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Burning Fight.
I was reading on MTV News this morning that my friend’s side project has a copyright problem: Distributors and stores are refusing to carry the United Nations album because the sleeve is essentially Abbey Road — except that the Beatles are on fire. As someone whose last band named their only album Thriller, I’m conceptually required to think this whole thing is pretty awesome.
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The Legitimate Alternative Deathstyle. →
Dick Hafer was a conservative cartoonist, to be polite. He was also one of those anti-gay activists who are, like, totally obsessed with fringe fetishism, and in 1986, he took a seemingly painstaking amount of time to make a comic book about how gay people pretty much have sex every day until we die — which I think is supposed to be an argument against homosexuality, but I’m not sure. (via)Video
Rage Against the Machine at the Republican National Convention.
When Zack de la Rocha traded in hardcore for hip-hop, he never lost sight of the common thread. This video, shot at a protest scene in St. Paul yesterday, might be one of the most politically earnest episodes in the history of musical agitprop. Plus, watching Tom Morello imitate his wah-wah pedal into a megaphone is kinda priceless.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
The Killers “When You Were Young” (The Abbey Road Sessions)
Originally published on February 21, 2004
The first time I met Emmett, I told him I didn’t like his band. It’s not the best way to start a friendship, but I was naïve and arrogant back then. (It was an era where honesty was never tacky and tact was reserved for liars, natch.) He respected my opinion because it was constructive, but perhaps more surprisingly, he didn’t take it personally. On one hand, that drove me crazy, because as ever-willing as I was to share my opinion about things, I can hardly handle any criticism myself. But the other hand drew me to his detachment. I thought I could learn something from him.
A few weeks later, my phone rang at 5:20 A.M. Some people can sleep through a ringing phone, but after my best friend Chris died — in the middle of the night — I always fear the worst. Good news can wait until a decent hour, so this call, I assumed, must be bad.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t catch you sleeping, did I?”
“The sun isn’t actually up yet.”
Emmett laughed. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to talk and this was the only time I could do it.”
I actually didn’t mind. I was young and I had friends all over the world. I found it difficult to stay in touch with all of them myself, so if it had to be 5 A.M., then that’s what it had to be. And so it was: Every couple of weeks, my phone would ring before sunrise, and it would be him — on the other side of the country, in the middle of his night. In a lot of ways, I looked forward to it. My body was not nearly as thrilled.
We were drinking coffee at Michael & Zöe’s — on Second Avenue, in the East Village. Emmett had come to New York on holiday, and it was the first time we’d ever really spent time together outside of the music scene. Nothing fell out of place as we navigated the winter streets. Everything felt natural. This is what we talked about when we talked about love.
“What are you looking for?” He sipped his drink inconspicuously.
“I’m not sure I am looking for anything right now,” I mumbled, making a reasonable case for my perpetually single status. “Besides, I’m pretty sure that whoever I wind up falling in love with will be nothing like the person I thought he’d be. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?”
He nodded in agreement. “Honestly? I think the only two people in the world that I’d want to be with would be my girlfriend and you.”
My eyes turned glassy. I must have stared a hole right through him, because he became visibly agitated and began to apologize. I immediately cut him off and made an assurance that he didn’t make me uncomfortable — even though he most certainly did.
There were things I didn’t say: For one, I never really looked at him that way, most likely because I knew he had a girlfriend. But perhaps more troubling, I was disappointed that these were the only opportunities that ever seemed to present themselves. All I wanted was to hear someone say they wanted to be with me — and only me — but perhaps this was too much to ask of a 22-year-old. I told him that I wasn’t looking for anyone at that moment, and I wasn’t. But I never bothered to share the notion that I hoped someone might be out there looking for me. Allow me to spare you the wasted time, lest anyone actually believes this method yields results: I was a miserable young thing.
Several years ago, long after the phone calls stopped, I ran into Emmett at a nightclub. He looked so much older, equal parts rugged and ragged. He made it a point to tell me that he no longer considered himself bisexual, that he dated women exclusively. I just giggled and changed the subject, as if his revelation were entirely irrelevant. My finger traced the mosaic tiles on the table where we sat, forgetting what it was that we had in common.
