2013-05-20T23:50:49-04:00 Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=scott-capurro Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Scott Capurro Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3174854 2013-04-29T19:00:00-04:00 2013-04-29T12:59:55-04:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/ Guardian's most recent pompous coverage of anything marginal, I stumbled upon a tirade written by Glenn Greenwald chastising the San Francisco Gay Pride Committee for de-nominating Bradley Manning as a Grand Marshall for this year's parade in June. If you don't know who Bradley Manning is, well, he's the guy who leaked Wikileaks info to that Aussie in limbo at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, consequently igniting, presumably, the Arab Spring. Or so Glenn writes. Obviously Arabs were lacking inspiration until Manning, The White Gay Crusader, took up arms and sacrificed military secrets. Thank Buddha for bored nerdy killers, homos or otherwise.

Glenn really trashes Lisa Williams, the president of the Board of SF Gay Pride, for un-inviting Manning and strong-arming her own committee. Powerful women are incredibly treacherous, especially when they have the law on their side! Then Glenn spends way too many paragraphs bemoaning the lack of true liberalism within the gay event, as he joyously lists, one after another, corporate sponsors with whom the SF Gay Pride Committee are in bed. Mean corporate sponsors, who arguably should be sent to live and work in Cyprus where money laundering is a less noble art than it is in, say, the UK.

I don't necessarily disagree with Glenn about the lack of substantial innovation within Gay Pride SF. Williams sounds like a nasty piece of groomed work, and Wells Fargo has been slipping ridiculous fees into my checking account for decades. But that's the point. Has Glenn been living in a hippie commune in Brighton for the last 15 years? Sorry, has he been blindfolded and huddling under a large, non-porous rock? For chrissake, Gay Pride has belted "LOVE ME AMERICA" since the AIDS crisis became a musical.

The fascist stepchild known as SF Gay Pride became a mainstream family event in the early 1990's. Gays either died or stayed home as we let the lesbians take charge, waiting to see if the ladies with their normal T-cell counts could do a better, more energetic job organizing a previously anarchic phenomenon now drowning in smugness and reverence.

Certainly Williams is earnest, and has magnified the faction of homos who crave public acceptance. The truth is, some gay people are Republicans, or bigots, or married, or swathed in American nostalgia as they march to the creaky repeat of the Ol' Red White and Blue. I suppose that's the chilling truth of fabled Democracy - even minority groups can be selfish, myopic race baiters.

These days, during the march, or, really, middle class shopping spree known as SF Gay Pride Sunday, thinking gays in San Francisco go to brunch and get high, letting those younger, wealthier, more anxious men and women dressed in something sparkly, revealing and frankly out of date amuse and entertain Bob and Sally from Oregon, who've driven all this way with the little ones, Timmy and Agnes, to see how the other half live for two hours. Weirdly, thinks Sally, as Bob disappears for far too long to relieve himself, the gays are in respectable family units as well. Obviously, she says aloud, a bit tipsy on overpriced Budweiser, we're all the SAME. Ain't America grand when white lesbians ruin the fun?

Sure, queers are clamoring for mainstream acceptance in the US. Fighting for sexual freedom became exhausting, diminishing our erotic buzz. Something had to give, and that, ouch, was Glenn Greenwald's dream of afternoon orgies on a rickety float, the Golden Gate Bridge shimmering in the distance. Why would gays wanna get married, Glenn, greased up in tiny short shorts might ponder, when they have the freedom to NOT? Because freedom is choice Glenn, and when unspoiled Democracy offers choice, citizens might not agree with the Guardian. Can Glenn, or anyone in a pressed shirt, imagine a gay world without the Guardian? I can, and there's laughter everywhere, especially because we didn't meet through Guardian Soulmates. Talk about a lack of imagination and sensuality. Who, in 2013, wears a cardigan or a royal blue tie and expects to get laid?

