Month: June 2000

Always Be Prepared

As if I didn’t have enough to do already, I decided to throw together a wee little something about the whole Boy Scouts brouhaha, with a few reference materials pulled from my vast archive of fun stuff.

First, an excerpt from a Boys Scouts of America guide to physical fitness, ©1968:

Another subject about which there is much misinformation is homosexuality. This term is generally used to describe a fixed adult pattern of behavior in which an individual is sexually attracted only to members of his own sex. Many boys before they become interested in girls develop strong friendships with other boys. This is perfectly normal and will lead to many strong friendships for the rest of their lives. It does not mean they are homosexuals or are not manly or will not develop an interest on girls. As they grow and widen their circle of friends and activities, they will become attracted to the opposite sex. If a young man has any questions about this area of friendship, he should certainly consult his parents and spiritual adviser for guidance.

That color is fabulous on you!There’s been a lot of hullaballoo about the Supreme Court’s ruling that supports the right of the Boys scouts of America to exclude gays from the organization. Despite my inherent belief that gays should be able to do whatever the hell anyone else can do, I must admit that I’m with the Supreme Court on this one. If the Boy Scouts are willing to stand by the idea that the right to exclude homosexuals from membership is a central part of their mission and their ideological foundation, then they should have the right to do so. The flip side to this is that they have to take a situation that they would probably prefer to ignore and make it a central part of their ideological foundation.

I hope the scouts do make this a big issue, but I really hope that people have the good sense to take them to task for making exclusion — rather than acceptance — a central part of their mission. I hope this is something that forces to the scouts to reevaluate what it is they’re doing. scout literature talks a lot about upholding ethical and community standards, but the organization is acting as if those standards are static, and not subject to evolution or variation from place to place. That’s crap. I wonder if something like this happened to Jewish scouts at some point. I wonder if the scouts will change this as homophobia continues to erode in this country. I wonder if this will cause a splintering of the organization as people involved at the local level who believe in the more humanistic ideals of the organization decide to stand by the gay people they know. I wonder.

I don’t really have anything against the Boy Scouts, except for their reactionary stance on this particular issue. I was a Cub Scout for two years, and I thought it was pretty lame. But I know other guys — gay and straight alike — who had a number of good experiences with the scouts, and think they are better for having joined them. (As a matter of fact, I know guys who had a number of good sexual experiences in the Boy Scouts. Will they have to institute a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? I wonder.) But I think that now’s the time to ask if the scouts are really doing such good work if their idea of preparing young men to be good citizens is to just out those who don’t agree with them. Or who might — heaven forbid — help them live up to part of their own Oath: “A scout is a friend to all. He is a brother to other scouts. He seeks to understand others. He respects those with ideas and customs other than his own.”

Chelsea’s Future

In the future, according to Titan A.E., all that will remain of Earth’s culture will be cargo pants, muscle shirts, and homo archetypes. I know this movie was manufactured specifically for 12-year-olds, so I wasn’t expecting quality, but I was genuinely surprised to see how well they managed to make the hero into a Chelsea muscle twink and make the villain character into his pseudo-butch Chelsea-daddy type. There wasn’t much romantic subtext, thankfully, but I swear that the characters were drawn from pictures taken from circuit-party snapshots. I couldn’t stop giggling.

Gay Shame

It’s Homo Overload…whoops, I mean Gay Pride Week here in New York, so I guess it’s only fitting that I chime in on the subject. But before I do, I just want y’all to think about this question posed by the Paris ACT UP chapter: “Proud of what?”

Gay Pride doesn’t inspire any particular pride in me. In fact, it makes me cringe with embarrassment and loathing. Not the idea of it, but the actual event in all its glitzy, our-way-or-the-highway madness. I don’t even know where to begin. (Paul Baker’s Burn Your Jockstrap site articulates my frustrations with gay culture much better than I ever could, anyway, so go look at that.) The homos are pretty homogenous — at least within each of their cliques — and it irritates me that there’s a parade to prove it.

