A Place on Earth

Well, it's that time of year again when the palm trees are decorated with twinkling lights and people wear scarves in 70 degree weather. Californians are so weird. But alas, it is time for me to return to the land of my birth, my desert from which I sprang, Arizona. I quite look forward to the trip this year, as I will be driving my brand new car, a 2006 Toyota Matrix. It's white and pristine and I absolutely adore it. It's my present to myself, even though I will be paying for it for years to come. A new car is like a new skin, a better version of myself and to compliment it, I have darkened my hair to a ruddy brunette color. The contrast is nice, though I have to admit, I miss being blond even though it had grown into an unsightly mess and had to be dealt with. My family will be happy.

Holidays baffle and confuse me and Christmukkah is no exception. I don't particularly dig celebrating the "birth" of Jesus, which was accented last year by my Mormon family showing me Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". Why not? What better way to celebrate someone's birth than by watching them tortured for hours and then hung on a cross to die? My sins need no atonement, thank you. So, I am hoping to avoid the Christian aspects of the season and concentrate instead on Santa and the materialism that make this country great.

I did catch quite a bit of Barbara Walters Special "Heaven: Where is it? How do we get there?" and had to laugh at her interest in this subject, though I quite enjoyed hearing from the Dalai Lama. My own views on this subject were not represented by any of her religious interviewees, not that I particularly expected them to be. I am actually more interested in figuring out what life BEFORE death is all about. That seems like a more worthwhile endeavor. After all, if Heaven exists or Hell for that matter, I will worry about that when the time comes. Truth be told, there is no guaranteed way into the pearly gates. No one knows for sure and I am truly suspicious of those who think they do.

To quote the great poet Belinda Carlisle: "Heaven is a place on earth." That makes enough sense, right? Anyway, Happy Holidays to you, no matter what you believe.

The Line

You know the line when you cross it,
into a territory that no man should tread.
Silence.
The fire crackles.
I say: "Ass hole."
It dies with the promise of what has been.

Happy Birthday!!!

My dear friend Holly is celebrating her birthday today.

Happy Birthday, Holly!

You can wish her a Happy Birthday, too. Go HERE

Homophobe Mountain

At work yesterday, I overheard the following conversation about the new movie Brokeback Mountain:

Guy: Do you want to see "Brokeback Mountain"? Everybody says it's supposed to be really good.

Girl: I don't know. Gay cowboys? How believable is that?

Guy: I wanted to see it, but then I found out what it's really about.

Girl: Oh, yeah? What?

Guy: Well, I heard that they have families and are normal, but they have sex with each other. They wrestle to see who is the top and who is the bottom.

Girl: I'm not homophobic, but I don't want to see that.

I almost had a fit. If that's not homophobia, I don't know what is... I am not offended by the constant and excessive displays of heterosexual love that have been shoved down my throat my whole freaking life, okay...maybe a little offended. But I wouldn't boycott a film because Tom Cruise might kiss a girl, or Jessica Alba hooks up with Paul Walker. I would boycott those movies simply because they are crap. For those of you who don't know, homophobia is defined as: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.

I don't want to speculate on the couple having this conversation, but I will since they obviously have an "aversion" to this films content. I suspect that the Guy is secretly desperate to see the film, since he started the conversation, and can't wait to be wrestled to the bottom himself. And the Girl (hardly, in her late thirties) told me she was married to a gay man who left her and she tries to put up a good front, for the kid. "We are still friends, so I can't be homophobic," she says, but she is. I can understand that she may not want to face her demons in a movie theater, but let's be honest.

Brokeback Mountain is a love story that happens to be about two men. That may be too much for some people to take, but I can't wait to see it. When I heard the "wrestling for top" comment, I was impressed. It is a gay custom, dating back to ancient Greece. I have experienced this many times, and can easily admit to "losing" on purpose. It's homophobia that I don't enjoy wrestling with. Brokeback is a far cry from gay porn and I am positive that Ang Lee exercised a lot of discretion in depicting the intimacies of the characters. If you can't watch boys wrestle, better stay away.

Let There Be Art

About three years ago, I found myself wandering around Michaels without a purpose, when I saw their rather large collection of canvases. I thought: I wonder if I can paint? Having recently seen paintings by Marilyn Manson, I figured I had nothing to lose. I had drawn things before. I was always fond of crayons and colored pencils, too. Maybe I could try my hand at a real, honest to god, ART form. I purchased some canvases and paints and went home to begin my new career. Then it hit me... What would I paint? I had no ideas, so I decided that I would let the canvases tell me. I set up the first one and waited for inspiration to strike.

