Oh. How understated. No wonder we couldn’t spot it from the car – I was looking for some sort of monstrous obsidian pyramid, possibly topped with some tentacled beast, possibly with a vortex opening in the sky above it. This rather pedestrian gravestone wasn’t WEIRD at all. The best effort towards “weird” was made by whoever left the toy dinosaur:

We made our own “weird” offering of a Canadian penny. Sadly, Cthulhu did not make an appearance in order to thank (or eat) us.

As this marks the only time in the history of the world that I will beat out Lillian Faderman in Google search results, I felt it necessary to gloat.

In even more immature news, I added “Michelle Schwartz is an Angry Butch Lesbian” as both the title and alt text for the above screenshot in an attempt to bolster these results up to number one. Angry butch lesbian. Angry butch lesbian. Crawl me Google, crawl me!

MILEAGE TOTALS:
477.45 miles (up from 283 miles in 2008)

Best month: September (81.47 miles)
Worst month: December (5.03 miles, not counting warm up runs on the gym treadmill)
Average miles/month: 39.8

GOALS FOR 2010
Run a half-marathon in under 2 hours.
Break 500 miles per year.
Keep average pace under 10 minutes per mile.
Explore new parks and trails.

2008 Running Map

MILEAGE TOTALS:
283 miles (between July and November)
Average miles/month: 56
First run of 2008: Mar 26
Last run of 2008: Nov 23

GOALS FOR 2009
Run a half-marathon in under 2 hours.
Explore new parks and trails.

On the bright side, the discontent continues to spread. Fresca at Astronave was kind enough to link me to her post on the campaign, as well as Mark Simpson’s take on the use of the word metrosexual.

This weekend I wrote up my first post for Shameless. Y’all are free to head on over and leave comments so that we can trick my new editor into thinking I am really, really popular.

What follows under the cut is the unedited version of my post. I have a problem with being concise and have a hard time letting go of my long held belief that longwindedness is the soul of wit. So this is the much longer version that didn’t make it to print.

The Case of the Amazing Invisible Homosexual on Reality TV

I have recently been sucked into the vortex that is the So You Think You Can Dance franchise. The newest entry, So You Think You Can Dance Canada premiered a few weeks ago, and it’s mostly been a fun time, although I have the same issues with it that I have had with the American version. Among them, there is the mystery I like to call “The Case of the Amazing Invisible Homosexual.” In the SYTYCD franchise, this mystery reveals itself in two ways. First of all, despite the number of gay male dancers that have appeared on the show, none of them are ever referred to explicitly as such. Not that I’m asking for it to be made into a big deal that there are gay men in the arts, but it would be nice if, instead of cutting to their moms in the audience, just once the cameras could show their happy boyfriends celebrating. It would also be nice if the show wasn’t so rigid in its gender stereotypes and heteronormativity. Male dancers who stray too far from the show’s idea of maleness are regularly told to “butch it up” and act more like “men,” not, it is implied, like prancing, delicate women.

This is a common issue in reality TV. I first noticed it on season 5 of America’s Next Top Model, when a contestant on the show, Kim Stolz, an out lesbian, was often berated for being too butch or too manly or for not being girly enough. Wearing a designer women’s polo shirt and sporting a short hair style was apparently enough to rile up the judges’ ideas about femininity. And this was coming out of the mouths of two men, J. Manuel and J. Alexander, who have decided that they know what it is to be womanly. In an interview with The Advocate, Kim Stolz discussed this treatment:

As far as Miss J., I like him, but he was the first and the harshest to criticize my gender-identity expression. And that really confused me. Because of all people, I think he should be the one to understand. I thought perhaps he felt like, “It’s so easy for me to be feminine, why can’t she be?” I guess I could see where he was coming from, but that was really offensive to me, that he would constantly harp on my gender. After a while, it was like, enough is enough. At one point, you’re telling me to be myself, then you’re telling me to be someone else. If I did that to you, Miss J., you’d have a hard time with that.

