October 29th - November 4th 2001
Sunday Dog-doo
Saturday Horses. Carriages.
Friday Koalas
Thursday Showers
Wednesday Porcupine
Tuesday Madame Blofeldt
Monday Duck Woman
Sunday 4th November 2001
Having discovered that the Todd Ojala who wrote to the London Review of Books, threatening to shove their "loony leftist faces into some dog shit", was none other than the same Todd Ojala who had previously written to Salon, hymning the virtues of "tolerating people who have beliefs that you may fundamentally disagree with", it would have been extremely naughty of me to drop them a short note pointing out the apparent discrepancies in Mr Ojala's views.
So, of course, I did. And half expected to find that they'd published it when I bought the latest issue last week.
But no such luck - the only reference to Mr Ojala's uncharacteristically unacademic outburst is another letter from him, apologising: "You are in no danger of me visiting your office and doing anything remotely violent with dog-doo. My e-mail was sent in a fit of passion..."
Shame. Elsewhere in the letters column, however, the flame-war continues.
You'll recall that Marjorie Perloff had written in to cancel her subscription in protest at Mary Beard's suggestion that many people thought, in the wake of September 11th, that "the United States had it coming."
Responses to Perloff's letter are framed, as ever, in a periphrasis of deadly elegance:
"Marjorie Perloff is moderately well known as an academic literary critic particularly gifted in the skills of close reading. Her comprehensively illiterate comments... suggest that this time round she must have been reading with her eyes shut."
"As an explanation of underfunding in the Humanities, [her letter] is, to say the least, intellectually dim and makes one wonder whether Perloff herself has chosen the right line of work..."
"Perloff's combination of the folksy, the smug and the reactionary is unbeatable."
"The idea that the appalling policies of racial exclusion and economic injustice in the United States are somehow mitigated by the ability of migrant domestic outdoor workers to call their employers by their forenames has an obvious appeal for people who live comfortably in Pacific Palisades: but really it is an imbecility."
"Perloff should think twice before claiming that she has real contact with the masses just because she has occasional conversations with her institutional or domestic servants."
Wowza. On second thoughts, maybe I should be grateful that they didn't publish my letter. Ms Perloff must be cringing at her desk.
Saturday 3rd November 2001
I don't think I'm the only gay man who has vague misgivings about weddings - or how else do you explain all those triumphant stories about giving your so-called straight cousin a blow job during the reception?
Hardly surprising, really. Most anyone can have a relationship - but only straights can have a marriage. But now that we're beginning to see gay weddings (and in England too, surprise, surprise) I suppose that tide will start to turn.
Jonathan and Mark's wedding - well, ok, relationship registration - was by all accounts a pretty low-key affair, though I dare say some family members shed a tear or too. And the reception, at the Retro Bar, was... well, it was reassuringly ordinary.
Slightly bewildered family members wandered about looking slightly lost, teenagers got drunk, small children went their winsome ways. Champagne was drunk, the happy couple got toasted, sentiments were aired and jokes about nuns were abandoned at the last minute.
Jonce wore a silver waistcoat, Mark's was gold. The (single-story) cake looked and tasted fabulous. Wendy was a trouper. At least three men wore kilts.
And the blogger contingent, suited and booted, went on to BarCode afterwards. Happy day.
Friday 2nd November 2001
Bored? Jaundiced? Terminally cynical? You may be just the person we need for our koala cull.
Name a towering figure of twentieth century pop who kicked his boyfriend and fellow band-member in the head so hard that he died a few months later? No? Try John Lennon.
Heartening news for Jonce's stag night. (And, my goodness, what excellent links.)
Thursday 1st November 2001
I wish I could remember who it was that, at some dim stage of the weekend, went on and on and on about Hallowe'en, and the Retro Bar, and I was going, wasn't I?
Well I hadn't planned to, actually, but what with not being needed at work, and it being a full moon and all, I thought I should venture out and see how Boystown was coping. Plus - you don't want to be at home when the kids round here come trick or treating, believe me.
BarCode seemed pretty empty, and I was about to leave when David and Marcus floating in fresh from their Marc Almond book launch disappointment thing. So naturally enough I tried to drag them to the Retro Bar with me. And, naturally enough, they preferred to go home and shag like bunnies. Er, wrong solstice. Equinox. Whatever.
The Retro Bar was rammed. There may have been familiar faces there, Mr Hallowe'en Retro Bar you are going aren't you may even have been there, but what with the crowd and the craaazy masks and the general jollity they were difficult to spot. Even Wendy looked a little distrait.
I spent five minutes squeezing to the bar, ten minutes waiting not to be served, and fifteen minutes propping up a wall in the slightly emptier upstairs before heading back out, with a quick peck for Wendy, and on to: The Man Bar.
That's the A-bar as was, newly touted as under new management and fully refurbished, complete with, gasp, showers. I know I wasn't the only one I know to have wondered how that was supposed to work, but I think I'm the first to have gone in to try and find out.
And the short answer is: it doesn't. They don't. They're not real showers. They're pretend showers.
The newly installed St Andrews Cross is real enough, I guess, though you'd have to see someone strapped to it to be sure, and I didn't. And the idea of an entire roomy cubicle furnished with nothing but a ceramic lavatory suite probably sounds cute in theory, but in practise... who knows? Not me - I didn't even get a chance to see if it was properly plumbed in.
Bizarrely enough, they've taken a perfectly good back-room bar and turned it into a kind of kinky theme park. The front area, which was never more than somewhere to quickly top up your alcohol levels before moving off in back, now has an extended bar. And a DJ booth. In a back-room bar? Umm?
I'm pretty sure I don't like it. But I guess I'll have to go back a few more times just to be sure. Probably before the next full moon.
Plot lines you won't be seeing in EastEnders - some items from the latest issue of eastendlife, my local feel-good free-sheet, produced by Tower Hamlets council:
Police are anxious to trace a woman who left the miscarried remains of her child on an East End street last weekend.
A 10 year-old boy was badly beaten and threatened that he would be set light to if he did not hand over his bike to two young boys.
A late arrival failed to effect the Wapping Hockey's club's ladies getting their season back on the rails in devastating style with a 4-0 win at Witham.
Shiblu Rahman crawled home on his hands and knees after he'd been stabbed three times and then had to wait 30 minutes before ambulance paramedics arrived.
Youths let off fireworks on October 22, injuring a guard dog when the explosive was thrown into his kennel around 5.15pm.
Wednesday 31st October 2001
God knows, the gay lifestyle can be scarey at the best of times, let alone over a Hallowe'en weekend.
But... if one of your friends turned up at your local wearing nothing but a pair of torn red rubber shorts that resolutely refused to cover his genitals and a black leather harness festooned with red fairy lights, whilst waving an utterly bizarre illuminated plastic wand that recalled nothing so much as a Japanese teenager on acid....you'd be scared, too, right?
But no. The truly frightening thing is that at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern on Sunday nobody batted an eyelid. Andy, you are one scarey mary.
"...physically small individuals with an over-abundance of attitude... a tendency to seek comfort by putting others down... wit, sarcasm, and ridicule are the primary weapons of its oftentimes disagreeable personality...
"With their consciously minimalist lifestyle, their financial needs are limited to the bare essentials of living and their homes are unadorned but functional. Unambiguous loners, porcupines prefer jobs that reward individual effort, avoiding manual labor...
"In the bedroom, the porcupine tends to be a little too curious and explorative... Nocturnal animals, they prefer the safety of their homes or small offices during the day, and most of their social connections take place at night... But their caustic wit and defensive posture puts others on their guard and they often return alone.
"It can be painful to get close to a porcupine and only those who have earned its trust can endure an intimate relationship. It is comfortable and secure in the company of mice and mole personalities, but should fastidiously avoid the companionship of larger carnivores like bears, foxes and wolves."
I am a porcupine. Do you have some kind of problem with that?
Fascinating group dynamics at last night's blogmeet.
At one table, one gay blogger (plus boyfriend) sat studiously avoiding any communication with two other gay bloggers (plus friend), none of them talking to anybody at my table, which had two more gay bloggers (minus boyfriend) plus me, who was trying to avoid any appearance of conversation between them and two other friends of mine who were there, one of whom was keeping an eye on yet another friend, who'd swore blind that he didn't want to talk to the man he was with, who was chatting amiably away to the man he was with, who didn't talk to any of us.
The A-list infuriated everybody by coming out on top.
Well okay, it wasn't a blogmeet, it was the Pop Quiz: Wendy gets very strict about not having more than four people in any one team.
And after we'd won, it got even more complicated - but I was rather drunk by then, so you'll just have to read what everybody else says to make any kind of sense of it at all.
Tuesday 30th October 2001
Have you noticed that each time Princess Margaret goes into hospital, she looks more and more like a Bond villain, with her wrap-around shades and bloated ill-tempered face?
One imagines her sitting in one of those Big Chairs, stroking a corgi and hissing: "Sew, Mistah Bond...have you come far?"
Monday 29th October 2001
The Independent doesn't appear to put all of its daily content on the net which is a shame since today's review section contains a number of interesting bits and pieces, only two of which are online:
Who is being interviewed here?
"Do you pay for sex any more?"
"I haven't made a new acquaintance in that way since 1997."
"Didn't you find it all a little... ahem... sordid?"
"No. I've made some very good friends by it. Some of my best friends are, or were, prostitutes."
"Did you have any frightening encounters?"
"There was one attempt to get money out of me. You know, 'I'll tell the newspapers.' I simply told him it would come as no surprise to most people."
"Who's the most fanciable man ever?"
"I'm very keen on J T Sloan."
"J T Sloan?"
"On Falcon Video.'"
"Oh."
Is this the most bizarre obituary ever?
"Howard, I don't know the name of the planet you came from. But, when you go back, I sure hope it offers Classic Coke, red-eye gravy, and okra fried just right by the Duck Woman of Orpliss. You deserve the best."
You askin' for a slap?
"He supports the notion that the shaving demographic has changed since the 1970s, when the skinhead style was rife. 'It's predominantly - but by no means only - on the gay scene,' he says. True: the other day, I walked past a pair of classic, 1971-vintage skinheads - nuanced right down to their black Harrington jackets, orange-tag Levi's and black Doc Martens with white laces. I realised they were gay and dressed like this for altogether different reasons only when I got up close. As Vic says:' There's a whole sexual fetish thing going on for the "smoothies".'"
How Microsoft changed my life
"...decided to head down to the pub for a few pints of XP. Just as we were going out the door I realised I was short of cash so I launched Microsoft Money and printed out some £20 notes. When we got to my local, there were a bunch of lager louts outside looking to start something. Fortunately, I'd launched Microsoft Fight Simulator before I left the house."
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