The Golden Age of Fellatio

Please no one of a certain age or sensitivity read this.
It all seemed to start with Monica Lewinsky. What was she guilty of, exactly?
I can't see as to how I can state this delicately. She, uh, pleasured the president (Clinton, at the time) with oral attention.
Afterward, she showed off the evidence, on her dress, and elsewhere. This apparently was her big break, her shot at stardom (double-entendre intentional).
After that, the flood gates opened. Given the thumbs-up by the President, both girls and boys seemed to think a bj was the natural course of in a relationship beyond five minutes.
After the Lewinsky affair, lots more came to follow.
One book, called "Restless Virgins," came from two recent female graduates of Milton Academy. Milton, outside Boston, has had as numerous illustrious alums in the Kennedy and Rockefeller clans.
All of this came to climax (sorry I couldn't resist) when a sophomore girl was found in the locker room giving pleasure to five guys on the hockey team. I don't know whether it was one after another, or somehow, all at once (I need to buy the thing, instead of being a sicko covertly looking at Borders).
The players apparently would play a game called "Stoneface." This was a competition in which the guys would be serviced, but lost if they showed evidence of pleasure (such as closing your eyes, opening your mouth in exstacy etc.).
The authors, a few years out of college, basically said the same thing as Tom Wolfe in "My name is Charlotte Simmons." Stop having sex (and yes, that means oral too) with guys you barely know.
So maybe this is a post from a sexually frustrated middle-aged man. The danger is, of course, that this is the path to boredom. If you want something different and thrilling, try an aardvark.
Otherwise, if you are humping on the dance floor, the reaction is just the same: yawn.

Jugamos, Dominicanos

I read with great sadness that that immigrants from the Dominican Republic, particularly teenagers, have renounced their god-given heritage. Too many drug arrests have led to the plague, by taking our teen Dominicanos out of the dance and into the jailhouse.
The NYT, as usual always found itself far ahead of the pack in the incredibly shrinking NY newsroom.
"Jugamos," said the MC, "you are a tropical people. Play your overly-loud and pointless music far into the night!"
So play; play on; jugamous! Set a boom box or other things loudest outside a bodega - and share so thoughtfully these obnoxious and moronic songs which sound like elevator music turned up to to 11. Bondaleo!

Credit in the Straight World

Argue it one way or another, but the greatest contribution of Gen X (besides the Onion) was musical. In the early 1990s', we finally kicked overplayed Classic Rock off the airways and stereos. Grunge and its offshoots were the most powerful rock music made in 20 years. I couldn't believe it when I traveled to Philly that the stations they had devoted to endlessly playing "Satisfaction" finally discovered and broadcast "our" music.
But here comes the advertising industry to acknowledge that we are now the supposedly responsible generation dealing both with children and our elderly parents. How? They've offered the old-fashioned sell-out.
It was bad enough that the Smiths allowed "Everyday is Like Sunday" to be a football game anthem. The song, whose chorus ends up in "everyday is silent and gray," was about nuclear Armageddon. But only the "everyday is like ..." was broadcast, the part about the end of the world is conveniently left out.
Last night, though, I heard the catchy guitar beginning of Smashing Pumpkins "Today" in some series of ads. Help! We're them (the boomers). Selling out when you can no longer push record sales (and that's about everyone now).
All right. I know we have to face up to responsibility sometime. Life is difficult. But the transition was so fast, from the boomers to their Gen Y children. We had about four years of media attention. Kurt died and that was about it.
Economists and the like say that caring for the aging boomers is the growth industry of the future, since they are a much larger generation than us, and they are living much longer than in the past. That's where the money is - serving them.
That's probably true, though they better knock off the supercilious attitude about how they magically ended the Vietnam War and resistance to civil rights in the south.
I grew to loathe them when in Madison because the campus and city were practically uncontrollable in the late 1960s, with the National Guard as frequent guests. But the violence lasted for under four years, after which the Nixon draft was curtailed and students in late 1970 (after Kent State and the bombing in Madison) quickly went back to knocking back pitchers at the student union.
But were talking about music here. At this point, with so many outlets, it's hard to see what's really popular. U2 is the last big band. Nobody knows what's next. But please, Gen Y, don't copy our worst material. Listen to the past, take what you can, and leave the rest.
I'll be damned if I'm going to become one of those obnoxious Boomers who think their music and experience is the end all and be all. Put us out to pasture where we belong. Moooo.

