Beaches

Did I ever tell you you're my hero?

Sorry. Wrong beaches.

I'm coming to you live this week from Maui. So it's more like this beaches. The webcam for that live, streaming video is hanging off the edge of my balcony. Life is fucking tough, bitches, and this is what it looks like:



Just to prove how tough it is, on the first pic below is of The Christmas Queen, The Little Dutch Boy and I waving from the ocean this morning. The Husbear took this pic from the balcony of our condo:
















Which was shortly thereafter followed by me crashing and burning in the surf in a moment of what can only be described as Delicious Irony to all who were watching. This pic captures me trying to get the sand out of my ass during what can only be described as a Graceful Recovery.


It's gonna be a hard week. Brace yourselves.

A First Time For Everything

In case you didn't notice, this is my first time to print a retraction ... and my last. (If the Little Dutch Boy is still reading ... that obscure reference is for you, baby.)

So yesterday I suggested that Michael Richards was a racist but on the grand scale of racism through the ages, he probably ranked above your mother locking the car doors a little too quickly when your father drove through certain parts of town and just below ... oh, let's say ... the Grand Dragon of the KKK.

That was before I actually saw his apology on Letterman for myself, thanks to my Tivo unit that clearly is out to teach me a thing or two about tolerance in the American entertainment industry.

I'm seriously taking it all back. Seriously. Because of two things.

First, in his apology he said he said some pretty bad things to some "Afro Americans."

No, really. "Afro." I turned up the volume so loud and pushed the repeat button on the Tivo so many times to make sure, my neighbor started banging on the wall.

I suppose the word "wearing" in his sentence was silent. But come on, Michael. Out of touch much?

Second, as it all soaked in a bit, it occurred to me that had he tossed around the word "nigger" like Paul Rodriguez tosses around the word "faggot," he'd probably be a garden-variety racist.

Like Paul Rodriguez is. Oh, it's true. I wouldn't blog it if I hadn't heard it myself.

Instead, the very first thing out of his mouth was to pine for the old days when an uppity black would have been lynched. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where Paul Rodriguez (and it pains me to say it) is right. There is a line you can't cross in speech, and that's the line where you in any way hint that someone should be ... uh ... taught a lesson.

Strange fruit, hanging from the Southern trees. Blood on the roots and blood on the leaves.

That's not to be dismissed so handily. I was wrong.

Godspeed, Mr. Altman

Robert Altman died today at the fabulous age of 81. Had it been up to a vote, I would have given him 81 more, as I'm certain he had so much more for us to see.

And just because this is all about me, he's the guy who inspired me to always have some place in my plays where people are intentionally talking all at the same time. When (if?) you ever hear my stuff and you notice it happening, give a little smile to honor his genius.

Godspeed, Mr. Altman. Godspeed.

But Some of My Best Friends are Spear Chuckers!

Michael Richards is not a racist. How do we know this? Because he says so. Not because he got heckled during a set at West Hollywood's Laugh Factory, prompting him to suggest to a black audience member that 50 years ago we'd have him "upside down with a fucking fork in your ass."

You could almost hear Mel Gibson sigh with relief.

Not content with this, Richards went on to toss "nigger" around more often than two teens on the 38 Geary bus. His current behavior notwithstanding, he dutifully went on to Letterman to make sure we all know he was not a bigot and was "deeply, deeply sorry."

What you really have to know he's sorry about is the invention of the video cell phone, which someone quickly trained on him to catch the majority of his rant. I have to admit, the printed version pales in comparison.

Is Michael Richards a racist? Of course he is. But probably not in the burn a cross on your lawn and wear a white hood while doing it sort of way. I'm betting he's the same type of racist you and I are.

Oh, that's right, buddy. You're a racist. Want proof? Look no further than Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical, and its show-stopper tune "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist."

And I quote:

You're a little bit racist. And you're a little bit, too. I guess we're all a little bit racist. Admitting it is not an easy thing to do. But between me and you, I think everyone's a little bit racist sometimes. Doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes. Look around, and you will find that no one's really color blind. Maybe that's a fact we all should face: Everyone makes judgements based on race.