The thing to keep in mind is that I love being gay. I mean, there’s no question about it. I’m really, really gay. And yes, I’m proud of it. I don’t mean that I’m a prancing nancy, or a pumped-up pretty boy, or straight-acting bear (all of which are terms that could be used to describe people I love). I’m Sparky. I am, among other things, an enthusiatic lover of other fellas. And goddamn I’m proud of that! It’s a part of me, and a pretty significant part, one which influences a lot of the other parts.

Coming out wasn’t a huge dilemma for me, even though I did it at the ripe old age of 21. I did it when the time was right for me, when I had the insight and energy to deal with that aspect of life. No trauma, just a couple of awkward conversations. But to get to that point, I had to figure out some stuff about my life and the world around me, and that’s good. If I weren’t gay, I may not have thought as much about what makes me the person I am. I’m proud that I had to ask myself difficult questions, and proud that I sorted out some sort of direction in a sea of conflicting opinions. I’m proud that I chose for myself what I want, and didn’t hold myself to what my folks or my school or my friends naturally assumed would be the way things worked.

I didn’t shut off that way of thinking when I confronted gay culture, which is why I get so incensed by this feeling that the so-called gay counter-culture would, if it could, impose the same kind of rigorous expectations on me as the so-called mainstream. screw it. I’m not any more likely to go to the gym to beef up my tits than I am to marry the girl next door and settle down in a house in Nutley, New Jersey, or shoot heroin in a crack den. I said “no” to all that. And I don‘t wish to be told I’m a loser for not making any one of those things a priority.

For me, gay pride is an everyday fact of life. An excuse to say, “That’s me, dig it or ditch it,” just like any other aspect of myself. I don’t want to be like every other gay person in the world, especially not if they’re trying to be just like everyone else (except, of course, for more inherently fabulous because they’re gay). If I were to let that happen, I’d be a whole let less Sparky, wouldn’t I?

Wilting in the Heat

As you may notice, all those software demos didn’t kill me, although I did get an extra nine hours of them that I wasn’t expecting. Every once in a while during the meetings, I would be amazed that people were actually deferring to my analysis of one damn thing or another, and it seemed just crazy. Who am I that I should be expected to have a reliable opinion about anything? Then, of course, I’d remember that I am almost thirty, after all (despite my boyish good looks), and I’ve been working in some variation of the same field for about 10 years. Then I would ask why I’m not more successful, and then I would remind myself that I purposely kept switching gears to learn or to do cool new things instead of just plodding ahead, and…

Oh well, you get it. The mind wanders when one is tired, right? But it’s been a week like that. Too poor to go out much. Too hot to have much sex when the opportunities present themselves (seeing as they’ve only been presenting themselves in places where it’s much too hot). Too much work to just hang out in the hammock and catch up on this month’s magazines (Wired, Paper, Metropolis, Emigre, Wallpaper, Nest). so all the mind wandering squeezes itself the little nooks and crannies of my attention span, forcing itself its way into my jam-packed mental space.

Today’s entry is dedicated to my faithful Manservant Hecubus, as a reminder that he’s still aces in my book, even if I have been too big a lazy bastard to write and catch up lately.

Endless Dreariness

One of my freelance gigs is a consulting project for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, doing some research about a computer system they want to buy. (Yes, I am also a nerd-for-hire by other nerds. Who knew?) Today, I will be sitting through a couple hours of software demos, which would not be much of a treat under the best of circumstances. After my unfortunate bout of insomnia last night, all those PowerPoint presentations and all that corporate jargon will surely kill me.

