Random Musings

Well, it looks like I'll have to stop calling you Flori-duh; and maybe Carlos and I can get married in Key West????

So Carlos and I are hooked on TNTs Murder in the First because … Taye Diggs. Of Course, it’s also a pretty good show, but still … Taye Diggs. Anyway, we were watching it Monday night and I look over at Carlos and he’s asleep.

‘Go to bed,’ I say.

‘I was just resting my eyes,’ he says.

I give him my Wendy Williams’ Mmm hmmm and a few minutes later and he’s asleep again.

‘Go to bed,’ I say.

‘I was just resting my eyes,’ he says.

‘If you’re tired …’

‘I’m not.’

I give him my Wendy Williams’ Mmm hmmm and he’s out again.

I watch for another five minutes or so, looking over at him, head down, eyes shut, a snore on the horizon, and I kindly set the DVR to record the show, and then lean in very closely, and very sweetly, with all the love I can manage, shout into his ear:

‘GO TO BED!’

Oy. It’s hard out here for me and my sleepy man.

Christian Minard is a lesbian who was studying at Southwestern Christian University, a school affiliated with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church so you know what that means. But, one semester shy of her sports management degree, Minard married her girlfriend Kadyn Parks, and when the school learned of her same-sex marriage she was expelled.

I was aghast and angry, but then I thought again. Christian school? Pentecostal Church? And the fact that as part of her admission requirements, Minard signed a lifestyle covenant that prohibits “homosexual behavior like same-sex marriage.

Sure, it’s backwards; sure it’s wrong. But Minard signed it because this was the only school that had the degree program she wanted. And she never once challenged the requirement during her entire stay there, so my question is, wouldn’t it have been better to wait until after graduation to marry and thus avoid being expelled and having to start over at a different school? Or, if she got married to try and test the school’s rules, why not do it earlier and avoid this mess?

I’m all for fighting for our rights, but she didn’t fight for them at all until they personally affected her.

Apparently one of Fox & Friends hosts, Heather Nauert, was all confused and stuff by Illinois State University's "all-gender" bathrooms that avoid any kind of confusion for transgender and cisgender students. In fact, she was so confused, she became an eight-year-old girl again as she and her ‘friends’ snickered about it on-air.

So, they had Fox News’ Steve Doocy take to the streets with a copy of the new bathroom sign and showed it to a collection of Fox News fans to get their feedback and expected the same sort of childish nonsense the news folks displayed.

"Maybe a family restroom?"

"Restrooms for both genders."

"Transgender, that's right."

Responding to the viewer's lack of dismay, confusion, or moral outrage, host Brian Kilmeade said, Well, they're better people than us."

No kidding.

That Jesse Palmer, the college football analyst from ESPN. I might have to rethink my sports watching. That’s all. Carry on.

Well, color me shocked, but who knew that a red Speedo was a ticket to homophobic harassment and being kicked out of a water park — a place where one might expect to see a Speedo?

It seems that Jesse Colter wore his red Speedo to the Kentucky Kingdom and was told his swim attire was suitable, suitable, by one of the park's public safety officers.

But then an officer from the Louisville Metro Police ALLEGEDLY approached Colter, called him "queer" and threatened to arrest him for the crime of Speedo wearing; Jesse says the officer told him that several Public Safety Officers from the park had warned him against the Wearing of the Speedo — which seems to be untrue — but Jesse still left the park to avoid being charge with wearing a bathing suit at a water park.

Let me get this queer, though, because I imagine that police officer would have no problem with a woman wearing the tiniest of bikinis in the park, and would probably be hiding in the shrubbery rubbing one off, but a guy in a Speedo is a crime?

Only in Kentucky, though sadly, that’s probably not true either.

Look, here’s the deal: you can disagree with me on every single issue, social or political, all you want, day and night, week in, week out, but please, for the love of the Baby Jeebus, if you’re gonna carry a sign, or spray paint your message on a building, learn to effing spell!

I mean, if the "English-only" crowd is going to demand President Obama deport millions of immigrants, shouldn't they first be required to learn to spell?

Thomas Ravenel, a former Republican state treasurer in South Carolina who was convicted of drug trafficking and starred in a reality television series —  Bravo's "Southern Charm" — has filed a petition to run as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate.

Sit down, asshat.

Outgoing, though not fast enough for me, Minnesota Congressnut Michele Bachmann actually blamed those migrant children on the borders for the deaths of innocent children in Minnesota and the rape of women in her home state.

Oh, yes she did.

“Foreign nationals that have come into the United States are between 300- to 500,000 [and] my heart is broken for a female college student in Minnesota who was raped, murdered and mutilated by a foreign national who came into our country. We had a school bus full of kids in Minnesota — four children were killed on that school bus because an illegal alien driving a van went into that school bus.”

Yes, she believes that these migrant children are crossing the borders to grow up, get jobs driving buses so they can kill good American children. Or, maybe these migrant children, the boys I assume, are coming here so they can grow up and rape our womenfolk!

Gosh, I want this dingbat to run for president in 2016 because we’ll need a good long laugh while we wait for Hillary to win.

I caught a little of Lifetime’s The Witches of East End, but found it nothing at all like the fabulous American Horror Story: Coven.

But it did come with man candy, so it was fun to watch for that reason alone, though I doubt I’ll watch again.

Still, from the top: Christian Cooke, Daniel Di Tomasso, and Eric Winter. Yum.

