Sharp Little Pencil Archives - Page 5 of 8

PC, LGBT, 8-tracks, malls and dystopia

If you were beamed down from the USS Enterprise into most malls, you’d be hard pressed to know where you were geographically.

Uthaclena, who I know in terrestrial life, asks:

Okay: at what point does Political Correctness become absurd? Do public facilities need to be sanitized of all things religious to ensure separation of church and state? On Halloween can you only wear costumes of your own race/ethnicity/religion?

Okay. Here’s the thing; I don’t know what different people’s boiling points are, because I’m not them. For instance, it is the groups of Native Americans who have complained about the name of the Washington Redskins NFL team that makes me believe in the rightness of the complaint.

Too often, people wear the badge of political incorrectness, to show how much cooler they are than the “hung up” other people, and it ends up being a way for them to justify their racist and/or sexist and or/homophobic behavior.

Dan Van Riper noted: “As far back in the 1990s, Dan Clowes predicted the rise of this cultural phenomenon in David Boring (one of the last Eightballs.) If you complain about this kind of racist reference, then ‘you just don’t get it.’ Is it a way of depowering racism by appropriating it for entertainment, or is it providing a new kind of refuge for racist tendencies?” Or it’s framed as “you just don’t have a sense of humor,” and I do, but it’s STILL not funny.

Thom Wade would call it Bigotedly Correct. The general term is hipster racism.

See, e.g., this article about the Minneapolis area theater scene that Dan sent me, which I subsequently saw in BoingBoing. Referring to a purported talk-back session, in which a Native American woman protester was supposedly given an opportunity to speak, but she wasn’t:

“That’s the thing about privilege. It shows itself in many ways. This time, it just happened to pop up as a group of authoritative white people publicly tag-teaming a lone woman of color, and being so oblivious to the prevailing power dynamic that it never occurred to them that this was a problem, or that the reporter in the room might notice.”

And to that end, I thought this was rather entertaining: ‘Columbusing’: When White People Think They Discovered Something They Didn’t.

However, I DID think this July 2008 New Yorker cover was funny, because, I thought, it was making a commentary about how the Obamas were perceived, not as they actually were. Still, Colin Powell spoke well about the lie.

We don’t need to remove the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court building. But I think those public, mostly Christian, prayers recently allowed by the Supreme Court suggest the establishment of religion. That’s not about being PC; that’s about following the Constitution.

I don’t believe white people should wear blackface for Halloween. But that doesn’t mean that blackface should NEVER happen, in an educational setting explaining why it’s so offensive to some people.

Occasionally, I see these stories about a teacher going “too far” in an educational demonstration showing racism or Antisemitism, e.g. About 2/3 of the time, I think the teachers have it right, and about 1/3 of the time, the proper context is not related, and it becomes a humiliation to those participating.

Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s attacks on large sodas annoyed me. But is that a PC argument or a nanny state argument?

I think the elimination of Halloween, in favor of a “fall festival”, is a bit silly, yet I’m good with celebrating “the holidays,” because there are several of them (Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa). Still, “Merry Christmas” is pretty innocuous, to me, because Christmas in America is not a particularly Christian holiday.

Did I ever tell you that I wished someone visiting my current church on Christmas Eve “Merry Christmas, and he said, “I don’t celebrate Christmas”? I stifled a laugh.

I’m in the Potter Stewart school; I know the PC line when I see it.

Arthur the AmeriNZ notes:

Yes, I did steal borrow the idea from you, but I do it far less regularly. Here’s a query for you: Tell us about the first time you realised that someone you knew was LGBT, like, how you came to realise that, consequences, that sort of thing. I’m thinking about someone you actually knew, though it could be someone in pop culture or whatever.

Well, the first person I knew to be gay was my late friend Vito Mastrogiovanni, who my sister had a crush on in high school. He was out to his friends, but not everyone at the time, I believe. Frankly, it wasn’t a big deal, and there were no “consequences.” He and I were part of that oddball intellectual, politically aware clique that opposed the Vietnam war, fought racism, and the like.

Now that you ask it, maybe I SHOULD have been more reactive, but I just wasn’t.

Now my freshman year in college, the guy next door was hostile, and as I’ve noted, he was possibly being preemptively nasty before I could be nasty to him; I thought it was sad.

But I knew a lot more lesbians, starting at that same time frame. Alice was the roommate of my future wife, the Okie. She fought the war with me, hitchhiked with me. Not sure what consequences I really discovered except this: with straight people, I generally preferred the company of women. With gay people, I generally preferred the company of women. This was informative because I realized that I wasn’t friends with them just so I could hit on them. Did I ever mention I went skinny-dipping with six lesbians back in the late 1970s?

