This morning I tried registering a user ID with eBay. I figured I’d use my first initial and my last name, since that would be easy to remember.

eBay told me it was too vulgar.

It’s times like this that I wish my grandfather had changed his name when he came to America.

My family had dinner at The Harrison in Tribeca last night in celebration of three birthdays: my brother’s was Monday, his girlfriend’s was Tuesday, and my dad’s was yesterday. There were seven of us at dinner: my parents, my aunt, my brother and his girlfriend, and myself and Matt. The food was delicious.

At the next table over, I noticed New York City Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and a female companion.
Doctoroff has been described as a latter-day Robert Moses, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s Doctoroff who dreamed up the NYC 2012 Olympics bid, and he’s also the guy who wants to build a Jets stadium on the Upper West Side. I’m against the proposed stadium, and I’m not particularly fond of the Olympics bid, either. New York is crowded enough as it is, and it’s not like New York needs the Games anyway.

I’m not alone in my skepticism.

I logged into Amazon.com today and saw something new on the front page. It turns out I now have a plog. What is a plog, you ask? Why, it’s a personalized blog.

That seems kind of redundant to me.

The telescoping coinage of the word is neat, though. “Plog” is short for “personalized blog,” but “blog” is already short for “web log.” And “web,” of course, is short for “World Wide Web.”

So technically, “plog” is short for “personalized World-Wide-Web log.” Even though it’s really just a personalized Amazon log. But the meanings of words often change, don’t they.

Mmmm… etymology.

[Update: I’ve added a couple of books that I’d forgotten earlier.]

A perusal of my reading habits over the last few months shows how strangely my brain works. I’ll find myself fascinated by one topic, wanting to read and learn all about it. And then somehow my mind will drift over to another topic, and I’ll want to read and learn all about that. And apparently I haven’t really gotten into fiction lately. I’ve been all focused on being an autodidact, and unreal things have seemed a waste of time.

In the fall, I rediscovered my love for the theater, and my reading shifted accordingly. I wanted to learn all I could about it.

Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum

Musical Stages: An Autobiography by Richard Rodgers

Ghost Light: A Memoir by Frank Rich

Stephen Sondheim: A Life by Meryle Secrest

Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical “Follies” by Ted Chapin

Sometime after the new year, when gay marriage became big again, I decided to focus on gay politics and other gay issues.

Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage by David Moats

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins
(Actually, I only read the first 2/3 of this, after which I got bored. One might wonder why this book comes under the gay section of my list; it’s because I was thinking about AIDS and began wondering about the evolution of viruses.)

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Then, this spring, my inner geek emerged after a long slumber. I’ve still been in geek mode lately.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
(the one novel I’ve read recently — but it was worth it)

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (almost finished)

It’s weird how I’ll get on these extended in-depth kicks that somehow morph into or get replaced by other in-depth kicks. A couple of summers ago I was all about Plato and the “great books” and teaching myself ancient Greek. Before that, I took a class and wrote a screenplay. At one point I was really into doing jigsaw puzzles. As for books, I’ve had political biography phases, fiction phases, and so on.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find that one job that satisfies me, or even that one goal in life to achieve. And that might be OK.

Life’s a buffet, and I’m in the all-you-can-eat line.

I’ve had Macintosh fever lately. I want a Mac. The fever has subsided in the last few days, but over the long Memorial Day weekend it was especially strong. For some reason, last Friday morning I found myself browsing all over the Apple website, checking out the different product lines and pricing different machines. Then on Sunday I spent a long time at the Apple Store in SoHo.

I don’t know exactly why I want a Mac. There seem to be several reasons: they look so damn cool, I keep hearing how elegant the Mac OS interface is, OS X is beautiful visually, and also I’m just darn curious and I feel like I’m missing out on something. The thing is, I bought a new computer just over a year ago — a Dell with Windows XP — so it might be a while before I get around to buying a Mac. Unless I sell my Dell. Or, I could get an eMac, maybe, since they’re cheaper.

