Christopher Moore's Blog

So, it’s been Gay Pride week here in San Francisco all week, which, unless you were in the Castro, where they’ve been having parties and activities all weekend, you wouldn’t really know. (Although I must admit, there were a lot of men on the plane here from Boston who had haircuts you generally only see on progressive middle-aged women with money, but that might be a complete coincidence.) But today was the big Gay Pride Parade.

This was my first Gay Pride parade, but I’ll try to report it as best I can.

At first I was confused, because I looked around and no one was clear, so I didn’t understand what they were chanting about. Then I realized that I hadn’t removed the earplugs that I wear to sleep when I’m on the road, and they, in fact, were not saying “We’re Here, We’re Clear, Get Used To It.” My bad. You know, between signings, I go whole days without speaking to another human being… You can lose your skills. But they were definitely not Clear. That would have been cool though, wouldn’t it? Anyway…

It started out with lots and lots of big Gay Cops. And I don’t mean Big Gay Guys in Cop Outfits, because that would come later in the parade, I’m talking real Big Gay Cops. There are many more Big Gay Cops than I would have thought, which sort of explains why you don’t have the sort of thing going on here that you have in LA with the brutality and all. Here it goes like: “No, cuff him while I do his high-lights!”

So that was followed by about twenty minutes of Gay and Lesbian married couples, many of whom carried signs that said they had been together for twenty-five, or thirty-five, or whatever number of years and now they were married. There were big Xerox signs with their marriage licenses on them, a few giant wedding pictures, and way more men in wedding gowns than you really want to see. I will say this, any girl who is mad because one of her friends made her buy a really ugly bridesmaid dress, will feel a lot better about the whole thing after seeing a couple of hairy guys in wedding gowns. This was a very happy, yet pretty adamant group of folks, and the crowd cheered them.

Then Gavin Newsome, the mayor who made the ordinance for all those people to get married came by, and everyone cheered. Gavin had many cute girls in his car so you would know he wasn’t Gay, he just really believes in Gay rights, which is a good thing in San Francisco.

Then came Gay couples with kids, kids of gay couples, people with signs that they loved their two moms or two dads or whatever, and then about five minutes of PFLAGs, which is parents and friends and family of gays and what you need to know – they weren’t dressed any worse than the gay people. In fact, overall, anyone out of costume, regardless of sexual preference, looked pretty tacky, mostly baseball caps and khaki shorts across the board. I’m just saying, they were much less fabulous than I was led to believe.

Then there were Gay firepersons, Gay bank people, Gay flight attendants (I know, redundant, from here I’ll just say G-) G-Latinos, Latinas, Filipenos, Vietnamese, Japanese War Drummers, Hawaiians, Scotchpersons (all looking vaguely like Catholic school girls in their kilts), Cowboys, Road Construction People, but no! no! Indians. That’s right, we could not make a village because we did not have the Indian to be the Indian Village Person… (And no one was Clear, either – now I had expectations.)

Well that was very disappointing. But then they came through by hobby:

Gay Karate, Gay Judo, Gay Close Order Drill Rifle Team (ROTC they were called – I believe it stands for Rifles Out of The Closet or something), Gay Chorus, Gay Hula Peoples, Gay Marching Band Dressed Like the Guys in Men In Black, Gay People waving Swords Around, Gay Clog Dancers (again, redundant) and of course, giant smiling penises of various races, one presumes Gay, but it was not specified. (Now, that said, Lesbians were very well represented in the parade, with some in most of the groups and dominating others – many sisters of Sappho in marching band—but I did not see a single giant smiling vagina, but then, there were definitely places that they could have been concealed.)

(Debunking Myth number 1: Gay people are not better dancers than everyone else. Unless they’re Black.)

Then the groups who identified by fetish and, well, other stuff came by: It was like an outline. First a big sign with LEATHER on it came by. And I was feeling solidarity, because I was wearing leather sneakers and all, but then subcategory Leather A. came through, lots of large people on Harley Davidsons, most of them female, then guys in harnesses and vests, then the Bears. Bears? (Yeah, I was wondering too. It was a big banner that said “Support Bears” There was a rainbow flag with a big paw print on it.) What I wasn’t expecting was a great-big truck full of great-big hairy guys in leather vests. Evidently Bears. A sub-group of leather-vest wearing Gay Guys.

Then you had some S&M people in cages, a few cracking whips, a float full of male strippers giving away Altoids gum (and I don’t even want to know why that was in the Gay Pride parade, but I’m going to just console myself that Gays and Lesbians enjoy being minty fresh more than the rest of us. Shut up, I don’t want to know. LaLaLaLaLa-I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. )

(Debunking Myth Number 2: Gay People are not all in shape. Many have never seen the inside of a gym. This is obvious when they are wearing far less costume than their individual Body Mass Index would indicate.)

