Blog Title: Fosco Lives!

What We Have Lost

As you can see on the left, today is World AIDS Day. Fosco Lives! is participating in a Bloggers Unite event to keep AIDS in focus as a global epidemic.

This is what I'm thinking about today. Two weekends ago, I saw the Passageworks exhibit at the SFMOMA. One of the highlights was the giant golden bead curtain (Untitled) by one of my favorite contemporary artists, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It is sensuous and gorgeous and fun all at the same time. Here is my picture taken through the curtain:

Of course, as beautiful and joyful as Gonzalez-Torres's works are, there is still an element of sadness to my experience of them. That's because Felix Gonzalez-Torres died in 1996 of complications from AIDS. He was almost 40 years old. In the years since his death, I have watched many museum-goers experience Gonzalez-Torres's art (usually with laughs and smiles of delight). Yet, such experience is bittersweet because Gonzalez-Torres's voice is no longer with us. That we can hear his voice at all is lucky; we have his early work as a testament to what he would have produced in a long, full life. But there are millions of voices that we will never hear, millions of people we will never get to know. They are the artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers that are absent from our lives because of AIDS. And that's what I think about when I think about the cost of AIDS.

Here's something else to think about today:

"CDC recently published national HIV incidence (new infections) that showed an estimated 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in 2006—that’s substantially higher than the previous 40,000 estimated annual new infections. Visit the CDC’s website to learn more."

Prop H8 Updh8

Yes, it's been literally days since Fosco talked to you about Prop H8. Don't worry, there is still Prop H8 news and Fosco is digesting it for you (so you don't have to!). Here are two Prop H8 titbits from the last couple of days:

• Tom Ackerman has a great trick to try on your married straight friends. As Ackerman writes:
  

  I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.
  
  Turns out it’s fun.
  
  Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
  
  She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
  “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
  
  The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,
  
  “How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
  “She’s my wife!”
  “Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”
  
  Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

  Feel free to try this at home. Passive aggressive and funny... Fosco likes.
  
  
• In an NYTimes op-ed piece, Charles M. Blow considers how to sell same-sex marriage to Black people. Blow notes that Black women are likely to be the most hostile toward gay marriage (for a number of reasons, most of them unsurprising). Black women are also more likely to vote than are Black me.
  
  Blow argues that the arguments the gay community has adopted to promote marriage equality are not likely to convince Black women. Rather, he suggests we frame the debate in terms of the health of Black women! Here's the logic:
  

  [B]lacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. [...]
  
  So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage.

  While this is worth a try, Fosco isn't convinced that it will make much of a difference. Really, what woman (of any race) is going to listen to the suggestion that she may be having sex with a closeted homosexual (or secret bisexual)? Blow's logic may make sense, but I just can't imagine any woman believing that his logic applies to her.
  

Thankful.

The weather here was finally beautiful today. Fosco walked down to the beach. The waves were the color of tea and they were large. Lots of surfers. You can sorta see them in this video:



Fosco is a very enthusiastic amateur bird-watcher and so he was quite excited to see a new bird today: the Black Oystercatcher. Fosco couldn't get a good picture, but here's the picture he would have like to have taken:

There were three of these guys browsing the tidepools this afternoon.

This was a nice afternoon and that's what Fosco needed today. To be honest, Fosco has had some trouble feeling appropriately thankful this Thanksgiving season. In many ways, Thanksgiving felt like a bit of downer this year, even though Fosco spent the day with family and his boyfriend Oz.

For one thing, Black Friday was even more distasteful than usual, what with the trampling death of a WalMart worker and the general economic meltdown (although, in the interests of full and somewhat-embarrassing disclosure, Oz and Fosco did buy an Xbox on Friday). And then there were the horrible attacks in Mumbai (more on that in an upcoming post).

Part of the problem is that Fosco is pretty ambivalent about the emotion of gratitude. What does it mean to feel grateful for something? And why should one feel that way? These questions are not that easy to answer if you think about them in terms of something like Thanksgiving.

Obviously, there are simple gratitude situations in everyday life. Say I'm 25 cents short at 7-11 (buying my favorite Chinese melamine chews) and the surfer dude behind me gives me a quarter. I'm grateful. Easy enough. Fosco is not a monster.

