Separated At Birth - Oscar Edition

Maybe it's because I read Spy magazine too much, but when I see televised pageants like the Oscars®, I can't help it when some celebrities remind me of other celebrities. To prove my point, I've put together some photos from the ceremony Sunday night with some random publicity photos of other people. Here goes:

Nicole Kidman	Gwyneth Paltrow
Melissa Etheridge	Hillary Clinton
Will Ferrell	Samuel Jackson
Jodie Foster	Jane Fonda
Ellen DeGeneres	Willie Wonka

And Ellen, I kid because I love. I actually thought your sitcom was funnier AFTER you came out and only started watching then. You may have lost two million viewers, but you gained one for your courage and wit. I saw your interview with Barbara Walters where you talked about starting a family someday, which can be difficult when you don't necessarily have the right plumbing. Just let me know and I'll extend the same offer I have made to other celebrities in the same situation.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: Anyone I missed?

Melissa And Friends

Last week was the Michigan Womyn’s Musical Festival and I was once again a no-show. Since I first learned about this annual event, I have wanted to go, but I fear it is a dream that will elude me forever. You see, I have a penis, and people with those are not allowed. And even if I wanted to, radical surgery wouldn’t gain me entrance since only “womyn born womyn” meet the eligibility standards. Even if they did change their policy, it’s unlikely that I would attend anyways. Camping in the woods in the August heat with several thousand feminists of the most militant variety is not a vacation I would be able to talk my wife into. So I have to just pout in a sour grapes way.

So instead of seeing Jill Sobule and Lez Zeppelin on the MWF mainstage last Thursday, I did something better. I got over my snit that she overlooked me and went to see Melissa Etheridge in concert at Constitution Hall in DC. I’m not sure that the mostly female audience was even aware of the irony of seeing America’s most famous lesbian musician at a venue that once snubbed African American singer Marion Anderson. Still, the DAR hall is a great place to see a show. Our seats were in a box just behind the floor seating. We had great sightlines to the oddly decorated stage, which consisted of a series of boxes that looked like glowing cubist strawberries.

This was my third time seeing Melissa live. We first saw her as the opening act for the Eagles on their Hell Freezes Over tour. She may have been still in the closet to most people, but she wasn’t fooling any of her fans that surrounded our seats. The second time was a few years ago on her solo (but by no means acoustic) tour. With just a guitar and some backing tracks, she rocked the Warner Theater.

At the DAR, we had to share our box with three other people. When we arrived, the first person was already there. She was very young and this was her second time to see Melissa. She had used her MEIN membership to get tickets to the Madison Square Gardens stand before she knew Melissa was playing DC. We had a fun time chatting and sharing celesbian gossip (Jodie Foster has been married for thirteen years, destroying another one of my dreams). Our final two boxmates were a twenty-something high-strung farmgirl that had just come out and her mother. Everyone complimented her mother on supporting her daughter so much. The mother’s attitude was that at least she didn’t have to worry about any unplanned pregnancies.

Melissa took the stage just five minutes after the nominal start time, surprising many of the attendees still lingering in the lobby, and proceeded to rock for nearly three hours. Melissa’s stage style is very Springsteenesque. She interacts with the audience a lot and likes to tell stories and ramble on. She introduced one song with a poignant story of a girl she had a crush on just after high school. The girl vanished one day because her parents had institutionalized her to keep her from spending too much time with the wrong crowd, meaning Melissa. Melissa also made multiple references to wasting ten years with the wrong person. We all knew whom she was talking about.

Good music is good music and Melissa Etheridge makes some of the best. In recent years she has had to carry a heavy burden as a role model and leader in the lesbian community and as a breast cancer survivor. She also plugs the Al Gore movie that she wrote a song for and (as a Kansas bred liberal) touts biodiesel fuels. Despite all this, she rocks hard and gives her fans what they want.

Melissa has a core group of loyal fans that will follow her everywhere. Judging by my boxmates and the enthusiasm of the audience, a Melissa Etheridge concert is part tent revival and part rite of passage. Melissa accepts that she will never be an arena-headlining superstar, which is fine with me since that lets me see her in great intimate venues. I don’t even mind sharing the men’s room with the women’s lounge refugees. And my wife doesn’t worry about any fellow groupies trying to pick me up. I’m just glad to be counted among Melissa’s great fans and friends.

I'm Mad At Melissa

Back in January, I made an open offer to several celebrities to help them with any future desires to reproduce. It seems that Melissa Etheridge, who is about to become a father for the third time, snubbed me for some anonymous stud (in the broadest sense of the word) that earned a few extra bucks for what he probably would have gotten around to doing eventually anyways. At least David Crosby didn’t get the call again.

