back to school shopping

L'Shanah Tovah!  It's finally September, but it's still hot outside and I can't go to Target until next week because I just know they won't have their Halloween business up yet and I can't face another disappointment.

When I can't go to Target, anything's on the table.  I've been known to blackout in Bloomingdales, emerging from an Orange Julius stupor hours later with a collection of overpriced tops and a shredded Amex Gold Card.  I guess there's a reason it's called the Chopping Mall (no one calls it that)...

Chopping Mall is an important film because its characters live out my now and forever fantasy of getting to have a sleepover party in a 1980s mall.  That's what I want a time machine for.  That's it.  All I want is to be able to buy vintage Nikes and action figures for pennies on the dollar while enjoying a vanilla frappe from Brigham's.  Couple that with the thrill that only comes from running away from homicidal security robots???  Nothing's better!

This is a movie about a bunch of twenty-something kids who spend the night inside a mall and die at the hands of robot security guards who come to life after the mall is struck by lightning.  Genius.  Chopping Mall is genius.

This movie also features one of my favorite tropes: the slutty short guy.  I don't just say this because I struggle to maintain my 5'8" stature (thanks, Boniva), but it has been scientifically proven that short guys have more sex than tall guys because we have something to prove.  Chopping Mall isn't afraid to go there.

The cast of Chopping Mall is a veritable who's who of 80s horror - Barbara Crampton from Re-Animator - Gay Russell Todd from Friday the 13th Part 2 - Kelli Maroney from Night of the Comet.  Keep your eyes peeled and you'll even see Joey from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies shoplifting records.  But you don't have to take my word or even wait for a repertory screening, Chopping Mall is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

who run the world? (girls)

Good morning.

Did y'all watch The Leftovers on HBO?  Yeah, me neither.  It just looks like such a chore.  Blech!

I already know all about the rapture, thank you very much.  I've seen Night of the Comet.

Night of the Comet is all about how fabulous it is when everyone on Earth gets wiped out by an errant comet and you're left to reenact countless shopping montages until the mall is overtaken by cannibal zombie punks and you have to escape only to wind up in the hands of corrupt government health officials who hole you up underground and separate you from your sister, leaving you with the sole responsibility of destroying the military industrial complex and rescuing several multicultural children along the way.

When I was in high school, my friend's older sister (who went to a fancy art school in Boston) asked me if I'd ever seen Night of the Comet and she went on about how much I'd love it (aka: "You're gay, right?").  She wasn't wrong.  It's refreshing to discover a movie that's so legitimately weird, even after all this time.

no country for gay men

"Hey, did you go to the shooting today?"

I don't know about you, kids, but this Target nonsense has me out of sorts. I’m positively depressed. It's not Back to School season without being able to pick up a New Kids on the Block TrapperKeeper and a couple of chintz picture frames. I don't even know where to buy socks anymore! Alas, no one ever said that being gay was easy. We must stay the course.

All of this political sacrifice, coupled with the sudden availability of pumpkin ale in my Whole Foods, has me harkening back to the days of being a schoolboy. Clutching my textbooks to my chest, tempra paint on my flat-front khaki pants from last night's all-nighter, cramming for that omnipresent Final Exam (1981).

Maybe we should all take a page out of the student handbook of those kids at Lanier College. Their student body was renowned for their elaborate political performance art projects in times of conflict. Take for instance the time that they staged a terrorist shooting on campus to get more funding for the arts (mind you, this was well before Columbine and 9/11 so it was still okay to laugh) – these kids were living!

Of course, the students were living until they start dying off one by one at the hands of a psychotic killer dressed up like Javier Bardem, but you can't make an omelette...

You see, Final Exam isn't really about a campus plagued by a serial killer.  The real story here, what separates this from the other ultra-low budget slasher dreck, is Radish. Radish is the school's resident old-school  sissy gay. Perpetually lemon-faced, Radish walks with a proud sashay as words slither from his mouth like a gay snake with sibilant s’s to spare. Whenever he speaks, eyes roll and midwesterners pray for a mercy-killing. 

This kind of gay isn’t at all exclusive to Final Exam.  Let me tell you a story.

The year was 1986. I was in second grade at Saint Agatha’s Parochial School and there was a little boy in my class named Paul. While my own budding homosexuality was subtle enough to pass as aloof intellectualism (unless, God forbid, someone brought up Ellen Greene), Paul wasn’t so lucky. Paul wore his gay with a badge of honor that, at 7 years old, left me mortified. I made the obvious second grade assumption that if I were to even look at Paul, it would draw attention to my own secret and they'd come for me in the night with torches. I avoided him like the gay cancer.

One day Paul was having a birthday party and he handed out the most beautiful invitations.  They were handmade with construction paper and glitter and dyed feathers. In a flash, it came to me - I figured out the perfect way to show that I was nothing like that sissy, Paul. In front of all my classmates, I tore up his invitation and sprinkled it on the floor to a chorus of laughter.  This was the worst moment of my life. I was Judas Iscariot. I was Nancy Allen!

"I should have had a salad instead of this spaghetti."

"Well, why didn't you?"

We all know about Mean Girls, but nothing trumps a mean gay. Gay on gay hatred is tricky business and it’s everywhere. No different than the Phelps clan or Target, this hatred is spun out of fear – fear of being taken down, fear of being questioned, fear of change. As long as it’s socially acceptable for everyone else to hate the gays, how about we take it easy on each other?

Whether in school or at work or at the grocery store, there's always a Radish – a gay who can’t be anything other than the precious little butterfly that God made him. And he shouldn't have to be.

If your first instinct is to cringe and distance yourself, I get it. I was that way too, but I got over it. Take a moment to acknowledge that feeling and then try to amend that behavior.  Why not? Let's evolve together. Straight people hate us enough; we don’t have to hate each other.

The next time you see a Radish, think about what it’s like to be in his shoes (even though they may be sandals with socks and even though they may make you throw up in your mouth a little). You don’t have to invite him over for a movie marathon sleepover or to your next vodka infusion brunch, but a little kindness can go a long way.  We’re all in this together.