Love You Like a Milkshake!

The first snow of the year came on Wednesday. In such a dramatic fashion that it must count for the second and third snows of the year too. It was one of those obese snows, that cover and cake the whole area code. Once skeletal trees and bushes were larded up with so much snow it seemed to be their proper foliage. A winter flush.

In the morning light, the whole world was a Cool-Whip commercial. I went running in a suddenly alien environment. That to me is one of the thrills of a good snow. The inert death of late fall is replaced by an entirely new, at once more dignified and more fanciful world. Running through the woods, the syncopation of black branches and white everything else, beat a staccato rhythm. Inspired views from my left, to my right, and straight ahead.

"I hate the snow." says Priya. "Brown is beautiful." To each, their own.

So it was a white Thanksgiving. Well, with jello-marshmallow salad and toxic amounts of TV, every Thanksgiving is a white Thanksgiving at our house. For me at least, the apathy and sluggishness I feel after the dinner is less a result of the Tryptophan than from prolonged exposure to football on the tiv. But if that's what it takes to get my Brother, Dad, Mom and myself in the same room at the same time, heck, I'll take one for the team.

It was my Brother's birthday as well. He was born on Thanxgiving too. Growing up, this was always the scary time of year for me. With his birthday in late November and mine in January, there was always a period where for a little more than a month, we appeared to be one year apart. Instead of him being six and I being eight, for the interregnum he would be seven, but I would still be eight. During these forty-five days I lived in a state of paranoia--what if he caught up with me one year? What if he overtook me? It would all be over.

After dinner, I caught up with my Bestus: Melanie, back in town from Boston. A one sentence profile: Once in high school we drove past Old Country Buffet; "Mmm! Let's eat out at Ole Cunty!" she said. I haven't been there since, which earns her sincere gratitude.

This was the same cat who worked on the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Broward County, Fla. She schlepped for Jewish-outreach as a matter of fact. The girl's got Shiksappeal.

Standing in her foyer, she presented me with kitschy tchotchkes, that were ironic, she said, only because Kerry didn't win. She bore gifts of K-E buttons in Hebrew, as well as a K-E t-shirt, also in Hewbrew, and a snappy little box for pills, with compartments for each day of the week's dose, and again, emblazoned with the K-E logo. This is a gift I must use. I must get an addiction.

Funny thing about the shirt--it was a smallish girl's shirt. Funny because when I stopped off at the state Democratic party HQ back in early October, the lady saw fit to give me a "Women for Kerry!" button. And at the Rally in late October, I was given--on separate occasions--a placard that said "It's up to the women! Vote Kerry!" and a bumper sticker that said the same. "Maybe they know something, Grant" said Drew.

We went to Denny's, the only place open Thanksgiving eve. Open and actually filled with people, apparently alienated from their families and estranged from their will to live. I needed caffiene to counter act the effects of the giant meal hours earlier. I bought Melanie a malt, which she only consented to after I said "ILoveyoulikeamilkshake!!"

We then took a long night's drive. Since I had a captive audience, I inflicted my taste in music upon her. With sleeping towns and pastures rolling past us, we had one of those conversations where every Noun should be capitalized. You have to be careful who you have those with. Though the moon was partially covered, the new snowfall made the fields glow, as if lit from beneath. These things seem to happen when she is around.

It's Always the Lesbian in the Carharts

A new bookstore opened recently. 'Bookstore' gives the wrong impression. It is more of a large, agoraphobic space with many tables, stacked with even more books. A sense of desperation in the air, that this place is some eleventh hour effort to cut losses on publisher overstocks. So many books that they would be more appropriately measured in bulk weight rather than individual copies.

Thomas Pynchon, $1.65/lb. !

I go for it though, the wearhouse aesthetic. Both small, deliberately obscure independent bookstores and big bougeoie chains like Borders, with their tasteful lighting and comfy couches, put me off. Both indulge the pretentiousness of us 'readers.' There has emerged a cult around reading that venerates books enough to ensure that people don't read them. 'Oh, I love books' is the mating call of the North American moron. Really? Even the phone book? Reading shouldn't be considered a sacrament, it should just be the way things are.

