Not funny.

The more I listen to Chris laughing hysterically while he watches Fraggle Rock, the more I understand why my jokes are simply not funny to him.

I agree, Marcy for President!

'A First Premiere' Redundant?

I never thought that I would be the type to walk down a red carpet, lined by photographers with zoom lenses so as to catch my every pore, video cameras, and adoring fans. Well, no, they were not MY adoring fans per se, but, for a moment, I caught myself daydreaming, imagining that in the parallel universe where the other J. lives, teenagers are huge Wagner fans and obsess over the up and coming Heldentenor. Flash of the bulbs and I am back to reality, me in my brown suit in the gray and black suit world. Unfamous, unrich, unbekannt. I think I might prefer this.

Chris told me weeks ago to keep Thursday open for a “surprise”. The need to surprise me at every turn seems to be an inherited, suspiciously perhaps-genetic trait of his entire clan. I don’t know what exactly gives such pleasure in seeing the surprise on their victims’ faces, but they simply must have it, and every member of the family goes to strange, even uncharacteristically obsessive lengths to get that reaction. But, to a control freak whose clock is typically too-tightly wound, surprises typically annoy me. They complicate the uncomplicated, frustrate even the most potentially docile situation and just unnerve someone who has few to spare.

Why is it that Chris cannot imagine how anyone could not love surprises as much as he does? I will le him answer this for you, as the mention of is name undoubtedly has caught his eye…

So I met the Chris at Potsdamer Platz at 6PM on Thursday, walked to the Sony Center, and, turning the corner, saw a giant Wall-E balloon. Now, even though you may imagine that a German movie premiere would not be as glitzy or extreme as its Hollywood version, I can hardly imagine how this version can have paled in comparison. Wall-E, partly because Pixar movies have hitherto for been hits, every one, and partly because the release dates have been scattered across the world, instead of being simultaneous (as has become the norm of late), this premiere in particular was hyped to steroidal levels. They flew in officials of every department who made the movie; the head of Disney Germany introduced them; the dub-over star was there (there’s very little dialogue in this movie), and the little robot who must have cost a mint as he looks exactly like his cartoon version, complete with puppeteers controlling his every move behind the scenes, had been flown in as well. Maybe he sat next to the Pixar people on the plane. There was free food, free drinks, free Wall-E video games, and, of course, the opportunity to hobnob with the German elite. We took advantage of this by standing in a corner like frightened little bunnies, pointing at famous people and wondering who the rest were, and saying things like “we should really introduce ourselves” followed by pre-pubescent giggles. I was standing in the bathroom waiting for a urinal after the movie (when have I EVER had to wait to pee—the benefits of being a man) when a reporter with a big camera around his neck asked me if the guy at the third pissoir from the left was the Minister President from somewhere. I would so like to have been able to give a wittier answer than “I don’t know, sorry”, (if only we had been in france where “pissoir” rhymes so easily with “savoir”) but alas, efficiency of speech seems to take over my brain when it can only focus on commands like “Pee” and “Now”.

A classic ‘methinks he dost protest too much’, I have to admit that I did really like the surprise. Would this involve me admitting such to Chris? I don’t think so. Methinks you dost not know me too much.

And, the movie, oh, the movie. This is a truly great movie! I cannot recommend it highly enough. I remember John Dickerson from Slate mentioning that “The Road” by Cormack McCarthy was one of the best books that he had ever read, because of ingeniously told story. The book had the added benefit, he said, of being called perhaps the best environmental novel of the modern age. This comment came to mind when thinking of Wall-E. The movie is filled to the brim with social commentary galore, yes, but, the over-arching, almost subliminal theme to which our children will be exposed is one of utter imminent environmental desolation barring the powers that be coming to their senses. Of course, the anti-capitalistic ‘beware the giant corporation who claims to be your best friend’ was also one I cannot disagree with. In these critical days, though, when our earth needs vigilance in order to right the wrongs of past generations, the message this movie sends is powerful in just the right dose. Pixar is more than just a trite message summed up at the end à la Disney. It seems the genius of its master works has been outdone once again, at just the time when one would expect a decline.

