… and back to Tokyo the week after next.
Si te rog, iubirea mea, primeste fericirea
Late last night I got an SOS
Post-wedding party last night. Myself, my wife, and ten drunken lesbians. There was heavy whipping cream1 and gratuitous breast fondling.2 I love you, San Francisco!
—
1In the dessert, actually.
2My own breasts, mostly.
Ya to na so re yoi! yoi! yoi!
The Japanese are nuts about baseball and it’s still a sport for the masses here. Hirasaki-san has kindly purchased tickets for a Japanese major league baseball game. The air is humid but picking up here at Jingu Stadium.
Now the teams playing tonight are the Yakult Swallows versus the Hiroshima Carp. Now you might think it would be difficult, nay impossible, to do a baseball cheer either for carp, or for swallows. You would be mistaken.
And I know what you’re thinking about calling an entire baseball team the Swallows, and that’s just not right, so put that out of your head. Let’s say you’re rooting for the Swallows and you want to show your team support. What do you do? You take out your big green umbrella, of course, and you bounce it up and down, while singing the team song, Tokyo Ondo, at the bottom of the seventh.
That’s what you do, if you’re a fan of the Swallows.
The seventh inning stretch comes up. The Carp contingent doesn’t sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Instead, the Carp fans inflate all these rubber balloons (see, you’re back thinking about the Swallows again, and I told you to stop thinking like that) and we sing the team song and then we let the balloons go and they float into the sky just like… well… here’s a QuickTime movie.
Alo Salut sunt eu un haiduc
A smoke-filled restaurant somewhere in Omotesando. Jars of sake and imojochu decorate one wall. I keep hearing this Romanian song all over Tokyo — the US will probably be inundated with it shortly. So I’m hanging out with Haba-san and Oikawa-san, enhancing the jet lag with Kirin. I ask about the Kyushu skewers that we’re munching on. “Cow organs,” Haba-san tells me. Haba-san’s girlfriend, Kumiko, arrives, and after a few more beers we initiate the time-honored cultural exchange program of teaching one another dirty words.
“I am mad with him,” says Kumiko. “This case. What do I say?”
“Ah,” I say. “In this case, you say, ‘You shithead.'”
“You?” asks Kumiko.
“You shithead,” I say.
“You shit?” says Kumiko.
“No. You shithead,” I pronounce.
“You shit… You shit, head. You chit. Chit head,” says Kumiko.
“Ssshhhit-head,” I say.
“Ssssshhhhhit-head,” says Kumiko.
“You shithead,” I say.
“You shit, head. You, shit head. You. Shit-head. You shithead,” Kumiko said, with conviction. Then, pointing at Haba-san, she says, “You shithead.”
I nod satisfactorily.
Kumiko pauses, and thinks. “What is shithead?”
I wonder, should I get up and fix myself a drink?
That’s my wife. Mickey Finns is a Russian schnapps that’s trying to expand distribution into Ireland. That’s me in the background. I don’t believe that I am the fruit in question.
What a field day for the heat
INT. OVAL OFFICE - NIGHT A round mahogany table in a dimly lit room. The Presidential seal leers down on a dozen generals and bureaucrats. Computer screens flicker and scroll an endless stream of data. The President taps a note pad with a ballpoint pen. PRESIDENT Update. GENERAL #1 Four thousand five hundred dead, Mr. President. Bridges into the city are out. Side roads impassable. Power, water, all out. PRESIDENT Stop. You. BUREAUCRAT #1 Survivors gathering at the Convention Center. PRESIDENT Number? BUREAUCRAT #1 Thirty thousand. Dozens of deaths every hour. Looting, raping, lawlessness. PRESIDENT Go. GENERAL #2 We've dispatched haz-mat teams from McClellan. Eight thousand men, armaments, vehicles. Arrives tomorrow morning. PRESIDENT Status. BUREAUCRAT #2 Administration approval rating down twenty-four points. Friendly news media replaying your speeches from three days ago. Unfriendly media calling for your resignation. The region went solidly against us in the last election. PRESIDENT I know. GENERAL #1 Sir, we need a go no-go. The President sighs. He caps the ballpoint pen. EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - NIGHT Urban hell on earth. Fires burn; people attack one another with sticks, knives. Stampeding, glass breaking, an idiot melange of screaming. A woman clutches a wailing baby in her arms and dodges bullets. A bleeding man staggers into her; she pushes him away with a shriek. Four men surround her. They carry guns and knives. One man swings a pipe experimentally. A new, mechanical sound: the distant hum of rotary engines. The chaos pauses and the people look up. WOMAN Food! MAN Water! Helicopters appear over the black city skyline. Their blue searchlights scan the destruction. The mob stops fighting, drops their weapons. People