WTF

Apparently my Wells Fargo debit card got charged $100 for purchases made at a Walgreens in Miami, but I have never been to Miami and my card has been here the whole time. HMMM ...

In the Dark

The light in my living room is burned out and my lamp won't work. I feel like a bat.

Saturday Night Ramblings

I just don't feel ANYTHING
Maybe I am tired and need electrolytes
Hooray purple Vitamin Water

Microsoft Word is blank
It's been that way for the past few years now
I always end up writing fake interviews of myself
And that is something a 10-year-old would do

The Banana is what it is
I suck at folding
But I'm okay at talking to people
And I like that I have a headset

To pay for stuff all by myself is my new year's resolution
And maybe gaining five pounds of solid muscle

Yesterday there were children running around in my sales racks
And they did not speak English
And I am bad with children
My co-worker tried in his New York accent
"Kids! Be cayful! Ya'll kill yaselves"

I do not like my accent
I sound like Frances McDormand in Fargo
The kids in acting class make fun of it and I think it is karma
Because in middle school we had a new kid from Queens and I would always make fun

These things are like bad SNL sketches
I never know how to end them
So there you go

Today in New York

I went to class
And then got a haircut
for $14
in Chelsea

Worth it and more
Channing Tatum's twin brother was there
People were nice and not judgmental
And the most important thing is
That my faux mullet is now gone

Still nervous about work tomorrow
But it's gonna be okay
Hopefully someone helps me put my belt on
It is kind of ridiculous that I can't do it myself
Maybe I will ask a nice old lady on the subway

I HATE PHILOSOPHY
But I must pass it
Erin loves it and I don't get it
I don't want to think about how I think
I just want to think

Happy thanksgiving to you and yours

Queer Film Blogathon Entry: Trick

The following entry is a part of the Queering the Apparatus Queer Film Blogathon

When I first heard of the Queer Blogathon courtesy of StinkyLulu, I was both excited and apprehensive. At first glance, "queer cinema" was a term that is much like "chick lit" -- not a term that is degrading per se, but one that labelizes a medium based on only one aspect of it. But once I saw the original announcement, I believed that a goal of this project is to prove the versatility that cinema can offer when presenting gay themes. So while I am sure there will be many riveting entries about films with great political impact, I chose to blog about a film that I saw when I was twelve years old, a film that, by being so blatantly apolitical and free of issues, showed me more about what it means to be gay than any Logo movie of the week ever could ...


Trick (1999), directed by Jim Fall
Starring Christian Campbell, JP Pitoc and Tori Spelling

On paper, the plot of Trick is silly -- almost ridiculous. Gabriel (Campbell) is a cute but nerdy aspiring playwright who encounters an attractive go-go-boy, Mark (Pitoc), on the subway in Manhattan.



The two spend an entire night in Manhattan trying to find a place to have a one-night stand. Surprisingly, the film ends up not being about sex but about an emotional connection between an unlikely pair, as well as presenting a cavalcade of characters, ranging from stereotypical older piano bar queens, reformed gay Christians, drunken party boys, and various aspiring theater whores.

It is strange to think a film with such an ostensibly shallow plot would have such impact on a questioning 12-year-old --



after all, the first shot of JP Pitoc's gargantuan pectoral muscles let me know I was at least bisexual -- but subtle choices by the screenwriter prevent the film from being just a gay movie.

Case in point: Gabriel's roommate, Rich, is straight. While Rich is a buffoon and there is a sense that the film argues straight men are dumb as rocks, it is also a powerful thing to contain a scene in which Gabriel and Rich are in the bathroom, flipping a coin to decide who gets the apartment to have sex that night (Gabriel with Mark and Rich with his girlfriend returning from Paris). Their sexual orientations are different, but they both have a common interest, as well as a respect for each other. Compare this to a recent comedy series on Logo, in which any time one of the characters has to even TALK to a heterosexual, panic and chaos ensue.





But if the film is to have any queer sensibility, it is an actressexual's dream. Tori Spelling surprisingly knocks out of the park her role as Catherine, the neurotic aspiring actress who is hopelessly in love with her gay best friend -- never on screen will there be a more hilarious monologue about cheese fries. It is a fun, fearless performance, as if an agent told her to find a role that was the furthest thing away from either Donna Martin or her various TV-movie roles.


In the role of Rich's ditsy, free-spirit girlfriend, Lorri Bagley achieves the funniest scene in the movie. Having just had reunion sex with Rich and with her breasts in full display, she announces her dream of being a sex therapist while attempting to repair a rift between Mark and Gabriel. With her exotic looks and coquettish voice to boot, Bagley does the most with a small part.





