Much was made of Hillary Clinton's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention: "Will she be sincere? Will she fully support Obama? Can she motivate her supporters to get behind Barack?" All day long ad nauseum that's all you heard from any of the media outlets. Well, good ol' Hillary hit it out of the ballpark with her speech last night. As you know, I've been an Obama supporter for a long time now, but I have to say I don't think I've ever been more proud of my Senator from New York than last night. And as for any Hillary supporter thinking of voting for McCain over Obama, could she have put it more plainly than "No way, no how, NO McCAIN!" Amen sister.
Also, it was no accident that Hillary's speech coincided with the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. I couldn't help but sing this song all day yesterday as well. I credit School House Rock for teaching me and a generation of kids in the '70s about the plight of Women's Suffrage. Watch it again and really listen to the lyrics. As an adult I'm struck once again by how clever they are. Enjoy.
Another piece of American Theatre History is being threatened by the wrecking ball. The ever-expanding NYU is planning to raze the Provincetown Playhouseon MacDougal Street. The playhouse has played host to the New York premieres of much of Eugene O'Neill's work as well as the plays of Edward Albee, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others. Andrew Berman, president of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, had this to say, "This is a world famous historic site that is critical to the development of alternative theatre in America. To demolish it is sacrilege." I agree, but then, I'm partial.
NYU says the expansion is still in the planning phase and that the theatre's demolition is not a done deal while at the same time trying to justify the demolition arguing that after the its 1940s renovation, the Playhouse's exterior bears little resemblance to the original 1918 structure. (Which is true as you can see from the photos.) They similarly rationalized away the demolition of one of Edgar Allen Poe's former residences a few years ago arguing that he didn't live there for very long. Whatever. Someone get this building landmarked and fast!
The original 1918 facade of the Provincetown Playhouse as it looked around 1936. The exterior as it looks today.
City Snapshot: The Spanish & Portuguese Jewish Cemetery
So I've been loving Glenn and Dave's weekly photo challenge. Each week they choose a topic or category and any blogger who cares to participate goes out and photographs their interpretation of it then posts it on his blog. So far the topics have included graffiti, barrooms, neighborhood grocers and today's which was breakfast. I love visiting the various blogs and seeing how people in different cities and environments handle the challenge. Unfortunately, I've been a little busy this month to participate, plus I don't have one of those credit card sized cameras I can just carry around with me all the time. But I happened to have mine with me yesterday and photographed what I would have posted for the week of January 18. The topic was cemeteries.
This is the Second Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Cemetery which is located just east of 6th Avenue on 11th Street in the Village. It's a tiny, triangular tract of land dating from 1805 tucked between a Georgian townhouse and what was once an old tenement facing 6th Avenue. These are the little gems that make strolling the side streets of New York truly fascinating. Enjoy.
For Veterans Day here's a city snapshot of the US Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square. Such a station has existed on this spot since the end of World War II. Situated at the crossroads of the world, the Times Square Station has out recruited every other station in the country over the years and has also served as a target for many anti-war protests. The current station was redesigned in 1998 to include flashy neon siding to match the then "new" Times Square. Happy Veterans Day to all our veterans.
You think you have problems deciding what color to paint the living room? Well, New York's Landmarks Preservation Committee has an even bigger quandary on their hands: What color to paint the Guggenheim Museum. Paint it white, right, hasn't it always been white? Well, not quite--more of an off-white, a shade called London Fog. Which looks something like this:
But famed architect of the Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright ,never approved of this color and in fact had another color in mind entirely: A shade called Powell Buff. Which looks something like this:
So, the question is, do they leave the Guggenheim the way people have come to know and love it or do they honor the architect's original artistic vision? Which would you choose?
You may remember it from the exterior shots in Single White Female, the 1990s thriller starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, but the Ansonia has been a landmark anchoring the Upper West Side at 74th and Broadway for more than 100 years. The Beaux-Arts style building was designed by Graves and Duboy for builder William Earle Dodge Stokes from 1899 to 1904 and is considered an Historical Treasure and is protected as such.
