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Next Stop

Anyone else catch any of the July 4th Twilight Zone marathon? Great stuff. I just saw Of Late I Think of Cliffordville which is particularly cruel, and stars Albert Salmi, who also played Smerdjakov in The Brothers Karamazov in 1958.

I also caught the only Jack Klugman TZ I’d never seen – Death Ship. & I love Jack Klugman, yes, because of The Odd Couple, but mostly because of Quincy, which, imho, gave birth to all of the forensic shows on TV now (most of which I watch).  But I have to go to sleep, despite the next one up being Printer’s Devil with Burgess Meredith. (It’s a good one.) I used to tape these when the marathons were on WPIX here in New York, but now they’re all on DVD, which makes it a bit easier. (& It took me borrowing the DVD collection to finally see the Buster Keaton TZ, which they never, ever show during these marathons.)

I really do love this series, and love Rod Serling – not just for The Twilight Zone, but because he fought and fought and fought the censorship that came with advertisers’ sponsorship of television, and during an era when they almost didn’t win. As he put it:

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.”

Now there was a fine tilt at an inexorable windmill, but at least he got a few stunning seasons of work done, which we’ll have forever.

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Happy 4th

Tea drinkers unite! You have nothing to lose but your taxes!

A very happy 4th, all. Please don’t drink and drive.

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Target: Women

Comedian Sarah Haskins has these short video clips about marketing that targets women, and her completely matter of fact, dry style is hysterically funny.

The new one’s on Botox. “I’m a form of punctuation that signifies an aside.”

There’s one on women voters: “Stick yourself in the middle of enough women, & you practically are one.”

Another on wedding shows: “They put the WE in wedding, and the End in feminism.”

And my favorite is about yogurt:  “I’m gonna shit my pants.”

Just go watch.

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Homophobe Juice

As reported by Alex Blaze on the Bilerico Project, William Bolthouse, founder and 43% owner of Bolthouse Farms, a farm in California that provides organic juices, lemonades, and smoothies to places like Whole Foods and other organic market places, has just recently given a  donation of $100,000 to proponents of a campaign to strip California couples of the right to marry.

Please take a moment and let Bolthouse Farms and their distributors know that you will no longer be purchasing their organic products, because even though they are organic, they come with some nasty side effects. Sign the petition.

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“Non-Essential Services”

A friend of ours works with a theatre out in IA that’s lost almost everything as a result of the recent floods, and like many others – they had no flood insurance. Worse yet, FEMA considers theatres “non essential services” and so they will receive no funding whatsoever to help them rebuild.

If you’re a theatre person, and you can help, you can contact them:

to see if you can make a donation, of money or stuff, to help them out. Right now they’re performing out of the local high school’s auditorium, as of course, the show must go on.

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Pride Rant

A great rant about Pride by Joe.My.God, which he wrote back in 2005 after watching a NYC Pride Parade:

Because even if Pride doesn’t change many minds in the outside world, it’s our PARTY, darlings. It’s our Christmas, our New Year’s, our Carnival. It’s the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other “Happy Pride!” Saying “Happy Pride!” is really just a shorter, easier way of saying “Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!”

I’m not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It’s OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our “debauched” celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

It seemed a great way to end Pride Month.

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Healthcare Proxy Forms

A couple who’ve been together for 18 years went on vacation, on a cruise, with three of their four children. One of them had a massive stroke as their ship was about to leave port, which meant she received medical care at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, where her partner was told the couple made the mistake of being in “an anti-gay city and state” and refused to let her partner in to see her, but for five minutes, as she was dying.

She died about 18 hours later. Both women were only 39 years old.

This is what DOMA & all this other anti-gay bullshit leads to, but please queer folks, fill out your healthcare proxies. You can find NYS’s here, and here in .pdf format. If people have or find links for these forms in their state, please post them below, or send them to me via email & I can post them.

More instructions and state-specific forms below the break. Continue reading “Healthcare Proxy Forms”