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Little Britain USA
For the first time since Six Feet Under went off the air, I wish I had HBO. Little Britain’s first season in America begins on September 28; here’s a clip introducing Bing Gordyn — the first man ever to walk on the moon with a mustache. (via)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Adele “Hometown Glory” (Pocketknife’s Familiar Faces Remix)
Bam was concerned. He noticed an update to my Facebook profile that concealed a disappointing revelation, and he felt compelled to let me know.
“Don’t like Adele,” he wrote.
These three words were not a suggestion, but an order. Truthfully, I take Bam’s opinions seriously. Ever since we shared a moment in London, dancing in a sweaty nightclub to the Sugababes while our boyfriends looked on with indie-rock indignity, I’ve looked up to him as a fellow conspirator in shamelessness. But this terse note led me to believe that there was some cruel, cruel shame in admitting that I listened to Adele. How could this be?
He suggested a singer named Laura Marling as a superior alternative, but I didn’t see the connection. “Both girls are only 18,” Bam explained, “but compare and contrast their poetry/maturity. Plus Laura is much prettier.” He added a wink to this last line, which I knowingly interpreted as a campy snap.
“You know what’s funny? I think Adele is gorgeous!”
And really, I do. I watched her tear up the Brit Awards on BBC America like the girl was singing for Basement Jaxx. She was shy as a presenter — mousey, even — but as a performer, she carried herself like Willi Ninja.
In a last ditch attempt to sway my position, Bam compared her unfavorably to Amy Winehouse — whom neither of us particularly care for. “Except Amy Winehouse looks like she crawled out of a trailer and Adele looks like she’d be an excellent student at college,” I countered.
Finally, something we could agree on.
“A good point well made,” he conceded.
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Good housekeeping.
I haven’t blogged about blogging for a while, so I figure we’re due for an update: You may have noticed that posting has been somewhat sporadic lately, warranted by a combination of being totally busy and being totally undisciplined. I’m not one of those guys who apologize for that kind of thing; I’ve been doing this long enough to accept that these things happen.
During this unofficial break, I had some time to think about the site and what, if anything, has inspired me to maintain Nervous Acid in one form or another for more than five years. To do that, I went back to 2003 — to a set of archives that I saved because the writing on the site meant something to me. At some point in 2002, I felt like the baggage of becoming a so-called public figure had weighed on my ability to write freely, so I signed up for a free Typepad site and established a thinly-veiled but essentially anonymous confessional called Nervous Acid.
I discovered blogging in the late ’90s when I very randomly stumbled upon Ultrasparky. I was working at an Internet start-up in Chicago, having moved from New York City for the first time in my life. Despite the fact that I “officially” worked from 7-to-3, I generally had only three hours of actual work to accomplish each day. Finding Sparky gave me something to do in between downloading dozens of gigabytes of music from Napster, yes. But it also gave me a lifeline to New York City that I desperately needed. Sparky was witty and insightful and serious and occasionally whimsical; he was my imaginary friend. (Since then, he’s become one of my best friends in real life.)
From there, I realized that there was an entire community of gay men using this new medium as a shared experience. My experience in self-publishing gave me instant empathetic access to some of these bloggers; I felt like I knew them because, even before my first blog, I was already one of them — an articulate confessor with an itch to share my paradigms, occasionally self-absorbed delusions, and totally valid (yet fleeting) emotional response. I have no shame.
I still look at a few of these bloggers as incredible writers: Jeremy, who wrote under the pseudonym SoBlo, revealed more than most memoirists and did it with a voice that was instantly recognizable to me. He shut down after an incident where his anonymity was compromised and a relationship was damaged, but I can’t help but recall the personalism and the personality. In spite of the fact that we’ve still never met, I still put forth the belief that he is a good person: This was a man who sent me, a total stranger, a mixed CD in the mail because he thought I could use a little cheering up. He was right, and it helped.
There was also Aaron, who wrote 8 Legs and Aanthems — depending on which era of gay blogging you follow. Aaron was that rare example of a blogger who was actually, like, a totally amazing writer. If he had made the whole thing up and put a hardcover on it, he’d be a best-selling author. But Aaron was a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker; he later became a dear friend and a creative inspiration.
