March 26, 2007
Sorry... I've been indisposed.
Get off my back, people! And I mean that in the nicest possible way...
I'm now blogging here. You better move. You're stepping on my heart.
Posted by kyle at 3:51 PM
April 4, 2006
Cat sh*t, Bat sh*t
With apologies to the great George Carlin, I present my latest sh*tty comic review for the Queer Eye on Comics series over at the Prism Comics website.
Now in our second year, our editor David Stanley recently posted a fun retrospective where one of my favorite articles, a review of Rob Liefeld's Avengers #1 was singled out for it's qualities of cleverness. I did enjoy writing that one, but I have to say, I'm much more partial to the Wonder Woman #207. But what do I know. I just work here.
Those of you in the SF Bay Area are cordially invited to visit the Prism Comics booth at this weekend's Alternative Press Expo (APE) in the Concorse Exhibition Center, SoMa/Potrero/almost-Mission. Amazing comics, cute boys, and an incredible greasy spoon diner right across 7th Street... what more could a guy want from a weekend?
OK... maybe cake.
Posted by kyle at 4:28 PM
March 22, 2006
"Worst. President. Ever."
Our President is speaking today very very very close to my hometown in West Virginia. News service reporter Helen Thomas, an arch enemy of Mr. Bush, and who once actually described him as the subject of this post suggests, had this exchange with him yesterday in Washington.
THOMAS: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President — your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth — but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?
BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist — that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.
THOMAS: And ...
BUSH: Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me.
No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.
This guy is fucking exhausting he's so awful. How can he look these soldiers and their families in the eye and talk like this? He didn't want war? You've got to be kidding.
This just in: Osama bin Laden is STILL on the loose. Way to go after those terrorists.
Posted by kyle at 8:09 AM | Comments (4)
March 20, 2006
Must Drink TV
I fancy myself a rather sophisticated consumer of advertising. Time was, I would take ads at face value. I actually got excited for the Olympics. Spots for the next episode of the Cosby Show, where nothing interesting EVER happened, would keep me riveted. And I'm actually embarassed to tell you how many hours of my youth I wasted by watching the Miss Universe Pageant. They went on about how it was the one time of the year that the most beautiful woman in the world was crowned, so there I was making my predictions and keeping score -- yes you heard me-- with mom. To think I could have been binge drinking or having indiscriminate gay sex. Ah well... wasted youth.
When I saw the new ad campaign for Southern Comfort, touting not only a new drink mixing the insipidly sweet spirit with lime juice, but the fact (repeated over and over and over again), that we're now supposed to call it "So Co." "Riiiiight," says I. "So Co. Riiiiiight." I am so smart and smug and no marketer is going to get me to call it "So Co," even though the song from the commerical is a little fun and the graphics are pretty neat.
Then I was at a party on Saturda, when PETE -- a grade-A, gen-u-wine young person who invents slang and listens to indy rock and is so cool he openly dissed Von Dutch hats months before anyone esle did -- ACtually in ACtual conversation... ACtually called it "So Co." He even said it more than once.
To preserve my superior self-image, picture me, rolling my eyes and sighing audibly at PETE's naivete. Thanks. In reality, PETE is still cooler than me by a factor of, like, twenty. Ugh.
Happy first day of new job to Pete, now with 100% more Los Angeles!
Posted by kyle at 11:40 PM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2006
Unbloggable
HO-kay. Just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been writing, right? This is our busiest time of the year at work, and since my evenings are mostly spoken for, my blogging time has been seriously curtailed these past several weeks.
Nevertheless, I have started and not completed many posts, and my Idea Bank is always full to bursting. So watch this space as I complete and post several of these, which may or may not be post-dated. Those of you who use Bloglines will know when new stuff gets posted, but the rest will just have to troll along.
I am spurred to these actions since I've recently heard from no fewer than two old friends who have somehow stumbled across my little corner of cyber-vanity.
My cousin Bryan back in West Virginia, who works for a Catholic university, actually attended one, posted the funniest comment to the most recent Found Porn entry, saying:
...since I still work for the Holy Roman Empire, I'd say 98% of my fund raising job is to apologize for things I have no clue about.
Bryan, while it's nice to hear someone involved with the Church of Rome ask for forgiveness of the rest of us once in a while, you don't have to apologize. I'm glad, though, that you are backing up my theory of Customer Service. Plus, you remind me how much Found Porn I have collected. That's a good thing.