Well done. Quite well done.

PS I am still pondering the meaning of the inevitable popularity of a movie so named in a city whose wall brought it to the forefront of the world’s focus some 19 years ago.

Despair

The most worrisome aspect of the current political climate is that it has made me, one of the most politically active people I know, completely turned off to it. I was so excited when I saw Obama speak in Berlin this year; I was so excited that a black man, an articulate, intelligent, educated black man who shared many of my ideas politically won the nomination of my party. But now, now that the hope has been sucked out of the campaign, in one stark slap across the face in the form of a 40-minute speech at the Republican National Convention, I am already disappointed even before the fact.

I now believe that Obama will lose the election.

The only glimmer of hope is that some in the media are starting to call a spade a spade and talk about the McCain campaign’s lies, actually using just that word “lies”. That’s really how I feel, that McCain is telling a bunch of whoppers and that Americans everywhere, so easily dissuaded because of “spin”, don’t really care or know whether they are true or not. This election will be about personalities, not politics, as McCain’s campaign advisor so rightly said. Well, that is just sad. So sad.

Dick Armey’s correct assessment of the American electorate with his theories about the “Bubba vote” (voters who resonate with Obama’s ideas, but that will, in the end, not vote for him because he is black) greatly trouble me, too. Chick Todd, on Meet the Press, also understood this incalculable, unpollable danger into account when he said that Obama would need to be ahead in some swing states by at least 48% in order to cancel out these independent “Bubba” voters. They are the ones who have said that they are undecided only because they are unwilling to take a hard stance against Obama, all the while knowing that they won’t vote for the man.

There is only one hope now, that Palin makes some huge, in your face mistake before the election.

The only other hope, one which I do not even flippantly entertain in my mind, is the hope that Americans will simply see through the lies and propaganda. Two words dissuade me from believing this, though: “Swift” and “Boat”.

I hope you all enjoy your soccer mom as president. I hope the international leaders find her charm as folksy as you have once 72-year-old McCain kicks the bucket in his first year.

But, you know what, if it happens, then you deserve the consequences. That is what the last 8 years have been anyway, haven’t they—payback for bad choices? I can understand how the election in 2000 took place, that seemed like a fluke. But you elected that idiot TWICE! I agree that the majority spoke in the last two elections. I also simultaneously agree that you all got what you deserved by making such a stupid choice. The Iraq war, the repeal of habeus corpus, Guantanemo Bay, a plunging dollar, a housing crisis, bringing on an overall economic crisis, these are all what you brought onto yourselves. Now, if you vote for McCain, you will be wishing onto yourselves more of the same, perhaps worse. And you will deserve it.

America, I am so close to giving up on you. I feel like some battered wife who stupidly sticks by her man. And now, in the midst of another beating, I keep repeating to myself “this can’t be happening”.

A Glimmer of Hope?

This is an article I found in the Post. Very interesting.

Whose Elitism Problem Now?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008; Page A21

In democracies, all political factions run against an elite. Since the New Deal, Democrats have cast themselves against the financial and business elite. Since the 1960s, Republicans have thrashed the cultural and intellectual elite.

Over the weekend, the moneyed class became a richer target. The foolishness of our financial geniuses now threatens to bring economic sorrow to Main Street. Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 attack on "the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties" never sounded so up to date.

Americans don't mind wealthy and even rapacious capitalists, as long as they deliver the goods to everyone else. But when the big boys drag everyone else down, Americans rise up in righteous anger. The New Deal political alignment endured for decades because the financial elites were so profoundly discredited by the Great Depression. The New Deal coalition dissolved only when prosperity began to seem durable and only after the GOP discovered the joys of baiting Hollywood, the media and the academy.

There is always something slightly phony about anti-elitist politics. Plenty of investment bankers are Democrats, and Republican politicians who claim to speak for devoutly religious cultural conservatives are usually far removed from the world (and the values) of those whose votes they court and whose resentments they stoke.