In this big, gray room with industrial flourescent lighting, books seem less precious and more as they should: like commodities, like necessities or staples of everyday life. On long row tables these books are displayed like cuts of salmon; in piles they are produce, under exposed air ducts, just as in the local big-box grocery store. And why not? Nectarines are cheap, plentiful and enjoyable, so are a lot of books, why not sell them in the same way?

There is little order to the book pile-ups, alphabetical or otherwise, which gives browsing the fun, predatory edge of snapping up an unexpected find. The Nanny Diaries lies next to Cormac MacCarthy. Maxine Hong-Kingston, Gunter Grass and Shopaholic find themselves in an unlikely three-way.

Shopaholic. The Nanny Diaries. 'Chick Lit' is too polite; 'Clit Lit' is more appropriately tasteless. One hopes that if Zadie Smith ever encountered the authors in some dark Knopf hallway that she would--very cogently--beat the shit out of them. Impale them with their own stilettos for setting literacy back farther than could the oeuvres of Jewel and Paris Hilton combined.

No, I am wrong. Paris Hilton wrote a book. That the handlers of this television-made sexbot felt it necessary that she write a book and--what's more--that there are readers for this book, shows how literate our society really is. Even the celebrity wet/dry vacs among us write books! And there is a market for them!

If I had ghostwritten her memoir though, I would have titled it Paris Hilton: An Oral History.

I bought ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Only five dolla! My cup runneth over. For the puropses of that moment, and that moment only, the free-market seemed to be working surprisingly well.

Inspired, I decided it would be best if I read it while drinking coffee elsewhere. There are about four coffee places I go to and am sort of a regular at all of them. So much so the java jockeys start my order when they see me walk through the door. Often I would actually like something different, but I don't have the guts to tell them. Plus I easily develop crushes on whomever serves me my caffeinated fixes. All the more reason to drink coffee elsewhere.

There was a rumor of an undiscovered cafe across town, so that's where I went. Turned out to be sort of a lesbian dive. Would that be a muff dive? And the only thing worse than a cafe with too many people is one with only a single table of people, as their conversation tends to be unignorable. I tried to concentrate, but their banter kept finding its way into my book. The story was about rival girlscout troops. I knew I wasn't reading as closely as I should when one of the protagonists said "Shit, after a couple beers, I'd tap that too!" The peel of laughter from the table across the room snapped me out of it. Nope, it wasn't the protagonist, it was the lady with the mohawk and Carharts.

It's a strange moment when your confusion is actually resolved by the lesbian with a mohawk.

A "Sno Ball's" Chance in Hell...

I think this whole 'War on Terror' thing is a big misunderstanding. We all know our president is so fiscally right wing that he doesn't even believe in syntax. His malapropisms and non sequiturs could support an entire publishing genre. Hell, they do support an entire publishing genre.

Rather than terror I think he has declared war on terroir, as in Cusine du Terroir, that school of French cooking which pays special attention to local ingredients and the quality of the earth in which they were cultivated. This would seem to explain why 'French fries' were renamed 'freedom fries' in the run up to the Iraq war, which the president never fails to remind us, is 'the central front in the War on Terroir.'

Though this country has more arable land than any other and is an agricultural superpower, our cusine decidedly eschews the organic and wholesome. Our official national phallic phood is the hotdog, which despite its indeterminable chemical composition, does not stop Americans from consuming 837 million packages a year. Other quintessentially American food-like substances just off the top of the head: TV dinners, Spam, and Mountain Dew.

Our obession with industrially processed consumables meets with our barely repressed Puritanical sexuality in the entire line of Hostess products. Bearing names like 'Ho-Hos,' 'Ding-dongs' and 'Twinkies,' these little atomic confections also bear the mark of our sublimated sex drives. My orientation was a done deal at the age of five when I ate a pair of hot pink Hostess Sno Balls. They were pink! topped with coconut! and called Sno Balls for Chrissakes! I never had a chance.

