Movie Review: 300

I finally saw 300, via Netflix.  I am soooo glad I didn’t see this one in the theaters.

One word sums up this movie: “juvenile”.

Disclosure: 300 is based on the comic book of the same name.  When the comic came out, I bought the first issue, read it, thought “What a piece of crap”, and didn’t buy the second issue.  My opinion of the comic has not changed since then, and the movie supports that feeling.

You know what would be cool?  Lots of blood squirting everywhere.  Like in that King Arthur movie, when the guy’s arms and legs come off.

You know what would be cool?  Lots of symbolic, dramatic lighting, like everything is occurring at sunset or under a full moon.

You know what would be cool?  A bottomless pit in the middle of the court of Sparta, with no railings or grating or cover, because, like, Spartans are so bad ass that they never slip, stumble, or fall.

You know what would be cool?  If the dramatic scenes all had shit floating in the air to give it a dreamy quality.  Snow, dust, pollen, whatever.

You know what would be cool?  If all the Spartans went shirtless all the time and were like totally ripped.  Dude, that would be gay, not cool!  Oh, well don’t worry, they won’t ever touch each other, so it won’t really be gay.  Just sorta.

You know what would be cool?  If we added reverb and other modulation to the voices at their most dramatic moments.  That would, like, totally help carry the symbolism through.

You know what would be cool?  If we had a voiceover going through the whole movie, sometimes reiterating the action but usually just giving color commentary and saying poetic shit.  And it would be way cool to — surprise! — make the voiceover be the story of the Spartans being told to others, to inspire them to fight crazy.

You know what would be cool?  If the Spartans were so bad ass that even their allies thought they were crazy and would run away.

You know what would be cool?  If there were all there dramatic, tension-filled conversations between the Spartans, full of pauses and deep brooding stares.  Um, dude, you’ve gone into the gay zone again!  Okay, we’ll have them break off the looks early, so no one could possibly think that there’s something gay going on.

You know what would be cool?  If we did all the action scenes cutting in and out of slow-mo, so you could totally see all the sword cuts and tumbling bodies and splashing blood.

You know what would be cool?  If the entire cast was men, just beating the snot out of each other.  Dude, gay thing again!  You need something with a woman, so we can get the chicks to let us see it.  No problem, man: we’ll add a subplot with the queen, and she can have sex in it, too.  She’ll be totally hot, and it will be rough, beating the snot out of each other sex.  And if we have to trim the film to make it shorter, we can cut the subplot some, removing girl stuff and keeping all the bad ass fight scenes!




You know what would be cool?  If this movie didn’t make me fear that the director’s upcoming Watchmen film will be more of the same.

What is a “Twink”?

This question recently came up on a list I’m on, and one person was tickled enough by it that he suggested I “publish” it.  By your command, edited for blogability…

It’s shorthand for “Twinkie&rdquo — which we all know is golden sponge cake with cream filling, light and fluffy and full of preservatives and pretty much nutrition free, but (to some people) oh so yummy.

Ergo, a “twink&rdquo is light and fluffy and full of cream (and often blond, and usually gay), without a lot of substance to him, but (to some people) oh so yummy.  A male airhead, like, you know?  (And I’m sure that somewhere, female twinks are referenced, too.  Probably letter-shifted to “twynks”.)

It used to be almost always a derogatory term, but these days, I gather it’s a mark of pride for some boys.  (It’s still a negative term in my book, though.  I never use it as a favorable reference.)

Movie Review: Mamma Mia!

Please don’t make Pierce Brosnan sing in a movie ever again.  Ever.

Note: I have not seen the stage version of this, so I can’t comment on how well or poorly the screenplay meshes with the original.  But I have my suspicions that a few things got dropped in the movie.

Beyond that, make no mistake, Mamma Mia! is not a “serious” movie. It is camp.  And when it remembers that it’s okay to be campy, that’s where the film excels, and sells itself to the audience, making us smile, giggle and twitter, and even sing along.  (It’s ABBA music. You’re supposed to sing along!)

When the movie pushes in a bit of melodrama — Sophie and Sky’s tiny spat, for example — it stutters and stumbles.  (Or anytime Brosnan sings.)  But as soon as the next whoop-it-up chorus-boys-and-girls dance number comes along, all is well again.

