When A Man Loves A Werewolf

Friday, July 30, 2010

Can we just stop the entire storyline of True Blood and put this guy on screen for an hour every week? Of course, he would not be allowed to wear any more clothing than he's wearing in this photo, but he is certainly welcome to wear less!

This show is full of absolute, pure, utterly adolteraded essence of Win. I think I heard it best describe as goth-chic softcore porn.

Acquired: Geek Happiness

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The husband and I made our way to the local game store last night to try out a few board games. The Dice Dojo is only a few blocks away but is one of the best gaming stores I've been to in a long time. It's got a pretty large selection of games, board, card, tabletop and otherwise, and a large area in back set up with the specific intention of allowing people to play some games and socialize.

Every Wednesday the store hosts an open board gaming night. They allow people to come in and try out nearly 300 different games they have opened for general use, and I suppose the idea is that if you try out some games, you'll be more likely to buy them. After all, most people are "try before you buy" types. That certainly includes myself and my husband, and the set up worked perfectly!

To be honest, I had been looking for a board game the husbear and I could play at home together. He's not really in to chess, there's only a few video games he enjoys (and even those on rare occasion), and the only board games we own involve hours of time and/or set up (Risk, Axis and Allies), so I was hoping to find something smaller scale that we could both enjoy. After consulting with a few friends and a shop employee, I decided we should try Carcassonne, and I'm glad we did.

The store was full of the types or people you might expect to find at a gaming function. I'm not one to normally stereotype, but if you know hard core gamers, you know what I'm talking about. But people were friendly enough and also smart enough to give us our own space to explore new games. Honestly though, we only got through one game of Carcassonne - Hunters and Gatherers before we decided to pick up the original version of the game for our own home use.

I wasn't shocked that my husband liked the game: it's fun and known as somewhat of a modern classic, so I knew that the game would be enjoyable. But I am very happy to have acquired a new piece of geekery for our house and particularly on that we can both enjoy. Together.

Drag U: First Impressions

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The husband and I sat down to watch Ru Paul's new show on Logo, Drag U, last week. Being big fans of Ru Paul's Drag Race, we were very excited to see the new show, if only because it brings some of our favorite queens back to the mix like Ongina and Nina Flowers. While the show was fabulously campy and perfectly low budget, I have to say that it rather annoyed me at times, but I'll get that in a moment.

The basis of the show is that Ru Paul has recruited his favorite (or the fan favorites at least) drag queens from the past two seasons of Drag Race to give biological women drag make overs. In the first episode they transformed three deliciously tomboyish ladies into wonderfully draggy divas! As I said, it's campy, as a show about drag queen performers almost has to be, and fun, as a makeover show should always be. But what was missing was the chance to focus on real human drama.

Some of these women had some serious psychological issues with being feminine. One wanted to spice up a failing marriage and another blamed her former femininity as the reason for being sexually assaulted. And while the producers made mention of these things, they chose not to focus on what their drag transformation might do to positively impact these women, which is a HUGE missed opportunity. That is real drama and the chance to show that these drag divas are more than just stereotypical drama queens was completely missed. Instead the producers focused on made up, scripted, trite "drag drama." "This bitch stole my wig," or "that gurl called me fat" were unnecessary additions to this show and only served to undermine the potential of it.

I was also slightly bothered by the judge's panel. These women are trying to make themselves feel better about themselves and having the judges rate them afterward really undermines that ultimate goal of helping these ladies. If they feel the need to judge anyone, they should judge the queens assigned to the women, as they are the ones ultimately responsible for the new look.

What is great is seeing the family and friend's reaction to their loved one's transformation. Getting a make over from a drag queen is quite different than getting a make over from the Queer Eye team. I also really enjoyed the bits of human drama that were tossed in. I also really like that this is a show that has the potential for a full season filled with cast members I actually like. Speaking of, I do really LOVE seeing my favorite divas again without having to look at that vicious Tyra Sanchez again.