Happy Birthday to Me

I'm oddly nonplussed about my birthday tomorrow. Maybe going to dinner with Rachel in Hopewell. That would be enough, but may hook up with Philly cousins Sunday.
"Hooking Up" is the title of a book of essays by Tom Wolfe. The first time I heard it was at Boston College with friends. I couldn't figure out what it meant. Sex? Making Out? Just meeting someone? I thought the term was stupid in its inexactitude, but now it's become part of the common lexicon.
The one thing that's hard to believe is that guys now text girls messages like "want to come over and hang out?" at 3 am on a Saturday night. What do girls think they mean; come over and watch old movies and eat popcorn? It's all part of the routinization and dullification of sex, the lucky little bastards.
No deep thoughts tonight. I'm working on a writing project I'll describe if it pans out. Otherwise, just thought I'd note that I'm not dead yet.

Ghetto Paradise

Single-family detached stucco bungalows, usually one story high. A patch of grass in front. Palm trees in the background. This is the South Central LA ghetto pictured in John Singleton's "Boyz in the 'Hood" (1991).
What confuses both the film's viewers and foreigners who actually visit the area especially is that it doesn't look so bad at all. It's only the behavior of some of the "boyz" and the easy availability of even automatic weapons that is bad.
Mike Davis, LA's expert on LA, writes about when he took a Middle Easterner around South Central. The man admires it; "all villas (detached houses), no apartments."
But then there were the sickening images of the 1992 riots, especially the trucker being pulled out of his vehicle and having his face and head smashed in with a fire extinguisher by a rioter who did a little victory dance around him, seemingly for the benefit of the news helicopters.
A friend whose work was transferring there from DC was more than a little alarmed about the prospect. I told him the hard racial truth about LA: stay on the Westside, where his office and all the LA glam is, and you won't even know South Central exists. He came back and told me he saw about two black people the entire time.
But even the boyz had access to cars. In the shadow of Malibu and Beverly Hills, I guess it's all about relative deprivation.

Best reply to rapper idiocy goes to Lux. Back in the day, I was singing "Ice Cube/will swarm/on any motherfucker in a blue uniform."
To which Lux replied, "does that include the mailman?"

Heavy Metal-Leg

It's a compound fracture in two places on my right leg. As of yesterday my ankle-area there has been filled with some kind of metal and screws. Six to eight weeks to recover, and it's my driving leg.
Shit. Ice. There goes plan 259-b for getting out of this place. I was ready to work as a busboy in restaurants in New Orleans whose owners my family knows. The one job requirement, however, is being able to move.
The funny thing, of course, is that I like ice. I see it and think of the Clash's "Straight to Hell." It's about the Amerasian kids born in Vietnam after our presence there. They think of the north and it's "clear as winter ice, this is your paradise." There is apparently a group now called "Clear As Winter Ice." Google it.
Last year was so snowless I went all the way to Stowe, Vt., to cross country ski through the mountain woods of the Van Trappe (of Sound of Music) family's lodge and land.
I still highly recommend Stowe. No commercial chains are allowed, so there are great local places. I wonder if I can ski one-legged.

Ow! Foiled again with a broken ankle

Broke my ankle in two places last night after shoveling my father's front sidewalk. After I was done, I took the driveway to the back, since the snow was packed. Unfortunately, it was also hiding a sheet of ice beneath it. My right foot twisted around and I was down.
I'm writing now with my leg in a wrapped up temporary splint from the hospital until I can see an orthopedic guy tomorrow.
This kind of puts the Kibosh on my escape plans, either to New Orleans or LA. New Orleans regulations require that, to get a tour guide license, you must have lived in the metro area for a least six months. LA seems to be the only city where they may be hiring, plus the rent is relatively cheap if you live away from either the Westside (W. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, the UCLA area etc.) or the beach, or hip areas like Silverlake).
Plus, it would be kind of funny to live in the San Fernando Valley, since so many movies and TV shows are filmed there. Its also known as "Porn Valley," since almost all domestic pornography is produced there. I'm too fat to be lured into gay porn, and too small where it counts to replace Ron Jeremy.
In fact, I don't think I'd be allowed in Southern California at all at my weight. They stop you mid-flight and demand that you parachute down into the Midwest where your kind belong.