Idle Chatter

09/11/98
Idle Chatter

A few thoughts and observations for a cool and cloudy Friday...

I read four books while I was on vacation. Tourist Season and Skin Tight by Carl Hiassen and Exquisite Corpse and Drawing Blood by Poppy Brite. I enjoyed the irony of reading Tourist Season - which is actually a Florida anti-tourist screed - on the beach, in Florida, as a tourist. The Poppy Brite books, well...she's always with the men having sex, boys doing boys! And in these two books the characters seem to be pretty consistently dirty, too, as in they haven't bathed in days dirty. She never fails to mention that they're grimy. Or stinky. For me, this contributes to the overall ick-factor of the book. Stinking men having sex with each other, innards, blood, gallons of semen - it's yucky! More often than not I put down her books with a shudder and say, "she's a freak!"

I just wish she'd write more.

Sunday afternoon Sonya and I were at the Riverwalk in New Orleans, browsing in one of the shops. There was a black girl and a white girl behind the counter, talking. They were both about high school age. The black girl, quite naturally, talked with a black accent.

So did the white girl.

I see and hear more of this every day, and I just don't get it. Was the girl trying to fool people into thinking she was black? She had a long, blonde ponytail and milky-white skin. She wasn't going to fool anybody.

"You know," I told Sonya as we walked over to Accent Annex, "if our kid ever talks like that I'm going to beat the hell out of them."

Sonya smiled. "Really?"

"Yup," I nodded as we browsed through their collection of Halloween masks, "I mean, you talk the way your parents talk - the way you grow up hearing other people talk. And any kid that grows up in our house is gonna know how to talk correctly.

"It's going to be a savage beating, too," I continued, "you'll probably have to get between us and I'll have to go to the bar to cool off."

This didn't seem to bother Sonya too much.

I'm not sure why the white-kids-talking-black bothers me so much. I think it just seems foolish to me. No matter how much you dress or talk like a black person, you're still never gonna get the look down, you know? Personally, I think there's nothing funnier than a gaggle of white boys in their baggy jeans and Fubu ball jerseys, tugging at their crotches and talking about "rollin' on the g-tip, bitch!" or whatever it is they say. If I were a black guy I'd be seriously insulted at a bunch of white kids appropriating everything I do 'cause they think it's cool. I would administer many beatings.

Did anybody else catch the MTV Awards last night? Some thoughts...

Tori Amos was stunning, naturally.
Ben Stiller's "Lost Backstreet Boy" short from the beginning was hilarious.
Hole's new tune rocks.
Wyclef Jean can play the hell out of a guitar. That whole Fugee's crowd is cool, as far as I'm concerned.
Madonna is lookin' all buff...and apparently it was pretty chilly in the Universal Amphitheatre during her performance.
Did anyone besides me notice that the international winner from Japan was named Spread Beaver? If they ever come to America I'm sure they'll be very popular. Of course, the crowd that shows up might be disappointed when they find out it's a band.
How 'bout that Marilyn Manson? He's a weirdo, ain't he? Sonya and I discussed what it is that makes him so popular...first he's got the Satanic thing, and then he's got the sexual ambiguity thing. Teenagers always need something to frighten their parents - has there ever been a more perfect parent-frightening icon than Marilyn Manson?
It really has all been done before, though...the Satanic thing by Black Sabbath, Slayer and countless others...the sexual ambiguity thing by Boy George, the glam bands of the seventies and eighties, the punks, goths, Little Richard...I think Marilyn Manson is so popular because he has such extreme amounts of the devil and sexual freakishness in him.
All from some chinless Florida cracker. America - what a country!

from the Starr Report to Congress:

In the hallway by the study, the President and Ms. Lewinsky kissed. On this occasion, according to Ms. Lewinsky, "he focused on me pretty exclusively," kissing her bare breasts and fondling her genitals. At one point, the President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky's vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: "It tastes good." After they were finished, Ms. Lewinsky left the Oval Office and walked through the Rose Garden.

Bill, you naughty, naughty puppy!

Now, I like the man - hell, I've voted for him twice. And the country, in my opinion, is in pretty good shape.

But I just got through skimming the report and it looks like Ken Starr has done a thorough job. I don't know if he should be impeached, but he sure as hell just got caught.

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