5 Random Thoughts

1. Everyone thinks the feminist movement happened because of white women writers and activists like Gloria Steinem, Simone De Beauvoir, and Betty Friedan. But it didn’t happen that way. It wasn’t that sexy. Rather, it was economic. The white middle class was having a harder and harder time maintaining itself. A middle class lifestyle is expensive. You have these huge mortgages. Two car payments have to be made. The fucking living room has to be redecorated. Then you have to pay for your kids’ college tuitions while saving up for retirement. At a certain point, during the 60s, white male suburbanites said to their wives, “Look, I can’t do this by myself anymore. You gotta get a job. You gotta pull your own weight here or I’m gonna die from a heart attack at 50.” So the wives started working too. But they were hardly revolutionary; if anything, they were behind the curve on this one. Black women and working class white women always had to work beside their husbands. They never had the luxury to be stay-at-home moms. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I love the intellectual feminists; they’re eloquent writers and very inspirational. However, they were hardly the core.

2. My Thursday afternoon women’s support group is the only real face-to-face socializing I have in my life. I love it. The only thing I noticed, though, is that there’s a lot of empty talk and whining without any attempt to get real solutions. It’s weird. It can be very supportive and emotional, but it’s meaningless. I mean, Monica’s lamenting the fact that she’s been with the same guy for the last 15 years and during this time he’s cheated on her five times. Five times?! She’s crying and crying about it, but nobody’s asking her why she’s stayed with this loser for so long. What is she getting out of this? Fifteen years is a long time to be dating someone. Dating is what you do in high school and your early twenties. It’s not where you want to be when you’re 40 years old! And then there’s this other woman whose name I can never remember. She loves to hear herself talk and can hog up the entire 90 minutes without anyone making any attempt to shut her up. In our last meeting she went on and on about her stupid cat and how it’s a shame people don’t hold the door for others anymore. Who cares?! Why are we putting up with this? This happens a lot. People crying about their horrible, fucked up childhoods. Just move on already.

3. But back to the whole women’s issues thing. I’ll always be a feminist and I think most people, men or women, are even if they don’t realize it. But does feminism, the way it has evolved, address the issues in my life? So much energy is spent talking about how women are hitting a glass ceiling at the office, never getting the corner office or their own parking space in the corporate garage. This is so far removed from what I’m concerned about. I mean, I’m not climbing anywhere so there’s never been a glass ceiling to hit. And then you see these successful businesswomen getting together for lunch, talking about the diamond rings they’re going to buy for themselves without men or a marriage to necessitate it. Is this what feminism has come to mean? That now women can be materialistic, corporate assholes just like their male counterparts?

4. At first I was really alarmed about the rise in hate groups in this country. I still am, but now I feel really bad for them. They’re poor white people who have been poor for generations and they’re sick of it. The world is changing so rapidly and they’re afraid, correctly, that they’re being left behind and nobody cares about them. So they’re afraid AND angry. The white-supremacist movement is the only thing that really addresses their needs, as misguided as it is. In the last election neither Obama or McCain talked about poverty. They only addressed middle class concerns. But the more I read about the white supremacist movement, the more I see how much they have in common with radical Muslim terrorists. This is what naturally happens when frustration and rage becomes organized. There should an international Poor People’s Party that incorporates the socialist ideals of these hate groups with the commonality of poverty of people all over the globe. Everywhere you look, in developed countries and undeveloped countries, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poor. Poor white Americans have more in common with textile workers in Thailand than they do with their better-off brethren.

5. The secret history of the American educational system is very interesting. I didn’t know until I went to grad school that in the beginning of our Republic, school teachers were primarily men who were very learned, intellectual, and passionate about their profession. It was a calling and they wanted to change the world by making Americans well educated. But this bothered those in power. They were afraid of what that would mean, to have an informed public. For example, coal miners might read about Marxism and form unions. People would question the practice of forced child labor. Things like that. So they got rid of these men and replaced them with women who were poorly trained, had not gone to college (many times having only an 8th grade education themselves), and became teachers only because they were merely spinsters and didn’t have a husband to take care of them. Naturally, the quality of schools in this country plummeted and teaching became less respected. Salaries for teachers decreased as well. That was intentional. It’s only fairly recently that men have returned to teaching in public schools so that now we have men and women entering this profession who are properly trained, college educated, and passionate about what they do.

5 Areas Where Liberals Sort of Agree with Neo-Nazis

As you all know, I’ve been visiting a lot of white supremacist sites. It’s pretty much the usual schtick (pun intended) over and over again by poor marginalized white people. The Jews control everything and black people are just slightly advanced chimpanzees. If you were a rabid Muslim terrorist who wanted to prove that Americans were evil and ignorant, you’d pretty much point to these people. But anyway, I did notice a few things that prove the whole “politics makes strange bedfellows” cliché …

1. Both Liberals and Neo-Nazis opposed the Invasion of Iraq. Basically the Neo-Nazis support any Arab country because they all oppose Israel. Neo-Nazis express great concern about the plight of the Palestinians and feel that Iran is not the nuclear threat as described by the Jewish-controlled media. They feel that American foreign policy in the Middle East is wrongly shaped by Zionist interests. Liberals also opposed the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it was an unprovoked attack and that it overstepped the boundaries of international law. Liberals too are suspicious of the American government’s motives, and feel our actions in the Middle East are fueled by oil company greed and imperialism. They too feel our country’s foreign policy is wrongly shaped – but by the neocons (of whom many are Jewish – Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, to name a few). Liberals also oppose an attack on Iran and feel that the U.S. is overly paranoid about their nuclear capabilities and actual threat.

