Hosted by Ms. Pac-Man.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by Classic Video Game Characters: Emptying your pockets of quarters since 1979.
Open Thread
Hosted by Ms. Pac-Man.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by Classic Video Game Characters: Emptying your pockets of quarters since 1979.
Suede to Reunite for Benefit Show
Britpop's founding fathers will reunite this Spring for a single gig at London's Royal Albert Hall, with proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust. The line-up will consist of Brett Anderson, Richard Oakes, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, and Neil Codling.
The date of the show TBA.
[Cross-posted with a tip of the hat to my Britpop pal Lena.]
Feel The (Quiet) Homomentum
From today's New York Times: Pentagon Steps Up Talks on Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’:
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is stepping up internal discussions on how gay men and lesbians might be able to serve openly in the armed services, military officials said on Thursday, in anticipation of fulfilling President Obama’s campaign pledge to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law.
The discussions, centered in a small group assembled by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are in preparation for a possible Senate hearing on the 1993 law this month.
H/T to MzR
Haiti Open Thread
[Trigger warning.]
CNN: Fears of lawlessness grow amid chaos in Haiti.
Fears of civil strife grew Friday in earthquake-ravaged Haiti as emergency crews raced against the clock to rescue those trapped under rubble and to keep survivors alive, fed and sheltered.Also from CNN: Voices from Haiti. This is a repeatedly updated section in which CNN is "collecting stories from bloggers, residents and Twitter users on the ground to share in their own words what they are seeing in different cities in Haiti following the earthquake."
Despite relative calm, there were reports of sporadic looting and violence after Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake clobbered the capital, affecting millions of people and possibly killing tens of thousands.
"If help doesn't come quickly, it probably will [get worse]," Agnes Pierre-Louis, manager of the Le Plaza hotel in Port-au-Prince. "We're not hearing anything from the government. We're not seeing any foreign aid yet."
...Former President Clinton told CNN's "American Morning" on Friday that the military's major priority should be to distribute supplies, get people radios, arrange adequate shelters and develop lighted areas at night.
"You've got unprecedented numbers of the people roaming the streets at night with no place to sleep. They haven't had any sleep in two days. They don't have water. They don't have food," said Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti.
"Think how you would feel if you lost everything? You were wandering around streets at night, they were all dark; you were tripping over bodies, living and dead, and you didn't have water to drink or food to eat. That's what we're facing now. That's what we've got to get through now."
LA Times: Relief groups struggle to aid desperate Haiti quake victims.
Reuters: U.N. to launch Haiti emergency appeal for $550 million.
BusinessWeek: Haiti Fundraising Accelerates Through Tweets, YouTube Appeals.
Please feel welcome to leave recommendations for additional reading and/or fundraising efforts in comments.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky Approved™ paints and brushes.
Recommended Reading:
Towleroad: Iowa Bigots Protest and Republicans Introduce Resolution Proposing Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban
Womanist Musings: [The Animal Rights Group That Shall Not Be Named] Takes On The Pro Life Movement
Fineness & Accuracy: I Don’t Care If You’re Offended
Joe. My. God.: Maryland Pol Introduces Bill To Bar Recognition Of Same-Sex Marriage
Shark-Fu: Reflectitude...
Feminists with Disabilities: Admit Two
Leave your links in comments...
The Adventure Continues
I think we all knew that Rush Limbaugh's journey into bilious booshwah about the earthquake in Haiti wasn't over with his pronouncement earlier this week. Yesterday he not only stood by his conviction that President Obama is helping Haiti for political reasons, he told one caller, "April" from Paducah, Kentucky, that he was right to say so and wouldn't back down.
What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a blockhead. What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a closed-minded bigot who is ill-informed. … And if you had listened to this program for a modicum of time you would know it. But instead you’re a blockhead. You’re mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears.It's probably an exercise in rhetorical questions to ask, "Why Does This Person Still Have a Job?" because the usual answer is that his audience eats it up and he knows that this is what they expect from him. So the next question would be at what point does his audience finally say "Enough!"? To quote the immortal Joseph Welch speaking to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
But I think we know his answer.
Daily Kitteh - Landlord Approved
So, in mid-September, this kitty showed up in our yard.
At first, we figured someone new had moved into the neighborhood, and that she was just checking out the new neighbors, but she didn't seem to be going home.
