A somewhat desperate and vain attempt to quiet the naysayers in my head
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Christmas Carols
So the Christmas playlist on my iPod has been dusted off and I am humming Christmas carols these days. In the past couple of years, I didn't really catch the spirit of the season until a couple of days before Christmas. If you play Christmas carols after the 25th of December, then people look at you funny. So this year I have vowed to get into the spirit early. I've just come across Chris Botti's jazz Christmas cd December and it's amazing. If you haven't heard it, you should pick it up.
I am leaving for New York on Wednesday, coming back Saturday. I'm looking forward to seeing my Mom and Dad and also meeting up with one of my sisters and her family who recently relocated to the area. In actuality, I'm only going to be there two and a half days, so I will survive without a cell phone or Thai food. I've definitely made contact with my drama queen gene lately about this trip.
My mom told me today that my brother just got transferred from Chicago to Seattle! I'm so excited. To have my brother's family just a couple hours away by air and in the same time zone will be a lot of fun and Washington is a great state to visit. Hey Mike, get ready for the requisite trip to the Boeing Factory with me. It's a cool place and I'm looking forward to seeing it again.
Here's to hoping you all had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend. I hope that you all have time to relax and enjoy the Christmas season over the next few weeks.
I saw a great film this week. It's from mainland China and it's entitled Shower. This was one of my recommendations from Netflix and I was really happy with this film.
The film is set in a suburb of Beijing. Master Liu runs a men's bathhouse and takes care of his mentally challenged son Er Ming. The film opens with the arrival of Da Ming, the older son from his home in Shenzhen. Er Ming had sent Da Ming a postcard of him and his father with a cryptic picture that led Da Ming to believe his father was dead. When he arrives, he finds life as he had left it before he went away several years ago to pursue bigger dreams.
The bathhouse is a gathering place for all of the men in the community. They talk, laugh, socialize, get massages and treatments, and enjoy their time together. It's very much the beauty shop atmosphere from Steel Magnolias, only in this case it is men in towels. Da Ming spends a few days with his father and brother and gets reacquainted with his former neighbors and friends. Simultaneously, the local government informs Master Liu that his bathhouse is going to be torn down in the push to modernize China. A shopping mall will replace his home and business. The remainder of the film follows the impact that this will have on all of their lives.
The movie follows the lives of the men who make the bathhouse their home. There are some splendid performances in this film, especially the two older men from the bathhouse who raise crickets to fight each other. Also Jiang Wu, playing Er Ming, puts a real human face on the mentally challenged character he plays and is a joy to watch. The magic of acting and a successful film is when you become emotionally vested in the characters well being. This film is incredibly successful on this level. Near the end, I wanted to stand up and cheer for one of the characters as he overcame his stage fright. It is a small film with a big heart and I highly recommend it.
Yet again, the holiday season is nearly upon us. The next few weeks are shaping up to be really busy for me. I'm going to see my folks in upstate New York the week after Thanksgiving. I haven't seen them in a couple of years, so it will be nice to catch up with them. The downside is, they live in the middle of nowhere. As in, your cell phone doesn't work until you get come down off the mountain and drive 20 minutes towards society nowhere. Yeah... I'm definitely more a city person and the idea that there will be no late night Thai restaurant within 60 miles of my location is quite a frightening thought.
I purchased a ticket this week to get away to Honolulu the weekend before the Christmas holidays. I always like going to Hawaii in December because it's not very crowded and you get a nice break before the hustle and bustle of everything. Probably the greatest thing about working for United in San Francisco was the great Hawaii layovers we used to get. I was fortunate to spend a lot of time on Oahu and the outer islands. I also lived there for a stint back in the early 90s. It was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to relaxing and catching up with some of my friends over there.
A neighboring agency of my job is short staffed, so they have asked for some volunteers to work overtime in their city. I met with the higher ups there this week and it looks like I will be training next week to cover some shifts there. Their systems are identical to my current job's, so the transition process should not prove too difficult. December is looking like it's going to be a busy month for me in general. I was going to put up a tree, but I'm not sure how much I will be home to enjoy it! Maybe I'll just get a Charlie Brown tree.
I ordered a sectional sofa back in July, target date for delivery was September 1st. It is now November 18th and no sign of my couch. I have to call the showroom and inquire about it. They always mumble something about issues in China and push the date back six to eight weeks. If I get my sofa by Christmas, I would be ecstatic.
