Author Archives: Anna

taking one for the team: on bravery and the future of pride in sports

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for anyone who missed it a few weeks ago, please do read viking’s punter chris kluwe’s open letter to maryland state delegate emmett c. burns, jr.  mr. kluwe wrote delegate burns after baltimore ravens linebacker brendon ayanbadejo had the audacity to speak out in favor of the maryland ballot initiative to legalize gay marriage, which mr. burns replied to by telling ravens owner steve bisciotti that he should ”inhibit such expressions” from his employee. the letter is incredibly incisive, funny, and full of swears (“mindfucking obscenely hypocritical” is a favorite phrase of mine). it made me proud to be a minnesotan, and it’s timely as well,  seeing as how our own gay marriage amendment battle is still much, much too close for my comfort.

last week, on the one-year anniversary of the repeal of DADT, former pittsburgh pirates owner kevin mcclatchy came out to the world and became the first mlb owner ever to do so:

“i’ve spent 30 years… not talking about my personal life, lying about my personal life,” said mcclatchy, who was the pirates’ ceo from 1996 to 2007. “there’s no way i want to go into the rest of my existence and ever have to hide my personal life again.”

despite the fact that i don’t really care about sports, it remains an arena where “traditional” masculinity is heavily policed and hostility towards queer sexuality and gender is rampant, and this is unacceptable to me. there are no active male professional athletes who are openly gay, and this will continue to be the case until players, owners, and fans state publicly that they will support any and all gay people in major league sports.

so good news from down under, where the australian football league is making big strides to demonstrate that gender-and-sexuality-based harassment and sports do not go hand-in-hand. in addition to airing this psa encouraging people to speak out against homophobia before two finals games, the afl is considering “a special gay-pride exhibition game next season to help make the sport more inclusive”:

“a pride game is one of the options we’re looking at. if we get behind something we genuinely believe in and if it’s something that we think we can help raise awareness and shift attitudes then we would support it,” league boss andrew demetriou said. “we would consult with experts in this matter and get the best advice to see how we can address this issue properly like we did with illicit drugs. i want to make sure then if we do go down this track we do it properly.”

just the thought of mn-based sports teams having gay-pride exhibition games makes me positively giddy. and, again, i really don’t care about sports. but lots of lgbtq people do, and god dammit they should feel like they’re recognized, both as fans and as players.  i know one guy who agrees with me…

 

VOTE NO, GUYS!

how i spent my summer vacation, or reflections on the fourth and freedom ticklers

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back in the unseasonable warmth of february (hello, record temperatures)
i decided that turning my fourth of july into a five-day weekend would
be a good use of p.t.o.  this proved to be true, as i was later
invited to a friend’s family cabin with ten other lovely people that
very weekend.  we journeyed to the woods of wisconsin to drink
beer, eat meat, shoot fireworks, and dance to drake.

an excellent time was had by all, but there was a group consensus
based on pit stops for food, beer, and gas that small town wisconsinites
were not feeling us. like, really not feeling us.  i personally
felt i was getting more side eye than mary-kate olsen and olivier
sarkozy (probably) do strolling through the city of lights.  it
could just be paranoia brought on by certain aspects of rural midwestern
culture, despite the fact that i’ve come to expect them, such as the
ubiquitous anti-choice billboards. the first one i noticed was a little
different than most, in that it shared half its space with an ad for
cremation services, as if to say “we are constantly thinking this whole
(what we think is the) life cycle ALL THE WAY THROUGH.”

while we are certainly a lively bunch, we are also far from
obnoxious, our politeness and hygiene both impeccable.
 nevertheless, it felt as if we were immediately recognized as
liberal, city dwelling outsiders and subsequently treated with an air of
disdain.  what i imagined them thinking was something along the
lines of, “we’re red. you’re blue. and purple doesn’t exist in this
country, so we hate you.”

