Tickle Me, Elmo

Illustration by Bob AulA couple of hours after El Modena High School's Gay-Straight Alliance held its first meeting on Feb. 9, students clashed with fundie protesters across the street from the Orange campus. However, it wasn't much of a melee, eyewitnesses told us and only us, because the Jesus freaks “fought like girls.” Known as the America Forever Foundation, the gay baiters' literature refers to gays as “anti-species” and says, “The simple suggestion of homosexuality and lesbianism should be criminal when exposed to children.” Guess that puts the kibosh on future Nutcracker performances. For their part, students have had it up to freakin' here with all the attention, anti-gay graffiti and their new school nickname, replacing their beloved “Elmo” with “Homodena.” They're also sick of the doctored OC Weekly adult ad that has spread around campus faster than media cockroaches. Under a picture of two men draped in each other's arms—hard, bulging, deliciously sweaty arms that get us all . . . uh, sorry—someone has scribbled: “Come on, Elmo, don't be shy! You're either gay or you're bi!” Sounds like those stuck-up cheerleaders to us. The hate group that started this whole mess —Orange Unified's board of trustees, which banned the Gay-Straight Alliance from campus in December, only to have a federal court later reverse that—continued its take-away-all-our-marbles-and-go-home-if-we-don't-get-our-way fit by banning all nonacademic campus clubs on Feb. 10. Students walked out in protest the next day. Why bother? Just form a Gay-Straight-Science-Geek-Spanish-and-Chess Alliance.

CROWDED CELL Jim Bakker—who should get a free pass to heaven if for no other reason than having bedded both Tammy Faye Bakker and Jessica Hahn in the same lifetime—warns that though times are good in America, you'd best hurry up and accept Christ. “The Lord spoke to my heart that religious people will blow their brains out when this stock market crashes,” warned Bakker in a Feb. 7 interview at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim. It seems odd that the messiah would use such salty language as “blow their brains out”—until you learn of the special bond forged between Bakker and the Big Guy in the Big House. “When I went to prison, I couldn't take a car or house with me, but Jesus Christ went there with me,” Bakker explained. Christ, I mean, Jeez, I mean, damn: first nails through your wrists, then five years in a cell with Jim Bakker.

STRIFE OF THE PARTY The rift over whether the Reform Party will hold its August nominating convention in Long Beach rather than Minnesota cost Perotistas their highest elected official on Feb. 11 when wrasslin' Governor Jesse Ventura quit the party. Besides snubbing the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Reformers are “hopelessly dysfunctional,” Ventura said. And he views the party's presumptive presidential candidate Pat Buchanan as “an anti-abortion extremist and an unrealistic isolationist.” Besides not having Jesse Ventura to kick around anymore, the Reform Party has lost Donald Trump, who withdrew his presidential bid. So maybe Jim Bakker is wrong about the end being near.

MMM-MMM GOOD! Complaints from an animal-rights group led Copenhagen police on Feb. 11 to remove an art exhibit that featured goldfish swimming inside ordinary kitchen blenders. Why? Because curious patrons could have switched on the appliances and made instant fish soup. Okay, who else flashed back to that classic Saturday Night Live “Bass-o-matic” commercial?

WE'RE ALL WET As we weighed whether to get a sitter for the California Rifle and Pistol Association Banquet in Anaheim on Feb. 19, we couldn't help but chuckle over “W.M.L.” of Costa Mesa's letter in the gun-lovin' group's current newsletter: “Colt Manufacturing Co. will lay off 43 percent of its workers at its Hartford, Connecticut, area plant soon,” writes Dubya. “Bottled-water-drinking and bedwetting gun grabbers are no doubt jubilant over this American tragedy.” We'll drink bottled water to that.

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