2. Both hate Eminem. To the Neo-Nazis, Eminem has betrayed the white race by adopting and endorsing a black form of music. They call him a “whigger” – a white nigger, or a white person who emulates black culture to an obsessive degree. Liberals hate him because his lyrics have been misogynistic and homophobic.

3. Both want to open up elections for third-party candidates. No need for explanation. The Neo-Nazis would probably nominate NSM leader Jeff Schoep, whereas the liberals would nominate Ralph Nader.

4. Both feel the media is controlled by the few. As usual, the Neo-Nazis point to the Jewish elite in Hollywood and beyond. Liberals point to the two or three multinational media conglomerates such as Time Warner and Viacom.

5. Both hate the Republican Party. As far as liberals go, this is a no-brainer. But neo-Nazis hate the Republican Party and former president George W. Bush because they view them as beholden to Jewish/Zionist influence– hence the wars in the Middle East that serve to protect Israel. They also feel that the conservatives and their party have betrayed them because, in their eyes, the Republican Party used to be the party of the white Christian people, but now they are in bed with the Jews and other non-whites, as evidenced by the presence of both Collin Powell and Condeleeza Rice in the Bush Administration. I would even go out on a limb and say that the Neo-nazis probably hate the Republican Party even more than the liberals do, if that is possible.

Question of the Day

"Why is it that when a black man wants to preserve his culture and heritage it's a good thing, but when a white person wants the same thing, we're called haters?" -- Thomas Robb, the national director of the Knights Party (an offshoot of the Klu Klux Klan).

The Rise of Hate Groups in America

Last year, about this time when I was in art therapy, one of my fellow patients commented that she hoped Obama would win because it would improve race relations. She was one of those old-school liberals who was still stuck in the 1970s. She always got on my nerves. For example, she was of Chinese descent so she was absolutely thrilled when Beijing hosted the summer Olympic Games. Now, why should a country, which is not even a democracy and is one of the worst human rights violators in the world (according to Amnesty International), even be considered for this? I thought it was a travesty. Then, there was that controversy over whether or not the female Chinese gymnasts were even old enough to compete. When various judges expressed suspicion, she insinuated that those claims were somehow political. Excuse me, but anybody could see that the Chinese were flat-out lying. Those girls were NOT 16 years old (the minimum age requirement); rather, they were more like 11 or 12 – 14 at the most. It was obvious. So then, with all seriousness, she says, “Yes, but Chinese girls mature later in life and I don’t think the western officials are taking this into account.” What the fuck?!!

Anyway, back to Obama. I didn’t see then what she meant about his nomination improving race relations. Did she really think that his becoming President would cause white people to say to themselves, Gee, I guess I’m starting to like black people more? Would black people say to themselves, Gee, I guess white people are coming around? Furthermore, what’s wrong with race relations in this country? I don’t recall hearing about any race-related riots in the streets. It’s not like this is the early 90s and O.J. Simpson just got away with murder. It’s not like there’s turmoil in the ghetto because the police who beat up Rodney King just got let off the hook. I agree that the early 90s was something of a nadir in black and white relations. But it was 2008 when we had this conversation and she didn’t seem to realize that the issues had changed.

As it turns out, we were both wrong.

While much of America is rejoicing the election of a very different kind of politician (myself included), the flip side is that there has been a surge in hate group and Neo-Nazi support. In fact, the day after Obama’s election, the Aryan Nation reported so much traffic to their website, their server crashed. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the numbers of individuals linked to openly racist organizations has increased by 54% since 2000. This dovetails with the findings of the Department of Homeland Security, who are just as concerned about internal terrorism as they are about external. Today there are approximately 926 hate/white supremacist/neo-Nazi groups across the United States. California and Texas have the most – 84 and 66 respectively. North Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico only have one or two each.

I decided to check out some of these hate sites. The American Nazi Party website is pretty minimalist and short on information. In fact, it’s downright boring. You can order a copy of MEIN KAMPF and some other standard literature, but there isn’t much to actually read on the site, strangely enough. So I bopped on over to the Aryan Nation website, which looks like it might have been designed by the Hell’s Angels. The color scheme is atrocious -- there’s way too much black and not enough red or white. That was a turn-off right away. There’s a section called NEEDFUL THINGS where they ask for donations (used furniture, old computers, calculators, etc.), as well as a FORUM and ACTIVIST TIPS. Stuff like that. It’s a practical website, but short on political content.

By far the most thorough and articulate hate website belongs to the National Socialist Movement, which seems to be somewhat “assimilationist” and, from what I can tell by their photo gallery, is more youth-oriented. They have a blog which is updated frequently, although nobody ever comments (kind of like here!). There is also a FAQ section, a 25 Point Party Thesis, and an extensive, alphabetized article list (“Jokes,” “The Jewish Child Porn Industry,” “Eugenics,” “The Failure of Multiculturism” etc.). I searched and searched and searched and could not find their economic stance, in spite of the fact that they have the word “Socialist” in their name. They’re very vocal and opinionated about everything else (The War in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, lactose intolerance, Katrina …), but for some reason won’t say anything about economic policy. This was annoying. On Youtube you can see clips of them marching on Washington saying they’re not about violence, they only want to advance the White Race peacefully and democratically, etc. They definitely know how to market themselves and, in my opinion, are the most dangerous because of their sophistication. Clearly, they are the user-friendly version of hate.