Historically a musical building in its heyday the Ansonia served as home to Igor Stravinsky and members of the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera. During the gritty 1960s and 70s the Ansonia served as home to the Continental Baths where Bette Midler and Barry Manilow famously performed together and started their partnership.
The building is in the newsonce again, this time for a roach infestation of "Biblical proportions". A couple, Alan Arkin (not the actor) and Suzanne Bagert, who rent a one-bedroom apartment (far below market value) on the 14th floor are suing the building management over the infestation which they claim has "rendered their apartment completely unfit to live in." They have been forced to sleep with their lights on, as roaches have been known to cover the floor, walls, ceiling and draperies.
Six years later, September 11th once again falls on a Tuesday. I give thanks for the overcast skies and rain. Anything but that bright blue September sky that so vividly invokes the memory of the original tragic day.
As I make my coffee newscasters announce the plans for the memorial. All the names will be read again. The Star Spangled Banner is sung a Capella as I get in the shower. I hear the names begin, through the A's and B's as I'm in the shower, shaving.
Irish names.
Italian names.
Spanish names.
Polish.
The names continue read by first responders, I can't help but think that these men and women whom we proclaim as heroes are having their health turned into an election year issue. They read the names pausing to remember their friends, co-workers, brothers.
It depresses the hell out of me but I can't bear to turn it off.
As I leave the house we're only through the C's.
Calderon
Callahan
Calhoun
Things on the subway seem remarkably ordinary. You'd never know this was the anniversary except for the headlines of the papers being read by commuters. They seem nonplussed, or like me, they are doing everything they can not to dwell on it. Not to make the day extraordinary. For some sense of normalcy.
At work the thunder claps and lightning flashes outside our windows. The sky is black. It seems appropriate.
Today marked the death of New York socialite and philanthropist, Brook Astor. Many of New York's venerable institutions such as the The New York Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and even the Bronx Zoo owe a debt of gratitude to the generosity of Mrs. Astor. Her contributions came at a time when many had given up on New York as crime soared and the city's coffers were near bankruptcy. She also made sizable donations to The Fresh Air Fund, charities for the blind and maternity care for inner-city women. Her husband, Vincent Astor, once joked that his wife would have a ball giving away his money after his death, and indeed all told Mrs. Astor gave away close to $200 million. She was quoted as saying "Money is like manure--it should be spread around."
Coincidentally, I met a friend of my sister's down in Asbury Park a couple weeks ago who served as Mrs. Astor's butler for a time while she was in her 90's. He had nothing but praise and kind words for her and said she treated every one of the staff with the utmost empathy and respect. Mrs. Astor was 105.
Ever since I was invited down to Asbury Park for a weekend by a friend three summers ago, I have been one of the town's biggest cheerleaders. (Click on the Jersey Shore link below to see some of my previous posts on the subject.) Once one of the most popular destinations on the Jersey Shore, Asbury Park fell on hard times in the 70s and 80s due to racial tensions and corrupt local government. That is, until the gays found it in the late '90s. Imagine it--grand old Victorian beach houses just blocks from the ocean at rock-bottom prices. Sure, the neighborhood around them was pretty shabby, but nothing a few gay urban pioneers couldn't conquer with some fresh paint, perennials and a flair for design. Fast forward a few years and the town is now in full-scale renovation, homes are being bought and sold, new condominiums are being built and a movement to restore the waterfront to its former grandeur is underway.
This past weekend I was invited by my sister, whom I encouraged to buy a home in Asbury almost three years ago, for Road Trip 6, the town's biggest gay and lesbian event all Summer. There are beach parties, big name DJs and headline entertainers. (We saw Judy Gold at the newly renovated Paramount Theatre--hilarous!) Despite gloomy weather reports, Saturday turned out to be a perfect day for the beach and the rain stayed away long enough on Sunday for my sister's house full of guests to enjoy brunch on the patio.
