I guess you could call her the nerd's pin-up doll. And I love John Cassavettes. I had to get up and do some work for my father's company in the middle of it, so I did not finish seeing it. Maybe another time.

But at this time, it feels like the end of the world to me. I don't know why, but there is something distinctly wrong. It is precisely wrong and lingering like tanins on the tongue or a hand swishing through a warm spitton looking for that ring or necklace that you never thought much of, but can't bare to live without. We have turned a corner I am afraid, and there is not much that any pundit can do

Unshaven Thoughts on McGeevey, Bush and Gotham Bookmart (Lost Tapes Part .5)

More unedited ramble from 9/19.

-----------------------------

I left all of my shaving supplies at Harlem Baker's house and now my face looks like a pipe cleaner. Thank god my Caesar is still fly (smile).

I went to sleep reading about the war. Now I wake up and there is something going on in Thailand. I need a cup of coffee first. At my house CNN is on all the time. My youngest sister started to watching Beyonce's Deja Vu one morning and all of a sudden my father looked from behind his paper and said "Since when have we started watching anything but the news in this house?" We have an unbelievable amount of televisions to accomadate all the different tastes and generations, believe it or not.

Today, it is very warm, like a late summer's day. The nights are cool though, I always sit on my porch for a couple of minutes before I sleep. I am really amazed at the house my father and stepmother bought. The space it has and how it allows me to annex a corner to do my work. Overall it has been a pretty nice month back with them, much nicer than I thought. I have not spent this much time with them in about 7 years. The only friction that we have had was over my dad's Vanilla Grey Goose. I dogged it without asking and turns out it was a birthday present. I thought I could drink it cause they said I could have all the beer in the house. Grey Goose is obviously not beer. I mixed it with pineapple juice on ice. Vanilla Grey Goose mixed with fruit punch or cherry Juicey Juice taste like cough syrup if you were every wondering. I will have to buy him some more this week.

Today the former DL Governer of New Jersey who was having an affair with an Israeli gentlemen released his memoirs. He will be on Oprah today. My father will probably watch this because of his hawkish instincts concerning the political process. I will be watching to see what his experience was like and to see how he identitfies himself. I think he is gay after reading the New York Times articles on him. It will be more interesting to see what the women's reactions will be to his confessions. I can already see where it is going.

Maybe I will watch it with the rest of my family. We don't pry into each other's business, at least here at my father's house. Instead all manners and matters of sex are pretty open to discussions though my father places all homosexuals within the ranks of Michael Jackson and Little Richard. And as time has gone on, I think he believes that they are freaks because they are not married and/or don't have kids. It is not a sex thing but a manly thing, and I think that this attitude has shaped my sexuality greatly.

Other than that, Bush's speech to the UN is on today. I think that it will be a non-event. A line from the the movie Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett comes to mind. It is that point where young queen Bess is sitting with her ministers and they are pushing for war with Mary of Guise played by Fanny Ardant. She is clearly stressed and nervous and busy asking for her minister's advice when after glancing at the papers she utters something about not liking wars because "the outcomes are uncertain." The short of it for us living through this 21 century fiasco is that the forces of war have been unleashed, and whether we paint ourselves as the rational West and they paint themselves as the valiant self sacrificing warriors of Islam, death and destruction are on a roll and no one knows what it will take for peace to ensure. Nor do we know when it will climax. This is becoming rapidly a war where issues concerning energy consumption are mixing with religious themes and issues of colonial partition. And Scooter B (?).

My barber in Tennessee said it best. "Did you see Bush this morning?" he screamed to the whole room. I simply nodded my head a little, he was busy cutting the back of my head. "That thang is crazy! He wasn't making any sense! He was confusing himself."

And if you every have seen a whole press conference, during the day, uninterupted or interpreted by CNN, then you will see why my barber said that.

PS
Gotham Book Mart is in trouble again. I wonder about their business model or if they are receiving the right counciling. I talked about Edwardian and Jackie O afterparty remix white folk with J. These are the guys that come to mind. I hope the world has not passed them by. And I wish with all my heart that they could find a way of transfering their literary position and tradition to our 21st century world.

The Lost Tapes, Part I (Sept 20th)

I wrote this on September 20th. I have decided to publish it as is, I don't really feel like spell checking it. I thought it was an interesting observation. Especially after a rum and coke.

-----------
It is about 8:00 am. I have been up since 5 in the morning watching news, doing laundry and finishing up this or that. Couldn't really sleep. I am going to give my new clients a call and see what I can do in terms of marketing research for them. We will meet this weekend in the city, probably in the Bronx. It will be great, yesterday the tensions started to rise in the house for just one second.

