Super Gay and More Than A Village

Gay Village is Rome’s huge gay nightlife party. It’s only in the summer and it’s in a park. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Tents, kiosks, bars, booths and dance floors sprawl as far as the eye can see.





It’s a veritable carnival of gay, gay, gay. It’s refreshing to see so many gay men and lesbians out together. New York’s queer community is quite segregated.

The selection at the snack booth is dizzying.







There’s a spin class. People brought biker shorts and gym bags for it.



The tobacconists are there to poison us and make otherwise attractive people repulsive. Fuck you, Phillip Morris.



There’s even a car show.



I decided to do it all. I was interviewed live on Radio Dee Gay. The lovely Sophia offered to teach me some Italian and asked what I wanted to learn. I said, “Since everyone here is so gorgeous I want to learn how to say ‘you are beautiful!’”

Bellissima!



There’s a booth where you can have your own photo shoot. I was feeling tipsy and sexy so I went for it.





Afterwards everyone spills out onto the streets.



These stands sell drunk food and, of course, more beer. What a country!

Word of the Day, Real Life Edition

A lot of my friends are literary types. So I occasionally find my vocabulary lacking and feel a smidge self conscious about it. I tried subscribing to one of those Word of the Day email newsletters. It seems like a good idea. But I lost interest quickly due to the lack of context.

So I play my own little version I like to call "Word of the Day, Real Life Edition". It goes like this ... when you encounter a word you don't understand, look it up. I keep a couple bookmarks right on my toolbar for this. Merriam-Webster has a friendly interface but can be a little limited. Dictionary.com tends to have more comprehensive info but has an ugly UI and lots of ads.

What I used to do with words I didn't know was just slide by on context. The other day, pressed for time, a friend suggested if we were to eat out, we proceed with "alacrity". Clearly he meant let's dine quickly. But the process of making a mental note and looking the word up later is quite a lot of fun.

As a result, I'll always associate the word with that evening. And I'll always remember now that "alacrity" includes an element of cheerfulness. These associations actually cause me to learn and remember. And I quite enjoy the process.

Today's word is "verisimilitude", a word every writer should know.

Gayer and Gayer and Gayer

I often worry I'm not doing enough on my quest to be the gayest nerd on the planet. Oh sure, I founded a gay board game club. I performed a gay wedding of gay gamers in a gay guild in World of Warcraft. I go to tech shows and take pictures of both the gadgets and the nerd hotties. I masturbate to German gay soap operas while listening to Kylie Minogue. (Who doesn't?) But as I reflect fondly on events such as these I always wonder, "what can I do to totally fag out today?"

Today is the 19th anniversary of my coming out. I didn't plan anything special. I was thinking I might watch Flash Gordon again. That's pretty gay, right? But it just didn't feel like I was doing anything to up the ante.

So I did what I always do when I feel like I'm not achieving enough, surf Google Images for pics of hot guys. And I've just now learned that my coming out day, today, is the anniversary of the invention of the word "homosexual" itself.

Whew!

Thanks, Internet. I feel gayer now.

The Sound of W

"William decided he won't let his weary heart wither his will, so he wept quietly, then weathered his woebegone mood and went back into the night with a wanton gaze, as is his wont to do."

...

For no other reason than I like the sounds of words, I challenged myself to write a sentence containing won't, wont, woebegone and wanton. As you can see it went all wiggly.

Would You Please Dumb That Down?

Tonite I tried to submit a movie review to Netflix and received this reply,

"This review contains one or more words that is larger than 25 characters. All words in a review must be smaller than 25 characters. Please change any words that exceed this length."

Apparently we Americans need to be protected from fancy words.

Do Aliens Laugh?

The more you think about laughter, the less sense it makes. I tell you a story with an inherent contradiction or impossibility and you have an emotional reaction which releases certain pleasant chemicals in your brain and usually inspires you to create one of a general set of particular rhythmic sounds. So great is our love of these improbable stories and observations and the reactions they elicit in us that we create designated places where we go to be reasonably well assured that such stories will be told and such reactions will be had.

How odd.

I sometimes wonder if we were visited by aliens what they would think of humor in general and the strange phenomenon of comedy clubs in particular.

Corporate Speak Comes To Grocery Stores

Just thought you should all be aware ... "frozen dinners" are now "meal solutions".

The Brown Jokes

Jerry Dante, a smart and thoughtful guy, commented on my blog here that, "Taking a shit will always be funny because it's something everyone does." Jerry has written more on the topic here and asked me to respond.

OK. Hmmmm ... I see where you're coming from here, Jerry. But sorry, man. But I gotta call this one like I see it.... And "shit is always funny" is such a straight guy attitude ... or at least a guy attitude.

