Other Than That, How Was the Play, Mrs. Lincoln?

A fan of this blog e-mailed yesterday and asked why I hadn't made any entries recently. No, it's not because awards season is overwhelming (though it is), but because such wonderful things have been happening in our lives recently.

On Dec. 20, our big screen plasma TV started going really buggy, so we called a TV repair service and they came and took it away: Probably back by the day after Christmas, we were told. We never saw it again.

With all of the tactics that repair shops in general use, they stalled week by week until, finally on the 12th of January, they said that the set could not be fixed. The plasma plate display was corrupt and would have to be replaced, which would cost as much as a new set. They then requested another $30 to return the set to us unfixed. We told them to go fuck themselves.

In the interim we had a lovely Christmas. Steve gave me a Blu-Ray disc player (ironic because we had no television with which to enjoy it). We went out and purchased a 19" flatscreen at a very reasonable price, so we weren't denied video fare, but it was like watching a postage stamp.

The first week in January, Steve was fired from his job. The boss was a psychotic on too much medication. Steve had been there for six months and 15 of the 20 staff employees (including the company president) had been fired during his tenure. I was not terribly surprised, since it was just a matter of time. It had nothing to do with how competent or effective Steve was in the job in reality, because the boss was just not in touch with reality. In any case, that was the second big stroke of shitty luck. The third was when Steve's car went in for maintenance and leaky front seals were found on the wheels, which costs $900 to fix, we discovered.

When we received the death sentence on the television, being good consumers, we decided to go out and replace it. This time we got an LCD, which uses much less energy. It also came with a new home theater system. All our components are now Sony, and we have them connected with HDMI cables, so they talk to one another. I have a suspicion they are talking about us. In any case, we now are renting Blu-Ray discs from Netflix and having wonderful high-definition viewing experiences. I'm also getting the Oscar nominees on screener DVDs from work, so we're able to watch those as they come my way.

Last week, the upstairs toilet blocked up, all of a sudden and for no apparent reason. Responsible homeowners, we went out and purchased a plumber's snake and attempted to dislodge the block, but toilets don't seem to be designed to allow the snake to pass through to the sewer pipes. Steve went out and bought some enzyme type of unclogger and we dutifully spent three days dumping this eco-friendly stuff down the loo, but to no avail. Steve asked his friend John, who is familiar with toilet troubles, to come over and assist in the diagnosis and repair of the problem. (Luckily, we have a downstairs half bath, so we weren't without facilities.)

On this last Sunday, I drove my car into work and stopped at the Subway shop just around the corner to pick up lunch before I went into work. When I went back out to the car, it would not start. I could tell it was a dead battery. So I walked over to the office, put my lunch away and called AAA roadside service. After half an hour they arrived with a huge flatbed truck that blocked everyone in the parking lot (and they all complained quite heartily).

I told the fellow I needed a jump start and he insisted on listening to the engine. I attempted to turn it over, whereupon he announced that I needed a jump. He did so and, after 10 minutes of running the engine, I headed into the parking structure at work. I went down every two hours and ran the car for a while, just to keep the battery charged. After work the car started successfully and I was able to make it back home. It's been sitting in the garage since. I rarely use it, since I take the train and subway into work most days, so a new battery is a low priority in my mind.

This week John came over and helped in the ongoing effort to unclog the toilet but was unsuccessful. His opinion was that the toilet was old and calcium deposits were blocking the flow in the toilet itself. So Steve went down to OSH and purchased a new toilet and, handyman that he is, installed the thing himself. The tank was leaking at the bolts.

The next day (Friday) I am normally off work, so we went and got some silicone epoxy and sealed the bolts. The toilet flushed once, then started backing up again. Today, we took the new toilet off and ran the snake directly down the pipe, hit the blockage but it would not budge. Upon pouring a bucket of water in, it backed up again. Our last hope was to get some kickass Drano type cleaner and see if it would do the job. We did so.

Upon returning home, we pulled out the snake to put in the Drano and up came a sock clinging to the end of the snake. Seems it had fallen in during laundry day (the hamper is directly across from the toilet) and no one had noticed.

So this sock is pictured here because it presents an icon for the last weeks since I wrote in this blog: smelly and covered with shit and God knows what and disrupting the true and free low of things as they should be.

