M.J. Wilde, The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
Posted 3/29/2005 12:00:00 AM
Anti-gaycounty inherits the windstorm
Life's scary. Ask my bosom buddies.
Bathing suit (my! oh!) can't skim flaws
I'd liketo teach sodas to live in perfect harmony
The baseball - it's something to spit about
Anti-gaycounty inherits the windstorm
March 26, 2004
By M.J. Wilde
The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
In the last several days,there has been a lot of voting going on in Rhea County down in Tennessee.
First, the Rhea Countycommissioners unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislationamending Tennessee's criminal code so the county can charge homosexuals with "crimesagainst nature."
Of course, that's ridiculous.Homosexuals love nature. Especially pool parties.
The most outspoken commissioner,J.C. Fugate (a name for the ages), put it this way: "We need to keepthem out of here."
In fact, County AttorneyGary Fritts was asked by Fugate to "find the best way to enact a locallaw banning homosexuals from living in Rhea County."
Was it a surprise? Well,no. All this is coming from the same county that still has an annual festivalcommemorating the 1925 trial that convicted John T. Scopes on charges ofteaching evolution, even though the verdict was thrown out by the TennesseeSupreme Court.
But this recent gay bandid not sit well, as you can imagine, with the rest of the civilized and,yes, evolved world and brought a poop storm down on Tennessee's most conservativecounty. So, in a lily-livered backpedal, the county's commissioners got togetherand reversed their 2-day-old decision.
That's right. Two days,and they caved.
Come on! If you're gonnabe ignorant, go all the way.
I say, let them ban gaysand lesbians from their county. I say take it beyond that. I say ban everythingthat even suggests gayness. And there's only one way to be sure, and that'sto strip Rhea County of all things fabulous and/or sparkly.
The only colors that shouldbe allowed in Rhea County should be beige, navy blue and brown. All comfortableshoes for women and all high heels over a size 10 should be burned. Toy poodles,Chihuahuas, Shih Tzus and Pomeranians should be bused to the nearest GayAccessory Shelter. Feather boas should be plucked naked, and all cosmetics- especially hair gel and glitter lip gloss - should be destroyed.
Of course, certain subversiveCDs and/or albums that make you feel like dancing, thinking, connecting emotionallyor being happy, i.e. gay, in any way - Cher, Judy Garland, John Lennon, JohnnyMathis, Melissa Etheridge, U2, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Donny Osmond -gotta go. (Marie Osmond is OK, ¹cause she's a little bit country. ButDonny, well, he's a little bit rock ¹n' roll.)
Now, any restaurant thatserves expensive food in small, attractive portions should be shut down immediately,and the owners run out of town. I mean, it's not like they can be rehabilitatedto overcook food and put gravy on everything.
School drama departments,swim teams, wrestling teams, community theater and musical groups of allkinds should be immediately disbanded. All participants should be requiredto sit and watch a re-edited, redubbed version of "Footloose" inwhich the kids realize that banning rock music is a good thing. The addedanti-gay message at the end will, of course, be re-enacted by puppets.
Cable TV? I don't thinkso, mister.
Finally, Rhea County residentsmight wanna think about building a really big wall around their county. Youcan't be too careful. But they should keep in mind gays and lesbians havebeen known to get around just about any barrier put in front of them.
Oh, and just FYI, I believethe Bush administration's chemists are developing a substance called Gay-B-Gone.It smells like a combination of feet, canned green beans, motor oil and Fritos.But it's just in the testing stages.
Seriously, I do thinkgays in Rhea County could do a couple of things to draw attention to theircause. First, they could drop planeloads of glitter and confetti all overthe county. I mean, who wouldn't love that? Or they could release as manymonkeys as they can find into the next County Commission meeting.
Who knows? Maybe the monkeyscan take over and make more enlightened decisions. They've evolved a lotsince 1925, you know. The monkeys, I mean.
Life'sscary. Ask my bosom buddies.
June 18, 2004
By M.J. Wilde
The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
You know, it's not deathI fear so much. It's everything leading up to it.
When you get to a certainage and the people you love have bad, bad things like cancer and emphysemaand diabetes, it tends to shrivel your view of life to pinpoints.
My aunt has emphysema.My sister has breast cancer. My cousin has uterine cancer. My mother, fatherand brother-in-law have diabetes. My brother has heart problems and a kneethat needs an operation. Another cousin has to have some serious back surgery.And a good friend has terminal cancer.