The casting, or more the use of the casting, is spotty.  The two adult women sidekicks rip into the film with abandon, chewing the scenery and carrying the film forward.  Meryl Streep always feels reined in by uncertainty — should she just say “fuck it” and embrace the cheese, or should she hold back?  This is informed by the character she is playing, perhaps, but she never feels like she is inhabiting a movie built around ABBA songs.  The girl playing Sophie is a wide-eyed cipher; her motives and dreams are vaguely mentioned throughout the movie, but she never really projects them.  Sky is cute but otherwise empty.  All three adult male cast members seem more stunned by the film than anything else; again, while that’s part of the characters, it comes across to the viewer as mediocre acting (or poor directing).

Thank goodness for one of the men’s implied gay romance.  The confession exchange on the boat gave more depth to the two characters talking than the entire rest of the film, and a genuine clever crossed-signals dialogue bit.

Also annoying was the insistence on groups of three — three adult women, three adult men, Sophie and her two girlfriends.  Sophie’s gal pals are so prominent in the first 10 minutes that their near absence from the rest of the film stands out strongly.  And where was the threesome (ahem) with Sky as the pivot point, to keep that balance?  Oh, there, we saw Sky, the black bartender, and one other guy for about 3 seconds in one scene, so that must have been that triad.  (Story logic says that the unnamed third guy there should also be the gay fling attached to one of the adult men, but I don’t think it was the same actor.)

In the end, you have two choices with this film: sit outside it and analyze it and find it wanting, or inhabit the film’s world and burst out into song, dance, and sequins as needed.  The choice is easy, the hard part is dealing with Pierce Brosnan’s singing voice.

Letter of Comment: “Trapped in the Closet”

This letter was sent to the Seattle Weekly, in response to this February 27, 2008 article (titled “Seattle, You Love Your Mainstream Country Music” inside the issue, but “Trapped in the Closet” on the cover).  It was published in the March 19, 2008 edition, but the online  version only carries a portion of the letters.  (Which makes no sense: online is where you can easily print them all.)  The letter was edited slightly (which is fine); original content removed is [blue in brackets].  Special thanks to Spencer for letting me know the letter was published.

Brian Barr and the Weekly’s editor must be wearing their Wranglers a size too tight.   How else do you cover feature a story with a blurb like “Trapped in the Closet” without making any mention of the gay and lesbian side of things?

GLBTQ country-western dancing and music is alive and kicking [(up its heels)] in the Seattle area.   The non-profit, volunteer-run Rain Country Dance Association currently produces dance nights at the Cuff Complex on Capitol Hill every Friday night and alternate Wednesdays, providing both dance instruction and all your favorite country-western dance music.   Rain Country is also in an expansion mode this month: we are adding a classic country music night at the Seattle Eagle, and Monday lessons and dancing at Swank in Kent.   (Kudos to the Weekly for your recent story on gay life in Kent!)   We also produce a monthly non-bar dance night at a Seattle church.

[Rain Country’s biggest news, of course, is the upcoming Emerald City Hoedown on April 25-27, with a whole weekend of dancing and dance workshops, including guest instructors from San Francisco.]

And [since someone will be thinking the question,] no, you don’t have to show your “gay card” at any of our dances.   Everyone is welcome.   [We don’t care who you sleep with, so long as you like to dance!   Check us out online at www.raincountrydance.org.]

-- Jim Drew
    [President, Rain Country]

Ireland: Dublin (part 4)

2:55 am, Dublin (at the hotel)

Next paragraph is a sex one again. Read or skip at your leisure.

Well, I never made it out to the pubs. I got “ordered in” via Manhunt, and went out to the apartment of a couple locals. A little leather hood, a little restraints, a little spanking, and little fucking, a little getting my dick sucked by an additional guy who was there, and little (but not enough!) ass play. I had been thinking about going to the local sauna (bath house), the Boilerhouse, but back to the hotel after 2:00, that’s not going to happen. (And their cover is steep, anyway, so I’ll just save some bucks, er, Euros.) Wish the scene had lasted longer, but I can’t complain.

I noticed that some of the crossing lights on O’Connell count down the seconds until the signal turns green for you, as opposed to the stateside method some use of counting down how much time is left. I suppose that has its value, in getting people to wait a few more seconds rather than stepping out into traffic because they’re in a hurry.

