Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay

A couple of weeks ago I watched a softcore gay porn video gay-themed film called The Journey of Jared Price, which Netflix recommended to me. It turned out to be badly written and acted, as well as very low-budget and grainy. I could forgive the production qualities, but not the writing.

I wrote a review of the movie for Amazon.com. Days went by — no review. It was finally posted a few days ago, after about two weeks.

Apparently, one of the reasons it took so long was because someone found my use of the word “gay” too controversial.

Here is my original review; the parts that Amazon deleted are in boldface. Some of the cuts I can understand, but others I don’t get.

Lots of heart, but that’s it

(2 stars out of 5)

I’m sure all the folks involved in making this movie are good people. The DVD contains an interview with the cast and the writer/director, and they all seem pretty likeable. I bet they’d be nice to hang out with. But the movie just wasn’t very good.

First, the good points. The story was ultimately sweet — it had heart. I found myself liking Jared and Robert and I rooted for them to get together. (Corey Spears is so damn cute that I was often distracted from his mostly not-so-great acting; Josh Jacobson was better. On a side note, I looked him up and learned that he was in the Buffy episode “The Gift” — he was the teenager who told Buffy “You’re just a girl!” after she rescued him from a vampire at the beginning of the ep.)

The film quality: I could forgive the fact that it was filmed on digital video — after all, they were given only a $30,000 budget.

And now the bad points.

The characters: they’re mainly unoriginal archetypes straight out of 60 years of gay pulp fiction. The cute, innocent small-town boy in the big city; the rich, 30something guy who turns out to be a lecher (because all gay men over 30 are jerks, right?); the elderly woman who dispenses wisdom and turns out to be open-minded towards gay people [something like that — I can’t remember the exact phrase I used there]. If you’re gay, you’ve seen them a million times before.

The plot: I recall writer/director Dustin Lance Black saying that 10 Percent Productions wanted a gay morality play, and that’s what he gave them. It’s all black and white and obvious. Men with money won’t bring you happiness; follow your heart instead! Duh. Okay, okay — there are lots of people out there who still don’t know that, so maybe they’d benefit from watching this. But you can advocate a point of view while still writing an entertaining movie with three-dimensional characters.

The plot has little narrative flow. Things are left unestablished. For instance, what does Jared see in Robert in the first place? And there’s little dramatic buildup and payoff. Things happen abruptly. There’s a scene where Robert calls Jared but Matthew doesn’t give him the message, and then it’s dropped. In a better movie, this scene would lead to misunderstandings and a little bit of tension. But nothing happens here.

The movie’s dialogue is pretty bad. It consists mostly of cliches, as well as things like “cool” and “oh, okay” and “my bad.” Sure, those expressions are true to life. And many of the scenes between Jared and Robert seemed very real, as if I were watching them on a surveillance camera. But there’s “interesting” real and there’s “boring” real. Watching paint dry is also real, but it’s not entertaining.

Although much of the acting is decent, two of the actors were pretty mediocre.

Basically, the movie had the production quality of a porn video with little of the payoff.

Here are Amazon.com’s General Review Writing Guidelines. I’m trying to figure out where the word “gay” fits in. Maybe someone thought it counted as “profanity, obscenities, or spiteful remarks.”

I love you, Amazon.com, but this is for you:

Gay gay gay gay gay.

So there.

(And Google, eat your heart out.)

[update: see this entry]

A year ago this week, I gave up blogging.

I ended the blog on Valentine’s Day. Kind of appropriate, given the heart motif. I wasn’t trying to be ironic — it just turned out that way.

At various times over the last few months I’ve considered coming back. I don’t know why. There are so many reasons not to.

First, it takes such a long time to write entries.

Second, blogging — at least, the way I did it — used up lots of emotional energy. I was never able to avoid giving this thing access to every inch of my psyche. For me, that was the point of having it. Also, people like to read that kind of thing, and I wanted the readership.

Third, I’m a perfectionist. (Unfortunately, perfectionism is a flaw, so no human being can ever be a successful perfectionist. Nothing can ever be flawless. But I digress. Oops!) Anyway, because I’m a perfectionist, I’m afraid that my writing will be inadequate. I’m afraid of subjecting it to scrutiny again.

Fourth, I have a theory that blogging (at least the way I did it) is inimical to finding a serious relationship. It’s been known to happen, sure, but — well, think about it. If you write openly about your life (as I did), you’ll probably write about the dates you go on. If you wind up becoming serious with someone, you’ll either have to continue to hide the blog from that person — making honesty in the relationship impossible — or you’ll have to confess to him that for weeks or months, you’ve been using your dates as entertainment for a whole bunch of people. And what if early on, you described your misgivings about the guy? That could make for some tense moments.

Fifth, I’ve been working on a more substantial writing project, and I’m afraid that if I start this site up again, it will siphon off some of that energy.

Sixth, there’s always the risk that someone I know will stumble across the site. That can be bad.

Seventh, life in the fishbowl can be really annoying.

