Yes, Please Jump

I hate Van Halen. I spent some formative years in the suburbs of San Francisco, when Van Halen ruled the radio dial along with a couple other bands. It’s not like I started hating them when Sammy Hagar took over vocal duties or even when they switched to synthesizers. No, I pretty much hated them from the very get go. Of course, since my friends liked them and the radio played their crap nonstop, I know a whole lot of their catalogue. So it’s not like I don’t know their music.

And to give proper respect, Eddie Van Halen really pioneered a guitar style, a style that was de rigueur during the eighties—neck tapping. Neck tapping is when you take your picking finger and tap down notes on the fretboard while simultaneously hitting notes with your regular playing hand. You’re basically hitting more notes without picking them, by tapping the notes out instead. It sounds very classical. Every cock rock band from that period had some prettified guitarist in torn nylons and a bouffant hairdo tapping away on his guitar. Thankfully no one taps anymore, less they immediately date themselves circa 1982.

David Lee Roth was a big reason for my loathing. He always reminded me of the non-too-bright guy who thought he was god’s gift to everybody. He could belt out a song, and their version of “Ice Cream Man” is actually pretty good. But Roth is made of cream cheese. He has a showman in him that’s partially vaudeville but mostly Vegas. His idea of wit is from Panama when he tells the woman/car object, “you reach down, between my legs…(here he pauses for effect) ease the seat back.” I’m sure there was a 12 year old who laughed his ass of at that one. I kept waiting for the funnier line. It never came.

But what really bugged me was the lack of a bassist in the band. I played bass for 15 years, and sometimes still take my bass out for a run. I grew up with John Entwistle of The Who, Chris Squire of Yes, and Geddy Lee of Rush, powerhouse players who could be fast, melodic, groovy and impressive. So hearing the single note bass line for “Running with the Devil” made me cringe with the lack of imagination. Not that you need to have the bass be intricate. It’s just every Van Halen song has a retarded bass line. I hear Michael Anthony is a nice guy. He must be cuz he’s a lousy bassist. Eddie Van Halen has said in interviews he didn’t want a bassist to compete with, but seriously it’s like Carl Lewis racing against Stephen Hawking.

Of course, in the end, it doesn’t matter much. Music, much more then other art, is subjective. I have MP3s of shameful music that I grew up with and love but couldn’t defend in a debate. I heard that music at a time before my critical mind took form, so hearing that music now brings a goofy smile to lips. So if you love Van Halen, I can understand. Hell, if you love Milli Vanilli or Britney Spears or Dave Mathews or other stuff that makes me want to scrape out my eyes with a dull spoon, I can’t say you’re wrong. You like what ‘cha like. Just don’t man the stereo at the party, cuz you will clear the place out.

What's Another Word for Evil?

The strongest asset a conservative has is his or her blind loyalty to their leaders. This also is their Achilles heel because Bush and Cheney’s incompetence will surely cost them the next election. Cheney doesn’t have to worry about elections anymore. He has stated that he will not run for President. I don’t see him relinquishing power though. Kissinger once said, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Looking at that grim turtle of a man, one can see that Kissinger needed all the power just to get laid.

But I see Cheney as completely sexless. The man has no joi de vivre, just an obsession with power. Power for him means no checks and balances, complete secrecy. You just have to trust him. Of course, his track record is shit. The Iraq war is a catastrophe. Cheney has lied every step of the way. He has ignored Geneva Conventions and brought back torture. He has pushed for spying on Americans. In short, he is the worst politician our country has, with no one willing to stop him.

I had a boss who was friends with Dick Cheney. The boss was completely removed from reality. He came into work, but really didn’t do any work. Mostly he treated the place as a fiefdom. And at the weekly meeting he would regale us with his wisdom. Now, I do the same thing with my blog, but you can surf to another site with a click of the mouse button. My co-workers and I had to endure his pointless pontificating.

He talked about his dinners with Cheney with obvious pride, oblivious to his employees rolling their eyes. A couple of years after I left that job, I went to a party that they had also been invited to. At some point I got into a discussion with the wife who screamed at me, “You don’t know what you are talking about! He is a brilliant man!” She then told me, Cheney would be vindicated and there was some stuff that she knew but couldn’t talk about, et cetera, et cetera. She was the epitome of conservative loyalty: unquestioning, quick to anger, deceitful and completely nuts.