In fact, most of the gay people I knew were women until I got to my current church in this century, which, I believe, has more openly gay men than lesbians, though I haven’t done a formal count.

Amy, with her Sharp Little Pencil, wants to know:

Why did cassette tapes overtake the 8-track market?

Because the eight-track was a stupid technology. I remember exactly when I realized this. I was in a car listening to someone’s Beatles Again/Hey Jude 8-track. The song Rain came on, and IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SONG, it did that weird grinding noise in the middle of it. I should note that Rain is a three-minute song.

I NEVER owned an eight-track machine.

Jaquandor over at Byzantium Shores, wonders:

1. Are there any topics that you’re surprised don’t come up more often during your Ask Me Anything’s?

Yes. Some REALLY embarrassing stuff. But if no one’s gonna bring it up, why should I?

2. I’ve heard your hometown of Binghamton described rather unfavorably at times. Do you LIKE Binghamton, or has it gone downhill?

I like Binghamton, and yes, it’s gone downhill. It had 75,000 in 1960, about 47,000 now. They built Route 17 so one can get through there more quickly. Like a lot of Rust Belt cities, it’s struggling economically; I always want it to do well.

3. I read an article the other day about the death of the shopping mall in America. Did you ever like malls, and if so, do you mourn their passing at all?

There was a place in Binghamton that had what we’d now consider a large strip mall when I was growing up. Had one anchor store, and I liked it well enough.

But, no I would not mourn their passing. I think attention to the malls have starved the downtown areas, which need to grow for a city, and its surroundings, to be socially and economically healthy. Moreover, malls are private property, so their presence had dampened the public square.

For the most part, the stores in a mall are the same, so the homogenization suffocates local personality and culture. If you were beamed down from the USS Enterprise into most malls, you’d be hard-pressed to know where you were geographically.

4. I’ve expressed dismay on my own blog and elsewhere about the dominant tropes in popular culture today being dystopian settings and a HUGE focus on anti-heroes — what I call “Awful People At Work And Play”. What are your thoughts on the tone of popular culture right now?

Not only am I uncomfortable with dystopian culture, but I’m also bored with it. Bored with the word “dystopian.”

Initially, I thought I was just getting older, but I now realize that these antiheroes just don’t interest me, don’t inspire me, but, rather, irritate me. I don’t need to identify with schmucks. I think a lot of people do, and they end up going online, emulating their schmuck heroes’ behavior. Yes, I’m pretty tuned out of most of it.

You can still Ask Roger Anything.

Growing up gay (as it were)

I have only smidgen of understanding what it must have been like to be gay in the 1960s and 1970s.

From New York Erratic:

How do you think growing up gay today is different than growing up gay in the past?

Well, since I never grew up gay, it’s kind of tricky to say. But I’ll try.

In my collective of high school cohorts, the politically involved, left-of-center, antiwar demonstrating, civil rights supporting folks, we formed a club called the Community Action Forum. But outside of school, we were friends called Holiday Unlimited, and our motto was “a splendid time is guaranteed for all, stolen from the Sgt. Pepper album.

In our group of maybe a dozen and a half people, at least three of them were gay, but I only knew about one of them, Vito Mastrogiovanni, at the time, and mostly because my sister had such a crush on him that he, or someone, let her know. She was sad because she thought he was so beautiful, and he was. He died of AIDS in May 1991, and you can find his square on the AIDS quilt.

The others who were gay, though, I had no idea. I felt a tad sad that they didn’t feel comfortable telling me, yet I understood.

I go to college, and my next room neighbor, who was gay, was openly hostile to me. I think it was a preemptive strike. Blacks were considered threatening to gay males in 1971, or so I was told. But I had a couple of lesbian friends; in fact, one, Alice, with whom I was once arrested at an antiwar demonstration, was roommates with the Okie for a time before the Okie and I got married.

Alice and I hitchhiked across New York State, trying to get to some friends who had been injured in a fatal car accident. One guy picked us up west of Binghamton, then gave us a lecture about the sins of race-mixing, assuming us to be a couple. I could only imagine what he might have said if he had known of her sexual orientation.

I dropped out of college in 1975 and lived in Binghamton for several months. The Civic Theater was doing a production of Boys in the Band, a 1968 play, but radical for upstate New York. The cast hung out together, and I discovered there was a gay bar in Binghamton; I had no idea. We got to be a tight-knit group for that period.