Saw McGeevey yesterday and I must say that I was really proud and touched by his confessions. I was kind of pissed off with Oprah a bit when she started to ask question about his feelings during sex with his wife. She was asking him if it was real or not, and as usual she took him to task with all the women clapping at the definitive moments of women's truths.

Now the thing I want to ask all the women in the audience and everywhere is why they find it so hard to accept why he got married. He talked about having same sex feelings when he was young but after reading all the materials available at that time he figured that it was a perversion and that is not what he wanted to be. So, the social programming started. Oprah then asked him why he got married any. Duuh! When will women start to ask questions about how they perceive masculinity in our society, and how they emasculate gay and bisexual men in their way of address, in their expectations of us and their clear denial of certain types of intimacy, or in other words being casted into effemicacy. Many women believe that since I have relationships with men that I am gay, and on top of that, there is no way I could know about an engine or what is wrong with the barbaque grill. Stuff like that.

McGeevey was receiving all his cues on self worth through the idea of being a knight in shining armour to someone and he played the role. But I don't get why Oprah and the studio audience can not deal with the fact that their expectations and social training also feed into the betrayal. That is all I am saying. It is the viciousness of the down low witchunt. Now, I think McGeevey is brave, and I think that his actions were at moments pretty bone chilling. Not so much the anyomous sex in dark alleys and video stores; but, sleeping with his male lover in the same bed that he shared with his wife while she was recovering from a difficult labor was hard to hear. But, I am pretty clear with all the women I am with concerning my sexual preferences and practices. Some dismiss me as gay a guy until they figure out that I am a top, then they want to know why I am not with women. Some say all I need is a good woman and I will be cured. Interesting.

The only thing I do have a problem with concerning the confession is Oprah's knife turning on the notorious page 228 where he made him read about the affair and then cornered him on sex with his wife. I thought it a bit vicious. And, on the flipside, McGeevey talking about those dark same sex places where the presence of women is negated was interesting. It was like revealing a secret from a coven or clandestine society. I remember a friend of mine from Germany who was originally from LA. He said that men should keep certain secrets to themselves. I am sure he was talking about the woman he loved and the brothel he visited. And strangely enough, I think he meant the woman I loved and the bars that I visited. Something about secrets, the reality of monogamy for men, the economic and social stability of marriage and the emotional and pyschic cost of a long term relationship with a woman. Oprah's bird's eye view and subsequent excitement about places where men gather is the demystification of a certain practice that I am sure you can find from the banks of the Great Lakes to an overcrowded bus in Calcutta. But it is this gaze that is unnerving to me. Oprah's commentary is speckled with judgement, "The men are lying to the women." Maybe, but how are women participating in this lie? I think through expectations of what a man should be for them, yet we have years of practicing the active liberation of women from certain roles and models of behavior, not to mention learned desire.

The Old Gentried Guards and the Princely Pages

There will be congressional hearings about young pages and stewards working in the halls of our congress. I can feel it. This is becoming a public spectical and it is easier to stage after all that internet stuff congress and the Attorney General brushed up a while back.

It is all going to start to unravel and I wonder if we will ever have a true picture of what Congressional culture really is?

The majority of the interns are saying that they have had no problems from the congressmen. I do believe that is the case. I just wonder about the former pages that are caught in the middle. I know that working with young people is a very delicate thing. They hold there mentors and elders in high esteem, and disappointment can be devasting in ways that are not easily seen. But admiration is also a ficlked thing and could turn to attraction. I wonder how far Foley actual went with the pages. I think this only scratches the surface of some compulsive behaviors this guy harbors.

The Children

Something is cosmically out of wack. There has been an assault on young girls from elementary to high school. And this is not stalkers, we are talking murder execution style. Pretty terrible.

There is something wrong with us. The violence that we unleash on others is pretty terrible. I am convinced that repression has something to do with it.

Another White House Page Scandal

OK, Mark Foley! What is up? For real.

And this time just before the elections in November and you hold a seat in southern Florida for the Republicans. This touches on many things, kind of like the McGeevey case. I wonder what will be the final outcome of this guys career (flushed down the toilet and heading for the Gulf of Mexico as I type). It was remarkable to see him smiling and walking down the street with his buddies. I wonder if that is old or new footage.

G.O.P. Cover-Up in Post-Catholic Priest Scalded and Scandalized America That would have been my headline on the front page of the New York Times. Americans will look at this as a trust issue, and the behavior of the Republicans will come into laser view. It is an interesting turn of events.