The president's meticulously cultivated unpretentiousness, which plays so well in the Red States, explains perfectly his hostility to certain French culinary movements. While the French put a premium on authentic, natural ingredients, Republicans are trying to end the FDA's practice of labeling food. No, really. The best defense in the War on Terroir is a good offense. We fight arugula abroad, so we don't have to eat it at home.

I guess this is all on my mind because I have been asked to pick out the turkey for this year's Thanksgiving, with a mandate to buy a free-range, grass-fed bird only. I have no problem slaughtering and eating animals, but at the very least the animal should have a comfortable life, living as close to a nature as possible. This contrasted with production-line turkeys which suffer the indignity of never seeing daylight, are pumped so full of hormones they're rendered immobile, sitting in their own feces, merely living to eat--and eat feed made from their dead turkey-relatives. Happy Thanksgiving!

* * *

I happened across a protest while downtown today. The speakers' emotions got the better of them and it seemed less a protest against Prop 2, than a protest against correct grammar. There was one good speech though--by an octogenarian Episcopal pastor who was active in the Freedom Rides of the 1950s. He was a small, trembling man, but a pillar of real 'moral values.' He closed by saying

I had a stroke last year that disabled my entire
left side. But my leftist politics and religion are still intact!

Wherein I Read People Magazine and Like It

I like to run. I realize I am running against thousands of years of genetics adapted for sitting on frozen rocks, but nevertheless.

A strange pain in my foot has kept me from it for the past several months. I blamed it on my shoes. I blamed it on the weather. I blamed it on whatever racial, religious or sexual minority I could think of. Yet even after the Lord delivered an electoral bitchslap to the Gay Agenda and our moral values have been reaffirmed, my foot still hurt. So last week I made an appointment with the doctor.

Yesterday I found my way to the office, checked in and had a seat. I made the mistake of taking my eyes away from my magazine and looking around: a scene, man. Patients looked like lumpen recapitulations of 20th century humanitarian catastrophes. Hiroshima over there signs herself in. Here comes the Halabja massacre in a muumuu. The gassy Indian woman sitting--mercifully--across the room? The Bhopal explosion.

The receptionist called me over. "It appears you are in the wrong office." Fucking right I am. "You want the orthopedist on this street but down one block."

Ah. This was better. I checked in again and tucked into the office copy of Vanity Fair. Good things: there was a great article by AA Gill and it also seems that Hitch is back from his neocon dirty weekend.

I was at the wrong place before. There all I had to choose from was a copy of Ladies Home Journal (cover story--an interview with George and Laura Bush! Aww.) and a stale copy of People. I chose People. The feature story was on Oprah's 50th birthday party "event." But truthfully the article was really
really
really
good.

The doctor called me back. Within the minute I had a diagnosis: "Plantar Fasciitis." I like that dipthong. It occurs when the ligament between the ball of the foot and heel becomes strained. Especially in people who 1) run and 2) have abnormally high arches. That's basically the autobiography of my feet.

He gave me some instructions on how to tape my feet and ankles. Very butch. He also gave me some physical therapy exercizes to do.

"Resisted dorsiflexion."
The "Plantar fascia stretch."
And the "frozen can roll."

Hot, right?

Getting Conde Nasty

The other day I was confronted with an ethical crisis. Such a thing is rare for me, which probably means less that I am a very ethical person, than a very unethical person. Existential inauthenticity and it wasn't even 8:00 am.

It involved the use of a web page that I discovered a while ago: bug-me-not.com. This site gives out real usernames and passwords to sites that require compulsory registration, e.g. the New York Times, New Republic, etc. It even gives access to paid subscription sites. In this case I was going to use it to crack open Financial Times subscriber-only content, pursuant to a dossier I am compiling. It will be used to Bush bash from the right and from traditionally conservative sources (the WSJ, Economist) in order to draw and quarter my Uncle this Christmas. He would question the atomic number of Boron (five) if it were printed in the New York Times.

Uncle Steve will be sitting at the kid's table this year. And on pillows, such will be his ass-kicking.

But when I accessed the username and password, I realized this was a real person I was defrauding. Adam Poenikhooser or some such. I imagined a gentle Dutchman working in imports/exports. Are you Adam? a box on the margin of the page asked, If not please log off. No! I am not Adam! What thin, fiber-optic line of morality have I crossed?

