Lakeside Chautauqua and Marblehead on Lake Erie

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Dairy Dock.
Bark!
Root at Lighthouse
What Lakeside is all about.
Marblehead Light.
The view is Cedar Point Amusement Park.
Lampost in Lakeside.
Marblehead Light.
Boats!
Marblehead Light.
Marblehead Light.
LaFarge Quarry in Marblehead.
Cracks in Marblehead Light.
Lights on the side of the Hotel Lakeside.
Gulls on my sister’s garage.
LaFarge Quarry loading dock as seen from Lakeside.
Hotel Lakeside sign and dockside pavilion.
I am obviously less of an American than these folks.
My dream cottage.
It’s broasted!

Manners maketh the hump.

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People sometimes accuse me of being overly obsessed with manners. I have my reasons.

Table_SettingI was reminiscing the other night with my friend Chloe. Her birthday was the next day, and I brought up celebrating with her back in 2005. A bunch of us sat on grass next to the East River in Brooklyn, watched the sun go down over Lower Manhattan, and drank copious amounts of wine. I brought a bottle of Smoking Loon Viognier. That day Chloe was turning 23; I had turned 39 three months earlier.

I remarked how wonderful it was that I was able to become such long-term friends with someone so much younger than me. Well, the fact that she was dating and eventually married one of my best friends certainly helped. However, I would have gladly been friends with Chloe regardless of that. (Though that would have probably involved a 39yr old man hanging around the Pratt campus).

“I just wasn’t into the typical college bullshit,” she said.

“True. I remember telling someone I had found a 35yr old 22yr old friend.”

“Yeah, I didn’t do crap like fuck in front of my roommate.” Well, that was out of nowhere, but I understood.

It’s all about manners, and nothing says ill breeding like fucking in front of one’s college roommate. College is the first time many people are away from the manner-enforcing mommies, and sometimes they go insane with improper etiquette.

Manners exist for a reason.

During my first term at Wittenberg after transferring in, they existed for the very necessary reason that I needed to be able to walk into my dorm room or fall asleep without seeing my new roommate Sheldon and his girlfriend Denise having sex. Continue reading →

A necessary palate cleanse with groundhog and Klonopin

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Wherein some things are too close to write about, but you gotta write anyways…

klnohogIt’s odd, but in the middle of a panic attack, even the worst one in seventeen years, one is still capable of a lucid thought or two or three. A couple of weeks ago I was at a new psychiatrist’s office attempting to get my meds refilled. However, Dr. Bela Agabalyan thought I was an alcoholic whose only purpose for being in her office was to score Klonopin. You know, because the three-hour nap Klonopin brings on really gets a party going.

She refused to listen to me, even when I pointed out that I didn’t need the Klonopin refilled anyways, and could we please talk about my bipolars. “I see two diseases here: bipolar and excessive alcohol use!” she snapped. It should be pointed out that according to the info available to her I drank three times a week for a total of five drinks a week. I’m really not much of a drinker. My interaction with her proved that weird corollary that the more one says they don’t drink all that much, the more people think you have a flask of Beam strapped to your thigh.

Nothing is more frustrating than when people who are wrong don’t listen to me. And when you don’t listen to me, your reward is a panic attack. Usually, these consist of me storming out of a room in a huff, but I needed my meds. I was trapped. Trapped in a room with a stupid person gets you a doozy of a panic attack. I might even punch a wall (or in this case a Purell dispenser). Trap me in a room with stupid person the same day I receive the news that I’m wildly diabetic and a few days after my beloved stepmom dies, Katie bar the door.

Literally bar the door Katie, because I’m going to start beating my head into it. Which is what I did, well over a dozen times. Yet, even though I was having by what any standard was a psychotic break, I was still capable of some lucid thoughts…

  • This has got to look bad.
  • Why isn’t Dr. Bela Agabalyan telling me to stop? People always tell me to stop banging my head. What is her problem?
  • I’m lucky I don’t need the Klonopin filled because she’s never gonna fill that scrip now, is she?
  • I’m gonna get some good writing out of this.

