House of the Future

This is the Moment I Have Been Waiting For

No, not finals week at UCLAW. The Gawker empire spawns a peroxide blonde daughter. Welcome Defamer! Let the defamation begin.

i-Pod vs. Boyfriend

Maura tells us why an i-Pod is better than a boyfriend. Regrettably my i-Pod will not shove his face in my armpits and call me daddy no matter how long I charge the dang thing up!

Move to New York and Die a Terrifying Death Not Fit for Convicted Murderers

The street muggings may have slacked off. But the threat of imminent demise remains.

Auntie Tom Crap

Here we go with the mad retreat from the heady days of mid-February, when it seemed that gay marriage was coming to a judge's chambers in every town in America.

"We're sorry we pushed, master. Please don't beat us." You know what? Nuh-uh. It is hard to call gay marriage a flaming agenda item of the queer fifth column when The Economist comes out four-square in support of the idea. (It's a subscription only link, but I would recommend ponying up for it or checking out the print edition: Feb. 28, 2005.)

I am not activist, and I believe much of what HRC et al. stand for does amount to 'special' rather than equal rights. But I am willing, as an out gay man who enjoys his lifestyle and its attendant liberties, to give full props to the crazy drag queens who were lobbing bricks and parking meters at New York City cops in late June, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn. How did America feel about them? I would reckon the populace was a whole hell of a lot more antipathetic toward the mere presence of gay men and lesbians then than they are toward the idea of same-sex marriage now.

To paraphrase a now famous epigram, freedom is never handed over voluntarily; it must be siezed.

Where Was I?

I love Camille Paglia. But like those of many otherwise respectable people who reach beyond their particular disciplines, her musings on politics and forays into social science I find usually odious. For instance, she considers heself a libertarian (small 'L'), yet is willing to afford the government a very un-libertarian amount of space in our private lives. I wish she would stick to art history. I would even give her some space for cultural studies, as long as she can bring it back home with a tie-in to overarching themes of Western Culture as they present themselves in the mirror of art.

She wrote recently on her perceptions of the culture's declining attention spans. While I, as an easily identifiable product of Sesame Street and other Children's Television Workshop brain candy, have a reluctant desire to agree with her, a good dissection of tangents to her claim can be found here, on the web log of some Penn linguists. Good stuff!

The Body Royal

All right, all right - He's not exactly my type, not that I have one, but here are some wholly gratuitous shots of the future King of England splashing about, playing water-polo.

On a strictly objective level, I'd give him a 7.5/8. As I said, he's not really my type. However, given the fact that he will be king, he merits an automatic bump up to the top of the chart.

Bad News for Sensitive Souls

"I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect,"' says the man who tells us that poets die younger than other writers.

Thankfully I am only a part-time, foul-weather poet. That should garner me a few extra years.

Could it be that they/we see the benefit in brevity? Who needs a novel when a well-turned couplet will do?

A Walk in the Park

What was Kevin Spacey doing walking his dog in the park in the wee hours? I bet I know. Gawd, when did I become such a gossip?

Update: Spacey spills his guts about falling for a ploy and then falling over his dog and injuring his head. Yeah - that's believable.

Got Rule of Law?

Apparently not on Long Island.

(link via Professor Reynolds)

Elihu Yale's Lovely Little Story About Gay Marriage and Divorce (ahem) Hollywood Style

Following is a letter I sent to the editor of The American Spectator because of this nifty piece of yellow journalism. (Read the article if you feel like being incensed.)

************************************

I will admit he's awfully good on the details. One might think . . . Oh never mind.

Unfortunately Mr. Yale seems to think that such a pattern of events could occur only between gay males. Do give us a break. A meretricious, philandering, heterosexual husband or wife could set the same chain of events in motion. In fact, I would wager that one would need not dig too deep (either in Los Angeles or elsewhere) to uncover such a lurid story.

Mr. Yale's tale does little than betray his swallowing whole every gay stereotype ever laid before his astigmatic and cataract plagued eyes. As I said, he's awfully good on the details -- probably because he lifted them from any of a number of media products he's consumed, which informed him of how life really is in big, nasty, queer Los Angeles. (Thank goodness he's safe at home in Scottsdale!)

"Now, class," he snidely asks, "what have we accomplished, other than a financial train wreck?" Oh golly, let's see: we've allowed two adults to do with their lives and their assets whatever they might choose; we've removed from an infantilized, three-fifths position an important segment of our society; we've respected the wishes of the Framers that the federal government allow a person to be left alone to do as he or she wishes as long as it does not bother another. Shall I go on?

If this is the best argument that gay marriage opponents can come up with, well, I reckon they've already lost the debate.