On the up side, we are now capable of handling any kind of drain blockage that might befall us in the future. And Steve has had numerous projects to distract him from brooding on his employment status.

Actually, he has already had one interview with the Pasadena Humane Society, is registered with a temp-to-hire firm here in town which specializes in accounting, and has had a request from another firm which is looking to add a full-charge bookkeeper. It's an accounting firm with, hopefully, no psychotic bosses or supervisors.

Also on the up side, we are adhering to our New Year's resolution to lose weight. I've dropped 10 pounds and Steve has dropped eight since the first of the year and the diet is becoming easy to manage. We're doing Atkins, and I adapted a recipe for New York cheesecake to make it low carb, and it really is impossible to tell it from the real thing. It helps us in keeping on keeping on.

Another New Year's resolution I made was to learn the program Dreamweaver, which is an authoring program for the Web. I figure if my head is on the block at work any time soon, I'll be ready to hit the workforce, since all the ads I see for designers and art directors require full knowledge of web applications as well as graphics programs. Welcome to the 21st century. Also, I want to be able to design a site to promote myself. And if I do get laid off from work, I get a nice severance package with seven weeks full pay. But I'm not focusing on that, since I'm painfully valuable to the Reporter.

So here's a really long blog entry to keep you occupied and bring you up to date. Sorry the sock is the only picture, but we don't have much else to show you. Who takes pictures of broken objects and frustrating moments?

On the marriage front, our connubial existence is still in limbo with the California Supreme Court weighing a plethora of briefs submitted over the whole Proposition 8 debacle. We understand sometime in April or May is probably when they will hand down their decision on whether the proposition is legal and, if so, whether our marriage (performed before the proposition passed) is binding or not.

Be happy. Keep in touch. I'll try to add to this blog more regularly in the coming year. Oh great; another resolution.

Happy F'in' Christmas

"What the hell have they been doing? It's been over a month since the last blog entry. Maybe they got arrested at that protest. Good God, I told him to settle for domestic partnership. What the hell were they thinking?"

Well, no we didn't get arrested. The California Supreme Court did take up the cases seeking to overturn Proposition 8, and there should be some kind of decision next March. Until then, Steve and I are thinking positive and assuming that our marriage is legally intact and viable in the State of California.

So now for a kind of whirlwind update of what's been going on since the rally downtown on Nov. 15.

For Thanksgiving, we went up to the moms' (or, existentially, the mom's) for Thanksgiving. Sister Kittie did all the cooking, and we had a lovely dinner with Steve and myself and Kittie and David and my mom and Bob Waltz, who is a longtime theater friend of the family from San Luis Obispo.

Steve and I stayed at the Shelter Cove Inn, which is just north of Pismo Beach, right on the ocean. We had grand unobstructed ocean views from the room, since the bluff outside our window was a wildlife santuary. Our first morning there, we woke up to two Peregrin Falcons flying over the bluff looking for mousey goodies and such to eat.

Aunt Kit was not in attendance for Thanksgiving, since she had fallen a few weeks earlier and broken her back. OUCH. Sister Kittie had taken her to the emergency room, and she had spent the last several weeks in hospital, having been transferred to a care home for her physical therapy. On Thanksgiving evening, we all went down and visited her. Her roommates were a dotty wailing woman who made no sense at all (I thought she had visitors, but she was just making noises to herself) and a deaf woman who has taken advantage of her affliction by using it to shut out the rest of the world. Not the best roomies, by a longshot, but hopefully she'll be in more amenable surroundings sometime soon. We all wish her the best.

The time with Mom and Sister Kittie and her husband Dave was really nice. I have been up there a couple times this year, but Steve, since he hasn't had vacation time yet this year, had not. So this was his first chance to meet the new dog, Goldie, who is a real sweetheart. After Alfie and Annie (who were both kind of damaged goods when it comes to the pet department), it's nice to have such a true-blue doggie buddy watching over the moms' house. Although I'm sure she'd be an absolute pushover for a burglar with a steak.

The first week in December, there was another cutback at The Reporter, and about a third of the remaining staff was laid off. Luckily, I was not among them. The editor told me, in fact, that my name was not actively brought up as a potential cut. I'm beginning to thing I'm indispensable, but that's not a wise thing to assume. Lesley, my best buddy on the copy desk, was laid off, even though I consider her one of the most comptent of the copy editors.

