Bust out those choir robes, kids, McDonald’s Gospelfest is coming to town!

Hi Dan,

For the first time ever, McDonald’s Gospelfest is coming to the Pacific Northwest! Did you know that there are over 4000 churches in Western Washington alone?  But Gospelfest participants don’t come from just churches; the competition this year includes adult and youth choirs, soloists, groups (2-8 people) and praise dancers. McDonald’s Gospelfest Seattle supports the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Western Washington Scholarship program, which last year donated over $75,000 to graduating high school seniors.

Auditions are being held the first week of February throughout the region. If you are interested in this new, exciting event, please feel free to contact me anytime.

Best Regards,

Katie Lindstrom
DDB Public Relations

Praise dancers? I’m not into gospel music, but I would pay cash money to watch some praise dancers dance all, you know, praisefully and shit. Perhaps the lap dancers the city is trying to put out of work should open a church where men can go and get the laps praised on.

Tuesday was the 23rd consecutive day of rain in Seattle, 10 below the record set in 1953.

After filing this post, I wondered: Who is writing quality erotica in the 21st century? Which current writers are stimulating brains and loins with equal potency? Is anybody filling De Sade’s formidably kinky boots (with extravagantly lubricious prose, I mean)? Does a modern-day Henry Miller wax phallocentric among us? I’ve become out of touch (so to speak) with this branch of literature. Can anybody point to some future classics of the genre?

Last week, Stranger theater editor Brendan Kiley made a mistake worthy of lifelong shame, somehow confusing Neil Simon with Eugene O’Neill. Brendan made a prompt apology, but can a mere apology suffice? Of course not, hence this quiz, through which Brendan will confirm his new and thorough understanding of these two ridiculously distinctive playwrights. Feel free to join in the fun!

JT Leroy — or “JT Leroy,” as the case may be — wrote a great piece for The Stranger once, back when he was writing under the name “The Terminator.” Here it is.

Also, there’s been some talk on the Slog lately about James Frey, who wrote an audience review for The Stranger in 2004. Check it out.

I just got an e-mail from The Popcorn Board (www.popcorn.org!) informing me that January 19th is National Popcorn Day. Begin planning your parties accordingly.

From today’s Times:

“Sweet Start to Session Ends Quickly”

And today’s P-I:
“Opening Session Not So Sweet”

Smobriety Charticle Three

Weight: 175 pounds

Pulse: 58 beats per minute

Smoking Resumption Risk:
Blue (low to intermediate risk)*

Unusual Ejaculations: None

Song Stuck In Head: “Stand By Your Man,â€� Tammy Wynette

Symptoms: In-freakin’-somnia, slight agitation, lack of concentration, the ability to talk for minutes without even realizing that I’m speaking, continued fascination with the lives and lifestyles of celebrities, especially celebrities who are getting married or divorced, intense back and neck pain.

*And, yes, this is the replacement for the Presidential Mood-O-Meter. Yes, the presidents I chose did have a meaning, (Van Buren, for instance, was obsessed with the Post Office, spending more time than any other president regulating it, and yesterday stamps went up to 39 cents) but the only people who would find them meaningful would be me and possibly Sarah Vowell. Today’s president, if you care, would of course be Jimmy Carter, who falsely claimed to be a transsexual truck stop whore before running for governor of Georgia, and then lied about being wanted in three states while running for president.

You know what? The act of quitting smoking is boring. By which I mean to say that quitting smoking is itself very, very dull. It’s like playing Tetris or Space Invaders on the first level forever: a thought drops into my head: “Cigarette would be nice right now. Cigarette’s what I do right now.â€� And then I think, “I don’t do that anymore.â€� And that’s it, the thought goes away. Which is fine, it’s pretty easy to do, it’s kind of like cult retraining, except it happens a thousand times a day, so it gets really monotonous.
And The Bupe is…well, it’s fine. It’s kind of hard for me to say where I’d be without the Happy Pills. None of the sexual side effects have happened, and, in fact, besides the insomnia, none of the signs of the bupropion actually working have kicked in. Which makes me wonder…apparently, it takes anywhere between five days and two weeks to kick in. I started on the third. Which means I could kind of be doing this cold turkey. If I don’t start lactating root beer or something equally fantastic really soon, I’m gonna feel gypped.
Oh, wait! There is an unusual ejaculation story, after the jump…

Continue reading "My Smobriety, Day Three: Ennuijaculations" »

It’s a funny thing to work in an industry where day after day, I can wake up to articles, like this one by Michael Kinsely in Slate, that explain why my industry’s modes of production no longer make sense.