The community pride in Asbury is such that celebrations are called for almost every weekend. Earlier this summer the town celebrated its 110 anniversary of the incorporation of the city. A grand and memorable party was planned for the occasion featuring among other things, a cake designed by Ace of Cakes' chef Duff Goldmanmodeled on Asbury Park's storied carousel. The episode featuring the cake and the town's anniversary party will air on the Food Network tomorrow night (August 2) at 10 PM Eastern. I am told that my two-year-old niece, Charlotte, who was visiting that weekend might be seen getting her groove on to one of the bands playing at the festivities. Catch the episode if you can!
Lady Bird Johnson died this week. A feminist who spoke out in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment and an environmentalist, Lady Bird was ahead of her time. She began the first piece of legislation introduced by a First Lady that was signed into law: The Highway Beautification Act.
I had the privilege of performing for Ms. Johnson and her daughter Linda Bird back in 1995 while I was working on a cruise ship. She still had the grace and poise befitting a First Lady and I feel honored to have met her. She died of natural causes at the age of 94.
Whether it's Cher or Barbra, Bette or Madonna, every gay man has his favorite diva. Why? What is it about these women that touches gay men on some deeply personal level? My own hypothesis is that they represent the disenfranchised. First, they are women. Second, they don't conform to the ideals of conventional beauty. They often come from humble beginnings or highly dysfunctional families. They are criticized for how they dress, who they marry (or how often), how outlandish they act, how much they drink, what they look like or how fat they are. Yet in the face of society's harsh stares, these women manage rise from all the ugly unpleasantness of their lives and the world and somehow emerge nothing less than fabulous! We gay men can relate. We know it feels to be put down for how we act or what we wear, or who we love. Many of us want so desperately to shake the dust of the redneck towns we grew up in where we were never understood or appreciated and come out...well...fabulous!
Perhaps the mother of all gay men's divas is my personal favorite, Judy Garland. (Pictured above with her gay fans reaching out to her across the footlights of Carnegie Hall.) But Judy, who always sang of rainbows, was much more than a gay icon. It was her untimely death in 1969 that sparked the outrage at the Stonewall Inn 38 years ago today and changed history.
On June 22, 1969, Judy Garland was found dead in a hotel in London. Her body was sent home to New York where a funeral was planned at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home for June 27. Thousands of fans turned out lining the street for her funeral procession and memorials for her were planned at gay bars around the city. These bars had been the target of increasingly aggressive police raids that year. The establishments were being shut down and their owners and patrons arrested and humiliated. The Stonewall was one of the bars with a planned memorial for Judy. According to some witnesses, in the wee hours of June 28 while "Over the Rainbow" was playing on the juke box, plainclothes officers raided the Stonewall. At first it appeared to be a typical raid, some patrons were allowed to leave and the owners were arrested. But things turned ugly when a police wagon showed up and officers forced some drag queens and lesbians to get in. The crowd on the street was outraged and began attacking the police who locked themselves in the bar. The crowd then grew even more violent hurling bottles and bricks through the windows. More police arrived and the disturbance grew into a full scale riot.
The event at the Stonewall that night sparked three days of similar disturbances and protests on Christopher Street and by the end of July, 1969 the Gay Liberation Front was founded starting the modern gay rights movement.
The day of Judy's funeral was just not the day to go picking on the fags.
This past Sunday I was down in Asbury Park, NJ for the New Jersey Gay Pride Parade. Once the crown jewel of the Jersey Shore, Asbury Park fell on hard times following race riots in the 70 and corrupt local government in the 80s. Finally, around 2000, gay men and women being priced out of trendy Fire Island and the Hamptons discovered the potential of this charming seaside town and have begun turning it around. Every year I go back more and more glorious old Victorian and Craftsmen homes are being painted, renovated and spruced up. I love driving down the wide tree-lined avenues past house after house with rainbow flags hanging out front.
Unfortunately, it was a gray day for Pride this year but the rain held off till after the parade. Below are some snapshots featuring representatives from Asbury Park, a burly biker bear, the Argentina/Uruguay LGBT Group float featuring who else? A drag queen dressed as Eva Peron. Next is New Jersey Leather Pride, followed by the Bus for Change featuring gay-friendly political candidates and finally the cast and crew of a local production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
A fixture on the Upper West Side, the Claremont Riding Academyand stables is closingthis Sunday after 115 years. It was built in 1892 and is the longest continuously operating horse stable in the country. The West 89th street stables were added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1980 and the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation in 1992, so the building will remain, but its purpose will change. The owners site decreased membership and increased development in the neighborhood as the reason for the closure.