We called the shelters, the vets, and checked all the "lost pet" ads we could find for our area. We even took out a "found pet" ad in the local newspaper, because we were just certain-sure that someone must be looking for this beautiful cat. We fed her and let her inside when she wanted to come in (she's quite the outdoorsy type, but was soon joining us on the bed every night), and we asked around to friends that we knew were looking for a new cat, because we really weren't sure we were ready for a new cat (Little passed away less than a year ago) -- plus we weren't really sure this kitty was "ours" (know what I mean?).
So, for about six weeks, we just hung around together. No one called from the shelter, or the vets, or the paper -- and we . . . . started falling in love. Because really?
How could we not? I mean -- really . . . 
We stopped calling her just "White Kitty", and started calling her "Sovereign" (also "Hammy McHammerson", because she seems to vacillate between standing on her enormous gravitas and acting like a complete goofball).
We formally adopted her on Winter Solstice, and as of January 14, 2010, she is officially land-lord approved (we had a pet deposit that was quite specific about the pet it covered, but she is now formally covered by the Pet Rider in our lease).
So we are very glad to welcome Ms. Sovereign Please-Carry-Me-Around-the-House-in-A-Sling & Give-Me-A-Greenie to our briefly catless household.
I will be following up with some film of Hammy McHammerson and the Squirrel in a few days.
Kittehs!
An Unabashed Plug for Local Theatre
Yes, theatre. Get over yourselves, my American friends, that's how a good chunk of the world spells it. :)
Last night I went to the opening-night show of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, playing at the Kitchener-Waterloo Little Theatre. KWLT is an organization which has been running shows in this town since 1935, owning their own building for the last forty years or so. Despite half the building burning down in 2002, the company continued, raising money and running shows in other facilities while volunteers donated thousands of hours in rebuilding. It re-opened last September.
Now, full disclosure here: The director is my much-loved ex, the stage manager is a Russian student of mine, and I'm friends or acquainted with everyone else in the show. I'm also an officer of the company, serving as non-voting librarian to the board of directors, and a former President of the board there, over a ten-year span with the organization. So I've got very strong ties to this theatre and this cast.
That said, I can say without reservation that I really enjoyed and would recommend the show to anyone interested in women's stories. Albee's script was seen as something of a redemption for him, after criticisms that his early promise (as shown by the superb Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - which I've directed myself a few years ago!) had faded by the 80s. The script was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer for Drama, and continues Albee's interest in characters with rough edges, mixed fortunes, flaws. It is a painful look into Albee's own life, his own estrangement from his mother over his sexuality.
A quick summary of the story (NB: spoilers): A, a woman in her 90s, suffering from an apparent dementia of unknown origin, is attended regularly by B, a woman in her early 50s. When the play opens, A is in her bedroom with B and C. The latter is a 26-year-old representative of the law firm handling A's affairs, and has some business she keeps trying to get through. As the first act closes, A has a stroke, and the figurative curtain (KWLT is a small, black-box theatre, and has no proscenium arch, hence no curtain) comes down with B and C running to get help. The second act picks up with a mannequin of A lying motionless in bed, and shortly her son ("The Boy") comes in to sit with her, apparently grieving. A, B, and C are now all playing A at various times in her life - at 91, 52 and 26 respectively. The conversation turns odd at times, as A and B reminisce about things that haven't happened to C yet. The story of the estrangement of The Boy comes out in pieces through the second act: he has left home because of his mother's homophobia, and they are estranged for many years.
The first act rambles through A's life, anecdotes, tidbits, half-remembered moments, and Albee pulls no punches about the experience of being a 90-year-old woman. The three main actors (there's also a character who's a man, but who has no lines), all local community theatre veterans of varying experience, do a solid job of bringing the script to life.
A is querulous, afraid, spiteful and funny by turns, shifting from one to the other smoothly. She has lost height and weight, despite her assertions that she was tall and strong as a young woman. She's well-played by Aleriel Lear, despite the actor being a good sixty-plus years younger than the character. Lear gives us an A who is alternately snarkily funny and angrily suspicious to all around her: "They all steal!" she says, of servants and attendants. She (mostly) maintains the fiction of her age well, moving with the careful frailty of a woman with serious osteoporosis.
B is a bounteous woman, all curves and strength, an archetype of the mid-life professional caregiver: she humours all A's outrageous assertions, feeling A is a product of her time, and is too old to be worth arguing with. Kluckow brings a hearty and earthy version of the character, who's seen enough to be wiser than she was, and not enough to have become bitter about it.
