Entries from June 2006 ↓

I was in a drug store a week ago, buying a graduation card for my nephew. I noticed all of the father’s day cards and it suddenly hit me. I no longer have a father. I have no one to send a card to. I nearly lost it right there in the store.

It has been six months since Dad’s passing and while I think of him daily, the realization that he is no longer somewhere where I can talk to him or sit with him or see him smile hasn’t totally sunk in. He was always a presence in my life even when he wasn’t around so much so that I took it for granted he’d always be there.

Growing up, he was the typical male of his generation. Mom did most of the day-to-day parenting—cooking, cleaning, shopping, family bookkeeping and tending to the needs of her six sons, despite having a fulltime job herself—while he went to work, brought home a paycheck and pretty much pursued his own interests. In today’s eyes while that might seem like emotional distance, and to some degree it was, it was merely the rigid and all-too-limiting roles that men and women were locked into in those days. As I grew into adulthood and we related to one another as adults, he was able to be more expressive with his love and got more involved in our lives.

But for him, growing up poor and Black in Dallas, TX, during the Depression, the eldest of four kids, he was of that generation that expected little but achieved a lot through hard work, perseverance and making the most of every opportunity. When the nuns at his high school offered a scholarship in physical education to a Catholic university, he accepted it, not because that was what he wanted to study, but because that was the only way he was going to get to college.

When World War II broke out, despite the fact that the armed services were as segregated as the rest of American society, he and thousands of other Black men and women answered the call to serve. When it ended, and the government thanked servicemen by offering college scholarships through the G.I. Bill, he again took advantage of the opportunity and got his masters degree.

Those experiences laid the perfect foundation for his work running community centers in three cities, working as a school teacher and district administrator, serving on numerous boards and heading or founding countless volunteer organizations, building a respected position as a community leader.

We used to have a family expression, “They don’t make rules for Dad.” Not our dad. Signs that said, “Keep Out” or “Authorized Personnel Only” were meant for someone else. He didn’t ask permission to do things, he just did them. He didn’t spend time complaining about how life wasn’t fair or some “ism” was preventing him from getting ahead. He just quietly found a way around those obstacles.

I bear a slight resemblance to my father and share his vocal intonations and speech patterns. I have many of his mannerisms and some of his habits. Those are things I either inherited genetically or learned through imitation. But I also learned many things through observation, not the least of which is not to complain when faced with adversity. Just put your head down and keep plugging away and somehow you work your way though any problem. That’s what Dad would have done.

Considering that many of my peers grew up either not knowing their fathers or having strained relations with them, I am fortunate to have had mine alive for as long as I did. Continuing on without him, I am all the more appreciative for the time we shared.

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The photo above was probably taken around 1959 or 1960, at my oldest brother’s First Holy Communion. Dad is with my four older brothers (from right to left), Rupert III, Charles, Stanley and Gregory. If I was born by then, I was probably somewhere with Mom and a bottle of formula. Younger brother Neil was still two years away.

NOTE: Some links refer readers to sexually explicit websites. View with caution. Furthermore, some links connecting to earlier articles may contain still other links that are now inactive.

Phillip Bleicher, owner of the live gay porn website Cocodorm.com and its related videos and magazines featuring young Black and Latin men, is in more hot water. Federal and Illinois state agencies are now engaged in a criminal investigation into allegations that a student leadership organization Bleicher ran defrauded public school systems out of millions of dollars.

These latest allegations stem from Bleicher’s management of the Student Leadership Network, a group he founded in 1992 ostensibly to offer conferences and leadership programs to student council members in schools across the country. The Illinois Attorney General’s office alleges he defrauded hundreds of schools by “cloning” checks. Once a school signed up for a leadership program and sent their check, Bleicher would allegedly create a bogus check, or clone, with the same check number and increase the amount of money. He is alleged to have used at least some of that money to finance his pornography businesses. The organization ceased operations in July 2005.

