The White Peril 白禍

Chrissie Hynde's one of those people like Madonna for me--I've been a swoony fan for over two decades, but never, ever would I want to meet her. What a bitch. But then, she's a rock star, so she's supposed to be a bitch and make maddening pronouncements about political issues she doesn't understand and blow a lot of money on living high.

Anyway, there's an interview with her in Billboard on-line that, in two passages, tickled my funny bone big-time. The profanities come thick and fast, naturally, so even though they're bleeped in the original anyway, I'll put the citations below the jump.

I hadn't gone to Omotesando Hills, the latest gargantuan Mori Building project, until this past weekend. Atsushi likes architecture and always has a memorably arch comment about something or other whenever we visit a new place together, so I wanted the first time I saw the place to be with him.

I like Roppongi Hills much more than I'd expected to when it opened. It's kind of confusing at first, and the architecture is on the anonymous upscale-mall side, but that's part of what makes it adaptable to all its uses. I have a friend or two in the apartments, and they (the apartments, not my friends) are utterly underwhelming in terms of aesthetics or amenities, apart from the views. But the address has major big-time cachet, and it's certainly a location that's easy to get around from.

I haven't seen the apartments at Omotesando Hills, and the site is smaller and wedged in very tightly among existing buildings, so I don't think it was conceived of as its own little village as Roppongi Hills was. The main building, which has most of the stores and restaurants, is the kind of structure that architecture critics have spasms of ecstasy over, presumably because they'll never have to shop there. (And the building was designed by Tadao Ando, so the accolades were probably phoned in even before the groundbreaking ceremony.) The place is claustrophobic and dark; when we got to the top level, I half-expected the ceiling to be dripping with limey water and have sleeping bats hanging from it. And they had this atonal electro-xylophone music playing, loudly, on the PA system--really distracting.

Otherwise, Tokyo's been doing a lot to remind me why I love living here lately. The weather over the last week has been completely schizo; there was a wonderful, chilly rainstorm--just coming down in sheets--on Tuesday night. The neon and drably colored midnight buildings always look better with a slick of rainwater, and the mist made the cranes and other construction equipment for the new Meiji Avenue subway line look like dinosaurs. The next day was blindingly clear, but sunny in that spring way, and not in the pummel-you-to-the-sidewalk way it will be four months from now. Since then we've had one or two cold nights--I'm betting there are going to be a lot of people getting sick right about now because it's impossible to know whether you're dressing properly for the weather right now--but for the most part it's very comfortable.

Atsushi will be home for Golden Week (the first week of May), and we'll have to celebrate his birthday then even though it's a few days early. He already knows he's getting an iPod. He seemed kind of lukewarm about having one...until I showed him my photo library. That did it. Atsushi--I've mentioned this, right?--takes pictures of anything and everything when we go on vacation. It's a cute quirk, but it means a WHOLE LOT of image files. I think he's pretty excited at the prospect of having them all live somewhere portable.

Of course, I didn't tell him about the iPod-related annoyances he'll also be contending with. Seriously, guys at Apple, no seamless play between tracks on albums? Here is what you need to do: Go up to San Francisco. Find yourself a disco queen with an iPod. Ask him how much he likes having gaps between the tracks on, say, Bad Girls.

Then duck.

Whenever there's an update, I hope against hope it'll include seamless play. But unless I've missed something, no such luck. And trying to cheat by using the fade-out-fade-in function does NOT help. Sigh.

And then there are the remote controls. The suckitude quotient on both of those I've owned has been oddly high for a company that's made its reputation on user-friendliness. The one I used with my old Mini was kind of cool-looking--until you actually pressed any of the buttons, after which the mirror finish was totally smudged and gross. (And that's my experience as a clean-freak homosexual, mind you. I shudder to think what happened in the hands of the average teenager.) The buttons were also jammed in close together, so it was very easy to misfire and end up jumping forward a track when you were just trying to turn the volume up. The radio remote I have now doesn't have that problem, but the alligator clip is hinged on the left, which means that when you fasten it to a bag strap, the control pad is angled away from you if you're right-handed. Kind of awkward. Also, the clip has no gripping power at all. It's so weak I've been thinking about giving it vitamin E supplements. In Tokyo, people are always brushing up against you to get off the train or cut in front of you to a department store entrance or what have you, and the damned thing is constantly sliding off.

Hmm. Anything else to complain about while I have the floor? I guess not really. The bank holiday means that Atsushi will be coming home for the better (in both senses of the word) part of a week. And later in May, a bunch of us will be getting together in New York for a college buddy's wedding, including some very close friends I haven't seen in a few years. (Tomorrow would probably be a good time to start looking for a present, actually.) Hope everyone else is enjoying the weekend.

