Victor, Victoria, Victorious

You have to hand it to Alexis Arquette. Here is a talented, very cute guy with the potential for a moderately succesful acting career, who has decided to live life as a nebbishy woman from Long Island.


Now, such decisions are hardly unusual, although actors tend to confine their unconventional eccentricites to weekend events, like the National Guard or deer hunting.

In all seriousness, I do not mean to disrespect Alexis Arquette or any other transexual or transgender person. I believe it takes a great deal of courage to decide to live life openly in a way that is so dramatically different than the way everyone has known you. It is revealing your inner most secret to the entire world. It is far more than coming out of the closet. It is coming out, and bringing everything in there out with you.

I believe people come out when, and if, they are ready. That's why I have never liked the idea of "Outing" people. I have always said that I think coming out is a very private and personal decision that people can make only for themselves, and only when the time is right. I make exceptions to that rule and philosophy for bigoted, hypocritical members of the political and religious communities. While it can only help our community when well known people come out, and young people need all the good role models we can provide, nobody should make the decisions for them.

Back to Alexis and what she represents. Alexis represents the true courage of coming out and being out.

It takes no courage to be straight. Being straight and living life today is like driving a Hummer at 35 miles per hour. Well protected, safe, structured, and totally risk free.

It takes even less courage being in the closet. While I accept the decision to live life in the closet, I neither understand nor respect it. Doing so denies who you are. It is hiding under a blanket in the back seat of that slow moving Hummer. It is, in its own way, playing dress-up, except you're disguising your life, not just your identity.

Being out defies convention, political expedience and society's norms, despite what they say in the New York Times Style section or on Project Runway. And while being out is brave, the majority of out men and women still "blend in", assuming a certain amount of anonymity and safety whether they seek it or not. The Alexis's of the world don't have that and don't seek it. Their reality is truly out there, like a billboard.

Not all gay men and women understand or accept transexual or transgender members of our community, despite what the banners say in the parades. But we all must recognize their courage, as we must be proud of our own.

Human Rights Campaign Coming Out Resources

OutProud

PFLAG - Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays

Human Rights Campaign Straight Guide to GLBT Americans

GayHealth.com Coming Out Page

Ramblings With No Direction

I haven't written anything in more than a week because, frankly, I haven't had anything to say worth reading. That isn't to suggest I EVER have anything to say worth reading, but at least I sometimes admit it.

I decided to try and stay off the Imus topic after my inital post because the bandwagon got so damn crowded. At some point so many people are shouting, its hard to be heard above the noise. So I begged off.

Katie Couric, however, owes Don Imus BIG TIME. She should take him out to dinner every Friday for a year! It's only because of his problems that people virtually ignored the CBS Evening News plagerism incident, where she read a "diary" entry that was actually lifted from the Wall Street Journal. A CBS staffer was fired. The only reason there wasn't a huge public outcry calling for her head is because the Imus flap was everywhere. I bet she didn't even send him a thank-you card. I bet American Greetings is developing one.

Then Virginia Tech. Again, nothing I could say that meant anything. However, USA Today has a very interesting sidebar, discussing how much bloodshed and tragedy this current generation has grown up with. It certainly makes one think. I also liked the Daily News column called "Yes Virginia, Guns Kill Innocents". That says it all.

And we can't forget In Touch magazine. These yahoos are giving their own colons a close-up examination (think about it). Take a look at their magazine cover this week. Pay special attention to the subject matter on the left, contrasted with the subject matter on the right. Enough said.


Moving on to another mostly unrelated topic... I got a bill from the IRS for 2004 for $4100. Knowing the IRS stands for "Invariably Really Stupid", I sent everything off to an accountant who figured out I only owed them $150. But his bill for sorting it all out was $700. Reminder to self... the IRS continues to be a bunch of feeble-minded bullies who think they can scare the crap out of people. They're worse than the thugs on Miami streets. At least you can see them coming and run the other way. The IRS just likes to pounce. If anybody reading this is sleeping with an IRS employee, please kick him in the balls for me.

That's if he has any to begin with.

Stupid Is As Stupid Says

I'm going to buck conventional liberal wisdom and certainly the feelings of many of my gay brothers and sisters today, when I say many of them need to repeat a semester of Social Studies.

People all across America are calling for the firing of Don Imus, after he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy haired ho's". Many of these people are the same ones who called for the firing of Ann Coulter from her radio and TV gigs after referring to John Edwards as a faggot.

I disagree. I certainly don't like hate speech of any kind. But ignoring the first amendment and denying people of the simple freedom of speech is not the answer to ending the hatred. Freedom of speech also allows people to make assholes of themselves and, as we often see, many do.

The way to deal with people like Mr. Imus, Ms Coulter, and others of their ilk is to ignore them. But we need to ignore them with our remotes and our radio dials and our feet. We need to constantly turn their programs off and encourage others to do the same. We must ignore their books and refuse to buy the newspapers that publish their columns. And again, encourage others to do the same. We must let the radio stations and the cable networks and the publishers know, without question, that they are free to continue airing or publishing these hate mongers, but our dollars and our ears and eyes are going elsewhere.