Maybe Glenn can stop blaming gay people for the merchandising of America's Left, and find his own progressives who don't mind being ostracized or murdered. Short of that, a radical makeover of SF Gay Pride is necessary, if only so Glenn has something to strum about when he's musing on his acoustic Gibson after one too many Starbucks cappuccinos from his Notting Hill local.

Or, instead of Glenn unplugged, perhaps the Guardian could drop its price so activists and the unemployed have a greater chance of finding out whatever else they've done wrong to ruin Glenn's childhood dreams of Utopia.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2372497 2012-12-18T19:00:00-05:00 2013-02-17T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/
I'd seen him from across the guacamole, whilst I singularly shoved in handfuls of tortilla chips covered in green lumpy goo. The invite stated tonight was a catered affair, but muscle-y gays don't eat solids after sundown. In the winter's dim their heartbeats slow to a sluggish pace as they conserve energy for Sunday squat sessions and spring mincing.

The trainer appeared, at a distance, to be a statuesque eight feet tall and 18 years old, so I bitterly purged on pricey champagne and dark salty beans from a casserole dish. Beans? Who prepared this menu, a Trappist monk? Where is the Turkey with stuffing and cocaine? For fucksake these queens are on such strict diets, you'd think they were studying ballet, instead of complaining about the cramped seating at Sadler's Wells. Wait, that seems unfair. Bitching is more accurate, whinging the £35 ticket price was too high, when an £80 trim of whatever wisp they pretend remains is beyond reproach.

Don't be boring, I murmur to myself. My drunkenness is a result of seasonal abuse. My mother had asthma attacks every Xmas and as a child I spent my California holiday indoors, sprucing up a fake spruce. My friends...ok, my friend...ok, my sister had a tan line and spent December shoplifting behind overwhelmed store clerks, whilst I brought my mother another blanket and knew, at age five, Xmas was like a bus. You waited forever for it to come, and it was shit.

Suddenly, somehow, I was canoodling with the Hun. I'd been drawn to him like a victim to his assaulter. I was Austria, in the throws of minor resistance. I thanked my cashmere for its confidence.

"Are you ill, because I am not allowed to be ill." The German was repulsed by whatever weakness I was flaunting. "Perhaps you should lie down."

"No, I'm just..." think fast, I'm hovering, "too thin for this cold weather." That would work at a high school reunion, IF I was at one and IF I was a woman. Oh well, one out of two ain't bad. To the German, I was as interesting as a vagina with arms and legs, which actually would be more interesting than my skinny thighs and migrating ass.

"You can gain weight. It is possible."

"Maybe for young men like you. At my age, one condenses."

"I'm 46." He told me, as he swiftly removed a calculator from his breast pocket. After correctly guessing my particulars, he punched numbers and proudly showed me the result.

"Eat this much," he stated, "and you'll increase. You'd need my guidance of course. But I work with many men like you."

Lonely men, elderly and irrelevant.

"I can make you strong again."

"But a half-pound?" I clutched my chest and winced, puncturing my palm on the sharp pin of my nametag, annoyed with myself for NEVER having been strong. "Is that an estimate?"

"It's exact." I looked into his eyes. They were black, a dolls eyes. Dead eyes. Like a shark's determined gaze when it's going in for the kill. "Follow me mein heir and the trains will arrive on time."

"But... for chrissake... Wolfgang..." I was dazed by his musky fragrance, a hobbit in the land of the aromatic giants. If only I understand metaphor, I thought, I could effectively chronicle this experience. "... when will I poo?"

Against whom are gays arming themselves? The men at this party, riddled with steroids and pumped up for a battle in Vauxhall, sported chests ballooning as if they were wearing bulletproof vests. But where is the adversary? In Central London, the average straight guy sucks cock for cab fare. My female neighbors are almost too supportive, offering embarrassing images of their skinny-dipping husbands and access to their young children.

With opposition thinning, it's as if gays' pasts have become our shame; and our youthful, sinewy bodies our foe. Lacking bullying, we've turned inward, picking fights with our adolescences and camouflaging our shy remains.

