Hit the shlopesh

Of course it is wrong for a sports icon to seem to advocate drunken skiing, as Olympic hopeful Bode Miller did on "60 Minutes" last Sunday. But let's be honest: people ski drunk all the time. I have skied at fancy Rocky Mountain slopes, as well as at their humble Midwestern cousins, and I do not recall ever visiting a ski resort that did not have a bar, or several bars.

Indeed, one Western resort I visited -- I believe it was Keystone, in Colorado -- had a bar halfway up the mountain, accessible only by ski lift. So you're supposed to walk down? And what about products like this, the ski pole-cum-liquor flask? Har har.

Drinking has long accompanied skiing, and the reason you seldom hear any hue and cry about it is that skiing is primarily a sport of the wealthy, who look after themselves. So shame on Bode Miller for skiing wasted, and thank goodness he wasn't hurt or worse, but it's not as though he's the only one.

I want my

Among the many pleasures of TiVo has been revisiting music videos, those elaborately staged and choreographed clips that accompany the chart hits. Youngsters today probably don't realize how drastically videos changed the pop scene after MTV debuted in 1981, since these days the channel is a miasma of reality programming and consigns videos to the very wee hours.

Which is where TiVo comes in. I have taken to recording MTV's overnight video program, "MTV After Hours," as well as VH1's "Fresh," and it has been fun getting caught up. I'm particularly fond of Madonna's "Hung Up," which sees the Material Girl working up a dance routine back in the studio, then trying it out in a nightclub filled with whirling youths, some of whom she makes out with. Gritty and not a little mysterious, and set to a marvelous sample from Abba's "Man After Midnight," "Hung Up" proves that Madonna -- a key, perhaps the key, pioneer of music videos -- still is a master of the format.

Other favorites: Ashlee Simpson's "L.O.V.E.," in which our heroine tosses a cellphone into the toilet, then struts with a cane and parties with her suburban friends (many of them whirling youths, like in the Madonna video -- most videos seem to have breakdancing now); Nelly's "Grillz," a tribute to orthodontic devices that are encrusted with jewels and precious metals; and Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You," wherein the chanteuse argues furiously with her man and then, after some disturbing flashbacks to her childhood, reconciles with him. (I'm a giant fan of Kelly Clarkson.)

But best of all are a pair of videos for "Heard 'Em Say," the track by Kanye West and Maroon 5's Adam Levine. The song is a sad meditation on urban woes, and one of the clips, animated by Bill Plympton, shows a family taking a cab ride through a hellish, disarmingly whimsical cityscape. In the other video, made by "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" director Michel Gondry, West and a gang of homeless children spend the night in a department store overseen by a nervous security guard played by Levine. The group tries out various of the creature comforts for sale -- they levitate through the aisles, at one point -- before settling down to sleep in one of the floor-model beds.

Both clips are haunting commentaries on poverty. You can catch them at 3 am or so on your local cable music station.

Good word

"They say people in your life are seasons
And anything that happen is for a reason"

-- Kanye West, "Heard 'Em Say"

Jesus was a Capricorn

And so am I. Today I turn 35!

Electric dreams

Ereck knows I am a computer-history geek, and yesterday he was excited to show me something in an episode he had Tivoed of "Paper Dolls," the 1980s evening soap about the fashion industry. What he wanted me to see was a computer being used by the Dack Rambo character, and it is measure of just how geeky I am that I was able in a twinkling to identify the machine as a Kaypro 4.

My loving boyfriend may have gotten more than he bargained for when I then delivered a treatise on the Kaypro computers and their chief competitors, the doomed Osbornes.

Up with gay, dope-smoking Episcopalians

I'm fascinated by this article in today's Wisconsin State Journal. The story is about "The Book of Daniel," NBC's controversial new series in which Aidan Quinn stars as a Vicodin-addicted Episcopal priest with a gay son and a pot-smoking daughter. Even though at this hour it has never aired, "The Book of Daniel" has predictably incited furor in some quarters, and affiliates in Terra Haute, Ind. and elsewhere have yanked the show.

But Madison's WMTV-Ch.15 will broadcast the series tonight at 8 pm, and here's what station manager Rob Crain had to say about the hoopla: "We're not in the business of censorship or deciding what people should watch. It's Madison."

A striking phrase: "It's Madison." To me the phrase is particularly striking because the week before last I used it verbatim in an article I wrote for Isthmus newspaper about my search for a church home (a search that brought me to Episcopalianism): "I had this notion that although the broader denomination was divided, as a gay man I would be welcomed with open arms at any Presbyterian congregation in Madison. You know, it's Madison."

I love how our little burg's ethos is so palpable that a prominent media figure like Crain can simply invoke the name of the city -- it's Madison -- to make a pretty powerful argument about the values that prevail here: we're open-minded, and we don't truck with bluenoses.

Of course, those sentiments are not universally true in Madison, which is sort of what my article was about. But I'm relieved to live in a place where tedious, reactionary moralizing is more the exception than the rule.

We're all set to Tivo "The Book of Daniel," though I'm not getting my hopes up for it. It has been panned by television critics I admire, including Tom Shales of The Washington Post and Isthmus' own Dean Robbins. But to me, any show that has an Episcopal priest and -- to quote the State Journal article -- "depictions of homosexuality, drug and alcohol use and sex," can't be all bad.

More larfs

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Isthmus had replaced "Life In Hell," the cartoon by Matt Groening of "Simpsons" fame, with a new comic called "Lulu Eightball." Recently I did a phone interview with "Lulu Eightball" creator Emily Flake, and the article I wrote about her is here.

I'm still delighted with "Lulu Eightball."