Anyway, in order to boost my confidence, I’d be interested in hearing from any Mac users who might have some input/advice/reasons why I should switch.

Here’s a profile of Kyle Cooper, who designs title sequences — “the short introductions and closings to films, videogames, and television shows that list the names of the cast and crew involved in the production.” He’s done the titles for Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Se7en, and other films. I never realized there was a person whose sole job was to design those things, nor did I realize how much effort went into them. Interesting stuff.

On Sunday afternoon there will be a peaceful protest against the New York MTA’s proposed subway photography ban. It’s at 1:00 p.m. in Grand Central Station. People armed with cameras will fan out and take photos on the subway. (Note that the ban would also apply to photos on buses.)

The Village Voice, for its part, has interviews with several NYC photobloggers about the proposed ban, and is running a Forbidden Photos Contest.

The front page of NYCsubway.org is currently all about the proposed ban.

A subway photo ban is a stupid, stupid idea. What’s next — banning photos of buildings? Maybe we should just require all subway riders to wear blindfolds, so they won’t be able to look at all the secret secret things.

We’re living in insane times.

Before I knew anything about politics, deficits, taxes, Congress, or AIDS, I knew that Ronald Reagan was my president. He took office when I was in first grade, and by the time he left office I was in high school in Tokyo, Japan. That was a huge chunk of my life. Until I was 15 years old, he was the only president I’d ever known. He loomed large over America, like a king.

My first memory of him is from the fall of 1980. I was looking at the Weekly Reader in my first-grade classroom. On the cover was a story about the 1980 campaign, with photos of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson in little ovals.

Reagan won, and the only thing I knew about him for the next few years was that he liked jelly beans.

Later, when I was in fifth grade, he was running for re-election. My class ran a mock election, with one student speaking as Reagan and another student speaking as Mondale.

Everyone in the class voted for Reagan except me. After listening to both kids’ speeches, I just decided I liked Mondale’s speech better.

I first started watching “Saturday Night Live” during the Iran-Contra affair. I was in middle school. I remember the famous sketch with Randy Quaid as Reagan, pretending to be stupid in front of the reporters in the Oval Office, and then barking out orders to his staff members as the mastermind of the cover-up after the press left.

The quintessential 1980s moment for me is Nancy Reagan appearing on “Diff’rent Strokes,” telling Arnold to “just say no” to drugs.

Reagan’s death is going to be the biggest news story over the next few days. There’ll be lots of familiar faces on TV, and for those of us in our mid-20s to mid-30s, there’ll be lots of childhood nostalgia.

Now that I’m an adult, my opinion of Reagan is more complicated than it was when I was a kid. Thousands of Americans died of AIDS because of him, and his economic policies shot the deficit through the roof and left a mess for his successors to clean up. For the last 10 years, I knew that he’d someday die, and as a newspaper geek, I always wondered what his New York Times obituary would look like. It’s strange that it’s finally happened.

Another piece of my childhood has gone away.

Congratulations to “Avenue Q”! The little musical that could, did. “Avenue Q” was easily my favorite musical of the past year, and I was so excited when it won the Tony for Best Musical tonight. I love it when a deserving underdog wins — especially in this case.

I’m sure the show’s Tony campaign helped, of course. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should listen to “Rod’s Dilemma, the song the creative team wrote especially for its Tony campaign. It’s really cute.

Hooray!

The New York Times obituary geek in me notes the following:

Length of Ronald Reagan’s obituary in the Times: 10,757 words.

Length of Richard Nixon’s obituary in the Times: 13,158 words.

Length of Queen Victoria’s obituary in the Times: 16,142 words.

Here’s how to make it into the New York Times obituaries:

It is best to die before noon, 2 p.m. at the latest, so that there will be decent time for justice to be done before the early evening deadline of the first edition — and less inconvenience to the staff. All those interested in having the Times sum up their lives, even briefly, should also avoid dying on Saturday, when the deadline is very early.

