Thoughts

These don't have any unifying theme, except that I thought them all recently.

1. This Smoking Cocktail post on simulated gay bashing at a sport's bar troubles me for several reasons, not the least of which is the blatant misuse of the apostrophe in "sport's bar" (what sport owns the bar? Is it curling? Because that would be pretty sweet.) However, having looked past the reasons it makes me cringe, it also makes me incredibly happy.

2. Neil Gaiman, too, makes me incredibly happy. Here are two brief quotes from Chapter Two of The Graveyard Book that help explain why:

"Her father taught particle physics, but there were, Scarlett told Bod, too many people who wanted to teach particle physics and not enough people who wanted to learn it, so Scarlett's family had to keep moving to different university towns, and in each town her father would hope for a permanent teaching position that never came."

"...one of the policewomen got into an argument with Scarlett's father, who tried to tell her that he, as a taxpayer, paid her wages, and she told him that she was a taxpayer too and probably paid his wages..."

Very few books contain characters who are underpaid itinerant adjunct faculty. Fewer books (I think) contain multiple policewomen. Even fewer bother to challenge the totally obnoxious "I paid for you so you do whatever I want" mentality. This short novel for children does all of those in the course of two throwaway paragraphs. It also explains particle physics from a five-year-old's perspective, but I'll let you all go read the book and laugh at that one on your own. If you live near me, you can borrow my copy, but please ignore the dog footprints on it. I read it in a park.

3. I'm gonna be on TV! Z2, your shirt is gonna be on TV too! Yesterday I spent several hours with Kathy Griffin, filming an episode of her show, My Life on the D-List. Kathy (she gets to use her real name here because she's famous) came to the LA Gay & Lesbian Center to learn how to canvass voters on marriage for gay and lesbian couples, and El Nico and I were the ones who taught her how. Then we all went out to Pasadena and she talked to voters, trailed by her crew, five of us from Vote For Equality, a crew from The Advocate, and a crew from Extra. It was a whole big mess o' gays. RC Cola and I got interviewed by The Advocate and I stared (a lot) at the ass of the reporter from Extra. It was totally awesome. And by "it" I mean the whole day, not the reporter's ass. Though that was awesome too. Kathy is such a sweet person, and her makeup woman has fabulous eyebrows. This experience is proof that everyone in LA is a movie star, including and especially ME.

4. In the past two days I have had a chocolate milkshake and a black and white milkshake, plus I've tasted a creamsicle milkshake and a chocolate peanut butter banana milkshake that The Mysterious X had. All courtesy of Swingers Diner. Milkshakes, it turns out, are delicious (who knew? Oh, right; everyone knew.), but each of these failed the crucial milkshake test: does it come with a tiny cup of the extra stuff that didn't fit in the glass? Without the tiny cup, I felt a little cheated, but they still tasted wonderful. By the way, for all you vegans, vegetarians, and sympathizers in LA, Swingers is AWESOME. For those of you who eat teh meats, it is also awesome. The She God of Shark Reef and I had almost identical chili-cheese-fries-and-a-black-and-white-milkshake meals, but she had it with turkey chili and I with veggie. Something for everyone!

5. I just got the soundtrack to Bea Arthur's solo show, Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends. It is fascinatingly, fabulously, bizarrely, inexplicably terrible, and I will probably write a paper about it. However, I want to point out here that her accompanist, the composer of some of the songs she sings, is also the composer of the theme music from Kojak. Other than that, you'll have to wait until the paper gets published to hear all of my thoughts on it, which means you will never ever hear them. Because who wants to publish a paper on Bea Arthur's one-woman show? Nobody at all.

6. Starting next Friday, an amusing theatrical troupe will be doing (melo-)dramatic staged readings of spectacularly bad screenplays. It is called Magnum Opus Theatre, and it is exciting to me. I plan on attending quite a few of these.

I think that's all I got for right now. Vacation is pretty sweet.