Tastes

What're we gonna write about tonight, Brain?

The same thing we write about every night....


It's tranny and the blog,
Tranny and the blog.
One's changing gender
The other is insane.

Ah, yes...One of the finer artifacts of American culture: Pinky and the Brain. The hormones haven't changed my love of cartoons for children over the age of thirty. Besides P&B, there are Beany and Cecil, the Roadrunner cartoons, most of Bugs Bunny (especially the episodes with the Tasmanian Devil) and the short-lived Mighty Mouse series from Ralph (sp?).

And singing the "Pinky" song--and barking the "Narf!" at the end--makes me laugh even more than it did back in the cartoon's run. Yeah, I know, it's the hormones again.

So I still love this stuff and will defend it as much as I would Leaves of Grass, many of Emily Dickinson's poems, Rhapsody in Blue , the first Godfather film and almost anything from Thelonious Monk and Billie Holliday as great and important American cultural artifacts. I mean, what would this country be without any of those things and the Bill of Rights?

None of those tastes have changed yet. Somehow I suspect they won't. And I think my dislikes are even less likely to change. I mean, if I never liked The Three Stooges or understood the need for just about anything Clint Eastwood or Kevin Costner made, I don't see how I'm going to like them with a body powered by estrogen. (I'll admit that Swing Vote, which I saw with Mom and Dad, was good and I actually liked Kevin in it.)

So which of my tastes have changed? Which ones might?

Like many other people, I'm watching the Olympics. This is probably the first Games in which I'm paying much attention to the men's diving, water polo and track and field events. Bicycling, as you can imagine, has always interested me. But to the other sports I've mentioned, I've never before paid that much attention.

All right. Accuse me of looking at guys who aren't wearing much and who are flexing, bending, pumping, sweating and grunting. I'll make a halfhearted denial. After all, I have to preserve my reputation as a lady of refinement and taste!

But I also found myself paying very close attention to the women's beach volleyball. Now, if I were still a guy, you could accuse me of watching the tall women in bikinis rather than they game they were playing. But Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Tranor (How can you not love a sport in which an athlete has a name like that?) have a combination of power and speed that rivals that of the Williams sisters, in my opinion.

Same thing with women's soccer. But I got hooked on that when Mia Hamm and her wonderful team won the World Championships back in 1999. The funny thing is, I responded to their wholesomeness as much as any fundamentalist might have. For me, they were women who genuinely loved (or seemed to love) what they were doing and didn't engage in showboating, trash-talking or any of those other loathesome behaviors of too many major male athletes.

So what other tastes of mine will change, or remain the same? I've a feeling I'll be writing more about that in this blog.