Tom and I got married on October 10th, 2008. Since we were racing to beat the clock before the election, we did a small wedding ceremony at the Van Nuys Courthouse in Los Angeles. The reception was the following day at our friend's Susan's apartment in our building.
I am waiting to get pictures from my friends of the actual ceremony. Enclosed are pictures before the wedding and then at the reception. Enjoy!
The show I just finished working on, MTV's Is She Really Going Out With Him, starting airing this week. The show is a very snarky take on relationships where hot girls date total douchebags. My first episode, chronicling the type of 'bag known as the Hustler Douche, aired today. Here are some clips below (with an ad before each clip, fyi). As the story producer, I shaped the story for the episode, was responsible for writing the voice-over (with a huge assist from my editor) and coming up with a lot of jokes. Here's our hustler douche Adam talking about the most gangsta of accessories, the flat-iron:
See? This is how much fun I've been having on this show. Rarely in reality TV do you get to actually show how ridiculous the participants are, and I ran with this opportunity. My other two episodes air in 3 weeks, and the show is hilarious. Check it out, when you have the chance.
In addition to this memorandum, Obama acknowledged that this, indeed, is only a small step. He also mentioned that the federal government cannot extend full insurance rights to its same-sex employees due to the odorous Defense of Marriage Act, and he reiterated his campaign pledge to repeal DOMA. He also mentioned about the Lieberman-Collins Benefits and Obligations Act, which would explicitly give LBGT goverment employees parity to their hetero counterparts (And yes, the one of the big co-sponsors of the bill is Sen. Joseph Lieberman).
Now, a lot of hay has been made as to why Obama is doing something about this today. The Department of Justice last week defended DOMA in a legal brief, even citing cases of incest to defend the exisiting legislation. Because of this, lots of bigwigs in the LGBT community are now backing out of a huge upcoming DNC fundraiser, featuring Vice-President Biden. Many feel that this memoranda today is throwing the gay community a bone to help quelch any potential PR problems the DNC and the administration might have with a very vocal portion of its base.
This is, indeed, a very small step, and I'm glad that the President did acknowledge that. This is also the first time the President has spoken about LGBT rights extensively since he took office (and I use the term "extensively" rather loosely). I voted for Obama over Hillary in the primary because of LGBT issues, so like a lot of people, I've been rather impatient with his lack of movement on the core political issue in my life. But also, I do think we need to cut the President a wee bit of slack.
Obama is the first President in office who at least has even courted the LGBT community since Clinton. And in the 6 years that the Republicans controlled all three branches of government (from Jan. 20, 2001 to Jan. 20, 2007), not one piece of legislation has ever been passed helping the gay community. Obama's been in office for roughly 5 months, and let's face it, he has a lot on his plate right now. While doing this memo is throwing us gays a bone (and it is), he is at least responding to the pressure we were giving, unlike our last President. So, let's keep up the pressure and make sure Obama delivers on his campaign promises, while at the same take realizing that all this is going to take a while.
The in-laws are visting, staying at a timeshare in Palm Springs, one of my favorite cities. We've been bouncing back and forth from the desert to L.A. and back, making a busy (but wonderful) weekend. I'm at work right now (...really, boss, blogging helps me focus) and tomorrow we're off to Disneyland, and then I'm back at work for the rest of the week as Tom entertains them. If you have never been to Palm Springs, I highly recommend it. It has a great, relaxed vibe to it, great shopping and restaurants, it's exceedingly gay-friendly, and it's so damn comfortable. If you want to go someplace to not really do much of anything, Palm Springs is your city. I'd love to get the cash together to get a second home there. Can't wait to go back...
PS: A very belated (but heartfelt) birthday shout-out to Jen. You are a wonderful, sharp person, Jen, and I am so very glad that we've been friends for so long.
This started months ago, I believe in October. Tom and the cadre of neighbors we hang with were bandying around some ideas of how to entertain ourselves during these tight economic times. They struck on the idea of watching our DVD of Clash of the Titans one Tuesday night. We all gathered at Sue's, did a potluck dinner and watched 80's camp fantasy unfold in front of our eyes. We'd all seen it before, of course, but it was great watching it again, especially in a group setting. So, the idea came to make it a weekly ritual. We'd get together on Tuesday nights, and watch an 80's fantasy (then Sci-Fi) film with a potluck dinner and lots of company. The film had to be rather campy. So, we ruled all ruled out The Dark Crystal, deeming it too good. After Titans, we watched Legend. And The Beastmaster. Then Excalibur. Then The Last Starfighter. And Flash Gordon. Etc.
The bulk of the films come from our individual libraries, so it's not like we're spending oodles of cash every week. We also try to theme the food we're eating to the film we're watching. For Flash Gordon, we did a Mongolian-style stir fry. Since the setting of The Last Starfighter is a trailer park, we did a lot of trailer trash cuisine (which meant a lot of mac-'n-cheese w/franks). Frequently, we'll make too much food for the group (which ranges in size each week from 5 to 9, depending on who's available), so we'll have plenty of leftovers to eat throughout the week.
We exhausted the 80's sci-fi with the one-two punch of the seriously obnoxious, smug, boy-it-doesn't-hold-up-well Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. We all universally hated it. I didn't remember digging it too well when I saw it on cable way back in '85, but yeesh, it's awful. The following week, we sat through Heavy Metal, the boobtastic "adult" animated fantasy film. It's not a good movie, and it did not go over well at all. Frustrated by all the boob and no peen action, our neighbor Mitch said she'd take care of the film for the following week... which was the excellent Forgetting Sarah Marshall. So now, we are each taking turns surprising each other with our movie selection. Last week, Shawn brought us Slither, which was pretty awesome. The week before, Sue put on The Wizard of Oz... but set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The best section is when Dorothy lands in Oz and arrives in Munchintown, and... well, just watch.
Pretty amazing, no?
The whole point of this is that you can entertain yourselves cheaply and thoroughly by just going through your own movie libraries, venturing into your kitchen, and calling some friends. Pretty easy... and tons of fun.
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