There’s a soap store just around the corner on Henry Street that is truly putrid smelling. It’s some sort of a hand-made cosmetics place, but there is an odor from it which wafts down onto O’Connell, even at 2:30 am, hours after closing. It smells like a huge vat of Palmolive; totally turns my stomach.

My goal for the evening is to stay up later tonight/this morning, and only get a few hours sleep. That will prompt me to sleep early on the flight back, and hopefully get back closer to my typical weekend schedule (waking up late morning) to ease myself back through the jetlag faster. We’ll see if it works.

I have to catch a bus to the airport at about 7:30 am tomorrow, for a 9:50 flight to Amsterdam. Then it’s a 1 hour layover there (cross fingers!) and back to Seattle, in at 2:35 in the afternoon. I’ll have to take the bus back home, but that’s fine. (If it isn’t raining, of course. Weather report doesn’t predict that for Seattle right now.)

Ireland: Dublin (part 1)

2:28 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

Made eyes at a couple bearish types at Pantibar and The George last night, but nothing beyond that.  Came back to the hotel around 1:30.  (Pantibar is named for an MTF transsexual performer, and I guess owner of the bar, Panti.  Part of the decor is red women’s and men’s underwear as light diffusers over the lampshades.)

My hotel room is a top floor garret room, with a single bed tucked into the corner.  A pretty lousy bed, truth be told: thin useless pillow, and a mattress that you can feel all the springs in.  The bathroom isn’t too bad, though, and there’s wireless, and ultimately, it’s a room in the City Centre area at not too expensive a price.

The view out my tiny window pretty much just shows the top floor of the building across the street, although I can also catch a view of the Spire.  The 120-meter tall Dublin Spire was erected in early 2003 as a replacement for the 138-foot Nelson’s Pillar, which had been blown up by the IRA in 1966 (possibly to commemorate the Easter Uprising of 1916).  It is a silver spike narrowing from about 10 feet at the base to 6 inches at the top.  The top several feet has white LED lights at night.

After breakfast, I took the tram back to Collins Barracks and visited the Decorative Arts wing of the National Museum of Ireland.  They have on display a reconstruction of a Viking longboat originally built in the Dublin area around 1042 and sunk (along with several other boats) in a Danish fjord some 50 years later.  The boat was reconstructed using period tools and techniques, taking 44,000 man hours to complete, and then it was sailed back to Dublin by a crew of 65, with stops at several locations along the way in Denmark and Norway.

The museum also has a display about the Easter Uprising of 1916, which led to Irish independence 6 or 7 years later.  Via other displays at the museum, it’s clear that such uprisings occurred every 20-40 years, going back into the 1700s and before.  Not that this tells modern American audiences anything about what to expect when occupying Iraq, oh, no.  (Basically, the local always want an occupying force out, and every generation will fight to get rid of the oppressors.)

Other displays include a look at Irish soldiers around the world, going back to 1550.  Much of it centers on Irish brigades in World Wars I and II, of course, but there are large parts about the Irish during English colonial days, the “Wild Geese” Irish expats serving in continental European armies in the 19th century, and the Irish brigades in the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War, and even the American Civil War (mostly on the side of the Union, but there was an Irish regiment out of Tennessee fighting for the South).  Interestingly, one ploy to strive for freedom from British rule in the 1860s was an Irish invasion of Canada (!) through Niagara, New York; the Irish beat the Canadian militia at the Battle of Ridgeway, but fell back to the States on rumor of British troops arriving.  Here is more info that you want about the event.

Other exhbits that I saw included Irish silverwork, Irish coins, and a some miscellany from the general collections, including a fabulous dress done by Charles Worth, founder of the first house of couture in Paris.  (I have a friend who studied couture in Paris a few years ago.)

Coming back, I wandered through the large pedestrian shopping mall that runs from Jervis to O’Connell, to the Spire.  Bought some souvenirs: three t-shirts, a mug and a shot glass, and some shortbread and chocolates; some for me, some for others.
I opted to not go to the Guinness Storehouse, when I found out that the tour was €14.  Half that would have been fine, but $20 was too steep for me.  I’ll probably be sorry later, and have to come back to Dublin someday. 

Shortly, I’m going to head out to the Archeological wing of the National Museum, on the south side of the Liffey.

