You Can Do Sidebends or Situps

“You might be in danger of losing your butt.”

Whoa. I’ve been on a bit of a buff-bridesmaid fitness kick lately, but the possibility Brian now proposes had never crossed my mind.

Buttie and I go back a long way. She burst onto the scene at John W. North High School in ’94, provoking giggles from the guys in my French class when I was called to the blackboard. (Confused about what was so fucking funny, I frantically erased and rewrote my French verbs several times.) Later the same semester, Buttie was grabbed on the stairs en route to the same French class. The perpetrator was a cute senior, a football player and—it merits mention, because butts are racial—black. I was a white freshman aspiring to coolness and, though taken aback, supposed it was a compliment.

Buttie snagged me a man in college. Oh sure, Brian’s probably stuck it out the greater part of a decade thanks to my good character, but it was Buttie that caught his eye in the dining hall of Berkeley’s Clark Kerr dormitory.

So it's worrisome to hear him now, saying, "I just don't want you to be on the J. Lo track." Apparently J. Lo has lost her butt. I hadn't noticed. But then, maybe she was ready to pass that butt torch to Jessica Biel. I can sympathize.

It was when I moved to New York after college that Buttie really started to seem like a liability. I could barely turn a corner in Brooklyn without hearing, "DAMN, where'd you get all that ass from?" One day I was harassed ten times just walking the few blocks to and from my apartment and the Hoyt/Schermerhorn A stop.

Not only did I become terribly self-conscious, I turned into a racial profiler. (I'm not going to dance around the truth here: almost all the guys who harassed me were black. No less an authority than Mixalot himself notes that "the average black man" will surely take an interest if you "pack much back".) I realized how bad the situation had become when I registered a youngish black guy approaching from a side street, and then felt great relief when I noticed he was carrying a coffee--placing him solidly outside the hindquarter harasser demographic.

These days, it's not so bad. I hear it now and then in the Bay. When we were at Hip Hop in the Park last month, I was too busy admiring a ten foot cardoon plant to notice a rapper freestyling for a camera nearby. Brian had to break it to me that Buttie had entered the guy's flow, calling up all the old ambivalences.

I don't think Brian has any reason to worry. Buttie is tenacious, and I'm really not the athletic type. Anyway, I suspect I could be a Nicole Richie stick figure and still have a badonkadonk. I checked in the mirror this morning and she there she was, undiminished.

Even if I could, would I banish Buttie?

Nah. She is me.

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Too Slicko

Tuesday I saw Michael Moore's new flick "Sicko." Yeah, I know it isn't out yet. Preview screening, bitch.

It's a very powerful movie which I recommend seeing. So kudos to Mr. Moore; I'm no hater. But something about his movies rubs me the wrong way.

His message always seems to be, Things are way simpler than you think. Here's the problem; it's super sucky. Here's the solution; it's super easy. All that's getting in the way are bad guys, but if the salt-of-the-earth heroes of the movie all band together, and you join them, even the bad guys can be overcome.

Well, that may sometimes be the case. But I get this uncomfortable feeling that Moore thinks he has to present me with a watertight oversimplification of an issue in order to convince me of its urgency.

In addition to being a little insulting to us the audience, I think this strategy actually weakens Moore's case. He spends his two hours giving you a sock in the gut, and you're left in speechless agreement. But by the next day the message wears off and your belly feels a little sore.

I guess I'm skeptical of campaigns. I would rather have an issue ripped open and explained in great depth. (And in fairness, Moore does a good bit of both regarding health insurance companies in "Sicko.")

Don't smooth the rough edges, Senor Mooro. Trust us with the messy truth.

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Walnuts v. Walnuts

I won't even get into the we-couldn't-think-of-anything bullshit passing as profundity in the Sopranos finale. I don't want to say David Chase thinks he's too cool for his own audience, but David Chase thinks he's too cool for his own audience. Also too cool for his given Italian last name. But that's not what I'm here for.

Believe it or not, there was one extraordinary development in the very last ever episode of God's supposed gift to TV viewers: the revelation of skunk-haired mobster Paulie Walnuts' aversion to cats.

Well, this slight was not taken lightly by our own beloved kitty, Paulie Walnuts. My enthusiasm for The Sopranos had not yet waned when we decided to foster a litter of kittens three years ago. Thus did the kittens become Furio, Silvio, Tony, Carmela and, of course, Paulie Walnuts.

Of the bunch, Paulie clearly grew into his name the most. (Fur, Sil and Ton moved on to other households and, like Mr. Chase, other names.) Both Paulies can go from furry and cute to unexpectedly vicious in an instant. Both love to wallow in self-pity, but are also scrappy survivors. Both have an infectious charm. And if you know the Sopranos or the Polwicks, you know the name is amenable to nicking. (See prior posts.)

All of which made the utter rejection by his namesake, not just of him, but of his entire species, utterly devastating to Little Paulie. Two legs broken in one year and now this. He's chewing the extension cord right now. It's just that hard on him.

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DEEP THOUGHTS

If the sexy never left




then why's everybody on my shit?











(Just ponder it.)

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Hot Man-On-Man Action

John Amaechi:




This guy's so gorge he's made me rethink myself. You see, I'd always found it incomprehensible the way straight men are into lesbians. They're so delusional, thought I. They don't really want to see two lesbians doing it. They want to see two straight women smooch between tequila shots.

But thanks to Gay Former NBA, I now see that I in fact would enjoy watching two men having sex, provided one of them is John Amaechi.

So, thank you, Mr. Amaechi. Thank you for having a British accent AND being able to palm a basketball. You are a great ambassador for gayness.

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