Why do we Even Care Anymore?

Ricky Martin is gay.

Lance Bass is gay.

Clay Aiken is gay.

Look, folks. I get it - sometimes, a gay public figure remains closeted for a long time, because he (or admittedly, in the case of superhottie Portia de Rossi, she) hides it well, or doesn't fit the stereotypical mold of what a gay person "should" be.

I'm looking at you, Neil Patrick Harris.

But in the cases of the Martin, Bass, and Aiken, it's not like we couldn't have figured it out. Ricky Martin's leather pants really should have been the first clue, but there were others. Frosted tips. Show tunes. Sex with other men. Whatever, they were all there.

What's interesting to me is why Martin and Aiken, especially, came out of the closet - both have children (all sons), and both wanted to make sure that they didn't teach their kids it was OK to live a lie.

It's true that there are certainly those who preach morality and hatred of all things not Biblical, and others who preach hate in the mask of love, which is probably even more insidious and hurtful.But by and large, modern society is generally acceptive of gay men and women - heck, all of the other members of 'NSync are still friends with Bass, despite the fact that they're all interested in vaginas instead of penises - with the possible exception of Chris Kirkpatrick, but it's not my place to know for sure. So why do these gay men and women continue to live the wrong life?

I think, in the end, there is a legitimate fear for the average gay man or woman that he or she will somehow become diminished in the eyes of friends, family, and in the case of the famous, fans. Clay Aiken's mother, for example, still struggles with the idea that Clay is gay. Honestly, woman, have you met your son?

And I know it's an easy question for me to ask from my position in the Ivory Tower of Straight People, and of course it's simplistic moralizing no matter who asks it, but it needs to be asked anyway: are the sorts of people who think less of their gay friends because they come out really worth having as friends?

Some of them probably are - folks who will come around and realize that Dan is still Dan, regardless of who he loves. I know that must be a hard thing for people who come out to ponder - "who will I still have as a friend?" While I obviously can't understand that exact trepidation, I can understand on an academic level that it, and all of the associated worries that come with it, is honest and legitimate and probably really, really terrifying.

But in the end, the onus is on those of us who fit the historical mold of what is normal - why do we, as straight folks, even care about whether a singer or actor is gay? Neil Patrick Harris is the same great actor he was the day before he came out. Lance Bass doesn't sing any worse. Liberace, though he never came out publicly, was a...well, he was Liberace every day, I guess.

In the end? It seems a shame, to me, that we as straight people honor the gay man who comes out and is willing to live an honest life, but are so often unwilling to be honest and open enough beforehand that our gay friends torture themselves so.





As a qualifier, this post was, in fact, inspired by Ricky Martin. Probably the first and last time that'll ever happen to me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go shake my bon-bon, or something.

An Introspective Retrospective

So, I turned 30 years old on Friday.

I haven't really put a lot of stock into birthdays in a while - not since at least my 20th. I'm not entirely sure why, but it might have to do, simply, with the fact that I'm a boring little shit. I've never been particularly good at keeping in touch with people who aren't always within about 4 feet of me (Sean can attest to this), so that means that there's not a lot of blast-from-the-past type folks to invite to parties or get-togethers or shindigs or, if I can find a jug band, hootenannies.

But, regardless of that fact, the thirtieth birthday is a legitimate milestone - frankly, it's the last milestone birthday until 40. So perhaps I should at least pretend to care about it. Here's a monologue that ought to suffice:

I consider my first thirty years a failure.
-Not because I don't feel like I've made enough friends - I have. But then I've done my best to lose them through inaction.
-Not because I don't have enough stuff - I do. But, truth be told, I probably have too much.
-Not because I don't have a good family - I do. But those back home I've ignored, and those here I've done the same. Both are bad, but the latter is obviously worse.
-Not because I don't get enough love - I feel loved in spades. Instead, I need to give more.
-Not because I haven't suffered enough head injuries - I have. One was inflicted by a baseball bat, one by a delivery truck, and one by an air duct. The one that was scariest is not what you might think.
-Not because I don't have enough hobbies - I do. But most of them are, quite frankly, stupid. By the way, I need help on a Moscow job.
-Not because I don't enjoy my work - I do. But I find that I'm frustrated by the bureaocracy, which makes me uninspired.
-Not because I haven't led a good life - I have. But I always think I can do better.

All in all, I think I should be proud of the three decades I've spent on this rotating ball of rock I call home. I wonder, though, if the next thirty years will be as good as the first thirty.

I close now, with a joke:
Three old men were sitting on a nursing home porch. One says to the other two, "What do you want people to say about you twenty years from now? I'd like people to say what a great father and husband I was."
The second man says, "I'd like them to mention my gifts to charity."
The third man thinks a moment and says, "I want people to say, 'I can't believe he's dating another supermodel.'"

See, This is Why I Don't Gamble on College Sports

I've been casting about hither and yon in an attempt to find something to post about this week, and it's been kinda hard. Kirsten has taken the wind out of my sails with two videos of Lorelei being adorable (well, one video of Lorelei being adorable, and one of her being vomitous), so kid-related blog posts are out. The cats haven't done anything special, so they're not gettin' posted about.

I am watching a Pixar short about Mater going to Japan and becoming a racer, a-la Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which is hilarious, but not really worth talking about beyond that.

Moving on....

No, I'm stuck blogging this evening about how much I FREAKING HATE THE NCAA FINAL FOUR. Seriously. Every year I put together a bracket that is based on legitimate research, the wisdom of crowds, rankings, RPI, record against top-25 and top-50 teams...and every year I get reamed with a broomhandle.

