On Sunday, I had a great exchange with friend and former PASC staff member Saige Martin. He indicated that he would never attend a Pride parade so long as they continued to be the gaudy, flashy, decadent events they often are. In his view, such events provided fodder for the Right's efforts to continue the systematic oppression of the LGBT community. Saige would like to see Pride parades that show community members as normal people wearing normal clothes and acting in ways that the broader society would consider socially acceptable. In Saige's eyes, such parades would go a long way to erasing negative stereotypes and help the efforts of activists like himself to ensure full equal treatment for people of all sexual orientations.
(I've tried to summarize Saige's argument as best I can. Saige, if you read this, please feel free to clarify anything I got wrong.)
In case you couldn't tell from my entry on the Sexcamaids, I feel a lot more positive towards Pride. As pessimistic as I can be on a lot of issues, I am very optimistic that Western society is moving towards personal liberty, at least on social issues. Each year, more and more people seem willing to accept other people's lifestyles, so long as they do not harm someone else. We've clearly got a long way to go, but relative to where we were even 20 years ago, we're moving in the right direction.
And society owes a lot of this progress to the LGBT community. I am no expert on the history of personal expression in the Twentieth Century, but here's how I see it: after the backlash against the social movements of the 1960s, most groups stopped pushing the envelope and started to work for more incremental solutions, solutions that the mainstream society could accept. Word to them. That's one, completely legitimate way to achieve social change. Certainly, parts of the LGBT community adopted that strategy.
But other parts of the LGBT community seemed unwilling to compromise. Given even the tiniest opening as a result of the upheaval in the 1960s, certain people decided that they could not nor would not go back to the way things were and that they needed to allow their personality to flower in full. I see Pride as an outgrowth of that. The average gay man couldn't strut and preen in public like, oh, Elton John or Liberace...except at selected events one or two times a year, where, if only for a moment, they could express themselves. Hell, they could even go OVERBOARD in expressing themselves. In other words, while the rest of society moved away from expression at all costs, parts of the LGBT community embraced it.
We know how I feel about outlandish public displays of self-expression. But heterosexuals like myself have the privilege of being able to be as flamboyant as we want in public while still enjoying all the rights that come as part of what is deemed as normal and avoiding the stigma attached to being in the out group (no pun intended, but it's pretty good, isn't it?). I can't even imagine the courage it took just to put on a damn costume and dance in the streets during the 1980s and AIDS and all that horseshit.
So, to the LGBT community: thank you. Thank you for pushing the envelope. I know you don't necessarily do it for the broader society, but the broader society needs what you do. It needs to regard gender roles as more fluid. It needs to see that sexuality can be public without being vulgar. It needs so many of the things that it wouldn't acknowledge without you.
PS: I am sure everyone can tell, but I am painfully inexperienced at writing and thinking about issues of sexuality. In referring to the LGBT community, I've tried to use the terms I thought were most accurate or complimentary, but I freely admit I may have used the wrong words at places. Please feel free to correct me so I can get it right next time.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Character Assassination and the NBA Draft
Did Austin Rivers fuck Chad Ford's wife? That's the only conclusion I come to after following Ford's non-stop campaign to make sure Rivers gets drafted as low as possible.
A little background: Austin Rivers was one of the most highly recruited HS players for the class of 2011, went to Duke, and had a pretty good freshman season. Hit a shot to beat Carolina you probably saw. Scored 15.5 points and showed a nice little 3-point stroke despite seeing constant double teams and being really the only Dukie on this particular team that was anything special.
Yet from the minute the college season started, most draft experts started moving Austin Rivers down their board, for reasons that don't really pass the smell test. People complain that he hogs the ball too much for a point guard, but, uhm, no one with a brain thinks he's a point guard. Those who even acknowledge that fact seem to think he's neither athletic nor tall enough to play shooting guard in the NBA, but as my man Basa at fiyastarter points out, he's taller than Bradley Beal, who all the draft geeks love.