But the captains of John McCain's campaign figured they might wring one more election victory out of the culture war. They ridiculed Barack Obama as the celebrity candidate loved by Europeans -- the right always consigns Europe to the elitist camp -- and harped on his unfortunate comments, ripped out of context, about "bitter" voters who "cling to guns or religion."
For good measure, McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. A religious and proudly gun-toting mom, Palin has turned expertise itself into a badge of elitism, proclaiming pleasure in her lack of a "big, fat résumé" that "shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment."

But anti-Washington politics is itself rooted in the interests of the financial elite. When the private economy goes haywire, it is always the federal government that has to step in. When those whom Teddy Roosevelt called "malefactors of great wealth" get out of hand, Washington is the only town with the authority to hold their power in check.

Therefore, the party of the business elite has always pursued its interests behind slogans proclaiming a war on Washington and its "bureaucrats" -- and never mind that a little more regulation might have prevented the subprime-mortgage-buying, short-term-profit-maximizing Wall Streeters from wrecking the economy.

All of a sudden, the culture war seems entirely beside the point, an unaffordable luxury in a time of economic turmoil. What politicians actually believe about the economy, what fixes they propose, whether they side with the wealthy few or the hurting many -- these become the stuff of elections, the reasons behind people's votes.

And nothing more exposes the hypocrisy of financial elites riding the coattails of those who revere small-town religious values than a downturn that highlights the vast gulf in power between the two key components of the conservative coalition. Even cultural conservatives will start to notice that McCain's tax policies are geared toward the wealthy investing class and Obama's toward the paycheck crowd. Even the most ardent friends of business have begun to argue that a re-engagement with sensible regulation is essential to restoring capitalism's health.

For some time, McCain's strategists figured they could deflect attention from the big issues by turning Palin into a country-and-western celebrity and launching so many ill-founded attacks on Obama that the truth would never catch up. The McCain strategists' approach reflected a low opinion of average voters, and some Obama supporters began worrying that their opinion might be right.

But those so-called average voters understand the difference between low- and high-stakes elections. They develop a reasonably good sense of who is telling the truth and who is not. And though it sometimes takes a while -- and a shock like this week's economic news -- these voters almost always turn on politicians who manipulate cultural symbols as a way to escape the consequences of their policies.

In 1936, FDR argued that "private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise." He insisted that "freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place."

The stakes in this year's election went way up this week. The days of Paris, Britney and the exploitation of divisions around race, gender and religion are over.

The End

In an ever-ongoing campaign to convince others of my own greatness, I bring to you an excerpt of a quote from an entry on June 7th of this year. In it, I predict the eminent decline that hit Wall Street yesterday. No, I am not an economist. Really, I know next to nothing about nothing when it comes to money. But, sometime it takes the village idiot to see the writing on the wall. I am rethinking the sign I refer to in the quote:

“Several months ago I had a premonition that much more than a recession was on the horizon. I believe that the staggering amount of debt that the typical American has accumulated, the specter of inflation because of oil prices, etc., the terrible weakness of the dollar (also a product of bad trade practice with China et al.) and the bulging national debt (aggravated by the cost of the Iraq War) all together spell a horrible, potential doomsday for us all. I say “us all” because when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. Although I have, perhaps, been involuntarily pulled into the vortex of European over-confidence, and there is a part of me that hopes that our economy here could weather such a storm, the truth of the matter is that the interconnectivity of the world’s economies is such that this crisis could actually create a domino effect that feeds off of itself, and thus destabilizes the world economy. There is potential tailspin there that is undeniable.

Now would be the time to convert stocks into cash, I my opinion. Or, perhaps I should say, yesterday was the time to convert assets into cash.

I am just short of painting a sign saying, “The end is near” and walking through the streets of Berlin.”