I thought about coming back last August, but I was drunk at the time. I was thisclose to coming back in November — I even redesigned the site — but I still didn’t come back.

I’d been thinking about this for a while, and I finally decided it’s time. Actually, decided isn’t really the appropriate word. My gut is telling me this. It just feels right.

It felt so damn refreshing to quit. It felt terrific, it really did. I felt so free, so unencumbered. Blogging is fraught with all the stuff I’ve just mentioned.

Given all of that, why the heck am I trying it again? I don’t know. But something inside me must want to.

So I’m coming back — on a tentative basis.

I’ll see how it goes. I’ll see what works for me. I might write about personal stuff, or I might not. I might write every day, or once a week, or never again after today. I really don’t know.

But at any rate —

for now, at least —

I’m back.

I’d been thinking about this for a while, and I finally decided it’s time. Actually, decided isn’t really the appropriate word. My gut is telling me this. It just feels right.

I’m leaving the world of blogging. This is my final entry.

I started this thing on a whim about 13 months ago. I got into it, and I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it.

It’s been a great tool for me. It’s taught me a lot. But it’s served its purpose. I’ve taken it about as far as it can go, gotten everything out of it that I can. It’s no longer where I’m at. It’s time to move on.

The other morning I woke up from a dream that I was having group sex with the gang from “Buffy.” We were all huddled together in this tight group, all writhing in mutual pleasure. I was on my knees, sucking Giles’s cock. I could see his thighs and his pelvis, and his penis was bouncing right there in front of my face, and I put my mouth around it. And next to me was Jenny Calendar, on her knees, trying to get in on the action too. Her face was way up close to mine, seductively close, and she looked hot, with her dark eyes and her chipmunk cheeks and full lips. And — although I wasn’t looking up at them — Xander and Willow and Oz and Buffy were in on the action too. We were all organically connected.

I started off my blog with that common blogging dream: I’ll start doing this, and maybe people will start reading it, and maybe my audience will grow and grow and I’ll catch on and maybe someday I’ll be as big and as popular as Kottke.

Well — my readership grew, and it grew more, and it grew even more, but a long time ago I realized that I was never going to be Kottke, and that that was totally okay because that’s not really a very exciting goal anyway. I don’t even know if Kottke finds it all that exciting.

Anyway, they’ve heard of me by now. They don’t read me, but they know the name. That one linked to my September 11th account on his big list of September 11th accounts. And that one posted a link to one of my entries on the Blogger front page once.

I’m never going to be them. But that’s not necessary. Who moved my cheese? I found my niche in the blogging world, my identity in it, and lots of people came to appreciate my blog for what it was.

And now I’m making it out to seem like this was all about achieving popularity, but it wasn’t. It was more about feeling less alone. Living in a commune, sharing my day with you, implicitly asking you if I was doing it right.

This can trap you into a certain way of thinking. Hell, it can trap you into thinking, period. I have to update! What’s the best way to describe this? What exactly am I feeling right now and why am I feeling this way and what does it make me think of and what does this mean and how will this play out and how can I put this into declarative prose?

That part of my brain is sore now. It needs a rest. It needs to do other things.

You start to live like there’s this Greek chorus around you. Slave to the blog, slave to the readers. They’re going to be pissed because I haven’t updated in a while. They’re going to make fun of me for thinking this, get pissed at me for doing that, get on my case about that other thing. But I have to tell them, I have to update, because if I don’t, they’ll leave, and I need them.

I needed it. I wanted to prove that I exist. But I know I exist. And I don’t need this anymore — or want this anymore. I’m just a person living my life, and I want it to be mine again. I want to stop swimming around in a fishbowl.

I’ve felt so liberated since last week. I’ve remembered that I don’t have to tell anyone else what I’m doing. I don’t have to worry about whether I should write about such-and-such. It feels so refreshingly normal.

A blog gives you instant gratification. It’s like anonymous sex — it’s quick and it’s cheap and it depletes you and it’s never quite satisfying enough but you keep doing it anyway, trying to get there, you don’t know where but there, and meanwhile you could be making things that are deeper, more intricate, but instead you keep draining the well every day, and you never have anything left over.

I want to put my creative energies into something that doesn’t give me instant gratification. I want to work on something more long-term, something deeper. I’m not necessarily talking about a book. I’m not necessarily not talking about one, but I’m not necessarily talking about one.

I won’t say that I’m never coming back. Maybe I’ll return in a different form. I’m keeping the URL (including the e-mail address), and perhaps I’ll do something else with this site. But my angsty what-should-I-do-now please-help-me online diary days are over.

I’ve met so many great people since I began this little experiment. There are some of you I’d still like to meet. But I don’t need a blog in order to do that.

(And if you’ve been afraid to write me, I’d love to hear from you. Now you know I won’t be sharing your words with a mass audience.)

Anyway: it’s been real. It’s been swell. And it’s been very educational. And if you’ve gotten something out of it, too, well, then, all the better.

Thanks for reading.
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