Our government was built with a solid base with the checks and balances. And although Cheney has done his best to dismantle it, luckily, his and Bush’s incompetence has hindered them somewhat. There is a possibility that Cheney will do a power grab when his time is up, but thanks to his demoralization of the military, he will not have the muscle to back it up. I know that sounds paranoid, but I could not have believed way back when they were elected what they have wrought in the years they have been in power. Let’s just say I will heave a big sigh of relief when they are booted out.

Sun Dappled and Scorned

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
—Dylan Thomas, “I See the Boys of Summer”

If you want to read an example of reporting with an obvious bias, exposed like a canine baring his sharp teeth, read this article about guys in their 40s renting a beach house in the Hamptons.

From Bar Harbor, Me., to Virginia Beach, there is a particular boy of summer who can be found preserving a postcollege life decades past his undergraduate days. While most party-oriented summer share houses are filled with single people in their 20s and early 30s, who seek weekends of beachside fun for several seasons before moving on to the more sober pleasures of marriage, a few share houses include men with more than 40 summers under their trunks.

These surfside Peter Pans survey each summer’s crop of young women on the sand like an incoming class of freshman co-eds on the quad. Theirs can be a bittersweet existence, where the highs of the evening’s party are occasionally doused by the recognition that matrimony and fatherhood may be slipping away with each relationship that dissipates on a cool September wind.

You can practically here the tisk tisk in the reporter’s tone. I kept thinking the writer’s name, Allen Salkin was a pseudonym for that douche bag, Dr. Phil. The assumption here is that matrimony and fatherhood is the endgame, that the sober pleasures of marriage is the zenith of life. This is a lie, unfortunately. While marriage and fatherhood can be wonderful in themselves, they are not the only choice in life. Believe it or not, you can have a happy life without them. And sometimes marriage and children can make you miserable.

But Salkin continues to beat a dead horse:

As he sipped beer in the fading light of the sun disappearing behind the Fire Island Lighthouse, Mr. Mahony, whose light brown hair is flecked with gray, considered how his life had brought him here tonight, one of the oldest people in a crowd drinking Heineken from plastic cups. “Relationships I thought were going to last didn’t last,” he said. “And to tell you the truth, the past five years, the older I get the shorter the relationships get, and now it’s like a game of musical chairs. There’s nobody left. It’s sad.”

People on death row contemplate how their life brought them to this point. Guys drinking crappy beer while looking at pretty girls in bikinis do not. Oh, and, Mahony, there are plenty of women out there of every age looking for long term relationships. Don’t give up, my gray-flecked friend.

Here is the Dr. Phil part, in which Salkin brings in a woman to judge:

There is something about the four-oh that turns many women off summer playboys. Adrienne Matt, 38, a strategist at an advertising agency, said she arrived for her first weekend at a Fire Island house a few years ago to find it was being run by a man in his 40s, who had done his best to fill the rooms with “vapid, insipid women.”

“It was disgusting,” she said. “He ran the house only to have sex with 25-year-old girls.”

One wonders if Ms. Matt considers older women and younger men hooking up disgusting as well, or for that matter, older and younger gay men and lesbians hooking up. If Matt was looking for intelligence and wit, perhaps she should have spent the weekend at a literary salon instead of a beach house. I can’t imagine her being much fun since she attacks both the women and the men, and comes off in the article as a shrew.

The article goes on with its braying, but I won’t bore you with that. The title of the article, “When the Boys of Summer Linger Till Autumn”, references the Dylan Thomas poem I quoted at the top of the post. Perhaps Salkin should have read the poem slower. The harsh narrator calls himself a son “of flint and pitch” (III, 5). Much like Salkin, he is not the kind of person who approves of fun. But Dylan himself knew fun quite well, and he lets the boys of summer reply:

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the country gardens for a wreath.
In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies,
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry.
O see the poles of promise in the boys.
(II, 13-24)

The images of the boys are light, nature, power and sex. The world of the critical narrator is where love’s muscle dies and kisses are broken like rocks in a quarry. I prefer the boy’s world of oceans and wreaths to the flint and pitch of the critic. While the poles of promise can be seen as a phallus, it’s a positive image nonetheless; the poles promise energy, sexual energy, energy that is preferable to staid boredom.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: Pink Saturday

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence asked for a media blackout about Pink Saturday this year. It didn’t work out, KTVU did a report on the requested black out. I read about it in the Bay Area Reporter, a LGBT newspaper. The Sisters were trying to keep the party from turning into Halloween, in which people tend to get shot or stabbed. The control of the party opens up a hornet’s nest of racial, class and sexual issues—way too complicated to cover in a blog post, especially a Slouching Towards Euphoria post, which is dedicated to bars.