Melissa’s second wife, Tammy Lynn Michaels, is pregnant with twins, neither of which will have any genetic material in common with me. I mention that Melissa is the father because in my mind the mother is the person that carries a growing mass of tissue for nine months until it eventually either gets pushed through the vagina like a cantaloupe through a toilet paper tube or sliced out with Ginzu-like precision leaving a smiley-faced scar as a momento. The mass of tissue will then start breathing, grow-up to be a teenager, and become completely ungrateful for all the effort put out for it.

The father’s job on the other is to have his hand squeezed in a vice-grip and ineffectually lead the breathing exercises between the screams for more Pitocin. Fathers must also endure years of reminders that they have no idea about the pain and difficulty of childbirth despite having the best view of the whole process of anybody in the room. Fathers also get reminded that they had the fun part of the job, even when it’s been sub-contracted out to a turkey baster.

These rough guidelines get hopelessly muddled by adoption, in vitro fertilization, surrogate birth mothers and the myriad other forms of forming a family. Still, Tammy has conceded that Melissa is the breadwinner, which in the traditional scheme of things makes her the daddy.

Second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience but few people fault Melissa for the break-up with Julie Cypher, the mother of her first two kids. There is clearly no statute of limitations on re-declaring your sexual orientation. Besides, rock stars are supposed to keep the arm candy young and trade down in age every now and then.

Melissa as a rocker cites Janis Joplin and Bruce Springsteen as her idols. I just worry a little that she may also be emulating Rod Stewart, if not musically, at least romantically. Julie was three years Melissa’s junior (and roughly my age). Tammy is a good thirteen years younger. It would be like me landing Liv Tyler (or Orlando Bloom, if I swung the other way). By comparison, Rod Stewart’s latest baby momma, who made him a proud daddy at the age of sixty, is seven years younger than his oldest daughter. It seems that even in the realm of rock and roll paternity, the ladies have some catching up to do.

Melissa will have a chance to make amends to me in person when I see her perform August 10th at Constitution Hall. I really doubt that she knows or cares how badly she has shattered my hopes and ambitions. Oh, well. At least, if the audience matches the demographics when I saw her at the Warner Theater a few years ago, I won’t have to stand in line for the restroom.

Celebrity Babby-Daddy Wannabe

Angelina Jolie is pregnant and it bodes well for the species that the two most attractive people on the planet are both fertile. Obviously AJ wanted see how bad childbirth hurts and Brad just happened to be hanging around to help out with his part. I wish them both lots of happiness and hope their kids grow up with happy, normal, well adjusted lives. That’ll happen.

Other than that, I don’t think the news affects me personally very much. What’s done is done. Sure I posted a long fawning blog entry declaring her the hottest woman ever, but I admire her more as a Platonic Ideal than a real person. If she doesn’t want to share genetic material with me, I can live with that. I have a long history of famous celebrities neglecting to consider me for fatherhood when they begin the family planning process.

AJ was not my first obsession with a celebrity. Women that are talented and smart are very sexy. I wanted to go to Yale just because Jodi Foster went there. I thought how cool it would be to just meet her casually as a fellow student. Then all of a sudden, trying to impress Jodi Foster became very uncool. Considering how respectful I was of her privacy, I was disappointed when Jodi decided to become a single mom and I was not even on the long list of potential dads.

I tried to redirect my affections to Brooke Shields and Princeton, but neither had quite the same cachet. I suspect they let her in just to stay in the running for the Ivy League school with the most Former Child Actors From R-Rated Movies as alumnae. And that lowered my opinion of both of them. And Brooke's career has never been quite as stellar as Jodi's. I think I made the right choice there.

Much later I developed an infatuation with Melissa Etheridge and her music. She was the opening act for the Eagles on their Hell Freezes Over Tour and my seats were right in the middle of a huge group that must have been charter members of the MEIN. That was when I realized I was not a good fit for Melissa Etheridge for a long term relationship, but it hurt when she chose David Crosby over me as the sperm donor for her first wife.

Now that she is with her second wife, Tammy, I want to make sure she keeps her options open. I don’t hold grudges. And for the record I would never wish any form of cancer on anyone ever, but if not for the Big C we never would of known how hot Melissa Etheridge is totally bald.

Overall, I try to keep my expectations realistic and understand that most gorgeous, intelligent, talented celebrities with loudly ticking baby-clocks don’t travel in the same circles as I do.

But I just can’t help thinking that now that Natalie Portman is out of Harvard, she might want to settle down and start a family. With or without me.

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