For Frying Out Loud Read online

  By Sunday we piled our gay selves back in our gay car (Diesel for diesel dykes) and headed south toward Delaware’s Oz.

  If you are in the mood, New York can surely be all gay, all the time. In today’s political climate it’s good to have a total immersion gay experience every once in a while. It reminds us to be out, loud and proud.

  And you don’t really have to go to the Big Apple to experience it. In fact, when we pulled back into town, there was disco music emanating from any number of establishments in the community, with gaggles of guys and gals all over.

  I’m as much for integration of gay and straight as the next person, but you know, it’s great to retreat into an all-gay space every once in a while, if only to gather strength to fight for our rights.

  Like little Frances Gumm (that would be Judy Garland) once said, there’s no place like….

  July 2007

  A WHOLE LOTTA UGLY FROM A WHOLE BUNCH OF STUPID

  I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  Recently, a controversy has been raging over the new musical film version of the fairly new Broadway musical of the old non-musical film version of Hairspray. Who says America doesn’t recycle?

  For the vehicle that began as an edgy John Waters movie, then made a huge splash on Broadway and is now at your local multiplex, it’s been quite a ride. But following an opening shot from the Washington Blade, which seeped into the nation’s blogosphere, there has been a dispute between a variety of gay spokespeople, official and otherwise, over the casting of John Travolta as Edna Turnblad in this latest Hairspray.

  The Blade editor wrote that gays should boycott the movie specifically because Travolta is a Scientologist. Responding, John Waters defended Travolta as a joy to work with, a fantastic actor, and not in any way anti-gay.

  (Disclaimer: I think Travolta has done some pretty decent film work, but his connection to Scientology, with their much publicized intolerance toward gay people and prescription medications bothers me and tars and feathers Travolta in my eyes. Then there’s the maybe-he-is-or-maybe-he isn’t-a homo aura to his personal life. But neither the actor’s acting chops, nor his choice to stay in the closet if he is a homo, plays much of a role in my feeling about this particular dispute.)

  The Travolta clash morphed from a discussion of whether a Scientologist should play Edna, to a secondary dispute regarding the history of the story and the gender of the actor who has, in the past, been cast as rotund Edna Turnblad. Edna is rotund Tracy’s mother, and Tracy dances her way into the hearts of 1960s Baltimore and simultaneously manages to integrate the town.

  If you are not a Hairspray groupie, in the original John Waters film Edna was played by portly drag queen Divine, who starred in Water’s early, really edgy, well, very edgy, kinda disgusting films.

  But 1998’s Hairspray introduced Divine (and Rikki Lake as Tracy) to all manner of mainstream households through Waters’ very sweet movie. It was funny, had a message, and no one did any of the revolting things they did in the earliest Waters’ films. (Google Polyester or Pink Flamingos). One of Waters’ films was called Pecker, and despite its nasty title was a charmer. I adored writing a review with the headline “I loved John Waters’ Pecker.”

  Following in Divine’s considerable footsteps came iconic gay actor Harvey Fierstein to play Edna in the Broadway musical Hairspray. He was fat, raspy-voiced and absolutely charming as Edna, with his gay icon pedigree adding to the excitement.

  While nothing in the Hairspray script ever says Edna is a drag queen, and nothing is intended to denote any homosexual storyline, the original film and subsequent musical always had an elusive gay sensibility.

  Although Harvey Fierstein readily admits he was just playing the role of a woman, much as Travolta said he was doing in a recent interview, lots of folks have their knickers in a knot because the casting of Travolta robs the new film of its undocumented and somewhat ethereal gay sensibility.

  Originally, because of my admitted prejudice against Mr. Travolta and partially because I didn’t spend much time thinking about the subject, I too, was pissed that Harvey or another out-of-the-closet actor was overlooked for the new Hairspray in favor of the Grease-y Travolta.

  Well, I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  I saw the movie last night and I am still smiling. Travolta is a very sweet, exceptionally funny Edna.