The problem is when a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around and the conventional wisdom is that you feel something we might call ontological gratitude--that is, gratitude for one's way of being in the world. By this, I mean feeling gratitude for one's essential position in the world, e.g.,

• I'm grateful that I'm smart.
  
• I'm grateful that I live in a rich Western society.
  
• I'm grateful that I have a family and friends who love me.
  
• I'm grateful that I'm alive.
  

Pop Music: The Littlest Mormon and more.

So Fosco is doing this pop music thing this week (with only mild complaints from his commenters). It just so happens that the last two or three weeks have been a period of much pop music consumption for Fosco--one of those semi-annual periods where he decides to get back in touch with his inner brainwashed-music-consumer.

And what better way to get reacquainted with pop music than the American Idol double whammy? That's CDs by AI winner David Cook and runner-up David Archuleta, released within a week of each other in mid-November.

Now, Fosco has never watched much AI (that's really more the department of his boyfriend Oz). However, these two guys are pretty blockbuster and it would be silly not to give them a listen.

Let's start with David Cook. For those of you who never watched AI, he's the "rocker." You can tell because he has facial hair. His eponymous debut CD has lots of rockin' guitars and some pretty rockin' song titles (like "Bar-ba-sol"--that's rockin'). As music goes, it's pretty inoffensive. Actually, it's all strangely familiar, as every one of the songs mimics a previously released song by another band. When Fosco played his favorite track ("I Did It for You") for Oz, Oz noted that he liked the song better when it was called "Stop and Stare" and it was performed by One Republic. That pretty much illustrates the problem with David Cook. He's a copy--a pretty decent copy, but still a copy. He sings like he's auditioning to lead a Nickelback cover band and he looks like a pre-highlights Dominic Monaghan.

Fosco is much more interested in David Archuleta, the Littlest Mormon. Seriously, that boy is like 4'5". And he's just so darling. Like a little (gay, yet repressed) elf.

I wish I could say that David A.'s CD is the next big thing, but it's not. It's better than David C.'s disc and has a few catchy songs, but that's about it. The first single is infectious (trust Fosco and his insomnia) and the video raises all kinds of interesting questions about which boy David wants to go swimming with. But even so, the song isn't the right setting for the strength of his voice.

One of the most interesting questions about this CD is how Wee David manages his sexual persona. After all, he has a legion of tween fans (called Arch Angels) who are just starting to feel tingly in certain places. And I mean look at that kid: has there ever been a pop music star who is less sexualized (including Jordy)?

It turns out that David's awkward sexuality is what makes so much of his CD fun to listen to. Consider these lyrics from the song "Touch My Hand":

Saw you from a distance
Saw you from the stage
Something about the look in your eyes
Something about your beautiful face

In a sea of people
There is only you
I never knew what the song was about
But suddenly now I do

Try to reach out to you, touch my hand
Reach out as far as you can
Only me, only you, and the band

Up until that last line, it's just a typical song about a connection between singing David and the adoring tween fan in the crowd. But then what happens? Suddenly, things get creepy. Only me, only you, and the band. Why is band involved here? Is he proposing what I think he's proposing? Or is this some kind of weird reverse plural marriage?

"Admit you're wrong. Then we can talk."

Fosco was always a little suspicious of the previous Pope's zeal for "interreligious dialogue." Not that "interreligious dialogue" is a bad thing--Fosco heartily supports it, as long as it doesn't mean Catholics and Mormons teaming up to beat down the gays. Reasonable religious dialogue might be nice, actually. Heck, it could stop some killing. It's just that Fosco never believed that any "dialogue" is possible with a religion (like Catholicism) that axiomatically believes that every other faith is incorrect.

Of course, this was the problem that puzzled all the commentators when old Pope Droopy II used to hold all those Interfaith Clambakes. After all, how can the Pope talk to non-Christians when it is the Church's infallible teaching that Jesus alone leads to salvation and that other religions are "objectively speaking [...] in a gravely deficient situation" (emphasis in original).

Can you imagine the conversation?

[CATHOLIC CHURCH]: Do you believe in Jesus?
[ISLAM]: We are actually more interested in a God we call Allah.
[CATHOLIC CHURCH]: That is gravely deficient. Would you like a cannoli?

