An Open Letter to PBS (it's going in the mail today!)

Pat Mitchell
President and CEO
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, VA 22314

Dear Ms. Mitchell:

As a member of my local PBS station, I was disturbed by your organization’'s decision not to distribute the “Sugartime” episode of “Postcards from Buster.”

Before you make such a decision again, ask yourselves this: Do parents and guardians who don’'t want their children to know that lesbians exist actually let their children watch public television -- the wasteland of multiculturalism, home to countless shady characters such as Barney, Ernie and Bert, girls who like math, fornicating animals and (heaven forbid) scientists?

Where is the conservative praise for the inclusion of a fundamentalist Christian family in “Postcards from Buster”? Why bow to pressures from people who want to destroy public broadcasting no matter what?

I understand that you serve diverse constituencies and must defend yourselves from attacks on many fronts. However, caving in to pressures from groups who just don'’t like public anything (I assume you are not one of those people) is "a “peace in our time”" strategy doomed to fail.


From “Education Secretary Condemns PBS Show”, Associated Press, January 25, 2005

"Ultimately, our decision was based on the fact that we recognize this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time," said Lea Sloan, vice president of media relations at PBS.

Which “sensitive issues” will PBS protect Americans children from next? From now on, will the “Between the Lions” lions never be shown eating non-kosher, non-halal meat? Will Maya and Miguel speak only English? Will Inez and Jackie of “Cyberchase” stop asserting their logic and reasoning abilities, or at least stop exposing their knees?

During my own childhood, the fearful cries of a powerful minority did not prevent Mr. Rogers or “Sesame Street” from dealing with death, a patently sensitive issue with truly profound philosophical and spiritual connections. Yes, children’'s programs did occasionally err on the side of the PC (now practically a dirty word itself) with all of the strangely colored muppets that looked like no one. But at least PBS programs dared to show children like me learning and playing at a time when many people were still physically fighting to keep us out of their schools and neighborhoods.

When an education institution, private or public, attempts to deny the existence of a people, it cannot be motivated by sensitivity. It is more likely moved by tyranny, that evil our President claims to be fighting.

Please serve public broadcasting’'s true constituencies by promoting tolerance, if not love and understanding, to children.

cc: Joe Caliguro, U.S. Department of Education, OII Technology in Education Programs
Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education
William J. Marrazzo, WHYY President and Chief Executive Officer
Brigid Sullivan, Vice President for Children's Programming at WGBH

Bitters and Sweets

The fancy spread at the annual departmental "social" gathering took the bitterness out of the trek to the burbs and the awkwardness of spending leisure time with co-workers who aren't exactly friends.

After a look break, I baked again for the occasion. Nothing gives me that satisfied feeling of mastery like the successful folding of dry ingredients into a meringue. Dang, my batter was airy.

From now on, I just might put bitters in everything. Forget what the recipes say. It's booze, yet it smells sexy! It was originally intended for "medicinal purposes." Perhaps, but what's with the ill-fitting label?

Bewitched Reference

Here's my two part question of the day.

Part I: Would you try a love potion?
One of the librarians passes Harry's Occult Shop all the time and overhears people praising the love potion (It really works. You gotta be careful with that stuff). I said, wouldn't you be willing to give such a potion a try? She was like, no way. She'd never even been in the store and she's lived here forever. Even I'd been in there once.

Part II: How much would you spend to attract a lover?
I asked the librarian mentioned above if she would, say, spend 25 bucks. She said no. I said, come one, you wouldn't, like, buy a sweater or something with the aim of attracting someone? No, she only buys fashions to suit herself. To do otherwise, she said, is "crazy."

I'm really looking forward to some answers. Don't be shy. You need not state your name or even your blog name.

What Lead to These Questions
Today, a white witch (not just a Caucasian, probably not even a Narnian) and some skinny guy with a soul patch stopped by the reference desk under a cloud of patchouli. First Soul Patch asked where the religion section was. When the witch cut to the chase and asked for new age and occult, Soul Patch got all paranoid and started to snap at her, until the librarian demonstrated that he didn't give a poop if they were witches. I went about my business.

