more Details
Arnold Zwicky
coverage of the movie, and jake and heath are to be seen everywhere:
the Advocate, Out, Instinct, Genre, and Details, just to list the ones
i subscribe to. (the Advocate is supposed to be for lgbt people
generally, and Details is for men, but not specifically gay men; it
seems to be what Conde Nast came up with as a younger, hipper,
gay-friendly version of GQ, which it also publishes.)
the december Details has an interview (by Benoit Denizet-Lewis) with
jake gyllenhaal, plus two pictures of him modeling clothes and looking
attractive in two different ways: relaxed, approachable, smiling jake
in black leather jacket and black jeans by Neil Barrett, olive t-shirt
by Louis Vuitton, and off-white tennis shoes by Polo Ralph Lauren; and
intense jake, staring right into our eyes, in a dark gray corduroy
jacket, collar turned up, by Boss Hugo Boss, gray t-shirt, hiked up
slightly to show us a sliver of jake's adorable belly and a bit of the
waistband of his boxer shorts (thin vertical stripes of gray, white,
and crimson), and a big ol' bold black-and-white knit scarf by Dior
Homme by Hedi Slimane. hey, look, clothes are *important* to the
readers of Details.
two highlights from the story. first, there's jake's take on the
characters Jack and Ennis:
-----
Gyllenhaal stresses to me the universality of Brokeback's story ("My
character could have been played by a woman and it would have made
just as much sense," he says), but I'm astonished when he says that he
doesn't believe Ennis and Jack are gay. "I approached the story
believing that these are actually straight guys who fall in love," he
says. "That's how I related to this material. These are two straight
guys who develop this love, this bond. Love binds you, and you see
these guys pulling and pulling and tugging and trying to figure out
what they want, and what they will allow themselves to have."
-----
i'm not sure how gyllenhaal thinks they got into fucking. meanwhile,
one of the producers is also astonished at jake's perception and then
gamely tries to explain it: "I think what Jake might have meant is
that these guys lived outside of a social construction of a gay
identity. There was no such thing as a gay identity for a cowboy in
1963." notice how carefully this is framed: for a *cowboy* in 1963.
and a good thing, too, since plenty of non-cowboys had gay identities,
and the word to go with them, in 1963.
the other highlight is a comment from director Sam Mendes, who reveals
that jake isn't easy to direct, since he gets obsessed with things and
tries too hard. "He's also the least technical actor I know. If I
say to him, 'Lift the gun at the point when you turn,' he can't do
it. He's not an actor who's designed to hit marks. So I just let him
do his thing." jesus, how annoying.
alex adams, in the fag mag bag
Ellen Evans
Arnold Zwicky <zwi...@Turing.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[]
>two highlights from the story. first, there's jake's take on the
>characters Jack and Ennis:
>
>-----
>Gyllenhaal stresses to me the universality of Brokeback's story ("My
>character could have been played by a woman and it would have made
>just as much sense," he says), but I'm astonished when he says that he
>doesn't believe Ennis and Jack are gay. "I approached the story
>believing that these are actually straight guys who fall in love," he
>says. "That's how I related to this material. These are two straight
>guys who develop this love, this bond. Love binds you, and you see
>these guys pulling and pulling and tugging and trying to figure out
>what they want, and what they will allow themselves to have."
>-----
>
>i'm not sure how gyllenhaal thinks they got into fucking.
I think Ken said he thought this was the gay movie for straight men.
That seems to be the case. Stephen Holden in the NYTimes *loved* this
movie, and the way he described it - "Yet "Brokeback Mountain" is
ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but
about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in
the heart." - makes it sound a lot like Gwendolyn's description, a lesbian
movie made with me. See, it isn't *fucking* - it's "loneliness" and
*lurv*!
[]
>the other highlight is a comment from director Sam Mendes, who reveals
>that jake isn't easy to direct, since he gets obsessed with things and
>tries too hard. "He's also the least technical actor I know. If I
>say to him, 'Lift the gun at the point when you turn,' he can't do
>it. He's not an actor who's designed to hit marks. So I just let him
>do his thing." jesus, how annoying.
This isn't that uncommon. Some actors can do it, others can do it if you
remind them, and some actors just get self-conscious is you even mention
it. So you do a couple of extra takes and manage.
--
Ellen Evans If my life wasn't funny, it would
je...@panix.com just be true, and that's unacceptable.
Carrie Fisher
Ellen Evans
Ellen Evans <je...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <dnd1hv$oqh$1...@news.Stanford.EDU>,
>Arnold Zwicky <zwi...@Turing.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>
>[]
>
>>two highlights from the story. first, there's jake's take on the
>>characters Jack and Ennis:
>>
>>-----
>>Gyllenhaal stresses to me the universality of Brokeback's story ("My
>>character could have been played by a woman and it would have made
>>just as much sense," he says), but I'm astonished when he says that he
>>doesn't believe Ennis and Jack are gay. "I approached the story
>>believing that these are actually straight guys who fall in love," he
>>says. "That's how I related to this material. These are two straight
>>guys who develop this love, this bond. Love binds you, and you see
>>these guys pulling and pulling and tugging and trying to figure out
>>what they want, and what they will allow themselves to have."
>>-----
>>
>>i'm not sure how gyllenhaal thinks they got into fucking.
>
>I think Ken said he thought this was the gay movie for straight men.
>That seems to be the case. Stephen Holden in the NYTimes *loved* this
>movie, and the way he described it - "Yet "Brokeback Mountain" is
>ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but
>about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in
>the heart." - makes it sound a lot like Gwendolyn's description, a lesbian
>movie made with me. See, it isn't *fucking* - it's "loneliness" and
^^
men. With me it would have been quite a different story.
David W. Fenton
news:439a2963$1...@newspeer2.tds.net:
> Larry
> McMurtry
NPR had a segment today in which they had McMurtry on. The
correspondent repeatedly pronounced his name as though the second
"r" were absent. She wasn't corrected by him, so I wonder if that's
correct or not? It struck me as an error, as I've always pronounced
it with the final "r" audible.
--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc
Max Vasilatos
> the Advocate, Out, Instinct, Genre, and Details, just to list the ones
> i subscribe to.
Just wondering: what do you do with the mags when
you're done with them? And do you read them right
away? We are packrats with our magazines, but I
read them very sporadically.
Paxrat
Robert S. Coren
David W. Fenton <dXXXf...@bway.net.invalid> wrote:
>ande...@wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) wrote in
>news:439a2963$1...@newspeer2.tds.net:
>
>> Larry
>> McMurtry
>
>NPR had a segment today in which they had McMurtry on. The
>correspondent repeatedly pronounced his name as though the second
>"r" were absent. She wasn't corrected by him, so I wonder if that's
>correct or not? It struck me as an error, as I've always pronounced
>it with the final "r" audible.
It's possible that he didn't feel like embarrassing the person
interviewing him. I imagine this kind of thing happens with some
frequency; I don't know what the protocol is.
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"There is altogether too much searching for meaning in this
world. Who understands a buttercup?" --Walt Kelly
Arnold Zwicky
max vasilatos <vasi...@earthlink.net> asks:
>Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>> the Advocate, Out, Instinct, Genre, and Details, just to list the
>> ones i subscribe to.
>Just wondering: what do you do with the mags when you're done with
>them?
the Advocate i treated like other magazines -- kept copies for a few
months to go back to, then recycled them (stanford recycling has a bin
just for magazines) as new ones came in -- but for some time i was
saving the rest, as well as G&LR, Lambda Literary Review, James White
Review, Harrington Men's Fiction Quarterly, etc. this was obviously
crazy. the paper began to pile up alarmingly. so a few months ago i
went through all the old stuff, extracted articles, text, and images i
might have some use for, and recycled all of it, except for Out, which
i'm still keeping because of my connection to the magazine. but i
think the old issues of Out are soon going to have to go too.
meanwhile, i've been keeping lots and lots of jack-off mags, really
way too many of them, some going back now twenty years. some of them
still have power, and anyway they recharge themselves in storage.
i've started going back through the older ones, cutting out images i
might want for my collages, and recycling the rest of the issues. but
it's hard for me to give the stuff up. oh, *that* guy, in *that*
pose, that is just so hot! those two together! (the friction fiction
is entirely dispensable.)
it occurs to me that instead of recycling this stuff, i could give it
to needy fags. a kind of service to the community. anybody
interested?
>And do you read them right away? We are packrats with our
>magazines, but I read them very sporadically.
i skim through everything as it arrives, and select things that look
interesting, and usually read them very soon. so i miss things.
remember that lots of non-gay-related things also come to my house:
the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper's, the American Scholar, Cabinet,
Daedalus, Scientific American, the Economist, Funny Times, etc. and
at kirjasto, omigod, Science, which comes out *weekly*.
bookish b a
Jack Hamilton
>meanwhile, i've been keeping lots and lots of jack-off mags, really
>way too many of them, some going back now twenty years. some of them
>still have power, and anyway they recharge themselves in storage.
Also remember Armistead Maupin's suggestion of just turning the
magazines upside down.
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
> Correcting it runs the risk of blowing the entire segment, assuming it
> was live. If not live there really was no reason not to correct and
> start over.
Perhaps he just doesn't care much about how people pronounce his name.
--
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
la...@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> i'm not sure how gyllenhaal thinks they got into fucking.
Especially since Jake's character, Jack, takes another male lover when he
can't have enough of Ennis (Ledger). I believe that Jack refers to "not
being able to have what I need" which is clearly sex with another man.
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Lane also says:
>
> ... "Brokeback Mountain" is no more a cowboy film than "The
> Last Picture Show." (Both screenplays were written by Larry
> McMurtry....) Each is an elegy for tamped-down lives with an
> eye for vanishing brightness of which Jean Renoir would have
> approved, and you should get ready to crumple at "Brokeback
> Mountain"'s last shot: [description omitted to avoid a
> spoiler]
I could tell they were tugging at my heartstrings as hard as they could.
