the awesome/terrifying freedom

many many apologies for the lack of bloggy goodness. in a reversal of situation, i should change the title to 'trials of an underpaid office temp.' sorry all - i need some time to stabilize myself.. and then i'll be back with plenty of theories of masturbation, pubic hair, foreskins, flesh eating viruses, and the tragedy of ben and j. lo.

it's guest mail day! yay!

faithful fan maryindiana:

Hello Joe,
I Have been on vacation and away from the internet for two weeks and I must say I have missed reading your blogs. I have never seen 'boy meets boy',but have to say the 'twist' sounded mean from the get go. But aren't all of these reality shows upping the ante? I read an article about the first 'disaster' to befall a show (Who Wants to Marry a Milionaire). They never reran the show,etc. once all was revealed about dear Rick Rockwell. But later the two rival 'creators' of most of these shows realized what a great thing it was to have a scandal DURING the shows run. Case in point "Sarah" of Joe Millionaire and her career in fetish films. Ratings jumped. On ' Married By America' one of the poor women fell for the man they paired her with. On the finale they had a wedding. Flew the families in,got everyone jolly on champagne and then had the ceremony. The minister said the vows,asked her "Do you..etc.." to which she joyfully said "Yes,I do" same rigamarole to the groom but at the "Do you..etc." He looked pained and said "No..I am so sorry,but I am not ready to do this..I never meant to hurt you blah blah blah." WELL IT WAS A TRAIN WRECK. Her family was drunken and outraged,his was tipsy and relieved. The poor woman in her wedding dress fled into a closet hoping the camera crews would at least her to sob and scream in peace,but of course not. So is 'boy meeets boy' really a cloaked attempt to show how foolish gay men are or is it just treating them with the same contempt as we find on shows involving straight people?

Somewhere this meeting is taking place: " Let's have a show called 'Prison Bitch'. We'll take a white middle class guy from the 'burbs..give him three cartons of cigarettes and see how he fares in a MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON!!" "Oh my god that's BRILLIANT..but how about this..we have his falsely arrested on trumped up charges so that he doesn't KNOW he's on a reality show.." "Love it..let's get some sponsors..tie in with product placement..brainstorm with me..Life Buoy Soap..Hanes socks..? "Hanes? Oh I get it..for the beat downs with the rolls of quarters in a...got it!"

I have seen a few "Queer Eye" episodes and really loved them. I never saw the 'gay man as subservient' angle. I just thought it was fun and learned a few little things I didn't know. Carson Kressly is the only one on there who is really over the top. Which of course makes him my favorite. He's the funniest and borderline bitchiest. Some of the others are on the dull side. ( I want my Noel Coward-esque bon mots and I want them NOW!) Hutton Hayes needs to relax and look at television history. Women were,in the early days,bad drivers who got easily confused by minor household problems,couldn't manage the household finances and feared their husbands. Lucy Ricardo was treated like a child by Ricky half the time. On Andy Griffith the town was agog at the prospect of a "Lady Druggist". A woman with a degree in pharmacology! GET OUT! I could go on an on. Poor Redd Foxx was only acceptable as a junk man. The Jeffersons 'moved on up',but they were safely 'regular' folks with no particular education,power,etc. It wasn't until the 1980s that we got the Huxtables with their M.D. and J.D. degrees. The Nineteen Eighties. So pick a gender,race,religion, and think about how each evolved over time. The networks aren't so much hateful as they are run by idiots. But that's just my opinion.

and from eddie walker:

I was surprised that it took until today for you to post anything on BMB. It did have a somewhat anticlimactic finish, didn't it? Though I was thrilled that James didn't choose Franklin, I wasn't celebrating. Like Chris from your Tuesday post, I couldn't help but think back to James' publicity interviews where he did indeed seem bummed about the whole thing. Though I can't blame him -- I, too, would've been really pissed about the inclusion of straight guys into the process. I guess that's what I get for being a naive optimist.

What I want to know is, just how busy has Brian's phone been since Tuesday night?

oh side note, how excited was i to discover that hottie straight guy dan, wes, brian, matt, and most of the other 'mos are connected to me through friendster! isn't the incestual web of gay hookups fascinating?

and from kelleydear:

Hi Joe,

Don't worry, I'm not a stalker or anything. I just thought you'd get a kick out this bit of Clay Aiken news:

Excerpt from Elle magazine:
"That women are so moved by his presence that they hurl their undergarments onstage as if he were Elvis mystifies Aiken: 'Ruben always jokes with me that I could have any woman out there. He says, 'You need to hook up with somebody before you leave the tour.' But I try and explain that that's not what this is about for me. The reason women like me, I think, is because I don't threaten them. I realize Ruben's right, I probably could' - he pauses, blushes - "you know, but I respect women more than that.'"

