Clumsy oaf of the day

Television star David Hasselhoff was hospitalized after a shaving accident in which he severed a tendon in his arm.

Say what?

The 53-year-old actor, who played lifeguard Mitch Buchannon on (Baywatch) for 11 years, was shaving at a gym in the Sanderson Hotel on Thursday when he hit his head on a chandelier, showering his arm with broken glass, his publicist, Judy Katz, said.

What? Baywatch was on for 11 years?

Today's fakes: you're happy enough

Australian authorities arrested three men for attempting to smuggle millions of Ecstasy hits into the country. The drugs were concealed as follows: vacuum-packed in plastic, then put into containers of blue dye which were shipped inside a shipping container. When customers agents discovered the drugs, they substituted fakes -- into blue dye, right? I wouldn't like that job -- and then tracked the shipment as it went on its way.

In Chicago, men posing as suburban police officers broke into a home, collected car keys from the residents, and drove off in their trucks.

And in Milwaukee, two men were arrested this week in a scheme that involved putting fake bar codes onto price tags for electronics, buying the gizmos at the low prices that showed up on the checkout scanner, and then reselling them on eBay. 23-year-old twin brothers carried out the scheme for three months before being caught.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Dept. of inflated expectations

A Kansas judge used a penis enlargement pump while on the bench, and once used a disposable razor during a trial to shave his "scrotum," according to the testimony of a former court reporter fired by the judge after she cooperated with an invistigation into his conduct (Courtesy Obscure Store) Update: The judge was convicted today on four counts of indecent exposure.

A Texas man mailed a threatening letter to his ex-girlfriend and included a human finger, writing "This is my last chance to touch you." Police complimented whoever amputated the finger, saying "It was a clean cut -- it wasn't mangled." That's a relief -- don't you just hate it when you receive fingers in the mail and they're all messed up?

Good thing he didn't send it UPS.

And in L.A., safety officials are giving a hard look at Bikram Choudhury's yoga studio chain, the one where they crank the heat up to 110 degrees no matter what the weather is like outside. But that's not the issue -- the issue is overcrowding.

Inspectors in April found 160 people squeezed into a space with a maximum capacity of 49, said Deputy City Atty. Eric Rosenblatt...

But I'll bet they were all slippery.

Eric Rofes, 1954-2006

Author and professor Eric Rofes, whom I interviewed earlier this year, died unexpectedly on Monday.
NYT obituary.
247gay.com obituary.
Bay Area Reporter obituary.
San Francisco Chronicle obituary.

Focus on the fundies: 'Warren Buffet = Mengele'

The Buffett-Gates Foundation donation and the masturbatory coverage surrounding it haven't pleased anti-abortion foamers, who are criticizing the philanthropists for supporting Planned Parenthood and other birth control programs. A priest, one Thomas Euteneuer, who runs an anti-abortion group said something that is so contradictory to common sense that it sounds like parody: "The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world." He also equated Buffett -- a wealthy businessman -- with Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.



Yes -- birth control may doom families in the developing world. Of course, the opposite is true: countries where birth control is widespread also have low infant mortality rates, fewer people living in poverty, and a higher life expectancy.

Euteneuer's logic is revealed on his website, where an article about Buffett's gift contains this sentence:

It was Warren Buffett who funded the deadly abortion drug RU-486 and has sent suction machines to the Third World to make sure that the poor would not proliferate in his eugenic vision of a white-dominated world.

I'd hate to see what he has to say about George Soros.

Today's fake: not Brad Pitt

A Jordanian salesman forged an identity card using a Brad Pitt photo and an Arabic name in an attempt to steal thousands of dollars in unclaimed bank account deposits. He was caught by UAE police and is now on trial in Dubai. Said he downloaded the photo from the internet and didn't know who Brad Pitt was.

Why, he's merely one of the people who make America great, according to Newsweek.

Secession

After the Anglican primate announced a plan to permit local dioceses to withdraw from national church organizations ("provinces") if they disagreed with them, four U.S. dioceses jumped at the chance. Among those were the diocese of San Joaquin Valley, a rural stretch which hasn't even caught up to the ordination of women (almost all Episcopal dioceses have ordained women since the late 1970s at the latest), not to mention the ordination of gay people, the issue ostensibly dividing the church.

The divergent dioceses wish to affiliate themselves either with each other or, as several conservative Southern California congregations have done, with a foreign diocese (the California congregations now profess allegiance to the Bishop of Uganda -- I don't have to tell you where he stands on gays).

How satisfying it must be to seceed -- to say you are no longer part of a group but you're on your own. It must feel righteous and bold and exciting. I'll bet it is what a lot of conservatives all over the country -- not Episcopalians, but all kinds of conservatives -- would like to do. Imagine if the San Joaquin Valley, or the Bible Belt as a whole, could seceed from the U.S. -- I'll be they would if they could.

Today's fake 'killed child pornographers'

Child pornographers are the new scapegoats, really. Who would possibly defend them? Who would convict someone who brought them to justice or even carried out vigilante actions against them?

This is the ethos behind a fellow named David Race Bannon, a North Carolina computer instructor at a community college (nothing says loser like being a community college instructor of a skill most people pick up intuitively) who claimed to be an Interpol assassin:

He said he led a 1998 raid on the Florida branch of a worldwide child-prostitution ring, rescuing an 8-year-old girl and killing one of her kidnappers with a knife to the throat. ... He filled a book with tales of two decades as a secret agent and assassin for Interpol, the international police force. He gave TV, radio and newspaper interviews detailing his adventures.

And he claimed to be a martial arts expert for a while, but was exposed on a website -- dig this -- called bullshido.net, a website devoted to exposing phony black belts. Love that. (Courtesy Galley Cat)

His ex-wife has the perfect deflating analysis: "He wants to be special, but he doesn't want to put in the work." There are so many people who fit that description these days.

