I'm staying the weekend!

I've been extended at my job here in NYC so I'm staying over this weekend. I feel bad about not going home to see Skippy and the menagerie, but it has been almost a year since I did this, and it IS NYC!

Get that thing away from me

The Virginia Tech killer's package was delivered to the NBC Studios in NYC, only 1/2 a block from where I was working.

Eek.

he he

From edbrill.com...

Reuters: Rove in new controversy over e-mails

I'm not writing about politics....

Perino said a White House review showed up to 5 million e-mails to and from as many as 1,700 executive branch employees might have been lost when the administration converted from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook in 2002 and 2003.

Oops.

Link: Reuters: Rove in new controversy over e-mails >

Are we ready yet?

I firmly believe that kids are becoming numb to the constant violence they are exposed to through tv, video games, etc. I know for myself, when ER first came out I couldn't watch it at all. Now I can watch every second of it and not blink once, no matter the procedure. Luckily I still can't watch things like Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Anyone who thinks that all this violence isn't numbing us and making violence more acceptable in our minds is just kidding themselves.

I asked Skip a couple of weeks ago to play the new Lord of the Rings Online game with me. He likes to watch and says he doesn't like to play because he's "not very good" at it. I'm very very good at telling when he's not being honest with me so I pressed him. He finally admitted he just couldn't see himself doing all that killing. You know what? That's totally fine with me and I won't ask him again. Good for him.

5 things about me...

You've seen these lists, right? A lot of them are 100 Things About Me. I tried that and evidently I'm not interesting enough to complete that long of a list, so we'll go with five for now. Aight?

Let's start with a no-brainer...

I could never live here but my favorite city is New York City.
My favorite pie is Grape pie.
The older I get the more I love snow.
I never tried to breakdance but I must admit to voguing a couple of times a long long time ago.
The first movie I ever interpreted in a movie theatre was the first time I saw The Little Mermaid.

Phew.

Deja Vu

Here I am back in NYC eating sushi at Lili's on 57th. So let's see....

Flying through and landing in a major storm is not fun...
If you are so obese that it takes you half a minute to get out of your seat you should not be allowed to sit in the emergency exit row...
I loved the movie Miss Potter with Rene Zelwegger (sp) and Ewan MacGregor...
I love New York City...

Blossom update

Our little angel is mellowing and it is very nice. This morning (around 5:30 am) we were downstairs and she was trying to sleep on the couch. At one point Skip said "Hey!" (to Gaston? who knows) and Blossom perked right up and looked at him. He said "not you" and she immediately put her head back down to go to sleep. She's a smart one.

Sadness

We ended up with over 12 feet of snow this winter. In the thick of it (just around Christmas) Skip and I decided that we needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle as he couldn't even get the Honda to the airport to pick me up. So we ended up with a 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid that we love very much. But it's not financially feasible to keep both cars so we are in the process of selling the 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. It really saddens me as that car gets almost 44 mpg even going up and down the mountains every day! It will be interesting, as the only way I have ever sold a car is through CarMax on my way to a new car.

A Lucky Break?

My 12:45 flight to LaGuardia was cancelled due to the storms on the east coast. Luckily I found out a 4 am. The wonderful specialist from India didn't understand me very well but got me on a flight to LaGuardia via Boston. I knew that wasn't the best they could do so I got to the airport 3 hours early and got on a 10 flight direct to LaGuardia.

A lucky break? I hope so. With the weather over there I hope we're not delayed, etc.

If it all works out I'll be at the hotel by 5:30 with plenty of time to have a nice dinner and maybe see a show! Hmmmmm.... what shall I see?

I survived!

SO I had my stress test this morning. First thing they do is start an IV so they can pump you full of radioactive material. Great! Then they shave 7 spots on your chest/stomach for the connectors. So my chest looks very strange at the moment. A 12 minute scan (done laying down) then the actual test. It was pretty easy but I can see where someone who didn't exercise regularly would have had a hard time. After that it was two more scans and then I was out of there. I should have the results in the next few days.

I even have a special card to show security at the airport tomorrow since I'm radioactive!

Brilliant and incredibly sad all at the same time

An article by Harvey Fierstein in the New York Times...

"Our Prejudices, Ourselves"

AMERICA is watching Don Imus's self-immolation in a state of shock and awe. And I'm watching America with wry amusement.

