Critical Exponent

This is Vinny. A noble steed with an independent streak, Vinny was one of the highlights of my weekend at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Knox and I took it easy this year: we swam a little and socialized a lot, I learned to ride horses and he learned to fly fish. And we danced. To Madonna.

It was fun.

Now, alas, Knox is traveling back to Seattle and I am focusing on work, biking, and reading.

She wanted to turn the world into a giant dance floor, and that she did. Madonna had everyone rocking as she packed the Garden on the first Boston show of her Confessions Tour. “C’mon, Boston, let me see you dance!”

The show included everything from riding crops to disco-ball-style crosses, from parkour to roller skates. She mixed some old favorites with new hits, and threw some social messages into the mix: celebration of gay love, impatience with demagogues, a call for help with the AIDS crisis in Africa. Our seats were great: up in the first balcony, we had a commanding view of the entire stage, but could see quite a lot of detail thanks to the powerful birding binoculars we made sure to bring. There are few things as frustrating as not being able to make out the performer’s face in your line of sight and having to rely on the Jumbotrons…

Madonna is as energetic as ever, though the most extreme stunts were carried out by her oh-so-fit backup dancers. Knox and I decided that would be a perfectly suitable second career choice for us, but perhaps we have further to go than we like to admit. You see, there was nary a teenager in sight. The audience were all people who had grown up with Madge, folks ranging from their late twenties into (gulp!) middle age. Though we may not all have three nannies, an assistant, and a driver and a jet, we did our best to keep up with the dancing dervish.

Disappointed as we were that the Garden was not playing warm-up Madonna music as we waited for the show to begin, all was made right when we left and walked along Canal Street: all the bars had her hits blaring to lure in the concert-goers. “What the hell!” we said, and went in to one. As Knox downed a beer, I danced and vogued and boogied-woogied to end my fabulous Madonna evening. She, I’m sure, was well on her way back to New York by then.

UPDATE: This is the second Madonna concert I’ve attended; the first was the Reinvention Tour. Rebecca Traister at Salon does a good job of describing what it feels like to see Madge in concert for the first time as an adult.

New York ruled that the state constitution does not require that gay marriage be accepted. That may be true, but some of the rationales cited by the decision, at least as quoted by the NY Times, are plain silly:

“There are at least two grounds that rationally support the limitation on marriage that the legislature has enacted,” the court said, “both of which are derived from the undisputed assumption that marriage is important to the welfare of children.”

So children of gay parents would be better off if their parents could marry, right? And since gay marriage does not affect straight unions, those children are just as well off.

First, the court said, marriage could be preserved as an “inducement” to heterosexual couples to remain in stable, long-term, …

Because obviously if gay people get married, straight people will no longer be induced to get married since their families, churches, and friends will no longer put pressure on them, they will cease caring about gift registries, and will be willing to throw out the window the thousands of legal perks that come with marriage.

… and child-bearing relationships.

The next step is to outlaw marriage for infertile couples.

Second, lawmakers could rationally conclude that “it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and the father.”

“Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like,” the court said.

“Intuition” also argued against mixed-race marriages not that long ago. And obviously, a child of gay parents will have no contact with family members, teachers, store clerks, neighbors, or friends of a gender other than that of his or her parents.

..gets the fireworks, apparently.

I was biking through Gloucester with Todd when we came across lawn chairs and beach towels and coolers lined up on the main esplanade in anticipation of the July 4th fireworks– tomorrow. Pretty funny.

Todd and I finally did the lobster loop, biking from the train station in Beverly all the way to Rockport. I wanted to eat some lobster at our destination, but we got early enough that it made sense for me to catch the 12:00pm train back and get ahead on the rest of my day. (Good thing, too! It’s been hectic…)