"What Was Gay?/In an increasingly accepting world, homosexual men are all too eager to leave their campy, cruising past behind."

"But the price of equality shouldn’t be conformity," writes J. Bryan Lowder in a long Slate essay, which I got to after watching the video at "Cover Girl Don’t Cover Boy: A Transformative Conversation on Drag’s Role in Gay Culture" (which ends with a reference to one of my all-time favorite movies, "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion").

From the "What Was Gay" essay:

This move away from broad-brush gay stereotypes is wise to a point. Ascribing an obligatory cultural component to homosexuality has caused a range of problems, from the merely annoying Oh you’re gay? Let’s go shopping!–variety to the more pernicious example of admission to safer, queer-only housing in prison being determined based on tests of “gay insider” knowledge or behaviors that not all queer people necessarily possess. Clearly, a person’s homosexuality should not be taken as evidence of any special affiliation, just as heterosexuals, united only by their sexual connection and propensity for procreation, are never assumed to share anything else. This has been one of the key arguments in the “we are normal” case for equality—and it’s been largely successful. Though the job is not totally complete, it feels like we are working as fast as we can to build what gay academic and activist Dennis Altman imagines in his provocatively titled The End of the Homosexual?: a world in which we no longer see “homosexuality as a primary marker of identity, so that sexual preference comes to be regarded as largely irrelevant, and thus not the basis for either community or identity.”

Let's go shopping?

"Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure."

Said Marie Kondo, author of "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing," the subject of a NYT article titled "Kissing Your Socks Goodbye/Home Organization Advice from Marie Kondo," which goes on to say:

Such anthropomorphism and nondualism, so familiar in Japanese culture, as Leonard Koren, a design theorist who has written extensively on Japanese aesthetics, told me recently, was an epiphany to this Westerner. In Japan, a hyper-awareness, even reverence, for objects is a rational response to geography, said Mr. Koren, who spent 10 years there and is the author of "Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers."

"Wabi-Sabi" got me drifting off trying to remember that Jim Kweskin song on that album we always listened to in college. What was it? Ah! The album is "Relax Your Mind." The song is "Guabi Guabi."



And that's how we relax in America, some of us anyway. Much as I'd like my house de-cluttered in some way that I might find all the more relaxing by thinking of it as Japanese, I just don't care anywhere nearly as much as I did before listening to "Guabi Guabi." How organized are Jim Kweskin's closets? But back to Leonard Koren:

"Think of the kimono, and the tradition of folding... There is also the furoshiki, which is basically a square of flat cloth used daily to wrap packages. Folding is deep and pervasive in Japanese culture. Folding is a key strategy of modular systems that have evolved because of limited living space.”

And in America:



Let's fold scarves!

"You're as cute as me. You are. In some cultures, maybe cuter."

Socks — with skirts — are a big fashion trend... but we're told not to wear them if we're over 30:

First of all, don’t even try this at home if you’re over 30; this is very much a girl’s game - and a girl with great pins, at that.

Over 30!

Well, too bad, I'm nearly twice the limit, and I've been relying on socks for nearly the length of time it would take a newborn baby to reach the limit, and nothing can stop me. But I get the point: You can do what you want, but it's not the fashion trend unless you're young enough to be entitled to believe without derangement that you're really cute.

***

Does this — Helena Bonham Carter, age 43 — seem deranged?



Can I wear these...



... when I'm over 50 and I'm operating in my law professor capacity?

***

Bonus movie dialogue:

Romy: I can't believe how cute I look.

Michele: I know!

Romy: You know what? This is, like, the cutest we've ever looked.

Michele: Oh, it's definitely the cutest.

Romy: Don't you love how we can say that to each other... and know we're not being conceited?

Michele: Oh, I know. No, we're just being honest.

***

Michele: Yeah, I let you have the ideas... so you won't feel bad that I'm cuter.

Romy: You are not cuter, Michele.

Michele: I am so cuter. It's, like, common knowledge, Romy. Everybody thinks so. I'm the Mary and you're the Rhoda.

Romy: That's Ridiculous. You're the Rhoda. You're the Jewish one.

Michele: Oh, my God. I'm talking about cuteness-wise, okay? And cuteness-wise, I'm the Mary.

Romy: That's crazy! You have absolutely no proof that you're cuter!

***

Michele: I can't stand that we're mad at each other. Okay, I'm sorry I said all those things. You're as cute as me. You are. In some cultures, maybe cuter.

"Curt Schilling? The Red Sox great pitcher of the bloody sock?"

Martha Coakley blunders horribly/hilariously, either not knowing who Curt Schilling is or — if you believe her spokesman's explanation — making the dumbest "very, very deadpan" wisecrack in political history. If it's any consolation, Martha, I didn't know who Curt Schilling is either. Bloody sock sounded interesting. I had to look it up. Now, would you excuse me? I cut my foot before and my shoe is filling up with blood.

A nighttime walk down 6th Street in Austin.

Here's what we saw from the sidewalk as we walked down 6th Street after the movie:







What movie? Why, it was "Girlie Night" at the Alamo Drafthouse, and — it was my birthday — we saw the 1997 cult classic "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." For added birthday festivity, we sat in one of the 2 private balconies, in leather recliners, and ate chili and drank Guinness.