There is nothing better than cold pizza for breakfast on a Monday.
Archive Page 40
05
Jun
06
Cold Pizza
Douglas Adams was nothing if not a visionary. Of course, he was much more than that, but the thing about him that impresses me most is his concept of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I can’t say he predicted the Internet — any more than Jules Verne predicted space travel — but I think we can certainly say that he saw the potential of the Web technology we are now settling into.
The fictional Guide was written by intergalactic traveling researchers — hitchhikers — who sent their entries back to editors at the publishing houses of Ursa Minor who red-penned them (One of the major jokes in the Hitchhiker’s books is that the entry for Earth was boiled down to the diminutive and somewhat insulting “Mostly harmless”), compiled them and sent them back through the sub-ether to all the copies of the electronic book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Simple collaborative publishing. The convergence of laptops and WiFi made the Web into the embodiment of Adams’ vision.
This was not lost on Adams. For a while there was a site called H2G2. I think he started it, in fact. “Researchers” made entries about whatever they liked, or proposed additions to existing entries. A team of editors would review the work and publish the entries. A whole community of nerds came together over the project, including myself. I had readt the Hitchhiker’s books in elementary school, and have always felt them to be among the major influences of my life — how I talk, how I write, how I think. Adams himself made appearances on the site. I remember in particular his entry on tea, which taught me the invaluable lesson that it is not enough to merely pour hot water on a tea bag. Rather, he opined, the tea must be met with boiling water — not water that had just been boiling, but water that was at that moment boiling. In other words, one must briefly boil the tea leaves.
I wrote an entry on the OED, which to my delight was published. And then the BBC bought and absorbed the site. And after I got into an argument with someone over the shape of Michigan (He adamantly denied that it was the shape of a mitten and a rabbit. Idiot.), I realized I had little to no interest in maintaining a presence in an online community. I wasn’t ready to live online yet. A late adopter, me. So I gave it up. Someone else would have to write about Dolly Parton, I reasoned, and Michigan (uhm, check out the shapes) and Madonna.
And, as if by magic, someone else did.
What has been catching my attention lately is the phenomenon of wiki, from the Hawaiian word meaning “quick.” The collaborative writing of Wikipedia — no official editors; anyone can log in, create a presence in the wiki community and edit — is a step beyond the Guide. But rather than chaos, what seems to happen is that the people with good reputations are trusted, and their work sticks, and Wikipedia seems to take on some coherence.
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of wiki. Meta-wiki. Yay! Fun with prefixes.
04
Jun
06
Oxford English Dictionary
I don’t think any part of me is English. I know I’m 50% of Polish extraction. The other half is mainly German, with a smattering of French (the Alsace-Lorraine region, my grandma says), Swiss and Native American. Not nearly enough of the latter to win me a scholarship, of course. And none of this is a source of pride or an attempt at establishing any sort of credibility; it is merely fact.
Nevertheless, my non-Englishness has not prevented me from feeling a kinship with England. It surfaced first most notably when I was a kid with my very strong reaction to Mary Poppins. I cried like a whipped child every time the wind changed and she left the Banks children. (This also led to an unassailable love for Julie Andrews.) When I got older, I bought the series of books by P.L. Travers, which I now, of course, prefer to the movie. (I think the “P.L.” stands for “persnickety lesbian,” which is why we love her.)
Now I collect the hard-cover, cloth-bound, first edition, British-published Bloomsbury editions of the Harry Potter series. The British spellings and slang just seem more true than what we see in the American editions. The British cover illustrations are far superior. Even the Bloomsbury typeface of the text is better.
When I was in London in the summer of 1997 for overseas study, I felt very comfortable. It was all a big romance for me — until I was dressed down by my writing professor once for something I wrote about the charming chimney sweeps dancing with Mary Poppins across the rooftops of London. Chim-chim-cheree and tally-ho!
Those men were overworked slaves of the aristocracy, he said — they often died of various kinds of cancer from the soot they inhaled throughout their lives — any child born to a chimney sweep inherited a short, dismal life of extreme hardship and abject poverty — shame on you, Eric, for romanticizing such a detestible way of life. You are overprivileged. You are petty. You are American.
Touché, Professor Penn.