I logged off without copping the juicy restricted-access article on how Bush's budget deficits are driving the dollar to new lows and scaring Chinese and Japanese FDI out of the US economy.

But if there were any justice, if that great Omniscient Narrator had any sense of humor, Adam would've turned out to be a real ass. I would have usurped his identity only to start receiving his outstanding child-support demands, get busted for his meth ring, and finally, wake up with his sexually-transmitted disease.

If I am to contract an STD it will be my STD, and it won't be from off some pole in the Champaigne Room. It will be in a bathroom at Conde Nast headquarters.

Cue "Taps"

Say what you will about exit polls, I'm pretty sure the one showing Bush winning eighty percent of the collars-up crowd was accurate.

I've tried to kick the twenty-four hour news cycle, but have relapsed, well, twenty-four times in the past day. Actually I wasn't doing so bad until about eleven this morning when my Uncle called. The only Republican in the family. And a paleocon at that, turns out.

It wasn't intended to be a political call; he was just trying coordinate plans for Christmas in Minneapolis. I didn't take the bait when he mentioned "No Child Left Behind," and gave the most vanilla of opinions when he brought up media bias. But y'all know what forced me to throw down. Begins with a "G" and ends in "-ay rights."

I never used to care. In fact, I used to groan at the thought of the Act Up! set, the papier-mache cadres, and people who use words like "transgressive" and "paradigm" too much, that is, at all. Gay rights? I used to think that was the promise of a lemon wedge in your Diet Coke, and the widespread availability of Black Inches magazine.

Well this administration and its recent campaign has changed all that. Attempting to bludgeon a small minority asking for equal protection under the law with the Constitution of all things, while putting similar measures on the ballots of states in order to boost turnout amongst the phobies, was all too much.

My Uncle was too much. Normally I handle relatives with kid gloves, but Uncle Steve is a smarty, and was virtually asking for a double-barreled argument. Plus I knew he had never been faced with a robust defense of gay marriage. He--predictably--tried to frame the issue in terms of providing an environment for procreation and the raising of kids, a la Maggie Gallagher. I said our canon of founding documents--the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--said nothing about going forth and multiplying, but rather gave us substantial freedom to define and pursue happiness for ourselves, and ensured that all individuals have equality before the law. Straight couples have the right to marry without having children--should they be made to sign affidavits swearing that they will? To argue that marriage should be straight only, pursuant to the national interest, was a surprisingly statist argument coming from an alleged conservative. Really more of a fascist or communist position. The state exists to provide and safegaurd individual liberities, individual civil rights do not exist to advance state power.

I just spent twenty minutes writing the rest of my argument, his arguments and my responses. Needless to say the call went on for over an hour, with nobody using their indoor voices. I never got outwardly emotional, or resorted to ad hominem attacks--no need, I was too comfortable with the topic. Towards the end he asked me why I was so intense on the matter. Was I making a big stink on civil libertarian principle? Not at all I said, rather it was a matter of profound, tangible, personal interest. A long silence. I understood that he finally understood. We quickly made our excuses and ended the conversation reasonably amicably.

Then my Grandma called. She said that Steve called to run Christmas plans past her, but was speaking very quickly and very loudly. Ha ha! I rattled him. The holidays will be fun, right?

Still, my heart was pounding and I needed to talk to someone, which is unusual. I called Melanie. She was in Boston, back from Florida where she finished her stint on the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Cue "Taps." She debriefed me on the open-casket that was the "victory party." Open-casket, but no open bar, alas.

When Priya called earlier, we promised each other we wouldn't talk about the election, yet that was what we kept cycling back to, like sequences in a fugue. Since I pace so much when I talk, I eventually head outside to avoid the caged-animal imitation. Usually I walk several miles over the course of one of our conversations. When I hang up I have to figure out where the hell I am, and begin to walk home. The scenery on the way back is often a surprise.

I've got to shut up, or at least ditch the cell, because my feet have been sore for days.