The End

In an ever-ongoing campaign to convince others of my own greatness, I bring to you an excerpt of a quote from an entry on June 7th of this year. In it, I predict the eminent decline that hit Wall Street yesterday. No, I am not an economist. Really, I know next to nothing about nothing when it comes to money. But, sometime it takes the village idiot to see the writing on the wall. I am rethinking the sign I refer to in the quote:

“Several months ago I had a premonition that much more than a recession was on the horizon. I believe that the staggering amount of debt that the typical American has accumulated, the specter of inflation because of oil prices, etc., the terrible weakness of the dollar (also a product of bad trade practice with China et al.) and the bulging national debt (aggravated by the cost of the Iraq War) all together spell a horrible, potential doomsday for us all. I say “us all” because when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. Although I have, perhaps, been involuntarily pulled into the vortex of European over-confidence, and there is a part of me that hopes that our economy here could weather such a storm, the truth of the matter is that the interconnectivity of the world’s economies is such that this crisis could actually create a domino effect that feeds off of itself, and thus destabilizes the world economy. There is potential tailspin there that is undeniable.

Now would be the time to convert stocks into cash, I my opinion. Or, perhaps I should say, yesterday was the time to convert assets into cash.

I am just short of painting a sign saying, “The end is near” and walking through the streets of Berlin.”

Pavlov/Venice

Most of you know, I think, that I was an exchange student in Belgium when I was young. I was 18 and went abroad for an entire calendar year. I learned many lessons there, and accumulated a lot of stories in the process. The exchange students with whom I lost contact are showing up, one by one, on Facebook, and we are all rekindling old friendships lost but not forgotten.

We all went on a 15-day bus trip around Europe at the end of our year. It just so happens that this trip in particular was, as I am sure for others, emblazoned in my memory. The bus driver of the trip, in a great stroke of genius, decided to gently elicit a Pavlovian response on us by playing loudly, every morning, “Pretty Woman” on the bus’ speakers. At the time, we thought that it was one of the most annoying aspects of the trip, sitting there in the bus, ready for many more hours of travel, groggy and incoherent, listening to Roy Orbison is his beautiful but somewhat extra-terrestrial voice croon Pretty Woman. (This was the same bus driver that, being stopped entering Hungary, played “Radio Free Europe” on the stereo as the communist guards came into the bus and checked our passports.) What a character. As it turns out, a brilliant character, because, even today, every time I here “Pretty Woman”, I reminisce about that trip through Europe, when I was young and my dreams seemed just before me.

Reconnecting with many of my old accomplices, I am reminded about stories that I had long forgotten. I was a bit embarrassed, actually, when a friend read to me what I had written in her year book at the time, something to the order of “to S., the woman with a thousand complexes. Try and get laid sometime.” Nice. I guess I was as blunt then as I am now… After apologizing profusely to S., she said that she remembered me fondly, as a friend who, when we had all run out of money and were craving some Italian gelato, simply put out his hat ad started singing until we had enough liras to buy just a bit more. I had completely forgotten that story. Well, someone unearthed a picture of this. I got such a kick out of it:

Palin Under My Skin

If I hear one more commentator say that Sarah Palin is a force to be reckoned with because of her “spunk” or her “charisma”, I am going to scream.

The woman became popular overnight because she said what everyone on the Right had been wanting to say for months. She lambasted Obama, a holy figure that seemed untouchable. Because of fear of a white guilt backlash, mixed with lingering notions of political correctness, McCain has, until now, been unable to ratchet up a pointed rhetoric against Obama. Somehow, someone on the McCain ticket knew that a woman could come out and insult Obama all she wants, as answering back would almost certainly backfire on the Democrats. The “old white guy” has been the favored punching bag of choice for some time. The Obama campaign should have taken advantage of that status before she ever came on the scene. Now, because Obama/Biden do not want to further alienate Hillary supporters, they have to pussyfoot around how they will deal with Palin. I’ll bet they are simply waiting now, biding their time until Palin will finally be “made available” to the press. They are surely hoping, just like the rest of us, that she will make some telling gaffs within the first few days, taking away the post-convention bump McCain now sees.

Surely McCain sees the potential for danger in her. That is why he is keeping her close by his side now, undoubtedly having his aides bring her up to speed on world affairs at every free moment. Of course, there is a distinct possibility that she is as savvy as she is vicious, in which case we’re all in trouble.

