Earlier tonight I was reading the alumni magazine of my high school (St. Ignatius, go wildcats!), and in the class notes I found an interesting bit about Bill Duggan, who was a junior when I was a freshman. We were in a couple of musicals together, and I was his understudy in A Chorus Line. Well, it turns out he is now the host of HGTV’s Curb Appeal. How cool is that? Good for him. By the way, he still looks great. Rowr.
Curb Appeal episodes are first run Wednesday nights at 10:30 p.m.
The map meme seems the thing to do, and I do love maps, so here goes. (Yes, Thom, finally.) Click on the links for the maps. I have visited six countries besides the U.S.: Canada (Vancouver and vicinity), Germany (Berlin), Hungary (Budapest), Italy (Milan), Netherlands (Amsterdam and Leiden), and the Philippines (Manila, Lucban, Santo Domingo, and points in between). (Link to World66 via Jase.)
Speaking of world travel, one of my cousins in the Philippines is getting married this May. My family, based in the Bay Area, is planning to attend, and I’m thinking about going as well. Getting to Manila from San Francisco is no problem; I’ve done it a few times. On Philippine Airlines, you usually stop in Honolulu on the way there and come back nonstop. But I’ve never had to fly there from Washington, D.C. Hmm. I guess I could fly to San Francisco first to meet up and rest with my family, then we’d all continue from there.
Or–and here’s where it gets very Amazing Race–I could take one route suggested by an Expedia search: instead of going west, go east on Air France, connecting in Paris and Bangkok. The layover in Paris is seven hours (I could go into town, eh?), jacking up the total journey time including connections to thirty hours. Yikes. But it does also open the possibility of mixing itineraries and just continuing east on the return as well, in effect circumnavigating the globe. (Rajani’s response: “You do know it’s been done before, right?” Silly girl. People don’t stop trying to climb Everest, do they?) The airfare on that would probably be astronomical, perhaps even more than a negotiated round-the-world fare. Anyway. It’s a thought.
Back to the maps. I have visited fifteen states, including D.C. (The District of Columbia is not a state–though it should be!–but that’s a debate for another time.) As you can tell from the map, with its patches of visited states scattered and isolated here and there, most of my interstate travel has been by plane. I haven’t been on many road trips, at least not very long ones. The last few I’ve taken were within California.
Another mapping website I like is the Great Circle Mapper, which tracks flight paths. I’ve created a map that displays most of the flights I’ve taken, not showing connections. Pretty cool, eh?
Where next?
Crap. Last night when I was fiddling with the Outlook and Norton settings on my laptop computer, I must have done something odd, ’cause when I restarted Outlook to receive mail, it basically redownloaded of all my messages. I now had duplicates of everything. Umm, okay. I deleted the dupes and thought nothing of it. But as I found out this morning, it didn’t leave the messages on the server like it usually does. Here on the office computer I use a web interface to access my e-mail, and today when I opened up my inbox, there was nothing. Nothing. (You may now break into song, preferably “Nothing” from A Chorus Line, but I will also allow “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston.) Okay, so it wasn’t completely empty; there were a handful of e-mails I had received since last night. And it’s not a complete loss, since, as I mentioned, copies of all my messages are and have always been safe on the laptop at home, but because they’re inaccessible at the moment, I’m effectively starting from scratch. Oh, well. I’ll live.
I mean, I’d been meaning to clean out my inbox, but this isn’t quite how I imagined it.
Stanley Kurtz’s screed in The Weekly Standard pointing to Scandinavia as evidence of how same-sex marriage is “undermining” the institution of marriage: not exactly a bit of light reading to start the day. An excerpt:
Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern–including gay marriage–is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.
More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.
The “undermining” assertion always boggles me. Do he and others choose to ignore the rights issue here? An excerpt from Andrew Sullivan’s response:
In countries with high levels of secularism, a vast welfare state, and the option of registered partnerships rather than marriage, you would indeed expect traditional marriage to be in decline. There are other factors as well, as Kurtz details them: “Contraception, abortion, women in the workforce, spreading secularism, ascendant individualism…” All of this is not exactly staggering news. What is staggering is Kurtz’s attempt to show that gay marriage in these countries is somehow responsible for this shift.
First off: the entire premise of the piece–that marriage for gays is legal in Norway, Denmark and Sweden–is factually untrue. There are no marriage rights for gays in the countries he cites. There are, instead, what are called “registered partnerships.” These partnerships are open to heteros as well as homos… Even if Kurtz were able to prove in any way a linkage between the emergence of “registered partnerships” and the decline of marriage, it would have no relevance to the debate on equal marriage rights for gays in the U.S. The emergence of gay couples in society is a fact. Sane conservatives need to acknowledge this rather than run away from it. Given that such a presence is here: what should we do to respond to it? My answer is: co-opt gays into the existing and paramount institution for coupling, i.e. marriage. Oppose all counterfeits–like civil unions–which, because they are also open to straights, obviously do undermine marriage. Don’t let your homophobia get in the way of your conservative common sense. Defend marriage from civil unions and domestic partnerships–not from gay couples.
Exactly.
For those of you who read Rebel Prince using the news feed, I’ve changed it to include the full text of each entry, instead of just excerpts, as you probably already have noticed. Let me know if you notice any wrinkles I need to iron out. Also, is there any demand for a different feed that would include comments? What else can I do to enhance your Rebel Prince experience?
‘Cause you know the excerpts weren’t enough. I’m just that damn interesting.
The Oscar nominations have been announced! (The list is also available as a printable scorecard, in image or PDF format). You know what this means: only a little over a month for me to watch at least the best picture nominees and make up my own mind. Maybe I’ll do another “pick the winners” contest like last year. Or maybe not. We’ll see.
I’ve seen only a small proportion of the nominated movies, so I don’t have much in the way of analysis. However, a few thoughts:
The awards will be presented Sunday, Feb. 29.
Not too many surprises at the Golden Globes last night. I only caught about the last hour on TV. Kudos to Angels in America, which won an award in every category for which was nominated. I was surprised, though, that Justin Kirk wasn’t nominated? (One article suggests that a switch in designation from supporting to lead actor may have gotten mired in memoranda to voting members.) I suppose I can’t complain too much: a total of six actors and actresses from Angels were nominated, and Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Jeffrey Wright, and Mary-Louise Parker all won. (What was up with Al’s speech? Did he just wake up or something? At one point I yelled at the TV, “Pull it together!”)
I need to see Lost in Translation. It won for best musical or comedy movie, and it’s the only one in that category I haven’t seen. As for the drama nominees, it’s the reverse. The winner, The Return of the King, is the only one I have seen. Yay for Six Feet Under‘s Frances Conroy. She is phenomenal on that show. The Office won the awards for best comedy series and actor (as well as raves from Rajani), so I suppose I should get around to watching it and seeing what the buzz is about.
A couple of TV categories were dominated by shows with queer themes, prompting Thom and me to wonder, is there a new category for gender issues? Heh. By the way, a word about the categories: they have best actor performances split into drama vs. musical/comedy, and also series vs. mini-series or TV movie; why not do the same for supporting actor? This year, Sean Hayes of Will & Grace was up against actors from the dramas Angels and Soldier’s Girl. It just seems a little strange.
Speaking of awards, the Oscar nominees will be announced early tomorrow morning, Jan. 27.
Mother Nature delivered, finally. Perhaps fed up with our pleas, she dumped three to six inches of snow on the D.C. region last night. It’s pretty, but what’s the point if I can’t stay home to enjoy it? Heigh ho, heigh ho.