Mike McKinley
news:439DD1D6...@cornell.edu...
Well, Jack and Jake are not the same.
Chris Waigl
> Sounds to me a lot like the straight man's complete and utter
> inability to understand how one man can look at another man and say
> "damn I wanna <insert sex act>" the same way a straight man looks
> at a woman and thinks that.
Strange. This has been the simplest and successful of my strategies
to explain "how I know" or "what it's like". My usual starting point
is "Imagine you're in a metro train; you have a sample of people of
both sexes, all ages, shapes and forms within your line of vision..."
chris-explanatory-in-pairs
--
blog: http://serendipity.lascribe.net/
eggcorns: http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/
personal blog : just ask for the URL
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Well, Jack and Jake are not the same.
Exactly, which is why Jake should be able to deal with the fact that Jack
clearly likes to fuck other men, even if Jake doesn't.
Gwendolyn
Mike McKinley
Yes, but...
An actor is not an objective commmetary machine that produces neat and
tidy prejudice-free opinions. That an actor can express something that he
doesn't feel or understand in a performance is sorta like what acting *is*.
One might hope that an actor becomes enlightened by all of this, but it may
not always be the case. Particularly with a young, supposedly hetero male
who might be insecure about many things, most importantly in this case, his
masculinity and his career.
When I made my thesis film about AIDS in 1991, I had well-meaning
Teaching Assistant, who had no idea about how art is made, tell me that
before you attempt any film, you need to construct your ideological
structure and create the drama around it.
I didn't, I went with my gut and not my mind, and it went on to win an
Award from the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences -- the Emmy people.
Otherwise, you end up with Socialist Realism. Or as they always said, the
story of a boy, a girl and their tractor.
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> "Gwendolyn Alden Dean" <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote:
> > Mike McKinley wrote:
> >> Well, Jack and Jake are not the same.
> > Exactly, which is why Jake should be able to deal with the fact that Jack
> > clearly likes to fuck other men, even if Jake doesn't.
> Yes, but...
> An actor is not an objective commmetary machine that produces neat and
> tidy prejudice-free opinions. That an actor can express something that he
> doesn't feel or understand in a performance is sorta like what acting *is*.
> One might hope that an actor becomes enlightened by all of this, but it may
> not always be the case. Particularly with a young, supposedly hetero male
> who might be insecure about many things, most importantly in this case, his
> masculinity and his career.
No argument. My point is that Jake Gyllenhaal is trying to negotiate
progressive, indie, alternative creds while being mired in/paying tribute to
traditional hetero-normative masculinity. He wants to have it all and he's
doing a darn fine job getting it because everyone else is "Like, dude, he
touched a guy...he let him...Gross!"
Not, poor little celebrity boy, as well as Heath Ledger, because Jake had to
play the one who, icck, actually liked to fuck other guys, while HL got the
plum role of the one who was suffering under unconquerable compulsions but
would have liked to be normal. like a real man.
But we've seen it all before -- between getting Oscars for roles with boy
haircuts, Hilary Swank's all ballgowns and fou-fou and how much she love sher
husband.
Gwendolyn
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
> Not, poor little celebrity boy, as well as Heath Ledger, because
> Jake had to play the one who, icck, actually liked to fuck other
> guys, while HL got the plum role of the one who was suffering under
> unconquerable compulsions but would have liked to be normal. like a
> real man.
(Spoiler warning: The following rant is based on the short story, and
not the movie, which I haven't seen. But I give away the ending
anyway.)
Brokeback Mountain is a twist on the familiar All Fags Must Die that
we've all grown to know so well. Any movie or book that feature a
gay man that doesn't end with that gay man dying in an anomaly. It
doesn't matter what kind of movie it is -- comedy, drama, action --
that gay man just has to die before the movie is over. Presumably
this is so that the movie can have something sad and poignant happen,
but not too sad. After all, that gay man is the only character that
doesn't hook up with anybody, so there's nobody to feel really
bereft.
These days, some movies have more than one gay man. You can't very
well end all these movies with a massacre, so the standard thing
nowadays is to kill off the faggiest man. Swish and you're dead.
Cue Brokeback Mountain. (For "swish" read "be marginally more out of
the closet".)
(Of course, lesbian characters have different trajectories...)
Mike McKinley
news:439F2B4F...@cornell.edu...
> No argument. My point is that Jake Gyllenhaal is trying to negotiate
> progressive, indie, alternative creds while being mired in/paying tribute
> to
> traditional hetero-normative masculinity. He wants to have it all and
> he's
> doing a darn fine job getting it because everyone else is "Like, dude, he
> touched a guy...he let him...Gross!"
> Not, poor little celebrity boy, as well as Heath Ledger, because Jake had
> to
> play the one who, icck, actually liked to fuck other guys, while HL got
> the
> plum role of the one who was suffering under unconquerable compulsions but
> would have liked to be normal. like a real man.
> But we've seen it all before -- between getting Oscars for roles with boy
> haircuts, Hilary Swank's all ballgowns and fou-fou and how much she love
> sher
> husband.
This from Missy Musto in the Village Voice:
RANCH UNDRESSING
The most perfect faygeleh couple of all sleeps with the sheep in ANG
LEE's Brokeback Mountain, a/k/a Bareback Mounting, a/k/a Crouching Cowboy
Hidden Penis (Mandarin title: Wo Hu Hang Long), a/k/a Eat Drink Man Man,
a/k/a . . . all right, I'll stop. Anyway, the film has a couple of hot
Wyoming ranch hands-one wears black, the other doesn't-going through all the
same mating rituals modern New York gays do. They fuck first, then kiss
later (though most of the kissing in the movie looks more like professional
head-butting). They pretend to go fishing to throw off the spouses, but
actually have no interest in fish whatsoever. And though they think about
moving in together, one has a meltdown freaking about the repercussions of
intimacy. (They're not lesbians, after all.) These two could be regulars at
Rawhide! At the premiere, when the film tried too hard to tug at our
faygeleh-loving heartstrings, I thought, "At last we have a gay romance as
banal as the straight ones. We've finally arrived!" But mostly, it's gentle,
well observed, and so doomy even homophobes can sit back and enjoy.
Mike McKinley
news:439F2B4F...@cornell.edu...
Well, *I'm* all ballgowns and fou-fou and how much I love my husband!
Seriously, I don't disagree, but maybe I've just been around the theatre
so much that I expect disconnects, innate schizophrenia regarding the real
and the imagined as well as public and private battling with onstage and
offstage roles and expectations, so I don't find this surprising or
maddening. I mean, look at Nathan Lane. He's not exactly the poster-girl
for gay role models, though he's gay and sorta out, sorta. Or am I way
wrong?
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Well, *I'm* all ballgowns and fou-fou and how much I love my husband!
And it's divine on you, darling, of course it is.
> Seriously, I don't disagree, but maybe I've just been around the theatre
> so much that I expect disconnects, innate schizophrenia regarding the real
> and the imagined as well as public and private battling with onstage and
> offstage roles and expectations, so I don't find this surprising or
> maddening. I mean, look at Nathan Lane. He's not exactly the poster-girl
> for gay role models, though he's gay and sorta out, sorta. Or am I way
> wrong?
Oh, the disconnects don't surprise me either. Porky little straight boys will
be porky little straight boys. I just sometimes feel the need to mention the
disconnects when everyone's waffling on about the bravery and the coolness.
You, on the other hand, are too cool for school.
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Brokeback Mountain is a twist on the familiar All Fags Must Die that
> we've all grown to know so well.
Yep.
> These days, some movies have more than one gay man. You can't very
> well end all these movies with a massacre, so the standard thing
> nowadays is to kill off the faggiest man. Swish and you're dead.
> Cue Brokeback Mountain. (For "swish" read "be marginally more out of
> the closet".)
> (Of course, lesbian characters have different trajectories...)
Brokeback Mountain is very much a typical lesbian trajectory -- the evil
brunette corruptor must die and the not-really-queer-blonde may live,
miserable and polluted.
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> This from Missy Musto in the Village Voice:
> RANCH UNDRESSING
> The most perfect faygeleh couple of all sleeps with the sheep in ANG
> LEE's Brokeback Mountain, a/k/a Bareback Mounting, a/k/a Crouching Cowboy
> Hidden Penis (Mandarin title: Wo Hu Hang Long), a/k/a Eat Drink Man Man,
> a/k/a . . . all right, I'll stop. Anyway, the film has a couple of hot
> Wyoming ranch hands-one wears black, the other doesn't-going through all the
> same mating rituals modern New York gays do. They fuck first, then kiss
> later (though most of the kissing in the movie looks more like professional
> head-butting). They pretend to go fishing to throw off the spouses, but
> actually have no interest in fish whatsoever. And though they think about
> moving in together, one has a meltdown freaking about the repercussions of
> intimacy. (They're not lesbians, after all.) These two could be regulars at
> Rawhide! At the premiere, when the film tried too hard to tug at our
> faygeleh-loving heartstrings, I thought, "At last we have a gay romance as
> banal as the straight ones. We've finally arrived!" But mostly, it's gentle,
> well observed, and so doomy even homophobes can sit back and enjoy.
I love this. Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Penis!
Mike McKinley
I just hope I don't humiliate myself tomorrow at my final exam in
Spanish Advanced Grammar and Composition.
I have not been inspired to crack a book or even book a crack.
Mike McKinley
news:439F3312...@cornell.edu...
Bad Gwendolyn, spoiler!
I've read so much about it already that I don't think I even need to see
it now. But brunettes are evil incarnate.
Frank McQuarry
That one caught my eye too.