It took a couple of days to get over the shock of losing so many coworkers ($1.8 million worth in salary). At some point, I decided that, since I was blessed with employment, I should spend as freely as possible this holiday season, and that's how I started my shopping.

I spent a whopping $60 to create a garland for over the dining room window. I spent $50 on wrapping paper and ribbons. (While at the store, I ran across these giant ornaments; they're actually a deposit box for toy donations for the holidays.)

In the interim, I got a picture of cat Buddy sleeping with his Elf and Teddy Bear buddies. We also spent a weekend (and then some) putting up and decorating the Christmas tree. It's an artificial tree, and on its last legs. We went down to Stats (a local decoration place here in Pasadena) to get the makings for the garland, and took a look at some very nice artificial trees which lookoed almost real...and cost about $500 for a six-footer. That expense, I'm afraid, will have to wait until next holiday season: That employed I am not.

So this is probably the last blog I will be writing for the rest of the year. A Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa and all the best in the new year. After throwing our shoes at Bush (I did as soon as I was given the idea, but they only got across the living room and nowhere near Washington, D.C.), things can only rise.

So I can say I feel truly blessed this holiday season: This year, I got to marry the man that I love; a thing I thought would never happen. And although there are lots of narrow-minded people out there trying to take that away, the light of the fact shines as brightly as ever. Equality is only a matter of time and perseverance. And the love doesn't change, no matter how it's enveloped by social status. And there is so much hope just waiting to explode into change this next year, I am eager to see what happens once the carbunkle Bush is gone from our capital forever.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Waiting for the World to Change

On Saturday, Steve and I, along with 14,000 or so other disgruntled folks, collected near City Hall in downtown L.A. to protest the passage of Proposition 8. (Included in this blog are signs from rallys all over the nation: Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York and here in L.A. Some of them are pretty funny, if you ask me.)

Wisely, we chose to take the Gold Line into town rather than driving in. We got at the rally location about 10:20, 10 minutes before the rally was to begin. Almost immediately, we ran into Lesley, a coworker who has been gently encouraging me to get involved in the demonstrations which have been taking place almost daily since November 4.

We had a pretty good place right near the stage up against the barricade. Not only did we get good views of the speakers, but a couple of them came right through the crowd in front of us, including out esteemed chief of police, William Bratton. The best speaker, however, was Mayor Villaregosa, a person who has been behind the gay community from the very first. Here's our first Hispanic president, in my mind.

It felt really good to be out there yelling with thousands of other people, knowing that hundreds of rallies like this were being held at the very same time all over the country and in foreign cities as well. But in a lot of ways, it was like preaching to the choir. The minds we needed to change had already voted, and the next and nearest hope was the overturning of the proposition by the state Supreme Court.

So after the high of people together to make action happen, I feel as though I'm sitting around, watching and waiting to see what will happen next.

On Sunday, CBS had an hourlong interview with Barack and Michelle Obama and I had a chance to feel good all over again about his win over McCain. But there, too, we're sitting around waiting for him to take office, for the real change to begin.

And that's what it's boiling down to for me now, waiting. Waiting for the Supreme Court to make a move. Waiting to see what direction needs to be taken. Waiting to see if our marriage, only a few months old now, is going to be wiped out. Waiting to see if we're going to be robbed of that very special moment when we felt a respect and dignity anointing out joining together. That's really what the proponents of 8 want to rob us of; being able to feel like complete people whose love is honored and cherished as much as anyone else's.

We Can All Join In

You have probably seen the daily demonstrations that have been taking place in and around Los Angeles since the passage of Proposition 8. It's good to see this kind of groundswell occurring spontaneously. All of this has been organized on the Internet, with times and locations being generated daily. Well, now's your chance to get involved on a national level. No matter where you live, there will be rallies and protests organized in every state in the union.

The protests will be held on Saturday, November 15 at 1:30 East Coast, 12:30 Central, 11:30 Mountain and 10:30 West Coast time. Check out the Join the Impact Web site for a site near you. They also list public transit alternatives for getting to the rallies.

So everyone who can, join in and let the nation hear that it's about time for equal rights; acceptance, not merely tolerance.

It's about time for another groovy revolution.

