OMG Y'ALL

So, I watched a little American Idol last night, which doesn't happen all that often. Normally I watch some of the early episodes, but then when they start making the kids do group medley numbers like some sort of high school misfits club - only not as awesome as Glee - that is when I quit.

ANYhoo, they showed a montage of people who showed up with Adam Lambert's hair, and one of them was Daniel Franco, the designer who was on TWO seasons of Project Runway. Daniel, in case you are not a PR nut like me, is a strange mixture of sweet, intense, a little crazy, talented, a little celebrity-hungry, and just, just THISCLOSE to occasionally being a little bit creepy. But I think that's because he's so intense. And he's always telling Heidi Klum that he loves her. I'm pretty sure he's in his 30s and thus too old for American Idol, but he got in the door somehow. I have a vague recollection of him singing show tunes in the sewing room with some of the other designers, but I could be confusing him with the other 400 show-tune singing designers that have been on PR.

I think he's kind of adorable and kind of completely from outer space. In fact, when I win the lottery, I think I might hire him to be my personal couturier. I think he actually *likes* women, as opposed to thinking women make conveniently mobile dress hangers for their ARTISTIC CREATIONS.

I would like to note, by the way, that Adam Lambert did not invent backwards hair. Emo boys have been wearing their hair like that for years. Shit, redneck nurses and Kate Gosselin have been sporting the rooster in the back/backwards in the front look for at least five years. Are the American Idol producers so out of touch with the rest of America that they think anyone with backwards hair is copying Adam Lambert? I think it's their job to be on top of what's popular, yeah?

True Fact

I was in my 20s before I discovered that "When the Saints Go Marching In" was actually a gospel tune. I was sure it was written for the football team. I never heard it in any other context until I left New Orleans.

Kermit Ruffins got his christmas wish!

Blog for Choice day

Abortion should be available ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY.

That is all.

twenty years on...

So, I ran across a copy of "The Band Played On", Randy Shilts' book about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and figured I'd go ahead and read it. It is thorough, grim, infuriating, sad, compelling, and enlightening. And, twenty years on, with AIDS still ravaging Africans and the drug cocktail that keeps it in check only available to the affluent, I can only believe it's this way because the people at the top *do not care* and have *never cared* about a disease has mostly afflicted poor people, gay people, black people, addicts, and sex workers.

And, furthermore, Ronald fucking Reagan? Was NOT a great president. He presided over what I can only call negligent genocide. His people kept calling AIDS his "number-one health priority" while refusing to fund it, acknowledge it, or throw any resources at it at all. The Congress had to force a tad of AIDS funding into the budget every year, but never enough. Never enough. That motherfucker, if I believe in hell, would be rotting there for sure.

There's also nothing like a week of reading about AIDS to turn one into a giant hypochondriac. I think of those years in the 80s, before they told us straight people could get AIDS, when I did not practice safe sex. I was on the Pill, what else did I need, right? I can't exactly pinpoint the moment when straight people realized we were at risk. For me, living in Texas, it was sometime between 1987 and 2001; I got married in 1987, and by the time I got divorced four years later, the sexual landscape had changed and condoms were mandatory. Before 1987, I don't think I'd ever used one. Birth control was the issue, not STIs. So, point being, every sniffle or new freckle I've noticed this week? Freaked. Me. Out. Which is absurd, considering I have been tested several times and been practicing safer sex for several decades. I cannot imagine the level of absolute terror gay men were living with in the 80s.

[I called this post twenty years on because the book was published in 1988 or so, which was 20 or so years ago, but in reality, the AIDS epidemic is much older. It's probably closer to 35 years old. The first MMWR report on what would turn out to be AIDS was published in the summer of 1981, almost 30 years ago]