It was an odd, random question, but as ice-breaking inquiries go, that one is a lot better than “Top or bottom?” or “Is it true what they say about black men?” I’ll allow the question, I thought to myself.

My response: “It would have to be a three-way tie between dogs, seals and penguins. When I’m in Australia, I add possums and koalas, and after my recent trip to Chiangmai, I’m more into monkeys and elephants than ever.”

Him: “My favorite animal is the human.”

His announcement came across like the only correct answer to what had been a trick question (though that was probably just my own insecurity getting the best of me). Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Maybe because as glad as I am to be a human being, people don’t necessarily fall anywhere near the top of my must-love list.

As I wrote that last sentence, I was reminded of an interview I once read with staunch animal-rights activist Brigitte Bardot. “People make me sick with their petty little lives,” she said, explaining why she loves her pets more than she does humans. I understand where she was coming from (I’ve been known to have a short fuse myself when it comes to human behavior), though I don’t think it’s necessary to put one above the other in that regard.

I also get that animals elicit a very strong reaction in some people, which is why I let patience rule when someone overreacted to the Facebook photos of my recent elephant trek in Chiangmai, Thailand. Her scolding commentary was something along the lines of “How can you do that? Don’t you know how those animals are mistreated?”

Do you? I wondered. She was basing her disapproval entirely on second-hand knowledge she’d received from God knows what source, not an actual visit to Thailand to see for herself. The mahouts at the conservation center I went to in Chiangmai treated their charges formerly filed under “pachyderms” like members of their immediate families. I got the distinct impression that Deng could spend all day with his elephant Oz, just the two of them, and not want for human company.

While I’m fully aware that elephants aren’t treated well everywhere, I wasn’t interested in hearing a sermon about a place this person had never been to from her pulpit on the other side of the world. As I read her opening and closing arguments, I wondered the same thing I do when I see photos and videos of PETA activists dousing animal-fur-wearing passersby with red paint: Does their peace-on-earth-goodwill-to-animals rhetoric apply to ones with whom they can have two-way conversations.

I’m not criticizing animal-rights crusades — or crusaders — in general. Somebody needs to speak up for animals that don’t have their own voice, but extremism in all forms and close-mindedness both vex me, especially when the extremists and the close-minded are not willing to consider dissenting points of view, or the fact that grey — in all of its many shades — is probably the most common color in the world.

One can do a lot worse than being a knee-jerk activist for what is basically a good cause, but people who maddeningly cling to black-and-white worldviews are just one of many reasons why I can’t embrace the human race in general. I’ve met far more people in my life whom I dislike or feel indifferent to than ones I like. I adore my friends, but I simply have no interest in knowing most people — regardless of how many “friends” I might have on Facebook!

It’s not that I’m a misanthrope, though I’m far more a loner than I am a certified people person. But look at it this way: When it comes to monkeys and koalas and Jack Russell Terriers, if you love them, you love them all the same. I like a Jack Russell Terrier because it’s a Jack Russell Terrier, not because of special individual qualities. When I see a bunch of koalas dozing in trees, I don’t like this one and this one, but not that one. One love fits all. My appreciation of humans is far more complicated — and limited. I don’t love all of them, just the ones I love.

Also, humans have a distinct advantage, which can actually put them at a disadvantage. To a large degree, they’re valuable to me because I can communicate with them using oral language. A baby doesn’t have to say anything to make me think he or she is adorable, for me to fall in love at first sight. But with the gift of speech comes the responsibility of communicating effectively. I wouldn’t want to be around a grown up who never says anything — or one who only makes barking noises or elephant squeals.

Then again, I’ve never had a pet, so I don’t know to what extent I could grow attached to a non-human animal. I’m pretty sure, though, that I could never fall madly in love with a monkey, and I’m certainly never going to go to bed with one. I like to think I’d do anything twice, but bestiality is one thing that will never find its way onto my bucket list. So yes, I can love people with an emotional and physical intensity that’s reserved strictly for humans, but I’m far more selective in my appreciation of them.

“My favorite animal is the human” was a good answer, one that definitely made me want to continue the dialogue, one that made me think enough to write this post, but it’s also one that I can’t quite adopt for myself. My love of people is too conditional, and the ones I can do without outnumber the ones in whose presence I delight by too great a margin for me to play favorites in favor of the human.

I’ll take an elephant to go, please.

The post Pets Vs. People: Would I Rather Spend the Day with an Elephant? appeared first on The Faster Times.

That was the name of a Roxette greatest hits compilation from 1995. In addition to being one of the best albums titles ever, it pretty much sums up my social attitude. My friend Mara and I once had a groan-fest about first-date interviews, or what we called the getting-to-know-someone phase of relationships. If only we could hand over our resumes beforehand to save ourselves the trouble of going through the motions every time. In love and songs, the chorus can’t come quickly enough!

In regular conversation, too. I love it when people get right to the chorus, cutting out all of the small talk leading up to it. One of the more interesting conversations I’ve had with someone I’d never met and probably would never meet again was a heated argument at a Christmas party in 1997. I can’t recall where the guy was from, what he did for a living, his name (neither of which I probably ever asked), or how we’d immediately landed on the subject of Mariah Carey. She’d recently released “Butterfly,” which, in my opinion, was her best album to date, and I didn’t have a problem saying so.

