”If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.”

-Al Gore at the Clinton Global Initiative gathering today.

In case you didn’t know (or care), yesterday George Michael was busted again, this time for possession of crack cocaine in Hampstead (my birthplace…shame on him). But to me, the poignant part of the story isn’t that he was caught with drugs but that once again, he was caught whilst no doubt cruising the South End Green toilets. I don’t get it. Gay men have fought for decades, centuries even, to be able to parade around out and proud, make out, hit on each other, have gay establishments, etc. yet they’re still cruising for sex in public bathrooms.

I get why Sen. Larry Craig did it. He’s not an open member of the gay community; he’s a so-called “straight” politician so he had to stealthly hunt for sex. But someone like George Michael, honey we knew you were gay when we saw you dancing in those dolphin shorts in the “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” video. You’d also think he’d have his share of groupies; what would be the point of touring otherwise?

Gay men cruising the toilets in the 21st century is almost equivalent to me becoming a courtesan in order to find a husband…archaic at best, just plain scatalogical at worst.

I recently saw “Prick Up Your Ears” with Gary Oldman again. The film chronicles the raunchy lifestyle of gay British playwright Joe Orton in the ’60s. But those were the days when things were a little more on the DL, if you catch my drift.  

I get it, some folks are drawn to the seedy side of life. For every gay man into inhaling the smell of decades-old piss as he goes down on a guy there is a woman prostituting herself online, in an exotic dance club or by way of good-old fashioned hookering. There’s a scurrilous and salatious underbelly aspect to things. 

I guess, living near West Hollywood skews your vision of the gay scene. The only cruising I see there involves same sex marrieds taking the adopted Guatemalan baby out for a spin to be the envy of other gay marrieds. Seems pretty cozily gentrified to me.

And I’ve asked gay male friends of mine why such a surprisingly large percentage of gay men still admit to hitting public bathrooms and such for cruising purposes, and they too remain mystified. Perhaps the answer lies not in their gayness but rather their maleness. It is, after all, tradition for the males to piss to mark their territory. So maybe bathroom cruising gives them a sense of power and dominion which in turn gets them off?

In all actuality, the fact that gay men still cruise bathrooms when they don’t necessarily need to, is comforting to me. Once a HUGE fan of the creativity and edginess of gay culture, I had grown bored of its mainstream yuppified side with its Wills and Graces. Alas there is something kinky left for society not to accept. Welcome mavericks….now turn away from the urinal and drop your pants…

Wishes do come true… About five days ago I was wishing, hoping, manifesting that the Large Hadron Collider would, for some reason, have to be turned off. I’m sure I wasn’t alone because they just announced the big news that due to glitches, CERN is being forced to turn off the LHC for at least two months. It will likely not resume operation until 2009. So let’s enjoy our lives and do all the things we’ve always wanted to do this Fall/Early Winter…and manifest the Collider’s permenent de-activation!

When I look at the above photo of the Large Hadron Collider I think, “Tech Porn…” a bunch of scientists oohing, ahhing and salivating over the world’s largest particle accelerator, currently revving up in Switzerland. “Oh, it’s soooo BIG!”

The truth though is that one man’s pornography is another’s ‘decline of Western civilization.’ This mega-machine intends to go where no man has gone before, simulating in essence The Big Bang in order to quantify the so-called God Particle (the Higgs Boson) and thus figure out what it all means, I suppose. The risk according to some (which means there is indeed some risk) is that it will form tiny black holes and strangelets. A bunch of scientists laugh off such laymen’s fears–like Marie Antoinette giggling at the peasants who know not courtly love–. “End of the world, pishah, you Plebian idiots know nothing about science.” I find this totally insulting. Who wouldn’t. It’s not THEIR world to destroy or put at risk of destruction, even in the name of solving the greatest enigma mankind has ever known.

My question is: why are we taking the chance on the snafus (end of life as we know it) that this machine could exact, even if it’s an infinitessimally small chance? In the name of what? Getting answers to why we’re here, what preceded the Bang, etc.? I’d rather go to the country, look up at the stars, marvel, wonder and feel small, or take shrooms and trick myself into thinking I have the answer to it all. That’s at least a tad less reckless.

Beyond the fogged-up lenses of excited eggheads’ spactacles, there’s a whole world of people that are none too jazzed about this LHC. Personally I love science fiction and devour books on high tech evolution but this is the REAL DEAL–it’s not a Will Smith movie where the goofy funny guy cracks a couple of jokes about the end of the world and then saves it.

Ever since news of the LHC has leaked into the mainstream press (believe it or not it was tucked away in the back pages of most U.S. newspapers until recently) I’ve witnessed a burgeoning albeit relevant phenomena: LHC Fever. The symptoms include insomnia induced by thoughts of being sucked up by a Black Hole (”October Surprise”?), a sense of restlessness to start life before it ends and a general feeling of carpe diem brought on by thoughts of the world disappearing before our eyes (or maybe it’s not even an instant disappearance but a slowly consuming whirlwind that crescendos in 2012). But I digress and get carried away with post modern paranoia.

The bottom line is, LHC awareness is causing some to wonder why we’re always sitting back in front of computers on Facebook throwing sheep at each other when we could be meeting up in person and screwing like bunnies. Why do we watch TV shows about people that do extraordinary things and go to extraordinary places instead of, in the words of the great Nike of Niketown, Just Doing It!? A generation is sitting around getting atrophied and slit-eyed playing Rock Band instead of just going out there and forming a band. I’ve got news for the scientists searching for their Holy Grail of physics: if the God Particle could talk it would probably say, “Get out of your lab, get some fresh air, make love not war, smell the roses and suck the marrow out of life before it sucks the marrow out of you.”

Image: Yours truly on the beach in beautiful Laguna Beach by the talented Geoff Moore, my photojournalistic partner in crime up and down Route 1

I just returned from an epic journey up and down the Coast on Highway 1 from Laguna Beach to Sea Ranch (Sonoma/Mendocino border-ish), working on a travel article about the breakneck but beautiful road trip for KLM’s in-flight mag. As I settle back into L.A. life and try to process it all, I’m left feeling utterly in love with my state, all dreamy and aflutter with butterflies. I’m just so grateful to live in this special (true blue) state. It is truly something else–a nation practically (an argument for secession comes next).

For people like George Bush senior to refer to us as “a bunch of California hot tubbers” is really missing the point. I embrace the progressive, expansive laid back beauty of my great state. I feel like I never really knew her before (is that appropriate to call a state “she,” since guys call cars “she,” hmmm…) Anyway, Cali is so varied but always interesting, eclectic and magical.

I finally saw the Milky Way when we were up in Sea Ranch, for the first time. I had seen the stars when I was in Woodstock years back, but nothing beats the visibility up on the edge of the Sonoma Coast. It made me wonder if not seeing the stars every night in cities like L.A., New York and San Francisco, further disconnects us from the cosmic pulses and, in turn, ourselves. But that’s just me getting New Age…that’s what we are out here, nothing but a bunch of New Age, hybrid-driving, California hot tubbers… and to use the words of our stodgy and devout accusers: “Amen!”

Image: Another gorgeous shot by GM of cows on an overhang overlooking the ocean on the dazzling Sonoma Coast–we’re about 5 hours from Oregon at this point…

I probably don’t have to provide too many excuses for the dearth of entries as it’s August…a month we all know as pretty dead. However, I do have to apologize that I won’t be blogging during this first week of September either. I’m off to explore the coast of California from Laguna to Sea Ranch for a story I just got assigned. All should be back to “normal” (is “normal” ever a good thing?) by mid-September. Happy Labor Day!