Finally, one would be remiss to omit the performance of Miss Coco Peru -- it's one of the meatiest parts for a drag queen this side of To Wong Foo. Coco Peru is the true diva of the movie, and also the catalyst as she is the one who plants the seed of doubt in Gabriel's mind about Mark, and when she is proven to be the only villain of the film, it's another cliche turned on its ear.



Nearly ten years later, I still remember how I felt viewing this movie: the sadness I felt when the bitchy friend I watched it with announced, "You'll never have pecs like that" as Gabriel doffs his shirt at the nightclub; my heart melting when Mark and Gabriel clandestinely hold hands while sitting at a 24-hour diner; the wonder I had, wondering what life would be like when *I* would be in my twenties and gay. I have yet to date a go-go boy, but I did move to New York City and began my own fake career as an aspiring entertainer. The other ways the film mirrors my life (my first roommate was his own version of Rich, I never did get pecs like Christian Campbell, and one of the only people I currently know in NYC is an older man who likes piano bars) is still surprising.

While Trick may not be a film with great social or political impact, it was my first "gay movie", and the first work of art I viewed as an adolescent that let me know that it was okay to be gay. And in a world where married men solicit sex in airport bathrooms, I think that's enough.

Viral Vendredi

WILL & GRACE BLOOPERS

LIVE TV DEBUT

"RESPECT"
PANEL DISCUSSION OF TEEN ISSUES
TONIGHT'S TOPIC: THE OVERLY INDEPENDENT TEENAGER

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH LIVE ON CHANNEL 34 IN MAHATTAN
OR ONLINE AT WWW.MNN.ORG
TUESDAY 8 PM EST

Doubt is a Seed

I told them I was leaving Stout
I was going to live in my room
Showed up with a legal contract
I was going to pay rent

They looked at me
With that look of scorn and disappointment
That I have become so used to

I got accepted to a school in New York
I told them I was going
It was my only way out

Summer 2007
Was even worse than '06
I felt like a prisoner
21 years old in a first-ring suburb
Skyline in the backyard

Alas I had no driver's license
Yes I failed the damn test four times
But I should have done that at 16
Not 20

They will never understand my anger
They will never know what it did to me
Demeaned and dehumanized
I am just oversensitive and whiny
And such an asshole
I get it

I will get over it someday
That when I was 16 and on Paxil
My mother had to win the game of Scratch My Back
It is what it is

A week before I left
My father asked me
"Are you even excited to go?"
I told him no
But that I had to

Doubt is a seed
When it gets planted
It spurts like an angry plant

My first months in New York City
I was all alone
In the most literal sense

No one to wake me up
And I was missing school
Couldn't find a job
I was trying but not hard enough

They said I was sad and pathetic
That I was squandering a very good thing
That I better get my shit together
Because you cant do anything without a degree these days

I regrouped and re-evaluated
Decided that I wanted it
Talked to an advisor
Faced the music
Fixed the situation

Enter Loretta
"You should move to Uptown Minneapolis"
"You are just playing house"
"Are you doing this for the right reasons"

And the seeds
Continue to be planted

I wish I could go for one week
Knowing what it is I want
Just seven days
Of knowing for certain

Whatever is done
Must be done for me
And no one else

I told her to stop paying the rent
Even though I have no money
I have to find a way to do it

Because it's not working

Shameless Plug and other News

I had a meeting on Friday that puts my academic career at, I would say, 80% saved ... But I have to do a lot of kissing up and kowtowing, including an e-mail to my music professor that I think I will write tomorrow, with or without the aid of vodka.

Loretta is here. She was upset with me because I slept until 4 while she cleaned, but then we saw a play at the school after an excursion to the laundromat. It will be okay.

My job interview on Friday was postponed to Monday, because I am a dumb-ass and always try to catch the 4 at Franklin instead of staying on the 2 to Atlantic, and it is a recipe for disaster.

Oh, and on Tuesday, I'M ON TV!!! If you are in Manhattan, you can see me on Channel 34 at 9 PM EST, but if you are not in manhattan you can go to mnn.org and click on Channel 34 to watch it on Windows Media Player. We will be discussing teen issues and if teenagers are overly independent or overly co-dependent, and I will be going on and on about how much of a screw-up job my parents did while my mother is standing 20 feet away. Hmm ...