“Are you kidding?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “Mariah Carey is terrible.”

“Sometimes, yes, but she really has improved with her latest album. It’s much less adult contemporary and more R&B/hip hop. It’s unexpectedly quite good.” I listed the best songs — “The Roof” and “Breakdown,” for starters — hoping to make my point.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi5oxzttjgo&ob=av2e

“Oh my God!” he said, making a face. “It’s awful. It’s the same thing she’s always done.”

“Really? You think so. Have you listened to it?”

“Not the whole thing. I could never listen to an entire Mariah Carey album. But I hate the single, so I’d probably hate the album, too.”

I pointed out that dismissing an album as being terrible if you haven’t even bothered to listen to it is like writing a film review based on the trailer. We spent a half hour immersed in debate, until my friend Rick walked up.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re discussing Mariah Carey’s new album. I love it, and he hates it, though he hasn’t actually heard it.”

Rick agreed with me, but he thought this was neither the time nor the place. Kiss and make up, and talk about simple things, he suggested. Busted by the conversation police! I told Rick that it wasn’t like anyone was even paying attention to us. He was free to go elsewhere to be entertained, which he did.

Later on, after the guy and I shook hands and agreed to disagree, I overheard Rick talking to someone. “So what do you do?”

“‘What do you do?’ That’s your idea of appropriate party banter,” I asked him on the way out.

“You can tell a lot about a person based on what they do for a living.”

“Oh, really? Despite the fact that most people work at jobs they hate, jobs that have very little to with who they are?” I was certain that I’d learned more about that guy based on his critique of a Mariah Carey album he hadn’t even heard than I would have from any job description.

Days later, I recounted the story to my friend Dave, who was on Team Jeremy. “If you’re really so interested in getting to know someone, why not cut out all of the BS questions and ask, ‘What are you all about?’”

That’s exactly what Kevin did the second time we saw each other, in 2004. We’d met the previous Friday night after being introduced by my friend Jose. On Saturday night, when he had me to himself, he put his arm around me and asked, “So what’s your story?”

I had no idea where to start, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t. It wasn’t the best question ever, but it was different. He was interested in getting to know me better, and that’s what he did over the next few months. He eventually learned my story, which he could have found out that second night by insisting that I answer his question, but it was revealed organically, over the course of conversations we had about movies we went to see together, like “Garden State” and “I Heart Huckabees.”

Maybe my distaste for the laundry-list-of-predictable-questions way of getting to know me comes from my journalism career, during which I’ve always been the one doing the asking. The Q&A-as-conversation format feels too much like work, and I’m the one doing the heavy lifting. There’s got to be a more interesting way to get to know me, one with less verse and more chorus.

Of course, not all ice-breaking questions are created equally. Some actually make me want to keep the conversation going, like “Where did you put all of that food?”, which a woman in London once asked after seeing me devour a huge three-course meal. Another woman I met at the Peel on my very first night out in Melbourne back in 2010 led with “Why are all gay guys so good-looking?” I didn’t agree, but I welcomed the change of conversational pace.

Of all the people I’ve met since I first arrived in Bangkok last year, one of my favorites is a guy who refused to tell me where he is from, or ask where I’m from because he didn’t want our impressions of each other to be tainted by cultural stereotypes. After months of not knowing, I found out by accident the other night that he is French. I wonder how I’d feel about him now had I known that all along. I think one of the reasons I’m so wary of “Where are you from?” is because I don’t want people making immediate stereotypical assumptions about who I am based on how I answer, which is why I understand why someone from Paris might want to keep it hush-hush.

Like people from all countries, I’m guilty of falling back on mundane questions from time to time, but I try to be creative. Recently, I asked a guy if he was aware that he and his boyfriend look like brothers, which to me was far more pressing than finding out where he was from (Paris, by the way, and yes, he was aware). I stopped short of wondering out loud if dating someone who looks exactly like you is the ultimate form of narcissism.

I’m not sure when the Q&A became the preferred method of getting to know me. Perhaps it was like this all along, only the Q’s changed. Most conversations back home began with “What do you do?”, which is the American version of “Where are you from?”, the Bangkok ice-breaker that I hear at least a dozen times daily. Oh, to be asked, “What are five movies/albums that changed your life?”, just to pick up the pace and get to the chorus. My response would not only tell you a lot more about me than where I call home, or what I do, but it would probably include that information, too.

Sometimes when I meet new people, I immediately say, “Hi, I’m Jeremy, a journalist from New York City, and I’m living here because I like it here” to save them the trouble and to get to the chorus, which rarely ever comes because I’ve interrupted their recycled melody. I’ve stolen all of their material, and they’ve got nothing left to sing.

As much as I gripe about it, I do understand why someone would see me, a black man living in countries where there are few black people, and want to know where I’m from, though I can live without the ones who burst into song — “Start spreading the news…” — when I answer New York City. My brother Alexi says I can’t expect every conversation to be as interesting as tossing bon mots back and forth with Oscar Wilde, which actually sounds like it would be kind of tedious. I know that he’s right, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to get to the chorus right away.