Pink Saturday is not a bar per se, but it is celebration of a kind that you find in bars and clubs. Quick lesson: The Pride Parade, which San Francisco and many other cities throw in remembrance of the Stonewall Inn riots, is usually celebrated on the last Sunday in June. The Saturday night beforehand, the streets of Castro are shut down and people dance and drink and carouse. It’s much wilder than the parade itself.

My roommate and I decided to throw a barbeque and then walk down and enjoy the festivities. The party started out as simple affair, but much like America’s waistline, it grew tremendously. The house was cleaned and washed and dusted, which took the attendees a few hours to reverse. Our place looked like it fell off the rainbow tree and hit every branch; we had rainbow flags, candles, towels, and garlands. I put out a party game of Name the Homo, in which you had to identify the pictures of famous homosexuals throughout history. On the box in which you put your answers in, I taped gay and lesbian porn pictures. That naughty little detail took me a surprisingly long time to put together.

The pièce de résistance was the ice sculpture my roommate had made especially for the party. Basically, it was a naked backside of a man. Running through the ice sculpture was a plastic tube attached to a funnel at the top of the sculpture. You would pour a shot of Jägermeister through the sculpture and the ice cooled the liquid as it ran through it, pouring out into a shot glass at the bottom. We dubbed it the Jägermeister glory hole.

Guests arrived slowly but surely. And as parties usually go, one moment there are a few guests then in an instant the place is packed. Beers are being opened; food is being devoured; the nose level creeps up. We had put together a dance mix on the computer, which we played at loud levels. Had my roommate’s subwoofer been working properly our guests would have felt it in their gut.

Around nine p.m., we decided to see what was happening out on the street. Two blocks of Castro street was closed to traffic. The Sisters were asking for donations to enter the area. The street was packed with people. D.J.s played on different street corners. The bars overflowed with patrons. Our group separated within the crowd. I had a bag of frozen Otter Pops and offered the pops to people walking by. Some folks took them, effusively thanking me. Other folks blanched, as if I was handing out right-wing literature.

On top of a truck people boogied to the beats. One guy stripped in the cold night air. The crowd was by and large people in their twenties. Although there were some straight couples, mostly, it was groups of young gay men and women. The crowd certainly held the rainbow: African-American, Asian, Latino, Caucasian. I assumed a lot of the crowd lived in the suburbs, and this was a chance to hang out with their sexual community. And with the drinking, people puked and pissed in the doorways. I thanked my Irish luck that my doorway was close enough to walk to the Castro but far enough away to avoid the drunkards expelling their toxins.

We danced for a while, then I went back to my place to start the party up again. A younger crowd took the next shift. The stereo was turned up even louder. The living room became a tiny dance club. Bottle and cups sat on every available open space. The ice sculpture crashed to the ground when one wayward youth put his head in the area where the shot glass catches the liquid. The Jägermeister was gone by then, so the loss was trivial. I hid in my room and played acoustic guitar with some new-found friends. Finally rosy Dawn spread her fingertips over the horizon. This meant one thing: get out.

The guest left. The house was in sticky shambles. I laid down and the cool mist of sleep came upon me.

On Your Knees, Boy

7:1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Epistles of St. Paul
1 Corinthians

The great thing about being secular is that your sexual outlook is your own and is not governed by what some asexual obsessive wrote thousands of years ago. Morals are what keeps us civilized, by keeping us from hurting one another; they shouldn't govern what is pleasurable and hurts no one. I bring all this up because of an article in the Los Angeles times about ex-gay leaders admitting that sexuality is innate and not a choice. This is a good thing: people admitting the obvious, but there are details from the article that drive me crazy.

Here's what they say about the head of an ex-gay movement, Alan Chambers:

With years of therapy, Chambers says, he has mostly conquered his own attraction to men; he's a husband and a father, and he identifies as straight. But lately, he's come to resent the term "ex-gay": It's too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. "By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete," Chambers said.

"Mostly conquered." Doesn't that sound like Bush pronouncement of the war? It's a good thing we've mostly conquered the Iraqi insurgents. He hasn’t conquered anything; he’s repressing.

