GenEx

The Earth is Toast

I don't know what it is about epic disaster film that makes me jump out of my seat like a kid, but when I saw the teaser for Roland Emmerich's 2012 this spring I did just that. Emmerich is the same director who brought us Independence Day (aliens destroying the Earth) and The Day After Tomorrow (climate change destroying the Earth). This time, the world simply ends and everything goes to hell. Yes, there is some sort of government conspiracy/cover-up and a massive Noah's Ark the whole planet is racing towards - but that's beside the point. We just want to see shit get blown up. 

Independence Day was my least favorite of the trio. The space ships arriving and torching things was the good part - all the cheesy acting and faux-hero nonsense of Will Smith sucked. In The Day After Tomorrow, we had the double whammy of great disaster effects and my boy Jake running through it all - the snowdrift over the Statue of Liberty nearly sent me over the edge. There was still some bad acting but we forgave. 

In 2012, John Cusack will play the role of the majorly annoying reluctant hero. I wish someone could make one of these films without all the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants wooooo-hooooo I'm flying a plane between two crashing skyscrapers and not scared at all bullshit. I want honest and true terror, but I suppose that's too much to ask. This is serious shit- why characters so often act like they are in a video game is beyond me. 

 Of course, I'll go see the film regardless. California slides into the Pacific - you wouldn't want to miss that.

Sterling Cooper Draper Price

Sunday's 3rd season finale of AMC's Mad Men was nothing short of brilliant. Not that I'd expect anything less from the genius creative team that puts the show together. Now, if only advertising were still this fun.

Every Week All Year

In my mailbox the other day - in one of those fancy Par Avion international mail envelopes - was the BUTT 2010 calandar, chock full of lovely photographs of homosexuals. In their words:

"After twenty-seven issues, a book, a blog and numerous events, BUTT brings out its first ever pin-up calendar. No ordinary monthly calendar, BUTT 2010 is jam-packed with the down-to-earth, international dudes our readers treasure. From almost every corner of the globe, BUTT fans have submitted their most candid and racy photos, which have then been carefully selected and sequenced over 54 weeks. There’s also a handful of bonus portraits by some of the magazine’s marquee contributors like Bruce LaBruce, Alasdair McLellan and Wolfgang Tillmans."

What's not to love.

Defeat in Maine, Victory in Washington

I've stayed blissfully out of the election fray this year, especially after my full on frenzy last year. The bad news this year is Maine. In keeping with that, I'll let Sully do the talking:

"In Washington State, another referendum on gay couples' equality was also a squeaker. But in this one, gay couples won. The state's domestic partnership law grants gay couples all the rights of married couples at a state level. The usual forces tried to reverse it, as they tried in Maine. But in Washington, the gay side won by 51.1 to 48.9 percent. Again, it's such a slender margin, it's stupid to draw any vast conclusions.

But I do want to point out that, from the perspective of just a decade ago, to have an even split on this question in a voter referendum is a huge shift in the culture. In Maine, where the Catholic church did all it could to prevent gays from having civil rights in a very Catholic and rural state, gays do have equality but may now merely be denied the name. The process itself has helped educate and enlighten and deepen the debate about gay people in ways that never happened before the marriage issue came up.

I am heart-broken tonight by Maine, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

Somehow losing by this tiny margin is brutalizing. And because this is a vote on my dignity as a human being, it is hard not to take it personally or emotionally. But I also know that the history of civil rights movements has many steps backward as forward, and some of those reversals actually catalyze the convictions that lead to victories. A decade ago, the marriage issue was toxic. Now it divides evenly. Soon, it will win everywhere.

I know for many younger gays and lesbians, this process can seem bewildering and hurtful. But I'm old enough now to be able to look back and see the hill we have climbed in such a short amount of time, and the minds and hearts we have changed. Including our own.

Know hope."

GenEx® Song of the Week

It's hard to get better than Digitalism's remix of Cut Copy's "Going Nowhere."