David Race Bannon, fakes, hoaxes

Lit conf etiquette guide

Off to a literary conference this summer? Novelist and creative writing teacher Alex Chee posts some rules on how to behave at literary conferences: Don't force someone to read your work; don't latch onto someone*, and don't let someone latch on to you; and more.

Based on my bad behavior last summer at Squaw, I would add something. Most people know that it's bad form to be overly defensive of your own work, or to fish for compliments by putting it down. But I would suggest: don't get too passionate, in any direction, about someone else's work either. You're there to give helpful suggestions; so is everyone else. If you find yourself being so passionate about someone else's work to the point of making more than your share of comments, or insisting on your point of view, it's probably time to back off and be quiet.

Last summer a story by one of the people in my group hit a little close to home, because it reminded me of a relationship from my past that I had never resolved. It was a good piece with good writing, too, but I got so caught up in analyzing the characters' actions and motivations that I began to over-dominate the discussion. After that most of the people in the group treated me like I was a complete idiot, though, come to think of it, things were sort of going that way already. Nobody likes a loudmouth -- a lesson I still haven't completely learned, after 40 years.

* Or you could be like F. Scott Fitzgerald who, according to this piece, greeted James Joyce by sinking to one knee, kissing the writer's hand, and asking "How does it feel to be a great genius, sir?"

literary conferences

Prison gangsters' secret codes

Leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood used invisible ink and secret codes to communicate with each other despite the fact they resided in draconian "supermax" prisons. The fascinating article contains links to examples of how they sent messages -- for example, using a code invented by Sir Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan contemporary of Shakespeare.

Sleepers awake

Did you know that Andrea Yates, the insane woman from the Houston suburb where I went to high school, is being retried?

Or that Chrysler has decided to market a small electric car in the U.S. just as a documentary called Who Killed The Electric Car? is being released? (It is all right to boo Ralph Nader when he comes on the screen, no matter how many kittens he says electric cars save.)

Or that not getting enough sleep can be a contributing factor to obesity?

Or that Pope Benedict doesn't like folk guitars or pop music in church services?

You probably knew all that.

'Dummies' authors to meet

150 authors of the "_____ For Dummies" books will convene in San Francisco in November (courtesy Publishers Lunch).

This suggests some comic scenes in which everyone wants to ask questions of the "Programming your VCR for Dummies" guy, while experts in the more obscure subjects ("Living Gluten-Free for Dummies") sit around boring each other to death.

In other book news, The Guardian has a piece on erotic updates of fairytales for adult readers.

Among the hoi polloi: the moviegoer

Recovering from a weekend on which I was laid low by an endodontist who, on Friday, "retreated" an existing root canal of mine with a pair of rusty garden shears and a small cache of C4 explosive, I ventured forth into the public today, finding myself at a cheek-by-jowl cheap Chinese place in Redwood City for lunch, listening to an enthusiastic scene-by-scene (and sometimes line-by-line) recounting of the new Adam Sandler movie Click.

Not happy was I.

Wonder no more at who the audience for such fare may be; he was a beefy, 40ish man wearing a dress shirt, and he dug into his third-rate Chinese food with every bit of the enthusiasm he brought to his several minutes-long retelling of the Click saga, which he recounted as if it were a cross between Being John Malkovich and Citizen Kane. His interlocutor, who showed slightly less enthusiasm for the work of Adam Sandler, must have been a slightly lower-ranking co-worker who felt compelled to listen to Mr. Moviegoer yammer on. What fresh hell is that -- forced to politely listen to somebody with more seniority or pull than you as he bores you to death with the vapid subject of his choosing. Compared to that, my toothache was a vacation.

Adam Sandler, Click, movies

It's not actually from the Onion

Rochester hopes slogan will fire up tourism

ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP) - Rochester hopes to give its tourism industry a boost with a new marketing campaign built around the slogan, "Rah, Rah, Rochester: More than you know."

City promoters hope the theme will bring attention to the city's lesser known landmarks and attractions.

"It's a new way and a new attitude to celebrate everything that's great in our city," said Brad Jones, director of the Rochester Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Things to read

A terrific piece in Bookforum about a film, Writer of O, about the author of Story of O.

An interview with Gore Vidal by an Irish newspaper, conducted in Rome, in which a little exaggeration ("Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror, but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means. It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless. We are in a dictatorship that has been totally militarised, everyone is spied on by the government itself. All three arms of the government are in the hands of this junta") goes a long way. And Salon has a piece about a new book, The One Percent Doctrine, which looks at how the right wing pulled it off.

Focus on the Fundies: 'He's Christian Coalition'

Former right-wing activist and lobbyist Ralph Reed, who founded the Christian Coalition, went on to become a high-powered Washington lobbyist ("I need to start humping on some corporate accounts!") and, now, candidate for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia, had extensive ties to Jack Abramoff, a bipartisan Senate report said.

In many cases, the report found, payments to Mr. Reed were handled through third parties in what appeared to be an effort to disguise the fact that the money was from tribes with large casino operations.

The report quoted a tribe leader from Louisiana as saying he was told to keep quiet about Mr. Reed because "he's Christian Coalition -- it wouldn't look good if they're receiving money from a casino-operating tribe to oppose gambling."

The report says that Mr. Abramoff turned to Mr. Reed in his efforts to defend Indian tribes that were threatened by competition; Mr. Reed organized lobbying to block the opening of new gambling operations in those states.

