We've finally got there. Anyone can be a TV commentator. It might be on YouTube or their own website or just a low resolution video attached to an email but EVERYONE can be a commentator on TV!!! You don't need an education. As a matter of fact that might be a hindrance. If you do have an education you should ignore it. Especially if you're a baby boomer. Forget all you've learned from living through Viet Nam, race relations, the peace movement, Watergate, women's liberation or Woodstock. Instead plant your head firmly up your ass and then try to talk. What comes out will be crap but that is evidently what advertisers (especially heterosexual males with ED) want to associate themselves with so you will likely succeed!!!
Ignorance now is truth. What you don't know should not intimidate your right to free speech. Go ahead and talk. Make it up as you go along. Go off on tangents and never return to the point you started. Just yak and whatever you say will become the new truth and that will go viral.
What a heady time for stupid people. Finally they are getting compensated for their lack of education and unwillingness to work. It's almost a miracle that so few with so limited an idea of humanity should lead a humanity that is losing its humanity.
Glen Beck says the President of the United States is a racist. Who knew? Rick Sanchez on CNN sent his intrepid reporter to the Abbey in West Hollywood when Prop 8 was overturned. You don't know what the Abbey is? She's our favorite character on NCIS!!! And how about when a little white girl goes missing? Will we ever get enough coverage? Not possible.
On Cable News you can't overreact to a story. Look into the camera and say, "Breaking News!!" and then say, "Let's check in and see if there's is still oil in the Gulf." There was oil in the Gulf BEFORE the spill. You can't go wrong! Go with the visceral images and loop those image again and again and bring in anybody who has ever heard about water or oil and talk endlessly over the images. We never will know when the spill in the Gulf is over. Great job!!!
News is now a montage of images both real and real looking and it doesn't matter which is which. Whatever gets you ratings is what's important. Go with you gut. The bigger the better. Addle your brain with drugs and alcohol. Just keep going like an Energizer bunny!! But don't use lithium!!! It could bring you down man.
I want to join in!!! I have an education (supposedly) but its mostly in Theatre so it was always suspect as to its real world worthiness. But I do have some improv skills and watching the terrific troupe of improv artists/anchors in cable news (with special props to Fox News) and listening to them on talk radio I am empowered to try this myself.
I am empowered but I just don't have the balls (literally) to do it. I'm still in awe of the great pretenders and I'm not sure I could keep bearing false witness with such fidelity. I know someone would call me out and I would crumble. These people don't!! If anything they get more bold and make up new stuff. My admiration for them is without reason. It just feels wrong and I know then its must be inequitable.
Keep it up you morons of the media. Whether your ideology is left or right or nowhere because to have principles is just too confusing, keep up your asinine dialogues and monologues. Mutual masturbation is always fun for someone.
It's time. I'm nearing my 60th year and I selfishly want something to happen before I...well am 60. That will July 25, 2012. Actually that would be a great day for it to happen. I mean it's time now but if he can't do it till then that would be okay. No it wouldn't!!! It needs to be said NOW! No more waiting! No more capitulating! No more reaching out to others to understand the reality that has been with us since the beginning of existence! What is it? What is so important that it can't wait one more day?
I want the President of the United States to say that he
supports gay marriage.
Today would be nice during his weekly YouTube address. It's in the news this week. Yeah today would be perfect.
Political suicide you say? Well his enemies want him dead anyway. What has he got to lose? And tell me what have the Democrats got to lose? Right now they can't take any of the credit for anything good that has happened in the last two years and are seen as responsible for anything bad. You want people to get up in your grill about stuff you didn't do or do you want to change the conversation?
If President Obama made that statement, I believe it would define and galvanize the Democratic party. It would show to the rest of the nation and the world that they are the party of true change. Can you imagine the lift it would bring? The Democrats wouldn't be afraid of anything!!!
Is this dangerous? Damn straight it is. People will want to kill the idea...Literally!! They've been trying to deny and kill gender variance for ten thousand years and we're still HERE!!!!!! But what was it, Mr. President, you said in Atlanta this week?
"And I do want to point out, when you get in your car, when you go forward, what do you do? You put it in “D.” When you want to go back, what do you do? You put it in “R.” "
Well put it in D!!! You stating that you unequivocally support gay marriage will move us forward. We need to hear a President, not a pretender to the Presidency but the actual President say those words.
And I think he wants to do it!
