Black Wednesday

I have to admit that I'm a little taken aback at how hard this has hit me. Imagine losing someone who'd not just confirmed, but by wit, razor-sharp rhetoric and unapologetically saucy style had shaped your sense of righteousness and your tolerence level for the buffoonery and unmitigated stupidity that passes for public discourse in this country.

It's a black, black day.

I don't know what lies beyond death, but I hope whatever it is is glorious for dear, dear Molly.

I'm Not Scared At All...

Urp.

Just the thought of this kinda makes me a little sick to my stomach:

I'm a Bitter Little Man

Oh, Dear Reader, I'm an angry, bitter little man.

I recently found out that my beloved was releasing a new album. I knew that it was coming, but I didn't know anything about it.

Imagine my terrible disappointment when I discovered it's a "best of" retrospective of songs from his previous albums, with only a few new songs thrown in.

Curses! Curses I say! I shake my fist at the music gods who taunt me!

motherofdearsweetwhattheohmyjeebus

Okay, it's no wonder I've never belonged to a gym before.

Let me just start by saying that I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, look like this when I remove my shirt:

Neither, however, am I at the other end of the spectrum:

I live, I should think, somewhere in the middle, closer to this:

Which has, up until this point, been fine by me.

I mean, I knew that people of that second sort existed; after all, I'd photographed them from a distance. But I had no idea that they existed in such large numbers or that they tended to congregate in gyms, seemingly with the sole purpose of making the rest of us feel inadequate.

I've been going to the gym before work, varying my arrival time anywhere between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. From purely unscientific observation, it would appear that the Greek Gods like to sleep in, and really don't start arriving at the gym much before 8 a.m., which, of course, is about the time I'm getting out of the shower and heading off to work.

It's probably best that I don't have to stare at the Greek Gods while I'm working out. I think it would tend to be overly disspiriting.

On a happier note, Fozzie insists that he's able to see changes in my body already, after only a week. I'm a little convinced that's wishful thinking on his part, but I'll take it. It might motivate me out of bed tomorrow morning.

All is Revealed

And you wonder why I wanted to move back to Prospect Heights.

Hello, My Friends

I was digging around through my backup drive the other day and came across this homage to my friends. I think I was exploring the wonders of the Windows Movie Maker. There weren't that many, but this resulted:

JesuJoyofMansDesiring!

I've done it.

I've finally gone and joined a gym.

Horrified as I am to discover that skipping a meal or two no longer suffices to reach my goal weight, that's not really the reason why I've done it.

I just haven't been feeling terribly healthy lately, and since I've been making such an effort to eat well, I figured it was about time I get serious about it.

I have to admit to being completely overwhelmed and intimidated by the idea of going to the gym. My experience of places in which people — men in particular — congregate to engage in athletic pursuits hasn't been all that great. It either results in me being bullied or laughed at. Of course, these experiences last happened when I was thirteen, so I may have the wrong impression.

But then again, have you people met the modern gay man?

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

But why, you ask, am I so repulsed by the idea of a working out at a gym?

It reminds me, I fear, too much of high school P.E. class.

I know. It's in the past, and I have to get over it, but that's just not the way I'm made, my friends.

Picture, if you will, lil' Joe, struggling to make his chum-like way through the mako-infested waters of the swill tank known as American Secondary Education.

Then imagine, if it doesn't strain too far your credulity, that Our Hero wasn't the most athletic of his tribe of adolescent animals. Imagine he had, say, the hand/eye coordination of, oh, I don't know, a retarded rhesus monkey, and the strength of a two year old girl.

Imagine further, if we may trouble you to do so, that selfsame young fellow plopped into the middle of a P.E. class in which the barbarian who ran the joint decided the young fellows in said class should murder each other with rubber orbs.

Oh, but it doesn't end there, my friends.

Continue imagining, do please, that Yours Truly manages to survive to nearly the end of the Trial by Ball and is, in fact, by some cruel twist of fate (read: mocking plan of the gods) the only player left on his side. Imagine that I successfully dodge a couple of shots, retrieve one of the balls, and have in my sites a clear shot at one of the Princes of the Jocks™.

I pull back with all the strength my girly arms can muster and prepare to heave-ho at said Jock.

At which point the Barbarian P.E. teacher decides to spare me and blows the whistle to end the game.

Remember my mentioning that bit about having the hand/eye coordination of a retarded rhesus monkey? Now's where that comes back to haunt me.

