Go See This movie
Yesterday I went and saw Milk, the bio on slain San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk. Everyone should go see this movie (it opens most places on December 5th). It’s hopeful, and sad, and wonderful. I don’t know how I ever questioned Sean Penn being cast as Harvey Milk – I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t get an Oscar nod from this. But the entire movie is so well done; from what I remember of the documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, it’s pretty spot-on with accuracy. They also actually filmed this in the Castro, not just on the street but in the bars there. Robert will be the only one who gets this, but at one point, there is a scene where a character runs into the Glass Coffin, and I bust out laughing when I saw that tacky carpeting. Nobody else in the theater was laughing…
The only thing I wish was different about this movie? I wish they would have opened it about three months ago; I have no doubt that had people seen this, the outcome of Prop 8 may have turned out quite differently.
Oprah’s Giving Away Christmas Music!
For 48 hours from when the show aired (which was Wednesday, so it looks like you’ve got til Friday), you can download eight Christmas songs. Just go to her website and download away!
Also, Happy Thanksgiving! I’m watching the Macy’s Day Parade…the best part by far was when a float Rick Roll’d itself. Here’s a video: (updated for one of better quality!)
Can someone explain to me how Rick Astley hasn’t aged in the past twenty years?
Christmas is coming!
Okay, it’s a month to the day til Christmas Eve. Yes, I know: you’re supposed to wait until after Thanksgiving for all this. But I just can’t help it. I love the holidays! I loaded up the iPhone with Christmas tunes this weekend, and I’ve already pulled them out at work. I’m sure time will fly by between now and Christmas, so I’m going to enjoy it while I can!
As I’m writing this, I’ve decided to do weekly (at least) Christmas posts. To kick it off, please enjoy the following – it’s perhaps the greatest Christmas song ever (definitely the best Christmas duet)
Bookends of my trip to South Carolina
Sunday, Day 1: find out too late that the train doesn’t run very often on Sunday mornings to the Newark airport, and end up having to take a $75 cab out there; get to the hotel in Charleston and discover we have to waste 4 hours before we can check in because our room isn’t ready.
Wednesday, Day 4: Discover that I have lost my debit card; have to borrow cash from Sandy to get home; somehow, for the first time EVER, miss my stop on the subway and have to get off at the next one up and walk 11 blocks back down in 28 degree cold – because my unlimited metro card expired while I was gone, and I refused to pay $2 for the trip; and come home to discover that not only my kitchen but also my living room lights are burned out, and I can’t see a thing.
I’m glad to be home, though I would love to crawl into bed and not leave for a day or so.
Conferencing in South Carolina
I’m with Sandy at a Blackbaud Conference in Charleston, South Carolina. (note: Blackbaud is the company that makes the database we use to track our donors where I work, and part of Sandy and my job is to teach our fundraising staff how to use the database.)
So far, it’s been alright. Charleston is apparently a big tourist city, but I don’t get it. There’s really not much to do here, and the city isn’t all that beautiful (if you really need to vacation in the Carolinas, I suggest Charlotte). There’s a few shops, yes, but…eh. It’s definitely the Deep South, though…just this morning we were driving to the conference and heard the DJs on the radio telling a racist joke involving an Indian and Smallpox…sigh.
The only other thing to note is me whacking myself in the nose with the heavy part of my laptop charger. It’s not really worth taking the time trying to explain how that happened…but it did, and we needed to put something cold on it right away, just in case. Since we’re in a hotel we didn’t have ice…and then Sandy had this brilliant idea…
Please note: I'm endorsing no particular brand of soda for icing one's nose
You have to give Sandy credit: she’s creative in a pinch!
One Week, Two Protests
As [I would all hope] you know by now, California passed Prop 8 (aka the Take Away 18,000 Persons’ Marriage Proposition). Personally, I thought the uproar was a little late, seeing that, before November 4, 27 states had already passed anti-gay marriage amendments (Oklahoma, for the record, passed their’s in 2004). Where was the outrage for all that? However, I do get why California’s was a big deal. One: it was a vote that actually took rights away from people – bad stuff. Two: as someone recently put it, “As goes California, so goes the rest of the country”. The important thing is, though, that this vote lit a fire under people’s butts. All of a sudden, the quote-unquote Gay Community recognized that it was getting shat upon, and decided that maybe it was time to stop settling for second-class status.
So, with this newfound motivation, protests began. Here in New York, there were two biggies. The first was geared towards the Mormon Church. No, it was not against the Mormon’s beliefs. It was against the fact that Mormons from all over the country funded about $20,000,000.00 towards the “Yes On Prop 8” campaign (about half of its total funding). This involved the LDS prophets telling the members to give money to that campaign. And yet the Mormons still have their tax-exempt status…not cool. Plus, one person’s religious beliefs should not dictate the personal life of another individual. Period.
So the rally was on a Wednesday night. We met at the big Mormon Temple on West 65th, and then (either impromptu or not, I’m not sure) we all marched down Broadway to Columbus Circle, waving signs and chanting. It was my first protest, and I have to say – it was pretty great! And it was completely peaceful; honestly, the vibe was pretty upbeat. I think everyone was just happy to be out and feeling like they were doing something.
I took photos of the event, thanks to my handy-dandy iPhone…
My fellow protesters: Joleen, Leslie, and Brent
A fraction of the 10,000+ strong crowd
Gays: fighting oppression with wit since 1969
Another sign
*In case you can’t read them, the signs above say “Don’t Get Your ‘Temple Garments’ in a Bunch, I Just Want My Civil Rights!” and “Marry Me Now and U Can Baptize Me When I’m Dead” (and yes, the Mormons really do this – they’ve been posthumously baptizing those who died in the Holocaust). The best signs I didn’t get good photos of…one said, “Et Tu, Donny and Marie?”. The other said, “Legalize Marriage, Ban the Electric Slide”.
