Milk. About What. Hot Bloggers. Diaryland. Fear. Hope. Love. Justice. Peace. Heartcore.

i. Annnouncements.

Firstly -- all my feelings about the DOJ in a new autostraddle: She's Done it Again, She's Managed It, Like the Cat, The L Word has Nine Times to Die. Secondly, I got my Hot Blogger Calendar in the mail and it's AWESOME, for reals, and I'm Miss October. If you don't buy one (a bargain at $12, and $2 goes to the autowin fund), you'll probs never know what day it is and then you'll be late for work. If you still have a job.

ii. I gave up my neck for Harvey Milk, and I liked it

We saw MILK last night, you should too. Look at me, I've already seen three movies this year, I've come a long way since 2007, The Year of No Movies (which you may recall was foiled by my evil mother and brother who forced me to see Juno with them, which I could've easily seen in January, but noooo whatevs Marie's Arbitrary Rules for Yourself, this is family time bladiblabla), this year I've already seen Sex and the City: The Movie, Rachel Getting Married and MILK! That's three whole movies!

Despite being on time with tickets in-hand, we were at the back of the line filing in (oh, the Urban gays!), and the only seats left together were front-row seats. I've seen A LOT of movies from the front row since moving here. SATC, Short Bus, The DaVinci Code (not my idea obvs blame Haviland). It's intense up there. Every pore in high-definition.

MILK was, as expected, triumphant and inspiring, depsite the sad ending. It's remarkable, really, the legacy of hatred and fear that plagues the history of humankind absolutely everywhere. I wonder if we're becoming better people, worldwide, or if it's just the same cycle over and over, with bigotry and evil popping up in different contexts in different countries but still, population-wise ... oh, I dunno. I wish this had come out in August, maybe it could've helped us avoid the Same-Sex Setback.

Also! Big man crushes happening right now:

Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones

James Franco as Scott Smith
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iii. What is this blog about, anyway?

I'm trying to write an "about me" page. All the other bloggers have 'em, and it's the first place I look when I hit a new spot, and I want to make my blog as new-user-friendly as I possibly can. Howevs, I'm a little stuck. Wtf is my blog about? I mean -- clearly it's about memememememe -- but what else? If you have any thoughts on this topic, please do let me know, I need an objective opinion.

iv. Working On
I'm working on the Top Ten Weirdos of 2008 and a new Stuff I've Been Reading. Just you know, FYI. I've read a lot of stuff!

v. Diaryland

In 2002, my friend Jake told me that Diaryland (the original online journaling site, which didn't offer the interactivity of later applications like livejournal, blogger and wordpress, and therefore remains kind of quaint and perfect) had erased all its inactive journals, e.g., mine. I checked -- indeed, they had. I'd printed out my first two months of diarylanding but the rest was lost.

Sometimes these things happen and I tell myself it's probs better that way, 'cause I need to learn to part with written words. Moving from idea to idea with the baggage of thousands upon thousands of already-written and well-archived words is daunting/haunting. Every blank page is crowded by the feeling I've said this before, already, and the possibility of proof just amps up that suspicion.

Then Krista will point out I've used the phrase "shoulderblades like angel wings" in ten different short stories and I'll realize, yes, my capacity for metaphor is ridiculously finite, I should probs get into Plastics or Nursing.

Anyhow! Last week I learned you can ask Diaryland to recover your diary! So I did, and they did, and it's really interesting to memememe, 'cause though I've got my whole life in journals, I didn't journal much this particular year. When I did, it was mostly about my body and the pain, 'cause that was the year I was first diagnosed with fibro. I don't remember much from this year. It's in my brain like a long dull dorm hallway. It was a strange year. Maybe because it was the most benign year I've ever had.

January 20th, 2001.

I am ruled by fear. In order to deal with these fears, I will list them here:

Fear of never having a boyfriend, fear of the telephone, fear of gaining weight, fear of losing friends across the country, fear of losing my journal, fear of my room catching on fire, fear of complete loneliness, fear of people finding out i'm a bad person, fear of anyone dying (especially if we're on bad terms), fear of being called ugly, fear of Ryan cutting me out of his life, fear of finding out i'm a terrible writer, fear of disability/physical impairment, fear of permanent depression, fear of never seeing my father again, fear of most social situations like parties, really strange crippling fear that when i ask for a "non fat cappuchino" they will accidentally put in whole milk instead of skim, fear of avoiding phone calls/applications/job searches enough that i never do what i want to do, fear of not having money to do anything, fear of being called out for everything i am afraid of.

