Homer'sWorld

Guys were hot in the 1970s. Especially gay guys, with their big bushy moustaches and natural bodies.



As a kid they would show pictures of San Francisco Gay Pride on the news, Walter Cronkhite noting in his regal voice how many people attended. Of course the cameras focused on the drag queens, but usually a few "clones" would be there, dancing in their cut-off jean shorts.



Then there were the Village People, who everyone knew were gay, but no one really knew if they were really gay. As a kid the Construction Worker seemed the hottest, nowadays the Leather Daddy seems more appealing.

When the 1980s hit everything went to hell. Androgyny, preppies, the super-smooth look. I remember my best friend Les being horrified that I found hairy chests attractive. I was glad when that ended and guys could be regular guys again.

Wonder what will be considered "hot" in the future, what's your guess?

Diet hint! Don't look at recipes in cookbooks.

Fantasy: Cookies. Cake. Pie. Onion rings. Mac & Cheese. Garlic bread. Peanut butter and jam on whole wheat toast. Potato chips. French fries.

Reality: Steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Apple. Banana. One cup of cereal. Three crackers.

Lol. Whimper.

Okay, so I had a revelation last night. I went over to Jim and Chris's casa to watch Rome and Extras and afterwards Chris and I stood on the fancy-electronic scale and I discovered I weighed 212 pounds. After gasping in horror (last time I weighed myself I was 195 pounds), I realized that holy shit I need to stop making delicious cream puffs and other fattening desserts. As of this morning, I am on a diet.

I can remember being super skinny in my early 20s- at one point I weighed 147 pounds in college while at the same height. When I hit 30 I discovered I had to watch what I ate. When I hit 40 if I looked at something the calories magically transferred themselves to me. Somehow over the last year I've managed to add 17 pounds. According to my Body Mass Index (at about 28), I am overweight. That's fracking amazing.

Well, if there is one thing I'm good at, it is willpower. I'm going back to my normal weight by the time naked pool volleyball starts. Rice crispies and one percent milk for breakfast. Bananas and apples for snacks. Salads. No chocolate. No desserts. No peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with lots of crunchy peanut butter. Sigh.

So do you have a "type"? In talking with a couple of friends this last few days, the issue of having a physical type that they are attracted to came up. Person "X" likes really, really hairy guys. Person "Y" likes African-American or Mexican men. Person "Z" only dates plump blonde guys. And so on.

In some cases, this can be rather limiting (for example, if you lived in Alaska and were really into Brazilian hotties). Or sometimes it isn't- if you like Mexican guys, then Tucson is the place to be.

Makes me wonder how a type gets set and whether strict adherence to looking for this type can have consequences. As in, never finding what you want or when you have it, always on the look out for a better specimen of that type.

In looking at my past boyfriends, there really isn't a physical type:

1). smooth, extremely muscled brunette
2). furry stocky hockey player-engineer
3). smooth blonde German swimmer
4). furry, muscles English scientist
5). short, brunette, furry Jewish scientist
6). lean, brunette, former model
7). skinny, balding intellectual

I guess, I tend to go more for brains rather that a specific physical type. However, if I had to choose a certain look- furry, beefy redhead- that would be it.

So do you have a type?

I attended the Tucson premiere of Eating Out: Sloppy Seconds last night. One of the producers, Michael Shoel, is a former Tucson resident. It was an entertaining comedy- I had a good time.



Ohmigod, full frontal nudity alert. Marco, below, drops his towel in one scene.


Marco Dapper.

Afterwards, a late snack with Frank, John, and Scott S., and then a short visit to the Venture Inn, where I saw some other friends. This morning I made breakfast (French toast, hash browns, and fresh-squeezed OJ) for Patrick and Brady. A nice weekend so far.

He said to me, "I'm not a slut, if I only abused myself." He was referring to a date with a sex toy, and yes, I guess that is the truth. It was funnier in person.

Went a party with the A-list gays here in Tucson. Jimbo would have liked the very woofy furry blonde, bearded hottie who attended the party with his boyfriend. I was amused to see that none of them were people who typically attend my craft parties. I don't hang out with the very well-to-do crowd, I guess.

