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THE LEFT HAND COLUMN

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The Surreal Life Redux

So I'm exiting the local mega-mart (politically incorrect but close to home). In this particular store, with which I'm sure all 8 of you are familiar, there are assorted games located at the exits-to get you to spend just that little quarter more.

As I'm walking I see a group, ok let's say a gang, all right, maybe it was a throng...anyway I see a crowd gathered in front of the ever-popular and easy-to-play (hyah, right) Crane And Tiny Stuffed Toys machine. They are, to use a hackneyed phrase, a motley crew: jeans torn and dirty, leather vests on everyone including the little kid actually running the machine, and everyone talking with a twang that can only be appreciated here in the wilds of Florida (a little bit Alabama, a little bit stump water).

Anyway, this group is twanging away animatedly as the kid tries to manuver the tiny, sliver crane over his .25 toy of choice:

"Git it awver thair! More. More. Mower!" "He ain't gawna git it." "Aw, c'mon Travis, git it!"

Meanwhile the kid is hunched over the console as if his hair, his happiness and his ability to breathe depends on getting this toy.

Then I hear a bunch of "aws" and "sheets" and "dayums." Apparently Travis sucks at this game and has let down the entire clan. Everyone starts shifting around grumbling over the loss of the stuffed Tweety that Travis wanted to win so badly he spent a whole quarter and brought his entire family to watch his efforts. Travis is not happy. Travis has failed. Travis is a loser.

Or is he?

As I exit the store there's a crush at the door with Travis' family, all 47 of them, grumbling and twanging all the way home. No one is happy especially Travis who gripes in a teeny twang right along with the rest. Until above the bitching I hear a middle-aged voice, and it releases Travis from his well of failure, his hell of loser-ness and raises him up, maybe not in his own head, but in the in the eyes and ears of anyone within earshot:

"Thayet thair was a gyp. G-I-P-P, gyp."

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 26, 2004 16:27 | link | comments (1)

Best Headline So Far Today:

Fart-absorbing undies for dogs include thongs

"Hey, pull my paw. No really, pull it."

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 25, 2004 17:40 | link | comments

Sunday Stuff

*Sign seen at a roadside feed store in Brandon: "Come on in and pick up some chicks!"

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 18, 2004 07:36 | link | comments

Best Headline So Far Today:

AP: Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy. Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack," a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

"Who could blame me? He tried to kill my daddy." Hyah.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 16, 2004 07:28 | link | comments

"O Canada! Our Home And Seal-Slaughtering Land!"

 350,000 seal pups killed in Canada hunt

Blame Canada. Shame on you.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 14, 2004 10:43 | link | comments (1)

Best Headline So Far Today:

(For it's "I'm so shocked" factor)

New abuse claim filed against Jacko
LOS ANGELES - Detectives are investigating a new allegation of child abuse against pop star Michael Jackson involving a person who claims to have been victimized in the late 1980s, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Say, isn't that about the time McCauley Culkin was defending Michael's "honor"? They're coming out of the woodwork like altar boys, now.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 14, 2004 09:59 | link | comments (1)

Best Headline So Far Today:

High-rise dorms would have view of nudists
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Beach bums on Wreck Beach could receive far too much exposure if a proposed pair of high-rise dormitories are built on the cliffs above, say bathers out to protect the privacy of the world-famous nude beach.

I smell new Playboy Party School!

And Then....

Fear Of Terror Is On The Rise

This was from the AOL log-in page and no link possible. I wonder why?

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 13, 2004 06:12 | link | comments

Until Next Season, L Word

If you took a poll of my friends and colleagues I would likely be the only one relieved that the Showtime Original Series (tada) The L Word is over for the season (or for whatever passes as a season on cable: weeks, months, a year...).

From the cleverly named P**** Posse (any guesses?) productions, logo-ed by a posse of unsaid felines standing atop the word 'Posse' (I just wanted an excuse to get that in, it's my favorite part of the show), The L Word, although groundbreaking and all that, disappoints.

Still, it's been pretty cool seeing Pam Grier on television again, even cast as The Boozing, Aging Ex-midlevel Singer. And even Jennifer Beals manages to hook my eye and drag it fifty feet while simultaneously having sex with her girlfriend (Bette and Tina-I tell myself-Bette and Tina).

They had some great guest spots this past season like Anne Archer as Alice's flighty, needy, former leading lady mom and Lolita Davidovitch as coffee house owner Marina's (Karina Lombard) fashionista partner, Francesca (with the open relationship, each could do as she pleased while the other was away-until they broke up). Snoop Dogg showed up. So did Ossie Davis and Helen Shaver (Desert Hearts, anyone...anyone?), Kelly Lynch as a drag king ("Baby, I'm your man...") and Rosanna Arquette, looking completely hot in her too-short turn as Shane's benefactor/lover. We like her. We want her to come back.

But then there is this little issue that most of the exposition is done through the eyes of a straight woman. Not damnable in itself, but it was usually done via one of Jenny's (Mia Kirshner) short stories which, typical of Jenny, usually contained a lot of "I's," and "my's" and generally written after having sex with her boyfriend soon-to-be fiance soon-to-be husband soon-to-be-ex-husband, Tim (Eric Mabius). In the first few episodes there was so much straight sex I wondered if I'd tuned in to Real Sex ("Real Sex: take 4!") on my other tier. It's a typical happening in lesbianland for the straight-but-curious girl (Jenny) to be taken in and enjoyed by the hot-lesbian-stud girl (Marina), but I'm surprised that their motivations aren't being brought out more (no pun intended). It's pretty superficial albeit fun to watch.