His stand on Prop 8 doesn't make any sense. It's divisive? That's why he opposes it? There's more to it than that. He can't possibly be opposed to gay marriage. I'm afraid that the reality is that he is looking at it politically and it doesn't seem to be the right time because there are so many people still opposed on MORAL grounds.
Supporting Equality has been and always will be the moral high ground.
The President and the Democrats should run to it while they still can get in front of it. Gay marriage in the United States will be a reality very soon because it is just and it is in our DNA as Americans to ultimately turn to what is just.
Now this is selfish on my part. I know I'm going to die someday because I already have. On the 30th of December in 2007 I had a massive coronary and it's a miracle that I am still here and can look back at the last two and a half years and marvel at what has happened in my life. If I had died that day, I wouldn't have been backstage at the Kodak when Senators Clinton and Obama walked in together for the California Democrat Debate. I wouldn't have seen Senator Obama go on to become President. I wouldn't have seen the Inauguration. I wouldn't have seen the Steelers win another Superbowl in 2009 and then the SAINTS, the SAINTS!!!! win in 2010! And I wouldn't have been standing in the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood, California when it was announced that Prop 8 had been overturned by a very conservative judge. Talk about miracles!
Make one more miracle happen Mr. President. Say "I support gay marriage." It's time.
It's so unusual to have a smart and moral person as the President. In my lifetime I haven't seen the like. We have had Presidents who have come from humble beginnings and have achieved greatness. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton certainly would come to mind. While both were brilliant they were duplicitous and ultimately their Presidencies suffered as did the nation. So we looked for persons who were humble and just like us or could pretend that they were President better than anyone finally culminating in last President who would've had trouble being a good Congressman. From Texas no less.
These silent raids of audits on employers of illegal aliens is just the latest example of the way this guy works. Quiet and smart. While the rest of the US politicians are in a stranglehold with one another and the pundits just sit on TV and analyze or I mean jack off, he is leading us to the promised land. But are we going to shut up our fucking mouths (and I'm talking to you liberals) or are we going to FUCKING HELP????!!!! It's bad enough that racists and other jack offs are going at him! Why are you doing the same??!!! And if you think your disgruntledness is more valid because you voted for him thing again.
Did you not remember who we had as our last President and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that...!!!! I sure as fuck do and I'm so fucking sick of hearing about the how GAY community is not getting everything they were promised and that jobs that are getting created aren't the right kind of jobs and the oil oh the oil in the gulf and all the other bullshit that everyone fixates on. Hell Nigeria has had the same problem that the Gulf is having for years. Their costal waters are as dead as the Dead Sea but no one is going to help them because WE can't give up our cars and our demand for all things petroleum!!! Even when it may cause the unwanted suffering of millions both here and abroad we can't be bothered. And Wayne LaPierre don't forget your fucking gun when you go this Sunday CHURCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That gun in church nonsense begs the question, "WHAT THE FUCK WOULD JESUS DO???"
But I digress...
But before I get back on track let me just say this. I'm especially bothered by the GAY leadership of our nation right now. There has been so much change for the good that has happened in the last 18 months for our community and you're bitching about that its not fast enough. How much got done say in the last, oh I don't know, ten thousand years?!!! And Hey GAY PEOPLE we in the trans community, you remember us, are used to waiting like our whole fucking lives to be whole. With all due respect you tell people your gay and you got a lot of shit ahead of you but when we tell people we're trans we're just getting started!!!
I could list President Obama's accomplishments but the biggest one is he has started real change. Real change like Health Care and Financial Reform and getting out of these Wars and stopping DADT and on and on so GET OFF OBAMA'S BACK!!!! He's trying like hell to do the right thing now we got it FINISH it. We all need to be quiet and smart. And that goes for me. So I'll shut up now and put away the dishes and WALK to church on Sunday!!
Hero was his name. I know it usually a girl's name but my Dad had named the mangy black cur who was my first dog and my first real friend Hero. We lived in northern suburbs of Indianapolis. It was not very populated when we first moved out there as a matter of fact we were in the only home built. Over the next few years home’s were built and were always immediately occupied and pretty soon there was a whole neighborhood around us. So Hero who moved with us from my Grandparent's was the defacto ruler of all dogs by claiming every bush and tree before other dogs with pedigrees and attitude even got their chance to make their mark. Hero ran about the neighborhood free. He accompanied my brother when he had a short lived paper route and everyone got to know the super sweet, tail constantly wagging pooch. He was as much the neighborhood's dog as he was ours.