That’s the solace I take out of whatever misfortune, real or manufactured, life hands me: I can always write about. The universe didn’t give me many gifts when it came to dealing with the world, but it gave me the ability to describe my feelings thru stringing together words and sentences in a pleasing manner, hopefully funny, that helps me understand what went on. And hopefully it helps others, too. Continue reading →

Looking at art with Ernie

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Co-visiting the Art Institute with my stepmom, who couldn’t make it for obvious reasons…

This past Tuesday, my stepmom Ernie passed away. I got the news as I was checking into a hotel in Chicago. A good friend of mine, Doug, was up there for an LGBT Law Conference, and I had decided to venture up there. I have been out of NYC for a while and really needed to see a friendly face from there. As there was honestly nothing to do at this point for her physical being, I decided to treat her soul to some art. I had wanted to visit the Art Institute, so I decided to devote part of my visit to her. This meant going to look at a lot of Impressionist paintings. Frankly, this was a lot more Impressionist paintings that I would look at on a normal visit; give me a nice Yves Klein Blue to stare at for an hour and I’m happy. Impressionism is a little heavy on the pastels for me, but I loved the woman. I can deal with pastels out of love. I learned a term when I was in Museum Studies: CO-VISITING is the notion that most people don’t visit a museum alone. There is not only a conversation going on between the viewer and the art; there is also a conversation between the viewer and his the person standing next to him. This was a great way to connect with Ernie. I flashed back to every Christmas when she would open the gift from her sister Nicole. They exchanged calendars every year, and it always seemed to be some sort of Impressionist calendar. I think they even gave each other the same one one year. Enjoy.

Art Institute as seen from walking from the Bean
“The Bay of Marseilles , seen from Estaque
detail, “Woman and Child at the Well” by Camille Pissaro
You can tell this is Pissaro by the agricultural themes and the text panel next to it.
details, “Water Lilies” by Claude Monet
I point out art.
She would’ve liked this Roman chicken mosaic.
The Chagall windows
detail, “Cafe Singer” by Edgar Degas
detail, “Acrobats at the Cirque Fernado” by Renoir
detail, “Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by George Seurat
Young couple looking at Seurat.

Photo walk of a sliver of the Clintonville section of Columbus of Ohio

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Last Saturday, I participated in my first organized photography event, a Photo Walk of Historic Clintonville, the neighborhood in which I live in Columbus. We were helped along by the Clintonville Historical Society and the good folks at Midwest Photo Exchange. Hopefully one or more of my photos will be included in an upcoming gallery show.

And yes, Beechwold is part of Clintonville. Continue reading →

PANTS SHOULD NEVER BE INTERESTING!

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The fine workmanship!

The fine workmanship!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: PANTS EDITION

“I just wanted to remind you of the standards of dress expected of teaching assistants in the Communications Department.” That’s all the professor who ran the Introduction to Public Speaking course I taught a section of at the University of Michigan. That’s all she had to say. I knew to what she was referring.

And she wasn’t referring to my habit of teaching while wearing mismatched Converse Hi Tops on my feet.

It was the pants incident. I blame Jerry Garcia for the pants incident.

Early on in my final undergrad year at Wittenberg University, I blew the crotch out of my favorite pair of 501s. All throughout my life, the epicenter of pants failure has been the crotch. The combination of giant thighs and an ample berry farm (mostly Pick-Ur-Own, sadly) has proven too much for various bits of denim, khaki, and wool.

I am a sound believer in the notion that a person’s environment affects his or her actions. Wittenberg in 1987/88 was in the patchouli and pit sweat throes of Grateful Dead fandom and all the sartorial and aural crimes involved in that “lifestyle.” Continue reading →

“Ohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn” and other German words that have come in handy during this morning’s time using the social medias.

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¡Ohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn!

Ohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn: A German noun describing the impotent rage that overtakes you when you see that someone has repeated the same clever comment on a Facebook post that you had made at an earlier time. Don’t people realize that they are part of a community whose basic requirements include reading previous comments? That is unless there is a button for “previous comments.” Clicking on that is understandably above and beyond.

Großeninnerstohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn: When you turn this impotent rage inward because the person has phrased their comment much better than you did. This is also often accompanied by an undercurrent of Ichwerdenierichtigerschriftstellerwerden, where you feel you will never be a “real” writer.

Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn: This is the tiny bit of pity you feel when the person has phrased their comment poorly. This is often concurrent with intense Kannicheinfachnurdiesenkleinensieg, muttering to the universe to please let me have this little victory. It was a pretty lousy joke to begin with, but, still, you cannot allow it to be sullied even further.

Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzornmitdrossel: Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzorn accompanied by the overwhelming desire to hunt down this person and throttle them for ending their post with “LOL,” or worse yet, “lol,” which indicates a flippancy that you cannot tolerate. You imagine them smugly chuckling as they tap your words into their device. You have to leave to go for a walk. You hit a few garage sales. At the second one, you experience a pleasing Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzornmitdrosselundmitzufälligenmesser when you score some fine German Henkel knives, and the guy at the garage sale says maybe you should leave the knives at the cash table because you’re smiling too much walking around with the knives.

Yes, a burning Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzornmitdrosselundmitzufälligenmesser

Yes, a burning Kleinemitleidohnmächtigsozialbuchzornmitdrosselundmitzufälligenmesser

Dear earthquakes… it’s over. Bye.