When I first moved to New York I lived around the corner from Claremont on West 90th street. Because of the one-way streets and the entrance to Central Park at 90th Street, it was not unusual for me to hear the clip-clop of horses outside my window, perhaps the last sound I expected to hear when I moved to the city. But along with the elegant horses came their unmistakable smell, causing me to wonder on particularly hot days just how "fragrant" the city must have been 100 years earlier when horses were the main form of transportation.
At the time I moved to 90th Street, Claremont bordered a community garden that spanned the length of the city block along Amsterdam Avenue from 89th to 90th Street. It was not an unhappy relationship between the gardeners and the stable which produced a lot of organic matter. Residents from nearby projects grew their own vegetables there, everything from greens and beans to corn and tomatoes, and interestingly, almost every plot included flowers. As the gentrification of the Upper West Side expanded north past 86th Street on gritty Amsterdam Avenue it wasn't long before developers bought up the garden and put up a high-rise apartment building in its place. At the time I wondered how the residents of the new building enjoying their balconies would peacefully coexist with the fragrant stables below. I guess that will no longer be a concern.
In honor of Earth Day, I got out to Riverside Park this morning to take some pictures of the daffodils that dot the park. A testament to how cold it's been and the nor'easter of last weekend, the daffodils are usually finished blooming by now so I was delighted to find them still in full flower. They were a welcome sight in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings and a week that included the solemn anniversaries of Columbine and the Oklahoma City bombing. But even the daffodils do not come without their own reminder of another tragic event: September 11th.
The Daffodil Project was started as a living memorial in New York City parks to honor the victims that died in the attacks that day. Thanks to the generosity of a Dutch bulb grower, Hans van Waardenburg, who donated 500,000 of his own bulbs and organized the donations of other Dutch bulb growers, he was able to present the city with over a million daffodil bulbs to be planted in all New York City parks in all boroughs. Over 10,000 volunteers turned out to plant the bulbs in the Fall of 2001, the largest community planting in city history. The following Spring, as a symbol of renewal and new life, the bulbs began sprouting up in clusters on hillsides, fields and flowerbeds and have been every Spring since.
College. I couldn't wait for it. Suffering through high school I was promised that, don't worry, you'll love college. They'll "get" you there. Oh, how I was counting on that to be true. I would be going away from home to a big university with a great drama department and devoting 15 credits a semester to pursuing my passion. My PASSION! Musical Theatre. And there would be others there, too, for the very same reasons. Those were the people I was told would be the friendships that would last my lifetime. It was supposed to be the best time of your life.
The year I went away to school, we showed up from all over the country. All of us eager and anxious, awkward and nervous, looking to find in one of these other kids a kindred spirit, for a sign that, yes, we were in the right place. The signs came quickly. Through the process of going from a bunch of kids who liked to sing and dance to becoming artists with a craft we got to know each other very intimately. We had to. We spent every day together in the theater building from 8:30 in the morning sometimes till 11 at night. We worked together in practice rooms, rehearsal studios, or sometimes even a hallway if that was all that was available. We grew. We learned. And we became family. We lived together, ate together, partied together--all in our little bubble of the Drama Department. There were no big lecture halls for us. No need to put a social security number on a paper. We knew everyone by first name in all the classes, freshmen to senior. There was only one Nicole, only one Miriam, only one Turhan, one Theo...etc.
As if this bliss wasn't enough, our school offered us the opportunity to travel to London for a semester in either our junior or senior year. Although students from the university at large went, for the drama students it meant we'd get to study acting with faculty from RADA and LAMDAand members of the RSC.We'd see everything we possibly could in the West End, at the National Theatre or the Barbicon. We'd go to Stratford and walk the hallowed ground of William Shakespeare and see his plays performed at the Old Globe. We'd study voice and classical texts, learn period movement and dialects. We'd have art history classes that took us to Paris for a long weekend and which also provided us with an intimate knowledge of the exhibits at the National Gallery or the Tate. And each week they would cart us around on day trips to make sure we got to Windsor or Canterbury or Bath or Brighton. Just as everyone promised that college would be the best time of our life, the students who had been to London promised it would be the best semester ever.