How's that for dialogue?

Well, as Pope Buckaroo XVI (pictured above) continues his sprightly little dance on the grave of Vatican II, it seems the idea of Catholic participation in "interreligious dialogue" has finally been admitted as a sham.

According to an article in the NYTimes, the Pope has written a letter to an author of a book on Christianity's salvific uniqueness, a letter in which

the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

Tax law made interesting

Ooooh, the Mormons are in trouble...

According to the SFChronicle, the State of California will be investigating the Mormon Church as to "whether [it] accurately described its role in a campaign to ban gay marriage in the state."

Hmmm... Fosco can't help but wonder if this is the first step in revoking the Mormon Church's tax exempt status. As you may (not) know, churches (and other tax-exempt organizations) are not allowed to attempt to influence legislation in a substantial way. Doing so would endanger that organization's tax-exempt status. Some thoughtful observers think the Mormons crossed the line on this one. Fosco hopes this is the case. Think about what all that delicious Mormon money could do to offset California's major budget shortfall.

We're coming for your money, Mormons!

In which Democracy breaks down!

It has now been almost ten days (and six "business" days) since Fosco sent an email to his Democratic US senators, asking them to kick the traitorous Joe Lieberman to the curb.

Despite Fosco's letter, the Senate Democratic Caucus has chosen to forgive Lieberman, leaving the matter of his anti-Obama criticism for him to settle with his Maker (from appearances, that would be Jim Henson's Creature Shop).

Even so, Fosco has yet to receive any kind of response or acknowledgment from his Senatrices Feinstein (pictured below as a scary monster) and Boxer (pictured above with filing system for constituent mail). Now Fosco understands why a personal letter might be too much to ask from either office; but a brief form email? When Fosco lived in other states, his every letter or email to his US Senators was promptly replied to. Now I know that California is bigger than any other state, but it has been ten days.

You see, it's not that Fosco really wants to hear either Senatrix's slippery excuses for letting "Melty Joe" stick around. It's just that, as Fosco's wise African-American grandfather used to say, "when your senator stops responding to your letters, that's when you have to start questioning your existence." Wise words, Grampa Red, wise words.

So what is Fosco to do if his elected representatives won't pay attention to him? Well, his only choice is to print unflattering pictures of them both once a week until he receives a response. And trust me, Senator Boxer, you don't want that.

Hot, flat, and dickish

Fosco always suspected that self-involved neoliberal know-it-all Thomas Friedman was kind of a dick. Now we have proof! From his most recent NYTimes column:

I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.”

Are we human? Or are we really bad lyricists?

Fosco has been listening to the new Killers CD this weekend (yes, it's not quite released yet, but Fosco gots connections). At this point, he is pretty sure that it's annoying (and how!). Saxophone! Steel drum! African chant! We are in territory far more pretentious than the fun and catchy "Mr Brightside," that's for sure.

There is one song from the new disc that is pretty powerful, though--that's the one you've probably already heard on the radio (if you still listen to the radio): "Human." You can see the video here.

The problem, as you have no doubt noticed after the first time you heard the song, is the lyrics:

Are we human?
Or are we dancer?
My sign is vital.
My hands are cold.

Inane.

The Killer lyricist Brandon Flowers has taken a lot of heat for the whole "human or dancer" construction. In the way of explanation, Flowers has credited the inspiration for this line to (absolutely overrated and totally pointless) journalist Hunter S. Thompson who (for no good reason, but what else is new?) disparaged America for becoming a nation of dancers. (Can we stop taking Thompson seriously now? Please?)

Of course, the grammatical asymmetry in the question (in which dancer becomes a plural category) is the invention of Flowers himself. Not that he's defensive about it:

"I guess it bothers people that it's not grammatically correct, but I think I'm allowed to do whatever I want"

In which Fosco defends the role of the courts in democracy...

As you've probably heard, the CA Supreme Court has agreed to hear legal challenges to the despicable Prop H8. As the SF Chronicle notes,

the justices asked for written arguments to be submitted through Jan. 21. The court could hold a hearing as early as March, and a ruling would be due 90 days later.