All in all, it's a decent show. I hope to see more variety as the season progresses and I hope they take the time to change up the focus, but I'll give it a few more episodes before I give a final verdict.

Album Of The Week: Jay Brannan's Goddamned

Monday, July 26, 2010

For this week's Album of the Week I decided to reach out to a slightly older album, but certainly one of my favorite recordings I've had the privilege of listening to: Jay Brannan's Goddamned.

I've written about Jay before when I first saw him in concert. Seeing him live is certainly a great experience and seeing him live without any previous exposure to his music was a complete and total surprise in the best possible way. This guy is a true singer/songwriter in many, many senses. I was recently able to see him on stage again here in Chicago, and although the venue (Beat Kitchen) was not the best, it was still an absolute pleasure to see him perform live.

Some things hold true about Jay no matter whether you see him live or listen to his albums, particularly the perfect qualities of his voice. I can't say it any better than I did the first time around:

This is a voice that you don't often hear in the music world. Soft and strong, perfectly pitched with a solid vibrato, and the accuracy of a trumpet with the rhythm of a percussionist. This was a musician on stage, not just a guy with a guitar.

Goddamned was his first effort at a self-produced album. That normally spells amateur and barely passable when it comes to most singer/songwriters, but Jay isn't really your average bloke with a guitar. This guy is a true musician that understands his art. He knows his voice, he knows his ability, and he knows how to allow the song to flow from within him, acting as the vessel to art rather than the patriarchal creator. There's something magical about that as it is a rare quality to find in a musician.

None of this means Jay is anywhere close to Sainthood though. With Goddamned, he explores the underbelly of money-hungry religious leaders, he reveals his promiscuity, and he revels in his many and varied neuroses. And not a moment of it is off-putting, because in every song the listener can relate on some level. We've all had the one-night stand, or the moment when we felt a bit whoreish, or that moment when we impatiently waited by the phone for that boy/girl to call us back even though we know in our heart they aren't going to call. More than just about any other songwriter, Jay finds a way to tap into all of those things in a way that both exposes himself and the listener at the same time, creating a bond that is hard to come by in an album.

Jay is a gay man, and although his songs often explore his life as a gay man, he abhors being called a "gay singer/songwriter." He's been known to delete references to his sexuality from his Wikipedia page. I'm not completely sure why it is important to him to be known as just a plain ol' singer/songwriter when his songs so explicitly handle the queer psyche, but it is important to him so I'll comply: He's a songwriter. That is also gay. And writes mostly gay-themed material, because that is his experience. But he's just a singer/songwriter.

Tracks to pay attention to: Half-Boyfriend, I Want To Be A Housewife, Bowlegged and Starving. Songs to skip: none. They're all really amazing with great production value. Minimalist, but well-done. If you don't own Goddamned, I strongly suggest that you add it to your collection. He has a newer album as well, but I'll cover that another time. For now, go get Goddamned and enjoy the hell out of it!

Geeks Pwn The Westboro Baptist Church

Good god, I love my geeks! I've been a geek for some time, as the simple evidence of writing a blog points to, but even more so I'm a gaming geek, as the evidence of writing a gaming blog would point to... OK, so it is completely evident that I'm a geek and I have no need to point it out to the readers, but still...

Anyway, there are reasons I love geeks, one of those reasons being how generally accepting they are of the LGBT community (except the online gaming community... they have a tendency to have some very vocal, vile, base punks in their mix). Another reason is that they have a wonderful sense of snark and sarcasm rarely seen in other communities.

Thus when the Westboro Baptist Church showed up to douse Comic Con, the largest "nerd con" in the states (events that heavily feature comics, games, or sci-fi as their subject... my definition at least), with their hate, the geeks of Comic Con were well prepared for some deliciously sarcastic rebuttals.