But even gay counselors are backing this new pronouncement. The role of therapy is to bring happiness, I guess at any cost. Here's a quotation from an ex-ex-gay, Michael Bussee:

He and other gay activists — along with major mental-health associations — still reject therapy aimed at "liberating" or "curing" gays. But Bussee is willing to acknowledge potential in therapy that does not promise change but instead offers patients help in managing their desires and modifying their behavior to match their religious values — even if that means a life of celibacy.

So what's wrong with a life of celibacy? I know what it's like; I was married for a while. But here's the crux: sex is major component of love. You love a friend, mother or pizza, but love with a partner is partly erotic love. So those who choose celibacy are limiting themselves immensely. Plus, what about those poor religious women who have to put up with the Ted Haggards in their life? Who wants to be with someone who doesn't desire them? Can you imagine a society where heterosexuality sex is only for procreation and not for pleasure? That’s a view of strict religion. Seriously, fuck that.

Between the repressed sexuality that religion brings and violence it inspires, secular humanism is the way to go.

Belated Bloomsday Blues

I am a bad boy. I deserve to have a scowling Jesuit priest smack my hand with a pandy bat. How could have I missed Bloomsday? But missed it I did. I'm sorry, James.

James Joyce set his novel, Ulysses, on June 16th, 1904, the day Joyce and his future wife (and a saint for putting up with that high-maintenance motherfucker) went on their first date. So every June 16th, Joyceans celebrate by reading his works and drinking. It's called Bloomsday, in honor of the protagonist of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. In New York they read the whole book in one sitting, sometimes broadcasted over the radio. Here in S.F., we have readings and plays—general geekiness over the Irish genius.

At some point in my mid twenties, I decided to read the classics, find out what all the hubbub was about. I picked Ulysses because I heard it was banned for being naughty. Looking back, I should have picked a far easier naughty read like Tropic of Cancer or Lady Chatterley's Lover, but Ulysses was there in all its close-to-700 page glory. It took me several months to read it, and I probably understood a seventh of it. But the prose was so beautiful that I kept reading. The book taught me to be an active reader. No more could I sit passively and let the story wash over me. Now I had to chew on sentences, figure out the context, look up meanings, and study Greek myth and Irish history.

I picked up Ulysses a second time later that year, this time with a book of annotated notes for Ulysses, a book as big as Ulysses itself. With the annotations, the book opened up for like a flower unfurling. I understood the story, and I fell in love with the book. It's sad story of lost people. Bloom's wife is going to have an affair that day and Bloom knows it. He travels around Dublin trying to keep busy, trying not to think of his wife's impending infidelity. Their lack of intimacy can be traced to their son's death at a very young age. Even though Bloom is going through a sad time, at heart, he is a good person. And his joy of life comes through the pages. In the end he forgives his wife and her last thought is a remembrance of him proposing marriage. The book ends on the word Yes—the most positive word in the English language.

The book's main style is stream-of-consciousness, which is the character's thoughts with no or little explanation. Here is Stephen Dedalus listening to the ocean while taking a piss on the beach:

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.

Beautiful, innit? Read it out loud to get the full effect.

He also writes chapters like newspaper articles, plays, literary gestation (styles of literature imitating 9 months of pregnancy) and even a 45-page chapter with no punctuation. Of course, this absolute disregard for the reader, this seemingly impenetrability of the text makes a very hard read. I've bought copies of the book for friends and family, who've tried and gave up. I don't blame them; who has the time? This ain't summer reading. The difficulty of the text and the fact that it tops the lists of the greatest books ever written brings out the anger in people. They regard it suspiciously, as if it was some trick to make them look stupid. They feel it's a joke pulled by pretentious professors. It's just a book, relax. To not get into a book doesn't make you stupid. I don't get into fantasy books, but I don't think the genre is a joke or dumb, it's just not for me.

I keep coming back to Ulysses. I love its understanding of remembrance. Here's a beautiful memory Bloom has of making love with is wife, while they were courting. He's been drinking a glass of Burgundy with a cheese sandwich for lunch:

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman s breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Now you can see why it was banned, and this is pretty tame compared to when Bloom masturbates on the beach. Of course, now it's practically G rated. But even with all the erudition flying about, one point keeps coming up in Ulysses, the word known to all men:

— But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.

— What? says Alf.

— Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment.

Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.

— A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.

— Well, says John Wyse, isn't that what we're told? Love your neighbours.

