L!A!

So instead of wasting my time typing up all of our fun adventures from our trip to Los Angeles, I thought I would just copy and paste everything Veronica said, and just add my own comments in there in brackets. She did take copious notes, after all. Here they are:

It would be impossible to detail the happenings of this epic trip with any sort of literary distinction. However, I will tell you that it was quite mighty, and will no doubt live on in infamy for many weeks, if not months to come.

That said, I will now whet your appetite with brief snippets of what actually happened, and leave you tantalized, to wonder what these things really mean.

Tuesday, 6:00am. Wasn't sure what was happening until I realized that I was talking to Evan on the phone, and I had probably fallen asleep whilst packing.

7-or 8 something am: Robbie schools me at BOMB, but I will eventually exact much revenge and carnage upon him later.

Hang on, wait. I can't find Tuesday in my notes...

Lots of mention has to go out to Evan's hilarious impressions of the Conchords.

Oh, okay here it is--the all awaited summary of Tuesday night, as copied verbatim from my notes:

(Disclaimer: as one of the favorite recurring quotes of this week has been "That's Racist!" prepare yourself, if you're in any way delicate.)

(Dialogue follows Robbie as he shuffles down the street in his best impression of an Asian tourist, several of which we had just seen)
V: "Are you flexing your butt, Robbie?"
R: "No, it just looks like that."
E:(totally out of nowhere) "That's the Grand Illusion."

Other Tues happenings...

While driving haplessly down the 10, almost got smooshed by an inconsiderate Semi Truck. Has anyone noticed? Why is it always the psycho drivers who DON'T have the "How's my driving? 1-866-TELLUSOK" signs? I ask you.

Ooh, here's a fun one. After our departure, at our first stop in Las Vegas (in the GHETTO of LV) [in 100+ temperatures] we noticed that the car would NOT start. Broken battery. So, for EVERY time we turned the car off for anything on the way down to LA, we had to find helpful citizens who would rescue us with an electric charge. I used my Oliver Twist face whenever possible.
Twice though, (or was it thrice?) [thrice] we were rejected, and some of the best excuses I've ever heard were given. Such as,
"Oh, this car doesn't do that." said the rich snobby guy as he and his dearest, "Muffy", stepped out of the Lesabre.
"I can't help you. This is the company car." said other unhelpful corporate type man.
[The third was "sorry, dude, but this is a bicycle." Ha, no. Not true. The third was that they were "really late."]
All I have to say about that encounter is God Bless Canada.

Wednesday. I'm glossing over some stuff because I'm tired and can't remember everything.

We ate lunch in the same Chinese restaurant where they filmed Rush Hour. Cheapest food EVER.

Surprisingly, considering my dislike of the general populace as a whole, Chinatown was my favorite part of our meanderings that day. (Just kidding. That's racist!)

GRAUMANN'S CHINESE THEATER.
Things I noticed:
One, I had way more fun standing in the footsteps of the guys, because Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe ALL had midget feet and made me feel like a freak of some kind.
Danny Kaye, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Nicholas Cage were all very humble in the signing of their names. But their feet were huge.
Matt Damon has freakishly tiny hands.
I couldn't find Mark Wahlberg anywhere, but it was probably for the best. If I had been able to, there would probably be some very embarrassing pictures of me trying to cuddle with that particular slab of concrete.

Other observations from the Walk of Fame:
Several guys playing bagpipes for money, although I think they could've gotten more if they had a sign saying "We'll stop for cash."
6.5 foot Diva/Drag Queen dressed as some kind of demonic creature gave me a "Ummmhmmm". Not really sure, but I'll take that as a compliment.
Saw Darth Vader with his helmet up, and was surprised to find out that he's actually Latino, and doesn't look like James Earl Jones at all.
Robbie finally found the star for Cuba Gooding Jr., and was at peace with life.
Stupid Musketeer wannabe [and Supergirl] forced us to take picture, and then demanded tip. We didn't even want one with him anyway. I would've just deleted the digital photo and been like, "No harm, no foul."
Homeless man on Hollywood and Vine held sign that read "I bet you a dollar that you read this sign." I REALLY wished I had a dollar to give him, cause that's what I call creativity.
Also discovered that Batman is actually a Mormon, after taking in evidence of G-lines under the Batsuit.