“Where are you from?” is the sort of question that’s more tolerable as the bridge, when it’s part of a longer composition by someone who actually seems interested in making it a memorable duet, and not just used as an interlude, a small-talk device, intended to break the silence between me and the cab driver, me and the massage therapist, or me and the woman selling me a mobile phone on the fourth floor of MBK shopping mall in Bangkok. I answer as best as I can, then I pray for the rest of the business transaction to be conducted in silence.

Not that all business transactions need be done in silence. On my flight from Melbourne to Bangkok last month, I had a conversation with one of the flight attendants, who noticed my “Mr. Perfect” t-shirt, as I was heading to the toilet.

“Did you buy that t-shirt yourself, or did someone give it to you as a gift?”

I didn’t know where she was going with this, but I was dying to know. “I bought it for myself.” I had a feeling that was the wrong answer, and I was right.

“Oh, no! You must never say that. When someone asks, you must always say that you got it as a gift. You don’t want anyone to think that you think you’re ‘Mr. Perfect.’”

Though I’d just returned from the bathroom, I almost peed myself. If only wearing my “Mr. Perfect” t-shirt always elicited such interesting questions! As ice breakers go, it doesn’t get much better than that, and she never asked where I am from, what I do for a living, or why I was going to Bangkok.

Now that’s one hell of an instant chorus!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC7V9dn1rC8

(Please visit — and “like” — my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Theme.for.Great.Cities.)

The post Talk That Talk: Memorable Conversations I’ve Had with Perfect Strangers appeared first on The Faster Times.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And a lot? Well, it gives me carte blanche to tell it like it is. So without further procrastination, everything you’ve always wanted to know about gay love and lust but were afraid to ask!

Can you find Mr. Perfect online? Consider this: Many of those bodies shamelessly displayed on Manhunt are the same ones crowding your local dance floor on any given Saturday night. Every gay guy has a profile somewhere. Many have messaged me on Manhunt after seeing me shake my groove thing live, and a weekend night at the Peel in Melbourne, or DJ Station in Bangkok, can feel sort of like a Grindr convention.

Sure most of the cruisers on Grindr right now aren’t looking for love, but neither are the ones cruising on Grindr while ordering from the bar at the Cock in NYC. Bottom line: It’s not where you meet him. It’s what he does after you do.

Should you sleep with him on the first date? The dynamics of gay relationships differ greatly from those of straight ones. Holding out until you’re sure he loves you — or that he’s looking for more than a hit and run — won’t necessarily make you potentially better husband material in his eyes. But it might make him think you’re not that into him, at least that was my experience during my four and a half years in the gay playground known as Buenos Aires.

As the old saying goes, men need to make love to feel love, women need to feel love to make love. So if two men are involved — well, you know where this is heading. But this isn’t “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” We’re all adults here. Don’t do anyone you don’t want to do.

Once again going from personal experience (okay, a few first-nighters too many), it’s sometimes better to get sex out of the way before the first date. If there ends up being a first date at all, at least you already know you’re more or less sexually compatible, and you can just relax and enjoy the company rather than spending the entire evening wondering where you’ll end up, just in whose bed.

Will he be there (in the morning)? Though it’s nice when he is (granted that you weren’t viewing him through beer goggles the night before), just because men don’t leave before the sun comes up, doesn’t mean they won’t exit without warning some other time, today, tomorrow, next week, or 30 or more sunrises and sunsets from now.

“I wanna go to bed with arms around me, but wake up on my own,” Dido sang in the opening lyrics of her 2008 single “Don’t Believe in Love.” Indeed, sometimes a hasty exit on his part can be a true blessing. You don’t have to run to the bathroom to tidy up of before he wakes up, or come up with a good excuse why he can’t linger when he does.

Top or bottom? If he has to ask, clearly he’s the latter.

To f**k or not to f**k? Personally, I prefer kisses and cuddles only. Years ago, a guy told me, in the throes of afterglow, that he could tell I’m not gay for the sex. I didn’t take it as an insult, and I don’t think he intended it as one. It was merely an innocent observation, and a dead-accurate one, too.

Now here’s where things get a little graphic. If a guy’s primary motive is to get you inside of him — and you can always tell by the way he shakes his ass during foreplay — chances are he’ll never love you for your mind. And if all he wants is to get inside of you, there’s plenty more where you came from, because let’s be honest: On the dance floor, on Manhunt, on Grindr, bottoms are often cheaper, and more prevalent, than a dime a dozen. If you won’t give in to him, he’ll simply find someone who will, and why would anybody want a lover like that?

What should you think of a guy who’d let you do him without a condom? This one is easy. If he’d let you in through his back door without protection, or without really knowing who is knocking, chances are he’d let anybody do it. Run — from him, or too your stash of condoms! Better yet, just run!

Does size matter? For some, sadly, yes, but only when he’s got nothing else to offer, like one original thought going through his mind. Is it true what they say about black men? That’s your burning question? Time to cross someone else off of my to-do list!

Is it in his kiss? Let’s put it this way: If the lips don’t fit, the people they’re attached to won’t either. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he kisses you: what he had for dinner, whether he flosses, and if it’s worth your time going ’round the bases with him.

Boxers or briefs? I’ve always found it much more comfortable to go commando during sex.

Was it good for you? If either of you have to ask, it probably wasn’t. And if you’re still doing it, what are you doing here then?

The post More Truths About Love, Lust, Sex and Gay Men appeared first on The Faster Times.