Ireland: Killarney to Mallow to Dublin, and in Dublin (part 3)

10:11 pm, Dublin (at the hotel)

Wandered down to the Liffey and hit Forbidden Planet.  Came back with a dozen miscellaneous back issue from their overstock bin at 25 cents each, and a copy of Justice League Legends, reprinting part of “The Lightning Saga” and a couple issues of Justice, including a new cover for my anal-retentive Legion collection.

If you don’t want to know details of my sexual escapades, just skip the next paragraph.

I hooked up with a Dublin guy early in the evening via Manhunt. (He’s actually from “the north”; don’t know if that means Belfast/Northern Ireland or not.) Ended up as and interesting encounter: he asked me to put on some of my leather – I only brought a vest and some boots, to keep the weight down – and that plus a nice fat dick made him want me to fuck him.  No problem. Except that he’d never been fucked before (and hadn’t done much fucking himself, I gather; I guess he was mostly an oral guy). Fat dick + cherry ass = probably quite he memorable time for him.  (Moreso because of the piercing. I only have the 6-gauge curved barbell in, so nothing nearly so dramatic as if the 2-gauge ring were in, but still, multiple new sensations for him!) Did he like it? Not sure; he had some definite pain, and he didn’t know what he should be feeling (and I could barely tell him, it’s been 18 years since I was in that place), but he stuck with it like a trooper and eventually decided he just needed to jam himself on down. (First time I’ve deflowered a guy, to my knowledge. He took it easier than some have, though!)

After that, I headed back into Temple Bar – past the actual Temple Bar, in fact and had dinner at a Chinese fast food place (duck in plum sauce) and then a Nutella and ice cream crepe and coffee for dessert.  On the way back, stopped in the Temple Bar Trading Co. shop, or the side that was open, which was all Guinness stuff.  Mugs, chocolates, refrigerator magnets, sure.  Soccer balls, rugby balls, t-shirt, okay.  Soft-boiled egg cups? Slippers?  Underwear?  Oy! (Or is that “Oi!”?)

My mother observed that she wasn’t picking up the Irish accent as readily as she has with other accents on past trips.  Me either, and that surprised me at first, although I’ve noticed it creeping in more the last couple days.  I suspect it’s because we’ve had three of us to reinforce each other’s American speech modes. Now that I’m on my own, I’ll be picking it up much faster, I’m sure.

I’ll be heading out to the pubs in a bit.

Ireland: Dublin, and Dublin to Killarney (part 3)

11:46 pm, Killarney (same location)

Coming back after dinner later, Mom missed the final turn to our cottage.  It was dark.  But she would miss it again at dusk on Sunday, too.  Turns out she was counting the speedbumps rather than the streets, and was remembering the original count from Saturday night.

Had quite good fish & chips for dinner, at a pub which eventually had traditional Irish music playing, after the France v. England Six Nations rugby match.  Watching that – I’ve never seen rugby before, and I still can’t figure out what prompts a new throw of the ball (a “scrum”?) – I can sure see why rugby is popular in the gay community these days:

• It’s a drinking game.  Every one of the British players (not so much the Frogs) looked like he’d be downing a pitcher of Guinness or Foster’s or something more British after the match.
  
• It’s hyper-masculine.  It’s like “tackle soccer” or “football without the rest break after every 30 seconds of play”.  Yes, Virginia, gay guys do fetishize extreme masculinity.  (Well, natural masculinity, as opposed to fake shit like pro wrestling.)
  
• It’s off the radar in America.  Gay guys have to be either bleeding edge or at least sharply non-mainstream, at least until the mainstream catches on.  Doesn’t matter if that’s facial hair, showtunes, or sports; rugby is so much easier to embrace when Joe Average Straight Guy has at best a passing awareness of it.
  
• Beefy boys in shorts and sweaty shirts tackling each other en masse, pulling at each other, unobtrusively grabbing who knows what bits of flesh along the way.  Good lord, it’s almost an orgy!  Who needs the bathhouse?
  
• September 11.  Rugby got a huge boost in the gay community due to Mark Bingham’s involvement in stopping the 4th plane on 9/11.  A genuine gay hero makes rugby a gay sport.
  