Later...

Standing in line for WICKED TICKETS:

Didn't win the lottery again, second night in a row. Convinced it was my fault, bad karma from not giving that guy a dollar.

"I heart transvestites." [No recollection of all of what that is referring to. That's racist]

R: [Peering through the crack of the door] "Hey, I can see the stage!"
S: "No, you can't."
R: "No wait, I can see a poster of the stage!"

Evan: "I hate Argyle. If it were up to me, we'd bomb Argyle."

Random, I don't know where this goes.

The Labrea Tar Pits: (White Trash Day)

S: "The tarpit has tasted Robbie, and it desires him."
E: "I like the thought of it being a living thing. And it's gonna HUNT YOU DOWN."
S: "I bet that tarpit gets bored with that same ol same ol...gazelle carcass and giant sloth pelvis."

Rubbing Elbows with Famous People conversation.

E: "I didn't talk to him. But I saw him through the glass and I said, : ' O."

THURSDAY:

Whole morning at Venice Beach. Also part of afternoon. Read the entire book Twilight. I LOVE the beach for this reason.

Robbie has a big mouth. Enough said. [Veronica was too busy menstruating to swim].

Wicked was the single most pivotal moment of my life. It marked the first time I have ever fervently wished to be a mythical creature, and practice the dark arts. And to be green.

FRIDAY:

R: "Isn't it funny that we're going to a place called Fuller to fill up our gas?"
...Ten seconds later...
V: "Isn't it funny how the town is called Fuller, and we're getting gas here?"
R: "I just said that."
V: "I know. I was quoting you."
R: (WTF look)
V: "It doesn't matter when you said it. A quote can be resaid anytime."
E: "Yeah. Like my good friend Ronny once said, a quote can be resaid anytime."

I still think that John Lithgow was in Bill and Ted's SOMEWHERE. [He's not]

Until next time, kids! I don't know why I've been on this irreverent streak lately. I'll post something in a more serious tone next time.

What I Did In Church On Sunday

People are always asking me why I'm afraid of midgets. Well, here's the definitive answer, in storybook form. It's a definite departure from my norm. I offer this flotsam up in the wake of my last post's political incorrectness:



























Man, I don't know what's wrong with me. The last thing I need is to be haunted by a midget ghost. I hope you enjoyed this.

Powwow

Further dashing my hopes that I may someday live a “normal” life, Ty Mansfield (King of the Gay Mormons) called me the other day (to proposition me, he said; I told him I was going to tell the internet). Apparently the leaders of the Navajo Nation wanted to meet with us the next day because they are trying to restructure their government and need to know what to do with the 2005 law they passed stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman. So we went.

I must say I was pretty nervous. I may have been mistaken for an Indian in the past, but I’m not one, and I had no idea what sort of cultural barriers I might run into. Do you shake hands? Or do you just raise your palm and say “How?” Is “Navajo” plural? Is it offensive? Was there any way I could score some Navajo tacos out of this deal? Was I going to have to smoke something? Did thinking about these questions automatically make me unqualified to help them?

So the next afternoon I texted Ty “What are you wearing?” which cracks me up. He didn’t answer in time for me to change my own outfit, so I showed up in a nice shirt and tie, and he showed up in the standard shorts and polo. Oh, well. I don’t mind being overdressed. Plus at least I didn’t go with my first thought, which was this: “Hmmm, it should be something part Indian. What do they wear? Feathers? And then something part gay… A feather boa! Perfect!” Really, all you gay Indians out there, if you want to start building understanding and tolerance in your community, you probably need to start building your outfits around the feather boa. I think snakes are even sacred to your people anyway. Wasn’t your Quetzalcoatl god a feathered serpent? It’s a good thing the American Indians have me to sort out their complex social issues for them.

So we showed up and Ty apologized for what he was wearing, probably mostly to make me feel more at ease, because the nicest any of the Navajos was dressed was a bolo tie, which I felt was a little stereotypical. The obvious leader of the group was an elderly man who had served as Supreme Court Justice in the Navajo Supreme Court for 13 years. The rest were aides or interns or something, but their opinions seemed to matter. They asked question after question for an hour and a half, and we answered them all. Each of the men seemed to have his own individual agenda, to which our words were constantly twisted. The whole meeting seemed a large balancing act, paring away what I didn’t believe, some from this side, then some from that side, until we got to the core of it.

