We're a Happy Family

Who would have thought that bringing a steaming cup of sweet, milky tea to my wife in bed each morning would undo all of the wrongs I have inflicted on her the day before? This is a MAJOR breakthrough for a man, folks! Even though I’m stumbling blind around the kitchen in the pre-dawn hours making breakfast for the kids, and packing M’s lunch, this simple act of kindness makes her feel like royalty, baby, and she starts the day happy.

Try it yourself at home with your mate/lover/partner, and substitute the tea for any appropriate/preferred beverage…and watch the good will credits pile up in the bank, yo! And you know we all need them.

Note to my primitive man brain: keep on doing this! Keep on doing this!

We're Through Being Cool

Sorry about taking a break from my blue-faced foaming at the mouth over the Bush administration’s insane policies. Even though I’m OUTRAGED by the mounting evidence that our government’s use of torture on “enemy combatants” is widespread (and approved by Bush and Wolfowitz) in Gitmo , Afghanistan, and Iraq (and people in Gitmo were tortured as recently as four months ago!) – and that 14 more U.S. soldiers were blown to bits in our dirty little Iraq-‘nam war, I need a break before my poor brain melts and my miserable heart implodes. Somebody make it all stop!

After having seen the original Star Wars movie (the one where the Death Star is blown up, not the crappy new episodes) one rainy afternoon this fall, my son M asked Santa to bring him a bunch of action figures (he has the few SW figures that survived my childhood, including Obi-Wan, Chewbacca – with one leg shorter than the other, poor wookie – Luke in his X-Wing fighter get-up, a headless Leia, and C-3PO). So, I found (and won) a massive lot of figures on eBay that includes multiple Stormtroopers, Sand People, and Jawas, as well as many of the main characters, like Darth Vader, Han Solo, etc. In addition, I bought these incredible X-Wing and Tie fighter toy ships on Amazon that are big enough so that you can place the action figures in their cockpits. It’s going to be pretty amazing to watch him open this all up on X-mas morning. He’s gonna freak!

Since my two year-old daughter F wants to do pretty much everything that her big bro does, I picked up this Playskool Millennium Falcon that includes stubby versions of Han, Chewy, C-3PO, etc. This way, she has her own spaceship and can put the other SW figures in it (and M will dig playing with it, too). When I presented this prize to her, my wife berated me, worrying that I’m gonna turn her beautiful, hep daughter into a sci-fi geek. I kept on playing up the “equal treatment of the kids” theme, and may have won her over…slightly. (“Honey, it’s made by Playskool, for Pete’s sake! And F will probably end up putting her little toy cows in it!”)

More troubling is my own geekiness. Over lunch yesterday with my co-workers, Star Trek reared it ugly, latex head, and I had to bite my tongue from answering all of these questions I knew down pat. My boss was trying to remember the name of the Next Generation’s counselor (“Deanna Troi!”) who had special powers (“She’s an empath!”) and was from an alien species (“Betazoid!”). Didn’t want to tip my hand. Then we all had a discussion about which series was the best, and I ended up trying to defend the sexist, imperialist, Cold Warrior original series against a room full of very progressive women! Needless to say, I didn’t put up much of a fight…

And the gift that Kris Kringle is bring me, M, and F that crowns me king of all geeks is the toy Galileo 7 Shuttlecraft (from the episode “Where No Man has Gone Before!”) that I also won on eBay. We already have all of these Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Uhuru, etc. action figures that will fit inside it and…oh…oh, the shame! The guilty, pathetic, loser-y, I-suck-pickled-eggs pleasure of it all!

Dear God

Have you ever tried explaining the real story of Christmas to a six year-old kid? The following words actually came out of my mouth (me, the agnostic!):

You see, son, God came down and, uh, made Mary pregnant with Jesus, because he could do magical things like that.