I guess we have to await the outcome. It makes you wonder about the kinds of sports and stunts that are happening in the halls of Congress. And what about in the past, like 1850 or so? Were there pages? Oh!, if those august halls, and well worn carpets and sofas, could talk . . .

Just a thought.

Picture Show

Saw The Last King of Scotland today. I loved it and talked to the Harlem Baker about it off and on. But later I realized I loved the performances very much, and I loved the cinematography of the African landscape even more than where the film took me. I won't talk about the specific parts of the film that hints at it not being perfect, but I will give a clue.

The descent into the "chaos" mimics The Serpent and The Rainbow and for me that is where the objectivity that the film proposes in showing the decadence of Idi Amin and his destructive path starts to fall apart. It is very much about the carte blanche that the world gives a young European traveling to the third world, and its destructive force. It is not about the political situation that got them there in the first place.

I will leave it at that. Great Performances. And up to a certain point a great movie until the pin slips and we are left with another chaos of Graham Greene's scale and accidental white tourists' folly.

Further Delays in Our Departure

OK,

Got word from the large bureaucracy across the Hudson, I don't have a position, they screwed up my application. And they say I have to wait until June. Plus they had more applicants than positions open, so I have to wait.

I don't have time to wait.

Well, all the other applications are out and . . . I have to wait! I am pissed because I was offered my German job back the day I interviewed for this position. There is something about New York's gargantuan civil service departments that has always been hard for me to deal with. Add local politics on the block an in the boroughs, or the lottery system for affordable housing, and it all becomes mind boggling. But there are still reasons to be here.

I have about 6 pitch letters I plan on writing for Q & A's.

So, if I am terse with my blog postings over the next couple of days it is because of writing and reading . . . I got about 3 books circulating through my fingers.

Got to look forward.

An Interuption to Our Normally Televised Program

Sorry, I have about 4 entries qued-up for edit. Between McGeevey, the lack of Coloureds in Harlem for President Clinton's blogging luncheon (who would have thunk it? Right?), another 2 job applications (one in the states, one for overseas), subsequent reading on local politics, the U.N. madness, war, my freelance gig and a real dive into my book collection trying to sort out what I can get rid of and what can stay, I have not had time to look over my entries.

I am striving to have them more polished before posting.

Time to turn things up a notch.

I will have much more to say in a couple of days.

Ciao.
LM

Deutschland Be-Bop, Talkin' Shop, and the Return of the Pop Princess

I have spent the last 3 days talking to people from Germany. Everyone is doing just about the same. Most of my friends there are straight and have families and that is cool, but Europe is odd. There is always the sense that any relationship is possible because people are far more mature and realistic about their inner emotional selves (it is how German's express their inner selves that leaves you wondering); but, you still are not a man unless you are married. Well, at least in Southern Germany. In the North it is a little bit different . . . but in all honesty, there seems to always be this distinction between places in every country of North and South. A linguist from Holland swears there are books on the subject. I don't need one though, I have grown up between the North and South all my life.

Speaking off marriages and real men, is Whitney really divorcing Bobby Brown? Maybe she caught a glimpse of her own reality show.

I love Whitney.

Anway . . .

talked to my friend, the north German musicologist. He is the only gay one in the bunch. We had a chat about hip-hop and how to put on a conference. He knows nothing about the first, but everything about the second. We had interesting conclusions. He said the problem is going to be the money. That seems to be the problem with all things in Academia. He also looked over a proposal I had given him. He said that he did not want to sound discouraging about my conference idea but blah, blah, blah . . .. Why do academics also try to make things so painless and are so concerned about ones feelings? I guess it has to do with one's need to nurture talent, but in the end, I have worked outside of the university system enough to want to just roll my sleeves up and work. There is something to be said about how we conduct business in the Ivory Tower. Something about the type of work we do and issues of objectivity and subjectivity keeps the lines fuzzy. Correction is alway so ephemeral, there is always something else to comment on 5 minutes from now. I guess I just have issues. I have been oscillating between the two worlds so long I become impatient with each one now.