After reading this thread, I've gone from, wanting to see it when it
comes to town next week, to waiting for it to come out on DVD.
Ellen Evans
Mike McKinley <mp...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>"Gwendolyn Alden Dean" <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote in message
>news:439F01B2...@cornell.edu...
>> Mike McKinley wrote:
>>> Well, Jack and Jake are not the same.
>> Exactly, which is why Jake should be able to deal with the fact that Jack
>> clearly likes to fuck other men, even if Jake doesn't.
>
> Yes, but...
> An actor is not an objective commmetary machine that produces neat and
>tidy prejudice-free opinions.
He was just irritated that Heath got the part that got the GG
nomination.
Meanwhile from Forbe's coverage of the nominations:
==============================
Novelist Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana - who shared a screenplay
nomination for "Brokeback Mountain," adapted from Annie Proulx's short
story - said the film was a broader story of tragic love, not a homosexual
romance.
"People come in with preconceived notions about the film, I guess because
it's acquired that tagline, `a story about gay cowboys.' We've had people
at screenings refer to it as that," Ossana said. "One person who saw it
said afterward, `I came in calling it that but will never call it that
again.'"
"It's a tragedy, not a success story," McMurtry said. "It doesn't wave the
banner of triumph over the homosexual lifestyle or any lifestyle. It's a
story about life itself. This is a realistic story and a sad story."
===============================
Clearly there was a lot of that going around the set.
--
Ellen Evans If my life wasn't funny, it would
je...@panix.com just be true, and that's unacceptable.
Carrie Fisher
Max Vasilatos
> Mike McKinley wrote:
> You, on the other hand, are too cool for school.
Ooh! Cool dude in a loose mood!
Buxom
Chris Ambidge
>> This from Missy Musto in the Village Voice:
>> RANCH UNDRESSING
>> The most perfect faygeleh couple of all sleeps with the sheep in ANG
>> LEE's Brokeback Mountain, a/k/a Bareback Mounting, a/k/a Crouching Cowboy
>> Hidden Penis (Mandarin title: Wo Hu Hang Long), a/k/a Eat Drink Man Man,
[gwengolyn]
>I love this. Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Penis!
I was rather taken by Eat Drink Man Man.
crouching chemist, hidden panda
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Bad Gwendolyn, spoiler!
I beg everyone's pardon. I thought someone said that the reviews had done all
the spoiling.
> I've read so much about it already that I don't think I even need to see
> it now. But brunettes are evil incarnate.
And that's why we like them.
Gwendolyn
and some blondes are evil incarnate
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> [gwengolyn]
> >I love this. Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Penis!
> I was rather taken by Eat Drink Man Man.
That's cute, too, but have you *seen* the flick?
It's *so* Crouching Cowboy, Hidden penis.
Gwendolyn
Chris Ambidge
>> >I love this. Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Penis!
>> I was rather taken by Eat Drink Man Man.
>That's cute, too, but have you *seen* the flick?
>It's *so* Crouching Cowboy, Hidden penis.
no, but I almost never see movies in a cinema (I think the
last one was *Polar Express* last December, with my 5yr old gt-
nephew; before it was Monsters Inc). I'm much more likely to
rent a video later. So unless circumstances change, it'll be
next spring or later before I see it.
but then, I saw *Latter Days* (speaking of straight cute boys
doing the homo-sex thang) on video too.
crouching chemist, hidden panda
Rebecca Ore
Blondes with roses tatooed on their left breasts definitely.
--
Rebecca Ore
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Gwendolyn
> > and some blondes are evil incarnate
>
> Blondes with roses tatooed on their left breasts definitely.
That wouldn't be my criterion.
Gwendolyn
eveil is as evil does
Rebecca Ore
My bad, sample of one. (And if the email got through, err, my
apologies for hitting R instead of F.)
You know good blondes with rose tatoos?
--
Rebecca Ore
Ellen Evans
Jess Anderson <ande...@wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>An article by Caryn James in the Arts section of today's NYT,
>about Ralph Fiennes, says:
>
> The essence of his acting is to play off the tension between
> his characters' restraint and his genuine movie start
> ability to hold the screen.
>
>But just ahead of that:
>
> [His reserve] says a great deal about why he is among
> today's most artistically successful actors and just as much
> about why he has been robbed of awards or nominations so far
> this season. (Gay cowboys come to mind.)
>
>And fuck *you* very much too!
It was nasty, but she has a bit of a point, as well: *everything* about
Brokeback just screams "I'm a *serious* *Academy* *film*". Which is part
of why there is *such* a "they're not really *gay*" thing everywhere in
the spin.
David W. Fenton
news:IrI9I...@ecf.utoronto.ca:
> but then, I saw *Latter Days* (speaking of straight cute boys
> doing the homo-sex thang) on video too.
That was a very sweet movie. It managed to skirt right up to the
edge of treacly unbelievability but nonetheless redeem itself with
some of the best writing I've encountered in a long, long time.
I just saw it for the first time (Netflix DVD) a few weeks ago.
I'm fascinated by Mormons, and was thrilled to get the chance to see
the real sacred undergarments (though they weren't too clear, since
it was dark).
Does anyone have an actual explanation of that little Mormon
weirdness?
--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
Tim McDaniel
David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>I'm fascinated by Mormons, and was thrilled to get the chance to see
>the real sacred undergarments (though they weren't too clear, since
>it was dark).
>
>Does anyone have an actual explanation of that little Mormon
>weirdness?
The incredibly good essay "God and I" by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden at
<http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html> explains that and many other
things Mormon. She starts with the story of how she got herself
excommunicated from the CoJCoLDS:
... So pick your own anachronism. Myself, I got hauled up in front
of an ecclesiastical court this summer and formally
excommunicated. Really. A genuine heretic, anathematized by the
grace of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also
known as the Mormons. (By the way, if you are a Mormon and are
reading this, I should warn you that I've touched all the pages in
this issue of Telos and the paper is probably crawling with
heretic-microbes. Don't let me stop you, but if you suddenly go
weak in the knees and develop an irresistible craving to vote the
straight Socialist Workers' Party ticket while drinking a cup of
coffee and praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a swimming pool
on Sunday, you'll know what's happened to you. Sorry.) I could
wish, just for the sake of completeness, that they had dashed the
candles to the ground and all, gone the whole route, and that if I
were to die without a reconciliation they would hunt up an
unsanctified crossroads to bury me under; but what actually
happened--well, what happened comes in the proper course of this
story. So let me maunder on for a while and then I'll explain how
the deed was done, along with other mysteries like the Holy
Underwear of God and the Book of Ether.
And a long explanation of the Book of Mormon and an immediate
debunking, and the only Thomist knock-knock joke I've ever heard (and
I'd love to hear more).
--
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
Tim McDaniel
Wait. I had the impression that blondes were corrupting femmes
fatales (cue the standard "make a bishop kick a hole in a
stained-glass window") but brunettes had no negative connotations.
Am I misinformed about American semiotics, or am I missing something
about movie semiotics, or perhaps just lesbian movie semiotics? And
are blonds like blondes in fiction?
(In re that last, I did like that noir detective story in _Hyperion
Cantos_: there was the hardboiled hard-drinking brunette detective
when the stunning blond client comes thru the door ... alas that the
HBHDBD was female ... interesting case, too: as I recall, the blond
bombshell wanted the PI to find out how and why he'd been murdered.)
--
Tim McDaniel just got used to the whole blue mantle thing for the BVM
Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
Tim McDaniel
Tim McDaniel <tm...@panix.com> wrote:
>Am I misinformed about American semiotics, ...
and perhaps, now that it occurs to me, about the meaning of the word
"semiotics" -- perhaps I should use "symbolism" instead?
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis
> The incredibly good essay "God and I" by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden at
> <http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html> explains that and many other
> things Mormon. She starts with the story of how she got herself
> excommunicated from the CoJCoLDS:
oh THANK you for that reference. What a delightful read! I hadn't
really had much-if-any idea what the Book of Mormon was, or even the
tales of the ones wandering around North America (other than the
information earlier in this sentence), so illuminative too. But most
entertaining as well as informative.
crouching chemist, hidden panda
--
"It's much more fun to use goats. you can scrape them off and use them
again"
... tim mcdaniel
Linda Yanney
>[tim]
>> The incredibly good essay "God and I" by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden at
>> <http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html> explains that and many other
>> things Mormon. She starts with the story of how she got herself
>> excommunicated from the CoJCoLDS:
>
>oh THANK you for that reference. What a delightful read! I hadn't
>really had much-if-any idea what the Book of Mormon was, or even the
>tales of the ones wandering around North America (other than the
>information earlier in this sentence), so illuminative too. But most
>entertaining as well as informative.
And don't forget the double dactyls:
http://nielsenhayden.com/dactyls.html
lj
--
David W. Fenton
<chris....@utoronto.ca> wrote in
news:1134670956.0...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> [tim]
>> The incredibly good essay "God and I" by Teresa
>> Nielsen-Hayden at <http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html>
>> explains that and many other things Mormon. She starts
>> with the story of how she got herself excommunicated from
>> the CoJCoLDS:
>
> oh THANK you for that reference. What a delightful read!
> I hadn't really had much-if-any idea what the Book of
> Mormon was, or even the tales of the ones wandering around
> North America (other than the information earlier in this
> sentence), so illuminative too. But most entertaining as
> well as informative.
It had much more detail about the Book of Mormon than I'd
known before, but I still had the basic picture.
But the explanation of the underwear was disappointing -- she
wasn't an initiate so couldn't actually explain the meaning,
so I didn't learn much more than what I'd already known.
David W. Fenton
news:43a5d579$1...@newspeer2.tds.net:
> Tony Rzepela:
>>Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen:
>
>>>Perhaps he just doesn't care much about how people pronounce
>>>his name.
