Charles Jensen
Erin Murphy
Dorianne Laux
Matthew Hittinger
Christopher Hennessy
Paul Hostovsky
Courtney Queeney
Julianna Baggott
Ellen Bass
Sandra Beasley
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Kurt Brown
Cecilia Woloch
Denise Duhamel
Dara Wier
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
2008 WHY DO I WRITE Participants
Charles Jensen
Erin Murphy
Dorianne Laux
Matthew Hittinger
Christopher Hennessy
Paul Hostovsky
Courtney Queeney
Julianna Baggott
Ellen Bass
Sandra Beasley
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Kurt Brown
Cecilia Woloch
Denise Duhamel
Dara Wier
2008 Sunday Eye Candy Roster
Eric Mabius: 11/30/08
Preston Lee: 11/2/08
Dominic Purcell: 10/12/08
Mark Vanderloo: 9/14/08
William Levy Gutiérrez: 8/31/08
Paul Walker: 8/17/08
Brett Novek: 8/3/08
Gerard Butler: 7/27/08
James Marsden: 5/25/08
Bryan Thomas: 5/11/08
Justin Bruening: 5/4/08
Chris Bailey: 4/27/08
Nigel Barker: 4/20/08
Michael Weatherly: 4/13/08
Sunday, December 28, 2008
"You’re Likable Enough, Gay People"
"You’re Likable Enough, Gay People" by Frank Rich was published in print today and online yesterday by The New York Times. The article is making its rounds on Facebook, Myspace, and everywhere else; however, I want it in my blog:
You’re Likable Enough, Gay People
by: Frank Rich
IN his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” We all know how that turned out.
Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control notwithstanding. At a time when very few Americans feel very good about very much, Obama is generating huge hopes even before he takes office. So much so that his name and face, affixed to any product, may be the last commodity left in the marketplace that can still move Americans to shop.
I share these high hopes. But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.
As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.
In this case, the capital spent is small change. Most Americans who have an opinion about Warren like him and his best-selling self-help tome, “The Purpose Driven Life.” His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change. He is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama. Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago.
There’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”
Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.” Less strange but equally hard to take is Warren’s defensive insistence that some of his best friends are the gays: His boasts of having “eaten dinner in gay homes” and loving Melissa Etheridge records will not protect any gay families’ civil rights.
Equally lame is the argument mounted by an Obama spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, who talks of how Warren has fought for “people who have H.I.V./AIDS.” Shouldn’t that be the default position of any religious leader? Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card. That Bush finally joined Bono in doing the right thing about AIDS in Africa does not mitigate the gay-baiting of his 2004 campaign, let alone his silence and utter inaction when the epidemic was killing Texans by the thousands, many of them gay men, during his term as governor.
Unlike Bush, Obama has been the vocal advocate of gay civil rights he claims to be. It is over the top to assert, as a gay writer at Time did, that the president-elect is “a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot.” Much more to the point is the astute criticism leveled by the gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank, who, in dissenting from the Warren choice, said of Obama, “I think he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences.” That’s a polite way of describing the Obama cockiness. It will take more than the force of the new president’s personality and eloquence to turn our nation into the United States of America he and we all want it to be.
Obama may not only overestimate his ability to bridge some of our fundamental differences but also underestimate how persistent some of those differences are. The exhilaration of his decisive election victory and the deserved applause that has greeted his mostly glitch-free transition can’t entirely mask the tensions underneath. Before there is profound social change, there is always high anxiety.
The success of Proposition 8 in California was a serious shock to gay Americans and to all the rest of us who believe that all marriages should be equal under the law. The roles played by African-Americans (who voted 70 percent in favor of Proposition 8) and by white Mormons (who were accused of bankrolling the anti-same-sex-marriage campaign) only added to the morning-after recriminations. And that was in blue California. In Arkansas, voters went so far as to approve a measure forbidding gay couples to adopt.
There is comparable anger and fear on the right. David Brody, a political correspondent with the Christian Broadcasting Network, was flooded with e-mails from religious conservatives chastising Warren for accepting the invitation to the inaugural. They vilified Obama as “pro-death” and worse because of his support for abortion rights.
Stoking this rage, no doubt, is the dawning realization that the old religious right is crumbling — in part because Warren’s new generation of leaders departs from the Falwell-Robertson brand of zealots who have had a stranglehold on the G.O.P. It’s a sign of the old establishment’s panic that the Rev. Richard Cizik, known for his leadership in addressing global warming, was pushed out of his executive post at the National Association of Evangelicals this month. Cizik’s sin was to tell Terry Gross of NPR that he was starting to shift in favor of civil unions for gay couples.