A is by turns racist and homophobic, and seems to really not understand that she's doing anything wrong, giving us the usual "I've had a best friend who was $ETHNICITY", among other outrageous and awful comments. C, a woman of 26, is regularly shocked by these comments, and disagrees with B on a number of occasions about humouring A's fantasies and offensiveness. Polly Edwards gives us a businesslike C in the first act, uninterested in the old woman's games and rambles. C is the mirror to A: where A is afraid of dealing with the details of life, C is uninterested in A's reminiscences, and unwilling to approach A with the reverence A demands, continually trying to bring the conversation back to the business at hand. In the second act, though, she brings out not just the fear C has that she will become first B, then A, as her life goes on, but also the curiosity most of us have at that age: where will I be in 25 years, who will I be with, what will I be like?
The direction is well up to the usual high standard KWLT audiences have come to expect from Janelle Mifflin Starkey. Some of her previous shows have been seen as among the best to come out of KWLT in the last ten years: The Attic, the Pearls, and Three Fine Girls receiving the most accolades, another feminist/woman-focused show.
And in the end, that's how I'm justifying this post here. This is a definitely feminist production of a definitely woman-focused show, appearing in a small theatre in a smallish city - not where one would ordinarily find such work. The script speaks unapologetically and frankly about the sex lives of older women, about growing old, about infidelity and alienation.
The actors are tight, lines are appropriately jumped, and the characters are clear and well-defined. That's not to say the show is flawless. The physical differences between the three women are a bit of a strain to the suspension of disbelief; granted that this is hard to avoid, in community theatre, as one is constrained by the audition pool somewhat.
There were also several moments when Edwards' hair fell in her face, completely obscuring her features and leaving us without a face for the lines. Kluckow sometimes gets a little upstage in her facing, which tends to lose a couple of words despite her lovely husky voice, as well as obscuring her face. And Lear's voice varies somewhat in strength, perhaps a bit more than one would ordinarily encounter in an older woman. The set is simple and unchanging, although I must say the use of a slightly-larger bed would have allowed a better maintenance of the fiction of the mannequin. As it was, The Boy (Adam Cyr) was more or less sitting on the poor lady, and when C joined him briefly on the other side of the bed, the mannequin sort of disappeared.
If you live in southern Ontario, and can make it out to the show, I can unreservedly recommend you come see it. Besides being a good show, it's a woman-focused show in a mainstream theatre, and the best way to make sure there's more of that is to get bums in seats. So not only will you enjoy the show, you'll be swinging a shiny teaspoon while you do it.
It's running January 15 and 16, 21-23, and 28-30, at 8pm, at the Kitchener-Waterloo Little Theatre, 9 Princess Street East, Waterloo (first link to theatre web site; second link to location in Google Maps). Tickets are $10 for members, $15 for non-members, and can be reserved through e-mail or by phone (see website for information).
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Teddy Pendergrass died Wednesday after a battle with colon cancer. RIP, Teddy. (Full obit below the fold.)
Theodore Pendergrass first hit the music world as the gifted drummer for the Cadillacs, the pre-natal troupe that would one day become Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. But his overpowering baritone was going to waste behind the drum kit, and with the Blue Notes he performed lead vocals on numerous number one hits before going solo in the last half of the 70s.
In 1982, the brakes on Pendergrass' Rolls Royce failed and, while in a spin out, his car struck two trees. Pendergrass' passenger escaped with minimal injury, but the accident left Pendegrass paralyzed from the waist down. He remained an active force in the music industry, releasing over a dozen albums until he announced his retirement in 2006.
Throughout his career, Pendergrass belonged to a class of R&B singers with a bent for positivity, and in their ranks, Pendergrass' singing voice, a heavy, husky baritone, and his stage presence of beaming good vibrations, made him a beloved and cherished musical presence.
In 2009, Pendergrass underwent surgery to treat colon cancer. Yesterday, he died of the disease, surrounded by friends and family. He was 59 years old.
Question of the Day
A few years ago I was Googling for something else and happened to come across the name and e-mail of a friend I had made the day after our family moved into our new house. That was in 1957 and I was four at the time. We stayed close friends even after his family moved to Florida. (In fact, through his invitation I visited here for the first time in 1966 and it obviously had an impact on me.) I lost touch with him when he joined the Navy, but that afternoon I dropped him an e-mail. He responded immediately and we've reconnected via phone and -- of course -- Facebook. We even met up in person when I passed through Chicago a couple of years ago. It's great to make new friends, of course, but there's something good in keeping in touch with someone who's known you all your life. So...