300

Fosco Lives! has now been around (intermittently!) for almost 2.5 years. This post is Fosco's 300th-an important (although arbitrary) milestone.

In honor of post #300, Fosco has collected some other notable 300s.

1. Of course, there is that movie (much beloved by Fosco's boyfriend Oz). As Fosco recalls, the film is shot entirely without the color green (Fosco's favorite color, incidentally) and contains a strangely queer backrub between a hairy midget and a alopeciac drag queen:
   
   
   
2. And then there's the Chrysler 300, which gets a whopping 26 mpg. Wow, Fosco just can't understand how a company that makes such a great car could be headed for bankruptcy.
   
   
3. Look at this little cutie!
   
   It's the Visotec Expert 300 by Bundes Druckerei. It scans and verifies travel documents. Sweet.
   
   
4. Fosco loves this one: the MCV-300 Concrete Vibrator. I wish it were as dirty as it sounds, but it's not.
   
   
5. And if you're interested in the most possible fun associated with the number 300, you cannot go wrong at the Joliet Moose Family Center #300 in lovely charming actually-existing Joliet, Illinois.
   
   
6. Oh, and you know who is about to turn 300? Walnuts!
   
   
   Ah, but who can blame him for loving naps?

From the Aztec Tomb...

It's closer... I can almost taste it! As Fosco mentioned recently, there is the tantalizing possibility of an "Arrested Development" movie.

To help you understand just exactly the domino of events that need to take place for such a wonderful thing to happen, Defamer has put together a handy "Arrested Development" film tracker. Fosco has "borrowed" it and presents it for you here:

It seems like the major problem at this point is the "NO" from box office powergeek Michael Cera.

As far as Fosco is concerned, an AD movie is just not possible without George Michael. Is it time for a "Draft Michael Cera" web campaign (www.draftmichaelcera.com)? Do any of you readers happen to... know him?

Space Oddities: New Yorker Fiction

Fosco is one of the few people he knows who still reads short stories. As the novel and the memoir battle for dominance in book sales and as the "personal essay" becomes the standard non-journalistic genre for magazine publication, the short story remains almost entirely irrelevant to literary culture (to say nothing of popular culture). The short story is essentially an academic exercise at this point--a genre practiced for its own sake, with little interest from most literary readers.

The educated reader can still find short stories in two main sources: McSweeney's (which has had some financial difficulties) and The New Yorker. While Fosco enjoys much of the McSweeney's short fiction, his relationship to NYer fiction is more ambivalent. Truly, Fosco only reads about five NYer stories a year.

And yet, some of Fosco's very favorite recent stories first appeared in that magazine: Jonathan Safran Foer's "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" (6/10/02), Stuart Dybek's "If I Vanished," "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July (6/11/07), "Spider Boy," by Joyce Carol Oates.

And yet, Fosco still can't bring himself to read most NYer fiction. In fact, there is a very complicated set of rules that determine the likelihood of Fosco reading a New Yorker story.

Fosco is less likely to read a story IF

1. he's never heard of the author (sorry, Janet Frame).
   
2. dislikes almost everything else written by that author (sorry, John Updike).
   
3. the story appears to contain numerous words NOT in English (sorry, Daniel Alarcon).
   
4. it's by Roddy Doyle or Tessa Hadley (sorry, Roddy Doyle and Tessa Hadley).

1. it's written by a writer whose previous work he admires (George Saunders!)
   
2. it's short (Miranda July!)
   
3. it's "ripped from the headlines" (Joyce Carol Oates!)
   
4. there is a cool picture next to it
   

Oh, the lie of weightlessness! We feel we’re floating only because we’re forever falling, as in an elevator with no bottom floor to smash into. And so, inside the elevator, the human party continues oblivious, the riders flirt and complain and mix zero-G cocktails, or chase bewildered zero-G leaf-cutter bees. Outside the ship, our consoling elevator’s walls dissolved, Keldysh and I were two specks falling forever, specks streaming down the face of the night. Ourselves plummeting downward to the gassy blue orb, the gassy blue orb also plummeting at the same mad rate away from us.

(Did you know we can’t even properly gaze at the stars now? Our breath fogs any window we turn to. We’re moisture, Chase, we’re returning to dew.)

