Broke Sheep Nightmares
I was on my Christmas hike on the 24th. For those of you unacquainted with the tradition, my friend, Ian and I hike down the Tennessee Valley in Marin on Christmas Eve to the Sea. We look at Venus rise, eat some cookies, and swig some sort of alcohol. This year it was a 1997 Sierra Nevada Christmas Ale. Yeah, nine year old beer, it’s aged well. After the hike back up the valley, we eat dinner at Piazza De’Angelo in Mill Valley. Ian and I are usually not alone. We bring friends and family (in his case Ian’s wife, and his eight week old daughter.) In my case, the SO.
We also allow other’s who have been along in the past, and we always’ invite a guest homosexual. He –as it’s never been a she—fills in for Josh, the original homosexual, on the original hike, in 1996, who, was a he. We don’t really discriminate, and it could be a she, but Lesbians seem to have their Christmas Eve act together better than we, and are usually unavailable This year, for only the second time, there was no guest homosexual.
I was concerned about this. Afraid the Ghosts of Guest Homosexuals Christmas Past might visit me in my dreams. Think about it, eight guest homosexuals tromping into your bedroom in the middle of the night. I already have no respect for Christmas, I don’t exchange gifts, I don’t go to Midnight Mass, I don’t even have a tree. The arrival of Harvey Firestein and seven other drag queens at 3AM was assured. Ian’s wife pointed out that the sexual orientation of her daughter was unknown and she could be gay. This would make her the Potential Guest Homosexual.
I grumbled a bit at the pretence. Much like Enis in Brokeback Mountain does when he is confronted with a breadfruit concept. Brokeback Mountain is the gay movie of the year. --Apparently.
NPR says so, “Blah, Blah, It’s and understated cowboy romance. A cutting edge tragedy set against the epic backdrop of the Sawtooth’s” (They are a mountain range in Idaho btw. Though the movie takes place in Wyoming, in theory, but was shot in the Canadian Rockies. No Sawtooth's that I could see.)
“It deserves an Oscar for the innovative resurrection of the Western circumstance,” some thesaurus looking up guy in SF wrote in the Weekly. --He’s gay. I bet he's never been anyplace wild other than Yosemite.
To be honest I had my doubts. (That Brokeback was anything, that is.) I saw the previews when I went to see some other independent movie in Berkeley a month or so back. Just the dialog between Jack and Enis up on the screen in the Montana/Wyoming wilderness saying, “I wish I knew how to quit you,” made me turn to the SO and say, “That’s going to be dumb.” But, NPR and a few newspapers and a TV news show hyped it. Needing to fulfill my inner need to make Pat Robertson ponder if rouged men with short hair and scraggley beards are the work of the devil, I went to see it.
The premise, two 19ish guys in 1963 take up a summer of sheep tending on Brokeback Mountain. A month or so into it, they decide sheep aren’t as attractive as each other, and so begins “the thing.” “This thing we have”, as Enis puts it, (Its one of his longer pieces of dialog in the whole movie) lasts fifteen years.
The movie has great scenery. It has some good understated dialog. Stuff like the West Wing is known for. Enis , Joe real cowboy, is the king of it. I haven’t heard that much meaning sandwiched into minimal mutterings since my last family reunion in Kansas. But that’s all that’s good about the movie. What bad? For one thing, it’s way too long. I walked out of it, and said to the SO, “It’s like what they said on Seinfeld about the English Patient, “Its too long”” Also, I never thought I’d say this, but, it has too many male on female sex scenes. About every five minutes or so after the first hour of the film we seem to find Jack or Enis in bed with a wife or girlfriend facing their inner doubt or something.
Now I bring this all up, because there was another person on the Christmas hike this year. Guest Homosexual from Christmas Past. (2003) He asked if we’d seen Brokeback. We dipped our heads appropriately. (Like Enis would.)
“Wasn’t it great?” he asked.
Everyone in the car muttered in Enis like half rotted straw verbs.
“You didn’t like it?” GH from Christmas Past responded, kind of puzzled.
We had not, but like Enis in the movie, were at a loss for words. We were at a loss of criticism, we were at a loss for ability to describe, “the thing. " This broken back, thing.
GH from Christmas Past just said, “I hope they make more like that.”
I had to think, what? We need more movies where guys who lack of interest in sheep go for other guys?
We can use this as a basis for an extremity relationship?
I should pay to see this?
Then, I thought of my friend Mike who was so incensed by the movie he sent me a review by Gary Indiana of the Village Voice. (Yeah, another gay guy. From New York, no less. Gary probably don't where the Sawtooth's are either.) Mike’s quote, “I wouldn't be caught dead going to that trash." But that’s Mike. He’s from Texas, a Professor of Classics, but limited in his understanding of the Northern Cowboy way. Mike seems absorbed by Southern mannerisms, so understanding Montana rough guys is left to me. Though Jack ends up moving to Texas so Mike may insight I don't. Gary’s review, on the other hand, went on about how, in a not so cowboy way, he was just generally pissed that two closeted cowboy’s were not getting over the closet. --
Jack and Enis were so closeted, that Enis finds his lost shirt, from the summer of sheep substitution on Brokeback. (Go see or rent the movie, I’m not telling you the whole story) in Jack’s closet after his death. Then and only then do you understand the love Enis (the non verbal) has for Jack. Gary, not being a cowboy, but rather a poof from New York, takes rash notice of this fact, calling it something like “graffiti from a spray can.”
That’s the problem with Brokeback. Its broke. It’s a movie, based on a 70 year old heterosexual woman’s view of closeted gay cowboy relationships in the 60’s. Then two other straight people adapted a six page short story to a 2 ½ hour movie. This the guest homosexual from 2003 gets excited about, and Mike the guest homosexual from 1999 abhors.