The last time I heard that one was two years ago when my best friend and I accidentally ended up in the “quiet car” of an Amtrak train in New York City’s Penn Station bound for Washington D.C. Don’t speak? Nothing makes you want to say something more than being told that you can’t.

But a little vow of silence never hurt anyone. Indeed, the zipping of the lips seems to have done wonders for those Buddhist monks I encountered in Thailand, and I like to think that the peaceful, serene aura that hovered over them like a halo inspired my own recently newfound composure and self-possession, from the outside in.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never taken a vow of silence that lasted more than five minutes. If I had, though, the ideal time for me to take it would have been before last Thursday’s post-mortem lunch with my ex.

I don’t believe this type of meeting ever goes well. The last one I had, on Valentine’s Day almost exactly 10 years ago, was more superfluous than disastrous — it added nothing to the love story, interrupted. But when you find yourself having an out of body experience mid-conversation, floating above the table, admonishing your seated self — “Why are you still talking? Shaddap you face!” — it becomes painfully obvious that strong and silent can be a far more flattering social pose than annoyingly loquacious, darting from topic to topic like some Olympian conversationalist.

Ugh!

In a classic case of too little too late, I haven’t said more than a few words since I hugged my ex goodbye and wished him well. Sure there has been the odd “thank you,” ‘have a nice day,” “my Wi-Fi isn’t working,” “one for the 1.30 showing of The Artist,” to supermarket workers, to one of the ladies who answers the phone at my building’s reception desk, to the guy selling movie tickets at Kino Cinemas in the Melbourne CBD, but not much more coming out of my mouth aside from an occasional yawn.

It’s been so long since I’ve worked in an office, where “Must engage in small talk” is often part of the job description, that I sometimes forget that to speak or not to speak is mostly my prerogative. But yesterday when I was walking, solo and silent, to the supermarket, it dawned on me: I hadn’t had a single live full-length face-to-face conversation, or uttered more than one sentence in one sitting (or standing), in nearly a week.

Do emails count? One of the reasons I hadn’t even noticed my physical silence is because my days had been filled with communication. I’d been writing emails, posting Facebook status updates, tweeting, sending text messages and even instant messaging (which I rarely do, but I must have subconsciously been overcompensating for my lack of vocal participation in everyday life), so while no one has heard a peep out of me, that doesn’t mean they haven’t heard from me.

But are you talking if you aren’t saying anything? Have all the rules changed in the 21st century, this age of semi-anonymous communication by machinery? Our capacity for holding face-to-face conversations has been diminishing for more than a decade now. Perhaps in the future, voices will be necessary only for singers and for actors who want to be stars in the era of talkies?

Is The Artist, which, appropriately, I saw a few days into my silent phase, as prescient as it is enjoyable? Although it’s not so much a silent move — there’s lot of music, loud music — as one that’s devoid of audible conversations, if you tilt your head and look at it a certain way, the strong contender for the Best Picture Oscar can be seen as a companion piece of sorts to The King’s Speech, last year’s winner that was all about the gift of gab and whose lead character, like George Valentin in The Artist, was similarly crippled by difficulty speaking. Was The Artist so enjoyable because no one in it spoke out loud? Would I have loved Jean Dujardin’s performance so much if he had been as chatty as George Clooney in The Descendants?

And what about me at this very moment? Have you broken your vow of silence if you are still making noise as your fingers furiously strike your laptop keyboard, racing to keep up with your thoughts? Tap tap tap… tap tap… tap tap… tap tap tap… Since I stopped talking, these are the sort of questions that have joined the cluster of thoughts already crowding and boggling my mind.

Use it or lose it. That’s what they say. I don’t know if it applies to the voice, too, but lest I become a mute, yesterday when I realized that I hadn’t really spoken in five days, I turned up my iPod and sang along, out loud. “There ain’t nobody better, oh, baby baby, we belong togetheeeeerrrrr.”

I didn’t sound nearly as good as Mariah Carey, but at least I could still let out an off-pitch squeal that, judging from the stares I received from passersby, was probably just as bad as whatever I was babbling to my ex about during my last full-on conversation.

Before you assume that I’m turning into some Greta Garbo-esque recluse, I’m not. (Though I’ve always imagined that someday, if I make it to 80, I would disappear into my ivory tower, never to be heard again.) I have people to talk to, a loose social circle, but even the life of the party needs to take some time off now and then.

Following the double-header of last Wednesday’s Soundgarden concert (I tried so hard to emulate Chris Cornell, it’s a wonder that I didn’t end up with laryngitis, which, come to think of it, wouldn’t have been the worst that could have happened, considering what did happen the next day) and Thursday’s ill-fated lunch, I needed some time to sit still, alone, in silence.

Which is pretty much what writers do anyway. As anyone who saw Young Adult knows, it can be one of the loneliest professions, one with lots of typing and very little talking. But the interesting twist is that no matter what our mouths are doing, writers are constantly communicating — with words, if not, George Valentin-style, with over-the-top mugging. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to differentiate sometimes between what we’ve written and what we’ve said.

One of the more interesting lessons that I’ve learned from my six days (so far) of silence is that being a writer isn’t so different from being an actor. We both hide behind masks of a sort. For actors, it’s a character. For writers, it’s words, beautiful, florid, powerful words, expressing all those things that many of us wouldn’t dare say out loud. But from the safety of behind our laptops, we erase our self-imposed boundaries.