As the questions about Jesus' origins and eventual crucifixion became more pointed, and my answers grew more and more convoluted, my wife and I both had the idea to bust out the kiddie Bible that he had received at his baptism. ("Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?" To redeem our sins...to make up for all the bad things we've done. "Did it take him a long time to die?" No, not too long. A few hours. "Where did he go after he died, but before he came back to life?" Uh...) My wife is Irish Catholic enough to be worried that M and F would be condemned to purgatory should, God forbid, anything happen...and we want our kids to know about their religious background, and all the cultural references contained in the Bible. We're very much of the mind that they should know about all the mainstream religions and make their own decisions about whether or not they want to be practicing any of them.

As we kept reading chapter after chapter regarding Jesus' life and ministry, I was amazed at how many of them I remembered. Must have been listening in some of those Sunday school classes after all. I was there primarily to be in the same orbit as these pretty girls...and, you know, I had to go. As long as I was under my parents' roof, I did as the Romans did...

About a Boy

Every adoptee has this sick fantasy that our biological mums and dads have gone on to accomplish great things after giving us up. And the hope against hope is that one day they will show up to rescue us from our humdrum lives, and all of the holes in our lives that we always attributed to being torn from the bosom of our genetic family will be magically patched up (with no unsightly scars or weight gain)!

In high school, I thought I looked a little like Dustin Hoffman and actually carried around a picture of him cut out from the paper in my wallet. (Daddy?) I’d see promo clips for the movie Wargames (“Do you want to play Thermonuclear War?”) and thought that in certain shots, I looked an awful lot like Matthew Broderick -- something in the eyes and eyebrows. (Are we cousins?) And since my parents and I simply did not get along during my teen years, the fact that we were not connected by blood pleased me to no end.

The ugly open-the-drapes-and-let-the-daylight-in truth is that we were given up for adoption because the "home" situation was not good (read this article from The New Yorker and weep). My biological mother was 19, in college, and slept with a senior guy she dated for a month or two, and then they broke up. Realizing she was pregnant with me, she took the next semester off, and moved in with a brother who lived in Boston while I gestated. I was born on the 5th of November in the year of our Lord 1966, and handed over to the adoption agency right after birth. My story is not that sordid (no tales of drugs, prostitution, etc.), but certain to cause shame. Enough so that all the records are sealed up tight, and my birth certificate officially faked by the State of Massachusetts. I'm illegitimate, baby. Says so right here...

I later found out that my biological mom did return to college and graduated. After that is a mystery. Do I want to unravel it...or will it unravel me? Or does any of it really matter?

New York Fever

I’ve been sick, and I’m such a freakin’ baby about being sick that my wife actually teases me when I’m hunched over in pain as I Frankenstein-walk to the kitchen for some juice. I really hope that I never come down with a chronic disease, because she’ll kick me out pronto, yo! In her defense, whenever I have a slight fever, I complain about every little thing and want LOADS of sympathy more than anything else. This simply is not my wife. She’s more of a “suck-it-up like a man, bitch!” type, which is fine – I knew it going in. Also, because she’s self-employed P/T (and deals with the kids, plus the crap that I’m too lame or passive-aggressive to handle), she doesn’t have the luxury to call in sick and rest up for a day, so she resents me for being able to do so (can’t argue with that). Using what little sense I have as a male of the species, I made as few demands on her as possible during my three days in bed, and tried to keep my whiny mouth shut.

The kids were fascinated by the facial hair that sprouted forth from my face while I was bedridden. M was particularly distressed when he found out that I was going to shave it all off before heading back to work (he liked rubbing his hands on my scruffy face). I compromised and told him I’d leave a small patch in place, which really pleased him. My wife will be shaving it off as I sleep, I’m sure. Last night, she recoiled in horror and yelped, “You’ve got a soul patch!” after we escaped a freaky alumni theater event in the Village and emerged into the glow of streetlamps and neon bar lights.

Well, I’m no hipster (just Familyman!), so off it comes. Dude.