The fact of this election remains: its big, red, throbbing ontology. It's not going away. The poetic karma of it though is that these homophobes are about to get fucked by a lot of men in the next four: George Bush, Dick Cheney, Antonin Scalia, Grover Norquist (total leather daddy), et al. Ever see Deliverance ? Quelle red state.

Reach For Those Ankles, America

There I was, before dawn and first in line to vote, beating the next type-anal personality to show by fifteen minutes. The day before I studied a sample ballot our precinct would be using on the internet. I looked for a token Republican to vote for, so as not to be a complete, how do you say, hack. Finding none, I voted a straight ticket. Well, a straight ticket may not be the best way to put it since I voted against Prop 2, the anti-civil rights amendment. I stabbed the "no" box over and over, like Andrew Cunanan.

I walked home, carrying the dawn's early light on my back. For the next sixteen hours I lived within the possibility--probabilty of--a Bush defeat. It was a fun place. Great drinks, and that Sandra Bernhardt is hilarious.

Then, a little before midnight, the claustrophobia of reality set in. Ohio fell. Kerry won among moderates and independents, while minorities and the under thirties turned out for him by record margins. But. Evangelicals turned out for Bush in numbers that can only be attained by people who take the bible literally and reality figuratively. Exit polling revealed the issues that brought voters out to be, no, not Iraq, the economy or terrorism--sane guesses all--but "moral values." Yes! That is a phrase that must quiver in scare quotes! "Moral values." Read: gay-baiting. During a time of war, record federal deficits and an anemic economy, it was a six to ten percent minority of the country, asking for equal protection under the law, that motivated the Christian right to vote Bush. Those guys have had a problem with the 14th amendment for some time.

By the wee small hours, here in Michigan, and in ten other states, I and millions others had less rights than when we did at dinner. I was surprised at how much this really hurt. Normally, homophobia can easily be dispensed with my making fun of the homophobe's personal hygine, or lack thereof. But there is no snappy rejoinder to tens of millions of people elevating their personal disgust of you to the level of a constitutional amendment. Mac called to commiserate. It was appreciated.

The center of political gravity keeps moving rightward in this country. These evangelicals love to get lathered up over issues of symbolic importance--if that. Witness the panty-bunching surrounding the Ten Commandments, the pledge, and gay rights. But to those on the receiving end, these issues are anything but symbolic. A fifty year-old pro-lifer with a dormant dick has little at stake in the abortion issue, but for the scared seventeen year-old who might need one and desperate to get one under any circumstances, the issue is not theological. The suburban mom who goes to church multiple times a week gains nothing and loses nothing by a gay couple being able to share insurance, inheritance, custody and other rights. Yet she gets to decide whether the the constitution will be applied to them or if it will be rewritten to exclude them. Two cheers for democracy.

You can't argue with these people, because, see, it's in the bible. Even if, of course, it isn't. Like Thomas Jefferson--or was it Wheezy Jefferson?--one day I'll make my own bible. I'll include recipes, political screeds by Arundhati Roy, some Maplethorpe photos and a multiplication table, on thin gold-leaf paper and bind it in red leather. Proverbs 14:23 will read

"Shove it up your ass; you may enjoy it."

Bush has a mandate. He won it by stoking hysteria--vote for Kerry and the trrrrrists will 'splode you!--while pandering to bigotry--and he will make you touch a wiener! Lagging the country's lagging indicators, now that's leadership. It's the kind of leadership that this country deserves, good and hard. Reach for those ankles, America. I thought four years of George W. Putin-ism would be enough to bankrupt it, but it looks like it will take eight, and will bankrupt the republic in the process.

I've taken to wearing a Dukakis-Bentson button. Apropos, no? I'm wearing headphones a lot too, I can't be alone with my thoughts too much these days.

Songs In the Key of Left

Well now the North Koreans and I have one thing in common. One more thing in common, I mean. We both love a good political rally. Granted, today's Kerry-Edwards rally in Detroit did not feature a performance by intercontinental ballistic gymnasts.

But close.

