Fake meat in a can (better than it sounds!)

The editor of the Gay & Lesbian Review Magazine responded to my pitch for an in-depth comparison of the different versions of Brideshead Revisited - novel, miniseries and film - by saying he liked the pitch but it won't work out because it just so happens that they've published a piece on the movie version, featuring an interview with Julian Jarrold, in the issue that just came out! It's a bummer since of all the suggestions I got, that would probably have been the most perfect venue for the piece. So I'm kind of at an impasse with that. On a slightly more positive note, though, Out Magazine just wrote to tell me they're publishing my letter on the same topic in their next issue - the one I wrote in response to their piece on the recent re-issuing of the miniseries in a new DVD package.

Now to skip from obsessions present to obsessions past: I tracked down and ordered a case of Choplets and a case of Veja-Links, the hard-to-find meat substitute products I was introduced to by the Seventh-Day Adventist farm family who babysat me as a child back in Minnesota. They arrived today and were a delicious treat when I came home from job-hunting. They taste just like I remember them and I had an entire can of veja-links, then turned it over to see that serving size is "1 link." (Riiiight.) What IS it about textured vegetable protein, wheat gluten, etc. that is so compulsively scrumptious? And why is this particular brand (Worthington/Loma Linda) so hard to find? It's like one little lady is making them in a cottage in the Midwest or something, and she only supplies a limited number. Anyway, we'll eat well for a while.

Le chemin de l'amour

Did you know "anti-Semitic" means not just anti-Jew (as many Americans in our pro-Israel country think) but also "anti-Arab"? An Arab friend of mine pointed that out to me recently, and he got me, because I only hear about the Jewish side of things, never the Arab side.

I just watched a movie called "The Road To Love" (Le chemin de l'amour en francais, dir. Remi Lange) about a French-Algerian "straight" guy who sets out to make a documentary on gay Muslims in the modern Maghreb region of North Africa. My first impression was that its production values were harrowingly low, the entire thing being shot with a shaky-hand home video camera. But knowing from first-hand experience how much inspiration and motivation it takes to realize even a short film when you're operating in a very independent, no-budget, making-it-up-as-you-go-along context, I shelved my initial impression and watched the entire film. It makes up in sweetness and novelty what it lacks in sophistication. I learned some things, too, particularly about the Siwa Oasis of Egypt, which in ancient times had a reputation for being what we would now call very "gay friendly," acknowledging marriages between men, and with its chieftain/pharaoh/whathaveyou keeping harems of boys for his pleasure. Towards the end the two main boys, Farid and Karim, make a pilgrimage to the grave of Jean Genet. (The film is in French.) There's also a segment where they go to Marrakech (Morocco) in search of gay bars which they don't find; instead of organized establishments exonerating and enshrining homosexuality like we have stateside, they happen upon covert roaming bands of homo people who acknowledge one another with subtle (or not so) cues. It's all quite fascinating to see how other (religiously biased) cultures deal with this issue that we've more or less come to accept in our secular capitalistic way.

I remember a friend of mine back in PDX telling me about going to the big market called the Medina in Marrakech and how it's like a labyrinth that can be scary because if you've never been in it before you can become trapped and frightened, and gangs of gypsy children will offer to show you the way out for money, but if you refuse them, they'll help make it a nightmare for you that you won't soon forget.

Hmm. I might have to go with a seasoned guide, if I do go.

ALSO, the new issue of OUT has a page on the reissue of the 1980s "Brideshead Revisited" miniseries, as though pointedly spitting in the face of my verbose love for the film version that came out last year. They give one indirect and dismissive mention of Jarrold's film, only to assure us there's no way to match the way Jeremy Irons and...whatsisname, who played Sebastian Flyte..."languorously inhabit" the characters from Waugh's novel.

Well, I just moved the DVDs of the miniseries to the top of my queue on Netflix. I'll be seeing them soon. I already have a good idea of what I'll think. I'll probably find it intoxicating, addictive, lots of fun, sexy in a restrained way, etc etc, and of course a more faithful and in-depth treatment of the book.

But that's not going to make me love the film version any less. I like its bold revisionism.

And only the film version has Ben.

But I will withhold judgment until I've given the hallowed 1981 series its due.