Thursday, May 26, 2005

Bookmark Now

Sometimes I feel as though I'm killing the American theatre.

I should explain. For a couple of decades now, there have been dire pronouncements that, with the advent of expanding home entertainment options—movies on demand, video games, personal computers, the internet and such—and an increased emphasis on an active lifestyle, with the 80-hour work week and the tendency of we humans in our off-hours to cocoon ourselves in our homes, theatregoing was in a not-so-slow and inexorable decline.

I thought about buying a bumpersticker for my car: "I [heart] my dying industry."

See, it's my job to extol the virtues and unique qualities of the live theatre. More than my job, it's my passion. And although I work for a reasonably healthy regional theatre, supported by a loyal and enthusiastic base of patrons, the audience is changing. Gone are the days when we could depend almost entirely on a subscriber audience—folks who sign up for a whole season of comedy, drama and music. They're being replaced by cherry-pickers who choose one or two productions each season. Actually, they're not being replaced. They're the same folks who used to go to the theatre all year. Replacing them with new theatregoers is hard, and getting harder all the time.

And I'm part of the problem. A few weeks ago, near the end of a long day at work, I knew there were two plays being produced in town I really wanted to see. One included a good friend's stage debut, the other was a seldom-produced work that was getting good notices that I wasn't sure I'd have the opportunity to see again for years.

All I wanted to do that night, though, was go home and fix a little supper then curl up with a warm DVD.

I returned to work the next day and wondered anew how to convince people to come to the theatre in an age when fewer and fewer people can be coaxed from their homes.

It was with considerable interest, then, that I received my pal Kevin Smokler's new (and first) book, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, a collection of essays by young authors that looks at the publishing industry and the writer's life in an age where popular literature is facing the same dire predictions as my own professional world: a steep audience decline.

I must also guiltily admit that, having committed to write a bit about it here today, I haven't read it yet.

Oh my. I'm killing American literature too!

OK, that's not entirely true. I have read a good bit of the book, although it'd be unfair to give it anything approaching a review without having completed it. The book came to me at a particularly busy time and while I was in the midst of reading another, quite different book I have been trying to finish for a couple of weeks. But I have known Kevin for a few years now and I have made my way through about a third of his book and I can therefore tell you these things by way of encouragement to run out and purchase it when it goes on sale next week:

1. I hang with a pretty well-read crowd and I can say confidently that I know no one more passionate about new lit and publishing and the potential of new technologies and social networks to encourage them than Kevin Smokler. He clearly edited this book infused with an excitement to share that passion with as many people as possible, and it thoroughly deserves that audience.

2. Even from the modest amount I've read so far, I can see that this book has the potential to enlighten and enthuse writers about their craft and about a publishing landscape that is not as barren as some would have you think. In short, if you're considering a career as a writer, you need this book.

3. If you are not a writer or considering becoming one, you have a lot to glean from Bookmark Now anyway. The essays are thoughtful considerations of reasons for entering and strategies for surviving a changing literary world, and many of those considerations apply to any industry—theatre, say, or even sales or service—being forced to reshape itself in this modern world.

4. For readers—consumers of literature, in the vernacular—Bookmark Now is a feast of voices, many of which will be new to you, from which you can sample and discover new writers to seek out and gorge upon. (Here endeth the strained metaphor.)

Kevin is on one of his whirlwind Virtual Book Tours this week, so have a look at some of the other sites around where he's guest-writing for certain popular webloggers or submitting to grillings by other writers. There's also a distinct possibility he'll be coming to your town or showing up at a bookstore near year sometime soon to pimp his book.

No quixotic quest, this. Kevin simply believes with all his heart that books neither will nor deserve to die, and we could all use a sip of that Kool-Aid.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

The Trouble Boy

My friend Jeff gave me a book last year for my birthday. He claimed to have read it and said "it made me think of you", but the volume was delivered in one of those cheap Target gift bags surrounded by wads of tissue paper—the sort of wrapping that just screams, "I picked this randomly from the shelf at Left Bank before rushing here to meet you for dinner. Happy birthday, bitch."