Actors say that listening and reacting are the most important technical aspects of acting. It’s similar for writers: Say less, and you’ll listen more, you’ll see more, you’ll have more to write about. I will talk again — that’s a vow — but for now, I think I’ll just continue to enjoy the silence, my own, and all of the mental benefits that come with it.

The post Shaddap You Face: Why a Vow of Silence Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea appeared first on The Faster Times.

In recent months, she’s had to endure the break-up of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher, anorexia (reportedly), exhaustion (supposedly) and a scary reaction to nitrous oxide (in the form of “whip-its”) in her Beverly Hills home that sent her into convulsions and to the hospital via ambulance on January 23.

To put it bluntly but somewhat delicately, aside from helping to launch the current Hollywood cougar craze when she began dating Kutcher, 33, in 2003, things haven’t been going particularly well publicly for the 49-year-old actress since Kutcher was still a teenager. Her career has been mostly on ice since the ’90s, and before the cracks in her marriage to Kutcher started to show, she was newsworthy mostly for having the smokin’ body of an ingenue half her age.

That’s around the age one would expect someone to be who would require medical attention for “whip-it”-induced convulsions. The low-budget drug, most popular with kids half Kutcher’s age, produces a quick burst of euphoria, due to its nitrous oxide content (that’s the chemical compound also known as “laughing gas”). Though this isn’t the kind of stuff that anyone should be inhaling outside of a dentist’s office, it’s commonly used by college-age kids to acquire a quick high.

Couldn’t Moore have made an emergency appointment to the dentist if she was looking for a chemically induced laugh? Instead, she ended up being treated by paramedics at her home and being taken to the hospital, where the official reason given for her condition was exhaustion. But apparently, that’s not code for “whip-its” alone. According to the recently released 911 tape, “She smoked something — it’s not marijuana, but it’s similar to incense.” If exhaustion was involved, it’s not the kind you feel after a hard day at work on a movie set.

Moore has a well-documented history of substance abuse (she spent time in rehab in the ’80s at the urging of her “St. Elmo’s Fire” director Joel Schumacher), so it’s hardly surprising that she may have fallen back into old habits. The day after her trip to the hospital, she checked into a facility where she is reportedly being treated for substance abuse and anorexia, though the official reason is “to treat exhaustion and improve her overall health.”

Considering what must be the precarious state of Moore’s mental health, one wonders how she feels about her latest release, which won’t be shown in theaters, or on TV, but is already available for screening all over YouTube. I’m referring to that tape of an unidentified friend’s 911 call on her behalf.

A few things stand out about the tape, one in which Moore doesn’t actually make an appearance. First, the 911 workers seem to be totally clueless, about how to handle a medical emergency expediently, and to the fact that they’re dealing with a celebrity, even after one of Moore’s friends refers to her by her first name. Second, even in a life-and-death situation, one of her friends still seems to reluctant to reveal the star’s age.

But the biggest shocker of all: that this tape was made public in the first place and ended up all over YouTube — with cumulative views only in the thousands after three days, which is good or bad news for Moore, depending on how you look at it.

Does doctor-patient confidentiality apply to 911 calls? And how do these things go public anyway? Is someone on the inside pilfering confidential tapes and selling them to the highest bidder? If I were Moore, I’d demand a thorough investigation and start calling my lawyers. That 911 call may have saved her life, but it’s not doing her reputation any favors.

Although I could never condone making money or gaining enjoyment from someone else’s misfortune, I think the tape might actually do some good, though not necessarily for Moore or her rep, unless she appears on the cover of People magazine in six months, under the headline “How I Kicked Drugs and Got Over Ashton.”

But for those who watch any of the YouTube videos, they are powerful reminders that drugs can kill (even when they are as innocuously named as “whip-its”) and cautionary tales on how not to push 50 gracefully.

Fortunately, Moore is still around to get that part right. May the next big drama in her life be one with “For Your Consideration” attached to it.

(Read what I once told Anderson Cooper about Demi and Ashton here: http://jeremyhelligar.blogspot.com/2012/01/and-we-said-it-wouldnt-last-what-i-once.html)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgX4ICh1wQc&feature=player_embedded

The post Demi Moore’s Best Drama in Years, for All the Wrong Reasons appeared first on The Faster Times.

What is this? “Gone with the Wind”?

As a writer, I despise ungrammatical speaking, and I sometimes wish that black-themed films that take place in another place and time would take a cue from films set in non-English-speaking countries where all of the characters speak perfect English (2008′s Best Picture Oscar nominee “The Reader,” for example), but I get it. It’s supposed to add color to the screenplay. No one would dare dis “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” a fantastic book set in Florida in the early 20th century, for the dialogue of its black characters, which is sometimes tough to slog through.

While I didn’t have a problem with the way the title characters spoke in “The Help,” I don’t think the film would have lost much if Viola Davis had spoken in her normal voice, which is actually quite mellifluous in grammatically correct mode. In “Eat Pray Love,” it was almost as lovely as all of those international vistas that Julia Roberts kept trekking to.