Because I've started the arc of my throw, ladies and gentlemen, and — like a horse biting down on an apple — once begun, this motion cannot be arrested.

And of course the Jock, hearing the whistle, relaxes and stands up out of his ready-to-leap-aside crouch — placing his face squarely in the path of my on-rushing Rubber Sphere of Death.

That's right.

That's the moment, my friends. That was the moment I was forever labeled as the poor sport who threw the ball after the whistle had been blown. And marked for all time (or, at least, 'til I finished high school) as the implacable enemy of the Tribe of Jocks.

And you wonder why I'm hesitant to step into a gym?

But I'm doing it. God help me.

Anyway, I'm lucky, 'cuz I have several people rooting for me, and at least a couple of gym buddy volunteers, so that's good.

So, yeah, I'm not really expecting to end up looking like the fellow in the picture to the left up there, but I at least hope to stave off looking like this a little longer:

Martha Graham Said It...

...to Agnes de Mille and, somehow, I think this is meant to encourage me to continue being an artiste:

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. "

from Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham
by Agnes de Mille

Kreepie

This, at Gawker.com, just made me laugh and laugh:

Reconsidering Brown

Ever since my mother bought me the chocolate brown polyester leisure suit, circa 1977, and paired it with a navy faux-silk rayon shirt festooned with printed bald eagles clutching ribbons and olive branches, Brown and I have held an uneasy truce.

For years, I've shunned Brown, passing it by at the clothing store, my eyes sliding off proffered choices faster than a drunken slalom skiier on an oil-slicked ice patch.

I have, in short, loathed Brown.

But all things, as they say, change. Recently, I had occasion to purchase a cordouroy jacket at an extremely low price. The store was, alas, out of the Olive number I craved, and all that was on the sale rack was a Brown. It called out to me, and I needed a little something to replace my light jacket.

So I bought it.

To my shock and awe, I've gotten more than a few compliments on how I look in Brown. So I've decided to give it another chance. I even went out and bought a sweater in Brown.

Gone, apparently, are the days when Brown and Black were forbidden to appear in the same ensemble. Which is good, since I have a lot more Black in my world than I have Brown.

Brown's just going to have to find a way to fit in.

For now, though, it's enough that I'm warming to Brown again.

I'm magnanimous that way.

Welcome, Lizzie!

Join me, please, in welcoming Miss Elizabeth Hope Coffee to the fold:

Mom and dad are well, if frazzled (hey, they've got two already!), and the family's settling in at home.

Yay Coffee clan!

Naughty

The Earth Resolves Around Me

Last year I actually made and kept a resolution, even though I had failed at them so miserably in every - and I do mean every - year before. But this past year, I resolved to see more theater, and managed to see more in Y2K than I had in the ten years before, probably. That may be a slight exaggeration, but if it is, it's just that: slight.

So I'm a little buoyant at the thought of making and following through on another one, but I'm feeling a little reluctant to commit. I mean, clearly, I want to avoid any of the resolutions that have been such a stumbling block in the past. And it's not exactly as if any of them apply. I don't need to lose 30 pounds... if I did, I'd look like Mahatma Gandhi, only white, young, and spectacle-less. Oh, and not bald. I don't need to fix my love life; I'm pretty happy with it the way it is. I don't particularly feel the need to be a nicer person - I think I do pretty okay in that department. I mean, I'm human and all, and have human failings, but when you get right down to it, I treat people the way I expect to be treated, I'm not too much of a bore (although there are people who would argue that I'm boring, and I'm not really sure I'd have many quick comebacks for them there), and I can hold up my end of a conversation without making it exclusively about me - although most of the time I'd like to.

So where does that leave me? I guess I could resolve to slim down another ten pounds. Then I'd be out-and-out hot. But it seems like such a pedestrian goal, you know? Here I'm this guy who just yesterday was writing about how we should all be so spiritual, and what, I'm gonna make a resolution based on physical appearance?!? It's not, as a dear friend might say, on the menu this evening.

I'd like to say that I could make a resolution to help the homeless in some way, or become a Big Brother® or something, but truth be told, I've got my hands full taking care of a freakin' puppy dog. So I think it'll have to just be this: I resolve to work toward I life for myself in which I no longer need to make resolutions. How's that? I think that the Dalai Lama would appreciate that one.

I have to be careful. If my mother gets wind of these sorts of musings, she's going to accuse me of becoming Buddhist. Then my resolution would be to find a way back into her good graces, her having disowned me and all. ;o)