"What, exactly, about this book reminded you of me?" I asked, flipping through the pages. "I'm sure it was the photo of the devastatingly cute author on the rear flap, no?" With the exception of Instant Messages from prospective short-term suitors, Jeff doesn't read much. As Mama Rose said, she reads book jackets and thinks they're books.

"No," he said, unfurling his napkin and stealing one of my eggrolls. "It's very New York, very downtown, very—"

And here the conversation ceased for about five minutes while Jeff flirted with the waiter and twice made a point of mentioning my birthday. When the terrified boy finally fled the table to fetch our soup and wontons, Jeff said, "I get your complimentary dessert. You're dieting."

"The book?" I prodded.

"What? Oh, yes. I don't know. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I thought you might too. All those stories you've told me about clubbing in Manhattan back in your youth. Your far, far, far away youth."

That much was true. I'd only last week recounted to Jeff and The Giant Queen the story of how I, an unassuming lad from Missouri, had become the toast of New York—for a weekend at least—and how I'd impressed the pants off some L.A. fellow (literally!) by talking us into the tony VIP room at a new club in the meatpacking district some 15 years before.

"Anyway, enjoy it," Jeff continued. "It's kind of like a gay Bright Lights, Big City."

My suspicions that Jeff was bluffing continued. It said that much in the blurb on the book jacket.

I politely thanked him for the book and we finished dinner. (Jeff got my flan and the waiter's digits. I ate his stale fortune cookie. "Very soon and in good company," it said. Even adding "in bed" to that sentence fragment didn't make it seem very portentous.

I have to say I'm dubious of any book, movie, play or interpretive dance described to me as a "gay [blank]". You have to feel a bit sorry for Jay McInerney that his seminal (if a tad insufferable) novel of 80s NYC culture has become a bit of reductive shorthand.

On the other hand, I feel a little sorry for Tom Dolby, the aforementioned cute guy author of The Trouble Boy, the book Jeff bagged for my birthday. I mean, you've got to wonder how many "Blinded Me With Science" jokes he has to suffer through at parties.

I did read the book (although Jeff never asked about it again and seemed confused when I brought it up in conversation) and I did enjoy it, although I suspect that if Jeff did read it and was moved to think of me, he had the hapless Jamie in mind more than the lead character Toby. On the other hand, I might have been Loft Boy. I have been known to use the "massage" bit before.

For The Trouble Boy, I offer the highest praise I can summon these days for a novel in the gay lit demiworld: I didn't forget the plot five minutes after I turned the final page. That may seem faint lauding but trust me, that puts Tom Dolby's debut novel ten notches above 99.9 percent of the genre on the shelf.

My friends know I've been writing a novel for the past, oh, 18 years or so. Every once in a while I take it out and decide it's nowhere near ready for prime time. After reading what passes for gay popular literature these days, I've nearly decided to abandon my quest to write well and simply turn in a novel that sucks. That seems to be what's selling.

The Trouble Boy, on the other hand, does not suck. It's an admirably smart first novel, a ripping read and a warmly optimistic story about finding your way in the world and, more importantly, finding your place in the city that never sleeps, never drinks less than premium and never—well, seldom—gives you a second chance. I look forward to Dolby's second effort.

(I'm pleased to be a participant in Tom Dolby's Virtual Book Tour for The Trouble Boy, now available in softcover, but still featuring a fetching photo of the author. Get one today.)

Monday, July 26, 2004

Marzipan in my pie plate

You hear your friends talk about such things, but you never in a million years imagine that someday you'll find yourself in a BDR. But love makes us do crazy things sometimes.

I have to face it. I have to deal with it. I have to say it, name it and move past it.

I am in a Buffy Discordant Relationship. More than one of them, in fact. So, let the healing begin.