Now a similar criticism is being lobbed at the episode of “The Young and the Restless” that aired on January 5 on CBS. In it, Harmony, a recovering drug addict portrayed by Daytime Emmy winner Debbi Morgan, who played Pine Valley Hospital Chief of Staff Angie Hubbard in her previous role on “All My Children,” referred to Phyllis Newman, her boss, as “Miss Phyllis.” (Important note: She was speaking to another character, not to Phyllis herself.)

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, and I’d pretty much forgotten about it until I started seeing complaints popping up all over soap-website message boards. The general gist of them: It’s 2012. Why is a grown black woman referring to her boss as “Miss Phyllis” when the rest of the characters, adults and kids alike, call her, simply, “Phyllis”?

Now I must admit, since Morgan’s debut on the show a few months ago, I’ve cringed several times when the character has lapsed into street speak (in much the same way that I do whenever Miranda Bailey — a skilled surgeon and a sassy black woman because, well, she sounds like one — opens her mouth on “Grey’s Anatomy”). Not only is it unnecessary for someone who has spent many years turning her life around off screen, but it’s kind of beneath an actress as skilled and intelligent as Debbi Morgan.

That said, although I understand the criticism of the “Miss Phyllis” bit, I think it’s been fueled by years of degradation and disrespect of black characters and black talent on the show. What Harmony said actually was pretty consistent with the character as written and performed up to now. I don’t see it as thinly veiled racism on the part of the writers. The two characters, Harmony and Phyllis, have developed a quick bond and respect for each other, and I saw it more as an equivalent of “Miss Thing,” a diva marker that was quite popular in the 1990s.

I have white female friends who sometimes refer to each other as “Miss [insert first name here].” It’s intended as a term of endearment as opposed to a reflection of one’s ethnicity or station in life. I have friends who call me “Mr. Jeremy” from time to time, simply to shake things up. I’ve never done it myself, but if I were to let a “Mr.” or “Miss” slip into casual conversation, it certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with my race or with the race of whomever I was speaking to. I know what decade I’m living in!

And so does Harmony, I’m sure. As I mentioned before, I see it as being more or less true to the character (which doesn’t let the writers completely off the hook — read on). She refers to Katherine Chancellor, a woman in her 80s whom everyone on the show calls by her first name, as “Mrs. Chancellor.” Hell, I’ve been doing the same since I first started watching “The Young and the Restless” with my mother in the ’70s. She’ll be “Mrs. Chancellor” to me until the day she dies — or I do.

As for “Miss Phyllis,” Harmony can call Phyllis Newman whatever she wants to — everyone else does, and usually it rhymes with “witch.” I’ve got bigger fish to fry with the character of Harmony: I think a general cleaning up of her language, particularly her pronunciation and syntax, is in order. I’m sure Debbi Morgan is trying to differentiate between this character and Angie Hubbard, whom she played for so many years, but I think she can do so without sounding like she just stepped off the set of a hip-hop video.

Rather than focusing on one small line on “The Young and the Restless,” I wish the crusade against “Miss Phyllis” would shift its focus past “Y&R” to hip-hop stars who massacre English or treat it like its their second language. More kids are listening to them and emulating them than Harmony, or Viola Davis in “The Help.”

The kids in America can use “Miss” and “Mr.” and “Mrs.” as much as they like, as long as they know that there’s a difference between “personal” and “personally,” that “I could care less” does not equal “I couldn’t care less,” and unless you’re speaking Spanish, or some other language, double negatives are just plain wrong.

The post When Black Characters Speak: Do They Need to Watch What They Say on TV and in Movies appeared first on The Faster Times.

It may have had something to do with the fact that the lead actor, Julian Shaw, reminds me so much of someone I used to love. (Who am I kidding? There’s no getting over him — yet.) Oddly enough, the 26-year-old author, actor and filmmaker even shares my ex’s December 16th birthday. But most of all, it’s the story itself. Boy meets, uh, someone. Boy shops, holidays and quarrels with someone. Boy introduces someone to his parents. Boy loses mom. Boy grieves. Boy rides a rollercoaster. Boy proposes to someone who happens to also be a boy. The moral of the story: Love is love, regardless of sexual orientation.

That’s a lesson that’s more valuable than all of the stupid pet tricks on YouTube combined. But despite my admiration of the video on an aesthetic and socio-political level, something about it never quite sat right with me. The other day it was revealed to me that Shaw, the one who reminds me so much of my ex, is actually straight.

Eureka! Now I’ve got it!

The fact that the video focuses on the half of the couple who could pass for straight and not his more gaydar-arousing significant other speaks volumes. The fact that the lead actor is a straight guy from New Zealand practically shouts it from the roof top: Gay people are most acceptable when they’re conforming to straight standards, or are, in fact, straight. Although the video has several thousand “dislikes” on YouTube, I don’t know a single straight person who has anything but love for it.

I wonder how the ad would have been received had the couple been totally camp. Or two extremely butch dykes. What if the main character had been more Jack McFarland than Will Truman? On TV, the Jacks of the world are more palatable to the masses when they’re making us laugh, but in reality, they don’t exist solely for comic relief. They fall in love, too. Don’t those who fit into the more stereotypical portion of the gay and lesbian spectrum deserve the right to marry just as much as gays and lesbians who could be mistaken for straight?