My friend Brian and I saw Borat this week. I'm still not quite sure what to think. Certain scenes are so funny, I was in tears. It is very well done and yet parts of it are in very poor taste. The movie is called a "mockumentary". It follows the story of Borat, a journalist from Kazakhstan journeying to the United States to file a story. Borat is one of several characters that actor Sasha Baron Cohen has created for his Ali G Show, seen here in the U.S. on HBO. Cohen rarely appears out of character and does very little press, preferring to let his work and his characters speak for him. In his personal life, he is Jewish and quite religious from reports. That being said, the anti-Semitic portions of this film were quite horrific and inexcusable in my opinion. He also pushed a few buttons with me in the wrestling scene between Borat and his manager. Yes we all need to have a sense of humor about things (and as a gay man, I can appreciate this), but in this case I felt he took things a bit too far. The humor was over the top, crude, and did not always find its mark. In the middle of the film, Brian made the remark "Oh my God. This is making me really uncomfortable." It definitely is not a film for the faint of heart.
That's what's up with me. Hope you all have a great weekend.
So my boyfriend and I severed ties this week and it's been an interesting mix of emotions. On the one hand, it's nice to have my space back and to feel a sense of independence again. If I want to stay up 'til 5 AM and watch a movie, then I can. The little things that irritated me about living with someone else are gone - bad bathroom furnishing choices, coming home to find socks, water bottles, and other stuff strewn all over the apartment, trash cans full. On the flip side, it is very quiet and lonely. One thing I am taking away from this experience is that I'm not sure I'm good at living with someone else that I care about. My friend Chuck and his partner Mark have always had separate homes and it seems to work well for them. I guess it's an issue of me being quirky and liking my space. Only thing with that is, Northern California does not lend itself to cheap living arrangements.
I had coffee with a very nice guy, a friend of a friend. It felt really strange. I think it was too soon. My wounds haven't quite healed and I'm still feeling raw and sad on some levels. I tend to be dramatic about certain things (my mother's side of the family is kinda OCD), so it comes out at times like these. I've been feeling like drunk Charlotte from Sex and the City in the episode where they're returning home from Staten Island on the ferry. (Season 3, episode 31 for all of you who want to go rewatch it.) It's freezing, they're sitting outside, and Charlotte is completely wasted. Then suddenly, she looks at Carrie, sobers up and says, "Carrie, where is he? All I want to do is get married. I've been dating for x amount of years and I'm tired and lonely. WHERE IS HE?" I don't know that I'm quite that dramatic, but it certainly does feel that way. It's as if I keep getting puppies from the pound that look really cute, but end up having major issues that don't clique with my particular ones. After a while, you don't even feel like looking anymore.
Happy Veteran's Day weekend to all, especially my dad and brother who both served in the Navy and my friend Christi, also a Navy girl. I caught an episode of Baghdad ER on HBO this week. It's like watching an episodeof China Beach, only it is a documentary and it is real. I've always been interested in medicine, so the medical aspect of the show is very interesting to me. At the same point, when you see a 20 year old American kid dying from an IED explosion it really hits home. The operating rooms operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The amputation scenes are incredibly graphic and gruesome. It seems completely surreal when a surgical tech picks up an amputated foot and puts it in a red biohazard bag. There's a certain reaction of "Wait, save that. A surgeon can reattach that!" followed by the sad reality that no, a surgeon cannot reattach that and the man or woman will never see his or her foot or arm again. There's always talk about the price of freedom. In the Civil War and World War II, thousands upon thousands of men died in single battles. We've had a couple of thousand die in the entire conflict thus far, but this show puts a name and a face to the injured and they are just kids. Innocent kids who deserve better and shouldn't have to be facing the prospect of spending the rest of their lives without an eye or a limb.
I picked up some overtime this week, so that has kept me busy. Each day on the job, I feel like I get a little bit better. This week we had a case that started out really bad, but had a happy ending. It felt good to be helping out in some small way.
That's about all from here. Working the weekend, ah so exciting.
So the scandals keep on hitting the press in recent days.
The first (and biggest thus far) is Representative Mark Foley, the congressman from the 16th district in Florida. He sent e-mails and instant messages (IMs) to multiple congressional pages, flirting with them and soliciting sex as well as sending them money and gifts. At least one of the young men in question was 16 years old at the time. The congressman is gay, but remained closeted throughout his tenure on Capitol Hill. In defense of his actions, Foley decides to blame his actions on being molested by a gay priest as a child. There is no excuse for being a pedophile. At the same time, one issue has nothing to do with the other. Being gay did not make Mark Foley a pedophile and being a pedophile and being molested as a child did not make Mark Foley gay. There was a recent report that Foley is undergoing alcohol treatment in Thailand. Yeah, I bet he is. I'm sure there's a few lovely establishments in Pattaya that will meet his needs nicely.