When I was in California in July, my sister showed me her gun. She lives in a wealthy, predominately white suburb, and she keeps the gun polished and loaded to defend herself and her family against lunatics who also have guns.

"It's us or them," she shrugged. We stared down at the shiny metal. A dog barked and my sister jumped.

"But lunatics have the element of surprise," I reminded her. "It seems like, when the craziness kicks off, the sane ones are never around." Or if they were, they wouldn't have guns.

The Berlin Wall is gone. Russia is afraid of itself. China is busy building bullet trains, and Iraq is starving. My sister's enemy is her imagination. Fear is her terrorist, and it lies in wait in the shade of a California palm.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2302125 2012-12-16T19:00:00-05:00 2013-02-15T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/
Nor should the reader tolerate child abuse, unless it's an integral part of a fictional story, the way some of these allegations against Jimmy Savile seem to be. Yes, he was egomaniacal, and yes, he liked the attention of young women, which, even more than his banal jokes, made him an average comic. But a pedophile? Where's the proof? Where are the leather shorts? He did have a mullet, which puts him one lap dance closer to being a fiddler, so glam rockers beware!

And everyone else, really. Years ago, in the hallowed, and, if you believe rumours, rapacious halls of the BBC, a notoriously combative Australian lady leaned in and whispered we're all paedophiles, we all like youth and beauty, but some of us take it a step too far. If by 'a step too far', she meant Savile, I never asked. I was too busy rummaging through my own memories, wondering how I'd managed to slip through the net when black boys on skateboards make me perspire and stare. But I realised I'd never approach a black boy, because my face is my calling card and my nose job cost five grand.

What makes me even more nervous than a beating is a trial in absentia. Savile cannot face his accusers. They're all too old to hold his interest, and anyway he's dead. One wonders why, if the pain they allegedly withstood was so great, the suffering so unmanageable, they didn't indict Savile before he passed away? His 'victims' were, as we've all heard, terrified of his power. But everyone was afraid of Savile. He was creepy! Lude, lascivious, lecherous, these were the staples of TV presenters in the '70s. So why is Savile being crucified for most men's slightly groping, misplaced, but ultimately harmless affections? What's in a peck on the cheek, other than a potential tongue? Isn't a hand on the knee just a simpler way of saying 'me likey'?

The public's appetite for disgraced celebrities seems to end at the Royals. No one minds that Prince Harry was just recently spending taxpayer money in Vegas, manhandling women who were possibly petrified, surrounded brutally by hangers on and bodyguards. Even if these ladies were being paid to attend to Harry's every need, including, I might add, his ginger pubes, which, in my own case, would require more money than that pale c*nt can wrangle, they might have felt violated, exposed. Not only has Harry's mishandling of his office been praised, the Royals, a bevy of inbred, cowardly, bigoted, bloated, underachieving Germans, are more popular than ever.

One might surmise that Savile is being raked over the coals for his commonness. A Northerner, a Catholic, a coal miner, he was eventually knighted, and, somewhere along that uphill grind we call show, made enemies. His ostentatious cigar smoking sickened Oxbridge graduates at the Beeb, as he blew holes 'round their starched shirted, constipated snobbery. Savile might now be on trial for his lower class origins, for being popular, successful and a Eurovision supporter. But perhaps his only real crime was his unwillingness to cut his hair.

Perchance he was young at heart, and the only people he felt didn't judge him negatively were the little ones. Children offer unconditional love, he felt at home with them, and they are flirty. They always look back.

If Jimmy was inappropriate with kiddies, conceivably the pressure of fixing everything left him damaged. That kind of responsibility made Jesus gay, and Mohammed illiterate, but unlike them, Jimmy was human and couldn't live without a sensitive touch. Maybe we're all to blame for ignoring the man, and praising the idol.