Unless you’re an ex-president, apparently. (It helps when your obituary is written way in advance.)

As for television, I despise the tendency of TV media to tell us to feel reverent and sad after someone dies, particularly someone as controversial as Reagan. Even Nixon became an angel in the press when he died. The Nixon hagiography was tempered, at least, by this entertaining Nixon obituary by Hunter S. Thompson.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

Free speech rules.

This is prompted by a blog entry I almost wrote.

I’m bothered by some of the statements and comments I’ve seen on various blogs since Reagan died — primarily blanket statements about “leftists” and so forth, particularly here (though he has since clarified his stance), here, and here. Granted, Mike did go somewhat over the top in his initial reaction to Reagan’s death (although he has since clarified his views as well).

Two points.

1) A problem with political discourse on both sides is that too many people refer to “the right” or “the left” or “conservatives” or “liberals” or “leftists” or “they” or “them” or whatever. But such polarizing generalizations blur the truth that we’re really just a bunch of human beings with disparate viewpoints, not members of monolithic lock-step groups. Just because I consider myself a liberal, doesn’t mean I worship Michael Moore or Susan Sontag.

2) I hate the word “hate” as it’s applied to politics. It’s way too overused. Phrases such as “Reagan-haters,” “liberals hate America,” and even “hate crimes” annoy me because they don’t tell you anything. Hate is a combination of various amounts of anger and ignorance and fear; it’s a compound, not an element. Furthermore, I believe that hate, like love, can come only from knowledge. Words such as “hate” only inflame political discourse.

These things annoy me. We’ll never be able to reconcile our differences unless we can look at each other, and each other’s viewpoints, clearly.

I don’t know if I’m being too anal-retentive here. Bloggers blog primarily for themselves, not for the greater public. But the Internet, of course, makes everything public, and conversely, broad changes often begin at the grass roots.

I’m very wary of putting people into groups, even though it seems to be a natural human instinct to do so. The thing is, although it’s easy to notice when someone from “the other side” does it, it’s not always easy to notice when you’re doing it yourself. So perhaps we’re just doomed to fling inaccurate accusations at each other until the end of time. It’s not like this problem is confined to early 21st-century America, after all.

What prompted this blog entry was the following. I was having a conversation last night with Matt and another member of our chorus. We were groaning about the Republican National Convention coming to town this summer, and then I joked, “You can bet the gay bars’ll be filled with closeted Republican boys.” After all, Madison Square Garden is what, 10 blocks north of Chelsea?

I was going to repeat that on my blog this morning, and then I thought, Well, here I’ve been criticizing the snide political discourse that’s been going on lately, wishing that we could all act more politely toward each other, and yet here I am, making a snide comment myself and thereby contributing to the acrimony with my own generalization.

But now I’m realizing that no, I’ve gotten confused.

Because it’s not mean if it’s true.

More accurately, I’m not vilifying an entire class of people here, or misrepresenting any viewpoints. I’m talking about something that will most certainly occur.

Sometimes I’m just way too much of a perfectionist for myself. I think too much.

So you know what? Screw it.

When the Republican National Convention coming to town this summer, you can bet the gay bars’ll be filled with closeted Republican boys.

After all, Madison Square Garden is what, 10 blocks north of Chelsea?

10 Super Foods You Should NEVER Eat!
(via Anil)

The Death List: “The DeathList committee draws up DeathList at the end of each year with the objective selecting the most celebrities who will die in the next calendar year.”

Morbid (by definition) and in poor taste, but fascinating.

The obit desk meets the undead. An article about the longstanding news practice of writing obituaries in advance of someone’s death.

When [former Boston mayor John] Collins asked whether Nolan was gathering material for his obituary, Nolan replied in the affirmative — which, in turn, led Collins to wonder aloud whether he could ever get favorable treatment from the Globe, of which he had been a bitter critic. Nolan recalls telling him, ” ‘You could die on a slow news day.’ And the son of a bitch died on Thanksgiving. He died on the slowest news day of the year.”