I could keep going — about Michael and Bradford and the recently departed Boy’s Briefs — but what really got me thinking about all this was a recent post on Towleroad. Obviously, in the past five years, Towleroad has become a hugely successful commercial gay news site — with its author, Andy, even scoring press credentials to this year’s Democratic National Convention. In 2003, however, Andy was mixing his journalist roots with a healthy dose of exhibitionism. Whereas today’s Towleroad regularly posts photos of shirtless models, Andy was — at one point, anyway — not above posting a video of himself in the shower listening to John Mayer. He has always been an intellectual presence on the site, but at one point, he also maintained an endearing physical presence on the site. In other words, there’s a reason that the site’s very name reflects his own.
This fact seems to have been obscured over time, and a rare personal interjection from earlier this month — detailing a luggage-related issue with JetBlue — has inspired 100 commenters to date, with some of his readers appalled that he would use the site to air a personal grievance: “You’re right to be upset, but to put up such an arrogant, waa-waa post seems to me like someone is forgetting they aren’t the center of the universe,” wrote Dan. Thomas moaned: “Andy Andy Andy. Tacky Tacky Tacky. I adore your site … [but] this is the first post I have ever seen from you which is a clear abuse of your position at the helm of widely read resource.” Said Paulie, “Sorry Andy, but no sympathy from me whatsoever. Get a grip dude … and stop whining.” Another anonymous reader offered:
“Sorry for your loss, but this blog is an important news source for many Gay people. You should wear that mantle with pride and not compromise your journalistic integrity by dealing with a personal issue by leveraging your readership. It is an injustice to the quality of this blog. Very Joemygod, but not up to towleroad standards.”
To me, this is the sound of nails running down a chalkboard. Blogging is where we inform and entertain and occasionally adulate, but it’s also where we mourn and contemplate and occasionally whine. There are several fundamental differences between, say, Towleroad and CNN: For one, Towleroad is essentially’s Andy’s house. We don’t live there, we’re just visiting. For another thing, you are not welcome to comment on CNN’s coverage. If you think Obama is making a mistake by choosing Joe Biden as his Vice President, they don’t care. Yet in their rush to criticize Andy, these commenters completely ran past the fact that Andy gave them their voice. Because even in its newfound role as a “widely read resource,” Towleroad is still a personal blog at heart. I know that Andy gets it.
For some reason, this episode got me thinking about community and expression and all of the things that inspired me to sign up for that Typepad account in 2002. The common denominator for everything I loved about blogging in 2002 — and for everything I wrote about up until 2004, when a car accident unplugged my site for the first time — revolves around the principle of sharing. Not oversharing, as a recent New York Times article commented upon, but the suggestion that my experiences are valuable and my opinions are valid. That they’re worth writing about, and that they’re worth reading. That embarrassment is spared only for cowards.
I stopped writing lengthier personal pieces for this site several months ago due to a lack of time, but going through my 2003–2004 archives, I found several shorter posts that didn’t take long to write and still maintained some resonance. I may repost some of these pieces for the sake of reestablishing a theme, but also to remind me that I don’t need to be Joan Didion every time I sit down at the computer.
I’d like to keep posting those shorter, pithier comments, videos, and links as I’m inspired to, but I’m not sure I want to maintain a linklog. I do, however, want to start posting music again — as a springboard for commentary about the artists or the unrelated stories that come to my head while listening to them — and I hope you’ll do like my web-friend Ryan did when he told me about an iTunes playlist of music he downloaded from my site. That was just cool.
But mostly, I feel like I want to reconstruct my physical presence on the site. We all know that there’s an intellect behind Nervous Acid, but do you know who I am?
I started reading blogs to find out; I started writing one to tell you.
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Embrace “You’re Not Alone”
It occurred to me this morning that despite the fact that they’re one of my favorite bands, I’ve flat out missed several videos in the Embrace canon. This one, from their second album, probably struck me the most odd — probably for its primitive CGI. Also, I’ve never seen a music video where everyone in the band just dies, but I guess that’s what you get when you go tightrope-walking in old school Vans.
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