Here are some things that I gathered that seem to matter to the Indians:

Their government and laws (they have their own constitution that does not fall under the U.S. constitution) have grown inorganically, mirroring our constitution. A push is being made to return their government to its traditional setup, with spiritual leaders called “medicine men” at the head. A problem with this is that the medicine men’s treatment of early signs of homosexuality is to send the person into the desert for nine days. That’s a long time.

The Navajos have not ever had a case of two of their citizens of the same sex trying to marry. They view the law as moot, built to reflect the current political trends in the U.S. At the same time, they worry that such a law only engenders prejudice, and would not want the laws they have set up acting as the catalysts for hatred.

Many fear that the Navajo people have forgotten their roots and rich heritage. According to the leader, gays were traditionally treated with much respeck (that's a Navajo word they taught me that means "respect"). “Just like you would treat a firstborn son or twins with respeck,” he said to me, which I felt was the sentence which most clearly pulled back the curtain on the differences between our cultures and mindsets. We learned that that mindset had changed over the last hundred years, as conservative U.S. values have seeped into their community, and that several of the current leaders among the Navajos have begun to accept those values as a part of the Navajo historic heritage (the same thing exactly has happened among the Mormons; we're forgetting that our church membership wasn't always aligned with the Republican Party).

The Navajos also don’t wish to make a homosexual person feel that he or she must necessarily live a homosexual lifestyle just because he or she feels homosexual desires. Their first law is respeck for all people. They also seem heavy on the “live and let live” policy, for which they have another special Navajo word they taught us that I don’t remember.

Now, here are some points that I made during the meeting:

First, they may have never had a case of two Navajos of the same sex trying to get married, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It’s the same with Utah: I can’t imagine wanting to live in Utah if I were trying to live in a gay marriage and adopt children and all. There are better places for that. But that doesn’t mean our law is moot. There are activists out there who would try to get married in Utah specifically to challenge our laws. And the fact that we have a law set up means that we already know in advance how we are going to deal with that when the time comes. I told the Indians that their nation would probably someday come to a similar point, where their laws are being tested not from within, but by a movement from the U.S. that aims to challenge their beliefs. Inorganic laws can serve as a good preemptive defense against inorganic activism.

Next, I told them about the changes we helped effect in the BYU Honor Code, and how the most important part to me was that it now specifically states that a person can be open about his sexuality. Homosexual behavior is still not allowed, but the new wording prevents the problem of the rule itself fostering anti-gay feelings. In this way, the law takes responsibility for itself.

Furthermore, I said, I would never want to coerce someone into living what I believe. I also would not want to push someone into living the opposite of what I believe. What I would rather do is clear the way before them and let them choose their own path (that’s how Navajos talk, right?). I gave the example of the teenage boy who went and got a tattoo without asking for parental permission, an action which was clearly against his family’s values. His family, however, maintained the attitude, “oh just let him do whatever he wants.” The flaw in that thinking is evident when one takes the teenager’s actions to the next level. What if what he wants is to do drugs? I told those Navajos that it’s fine to let people make their own decisions, but that doesn’t mean that at any point we stop teaching them our values and spiritual traditions, and that we have a responsibility to those over whom we have a charge to help them make good decisions, as well.

I don’t know how much anything we said actually reached them, or whether they’ll be able to communicate any of it back to their government in any useful way, but I felt that the meeting went very well.

After the meeting, we talked to one of the aides, who, it turns out, is Navajo and Mormon and a closeted homosexual. Yikes! Sucks to be him. He is working in his government right now, trying to bring about social change, which is the reason he can’t come out. He’d lose his job. It was really neat to talk to someone who was fighting the same fight, but on a different battlefield. My prayers are with that kid. I can’t imagine how tough it must be to mix three different clashing cultures in one life. I hope he writes a book.

Anyway, I do have one regret from the meeting. It’s that probably if I had just remembered to bring some firewater and beads to the meeting, I could right now own a LOT of Arizona. Yeah, but who wants it anyway, right? I mean... right?