I wish I was savvy enough to hack into their sites and take them down, but alas, my technical skills are pretty limited. I have been tempted to become a member so I could lurk in their forums, but I’m paranoid they can see my IP address. So instead, I’ve been reading a lot of information on the Internet. All the news sources say the same thing – hate groups are on the rise in America because there’s the perfect storm of: 1) poor economy; 2) much debate over immigration and illegal aliens (especially as they relate to homeland security); and 3) the election of an intellectual black man in the White House. I would also put my two cents in and add my theory that the world is going through so much stark, dramatic change both nationally and globally that lower income, uneducated white people feel they are being left out and left behind. They are frightened and mad. Not surprisingly, the Secret Service have had to work extra hard to keep the President safe because there are more death threats than usual for an American leader.

So all of this is pretty disturbing. Call me naïve, but I didn’t think white people like this still existed in such abundance. They are probably exaggerating their popularity (as are the civil rights groups who monitor them), but the sheer number of documented groups across the country is shocking. I can see why the Department of Homeland Security is so concerned. After all, the first real terrorist attack on our soil was committed by the American militant Timothy McVeigh (although, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he did not have racist beliefs). But in a way I’m glad this stuff is out in the open. People like this should be identifiable. I think that censoring them or jailing them would just force them to go underground where they would morph into terrorist groups. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t already. That would be the new frontier

Sarah Palin To Guest on Oprah Show in November

I went to the Oprah website and read some of the 500 or so comments already piling up in response to this. I put in my two cents:

I voted for Barack Obama wholeheartedly, but I was extremely disappointed last year in how Oprah covered the Presidential Campaign, endorsing Barack Obama without giving the other candidates any air time on her show. It was unprofessional and I expected more from her. I also did not appreciate her telling me who I should vote for. It was disrespectful and insulting to my intelligence. There was much talk in the liberal media that no matter what she did -- endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- she would have gotten a backlash from either the black community or women. But she would have avoided a lot of grief by not endorsing anyone at all and keeping her voting decisions to the privacy of a voting booth. That was the mistake -- not that she endorsed a particular person, but the fact that she endorsed someone in the first place. It was inappropriate. Am I happy she is having Sarah Palin on the show? Well, it's a little too late isn't it? Having said that, I think Sarah Palin is a disturbing individual, but she is a public figure in the news and therefore deserves coverage on this show.

White People Were Slaves Too

White Cargo - The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America. By Don Jordan and Michael Walsh.

The New York Times Book Review By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU; Published: April 27, 2008:

Every schoolchild recognizes certain images of this nation’s darker side: slaves kidnapped from their native lands, shipped in disease-ridden holds, traded like animals, and then whipped and worked on America’s plantations. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, both of whom have made documentaries and both of whom live in London, retell that familiar tale — although the victims here are not Africans but English, Irish and Scottish people, sent to the colonies largely against their will in the 17th and 18th centuries.

“White Cargo” begins with the discovery of a 17th-century skeleton in Maryland in 2003; it turned out to be that of a boy, about 16 years old, who had suffered from tuberculosis and injuries consistent with hard labor. Presumably he had been a slave, since his body had not been properly buried, but thrown into the basement of a home near Annapolis, “in a hole under a pile of household waste.” He was northern European, probably British, one of tens of thousands of victims of a century-long practice, stretching from Boston to Barbados, that treated whites as slaves and that largely predated both the black slave trade and American independence.

Mainstream histories refer to these laborers as indentured servants, not slaves, because many agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights. The authors argue, however, that slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. Many early settlers died long before their indenture ended or found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. And many never achieved freedom or the American dream they were seeking.

This vividly written book tells the tale from both sides of the Atlantic. Its condemnation is aimed at both American planters and the English elite, who were blinded by greed, arrogance and a desire to get rid of their “society’s sweepings.” Horribly, one of the first groups sent to America was made up of street children, ages 8 to 16, who arrived in 1619. This slave trade, which the authors say was often “dressed up in bright humanitarian clothes” for the public, later extended to beggars, Gypsies, prostitutes, dissidents, convicts and anyone else who displeased the upper classes. Founders like George Washington do not fare particularly well, but Sir John Popham and Oliver Cromwell come off worse. Benjamin Franklin is one of the few good guys.

“White Cargo” is meticulously sourced and footnoted — which is wise, given its contentious material — but it is never dry or academic. Quotations from 17th- and 18th-century letters, diaries and newspapers lend authenticity as well as color. Excerpts from wills, stating how white servants should be passed down along with livestock and furniture, say more than any textbook explanation could. The authors are not only historians, but also natural storytellers with a fine sense of drama and character.

Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, their playful way with words and love of literary allusion come through. There are kidnapping victims of the kind written about in Daniel Defoe’s “Colonel Jack,” and a tumultuous ocean voyage that may have inspired Shakespeare’s writing of “The Tempest.”

What little discussion there is about this forgotten bit of American history is sometimes linked to those with ulterior political motives, usually interested in delegitimizing current-day discourse about race or the teaching of black history. “White Cargo,” which was first published in Britain last year, has a refreshing sense of distance and neutrality. The authors take care to quote African-American sources and clearly state that they have no wish to play down the horrors of the much larger black slave trade that followed. If anything, Jordan and Walsh offer an explanation of how the structures of slavery — black or white — were entwined in the roots of American society. They refrain from drawing links to today, except to remind readers that there are probably tens of millions of Americans who are descended from white slaves without even knowing it.