Download 03 Going Nowhere (Digitalism Remix)

Thriller Provincetown

Jack O Punks

I don't know what it is about Halloween and Jack 'O Lanterns but I never get tired of them. There's something magical and kid-like about them but also sinister and haunting. Displayed on a dark porch, they're downright creepy. When we were young, my brother and I would carve several and after a few days in the house, they'd reside out in the backyard on an old redwood bench. We kept them lit every night, even after they started rotting. The demented, caved in faces were even better than our original design.

I've been carving them again over the last few years. I tend to carve a face with a wicked, toothy grin of sorts but this year I want scarier, like the Jack on the left in the image above. I feel it's my personal mission to keep the scary in Halloween. Enough of dressing up as fairies or cereal boxes - the night is supposed to be terrifying. Do you part - keep it dark.

FM Autumn & Winter 2009

I don't know what's more exciting - the new issue of Fantastic Man hitting newstands, or that British Rugby player Ben Cohen is on the cover. As magazine titles fold every month, this is my print life raft; gorgeously photographed and exquisitely printed on the finest papers.

 

In reality, Ewan McGregor is on the cover and Ben Cohen on the mini supplement inside. But why bore you with the details.

It's another can't miss issue, including a preview of their coming-soon title for women Gentlewoman. Find it wherever you pick up Egyptian Vogue and Ritter Sport candy bars.

Right, Left, Red, Blue

Sully posted this graphic a few days back - created by David McCandless and Stefanie Posavec - just in time for Election Day. It is both nicely designed and freakishly true, as far as mass generalizations go. My one question is why on Earth make the left red and the right blue? Major design fail. 

If only I don't bend and break

Every so often I find myself getting overwhelmed. A sort of rush of suffocation; one too many pressures that I fear may take the dam down altogether. The emotion is fleeting, but the issues remain. 

I'm beginning to think that modern life is nothing but a serious of massively unsolvable problems. There are elements of good - motion and progress - but they are few and easily overshadowed. I don't think I always felt this way. I wouldn't say that 9.11 was the beginning but I know many feel that is when America realized its own vulnerability. For me it's been these last few years as we've slid into the great recession. Terrorism - its breeding and magnification, culture of hatred towards the West, etc - is certainly a concern but not something I go around in fear of every day (though I probably should). My continual anxiety seems to stem from less immediate - but just as massive - slow-burn issues.

Many of these issues affect the environment, but not all. Energy production and policy, climate change, overpopulation, religious fundamentalism, widespread disease such as Cancer and AIDS, industrial agriculture, the obesity epidemic, consumerism, our forever shrinking attention span...you can't pick up the paper or watch the news and not be inundated with issues such as these. And while many can simply turn the channel or just forget about these things altogether, many of us can't. That doesn't mean we're better or more concerned - it just means we're wired to worry. 

If you take any one of the issues I've mentioned - the next 50 years has the ability to either put us on the road to recovery or affect enough change as to threaten our existence altogether. 50 years is about the most many of us have left to live. Are we supposed to feel relieved that we won't be around for any real consequence? Should we just continue along in our throwaway culture and consume as if we were the only people on the planet? The US Chamber of Commerce recently issued a statement - in reaction to Obama's proposed legislation about capping carbon emissions - that they will not support it. Because, as always, it is not in their self interest to do so. I fear we will never solve any of these monolithic problems when we only act based on self and/or economic interests. But as Michael Moore points out, that's capitalism. 

Is the system just entirely fucked? Our government and politics, corporate culture and industry, our engrained way of life, ourselves - is everything too set in stone to ever change course? Many potential solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems lay in making solutions profitable. But I feel like for the first time many of the issues that lay before us require an entirely different system of thinking; one we may not be capable of achieving. Or I should say one we don't want to achieve. For example, the notion that greater and greater consumption is the way to grow business. Ever-expanding consumption is unsustainable and therefore a flawed system. It creates waste, and festers countless other problems. But it is at the heart of all business - how do you change that model? Can you change it?

I struggle with how to feel in relation to all these issues. I've said it before on this blog many times in different ways that I'm very lucky to have the friends and family and support system that I have. And when you look at the bigger picture - that of a white man living in a great city in the most prosperous nation in the world - it seems absurd to worry about such matters. Then again, it makes absolute sense.