After the game was over, but before Mom was ready to leave the music (we had to eventually in order to get to the SuperValu before it closed), I went a-wandering.  Hoped to find an Internet café, but both I found closed at 10:00 (one had already locked up at 9:45 when I got there, grr), so I haven’t checked my e-mail yet and told anyone I’m actually here and intact.  Found a music store and bought some cheap CD reissues (4 for the price of 3 at €3.99 each): Pam Tillis, Dolly Parton, Mickey Gilley, and Charlie Rich.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow.  Maybe driving the Ring of Kerry (I assume that’s some long route around the county) or going to the Dingle Peninsula; I think I read that there are some archeological ruins up there.  If not tomorrow, then later in the week.

Should find the train station tomorrow and get my ticket for Friday morning.

Ireland: Dublin, and Dublin to Killarney (part 1)

9:40 am, Dublin (again, on the bed at the B&B)

Dragged myself out of bed at about 9:30 last night, swigged a cup of instant (ewww!) coffee, and caught the bus to the City Centre.  Fortunately, lots of folks were getting off at a couple spots, so I knew when to exit – right on the O’Connell Street Bridge over the Liffey River.  From there, I walked east along the south side of the river (Aston Quay and Wellington Quay), trying to find Georges Street where a couple of the gay pubs are.  Finally got to Parliament Street and remembered that Georges didn’t come all the way to the river, so I found where I was going in short order.  Passed by the Dublin branch of legendary UK comic store chain Forbidden Planet; I’ll get back there next weekend.

Had a Foster’s at The Dragon, and then a Guinness at The George, where I met a couple guys from London (Fraser and I think it was “Fahmi”).  Chatted with them a bit, then headed across the river.  Tried to find Out on the Liffey, but it is closed according to the guy at The Dock Sauna (a gay bathhouse, attached to Inn on the Liffey; no, I didn’t go in).  So I went to find Pantibar (formerly GUBU [short for “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, and Unprecedented”, a quote from Taoiseach Charles Haughey, referring to a double murder in 1982; although the original quote is apparently not gay related, as a name fort a gay bar, it is almost as good a repurposing as “santorum”]).  I got rough directions, but couldn’t find it until I stopped at a straight pub and got better info.  Had a Guinness at Pantibar, and eventually started to fade; too little sleep does that.  Met and made out with a guy named Declan there; maybe I’ll get the chance for more when I’m back next weekend.  (Told you I’d pay for the lack of sleep.  Otherwise I would have gone back to the George with him and his buddies and well, who knows!  Always a shame to pass up potential goodies.)

Walked to O’Connell Street to try and find the hotel where I’ll be next weekend, but no luck.  (Didn’t see it on Sunday when we were by there in the daylight, either.  I think it’s a block further up.)  Caught a cab, who I was sure was taking me completely in the wrong direction, but poof, there we were back by Porterhouse North and I was in bed by 1:30 am.

Marriage vs. Civil Union

Originally posted on the Legal Marriage Alliance of Washington mailing list on February 12, 2004, where someone asked “Other than the semantics of ‘marriage’ and ‘civil union’, what are the real differences?”  Mildly edited to current blog inclusion…

The difference is that the benefits, rights, and responsibilities of “marriage” are already defined and supported by case law.  “Civil union” is still a largely undefined term.

One of the proposed amendments to the Massachusetts constitution which was discarded in February, 2004 would have disallowed same-sex marriage but permitted civil unions, with the legislature being made to define such, and with the ability of the legislature to revisit that definition periodically.  In theory, the legislature could thus define “civil union” to be nothing at all (or at least nothing of value).

The only acceptable set of benefits, rights, and responsibilities to go into “civil unions” is those which go into “marriage”.  So then you are left with two choices: either say “Civil unions are granted all the benefits, rights, and responsibilities of marriages” or try to specify all of those benefits, rights, and responsibilities in great detail and have to revise that every time a new item comes up (and if you don’t revise, fight a lawsuit for every one of them).

In the end, you are left with either two terms which mean the same thing (in which case, why have two terms?) or one term which is said to be the equivalent of the other but falls short both in some known areas and some unknown areas, in which case it isn’t equivalent, and certainly isn’t equal.

