Wednesday, January 31, 2001

Hey! Teach!

After a few weeks of negotiation, it appears that I will be teaching again this fall, at my alma mater of all places. When I was in college, it was a common joke that a degree from my university uniquely qualified a person to...teach at my university. There seemed to be a certain self-perpetuating machinery in place, since so many of my professors -- in the introductory level courses, especially -- held credentials from the place.

I've been invited to teach a mid-level journalism course, imparting my knowledge of writing and reporting to sophomores and juniors who have declared a major in my chosen field. This is my opportunity to shape careers, to mold young minds, to take my place in a tradition of scribes who have returned to the academy and insure the life of our noble profession into the next generation.

In other words, it's payback time!

Tuesday, January 30, 2001

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Jeff: So did you dress in the dark or what?

Brad: Why?

Jeff: Honey, those pants, that shirt?

Brad: You're saying these don't go together?

Jeff: Those not only don't go together, it appears that they had a rancorous relationship followed by a rather nasty breakup. They should make Gay Garanimals for people like you.

Brad: I thought that's what the "hankie code" was for, to find a pair that matches.

Monday, January 29, 2001

Meeting out a punishment

The Giant Queen has just come from a meeting of a local gay political group and, even before he places his order for a "double anything", his frustration is evident. If he were a cartoon character -- and of all of my acquaintances, he is perhaps the nearest to being so -- there would be little exclamation points emanating from his skull to indicate stress.

"How did the meeting go?" I ask.

His drink is gone in two gulps and another is ordered before he turns to me. "I don't care what the fucking religious zealots say," he says. "AIDS is not a punishment from God. If God really wanted to kill gay men, he would put us all in a room with three lesbians and not permit us to leave until we reached 'consensus'".

Friday, January 26, 2001

Here is what happens in the morning at my house

At around 6:30 a.m., the digital timekeeping device at my bedside signals me by beeping that it is time to begin the day, rousing me from unconsciousness while giving me the opportunity to quiet it and slumber for an additional nine minutes. At the same time, an immensely powerful computer sitting a few feet away on my desk starts itself automatically and joins itself to a massive worldwide network of similar machines. Thus connected, it gathers messages from distant correspondents which have been transmitted to me throughout the night and then assembles an "electronic newspaper" for my review, paying particular attention to those topics in which I have, in the past, demonstrated an interest or fascination.

An hour before, a smaller computer on the second floor of my house has communicated with the furnace in the basement, instructing it to raise the ambient temperature of my home by approximately 10 degrees in preparation for my wakefulness. In the kitchen on the first floor, a still smaller computer begins -- with one half hour remaining before I awake -- to direct the activities which will brew my morning coffee. Nearby, an even smaller electronic device, switches off the incandescent lamps which have, throughout the night, illuminated the front and back porches.

Three flights upstairs, it is now 6:45 a.m. and the massive 32" video screen in my bedroom automatically comes to life, instructed by the digital video recorder to which it is attached to show me the morning weather and traffic forecast and, in the event I am still too bleary-eyed to make sense of this information, provides me with the means to rewind and review the information at my leisure. Likewise, throughout the night, this electronic servant, apprised of my tastes and preferences, has sought out and preserved entertainment and information programming I will perhaps enjoy viewing at another time.

I stumble down the stairs to retrieve a cup of the aforementioned coffee before ascending again to review the messages gathered earlier by my desktop computer and to read the custom newspaper assembled for me. This completed, I press the tiny button on a nearby "cradle" and, moments later, remove and consult a translucent blue device which contains a complete list of my friends and business associates along with their contact information and a complete schedule of my appointments and obligations for the coming four years. I briefly scan the latter list to determine I am to meet a friend for breakfast and, following a workday during which I must return two telephone calls and attend three meetings, meet a second friend to exercise at a gymnasium.

The computer on my desk, using the voice of a character in one of my favorite entertainment television programs, informs me that it is now 7:45 a.m. and time for me to descend the stairs and begin my preparations to face the day scrubbed, tubbed and suitably dressed.

I live in the fucking future, man! And I am not alone.

Thursday, January 25, 2001

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Jim: We're having "Movie Night" on Friday. You wanna come over?

Brad: Who's "we"?

