Sports.

I'm sure mostly due to my (willful) ignorance about institutional sports -- to be honest, I'm ignorant about all kinds of sports, but the organized ones are the ones that are most ridiculous to me -- it seems like they're always getting worked up about inane things. Like doping, for instance. Why not just let the people take the drugs? There are so many ways -- usually having to do with access and money, but also genetic make-up, and others -- in which the so-called playing field is uneven. Why are they so cranky about drugs?

And this today in the Times about gender. Are they really just now discovering that gender can be elusive? Really? I guess if I can avoid knowing anything about sports, they can avoid knowing anything about gender. Why the separation in the first place? Why not just have a race and let everybody compete, not worry about whether they're men or women? Isn't it condescending to have separate women's sports in the first place?

Like I said, I know so little about sports, so I welcome comments telling me I'm being an idiot. The only requirement is that you have to tell me why.

Makin' up a few purdies ain't agin' no law I know of.

At first glance, this stuff can seem so dated and sentimental and campy, but the beauty and subtlety and precision of the storytelling in these songs always blows me away. Look at Gordon MacCrae's performance with fresh eyes and let yourself be moved. And how beautiful was Shirley Jones?

Red Without Blue.

J and I just watched a beautiful film called Red Without Blue. It's a great story well told, great soundtrack, the filmmaking is lyrical. I highly recommend it. It's the kind of film I hope some day I will make.

Through the Eye of a Needle.

This op-ed in the Times today made me sad and angry.

I just read a book called The Worst Hard Time, about the Dust Bowl. (Great book -- I recommend it. It's by Tim Egan.) There was a wrenching episode in which two black men who were riding the rails looking for work were arrested somewhere in the Midwest and put in jail for stealing some food. Twice they were hauled into court before a judge who made them dance. And then sent them back to jail.

I've never in my adult life been very far from indigence (literally and figuratively speaking). I'm fine being poor. I think I could adjust to being even poorer -- I've never had any money -- but the moral judgment scares me, the shunning. J and I were just talking yesterday about the old black men who hang out at the bus stop on the corner. They're old, poor, and very polite. They ask for money, but they are so not a threat to anyone, yet the police harass them regularly, make them get up, move. It's just a big show of power and humiliation.

So far to go.

Trust Me. Stay Away.

Summer in Texas is a living hell. If you have any say in the matter, do not come here any time from May to September. It's an absolute nightmare, and it has defeated me. I have tried over and over and over to change my attitude toward it and it has defeated me. The heat is absolutely relentless, and it brings out a rage in me that scares me.

I'm sure one reason I have found it so hard to blog this summer is that, whenever I sit down to write, all I feel moved to do is whine about how goddamn hot it is. I think there have been a half dozen or fewer days since the first week of June when the afternoon temperature has been under 100. And not much under 100. I'm sure everyone around me is sick of hearing me complain. I'm sick of hearing me complain.

I have to find some way to get out of here in the summers.

Pearly Dew Drops Drop.

This is exactly how I remember Cocteau Twins live, with the big tape deck on stage. I think I saw them at Webster Hall, which wasn't called Webster Hall back then, but I can't remember what it was called. This song takes me back to such a specific time and place, like a pin on a map.

Facebook Ate My Blog.

Summer school was tough, and I have a whole list of things I was putting off until I finished. One of them was to start blogging again, daily. So that's what I'm doing, even though I'm not really sure what I have to say today. I realized that my facebook status updates were fulfilling my need to share my pithy (or not) little thoughts or things I'd run across in various places and thought they were interesting. That's what this space was for, before facebook.

A week from tomorrow I'm leaving for New York for the last couple weeks of rehearsals and the opening weekend of Lizzie Borden. When I get back I have to find a job. Before I leave I want to finish reading the manuscript of J's novel, which he just finished.