What can you expect to lose?  Clarity, smoothness, and efficiency.  Will civil unions cover hospital visitation?  Inheritance?  Adoption?  Extra Chevron credit cards?  Attending company holiday parties?  Health care?  Corporate travel for spouses?  State income tax?  Federal?  Family seating at your partner’s daughter’s high school graduation?  Each and every benefit, right, or responsibility which is given blindly and unquestioned to married opposite sex couples, you may have to ask for and possibly demand.  You may have to show paperwork or ID cards.  Rules and regulations will have to be considered and rewritten by every company and government organization to include appropriate wording.  On the flip side, “married” means “married”, and all you’ll have to do is sigh every time someone has to do that mental adjustment about your spouse’s gender because they haven’t been hit with it a thousand times just yet.

Letterhack

Updated from original post dated March 8, 2003…

Every now and then, I write letters of comment to various places.  (I used to have a long list of where I had written to and which had been published.  Gave that up long ago.)  This week, I managed to have two of them published:

Regarding this article in The Stranger about a school shooting several years ago, I wrote a letter which got printed, titled “Yanked by the Nose.”  (You’ll find it 2/3 of the way down this page.)

Regarding a letter in the “Dear Glenn” advice column in the Seattle Gay News, I sent in a letter about people joining organizations in order to meet people, which he printed.  The column doesn’t seem to be online regularly, so here’s what I wrote (it was slightly edited in the printed form):

Glenn,

Reading Ivan’s letter in the Feb 28 column, I was struck by something which might be worthy of repeating/running a column on/etc.

Ivan spoke of having joined several local groups in the past in search of relationships and/or friends.  We’re often told this by friends: “You need to go out and join a group to meet someone.”  There’s definite truth in that, but it often seems to get misinterpreted.

First, anyone who is joining a club or doing volunteering or things like that in order to find a boyfriend is bound to get disappointed.  With few exceptions, hooking people up in longterm monogamous relationships isn’t the mission of these groups.  They are usually social groups or fundraising groups; you might well expect to meet people (some of whom might have potential for dating), but being upset that you don’t end up in a relationship from the groups is problematic.

Second, these things take time.  I can’t speak for Ivan, of course, but I’ve seen people who join a group, come to a couple events, don’t get what their misset expectations wanted, and then drop out, all in a couple weeks.  Or I’ve seen people decide to take up sports activities: they take a couple short lessons, aren’t instantly experts, aren’t being continually asked to dance or winning races or whatever, and they stop coming, before they’ve really had a chance to meet people and grow into the new activity.  We’ve been led to demand immediate gratification, and to “change the channel” when we don’t get it.

Third, you get out of these groups what you put into them.  This is especially true with the social groups me mentioned (many of which in the gay community are aligned along sports of sexual fetish lines).  If you’re in a running club, you’ve got to go running to meet the people who run, to hang out with them, and to get to know them.  If you join a leather club, you’ve got to have an interest in leather and some of the associated sex activities, you have to go to their group functions, and you have to dive in there and meet people.  You don’t have to step up to a board position right off the bat, but you can bet there are tasks you could volunteer to help with.  If you aren’t being active in the group, the group won’t be active around you.

Thanks for doing your great columns, Glenn.

At least one person (Hi, Tom) knew that it was me who had written the letter, despite it only being signed in the paper with my first name.

Coors Beer and the Gay Community

Long before I came out — perhaps even as early as age 14 or so — I knew that “You don’t drinks Coors.”  I never knew why at that age, but I took it as gospel.  It wasn’t until a decade later that I learned that the proscription was linked to anti-gay activities on the company’s part, that no gay bar in the world served Coors.  Again, I accepted it as gospel that the company was simply bad.

I bet a lot of people did likewise.  And they still do today.

Another five or seven years down the line, I was working for a gay newspaper (OutNOW! in Silicon Valley; now defunct as a newspaper, but the name is used for a magazine-type publication), and Coors started trying to do outreach to the gay community, trying to repair its damaged reputation.  (After all, with the gay community representing some 10% of the market — perhaps more, given disposable incomes and “bar = social arena” situations — and with Coors being a distant third among the nation’s top breweries, writing off that segment of potential business is not the smartest idea.)

Actually, Coors had been making changes for some time before that.  The had established a gay and lesbian employees group.  They had instituted domestic partner benefits.  They had donated money to a handful of gay pride organizations and the like — those who would consider taking the money.  They had split the beer company off from both the brewing technologies and the Coors family’s foundation.

