AugTober

Hot enuff fer ya?

It's sure as hell hot enough for me and I LOVE summer. My fellow blogger, Jake over at NoFo (and his huzband-to-be, Justin), had a heck of a time during the Chicago marathon yesterday, along with 100's of others, until the race organizers finally called a halt to the damned thing.

Now Chicago's weather has arrived here in NYC. It was hot last night. I had the a/c blasting in my bedroom all night long. I was still hot. When I got up it was hot (the house is an old Victorian, so only select rooms have window units). The bathroom was like an oven.

I can take this weather in July, but it's the middle of October, fer cryin'-out-loud, and although I'm no great fan of winters in New Jersey, I do the like the certainty that when the weather gets wearisome, no matter what the season, it will change in just a few months. But these days I'm starting to wonder.

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I sat down at my desk this morning and my cellphone immediately "dinged" to let me know that somebody had sent me a text-message. Someone, who shall remain nameless but she's spending today with her mother and cousins, had awakened in the dead of night (as is her wont) and, in a fit of boredom, couldn't get her iPod to reboot and wondered if I'd send her the instructions for rebooting it. I located the instructions (all 4 paragraphs of it) and realized that it would take me an hour to key it into my cellphone. Throwing caution to the wind I called her (6:30 a.m. PDT)and talked her through it (thrown the little switch on top. Hold down the "Menu" AND "Select" buttons simultaneously for about 10 seconds until the Apple logo appears. Lather, rinse, repeat if necessary. By then, though, her mom and cousins were up and they were all apparently ready to dive into the sauce (so I believe) so it was pointless to try to have a coherent conversation with any of them. These so-called "Cousins Days" of hers seem to me to be little more than excuses to get hammered and to card-shark the hell out of each other.

I hope they're having a good time today. (They usually do!)

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Whilst websurfing this ayem I came across an item (the Huffington Post?) about Bob Novak (remember him? Valerie Plame's outer?) saying he'd alleged that most of the Republican membership of the Senate (and probably the House, too) had always known about Larry Craig, not just that he was gay, but that he was a notorious tearoom queen, too.

Not to be outdone in terms of co-signing Larry's denial bullshit, another item alleged that Idaho has proposed to induct him into their Hall of Fame. I only wish I were kidding.

Apparently the Roy Cohn Memorial "Whatever the fuck it is that I am, I'm NOT THAT" Club in Washington (and Idaho) has a huge charter membership on both sides of the partition, er, aisle.

Fantasyland!

When I was a kid, watching the grand opening of DisneyLand in Anaheim in living black & white on channel six out of Philly (ABC), I was enthralled to find out that they had various "theme areas" to the park. There was Frontierland (because Davy Crockett was a Disney franchise), Tomorrowland (with it's sleek RocketShip), Adventureland (with it's Pirate Ship) and Fantasyland. When my imagination turned, as it often did, to the subject of my rescue, when the Knight in Shining Armor (my father) rode in to rescue me from the clutches of the Evil Queen (my mother), he and I were then always torn between riding off into Tomorrowland or Fantasyland. Generally, though, we came down in favor of Fantasyland.

I got enabled (a lot) by people who wanted to control me over the years. The adults with whom I lived while I was raising myself, the Navy, some well-meaning but totally controlling friends in college, lovers, bosses, et al. President Shitforbrains got enabled a lot, too, by the finest politicians and institutions that his daddy's money could buy. Eventually I hit a bottom and had to face a lot of realities, real fast. There's nothing like waking up in a jail cell on a Sunday morning with a DUI and no bail to get your attention.

And there's nothing like a quick trip to Iraq to give Assahola Bush a slap or two in the face, regarding the "real life" he's been ignoring for years now.

There's a wonderful piece in The Huffington Post about it today. Go check it out, here.

It's a funny thing about Fantasy. It can be whatever your pea-sized brain needs it to be. Whatever serves your immediate and unbending, unyielding, needs. Fantasy. Great word that. It implies a total denial of current reality.

Speaking of that, one of my favorite moments of all times in the theater comes in "Angels in America" when a doctor confronts Roy Cohn with the truth about his disease. Roy absolutely, vehemently, denies that he is "gay." Oh, he may have had sex with men, but he is not gay. He threatens the doctor with ruination if the doctor even utters the thought that Roy might be "gay." Roy sums up his feelings about it thusly, "whatever it is that I am... it's NOT THAT!"

And that was the end of that. Oh yes, he took it up the butt from a string of handsome young men (proteges all), but he was NOT THAT.

Pacino was (well, wasn't he always?) over the top in his performance of the scene. But he definitely captured the essence of what Cohn was all about. Absolutely controlling and dictating what people even thought about him. Or, at least, he tried to.

That's why, slightly later in the play, as Cohn lay dead of AIDS in the hospital, one of the most breathtaking pieces of sheer theatricality I have ever seen in my life occurs when the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production) steps out of the shadows to say Kaddish over his corpse. It brought tears to my eyes and spoke volumes regarding the subject of forgiveness.

Anyway, Dubya is a lot like Cohn. Controlling. Pigheaded. Absolutely Right and everyone else is absolutely wrong. A dictator. Cruel. Self-centered. Egotistical. Completely unsolicitous of others unless he's gonna git sumthin' outta it.

There are two types of people in his world. Himself and all the little people.

He should only be so lucky as Roy Cohn when the time comes for someone to say Kaddish over him.

And speaking of denial, see also the latest on Larry Craig. He's still hiding his queerness behind his children. As though he were the first gay guy to get married and sire kids as beards.