Olympic Fever, Sort Of

I am sitting down to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Games, and to eat my Thai food, which was delivered quickly and efficiently by the new place on Broadway. I had forgotten about all the package pieces that NBC does--including tonight's brief "Canada 101" by Tom Brokaw, in which he explained that Canada was nice enough to "share" their stars of music, film and television, and then flashed shots of Celine Dion, Jim Carrey and Seth Rogan. Wait, share?

I used to get really excited about the Olympics--now my feelings are a bit colored by the incredible amount of money spent on advertising and sponsorships. There is so much branding and marketing moments, one can hardly see the athletes for the logos. It's beginning to look too much like NASCAR. Also, no mention of (openly?) gay Johnny Weir in the package piece about American male figure skaters. And the sad news, before the games even begin, of the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.

But there are some real moments in my own Olympic history:
--I'm thinking of the nights spent at Keith's house, staying up far too late watching the Ladie's Figure Skating Final back in Nagano.
--I'm thinking of Midori Ito, arguably the most incredibly talented figure skater of all time, and the time she landed the first triple axel in competition (1988,) and the time she landed the first triple axel in Olympic competition (1992.)
--I'm thinking of the night back in 1994, when Michelle O'Born's mother announced, much to our teenage dramatic dismay, the medal results that she had seen earlier in the day, just moments before the final group of women took to the ice for their warm-up.

Okay, so maybe all of my big memories have to do with figure skating. How gay is that? Also: How gay is this? Also: Rice noodles are fucking good.

GrammarPiano TweetCloud

TweetCloud, this cool new website, is "a service that lets you generate a cool looking cloud of the words your tweets mostly contain." I like that they call this a "service." This is what mine looks like:

Me and the Justice League

Letter from Utah: Part 12 of 12

This post is part 12 in a series of 12. You can download the entire essay by clicking here, or you can read the serial installments as they appear.

Rain. The wind blows the water against the window.

We set out for Temple Square, the center of the Mormon religion, before our flight in the afternoon. The square is walled in on all sides, and is crawling—somewhat benevolently—with young Mormons, who each have a black plastic nametag that includes the flag of…their home country? Country of origin? Nationality?

A young lady hands me a palm-sized postcard, a photograph of the temple, with the most bizarre, surely Photoshop-enhanced, purple cast to the sky behind it. We wander through their museum, through the spiraling-heavenward gallery in the North Visitor’s Center, where the enormous white statue of the Savior stands, surrounded by a gorgeous, if somewhat tacky, mural of the entire universe. Maybe there is some kind of piped-in narration, recounting the history of the heavens and the earth and we missed the beginning of it, or maybe there isn’t any, and we’re just supposed to sit here contemplating ourselves and basking in the wonderment. A few minutes pass, and we awkwardly get up, move through the aisles and back down the ramp.

The Mormons are all friendly and genuine. They are extremely happy to tell you about this building or that building, or to point out a piece of scripture that speaks of triumph through adversity or to the importance of family—one of them opens her Book of Mormon and points to a verse she’s highlighted in pink.

Outside, with the water sprinkling down on us, we stand in front of the Handcart Pioneer Monument, which stands in tribute to the thousands of Mormons who walked to Salt Lake City from Iowa in the 1850s. In the sixth grade, my friends and I were obsessed with the computer game Oregon Trail. Your quest begins in Independence, Missouri, when you purchase extra sets of clothing for your family, as much food and spare parts as your wagon can carry, and a team of 6-10 oxen, who will pull you across the land. This is not, I suddenly realized, the way many of the pioneers did it. Most of them walked. How many of them could afford oxen? Even less could afford extra clothes. It’s inspiring, this massive migration of people from one place to another. They made the difficult—the frightening, the only—choice, to set out for whatever challenges and hardships and frozen dirt awaited them. Because they had had enough.
We are too comfortable. We need more of that motion, that desperate, creative energy to make a new and better life each other.

----

In the end, we drove more than 1600 miles—265 more and it would equal the one-way distance from New York to Salt Lake. But that’s another trip, isn’t it? As the plane begins its descent, curving across the sparkling surface of nighttime Brooklyn, I mistake the wing’s navigation light for the moon.

The Truth About Grade B

At the Greenmarket today, a woman asked me, as dozens of people do each day, if I had any Grade B maple syrup. She was planning to attempt the infamous Master Cleanse, in which you drink a cocktail made of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne for anywhere from three to ten (or even more) days. You eat nothing else. Most people combine this with "laxative tea," or some other such natural, or unnatural brew. The idea is to remove all the toxins from your body--whatever that means, if that is indeed possible.

