It’s kind of funny all of this controversy the film Kinsky has created. I mean this movie is about a man who did sex research in the 50’s and came up with some shocking discoveries, like the fact that most people do masturbate (and don’t go blind), gay people aren’t crazy, and that most people don’t stick with just the missionary position. Absolutely shocking, I know. What’s probably more shocking is the fact that before he put out his research if you were to read the leading book on sex at the time and then actually try to complete the act, if you succeeded you probably read it wrong. I mean, what’s wrong with America today?

People are worried about this movie, but turn on the TV. Just about any show on television right now that doesn’t have the words “Seasame Street” in the title has sex in it somewhere. I mean, that’s the whole WB lineup right now. What about this whole Desperate Housewives fiasco? I missed the part where you could actually see something other than her bare back. Ooooo. It wasn’t exactly a repeat of the whole Janet Jackson thing. And I’m sorry, when was sex NOT a part of football? Show me a year when there wasn’t a sexy commercial during the Super Bowl and I’ll show you a year before football.

Oh, and then there is the whole Saving Private Ryan thing. This is where the whole religious conservative thing really gets me. In everything I’ve read, I haven’t heard one person complain about, oh, that scene where the guy’s arm gets blown off. No one objects to the blood, the violence. I mean this is one of the most powerful movies I’ve ever seen and where is the objection? In the fact that the work FUCK is said eight times? Pardon my French, but what the FUCK? FUBAR indeed.

At one point it was ruled that if fuck was used with a non-sexual meaning it was OK to say it on the air. Hence, when Bono said that Scorcese was “fucking brilliant” on the Golden Globes last year, it was OK. Fucking meant “really” or “very”, but come on, “really” and “very” are really very boring words. Fucking sounds so much better. Then Janet’s tits fell out and everything changed. Suddenly you can’t say Fuck again, because it just has too much of a connection with sex. I’m sorry, but if I’m being shot at I’m going to say fuck a lot, and I don’t imagine any of those times I’m really [or fucking, whichever you prefer] going to be thinking about sex. I’d like to think that Ryan was saved so that I could use the word fuck without being fined thousands of dollars.

You hear that the FCC now wants to control what’s on cable? Hell, fuckin’ no!

It’s all just crazy. All of this was just lead-up to my main topic, though, which is what I did this weekend. Since I’ve started working at Bose I’ve only had one weekend off, which was a sweet-ass weekend. First I went down to Bardtown to see Sara. We got lost trying to find the theater showing Shawn of the Dead, which turned out to be something extremely easy to find, we were just given extremely bad directions. We did catch the zombie goodness though, and had a great time wondering the mall like the consumer zombies we are. After heading back we went to Sara’s sisters art gallery opening set in some abandoned factory in Hudson. Totally not how I expect to be spending my evening, but it was a pretty awesome time.

The next day I picked up Clancy from the train station in Albany and we proceeded to (again) get lost trying to find a mall. Fun was had catching up and finding out about all of the stuff I never thankfully got to say I told you so to. I do miss talking to him, and it was really awesome to catch up, have a pint, eat a really great Angus burger, see a messed up Swedish film.

Anyway, again I’m off the point. So here’s the sweet part for all of you who actually read this far without your eyes glazing over and rolling into the back of your head. This weekend I actually had off, the second one since I started working at Bose. I was a little bummed that I had nothing planned and there is nothing worse than a wasted weekend. Thankfully good ol’ Harry and his birthday saved the day for me having a dull weekend.

So I went to my first strip club! That’s what Harry wanted to do, so God help us a whole bunch of us went. I think he was the only one really into the whole thing, although I teetered back and forth between being disgusted by the concept and actually really wanting to check it out. I mean the whole thing is just so surreal. First of all, this place we went to in Latham was no Bada Bing. There were no Playboy models walking around this joint. Instead, you remember that skinny skank from your high school? Yeah, she’s the type of girl that works at a strip club.

Maybe I’m just not the type of guy that gets turned on by this sort of thing. Well, I’m definitely not the type of guy who gets turned on by this sort of thing. There wasn’t a single point in the evening that I was actually “turned on.” It was fun though. I don’t know, there was just something inherently wrong in it that made it enjoyable after you got over the fact that you were putting your hard earned money in a g-string of a girl who was doing something anywhere but in a strip club you would call her a whore for. None of these girls had a very big rack, and the lighting was so low half the time you didn’t notice when a girl lost her underwear. That’s probably a good thing though. Some of them definitely benefited from that lack of light.

I was more interested in the whole thing on a more sociological level. I was just as interested in the kinds of people who went to a strip club. Like the lonely (aka creepy) old man. The flamboyant loser throwing his money around. At one point this guy came in with three girls, one normal looking and three hideously obese. They didn’t stay long. The whole thing was kind of weird. When a stripper came over and asked me if I wanted a lap dance what I really wanted was to ask how she got there. Bad home life? Poor self esteem? Lack of money? Really poor guidance counselor? I mean as a writer this stuff is golden. Instead I let the poor girl grind her ass in my lap, because heaven forbid you refuse enough, they throw you out. The whole thing is comical. A girl you never met before walks up to you and asks you if you want a lap dance. It doesn’t matter what you look like or how much money you make or how funny your jokes are. She’s asked everyone. So you say yes, because what else can you say? Some do a decent job, some can’t hide their lack of interest, some are so into it that their tactics can be considered brutal. I got a good laugh watching a friend coming back from some private couch time, looking like a cowboy after a long haul.

What was really funny though was that after we decided to leave and walked out into the parking lot, we noticed the strip club was stationed right next to the Latham Meat Market. I can only imagine the poor sap that would get confused and enter the wrong building….