Alternate reality
November 13th
posted: November 13, 2007 3:09 EST
Dim pol Fife Symington blinded by the bright lights on Larry King's show.
By Tony Ortega, Village Voice
Before people get too worked up about disgraced former Arizona governor Fife Symington’s “disclosure” that he saw the 1997 “UFO” known as the Phoenix Lights—the subject of a breathless segment on the Larry King Live show last week—a few words about that phenomenon from someone who actually investigated it.
In 1997, Symington was in the middle of the bank-fraud scandal that would bounce him from office, but that’s not my way of questioning what he saw in the sky—thousands of Arizonans did, in fact, witness the famous Phoenix Lights that March. But from the start, bad reporting of the facts, hyperventilating by UFO “experts,” and constant stupidity from television reporters in particular resulted in a false impression that has hardened into seeming fact a decade later—that the “vee” of lights seen flying over the entire length of the state was explained away by the Air Force as flares dropped from military planes.
That is not the case. But it’s not hard to see why people think as much. Because the bare facts of what happened that night almost never get told by a confused press, even ten years later.
Here’s the truth: there were two, distinct events that happened the night of March 13, 1997 in the skies over Arizona, which I reported in great detail in a story that appeared a year later in the Phoenix New Times. The first event was the famous “vee,” which appeared over northern Arizona and gradually traveled south over nearly the entire length of the state, eventually passing south of Tucson. This is the “wedge-shaped” object that Symington and hundreds or even thousands of others saw—including two of my colleagues at the New Times. Timings of the “vee” sighting started at about 8:15 over the Prescott area, and it was seen south of Tucson by about 8:45. That’s 200 miles in 30 minutes, suggesting an air speed of 400 miles per hour.
News of the sighting spread fast, drawing out many other people who began looking at the sky, some with camcorders. And it was this second wave of observers who caught the second event of the night at about 10 pm, a set of nine lights falling behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain ridge to the southwest of Phoenix. Television reporters were the first to suggest that this was a series of flares dropped over the North Tac range behind the Estrella. But naturally, people who had seen only the 8:30 “vee” were incredulous—how could “flares” dropped from planes fly over the entire state in a vee formation?
Well, they couldn’t, of course. But to this day, reporters almost never distinguish between the two events and the explanations that were soon presented for each.
The flares over the Estrella were soon cleared up. The Air Force, after some maddening early denials, eventually owned up that the Maryland Air National Guard had dropped them over the North Tac range. So much for the 10 pm sighting.
But what rarely gets reported is that the famous vee was also solved quite early. First of all, contrary to what you usually hear, there was a videotape made of the vee. I saw it after questioning the person who shot it (he also shot the 10 pm flares over the Estrella), and the video quite clearly shows the lights moving in relation to each other, rather than as lights on a solid object.
The human eye, however, seeing point sources of light in a dark Arizona sky, will tend to fill in the space between the lights in a contrast effect—convincing the eyewitness that he’s seen a solid object. Again, however, videotape of the ‘vee’ clearly showed that this was not the case.
(My personal favorite of all the accounts that night is a sighting that was convincing proof that the “vee” was not solid. A man saw it pass directly over the face of the Moon, and instead of a solid object, he saw five contrails pass over the Moon, making the Moon look blurry. Now, instead of concluding that he’d seen five planes flying in formation with their exhaust plumes plainly showing against the Moon, he instead insisted that the “captain” flying the alien triangular craft had turned it transparent just at the right moment so that he could see the Moon through it!)
Also, reports that the vee was low overhead and moving slowly have to be discounted. The human eye is notoriously unable to judge the distance to overhead point sources of light in a dark sky. Simple physics dictates that in order to fly from Prescott to Tucson in 30 minutes the vee was moving very fast, and, logic dictates, at a high altitude.
