Stanley Kurtz Is Dead

I'll miss Stanley. Oh, he wasn't a close friend, or anything like that, but I'll miss him, nevertheless, much as God misses any of His Creation. I mean, I don't have to know his intimate life (although I do) to appreciate the fact that Stanley, well, Stanley was quite a piece of work, and a hard worker, too.

I've got to keep better track of things. I didn't see it coming, and I should have, because that's my job. I suppose I could have prevented his death, it was untimely. According to my charts, Stanley was supposed to clock in another twenty-two years, four months, and eighteen days. I did not anticipate that flying lunch box. Normally, air resistance would have slowed it down so that it would have dented Stanley's head, but it wouldn't have been fatal. Alas, it contained one too many cans of sardines, and it fell, unimpeded down those eighty-seven stories.

No, I don't take the blame for Stanley's passing. I don't engineer events. I just let them happen. I'm not a personal God, because that would make me a personal servant. I don't make coffee for anyone else. And Stanley was walking when the lunch box impacted his cranium. He was one of my best thinkers: clear sighted, energetic, calling out Obama and the homosexual agenda, defending my values. I adored what he did, although I thought he was a bit stuffy and overly combative.

Stanley was right about one thing. Homosexuals getting married is really going to upset the applecart. It's so sad that he stepped in front of that bus trying to avoid that gay skateboarder bearing down on him. I mean, I knew that the skateboarder was packing fudge, but Stanley only knew that theoretically. Stanley was plastered up against the windshield like a giant locust from Utah. His colleagues at the Hudson Institute (of which Dr. Kurtz was an associate fellow) will miss him terribly. The skateboarder was unhurt, but ticketed for feckless behavior.

If I had hands, I would wring them. I once had hands, and I did wring them, and it caused lots of problems. To put it simply, the unexpected expansion of the universe shortly after The Big Bang was caused by a lot of my hand wringing. Or maybe it was the blink of an eye. I forget. Fifteen billion years doesn't seem like a lot of time, but there is so much to remember, and frankly my memory is not that good. I would wring my hands over the demise of Stanley Kurtz. He was that good.

Yes, he was walking his dog, Swoosie (that was his little joke for being saddled with his last name: he really didn't like it that much), when the dachshund leaped after a squirrel, and Stanley slipped on a banana peel. How life mimics art! His left leg came up over his chest and wrenched his buttocks into an airborne state. The cheery whistle on his lips morphed into a rictus grin of prescient doom. Clearly, Stanley knew that his number was up. Felled by a banana peel. This is an end of Biblical proportions. I didn't plan it this way at all. Stanley crumpled on the street, only to be run over by a charging garbage truck. Because I'm God, I don't believe in luck. Fate is another, different thing, though.

Like Stanley, I don't particularly like homosexuals mocking me. They pretend that when they marry each other, it's all going to settle the matter. I sent them Fred Phelps. I sent them Pat Robertson. I sent them Stanley Kurtz. I even sent them Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith, Jr. I stripped them of their dignity. I had thugs beat and murder them. I turned my back on them, even the ones I loved (Caravaggio's angels come to mind). And what do they do? They want to get married. Can you imagine that? They want to get married!

Stanley would have none of it. He was a great statistician, which is to say, he was no statistician at all. He knew how to make numbers lie so that hateful pols and smarmy media commentators could make blood libel (truly, those Americans really do like to kill homosexuals) about part of my imperfect creation, something that I was a little disturbed about, too. Stanley knew, and I fully agree, because I am God, that homosexuals threaten marriage. I'm not sure why they threaten marriage, that was up to Stanley to figure out. So he lied about it.

My creation started out better than this, and the six thousand years or so (yeah, I know I cooked the fossil record, too) turned out pretty well. The earth had a certain bloody order (if not the universe). But it's gotten out of whack. The Madonna isn't a virgin anymore. Jesus is a Mexican baseball player. And Modern Family is the most popular television show in America. I gave them Sarah Palin, but they are watching Glee. And now, Stanley is gone. I weep, but enough of that. You don't want to see me weep. It messes up the atmosphere.

So Stanley died at his desk. He was reading M.V. Lee Badgett's book, When Gay People Get Married. His hippocampus suffered a proto-molecular quantum wave collapse. He never recovered. Dead as a door nail. Stanley Kurtz is dead.

Spiderman

O Spiderman of sticky web
How did you end up in my bed?
I dreamed of this, you know, quite wet
Revealing that you're not quite het.
No Mary Jane could turn your head:
instead a fag in spandex skin,
A circumstance I revel in,
A situation, queer, indeed.