Apparently, dating -- though not on my list -- is one of those things I was putting off till I finished school. I went out with a guy Sunday, who I'd been out with once before and like a lot, and last night I went out with another man, very different from the guy I went out with Sunday, and had a great time. I met my newish friend M Sunday afternoon at a bar in town that I'd never been to before. I had heard it was fun on Sunday, but while I was in school I never did anything on Sundays but homework. It was fun, and two handsome men quite a bit younger than me asked me out. Speaking of how old I am, I'm 48, and I'm not sure why it is I'm suddenly so popular, but I'm going to enjoy it.

My Digital Age.

There are so many ways in which the Internet has improved the lives of students and educators; I'm sure I don't need to list them here. But there are also some drawbacks. UT has a system called Blackboard that is set up to make it easy for teachers and students to communicate in myriad ways. It's full of amazing, powerful tools. But at least 2 or 3 times a week, I get emails like this:

Hi everyone,

Sorry to do this, but I was wondering if someone who types their notes could send me what notes they take in tomorrow's (Monday July 27) lecture. My air conditioner has gone out and I'm going to have to meet someone back at my apartment tomorrow morning so they can fix it, and I doubt they'll be done by the time class starts. I'll be happy to return the favor if you don't mind.

Thanks so much,
[hapless college student]

I really have to summon up superhuman resistance to keep myself from replying, "Lamest excuse ever. Did you ever think of having the a/c person come AFTER class?" I mean, c'mon. I even typed up that exact reply just now, but caught myself just before hitting send. I mean, I'm not exactly the most credible person to be giving lessons in how to grow up and manage life as an adult, am I? (And, to be honest, I should be the first to excuse any sort of behavior, no matter how immature or irrational, brought about by a broken air-conditioner.)

Post-racial America? Not Where I Live.

Rachel Maddow is one of the very few things that ever make me think I might want to get a TV.



On the bus the other day, I happened to sit between two women who were having a conversation. There's lots of conversation on my bus. People know each other in my neighborhood, at least the black folks do, and that's most of the folks in my neighborhood. These women were speaking in a dialect so different from mine that I could not understand most of what they were saying. I could understand enough of it -- and I recognized certain rhythms or cadences, I don't know the linguistic terminology -- to know that it was English, but other than the odd word here and there, I had no idea what they were saying to each other.

It struck me that right there was a lesson in racism in America, that this community of people right here in the middle of a big American city is still so isolated, so culturally separated, that they speak a dialect that barely resembles the dominant dialect.

So, lots of feelings and ideas come up which I don't have time to sort out here right now. I have to say, though, that, despite the difficulty sometimes of living in the squalid, bleak, risky neighborhoods I've lived in most of my adult life, one positive aspect, among many, is that I didn't end up as ignorant as Pat Buchanan. I'm grateful for that.

Happy Friday Music.

One of my favorite songs of all time, from one of my favorite albums of all time.

Attention.

Last night I was at an improv performance that J was in. (The show was fun and J was great, but that's not what I'm going to write about.) The setup for the show was that a local demi-celebrity got up on stage and told a personal story, and then the improv performers created scenes inspired by the story. The first storyteller was a local blogger and journalist. She told a story about a visit to the dentist. At some point in the story, she mentioned that she had recently gotten married, and the whole audience erupted in applause. She sort of blushed and said, "thank you." This sort of thing happens all the time, but it still catches me off-guard, and I still have a sort of disgusted reaction every time, like "what's so fucking great about that? Five years from now, they'll be divorced."

But last night, because same-sex marriage is so much on our minds lately, I had a small epiphany when I heard the applause. One of the reasons so many gays and lesbians want to be able to get married must be because they want that particular kind of attention. They want the room to burst into applause when they say they're getting married.

This post from yesterday on Andrew Sullivan's blog is a great little history lesson on how the gay liberation movement went from revolutionary to reactionary in the last 20 years. I have very mixed feelings about Andrew Sullivan's politics, I often disagree with him, but I read him every day because he writes intelligently about things I care about. What's fascinating to me is how in the nineties every gay activist I knew could hardly mention Sullivan's name without spitting. Fifteen years later, the gay movement has completely adopted Sullivan's conservative agenda. He has always said that the way to get mainstream America behind gay rights was to stop talking about sex and demand to participate in the most conservative American institutions: marriage and the military. Maybe it's working, judging by how same-sex marriage has become such a popular cause now among liberal heterosexuals, the so-called "straight allies."

