Category: uncategorized

From New York magazine, some musings on a “persistent fantasy”: “The Independent Republic of New York.”

How cool our currency, the york, would be. Vera Wang could design our flags. Groucho Marx would be on our stamps. Bill Clinton could be president again.

Do check it out, especially for the mock-up of the one-york note. Nice. [Link via (Southern Cross) Words. See also, a couple of classic New Yorker covers: “New Yorkistan,” Dec. 10, 2001, by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz; and “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” Mar. 29, 1976, by Saul Steinberg.]

By the way, also from this issue, a conversation between Norman Mailer and his son John Buffalo Mailer. Okay, you caught me. I’m only linking this due to the latter’s cuteness.

Does anyone out there watch Things I Hate About You on Bravo? It premiered a few weeks ago and I’ve (perhaps wisely) avoided it so far, but last night Thom and I saw the commercial for next week’s episode, which features a gay couple, one of whom snores. Oh boy, does this hit close to home. We’ve already set the TiVo. Things I Hate About You airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

The segment on last night’s Daily Show in which Samantha Bee interviews Florida state legislative candidate and homo-nausea sufferer Ed Heeney is hilarious. One of his publicized peeves is that the “lesbian community is buying restaurants and bars,” making it inconvenient for him to play pool. Ohh-kay, then. (If the Daily Show posts the video on their website–and I hope they do–I’ll add the link here.)

Today is Thom‘s birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart!

(And this week four years ago was when I switched coasts and moved to D.C. Wow, four years. Tempus fugit, etc.)

So I joined yet another social networking system, Tribe. I had read about the gay bloggers tribe on a few people’s blogs, and decided to jump on the bandwagon. It’s given me some new blogs to check out (as well as some familiar faces), and the tribe has a lively discussion board, which keeps me going back for more.

I’m sure most of you will get the allusion in this entry’s title, but if not, perhaps I should state that no, I am not a gay Eskimo. (Well, homosexual, yes. Arctic native, no.)

In other tech news, I owe Sam (of madlife) an overdue shout out for sending me an invite for a Gmail account. It took me forever to decide on a username, but I ended up going with one just based on my name and initials. I had tried to come up with some kind of kicky riff on my first name’s similarity to “jif”: “choose jeff” (you know, like the peanut butter), “jeffy pop” (cute, but taken; ah, story of our lives), “jeffy lube” (…).

So it’s yet to be seen what I actually do with the account. Since I have my own e-mail at my domain, the Gmail account is just sitting there like a large, empty warehouse.

Wow. Bill Clinton still has it. The man knows how to give a speech. However, despite briefly donning a private-citizen persona last night, when he outlined the achievements of the Democratic party–i.e., under his leadership–I kept thinking (and perhaps you were too), “Bill Clinton for President! Send him! Oh, wait, I mean, John Kerry! Yeah, that’s it!” A couple of the money lines:

“[Republicans] need a divided America. But we don’t.” “We tried it their way for 12 years. We tried it our way for eight years. Then we tried it their way for four more. By the only test that matters, whether people were better off when we finished than when we started, our way works better.”

Countering opponents’ claims that Kerry and Edwards won’t stand up to the terrorists: “Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.”

Highlighting Kerry’s continued public service at every turn (and providing the sound bite of the evening): “John Kerry said, ‘Send me.'”

Links: transcript and video (Real format, approx. 25 min.).

Asides on the spectacle: first, I must say that the huge 90-foot-wide screen they have above the stage is pretty cool. Second, some of that cheesy walking-on music, not so cool. Lastly, I know I’ve heard the announcer’s voice before. Doesn’t she have a lock on the awards-show circuit? Every time she announced a new speaker, I kept expecting her to continue with something like, “This is Glenn Close’s sixth Oscar nomination. Her first win was for…”

John Karls, globe-trotting bouquet-tosser:

Mr. Karls, 62, started going to operas and ballets and throwing bouquets to his favorite performers at the age of 9, when other boys were throwing to first. He has attended upward of 2,500 performances and tossed some 750 bouquets in a career spanning more than half a century…

Mr. Karls uses a two-handed toss not unlike that of a hammer thrower. In bouquet tossing, weight is not an issue: the flowers only weigh 2 pounds 12 ounces. The real issue is wind resistance: the cellophane wrap can cause significant drag and can make a bouquet do what Mr. Karls calls a “dying duck” over the orchestra pit. With pits measuring 20 feet or more across, a successful toss requires a clear back swing, a clean release and a surprising amount of oomph.

Matt and Jeff were in town, and on Saturday night Thom and I met up with them at Dupont Circle. We all headed to Levante’s, on 19th Street, for a tasty Mediterranean dinner. Ah, great food and great company. (And great weather, too; there was a forecast of rain, but our table on the patio got nothing more than a strong breeze.) Among other things, we traded vacation stories: they told us about how their D.C. trip was going–Thom and I agreed the boys had quite an impressive sightseeing itinerary, covering several museums and monuments in just a few days–and we told them about our trip last month to New York (hey, I never did get around to writing about that, did I?).

After we parted ways, Thom and I walked up to Lambda Rising, where I picked up a couple of books from the sale racks: Michael Cunningham‘s A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood (published together in one volume), and Fraud by David Rakoff, which I’ve been meaning to get for a while. That man has a big (wait for it…) vocabulary; the new word I learned today is “samizdat.”

Yesterday I went to the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center. That night’s performance, held in the Concert Hall (usually these free concerts are in the foyer, so I especially like to go to the occasional ones held in the center’s other larger venues), was by the National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute, a program for youth ages 14-21. It’s always exciting to see such talented young musicians. They played a program of Glinka, Sarasate (featuring a fantastic solo violinist), and Schumann. By the way, a couple weeks ago I went to the Millennium Stage to see the London Gay Men’s Chorus, which was a fun and moving performance. Two of the songs, “Seasons of Love” and “Come What May” brought a few tears to my eyes, and I thought to myself that had Thom been there too, we both would’ve been bawling. (We’re such criers.)