Are you still in touch with your best friend from childhood?
You May Be Through With Leno, But Leno's Not Through With You
As I (and just about everyone else in the world) reported earlier this week, Jay Leno's stinking turd of a show is being scuttled.
Shame, that.
At the time, it was also suggested that Leno would be given a new half-hour show, and Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show would be pushed back to midnight. Not really a good deal for The Tonight Show, an even worse deal for O'Brien.
O'Brien was pretty vocal about how he was being shit on by NBC and by Leno, and indicated he would not go along with their plans.
What is a network to do? Fire O'Brien, apparently, and give Leno back The Tonight Show.
So, after Leno stank up the network (and seriously tanked affliates' revenues) for six months, he is being rewarded by returning to The Tonight Show. Nice.
Jebus, doesn't this guy have a vintage fire truck to go ride or something?
[Cross-posted.]
Daily Puppeh & Kitteh
I was browsing through my photos the other day and came across these. I'm so glad all three have joined our family over the years!
Haiti Help and Info Open Thread
Help: Doctors Without Borders. DWB was operating three medical centers in Haiti, providing some of the only accessible care in Port-au-Prince for poor pregnant women, new mothers, and infant children. All three of the medical centers were destroyed in the earthquake, yet DWB "has already treated more than 1,000 people on the ground in Haiti following Tuesday's earthquake, but the needs are huge. An inflatable hospital with operating theatres is expected to arrive in the next 24 hours." They really need support.
As before, please feel invited to include other recommendations for donations in comments.
Recommended Reading:
WaPo: Red Cross estimates quake killed up to 50,000; Obama pledges $100 million in aid.
A Haitian Red Cross official estimated that between 45,000 and 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's devastating earthquake in this impoverished capital, and President Obama pledged $100 million in aid to support what he called one of the largest international relief efforts in history.Reuters: Clinton sees "long-term effort" to help Haiti.
"No one knows with precision, no one can confirm a figure," Victor Jackson, an assistant national coordinator with Haiti's Red Cross, told Reuters news service when giving the estimated death toll Thursday. "We also think there are 3 million people affected throughout the country, either injured or homeless."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday the United States will provide long-term assistance to help Haiti recover from this week's devastating earthquake.PC World: FBI Warns of Bogus Haiti Online Donation Scams.
"This is going to be a long-term effort. We have the immediate crisis of trying to save those lives that can be saved, to deal with the injured ... to try to provide food, water, medical supplies, some semblance of shelter," Clinton said on NBC's Today show.
She said the U.S. government was also prepared to work with the Haitian government and other international partners to begin rebuilding the stricken country.
"This calamity has affected 3 million people. It has caused the collapse of ten of thousands of buildings. We know that there will be tens of thousands of casualties," Clinton added without providing specific numbers on fatalities.
Clinton said in a separate interview on CNN that a U.S. military team had reopened the airport so that heavy aircraft could begin to arrive.
She also pledged U.S. help for the crippled Haitian government. "The authorities that existed before the earthquake are not able to fully function. We're going to try to support them as they re-establish authority," she told CNN.
BBC: The Big Picture: Haiti After the Earthquake.
Modern Bullshit
Did anyone manage to catch Modern Family, ABC's new show about, well, modern families? I didn't. But I did happen to stumble across the above picture recently. It's the show's gay couple. And their adopted Vietnamese baby.
Wow, groundbreaking. There's the prissy fag on the left in the darling little sweater. (I've dubbed him Sweater.) And on the right there's the tubby mo with the wild and wacky shirt! (His name will be Paisley) Jebus. Those were my first impressions. Just based on the photo. Two tired stereotypes right out of the box. But that couldn't be right, could it? Not in a show created by two hetero dudes.
So I went to Wikipedia, and read the character bios.
Sweater is a low-key or mild-mannered person. At most times he is the exact opposite of Paisley which usually causes disagreements. Paisley acts as a counterbalance to Sweater's uptight, worrying ways. He is not ashamed of his homosexuality and usually responds to homophobia (whether real or perceived) by giving "speeches". However, he is sometimes embarrassed by Paisley's flamboyance. Sweater's dad isn't completely comfortable with the fact that his son is gay, which most likely contributed to Sweater becoming a momma's boy. Sweater is an overprotective and cautious father. He also enjoys musical theater and loved ice-skating as a kid.
