PeaceBang

bombie prince harry

bombie prince harry
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

When I first saw this image, I was flooded with disgust and fury, imagining this stinking rich, in-bred royal strutting about in this hateful costume and giggling with his little friends from Eaton. Then someone said, “Hey, ease up: the theme of this dress party was ‘Tasteless.’” So I eased up. A lot. I figured Lady Di’s Boy was just dumb and insensitive, not necessarily totally despicable.
But I was misinformed. According the the Britain Sun (a tabloid, I know, but they’re THERE and we’re HERE), the theme of the party was “Colonial and Native.”
Let’s just say that I’m reserving my judgment: I’m not spitting between my index and middle fingers at the mention of Harry’s name yet, but it could happen any day now. If you have reliable sources that can confirm the party’s theme, I’d like to know.

Ya Gotta Love The Golden Globes

Oh, I can’t help it. Awards shows bring me such brainless joy, and I spent a few hours tonight absorbed in the guilty pleasure of Hollywood glamour. The women were fab — hardly anyone looked undernourished and miserable — or maybe I’m just getting accustomed to to emaciated, plastic look. They’re doing long gowns this year, down to the ankles, with lots of gloppy, neutral lip gloss and soft, waved hair. LOVE it, girls! Only Nicole Kidman looked like a starved mermaid with eyes pulled way back tight.

My boyfriend, Kevin Spacey, had a handsome date with lots of silver hair: they looked coy and yummy together. Oh, Kevin, darling, be HAPPY. Be OUT.

Glimmeringly botoxed, siliconed beauty Teri Hatcher provided the surprise touching moment of the night, emphasizing in her teary acceptance speech that she was until quite recently a “total has-been.” The creator of her show, “Desperate Housewives,” (which I’ve never seen) thanked his Mom, who apparently supported him financially during recent lean years of unemployment and who gave him the idea for the show. “That’s good parenting,” he said. It was all very sweet and just the antidote to this oppressively gray weather we’ve been having lately.

The Hollywood Foreign Press gets a lot of grief for not being as highbrow as the ACADEMY, but I’ll tell ya, they put on a hell of a party, and they throw a lot of dough at humanitarian causes, so good on ‘em. I’m just so glad I skipped the shrieking harpies, Melissa and Joan Rivers, during the obligatory, pre-show red carpet stuff (you could not GET me to miss the red carpet!). The comic Kathy Griffin was much funnier. She asked all the arriving celebs, “Who are you wearing?” and no matter what they answered, she’d say, “Me, too!” It never got old.

I must dab at my eyes with a fresh hankie when I think of the comfortable, gorgeous fleshiness strutted by Meryl Street and Anjelica Huston, who always look as though they spent the afternoon in bed with their husbands, eating pasta, drinking wine and swyving, and are holding back peals of laughter at themselves and their youth-and-skinniness obsessed industry. KISSES, ladies. You could not be more outlaw and you make me swoon.

Your Hollywood Correspondent, Peacebang

Please Pray For This Man

leon hatfield
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This is Leon Hatfield, a notoriously depraved S.O.B. who steals from churches on the South Shore. Police are looking for him. If you know him, please tell him that Jesus is really disgusted with his behavior and that while Jesus might forgive him, Peacebang (whose church he stole from) would like to kick him real hard in the teeth.

Peacebang Celebrates Natal Day

Thanks for asking: I’m 39 and not given to coy evasions about that fact. Given my tendency to “live” in the 19th century, I am amazed at how long our lives are getting … a century ago, I would have been dead in childbed by now. Or from the influenza or stepping on a rusty nail. Or from drowning, as Margaret Fuller did in her late 30’s in full sight of shrieking observers on shore, her skirts billowing around her as she went down in a shipwreck off Fire Island. Her dear friend Henry Thoreau died in his early 40’s of an ailment that a round of antibiotics would have taken care of in a jiffy, if he’d had access to them. Our lives today are so much longer. Are they good-er? (I don’t mean better, which is an entirely individualistic measure of quality. I mean more good. Interpret as you will).

Aging is fun when you’re approaching 40, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I hated being a child, I had fun teenaged years, emotionally devastating early 20’s, then climbed my way into my own manic, overstimulated version of deep contentment in my 30’s. Life is intense and therefore constantly engaging, and I don’t expect it to carry on for decades and decades and decades. Aging is not fun when it turns into an exhausting round of doctors and worries, financial burdens and loss of independence. So while I’m socking away money for retirement I’m also a card-carrying member of the organization End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society. I wish they had kept the old name. It had so much more gravitas and philosophical resonance. Also it always makes me chuckle, because I’m that one girl you know who is far more comfortable keeping vigil in the death chamber than in the room where someone’s giving birth. THAT freaks me out.

I don’t think Americans have any idea how prohibitively expensive it is to live a really long life in this country. By the way, you might want to check out what the darling Mr. Bush has in mind for your social security benefits:

http://www.moveon.org/socialsecurity/

But meanwhile, l’chaim. To life!

Verizon Madness

My cell phone woke me up this morning and told me it had tons of new voice messages for me. When I listened to the messages, not only were there two new ones from friends they left on, um, CHRISTMAS, and two from a friend left on NEW YEAR’S DAY (Sylvester! So sorry! I never heard them!), but there was a message from MYSELF that I left in early December for a colleague on MARTHA’s VINEYARD, discussing a memorial service we were doing together.