So when it was time forme to go in and get a physical, I was a little, um, freaked out. OK, I wasreally freaked out.
The physical wasn't sucha bad experience. Except you're naked, draped in a thin paper gown and sittingfor 20 minutes on butcher paper. I felt like a club sandwich without thetoasted bread. All that was missing was a pickle and a side of cole slaw.
Every time my doctor said, "Thisis going to feel a little uncomfortable," she was being completely honestwith me.
It turned out I had aquestionable little bump on my left breast. The doc said it was probablyjust a little swollen node. OK, I bought that. It was nothing. Then she saidit would be a good idea to have a mammogram, just to be sure. I hadn't hadone yet, and so it sounded like a sensible idea.
Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
My sister had just hada mastectomy, and my cousin a partial hysterectomy. Both were undergoingchemotherapy, and both were doing well. This news did not calm me.
In the three days beforemy mammogram I kept having the same dream. I was in some 1930s Hitchcockmovie. Everything was black and white and slightly tilted. I was in a ritzyhotel lounge having a drink with friends. I was so happy, so carefree.
Then a bellboy who lookedlike a young Harrison Ford appeared at the door to the lounge and yelledout: "Mammogram! Mammogram for Ms. Wilde! Mammogram!"
Everyone turned and lookedat me and froze. I'd wake up in a sweat.
So the day finally came,and I soldiered on over to the radiology place, filled out some papers andsat among the brave. Women of all ages sat, acting casual and reading golfmagazines as though the secret to life were hidden in the pages. We all hadthat same look. The look that said: "This is nothing. No big deal. It'llbe fine, and then I'll go get ice cream. Maybe buy a sexy new bra. Or a bottleof bourbon."
They called my name.
"M.J. Weeeldee?"
"Um, that's Wilde," Icorrected. Geez, I thought in a panic, I hope they're better at reading mammograms.
During the mammogram,the technician made small talk as she cavalierly squashed my perky girlsinto Play-Doh pancakes between panes of glass. By the time she was done,we each knew the other's life story, and my mammos were now hanging to myknees. In fact I almost asked if they had one of those canned ham keys soI could roll ¹em back to their original positions.
After a week of waitingfor the results, my doctor called me at work.
That's gotta be bad news,right? They never call you at work. Heck, they never call you.
But she was calling togive me good news. I was fine. All the tests were normal, including the mammogram.
I should've been happy.But all I could think of was why was I the lucky one?
There's no answer really.We wake up every morning, hold on to hope with both hands and laugh as muchas we can.
It's not much to go on,but it's all we've got. Besides, hope and laughter beat fear any day of theweek. And if we're lucky, maybe even cancer.
You can call or e-mailM.J. Wilde at (505) 823-3605 or mjwilde@abqtrib.com. Not to worry. The girlsare bouncing back just fine.
Bathingsuit (my! oh!) can't skim flaws
July 16, 2004
By M.J. Wilde
The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
It happens every summer.And it's a big, fat lie.
There has never been abathing suit made that can "hide your figure flaws." Unless, ofcourse, your figure flaw is a tiny heart tattoo on your size 2 tushie. Andif it is, I hate you.
And there has never beena bathing suit made that can "draw attention away from your figure flaws." Iimagine, in my case, this miracle suit would have to come with a jugglingmonkey I would wear as a hat as I approached the pool area.
Every time I log on tothe Internet these days I see the happy little feature stories on how togo about buying the bathing suit that would flatter, fix and forgive eventhe worst of my fatty and/or genetic flaws.
The idea, you see, isto camouflage the problem. Blend in. Make your 2-foot moons glow less brightlyin the light of day. This works about as well as when guys wear those camouflageoutfits to the grocery store so the "enemy" can't see them in thecereal aisle.
And magazines glare outat us every year with advice on how to fix big butts, small butts, smallchests, big chests, short legs, long legs, big tummies, short torsos, longtorsos and everything else they know we consider just plain ugly. The reasonthey know we consider ourselves just plain ugly is they helped put the ideain our heads in the first place.
You can ask any normalwoman - from a chick-on-a-stick to a-roast-on-a-platter - and each will tellyou, point by point, what is wrong with their bodies. And, unless they'reon the cover of Sports Illustrated, they'll also tell you how much they hatewearing a bathing suit.
Some of the suggestionsof the bathing suit gurus are such lies that it's silly even to point themout. So I will.