Sunday Top Ten: In the Place Where There is No Darkness, There is Our Sitcom.

Sunday Night, 7.1.2007, circa 11:30 p.m.:
Me: "I need to think of an idea for my Sunday Top Ten."
Carly: "Oh, you mean your Thursday Top Eight? Your Tuesday Top Six?"

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This's a dispatch from Carly & Riese's Gay Sitcom Write-a-Thon 2K7, which's been, thus far, Extremely Successful. [Aside from a brief break on Saturday night to drink and another on Sunday night to watch the Big Gay Cruise Movie with Haviland, Heather, Lainy, Jen, Craig, Janet, Layla, etc., which was actually worth it for it warmed our hearts down to their very embers. Carly's not going on the cruise, but she was a sport.]

In order to conceptualize, develop and actually write an entire sitcom in about five days, I've had to commit my mind almost entirely to this task. Therefore, I'm unable to think of anything for the Sunday Top Ten that's not at least tangentially related to our sitcom. I could do "Top 10 Reasons We're The Awesomest Sitcom-Creators Of All Time," but I don't want anyone to feel intimidated, especially you, Ilene Chaiken. Because we're going to eat your breast cancer for breakfast, and wash it down with a long tall glass of ovulation, smear it in a warm bath of BETTY--and we're gonna do all that with all our clothes ON.

Also Ilene, if you were about to pick up the phone to call and hire me, don't let the above paragraph change your mind. I'd like to remind you that there's a thin line between love and hate, and that it helps to have writers on your team who don't just sit around and validate your retarded ideas all day. You've hired plenty of amazing writers, e.g., A.M. Homes and Angela Robinson, who probs also questioned some of your "choices," so why not hire me? I'm not even amazing, so you could boss me around if you want to. I like being bossed around sometimes. Except today, when I've dispatched a great deal of the research duties on this particular Top 10 to my unpaid intern. She just sent me an email that included bullet points! Go Carlytron!

But the First Rule of Best Lesbianish Sitcom Ever Club is "NO Opinions Allowed: Except from Marie and Carly." So I can't say what it is about, really, because we can't handle opinions right now. But the first thing we did was make a list of all the things that we were not going to have in our teevee show.

SUNDAY TOP 10:
IN WHICH TEAM AWESOME CREATES A GAY TEEVEE SHOW UNLIKE ALL OTHER GAY TEEVEE SHOWS

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10. No Death

See: Dana Fairbanks Obvs on The L Word, Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vic and the Random Gay-Bashed Boy on Queer as Folk, Doug on Workout, Sandy on ER, most lesbians in Law and Order/CSI/etc [after murdering someone clearly]. Also Jen died on Dawson's Creek and she wasn't gay but she was a total fag hag and when she had her final convo with Jack [gay!] ... Krista and I were crying like, a lot. Although we also cried all the way through Closer, and in the final musical performance at the school scene in Uptown Girls. And during our third, fourth and fifth viewings of that musical section I just mentioned from Uptown Girls.

We've got a notes sheet where we write down all of our tangential glimmers of brilliance. At the top, it reads: ALL OUR CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN GRANTED ETERNAL LIFE. Like Gilgamesh!

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9. Specifically, no Breast Cancer

See: Dana Fairbanks, obvs.

This rule's 'cause of Dana Fairbanks. Moreso, it's because of Ilene Chaiken, who lives in a deluded fantasy world of her own creation in which the only way to "tell the story" of breast cancer [She "needed" to tell this story, p.s., like maybe it came to her in a dream or something? Who knows whatevs, she's clearly completely out of her mind.] was to kill Dana. She's probably already stewing up how to sacrifice Alice to Al Queda or something. [Note to google spies: I know I've just used Al Queda and lesbian and AIDS in the same blog entry, but I swear I'm way too busy to be a terrorist. I'm writing a sitcom, obvs! That's like, the opposite of terrorism, because it lulls the people into robotic complacency. Especially a gay sitcom, because the gays are particularly pissed for obvious reasons.]