  More importantly, whatever gay sensibility was lost to casting is still alive and well everywhere in the film. Yes, the story is about racial prejudice in the 1960s and yes, yes, yes, Tracy scandalizes the town by integrating not only the barely fictitious Corny Collins TV show (Baltimoreans, remember the Buddy Dean Show?) but all of a barely fictitious Baltimore as well. Tracy manages this by socializing with her “African American” friends. I use the quotation marks because in the film, Corny Collins allows those friends to dance on his TV show once a month for Negro Day.

  At the film’s first mention of Negro Day, there was a palpable sense of embarrassment in the theatre. If people didn’t actually suck air, their faces felt hot as they remembered how horribly this country treated African Americans just a short time ago. Of course, I wouldn’t call our nation’s current race relations hunky-dory (or should I say honky-dory?) but at least it’s no longer acceptable to openly discriminate – and the U.S. Government no longer officially codifies prejudice with state-sponsored discrimination against African Americans.

  But wait! In exactly the same way as the citizens and government maltreated African Americans in Hairspray (and for real) gays and lesbians are now being maltreated.

  Ba-da-bing! This movie has gay sensibility written all over it.

  Trust me, the musical is hilariously funny, with great choreography, joyous music, and laugh outloud comedy schtik. There are awesome performances from the entire cast, including a surprise turn from Michelle Pfeiffer. Attention lesbians: if you swooned over her as she slithered across the grand piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys, her character here is not as alluring!

  But apart from the terrific entertainment, the truth is, when I saw a candlelight march on screen, led by Queen Latifah and John Travolta, it was hard not to think, for just a minute, about that San Francisco vigil after Harvey Milk was shot, and the one in Wyoming after Matthew Shepard died. It reminded me of the marches we have made along Pennsylvania Avenue, chanting for our rights.

  Hairspray is about intolerance, and since gays are the current and officially sanctioned piñata for intolerant people, I can only hope for a day when we get our Hairspray moment. I want people in a movie theatre to get queasy, flinching when they hear how inequitably the nation treated gay people back in 2007.

  As the inimitable Queen Latifah explains to a white teenager and her black boyfriend, “You’ve got to get ready to face a whole lotta ugly from a whole lotta stupid.”

  Well I’m afraid that gays are going to face a lump of ugly from a gang of stupid in the 2008 elections. I’m praying for an enlightened victor. And I hope our wait for equality and tolerance doesn’t take more than half a century.

  But in the meantime, let that Saturday night fever overtake you and go see Hairspray. You’ll smile from start to finish, laugh a whole lot and feel good all over when the lights come up. It’s great to watch a whole lotta stupid get their just rewards.

  August 2007

  I SHOULD LIVE SO LONG…

  So, how do you feel today? I felt pretty good until I got my hands on some advice to extend my life.

  Let me put forth a disclaimer here: I believe in traditional Western medicine, but I am also open to, although I haven’t experienced much of, what folks call alternative therapies. From trigger point massage to acupuncture, natural remedies to yoga, I believe there are some great ideas and great practitioners around. And I mean absolutely no offense with the following…but…

  Auuughhhhh!!!!!! I have just had the living poop scared out of me by a magazine purported to represent life extending alternative medicine therapies, regimens, drugs, machines and pills the size of
bagels.

  I sat down to warn you about this stuff just after I tried to swallow something that promised to extend my life. By the time I got finished choking the thing down, chasing it with water, then tomato juice, then a slice of cheesecake (it was the only edible in the fridge at the time), I’d used up twenty minutes of my life and clotted my arteries sufficiently to take two months off my existence at the other end.

  Between the taste of the pill and the feeling that there’s still a major league baseball stuck in my throat my life extension adventure is off to a rocky start.

  It all started when my spouse went to have a treatment by our local Myofascial Trigger Point Therapist. Contrary to how it sounds, Myofascial does not mean a massage for your face. It’s a discipline to treat muscle pain by finding the trigger points where the pain originates. Frankly, that means that the therapist sticks her elbow in the small of your back, trying to shove it through to your belly button so your rib cage will stop hurting. Honest. I’ve had treatment myself, for (I love saying this) a sports injury (stop laughing). It works and works well.