I've talked about the futility of protesting hate groups like the WBC before, and I still believe that, but the difference between the counter-protest I was talking about in that article and the one seen at Comic Con is that the Comic Con protest was the absolute perfect way to handle the WBC freaks: you can't take them seriously. All we can do is point out the absurdity of their message. Any our geeky friends just did it the best.

Avenue Q Had It Right: Everyone's A Little Bit Racist

Thursday, July 22, 2010

The continuing saga of Shirley Sherrod provides an excellent starting point for something that has bothered me for a very long time. Her point is not my point, mind you, but it leads in to what I've though for far too long. There are far too many people willing to accept racism within their own ethnicity but will then cry foul when someone of a different ethnicity expresses even the slightest racist thought.

That mentality is what is at the root of the entire Shirley Sherrod scandal. Some white dude edits a video that ostensibly shows an African American government official admitting she had a racist thought at one point in her life, distributes said video, the news orgy erupts with outrage, and she gets fired in the process. A few days later, people take a look at the context of what she was saying and realize that she was actually admitting that she knew race had nothing to do with the situation at hand and that people needed to work together to solve societies ills, and now everyone is all apologizing to her and offering her new jobs. But why did people not take the time to go through all the information when the story first hit?

Here's the bottom line of it all though: there are racist white people and there are racist black people and there are racist Hispanic people and there are racist (insert ethnicity here) people. Until we can accept that and admit that, then the dialogue on race goes no where. As long as we pretend that members of a different ethnic background should be immune to racist thought while accepting it within their own, nothing moves forward.

Admitting that at one point in your life you had a racist thought is not the end of the world. Well, it should not be the end of the world. What it should be is an admission of fault which lead to a growing understanding. Saying that I once had a racist thought, but that I then examined that thought and it lead me to the conclusion that every one suffers and that we all should work together to resolve differences is the correct attitude. Racist thoughts are bred into us through our societies and the people we surround ourselves with and the media we consume. It will happen that, on occasion, a person will have a racist thought. The condemnation should not come at admitting that thought, rather the condemnation should come if a person chooses to act on or accept that racist thought. Do you act upon that thought negatively, or do you take the initiative to analyze it and work beyond it?

There is a psychological theory on racism (which I, of course, cannot find or remember the name of at the moment) which looks at racist thought as a forgone conclusion. It is not whether someone has racist thoughts that determines if someone is racist, because everyone has racist thoughts. Instead it looks at how quickly we move away from those thoughts. The theory goes that when presented with a situation, we immediately jump to our most basest thought first, then move to a more rational thought. When it comes to race, this is where racism is measured. We may think racist thought initially, but the measure of racism is how quickly we move beyond that thought to a more rational view of the situation.

If we cannot admit to having racist thoughts, how can we examine those thoughts for what they are and learn to grow beyond them? That, in a roundabout way, is what Shirley Sherrod was getting at in her video. If we cannot accept that racism is real and alive, we cannot fight against it. We cannot fight an enemy that we do not believe exists, and that includes a belief we hold.

I'll only give a passing mention to the hypocrisy of the far right holding this story up as a beacon as if they were revealing some seedy underbelly of the Obama Administration. One woman does not an administration make More importantly, one should always clean their own house before criticizing someone else's home. Using this woman as a smokescreen is pretty obvious and just a little pathetic.

But Shirley is right. We all need to move on, and we can't do that until we admit that there is a problem that needs to be solved.

Men Are Hotter In The Morning?

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Maybe it's just my gym, but I've found that hotter guys tend to be at the gym first thing in the morning compared to the evening crowd. There also seems to a drastic attitude difference between the two. It's almost as if the guys in the mornings are there to actually work out and the guys in the evening are more concerned with scoping the scene and posing. Of course, that Stand & Model approach to gym time has absolutely nothing to do with the around 70-80% of members being Friends of Dorothy… I'm sure that has no effect on the attitude...

I've come to quite like gyming in the mornings though. The people are more pleasant, there's less of them, and as I mentioned above they are much hotter, which is a key motivator in the "I want to look like that" department. The pleasantness could be due more to it being 5:30 am which means no one in there is quite awake yet, but still… having less people in the gym is quite nice too.