Focus on the Fundies: Apocalypse Now

A number of sects, organizations and movements are not only preparing for Armageddon -- they are hoping to hasten it. These include not only nutball Christians and messianic Jews but some Shiites, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- gee, and he was seeming so rational. The Iranian leader has "spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi."

Meanwhile, the rest of the population was doing its best to assure the end of the human race and as many other species as possible: a new study reported the Earth is now as hot as it's been for 400 years.

Good thing I live in San Francisco.

Santorum: 'We wound WMD in Iraq'

In MSNBC's First Read, I noticed something mind-boggling: Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum declared "we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".

Courtesy this progressive site, TruthDig, we are then treated to video -- from Fox News, no less! -- of Santorum's expression as he learns his breathless announcement was based on "pre-1991 weapons" that even the Bush administration is discounting. YouTube version.

As Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who is the co-idiot in this situation, said: "Rick (Santorum) got this information from an unconventional source, someone outside of the government..." Looks like somebody tricked Santorum into making the announcement and looking like even more of an idiot than he usually does.

Santorum, WMDs, disinformation

Books and writers

Read my Metroblogger post about cheerful news for a San Francisco independent bookstore -- for a change.

I got shut out of the Clear Cut Press reading last night. I had been looking forward to this for some time, but traffic across the city was so bad that it took me 40 minutes to drive to North Beach. I arrived only 10 minutes late, but the upstairs room at City Lights was so small that it was completely full, with people standing on the stairs leading up to the room. I was in no mood to sit slumped on the stairs for more than an hour, so I just split. I was so disappointed. They are, however, reading in Berkeley tonight and L.A. this weekend (more info), and the big turnout bodes well for them.

bookselling, Clear Cut Press, literary events

More confusion about gender

A North Carolina performance artist's show was cancelled (Link courtesy Violet Vixen) at a community college, but another nearby school let him do one performance. The problem? The performer, Scott Turner Schofield, is a transman, and at the end of the show he "sometimes" takes off his shirt.

The original venue had a problem with that, with a spokesperson saying "We don't allow nudity here." What about the recent production of "Jesus Christ Superstar," in which an actor appears dressed only in a loincloth? "A man who has always been a man is different, I think." Well, what was offensive about a man taking his shirt off? "I try not to draw a (mental) picture."

Precisely. What's behind this small incident is one guy who is so freaked out by the prospect of an ambiguous chest that he cannot bring himself to think the whole thing through.

You know, I sympathise with that administrator. People who fuck with gender are threatening in a way -- if they weren't, then their material would have no power. But someone in that man's job -- he is the facilities manager for the college's arts complex, which includes a 1000 seat theater, the 225-seat hall that Schofield's producer tried to rent, and a third 175-seat hall -- has to think about such things. It's his job to think about issues of art, censorship, what's offensive and what's not, first amendment issues and so on. Who else is going to think about these things?

It's like a librarian saying "Our library is not going to carry certain books because I can't bring myself to think about the terrible ideas contained in them." No -- that's your job.

censorship, transexuals, performance art, First Amendment

Hippies intimidate rangers

When U.S. Forest Service police tried to prevent people from entering Routt National Forest in Colorado for the annual Rainbow Family gathering, hundreds of the hippies surrounded the cops. The rangers at first drew shotguns, but when the campers refused to budge, the cops backed down and drove away, abandoning their checkpoint.

Over 15,000 people attend the annual event, which is held in different parks each year.

Dept. of unintended consequences: turning alpha-minuses into alphas

In a fascinating story about the unintended consequences of applying a new technology to a wide audience, the NYT today says now that up to a third of all Naval Academy grads get free laser eye surgery, with the unintended result:

For generations, Academy graduates with high grades and bad eyes were funneled into the submarine service. But in the five years since the Naval Academy began offering free eye surgery to all midshipmen, it has missed its annual quota for supplying the Navy with submarine officers every year.

Wow, so that line about submarines "running blind" was not just a metaphor.

The story goes on to describe the details of the surgery -- instead of leaving a corneal flap, as cilvilian laser eye surgeons do, the Navy surgeons "grind it away," which is not the most pleasant image, especially considering you're watching this as it happens. But the point is that they had all these smart guys with imperfect eyesight before, but now that they have fewer of them:

The growing number of aspiring pilots has also made it harder to find candidates to become "back-seaters," officers who serve as navigators and weapons officers on planes, Navy officials say.

I love stories of unintended consequences.

Hey Houston -- enjoy the summer!

 
Here is the "five day forecast" graphic from this morning's Houston Chronicle website. They have already had two days of torrential rain and widespread flodding on Monday. And this is without the agency of a tropical storm or anything -- it's just barely worse than normal.

Also, notice: in addition to what is undoubtedly humidity in the high 90s, the temperature is also in the 90s. It's not fun, believe me.

Elections 2006!

It's church convention time, and:

• Presbyterians elected a moderate female leader on Friday, the Rev. Joan S. Gray, who said "that she was 'comfortable being uncomfortable' with her inner turmoil over whether the church should let gay men and lesbians serve as ministers." In other words, she understands and tolerates ambiguity, which is a good thing in church leaders; it keeps them from being demagogues.
• Episcopalians elected a liberal female leader today, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada. She supported the election of gay Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, but all you really need to know about her is that conservatives are pissed off that she was elected.
• And Southern Baptists elected a moderate conservative male, which was actually a moderation from the hard-right leaders they've had for the last 20 years. The quote that everyone was quoting from Page was: "I believe in the word of God; I'm just not mad about it."

All things considered, not a bad week.