— That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, Moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair genteman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but

God loves everybody.

Amen, brother Joyce. I raise my pint to you.

The Video Game and the Damage Done

Oh, I have my vices, yes I do. Fun little exercises in excess they are, but I couldn't call them addictions. Addiction is where you are so obsessed that you can't work and you can't sustain a relationship. Addiction is when you keep doing a formerly fun thing when the fun has drained out, leaving you with only grim repetition. And I have had addiction—one in which I killed and had magic powers and spent countless hours on. I'm referring to the video game, World of Warcraft.

It would take too long to describe the game and it would bore the bejesus out of you. Instead read this sympathetic article about WOW gold farmers in the New York Times Magazine. It explains an awful lot about the game.

The most illustrative term in the game is called grinding. Basically it's the little quests you do for points and game currency. WOW makes these jobs labor intensive. In order to accomplish a task you need a certain amount of skins, but not all the creatures you kill yield the skins, so you have to keep killing creatures. You have to grind away.

I have some friends who live an hour away. With the dawn of high-speed internet, we could hang out, drink beer and play games, while never leaving our respective houses. We'd play first person shooter games, like Tribes or civilization games like Age of Empires. The games were fun, but really it was the socializing, especially since we can talk over Skype.

And then a good friend, a friend who keeps up on the coolest games, brought WOW to the table. The creators of WOW, Blizzard Entertainment, understand how addiction starts in a social circle; Blizzard gives you a free credit card to give to a friend when you buy the game. The first one is always free. My friend gave me the card and the game to put on my computer. I was hooked.

I'm not whining; the game is amazing, a huge synthetic world, that even after months of playing, still had areas I had not seen. And it was fun. You really jump up in the beginning levels quickly. And there is a lot of eye candy and goofy names, and cool armor. I've made friends with people, whose real names are unknown to me. Believe me, there's a reason why there is around 8 million people playing this game.

But WOW is a great black hole of time. Even traveling in the game can take up to 10 minutes. Add the grinding, the goofing off, the deciding what to wear, and you end up sitting down for six-hour stretches. You babble WOW arcane trivia, while non-players try to hide their yawns. I've seen people spend more time in WOW than at their job. I've seen marriages get rocky over the game, and friendships turn cold. My wrists began to hurt, my eyesight turned weak, I had to stop. What was once fun was now repetitious.

My salvation came when my computer died. When it was fixed, I did not put WOW back on it. Now I go outside. I meet people. I even get laid once in a while. To tell the truth, I don't even miss it. It's a brilliant game, but the real world is satisfying enough.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: The Alembic

After seeing a noisy pop rock band, called the Noisettes, at Amoeba Records in the Haight, my friends and I stopped off at a bar called The Alembic. It occupies a space that was a taqueria, now it is a high church to good spirits.

It’s interior resembles a roadhouse, a very clean roadhouse, a roadhouse where the drinks start at six bucks and head up from there. Little alembics line the shelves, along with cocktail books and pictures of pipes and kilns. The ceiling is covered in brass with two fans that languidly rotate. The tables and the floor are distressed wood. I tried to comfort it, but to no avail. They have a chalkboard that is held up by ropes and a pulley. The board lists the extraordinary amount of fine booze they sell. The bathrooms are sparkling clean and they have rolled cloth towels. The place is a mixture of down home and decadent.

I was told that the owners also own the fine hippie brewery, Magnolia’s down the street, so it is no surprise they carry Magnolia’s excellent craft brewed beer on tap. They carry other top notch beer also, including a great Belgium beer selection. Don’t ask for Bud or Coors here, fool. To my pleasure, they carry the most gin I’ve seen anywhere. I tried the Dutch gin called, Boomsma Oude. I had it in a martini, which was a mistake. Boomsma Oude is aged in oak barrels, which gives it a smooth and earthy taste. Smooth is good for martinis, earthy is not. This would be excellent in a highball glass.

The real pleasure in Alembic is the choice of bourbons. Bourbon is very trendy right now, but not in a lemon-flavored way. The Alembic has dozens of aged bourbons. I had a drink, I’ve never tried before: the Mint Julep. Outside the bar, they had a small chalkboard with a quotation of Hunter Thompson regarding the Mint Julep. I wish I wrote down the quotation, but if Hunter recommends it, I’ve got to try it. I assume he has sent many a pious person down the treachery slopes to hell.