There was the three-way with Bette (Beals), her partner Tina (Laurel Holloman) and the anonymous sperm-donor. To have a child. For themselves. No paternal involvement wanted. Nothing to say about that except, "Oh, come on." Not via a menage-a-trois, even an aborted one. Not in a committed relationship. Not in these days. If the writers know anyone who has done that-who isn't crazy, let me stipulate, let me know, maybe I AM sheltered.

Oh yeah, there's also the "lesbian identified male" guy named Lisa (Devon Gummersall). He considers himself a lesbian. Apparently this gives him in kind access to sex with other lesbians-should he sufficiently defend his thesis. I've known Lisas. Some of my best friends are Lisas. None of them was ever a man and I never felt like I was being prejudicial for not thinking of them as one. None ever asked me to call her Harry as she was a gay-identified lesbian. It was just silly.

There are rude remarks at the expense of other lesbians (read dykes). The fifty foot lesbian is the one you can tell is gay from fifty feet away. There was this garbage about "p*ss* confidence" and "nipple confidence." I know I moved to a small town but I have never in my life heard of these types of confidence. Breath confidence, yes. B.O. confidence, definitly. But nipple confidence? Confident of what, that they don't point straight down? Who are these women who talk like this? Again, still fun to watch.

They are beautiful, WASP-y (Oh come ON, Jennifer Beals as the token black lesbian? The even had her defending her racial makeup in a therapy session: she's black, dammit, black, she can't help it that she "passes" because she's pale and beautiful), educated and if not awfully well-off, awfully beautiful (did I say that already?). Shane, the bad-girl (and hot) assistant hairdresser (Katherine Moennig) was The L Word's idea of a dyke until Carmen showed up-she's a contractor, very dykey. No fifty-footers here.

Even a manatee is too ugly to put on camera, I guess. Last week, as Jenny noodled, self-absorbed as usual, in her journal in a zoo's underground aquatic viewing area, she mused about a manatee she was supposidly observing. Hello? It was white and it was smooth and it was pretty. A Beluga whale or something. Here swims this beautiful, white, flowy little whaley thing and Jenny is writing (hear the voiceover?) about the beauty and serenity of it all, how her character was morphing and...oh, it was too dumb. So I'm turning to my partner, thinking I'm somehow wrong (as usual) and she has the same weird look on her face, like she tasted something really bad and was trying to figure out what the hell it was. "Maybe she's just looking at the whale but thinking about the manatee," she offers, generously. Until this scientific looking guy starts discussing the same "manatee" with her. I don't even think you have to be a native of Florida's west coast to know what a manatee actually looks like. Suffice to say, its nickname is the "sea cow." So not a Beluga whale.

Ok, so, so far we have Stepford-lesbians (although the final dealio with Dana the repressed tennis pro (Erin Daniels) and her single-white-female, couple-week girlfriend whom Alice (Leisha Hailey) believes may have murdered Dana's cat, Mr. Piddles as the girlfriend had expressed a hatered for cats and then showed up with an engagement ring days later at Mr. P's wake, was so off the shelf it was great), no dykes (sorry but they exist and some of us look just as cute in a skirt as in jeans), too much straight sex, Jenny being the teller of the tale (I'm sorry, she's a ho. She even slept with the scientific-looking guy at the zoo-in front of the sealions-gasp! I just don't believe in bisexuality. Like Roseanne says, "The rest of us had to make a decision, why not them?"), the inclusion of Jenny's dissolving relationship/marriage (who cares, I ask you?), the lack of doing anything fun and constructive with Alice's chart (where Alice, the writer of the group, charts her sexual connections to other lesbians, eventually charting everyone's sexual partners), and did anyone else notice that the images at Bette's gallery's showing that caused such an uproar, Provocations, were male homo-erotic?

In the end it's nice to see other lesbos on TV. Even if none of the cast is lesbian (although word on the internet is that Leisha Hailey is bisexual, does that count?). Even if the world is full of lesbian identified males. Even if Mr. P was murdered and the villainess is now poised to marry the lonely tennis pro. I'll probably keep watching just to see the fallout of the Alice/Dana kiss. Was it real, or a fake-out to get rid of the cat-killing girlfriend? Maybe Marina will get what's coming to her. Maybe Tim will move away. Maybe Bette and Tina and Carmen will have a go at it.

Hey, it's only TV.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 12, 2004 10:48 | link | comments

Best Headline So Far Today:

'Help - my hamster's stuck in my printer'
Police in Germany were surprised to receive an emergency call from a woman whose hamster was stuck in her printer.

Another prank call from George Michael.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 07, 2004 06:25 | link | comments

Best Headline So Far Today:

Top doc backs picking your nose and eating it
Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.

This from the country that brought you Hitler.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 06, 2004 10:54 | link | comments

Best Headline So Far Today:

Teacher arrested after boy found hanging on closet hook
A New York teacher has been arrested after hanging a young boy by his belt from a hook in a closet.

Yeah, but did she use tape?

Until THIS:

Morissette becomes minister to marry gay friends
Canadian pop star Alanis Morissette has got herself ordained as a minister.

Still more work and yet another reason for Alanis to come visit.

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at April 01, 2004 08:32 | link | comments