Your call is not important to us

By now we have all learned the trick, when speaking on the phone to some clueless customer service person, to ask to speak to a supervisor when things start to go south. I found this page on the site for -- yes, there's an industry magazine for everything -- Call Center Magazine:

In order to still provide the customer with the feel that their call is being escalated, we have developed a little trick. Instead of passing the call along to a supervisor, we just pass it to another agent. Prior to transferring the call, we quickly inform the other rep of the situation and our reasons for any decisions that we have made. The second rep simply announces themselves as "Senior Customer Service Representative," which is a made up title in our department. This way the customer feels like their call and their business is important, without making a mountain out of a molehill.

Off-topic discussion of the week

From a piece in the NY Daily News:

It was a Wednesday night at Cottage, a restaurant off of Union Square, and a preppie 25-year-old woman was giving six of her girlfriends an in-depth lesson on oral sex.

The occasion? A meeting of her book club.

But to get the full joke, you have to read the article and find out what book they were supposed to be discussing. (Link courtesy Booksquare.)

Ask not what that cute guy can do for you -- ask what he can do on you

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Austin teacher update

This morning's Austin American Statesman has a followup piece (courtesy Metroblog Austin) on the story of the high school art teacher who may be fired after a rival tipped off school officials that there were semi-naked pix of her on Flickr. The snaps were posted by the female teacher's girlfriend, adding a whiff of homophobia to the affair.

The article says a rival teacher acted to resolve a petty argument over the use of the school's pottery kiln -- a sad note that will ring true to anyone who's ever taught in a public high school where resources are scarce and people take guarding their fiefdoms way too seriously.

Tamara Hoover, Austin

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

A man being questioned by police said he was angry because a woman "fucked up my holiday" by dying in his stateroom on board a cruise ship in 2002.

Mr Silvestri said he had briefly met Mrs Brimble in the nightclub. ... "It's like, Hi, see you. I just brushed her off, I didn't want to speak to her . .. breath, yuck, ugly dog, just go talk to someone else. Ring the RSPCA," Mr Silvestri said.

"Stop laughing," he tells police conducting the interview.

"I thought she was desperate ... I thought, f--k, she is smashed and she, yeah, she was pretty flirty," he said. "I thought I could've got lucky on the first night, but no, it didn't eventuate."

In the interview he referred to her more than once as the "thing" and called her the "ugly dog". "She smelt, she was black, and she was ugly," he said. At one stage Mr Silvestri said he woke up and, finding her in his bed, pushed her to the floor, where she stayed until morning. "There was this fat thing laying in my bed, and just like ... yeah, it's like, can you get off?"

The woman died from a toxic level of alcohol and GHB, said coroners.

Even more unbelievable was the guy's description of what happened after he and his cabinmate discovered the woman's body and called ship security:

"They come flying around the corner and it was time to leave. Because it had nothing to do with me, you know what I mean? I'm not getting involved in this or whatever, and I just couldn't really care, because it's not my issue."

"I want a big apology from everybody out there ... Just, like, all the passengers ... I'd really like the captain to do something about it. That would make my day. You know, it's not his fault, I understand, but it's not my fault either.

"I am just angry ... I am, yeah, pissed [off]. How dare this thing f--k my holiday up."

In other news: A man killed his wife and was driving with his wife's severed head when he collided with another car, killing its occupants and causing the head to "fly out of the car." A jaw-dropping story if I ever saw one.

Yay for Marilyn!

Congrats to my friend Marilyn, who sold her labor of love, the erotic novel Freak Parade, to Magic Carpet Books (not the Harcourt imprint but a line published by Richard Kasak).

publishing, erotica, Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Ancient history: early yoga teacher "did it for love"

I stumbled across this digitized version of a 1972 newsletter from Project Artaud, the San Francisco artists' collective that was the original legal live/work artists loft building. In the article "The Ultimate Toe," original member Abe Davis writes:

I was meeting "Sid" the Yoga Teacher, who was thinking of having his classes here. After I heard how he runs his classes, it was obvious that this was being done for love, and that any slight amount of money involved was less than he spent on dinner for his students after the class.

Wow, that must have been a long time ago. But it gets better:

...I said, "What do you really do for bread?" He gave me his card: Sydney G. Abrahams, Chief Architect, San Francisco Arts Office, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Region IX. And he said, "If there's anything I can do to help the project..."

"Yes," I said quickly, "we need some help to get this theatre re-opened..."

The rest is history. Countless performers (including me, in tiny parts), have appeared in Theater Artaud itself, and in the other performance spaces at Project Artaud, still a rollicking place.

But to get back to the point -- I love that back in 1972 there was this hippie architect who taught yoga classes for a couple bucks and then spent all the money on his students. Nowadays people would be telling him he deserves to make money from his expertise; they'd hire him on a contract basis to fill out the schedule at their high-end yoga studio. But back in the early 70s, giving away your time and talent was still thought of as a virtue.

yoga, Project Artaud, Theatre Artaud, hippies,Sixties

Stupid book deal of the day

From Publishers Marketplace:

Diana Killian's CORPSE POSE, three books in a new yoga mystery series, to Sandy Harding at Berkley Prime Crime, by Jacky Sach at BookEnds (World).

On the one hand, I think, great, finally somebody is making fun of those stupid names for yoga poses. Corpse Pose indeed.

On the other hand, the fact that this is just a cynical attempt at exploiting a fad -- three books in "a new yoga mystery series" -- is disgusting. You think they have mysteries about, oh, I don't know, jogging? If the publishing world in the mid-70s had been like the publishing world today, then they would have. The Jogging Mysteries!

publishing, book deals, fads, mysteries

Hangar to become giant pinhole camera

Some artists are rigging a hangar at the closed El Toro Marine Corps air base as a giant pinhole camera. The "film" will be a piece of white muslin over 100 feet tall, the "lens" is a three-quarter inch hole drilled in the hangar door, and the resulting photographic exposure will be developed in a "tray" the size of a swimming pool!