But there’s an even better reason to believe that the vee was not what Symington and others believed. As I reported in June of 1997, there was a credible report of the vee’s nature that was received immediately by UFO “experts” but not followed up—at least until I checked it out. It turned out that an amateur astronomer, Mitch Stanley, had been outside that night using a Dobsonian telescope, and had captured the vee in his field of view, giving him a view 60 times the magnification of the human eye. (I’m a builder of telescopes, and I thoroughly checked out his telescope and quizzed him about his use of it. There was no reason to question this young man’s veracity.) That March evening, his mother was standing nearby and could see that he was looking at the vee through the scope (I questioned them both) and they both say this was his response when she asked him what it was: “Planes.”
What I reported a decade ago:
What looked like individual lights to the naked eye actually split into two under the resolving power of the telescope. The lights were located on the undersides of squarish wings, Mitch says. And the planes themselves seemed small, like light private planes. Stanley watched them for about a minute, and then turned away. It was the last thing the amateur astronomer wanted to look at. "They were just planes, I didn't want to look at them," Stanley says when he's asked why he didn't stare at them longer. He is certain about what he saw: "They were planes. There's no way I could have mistaken that."
The only real mystery of the Phoenix Lights is which group of planes this was. I suggested that Stanley’s description (squarish wings) sounded like A-10s, not private planes. But the Maryland National Guard denied that they had flown over that path before dropping flares later.
Ten years later, however, the Phoenix Lights still live because it’s claimed by UFO supporters that the only explanation for the flying vee was that the Air Force called it flares. You’ll hear that explanation ridiculed again tonight on Larry King Live, and the “UFO community” will no doubt consider it a huge victory. So much for common sense.
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October 29th
posted: October 29, 2007 3:31 EST
Tommy Chong makes a tokin' appearance.
By David Downs, SF Weekly
Saturday and Sunday's Wonders of Cannabis Festival in Golden Gate Park succeeded in one true thing: convincing attendees that they need to cut back — "wayyy back, man."
If the sound of people hacking up a lung in the parking lot didn't make attendees reconsider, then the herds of fat, bearded, dull-eyed 50-year-old burn outs intervened. Moreover, the impermeable ganja smog of the place reminded people of the time their Dad caught them smoking a cigarette and made them smoke ten packs. Overkill achieves aversion.
Which isn't to say a $15,000, automated weed trimmer called 'Odin's Berry-Shucker" wasn't a sight to behold. Anything to put hippies out of business, I say. Ditto for the pocket vaporizers that make you look like you're smoking Spock's tri-corder. And Tommy Chong's half-hour comedy bit wasn't unfunny.
Chong's memory remains strong enough to entertain an easily amused crowd, and he affirmed his status as a road-tested stand-up comedian, if only by sheer motor-cortal reflex. The racial jokes got the most laughs from the graying acolytes. Chong's wife of 35 years (MiLF!) talked about how Chong introduced her to Cheech by saying, "He's a Mexican."
"What's a Mexican?" she asked.
"It's like an Indian with an education."
Chong also told the audience why the Batman and Robin of soft drug addiction flamed out.
"We got rich. And I've always said, 'You can't make a rich Mexican do shit.'"
At this point, someone in the 500-person hall started yelling "Viva, Mexico!", and "Viva, Zapata!" and I had to get some fresh air.
Photos for this story are pending recollection of where we put down the camera.
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October 22nd
posted: October 22, 2007 6:26 EST
Munchkin Mickey Carroll comes up short.
By Chad Garrison, Riverfront Times
Jennifer Silverberg
In the end, neither a letter from Governor Matt Blunt nor the recommendation of Mayor Francis Slay was enough to sway the jury. Mickey Carroll — one of the few surviving Munchkins from
The Wizard of Oz — will not get a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Not this year, anyway, and perhaps not in Carroll's lifetime.