At this point in the afternoon, I had only a single half-gallon of our Grade B syrup left. (It is quite popular these days, especially after having been recently featured in Style section of the New York Times.) A half-gallon wasn't enough. She wanted a whole gallon. "Sorry, this is the best I can do," I told her. She complained that she had intentions of starting the cleanse right away.

"You can use the other grades of syrup," I told her. "There really is no difference other than the taste." She made a face. "Grade B has more minerals," she said. "Actually," I tell her, "it doesn't. There is no nutritional difference, only taste and color." Then she had the nerve, the insane, foolish, ignorant nerve to proclaim that "Well, maybe in Western medicine it doesn't, but in ayurvedic medicine it does."

I'm fine with ignorance. People are constantly asking me, genuinely asking me, about the difference between the syrup grades. But ignorance plus stupidity really bothers me. At this point, I put the half gallon of syrup down, "Okay," I said. "This is what I have, and you're welcome to it." What else is there to do, or to say, when someone has made up their mind that you are wrong and whatever cockamamie stuff they read somewhere is ingrained in their brain to the point of no return?

So, for the record, I present:

The Truth About Grade B:

Maple syrup is graded by color and taste only, with the darker syrups having a more pronounced maple flavor than the lighter. One is not better than the other. Think of white wine versus red--both are suited to a person's particular tastes and uses, and neither is better or worse, just different. I like lighter syrups for breakfast things like french toast and waffles, and I prefer a darker syrup for salad dressings and baking. Some people like the opposite.

Take this, for example, from Squidoo, which is factually incorrect: "Grade B maple syrup goes through a special refinement process that keeps the vital nutrients in the syrup. Other grades of syrup don't have these vitamins and minerals." Similar false information is available all over the Internet. As any sugarmaker can tell you, the syrup-making process does not change from one grade to the next. In fact, there is absolutely no refining taking place when you make maple syrup. Step one: Tap the trees. Step two: Collect the sap. Step three: Boil the sap. Step four: Filter the syrup for solids. The only thing you're doing is taking water out of the tree sap via evaporation, and the filtering process is the same thing that happens when you use a coffee filter in the morning--it's not changing the composition of the liquid, but just removing any solid parts.

As a general rule, the darker syrups are made toward the end of the sugaring season, and the lighter syrups are made at the beginning. But maple syrup is an agricultural product, subject to the whims and wonders of nature. Thus, the general rules do not always hold. In 2007, for example, this "light to dark" rule was totally debunked, when the syrup ran back and forth from one grade to the other, finally ending in late April with Fancy grade, the lightest, which is normally made at the very beginning. (If we could double the amount of Grade B syrup we make each year and sell it at the Greenmarket for what you pay in the stores, don't you think we would?)

Lastly, I realize that I don't know anything about ayurvedic medicine--but I'm sure there are no sugar maples growing in India. And I'm sure that glucose, which is the major chemical compound in maple syrup, does what it does in western bodies the same way it does what it does in eastern ones.

So--master cleanse all you like. If you love it, great. If it makes you feel fabulous, great. But get the facts straight. A customer once told me, "I think it's really important to know exactly what's going into your body." I can't agree more.

Fun with iSight

Dialogue, in Two Parts (Unrelated.)

W: I only want to see movies with starships, explosions, and superpowers.

L: Right.

W: And cute boys.

L: Right.

W: And cute boys with superpowers flying startships and making explosions.

--AND--

E: Maybe if I had the vaginal canal of a dwarf it would be okay.

L: What kind of vaginal canal do you have?

E: The kind of a grown ass woman.

In Tennessee

I'm exhausted--teetering, as Ms. Difranco says, between tired and really tired--which is why I haven't been able to sit down for good while and write about our trip to Tennessee.

<--- The Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

Kip and I went to visit my folks in Chattanooga for about a week--ostensibly so we could attend their annual 4th of July party, a legendary occasion all its own which draws in somewhere in the range of 150 people, in a low-key, elaborately casual sort of way.

Here is my mother awarding one of the attendees. -->

Yes, there are awards for the most elaborate costume, the most patriotic kid, and other coveted categories. And it's brunch. Read this post for a better run-down.

We also went to visit Dollywood. If gays are called to the four corners of the gay universe, they are New York, San Francisco, Provincetown and Dollywood .

Kip is decidedly easy-going about almost everything, and my parents--stubborn and decidedly parental in certain ways--truly know how to relax and have a good time doing something or nothing. We ate, we ate, and somehow--this is the greatest wonder of human nature--we were later hungry and could eat again: Foster's pound cake, potato salad, mac-n-cheese, biscuits, watermelon, that chicken thing with the chipped beef.

