Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?

Lisa Leff of the Associated Press wrote up a news article on how Air New Zealand is creating a gay-theme flight, with a drag cabaret, pink cocktails and gay-friendly movies:

"The destination for the airline's one-time "Pink Flight," scheduled to depart San Francisco International Airport on Feb. 26, is the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, one of the world's most well-attended gay events, said Jodi Williams, an Air New Zealand marketing director."

The airline also plans to throw a "Get-Onboard-Girlfriend" going away party for its passengers.

Does anyone still call each other girl-friend?

Really?

Get the fuck out, I say. I can tell you that this "girlfriend" is not about to board a 20 year-old stereotype.

It's grim enough to cross an ocean with the regular number of rubes in the skies, let alone a bunch of middle-aged circuit party queens who still z-snap, use poppers while vogue-ing and think Will & Grace is groundbreaking entertainment.

I would appreciate Air New Zealsnd's efforts a whole lot more if they put their "gay friendly" dollars towards raising awareness of homophobia and persecutions of gay folk in the South Pacific. I think that well-heeled Castro queers already have plenty of "look at me, I'm gay and fabulous" opportunities to spend their money on.

Ready for the weekend...

I know, it's only Thursday night, but my brain is already located at 5:00 PM, Friday. I'm supposed to go into the big city this weekend to catch up with an old friend of mine from graduate school. We're in very different worlds, she's in an evangelical college and pretty devoted to her tradition and me, I'm a queer-ish former Catholic. Still, we have been able to stay in touch. She's one of the nicest and smartest people I've met, so I'm grateful to be able to see her again.

Otherwise, if you want to find me, I'll be down here (click on picture to make the SoCal experience come to your screen-you'll be grateful, I promise):

I would rather have a bourbon and coke...

According to Roger Yu of USA Today's Airport Checkin:

SANTA ANA, CALIF.

You can give blood on the fly

Passengers traveling at John Wayne Airport today will have an opportunity to donate blood. The Bloodmobile truck from the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross will be parked at the airport's Thomas F. Riley Terminal on the lower (arrival) level outside of Terminal A.

Is this really what passes as an airport diversion nowadays? It might be a good thing - if all those blood givers are woozy at high altitudes, then they'll be too weak to hog both arm-rests. I'll stick with my usual time-filler, sweet, delicious alcohol.

It's not a gay thing

All across America, there is a new wave of gay panic sweeping public spaces. I am sure that there are hundreds of restrooms crawling with tap-happy gay-bashing straight guys (and those who are really trying to prove they are straight). It is with some degree of Schadenfreude that I think of them whaling on each other. They are discovering that the subtleties of tea-room protocol might be a little more complex than their little brains can fathom.

Now, I know this is old news and that the blogosphere has been rife with the gnashings of teeth and long-winded analyses about the whole Senator Craig affair, but bear with me here, after all:

• I was away for a long weekend kanoodling with my sweetie,
• I have a real job, and
• I don't care so much about identity politics anymore, it's mostly a venue for middle class poseurs to appropriate the real suffering of others.

Sen Craig's big announcement after the scandal broke was that he is, in fact, not gay. You prolly saw the picture of him talking with his mid-westy Hausfrau standing awkwardly beside him in big-ass sunglasses. He also tried to back up his claim by pointing to his three kids - conveniently brought into the marriage, suspiciously the Senator has no known spawn. By the way, good on the kids (well one of them, anyways) for saying that it wouldn't matter to them if Larry was straight or gay.

At first I thought, "Fine, he's not gay." Who needs fuck-ups like him? It's not like the gay community has benefited from former NJ-governor McGreevey's or Lance Bass joining the ranks of "gay-Americans". It's easy to reject Craig, his self-loathing, his creepiness. Can you imagine your reaction to him peeping into your stall? I am not one to shriek, but I might utter a somewhat shrill noise at that point. My mind boggles, though, as to how he could smoke cock in bathrooms and then go off to the Senate to promote hateful legislation against the very people with whom he needed to have sex. Maybe it was therapeutic for him in some way. It might have been a means for him to assuage his self-loathing by lashing out at people who flagrantly display that which he hates about himself. Maybe it was a way for him to exercise power over those who he finds himself powerless.

Now, though, I think we should embrace Craig. Not in some goody-two-shoes, let's convert him, kind of a way. No, Larry Craig's sociopathic cowardice and his endemic participation in hate legislation are irredeemable. Rather, we should embrace the Senator at the point of his "I'm not gay!" announcement. His assertion that he is not gay sat perfectly well for me. After all, he's right, "gay" men don't find themselves soliciting each other for sexual gratification in anonymous stall bathroom sex for years at a time. That's what "straight" guys do when they are "curious" or "bored" or "drunk" or "just want to get off".