Spoken like a true heterosexual man - NOT. The response from most of his fans has been, "Oh, how sweet! That's just what I want in a man!" I'm not hating on Clay here - I love the guy - but these women are kidding themselves.

The "non-threatening" thing is interesting. I wonder how that would change if Clay were to come out as a gay man? Would he be more threatening, because he's an evil homosexual, or less threatening, like Jack McFarland? I'm just rambling here. Love your blog!

keep 'em comin, folks!

oy, i am so busy busy lately.. i've had some mail commenting on my lack of blogness. sorry for the infrequent updates - i am basically working two jobs simultaneously at the moment. free time has been sparse.

this, however, requires national attention. jocelyn elders can throw back her head and laugh. maybe she'll get her job back? not likely, but it may allow countless mothers across the country rest a little easier when little johnny is locked in the bathroom for hours on end. oh i have so much more to say about monkey spanking, but unfortunately it will have to wait.

clay aiken is everywhere again. it's amazing. who won american idol again? rudin?

so james picked wes. how touching. too bad he doesn't really like wes. as soon as they get back from that vacation (which they've probably already had) james will become the gay aaron buerge; bland on screen, super-mega slut-machine off screen. soon to be appearing on alternate wednesdays at the gaiety theatre.

franklin. hmm. interesting guy. wow does he love himself. 'out' did an article recently on straight guys who like to go to gay bars because they get hit on more and it makes them feel powerful. frankin and dan are these kind of guys.

what is most irking is franklin's notion that he 'now knows what it's like to be in the closet.' uh, not quite homeboy. you know what it's like to be in the closet just as much as that wall street banker who said during the blackout 'i have a deeper appreciation of the struggles of the homeless,' understands poverty. the show may have created an environment in which a 'secret' needed to be kept, but a huge aspect of closethood was still left out. franks, try living an entire childhood and adolescence of doubt and self hatred. try balancing the counterweights of social acceptance and self denial with self actualization and ostracism. try having your first junior high-level sexual relationship in your mid-twenties. try having mind-blowing butt-sex for the first time and not being able to tell anyone about it. hmm. that's probably not a gay-exclusive experience. butt sex for straight men is the new frontier. you really should try it franklin, you really should. or dan. try it with dan. you might want to make an archival video of that too.

bill mahr says that 'lesbian kisses are no longer shocking.' so true. roseanne did it ages ago. what's shocking is just how much coverage the madonna/britney kiss got. what's even funnier is how absolutely nothing has been said about madge's identical kiss with christina aguilera. i guess it's because we've come to expect this sort of behavior from xtina, who flings her dirty self about like a homo in a 70's bathhouse. we know britney's no saint, but she claims to be, so any evidence of hypocrisy makes front page news.

i can't wait for the day when open mouth straight guy on straight guy make outs are used as publicity stunts. 'american pie 2' sorta did this, but played it as disgusting and awful. no. i want full britney/xtina/madonna action with, oh, hows about justin/ricky martin/marky mark?

of course the problem is that girl/girl kissing has the effect of doubling the participants' femininity, where a guy/guy kiss has the effect of halving the participants' masculinity. but as women gain more power, this perception may start to crumble, and boys will start mouth gymnastics for the same reasons straight girls do: to practice and to turn on the opposite sex. so girls, seize your power and demand that your boys do the tonsil tango.

chris chimes in:

Whoever James picks, you know it's going to be the straight boy. Why else would he have been so prickly in post-production interviews? I mean, if he had actually found "Mr. Right" he probably wouldn't have cared that to do so meant jumping through hoops for the heteros.

ah yes, tonight we may witness a true gay stereotype: that we always fall in love with the straight boy.

really it's not a gay sterotype, it's just a human reality - we want the unattainable. just look at andra. how many times do you think she's accidentally called out 'james!' while doin' it with her husband?

so tonight i was at a dinner party, one of those dinner parties you see in movies - a fabulous multi-level new york apartment populated by intellectuals drinking mohitos and barbequeing on the rooftop. and here's the clincher: the crown jewel of the evening was a drunken viewing of the classic film 'rambo 3.'

okay, i'm totally serious here, everyone reading this needs to get together with their friends and have a 'rambo 3' viewing party. why? because the plot of rambo 3 involves john rambo going to afghanistan in order to assist the taliban in their fight against the soviets. the entire film is pro-afghanistan, pro-taliban, united states propaganda. it's the perfect party film for a generation that can't get enough irony.