Teamteacher’s Weblog

There is no better indicator that I need a life than the fact that my evenings now rotate around what’s happening on Bravo. It all started out innocently enough, with a once a week splurge with Kathy Griffin. Every Thursday night, I’d snuggle up with Kathy and watch as she chases around the gays, her dogs, and photo opportunities across Los Angeles. Then July was upon us, and the final season of Project Runway began. Since it is the last season that will be airing on this illustrious network, I concluded I had to tune in for the dresses made out of plastic bags and the predictable catty drama that would ensue. This season lacks a nymphish androgynous standout shouting “hot tranny mess,” but it does have a character named Suede who refers to himself in the third person and Stella, who just might be the hottest mess I’ve ever seen on cable

Stella specializes in leather, but in this episode she does her best to make a punk-rock outfit out of Hefty bags. Get familiar with Stella here:

I love how delicate and hip all of the other contestants are, and then Stella comes in looking like she woke up 15 minutes ago in Astoria, got on the N train, and barely had time to tie her thigh high leather leggings. She had me sold when she mentioned her aesthetic was “cheap and chic.” She won’t last long, but each week I pray they’ll extend her stay.

The program that really tipped me over the edge into full-blown Bravo addiction does not follow the predictable pattern of eliminations like Project Runway and so many of its spinoffs. Flipping Out is like a gay trading spaces on a triple espresso, minus the perky hosts and Midwestern locales. The new Bravo series, in its second season, follows Jeff Lewis as he finds old homes and “flips” them into beautiful luxury pads to turn a profit. If this were simply a sweet home show with lots of do it yourself tips, I would probably be channel surfing. Lewis, however, manages to make hedge fund investors look tame and Anna Wintour look like boss of the year, as he spits orders at his assistants, who are usually in the middle of messing up his big plans. Kathy Griffin manages to handle three pretty much incompetent assistants on her show with one-liners and some requisite passive aggression, but Jeff goes for the jugular every chance that he gets. Watch him here, as he derides his staff and 50 Cent:

His only love is his cat, which appears to be just as feisty as he is.

He gave one of is cherished assistants the job of taking his ornery kitten to the vet for acupuncture. What keeps me coming back to Jeff and his staff of miscreants isn’t their weekly, predictable struggle, but Jeff’s nutty combination of New York businessman and new age California beach boy. In the same breath, Jeff will shout at a contractor to increase productivity on the site and call a psychic to cleanse the home he’s selling of bad spirits. In earnest, Jeff watches this psychic perform an exorcism on his property. His contradicting level-head and reverence for the un-dead make him one of the most bizarre characters on television. I wonder, for example, how someone so in touch with the other side, would find it impossible to hug an assistant during a divorce or give her a day off after she steps on a gigantic nail. The only conclusion I’ve reached so far is that Jeff is, in fact, the devil. Now that explains why I can’t stop watching his network.

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I never thought I would be in a position where I’m actually blogging about blogging, but here I am, knee deep in the blogosphere, only to be self-obsessed enough to dare blog on the very subject itself. Since being self-referential went out of style with John Cusack in High Fidelity, I will draw attention not to my own blog, but to a blog with many thousands more hits per day: The Philadelphia Eagles Training Camp Practice Blog.

If you’ve been reading my entries, you might have noticed that thus far the closest I’ve come to sports commentary is mentioning Olympic swimmers in speedos swirling in 50 meter pools listening to Loudon Wainwright. There is a special place in my heart for the Philadelphia Eagles and not because I like horrible public transportation systems, trashy Jersey Shore weekends, or the zesty cheerleaders who accompany these titans on their Sunday conquests.

My passion for the birds comes out of fraternal love for my brother, Michael Frazier, a statistician for this illustrious team. Having a brother who is a coach on a professional sports team is reason enough to blog, but just this past week at training camp my celebrity brother had a run in with the charismatic QB for the team, Donovan McNabb. Michael has mentioned self-deprecatingly several times that he has spoken with the soup-endorsing hometown hero on several occasions, but this recent blog post seems to indicate that the two of them are quite cheeky, so to speak:

“9:41 AM – McNabb bringing laughs again. As he switches fields, he spanks statistical analysis coordinator Mike Frazier while yelling, “WOO!” Took most people by surprise.”

While I’m incredibly proud of my brother, who works more than overtime for his team, I’ve never really been jealous of his job: until now. Donovan’s bold move certainly took me by surprise, though I suppose these sorts of “atta boy” towel-slapping hijinks are common in the male-dominated arena. McNabb is known for being quite the comedian, as the blog further enumerates:

“8:59 AM: Funny moment from who else but Donovan McNabb. As he crosses the field to work with the running backs, McNabb intentionally runs through a wide receiver drill. ‘Hey, stay outside the hash marks!’ David Culley yells. “I AM! I AM!” McNabb shouts back, despite running between them.”