Problem is, labels are a messy thing, kids. While he can claim he's not gay, Craig certainly isn't straight. My hope is that Senator Craig's "I'm not gay!" pronouncement can lead to better things. It shows just how incredible fragile and artificial the boundaries between straight and gay are. Craig has shown that for him the difference between gay/straight was an issue of power -- might not be everyone's experience, but that is my point. Also, Craig's statement clearly demonstrates that we end up sleeping with who we want and need to, no matter what label we put on ourselves for others.

Now if everyone just embraced that thought, perhaps we could get on the with the very important business of working on our love and not on our labels.

Something simple

Things are good, dear readers. The cool breeze coming in off the Ballard Locks this early hour certainly has a bit of a bite to it, but I am taking a lot of pleasure in feeling the cold. I have a while to go before I feel the same chill down in SoCal. The sunrise is a bit murky and that is just fine, I am easily distracted by all the different bird sounds (gulls, ravens, sparrows). Visiting with my sweetie, who's having a bit of a lie-in, has been great. Admittedly, we have both had to work so far (I telecommute back and forth with the mothership and he rides off to Redmond), but today we will have to ourselves. The working doesn't matter so much, it is great just to have share those domestic moments with each other. Stuff like laughing at goofy faces while showering together or talking about all the condos replacing many of the old apartments during our walk through the neighborhood after dinner.

The best thing of all moments is the one where he gently takes my wrist, wraps my arm around him and we fall asleep with him holding our clasped hand against his chest. It's that small thing that is so huge it eclipses the daily annoyances and frets about what occurred weeks prior. It shatters the need to indulge in fairy-tale "happily ever after" rhetoric. Who cares about the end of time when we live in that moment?

Flying good times

I am always into aircraft 'incidents'. If you're a nervous flier, you probably won't like Air Disaster dot com. I personally like flying. Sit me in a window seat and I'll be amused for hours. For example, on my flight last night I watched the spectacular moon-rise over the California coastal mountains flying from SNA to SEA. It began as a huge bright orange globe that morphed into a smaller bone white disc once it broke away from the horizon of the desert peaks. It made the 45 minute delay worth it, just so I could catch those moments in the air. I take it as the universe's blessing of my trip to visit my sweetie here in Seattle.

Here's a quick loop of a plane in Japan being struck by lightening during take-off. Lightening is generally harmless to planes, but the bang is certain to cause a few bladders to release.

Thanks to Gizmodo for posting the link.

You think that Canadian are smiles, beer and hockey, eh?

Well you are wrong my friend.

Not only is the great northern menace trying to lay claim to the Canadian Arctic (buggers even named it after themselves) by planting flags and stranding Inuit peoples to starve on Canadian claimed territories, but they are now infiltrating the very foundations of American higher education.

Today in the Chronicle of Higher Education (that venerable rag), there was a story about how Canadian propagandists are reworking the primary source of knowledge for American high school and university students (and maybe a few professors as well). In the Wired Campus edition, it was noted that 11,000 -that's right, eleven thousand - entries of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, had been edited by Canadians. Not just any Canadians, rightfully-fearful readers, but Canadians with ip addresses that are tied to Canadian government computers.

No doubt, now-terrified readers, you are wondering how Canadian propagandists are changing the great forge of American knowledge from which so many of my students see as the only font of information around. Will Canadians be smugly changing entries so that American youth question the evils of socialized medicine, multilingualism and a reasonable immigration system?

It doesn't appear that that is the case just yet. As we read in the Chronicle article:

Despite Wikipedia’s monitoring, one user with an Internet-protocol address at the House of Commons repeatedly removed material from the encyclopedia’s entry on homosexuality, replacing it 24 times with terse statements like “Homosexuality is evil.”

Huh...

I admit I was a bit perplexed at this tact by the Canadian Politburo. At first I thought that this surely must be what Albertan patronage appointments must do in Ottawa for kicks; having neither the wherewithal to do anything useful with themselves, nor the ability to break through the neocolonial powers of central Canadian politics. But what I think is really going on is this: these edits in Wikipedia are part of a grand conspiracy of Canadian professional bureaucrats to further the right-wing agenda of the American social conservative movement, thereby leveraging Canada's warm and fuzzy reputation in the world as a bastion of weak-socialist liberalism. Upon successfully distracting/lulling the world, that's when they will spring forth in their black helicopters and begin the True North One World Government.