Making sure Christian youth are out standing in their fields

Three men were arrested in Texas on charges of beating a 13-year-old boy at an unlicensed "boot camp" where one of the methods of discipline was to banish kids to a remote pasture for hours with no water:

The camp, about three miles north of San Angelo, came to the attention of sheriff's deputies when a county resident reported passing the facility and seeing a boy sitting in a field, Richey said. The resident drove past several hours later and saw the same boy sitting in the same field.

In other news, there's a movement among fundamentalist Christians to open religious schools so parents could withdraw their children from public schools altogether. They're finally waking up to the fact that they're never going to win those perennial battles on school prayer and evolution:

The proposal from Moran and Shortt, author of "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," complains that curricula teaching that "the homosexual lifestyle is acceptable" are being implemented in public schools. It also criticizes a federal court ruling last year that banned the teaching of "intelligent design" -- the notion that life is so complex it must have been created by a higher intelligence -- in a Pennsylvania school system.

"Things aren't getting any better in the public schools," Moran said. "They're getting worse."

Undocumented laborers of the week

They really do do the jobs no Americans want:

Montclair gold hunter digs 60-foot-deep hole in front yard

(06-14) 03:56 PDT Montclair, Calif. (AP) -- A homeowner digging for gold in his front yard said he got "carried away" and ended up with a 60-foot-deep hole, authorities said.

Norm Enrique, 63, began digging 10 days ago after his gold detector reported a positive hit near his front patio. He told authorities he only intended to go down three or four feet.

Fire officials called to the scene Tuesday found two men that Enrique hired were inside the unreinforced hole, using a bucket and rope to remove dirt...

Adventures in censorship

The Amazon.com page for Basic Instinct Ultimate Edition contains a long list of quotes, goofs and trivia which includes this "quote" from the film:

Gus: Well, she got that magna *** laude p**** on her that done fried up your brain! (sic)

I give that high honors.

Prof fired from Mormon school for criticizing anti-gay initiatives

Courtesy poynter.org: A philosophy instructor at LDS-run Brigham Young Univ. was fired four days after the Salt Lake Tribune ran his op-ed saying it was immoral to oppose gay marriage or support the campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban it. The letter from BYU Department of Philosophy Chairman Daniel Graham said in part:

Since you have chosen to contradict and oppose the church in an area of great concern to church leaders, and to do so in a public forum, we will not rehire you after the current term is over.

Only the saddest institutions react this way to indirect public criticism. The equivalent would be if you were forbidden to go to Giants games because you criticized Barry Bonds. (In fact, that's just what happened to Giants broadcaster Hank Greenwald in 1999.)

Kawaii!

Cuteness is big in Japan, says a marketer.

You think? (Click for full image)



Update: a BoingBoing posting about "a truly strange food product, based on a movie about kids who starve to death."

Cute... starving... candy... gee, what could be the connection?

Grove to revive Black Cat imprint

For all my frustrated writer friends whose stuff seems too weird to get published, here's encouraging news: Grove/Atlantic is reviving their Black Cat imprint to feature (what they consider) edgy fiction. (Courtesy GalleyCat)

Our love was so short, but the internet is forever

One of the things about having a website in your own name is that people from throughout your life can track you down, for better or worse. I guess whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends partly on your karma so far, but I have to say that just about everybody who has used this website to get back in touch, after being out of touch for a long time, I've been glad to hear from.

Of course, like anyone who is paying attention, I realize there could be a downside to sharing so much of your life online. The other day the NYT ran a piece on youngsters whose web postings undermined a job search. And just today the Austin paper ran a story about a high school art teacher who might get fired for semi-naked photos posted to some website Flickr. (Update: the Flickr page for photog Celesta Danger describes Hoover as "my girlfriend," and features a link to Hoover's own Flickr page in which she describes Danger as having "the sweetest face... the way I see her." So the subtext of this whole thing is that Hoover is an out lesbian.)

To be sure, I realize that the books I've written and the stuff I've posted on this site mean I will never teach in a high school classroom again -- nor will I ever be able to pursue several other jobs. And I'm also careful that if I ever post anything about my day job, it never contains an identifiable reference to my current employer. (That said, I'm glad there were no such things as blogs when I worked for Sybase in the mid-90s, because I probably would have gotten myself in trouble real fast. As it was, I was part of a group of employees who called themselves the Troublemakers.)

So yeah, one of the reasons I have this site is to collect people from the past. And not just the good relationships. Hey, all you fuckers who bullied me when I was a kid -- show yourselves!

Tamara Hoover, internet, privacy

Eliminated: how big do you have to be?

On April 21, 2003, Time magazine celebrated the capture of Saddam Hussein by doing ... what would you call it? an homage? an update? a mashup? -- of one of its most famous covers: the May 7, 1945 portrait of Hitler with a big red X on his puss.

Now its June 19th issue gives the same treatment to ... oh Christ, now I'll have to look up how to spell it... Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

So it's a sort of honor now, isn't it? What I want to know is, just how big do you have to be before Time gives you this treatment? Milosevic didn't get it, and I'll bet he was responsible for a lot more deaths than Zarqawi. Mao didn't get it, and he killed at least as many people as Hitler. Stalin didn't get it... you could go on for a long time.

You know, if they do it to Castro when he kicks, I'll be really pissed.

Courtesy FishbowlNY.

Time magazine, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Elliott on soldiers

After reading with Stephen Elliott the other night I was talking to my editor friend Jeanne about his interesting literary style: short declarative sentences and an amazingly open emotional quality. Just now I ran across a piece on Huffington Post in which Elliott describes his quest to find out more about two dead soldiers, one who was among the first casualties of the Iraq war, another who made it home with such emotional and spiritual damage that he hung himself in the basement of his parents' home.