Went to see the musical Altar Boyz. It was amusing. The Jewish guy Abraham, played by Nick Blaemire, is a total hottie. Tucson doesn't have enough gay Jewish guys, in my opinion.

Nick.

Is it somehow appropriate that instead of watching the State of the Fuck Up address tonight, that I will be attending the premiere of the zombie short movie I was an extra in?

My buddy Brady started his full-time job with the county yesterday. Only 4,999 work days until retirement dude! I laughed when he said to me, "I don't want to go to work tomorrow."

Dick Cheney's eldest spawn, Liz, wrote a sophmoric editorial for today's Washington Post- all about how Hillary is evil and how the war in Iraq is like a Barbie Dream Vacation for dumb trash who don't know about how to stay out of the military and other blah-blah-blah stuff that makes my head hurt. I was amused to see the hundreds of comments. My favorite was "Just remember, everybody who has an opinion also has an anus." Every member of that family is just plain vile, but is course that is my anus.

Just want to state that I don't think our soldeirs are "dumb trash." As far as I can tell most of the men and women in the military are there trying to earn money for school or to learn a skill. I have been against this war from before it began because I did not want these soldiers to die for a worthless cause. In contrast, neo-cons like Liz Cheney don't give a shit about the deaths of these people.

A few more snow day photos. Before going to work I drove up the side of the mountain next to my house and took some pictures. Many of my Mexican-American neighbors had taken their small children up there to see the snow. I'm sure for some of those kids, it was the first time they had thrown snowballs. I went to work feeling very happy, strange how that happens.


Homer in the snow.



Palo verde tree.



Tumamoc Hill.

Snow day. Well this is a first for me. I've lived in Arizona since 1993 and don't ever remember having a snowy morning like this.


Orange tree.

Of course I had put my potted plants back outside yesterday. So they are now officially frozen.



I've been waiting to go into work, apparently the roads are very icy. Talk about icy, my house is freezing!

I read the newspaper of the town I grew up in online. The letters to the editor reveal a growing demand by born-agains to replace science education with Bible-based fantasy. A letter I wrote in response was printed today.

It wasn't always like this. In kintergarden we did basic science experiments- I recall melting bright white snow only to discover the masked dirt and pollutants. We did simple experiments and learned the differences between hypotheses and theories. As I grew older the experiments became more complex, involving smelly chemicals in chemistry as well as the disgusting dissections of worms and frogs. One of my most valued Christmas presents was a Visible Man. I find science fascinating. I'm less interested in living my life based solely on texts written a long time ago by people who thought the world was flat.

Religious conservatives- Christian, Muslim, and otherwise- would willingly drag the human race back to the days of alchemy and burning witches. You can see this underway in Iraq- where university professors are one of the top targets for assassination by those who want their version of Islam to tell the other version to fuck off.

I'm less inclined to think it could happen here, especially after the last election. But the gulf between reason and fantasy seems to be growing. The Park Service sells a book at the Grand Canyon visitor center that states the canyon was a result of Noah's flood. If our government can give credence to this sort of garbage, what can we expect in the future?

I'm debating whether I should run for president too. I think I could do a better job than ClusterFuckBush, but then, a deformed Latvian albino llama could do a better job than ClusterFuckBush, so that's really not saying much, is it?

So anyways, the newspaper the other morning had a headline about the "Vomiting Illness" coming to Tucson. Something to dread, I guess. Well, I seem to be suffering from a related illness, one which I will not go into great detail about because I know my refined readers don't want to go there.


What's that sound?

There are only so many hours you can lie in bed mentally writing your will as your digestive tract relentlessly churns, or so many online episodes to watch of Passions (who raped Fancy? Was Grace really on the exploding bus? Who put JT's dead-in-drag corpse inside Whitney and Chad's wedding cake?), so I think I may actually get in my car and go somewhere- maybe the grocery store to buy some milk.