But here’s what’s funnier: Blogging about it.

For anyone who read A Million Little Pieces, The Smoking Gun’s expose on James Frey and his wild ways is a fascinating read.

I zipped through the book quite a while ago (before Oprah, thankyouverymuch), and even though I thought it was a thrilling and disgusting page-turner (oh my god, his teeth! I cringed for days!), Frey’s bravado struck me as false in some places, and TSG finally reveals why: his non-fiction accounts of his own badassary have more than a bit of fiction to them. This article is nearly a novel itself, but worth the read if you have time.

Some highlights: Here is Frey’s account in A Million Little Pieces of his arrest in Ohio that resulted in charges of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Assaulting an Officer of the Law, Felony DUI, Disturbing the Peace, Resisting Arrest, Driving Without a License, Driving Without Insurance, Attempted Incitement of a Riot, Possession of a Narcotic with Intent to Distribute, and Felony Mayhem.

As I was driving up, I saw her standing out front with a few of her friends. I was staring at her and not paying attention to the road and I drove up onto a sidewalk and hit a Cop who was standing there. I didn’t hit him hard because I was only going about five miles an hour, but I hit him. The Cop called for backup and I sat in the car and stared at her and waited. The backup came and they approached the car and asked me to get out and I said you want me out, then get me out, you fucking Pigs. They opened the door, I started swinging, and they beat my ass with billy clubs and arrested me. As they hauled me away kicking and screaming, I tried to get the crowd to attack them and free me, which didn’t happen.

What a badass. In the book, this stunt lands Frey in jail for three months.

Now, here is the arresting officer, Sergeant Dave Dudgeon’s police report from that incident, as reported by TSG:

While on foot patrol at about 11 PM on October 24, Dudgeon was standing in front of a knick-knack store called the Tole House when he spotted a 1989 white Mercury pull out of a nearby bank parking lot. The driver then attempted to park in a no parking zone directly across the street from the Granville firehouse and a few doors down from a bar/pizzeria popular with Denison students. The vehicle’s right front tire rolled up onto the curb, missing a power pole by just a few inches.
Dudgeon, then 32 and on the Granville force for 3-1/2 years, approached the car and told Frey that he was in a no parking zone. Dudgeon noticed that Frey was slurring his words, his eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and he smelled of alcohol. There was also a half-full, 12-ounce bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer between the car’s bucket seats. After Frey exited the Mercury at Dudgeon’s request, the cop administered several field sobriety tests, which Frey failed. Dudgeon then arrested the 23-year-old. Since Dudgeon was on foot, a second cop came and drove Frey the few blocks to police headquarters. There, Patrolman Charles Maneely reported, Frey declined to take a blood alcohol test.
Since headquarters did not have a cell or any kind of secured holding area, Cartnal explained, Frey would have been placed in a paneled room with chairs and a fold-up table upon which sat the department’s Breathalyzer machine. And Frey would not have been handcuffed unless he was being unruly, added Cartnal.
Frey was issued two traffic tickets, one for driving under the influence and another for driving without a license, and a separate misdemeanor criminal summons for having that open container of Pabst. He was directed to appear in Mayor’s Court in 10 days. Frey was then released on $733 cash bond, according to the report, which was written at 4 AM on October 25. So, Frey’s time in custody did not exceed five hours.