Monday Procrastination Tools

As if reading Fosco Lives! isn't procrastination in itself, Fosco has found several other things you could read today to avoid doing any work:

• From the Anchorage Daily News, read that Alaska's dropout rate is double the national average. Wow. Sarah Palin has done some great work.
  
• Does your sense of California superiority need a little deflating? From the HuffPo: "Can We Stop Pretending California is Green?"
  
• From Andrew Sullivan, read about The Mormon War on Gay People.
  
• From SFGate read a fascinating history by Oz's US Representative Jackie Speier about her ordeal at Jonestown. It turns out to be a really remarkable story.

Week of Pictures

As Fosco surfs the web every day, he saves lots of random pictures that may be useful for blog posts. And then, at the end of the week, he realizes he isn't going to write about a bunch of them. So what to do with these poor, lost pics? How about a nice miscellaneous "Week of Pictures" post? Don't mind if I do...

• It probably wasn't necessary for the SF Chronicle to create this map; but now that they did, Fosco is fascinated. Do you wonder which neighborhoods of San Francisco voted in favor of Prop H8? Now you can see:
  
  Damn Chinatown! I need to find a new place to buy my favorite Melamine Chews.
  
  
• Remember the baby on the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind"? Well, it appears that every fifteen years or so for the rest of your life that kid is going to recreate that CD cover. Look, he's all grown up!
  
  The next time he does this, I bet he won't be wearing those shorts. Oh, and that green money won't be worth anything.
  
  
• Is anyone surprised that George W. Bush knows how to make a filthy hand gesture that is popular with college students?
  
  
  Also, who isn't surprised that W's trashy daughter knows it too?
  
  He's raised himself a classy lady, that's for sure.
  
  
• Thanks to a recommendation by le kungfuramone, I am loving the site called Cake Wrecks (N.B., it's what you think it is). I laugh every time I see this one:
  
  Just posting this, I laughed again.
  
  Fireworks Explosion!

Democracy in Action

Here is the letter Fosco recently sent to both Democratic senators from California:

Dear Senator Feinstein/Boxer,

I am writing to ask you vote in favor of removing Senator Joe Lieberman from the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Senator Lieberman's comments about Senator Obama during the campaign were unforgivable and he should face serious consequences for making them. Although I know that Senator Lieberman regularly votes with Democrats, I do not trust him as the chair of this committee. I believe that he would use his chairship to counter President Obama and to obstruct the policies that Americans voted for on November 4.

Also, he looks like Caliban.

Thank you.

Well, maybe this letter isn't exactly like the one Fosco sent to his senators... But it's pretty similar.

Now this was a day.

Last night, Fosco was flipping channels past his local news (the always amateurish KSBW Action News 8 serving Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz) when he caught their report on the national Marriage Equality rallies. The anchorette noted that 1000 people showed up in both Monterey and Salinas (surprising, as both cities are relatively conservative for this area). But the best part is when she said that an estimated 100 million people protested nationwide.

Of course, this number is absurdly wrong. As much as I would love for it to be true, that would mean that one third of the US population rallied in favor of gay marriage. I'm going to have to be skeptical of that figure.

But, even if this number was inflated, Saturday's rallies were still remarkable. This is like nothing I've seen in my lifetime. Here is the front page of last night's NYTimes:

If you're like Fosco, you still want to bask in the glow from yesterday's rallies. Here are some ways for you to do that:

• Towelroad's Photo Album of rallies across the country.
  
• Gawker's report on the best signs at the NYC rally.
  
• SFGate's story on the SF rally.
  
• A moving story of the Indianapolis rally (almost Fosco's home state).
  
• The story of the Santa Cruz rally. Highlight: "One man marching quietly along with his partner had penned a simple message on his sign: 'I am worthy of marriage.'" You can see that sign and read Mere's report here.
  
• Andrew Sullivan posted reports from all over the country. Start here.

Knowing Who Your Friends Are

As Fosco noted in (the depths of) his Prop 8 Omnibus, you can track donors to both sides of the Prop 8 battle using this database (always with the caveat: donations under $100 do not seem to appear in the database, which leaves Fosco out in the cold...).