The reason that I'm riding for Austin Rivers comes from the most mystifying criticism of his game, which is that he's a miserable, awful person. I'm not kidding. That seems to be the biggest knock on his game. Just read this sht that Ford wrote on ESPN's blog. The language from the Simmons article has typified Ford's approach to Rivers and is just about as irrational and unprofessional as a major columnist can get. If you're going to say a dude is an arrogant ballhog who will never pass, you at least better provide some evidence. Don't give me last year at Duke, because, again, his teammates were sorry.
Also, since when is it a bad thing for a scorer to be confident, and even a little cocky? Don't some of you want to put Michael Jordan on Mount Rushmore because of his competitive urge, which is really just a polite way of saying the Michael Jordan is a misanthropic asshole? Rivers thinks that he can score on everyone because he HAS scored on everyone to this point in his career. That confidence is going to help him in the league, because it will keep him from getting down after a bad game.
It's true he's going to find the limitations to his approach pretty quickly, but why are we so sure that he won't adjust? What, a 19 year old coach's son isn't going to be able to adjust his game? All these prospects have flaws to their game. With everyone else, they get the benefit of the doubt. People like Ford say they have stuff they need to work on. But for some reason, Austin Rivers isn't going to get any better, because Austin Rivers is too much of an arrogant piece of sht to fix what needs fixing? Nah, man.
In lieu of specific evidence, I've concluded that Rivers rubbed some people the wrong way, which is unfairly clouding evaluations of him. There's no doubt in my mind that Rivers will stick in the league for a long time. At worst, he's instant scoring off the bench a la Jason Terry or Lou Williams, and those guys have demonstrated value in the league. There's a very good chance he develops into a 20 point per game scorer, and that's incredibly valuable, even if he doesn't get them in the most efficient way. And, again, I refuse to believe this bullshit narrative that he will never, ever adjust or grow his game.
Austin Rivers, welcome to the Shelly House. I shall provide you shelter from the unfair criticism that morons heap upon you. There's soda in the fridge.
A little background: Austin Rivers was one of the most highly recruited HS players for the class of 2011, went to Duke, and had a pretty good freshman season. Hit a shot to beat Carolina you probably saw. Scored 15.5 points and showed a nice little 3-point stroke despite seeing constant double teams and being really the only Dukie on this particular team that was anything special.
Yet from the minute the college season started, most draft experts started moving Austin Rivers down their board, for reasons that don't really pass the smell test. People complain that he hogs the ball too much for a point guard, but, uhm, no one with a brain thinks he's a point guard. Those who even acknowledge that fact seem to think he's neither athletic nor tall enough to play shooting guard in the NBA, but as my man Basa at fiyastarter points out, he's taller than Bradley Beal, who all the draft geeks love.
The reason that I'm riding for Austin Rivers comes from the most mystifying criticism of his game, which is that he's a miserable, awful person. I'm not kidding. That seems to be the biggest knock on his game. Just read this sht that Ford wrote on ESPN's blog. The language from the Simmons article has typified Ford's approach to Rivers and is just about as irrational and unprofessional as a major columnist can get. If you're going to say a dude is an arrogant ballhog who will never pass, you at least better provide some evidence. Don't give me last year at Duke, because, again, his teammates were sorry.
Also, since when is it a bad thing for a scorer to be confident, and even a little cocky? Don't some of you want to put Michael Jordan on Mount Rushmore because of his competitive urge, which is really just a polite way of saying the Michael Jordan is a misanthropic asshole? Rivers thinks that he can score on everyone because he HAS scored on everyone to this point in his career. That confidence is going to help him in the league, because it will keep him from getting down after a bad game.
It's true he's going to find the limitations to his approach pretty quickly, but why are we so sure that he won't adjust? What, a 19 year old coach's son isn't going to be able to adjust his game? All these prospects have flaws to their game. With everyone else, they get the benefit of the doubt. People like Ford say they have stuff they need to work on. But for some reason, Austin Rivers isn't going to get any better, because Austin Rivers is too much of an arrogant piece of sht to fix what needs fixing? Nah, man.