My problem is that what they're asking for the right to be is exactly what I've never wanted to be.

Can You Just Let It Ring a Little Longer, Longer, Longer...?

I was obsessed with this song the summer it came out, and I am again the last few days.

Book Your Flights!

I'm very excited to announce that the dates have been set for the run of my musical Lizzie Borden in New York. The producers have booked a theater on the Lower East Side (my old neighborhood!) Opening night is September 10! Auditions are next week, and they're in the process of hiring designers now.

Here's the web site for the production. There's not much on the site right now, but bookmark it. As the production gets under way, there will be lots more stuff, including samples of the music.

Back On the Horse.

The first or second thing most people ask is "Were you wearing a helmet?" so I'll answer that right off: I was not wearing a helmet. And it was a head injury, which I would imagine is common in bicycle collisions because when a bike stops suddenly you're gonna go flying headfirst somewhere. Into a car, a wall, the pavement. I'm very aware as I stare every night in the mirror at the tiny scars, one below and one above my right eye, that I could just as easily right now be a quadriplegic or a vegetable or dead.

The ugly outward symptoms have mostly healed. The swelling has gone down almost completely. The purple bruising around my right eye is faded. The white of my eye was bright blood red for two weeks, but now it just looks badly bloodshot. My ribs ache, more at night, and the broken bones in my face have not completely healed. A few times a day, I hear a strange vibrating or sometimes a clicking sound in my face. I imagine it's the bones settling back into place. (At least one of my childhood dreams has come true. When I was about 10 or so, I wanted a broken bone. My brother and sister had both broken bones and I wanted the attention they got.)

I still don't know what I hit. I don't have any memory of the accident. I don't remember anything in between a few minutes before I left my house until I woke up in the ER a few hours later. The abrasions on my face didn't look like road rash. They were too smooth. I have several fractures in the bones around my eye socket and upper jaw, so I must have hit a hard surface. The side of the car that hit me? Or did I hit the side of the car. I had two small, deep cuts around my eye, right along the ridge of the bone, abrasions on my shoulder, knee, and knuckles. The woman I saw collide with a car and die in San Francisco, she hit the car.

I spoke to a lawyer today, and I will probably hire him, so I'm hesitant to write much in detail about the accident. I wanted to negotiate the claim myself -- the driver who hit me is insured so my medical expenses should all be paid for -- but it's more than I can handle right now. I think I'm barely keeping it together as it is. I'm very close to failing one of my classes. This heat has me struggling every day against a foul mood.

The hardest thing, in the end, about this is that I don't remember the accident so I am at a loss to learn anything from it. What was I doing when I was hit? How did it happen? Was I careless, or stupid, or aggressive? There was a witness and the driver gave a statement to the police and to her insurance company, so the basic outline of the accident is established. The driver was at fault, and she was given a ticket ("failure to yield right of way"). I'm afraid to ride my bike again now without having a chance to learn something from this accident that I am so grateful to have survived.

I keep looking for ways in which this experience has changed me. Maybe, if I ever ride a bike again, I will wear a helmet; but it's more likely that I will avoid riding my bike because I don't want to wear a helmet. That's why I stopped wearing one in the first place, because the thought of wearing one was so irksome I would decide not to ride. The greatest change I've noticed was unexpected: My feelings toward the police have completely turned around. My attitude toward cops was forged in New York during ACT UP demonstrations and the Tompkins Square riots of the late 80s. New York cops were always the bad guys. I didn't realize to what extent, but I've carried that negative attitude around with me all this time even though I had no reason for ill feelings against Austin police. But since the accident, every time I see a police officer, my heart swells. The first couple times I came near to crying. The police were at the scene within minutes of me being hit, and they, along with the paramedics from the local fire station, took care of me, got me to the hospital. Maybe it's too dramatic to say that they saved my life, maybe not. I know I'm very grateful.

