Earlier this evening I spent a little time talking to the charming and funny Tony Kahn. He hosts WGBH Boston’s Morning Stories. Then, I read this.

I’m gonna be on NPR.

The show airs in two or three weeks, then it will be available as a podcast. I’ll post links, of course. Stay tuned.

All I wanted to do is write up some nice blog posts about man stuff, but dammit if politics didn’t interfere over the weekend. I stumbled across a catfight that got me thinking and the more I think about it the more it seems like part of the carnival of modern man.

So it’s like this. Bill Clinton (The All Singing All Dancing Carnival of Modern Man that he is) decided to invite some bloggers to Harlem for lunch to talk about how the netroots and the cheap suits can work together to save democracy, America and the world. Sounds reasonable. My friend mcjoan, Aravosis and a few others were more than happy to accept the invitation– as was Jessica at Feministing. If you follow that link, you’ll read about how things went south. Apparently, a conservative blogger decided that this picture proves something about not just Jessica’s character, but the character of anyone who would have lunch with Bill Clinton.

Granted, the blogger who first took issue with Jessica is a woman. But if you read the comments here, or Lindsay’s helpful recap here, you can get quite an insight into some of the stranger rides parked along the midway at the carnival. Not so pretty. (What is it about boobies that makes conservatives go publicly nuts?)

I’m wondering what the guys reading think of this? Do you think she’s dressed inappropriately, or posing in an obvious or ridiculous way? Does she look like Monica Lewinsky? And at a time when we are fighting and losing two wars–and spoiling for a third–could anything matter less?

I just don’t see it. But then again, brunettes and boobs are not my speciality. And that’s just the kind of modern man I am.

“Eclectician” at Off the Bone is doing the Carnival of Modern Man thing with a level of culinary dedication that is, well, manly. While good friends may recall a certain project that involved “ten pounds of salsa,” this guy cooked 15 pounds of pork for his wedding.

I’m making pork confit, then layering it with duck livers for terrine. Making confit takes 2 days if you’re rendering the fat yourself, the terrine takes another. And yes, doing this makes me feel manly.

It’s not merely the huge piles of meat and fat, nor even the sweetly animal smell that permeates my Brooklyn shoebox after rendering three gallons of lard. It’s that my fiancée thinks I’m crazy for doing this. It’s that I’m doing this at home, in a kitchen far too small for a project this size. It’s the sentiment of “damnit, I will feed the people who come to my wedding, with my own two hands.” But on some level, I’m doing it because I woke up one morning and said to myself, “I’m making terrines for the wedding,” and the thought made something in me growl contentedly. And it is, sad to say, at least partly the joy of being stupid that’s made this project so much fun.

Cooking seems to be one of those activities whose polarity seems to flip unpredictably between the masculine and the feminine. Perhaps it’s only when it’s a “mother feeding her family” scenario is it truly feminine, or perhaps it’s just sugar shock from the Era of Betty Crocker that makes me think that. Whatever gender we give it, I do know that there’s nothing more powerful than that primal maternal feeding instinct. Eclectician seems to hit on something I might label “Atlas Shrugged in the Kitchen”–the hypermasculine theater of culinary triumphalism that says “I must cook this pig today!” Or perhaps more aptly, “me fight pig me win.” I’m thrilled that this impulse has been translated, through the miracle of the democratization of haute cuisine, into “je dois faire les terrine pour le mariage.”

Whatever the language, that’s butch. And as far as I’m concerned, hot. Mrs. Eclectrician is a lucky gal–if I’m allowed to make such comments at the Carnival.

Technorati tag: modern man

I recently switched from my beloved BlackBerry to a shiny T-Mobile MDA. I’m impressed by the new device, but the process of dealing with T-mobile to make the switch was a total nightname.

I won’t go into the details of the initial transfer, which involved porting my cellphone number from one account to another, but let’s just say that I spent at least 4 hours on the phone with T-mobile reps trying to get the mess they created sorted out, and lost much of my hair in the process. But it all got sorted out in the end, and I thought I’d put it all behind me.

I’ve had the phone for about 6 weeks now, so I’ve just seen the first bill for a full month’s service. Beyond the basic minutes plan, theres a $30/month charge on top so that I can access the Internet (and thereby my email) from the MDA. I love the way it syncs with my work’s Exchange server, much sweeter than the Blackberry, but $30 is pretty steep just for email, which is why I got the MDA in the first place. Anyway, that 30 charge is broken up two line items, cryptically described as “Discounted HotSpot Unlimited” ($14.99) and “VPN Total Int Addon”. Now, I don’t use a VPN for email, and I don’t use T-Mobile hotspots, so I thought I’d check if I could make things cheaper by eliminating one or both of these services.

No dice on that front: after calling T-mobile customer service the first rep I spoke with informed me they were bundled together (the “T-Mobile Total Internet” plan), and they were needed if I was going to get email on my device. Oh well.

Then I thought, well, at least if I can also use Wi-Fi on my laptop in Starbucks thanks to my T-mobile Hotspot subscription, it might be worth it. Let’s just check with the rep if that’s possible. She passed me onto another rep. He said I needed to transfer my SIM card into an Airphone card in my laptop, which I dont have. I said this seemed rather impractical, so passed me onto a third person who didn’t know if what I wanted to do was possible either. Finally I got transferred onto a Hotspot rep, who might have known but wouldn’t tell me, because the name on the account in their records wasn’t what she expected. (The phone account is in Jay’s name because we share minutes, but the Hotspot people only know about me, because Jay doesn’t have the Hotspot feature.) I was about an hour into the call by this point, and gave up. When I told that 4th rep I was out of time and about to hang up she casually mentioned all I needed to use my laptop in Starbucks was my phone number and the last 4 digits of the account holder’s social security number! At last! I haven’t actually tried it yet, but at least it sounds plausible.