For the 88-year-old former actor and his caretaker, Linda Dodge, the rejection ends a six-month campaign to include Carroll among the dignitaries whose names line the sidewalks of the Delmar Loop. Early this summer Dodge organized a petition drive urging the founder of the St. Louis Walk of Fame, Joe Edwards, to put the Munchkin on this year's ballot. Edwards later threw out hundreds of the petitions when he discovered inaccuracies in Carroll's official biography, including claims that the Bel-Nor resident once starred in the Spanky and Our Gang series.
"I had to consult with a Wizard of Oz scholar and author who helped me sort out which facts in Mickey's bio were accurate," notes Edwards. "He wasn't in the Our Gang series, but he was definitely in The Wizard of Oz."
After some initial hesitation, Edwards says he decided last month to include Carroll among the list of candidates he delivered to the Walk of Fame's 120-person selection committee. "The committee selected three outstanding nominees for induction," says Edwards. "Unfortunately, Mickey wasn't one of them."
Edwards plans to announce the winners this next spring. Since Carroll received less than 50 percent of the vote, Edwards says the Munchkin will not be considered again next year. "Perhaps in five years or so Mickey can once more be on the ballot," offers Edwards.
That's little comfort to Linda Dodge, who fears the Carroll may not be around for another vote. "We wanted to do this while he was alive. That's the whole point," she says.
In November, Mickey and a few of the nine surviving midget actors from the 1939 film classic will be on hand when the Munchkins receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dodge believes that honor, as well as letters from Governor Blunt, Mayor Slay and retired St. Louis Cardinal great (and St. Louis Walk of Fame inductee) Lou Brock, should have been enough to earn Carroll a star in his hometown. "I really thought we had the momentum," says Dodge. "We're not by any means finished in our efforts."
After Riverfront Times first reported this summer on the controversy surrounding Carroll's nomination, several readers wrote in alleging that the Munchkin had a history of misstating the truth. Among the fables he's allegedly told — they claim — was that he played the Munchkin coroner in the 1939 movie and that Judy Garland herself recruited him for the film. (See "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," June 27, 2007.)
"I never told anyone I was the coroner," counters Carroll, who played a soldier and other Munchkin roles in the movie. "But I did do the coroner's voice-over. And, yes, Judy did recruit me for the film. I didn't want to do it because it only paid $35 a week. Then she put Victor Fleming (the film's director) on the phone and he convinced me."
How or why Carroll's name later became associated with the Our Gang series remains a mystery. "I wouldn't dare be on that show," says Carroll, who was born Michael Finocchiaro. "They got $25 a week to work three days a week. That was for kids with no talent."
Carroll describes his rejection from the St. Louis Walk of Fame as a "kick in the head," but says it won't discourage him from continuing to make public appearances and raise money for charity. He estimates he's used his Munchkin fame to raise $2 million to $3 million over the years.
"I've got millions of fans out there, and I know I'm loved in St. Louis and the world over," says Carroll. "It's Joe Edwards who really should be worried. He's got a Walk of Fame with hardly any lifelong St. Louisans like me on it. You walk down the sidewalk and you think, 'Who are these people?' It's full of strangers."
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October 18th
posted: October 18, 2007 4:17 EST
For the wealthy old in search of the beautiful young, South Florida is a sweet spot.
By Isaiah Thompson, Miami New Times
Dan Zettwoch
"I was out with this one girl — she was really pretty," says Easy Rider, bending forward confidentially across the table as he relates the details of his date. He and the woman, 35 years his junior, went out to dinner, then for a walk, and then back to his apartment (one of three he owns in Miami Beach). "Then she asks me: 'How much money do you have?' "
The wine comes. It's a steamy Sunday evening, and as the sky melts into pinks and oranges, Lincoln Road begins to fill with the beautiful people — the casually elegant, the high-heeled, the tight-skirted, the well-cleavaged. Easy Rider surveys the scene with satisfaction, waiting for the server to leave before continuing his tale. A tidy man with a small, athletic frame and a crop of respectably graying hair, Rider — not his real name — fits into his 55 years like a hand in a tailored glove. He is friendly and unfailingly polite, and he speaks in an easy, disarming manner. When he swears, he swears elegantly.