The SO and I changed the conversation. But late that night, it wasn’t the Guest Homosexual of Christmas Past the visited me in my dreams, it was Enis.
--And true to life, he didn’t say much. But he haunts me. -And he keeps waking me up.
We also allow other’s who have been along in the past, and we always’ invite a guest homosexual. He –as it’s never been a she—fills in for Josh, the original homosexual, on the original hike, in 1996, who, was a he. We don’t really discriminate, and it could be a she, but Lesbians seem to have their Christmas Eve act together better than we, and are usually unavailable This year, for only the second time, there was no guest homosexual.
I was concerned about this. Afraid the Ghosts of Guest Homosexuals Christmas Past might visit me in my dreams. Think about it, eight guest homosexuals tromping into your bedroom in the middle of the night. I already have no respect for Christmas, I don’t exchange gifts, I don’t go to Midnight Mass, I don’t even have a tree. The arrival of Harvey Firestein and seven other drag queens at 3AM was assured. Ian’s wife pointed out that the sexual orientation of her daughter was unknown and she could be gay. This would make her the Potential Guest Homosexual.
I grumbled a bit at the pretence. Much like Enis in Brokeback Mountain does when he is confronted with a breadfruit concept. Brokeback Mountain is the gay movie of the year. --Apparently.
NPR says so, “Blah, Blah, It’s and understated cowboy romance. A cutting edge tragedy set against the epic backdrop of the Sawtooth’s” (They are a mountain range in Idaho btw. Though the movie takes place in Wyoming, in theory, but was shot in the Canadian Rockies. No Sawtooth's that I could see.)
“It deserves an Oscar for the innovative resurrection of the Western circumstance,” some thesaurus looking up guy in SF wrote in the Weekly. --He’s gay. I bet he's never been anyplace wild other than Yosemite.
To be honest I had my doubts. (That Brokeback was anything, that is.) I saw the previews when I went to see some other independent movie in Berkeley a month or so back. Just the dialog between Jack and Enis up on the screen in the Montana/Wyoming wilderness saying, “I wish I knew how to quit you,” made me turn to the SO and say, “That’s going to be dumb.” But, NPR and a few newspapers and a TV news show hyped it. Needing to fulfill my inner need to make Pat Robertson ponder if rouged men with short hair and scraggley beards are the work of the devil, I went to see it.
The premise, two 19ish guys in 1963 take up a summer of sheep tending on Brokeback Mountain. A month or so into it, they decide sheep aren’t as attractive as each other, and so begins “the thing.” “This thing we have”, as Enis puts it, (Its one of his longer pieces of dialog in the whole movie) lasts fifteen years.
The movie has great scenery. It has some good understated dialog. Stuff like the West Wing is known for. Enis , Joe real cowboy, is the king of it. I haven’t heard that much meaning sandwiched into minimal mutterings since my last family reunion in Kansas. But that’s all that’s good about the movie. What bad? For one thing, it’s way too long. I walked out of it, and said to the SO, “It’s like what they said on Seinfeld about the English Patient, “Its too long”” Also, I never thought I’d say this, but, it has too many male on female sex scenes. About every five minutes or so after the first hour of the film we seem to find Jack or Enis in bed with a wife or girlfriend facing their inner doubt or something.
Now I bring this all up, because there was another person on the Christmas hike this year. Guest Homosexual from Christmas Past. (2003) He asked if we’d seen Brokeback. We dipped our heads appropriately. (Like Enis would.)
“Wasn’t it great?” he asked.
Everyone in the car muttered in Enis like half rotted straw verbs.
“You didn’t like it?” GH from Christmas Past responded, kind of puzzled.
We had not, but like Enis in the movie, were at a loss for words. We were at a loss of criticism, we were at a loss for ability to describe, “the thing. " This broken back, thing.
GH from Christmas Past just said, “I hope they make more like that.”
I had to think, what? We need more movies where guys who lack of interest in sheep go for other guys?
We can use this as a basis for an extremity relationship?
I should pay to see this?
Then, I thought of my friend Mike who was so incensed by the movie he sent me a review by Gary Indiana of the Village Voice. (Yeah, another gay guy. From New York, no less. Gary probably don't where the Sawtooth's are either.) Mike’s quote, “I wouldn't be caught dead going to that trash." But that’s Mike. He’s from Texas, a Professor of Classics, but limited in his understanding of the Northern Cowboy way. Mike seems absorbed by Southern mannerisms, so understanding Montana rough guys is left to me. Though Jack ends up moving to Texas so Mike may insight I don't. Gary’s review, on the other hand, went on about how, in a not so cowboy way, he was just generally pissed that two closeted cowboy’s were not getting over the closet. --
Jack and Enis were so closeted, that Enis finds his lost shirt, from the summer of sheep substitution on Brokeback. (Go see or rent the movie, I’m not telling you the whole story) in Jack’s closet after his death. Then and only then do you understand the love Enis (the non verbal) has for Jack. Gary, not being a cowboy, but rather a poof from New York, takes rash notice of this fact, calling it something like “graffiti from a spray can.”
That’s the problem with Brokeback. Its broke. It’s a movie, based on a 70 year old heterosexual woman’s view of closeted gay cowboy relationships in the 60’s. Then two other straight people adapted a six page short story to a 2 ½ hour movie. This the guest homosexual from 2003 gets excited about, and Mike the guest homosexual from 1999 abhors.
The SO and I changed the conversation. But late that night, it wasn’t the Guest Homosexual of Christmas Past the visited me in my dreams, it was Enis.
--And true to life, he didn’t say much. But he haunts me. -And he keeps waking me up.
posted by Stan at 2:38 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home