I'm aware this is a careful subject, and to the victims, if they exist, might I offer these words of illumination: At least you were chosen. I spent twelve years in Catholic school, and those priests never came near me.

That is a crime I'll have to die with.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2270677 2012-12-10T19:00:00-05:00 2013-02-09T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/ Ladies Night
All I Said... Part 2

Not too long ago, in the cellar of a Soho gay club, when I diplomatically suggested to a Chinese-American woman that her driving might suffer because of a lack of periphery, a lesbian chucked ice at my temple. In self-defense, I flipped the lesbo table, then other tables were turned. Later the Chinese woman apologised, and stated, in quirky grammar, she didn't require the "lesbian's aids". I said, If only lesbians did get AIDS, we'd all be equal. That joke suffers in print.

For telling incest jokes about my own father, the Daily Mirror stated I was evil and should be forced to leave the country.

For telling jokes about the Daily Mail's slobbering coverage of Goebbels's - sorry, the Queen's - Jubilee, a promoter told me I was evil and should return to the US.

For telling jokes about Obama to a middle class, white, cross-armed crowd in my hometown of San Francisco, I was told by a 'fan' that I was autistic and practically British.

Comedy clubs have, for a long time, been a female's safe space. Not on stage, because of the pure misogyny of stand up, but off. A husband won't win that fight about offensiveness, so he keeps quiet, while women determine what's appropriate. And even more than 'queer', the word 'inappropriate' rushes me into a rage. I mistrust authority, and anyway who draws the boundaries? After all, not every comic wants to be a hackneyed TV presenter. If I'm not worried about taste and decency on the BBC, then why be limited by arcane rules at a live performance?

Because most people have no sense of humour, stand up comedy is cultish. It's also cheap to produce and, relative to other live performance like Shakespeare and all that made up garbage, inexpensive to attend. The masses are gathering, stumbling like zombies toward comedy clubs. Online bookings are more prevalent, shouldering out loyal locals and enticing lazy hen parties and other terrorists that travel in packs and have seen McIntyre, so they know what comedy is, mate.

But I don't want to be liked by a pack of strangers. If they want a clown they can afford, they should storm a children's party. And tolerating a comic is demeaning. If an audience member has an idea they want to share, then bring it, but griping about one's feelings? I'm not wearing a white coat and I have a husband, so one's feelings should be saved for lucky friends.

Just last weekend a woman, during a rare moment of silence, barked "racist" at me in a room of 200 otherwise well behaving audience members. I was joking about the Koran and the bigotry of radical Muslim fundamentalism, so her remark might've been welcomed had it not been directed at me. The crowd, already a bit tense over my mentioning the Koran and Big Mo, grew quiet, nervous, which made my loins twitch with excitement. What might happen next? The beauty of live performance is anticipation.

"All Americans are racist," she then stupidly continued, ruining both her argument and the room's anxiety. Some 200 people laughed at her expense, and I was reminded how tenuous is a comic's grip of control on that tiny, wooden stage.

The heckler approached after and asked me if I'd like to discuss the misogyny of my act with her female friends, gathered like a coven in the back of the club.

"You mentioned rape. We're uncomfortable."

I had mentioned rape, but my husband's rape of me, which I then said was impossible because you cannot rape a gay.

"You're married. Don't you want to have children?" She asked this with true concern.

"No, not all gay men are paedophiles." I then removed her hand from my knee, ushered her away and suggested she try to have fun.

"I'm too drunk," was her response. "But I know comedy. I used to work in a comedy club!"
One shudders.

"Your moral compass is just right," A man told me after my set last month, privately, at the bar of a lovely, sprawling comedy room near Leicester Square, whilst his girlfriend visited the lady's.
That made me uncomfortable. I don't ever want the audience to know what side I'm on. I've got no sides. I'm trying to deliver more than one argument. I'm like the US army - I don't take a position, I'm just there to help clear up this mess of confusion about political correctness, because there is none. Everyone's boundaries are different, thank Goddess. If we all agreed, nothing would be funny.