PS
The problem with Britney Spears is that she became a legend before the cards were marked by the judges. Aretha is the Queen of Soul, Whitney is the true Pop Princess and Mary is the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Now that Spears' teeny bop banter has been spliced to reveal that she is just an industrial strength sweet confection manufactured by the spin machine, I feel sorry for her. All those reviews and pop critic cats were feeding at the trough in the late 90's, hailing her as baby Madonna, when in fact she just pushed envelopes with her stylized videos and performances but few emotional buttons through her voice. Madonna was busy riding her ray of light into the middle aged afternoon sun, defiantly anti-cabaret (she left that to Celine Dione) and distinctly British (with a Scandinavian producer) when high pop critical society (shame on you Michael Musto and Rolling Stone) pushed Britney onto us with her Lolita sexuality causing every American father to hypervenilate during the MTV awards. I wished Whitney would get back into the saddle and do the Natalie Cole thing but faster and harder, pushing air up and through scared vocal cords, belting like a 1st alto at sister Mary Walker's family church off some dusty road between Bessemer, Alabama and a county line, looking 20 pounds heavier and fresher.

The Cybersphere As A Portal To Grooving Ass

GeeeWhizzzz! I have all these blogs linked to my blog. I have started to check them out, and through them I have seen some have retired, while others are still blogging. I also found a long lost friend of sorts who I have to hit up this week when I go down town.

I also found an old friend that is now a jet setting producer. He just followed his dream and did not think that much about it, which is starting to be my motto of late. He goes to Norway and London all the time. He said that he wanted to produce a song with me before I left because my voice is very old, like 1950's scratchy Ben E. King or Sam Cooke. It is somewhat like that. It depends on what I sing. But it has been so long since I have sung regularly and it is hard for me to find a place to do it. I should find a gospel choir. I like gospel.

But I could care less. I found him, and that is the important thing. 3 years ago his world was turned upside down, as well as mine when our inner circle started to unravel under the strain of life. No details but, it was funky. I wonder about black gay men's shit. Or black bisexual men's shit. Do people really know what a tight rope this is in the community? But things are changing. I saw some New Orleans Bounce videos on Youtube. They are all self made, and the boys are really bouncing . . . like the girls on the videos that everyone detests. It was weird, I turn a half cocked eye at the girls with the gigantic asses like they have been pumped up with Afrosteroids, but the boys wiggling does something to me . . . as long as the onion is not too big . . . but big is relative . . . no?

Does this make me hypocritical? I look at the girls as being used, but I look at the young men and think . . . hummffff. Would I think about the women differently if I was 100 percent straight?

OK, I gotta go. It is the beginning of the weekend and I have to finish a couple of applications, finish the list of references I am making, catch up on my Publisher's Weekly back issues, and clean-up my list of blog friends on the right. I have not been as diligent in trying to read them all as I should, but I have been in transition. Funny, today listening to New Orleans Bounce and watching Booty Shaking and craving sweet, salty and greasy things . . . I all of a sudden missed The South. I like that anybody can be delectable there. It is a very, very nice feeling.

The B-Side Fest Continues

It is continuing today. I have been listening to Prince's B-Sides for about 2 days now. It is OK because I am slamming out applications for different jobs while I still waiting for a response from that unmentionable pack of slow ass civil servants a state over. Damn!

The day has been peppered with affirmations that my creative sap is rising, if not my survival skills concerning being a freelancer. I started to make a list of all the people I know. So, I am ready to play cards. If I have learned anything over the last 6 years it is that your prosperity in life depends heavily upon those that surround you. And, on the flip side, you can gauge your emotionally state through those you choose to be friends or lovers with . . . if your life is a revolving door. So it is important to chose the right folk or you might as well be alone.

OK. Enough of the soap box.

I saw Noah's Arc, Project Runway and Million Dollar "Something" tonight. So it is late, needless to say. I like these shows because they reflect the things I am going through creatively, sexually and financially. I guess it is best summed up by a need for a greater understanding in all of those areas and how I operate. Noah's Arc is cool, but it is more like watching a comic book adventure series like captain America or Bullwinkle from the '70's-- or a television novela -- than a serious drama. The way they collectively resolved the Guy storyline was boring. No! I am sorry it was sophomoric. They should have just not attempted to do it at all, but I am not that frustrated . . . let's march on to the next comic filled frame next Wednesday . . . though I am wondering if Noah's accident/conflict/crisis will bring a necessary character shift, which it must, through all common sense when it comes to good writing.

I want to see something unexpected on Noah's Arc, otherwise we will be left with two dimensional action figures of black gay life and love, which is not a bad thing with all that hot Nubian beauty they prance in front of the camera, but a little krptonite would be cute too. Maybe that is why I like the show, I am trying to figure out where I fit in, and I don't see it exactly. But the bigger question is why I am searching for myself on LOGO. I think it is being thrown back into a market driven economy where I should receive my subliminal signals of belonging and cues for what to buy at the mall through television. It has been almost 2 years since I have been back, and it is very difficult to resist the advertised candy.