“This is my voice mail to the world

that never text-messaged me…”

(Apologies to Emily Dickinson)

I have been walking around with very big eyes and a very furrowed brow all morning. What other messages have I missed? Where is this limbo or purgatory my messages have been lost in all this time? Did I unintentionally do some penance to release them?

I am thinking of having an existential crisis about it but I’ll have to schedule it for later in the day.

There’s Always the Dancing Brown Jesus!

In “Does God Matter? A Social-Science Critique” by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, they report that “…nearly everyone, at least in the United States, purports to believe in God. Still, it remains unclear what people mean by ‘God.’ … Clearly, an individual who views God as an abstract, cosmic force and an individual who views God as a bearded white man sitting in the clouds propose distinct religious worldviews.” — (Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Vol.32, Number 4)

Hey fellas, do you really think that anyone really views God as a bearded white man sitting in the clouds? Maybe it’s just me, but that seems to be a really lazy cliche that isn’t exactly contributing to our understanding of orthodoxy in this nation.

I’m afraid, actually, that a lot of people see God as “Buddy Jesus,” with long Breck-girl hair, great teeth and a perfect complexion and a kind of self-esteem guru bounciness. On second thought, I’ll take the crotchety old guy on the cloud.

Snausage!

hot dog
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

BWOH!
This guy is almost as cute as the golden retriever puppies my dog Pippin had when I was eleven. They looked like corn dogs when they were first born, and I once warmed up a plate and put a puppy on the plate, garnished with a sprig of parsley. It was either my sister or my brother who giggled over it with me for hours. It looked just like a little chicken cordon bleu, only with paws. If my friend Sari is reading this she is exploding with cuteness right now. Thanks to Rebecca for sending it in one of those Extreme Cuteness e-mails.

Les Deux Magot

I sat working on my tiny little inconsequential book on church life today, sitting at Panera typing away on my laptop and thinking to myself, “My God, this is my suburban Boston equivalent of Ernest Hemingway at Les Deux Magots.” It was almost a cripplingly depressing thought and then I remembered that I actually HAVE been to Les Deux Magot, and everyone was really mean and scowly and I was afraid to stay for very long. I think I smoked a cigarette or two and left. Everyone at Panera was very friendly and the coffee was better than in France. So I’ve decided my life is okay, and I never really did “get” Gertrude Stein anyway.

And Then She Ran For Her Life

I am watching “The Actor’s Studio” on Bravo with James Lipton, who is interviewing Cameron Diaz with more than his usual sycophantic intensity; he looks like he’s about to lunge out of his chair and snap Diaz’s neck between his teeth, crunching her bones and broadly wiping his mouth with a big, blood-stained hanky. He wants her so badly his glasses are fogging up.

The audience of student artists and actors (”Hi, um, my name is Elaine and I’ll never work because I’m an unattractive wanna-be with delusions of talent, but I was wondering, what was it like to work with Marty Scorcese?”) is watching with that particularly rapt, maenad-like hysteria they always have, as though only sheer willpower is keeping them from rushing at Diaz and tearing her body apart with their bare hands,stuffing any little bit of her famous, gorgeous, blonde essence they can get into their mouths.

Cameron Diaz’ upper lip is so charmingly lopsided and thin, I deeply fear that she will inject herself with collagen and become one of those Meg Ryan duck-faced Hollywood freaks.

Her favorite word? “Unity.”

Her least-favorite word? “Hate.”

That is so deep, but I still hated “Shrek.”

Homophobia/Heterosexist

An article in The Christian Century announces, “Lutherans To Address Issues of Homosexuality.”

Pardon me, but have the Protestant churches been doing anything but addressing issues of homosexuality ad nauseum and ad infinitum?

The gay community took a real bashing after the elections, becoming the whipping boys and girls for an insanely disappointed and disillusioned Democratic party. After I got through banging my head slowly and repeatedly against a brick wall, I thought the opposite thing: where were the Protestant churches during the campaign, and the last two years of Bush’s first term, for that matter? How come our churches let our gay brothers and sisters put themselves out there without our unequivocal support and prophetic righteousness to equal the hateful self-righteousness of the conservatives? And I don’t mean a few courageous commentators or inveterate writers of letters to the editors, but churches — whole churches. Millions of Christians, loud and proud. When are the liberal denominations finally going to settle this hash and end the eternal assemblies and conferences? Does God have that much patience?

Enough people have spoken of the need for a new “religious left,” and I have nothing to add to the conversation. But about gay rights, this: Before we cross off all the red states and the people in ‘em as despicable homophobes, might we consider the subtle, and hopeful, difference between the true homophobe and the heterosexist?

True homophobia is probably incurable: it requires such repression,such projection, such disgust and hatred as to be a true pathology, and beyond the reach of casual intervention. My guess, however, is that the majority of those who refuse to support gay rights are heterosexist, and can be reformed. Heterosexism is more about privilege than repulsion — it has provided an easy bandwagon for lazy, comfortable heteros to jump on without being challenged, and hets have jumped… by the millions. The antidote to heterosexism is most often achieved when comfy, smug, privileged heterosexists become aware of — and accomodate, in the spiritual realm, the social realm and the realm of justice — the fact that lots of people they actually know, love, respect and need in their lives are queer.