I am a Camera

Last weekend, I pulled out my snake’s nest of orphaned A/C adapter cords in an attempt to reunite one of them with my scanner. After a few attempts, I finally found the sucka (reunited and it feels so good!), and will try to add some of my own photos to this blog, as well as some stock photos floating around the net. Kimdawg has put me to shame with all of those nice pix livening up her text…

Right now, I’m an analog guy (sadly, the older I get, the less inclined I am to use the latest tech gadgets, as in “35mm film has worked for the last damn century just fine, so why should I buy this blankety-blank digital camera?!”), but my son put in a request (in writing!) with Santa to send me a digital camera (and since my wife wants him to keep believing in the guy in the red suit for a few more Xmases, told me that’s what’ll be under the tree for me Christmas morn). Okay, I’m not really an analog guy. I love my iPod and my Apple laptop and my DVD player, but I don’t need the latest or the best, dammit and I don’t download music off the internet. Yet.

Let's Talk about Sex, Baby!

Hopefully, you’ve seen one of the many editorials or articles regarding California Congressman Henry Waxman’s report on abstinence-only programs that the Bush administration has been pushing (to the tune of $900 million dollars over the past five years). The sticky thing is that the vast majority of abstinence-only curriculums in the Congressman’s study contained inaccurate or downright misleading information regarding contraception, STDs, HIV/AIDS, masturbation, and abortion. Some of the misinformation forced on American youth includes the following:

The AIDS virus can be spread by sweat and tears (it can't); condoms fail 31 percent of the time (a federal study says 3 percent); and abortion can lead to suicide (there's no proven link).

Why is it that the anti-sex crowd, if they are so correct and righteous in their convictions, have to resort to outright lies and fear mongering to score their points and convert the masses? (Sort of like going to war on false pretenses, isn’t it?) Afraid the truth doesn’t cut it, eh? Even more disturbing is the fact that studies are beginning to show that abstinence-only programs simply don’t work , despite the enormous amount of money we shower on them:

“A recent Columbia University study found that teens who make "virginity pledges" to delay sex until marriage still have premarital sex at a high rate (88 percent) rivaling those that don't, but are less likely to use contraception once they do.”

So instead of educating these teens about sexuality, contraception and the like, the abstinence-only folks intentionally keep these kids in the dark, so when they do have sex (and most of them will, like crazed rabbits), they are completely ignorant as to how to avoid unwanted pregnancy, STDs, etc. Mission accomplished, I’m sure.

Can’t we just give kids accurate information and help them to make their own responsible decisions? We're all sexual beings and deserve to know about our bodies -- it's part of being human. But how do you find middle ground with folks who ignore science, impose their religious beliefs on others, don’t care how many lives they ruin, and demonize those who disagree with their viewpoint?

Also, Frank Rich has a terrific column, The Plot Against Sex in America, which neatly summarizes many of the ludicrous (and scary) developments on sex cultural war front.

What is it Good For?

Check out this unsettling interview with un-embedded journalist Dahr Jamail, who is covering the war in Iraq. Things are far, far worse there than we imagine. Just plain bleak.

One Thing Leads to Another

Even though the Pentagon flat out denies torturing its prisoners at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, apparently it’s perfectly fine and dandy to use any “evidence” obtained through torture in military court.

Now, if they’re not torturing the 500 or so guys at Gitmo, why would the military be arguing that it’s okay to use any prisoner statements extracted through torture in a military court?

Does the phrase “just following orders” bring anything to mind?

I'm a Homosapien, too.

Determining a person’s civil rights based on whom they sleep with is completely un-American. Either we’re all equal under the law and the Constitution, or none of us are guaranteed any rights as citizens. It’s as simple as that.

As more and more gay-bashers and bigots slither out of their cesspools into the media glare to spread their hatred, decent Americans need to stand up and smack them down before any more damage is inflicted on the republic and its gay and lesbian citizens. That our current government happily trades in this kind of discrimination pisses me off to no end, and all sorts of stories are starting to emerge in the wake of the GOP’s ongoing campaign of homophobia:

An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries .