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8. No Pregnancy, Babies, or discussions of Fertility and/or Ovaries.

See: Carol & Susan on Friends, Mel & Lindsay in Queer as Folk, Bette & Tina in The L Word, Keith & David on Six Feet Under

Why? Because if I wanted to talk about my ovaries or about babies, I would have a baby. If I wanted to talk about building healthy and stable partnerships in order to best enrich the upbringing of another human person, I'd stop being a baby. But Angelica in The L Word: adorable ... though the lesbian-with-a-baby storyline is really lame, especially when partnered with a lesbian-bed-death storyline. What came first, though, the chicken or the egg? You know?

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7. No Ridiculous Bisexual Females

[Vacillating between women and men, partying like there's no tomorrow, killing people, being manipulative/insane, constantly tempted to return to heterosexuality for All the Wrong Reasons, just experimenting with a friend but really likes cock, etc.]

See: Jenny, Alice, Dylan and Tina in The L Word, Marissa on The O.C., Sarah on America's Next Top Model, Genesis, Bree, and Ruthie on The Real World, Paige on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Julia on Dirt, whatever's happening with that Aidan-Spashley love triangle on South of Nowhere, etc.

Where do I begin on this topic? Really, where? Do I begin with The Real World, L.A Law, Ally McBeal ... movies like Personal Best and Wild Things? Though homosexuals and queers of all variations've been notoriously underrepresented on television for centuries, the Sweeps Lesbian -- TV terminology for that girl who goes gay for ratings, then returns to the men America's wanted her to fuck all this time -- remains a popular staple. I've got this really revolutionary idea: what if bisexual women were just women who were sometimes attracted to women, and sometimes to men? Wouldn't that be weird?

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6. No Coming Out Stories

See: Jack on Dawson's Creek, Justin on Queer as Folk, Spencer on South of Nowhere, Dana & Jenny & Phyllis on The L Word, Ellen on Ellen, Marco on Degrassi: The Next Generation, Jessie on Once and Again, David on Six Feet Under, etc.

There's nothing wrong with coming out stories, they've just been done. And done. Much like real life, in which people come out, I guess. I don't really know because I've never "come out" to anyone. Why? Because I'm one of those annoying bisexuals mentioned in "7" who take the easy way out, and just write blogs about their primarily lesbian lifestyles and figure if anyone really wants to know, they can just read it. Or you can put it on your myspace profile or whathaveyou. For example on how well this works, see below:

"Mom also gave me an update about your life, but I found that my friend Nick gave me a way better update a week or two ago. Which is you know, funny, how a complete stranger yet loyal reader gets the dirt weeks before our Mom. Anyway I played along, Oh wow, she's in a relationship? With a girl? Wahhhht!"

-My brother Lewis, email to me, 4.11.2007

Like when Lewis came to visit in November and I was seeing/special-friending Steph and we all went out together and she consequently spent the night, it did occur to me I'd never "come out" to him but I was like, whatever, he reads my blog. Anyhow: I know what it's all about, coming out. My Mom came out to me once! So did a girl from high school when we were both on the elliptical trainers at the Upper West Side New York Sports Club. A girl from middle school, on her behalf and also another one of our best friends. And so on.

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5. No AIDS

See: Pedro in The Real World: San Francisco. Ben, Vic and Hunter in Queer as Folk, Doug on Workout.

The thing about AIDS is: it's really depressing. If you've ever befriended a forty or fifty-something gay male in NYC, you've likely heard a variation on this story: "I use to have a lover. He had AIDS. We had an apartment in the meatpacking district before it was trendy. Then my lover died of AIDS. I used to have all these friends. They died of AIDS. Now I live alone. I don't have AIDS but I have a rent-controlled apartment. Also, everyone I know is dead. From AIDS." That is heavy shit and this is a sitcom. We want people to laugh. I mean, everyone loves a good tearjerker. If you are one of those people, go rent Philadelphia. Actually, if you wanna cry like A LOT? Rent It's My Party.

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4. No Ridiculous Fashions

See: Everyone on The L Word, Samantha on Sex and the City [I'm including her moreso for her fagginess, and I mean that in the best possible way, than for her brief flirtation with lesbianism].

