wdydwyd?

My friend Tony runs a neato project collecting portraits of folks answering the question Why Do You Do What You Do? This week he’s got my portrait up there, to be followed in the coming weeks by other campmates of ours from BM07. You can also post your own portrait with your answer to the question. Check it out!

Ashes to Ashes, Bust to Bust

(Note: I researched and wrote this piece in July 2006, shortly after Brooks passed, for publication in the regular obituary column of LiP magazine. It never got printed, and I just happened to find it on my harddrive today.)

Robert Howell Brooks, head of the Hooters chain of restaurants, died of natural causes at the age of 69.

Brooks, who spent much of his impoverished childhood working in his family’s tobacco fields in South Carolina, was a member of Future Farmers of America, a public agricultural education program for boys (until 1969, when girls were admitted), before studying dairy science at Clemson University. He made his first fortune in Naturally Fresh Foods, Inc., with fast-food milkshake formula and non-dairy creamer for airlines.

Despite his proven familiarity with udder-based products, Brooks claimed to be ignorant of the mammary connotations of the Hooters brand when he took over in 1988. The official Hooters website says of its famous brandmark: “Hooters does have an owl inside its logo and uses an owl theme sufficiently to allow debate to occur over the meaning’s intent. The chain enjoys and benefits from this debate. In the end, we hope Hooters means a great place to eat.”

In deference to his wife Tami, who engages in weekly Bible study with daughter Belle, Brooks did remove Playboy spreads of former Hooters Girls from all the restaurants after taking the helm, which Tami apparently found more objectionable than signs like “Hooters Waitresses are Flattery Operated,” which prevail.

Invariably young and buxom, overwhelmingly white, and minted from a single “All-American Cheerleader” mold, the “Girls” are officially described as “bubbly,” “vivacious,” and “wholesome yet sexy.” At their hiring they sign a policy that asks them to acknowledge that “the Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace” and furthermore that they “do not find [their] job duties, uniform requirements or work environment to be offensive, intimidating, hostile or unwelcome.” “Hooters Girls are to be camera-ready at all times,” explains the extensive employee handbook.

Over the years, several cases of sexual harassment by Hooters managers surfaced (sexual harassment by guests being a condition of employment). One “Girl” sued her Panama City Beach, FL employer for being tricked into thinking a contest would win her a Toyota, when what she got was a toy Yoda. But under the steady hand of Brooks, Hooters not only survived these and other challenges (such as the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s investigation regarding discrimination against males in 1995)–indeed, Hooters came out on top.

Part of the community appeal sprang from a PR idea of Brooks’: philanthropy. Hooters Community Endowment Fund has donated over $8 million to charities, including to Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Yet, while the company website asserts that “the women’s rights movement is important, because it guarantees women have the right to choose their own careers, be it a Supreme Court Justice or Hooters Girl,” women’s rights groups do not figure prominently among the beneficiaries of HOOCEF.

By all accounts, multimillionaire Bob Brooks worked tirelessly for the wealth he accrued. The small chain grew into a multinational with over 430 locations in 20 countries. Brooks’ related business endeavors include Hooters Magazine; Hooters Casino; and the ill-fated Hooters Air airline. Promoting, commodifying, and normalizing the sexual-objectification of women: It’s hard work.

change

utterly compelling, this speech. Looks like the Future.

Conjunction Junction, what’s your Function?

Apparently a striking planetary/galactic configuration unfurls in the heavens today and tomorrow: an almost perfect convergence of all the planets near or along the galactic center, which is the rotational center of the Milky Way galaxy. Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Mercury, the Sun and the Galactic Center will all be lined up! This phenomenon is made even more remarkable in that it will be accompanied by the Full Moon at about 2 a.m. on December 24.

In positional astronomy and astrology a conjunction means that celestial bodies appear near one another or in alignment. From our vantage point on earth they appear conjoined but in reality there are many millions of miles between them. Without the observer there would be no conjunction at all. The conjunction exists only in being observed.

There’s lots of theories floating around in the ether about the significance of this event: references to the Illuminati, the Mayan calendar, the Book of Revelations. Some say that the planets will form a cross with the sun in the middle, and further, that the Sun will die on the galactic cross and be reborn again after 3 days…

I like what Will Parfitt had to say about it: “Remember it will only be happening because you are observing and experiencing it, so rather than looking at it from the perspective of others, or in books and charts, observe it closely, and deeply, from your own position. Sure, make any astrological calculations you may wish, but also be there at the time of the conjunction, sense it in your body, feel it in your heart, watch carefully the effects it has on your being and your nature.”

watch this, Mugabe

My close friend Todd made a documentary chronicling the world’s first all-transgender gospel choir, “The Believers.” (sneak peek). He and his crew have been through a lot with The Little Film That Could, including first being denied permission to use the traditional gospel songs because of the identity of the people performing them in the film. Loads of legal fees and post-production bills later, the film is starting to get out there, including with its broadcast premiere on LOGO TV this Saturday, August 11. (Watch it, record it!)

This morning he was notified that the film had been accepted into the Zimbabwe International Film Festival: spectacular, shocking news. This a film about a group in which, as one of the choir members, supa’star Bobbie Jean Baker, puts it: “everybody who now lives as a woman was born a man, and everyone who now lives as a man was born a woman.”

Homosexuality is not only taboo in Zimbabwe, it’s illegal. In 2006 they updated their existing sodomy law with a sexual deviancy law, which deems any actions perceived as homosexual a criminal offense, including kissing, hugging, and holding hands. At the country’s independence day celebration in 1995, Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe said: “It degrades human dignity. It’s unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings?. … We will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as Lesbians and Gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!”

“The Believers” assumes a fair amount of familiarity with fluid gender boundaries—Todd refused to make a Trans-issues-101 film out of the choir’s story—so the film pushes the envelope even here in the relatively queered U.S. of A. I can’t wait to hear what it accomplishes in Zimbabwe. I just wish it was a safe enough environment for Todd and his partner Jim to travel there themselves to see.

The illustration, by the way, is the flag of Zimbabwe, with a modest modification on my part. Enjoy, Mr. Mugabe. Dickhead.