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

And then there’s the defrocking of a Methodist minister solely because she is an active lesbian…

Following a two-day ecclesiastical trial, the jury voted 12 to 1 to find the Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud, 34, guilty of violating the United Methodist Church's ban on "self-avowed practicing" homosexuals in the clergy.

And the networks have been so cowed by (or are beholden to) conservatives in power that they are much more concerned about the political content of the ads they run than any of their hyper-violent, misogynist, stereotyping programming: both NBC and CBS refuse to air an ad by the United Church of Christ that promotes its acceptance of all people. The tag line of the ad is: “Jesus didn’t turn away people. Neither do we.” What’s so controversial about that? Well, it seems that they show two women with their arms around each other in the diverse crowd of folks that are welcome into their churches (see the ad here).

First we propose to enact laws denying them equal rights as heterosexuals. We seek to ban and bury "gay" books. Then, we do all we can to discourage their acceptance within our societal institutions (churches, schools, etc.). When do we start rounding them up in cattle cars?

The World's a Mess (It's in My Kiss)

There are some terrific off-line articles in this week’s New Yorker magazine (November 23, 2004) that you should read. One posits that the wide-spread belief that moral values largely shaped the outcome of the presidential election is complete bunk (or crap, for you young’ins). Essentially, the media (and crazy evangelical Christian right-types who want to run our lives) misinterpreted the results of the polling (which, itself, was somewhat skewed, due to the manner in which the questions were framed). Moral values had little to no effect on the election. It was all about 9/11, stupid. The other article is about a weird born-again guy, Ole (pronounced ‘Oh-lee’) Anthony, who runs this ministry out of Dallas that is based on sort of a redemption-through-suffering theology, which is really beside the point. The best part is that they go after the televangelists, like Robert Tilton, and expose their sham, money-grubbing, scam ministries!

In the ‘make your skin crawl that anyone could actually believe this lunatic’ category, the New Yorker also features Judith Reisman and her looney anti-Kinsey crusade. Here’s a teaser for you:

She claims that Kinsey actively solicited pedophiles to molest children and report back to him. In fact, she said, “there is absolutely no reason to believe that Kinsey himself was not involved in the sexual abuse of these children.” (None of Kinsey’s four biographers have turned up any evidence that he was.) Reisman also believes that Kinsey died not from heart failure but from what she calls “brutal, repetitive self-abuse.”

To a reader of Reisman’s scholarly papers, it sometimes appears that there is little for which she does not hold Kinsey responsible. In her research on gays, for instance, she has written that the “recruitment techniques” of homosexuals rival those of the Marine Corps. The Kinsey paradigm, she holds, created the moral framework that makes such recruitment possible. Reisman also endorses a book called “The Pink Swastika,” which challenges the “myths” that gays were victimized in Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party and the Holocaust itself, she writes, were largely the creation of “the German homosexual movement.” Thanks to Alfred Kinsey, she warns, the American homosexual movement is poised to repeat those crimes. “Idealistic ‘gay youth’ groups are being formed and staffed in classrooms nationwide by recruiters too similar to those who formed the original ‘Hitler youth.’”

Can’t make this stuff up…well, actually, I guess she can!

Oh, and note to self: ease up on the masturbating!

Happiness is a Warm Gun

God, someday our country’s hubris is going to come back to haunt us big time. And payback is going to be a mighty bitch when it comes (and it will come someday). The latest International Red Cross report from July, leaked and printed in the New York Times yesterday, condemns the Bush administration for using interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay that are “tantamount to torture” and are clearly illegal according to international and U.S. laws.

Haven’t we already done enough to piss off the Arab world for at least the next 50 years? The cultural memory in many of these countries is long…they’re still fighting over events that happened centuries ago…

The IRC people also noted that, in violation of all medical ethics, physicians were being consulted to ascertain the POWs’ physical and mental weaknesses, and sometimes the interrogators had the POWs’ medical files right in front of them during questioning. "Paging Dr. Josef Mengele to interrogation room 'C'..."Angel of Death" to interrogation room 'C'..."

