From the Vacation, the mind wanders and wants to get lost.

Being away from the U.S. -- watching American television is depressing. Except for the Simpsons, which is oddly a relief. Watched an episode of Oprah -- most of the cast of the Cosby show was on -- and while my sentiment and nostolgia were aroused, I was mostly saddened that Bill Cosby is apparantly ill or ailing or just old and ill-looking. Growing up, my brothers and I (the four of us shared two rooms) would listen to his comedy tapes as we went to sleep. I suppose he was my mammy at bedtime. He was comforting. When I see him on TV (or like when I saw him in person two years ago), I trust him implicitly. I don't believe for one second he would do anything wrong to me or anyone else. He is my television father. Of course most of my father figures have come from TV. There was Sam from Cheers; he always seemed to be the nice guy, if sex wasn't involved. However, for all the Michael Landons and Mr. Rogers (who I did love), I think Bill Cosby comes out on top as my #1 TV surrogate father.

I remember Bill holding his TV daughters when they had been in some sort of trouble with friends or boys. This is something my father never did. Of course my father held me as a baby, but he didn't hold me when I needed comfort. He was no shoulder to cry on -- he's not a giver of tissue or an offerer of a sleeve. He's a stony man with something more important than your tears on his mind. He's a man who when a lovely speech was being read to him about his daughter and her impact on the school she got herself through and the award she was to receive could be found leafing through the purple program appearing uninterested. He has been the father deathly afraid of being branded a nepotist, failing to understand that he is still free to support, praise, comfort, and love his children. Yeah, if you haven't noticed, I'm working through some issues here.

On Oprah, there was some talk about the Cosby show itself, about how it portrayed an unrealistic situation within a black family, possibly discouraging black viewers. I never knew of this controversy, because I was watching this in a white neighborhood and thinking to my little white self, these are just people -- a big family, like mine, I wish I had such a big house, with my own room -- and I wish I had a dad that cared that much about what was going on in my life and would put his arm around me and tell me I was special and smart. A dad that believed in me. A dad that wanted me to go and get what I wanted out of life.

Listening to BIll Cosby at night before bed stepped in as that voice to say get out, get out of a bad situation and find your own road. I took my dad to see Bill Cosby at the OC Fair last year, and it was less meaningful to him than to me. The reality hits then -- I only have one dad. It's not the funny, charismatic person on the stage. It's the bored and uncomfortable white man down the way.

Saying goodbye to the fantasies that got me through the ideas I held on to in my youth has been hard. It's all part of the death of youth. The countdown to 29-07-09, when I will be thirty years old, with no fanfare, but maybe, with some hope. Kissing things goodbye only means that you create a space for more things to kiss. So here's goodbye to all the stand-in dads that I leaned on in times of dad-abandon. Thanks. I needed that.

Big Baby!

At the Long Beach Museum of Art, a large orange fiberglass baby measuring fifteen feet tall has held court for the last year or so. Amidst the post-nuclear charm and malice that dance around Long Beach's Ocean Blvd. waterfront, the stark and tragically oversized infant has brought a sense of urgency; standing so aloft and so aglow, the Big Baby, as we affectionately called him and yelled out in the car as we passed him, helped us see that our young nation is awkward and lonely, goofy and imposing. I loved it. I thought it powerfully metaphoric, and even a little rebellious, especially for our LBMA, known for it's collection of impressionist works, and strange colored pencil 1980's works.

Well, the Big Baby is gone; now in storage somewhere. The empty space that he once occupied now feels cold and drab. He took with him all the promise of a new Long Beach, an appreciative and refreshingly hopeful Long Beach; a Long Beach that wouldn't tear down it's historical buildings to the tune of 2 million dollars -- and I know, 2 million dollars sounds really good right now -- but you can't get these buildings back, people! Someone laid bricks, someone cut a ribbon, someone (okay, me) found first editions and excellent used copies of her favorite authors in your establishment. Legends are being razed, and we don't even have our Big Baby to turn to.

But I have found a new Big Baby. Marlene Dumas is a painter from South Africa and the Netherlands who paints babies, big.