The following Saturday was the nationwide Join The Impact protest. Cities in every state in the U.S., and in numerous countries around the world, joined together and all protested for equality at 1:30 EST. It was pretty huge – I never heard the exact numbers for the one in NYC, but it seemed much bigger than the protest on Wednesday. To me, it didn’t feel as empowering (we didn’t march, we stood and listened to speakers), but it was still really good. Here’s the art!
The view of the crowd behind me...
...and the view of the crowd in front of me.
No More Mr. -or Ms.!- Nice Gay
A man, or not a man
A certain Robert C. tells me that the video for Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” features a man in drag. I’m not so convinced…I think it’s just a mannish-woman. He offers this site as proof. So what do you think? (and regardless, this video is still pretty damn hot)
NOTE:This video is protected or something, and won’t embed, but you can (and should!) watch it here
Channel 7 goes Everywhere for news
And I mean everywhere
At yesterday's rededication of the USS Intrepid - She didn't want to miss ANYTHING
Keith Olbermann on Prop 8
I’ve been not too bloggy lately – I think I’ve been unconsciously taking a few days off from it! However, this is already making the rounds (pretty sure it was just on his show last night), and I wanted to post it here as well.
Love Olbermann or hate him, this is a good watch.
As for me wondering what I would do with my post-election time? It’s spent being an activist-y lesbian (a couple of pro-marriage rights rallies this week). Though I’ve got to say, I’m beginning to think I’m spreading myself a little thin…ah, well, this is how it goes.
We Did It
The President-Elect
Wow.
Two years ago, I started supporting Barack Obama for President. I thought it was a pipe dream; I thought this country, assuming it could get over the racial issue and vote for someone of mixed ethnicity, would never be able to vote for a man with the middle name Hussein.
I have never been so happy to be proven wrong.
I’ve been trying to write this blog all day, but it’s been difficult – shocking though this may seem, I’m having trouble finding the words. But I’ve got them:
Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.
Wow.
Some have called this “the most important election of our lives”. Believe it or not, I disagree. I think that the 2004 election was the most important (thus far, anyway) – and I think we got it wrong. This election was a chance to rectify that. And boy, did we ever. It isn’t that we won, it’s that we won in a landslide. That there was no need for a recount, or for a supreme court decision. As of right now (NC is still not official), it’s 349-173.
Obama got 63,933,373 of the popular vote; McCain, 56,422,226
In 2004, after Bush was reelected, we Dems were shocked. I remember a sense of utter hopelessness. And it wasn’t that Kerry was so great; it was that Bush had caused so much harm, and the thought of what could happen in the next four years was frightening. We’ll never know what would have happened if Kerry had won; we do know that a Bush victory has meant many thousands more are dead in Iraq; that we’re in the very beginning of the mother of all financial crises; that our country has been looked at with contempt by so many other residents of the world. Would some of this have happened without Bush? Maybe. But I cannot see how Bush has made this country a better place in the last four years; I can’t think of one redemptive part of his presidency. And yes, that $600 check was nice – but I would gladly have given it up to go without another round of W.
But I digress.
This election was so much different than 2004. It wasn’t a matter of hating the Republican candidate; it was a matter of truly, passionately feeling that the Democrat was the exact right person for the job. There are many reasons that I was an early supporter of Barack Obama, but I think the biggest one for me was that he is an extremely intelligent man who seemed to want the job for the right reason: that he actually wanted to change America, to make it a better place. Yes, I know, he is a politician. But he’s also done a lot for social justice, for the neediest of society, before he had any political ambitions to speak of. Before Harvard Law, he worked in the South Side of Chicago as a community organizer. Governor Palin mocked this at the RNC, but that was one of the things that spoke most to me about his character.
And let’s talk about the fact that this country is finally realizing that liberal is not a dirty word; that progressive can be a good thing. Four years ago, gay marriage was a divisive issue, used by Republicans to scare conservatives into a vote for the Right. It’s hard to remember today, given the blows to civil rights in California, Arkansas, Arizona, and Florida, but we have come so far since then. There are several examples, but case-in-point would be Obama’s speech last night. He mentioned gay people in the first minute-and-a-half of his acceptance speech. Gay people were mentioned in a normal, positive way by a politician. Pretty incredible.
I know that everything won’t change overnight; Obama is walking into a Presidency with a situation that is beyond difficult. And yet. I am so hopeful right now. Hopeful that things really will begin changing for the better. Hopeful that this country is filled with people that want what is best for themselves and their neighbors, that will no longer be led by fear and hatred. Mostly, I am glad I got to be a part of it. Never have I had such confidence in the strength of my convictions; knowing that a majority of this country agrees is powerful. I have enjoyed living in this blue city, in this blue state. But the thought that I now live in a blue country, at least for the next few years – amazing.
The high of this will wear off eventually, I am sure. But the moment last night when Obama was elected – I’ll never forget that. I am so proud that I was a small part of this, and I am going to relish how this feels.
I’m posting Barack’s acceptance speech below. I don’t know that anyone will watch it – if you haven’t, you ought to. It is really fantastic; Obama really is an incredible orator. I know I’ll watch it again in the future, and hope whenever I do I can be reminded of how I feel right now, in this time.
Yes we can – and yes we did. I can honestly say, I have never been so proud to be an American.
Aide-mémoire 