Some things I can watch over and over again...

Love the little guy in leather, especially...thanks to my friend Dan Nash for the tip.

On Memorial Day

This map from James Fallows says it all.

"I promise you a police car on every sidewalk." --Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C.

I first saw Marion Barry back in the early 1980's at a Gay Pride celebration. He was on the stage between drag queens and lesbian folk artists explaining his raison d'être: "There are two things a politicians like...votes. and money. You got both." It was hard to forget the real reason this man was able to run successfully three times. I voted for him for second term, but not the third. He probably would be an elder statesman, well respected and honored talk show habitué has not his third term been such a disaster. There was the time the police raided a "nightclub" on 14th Street called "This is It?"

“If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low
crime rate.” — M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC

When I first came to Washington, for a few weeks I thought Popeye's was a strip joint. I thought this because it anchored a notorious block on 14th Street between H and I, which housed businesses such as the Olympic and Astoria Arms baths, the Le Salon Theatre and peepshows, the Benny's Home of the Porno Stars, and the Butterfly. It was one of those Times Square-esque (seedy 1970's version) places that make one want to take a shower after walking through. Well, anyway, the police decided to raid "This is It?" at around 2:30 am one night and found the mayor in the backroom. This was a cocaine drug bust, the mayor was there, as he explained it with a straight face "there for a fund raiser."

“First, it was not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what
can I say? I’m a night owl.” — M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC


Then came the career-ender. (Or what would have been a career-ender anywhere else on the face of the planet.) The Mayor of Washington was arrested in January, 1990, after getting caught on video smoking crack with a woman who was not his wife. Of course, the well-known phrase entered our national lexicon "The bitch set me up. Goddam bitch."

"What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?"
--Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C.


Mayor Barry would be sent to jail, and exile for a couple of years before bizarrely in 1994, win the office of mayor after a weak slate of primary opponents, followed by an astonishingly strong opposition from Republican Carol Schwartz in the general election. He would not have much power as the city would come under the scrutiny of a federally-appointed control board. In 2004, he would return to the city council, representing the poorest and mostly African-American Ward 8 in Southeast Washington.

When you look at his biography, he started out of the gate from Itta Bena, Mississippi with an impressive string of noble accomplishments, including graduating from Fisk University with a Masters in Chemistry. His first couple of terms, he did bring the city back from the brink by encouraging construction of office buildings downtown and the movement of people back into the city. Some in the gay community were suspicious of his broad coalition that including not only gays, but the city's African-American poor and middle class, and crucially, many of the Baptist ministers that dot the landscape of the poorest neighborhoods.

"All hell is going to break loose. We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this." -- Marion Barry, City Councilman, Ward 8.

Recently, the man who used to be referred to in the local City Paper weekly as "Mayor-For-Life Marion Barry" popped back up in the headlines as the champion of Christian Morality.

For many in the gay community, this was a stinging rebuke, an about-face for a man who for so long seemed to be on our side. Like the stands of the likes of Barbara Mikulski and Paul Wellstone, and our current President and Secretary of State, it seemed like there's only so far they will go for gay rights. But this seemed to go a bit far.

"What you've got to understand is 98 percent of my constituents are black and we don't have but a handful of openly gay residents," Barry said. "Secondly, at least 70 percent of those who express themselves to me about this are opposed to anything dealing with this issue. The ministers think it is a sin, and I have to be sensitive to that."

I guess that says it all, doesn't it? Watch the video, have a pail ready to vomit.

Special thanks to Randy Shulman and Metro Weekly for the video. Here is Part Two.

In memory of Bea Arthur

Every so often I want to get rid of something in my home that I no longer have use for. Sometimes it's a piece of furniture, or old clothes, or file boxes from the 20th Century (yes, I know, I know.)

Of late, the things I wish to get rid of tend to be not that old. We're living in an age when technology gets old real fast. Look at the economy. Major newspapers are shutting down. Now even East Coast behemoths like the New York Times and the Boston Globe are endangered. On the tube, NBC is eliminating original programming from 10pm-11pm in favor of a revamped Jay Leno hour. In the daytime, the soaps are dying off faster than their aged casts...the latest victim, the longest-running program ever, "The Guiding Light." I never watched that one, but it's earlier Proctor and Gamble show is now featuring a gay storyline, brought to you by All-Temperature Cheer, or feminine hygiene products with a clever design. That show gave us the Carol Burnett satire "As the Stomach Turns." Rumor has it that the sands through the hourglass may be running out too.

The cause of all this economic turmoil may just be the Internet. No longer are people slaves to old-economy technologies. People reading newspapers wince when they realize today's edition is a rehash of everything we read 17 hours ago yesterday. Of course, you knew all of this anyway, because you read it three months ago on another blog, probably. So congratulations to whomever has use for that scanner this morning. And that end table from the 1980's.

---------------------------------------

Today we played tennis. We use the same courts we always do. Being in the city, the weekends become a high-demand time. According to the website for Dc Parks and Recreation "Residents can play tennis at any one of the listed locations in neighborhoods throughout the city. All courts are available on a first-come, first-served basis for one-hour intervals, unless a permit has been issued for extended use. Yes, ONE HOUR, not three sets. The offending parties know who they are.

---------------------------------------

We had a glorious spring day here. The blossoms were everywhere in bloom, the tulips abounding, the birds violently eating worms, insects and each others young. Ah, spring. There were lots of people walking around with palm fronds, reminding me what a terrible Catholic I've been these past couple of decades.

______________________________________

There's a good reason ...

I watch One Life To Live on my lunch hour: