That Bad Eartha!

On Christmas day when I reached over to hit “snooze” on the Blackberry, I squinted at my messages. Everything was OK with work, then I checked my Gmail. Harold Pinter had died while I was sleeping. While I’m familiar with and admire Pinter, if I were even to attempt to try to write anything lamenting the passing of the Nobel prize-winning writer, poet, actor and humanist, I’d come across like a fake and a turd. More than usual. And sadly that might not really be as entertaining as it sounds.

The next alert I received a couple of hours later hit closer to home. Eartha Kitt, “the most exciting woman in the world” according to Orson Welles, had just died at age 81. The singer, actress, dancer, and activist who gave the world “Santa Baby”, was blacklisted  by LBJ for speaking out against Vietnam, had a CIA dossier, sang in half a dozen languages, played Catwoman and was an icon to gay men in every galaxy, including the undiscovered ones, checked out on Christmas Day. Ugh. Really?

My mom was a fan because Eartha sang one of her favorite songs in Spanish, “Angelitos Negros”, about the lack of black angels in paintings and churches (but not Heaven). My mom sang it to me as a lullaby, my aunt played it on the guitar. Mixed race people often have multi-hued families, and mine was no exception. Neither was Eartha’s. All three of them sang it from a deep place in their souls. (Cat Power did as well.)

Later, in keeping with the homosexual agenda, I “got” Eartha on a whole new level. I learned more about innuendo from one Eartha Kitt album than a million drag shows. Suddenly, the word “Fierce” had real meaning. Exotic, purring, globe-trotting, award-winning, show-stopping gold-digger – and she made Lady Bird Johnson cry? Talk about Kitten with a Whip!  For two years, fresh out of High School, I lived with my first lover and his best friend. We drank way too much wine and had too many sing alongs – including “Uska Dara”, though we had no idea what we were singing, and of course the Italo-disco classic “Where is My Man“. The phrase “cette petite sensation” from “C’est Si Bon” still tickles when I hear it.

Recently, while living in New York, I kept threatening to drag my best friend to Cafe Carlyle for her cabaret show. Sadly, we never made it. I like to pretend I don’t believe in regret, but if I weren’t me, I’d take away my own gay card. Fortunately, Eartha belonged to the world, so no card is required. All you need to appreciate Eartha Kitt, appropriately enough, is a taste for the better things in life.

The dark side of the rainbow

I’ve spent the last couple of days in a funk.

First, Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation hit me like a kick to the stomach. Intellectually, I appreciate and applaud the “team of rivals” strategy. I’ve been through the NA 12-step program, practiced Zen with HIV positive men, NSA Buddhism with pushy actors, endured my first lover’s fascination with the Course in Miracles, my second lover’s fling with Est/the Forum, and I often list Alan Watts as one of my heroes. I’ve been accused of smiling and laughing too much. I know better than to be upset.

Emotionally, intuitively, however, I feel like a fox has been let loose in the hen house. Like a deranged chicken, my reaction is not an enlightened one; it’s a passionate one. It’s a reaction rooted deep in the darkness of my brain, the part attuned by years of dealing with bigotry and prejudice as a gay, dark-skinned Latino in USA, Inc. It’s rooted in the blood and flesh I inherited from my lesbian mother who lived with her partner for 30 years but still can’t marry her. It’s my reaction, and it is valid, legitimate, cathartic and a vital part of my conversation and how I experience the world and arrive at insight. Do not dismiss me because I haven’t earned my wings or halo yet. I’m trying; but please, in the meantime, do not ask me to “calm down”, repress my gut-feelings, or take a shortcut. Engaging one’s rivals can and should be visceral, messy, heated. In that fiery discourse, ideas break down and are reconstituted.  As long as there are bigots out there, we will need that fire for protection, warmth and light. Otherwise, I could go up to the next straight stranger I see and kiss them on lips without fear. But, I know better. I know there are people out there who look upon me like a punching bag. My brother, the former gang member, and his friends were people like that.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s upset me. As I was kicking myself for being so radical, so reactionary, so “un-progressive”, cynical, paranoid, so “intolerant”, I came across an article about a lesbian that was repeatedly, brutally gang raped and left robbed and naked outside an apartment building. In San Francisco. Because she had a rainbow sticker on her car.

I’m not a flag-waver, and I know an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But if this is what we have to look to forward to, is the view really worth seeing? And if it’s not, is it not our duty to say and do something until a better world comes into focus? Are we to achieve this by biting our tongues as our brothers and sisters are beaten senseless for simply being themselves? I could prize civilized discourse above a human life, but that’s not me. Sometimes, I need a heated argument to let my rage burn off. That’s just how Jesus made me. And Jesus don’t make no mess.

So, I will not boycott, censor, avoid or ignore the inauguration or invocation. I’m not even arguing that Warren shouldn’t deliver the invocation. I’m saying that it is in poor taste, a cheap appeal to the hard right. It’s politics, I get that. Rights and privileges are negotiated, bartered and compromised every day. When push came to shove, Clinton backed “Dont’ ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. When pressed on Prop 8, Obama could have said “Marriage should be between two people who love each other”. But tellingly, he didn’t. Did he not have faith in his base?  I would like to believe that including an avowed exclusionist in a highly didactic moment implies a surplus of faith. But how productive will this super-charged gesture be? Is the hard right going to convert by invocation’s end? Will they be inspired to comfort the queers with bus tire tracks across their faces? Or, will it embolden them to continue committing more brazen hate crimes as statistics indicate?

I do not know. But I will be watching. And listening. And venting. And if that upsets you, let’s talk about it.