I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by obituaries. I just am.

Speaking of which — Ray Charles died today. R.I.P.

Matt and I saw “Super Size Me” last night.

Ick.

For those who don’t know, the premise of this documentary is that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days. He sets the following rules for himself: he has to try everything on the menu at least once, he can’t eat or drink anything that doesn’t come from McDonald’s, and if he’s offered to super-size his meal, he has to say yes. He enlists three doctors to monitor his health, which greatly deteriorates over those 30 days. He gains 10 pounds in the first week alone; by the end of the month, he’s gained 25. He gets chest pains; he feels depressed and loses his sex drive; his liver starts to mimic the diseased liver of an alcoholic.

Ick.

The ostensible point of the film is to show bad McDonald’s food is for you, but the larger message is that the nation’s food industry sells us crappy food, and we choose to eat it.

Especially kids.

This is partly because of all the food advertising skewed toward children, but I think a more important cause is that parents don’t make dinner as often anymore. They’re too busy to make a meal, because they both work during the day and they’re both wiped out once they get home, and who wants to cook?

A few years ago I worked for a woman who was co-writing a book about meals made from fresh, local, organic ingredients. (I proofread it for her.) I worked for her for a year, and she and her assistant were very into healthy eating. I learned a great deal from them both. I haven’t quite taken all of their lessons to heart, but I do usually try to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I can.

It’s odd that we pay so little attention to the things we put into our very own bodies.

Anyway — “Super Size Me” is totally worth seeing.

And I won’t be eating at Mc Donald’s for a long, long time.

Newspaper front pages on Reagan’s death.

Jesus. Remind me never to get on Jason Calacanis’s bad side.

Gothamist.com issued an apology to Calacanis for a post it published about him earlier in the day. It has also edited the original post. But scroll down to see a transcript of an IM conversation between Calacanis and Bluejake in the comments. Is that how business entrepreneurs are supposed to talk?

Yeesh.

My apologies to anybody who tried to post comments yesterday. I was fiddling with my comment templates yesterday and somehow wound up preventing all comments from getting through without realizing it. I didn’t even realize there was a problem until last night, when one of my readers alerted me. It should be fixed now.

Comment away!

Virginia’s New Jim Crow

In the Marriage Affirmation Act, Virginia appears to abridge gay individuals’ right to enter into private contracts with each other. On its face, the law could interfere with wills, medical directives, powers of attorney, child custody and property arrangements, even perhaps joint bank accounts. If a gay Californian was hit by a bus in Arlington, her medical power of attorney might be worthless there. “Sorry,” the hospital might have to say to her frantic partner, “your contract means nothing here. Now leave before we call security.”

On July 1, Virginia will put into effect one of the most draconian anti-gay laws in the nation. Gay marriage is already prohibited there, but the new law will even make it illegal for two same-sex people to create private wills or powers of attorney with each other. This goes beyond denigating gay couples; it denigrates the power of gay people as individuals. In infringing on the right of contract, it seems blatantly unconstitutional. (If I have my law correctly.)

I’m almost ashamed I went to school there. Virginia, I’m disappointed in you.

Matt and I made omelettes this afternoon. Mmmmm.

My old UVA friend Tim Jarrett went to his 10th reunion recently and took a bunch of photos of the Grounds (the word for UVA’s campus). Great representations of a beautiful place. He even took some photos of Room B012 in Old Cabell Hall, where the Glee Club still rehearses. Sigh, I remember that room well. Good times… good times.

Here’s another omelette photo.

I’m having book frustration. I need a new book, but I don’t know what to read. This happens to me sometimes — I desperately want to exercise my mind, get absorbed in a good book, but I’m afraid of making a commitment I might not be able to fulfill.