I know my husband thinks I'm insane for getting up at 5am just to go to the gym, but the way I figure it is I either do that or go in the evenings which usually takes me longer due to the crowds in the gym. Not to mention I'm just generally annoyed with life by the time my work day is done and I've sat on the CTA for an hour and a half. Oh, and the mens just aren't as hot.

I still go in the evenings sometimes, usually because when my alarm goes off at 5 am my body and mind tell me that I must go back to sleep for another hour, but I'm trying to phase that out and make my mornings more gym centric. I also like that there are fewer reasons to not go to the gym that early compared to the evenings. At night there's always something I that need to do, someone we need to meet, or dinner that needs to be cooked, but not so in the mornings so if I go in the AM then I can be free to entertain or play house husband for the evening.

The downside is that 5 am is hella early. Yes, working out gets my blood pumping and wakes me up and provides some energy for the day, but by noon or so I'll be dragging bad. Nothing that some coffee or tea can't fix, but still, I'd rather not have to rely on caffeine to get through the day.

So, I sum this us thusly:

Working out in the morning Pros
Hot guys
Less crowded gym
Pleasantness
More time in the evenings

Working out in the morning Cons
It's damn early
I have to get up early
Crazy people are up early
I might be tired throughout the day, due to waking up early

Album Of The Week: Dark Night Of The Soul

This week I thought I'd share an album that I actually like as my Album of the Week. It's another new one, which was a bit unintentional, but regardless it is really, really good.

Dark Night Of The Soul is the new collaborative effort spearheaded by Danger Mouse, this time with Sparklehorse. Given that Danger Mouse is the mastermind behind another group that I absolutely love, Gnarls Barkley, it isn't much of a surprise that I'm also digging Dark Night of the Soul, but even though the Gnarls Barkley sound is similar to the Dark Night sound, Dark Night has a definitively Alternative rock feel and sound to it.

Instead of focusing on one vocalist for the whole album, Danger Mouse brought in a few different vocalists to lend a note to each of the tracks on the album which helps to keep each track fresh and interesting. On my first few listen throughs I found myself completely enthralled with the variety of artists involved in this album. I knew each track would offer something different than the last and I was looking forward to each song, but I did not want the song I was listening to end.

For those looking for a pop sound, this is not the album to find it. For those looking for something alternative and rocky, this album likely won't deliver. For those looking for something interesting, unique, and fresh with a hints of different sounds tossed together with a dressing of Danger Mouse, this will satisfy perfectly.

Some tracks to pay attention to: Revenge, Little Girl, Pain (with Iggy Pop!), and Everytime I'm With You. Tracks to avoid: none really. Not every track is perfect, and some sounds are a bit overused, but nothing stood out at me as just plain terrible.

Check out the samples on the left side of the site. If you like 'em, you know the drill. If you hate them… well, you wouldn't be the only one as my husband isn't a big fan either. In any case, I'm digging the album, I hope you do too!

I Don't Know You, But I Think I Hate You

Monday, July 19, 2010

Are there any people you happen to see every day but don't know at all? And of those people, do you absolutely detest one of them for what you perceive them to be? No? Hmmm… well then, me neither…

OK, well, that's not completely true. There is this one guy that rides the bus with me every morning, but I swear if we ever actually met I'd think he was an utterly miserable tool. I look at him and am amazed that there is anyone out there at all who could think he has anything close to a passably friendly personality. Except maybe his mother, but probably not. I mean, she probably smiles sweetly when he deigns to grace her with his presence and says encouraging things to him on the phone when he calls her to cry himself to sleep every Saturday night while he sits in a watches Golden Girl reruns again, but I can guarantee that she talks to her friends about him like he has Downs Syndrome or just forgets to bring him up in conversation at all.