I wish I knew why this was funny, but perhaps it was a “you had to be there moment.” My brother’s entry, on the contrary, really seemed to capture the mood of frivolity with McNabb’s “WOO!” On the phone, Mike maintained that he remained professional, despite an unexpected shot to the fanny.

Now these brethren bloggers for the Eagles are doing an outstanding job chronicling every last detail of the action on the field, refusing to leave out moments some might call banal like, “Practice looked like it was going to get relocated in doors but the weather is holding up. Everyone is out on the field and warming up…stay tuned.” I waited with baited breath, refreshing my page, hoping that everything stayed on schedule despite the impending rain. Tomorrow, I think I might try live-blogging myself:
10:37 am: Wake-up dreaming of Eagles, turn on computer.

10:55 am: Log on to Eagles’ Practice Blog

11:01 am: Second practice of the day begins, no sign of Donovan.

11:06 am: Refresh page.

11:07am: Attempt internet chatting with my favorite Eagles Cheerleader in new browser

11:08 am: Refresh page. Donovan arrives; search for slapping incident #2 commences.

At this point I imagine I will entirely abandon my own site for the superior Eagles coverage, with high hopes for further coverage of any and all hilarity from Donovan. In fact, why are you even reading this? Shouldn’t you be finding out what happens next? Fly Eagles Fly!

After a night spent sleeping in the luxury of a downtown Marriot, I awoke hungry and in search of my weekly Sunday addiction: brunch. Perhaps the only person in the twenty-two floor Marriot complex not on a business trip or entertaining small children, I decided to try to find my kind of people among the self-tanning, bleach blond western Pennsylvanian wives and their leather loafer wearing, golf club toting husbands beyond the confines of the hotel.

Leaving the continental breakfast behind, my first stop had to be for brunch. I chose Zenith, a vegetarian cafe and antique shop, all in one: http://www.zenithpgh.com/. The line for food can be quite long, so it was useful to have random bric-a-brac to mull over while waiting. Determined to eat somewhere hip, I carefully scouted out the address, used the GPS system, and made my way to 86 South 26th Street. Upon arrival, I saw a plate glass window with a mannequin’s head an an old sign telling me to vote for some stranger for city council. It did not look like brunch was available. I circled the block and tried again, believing that perhaps in a matter of minutes the door would be open and smells of lentil salad and vegan cookies would be wafting to my nose. I had no such luck, and in a tragically unhip gesture, I phoned the restaurant to find the entrance. It turns out, the door is simply around the corner, right by the gigantic sign that says, “Zenith” in robust purple letters. Had I been a New Yorker in the late 1970’s, I could only imagine myself parading down West 54th street asking passersby if they knew of this place called Studio 54. Perhaps I would have been more at home among the bleach and loafer crowd, after all.

My delay had only further churned my stomach, and I waited patiently among the folks who strolled in with me. These were locals, and I don’t believe they had any such problem snooping out the entrance. After a few turns milling about old chairs, porcelain dolls, and ancient American flags, a gentle maitre d’ led me to my seat.

Seated among plants, natural light, and patrons dining solely on vegetarian fare, it was easy to gather that Zenith is an eco-friendly place. You might expect then, an almost stereotypically “green” crowd of energy-efficient light bulb toting, grassroots organizing, circle drumming types, but the crowd was surprisingly diverse. There were certainly enough Obama stickers in the neighborhood to beckon a Democratic crowd, but a smattering of ethnicities and occupations convened on the smorgasbord at hand. I had always assumed that Pittsburgh wasn’t exactly the place where an all-vegetarian brunch would have patrons lining up around the block, but Zenith certainly put my own stereotypes in check.

The check itself was perhaps the most shocking part of my journey to this South Side destination. For $10, I had an unlimited buffet of a variety of salads and side dishes including a black bean salad, pasta salads, cold peanut noodles, broccoli salad (though not the kind my mom makes), bread and hummus, among others. For those Oberlin readers, it was like the most outlandish and extravagant coop spread you could ever imagine. Also included in the price is your choice of entree. I was almost too full on my starters to nosh on my Jakarta wrap, a seasoned tofu spinach wrap with tangy sesame dressing and yellow rice. At the end of all this, dessert awaited me, and I chose from a plethora of pies, cakes, and other yummy baked goods. Let me reiterate one more time: $10. If you have not already bought a plane ticket and map quested this destination, do so now. Regardless of where you live, you will probably save money going to Pittsburgh for the weekend than staying at home. Another benefit to traveling to Zenith was its prominent location in Pittsburgh South Side, a neighborhood worth visiting even if you don’t have time for brunch.