Then there were transvestites, transgendered – marching by which direction they were transing, and a group with POLYMOURPH or something in big letters, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out from their appearance what they were about and I’d never seen the word before so maybe it has something to do with plastic or frogs. Oh yeah, and one old hooker with a sign saying “Support Sex Workers, Don’t Arrest Me, Ask Me to Blow You” — I am not making that up.

Then things got weird. Meaning the whole outline structure seemed to go to hell in a posing pouch and people were just marching along in their individual weirdness and there was a lot of feathers and mylar and eye-shadow, and I had skipped breakfast so I left to get a burger before the grand marshals, Bruce Villanch and Alan Cumming came by. I did wave to Graham Norton, and he looked right at me, I swear.

So, the Clear people may have showed up while I was eating. Overall, although normally I am not a parade person, I thought it had a better sense of humor than most parades, and I was filled with Gay Pride by all the “Lick Bush in 2004” signs. I would give it an 8 out of 10.

Check out the The Tour Pics page for captions, I can’t make this thing put images in with the text.

http://www.chrismoore.com/tourpics2.cfm

Pics are up from Miami and Dartmouth. I’m still waiting for the pictures from Worchester. I forgot my camera that night, but the staff filled in with their own camera and said that they’d send me the pics.

Meanwhile, Dartmouth was great, with people coming from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, a couple of marine mammal scientists, and Lauren, Hillary, and John from the board. The pic of Lauren, Hill and I didn’t come out. I suspect it was because Hillary used her dark voodoo powers or something.

During the day I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Art for a couple of hours. They had a great collection of Dutch Masters, and I have to say, that Rembrant could really paint, considering he was also making cigars and stuff.

Flew into San Francisco this afternoon, and boy are my arms tired.

So, I watched School of Rock on my computer on the plane up from Miami to Boston — if you like Jack Black, it’s a rental, sort of Bad News Bears meets AC/DC, but cute. If you don’t like Jack Black, get far, far away from it. A whole exit row to myself… It was just swell….

My media escort, Jim, was, for thirty years, a Shakespearean scholar, documentary film maker, and English teacher at a prep school, who, because his wife was sick, had to drive me around (it’s her business). I assume this is because he did something really heinous in a previous life and karma is presenting him with a difficult lesson that only I can teach.

Anyway, he showed me Walden Pond and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house and Edith Wharton’s house and the bridge where the shot was heard round the world and the Boston Turnpike, which is where Thoreau walked when he needed to go to Cambridge to get a Snickers bar, and even though it was dark and I couldn’t see what he was pointing at, I’m sure all of those things were very historical. I felt enlightened and worldly.

People at the Worchester event were great! The best event so far. Lots of newbies who just took a risk and bought the books even though they’d never heard of me, as well as people who had read everything. Overall a great crowd, including another soldier who did two tours in Iraq, passing my books around the guys in his unit.

The pictures are going to be a little late gettng posted for this one. I forgot my camera and the lovely folks at Tatuniuk Book Store are going to e-mail me theirs.

On to Dartmouth tomorrow. Peace.

So, I found out that Dick Morris is going to be doing a signing at Books and Books here in Miami right before I am….

Hmmm, interesting double feature — like Hellraiser V: Sharp Pointy Things Stuck in Your Eyes, and Tickle Me Elmo: The Movie!.

Then Suetu writes me to tell me the Bill Clinton has an event in San Francisco the same day that I do. At least it won’t be at the same store.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how things go tonight. I don’t even know if Dick Morris is a conservative or a liberal. More a pragmatist, I think.

Chicago Institute of Art You were thinking maybe weapons of mass distraction pics? I don’t know how to zoom out from these. By the way, I don’t know these people in the picture, it was just a happy accident. I have a print of a picture called, “Thinking about Pollack” that a friend of mine painted, and I wanted to get a shot of someone doing just that.

Chicago

Well, I’m Miami, but Chicago the last two days – great city!

My first event was at Barbara’s in OakPark, where on one street you can see eight of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style homes – including his own, personal residence. Thirty-eight Wright homes altogether, all from my favorite period of his work – great squatting monster houses with big overhangs and leaded glass windows that must have sent glass-cutters to the loony bin with their complex designs.

A smallish crowd at the event, but everyone there had read most all of the books, so it was like hanging with people you know, rather than talking to strangers. Face it, if you’ve read seven of my books, you’ve spent a lot of time in my head, and if you still like the ideas, then you’re probably the sort of person that I’d like too.