  So my mate was behind closed doors having her triggers popped and I picked up a magazine we shall call Live Longer Than Most People. That’s not the name, but I don’t want litigation. I took the magazine home with me. Purportedly, this magazine features alternative meds and natural remedies to fix everything you can possibly die from, now or in the future.

  In ten minutes I learned that I have to improve the endothelial function in my arteries, better absorb Bio CoQ10 for anti-aging, take Mitochondrial Energy Optimizer, eat pomegranate supplements, use Theanine to calm my nerves, avoid benzodiazepines (eek, don’t step on the benzodiazepines), avoid the wrong form of Vitamin E (of course, that’s what I take), swallow more butter extract, and keep from microwaving myself with my TV or cell phone. And I was just on page 32 of 94, not including the Buyers Club pages in the back.

  The thing is, each article makes sure you know exactly which unhealthy pharmaceutical company drug is bad for you and tells you exactly which of their natural house brands MUST take its place or you are toast. The hell with Valium, Lipitor or soap and water. You have to use Reversatrol, Sesame Lignans and Olive Fruit Extract. Frankly, I get plenty of olive fruit extract from martinis.

  From what I can glean from the articles and ads, if you take one pill from the greedy pharmaceutical companies, you have to replace it with four pills from the greedy Live Longer Than Most People people.

  If you take even a small portion of their advice, you’d be in the bathroom every morning swallowing pills until lunchtime. If I do live twice as long but spend months at a time gulping handfuls of anti-mutagenic pills, is this a good trade-off? If I have to live like this I want my life to be shorter than most people.

  Then there was the cautionary article “Single Fast Food Meal Increases Blood Pressure.” I’m sure that’s true. It should have been followed by “Single reading of this magazine monumentally increases blood pressure.”

  I turn the page. Look out for free radical reactions! I’m having a pretty radical reaction to this whole thing. Know what an adaptogen is? It’s an agent that strengthens the body’s response to stress. I think a stopreadingogen can do the same thing.

  Then come the machines. Blood testers, capsule filler machines, Dr. Fung’s Tongue cleaners (ick), pill grinders, and a Gauss Meter to detect radiation from my phone, photocopier and (omigod) my computer. Hell, I should be dead by now. Did you know that premature labor is associated with gum disease? While I don’t have to worry about that, or the boswellia plant providing optimum prostate health, I can avoid some ugly maladies by using Live Longer Than Most People Toothpaste.

  The magazine also recommends diets, all of them based on starving yourself to death. The Ultra Low Calorie Diet is, essentially, not eating. My idea of ultra low calorie is pizza minus the pepperoni.

  The UltraSimple Diet advocates getting rid of extra body fluid. I do that already, after several Yuengling Lagers.

  In the back of the magazine readers are invited on a special Live Longer Than Most People Cruise. You travel to the tropics while enjoying anti-aging lectures, Live Longer Than Most People gift baskets, and “insider secrets to significantly extend your life span.” Wow, does the midnight buffet include all-you-can-swallow capsules, pills and Pomegranate Oils? Nightly in the lounge, Miracle Cures trivia? Excursions to Island health food stores?

  There’s even a Live Longer Than Most People Credit Card, with Merchandise Rewards. Don’t ask. But you don’t get Longer Than Most People to pay.

  And on just about every page in this magazine there’s a question.

  LLTMP Magazine: Are you overdosing on Lipitor?

  FJ: In their view, yes.

  LLTMP: Can you manage stress without drugs?

  FJ: Probably not.

  LLTMP: Are you swimming in radiation emissions?

  FJ: Absolutely.

  I can’t decide if I should go to the emergency room or suck down olive fruit extract at Happy Hour. I’m heading to the kitchen to finish the rest of the cheesecake so I can get my butter extract. Ahhhhh….

  August 2007

  THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON, PART TWO…

  You may have read my previous rant about a cross-country flight that set a new low in comfort and customer service. While I didn’t think it possible, that terrible record has been bested. Seattle to Philly had nothing on Philly to New York.