Back to School.

I started school again yesterday. I still associate summer school with remedial classes because that's what it was when I was in elementary school. Though it's not exactly remedial, the math class I'm taking has a little of that feeling because it's math for liberal arts majors. For most of the people in the class, it's the only math class they'll take (only one is required) and they're terrified of it. Like me.

The teacher is great. Very sweet-tempered and reassuring.

My other class is Applied Human Anatomy. It's in the kinesiology department, not biology, which I'm hoping will make it a little easier. Kinesiology is (I think) for students who want to get into fields like sports management and fitness. We'll be cutting up human cadavers in the lab part of the class. I wouldn't have taken a class where we had to dissect animals, but human bodies I think will be fascinating. At any rate, I will have a new experience.

These are my only two classes for now. The summer session is divided into two periods, with one or two classes each period. A whole semester's worth of material is crammed into five weeks, so the pace is frenetic. It sounds hard, but I think I'll like the more concentrated study. During the regular semester I have usually felt like my focus is too diffuse because I have 4 or 5 very different subjects to keep track of.

Exene.

I read this morning that Exene just found out she has multiple sclerosis. How great is Exene?

Strip Football and Surprise Mirror.

Faith.

I hate when I let so much time pass between posts! Last week was finals -- I didn't have anything too terribly challenging, but still I had to study. For some reason this past semester, though the coursework was not heavy, I had a hard time buckling down. Senioritis, I guess. I've been checking all day to see if my grades are posted yet. The only one that's up is for Science and the Modern World, which is an A. It was a class in the history and philosophy of science.

I grew to hate this class. The lectures were dry summaries of the reading (some of which was great: we read a bit of Dawkins and Dennison on evolution, but we also read a book called Worldviews by someone named DeWitt, which was awful, deadly tedious, shallow, and repetitive), and the discussion sessions with the T.A. were more or less an hour of him showing off his ability to pontificate. But I think my irritation was mostly a reaction to how philosophy is approached in academia. Everything's an argument. And it annoys me that most academics seem to have so little knowledge of or understanding of Asian philosophical traditions. It seems to me that even a rudimentary understanding of Buddhism turns 95% of the body of European philosophical thought into a lot of masturbatory nonsense. But that's just me.

Anyway, that's the only grade I was concerned about (concerned that I might get a B) so I'm pretty sure now I got straight A's this semester.

My reaction to that class and then reading about Obama's speech at Notre Dame has me thinking about faith the last few days, because it seems to me it takes a lot more faith to be agnostic, or atheist. The word faith has, in Christian circles, come to substitute for belief, which I think is a very different thing. Belief is closer to certainty -- when most people say "I have faith in God" they mean "I am certain that God exists" -- whereas faith doesn't make any sense without uncertainty. If you really believe that any sort of ultimate higher purpose is either nonexistent or unknowable, what else gets you up in the morning but faith? Faith that this day and what it contains is enough.

It's a Car Wash, Ladies and Gentlemen!

One more. I couldn't resist.

But Then Again, Aren't We All.

A music journalist in New York who was a great fan and booster of Y'all once wrote something to the effect that Y'all deserved all the attention that Hedwig and the Angry Inch was getting. At the time, it felt great to read that because Hedwig was certainly getting a lot of attention. It wasn't like a rivalry or anything -- we were just usually too busy with our own career to notice much of the other great stuff that was happening in New York.

When people described Hedwig to me, it always sounded stupid, so I never got too interested. (That cracks me up to read what I just wrote -- how many times did people say that exact same thing about Y'all?) My mistake.

When I was in San Francisco doing the final edit of Life in a Box, I rented the movie, and I must have watched it about 20 times. Literally 20 times. I couldn't stop. I think there are a couple missteps in the film, but all in all it's probably my favorite movie from the last several years. I love anything that makes me laugh and cry hard, usually at the same time. John Cameron Mitchell's performance blows me away every time. I think this is my favorite scene: