<3 This

Coincidence or Cylon?

Bling Baby

Who Put the Hick in Hickory?

Follow along with us as Bill and I enjoy this priceless video gem.

me: ok. so that is where my family is originally from. HICK O REE North Carolina

Bill: holy shit it just gets better and better. the fucking handicapped person in the magic box!!!!!!!!!

me: let’s get summer jobs working a salespersons in the dress store Charlie’s of Conovers

Bill: HAHAHAHA! i’m SOOO there

me: the Advantage One Hair Salon in Newton

Bill: HAHAHA! that poor redhead is LOSING IT

me: bwww ha ha POOF! what level does my mage hafta get to in World of Warcraft to be able to conjure up a cripple in a box?

Bill: NO SHIT… that’s a special one

me: oh! red is losing it!

Bill: I KNOW

me: these women and the HAIR! that hair has been the same in the south FOR EVER! they look like they stuck their clit in an electrical outlet

Bill: why did that hair ever go away?

me: red is losing it again, poor thing. the edits away from red as she loses it back to the blonde terrier in the red dress is the best part

Bill: poor girl.. public speaking is not her forte. the fucking cripple in the box is priceless… TA DA!!

me: MAGICAL DREEEEEEEAMS . . .that poor girl is doing very well for someone with an enraged orange tabby attacking her head.

Bill: and the fucking charlies angels soundtrack… amazing

me: holy shit! a juggler! ok two words

IN

BRED

me: the transformation as Tammy Walker Moser goes from bored bottle blonder to winner of this year’s kween is worth looping

Bill: i know. LOVE HER! Mr. Harold Pritchard from the Advantage One Hair Salon in Newton discussed modern methods of hair care. the contestants asked specific questions about their own hair and shared common problems and difficulties. Harold provided support and various solutions to their problems

what would they do without the comfort and support of Harold Pritchard?

me: there is a thought balloon bigger than God’s ass above Harold Pritchard’s head saying “WHAT? I LOVE PUSSY!”

Bill: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

me: you attendance tonight will help these individuals in ways that can not be seen

These Are Two of My Favorite Things

SFGate has just posted an article about a subject I’ve been yammering on about, and receiving blank stares about, for a few weeks now: my favorite superheroes have moved to my favorite City. As the article notes, it is a great match, what with the mutant cause in the Marvel universe closely paralleling our own gay rights movement.

Issue 500, which hit stands last week, is somewhat awesome in that Colossus gets thrown through the skylight of SF MOMA, and Emma Frost, my fav fav fav XMan, bitches about the high rent in San Francisco. I love it.

Also, here is an interview with the Marvel writer, and fan of San Francisco, largely responsible for the team’s move.  The big teaser in that interview being . .  .Q: Is there a chance we might see one of the X-Men come out?

A: Yes. Yes. The city being what it is, certain characters whose sexuality might have been ambiguous are going to feel free to be who they are. I will qualify and say that I never go into the situation with a mandate or an agenda. It has to come along naturally. We’re not going to rush into it. But I see it happening.

X-Men go west, to San Francisco

Peter Hartlaub

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The X-Men praise SF shortly before Magneto blows up SF MOMA.

If you pay attention to the national news, it’s been the world against San Francisco lately. If we aren’t getting hammered for the city’s activism in the gay marriage debate, our role as a “sanctuary city” routinely causes controversy.

But San Francisco just got some pretty big (albeit fictional) allies in its progressive fight for equality: The X-Men have moved to the Bay Area.

This isn’t a small deal in the world of comic books. The X-Men, who settled in the Bay Area in the just-released 500th issue of the Uncanny X-Men, are arguably the most popular and recognizable superhero team in comic book history. And they’ve spent most of their 40-year existence based out of a mansion in Westchester County, N.Y.

But it should be no surprise. The trials of the X-Men, who discover at puberty that they are mutants, and are often forced to hide their true identities out of shame, have a lot in common with left-leaning causes, most notably the gay rights movement. In the comics, the X-Men have had gay and bisexual team members and associates, and their numbers were once decimated by a virus that had strong similarities to the AIDS epidemic.

Marvel Comics Executive Editor Axel Alonso says the city will be more than just a backdrop for the comic.