Cizik’s ouster won’t halt the new wave he represents. As he also told Gross, young evangelicals care less and less about the old wedge issues and aren’t as likely to base their votes on them. On gay rights in particular, polls show that young evangelicals are moving in Cizik’s (and the country’s) direction and away from what John McCain once rightly called “the agents of intolerance.” It’s not a coincidence that Dobson’s Focus on the Family, which spent more than $500,000 promoting Proposition 8, has now had to lay off 20 percent of its work force in Colorado Springs.
But we’re not there yet. Warren’s defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect’s rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.
It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears. “You’ve got to give them hope” was the refrain of the pioneering 1970s gay politician Harvey Milk, so stunningly brought back to life by Sean Penn on screen this winter. Milk reminds us that hope has to mean action, not just words.
By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.
Since he’s not about to rescind the invitation, what happens next? For perspective, I asked Timothy McCarthy, a historian who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an unabashed Obama enthusiast who served on his campaign’s National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council. He responded via e-mail on Christmas Eve.
After noting that Warren’s role at the inauguration is, in the end, symbolic, McCarthy concluded that “it’s now time to move from symbol to substance.” This means Warren should “recant his previous statements about gays and lesbians, and start acting like a Christian.”
McCarthy added that it’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.” And “for LGBT folks to choose their battles wisely, to judge Obama on the content of his policy-making, not on the character of his ministers.”
Amen. Here’s to humility and equanimity everywhere in America, starting at the top, as we negotiate the fierce rapids of change awaiting us in the New Year.
You’re Likable Enough, Gay People
by: Frank Rich
IN his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” We all know how that turned out.
Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control notwithstanding. At a time when very few Americans feel very good about very much, Obama is generating huge hopes even before he takes office. So much so that his name and face, affixed to any product, may be the last commodity left in the marketplace that can still move Americans to shop.
I share these high hopes. But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.
As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.
In this case, the capital spent is small change. Most Americans who have an opinion about Warren like him and his best-selling self-help tome, “The Purpose Driven Life.” His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change. He is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama. Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago.
There’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”
Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.” Less strange but equally hard to take is Warren’s defensive insistence that some of his best friends are the gays: His boasts of having “eaten dinner in gay homes” and loving Melissa Etheridge records will not protect any gay families’ civil rights.
Equally lame is the argument mounted by an Obama spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, who talks of how Warren has fought for “people who have H.I.V./AIDS.” Shouldn’t that be the default position of any religious leader? Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card. That Bush finally joined Bono in doing the right thing about AIDS in Africa does not mitigate the gay-baiting of his 2004 campaign, let alone his silence and utter inaction when the epidemic was killing Texans by the thousands, many of them gay men, during his term as governor.
Unlike Bush, Obama has been the vocal advocate of gay civil rights he claims to be. It is over the top to assert, as a gay writer at Time did, that the president-elect is “a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot.” Much more to the point is the astute criticism leveled by the gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank, who, in dissenting from the Warren choice, said of Obama, “I think he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences.” That’s a polite way of describing the Obama cockiness. It will take more than the force of the new president’s personality and eloquence to turn our nation into the United States of America he and we all want it to be.
Obama may not only overestimate his ability to bridge some of our fundamental differences but also underestimate how persistent some of those differences are. The exhilaration of his decisive election victory and the deserved applause that has greeted his mostly glitch-free transition can’t entirely mask the tensions underneath. Before there is profound social change, there is always high anxiety.
The success of Proposition 8 in California was a serious shock to gay Americans and to all the rest of us who believe that all marriages should be equal under the law. The roles played by African-Americans (who voted 70 percent in favor of Proposition 8) and by white Mormons (who were accused of bankrolling the anti-same-sex-marriage campaign) only added to the morning-after recriminations. And that was in blue California. In Arkansas, voters went so far as to approve a measure forbidding gay couples to adopt.
There is comparable anger and fear on the right. David Brody, a political correspondent with the Christian Broadcasting Network, was flooded with e-mails from religious conservatives chastising Warren for accepting the invitation to the inaugural. They vilified Obama as “pro-death” and worse because of his support for abortion rights.
Stoking this rage, no doubt, is the dawning realization that the old religious right is crumbling — in part because Warren’s new generation of leaders departs from the Falwell-Robertson brand of zealots who have had a stranglehold on the G.O.P. It’s a sign of the old establishment’s panic that the Rev. Richard Cizik, known for his leadership in addressing global warming, was pushed out of his executive post at the National Association of Evangelicals this month. Cizik’s sin was to tell Terry Gross of NPR that he was starting to shift in favor of civil unions for gay couples.