full disclosure, i’m smack dab in the middle of franzen’s freedom, so
competing notions of freedom and the uglier memories of the bush jr.
administration have been occupying my mind a bit more than usual lately.
 but even if that hadn’t been the case, the following picture of
what i found in a gas station ladies room still would have sent me right
back there:

sweet liberty

the french freedom tickler.  now, as i’m sure most of you
remember, back in 2003 when the u.s. decided to invade iraq, our french
friends were strongly opposed and expressed this opposition loudly in
the united nations.  this led to some americans boycotting french
goods and, to really drive their point home, alter the name of perhaps
our most beloved fried food, french fries, to freedom fries.  as
far as i know, this phenomenon was relatively short lived, but the
evidence of its existence still lives on in google image search:

would you like some freedom with that?

i can only imagine that the maker of the french freedom tickler
thought that, unlike with fries, to completely replace “french” with
“freedom” might prove too confusing for people, and they would pass on
buying it.  so what they did instead, that clever person, was put
the word “french” up in the corner, ablaze in the fire held by the very
statue that the french themselves gave us in 1886. how does that liberté
feel now?

“tickle her fancy with the real thing,” the tickler proclaims,
because everything real exists on american soil.  and just in case
you weren’t sure you were buying what you think you were buying adjacent
to the coin-operated condom dispenser, they put “adult novelty” at the
bottom.  for those of you who don’t know, this phrase is a rather
abhorrent one, because (in the united states) by selling products in
this particular category, you are entitled to all sorts of legal
loopholes that let you sell (cheap) toys that people insert into their
most private of parts containing b.p.a. and other shitty chemicals and
can also be totally porous and unsterilizable, allowing bacteria and
s.t.i.s to be fruitful and multiply (and, if you share them, shared!).
LET FREEDOM RING!

this trip to the ladies room made me sad at first, thinking that
perhaps the only “novelty” to speak of in this town was a sad,
heteronormative freedom tickler. then i remembered it’s the 21st century
and started to recall other things that made me think i shouldn’t fret
so.  like how there are a great number of sex toy stores that are
decent and don’t sell shitty toys and, most importantly, sell shit
online.  i thought back to my own days working in such an
establishment, and how i would smile a little when i would see that some
finely-crafted leather cuffs or high-quality dildo were being sent to
someone in bumfuck (pun intended) america. even target now sells a number of vibrators and (generally vibrating) cock rings in stores and online.

while this may or may not seem like a huge deal to you, i’m sure that
the people of alabama certainly appreciate it, seeing as how in
2009, the alabama supreme court upheld their ban on the sale of sex toys in
a 7-2 decision. so, you know, feel free to sell and stockpile weapons,
but pack up your leather harnesses and butt plugs and get the fuck out
of here.  this is what freedom sounds like in alabama:

public morality can still serve as a legitimate rational basis
for regulating commercial activity, which is not a private activity,”
associate justice michael f. bolin wrote in the majority opinion.

there is nothing `private’ or `consensual’ about the advertising and sale of a dildo,’” the majority opinion said.

after reflecting on ideas of sexual freedom in this country, i took a
moment to be grateful to live in a time and place where i can choose to
have sex only for recreation and not for procreation and can buy a
variety of birth control methods and sex toys, not to mention get an
abortion should that birth control fail.  this doesn’t mean that i
don’t hope for much, much better for the people of america when it comes
to having a nuanced and fully informed grasp of human sexuality, but i
do want to appreciate the battles that were fought to get us to where we
are now.

now, for the proof that i really was in wisconsin, the leinie lounger:

if my hair had been as long as it was a few weeks ago, i might have even tried a freedom braid:

wade davis and the importance of thinking out loud

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last april, i wrote a post about outsports,
a great website that provides a forum for the sports community (fans,
coaches, and players alike) to come out and/or deal with issues of
homophobia in sports. last week, former nfl player and closeted
cornerback wade davis came out to outsports in a touching article.  davis is now the assistant director of job readiness at the hetrick-martin institute, a non-profit that advocates and provides services for lgbtq youth.

davis also gave an interview to outsports’ sister website, sbnation.  he talks to amy k. nelson about
his work with hetrick-martin institute and his campaign efforts for
barack obama. but, to me, the most interesting part of the interview
came when amy asked him if he thinks that the leverage of talent is
necessary when deciding to come out as a professional athlete:

wade davis: i believe that it’s okay to be gay and play sports or be a
rapper or an actor. i just think we’re moving in that direction. i
can’t say it’s in the next five or ten years, but i definitely think
it’s on the horizon.