I like the one where theysuggest wearing one of those shiny metallic suits to create an optical illusionabout just what the heck is wrong with you.
Yeah, this way the suncan point you out to those who might have thought that slap-slap-slappingsound was coming from the pool's water instead of your thighs. Happily, justbefore they register your face, you will reflect said sun so intensely theywill be blinded for life.
Win-win sitch.
Then there's always theskirted bathing suits decorated with dizzying geometric patterns. These makepeople feel nauseous and fall down, giving them no time to notice your poochystomach/floatation device.
I have one word for you:Lycra.
This is the magic wordused in many catalogs for women larger than a size 8. It is usually foundin the bathing suit section, which is one page squashed between the 20-page "whydon't you just stay home and wear a caftan?" section and the 12-page "thank-you-God-extra-wideshoes" section.
Lycra, my friends, isnot found in nature. It was not discovered on a hippo who was using it toquell the gibes of hyenas as she approached the watering hole.
Lycra is the trademarkfor a substance called Spandex, a man-made elastic fiber used in all typesof clothing, especially leotards, unitards and Halle Barry's cat suit. Andyards and yards and yards of it is used in bathing suits. It will flattenyour tummy and hold in your tush. But I must caution you. On some of us,it can smoosh those flaws out the leg and arm holes and leave you lookinglike the Michelin Man.
I say flaws be danged.I say embrace your figure flaws and show the world it's those very figureflaws that make you the gorgeous, saucy, unique individual you are.
Personally, I'm gonnado my bit by stripping and going nekked to the next office swimdig.
Of course, I'll wear thejuggling monkey as a hat. I mean, I'm not crazy.
I'dlike to teach sodas to live in perfect harmony
July 23, 2004
By M.J. Wilde
The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
A Pepsi drinker once askedme why I'd never joined Pepsi's "Next Generation."
Honey, I replied, Pepsi is a cult. But Coke is a religion.
You see, there are two kinds of people in this world. There are Coke people andthere are Pepsi people.
Coke people are smart and very awake. Pepsi people think they're smart and veryawake. But both are good people. Except for Pepsi people.
Not that I'm a soda bigot. We all have a right to drink whatever we like withouthaving it held against us. And if someone out there decides that drinking a weak,sorry-excuse-for-a-soda like Pepsi makes them happy, well, good for them.
Now, this is just the kind of open-mindedness that has made me proud to workhere at The Tribune.
You see, we here at The Trib are all about diversity. We're all about choice.We're all about thirst-quenching freedom.
And nowhere could you find better proof of those ideals than in our soda machine.
That's right. Stressed out, cotton-mouthed employees could choose from Coke,Diet Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Slice, Mountain Dew and even some kind of atrociousgrape soda.
All you had to do was pay 55 cents, and you were instantly rewarded with a coldcan of the heaven of your choice.
It was beautiful, man.
It was also proof that Coke and Pepsi could co-exist peacefully and profitablyin one machine. And if they could, maybe there was hope for the rest of the world.
That's when it happened.
Our little testament to freedom and diversity was replaced. On the surface, nota bad thing. And not a complete surprise. The old machine was a little eccentric.It sometimes sucked in dollar bills and then refused to cough up a soda. Andthere were those times when it didn't agree with your choice of Diet Coke andgave you Dr Pepper instead.
We could hear the commotion down the hall as our old friend was scraped acrossthe floor, lifted onto a dolly and unceremoniously rolled into the sunset.
When the noise died down,I made my way down the hall toward the small room where my cravings for "the real thing" hadbeen satisfied for so many years.
My screams of horror could be heard throughout the building.
Standing before me was a modern gargantuan example of corporate greed. And staringback at me from behind its plexiglass lair were rows and rows of - Pepsi products.
"Noooooooooo!"
I thought perhaps I was mistaken. So after the initial shock, I scanned the machine'sofferings again.
But it was true. There was bottled Pepsi in all its horrid and various forms.Wild Cherry Pepsi? I gagged.
There was also bottled water and juice. For the love of bourbon, we're not schoolteachers.We're journalists. There should be a row of Lynchburg Lemonade, not mango juice.
All this, but not one Coca-Cola product.
Avarice! Sheer avarice!
My shock turned to rebellion,and I went straight to The Trib's editor with the war cry of "Coke or death! Coke or death!" freshupon my thirsty lips.