Over the weekend I bought Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, which just came out in paperback. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m almost 200 pages into it and I’m bored. Last summer I read a biography of Robert Kennedy, which covered much of the same territory. I find RFK much more intriguing, and how much more do I need to know about JFK anyway? Unfortunately, this is a non-returnable book, but I’m going to exercise one of my reader’s rights and put it on my bookshelf, where it will languish until I’m more in the mood for it.

What to read instead? I’m thinking perhaps Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, the first volume of his Baroque Cycle trilogy. I’m really intrigued, although it’s more than 900 pages, and it’s not yet out in paperback so I’d have to lug around a big hardcover, and I only recently finished Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Any opinions out there? Is it worth reading?

Again, it’s a question of commitment. Sometimes I think my eyes are bigger than my data-stomach (i.e. my brain; the brain is basically a stomach that digests data, right?).

Matt and I sing in the Gay Gotham Chorus in Manhattan, and we have a concert this Saturday night: Shenandoah: The Songs of America. It’s at 8:00 pm at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, 263 West 86th Street at West End Avenue. Tickets are $20, or $15 for students and seniors. Please come! (We’re still looking for ushers, who get in for free, so let me know if you’re interested.)

I’m switching my site over to a new hosting service today, so there may be some weirdness for a day or two while the DNS nameservers switch over. I’ve copied all my Movable Type files over to the new server, and I hope I’ve adjusted all the paths and other things that need to be adjusted. If not, the blog may disappear until I fix what needs to be fixed.

Oh, and until everything switches over, I can’t guarantee the stability of any new comments, so you might want to refrain from commenting until the new stuff’s set up.

Well, my website has moved over to its new server, and I’ve also switched from Movable Type to Word Press. If the front page looks boring, it’s because I’m using the default visual template. I’ll get around to redesigning it soon.

And I have the most wonderful computer-genius boyfriend in the world, because he just spent several hours importing my Greymatter and Movable Type entries and making sure the URLs remained the same and setting up redirects and so forth. I’m such a lucky guy!

In return, I made smoothies.

Not quite the same thing, but we’ve all got our talents.

I’ve recreated my old blog template after installing WordPress over the weekend. Matt keeps getting on my case about making a new design, though. He’s made fun of me for having used the same logo for the last three years. I don’t know… I wouldn’t necessarily mind a new design or logo, but I have zero design skills. If someone wanted to make a new logo for me, I’d consider using it.

Matt and I had a busy weekend. On Saturday afternoon we saw Broadway: The Golden Age, a terrific documentary by Rick McKay in which dozens of legendary Broadway actors and producers (some of whom have died since McKay interviewd them) talk about what it was like to be on Broadway in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Rare footage of plays and musicals is sprinkled throughout. We both really enjoyed it. Then our Gay Gotham Chorus concert was on Saturday night, after which we went out to dinner with my parents. (Matt insisted on paying, over my dad’s protests.)

On Sunday we decided to go to the TKTS booth in Times Square and wound up getting tickets to see “Caroline, or Change again. We first saw it January when it was at the Public Theater, but we’d wanted to see it again. I have to say, I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Tonya Pinkins’s voice was a little raw in the upper registers, but other than that, she still gave a powerhouse performance. She’s a trouper. The album comes out soon, and I can’t wait to buy it.

Anyway, it was nice to produce some entertainment this weekend as well as consume some. It reminds me of that old saying: “Straight men reproduce; gay men produce.”

OK, I just made that up. It’s not an old saying. But it should be.

“A friend of mine brought back something nasty from France,” his royal highness announced.

It took Daniel a long time to decrypt this. He tried to understand it in any number of different ways, but suddenly the knowledge rumbled through his mind like a peal of thunder through a coppice. The Duke had said: I have syphilis.

“Shame, that,” Daniel said. For he was not sure, yet, that he had translated it correctly. He must be ever so careful and vague lest this conversation degenerate into a comedy of errors ending with his death by rapier-thrust.

