Logopolis

Putting the Clean Water Back in Christmas...wait that's not how that works

Even more so than Black Friday, Cyber Monday seems like a designation created so that the news media can "report" and we are reminded to do our capitalist duty and shop, shop, shop.  There was something about the way Matt Lauer was leading with this story this morning that really made this clear to me, but I can't quite tell you what and why it bothered me so.

Especially because on this issue I'm conflicted, I love to shop for others (and myself obviously but that's not what we're talking about...) and I love to buy and I pretty much think capitalism works, and even if it doesn't it's the system with which were stuck, and that if all of the sudden Christmas spending stopped we'd be in a world of hurt. Like the banks, Christmas is too big to fail.

But I also think though of us who feel icky about that are obligated to do something about those icky feelings rather than suppress them with another glass of eggnog. This isn't done by making other people feel crappy about how they choose to celebrate the holiday season -- because honestly, the only thing I'm more tired of than Christmas commercialization is those who complain about it but do nothing, but instead to be the change we want to see in the world and to refocus our priorities on an individual level.

If you're stuck for ideas or intrigued by this one, check out Advent Conspiracy. No matter what your religious affiliation or beliefs, they do good work. (Personally, I think even if you celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday, there is still a meaning to Christmas that is more important than the spending, and hopefully, this is true for you too and not just something I've created after watching too many made-for-TV movies and very special episodes where that are rip-offs of A Christmas Carol) I'm having trouble posting their video here, but the one I meant to is on this page, scroll to Enter the Story. Some of the quoted dollar figures seem a little wonky to me, and if you agree, please try not to get too hung up on that. I'm not sure this is the type of thing that can be dealt with in dollars and cents. But if you've got to deal with numbers, instead think about how nice a glass of clean water tastes to you and multiply it by about 450 billion. That's probably how it tastes to those who need it most.

P.S. For the first time in a long time, I'm really psyched about the holidays this year -- this is not solely due to, but in no small part because, Andy returns to Chicago for a visit on Christmas Day. (Santa's obviously bringing me what I want, despite the fact that I haven't been a very good boy.) 

Like "Chicagoland", the "holiday season" is a term for which it is hard to nail down the forever sprawling borders. But for me, this year, it's from Thanksgiving until a few days into the New Year. And since Thanksgiving  with my family was fairly awesome, I have no reason to think the rest of the"holiday season will be any different. In other words, you can expect lots of good cheer postings around here peppered into the typical world commentary. 

Speaking of, if I had a video camera and lipstick at work, I would totally do a You Tube homage to that guy who loved Britney (Chris something or another, I've forgotten his name and refuse to Google it), and say "Leave Tiger alone!" though I suppose if his wife was scratching his face and swinging golf clubs at him, this is a matter for the police, like it or not.  That does not, however, make it a public matter.

links for 2009-11-26

• 'I Once Dressed as Dr. Frank-N-Furter at a Fancy Dress Party'
  Or what does Gawker think Prince Charles said to Susan Sarandon in this picture. Also, D-A-A-M-N Susan Sarandon is 63..amazing
  (tags: PrinceCharles Gawker SusanSarandon)

Happy Thanksgiving

Is this the worst thing ever or the best thing ever? I can't decide.

Seriously, it's like the two parts of my brain that are constantly fighting each other have just sprung from my head like Athena (I think) from Zeus and put themselves in a YouTube clip.

Of course, it's a YouTube clip of Promises, Promises from the Ed Sullivan Show years before I was born. But if

But seriously though, I bet office parties were a lot more awesome back when there were "girls" from the "memograph department", as if Mad Men hadn't already taught us that.

Come to think of it, if the Mad Men series finale doesn't end in a giagantic dance number where the cast does this, the whole show had been a waste.

At any rate, Happy Thanksgiving everybody. It's Turkey Lurky Time, indeed.

The 6 Talking Points You Need When Discussing Adam Lambert Today @adamlambert

Lifted from

Re-quoted for truth.

1. EdenLake Any1 think adam lamberts 'afraid of gay label' comments were a set up for the ama performance he had planned?
2. kingisafink Adam Lambert waited to come out until his Rolling Stone cover story was on newstands. His onstage snogging and grinding = NOT spontaneous
3. kingisafink At the same time, Adam Lambert's onstage snogging & grinding DO NOT make him a threat to society, kids or str8 marriage @thisisnotarealstory
4. MCMikeNamara  In  2059, LambertOutrage2009 will be like how we now view filming Elvis above the waist: amused at the era's innocence over this hubbub
5. MCMikeNamara But if anyone is calling Lambert the Gay Elvis in 50 years (unless he goes from hot to fat), I'll still be disappointed in society
6. Sandmonkey Ok..who is adam lambert? and what did he do on stage? I heard the words gay and oral sex during the American Music Awards...I am intrigued.