>
>>Nobody believes me when I say that I share such an attitude.
>
> Did you always (not care)?
>
> I'm not surprised, though, because the consonant spelled "rz"
> *is* hard to pronounce [1] for people whose native language
> isn't a Slavic language that has it (e.g., Czech).
>
> I had a colleague whose name was Trzecziak, which most English
> speakers pronounced as [tree'-zee-ak]. He cared, but some
> fights are not worth the struggle.
This reminds me of one of my professors at NYU. We had a Polish
student whose first name was Woijceck (I have no idea exactly what
the correct spelling should be), but we all pronounced it
"voy-check." Anyway, this professor in his seminar always called him
"Mr. Woijceck," and everyone else Amy or David or Linda. At one
point he apologized and said "I'm sorry, but I have never figured
out how to pronounce your first name," apparently somehow having
gotten the idea that Woijceck was his *last* name.
I guess you had to be there.
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> [tim]
> > The incredibly good essay "God and I" by Teresa Nielsen-Hayden at
> > <http://nielsenhayden.com/GodandI.html> explains that and many other
> > things Mormon. She starts with the story of how she got herself
> > excommunicated from the CoJCoLDS:
>
> oh THANK you for that reference. What a delightful read! I hadn't
> really had much-if-any idea what the Book of Mormon was, or even the
> tales of the ones wandering around North America (other than the
> information earlier in this sentence), so illuminative too. But most
> entertaining as well as informative.
You should bop down this way to Palmyra one summer and see the Hill Cumorah
pageant -- your questions will be answered.
Gwendolyn
in the birthplace of Mormonism
Arnold Zwicky
<ande...@wisc.edu> whopps:
>Manohla Dargis, in Sunday's NYT Arts section:
> The mountain becomes their lost paradise, a realm of absolute
> freedom separate from the law, society and, most radically, the
> yoke of identity. On Brokeback, the two men are neither straight
> nor gay, much less queer; they are lovers, which probably accounts
> for the category confusion that has greeted the film.
>I let out a big whoop when I got to "freedom from ... the yoke
>of identity".
and i let out a big discouraged sigh, on reading dargis, and again on
reading this comment of yours (and, earlier, on reading your follow-up
to my comments on the Details interview with jake gyllenhaal). there
is a serious confusion of categories here. on the one hand, there's a
characteristic of individual men, a kind of (powerful) taste, a
significant desire for physical intimacy (of one or another kind --
cuddling and kissing, body play, various sorts of genital sex acts,
whatever) with other males, and in adult men, significant arousal by
(some) other men (what steven levine calls DHL -- dick-hardening
lust). call this Taste Y.
men can have Taste Y in varying strengths, it can coexist with Taste
X, it comes in various flavors, etc. there's lots of complexity here.
men can have Taste Y but not engage in man-man sex. men can engage in
man-man sex without having Taste Y; there are other reasons. men can
have Taste Y, even to a high degree, but not understand this
consciously; people can be self-deceived. men can have Taste Y, and
recognize that they do, but believe that having Taste Y is not a
particularly important fact about them. a man who has Taste Y,
recognizes it, and believes that having this taste is an important
fact about him is someone i'll call a Y Man.
you can be a Y Man without having a name for your taste. you can be a
Y Man without *anybody's* having a name for your taste. presumably
there have been some Y Men around as long as there have been men
around. you can be a Y Man in a culture that has names for your taste
but reject these labels because they have additional denotations or
connotations that you believe do not apply to you. you can be a Y Man
and believe that no one you know is one, or even that no other man in
the world is one; this is actually fairly common in Y Boys. being a Y
Man is not a social fact or state, but an individual, psychological one.
on the other hand, there *is* a related social category, a recognized
*kind of person* in our culture, a kind of social identity (well,
probably, several kinds, but let's keep it simple). we view some set
of men with Taste Y as constituting a class for social purposes. call
this Category G, and call a member of Category G a G Man. [yes, i
recognize that these are desperate, unlovely labels. but we need to
get away from the usual labels, because they're used in diverse, even
contradictory, ways by different people on different occasions, and
the concepts in question are frequently confused.] people suppose
that G Men will tend to share properties beyond having Taste Y and
that they will fit into society in certain ways. G Men will tend to
believe that are in some significant ways *like* (many) other G
Men. (these are the ways social categories work in general.)
the existence of a Category G is a historically contingent fact. it's
reasonable to claim that in western culture in general Category G is a
fairly recent development, that before some period there were no G Men.
ordinary language is generally very poor in distinguishing properties
of individuals from social categories. "cowboy", for example, names a
characteristic of some individual men, who do certain kinds of ranch
work, and it also names a social identity. (to complicate things
still further, there's another cowboy social identity: a gay persona,
or presentation of self, which might have precious little to do with
ranching.) Jack and Ennis are cowboys in both (non-gay) senses; Ennis
can't imagine anything but the cowboy life, and Jack's dream is not to
get away from the cowboy milieu, but to ranch with Ennis.
so it is with "gay". i've been accustomed to using this word, as
applied to men, either for men with Taste Y in general, or more
specifically for Y Men (putting some men in a marginal gray area of
sexual taste). i myself had Taste Y from roughly the age of 7, but
didn't become fully conscious of it -- i seem to have thought that it
was "normal", that other boys had this taste, this desire to embrace
and kiss other boys and men, but just didn't talk about it, though i
saw absolutely no evidence of this in the behavior of the boys around
me) and didn't view it as a significant fact about me (presenting the
problem: how am i going to live my life?) until my mid-20s. for G
Men, i say that they have a "gay identity" or "identify as gay" (i
didn't identify as gay until my late 20s). but it's hard not to slip
into using the simple, single word "gay" to refer to the identity.
often there's no problem; the context makes it clear.
but there can be problems. in the Details piece, the Brokeback
Mountain producer moves in a few sentences from the question of
whether Jake and Ennis are "gay" to the question of whether they have
a "gay identity" -- while (quite correctly) denying the latter, and
thereby casting some doubt on the former, even though he's just
expressed his belief that the characters are indeed gay, no matter
what gyllenhaal thinks.
Jack and Ennis deny a gay identity, and there's no reason i can see
not to take them at their word. but it seems to me that they are
unquestionably men with Taste Y, at least for each other (and in
Jack's case, rather more generally), and there's some evidence that
they are both Y Men. at several points we see really urgent desire on
both men's parts (possibly stronger in Ennis than in Jack), with
kisses both passionate and affectionate. both men articulate their
aching need for one another -- and what they mean by this is not just
best-buddy time together, but physical intimacy everywhere on the
scale from stroking and nuzzling up to fucking. Ennis notes that if
they were out in the real world together, they'd sooner or later give
themselves away (meaning, something like they wouldn't be able to keep
their hands (and lips) off one another), and in the final
confrontation scene, Ennis asks Jack if he doesn't think sometimes
that when he goes out on the street other people can *see* (meaning,
can recognize that he's a man who desires other men); Jack doesn't
seem to, but Ennis is tortured by the thought. this seems to me like
an explicit recognition that same-sex desire is an important (though
unwelcome) part of his image of himself. Ennis is also mad for the
*smell* of Jack (as well as the taste of his mouth).
Ennis is a complex character. he is, first of all, absolutely starved
for affection, and gets it from Jack. Jack opens Ennis up
emotionally, truly changes his life (i think that the affection he
shows for his daughter, especially in the final scene, would never
have been within his emotional range if Jack hadn't brought him to
life emotionally), and also triggers his desire. Ennis is depicted as
desiring his wife mostly instrumentally -- to get his rocks off
(though he doesn't articulate that) and to make babies (*that* he
articulates) -- and as increasingly less affectionate with her over
the years, while becoming more and more affectionate with Jack.
ok, another complexity. so many people want to say that Brokeback
Mountain is *just* a love story between men. (several people have
already commented here on the desire of many critics to stay all the
way out of the icky icky fag zone.) it is certainly that. but it
seems clear to me that it is *also* a man-man desire story.
this is not a matter of choosing one and only one thing. in fact, the
movie is full of touches that communicate two things at once. several
times Ennis talks about "Jack fuckin' Twist", expressing *both*
affection *and* complaint. and when Ennis explains that they can't
meet because he has to go on roundup, he needs the job, we see that
this is *both* true on its face (Ennis is a solid, responsible guy)
*and* also an excuse, covering a desire to escape from this painful
relationship (their "thing").
back in an earlier posting, jess anderson said that it was entirely
"natural" for Jack and Ennis to express their love for one another
through sex. this is profoundly silly. if by "love" we mean a
relationship to someone else characterized by intense pleasure in
their company (probably accompanied by an elevated oxytocin -- the
"affection hormone" -- level), desire to spend time with them,
admiration and respect for them, a feeling of being a better person
when you're with them, feelings of trust and support, feelings of
simultaneous likeness and complementarity (Jack and Ennis are
wonderfully paired on these two dimensions), etc., then there are
plenty of straight guys who love one another. they call each other
"best buddies", or have no name for their relationship at all. but
they're very important to one another. almost *never* do these
relationships involve physical intimacy, even at the cuddling and
kissing level. and that's because these guys don't have Taste Y. for
them, there's no natural progression from love to sex. Jack and Ennis
*do* have (heretofore unrecognized) Taste Y, so they're soon going
down that slide into fucking.
(of course, if your idea of what counts as "love" includes a component
of desire, then there *is* such a progression. but then we're playing
with words, and i'll go back and reformulate what i just said about
"love" in terms of "being in Relation L" or something like that.)
> [Interviewed in a Wyoming newspaper] "Excuse me," said Ms.