I love this book.

I did a little bit of, uh… trimming last night.

Unfortunately, I slightly nicked myself near the underside of the base.

Fortunately, the nick is tiny, it doesn’t hurt, it’s situated so that I don’t even notice it, and it’ll probably heal quickly.

But I may try not to get too “excited” in the meantime.

Also, I’m all kinda itchy today.

The Village Voice presents the 25th Annual Queer Issue.

Last night Matt and I attended That’s So Gay: Tales of Extremely Gay Gayness, the latest installment of WYSIWYG and the first one either of us had been to. It was filled with great performances, each of which was different and special in its own way. Besides the performers, many other gay bloggers were in attendance — some of whom I’d never met before and some of whom I hadn’t seen in ages. I got to catch up with Charlie, whom I last saw more than two years ago and who reminded me of our long-ago trip to the West Side Club. (Shiver.) He met Matt and said that Matt’s obviously been a great influence on me — that I seem happier and much less neurotic these days. Yay Matt! (And yay Celexa.)

I caught up with Faustus, Sparky, Sam, Scott, Andy, and Chris. I got to meet MAK, Crash, and Bob (whom Matt and I agreed was a hottie). I think some other bloggers were there, but I didn’t get to meet them.

Besides Faustus, Sparky, Charlie and Bob, the performers included Kiri, Jimbo (who read a hilarious story about a drag-queen race mishap), and Kythryne. The grand finale was an appearance by The Hazzards, who read some of their hate mail and performed their big Internet hit, “Gay Boyfriend.” (Matt got an autograph.)

What most struck me last night was Charlie’s comment that I seem less neurotic today. A blog isn’t all of a person’s life, of course, but I certainly feel less neurotic. I’m much happier with myself and my life than I was a couple of years ago. But I’ve also learned not to let everything hang out on my blog like I used to. I no longer need that kind of attention; I no longer feel like I need the world watching me in order to have my existence validated.

It probably makes for less entertaining blog entries, but given the choice between more readers and a better sense of well-being, I’ll take the latter any day.

Bush Backs Condom Use to Prevent Spread of AIDS

Well, I wasn’t expecting that.

Mr. Bush has mentioned condom use at least once before, last July, in Entebbe, Uganda. But mentioning it in a domestic context is quite different.

“I can’t believe the president actually used the C-word,” said Amy Coen, the president of Population Action International, which has long backed birth control and AIDS prevention in underdeveloped countries. “That’s not one that comes easily to him. But it’s one thing to use the word and another thing to actually fund it.”

One can hope.

The acknowledgments in the front of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, which I’m currently reading, include a reference to Fernand Braudel. I’d never heard of him before, so I looked him up.

Beneath the rapid succession of events on a human scale, which the historian likens to ripples on the ocean’s surface, Fernand Braudel attempts to charter a course through deeper waters to find the slower currents typical of the history of human groups relating to their environment, the structures that shape societies, be it essential trading and sailing routes or mentalities.

This led me to think: what era do we live in? There are many ways to think about it. We could say that we live in:

– the post-9/11 world

– the Internet era

– the world made by the countercultural movement

– the post-World War II era

– the age of electricity

– the age of democracy (begun in the 1770’s)

– the modern era (begun in the Renaissance)

– the era of human civilization (begun 5,000 years ago?)

– the era of homo sapiens

And even further back.

We’re all really just specks in the grand scale of things. Sometimes it’s good to step back from the day-to-day events in the news and get some perspective on those slower, deeper currents that we rarely notice.

I am testing a new logo. It was designed by Dan’l, whom I haven’t seen in ages but who saw my call for help a few days ago and made a new logo for me. Cool, huh?

Whaddaya think?

Notes from the Pride Parade:

It was my fourth annual Pride Parade and my first one with a boyfriend. Hooray! My forehead and nose are a little red now from several hours in the sun, but not as red as Matt’s. Poor guy.