Unfortunately something is messed up with the Huffington Post design such that there are no paragraph breaks in the story, but if you can handle that and just keep reading, it's not only well worth it for the content but it shows the same qualities that struck me about the very different piece Elliott read Wednesday night at the Best Sex Writing event.

Creepiest thing of the week

Courtesy BoingBoing, a collection of mysterious 40-year-old photos of young women with marks on their foreheads and expressions like lambs to the slaughter. SO WEIRD. Be sure to read through the comments, as readers try to puzzle out the mystery.

Just another summer morning in San Francisco

Quiet and cool, with all the possibilities of a Saturday. Yes, I'm going to try to work on my novel.

San Francisco, Bernal Heights

Giants game

We had a lot of fun at the Giants game -- though they lost in the 9th inning when a ball hit down the line bounced into the seats for a ground-rule double, forcing the runner from first base to hold at third, though he would have easily scored if the ball had remained in play. My pictures here.

Dept. of Unclear on the concept

I love this quote from the father of a 16-year-old American girl who jetted off to the Middle East for a date with a guy she met on MySpace:

I just don't understand with all these new laws protecting America how a 16-year-old kid could get out of the country.

Dude, that's a totally awesome idea. You know that big-ass fence we're going to build on the Mexican border? Well, let's build one on the Canadian border too. And then let's mine the borders, put up a bunch of guard towers, and shoot anybody who tries to leave. Now that's what I call protecting America.

Oh wait -- somebody's already tried that. Tell you what, how about you just do it for your own house. Or you could just chain her up.

Or just accept reality. She's already more mature than you are.

It's Bad Behavior Friday ™!

A thief brazenly stole a judge's purse from her chambers behind her courtroom in Houston's Criminal Justice Center, then located her SUV in the building's parking garage and drove away in it -- the keys were in the purse.

The Colorado Springs Gazette has a story on the people who work in the county jail mailroom, where "a veteran Sheriff's Office employee who is long past the point of blushing or flinching" at the contents of mail she inspects daily. Among the things that are forbidden are drawings or art of any kind -- for example, children's "crayon drawings aren't permitted because drugs could be hidden in the wax."

Never thought of that.

Some anti-DRM activists are staging demonstrations at seven Apple stores across the country tomorrow. Their poster for the event is a bit over the top -- it shows a female figure with her hands tied behind her back by means of iPod headphone wires. I get the point, but when you compare it with the famous "iRaq" graphic showing the famous Abu Gharib image of a man with a hood and wires -- in the parody, they are iPod wires -- dangling from his hands, it sort of begs the question. Is DRM (a method of encoding audio and video files so producers can control them) really equivalent to torture?

Beautiful morning

Can anything be better than the cool, fresh air of summer mornings in San Francisco? This is what people in New York mean when you tell them you're moving there and they look at you agog and ask "Why??" (Image courtesy KPIX)

See the right-side bar for my posting this morning on Metroblog SF, featuring photographs of St. Gregory Nyssa Church, where I go to morning prayer every weekday morning at 8. (If you like singing and you've got time, you should come.)

Tonight to the Giants game with Jeanne, who was also kind enough to come to my reading Wednesday night.

San Francisco, St. Gregory of Nyssa, morning prayer

Mitchell's "Shortbus" was downstream

For those who came to one of the Best Sex Writing readings (SF last night; New York on Monday), you may be wondering what eventually happened with the John Cameron Mitchell film that Paul Festa spoke about. I found an interesting interview with filmmaker Mitchell on the Hollywood Reporter site. The film, called Shortbus (whatever that means), receives a funny review here.

John Cameron Mitchell, Shortbus, Paul Festa, Best Sex Writing

Life in Hell: MySpace 'founder' has to have page on MySpace

Valleywag posts on the newly discovered "secret" MySpace page of MySpace "founder" Tom Anderson:

Sure, Tom is your friend. The Myspace founder is everyone's friend -- but only in the meaningless way that Kate Moss is your friend until the blow runs out. Tom Anderson keeps his real friends on a private profile under the name "Tom-Tom."

Don't forget to get your Tom is Not My Friend t-shirt while they last. (For anyone older than 14, this refers to the fact that when you join MySpace, the supposed founder automatically friends you.)

Read Trent Lapinski's excellent, well-researched articles on the strange origins of MySpace -- making it clear it had nothing to do with this Tom Anderson character.

MySpace

Too much of a good thing, part deux

An "IT glitch" at British candy maker Cadbury resulted in a chocolate glut during the first months of the year, leading the company to heavily discount its candy bars. The company lost millions of pounds even as British consumers gained them.

Then we have the spam names of the week. Remember Brave New World (The whole text of the novel is available online!) where the characters were called things like Benito Hoover and Lenina Crowne? It's like that! A whole world of mismatched names, sort of like MadLibs with names. Who could possibly think of names like:

Basma Mowbray -- bank teller, secretly a gampling addict who will some day begin embezzling
Jewell Padilla -- half-sister of would-be bomber Jose Padilla, single mother and an amateur poet
Wincenty Rennick -- retired CalTrain engineer, now a real estate investor
Cleon Mayweather -- eighth-round draft pick for the Philadelphia Eagles
Helladius Midgley -- on permanent disability, he rides buses all day and scrawls on the seats
Hung Moyer -- gas station attendant with plans to own his own gas station/convenience store chain
Paula Bush -- that co-worker whose name invariably makes you think of pubic hair because her frizzy hair resembles it
Marcellus Petrosky -- frat boy who dies from binge drinking
Anastasia Wiseman -- grad student in the history department
Hana Burchell -- she lived in the apartment before you and you keep receiving her mail
Gregorios Chick -- pimp
Winifred Swain -- failed short story writer, now a tech writer about to be laid off by Sun
Haylee Blas -- that girl on the swim team everybody kisses up to

Best Sex Writing -- SF reading

Tonight's reading for Best Sex Writing 2006 was really superior -- there was a big crowd, they laughed at the right spots, all the pieces people read were awesome, and several friends of mine came. I was even asked by three strangers to autograph a copy of the book afterward -- wow, that never happens.

