Last week, as Winter expelled its icy breath across the campus for (hopefully) one of the last times before Spring extends its dewy fingers, the gale-force winds carried with them the vestiges of a fleeting premature summer: bronzed bodies — skin baked pleasantly crisp by tropical suns — filled lectures, ambled across the Arts Quad and unintentionally tripled the ethnic diversity of Cornell.

I was not one of these tanned, refreshed travelers. Instead of voyaging to some small, equatorial island, I spent my spring break in Denmark — which means that I returned to Cornell with a Scandinavian pallor, not to mention a hacking cough that still clears a three-seat radius around me in every lecture.

Though I’m ashamed to admit it, this was my first time ever leaving the country, and I had high expectations for how much I would grow as a result of the experience. In my mind, one’s first trip to a foreign land was supposed to be life-changing, the sort of experience that forever alters the way you think about the world, making you question all of your cultural assumptions and stereotypes. Up is down! Black is white! Pickled herring is delicious!

What I discovered, however, is that if you’re looking for culture shock, Copenhagen is not the place to go. Beautiful 18th-century architecture? Sure, they’ve got that. Great museums? Got that, too. A 7-11 on every corner? Yep, there to meet all your microwaved-burrito needs. They drive on the right side of the street, they all speak English and they’ve got a healthy dose of xenophobia; if not for the ubiquity of signs with bizarre letters like � and �, you’d mistake it for some seaside metropolis in the U.S.
(more…)

I like to think of myself as fairly in tune with the modern Zeitgeist. I peruse The New York Times on a semi-daily basis, keeping up-to-date on current events (not to mention the cutting edge of crossword-puzzle technology), and I read the covers of trashy magazines while waiting in line at Wegmans, thereby gleaning not only the latest comings and goings of Hollywood’s hottest stars but also 107.38 NEW Ways to Please My Man in Bed (”To add some variety to your love life, try surprising your man by unexpectedly sticking a piece of dry ice down the back of his underwear! He won’t be able to sit for weeks!”). So it was with a certain smug confidence that I sat down with a few friends this past weekend to play the 1990s-themed version of Trivial Pursuit. After all, nearly half of my life transpired during the ’90s — I couldn’t help but know all of the relevant trivia. Or so I thought.

We tore open the box and set up the board. Instead of the usual circular playing pieces, there were four figurines: a cup of coffee, a PalmPilot-esque PDA, a certificate for “dotcom.com stock” and a grunge rocker. And instead of the usual six stodgy categories, there were six ultra-hip types of questions: “Hanging,” “Viewing,” “Wired,” “Oops,” “Trends” and “Important.” After admiring the shoddily-made game pieces and the “funky” typefaces on the board, we could no longer stand the suspense and began playing.

Half an hour in, nobody had answered a question correctly. We began accompanying questions with hints and telling each other which categories to choose based on which question the player would be most likely to answer correctly. Questions were read so as to make the answers as obvious as possible: “‘Which company sent its TIREless mascot on tour in 1994?’ No, it wasn’t Goodyear; Goodyear doesn’t have a mascot. A blimp doesn’t count as a mascot! No, it wasn’t Firestone either. The mascot is the something Man. It’s alliterative. It sounds like ‘Michigan.’”
(more…)

A popular blog, Dooce.com, opened up its comments on Sunday evening for readers to post their most embarrassing moments. Within 24 hours, there were more than 400 replies, evoking reactions from “Why was he embarrassed by this?” to “Oh no, on her priest?” I wasted more time than I’d like to admit reading through these confessions and vignettes, and I began thinking about how infrequently I feel humiliated these days. Even when I experience something that would have sent me into hiding for several days were I to experience it during high school — say, a ridiculously clumsy pratfall on the Goldwin-Smith staircase that culminates in sliding across the landing on my stomach while people around me gasp in horror — I merely stand up, brush the dust and literary magazines off of my coat, and continue on my way, silently formulating how I will tell the story in order to maximize its hilarity. Goodbye, “How will I ever set foot in public again?” Hello, “How can I work this into next week’s column?”

