Greetings from Justinland

Melancholia

Hey, for those of us that get a little morose this time of year and would rather watch the leaves fall that participate in all the fa-la-la-la-la-ing, You Tube had a rather good collection of homemade Nick Drake tunes with accompanying photos.

Because, damn it, we don't have to be happy all the time

 

Future Shock

We watched some of the Live Earth concert yesterday. Baseball and bullriding were not on and I will confess to having a boyhood crush on Jon BonJovi and Sting. OK, I still have a bit of a crush on Sting, but that is not my point.  Sting once wrote 'never saw no miracle of science, that didn't go from a blessing to a curse'  THAT is my point and I hope to get around to making it eventually.

Anyway I wondered about the impact of my carbon footprint and made the pledge to start using those twisty light bulbs. I will keep growing my own herbs. I wondered to Hawk when Al Gore became a folk hero. "Because its  94 freakin' degrees outside" he answered.  I patted myself on the back for driving a more fuel efficient car, although that move was motivated more by my bank balance than a love of the planet. If I had more disposable income, I would be back in a Japanese sports car in a nanosecond. (Maybe an Infiniti M)

However, we  did notice that about every other teevee ad during the concert was for the new, sparkly Apple iPhone. The irony was not lost on me, or you either, dear reader. Visitors to Justinland are a bright lot that appreciates a good spot of irony. We both declared the $600 iPhone a technotoy that the planet just did not need.

Now for awhile, I was keeping up with the Jones in terms of technotoys. I had the first  Commodore 64 on the block. I have David Bowie on vinyl, 8-track, Cassette, CD and in my pink IPOD mini.  Atari, Nintendo, Playstation.  Espresso Machine. If it comes down to giving up my DVR (faux Tivo) and High-Def teevee to save the planet…sorry Mother Earth.  

But sometime last year, I reached overload.  I started to notice that some people were walking around talking to themselves and they had a technotoy impaled on the side of their heads, like Uhura used to wear on Star Trek. Weird. They would be in the grocery store, looking at boxes of Jello and talking to themselves. Cell Phone Zombies.  

I don’t know about you, but I just don’t want to be that hyper-connected. I enjoy silence way more than I used to. I like sitting on the front porch with a cat on my lap. I have a cell phone but I don’t use it that often. The only number I have in my phonebook is AAA. My phone does not take pictures. 

Just an aside, but if you haven’t read The Cell, by Stephen King, it is great. Steve doesn’t knock one out of the park everytime, but The Cell is a solid homerun. Cell Phone zombies. Whoa! 

Just another aside, in defense of cell phones, recently in our neighborhood, there was a truly awful abduction and murder of young girl. The police were able to locate her body by the signals (pings) from her phone to the towers. 

I heard on NPR that the Japanese have two years worth of technotoys stashed away, waiting for the rest of us to catch up with our Future Shock before they are introduced.  Be afraid.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated that this new iPhone is like “having your whole life in your pocket.” OK, fine, but I am happy enough scattering my life all over the house.

And locating that house on Walden Pond is starting to sound good.

Bye Uncle Nick

OK, WTF was that?

Santino decks Kara out in a jumpsuit so fugly that it looks like it came from the Wal*Mart Dickies aisle and THEN has a freakin' sleeve fall off the damn thing on the runway... 

and NICK is Aufed.  Uncle Nick who made that adorable Daniel look like hot Eurotrash and knows all about dressing  Barbie.

Damn,  I may quit watching television. 

Book Review

Justin to his sister, the Bookstore manager: "So when are you moving James Frey's A Million Little Pieces" to the fiction section?

"Never!" she said

"Uhhh, why is that?" he asked.

"Because then Oprah wins again"

 

Date Night for Cowboys

and Indians

It’s January and that means it is influenza season and New Year/New You season. Kindly ol’ Doc Hawk and I have darn busy with wheezing babies and folks that want to change their bad habits overnight.

“Kiss me Goodbye and I’ll see you in the Spring”

Yeah, we are a busy GUPPIE couple, so we have to schedule ‘date night’ to spend time together.  Nothing fancy just a nice dinner at a restaurant that has china instead of paper plates, an early movie and home to bed before 10pm.