Atsushi was coming home this weekend, so Friday I'd planned to turn in early. But a dear friend had suddenly decided to pack up and go back to his home country, so it would be one of my last chances to see him, and work had been pretty intense over the last week; so I ended up out for a little while. It turned out to be a wise decision. For the first time in a few weeks, I spent an entire night out with the boys when it was just fun--no tear-wiping or advice-giving. You know how things seem to go in cycles wherein the lives of all the people you know get way complicated all at once? It's not that you can blame anyone (except the fickle, duplicitous guys who tend to be involved in many cases); it's just what happens. Friday night I was able to ramp down from big brother mode a little and just have a matey good time, and it made it much easier not to attack Atsushi with a litany of frustrations the moment he came in the door.

IKEA is opening a store in the Tokyo area--Funabashi, the first city I stayed in when I arrived in Japan nearly ten years ago, actually. Anyway, for publicity, the company has an exhibit of model rooms in installation boxes along one of the boulevards in Aoyama. Atsushi is a total furniture queen. Not a decorating queen, mind you, just furniture itself. He likes to buy it and then kind of plunk it in the apartment where it seems to make sense and forget about it. I'm one of those people who have to try a new piece in every conceivable position before I leave it sit.

Additionally, furniture was one of our major flirtation props when we were first getting together. He'd just bought the apartment and was moving out of a furnished company dorm room, so there was a lot to buy and arrange. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to throw lines like "Call me if you need help with anything; I only live a few stops away, and, you know, American guys are good at DIY stuff." As a literal offer, it was complete malarkey. I'm really not bad with stuff around the house--though living in modular-plastic-box Japan for ten years has made me forget a lot--but he was moving into a brand-new building and having everything delivered and installed by Nippon Express. There wasn't anything to help out with, and we both knew it. But it served as a demonstration of interest, and looking at home furnishings became a staple date activity for us over the first few months. So yesterday was kind of a sweet reminder of that, even if the rooms themselves were, as one might have expected, ridiculously unlivable-looking.

And we got to spend Sunday morning eating breakfast and watching the political yak shows and stuff. This morning's ration of "and stuff" was a fascinating special about public works boondoggles in Hokkaido. It was a Dogs and Demons classic. If none of the information was really new--I mean, I hadn't been aware of what was happening in those specific villages, but redundant roads and dams are old stories in Japan--it was still entertainingly presented.

I especially liked the new federal highway planned to run through a village of 5000 in the north-central region of the island. Not only are there already a tangled skein of little-used federal, prefectural, and municipal roadways criss-crossing the area--seriously, this must be the most readily accessible isolated village in human history--but the new road takes the long way around to its coastal destination. The reporter interviewed several truckers, who chuckled that of course they weren't going to use it because there was already a truck-worthy shortcut to the same city that wasn't a toll road.

Residents of, I think, Sapporo next talked about snow-plowing, which is performed by three separate fleets of public teams. You have your federal team for the federal roads, your prefectural team for the prefectural roads, and your municipal team for the municipal roads. I was only listening with one ear at this point, but the problem seems to be that the local roads people actually need to use to get out of their houses are plowed after the federal snow removal teams have sailed through, scrupulously taking care of their territory only. So there are both redundancies and non-performance problems.

We had to take off when they started talking about the gajillion unnecessary dams and retaining walls that shackle the rivers. The point that was made--again a known one, but presented in detail--was that the Hokkaido prefectural government had submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport a list of projects that should be shifted to local jurisdiction...and was curtly rebuffed (譲渡が困難 was the phrase highlighted in the document, IIRC) because the projects were deemed to be in the national interest. And, the reporter pointed out, it's in the budgetary interest of the MLIT to keep as many projects under its own management as possible.

So...bureaucratic self-centeredness: bad. Mischievous, non-nurturing good time with friends: good. Atsushi here for weekend: good. Atsushi having to go back to Kyushu again: bad. I think I made out well on balance, especially since my street is never under three feet of snow. Hope everyone else had a good weekend, too.

Last week, as those who picked up on the title to this post will have figured out, I had kind of a Bjork moment. And then, as if by magic, Beautiful Atrocities linked to this impossibly hilarious video parody. (How did the Flea not get to this first?) Bjork's such an easy target, you'd think result would be kind of lame and surprise-free, but no. Totally made my day.

Speaking of experimental-ly people we listened to in college during the early 90s, the new Massive Attack retrospective made me realize that Blue Lines came out fifteen years ago. Fifteen. Years. Ago. Kids who were conceived to it are, like, finishing junior high school soon. Sheesh.

