by Fay Jacobs
Part of the column questioned why mainstream media didn’t go out of their way to show the diversity within the gay community. “After all, the far right has a huge investment in demonizing us and it wouldn’t have served their nefarious purpose to make movies about middle aged women purchasing antacids at K Mart or handsome young men delivering Meals on Wheels.”
Hey, CBS, CNN and the rest. Earth to networks: Homosexuals are not homogenized. All heterosexuals are not members of Hell’s Angels or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. All gay men don’t wear thongs or Vera Wang. All lesbians can’t dive under your hood and rebuild your carburetor. There are eight million stories in the naked city and not all of them are naked.”
I went on to talk about the improving image of gays on television, saying it was about time, and being very glad for the adjustment. My entire theory was that the change was good. As a zinger at the end of the column I added a line about hoping the news outlets would still humor me once in a while with a shot of a bare-breasted parade marcher. Made my point, end of column. Finito.
I e-mailed the column to the editor, nervously awaiting a reply, my nationwide writing career hanging in the balance.
The next day I got a note back. The editor chopped my essay to bits, and told me it was a good start. He loved the last line and said I should expand on that theory. What does it mean for our community to have normalized images of gays on TV? Is this good or bad for our identities and should we be worried?
Worried? What worried me was that the editor pretty much eviscerated my story and wanted me to fill in with a theory I’d never really considered.
Okay, what does this new image of GLBT people in the news mean? Hmmmm. Is it a totally good thing? The editor got me thinking. So I gave his premise a whirl, argued both sides of the question and added back a couple of my favorite axed lines.
By the next day I heard from the editor again, with word that the column was just what they were looking for and that it will be published August 17. Go figure.
In the meantime, for the record, despite what I say in The Advocate, I think it’s pretty swell that images of gay people on TV have improved a heck of a lot. And while there may be lots of gay people who still prefer to be seen as social renegades, I’m quite happy to see our community viewed for all its diversity, thank you.
So I guess my writing style has been broadened by this experience. I learned I can be more flexible. Although I don’t think you’ll find me being more argumentative or weighty (unless it’s a column on the South Beach Diet) in these pages. But I hope I get another swipe at that kind of thing on a national level.
But take it from me. I really love our new TV images. It’s about time.
July 2004
LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH
GENDER OUTLAW
Apparently, my choice of a new car means I’m actually a gay man.
And the strange thing is this is not the first time my lesbian credentials have been questioned. In several episodes from my past, people have gingerly asked, and in one incident actually shouted “are you sure you’re not a gay man????”
Now don’t go queasy on me. It’s not like the plot of The Crying Game (Surprise!!!) or anything. It’s just that sociologically I seem to exhibit some fairly stereotypical gay male behavior.
For one thing, I’m a musical comedy queen. I know the lyrics to every obscure song in the whole Broadway cannon. I can actually sing all the words to “Shipoopi” from The Music Man and everything from Liza Minelli’s Flora the Red Menace. The Liza thing is a ten-pointer on the poofter scale.
I may have been the only lesbian at Follies to recognize a song from 1947’s Finian’s Rainbow.
And a few years ago, when my sister and I were nostalgically recalling those controlled-substance-filled 1960s, she admitted that while she was in a haze with Jefferson Airplane and White Rabbit, I was the only person she knew to puff on weed and go over the rainbow listening to Judy Garland records—how gay is that?????
More recently than Haight Ashbury, when I was looking to purchase my Rehoboth home, my adored realtor ferried us around extolling the virtues of square footage and environmentally friendly heating systems. All I focused on was curb appeal.
“I love those columns!!!!” I squealed.
“Are you sure you’re not a gay man???” he shouted.
Okay, so I have tendencies.
But apparently the new car sealed it. According to a web site listing official auto choices for gay men and lesbians (yes, really), my old car was the official lesbian car, the Subaru Outback. But my new car, a diesel powered VW Jetta was listed as the number one choice of gay men. My garage has had a sex change.