Meanwhile, the ever-lovely Kari found this site via another college friend. Trish, Kari and all my favorite Alpha Gams... what great memories have been brought up knowing you guys have read my ramblings. Doesn't Wesleyan's new president look like someone's Mom or fifth grade teacher?
Thanks for the nice compliments on how I look, but you'll notice that my hair is very different. Above, I am seen in my Reese Witherspoon wig, which I wear on special occasions, like Laundry Day.
Just kidding of course. I'm going bald bald bald. I think it's God's punishment for making fun of Catholics so much.
Posted by kyle at 12:02 PM | Comments (1)
February 27, 2006
Same time next year
As many of my regular readers no doubt already know, February is a rather important month around the Minor-Myers household. On the 1st Saturday of the month, Christopher and I celebrate the anniversary of our first date. This year it fell on the actual day of our first date 11 years ago, February 4th, 1995. It is from this point that we really mark the beginning of our relationship.
Once we moved to San Francisco, we took advantage of the wonderful opportunity to register as Domestic Partners, first in the city and then shortly after with the State of California. Both required a little paperwork with a lot of very serious commitments... including, for the SF registry, declaring under penalty of perjury that if one of us owes someone money, that person could collect from either one of us. Even more interesting is the very first declaration:
"We have an intimate, committed relationship of mutual caring"
Do marriage licenses even say that? Anyway, that seriously impressed us. How could we ever live in a Red State or even a slightly Purple State after that? We did the SF registry when our friend Nank was visiting once -- in February. Anniversary #2.
Then, two years ago in 2004, crazy ol' Gavin Newsom (who still needs a hair-do makeover. Seriously.) went off his meds and decided he'd start letting same-sex couples get marriage licenses and have civil ceremonies. It was a phenomenal experience even to walk through, let alone get to join in on. For us, the ceremony happened two years ago today, on February 27, 2004. I’ll never forget the feeling around City Hall those days – everyone was just so freaking happy! Bouquets of flowers sent from across the nation piled up in every corner, and everyone from civil servants to ordinary citizens spent hundreds of hours volunteering to see that everything went well. It was spectacular.
C and I spent this past weekend in San Diego where his parents were visiting again, and after dinner one night, his mother trotted out a cake and a wee giftie to mark our anniversary. Everyone should be lucky to have in-laws like mine!
This got me to thinking about what different people in our lives consider when they decide how, and more importantly when, to congratulate us on the fact that our clothes, books and music are too mixed in together to separate after all these years.
My sister, Erin, was the first in my family to recognize our anniversary as a real thing, since she started seeing her now-husband right around the same time, and before they got married, they would mark time from those early dates, too. She would call and say, "I know I should know this, but don't you have an anniversary coming up?" I reminded her that we always celebrated on the first Saturday in February, and that it was sweet of her to remember at all. Not long after that, my mother, no doubt hearing that Erin had sent us a card (she's unfailingly good about things like that, quite unlike me), would call and say "Oh, now tell me again. when is your anniversary?" I reminded her many times over, but it never seemed to stick in her mind or on her calendar, though she's sent us many cards and generous gifts over the years.
After the big City Hall wedding two years ago, Mom seemed to take special notice. That "wedding date" seemed to be something she could finally wrap her mind around, so she decided to recognize that one. About a year afterward, I was having the inevitable "when is your anniversary, anyway" conversations with her, and again I went into the whole thing about our first date, Domestic Partnership and the City Hall officiated wedding. She said something to the effect of, "Well, the one you had at City Hall... that's the one I think is official." Her emphasis -- not mine.
It was then I realized that mom and I had grown so apart politically. She takes the Government (capital G intended) and trusts whatever it says. Especially since the presidential election of 2000, I have trained myself to look at the real-world implications of government actions and try to figure out who is really being served. And more often than not, it's whomever has the most money or power.
Instead of pointing this out to Mom right then and there, I reminded her that, just six months after our official wedding -- on my birthday, no less, the Supreme Court of California declared all those same sex unions null and void. She had no reaction whatsoever. You could practically see the "Does Not Compute" scroll past her eyes.
Mom still recognizes our City Hall wedding as our anniversary, and I feel badly even casting her in this light. She's a wonderful parent and loves Christopher like she loves my sister's husband. He's part of our family because she knows he's MY family, and so many other people in my situation don't have that.
Shouldn't I be happy with that?
Posted by kyle at 11:50 AM | Comments (2)
February 15, 2006
It's Okay to Skip Dessert
…especially if it’s carbonated.
Christopher and I celebrated eleven years of putting up with each other with another lovely meal two weeks back. Because we just spent a good deal of money at Christmas and since we’re ordering some new furniture, we decided a slightly more… austere… evening was in order, especially compared to last year.
