If, before last night, I’d known that Wet Hot American Summer featured a gay sex scene with Bradley Cooper getting fucked in the ass, I would have watched it long ago.

That is all.

The Inexplicable Survivors of a Widespread Epidemic:

It has been 16 years since Mr. Brothers learned he was H.I.V. positive. Since then, he has never taken AIDS drugs or had any illnesses associated with the disease. Despite his good fortune, Mr. Brothers says he feels isolated.

“I don’t identify with people who are H.I.V. negative because I’m not,” he said. “I could infect someone. I don’t identify with the positive people, because I don’t have to deal with my health and medications and the things they have to worry about.”

Once a month Mr. Brothers visits the laboratory of Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who is director of the university’s laboratory for tumor and AIDS virus research. Since the epidemic began in 1981, Dr. Levy has been trying to understand why Mr. Brothers and others who are H.I.V. positive can remain medicine-free yet fit for decades, while the average person with H.I.V. progresses to AIDS within 10 years, if untreated.

Weekly TV series I regularly watched before I met Matt:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
Smallville

Weekly TV series I regularly watch now:

Desperate Housewives
Veronica Mars
American Idol
Smallville
Jack & Bobby
Lost
Alias
The West Wing
Joey
Will & Grace
Saturday Night Live
The Daily Show (x4)

Granted, I used to watch Will & Grace and Saturday Night Live, but hardly regularly. I used to watch The West Wing regularly, but when I met Matt I hadn’t seen it in about two years. Desperate Housewives, Veronica Mars, Lost and Jack & Bobby didn’t exist when I met Matt, but I don’t know if I’d have started watching them if not for him.

I (look forward to/dread) the arrival of June and the end of regular-season broadcasting.

The U.K. has a general election tomorrow. The British system of government has always confused me – you mean it’s not written down?* you mean the Prime Minister can call an election whenever he wants? – so I decided to do a little research. Someone posted a nice overview of the British system as a comment on Matt P.’s blog.

I also found this on Wikipedia:

The term of a Prime Minister is linked to the term of Members of the House of Commons. Parliament has a maximum term of five years [ever since the Parliament Act of 1911]; in practice, however, it is usually “dissolved” sooner by the Sovereign, acting on a request from the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister normally chooses the moment most advantageous to his or her party for the dissolution. In some circumstances, however, the Prime Minister may be compelled to dissolve Parliament (or, if he or she prefers, to resign) by the House of Commons. The House may attempt to force the dissolution by passing a Motion of No Confidence or by rejecting a Motion of Confidence. The same effect is achieved if the House of Commons rejects the Budget (“withdraws Supply”), or if it rejects some other important component of the Government’s agenda. Such defeats for the Government, however, are rare; there have only been three defeats on confidence issues since the nineteenth century: twice in 1924, and once in 1979. …

Whatever the reason… the dissolution is followed by general elections. If his or her party has lost a majority in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister is compelled to resign (or request a dissolution, but the Sovereign is not compelled to accept such a request). The leader of the party or coalition now in the majority is then appointed Prime Minister by the Sovereign. …

Much more fascinating stuff about the British political and constitutional system here, here and here.

* Turns out some of it is written down.

Separated at birth?

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof

and Desperate Housewives actor Steven Culp.

You may recall that a few days ago I was denied acceptance by Google AdSense. After reading some of the comments to that entry, I emailed Google AdSense yesterday afternoon.

I ask you to reconsider your decision not to allow my site (http://www.tinmanic.com) to use Google AdSense. Your program policies list “excessive profanity” as a reason to deny use of Google AdSense. Yet a search of other sites that use Google AdSense reveals that exceptions are being made to this policy: see http://www.dooce.com, for instance. Do a Google search on “site:dooce.com f**k” or “site:epenthesis.org f**k” and you will find profanity on such sites.

My blog was named last week by The Advocate magazine, the nation’s foremost gay and lesbian magazine, as one of ten “must-read blogs” – see this list: http://www.advocate.com/current_story_1_w.asp?id=15772

I write about personal issues, political issues, social issues, theater, and more. And my use of profanity is sparing.

Therefore, I ask that you please reconsider the decision not to allow my site to make use of Google AdSense.