Of course, they do. And I am 100 percent certain that most of the straight people I know would agree. But what about the more than 67,000 people who “liked” the GetUp! ad? Would all of them have clicked on the thumbs up tab if the first image they’d seen had been a perfectly groomed guy with an unmistakable swish? Or if the boyfriend, whom we don’t see until the end, had been the lead.

I suppose part of what made the video such a sensation was the “The Crying Game” effect. You didn’t necessarily know that the main character was gay until those final frames. Straight people can watch it and walk away with some brand new knowledge: Gay people are just like us.

Only for the most part, they’re not. Now I’m not one of those hardliners who believes that gay characters can be played only be gay actors, and I applaud Julian Shaw for his support of gays and lesbians and his sexy facial hair. Everyone should be so open-minded. But casting a straight actor to represent gay men in an ad that’s supposed to be about acceptance and equal rights for gay people sort of defeats the purpose.

GetUp!’s heart was in the right place, but next time I hope they’ll choose an actor who more accurately represent the state of being gay — onscreen and off. It’s not necessarily campy, or “straight acting,” but somewhere right down the middle.

The post Why Are Gay People More Acceptable When They’re Passing for Straight? appeared first on The Faster Times.

The film, which, in part, chronicles the romance of American divorcee Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII (sidebar players in the most recent Best Picture Oscar winner, “The King’s Speech”), has earned a 30 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is dangerously close to “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1″ territory (26 percent).

What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is,” sniffed the Guardian in a one-star review, while the Los Angeles Times wished Madonna would “find other creative outlets for those times when she’s bored with the pop-star life.

Despite its sound critical drubbing, the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press were impressed enough to give the film two Golden Globe nominations, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Masterpiece,” which plays as the “W.E.” credits roll. Those might not be as impressive as Best Actress in Motion Picture Comedy Or Musical — the category Madonna won for “Evita” in 1997 — but two nominations are certainly better than none.

In the Best Original Song category, she’ll face big-name competition from Elton John (“Hello Hello” from “Gnomeo and Juliet”), Chris Cornell (“The Keeper” from “Machine Gun Preacher”), Mary J. Blige (“The Living Proof” from “The Help”) and Glenn Close (the Sinead O’Connor-sung “Lay My Head Down,” for which Close wrote the lyrics, from “Albert Nobbs”).

And what about the song? It’s throwback Madonna — shades of her 1998 single “The Power of Good-bye” and the acoustic tracks on “Music,” her 2000 album — but it’s hardly throwaway. Though it’s a lovely tune, its chart chances in this age of Gaga might be practically nil. (If we were stuck in the ’90s, “Masterpiece” probably already would be No. 1 on the Hot 100.) But then, so were those of Annie Lennox’s “Into the West” (from “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”), and that song still went on to win the Best Original Song Oscar in 2004.

Though the 2012 Academy Award nominees won’t be announced until January 24, if I had to pick an Oscar frontrunner from among the GG nominees, I’d go with Elton John, who already has an Academy Award for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King,” or Mary J. Blige, whose song is from a Best Picture contender and who has the sort of widespread industry respect that Madonna has never been able to muster, despite decades of gold and multi-platinum success and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Or maybe they’ll want to toss this bone to the shockingly Oscar-less Glenn Close, who’ll likely be nominated for Best Actress but has increasingly slimming chances of winning in that category. This could be the Academy’s way of thanking Close for her decades of cinematic service.

But it’s an honor just to be nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar, and if Madonna can pull that one off, she’ll finally have some legitimate validation in Hollywood, even in “W.E.” sells even fewer tickets than “Swept Away.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZpQu7-bIo

The post Can Madonna Still Win an Oscar for ‘W.E.’? appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m not saying that Tracy Morgan’s “I’m sorry” after he was blasted by gay-rights activists and straight people alike following an anti-gay stand-up routine at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in June was heartfelt. That’s between the “30 Rock” star and his handlers. Though he publicly acknowledged the insensitivity of his homophobic rant disguised as a joke in which he said he would kill his son for acting gay, an unenlightened few, including fellow comedian Chris Rock, still felt the need to rush to his defense.

Now you can add rapper T.I., who should be more focused on working on his own image and career post-prison than supporting Morgan, to the unenlightened.

In the December issue of Vibe magazine, T.I. blasted the negative reaction of gay-rights groups to Morgan’s comments. As he sees things, it’s an affront to the freedom of speech guaranteed to U.S. citizens in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“They’re like, ‘If you have an opinion against us, we’re gonna shut you down.’… That’s not American. If you’re gay, you should have the right to be gay in peace, and if you’re against it, you should have the right to be against it in peace.”

Immediately, the headlines came pouring in: “T.I. Calls Gay Activists Un-American!” and slight variations on that theme.

Whoa, Nelly! — I mean, T.I.! Where exactly did T.I. say that gay activists are un-American. What he seems to be suggesting is that denying anyone, even someone with an unpopular point of view, the right to express his or her opinion is un-American. There’s a difference.

I’m less offended by the headlines than I am by T.I.’s cluelessness regarding the dangers of First Amendment-protected homophobic rants, but those headlines are just stirring a pot that’s already at a dangerous boil. I suppose the freedom of the press promised by the almighty First Amendment protects careless headlines, too.