Frequently the South Side brings comparisons to New York’s East Village, the neighborhood against which all others are judged. While I recognize that both offer eclectic dining, coffeehouses, bars, galleries, and performance spaces, the South Side has something the East Vilage does not: community. New York’s East Village is amok with twenty somethings like me, drinking and carousing until early in the morning, spending our disposable income that should be in savings, driving up rents, and barfing on the sidewalk on our way home. Touring the South Side in the middle of the afternoon, I saw all the things I love about the East Village as well as a broader spectrum of ages and occupations of those who inhabit the area. It appeared to be a much more livable neighborhood, one where you don’t pay a thousand dollars for a shoebox that has bedbugs.

After leaving my vegan brethren on the South Side, I traveled North to the neighborhood of Oakland, home to the University of Pittsburgh. Though only a couple of miles away, Oakland is a vastly different scene than the South Side. Here there are sprawling quads, Gothic cathedrals, and the tallest academic building in the Western Hemisphere: The Cathedral of Learning

Part Midtown skyscraper, part church, this spiraling structure certainly stirred my academic spirit. Built in the middle of the Great Depression, the Cathedral of Learning houses a majority of the humanities and politics classes. It stood in stark contrast to my own collegiate cathedral, King Hall at Oberlin:

What King lacks in architectural grandeur, it makes up for in gender neutral bathrooms, something Pittsburgh building just can’t offer. Inside the cathedral, I felt like I had just teleported to Oxford.

It didn’t exactly come off as a cozy corner nook in a comfortable library where one might want to settle in with the collected poetry of Wallace Stevens, though perhaps the austere surrounding stimulate academic enrichment more than lattes. I investigated their famous department of Rhetoric and Composition, leaving a note for the head of the department to call me at his convenience. He must be on summer vacation because I haven’t heard back yet. I’m hoping I can just get in without taking those pesky GREs.

While I imagined myself knee-deep in books in the middle of the place of worship/place of learning, I realized that my time in Pittsburgh was waning and there were still more neighborhoods calling my name. Though inappropriately sounding, especially for a Sunday, the Strip District was my next stop. Named for its narrow geographical position close to downtown rather than adult entertainment options, I ventured forth from Oakland to get the skinny on the Strip. What I found confirmed a hunch I’d had from the start of my journey: Pittsburgh residents like to eat.

Lining the streets of this area along the waterfront are open air markets, Italian bakeries, butchers, and specialty shops that sell gourmet popcorn, fudge, and chocolates. The Strip District is Pittsburgh’s version of Little Italy, without the vapid touristy flair of many major cities. These Italian shops don’t play “That’s Amore” while you peruse an overpriced wine list. They simply churn out authentic, delicious cheeses, pastas, and meats, kitsch on the side. If you do go to Pittsburgh, head to the Strip District on a Saturday morning, when the majority of vendors are open and the streets are teeming with locals preparing for dinner parties that evening. Murals provide further eye candy along the way.

Aside from glee, the only feeling I carried with me on the way out of Pittsburgh was a touch of nausea, after all the food I’d managed to pack in during my two day stay. Though Pittsburgh offers cuisine from every possible background, the Midwestern spirit for excessive consumption, whether its Afghan or Ethiopian, abounds here. Pittsburgh’s messy mix of ancient factories and new urbanism, its die-hard Steelers fans and equally die-hard art critics make this reemerging industrial giant hard to define. Like an excellent vegetarian salad, its texture is complex and its flavors somewhat contradictory. That’s something I can definitely sink my teeth into.

Following a recent trip to Pittsburgh, I am ready to leap higher than Jennifer Beals in a sweat-stained unitard to express my newfound love for the steel city. Flashdance, filmed in the early 1980’s, portrayed a rough and tumble town where a girl could dance at night only if she knew how to weld during the day. The rules have sinced changed, however, since yours truly can’t weld to save his life and spent the day gallery hopping and dining on Thai food rather than melting bronze pipes in a factory. My hands are almost too nimble for chopsticks, so I can’t imagine how they might handle a blowtorch.

To say that I am breaking the story on Pittsburgh renaissance might obfuscate the recently published piece in the NY Times highlighting the resurgence of Pittsburgh as a bright spot on the confluence of three rivers: http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/travel/06hours.html?incamp=article_popular_5. This fluvial fun fact as my only background on Pittsburgh prior to embarking on the trip, I shoved off with the Times article in tow set on investigating their finds and doing some trailblazing of my own.

The most striking part about arriving in Pittsburgh is adjusting to the barrage of geographical features that emerge as you drive west into the city. In the sprawling Cleveland environs, any slight increase in elevation gets labeled a “mount,” and dense, lush forests have long been bulldozed over by suburban wasteland. At the foot of the Allegheny mountains, Pittsburgh meshes urban and rural and industrial and pastoral all at once. Staring across the city skyline, lofty skyscrapers mesh with forests and factories, and the pesky red stain of the Heinz corporation marks prominent streets, buildings, and ballparks in every conceivable direction.