Thank you,
[me]

I received the following response this afternoon:

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for your continued interest in Adsense. Our AdSense representatives review all AdSense applications according to our Terms and Conditions (http://www.google.com/adsense/terms) and our program policies (http://www.google.com/adsense/policies). I apologize if the prior disapproval of your application was made in error.

I have now reviewed and confirmed that www.tinmanic.com meets all of our policies. Your application has been approved. Please check for a separate application approval email for your records. The approval email also includes detailed instructions on how to access your new account and get started.

And the official approval email is in my inbox as well.

I’m pretty impressed that they took my appeal seriously. It’s nice that organizations have a mechanism to re-examine such things. Thanks, Google AdSense!

During my lunch break, I walked over to the library to return a book. I walked through a park and saw two big groups of children playing. They must have been 5 or 6 years old. And I thought – it’s conceivable that some of them could live into the 22nd century. There are undoubtedly people alive today who will live until at least the year 2100.

There are times when I find myself thinking, wow, I’m 31 years old? I remember when 30, let alone 31, seemed OLD. Old old. So often I live in the present – or at least in the present phase of my life, i.e. Newark and New York City in the first decade of this century – that I forget the other lives I’ve lived in the past. A high school student in Japan. A college student in Virginia. A little kid in the suburbs. Wow, I’ve lived a lot so far.

I will turn 80 in 2053. I hope I manage to live until at least the halfway point of this century. It would be nice to live even into the 2060s. Of course, by then, barring unforeseen (albeit likely) technological advances, I’ll be a doddering old fool, out of sync with the times, just like how Miss Daisy seems much more suited to those big elegant 1940s Buicks than those ugly early 1970s cars. The kids will be cyberporting around with their identity chips in their heads, and I will be old and lost, pining for the old pre-millennial days, while people laugh at me.

Hopefully, in the 2000s and 2010s and 2020s and 2030s and 2040s and into the 2050s, lots of great stuff will have happened over my lifetime to make it all worthwhile.

The Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

This is idiotic (just like the ban on gay blood donors). So I guess it would also be wrong for a so-called “ex-gay” man to get married and start a family, right?

Also, if genes play a part in homosexuality, this comes awfully close to eugenics, even if that’s not the stated purpose.

OutNotes has launched. It’s a collection of actual coming-out letters, and you can contribute your own. It’s worth checking “out.”

We’re in the midst of a busy few days and nights:

Last night: a small Cinco de Mayo Happy Hour at XES, where I’d never been before. In its layout, it reminded me of Barracuda, except it has a patio in the back. The place seems to have a nice vibe.

Tonight: GB:NYC2 at Barrage, where there will be many gay bloggers, including me. (Matt might not make it.)

Tomorrow night: a friend’s birthday party in Park Slope. I’m a big fan of Park Slope.

Sunday: Mother’s Day.

Monday: a private reading of Dog Sees God in preparation for an Off-Broadway production this fall. (Matt and I got to meet the playwright, Bert Royal, and his boyfriend a few weeks ago after he discovered this blog.)

Yay for busy-ness.

GB:NYC2 on Friday night was a blast. There must have been 40 or 50 bloggers at Barrage, so I can’t begin to remember everyone I met or saw.

Although this was my fourth or fifth time meeting MAK, it was the first time I actually got to have an extended conversation with him. He’s quite a trip. I also got to meet his elusive boyfriend K. There was the strikingly hot Steven. There was the totally cute and charming Accidental New Yorker. There was the incredibly sweet Homer, who was actually the first person I recognized when I walked into Barrage. There was good ol’ Jere. There was the always-fun Aaron, who took these photos. There was also this Aaron, who apparently wants to clone me. There was Brian, another sweet guy. Addaboy and I were somehow introduced to each other about five times. There was Mark, our organizer (thanks for putting together a great night!). There was the ever-sexy Glenn. There was Byrne, and Jimbo, and Jase, and Chris, and JoeMyGod, and Mzouiser (I’d always read this as rhyming with “Bouvier,” but I was wrong), and Hugo, and Robocub (short and hot), and Dogpoet (whom I’ve long admired and been in awe of), and Patch, and… I’m drawing a blank.

There was one point where, inexplicably, several guys were feeling up my chest underneath my shirt. I’m not sure why. But it was kind of hot. (Matt: feel free to do this to me whenever.)