> Proulx, "but it is _not_ a story about 'two cowboys'. It is a
> story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in
> 1963 who left home and find themselves in a personal sexual
> situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage."
i'm surprised that proulx insists that the story is "about" two
inarticulate, confused ranch kids, not "about" two cowboys. well,
the main characters are certainly cowboys, in both senses, so i have
to suppose that what proulx is trying to say here is that their
identity as cowboys is unimportant in comparison to the fact that they
are both inarticulate, confused, lonely, isolated kids in a tough
rural world. (i would have said "young men" rather than "kids".) i
do note that proulx explicitly says that they're in a personal
*sexual* situation.
there's more to say, but enough for now.
b a in p a, noting that his theatre ticket does indeed say
BROKEBACK MO
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:43A6D70E...@cornell.edu...
[deletions]
> You should bop down this way to Palmyra one summer and see the Hill
> Cumorah
> pageant -- your questions will be answered.
CBS Sunday Morning yesterday ran a segment on Mormons in America. It
included some clips of the pageant you mention. A-fucking-mazing!
They also showed pilgrims visiting Joseph Smith's little cabin there in the
Palmyra area.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Chris Ambidge
>> oh THANK you for that reference. What a delightful read! I hadn't
>> really had much-if-any idea what the Book of Mormon was, or even the
>> tales of the ones wandering around North America (other than the
>> information earlier in this sentence), so illuminative too. But most
>> entertaining as well as informative.
[dame gwengolyn]
>You should bop down this way to Palmyra one summer and see the Hill Cumorah
>pageant -- your questions will be answered.
>
>Gwendolyn
>in the birthplace of Mormonism
is it as good at the ithaca infants of prague?
did you show me this *last* time I was down thar?
Nooooo, I got left to fend for myself in the local dollar store
purchasing items of clothing (all right all right, it was my
fault I brought along outer clothing for four days but no extra
undies nor socks, so had to go and purchase -um- wardrobe supplements),
and then to the Ithaca Tar-zhay.
so NOW, when I'm hundreds of snowy kilometres away, NOW do I get
told of the extra delights of your neck of the woods.
so I'm left up here pining for the finger lakes.
manly panda
if anyone comes in to nail my feet to the perch, I'll *know* I'm in trouble
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> "Gwendolyn Alden Dean" <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote in message
> news:43A6D70E...@cornell.edu...
> [deletions]
> > You should bop down this way to Palmyra one summer and see the Hill
> > Cumorah
> > pageant -- your questions will be answered.
> CBS Sunday Morning yesterday ran a segment on Mormons in America. It
> included some clips of the pageant you mention. A-fucking-mazing!
It is indeed.
> They also showed pilgrims visiting Joseph Smith's little cabin there in the
> Palmyra area.
Yep. Maybe we should have a Palmyra .con one year?
Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> is it as good at the ithaca infants of prague?
It's different but as good, I would say, for those of us with an interest in
religion.
> did you show me this *last* time I was down thar?
Now Panda, it only happens in July. This year it will be July 14, 15, 18-22.
Check it out at http://www.hillcumorah.org/Pageant/
Gwendolyn
David W. Fenton
If he should ever visit the Bay Area in late July, he would have two
weeks of an opportunity to see the Oakland Interstake Center's
pageant, which is a huge production with full orchestra and
elaborate sets and costumes that tells the whole story.
David W. Fenton
That picture looks very impressive, but the Oakland Temple Pageant
claims uniqueness:
The Oakland Temple Pageant, "And It Came To Pass...", was first
presented in 1964. The pageant is performed in the Auditorium of
the East Bay Interstake Center on the grounds of the Oakland
California Temple. Unique in the church, the Oakland Pageant is
a completely live performance, with full Symphony Orchestra, 450
voice Balcony Chorus, Actors, Soloists, Stage Chorus and
Dancers.
-- http://www.oaklandtemplepageant.org/home.html
The dates in Oakland are nearly exactly the same, the 2nd and 3rd
week of July (I said the last two weeks of July in my other post,
but that would be impossible, as the California Music Festival has
always started then, using the Interstake Center's facilities for
daily rehearsals, which would be impossible during the pageant).
analytical arnold
A lot!
Thanks, Arnold, for the best pieces of non-self-deluding,
crystal-clear, analytical thought on this issue that I've seen
anywhere, ever.
--
Bill
see below
On 2005-12-19 20:58:42 +0000, analytical arnold
<zwi...@Turing.Stanford.EDU> said:
I am using a new piece of software that
I should be more familiar with,
and made a mistake that looks as though
I was impersonating Arnold in the message above.
Sorry about that, and for the dilution of the message.
--
Bill Findlay
KLS
If you two decide to go next summer, please let me know; I might join
you for the hell of it after a 15-year hiatus. It really is quite an
amazing cultural experience, and I would feel protected with the two
of you there. :)
Katie
--
Katie Schmitz
Rochester, New York, USA
k l schmitz Uppercase2 frontiernet.net
Still into xymergy in spirit, if not in action
Arnold Zwicky
bill findlay <findl...@blueyonder.co.uk>, accidentally masquerading
as me, says very nice things:
>A lot!
well, for decades now i've been paid to think (and write)
analytically, though mostly not on sex and sexuality. it pleases me
no end when someone finds it illuminating (i understand that it's
somewhat on the academic side, so not everyone will take to it).
in this case, i've been sweating on a piece for Language Log that
started some time ago with a comment on a bizarre letter to the New
York Times, but has since branched into this monstrous Thing about
how people use the word "gay". i tried to extract one more or less
coherent piece of it for soc.motss, with the excuse of my annoyance at
some of the stuff that's been written about Brokeback Mountain.
i'm a card-carrying linguist, but philosophy was my minor at
princeton. i'm in no way a philosopher, but that connection to analytic
philosophy is still important to me.
alex adams
Rod Williams
> That picture looks very impressive, but the Oakland Temple Pageant
> claims uniqueness:
> [...]
> -- http://www.oaklandtemplepageant.org/home.html
<ack> As I look out my living-room window, the weird Oakland Temple,
all lit up, dominates the view from a few hundred yards away. I'm
still waiting for Buck Rogers to return and fly it away to some far-off
galaxy for a while. Ted & I explain it to visitors as our Guest
Cottage...
Ellen Evans
Arnold Zwicky <zwi...@Turing.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[]
>i'm surprised that proulx insists that the story is "about" two
>inarticulate, confused ranch kids, not "about" two cowboys.
Proux has always been focussed on very particular *details*. My guess is
that she feels that saying that the story is about "cowboys" is a kind of
shorthand for "we already know what kind of story *that* is" and it's a
gesture of refusal of genre in the name of specificity as a kind of
"realism", the kind she practices. These are not "America's natural
nobility" but two young men, hard luck cases, both of them, and without
much in the way of prospects. That would be the sort of frame, I'm
guessing, she would be comfortable with.
> well,
>the main characters are certainly cowboys, in both senses, so i have
>to suppose that what proulx is trying to say here is that their
>identity as cowboys is unimportant in comparison to the fact that they
>are both inarticulate, confused, lonely, isolated kids in a tough
>rural world. (i would have said "young men" rather than "kids".) i
>do note that proulx explicitly says that they're in a personal
>*sexual* situation.
Again, *for her* I think the resistance to the "gay" frame is a resistance
to a genre-driven abstraction *for the story*. And I think that's a trend
that follows from the kind of writing she does. The Hollywood version is,
I think, probably a bit more self-serving, in all sorts of ways.
--
Ellen Evans If my life wasn't funny, it would
je...@panix.com just be true, and that's unacceptable.
Carrie Fisher
Chris Ambidge
><ack> As I look out my living-room window, the weird Oakland Temple,
>all lit up, dominates the view from a few hundred yards away. I'm
>still waiting for Buck Rogers to return and fly it away to some far-off
>galaxy for a while.
for some unaccountable reason, my staff allowed me to visit
your neck of the woods last March and NOT take in this -this-
- um- architectural gem. I will have sharp words with them, but
that particular opportunity was missed.
is the oakland edifice anything similar to the Emerald City,
the LDS pile visible from the northern reaches of teh Beltway
around DeeSee? *that* one I've seen, and it was -um- special.
>Ted & I explain it to visitors as our Guest Cottage
be careful what you wish for
do you RILLY want future guests to get Converted while
visiting you, hear the blast of teh angel moroni's trumpet?
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis, panda walking on paws, not a
flying monkey
surrender dorothy!
Chris Ambidge
>>> is it as good at the ithaca infants of prague?
[dame gwengolyn]
>>It's different but as good, I would say, for those of us with an interest in
>>religion.
I'm intrigued.
>>> did you show me this *last* time I was down thar?
>>Now Panda, it only happens in July. This year it will be July 14, 15, 18-22.
>>Check it out at http://www.hillcumorah.org/Pageant/
ooooooh!
[katie]
>If you two decide to go next summer, please let me know; I might join
>you for the hell of it after a 15-year hiatus. It really is quite an
>amazing cultural experience, and I would feel protected with the two
>of you there. :)
well, THIS panda wouldn't feel at ALL safe attending such
festivities alone, but if I had katie and gwengolyn to -um-
be my security guards, then it becomes possible.
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis
Ellen Evans
Chris Ambidge <amb...@ecf.toronto.edu> wrote:
> [roddy joe is hankering after a missed NIMBY opportunity]
>><ack> As I look out my living-room window, the weird Oakland Temple,
>>all lit up, dominates the view from a few hundred yards away. I'm
>>still waiting for Buck Rogers to return and fly it away to some far-off
>>galaxy for a while.
>
> for some unaccountable reason, my staff allowed me to visit
> your neck of the woods last March and NOT take in this -this-
> - um- architectural gem. I will have sharp words with them, but
> that particular opportunity was missed.
