If you asked me what the greatest, most scene-stealing-est supporting performance in modern history might be, I’d scarcely be able to come up with a better answer than Emma Sjöberg in the George Michael video “Too Funky” (a masterpiece in my own right, even outside of her formidable contribution — one that stands alongside All That Jazz and Last Year at Marienbad in, ahem, “examining” the mechanics of the human body’s ligaments under the duress of fantastic clothing). Linda Evangelista and Nadja Auermann are the first two models that strut the catwalk, and if Linda’s Marilyn pastiche is note-perfect, take note that Thierry Mugler and G. Michael frame her impressionistically tipsy-dizzy journey down the runway’s length with the germination of a pre-show tantrum (as last-minute make-up artists peck at her flaws until she ) on one side and a shot of her rolling her eyes with her back to the fashionistas alongside the walkway, a reflection of the same sort of lovable contempt that informed the quip “we don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” (as per Wikipedia, anyway). Nadja, on the other hand, can’t even work up the enthusiasm to switch up her sway, perhaps saving her stamina for later in the video when she’s seen wetting her expensive chiffon doily gown underneath a synthetic waterfall. (?!)

Thus, the first disembodied shots of Emma break through the staid procession, first with the blazing blue-red chrome chestplate (anchored down the sternum by a painted cow skull) and second by her upholstered-leather ass heart. Here, suddenly, is a model who has latched onto the handlebars of the song’s stilted snare rhythm (Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds”) and intends to ride it to the tune of her twisting/twisted spine. First medium shot, she’s caught chewing gum. Caught? The saucy bitch strings it with one driving-gloved hand and snaps the remainder back in defiance of Linda/Nadja’s code of cool elegance. Her Punky Brewster two-tone wig — red and orange straw with mottled bangs — gets a tousled once-over in one of her chest abutment’s rear-view mirrors before she checks her lips in the other, giving herself a prolonged smoochie. Fuck it. Michael’s sideline camera goes in for a second shot of her perky “heart” and, for his/our benefit, she limberly punctuates his/our voyeurism by craning her arm back and pointing to what is clearly her ensemble’s exclamation point. She’s not rolling her eyes on the retreat to the backstage. She’s fucking dancing her way back, caught in a tracking shot from the side shuffling her cowboy booted legs in a double-time change up. And this despite (or in spite of) the dressers’ over-zealousness with the leather-strap accessories, chokers, armbands, cockrings… Pebbles Flinstone bones-on-thigh?! And, to cap it off, during the song’s recapitulation-cum-curtain call Emma’s first frames reveal her not just returning to the stage but hiking up her leg and slamming it down in case anyone hadn’t received her impression the first time around. Proud and defiant, blithely profane towards the notion of the clip’s debt to “male gaze” (even if it is Michael’s), Emma’s 30-odd seconds of screen time are queer theory in a nutshell.

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My family’s remaining dog Miles started making horrible croaking noises last night while my friend Adria was over at my parents’ house. We were mere minutes away from leaving to see Peter Pan at the Ordway with my dad’s comp tickets. He was wrapping up his dinner and suggested that Miles was probably hitching up to barf. I didn’t think so, but let him out anyway. He weaved around a little while and I ran to get him a bowl of water. When I came back from the utility room with the bowl, I saw he’d retreated behind the lilac bushes in the far corner of our yard. Knowing as I did that dogs and cats only did this when they were alarmed for their own lives, I yelled at my dad and Adria to come down, especially because Adria is a vet tech. I ran to the bushes, where he still stood, his lower abdomen pulled completely in as he gasped for air. I tried to get him to walk out for a couple seconds, but when I saw him sink down on his forearms like a cow, I lunged into the bushes, grabbed his front legs and yanked his limp body out. I ran back to the porch, where Adria and my father tried to open up his trachea and remove whatever was obstructing his ability to breathe. His gums and tongue were the color of oatmeal. Not finding anything, my dad immediately took him to the Apple Valley animal emergency clinic…

Adria and I followed, and once Miles had been admitted, my dad started misting up and expressing guilt that he still had to go perform at the Ordway. (No understudies for musicians; subs, sure, but they need more notice than fifteen minutes.) While Adria and I watched Animal Planet’s X-Treme countdown of the top 10 animal architects (spiders were robbed way down at #8), I juggled calls with the rest of my family: my sister Mandy (at work at St. Joe’s in Minneapolis), Lauren (at a dance competition in Chicago), and my mom (working in Sacremento this week). As per usual, I was the most emotional-controlled (downright emotion-avoidant) of the lot. My sister later said that she was glad I was there instead of her. “I would’ve lost my damned mind if I saw that,” she drawled. Eventually, a doctor came and showed Adria and I X-Rays that showed a grossly enlarged and rigid epiglottis and a number of suspicious densities that were, in all likelihood, cancerous. I was trying to volley phone calls between my mom and my dad (who arrived to play the first act of Peter Pan and then was told by the conductor to return to Apple Valley), wondering whether we should remove the tracheal tube, should we give him a tracheostomy to keep him up and running long enough to get him to the U for biopsy or ultrasound to diagnose the growths… eventually my mom asked the doctor (over my phone) to just see how he did without the oxygen tube in. Twenty minutes later, he had improved remarkably. I went back to see him and he got up on his feet and wagged his tail as I reached through the window’s armhole. My dad arrived at that point and we gave Miles a goodnight pat, leaving him under observation and contemplating the relief that we would still have the opportunity to euthenize him properly should the growths be diagnosed as cancerous. How strange a comfort that is.

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My possessions are half in the basement of my parents’ house in Burnsville, half in my new apartment in Minneapolis, half in the storage locker, and one-quarter in the back of my car. It adds up as such because I had lost track of just how much crap I’d accrued even in just the last couple years. I’ve already managed to make a pile of some ten or twenty books I have no good argument on behalf of keeping. Not that I expect too many people will actually want them, but I’ll come back (probably tomorrow, as my internet access is sporadic until I can settle in at the Minneapolis location) and post a list of books that I intend to donate to Half Price Books in St. Louis Park on the off chance one of you want one of them. Don’t get excited, though; it’s mostly useless outdated movie almanacs, et al.

I went to the bank this morning to deposit a couple checks. The first was from my Grandma Olsen, given to me for my birthday. I have mixed feelings about cashing checks from her since my Grandpa died last summer. She’s not working, and I wouldn’t exactly say she’s printing her own retirement money, but on the other hand I’ve seen how huffy she gets when my cousin doesn’t cash the checks Grandma gives her for her birthday and Christmas. The second check was from the State of Minnesota (ironic, considering the government of the state has been idling on the tarmac for the last six days). Apparently I was wrong for thinking I owed the state some $150; I was supposed to get over $275 back. That’s a near-half-grand that will probably go immediately towards paying for my new plush, queen-sized bed.

Anyway, the bank teller had the trifecta going on: fat, black and womanly. Respitorily speaking, I could tell that she was breathing through her mouth because her pores were working overtime to exude her copious regality. She looked at my deposit slip and its modest figures and intoned “Somebody knows they math.” I felt flush with both pride and humble genuflection. Such was my raised stock that I felt compelled to opine “It’s almost a shame that you can’t brush up your multiplication and division on these deposit slips.” Her eyelids practically retracted to top of her skull and her neck rolled back to absorb the shock. For a terrible second, I thought I’d transgressed. I thought I’d be dressed down and banished to the scummiest social caste. The moment passed and she wheezed: “Yeah. That is a shame, mister math man.”

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