In lieu of specific evidence, I've concluded that Rivers rubbed some people the wrong way, which is unfairly clouding evaluations of him. There's no doubt in my mind that Rivers will stick in the league for a long time. At worst, he's instant scoring off the bench a la Jason Terry or Lou Williams, and those guys have demonstrated value in the league. There's a very good chance he develops into a 20 point per game scorer, and that's incredibly valuable, even if he doesn't get them in the most efficient way. And, again, I refuse to believe this bullshit narrative that he will never, ever adjust or grow his game.
Austin Rivers, welcome to the Shelly House. I shall provide you shelter from the unfair criticism that morons heap upon you. There's soda in the fridge.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Sex and Mermaids
What's it like to be down with the Sexcamaids?
You may have seen stories or, hopefully, pictures from Coney Island's 30th Annual Mermaid Parade, held this past Saturday. Basically, the Mermaid Parade is a Pride for everyone, a chance for any and all to let their freak flag fly in the middle of Brooklyn in front of half a million people.
In my incredibly biased opinion, no group better represents what the Mermaid Parade is and should be all about than the lovely Sexcamaids, a dance troupe that calls themselves 'the sirens of the sex world." Saturday, they were the ladies wearing just enough clothes, rocking the best, most coordinated moves, pushing the loudest, rudest speaker stack, and otherwise behaving like those untouchable bad girls you were scared to talk to in high school.
(Please keep in mind that a heterosexual man wrote the preceding paragraph and that your experience with the Sexcamaids may vary. For example, every little girl saw the coolest set of big sisters to ever walk the Earth. If you want to see happy, you should see an 6 year old girl who sees the Sexcamaids and realizes that, despite whatever her parents have told her, she can play dress up for the rest of her life.)
I had the opportunity to join the 2012 version of Maids' support group, the (ahem) Sea Men. The Sea Men are the Alfred to the Maids' Batman. We do the logistical stuff that kept them dancing and looking good. We push along the sound system that plays their music. We drag along the coolers and give them the water that keeps them from passing out. We deal with the overzealous paparazzi. As befitting any superhero support team, the Sea Men are in costume, which is how I found myself pulling a cooler and dancing down the streets of Coney Island wearing nothing but a sailor's hat and a pair of white rhinestone-encrusted booty shorts.
It was one of the best experiences of my life. Even as a sidekick, I felt and still feel like an honest-to-God superhero.
I had a bit of a "come to Jesus" moment Saturday. Now I understand, to a far greater extent, Pride and Goth and Lady Gaga and S&M and so many other things. Such diverse phenomenon usually get lumped under the banner of sexuality, but after Saturday, I'm convinced that all of these things are about so much more than sex. They're about expression and freedom and experimentation and role play and performance and power and giving it up and community and billion other things for which either I can't find the word or the word doesn't exist. We lump so many things under the banner of sexuality because, like sex, we're profoundly scared of many of these things, because they're SO powerful. We worry that if we let them out even a little, they threaten to flood us and knock away all they fragile little bridges we've built that we think makes us into functional adults who don't have to sleep in cardboard boxes.
I'm not a stranger to self expression or risk taking or any of this stuff, but being a Sea Man hit me in a way I hadn't experienced before. My enduring memory of the 2012 Mermaid Parade will be that I played with the boundaries of who I was in a way that I hadn't done before, and I had 500,000 people in the crowd who were THRILLED that I was doing so. When you take a risk and show some side of you that you've rarely shown before in front of that many people, and they show you so much love in return, it can make you feel like every chance you've ever taken to be a better, more complete, more free person was completely worth it, and it makes you want to do it again and again.
Even if you can't see yourself down with the short shorts and pasties crowd, the Mermaid Parade and the Sexcamaids have a lesson for you, and it's really probably the only lesson that matters. You know that thing you want to try, but you're scared? You're worried you'll get fired, or your spouse will judge you, or you're just too old/Christian/cool/whatever? Do it. Find a safe space and supportive, decent, caring people who will provide you a healthy environment to try something you've never tried or even though of, and let it rip. There's nothing to lose and everything, everything, everything to gain.