Ho ho! He also enjoys musical theater and loved ice-skating as a kid! Of course he did. He's a momma's boy, like all sweater-loving fags. I also am thrilled that gay men are yet again portrayed as imagining phantom homophobia under every pillow. Oh well, any excuse to give a speech on political correctness!
Paisley, also referred to as Paise, is Sweater's partner of five years who has a very big dramatic personality. His bubbly outgoing personality contrasts to Sweater's uptight manner, which causes them to be very opposite. Paisley was a starting center for the University of Illinois football team. Paisley fosters many unusual hobbies such as collecting antique fountain pens, being adept in Japanese flower arrangement, filming home movies, and is a classically trained Auguste clown. Paisley often dresses their daughter up as famous people, such as Diana Ross or Ray Charles for the purpose of taking photographs.
Oh my, the laughs just keep on coming, don't they? See, he's an ex-football player, but he loves Japanese flower arrangement! How gay is that? Of course he loves antiques, amiright? He's bubbly and dramatic (in fairness, those words were written by a Wiki contrib, though I suspect it isn't inaccurate). And he was trained as a clown! Because all homos just love to perform. When they're not playing dress-up with their adopted kid*.
Sometimes I forget we're living in the 21st century when retrofuck swill like these stereotypes continue to fill the airwaves. One of these days, maybe, I'll see a TV show that features real gay characters.
* As we know, if you're a lesbian on TV, you've a baster baby. If you're gay, you've adopted one from some war-torn country.
[Cross-posted.]
Today in Ridiculous
We learn that The Heritage Foundation suggests that President Obama appoint George Bush to represent the Republicans in the Haitian relief/rescue effort:
The U.S. government response should be bold and decisive. It must mobilize U.S. civilian and military capabilities for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform. President Obama should tap high-level, bipartisan leadership. Clearly former President Clinton, who was already named as the U.N. envoy on Haiti, is a logical choice. President Obama should also reach out to a senior Republican figure, perhaps former President George W. Bush, to lead the bipartisan effort for the Republicans.Because Bush did such a heckuva job the last time he managed a relief and rescue effort during a natural disaster, right? And because relief & rescue efforts need to be represented by Dems and Republicans or else they won't be, what, fair?
Oh and while we're there being all humanitarian and shit, we should totally stick it to Chavez, watch out for
While on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. military can also interrupt the nightly flights of cocaine to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter the ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola. This U.S. military presence, which should also include a large contingent of U.S. Coast Guard assets, can also prevent any large-scale movement by Haitians to take to the sea in dangerous and rickety watercraft to try to enter the U.S. illegally.But remember:
Meanwhile, the U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue. Congress should immediately begin work on a package of assistance, trade, and reconstruction efforts needed to put Haiti on its feet and open the way for deep and lasting democratic reforms.
The U.S. should implement a strong and vigorous public diplomacy effort to counter the negative propaganda certain to emanate from the Castro-Chavez camp. Such an effort will also demonstrate that the U.S.’s involvement in the Caribbean remains a powerful force for good in the Americas and around the globe.Just in case you forgot to use this rescue and relief mission to really stick it to Chavez. Gee, I can't imagine why would the Foundation would be so certain that "negative propaganda" will come from Chavez's camp after reading this heartwarming directive so full of concern for the Haitian people.
[UPDATE] The AFP is reporting that the White House did, in fact, ask Bush to co-lead:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Former US president George W. Bush will join former president Bill Clinton to help lead the US relief effort in response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti, an official close to Bush said Thursday.Head.Desk.
Bush, President Barack Obama's predecessor, "will join president Clinton in helping with disaster relief" after the catastrophe, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The official announcement was expected to come from the White House.
[...]The White House declined to comment on the request to Bush and Clinton, but said that Obama would make a new statement on the unfolding US relief effort for Haiti later on Thursday.
Obama is due to speak from the Diplomatic Room of the White House at 10:05 am (1505 GMT).
Out There
Rush Limbaugh has moved so far and so fast beyond contemptible that it takes the light from his home, the Planet of the Bloviating Shitheels, five years to catch up to him.
(Same commenting rules as in Spudsy's post.)