Anyway, it was loads of fun meeting new people and spending time with friends. I can’t wait for GB:NYC3.

(And if anyone else has pictures of the event, particularly pics of me, please let me know.)

Faustus finally outed himself, because his book is out today. Congrats, Joel!

My grandma, 91 years old, had a stroke three weeks ago. One moment she was talking with a nursing home aide, and the next moment she collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and spent a couple of weeks there, where I visited her with my dad during Passover. Now she’s back in the nursing home, where my parents and my brother and I visited her on Mother’s Day. She has apparently recovered all she is going to – which is not much.

She’s confined to a bed. The left side of her body is paralyzed, and her head is turned to the right. She can hardly speak, and she can’t smile, but she can nod her head in response to questions and she seems almost completely lucid. We brought her some roses and a Mother’s Day balloon, which she looked at and seemed to appreciate. And when I gave her my hand, she squeezed it – hard.

She’s so lucid that at one point I realized she was trying to say my brother’s girlfriend’s name in order to ask where she was. (She was visiting her family in Canada.) Even debilitated by a stroke, my grandma is curious about everyone. But so much else has changed.

This is a woman who has always loved food, but because she can no longer swallow, she is now denied the pleasure of eating. Instead, she’s hooked up to an intravenous feeding tube. She also likes to read and do crossword puzzles, but she can’t do those things anymore, either. So during our visit, my dad read to her from a mystery novel.

There was a radio playing in the room, which my aunt must have brought over previously. It was playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, and the piece lasted through our entire visit. It was in a minor key, appropriately, but its agitated intellectual complexity made the visit more bearable for me.

That evening, my family went out for a Mother’s Day dinner. It was just the four of us – no girlfriend, no boyfriend, just my parents and my brother and I. I can’t remember the last time the four of us spent time together without anyone else. It was lots of fun – it was a Brazilian restaurant where they keep bringing you skewers of meat – and it reminded me of when we used to live overseas, which was a big bonding experience for our family. And yet we weren’t two parents and two kids; we were four adults, having a good time together.

It wasn’t until later that night, back in the city, comfy in bed next to a sleeping Matt, that my emotions about my grandma hit me.

One, I realized that I’m glad my grandpa never had to see my grandma in this condition. He died two and a half years ago at age 94. This would have devastated him.

Two, I thought about coming out to her. I’ve never told her I’m gay, but her death seems closer than it used to, and I sort of want her to know. But how cowardly is it to tell her something when she can’t even respond? I don’t think she’d mind that I’m gay. In fact, she might resent that I waited to tell her until she couldn’t respond. I want her to know that I’m happy and not alone. And yet – I’m still scared.

At any rate, I can’t believe that this woman – my grandma, who is stubborn, smart, overweight, loves food, never forgets a name or face, interjects comments into conversations whenever she wants, selectively hears what she wants to and ignores the rest – has been reduced to this. Lying in a hospital bed, connected to a feeding tube, communicating via nods and hand squeezes.

Tears came into my eyes, and eventually I fell asleep.

Apparently my tinmanic.com e-mail account has not been functioning since late yesterday afternoon. If you’ve sent me e-mails since that time, I haven’t received them. Please send your mail to me again at [ ] AT yahoo.com until I fix this. Ugh.

I’m looking for a new web host for my site, as my current host has been unreliable lately. I currently have 200 MB disk space, 5 GB bandwidth, a mySQL database, etc., for $5.95 a month. I’d like something with a similar price. (I need the mySQL to run WordPress.)

Any recommendations?

(Update: I have chosen site5 as my new host. I found them through some research and they have a terrific reputation. Thanks for the suggestions!)

You know how sometimes you keep meaning to blog about something, but you only remember it when you’re nowhere near a computer? Well, I’ve finally remembered something I’ve meant to blog about for a while, and I’m actually at a computer.

I really hate those Bud Light “Be Yourself” ads by Joe Phillips that appear in gay magazines. Apparently it’s okay to “be yourself” as long as you are ridiculously buff, wear tight-fitting clothes, and have perfect teeth and well-coiffed hair. In other words, you can “be yourself” as long as you look like a Chelsea clone. How utterly ridiculous.

