Spring begins tonight at about 8:00 Eastern Standard Time. I don’t know about you, but to me, nothing says “vernal equinox” quite like going to war!

That and the smell of freshly-cut grass.

I know there’s a war on, but I’m annoyed at New York’s Channel 11, our local affiliate of the Frog Network. They cut in with war coverage at around 9:55 last night. “Angel” had a minute or two left, at most. They couldn’t wait one or two more minutes? Did they think they were missing out on an exclusive? The WB doesn’t even have its own news team. They had to carry the CNN feed. I could have done that by switching channels.

I guess it makes sense, though, as CNN is owned by AOL Time Warner, and that’s AOL Time Warner, as in “Warner Brothers,” as in the WB. (AOL Time Warner also owns DC Comics, which owns the rights to Superman, which I guess is why “Smallville” runs on the WB.)

UPN, meanwhile, would seem to be owned by Fox, because UPN was carrying the Fox News Channel last night. But no, it’s owned by Viacom, just like CBS, so I don’t know why it wasn’t broadcasting CBS. Not that I would have understood that either. While I can sort of understand the WB broadcasting CNN, as non-cable viewers don’t have CNN, both Fox and UPN were broadcasting the Fox News Channel last night, and they’re both over-the-air networks. A tad redundant, no?

By the way, Fox is owned by News Corporation, a.k.a. Rupert Murdoch.

We’re living in a media conglomerocracy.

So last night, in a media craze, I basically found myself switching among General Electric, Viacom, AOL Time Warner, News Corporation, and Disney.

It’s a frickin’ miracle Willow was able to show up on “Angel” last night.

But I guess witches who speak bad Latin can pretty much do anything they want.

I was a senior in high school when the first Gulf War began. My family and I were living in Tokyo, Japan, at the time, so it was about 9:00 in the morning on Thursday, January 17. I was sitting in calculus class.

As the world had approached the January 15 deadline and Saddam still wouldn’t get out of Kuwait, I’d read the International Herald Tribune at home every night, feeling the tension grow. My friends and I would talk about the impending war during our 75-minute train ride out to the American School in Japan. Many of my friends loved to blab about politics and religion and anything controversial. (The cool kids called us the Nerd Herd.) Riding to school that morning, the deadline behind us but war not yet begun, we were in full blather.

So it wasn’t a surprise when, sitting in class shortly after 9:00, I saw my friend appear in the doorway near the back of the room, holding up a handwritten sign that said “WAR.” Not a surprise, but still kind of shocking.

The administration set up a big TV in the school lobby. My school didn’t have periods — when you weren’t in class, your time was your own — so a changing crowd gathered in front of the TV as the day went on. I remember talking with one of my friends in physics class later that day, saying to him, “I can’t believe our country is at war.” At war. Our country is at war. The words sounded so strange. It was like this huge legalism had clicked into place. I could hear the gears shift. Things just felt different.

That afternoon I rode home with a friend of mine. We listened to the news on Walkmans. Or maybe we listened together on his Walkman. I can’t remember. But that night (or maybe it was the next night), a few of my friends came over and we sat on the couch together, glued to CNN, watching Richard Roth report from Israel as Scud missiles fell.

That Saturday, our school’s annual Battle of the Bands went on as scheduled. Student rock bands from the international schools in the Tokyo area came out to ASIJ to compete. My friend Joe, an amazing guitar player, channeled the ghost of Jimi Hendrix by playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his electric guitar.

It brought down the house, and his band won.

Because we were Americans living overseas, our school took some precautions. Many ASIJ students rode to school on buses that said “The American School in Japan” in big letters. The administration decided to cover those signs for a while, so they wouldn’t draw attention to the fact that there were American kids on board. Sure, this was Japan, a very safe country, but we were still living overseas.

Had we been in the States at the time, of course, we would have felt safe and secure. The United States was the most powerful country in the world.

Our nation might have been at war, but nothing bad would ever happen on American soil.

That would be unthinkable.

I got my new computer yesterday! I’m so psyched, even though we’ll all be dead by next week.