I can't believe your hairless chest
is getting my attention best.
I dreamed of this, a spider's nest
of comfy love togetherness.
A tighty white across my pecs,
You, Spiderman, made quite a mess!

It's Not Easy Being Gay

I remember at the beginning of this year, that I promised all of my readers that I would be updating this blog regularly. I guess it depends on how you define "regularly."

Some updates: My bedroom is still a complete mess. I need to set a deadline, then get to it. It's a scary prospect for me. I keep hearing about elderly hoarders, and I wonder am I contemplating my next forty years every time I look at that pigsty (and that's really being unfair to pigs) of a bedroom. What gives here? Am I mentally unbalanced. I also notice clutter creeping back into the office, and it's giving me the heebie jeebies. I'm entering some warped zombie-like universe. Everywhere I look I see awful premonitions of my future.

Michael and I made it to the Silver Spring Farmers Market early Saturday morning (okay, 9 a.m.) to pick up our box of CSA produce. I also purchased a baguette and a container of cardamom gelato. Later on, I proceeded to prepare a spinach potato dish that Spiral Path Farms had conveniently included in their newsletter. Spinach Colcannon is a dish worthy of your consideration, especially if you fix it like I do.

We'd already eaten half the dish when it occurred to us to take a picture

Tim and I went to Sushi Damo on Saturday afternoon, just after the lunch crowd. There's nothing quite like post-coital seafood. And that sentence is wrong on so many different levels. Not a hint of Tuna was to be found.... But the rolls were wonderful: the Eel Special Roll, and the Mango Sensation. I think I can speak for Tim (and Me!) and heartily recommend both creations. I have no idea how "authentic" these rolls are, but sinking back into the taste and delight of the moment makes that judgment wholly irrelevant, for at least this particular lunch time.

Sunday, Ron and I attended a (very) (gay) pool party in the neighborhood. The looksist and ageist demons were dancing in my head while I was attending this spectacle. Bawdy ballads, anyone? Care to hear about the latest naked sightings of young male celebrities? Are you interested in knowing the real inside dope between Sal Mineo and Tony Perkins? I thought so. The aforementioned Spinach Colcannon was devoured in its entirety. One-half pound of melted cheese just about guarantees a cleaned out dish at a potluck of this caliber, although I continue to be dumbfounded and amazed at the results and my reaction to those results. Sometimes, I just want to turn in my card, and slink back into the slimy shadows from which I emerged after Stonewall.

Groundhog Day

If that little, fierce, furry creature had popped its head out of its hole yesterday, we'd have six more weeks of winter. Today, however, the sky is overcast, and depending on when that awful rodent makes its appearance, we may just have six more weeks of winter.

I'm pretty sure that Ms. Groundhog doesn't affect the weather at all, and what happens if it doesn't see its shadow? Is the temperature suddenly going to rise, and we're going to have the warmest February on record? It would also ruin my Caribbean trip, if I were to fly to the sunny South, only to have it be all comfy up North.

No, I don't like winter, just like the next guy, but when I go on my winter vacation, it better be cold back home. And that little furry beast better show up, and it better see its shadow, too. I wonder if ground hogs taste good?

The Elf Man Cometh

T'is the woolly season of fashion gone awry, and mysterious men ending up in the living room under bad lighting conditions. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la! la! la! So much for gay apparel.

Santa's Little Lost Elf....

Eliot on CNN

Eliot Spitzer was all over CNN last night, rather his story was. The reporters were relishing it. Yes, Anderson Cooper, you were smirking a lot on camera last night.

Oh how the fall of the mighty is grist for the media. CNN at one point trotted out vignettes of Senator Larry Craig, President Bill Clinton, Governor Jim McGreevy, and Senator Gary Hart at their most embarrassing and memorable moments. Without calling Governor Spitzer a hypocrite, all of the bobble heads were calling Governer Spitzer a hypocrite. I understand that the Republican Senate leader in Albany is already crafting a scarlet letter for the governor.

The Guv was apparently caught up in a sting that included a wiretap on a high-priced business woman's phone. When Spitzer was a Federal Prosecutor he went after this kind of "corruption." What was this guy thinking? Duh! He didn't appear to be the target of the operation, but he's certainly getting the flack.