If at least parts of the crowd aren't shaking or angry by the end of my set, they haven't got their money's worth and I feel a bit dirty, like I've let down the contingency of cantankerous, crabby, clarifying comics by smothering myself in sticky, gooey kindness. Yech!

There's a threshold I must pass, even in a brief 30 minute set, where the crowd realises 'queers' can be something other than lonely, sexless, mincing, prissy, overweight, wall-eyed elves with one joke and no friends. We can also be varied, like any ambitious voice on the comedy circuit.
So I'm argumentative, disagreeable, miserly, confrontational, sexual, manipulative, affable, frank and self abusive. I'm also fast, so those with reservations have little time to ponder. I'm not just a cocksucker, I'm a grinning idiot with barbs. I'm a comic who reveals hypocrisy and helps tragedies fade.

Comics shed light. We're as necessary as a light bulb, yet harder to replace.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2256786 2012-12-07T19:00:00-05:00 2013-02-06T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/ All I Said Was... Part 1

Many years ago, when I was a legitimate actor in San Francisco, I got the idea that audiences weren't listening. Maybe it was the tired tourist trade for which I was performing; or perhaps I was, at the tender age of 28, disillusioned, but theatre goers seemed detached.

I wanted to test audiences and see if words could change their perceptions, and the first perception I was eager to alter was that homosexuals are all camp, limp-wristed, foppish clowns. I wanted to make people think differently about gay men.

This had to begin, obviously, in straight comedy clubs. I'd already successfully played the ONE gay club in San Francisco. Josie's, the vegan juice joint I called my performance home, had allowed my comedy skills to grow amongst like-minded homos, but I wanted to hone my craft in a wider world. The US seemed, especially then, obsessed with butch arrogance, so I went to the Edinburgh Fringe and was nice for three years while I searched for my true comic voice. I felt I was funnier, more clever and cunning, off stage than on. I had to transfer my guile from backstage to the fore.

Eventually, and oddly, I finally found the one item that audiences wouldn't tolerate, and that was making fun of Anne Frank. Women rule comedy rooms, and Anne is no exception. Let's back up.

No one wants to see a gay man abusing a woman, but the bitch was coming at me so I punched her in the side of her head. Not Anne because that would've been redundant. I was in Covent Garden, a few years back, telling a joke about a girl who's missing. Her parents are Brits and she's probably dead, but one person's hope is another's punch line.

An audience member stood up, lifted the collar of her tweedy overcoat and announced to her workmates, "I don't have to put up with this from some sad fucking queer."

Now, I know I sound sad, but that's mostly the fat talking. The woman 'came at me', meaning she passed too closely to the stage and I took a swing at her with the palm of my hand. I batted her right temple, enough to make her head bob.

"Oy" she barked, "I just had head surgery."
"Well it didn't fucking work," was my response. I should've won the argument earlier with words, but I'd had lots of coffee that day and verbal abuse all my life.

I've got a blind spot where the word 'queer' is concerned, unless I'm paying someone £50 to whisper it into my ear. When my sexuality is used as a weapon, the comedy club becomes a schoolyard and I'm 14 again, tall and skinny and femmy and mouthy, a huge ego and a low self esteem - the constitution of a serial killer or hairdresser or yoga teacher or brain surgeon.

To hide my attraction to my male friends I was funnier and smarter than everyone else. I dressed well as camouflage. I hated myself for hiding, the way a comic hates himself for brutally putting down a heckler. Any c*nt can tell a joke, or else Lenny Henry would work in a hotel instead of promoting one on television.

Bigotry sets me off, so I beat the crowds to the punch by being outrageous.

In Amsterdam I reminded the Dutch of their complacency in 1939, and their responsibility for little Anne's death. I was not invited back to Amsterdam for 12 years.