Social Media Cares

As Yahoo, Sprint, EMI, and a slew of other media giants collapse under the “un-recession”, users beginning to burn out on social media, and mysterious monsters chopping on cables buried deep in the Indian Ocean’s muck, let’s not dismiss entirely the utopian hopes we had for the World Wide Mess as far back as Y2K, during the 1.0 heyday. The 2.0 bubble may be on the brink of bursting but for now, as it floats through the cyber-sphere, still relatively impervious to the real-time woes of the brick and mortar world, here are some nifty little blips on the radar highlighting the internet’s nobler intentions. (Though, we’ve all heard where that path leads.)
Youtube -Will-i-am’s viral Pro-Obama video, borrowing on the Latino slogan “Yes We Can” has enough celebrities in it to give “We are the World” a run for its money. Hell, his catch-phrase, “We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For” bears an uncanny resemblance to that 20th century chorus. Let’s just hope the stockpiles of dreams gather less dust than those bags of misplaced grains.
Twitter – Elections: A mashup of Twitter and Google Maps featuring Twitter Pop Ups of netizens’ play-by-play accounts of the elections. Say what you will about Billary and Obama Wan Kinobi, the Bama-rama’s got the Twitter factor in his favor, and one should be careful not to underestimate the 2.0 generation’s impulsiveness and willingness to rush in where their 1.0 elders fear to tread. As I recall, America’s last Camelot did not end so hot, but as Reverend Jackson said, one must “Keep hope alive..”
Facebook – Smile for Cancer: If you can raise money for a cancer ward clear across the planet by simply uploading a jpg of your muggin’ pearly whites, and embedding it on your Facebook page, why not click your way to a clear conscience?
Godtube – Jesus 2.0: “Broadcast HIM” The internet, it seems, does have a soul. The thought of giving “Christi-uns” another tool to spread their haterade does not seem like something worth celebrating in these pagan “pages”. That is, until, like me, you scroll down past the pitch to the internet’s redeeming feature: the comments.
Buried there, deep beyond the “Godtube” sermon, proof of the web’s capacity to disarm – a paragraph-long diatribe that answers the eternal question: “What Would Jesus Smoke“? Apparently, cannabis.
The leafy treat poised for vending machine deployment across California was seemingly a biblical staple. Behold Isaiah 43:24: “I have not burdened you with grain offerings, nor wearied you with demands for incense. You have not bought any cannabis for me, or lavished me on the fat of your sacrifices.” (M’kay?) God and Martha Stewart would agree: this [shit] is good.
So, pipelines and satellites may snap and fall, fickle tweens may age and bore, and all the world be drowned in a mighty tide of melting ice caps, but chances are the internet will outlive all. And someday, when the mothership returns and Jesus clicks YES on our ultimate Friend-request, we can take some comfort knowing that we will be judged not solely by our cache-loads of Hot-or-Not porn.

Mad, Bad and Outta Control

The World Wide Mess is abuzz with the latest Apple shenanigans. Apparently you can’t use cash to buy an iPhone. So if you’re a cash-based consumer, Apple doesn’t want you. They can’t track you and what you’re doing with their precious product, and basically, you’re not their target market. Just to keep it real, though – if you’re cash-based, you probably shouldn’t be blowing money on a sticky screen iPhone anyway, m’kay? But – gadget-loving Gemini that I am – who am I to tell you how to spend your money, eh? I had been considering treating myself to an iPhone, but after reading this and all the flaming commentary blazing on the net, I’m not so sure. And, I’m one of those 80’s California babies who grew up with Macs in their public schools. I willingly and enthusiastically gave myself over to the cult of cute-follows-function: iMac, iTune, iPhone, iAm. And what iAm is cute, and well, you’re not. As the world swings toward open-source everything, perhaps the big bad apple should reconsider its Darwinist marketing ploys. Next up, T-Mobile is in some squabble with wee microblogging darling Twitter. I tawt i taw a cock-blocking putty tat, cries Twitter; Nuh-uh say T-Mo. Urgh go millions of T-Mo users. Be warned, if you’re thinking about switching to an AT&T-only iPhone, bring le plastique! Once you’re safely strapped into your mobile device, rejoin the collective SMS stream of consciousness pushing text message volumes over the 2 TRILLION mark. Any day now, text traffic will surpass the national deficit. If only we could just text our way out of debt before our thumbs get arthritis… [Cue dream sequence and James Brown soundtrack: "Talking Loud, Sayin Nothing..."]

G.O.D. said Dance: Mel Cheren RIP

Say w00t? Word of the Year

From Reuters and ThinkGeek.com:

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.

Mac Attack

Further proof that Mac-heads are a cult: three reasons to love Apple, and none of them have anything to do with technology.
1 – MacBook Pros make great cat toys
2 – if you make a commercial and they like it, Apple will buy it
3 – Stefano, iPapi

kitten vs. frontrow from mattcoats on Vimeo.

Radiohead Gaga

God’s favorite band, Radiohead, earns their keep. Proving why they are geeks’ last hope for indie pop, and possibly better than every other musician and mere mortal on this scorched earth, the label-free group released its latest album In Rainbows online, direct to ‘Head heads, allowing them to download fully shareable mp3s – for whatever price they wish to set. Of course, their site crashed. In a Web 2.0 world, that’s like having multiple clitoral, vaginal, anal and oral orgasms on-camera during half-time at the Superbowl. Record labels, ask not for whom the ping tolls. To cover their wee rocker arses, they’re releasing a fetish CD box set including – gasp! – vinyl, reminding users that while instant gratification in your earhole is all good, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of….acetate in your hands.