My sophomore year many of my closest friends in the class ahead of me opted to go to London their first semester, junior year. It was always weird when people were away in London. Part of our family was missing back home. But we were glad they were having the opportunity. So we wrote copious letters about the casting of this show or that, made cassette tapes of us rambling on about all the Drama Department gossip and sent them across the ocean to the kids in London so they would feel close. As that semester drew to a close I was looking forward to seeing my returning friends. We wouldn't even wait for the next semester. We'd get together over Christmas break. I think Janie was planning a New Year's Eve party that year.
My last final that semester was December 21st. As soon as it was over I was planning to hop in my car and head home to Jersey for the holidays. A four hour drive spent singing along to Christmas music by myself. It was about 6 PM when I arrived and walked through the door of my childhood home. Expecting to walk into the vibrancy that is my mother's kitchen the week before Christmas and be met with a warm, happy embrace, instead my mother was very quiet and asked "Michael, when is Hank coming home from London?" Hank was one of my best friends from school and had spent Thanksgiving with us the year before.
"Not till the 26th," I said. "His parents are flying over to London to spend Christmas with him before heading home."
"Oh, thank God." was her response.
There had been a plane crash, she explained. The story was still breaking on the evening news. It was Pan-Am flight 103out of Heathrow which exploded in mid flight over Lockerbie, Scotland killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew members on board and 11 people in the town below. Among the dead were 35 college students from Syracuse University returning from a semester abroad. THIRTY-FIVE.
Then the phone started ringing. Frantic calls from friends still at school, others who were already home. Do you know when Tom is coming home? What about Julia and Mike? Or Annie and Theo? Turhan, Miriam, Nicole. Each of us trying to piece together what we knew from letters from our friends or calls to parents who might know who was coming home when. By the end of the night I had compiled a list in a notebook of dead friends, friends who were safe, and ones we didn't know about yet. It turned out that of the 35 students on board, six were from the Drama Department. I had only just turned 20.
It was not long before a Libyan terrorist group claimed responsibility for the explosion. Somebody actually did it on purpose. My friends had been murdered. Plastic explosives. It was timed to explode over the Atlantic Ocean so recovering bodies and evidence would be virtually impossible. But the explosives went off early raining down humanity and debris onto the hills of Scotland, killing innocents below. The flight was specifically chosen because of the number of Americans who would be on board. The 35 college students were a nice touch, too.
Memories between that day and when I returned to school are fuzzy. I remember the news coverage. I remember the images of family members who had gone to the airport to pick up loved ones. A mother who could have been Nicole's, lying flat on the floor of JFK wailing to heaven. Pictures in a magazine of Lockerbie where one could make out the images of people still strapped to airplane seats, a girl with long black hair like Theo's. Descriptions of how the explosion happened, and what the victims would have experienced. They should have died instantly, their lungs exploding from the change in cabin pressure, but later forensic evidence revealed that victims were found clutching babies, crucifixes and hands. I remember memorials being planned. Meeting Turhan's brother who bore a uncanny resemblance to him, now a walking reminder of his dead sibling to all who knew him. I remember going to Port Jervis to Theo's memorial and the outrage her parents felt when the remains of their only daughter were sent home and they were informed they could come to the airport to pick up their "parcel."
I remember returning to school and the memorial the Drama department had to honor our own. It was in the theater--our temple. We lit candles and sang songs and people read poems, shared memories, played recordings and showed pictures. We cried, we prayed, we held each other. And we will never be the same.