amy k. nelson: does it have to be the quarterback [who comes out]? can it be the reserved player at first?

wade davis: i’ll be flat-out honest with you. it probably shouldn’t
if he wants to keep his job. if he wants to keep his job, if he’s the
53rd man on the roster, if he’s a free agent who’s fighting for a job,
maybe he shouldn’t. i would hope that he would, i would hope that he
feels that he can, but if you want me to be flat-foot honest with you,
it probably shouldn’t be, just because i don’t want to tell someone to
give up their lifelong dream of playing in the nfl to … you know what,
yes, it should be. you know, screw it. it should be. i don’t want to be
in the business of telling anyone they can’t live their life
authentically. i don’t want to do that anymore. it’s just not what i’m
about anymore. so I want anyone, whether you’re the first man or the
25th man or the last man or even someone on the practice squad, to come
out and say, “you know what? i’m gay, i’m still a great athlete, and i’m
an even better human being.”

i think this is a fantastic moment, because you can see (literally, if you watch the video)
how, as davis gives his initial answer, the wheels are turning in his
mind as he realizes, “goddamn it.  the status quo is bullshit, and i
can no longer reinforce this bullshit by saying that a man should
sacrifice his right to live authentically and love who he wants for the
dream of playing professional football.”

it’s insane that we live in a world where you have stronger job
security in professional sports by discriminating against others and
trying to prove that you’re not gay than by being a great athlete who
openly loves other men. wade davis, i applaud your courage and thank you
for taking a step forward in making sports an arena of tolerance and
respect instead of homophobia and bullying for the athletes of tomorrow.

dear old dad: how television reflects the shifting landscape of child care

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last week, when i was at the y, catching bits of cnn between
reading “who wore it best” and  ”celebrities: they’re just like
us!” like i do, i caught this story about the rise in number of stay-at-home dads:

among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of
their kids at least one day a week in 2010, according to the u.s. census
bureau, which looked at families with children under 15 years old.
that’s up from 26% in 2002.

of those with kids under the age of 5, 20% of dads in 2010 were the primary caretaker.

many find that having one parent at home does have its advantages, especially as child care costs continue to climb.

couples do the math and realize that it makes more financial
sense for one spouse to stay home with the kids. and while it’s often
the woman who decides to drop out of the workforce, more men are taking on the responsibility of child care as well.

seeing this story compelled me to write about something i’ve been
thinking a lot about since the fall, which is the exciting and
well-executed reflection of this shifting reality in the domestic sphere
on television.

up all night has done a tremendous job of illuminating both
the universal challenges of new parenthood and those that are more
specific to new stay-at-home dads trying to create an identity for
themselves in a society that still genders child care and other domestic
work as “feminine” versus gender-neutral adjectives, such as nurturing
or supportive.

in up all night, will arnett plays chris brinkley, a former
lawyer and full-time stay-at-home dad to his new daughter, amy.
 christina applegate plays his wife, reagan, a driven producer for
the oprah-like television show ava.  maya rudolph wows as
the nutty and endearing ava alexander.  the show was based on the
experiences of its creator, emily spivey, and the trials of creating
work-life balance when she went back to working for snl after giving birth to a baby boy.

overall, chris handles the stresses of parenthood in stride.  he
brings amy to the studio to visit reagan and finds community with other
parents at early childhood education classes (see “mr bob’s toddler kaleidoscope“).

one of my favorite episodes is “working late and working it,”
where chris wants to get reagan back in the mood for love, but his
attempts still leave her slipping into maternity jeans after long days
at work.  chris looks to his new hip friend, reed (played by will forte of 30 rock and snl fame),
for advice.  chris doesn’t want to ask reagan directly to spice up
her look at home, so reed tells chris that if he wants to see sexy, he
needs to lead by example and “put sexy out there,” which leads to a
hilarious living room critique of chris’ wardrobe, underwear included.
the ever-enthusiastic chris ultimately fails when he “brings it on the
sexy front, but blows it on the subtle part” and pisses off reagan.

the study that cnn was discussing, however, does not include the
growing number of families with two fathers, where, inevitably, if one
parent stays home, it will be a father.  modern family, one of my favorite shows, features such a family with cameron, mitchell, and lily.  in this clip,
cam and mitch are discussing lily’s problem with biting people, and
snappy dialogue ensues after mitch suggests cam is to blame, because
he’s the one who is home with her all day.

