OK, all you friends of Dorothy out there, trivia quiz time re The Wizard of Oz. Where did L. Frank Baum, its author, get the name Oz? Answer: from a filing cabinet. What were the other three types of Oz inhabitants besides the Munchkins? Answer: the Quadlings, Gilikins and the Winkies. And according the Chicago Sun Times (5/4) what city was the inspiration for the Emerald City? Answer: Chicago-‘… a city built in the center of nowhere that would attract people from all over.’ Baum lived in Chicago while writing the book. Let’s see—would that make the mayor the wizard?
Any of you folks tired of straight guys and their all-woman ‘lesbian’ porn? Get a load of this: the Chicago Tribune (5/12) tells about a flip-flop on this, ummm, genre—in Japan, straight women are highly enamored of comic book romances that are all-male. Yup, Ryoji & Kahiwazaki & Toru, all guys, are getting it on in manga (comics) of a type called ‘yaoi’ (boy’s love). Boys, for the most part don’t read these fantasies (and they are fantastic because no one loses their job or gets in trouble with families) because straight guys ‘… feel their masculinity is threatened by homosexuality.’ Women love it.
The Chicago Tribune (5/4) tells of a new novel by Egyptian novelist (and dentist) Alla Al-Aswany The Yacoubian Building, which, among other characters, has a gay newspaper editor. The book ‘ … deals very directly with a homosexual relationship.’ This is, to put it mildly, highly unusual for a Muslim author from a Muslim country. The book is being made into a movie.
The Economist (4/30—5/6) in a story on the legalization of gay marriage in Spain shows a much more complicated story than it first appears. The Vatican has called the law ‘iniquitous’; the opposition party in Spain has a leader calling gays physically and psychologically handicapped and that he ‘had never seen two male dogs trying to make love.’ Some majority party mayors will not marry gays and some oppositionists insist they’re only against the word ‘marriage’, not against same-sex unions.
From the ‘Princess-Leia-How-Could-You?’ file The NY Times (5/1) has a tale of R. Gregory Stevens, a gay Republican operative, who died of a drug overdose while sleeping next to Carrie Fisher in her bed. Mr. Stevens was a rock-ribbed conservative who’d worked for every Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. Ms. Fisher is just as strong a liberal. They, she said, met on a plane and became instant friends. Talk about a cliché—truly politics does make for strange bedfellows.