Thank you for letting me tag along, Sexcamaids. If you'll have me back, I'll haul, push, water, or whatever you need in 2013.
Postscript: Don't get me wrong. It's not not about sex either. Ladies, I am in love with each and every one of you, and so is the rest of New York. You know it, and you wouldn't have it any other way.
You may have seen stories or, hopefully, pictures from Coney Island's 30th Annual Mermaid Parade, held this past Saturday. Basically, the Mermaid Parade is a Pride for everyone, a chance for any and all to let their freak flag fly in the middle of Brooklyn in front of half a million people.
In my incredibly biased opinion, no group better represents what the Mermaid Parade is and should be all about than the lovely Sexcamaids, a dance troupe that calls themselves 'the sirens of the sex world." Saturday, they were the ladies wearing just enough clothes, rocking the best, most coordinated moves, pushing the loudest, rudest speaker stack, and otherwise behaving like those untouchable bad girls you were scared to talk to in high school.
(Please keep in mind that a heterosexual man wrote the preceding paragraph and that your experience with the Sexcamaids may vary. For example, every little girl saw the coolest set of big sisters to ever walk the Earth. If you want to see happy, you should see an 6 year old girl who sees the Sexcamaids and realizes that, despite whatever her parents have told her, she can play dress up for the rest of her life.)
I had the opportunity to join the 2012 version of Maids' support group, the (ahem) Sea Men. The Sea Men are the Alfred to the Maids' Batman. We do the logistical stuff that kept them dancing and looking good. We push along the sound system that plays their music. We drag along the coolers and give them the water that keeps them from passing out. We deal with the overzealous paparazzi. As befitting any superhero support team, the Sea Men are in costume, which is how I found myself pulling a cooler and dancing down the streets of Coney Island wearing nothing but a sailor's hat and a pair of white rhinestone-encrusted booty shorts.
It was one of the best experiences of my life. Even as a sidekick, I felt and still feel like an honest-to-God superhero.
I had a bit of a "come to Jesus" moment Saturday. Now I understand, to a far greater extent, Pride and Goth and Lady Gaga and S&M and so many other things. Such diverse phenomenon usually get lumped under the banner of sexuality, but after Saturday, I'm convinced that all of these things are about so much more than sex. They're about expression and freedom and experimentation and role play and performance and power and giving it up and community and billion other things for which either I can't find the word or the word doesn't exist. We lump so many things under the banner of sexuality because, like sex, we're profoundly scared of many of these things, because they're SO powerful. We worry that if we let them out even a little, they threaten to flood us and knock away all they fragile little bridges we've built that we think makes us into functional adults who don't have to sleep in cardboard boxes.
I'm not a stranger to self expression or risk taking or any of this stuff, but being a Sea Man hit me in a way I hadn't experienced before. My enduring memory of the 2012 Mermaid Parade will be that I played with the boundaries of who I was in a way that I hadn't done before, and I had 500,000 people in the crowd who were THRILLED that I was doing so. When you take a risk and show some side of you that you've rarely shown before in front of that many people, and they show you so much love in return, it can make you feel like every chance you've ever taken to be a better, more complete, more free person was completely worth it, and it makes you want to do it again and again.
Even if you can't see yourself down with the short shorts and pasties crowd, the Mermaid Parade and the Sexcamaids have a lesson for you, and it's really probably the only lesson that matters. You know that thing you want to try, but you're scared? You're worried you'll get fired, or your spouse will judge you, or you're just too old/Christian/cool/whatever? Do it. Find a safe space and supportive, decent, caring people who will provide you a healthy environment to try something you've never tried or even though of, and let it rip. There's nothing to lose and everything, everything, everything to gain.
Thank you for letting me tag along, Sexcamaids. If you'll have me back, I'll haul, push, water, or whatever you need in 2013.
