tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8841356013250880291.post3740420423130421458..comments2024-03-15T17:03:45.018-07:00Comments on Las Vegas Blog: Steve Friess' VEGAS HAPPENS HERE: A Pete Rose Afternoon!THE STRIP PODCASThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03593322167326380577noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8841356013250880291.post-57694137241935761642007-10-06T18:06:00.000-07:002007-10-06T18:06:00.000-07:00" I promise I won't ask him if he's gay,"This remi..." I promise I won't ask him if he's gay,"<BR/><BR/>This reminds me of something from your Sedaka interview. You seemed to think Sedaka was gay, because of the way he spoke. <BR/><BR/>As a New Yorker, I had a different take on that. I always assumed the married-with-children Sedaka was straight.<BR/><BR/>In school and later, I occasionally encountered boys or straight men with a peculiar variant of the New York City accent. These guys were usually Jewish and had a Queens accent. No pun intended. Queens, as distinguished from Brooklyn or The Bronx has always produced people with an identifiable accent in which syllables are over-enunciated. One hears this accent much more frequently in women than men. Of course, it's not exclusive to Queens (or Jews); you can hear it out on the Island or Manhattan too, but its most closely associated with Queens. No pun intended. <BR/><BR/>So these guys that I used to hear were straight, but they sounded like their mothers. I always thought of them as mamma's boys. This is exactly what Sedaka sounds like. <BR/><BR/>Interestingly, he mentioned in your interview something about his being unusually close to his sister and maybe mother (I forget) while growing up. I think he said he was a nerd in school and clung more to the female members of his family than his peer group. This fits the profile neatly, and when I heard him say that, I thought, "Aha! I knew it!" <BR/><BR/>One way to make the differential between gay and New York-nerd-mamma's-boy-straight is that some other characteristics of typically gay speech are lacking. The stereotypical gay inflection is missing, for example. <BR/><BR/>P.S.<BR/>I guess in these touchy times I have to say that I know many or most gay men speak like everybody else, many of my friends are gay, and I'm Jewish.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8841356013250880291.post-71625706774119006252007-10-06T08:34:00.000-07:002007-10-06T08:34:00.000-07:00Oh wow. I wish I would have seen this earlier. I...Oh wow. I wish I would have seen this earlier. I'm from Ohio originally. Looks like you already meet with him but I'd be really interested to know if he tought it was a mistake to release his book in conjunction with admitting he bet on baseball. I thought it was in very poor taste and pretty much doomed his chances of ever being reinstated.BrownElfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09619592102998833743noreply@blogger.com