According to an editorial in today’s Times, the good news is that the IRC noted that the Pentagon has backed off the sexual humiliation of the POWs and has ceased having female interrogators bare their breasts, fondle the POWs’, show them porn, and make sexually suggestive comments.

How does our government respond to all this (from today's Times):

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a news conference in Indianapolis on Tuesday, dismissed accusations that the tactics amounted to torture.

"We certainly don't think it's torture," General Myers said before delivering a speech to the Economic Club of Indianapolis, according to the Web site of The Indianapolis Star. "Let's not forget the kind of people we have down there," he said. "These are the people that don't know any moral values."

Who are we talking about here, general, the prisoners or their keepers?

And just who exactly would Jesus torture?

People Who Died (World AIDS Day)

Chris – He was a rabble-rousing hippie friend about a decade and a half older than me, and the first person I knew who died of HIV/AIDS back in the late 80s. He dug New Wave music, taught me how to drive stick in his brother’s VW Bug, took me to my first concert at Madison Square Garden (Queen and Billy Squire), and patiently listened to me pine after various girls in our church’s youth choir who looked like Chrissie Hynde or Grace Jones. He’s probably unleashing a stream of choice expletives about Bush right now, wherever he is…

Ari – I met him through my college’s alumni theater company, where I sometimes helped at the lighting board and backstage (once falling asleep and waking up just as I was supposed to lower the curtain…). He was a brilliantly funny actor (both in drag and out) and terrific costume designer, who also made a mean bowl of gazpacho. Ari was one of the most warmhearted, decent people that ever crossed my path and graced this planet. The stage lights are dimmer without you.

Bruce – I grew up with Bruce. He was the younger brother of my best friend, who often tagged along for whatever we were doing in the neighborhood. He came into this world with a couple of strikes against him: his mother abandoned him, he was a hemophiliac, and was learning disabled. But he was lucky enough to become part of my friend’s family, the 13th child in their household (11 by birth, two adopted). His passion was Star Trek, and he could quote whole episodes verbatim. Spock particularly fascinated him. Bruce was one of the sweetest people I knew – didn’t have an ounce of guile in him. Do they show reruns where you are?

Ms. R. – Back in the first half of the 90s, when I was a caseworker at a residence for formerly homeless people with mental illness, one of the people I worked with was slowly dying of AIDS, cycling in and out of Cabrini Hospital with alarming regularity. Thanks to her meds, she was lucid and faced her situation with a quiet strength. She was someone that many people of strong “moral values” were all too willing to cast off, but it was an honor to know her and help her.

All of you are greatly missed.

You Say it's Your Birthday/Birthday Suit

Yesterday, my son’s first grade class had a publishing party, where all the kids in his class shared real-life stories (fully illustrated, too) with their parents. M recounted a visit to Lasker Rink last winter, in amazing detail. The cover of his novella featured yours truly, nude in the shower, with very hairy armpits (that needed a trim), among other anatomically correct renderings of my body. (His logic for including this episode in his story was that I took a shower before we headed off for the park that day – and we all know that a little skin helps move units...) Much hilarity ensued as many of M’s classmates and their parents caught an eyeful of my in-the-buff self. Can’t wait to see what else he reveals about me in upcoming tomes…

November 30th also was my daughter’s second birthday! After opening her presents first thing in the morning, she started asking for the cake, but was placated when we told her it would come after dinner (a cookie-dough ice cream cake). We’re having a party for her on Sunday for family and F’s friends, which will coincide with Brick Church’s caroling and lighting of the Christmas trees on Park Avenue (which began during WWII, in memory of their sons killed in combat). We’re not especially religious, but it’s beautiful and helps remind one that the day is not about lining the pockets of capitalists.