The review of the production made it sound as though the whole cast was gay, which frankly didn’t bother me, but it upset one of my high school friends, who said to another, “Too bad about Roger!” “What about Roger?” “He’s gay!” “He’s not gay!”

So I have only a smidgen of understanding what it must have been like to be gay in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because gays weren’t invented until 1969, or so you were supposed to believe. And it was only a handful of “them” so it was somehow OK to discriminate against gays, threaten them, use terms about them as barbs even against people who were not gay. And AIDS was “God’s scourge” against gays, though there were plenty of straight people getting the disease too.

So how we went from having a whole lot of closeted gay folks, for understandable reasons, to legal marriage for gay people in about a dozen and a half states in the last decade or two is remarkable. I was in a discussion with a blogger who is gay (not Arthur) back in 2006 or 2007, and he didn’t think the issue of marriage equality was that big a deal, quite probably because he had had a bad breakup. But marriage IS a big deal. It’s a fundamental ceremony of society. The POPE is considering the acceptance of civil unions, for crying out loud. Oh, here’s a joke about marriage equality that I actually found to be clever.

Rewatched the Oprah Winfrey Show episode recently in which Ellen Degeneres talked about coming out in 1997, and I was reminded how it was a BFD. Now she’s a popular talk show host, Oscars host, Twitter breaker, and dancing fool.

I think this article about Fred Phelps is true. When the hatemonger first started his picketing, few opposed his poison. But over time, the crowds against the Westboro Baptist Church grew and grew, people standing up and saying we’re not all like that. This is why I say, all the time because I’m a boring guy, that gays need straight allies in the struggle for equality, just as blacks need whites, etc. The “gay agenda” I keep reading about, a lot, is the very freedom everyone wants.

So while there is still plenty of things to overcome – check out the Human Right Campaign, e.g. – today’s LGBT teens must have it a sea change easier than gay kids in decades past.

PS: Boycott Mississippi.
***
Those HoneyMaid ads.

Amy’s How to “Recruit” Straight People: A Guide

March Rambling: mostly about me

I’ve been Superman, Abraham Lincoln, and a Georgia O’Keefe painting.

My old buddy Augustus (who you FantaCo customers might have known as Matt), put this together for my birthday. Pic on the left is from the cover of the FantaCon 1988 convention program, drawn by the late Chas Balun. The image is on the right was John Hebert’s rendition from Sold Out #1, c. 1986.
This is about me because: It was so cool. And he wrote: “Thank you for turning me on to a world of literature far beyond science fiction and fantasy. You are still an influence on this boychik. Long may you arrange. (books in order).” And you thought I couldn’t blush.

Now Jaquandor KNOWS how to celebrate my birthday. He added me to his sentential links here. He answered my question about football.
This is about me, obviously. (Sidebar: some highly educated person wrote: “As is my want” recently in a mass e-mail I received. You have NO idea how difficult it was for me NOT to correct him. Jaquandor would NOT make this misteak, er, mistake.)

Tom Skulan of FantaCo is being interviewed for Theater of Guts.
This is about me because: I worked at FantaCo for over eight years I took the photo of Tom, and also the pic of the late Chas Balun looking towards the ceiling. I find it interesting that my photos of the store and the FantaCon have been so heavily used since I am really a lousy photographer.

Dustbury answers my question about women’s fashion. Not only does he know more about the topic than I do, but he also knows more about popular music.
This is about me because: as a librarian, I am always ready to defer to people with greater expertise.

Occasionally, I’ll do one of those BuzzFeed games. This month, I’ve been Superman, Abraham Lincoln, and a Georgia O’Keefe painting.
This is about me because: actually I found the first two descriptions relatively accurate; the third, maybe not so much.

Meet Jeopardy!’s new master–and his controversial strategy, [Podcast interview] by Glenn Fleishman, two-time JEOPARDY! winner. Plus Arthur Chu’s social media brand, from the New Yorker.
This is about me because: I like to watch JEOPARDY! And now that Chu’s 11-day run is over, these articles will stop, at least until the Tournament of Champions. See also, Ken Jennings’ interview with Julann Griffin, the mother of JEOPARDY!

Tosy continues to count down his U2 song rankings, from 144 to 135 and 134 to 125 and 125 to 115 and 114 to 101.
This is about me because: When I wrote that I was linking to his return post last month, he wrote, “Thanks, Roger! I need the pressure!” I THINK he meant that in a good way.