"It fucking blew my mind," he continues after the waiter leaves. "Here's this girl — 20 years old, beautiful, but I don't know... she wanted money to sleep with me. I was polite, I didn't mind — but I just walked her back to her car."
Pause.
"So I could have fucked her for $500," he adds philosophically. "So what?"
You might think Rider is cursing his fate, bemoaning a date gone awry. Not so: The point of his story is not that the date was a failure; it's the opposite. When that beautiful 20-year-old stepped into a cab and vanished forever, Rider — who, mere months ago, hardly would have dared to dream of a date like that one — was only momentarily put off. He'd soon be out with another beautiful 20-something, and then another, and then another.
In fact Rider has his choice of young, vivacious women to date these days. There are so many he can barely keep up. "Bottom line: amazing," he says, mouthing the last word slowly, like more fine wine on his palate. "It's almost too good to be true."
It wasn't always like this. The spark that ignited Easy Rider's romantic life came three months ago, when his Palm Beach neighbor and morning walking partner told him about a dating website tailored to rich older men, one that had changed the neighbor's life. Rider, until then nearly Internet illiterate, signed up and created a profile, listing his annual income between $100,000 and $250,000 and a net worth of $5 million to $10 million. Choosing Easy Rider as his screen name, he wrote a blurb about himself: "Smiles are important, as is an ability to share." He was immediately flooded with e-mails. Overnight he had become a sugar daddy.
• • •
The idea that the rich might use their wealth to attract the young and beautiful is hardly new. Centuries before Anna Nicole Smith and billionaire hubby J. Howard Marshall titillated the public imagination, ages before Andrew Cunanan murdered five people, including Gianni Versace, in what many people believe was the killing spree of a spurned sugar baby, the sultans of the Ottoman Empire kept harems of hundreds of women who had been purchased or presented as gifts at the sugary halls of the Topkapi Palace in what is now Istanbul. From the pages of the Old Testament through to modern history, men have kept concubines, a tidy word for women supported in exchange for sexual favors.
It's good to be king, but even the sultans didn't have the Internet. The ongoing migration of courtship and kink online has made it possible — in theory, at least — for any guy with a paycheck and a PC to try his hand at being a sugar daddy. At the same time, for a woman with a sweet tooth, sugar has never been easier to find.
read on . . .
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October 17th
posted: October 17, 2007 11:10 EST
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
Today's scheduled embrace of the Dalai Lama by George W. Bush represents a major change in foreigner policy by the White House.
Bush's new plan: If you meet the Buddha on the road, get a photo-op with him.
That's a shift from the Blackwater philosophy: If you meet an Iraqi on the road, shoot him.
In any case, plagued by a war that his own regime started, the president has chosen to burnish his image by meeting with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not Al Gore, who looks as if he's won several pizza prizes since Bush's operatives stole the presidency from him in 2000.
This Nobel winner is Tenzin Gyatso, who was proclaimed the Dalai Lama when he was only two years old and ruled Tibet until China ousted him years ago. Gyatso won the 1989 Nobel prize "for his consistent resistance to the use of violence."
Meanwhile, China is pissed, as the L.A. Times notes this morning:
"We solemnly demand that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters before the meeting. "It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China's internal affairs."
Too bad that Hunter S. Thompson, the Dalai Lama's deceased twin, isn't around to write about this absurd face-to-face between two spiritual leaders whose approaches to violence are so different.
Will the peace-loving Buddhist leader have any impact on Bush? It's too late for that. The best we can hope for is that, instead of gonzo pol Karl Rove whispering into Bush's ear, "Stick to principle, stick to principle," this Gyatso pol will whisper, "Stay in the moment, stay in the moment."
It would be nice if he also told Bush, "Don't stay in Iraq, don't stay in Iraq."