When I did my Frank shtick in Edinburgh, Cambridge Footlights members stormed out, in tears. I was upset too: Surely, by 2001, someone had covered Anne Frank in his act! However Anne remained virgin territory, and as the walkouts increased, so did the number of subjects one could discuss onstage. The Jewish Chronicle stalked me, I received death threats, and when several comics stopped talking to me I knew I was doing something right. Taboos kept smashing because I had less left to loose.

I saw the confusion and angst in the front row's eyes. Finally, we were getting somewhere - the audience didn't know what's coming. How exciting for them. I fed off their sweat and steam.
In Central London, a few years later, a comedy club booker, an old hippy with a Jewish wife, threatened to ban me for being a Holocaust denier. My response, on stage: What Holocaust? Oops. That club closed eventually anyway. Sorry, it was purged. Cleansed? Whatever.

In Australia, I was asked to do a set on live television, to promote the Melbourne Comedy Festival. I sent them the set in outline form. When, during performance, I eroticized the Christ figure, complaints were lodged. Who knew Jesus could still cause a buzz? I was accused of improvising, of varying from my script, which I'd like to say, in a revolutionary sort of way that I had, but I hadn't.

Still, my Festival show was banned by the Catholic Church on Easter, although one wonders what an Orthodox Catholic is doing at my show, especially during Christ's erection, other than procuring amongst my younger fans; TV producers were apparently fired for letting me experience the joys of freedom of speech; and the Festival, in feigned outrage, removed their support from my show. Though it's been made clear to me many times, even within the last few days, that I'm not invited back to work in Australia, I've become a show biz myth, and 'Don't pull a Capurro', meaning I suppose don't go rogue and do relevant material, is the warning given to most comics before stepping in front of an Antipodean TV camera.

Stay tuned for part 2: Ladies Night]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2224076 2012-12-02T19:00:00-05:00 2013-02-01T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/
The only career Hugh Grant has now is testifying. I wouldn't be aware of how useless his stylist is if I didn't see him traipsing into court, disheveled hair and baggy suit, almost daily. He's got a story to tell, and frankly no one cares as much as Rupert did several years ago.

Where Hugh is concerned, people only really want to know if Divine Brown was a fella. 'She' spoke about 'her'self in third person. Remember? "Ms Brown thinks" and "Ms Brown says", as if she was mocking or mimicking her own female title. Ok, maybe most people have moved on, but I want to know if Hugh picked up that black babe hoping she was packing, or did he really believe anyone with a name like Divine Brown was, well, to coin a political phrase many use to describe the Coalition, dickless.

Celebs lined up to testify at the Leveson Inquiry in the summer, but I can only imagine it's because they felt forgotten. Tony Blair's been assigned a desk job in Lebanon, so he was happy to return in May to smile and kill national pride. Theresa May in June took a break destroying families to wonder, in court, if she would ever really be liked. Sorry, what I mean is, she cuts herself.

Andy Coulson said stuff, and that red head that might be bound for the clinker pouted and waited for someone to tell her she was good. But what the public really wanted to know was, did that socialite really say she was glad when Diana died, because she, the socialite, looked good in 1997? Does Harry have a Dad? Is the Queen dead inside as well? Did they tap Simon Cowell and if so, can anyone explain his hair? His grimace? And the way Olly Murs swept him off his brick sized feet? Was Olly's phone tapped, or is he too stupid to dial?

Which Olympic divers are straight? Which footballer isn't a cunt? Why are we alive?

Leveson is another reality show I'm not on, and I'm waving from my bedroom window, yelling, "Pour maggots on my crotch! Starve me! Elect me then send me thousands of miles away so I can be hated and sent home!"