They had tried to make inroads with national gay organizations (I forget if it was the Human Rights Campain Fund or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force), but had been rebuffed.  “Everybody” knew that Coors was a hateful, right-wing, fundamentalist, anti-gay, yadda yadda yadda company, and the national organization wanted to see documentation of their giving to such causes.  Coors Brewing could not supply such documentation, claiming that it did not exist because they did not give such funds.  In light of what “everybody” knew, though, this merely proved that they were lying, withholding such info.  (Think about that logic a moment: we know you’re guilty, so any failure to prove your guilt means you are lying and thus proves your guilt.)

Now, what was the origin of the Coors boycott back in the 1970s?  Do you know?  I mean, do you really know?  Apparently the answer is two-fold.  First, the Coors management fought attempts to unionize its workers, and attempts at coalition building to combat this included pleas to the gay community and other perceived progressive groups.  Second and most important, though, was Anti Bryant’s “Save the Children” campaign.  In an article in San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, a writer listed a number of donors to Bryant’s campaign, including Coors.  We were tossing out orange juice at the time, so this was all we needed to toss an entire brand of beer as well.  Unfortunately, the writer was wrong; Coors was not a donor to Bryant’s campaign, and the B.A.R. later printed a retraction.  Of course, retractions end up in small print, buried somehwere in the middle of the paper, and they never get quite the publicity that the original story does.

And thus the Coors boycott began, and took on a life of its own.  Today, it is even thought of in some circles as a legacy of Harvey Milk, sainted martyr of the gay community.  (Is the boycott something he supported and wanted to continue forever and ever amen?   Beats me.  But invoking Harvey’s name in conjunction with it has a way of shutting up the opposition: “If this is what [Saint] Harvey wanted, it must be true and good.”)

So now we come to today.  The boycott is still at least somewhat active in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, but at best sparsely held to elsewhere in the country.  A couple high-profile situations have hit the press regarding groups taking funds from Coors — like a Los Angeles gay community center — with major negative backlash (at least in San Francisco/Los Angeles/New York, if nowhere else).  A lot of energy has been expended by people who want to continue the boycott to find out who the majority stakeholders are in Coors, who the individuals give money to, how much, and so on, attempting to justify the boycott by showing us how bad (some of) the people who profit from Coors are.

The first questions I always ask when I see these reactions is “Who runs Miller and Budweiser, and where do their profits go?  Who are the majority stakeholders of Ford and Microsoft and Shell Oil and Nabisco?   Have you thoroughly researched the people who made your car, your computer, your toaster, your ballpoint pen and found out where they donate money?”

The follow-up question is “Can a company change?  Ever?  Or does its past taint it eternally?”  (And if so, how do you justify calling a man “gay” if he has ever, even once, had sex with a woman?  And what about that vacation you took to Germany?)

It’s easy to target a company which has a long-running boycott against it, because those who are interested in seeing the boycott continue — and who and why would that be, hmm? — provide you all the info real easy.  (Or at least they provide you with the negative info.  Again, hmm.)

As my friend Alan observed, the real tragedy is not that some rodeo association or street fair or community center takes money from Coors, it’s that they take money from alcohol companies in the first place.  The big booze companies are so eager for our business that they will gladly give us sponsorship money, and we’re glad to take it, as though someone, anyone giving us money means we are recognized and that we have self-worth.

(Note: I don’t drink Coors — never have — and if I have a choice, I avoid Bud and Miller as well.  Industrial beer sucks.)

Dr. Laura

Updated from original post dated September 23, 1999…

Okay, I don’t outright hate Dr. Laura.  When she limits herself to dealing with family and marriage issues — the stuff she is licensed for — her advice is generally pretty good.  But she gets on my nerves.  (And those of a lot of people.  She got parodied in a Stephanie Brush humor column, and a version of her even got used as a patsy by the super-villain The Kingpin in the “Spider-Man” comic strip.  And try this short bit for fun.)

She has a tendency to weigh the importance of kids in the family too strongly for my tastes, coming off more or less as “If you have kids, they are your entire life until they are 18 years old.  To have any pleasure of your own that does not both include and focus around the kids is wrong.”  I don’t have kids, myself, and I have little expectation of ever doing so, but this seems a bit heavy handed.  Not completely wrong, but not completely right, either.  Just “over the top.”