My great aunt Allene, who for the last however many years was a caretaker, until her mother died two years ago, has never been known, as far as I can remember, to be anything other than in perfect, relaxed control of the situation. Lately, she is perpetually on the edge of tears--or slap happy with uncontrollable fits of laughter. For no other reason, it seems, than she is old, exhausted and still running around, for the most part, full-speed ahead. She still mows her lawn, for example. Granted, it's a small Atlanta lawn, but she mows it.

<--- From left: Margaret, my Dad's sister who lives in Southern California, my Dad, me and my Mom.

My parents neighbor, Lola, who is essentially my surrogate grandmother, is becoming a bit slower, beginning to retreat into stories from the past--but then we all do that, so why should it be alarming? She is still sharp. What separates her, I think, from my father's parents is that she is still genuinely interested in other people's lives. How did the Houck's become so distant, so drawn into themselves as to obsess over the tiniest, perhaps-invented notion of what your life was, and is? Nothing comes out of the blue, I want to write--as if to prove that we could have foreseen their slow, strange, co-dependent decline that their marriage has become--but I know that is untrue. I know that sometimes the phone rings and your life is changed.

Dollywood is as I remember it, only with larger crowds. And now that NYC has colored (distorted, enhanced, righted, informed?) my perception of everything, only the people look bizarre. I forget that people don't know how to walk. That is, they don't know where their body is in space. Car culture in non-pedestrian cities is such that your spacial awareness atrophies. Or never develops to begin with. People just swing their arms and stop, turn without warning--bad drivers, if you will.

At Dollywood, we at BBQ sandwiches, heaps of roasted potatoes and cole slaw, chocolate covered potato chips, and later handfuls of red, white and blue Kettle Corn.

<-- We took pics in the photobooth.

We rode the world-ranked and Golden Ticket-winning Thunderhead rollercoaster, which lives up to its promises, or is simply a great ride, if you're not the type--like I am--to have read about it's development, construction and opening, since it was announced. (Geeky Thunderhead stuff can be found here, here and here.)

They've re-vamped Dolly's Chasing Rainbows Museum, where the story of her life and career is told via photos, her awards, and dress after dress after dress. They've also shellacked personal notes passed between Dolly and her personal assistant/longtime partner Judy. (Dolly's a lesbian, by the way. It's not unknown, but people are sometimes shocked to hear. I think the more shocking thing is that a lesbian can't have a career in country music.) It's quiet, respectful way of including Judy--since she must live an otherwise invisible existence.

We returned to New York--it's now been more than a week. It was a lovely trip.

Here we are in the parking lot before our departure -->

This Blog is Rated G

Apparently, my blog is rated G. As the website told me: "This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words: anal (1x)." If I had used the word anal, say--(7x,) or even (49x)--would that have pushed me over into another realm? Because, even though I want readers, I also want to be rated XXX, even though I'm not really interested in writing posts that say anal (49x).

This reminds me of Ani Difranco talking about that maybe-real list of banned songs which supposedly was circulated among Clear Channel radio stations post-9/11. How she kept saying to herself: "Oh man, ban one of my songs!"

So how about this: shit, piss, fart, fuck, pussy, cock, asshole, jack off. Now let's see what I get.

Now we're talkin'!

Creative Comedown and Particle Physics

I had this thought: that perhaps what we know as "creative comedown" -- that semi-long-ish period of sadness and meloncholy (and nostalgia) that follows a huge artistic push -- has something to do with the unifying theory of the cosmos.

But seriously.

I can't put all the pieces together. There are too many; they are too fragile. They seem unrelated.

So here's the scoop, in a roundabout, unfinished way:

--My friend Manuel's second book of stories has just come out, and I wondered how it might feel to have so many people suddenly reading your work at the same time, particularly in a rather contained geographic area. Whereas before a book is out, it's a smaller group of readers: short story journal subscribers, your mom, close friends you trust--spread out over a large geographic area.

--I asked Manuel what he thought of this cracked idea, and he wrote to me: Creative comedown coming from work that was finished long ago...sounds more like the true nature of starlight and its speed to you while you're looking up at a night sky from the backyard. It's been over since before you got there.

--Then I was reading this article in the New Yorker, about the world's largest (at least so far) particle accelerator. And it opened this idea that what if creative work--music, art, writing, film--could be thought of as an actual beam of particles sent in a conscious stream from the artist, out into the universe.

--That beam of particles is then received by the "audience."

--A note for the new novel: "time is not linear, it is not a circle. time is a fog, existing all around you all at once, with no visible end or beginning."

--"Light pollution," says another note. I keep coming back to it.