Hey, no big deal. Gay men don’t have self-image problems, right?

They’re just ads, but they’ve pissed me off for a long time.

Now back to your regularly-scheduled whatever-you-were-doing-before-you-came-here.

I went to the Strand’s main bookstore last night for the first time in months and was pleased to see that they’ve majorly renovated and expanded the place. They’ve added an entire second floor that now contains all the art books and children’s books. And I was relieved (literally) to discover my favorite improvement: real restrooms! Before, there was only one small unisex bathroom on the first floor. It was dank, dark, smelly and right next to some cramped bookshelves, and I always felt really self-conscious doing my business within earshot of other book browsers. And the sink was outside the actual bathroom, so you had to wash your hands in full view of everybody, thereby drawing more attention to what you’d just been doing. That bathroom’s now gone, and it’s been replaced by brand new men’s and women’s restrooms on the top floor. The men’s room contains several stalls and urinals and state-of-the-art appliances, and everything’s covered in nice white tile. Now you can do your business in peace and privacy.

Which is good, because last night I was suffering from what I call Jewish Bowel Syndrome. Matt and I had dinner at EJ’s Luncheonette, which is in our soon-to-be neighborhood, and then we parted ways because he had to go to a meeting. I started walking toward the Strand, but nature soon hollered at me, the bitch, so I turned around and went back to EJ’s to use the restroom. (I’m very familiar with the restrooms there, because it’s right near the 9th Street PATH station and I used to duck in occasionally.)

Afterwards I went to the Strand, but nature wasn’t through with me, so I got to check out the aforementioned restrooms. As I said, they’re great.

Anyway. I went to the Strand in order to find a new book. I’m currently between books. This happens to me every so often; there are times when I finish a book and immediately know what I want to read next, but sometimes I’m stuck in bibliolimbo. On Monday I finished The System of the World. Before that I read A History of the Jews. (Those were both very long hardcover books, and each weighed down my bag considerably during my work commute.) Before that was Cloud Atlas; before that was The Plot Against America; before that was Leave Myself Behind; before that was How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater.

Anyway – I’ve been all about the Brits lately. So I might find this book I saw on Amazon called The Birth of the English Common Law. I’m a dork. But it’s a short book, and the local library has it, so… why not.

After all, I need something to read on the toilet.

How’s your gaydar?

I scored 75%.

Steve Leveen says that we should allow ourselves to give up on reading a book if we’re just not feeling it after, say, 50 pages (via). I’ve written about this before – it’s one of the tenets of the Reader’s Bill of Rights. Leveen asks:

Most of us give up on people faster than books. Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and the first person you chat with turns out to be a stupendous bore. Do you keep talking to him for the next hour because you started with him?

Well, the difference is that you haven’t paid to chat with that person. By contrast, most people have bought the book they’re reading, and they’re loath to give up on that investment. That’s why libraries can be so liberating – if you don’t like a book you’ve borrowed, you can return it, and you haven’t lost anything.

Also, Leveen has recently written this book, which looks very intriguing.

I have sent the following question to The Ethicist:

There’s this book I want to read. I decided to order it from Amazon.com, because not only is it cheaper that way but I have an Amazon.com gift certificate with lots of money left on it. The problem is that the book will not arrive for several days, and I want to start reading it now.

Is it OK for me to go to Barnes & Noble or Borders, buy the book at full price, start reading it, and then return it to the store once my copy arrives from Amazon.com? I could even give the store whichever of the two copies is in better condition. What do you think?

What do you think?

This is the week of the upfronts, when all the major networks unveil their fall schedules for the 2005-6 season. Tomorrow is the WB’s turn, so we’ll find out whether “Jack & Bobby” will be renewed. It’s currently the lowest-rated show in its time slot and in danger of cancellation, but I’d be sad to see it go. The show’s writers seem prepared for bad news, because last week’s season finale sure seemed like a final episode.

Today it was NBC’s turn, and I’m most interested to see that “The West Wing” is moving to Sunday nights at 8:00, after six years of Wednesday nights at 9. It’ll probably be the show’s last season. Also, the lame “Joey” will be back (lame, but we watch it anyway), while the latest “Law & Order” spinoff will not be.

A new one-hour drama next year will star Geena Davis as the first female president.