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May 3, 1974: Actors dodging rubble during filming of motion picture

(LA Times)

Certain aspects of your personality don’t mesh with certain aspects of my personality. I’m afraid I’m choosing to die in another form of natural disaster.
It's all a matter of where you stand.

It’s all a matter of where you stand.

A couple of days ago my Facebook feed was filled with several posts about an article in the New Yorker about a massive earthquake that’s due to strike the Pacific Northwest. The author says that it won’t be the Big One; it will be THE VERY BIG ONE.

Normally, I’d jump all over phrasing like that. Not today. Not for you, earthquakes.

The author goes to great, well-written lengths to explain the mechanisms behind such a Very Big One and how it will turn everything west of Interstate 5 into the infrastructural equivalent of a rotting cantaloupe filled with dead bodies instead of seeds.

But I didn’t need an education. I was already quite aware of the phrase “Cascadian Subduction Zone.”

And “liquefaction.”

And “ghost forest.”

And “inundation zone.”

I have been fascinated with disasters since I was a child –so much so that our neighbors gave me a coffee-table book called The World’s Greatest Disasters when I nine. I read and reread the book so many times that the book’s British origins helped fuel a lifelong Anglophilia in me. After all, what kid can resist reading that the debris following the Christmas Cyclone of 1974 in Darwin, Australia was “scattered higgledy–piggledy?”

When my mom dabbled in Community College when I was eleven or twelve, she would take me to the library when she studied. I was expected to amuse myself with the various AV materials available, and I found myself repeatedly watching one called San Francisco: The City That Waits to Die. In it, men in white lab coats placed a small toy house with a flag attached to it on a mass of wet sand, and then they shook the shake table. Every time I re-watched the film, the tiny house plunged downward until only the top of the flag could be seen. Our house at the time was on sandy soil and in imminent danger of liquefaction despite its location in Virginia Beach.

And to this day, if I wake up in a weird position on the bed, covered with pillows, I just lie there still, pretending what it’s like being covered in debris. Continue reading →

A phenomenological exploration of what happens to me when I see a Bad Drag Show.

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…in which I lay bare my internalized homophobia and other stuff I’m not allowed to talk about.

I didn't want to offend any actual drag queens, good or bad. So, I figured no one likes Rudy Guiliani.

I didn’t want to offend any actual drag queens, good or bad. So, I figured no one likes Rudy Guiliani.

I had the honor of seeing a Bad Drag Show the other night. Before I begin, I want to say that it was for a worthy cause and I applaud this. I also enjoyed the company of the person with whom I attended the show. Heck, I even tipped the performers. That said, I most definitely did not enjoy the show itself.

Also, I am not calling all drag “bad.” This is not that.

My knowledge of phenomenology has been entirely gleaned from an article I used to assign to my students in a class I taught called The Mechanics of American Retro. The article was entitled “The Dislocation of Time: A Phenomenology of Television Reruns.” All I really remember about it was the notion that even the most serious television drama devolves over time into “an intense comedy of obsolescence” where the viewer just mocks funny lapel widths.

But basically phenomenology is looking at how a something affects the subject, who in this case is me. Therefore, I’ll be looking at what goes through my body and mind when I see what I consider a Bad Drag Show. I will not be analyzing any specific show; instead I will be constructing a generic show for the purposes of this exercise. However, it should be noted that all Bad Drag Shows are pretty much the same.

I will be the first to admit that a drag show needs to clear a pretty high bar with me before I will consider it something more than really bad. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen some amazing drag (and gender-fuck, etc.), but I feel those folks were entertainers first and foremost. For example, I am sad I will not be in Provahncetown to see the legendary Dina Martina this week.

Here goes:

  • When I enter the venue and I realize that there will be a drag show, my shoulders slump, I sigh, and I feel a tightness behind my sternum. When I am not expecting a drag show and then realize there will be a drag show from which I cannot escape for whatever socially-mandated reason, I feel trapped. I begin to do breathing exercises. I continue to focus on my breath throughout the evening.
  • When I see the tackily hung rainbow PartyCity detritus, I ask myself, “We’re in a gay bar, is anyone really gonna forget that they’re gay? Do they think I’m stupid?” I try to remember all those other things that remind me I’m gay, like the dude-lust, the coming-out struggle, and furniture with the clean modernist lines.
  • I cringe when the mistress of ceremonies grabs the microphone and shouts into it in a voice that naturally does not require amplification. The tightness behind increases due to the physics of the soundwaves upon my person.
  • Minor anger wells up behind my left eye when she welcomes the crowd by calling them “BITCHES!” I wonder where all this hostility is coming from.

Continue reading →