Jubilation and Devastation

On Tuesday, America made it clear that race was no longer the issue it used to be. In an overwhelming electoral majority, the people of this land elected their first African-America president. In that moment, every black American realized that they could be anything they wanted; that the doors were no longer closed. Racially, the millennium had arrived for the descendants of American slaves. Blacks were no longer niggers. They had pride and hope as their personal possessions. When I saw their reactions on the television coverage of this historical event, I cried with them, recalling the struggles and sacrifices of the equal rights movements of the 1960s.

In the same moment, here in California, the electorate passed a constitutional amendment that eliminated the newly born right of gays and lesbians to marry the people they love. Here in California, by embedding it into the very Constitution that guides the state and its citizens, Californians created a new class of niggers: Fags and dykes. The words are all interchangeable and all define a separate and less equal class of citizens. And the 18,000 same-sex couples who were married during those four and a half months of equality (including yours truly) now have licenses and vows that are in legal limbo.

When I got up this morning and heard the results (52% yes, 48% no), I was devastated. I was angry. I was depressed. I was resentful. I had a mild urge to go out and firebomb a Mormon temple or a Catholic church or some such edifice of Bible-driven bigotry. I was going to call into work and take a day off because I was so upset. But then, I realized I would just sit at home and stew, making myself more miserable and not achieving anything. So I went to work.

On the train in, I looked at the people riding with me: Did she vote yes? Did he vote yes? Does he look like the type? And it was frustrating because you just can't tell. The one thing that did infect me, though, was the high spirits of so many of the black people on the train and subway. They were smiling. They were making eye contact and nodding hello. You could tell they felt like whole, complete people. And though I was still depressed about my own situation, their energy helped me continue into the day.

Finally, I realized what was happening: I had lost the feeling they had achieved. When I took my vows and married Steve, I felt whole and, for the first time in my life, my heart was completely full. My relationship was being acknowledged with the honor and dignity it deserved: the state of marriage. I was able to share that with very special people. With Tuesday's vote results, my heart had hemorrhaged and I felt less than a whole, complete person. I had become the nigger of the Religious Right.

But there are already court documents being filed. This is not the end, but the beginning of another long round of court cases, judgments and appeals to re-establish the simple right that the California Supreme Court so eloquently conferred back in May: every citizen's right to marry the person of his or her own choosing. It's just that I was hoping this one struggle would be over and the concept of elemental personal rights would start spreading beyond our borders. Guess not. But Steve and I still have our rings. We still have our valid marriage license. We still have one another. And all the good people interested enough to check in on us here on this blog.

Worra Worra Worra

It's been a while since I added anything to the blog, and then it was pretty much just video links. And the reason is because I've been fretting. I've been anxious. I've been worried.

I'm feeling pretty good about Obama's likelihood of being elected. There's no real problem there for me. Unless something very extreme occurs in the next eight days, I think we have our new president. No, it's the Prop 8 thing that really has me torn. I keep trying to explain to people that it's like the state's having an election to see if I, personally, will remain married. Is it OK, California? We really love each other, and I don't know what I'm going to do if you say no to us and yes to Prop. 8.

This whole line of thought leaves me feeling very weak and vulnerable, and that makes me angry. I don't like feeling that way. I don't like feeling like other people have usurped power over me. But that's the position I'm in -- tens of thousands of people are in -- right now and we just have to wait for the vote.

No no no no no no no no no no no no. ...no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

I hate accentuating the negative, but it is most necessary this week.

And since I don't have any photos to share this week, I offer another video, this one from Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

And for those of you who haven't seen "The Landlord" yet, I'm including that, too. It has nothing to do with elections or personal rights and freedoms, but PEARL ROCKS!:

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

And one more to get you to go to FunnyorDie.com and browse around.

See more Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay videos at Funny or Die

Sure Hope These Hit the Airwaves

Surfing the Internet for videos on Proposition 8 is interesting. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them, both for and against (lots and lots on YouTube). Most of the ones for Yes are pious (one is even fire and brimstone, suggesting that last years fires in May were because of the court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage).

Bill Maher said Obama vs. McCain was YouTube vs. feeding tube. How true.

This set is my favorite because they parody a set of ads (PC vs Mac) that are fun and that everyone is familiar with. Check 'em out:

Now, this concept is genius


It's fun and gets the IMPORTANT concepts across


And next to these, the "Yes" ads seems so rigid


And Margaret Cho explains it for the really stupid people


Can the message be any clearer? Pass this proposition and you are creating human rights exclusion in a constitutional document. Duh.