What makes a BDR? It's when one member of a couple (or one or more of a group of friends) has seen more episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the other. It's dating someone who had the foresight to watch all seven seasons of the supernaturally addictive Sarah Michelle Gellar drama when it was actually first aired and then being utterly unable to discuss the show with them for fear important plot points will be revealed. It means stepping gingerly around "spoilers" innocently dropped into conversation. It means, occasionally, running from a room at an otherwise sedate party with your hands clamped over your ears, screeching "la la la la! I can't hear you! La la la la!"

I am in a BDR and I have run, clamped and screeched.

I've been involved in a regimen of therapy for several months now, purchasing the DVD sets as they become available and devouring entire seasons of the show in a single weekend. In fact, over the course of a few weeks, I blew through seasons one through three and then had to sit in a dark room, quivering and avoid contact with Slayer devotees for almost 10 days until the fourth season hit stores.

And once that season was viewed -- in a particularly intense two-day Buffy-binge during which I neither went to work or, in fact, showered -- things went a little wobbly.

You see, I had enough information to discourse thoughtfully on the pros and cons of Angel and Riley (advantage Riley, in my book; give me whitebread, blond and ab-endowed over tortured, broody and brunette any day). I could discuss with some authority the dramatic merits of the Master story arc as opposed to the Initiative season. I had just enough information to be dangerous to the innocent longtime fans with whom I was involved.

I discovered this in the most frightening manner possible: talking about the show with a friend in a moving vehicle. We were, I thought, on pretty safe ground, the relative lethality of demons against vamps, maybe. And then he said it -- I've thankfully blanked on the actual words. "Things get really interesting in season five, especially after [blank] [blanks]."

"[Blank] [blanks]?!" I squealed. "How could [blank] [blank]?! What do you mean [blank] [blanks]?! [Blank] can't [blank]!" I wailed. I whimpered.

He nearly drove off the road.

It was a wakeup call for me. I apologized, gathered the CDs off the floor and stacked them back on the dash and vowed to redouble my efforts to avoid matters Sunnydale-related in all future social settings. This weekend, after being stalled by long-neglected work and other obligations, I am pleased to say I finished off season five in one hellgod-and-monster marathon.

I now know why [blank] [blanked], and that particular episode is sure to become one of my favorites. It made me cry, as did the one where [blank] discovered that [blank] was the [blank]. I knew it was coming -- those damnable Internet message boards and their siren songs! -- but I still clutched my pillow tight when [blank] [blanked] off the [blank] and [blanked] to save [blank] and, not incidentally, the [blank]. Again.

And tonight, Derrick and I watched the first episode of season six together, after he first consented to simply cuddle quietly and let me digest and enjoy what he's already seen three times in reruns. My friend Jeffrey will be pleased to learn that I now understand his oblique "marzipan" reference.

And all of my friends -- who for years begged me to take up watching the show and who patiently waited until I discovered it on my own -- will be delighted when October rolls around and the seventh and final season of the show makes its way to DVD. I'll watch it all right away, I promise. And then we can catch up on nearly eight years of deferred conversations. We can stop walking on eggshells and vampire dust and chat openly about all the Scoobies. I'll dazzle you with my Mayor trivia and my Quark-as-principal impersonation.

And we will be BDR no more.

The suspense is killing me. I hope it lasts.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

The digital life

I made what I thought was a very sensible decision, namely that I was not going to purchase an iPod -- one of those tiny, portable computer hard drives from Apple Computer designed to hold a ton of digitized music, a higher-tech Walkman -- until I actually had a ton of digitized music. They advertise that those little buggers can hold 10,000 songs at a time, which sounds like a promising prospect: "Carry your whole CD collection with you all the time!"

Their promise, however, depends on making one of your own. Before you can experience this marvel of the digital age, you have to digitize, or "rip", the music from your compact discs into a format the computer can understand. This takes a lot of time, particularly if, like me, your music collection contains many more than 10,000 songs. In fact, it's nearer to 10,000 CDs.