  My step-mom Joan visited Rehoboth from New York last weekend. Since we didn’t want Joan driving the distance alone, we suggested a short flight from White Plains, NY to Philadelphia, where we would pick her up. I’d taken that very same round trip in reverse last June and apparently there was a glitch in the system because both flights were on time and without incident.

  Here, the similarity ends. When leaving N.Y., Joan’s one-hour flight was more than three hours late. Apparently, somewhere in the continental United States, there had been weather.

  On the following Monday, after a wonderful weekend, Joan and I headed back to Philadelphia for the departure leg of the journey. Leaving the car in Short Term Parking, we foolishly figured it might cost me “first half hour $4” but I’d certainly be back before it doubled, right? Yeah, you know.

  We crossed from the parking lot to the departure area and discovered we were at U.S. Air Terminal B and not U.S. Air Express, Terminal F. However, a woman behind the ticket counter, said, “You can take a bus to your terminal, but we’ll check your suitcase here.” For a minute I considered sending Joan on the baggage belt with her suitcase.

  I was heaving the bag onto the scale when another, quite frantic employee rushed at us whispering, “NO! Don’t do it! We’re having baggage issues!” Wow I’m glad I didn’t plunk my family member down on that conveyor belt.

  We snatched the bag from the jaws of defeat and schlepped it with us toward the shuttle bus to Terminal F.

  The ride was so long I thought we’d accidentally gotten onto the bus to Manhattan. But it finally delivered us to the very last door in the entire six-terminal airport, a good 5K from Short Term Parking. A few more yards and we’d have been in center city Philly with the Liberty Bell.

  In the right place at the right time at last, we stared at the Departure screen, found the flight number and saw the throbbing words CANCELLED. CANCELLED. It sounded so, well, final. Joan and I exchanged helpless glances and headed for the ticket counter.

  “Our flight’s been cancelled, what now?” I asked.

  “You wait,” the agent said, dismissively.

  “How long?” I questioned.

  “Until we can get you on another flight. Looks like 4:30,” he responded, head down, willing us to vaporize.

  “Will I be able to get a refund if I drive to Amtrak at Wilmington instead?” I asked.

  “Nope,” said the dope, “our obligation is just to get you on the next available flight. And that’s 4:30. But you can check your bag now.”

  I looked around to see if another em
ployee was going to freak out and throw herself in front of the scale to stop me from checking the bag. No crisis worker intervened, so we watched the suitcase go bye-bye.

  “Can I ask why the flight was cancelled?” I inquired.

  “Operational Decision.”

  Really? They decided not to operate? Who’s decision was this? Granted, there can’t be throngs of people anxious to suffer modern day air travel for a measly one hour pain ride, so the flight must have been cancelled due to a masochist shortage.

  I sighed and prepared to move on. But Joan, having stood demurely and quietly this whole time, addressed the agent.

  “Aren’t you even sorry?”

  Way to go, Joan. The pompous, patronizing ticketing agent in this, the City of Brotherly Love, stammered some kind of answer as we turned and left. On our exit we spied a bank of “Courtesy Phones.” I bet not.

  That the next flight was just under five hours away was awful enough, but thanks to any number of terrorist threats, our airports are now hermetically sealed. No one without a boarding pass can enter any part of the airport where they dispense books, souvenirs, food or, as was becoming increasingly attractive, something to drink.

  “Let’s take that shuttle back to the Marriott at Terminal A,” I suggested. We stood at the curb, waving, and a bus flew past without stopping. We flagged another and it too, whooshed by as if we were lepers. Turns out the shuttle only goes one way. Getting back from F to A is not their problem.

  So we hiked the U.S. Air Express 5K, in the ninety degree weather. As it happens, every terminal from F to A had a wall-mounted Automatic External Defibrillator, just in case. Airport humor?

  We crossed the Marriott finish line, with both of us schvitzing, panting and in serious need of adult beverages. Luckily, the restaurant was cool while we tried to get calm and collected. Spending a few extra hours together was a lovely gift, but it galled us to realize we’d be approaching New York’s skyline by now if we’d just kept driving.