Ever green

Viggo Johansen, Radosne boze  narodzenie
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Last night's local news offered some very helpful tips on recycling your Christmas tree--

"All Allegheny County parks will accept Christmas trees for recycling."

"Be sure to remove all lights, ornaments, and decorations before recycling your tree."

"Also remember to remove any children or gifts from under the tree and remove the tree from your house before recycling it."

I made up the last one, but apparently when it comes to tree recycling in our little town, instructions have to be very clear and very specific.

Merry Christmas, bitches!

Sorry, I have just always wanted to say that, at least since everything in North America became a little more hip-hop.

My wish for you all is a wonderful December 25th, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, as a religious holiday or a secular one.

Sometimes just making it to the end of the week in late December is reason enough to celebrate. So pat yourself on the back and toast your good fortune with some sparkling, non-alcoholic cider and half a pan of butterscotch brownies. That's pretty much my plan for the day.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I'm just going to go ahead and eat the whole pan.

Elfin art for art's sake

"Elf on the Shelf" by Micala - Courtesy of Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Every time I see a new "Elf on the Shelf" image, I think to myself . . .

Finally! Jeff Koons has found his true muse!

* * *

Really, I despise this sort of crap art (both of the Elf on the Shelf and Jeff Koons variety). But if this quote by lace-on-his-Victorian-bloomers art critic Robert Hughes is to be believed--

"Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him."*

Then I despise pretentious, bigoted modern art critics almost as much.

Honestly, observations on the theme of American vulgarity are practically as old as the country itself and are no less derivative than Jeff Koons' art.

And while we're painting entire nations with the same slapdash brushwork, may I just say that it's rather rich, being called out for a tacky, boisterous, self-aggrandizing culture by an art critic from Australia?

(Australia, I love you, but come on . . . .)

* * *

* Hughes, Robert. "Showbiz and the Art World", The Guardian, 30 June 2004. Quoted from the Wikipedia article on Jeff Koons. I'll check the original quote as soon as possible and retract it if it's been taken our of context. I doubt I'll have to, though.

When I was 15, it was a very good year . . . for music

I think we can all agree by now that my taste in music--and most other forms of popular culture--is a mixed bag, ranging from the almost-credible to the incredibly dodgy.

Australian and South African soap operas, Fannie Flagg novels, lustful or wry commentaries about French TV personalities, the Sims, ABBA, shortwave radio, the Minogue sisters, '60s James Bond movies, Eurodisco and other music that is more about the beat than the lyrics--guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and so very guilty.

And so be it. I am what I am, and to deny these rather camp cultural tastes is to deny myself, my identity, which in large part is that of a gay white American man in his early 50s with a slight Southern accent and somewhat leftist politics who can't drive a stick and avoids pretentiousness and math as if they were plagues from the heavens. I'm weary of apologizing for myself and tired of feeling embarrassed about my likes and dislikes--even though I am doing a bit of both, right here and now.

I do have other interests, ones that are slightly more highbrow, especially when it comes to movies (ahem, film) and fiction (ahem, literary fiction). I should share more about those and maybe I will in the year ahead. Admittedly, it is tougher to write about the "serious" stuff and somewhat less fun. Perhaps this belies some serious intellectual laziness on my part, I would wager. Or, again, am I dissing myself over my true interests so as to seem weightier, to be taken seriously? Yes, that too.

Goodness knows I struggle with this at work too often, pretending to being into what I do when, really, I think my interests within my profession lie elsewhere and are much more basic. They're more about helping people, relating to them, figuring out their needs, than shilling to them about another new, half-tried technology or half-baked theory.

My profession is crazy these days. But it doesn't mean I have to be, too.

And, thus, I present to you "Fly Butterfly" by Ruby Manila.

This is one of those songs that has teased my memory for years. I used to hear this--or something like it--on my shortwave radio in the late 1970s, but I was never able to identify the performer, the song title, the country of origin, the year of release, or even the exact station I was listening to (although I had a pretty good idea it was being broadcast on a German station or one in the Benelux between 1976 and 1978). I heard it more than once during the era but could only remember the refrain, "fly, fly (or high?), butterfly (butterfly)," sung by a smooth, high female voice, counterpointed by a ridiculously deep male voice.