A John Galt Moment

Fucking Europeans. It will never happen of course, but oh how I would revel in Schadenfreude were Microsoft to say to Europe simply, "No" followed by "Goody-bye. Ciao. Au revoir. Tschüss!" And the whole mess would grind to a halt, the whole stupid continent, the whole bureaucratic octopus!

My contempt for the Old World grows daily. I fear that soon it will not even be worth my contempt -- only my pity and sorrow at the loss of something that was once magnificent.

As If We Didn't Have Enough to Worry About

Now comes this dire warning from some really upright scientific types.

Inform yourselves. Forewarned is forearmed, right? The So-Cal town of Aliso Viejo took notice, and now the rest of America has as well.

(Via Instapundit)

Fill 'Er Up

The smartest man in Los Angeles County shows us that we are not paying as much for gasoline as we think we are.

A Fool and His Money

Read this, and remember that I made no disparaging remarks about West Virginia.

Down to a Science

Don't spend any more time wandering around bars, trying to decide whom to take home with you. Take the quiz!

(This must have been produced in SF, 'cause I recognized two of the guys whose picture they use. Hi Tony! Hi Bob!)

Growing Up

Here's a link to an article at the Weekly Standard about the apparent failure of much of the American populace to advance beyond their late adolescence. The author, Joseph Epstein, quite correctly, in my opinion, cites much cultural evidence -- from the ubiquitous baseball cap on men of all ages to television sit-coms like "Friends" -- to show that many of us are clinging to and glorifying this period in life and are doing so at our own peril.

The sine qua non in addressing arrested development (glaringly without a mention in Epstein's article) is, of course, homosexuality. Time was gay men and lesbians were seen as stuck early on in adolescence, in the period before the budding of interest in the opposite sex. Bruce Bawer, the rather conservative (and Christian) gay author of "A Place at the Table", has likened gay men to teenage girls in their tastes and affections. (I am too often tempted to agree with him. See, e.g., our cliquish nature, the fetishization of clothes and music, giggling approaches to cute boys, etc.)

For about a decade now (I'm 31) I have been mildly obsessed with what it means for a gay man to mature, to become a man. For instance, my father at 31 had three children, a home, a career, etc. (Epstein cites Zorba the Greek, calling this panoply "the full catastrophe".) Meanwhile I live the life of a grad student, all alone in my comfy little Westside apartment, filling up my time with law school, the gym, hikes in canyons, Netflix, and the odd night out on the town.

The fight for gay marriage rights provides an interesting counterpoint to all of this. It would appear that in demanding marriage licenses, gay men and lesbians are trying to shed that last vestige of perpetual adolescence. I imagined at one time that gay men must just have a different measuring stick in determining when maturity strikes. Who would our role models be? Gore Vidal? Ian McKellan? Elton John? Now, with the potential to take a partner in matrimony, to have children and a home life and the potential to extend ourselves into the next generation, I see that my role model might yet be my father.

This Angers Me

"Italian chief art restorer Cinzia Parmigoni adjusts a mimosa garland on the head of Michelangelo's David at Florence March 8, 2004. The David was adorned with mimosa on Monday to celebrate International Women's Day."

This stunningly beautiful piece of artwork, which is not done justice by any photograph, is apparently too unabashedly masculine for the marxist, vagina-power crowd. Perhaps they'll hang a purse off his arm, too.

Apparently the mimosa is the symbol of International Women's Day. Someone in the UK interprets the mimosa as representing sensitivity.

(REUTERS/Max Rossi)

The Angeleno Summer

It reached a high of 91 degrees today. I declare open the summer of 2004. Gentlemen, start your boardshorts and flipflips.

Science v. Religion, Pt. I

Super smarty pants physicist Lawrence Krauss, speaking about a meeting he attended at the Vatican:

There were about 15 people, theologians, a few cosmologists, some biologists. The idea was to find common ground, but after three days it was clear that we had nothing to say to one another. When theologians talk about the 'long term,' raising questions about resurrection and such, they're really thinking about the short term. We weren't even on the same plane. When you talk about 10^50 years, the theologians' eyes glaze over. I told them that it was important that they listen to what I had to say—theology, if it's relevant, has to be consistent with science. At the same time I was thinking, 'It doesn't matter what you have to say, because whatever theology has to say is irrelevant to science.

From an article in Slate about the ultimate fate of the universe.

Gilbert & Sullivan and Rehnquist

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist exhibits a little whimsy by personalizing his stodgy black robe.

Next year he will suggest that opinions of the court be set to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and delivered in a dinner theater atmosphere on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings with half price Sunday matinees. If he makes it to 2006, look for new rules of the court, stating that oral arguments before the bench be patterned after early 20th century vaudeville or Parisian music halls à la Moulin Rouge.