-- The New York Times Book Review

Racist Liberals

I love group therapy. The women in it are cool, smart, wise, honest, and funny. We come from all ages and colors, but we can relate to each other on so many levels. The discussions can be almost like salons where we talk about not just the usual mental health issues, but about what’s going on in the world.

Today was especially good because we had a pretty decent turnout in spite of the rainy weather. We started talking about racism on the part of so-called enlightened liberals who treat people of color differently because they think they’re being culturally hip. Monica, who is of mixed Mexican and Scottish descent, has had the tedious experience of having to explain to (usually white) liberals that: 1) No, she doesn’t speak Spanish at all (to which they invariably reply, “Why not? Don’t you want to learn about your culture?); 2) No, she’s never been to Mexico (to which they invariably reply, “Why not? Don’t you want to learn about your culture?”); and 3) She doesn’t really eat or know how to cook Mexican food (“Why not? Don’t you want to learn about your culture?”).

These comments are typically followed by not-so-subtle insinuations that perhaps she is ashamed of her so-called cultural heritage. The subtext here is that, because she looks Mexican (dark hair and dark eyes), she is somehow obligated to be “ethnic” in ways we would never expect of white people (or, more specifically, European-Americans). Nobody ever says to white people, “How come you don’t speak German? And why have you never been to Berlin? And you don’t eat frankfurters? What’s wrong with you? Are you ashamed of your heritage?” Interestingly, when she informs them that she is also part Scottish, they shut up. They never expect her to identify her European roots. After all, they never do.

Monica is very smart. She said, “I think European Americans (because that is what white Americans should be called) are conflicted about being white. They never bother to learn about their own heritage and ancestors, but expect people of color to. As if, somehow, people of color can never be completely American, as if we are destined to somehow straddle two cultures. I was born and raised in the United States. I shouldn’t have to explain this to anyone.”

It’s racism, pure and simple. And it comes from liberals who think they’re “multicultural” and “worldly.” But a lot of those liberals have serious issues with their own American culture (which they refuse to acknowledge) and project a romantic notion on to other cultures. They cannot fathom that there are people of color who do not have issues with their own American identity. They do not see themselves as Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans, or African-Americans. They are simply “Americans.” Just like European Americans are simply “Americans.”

I know a lot of those liberals. I went to college with them. They were always so politically correct, always pointing out how progressive they were. Nobody could stand them. They could talk forever about poverty in the ghettos and infant mortality rates in the black community, but if you ever tried to get them to talk about poor white people, they could care less. Which is pretty racist.

And classist. Liberals hate to talk about class, lest it come to light just how privileged they are in comparison to their neer-do-well cousins living in trailers. They never want to admit that classism breeds racism, that racism is the product of classism – never the other way around. Suddenly, when it comes to this point, they become suspiciously un-intellectual. They won’t go there. It’s much more comforting to feel superior to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party while simultaneously being just a racist in their expectations and assumptions of what people of color are supposed to be.

Guess Who Said This

"I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."

My Neighbor Wants to Have Sex with Me

I keep telling myself I should have a lesbian fling (because you only live once), but I never get around to it and just don’t ever feel like it. I remember once, I was with a group of really cool actors in a closed off room at a bar. We started talking about sex while lounging on big purple velvet couches and sipping martinis. As it turned out, I was the only person there who had never been in an orgy, fucked someone on a plane, had anal sex, or made out with a woman. I felt so boring!

So yeah, I guess I’m not that sexually adventurous. A few opportunities have come my way, but I always passed them up. Practically out of sheer laziness. I figure, if I ever make love with a woman, it would have to be with Angelina Jolie. There’s really no other woman I would consider, but you never know. There was a show on OPRAH recently about straight women who thought they would never go for a woman, but then surprised themselves by falling in love with a lesbian who, for various reasons, proved to be the exception, the special one who made them switch teams. The affairs would go on for a year or so and then the straight woman would back to being straight. Hmm. Interesting.

So anyway, I’m writing all this because I recently had the following conversation with my friend Sara while we were on our way to I-Hop for breakfast:

Sara (out of nowhere): So, are you a dyke?

Me: No, but everyone thinks I am. I don’t care.

Sara: I’m not a dyke, but I’ve done certain things.

Me: Like what?

Sara: I’ve fooled around with women.

Me: Oh, well that’s not unusal. Most people experiment.

Sara: Do you?

Me: Nah. I never did. But I don’t judge people who do.

Sara: So you wouldn’t want to fool around then?

Me: Not really.

Sara: Have I offended you?

Me: No! Not at all. It’s very flattering actually.

Sara: I fool around with my best friend from high school and her husband at their house in Plainfield. I tried to get my husband to join us, but he won’t do it. He’s very conservative.

Mr: Hmm.

Sara: So, you wouldn’t want to do anything like that?

Me: No. But I’m not judging you, don’t worry.

Then I promised I’d take her to a lesbian bar on condition that we also go to a gay men’s bar because the music’s better over there.

In Case This Blog Gets Deleted ...

Go to www.orange5000.blogspot.com

Why? My Sitemeter records show that someone from Morristown, New Jersey with a certain IP address left comments here 2 months ago about quotes allegedly stolen from the compilation book of Keith Richards quotes by a certain author. This person, who found my blog by Googling “Keith Richards Quotes”, fervently insisted I take down the quotes. After much debate, it became clear that it was very possible this person was indeed the author of that book (judging by the apparent indignation and hostility). Then I did a quick search and read various articles written about that author that said she lives in Morristown, New Jersey -- a small rural community. I did not interpret that to be a coincidence.