Oh, Bjork wasn't the only funny video-related encounter I had in the last few days. The other night, some Simply Red video--I assume it's new--was playing, and one of the guys was like, "Sean-chan, everyone else thinks I'm crazy to say this, but doesn't he look like Kim Jong-il?" My buddy was referring to Mick Hucknall, with his pouffy receding hairline and owl glasses, riding standing up in a car. And he was right. He did look like Kim Jong-il. The resemblance was so unmistakable I almost fell off the stool--seriously, it was spooky. Give Hucknall credit for not having facelifted and hair plugged and Botoxed himself into an animatronic wax figure like many other celebs his age, but the guy seriously needs a new stylist.

Yes, that's bitchy, but it was that kind of weekend. Atsushi was supposed to come home, but through no fault of his own ended up having to stay in Kyushu for business. So I was kind of in a mood that my friends took it on themselves to yank me out of. I was entertained the whole weekend, but I think I ended up exhausting my entire ration of gayness for the next six months. No one tell the board of the International Homosexual Conspiracy, or they'll send their enforcers to keep me in Dockers and Miller Lite until October.

Not that anything newsworthy happened. In a way, it was the according-to-recipe-ness that made it comforting: The packed club where someone jostled my buddy's arm and sent half his shot of tequila across the front of my sport jacket. (I had fun explaining that one to the dry cleaner.) The two Japanese guys in their early 20s who, in addition to looking about thirteen, did that junior high school thing where they come up to you and say, "Our friend over there? He'd really like to talk to you? Is it okay if we bring him over?"

One thing that wasn't comforting: DJ types? Guys? Seguing from "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" into "Hung up" was a tired idea before you even did it the first time last fall. Enough, already.

When I went to dinner with a friend--this was the next day--the headwaiter swooped down on him in full service-industry swish mode: "HONEY! Haven't seen you for ages the sweater is working for you how are you who's your friend you'll love today's fish let's give you a table with a view I know you want a bottle of Italian white BAY-BEE!" In the silence and stilling of air currents occasioned by his departure, I asked my friend who he was. My friend responded (gay readers will know exactly what's coming) in his usual confiding Australian drawl: "Sean, I have no idea. I was hoping you'd remember him." If you've ever wondered why gay guys resort to calling each other "darling" all the time, it's there in that moment.

or "All the gay stuff I haven't written about for the last two weeks"

or "How to be gay and annoy me"

Beautiful Atrocities had this column of advice for newly minted gay men linked under "Outside Reading" this past week. Most of it is pretty sound underneath the inevitable tone of snark (and be warned that some of it's on the raunchy side). It's also, unlike a lot of attempts to be funny, actually funny. Item #1 made me laugh out loud.

However, item #14 nettled me. It's not so much that it's bad advice as that it scornfully hits an easy target but leaves out the flip side, which I think affects far more people:

14. Beauty fades. Develop some inner resources, otherwise when it goes, those of us with less far to fall will laugh at you. To your aging face.

Fine. Point taken. But newly out guys also need it drummed into their heads that...

14.1. Don't assume that someone you think is unusually hot must therefore be (1) a bitch, (2) a slut, (3) a moron, and (4) a shallow user.

14.2. Plenty of men who will never be models or CEOs are in happy relationships. You can be one of them if you look for ways to be generous and stop expecting The Love You Deserve to ambush you while you lean expectantly against the bar.

For every gorgeous, turned-out man who thinks he's some kind of Gay Brahmin, there's a fag who sabotages his own potential regular-guy attractiveness by constantly drawing attention to the fact that he's not Jude Law. Humility can be sexy; self-humiliation is a turn-off.

Not all stereotyping is quite so damaging. At least, I don't think so, though people have too much time on their hands apparently disagree:

Some gay rights advocates are raising questions about a new Chrysler commercial that features a fairy who uses her wand to turn a tough-looking guy with a big dog into a pastel-clad man walking four small dogs on pink leashes.

DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group introduced the "Anything but Cute" ad campaign last month to promote the new Dodge Caliber compact car, aimed at young buyers.

...

The Commercial Closet, which monitors marketing tactics that could be offensive to gays and lesbians, was more critical of the ad [than the mewling executive director of the Triangle Foundation, cited earlier].

"It directly finds humor with the term fairy, referring not just to the type that flies around with a magic wand, but also the universally recognizable gay stereotype of an effeminate gay man," it said in an online review of the ad.