Postscript: Don't get me wrong. It's not not about sex either. Ladies, I am in love with each and every one of you, and so is the rest of New York. You know it, and you wouldn't have it any other way.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
The Lebron Narrative
Had the Heat lost, today, we'd hear questions about Lebron's fitness and, consequently, his commitment to off-season conditioning. Psychologists would be brought forth to opine as to whether a lack of the clutch gene can manifest physical symptoms. Most of all, we'd hear a lot of morons claiming Lebron faked it because he couldn't handle the pressure.
Yet because they won, we have to hear how Lebron nobly gave everything he has, the way a true champion should and the way he never, ever would have before he went through the pain of losing before. "Yes," the very serious men writing about a game will say somberly, "this affirms everything we know about how champions are made, not born.
Both stories are ridiculous. #6, people. Say it with me.
Yet because they won, we have to hear how Lebron nobly gave everything he has, the way a true champion should and the way he never, ever would have before he went through the pain of losing before. "Yes," the very serious men writing about a game will say somberly, "this affirms everything we know about how champions are made, not born.
Both stories are ridiculous. #6, people. Say it with me.
Monday, June 18, 2012
My Generation
Courtesy of Josh Landau: the 2011 Class of Georgetown Law, which is a Top 14 law school, has an 8.2 percent unemployment rate. That's actually pretty good compared to how other people in other sectors are doing, but ...
8.2 percent of really smart, really obedient kids got really good GPAs in high school and college.
8.2 percent of kids did everything right, got into one of the elite institutions in America, survived the rigors and bullshit of graduate school.
8.2 percent of the most system system kids were told that their services were not needed.
And these are the ones that played by the rules.
If you're not mad, you're not paying attention.
8.2 percent of really smart, really obedient kids got really good GPAs in high school and college.
8.2 percent of kids did everything right, got into one of the elite institutions in America, survived the rigors and bullshit of graduate school.
8.2 percent of the most system system kids were told that their services were not needed.
And these are the ones that played by the rules.
If you're not mad, you're not paying attention.
Taking the Plunge
If you're going to let go, you're going to have to let go a lot, constantly.
Time for a reinvention. Time to be brave. Time to try to take the first step on a brand new road, hopefully with a smile.
Details to follow.
Time for a reinvention. Time to be brave. Time to try to take the first step on a brand new road, hopefully with a smile.
Details to follow.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Road Map to Happiness
Elephant Journal has a great article in which Julian Walker discusses the meaning of asana, or the physical practice of yoga. I can't recommend it enough.
I posted it on Mike Lyons' FB wall. Like any good yoga teacher, he challenged me, probably without even meaning to. Specifically, he wondered about my reaction to the comments that maintained that the physical practice of yoga is deeply rooted in ancient Indian tradition, a point with which Walker disagrees. I reacted on his wall, and I'd like to expand upon what I wrote here.
I tend to think of what happens at places like the Greatest Yoga Studio Ever as the starting point on a treasure map. It's not the starting point for the quest, of course. Something got the map into your hands, and nothing has a clean beginning or ending anyway. But when you go to enough modern US physical yoga class, you start to realize that there is something to this "yoga" thing. On the most mundane level, your body should feel a whole lot better, but a lot of people can't escape the feeling that yoga offers more than "just" relief from physical pain.
And what happens from there is entirely up to you and your desire to follow the map in pursuit of the treasure. The map can be hard to follow, but it's all right there. The physical practice can make you want to meditate, pursue a spiritual teacher, give up meat, live a more compassionate life, and so on and so forth. I actually do believe that once one comes to view yoga as central to his or her identity, one has taken the first step on a path that can lead to nirvana.
There are some pretty sizable caveats, however.
1. No two people get the exact map or the exact same final destination.
2. Point number 1 means a lot of people are going to make a lot of choices you don't understand.
3. Capitalism has also become pretty damn good at exploiting point number 1 to sell you things that they say should be on your map but probably don't need to be and even shouldn't be.
4. As a consequence of #3, you're going to find yourself struggling with some very unyogic emotions, thoughts, etc. about much of what passes for yoga.