Recently that same location and IP address left another comment promising to notify Rolling Stone magazine about alleged copyright infringement on my blog. The snarky tone was very familiar and I knew it was the same person as the first time. My Sitemeter confirmed this. This comment was in response to my post “What Is It About Keith Richards?” wherein I said that I had gotten grief over claims that I stole quotes from that book. That person reached this site by Googling the name of that book.

Then, even more recently, someone with that same location and IP address visited this blog for 30 minutes and looked at 8 pages – but left no comment. That person found this site by Googling her full name and my name. My guess is that during this last visit, she wasn’t just browsing – she was screen-capturing posts she felt infringed on copyright in order to fulfill her promise of contacting Rolling Stone magazine.

So to avoid even more headaches, I’ve deleted all posts that have even a remote possibility of bringing on litigation.

I should add here that my other blog, Orange5000, is pretty fucking cool. I posted some of my grad school papers for lost souls floundering in early British literature courses. I figure, with the world being as competitive as it is, and with standards being higher and less forgiving than ever, today’s young adult needs all the help he/she can get. I’m just helping them out. Of course, I prefer that students credit my blog and list me in their bibliographies, but if they have to flat-out plagiarize my scholarly papers out of sheer desperation and terror, then I would partly feel flattered (and, really, what can I do about it?).

So, bookmark it: www.orange5000.blogspot.com

4 Lists of 10

10 Things I Love That Everyone Hates (or pretends to hate):
1. TOP MODEL
2. Painfully skinny fashion models
3. The possibility of Paris Hilton venturing into serious acting
4. Fidel Castro
5. The Recession (everything is so cheap!)
6. White trash cooking
7. Old Nazi film footage
8. Disappointment over President Obama
9. Small, yappy dogs
10. Farting


10 Things You Should Do Before You Die:
1. Go on a safari
2. See The Rolling Stones in concert
3. Steal something expensive
4. Get to know your parents
5. Forgive your parents
6. Buy cowboy boots and a Stetson
7. Write a passionate letter to the editors of your favorite magazine
8. Adopt a homeless animal
9. Try marijuana and cocaine and Ecstasy (but not at the same time)
10. Tell a despised person exactly what you think of him/her


10 Overrated Things:
1. The Beatles
2. French food
3. Lip moisturizer (Vaseline works much better)
4. College
5. John F. Kennedy
6. Impressionism
7. Twitter
8. Punk rock
9. Andy Warhol’s silkscreens
10. Almost any book in the English Literature curriculum in American high schools (FRANKENSTEIN, THE GREAT GATSBY, and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to name just a few)


10 Underrated Things:
1. Roxy Music (their romantic, lush sounds are endlessly influential)
2. Cilantro
3. Cliff’s Notes and the “… For Dummies” series
4. The color orange
5. The warm disposition of the English
6. George Michael (in the United States)
7. Semicolons
8. Astrology
9. Feminism
10. Jon Bon Jovi (a better-than-decent actor, passionate activist, philanthropist, devoted husband of more than 20 years, musician)

Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake

Theresa Duncan comes from humble beginnings; her mother was a grocery store clerk and her father worked as a factory drone. Jeremy Blakes’s father died of AIDS when he was 17. Theresa aned Jeremy meet in 1994 admist Washington's punk rock scene. They move to New York City. Theresa gets a job as a receptionist at Magnet Interactive, a CD-ROM company. She pitches an idea to one of the executives, a computer game aimed exclusively at girls. This has never been done before. The idea becomes reality and the final product is lauded by Entertainment Weekly and various gaming magazines. Theresa is famous, while Jeremy starts to make a name for himself as the creator of digital art paintings. Theresa and Jeremy collaborate on an animated film, HISTORY OF GLAMOUR, that is a hit at the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Everybody wants them. Gallery owners and the cultural elite regard them with great interest. They are a brilliant couple. Theresa lands a two-picture deal with Fox Studios in Hollywood and begins shopping her screenplay, ALICE UNDERGROUND, about a rock star who is kidnapped by a gang of teenagers. She claims that musician Beck, a confirmed Scientologist, is very interested in playing the main role. Jeremy is also making a splash in Tinsel Town, creating a dream sequence piece that would be featured in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. His next project is to direct Beck's latest video for MTV. Theresa and Jeremy move to Los Angeles in 2002, staying temporarily at the Chateau Marmont Hotel before settling into a charming bungalow in Venice, California. Theresa is having trouble getting studio executives to produce her movie. She becomes convinced that Scientologists, and Tom Cruise in particular have sabotaged the ALICE UNDERGROUND project. She also believes that Scientologists are spying on them, collaborating with the CIA to have them removed from the country. Jeremy believes her. The phone rings and rings, but when they answer it, nobody is there. Then they find a dead cat on their roof; it is the work of the Scientologists, an omen of things to come. Theresa approaches a neighbor and asks her if she would like to join them in their new club – a club where old men would fuck them up the ass. The neighbor declines. Then Theresa calls another neighbor a whore. Soon the neighbors form a petition to have Theresa and Jeremy evicted from the neighborhood. They return to New York City and, with the help of a radical priest who believes in conspiracy theories, move into a church rectory in the East Village. But they are still being watched. Theresa and Jeremy begin attending church services conducted by the radical priest who claims that the government is covering up what really happened on September 11. Jeremy sends rambling emails to all of his friends, decrying the Scientologists and their collusion with Vice President Dick Cheney. Jeremy writes a 27 page treatise detailing the machinations of the Church of Scientology, listing film director Francis Ford Coppola as being heavily involved in a smear campaign to damage Theresa’s reputation because she wrote a negative review of his daughter’s movie, LOST IN TRANSLATION. The treatise is in preparation for a lawsuit Theresa and Jeremy are going to file against the Church of Scientology. Jeremy sends out more emails explaining these plans and friends grow concerned. Jeremy buys a gun and is interviewed by British television for a special on impresario Malcolm McClaren, of whom Jeremy is doing a portrait. More emails. Theresa and Jeremy begin to shun others they feel are against them or who have betrayed them. During the summer of 2007 Theresa takes a deadly cocktail of Tylenol PM and Benadryl with champagne and successfully kills herself. Her last blog entry is a quote from Kafka. Friends take turns keeping Jeremy company, fearing for his safety. Blake appears calm and emails everyone about his excitement for an upcoming show. The day before he is to leave for Detroit to attend Theresa’s funeral, he walks naked into the Atlantic Ocean off Rockaway Beach in Queens and drowns. In October of 2009 it is revealed on the celebrity blog Perez Hilton that American writer Bret Easton Ellis has been tapped by Hollywood to write a screenplay about the doomed couple, with director Gus Van Zandt attached to the project.