I laid out my cola complaint on behalf of myself and like-minded colleagues.My editor took immediate action. He called the soda people and told them we wouldn'tput up with such a blatantly evil anti-Coke demonstration. He told them thatPepsi and Coke had been living in harmony lo these many years and The Tribunewould not compromise its ideals to satisfy any attempt by Pepsi to monopolizeour thirst for equality and diversity.
Or maybe he just askedif next time they could throw in a few more Cokes so we'd leave him alone.I'm notsure. But whatever was said, a row of Cokes andDietCokes was added. But over the past several weeks, slowly, insidiously, theyhave once again pushed Pepsi upon us. The balancing presence of "the real thing" hasagain been eliminated.
First the Patriot Act. Now this.
My friends, I fear for us all.
The baseball - it's something to spit about
Nov. 5, 2004
By M.J. Wilde
The Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune
Did you watch the WorldSeries? Or as a friend of mine calls it, "thebaseball"?
Very exciting for the Red Sox, I understand, who hadn't won a series sincethe earth cooled. Now they've won and the world can breathe a great sigh ofrelief and continue spinning happily on its axis. And I believe the playersgot a parade and a ring. Well worth years and years and years of taunting andsacrifice.
I tried to watch the baseball, but, well, there was something disturbing thatdistracted me completely from enjoying America's pastime.
I'm speaking, of course, of all the spitting. You know what I'm talking about.
There's always been spittingin the baseball, but over the last several years it has escalated to tsunamiproportions. There's so much spitting on the fieldit gives "sliding home" a whole new, icky meaning.
Used to be you'd see some ballplayer with a wad of tobacco in his cheek thesize of a golf ball. Very attractive. Chick magnet. But now, every man on theteam looks as though he's got a giant softball-size meatball in his cheek.Some have tobacco, some have wads of gum. They look like a control group insome kind of grotesque medical study of cheeky tumors.
They spit on the field, they spit into their gloves, they spit on their hands,they spit on the bases, they spit on the baseball and they even spit in thedugout. I pity the poor janitor who gets the dugout gig. There are no words.
It made me think a lot about men and spitting in general. Hey, it's my job.I'm a columnist.
For the most part, men do not spit indoors. For that we are grateful. But assoon as they're outside, all bets are off.
Now, as a rule, women won't spit unless there's a bathroom sink available ora big, soft absorbent tissue suffused with aloe and vitamin E. Apparently,a woman's salivary glands are not triggered by the outdoors. (There are thosethat believe the spitting is a sports thing. But I watched the Olympics andall the spitting and drooling happened off-camera from male correspondentsduring women's volleyball.)
I had a boyfriend oncewho never spit if we were on a long trek in which sidewalks were involved.But gethim on some outdoor dirt trail and, "Hock-patooey!"
I asked him once why he spit. Did the outdoor air trigger some kind of uncontrollabletestosterone spit font? Was it something macho he learned as a boy while playingsports? Were men born with a spit gene as part of their DNA construct? Washis swallower broken?
He blinked as if I wasan alien from the planet Loogie, spit and said, "Beatsme."
Today that man is clinically insane and wears a bib.
Now, I've interviewed tens of people about this. OK, five. Alright. Two. I'vealso perused football, basketball, tennis, golf and badminton and could onlydetect one or two incidents of spitting. And it was during a rather tense setof badminton.
It all leads me to this very important conclusion:
Men spit while playingthe baseball because it's what ya do while playing the baseball. It's whatBabe Ruth did.It's what Lou Gehrig did. It's what SammySosa did. It's what Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins did in "Bull Durham." It'sa tradition. I get it. But it's gotten out of hand.
(Now, this is all very different from that old guy you always see spittingup something heinous and possibly alive onto the sidewalk in public. He's anold guy and has had many years of life built up in his lungs and must get ridof it in order to stay alive. Give him a break.)
I guess in the baseball, if you're not salivating like a bull mastiff, thenyou're just not passionate enough to be playing the game. You need to go home.The baseball is not for you.
Look, I'm all for tradition and I love the baseball. All I'm asking is fora return to golf ball-size cheeks and intermittent, moderate spitting. Andif you're a grown man and not even remotely involved in a sport, just cut itout.
If that happened, muchlike Gehrig, I'd consider myself "the luckiest(luckiest, luckiest, luckiest) gal (gal, gal, gal) on the face of the earth(earth, earth, earth)."
Stories copyright 2004 The Albuquerque Tribune. Reprinted with permission.