I adore the song--it's quintessential Eurodisco, with the swooning vocals, skanky bass, and seductive beat, perhaps more 1976 than 1978 in sound, but who's counting? It's not quite as I recall it--I don't remember any of the lyrics other than the chorus; I remember the music being slightly more electronic and faster in beat; and I remember the singer's voice as being a little higher--but it is the song. Maybe there was another "special disco version" or someone else covered the tune. Regardless, this is it, and I'm glad to finally discover it after nearly 40 years of off and on searching.

How did I find this? I'm not sure I can even recall the exact steps. For years (at least five, maybe longer), I've searched repeated for the phrase "fly high butterfly song" and "fly fly butterfly song" or simply "butterfly song 1970s" via Google, YouTube, and some online music forums. You'd be surprised not at how many references to butterflies in the 1970s you might find in this way but perhaps at the number of songs you might discover.

Such as this:



Which is close. Right genre, right era, right region.

And this:


Which is not but was popular in the early '70s and was covered in other languages and by other artists.

Apparently, too, these guys had a hit with a song called "Butterfly" in the 1970s, but I kept getting pointed to this instead:



No, I don't understand it either. On many different levels. When it comes to "schlager," I realize that even I have borders of camp that I won't cross.

For some reason, last night, after a day of housework and sleep, I was obsessed with the idea of finding this song (plus one other, which we'll get to in the near future). I tried my usual searches and came up empty. And then I got creative (or overcome by the dust and cleaning chemicals, take your pick) and branched out a bit. I can't remember what exactly I typed in the search box: Some combination of "butterfly, fly, disco, song, 1977, 1970s" or some such. This search somehow miraculously led me to this page, which identified a song title and a singer, although providing more lyrics than I recall. And this information quickly led me to discover the video that started off this post.

There are a few other references to the song: For example, this page and this page. But that's about it, at least for now.

None of my usual searches and sources have turned up a roaming mp3 or even an unwanted vinyl for the tune. But never say never. I found the song, I found the artist, and in good time, I'll add the music to my collection.

Along the way I think I also discovered another lost part of my youth and thus nother part of me. Misspent you say? Wasted you infer? I beg to differ. I wouldn't be me without all the Ruby Manilas and Fly Butterflys in my life. Perhaps that means little to you--but if you've gotten this far in the post, I suspect it means something--but it increasingly means a great deal to me.

Tools of the trade

"First Amendment inscription" by Robin Klein - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia

This is how this will play out: The Interview is shelved for Christmas release due to "terroristic threats" and "concern over everyone's safety."

Within three months, it will be released to theaters "due to popular demand" and everyone's 1st Amendment "right to free speech"--but, really, because it's likely to have a better opening weekend in the dead of winter and because more buzz has been created around it. ("The movie that Kim Jung-Un didn't want you to see!")

Really, folks, this is how capitalism works. It's the cockroach of economic systems.

So everyone please stop being such tools of the entertainment trade, fools of the Hollywood machine. Seth Grogen does not care about Americans' right to free speech. Ferchrissakes, he's Canadian for one thing.

For another, I keep remembering how he blasted that probably douchebaggic Macklemore for his alleged anti-Semitic costume at a concert in Seattle a couple of years ago. Someone who supports free speech at any cost would surely support the free speech of a LGBT-loving, 9/11-truthing, possible-Jewish-stereotype-baiting rapper, wouldn't he? After all, free speech . . . .

And for yet another, he's one of the Nerdpack, another hack-tor in the current series of nebbishy guys starring in dumb-guy comedies. His motivation may in part be free speech, but I'm willing to wager that it is also more money and more fame.

Does anyone care about the quality of free speech? I mean, are we really willing to go to bat or to war for "poor" Sony Pictures and a ridiculous movie with a tacky premise--the murder of a sitting head of state?

How would we react if someone made a movie about killing our head of state? The Queen of England? The prime minister of Australia or Canada? The president of Brazil or Nigeria? Or 130 schoolchildren in Pakistan?