OK, well perhaps that's an exaggeration. But my motley assortment of cast recordings, jazz, folk, country-western, a cappella, pop, rock, dance, cabaret and classical discs does number in the thousands. It's a bit embarrassing, sometimes. At parties, when the conversation turns to matters of money and investing, at my turn I just smile enigmatically and aver that my funds are all tied up in CDs.

But over the past few months, by a piecemeal process, I've undertaken the task of stripping all the little 1s and 0s off the discs and storing them in my computer, their native habitat. It's slow going, taking between five and ten minutes to process each album.

And, occasionally, I get pangs of doubt. In geek speak, I'm converting the CDs into a computer file format called MP3 which, you may recall, was all the rage a few years ago among teens and college students swapping music with the Napster application.

I was a late-comer to that party; lacking, for the longest time, a high-speed phone connection attached to my home computer, the prospect of downloading large music files was too daunting. It never even occurred to me that I could simply convert the many music discs I already owned. So MP3 remained a mystery to me and I was, quite frankly, reluctant to explore and embrace it.

Hell, when they were introduced, I refused for a long time even to buy a CD player until I got a signed affidavit from somebody promising they wouldn't come out with something better a week or two after I did. The milk crates packed with vinyl and a closet full of eight-track cassettes, dying and dead formats, in my student apartment already cruelly mocked me and, at the same time, labelled me a luddite.

So naturally I'm fretting that as soon as I finished ripping all of my CDs into the MP3 format, they'll invent something better the next day and render all my time spent feeding disc after disc into the computer obsolete.

The process has, however, yielded a few discoveries about my music collection, some happy, some perplexing, some worrying. For example, I was only slightly surprised to discover that there are a few dozen discs I purchased but never bothered to remove the plastic wrapping from, meaning they've never been heard in my home. There are a carton or two more that I received either as demos from groups I sought to book for one performance series or another, or review copies passed on to me during my tenure as a music critic for a major daily newspaper. Still others are extra copies boosted from the radio station where I DJed after high school.

And there's nothing like touching every album in your collection to expose odd gaps and even odder surfeits in my inventory. Cast albums, naturally, comprise perhaps the largest percentage chunk of the lot, but I've got a suspiciously lesbian number of Joni Mitchell albums. A bit earlier alphabetically, my Bette Midler collection is complete, but there are several missing Madonnas. And how I ended up with three copies of the perternaturally awful concept album for Starlight Express, I have no idea. (I suspect I was too drunk at too many white elephant exchanges in the 80s.)

Anyway, I've a few more albums to convert (and by "a few", I mean "at least 1,500") before I order that iPod. It's nice to have a goal and, heaven knows, I've got plenty to listen to while I pass the time.

"Heaven Knows." Hmmm...

Donna Summer, Robert Plant, or The Corrs? They're all here somewhere.

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Confession

I like her a lot, really I do! But I swear, whenever I hear Arianna Huffington talking on the radio, I can't picture her in my mind. I keep coming up with Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

A commercial I’d actually watch

That Verizon guy, sitting in a restaurant at dinner, repeating "Can you hear me now?" into his cell phone, then being beaten senseless by dozens of irritated diners. Alternate locations: movie theatre, public restroom, art gallery, library, cross-town bus.

Friday, September 14, 2001

Everywhere, signs…

I have nearly 3,000 songs compressed in MP3 format stored on my laptop computer's hard drive, essentially turning my expensive portable computer into a Walkman jukebox containing a good chunk of my CD collection. Most of the time when I'm at my desk at work, the computer is plugged into a set of small speakers and the whole selection of tracks set for "shuffle" play, meaning any random song can pop up at any time.

A couple of weeks ago, a version of the old Julie Brown comedy song "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" recorded by The Flirtations started playing. After I'd begun singing along, I caught myself thinking that, in light of events such as those at Columbine High School, it was unlikely that this trifle of a song, parodic and outlandish when it was created, would ever see airplay again. It just wasn't funny anymore.

Debbie's smiling and waving her gun,
Picking off cheerleaders one by one:
Oh Buffy's pom pon just blew to bits,
Oh no, Mitzie's head just did the splits.
God my best friend's on a shooting spree;
Stop it Debbie, you're embarrassing me!