“The X-Men moving to San Francisco isn’t just a physical move, it’s a spiritual move. I love San Francisco and we want to see it really represented,” says the city native during an interview last week at Isotope Comics in Hayes Valley. “Anyone who looks at the X-Men, the analogy is right there: If you’re different in any way due to race or sexual orientation or just being nerdy, there’s an X-Men character for you. They’re about being different and finding strength in that weakened position.”

Action movie fans will note that the X-Men and their nemeses have already been to San Francisco, destroying the Golden Gate Bridge and much of Alcatraz in the 2006 film “X-Men: The Last Stand.” But for that sequel, the filmmakers didn’t do any meaningful filming in the Bay Area. The movie was shot in Vancouver, and visual effects were used to add a few landmarks to the background.

The comic has much more of an insider’s vibe. Marvel Comics artists will be visiting San Francisco frequently to get a feel for the fashion, architecture and even the way residents walk and talk. There are no cable cars in the first issue, but the artists did include a KRON TV news truck and a panel where the iconic mutant Wolverine walks through Noe Valley. The heroes make their base in the concrete bunkers beneath the Marin Headlands and join the protest of a controversial art installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Perhaps most significant, they seem to appreciate San Francisco’s much publicized (and recently criticized) role as a sanctuary city.

“San Francisco is now a mutant sanctuary,” X-Men group leader Cyclops proclaims, near the end of Issue 500. “Any of you – and your family or loved ones – are invited to join us here, and know safety and protection our kind has never known.”

Of course, this being a comic book featuring a guy who looks like a giant blue cat, there are a few moments of pure fantasy. While the leader of San Francisco in both worlds is a young attractive politician with great hair who seems more than a bit starstruck, in the comics, the mayor is a woman not named Gavin Newsom. And the X-Men somehow establish their enormous base without a historical society protest or a single tree-sitter in sight – although, to be fair, they do set up a hippie-friendly hydrokinetic power plant, presumably using tidal power from the ocean.

“We believe that homo sapiens superior represent the future, so we better start living like it,” says X-Men member Beast, sounding as if he’s about to run for governor. “Soon the X-center won’t just be green, it’ll be positively viridian.”

Whether the X-Men will settle here for the next four decades isn’t known, although Alonso says the story arc is mapped out for at least a year. Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada says the length of their stay has a lot to do with reader reaction.

“Temporary or permanent is a weird thing in the world of comics,” Quesada says. “As far as we’re playing it right now, we just got to San Francisco. We’re not planning to leave any time soon.”

X-Men and the sanctuary city

Parallels between the X-Men and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement have been so strong that some real-life conservative groups have denounced the comics and movies for being pro-gay rights. Here are a few themes from the X-Men comics:

– The X-Men don’t discover their super powers until puberty. They often try to hide their differences until finding others like themselves.

– The mutants suffered (mostly in 1990s comics) from the Legacy Virus, which wasn’t understood at first and killed many mutants before treatment was found.

– Anti-mutant slurs are frequently heard in the Marvel Universe. (“Mutie” is a common one.)

– Efforts have been made to “cure” mutants by changing them back into nonpowered humans.

– One of the biggest struggles for the X-Men is a political: establishing rights for mutants that are equal to humans without powers.

- Peter Hartlaub

Hate for 8

Attorney General Jerry Brown has predicted that should, Satan forbid, Prop 8 passes, it will NOT be retroactive, so any couples married in this weird ‘meantime’ will remain married. This, coupled with a sale on registry items at Gump’s, could convince a few couples to do the deed now. In case there isn’t a later.  FYI the Prop 8 haters are ahead in fund raising. . .

Raising a Cup for Cary

Only in retrospect do I now realize this: I stopped going to therapy exactly at the time when I began needing it the most. It was odd, at first, going in for something that I’m preparing to do as a career. “The other side of the couch”. I had the typical reactions: distrust, nervousness, anticipation, and some hope.

And then I stopped going. Mostly because of money. And so it is with some envy that I look around at the co-workers and friends still going: life coaching, couples counseling, group therapy. . .in whatever form, a lot of people in my life are seeking assistance in better navigating their own lives.