The only name proliferating more than Heinz in this riverside town is that of Andy Warhol, Pittsburgh’s most fashionable native son, second perhaps only next to Orrin Hatch, that is. Despite drug abuse, sodomy, and even his spiteful claim, “I am from nowhere,” no other city has best memorialized the 20th century’s most commercially successful artist. Warhol’s name not only lines the doors to a 7 story museum dedicated to his collection, but also to the bridge that gets you there. Having to pay one dollar for every minute of fame Warhol conjectured I’d have in the future just to enter this establishment initially made me frown like a technicolor Mao, but the price of admission mattered little once I made my way through the opening exhibit of the museum. Inspired by Warhol’s affinity for the industrial, the exhibits themselves are housed primarily in concrete loft spaces, which lends to the approachability of the subject matter. A stuffy Louvre it is not. Here children play with the interactive installation art and elephant wallpaper, while adults gawk jealously at the dated celebrity photographs of Jodie Foster, Jerry Hall, and an infant Mel Gibson.

More than simply showcasing Warhol’s celebrity, the museum celebrates the artist and the principles by which he lived through its loud, bizarre, and playful exhibits. Most noble, perhaps, is the simple fact that there is a gigantic structure financed by the Carnegie Institute to honor a drug using eccentric gay man steps from the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium. It is, in fact, the largest museum in the world dedicated to one person. Though Andy moved on from Pittsburgh and found a home in New York, his work undoubtedly emerged from a Pittsburgh past where he witnessed mass production and the kind of commercial America he invoked in so much of his pop art.

A city that has long celebrated production in every arena, Pittsburgh’s art scene shows no signs of cutbacks anytime soon. The Warhol Museum, while formidable, is not the only place to see experimental pieces, as nearby the Mattress Factory houses a variety of extraordinary installation pieces. The museum is dedicated to installation art and allows artists to build site specific works. All of this lends to an air of something often missing from museums: fun. The installations at the Mattress Factory were inventive, interactive, and frequently terrifying. Though certainly more cerebral than a theme park, the Mattress Factory spiked more adrenaline than I had anticipated.

Our tour began in the basement of the museum, where Yumi Kori’s piece, “kamata,” started our journey on a bit of a terrifying note. Kamata, which means, “in the distance,” in Japanese, is a pitch black room with a bright, rectangular light at one end, beckoning viewers. Perhaps it was just my guilty conscience, but I felt like I was walking into hell. White noise clouds your thinking and the dizzying darkness increases your paranoia. Luckily, hidden handrails guide the journey.

Elsewhere in the museum, other exhibits play with darkness and the reactions of visitors to this darkness. In the permanent collection a series of installations by James Turell confront viewers with two visions: what they see and what they think they see. Traveling in the darkest room in which I have ever been, I open and close my eyes several times to see if I can tell the difference between the two. Open, shadowy figures dance, floating in space. Closed, my dizziness stops, but the shadows remain, forcing me to wonder what I imagine and what is out there. Adding to my puzzlement are the other visitors, none of whom I see but only hear, smell, and feel, as my size 14 shoes crunch on those beneath me.

Light shines elsewhere in the museum, most brilliantly perhaps in Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Dots Mirrored Room” pictured below.

Part Studio 54, part McDonald’s PlayPlace, this exhibit invites viewers to dance, pose, and groom themselves among the bevy of mirrors that cover the space. Again, visual wizardy makes the room appear much larger than it is, though the laughter and frivolity of the space is no trick.

After climbing through installations, some of which cut through the floorboards and jutted out the windows, I explored the neighborhood that houses such funky displays. Understandably, this north side spot is artsy and chock full of homosexuals. I’m not sure what it is about old Victorian homes and middle aged gay men, but for this neighborhood, dubbed the Mexican War Streets district, it was like moths to a flame. Everywhere I turned there was a gorgeous home mid-refurbishment, much like the gorgeous Inn on Mexican War Streets, shown below:

In a nearby coffee shop, I asked how much rent was around the neighborhood. The chatty barista mentioned casually that she and her roommate pay a total of $700 a month for a 2.5 bedroom home on two floors. Were I not enjoying so much a vacation from work, I might have quit my job and moved at that very moment. Though extraordinarily comfortable among the Victorians, the gays, and the cheap rents, I was determined to see the real steel city and use my streetwise sensibilities to get to know the gritty underbelly of this industrial giant.

I began this quest at an upscale Asian-fusion restaurant called Soba, in the trendy district of Shadyside. What the area lacked in grit it made up for in boutique cupcake shops and patio dining. The restaurant was on the elegant side, with a never-ending waterfall and inventive cocktails, like my martini with shaved almonds, coconut milk, gold sake, and amaretto. Over the course of the rather luxurious meal, I devoured savory rare grilled Ahi tuna, peach-infused pork fried rice, calamari with lime and chile, and a dessert of fresh peaches, almond ice cream, and vanilla chantilly: a typical steelworker’s dinner, no doubt!

