My "dream outside the box" wishes for 2011:
(1) Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor publicly announce they have become lovers. In reaction, Clarence Thomas has a stroke and Anthony Scalia resigns in contagion panic. Suddenly there are five women on the Supreme Court, three of them sistahs of color.
(2) Nancy Pelosi announces she is running for the Presidency in 2012. The heads of liberal boys explode all around the country as they try to claim she isn't as progressive as Obama.
(3) A move is under way to replace the word "God" with "Kenny Loggins" in the motto imprinted on currency.
(4) Health care for all members of Congress is repealed and they have to find insurers who will cover them as they are.
(5) There is a freak convergence of tornados at the state funeral of Dick Cheney, taking out so many neocons that the next day the 700 Club admits global warming might be an issue to worry about.
(6) Ellen Degeneres starts eating again and calls herself a lesbian.
(7) New influxes of lesbians in the armed forces form secret vigilante groups who (a) castrate male soldiers who rape women and (b) leak the codes and whereabouts of all Blackwater-esque "private pay" forces to the Taliban. The wars are hastily ended.
(8) A coalition of progressive organizations begins demanding every candidate for public office answer one question: Do you believe in the supremacy of the white race? Refusal to answer is called a Yes. Speakers are shouted down until they answer the question. Teabagger support is badly eroded, and the remaining parties are classified as hate groups by the SPLC.
(9) Dennis Kucinich slips a bill labeling high fructose corn syrup a controlled hazardous substance into a defense spending bill and it passes, ending corn subsidies and wreaking havoc on agribusiness.
(10) More cowbell.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
DREAMIN' BIG
Thursday, November 18, 2010
ELVIS LIVES: A PERFORMANCE PIECE
What with the recent apparent discovery by the general public that TSA search policies shred civil rights, I thought it was time to re-present a performance piece I wrote and enacted for Actual Lives (a page to stage autibiographical theater troupe for disabled adults directed by Terry Galloway) during the early 2000s. This is a completely true story with, in fact, no embellishment. It has since been published in My Body Of Knowledge, edited by Karen Myers and Felicia Ferlin. The online version can be found here.
In December of 2001, two dear friends who "get it" rescued me from spending Christmas absolutely alone by sending me a plane ticket to visit them in Boston. All I had to do was get myself physically there and back. But that was the part that made me anxious. This would be the first time I had flown since my knee replacement surgery. I can't stand for very long, can walk only short distances, need to change positions often, run a high risk of blood clots in my legs, don’t fit in most airline seats, get asthma in pressurized cabins …. I was, well, anxious.
But if you think I was anxious — this was just a few months after 9/11. I would be flying into cold, grey, paranoid Logan Airport, the airport that launched United flight 175 and American flight 11. To add to their burden, the day I traveled was the day a lunatic tried to set off explosives in his tennis shoes and that flight was emergency landed at Logan.
Passengers were being separated from their loved ones right away. After that point, I would be in a wheelchair and, like Blanche Dubois, relying on the kindness of strangers—strangers wearing dark blue American Airlines blazers and stony faces. I kept telling everybody, at every step of the way, that I needed an extra wide wheelchair. Apparently, Logan couldn't find such a thing, so I was crammed into what I think of as the California surfer girl model. But then, my luck turned. A tall young man with a full beard stepped forward from the cluster of blue blazers to be my official escort: Enter Ahmed.
Ahmed was from Saudi Arabia, from a city that had been home to two of the hijackers. His looks, his accent, his absolute being made all the passengers in the airport freeze up around him. He was fucking sick of it. And here I was, a huge crippled dyke. If we were dumped out of a car together into the town square of an average small white burg, I don't know which one of us would get stoned to death first. We bonded instantly.
Turns out, in his off hours Ahmed was an Elvis impersonator. I don't know how he got around the obstacle of his beard, but in terms of dialogue, he really had it down. My little brother Bill was also an Elvis impersonator, so Ahmed found in me the perfect foil. I’d feed him a line like "Melli Kalikimakki" and he’d start singing "I’ll have a buh-looo Crismuss without yew." I’d ask him which part of Boston he lives in, he’d break into "Since mah baybee left me / Ah found a new place to dwell …"
Ahmed as Elvis was charming, and clearly disconcerting to his fellow American Airlines employees. He didn’t seem to give a rat's ass. He kept trying to find ways for me to get through the long lines and bottlenecks faster. At checkpoints, even though the wheelchair I was in was clearly their property, I had to get up and walk while they removed this chair and replaced it with another — also their property. Looking around at all these humorless guys in camouflage carrying assault rifles, I had to wonder, what is it that I could pull off in a borrowed wheelchair that would be as deadly as those automatic weapons. I mean, I’m not a crip McGyver.