>
> is the oakland edifice anything similar to the Emerald City,
> the LDS pile visible from the northern reaches of teh Beltway
> around DeeSee? *that* one I've seen, and it was -um- special.
Well, let's see: it's covered in zigzags, and other Buck Rogerish
details, it's on a hill and you can see it from Ned's apartment in the
City, and it's lit up like a Xmas tree every night of the year.
(It also has a pavillion with a multi-story statue of Jesus)
You decide.
David W. Fenton
news:Irs51...@ecf.utoronto.ca:
> [roddy joe is hankering after a missed NIMBY opportunity]
>><ack> As I look out my living-room window, the weird Oakland
>>Temple, all lit up, dominates the view from a few hundred yards
>>away. I'm still waiting for Buck Rogers to return and fly it away
>>to some far-off galaxy for a while.
>
> for some unaccountable reason, my staff allowed me to visit
> your neck of the woods last March and NOT take in this -this-
> - um- architectural gem. I will have sharp words with them,
> but that particular opportunity was missed.
It has one of the best views of the Bay and San Francisco of
anywhere in Oakland. Those Mormons were very smart about real
estate, seems to me.
> is the oakland edifice anything similar to the Emerald City,
> the LDS pile visible from the northern reaches of teh Beltway
> around DeeSee? *that* one I've seen, and it was -um-
> special.
I don't know the DC temple, but here are pictures of the Oakland
one:
http://www.dfenton.com/Temple/
It's pretty impressive from a distance, but fairly generic up close.
On the other hand, I think of St. Anthony of Padua in SoHo here in
NYC, which looks fairly ordinary on the outside, but inside is an
amazing church, with green marble (and lots of green faux marbre)
and an incredibly high ceiling and huge, tall dark green columns,
with two organ galleries in the back.
An amaxing place that I'd never have given two moments thought to
from the outside.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mormon temples aren't similarly decked
out inside, but I'll never know.
David W. Fenton
> well, THIS panda wouldn't feel at ALL safe attending such
> festivities alone, but if I had katie and gwengolyn to -um-
> be my security guards, then it becomes possible.
In 2003-04 I spent a total of 20 days on the grounds of the Oakland
Temple, and was not accosted once by the Mormons, though many of the
other students and faculty of the Festival were. I remarked here at
the time that I didn't understand what it was about me that caused
them to avoid proselytizing me (this has always struck me as a
mis-usage, but it's the way the Mormons themselves use the term),
but I still can't figure it out. The same thing happened on a subway
train a few weeks ago that was filled with 6 or 8 Mormon Elders
casually chatting up other passengers. Not one of them made any eye
contact with me (despite my efforts with some of the cuter ones).
I thought that seeing Latter Days might give me some clues, but it
didn't.
And I thought that the first year I was in Oakland, my dyed blond
hair might have been keeping them away, but I haven't had that since
early 2004.
Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
keep them away.
Robert S. Coren
David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
>keep them away.
My typist denies all responsibiity for this. In fact he has no idea
what it was supposed to say.
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"I feel like my brain was run over by a lawnmower. That was really
excellent." --Rider getting off a roller coaster, as seen on The
Learning Channel
Chris Ambidge
[I asked]
>> is the oakland edifice anything similar to the Emerald City,
>> the LDS pile visible from the northern reaches of teh Beltway
>> around DeeSee? *that* one I've seen, and it was -um- special.
[jeeves]
>Well, let's see: it's covered in zigzags, and other Buck Rogerish
>details, it's on a hill and you can see it from Ned's apartment in the
>City, and it's lit up like a Xmas tree every night of the year.
>
>(It also has a pavillion with a multi-story statue of Jesus)
>
>You decide.
oh my. oh my paws and whiskers.
I hadn't realised just HOW big a mistake my staff made in
allowing me to omit viewing THAT spectacle.
I know one of the items [as opposed to *people*] I simply
MUST take in next time I'm in cally-for-nye-aye.
how do you stand the excitement of living nearby? you poor things.
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis
gobsmacked from three timezones away
Chris Ambidge
>> They also showed pilgrims visiting Joseph Smith's little cabin there in the
>> Palmyra area.
[gwengolyn]
>Yep. Maybe we should have a Palmyra .con one year?
I can see us all moving around in a pack -- I can't decide
if we should be in pink and violet uniforms, or blue gingham +
ruby slipper / tin / straw / fur outfits.
Gwendolyn's Fagoots and Dykes (oh my)
hey, cobra woman! ya wanna be Glinda?
manly panda
I already have the ruby slippers
Chris Ambidge
[david is being cryptic]
>>Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
>>keep them away.
[robert]
>My typist denies all responsibiity for this. In fact he has no idea
>what it was supposed to say.
I'm quite befogged too, and since the comment was apparently
addressed to moi, I'm curious about the translation
manly not proselytised panda
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Gwendolyn Alden Dean <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote:
> >Chris Ambidge wrote:
> >> is it as good at the ithaca infants of prague?
> >It's different but as good, I would say, for those of us with an interest in
> >religion.
> >> did you show me this *last* time I was down thar?
> >Now Panda, it only happens in July. This year it will be July 14, 15, 18-22.
> >Check it out at http://www.hillcumorah.org/Pageant/
>
> If you two decide to go next summer, please let me know; I might join
> you for the hell of it after a 15-year hiatus. It really is quite an
> amazing cultural experience, and I would feel protected with the two
> of you there. :)
They were very nice. You know, once you've been talked to politely by the Mormon
recruiters, they give you a little sticker so no one else will approach you. We
didn't get proselytized at all. When we were asked why we came, we said that we
were interested in Mormon history and the nice man was so astounded that we just
chatted about history until he had to move on to more promising prospects.
I actaully felt the most harassed when we were waiting in line to get in and there
were anti-Mormon protestors yelling at us. Peaches is not white and they started
screaming at her about how the LDS church discriminated against people of color
for most of their history. We're like, "Right, and you guys are big anti-racist
activists." Then they started yelling that Joseph Smith was a whoremonger and
Peaches couldn't stop chuckling because she'd actually heard someone use
"whoremonger" in all seriousness.
Gwendolyn
David W. Fenton
news:doa0rs$el3$1...@panix1.panix.com:
> In article <Xns9732AFA1973DFf9...@127.0.0.1>,
> David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
>>keep them away.
>
> My typist denies all responsibiity for this. In fact he has no
> idea what it was supposed to say.
I have no idea what happened there at all. I was intending to say,
some fashion, that perhaps he gives off the same aura and would have
the same effect. But I can't reconstruct a wording for the first
clause now that would make sense, nor can I figure out any way in
which whatever I actually wrote there would get garbled as
"Oergaosm."
It *does* look like it really ought to be a word, though.
David W. Fenton
>
> [I asked]
>>> is the oakland edifice anything similar to the Emerald City,
>>> the LDS pile visible from the northern reaches of teh
>>> Beltway around DeeSee? *that* one I've seen, and it was
>>> -um- special.
>
> [jeeves]
>>Well, let's see: it's covered in zigzags, and other Buck Rogerish
>>details, it's on a hill and you can see it from Ned's apartment in
>>the City, and it's lit up like a Xmas tree every night of the
>>year.
>>
>>(It also has a pavillion with a multi-story statue of Jesus)
>>
>>You decide.
>
> oh my. oh my paws and whiskers.
Not only that, the multi-story Jesus *talks*.
(well, not really, but there's a tape running out of a speaker at
its base all the time, and at first when you enter the visitors'
center it can appear that it's coming from the statue)
David W. Fenton
news:43A98C5E...@cornell.edu:
> I actaully felt the most harassed when we were waiting in line to
> get in and there were anti-Mormon protestors yelling at us.
> Peaches is not white and they started screaming at her about how
> the LDS church discriminated against people of color for most of
> their history.
They certainly don't discriminate today. I'd say about 1/3 of the
Mormons I saw at the Temple in Oakland were non-white.
Of course, none of them were African-Americans -- only Asians and
Latinos, mostly Asians, in fact.
Ken Rudolph
> A substantial number of us, I'm sure, have not (and will not
> for at least a few more weeks) have a chance to see the film.
I received the DVD of BROKEBACK day before yesterday (
http://home.comcast.net/~kenru/2005-06_Academy_Screeners.html )
Anybody really desperate to watch it...come on by! (No way I'm
going to dupe the DVD, so don't even ask.)
--Ken Rudolph
Robert S. Coren
David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>co...@panix.com (Robert S. Coren) wrote in
>news:doa0rs$el3$1...@panix1.panix.com:
>
>> In article <Xns9732AFA1973DFf9...@127.0.0.1>,
>> David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
>>>keep them away.
>>
>> My typist denies all responsibiity for this. In fact he has no
>> idea what it was supposed to say.
>
>I have no idea what happened there at all. I was intending to say,
>some fashion, that perhaps he gives off the same aura and would have
>the same effect. But I can't reconstruct a wording for the first
>clause now that would make sense, nor can I figure out any way in
>which whatever I actually wrote there would get garbled as
>"Oergaosm."
>
>It *does* look like it really ought to be a word, though.
It looks like an attempt to represent some bizarre English dialect's
version of "orgasm".
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"Little baklavas pulsate in the oven. It's scary and somewhat
erotic." --BBC
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:Xns9733A0BB58F27f9...@127.0.0.1...
> Gwendolyn Alden Dean <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote in
> news:43A98C5E...@cornell.edu:
>
>> I actaully felt the most harassed when we were waiting in line to
>> get in and there were anti-Mormon protestors yelling at us.
>> Peaches is not white and they started screaming at her about how
>> the LDS church discriminated against people of color for most of
>> their history.
>
> They certainly don't discriminate today. I'd say about 1/3 of the
> Mormons I saw at the Temple in Oakland were non-white.