A Mint Julep at The Alembic is made with mint, sugar, 12-year old bourbon and "brutally crushed ice." They are not kidding about the brutality. The bartender put the ice in a canvas bag and beat it with a stick. The drink is served in a silver cup. The cup frosted over. It was a hot night, a rare hot night in San Francisco, and I wanted to say in my worst Southern accent, would y’all like ‘nother Julep to fight the vapors with?

I admit it: I love this bar. I highly recommend you check it out.

When Love Comes Tumbling Down

I couldn’t pass this up. The military briefly looked into making a gay bomb. Let’s let the article tell the story:

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soldiers would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

The full article is here.

So many jokes…and stereotypes. It sounds like a plot for porn film. Man, there’s war going on, but my armor is really chaffing me. Mind if I take off my pants? (cue bad seventies funk music). Or maybe they thought the enemy would throw down their weapons and start singing show tunes? Or maybe make bitchy remarks about the enemy’s uniforms? Ask for a minimosa with their MRE?

I know this is Ohio in 1994, but really, who has this job? This is an example of the Peter Principle. This really illustrates the oxymoron, military intelligence. This is why, satire is impossible.

Butterfly on a Wheel

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Honey, I Shrunk the Porn

It was like coming across an old friend and not recognizing him or her at all. I was waiting for a haircut in the old style barbershop in my neighborhood. I perused the magazines and found Penthouse. Being that the Castro is a gay mecca, it’s a bit strange to find a nudie girl magazine, but these types of mags are a part of barbershops. So I flipped through it.

I sort of grew up with Penthouse. My brother would bring one home, or my friends might have few copies taken from Dad’s nightstand. Even back then I understood the hierarchy of the nudie magazine. Playboy was pretty but dull. Hustler was way sleazy. Every model had to be greased up for a Hustler shoot. I imagine they had a 10 gallon bucket of grease at the studio. Penthouse was a nice middle ground: they showed more than Playboy but had nicer models than Hustler. Back in the seventies, they showed genitalia. As a kid I poured over the pictures wondering at the model’s beauty, wondering what it would be like to have sex with them. At that age I wasn’t even masturbating yet, but I was intensely curious.

They had articles like Playboy, but they were more about sex. And there was the Penthouse Forum. The Forum was letters from readers describing their sexual adventures. It was all fake, of course. I had one of those Santa Clause/Tooth Fairy moments of clarity when I thought, hey, wait a minute, these stories sure are familiar. So people don’t quite have these random hookups described by the Forum writers, but I sure learned an arsenal of descriptive words: tits, bazongas, bodacious tatas, prick, dipstick and my personal favorite, raging manhood. Great name for a band if it’s not already taken.

So as I flipped through the Penthouse at the barbershop, I searched for any similarity to the mag of old. It’s a lot slimmer these days, and perhaps smaller too. The Forum was two letters only. The articles were all about stuff you could buy, or they were bullet points—lists of cool things, but not any interesting articles. Penthouse now resembles those stupid lad mags like Maxim or FHM, whose readership apparently has the attention span of gnat.

And strangely enough, Penthouse is coyer these days. I only saw a slight glimpse of genitalia. I don’t think I miss the gynecological photos they use to do, but it does seem a bit more tame. The pundits proclaim the pornification of society, but Penthouse is toning down the raunchiness. Of course, you can see all sorts of wild and wacky stuff on the internet for free, so to be coy is sort of a fresh idea. And, unlike Playboy, the women didn’t have breast implants.

But in the end, Penthouse was a dull read. I flipped through the entire magazine in 10 minutes. If you took the nudity out, you would have a minor Esquire magazine. But I suppose Penthouse will survive. Times change but the enjoyment of seeing naked people is eternal.

Slouching Towards Euphoria: Harvey's

I've been avoiding writing about this Harvey's because it's my main watering hole. (In this neighborhood, I avoid calling it a watering hole; gays cannot pass up innuendo.) But they have just redone the place, and I got some space to fill (Jesus, more double entendres). This bar carries San Francisco history. The bar is named after assassinated city supervisor, Harvey Milk. Back when it was called The Elephant Walk, the San Francisco Police, in retaliation for the White Night Riots, came in here and destroyed the place along with cracking a few heads.

An excellent history of The Elephant Walk can be found here.