Oh, don't worry, I'm not feeling sorry for that Thug-in-Chief of North Korea. Not in the least. But as much as I want to preserve free speech, I have to question the idea of free speech at any cost, of free speech without responsibility. Surely I want new ideas and provocative ideas to be expressed and shared. However, sometimes common sense and better taste might cause one to think before one speaks--or makes a movie or dons a costume or shows one's butt to the universe with a wack opinion about 9/11 or Jews or Muslims or anyone else for that matter.

We obviously need free speech to make us aware of the torture our government agency's practice. But do we need free speech to make a company a lot of money and to raise Seth Rogen's and James Franco's profile? I'm sure I'm seeming and possibly being short-sighted--I can't stand either of them, along with George Clooney as well--and I'm sure I'm just being curmudgeonly. It's what I do.

But, feh, call me when everyone starts to talk seriously about torture, 130 schoolchildren being murdered in Pakistan, hostage-takings in Australia, repression in North Korea, our support of allegedly Communist China but our 50-year non-support of Communist Cuba, and man's ongoing abuse of man, animal, and the planet.

That's free speech I can get fired up about.

ShhhhTFU* please

Image courtesy of Words, Words, Words

 It does indeed.

* Shhhush those folks up, please.

Back to our regularly scheduled shallowness already in progress

Despite a week of protests against racism conducted by local government agents and congressional revelations about torture conducted by federal government agents (what, no state government agents? slackers . . .), my early '90s nostalgia continues. This time in the mix, Tejano music star Selena and my favorite Spanish-language song by her, "Amor prohibido" ("Forbidden Love").

When I moved to San Antonio in August 1995, Selena had already been dead a few months, murdered by the former president of her fan club, a woman whose name I will not mention here. (She is simply not worthy of the publicity that she seems to crave, even 20 years later.) Yet in spite of having been murdered five months earlier, feelings still ran high and strong in South Texas.

While Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas (in Brazoria County over toward Houston), and grew up in Corpus Christi, San Antonians knew her and loved her well. San Antonio was, after all, sometimes referred to Mexico's northernmost city, at least in Texas, where more than 60 percent of the population is of Latino origin, chiefly Mexican American. It is a Mexican American population with a long history in the region, back to the early 1700s at least, when Spain began to colonize South Texas. Even after being declared independent from Mexico in 1836 and later becoming part of the U.S., Mexican influence remained strong and constant with successive waves of immigration throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, which resulted in the development of a homegrown, native-born Tex-Mex (or better, Tejano) culture. Tejano music is a fine example of that.

When I lived there from 1995 to 2004, I loved this aspect of San Antonio, more than all the Alamo and Republic of Texas meshugas--so white, so American in perspective. Fiesta San Antonio, cascarones, that Mexico seafood place on the Southside where I had to order in Spanish, aguas frescas, corn in a cup (hard to find in SA but usually brought out during festivals), code-switching, a passionate local literature scene, las Posadas, tamales at Christmastime, the close proximity of both the Texas Hill Country and Mexico, the slower pace, and a montón of other things--I miss them all. I spent a good nine years of my life there, and as winter in Pittsburgh stalks me once again, I often wonder why I left.

Oh, but I do remember why. I had my reasons, many of which seemed very good then and even now make a lot sense. I hated the Texas heat, all seven months of it, even if it was mostly a dry heat. The slower pace belied a lack of dynamism as well, a go-along-to-get-along attitude that chafed me professionally and intellectually. The strong sense of familia, which could be welcoming and comforting even to an outsider like me, also meant that a lot of gay people lived their lives in the closet.

A snide aside: Nevertheless, by the number of times I've been hit on by married white gay men in other parts of the country, I do wonder if a lot of gay folk have a "familia" issue to deal with. At least Latino gay men in San Antonio seemed happier and better able to live life on the hyphen.

Seriously, though, if I could have found a decent job in a decent library at a decent university in Houston, or maybe even Dallas (but steady on, let's not go to extremes), I think I would have stayed in Texas--or just would have cut to the chase and moved to Mexico, which I love deeply for some of the same reasons, as well as several hundred additional ones. But things turned out differently for me, and the crazy charm of Texas in the '80s and '90s seems to have resulted in just pure "t" crazy in the '00s and '10s. So let's keep the regrets to a minimum and move on.

