End of Summer at Virtual Occoquan

With deepest respects for my nay-saying fellow blogger(s), the End of Summer is here.

Check it out at VO today; you’ll find:

It was 51 degrees here yesterday morning.  School starts Monday.

Yeah, stick a fork in it, summer is done.

5:16:49 PM    comment []

Queer Eye: Why?

Hugh at SRO isn’t too keen on Queer Eye for reasons that are rather similar to those of Andrew Sullivan.

Both Hugh and Sully seem to think we, the breeding public who rave about the Fab Five, aren’t aware that gays come in all sizes, shapes and colors, that we should grow up and be so over this. 

Look, I get it, got it, been there, done that, been close and personal, shared my family and life with them.  I’m sorry if you think it’s that I don’t appreciate you as you are (really, I love you anyhow); I’m really sorry if you think I believe that all gay men should fit into a pretty party boy mold. 

Hell no, I don’t believe that any more than I ever believed I’d qualify as a beauty pageant contestant or prom queen.

It’s simply not for the stereotypes of gay men that I like Queer Eye.

It’s because these guys get away with stuff I can’t get away with.  I live through them vicariously.

I can’t say to even my closest male friends that their houses are ready for condemnation by the health board, can’t wax the back of the man I live with, can’t say anything that others might label as “bitchy” for risk of losing social status and attendant social power.  Yeah, I know, my close friends and I can dish and let it all out together in private, indulge in honeyed sarcasm after quirky retort – but really, there’s a point at which we are forced to draw the line.  We’re forced into a closet of sorts ourselves, unable to let ‘er rip when we want to.  I beg to differ with Hugh; our society won’t let us be what we are.  We have to be politically correct and kind and generous, butter-won’t-melt-in-our-mouths, all that good-girls kind of sh*t.  (Look at what they did to Martha, for Christ sake, and she wasn’t ever sarcastic on TV.)

The Fab Five, on the other hand, don’t have to stay on the leash – somebody actually ASKED for them, ASKED for their fresh mouths, ASKED for their help and PAID for it, either through a paycheck and subsidies or through the obligatory human hair offering.

Damn.  I want that opportunity.  I am soooo jealous.

Perhaps it’s just my inner dominatrix crying out, I thought, as I pondered over the why of Queer Eye.   Then I recalled a pleasure that was rather similar and just as popular with me in its earliest days: MST3K. 

Mystery Science Theater 3000, for those of you who weren’t Mysties.

Don’t you want to be able to let that id go, let your own Crow rip about what an atrocious spectacle you see before you, just like Tom Servo giving it to a sci-fi movie maker with both barrels?  Yeah, Tom Servo = Carson, Crow = Kyan…yeah, that’s it.  I’ve been missing that wise-cracking, out-there-in-plain-sight sass.  Not really malicious, though (we’ll leave that to Joan Rivers, really).  The kind that results from stating the obvious, the way a preschooler can get away with calling you fat and mean it and giggle and you giggle too.  There’s something special about being simple, honest, real, about calling a spade a spade and having a laugh about it. 

It’s more than just having permission to rip.  It’s being able to find the shared humor in the ripping.

And now people who aren’t Mystie geeks like me can share the experience, too, let their id revel.  10PM on Tuesdays with the Fab Five on Bravo.

3:55:37 PM    comment []