one of my favorite episodes that centers around cam and mitch’s
parenting is season 1 episode 2, “the bicycle thief.”  they are
taking lily to her first toddler play group, and mitch is concerned that
they’ll be judged for being the only gay parents, so he asks cam to
tone it down a little.  naturally, cam trying to conceal his true
personality results in him being quite awkward, like when he says, “i’m
cameron, and i’m not currently working….which gives me more time to
grill and shoot baskets.”

ultimately, after another gay couple shows up, unconcerned about
seeming flamboyant, mitch loosens up, and even lets cam slap his own
butt during the “hello dance” so he can “make his horsey go.”

one reason that i’m glad i waited on this post was so that i could
mention another notable instance of men in child care on t.v.
 mid-season on new girl, unemployed winston is trying
to network at schmidt’s holiday work party.  he finds himself
talking to schmidt’s boss’s son, elvin, a precocious and notoriously
unfriendly boy. his mother is so impressed that elvin has taken a liking
to winston that she offers him a nannying job on the spot.  he
takes the position, although, eventually, elvin decides that winston
needs to push himself more towards his career goals and lies to his
mother about winston smoking pot to get him fired so he’ll have to find a
new job.  short lived, but still, it’s nice to see a man nanny on
t.v. for once.

hopefully, as time goes on and attitudes get more progressive,
representations of men in positions of caretaking and nurturing roles
will become more abundant and nuanced.  if we want to become more
functional as a society, promoting the idea that anyone, regardless of
sex, gender, or orientation, is capable of providing care, love, and
protection will serve us all greatly.

kickstarting the future of queer cinema

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queer cinema has always been an academic passion for me. in
addition to presenting a paper i wrote on cinematic legend john waters, i
had the honor of being invited to contribute an essay to coming out to the mainstream: new queer cinema in the 21st century,
which, among other things, examines both the advantages and drawbacks
of marketing and presenting queer cinema to a mainstream
audience. one of the larger problems with mainstreamed queer cinema
is that the hollywood process generally leaves narratives diluted and
watered down, or lost in a sea of ang-lee-budget production values.
 the power of queer cinema and new queer cinema until the
mid-nineties had existed in its raw grittiness, its ability to make
people feel something they had never felt before watching film, because
these were stories previously untold on the big screen.

independent queer cinema, glorious as it may be, is not without its
problems either, mostly cash-related, which is why i was delighted when hollis brought to my attention this article from out magazine that looks at the role kickstarter is playing in the future of independent queer cinema. for those of you not familiar with kickstarter,
it is “the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects.”
 kickstarter supports any sort of creative endeavor, from food to
dance to fashion,  however,  ”with $40 million spent on 4,700
successful projects, the film sector of kickstarter has garnered the
largest percentage of the over $125 million raised since its inception
in 2009.”

in fall of 2011,  michael stabile’s documentary seed money, which
presents the story of late falcon studios founder and political
philanthropist chuck holmes, had run out of steam after 4 unfunded
years of crafting together interviews of porn stars, politicians, and
celebrities, such as one of my personal heroes, john waters.   by
the end of december and six weeks after launching his fundraising
campaign on kickstarter, stabile had $28,430 and a new private investor
to help him take on the post-production costs that were previously
insurmountable for him.  after watching the trailer, i am
absolutely psyched for this documentary to be released.  not only
are porn and censorship topics near and dear to my heart, but chuck
holmes is a fascinating figure. and in an age where rick santorum, a man
who, among other things, wants to ban all pornography (but especially
gay porn),  was a frontrunner for presidential candidacy, i feel
like it couldn’t be coming out at a better time.

having capital to get films made is one problem, but there is also the
separate issue of getting films distributed to the audience.  for
filmmakers, kickstarter has been a solution for this as well.  pariah, dee
rees’ semi-autobiographical story of a young black lesbian grappling
with identity and struggling to come out in brooklyn, was turned into a
feature film after it screened at 40 film festivals as a short film and
won over 25 “best short” awards.  rees was ecstatic about being
accepted into 2011 sundance film festival in competition, but did not
have the means to get all the way there. using kickstarter, rees was
able to raise the $10,000 she needed to cover the post-production costs
and amount it would take to get her crew to the festival.  getting
indie queer films like pariah to the festival circuit is
crucial, as that level of exposure is usually what helps films get into
independent theaters and the hearts and minds of audiences across the
world.