Back to Selena: She was everywhere in 1995, before and after death. I remember seeing tributes to her in office cubicles in the city's personnel department; constant gossip and worry about her relationships with her father, her club president, and her husband; this huge (and somewhat unflattering) portrait unveiled and displayed at the public library; and her songs in heavy rotation on the airwaves. Yes, we were still listening to the radio back then.

In fact, if I recall correctly, at the time I drove across the Texas border on IH-10 near Beaumont, I picked up a station on the car radio playing either "Amor prohibido" or "Como la flor"--I can't remember which now. It may have been a tribute to Selena's sad, untimely death at 23, but for me, at the ripe old age of 33, it felt like a new beginning.

Sometimes I wish I had just stopped the car in Houston--far more dynamic, far more cultural and cutting-edge. Hot, sweaty, full of "oil field trash" and godawful traffic, and marred by a tragic lack of zoning and urban planning but also blessed with fantastic museums (the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection being noteworthy on an international level), opera, ballet, the Galleria, huge Asian supermarkets, and the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer, epicenter for Houston's gay community. I think I would have been happier, more satisfied, and would probably never have left Texas.

And in so doing, I wouldn't have met Cairo; wouldn't have edited a journal; wouldn't have gone to Montreal to study French and learned about an entirely different culture; wouldn't have become president of a regional library organization; wouldn't have made some wonderful friends in Gettysburg; wouldn't have reconnected with friends in Washington; wouldn't have traveled to Scotland, France, Germany, and England (twice); and wouldn't have done a whole host of other stuff either.

I might not have ended up in another Pittsburgh winter either with a hectic job that feigns at being a career "opportunity." I might have more than just a couple of half-hearted friendships. I might not have gained eight pounds in the last year. But it's give and take most days. Win some, lose some, or come to a draw. But most of all, keep moving.

So perhaps this post isn't as shallow, frivolous, and nostalgic as I might pretend. Maybe in the last 20 years, years that have passed by faster than a Rip Van Winkle REM stage dream, I have learned and grown and laughed and loved and striven and succeeded more than I realize. Life feels slow in the here and now, like cold molasses most days, but oh, it does go by and it goes by fast. And whenever I can stop for a moment, catch my breath, and look where I've traveled from and not focus so much on where I'm running to, I realize that I love my life, more and more, truly, madly, and deeply.

I only wish Selena had had the same opportunities. Talented, personable, and by all accounts a lovely, kind person, she deserved better. We all do.

It's torture

I'm not going to do this justice. Not that justice seems to matter much.

"Forgive me if the question seems impudent, but I would like to ask: How do you find it possible to eat afterwards, after you have been . . . working with people?

"That is a question I have always asked myself about executioners and other such people . . . . I would imagine that one would want to wash one's hands. But no ordinary washing would be enough, one would require priestly intervention, a ceremonial cleansing, don't you think? Some kind of purging of one's soul too--that is how I have imagined it.

"Otherwise how would it be possible to return to everyday life--to sit down at table . . . to break bread with one's family or one's comrades?"

 --J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 145

I wasn't kidding

Another early '90s tune, a barely remembered classic (at least to my ear)--Kym Sims, "Too Blind to See It," which tiptoed into the US Top 40 way back in in 1992 but which stomped its foot on position 5 in the UK charts.

Funny that. I was once again more tuned into what was going on in music in Britain way back when (rave, Kylie Minogue, The Shamen, Q magazine), even when it was essentially American music playing on BBC Radio One. Wrong country, wrong time.

I made my first trip to the UK in 1993, when I probably should have gone in 1983 or before, being more new wave than rave. Nevertheless, it was fun being there in the summer of '93, INXS playing a concert in some pub, videos for The Shamen on giant screens on Oxford or some other high street, the secret wish that I'd see Kylie in some random shop. The best I managed was Eric Bogosian, Annie Lenox (sort of--she regularly had lunch in Crouch End, where I was staying), and some unknown Brit actor that I recognized from American TV, forgotten to me now.