Eddie, the Renaissance Geek, links to Green Day songs.
This is about me because: I mean it’s GREEN Day. Yeesh. How is it that American Idiot is MORE relevant now than it was a decade ago?

In the years 1965-1966, Pete Seeger hosted a television series, Rainbow Quest, devoted to folk music. Here are 13 of the 39 episodes.
This is about me because: I loved Pete Seeger’s music, and I used to sing folk music, and this was posted by a sort of relative.

Incredibly dirty R&B: gloriously filthy music from the 30s-50s
This is about me because I really like music, as my posts this year should suggest. I’m particularly interested in the history of music in the United States. Yeah, that’s the story.

Why Sharp Little Pencil writes.
This is about me because: we lived in the same county (Broome, NY), at the same time, once upon a time. And because she speaks truth to power, which I find to be an admirable thing.

Here is, on a wall of Binghamton High School, a picture of Rod Serling.
This is about me because: Rod Serling went to what was then Binghamton Central High School, as did I. He was student government president, as was I. I got to introduce him to an assembly, sort of.

Mark Evanier linked to twelve songs, all but one sung by Mel Blanc, voicing a different cartoon character, each a “Happy Birthday” song for a different month. Here’s
January and February, and
March and April, and
May and June, and
July and August, and
September and October, and
November and December. PLUS Happy Birthday played on “the 5th largest organ in the world”
This is about me because: did I mention this is my birth month?

12 YEARS A SLAVE: portraits of Solomon Northup’s descendants
This is about me because: what it says about our preconceived notions. And because it’s about movies. And Northup lived around here.

My cousin Dr. Anne Beal is leaving one important job for another.
This is about me because: my family had Thanksgiving dinner with hers, and about a dozen other people, in 2013.

Stephen Bissette‘s open letter to DC on Facebook about NBC’s Constantine.
This is about me because my friend Steve’s dissection of DC is so deliciously understated, and addresses the issue of common courtesy.

Rory O’Neill, aka Panti Bliss, a leading drag performer in Ireland, speaks about homophobia.
This is about me because the narrative reminds me of certain people on a certain “news network” defining racism for black people.

Lisa retells the story of Esther, which led to the holiday of Purim.
This is about me because: about 20 years ago, I played Haman in a church play.

What’s the reality behind “senior moments”?
This is about me because: because…because…oh, yeah, because this TOTALLY explains mine.

Anthony sees an anxious face in this picture of a building.
This is about me because: so do I.

The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter from Jaquandor, and the AmeriNZ response.
This is about me because: I seldom respond quickly to comments on the Internet so that I can avoid unnecessary noise.

SamuraiFrog is linking to Muppet stuff, such as Sequel Song and Lipton Tea commercials, and searching for sushi and St. Patrick’s Day.
This is about me because: The Daughter REALLY wants to see the new Muppet movie, so I GUESS I’ll just HAVE to take her.

Les Miserables is back on Broadway, and Sesame Street has put together an excellent cookie-themed parody of it.
This is about me because: I love theater and Muppets. And COOKIES!

Frog is also still writing his 50 Shades of Smartass. Here’s Chapter 17 and Chapter 18 and Chapter 19 and Chapter 20.
This is about me because: now I have an excuse to REALLY NEVER EVER have to read the books.

Dustbury notes that a strange story about the woman’s auto-payments hid her death for six years!
This is about me because my auto-posting on this blog, and directed to Facebook and Twitter, would probably hide my own demise for a month.

I love this church sign.
This is about me because: I TOTALLY mean it. Bring it on, Westboro! Here’s my Fred Phelps tribute post. Here’s Nathan Phelps’ statement on the death of his estranged father. And Dustbury points to the new Westboro poison meister.

February Rambling: niece Rebecca Jade in a movie

My niece, Rebecca Jade, appears as a singer (typecasting, that) in a film called 5 Hour Friends, starring Tom Sizemore,

From Jeff Sharlet, who I knew long ago: Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia. In 2010, Jeff wrote about the American roots of Uganda’s anti-gay persecutions. He notes: “Centrist media sources dismissed my reporting as alarmist; The Economist assured us it would never pass. [This week], Ugandan President Museveni is signing the bill into law.”

There was no Jesse Owens at Sochi.

Arthur’s letter to straight people: why coming out matters; read the linked articles therein, too. (Watch that Dallas sportscaster on Ellen.)

So Dangerous He Needs a Soo-da-nim. Racist homophobes who comment on Sharp Little Pencil’s blog.