It seems lots of smart and angry gays have been using this information to drive boycotts. That's fine with Fosco: political decisions (including donations) should have consequences. Don't expect Fosco to slip you his hard-earned(?) cash if you want to deprive Fosco of basic civil rights.

This information is also useful for another purpose, as described by Gloria Nieto in the same article:

"I prefer a buycott to a boycott. Yahoo, Apple, Google all opposed Prop. 8," she said, and people should buy from companies that support gay rights.

• Alan Alda, actor, $5,000
  
• Anne Hathaway, actor, $10,000
  
• Eve Ensler, playwright (The Vagina Monologues!), $200
  
• Jonathan Adler, interior designer (and "Top Design" judge), $500
  
• Mark Doty, poet, $100
  
• Michael Ausiello, TV critic, $100
  
• Mike Signorile, gay radio host, $100
  
• Robert Gober, artist, $5,000
  
• Robin Quivers, Howard Stern co-host, $1,000
  
• T.R. Knight, actor ("Grey's Anatomy"), $100,000. That's right: A HUNDRED FUCKING GRAND.
  
• Tony Kushner, playwright (Angels in America), $15,000
  
• Wanda Sykes, actress, $19,500
  

Prince Walnuts

It turns out that Bonny Bunny Bony Bonnie Prince Charles is just the kind of guy you always hoped he was... you know, a giant asshole. British paper The Guardian has collected excerpts from his lifetime of correspondence. And, as is clearly The Guardian's intention, you can't help but concluding that Chuck is kind of a dick (and always has been).

From 1981:

I am beginning to get fed up with the amount of nonsensical rubbish I take all day and every day. If one more NZ [New Zealand] child asks me what it's like to be a prince, I shall go demented.

[I agree with a farmer in Cumbria who told me] "if we, as a group, were black or gay, we would not be victimised or picked upon."

What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.

We're here, we're queer, and we want a wedding!

By now, you know that the gays (Fosco included) are pretty angry about the whole Prop H8 thing... So there was a major protest march down Market St. in San Francisco last Friday night. Fosco and his boyfriend Oz were there. This is the story.

First, it is important to know that Fosco spent several hours (and used art supplies!) to make posters. Here is his favorite:


You can tell that the above photo is a Fosco photo because it is so blurry. Luckily, Oz was in charge of the camera during the march itself. Here are some of his excellent pictures of signs:



Hey, you know what? Queer sex is awesome!

Yes, that is a guy dressed as a nun...




Here's a good picture to remind us all what this is about:


Fosco's favorite part was marching through The Castro. Here we are marching past the eponymous theater:


Here is the guy with a bullhorn who kept chanting: "I'm gonna get maaaaaaaa-rried. Somebody wants to maaaaaaaaaa-rry me." At first it was annoying. Then it was funny. Then it was something in between. (Psst: check out the lesbian hair in the foreground!)


Here is my favorite sign of the night:


And here is a picture of Fosco and Oz. Yes, that is Fosco's unruly mustache peeking over the top of the sign. (No, it is not a centipede.)


If you are one of those who prefer live-action, check out our short video:

If you watch this video, you will see the frequent amused reactions to Fosco's "Utah" sign (at this point in the march, Fosco and Oz were standing on the sidelines). The best part is the guy in the motorized wheelchair who shows up at the end of the vid and can be heard saying "Let me tell you about Utah." Oz turned off the video at this point (which was only the polite thing to do), but I wish we had caught the guy's story on tape. He said that years ago (in the 70s I think he said), he lived in Salt Lake City and there used to be a number of gay bathhouses. He said that lots of married Mormon men would go to the baths for man sex and that they would walk around the baths in their special underwear (instead of nude or with a towel, as is the custom). He said that a lot of the guys were really good at gay sex. He was definitely nostalgic for it. What fun!


There is another rally in SF this weekend and Fosco hopes to see you there.

Bad News, Good News

While it looks like Fosco's beloved "Pushing Daisies" is in real danger of being canceled (and yet, the CSI: Miami Beach continues unabated its war against neurons...), Fosco's buddy Todd passed along some good news:

there will be an "Arrested Development" movie!
Or is this news premature?

