Song Poison: Pee-Wee's Playhouse

It's a shame that my distaste for Pee-Wee's Playhouse doesn't preclude me from getting the theme song stuck in my head. At least it's Cyndi Lauper.

Come on in, and pull yourself up a chair
Let the fun begin, its time to let down your hair!
Pee-wee's so excited,
'Cause all his friends have been invited
To go wacky, at Pee-wee's playhouse!

Theres a crazy rhythm, comin' from Puppetland
Dirty Dog, Cool Cat, and Chicky Baby are the puppet band
Hes got a couple of talkin' fish,
And a genie who'll grant a wish.
Golly, its cuckoo at Pee-wee's playhouse !

Globey's spinnin', Mr. Window's grinnin',
'Cause Pterri's flyin' by
The flowers are singin', the picture phone is ringin',
And the dinosaur family goes, hi!
Mr. Kite's soarin', Conky's still a-snorin',
There's the flashing magic screen.
The Cowntess is so classy, Randy's kinda sassy —
A nuttier establishment you've never seen!
Spend the day with Pee-wee and you'll see what we mean

Get outta bed, there'll be no more nappin'!
'Cause you've landed in a place where anything can happen —
Now we've given you fair warnin'!
Its gonna be that kind of mornin'
For bein' wacky!
For getting nutty!
Golly, its cuckoo!
At Pee-wee's playhouse!

Christmas bonus: Who cares about sugar plums when you have visions of ... Grace Jones! (And a choir of U.S. Marines!)


Hmm... I think maybe this show's brilliance was lost on me as a young lad of — gulp! — 12. Perchance, I shall give it another look as an adult.

Visible Vote '08

	Click it! [www.visiblevote08.com]

In January 2009, not just the curtains will be replaced at the White House, and I'm counting down the days.

In a shout out to all the gay voters out there (and considering the way the conservatives used us to divide the country four years ago, "gay" and "voter" ought to mean the same thing), Logo launched a new site today called VisibleVote08.com.

It's Logo's home base for GLBT news from the presidential race from now through Election Day. There'll be guest celebrity bloggers and plenty of opportunities for users to comment and participate. You can submit questions to be asked of the candidates at a presidential candidate forum on August 9 all about GLBT issues. (It's not a debate: They will speak alone in turn.) All Democratic and Republican candidates were invited, but it'll be just the Democrats, because the Republicans said they have to wash their hair that night. It's a live broadcast, and it'll stream live on the Web site, so if you don't have Logo, you can still watch!

GLBT folks have a voice, and we gotta use it. We need to hold not only our political enemies, but also our political allies, accountable for the actions they take (or don't take) that directly affect our lives, our families and our basic rights. I hope this will encourage the Democratic candidates to say something real and meaningful to us for once.

In the meantime, check out the guest commentary by Cyndi Lauper!

Love her!

P.S. Mac users can watch, too!

Put 'Em on Me

Empty and untouched [fantasy arts resource project]

When I had a chance to touch Cyndi Lauper recently, I turned it down.

When she walked out onto the peninsula of stage projecting out into the masses assembled on the floor of the club, she reached down to the frantic hands grasping at her knees. She briefly clasped fingers, slapped palm to palm, butted fist to fist.

My friend pulled me closer and shouted into my ear. "Do you want to go up there and touch her hand? I'll go up there with you."

I hemmed and hawed and eventually decided no. No, I won't.

"OK," she said, "but if you change your mind, let me know. I'll go up there with you."

I wanted to go up there. No I didn't. Yes I did. I looked at the bouncing crowd at her feet. It was packed. I'd have to be pretty aggressive to get up there. Rude, even. But I might never be so close again. And why shouldn't they share her with me? Oh, why didn't I start out closer to the stage before the show started, when there was plenty of room to stake out a spot?

	I couldn't get a good snapshot, but memories "R" Good Enough. [dnamagazine.com.au]

Lauper retreated, and the hands came down. My moment, my chance, had passed. Much more importantly, I could stop fussing and wimbling and concentrate on the show.

I looked over at my friend. What have I done? (What have I not done?) She sort of shrugged, as if to say, Well, that's that. I asked you.

Cyndi Lauper was performing with Soul Asylum, Lifehouse and Mint Condition in a benefit concert for Wain McFarlane, a friend of mine. He needs a new kidney, and with the inadequate health insurance of a man who makes a living as a musician, Wain can't afford the procedure and, more importantly, the anti-rejection drugs he'll have to take the rest of his life. Thankfully, his brother is donating the organ, and it's a good match. Things could be worse. But he's still got to pay for it.

All the performers have a professional and personal connection to Wain, and agreed early on to do the show. Jeff and I flew back to Minneapolis for the show to support our friend — and, I'm not ashamed to say, to see Cyndi Lauper.

Before long, she was back on the peninsula, and my friend was elbowing me in the ribs.

I was reminded of a guy I met online whose cowboy hat Madonna took off his head at a concert last year. She wore it through a song and threw it back out into the crowd. He was apoplectic with joy. (His friends strongarmed the poor person who caught the hat into returning it.) Oh, why can't I be like that guy?

As it was, I was embarrassed even to be standing there with my cellphone pointed upward trying to snap a few photo. My real camera had been barred at the door, but it didn't stop us from flipping open our phones, the constellation of those tiny video displays glowing blue and shifting shape for the hour-long set.

It felt so lame and ineffectual. Every time Lauper looked in my direction, possibly even making eye contact a couple of times (which was thrill enough for me), I could feel her disappointment. You're missing the point, idiot. This is music. This is a party. You're trying so hard to capture the moment that you're missing it.