Jim: Oh, just a few folks. Me and Jason, Philip and Ian, Mike and Jeff, James and --

Brad: I don't think so.

Jim: What? Why not?

Brad: Listen, it's nothing personal. It's just that all of my friends are pairing off right now and I'm a little sensitive about being single.

Jim: You?

Brad: I know, it's silly. But lately I've really been feeling like a third wheel everywhere I go. I went to a party a couple of weeks ago and Norman was introducing me around the room. It was like, "Ed and Steve, Liz and Charlie, Mike and Michael, Paul and Jason, this is Brad...and nobody."

Jim: Aw, come on. It wouldn't be like that.

Brad: Will there be any single men there besides me?

Jim: Er, probably not.

Brad: Look, maybe you're right. I am being silly. It just seems like everyone is in a couple but me right now and with Valentine's Day coming up, everywhere I look is a reminder of that. I'll come, OK? What are you planning on watching, anyway?

Jim: (pause) I don't want to tell you.

Brad: What are you showing?

Jim: Romeo & Juliet.

Wednesday, January 24, 2001

Helpful tips

He mentioned it as off-handedly as if he were discussing his grocery list or the fact that tomorrow he would be having an English muffin for breakfast instead of toast. James and I were having dinner when he ended a litany that began when I asked, "So, what's new?" by saying, "...and, I've been considering having foreskin replacement surgery."

I had to excuse myself from the table to avoid asking the following questions: Foreskin replacement surgery? Who thought that up? Was there some Jewish mother at a bris turning to the mohel and saying, "Oy, save the wrapping. We can use it again."? Can you only have this surgery if you're already circumsized or is it possible to trade up? Is there some sort of showroom where you go to look at swatches? Is it like The Gap, where you can choose "relaxed fit" or "classic"?

Tuesday, January 23, 2001

Let your fingers do the walking

Unless they've seen the trailer personally -- featuring the company name in large red letters painted on the side -- parked on a job site, no one believes me when I tell them about this business.



A few years ago, there was a nursing home being constructed across the street from The Complex, one of St. Louis' more popular gay dance clubs. The Big Boy Steel Erection trailer and several trucks also bearing the name were parked nearly every night throughout the summer, just footsteps away from hundreds of homosexuals. I would point them out to guys on the patio who hadn't noticed them, and the result was almost always a spit-take.

Over lunch yesterday, I was looking for something else in the Yellow Pages and ran across this listing. When I saw the street address, I spit Mountain Dew all over my computer monitor.

Monday, January 22, 2001

This is my song

In interview after interview during the final weeks of his presidency, Bill Clinton said that one of the things he'd most miss about being the leader of the free world was that, as a private citizen, a band would no longer play when he entered a room.

I'll admit that I've always been fascinated by the ceremony of affairs of state and, like him or not, it's pretty stirring when the President of the United States arrives at a dinner or the Kennedy Center and the band plays "Hail to the Chief". Of course, I also tear up a little bit when Bob Hope hits the stage and the refrain of "Thanks for the Memory" swells from the orchestra.

I guess what's really cool is that these people -- the president and Bob Hope, I mean -- have a theme song, a particular leitmotif associated with them. You hear the music, and you know who's coming. Lesser celebrities and notables have them, too. Consider poor Florence Henderson or Bob Denver. Until the day they die, whenever they appear on Letterman or Leno, the house band is gonna launch into the theme music from The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island.

Now the likelihood that I'll ever become president and hear "Hail to the Chief" whenever I attend dinner is...well, it's increasingly unlikely. But Bill Clinton got me thinking, "What if I could choose a theme song?" What if I could select a piece of music that would be played, for the next four or eight years, whenever I attended a public gathering, event or state funeral? With the whole catalog of popular, classical, martial and other music at my disposal, what would I choose?

I've pretty much settled on "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo.

First of all, it begins with that brief bit of guitar that says, "A really rockin' dude is headed this way!" Secondly, even after 15 years, it remains my favorite song by Danny Elfman (and that's including the theme from The Simpsons,/i>, so that's saying something) and I don't think I'd tire of hearing it repeatedly. Thirdly -- and perhaps most importantly -- it was featured in the rollicking 1986 Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School, so it has a positive association with two of the most crucial contributors to my personality, namely humor and higher education.

January 22, 2001 at 2:34 PM | Permalink
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