Take this story, for example. At the start of this past winter break, I went home with my boyfriend to meet his family for the first time. I was understandably apprehensive, and spent the entire six-hour bus ride chewing my fingernails and repeatedly questioning the boyfriend about whether there were any conversational topics I should be careful to avoid broaching (”You’re sure nobody in your family has ever been injured by an errant lima bean?”).

As it turns out, my fears were unfounded; his family was extremely hospitable, and I’m not just saying that because they read my column occasionally. But there was one little incident. After several hours, the lengthy bus ride coupled with the three or four glasses of water I had gulped down nervously meant that I was experiencing a rather urgent need to use the facilities. At last I could wait no longer, and I politely asked where the bathroom was located. I followed their directions, did what I had to do and flushed the toilet.

And the water level started rising.
(more…)

This past Sunday, I sat down in front of the television for the Simpsons-watching that serves as my weekly “Damn, Monday’s almost here” reminder. Instead of the usual segue (which involves a local weatherman standing in front of a cheap plywood map), I was greeted with an urgent warning: “The following program contains discussion of gay marriage. Parental discretion is advised.” At first I thought the warning was a clever joke thrown in to poke fun at the recent censoring craze. But when the episode was over, and various media outlets ran articles on the controversy, my amusement was replaced by confusion.

The warning was real. L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, told The New York Times, “You’ve got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can’t we just entertain them?” So on a show in which the ostensible hero throttles his own son, exposes his rotund, jaundiced butt and is so incompetent that he routinely threatens Springfield with impending nuclear holocaust, it’s the discussion of gay marriage that should give parents pause?

I’m often baffled by the lengths to which people will go to shield their children (and sometimes even themselves) from things that they consider “unsavory.” Books are banned; television shows and movies are censored or cancelled; products are boycotted; eyes and ears are covered and mouths sing “Lalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” We’ve created a culture of ignorance, a world in which people sincerely believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt you — and that if you cross your fingers, maybe it will just go away.

The representation of gays isn’t the only thing that gets parents’ collective gorge rising, of course; sex writ large has the honor of being the most concealed — and yet most discussed — topic to emerge from human sentience. In the 1950s, Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds, making Little Ricky’s presence somewhat mystifying; now, although sex has become a mainstay of all the major media, the government funnels millions of wasted dollars ($167 million this year, to be precise) into abstinence-only education, which presumes that teenagers won’t have sex if they’re not given any information about it.
(more…)

People often bemoan the fact that most holidays — especially the one that just passed — have been commercialized by our money-grubbing, everyone-wants-a-piece-of-the-pie culture. These people are perhaps overlooking the single greatest contribution that this commercialization makes to our holidays: discount candy! Obtaining perfectly good candy at obscenely low prices just because it’s wrapped in the colors of yesterday’s event has certainly become the most important part of my holidays. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I judge holidays not on their cultural significance but on what I can buy for 50 percent off the next day. What follows is a grading of the holidays, based on what really matters: the candy.

Valentine’s Day
One word sums up the candy scene on Valentine’s Day: chocolate. Long before the connection between chocolate and sex was scientifically confirmed (both release the same hormone, oxytocin, into the bloodstream), lovers were proffering each other chocolate in exchange for sex. Valentine’s Day brings a bevy of molded, foil-wrapped chocolates to the table, which isn’t much in the way of variety but, hey, it is chocolate, so you won’t find any complaints here.

The most oft-heard complaint about Valentine’s Day candy regards those candy message hearts. True, they taste like chalk, but you’re not supposed to eat them. Candy hearts exist to provide amusement, not to titillate taste buds, and amuse they do with such romantic overtures as MAD 4 YOU, YOU [illegible], [illegible]K, and READ MORE. Candy hearts inject fun into any Valentine’s Day, especially if you change all of the messages to something dirty.