The Soundtrack of Your Life

I adore easily completed, vaguely meaningful, and technology-incorporating tasks such as this meme. Put your iTunes on shuffle, and let 'er rip. Now you've got the next 18 songs to underscore, literally, a series of scenes in the movie of your life. I've adopted Alex's additions, Coming Out and Leaving Home, but I've changed the order a bit, to suit my preferred narrative structure. We're taught not to begin with someone waking up, right?

Also, the role of me in the movie of my life will be played by a mostly-naked Daniel Radcliffe, who will perfect my East Tennessee accent, as well as gain and lose the same 15 pounds over and over, thus winning him an Oscar. In his acceptance speech, he will shout my name over the play-off music and everyone will say "Too Little, Too Late" in the papers the next morning.

Title suggestions, anyone?


Opening Credits -- Liar, by the Cranberries, live in 1994
This is from an unknown bootleg I have of theirs from back in the day. The intro is killer, perfect mid-90s pop, and at this point during the exercise I feel as if my computer knows how to excite an audience.

First Day of School -- Anticipate, by Ani Difranco from 2002, 11/04 Paradise, CA
"for every hand extended / another lies in wait / keep your eye on that one / anticipate." I cannot say enough about what Ms. Difranco has brough to my life. This blog post is the best I can do. This song isn't nearly one of my favorites, but I'll take it.

Coming Out -- Here I Am by Emmylou Harris
Perfection, I say! This further illustrates the symbiosis I have with my laptop. Something amazing is happening to Emmylou's voice as she gets older. It's becoming fainter, it cracks easily. It's so beautiful--nobody's recording like that anymore. In this scene, I go from place to place, coming out, and it has the look and feel of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich when she was going around town to tell everybody how much money they won from the lawsuit.

First Love -- A Lack of Color, by Death Cab for Cutie
"If you feel discouraged / that there's a lack of color here / please don't worry lover / it's really bursting at the seams / absorbing everything / the spectrum's a to z." Here I am again, overly concerned about the way some emotion is perceived, and thus I have to process.

First Song -- Dawn, by Cinematic Orchestra
I'm not sure what sort of song this would make for your first. There is no beat, and no words, only a wonderous drone for about four minutes. Maybe this first song leads to a sex scene, which later leads to the....

Breakup -- Time Will Do the Talking by Patty Griffin
"I change the lock on the door / I learn how to take a little more / I can outrun all of the devils here / But never the doubt." All hail the church of Patty Griffin. It's an instant-conversion policy, I believe.

Prom -- Danger, by Erykah Badu
For some reason, at my prom I decide to go rob a bank or maybe shoot some people. "Thinkin bout lives that you've taken / All the love you've forsaken / Niggas gon' get they fuckin head blown."

Driving -- Alone But Not Lonely, by Mary Chapin Carpenter
Then I'm driving a long stretch of dark road, while on the lam. But I'm okay. I got my Mary C.C. to guide me: "There are moments in time that are meant to be held / Like fragile, breakable things / There are others that pass us, you can't even tell / Such is their grace and their speed."

Flashback -- Since You Been Hard to Find, Kelly Clarkson vs. American Analog Set
This a great mash-up by somebody. I "archived" it from the WWW.

Waking Up -- Spring Haze, by Tori Amos, 2005 Manchester UK
"i found out where my edge is / and it bleeds into where you resist / and my only way out / is to go so far in" Tori's music is like an IV line directly into her consciousness. Hook me up, and I'm following her, wherever she wants to go. Fun places, dark places. I trust her completely.

Leaving Home -- Star Guitar, by Chemical Brothers
Have you seen the video Michel Gondry did for this song? The versions of it on YouTube are all badly converted, so you miss a lot of the greatness. So check one of them out here, but then imagine me on that train.

New Love -- Black Heart Today, by Amy Ray, bootlegged from 2005 4/19, NYC
I'm not sure what these lyrics are supposed to mean in this scene. "Take this meanness out of me / Take this meanness out of me / Take this meanness out of me."

Wedding -- Both Hands (dance mix), by Ani Difranco.
Now my iTunes is laughing at me.

Birth Scene -- Irresistible Bitch, by Prince
It's still laughing. Only this time, The Gods are laughing, too.

Final Battle -- Here Comes the Flood -- Peter Gabriel
"When the flood calls / You have no home, you have no walls / Dont be afraid to cry at what you see." This scene will be played mostly in silence, except for Peter's voice. At the end of it, everyone would be breathless and regretfull.

Death Scene -- Another Part of Me, by Michael Jackson
This is the version from Captain EO, the 3D movie that was at Disneyland for years and years. I was (read: am) so jealous of Anjelica Huston as the Supreme Leader.