By the time I was his companion as I traveled along on my bike to see the sights of our neighborhood, Ralston Heights, he had seen it all before. He was getting up in years and now was content to hanging around the house and survey his survey his kingdom from the stoop that led to the back of our house. That’s where you find him usually sleeping more and more as old age was setting upon him.
On July Fourth in 1964 he had reached 16 years of age and though he was an American dog he had never liked the loud noises of Independence Day. The neighborhood sounds of exploding cherry bombs, firecrackers, roman candle and their like always upset him. But the fireworks we're quite legal for adults to purchase and would find themselves in the hands of their children every fourth. That evening we went to a fireworks display at Riverside Park. We left Hero alone in the backyard on the stoop that led to our back room and settled down to a comfortable nap as he awaited his pack’s return.
When we returned home from a totally lame fireworks display, Hero was not around the house and my Mother immediately worried about him. My Dad assured her and me that we would find him lying on the stoop that led to our back room in the back yard when we awoke. He had done this kind of thing for years and there was reason to think otherwise.
The next morning, we all awoke to a banging on our front door. My Father answered it and talked with one of our neighbors for a brief bit and then turned to us with devastating news. Out on the big road that led to our neighborhood there was the body of dog lying on the roadside. My Mother stated to cry and so did I as Dad got in the car and traveled out to see if it was our Hero.
In what seemed like forever Dad returned shortly. He left the car in the driveway which was unusual because he always pulled it into the garage. He got out of the car and slowly walked up to his sobbing family. He told us that he had found Hero on the Big road and he was dead presumably hit by a vehicle. He then told us that Hero was lying in a blanket in the back seat of our car. I wanted to see him but Dad would not let me and my Mother held me back. I turned into my Mother’s arms and dissolved into heaving tears. Dad took Hero to the vet who would take care of Hero's final arrangements.
My Mom stayed at home with her devastated little child. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't believe how sudden life could be taken away. I've never been able to wrap my head around that to this day. I accept it now but it still leaves me utterly helpless at the capriciousness of death.
Over the next few days, we pieced together the last few hours of Hero's life. After we left to watch the fireworks, a group of boys came by our yard where Hero was lying peacefully on the stoop to back room of the house. They were armed with various LEGAL fireworks mentioned before, lit a few and threw them at our defenseless dog. Hero sought shelter but there was none to be found in the yard and so he bolted out of our yard. He ran through our neighborhood pursued by the pack of boys maintaining their assault on him. He ran out of the safety of neighborhood and onto to the unfamiliar Big Road and was hit by some vehicle and was probably killed instantly. We got this account from all our passive neighbors as they watched the tragic story unfold. In all fairness to them, Hero was a street wise dog and all thought he would eventually evade his torturers. But Hero was old and arthritic and could no longer make the quick turns and have sudden bursts of speed that had been his legend. His fate was sealed when he left our yard.
I wanted to post this today because this is the date I learned of the news. Since that day, the July 4th weekend, no matter what I do, has always been tinged with melancholy as I remember my fallen friend. Sure he was just a dog but to me he was my first and bestest friend.
It was concluded by many that the boys had spooked him and Hero had run away in fear. I can't imagine my loyal friend ever doing that. Instead I always like to remember him leading the danger away from his pack and our home and then tragically given his life for us. After all, his name was Hero.
My spouse and I are going Metro!!! Our carbon footprint has just gone down considerably because we gave up our car and we're walking or taking mass transit to get to wherever we have to get too. It's so liberating not to have that damn Prius anymore. No it really is. We didn't really want to give it up but sometimes you have to do what's best for yourself and the world. Okay we do care about the world but we had to give up the Prius regardless. It just so happens that Joy's (my spouse) work is right on a bus route and so is our apartment. So we could give up the Prius and she could keep her job and I can get to my training and job interviews.
The main reason we gave up the car was that quite suddenly my unemployment stopped. I came to find out that I was one of the million plus people who were being funded by the federal government. With the Senate unable to pass the new funding suddenly it was gone. Such is life. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else but the United States and we don't have enough money to move anyway.
I'm not worried about us. We're blessed. My spouse is working and loves her job and so many of our friends are helping us get through this. I am concerned that a new mindset is taking shape in our national dialogue. Not helping the "least of these" is seen by many as the right thing to do. I believe its because the meaning of the "least of these" has changed. What use to mean a person or persons is now a number. 1.2 million unemployed. Numbers have no feelings so you can ignore them. When you're talking about 200 million plus in the work force and the number is less than half a per cent its easy to make a "tough" choice.