The last one isn't exactly a talking point but I think it provides an awesome perspective and most certainly, illustrates exactly why somebody might court such controversy the same week his album came out.

UPDATE

Speaking of perspectives, here's two more tweets that show how the rest of the world (or at least people who will probably never find their way into my twitter stream) thinks:

XXXXXX  y they sayin #shameonyouABC?@XXXXXX cuz they let that fag niggah Adam lambert kiss a dude on stage & rubb his dick on a otha dudeface

Classy.  Handles have been scrubbed from this one because...well, they didn't ask for their ignorance to be mocked, and more importantly, I don't need their self-searching Internet hits to come back to me and get a cap in my ass  (Okay, sorry for the casual bigotry, but, um, they started it...) though honestly,

1. getting shot in a drive by because of
2. a blog post regarding
3. a tweet about
4. Adam Lambert

would, on at least 4 obvious levels and perhaps more, possibly make me an icon for this decade.. and maybe the whole 21st century if we're not careful.

And finally, from a somebody who I first assumed was a babygay based on their user picture but it turns out that was a picture of Justin Bieber (who I didn't know was a person until yesterday when he caused riots and a joke about him on Chelsey Lately made me do a spit take in bed); the tweet is actually from a real life teen girl:

XXXXXX Adam Lambert looked appauling out there, darn pig :O show ur gayness in a less festy way, uggh. i used to LOVE him when he was "SHY"

Remember when all the little girls (and admittedly many other demographics) turned on Miley (and many other female pop stars before her) because she stopped matching their perception of her, even though that perception didn't EVER match reality. Well, pop culture now has a gay version. You've come a long way baby.

First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

And to keep taking a bold stand for gay rights (and not at all to keep the controversy going a bit longer to sell more albums), Adam Lambert is going to be riding him.

At least, I hope that's the subject/object order that phrase should have.

Via Stephen

Thankful (To Not Be These Internet Folks)

I keep reading everywhere over the past two days two separate stories which have nothing in common except for

1. their recent online ubiquity
2. their high winning percentage in the "You think you have it bad? Well, I..." game

Entry #1: "You think you have it bad. Well, I found out my biological father was Charles Manson." 

This, my friends, is a very OTT example of "You can't pick your family."  Except, of course, Matthew Roberts did, in a way, make a choice by deciding to track down his biological parents.  I seriously wonder how many adopted kids might decide, regarding their search for their birth parents, after hearing this story, to leave it well enough alone.

Roberts, a Gandhi-adoring, no-bug-killing vegetarian DJ, said: "It was like finding out your father is Hitler."  Geez, a guy carves one swaztika into his forehead and it's "Hitler, Hitler, Hitler..."

Entry #2:  I have decided not to actually describe for the sanity of certain readers.  For the love of God  (and you ever being to sleep again), Andy, please DO NOT read this story. As I am to horrible eye phobia, Andy is to this. 

Of course, you may have heard about it.  A certain diagnosis for 23 years.  Except not.  I only have one comment about the idea of this happening to me:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Seriously, terrifying.

There's no failure in trying...except when there is

Yoda says "Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try." And while I get he meant, sometimes you can do and do and do. But it still ends up not done. And all you have is the try.

I spent this weekend working on a screenplay for a not-really-that-big-of-a-deal but yet it drove me up the wall with anxiety and fear or...something... not failure, just some weird mental road block.  And many hours later, I ended up with 20 pages that I couldn't get down to the required five. And while yes, if you wanted to be argumentative, you could say "yes, I could" have done it. Yes, one could. But I couldn't. Every version I cut together was so much worse than the one before and I got so panicky that by the time I went to bed at 2 AM, I was physically exhausted. I woke up with no alarm 3 hours later, convinced that I thoughts to fix it, hoping I sneak turn it i late. But like so many times before, the dream was gone by the time I got out of bed. But I still gave it a couple of hours more effort.  Long story short, I finally threw in the towel at 7:30 and called in sick to work, feeling totally guilt free about as my sleep-deprived body was revolting, my bowels were irritable and overall I just felt sick

I'm reminded about something my dad probably used to say -- I certainly can imagine him saying it -- every time he was trying to teach me something I couldn't manage (hitting a ball, throwing a spiral, driving, lighting a match on the side of a box...pretty much all the manly arts): "Why are you making something so easy so hard for yourself?" And while my dad would have said it gruffly -- and again, I'm not sure he did say this but I am he sure he thought it and said it with his eyes -- he was never cruel and it was communicated, in a way that obvious even to a bratty kid, with a frustration born out of love for his eldest son rather than the scolding internal voice I use on myself. I think maybe, on this particular topic, it's time for me to man up and be more like my dad, and at least give myself a break. I'll do that later -- for now, self-pity wallow!