Raising Hell about the Coulters and the O'Reillys and the Imus types of the world only gives them the attention and publicity they need and crave. It feeds their public relations machine and draws people in, wondering what they will say next. Like moths to a flame, people can't avoid it. I haven't figured out yet why any one of those three have anything to say worth listening to. So, just stop. Just say no.

Stripping idiots of their free speech is a dangerous precedent. They are trying every day to rob us of our rights. Depriving them of theirs is simply lowering ourselves to their level. We can't claim we're better people than they are if we really aren't. Allowing them to shrivel and die on the vine, like a crop of bug infested tomatoes, is the best way to deal with them. Eventually even their most ardent followers will see them for who and what they are, and abandon them too.

My father, in one of his few sober moments, once told me it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt. The Imus's and the Coulters and the O'Reillys remove all doubt with every syllable. The only way people will learn how stupid and dangerous they are, is if they can hear the stupid things they're constantly saying.

Channeling Bad Decisions

Once again corporate America slithers to another new low. This time it's Circuit City, terminating 3400 employees because they make too much money. So they'll all be fired and replaced with another 3400 employees who will be paid less.

This is lousy news for those 3400 employees But for anybody who has actually shopped in a Circuit City, this is like saying they've just lowered the minimum basic requirements for selling a Sony from dumbass to dumbfuck. As it is now, the average Circuit City employee ranks on the ability and interest level somewhere between TSA and Rite Aid employee.

I can't even begin to imagine what they're going to find once they start paying less than they are now.

Over the years and in different states, I've made a fair number of purchases from Circuit City. A few televisions, a washer-dryer, refrigerator, XM radio, various accessories and some other gizmos here and there. But I learned long ago not to go near one unless I had done all my research first. Any time I walked into a Circuit City to buy something,I had already decided on the exact make and model of whatever I wanted, plus the price I should pay. I know that nobody working in one of those stores knows enough to answer any sort of comparison question about their products, warranties or quality. The last time I was there, they didn't even know that what I was buying was on sale.

And now, they're going to dumb it down. Well, I don't need to be told again to avoid those places. At least in New York we have J&R, which beats the hell out of every other place anyway. But God help people living in the flyover states.

I can't quite fathom how Circuit City thinks there is long term gain in this. The public relations fallout has already been on every business section front page in America. As customers start realizing the sales staff has dumbed down even further, they'll run for the doors. Provided of course, there's a place to run to.

Interestingly enough, by early 2009, moost American television sets will be obsolete and people will have to replace them with digitaql receivers. By then, the new crop of Circuit City employees will be making just enough to be fired and be replaced by yet another wave of cheap drones. Which means that 15 year old in the subway who just jumped the turnstile, has his Ipod blasting loud enough in his ears that you can hear it at the other end of the car, and is trying to toss french fries into his girlfirend's cleavage is probably going to sell you your next $1500 HDTV.

Makes you want to start reading again, doesn't it.

Terminal C

(I obviously had nothing better to think about this week than dealing with Houston's airport. I gotta get a life.)

I spent last weekend in Houston for my friend Jack’s wedding. Jack, if you ever read this, I think the thing that amazed me wasn’t that you had so many cousins... SO MANY COUSINS... it was that you could remember all their names! And their spouses’ names! And their kids’ names!

But that’s not my point (and congratulations Jack).

I used to live in Houston but had never really visited there as a... well... visitor. If first impressions really matter, than its no wonder Houston has some issues..

First, I want to know what Houston brain surgeon designed the rental car facility at Houston Intercontinental Airport? Let me describe this to you. On arrival, after schlepping the mile or so from your gate to baggage claim that clearly must be in another county, you haul your bags across a cavernous hall the size of Lake Erie to find the bus to the rental car building. After hauling your bags onto the bus, along with the dozens of others jockeying for space, you take the five to eight minute ride to a futuristic structure that looks like the Starship Enterprise crashed alongside a Texas highway.

Not much different than some other major airports you might say. Ah, not so fast.

You see,at IAH, they have a surprise for you. The bus drives up a ramp to the second level discharging passengers on the upper level of the building, where there is absolutely nothing... except escalators to take you down to the first level. The logic of this absolutely escapes me. Customers haul their luggage off the bus, then negotiate it down the escalators into another great hall (picture the Orange Bowl in its glory years), to find their rental car counter.

(Intermission... I am writing this while waiting for my plane in Terminal E of Intercontinetal. The people sitting across from me have a miniature poodle that they are obviously bringing on board with them... dressed in a SUEDE overcoat complete with designer belt. The dog... not the owner. She is giving it a sip out of her take-out coffee cup. I’m not sure whether this means I need to travel more, or less.)

We’re back. After the requisite paperwork, one is directed to the great garages, out double doors on either side of this great expanse. And there, one drags their luggage either up or down, you guessed it, more escalators, to the aisles where their cars are. Mine was at the very end of its row, which meant walking halfway back to the Continental airlines terminal.

Only in Texas would they design a building that forces people who they know will be carrying heavy suitcases to traverse multiple escalators with their luggage, repeatedly... because, after all, the process must be repeated in reverse when returning the car.

Now you might find it odd to base an entire entry on the simple act of picking up a Pontiac from Hertz. Perhaps. But trust me... you’d rather read about this than what happened between 2:17AM and 4:21AM after the night of the Mexican food dinner.