Random Musings

So George Zimmerman was arrested. AGAIN.

He ALLEGEDLY pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend, and has been charged with one count of felony aggravated assault, and two misdemeanors including domestic violence battery and criminal mischief for the ALLEGED domestic dispute.

Here’s my take:

1. George Zimmerman thinks he has a right to use his guns to solve any issue that displeases him, whether it’s a girlfriend pissing him off or a young boy walking though his neighborhood.
2. George Zimmerman is the poster child for why we need stricter gun laws in this country.
3. George Zimmerman, like OJ Simpson, who also got away with murder, will one day find himself behind bars for another crime, just like OJ. It’s the universe righting itself.

Until then, let’s just hope he doesn’t murder anyone else.

Ted Cruz; “Senator” and comedian, er, liar.

At The Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum recently, Fox News host Chris Wallace pointed out to Cruz that many of his colleagues thought he’d hurt the party by forcing the government shutdown instead of letting Obamacare fail on its own, and Cruz responded like this:

"That ignores who I think was responsible for the shutdown. I didn't want a shutdown. Throughout the whole thing, I said we shouldn't have a shutdown."

The audience howled, knowing a liar and charlatan when they see one.

And the Tea Party thinks he’s their newest darling? I cannot wait for him to run for President because that would really be funny.

Carlos and I went to see 12 Years a Slave over the weekend and I must say I loved it. Of course, I am a huge fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played the slave Platte, AKA Solomon Northrup. It was hard to watch at times; cringe-worthy and WTF-inducing, but it’s the kind of story that needs to be told and remembered so it cannot happen again.

Based on a true story, Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free man living in upstate New York, who was kidnapped in Washington, DC and sold into slavery, and forcibly taken to Louisiana, where he worked for assorted slave masters played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender and Bryan Batt. The cruelest of all was Fassbender’s character who was insane and brutal and vicious, to say the least.

Other actors in the film, include Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey, in a heartbreaking performance, along with Alfre Woodard, a slave turned slave-owner, and Sarah Paulsen as Fassbender’s sadistic wife.

But it’s all Chiwetel Ejiofor and, these aren’t spoilers, in two scenes he proves whey I think he should win the Oscar. 

One, at the funeral of a fellow slave who died in the field, the camera pulls in close on Solomon as the other slaves sing a Negro spiritual; with just his house and very subtle facial expressions, you see him go through all kinds of emotions about his situation, the plight of the slave, and his final realization that he may never get home.

Two, in one of the last scenes all he has to say is “I apologize for my appearance’ and the tears flowed.

It’s a great film, subtle and yet in your face; all of the performances are just spot on. It’s not the kind of film that you can see again and again, but it’s the kind of film that stays with you for a very long time afterwards.

Orlando Cruz, the openly gay Puerto Rican boxer married his boyfriend José Manuel Colón in New York's Central Park over the weekend.

New York City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is among the frontrunners to succeed Christine Quinn as New York City Council Speaker officiated the ceremony, and Orlando noted the ceremony on his Facebook page:

“Giving thanks to my heavenly father for one more day of life and with [my] husband José Manuel in it.”

Congratulations to the happy couple.

The Oxford English Dictionaries announced that ‘selfie’ is their international Word of the Year 2013.

selfie noun, informal (also selfy; plural selfies)

a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website

Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that the frequency of the word selfie in the English language has increased by 17,000% since this time last year, though the word can actually be traced back to 2002 when it was used in an Australian online forum.  

Other words on the short list included bedroom tax, binge-watch, bitcoin, olinguito, schmeat, showrooming, and twerk.

Yikes. I have taken but one ‘selfie’ in my life and it was a few years back when I had the shingles because my father wanted to see it. That picture was taken and sent and then deleted.

Pity poor Nom [National organization for Marriage].

After the Human Rights Campaign [HRC] filed a complaint with the IRS to compel NOM to publicly release its financial documents related to its political advocacy spending in 2012 comes the news that the hate group is some $2.7 million in debt.

NOM's sole 2012 ballot victory occurred in May, when North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Ouch. I’m guessing Bryan Brown is really crying now.

This is a football game? Men in Speedos?

Perhaps I should have attended more game when I lived in Miami, those these two brutes in teeny bikinis were told to put their clothes back on by stadium security.

Damn them!

People magazine has named Adam Levine The Sexiest Man ALIVE!!

Hardly. Cute, sure; sexy, no. I could list hundreds more qualified for the title … 
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tom Hiddleston, Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes’ Morris Chestnut, Chris Pine,  Henry Cavill, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tyson Beckford, Chris Hemsworth, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Diego Klattenhorf, Billy Brown, Sean Maguire, Zachary Quinto, Jake Gyllenhaal, Blair Underwood, Hugh Dancy, Jon Hamm, Jonathan Bailey, Idris Elba, Kellan Lutz, Channing Tatum, Kevin Ryan, Daniel Craig, Michael Fassbender, Daniel Day-Lewis, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington, Ryan Gosling, Anderson Cooper, Damian Lewis, Matt Bomer, Charlie Carrick, Oscar Isaac, Omar Borkan Al Gala, Baz Luhrman, Bradley Cooper, Jason Sudeikis, Tom Bateman, Blake Ritson, Francois Arnaud, Hill Harper, Sam Palladio, Mike Colter, Jonny Lee Miller, Hugh Jackman, David Giuntoli, Max and Charles Carver …

Okay, I’ll stop.