Sunday, October 22, 2006

Hail, Mary!

Gotta love a Fast Forward on the Amazing Race. Mary and David get a reprieve. Long may they reign.

Marked For Elimination

It's happened. We knew it would. So we just have to buck up and say it: David and Mary are in some deep shit on Amazing Race.

Unless they come in first tonight ... and let's face it, I have a better chance of accomplishing that, and I'm not even in the damn thing ... they'll have 30 minutes of waiting at the end of this next leg to find out if they're out of the running.

And I know those bastards at CBS will have edited the thing so I have no fingernails left. I'm not sure if I hate them more for manipulating me, or me for falling for it, but the drama may wear my frazzled nerves right out, I tell you.

So in case they flame out and have to return to the hills of Kentucky sooner rather than later, I'd like to say:
Oh, David and Mary. We hardly knew ye. But what we've seen, we've loved. And I personally thank you for showing that it's not just the rednecks that have their prejudices to get over. Being a card-carrying pinko cocksucker, I admit I read your bio and heard your accents and immediately assumed you'd be loud-mouthed, narrow-minded trash, threatened by anything and everything that wasn't 1) white or 2) sold at Wal-Mart. But you were not. And you met the gays, the blacks, the asians and a bowl full of fish eyes with open arms.

I salute you. And in your honor, I vow to once in a while not have my mind closed to people I'd usually have it slammed shut for. Until they open their mouths and say something so homophobic that they must be destroyed.

And when you head into those hills, keep your heads high. And please, Mary. Please, oh, please. Don't beat the shit out of David.
In the event they survive tonight by some miracle, I'm taking it all back. Until then, I'll be conducting a prayer vigil. Join me, won't you?

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Lord of the Ring Mold

With Project Runway finished, I must now turn my attentions elsewhere. So why not give Top Chef a look?

It's early to tell. But this season's pretentious tool (the Stephen substitute) is clearly Marcel.

But who cares (yet) about what an ass he is. First, let's trouble ourselves with important things. I will begin with an open letter.

An Open Letter to Marcel's Hair:

Dude. What are you thinking? You look like Froddo. You look like a tweaked-out Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine playing Liberace.

You look like an idiot. Your ego is making you look like an idiot. Put the mousse down and back away before anyone gets hurt.

Seriously.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Sugar Baby Love

Since my last tirade about the death of my civil rights, I've been waiting to see something that made me laugh and feel joyful before I came back to bloggin' it out.

Took a while, but along it came in the strangest of places: A safe sex ad. Yeah, I know. Who'd've thunk it. (And to be fair, he made a hetero one, too. Almost as cute.)

But it's from the incredible French animator, Wilfred Brimo, and is a three-minute cartoon that was part of that country's AIDS awareness campaign.

Heartfelt, funny, joyful, poignant. Very, very sweet. Now I've got that flippin' song in my head.

It's a little racy, but only PG-13 racy. Still, consider yourself warned. And see if for some reason a safe sex campaign can't make you feel better somehow.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Not So Funny Business

On Thursday, the 1st District Court of Appeals upheld California's ban on gay marriage. This summer, high courts in New York and Washington states also refused to strike down laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.

Rusty and I have been together for the last 11 years. 11. Count 'em, you judicial fuckers. 4,015 days.

We own a house. And a dog. Well, it's more like the dog owns us. But we own the back yard he counts as his toilet. We've fought. We've laughed. We've fucked. Just like everyone else.

And for each of us, there was a time when we thought we were watching the other one die. Seriously. No hyperbole. There was one day in those 4,015 when it looked like I might bleed to death. And there was about a week in those 573 weeks when it looked like complications from Rusty's surgery were going to prevail.

Luck prevailed instead in both cases. But what if it hadn't?

Due to circumstances that aren't important to this rant, our house is in Rusty's name. Had he died, I promise you that the house we've laughed and fought and fucked in for the past decade would no longer be mine. His family would have rights to it that I'd be denied. They've never been in my home. Not that they wouldn't be welcome. But they've never wanted to be any part of the last 14,600 days of Rusty's life. And so they are not.

They don't send Christmas cards. They don't call on his birthday. They certainly don't invite us over for dinner. They don't drop by when they're passing through. They ... just don't.

But they'd own my home. And I'd be out. It would take just about as long as it's taken to type this.

Now of course you can say that we can protect ourselves from this by paying an attorney thousands of dollars to make certain I'm protected as well as I have to be. You're right. And we have ... but not everyone in our situation has that kind of cash or the wherewithal to know what to do.

But here's the question the high courts and every last pig-fucking mouth-breather who doesn't think Rusty and I deserve to be married should answer: Why should we have to do that?

Why is the right of survivorship something I have to pay for when other people wake up and have it for free? And don't get me started on taxes and the mountains of other things that all the money in the world to an attorney will never afford us.

Why should anyone in this country wake up and be three-fifths of what anyone else is? And why aren't we rioting in the streets?

I'll be funny tomorrow. Today, I simply can't afford it.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Proud Mary

So Amazing Race is having one of the best seasons ever. And I'm still giving all the thanks to Team Hillbilly. That woman is just a step away from my personal reality TV Hall of Fame. (Other inductees include the clowns and just about every other team that came in fourth place. I can really pick a winner, people.) Every week, I pray for just one more hour of Mary and David.

And speaking of just a step away, Team Peg Leg looks to be having troubles. This leads me to the obvious question: We all know it's tough when you break up with someone. But what happens if you break up with the guy who makes your legs? I have an ex that I can run into nearly a dozen years later, and it's still tense. And the only thing he ever made me was ... well ... not a damn thing. If he'd also been molding my prosthesis ... well ... I'm just sayin'. Tense.

It'd be especially tense because I don't have a prosthesis. But anyhoo. I'm just stalling. Because there's something bugging me, and I'm hesitant to bring it up.

Since confession is good for the soul, I'll just come out and say it. It's Team Miriam. Kirsten, an excellent blogger, good friend and winner of the the Friend Of Gays Lifetime Achievement award (it sort of looks like a jock strap made of Swarovski crystal ... I understand she keeps hers in her bathroom to throw guests off kilter), sort of likes them. I personally want to wrap them up in the yards of chiffon that fall from their mouths every time they talk and throw them into the river until their cha cha heels stop twitching.

What is it, I ask, about these two gay boys that gets under my skin? It's not like I'm the butchest dude on the planet. (As the Little Dutch Boy and I like to say, people who never suspect we're gay have clearly never heard us talk.) And another inductee in my Reality TV Hall of Fame is Austin Scarlett, who doesn't appear gay as much as he oozes it.

It occurs to me as I'm writing that it's not them. It's not that I think they should hetero it up. And if that was the case, it'd really bother me. Because I'm the guy who once ordered coffee from a 6'3" tall white boy with shoulder-length, green dreadlocks, silver platforms, a leopard print pillbox hat and sequined cats-eye glasses. And the only thing I thought was, "God, those glasses are fabulous."

So if I was suddenly turning 40, which I just did, and becoming embarrassed by the more flamboyant amongst us, it'd be a sad day. Instead, I'm turning a dark eye toward the producers, who insist on pigeon holing us as lisping little girls. You want to be a lisping little girl? Rock on, sister. And come sit by me. But you want to think that's the only way America can see us? Then shame on you. Shame, shame, shame. Bitches.