Cizik’s ouster won’t halt the new wave he represents. As he also told Gross, young evangelicals care less and less about the old wedge issues and aren’t as likely to base their votes on them. On gay rights in particular, polls show that young evangelicals are moving in Cizik’s (and the country’s) direction and away from what John McCain once rightly called “the agents of intolerance.” It’s not a coincidence that Dobson’s Focus on the Family, which spent more than $500,000 promoting Proposition 8, has now had to lay off 20 percent of its work force in Colorado Springs.
But we’re not there yet. Warren’s defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect’s rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.
It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears. “You’ve got to give them hope” was the refrain of the pioneering 1970s gay politician Harvey Milk, so stunningly brought back to life by Sean Penn on screen this winter. Milk reminds us that hope has to mean action, not just words.
By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.
Since he’s not about to rescind the invitation, what happens next? For perspective, I asked Timothy McCarthy, a historian who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an unabashed Obama enthusiast who served on his campaign’s National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council. He responded via e-mail on Christmas Eve.
After noting that Warren’s role at the inauguration is, in the end, symbolic, McCarthy concluded that “it’s now time to move from symbol to substance.” This means Warren should “recant his previous statements about gays and lesbians, and start acting like a Christian.”
McCarthy added that it’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.” And “for LGBT folks to choose their battles wisely, to judge Obama on the content of his policy-making, not on the character of his ministers.”
Amen. Here’s to humility and equanimity everywhere in America, starting at the top, as we negotiate the fierce rapids of change awaiting us in the New Year.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Canadian Border Patrol
On Christmas, my nephew showed me the laughter that is Canadian Border Patrol:
Best of 2008!
It is time to vote for your favorite participant in the Why Do I Write series as well as the Sunday Eye Candy series.
You will find a poll for each series on the left of the blog.
Vote!
You will find a poll for each series on the left of the blog.
Vote!
Friday, December 26, 2008
RIP: Harold & Eartha
LUST
There is a dark sound
Which grows on the hill
You turn from the light
Which lights the black wall.
Black shadows are running
Across the pink hill
They grin as they sweat
They beat the black bell.
You suck the wet light
Flooding the cell
And smell the lust of the lusty
Flicking its tail.
For the lust of the lusty
Throws a dark sound on the wall
And the lust of the lusty
- its sweet black will -
Is caressing you still.
~ Harold Pinter
&
Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter
Articles:
Eartha Kitt, sultry 'Santa Baby' singer, dies
The Purrrfect Diva
British Playwright Harold Pinter, 78
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Holidays!
The master in the art of living makes little distinction
between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure,
his mind and his body, his information and his recreation,
his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which.
He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does,
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him he's always doing both.
~ James A. Michener
Merry Christmas!
Happy Hanukkah!
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas: "Taking Down the Tree" by Jane Kenyon
Taking Down the Tree
"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.
The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.
With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.
By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.
~ Jane Kenyon
"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.
The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.
With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.
By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.
~ Jane Kenyon
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
"Where Are The Stars Pristine" by Alice Fulton
Where Are The Stars Pristine
Everyone's spending Christmas Eve adrift
in the corporal skirmish, mixing
up the darks with the lights, fending
with elbows and dirty
looks. Wet wool and down
crowd the air. Where are the stars, pristine
as great ideas? Behind clouds
the heavens saturate
with luminous dust, shuttles wearing halos
of earthdirt, light pollution
from jets fired to keep things
on course. Boys rickrack a ball off
floor and ceiling past the table
tree bubbling with giveaway
ornaments from Burger King and lights
that manage an occasional
lackadaisical flash. Showstoppers: everyone
looks every time and keeps looking
to make sure it happened.
The double frontloaders are going
like abstract TVs. And the program is important:
all about the boggling sullied
lives we'd like to hide.
But this is no place
to do so, where known
and unknown perverts come
to pirate underpants and the innocent
clutch their Cheer and Shout.
The rules are posted: only the toughest
habiliments, the superego
of raiment can take such agitation.
And only the poor are invited to endure
the sneezy powders and clean resentment.
Imagine a museum installation—
200 hypnotic washers stuffed with somersaulting
cloth. Critics could rise to the challenge,
their statements settling like coats
of gold and silver
chain mail over each machine:
"These Speed Queen pieces thrust ahead of art-
for-art's sake to confront us
with a realism of socio-political
magnitude. The vortex-like movement
of pattern, color, and texture infuses
these works with an abundance of unconscious
bliss. The soft forms
circulate with vigor
across the screens. The viewer
is not privy
to the cause of dirt
though one is witness to the dirt's
ablutions. The point is
we are not impeccable."