Very clever, vile canucks... very clever indeed.

Ulitimate fighting, gym monkeys and the new 'gay' generation.

ooh, Friday night and I am home alone blogging.

This long distance relationship thing sucks.

Hmmm, well, there's always the distraction of mixed martial arts (Pride, UFC, IFL to name three of them) - basic cable swims in soft-core homo-erotica. Long time readers will know my appreciation for UFC as a celebration of blurring male sexualities. Is it straight or gay content? Who knows? Seriously, dear readers, it doesn't take but 15 minutes of watching any of the mixed martial arts shows to see that the target audience of these shows is men and those who like them. The commentary and the associated adverts promote toughness and ideals of masculinity. Interstingly enough, these ideals of masculinity include hours of watching buff men burying their faces into other men's chests and armpits while grappling on the floor sweating with arms and legs intertwined. Then, there's hugging and kissing at the end. The ancient Greeks would have been very familiar with these activities. The uncanny thing about these lads of the new mixed martial arts generation is that they are almost all pretty boys - not the usual denizens of traditional boxing gyms, let alone the questionable circles that started no-rules fighting. The old days of glorified bum-fights in bars have been eclipsed by highly staged (however authentic the fighting may be) events that highlight these very well groomed and very suspiciously attractive young men. Take a look if you don't believe me.

As an aside, there are also the (almost as) homoerotic biblical retellings on evangelical tv channels. Right now, for example, between MMA commercials i stumbled across a presentation of the biblical Joseph in Egypt after being sold by his brothers. There was a long scene of Joseph showering (SLOWLY!), the director choosing to emphasize the lad's very tanned, very smooth, very muscular young body. His body was also clearly oiled up like he was heading out to a Venice Beach muscle show. Who knew that the early Hebrews in Egypt were actually refugees from the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue? Not sure how the Hebrews sprung out of the midwest, but I guess that's what good Christian dogma dictates these days.

M'eh, I'll switch over to the woofy bear goodness of Canada's Les Stroud (a.k.a. Survivorman on Discovery Channel) in his undies as he negotiates a rain forest. Gotta love the nipple-cam shots that he seems to be fond of when filming himself. Sweet Jebus on a pogo stick, there is a lot of male flesh on television these days.

But, speaking of the drawbacks of a long distance relationship, I have been working out my frustrations by hitting the gym. It's been a very long time since I've been on a campus gym. The recreational center where I go to is fascinating. The behavior of undergraduates in gyms is very different from people in public gyms elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, dear reader, I ain't leering at the twinks. 8 years of teaching the 20 somethings has made them completely non-interesting to me. What DOES interest me though, is the un-selfconscious preening and visual masturbations that many young men are so fond of doing.

For example, a couple of days ago there was one young fella who was making gawd-awful noises as he was lifting 100 lb weights for tricep lifts. Certainly a desparate cry for attention rather than uncontrolled groans of exertion. But it was between sets where the Jane Goodall/Diane Fossey in me perked up. The lad dropped his weight more dramatically than any drag queen could drop her purse before diving for that last pair of size 12 factory outlet Jimmy Choos. He then strutted over to a mirror and did an approving inspection of his arms. Then he lifted his tank top, pinning it under his chin, while he swayed back and forth staring at and running his fingers up and down his abs.

Fascinating.

I can't say I ever saw that at my undergraduate and graduate school gyms. It was like he was having a very public self-sexual moment in a space filled with several other guys participating in similar activities. It was kinda odd to be in this room filled with people participating in an orgy of mutual masurbation where no one looked at each other directly, but were all connected through the reflections on the mirror covered walls.

I figure that all the mixed martial arts on TV along with the rest of the packaging of the male body on TV is yet another marker of recent shifts in American sexuality. The hypersexualization of youth (even to the mass hysteria surrounding anything that might smack of pedophilia) has crossed the gender divide. It appears that the youngins nowadays are being socialized to now think of men as sexual objects, even onto themselves. Aside from the evils of objectification of people, this shift could result in good things if the concrete walls between straight and gay male sexuality become much more porous. The optimist in me hopes so; the deconstruction of these artificial sexualities that have allowed for so much discrimination and marginalization would bring about real change in the world. The pessimist in me worries that we'll see the incorporation of gay men into the hierarchy of straight male sexual gratification. Just as lesbians have been appropriated into the circle of heteromale fantasy, so too could gay men become objects for gratification. Mind you, that's not too different from how gay men treat each other now.

Ah well, at least the dating pool will increase...

I slept through my first earthquake.