Below: Jeremy Blake’s piece for the film PUNCH DRUNK LOVE

Drama on a San Francisco Bus

Actual comment to the above clip on the gay Towleroad Blog by someone calling himself “Jeri Curl” …

Blacks act just like a sub-human species without respect for the preciousness and beauty of life. I do not understand them. They are very different from other people: so intensely angry. They’re always shooting, beating and killing each other or anyone else. They’re openly rude wherever you go, they drive like they’re insane, they behave carelessly as if they have nothing to live for and they attack you for being "racist" if you say anything about it. YET THEY ARE ALWAYS THE "VICTIM". Talk about a HUGE case of cognitive-dissonance. No respect for anyone…while demanding it of everyone. Disgusting.

I can’t stand people with a sense of entitlement no matter what race but let’s face it - the vast majority of people in this country with a HUGE sense of entitlement are black. Most sane people hate them for that because: 1) WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN DAMN PROBLEMS, and 2) we neither blame nor expect solutions from other people for those problems.

AND while I love my president it is entirely possible for me to hate black people who are stupid without being a racist. I love Al Gore and I hate white people who are stupid, like Rush Limbaugh and anyone named Bush. I love the Dalai Lama but hate stupid Asians like Kim Jong IL. No difference.

Yo blacks: wake up to what real equality smells like. Sit down, shut up and realize you share the planet...and the goddamn bus.

-- jeri curl

You can read more comments like this at the Towleroad blog: http://www.towleroad.com/2009/10/towleroad-guide-to-the-tube-551/comments/page/2/#comments

Hmm. I find this all very interesting. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but I suspect there’s a fair amount of tension between the predominantly white gay community and the black community, judging by the harsh response of so many (presumably) gay posters to this clip. I’m reminded of last year’s passing of the California Referendum that banned gay marriage. It was a close call but the gays lost out. Exit polls showed that white, Asian, and Hispanic voters were mostly against the Referendum (i.e., supported gay marriage), while in sharp contrast the majority of black voters were for it and thus tipped the scale. The irony, of course, is that it was not that long ago that interracial marriage (i.e., between blacks and whites) was illegal in this country.

Obama and the Nobel Prize

This morning when I checked my Facebook page, the first thing I read was Rose Marschak’s status update: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize. I thought it was some kind of joke, because the last I heard, leaders don’t win that award unless they’ve actually been in office for more than 9 months. This is, after all, an award that has previously gone to the likes of Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. I mean, don’t you have to have been around for a while? Don’t you have to have actually accomplished something? My reply to Rose’s post was: I hate to rain on everybody’s parade, but I think this is a bit premature. Soon, one of her friends replied that she agreed but surmised that perhaps this was the Swedes way of making sure Obama would not renege on his promises for greater cooperation and multilateralism. Then, my friend Mark posted: This is just the Swedes way of showing appreciation that Obama is not George W. Bush. Fair enough, but considering Bush is not a hard act to follow by any means, isn’t this nomination demeaning the gravity of the award itself?

Later that afternoon, I learned from Facebook friend Brian Rogan that the nominations were submitted on February 1, 2009. Which means that Obama was nominated when he’d only been president for two weeks.

WTF?

Is the world so desperate for hope that they have to crown an American whose leadership skills are yet to be seen? Is the world so desperate for hope that they have to crown an American leader who is still waging two wars in the Middle East – one who has, indeed, just decided to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan? Do lofty speeches of peace and reconciliation really warrant such a distinction? I don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong, I hold nothing against Obama. After all, he never volunteered for this award and seems just as genuinely surprised as the rest of the country. Apparently his spokesman’s only comment this morning to this latest news was, “Wow.”

Clearly, the world is in love with Obama and his charisma extends beyond our own shores. A recent poll catapulted the United States to the #1 position of most admired country, up from position #7 last year. Hell, we haven’t been this popular in Europe since D-Day. Suddenly, it’s okay to be an American again.

But what worries me is that this is a president who has yet to be tested, who had so little political experience when he was elected last November. Expectations are high and popularity can only get you so far. Can the world really afford to believe in a Messiah?