However, those sweeps sure could dance!
So, I think I’m an Anglophile.
I am aware that this is a completely superficial appreciation for England. It is, after all, filtered through the lens of American history, literature, public television and BBC America. I’m comfortable with that.
But maybe I’m just biased.
Part of that love is manifested in an intense love of the English language — which, it is rumored, some people still speak in the U.K. This love knows no bounds but my general laziness for study. However, I did write a senior project in college on the history of punctuation. And I took graduate-level courses as an undergrad on the history of English. It was taught by an Oxford English Dictionary researcher. (I say this, again, not out of pride, and not to establish myself as any sort of expert — Lord knows, I am not — but just to show my love.)
English is huge. More than 400,000 words, and growing. Highly adaptable. Many of those words are absorbed (I will not say stolen) from other languages. As a result, it is monstrously confusing to second-language learners. (Even I, when typing “monstrously,” had to ask myself: Is there an E?)
I can’t wait until 2010, when the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is scheduled to be released. Far more than a simple, boring compendium of definitions, the OED is a treasure chest of history. Every word is traced back to its earliest appearance, from Old English to modern Standard English.
I love the OED. I covet it. All 20-plus volumes of it. I want to pore over it with a magnifying glass. I want to sleep with each volume in turn, wrapping myself around its sharp, hard-bound edges.
Years ago, I wrote an article for the Hitchhker’s Guide to the Galaxy Web site, about the OED. I was inspired by a book I had just read called The Professor and the Mad Man, by Simon Winchester, about a criminally insane OED researcher and his relationship with the dictionary’s original editor.
I was amazed and gratified when the entry was edited (hence the British spellings) and published.
When I first learned that Doug Savant and Marcia Cross would both be among the cast of Desperate Housewives, I assumed the show would be another trashy incarnation of Melrose Place. But I listened to my obsessed friends who insisted that it was special; it was different; it was like nothing else; it was Good. So we rented Season One and got ourselves hooked. We waited with Six Feet Under, too, and we ended up adoring that show, so I figured maybe the same thing would happen with D.H.
OK, so it’s a good show. We love Lynette. We hate Susan. Bla bla bla.
Then, oddly, at the end of Season One, the reason for the show’s existence was eliminated: The mystery of Mary Alice’s death was revealed. Yes, certain other intrigues were introduced — something to keep the show in a second season, like the new neighbors with the creepy guy in the basement, and the aftermath of Mrs. Huber’s murder — but the main engine of the show was shut down.
I began to worry again.
Sure enough, to keep things moving, the second season has been filled with nothing but a series of contrivances, each more far-fetched than the one before. And now that we’ve reached the end of Season Two, we find ourselves with Bree escaping from the loony bin, Susan living in a trailer, and Zack shutting off granddad’s life support to force-inherit his fortune and a rather large house, and abandoning his dad in prison. Tom has a long-lost daughter, whose crazy mother is moving into the neighborhood. Gabrielle’s maid is having her baby. Mike gets run down by Susan’s dentist! And Andrew is wandering the back highways of … Illinois? (Where are they, anyway?) … after Bree drops him off at an abandonned gas station in nowheresville.
And, incidentally, who cares if Andrew is gay? His assholeness trumps any interest I might have in his love life — though I was enjoying the scenes of his boyfriend mowing the Solis’ lawn. Nor do I have much use for his totally non-credible hatred of his mother. What did she do to him, again? Uhh… hospital corners on his bed? Whiter-than-white underwear? Potpourri? Surely he’s not upset that she gave him a hard time about his sexuality. I mean, she didn’t kick him out — until he seduced her sex-addicted AA sponsor/boyfriend. After he falsely sued her for child abuse to become an emancipated minor and abscond with his trust fund to buy … a car? A car? No, Andrew isn’t even soap-opera interesting. He’s just petulant and boring.
One of the best characters of Season One, Mrs. Huber’s weird sister Felicia, is reduced in Season Two to the minor role of Zack’s grandfather’s nurse, playing some manipulative role in Zack’s future — and with a terrible new haircut!
When TiVo screwed up and failed to record the last half hour of the two-hour season finale, we were barely bothered. Most of the details I missed, I got on the ABC Web site. As it settles safely into Melrose Place Land, will anyone care about this show anymore?