I read a lot; fiction, non-fiction, speculative fiction, journalism—I love it all equally. But it pisses me off when a genre is misrepresented like this. Frey’s novel still holds merit as a work of fiction, but it definitely loses its punch when you discover your gutsy badass protagonist was really a soccer playing frat boy (as TSG also reveals) with—yes—a drinking problem, but also with a vivid imagination and impeccable manners.

Oh, and what I’m for: bacon, puppies, and running.

PBS is apparently doing an adolescent-boys-in-crisis series this week, with the miniseries documentary Country Boys yesterday through Wednesday and a doc on troubled urban boys called Raising Cain Thursday night. I don’t approve of the conceit generally—seems like a modified version of that perennial (and perennially overrated) crisis in masculinity to me—but Country Boys is good for other reasons.

The series follows two high schools students named Cody and Chris who live in the hollows of Appalachian Kentucky. Their lives are tough—Cody’s father shot his stepmother and then himself when Cody was 12; Chris’s father is an alcoholic who can’t hold down a job. So far the politics of the region are addressed only obliquely, but it was fascinating to see Cody, who talks through a Heath Ledger-style lockjaw, arguing with a friend about whether government was good or bad. (Cody came down pro, and to illustrate his point he mimed shooting his friend in the head and said that without government he would experience no repercussions.) What was really eye-opening for me was to see how thoroughly religion was woven into the public alternative high school the boys attend. Prayers open the graduation ceremony, a science teacher says humans shouldn’t be cloned because you shouldn’t mess with God’s creation. The Supreme Court has no clout here.

You can watch yesterday’s episode online here; tonight’s episode airs in Seattle at 9 pm on PBS.

There is an urban legend that crime dropped precipitously in New York City for one hour on Feb 9, 1964—when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

It appears, however, that Ariel Sharon has achieved what the Beatles couldn’t. From the UK’s Times:

Burglaries, car thefts and other crimes have more than halved since Israelis began gluing themselves to television sets for news on the health of Ariel Sharon, their ailing Prime Minister.

In the first three days after Mr Sharon’s stroke only 865 burglaries were reported, compared to 1,739 in the corresponding period last year. Police attributed the fall to the fact that householders and would-be burglars have been preoccupied with their Prime Minister’s fight for life.

A lot of the mail at Savage Love is from readers who aren’t happy with something I’ve written. Which is fine—it’s advice, not gospel, and advice, according to Webster’s, “is an opinion about what could or should be done,” and people are free to disagree with my opinions and share their own. (They’re also free to go get their own damn advice columns.) But sometimes people send me letters that make me want to reach through the ether and slap their faces. Like this one:

I can’t believe you wrote this, Dan: “Stereotypical straight women, as every man knows, like to get little calls, you know, just ‘cause.”

Excuse me, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. That is a stereotype!!!

I’m a straight woman and I HATE talking on the phone. I would much rather have my car fixed or my face cum on.

Krista

Golly, it’s stereotyping to say that women like to talk on the phone? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO shit, Krista. And guess what? There was a clue in the column that made it pretty clear that I knew that already. Slowly re-read this sentence and see if you can spot the evidence that I’m knowingly employing a stereotype about women: “Stereotypical straight women, as every man knows, like to get little calls, you know, just ‘cause.”

Geez!