And on Project Runway . . . Laura won! Great! I think she is a very interesting woman. My bet is that Uli will be kicked off in the next round. But who knows? It is so very much about what people like and don't like. It would take a total lack of judgment for the judges to kick Michael off, he could thread a wad of Dax hair wax on elongated buffalo tendons and call it charmeuse and dem bitches would love it. But I don't hate the brother, I love that they love him, it is just that the competition is so stiff now. Jeffery and Laura are impeccable to me too. Uli is just into the sun dress, that is all she can do . . . which reminds me to tell you guys something about Germany when I a bit well rested.

The last thing I want to mention is my post on August 25, where I said that my grandfather would have had no problem figuring out that ad. I have changed my mind. I wonder what he would have thought, seeing that I never meet him, I just grew up with the legacy of his activism around me. He was one of those armed deacons that guarded Martin Luther King when he visited Mount Olive Baptist church in Anniston, Alabama and he was big on urging people to pay the poll tax in order to vote. There is a part of me that understands what level of comprehension my grandfather's actions required, but then there is the question of sexuality, nudity, play, male bonding and the second World War. What would have been his perspective sans Derrida? That is the true question, and could I ever know for certain what his thinking dictated to himself internally verses what he expressed externally. I know that he was worried about raising soft men, but is that the same as a faggot? Is it being feminine or is it the fucking?

I wonder.

I have depicted him in fiction before, maybe I should try and sketch it out.

September 12, 2006

On the morning of September 12, 2001 I was living in Tuebingen, Germany on Lazarettegasse in an apartment above a bike store. The entire building used to be a coffin workshop. It did not surprise me because there was a feeling that a little girl was always running through our house, between the toilet and my bedroom. I remember that morning because I woke up and realized that what I saw on television was not a dream. There was still that lingering feeling that the MGM Lion was going to pop up and I could turn off the television and get on with my life. Instead I went to the Deutsches-Amerikanisches Insititut, saw my co-workers, had a coffee and sat down to watch more television. It was fall, I was sad, I was teaching way too much for the money, I was preparing for ghastly commutes and I spent every bit of extra time I had with Das Experiment.

Tuebingen was like Nashville in the way that I always felt I had to get moving or I would be trapped. It was different than Nashville in that I found a great love (little did I know how it was going to fundamentally change me) and with love you can live anywhere. And that is the beauty of a relationship, it makes life more habitable.

I am such a romantic.

I think I am going to leave it at that. I am going to try and bash out an article that deals with Willie Ninja and the New York I seem to have lost. I drove up the Westside Highway to see that the piers near Christopher Street are gone. It looks like a water park in Chicago or Toronto. It just doesn't feel like New York. I was in Brooklyn this Sunday, and Fulton Street between the G and C train stops looks like Park Slope. Everything is so white and middleclass. Not a bad thing, but nerve racking none-the-less, that what I used to think of as some sort of spiritual resting stop. I used to eat at a resturaunt near there because I knew the cook and she used to lift my spirits up. I remember going their after a funeral, a young lady that sat two desks in front of me died of breast cancer, she was only 28. That meal and those smiles were just what I needed that day. Now I struggle to find the resturaunt on that block.

New York used to be accessible, now it is prohibitively expensive. I used to walk briskly down that same street because it was on the edge of crime land. Now it looks like HGTV adopted the block.

Man!

Enough of my ramblings.

I will write a bit more later.

When I am done banging out at least one timely article to sell to somebody.

I have started to get back in the groove.

PS

One of the dangers of exile is that you miss all the hyped events and movies in your home country. Youtube came to my rescue again . . . this time it was Whitney Houston singing at the Michael Jackson tribute. Besides Usher looking weird with that wolf fur draped around him, Whitney did look like death moonwalking to your front door. Damn! Now I see why we needed an intervention.

I still think there is something epic in her life and how it mimics our current state of Black America. My stepmother's best friend and her husband came to have coffee and Sunday chat. I remember Peter saying "I miss the Cosby show. It depicted black folk as we really are." Yeah, I thought, but what about "the depiction" we slide with honey and rose filtered lenses to ourselves rather than what we want white folk to see? That would be a different show: Preppy black children smoking blunts and oblivious to their sero-status. We fault Whitney, but she mimics us and our values and what we ultimately do to our children through expectations. And that was when I realized that my parents wanted me to turn out like one of the Cosby kids, a doctor (doesn't matter, medical or intellectual) with an empty smile and an American dream, brandishing impecable sweaters. I had forgotten totally with whom I am living and what these guys want!

Maybe I can negotiate for more emotional space now. Thanks Whitney!