With conversations about shipping potentially dangerous liquids through my area, here’s a recollection of a train wreck 40 years ago.

If you knew you were going blind, what would be the last thing you would want to see before everything went dark?

The mess of an answered prayer and talking about mental illness.

A Hero’s Welcome after World War II. On a lighter note, The Margarine Wars.

This school is not a pipe, or pipeline.

An alto’s-eye view of choral music.

Who the heck was Ed Sullivan. Plus, Meet the Beatles and what it replaced, and What the critics wrote about the Beatles in 1964, and Introducing the Beatles to America.

Evanier’s experiences with Sid Caesar. Evanier wrote a brace of followup stories here (which also talks about Howie Morris) and here. Also, Dick Cavett reviewed one of Caesar’s two autobiographies, plus an article about the ever-foldable Al Jaffee of MAD.

Leonard Maltin on meeting Shirley Temple.

There are several Harold Ramis films I haven’t seen yet, but the ones I DID view – Animal House, Ghostbusters, Analyze This – I really enjoyed. Groundhog Day was among the first movies I ever purchased on VHS. And his SCTV stuff was fine, too.

A reminder that this is why we are so touched by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, from Anthony Lane. As someone put it, “It’s not his celebrity but his art.”

An audio link to a 46-minute lecture by Charles Schulz.

My niece, Rebecca Jade appears as a singer (typecasting, that) in a film called 5 Hour Friends, starring Tom Sizemore, a 97 minute comedy/drama/romance. “A lifelong womanizer gets a taste of his own medicine.” It was made in 2013, but not widely released, if at all. It will be in theatrical release in San Diego March 28-April 4th. Here’s the trailer, in which Rebecca can briefly be both seen and heard singing.

After only an 18-month hiatus, Tosy and Cosh are back ranking every U2 song.

Why Tom Dooley was hanging his head. Plus hangman John Ellis.

That is NOT the way Dustbury remembers that song, and I don’t either. Plus the history of Unchained Melody.

Mark Evanier’s teacher from hell.

Lefty Brown’s Valentine’s Day post to Kelly. “The Married Gamers – Play Together. Stay Together.”

Maypo Cereal Commercial (1956) Yes, I DO remember it, so there.

The five-second rule, expanded. Very true.

One can count on SamuraiFrog for all things Muppet: Getting to the Big Game and Miss Piggy’s response, plus a meta ad for the upcoming movie and Rowlf getting ice cream and saying good night to Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night; I hear Fallon’s gotten another job. Fallon, BTW, went to school at the College of Saint Rose, about five blocks from my house.

Yet another version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Frog still torturing himself with 50 Shades of Smartass: Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 and Chapter 16. When I typed the title, I accidentally wrote “50 Years…”; read into that what you will.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

And now for the AmeriNZ section: Arthur’s linkage, in which he calls my Everly Brothers post “diabolical.” Arthur’s Law restated, tied to my Facebook unfriending. The law is a ass.

YouTube and AIDS deniers.

Advent/Christmas stories and songs

A Charlie Brown Christmas almost never aired

MUSIC:

Jaquandor has been offering Your Daily Dose of Christmas.

About.com’s Top 100 Christmas songs

The Bells of Christmas by Julie Andrews from a Firestone tire LP I still own.

Nat King Cole -The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)

Snow from White Christmas (Bing Crosby, et al).

The Dream Isaiah Saw, plus the backstory of the song, the lyrics and another rendition.

Tamale Christmas by Joe King Carrasco

SamuraiFrog’s contributions include Good King Wenceslas and the original Santa, Baby, as well as my favorite, A Christmas Carol by Tom Lehrer. But you should READ what he has to say about It Feels Like Christmas.

Eddie, the Renaissance Geek’s usual offering.

A Moose in a Maple Tree – The All Canadian 12 Days of Christmas

Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in Latin, set to plainsong.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen if it were played in a spaghetti western

The Beatles’ Christmas Record 1963

Vince Guaraldi Trio – A Charlie Brown Christmas (Full Album)

A very Coverville Christmas 2013; I especially enjoyed the Led Zeppelin.

dj BC writes, “I just dropped Santastic 8, the 8th annual Holiday mashup album in the series … This year we offer 14 new Christmas mashups and one old one which was reissued because it is great and it matches the album cover so well.

A goldmine of mostly very obscure, very bad seasonal music! Examples: a surfing Little Drummer Boy; a Jimi Hendrix version of Auld Lang Syne; and the truly awful Debbie’s Last Christmas.

VISUAL: