Last week, my mom bought “our” dog Oriel (or Oreo) a diaper, for her incontinence problems.

Hiding from cruel eyes:

Attempting to eat in dignity:

Even my other dog Miles appears to be averting his gaze in shame:

Clowns | No Comments »

When I first started working downtown and parking my car a block away from Loring Park (there are four hour meters there, and when the temperature dips below freezing, I’d rather not have to plug it twice), one of my fellow male employees pointed out to me that, despite police stings diluting their commonplace, it still remained a popular cruising location. For the last three years, I’d never run into anything resembling a carnal proposal. At best, I saw a few lollygaggers that I could safely assume were male prostitutes. I have to admit that, until just now, I was a tad crestfallen. In the back of my mind, I was sort of hoping that I might get the opportunity to get mistaken for one of those prostitutes, unlikely as that would ever happen with my rail-thin, balding self. (On the other hand, I think I hold my own.)

But in the ass-crack early morning hour of 4:15 (when I arrive at work for this tiresome morning shift) while I was driving East on 12th towards my usual row, I noticed a tan Lexus driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Naturally, I made it a point to glare at the driver and point out that he was going against traffic. (Nevermind that, at this hour, he was in no danger at all of running into anyone.) The fat, fuzzy dude sitting behind the wheel looked back at me with what I thought was gratitude on his face and I drove on to my right turn onto the side street to park. As I was gathering my cans of pop, my box of Capt’n Crunch and my gloves, I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed the Lexus creeping around the same corner, coming up behind me slowly. Eh, maybe he’s just looking for a suitable place to park. I didn’t recognize him, and I’d actually been working the damned morning shift long enough to recognize some of the other poor saps who have to arrive at roughly the same time as I do, but I assumed that he’s just someone I’d missed in the last few weeks. My suspicions were assuaged when he slowed down up the block and appeared to be pulling into a meter. I gathered everything in my bag and collected two dollars’ worth of quarters from my cup holder and was about to brace myself for the cold walk to work when I realized there were headlights shining in my face. I looked up and realized that the Lexus had swung towards the curb in order to U back around toward me. I was being cruised… by a man in his car.

Not wanting to make any further eye contact, I pretended to be gathering more possessions, grasping down at the dirt on the passenger seat’s floormat as the Lexus crept alongside my car, close enough to me that he was actually once again in oncoming traffic. Unfortunately, there were no cars to cut him back to his side of the road, so I had to pantomime obliviousness while he inched on by. Once he’d past, I was about to leave when I realized that if I exited my car while he was still behind me (and sure to swoop once again), he’d undoubtedly think I was approaching him. So I sat in my already rapidly cooling car while the undoubtedly closeted fat homo in his automotive token of suburban success turned back around for a third pass at the incredulous guy in the utilitarian Ford Escort. He pulled up and, for a brief terrible moment, I was sure he wasn’t going to budge from alongside my car. I figured a “roll down your window” gesture would soon follow, and I’d have to flip open my Leatherman mini-knife, but he passed once again. I seized the opportunity and got out of my car. So as to leave little doubt in his mind, I shot his rearview a look of appalled fury, slammed my door shut, turned on my heels and stormed off the other way. I wasn’t sure if he’d swerve around for one final vehicular caress, and I was less sure what I would do if he did, but thankfully he took the hint. I might secretly pretend to live the life treacherous as a prostitute, but I’ll choose my clients, thanks.

Flesh, Trash, Heat | No Comments »

While I was driving home from work this noon and waiting at the last light on 12th Street before I could turn onto 35W, I saw a white minivan pull up next to that immigration/court/whatever building and park. The sliding door on the side opened up and a twentysomething African man started to emerge, but as he was attempting to exit the cab, somehow his feet became tangled. His entire body arced out of the van on the axis of his feet, which were two feet above the ground. He hit the pavement hard, palms down at a velocity that let me to believe that he had surely sprained both wrists, if not fractured a few bones. This happened literally the same moment that our light turned green and I thought it was extraordinarily lucky for him that the light hadn’t changed 15 seconds earlier or he would’ve pendulumed himself right into the front grill of an oncoming car. As it was, we waited for him to clear out of the road and run into the building, looking at his palms with the same disbelieving anguish that mad scientists will convey upon discovering that their hands have become furry talons.

After Adria, Jess and I had finished our rancid lunch at the Byerly’s Minnesota Grille restaurant in Apple Valley (the downtown location had just received a withering one star rating in the St. Paul Pioneer Press a day or two ago), Jess fielded a call from Sara about our plans to celebrate the end of the semester later that evening. Adria pulled a mini chip-clip from her pocket and unpremeditatedly snapped it down on my shirt, miraculously managing to locate precisely my right nipple. I must’ve looked like I was being electrocuted from the immediate sting of pain, which made Adria laugh hard enough that she couldn’t keep her hand steady enough to remove the yellow, plastic S&M device from my tit. Which was just as well, since she very well could’ve torn it off. “Oh my god, I don’t know why I did that!” she guffawed.

Flesh, Trash, Heat | No Comments »

Her sister Gloria’s right eye bulged and strained against the constraints of her tightening eyelids as Dorothy continued to exert increasing telekinetic abuse on the rapidly buckling cranium. Gloria briefly wished to protest, but instead focused her gaze ahead and accepted, with only slight resignation, her fate. She knew that Dorothy was omniscient and that her punishment was fair. Moments later, her head collapsed mournfully and retreated into the folds of her shoulder blades.