Davis stars with Donald Sutherland in “Commander-in-Chief” on Tuesdays. She assumes the presidency with twin teen-agers and a 6-year-old at home, and a party that wants her to resign rather than take over for a dying president.

“It’s not a political story,” said Stephen McPherson, ABC entertainment president. “It’s the story of a woman; it’s the story of a wife; it’s the story of a family.”

Or, as my friend is calling it: “The Breast Wing.”

This same friend is having dating issues, so I went to Amazon.com to find some books for him. One was The Mandates: 25 Real Rules For Successful Gay Dating.

However, when I looked at that book, Amazon.com told me the following:

I hate to break the news.

Well, “Jack & Bobby” has officially been cancelled. Sigh. I’m bummed.

Also, “Smallville” is moving to Thursday nights at 8. So is “Alias.” It’s a good thing Matt and I will have two TiVos after we move in together.

If you use WordPress for your blog, you should know that my boyfriend has created a WordPress FeedReader plugin. It’s a blog feedreader that you view through your WP-Admin page. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks, and it’s very pretty and elegant. Matt actually uses parts of it to run QueerFilter right now.

(And I’ve never mentioned it, but how cool do I feel that my boyfriend is the guy who created QueerFilter?)

Every so often I get these weird intellectual obsessions. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, lately I’ve been interested in learning more about the British constitutional system, how it was created, how it influenced the creation of the American constitutional system, and how the two systems differ. It just seemed odd to me that (1) the British constitutional system is not all written down in one place, and (2) Parliament is completely sovereign, without any checks on its power such as judicial review.

Yesterday I read a law review article about it: Lord Irvine of Lairg, Sovereignty in Comparative Perspective: Constitutionalism in Britain and America, 76 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1 (2001), if you’re interested.

I also read a somewhat lengthy review of a book called The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy.

And the other day I finished reading (although I skimmed much of it) Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution by Forrest McDonald, and I’ve ordered Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, by Jack Rakove, which won a Pulitzer a few years ago.

I took a bunch of con law classes in law school – it was probably my favorite subject, and it nicely complemented my history major from college. So I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m interested in this stuff. Anyway, soon enough I’ll get sick of this and move onto something else.

Well, next fall’s primetime network TV programming grid is complete, as Fox and UPN both announced their schedules today. On Wednesdays at 9, “Veronica Mars” (which more people should watch) will be up against “Lost” (which is not a good way to get more people to watch it). And Fox will have new shows starring David Boreanaz (Tuesdays at 8) and Bradley Cooper and Nicholas Brendon (Mondays at 8:30, following “Arrested Development”).

Damn you, evil television, you seductive temptress.

It’s Slate’s History Week: “essays on new books about history, as well as a debate about how American historians are teaching the past.”

Gay Villains Back with a Vengeance on Network TV. “A lying, scheming hit-and-run driver. A disgraced son whose homosexuality puts the country at risk for nuclear war. A social-climber who killed a man to stay closeted. Currently, these are the only prominent gay characters you’ll see on network TV dramas – and the landscape doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.”

Bloggerata:

Last night I got to meet my brother’s girlfriend’s parents. Matt and I and my parents and my brother and his girlfriend and her parents (whew) went out to dinner at Frank’s, a steakhouse in the Meatpacking District (how appropriate). The food was tasty, but the experience was strange. The place was cavernous and didn’t seem very crowded, but it took forever for the waiter to take our orders. Even weirder was that in the back part of the restaurant, several employees spent at least half an hour trying to set up a black curtain to wall off a particular section for a private party. It took them forever, as if they’d never done this sort of thing before. Eventually, this big crowd of obviously hetero guys who’d been standing at the bar (as my brother said, they all looked like “Joey from Long Island”) walked back to the private area, and we figured out that it was a bachelor party. We kept an eye out for the strippers and correctly identified them when they walked in the door, because one of them was wearing a top hat and the first thing all three did was stroll into the ladies’ room. But we were done with our meal before the show got started.

I’ve been listening to the Altar Boyz cast album, which arrived in the mail yesterday. The boy-bandish music is as infectious on CD as it was in the theater. Not only are the songs hilarious, but they’re also very creative musically. I’ll be listening to this one a lot.

