Japhy Go Boom Plus, Larry Kramer Gets His Ass Kicked, My Andrew Sullivan Connection, I Write a Novel and The Dem Ticket for '08 One of the great things about blogging is that you're free to write about whatever you want, whenever you want to. Later this week, I'm going to put up a guide to leaving the country, but first let me tell you about my awfully fun brush with death. Fascicle is Not a Pasta So I'm riding my bike home from the office on Saturday (yes, I'm a workaholic- yes, I have no life) and I'm riding past this Saturn SUV when the driver door opens and slams into me. Wheeeee! I'm turning all sorts of directions and then am on the ground, my pocket change spilling all over the street. Boo! Next thing I know, I'm being picked up by the driver of the car, a big El Salvadoran man who seemed to know what he was doing, so I follow along. We notice that I'm hobbling on one leg. I pull up my jeans leg and lo and behold, there's my muscle. No, not the outside part- but ya' know, the soft chewy center on the inside. Weeee! I'm all light-headed. I call my friend John and ask him what hospital I should go to and he offers to take me. The El Salvadoran holds my bleeding leg and tells me it's not bleeding too bad- that back home he's seen far worse from gunfights, but that it is kind of weird you can see my muscle underneath. Jon show up, I hobble into his truck and we're on our way. First stop was the hospital downtown, which was, what I remember of it- scary. Nobody was there and by this time I'm feeling the wooziness of shock. "Take me to where the rich people go", I mutter to John and off we go to Cedars-Sinai, whose ER has its own waterfall. Much better. An hour or so later, me and my gimp leg are in a private room. The doctor comes by and unwraps the gauze a nurse had put on it. "Oh wow, how did you do that?", is not the first thing you want a doctor to say to you, but I tell him that I think it was my bike chain that cut me and he explains how that's impossible. "See, look at this laceration. It's like it got hit with a really blunt object, like the back of an axe, or in your case, probably the car door. Your skin just burst open like a balloon and then just kept ripping." Why do doctors always sound so thrilled when they get to explain to you why it is that you're in pain? He continued "And all that stuff you can see? Those are fascicle. Like, when you eat a piece of meat, you know how there's sometimes that thin layer of fat over it? That's it." Coooool. So then I waited some more. Even at rich people's hospitals you wait a lot. John came back after grabbing some food and we watched The Women on the TV mounted to Craftmatic Adjustable Examination Table. In fact, I really lucked out with the bed/chair thingie. They had accidentally stuck me in the OB/GYN room and so was in the lap of luxury, at least for an ER. Any rate- long story made short: They cleaned my muscle out and I was the hit of the ER. Nurses kept coming by and looking at my leg and asking me excitedly, as if my giant gash were a particularly rare owl or something, "Have you seen this?" To which I responded, "Oh, yes, we're old friends." Finally they got around to sewing the damn thing up and John and I watched Joan Crawford get her comeuppance on the TV. Because of muscle damage they put me in a partial cast and was soon on my merry way. Today, after hearing of my plight, ABV came by my hotel and brought over my favorites: Pomegranate juice and Phish Food. Between his kind act, John's kind act and James Spader, I think I have reason to go on living. Still, I deserve lots of sympathy- I'm told that if I ever had any hopes of being a leg model, those days are over, but the upside is that I'll have a huge scar, which is awesome. In lieu of flowers, please send escorts. The Night Larry Kramer Got His Ass Served to Him On a Platter My friend Jared relayed to me how he chewed out Larry Kramer at a JCM hosted Q&A at Cooper Union. Here are the highlights, which I hope Jared won't mind me sharing, seeing as how he did this in front of a packed house of gays:

"[Larry Kramer] generalized gay people and said that he thinks gay people are better, smarter, more aware, etc etc.....he said it at least five times in his speech...I said that if you're going to generalize gay people, I'll put it this way...We're self-loathing self-absorbed hedonists...We only are politically involved when it comes to things that affect US (civil unions, adoption, etc)...That we're in denial about the fact that we were merely pawns for Karl Rove in this election.....That its completely selfish and counter-productive for us to keep fighting for "gay marriage" when there's a million more issues that are more important, like human rights, the environment, Africa, corporate ownership of everything, media control.... That its not JUST gay people who have HIV and use crystal meth...That HIV is the number one killer of young African-American females...That we cant keep separating ourselves and fighting for things we DON'T NEED. That we need to look outside of the fucking gay bubble.... I said "What's going to happen once we do get civil unions? What happened after black people were integrated into our schools?"They still got called niggers... And we'll still be called faggots. Get over it and fight for more important things." The audience, according to Jared responded with huge applause.

Pundits Don't Drive

While I've never met the man, it seems Andrew Sullivan and I are on a collision course of our own. While my first knowledge of Sullivan came from Michaelangelo Signoreli's posting a personals ad of Sullivan's that pointed out his preference for barebacking, since he has turned against Bush I find myself reading his excellent blog more and more. According to the site, he was in L.A. this weekend and I missed his appearance at the Abbey, but really who cares? What excites me is that he drops this little tidbit:

"I usually feel at a loss in L.A. because I don't know how to drive a car." (emphasis added)

As a 25 year old who doesn't drive and whose leg got mangled in the name of alternative transportation, it's nice to know that I'm not alone. Perhaps Andrew and I can team up to start our own PAC: Gay Bloggers Who Don't Drive.

Young Hemingway- only without the bulls, the war and the repressed homosexuality...Well, okay- without the bulls.

So, I'm working on doing National Novel Writing Month's 50,000 word challenge. I'm way behind at this point, but I'm determined to make it. Don't expect too much posting here over the next few weeks, since even for me, 50k is a lot. Check out my NanoWriMo profile through ought the month by clicking the icon on the sidebar. It will show you how far along I am and I'll keep changing the excerpts. The idea of the contest is not to write well, but write a lot, so I'm not editing anything, which is a freeing experience in itself.

A Ticket For '08

Finally, I have this conspiracy theory that all the networks are bringing up the idea of Hillary in '08, just so that we can hear the public outcry now, realize that nominating Hillary is political suicide (people hate her, hell- I kind of hate her and I voted for her) and move on. My personal choice for an '08 ticket at this point: Barack Obama/ Bill Richardson.

Both are brilliant, both are minorities (Republicans don't know what to do with unpasty people) and both are really pretty much all the Dems have got right now. Richardson, in particular, is really an underdeveloped resource for the DNC. A former UN ambassador, former Secretary of Energy and four-time Nobel Prize nominee who just happens to be Hispanic and from the swing state of New Mexico, you'd think you would have heard of him earlier- say...As Kerry's running mate? Whatever. Stupid Democrats.

Send escorts!

posted by Japhy at 11/08/2004 01:10:00 AM || #