My take is that if the Governor can afford the (alleged) $4000/hour services, and the money came out of his pocket rather than the pocket of New York state taxpayers, hey, have at it! The private sexual shenanigans of politicians shouldn't be the public's business (unless, of course the politician is a hypocrite). And since when was sex worth $4000? Is this guy out of his mind? What's the qualitative difference between a $400 "date" (I wouldn't pay that much, either), and a $4000 date? There's only so much you can do in an hour. Inquiring minds want to know.

Review Time

Lots of stuff to review here: an (old) HBO series, a couple of movies, and a restaurant! I'll take them one at a time.

Okay, I've only seen the first two episodes of Big Love, but I'm already hooked. The characters are, perhaps, a wee bit overdrawn, but that makes for a good soap opera. I'm amazed at the research that went into this series. It uses the authentic language and customs of the LDS Church, and of the LDS Fundamentalists. I'll let you know what I think when I have a few more episodes under my belt.

Next up is the movie, The Namesake. This movie took me back to my boyhood when my parents befriended many an Indian college student at the University of Idaho. The film is beautifully done. The three big performances are Tabu as Ashima, the mother; Irrfan Khan as Ashoke, the father; and Kal Penn as Gogol, the son. Their story is about the immigrant experience, the American Dream, and a search for authenticity in New Jersey. Mira Nair directed this film. This is a wonderful drama. You just have to love those Bengalis!

The other recent movie we've seen (Netflix has revolutionized our life in the bedroom) is The Illusionist. I groaned when Ron said this film was on our list. I had seen a preview, and thought, "No way." I was wrong. I was completely taken in by the performances of Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel. If you like mystery, madness, and majesty, this may be your cup of tea.

Finally, on to restaurants. The boys and I went out to Old Europe in Georgetown last night to celebrate my birthday. The food was excellent, but the service was very slow. Let me tell you, a bratwurst in your belly takes care of a lot of things. The beer is chilled, so don't expect the continental tradition of simply cold beer. I'll go back, but not for my next birthday.

The First Afghan War

I'm listening to the radio, hearing news of unrest in Pakistan caused by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It's an eerie counterpoint to the film, Charlie Wilson's War. The news also reported a new Bin Laden tape. The airwaves are full of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Ron and I went to see Charlie Wilson's War today. It's déjà vu all over again. The film is a fascinating tale of the life of the rich, the life of the hopeless, and the life of our elected officials. Many scenes in the movie are priceless, including the opening footage showing a naked Congressman in a hottub full of Las Vegas showgirls, and the grilling of the same Congressman by the President of Pakistan and two senior Pakistani officials.

Tom Hanks plays Congressman "Good Time" Charlie Wilson. Julia Roberts plays Texas socialite Joanne Herring. (Check out her web site!) Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays CIA operative Gust Avrakotos. The acting is believable, and the movie, for all of its serious themes, is more a comedy than a historical recounting. It ends up, though, a sobering reminder of how a determined small group of people can (and do) change history, people who are completely unbeholden to the rest of us.

Unintended consequences?

An Analysis of All About Eve

Okay, I admit that I'm not much of a gay guy. Until last night, I had never seen All About Eve. One can enjoy this classic in several delicious ways. In a feminist reading, it's a story of two strong-willed women who are put in their place by an implacable patriarchy. Margo Channing (Bette Davis) and Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) will always be at each other's throats. Men set up women to undermine each other. Men want the newer, faster, sleeker models. An aging (badly) Margo knows this, and Eve uses it as her trump card, ultimately to be trumped herself by Addison DeWitt's (George Sanders) own privileged duplicity.

An interesting character is Karen Richards (Celeste Holm). She plays the dutiful wife who is supportive of the other women. She believes in good manners. She's portrayed in the film as being either naive or duplicitous when she plays her "joke" on Margo. At the end, she's dumped by her husband for Eve, the newer model - although it's unclear how Karen's relationship with her husband is finally resolved. In any feminist analysis, though, men ultimately are the actors, and women their objects to be moved about, paraded, discarded, or, in Margo's case, married off and removed from the action.

If Karl Marx viewed this film, he might see it in a different way. I think the telling scene is where Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), the playwright, challenges Margo with the line, "I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's speaking and HER thoughts she's expressing?" Margo replies, "Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!".

This is a case of the means of production trying to control labor, and labor revolts. It's Margo's finest moment in the film - a moment when she is truly herself. In some sense, it's the film's climax. Margo clearly understands the power relationship here, even if Lloyd doesn't.