While I was Mister Photo at the New York reading on Monday, tonight I just sat back and enjoyed myself. It didn't even occur to me to take pictures.

Then for a bite to La Rondalla with Suzanne, Shannon and Carmen. That place hasn't changed in 30 years, I swear. The service still sucks, the food is still mediocre, and the decor is great. I came in after the women and a waitress never even asked me, in 30 minutes, whether I wanted anything. A mariachi band plays live and you just have to stop talking while that happens. Suz. told a funny story about having a breakup there while the band was playing at full volume.

It's such a pleasure to read in public. I really like doing it. I guess I ought to finish more stuff and then maybe I'd have something more to read!

Today's fake: the rent-a-cop

This should be getting plenty of publicity, and I'm happy to contribute -- courtesy Violet's post on Metroblogger, this account by a local photographer who alleges he was harrassed and assaulted by a man claiming to be a police officer (but refusing to show identification) for taking pictures of a San Francisco skyscraper.

A lot of things are disgusting about this situation. The physical bullying, for one thing. Worse -- it's bad enough when a cop hides behind a badge to rough somebody up, but when somebody who's not even a cop tries the same thing, and won't even identify himself, that's both pathetic and scary. This is supposed to be a free country, not a place where some thug in a windbreaker can push you around with impunity.

The photographer in question, one Thomas Hawk, should certainly file a police report for assault. I wonder how pleased the local cops will be when they hear some rent-a-cop is throwing his weight around and claiming to be a police officer.

Worst of all is the paranoia -- the notion, held by at least one corporate goon, that taking pictures of a building is threatening. The question I have is, where is this idea coming from? Is there some security consultant going around briefing corporate security guards about the supposed threat to their buildings by amateur photographers? Who is promoting this notion?

50 Fremont, 45 Beale, Bechtel, security, Thomas Hawk

And we're back

Now we're back in sunny, beautiful San Francisco. This was our first time with the "JetBlue Experience" -- as the flight attendants refer to it -- and I give it a big 'ol plus. Not only are the leather seats very comfortable and the in-seat televisions turn-off-able, but you get an unexpected bonus coming back across the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco -- a splendid view of the bay from higher up than your car, and you can see the new bridge under construction and then a fabulous view of the city.

Our garden was beautiful when we came back, thanks to Sara who cat-sat and watered the garden. Wait til she sees the souvenirs.

Last night's reading

Last night's New York reading for Best Sex Writing 2006 at Bluestockings bookshop on the Lower East Side was lovely. The store was small, but the crowd of 40 or 50 people filled it, which is the optimal condition -- much better to fill a small space than to half-fill a large space with the same number of people.

See photos of the readers.

The New York crowd was strangely quiet. At most, they merely tittered at a funny line -- not just mine, but everybody's -- as if they weren't sure it was okay to laugh. Not sure what that was about. I'm used to demonstrative SF audiences. Last fall the crowd at LitQuake laughed 15 times during my piece.

Mucho thanks to Anna who brought along three (3!) cousins. It's not easy for an other-coast performer to bring people in, so the fact that she and cousin Veronica were on the east coast at all yesterday was a stroke of luck. Then we all went out for a festive meal. Thanks also to Jeff Weinstein for directing us to that restaurant. If you need a restaurant recommendation, it never hurts to have the former restaurant critic for the Village Voice right there.

Best Sex Writingt, literary events, Jeff Weinstein

Disrecommended: Carmel Car Service

In the past we've used Carmel Car Service to get from JFK to Manhattan, but after this trip, no more.

On the way in, the car picked us up at the gate on time, but then the car immediately broke down before we went 100 feet. We climbed into a taxi.

This morning, to go to the airport, the driver called my cell phone ten minutes early, saying he was across the street. "Great," I said. "You've got ten minutes to come around the block and come to our side of the street."

"I wait across the street," he repeated.

"No, pick us up in front of our building," I said, and hung up.

So, basically repeat that over and over again for the next fifteen minutes. I got downstairs and there the guy is across the street. Now this was 34th St. in midtown -- a very busy two-way street. There was no way to make a u-turn. But the guy had had plenty of time to do whatever he had to do to drive down, circle as many blocks as he needed to, and pick us and our luggage up in front of the building. He refused. He waved to us from across the street. I pointed to the curb at our feet. Repeat that several times. Finally we just said fuck it and got a cab.

Fortunately I had not paid in advance with a credit card for either trip. But in the future, I'm finding another way to get to and from JFK.

Carmel Car Service, complaints, Travel to JFK

A literary interlude

Galleycat posted a link to a Seattle Times piece about Powell's Books of Portland as well as a link to a Slate piece examining a best-selling example of "street lit," a book titled Candy Licker.

I picked up the Spring 2006 issue of n+1 at a store on Mercer St. and have been really enjoying its essays on the state of "American Writing Today."

Monday morning walk

Every time I'm left to my own devices and take a walk without really thinking about where I'm going, I seem to wind up down here on the Lower East Side around Rivington and Orchard St.s, where I took these photos this morning.

As Blogger is feeling weird, I'm not sure when I'll actually post this entry, but know it was composed at 12:45 on Monday afternoon.