I need to pick up my phone and hear someone other than my sister Liz breathing. That's what success sounds like - invasive, third party aerobics. When Lizzie and I speak, I can get crazy on her ass and start accusing the Jews of conspiracies and Mel Gibson of being Jewish and my TV of talking back to me. I can imply very subtly that my nose fell off before the Royal Wedding, then sing my new hit single, LOUD, after which I drunkenly claim my heart belongs to Chechnya. I'm fretful over the BAFTAS and frighteningly accurate when predicting weather. I'm cagey and calculating and incredibly insightful as Julie Roberts confides her breasts are uneven. I can spout my most truthful fantasies and blur everything with my painkiller-sucking lack of tact; and the next day, BAM! My words will be on the front page of something, somewhere, with a picture of me jogging to the local shops to buy the rags that cover my every move.

My publicist, also known as Twitter, tells me this is the kind of hype required to sell tickets in Crewe. I mean, if I'm not worthy of Murdoch's attention, why pay to see me when a C-Lister's cocaine addiction boosts her record sales and the public's ego as one more peg drops off the ever-spinning show reel we call culture.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2123842 2012-11-13T19:00:00-05:00 2013-01-13T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/
I'm glad a gay lady won something. Makes meals on queer cruise lines less victimy and more conversational. And I don't want Iraq to think women on women action is limited to harems and hair salons. Ladies with manicures and shoulder pads can now serve the country in other ways, no matter how misguided is the stale, expensive US Senate.

Why do we pretend the English were right, when they set up a second legislative body to pimp-slap the other? Checks and balances was a good idea hundreds of years ago, I guess, when the public was too stupid or busy feeding themselves to keep an eye on corrupt politicians.

But now, in about three minutes I can locate nearby suspected paedophiles. I'm sure politicians aren't far behind. Their graft, insincerity and fake workout schedules are all at my fruited fingertips.

With this knowledge, the uninformed electorate recently proved that we ain't puttin' up with no more bullshit Washington, so do what you were meant to do when we voted this same way in 2008. Show up at work, answer your calls and memorize Paul Krugman.

Senatorial ladies, will you be any different from the past dudes? Or will you just rest on your cellulitic laurels, pretending to be stern when minorities approach with their needs for food and housing? Why accommodate senators, drooling over contributions while swallowing their pride, when a family of Asians can turn one senatorial storage closet into a successful Calvin Klein workshop?

Americans are praying for jobs. Let's employ 20 of them, rather than an incumbent from Wyoming County with equal political power to a senator from broken California who is slightly scary but bilingual. Sort of. Sorry, un poquito. Now empty the spittoons, por favor.

When we abolish the Upper House, it will be like eliminating the Nazis on the Eastern Front. Not that the senate are similar to the Fascists, because the Nazis knew how to dress. Was Elizabeth Warren actually wearing a black blouse and a dark blue jacket on election night? I thought she wanted to win the gay vote. Say what you will about Himmler, he mixed his shades properly.

And better still Himmler got things done, maybe because he had only one vegetarian to answer to. The ladies in the senate would like to save the world, but they're lactose intolerant. They can't feel their feet. It's tough to fix Orange County when you're munching on bowls of bean sprout and cat litter just to please hairy forearmed activists, whilst courting failed CEOs from IBM.

I'm frankly sad for the senate, its members are so desperate to be liked by everyone who DIDN'T elect them. Diane Feinstein and her coterie want to have dinner with Log Cabin Republicans, but those queens won't be caught dead with those other queens. Country Western without the letter 'o' is both high camp and Paul Ryan's nickname for the West Coast. Ryan's got his finger up someone's pulse.

Has he always been a fella? I only ask because he tears up so easily.

Everyone knows Obama won because voters require a monarch. The senate's wheel chair is in the way of America's happiness, like an armed, angry old man with a colostomy bag, a disposable income and no enemy except the dirt. The battle left. The left won, so GET ON WITH IT, Obama. The voter spoke and we've eliminated discussion. No one's working, except the senate and they're working against a more direct Democratic process.

I don't want their oxygen cut off. That would be pointless, as several senators stopped breathing decades ago. Obama, take away their credit cards, the way Romney did to his loyal staff on the midnight he lost his way last week. Without credit, senators will fade away like the stern resolve in Romney's wife's eyes.