flag the helicopters, shouting with joy. INT. PRESS ROOM - DAY Bright sun through the windows. The President shuffles papers behind a podium. A makeup artist touches his nose with a powder puff. PRODUCER We're on in five. PRESIDENT I'll rehearse. EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - DAY Helicopters slowly descend upon the crowd. The faces of the people, smiling, shouting, waving, gather around beneath them. PRESIDENT (V.O.) My fellow Americans... Our woman's face. She looks at the helicopters, thinks... then turns, and begins to run. PRESIDENT (V.O.) I have consulted with the governors and the mayors of the affected region... A milky white powder billows from canisters on the sides of the helicopters. PRESIDENT (V.O.) And unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the state and federal authorities... As the powder hits the people, they crumple and fall like narcoleptics -- silently, suddenly, as if poleaxed. PRESIDENT (V.O.) No survivors have been found. EXT. BLIND ALLEY - NIGHT The baby in her arms still screaming, our woman cuts down a back alley. She runs into a blind end: a door, a metal Dumpster, three brick walls. PRESIDENT (V.O.) We will be tireless in our efforts to overcome this disaster... She wrenches at the locked doorknob -- useless. PRESIDENT (V.O.) We will not falter and we will not fail. A familiar mechanical drone. The baby wails. Our woman looks up, and as she does a dark helicopter fills the sky above the alley. PRESIDENT (V.O.) And though there has been great misery and pain... She wildly looks around her, sees the Dumpster. PRESIDENT (V.O.) I believe we as Americans can rise to the challenge. She looks up. From the woman's POV, a billowy cloud envelops us, and we are in sudden perfect white silence, except for the President's voice... PRESIDENT (V.O.) Through this challenge, we will discover our capacity for greatness. FADE TO: EXT. CONVENTION CENTER - MORNING Morning, gray and fine. Camouflaged army troops, bearing rifles, pick their way through innumerable piles of corpses. Smoking, charred rubble, overturned cars. PRESIDENT (V.O.) It will take more than weeks or months. It will take years. EXT. ALLEY WAY - MORNING An Army grunt wanders down the alley. He shoulders his rifle. Our woman lies in the alley. He nudges her hand with his boot. PRESIDENT (V.O.) It will cost billions. We will find the money. A tiny, reverberating cry. PRESIDENT (V.O.) For a time, my fellow Americans, we will mourn. But then... The grunt turns toward the Dumpster. Tentatively, he lifts the lid, and we hear a baby's cry... PRESIDENT (V.O.) We will rebuild. CUT TO BLACK.
Except, for once, my mother’s camisole
Thanks to Satori for the link to write your own comic strip.
Let’s start a war, start a nuclear war
As far as I could tell, it was a thoroughly normal wedding. People dabbed tears from the corners of their eyes as the couple walked down the aisle. The brother-in-law made an off-color toast. Family photos were taken in the garden. The icing on the wedding cake was buttercream. Yours truly played the processional and recessional, on guitar: Embraceable You, East of the Sun, At Last and You Are the Sunshine Of My Life.
Stacey Camillo and Alex (Cynthia) Alexander were married on August 14, 2005 in a quiet ceremony in Ogunquit, Maine. Stacy and Alex are, of course, women — although some of us referred to them both as brides, they themselves preferred to be called the gride and the broom.
History is not kind to bigots. A hundred and twenty years ago, Richard H. Colfax and George Fitzhugh wrote ornate, collegiate-sounding essays on the unfitness of the black man to own himself. Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry proposed a Constitutional amendment in 1912 prohibiting the marriage of white people to black people. Roddenberry liked expensive words: his amendment would “exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy.”
Ultimately, these impressive-sounding men died of natural causes, and society improved.
Within a generation, the political push to “protect marriage” will be backshelved. Every day the conservative rhetoric gets a little softer. Every day the Establishment gets a little older and grayer.
Tell me honestly: do you know anyone under 25 who wants to ban gay marriage?
Tell me honestly: which side of history do you want to be on?
Time is on our side. Literally and figuratively, the movement to delegitimize same-sex marriage is dying, and it’s dying of natural causes. Within a generation, the spirit of humanity will prevail over bigotry and fear.
Here’s to the day when a gay wedding is no longer a political act.
A side note: I had the door held open for me at the Maine Street Bar in downtown Ogunquit. The fellows there are generally polite, except for the guy who demanded to kiss me.