Everyone would be happy
to know that! And so we're forced to
scoop and pour
a fine white empathy over
the hairy flannels, snaggy nylons,
the glass front that gives
forth this light
industry, the silly tree
and jingles about blue and white
Christmases, chestnuts, sleighbells,
just as snow settles
on every unsequestered thing:
from blistered gum -
ball machines, clumsy bumpers,
crepuscular theaters with sticky floors,
to ramshackle mansions
choked with smiling
china animals where light shakes itself out
from TVs and old women
frail as walking sticks
sweep their stoops at eight a.m.
Just as snow makes the less than impeccable
classical, stroking the merely
drab or passing, quickly or slowly,
so we can count only on its
leaving, teaching
liquidity
to what seems solid.
Everyone's spending Christmas Eve adrift
in the corporal skirmish, mixing
up the darks with the lights, fending
with elbows and dirty
looks. Wet wool and down
crowd the air. Where are the stars, pristine
as great ideas? Behind clouds
the heavens saturate
with luminous dust, shuttles wearing halos
of earthdirt, light pollution
from jets fired to keep things
on course. Boys rickrack a ball off
floor and ceiling past the table
tree bubbling with giveaway
ornaments from Burger King and lights
that manage an occasional
lackadaisical flash. Showstoppers: everyone
looks every time and keeps looking
to make sure it happened.
The double frontloaders are going
like abstract TVs. And the program is important:
all about the boggling sullied
lives we'd like to hide.
But this is no place
to do so, where known
and unknown perverts come
to pirate underpants and the innocent
clutch their Cheer and Shout.
The rules are posted: only the toughest
habiliments, the superego
of raiment can take such agitation.
And only the poor are invited to endure
the sneezy powders and clean resentment.
Imagine a museum installation—
200 hypnotic washers stuffed with somersaulting
cloth. Critics could rise to the challenge,
their statements settling like coats
of gold and silver
chain mail over each machine:
"These Speed Queen pieces thrust ahead of art-
for-art's sake to confront us
with a realism of socio-political
magnitude. The vortex-like movement
of pattern, color, and texture infuses
these works with an abundance of unconscious
bliss. The soft forms
circulate with vigor
across the screens. The viewer
is not privy
to the cause of dirt
though one is witness to the dirt's
ablutions. The point is
we are not impeccable."
Everyone would be happy
to know that! And so we're forced to
scoop and pour
a fine white empathy over
the hairy flannels, snaggy nylons,
the glass front that gives
forth this light
industry, the silly tree
and jingles about blue and white
Christmases, chestnuts, sleighbells,
just as snow settles
on every unsequestered thing:
from blistered gum -
ball machines, clumsy bumpers,
crepuscular theaters with sticky floors,
to ramshackle mansions
choked with smiling
china animals where light shakes itself out
from TVs and old women
frail as walking sticks
sweep their stoops at eight a.m.
Just as snow makes the less than impeccable
classical, stroking the merely
drab or passing, quickly or slowly,
so we can count only on its
leaving, teaching
liquidity
to what seems solid.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Bryan Thomas for DNA's Mate of the Year
The sexy specimen of man you see above is Bryan Thomas, I am proud to say he was Sunday Eye Candy back in May of this year
Bryan needs our help!
Ladies, no. Bryan doesn't need a back rub. Gays, no. Put your shower cap back because Bryan doesn't need his back washed. Bryan can use our vote since he is up for DNA's Mate of the Year. Go ahead, lick your computer screen... touch yourself.. do whatever you need to do as long as you click here and vote!
*Note* You can vote once every 24 hours!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Secrets to Brighter, Whiter Teeth
Some people still prefer the age-old home remedy of baking soda and a toothbrush to gently whiten teeth at home. Also, some foods such as celery, apples, pears and carrots trigger lots of saliva -- which helps to scrub away stains on your teeth. Chewing sugarless gum also triggers saliva, which help eliminate teeth stains. A bonus from all that saliva: It neutralizes acid that causes tooth decay. With teeth, more saliva is better all around.Sunday, December 21, 2008
LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Jeremy Glazier
Here is another poem nominated from Limp Wrist:
Circuit Party
Beautiful boys with glistening skin,
their eyes aglaze with ecstasy,
wait for the night to come full circuit,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm.
If their eyes are aglaze with ecstasy,
their hearts and minds are ablaze with love,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm
they won't remember in the morning.
Their hearts and minds indeed blaze with love,
or what they think of as love.
But they won't remember in the morning
the things they whisper to one another.
What they think of as love
is the pulse they feel beneath the music.
The things they whisper to one another
on the dance floor shimmer just out of reach.
What is that pulse they feel beneath the music?
Something primitive, that keeps them moving.
On the dance floor, shimmering just out of reach,
they somehow understand what is to come.
Something primitive keeps us moving,
like beautiful boys with glistening skin.