There has not been a single time since December 21st, 1988 when I didn't wish someone a "safe" flight rather than a good one. There is not a single time I fasten the seat belt on an airplane that I am not consciously aware of the possibility of being blown out of the sky. On days when I know loved ones are flying, my father on a business trip, my sister going to Italy, my parents on vacation, that I don't listen to the news for reports of plane crashes. I can't put the thought out of my mind until I know they've landed. Hell, I can't even watch Lost! Yet when some other heinous and senseless act of violence is committed against innocent people, I still feel the same sense of shock and helplessness as I did that December 21st. It doesn't get easier.
At some point after the crash someone in our group dubbed December 21st "Dead Friends Day." Not out of disrespect or flippancy, it was just our way of dealing with it. We didn't want to call it Pan Am 103, that was a flight number. This was the day our friends died. And so, "Dead Friends Day." And every single December 21st that has come and gone since, I have remembered them, these beautiful, smart, funny, talented, promising kids and thought "Dead Friends Day." And I probably will for a lifetime.
Sunday was the 96th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Firein New York where 146 young girls perished behind the locked doors of their sweatshop workroom. They ranged in age from 12 to 23 and were mostly Italian and Eastern European immigrants working 70 hour weeks for $1.50 sewing shirtwaists in cramped conditions. The story of the fire, the worst workplace disaster in New York City history outside of 9/11, is legendary. The fire started on the eighth floor and spread quickly due to the multitude of cotton material, shirtwaists, fabric scraps and paper patterns which filled the workroom. With the doors locked to prevent the girls from taking breaks or leaving early and to keep out union organizers, the girls had no chance of survival. Some died plunging to their deaths in the elevator shaft, some held each other as they leapt to their deaths on the sidewalk below and others were overcome with smoke or burned alive.
The tragedy led to major reforms of not only fire and safety laws but improved working conditions for women, garment and factory workers. Yesterday several dignitaries including Cardinal Edward Egan, City Council Speaker Cathleen Quinn, members of the Fire Department and the New York Department of Labor were on hand at the corner Green Street and Washington Place, the site of the fire, to commemorate the victims.
This story has always resonated with me. Perhaps because my great-grandmother, my Nanny, might have very easily been one of those girls toiling away at a sewing machine in those days. She and her five sisters immigrated from Austro-Hungary just about 100 years ago, teenagers at the time, all of them.
They were the lucky ones who found posts as domestics in fine New York City homes. One sister working as a cook, another a maid and Nanny was just that, a nanny to the young children of a wealthy doctor on Central Park South. She told many stories of New York in those days as a carefree and exciting place. She went to dances with her sisters in Yorkville where she would meet other young German and Eastern European immigrants making their way in a new country. She told of occasions when the doctor would entertain and she would impress him with her baking skills whipping up an apple strudel from a recipe of her mother's carried across the sea in her memory. She eventually met and married a young man from her hometown back in the old country who had also moved to America. The two of them established roots here and started a family.
When I hear the story of the horror those girls in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire suffered, I can't help wonder if Nanny knew any of them. Did they go to those same dances? Did they live on her block in Yorkville? When she heard how they died did she cry? Did she pray for them? Did she realize how easily she could have been one of them?
Certain events in history affect the collective consciousness of not only the city but the whole country. Almost 100 years later New York City is still honoring the victims who gave their lives so that others would never have to suffer a similar fate. But aside from the historical affect the fire had on us, it's the humanity of the story that lingers in one's mind.
Below, next of kin identify the remains of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims.
While New York is usually ahead of the curve on most things over my home state of New Jersey, not so with civil unions. Last Fall the NJ Supreme Court voted to guarantee gay couplesthe same rights and privileges as straight married couples, making it the third state in the country to do so. Today was the first day NJ granted such civil unions. Couples started liningup last night at various municipal offices around the state for the stroke of midnight to be among the first to participate.
Below meet couple number one, Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross, who tied their legal knot in Teaneck, NJ just after midnight. MazelTov, boys!
Update: Asbury Park, NJ's city manager, Terence J. Reidy: “Come to Asbury Park, baby, where it all happens.” Check out the NY Times articleon the history of NJ Civil Unions.