I just wish I could have stayed longer. But, really, balding at the ripe old age of 32 and decidedly not stylish like perhaps I was for one brief, well-put-together moment in the '80s, I already felt out of shape and out of place in any sort of under-25, G.A.Y.-oriented environment. Alas and alack. The amount of time I have spent in my life worrying that I was too old, too ugly, or too unhip. What a waste.

Anyway, Kym Sims. This is a great song and an alright video, so evocative of the era, musically, stylistically, and crazy camera-anglely. What is up with those rapid close-ups and reverse-outs? And that dancing--much faster than the song itself, very out of sync. Silly.

And pre-Worldwide Web as well. Imagine having to get all your music news from magazines and BBC broadcasts, letters from friends, and the occasional foray overseas. Yes. Really. That's the way it worked.

To be honest, I miss it. Oh, I love the Web and I make use of it thousands of times per day--and looky, even to write this blog that I'm never sure anyone's actually reading. I met my current boyfriend thanks to the Web, keep up with friends and make new ones through it, do my serious and fun research thanks to it, shop, read, work, stay up-to-date on current events and cultural happenings, goof around, play games, and generally eat, sleep, and breathe it. It makes me more sedentary perhaps, but it also helps me to "travel" through my conversations with others. And it makes me much less lonely than I might have been during my extended sentence in the hell that is Pittsburgh.

But, still, nostalgia. A couple of weeks back I went to a bookstore--yes, a bookstore!--a new one opened by a friend of mine here in town. How fun and exciting it was just to browse in a bookstore again and buy whatever struck my fancy.

Sure, we can do that in a way through hyperlinking and web-surfing, but . . . it just seems different now, more passive, less interactive, than going to a physical store and searching through the shelves, stacks, and bins.

Maybe it's a Pittsburgh thing or a small city thing, living in a place that doesn't have enough people and disposable income to support more retail. We still have a couple of contemporary music stores and some fantastic vinyl shops. We seem to be seeing a resurgence of bookstores, with two now open in Squirrel Hill after a few years of bookstore death. There are some other types of shops as well--cards, gifts, housewares, design, etc. They are few and far between, though, not nearly prevalent or promoted enough.

But do I go to them? No, not really. Rarely, in fact.

Some of it is due to money--trying to be wise with it for a change and not spend it on more stuff that I don't need or will have to pack and move at some point. Some of it is due to focusing on my true interests--music and media, mostly, when it used to be more about music, books, clothes, and food.

But, all in all, I'm just not that interested, and I'd really rather . . . live, work, and shop online.

And watch early '90s videos, remembering when, twenty years ago, and who I was then and reconciling it with who and where I am now.

God help me, I've rediscovered the early '90s

I really don't know what triggered it--maybe a message from a friend reminding that it was 20 years ago when Kylie Minogue released "Put Yourself in My Place" or the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain tributes of late--but I have suddenly remembered the '90s.

Not all of the '90s, mind you, but just certain moments, mostly related through pop music.

It was 23 years ago that I left Washington for greener pastures. It was 21 years ago that went to grad school to be a librarian. It was 19 years ago that I accepted my first library job and moved to Texas.
I was aged 30 to 33 during that era. I went to my first (and only) rave. I hung out with kids younger than me in grad school. I was one of the younger people in management when I made it up the ranks of my career ladder. And yet I felt old then, or at least older than the people I would have considered my contemporaries--new library school grads, new librarians, many of my friends.

Imagine me now: Twenty years later, I feel positively ancient.

It is what it is, and I think I'm coping with getting older these days, much better than I did when I turned 50 a couple of years back.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for early '90s music and style (I would have totally worn D:Ream's windowpane check suit, although 10 years earlier), trying to remember myself then before things got busy, I moved around a lot, and 20 years slipped by in a blink.

Perhaps, too, it's a way to come to grips with the middling present. In some ways, relationship-wise, I'm happier and more satisfied than I've ever been. In others--the lack of friends nearby, the sense that the culture has changed too much and has passed me by, and work, above all else, work--I am not so happy.

So a return to 1990-1995 is in order. It's a way to help me remember who I was then, compare it to who I am now, and try to remember what I wanted out of my life.

Before another 20 years passes me by. Before it's too late to do anything about it.