Today, seeking a respite from a week when my radio was seldom switched from NPR news, I opened my laptop and started the music playing program, then began working on a proposal I'd been putting off for days.

Did you ever have feeling that there are elemental forces at work conspiring to screw with your head? Sometimes I truly believe that. Today, for example, Fate clasped hands with Shuffle Play, and Karma and Coincidence got jiggy with it.

While I tapped away at the keyboard and silently muttered curses at Microsoft Word, three songs came up in randomly-selected succession: Styx's "Angry Young Man," Elton John's "Take Me to the Pilot" and, finally, John Cougar Mellancamp's "Crumblin' Down".

My hands were shaking as my concentration drifted from my work and I heard the lyrics of the chorus, divorced from the context of the song:

When the walls come tumblin' down
When the walls come crumblin' crumblin'
When the walls come tumblin' tumblin' down.

I shivered. I decided the universe was trying to tell me something. I shut off the computer and went outside and sat under a tree and lit a cigarette and cried for a while. It just wasn't funny anymore.

Tuesday, March 20, 2001

Look at these jazz hands!

The touring company of the musical The Civil War -- or, as I like to call it, "Up With All People Being Created Equal" -- opened tonight in St. Louis. This led a couple of us to wonder, "What might a show tune based on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address sound like?"

We decided it would be something akin to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. No, really. Try it...

"Fourscore and seven years ago

our fathers brought forth on

this continent a new nation..."

...and so on.

OK, perhaps it works better after a few beers.

Monday, January 15, 2001

Doctor, doctor

Mark is telling me about a conversation he had with one of our actors about which Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise each liked better on Star Trek: The Next Generation: Doctor Crusher or Doctor Pulaski. Mark favors the original, played by Gates McFadden, while Lex appreciates her one-season replacement, portrayed by Diana Muldaur. Mark contends that Lex is wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Well," I say, "let's look at this objectively. Dr. Pulaski was gruff and aloof, enjoyed genetic engineering as a hobby -- which, in one episode led to her accidentally aging 60 years in about three hours -- and, in another television role, had her character killed off by stupidly stepping into an open elevator shaft.

"Dr. Crusher, on the other hand, was a fabulous dancer, got to fool around with Captain Picard and, in one episode, got trapped in subspace such that she perceived she was the only living person in the whole universe.

"Frankly, I don't think there's any question about which one a gay man would favor."

Tuesday, October 03, 2000

The Sexiest Bachelor in America

Of course I watched the televised search for the Sexiest Bachelor in America. I was duty-bound -- and genetically predisposed -- as a warm-blooded American gayboy to tune in, with the same rapt fascination with which I used to greet the annual "Sex in the Cinema" issue of Playboy during my pre-adolescent "discovery phase". I watched, however, not with lust but with a sociological detachment, intending to switch the channel after I'd ascertained just how many of the contestants were destined to remain "bachelors" unless they were willing to relocate to Vermont.

(Twenty-six, by my count, including three of the finalists.)

By the time the two-hour special was over, my gaydar was being activated so often, it was causing RF interference with the neighbor kids' PlayStation. I'd managed to spot two queer college classmates who'd moved west, the ex- of an ex-, and at least two contestants whose carriage and demeanor screamed "Mary!" so loudly you'd have thought they were Valerie Harper. This is, of course, not even counting Caroline Rhea, the hostess of the Twinkies. She's practically an honorary gay man herself.

I am now waiting for the Fox network to really gild the lily -- or, perhaps more aptly, beard the boy -- by combining one flop and one middling pageant to create "Who Wants to Marry the Sexiest Bachelor in America?" I'd check it out...for the sociologically interesting aspects, of course.

Thursday, September 28, 2000

My career in rap

I have decided, based on the success of Eminem, to become a gay white rapper called ReesesPeace. My first single will be a screed filled with hateful invective about poorly tattooed suburban boys trying to be "street" and instead just coming off looking like dumbasses. I think I'll call it "Eww! Put a Shirt On!"