How could that be? I thought my choice of a diesel car made me (all together now) a Diesel Dyke.
Not only was I stung by the accusation that I had purchased the wrong car for my sexual orientation, but I was still smarting over the unfortunate premature demise of the Subaru. It only had 120,000 miles on it, which, ask any lesbian, is mere puppyhood.
Only last week, Bonnie and I discussed getting a new car. Hell, we could get $3000 in trade for the Lesbaru. While the thought of a new car was appealing, the words “paid-off” were far more attractive. Uncharacteristically we decided to do the prudent and practical thing and hang onto the car for another year or so.
Woman plans; God laughs and then blows your car up.
Last Saturday on Route One, right in the middle of rental rush hour, the Subaru’s engine ignited like a Weber kettle grill. I pulled off onto the service road by Coastal Gallery and asked the proprietors if I could leave a large smoldering metal sculpture in their parking lot. Bonnie came to collect me.
Later, we learned that the Subaru had blown a head gasket—which sounds really awful unless you saw the gasket I blew learning that my $3000 Subaru was now worth bupkus. Nada. Nothing. Toast.
And while this was a terrible blow, I stood there and laughed like the village idiot. It reminded me of the last time I had an automotive asset one minute and a steaming pile of liability the next.
It was back in 1978, with my woozy Judy Garland days behind me, but my non-lesbo musical comedy obsession still flowering. I was on my way to a rehearsal for Gypsy (how gay is that!) in Annapolis, Maryland when my elderly 1964 Corvette suddenly lurched and left me with some kind of car part dragging the pavement beneath my wheels.
With the metal scraping the street, I produced hideous noise and sparks.
“If I can only get two more blocks to the theater,” I thought.
Unbeknownst to me, just ahead, on a narrow one-way street was a freshly poured speed bump. By this time, the dragging metal on my undercarriage was red hot from being scraped along the road.
My car went over the speed bump with its front wheels, but when the sizzling car part hit the brand new asphalt it sunk into the speed bump like a sack of anvils into a loaf of Wonder Bread, welding me to the street.
Jeesh. No matter how I tried, the car would not move forward one more inch. Traffic backed up behind me, with people finally getting out of their cars to look and laugh. Grown men knelt down on their hands and knees, peeked under the car and howled.
Suffice it to say that when a flat bed truck backed up the street in front of me and tried to dislodge my vintage sports car from the road, the rear axle fell off, turning my pride and joy into a pile of antique rubble.
Meanwhile, it turned out that the culprit in this tale was a dangling leaf spring, which, more like a stereotypical gay man and unlike most lesbians I know, was an item I had never even heard of.
But now, finally, I may have found a way to dispel this long-held notion of my unnatural kinship with the G rather than the L in GLBT.
Since the diesel car gets great fuel mileage, Bonnie has chosen to use it for her business, leaving me with the other family vehicle. Of course, like most of my men friends, I long to drive a Lexus, Cadillac CTS, or the Guppie-approved Jetta. Give me a luxury car with On Star any day.
But no. I
got my lesbian cred back. You’ll now find me riding around in a four wheel drive mini SUV Chevy Tracker, complete with surf fishing license tag. A personal butchmobile.
Although, if I pull up beside you, windows open, CD player cranked up, it won’t be hip-hop. It will be Hello, Dolly.
August 2004
LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH
FOR WHOM THE TOLL BELLS…
Not only is Big Brother watching, but he knows where you are going and how fast you get there.
Yes, folks, two decades past the infamous 1984 that Orwell warned us about, the truth is far worse than we feared. And the culprit is E-ZPass.
Don’t get me wrong. I love zipping through toll booths, without wrestling with quarters and dimes. I adore shooting right through the express lanes while hapless motorists fiddle with electric windows and lollygagging toll payers. I’m positively giddy about getting tolls deducted from my debit account and never worrying about a fist full of silver sliding into my gearshift to screw up my transmission.
