For example: If you want to watch a baseball game, the TV is no longer any help. You have to actually go to the stadium.

Only then will you see the pitcher wind up, at the same time you see the fielders moving based on what pitch they know he's throwing, and the runner leading and possibly beginning to steal, and the catcher moving his mitt to target an outside pitch, and the batter either moving inside or outside depending on his guesses. And then see the whole pitch, from windup, to the ball's travel to the catcher, to the swing.

And then you can see the fly ball lofted to left field, the runner deciding whether to tag up, where the cutoff man is, who is backing up whom (an important point to teach your Little Leaguer if he's with you).

The TV used to show static shots of the diamond, or even the whole field. No longer. You don't see the game any more, just tiny disjointed parts of it, zoomed in so much that they are meaningless.

But if you want to see the utility man picking his nose in the dugout, the progress of the pitcher's five o'clock shadow, closeups of famous people in the stands, or faces of announcers stating the obvious, then stay sitting in your living room.

Stephanie Zacharek is the best movie reviewer I ever read.

If you get paid to watch five movies a week, you develop a different perspective than the average moviegoer. Not Steph. She is open-minded, free of cynicism, attentive to what she watches, and a marvelous writer.

Reading this made me feel a little queasy, but not nearly as much as seeing two men tongue-kiss.

Just because something disturbs you, bothers you, nauseates you, or offends you -- doesn't make it wrong.

The number of progressives who can't pass this test is amazing.

. . . AND this is true even when the woman (like most women) has no problems reaching orgasm.

Compare the plethora of books about how to pleasure a woman, with the paucity of books about how to pleasure a man.

It's always up to the man. If the sexual encounter is a flub, it's his fault. If it's great, it's his doing. But as the responsible one he's actually just a spectator.

Meanwhile most men don't know how to receive a backrub or a lotion massage, don't know how to moan with ecstacy, are in general far less vocal during sex than women, and in fact don't know how to receive pleasure at all unless it leads directly to orgasm.

This commune is not revolutionary. It is achingly conventional.

As a lesbian you probably wouldn't know.

But the men alive today are not 19th century men. They are 20th and 21st century men. Crowing that "the tables have turned" will get you nowhere. You are talking about a world where sexual pleasure was only allowed to men. But the men alive now grew up in a world where it was up to men to be able to "give" women orgasms. It has been a male responsibility.

So now we have a world where so many men don't know how to receive pleasure. Only give it -- if they're skilled and work at it -- something that's encouraged in our culture and taken to extremes by this commune. Meanwhile they are inculcated with the view that male sexuality is simple, one-shot-and-it's over, and not as complex as female sexuality. Not true, of course. But we have been studying and obsessing over female sexuality for so long that we now know so much less about male.

It is still usually up to the man to be good in bed. As someone put it about virgins having sex, "The guy is under pressure to be good. The girl just has to be *there*."

. . . whether it's in what they are allowed to wear, the more acceptable and ready-made option to stay at home and raise kids, kissing a member of the same sex, being active or passive in bed, or just being far more able to get laid on a Saturday night . . .

. . . has long been clear, at least, to 51-year-old me.

So many good points in his comment!

You outdid yourself with this one, Cary!

For some people it really is a choice between being self-destructive and being boring. I'm reminded of what John Lennon said:

"Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? It's all bullshit. Neil Young says, 'It's better to burn out than fade away.' If he really believes that, why doesn't he do it? No thanks -- I'd rather stay among the living and the healthy."

At the time Lennon was a middle-aged guy who was off smack, living a stable life, no longer had anything interesting to say and was writing boring songs. The quote above might not be brilliant but it's something more important: true.