Somehow we too understand what is. Come.
Wait for the night to come full circuit.
~ Jeremy Glazier
Circuit Party
Beautiful boys with glistening skin,
their eyes aglaze with ecstasy,
wait for the night to come full circuit,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm.
If their eyes are aglaze with ecstasy,
their hearts and minds are ablaze with love,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm
they won't remember in the morning.
Their hearts and minds indeed blaze with love,
or what they think of as love.
But they won't remember in the morning
the things they whisper to one another.
What they think of as love
is the pulse they feel beneath the music.
The things they whisper to one another
on the dance floor shimmer just out of reach.
What is that pulse they feel beneath the music?
Something primitive, that keeps them moving.
On the dance floor, shimmering just out of reach,
they somehow understand what is to come.
Something primitive keeps us moving,
like beautiful boys with glistening skin.
Somehow we too understand what is. Come.
Wait for the night to come full circuit.
~ Jeremy Glazier
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Woman Gang-Raped in East Bay
I was browsing MSNBC for an article on Palin's daughter's soon to be mom-in-law being busted on drug charges when I came across an article on a lesbian who was gang-raped in East Bay. (Click here for the article.)
Whenever I read or hear the word rape I become nauseated. I read the article and cried. My heart and soul go out to this victim.
I want to hold her hand.
I want to hug her and tell she isn't alone.
I want to tell her it will be OK, but I know it will be a long time before it will be OK. And, even when you start to think it is OK, that you dealt with most of the demons, something small will happen that makes you realize you haven't.
I want to tell here there will be times of sadness, anger, and depression. Do not bottle them. Let them out.
I want to tell her there will be nightmares. There will be nights that she won't want to go to sleep because sleep is the one place you think you can escape, so be prepared.
I want to tell her to never think: "What could I have done differently?" Those words formed together to make that sentence have no place in her mind because it implies she had control, and she didn't. She was was robbed of control among other things.
And, when the time comes, and it might be years, I beg her to speak out because she will be able to help others who've been in her shoes.
I want to end with a poem I wrote last week. I'll probably end up taking the poem down in a few days, or maybe I'll leave it. Who cares if an editor doesn't want it because it was in my blog. This issue is bigger than publication.
LAW & ORDER: SVU
I like to see the the rapist slammed
against the interrogation room wall,
to stand before the judge
and receive a hefty sentence.
My thoughts transcend the show:
Will the rapist be raped in prison?
Will he finally know how it hurts?
I watch to see the bad guy persecuted,
not for the episodes with open endings,
that's how it happened with me.
Whenever I read or hear the word rape I become nauseated. I read the article and cried. My heart and soul go out to this victim.
I want to hold her hand.
I want to hug her and tell she isn't alone.
I want to tell her it will be OK, but I know it will be a long time before it will be OK. And, even when you start to think it is OK, that you dealt with most of the demons, something small will happen that makes you realize you haven't.
I want to tell here there will be times of sadness, anger, and depression. Do not bottle them. Let them out.
I want to tell her there will be nightmares. There will be nights that she won't want to go to sleep because sleep is the one place you think you can escape, so be prepared.
I want to tell her to never think: "What could I have done differently?" Those words formed together to make that sentence have no place in her mind because it implies she had control, and she didn't. She was was robbed of control among other things.
And, when the time comes, and it might be years, I beg her to speak out because she will be able to help others who've been in her shoes.
I want to end with a poem I wrote last week. I'll probably end up taking the poem down in a few days, or maybe I'll leave it. Who cares if an editor doesn't want it because it was in my blog. This issue is bigger than publication.
LAW & ORDER: SVU
I like to see the the rapist slammed
against the interrogation room wall,
to stand before the judge
and receive a hefty sentence.
My thoughts transcend the show:
Will the rapist be raped in prison?
Will he finally know how it hurts?
I watch to see the bad guy persecuted,
not for the episodes with open endings,
that's how it happened with me.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Kurt Brown
Here is another poem nominated from Limp Wrist:
APOLOGY FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD
It was not my fault. I had no say in the matter. From the beginning, my parents conspired to
subvert my ambition to be a poet: "No juicy material for him," they agreed. Like Roberto
Benigni's son in "Life is Beautiful", or little Gautama Buddha safe in the enclosure of his father's
castle walls, all ugliness and pain were kept from me. Death and the ephemeral were not my
playmates. When a puppy died, or a toy lay broken on the living room floor, my eyes were
blindfolded and I was whisked away and told that all would be well. And when the blindfold
was removed: it was! There stood a new puppy, and a shining toy, resurrected and whole, as
good as the original. Even better. I thought it was the original, that all things healed themselves
instantly, and from within. It was a joyous world, Eden without sin, without a fall, and I—its
little Adam-strutting around ignorant of apples, and sexless.