Imagine a world without senators on Sunday morning talk shows barking at one another about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens or whatever special interests their representing while I'm forced to fart to warm my NYC apartment.

Abolish the senate before chicks take it over and a needy McCain has a sex change, while blathering on about his refurbished Mekong Delta.

Obama, downsize, before the voters send Harry Reid a pink slip. He's got boney ankles.

Next week: Senator Reid's carpet burns.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2082529 2012-11-06T19:00:00-05:00 2013-01-06T05:12:01-05:00

Scott Capurro http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-capurro/
Gay marriage is illegal there. A civil union is acceptable, but that's just two signatures in a book and some handholding. It carries no legal status in the Federal government. With Mormon political leaders using their poorly edited Christian text as a weapon, my desire to spend my life with my male partner is seen as evil, whilst more liberal politicians, namely Obama, have evolved into acceptance. If Romney wins, I'm Satan. If Obama wins, I'm modern. Whilst here in London, I'm merely a tax-paying spouse in Hackney.

Why are many Americans still burning witches whilst even the conservatives in Britain have bent over in every direction to accommodate my gay needs? Are the British an older culture, so more sophisticated, assuming wisdom comes with age? Or have gay rights activists here been less emotional and more effective than in the US? Or perhaps most British men of power had their greatest love affairs whilst away at Eaton, et al, and so they understand the value of same sex coupling?

Frankly, the answer is probably amusing, potentially pornographic, but ultimately un-important. What concerns me is the humiliation my husband suffered when being turned down for his tourist visa at the American Embassy in London. The interview lasted less than 60 seconds.
My man: "I want to visit my husband's hometown of San Francisco."

Balding fat homophobic interviewer: "He's your husband? Well you're not going to America. Next!" Elections come and go, Presidents smile and change color, but gay humbling thrives under the huge golden eagle in Grosvener Square.

However this year I voted for Obama. My husband is black, and I'm assuming they know each other. Actually my husband is so black, he's purple. He has green eyes, and dyed a streak of red into his hair. It's like getting bummed by a rainbow. I'm watching him run about the flat in his white pants right now, wondering how anyone could be unaccommodating to this lovely, charming man who speaks four languages and yes, If he could, he'd campaign for Obama. Or at the very least prepare him a very tasty lunch.

I voted for Obama because he seems like a prudent choice, because the economy in the US is still poor, and black men work for less. But he's disappointed, like every other politician. He said he'd pull out of the Middle East, but men say they're gonna pull out all the time. They lie, and that's how Alabama stays populated.

I voted for Obama, even though he's ordered the illegal bombing of Pakistan, and the hippies in California don't say a word. Where is the hairy lesbian with a rifle rushing City Hall in San Francisco, demanding to know why women and children are dying there because of American drones dropping bombs made in South Korea? War isn't just Hell, it's complicated and in this uncompromising age, time consuming!

I voted for Obama because my mother died without health insurance. Several bills remain stuffed in a manila envelope on my sister's desk. Someone has to pay them. I'll call Mitt. Do Mormons have cell phones? Well I know they have a few bucks, now that Mitt's adds are done running. Oh that's right, if he wins, 47 percent of Americans have to learn to fend for themselves. Maybe my dying mother could've learned to make things out of sticks and clay and sold them on the street corner, using her last breaths to beg for coins.

Maybe Mitt can take time out of his busy prayer breakfasts and come witness what middle class poverty, and a swampy New Jersey coastline, smells like. I guess Mitt prefers to be on his knees, swallowing pork and hoping for a miracle.

I voted for Obama because I want to sleep. What keeps me up at night is the anger I feel because my husband can't meet the row of alcoholics and pill poppers that make up my lineage. If only he could witness, in person, what a paranoid, trembling mess my remaining family of underpaid, suffering Americans are, he might realize how well I've turned out!]]>