I believe that unemployment insurance is a good thing and I hope it will continue for those of us affected and those affected is a number that grows weekly. But it must be accompanied by training and that training should be free.
I waited a year for MS Office training at the Actors Fund. It's fantastic. It's a twelve week course that includes basic to third level training in Powerpoint, Word and Excel. I'm through Powerpoint and am not quite halfway through Word with five weeks of Excel training to follow. I've used these programs for years but I can't tell you how reaffirming and enlightening it is to finally have someone to show you how they really work. And the training is free. I had to wait a year because having a highly skilled experienced instructor teaching you a new skill set for free is really hard to find. It shouldn't be.
Members of Congress have also been saying that those of us on "unending" unemployment are unmotivated, lazy and one Freshman Democrat in Congress said that we're not looking for work because we're eating bonbons. For the record, I have not eaten one bonbon during my entire recent unemployment. If she had said that we're eating See's Dark Chocolate Truffles well... But it does make going through these days sweeter. Well bittersweeter.
In a recent article written by openly gay columnist Ramin Setoodeh, Mr. Setoodeh asked the question, "Can the public accept gay actors playing straight roles in theatre, television and film?" He pointed out the Tony nominated performance in Promises, Promises of Sean Hayes and several other actors on TV and film. Of Mr. Hayes's performance Mr Setoodeh wrote in part, "...his emotions often seem pale to the point of colorlessness...his relationship with his costar Kristin Chenoweth feels more like that of a younger brother than a would-be lover and protector."
Can the public accept gay actors playing straight roles in theatre, television and film? My answer is a resounding yes. Most gay people have been playing straight in a much tougher venue for several Milena. Life. I'm sure Mr. Setoodeh has played this intolerable role and pulled it off quite well. It is good to live in a time of revelation where many people can feel free to be themselves. The LGBT community is enjoying the option to live openly as a person with gender variance. I'm one of them as a transgendered person. But with that openness comes consequences. Not just the obvious backlash from the straight community often armed with their few Bible quotations but a more insidious and ultimately destructive force. The shame of an openly gay person being gay. I have seen this too many times in my life. When LGBT individuals stand up and let the world know they are gay, they may find support in the LGBT community and close friends, but that is simply not enough.
When you announce to the world such a statement you reject all you believed at one point to be true. You can only live the new lie for so long without it affecting you. You have stated that you are gay and proud to be so and I do not doubt for one moment that is what you believe. But loving yourself, after stating this to the world, is hard to do especially when you have been told all your life that you can't. Repeatedly I have seen gay people create a new persona that is not them but a protective shield from themselves. When you are in this place of self loathing and self detachment you may say and do things that are destructive not only to yourself but also many others as well. I fear that Ramin Setoodeh is suffering from this. He is lashing out not at Sean Hayes or any other gay actor but himself. Perez Hilton does the same. Their words and actions are the manifestation of their own denial that they don't love themselves because they are gay and other gay people should suffer the same false notion about themselves.
First of all, let's getting something straight and I know this to be true. God loves you as you are. You are created by God as you are and there is nothing that can change that. Accepting this is impossible for many gay people but it simply is the truth. Once you know that it is true it doesn't matter what anyone says or does. You are allowed finally to love yourself. Do you have to find a faith community to have this realization? No. But you do need some people that can represent all orientations, station and status to reflect this for you to see your own worth.
Gay actors playing straight roles has been going on for the same time as gay people playing straight in real life. I can't tell you how many thousands of times I have had to endure straight actors playing straight characters supposedly hopelessly and passionately in love with each other and simply failing with every syllable, kiss, embrace and other nuance of their lifeless interpretations. As a director I have likewise known that one or both actors are gay and they have been viscerally real in their portrayals as straight lovers. Perhaps the problem for Mr. Sedooteh is that knowing some performer is gay and not being able to allow himself to see them as anything but gay. That is sad but this will pass.
One of the magic qualities of performance, be it on stage, TV or film or whatever medium is coming, is that we as a audience watch it with our own prejudices and pre-concieved notions. That contributes to our enjoying or being repulsed by it. That's not going to go away or should it. But when we allow ourselves to suspend disbelief and let ourselves get lost in the fiction that enfolds in front of us we can be rewarded with enchantment. That alchemy is what elevates the rare performance to the exalted level of art.
At some point (perhaps a near future generation) a child will know from the very moment of their own consciousness that they are what God has made and it is good. We all will reflexively honor and respect this even in ourselves. We must hasten that day. Till then we need to get lost in the fiction.