That was 2005. This is 2008 and things have not changed one bit. If the male dancers on SYTYCD are expected to play along with the show’s concept of manliness, then the opposite is true of the female contestants on American Gladiators. Once again, I don’t think North Americans would be particularly scandalized to find out that their are shhhh… lesbians in the worlds of professional sports, the armed forces, or law enforcement, the professions from which a good number of gladiators originate, but apparently the producers have decided that everyone on the show is straight, and not just straight, but a particularly staid Fifties sitcom version of straight, y’know, when women were women and men were men. Maybe because the show’s content is so intensely homoerotic (hell, that’s the only reason I’m watching), the networks felt it best to force the text into subtext by forcing a Susy Q. Homemaker storyline onto all the women and a Manly McJones narrative onto all the men. When one of the male contestants strays too far from the show’s male ideal, he is treated with a mixture of condescension and revulsion. “Wow, Bob,” the show’s announcers spit out, “he’s a dancer! Have you ever seen a dancer take on a gladiator? Who would have thought a dancer would be able to best our gladiators” as if the words “male dancer” carried the same meaning as “weak, limp-wristed, lady-man.”

And when it comes to the female contestants, the only women the show spends any time on are aggressively heterosexual, aggressively post-feminist ladies. The type of women who give squealingly enthusiastic interviews in which they extol the virtues of their husbands and their children and how they certainly could never have climbed a wall made of rope without the help of a good fine man. The contestants wave from the arena and the camera lovingly pans over their happy smiling nuclear family. Women who don’t meet this feminine ideal are shunted to the sidelines. They are interviewed about their job or their parents and never mention any relationship that does not meet the show’s “family friendly” standards. I find it strange to think that no one on that show has EVER even mentioned their same-sex partners as their inspiration. Do they give the interviews which are then never aired, or does the show operate on a strict don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy?

What I would like to see on this coming Fall season on reality TV is one or two same sex partners actually identified in the audience, a few less male judges deciding what it is to be a woman, and maybe just once, an interview in which a gay man or woman is allowed to say “Hey, I dedicated this dance/run through The Eliminator/walk down the runway to my partner.”

Six months ago, on March 26, I set the goal of running the Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, and this morning I actually did it! I met my goal! Which goes to show you – if something is non-refundable, I’ll get it done. No way I’m lettin’ Scotiabank keep my 75 bucks without getting something for it!

This morning, after getting up disgustingly early, Stark and I headed down to City Hall to line up for the start. Stark was the official photographer and cheering gallery. Here I am, waiting in the dark for the race to start:

Then finally, after a lot of standing around and scoping the area for hot dykes and people in funny costumes (We saw Spider-Man and Stark saw Elvis. Spider-Man actually beat me to the finish, the jerk. Who can run fast wearing that mask? I guess the answer to that question is “Spider-Man.” Sadly, I think Elvis beat me, too), I was off on my run!

The run itself was really fun. The marathon route doubled back, so I got to watch all the elite runners coming back in the opposite direction. Man, do those guys move. I was momentarily heterosexual, watching all those men with their firm, yet supple chest muscles and rippling shoulders run towards me. They were quickly followed by the less-fit hairy guys with big sweaty bellies bouncing up and down and I happily rejoined the all-girl team. The run went through a bunch of neighborhoods, and each one had set up a little cheering section. The Polish/Ukrainian neighborhood had an oompah band. The British neighborhood had… salsa dancers. Yeah, I don’t know, I guess being British isn’t that conducive to enthusiasm, so they had to borrow from a more exciting culture.

And then, finally, I WON!

Okay, I didn’t win, but I got a medal which says “Finisher,” not “Winner,” sadly! And they gave me one of those foil thingies that made me feel all shiny and athletic. Now Stark is making me Victory Crepes! Yay! I did it! Go me!

Updated: The results have been posted! I finished ::drum roll:: 5745th! YES!

This Week9.16.2008: 25 songs, 1.5 hours, 130.6 MB