Because you gotta believe, Fosco is going to assume that the movie will happen and will happen soon. Then, the only question Fosco needs answered is whether the entire original cast will be willing to participate. And can Liza be unfrozen for a cameo?

Isis and toucans

Fosco and Oz have a kitty named Isis and she looks cute when she sleeps:


Of what does Isis dream? Why, of The Enchanted Tiki Room, of course.

Nostalgia

Remember how after the 1996 Presidential Election no one ever paid any more attention to Jack Kemp again?

I miss those days.

Your Prop 8 Omnibus

So there is this thing called Prop H8 that takes away marriage rights from CA gays (like, for example, Fosco). While the Obamagasm (which, btw, Fosco is not complaining about) has mostly kept Prop 8 out of the coverage of the MSM (although, see the eloquent Keith Olbermann plea), the internets are buzzing. So how can you make sense of it all? Who is there to read and distill all the Prop 8 coverage for you? That's where Fosco comes in.

1. First things first. Fosco needs to apologize for an earlier post in which laid partial blame on black voters for the passage of Prop 8. While there were indeed exit polls that suggested black voters supported Prop 8 at , there is good reason to be suspicious of these numbers. And, even if these numbers are correct, a thoughtful analysis reveals that the black support would still have been too small to pass the measure by itself. You can read these analyses here. Fosco plans to amend his earlier post accordingly and apologizes for jumping on this bandwagon.
   
   The question of how this black scapegoating came about is an interesting one. There has been much hand-wringing in the gay community about racism recently. This piece from Pam's House Blend is particularly thoughtful.
   But I do want to think that there are less-racist reasons why this story became a story. Because Fosco is a "literature-type," he would like suggest that the outrage over (possible) black support for Prop 8 is about the seductions of narrative. Here are two (related) explanations.
   
   Think about the surprise and anger that gay people and their allies felt on Wednesday morning when they discovered that California is so astonishingly retrograde. At that point, there was one set of exit polls available, those from CNN. The CNN exit polls were not particularly nuanced at this point, breaking down the results by five sets of demographics: age, religion, previous voting behavior (first-timers vs. regular voters), educational background, and race. All of the demographics except race followed Fosco expectations: old people are more homophobic, college graduates are more tolerant, etc. For Fosco (and, I suspect, for many people), only the last category provided any new information: the suggestion that black voters were more socially conservative than he expected (of course, as Fosco noted above, there are reasons to doubt the methodology of these exit polls and consequently their findings). But anyway, on last Wednesday morning, the exit polls seemed to offer one piece of new and interesting information (black support for the measure) that could then be subsumed into a narrative about the surprise passage of Prop 8.
   
   But, once this narrative (that black people "caused" the passage of Prop 8) became established, there was another reason why it became almost irresistible: its tragic irony. There is something in us (particularly in well-educated types) that loves a good irony and this narrative had it. The irony: the same social group (black people) that turned out in record numbers to help elect Barack Obama (a man that most gays ardently desired as president) also doomed gay marriage in California. In other words, one of Fosco's most wished-for outcomes (an Obama presidency) was fundamentally tied to Fosco's loss of civil rights. What high tragedy! No wonder this narrative was easy to embrace.
   
   Which is not to say that racism isn't implicit in these narratives (because it is, I think). My exercise here is not to excuse myself and the gay community from blaming black people for the passage of Prop 8; rather, it is to look for the ways that racism worked alongside/within other structures of meaning-production (such as narrative desire) to produce negative outcomes. Remember: complexity is a good thing.
   
   
2. So who is to blame for Prop 8? Well, as the always brilliant number-crunchers at fivethirtyeight.com note, a primary culprit is the elderly. According to Nate Silver:
   

   The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

   Are we sure that we want to expand Medicare?
   
   
3. Of course, no round of blaming would be complete without Fosco's new favorite nemeses: Mormons and Catholics.
   
   Recently, Fosco focused his anger on those pesky Mormons. However, it turns out that the Catholics are a problem as well. For one thing, the involvement of the Mormons in this fight seems to have been orchestrated by the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco George Niederauer (no, not that George Niederauer). According to an article in the SF Chronicle:
   

   The June letter from Niederauer drew in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and proved to be a critical move in building a multi-religious coalition - the backbone of the fundraising, organizing and voting support for the successful ballot measure. By bringing together Mormons and Catholics, Niederauer would align the two most powerful religious institutions in the Prop. 8 battle.