We watched most of the parade from the northeast corner of 17th and 5th. I’m short, but luckily, I managed to snag the base of a lamppost, so I watched much of the procession from about a foot and a half off the ground, giving Matt a continuing preview of what was up the street.

There seemed to be many more pro-gay-marriage groups and floats than in years past. Also, many more anti-Bush signs.

My favorite moment happened when the group from God’s Love We Deliver went by. I was standing on the base of the lamppost when one of the guys marching with that group came over to our side of the street. He seemed to be looking at me. I thought I was imagining it. Then he pointed in our general direction, and I turned around to see who he was looking at. Then he disappeared. A minute later, he reappeared behind me and Matt and said hi. It turned out that he’d recognized me from my blog — when he saw Matt, he recognized him as well — and he just wanted to say hi. It was incredibly flattering to be recognized. And we weren’t even marching!

(This was actually the second time in a week that someone recognized me from my blog; it happened a few nights ago at Newport Mall in Jersey City, too.)

People we saw marching: Chris; Chad with the rugby team (he’s on the cover of this month’s Out, too); Barney Frank; Carson Kressley; James from “Boy Meets Boy”; Gifford Miller. No Charles Schumer or Hillary Clinton this year, unless they were at the very beginning, which we missed.

After the parade ended, Matt and I went to Chat ‘n Chew for dinner. Then we went back to his place, where, tuckered out, we took a nap.

Happy Gay Pride 2004!

This morning, as I was waiting for the doors of the near-empty PATH train to open so that I could get off, two men were standing next to me. One of them was making fun of some third party who was not present; he was imitating the third party’s way of speech, affecting a very “irritated white guy” voice (he was black). Then he added for emphasis, in his own voice, “Fuckin’ faggot.”

Rage boiled up inside of me.

I wanted to say, “I’m a fucking faggot, you asshole, so watch your fucking language.” Instead I said nothing. But I gave the guy several focused glares, including a few (as I was walking) that required me to turn around in order to focus said glares. I don’t think he noticed, though.

I was angry for the next half hour.

Matt and I saw Nathan Lane’s new adaptation of Aristophanes’s The Frogs last night.

Oy.

With all due respect to Nathan Lane (and keeping in mind that it’s still in previews), this is a really misguided production. It’s too long, many of the jokes are high-school amateurish (although there are some good ones), and it’s overly preachy. I liked much of the music (the score is by Sondheim), but a lot of it sounded like very derivative Sondheim. (I’d never heard Sondheim’s original score for the show, so I don’t know what was new and what wasn’t.) Chris Kattan does Chris Kattan, and he’s quite endearing, but he can’t really sing. The final quarter of the play — a verbal duel between George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare — is absorbing and moving in and of itself, but within the context of the show, it drags everything to a halt.

The last 10 or 15 minutes of the production left me depressed about the state of the world, which I guess means that it did its job, although there is one really cringe-worthy and by-now-clichéd piece of scenery that briefly appears onstage before the final curtain and actually has little to do with the play’s message if you think about it.

As for audience reaction, there wasn’t much of one. The applause after each number was tepid. One song, sung by Shakespeare, didn’t even get any applause. Zero. It made for an awkward moment. (I think the song put everyone to sleep.)

The best aspect of the show was probably the frogs themselves. There is some very cool frog choreography by Susan Stroman, the frog costumes are fun, and the frog music is appropriately discombobulating and frog-like. There were also some well-done performances; Peter Bartlett as Pluto, God of the Underworld, was a hilariously bizarre standout.

As a whole though, the production is wildly uneven. I could see what Nathan Lane was trying to do with this, and as an academic exercise it’s interesting, but as theater it just doesn’t work.

Interactive cross-section diagram of Monticello, the quirky but beautiful house that Thomas Jefferson built, from Time Magazine’s special issue on Thomas Jefferson, out this week. (Jefferson founded my alma mater and is practically a religious icon there.)