GENESIS
Today on the one year anniversary of Standing Room Only, I thought I'd give you a brief history of how this Blog came about.
I started SRO driven by one of the most primal instincts - one that has bred great careers, one that has caused wars and one that Jesus probably used a time or two to keep going - the satisfaction of being able to say “Fine. I’ll do it my way.”
I had written a few items which had been published but I found editors to be the most unreliable people on Earth, possibly due to that whole My Girl Friday vibe they’d like to imagine themselves part of but minus the witty banter and Rosalind Russell. Alot of what I was submitting was about current media events, topics whose pertinence withers like dying flowers in a time lapse film. I would get positive and often flattering responses but the moment had passed, blah blah blah. I was left with a cache of homeless writing, articles I was proud of and wanted read.
I’d come across some information about Blogs including Salon’s own Scott Rosenberg’s but it didn’t seem my cup of tea. Blogs were already being mocked as either mundane, self-centered details of neurotic life or political soapboxes supporting Nobodies and their amateur ranting. Yawn and yawn. (Granted, I haven’t always avoided the mundane here but you’ll almost never read about politics other than my admiration for Shwartzennager’s ass in Terminator.) But what, I pondered, if I just put all the stuff I was constantly writing either literally or in my head on a Blog. My audience would be limited but that’s an up-stat after Just Me reading them. The cost was minimal, I wasn’t dependent on it’s success, I had nothing to lose.
My one concession to living surrounded by The Industry was a comedy class I took a couple of years ago in hopes of gaining more insight into writing. My opinion of the class? There are alot of people in LA who think they are funny and so, so aren’t. One of the questions we were asked was “If you had a one-person show, what would you call it?” My answer was Standing Room Only because of the obvious theatrical implications but also because as someone who’s both extremely tall (6’6”) and big (240), I often find myself squeezed into space like an enormous stuffed animal into a gift box. It’s one reason I hate crowds. People apparently can’t see that I’m a person, they perhaps think I’m a padded wall in their cell they can hurl themselves against. Maneuvering through them is nearly impossible, Dorothy surrounded by surly, poorly dressed Munchkins. In the end it’s usually easier to just stand and being still has the advantage of increasing the opportunity to observe.
So I started posting under the banner line of “MEDIA/HUMOR/TELEVISION/GAY/LIFE”, a broad categorization which encompassed my initial vision of posting humorous critiques. I knew the process of setting up a Blog on Salon was entirely Democratic but I liked to think the Bloggers here were somehow sharper, more literate. A Virtual Salon of writers, I could be Dorothy Parker with an iBook, who toasted over a vow to encourage input and dialogue in hopes of keeping the quality and integrity of the Blogs housed here as high as possible.
Boy was I wrong. My attempts to illuminate poor writing or pompous and bigoted opinions were met with scathing criticism, some of it delving into Gay Bashing which I certainly had no intention of enabling. I also had an e-mail conversation with the Reverse Cowgirl whose Salon Blog I felt the most kindred to at the time. “Just sing” and “Your Blog is a dictatorship, not a democracy” were her invaluable words of advice and the insight altered how I thought about SRO. I changed my banner line to “Love in the Middle of War”. The “War” was the War our country had entered, the struggle over doing the Right Thing I constantly referee and my physical War of twenty years of being HIV positive and having AIDS.
I have learned to stop being judgmental about my writing. I am extremely critical about everything I post, some things I love more and some I just toss off, but I’m still constantly surprised by the response. You Just Never Know what gets under people’s skin, good or bad. I’ve realized that in the end it’s not my job to decide what touches people, just provide the material, the scene, the picture, the trip. We are both riding together over winding roads through the canyon. Look, there’s a cool tree! Look, aren’t actors weird? Look at the clear blue sky shining over the city, the oasis we created, here in the Middle of War.
10:27:54 AM  sro home /
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Monday, September 29, 2003