It was my year to choose, so I chose a little neighborhood spot, since a place that fit that category was such a hit back in 2002. We hopped on BART, a confused Christopher wondering why we were on a Millbrae train, and got off in the quaint if foggy village of Glen Park and had a lovely meal at Chenery Park.
Surrounded by more senior citizens than at a Tuesday noontime opera lecture at the local public library, we had a really delicious meal served by a painfully cute waiter. The one dark spot was the bottle of wine we took. We thought we’d save on the check by only paying the $15 corkage fee. It turned out to be not so great, but a perusal of their wine list fixed that situation, if not the size of the bill.
Chenery Park specializes in fancier versions of ‘comfort food,’ so naturally we ordered their macaroni and cheese. It was delicious! Cut to several courses later, and I am full, yet still eyeing the dessert menu. When I saw that they had a Thomas Kemper Orange Cream Soda Float, I couldn’t resist.
It turns out that cocktails + wine + more, better wine + melted cheese and cream + scallops + one Thomas Kemper Orange Cream Soda Float = fucking unbelievable indigestion. And fucking unbelievable indigestion doesn’t really put one in an amorous mood, regardless of how big an anniversary it is. Burp!
Could my famous bottomless iron stomach be failing me?
Nah.
Posted by kyle at 11:36 AM
February 14, 2006
Kit watches the Olympics for you
Our pal Kit lives in a house of men… specifically her husband and her two sons, aged 8.5 and 11. They watch a lot of sports. When we visited them last summer, they were watching the Tour de France. You heard me… beautiful sunshine outdoors, a pool, toys, games… a bazillion distractions and Kit’s men were watching a bike race. The male of the species, ladies and gentlemen.
Here is the text of an e-mail Kit sent yesterday:
So okay, we rotted on the couch ALL DAY yesterday watching the Olympics…• Chad Hendrick (long track speed skating) is one of those HOT guys who really should NEVER say anything!
• Kid observation of the day (proof I live in a ‘boy house’): “Mom, I don’t think it is a good idea to have big parts if you do Luge…it makes you less aerodynamic!”* [This comment came out after watching a particularly well hung Italian do his run.]
As you can see, Kit is right about Hendrick. He’s a total Danny. Do I see a razor ad in his future? Samples of recorded interviews at the NBC website prove her second point. He strings cliché after cliché until he sounds like George W. at the State of the Union address. His teeth sure are white, though. Definitely a razor ad.
As for luging… I never was very good at it anyway.
---
* Obviously, I am "tm-ing" this statement right now.
Posted by kyle at 4:21 PM
February 3, 2006
Send in the Marines?
Who doesn’t get the gay obsession with military-types? The hyper-masculine bravery, the beauty of youth and physical fitness, the “touch-me” hairdos, the sexiness of the tough and/or stern – to say nothing of the costume opportunities!
This comes to mind because today I spotted what looked to be a bunch of… well, not exactly Marines, as they were really too young (they looked to be high school age) and they were in civvies. But they were definitely Marines. A couple of them were in dress uniforms and they had the requisite high-and-tight haircuts. They were setting up for and practicing in formation for what turned out to be a recruiting effort. They were definitely hotties… especially the one in the grey sweatshirt. You know who you are.
At first I had the typical reaction: ogle while appearing to be nonchalantly passing by, a skill honed by every gay man who has spent any time in the closet. After I passed I had a very different thought though: we’re at war and these guys could end up dead very soon, just for doing their job.
And for what?
FUCK YOU GEORGE BUSH.
There. Now I:
A) got that off my chest, and
2) got myself on the NSA’s new phone-tap list.
Posted by kyle at 1:24 PM
February 2, 2006
CSI: Customer Service Issues
It’s been a pretty tough week at work as regards customers complaining, often bitterly, about this, that or the other thing. In the midst of this, I had a revelation: 75% of customer service seems to be apologizing for things over which you either have no control over or aren’t the remotest bit responsible for.
The center of all these interactions seems to be empathizing with them and their situation, no matter how crazy or invented by them it is. Saying something like “I’m sorry… I know you’ve been waiting a long time,” or “I know that’s not the answer you were hoping for,” or “I understand why you’re disappointed – I would be too,” usually does it. That won’t work on everyone, but when you start out that way, and later they perceive that you’re put off by their bitchiness, they remember how nicely you started out and back off.
Think I could parlay this into a book deal?
Posted by kyle at 12:42 PM | Comments (1)