if you are a fan of independent queer cinema, i urge you to check out
kickstarter to see if you could be the patron of your next favorite
film.

the fbi steps into the 21st century by acknowledging that men can be raped too

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file this under “thank fucking god” and “how had this not already happened?”.   after over 80 years of existence, the fbi has finally changed its definition of rape to include male victims,
“ a change that will bring more accurate counts of male rape and
provide better resources to victims.”  their new definition
“describes rape as any kind of forced penetration.”  this
definition still seems fairly limited to me, but i guess if that is
somehow useful in distinguishing between rape and other sexual assault,
then okay.

it blows me away that the idea that men can’t be raped has pervaded
for so long  and, i think, underscores how much work there is to be
done in giving masculinity a proper breakdown and deconstruction the
way that femininity has had over the past few decades.  the idea
that men can’t be raped assumes a couple of falsehoods about men that
are constantly perpetuated in our society : a.) men always want sex,
therefore they could never be raped and b.) men always want sex,
therefore they want to sleep with virtually anyone and could never be
raped.  this, to me, has functioned as a sort of (different but
equally fucked up) gender-based victim blaming.  hopefully as men
continue to be recognized as rape survivors and receive badly-needed
support, the movement to end victim blaming and rape culture will really
take hold.

an anti-rape campaign from the california department of health services 
is reflective of how our culture is changing in its perception and
definition of  rape and now features posters with two men and the
message, “so when I wanted to and he didn’t, WE DIDN’T.”

*side note about all of the “my strength posters.” i really wish you guys had made these people look happy. rape didn’t
happen, for crying out loud. let’s make that seem like a great fucking
thing, shall we?  right now, you’re running the risk of your
audience perceiving the men in the poster as being irritated (or at
best, indifferent) over the fact that they didn’t rape their partner.
 maybe you were afraid that showing happy people might somehow
undermine the seriousness of rape, but if we’re going to become a
functional, sex-positive society, we need to get seriously happy about
consent and show some beaming couples being like, “fuck yeah, we respect
each other’s boundaries and don’t violate each other!” just sayin’.


 

the tide of hip-hop turning against homophobia?

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i was excited today when i saw an article on the daily beast proclaiming a new era where homophobia will no longer go unquestioned in hip-hop. 
i’ve always found it difficult, and i know i’m not the only one, to
reconcile my love of hip-hop with the myriad hateful lyrics that make my
stomach turn.

a quote i found particularly interesting was from one of this year’s favorites, a$ap rocky:

“i used to be homophobic, but that’s fucked up,” a$ap rocky told
the influential music site pitchfork in october. “i had to look in
the mirror and say, ‘all the designers i’m wearing are gay.’”

i had never previously considered that the importance of
fashion within hip-hop and the subsequent merging of those two
industries might eventually lead a reduction in homophobia, but i
suppose it makes sense. it also makes me sad that social progress would
come out of materialism and narcissism, but i guess you have to take the
bad with the good.

chris lee also points out a couple examples of gender bending within
the genre, including lil wayne wearing women’s jeggings at the mtv vmas
this year. but not surprisingly, there exists a much more interesting
example than lil wayne:

texas rapper daryll “d phill
good” phillips II has taken things even further. in stark contrast to
hip-hop’s default fashion setting for much of the ’90s and early
’00s—baggy pants with the waistline sagging precipitously below belt
level—he has grabbed headlines by wearing lipstick and flowery tights as
well as spearheading something called the xy movement: a grassroots
effort aimed at undercutting established gender constructions by urging
straight men to wear women’s clothing.

here is
a great interview with dphill spanglish on youtube. in it, he says,
“the only obstacles are in your mind. that’s the way i feel. you
know, i had to break down those barriers in my mind to the point where i
was confident enough to just do it.” i am looking forward to checking
out his music and following the progress of the xy movement

my favorite part of the entire article was probably the very matter-of-fact, and i thought heartfelt, quote from fat joe:

hardcore new york rapper fat joe, who is straight, summed up the attitude thaw succinctly in a recent interview with vlad tv.
“in 2011 you gotta hide that you gay?” he asked. “be real! ‘yo, I’m
gay. what the fuck!’ if you gay, you gay. that’s your preference. fuck
it if the people don’t like it.”

i ‘m positive this quote will be music to my sister’s ears,
as i happen to know that the year it came out, alison listened to fat
joe’s (featuring ashanti) what’s luv almost daily.  what’s luv, fat joe? i think you just showed us all.