We don't really have any special plans for the day, only to get back to the room in time to shower and then get downtown for tonight's reading (see top of page).

Sunday at the ball game

Since the Giants happened also to be visiting New York this weekend, I got ticket to the Mets game. Here's my entry on Metroblogger about our trip to the ballgame.

Since the game went into extra innings, that's basically the only thing we did today. We stopped into Macy's on the way back from Penn Station to the hotel/condo/weird-place-we're-staying and bought a blanket -- the room AC is too cold! -- and had some very indifferent food in Macy's basement, but we were starving.

Now we're sitting around the room resting up for tomorrow.

Off Broadway

We went to see the theatrical tribute to Spalding Gray, Leftover Stories to Tell (here's a link to the NYT advance piece on the show). This is the first time we have seen theater in NY that isn't some big Broadway show. It was at PS 122, an alternative theater complex that is famous for its history in postmodern dance and theater. Just being in that building impressed me.

The Gray piece, performed by a half-dozen actors in front of an audience that undoubtedly had dozens of actors in it -- albeit out-of-work ones (they weren't in a show on Saturday night) was pleasant and elegaic and funny.

We came out into a light drizzle, picked up a few things at a deli, and caught a taxi back to the weird condo-hotel-apartments.

Rainy New York day

I walked around rainy New York midtown. You know what the secret is for visiting a place where you don't really have a goal? Give yourself the goal of finding something that will be very difficult to find. My thing? A drain stopper.

Didn't find it.

We're in New York

Cris and I are in New York til Tuesday so I can read on Monday night in the Best Sex 2006 reading at Bluestockings (see above). We're staying at a sort of weird condo rental I found on Orbitz -- nothing indicates it's anything like a hotel. The lobby is like an office building; the hallway is noir. We're going to the 24-hr Duane Reade down the street to find a blanket. On the plus side, there's a full kitchen.

More dispatches during the weekend.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- WTF edition

Ellen Jong, daughter of author and protofeminist Erica Jong, has a new fancy coffee table photo book out -- of women peeing. It's called Pees on Earth. This rendered me so speechless I had to lie down. It's almost as good as Daphne Merkin writing about cunt hair.

In Japan, lonely, depressed people make suicide pacts over the internet. Meanwhile, the birth rate there is at a record low.

After singer Pete Doherty spent "an unusual amount of time in the toilet," police in Spain to search the "aeroplane" he flew in on; they found a syringe in the garbage bin. He freaked out when being questioned, but they let him go. However, he and his band Babyshambles are banned from flying that airline.

Sofia Coppola is pregnant. Holy shit, she's 35 already! I guess it's been a while since she was the ingenue in Godfather III.

Focus on the fundies: the victimology of the powerful

The LA Times has a piece about anti-gay and "ex-gay" groups getting a foothold in public schools.

Just as conservative Christians demanded equal time for Genesis whenever Darwin got a mention, ex-gays and their allies are insisting on equal time for their views whenever homosexuality is discussed.

Precisely. While most people were scratching their heads wondering why the anti-evolutionists were even bothering, fundamentalists managed to change the debate on evolution. Instead of attacking the science of evolution head-on -- a fight they could never win -- they took a page from the other side and simply asked for their beliefs to be taught alongside science. Now they're asking for hatred to be presented alongside, and as if it were coequal with, diversity.

Then, courtesy Chr. Today, two pieces:

First, Michelle Goldberg on AlterNet on The Tyranny of the Christian Right, about:

(right-wing Christians') conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all -- government, science, history and culture -- must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology -- I call it Christian nationalism. It's an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It's what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country.

Second, an op-ed from the Ft. Wayne Ind. Journal-Gazette, about the strange disconnect between the reality of the rising influence of the religious right and their concurrent claims of persecution from "humanists" and "secularists." The writer, an Indiana sociology professor, points out how odd it is for special interest groups to cry they're being persecuted while they occupy powerful places in society -- as if having only three or four Supreme Court justices who agree with most of their positions, from a personal standpoint if not as a matter of law, marks some kind of threat.

About the AlterNet piece -- the comment thread is entertaining, especially the guy who writes:

George Bush is no Christian, born again or otherwise. Rather, he is a Luciferian Illumininist working for the New World Order. The goal of the New World Order is to destroy Christianity and replace it with the worship of Antichrist.

Along the way, the diabolical plan is to TAKE OVER religion, to bribe and corrupt it, pay Christians money to leave their Bibles and the gospel home, and to become, in effect, government social workers and agents.

As John Lennon said, Imagine a world with no countries, no possessions, no religion, with everybody living for today.

fundamentalists, right-wing Christians, Michelle Goldberg

Skateboarding for Jesus

Colorado Springs, the crotch of the Christian fundamentalist right, is home to many right-wing religious groups, megachurches, and the US Air Force Academy where, an investigation last year showed, Christian fundamentalists had essentially taken over the management of the institution. So it's no wonder that local youths are skateboarding for Jesus:

Eager to bring more young believers into its folds, some churches are trying to show that grinding and God can be compatible. And frankly, some skateboarders say that church is one of the few places they can skate and not get yelled at.

The Web is awash in Christian skateboard companies and, at last year's International Christian Retail Show in Denver, a corner of the convention floor was set aside for skateboarders who thundered through a portable halfpipe. While the merchants around them peddled earth-toned evangelical books and inoffensive trinkets, these skaters were marketing a lifestyle.

"The last couple of (Christian youth) events I've been to have been very skater-focused," said Christine Mendoza, who co-pastors The Grace Place with her husband, Lion.

The story goes on to mention that one kid was skateboarding in a t-shirt reading SATAN SUCKS. Yes, I'd like homophobia with my religion, thanks very much!