It is such a different life than our male protagonists in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, our date night movie of the week.  Now let me just say up front, there is not enough hot nekkid cowboy sex in the great outdoors in this movie.  Ang Lee should have consulted with Kristen Bjorn.  There is sheep and glorious scenery and I like both, but if you are expecting softcore cowboy porn, you may want to look someplace else.  I can make some suggestions.

But pretty mountains and sheep aren’t the best reason to see the movie.  It’s a love story, but Oscar Wilde wasn’t being amusing (for once) when he wrote about the ‘love that dare not speak its name’.  Our cowboys don’t talk much, certainly not about 'this thang' they have.   Jack and Ennis fall in love on the mountain one summer in 1963, just 6 years before the first angry drag queen threw a rock at the police at the Stonewall bar.   Not that either of them would understand or appreciate the Stonewall riots.  New York City is a long way from Wyoming.

You know Wyoming, the place where two cranked up cowboys beat Matthew Shepard to death not that long ago.

Of course men have been giving each other the eye since men started walking around erect....maybe even before.  But our boys are unable to place themselves in a historical context and they certainly have never heard the concept that gay men are born that way.  They are cowboys, for God’s sake and Cowboys ain’t queer!  So ultimately, we get a movie about two miserable men wasting their lives, going through the motions, unable to scratch their itch and have the one thing they really want. 

This ain’t a happy movie. It’s  freakin tragedy.

But WOW! Heath Ledger as Ennis gives a performance worthy of the best of Brando. The boy is so emotionally repressed, its a wonder he doesn’t explode more often. The words he doesn’t say carry way more weight than the few words he chooses to speak.  I see this guy in my office all the time. Bravo Heath!  Jake Gyllenhaal is a cutie (those eyes) and his Jack is just a little sleazy and yet he is vulnerable.  The ladies in the film are also most wonderful as their characters grow hard and cold over the years.

But Yo? Ang Lee? What is up with all the naked boobage, dude? I mean, there are just some things in the moveis I don't want to see.  But you are forgiven because I loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

So, grab your boyfriend and declare it ‘date night’ because we’re queer and we’re here and we aren’t mentally ill or hell bound sodomites.  We’re just a couple of Guppie boys, still in love after all these years, going to the movies.

A Little Help From My Friends

Because I was raised by Beatles listening hippies, I have been refering to the most recent hurricane as Lovely Rita.  Some things I just can`t help.

Which brings me to the question: What is your favorite Beatles song?   

and here are Abby`s birthday sox.  Opal Petticoat on #1 bamboo needles if you care about that sort of thing.  Abby sez her favorite Beatles song is Yellow Submarine.  Hawk loves Here, There and Everywhere.

Michael votes for I am the Walrus.  Miss B likes `all of Abbey Road`  Missy loves Octopus` Garden.  Mom voted for Lucy in the Sky. Nolan sez Let it Be  and Houseboi said  I hate the Beatles.

Me?  I really like Got to Get You into my Life and All You need is Love.  I get two picks because its my blog

RIP 6FU

Except for baseball and goggling my girl Lisa on QVC,  HBO's Six Feet Under  was one of the few reasons to own a teevee.  The show ended last night with the flawed Fisher family finally getting some closure and moving on with their lives after Nate's death.  There wasn't a dry eye in my flawed family as Claire drove off into the desert and into the future.

But the show was never really about death, but more about our lives and what we choose to make of them. There were funerals, of course, but births and weddings and family breakfasts around the table.

I'll miss the Fishers, but if I learned anything at all from watching them for the last 5 years it is that life goes on.  Make the most of it

Freebird

My eyes are much better, thanks for asking.  Shouts out to Craig for pinch hitting.

So, the other day, Miss B and Houseboi come in from ‘running errands’ and being a trained psychologist, I can pick up instantly on the tension between them.  They have been spatting.

“Your daughter is an idiot!” Houseboi tells me.

“You’re the idiot!” Miss B retorts brilliantly.

I do relationship counseling professionally, so I ask ‘Uhh, what is the matter?’ instead of just turning up the volume on the Royals-Red Sox game, which was my first thought.