(My favorite — not — example of this was when a male caller talked about how he had come to terms with being gay, and how he and his wife were considering getting a divorce.  Dr. Laura’s response?  Since he and his wife had a child, divorce was not an option.  The couple must stick it out until the daughter grew up; they were not allowed to develop other relationships or otherwise have lives of their own.  Another decade of misery and stress for both parents was the only solution Dr. Laura would consider.  Never mind what that situation might do to the child.)

She also has a tendency to be abrasive with her callers, jumping on side issues (especially kid-related ones) rather than letting the caller speak through their problem.  Sometimes this is the right thing to do, as many callers are rather unfocused and/or unwilling to self-analyze.   Most of the time, though, it just comes off as abuse from the advisor.

The biggest problem with Dr. Laura is when she moralizes.  She goes outside the bounds of being an advice show and into the realm of preaching about what is wrong with society.  (Two of her favorite topics in 1999 are (a) homosexuality and (b) libraries and the Internet.)  She also has a tendency to quote from news stories and letters, giving minimal context, using those phrases which support her or deride those she is opposed to.  To someone used to reading between the lines and being suspicious of such “opinion journalism,” it is evident what she is doing, but does her average listener have the skills and skepticism to sift around her statements?  And then there is her use of hot-button words like “pedophilia,” words which evoke a reaction stronger than is warranted by whatever story (usually kids and the Internet) she is dealing with.

Further, she gives no opportunity for people with differing opinions to express them to her.  Callers to her show are apparently carefully screened in order to prevent confrontation on issues.  Dr. Laura explicitly avoids having an e-mail address, and there is not even an obvious way to contact her (or her people) on her web site (there is a chat forum of sorts, but it is subject to editting and enforced “politeness”; it is easy to guess what is apt to happen to anti-Dr. Laura opinions there).  The end result of this is that Dr. Laura has a “bully pulpit” from which she is allowed to speak her mind without fear of contradiciton.

This also means that the only recourse for people who oppose her views is to express themselves via the press, or to attempt to have radio stations (and now, television stations) drop/limit her show.  And that just gives more grist for her mill, allowing her to say that she (innocent, good-hearted little her) is being attacked.   (And then she quotes only the extreme bits of such articles, of course.)  Her favorite claim on being attacked seems be that it comes from “gay activists,” without detailing who they are or what their agendas might be, tarring all gay and lesbian people with the same brush.

So what can or should be done about Dr. Laura and her shows?  With neither the ability nor the hope of getting her to moderate her opinions and moralizing, and without trying to outright stop (i.e., censor) her, the best suggestion is to try and limit her instead.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, the 1999 popularity of her radio show was such that its carrier, KGO, expanded her show to about double the previous amount of weekly time, even going so far as to bump the schedules of their local talk radio hosts into later slots and removing their female host from weekdays altogether, relegating her to reduced hours on weekends, plus fill-in slots for the other hosts.  Dr. Laura’s annoyance factor and the amount of time spent moralizing went up dramatically as a result (although I can’t be sure whether there was a percentage increase for such as well as a total time increase).  Fortunately, in July 2000, backlash and negative reaction to Dr. Laura (and her then-upcoming televison program) had increased to the point that she was bumped completely off KGO and onto its conservative sister station, KSFO. Ask your local radio or television station that carries her show to cut her show back to a smaller time slot.  In addition to limiting her time in the “pulpit,” it will encourage her to focus on advising individuals — the ostensible purpose of her show — and it will enable your radio station to give more variety to the listeners by using more hosts, hopefully even local ones rather than someone with a national focus like Dr. Laura.  Everyone will win.

For more info on Dr. Laura and the fight to moderate her bully pulpit, visit the Stop Dr. Laura website.  (Note: I am not associated with this website in any way.)

Cologne

Several years ago, at a rodeo host hotel (where then men should be butch and manly, and the women, too), I got on the elevator after a pair of West Hollywood queens got off, and I was nearly overwhelmed by the fumes.  Although I didn’t say it verbally, I sure thought it hard:

“Girlfriend!  Leave some in the bottle for next time!”

GLAAD

“If they’re GLAAD, why are they always so pissed?”

G.L.A.A.D. is the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a media watchdog group that pays attention to portrayals of lesbians and gay in film, television, and other popular media.