Somewhere Over The Rainbow

A great actor

A great humanitarian

You will be missed

This weekend has felt fairly non-existent. I had to go into work yesterday (got called for jury duty tomorrow, so I needed to make the time up - it's not like anyone's going to be doing my work when I'm gone). I'd initially planned on staying 4 hours, but wound up staying 9. Then I went over to the ArcLight with every intention of seeing "Eastern Promises" but the showing I wanted to see was sold out - I didn't want to go later, because walking around Hollywood late at night after seeing the Russian mob pic would be a little unnerving. I did manage to pick up a copy of "Searching for Debra Winger" at the DVD store. I've been looking for it for a while.

Who is this Fox gal doing the Emmy pre-show? She's wearing one of the ugliest dresses I've ever seen. I got a bit of a giggle when the other interviewer asked Ellen & Portia what was the last thing they did before they left home. My mind went to the place that would have been censored by the time it got to the L.A. rebroadcast. I'm tempted to peek and see what's won already.

I wrapped up the script last night. I'll sit and gel until I'm done with the next one, then I may revisit it. I don't hold a lot of illusions about it. It's okay, more of a way to get my feet wet than anything.

Quite a few things to get done before tomorrow. Ah, the great fun of sitting in a room all day. I hope to make some headway on the fanfic projects I've been working on.

I don't remember when it was hot today. Why are all these people complaining about it being hot out on the red carpet? I'm not really rooting for anything - it's more interesting to sit back and critique the fashions and the speeches.

The Cardinals are officially out of the running for the playoffs. Which means I'll be rooting for the Cubs. I love the Cubs, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure I'm ready for them to be in the playoffs again. The last time just about did me in. I was in the airport in Las Vegas watching the game on the television and saw Moises Alou go to catch the foul ball and then the whole thing just imploded from there. And all that kept going through my brain was that they were five outs away from going to the Series. Beyond sad.

Who was the genius that did the Hawks pre-season schedule? During the regular season, teams only play 2 games in a row, then get a break, but the Hawks are playing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It's insane.

I've been seeing headlines on line the past few days about Pope Benedict's comments that pissed off the Muslim world. I read the speech, will admit to some of it going over my head/boring me to tears, but these are the two inciting paragraphs as presented.

( The Pope's Remarks Taken Out of Context )

First of all, I don't know why he chose a passage from this work that meant to insult and incite. He mentions himself that there were other conversations, perhaps more involved and showing the shared points between the religions or the benefits of either religion, but we don't hear this from him. Instead, we hear, this is my point, your religion is full of violence and destruction and everything that separates your religion, the teachings of your prophet is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I'm all for condemning war, all for it, and it's nice to know that the Pope & I have that in common (not a whole heck of a lot else, and I like it that way). But so many of the world's wars have been religion based, so why is one of the most powerful figures in Western religion stirring up shit?

Holy war is bad, brought to you by the religion that sponsored the Crusades.

Why is there such a need to focus and exploit the differences between the religion, rather than to see the common threads that bind us all together? Why can't we just see the faithfulness of the people and appreciate that? I don't get it.

No, I never read that book.  I'm just never sure what to title these and I don't really feel like leaving it blank.  I'm not going to be searching the entry for themes and then writing a title for it afterward, like "The Hazards of Titling and Other Things That I'm Thinking of Today"  But that's all I have to say about that.  

I got a e-mail (which I get most weekdays) from PlanetOut.com detailing the news of the day.  Some disturbing stuff - a bunch of lesbians beat up some straight street vendor for making unwanted advances toward one of them.  Yelling back, okay, punching the guy in the nose, a step toward the line, but still understandable, stabbing him and beating him with belts bad enough to put him in the hospital, a bit ridiculous.  There's always some folk that spoil the party for the rest of us.  As if we didn't have to deal with the impressions of perversity and woefully misdirected accusations of pedophilia from the narrow minded in the world, now we face perceptions of thuggery from anyone who would see this on the news (queer-friendly folks included).  Maybe for us, it'll be buried in the middle of the local section in Jersey and not really make news anywhere else.   One can hope, but it does put a blight on the community which really also makes me wonder why I'm spending so much time writing about it - look, mom, hate crimes are universal - it's not just them against us, it can be us against them as well.  Stupid, stupid people.

That's enough of that.  PlanetOut had some really exciting news as well, at least for me.  Apparently HRC is starting a spiritual community where they'll have weekly scripture readings and analysis posted.  All the scripture readings have a queer bent to them.  They do not, however, use inclusive language which I find a bit disheartening - I mean, for goodness sake, the Human Rights Campaign can't make the scripture inclusive.  I also got a bit of a giggle since the first reading for the week was the Song of Songs one that was used at my brother's wedding - you just have to say the phrase "like a gazelle" in a way that'd be a good impersonation of my brother and I crack up.  In fact, I can't read it without hearing his voice saying that, so it kind of blows the whole reverent quality of it.  It might be too churchy for me.  I like my church with it's one reading and out way about it.  Five readings, you only get that at the Easter Vigil for Catholics.  Crazy.  But it's a bible study and like many Catholics, I don't know much about the Bible.

New topic - spent most of my free time today, working on the longer story.  It's becoming a novella or something.  Seriously out of hand, but given the AU I've chosen, I have a lot of characters that I could play with.  I wrote quite a bit on it today and it's getting into shape.  I also managed to have a little bit too much fun writing on the train this morning.  I had to stop before the pair got carried away.  Boy, oh, boy.   I haven't devoted this much time to a pair since the days of "Closure" aka "The Great Queer Casablanca"   (more detail on that can be found in my previous post - you figure out which one it is).  I love writing.  This week at least.  I may put an excerpt up tomorrow.

BTW, there is a big billboard in WeHo for the new FOX drama "Justice" - does Eamonn Walker ever smile?  I've no idea who the women are - with my eyesight and the way it's shot, it's impossible - I probably wouldn't have recognized Eamonn if I hadn't known that he was in it.

Time for bed.  I got checks today, guess I'll pay bills tomorrow.  

I lead such an exciting life.