Perhaps the character who sees it all is Birdie (Thelma Ritter), Margo's maid. She understands from the beginning that Eve is nothing but trouble. Margo ignores her advice because of the chasm of class. Birdie knows all about labor, because she is labor. If this film were in color, her uniform would be pink.

Of course, if you're a gay man, you'll enjoy this film for other reasons. Bette Davis is divine. This is camp at its best. Marilyn Monroe in her Claudia Caswell character exudes sexiness, blondness, and the means to control the patriarchy. One glance, one sultry, "All I want is a drink," and men are falling all over her. Margo and Eve should take a lesson. And that dumb blond is dumb like a sly fox.

So fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!

The Lesbians Probably Don't Like Notes on a Scandal

It's never said that Barbara Covett is a lesbian. In fact, Barbara would probably recoil at the thought. She is an evil character, and she's a baaaaad black widow. Annabell, watch out.

Judi Dench as Barbara Covett and Cate Blanchett as Sheba Hart suck you into this drama, until you are over your head. You sit and watch bad moral judgment come to a very bad end. The surface is so different from the rotten heart, and you see it all peeled back, layer by layer. But what a gem to watch!

The scandal at the heart of the tale is Sheba's affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil (Andrew Simpson as Steven Connolly) of hers. Connolly seduces her, and she falls in love with him. Barbara discovers the affair, and it unravels from there.

The film is full of marvelous actors, including Dench's and Blanchett's performances. Simpson also gives a very strong performance that captures exactly a teenager who thinks with his dick rather than his brain. He's no child victim.

Sheba's husband, Richard, played by Bill Nighy expressively demonstrates the pain of the cuckolded husband. You can feel his anger, hurt, and bafflement all rolled up into a shouting match with his wife.

This isn't a quiet English drama; it's a gritty, stunning moment of rotten loss served up by an incredible cast. See it, then catch your breath.

Infamous and Capote

I have all the <meta> information I need about In Cold Blood. Toby Jones in Infamous and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote bring to the screen a compelling story of Truman Capote. While neither movie is slapstick, both have a sense of humor and a sharp edge on the Capote character. He isn't the kind of person that you would confide anything to that you wouldn't want printed in the New Yorker or the National Enquirer.

Both movies provide compelling narratives to the writing of In Cold Blood, and each has its own perspective. It's a lot like having two storytellers recounting the same history. Infamous is more about Capote, and Capote is more about In Cold Blood.

I think Capote is the better picture, but Infamous is a better portrait of an artist who ultimately loses his way, sells his soul, and is enormously successful along the way. He never published another important novel, but he certainly became America's Greatest Living Homosexual, which is not a bad thing.

Anna Nicole Smith

You started out Vicky, and I'm sorry that it ended so badly. This is a tale of guts, sex, love, tragedy, bad manners, and bad taste. You were a plucky girl who did what you had to do to raise a kid. You're the girl, who I think could give stripping a good name. You did what you had to do.

She married a man three times her age. Who was the fool? Did she do it for the money? Is it anyone's business but she and her man? Now everyone, except the baby are dead. What's the tragedy? The loss of a mate, the loss of a child, her dying years before her time? I think the greatest tragedy is that she was treated like dirt. Our media, our age gave her the very worst. I can still hear the tongue-clucking.

I never much knew about her until she died. I see her pictures and marvel at her voluptuous beauty. She had it in spades, but all the news stories can report is that she was born on the wrong side of the tracks in a small Texas town, that she married at 16 and had a baby at 17, that she started out as a stripper. The media don't report her grit. They don't report her determination. They don't report how she always came back, sometimes reinventing herself, but never ever giving up.

Anna Nicole, your story is all-American in so many ways. I'm touched and drawn to it, and saddened by the shabby, snarky ending so many are trying to give it. I'm counting on you to make one last, very dramatic comeback.

Dream on

Dream Girls is one of those movies I've been wanting to see since 1966. I just didn't know it. My brother gave me the Supremes album The Supremes A' Go Go. Let's just say that it rocked Potlatch, Idaho.

So Dream Girls isn't about the Supremes, but it's really about the Supremes. The music in the movie is good, and Jennifer Hudson has the voice. This is a fun film to watch in an afternoon matinee at the Majestic. There will come a time in the movie when sistahs the audience will be 'spressin' themselves. You might be too. And for good reason.

If you grew up with the Supremes or Motown, you really should see this movie.

Two More Movies of Note for 2006

Netflix is a great invention. I see a lot more movies than I used to. Ron and I saw a couple of movies last week that I wanted to mention here.