The Illinois AG was pursuing a civil suit but was persuaded to cooperate with unnamed federal investigators who are seeking criminal charges.

Meanwhile, Bleicher relocated his pornography operations from Chicago to Miami, Florida in May following an investigation by the Chicago Public Health Department which charged that models used in his videos and live webcam shows were practicing unprotected sex acts while infected with HIV and that CocoDorm not only took no steps to protect them, but actually encouraged unsafe sex.

Unless you know me offline, you probably didn’t even notice I was gone, but I’ve been out of town for the past four days. Family business. One of my brilliant nephews—a scholar and a three-sport athlete—graduated with honors from high school Monday. Family convened down in Maryland to celebrate and watch him give a commencement speech. Despite his Uncle Bernie’s decidedly pro-left and anti-war proclivities, in two weeks he reports here to begin officer training. He just might change that entire place. By 2010 he’ll be a 2nd Lieutenant; Joint Chiefs of Staff should happen by 2030.

Getting out of New York City is always a beautiful thing, but for four days I was away from Internet, newspaper, television and radio news coverage. I returned to 250 emails on my main account, about 100 spam messages on a secondary account, another 150 spams hit my blog but were caught by the filter and I even had a full snail mail box.

Trying to catch up, I realize I missed a lot.

I’ve been missing most of this, including this and this.

I also missed this sad story, that at least had a positive ending.

Shockingly for me, I even missed this. I may have jeopardized my good standing in the society of theatre queens.

Although there was no Triple Crown at stake, I missed this, but also this and this, although I’ve caught a few minutes and know that Dallas looks pretty damn good. Props to Avery Johnson, not only for the great coaching job he’s done this year, but for proving that unheralded college players can turn into great NBA players and later coaches. Nobody gave him an easy path to the success he’s achieved. He’s earned every bit of it.

I got back to town too late to attend this. I hope some of you did.

And who knew that this happened, on of all places FOX News!

The 18th FIFA World Cup begins in Munich, Germany today with a game between Costa Rica and the host German team. Millions of people the world over will skip out on work and school and be glued to their televisions and radios, to follow the first of a month’s worth of games, culminating with the World Cup Finals on Sunday, July 9. It is a sporting event that has the entire world in its grip it seems everywhere except in the United States.

For almost as long as I’ve been alive, people have been saying, “Soccer is about to take off in the U.S.” In my 46 years it hasn’t, and isn’t likely to in my lifetime.

I’m not suggesting to you that soccer, or football as it is called in the rest of the world, isn’t at times an interesting sport. There are youth leagues in just about every community in this country. The term “soccer mom” reflects the fact that kids all over America are involved in leagues where parents regularly have to drive them to games. But the higher up you go, from high school to college to professional leagues and international competition, participation and fan interest drops off precipitously. The rest of the world can’t seem to understand why we don’t love “the beautiful game” the way they do.

The answer merely requires a basic understanding of the American mindset.

First, we didn’t invent it. It isn’t our game. Americans will import television sets or fabrics or fruits and vegetables, but we don’t import our culture. We like to think of that stuff as our own special province. We might take it and change it into something uniquely American, like indoor soccer–a game played on a hockey-sized rink and only in this country—but we aren’t accepting the world’s game hook, line and sinker. Xenophobic as it sounds, it’s just too foreign.

There’s not enough scoring. A soccer match can go 90 minutes only to have the final score “1-nil.” (And we don’t use words like nil around here either. It’s zero, or zip, or nothing, but never nil.) That’s simply not enough. American sports fans like to see scoring, witness basketball and football, our two favorite sports. Running up the score is exciting. It’s an example of one team’s domination of another. Low scoring is dull and a sign of weakness.

