Brewer's BS

By now I'm sure everyone knows about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's veto of that so-called "religious freedom" bill that really was just an excuse for business owners to discriminate against folks. And while the governor is enjoying her moment in the spotlight and accepting the thanks of people who supported her decision, I think she's still full of shit. I firmly believe Brewer would not have caved if not for the loss of money (mainly via the Super Bowl and its sponsors) she was about to face had she not vetoed that bill. I don't think for a second that her decision was made because it was the right thing to do or whatever bullshit reason she gave during her press conference last night. This vote was about one thing, pure and simple: money. Arizona was not prepared for the backlash that followed this proposed bill and once huge sponsors like Apple and the NFL themselves started making noise, the state had to do something to keep businesses from fleeing and taking their money with them. It's a shame that in this day and age people still feel like it's okay to deny service to someone. If a Christian bakery owner tells a gay couple he won't bake a cake for their wedding because he thinks homosexuality is a sin, what's to stop a Jewish baker from denying service to a Muslim customer because he dislikes Islam? Couldn't business owners deny service to anyone and claim it was done due to his or her religious beliefs?


Customer: Hello. I want to order cake to celebrate my daughter's college graduation.
Baker: Sorry. My religion believes in women staying home and not going to school. No cake for you!


It's a slippery slope, my friends. I would think, especially in this economy, business owners would be clamoring to get whatever business they could. And since when did providing a service mean that you're endorsing the customer's life? If a bigoted baker was approached by a heterosexual interracial couple who wanted a cake for their wedding, his ability to provide said cake isn't an endorsement of their marriage and it doesn't stop him from being a bigot. He isn't joining this couple in matrimony, he's doing his job and, hopefully, keeping his personal feelings to himself. Why can't people just stay out of other people's business? In a perfect world, a customer and baker would have a conversation that went more like this:


Customer: Hello. I want to order a cake to celebrate my ten-year reunion with my same sex partner.
Baker: What kind of cake would you like?


Do your job. Mind your business. End of story.

All Day Long

I heard a report that McDonald's might start serving breakfast all day long. I've been hearing these rumors for some time now, but I still haven't seen any hash browns, Egg McMuffins, or hotcakes past 10:30 am any restaurant. The breakfast menu at McDonald's is the best thing that place has going for it at the moment (other than their fries) and they make tons of money off of that morning grub. Some folks like myself would like to have a McGriddle for lunch...or dinner...or a late night snack. Why not give us what we want? Having worked at a fast food restaurant as a high school student many years ago, I know that certain things in the kitchen have to change when the staff gets ready to change from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu. It's not just a matter of flipping a switch and dropping the fries. If the breakfast all day option were to be adopted at McDonald's, I'm sure franchises would have to make changes in their stores to accommodate such a change. And who would pay for that? The franchise owner? Probably the consumer but I, for one, wouldn't mind paying a little more for the opportunity to get breakfast all day long.

Stranger Danger

I went to see this French film called Stranger by the Lake today. I had read about it and when it finally showed up at a theater in town, I went to see it. It's a thriller involving a suspected murder at a beach known for gay male cruising. One guy thinks he sees another guy commit murder and then he falls for the suspected murderer and starts hooking up with him at the lake. This film had a lot of cruising and a lot of full-frontal male nudity. (It is French, after all.) What surprised me was the graphic sex. I don't just mean the simulation of sex done with creative positioning and fancy lighting, I mean someone being orally serviced on camera (an actual mouth on someone's genitals) and real ejaculation. People walked out during the show I went to. I wondered as I watched them gather their belongings and leave if they would have walked out on the same actions done by a heterosexual couple. Maybe, maybe not.


I commend foreign filmmakers for not being so hung up and uptight about sex and male bodies as we Americans are. Stranger by the Lake would never have been made by an American studio with American actors. Hollywood studios would never (A) do a movie with a fully male cast that focused on gay men, (B) show gay men having graphic gay sex, or (C) have full-frontal male nudity throughout a movie. And if, by some chance, such a film was ever made, the studio would have a hard time finding an American actor to star in it.

Charles Blow Blows

I occasionally read NY Times columnist Charles Blow and often find myself disappointed with his views. He pissed me off a few years ago by claiming that single black women helped fuel the anti-gay marriage ruling in California because single black women there are apparently bitter since they don't have husbands themselves. So, in their bitterness, they lashed out against the gays for wanting to get married. What? In today's NY Times column, Blow claimed that black people dislike themselves because they often spank their children. Huh? I was spanked as a child and I don't hate myself or devalue the black body because of it. I think Charles Blow just spouts off some nonsense he pulled out of his ass when he woke up in the morning, types that crap up, submits it to the Times, and collects a check. I must repeat this mantra after reading his ridiculousness to calm myself: Charles Blow Blows! Charles Blow Blows!

Even More Snow

After a relatively quiet week weather-wise last week, winter came back with a vengeance today, dumping several inches of snow on the Chicago area yet again. At least I had the day off for Presidents' Day. Thanks, George and Abe!

Buzzer

I went to see the play Buzzer last night at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and I thought the play was okay. The performances by the three lead actors were good, but I felt like there was something missing overall. The play focused on an interracial couple (a black man named Jackson and a white woman named Suzy) and the black man's white friend, Don. Jackson and Suzy move into a slowly gentrifying area of New York (although the specific area is not identified) and Don shows up needing a place to stay as he tries to rehab off of drugs and alcohol. Things go seriously awry when Don and Suzy fool around with each other behind Jackson's back and Suzy admits to Don that she doesn't like living in the ghetto area that Jackson is so keen on even though she lies to Jackson's face and makes him believe that she loves living there.