Though my ability to sleuth out the city of 1980’s films may have faltered, my sense of direction had great assistance from a new addition to the car: a GPS system.

Sleek, silver, and eerily prophetic, the GPS system knows exactly where you are and exactly where you want to go. All you need to do is type in your destination address, and it navigates you there, even accounting for detours and traffic. When you’ve made a mistake, it gentle proclaims, “recalculating,” and sets you on a new course. Letting this Jesus take the wheel, I arrived at Brillobox, a bar and concert venue named, of course, for Warhol’s ever-proliferating pieces.

The bar is meticulously designed with bright, red vinyl benches, a glowing jukebox, and kitschy flair adorning the bottles of liquor and tables. Second only to the advantage of sipping on inexpensive beer is the freedom to smoke inside. Though I don’t smoke, I revel in the bar smoke, this perhaps getting me as close to the Pittsburgh of old as I’ve been all day. Brillobox, however, is a bar distinctly of the present. Its young clientele, wearing everything from biker shorts to the latest in American Apparel t-shirt dresses, suggest anything but an archaic city. I wonder constantly what makes Pittsburgh outshine Cleveland, making my city by the lake look more like the dark installations I’d seen earlier that day and Pittsburgh the mirrored room with sexy young people and bright lights.

Sipping on my bottled Framboise, the lights of Brillobox start to blur and I realize that it’s been a day good old Andy might have enjoyed himself. Too tired to dance like a maniac, I return to my hotel to rest up for tomorrow and clean the non-existent grit from underneath my fingernails.

It’s been a week already since I’ve indulged in some of my favorite Midwestern cuisines, and I wanted to share them with those who might be interested in spicing up their tired plates of organic hummus and whole wheat pita. The following are not for the culinary faint of heart. I’m not entirely sure why Anthony Bourdain hasn’t taken his fearless cooking show, “No Reservations” to the outskirts of the Illinois/Iowa border because the following salads certainly know how to shock. Sometimes, they even taste good.

WATERGATE SALAD

Named the Watergate Salad because of its meteoric rise to fame during the Watergate Scandal, this gigantic green dish is certain to bring out the jolly in anyone. Though pistachio lends its name to the green pudding contained within, not a single pistachio nut is to be found! The nut of choice for this Midwestern nod to DC gets its prefix from the giant blue stores that abound in sprawling rural towns: the walnut. The salad is festive and fresh and perfect for a holiday gathering, though it may invite some uncomfortable political remarks in mixed company. Once the wounds have healed, both Democrats and Republicans will be licking the bowl by the time you’re through.

Ingredients:

• 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant pistachio pudding mix
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple, with juice
• 1 cup miniature marshmallows
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

Directions:

• In a large bowl, mix together pudding mix, pineapple with juice, marshmallows, and nuts. Fold in whipped topping. Chill.

BROCCOLI SALAD

With all those crunchy broccoli stems, this one might look like a true healthy choice. A real Midwestern cook knows there is no such thing, so she furtively hides the secret ingredients of mayonnaise and bacon behind all those benevolent broccoli stems and plump raisins. Another reason why this broccoli tastes so good: the cup of sugar that went into the sauce.

Ingredients:

• 5 cups fresh broccoli florets
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup cooked, crumbled bacon
• 1/4 cup of red onion, chopped
• 1 cup of frozen peas, thawed

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar

• Directions: Combine broccoli florets, raisins, sunflower seeds, crumbled bacon, chopped onion, and peas in a large serving bowl. In a separate bowl or large cup, whisk together mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar. Add dressing to the salad and toss to mix well; chill thoroughly before serving

DORITO’S NACHO TACO SALAD

So, you’ve just finished watching the Cubs game and all you’re left with is a loss and a bag full of Dorito’s crumbs. As I like to say, when God gives you Dorito’s crumbs, you make Dorito’s Nacho Taco Salad. Since it’s the Midwest, we don’t like to get too spicy, so the closest thing we get to salsa is Italian dressing. This dish is really fusion in its attempt to bridge both Mexican and Italian cuisine, and the result is literally sweet. You’ll have to taste this south of the Tuscan border delight for yourself

Ingredients:

Beef: 1 lb. ground beef

To taste; chili powder, onion powder, season salt, garlic powder, Worcestershire

They may be disguised beneath a puffy white layer of whipped cream and cream cheese frosting, but it’s worth digging for those crunchy Bavarian snacks at the bottom of this gluttonous concoction.  I personally like to anoint the pretzel salad with the very bread product for which it is named, though evidently this chef did not.  This is the beauty of the Midwestern salad, as each one becomes its own very beautiful variation on a theme.  Like snowflakes, no two pretzel salads are alike.  Here’s how to make your own:

FIRST LAYER

• 2 cups coarsely crushed pretzels
• 3/4 cup melted margarine
• 3 tablespoons sugar

SECOND LAYER

• 1 (8oz) pkg cream cheese
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups whipped topping (small container)

THIRD LAYER

• 1 lg pkg (6 ounces) strawberry flavored  gelatin
• 2 cups boiling water
• 1 (10oz) boxes frozen strawberries

Preheat oven to 400°. Put first layer in a 9×13x2-inch pan. Bake 8 minutes. Remove to cool.
Second Layer – Beat sugar into cheese, stir in whipped topping. Spread over cooled pretzels.
Third Layer – Mix gelatin, boiling water and strawberries together and set aside 10 minutes. Pour over cheese mixture; chill thoroughly.