For the first time in my life, there is someone for whom I can willingly vote. I would hate to think that it will all be spoiled by some hickish Moose-hunter from the north who refers to her husband as the “first dude”. Then again, although such circumstances certainly read like pulp fiction, it, all in all, does seem somehow poignant and fitting for the days in which we live, if it were to come to pass.

Where is Hillary in all this, anyway? She would be the perfect point guard on this as she is in a unique position to completely tear apart Palin as no one directly in the Obama campaign could. Come on, Hillary, be a good sport and take this bitch out! I do love me some girl on girl fighting-to-the-death action. I once saw two girls fight in high school. Man, that was one of the scariest things I ever saw: hair-pulling, grunting, spitting. That’s hot!

I knew we should be worried.

Hypocrisy

Cheeky

An annonymous commenter from my last blog brings up some very good points, most notably, of course, the one about me, the question as to whether I consider myself a part of some “intellectual noblesse oblige class”.

Answer: well, yes, I do consider myself an intellectual. And what is wrong with that?

In America, this is seen to be some kind of automatic conceit when one admits it aloud. “Intellectual” is a compliment that, as an American, is to be meet with false humility, a sweet smile, and some folksy response like “naw, I just like to think” or some such thing.

Truth be told, many think that I live in Germany because I am an opera singer or because I am gay. The real driving force behind me being here, though, is that I live in a place where someone who is intelligent and has a lot of curiosity about the world, driving him to learn more and more, is not viewed with suspicion. In fact, intellectuals in Germany are heralded. I first learned this about Europe when I was an exchange student in Brussels. I remember distinctly watching an American movie subtitled in French. As I followed the subtitles, I remember noting that there was no good translation for “nerd”. I asked many people about this, and later came to understand that “nerd” was not a term directly translatable because denigrating someone who was good in school or interested in learning would make no sense in Belgian/French/German--European society. Why would there be some horrible pejorative term for something for which all students aspire? Hmmmm, I thought, Europe might be just the place for me. Ever since then, I dreamed of living here, free of the societal pressures to “just be normal”.

In America, there is nothing more dubious than being an intellectual. The best villains out of Hollywood are Shakespeare-quoting, latte drinking, opera aficionados hell bent, for whatever reason, on blowing things up in their search for world domination. “Real” Americans like Andy Griffith, whistling on his way home to have lunch with Aunt Bee and Opie, not a care in the world, proud to tell you that his chosen reading includes the Bible and Life Magazine. That is why Sara Palin is such a danger. She has a very folksy appeal that Americans love.

In America, I was always some kind of black sheep, unless I was tucked away in my little university town. From the time I was a small child, no one in my town of 1,000 shared an interest in Classical Music, “the Avengers”, “Doctor Who” and literature from the Middle Ages. When I say it like that, you begin to understand, don’t you? I am everything that is reviled within the unspoken portions of the American psyche: a gay, intellectual opera singer. Three strikes and you’re out. People ask me when I will return to live in America. You should see the looks of surprise when I say “probably never.”

I love America for what it is. It is an idea, a philosophy, a beautiful country, and a well-meaning people. But America never really liked me. They didn’t have a cookie cutter in my size, I guess.

As to “noblesse oblige”, well, I don’t think that really exists in America, does it? Some of the smartest people I know are teaching at $30,000 a year in universities. There’s nothing “noblesse” about that.

As to the rest of the warnings of becoming an “embittered lefty”, I wouldn’t worry too much. My vitriol about Sarah Palin stems simply from the writing I see on the wall. GW is an idiot. I knew it back then, but people voted for him anyway, because they would have preferred to have a beer with him over Gore or Kerry. I knew it was a horrible mistake, one which was made for the country by social conservatives and die-hard Republicans coming out of the woodwork in 2000—“real” Americans. I never was one of those who insisted that the election was “stolen” or some such thing. He won fair and square as far as I am concerned. But, that such an idiot could be elected to our highest office TWICE really says more about our country than I ever could, doesn’t it?

Now, we can get into a debate about whether intellectuals (we may need to define that, I guess) are better suited to running the country than cowboys, but that will have to be another time.