I wish someone had told me how odd this site looks on a 1024 x 768 monitor using Internet Explorer 6.

I forgot to write about my gay gallery tour last Saturday afternoon. A friend of mine had read about a tour of Chelsea art galleries for gay men. You pay 15 bucks for a whirlwind tour of 10 galleries in two hours.

It turned out that the tour was organized by the Date Bait Guy. If you live in New York and you’ve gone to Date Bait, you know who I mean. The guy who runs Date Bait, who’s probably a nice man and who probably doesn’t deserve to be made fun of by me without his knowledge but of whom I will now make fun anyway, has thinning gray hair and a paunch and is kind of greasy-looking. At Date Bait, he charges you $15 to stand up and humiliate yourself and get maybe two or three matches for dates, whom you will see maybe twice at most and then never speak to again. If 60 people show up for Date Bait, the guy makes 900 bucks, with little overhead cost. And he does this twice a month. It’s ingenious, really.

My friend knew that Date Bait Guy was also Gay Gallery Tour Guy, and I think he told me this, but I must have suppressed it.

We met at the appointed gallery at the appointed time. Gay Art Gallery/Date Bait Guy was there, of course, and he energetically asked us to sign the sign-in sheet and pay 15 bucks, just as energetically as he’d asked me on three prior occasions to sign the Date Bait sheet and pay 15 bucks. He was wearing this little holster on his belt that held what looked like a hot pink phallic aluminum flashlight. I wasn’t sure why. It was sunny out.

I surveyed the crowd. It wasn’t just gay men — there were some straight couples, too. I grimaced, because this would mess with my cruising karma.

Once everyone was signed in and ready, Gay Art Gallery/Date Bait Guy began his spiel. He said that he visits 100 galleries a month and selects what he thinks are the ten most worthwhile exhibitions. One hundred galleries a month? I guess when you’re a Date Bait/Gay Art Gallery Entrepreneur, you don’t need a day job.

He said that he’d advertised his tour not just in gay publications, but also in some straight ones. Well, that explained the straight people. He then said that the tour was designed primarily for gay men. “I’m gay,” he said. Like that wasn’t totally obvious. “Not all of the artists whose work we’ll be seeing are gay, but some of them are, and I’ll point them out as we go along.” Well, that was a huge relief, because of course I judge each and every human being on his or her sexual orientation, and on nothing but his or her sexual orientation, including visual artists.

He handed out copies of the itinerary, in case anyone got lost.

He then whipped out the hot pink phallus, as well as a little baton with a ball on the end. These were apparently his signalling system. “One bell means I’m about to discuss the artwork.” Bing, he demonstrated, and it rang out clear as an elevator bell. Fourth floor. Ladies’ lingerie. “Two bells means we’re getting ready to leave.” Bing, bing. And then the tour began.

I recognized one of the attendees. He had scraggly brown hair and a brown mustache and Coke bottle glasses, and he walked very fast and had to be the first person into every gallery. He was creepy. It took me a while to place him, and then I realized I’d seen him at Date Bait before. At the Date Bait for 20/30somethings. He was about 45.

My friend and I abandoned the tour after the third gallery and went ahead on our own, printed itinerary in hand. It was kind of embarrassing to be part of the huge tour group, especially when I saw random hot guys who clearly weren’t part of the tour group, and also, the group moved too slowly.

We saw some pretty great art work, to Date Bait/Gay Art Gallery Guy’s credit. That alone was worth the 15 bucks. We saw geometric tiled paintings with guts exploding. We saw mobiles by Alexander Calder, and, while intently watching them, got intently watched by an unreasonably suspicious security guard, which was disconcerting, since we were the only two visitors in the whole gallery. (We wondered how he’d handle the 34-person tour group just minutes behind us.) We saw some wonderful photographs by Nan Goldin of couples, gay and straight, making love. We saw some fucked-up cartoon art. We saw a rug made entirely of Band-Aids. It was fun and worthwhile.

Now, not all of my blog entries are gay, but some of them are, and I’ll point them out as we go along.

Just follow the hot pink phallus…