They also seemed to be stopping people randomly and asking them to remove their shoes for inspection. We didn’t know about the sneaker bomber yet, so this struck Ahmed and me as especially hilarious. I can get my shoes off by myself, but not back on without certain kinds of help. I decided if they picked me, Ahmed could use the occasion of kneeling before me to do the proposal scene from Viva Las Vegas.
My friend Danny, who is wheelchair-bound and Latino, also had to fly somewhere this same holiday season. He told me later that when he was selected out for a shoe search, he was honored that he could still be perceived as a possible terrorist, even though he was an overt cripple. Then he added that what probably pushed him over the edge from pity into menace was the spic factor.
When I went through the metal detector, I told the guys on this end of it that my left knee is titanium and it absolutely would set off the alarm. Even so, when I emerged on the other side, the quality of what registered on their security monitor brought every blue blazer in the vicinity to stand around me. Ahmed waved at me over the shoulder of one official. I emptied all my pockets, but I was still setting off red rockets of alarms. But Logan was running short on the little wands they use to wave over people's bodies, so I had to be patted down by a security expert. They sent for the one woman apparently allowed to do this kind of work.
Now, here's the thing. I am a lesbian Chandler Bing; I make jokes when I am nervous. I was nervous then. They were keeping Ahmed and the second wheelchair a few feet away, giving me a folding chair to sit on until the pat-down artist arrived. And when they parted the blue blazers to let her through, she was — of course — skinny, white, extremely straight, with impeccable make-up and hair. Except when I’m in all-lesbian groups, I have never in my life been wearing the right clothes around other women. She looked as dismayed at the sight of me as I was at the sight of her.
So, I had some tension to let off. I managed to keep it together until she reached a certain region that my mother referred to as munchkin land, as in, "Did you wash good in munchkin land?" Which made watching The Wizard of Oz a truly bizarre experience as a child … but I digress. When her pale, well-manicured hands began searching munchkin land for box cutters or plastic explosives, I could not help myself. I said, with complete Tupelo charm: "Thank yew, thank yew verra much."
© Maggie Jochild
Sunday, October 24, 2010
LIVING BY THE TRACKS
After a while, we became so accustomed to the daily roar-throughs that we didn't notice it any longer, just automatically raised our voices when necessary. We became so oblivious to it that when my urban cousins came to visit from Dallas, we were all bewildered by the growing expression of horror on their faces. They all stood in obvious terror, looking around wildly, and Mama yelled "What on earth is wrong with y'all?"
My uncle said "My god, don't you HEAR that?" as the train blasted by.
"Oh. Yeah, that happens" we said, giggling at their reaction. We might have been trailer trash but we did know better than to actually park on the tracks.
Later that year, we got a Siamese cat for Mama's birthday, carrying it home with pride. The dogs were temporarily locked outside -- as was Blossom, the goat -- while the new fancy cat sat on Mama's lap and we tried to read its personality. Then, out of nowhere, the cat flew off her lap and ran headlong into the back window, hitting its head so hard that it crumpled to the floor, stunned.
As Bill went to pick it up, Mama said "Oh, no, we got one with seizures!" We were dismayed for a few minutes until we realized a train had gone through and the poor cat was simply trying to get away from it.
Monday, January 26, 2009
THE G.W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
Found in my e-mail today:
Dear Fellow Constituent:
The George W. Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages and accepting donations.
The Library will include:
1. The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
2. The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.
3. The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.
4. The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
5. The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
6. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
7. The National Debt Room, which is huge and has no ceiling.
8. The Tax Cut Room, with entry only to the wealthy.
9. The Economy Room, which is in the toilet.
10. The Iraq War Room. (After you complete your first visit, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth visit.)
11. The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shooting gallery.
12. The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.
13. The Supreme Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
14. The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
15. The Decider Room, complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.
Note: The library will feature an electron microscope to help you locate and view the President's accomplishments.
The library will also include many famous quotes by George W. Bush:
1. 'The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.'
2. 'If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.'
3. 'Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.'
4. 'No senior citizen should ever have to choose between prescription drugs and medicine.'
5. 'I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.'
6. 'One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.'
7. 'Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.'
8. 'I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.'
9. 'The future will be better tomorrow.'
10. 'We're going to have the best educated American people in the world..'
11. 'One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.' (during an education photo-op)
12. 'Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.'
13. 'We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.'
14. 'It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.'
15. 'I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.'...George W. Bush to Sam Donaldson
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY!
Sincerely,
Jack Abramoff, Co-Chair
G.W. Bush Library Board of Directors
[Cross-posted at Group News Blog. H/t to Adrienne.]
Posts