She had enough to contend with, including a band that seemed unable or unwilling to keep up with her and some sound techs who just couldn't seem to get it right. The diva — cold, raised voice, and forceful gestures (Move. There. Now.) — came out a couple of times. She is the boss and in total control. But she is not without flaws herself. When she dusted off "When You Were Mine," an apparent gesture to local-boy-made-good Prince, she had forgotten many of the lyrics and couldn't seem to read them very well from the back of a flyer where they had been scribbled. Eventually, she dropped the paper and rocked the chorus out instead.

None of the images I took turned out, by the way.

I had a friend in college who was a Tori Amos groupie and had a picture of herself with Amos from every concert she had attended. The dedication of waiting at the stage doors after each show, the consistency and Amos' eventual recognition of her, was impressive to me. I was jealous, but also alarmed. It seemed obsessive. Why the need to do it more than once?

A group of three women pushed past me toward the stage, annoying the enormous man standing next to me. The one in front would gently displace someone and then her friends would rush through. It was a nuisance. There was no room for them. I hated them. I wanted to be them. No, I didn't.

I don't think less of people for wanting to make that contact. They were fulfilling a "need" that Lauper was willing to accommodate. Unlike my friend with the Tori Amos fetish, I suppose I just didn't feel that need strongly enough to act on it. Unlike these women, I didn't want to interfere with other people's experience for an ultimately empty gesture.

It struck me that this may not have been about me. By refusing to push forward, I was keeping my friend from getting closer, too. All the emotion around my devision was instantly transferred to guilt. I should do it for her, not me. Though I guess her boyfriend could have taken her up there if she really wanted to go.

It's enough for me to consider that I am only a degree away from Cyndi Lauper. I felt like an insider just being there. I had the hubris to think that maybe Wain would introduce us after the show. It would be just weird to touch her hand like everyone else. She talked about her upcoming True Colors Tour (which won't stop in Minneapolis), days before the official announcement. But even that is meaningless. I don't know her. I have nothing to say except as a one of millions of distant fans.

Cyndi Lauper is a formidably talented musician, not a faith healer. I would love to meet her and tell her I admire her and thank her for helping me friend. But I don't want to reduce her to a fetish. What would I get out of touching her hand? The transferance of greatness? A palm full of sweat? Maybe the human touch would be just enough to assure them that she is as real as they are. Or that they are as real as she is.

Dammit, I should have just gone up there and done it.

Kidney Tones (with apologies to Jeff)

From the cover art of Wain's 2001 release That Was Then, This is Now [myspace.com/wainmcfarlane]

These days, my good friend Wain sticks mainly to cranberry juice. He jokes now about his bar tab. Not long ago, he'd drop a twenty at the most on a night out, because so many people would buy him drinks and the bartenders would do him favors. But no one gets anyone a cranberry juice, even good friends. He has to buy his own. And at a bar they charge you like it's a cocktail. So now he spends much more not drinking than he ever did drinking.

He's no alcoholic, and this is no 12-step program. Trust me, if he had his druthers, Wain would be back to the booze — free or not. But he's got a problem with his kidneys that makes alcohol highly ... um ... disagreeable to his system. He's on doctor's orders. (And when that doctor is from the Mayo Clinic, one doesn't argue.)

Wain's kidneys are functioning at roughly 6 percent capacity. He needs a new one pretty badly. And as a musician, he doesn't have heaps of disposable income and he doesn't have great health insurance. He does have three things, however, in abundance: luck, friends and connections.

The luck came in at a bar in Walker, Minnesota, out in the north woods. He plays up there sometimes. At this bar, by chance, he met a doctor. That doctor knew a kidney specialist at Mayo. And suddenly there was Wain's golden opportunity. Introductions made ... 87 miles each way between Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota ... tests taken ... and voilà! We have a surgeon and we have a donor (one of Wain's brothers).

The friends came in shortly thereafter. A bunch of musicians decided to get together to produce a benefit concert on March 10. Wain fronted a funk/reggae band in the '80s and '90s called Ipso Facto, and he's been around the block a few times, having played with Prince's band, Dave Pirner, Jonny Lang, UB40, Tracy Chapman and scores of others. This is where connections come in.

A few years back, Wain's brother was Cyndi Lauper's tour manager, and she became friendly with the family. Wain tells me he once saw her at a party in a gorilla costume. A musician he mentored toured with her. When she performed at the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, she let Wain sing "Time After Time" with her, letting him ad lib a verse dedicated to his late sister. She brought him back out on stage for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," which Wain and her bass player spun into an impromptu reggae jam.

A connection.

	[cyndilauper.com]

So, we are told, Ms. Lauper has graciously agreed to lend some of her time and abundant talent to the cause. And many other people he's worked with are helping out, too: Lifehouse, Mint Condition, Soul Asylum. You can read about it on her Web site.

Wain was our neighbor for more than three years. His wife Catherine, another good friend, was our landlady. He sang at our wedding. We planted vegetable gardens and herb gardens together. They babysat our cat. We've had Easters and Thanksgivings. We've dined on curried goat. We've toasted aquavit. He once gave us 15 lbs. of crab legs (there wasn't enough room in his freezer for 30 lbs.) because the parents of a kid he tutored are fishmongers and they paid Wain in fish.

We just saw Wain right before Christmas. And I guess we'll be back in March. Apparently he thinks we don't visit enough, so he's hauling out the heavy ammunition. I'll take any excuse to go back to my adopted home for a visit. Even in a month as c-c-cold as March. But it's not Cyndi Lauper who's luring us back. It's the prospect of being part of a concert full of people who are there to give their love to my friend.

(Truth be told, having Cyndi Lauper there, too, doesn't hurt.)

To all my Minnesotans: Please buy tickets!