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October 16th
posted: October 16, 2007 11:54 EST
Prophet Warren Jeffs' conviction won't stop underage marriages among his followers, much less end polygamy.
By John Dougherty, Phoenix New Times
The recent conviction of Mormon polygamist leader Warren Steed Jeffs on two felony counts of rape as an accomplice is a huge public relations victory for Utah and Arizona authorities who have been under intense pressure to crack down on so-called "spiritual" marriages of underage girls.
But it is doubtful that the conviction of the leader of the nation's largest polygamist sect — considered by his followers to be God's prophet on Earth — will stop illegal marriages of children or stem polygamy.
That Jeffs is headed for prison will not even mean a new prophet will reign over the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Insiders say Jeffs' second-in-command, Wendell Nielsen, is running day-to-day operations of the church but that Warren, reminiscent of top organized crime figures, will rule the FLDS from behind bars. That includes deciding who will marry whom in the religion.
More than 50 years of government indifference toward widespread abuses within the FLDS has allowed the sect to grow from fewer than 400 people scratching out a living on the remote Arizona Strip in 1953 to an economic powerhouse with more than 10,000 members spread across the West.
The sheer size and wealth of the rapidly reproducing congregation, which accounts for only a quarter of the estimated number of polygamists in Arizona and Utah, have forced law enforcement to focus on the most notorious crimes while conceding that little will be done to stem a practice that violates the Arizona and Utah constitutions and has been found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Still, Jeffs' high-profile arrest while on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List and subsequent conviction on felony charges — which could bring him life in prison — have focused the nation's attention on abuses that have flourished for decades within the closed FLDS society.
read on . . .
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October 11th
posted: October 11, 2007 2:39 EST
Do transsexuals get a second chance in the great gender-identity sweepstakes?
By Ashley Harrell, Broward-Palm Beach New Times
Michelle just loved to shop, says 43-year-old Michael Berke. Over the year and a half that she ruled Berke's life, she bought 45 pairs of strappy high-heels, mostly from DSW. For bras, she always opted for Victoria's Secret. Everything she bought had to be tight, vibrant, and provocative.
Berke wishes that he had more pictures of her in those stunning outfits. Or a bottle of Michelle's elegant Incanto perfume. He can almost hear her gravelly voice, making those offbeat jokes. "Hickory, dickery, dock — I got tits and a cock," she used to say. He'll even miss her impulsive spending.
"She bankrupted me," Berke says with a smile.
It's been two years since those D-sized breasts, beautiful legs, fire-red hair, and killer smile all belonged to him. Literally.
That's right, Berke used to be a woman who used to be a man. He's an MTFTM, male to female to male. An ex-tranny who took a surgical U-turn. No, it never got to the big one. He's still got "Snoopy." But add up all of Berke's other surgeries, including breast implants, a brow lift, a nose job, cheek implants, and more and it equals about $80,000. Call it bankruptcy, as far as Berke is concerned. All for a big mistake.
Or was it?
In recent years, the transsexual community has beseeched the media to cover its discrimination and to help extend equal-rights protections. That's important, all right. Transsexuals are mistreated because of their gender identities, particularly in the criminal justice system and the workplace. "Transsexuality is the biggest taboo in the world," says Mark Angelo Cummings, a Hollywood transgender activist and the author of The Mirror Makes No Sense, about his life as a transsexual.
But the story of oscillating trannies has slipped under the radar. The truth is, not every tranny lives in gender bliss ever after.
read on . . .
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October 8th
posted: October 8, 2007 1:48 EST
Worshippers of The Big Lebowski at last have a fitting Bible
By Michael Ray Taylor, Nashville Scene
When T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” was published in 1922, critic Charles Powell panned the poem’s disjointed, cryptic passages as “so much waste paper.” But Edmund Wilson believed Eliot had captured the essential desolation of modern life, that he had walked the desert of urban London and, “like Buddha, he has seen the world as an arid conflagration.” Within a decade of its publication, the poem came to represent an era.