I just don't understand why you'd dress your characters in ugly clothes when you could dress them in cute clothes. I mean, you have a choice, and you choose incorrectly. Why?

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3. No meditation, or references to drum circles, serious relationships to yoga, chakras, sun gods/goddesses

See: We don't know if this's been anywhere but The L Word. But in real life, lesbians dig this shit.

Um, it's just boring. Also, people who aren't into it (like, clearly, us), are really skeptical and semi-caustic about their disbelief. Probs I'm just jealous that you have like, a goddess to bless your chakra and unify your holy spirit or whatevs, and I'm just like "What's up. My mind is racing right now and it won't stop. Try to quiet the waves of my overactive brain. I need a drink." Mostly, we're bothered that Bette's entire meditation-hoo-ha storyline was not only completely out of character ["Of course. it's a technique of self-help people like him. You spout enough pre-packaged wisdom, there's bound to be something for everybody. you know, i find something for me in the Vogue horoscope, too, that doesn't mean it's not bullshit." -Bette, to Kit, Re: TOE, Season Two] and boring, but was crafted specifically to hide Jennifer Beals' pregnancy and for no other reason. Isn't that dumb? Couldn't they just give her weird outfits like they did to SJP? Oh wait--they did.

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2. No Terrible Theme Songs, Specifically no BETTY.

See: "The Way That We Live," The L Word, "Spunk," Queer As Folk, "Things Just Keep Getting Better," Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I mean seriously. I may have mentioned this before, but I believe the following things could create a better theme song than 'The Way That We Live": the sound of iced tea being stirred, an angry kitten, your mom, my ass, Milli Vanilli, a 6th grade recorder student group, a beached whale, a non-beached whale, the sound of Shane banging her head against the wall, the sound of people fucking, the sound of people crying, Rock-a-Pella, that guy who sang Ricky Martin on The American Idol Show, me.

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1. Sex and Partial Nudity Whenever Possible
See: Nothin', Til Now.

Why? Because sex is hot. And also, kinda funny. Like, much much funnier than dying or chakras. People're naked and rolling around sticking their fingers and tongues in each other. That's really funny. And what's amazing about it is that we humans've managed to transform it into something that sucks genuine out of ridiculous and then wears it like happiness ... which's why it's fun to have on the teevee. Every now and then, e.g., when appropriate. Like don't cut away just when things get good. Pump up some Shiny Toy Guns and get it on. Or if you're just chillin' in your room, what's with all the clothing? Fashion show? Because we're not gonna have violence, you know? Just love. Because that's the L Word, weirdos. Like, for your friends, mostly [because I get by with a little help from my friends], but for your family too and for life itself, and then for the stories we tell about it. The End.

Ha. Obvs it's late and my brain has dissolved completely and is no longer responsible for it's contents.

Sunday Top 10: I Think You're Crazy, Just Like Me.

I am re-reading "Strunk & White: The Elements of Style." I purchased this for myself a year ago because I had a really strong feeling that I didn't know how to construct a sentence. I re-read it but apparently nothing sunk in. Today (Saturday, when I began this post, which I imagine I might finish next week some time, as soon as I can find a goddamn photo of Duncan Fuckin' Nutter), on my way to and from the Waldorf-Astoria to move gift bags from one room to another for the HRC, I re-engaged with my friends Strunk and White and I am paralyzed. This blog is a grammatical and stylistic nightmare.

It's a nightmare I can't seem to wake up from. But that's fine! I will plow forward with blind and misguided ambition, much like Rachael, the young "prophet" who declares, in the film "Jesus Camp": "Man's decision? WHATEVER. God's decision? SOMETHING." That's right, Ray-Ray. You tell 'em.

In honor of:
1. "Jesus Camp" and "Friends of God," two movies I saw this weekend about the evangelical Christian Crazies (lest any of you jump upon me with curses regarding what a bad friend I am for being too busy for you but not too busy for Jesus, I watched both of these movies while doing five other things)
2. Anna Nicole Smith, (who's show, "The Anna Nicole Show," should've been on Bravo! instead of E! because if it'd been on Bravo! people would have realized how secretly brilliant! it was and then watched it!), this month's Sunday Top Ten is devoted to my favorite crazy people EVER, those who were captured in documentaries or on documentary-style television programs. (That's not the same as Reality TV. Reality TV is when they have to create situations to make boring people more interesting.)