'Nuff said. They're right. Michael Richards was stupid and showed bad judgement. But so did that guy in the audience yelling "That's uncalled for, cracker ass," and you don't see anyone turning the camera on him.

Then there's Paul Rodriguez, also on the bill the same night, who found a news camera as quickly as he could to say, "Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don't happen to be African American, then you have a whole lot of explaining. Freedom of speech has its limitations, and I think Michael Richards found those limitations."

Oh, Paul. Puhleeze. You use the word "faggot" like it's punctuation. And unless your hairdresser knows something we don't know ... you've got a whole lot of explaining to do, buddy. So how about you shut yer yap, my nigga.

Or someone's bound to get offended.

Sleeping With The Enemy

So Ken Mehlman, the newly deposed head of the Republican National Committee, is rumored to be gay.

Then there's our friend Ted Haggard, the Colorado minister who admitted (or denied) he had (or didn't have) sex with a male prostitute. Actually, a side note about Haggard ... for this isn't my point here, but I can't help but mention it: When the shit really hit the fan, rather than admit he had sex with a man, Ted swore it was a drug deal instead. And crystal meth at that.

Oh. Thanks for the clarification, Ted. Hand jobs now rank above drug dealing on the mortal sin continuum. I'll make a note of that. But you've confused the hell out of me, because when I came out, my mother said, "Of course I still love you. It's not like you're a drug dealer."

So between my mother and God, there seems to be some disagreement. Great. And even then, I have the sneaking suspicion neither of them have it quite right.

Anyhoo.

To round out the holy trinity of self-loathing is Mark Foley, the alleged pedophile and self-professed alcoholic homosexual who was smart enough to blame it all on being a cocksucking booze hound but not bright enough to know about things called chat logs.

This is almost all too much for my smart-ass heart to take. But the exposure of such hypocrisy is a hollow victory this time around. Because I want to just riff and riff and riff on it, but I can't bring myself to do it. And doesn't that just suck?

Because it's wrong to preach against and legislate against and politicize gay civil rights. It doesn't make it worse if you're gay and doing it.

No, really. It doesn't. You're not more evil for sucking dick while publicly railing against dick suckers. You're just more sad. You're just profoundly, inexplicably tragic. And lost.

Not to say that you get a pass. You step on the rights of gays? You should have no power. No matter what you're doing in your bedroom. You must be stopped.

But to wind up in a place where you're relentlessly tearing down the very thing you are? Then you're sleeping with the enemy. And you have far worse problems than the rest of us in the community.

I don't hate these men. I pity them.

Better Late Than Never

Well, finally.

It only took six years of the current administration and 12 years of Republican domination of the House and Senate before Democrats managed to regain control of congress. Six years of this administration before we collectively woke up from the "stay the course" haze that had somehow made us very, very sleepy. Not to mention very, very stupid. And now very, very in debt in every conceivable notion of the word and every far-flung corner of the world.

Granted it was done in a very dramatic fashion, which came as a bit of a shock to our Republican brethren and sisteren. And shocking Republicans is one of my favorite past times, don't get me wrong.

But excuse me for saying that while I'm thankful for the tourniquet to stop the bleeding, I can't help but remind everyone that we had the chance to save the rest of the leg a couple of years ago but somehow thought it better of it. And me being me, I'm not so thankful after thinking that. I'm just mostly annoyed. But all the same ... welcome back from the abyss, Ohio. All is forgiven.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Up Against The Wall, You Redneck Mothers

So the Sweeney Todd bootleg got busted on YouTube. You can thank Actor's Equity for causing a stink. Does this mean I'll be blacklisted from getting my card? Just wait until I'm rich and famous. Then those bastards will be begging me to post things without regard to copyrights and such.

Just you wait. It's only taken 40 years so far. But I'm feelin' lucky.

Knotted, Polka Dotted, Twisted, Beaded, Braided

It was very sweet of my former professional wife to plug my blog and to compliment my humor in a recent post.

But then she starts posturing about how she has a lot more hair than I do in a clear attempt to provoke a blog feud. Now I don't know why sister needs to do that, given that more than two people read her posts (unlike my quiet corner over here).

But I love her, and I'm prepared to take the high road. If this is how she wants to talk about that back hair problem of hers, then so be it.

