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For the release of his third album of greatest hits, deceptively titled Greatest Hits Volume II, country music megastar Alan Jackson included two brand new tracks, something of a rarity for greatest hits compilation albums.  The first of these is It's Five O'clock Somewhere, a beachside bar anthem featuring legendary flip-flop enthusiast Jimmy Buffett.  The other song, Remember When, plots a much different emotional course through the listener's ears, en route to the depths of human existence.  There is no description of this song that can adequately explain the internal anguish Remember When inflicts upon the listener.  It's a song that isn't heard so much as experienced, and that experience is pain - an excruciating and lingering pain that refuses to leave you even when the tears have dried and the mascara has been reapplied.   Remember When tells the life story of a generic romantic couple from the first-person plural perspective.  It chronicles the...

 In September 2022, a teacher at a public high school in Ontario Canada began wearing an obvious blonde wig, eyeglasses that are typically associated with elderly women, brightly colored spandex clothing, and, most notably, comically oversized Z-cup prosthetic breasts.  In the few interviews found online, this teacher stated that the breasts were real and simply the result of a genetic condition, and that this teacher also was intersex, having XX chromosomes but male primary and secondary sex characteristics.  Because the local school board had recently adopted policies that allowed transgender teachers to dress as their lived gender, this teacher was allowed to continue wearing the wig and prosthetics to work.  These gender affirming policies, it seemed, had a glaring fault that was much too dangerous to leave unmitigated.  How could such a person be allowed around the children?  Surely the powerless and debaucherous Ontario school board's inaction was a s...

It’s 8:00pm on a Monday.  I’m watching the 1995 film Empire Records because it’s Rex Manning Day.  If you’re not familiar with that cult classic movie, an aging pop star named Rex Manning makes a stop at locally owned Empire Records for an autograph signing in an effort to restart his career.  Years after the film had mostly faded into obscurity, internet irony junkies noticed that the date listed on the posters advertising Rex Manning’s in-store appearance is April 8.  The characters in the film also refer to the day as “Rex Manning Day” with both excitement and revulsion.  In the theatrical release version of the film, Rex Manning is forced to leave the store in disgrace after traumatizing one adoring and naive employee, having a back office tryst with another employee, and then getting into a physical altercation with yet another.  On his way out he unrepentantly hurls one last insult at the fine young employees of Empire records and is not seen again....

In February of 1994, Jim Carrey was still a D-list celebrity known primarily for his recurring characters from In Living Color.  One of those characters, Vera de Milo, was a buffoonish female body builder who chewed mouthfuls of steroid pills, spoke with a deep, raspy lisp, and whinnied like a horse for some reason (I assume this was an allusion to the fact that many body building steroids were derived from steroids given to racehorses).  The humor behind the character was a slapstick blend of mockery and ridicule.  Male characters in each sketch were repulsed by her overtly sexual advances.  Vera's bikini top was often stripped from her, revealing Jim Carrey's bare male chest.  There was no subtext or social commentary, no layers or comedic depth to the presentation of the character.  The laughs came from the cruelty.  Look at this freak and laugh.  Isn't she disgusting? By the end of 1994, Jim Carrey had starred in three films in that one year t...

The year of our lord, 19 hundred and 99, was the absolute pinnacle of human achievement in television arts. In that one glorious year, a closeted transgender college sophomore could watch first run episodes of Star Treks Deep Space Nine and Voyager, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and, the subject of this blog post, Xena: Warrior Princess. Sure, the dot-com bubble pop, the 2000 US Presidential election, and 9/11 were waiting just around the corner to suck all the fun and joy out of everything, but for that year, we were god's favored children.     Xena: Warrior Princess tells the story of the titular Xena, a former warlord who begins a path of redemption after saving an infant's life while pillaging the pseudo-Greek landscape. In the premiere episode, Xena meets a bookish (scrollish is perhaps a more historically appropriate term) provincial maiden named Gabrielle, who becomes her sidekick, her travelling companion, and, since ...