By Judith Wright
The eyeless labourer in the night
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day-
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.
This is no child with a child's face;
this has no name to name it by;
yet you and I have known it well.
this is the hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.
This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood's wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.
This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.
--------
Poem by an Australian writer and environmentalist, recced by chaosmanor whom I thank. I did some writing and some cleaning in anticipation of Paul's parents' arrival in the afternoon to attend Adam's school orchestra concert and celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday and the start of Chanukah. My parents came for dinner too, and all eight of us crammed into the kitchen for latkes and pan-fried chicken (got to have that oil)! Plus Paul made a cookie cake. The concert was terrific -- this middle school orchestra is really extraordinarily good, they played the third Brandenburg Concerto superbly, and a Taiwanese piece and some fiddle tunes and the Wexford Carol. Plus I got a wonderful Chanukah present from DRush!
The intermediate middle school orchestra playing Bob Phillips' arrangement of "Sword Dance."
Here are the kids filing in -- the advanced orchestra and intermediate orchestra had to switch between the seats and the bleachers to wait.
There were, of course, long tuning sessions.
Daniel and all his grandparents at the concert.
Here are the menorahs lit for the first night of Chanukah.
And Adam with the penguin book he received as a gift and spent the rest of the night reading (Outdoor Photographer had given it a very good review).
Was a bit distracted for Boston Legal due to cleanup and having been out all evening, but there was a lot I liked in the episode...much more than in the last couple, at least. Like, Shirley and Bethany go head-to-head and Paul is back! I expected the Denny-as-Larry-Craig storyline to be my favorite of the evening, but despite Stephen Culp as a gay D.A. -- and what a week that actor is having -- I still preferred Shirley's free speech case.
The Denny case is played for crack at first but is actually the first time I felt sorry for Larry Craig for five seconds, until I remembered that he is a liar and (as Alan says) he got thrown in front of the bus he helped build. Denny goes into the men's room in the courthouse, lets out a huge fart, is embarrassed, looks under a stall to see whether anyone was in there to hear, pushes his briefcase forward so he can work on his constipation, does a lot of grunting, hums to cover it up, taps his feet...gets arrested. It's so thoroughly gross and unsexy that it makes one wonder how anyone could possibly find anything arousing about looking for sex in a public restroom. (Denny's cell phone still makes a Star Trek communicator noise, too.)
The police offer to let him plead guilty to disorderly conduct, pay a fine and make this all go away but Denny and Alan both insist that this is outrageous. Still, Denny is willing to pay the fine just to keep his name out of the papers, but Alan insists that it's extortion. Not even Paul and Carl's concerns about Denny's reputation will keep him from insisting on a trial, and Denny ends up agreeing that it's better to risk job and reputation than roll over quietly. Just as long as people don't think he's gay. And as long as Alan doesn't have any sleepovers with Carl talking strategy while Denny meets with Paul to reassure him that the firm won't be damaged. Then Denny tries to get Lorraine to have sex with him in an elevator to get caught on surveillance and reassure people that he's straight. He's furious when Gracie Jane accuses him of violating family values, saying she knows he isn't gay and told him that she was the best sex she had since her brother.
Of course they get the same-sex attraction disorder judge, who says that even in Massachusetts, Denny must stand trial for propositioning a man. Alan tell Carl and Paul that he must put Denny on the stand in his own defense. Denny tells the story of his constipation, insisting repeatedly that he is not gay, but Alan's case focuses more on the fact that there is no evidence Denny was looking to pay for sex, which is the crime with which he has been charged; he says repeatedly that just being gay and flirting with men is not illegal. When Denny says he only has bathroom sex with women and jokes about the D.A. being gay, the D.A. says that in fact he is gay, then asks about Denny's sleepovers with Alan, his special time on the balcony, the fact that they refer to each other as flamingos...all coincidence while Denny is not gay? "Damn right I'm not!" announces Denny, who thinks homosexuality is against God and the president.
Alan closes by saying he never heard of gay prostitution in a courthouse restroom and asks why gay prostitution is so much more heinous than heterosexual prostitution...Congress ignored the Louisiana senator who visited female hookers, and 29 members of congress have been accused of spousal abuse, plus there's all the fraud, mentions fraud, tax evasion, etc. but we had to spend lots of money trying to find out whether Larry Craig taps back. Don't police have better things to do than play footsie in men's rooms? Alan declares that it's all a symptom of homophobia run amok, so now everyone is wasting tax dollars because Denny had gas. Ultimately, since there's no evidence of an actual crime, Denny is found not guilty and hugs Alan awkwardly as Paul and the DA both watch.
Back at Crane, Poole and Schmidt, Katie thinks Lorraine looks familiar, and moreover that she doesn't believe for a moment that she's American -- Lorraine says to call 999 instead of 911 and has a bit of an accent. She and Whitney do a bit of investigating and discover that Lorraine never really went to Georgetown. When Lorraine twigs to all this snooping, she says that she was married to a Pakistani who caught her cheating and has vowed to find and kill her. Katie tells Whitney, which upsets Lorraine who says her life could now be in danger, but Katie's still not quite sure she believes Lorraine...her face is familiar, and Katie thinks she's a criminal.
Meanwhile, in the rocking case of the night, Shirley is visited by old friend Bob, a shock jock who was recently fired for suggesting that old people should die and stop being a burden. "Free speech, rah!" Bethany is representing the station, and she and Shirley exchange barbs about one another's appearances. The station manager says that putting down blacks and Jews is fine, but baby boomers are the core of the station's profits. Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot is fine, Don Imus accusing Arabs of fucking sheep is fine, but expressing the opinion that the 40% of the federal budget going to aid retirees is too high when politicians won't even talk about the baby boomer retirement crisis is unacceptable (Bethany suggests that Bob suggested genocide of the elderly).
Shirley says that while she understands the need to avoid racist remarks, this is a case of censoring political content from a news analyst who was asked by his station to sound more like Howard Stern. The judge says that while the case is not about censorship but editorial control, corporations slap suits to chill free speech; in fact, and let me capslock because this is so important in the blogosphere right at this moment, CORPORATIONS HAVE BECOME BIGGEST THE INFRINGERS ON FREE SPEECH -- the public gets the opinion the sponsors pay for. Shirley wins for her client, and Bethany goes to prison for contempt when she insults the judge. She thinks Shirley hates her because she and Denny were lovers and Shirley still loves Denny
The man in question is still shaken that people might have thought he was gay -- even after Alan wins his suit, Denny wants the judge to find that he is not gay as matter of law. On the balcony, Alan suggests to Denny that women are less guarded around gay men, so if they did think Denny was gay, he could endear them as a Trojan Horse before charging at them with his, uh, Trojan. Denny isn't happy that Alan had to lump him in with "that closet Democrat" Craig but is very happy to have won, particularly against that gay DA who is intolerant himself for seeing something sexual in good old fashioned male bonding. Denny is more interested in thinking about Shirley going up against Bethany and wondering whether there are dwarfs in hell, where he believes he and Alan are going to be soulmates for eternity after Alan quotes Mark Twain: "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
No comments:
Post a Comment