The highlight of Valentine’s Day is the Whitman’s Sampler, not because it’s tasty (which it is) but because it’s accompanied by a little map that identifies the filling of each chocolate. You can use this as a guide to giving other people the ones you don’t like, but, more importantly, you can put it on a light-box and pretend to be a doctor examining an x-ray film. Prognosis: delicious! A-
(more…)

As a college student, I’ve gotten pretty good — nay, excellent — at wasting time. The moment I sit down to do work, I am distracted by an endless chain of tangential thoughts, each linked ever-more-tenuously to the previous. Having Internet access only exacerbates the problem, as the very structure of the Internet echoes a tumultuous mind; websites lead to other websites in a vaguely linear fashion until you’re suddenly left wondering, “What was it I was looking for initially, and how did I end up in the IMDb goofs section for Charlotte’s Web? And, wow, did the actor who voiced the role of Templeton really die from ‘extreme substance abuse’?”

Given my toddler-caliber attention span, it isn’t all that surprising that I spent a sizeable portion of last Saturday morning watching old clips of Square One, the brilliant children’s show that ran on PBS in the late eighties. Square One had been a mainstay of my early childhood, and on Saturday I suddenly remembered why as I laughed my way through math-related music videos that flawlessly parodied popular genres. There was the inimitable “Nine, Nine, Nine,” a country-western hit about how the digits of multiples of nine add up to nine, and “Eight Percent of my Love,” in which a Springsteen look-alike explains to his girlfriend why she only gets eight percent of his love (his bicycle gets another eight percent, while his parents get a mere four). And who could forget that classic “The Mathematics of Love,” in which a doo-wop group from Phoenicia learns how to read roman numerals?

We truly grew up in the heyday of children’s television. By the eighties, it had become acceptable — even expected — to allow small children to watch television. This fact, coupled with the way that Baby Boomers were shifting their sense of entitlement to cover their children as well, led to a selection of quality television shows that catered to kids.
(more…)

During a week-long sojourn to Florida over winter break, I encountered a man named Top. Top was a shuttle bus driver, but, more importantly, Top was a chatty shuttle bus driver.

While most drivers are content to announce stops and — if you’re in Orlando, as I was — provide Disney trivia, Top decided that his job was to invigorate a crowd of unresponsive, heat-stroked passengers by occupying every single second of the trip with his voice.

Top was my bus driver twice, and I soon learned that his repertoire was carefully calibrated to last through the duration of a one-way trip; relying on the quick turnover of a tourist crowd, he would repeat the same shtick each day. First he would introduce himself to the passengers, mentioning both his previous service in Vietnam and his current occupation as a substitute gym teacher. Then he would ask if anyone on the bus was from another country, and nobody would respond. “Another country” would be modified to “another state” and, still, no response. That’s when Top would break out the jokes.

“What do you call two Mexican guys playing basketball? Juan on Juan.” (Several people chuckle.)

“Here’s one for the kids. Why was Tigger looking in the toilet? He was looking for Pooh.” (Little kids giggle.)

“Why are there no Wal-Marts in Iraq? Because there’s a Target on every corner!” (There is dead silence as everyone shifts uncomfortably in their seats, exchanging wary glances.) “Get it? Target? Tar-jay?” (Several teenaged girls laugh because they, too, call it Tar-jay.)
(more…)

Much ado has been made lately about The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, a soon-to-be-released book written by psychologist and sex researcher C.A. Tripp shortly before his death. Taking into account Lincoln’s dearth of close friends and his icy marriage to Mary Todd, Intimate World arrives at the conclusion that one of Lincoln’s favorite pastimes was smoking a little stovepipe (if you know what I mean). It’ s certainly not a new rumor; in 1978, Lincoln was tenuously referenced in the name of the Log Cabin Republicans, who sought to provide a voice for gay Republicans by distancing themselves from the label as much as possible.