31
May
06
Burn the Witch!
This just in from the Morning Herald in Sydney, Australia, where it is already tomorrow:
When a couple of streakers from the Convicts section tried to cross the field, the hosts were not amused. Says McCarthy: “Americans don’t really get streaking at sports events — it’s considered an English peculiarity, like bad plumbing,” and the incident brought a swift public address announcement from arena officials threatening to stop the match if there was a repetition.
I missed this incident, but I heard from many people afterward about the streakers at half-time during the final San Francisco Fog vs. Sydney Convicts match on Sunday, May 29. These may have been the same guys who ran naked somersaults across the stage during the kangaroo court at the closing night party at Webster Hall later that night. If so, I’m sorry I missed half time.
I would like to state for the record that the source of the displeasure was not an entity affiliated with the hosts of the tournament, my rugby team. No, we know how to appreciate a well-placed naked man in rugby boots. The announcement came rather from a joyless official on the loudspeaker at Icahn Stadium, which adjoined the pitch where the match was being played, and which was hosting a high school or junior high track meet at the time. I guess the guy on the mic threatened to call the police, with all the humor of a 17th century Puritan preacher and all the authority of your meanest uncle.
Yes, with naked men and women dripping from billboards up and down Manhattan and bullets and explosions all day long on television, heaven forbid we should allow people to see a fun, non-sexual and completely harmless expression of nudity in real life. This shame of the human body in America is freakish.
29
May
06
Bingham Cup 2006
On Memorial Day weekend, my rugby team, the Gotham Knights, hosted the third biennial Bingham Cup, the largest international tournament of gay rugby teams in the world. (Previous hosts are the San Francisco Fog and the King’s Cross Steelers of London.)
Here’s our latest press release:
The Sydney Convicts Rugby Football Club took top honors on May 28 at the 2006 Bingham Cup hosted this year in New York City. Having traveled half-way around the world from Australia to compete, the Convicts’ victory against the San Francisco Fog in the finals closed out the international gay rugby tournament held in honor of United Flight 93 hero Mark Bingham.
Alice Hoagland, mother of United Flight 93 hero and gay rugby player Mark Bingham, presented the grand prize on Randall’s Island, the site of the tournament. More than 700 rugby players from teams around the world competed in 80 matches. Ms. Hoagland passed up screenings of United 93 at the Cannes Film Festival to attend the tournament. Instead, she presented the Cup named after her son to the winning team on Sunday. Players from teams all over the USA and from Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Holland, and Australia, flew in for the tournament.
In addition to the presentation of the Cup, Boston Ironsides won the second division competition with a 3-0 overtime victory against the Dallas Diablos to take home the Bingham Bowl. The Sydney Convicts also won the third division by defeating a Worldwide Barbarians team by 26-7 to take home the Bingham Plate. In the first ever Bingham Cup women’s rugby division, top honors went to the aptly named team from New York Rugby Club named “I Love Kuch,” who bested the Scottsdale Lady Blues and a composite team to take the newly designated prize.
The Bingham Cup is the biennial international rugby competition named after Mark Bingham a hero of United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Bingham played for gay & bisexual rugby team the San Francisco Fog RFC after leading UC Berkeley to national championships. The Bingham Cup was first held in San Francisco in 2002 and in London in 2004. The 2006 Bingham Cup was hosted by the Gotham Knights Rugby Football Club, a team Bingham was helping to found in 2001 before his untimely passing, and proceeds will benefit both college scholarships via the Mark Bingham Leadership Fund and the United 93 Memorial Fund.
For more information about the Bingham Cup, participating teams and match results go to www.binghamcup.com.
Associated Press coverage of the tournament was picked up across the country in mostly smaller daily papers. We’ve been covered in the gay press and internationally, notably in Australia, the UK and South Africa. We’ve also had some strange appearances, such as on Chinese and Indian television.
Notable appearances:
• Outsports.com
• New York 1 television news (Includes video clip. Please excuse the silly spelling error in the headline.)
• Reuters.com (Includes video clip.)