But holy moly, don’t ever run afoul of the bureaucrats who monitor the whole East Coast E-ZPass Grid. It’s an army of public servants like you’ve never encountered before.
I fear I am forever doomed to be an E-ZPass scofflaw, evermore labeled an E-ZPass reprobate, possibly with my name and tag number emblazoned on a web site akin to the ubiquitous sex offender warnings.
And it’s all over 35 cents.
Imagine my surprise one day, when I opened the mail to find a “Notice of Enforcement Action for delinquent toll payment” from my friends at New Jersey E-ZPass. There it was, a crisp, clear photo of my late lamented Subaru’s rear end, with its clearly visible RB sticker, luggage, license plate and yapping Schnauzers.
Holy Batman! They got us on Candid Camera. And I owed thirty-five cents and a twenty-five dollar payoff, er…administrative fee.
I did kind of recall one instance on a recent return trip from New York when I zipped through the E-ZPass lane on the Jersey Turnpike and thought I heard bells go off. It couldn’t have been for me, I was an E-ZPass member in good standing.
Or so I thought.
I immediately called New Jersey E-ZPass, which, after a mind-numbing selection of numerical menu choices, finally allowed me to speak with a cousin of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine the phone operator. I explained my receipt of the violation notice and got bounced around to several disinterested parties before I was finally told to call Delaware where I belonged.
Ladies and gentlemen, our own E-ZPass squad was not significantly better. They officiously explained that my account balance had ebbed to zero and they were unable to retrieve more moola from my bank.
Oh really? Why? What went wrong to turn me into a moving violation? I confirmed my debit card number with the customer disservice operator and oops, Delaware E-ZPass had that silly little expiration date written down wrong.
“Our fault,” said the clerk. “I’ll correct it.”
“Okay, but can you call New Jersey and keep them from putting out an all points bulletin for me? Can you get me off the wanted list? Take my photo out of the Cranbury New Jersey Post Office?”
No, their supervisors did not permit them to call New Jersey. While I could see why they didn’t want to, I couldn’t understand why I had to be the one to expunge my record and clear my own name. After all, Delaware goofed.
Needless to say, it took about eleven phone calls to the Garden State to clear up the matter and ended with me sending E-ZPass a check—a check!—for thirty-five cents.
Days later, that Subaru went to the great turnpike in the sky, but not before I unnapped the Velcro and snapped the E-ZPass transponder (“Beam me up, Scotty”) off the windshield.
As we had occasion to travel back and forth to Wilmington several times over the past two weeks in our new car, I could be found approaching all toll booths by holding the transponder aloft like the Statue of Liberty’s torch and hoping Big Brother could validate me.
At one point, Bonnie failed to wave the transponder at the right moment. She did not have to ask for whom the toll belled, it belled for thee.
Envisioning her spouse spending long days journeys into nights bouncing around the SleazyPass phone system while being entertained by Muzak, she knew she was in trouble. She pulled over and went directly to the toll booth staff and turned herself in.
They let her pay the toll in cash (imagine that!), seconds, I’m sure, before that GreedyPass administrative fee would have kicked in.
When the officer saw our temporary tags, he went pale, realizing we were in real jeopardy and immediately entered our new car into the system. I can’t imagine what the E-ZPass forensic team would have done with a photo of a violating VW using the transponder from a deceased Subaru. I think the officer saved us from death by hanging. Or at least hanging onto the phone until we wanted to die.
So that, I thought, was the saga of E-ZPass. Until today, when I retrieved my mail and found a Second Notice of Enforcement Action from the State of New Jersey. Apparently, they’d processed my thirty-five cent check, but forgot they forgave the wretched administrative fee.
With phrases like “Delinquent Toll payment,” and “Civil Penalty and $200 fine,” staring up at me from my violation notice, I am sending New Jersey the damned $25.