 

you’ve come a long way, baby: the queer and now turns 1

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this is our 101st post. it’s hard to believe it’s been a
year.  here’s to making it to two, with more profanity and queer
feminist outrage than ever before (at least on my part).

i’d like to thank anyone who’s taken the time to read this blog. i’d
like to give a special shout-out to those who have commented and added
to the dialogue.  while i love writing for its own sake, i also
miss the discussions that came from all my glorious gender, women, and sexuality studies classes.  so if you have something to add, you know, don’t be shy and shit.

i’d like to thank my sister, alison, for being an incredible human
being and amazing sister.  i’m so glad we have a pet project
together.

i’d like to thank eliza schwartz for being generally awesome and for
joining up with us to make our blog stronger with her fantastic
contributions.

i’d like to thank my secret lover, the internet, for filling my days and nights and making self-publishing possible.

true tales of teenage lust and the incontrovertible lure of leonardo dicaprio and james deen

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i stumbled upon this article, “what women want: porn and the frontier of female sexuality,” which
came out a couple of weeks ago and profiles my personal porn favorite,
james deen.  the first half of the article discusses his entry into
the business and how exceptional he is as a straight male porn star, something i’ve been trying to get the word out about myself.

a lot of the information about the realities of the adult industry
were not surprising to me, as i have made it a point in my life to have
an in-depth understanding of what goes on there.  what i was
surprised to learn, however, is the existence of a network of teen james deen fans on tumblr:

the young women trade deen videos, post candid photographs, and
pluck out all the minute details that turn them on: the way he looks at a
woman, touches her, stares into her eyes, whispers in her ear. “there
was just something about the way he moved,” emily says of her first
exposure to deen. he seemed to be “speaking to the girl, but not with
his mouth, with his hand over the girl’s throat, and with his
eyes.” 

deen’s young fans gush over the sight of him thrusting into a
woman while holding her hand. they sigh over a private photo of a
clothed deen commuting by plane. they create animated gifs of deen’s
greatest moves so they can watch him execute them again and again and
again without rewinding. they pepper their deen fantasies with “harry
potter” jokes and circulate them to other girls. several propose
marriage.

reading about this community and their obsession with james resonated
not only with my 26-year-old self who also loves james, but with my
12-year-old self who was over-the-top obsessed with leonardo dicaprio.

the effect of watching leonardo dicaprio in romeo in juliet
is, in many ways, similar to that of watching james deen.  his
incredible looks, coupled with his ability to stare deep into claire
danes’ soul, was about as hot as hot could get in ’96.  then in ’97
you have him sketching a gorgeous nude kate winslet (can’t wait for that in 3d)
and the legendary
hand-swiping-the-condensation-on-the-inside-of-the-old-timey-car-in-the-depths-of
the-titanic scene and, well,  let’s just say there was no other
guy worth thinking about as far as i was concerned.

unlike a lot of my peers who never really went beyond watching romeo and juliet and titanic, i spent good chunks of time watching his earlier, lesser-known works like this boy’s life, basketball diaries, and even suffered through growing pains
reruns in hopes of seeing him as luke brower (these kids with netflix
today don’t even know how good they have it).  i also watched him
in total eclipse, where he plays french poet arthur rimbaud
and, most importantly to me at the time, has an incredibly brief nude
scene (we’re talking the blink of an eye here).

remembering myself in my bedroom unsuccessfully trying to pause a
rented vhs tape on that insanely short nude scene is completely
hilarious. vhs? my god. if only i had had a dvd i could have gone frame
by frame.  but this was a different time, and i had to resort to my
next best option: dial-up internet.  armed with my
middle-school-issued internet research training and my best friend at
the time (who was a fellow leo fan and, also of a unitarian upbringing,
sex-positive), i proceeded to find that naked leo still on the internet
and then printed it out for the both of us on the inkjet printer in my
dad’s home office.

