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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com

Monday, November 12, 2007



At Opening Day 2001 (I remember the year because it was Ichiro’s first game in the Majors), when the loudspeaker played the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A,” and thousands and thousands of people started spelling out the letters with their arms, a friend who’d been around in the ‘70s but hadn’t kept up with mainstream pop culture doubled over with laughter -- how delightful and surprising to see a gay-identified disco song being joyously embraced by mass popular culture 23 years later!

Today we went roller skating. The kid did great, falling down over and over and bouncing back up, happy as can be, waving his mom and me off, “I want to skate by myself”; so I got to skate. I’m not any good but it was great fun, bringing back junior high memories of just GOING -- the joy of movement -- without the junior high anxieties of identity and adolescence.

And when the DJ played “Y.M.C.A.,” the pre-adolescent girls, born 20 years after the song came out, spelled out the letters with their arms, so my beloved spouse and I did too, skating around the rink, vibing on the utopian vision of male solidarity-in-poverty expressed so exuberantly in the song.

A song for the ages.



Comments:
The best Halloween costume I saw this year was a guy on the el dressed as the Village People.

ALL of them!
Kerry
 
I would have loved to have seen *that* costume!
 
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