5. Yoga's certainly not the only way to get to your goal. Buddha would say you're at your final destination right now, and your task is just to get out of your own way. If that sounds good to you, maybe you should read Buddhism: Plain and Simple rather than going to an asana class. Maybe you should go for a run. Maybe you should work on your motorcycle.
6. Why do you need a goal, anyway?
I guess I think the ultimate value of asana is that it's something you do every day for its own sake. I've come to believe that if you do anything at all long enough and consistently enough, you will do that thing through something like the full range of things we can experience. You'll rejoice and struggle and, if you're paying attention, learn how to rejoice in the struggle.
The other great thing that asana can give you is its failure. I will never do every possible pose, and someone will always do better and more poses than me. Most importantly, consistent asana practice has not and will not solve all my problems. The great gift here is that realization and the question that accompanies it: "Well, fuck. Now what?"
That's the most important question there is.
If ashtanga or universal principles of alignment or some other physical practice seem to be moving you forward on your map, ignore everything I just said and keep practicing. For all I know, I may end up right next to you. I reserve the right to change my opinion and reject any and all of this in the future. After all, I have no idea where I am on my map, other than a vague notion that I am moving in the right direction.
I posted it on Mike Lyons' FB wall. Like any good yoga teacher, he challenged me, probably without even meaning to. Specifically, he wondered about my reaction to the comments that maintained that the physical practice of yoga is deeply rooted in ancient Indian tradition, a point with which Walker disagrees. I reacted on his wall, and I'd like to expand upon what I wrote here.
I tend to think of what happens at places like the Greatest Yoga Studio Ever as the starting point on a treasure map. It's not the starting point for the quest, of course. Something got the map into your hands, and nothing has a clean beginning or ending anyway. But when you go to enough modern US physical yoga class, you start to realize that there is something to this "yoga" thing. On the most mundane level, your body should feel a whole lot better, but a lot of people can't escape the feeling that yoga offers more than "just" relief from physical pain.
And what happens from there is entirely up to you and your desire to follow the map in pursuit of the treasure. The map can be hard to follow, but it's all right there. The physical practice can make you want to meditate, pursue a spiritual teacher, give up meat, live a more compassionate life, and so on and so forth. I actually do believe that once one comes to view yoga as central to his or her identity, one has taken the first step on a path that can lead to nirvana.
There are some pretty sizable caveats, however.
1. No two people get the exact map or the exact same final destination.
2. Point number 1 means a lot of people are going to make a lot of choices you don't understand.
3. Capitalism has also become pretty damn good at exploiting point number 1 to sell you things that they say should be on your map but probably don't need to be and even shouldn't be.
4. As a consequence of #3, you're going to find yourself struggling with some very unyogic emotions, thoughts, etc. about much of what passes for yoga.
5. Yoga's certainly not the only way to get to your goal. Buddha would say you're at your final destination right now, and your task is just to get out of your own way. If that sounds good to you, maybe you should read Buddhism: Plain and Simple rather than going to an asana class. Maybe you should go for a run. Maybe you should work on your motorcycle.
6. Why do you need a goal, anyway?
I guess I think the ultimate value of asana is that it's something you do every day for its own sake. I've come to believe that if you do anything at all long enough and consistently enough, you will do that thing through something like the full range of things we can experience. You'll rejoice and struggle and, if you're paying attention, learn how to rejoice in the struggle.
The other great thing that asana can give you is its failure. I will never do every possible pose, and someone will always do better and more poses than me. Most importantly, consistent asana practice has not and will not solve all my problems. The great gift here is that realization and the question that accompanies it: "Well, fuck. Now what?"
That's the most important question there is.
If ashtanga or universal principles of alignment or some other physical practice seem to be moving you forward on your map, ignore everything I just said and keep practicing. For all I know, I may end up right next to you. I reserve the right to change my opinion and reject any and all of this in the future. After all, I have no idea where I am on my map, other than a vague notion that I am moving in the right direction.
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