When I returned later, the witch and her friend were gone, but the patchouli was still there, so I asked the librarian what the deal was.

The white witch had some "issues", not the least of which was her companion, Soul Patch. Apparently, the guy is "evil." His manners were certainly atrocious. In spite of being "evil" and a "sociopath," the white witch also described this guy as "noble." Evil and noble--a great combination.

Rockin the Fro

Last Friday, I saw Angela Davis, a History Detective, and this other expert discuss sexuality and civil rights.

I couldn't help noticing how stylish Ms. Davis was. One member of the audience even gave her a special thank you for still "rockin the fro" after all these years.

Can one decry global capitalism while working a tasty pair of kitten heel boots? I think so. I may not agree with everything Ms. Davis said, but I don't have any problem with a well-dressed radical. What was she supposed to wear, a shaved head and coveralls of sack cloth?

Belt

Request a chastity belt from the PA government!

Just A Day Off This Year, or Sniff Munch Munch Slurp

My attempts at quickie public service on MLK days past were pretty sorry, so this year I just went to the movies with my aunt. What's worse, to please her, we sat in the back of the theater, and she'd grown up during segregation.

We did see Hotel Rwanda, which was better than I expected. Of course, I knew Mr. Cheadle would be excellent as always. But that Sophie Okonedo stole the show.

Hotel Rwanda is in that genre of movies I call the I-Should-See-That, as in "I should see that, but I'm just not in the mood."

Even during an I-Should-See-That, I hate to cry at films. I always feel like a sucker, especially if it's a feature narrative movie movie. At moments inHotel Rwanda, I felt a strange combination of guilt and "bamboozeledness." The children's faces, the rain, the music all conspired. They pushed my buttons like a lounge singer playing a casio. I sat there with my popcorn and drink going "(sniff) What will happen to those orphans?(Munch munch slurp)"

However, since it is the right and privilege for Entertainment and Art to take elements of actual events and make them personal, I won't berate myself for too much for crying at a movie with Hollywood stars, while not so much as sniffing at the plight of regular folks in the news, documentary, editorial or even agit prop. Non-fiction sends my guard up. "Based on a True Story" doesn't so much. But does that make Entertainment and Art more insidious?

Enough of my literal-mindedness! What matters are actions outside of the cinema! I'll do a real service this week! Munch munch slurp!

Why Skating is Like Looking at Naked Guys

Those who may have been looking forward to this since January 5 will probably be disappointed. Sorry, no pictures.

Until recently, I had no idea how to enjoy looking at naked guys. My appreciation of naked men did not come naturally like my love of food.* It was sort of accidentally cultivated. Huh?

The break-through occured a few years ago when I was taking a drawing class with live naked models (not my first nude figure drawing class**). For some reason, while I was drawing this guy who you probably wouldn't look at twice if you passed him on the beach, I figured out how to fully appreciate naked guys.

Suddenly, the meeting of line between neck and shoulder was both physically and aesthetically pleasing. For an instant, I experienced a unity of the senses. Maybe most people can take this kind of thing for granted. For me, it was a revelation. I wish I could fully dissect the process, when personal experience and socialization (is taste the right word?)united with a kind of physical prowess--an advance in perception and coordination...oh forget it.

It was like the moment I figured out how to skate, only hot.

GETTING ACROSS THE RINK
The majority of people teaching me how to look at naked guys have been other guys. I used to think this was an obstacle that caused a detour in my development. Unlike the time when I learned to ice skate by watching some boys playing hokey, a masculine example wouldn't do. It's okay for a 4-year-old girl in white figure skates to zip across a rink in a running swagger, but when she hits 14 a little more grace is expected. I wanted to feel confident that I was looking at guys like a girl, whatever that meant. I'd learned from a few surveys in women's glossies what ladies were looking at when checking men out, I asked my peers, but I never felt like I was doing it right. I just wasn't seeing as many attractive guys as the other girls claimed to see, and I sort of gave up.

