The Metrosexual Tarot

This is the second of my Tarot-as-ethnography stunts, which I worked on in early 2004. Back in 1999 the success of the Silicon Valley Tarot really took me by surprise, but this time around I sort of meant it. I had the idea that Tarot – as silly, simple-minded, and occult-cliché'd as it might be – could be a good lens through which to view popular culture... which tends to be silly, simple-minded, and generally cliché'd.

At the time, I was reinventing myself at a fairly rapid pace; I'd been through some really horrible personal stuff that put me back to square one in my private life. I was repartnering and trying to find a new home, which meant trying on cities and lifestyles to figure out where I fit in the world. So, for a couple of years I was a one-man lifestyle research skunkworks. There I was, forty-one years old and trying to make sense of the world in the way that people usually do when they're in their 20's.

The whole Metrosexual concept seemed to overlap with/crystallize much of what I'd been discovering on my own, and I wanted to do my own humorous take on what I'd been discovering. I tried as much as I could not to taint my research with what other people were writing about Metrosexualism. Still, there was a ton of overlap with what'd already been written. Mostly, I just tried to add a little graphic atmosphere and pseudo-spooky spiritual humor and spin to it. It's been a lot of fun.

Of course, the rest of the world eventually discovered it, too. There's been a little press, and a ton of Web hits. It started with an entry at the Coolstop site. Then a . Then it became USA Today's hot site of the day. Then Putalocura Freakolinks... a Latin American porn site! (Oh, man...) Then it became a Yahoo Pick-of-The-Day (which made me very happy I'd picked the 'unlimited bandwidth' option at my ISP...) A have picked it up. I've also had a number of radio interviews, mostly outside the USA: Ireland, Australia and the UK. Basically, english-speaking countries with big soccer followings – after all, David Beckham is the proto-metrosexual. I don't think the Metrosexual concept has caught on in the United States in the same way; I'm chalking it up to red-state Republican homophobia and lack of a soccer culture.

My friend collaborated with me a lot, mostly in the form of color treatments for my cartoony, black-and-white card images. I did the writing, I rendered the basic images, and Hughes added a third dimension with his post-production stylizations. He's pretty good at this stuff, having done all sorts of video editing and graphic post-production work in Hollywood. (Oh, and Hughes does a great photoblog of the Los Angeles scene at .)

Anyway, you can find the Metrosexual Tarot here. Enjoy. I'm not working on it much anymore, as I was startlingly effective at reinventing my personal life, so I'm not really 'in the scene' as much. Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point. Or maybe I'll get a publishing deal. I know, dream on...