Oscars: The Curious Slum-Milk of REVOLUTIONAR-E/Nixon

There is no reason to get irritated when mediocrity triumphs; that’s what the Oscars are for.  Of all the movies that have won Best Picture there’s really only about 3-4 that actually rank among the best of American film.  The last 15 years, starting with Forrest Gump, have been particularly egregious.  Now let’s dish.

Kate Winslet looked outstanding.

Tilda Swinton now occupies a nice of androgyny that even Annie Lennox would envy. She had no tits!

Freida Pinto was also totes beautiful.  Asymmetrical haute couture sari.  Rad.

Penelope Cruz is really hot but I don’t get the appeal of looking like a bride.

Meryl Streep had a cottage cheese stomach under that bland dress.  Sophia Loren looked like a Superfund site.

Jessica Biel looked like an ugly Evangeline Lilly in something Vanna White would wear on a Tuesday.

Natalie Portman might be the worst actress around but she’s very pretty.

Sarah Jessica Parker grosses me out.  Matthew Broderick is fat.

I actually liked what Miley Cyrus was wearing.  I hope she’s in on her own joke.

Amy Adams‘s necklace was totally hot.  At first I thought it was dumb to wear a dress the same color as the carpet but maybe she’s cool like that.

Beyonce is kind of in her own category.  I just don’t think it’s tenable to dismiss her in any way.

Anjelica Huston is arch-fabulous but she sort of looked like she was in character for a third Addams Family movie.

Marisa Tomei doesn’t age.

The only word for Viola Davis is radiant.

I honestly have no feelings toward Angelina Jolie whatsoever.  I don’t feel the glamour and I don’t care how many kids she adopts or how quickly.  Joan Rivers called her lips “an inflamed anus” and I can’t think of anything to top that.  Brad Pitt is starting to look a little busted.

Josh Brolin is a babe.  He’ll always be a Goonie to me.

I would bottom for Daniel Craig at a moment’s notice.

Ryan Seacrest is going to be a fixture at everything for the rest of our lives.

Mickey Rourke looked like he had some real trouble dressing himself after lavishing all those years in isolation, making Chinese Democracy.  He tacked more crap on himself than a Latin American military dictator reviewing troop formations.

*********************************** Milk

I’m glad for Sean Penn but Dustin Lance Black is gross!  Religious gay people possess an alarming selective blindness.  They can go through their lives with the knowledge that virtually everything monotheistic religions have to say about sex–especially the kind of sex they like to have–is wrong, but somehow they still believe in the bearded cloud who watches over us.

And the way in which DLB, like many gay “persons of faith,” pompously brandished his religiosity in a way that is “moving” and “poignant” was tedious.  There was no mention of how or why a gay person should embrace God in the first place, just a mild celebration of his declawed deity and Black’s own painful adolescence.  Yawn.  It’s like this piece in today’s Times, which goes out of its way to state the obvious and unnecessary point that no church should have to recognize any federal same-sex marriage.  As if that were the issue with marriage, ever.

Just as when middlebrow films “speak to” some important issue and leave their sentimental paws all over it, Dustin Lance Black’s speech will probably be taken by boring homos and by the gay-tolerant public as some kind of landmark oration.  Even though he didn’t advocate anything or advance any intellectually cogent way to reconcile his sexuality with his religion, he probably played a major role in normalizing deviance, at least to people who believe in the transformative power of commercial movies and who assume the road to equality runs through an awards show.  “Touching upon” the issue by mentioning it is sufficient.

I can’t think of a better example of the Death of the Author, or the complete disconnect between a text and its authorial intent, than between Black and Milk.  Milk was way more progressive than people are giving it credit for.  Harvey Milk slept with boys he pulled off the street and put them to work in his campaign.  That’s amazing, and the film didn’t shy away from it.  The specter of the sexual faggot, unlike images of neutered public homos like the guys on Queer Eye, remains transgressive.

Dustin Lance Black’s acceptance speech and Milk‘s general reception remind me of another dynamic.  It gets under my skin when people refer to my boyfriend as my partner after I just used the word boyfriend.  Because while they’re telegraphing their facility with being around gay people and their gay relationships, and they want me to know that they respectfully believe my love for him deserves the same dignity as anyone’s love for anyone else, the word boyfriend still makes people uncomfortable.  It suggests kissing and possibly fucking, and people prefer to desexualize the bestowing of dignity.