After years of gradual, fitful progress, I realized that it was fine to look at guys "like a guy" or in any way, as long as I got across the rink, because appreciating naked guys is pretty much like appreciating naked ladies. The difference is that they're guys.

**********************************************************************

HOW I GOT TO THIS PLACE (THE RAMBLING PART THAT YOU CAN SKIP)
Here I ramble on the theme of naked guys and present a bunch of ideas that I think are related.

NAKED RULES
Of course I was rarely exposed to nudity as a child, yet I learned a few things from the Love Boat, Benny Hill, rumors and such. Here are some of the rules I learned about looking at naked people:

Rule 1: Everybody wants to see naked women. Nobody wants to see naked men.

Rule 2: Women aren't supposed to get excited looking at naked women.
Women get excited looking at men, but not naked men so much.

Rule 3: Looking at penises is like watching horror movies. They are supposed to be interesting to look at, yet they are terribly frightening.

NAKED REALITY
When puberty hit, these rules confused me. Rules 1 and 2 contradicted each other, and all the rules ran counter to my feelings. For many years, I found pictures of naked women more exciting than pictures of naked men, even though I was more attracted to real males than to real females. Since images of naked women were more plentiful, well-done and sexier than the few available pictures of naked men, I had more opportunities to appreciate them. It was easier to recognize a beautiful female figure. With guys, I didn't know what to look for below the chin. I also had little interest in looking at any penises. Why I couldn't get with the program?

THE FIRST REALLY NAKED GUYS
In junior high, we girls all looked at pictures of various hairless "Coreys" in Tiger Beat and such, but these images were relatively tame.

The first overtly sexualized images of men that I remember were some strange airbrushed greating cards of dangerously exposed firemen that I saw in an Uptown stationery store and the copies of GQ in hair salon mom and I patronized. This was in the early 1980s. Back then, the typical model in GQ was extremely pumped, hairless as a baby, and did nothing for me. (There was much grumbling in the salon when the publishers of GQ figured out that the sleek models were scaring away straight and wanna-be straight men, and started to use more "regular guy" models.)

COLLEGE LESSONS
**When I took my first figure drawing class with live naked models, I was never excited by anything I saw, male or female. I figured it just wasn't possible to be aroused by a model while drawing, because I was so focused on depicting what I saw. But I did notice that students were less likely to draw what they actually saw if the model was female, particularly if the model was "beautiful."

*A roommate and I got into one of those arguments you can only have in college. She, who enjoyed sex, said it was a source of pleasure comparable to eating. I, who only enjoyed food, argued that the pleasures were completely different. (Before I graduated, experience proved me wrong. So I guess she won after all. Fine.)

Once, during my junior year, Quiconque and I embarked on a doomed quest to find some decent porn for straight women. The best thing we found, some book by Nancy Friday, was also the worst. Forget about anything with pictures.

During a college communications class screening of a film called Hermes Bird, which is basically an 11 minute close up of a dick, I realized that the people most interested and frightened by the image of the penis are people who actually have them.

This kid showed me an erotic magazine for gay men. He was was very proud of this publication. He saw it as an empowered celebration of difference. I thought it was more of the same in that the poses were similar to those I'd seen in in straight men's porn--the vacant expressions, the offered bottoms.

A Famous Dog

Last night, for one brief shining moment, I was dancing on stage with Funkadelic.

Sexist Statement A' Comin'

It's no newsflash, but guys are just as sensitive as us. The problem is that they don't explain why they are upset until it's too late and their wounds have been festering.

Also, if you don't see yourself as sensitive, you are inclined to believe that you can only be wounded by great outrages. Wrong, you armored ones. You see your emotional paper cut as some great bullet hole of injustice, leaving the person weilding the offending paper no choice but to shrug and say, "oops."