Detroit! A once vibrant cultural capital, which in the last thirty years has become increasingly cracked-out and whacked-out. The city as metaphor for Diana Ross! Or is that the other way around?

Getting to Joe Louis Arena gave Drew and I an excuse to wallow in the industrial-gothic ossuary that is downtown Detroit: a Tintern Abbey on every block. Even in broad daylight the city seemed to be carved from shadows. If Detroit detoxes and attempts a comeback, it shouldn't try to reinvent itself as an entirely safe, hygenic or even pleasant place. For one thing, there is just too much Detroitage for this to be possible. But for another, I think it is the edgy, gothic aesthetic that would be a major draw. It shouldn't be branded as a place to raise a family, but as a metrosexual Mecca.

The rally goers were more retrosexual. In the row below me stood a tiny Arab man in a mesh cowboy hat who yelled out (ululated?) incomprehensible things, not when the rest of us were yelling out like automatons, but in moments of relative quiet. Needless to say he endeared himself to us all. Except for the woman next to me whose black schellacked hair may have in actuality been a helmet from the Kaiser's army.

She wanted to know the capacity of the hockey arena.

"Twenty-thousand?" I ballparked. She wasn't satisfied with my estimate and began tediously multiplying rows by aisles by sections.

"Looks more like eighteen, nineteen thousand."

"You win." My concession speech.

The party running-dogs began to hand out agitprop. Drew and I broke a few commandments to get our hands on the rare "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" bumper stickers. "You are not going to put those on your car are you?" the same lady asked. I explained that it was a joke, that Jesus wouldn't bomb anybody. "Oh" she said while otherwise showing no understanding. Tedious and humorless! A fellow liberal, natch.

Behind us were queeny lawyers in their mid-forties who made snide comments about the hacks on the dais in between their snide comments about Cher's very long "farewell tour." "It's not a farewell if she never leaves." Come on guys! We're trying to defeat Prop 2 here! Even I would be okay with denying civil rights to Cher hangers-on. Flaming liberals? Flaming somethings...

On stage the pagent played out: the aparachiks were followed by the comissars, followed by the "grandees" followed by the poobahs, followed by the muckety-mucks, followed by...Al Sharpton! This was unexpected. He gave his "faith without works is dead" sermon, making the case that the libs are more the Lord's side than the Republicans. I'll vote Dem despite that. The parade of competent, charismatic state Democrats gave me a rare moment of Michigan pride. Between Grandholm, Sander and Carl Levin, the Stab', Conyers, and union leaders like Hoffa, Michigan is bucking the nationwide trend of liberal apostasy. And on my ballot, the Levins run unopposed in adorability. Even if, or perhaps precisely because, the two of them together lack a quorum of hair.

And all of this was a prelude to the prelude, that being Stevie Wonder. He played something from Songs In the Key of Life as well as "America the Beautiful" on harmonica. After which, he delivered quite an empassioned speech against the war and divisiveness at home. But wait.

"I was reading about the situation in Iraq..." Stevie said.

Reading ? Drew and I looked at each other, supressing a laugh. The tedious, humorless woman next to us was suddenly both at the same time.

The pool reporters then began to flood in. This can only mean JFK is around here somewhere. Is that Adam Nagourney? Ad Nags! Oh, me so Nagourney! Drew pointed out a Detroit Public Radio personality looking as deshevled and tweedy as a crypto-socialist ought.

Kerry bounded down the stage to the podium. He is one of those rare figures whose physical presence squares with his public image. I've seen Clinton in person three times. Though he is a big fella, he is never as big as I expect in my mind, which is like fifteen feet tall. But Kerry is as large as he should be. He is a sarsen stone.

And a sovereign presence on the stage. Very much "Mr. Senator." Though he must have given variations on that stump speech hundereds of times, he was clearly not sleepwalking through it. His pauses were filled with thought and feeling. There were no poses, puff-uppery or asshole affectations. This makes me worry. I think Kerry is too good a leader for this country. I'm afraid we will get the president we deserve. The one who is a reflection of this deliberately uninformed, paranoid, carnivorous electorate.

"The masses are asses" Pedro Pietri said. In several hours we will find out in which states they live.