Sometimes when I hear about the "homosexual lifestyle" and the "homosexual agenda" I wonder exactly what am I missing. But then I get distracted searching for vice presidential contenders on bigmusclebears, and I forget exactly what I was wondering about.

Important goals for 2007. So I won't forget.

- floss daily.
- eat more vegetables.
- give more to charity.
- revoke vows of chastity.
- write memoirs, "My Boyfriend, the Porn Star."
- become a hypochondriac.
- call in sick.
- point out other peoples' grammatical errors.
- take more blurry photos.
- learn obscure Eastern European language to impress friends.
- train cats to clean own litter box.
- just be more fabulous.

They gave me tofu soup to eat before I have my talk at the history meeting. Halfway through the 40-minute talk I began to develop horrible pressure in my insides. Two hours later I'm making a vow- no tofu ever, ever again.

To make matters worse, I pulled the parts of me that include plastic mesh from my December 2004 hernia operation. This happens every once in a while and for a day or three my left side hurts. Combine that with tofu gas. Ouch.

In other news, I watched the American Idol show last night with Patrick and Brady. We agreed that the show was focusing on people with learning disorders or behavioral problems. It was very strange to watch, in fact at certain times Patrick and I couldn't look at the telly, it was so awful. I guess they have to make Paula look normal somehow.

My next boyfriend should be a plumber. So handy with pipes, they know what to do if something freezes up or is leaky.


BJ

BJ, above, was featured in today's paper. He'll do.

Brady bought a box of Captain Crunch but they seem to have changed the formula and they aren't as shiny-crispy, scrape-your-palatey as they used to be. He and Patrick are watching American Idol tonight. I deliberately stayed away from the telly, instead I have been transcribing a document from 16 March 1848, which lists 70 men in Tucson and tells their age. In handwritten Spanish. For many of these men this document is one of a handful that provide information on their lives. I've been gathering them up for the past few years and creating biographies. I'm hoping the book will be finished this year, and then I can move on to something else.

I'm not one for making resolutions, but perhaps this will be the year I finish a few of the many projects I have started. It would be helpful, I guess, if I didn't start any new ones first.

For those graphically inclined, Flickr has a set of 2,820 WW II government posters. The artwork varies dramatically, as does the themes (I was surprised that appendicitis was the topic of one poster).

Damn, it is fricken cold here in Tucson. I've been monitoring emails from work, where the sewer lines are frozen and the bathrooms aren't working. I'm not planning on going in until that mess gets taken care of.

At home I've got the two space heaters going and for a while I stood in front of the oven with the door open, basking in white trash heat. It only gets cold here three or four days, so older houses (like mine) aren't well insulated and don't have central heat. So I turned the electric blankie on and curl up in bed with the cats and pretend I'm a polar explorer.

In other news- Children of Men is a great movie- interesting, makes you think, and Clive Owens is certainly nice on the eyes.

Redhead Sunday.

Joey.

I dropped $336 at the Saturn dealership. They figured out my engine was going "click-click-click" because a valve gasket was cracked and all the oil had leaked out. Some more money went for two new front tires. The mechanic complimented me on how nice my engine was. I blushed. He said it didn't look like it had hardly been ridden. I blushed again.

In the waiting room there was an auburn-headed cub with a full, red beard. Beefy, red chest hair curling out the top of his t-shirt. I wanted to tell him that we had so much in common, Saturn cars and all, that we should register for a domestic partnership. But I'm pretty sure he was pretty straight, so that was yet another car dealership repair waiting room fantasy dashed.

An important question. When you sneeze, do you usually sneeze once or twice?

I almost always sneeze twice. Why that is the case I don't know.

So, once or twice?

The gays love science fiction now. Battlestar Gallactica. Serenity. Shawn of the Dead. When I was younger it seemed like I was the only gay guy that wanted to go see the Star Wars movies. I distinctly remember lusting after Gil Gerard on Buck Rogers in the mid-1970s.

When I was a very, very little child I remember being at my father's friend Ken's house and an original, first-run Star Trek was on the television. It made a huge impression on me because my father hated science fiction and we were never, ever allowed to watch it. That didn't stop me from borrowing science fiction books from the library- instead of watching it on tv or the movies, I could imagine the scenes in my head.