God Has Stopped Whispering

"The world is very loud, and God whispers." -Wynonna Judd when appearing on Oprah
"That's a good quote" - Whitey, who was in the room at the same time while I was pretending I couldn't find the remote

"ask god
listen" - Rosie O'Donnell on her ask ro section, answering a difficult question from a fan

Today I am to meet with an academic advisor, one that had I met on the first day of classes, perhaps things would have been a lot different. I am currently on the fence as to whether or not I will save my academic career -- or if even can be saved. I have been flip-flopping by the hour.

My irritable bowel syndrome came back at the same time, and if you believe in mind-body connection, you would understand that this is not a coincidence. Sparing the grisly details, this involves a lot of toilet-flushing. A LOT. And at 4:35 this morning, my toilet decided that it could not take anymore, and decided to overflow and flood.

I quickly sprang to action, and despite the fact that I had no towels because I am a lazy-ass and haven't laundered them in too long, I used a plethora of paper towels and I cleaned up the mess. This is a sign! I told myself. This is God telling me that sometimes our lives give us messes, but if we have the strength we CAN clean them up! Never has anyone been so gleeful to clean a bathroom, and for half an hour I rehearsed telling this story to some non-believers some day, like I could be my very own Joel Osteen.

Then I went back to the toilet, thinking the problem had been "fixed", when it flooded again. My online research told me I need a plunger. I don't have a plunger. I don't have the funds to call a 24-hour plumber. Then a centipede as big as a Buick crawled across the wall, and I killed it with long-range roach spray like a shootist in an action film, but by God did that fucker die a slow death. I almost feel bad.

I really wrote this just to kill time, because I don't want to call my landlady at 5:40 in the morning and feel I should wait until at least six. But now I feel like my whole epiphany was wasted, because even though I cleaned up the mess the first time, I didn't have it in me to clean it up the inevitable second time. What if that was the message? Why am I basing my major life decisions by using my toilet as a metaphor? What happens when I have to poop again? Why me?

All of My Bullshit Excuses

1. I'm too depressed. Well, I'm not depressed anymore, but clinically you could argue I was during that first month.

2. I'm not suicidal anymore either, but you could argue I was that first month too, and that takes a lot out of a person.

3. I think I have narcolepsy. No, really.

4. My IBS totally came back. Dr. Don would say it's not a coincidence.

5. In November of 2005, I entertained the idea of not returning to Stout after the third semester. When I chose to stay to finish sophomore year, it was because I wasn't ready to leave the people, and while I don't regret that decision, those months from January to May were also some of the darkest I ever had. What I am trying to say is that I really "checked out" about a year ago, in more ways than one.

6. In my mind, it was my only way out of Dodge.

7. I really didn't think it was gonna be that hard. I mean, I get it, school is hard. But I didn't know how lonely I would feel. I didn't know how the homey feel of UW-Stout, with its on-campus housing and on-site athletics and plethora of local businesses, would so greatly differ from City University of New York Brooklyn College, a commuter campus where people go to class for two hours, go back home, and ... that's it. No smiles and no hellos. I didn't know that I would not make any friends. I didn't know that I would get shushed when I would ask for directions. I didn't know that anything registration-related had more red tape than FEMA. I didn't know that by the time I knew who would hold my hand, it would be too late. I didn't know that it was not a coincidence that from eighth grade to my fifth semester in college, the only time interval in which I was actually successful and GOT MY ASS OUT OF BED AND WENT TO CLASS AND GOT A'S was when I was living with a strange boy from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin who would shake my bunk in the morning and turn on CMT to get me going by 9:00. He had a birthday yesterday, by the way. Happy birthday, Whitey.

8. If I could do those first two months over again, I totally would. But I can't, and I can no longer do the "If I close my eyes it will all go away" routine so greatly used by my mother, who learned it from her mother, who I have no doubt learned it from hers. So this is the part when I face the music, when I talk to the registrars, tell them to either let me withdraw now or go halfsies for the rest of the semester, because it was all an illusion. And the illusion that I, who never worked hard in school a day in my life, could be a prestigious full-time student, that the illusion that I could actually amount to anything, the illusion that I could be worth all of the money and the hype, the illusion that I could actually function as an adult, has been thoroughly debunked.

Leave a comment

Viral Vendredi: RIP The Fabulous Moolah

In memory of The Fabulous Moolah, who died at the age of 84. The following is a match she had on her 80th birthday, as promised to her by Vince McMahon -- and while the ending may seem in poor taste, it's a testament that at her age she loved taking "bumps" and being involved in high-profile angles.