Speaking of James Joseph, this morning I got a message that said he was really glad I was taking writing so seriously again. And though, given I woke up to it after a sleepless night of feeling failure, after having more time to process it, it feels like a win. I don't mean to give you the impression that my dad ever did anything that would drive me to suicide after he got Robin Williams fired from my prep school. It's just that, in their imagination when they win the lottery, my mom sets me up so I can write without pressure, but I always thought my dad would still send me to law school. So it's a win to hear otherwise. That, and I suppose I should be grateful that I have a hobby that gets me so riled up.

There are far more details about this process in my original take -- but it was even more livejournal-esque than this one. But I'm going to post this so I don't have to keep re-telling this embarrassing story until I feel better about it -- though writing it all out has helped me process my insanity -- so I guess score one more for keeping on truckin' in the writing department. Thanks for your support and we now return Logopolis to its snarky cultural commentary.

Did you see Adam Lambert last night?!? I didn't but I got to see The View walk about it. Obviously, we know which I side of said debate I fall on. Joy Behar and I are both totally in favor of simulated male face fucking being shown during prime time.  Okay, not really, but even Elizabeth said that maybe your kids should be in bed at 10 CST/11 EST; however, previously when she said that if Lambert keeps doing stuff like this, people will not focus on his music, she really came close to sounding like she didn't mean he should "stop with the pop theatrics" (because he totally got famous by being low key) but instead "stop being such a faggot"; given a few hours to mull it over, I don't think that's what she meant, but her voice makes it impossible for me to give her the benefit of the doubt as I hear it.  Barbara didn't have an opinion on the matter but was just mad that, it being morning, she couldn't show the clip on her show because as we know from her biography, it's her long time dream to be the largest purveyor of pornography. 

But you know who's most excited about the Glamby Lamby going all gay rapey in his performance? J Lo -- her falling on her most famous asset was set to be the big story of the night.

First Clip from Doctor Who: "The End of Time" aka 'How I Ignored My Impending Death By Saving Planets and Fucking British Royalty' by Dr. John Smith

As part of this year's Children in Need telethon, the BBC released 3 minutes from the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special. It seems the Doctor has recovered from his breakdown that caused my breakdown, is suppressing his emotions and rather than dealing with his own emotions regarding his mortality is gallavanting around, having misadventures, and making bad sexual decisions. (It's just shocking that I'd identify with this character, eh?)

But at least now we know why Elizabeth I was pissed at him at the end of :The Shakespeare Code". (Hint: Good Queen Bess is always known as "The Virgin Queen"; can you imagine that joke making it on a family show in the US. Probably not, but since the last episode ended with <spoiler> a suicide that was more or less caused by the show's hero<</spoiler>, it's pretty obvious we're dealing with a different standard.

Mike's Doctor Who "The Water of Mars' Mental Breakdown Audio Commentary

So since Andy and I couldn't watch the latest episode of Doctor Who together, I was record a commentary of myself watching it for him to enjoy when I sent him the DVD.  But this plan neglected  a really important point:

Since when do we allow talking during a new episode of Doctor Who?

So I gave up on it after a while.  However, at a few different points, I was recording during the emotionally upsetting end. I wasn't kidding when I tweeted earlier this week that I cried and yelled for the last 25 minutes for the hour

These contain some spoilers, but even if you don't care about Doctor Who, if you ever want hear somebody being a complete and total freak about a fictional universe (and violating the laws thereof), I recommend it.

I'll admit this is pretty much the audio equivalent of the Star Wars kid or the fat guy who breaks his above ground pool outside his trailer on America's Funniest Home Videos embarrassment-wise. But I don't care. I'm glad I can care so much.

I also recorded the entire last 5 minutes, but the file is too big to email to myself from my iPhone, so I can't figure out how to get it off.  And sadly, it has the best moment -- where Dusty starts meowing at me out of concern, and I eventually respond with my new favorite phrase:

It's okay. It's just a show. Crying daddies are okay.

Anyway, here they are:

Please stop. It's so sad. It's just...

 It just dropped on his face. Oh God, don't make him listen.

No, don't say what you're going to say!

"Can You And I Be Friends?"

From here on out, in honor of his guest starring role as Cathy Geisse's lawyer on 30 Rock, Teddy Ruxpin will be the go to joke whenever I don't actually post for a few days.

I may not keep up with this. There are no rules at Logopolis -- like check-in at an Italian sex party.

Look at those creepy eyes and that futuristic space astronaut eunuch suit. How did little kids not think he was going to maul them or kidnap them to the Spacebear Mothership Time Machine in the middle of the night?  Seriously, I bet this bear is why [insert inappropriate school shooting reference or other tragedy that happened to people younger than me here] happened.