Columns

Last Days

by David Schmader

Early this week, Last Days was strolling down 19th Ave when we stumbled upon a curious find: an abandoned, mid-sized shopping bag bearing a decorative print and glossed yarn handles, containing nearly a dozen videotapes. Closer inspection revealed the discarded tapes to be instructional social-service videos, covering a range of "sensitive issues," from schoolyard harassment to hereditary alcoholism to childhood sexual abuse. Was God providing us with an opportunity to expand our empathetic sensibilities? Or was Satan inviting us to get stoned and cackle at the hackneyed dramatizations of the misfortunes of others? Join us as we find out.

MONDAY, JULY 10 The week began with the far-less-surprising-than-it-should-have-been news that Kim Mathers--wife of the reviled, celebrated, and fatally limited rap artiste Eminem--tried to kill herself late last week in the couple's suburban Detroit home. Ms. Mathers is no stranger to personal endangerment: She's the victim of a brutal murder in her hubby's song "Kim," and her corpse is sunk to the bottom of a lake (with the aid of the pair's toddler daughter) in "Bonnie and Clyde '97." But in real life, 25-year-old Kim Mathers eluded the grim reaper, receiving emergency treatment for her failed wrist-slashing late Friday night before being released and returned home. A spokesperson for Interscope Records told the Associated Press that Eminem was not at home during his wife's suicide attempt, and that the 27-year-old rapper was "obviously concerned about his wife's well-being. As far as anything else, it's a private matter, which they'll be addressing privately"--at least until Eminem's next record, featuring the sure-to-be-smash hit "Stupid-Ass Bitch (Can't Even Kill Yourself Right)."

··Meanwhile, Last Days commenced our Sensitive Issues Film Fest with a screening of The Savage Cycle: A Video on Domestic Violence. Produced by Seattle's own Intermedia Inc., The Savage Cycle juxtaposes video footage of police at scenes of spousal abuse with documentary interviews of perpetrators and victims, along with creepy crayon drawings of domestic fight scenes: Mommy pointing a gun at Daddy's head, Daddy burning Mommy with an iron. Focusing largely on those folks whom less-sensitive people might deem "white trash," the video captures in horrific detail the lives of those unfortunate men and women who, due to societal pressures and economic injustice, find themselves having knife fights in their front yards in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but underpants. The documentary footage was harrowing, and The Savage Cycle promptly became the first film to make us cry since--well, since Chicken Run--but nonetheless, the film instantly renewed our appreciation of our parents for being far too lazy to ever beat each other, and confirmed that wife-beating (along with the Holocaust, the plight of the American Indian, and the work of John Keister) is one of the few things on Earth Last Days does not find funny in the least.

TUESDAY, JULY 11 Pumping is good, scary eye contact is bad: Today ABCNews.com offered a privileged glimpse into the psychology of handshakes. For nine months, four college students from the University of Alabama studied the welcoming grips of 112 classmates, ranking the 48 males and 64 females for completeness of grip, temperature of skin, dryness, strength, duration, vigor, texture, and eye contact. The results of the study (published in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) revealed that the most impressive handshakes consist of a cool hand, a firm grip, reasonably timed eye contact, and a few up-and-down pumps, while the least impressive handshakes consist of a slimy hand, a flimsy grip, and a suspicious lack of pumping.

··Speaking of the lasting power of touch, tonight Last Days watched Childhood Lost: A Video about Child Abuse, whose graphic accounts of childhood horrors (a mother duct-taping her toddler's eyes shut for the night, a father breaking his nine-year-old daughter's hymen with a pen) make last night's wife-beating video look like Teletubbies. And while Last Days is tempted to add child abuse to the list of the perpetually unfunny, Childhood Lost's ridiculously lurid, completely unnecessary "dramatic re-enactments" drove home the unfortunate truth that wacky slapstick humor exists in the darkest of places.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 12 Here's a story that puts the "oy!" in schadenfreude: Less than 48 hours after the last of the Vatican's rabid denouncements of Rome's World (gay) Pride celebrations, the Associated Press today reported the Miami, Florida arrest of Roman Catholic priest Patrick O'Neill, nabbed after offering to pay an undercover (male) police officer $100 to touch his priestly penis.

··In other, better gay news: Today Last Days watched Speaking for Ourselves: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Youths. This locally produced video warmed our heart with its good intentions and impressive diversity (honkies in the minority, with nellie fags and butchie dykes displayed unapologetically), and provided us with the unique experience of watching a man who once showed us his penile-shaft piercing in a queer bar men's room having a tearful onscreen reunion with his mother.

THURSDAY, JULY 13 Today Last Days' war on public grooming took a bizarre new twist with a Hot Tip from a man named Daniel. Daniel is a worker at Boeing corporate headquarters, where this afternoon in one of the men's washrooms, he witnessed a man standing at a urinal. In one hand the man held his urinating penis; in the other he held a half-eaten apple, which he shamelessly munched as he took care of business. "Talk about multi-tasking!" exclaimed our rightfully disgusted Hot Tipper. For an informed response, Last Days viewed the 1994 corporate training tape The New Workplace. While the video featured plenty of talk about "the changing dynamics of public sector employment," it had nothing whatsoever to say about the propriety of simultaneously eating and peeing. Sorry, Daniel.

FRIDAY, JULY 14 Today Last Days was blessed with another thrilling Hot Tip--this one from a lucky fellow named Joel, who had the extreme privilege (along with most of his U-District neighborhood) of hearing a very noisy X-rated gab session--followed by a very noisy three-way--between a lusty ex-Marine and his two sexy (and perhaps rented) lady friends. Meanwhile, Last Days was watching the video Keisha's Choice, in which a young girl must choose between having a healthy baby or doing a whole bunch of crack. In direct violation of our strenuous urgings and every law of dramatic structure, Keisha chose the baby.

SATURDAY, JULY 15 Tonight, at long last, Last Days was blessed with the jaw-dropping, mid-level-star-studded instructional video extravaganza we'd been longing for. Directed by and starring Joan Van Ark, Boys Will Be Boys chronicles the growing problem of student-to-student sexual harassment, and features such notables as Home Improvement's Richard Karn and the blond guy from CHiPs, as well as a bunch of teenage actors who look so similar to other, more successful teenage actors it's amazing they get any work at all. Still, the acting was quite good, particularly the teenagers, who were frequently forced to deliver such lines as "What I think is okay might not be okay for someone else" without gagging. All in all, it was precisely the cinematic experience we'd hoped for since we first picked up that soggy sack of tapes.

SUNDAY, JULY 16 Today, like God, we rested.

Send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com or phone the 24-hour Hot Tip Hotline at 323-7101, ext. 3113.