Different times call for a different sort of Buddha. Just ask any “Achiever,” as the oddly rapturous fans of the 1998 film The Big Lebowski call themselves. The clueless, bathrobe-wearing, white-Russian-swilling Buddha they follow is The Dude, portrayed by Jeff Bridges. The film—which also starred John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Sam Elliott and Philip Seymour Hoffman—was released on the heels of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Academy Award winning smash Fargo. A box office flop, it was generally dismissed by critics. (The New York Times called it “loopy.”) Nonetheless, Lebowski went on to build a cult status of the sort enjoyed by The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since 2002, fans have gathered in Louisville for the annual Lebowski Fest, celebrating all things Lebowski, with similar events held in Los Angeles, London and other cities.
Ben Green and three fellow creators of the original Louisville event have now penned I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What-Have-You (Bloomsbury, 256 pp., $16), an astounding compendium of trivia, actor interviews, still images and assorted rites and rituals to be followed by aspiring “Achievers.” (The name is a reference to a charity mentioned in the film, the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers.) Bridges wrote a forward to the book, and he took many of the cameo images from the film set as well.
read on . . .
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September 27th
posted: September 27, 2007 6:56 EST
Greg Anderson has given up his freedom rather than testify about Barry Bonds. But one man has learned the deepest secrets of the trainer behind baseball's new home run king.
By Nic Foit and Ira Tes, SF Weekly
Prison changes a man. Makes him hard and cold, "like the frozen earth itself," as Hemingway once observed. Only returning to the outside has allowed Marlon Leftwich to thaw his spirit, to warm his soul.
He was paroled in August after serving a six-month sentence, ample time for seasons to change and hope to decay. The San Francisco native landed behind bars for a crime spree vast in geography but narrow in its choice of targets: Over a six-week period, federal court records state, Leftwich crisscrossed California, Arizona, and Nevada to rob 44 convenience stores.
He recounts his arrest while sitting in a cramped room in a Tenderloin SRO that he asked SF Weekly not to identify, fearing unwanted attention. A stack of copies of the Examiner doubles as his chair. He sleeps on a wooden pallet swaddled in bubble wrap; when he rolls over at night, "it sounds like the Fourth of July." On a rusty hook inside the door hangs his ruined trench coat, dark fruit-pie splotches visible in the wan light cast by the room's lone ceiling bulb.
The 43-year-old Leftwich moved here after his release from prison to piece together the shards of his life. He found a job in pest control, and though to him it marks a demotion from his stylist days at Supercuts, he earns enough to afford basic cable.
For transporting stolen goods across state lines, Leftwich had been assigned to the federal penitentiary in Taft, 40 miles southwest of Bakersfield. With no beds available until mid-March, however, he spent the first week of his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin. When he met his cellmate — or "cellie," in prison parlance — Leftwich thought he recognized him. His black hair styled in a mohawk with dreadlocks, the inmate, stout and thickly muscled, spoke in a voice oddly squeaky for someone so buff. He introduced himself as Greg.
As it happened, the next day, while watching ESPN on the only TV in the prison commons area, Leftwich learned why his cellie looked vaguely familiar. The cable sports network aired a spring-training update on the BALCO case, the federal steroids investigation that has embroiled Giants slugger Barry Bonds since 2003. Across the screen flashed the images and names of some of the scandal's key players, including BALCO founder Victor Conte, Bonds' former mistress Kimberly Bell, and his onetime personal trainer — Greg Anderson.
"I almost had a Depends moment," Leftwich says. "I'm thinking, 'My cellie is the guy who juiced maybe the greatest player of all time.'"