>
> Of course, none of them were African-Americans -- only Asians and
> Latinos, mostly Asians, in fact.
I think that it was only blacks were barred from the Mormon priesthood
before the big revelation that it made it cool. The very first Mormon temple
I ever saw was at Laie on the island of O'ahu. Next door was a tourist
attraction called Polynesian Cultural Center. The Mormon missionaries were
very active through Polynesia even back then (1963). In fact, we were told
that it was the first temple built outside of Utah.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Jed Davis
> Then they started yelling that Joseph Smith was a whoremonger and
> Peaches couldn't stop chuckling because she'd actually heard someone
> use "whoremonger" in all seriousness.
Been there, done that, with Brother Jed. (And I knew someone who got
himself called a "Christ-killing, whoremongering faggot" by said
personage; I was confused, until I listened to BJ for long enough to
find out what "whoremonger" was meant to mean, and then it made sense.)
--Jed
--
"When I was one of the devil's lesbians, my headmistress Countess Clitoria
would reward me with hot tubs and vacations to Spain and Greece. I'm sorry
you're still at the toaster level. You must do your vampirizing only in scummy
out-of-the-way places." -- Mother Bernadette Strange <exle...@wowmail.com>
Jed Davis
> In article <Xns9732AFA1973DFf9...@127.0.0.1>,
> David W. Fenton <XXXu...@dfenton.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>Oergaosm Chris, you'd give off that same negative aura that would
>>keep them away.
>
> My typist denies all responsibiity for this. In fact he has no idea
> what it was supposed to say.
Nonetheless, I think an epithet is born. (Not just for mammoths anymore!)
--
(let ((C call-with-current-continuation)) (apply (lambda (x y) (x y)) (map
((lambda (r) ((C C) (lambda (s) (r (lambda l (apply (s s) l)))))) (lambda
(f) (lambda (l) (if (null? l) C (lambda (k) (display (car l)) ((f (cdr l))
(C k))))))) '((#\J #\d #\D #\v #\s) (#\e #\space #\a #\i #\newline)))))
Chris Ambidge
>They were very nice.
>You know, once you've been talked to politely by the Mormon
>recruiters, they give you a little sticker so no one else will approach you.
Pride in Toronto collects donations from participants, and
some volunteers are out there collecting -- they ask for
"a toonie" , that is, a $2 coin (the one with the polar bear
on the back).
they too give out stickers to donors, which were refreshingly
direct last year: "I gave you a toonie, now leave me alone!"
(*)yesterday I suggested a .con event with us all dresed as
characters from Oz -- on second thoughts, maybe *Alice in
Wonderland* (and of course, through the looking glass) would
be a better theme. It's Gwengolyn's neck of the woods, so
she can be our lovely and glamorous hostess again, she's even
got the right hair to be Alice (all you need is an alice-band
in the hair); we can have jabberwocks and dodos and march
hares and dormice and mad hatters and the tweedle twins and
the duchess and the cook (and pepper) and haigha and hatta
and red queen... oh it has possibilities I tell you.
I think the white rabbit will morph into the black-and-white
panda. oh my paws and whiskers, yes.
so, our lady of ithaca -- I saw steph posting a call for
proposals for the 2006 .con - howzabowtit? hmmmmm??
<winning smile>
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis
and you've assured us that the natives won't hassle us if we can get
our hands on a sticker or two...
Chris Ambidge
>>>details, it's on a hill and you can see it from Ned's apartment in
>>>the City, and it's lit up like a Xmas tree every night of the
>>>year.
>>>
>>>(It also has a pavillion with a multi-story statue of Jesus)
>>>
>>>You decide.
>> oh my. oh my paws and whiskers.
[david tells more]
>Not only that, the multi-story Jesus *talks*.
>
>(well, not really, but there's a tape running out of a speaker at
>its base all the time, and at first when you enter the visitors'
>center it can appear that it's coming from the statue)
*swoon*!!
clearly my attendants will have to be carrying my smelling
salts and a fan when I visit.
good heavenly days.
crouching chemist, hidden panda
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> so, our lady of ithaca -- I saw steph posting a call for
> proposals for the 2006 .con - howzabowtit? hmmmmm??
>
> <winning smile>
I seriously doubt that everyone wants to come to beautiful, exciting central NY
again this soon, even with the attractions of me, AnnB, Henry P-B, and the Hill
Cumorah pageant.
Gwendolyn
Robert S. Coren
What do you bet there'd be significant interest in a Perry .con?
--
---Robert Coren (co...@panix.com)------------------------------------
"I once had a very surreal Marengo with Derik."
--Jeffrey William Sandris
Gwendolyn Alden Dean
> Gwendolyn Alden Dean <gd...@cornell.edu> wrote:
> >Chris Ambidge wrote:
> >> so, our lady of ithaca -- I saw steph posting a call for
> >> proposals for the 2006 .con - howzabowtit? hmmmmm??
> >> <winning smile>
> >I seriously doubt that everyone wants to come to beautiful, exciting central >NY
> again this soon, even with the attractions of me, AnnB, Henry P-B, >and the Hill
> Cumorah pageant.
>
> What do you bet there'd be significant interest in a Perry .con?
Probably so. AnnB? Are you listening?
Gwendolyn
who would be happy to help
David W. Fenton
news:lcs64ph...@panix5.panix.com:
> Gwendolyn Alden Dean <gd...@cornell.edu> writes:
>
>> Then they started yelling that Joseph Smith was a whoremonger and
>> Peaches couldn't stop chuckling because she'd actually heard
>> someone use "whoremonger" in all seriousness.
>
> Been there, done that, with Brother Jed. (And I knew someone who
> got himself called a "Christ-killing, whoremongering faggot" by
> said personage; I was confused, until I listened to BJ for long
> enough to find out what "whoremonger" was meant to mean, and then
> it made sense.)
Brother Jed?
What about Holy Hubert?
He came to Oberlin one afternoon and was holding forth out from of
the Student Union on the homosexual menace and all that, and campus
security came around and told him he needed to leave, since he had
no on-campus sponsorship. I was there with my co-chair of the Gay
Union, enjoying the spectacle, and we rushed into the student union
and signed up as his sponsor. He was then left alone to complete his
rants.
When he finished and started packing up, we announced that his visit
to campus that day had been sponsored by the Gay Union.
He was not amused.
Jed Davis
> The usual convention has been to use the phrase SPOILERS
> followed by approx one screen of vertical white space.
Or save precious bndwdth, and maybe waste fanfold paper, with one of these:
That is, a form feed, which is the preferred spoiler delimiter for those
using Real Newsreaders.
Gary G. Taylor
> Or save precious bndwdth
Um, one screenful of blank lines takes about 50-60 bytes ... not that
extreme. :)
Cobra Woman
[gwengolyn]
>>Yep. Maybe we should have a Palmyra .con one year?
amb...@ecf.toronto.edu (Chris Ambidge) writes:
> I can see us all moving around in a pack -- I can't decide
> if we should be in pink and violet uniforms, or blue gingham +
> ruby slipper / tin / straw / fur outfits.
> Gwendolyn's Fagoots and Dykes (oh my)
> hey, cobra woman! ya wanna be Glinda?
Hmmm. Baum or Maguire?
What the hell: Sure.
>manly panda
>I already have the ruby slippers
Does that make me a friend of Dorothy?
Cobra [catching up] Woman
--
Cobra Woman is Mara Chibnik
Panix - m...@panix.com Personal - ma...@panix.com
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Bock
>
> On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:27:37 +0000 (UTC), zwi...@Turing.Stanford.EDU
> (Arnold Zwicky) wrote:
>
> >in article <43a6ab73$1...@newspeer2.tds.net>, jess anderson
> ><ande...@wisc.edu> whopps:
> >
> > >Manohla Dargis, in Sunday's NYT Arts section:
> >
> > > The mountain becomes their lost paradise, a realm of absolute
> > > freedom separate from the law, society and, most radically, the
> > > yoke of identity. On Brokeback, the two men are neither straight
> > > nor gay, much less queer; they are lovers, which probably accounts
> > > for the category confusion that has greeted the film.
> >
> > >I let out a big whoop when I got to "freedom from ... the yoke
> > >of identity".
> >
> >and i let out a big discouraged sigh, on reading dargis, and again on
> >reading this comment of yours (and, earlier, on reading your follow-up
> >to my comments on the Details interview with jake gyllenhaal). there
> >is a serious confusion of categories here. on the one hand, there's a
> >characteristic of individual men, a kind of (powerful) taste, a
> >significant desire for physical intimacy (of one or another kind --
> >cuddling and kissing, body play, various sorts of genital sex acts,
> >whatever) with other males, and in adult men, significant arousal by
> >(some) other men (what steven levine calls DHL -- dick-hardening
> >lust). call this Taste Y.
> >
> >men can have Taste Y in varying strengths, it can coexist with Taste
> >X, it comes in various flavors, etc. there's lots of complexity here.
> >men can have Taste Y but not engage in man-man sex. men can engage in
> >man-man sex without having Taste Y; there are other reasons. men can
> >have Taste Y, even to a high degree, but not understand this
> >consciously; people can be self-deceived. men can have Taste Y, and
> >recognize that they do, but believe that having Taste Y is not a
> >particularly important fact about them. a man who has Taste Y,
> >recognizes it, and believes that having this taste is an important
> >fact about him is someone i'll call a Y Man.
> >
> >you can be a Y Man without having a name for your taste. you can be a
> >Y Man without *anybody's* having a name for your taste. presumably
> >there have been some Y Men around as long as there have been men
> >around. you can be a Y Man in a culture that has names for your taste
> >but reject these labels because they have additional denotations or
> >connotations that you believe do not apply to you. you can be a Y Man
> >and believe that no one you know is one, or even that no other man in
> >the world is one; this is actually fairly common in Y Boys. being a Y
> >Man is not a social fact or state, but an individual, psychological one.