There were no clocks in my childhood, and mirrors were banished. In autumn, I was kept
indoors. When I went outside, it was always summer. The sun stood in the middle of the sky, and
before it went down I was brought back inside where lights burned merrily. And when I slept,
even my dreams were monitored, so when I whimpered or cried out someone caressed my brow
and woke me, only to rock me back to sleep again, singing. What had I to dream about! Morning
was a flood of light in which I basked, and I was fed with utensils made of pure gold. This could
go on forever, without tears or blood.
And then suddenly one day-when no one was looking-I wrote my first poem.
~Kurt Brown
APOLOGY FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD
It was not my fault. I had no say in the matter. From the beginning, my parents conspired to
subvert my ambition to be a poet: "No juicy material for him," they agreed. Like Roberto
Benigni's son in "Life is Beautiful", or little Gautama Buddha safe in the enclosure of his father's
castle walls, all ugliness and pain were kept from me. Death and the ephemeral were not my
playmates. When a puppy died, or a toy lay broken on the living room floor, my eyes were
blindfolded and I was whisked away and told that all would be well. And when the blindfold
was removed: it was! There stood a new puppy, and a shining toy, resurrected and whole, as
good as the original. Even better. I thought it was the original, that all things healed themselves
instantly, and from within. It was a joyous world, Eden without sin, without a fall, and I—its
little Adam-strutting around ignorant of apples, and sexless.
There were no clocks in my childhood, and mirrors were banished. In autumn, I was kept
indoors. When I went outside, it was always summer. The sun stood in the middle of the sky, and
before it went down I was brought back inside where lights burned merrily. And when I slept,
even my dreams were monitored, so when I whimpered or cried out someone caressed my brow
and woke me, only to rock me back to sleep again, singing. What had I to dream about! Morning
was a flood of light in which I basked, and I was fed with utensils made of pure gold. This could
go on forever, without tears or blood.
And then suddenly one day-when no one was looking-I wrote my first poem.
~Kurt Brown
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Jessica Hand
Over the next few weeks, I am going to post the poems from Limp Wrist that have been nominated for the Pushcart.
Here is the first I will share:
ODE TO MY PENTECOSTAL RIGHT ARM
The live wire writhed: a Pentecostal copperhead
sinking fangs into my ulnar nerve—dendrites convulsed
in the Spirit and passed out, synapses crashed
like stalactites loosened from God's cavernous mouth,
and for the first genuine time I spoke in another tongue.
Can I get an amen? Can I get a man who doesn't mind
my arm throwing spaghetti and calling for revival?
My right arm contracts and gives birth to a new baby Jesus
once each minute, and He's got a holy set of lungs screaming.
This arm awakens and dances at night when He gathers
his loincloth for a jig. God is boogie-woogie electric,
and my arm knows it, knows there's a pulsing, painful
purgatory, has met eternity and returned tap-dancing.
O, right arm, won't you tell me what you know?
My body's on fire, my body's one big coal bed
for God's enormous iron poker, but I can't see
past all the smoke. My stubborn mouth could never swallow
the embers of God's language. My pagan feet fire-walk,
my left arm makes the sign of the cross,
and the backs of my knees refuse to believe in anything
so my body becomes a war zone. Somewhere God
discos through the carnage, and all I can do is follow
when my right arm stiffens into a divining rod
and bows down.
~ Jessica Hand
Here is the first I will share:
ODE TO MY PENTECOSTAL RIGHT ARM
The live wire writhed: a Pentecostal copperhead
sinking fangs into my ulnar nerve—dendrites convulsed
in the Spirit and passed out, synapses crashed
like stalactites loosened from God's cavernous mouth,
and for the first genuine time I spoke in another tongue.
Can I get an amen? Can I get a man who doesn't mind
my arm throwing spaghetti and calling for revival?
My right arm contracts and gives birth to a new baby Jesus
once each minute, and He's got a holy set of lungs screaming.
This arm awakens and dances at night when He gathers
his loincloth for a jig. God is boogie-woogie electric,
and my arm knows it, knows there's a pulsing, painful
purgatory, has met eternity and returned tap-dancing.
O, right arm, won't you tell me what you know?
My body's on fire, my body's one big coal bed
for God's enormous iron poker, but I can't see
past all the smoke. My stubborn mouth could never swallow
the embers of God's language. My pagan feet fire-walk,
my left arm makes the sign of the cross,
and the backs of my knees refuse to believe in anything
so my body becomes a war zone. Somewhere God
discos through the carnage, and all I can do is follow
when my right arm stiffens into a divining rod
and bows down.