I simply can't stand him. He gets on the bus every morning wearing whatever "trendy" outfits some fashion magazine picked out for him with his nose turned so far up I'm surprised he doesn’t trip with every step he takes. I know when he gets on the bus too because the distinct aroma of fetid cockiness and disturbed air of unearned confidence travels throughout the bus as everyone lets out a sigh and rolls their eyes. He then proceeds to find an open bench and ensure that his bags find a way to take up the seat next to him, never mind that pregnant grandmother standing up right next to him hanging on to the handrail with frail and wary hands. And heaven forbid someone accidentally brush against his leg which is extended so far into the aisle it may as well be a limbo bar for toddlers because he will instantaneously launch into a tirade of lip smacks, hard stares and mumbling. Oh, and he, of course, needs to open his laptop immediately upon sitting and get on his cell phone and talk and type for the entire trip. Because any person that is actually that important lives in his neighborhood and rides the public transit system out to Rosemont for work on a daily basis…

Why do I hate this guy I've never met? Truthfully, I have no idea. It is completely irrational, and I am completely aware of that, but every time I see him on the bus, which is every work day, I get the urge to scream at him in some guttural language and hope it amounts to a curse that causes his hair to fall out while he weeps in the shower (I may have watched The Craft recently...). Does he have actuall friends and a fruitful, productive life? Who cares! It's much more interesting to project on to him my perception of his life than it is to actually talk to him. Besides, we don't talk to strangers in Chicago, particularly ones who obviously aren't homeless but would likely fit right in if they ever happened to find themselves in that situation.

Crazy Creepers Are Up Early Too

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

There are some absolutely wonderful things about living in Chicago. Street fairs, art, music, hot boys, and great food all make this city magical. But I can verify for you now that random strangers on the street are not one of those magical things about Chicago. In fact, they tend to be the thing that makes me want to move out of this city.

When my mom and stepdad were in town, they had a tendency to say "Hi!" to every person we walked by. Didn't matter if they were raggedy street thugs or uppity snobs, they smiled politely and greeted everyone... And were promptly ignore by 85% of the people they greeted. See, their from the rural South, where greeting people is the norm. Chances are you've met that person, and if not yet, you might someday so why not be nice to them now, right? Which is fine for panhandle Florida, but not so fine here.

Here in Chicago if a random stranger smiles at me and says hi, or anything really, I KNOW the next thing out of their mouth is "Do you have any money?". As such, Chicagoans have developed a keen ability to ignore everyone. It's a truly amazing skill, and one that has probably saved our lives in more occasions than we care to admit. The only people that respond to random strangers are tourists.

So it was this morning that I was heading to the gym. I get up way too early to go to the gym before work, so usually there's no one on the streets. But as luck would have it, there was one wide awake, crazy-eyed creep on a corner that I pass by to get to the gym. He sees that I'm checking my email on my phone as I walk by and then asks if he can use my phone for a quick call.

... I don't even make eye contact with random ass people on the street, I highly doubt I would ever let some stranger touch my fucking phone! Besides, who the hell are you calling at 5:20 am?

So I give him my standard "no" answer (admittedly with some attitude) and keep walking. Most creeps just move one and start harassing the next person, but not this guy. No, he wanted to try and make me feel bad for not letting him use my multi-hundred dollar phone. So he starts screaming at the top of his lungs:

"Fucking faggot! Honkey ass, racist faggot! I ought to slap upside your KKK head, teach your faggoty ass a lesson! Goddamn faggot with your pretty little phone, I bet that shit's pink like you faggoty ass!" And so on and so forth. I could still hear him two blocks away.

Now I don't know if he was just bored, so that's why he hollered after me, or maybe the lack of other people to harass at 5:20 am on the street was his impetus to keep yelling at me, but whatever it was that inspired him to think that I'd let His Royal Trashiness use my phone had to either be severely psychotic or really fucked up on various and sundry drugs.

Luckily the dude was harmless. He just kept yelling, but didn't follow. But still... It made for an interesting morning.