I’m just not sure it was worth 60 minutes of my life, let alone $30 a month, though.

Following on from the very cool Banksy wall art that Pam posted, here’s another very cool graffiti artist. He uses soap and water to create “negative graffiti” by cleaning dirty walls and other surfaces. Sometimes he scrapes old posters off walls to make images from the layers beneath. You can read about “Moose” in this NPR article (there’s a great slideshow there too), and you can see more of his art at his website.

Seems the authorities are a bit upset about all this, but aren’t sure how to charge him. If he graffitied a very large rectangular area with this method, would this still be graffiti, or just cleaning?

[symbollix.com]

Sometimes he gets paid to do promotional work too — see the Xbox logo in the last slide. But is it still art, then?

Well… sort of. In browsing my daily hot sheets, I came across this little article in Engadget (which, like this article, is a re-hash of this article) about the iPod Suit. Designed for the young, hip, exec that needs to wow the boardroom with his newfangled widgit that cost a lot and really serves no purpose other than showing his or her generational chasm from traditional business attire. However, this does mark the first time I can remember the iNoun product wave attempting a swing into the executive fashion market.

“As if your ipod is THAT inaccessable in a suit?” R.Randall Fransen, heterosexual designer, quipped. He goes on (and I paraphrase), “But if your iPod is buried in a bag I can see a need, of course.”

I give them “E” for effort, “A” for style but “F” for iNoun product awesomeness.

I think nonfamous should have another cat. for iNoun products…

More proof that Banksy is a freakin’ genius. That’s the illegal barrier wall between Israel and the occupied territories. Click the photo for more.
Hat tip to Mideast Youth – “We are a diverse group of young students, bloggers, and activists who strive for coexistence through democracy and democracy through coexistence.”

All of you who have been chiding me about my recent lack of blogging will be happy to know I’ve been summoned from my slumber by the brand wizards and trend gurus at PSFK. They were looking for some guys to blog as part of their “Carnival of Modern Man” and, as a big fan of their blog, masculinity and, well, carnivals I guess, I said yes. Thus the logo. (Does this make me a carny of some sort?)

Anyway, I’ll be blogging on this topic frequently for the next couple of weeks and I really hope all of you–the nonfamous nonstrangers and our quiet lurkers alike!–will chime in. Feel free to give me tips on any man-related tidbits that you think would be good grist for the mill.

It’s an expansive topic, and one that I navigate with occasional perplexity. What’s a post-gay guy to do in a world where metrosexuals, ubersexuals, transsexuals, thugs, bears, bois, meatheads and Fake Cowboy Presidents fight over the scraps of meaning in our fallen republic? As Rufus Wainwright sings “Made me a man/ oh but who cares what that is?”

Actually, compared to a lot of gay guys I know, I don’t worry about it too much. I guess the main reason I can be completely comfortable in my skin as a man is my dad. Those of you who know him know that he’s a giant redwood of a man who has spent most of his life tearing down (and occasionally blowing up) buildings. For the past year, he has been in New Orleans helping dig the city out of its mucky neglect. In short, his butch bona fides are there for all to see and have never been questioned.

But he’s also an amazingly delicate man with a laugh that is prone to escalating into a high giggle, a propensity to cry at the movies and a steadfast commitment to doing his share (OK, more than his share) of the housework. He has never told a fart joke and no matter how filthy hours of work on a demolition site might make him, his nails are always fastidiously clean. I’m not sure which of my sisters started it, but we’ve called him a “sensitive new age redneck” for years–which I suppose means for him it’s no contradiction to listen to Rush Limbaugh and tell me how angry he gets when the GOP has another of its bad jags of gay-baiting. The “Big L” is an amazing guy and as different as our lives are, he’s an amazing father and role model for me. Here is my favorite recent picture of him, with me at David’s and my wedding in Vancouver:

(That may well have been his pink cocktail by the way… he hardly ever drinks but when he does he kind of likes the girly drinks.)

And just for good measure, a shot of him and his Christmas present the previous year:

The Quake being, of course, the gay rugby team David and I played on. Why not?

All that is to say that I always knew, on a deeply personal level, that real men aren’t troubled by our contradictions–we revel in them. Walt Whitman is, of course, the patron saint of this faith:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I conradict myself
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

But there’s very little Whitman left these days, which I guess is one reason Modern Man needs a carnival. Just don’t waste your money on the ring toss.

Technorati tag: modern man

Hey nonfamosi,

ABC is planning on showing a “documentary” on Sunday night called “Path to 9/11″ which is apparently just more Bush administration propaganda, this time blaming Clinton for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. The democrats, bless ‘em, have a petition going to send off to Disney to say this is most definitely not cool, and violates the responsibility to the public. Please send off a note too.

Do any of you know how to find out who ABC’s Sunday night sponsors are. It might be worth letting them know that some of us would hold them responsible for airing bullshit like this that panders to the Lying Bastard in Chief and his jihad to take the middle east, one oil-producing nation at a time. I smell a boycott in the air.

Where can you have some drinks, hear Derek Mazzone spin, and support the best candidate to represent the 43rd district of Washington State? At the High Dive tomorrow at 6 PM. Finish off your work day with some fun and get home early enough to get up early the next day (if you must).

[click to enlarge]

I’ve been having terrible back trouble lately, and I’d probably choose to let my retirement from society continue a bit longer, but I’m focusing all available energy on being at this event. As we get closer to election day, making our support for Stephanie public is extremely important.