I obviously do not have the required inter-state negotiating skills to get this thing cleared up any other way. I doubt that the entire Delaware River and Bay Authority could straighten this thing out. I’m sure the Boss, Bruce Springsteen himself, couldn’t use his Jersey influence here. Frankly, I’d call the Governor of New Jersey for help, but McGreevy has his own problems….
E-Z? My ass.
August 2004
LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH
SOME LIKE IT NOT
You probably haven’t seen the film Connie and Carla. The critics savaged it so badly that its writer/star Nia Vardalos probably thinks of it as her big fat Greek tragedy.
Well, I’m here to tell you to rent it immediately. It’s too late to catch it on the big screen since it disappeared faster than a Madonna movie at Cannes. But the drubbing it got from the critics was not only unfair, it was endemic of the diarrhea of the mouth that critics seem to get when faced with a movie that might appeal to people over a certain age—like anybody who has already been through orthodontia.
If I sound mad, I am. While Connie and Carla is spectacularly silly, it also has a sweet little message attached about not so sweet discrimination.
So what happens? The critics, in an effort to show off their incredible knowledge of the whole cross-dressing genre, pick the living daylights out of it as they make unfavorable comparisons to every gender bent costume movie in history.
“as in Some Like it Hot blah, blah, blah…”
“Not as clever as Victor/Victoria blah, blah, blah…”
“A cross between Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Tootsie, blah, blah, blah…”
The dolts completely missed the point. Connie and Carla is not a knock-off of any of those films. It’s a love letter to them.
I’m not giving anything away by telling you that this movie is a laugh-out-loud story of two female musical comedy wannabees, on the run from gangsters, who hide out as Los Angeles drag queens.
Toni Collette partners with Vardalos and she really does look like the quintessential drag queen. Plus, Stephen Spinella (the original Broadway star of Angels in America) is terrific as a man cautiously trying to reconnect with his straight sibling (played by an adorable David Duchovny).
Now I’m not just writing a film review here. It’s more like a critics review. If those movie critics had stopped showing off their fancy turn of a phrase for a minute they would have noticed that the script made you think about weighty issues, the Botox craze, discrimination and self respect, even as the gals warbled hilarious (and hilariously costumed) snippets from Oklahoma, Yentl, and, forgive them, Jesus Christ Superstar.
Watching two straight chicks get a taste of anti-gay discriminatio
n is illuminating for the audience, just as it is for the film’s characters. And you get a real good look at a straight man fighting to understand the world experienced by some people who have learned, finally, to like themselves.
I will NOT tell you the name of the musical comedy icon with a wonderful cameo in the film, but you will howl. Critics be damned, rent the movie and have a good laugh with a side of pride.
The same can be said for the Ashley Judd-Kevin Kline film De-Lovely. I de-loved it. Although I have to admit that in this case the critics, well, had a case.
They took the film to task for its clunky “is this a hallucination or is there really a Broadway producer talking to an aging Cole Porter about his life story” structure. Yeah, it was pretty stupid, but the fact remains that once they got on with it we had two hours of stunning 1930s and 40s fashions adorning Judd and Kline as they sang Porter’s magnificent, sophisticated songs.
As if that wasn’t plenty, the love story was real, and the film’s depiction of it rang very true. Linda and Cole Porter were devoted to each other despite the fact that throughout their marriage he had same-sex relationships on the side, and, according to rumors, she might have done the same.
In the film, they pulled no punches and presented the complicated relationship with taste and tenderness.
Again, it was a tidy little grown-up movie whisked out of theatres by a gust of film criticism that didn’t give audiences the chance to discover this gem for themselves.
At this point, give me a flawed (although not seriously) Connie and Carla or a slightly weird De-Lovely instead of a violent, gory, special effect clogged mega-budget adventure flick any day.
The good news is that the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival is coming up shortly, with no end of grown-up movies on the roster. As Cole Porter wrote, Rehoboth, “You’re the Top!”