It is more difficult to find good science fiction nowadays. I'm not really interested in the wizard and magic stuff that takes up too much room on the bookshelves at Borders. I like problem-solving stories, time travel, and what ifs.

I recommend the books by China Mieville- he has an amazing imagination. I have a small set of books that I re-read every few years- Malevil by Robert Merle is one of my all-time favorites.

So what's your favorite science fiction movie and or book?

My buddy Rod and I had supper at a vegetarian restaurant. He had the lasagna and I had the Picadilly loaf (ground nuts and mushrooms) and mashed taters.

Rod.

I was so pleased to have a healthy meal. Then when I came home, Brady had bought Double Stuff Oreos. Damn him to partially hydrogenated hell!

There is nothing a food stylist can do to make Velveeta recipes look attractive. All of the pictures on the Kraft website look like barf or worse.

Aaron asks how I learned to write Letters to the Editor. There are several important factors to getting them published. First, shorter is better. Second, use an unusual word or phrase ("human sacrifice" and "misadventure" appear in my last letter). Third, a little sarcasm appeals to the person reading the letters at the newspaper- they have to wade through endless dull ones, something that makes them laugh will leave a good impression.

Richard's birthday party was held at Mark A.'s house, outdoors on his patio. I admit, it was fricken cold, I am so aclimated to the usual warmth here.

I had gone in the afternoon to a hobby store and found a Visible Man kit. They were having a remote control buggy race at the hobby store. Holy Hot Daddy Alert! Which one to casually look at first? Or perhaps the beefy redhead employee? I needed a valium afterwards.


Richard and the as-yet-invisible Visible Man.

The party was lovely and despite the cold, I had a nice time. Richard was very pleased with his present, I'm pleased that I have a good sense of what people want for presents.

Mark and his doggie.

Spent today making a couple of loaves of bread, which are busy baking inside the Visibake. As I type this the smell is making my tummy rumble!

Another letter to the editor.

Going to Mexican Safeway hasn't been the same since Byron quit. I wander up and down the aisles, listlessly dumping over-priced groceries into my cart. I squint as I read the fine print to discern whether the bigger container is cheaper or not. At least my cute across-the-alley neighbor was there today. He is very fine, but I doubt he knows it- nice skin, good teeth, the sexy moustache that many young Mexican-American guys have. We chatted for a while, I made a comment about his huge package- of Velveeta. Turns out the neighbor's dad uses it to go fishing. Who would have thought?

Thank you to whoever sent me the Pasta book from my Amazon wish list! I'm going to try to make ravioli sometime soon.

An article on changing fashion in the New York Times:

Think of how hipsters have suddenly started looking like Paul Bunyan. Think about how the grizzled, bearded look now affected by half of Williamsburg this winter was only a short time ago derided as an affectation of gay bears, a small minority of hyper-masculine men who affect potbellies, clodhoppers and lavish chin whiskers.

We are talking full shrubs here, not mangy soul patches, the kind of beards that gay bears once seemed to be the only ones to flaunt (the better to attract each other at bars and roundups like the annual Bearapalooza or the Furball in Canada).

I was fashionable and didn't know it, but then I trimmed the facial hair and I guess I am no longer a hipster.

I was hoping for a fourth funeral for President Ford, but they buried him instead. I guess I was supposed to feel patriotic and fond of him (I well remember seeing him and Betty ride by in 1975 during the Cherry Festival Parade in Traverse City), but I felt the same way about President Raygun's funeral- a bit contrived and this feeling of being forced to be fond of him. Actually, Gerald Ford was an honest, forthright man and we could use a president like him right now.

While I'm on the topic of Our Great Leaders- I was imagining how empty the current President Bush's presidential library will be when (if) it gets built. All of the documents have already been through the shredder or are so top secret that no one will be able to look at them until the third or fourth term of President Jenna Bush's administration.