The bar is much more sedate these days. Most nights, it closes before midnight. But I like it for that very reason. Most bars around here are meat markets with loud dance music. When I want just want a quiet drink and talk to a friend, it's the place to do it. They also serve food, which is mostly hit and miss. Like The Edge, Twin Peaks, and Moby Dick, tall windows line the outside walls, so people are content to eat and drink and watch the people go by. The windows are symbolic too, letting people know there is nothing to hide inside. The new decor is slightly bland. Soon they will put up more art and a tribute to Milk, but for now it sort of resembles someone's rumpus room circa 1979.

The staff is really cool, laid back and very attentive—so attentive that I usually end up stumbling home. Which isn't too bad, but it is uphill. They are also patient with my sometimes elaborate drink requests. The choice of booze is limited. I wouldn't mind a passtisse or a good single malt scotch, but their shelving is limited. They have trivia nights and drag nights and lesbian nights. Soon they will have a D.J. booth. I'm not sure if that'll be to my liking, but the masses have got to boogie.

I guess what I like most about it is the local hangout feel it has. It feels like a gay Cheers. And after a couple of drinks, there is a definite laugh track.

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

Every once in a while, sanity prevails. Americans are pretty hypocritical about many things, but at the top of the list is sexuality. And a subset of that is language about sexuality. To me words are just words, but to the F.C.C., words can cause everlasting damage. Obscenity by its very nature is subjective. It supposedly can't be defined, but the authorities know what it is when they see or hear it. But a U.S. Court of Appeals, said to Bush's F.C.C.—and I paraphrase—"Fuck you, buddy."

The opening paragraph of the New York Times article says it best:

"If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts."

Both fuckwads have uttered swear words or "fleeting obscenities." So why do television networks have to pay $325,000 when Bono (a good Catholic by the way) or Cher utters a swear word? The Bush administration feel they are above the law, of course, but this time the courts grew some balls and said no.

The F.C.C. hack gave his rebuttle:

“I completely disagree with the court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families,” he said. “The court says the commission is ‘divorced from reality.’ It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality.”

Nice touch about the families. Won't someone think of the children? I also like how he noted that the court was from New York. That's conservative code for Eastern liberal elites. I'm always amazed how people can do the most amoral things and then get heated up over words like cock, cunt and shit. It's as if they can accept the bad stuff they do, if they don't use words deemed offensive. It's also worth noting that words like nigger, faggot, chink, and the like are not deemed obscene only rude. You can be racist but not sexual or scatological.

Of course, like most moral controversies, the swear words are a distraction for the real problem: media monopolies. Bush's F.C.C. has been gutting regulations and now there is no local radio. Here in S.F. we are lucky enough to be a big market, so our D.J.s are local and talk about local issues. But smaller towns or even cities listen to D.J.s who aren't even in their own state. Music genres are rapidly expanding, but you wouldn't know it by listening to the radio. No wonder internet radio is so popular.

Strangely enough I believe that swear words should keep their power to shock, but not through fines. I'm sure the F.C.C. will take this to the conservative Supreme Court and the networks will lose. And in the end we'll all lose, although we'll keep on swearing. Fucking A, yes we will.

Yawning Towards Gentrification

I visited the East Village in the early nineties. It was funky like the Haight, but I felt safe. It was gentrifying. And pushed by the march of time, it's still gentrifying. The neighborhood is filling up with condos and expensive hotels. There are still nightclubs, hip bars and sex toy stores, but long term residents are being misplaced. Even with those huge government housing projects on the edges of Manhattan, New York seems to be me so expensive that I'm surprised they have any middle or lower class at all. The same could be said for my city.

I live in the Castro, one of the more expensive neighborhoods in the city. It might have been a gay ghetto, but now it's so fabulous that upscale hetrosexual couples, who have enough green to hire all those Latino nannies I see during the weekday, have started to move in. All neighborhoods change; it's the nature of the city. And gentrification has its nice side: good coffee, lower crime rate, less garbage.

But it also becomes less funky. Businesses have a hard time staying open with expensive rents. There are a lot of empty store fronts. The Castro has many bars, but they've shrunk. At one time, there were 32 bars in the area, now it's shrunk down to 14. I'm not complaining; I don't need 32 bars, but with the bars passing, so does a zeitgeist of that time. It must have been a wild place. It still can be during the weekend, but the place is quieter, more tame. If this trend continues, how dull will this place become?