   That bastard! I just don't understand why any self-respecting Catholic would get into bed with the Mormons... Don't they know about the naked touching?
   
   As the article goes on to note, it is Catholics who responded to pulpit-pressure at the last minute who passed the measure:
   

   The last Field Poll, conducted a week before the election, showed that weekly churchgoers increased their support in the final week from 72 percent to 84 percent. Catholic support increased from 44 percent to 64 percent - a jump that accounted for 6 percent of the total California electorate.

   More proof that the Catholic Church is now waging an organized war against the individual consciences of its members (psst: Vatican II is dead).
   
   
4. And what about those Mormons? Well, they're still evil, of course (and not just because they are busily posthumously baptizing as Mormons Jews who died in the Holocaust).
   
   What were the Mormons saying at their anti-gay rallies? Here is a priceless paragraph from an article in that charmingly British "newspaper" The Economist:
   

   Mr Perkins [a Mormon] informed the crowd that gay marriage and tolerant school lessons are little more than “a recruiting process for homosexual behaviour”. Anybody who doubted the connection should take a look at Europe, where homosexuality is apparently rampant.

   That "apparently rampant" line is so deliciously dry. Nice work, Economist. (But, is Mr Perkins right?)
   
   But not all Mormons are evil. There are some who stick to their progressive beliefs, like the Feminist Mormon Housewives (kudos to you, ladies!). And such dissent is not easy, as noted by a comment to Andrew Sullivan's blog. According to the commenter:
   

   Those who openly speak disagreement with the church's orthodoxy are routinely excommunicated (you can easily Google public examples, most are secret). There are reports on public websites that Mormon Bishops even questioned individual’s actions supporting Prop 8 in “Temple Interviews,” a form of confessional where members validate that they are living up to the highest church standards.

   All of which makes the intolerance of the Catholic Church look like french kissing.
   
   So how does one deal with the Mormons? What if we actually took them at their word re: their support for other gay civil rights (just not marriage)? Well, someone has had that brilliant idea! Utah is about to become a lot more progressive...
   
   
5. And then there are just the garden-variety religious nutballs. Like the execrable flat-earther and View cohost Sherri Shepherd. This Defamer headline says it all,
   

   Sherri Shepherd Vows to Defend Biblical Definition of Marriage That She Cannot Remember,

   but you should still watch the insanity here.
   
   
6. Did you know that you can see who donated money to either side in the Prop 8 struggle? The searchable database is here.
   
   Note, this database apparently only includes donations greater than $100 (as the donations of Fosco and his friends do not appear). So don't assume that absence from the database means no donation was made.
   
   
7. Finally, what are we supposed to do about Prop H8 until it is overturned? Here are some good ideas:
   
   • refuse to pay CA taxes (caution: may only work for celebrities!)
     
   • protest, protest, protest (especially at Mormon "churches")
     
   • boycott Utah (Fosco's been onboard with this one for years)
     
   • boycott people who supported Prop 8 (See, this already worked! And worked again!)
     
   • did I mention protest?

How to educate a generation on $10 a day

Well, it looks like Harvard is almost broke. Apparently, the once mighty endowment is down 25-30%! Even worse, the university

is also reportedly trying to dump 1/3 of its private equity holdings to raise cash, which would be a seriously distressed move.

1. A giant "Harvard Yard SALE!"
   Everything must go!
   
   
2. A slowdown in construction of Harvard's new Allston Campus (as seen below).
   
   
3. More pesky fundraising letters to Harvard alums. Sorry, alma mater, I gave all my extra money to fight Prop 8.

advised principal officers to implement a $4.5 million budget reduction for our campus.

In the meantime, I've directed principal officers to implement all reasonable cost-saving measures and to engage their staffs in identifying creative ways to invest limited resources as efficiently as possible. I invite you to share with them your thoughts and questions, as well as your own suggestions for belt-tightening. We will thoughtfully consider every reasonable suggestion.