i love san francisco.
what other major city are you going to find gigantic freeway billboards of a big black man in drag advertising a service to corporate businesses?
mike's parents are ultra-conservative catholics from the farmlands of central california. he's been trying to avoid visiting them as often as they want him to, but it's only resulted in giving them added incentive to visit him here in san francisco.
when i say mike's mom is a catholic, i mean she's a bold italicized underlined catholic. she watches the pope on television with the fervor of a daytime soap addict and she tapes each and every pope appearance that she can find on tv. her shelves are filled with videotapes labelled "day 12: john paul in chicago," or, "day 23: john paul visits orphans."
as you imagine shelves and shelves full of tapes with nothing but a frail, old polish man in a big hat, you're probably thinking "ok... that's pretty weird." but the problem is, is that it's not weird enough. not only does she tape record every broadcast appearance by the pope, but she also takes pictures of him from off of her television screen.
that, my friends, is really weird.
so mikes's parents are in san francisco, visiting their nice, grown-up, secretly athiest sons and daughter in the bay area and the whole family drives past one of these rupaul billboards. it's the one where the big black man in lipstick looks lustily at the camera and the bold text above him reads "meetings used to be a real drag." it's for some internet company that allows for businesspeople to hold multimedia meetings over the web. their advertising kind of sucks because i remember the ad, but for the life of me, i can't remember the name of the company.
"i don't get it," says mike's mom, sounding increasingly puzzled "that lady is so unattractive! why is she on that billboard?
silence.
her children haven't the guts nor heart to explain to her that it's a man in makeup. that it's a man in a dress. they're imagining the conversations she would have with her friends at church and how she would gauge the shocked look of surprise from each and every person that she talked to.
"well..." says bill, the first of the three to think of a safe response, "it's supposed to be... you know... shocking."
silence. the siblings hold their breath, hoping that this doesn't somehow spark some conversation about gender politics and how they relate to her children.
"oh," says their mom, satisfied with the answer. satisfied that everything is still all right and good in the world.
meanwhile, in the back seat of the car, everyone did their very best to not laugh really, really loudly.
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all words (c) filmfatale industries 2000