Tuesday A/V: I Know What Boys Like

Yeah, I'm 40. You don't have to say it. My head is perpetually in the 80s. But hey, how can you resist a toss-back to one of hundreds of one-hit wonders from the era, like this one?

They used a sample of this, the only single that was a minor hit for the New Wave rock act, The Waitresses -- in a recent episode of The Simpsons. (Recent in the sense that I just saw the repeat here.) It was yet another brilliant use of old pop culture references, and it was the background for a montage of Lisa assimilating in disguise as Jake Boyman at the "boy's section" of Springfield Elementary after a spate of forced gender separation in the school. Good choice - because for some of us who came of age as gay boys (and also those who came of age as trannies, I guess) around the time, it became a sort of smarmy anthem for what was the best part of being gay. When you know what boys like, you got it all. And who better to know what boys like than another boy, huh? ;-)

I remember that they played this on the small dance floor at the now-long-dead D.C. mega-club Tracks one night in the mid-late 1980s, and everybody loved it. The gay boys could laugh it up, the lesbians could be all snarky and sarcastic, and the fag hags at least knew the lyrics and could pretend their evenings would end successfully, somehow.

But looking at the video now, I just gotta say that it was a mistake to show the band at all. It should have just been lead singer Patty Donahue in some J. Geils Band-ish scenario, teasing a bunch of high school athletes in a locker room or something. I mean -- who did the wardrobe for this video?? In what rock and roll manual does it say that the bassist should wear khakis and a sensible blouse to go with her Woolworth's hairdo?

The Andean View

The trip to and from Quito had to be the best part of the experience. I didn't get more than a glimpse of the city while I was there, but it was okay. It was a strange sort of experience, sort of what I imagine Alaska to be like but with very different sorts of people. It is high up and the city is shaped like a banana, carved into short valley that wraps around two huge lines of mountains. And it's wet and cold, wrapped in a perpetual swath of clouds going in and out. But it has a beauty, so much of it natural and overwhelming. Inescapable.

Flying over South America, heading from the beach-strewn east coast to the craggy, forbidding Andean west was an intimidating concept before I got on the plane. But it was actually quite nice. The trip to Lima was shorter than the flight from D.C. to Los Angeles, and when the mountains appear they never stop coming. You're on top of the world the rest of the way, and you only know you're approaching Lima when the plane suddenly noses down into a thick cloud bank, under which is a large coastal port city amidst a dotting of mountains on and off the shore.

The jump to Quito is even more surreal. You head up off the runway at Lima and basically don't come down. The mountains are so high in Ecuador that as you're flying at cruising altitude above a thick layer of clouds, suddenly the snowy crest of a mountain top will pass by almost at equal height to the top of the plane.

The most breathtaking moment was on takeoff from Quito airport on my return home. The single runway at the airport faces a mountain side -- no lie -- and you take off fast and high to clear it. Once we got over the clouds, a big, glistening mountain top came into view. It had snow along one side, and a craggy shelf that swerved around it 90 degrees to another side. When I saw that the top was actually blown apart, I realized it was a dormant volcano. And the shelf had a ribbon of streams running from the melting snow cap to a big lake that was so still and clean that it looked like glass. Tens of thousands of feet up from the sea. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

The planes I flew on were filled with a combination of Brazilian and Peruvian businessmen and European backpackers heading home through São Paulo. It was a funny kind of familiarity. Not quite the reference point of the usual folks on transcon flights in the U.S., but I felt very comfortable. I felt more Brazilian.

The Road to Quito

I have to go back onto the road tomorrow morning, at the crack of dawn. I'm heading to Quito, Ecuador, to give a speech on Thursday at a conference. And, I've heard that it's quite likely I will have no internet access at my hotel. Oh joy.

On the bright side, it's my first trip to the west coast of South America, and I'll have the pleasure of landing at both Lima airport and Quito airport, known to fellow travelers from São Paulo as the two most frightening airports to fly into in Latin America. I'm a bit of an adventurer on those counts. There hasn't been a crash at either airport in a while, so...

So if I am not terribly active between now and Friday, you'll know why. I'm bursting with things to say and think about, but there literally isn't enough time and energy in the day to blog right now. Once this trip is over, I will be back to being me.

p.s. - Here's hoping Hillary finally gets squashed like an insect tonight. And Bill along with her.

Our Work Is Never Over

OK, so...

I went away for a while, and a great deal of things happened. As I indicated in my last postings, my 40th birthday was quickly approaching, and a series of my closest friends were set to begin arriving in cycles to visit and celebrate. That all went by in the last three weeks of March, and I then went back to Washington for a week of work, and visiting, and the third in a series of birthday parties to round off what was, without a doubt, the best birthday I ever had.

But there was just something about the whole time that made me uninterested in blogging. Not that I didn't want to share it all with you. Far from it. I just was so in the moment that I really honestly couldn't break away.

Then, work took over. Boy did it ever take over. I have been so swamped and overwhelmed with stuff lately that my head is reeling.

So, in that spirit, I turn to King Julien and his brother, Jay, to say it for me. If I know my audience well, I know you'll appreciate it, and forgive my absence. Because alas, we must work it faster, stronger and harder all the time.