Since I'm a second-class citizen -- a gay man -- my seats for the ballgame of American discourse are way back in the bleachers. I don't have to wait long for a shock jock or stand-up comedian to slip up with hateful epithets aimed at me and mine. Hate speak against homosexuals is as commonplace as spam. It's daily traffic for those who profess themselves to be regular Joes, men of God, public servants who live off my tax dollars, as well as any number of celebrities.

In fact, I get a good chuckle whenever someone refers to "the media" as an agent of "the gay agenda." There are entire channels, like Spike TV, that couldn't fill an hour of programming if required to remove their sexist and homophobic content. We've got a president and a large part of Congress willing to change the Constitution so they can deprive of us our rights because they feel we are not "normal."

So I'm used to catching foul balls up here in the cheap seats. What I am really enjoying is watching the rest of you act as if you had no idea that prejudice was alive and well in your hearts and minds.

For the past two decades political correctness has been derided as a surrender to thin-skinned, humorless, uptight oversensitive sissies. Well, you anti-politically correct people have won the battle, and we're all now feasting on the spoils of your victory. During the last few months alone we've had a few comedians spout racism, a basketball coach put forth anti-Semitism and several high-profile spoutings of anti-gay epithets.

What surprises me, I guess, is how choosy the anti-P.C. crowd is about which hate speech it will not tolerate. Sure, there were voices of protest when the TV actor Isaiah Washington called a gay colleague a "faggot." But corporate America didn't pull its advertising from "Grey's Anatomy," as it did with Mr. Imus, did it? And when Ann Coulter likewise tagged a presidential candidate last month, she paid no real price.

In fact, when Bill Maher discussed Ms. Coulter's remarks on his HBO show, he repeated the slur no fewer than four times himself; each mention, I must note, solicited a laugh from his audience. No one called for any sort of apology from him. (Well, actually, I did, so the following week he only used it once.)

Face it, if a Pentagon general, his salary paid with my tax dollars, can label homosexual acts as "immoral" without a call for his dismissal, who are the moral high and mighty kidding?

Our nation, historically bursting with generosity toward strangers, remains remarkably unkind toward its own. Just under our gleaming patina of inclusiveness, we harbor corroding guts. America, I tell you that it doesn't matter how many times you brush your teeth. If your insides are rotting your breath will stink. So, how do you people choose which hate to embrace, which to forgive with a wink and a week in rehab, and which to protest? Where's my copy of that rule book?

Let me cite a non-volatile example of how prejudice can cohabit unchecked with good intentions. I am a huge fan of David Letterman's. I watch the opening of his show a couple of times a week and have done so for decades. Without fail, in his opening monologue or skit Mr. Letterman makes a joke about someone being fat. I kid you not. Will that destroy our nation? Should he be fired or lose his sponsors? Obviously not.

But I think that there is something deeper going on at the Letterman studio than coincidence. And, as I've said, I cite this example simply to illustrate that all kinds of prejudice exist in the human heart. Some are harmless. Some not so harmless. But we need to understand who we are if we wish to change. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess to not only being a gay American, but also a fat one. Yes, I'm a double winner.)

I urge you to look around, or better yet, listen around and become aware of the prejudice in everyday life. We are so surrounded by expressions of intolerance that I am in shock and awe that anyone noticed all these recent high-profile instances. Still, I'm gladdened because our no longer being deaf to them may signal their eventual eradication.

The real point is that you cannot harbor malice toward others and then cry foul when someone displays intolerance against you. Prejudice tolerated is intolerance encouraged. Rise up in righteousness when you witness the words and deeds of hate, but only if you are willing to rise up against them all, including your own. Otherwise suffer the slings and arrows of disrespect silently.

Harvey Fierstein is an actor and playwright.

My stress test

Wondering what's going on with my stress test? Me too, until they finally called me yesterday. It's at 9 am on Saturday. I can't have any kind of tea or coffee 24 hours in advance. I will walk on the treadmill until my heart rate is at a certain level then they will inject me with something so they can take pictures. Lovely.

Two feet!

Supposedly we are getting two feet of snow today and tomorrow. Then it's off to NYC again on Sunday!

That really makes me mad

So Don Imus loses sponsors, his tv broadcast, etc. for a racist remark. Good, he shouldn't be saying that kind of stuff.

So what happens to Isaiah Washington for making homophobic remarks? Repeatedly? In public? Nothing! It's just ridiculous.

Here it is!

So sorry for the wait....

This is a rare 4 picture post. It's too hard to see detail with just the one picture. The cake is so tall that it didn't fit in the back of our Ford Escape Hybrid. We had to take the top layer off.