welcome to downtown coolsville

Tonight I made Little Brother watch E.T., because somehow he managed to make it to age thirteen (nearly fourteen!) without seeing it even once. I don't know how that happened. Clearly I fail as a mentor.

E.T. is something I'm slightly embarrassed to admit to getting emotional about, because it's about a white suburban kid who befriends a cuddly alien and that is pretty uncool! But I tear up every time I watch it anyway, because I am a sucker for stories in which Lonely, Alienated Children Befriend Strange Creatures.* Elliott is the first movie character I ever remember really relating to, and I really wanted an E.T. when I was little. Except one that looked a little less weird and ugly and didn't make so many fucked up noises. I also wanted a bike with a basket on the front like Elliott's with which to transport said E.T., and a really huge closet to store it in so my mother wouldn't find out about it. I didn't get any of those, not even the bike with the basket, but it was nice to dream.

Anyway, I think the movie would have gone better for LB if he hadn't just watched the video for "Telephone" fifty bajillion times in a row. He ended up giggling and singing to himself every time E.T. said he was going to phone home and, during the climactic scene in which E.T. goes back onto the spaceship, wondered aloud if Lady Gaga was going to be in there.

Kids these days.

Oh, speaking of Lady Gaga, would you like to hear about how she and Beyonce totally saved my life on Friday? ( You probably don't, which is why I put it under a cut! )

The night after Lady Gaga and Beyonce saved my life, I went to a costume party. I was waffling over what I wanted to be for a while- I've already been a riot grrrl, a zombie Catholic schoolboy, Daria Morgendorfer, and Donnie Darko, so I was starting to run out of ideas. And then I watched Velvet Goldmine twice in one week and started listening to Without You I'm Nothing again and, well, ( this happened. )

Things currently making my life:

The Iggy Pop/Gerard Way interview, still. Even though it is mostly a back-and-forth consisting of "You're GREAT, Iggy!" "No, YOU'RE great, Gerard!" "Oh, know what else is great? Green Day!" "And golf!" "And babies!" "Gosh, everything is so great." "Just like us." "Yeah."

This nostalgic post about the early days of the Internets. I find it difficult to picture a world without lolcats. I mean, obviously I know it existed, I was ALIVE, but still. Weird.

Health care! Granted, I'm Canadian so I already had it, but still, hurrah. (The Stupak Amendment is still getting me down, though.)

This. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Baby otters.

... my mother just poked her head into my bedroom to inform me that she stole a turkey. I think the poor woman may finally be cracking under the stress.


* The Iron Giant is also something I get absurdly teary over. Actually, E.T. and The Iron Giant are pretty much the same story, except one has kids riding bicycles into the moon and the other one has, um, atomic bombs. I think The Iron Giant is a better story overall, but I don't remember watching it in a pair of footie pajamas so E.T. has the upper hand when it comes to turnin' on the waterworks.

** His parents are Ukrainian-Canadian (hence the single-vowel name), he was raised partly in London, and he spent a good lot of his college years in Prague. Try to imagine what that sounds like. Then add a drawl, expressive hand gestures, a look of vague disdain, and a little black cap. Yep. TERRIFYING.

*** No, really, that's how I said it.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. It's possibly because I watched Velvet Goldmine and found myself longing for an era, however brief, when sexual ambiguity and gender bending were actually cool. Or it could be because I watched Velvet Goldmine and rediscovered my little boy crush on Ewan McGregor. Either way, I feel the need to get this off my spindly little shoulders.

( This is long. Very long, in fact. )

( And a complimentary comic about David Bowie. For giggles. )

* Unless you are a member of boy_touching or go to the same parties I do.

** Or the people who say that the existence of the aforementioned knuckle-draggers means that queer women are accepted by the mainstream. That is not acceptance, people, that is objectifying ickiness. Kind of like how a bird is not a cat.

*** Seriously, what high school did these people go to? More importantly, why couldn't I have gone too?

**** Or Tim Curry in fishnets, because the man's got a killer pair of legs.