Get over it, people.  We fuck.  And get over it, Dustin Lance Black.  There’s no God.  And your movie wants to be our boyfriend but you, your God and the movie-going public who share your belief in Him want Milk to be our husband.

Gay Marriage Inches Closer Towards Its True Form

Check it.

There are two purposes to same-sex marriage.  One is convincing yourself that you’re normal, even though you should count yourself fortunate that you’re not.   The second is to make sure you get all the $$$$ your rich significant other accumulated until their death but bizarrely chose not to bequeath to you specifically as they are already completely entitled to do.

I’m so grateful to the legal system for pioneering equality in the form of millions of dollars for a no-doubt radical queer!

(Again, for the record, there is no intellectually coherent conservative or religious argument against same-sex marriage.  It still sucks, though.)

Chillax, Ted Haggard. You’re Just Gay, Is All. It’s Actually Fun.

Jesus Christ, has this guy had enough from Jesus Christ.

I especially love the church’s justification for paying the guy to keep quiet about it:

“Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance — certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

Yielding to temptation is totes a good time, but now when the price is damage to your life and the lives of others over whom you hold a great deal of power because you’re a famous pastor and everyone involved thinks they’re going to burn in hell for the price of a snog.  Get over it, Haggard.  You’re just a homo.  It’s all right.

The Worst Rationale for Gay Marriage. Period.

From the NYT letters-to-the-editor:

By failing to pass the marriage equality bill, which has been passed by the Assembly, the Senate is driving wedding business out of New York, hurting New York’s crumbling economy without stopping gay New Yorkers from assuming the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

All the bill effectively does is open marriage bureaus here to gay couples who either cannot afford the train fare to Greenwich, Conn., or who are too disabled to travel.

That is so gross!  “Let us marry or else we’ll take our hard-earned gay dollars to Connecticut.”  I just diarrhea’ed in my mouth.  This boils down to tall children threatening, “I have disposable income!  It’s enough money that me and other entitled people like me can get your attention by throwing it around!  Me wanty!”  Biggest White Whine ever.

Applying this rationale to other things in the world, you quickly find that New York should entice coal companies to build giant power plants in low-income areas of the Bronx before Pennsylvania lures them first.  It would provide shitty jobs for poor people and reduce electric rates for everyone.  And it would be good for the economy!  Just don’t site them where people who can afford train fare to Greenwich live–because they’ll move to Greenwich, and that would be bad.  And it is only just and prudent that there be no graduated income tax in New York either, otherwise rich people who can afford it will move to Greenwich.

Who knew that Greenwich, CT was also the capital of NYers’ empty threats?

Ted Haggard, Wayward Fag

OMG, suck it, Ted Haggard.  You’re such a goddamn homo.

There isn’t even a closet for him anymore, so what is the emergency?  I mean, he’s flockless and reduced to selling door-to-door, which I didn’t even know  still went on.  What’s he selling?  Encyclopedias or Fuller Brushes?  He makes Larry Craig look dignified, because Larry Craig never got $300,000+ from the Senate after leaving it only to whine that they were mean to him.  Money quote:

Haggard said he isn’t qualified to judge what factors into one’s sexuality, but still believes it’s “God’s perfect plan” for marriage to be between a man and woman.

Umm, this isn’t actually about gay marriage, so cut the “perfect plan” shit.  It’s about calling out evangelical/conservative/religious opposition to deviant sexual orientations and acts–which of course would include hetero-blowjobs, in the eyes of our own Taliban.  Ted Haggard has either learned nothing or else he’s still completely invested in all the things he ruined his life lying to protect.  Lame.

Come back to the disco sauna, Ted Haggard, Ted Haggard.

The gay is inexplicable

From CNN, the exit polls show that Obama did better among virtually every category of voter than John Kerry did…except the LGBT population.  By 11 points!  I guess not actively pursuing a constitutional amendment banning fag-fag marriage counts for something, but that’s just weird.  I mean, isn’t the gay usually at least a little smart?  And don’t you people learn anything?

This is 2008:

This is 2004:

We can deduce that in 2000, Bush did worse than McCain in 2008.  Bizarre, that.  At least Obama won straight vote by basically the same margin as he won the general population, which proves that the straight has achieved median intelligence in at least one arena.  If President Obama mandates two hours of daily Bravo consumption, we will see great gains for heterosexual-Americans.

Now I know why, whenever I leave a coast and go to a gay bar*, they’re always awful.  Or amazing, but ironically.

*For the purposes of this post, Miami is way the fuck inland.