Film Buff

For such a film nut, there are huge, gaping holes in my classic-films checklist. I blame it on my youthful fascination with trash culture. (Which I still love, but I temper with appreciation of the finer things.) I always pooh-poohed all the greats — the silent films, gorgeous black-and-white masterpieces, taught thrillers — as long as I could get a chance to see something more fun, like Valley Girl or Class of Nuke ‘Em High. Thankfully, I’ve gotten over that kind of short sightedness. Now, whenever I see something generally regarded as a classic, it’s always such a revelation, and I could kick myself for not catching it sooner.

It happened the first time I saw Buster Keaton, who I now regard as one of my all-time favorites. It happened when I recently saw Sunset Blvd. and suddenly realized how many other images I had seen on film over the years (not to mention that whole Carol Burnett skit) had drawn from it. And it happened again tonight when I finally watched the DVD for Notorious that I picked up a while back, thinking that I ought to watch it, if just because it was set in Rio and Duran Duran did that song about it. What a gorgeous movie! Just beautifully done. (And it made me very nostalgic to see footage of places in Rio I had been to when I was there.)

Wow! That Hitchcock guy knocks my socks off every time. Do people know about him?

And I don’t mean to get too faggy — and this is above and beyond, even for me — but did Edith Head sell her soul to the devil or something for that kind of talent? We would have a totally different image of Hollywood glamour if it weren’t for that woman.

Room at the Inn

Things could get wacky here this summer. I don’t mean “here” as in this site, although there could be spillage into my online life, but “here” as in my house, since I’m taking in a lodger for the summer. My old roommate David, he of the Twine Tour, is going to be in town for the summer working on a movie and we figured that we could solve the problem of his accomodations and my rent increase with one fell swoop. I haven’t had a non-romantic roommate in a long time, and I have no interior walls in my loft, so this should be kooky.

Of course, things have always been kooky for David and I. When we first met, small-world factor reared it’s ugly head when he realized that the year before a good friend of his had been telling him about a guy (me) he met at a movie who also had a copy (just like David’s) of the photo-novelization of Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People movie. Kismet! Our kitsch-loving paths would be forever intertwined from then on.

In other news of kookiness, the new episode of Ooze is finally out, much to the dismay of the easily offended everywhere. My oldest pal Eddie and his cronies continue to spread the word of juvenile antics. Be sure to check out their promotional video for PWEETA, People Who Enjoy Eating Tasty Animals.

I Was Never Punk

I never said I was a punk, so you can’t call me a poseur. I was never good at committing to just one “scene”, since my interests were always so eclectic, although like many disaffected teenagers I went through my skater, New Wave, punk (Ah, 1987 — the year all the Staten Island New-Wave kids went punk…) , rude-boy, and newly-out fag phases before amalgamating them all into the Sparky you all know and get fed up with today.

Anyway, the subject was punk. I went to go see The Filth and the Fury last night, the latest documentary on the Sex Pistols. Although I was never much of an angry, working-class kid, the Sex Pistols really captivated me way back when, and it was easy to see why as I watched footage of Johnny Rotten shouting and snarling into the microphone as he stared wild-eyed at the crowds. I could feel my whole body tense up with excitement. It was also surpisingly moving to hear him talk about his rage and sadness at how Sid Vicious just fell apart once he became a junkie. I guess it’s not very punk for him to get teary during an interview, but I guess he’s John Lydon now and not Johnny Rotten, so we’ll cut him some slack.

Julien Temple thankfully doesn’t take the whole thing too seriously, even though he’s trying to show a more historical view than he did in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Even though a screenwriter pal didn’t think he handled the passage of time well (whatever wanky film-biz nonsense that is), I liked the way he built a context for all of it with a hilarious montage of film and video clips, including a bunch of apropos snippets from Richard III and British TV news. He also kept the contemporary Pistols in silhouette when he interviewed then, which was a deft way to not ruin the impact of all that combustible young anger by showing what they looked like all old and bitter.

To balance things out, today I’m listening to the soundtrack to Hair, surprisingly moving music of another sort altogether. (And back from the days when Treat Williams lived up to his name.)