I went to the Chicago institute of Art yesterday. Exhibits span from the earliest Egyptian funereal objects to modern furniture design, and everything in between. A great collection with especially deep collections of Chinese art.

They had perhaps five Magritte’s, on of my favorite painters, as well as Miro I actually liked. (I know it sounds unsophisticated, but Miro’s stuff always looks empty to me. This one had some substance beyond the surrealistic symbols.)

After looking at all of the religious art from India and Indonesia and reading the captions, trying to absorb the passion that each of these ancient artists put into his work, I had to sit down and think. So I went into the café. There, about twenty feet away, sat an old woman, eating her lunch. I watched her eat, after having my head pried open by five-thousand years of spiritual art, and this is what I wrote in my notebook:

Eating Meatloaf and Asparagus at the Chicago Institute of Art

She eats slowly As if every bite contains nitroglycerine; Or is it all that time Spent sitting in front of paintings Absorbing cultures Has made her meatloaf Into Art? And now At age seventy-six Letting one more chance To obtain beauty Slip by Would kill her

To digest the whole of human culture In one afternoon And fear death by exploding meatloaf…

Her fear of irony Should be added to the collection Of religious artifacts

So there you go. Don’t be surprised if the meatloaf lady pops up in the next book. This answers the question: “Where do you get your ideas?”

The event in Skokie was very pleasant — perhaps 45 people, but all faithful readers, a couple of guys who drove in from Akron/Kent/Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (towns in Ohio are pretty close together) for a second time, having driven to Chicago in a snow storm two years ago to hear me talk about Lamb in front of a Unity Church congregation. Diana from the board (AKA: SmartFunnyFem) also came back, after having been thrown by the wrong address on the Harper-Collins web site. There were also a bunch of booksellers from other stores who showed up to say hi, which always makes one feel good.

Besides an incident at a Borders, where an officious manager-type carded me before he would let me sign books – a first in fourteen years of doing this (I left at that point)—Chicago was a great experience.

It’s about 90 degrees in Miami with about ninety percent humidity. Ah, like autumn at home.

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Harper Collins published the wrong address for the book store in Chicago where my event was tonight — and so I cut and pasted the wrong address and sent it to you guys in my tour spam.

I’m so sorry. If anyone came out to go to the event and couldn’t find it, please e-mail me at BSFiends@aol.com.

Tomorrow night June 18th)I’m in Skokie, which isn’t that far from Chicago. Make up test?

Your frequent poster, I8tokyo, in the flesh, presenting an imaginary check to the AG. All the St. Louis and Kansas City pics are up now kids.

I should have known, when Rush Limbaugh was going off about abstenence on the radio of the car that picked me up at the hotel at 6:00am…

So then, as I was going through the metal detector, it beeped, so I gave them my belt.

Then, as I came through again, the fat fuck guard was crowding the exit, so I stepped to the side, so the zipper on the thigh of my cargos hit the detector, so it went off. Two strikes, you go to the feel-up zone.

So they wanded me, and it was okay, of course, the wand guy baffled how I’d set the thing off in the first place, and me not wanting to do the fat fuck explanation in front of the fat fuck, so I went and tried to put my suitcase back together. It took me 15 minutes to get it closed again (you pack pretty tightly to get through a month with one carry-on bag.). So in the process, my new flannel shirt was lost.

Then the cattle call to Southwest, where I was able to read an interview with Chuck Palahniuk in the in flight, him talking about having 1100 people at his signing in Las Vegas (and much as I enjoy Chuck’s books, I imagined him blowing a porcupine in front of 1100 people) — then, a fifty-dollar cab ride to the hotel, who lost my reservation, then put me in a smoking room that smells like an ashtray, then the phone didn’t work, then the internet, then — and I’m not kidding — the elevator.

So, all that stuff settled, I decided to catch a nap, and the sky opened up. Within 20 minutes the street in front of the hotel was running with two feet of water, and the thunder was going off like artillery.

Four in the afternoon and in a holding pattern now, waiting to see what the weather does before the signing tonight at (again, I’m not kidding) Rainy Day Books.

And just so this doesn’t turn completely into a travel whine — I’m a little worried about Kurt, the Klingon assassin who is following me through the Midwest. I hope he’s okay. It was really raining.

Oh yeah, on the bright side, there’s a Snicker’s Bar the size of a skateboard in the mini-bar, and only $9.00. Choco-nougat disco party tonight in the smoking room!

And everyone in St. Louis was very pleasant, even the assistant principal, who I admit, brought out some pre-set predjudices in my nature that I need to look at at some point.

Until I get a chance to get all the pictures up and blog you guys, here’s a shot of me sweating on Lib from the board last night in St. Louis.