> >
> >on the other hand, there *is* a related social category, a recognized
> >*kind of person* in our culture, a kind of social identity (well,
> >probably, several kinds, but let's keep it simple). we view some set
> >of men with Taste Y as constituting a class for social purposes. call
> >this Category G, and call a member of Category G a G Man. [yes, i
> >recognize that these are desperate, unlovely labels. but we need to
> >get away from the usual labels, because they're used in diverse, even
> >contradictory, ways by different people on different occasions, and
> >the concepts in question are frequently confused.] people suppose
> >that G Men will tend to share properties beyond having Taste Y and
> >that they will fit into society in certain ways. G Men will tend to
> >believe that are in some significant ways *like* (many) other G
> >Men. (these are the ways social categories work in general.)
> >
> >the existence of a Category G is a historically contingent fact. it's
> >reasonable to claim that in western culture in general Category G is a
> >fairly recent development, that before some period there were no G Men.
> >
> >ordinary language is generally very poor in distinguishing properties
> >of individuals from social categories. "cowboy", for example, names a
> >characteristic of some individual men, who do certain kinds of ranch
> >work, and it also names a social identity. (to complicate things
> >still further, there's another cowboy social identity: a gay persona,
> >or presentation of self, which might have precious little to do with
> >ranching.) Jack and Ennis are cowboys in both (non-gay) senses; Ennis
> >can't imagine anything but the cowboy life, and Jack's dream is not to
> >get away from the cowboy milieu, but to ranch with Ennis.
> >
> >so it is with "gay". i've been accustomed to using this word, as
> >applied to men, either for men with Taste Y in general, or more
> >specifically for Y Men (putting some men in a marginal gray area of
> >sexual taste). i myself had Taste Y from roughly the age of 7, but
> >didn't become fully conscious of it -- i seem to have thought that it
> >was "normal", that other boys had this taste, this desire to embrace
> >and kiss other boys and men, but just didn't talk about it, though i
> >saw absolutely no evidence of this in the behavior of the boys around
> >me) and didn't view it as a significant fact about me (presenting the
> >problem: how am i going to live my life?) until my mid-20s. for G
> >Men, i say that they have a "gay identity" or "identify as gay" (i
> >didn't identify as gay until my late 20s). but it's hard not to slip
> >into using the simple, single word "gay" to refer to the identity.
> >often there's no problem; the context makes it clear.
> >
> >but there can be problems. in the Details piece, the Brokeback
> >Mountain producer moves in a few sentences from the question of
> >whether Jake and Ennis are "gay" to the question of whether they have
> >a "gay identity" -- while (quite correctly) denying the latter, and
> >thereby casting some doubt on the former, even though he's just
> >expressed his belief that the characters are indeed gay, no matter
> >what gyllenhaal thinks.
> >
> >Jack and Ennis deny a gay identity, and there's no reason i can see
> >not to take them at their word. but it seems to me that they are
> >unquestionably men with Taste Y, at least for each other (and in
> >Jack's case, rather more generally), and there's some evidence that
> >they are both Y Men. at several points we see really urgent desire on
> >both men's parts (possibly stronger in Ennis than in Jack), with
> >kisses both passionate and affectionate. both men articulate their
> >aching need for one another -- and what they mean by this is not just
> >best-buddy time together, but physical intimacy everywhere on the
> >scale from stroking and nuzzling up to fucking. Ennis notes that if
> >they were out in the real world together, they'd sooner or later give
> >themselves away (meaning, something like they wouldn't be able to keep
> >their hands (and lips) off one another), and in the final
> >confrontation scene, Ennis asks Jack if he doesn't think sometimes
> >that when he goes out on the street other people can *see* (meaning,
> >can recognize that he's a man who desires other men); Jack doesn't
> >seem to, but Ennis is tortured by the thought. this seems to me like
> >an explicit recognition that same-sex desire is an important (though
> >unwelcome) part of his image of himself. Ennis is also mad for the
> >*smell* of Jack (as well as the taste of his mouth).
> >
> >Ennis is a complex character. he is, first of all, absolutely starved
> >for affection, and gets it from Jack. Jack opens Ennis up
> >emotionally, truly changes his life (i think that the affection he
> >shows for his daughter, especially in the final scene, would never
> >have been within his emotional range if Jack hadn't brought him to
> >life emotionally), and also triggers his desire. Ennis is depicted as
> >desiring his wife mostly instrumentally -- to get his rocks off
> >(though he doesn't articulate that) and to make babies (*that* he
> >articulates) -- and as increasingly less affectionate with her over
> >the years, while becoming more and more affectionate with Jack.
> >
> >ok, another complexity. so many people want to say that Brokeback
> >Mountain is *just* a love story between men. (several people have
> >already commented here on the desire of many critics to stay all the
> >way out of the icky icky fag zone.) it is certainly that. but it
> >seems clear to me that it is *also* a man-man desire story.
> >
> >this is not a matter of choosing one and only one thing. in fact, the
> >movie is full of touches that communicate two things at once. several
> >times Ennis talks about "Jack fuckin' Twist", expressing *both*
> >affection *and* complaint. and when Ennis explains that they can't
> >meet because he has to go on roundup, he needs the job, we see that
> >this is *both* true on its face (Ennis is a solid, responsible guy)
> >*and* also an excuse, covering a desire to escape from this painful
> >relationship (their "thing").
> >
> >back in an earlier posting, jess anderson said that it was entirely
> >"natural" for Jack and Ennis to express their love for one another
> >through sex. this is profoundly silly. if by "love" we mean a
> >relationship to someone else characterized by intense pleasure in
> >their company (probably accompanied by an elevated oxytocin -- the
> >"affection hormone" -- level), desire to spend time with them,
> >admiration and respect for them, a feeling of being a better person
> >when you're with them, feelings of trust and support, feelings of
> >simultaneous likeness and complementarity (Jack and Ennis are
> >wonderfully paired on these two dimensions), etc., then there are
> >plenty of straight guys who love one another. they call each other
> >"best buddies", or have no name for their relationship at all. but
> >they're very important to one another. almost *never* do these
> >relationships involve physical intimacy, even at the cuddling and
> >kissing level. and that's because these guys don't have Taste Y. for
> >them, there's no natural progression from love to sex. Jack and Ennis
> >*do* have (heretofore unrecognized) Taste Y, so they're soon going
> >down that slide into fucking.
> >
> >(of course, if your idea of what counts as "love" includes a component
> >of desire, then there *is* such a progression. but then we're playing
> >with words, and i'll go back and reformulate what i just said about
> >"love" in terms of "being in Relation L" or something like that.)
> >
> > > [Interviewed in a Wyoming newspaper] "Excuse me," said Ms.
> > > Proulx, "but it is _not_ a story about 'two cowboys'. It is a
> > > story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in
> > > 1963 who left home and find themselves in a personal sexual
> > > situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage."
> >
> >i'm surprised that proulx insists that the story is "about" two
> >inarticulate, confused ranch kids, not "about" two cowboys. well,
> >the main characters are certainly cowboys, in both senses, so i have
> >to suppose that what proulx is trying to say here is that their
> >identity as cowboys is unimportant in comparison to the fact that they
> >are both inarticulate, confused, lonely, isolated kids in a tough
> >rural world. (i would have said "young men" rather than "kids".) i
> >do note that proulx explicitly says that they're in a personal
> >*sexual* situation.
> >
> >there's more to say, but enough for now.
> >
> >b a in p a, noting that his theatre ticket does indeed say
> > BROKEBACK MO
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Best analysis of the thing I've seen!
>
> In another group, I tried to tell some doubters that there are men who have
> sex with men, but who consider themselves straight, not "gay". (Not that
> I'm one of them, but I know men with that philosophy DO exist.)
>
Well, unfortunately our defintion of ourselves doesn't count. We can
call ourselves
anyting we like but it is how others define us that really counts in
society.
> As you might expect most responders couldn't see the distinction.
>
> Glad you could explicate it so well!
>
> Alan
>
> ......................................
>
> Arguing over a god’s moral character is a lot like
> debating the aerodynamic qualities of Santa’s sleigh.
>
> Guy P. Harrison
> .......................................
David W. Fenton
news:620sq1pe8ei4urc70...@4ax.com:
> In another group, I tried to tell some doubters that there are men
> who have sex with men, but who consider themselves straight, not
> "gay". (Not that I'm one of them, but I know men with that
> philosophy DO exist.)
>
> As you might expect most responders couldn't see the distinction.
What I have never understood is that its often the fundies who can't
make the distinction. Yet, they still insist that homosexuality is
only a act, and not a state of being, and something that's a choice.
Of course, I guess my error is in expecting logical consistency from
these lunatics.
Chris Ambidge
> > I can see us all moving around in a pack -- I can't decide
> > if we should be in pink and violet uniforms, or blue gingham +
> > ruby slipper / tin / straw / fur outfits.
>
> > Gwendolyn's Fagoots and Dykes (oh my)
>
> > hey, cobra woman! ya wanna be Glinda?
[and CW replies]
>Hmmm. Baum or Maguire?
>
>What the hell: Sure.
I see you in the Billie Burke Glinda costume. AND I wanna hitch a
ride in your pink bubble.
> >manly panda
> >I already have the ruby slippers
>
>Does that make me a friend of Dorothy?
only you can answer that definitively, but I think so
and if you want ruby slippers, just send me an old comfy pair
of running shooz and I can rubify them for you.
ailuropoda melanoleuca torontonensis
hot-glue-artiste
--
"In the end, we'd end up with a pile of pig testicles and a farrowing
house full of highly annoyed screaming pigs" -- David Fenton