It seems that one of the ‘errands’ that had to be run was a trip to Planned Parenthood to pick up Miss B’s birth control patches and that makes Dad happy because I am way too young and cute to be a grandfather, although Doc Hawk does turn 40 Wednesday.  I’m just saying…..

But that isn’t the issue.  The problem is that AFTER visiting the clinic, they get back into the car and the classic rock station is playing Lynyrd Skynyrd Freebird . Houseboi, like a lot of music lovers considers this the greatest rock anthem ever written, seeing it as more than just music, but a salute to a  carefree lifestyle. 

I have heard  that the tune can cause a Southern boy to stand up, shed a tear and place his ballcap over his heart, much like when they play Dixie.

Markus? Can I get an Amen? 

I’ve never given Freebird or Skynyrd a lot of thought, since John Lennon’s Instant Karma is MY favorite song.  I thought Neil Young had a good point. And as a trained psychologist, I have a problem with anyone proudly proclaimed that ‘Lord knows, I can’t change’   You CAN change if you  want to.    Bowie sang  ‘Turn and face the Ch-ch-changes’ and Bowie is a freekin chameleon and still alive, unlike most of LS.

So, while the radio is taking Houseboi on a mental trip down that free and open road , Miss B mentions that her birthcontrol patches makes her feel like a Freebird.  Miss B, of course, was born to teenage parents that were too stupid to use birthcontrol, so I can understand while she feels this way. While her mother and I love her to pieces and have no regrets, thank the Goddess she was smart enough to learn from our mistake….because it is hard to hit that open road and see ‘those many places I’ve got to see’ with a baby in tow.   

Houseboi is adamant that the van Zandt brothers did not write this  song as a jingle for birth control and appeals to me to confirm that Miss B just doesn’t ‘get it.’ They spat a little more 

It is time to be the Dad.  “Art is subjective, I say.  However, there is nothing heroic or romantic about just walking out in a relationship that means something to you.  That is easy.  If you love somebody you stay and fight for that relationship, even if they don’t get your favorite song or are about to turn 40."

Doc Hawks (almost 40!) reminds them that mighty Brother Eagle mates for life.

I don’t have anything more to say because the Red Sox have the bases loaded and David Ortiz is up to bat.   Just. Freekin. Great.  Houseboi and Miss B head to their basement lair, hopefully to find some music that they can both agree on and work it out.

I want it NOW, Daddy!

I am just sorta ho-hum about a new Harry Potter book this weekend (although my sister, the bookstore manager has $$$ in her eyes)

However, this has me eagerly waiting for Friday. Anybody else?  We already bought the Hostess Wonka cupcakes, because Johnny Depp and baked goods...well. enough said. They were PURPLE inside.

Greatest American?

Well kids, that moment we have all been waiting for is almost here.  Sunday, the Discovery Channel reveals our choice for THE GREATEST AMERICAN! 

The list was voted on by the same good folks that elected GW Bush president, twice!  'Nuff said.

Now this list of candidates has been admittedly bizarre. Check it out.  Apparently, as a nation, we are a swallow bunch that don't read books.  No Walt Whitman, but Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise may have a million dollar smile, but that does not make a great American. Madonna?  Frank Sinatra? Michael Jackson, but not Gershwin or Aaron Copeland?  Now I love Frank, but really I can't think of any entertainer that would deserve the title except for maybe Bob Hope.

Apparently, no one studies American History or Geography anymore either. Some of the nominees weren't even born in this country, like Arnold and Albert Einstein.

Hey look,  Phil McGraw is on the list.  I like Phil McGraw.  So is Oprah, Martha and Ellen.  All contenders for the The Greatest American with an afternoon TeeVee Show.  Can I vote for Judge Judy?

The top 5 appear to be:
George Washington
Ben Franklin
Abe Lincoln
Martin Kuther King
Ronald Reagan....(shudder)   

And Yes, Hawk, they were wrong to leave Crazy Horse off the list.

Ok, I am going to cast a vote for Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Roger Clemens and whoever invented Diet Lime Coke.  Was that Ben Franklin or Thomas Edison?   

How about You?  Who is the Greatest American?