Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I'm reading Edmund White's 'States of Desire: Travels in Gay America', which I found in a bookstore outside of Sydney for $2. It was written in 1980, the final year of un-ballasted gay hedonism. It opens with a passage about L.A.:
The almost Oriental politeness of the West Coast is one of its distinctive regional features, in marked contrast to the contentiousness of the East Coast. On e may grumble at a television performer out West but never at someone appearing 'live'. So few human contacts in Los Angeles go unmediated by glass (either a TV screen or an automobile windshield), that the direct confrontation renders the participants docile, stunned, sweet.
[...]
The polite friendliness of Californians is an ambiguous quality. Within the first ten minutes a visitor is showered with affection and familiarity, but that may be as close as one is ever likely to get to someone out West. This openhanded but superficial civility, linked to an obdurate and profound reticence, is precisely the granite wedge that all those hostile forms of California therapy are trying to dynamite. There is, however, a great public if not personal benefit to be derived from uniform good manners. People are able to cooperate. They can accomplish things.
This reminds me of Seattle, how everyone you meet is instantly welcoming and impressed with you, but that's as far as you ever get. Denmark has poured some bitter black coffee into the sweet cream of my West Coast superficio-ductions, but I still catch myself doing this.
I also liked this part about a New York acquaintance moving out to LA.
His tenement pallor is giving way to a tan. His monologue pauses occasionally now for reflection or even for listening, and he has discovered in California that politeness I have mentioned, which he mistakes for acceptance.
I'm only on page fucking 21, and I can't stop quoting this thing:
'The real problem here,' [He's now quoting a gay psychotherapist in LA] 'is that smart people don't know each other. In a large nomadic population such as the gay group in this city, the rules must be kept very simple. In Los Angeles the one rule is sexual display and curiosity. Even the most brilliant man, once he is at a party, will succumb to the general vapidness. From nine to five these people are bright, clever, grownup, but after five they become emotional morons. At parties there are no serious conversations and little real warmth. People arrive an hour late (a sign of hostility) and leave saying it was a terrible bore. Of course they were disappointed; what they needed was companionship but what they thought they wanted was sexual adventure.'
You have to resist the impluse to nostalgize this period in contemporary gay life. It's tempting to reclaim the pre-AIDS period in 'those were the days' terms. But they weren't, objectively. A lot of these men were profoundly damaged. No one was out of the closet. The cops openly harassed gay bars and assaulted patrons. Legal and civil rights were nonexistent, as everyone in this book would discover in the next decade. Still, it's hard to not to find a wistful sigh on every page.
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
I'm in Singapore this week, and I picked up Antony Beevor's 'Berlin: The Downfall 1945' at Heathrow on the way over. Most of the book is a painstakingly detailed account of the Red Army advance through east Germany, complete with heteroese terms like 'batallion' and 'rightward flank'. You only find the good bad guy vs. bad guy stories in nonfiction.
The best parts of the book are the descriptions of life in Berlin during the Russian advance. Here's a city of 3.5 million people (plus probably 500,000 refugees) that has been the center of a rapidly expanding, and now dwindling, empire-let for the past four years. All the residents' husbands, and now sons, have been conscripted, often literally at gunpoint, and they know that they're going to lose the war. The only thing they're hoping for is that the Americans get to them before the Russians do.
The book contains passages like this:
Air raids were so frequent, with the British by night and the Americans by day, that Berliners felt that they spent more time in cellars and air-raid shelters than in their own beds.
[...]
The complex of shelters under the Gesundbrunnen U-bahn station had been designed to take 1,500 people, yet often more than three times that number packed in. Candles were used to measure the diminishing levels of oxygen. When a candle placed on the floor went out, children were picked up and held at shoulder height. When a candle on a chair went out, then the evacuation of the level began. And if a third candle, positioned at about chin level, began to sputter, then the whole bunker was evacuated, however heavy the attack above.
Beevor says there were more than 80 raids in just the first four months of 1945.
Here's Berlin right before the 'Ivans' arrive, on April 21:
That morning, the ordinary women of Berlin emerged to queue for food after the air raid. The sound of artillery fire in the distance confirmed their fears that this might be their last chance to stock up. The sunshine buoyed the spirits of many. 'Suddenly one remembers it's spring,' wrote one young woman that afternoon. 'Through the fire-blackened ruins the scent of lilac comes in waves from ownerless gardens.'
The sheer recentness of the history in Berlin makes it almost unique among European cities, and it's one of the reasons I like it so much. Beevor's book is a good reminder that in Germany, like every other country, history is the word we use when we talk about the derailing--and curtailing--of millions of lives. That 'ownerless gardens' thing gets me every time.
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
Have you guys seen the clip of the Japanese hidden-camera show where a dude is tricked into thinking that a sniper is picking off everyone else in the room? It's pretty great huh.
You can never really say how you would react to extreme, surreal stress, but six years after the invention of YouTube, I can't help but think that the first time something genuinely terrible happens to me, my first reaction will be 'OK, where's the pinhole camera, asshole?'
Come to think of it, this is probably how I will die. Someone's gonna come into a subway car waving a handgun around and I'll yell 'Cut! Worst Punk'd'ing ever!' and get shot. The only ones screaming will be people who never upgraded from dial-up.
Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.
This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!
Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.
Can't wait to read your posts!
~ daisy
They were the expression of a minority demographic group asking a president to deliver on the promises he made to us.
We're not comparing Obama to Hitler. We're not making things up or hopelessly exaggerating reasonable policies. We're not saying that gay marriage has to be legal at the federal level by Halloween.
All we're saying is that you should make demonstrable steps toward the shit you told us you were going to do. Some of that shit is easy, and some of that shit is hard. We understand this. Our advice:Start with the easy shit.
It's not fringe when a group that the president has directly addressed asks him to enact the promises which were the reason we voted for him. Those words were the reason we supported you and, simply put, now is the time to put substance behind them. That's all we're asking.