One TiVo trick I learned from Matt is that you can speed-watch a program by putting the playback on double-speed with the closed-captioning on. Yesterday I caught up on the last three episodes of “Smallville” that way, because except for a few scenes they were too boring to watch at regular speed.

I had my six-month dental checkup yesterday. No cavities or problems. Hooray!

From Southern Voice: “An HIV-positive man has been indicted in Fayette and Fulton counties [in Georgia] on felony criminal charges for allegedly engaging in consensual sex with three other men without disclosing his HIV status, a violation of Georgia law.”

Although HIV-positive people shouldn’t have unprotected sex without disclosing their status, this is just stupid. Everyone, positive or negative, has to take responsibility for his own health and safety. Yes, it can be romantic to trust someone, especially when you’re engaged in as intimate an act as sex, but romance isn’t made of latex. As Jeff Graham, executive director of the AIDS Survival Project, says in the article, it takes two people to practice unsafe sex.

John Withrow, the 25-year-old man whose complaint led to the criminal charge against Carriker in Fayette County, also filed a civil suit in State Court in February against Carriker, claiming he has “suffered extreme and severe emotional distress arising from the fear of developing HIV.” …

The two men dated until April 2004 and had unprotected sex numerous times, according to the suit. …

[Adam] Jaffe, Withrow’s attorney, said his client is undergoing repeated HIV testing and has tested negative for the disease.

“He will be enduring real mental trauma for the next couple of years,” Jaffe said.

Huh? Today you can get an accurate test result three months after exposure, if not sooner. What’s with the repeated testing? What’s up with “the next couple of years”? If he’s tested negative more than three months after the exposure, he’s negative. (At least as regards Carriker.) This guy sounds like an extreme neurotic. I’ve experienced the fear of getting HIV, but at least I trusted the test results.

But I’ve worked on an HIV hotline, and he’s not the only guy with such issues. HIV-related fear and sex-related guilt (especially when it’s gay sex) can create a potent mix. People think God is trying to punish them – if not by giving them HIV, then by giving them the fear of having contracted HIV, which can be debilitating in its own right.

Yeah, Withrow shouldn’t have trusted Carriker (who clearly has issues of his own). He did a stupid thing, but luckily, he’s tested negative. He should be thankful, consider it a lesson, and move on with his life. His persistent guilt helps nobody, least of all himself.

Joel is interviewed in Gothamist today about his book and his website (congratulations again!). He is asked about his process for composing music for the theater. His response:

“I almost never write the music first — I’m always responding to a lyric the lyricist has sent me. Even as a composer I’m a bottom.”

Well, wow. In a new piece in the New York Review of Books about how he came to write his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (one of my favorites), Michael Chabon – who is married to a woman and has several children – writes of his college summers:

I had just been through, in the years preceding my decampment for the West, a pair of summers that had rattled my nerves and rocked my soul and shook my sense of self — but in a good way. I had drunk a lot, and smoked a lot, and listened to a ton of great music, and talked way too much about all of those activities, and about talking about those activities. I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him. I had seen things and gone places in and around Pittsburgh, during those summers, that had shocked the innocent, pale, freckled Fitzgerald who lived in the great blank Minnesota of my heart.

Three of Chabon’s four novels – The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – have a major character who is gay or at least has homosexual tendencies. When I first read Pittsburgh I wondered if Chabon was gay, because the novel seems very autobiographical. When I learned that he was married, I figured that either he had experimented sexually (or was bisexual) or had a close relative or friend who was gay. For some reason I thought the former possibility less likely.

It’s totally none of my business or anyone else’s, of course, and I like how he discloses the information matter-of-factly in the middle of a paragraph. But even though we’re supposed to be blasé about sexual experimentation these days, it’s still a big deal to me that Chabon once loved and slept with a guy. I guess it’s because I’m gay and I’m a big fan of his.

So it’s not a big deal… but it is to me.

Why do I see blog comments as a status symbol?

I take the number of comments I get on a particular post as a value judgment of that post, and more generally, as a value judgment of myself. Some people write posts on cheese sandwiches and get 15 comments in response, and I’m always jealous of those people. It doesn’t matter if I go into SiteMeter and see that I’m getting a particular number of visitors per day; it’s comments that make a person feel good. Putting lots of time and effort into writing a post only to receive no comments is like telling a joke and hearing crickets chirp in response.