I first heard about Tripp’s book — and the resulting controversy — while watching two talking heads duke it out on CNBC. Many weighty issues were raised, such as:

* Abraham Lincoln had sex with men.
* Abraham Lincoln did not have sex with men.
* No, seriously, he totally took it up the butt.

After enduring ten minutes of this verbal ping-pong match, I had only one question: who cares? Isn’t there a war going on somewhere, or at least people engaging in fights to the death over DVD players at Wal-Mart?

Sadly, plenty care, and Uncle Abe isn’t the only one whose bed habits are being debated seven score and four years after the fact. Americans have a long and storied tradition of posthumously outing historical figures, foisting the honor upon such influential people as Plato, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great, Virgil and three of the four Ninja Turtles’ namesakes (apparently Raphael was the only one tempted by April’s pneumatic figure).
(more…)

The holiday season is upon us, which means two things: first, it is now impossible to turn on the radio without hearing horrible pop covers of already horrible Christmas songs performed by artists whom God never intended to collaborate. After listening to Mariah Carey shriek out far too many key changes on “All I Want for Christmas (Is You)” while sitting in holiday traffic for five hours, I have decided that I am writing my own holiday song. It will be called “I Hope Your Kidneys Don’t Get Stolen This Christmas,” and it will be an instant classic among black-market organ traders and urban myth aficionados alike. Here is a sneak preview:

I hope your kidneys don’t get stolen this Christmas,
‘Cause come Kwanzaa, they’re gonna be mine,
I’ll slip you drugs and when you are unconscious,
I’ll excise your kidneys and leave you in a bathtub full of ice.
Singin’ kidneys, kidneys …

Second (lest you forget I’m listing things), the holiday season is all about maintaining relationships, which means that it is the perfect time for apologizing for past transgressions and making amends. Traditionally, Christmas is a time to let bygones be bygones, to forgive and forget, and to use endless trite phrases in lieu of original content.

As a columnist with a devoted readership of, oh, at least two or three people, I’ve angered plenty; as someone with little sense of propriety I’ve angered many more. In the spirit of Ruben Studdard, whose song “Sorry 2004″ comprised a blanket apology for every mistake he was going to make in the subsequent year, I would like to use my last column of the year as a forum for extending the olive branch to some of the people I have offended in 2004.
(more…)

Every time I go home over a break, something is different. Nothing drastic has occurred — it’s always some small, barely noticeable shift that leaves me vaguely unsettled until I figure out what it is. The coffee table is turned 45 degrees, or there are new handtowels in the bathroom. The last time I went home, for fall break, there was a rather lifelike artificial rooster surveying the dining room from atop a tall stack of shelves in the corner. As I recoiled in horror, my father proudly announced that it had been his purchase. The fake fowl regarded me with disinterest from its lofty perch; I nodded in feigned appreciation.

Today marks the onset of Thanksgiving break and with it comes the annual campus exodus, in which thousands of students make the journey back home to argue with relatives and gorge themselves on turkey and stuffing until they drift into tryptophan-induced delirium. For more than 3,000 freshmen, this will be their first home-from-college Thanksgiving, which means that it will be an opportune time for them to notify all of their closest family and friends that they are gay or — even worse — Republican.

Tomorrow night, Cornell students across the country will be squeezing into their now-too-small childhood beds and lying awake in the dark, examining the artifacts of their youth by the glow of a teddy-bear nightlight. I know the scene all too well: stuffed animals cast monstrous shadows across the walls, and plastic spelling bee trophies reflect the barest glimmer of light from the darkened recesses of the room. Everything smells musty, static. It’s difficult to ignore the feeling of suffocation.

But even asphyxiation is better than the alternative, which is coming home to find that, in your absence, your parents have cleared out all of your stuff and converted your room into something completely different, like a guest room or a meat freezer. The sense of abandonment is unparalleled; your room is sacred ground, and nothing should be moved from its place. In fact, the day you left, your parents should have constructed a papier-m�ch� stand-in who could sit on your bed and be equally unresponsive to their prying questions.
(more…)