• Newsday
Other appearances:
Time Out New York
New York Channel 9
MSNBC
CNN SI
Sports Illustrated Live
WNBC
LOGO
YES Network
Boston Herald
at least one TV station in mainland China
at least one TV station in India
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Arizona Republic
Calgary Sun
Hamilton Spectator (Ontario)
The Independent (South Africa)
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, S.A.)
The Trentonian (New Jersey)
Charleston Gazette
San Diego Union Tribune
WKNG Channel 6, (Orlando, FL)
Times Leader (Wilkes Barre, PA)
Findlaw
Auburn Citizen (New York)
Guelph Mercury (Canada)
Standard Speaker (Pennsylvania)
Edge (Boston)
The State (South Carolina)
Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN)
Monterey County Herald (CA)
NEPA News (PA)
Kentucky.com
Kansas.com
Sydney Star Observer (Australia)
UK Gay News (London)
PM Entertainment (Long Island)
New York Blade
Southern Voice (Atlanta)
Houston Voice
Southern Voice (Florida)
Washington Blade
Gay Outdoors
365Gay.com
OutUK (London)
Gaysports
23
May
06
Religion in the Copy Center
I was in Staples at 34th and Broadway today, waiting for some copies to be made, and I overheard a conversation between a man in his early 20s and a woman in her late 40s about God and biblical literalism. It had been going on for some time by the time I got there.
He was standing at the paper cutter cutting 8.5 x 11 copies into eighths. Some kind of cards to hand out advertising an event of some sort. He wore a too-long moustache, an oily ponytail and rollerblades.
She stood next to him at the counter doing something with lamination. She had unbound salt and pepper hair down past her shoulders, she wore too much eye makeup, and loose, shabby clothing.
I couldn’t tell if they knew each other before this episode at Staples. At first I thought they were arguing. They were disagreeing slightly. That I could tell for sure. But it was cordial enough. Essentially, his point of view was ecumenical and secular and logical, but ultimately respectful and deferrential. He didn’t want ana rgument; he was just curious. Her point of view was very rigid and literal and of strong conviction. He was being heroically fair to her with statements like, “I really appreciate your point of view. I’m just saying …”and “I’m not a scholar, so I can’t be absolutely certain, but …”
At one point he explained that he always had a problem with the Book of Leviticus and its harsh prescriptions against immoral heterosexual behavior and homosexuality.
She leaned in. “Well, you know why homosexuality is bad,” she said, lowering her voice to a discreet whisper. “It’s because it’s unclean. It spreads disease. It’s unholy.” She went on, though I had lost interest in the particulars.
He gamely pointed out that plenty of heterosexual behavior also spreads disease. They discussed it a bit further. He also drew a distinction between the conviction that adultery being bad because it’s against God’s word and the opinion that adultery being bad because it breaks down bonds of human trust, his opinion being the latter. Eventually they agreed that it was ultimately best to live a life of peace and forgiveness.
Then she closed her part of the discussion with a neat and tidy “Listen, I don’t judge. That’s not my job. Only god can judge us.”
Bravo. I agreed with her — partially — on something: It was not her place to judge people. But what caught my attention was her hypocrisy. She was passing judgment.
I can accept that whoever wrote what is in the Bible is passing judgment. Or, rather, if the words in the Bible are to be taken as the word of God, then what is in the Bible is a representation of God passing judgment. We’re taught that only God can do so and that we must not. OK. I can take that as an axiom of Christianity.
But if she says something like “Homosexuality is unclean,” instead of “The Bible says homosexuality is unclean” or “We are taught that homosexuality is unclean” — if she is stating the biblical fact with her own conviction and not attributing the judgment to God, then she’s not expressing an original thought at all — she’s just taking credit for someone else’s work. She’s plagiarising God. And how do you think he would fancy that?
23
May
06
Phantom Limbs
My vigilance has paid off: I saw another man with an arm missing today.
He was wearing a long-sleeve sweater (it was rather chilly and windy today), and the cuff of the empty left sleeve was stuffed into his left-hand hip pocket. (Can I even say “left-hand hip pocket” in his case?) First I thought he wanted people to think he just had his hand in his pocket. But on closer examination, I think it’s more likely because he didn’t want a swinging empty sleeve to get snagged on sharp or rough surfaces. Or to be tugged on by small children.