the quality of the picture, both in terms of its eroticism (he’s just
standing with a flaccid penis) and how it looked printed, was marginal
at best.  however, i was 12 and had no standards to speak of for
naked pictures, so printing off something material that was
representative of my budding sexuality was cool enough for me.  the
two of us stealthily hid our low-quality “porn” inside of the jewel
cases of our respective cds.  for some reason, i can remember that
my friend hid hers in a 4 non blondes case, but i can’t remember what i
hid mine in.  probably letters to cleo or, perhaps, fiona apple.

in the weeks to come, i felt sufficiently like a badass. this lasted
until i learned that there was such a thing as a browser history, which
happened when my brother asked me one day out of the blue, “were you
looking at naked pictures of leonardo dicaprio on the internet?” i don’t
remember exactly what i said, but i do remember denying it, even though
i was the only one in the house with a veritable leonardo dicaprio
shrine, not to mention my parents and older sister pretty much never
used the internet. despite the fact that it was obviously me, it was
left at that and was not brought up again.

when i look at the animated gifs of james deen doing some
spanking/licking/hard fucking that these teenagers are posting on
tumblr, my story of printing off leonardo’s junk seems almost innocent
or quaint by comparison.  it’s strange to think of the changes and
impact that 14 years of technological development can have on teen
sexuality.  i’m sure if i was a teen now, i would be all over that
james deen tumblr and would probably be super unimpressed by that still
shot of leonardo dicaprio.  be that as it may, i would not trade my
experience for anything, because it is so awesomely and thoroughly
’90s, and it’s a hilarious anecdote that i’ve enjoyed telling friends
for years.

celebrity marriage = the worst. marriage in mexico city = the best!

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it only took till tuesday for this to be a bummer week for celebrity nuptials or, in kardashian’s case, “celebrity” nuptials.

kris humphries learned this week that his new bride, kim kardashian, was divorcing him.  apparently,
he also learned this, along with the rest of the general public, on
tmz. despite them having talked about the possibility of getting a
divorce after only 72 days of wedded life, kris said he was “blindsided.
” i honestly don’t know if i could imagine a more degrading way of
finding out that i was getting dumped than by watching it on tmz.

who knows if kim was using him all along or if she had actually
“hoped this marriage was forever.”  maybe it just took her that
long to realize she was marrying a dude with the exact same fucking name
as her mother and that maybe that’s a little awkward. alls i know is,
the following pretty much sums it up for me:

as much as i’m down on the idea of marriage lately, at least for
myself, i still want anyone who desires to get into that type of legal
situation to have the right to do so.  and maybe this
ridiculously-covered-by-the-media, pathetic tale of “romance” along with
a group of troops filing a suit against the defense of marriage act will help make a little headway on the gay marriage front.

on tuesday, it was announced that indie-darling couple ben gibbard and zooey deschanel have separated after two years of marriage. 
according to their statement, the separation was “mutual and amicable”
and “there was no third party involved” (the fact that they said that
outright seems a little suspicious to me, but whatever).

now, i already had a little more respect for ben and zooey than kim
and kris. i have my favorite postal service/death cab songs, and i also
was not able to stop myself from watching and somewhat enjoying the
first three episodes of new girl.

but on top of that, i give them credit for giving it at least two
years before calling it quits.  that seems like an honest effort,
and if they truly think they’re better off without each other, then more
power to them.

it also makes me think that mexico city is on the right track with a new proposition to legalize two-year temporary marriage contracts:

the minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be
renewed if the couple stays happy. the contracts would include
provisions on how children and property would be handled if the couple
splits.

“the proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the
relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,”
said leonel luna, the mexico city assemblyman who co-authored the bill.

“you wouldn’t have to go through the tortuous process of
divorce,” said luna, from the leftist party of the democratic
revolution, which has the most seats in the 66-member chamber.

this bill, coupled with the fact that gay marriage is already legal
in mexico city, makes me think that when it comes to marriage, mexico
city has got it going on.