The gentrification aspect of the story didn't interest me as much as the racial dynamics. There is an immediate level of intimacy and familiarity between Don and Suzy that doesn't exist with either of them in relation to Jackson. The two white characters bond over their whiteness and Jackson ends up being the odd man out. It was amazing to me how clueless Jackson was about the situation festering between his wife and his friend in his own home. Or maybe he wasn't clueless and just chose to ignore what was going on. I like to see plays that push beyond the racial boundaries we normally see (a minority being discriminated against, white liberal guilt, etc.). This play does have some of those aspects, but it didn't dwell on them. Interestingly, there was an interracial couple (white woman, black man) seated next to me at the theater and I heard the woman tell the man the play wasn't really about race, but about relationships. I think it was about both, but the racial dynamics were never not present in every part of this play.

Beer, Wine, Whatever

I went to a meeting of two local aldermen (both of whom are women, but they're still referred to as aldermen here, for some odd reason) last night to hear about issues going on in my new community. One of the aldermen mentioned that a local CVS store wants her approval to sell alcohol at the store. (Maybe here you have to get your local alderman's permission to do this. I don't know.) Anyway, the alderman said she was inclined to let the CVS sell alcohol, but beer and wine only, not hard liquor because she believed hard liquor led to problems. Uh, can't you have "problems" with beer and wine also? I guess I should have piped up and asked for an explanation of the distinction between hard liquor and beer and wine, but I didn't. Most people know when someone goes off the rails because of alcohol, the results are the same whether that person overindulged on beer, wine, or something harder. Is a beer drunk any better than a vodka drunk? I don't think so!

Daddy Issues - March 16

My new book, Daddy Issues, should be available for sale March 16 from JMS Books (http://www.jms-books.com/) and the cover is posted below. Daddy Issues is the story of a twenty-four-year-old man who falls for his divorced mother's forty-seven-year-old boyfriend. Naturally, chaos ensues! Yes, I went there and I hope you'll let me take you there, too! Watch for more details later as the publication date approaches.

Baltimore

I had to travel to Baltimore yesterday for work and, although I was only there for one night, I found the city interesting enough to want to make a return trip. The parts of Baltimore that I'd seen from the train on the way to DC weren't exactly awe-inspiring, but I did have an opportunity to see more than a string of dilapidated row homes during my visit. I got a chance to visit the campus of Johns Hopkins University and have a great dinner at Kali's Court restaurant in Fell's Point.

Shark Tank Tuesdays

I am a big fan of Shark Tank. It's really the only network show that I watch religiously. So when CNBC started showing reruns on Tuesday nights, I was quite happy. It's not like there's anything else on Tuesday nights, right? On the first episode tonight, Kevin (aka Mr. Wonderful) told one entrepreneur who was hocking an organic spray that would remove odors that he'd buy the guy's company outright for $150K and then he'd fire him. That made me laugh. The guy couldn't believe Kevin didn't want him at the helm, but, really, the dude seemed unhinged. When he stepped out of the shark tank to call his wife, he was crying on the phone as he explained the deals he'd been offered. I don't know why he was so upset. Kevin was doing him a favor by offering to buy his company and he was also going to give the guy 7% royalties on the products sold, so it wasn't like the guy would go away and get nothing.


What I love about Shark Tank is that you get a chance to see people who have ideas and their efforts to bring those ideas into the marketplace. I think it's so great when someone faces a problem and comes up with a workable solution. I wish my mind worked like that. Unfortunately, when I face a problem, I usually just complain about it!

Neighborly Advice

A word of advice to my upstairs neighbors. When you live on the third floor of an apartment and you know people live beneath you, don't lift weights and drop them on the floor repeatedly. This should be common sense, but some people (like my upstairs neighbors) needed to have this advice explained to them. Ah, the joys of communal living. Some day I'll be in a real house again with no one above or below me. Some day.


On an entirely different note, what a shame to hear about Philip Seymour Hoffman's death. He was such a great actor and while everyone waxes on about his roles in Capote, Doubt, and Boogie Nights, I'll always remember him as Grant in The Big Lebowski. RIP.

Weekly Wrap Up

I keep thinking I should start a new blog with a new name since I don't live in Brooklyn anymore, but part of me wonders if I should even bother. Since there's no way to change a URL, I'd just have to shut this one down or leave it up and put some message on the home page to direct people to the other one. I'm on the fence about this now, but I need to make up my mind soon.


When I heard about the school kids in Utah who had their lunches taken from them and thrown in the trash because their parents hadn't paid their overdue lunch bills, I, like a lot of people, was disgusted. Regardless of the money the school was owed, the food had been served to the kids. It wasn't like those meals could have been recycled or given to another child. The food was served. Why not just let the kids eat it instead of taking it from them and throwing it in the trash? Idiocy rules sometimes and it's unfortunate when an innocent kid is on the losing side.


I went to my first book club meeting in Evanston this week and it was okay. I wish the attendees were more diverse in terms of gender, race, and age, but it was free and open to the public, so it's not like diversity wasn't encouraged. The list of forthcoming books doesn't look bad, so I'm going to try and stick with it. Plus it will give me an opportunity to meet some other folks in town.