I Miss You

Simply Awesome

Thanks to my excellent guests, Saturday's party was a success. My only real regrets were running out of ginger ale and spending too little time talking with each person.

Dreamy Jon in Trouble Again

And this time librarians are to blame!

To Sir with Love

I decided that it is better to look like a well-groomed man with boobs than an undecided woman without style.

I never fully pretended that I was treating myself when I went in for a long overdue haircut today, but I didn't think it was going to be such a traumatic experience.

I thought I'd take it well (like a man?), but as my stylist brushed the clippings away, I had to excuse myself to the restroom for a moment. Good thing I'd told her that my contacts were bothering me before, otherwise it would have been even more embarrassing.

I may try twists or some kind of braiding again when my hair grows back a bit. It's such a pain, but it's the only thing that prevents my hair from breaking off.

Do You Speak Narration

Last night I watched Do You Speak American? Overall, it was a quality, old school expository public tv documentary series. Its narration was written for educated, curious people who still need a helpful stentorian Canadian to explain what Detroit rappers mean by "sick" and "ill." To me, they did a couple of things that didn't seem to fit the style.

1. The narration didn't bother to draw the links between contemporary hip hop slang, contemporary Surfer Dude/Stake/Snowboard slang, and what one researcher pointed out as a new Chicano dialect in LA. And it was especially weird in the scene where the 2 LA kids demonstrated this new Chicano dialect while they were hanging out with a black/Latino combination group of kids.

2. They introduced the California section with a clip of Nicole Kidman announcing the winner at an Hollywood award ceremony. WTF, mate? Was it a nod to Anglo-Saxon capitalism and media globalization? Were they fishing for funds to make a sequel called Do You Speak Australian?

I hope it's obvious that humans move around, mix and mingle, etc. Americans are born in Canada, Australians are born in America, Mexican-American kids could be very tan and have 'fros. I guess I'm being so picky because the producers set up the expectation that everything was going to be explained. Plus I was sore that they didn't stop in my native dialect region. That was not ohkee-dohk.

I do give them points for the sequence of southern accents in post-JFK era Presidential inaugurations. They also tried to leave in most of the dirty words. My station bleeped some, but not others, the jaggoffs.

Year of the Cinematic Geek Fantasy

One trend I've noticed from my furtive glances at film critic's year end lists and discussions is that 2004 was a very good year for on screen schlubs to get it on with hot chicks and that something is wrong with this picture.

Even "Paulettes" and hipper-than-thou aesthetes can agree that movie dorks scored way more than nature would have allowed. Crazy men got loving care from classy dames. The best example of this trend is the Sideways coupling of Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen. Even if you think Mr. Giamatti is cute, his character was so rude to the smart and lovely lady you have to wonder why she gave him a second look. Why?Becauseitsamovie was the thought that probably flashed through my head as I watched and mostly enjoyed Sideways.

But Why?Becauseitsamovie logic is not good enough to excuse the overwhelming presence of geek boy fantasy in American movies.

Perhaps there are more homely male/gorgeous female couples in the world than the other way around, but based on my observations, the movies have skewed the ratio beyond belief--even suspension of disbelief belief.

The world is way past due for some geek girl fantasy movies.

The first solution, more geek girl directors, does not necessarily yield my desired result. I'm not saying that Lost In Translation would be better if Jane Curtain had connected with Josh Hartnett, but I would have enjoyed the film's opening shot a lot more. I fear the problem is more complex that an equal opportunity solution.

I believe it is related to a problem I used to have with looking at guys naked. More on that later.

Biggest Bestests

Now's the time when the fundits and the pundits and all the me's in media are showering us with best, worst and most of the year lists. Once again, I have no idea who half the people on the lists are, so I need your help.

So please, people, give me your best "ests" for 2004. But no most overrated, please. Overrated is Overrated. That smells of second-guessing and contrariness. And heaven knows I cannot abide those.

Happy New Year!