When a guy goes into shit jokes (and it's almost always a guy) I tune out. A little voice in my head just says, "This is the best you could come up with? The most interesting thing about you is that you take a shit? Time on stage is precious, and this is what you want to do with yours?"

Sadly, shit-joke hacks literally seem to have nothing better to talk about. Or perhaps more likely, they're not willing to take a risk and expose themselves by talking about something personal.

I once sat in a workshop and listened to the owner of one of NYC's top clubs tell a comic, "don't do shit jokes in my club."

While maybe not all club owners have this attitude, I think most do. Ignore this at your own peril.

"But Eddie Murphy did it!"

Yeah, and Jeanine Garofalo did a Comedy Central special, reading from her notebook which she had on stage. (That's her in the cartoon. I couldn't bring myself to use an image that's appropriate for the topic. Ick.)

But these comics already have a following, earning them a platform from which they can do, just about whatever they want. Those of us down here at the bottom haven't earned that yet.

I firmly believe that shit jokes and performing from notes will not move you up the ladder.

Jerry, you've certainly helped me understand why guys write about shit. But I'm no more interested in the topic than before.

Perhaps my perspective will help guys understand why some people (chicks in particular) tune out on these kinds of topics. I can just see the comics up there thinking, "but people, takin' a shit is funny!"

And I can see a large part of the audience thinking, "maybe, but we just don't care."

I think ass fucking jokes are hilarious. Funny is funny, right?

But I've learned (from painful bombing) that if I ignore an audiences' sensibilities they'll quickly decide to ignore me back.

Nobody Likes a Braggart

Murray has made some fascinating observations in the comments at the bottom of this post which have inspired me to indulge in various philosophical musings on the difference between confidence and arrogance.

Here's my perspective. Dictionary definitions are linked.

CONFIDENCE - A belief in the value of one self or what one has to offer, tempered by humility.

ARROGANCE - Pride and fear pretending to be confidence. Arrogance is closed to criticism and blind to error.

A truly confident person is grateful when presented with a better way. An arrogant man secretly fears being exposed, accepts no criticism, is often unaware of failure, and thus learns nothing.

Confidence allows for progress. Arrogance creates stasis.

Confidence draws people in. Arrogance pushes people away.

One of the things I often remind myself, both when I'm performing and when I'm writing is that, "nobody likes a braggart." We've all seen the comic who goes up and brags about his sex life. Nothing turns an audience off quicker. That's why self-effacing humor is so much more popular and effective.

If a comic first shows the audience a few frailties, frustrations and failures (a veritable trifecta of Fs) he can then earn a little leeway to be a bit cocky or condescending. This is a tricky line to walk. I often try because it's fun playing on that edge. I don't always succeed. When successful, the result can be delightfully sardonic satire. When unsuccessful the result is frequently obnoxious, smug failure.

I'm learning that cocky or condescending material can only be done with careful awareness of how the material is being received and monitoring of the audiences' emotions. A little bit of playful charm goes a long way to smoothing this path. Failure to notice signs of alienation leads directly to bombing.

Stupid Google Tricks

Google offers a language translation engine. While it is a useful tool, it's hardly perfect. For example, I often miss deliveries because the couriers are too timid, so I decided to make a sign for my apartment door reading, "Please Knock Loudly". It seemed like a good idea for it to also be in Spanish. Translating three simple word shouldn't be too hard, right? Well ...

What I got was "Por favor golpes en alta voz." Which means "Please blows in high voice."

Perfect.

For more of this type of fun, try taking a story, run it through the translator and then run the results through again translating it back into English. I did this with some of my own pages and the results were a thing of beauty.

"When I was 20 years old, I came out of the closet," translated into French and back into English became "When I was 20 years old, I emerged from the cabinet." When I translated my blog into Spanish, "Obnoxious and Inappropriate" became "Disagreeable and Inadequate" and into French it became "Unpleasant and Inadequate."

Priceless.

Marvelous Nuances

I love language. I do. All the twists and nuances and shades of meaning fascinate me no end.

I often find myself searching for exactly the right word to express myself. I find it deeply satisfying when I land upon just the right turn of a phrase.

One thing I particularly enjoy is when there a several words that all express the same general idea but with subtle differences, like pernicious, baneful, noxious, deleterious and detrimental. Or how about sarcastic, ironic, caustic, satirical and sardonic?

I'm also quite fond of it when words from other languages wander into common usage ... like schadenfreude.

And then there are words that are just plain fun ... words like giggle, sparkle, doily and one of my all-time favorites ... callipygous.