11/4/2002: Gay Games open

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by sycamore
Sorry Mags...you lost me on that one...Toaster Oven award? Is that like an El Camino?

Lemme just crib what I wrote on one of the Pink Pistols lists where one of the straight members didn't get a "toaster oven" joke.

<blockquote>
In 1997, when Ellen deGeneris' character "Ellen Morgan" on the ABC sitcom "Ellen" discovers that she is a lesbian...
<blockquote>
"There's a moment in the first half hour of the show in which Laura Dern's character, Susan, dealing with Ellen in full-blown homosexual panic <i>[ after rejecting the advances of a man on a date, and Susan's making a pass at Ellen, who realizes to her dismay that the idea seems much more appealing to her than the man did --ml ]</i> cracks a joke about her failure to "recruit" Ellen for the lesbian cause. "Damn," she says, as the laugh-track explodes, "just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven!" "Is that gay humor?" Ellen asks, "`cause I don't get it. That's how un-gay I am." Later in the episode, Ellen tells Susan that she "got the joke" just before she comes out, and the end of the episode features a cameo of Melissa Etheridge signing Ellen up as a lesbian and giving Susan the longed-for toaster oven.
</blockquote>
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/...ds/Torres.html

So that's what the "toaster oven" thing is about. It's a joke about the mistaken idea that every queer person in the world has subscribed to a "homosexual agenda" that includes recruiting as many people to homosexuality as possible, and that this invidious campaign is so organized that there's actually a catalog from which you can select incentive awards.
</blockquote>

Now what's this about an El Camino? I know about Mary Kay and the pink Caddy, but El Camino?