I'm afraid I'd make a very bad gay activist, because there is no way in hell I could make a public statement that solemnly and carefully differentiates between a fairy "that flies around with a magic wand" and a gay guy without dissolving into laughter.

Of course, we want to get rid of the stereotype that gay guys are all girlie, emotionally fragile, flighty, and limp-wristed. Permit me to point out, though, that advertising spots are not the place to expect sophisticated commentary that challenges preconceptions. (There are plenty of ads that end in unexpected revelations as a way of providing a jolt that might make the product memorable, but they usually don't constitute social science lessons.) Steve Miller at IGF posts a link to the ads.

We're supposed to bloviate over that? I was more offended by the guy's post-spell walking-shorts-and-socks combo than anything else. That fairy needs to get herself a fag friend to teach her about style, cute or otherwise.

And people need to learn how commercials work. Television is populated by dads who are amazed to find out that you can clean clothes with detergent, black women who have clearly been directed to turn the sassy-chick-erator all the way up, Italians who can't say a word without windmilling their arms, and people whose persnicketiness is signaled by British accents. Sometimes these types are used skillfully, and sometimes they're used poorly; but ads generally have to rely on stock characters because they have an extremely short amount of time to make an impression. It's certainly possible to imagine an advertisement that implies something genuinely offensive, but I don't see how showing some dumb jock type get turned into an dorky metrosexual necessarily does, even if he's supposedly being punished for saying "Silly fairy!" to a fairy.

Speaking of silly--or at least muddled--fairies: Last week, Rondi Adamson posted about the release of Canadian Christian peace activist James Loney, who had been abducted in Iraq. Loney's family and friends scrupulously avoided mentioning his homosexuality while he was in the hands of his abductors:

I remain puzzled that a gay man like James Loney would, de facto, have aligned himself with people who would see his sexual orientation as sufficient reason to kill him.

...

One of Loney's CPT colleagues, Doug Pritchard, seems to have a case of both [mental-midgetitis and irony deficiency]:

"It's a sad fact that around the world gays and lesbians are more vulnerable to attack than straights," Pritchard said.

Hmm. Yeah. Particularly under Islamist fascist regimes, Doug.

No kidding. I don't think this is the first time Rondi has expressed (perfectly understandable) puzzlement about gays who give a free pass to the Palestinians and other aggrieved groups whose anti-homosexuality is so extreme as actually to warrant the overused word oppression. The article doesn't mention whether Pritchard is gay, but his attitude is pretty representative of the basic problem. His statement isn't inaccurate taken as a self-contained thought. But that "around the world," which runs the entire world together into one, big vaguely threatening place, is bizarre given that the context for the remark is that contrast between Islamofascists in Iraq, among whom revealing your homosexuality could lead to mistreatment or worse, and Canada, where you can talk about it to the press. (One of Loney's fellow abductees was murdered.)

[Aside: Martha Stewart just explained to viewers that when the shrimp turn opaque that means they are "not transparent." Has the educational system deteriorated that much?]

Unlike a car commercial, the public spotlight that comes with having your gay colleague released by terrorist kidnappers seems to me like the perfect opportunity to make a social and political argument: Thank God he's back here in the democratic West, where we value personal liberty and the ability to live peaceably with our differences. After all, these people are supposed to be looking for ways to espouse Christian Peace, are they not? Perhaps even the mention of bloodthirstiness, however germane to the situation at hand, would have seemed off message.

The message from the director of a new movie out of the UK is that Chinese-British gay men exist (via Gay News):

"It's very frustrating. Chinese people don't just run restaurants. Lots of them do great jobs like lawyers. It's scarily backward in the UK. In the US, Lucy Liu was in Charlie's Angels not because of her 'Chinese-ness' but because she was right for the role."

Tell that to the more oversensitive Asian-American activists, honey. Anyway, what I found interesting was this part:

The filmmaker said Hong Kong is the most liberated Asian country, "Racism exists on the international gay scene. Chinese gay men have a low ranking in the gay hierarchy because they don't fulfil the classical male beauty."

"I know some Asians who have switched to dating Asians."

Because there aren't enough Western gay men who are looking for smooth little Asian hotties?! That's a demographic development I hadn't been aware of, though I admit to not being all that familiar with the scene in Hong Kong. The tendency for some Westerners to want their Asian boyfriends to act like man-geisha does strike me as a problem, but that doesn't appear to be what Yeung is talking about. In any case, he seems to be able to point out what he thinks are problems without taking a whiny tone, which is always good to see. If his movie is the same, I hope it does well.

Agenda Bender finds subliminal messages in the darnedest places. (And the scary thing is, he doesn't seem to be forcing it at all.)