Freeze Frame | No Comments »

Today was be the announcement of the first “critics’ group” to weigh in on the year in film, as well as the first (as far as I’m aware of) batch of individual critics’ top ten lists. I obviously use the scare quotes because we’re talking about the National Board of Review. I won’t bore anyone with the full results (and they might have reach a new high for ho-hum this year), but suffice it to say that Michael Mann’s award for best director is the coolest selection by default.

Collateral appears on one of the Artforum top 10s as well, which is surprising considering the two in tandem constitute just about the most schizophrenic pair of summation statements imaginable. See for yourself. I sort of thought I was moderately on top of the film scene this year for just about the first time ever, but Chrissie Iles’ list has four films I’ve even heard of and six that just have me scratching my head. I remember seven, eight years ago I would be excited for the start of “Oscar season.” Then that gradually evolved into excitement for critics awards (which, at the time, included the Board of Review). Now I get excited for the deluge of top ten lists, and specifically lists like Iles’. Next stop in the evolution is to not get excited for the end of the year at all, or lists in general. (I suspect after that will come the nonchalance towards films in general, no doubt… or not.)

Speaking of the Board of Review, I had a surreal conversation with a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (which make the Board of Review look like Cahiers). I wanted to know exactly how the organization went about nominating/awarding their citations, and if the process was as contentious and rancorous as I understand the New York Circle can get. (The image of turfwars among the soft-bellied middlebrow danced in my head.) Anyway, as I put it in an email to someone else, he was so laughably naive and provincial, claiming that the superior “democratic” results of Oscars (which the BFCA more or less follows in terms of generating their results) are less subject to criticism of gerrymandering and maneuvering than, for example, the NYFCC (who, I told him, decide their awards in a conference setting, as opposed to just sending a secret ballot in through the mail). The conversation, as best I could recall when recounting it later, went something along the following lines:

ME: blah blah blah the NYFCC, I think, actually gets together in a conference room to hash out the results of their awards.
HIM: The BFCA uses a secret ballot method like the Oscars. The results are more democratic that way.
ME: Yeah, I think the NYFCC method ensures that the results will be a bit more on the idiosyncratic side…
HIM: (rolls eyes) That’s a good thing?
ME: Well, the whole reason critics’ groups were formed was to create an alternative to the “mainstream-ness” of Oscars.
HIM: (rolls eyes further) They’d have a hard time selling that being as worth any respect to me.
ME: I don’t think they even deny that their awards are the results of political maneuvering, but they’re more interested in selecting films that reflect their personality as a group.
HIM: (rolls eyes and pops them out of his skull a la Geena Davis in Beetlejuice)
ME: Anyway, you could just as easily level charges on Oscars for kowtowing to politics and lobbying.
HIM: No you can’t!
ME: There are advertisements in trades for months leading up to the nominations.
HIM: But it’s a secret ballot. Anyone can vote for whatever they like, and every film is eligible.
ME: (changing the subject to avoid choking him) So, what are you voting for for the BFCA?
HIM: well… not Alexander, I can tell you that much.
ME: I wouldn’t have expected that.
HIM: Mmmm…. I think Finding Neverland deserves to be up… I’ve heard The Aviator is supposed to be spectacular…

Et al, ad nauseum. If I ever had any doubt as to the ability for him (and, I’ll be honest, all of us, be we renegades or pop-culturists or suckling swill-receptacles) to be 100% positive of his own “critical independence” and 100% in denial of the outside forces that form that independence, I don’t any longer. I mean, he literally admits that he’s reserving a slot for something that just happens to be one of the major studios’ Oscar-grasping buzz items… Which proves my theory that I don’t think there are significantly more contenders for any given year at the Oscars then there are for any critics’ group. (And by “contenders,” I mean to say that, as far as Oscars are concerned, there may as well have only been a dozen or two films released for the entire year.) The main crux of his arguement seemed to be that whereas the NYFCC ends up narrowing its pool of eligible contenders through the verbal, interactive voting process (making it subject to “tainting” or whatever), the Oscars and BFCA system is set up so that anything can win. But to accept his argument requires one to totally ignore the overpowering buzz machine (the one he characteristically denies even exists, mostly because he’s one of the cogs). I don’t mean to suggest I think that critics’ awards aren’t subject to the same, but sweet jesus if this pin-cushion of a man doesn’t literally believe that he’s not just a cog in the publicity machine.

OK, enough about stuff I claim to care nothing about.

To be filed under the “do people really still think they’re funny saying this” headline, the following generic exchange:
Fag Hag: You’re, like, perfect. Why don’t you just go out with me?
Fag: Girl, I love you, but… (laughing through teeth) you just don’t have the right equipment.

If you’ve said this recently or more than once, just kill yourself now and get it overwith because you’re sure enough going to die alone and stupid. In related news, Anderson Cooper apparently referred, when recently engaging in a debate with Jerry Falwell, to gays with the pronoun “we” instead of “they.” And I just caught the CNN ad where he’s portrayed sitting astride a pouty-lipped young buck’s office desk, attempting to read him the headlines as the dude fields a phone call from his lady friend. Cooper repeatedly attempts to interject the headlines, and thought the guy keeps leading him on and begging to have Cooper continue, the frosty-topped geekishly handsome anchor keeps waiting for the man’s full attention. He finally gives it up, though, when the man says “I love you,” getting up in frustration. “No, wait! I wasn’t saying ‘I love you’ to you!” the man says. “Come back!” He knows that you weren’t talking to him, dude. That’s why he’s leaving, in dejection and frustration. This scene shows up in any number of soap operas and romantic comedies, only it usually takes place in a bed, post-coitus. Apparently Anderson could only talk the promotions department at CNN into so much subtext.

La Hainerade | No Comments »