OH AND: When I looked up "The Anna Nicole Show" on imdb, this sentence was included in the plot summary: "The cameras also accompany her on dates and to Hollywood parties and charitable events." Charitable events? Hear that, Strunk? I'm like, Grammar Girl compared to that bullshit.

SUNDAY TOP 10: THE CRAZIEST OF THE CRAZIES, BOTH GOOD CRAZY AND BAD CRAZY

10. BAD CRAZY: ALL THE LOONIES TAKING BACK AMERICA FOR JESUS, AND ALSO FOR CRAZY PEOPLE, "JESUS CAMP": How many of these guys have to be outed as closeted homosexuals (seeking to repress their natural sexual desire by becoming assholes who preach about Jesus to dimwits) before their followers see the light of Actual Logic? I think this movement comes from two things: some sort of underlying revulsion with the very compulsions that make us human (aka all sex drives of all orientations, ambition, intellectual curiosity, intelligence, an occasional desire to transgress), groupthink/stupidity/inbreeding? I feel sorry for these kids. I don't like it when people accost me on the street to give me a free haircut or sign me up to vote, let alone to tell me that God has a special plan for me.

Don't get me wrong--people should believe what they want to believe. But these groups want to convert and conquer, and their moral absolutism is appalling. Have you seen "The Devil's Playground"? It's about Amish people. They actually have similar beliefs, the difference is that they keep it to themselves. Like, they don't even hang out with other people.

Compared to the Colorado Springs experience when a girl in a bowling alley gets confronted by an 8-year-old mini-lunatic who thinks God has a special plan for her, the Do-You-Have-a-Minute for Greenpeace guys don't seem half-bad.

9. GOOD CRAZY: PERKY and PUNCTUAL, AKA KATIE MORGAN, FROM "PORNUCOPIA": I can't say enough about the sage that is Katie Morgan. We watched this HBO documentary in November of 04. At that time, I had not seen very much porn in my life, ever. I still haven't, but I've seen a whole lot of documentaries about porn. Krista and I could not get enough of Perky N' Punctual. We gasped with delight when she shared her story of getting into porn (it's cuz she got caught with a lot of drugs and needed cash), and we erupted into girlish giggles of rapture when she told a casting director "I don't do up the butt!". Sometimes, I think some of my most compelling roommate experiences and memories are those lovely times my roommate and I were simultaneously sucked into some sort of non stop television marathon train-wreck, like Krista and I's Pornucopia-habit ("RIS! The gorilla! She's fucking a man in a gorilla suit!") and Monday night West-Wing-A-Thons or the weekend during the summer of 04 that Lindsay and I were accidentally sucked into the terrible world of...

8. BAD CRAZY: DUNCAN NUTTER, "SHOWBIZ MOMS AND DADS:" There's a lot to say about the pageant Mom and the Wonder that is Debbie Klinginsmith and her tone-deaf son, but the real gemstone of this brilliant program was Duncan Nutter. First of all, he's the gayest straight guy ever, and he's married to a very homely Earth Science teacher, and he is completely off his rocker. He moves all his 10,000 kids to Queens to pursue their dreams, which are obviously really his dreams. I think he'd be better as a diet TV guy, like Richard Simmons. Or as a Children's Television host. He could sing Bananas in Pajamas.

7. GOOD CRAZY: The Trekkie dentists, "TREKKIES"
This documentary, which I think I first saw with Jake, is probably one of the best documentaries ever. I'm partial to it because I've you know, experienced this culture first-hand, but also I don't like to go to the dentist. And if my dentist decorated his office as though it was a Star Trek battleship, that would be fine, because to be honest with you, going to the Dentist does feel, to me, a bit like being attacked by light-sabers in a galaxy far far away or like, having sex with a Klingon who is scraping away at my teeth with his evil pointy fingernails. I have a Dentist appointment on Friday, P.S. As you can imagine, I'm already thinking about how to get out of it.

6. BAD CRAZY: MARK HARRIS, "GAY REPUBLICANS": This guy says that he supports G.W because, according to him, G.W is not saying that gay people can't get married. He's just saying gay people can't marry each other if they both happen to be men. Also he'd rather be in a room of Republicans than a room of gay people. I'm guessing he's a 3-incher.