But perhaps I'm looking through rose-colored glasses at the neighborhood's past. Maybe it sucked to live here. And maybe the future will be great here. But I won't know the future because I can't afford to stay here. Who are all these people that can afford to live here? Who will serve them that good coffee? Who will play them the music? Who knows? Maybe I can find the next funky place and buy some property. I could move out ot the suburbs, but even the suburbs are expensive. Also, I’d rather have my eyes popped like a two balloons than live there. I think I'll just complain some more.

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers

Evidently there is an eternal battle between wine drinkers and beer drinkers. In that fight, we all know the beer drinkers will win because they hang out with the hell raisers. And although I love good wine, my heart belongs to beer. But, alas, according to a wonderful article in Slate, wine consumption is increasing while beer consumption is down. It's a great article, by the way, written by the well-named Field Maloney. Seriously, wouldn't you want to have a beer with some one named Field Maloney.

In a two page article, Maloney discusses trends, statistics, marketing, and history. I have no qualms with the article, but the beer he is talking about is mass produced beer, the macro-breweries. And even if beer sales are stagnating, craft beer sales (or micro-brews if you like) have increased. Maloney notes this in a side bar, but it seems a little disingenuous not to mention it in the main body of the article. But he makes some interesting points, such as:

Meanwhile, the American middle classes have fast become connoisseurs of everything—coffee, '80s Japanese garage-rock bands, environmentalist toilet paper. Now, Americans who want the exclusivity that connoisseurship offers but didn't want to seem like snobs can have it both ways. Beer's approachability became less of a virtue. Ironically, in the ultimate about-face, craft-brew drinkers lifted the language of wine. (Tasting notes for a pale ale from the Web site Beer Advocate: "Nose is floral, like orange blossoms, with some citric rind and soft apple.")

I disagree about the want for exclusivity. I think people like connoisseurship with beer because people are sensual creatures and a beer that tastes good is sensual, for me at least. I agree with Maloney that beer is enjoyed upfront as a way to get loaded, while wine has a pretension that it’s not about getting loaded, when in reality it is. If any one has traveled the wine country, first and foremost it’s about getting fucked up in a pastoral setting. But being a beer connoisseur is about the explosion of taste in your mouth. It really is a party in my mouth. I don’t care if you think I’m a snob. I’m not drinking beer (or wine for that matter) to show status; I’m drinking a good tasting beverage that makes me happy.

He then talks of beer marketers trying to entice this aficionado class of drinkers:

…beer marketers seem torn between broadening their appeal and energizing their base. But brand repositioning has to be at least somewhat convincing: In 2005, Anheuser-Busch released a malt liquor called Bistro 8, a "new fermented beverage created in collaboration with Master Chefs to complement Bistro Fare. Bistro 8 features the aromas of exotic fruits, spices and citrus.…" Bud executives pulled it.

Again, Maloney is only looking at the macro-breweries, who brew for money rather than love. Craft breweries don’t have to reposition because all of their beers can be paired with food, perhaps with a wider range of food. Anheuser-Busch tries to latch on every fad there is. One that struck me as incredible lame was something called B2E, pronounced Bee to the E. It’s caffeinated beer. Bud was trying to cash in on all those lame-os ordering vodka red bulls, another disgusting drink. I never tried B2E, but I’m sure it sucked. Vodka red bulls taste like children’s aspirin. Try the Irish coffee if you want to be wired and drunk. Or cocaine and martinis.

Maloney also talks of the uniqueness of wine:

The hallmark of beer is consistency: A brewer strives to make batch after batch of Pilsener so it tastes the same—and often succeeds without much difficulty. Wine is more variable: The sugar levels and tannins and acidity of the grapes fluctuate from year to year, and so does the character of the resulting wines. This explains why the whole concept of vintages is so central to wine but largely absent from beer.

Again: macro-brews. I really wish he would make that distinction. Belgium beers are usually fermenting in the bottle. And most craft beers have different tastes batch to batch. Macro-brews try hard to have consistency, much like McDonald’s french fries.

But in the end he is right. Americans are becoming more white collar and turning away from beer. Here in S.F., I am separated from the rest of the country. Every bar has a great selection of local and foreign craft brews. Our supermarkets have a wide choice too. Sometimes I assume people have stopped drinking crappy, tasteless beer, but in the heartland, Joe Six Pack is picking up a cheap 12ver which he’ll drink and then beat the wife or dog. Harsh I know, but it’s true. Better beer equals peace love and understanding. Now stop whining.