So, that’s two right arms and one left arm I’ve seen — or rather, not seen — missing in the last couple of days.
Why do I never see armless women?
Severed limbs are so bizarre. The moment a body part is separated from the body, it becomes something else. The body is still the body. It just weighs slightly less. But the body part becomes a dead object. Useless refuse. Something to bury. Somethign to preserve. It could even be art. We make pictures with crayons by what the crayon leaves behind on the paper. Can we make art with what we leave behind of our bodies?
Is it even ours when it is removed? We always talk about “my hand” or “my leg,” but if that hand or leg is lopped off, is it mine anymore? I can’t do anything with a severed arm it except maybe beat someone over the head with it or use it as a door stop. Whether I want to keep that arm or not, it’s sort of given back to the earth at that point, in a way, isn’t it? Relinquished to the cycle of decay and creation and everything that is outside of our bodies.
21
May
06
Arms
I saw two people yesterday who had only one arm. I saw the first one on the way to a rugby training that morning. His baggy tee shirt sleeve hung empty from his side shoulder like a deflated balloon. The second guy, I saw on the way home. He had his shirt sleeve pinned up.
I thought nothing of the first one. Just an anonymous New Yorker with one arm. When I saw the second one, he stood out to me because of the first guy. How many armless people will I see today? I wondered. I thought armless might be a theme for the day, and I was preparing for the third one-armed man. But I saw no more.
It was a strange way to book-end rugby training, rugby being a game that requires two arms yet not infrequently puts someone in near danger of losing them. I don’t think most people participate in activities that put them in such danger.
Today, I saw a person who I thought might be missing an arm or two, but they were actually just tucked inside his shirt. I could offer no explanation for why he might be doing this, except that maybe his arms were cold.
It made me remember pretending to be an amputee as a kid. I’d pull my sleeves off and clasp my arms under my shirt behind my back and walk around bumping into things and people and falling down and trying to get back up with my arms. My favorite part was always pushing my arms back out through the sleeves and watching them “grow” back to their normal state.
I think I will be looking at everyone’s arms today.
20
May
06
How P!nk Helped Me See the L!ght
As a kid, I imagined God literally controlled each one of us. I visualized it with Flintstone vitamins. I’d pour them out on the kitchen table and take Fred and Dino in each hand and bounce them toward and away from each other, making them talk to each other and interact.
“Hi, Dino.” “Ruff! Ruff!” “Down, boy!”
You find philosophy in the strangest of places.
Like lately — I’ve been downloading crap for the last few weeks from iTunes. Everything from Tim Burton movie sountracks to mindless pop music. Something tickles my fancy, and 99 cents later, it’s mine. Recently I was reminded of a little gem from P!nk called “God is a DJ.”
I’ve heard worse.
In fact, I’m a little embarrassed to admit, I like the song. It’s kind of clever, isn’t it? (Isn’t it?) Father forgive me, for I have sinned. It is … a long time since my last confession.
If God is a DJ
Life is a dancefloor
Love is a rhythm
You are the musicIf God is a DJ
Life is a dancefloor
You get what you’re given
It’s all how you use it
At first, I thought that last line was “And somehow you use it,” which I actually like better.
I suppose there’s a sort of theological relevance: God is not a puppetmaster, manipulating us like marionettes. God doesn’t move us one by one. Rather, he spins the record, and we groove along the best way we can. He merely controls our environment, and we are left to make our own choices.
Of course, “God wants you to shake your ass,” as P!nk so gamely shouts toward the end of the song. It’s the sort of clever conceit that passes for deep thought in pop music. But truthfully, it’s not a bad metaphor. “Get your ass on the dancefloor,” she shouts again. Get out there and do something. Take what you have in life, and move. Don’t stand there against the wall and watch everyone else dancing.
I can see why someone might believe that. It might also be total crap. Who knows if P!ink herself even believes it. It’s irrelevant.
At any rate, it’s a much more comforting way of comprehending divine intervention than what my childhood imagination allowed. It outs a lot of pressure on a kid to think of himself as a chewable pawn between the index finger and thumb of God’s hand.
... but enough about me 