Aside from the 43-year-old Bonds, Anderson is arguably the person most responsible for this year's crowning of a new home run king in Major League Baseball. In late 2005 Anderson served three months for steroids distribution and money laundering in connection with the BALCO probe. But it's his unwillingness to testify in front of the latest grand jury convened in the case that has kept Anderson, 41, in federal custody since August 2006. Held in contempt of court, he shows no signs of cracking before the grand jury's term expires in January, stoking intense speculation about what he knows and whether Bonds bought his silence.
Yet contrary to Anderson's public reticence, Leftwich claims during their time as cellmates the chemically enhanced trainer shared one shocking anecdote after another about Bonds and BALCO. Among the revelations, according to Leftwich:
• Desperate to combat the testicular shrinkage that can occur with steroids use, Bonds injected human growth hormone directly into his genitals during the 2002 playoffs — with disastrous results for both him and the Giants.
• In early 2003, owing to the performance-enhancing drugs coursing through his body, Bonds suddenly began lactating, forcing doctors to excise his mammary glands.
read on . . .
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posted: September 27, 2007 5:51 EST
He ain't heavy, he's my lover.
By Amy Guthrie, Broward-Palm Beach New Times
It's Friday night in Wilton Manors, and Sidelines, a gay sports bar, is packed with slender boys. Carlos Lopez, 28, sits on a barstool near the door nursing a glass of whiskey. Trim and handsome, Lopez chats with Blake, a lean 29-year-old with chubby cheeks.
Blake, who moved to Florida from the Midwest last year, says he doesn't really have one type of man he goes for.
Does he know that Lopez likes big men — really big men, as in guys who weigh 280 to 350 pounds?
"He likes fat guys!?" Blake says. He touches his cheeks. "Am I fat?" he asks several times, sounding almost hysterical.
Blake is not fat. His navy-blue T-shirt hugs a flat stomach. His fitted jeans hint at long, toned legs. He simply has a body type that Lopez does not find appealing. Lopez is a chubby chaser.
Blake rolls his eyes at Lopez, hoping perhaps that Lopez will say it's all a joke.
No. Lopez sweeps a hand over his hair, as if to say the concept is over Blake's head.
People often have trouble understanding that Lopez is attracted to only heavy men, he says. Even Lopez has trouble explaining it. The best he can do is point out that he once tried dating a man who was below his ideal weight range, saying, "The attraction was not all there."
Lopez says maybe he's drawn to the jovial, nurturing nature he associates with bigger men. Then too, he says, large gay men seem to particularly appreciate love and compassion — perhaps because they're so far from the mainstream. And Lopez is a caretaker-type, he says; perhaps it's just a good fit. In any event, he says, his shrink told him not to worry about it. It's just the way he's wired.
Lopez is not unique. There are whole pageants dedicated to this substratum of gay life in which titles such as Mr. Chubby International and Mr. Chaser International are conferred.
Some chasers say owning up to a fat fetish is like coming out of the closet a second time. Chubbies and chasers are often ridiculed within a gay community where svelte figures and boyish good looks are prized. In the 1970s, some gay bars and sex clubs barred fat men. But it was around the same time that the first group for chubs and chasers, Girth & Mirth, was formed, and today, the predilection of chasers seems to have become at least acceptable in some quarters if not celebrated.
Many chubs seem puzzled by their suitors' desires even as they appreciate that they are appreciated. They would still prefer to look more like Michelangelo's David than a Botero sculpture, they say, and would never date someone their own size.
read on . . .
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Here’s the truth: there were two, distinct events that happened the night of March 13, 1997 in the skies over Arizona, which I reported in great detail in a story that appeared a year later in the Phoenix New Times. The first event was the famous “vee,” which appeared over northern Arizona and gradually traveled south over nearly the entire length of the state, eventually passing south of Tucson. This is the “wedge-shaped” object that Symington and hundreds or even thousands of others saw—including two of my colleagues at the New Times. Timings of the “vee” sighting started at about 8:15 over the Prescott area, and it was seen south of Tucson by about 8:45. That’s 200 miles in 30 minutes, suggesting an air speed of 400 miles per hour.