MIDWESTERN HARDTACK

Like the simple folks of the Midwest themselves, these recipes show us just how far staples like mayonnaise and Jell-o will take you.  The preservative possibilities are endless, yet there’s no need to sit on these recipes.  Hungry picnic and potluck attendees are waiting for you to bring out your inner Julianne Moore trapped in a ninety-fifties housewife, so run out and pick up the requisite marshmallows and bacon bits before summer’s expiration date runs out.  No amount of Jell-O can stop that.

Prominently displayed in downtown Sterling, Illinois, sits a mural depicting the eight American presidents who have at one time or another, visited that fair city on the Rock River. The list is impressive and includes some of our most revered leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. All the way on the left stands someone strikingly different, a man whose Hollywood good looks and debonair coif make him look almost like a movie star. This man is none other than the star of the epic film about the misadventures of a zany chimpanzee and his hapless owner, “Bedtime for Bonzo.”

And yes, he was also the President of the United States. This movie star turned neo-con shares something special with the people of Sterling, Illinois, beyond being immortalized on a mural in the town. He was born not too far away, in a small town called Dixon, Illinois, the “Petunia Capital of the World.” In fact, the doctor that delivered Ronald Reagan also delivered my grandfather. I guess that means that I’ve touched the hand of the man who was grabbed by a man who touched Ronald Reagan’s mother’s vagina. If that doesn’t make me an honorary member of the GOP, I don’t know what will.

Reagan’s home in the fair town of Dixon, Illinois is not just an anecdote; it is an entire industry. “Ronald Reagan’s Boyhood Home,” as it is billed, draws tourists from around the country to explore the grounds that once sheltered this chimpanzee wrangler turned President. The website, www.ronaldreaganhome.com, implores visitors to, “If only for a moment, transport yourself back in time and walk in the footsteps of the greatest American President of the 20th Century … Ronald Wilson Reagan.”

I did precisely that when I had the opportunity to visit this sacred ground on my recent visit to the Land of Lincoln, though in Dixon, it is distinctly the Land of Reagan.

Rather ordinary to the untrained eye, the Ronald Reagan home is a treasure trove of Republican booty. Reagan spent only three years here, from 1920-1923, when he lived here with his mother, father, and older brother. The tour takes only about 20 minutes, and our tour guide Janet opened her presentation by mentioning rather righteously that the entire museum is funded “only by private donation, so no government money was used in the process of restoring his home.” She went on to note that, “Given Reagan’s political inclinations, we find using only private donations appropriate.” I wondered why we don’t just operate our school systems and highways based on private donations as well, given the success of the Reagan compound.

Disappointingly, the Reagan house is entirely a replica of what it might have looked like, rather than an authentic version of itself. It is outfitted with all the trappings of an early 20th century home, like limited electric appliances, giant marble bathtubs, horse hair couches, zinc topped sinks, and a magnificent cupboard complete with flour sifter in the kitchen. Since little is left from Reagan’s stay, it was all redone based on his memory. I may not know much about Republicans, but I do know that Reagan’s memory is about as reliable as Bush’s foreign policy.

Janet recounted the pennies little Ronald hid underneath the tiles and the lives he saved as a lifeguard on a the Rock River. I searched for the very bootstraps by which he pulled himself out of working class poverty, but they were not on display. I was lucky enough to spend some time in the Ronald Reagan gift shop, where I took a photo with the Gipper himself. He’s even more handsome in person than in his films.

Outside the museum is Ronald Reagan Memorial Park, complete with requisite bronze statue. I for one felt better knowing that the metal had come from tycoons melting their coins rather than from public funds. From the park, you can see the small town of Dixon below, a town who certainly benefits more from this museum than any of Reagan’s economic policies. With only 12% of the population holding a bachelor’s degree and the major industry being construction and manufacturing, the reduction of government intervention plans and acceleration of global free market economies has left Dixon drowning swiftly in the Rock. My great aunt Margaret, who grew up with Reagan, always told me he never was a very good lifeguard.

