queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2002-05-22 12:57 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2002-05-22 12:57 pm
Queer Baseball Players and Francesca Lia Block
Major League Baseball Player Comes Out as Heterosexual
Hmm. I see the potential for progress to be made.
The Out magazine editor's I'm-not-naming-names-but revelation annoyed me, though. I mean, how many major league baseball players can an Out magazine editor be hanging around with? How hard would it have been for a reporter to follow him around and watch for a major league baseball player to show up? That revelation was playing with fire.
In other news, I read Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat recently to find out why so many people on my friends list grew up obsessed with it. I almost threw it across the room and refused to finish it after the very first page, when the main characters were introduced as being a beautiful skinny blonde popular girl who's dating the best-looking guy in the school, and her boy friend, the best-looking guy in the school. Who wants to read books about popular people? Upon hearing this description of them, I immediately lost all interest in hearing anything about their lives and dismissed them as abhorrent, thoroughly unpleasant people to be around.
The book did get better from there, when I forced myself to keep reading. The book does an excellent job of supporting extremely unconventional family structures and the idea of inventing one's own family structure to suit one's own needs, and I'm sure these revelations about the appeal of hitherto unimagined family structures must have really revolutionized a lot of young readers' lives in a wonderful way. And even the characters managed to become a little less abhorrent. Still, there's something thoroughly plastic and unreal about the whole thing that I definitely don't like at all.
Hmm. I see the potential for progress to be made.
The Out magazine editor's I'm-not-naming-names-but revelation annoyed me, though. I mean, how many major league baseball players can an Out magazine editor be hanging around with? How hard would it have been for a reporter to follow him around and watch for a major league baseball player to show up? That revelation was playing with fire.
In other news, I read Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat recently to find out why so many people on my friends list grew up obsessed with it. I almost threw it across the room and refused to finish it after the very first page, when the main characters were introduced as being a beautiful skinny blonde popular girl who's dating the best-looking guy in the school, and her boy friend, the best-looking guy in the school. Who wants to read books about popular people? Upon hearing this description of them, I immediately lost all interest in hearing anything about their lives and dismissed them as abhorrent, thoroughly unpleasant people to be around.
The book did get better from there, when I forced myself to keep reading. The book does an excellent job of supporting extremely unconventional family structures and the idea of inventing one's own family structure to suit one's own needs, and I'm sure these revelations about the appeal of hitherto unimagined family structures must have really revolutionized a lot of young readers' lives in a wonderful way. And even the characters managed to become a little less abhorrent. Still, there's something thoroughly plastic and unreal about the whole thing that I definitely don't like at all.
witchbaby speaks
also i used to identify very closely with witch baby, her loneliness, her unbound love, her drum craziness, her unprotected heart.
the books are very dear to me. try witch baby or missing angel juan. i actually didn't read weetzie bat until i'd rest most of the rest of them.
--witchbaby
Re: witchbaby speaks
sure, they're not quite real, but that's part of what makes the books so attractive. I like weird books. I like off-the-wall impossible characters that I can relate to anyway.