~ Jessica Hand
Thursday, December 11, 2008
People & Their Os
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Voting Starts on 12/8/08
The Atlanta Pride Committee wants feedback, so take a moment to vote on the theme for 2009 Atlanta Pride Festival. As seen above, your options:
Stonewall to Atlanta: Our Story Continues
Become The Impact
Pride Begins With You
I am casting my vote for Become The Impact because it is versatile (no jokes from the peanut gallery).
Become The Impact can be political-- write your elected officials, so they know how you feel about the issue. Or, simply make an impact by voting. It can be non-political--- Become the Impact by volunteering or making a donation to a nonprofit. Become the Impact by simply coming out to someone who has been in the dark about your sexual orientation. Become The Impact by recycling and/or buying green friendly products.
There so many ways we can Become The Impact.
****UPDATE-- Change in voting-- it will begin on 12/10/08.****
Duhamel in Ducts
Fathers
My father walks through the scrub, a shortcut, to get to Walmart
where he meets up with his friends for coffee on Friday afternoons.
He says teenagers are always hanging around back there, barbequing
something. I’m assuming my father has never smelled pot
and that’s what he’s smelling now, so I say, Dad, stick to the streets,
because I am afraid for him, even though these kids
are probably mellow from weed. My father, 80, says
there are too many zooming cars on the road, and besides,
he likes the pond, the wildflowers that will probably be gone
when the plaza expands to a Super Walmart next year.
I want to make sure the teenagers don’t rob my father for his two dollars,
the way they robbed my father-in-law right in the Albertson’s bathroom,
pushing him into the white tiled wall while he was at the urinal,
then fleeing with his wallet. It took my father-in-law a long time to get up
and regain his balance. It took him a long time to replace
his credit cards and ID. He was 90 by then. My husband said,
Can’t you catch these kids on the surveillance camera?
The manager was lazy and said the supermarket wasn’t responsible.
My husband said, No one is saying the supermarket is responsible—
we just want an arrest so these kids can’t mug anyone else.
My father-in-law filled out a police report,
his provisions idle in the silver cart.
When the supermarket wanted my father to retire,
they sent him to get the carts in the rain. Though there was a union
to protect wages, employees had no fixed assignments.
Having meat men suddenly clean bathrooms or produce men
suddenly wash floors was one way management
could humiliate older workers enough to make them leave.
A grown man doing the work a teenager could.
A grown man working 40 hours a week, eating up
the supermarket’s profits with his benefits. A teenager was warm inside,
part-time, bagging, flirting with the cashier, maybe laughing
at my father because my father wasn’t the teenager’s father.
That would have been a different story all together.
~ Denise Duhamel, taken from Ducts
Don't forget you can win an autographed copy of Denise's new book, KA-CHING!, which is due out spring '09. Click here for the details.
My father walks through the scrub, a shortcut, to get to Walmart
where he meets up with his friends for coffee on Friday afternoons.
He says teenagers are always hanging around back there, barbequing
something. I’m assuming my father has never smelled pot
and that’s what he’s smelling now, so I say, Dad, stick to the streets,
because I am afraid for him, even though these kids
are probably mellow from weed. My father, 80, says
there are too many zooming cars on the road, and besides,
he likes the pond, the wildflowers that will probably be gone
when the plaza expands to a Super Walmart next year.
I want to make sure the teenagers don’t rob my father for his two dollars,
the way they robbed my father-in-law right in the Albertson’s bathroom,
pushing him into the white tiled wall while he was at the urinal,
then fleeing with his wallet. It took my father-in-law a long time to get up
and regain his balance. It took him a long time to replace
his credit cards and ID. He was 90 by then. My husband said,
Can’t you catch these kids on the surveillance camera?
The manager was lazy and said the supermarket wasn’t responsible.
My husband said, No one is saying the supermarket is responsible—
we just want an arrest so these kids can’t mug anyone else.
My father-in-law filled out a police report,
his provisions idle in the silver cart.
When the supermarket wanted my father to retire,
they sent him to get the carts in the rain. Though there was a union
to protect wages, employees had no fixed assignments.
Having meat men suddenly clean bathrooms or produce men
suddenly wash floors was one way management
could humiliate older workers enough to make them leave.
A grown man doing the work a teenager could.
A grown man working 40 hours a week, eating up
the supermarket’s profits with his benefits. A teenager was warm inside,
part-time, bagging, flirting with the cashier, maybe laughing
at my father because my father wasn’t the teenager’s father.
That would have been a different story all together.