My recent lapse in posting can be most directly attributed to an overdose of farm food and subsequent sugar comas brought on by a visit to see my family in Sterling, Illinois, a town pictured below:

Though it may look desolate, I can assure you that what this town lacks in economy and entertainment it makes up for in starch and carbohydrate consumption.  My primary purpose in traveling hundreds of miles to reach the heartland was not to simply ingest an array of casseroles but to introduce my boyfriend to my extended family, which was all converging on Sterling from as far away as Houston and Philadelphia and as near as down the block.

My mother and father recently migrated to Sterling from our home in Ohio to spend time with my grandparents on both sides, who have been living in Sterling for decades, as have many of my other relatives.  All told, Josh managed to meet my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even my great aunt and her octogenarian love interest, Vern.

In many ways, I had a lot in common with my great aunt Margaret, who dared to bring a lover out of wedlock to a family gathering.  It was really only my same-sex interest, political affiliation, and about 70 years of life that separated us.  Vern has become a staple at recent functions, and his benign presence at birthday parties and graduations gave me hope that a Vern of my own might also be welcome.

Not to degrade Vern, but Josh left a decidedly better impression on my family, despite his latent homosexuality.  In fact, I was almost hoping for a little more drama than our journey brought.  It is hardly worth driving 500 miles for polite conversation and cheesy potatoes.  At times, I longed for the old days of torrential sobbing and empty suicide threats.  Our visit was much more home movie than Lifetime movie, a far cry from the battleground of a coming out scene 5 years ago.

More broadly, the relative non-event of a gay son bringing home his boyfriend to a heavily Catholic rural farming town in Western Illinois speaks to both the ability of a family to adapt to diversity in its own ranks and the credit that is due to such Americans who are so often unfairly branded as intolerant and uneducated.  More than anything my trip gave me the first hand experience of witnessing the racehorse speed at which American values are changing.  Though somewhat tangential, I can’t help but consider how it these same people who will hopefully be electing our first African-American president in a few short months.

It was my 64 year old aunt, in fact, who brought up Senator Obama, and her hopes for his candidacy.  My grandmother, who has only a high school education, similarly piped in on how much she enjoyed the Keith Olbermann Show and his “spicy” commentary.  Though my family has always leaned Democratic, I’d always considered them populists, particularly concerning their conservative Catholic values.  Perhaps it was simply Josh’s clever musings on professional baseball or his adorable poodle mix, Oliver, but even my grizzled grandfather Jack seemed warmed over by the new addition to the family.  Even though the furniture was dated, this family was not stuck in the past, but rather living very much in the present.  One element of the  family that has never changed is our commitment to three solid meals a day, a tradition my grandfather holds particularly dear. 

“Are you a bacon eater?” my grandfather barked at Josh one morning at breakfast.  “Pass that sausage around one more time, will ya, Josh?” he called out to him, as Josh’s plate quickly doubled in pork product.  He sweetly called Josh my “buddy,” and they easily conversed about the Chicago Cubs’ pitcher and my grandfather’s past as a farmer.  The barrier was not difference, but rather my grandpa’s hearing, which has been troubling him for years.

My grandparents were not the only ones who went out of their way to make us feel right at home.  Every single person, whether it was my podiatrist Uncle Lynn giving Josh free orthotics or my adorable little cousin Jacob inviting Josh to play Power Rangers with him. 

Though Independence Day had past, my return to Sterling really strengthened my belief in American democracy, despite the attempts of the current administration to do their best to make me feel quite the opposite.  Here I watched four generations of an Midwestern American agrarian family embrace pluralism for the sake of getting along and moving forward.  So clearly this pluralism has made us much stronger, as my experience makes me more committed to improving our family, rather than breaking away from it.  In our own microcosm, I found faith in the kind of American future I want to see.  I also found a yellow cake with whipped cream, strawberries, and blueberries in the shape of an American flag, which was equally delicious.

Prior to returning home for my reunion, I did what any other classmate does to prepare for impromptu meetings with old acquaintances: I stalked them all on Facebook. I saw that one would be in Namibia and therefore absent, that one might be in labor, and that another had put on some unforgiving pounds and might require an extra serving of Beer Nuts. I laughed my way through photo albums of bachelor parties, graduations, and weddings and grew in disappointment when I discovered just how many of my contemporaries would not be supporting Barack Obama in the upcoming election. How John McCain cornered the market on some of these young white women is quite a mystery to me. By the time the reunion rolled around and I scanned the crowd to mingle, I’d realized that my Facebook findings had already told me everything a casual conversation would reveal. I stared and recounted to myself, “He’s in medical school, she is a horse trainer, she teaches middle school math, and he is an unemployed biochem graduate student.” Approaching these long absent classmates with some inoffensive anecdote, only to walk away knowing nothing more than I already did seemed like a lost cause, and the social anxiety sufferer within me sighed with relief as I nursed my pink lemonade and nacho plate.