Funeral Song -- Any Way You Want It, by Journey.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

Final Credits -- Lay Down, by Floetry
Somebody's getting busy right after my funeral? I'm hoping it's a throng of sobbing queens, who have an orgy on the steps of the Capital Building, one final act of civil (and totally hot) disobedience.

Let's just spend a little time,
Do a little more
Share what's in our hearts
Give each other all
Nothing more to do,
Lying right here with you
Let's just lay down

Hey Mario, Amanda and Michael, you're tagged. And you too, Rob, because Ted already tagged you and I can't wait to see what fabulousness your iTunes churns out.

Fun with PhotoBooth

Website

Maybe two more weeks before the website is up and live. I'm waiting for a few things to fall into place, and then we'll be all set. In the meantime, here's a screenshot, how it looks so far....

BBQ in Crestwood, and other things.

Yesterday several of us took the Metro-North up to Crestwood to have a Memorial Day BBQ at my friend Chris Cerasi's childhood home. Perhaps the highlight of the trip--not including, of course, the grilled meat items and Kip's potato salad--was Chris's mother announcing, after trying to figure out which one of her children had made a desultory comment about something many years ago, "It was probably you, since you're so critical." It was the kind of situation where you learn everything you ever will need to know (or previously considered) about your friend from meeting his parents.

On Friday night we saw X-Men: The Last Stand, along with a theater full of other geeks. (For anyone who's not seen it yet, stay until the very end, until all the credits are over...trust me.) After, we all chose our own mutant powers, mine being the ability to become instantly shower fresh. And, of course, to be able to make others shower fresh, something we've all wished for here in NYC.

Today I'm of to a rehearsal for a parade, which will kick off the River to River Festival. Later in the festival, Ricky Skaggs will be performing, along with film screenings of Barefoot in the Park and Rear Window (among others,) as well as many other arty-farty things to do--all of them for free.

MacBook Secured*

*Thanks, Kathleen!

New New New (and it also comes in black)

My friend Witold (see Yoga: Art + Science) and I went to the new Apple store on Fifth Avenue today, ostensibly to buy me a new laptop, but really just to see what all the fuss is about.

The store is entirely underground, in the plaza in front of the GM building, and you enter it via this I.M. Pei-looking glass cube, on a staircase that descends into MacLand. It's quite lovely. The store is harder to navigate than the SoHo store, despite it seeming smaller. It's hard to differentiate between the Genuis Bar and the checkout, and products are sort of laid out in all areas of the store. MacBooks in two corners, iMacs along the wall...and also over here on the low table with squishy balls for desk chairs. I'm not sure what the big idea is, but okay.

Mostly we played with the Photo Booth software on one of the MacBooks, taking pictures of ourselves and emailing them to our friends. We also scrolled through all the sent mails in the Mail app, looking at other people's pictures. You could even see how this particular laptop had been moved around the store by seeing what part of the architecture was behind the people in the photos.

I also tried to chat with the other people trying out the MacBooks, using the iChatAV program, to no avail. You could sign in as your MacBook, and see the other computers on the network. Some of them were on-line; most were not. But I wrote "Hey" to them, and when that didn't work, I tried "Hello."

No purchase was made today. Come next week, I figure, I'll be sitting here with a MacBook size helping of new technojoy.

Attack of the WWW

See, the internet really does bring people together:

-Subservient Chicken
-Puke or Soup?
-The "She's Not a Christian" Lady
-Kitten Wars!
-Someone Keeps Stealing My Letters
-Stuff on my Cat

Architeuthis dux

The Giant Squid Lives!

Go here.

Orlando/Tampa 2006 Stats

Coasters conquered: 11

New coasters: 8

Total inversion count: 46

Total length of coaster track traveled: 54,580 feet (10.34 miles.)

Martians, Part 2

In the 1960s, Dr. Frank Drake, one of the founders of SETI, invented an elaborate equation for use in thinking about the possibility of finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life. The equation is supposed to allow scientists to quantify the uncertainty of all the factors which can determine the number of civilizations out there. The Drake Equation looks like this:



N equals the number of number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we could expect to communicate. The other pieces include the rate of star formation in our galaxy, the fraction of those stars which carry planets, the fraction of those planets which can support life, and so on in smaller, more complex pieces until you get to what I think is the most interesting part of Drake's equation: L. It is referred to as the "lifetime factor."

If our own is any indication, civilizations create technology that allows them to potentially communicate with extraterrestrial beings at approximately the same time that they create the means with which to completely annihilate themselves. Therefore N, considering L, equals those civilizations that don't blow themselves up.