Also, if visitors to your site see that you get a bunch of comments on every post you write, they’ll think you’re really popular. (And it’s all about being popular, of course.)

And it’s especially neat to get comments from people who have never commented on your site before, because that way you get introduced to new readers.

The best way to get more comments, of course, is to write entries that make people want to respond. This still doesn’t explain how the cheese-sandwich people get lots of comments per post, but it’s still a good rule to follow.

To sum up: bloggers like getting comments. So leave them. A comment is like a birthday present.

Except for spam, which is the equivalent of socks.

As Andy says, this speech excoriating the Texas legislature’s anti-gay-marriage amendment is a must-read.

So, it’s Friday before a three-day weekend, and I have nothing to say.

Because of my weekly therapy appointment, I was unable to see him read from his book at Barnes & Noble last night. By the time I got there, it was over, so I found Matt and wound up chatting with the bloggers who had hung around afterwards. Then Matt and I went to Chat ‘n’ Chew, where I had Thanksgiving on a Roll for dinner. Thanksgiving on a Roll is a sandwich that contains roast turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy, and stuffing, and it’s sooooo good but sooooo big. So Matt finished it for me, in addition to his own dinner. Isn’t that what boyfriends are for? Finishing your sentences and your meals? (He doesn’t really finish my sentences, but the compound-object thing worked nicely there, didn’t it?)

We don’t have big plans for the weekend – we’re hanging out with some friends tonight, and maybe we’ll see the final “Star Wars” at some point, and maybe we’ll see some hot sailors as well. All I know for sure is that I’m sleeping in on Monday morning. I look forward to it.

Zzzzzzzzzz…

In today’s New York Times, a gay teenager writes about being the default prom date for his female friends.

If I were a worried mother of a dateless daughter, I would scour the hip coffee shops of my town waving a rainbow flag in search of recruits. It might cause my daughter to die of embarrassment, but at least she would have a fabulous night out and wouldn’t make me a grandmother anytime soon.

Cute, poignant piece.

On Friday night there was a fatal shooting on 126th Street in Harlem, and Matt and I missed it by about an hour. At around 7:30 at night we came out of the 125th Street subway station to go to a friend’s place, only to be confronted by yellow police tape, several cop cars, guys in suits, TV news vans and cameras, and a crowd of onlookers. We wondered what was going on, and I finally saw a woman with a press pass and asked her. “There was a shooting,” she said. “Oh, okay,” I responded, in my most blasé New Yorker voice.

From there we went to our destination, where we hung out with a group of friends and watched two memorable movies, neither of which I’d seen before: “Barbarella” and “Xanadu.”

Wow.

One stars Jane Fonda as a nymphomaniac space hero who wears seven or eight costumes and befriends an angel. The other involves Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, rollerskating, and 1940’s big-band music.

I’m not sure which one made more sense, but the dance sequences in “Xanadu” were pretty fanatastic. If you ever want to see a really good “bad” movie, that’s the one to see.

Just make sure to avoid any shootings.

Yesterday Matt and I saw Revenge of the Sith. It was easily the best of the three prequels, and it was more than tolerable; I actually enjoyed it and found it quite moving – particularly the assassination of most of the members of the Jedi council. John Williams’s lush score, mixing familiar themes with some great new ones, also helped. (I’ll probably buy the soundtrack.)

It was neat to watch all the pieces fall into place for A New Hope, even down to the appearance of Luke’s childhood home on Tatooine. Matt pointed out the incongruity between, on the one hand, all the CGI-generated special effects, and on the other, the 1970s-era control panel on Darth Vader’s chest with all those big push-buttons; and there was a woman behind us who laughed whenever Yoda spoke a particularly long and grammatically convoluted sentence – it was hard to tell sometimes whether or not his dialogue was meant as parody. But overall, I enjoyed the movie.

At night, we met Mike for a dinner of Ethiopian food (which I’d never had before – pretty tasty) and then the three of us joined up with Dan, Mike’s roommate and our longtime friend, at Xth Avenue Lounge for drinks. Several drinks. We were both pretty drunk when we got back to Matt’s place; while taking off my socks, I lost my balance and landed on my ass, knocking over a couple of stacked folding chairs in the process. (My tailbone is a little tender, but it’s not too bad.)

