Finally the international swimming board has come to its senses. It is banning the use of those high tech all-body suits we came to know in the Olympic Games last year. There are obvious competitive reasons, but more important is how this policy improves things for the spectators. Competitively speaking, as long as regulations are consistent for everyone, there really is no difference between the all-body suit and brief-style except in times. I imagine the same athletes will place equally no matter which suits they use, just that with everyone in briefs their times will be a few hundredth’s of seconds more.

More significant is to consider the male swimmer’s body. Most would agree a well-trained swimmer has a beautiful physique that brings pleasure to gay men and female office workers around the world. How many more magazines have been sold over the past few years for featuring the bare torso of Michael Phelps on the cover? Just as more baseball fans crowd to parks when the players hit more home runs, more swim fans will tune in if the male swimmers are clad in brief-style suits than in full body ones.

Compare the two pictures below of Mr. Phelps. Notice that he has a nice set of Olympic rings tattooed at the hip line that would be a complete waste in the full-body suit:

“The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies [in Latin America], but over the last several years, I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don’t always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States.”

– US President Barack Obama

Formerly just another gay flight attendant, he endeared much of Argentina. Fernando Peña passed away suddenly on June 17. Even though there remains a lot of machismo and homophobia in this country, Argentines of all walks of life were fascinated by Fernando Peña and mourned his death.

I don’t know the story so well as I have only been becoming acquainted with him and his personalities, yes his personalities, but I’ll try my best. I say flight attendant because he became a celebrity at 30,000 feet. Fernando worked for American Airlines, Aerolineas Argentina, and others and his humor on the planes became known. I imagine he was a bit better than the typical one-liners  you hear on Southwest Airlines. He knew English pretty well, because he lived in Miami and New York for a period of time.

The legend is that more than ten years ago he became known to a frequent passenger who worked in radio brought him to a morning radio program on a rock station. He became a sensation for how he would create complex scenarios with up to a dozen distinct characters interacting simultaneously, while he was the only one at the mic. Sometimes the personalities can be scarily convincing but in moments become completely ridiculous. I think that some of those personalities were born from his shtick on the airlines. In one newspaper I read, not only was there an obituary for Fernando but also for several of his personalities, who are almost as well known as he is. A Cuban woman, Milagritos López, was the best known and since she was only known from radio. Her character was so convincing that a few guest who arrived at the radio studio were shocked to discover that the señora from Cuba was really this tall thick-built guy.

Fernando Peña had a weekly TV show a few years back when I first got to know him (its name “Isla Flotante” comes from the most over-the-top dessert you can imagine), but on the radio is his mainstay and I regret only having the presence of mind to tune in a few times. My Spanish is very good now for conversing, reading, etc, but for acting when people speak rapidly with lots of colloquialisms, I am very challenged. Plus there are still cultural references that I still don’t get. The parts I understood were usually hilarious. I have also heard him talk and read interviews, and when he is himself I understand him a lot better. He was a complex person with his dark sides, very provocative, and philosophical. He hid nothing about what he believed or who he was, even video-taping his cancer treatment at the very end.

Fernando always did theatrical performances too. Shows based around various characters he created. Last year I went to a re-do of his first ever show, “Gracias por Volar Conmigo” (Thank you for Flying with Me), about flight attendants, performing a monologue each of a stereotype of a certain type of flight attendant. I had a hard time understanding a lot of it because all the characters were so hysterical and talked so fast, and at moments felt out of place amongst an audience of everyone cracking up except for me. But I still was pretty amazed, and I did understand a couple characters and when Fernando sat facing the audience to talk from himself. Also, he would serve himself a cocktail from the drink cart and fixed a few for members the audience. He also appeared to inhale a line of coke, which I found unbelievable, but Guille (my boyfriend) assured me it was for real and part of who he is. It has been my goal in to improve my Spanish enough to return to a show of his and understand it all. Well, unfortunately I’ll have to look for some recordings now.

Infected with HIV, and I believe at  one point Fernando was near death with AIDS. He did not appear unhealthy, a big masculine type with various tattoos and piercings and painted finger nails. His appearance was always to me very masculine and very feminine at the same time, punctuated at T.V. interviews by the accompaniment of his poodle. The cause of his death was not related to that but to a very aggressive cancer that was only discovered recently. Guille and I had no idea he was even sick when we saw the news.

Fernando Peña, Milagros López, Diputado Porelorti, Cristina Patricia Megahertz, and others will be deeply missed.

The recent events in the streets of Iran due to the contested election, has possibly done more in one week to inspire “regime change,” than George W. Bush could have ever done. (Regime change in the Middle East had been a stated goal of Bush.) This is a popular movement, and seems very spontaneous. The entire world is watching the people of Iran, and learning how a public can act against a repressive government. These events came more than from the supposed fraud in the election, but a general dissatifiction with a government that has drifted far away from serving its people and has resorted to intimidation as a last resort.

If Bush were still president (and probably if John McCain had been the winner in November), the US response would be lots of  axis-of-evil blabber, accompanied by threats. This would have played perfectly into Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hands. He would respond with his usual anti-US rhetoric,  mobilizing the public against US meddling. Although there still would have been protests, they would not have been so widespread as we are seeing. Meanwhile Bush would circle the ships near the waters of Iran, and call for international measures. The French government would be upset by the US arrogance and instead of spending energy criticizing the events in Iran, would be in a political fight with the US government.

The US economy may have not been any worse than it is today, but surely more unstable with unprincipled actions. This would be from plenty of aid going to industries and corporations who are friends of Bush and “tough love” going to everyone else. There would be no method to this, and a heightened sense of unease in the US, motivating the public to rally behind Bush in his standoff with Iran. Troops would be diverted from Bagdhad to the Iran border, thus heightening tensions. And in response, Ahmadinejad might start hastily  putting together an imperfect nuclear weapon that would not be able to reach a precise target, but create plenty of havoc.

Ahmadinejad, like the Bush Administration knows how to use fear to control people. Too bad for him his partner in crime is now missing.

“Ayatollah Khamenei blamed ‘media belonging to Zionists, evil media’ for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not, while, in fact, the election had shown Iranians to be united in their commitment to the Islamic revolutionary state.”
–The New York Times

It seems that much of the news about the unrest is coming from Iranian citizens individually publishing things on Twitter and YouTube. If what Ayatollah Khamenei says is true, then he must be surrounded by a citizenry of thousands or millions of evil Zionists right there in Iran. It can be argued that the government of Israel has done some evil things, but I don’t believe that causing the public unrest in Iran today is one of them.

He also said that the margin of votes was so large that there is no way it could have been falsified (I think that’s a reference to G.W. Bush who falsified an election with thin margins). Yes, those numbers are impressive, but just being large does not mean they are to be unquestioned. It is suspicious that Moussavi lost in his home district in an election where he lead convincingly in the nationwide polls. Maybe the outcome was accurate and no cheating went on. If so, end the debate and invite the staff of each losing candidate to verify the results.

Further he says, “street challenge is not acceptable.” But “street challenge” was acceptable when it  brought his predassesor to power 30 years ago. Free expression is more than a human right that I believe in strongly, no matter how much the person speaking may abhor me, it is uncontainable. Does this guy realize how ridiculous he sounds? I think that Khamenei’s arrogance is out of touch, and these words will only motivate the protests more.

The majority of the Iranian people are intelligent and free-thinking, and their rulers do not recognize that. The rest of the world can only sit back and watch this unfold. Stay tuned for big changes in Iran.