Her painting, The Painter, currently on display along with dozens of others at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand, downtown, is magnetic. It's a painting of a washed out nude threeish year old, with one red hand and one blue hand, and it's breathtaking. Her works are disturbing, but of course that's the point, and I am moved by them. Her more obvious shocking images, like a Marilyn Monroe death mask painting, and several paintings of dead bodies and people hanging from the scaffold, are not joyful, but they are somewhat sublime.

What is even more spectacular is that she is this bubbly blonde European woman with a fast tongue and an eagerness to talk that pleasantly surprises one, as these days you have to be on a New York society page to get coverage as an artist -- see Schnabel (Dumas' work is in an other, vastly superior, realm than his is), or these other connected artists that you could never have a conversation with about zits or sit with and eat a Greek omelette.

I really recommend seeing this show, not only for the NBB (New Big Baby), but for her whole body of work. It is something to see.

Desire Diverted, or Maybe Freud Inverted, and Bros Before Hos

I haven't read Freud, so I don't know why I act the fool and use him to explain ideas floating around in my head. I do sort of know that he had this idea that at a certain age boys want to have sex with their mothers and girls their fathers, and that they become jealous and possessive of them. Yet, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it seems that the inversion of Freud's idea is true, as least where males are involved: Brick's troubled relationship with his father and his friend Skipper has diverted his desire for his wife and inspired him to numb his feelings and cares with alcohol. I think it was Blythe who informed me that there is a theorist who suggests that homosexual desire is often sublimated through a third party in literature -- I agree with this observation. I find it apparent in Gatsby, within the relationships between Nick, Jay, Daisy, Jordan, and Tom, as well as in much of Tennessee's work, like Cat, Streetcar, Glass M, and Suddenly.

I don't know just what I can add to that discussion. I don't know enough. But it's something I am thinking about for a paper. I could just stick to Fitzgerald's novel, or try and have a discussion of William's works as a collective. I'm not sure how that kind of paper is received by the academy nowadays, but I suppose there's no harm in trying.

Loosely related, the oft mocked phrase "bros before hos" bears some significance here. Although the poetry of this phrase might give it a modern edge, the meaning behind it is timeless. It is also an idea used to support army life; you have to leave the one you are in a relationship with in order to live with and possibly die for an army of others. Now, in our capitalistic country, the citizens do not have to join any of the armed forces. But when they do, they must employ the BBH philosophy in order to justify putting aside personal commitments to lovers in the name of allegiance to unknown others.

Yet, the BBH philosophy has retained it's strict gender control in a few recent successful films. In Todd Phillips and Judd Apatow's most recent comedies the BBH mentality is taken to a new level of frustrated sexuality. Blythe mentioned to me that Telladega Nights is a good example of this, as well as Old School, and then as I got to thinking...Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad...etc. I don't include Forgetting Sarah Marshall, because the "Bros" in effect actually put their love interests before their relationship (making that a sure-fire post ironic film, Brandon? I'm not sure), and even the quintessential "Bro" in the film only puts himself before others -- everyone else in on the same level to him. As far as the other films are concerned, they seem to have BBH as a common thread. Sometimes the Bros in the movies must unlearn their BBH behavior, and come to appreciate their Ho even more than their Bro, as is the case in Telladega Nights and Old School. And it is usually a Bro that doesn't have (or doesn't get many) a Ho, or is tired of his Ho, see Old School's Beanie or Telladega Night's Cal.

Doesn't it seem as the though the BBH mentality is a rationale for the third party sublimation theory, as well as the inversion of Freud's theory? Certainly the BBH philosophy is present in Cat, as Paul Newman is overwhelmed by his self-pity concerning Skipper's death, and must have the love and approval of his Father in order to resume any sexual activity with his wife. He was active with her before, when Skippy was alive, and was there to keep his desire alive. His relationship with his father becomes the new same-sex component of the triangle of sublimation, with a nod to Freud. Big Daddy, indeed.

It's rather complicated and somewhat pedestrian, but I feel like I'm on to something.