~ Denise Duhamel, taken from Ducts
Don't forget you can win an autographed copy of Denise's new book, KA-CHING!, which is due out spring '09. Click here for the details.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
WHY DO I WRITE ~ Charles Jensen
1. What do I write?
I tend to write poems, although what is and isn’t a poem is often a source of rich inner monologue for me. I don’t consider most writing to be poetry, and I don’t even consider all of what I write to be poetry. In some ways, I continue writing in search of a definition of what exactly it is I’m writing. Is it prose? Is it nonfiction? Is it subjective? Is it genre? Does a line break make it a poem?
2. Who do I write?
I once admitted that although my work tends to be about other people (real or imagined), it is often also as much about my life or my experience as it is theirs. Or, to be glib, poetry is a kind of drag. I wear the clothes, hair, and make up of various voices and I mouth their lines as if they were my own. And sometimes, we’re saying the same things.
3. Where do I write?
I write mostly hunched over at my desk. When my desk had its own room, I wrote often. When my desk had its own loft in a light-filled apartment, I wrote constantly. When my desk shares room with a Nintendo (aka “Nofriendo”), a television, a cable box, and an internet connection, it feels neglected. I am only human.
I have also written an entire sequence of poems in bed. They were about a murder. These things are unrelated. For that reason, where I write rarely influences what I write or who it’s about.
In my college years, I filled about seven blank notebooks with notes and poems while sitting in a coffee shop smoking cigarette after cigarette, drinking mochas—I truly was that guy.
4. When do I write?
Not often enough! My current circumstances should allow for some forgiveness, however. For instance, I am writing right now. This counts for something. I attempt to blog every day. Creative work, though, is more fleeting of late, although I do tend to write in spurts rather than an even smattering of work over time. Once an obsession, a voice, an imagining captures me (or, as I like to suggest, chooses me), I’ll write poem upon poem until I’ve exhausted all the fuel. And then the quiet time returns, when I’m doing the other work of the writer: living. And sometimes reading.
5. How do I write?
I like to take Aaron Shurin’s advice: “Get out of the way.” I try to let the poem do its business without much interference or anticipation from me. Later, I’ll come in with my delete key and my nimble fingers and I’ll begin shaping the poem into where I think it should be headed. I edit primarily by subtraction.
6. Why do I write?
In other lives and careers, I learned that forming a question with the word “Why” puts the receiver on the defensive because it demands justification. For that reason, when you argue with your lover, you should phrase things with “How come” instead; it’s less confrontational. Dustin, if you’re seeking my justification for writing, I simply don’t have one. If you are asking a variation of this: what prompts me to write, what is my writing goal, who am I trying to please? Those questions are answerable. If there’s a hope for why I write, it’s simply this: I believe I have the potential to write something in a unique way that will, ultimately, transform my reader somehow. It doesn’t happen every time. And I’ll feel good if it even happens once. I keep writing.
All Kinds of Stars ~ Prop 8 The Musical
Yesterday, after discovering Prop 8 The Musical from the blog of the delightful Christopher Hennessy, I quickly posted it to my Facebook page. Now, it is time to bring to my blog. Christopher, you're my hero for exposing me to this video:
Kathy Najimy + Allison Janney + Jennifer Lewis + Margaret Cho = One of my gay dreams.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Fundraising Announcement & The Tree
Before I write about the night I want to make an announcement. From 12/5/08 to 12/31/08, I am going to donate $1 from every "O" bumper sticker purchased directly from me to the Atlanta Pride Committee. Buy a stocking stuffer and help Atlanta Pride at the same time. This is definitely a win-win situation.
Tonight was the annual lighting of the LGBT Christmas Tree at Outwrite Bookstore and Coffee House, which is a fundraiser for the Atlanta Pride Committee. I want to give a huge thank you to Philip, the owner of the fagulous Outwrite. Philip does so much for the Atlanta LGBT community, so I hope the Atlanta LGBT community will remember Outwrite when it comes time to Christmas shop. Keep your eyes open over the next week or so because Outwrite is going to have a fan page coming soon!
There were great performances from Our Song and the Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus. And, Wild Cherry Sucrets in the form of Tony was an entertaining MC for the night. It was all around good times. Thanks to everyone who attended. If you didn't attend, don't worry because you can attend next year.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Meryl Streep + DOUBT = Oscar
God, I'm falling in love with Meryl Streep all over again. I can't wait for Doubt to come out. I'm arranging a Gaggle (Gaggle = Group of Gays) to watch the movie and have a cocktail after in celebration of what I know is going to be a powerful and riveting performance by Streep. Email me if you want in---yes, a Gaggle can include heterosexuals. We need token heteros.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Marie Howe in Honor of World AIDS Day
In honor of World AIDS Day:
The Last Time
The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward
and took my hands in his hands and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.
And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don't.
And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.
And he said, No, I mean know that you are.
Marie Howe
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