Today we decided to go to Shake Shack for lunch, but when we got there it was closed. I was a little annoyed – its web site says it’s open seven days a week, and I even called the phone number to make sure. I got a recording, but it didn’t say the place was closed. In fact, it said something like, “Sorry, we can’t answer the phone right now because we’re busy serving up delicious burgers and shakes to our customers!” Bah. So I still haven’t had a Shake Shack burger. Maybe next weekend. Instead we walked up to the Manhattan Mall food court and then browsed at Macy’s. I want a pair of casual shoes – I have a pair of black dress shoes and a pair of New Balance sneakers, but nothing in between. That’ll be my next purchase. Possibly something like these (inspired by Other Jeff).

Anyway, hope everyone had a nice holiday! Me, I sure could use another three-day weekend.

A new reader of my blog, a teenager, emailed me the following questions this morning. His instructions: “While abstract, please don’t play guessing games with the questions. However, do question, do analyze, and do be as sure as possible.” Here are his questions and the answers I gave him.

1. What is your favorite color?

Purple.

2. How often do you sing out loud? (appropriate adjective)

At least once a week. I sing in a chorus. Outside of chorus, probably every other day or so.

3. What is your favorite time of day?

Late at night. But when I don’t have to go to work, I enjoy the early morning.

4. Do you enjoy snow?

I do, particularly since I’m a city guy and don’t have a car and therefore don’t have to drive in it. I love being inside and watching the snow fall. I love the still and quiet that comes after a snowstorm.

5. Do you like pets?

I love dogs. We had a dog when I was growing up. Someday I want a dog of my own.

6. Who has been most influential in your life?

My parents, since they were the first people I ever knew and I therefore looked to them for cues about how to perceive the world around me, for better and for worse.

7. When do you normally shower?

In the morning.

8. Where is the place most comfortable for you?

In bed.

9. With whom have most of your memorable moments in life been spent?

Wow, this is a tough one. I would say my friends – high school friends, college friends, post-college friends. But I could also say the fellow members of my college men’s chorus.

10. What do you think of pain?

Pain sucks. But you can learn a lot from it.

I’m a strong believer in the subconscious, and I think the threat of emotional pain is often what often drives us subconsciously. The subconscious tries to protect you from most forms of pain (but sometimes tries to make you confront it). Unfortunately, the subconscious sometimes can be overly protective.

You can learn a lot from pain, too. Once you’ve confronted something painful and survived, you’re stronger for it. That’s true of physical pain as well, I think.

11. Is patience a virtue?

Totally. Patience, delayed gratification, persistence, perseverence – all good. Things in life don’t happen as quickly as we want them to, but they do happen. You need patience to get through it all. Up to a point. But it’s hard to tell when it’s time to stop being patient.

12. Do people live forever?

No, unfortunately – except in the memory of others, and in what we leave behind.

13. Does psychology work for you?

Very much. I think it explains a hell of a lot about people. And I’ve benefited from a couple of great therapists.

14. Do you consider yourself disciplined?

Not as much as I’d like to be, but more than lots of other people. If I were as disciplined as I’d like to be, maybe I could write the novel or play I’ve always wanted to write.

15. How faithful are you?

If you mean faith as a form of belief, I don’t really believe in God, except perhaps as some sort of Prime Mover that set off the Big Bang. I have faith in the laws of science, but I think there’s so much that humans can never know. The universe wasn’t created for our pleasure or enlightenment; we’re the ones who are incidental to things, and it’s doubtful that the arbitrarily-evolved human brain (or at least the part we’ve figured out how to use) is the most appropriate organ for figuring out the grand scheme of things – particularly the whys. But as for the whats and hows, we’ve come pretty damn far since caveman days.

If you mean faithful as in loyal, I try to be loyal to my friends and loved ones. If I promise to do something, I make my best efforts to do it. Basically, I try to treat other people how I’d like to be treated.

16. Will people make good use of the portions of their minds which are not in use in this age?

Maybe so, as we continue to evolve. And I hope humanity survives long enough to continue evolving.

17. Are dandelions beautiful?

I’m not really fond of them. But they do make me think of childhood.

Paul Krugman and Daniel Okrent don’t like each other very much.