Thursday, September 07, 2000

Some random but related thoughts about movies

I saw The Matrix for the first time tonight. It isn't as good as everyone says it is.

Last week, I bought the DVD of Clerks and watched it for the first time since I saw it in the theater when it was released. It isn't nearly as good as I remembered it to be.

I have never seen the film version of Gone With the Wind, although I have read the novel twice. I have promised myself that the first time I see the movie, it will be in a theater on a large screen, as God intended it to be seen. However, in the past five years, I have passed up two such opportunities.

I am vaguely concerned that, while I believe myself to have a very rich and vivid imagination, it does not easily withstand assaults by the mass media and the ubiquity of hype. I have carefully avoided any press coverage of the inevitable movie adaptation of the Harry Potter novels, and I have resigned myself to not seeing the movie for several years, if ever. I have a very clear and infinitely detailed picture in my mind of how Hogwart's School appears. I can see the awkward Harry, the bookish Hermoine and the freckled, impetuous Ron as I imagine the author herself imagines them. If I glimpse the child actors the media has lionized as "perfect" for the respective roles, or if I am made privvy to the details of locations that will stand in for the sites in the books, I fear that my imaginings will dissipate like morning fog and with them, my enjoyment of the books will vanish as well.

Tuesday, September 05, 2000

Of course, my sex life is all outtakes so…

I just ordered a big box of pornography, my first fresh batch in quite a while, including one feature on DVD. Among the special features they're touting on the disc is "digitally remastered sound" (presumably so the cheesy 70s wah-wah music can be presented with maximum fidelity) and "bloopers and outtakes". How embarrassing must it be for an adult video actor to find one's performance included on a porn "blooper reel"? Are these things going to start showing up on those Dick Clark and Ed McMahon specials? How odd is it that, despite expecting several cassettes chock full of sweaty man-on-man action to arrive on my doorstep in a few days, what I'm most anxiously anticipating is the DVD bloopers?

Monday, August 28, 2000

A Survivor I’d watch

Except for the last five minutes of the finale, I didn't watch Survivor, and I probably won't tune in for the Australian version next year. If they really wanted to get my attention, they'd put Sherwood Schwartz in charge of the show, get back to the island and, using the same rules, put on a competition among Gilligan, a skipper too, a billionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor and Mary Ann.

Alternatively, lock up The Village People in the Big Brother house and tape the wacky antics that follow. I'd tune in for that too.

Monday, August 21, 2000

Homosexual panic sells! (Part II)

As you know, since The Daily Brad began publication in the late 20th century, we've been keeping an eye on the trend of using homosexual panic as a commercial tactic to make a product or service seem appealing to consumers. A number of our readers (two, actually) have written in to share their own sightings of commercials that fortify our theory America's fear of going fruity is sweeping the mercantile.

Alert reader Julie describes a commercial for the TiVo personal video recorder:

There are two bored children (oneof each sex) sitting on the couch while dad, full of enthusiasm, keeps up a running commentary on the finer points of all the sporting events TiVo has captured for them/him, oblivious to the children's lack of reaction. When figure skating appears on the screen, dad directs his commentary solely to the daughter who continues her disinterest while the son suddenly becomes animated, jumps up from the couch and begins to (for lack of a technical name) twirl. The father becomes agitated and demands the boy stop. The boy persists in his twirling, the father's annoyance (and is that a hint of panic I detect?) increases, and the demands to stop continue to be ignored. Commercial over. I am quite certain there must be some connection between a father's stupidity about the nature of sexuality and the desire to purchase a hot-rod VCR, though it escapes me at the moment.

Good catch, Julie! It escapes us too, of course, and in the wake of dad's obvious discomfort with figure skating, we're left to wonder "What would Brian Boitano do?"