Fucked-Up Men

Women have always been characterized as being more prone to mental problems. Hysterical. Emotional. Irrational. However, my experience with fucked up people does not bear this out. I’ve been going to various therapy groups over the last 4 years and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that when men are really fucked up, they’re pretty much a hopeless cause. At least the straight ones. I suspect gay men are a little more in touch with their emotions and are able to talk about them better, but this is all conjecture; I really don’t know because somehow I’ve never been in a therapy group with gay men.

But yeah, fucked up straight men are really just the most fucked up people you’ll ever find on this earth. They don’t seem able to confront themselves or even want to understand themselves. They attend group meetings but don’t really participate and, if they do, they only give feedback to other people’s problems without ever exposing their own. When they see their shrink, nothing is ever really examined closely and the sessions just become lazy chat sessions, not unlike talking to a bartender. They go in endless circles analyzing their own lives, but since they are afraid to actually confront what is really going on, the analyses are nothing more than empty, superficial theorizing. They’re the same today as they were 10 years ago. There’s no progression. If I were a therapist, I’d pretty much ban all straight men from my practice and concentrate on women and gay men. At least they’re learnable, changeable, and brave.

This one guy, Phil, I met when I attended these group sessions over at Lutheran Memorial Hospital. At first things were fine. We’d go out for sushi or hang out at the dog beach. Sometimes we’d just spend time in his room and surf the internet. I made him a George Michael CD which he liked; he described the music as “sexy … very, very sexy.”

Then I found out certain things about him. Stuff he either told me or stuff that I intuited. He had some kind of nervous breakdown some twenty odd years ago when he was in college and since then he’d been living at home in his mother’s attic, usually unemployed. He worked briefly as a cab driver, but that was a long time ago and he hasn’t received a paycheck since. Basically, life is just passing him by. He doesn’t seem to mind this at all. He spends much of the day emailing his various friends from high school who put up with him because they pity him and don’t know how to get rid of him. He’s never had a girlfriend and I’m almost positive he’s still a virgin. He sees a shrink who’s a Republican and has never told him what her diagnosis of him is – and he’s never asked. All he knows is that he’s on Lithium. When I told him that Lithium is to treat manic depression, he said that he wasn’t bipolar and that the Lithium was for something else. Whatever. He goes through phases where he’s very edgy and confrontational and unpredictable, even mean-spirited. So then he shoots off a bunch of crazy emails and within the hour all the female friends respond expressing concern. Are you alright, Phil? Do you need to talk, Phil? As if he were a little boy, which I guess makes sense since emotionally he’s still about 14. He’s in denial about being bipolar but then, funnily enough, exaggerates his bipolar behavior very consciously to get a response from people. And it usually works.

One time he called me and I was depressed about something I can’t remember. Then I said something like, “Well, I guess I shouldn’t complain and feel sorry for myself. I mean, there’s people in Somalia that don’t even have clean drinking water and …” He TOTALLY BLEW UP and started ranting about how the world doesn’t understand mental illness and the sheer hell of what we go through and how the towel-heads (arabs) should all be deported and so on. This went on for a good seven minutes. I didn’t say anything because he was yelling nonstop. When he finally calmed down he said, out of breath, “Well, that was good. I needed to get that out.”

Another time he came over to my house, agitated and frenetic. Out of nowhere he goes, very exasperated, “You never wear high heel shoes. You always wear flats.” Apparently, he’d been toying with the idea of us becoming a couple, but was bothered by my shortness. I ignored the comment and we went out for a drive in his car. He goes, “I know all of these people’s secrets.” He was always talking about his mother and how influential she was. So I go, “What secrets?” And he replies, with this mischievous grin on his face, “I can’t tell you. They’re secrets.” That was the last time I hung out with him. Several months later he called me out of the blue, very friendly and calm and “normal.” I could tell he was really lonely and realized he better be on good behavior. My guess is that his old high school friends weren’t responding to his emails anymore. He was working up to ask me if I wanted to go the movies when I cut him off and said, “Well, it was nice hearing from you. Take care.” Then I hung up.

This other guy I met in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy at Masonic Hospital. His name was Peter and he used to be addicted to opiate prescription medicine but got off it and was in recovery. On the way to DBT, he got on the same train as me and we struck up a nice conversation. As it turned out, we even lived in the same neighborhood. We started hanging out that summer and he tried to turn me on to Charles Bukowski. We’d also go to these these poetry open-mic readings where he would recite these morbid stories he wrote. They were all about children and porno magazines and cat litter and filth. Just really twisted shit. Everyone put up with it because he was a nice guy, but he always went beyond his 5-minute mark and would often have to be ushered off stage. He actually assumed people would want to hear his stories for more than five minutes. He thought he was original and visionary; he thought he was talented.

He could never explain himself very well. Very evasive and mysterious. He admitted to me that he was having trouble in his support group because he never talked about himself when everyone else was bearing their soul and being very open. This eventually became an issue in the group because it was uncomfortable for everyone else to be sharing around a guy they knew nothing about. I mean, it wasn’t very reciprocal. When I asked him why he didn’t talk, he claimed he really had nothing to say.

I tried to help him out. I set up an email account for him because he didn’t have one and typed up his resume. This last part was like pulling teeth because he whined the whole time. He was always whining. Very self-absorbed and baby-like. I gave him my old laptop because I couldn’t stand how he was so removed from technology. He kept calling lap tops “lab tops.” I kept correcting him but he insisted he was right. He also referred to women as “chicks” and when I told him how annoying and antiquated that termiology was, he was almost incredulous. Like Phil, he was really only 14-years-old. A lot of cynical posturing.