We had a 4.5 quake in LA, the first time I visit the town. It occured around 1AM, well after my bedtime.

Damn.

I was at a workshop/conference at UCLA during the week. Quite a pretty campus. Looking at the buildings, it looks like the campus heyday was about 40 years ago. Sure, there has been change, but the architecture of many buildings bears a certain late mid-20th Century essence about them. There's the industrial scientific confidence of the 50's space-age romanticism tempered by the awkward expressions of clunky 60's funk. Don't get me wrong, the place has its charms. The view of the hills on the other side of campus is stunning. I took a stroll around campus just after sunrise, the cool air made for a pleasant walk over the long shadows settling on the quad. About at the end of my walk, I came across this commemoration piece for Duke Ellington in front of the Music Dept. There ought to be more art installations like this.

Artifacts of appreciation are too rare.


After the first night of the conference, I stayed at a motel in Brentwood after being unceremoniously bumped from the hotel in which I had originally booked a room. It turned out for the best, I figured. The place was funky and quiet and was in a much nicer space than the place I had booked on Wilshire. The shower had a 'champagne' setting so that the streams of water were foamy and thick. Very classy, no? If Norma Jean were around, she would have said it was 'swellegant', a term coined in her film (and my favorite) The Seven Year Itch.


Also, some lovely Los Angelino cut a 1/2 foot gash on the side of my truck. Thank you very much, whoever you are (it's a very high scratch, so I am thinking semi-truck or Hummer). I'll keep you fondly in my heart for adding your special touch to the one thing of value I own.

Zen-d'oh!

I've been a good zazen pupil. I've headed out to the little Zen community center twice a week and have tried to do sitting practice (harder than it sounds, dear reader) at home. Just when I thought I had brought my performance down from Keystone Cops to something along the lines of Groucho Marx, they go and mix up the routine.

Last Tuesday, I went to zazen and I was doing all sorts of stuff that was outta sync with the rest of the zen-crew. I bumped into people during walking meditation, I ended up facing the wrong way a couple of times, it was a mess. The thing that makes it difficult is that when we go into the zazen sitting room, everyone practices complete silence, so other than an occasional, somewhat vague finger pointing, ya kinda have to figure things out by watching people. It makes aiming for tranquility a little more challenging, I tell ya. On Tuesday, the woman I was sitting beside who had been trying her best to point me in the right directions all evening finally gave up at the end of the second round of meditations. She had been trying to reposition me to another spot on the floor and I was not quite getting what she wanted. Finally, she broke the silence and whispered, "Sit here and face Carol!" The way she had me positioned was to face an empty spot by the wall where no one was sitting. No one was there and we all sat in zazen for a good 5 minutes. At about the 10 minute mark, I was thinking for sure that this might be the part where it's revealed that we were all waiting for some divine visitation. At last, a small yoda-esque woman climbed up the stairs and took a seat at the empty spot on the floor. So, it appears that Carol likes to make an entrance.

The dharma talk ended up saving the evening as it was the first real Zen chat that we had since I've been going. Not to detract from the other leader, she's great, but this talk was much more in line with what I was expecting. Now if only I can figure out the rhythm of the place, I'm sure I'll be walking on the tops of bamboo stalks in no time.

For Your Consideration

For your consideration...

If it gives an error message, try clicking it again. If it persists in telling you that BBC won't allow the embedding of this content, send your browsers to here,

"That's the beauty of West Hollywood The Castro The Village Camden, you're allowed to be different, you know, an individual."

A reminder

Gay Pride in Iran....

Two years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran hanged two youths after tarring them as homosexuals. After international outcry, Iranian officials said that the sentence derived from a rape charge. Given the continued program of lynching men construed to be gay in the subsequent couple of years, trumped up charges only demeaned their deaths further.

What's worse, Iran is not alone in this. One need only look at Jamaica where men targeted as being gay are murdered with a burning tire tied around their head. Wide swaths of Africa force gays to live in constant fear with governments and newspapers maintaining homophobia to the level of mass hysteria. It's not a good thing and it's gonna take a long time and a lot of work to sort it out.

I guess one way to start is to think about what we do during this pride season and how we can make a difference not just at home but for people labeled as "us" in places where "we" are not allowed to exist.

Lights, Camera, Goofiness

So, one of the projects at work is to start creating teaching tip videos. Turns out it is much harder than it would seem. I had figured that it would involve more than jsut standing in front of the lights and the teleprompter. It was a bit of a learning curve to catch on to the finer touches of standing in front of the camera.
Too much moving and ya look like a goofball.
Too little movement and you look like a zombie goofball.
I learned that the closer ya resemble a used car salesman, the better.