This year there were the standard upsets in the first round of the tournament, which is to be expected - no big deal, right? Right. The real problem comes in the second round of the 2010 Division I basketball champinships, when freaking NORTHERN FREAKING IOWA beats Kansas. Number 1 in the overall tournament Kansas! Versus number 9 in the region Northern Iowa! THEY LOSE TO FREAKING NORTHERN IOWA! WHAT THE HELL???

Every one of the five brackets I submitted this year had Kansas going to the National Championship game and winning. Every one! So what now? Well, it looks like I've donated 10 bucks to charity in two pay bracket leagues, and wasted my time with the other brackets.

At least the fact that 11th-ranked Washington beat number-3 New Mexico later in the day now means nothing, despite my having New Mexico making the Elite Eight in three of my brackets.

There are times when I can honestly say that I'm a subject-matter expert. There are times when I can say, in sporting-related questions, that I know what I'm talking about?

But in March? Well, that'd just be madness.

Honey, Keep the Cats Indoors

So, some bird of prey has taken up residence in my very urban neighborhood. I was driving down Osceola Street on my way to get some Sunday doughnuts, and this bird (which had been happily chewing on a squirrel) took off and roosted in a nearby sweetgum tree.

I'm unsure of the species - I'm relatively certain it's a juvenile red-tailed or Swainson's hawk, but if anyone can more accurately identify it, let me know.

Of course, the REAL qusetion is whether the bird is here to stay, or is just a property speculator, artificially inflating roost values.

Picture here:


And a few more pictures are available here:
http://shapu.deviantart.com

Brief Update

Kirsten has decided that being a mother and housewife is a major enough status change to justify shutting down one blog, and creating a new one on WordPress.

Her new blog is here: http://adventuresofanurbanhousewife.wordpress.com/.

Sorta Like Julie and Julia, but Less French.

So, Kirsten and I have been cooking more, as we cut financial costs out of our life, whut cuz mah wife ain't workin' no more an' all. While the downside is that we spend a lot less time at great restaurants like Chimichanga's Mexican Restaurant or The Original Crusoe's, it also means we get the chance to try new things.

Like, say, stew.

Before about a week ago, I don't think I'd had homemade stew in years. My mother has made it in the past, and she's a fine cook, so I know what good homemade stew is supposed to taste like. Still, since I came to college, I've discovered the joy of things like Dinty Moore Beef Stew in a Box ("no refrigeration required!") and, admittedly, the results.

But thanks to the fact that most Targets now carry groceries, Kirsten has become more and more willing to experiment with cooking (right now we have a whole chicken in our fridge, waiting to be soaked in Guinness beer). So a few days ago she bought a pound of stew meat, some veggies, and a whole lot of moxie (not Moxie cola; That stuff is crap).

And today she put all of the ingredients into a crock pot that we bought for just this sort of adventure, set the thing to cook for 8 hours, and voila! Stew!

And I gotta say that my wife did a great job. The meat was melt-in-your-mouth soft and delicious, the veggies were great, and the mashed potatoes we spooned into the bottom of our bowls were the perfect way to add starch.

I just hope Kirsten doesn't cut her hair short the way Amy Adams did for the movie I've referenced in this post's title. Frankly, she was much better looking with her hair long and her clothes mostly not on her.

People, Please: Fill Out Your Forms

So, something not a whole heck of a lot of you might know is that I moonlight as a Kaplan teacher. It's not a particularly glamorous job, but it puts a few extra bucks in my pocket and it keeps me out of trouble on weekends. Sort of like midnight basketball, except that I'm so old that midnight is way past my bedtime.

True story: Before I took this job, I considered graveyard shifting at a local Motel 6 to make some extra scratch. I dutifully filled out an application and was turned down - why, I do not know, but I'm gonna guess it's because I asked for more than minimum wage. To the owners of Motel 6: If you would spend less money on a "famous" voice talent for your radio ads, and more money on night-shift desk clerks, your chain would suck significantly less. Just a hint.

Anyway, one of the good things about this job is the fact that I get to actually hang out with dedicated people. I often allow myself to get beaten down by my own perception of other people - coworkers, friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, Kevin Bacon, whatever. And I often say, "Well, x person doesn't try hard, so I don't have to, either." The end result is that I end up slacking off for basically weeks, and not enough gets done.

This isn't fair, or right, or even intellectually honest of me. But when I get in front of these kids - they're a legitimate inspiration to me.

Case in point: one of my students in this particular class confessed to me that she felt she didn't really remember any of her high school math. She says she guessed on a lot of the questions. She says she's really worried, and I could see on her face that she might have actually been understating her fears.

But she still scored a 13 on the math section of the ACT. Now, admittedly, a 13 out of 36 isn't great - it's in the bottom 30 percentile. But for someone who claims not to remember any of it? It's a great score. And it's consistent with what her other section scores were - which means that she either remembers more than she thinks, or that she guessed really well, or it means that she doesn't remember anything from any subject (I consider this the least likely possibility).

The only problem is that so many of these kids need constant reminders to do their homework (required for the guarantee of a better score), or to focus their studying, or whatever. These reminders come from me - but the only way I can check their progress is on the Kaplan intranet, which records their activities on the Kaplan website. But if they don't fill out their online agreement, they can't go online, which means they can't make progress, which means I can't track it. End result? They don't qualify for the guarantee, and I can't make them better test-takers. And it's not like it's hard - it is, in point of fact, a checkbox and an "Ok" button. No need to even read the agreement - it's not like anyone reads the truly absurd EULAs out there, so why read this one?

Just kidding. Kids, read your contracts.

But if that's the only headache I have, I can cope. Now if only I could earn 50 grand a year teaching pre-college tests. I would do that in a heartbeat. Especially if the worst I have to deal with is a 30th-percentile student who's obviously smarter than she thinks.