He Uses Antlers In All Of His Decorating

I just saw that Donny Osmond is "starring" in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. As he's only playing Gaston and neither the beauty nor the beast, that "starring" credit is up for debate. But marketers will be marketers.

I digress, however. Imagine that.

Today's rant is actually about how his son came to opening night. His adult son. Who looks older than he does. There they are in the photo. With Donnie's face tighter than his progeny's.

Ick.

Amazing Race, How Sweet The Sound

How is it possible, I ask, for me to get as giddy about a new season of The Amazing Race as I have already?

Because I lead a simple, quiet life? Well, yes. And thank you for asking. But come on, people. There's a woman from Kentucky whose husband is a coal miner. And while he was offering suggestions to help her scale the Great Wall of China, she barked, "Step back and shut up. That's how you'll help me."

If you think Rusty haven't said similar to each other ... well, we haven't. But that's only because neither of us has been trying to scale the Great Wall of China.

I just saw a preview where she says, "We're from Kentucky, so we haven't met gay people. But I like them!!!"

Upon which her husband came out of the closet. Okay, okay. But *that* would be some good television. He has very pointy ears. It's odd. And the photos in their online bio are touched up. Girlfriend could use some orthodontics. Still, love her, love her, love her.

I do not love, however, Team Peg Leg. I don't care if girlfriend is leaking hydraulic fluid from her prosthesis or not. The second her ... boyfriend? ... said "When you get over that wall, Sarah, I'm going to cry," and she didn't reply, "Step back and shut up!", I knew there was more made out of plastic than just her knee caps. (He didn't cry, by the way.) Not to mention that anyone who ... dates? ... the guy who makes her fake legs creeps me out, people. Creeps. Me. Out.

Their bio says they have unresolved romantic feelings. I imagine he does, yes. For the junkie male models. What's up with women who fall for emotionally unavailable men? And what happens to their legs below the mid-thigh? It's a question for the ages.

Get Off My Skirt

There are those out there who wonder where I am. And why I haven't kept them entertained. And there are those who could give a shit. To both of you, I say: I've been working 15 hours/day as of late. So cut a girl some slack.

The Last Five Years

From today's New York Times editorial:

Today, every elected official in the country will stop and remember 9/11. The president will remind the country that he has spent most of his administration fighting terrorism, and his opponents will point out that Osama bin Laden is still at large. It would be miraculous if the best of our leaders did something larger -- expressed grief and responsibility for the bad path down which we've gone, and promised to work together to turn us in a better direction.

Personally, I'm waiting on the miracle. If only it would come.

Whoa, Nelly!

Who else could make Hedwig and The Angry Inch look tame but its creator, John Cameron Mitchell. I just saw the censored trailer for his new film, Short Bus. And let me tell ya ... I'm a little shocked. In a good way, of course. But most San Franciscans think they've seen it all. I'm guessing Mr. Mitchell is giving us more to see, God love him.

Check it out for yourself ... but be forewarned that even though censored it's adult and about ... well ... sex.

Some Things Are Worth Waiting For

Last week I was ready to walk away from Project Runway. It was too much to believe that the hands of the producers weren't guiding every move. And then something so delicious happens this week, that all is forgiven. I know the Little Dutch Boy is still out of range of a Tivo, so I won't divulge. But let's just say that if you fly to Paris, be prepared to leave quickly. It was everything I could ever want.

Speaking of everything I could ever want ... and to the two or three of you who reflexively thought, "James Gandolfini in a bathrobe?" - shame on you ... my former Professional Wife recently became engaged. I couldn't possibly be more happy, because she's a catch if there ever was one. I swear to you, if I wasn't so damn homosexual, I'd make an honest woman out of her myself. But since it can't be me, and since we're no longer professionally married, I have to say that she's landed a good one.

I know many of you will be checking for my endorsement, so I'm coming out with it early. That boy is a keeper. He not only received the first ever Gay Merit badge, he also recently nabbed the much-sought-after and often-coveted Good With The Gays seal of approval. What more could a heterosexual woman hope for? Marry the man, sister. And just a thought to hold onto as you make your plans: I look dynamite as a flower girl.