Changing the subject completely. Meg sent me to a wonderful recipe site and I made Blueberry Pudding Cake with Buttercream sauce. Very tasty and fattening. I had to use blueberries instead of cranberries, which all of the stores threw out on New Years' Day- apparently it a social taboo to eat them after that day, but a taboo no one informed me about. I was pleased to see that there were no recipes that included tofu, which is a most disagreeable and smelliferous ingredient as far as I am concerned. Alas, no more fattening recipes for me for a while. With the little raise I'm getting at work I'm probably joining a gym to get some exercise and part of that effort is just-say-no to all delicious foods. Say an atheist prayer for me.

I would go back to the farm for Christmas break when I was at the University of Michigan. Going to school had been an escape from dreary farm life. My father quit truck driving in 1974 and started a dairy farm. In 1979 we moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a short time before Ronald Reagan’s administration cut the milk subsidies. That was the start of the end for small, family farms. Times were hard, we barely scraped by. The only reason the farm didn’t go under was that my nice grandmother sent my mom money every week.

We had about forty Holstein cows in our drafty barn, along with a small number of Brown Swiss cows my brother was raising. In the summer I would go out twice a day and bring them up to the barn to get milked. Once the ground froze they were locked up inside until spring. It was too cold outside- this was back before global warming, of course.

Dairy cows have the same gestation period as humans- nine months and a week or two. They come into estrous about once a month, you could tell when it was happening because the other cows would mount them and vigorously hump away. Lesbian cow action, no wonder I’m gay. We only had bulls a couple of times- they could be aggressive and dangerous. The second time my father borrowed one from his buddy Chum and that huge bull chased me across the pasture onto a hay wagon, bellowing at me in anger. Luckily I had a pitchfork with me and was able to escape. My father didn’t believe me when I told him what had happened. I think he thought I was a big pussy. The next day he had the same experience, and the bull was sent that afternoon.

Most of the time my father or brother would artificially breed the cows. About three or four months after they had given birth, and when there were signs of estrous, the metallic gray tank was opened up and an ampule of semen selected. We would get these catalogues that you could order cattle semen from, with glossy pictures of the bulls prominently positioned to show off their enormous testicles. Lots of statistics on the milk production of their offspring. The company would deliver the tubes of semen and recharge the liquid nitrogen in the tank. Once they emptied the tank completely out and found a bunch of ampules that had fallen into the bottom- some of which were from long-dead bulls and that had become very, very valuable.

These ampules were unthawed in warm water, the end nipped off, and inserted into a really long syringe. Then my father or brother would put on a long, clear plastic glove and stick their arm down the cows behind. The cows did not enjoy this. I’m pretty sure my father and brother also did not have a good time. The syringe was inserted into the cow’s vagina and the hand-in-the-bum would feel for the syringe going into the fallopian tubes. Once there, a quick push on the plunger and- voila- the cow usually got pregnant. Very romantic.

One aspect of this whole business was that cattle were being bred for size and the resulting calves often had enormous heads. Heads that had a hard time sliding through their mother’s pelves during birth. Sometimes you had to take drastic measures- including using winches to yank the poor calf out. While this was going on the cow would be mooing loudly and sometimes the calves would die. In the winter the calves sometimes tried to stay inside their mother- when their little feet came out they would feel the cold and pull them back in. Add in all the placenta and fluids and cow poop, it was a big mess.

So two years in a row, a cow started giving birth on New Year’s Eve and the calf got stuck and me and my brother were sent out to get the calf out. Both times my brother had to prop the cow up, if she sat down that made everything much harder, while I had to reach in and grab those slippery little legs and pull. No gloves- they made your hands just slip right off their slick legs. I had to pull as hard as I could to get the head to come through and then out, and then really pull hard to get the rest out. Splat, the calf would slide out and fall to the ground- the sudden jolt usually served to make them cry out and start breathing. You’d carry the bloody calf around to the mother’s head and she would energetically start licking it, mooing in the special way new cow moms mooed. The other cows would look on in interest and then go back to chewing their cuds.

Oh, the good old days. So glad I’m not a farm kid anymore.