When I did gain the courage to strike up conversation with the GHS graduates of ‘03, I had to concentrate harder on what information I knew about them through Facebook and what information I had found out from our very conversation. I would be humming along only to realize that I’d asked questions about a study abroad program in Chile and a vacation to New Orleans before recollecting that these queries came not from previous correspondences but from albums I’d looked at several times online. In a way, it accentuates the often spouted cliche that, “It feels like no time has passed at all,” since I’ve been there virtually every step of the way, through bad breakups, drunken nights out, changed political affiliations and even sexual orientations. With Facebook keeping an up to the minute tally of your identity, why bother stopping to refresh someone’s memory? Just refresh the page.

This omniscient knowledge can be startling, especially when you are on the receiving end. Recently, an old friend, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, stopped me and asked, “So how is your summer in Oberlin going with the boyfriend?” I hadn’t told this person I was spending the summer in Oberlin, nor that I was spending it a significant other. Slightly dazed, I soon realized that if I had volunteered this information on Facebook, I might as well have put it in the paper.

Though faced with less of a need to personally contact old friends, I now have access to people I never thought I would ever imagine thinking of again in my life. I may have sacrificed depth for breadth, but Facebook has still been a greater source of social connection than social apathy. Perhaps Facebook is just filling in the banal gaps we’d all just rather have people know than ask about. How luxurious to just click a button and come out of the closet or end a six year relationship without anyone pestering you about it. In the meantime, I may try to get the best of both worlds by using this as my “current status” message: “Just call me.”

Despite what we see on Bravo, being gay doesn’t always afford special treatment. Gays fight for marriage equality, partner benefits, and in some areas, even basic safety. 30,00 feet in the air, however, these barriers are as tiny as the cars and houses seen from above, as there has never been a better time to fly gay. On a recent flight from New York to Cleveland, I had the opportunity of flying with a steward named Steven, a self-proclaimed “diva of the skies.” A bearish and extraordinarily cordial man in his early forties, Steven gave an extra flourish to the nowadays quotidian safety speech at takeoff by claiming to have, “the most fabulous crew in the skies!

Shortly after takeoff, Steven began the beverage service, and when I asked for a cranberry juice, he gave me a wink and an entire can to myself. I thought that was the only special service I would be getting on the flight, but moments later he came back and asked, “Can I get you anything else? A bag of trail mix perhaps?” As budget travelers know, these trail mixes come at a hefty price, but just by flashing my pearly whites, I was soon indulging in yogurt pretzels, nougat, and sesame sticks for free. After some routine twirls around the cabin, Steven approached yet again and offered to upgrade my seat to one with more legroom. The straight businessmen flying home to their families in Rocky River scowled with jealousy, as I entertained the idea of stretching out for the remainder of the flight. I ended up turning Steven down, for fear of having to later retrieve my belongings in the back of the plane, but I nonetheless enjoyed the descent feeling quite like gay royalty.

Bonus trail mix and legroom don’t even hold a scented votive to the treatment other lucky gentlemen recently got on an Air New Zealand flight from San Francisco to Sydney. Dubbed, “The Pink Flight,” this transcontinental, 14 hour journey enlisted drag queen flight attendants to serve on the gayest trip in the history of travel. Prior to boarding, guests enjoyed a runway show with the crew, cosmopolitans, and a free gift bag complete with a pink and fuzzy sleeping mask. Perks did not end there, as Kathy Griffin flew along to entertain guests prior to her performance at Gay Mardi Gras in Sydney. Griffin was at home among “her people” on this flight, though I think they preferred the hot body contest to her stand-up performance:

The skies have clearly never been gay-friendlier, and travel businesses like Air New Zealand and Orbitz, who directly serve gay clients, have never been happier. The pink flight speaks to the millions of dollars spent every year on gay travel and the eagerness of many to visit exotic locations with distinctly gay operations. I’m not sure that this kind of travel will always been in vogue, as newer generations of gays and lesbians are better integrated into mainstream culture, but for baby-boomer gays with disposable income, these flights seem to be worth the money that could be going toward domestic cosmos. For now, I’ll just fly my standard American Airlines flight and pray that Steven is on again to bring me free refills and secret servings of snack mix. It will be a while before I’ve got the money for a pink flight across the world, so let’s hope it lasts at least a little longer than my other favorite niche traveling company, Hooters Air.

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Prior to alluding to Zac Efron in one of my posts, my blog had a maximum number of 41 hits per day.  One day it was a measly 17.  Since the “Rolling Stone” cover boy has graced Teamteacher, I’ve had over 500 hits.  So here’s to you, Zac Efron!

In order to really capitalize on my audience, I’ve decided I could either actually start writing interesting and compelling pieces, or I could continue to rely on the appeal of a sexually ambiguous pop star.  In the interest of my own relaxation, I have chosen the latter.  Here is an even steamier scene with Zac and his costar from “Hairspray.”