Peter once told me he had 20 sessions of electric shock therapy. With a smirk he said, “Some day people will look back and see all the horrible things sick people had to go through.” But I had no sympathy for him whatsoever because he volunteered for those treatments repeatedly rather than confront the issues in his life. He wanted a quick fix (drugs or electric shock therapy), but never actual understanding.

At the end of the summer, Peter told me that his sister-in-law wanted him to work for her business, a doggie-daycare center right in our neighborhood. She wanted him to buy a van and pick up the dogs in the morning and take them to the center. But he didn’t want to. For some strange reason, he didn’t feel comfortable telling her this. We talked about it and at one point he said that his sister-in-law was in therapy and was slowly eliminating certain people from her life. “And I’m one of the last people to be eliminated,” he said cryptically. I asked him what he meant and he just repeated it, saying he didn’t know how else to explain it – as if I was dense or something, as if it should have been perfectly understandable. Finally I asked him if he was having an affair with her or did in the past. He denied it.

In October I was student teaching, doing my internship at a high school, to become an English teacher. They wanted me to attend a football game so that I could learn more about the school’s culture and see the students in a different setting. The football stadium was right in my neighborhood so it was really convenient. I called up Peter to ask him to watch the game with me. I figured it was a simple enough request and since I had done so much for him, maybe he could return the favor. I mean, it’s not like he had anything better to do, being unemployed and on welfare. So I called him and explained the situation and he started whining all over again about how he wasn’t up for it, etc. So then I TOTALLY BLEW UP and said he was a selfish bastard and not much of a friend. Then I hung up.

About three weeks later I decided to give him a call and there was a strange message on his answering machine: “If you are trying to reach Peter B., please call …” So I dialed that number and it turned out to be his sister-in-law’s number. I said to her “What’s going on? There’s this strange message on Peter’s …” Then she told me: Peter had committed suicide by jumping in front of a fast-moving Metra train at two o’clock in the morning. “He knew the train schedule and we think it was something he’d been planning for a long time,” she said in her strained voice. Apparently, she had the unenviable task of explaining this to everyone for days and giving them funeral information. Obviously, there was no open casket so he was cremated and stuffed into an urn.

Going backwards, I’ll end with Tad, the chronically homeless guy. We met because we were both volunteering at a dog shelter and struck up a conversation. I’m too tired to explain his fucked-up-ness but basically he could never be employed for very long and was constantly living in a shelter because his mother kept kicking him out of the house. He was about 33. I offered to help type up his resume since he didn’t have access to a computer, but he declined my offer. His dream was to become an artist like Picasso; he attended a second-rate art school but never graduated. He clearly had low self-esteem and so I told him that it was important to always love himself and put himself in the way of good and then he TOTALLY BLEW UP and screamed for 10 minutes about how nobody understood him and that self-esteem was the least of his worries and that I had no idea what he really needed. Which was not true. It was obvious that the first thing he needed was a job, but he never seemed to really be looking for one. I mean, he was volunteering at a dog shelter when he could have been signing up at an employment agency or whatever. The others things he needed were less obvious but even more important. He needed to love himself and to demonstrate that love by taking care of himself in the most basic ways. But he never gave himself a chance and would subconsciously fuck up the few opportunities that came his way. It didn’t take a psychic to see he was filled with this intense self-loathing and anger toward himself. Anyway, I’m almost positive he’s still homeless. Once I saw him at a busy intersection, holding up a sign "HUNGRY, NEED MONEY" and standing in the middle of the road at the red light. I just drove on and pretended I didn't see him.

So that’s the fucked-up-men trilogy for you. Now I’m in a women-only support group. Thank God.

I've Pissed Off a Lot of People at Towleroad ...

but I call things as I see it. And some people obviously don't like that.
See comments section at: http://www.towleroad.com/2009/10/exhusband-of-comedian-matt-lucas-takes-his-own-life.html

What Do These People Have In Common?

Salman Rushdie

Milan Kundera

Isabelle Huppert

Diane Von Furstenberg

Pedro Almodovar

Wes Anderson

Darren Aronofsky

Stephen Frears

Tilda Swinton

Martin Scorsese

David Lynch

Woody Allen

Debra Winger

Mike Nichols

Harmony Korine

Terry Gilliam

Julian Schnabel

Harvey Weinstein

Sam Mendes

Steve Soderbergh

Taylor Hackford

Natalie Portman

Harrison Ford

Alfonso Cuaron

Isabelle Adjani

Jeremy Irons

Ethan Coen

Penelope Cruz

Gael Garcia Bernal

Kirsten Scott Thomas

Terry Zwigoff

Keith, Redux

I swear, I cannot get enough of this man. He is so beautiful inside and out. I know a lot of you are probably thinking, "God, when is she going to get off this Keith Richards kick?" Well, never, but I promise I'll not post anything about him for a very long time after this. Maybe post something on his birthday or when his autobiography comes out in 2010. Like George Michael, he got a really huge advance after showing the publishing company a 10-page rough draft -- something like $7 million. Wow. Problem is, there are already some 8 or 9 books written about him (which I have read) so I'm wondering how much of his book is actually going to be a revelation? I already know about his drug habit (which has been covered ad infinitum) and his lovers and his children and his relationship with Mick Jagger both professionally and socially and his childhood (very close to his mother, an only child, etc.) and his run-ins with the law and his influences and his side projects and solo albums and his favorite foods (Shepard's Pie and anything with HP sauce on it) and his favorite books to read and so on. But, of course, I'm still going to pre-order it.

Hottie of the Week: Uschi Obermaier