As for T.I., I wonder how he would react to a white comedian getting onstage and making racist cracks against black people. I’m pretty sure he and Rock and Morgan would be first in line to join the firing squad. But what about a racist’s right to free speech and his or her right to be bigoted in peace? Should black people learn to toughen up and take “nigger” jokes as cheerfully as gays, in Morgan’s words, “take a f**king dick up their ass” (as if that’s all there is to being gay)?

Of course not. They have as much right to speak out against racist speech as gay people have to speak out against homophobia disguised as comedy. And T.I. should get his facts straight: Gay activists were not the only ones who were appalled by Morgan’s comments. So were his “30 Rock” costar Tina Fey, actress Anika Noni Rose and pretty much every straight person I know.

Here’s the thing: Yes, free speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution, but I’m tired of ignorant people hiding behind the First Amendment. If you want the freedom to say what you want to say, you have to be prepared to face the consequences of saying it. There is nothing in the First Amendment that prohibits the unpopular comments that it protects from being criticized.

And furthermore, it’s time for celebrities to be more responsible for what they say and do in public. People are watching and listening. A homophobic joke that some people might view as being funny, others might view as an excuse to hold onto homophobic views and even commit acts of violence against gays and lesbians.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. But it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to watch what we say. And that also goes for headline writers hoping to lure in readers with unhealthy doses of sensationalism. The First Amendment may protect us all, but it excuses no one.

The post T.I. Vs. Gay Activists: How Shoddy Journalism Is Part of the Problem appeared first on The Faster Times.

The smell of it is in the air, competing with all of the delicious food being fried up and sold on the city’s busy sidewalks. Or in the bathroom stall of your five-star hotel!

Don’t feel like dancin’? Today is your lucky day because even if you’re traveling solo, you can get lucky without leaving the comfort of your 5-star hotel room — or with a quick elevator trip down to those spotless bathrooms in the lobby. Just leave your inhibitions in the taxi that drops you off at the front door, and let the fun and games begin!

Oh, and if you happen to be gay, you’ll need your iPhone and a profile on Grindr, that boy-meets-boy application whose geolocation device has revolutionized the international gay dating scene and is putting even more bang and cock in Bangkok. If you’re looking for fastlove, it’s the next best thing to just walking around with your junk hanging out.

The other night I learned a little more about the power of Grindr and the insatiable male sex drive when I went out for drinks with one of the guys who works at the front desk of one of Bangkok’s 5-star hotels. He told me some of the funniest, most horrifying stories I’ve ever heard. The term “guest relations” will never again have quite the same meaning for me!

So what’s all in a day’s work for this front-desk employee? Checking in guests, checking out guests, luring guests into the bathroom for clandestine on-the-clock trysts. Think Hotel and Fantasy Island crossed with Queer As Folk. I was going to include The Love Boat, but really, what’s love got to do with it?

Thanks to Grindr, there’s rarely a dull day at work. My friend is almost always logged on, even as he was telling me his stories. When he’s checking in guests, it’s with his attention divided between the job at hand and on a hand job, which he will likely score on his next break, courtesy of the iPhone perched conveniently by the keyboard. As he’s checking out incoming guests (as in sizing them up with his gaydar), he’s checking out Grindr to see who’s online.

Some of his future conquests check in solo, some with friends, some with lovers and others with their girlfriends, deepening their voices and putting on their best hetero act. So many of them, it seems, have profiles on Grindr. Minutes after sending another new guest off to his room, he glances down at Grindr to see who’s around. Hot guy alert! “25 metres away.” He starts typing.

“Hi. How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. Didn’t you just check me in?”

“Yes, that was me.”

“I had no idea you were gay.”

“I didn’t know that you were gay either.”

“Meet me in the bathroom in 15?”

“See you then!”

Though I suppose he’s only honoring the ultimate goal of his job, which is to make guests happy, I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sometimes he has this exchange several times a day, the record being, he told me, five in one shift.

Apparently, he’s not the only worker who’s fooling around on the job. Everyone does it at all of the classy Bangkok hotels, he said, and not just the gay men with the Grindr application downloaded on their iPhones. The female employees, who are all so beautiful and elegant, often go out to dinner with hotel guests before getting more intimate behind closed doors — though most likely not the one on a bathroom stall. It might be more Carrie Bradshaw than Samantha Jones, but the endgame is the same.

Alas, I’m not on Grindr, so I won’t be meeting up with any of my fellow residents unless it’s purely by accident — and aside from a hottie sighting or two in the gym, I haven’t spotted anyone worth making a special trip to the loo for. Still, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to send away that cute hotel employee who delivered the bottled water to my room a couple of weeks ago.

But who am I kidding? I’m much too shy to ever go there. I’ll be picking up my next stranger with a Jack and coke in one hand and a lame Rihanna remix pounding in my ear. In a city that’s just dripping with sexual opportunity, it’s even more certain than death and taxes. Standing on the sidelines at DJ Station can be like watching a public orgy unfold, as guys switch partners more frequently than the DJ changes songs.

And if I end up doing the walk of shame through the lobby the next morning, I’ll have to remember to hold my head higher. Everyone watching me has probably walked in my scuffed John Varvatos boots — sometimes more than once a shift!

The post Sex in 5-Star Bangkok Bathrooms: Grindr and the Workplace as the New Gay Disco appeared first on The Faster Times.