Meanwhile, alert reader Steve points out a commercial for Kozmo, the web-based home delivery service. In this ad, a male shopper at the video rental store works up the moxie to check out the "adult" videos behind a curtain in the back of the store. Apparently weary of trolling the Internet for the same tired old hetero porn, he browses the racks briefly before being confronted by a fey gentleman clutching a copy of "Saving Ryan's Privates" or somesuch. The homo gives him a cruise more obvious than a Carnival luxury liner, causing the straight boy to freak and rush from the naughty section clutching a randomly selected tape, only to bump into a disgusted female patron. Chastened, he drops the video and bolts from the store.

The moral of the story? If you're hankering for some video stimulation to aid in your self-pleasure, order it in the privacy of your own home. Our friendly Kozmo delivery drivers will drop it off in 30 minutes or less and won't smirk derisively at you, you pathetic closet-case. We promise.

Have you seen a television commercial or other advertisement that blatantly trades on homo anxiety to push product? Let us know! Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

Thursday, August 10, 2000

Homosexual panic sells!

I spent a fair amount of time early in my career writing pitches for radio and television commercials, so I tend to keep an eye on developments in the field. I await the annual doling out of awards for the best 30-second masterpieces each year with the same enthusiasm many people reserve for the Oscars. Those hour-long "racy commercials from other lands" television specials that the networks use as cheap-to-produce schedule filler are frequently more entertaining to me than most regular prime-time programming.

That's why it's surprising to me that a new trend in television advertising has, so far, gone unnoticed by the trade press and professional media analysts: the use of homosexual panic as a selling tool.

Perhaps you've seen the spot for the Kia economy car, where a goofy blond guy is seen rapturously zipping down the highway in a sporty red Kia. He hangs his head out the window, the wind whipping through his hair, and then gives the dash of the car a playful stroke with his fingers. Just moments later, the car comes to an abrupt stop and its hapless driver is hurled forward, his cheek pressed against the windshield like some sort of Nordic bug.

It is then that the camera dollies back and we see that the protagonist is, in fact, just riding in the car, perched atop a multi-tiered auto carrier. Enter a barrel-chested, long-haired rough trade type long-haul driver who commands the stowaway to "Get down from there!" There's some fine-print superimposed on the screen about mileage estimate and warranties and price while the announcer continues to extoll the virtues of Kia and then cut to the interior of the truck's cab, where the blond guy sits abashed and clearly dwarfed by the trucker. "So," the trucker says, leeringly glancing at the blond, "you're a Pisces too?"

The implication is clear: At the next truck stop, a horrifying anal rape is in the cards for the guy trying to enjoy the pleasures of Kia without benefit of purchase. Run, don't walk, to the nearest Kia dealership! If you merely covet but don't buy this car, we'll see to it that a predatory homosexual is dispatched forthwith to deal with you!

Why, that's just advertising gold.

Sprite is using homo anxiety to sell sugar water, too. Apparently, they're running some sort of contest where you collect bottle caps or coupons or something to trade for money and fabulous prizes. In this commercial, another blond nebbish is checking out the bulletin board in a high school hallway when a gorgeous female classmate approaches from behind, playfully gropes him and suggests that he and she simply must spend some time together.

The blond, Billy, barely has time to mumble his agreement when a second girl comes up and even more aggressively grabs him. As the camera pans down, it becomes apparent that she's not making a play for his lithe adolescent body but instead executing a methodical search of his pockets, questing for Sprite swag. Another sortie by yet another female cutie leaves Billy so flummoxed he drops his books and bends down to gather them.

Only then, from behind Billy -- dear, sweet, virginal Billy -- do we see another classmate approach, apparently intent on being the next to give him a rough and tumble shakedown for soft drink prize gold. It's a burly, goateed guy, a star offensive lineman for the school's football team, no doubt. "Hey Billy," he gruffly says. "What's shakin'?"

The panicked look on Billy's face easily communicates that he knows all too well what's shakin'. Although he wants only to collect his textbooks and beat a hot path to study hall, his rear flank is exposed and he's just moments away from being dragged into the boy's bathroom and introduced to the taboo world of sweaty mansex. That'll certainly leave you parched! Obey your thirst, Billy, and obey your swarthy high school daddy! More Sprite, please!