While reading for the third time Tsitisi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Condition, which was published in 1988 and is set in in the 60s in the region of Manicaland, Zimbabwe, home of my tribe the Chimanicas, I came across this wonderful passage: “An enterprising owner of one of the tuckshops…introduced a gramophone into his shop so that the youth could entertain themselves with music and dancing. They played the new rhumba that, as popular music will, pointed unsystematic fingers at the conditions of the times: ‘I’ll beat you if you keep asking for your money,’ ‘Father, I’m jobless, give me money for roora,’ [roora is money paid for a bride] ‘My love, why have you taken a second wife?’ There was swaying hips, stamping of feet, to the pulse of these social facts.” The first two of the three samples of afro-pop need no explanation. The third (“a second wife”) concerns the modernization process, the crumbling of an older, African order and the emergence of a new, Christian-based one. The passage from Nervous Condition is important not only because I’m related to its author (we share the same totem) but also because it shows how any historical study of late-20th century African culture is useless or incomplete with the exclusion of its popular music. This is not true for all cultures; some require only written materials for the reconstruction of a given time. With Africans, particularly from the southern nations, you must listen to the music.
The same is also true for post-independence Jamaicans, whose history is nowhere else but in popular music—listen to Horace Andy’s ‘National Heroes’ or Johnny Clarke’s “Declaration of Human Rights.” Another excellent example is this sad song by the great Gregory Isaacs (the Lonely Lover) “Front Door”: “I gave her back the key to her front door/ because it seemed she didn’t care about me any more/I gave her all the love I had and she spilled it/So I packed my things into a shopping bag and decided to quit.” The opening of “Front Door” contains two significant “social facts”: one, the the singer survives in a capitalist economy (shopping bag); two, extreme poverty determines the singer’s reality (he can fit all of his belongings into a shopping bag).
I want to say more on this subject, as there are more examples from Zimbabwean and Jamaican pop, but I fear it’s not a very interesting topic for most of you.

Apparently, art museums are good for you.

Kind of like Mozart. Except that classical music has been hailed as relaxing and healthy for years, and that has only harmed classical music by convincing everyone it’s totally boring and giving conductors and orchestras cause to make it ever more boring, harming it even more. Why is relaxation always the only measure of health? Why isn’t it just as healthy to get good and riled up over something, get a little color in your cheeks?

Unfortunately, art often seems to be complicit in what has become a loser race to relaxation. I was at Seattle Art Museum on its final day last week, wandering with the hushed crowds through the Tiffany show. The lamps were gorgeous, even titillating. But what was interesting, frustrating, and above all, worth talking about, was the show’s (unstated) range. Because, as I discovered, Tiffany was a terrible painter, truly terrible. Of course, organizers want the show to hang together, to form a respectable whole, and that doesn’t allow for frank talk about the artist’s ability levels in various mediums. Yet for my money, that debate would have been more fun, smarter, and virtually packed with vitamins and minerals.

There were howling wolves outside my apartment all night.

I live on the top floor of a six-story building, in the corner, and all night long the wind howled like you wouldn’t believe — long, irregular, animal-like wails as it whipped around across the brick and terra cotta features of my building. I usually sleep like a bag of rocks. The building is on one of the busiest intersections in Seattle and I’m used to noise — ambulances, crack heads shouting at each other, jackhammers on Sunday mornings, all of it. This wind was loud, hellish, and unrelenting. I’d say I got less than an hour of good sleep. After a while I went and tried to sleep on my couch away from any windows. I could still hear it, and I don’t really fit on that couch. Then I went back to bed and opened the window above my head just a crack, thinking maybe there was just a problem with air pressure, that if I opened my window the sound would die. This was just before dawn. The blinds lifted in the rush of air and flags of cold wind ran through me and ruffled the sheets and the noise, if anything, got louder. It’s morning and I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve been beat up by wolves.

The New York Times keeps John Tierney’s column behind their “Times Selectâ€� firewall, so you’ll either have to pick up a copy of the paper or surf around a bit and find someone who has posted the entire column on the web. But everyone who is pro-choice should read his column today. In “Men’s Abortion Rights,â€� Tierney walks folks through this controversial idea: Just as women should be able to accept or reject maternity, men should be able to accept or reject paternity.

If the pro-choice side adopted a gender-neutral policy, then either the man or the woman would have the right to say no to parenthood. I don’t’ know of anyone advocating that a woman be required to have an abortion, but there’s another right that could be given to a man who impregnates a woman who isn’t his wife. If the woman decided to go ahead and have the child, she would have to notify him and give him the option early in the pregnancy of absolving himself of any financial responsibility for the child.