Little Miss Sunshine is a great roadtrip from hell movie. It also has a high ick factor when it comes to tiny beauty princesses and foul-mouthed grandpas. As the trailer says, it puts the fun back into dysfunctional family. Let's just say the movie captures new-age affirmations, teenage angst, and old-age libertarianism. Grandpa is Sophia on steroids. Be very afraid. If you like Miss America pageants, you'll love the last twenty minutes of this movie, guaranteed.

A Scanner Darkly is a more sobering, animated tale. Philip K. Dick's short story comes to life in Anaheim seven years in the future. I've never read the short story, but the film is tight, ambiguous, addled, dystopic, in short a good flick on a Saturday night. The strangeness of the animation fits the strangeness of the story. Keanu Reeves isn't quite so wooden. The film has a high creepiness factor, and was probably filmed at the NSA, at least the technology would lead a drug-addled paranoid junky to think that.

I'm Delinquent in Reporting my Gay Life Style

Since the tooth incident, my gay life has not slowed down. I took some follow up photos. Nothing was quite as spectacular as the initial shot of the bloody, seething, pulpy, painful mass. I got that out of my system. The week after the extraction, I kept feeling something hard and sharp in the tooth socket. The day of my dental checkup, I was flossing, and a good-sized chunk of tooth fell into the sink. Finally, the whole tooth was out! The dentist (cute Dr. Perkins) said everyting looked okay, and an implant is probably in my future.

So what else do gay men do between teeth extractions? That's an important question (I often ask myself). The DC Lambda Squares went tubing down Antietam Creek last Saturday. The creek has a very rocky bottom, so traveling down on tubes is quite delightful if you are a versatile gay man. I think the straight people had a good time, too. Tom, who manned the rafting company's canoe, got plenty of attention from the guys; only one of us actually drooled, though. I'm fairly certain he knew his audience, and he was very good-natured about it.

Pastoral Scene on Antietam Creek,
Copyright 2006, Brian Jarvis, All Rights Reserved

And I survived the heat. It has been an incredible week, even for DC summers. I didn't see anyone melt or spontaneously combust on the sidewalks of Washington, but I would not have been surprised had it happened. The heat caused more people to ride the Metro (they probably didn't want to get caught in traffic jams on I-495). A couple of days the Metro cars were full at 6:30 in the morning. The tourists seemed to take it in good stride, and the Legg-Mason Tennis Tournament went on as scheduled. I'm used to hot weather, but this was exceptional.

The power in my office building failed Thursday morning around 11. We're on emergency backup, but I powered down immediately. Then the network went down. The phones (VOIP) went down. The lights were out. The air conditioning was off. So our work group went out to lunch. Eating seems to soothe most emergencies. In the meantime, our VP sent all employees home. I went and got a haircut, instead.

Actually, I had my hair styled. Bill, you bitch, you left me without telling me that you were going to a different salon. So I have to do the walk-in routine. There's a lot of fear in my gut, because I don't know who is going to style my hair, and Bill, I really loved you, I really did, and you left without a word.

So Donnell has entered my life. Donnell was a headliner entertainer at Ziegfeld's before evil developers bulldozed Washington's gay business district. He gave me all the dirt about the developers, politicians, management, and the girls. Donnell should have his own commentary on NPR, he's that good. And he's such a sweetheart, too, Bill.

I admit it, I'm a celebrity groupie. Donnell a.k.a. Ella Fitzgerald, when she's not entertaining the troops, wields a mean pair of scissors as a jolly, saucy, sometimes sharp-tongued gay hair stylist at one of Dupont's premiere salons. You see, having a gay life style, like I do, demands that I have a gay hair stylist like Donnell. And now I have earned some extra gay glitterati points, because of the fabulousness of Donnell's alter-ego. I am in gay heaven. And Donnell, you are such a sweetheart: not at all like Bill who spurned me for those chappies up on Capitol Hill, probably found himself a closet lobbyist or a Supreme Court justice. You never know about Bill.

Finally, this is the week of Lance Bass, and of course, I went out and bought People Magazine. Lance, your social commentary really sucks, but I love your goofy grin, anyway, and now you can enjoy the party without feeling like an uninvited guest. If I were forty years younger, you'd give me hope, being the crazy role model that you are, as I replayed all of my old N'Sync records thinking how much I love you.

I love being gay, because I love the intellectual challenge. Lance told me that's why he loves being gay, too.