Next, we have the Evangelical leader Ted Haggard from Colorado Springs, Colorado resigning after Mike Jones, a gay escort goes public with their 3 year affair. Initially, Haggard denies the affair. Leave it to a bitter gay man, Mike saved the voicemails and whips them out. (As my brother famously says, "Without that stained blue Gap dress, Clinton would still be shaking his finger at us and saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." He has a good point.) Haggard then comes up with an absurd story that he purchased meth, but never used it. He also states he paid for a "massage" from Jones, but never engaged in sexual activity. Yeah...and Clinton didn't inhale.
As an out gay man who takes personally ridiculous claims from the right wing that gays are destroying the moral fabric of this country, violating the "sanctity of marriage", and creating more gays by adopting children who need homes, one cannot help but watch this news with an enormous smile and an overwhelming sense of glee. Who the (pardon my french) do you think you (insert plural expletive here) are to start throwing stones when your glass house has (yet another choice word, commonly used in place of excrement) all over it? There was a study done at the University of Georgia several years ago know where they took male college students and quizzed them on their feelings about homosexuality. The subjects were then put into two groups, homophobes and non-homophobes. Sensors were attached to their members and they were shown three types of pornography - straight, lesbian, and gay. The non-homophobes were not aroused at all by the gay porn. The homophobes were aroused. Quelle surprise.
As I became an adult, it became harder and harder to justify my sheltered and judgmental upbringing. I am proud to call myself a liberal and to respect people's beliefs and decisions as their own. As long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else, live and let live. It's so frustrating whenever political season comes around and you see the media and the national political machines pull out the words or phrases liberal, California, homosexual, baby killer etc. and use them in a defamatory manner. Yeah, it's so horrible to be a liberal from San Francisco isn't it? Mothers, hold your babies close. Indeed universal health care, a functioning education system, and a decent government pension would be destructive to everything the United States stands for, wouldn't it?
At the opposite end of the spectrum, actor Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, MD) came out publicly. Even though he was pretty much forced out by the blogosphere, he made a very classy exit from the closet. "The public eye has always been kind to me, and until recently I have been able to live a pretty normal life. Now it seems there is speculation and interest in my private life and relationships. So, rather than ignore those who choose to publish their opinions without actually talking to me, I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love." That, people, is the way to do it. Cheers Neil!
Thanks for the calls, e-mails, comments, well wishes over the past couple of days. I must admit, I was very upset when I wrote my last blog entry. Things always look better in the morning though and I am feeling much more upbeat than I was a couple of days ago. I do not have any plans to take the next exit off the freeway of life or anything. Promise.
O got a new place closer to his work this week, but didn't really tell me until he was starting to stay there. (Sample conversation O "Well I'm going to my house tonight." (Long pause) Me "Uh, don't you live here?" O "Oh no, I moved." Funny, I hadn't noticed because everything you own is still here in our apartment. When pressed on this, his response was, "Well, I told you I was moving." Yeah, in a "I'm going to get a place closer to work soon..." kind of way, not an "I don't live here anymore." kind of way.) It was very unexpected and it threw me for a loop.
I still adore O, but there is no doubt that we have been growing apart as of late. Europe definitely accentuated some of our differences and we both learned a lot about each other on the trip. Our relationship has been punctuated by awkward conversations and silence in the past few weeks and the realization that perhaps we didn't know each other as well as we thought. We have communication issues and instead of discussing things with me face to face, O sends me an e-mail or a text message which I abhor. There's something wrong when you can't discuss something with your partner face to face, but you can express it in an e-mail. That's my take.
Even though I understand his reasons for moving (reducing his commute from over 3 hours a day total to about 30 minutes), the circumstances under which he did left me feeling sad and unwanted, as if I had failed our relationship somehow. It's one of those situations where logic and love are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Grr... Life is such a bitch sometimes.
The other thing that is adding to my melancholiness is the type of work I am in. A good friend of mine recently called up and mentioned she was thinking of moving to the town where I work. She was asking what I thought of it and I answered truthfully, "I am the wrong person to ask because everything I hear about this town involves crime, violence, and bad news." I'm sure for 98 percent of the residents of the town, life is good to great. Why else would they live there? For me, it's a totally different picture. I speak to the 2 percent that are abused, drunk, high, assaulted, robbed, injured, in crisis, etc. It can definitely take a toll if you don't have a good perspective on things and/or a good sense of humor. Lucky for me I'm just cold and heartless. (That's a joke.)
It is Friday, the weekend is here. Have a great one. Cuidate.