This option to have a “financial abortionâ€� has been advocated by a few iconoclasts—not all of them men with child support payments…

After years of getting letters at “Savage Loveâ€� from teenage boys asking me if they’re fucked—i.e. on the hook for 18 years of child support payments—when their knocked-up girlfriends decide to go ahead and have the baby, the right to a financial abortion makes sense to me, and I’m not a man making child support payments. It’s a sexist stereotype that all boys who knock up girls were negligent or abusive and are therefore to blame: I’ve heard from boys whose girlfriends swore they were on the pill when they were not; from boys whose girlfriends swore they were pro-choice and would have an abortion and then changed their minds. Not all men are dogs and not all women are righteous—there are women who entrap men, depriving them of their right to make up their own minds about whether or not they’re ready to become parents. So to me it seems only fair that boys, as well has girls, be given the same right to choose.

When I’ve floated the idea to friends (I also touched on the subject in The Kid), I’ve been told that boys do have a choice—they can choose not to have sex. If a boy chooses to have sex, well, he has to accept the consequences, doesn’t he? That language, however, smacks of the rhetoric the rights uses when it argues against a woman’s right to choose an abortion—hell, it is the rhetoric the right uses to argue against abortion. “Not ready for parenthood? Then don’t have sex.â€� How can that be sexist when the anti-choice crowd says it to girls and progressive when pro-choicers say it to boys?

Maybe I’m just so enamored of the rhetoric of choice and the equality of the sexes that I support—at least in concept (there are a lot of details that would have to be worked out)—a man’s right to a financial abortion. Women and men should both be able to choose when and how they become parents, and the ability or willingness of the male to chose fatherhood is certainly something a woman should weigh when she’s deciding whether or not to chose motherhood.

Would a man’s decision to reject paternity have a coercive affect, nudging a woman toward making the choice to have an abortion? Yes, it certainly would—but what’s wrong with that? Again, the willingness of the man involved to actually be the father—emotionally and financially—is something that a woman should consider when she’s deciding whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

More from Tierney:

If it were just a question of the woman’s rights versus the man’s rights, I’d go along… But if the man gets a financial abortion and the woman goes ahead with the pregnancy, someone else’s rights still need to be considered: the child would be suffering because of the parents’ decisions.

Tierney assumes that the child of woman who goes ahead with the pregnancy is going to live in poverty. But he overlooks the other choice a pregnant woman whose partner has chosen financial abortion can make: she can choose to place her child for adoption.

George W. Bush is a dangerous lunatic—who knew?

Thomas Friedman did, actually. In a NYT column in 2002, Friedman wrote: “There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness… to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.”

So there I was, enjoying an Arby’s commercial wedged between segments of Wife Swap when I noticed the guy in the Arby’s commercial was easy on the eye. I’d seen him before, in a Beneful dog food commercial, and here he was again, with his lunky goodlooks and meaty frame. Then it hit me: I was having impure thoughts about a Deluise.

For those born after the 1970s, the horror of having erotic thoughts about anything even remotely related to Dom Deluise will be hard to fathom. And David Deluise isn’t just RELATED to Dom Deluise—he was shot out of the end of Dom Deluise’s penis! He is the spawn of Dom.

Nevertheless, he’s dreamy. His acting career doesn’t look like much, building from such resume-padding roles as “Fratguy” in 2002’s Buying the Cow to the ostensible peak of 2003’s Bachelor Man. (For extra fun, read the back of the DVD case. Holy fuck!)

Still, he’s got such expressive eyebrows. He’s nice to waitresses. He looks nice with a beard. He even looks okay rendered in Claymation (though I’ve got a bad feeling about that hook). Sometimes it seems like he might even be a homosexual.

But no, he’s been married. And it looks like he’s capable of being an asshole. But that’s part of his Deluisey appeal.

I live in shame.

But, really, why should Alaska treat their canine passengers any better than they treat their human passengers?

No, I’m not talking about my shameful recommendation of last year’s Def Leppard concert (I already apologized for that), but the fact that this CD actually exists. An acoustic version of the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane”? The resurrection of Nelson?! Someone over at VH1 Classics needs to be given paper cuts in the webbing between their toes.