With the surreal Manson work still fresh in my mind, I went to work on a creepy "Alice in Wonderland" piece. It came out okay, but Alice had no nose. That was a big weak point in my artistic ability. I couldn't do noses, ears, or hands. That could be my signature, I thought. But inspiration was slow. I set up two more canvases on the floor under my television, hoping that I would look down and just see what I was supposed to paint. After many days, many movies and many cigarettes, it came to me. One canvas was to be Jessica Lange, being swept up by the giant hand of Kong from the 1976 version of "King Kong" and the other was to be Jodie Foster as the teenage prostitute Iris from Martin Scorcese's "Taxi Driver." These paintings are among my favorites, even though neither heroine has a nose.

After that I just painted whenever inspiration struck. You can witness the fruits of my efforts at saviouronassis.com I would love to hear what you think because without you, I'm just me. By the way, I have added noses, ears and hands to my repertoire.

Pastime

One of my favorite pastimes is dancing around in my underwear. That doesn't make me Madonna, but it comes damn close.

Back in the Day

Back in the day, I was the kind of boy Dennis Cooper fantasizes about. Cute, vain, insecure, arrogant, and a total slut: all you had to do was ask. Make a move on me and I was moved, always. Only once did I stop an advance, due to a proliferation of genital warts that I backed away from like, well...genital warts. Other than that, I was easy and so was my justification. I wanted to be wanted. It wasn't like the promise of youth was wasted, merely unappreciated. Yeah, Joni, you don't know what you got til it's gone.

Back in the day, I learned that pretty girls are just like the homely, intellectual, sensitive ones. Except for the homely, intellectual and sensitive part. I avoided an enormously talented girl named Juno because the pretty girls all hated her. Juno was not pretty, not in the same ways. I ate my lunch and studied "Bitchy 101". Everything has a price. Idiot is more expensive than you might think.

Back in the day, I was easily fooled. My tendency to believe everything I was told proved to be a horrid life lesson and soon I stopped listening. (Oh, I still tend to believe. I am just more careful about what I hear.) Sometimes, I have trouble making things out and wonder about the damage rock'n'roll caused my eardrums. If a pin drops, I don't care. I am rarely barefoot so it doesn't really matter to me.

Back in the day, there was always something to engage in, some worthwhile endeavor. I suppose that goes along with being a tweeker. There was a crystal method to my madness, but I was never bored. Even when Mark stole my car and tried to overdose me, I remained fully entertained. Only when I was cleaning blood off my walls did I start to fade. Girl power goes a long, long way, and someone called me "Jetboy". I didn't get it for years.

Back in the day, I was asking for it. Yeah, yeah, I got it. Back in the day, back in the day.

What was I doing?

Recently, I have noticed a rather disturbing behavior in myself. When I walk into another room in my apartment, I forget what my original purpose was and end up doing something entirely different. This is made even more disturbing when you consider the fact that I only have three rooms. It's not exactly Hearst Castle up in here.

Earlier today, when I went into the kitchen to retrieve light bulbs and I ended up cooking a three course meal. Only when I returned to the darkened living room did I remember the bulbs, but by then I was too tired from eating to do anything about it. And just a moment ago, I went into the bathroom to take some vitamins and found myself plucking random hairs for fifteen minutes. I believe that I am too young to have Alzheimer'’s but this is starting to freak me out.

Actually, it'’s rather nice to have so much free time that I can randomly wander about finding new and intriguing things to do, but it is a bummer to forget my purpose. Wait, what was I writing about?

School "Outing"

You can read about Charlene Nguon vs. the School District here and here.

'A federal judge ruled this week that school districts cannot "out" gay students even if their sexual orientation is known on campus. The ruling paved the way for a discrimination lawsuit by a 17-year-old student to go forward against the Garden Grove Unified School District in California, after Charlene Nguon alleged that officials unfairly disciplined her this year for hugging and kissing her girlfriend on campus. Her punishment? Administrators revealed Nguon's sexual orientation to her mother and temporarily forced the teen to change schools.'

As someone who was forced out of the closet by an institution myself, I sympathize with Charlene's situation. I can't believe, in this modern world, that people are still so freaked out by homosexuality and that this happened in California! What a world we live in...