The game also doesn’t have sustained and clearly identifiable periods of offense and defense. An attacker advances the ball only to have it taken away by a defender who moves it forward only to have it stripped by an opposing player, and on it goes. This constant shifting of possession grows tedious for sports fans accustomed to seeing one team sustain a drive and their opponent man a defensive stop. Even basketball and hockey, with similar styles of fluid action, enable fans to see exactly when one team is moving in for a score. Strategy laid out in black and white is easier to comprehend and builds excitement toward the realization of an impending outcome. Too much time is spent in a soccer match waiting for a play to develop. That requires an understanding and appreciation for subtlety and nuance, ebbs and flows and change that comes with patience, time and sustained effort.

The World Cup only happens every four years. The three years in between is more than enough time for Americans to lose interest or move on to something else. Ours is a consumer-driven society. We have many things competing for our entertainment dollars, many options to keep ourselves amused beyond sports. You can’t expect a sport that hasn’t gained a foothold to hold onto its tenuous grasp with such long gaps. And professional soccer in this country, in the form of the MLS, doesn’t even draw as well as horse racing.

The best players in the game are not from the United States. Hockey suffers from this problem as well, to a lesser degree. Most Americans can’t name anybody on the U.S. squad, let alone identify the game’s best, and American soccer players are not in that group. Brazil’s Ronaldinho may be known around the globe, but he’d be just another cute brotha with a jheri curl if he walked down any street in the United States. Conversely, while some of the best baseball players in America are from Latin American countries, they are playing our game, here. In essence, they have assimilated.

The NBA and NHL finals are underway, baseball season is heating up and NFL teams will go to training camp in July. The U.S. would have to win the World Cup before anyone would take notice here. We know that will never happen.

Now, I’m not suggesting America’s reasons for ignoring soccer are rational or drawn from an enlightened world view. Clearly they aren’t. They are valid only in that they are the obstacles to be overcome before anyone will embrace the game. But they are precisely part of the (many) reasons why people so despise us. The insular, elitist “we’re important, you’re not” position we take not just around sports but in most of our foreign affairs.

We call our Major League Baseball championship the World Series, even though only American teams play in it. We call our game football and the world’s game soccer, even though in our game, touching the ball with one’s foot is done only on kickoffs, punts, field goals and extra points. We send NBA players to the Olympics to push around smaller countries and win by large margins (although the balance of power in international basketball seems to now be shifting). Sport, as an extension of U.S. foreign policy and prevailing American sentiment, dictates that we define the rules of engagement and deem important only those things where we dominate. Soccer is not one of them.

I won’t pretend to be an avid soccer…uh, football fan, but I will pay attention to the games, watching when I can, following scores when I can’t. As a citizen of the world who happens to reside in the United States, I want to join my fellow world citizens in participating in this international spectacle that comes along every four years. I don’t think that’s asking too much of my time.

No, I’m not talking about me (although…), but the new show on Logo. The network that gave us Noah’s Arc last year, has finally given us another reason to tune in.

Can’t Get a Date is a quirky dating advice program that pairs lovelorn and unlucky gay and lesbian singles with experts who provide them with guidance on relationships, fashion and personal grooming, under the direction of an off-screen host and counselor. Kind of a “Queer Eye” for queer guys and gals but far less smarmy.

Through a fast paced half hour, cameras follow each week’s subject at home and on their trips around town to the various experts, while the host questions them on what they’re looking for in a mate, and finds out what they’ve been doing wrong. In the debut episode, we were introduced to Jenni, a brassy, tough-talking 46 year old mother of two teenage girls, who came out late in life, but is a self-confessed fem looking for a butch partner. Her wardrobe and hairstyle was clearly working against her as was her tendency to talk about her foot neuropathy on first dates. Very unsexy.

With help from the advisors she was able to find and date someone she found interesting, although changes they suggested probably won’t stick. As she herself said, “I am what I am.” But it was a funny half hour with an upbeat attitude unlike a lot of the recent spate of dating shows that seem designed more to create conflict and controversy between potential partners rather than bring people together.

Can’t Get a Date airs Wednesday nights at 10:30 pm, with repeats at various times throughout the week.