The hands, the facial tics (wow, lots of those), trying to an-nun-ci-ate clearly, trying to not look like I'm reading... No matter what, I look like like I am outta my element.

I showed Brett some test video and we could not stop laughing. He has a new-favorite activity: stop the video clip at any point, take a still image and naming it. He's hilllllllarious. Although, to be fair, it's comedic gold.

Ah well, the things we do for our craft.

I had a lot of fun, though. I got to dress up, stand in front of a bunch o'cameras and play Guy Smiley. The video's director (yes, we have an in-house director and an in-house producer) was super patient and a great coach. Hopefully the editing does wonders.

I Zen'd My Ass Off

It's been something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, dear reader. Join a zendo and begin a course of meditation training. I had tried to do it in Texas, but the final days of my sojourn there were rather chaotic. I found a local zendo that I am somewhat confident is reasonably sane. This past Sunday, I signed up for an intro class. It's just down the road from me, a quaint renovated house filled with twisting hallways and a spacious upper floor patio. The interior decor is SoCal-inspired Japanese drag. It is bright, clean, covered in white paint with bamboo veneers and contains an un-Zenly amount of Chinatown trinkets. The afternoon event covered zazen basics, nothing new to me theoretically. Practically, it wasn't too strenuous as we only sat for about 10 minutes.

There were five other folk there, all women and, weirdly enough, three of them were named Deborah/Debbie/Deb. Yes, dear reader, I thought the same thing! I had not entered some innocent Zen training class but instead had stumbled into some strange cult where initiates change their names to Debbie, sign over all their worldly possessions to the "zendo" and marry some unwashed long-haired hippy dude named Gary. I'll keep my eyes on this Debbie thing. In the end, the energy of the group was pretty good, and we were pretty much all new to Orange County, coming from Iowa, San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C. Post Buddha boot-camp, we parted after a snack of organic lemonade and seedless California grapes (holy mixed message!) I left excited about my new course, harboring only a slight disappointment that we weren't supplied with some zen swag for our $$ -- perhaps a bodhisattva bottle opener or maybe a t-shirt boasting something like, "Real men heart Buddha"...

This Tuesday night, I went to my first full zazen session. This involves two 30 minuted sitting sessions and one ten minute walking meditation. There was only one other newbie from Sunday there, the woman who wasn't a Deborah. There wasn't much of an orientation; I entered the zendo and someone pointed out a spot for me. I had inaccurately gauged the appropriate size of my zazen ass-cushion and I chose poorly. My selection was far too small for me and my posterior began to slowly and painfully squeeze the blood from my legs. Another distraction was the fact I had been given a spot in front of the dishwasher; I kept trying to imagine a Japanese zendo with an automatic dishwasher and it sorta took the romance out of the whole thing. It was also a bit rough trying to be mindful of one's breath while my ankles slipped into a coma. Always eager to strive for academic poise, I alternated between being mindful of breath and mindful of the developing deep vein thrombosis in my left anterior tibia. One blessing of losing blood in the lower extremities is that eventually starved of oxygen, distracting nerves stop tingling. Of course, being the prim Zen newbie that I am, I certainly did not want to stir and reposition myself and then disturb the 15 or so other practitioners. After the first half hour, the zen teacher struck a gong, everyone stood up and bowed. This is where it got interesting...

I was able to pull myself up and lean against the dishwasher with one leg. The left leg was really groggy and I could not move my foot at all. I experimented with swiveling my hip around until I could pivot my left foot flat on the ground. I couldn't put any weight on the leg, lest I tip over. Cursing to myself, I tried to figure out what people were doing next. Everyone in the room was facing my direction. Great, I didn't feel awkward at all. I tried to turn in the general direction of the group but started to tilt over on the side of my dead leg, augh! I caught myself without falling into the man next to me but did tip a chair backwards, almost dropping it onto another meditating fella. Then the group took a step forward. Dammit, the walking meditation was beginning and I had no motor conrol of my feet. A knot in my stomache forms and I have visions of being the first newbie to injure himself by falling and impaling myself on the nearby pointy buddha-statue. Thanks be to Quan-Yin, "walking meditation" involved taking one step every 15-20 seconds at first. By the time I had to cross the room, I was able to stand without leaning against wall or cabinet. Needless to say, I was not particularly in Zen-mind for the second sitting session. Still, I managed to sit for the next 30 minute session and then gingerly step over to the reading group. Next time I head back to the zendo, I'll be sure to grab an ass-pillow that is more dimensionally appropriate.