5. GOOD CRAZY: JONATHAN CAOUETTE in "TARNATION:" This is one of the most brilliant films I've seen in my life. Partially because I also spent massive amounts of time as a young girl filming myself or filming my brother in various compromising situations (e.g. music videos of 'Heal the World' and daytime-talk-show parodies in which he wore a series of female wigs) and it's fascinating to see how the filmmaker put these all together to tell the story of his mentally ill mother and all this fucked up shit that happened to him as a kid. Seriously, just fucking see it.

4. BAD CRAZY: DIANE, "FAT CITY": I miss Trio. It was like more or less my dream channel, showing nothing but documentarial delights like "Fat City," which featured this 600-pound woman, Diane, who says, while flashing the camera a disarming photograph of herself wearing something alarming: "In this shot, I was wearing a one-piece catsuit which is stretch lace from shoulder down to ankle with nothing underneath it. I see in this photo someone who is very comfortable in her own skin, someone who accepts herself and makes no apologies to anybody and also accepts the fact that she can be sensual." Really, Diane?

3. GOOD CRAZY: Anna Nicole Smith, "The Anna Nicole Show"
Oh Anna. "The Eating Contest" episode of your show was so beautiful! When you and Howard had that fight about if you were cheating or not and you were all like "Howard, fuck you, you asshole, you're lying, I can't trust you if you don't trust me"? There are other parts of the show that are more obvious, glaring, shocking train wrecks: namely, the fact that you are totally doped up on Vicodin or one of 10,000 other medications for the majority of the program, including when you are supposed to be going to various publicity events and interviews. But it is the eating contest that made me fall in love with you, and, thus, when Lo and I were at a little bar in Gramercy last week and the woman next to us made a comment about ANS and I made a comment about how awesome her show was and the woman next to us laughed like I was obviously kidding, I wanted to challenge HER stupid ass to an eating contest, which I would have totally WON. Yeah, as Anna herself may have said---she bit my goat. RIP, Anna. You ruled a lot.

2. BAD CRAZY: George W. Bush, "Farenheit 9/11."
It's sad to me that Micheal Moore made those few kinda-sorta inaccurate claims in this film (e.g. the kite-flying kid in Iraq) which left him vulnerable for grander assaults, like people who think the whole movie was bunk, when, in fact, 90% of this movie was really good and really true and really important. I've loved M2 since I first saw "Roger & Me" and subsequently developed a semi-obsession with the city of Flint, Michigan [this happens to me with documentaries and non-fiction books, I've been moved to similar individual awareness campaigns in which I preach constantly to anyone who dares to speak to me on the message of the film/book I've just seen, e.g. Joan Ryan's "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes" (a book about gymnastics and figure skating), Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities" and of course Eric Schlossel's "Fast Food Nation."] I saw this with Jon and Steph in '04, which means I was probably stoned and eating gummy candy, but I still dug it. Really the scariest part is when G.W is at his golf course like "we should do everything we can to stop these terrorist killers. Now watch this drive." There's nothing I can say about this man that has not already been said by someone who actually reads the newspapers instead of watching left-wing radical documentaries all night when I should be sleeping.

1. GOOD CRAZY: Edie Beale, "Grey Gardens." If you haven't seen this movie, your life is probably filled with sadness and despair. Edie invented the term "costume of the day" and there is not enough room in this blog to contain every element of her genius. Furthermore, once I went out with this guy who looked really good on paper (Ivy League, made a living as an actual artist, lived in a rent controlled apartment downtown, cute) and when he told me he hated Grey Gardens, he may as well have said "I eat babies for breakfast," because I was like, 'I don't feel so good' (I didn't) and I got right on the subway and went home and never spoke to him again. The next day on AIM, Lainy suggested that perhaps I am a lesbian. No, I'm bi. I just don't like boys who don't like Grey Gardens---ok. No. I don't like boys who tell me that Grey Gardens is the worst movie they've EVER SEEN. That would be like how Rachel from "Jesus Camp" would feel if I told her I thought her whole religion was bullcrap. She probably wouldn't date me. But she also probably hates gay people, even just half-gays. Though lets be real here: chances that Rachel will turn out to be a gay are pretty f'in high. I'll be breaking that story right here.