Salon.com’s Cary Tenis wrote recently about therapy, his own relationship to it, his expectations for it, while addressing the concerns of one reader writing in who was understandably concerned about how abuse suffered in childhood warped her current world, and her frustration at her lack of progress in overcoming it.

Cary’s response is insightful, even if the prose can lean toward the purple a bit.

I suggest you think of this abuse as a poisoned headwind you have been walking against all these years, a foul breeze laden with the residue of an ancient crime. . . Some days it’s so bad you think you’re going to die. But we live with it. We know it won’t kill us. As bad as it gets, we know it won’t kill us. That’s the thing. We live with it.

You say that you went to therapy and it was disastrous. That is unfortunate. Those of us who are both very wounded and very competent sometimes have the gift of appearing well when we are not. We open up the terrible wounds to a therapist, we speak freely of our past with apparent insight. We leave the therapist’s office feeling light and free. Then we go home and we go mad. It clobbers us. We begin to wreck things. We are wrestling with this thing on the floor and we say to ourselves, what the fuck is wrong with that therapist?

Perhaps your therapist misjudged you. It’s possible. The more competent we are, and the more pained, the more difficult we can be. So I think of therapy not so much as something a therapist does to me, but as something I am undertaking on my own, with his help, a lifelong struggle, or journey, if you will, part of my daily practice. I pay attention during the week to what troubles me and surprises me and I try to describe the muffled voices speaking at my back. Sometimes I make progress; sometimes I just sit there in the foul headwind of my unconscious, choking on it. So it goes.

But I think you need someone on your side. . .I think you need an ally, someone at your back. If it is not the therapist of your disastrous visits, then someone. You need someone you can trust as you negotiate this treacherous ground. . .

Speaking again somewhat broadly, the past and its effects on you are chronic. You are in your mid-20s. These things will be with you for many years. So I suggest that you hunker down, you settle in for the long haul, you shore up on many fronts. Build structures now for shelter and support. Seek joy in beauty and in experiences that stay fresh and sharp in memory; fill your memory with art and music and light, to compete with those other memories that perch like ravens, eyeing your carcass, waiting for you to slip. . .

Do not seek things that are supposed to bring you joy but which only bring you worry. If you are not comfortable with intimacy, then do not look to intimacy for joy. There will be no joy there for you. There will be only rawness. Instead, look to safe things that you know do bring you joy, and increase their number in your life.

You are at war with something that seeks to undermine you. You cannot know when it will strike. But you can shore up your surfaces and build shelters against it, and you can take all the joy you can find.

And finally, take this thought with you: Your past is your partner for better or worse. Sometimes it is an impediment and sometimes it is an aide. Oddly enough, your history can serve as a priceless well of experience, giving you a view of the world few others have, allowing you to see, in certain instances, the pure, ineluctable depth of tragedy, the power of fate. You can understand human failures as others cannot. You can see clearly the temptations — of repeating the cycle, of blunting the discomfort with drugs and alcohol, of acting out compulsively.

That you have not responded to your abuse in those ways is a testament to your spirit, to the part of you that is hurt but is tough and takes the high road. I think that part of you is priceless. Cherish it. Seek beauty and joy and cherish your toughness of spirit, but do not expect miraculous cures. This noxious breeze off the poisoned lake blows night and day in all weather.

Cash n Marry

OK this is depressing. Time to dig deep my friends, and throw some cash at fighting this Prop 8 bullshit. I wish I could, uh, smite the fuck out of James Dobson and his cult of hater fucks.

Proposition 8 supporters’ largest donation before June 30 came from outside California: Influential conservative James Dobson’s Christian organization Focus on the Family gave $250,000 to Protect Marriage. Dobson’s group believes the outcome of Proposition 8 will affect the marriage debate in the rest of the country, said Monica Marti, a spokeswoman for the group.

“If we had more money to give them, we would,” she said. “We want to keep marriage defined as one man and one woman throughout the nation.”

Protect Marriage pulled in an even larger donation – $500,000 – from the American Family Association on July 21. The Mississippi group says it has 2 million online supporters.

In all, Protect Marriage attracted donations from 33 states.