BTW, I thought my last entry was quite tongue-and-cheek funny. Oh well.

Best in Show

I have some bad news: this presidential race is going to be much closer than I thought. ‘Why?’ you ask. Well, in spite of the lack of “real” education and “real” experience, Sarah Palin appears to be a huge threat to Obama’s race to the White House. The pundits can make fun of her all they wan--the woman, raised in rural Alaska, has a very real and very strong appeal to “normal” Americans, the kind that voted for GW in the past.

Watching Palin’s speech at the Republican Convention, I was absolutely floored at both what she was saying and with the audience’s enthusiasm for her words. She slammed Obama as he has never been slammed before, and the audience, starving for someone to say the one-liners they have undoubtedly heard at one time or another, went absolutely wild. These people, admittedly the “inside the beltway” type even if they don’t necessarily reside in D.C., have been itching for a fight, and it looks like they’re going to get one, and how. Obviously the McCain campaign, well aware that Joe Biden was hired as the dark side of that good cop/bad cop relationship, found themselves their own little firecracker to push back. They knew Biden would spend the next two months biting at the heels of McCain in every attempt to derail him, both because Obama seems to be very unwilling and almost chronically unable to go on the offensive, and because McCain was able to, because of the extended fight between Obama and Hillary, fly virtually unnoticed under the political radar for months on end, immune to any potential criticism from the Democrats. Biden now has a counterpart in the other campaign, though, and she is, as alluded to in her speech, a pit bull waiting in the wings. As the Republican Campaign Machine sharpens her teeth, training her to go for the jugular whenever possible, her handlers, I am told, have even taken to poking her with a stick through the bars of her cage in her down time, an attempt to “keep the fight in her” as she rests between training sessions. Rumor is, they went through three sparring partners in the first day alone. One can only hope they throw Ann Colter in the ring with her at some point and rid us of that cunt once and for all. My luck being what it is, they would probably swoon from mutual admiration for each other instead of fighting, frustrating the on-lookers as they sniffed each other’s butts in ecstasy.

This Palin woman is a real power hitter of the back woods variety, folks, and I ain’t kidding. I know she’s got some razors hidden in that up-do of hers. Don’t let that smile fool ya; she’d just assumed tear your heart out and take a bite out of it while you look on as talk to ya. Biden had better be on his toes for the debate, and the Obama campaign had better start to change its tactics or it’s going to get a modern Swift-boating as the crème-de-la-crème of the Evil Party begin to hone their zippy one-liners. The tenor of the speeches seems to be tailored to the cowboy-hat-wearing-war-mongering-oil-baron-wannabes that litter the Convention Center’s floor. But I would have to agree with Palin when she muses at the political elite’s great underestimation of the masses. That is to say, that they underestimate just how many hicks there are in the world.

All in all, I was saddened, frankly, that the idea of playing nice between the camps is not to last longer than it has. After seeing Mrs. Palin speak, though, I am convinced that there is no other way to win than to just jump into the brawl, arms flying, hoping to hit some soft spot as you juggernaut your way to the November polls. I am not sure, really, how Palin is going to play out in the media. But, as fickle as the American public is, I am not sure they can be trusted to just cognitively know who would be better to send to Washington on their behalf. It’s such a double standard that the public yearns for in its politicians. They expect them to be pure, and dead set against furthering their own interests, to be even and knowledgeable on policy and foreign affairs, all the while complaining when they don’t get down and dirty in the Primary ring, fighting to the death in some semi-celebrity deathmatch this time between McCain the Snickering Leprechaun and Obamatron, Robot of de Peoples. I guess American’s ideal candidate would be a pretty, pastel Mother Theresa coating with a creamy O.J. center, the evil within just waiting to be unleashed.

That’s just what worries me. If you were to put these factors into your “perfect candidate logarithm”, mix in some fun 80s pop and a lightning storm, what may emerge is your Weird Science pre-pubescent fantasy, a hot supermodel, who is there to serve you but put you in your place when you need it. She is an overly fertile, top notch MILF. She is Sarah Palin, your pit bull wearing lipstick.