Freudian Slip

Well, I'm in Washington. I'll be back Monday night, latish. So, I don't have much time right now, so I figured I'd just post another poem that I have saved in my drafts for just such a time. Enjoy. I'm still working out the ending.



Freudian Slip

There WAS no summer.
We sat high on the edge of the spring, bored,
waiting for the inevitable fall.
She eyed me a little,
owed me a lot;
I let her.
She had a strange piece of mind
wedged in her smile,
leaves left
tangled in her sloppy hair
the brush struck and stuck
in the tangles and tendrils.
"So knotty today," she sighed, coil-ly

In a matter of secs,
the fall came.
We slipped.
The hole whirled past us,
the whole world passed us,
lightning fright'ning away
foreign twenty blackbirds,
rousted from their roost.

...And now here we are together in a moment of calm...
...The you and I of the storm....

Then it's upon us again, the sky
rains on the back of my neck, and a bit in my mouth.
The weight of it all; I'm lead.
Then, nothing.
I am her fading crush;
Her fading crushes me.






p.s. If you have a few minutes (which you obviously do if you're reading blogs) go read Evan's blog. He's hilarious, and I think his writing style is similar to mine, with the feeling that he's just talking directly to you, and the fact that he seems to interrupt himself all the time.

Other Thoughts

K, here's a poem I wrote a while back. The last line is something odd that someone odd actually said to me, and the rest of the poem grew out of there. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think this might be about. I am wondering if it's clear enough.



Have to find something else to think about

That man has a hook arm

Metal, impenetrable arms

Wait—How does he pick his nose?

Dead fish in the marketplace, grey, cold, dead

Almost out of money; have to return to work soon

Razor blade, poisonous, keen

Where are my house keys!?

Okay, they're in my pocket

I can’t do this

No drinking fountain on this damned bus

Blood, worms, dust

Forever unused bottles of nail polish and perfume

Our little bridge over the Napa River going by

A stop, and there goes Captain Hook

More Mexicans get on

The barren future

Getting sleepy

My headrest is gone

You



Awake again

Where are we!?

Downtown, all the people, moving, unmoved

So thirsty, always now

Foamy, spongy food; all I get anymore

Is that Tina Davidson? Has she heard?

Just look away--Can she see?

Uncomfortable bench, no seatbelts

Rusted, sinking nobody

Mouth dry, needing kisses

Have to pee, have to hold it

Always, always, have to hold the liquids in

Time to clip my nails again; no reminder

Last month is swallowing me

Train of thought slipping

You



Quickly, anything else

Scientific advances within the last hundred years

(not ENOUGH!)

Mom's meatballs

A kitten, and fleas sucking the life out of it

Frowning Arabian crossing guard, sweaty

Should have seen the signs

STOP

A bit ill; no more corn flakes at home

Chuck's baptism, creepy, necessary?

Guy across the aisle looks like a turtle, wizened

Cracking world made of solid ice

A bell, a light, a lurch!

Now down the stairs, left, right, left

Yellowing, lumpy mayonnaise spilt on the counter last night

No one to clean it up

No one to clean it up for

Cold, insensitive smiley faces, like stars

Distorted by the atmosphere, rushing blindly past

Gamma rays on my head, hungrily biting my face and neck

Raining that day, not like today

Powdered misery, just add water

Shouldn't have eaten those microwaveable nachos for breakfast

Pushing the pavement with my feet

Should have learned to cook for myself

You



Have to let go

I waste too much time

What does despair taste like? Does it taste ugly?

Gouging blade in a dying wrist

Spiral checkerboard in my eyelids, hell

Here at last; the grass looks nice, green

Need to call Mom back

The empty spot of ceiling over our bed

Linoleum composure, easily wiped off

No one to clean it up for, either

How sad the caretaker woman must feel, no teeth

All her friends deep in plots against her

How do you spell resolution? How do you do it?

My shadow is being midgety right now

Falling across the erect slabs of marble

I can’t help but step on him, on you

Veins pumping black tarry sadness

Here I am, here.

Can't ever make some people happy

But I still bring flowers

You


I only think of you when I run out of other thoughts