thatvoodoochick's blog: "Mindless Ramblings Of Me"

I know, we're supposed to be the vanguard. We're supposed to lead the way, set the agenda, be at the forefront on exactly this kind of delightfully blistering, divisive, sticky cultural issue, especially given our world-renowned reputation for flying our fearlessly flamboyant freak flag as high as the Transamerica Pyramid dancing on ecstasy at Burning Man.

I know, we're supposed to be this unswerving bastion of progressive liberalthink, the frothing epicenter of just about every wild/weird/wonderful sociocultural movement and civil right in America. After all, we're the birthplace of hippie culture and gay culture and New Age culture and roughly 10,000 other progressive beliefs and revolutions and soul-fellatings you can name and many you can't, because they have yet to be concocted in one of our genius inventor/scientist/poet's feverish peyote dreams. I know.

In other words, we're supposed to know better. We're supposed to get it right, particularly about something as obvious and relatively, uh, straightforward as gay marriage, exactly the kind of issue about which the world expects California not merely to have our godless, revolutionary sh-t together, but to know how to follow through. After all, in terms of blue-state, damn-the-fundamentalists street cred, we gotta represent.

This is why the truth is so very difficult to admit: we failed. Choked. Dropped the ball. Botched it completely. Gay marriage, that is. Prop 8. The whole gay rights shebang. What a shame. And how utterly embarrassing.

What can we say? I'm not quite sure what happened. Somewhere between a slick 'n' cocky SF mayor Gavin Newsom speechifying in front of City Hall on one of the most electrifying days in the state's history a few years back, making us all unexpectedly, shockingly proud to live here, and "holy crap where the hell did all these panicky Mormons and old conservatives come from with their checkbooks and their fear," we lost our footing.

What's worse, we lost our soul, our center, our identity. Then again, to be perfectly honest, we don't really have the slightest clue as to what the hell that is, exactly. And we never really did.

Look, we're a big state. Massive. Unimaginably so. You ever been here? You ever driven around for more than a few hours, tried to navigate the 110/405/101/I-5 interchange without missing the I-10 split to get you to the 760 without crashing into Stockton or Pasadena or (shudder) Fresno? Good luck.

Hell, you can drive for a solid day and a half from parts far north aiming southward, and feel like you just drove through eight separate countries and 10 major climates and six distinct socioeconomic systems, four time zones and 15 languages and a dozen religious denominations because, well, you sort of did -- and you haven't even hit Santa Barbara yet. It's that big.

Hey, our coastline alone is nearly 850 miles long. We have volcanoes. We have geysers. Caverns. Mount Whitney. Death Valley. Epic fog and floods and fires, Tahoe and Disneyland and Hollywood and Porn Valley, avocados and raisins and water parks the size of the devil's last wine-cooler nightmare. We have towering redwoods and scorching deserts and a seashore to melt the heart of every photographer in the world, not to mention one of the strangest, most surreal seas you have ever smelled in your lifetime.

We have the Sierra and Sacramento and Slab City and San Diego. We are where surfer dudes perpetually baked on some of the world's finest home-grown ganja meet vintners perpetually buzzed on some of the galaxy's finest home-grown grape, and often you can't even tell which guy is which.

Did you know one-eighth of all U.S. residents lives here? I didn't. I had to look it up. That's how big we are. Stuff you think you know vanishes in the vortex of our madhouse schizophrenic bigness. Amazing.

Truly, we have more Nobel laureates, writers, poets, chefs, yoga teachers, PhDs, artists, mad scientists, healers and world-class academics per capita than Atlantis, with every attendant freak and exploiter and nutjob criminal jackass circus sideshow to match. The iPod was born here. The Internet. French Laundry. UC Berkeley. And yet, our governor starred in "Kindergarten Cop." You'll understand if we're just a little bit insane.

One more dirty secret that requires mentioning, given how heavily it stabs at the heart of our gay rights woes of late: We're also home to some of the most unfortunately inbred, socially conservative, spiritually malformed, sexually stunted religious leaders and megachurches in the nation. Yes, guys like Rick Warren and his Saddleback Church are here, and we are ashamed. Then again, we also have Glide Memorial. God is all like, WTF?

I could go on, but it's really just a big pile of lukewarm excuses. What we really owe you, the justifiably disappointed progressives and liberals and gay rights orgs of the world -- but also you over in the salivating right-wing nutball Limbaugh/Glenn Beck homophobe core, all you gun-hoardin' sodomy-fearin' paranoids who adore California for our endless supply of Things You Do Not Understand and Therefore Must Fear and Despise Even as You Secretly Desire to Lick Them All For a Month -- is a sincere apology. We let you down. All of you.

Fear not, however. We shall regroup. We shall try again. In fact, we already are. Know this for certain: We aren't the kind of state to let a perfect opportunity to pinch the lazy ass of the human experiment slip by for long.

But for now, we shall eat our humble pie and hang our heads in shame as we hand off the baton of delirious change to places like Massachusetts and Canada and Iowa -- Iowa! -- and be deeply grateful to let them all show us how it's done, at least as far as gay marriage is concerned. Yes, it's a bit humiliating. But you know what? In a strange way, it's also sort of refreshing. And a bit of a relief.

I have to admit, it's a bit exhausting being at the vanguard of all this progressive stuff all the time. We can use a break from being everyone's alarmist headline. Let the dour conservatives and shrill pundits stomp their little feet and stab their pitchforks of meek hysteria into a few other states for awhile. We've got enough going on.

Have you seen our budget lately? Our water issues? Our endless sunshine and our abundant wine supply and our sly, knowing grin? I mean, oh my God.