The most recent entity to exploit the commercial appeal of suggested sodomy is althletic shoe maker Reebok, which has caused a small sensation with its ad campaign sending up the CBS show Survivor. These spots feature Nate and Brian, a Mutt-and-Jeff duo of dubious intellect who have, it seems, embarked on a series of challenges similiar to those endured by the millionaire-wannabes on that damned island.

Here, we drop the pretense of any sort of daddy-boy dynamic; the Reebok company, we're meant to think, is far more egalitarian than that. No, we are meant to believe, I think, that these two stoner survivalists are dudes, buds, amigos. And so, in the recent commercial where the slighter of the two, Brian, is bitten in the wild by a poisonous snake, it's only natural that his compadre Nate gallantly offer to save his life by sucking the venom from the wound. And here, friends, we are treated to a staple of commercial comedy: the sight-gag. You see, the wound is situated so that, seen from the back, it appears that Nate is fellating his fratboy chum. Kissing the kielbasa. Adding a little Brian beef to his diet.

Brian, grateful to be averting death, becomes belatedly aware of this potential for confusion when a buxom female jogger happens by. Why she is doing laps in what we presume to be a deserted jungle is left unexplored, but little Brian, horrified at the implication he is being orally pleasured by his bro, roughly pushes Nate to the ground, willing to accept poisonous fate rather than be thought less than manly by the passing maiden. Oh, if only Brian had had the foresight to purchase Reebok cross-trainers before venturing into the bramble on his survivalist mission with Nate! Suitably shod, he could have reveled in the ministrations of his chum, savoring the warm, wet sensation of Nate's lips upon his skin while at the same time retaining his masculine birthright and remaining attractive to the fairer sex, even in the throes of man-on-man passion. "Reebok!", the commercial crows, "Footwear for the bisexual in all of us!"

I await other entrants to this advertising genre with a mixture of anticipation and dread. It is only a matter of time, I'm sure, before other companies recognize the opportunities for humor -- and consequently, increased profits -- by trading on homophobia and macho insecurity. Surely Proctor & Gamble can sell a lot of soap with some sort of wacky prison shower scene. And do I even have to point out the potential to the makers of Crisco?

Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Music I Play to Torture Myself

The power of the senses upon my memory never ceases to fill me with wonder. Lots of folks have memories -- pleasant or otherwise -- associated with certain fragrances, a fragment of music or other sound, the sight of a particular totem or motif that recalls a definite place and time. For me, it's generally clothing and music. I'll be digging through my closet and run across the sweatshirt I purchased at Kennedy Airport because I was freezing and my flight was delayed eight hours and I can recall with remarkable clarity the grim purpose that took me to New York that November in the first place.

But mostly, it's music. Now, in the movies, when the hero or heroine hears a favorite old song and is transported to another time, another place, it's generally something rather high-toned. A bit of Gershwin, perhaps, whisks Ingrid Bergman back to a sidewalk cafe in Paris. In yet another needless demonstration that my life is nothing like the movies, tonight the song was Animotion's Obsession (damn you, Y98 "Eighties at Eight"), and in a flash, it's 1985 and I am lying on a blanket in the back of Roger's pickup truck, gazing at the full moon and believing I was blissfully and enduringly happy.

There is, in my record collection (weighted though it is toward showtunes and the predictable disco chart hits), a particular genre commonly referred to as "Music I Play to Torture Myself." This is the music of my memories, and I can quickly locate the few tracks necessary to delineate the phases of my all-too-brief relationship with Roger.

Obsession, of course. How many romances were launched or consumated to the melodies of one-hit "wonders"? Duran Duran, because for about four months, we were the Wild Boys. And, finally, Styx. The Best of Times? For a while, at least. But at last, plaintively, Don't Let It End.

I am so not Ingrid Bergman. It is painfully clear that I am, in fact, Molly Ringwald in every John Hughes movie ever made.