Well, sports fans, with all the computer trouble I've been having lately I haven't had a chance to comment on this year's celebration of neanderthalism and lowest common denominator dumb jock ideals, the Superbowl, or as I call it, the Homophobe Bowl. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new when I say that American football is filled with ignorant, grossly overpaid and grossly overweight "athletes" who are deified by the public and live in a vacuum where being openly homophobic is perfectly acceptable.
This attitude has apparently spread to one of the Superbowl's sponsors, Mars, makers of Snickers bars,who launched not only an unbelievably offensive and homophobic ad campaign ("The Kiss" pictured above), but established a website (which has since been pulled) where viewers could watch alternate endings to the ad and vote on their "favorite." Perhaps Mars was trying to measure exactly how homophobic their consumers are for future offensive ads. In addition to this poll, there were clips of NFL Players watching the ads and showing their open disgust at the sight of two men kissing. I assume the players were okay with their images out there on the web for all to see as a kind of public record of their hatred and disgust toward the gay community. Apparently this was supposed to be funny as if to say "Look how much these guys hate fags! That's HILARIOUS! I'm laughing so hard I might wet myself!" Well, hardeehar-har, Mars. Thank you.
And I really liked Snickers bars, too. Humph.
Thankfully, after complaints from GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, Snickers has pulled their ads from the air and the web and have released a statement to the the NY Timesin which they defend the ads and explain that humor is "subjective" (as in, you have to hate gays to get it) but no where do they apologize for offending the gay community or perpetuating violence against them. We're still waiting for that apology, Snickers--the sooner the better. Then you can all head off to rehab. To add insult to injury, the winners of this year's Homophobe Bowl were the Indianapolis Colts headed by Coach, Bible Thumper and Chief Homophobe, Tom Dungy who openly attended and was even "honored" at an event by the Indiana Family Institute, one of the leading proponents of the gay marriage ban in the state of Indiana. On Sunday's win Dungy credits God as the MVPproving that he is one of those misguided Christians who thinks God actually cares who wins a ridiculous sporting event. Sorry Tom, but something tells me He probably has bigger fish to fry, like, I dunno, AIDS in Africa, genocide in Darfur--all that jazz.
Dungy made history this year as the first African American coach to lead an NFL team to Superbowl victory. It is a shame, however, that such an accomplishment should be marred by his openly homophobic views. Once again, as in the case of Isaiah Washington, one can't help but notice the irony of an African American man's apparent bigotry and hatred toward another group striving for equal civil rights. It boggles the mind.
This week I've been doing some work for my friend Peter and his mother who are old time New Yorkers. Peter grew up at 82nd and Westend (around the corner from where I live now) in a gracious old prewar building with full time doormen and elevator men in a 14 room apartment with two maids rooms at a time when no one in New York had ever even heard of a co-op. His mother is probably 70+, sharp as a tack, still works and has run her own successful business for years which, incidentally, is specifically for women in construction. Get it? She's a pretty strong lady, the type one might have called a "dame" in another era. She has a great sense of humor and has been known to posess some of the unique eccentricities Manhattan woman are sometimes known for including a failed marriage to a crazy opera singer and more recently the companionship of a distinguished gay pianist in his 60s who's all too happy to accompany her to the theatre or a dinner dance should she need an escort.
As we were finishing up yesterday Peter and his mother, along with her pianist friend (also a native New Yorker), were discussing their old neighborhood on the Upper West Side. Now, anyone who lives in New York knows there is a distinct difference between Eastsiders and Westsiders and at one time it had everything to do with social class. Peter's mother remembers that time all too well and recounted a story for us of an Upper East Side dowager from those days remarking to her upon learning her address "The West Side? The only time I go there is when I go to Europe!" to which the three of them roared with laughter. I didn't get it. Peter's mother, who doesn't miss a thing, noticed this and said, "Oh, he's too young, he doesn't get it!" She then went on to explain that the West Side piers were where all the trans Atlantic luxury liners used to dock. And here I was thinking "Why? 'Cause they flew out of Newark?"
I was slightly embarrassed for a moment but took comfort knowing there are still things I'm too young to get.
Photo: The Queen Mary II docked on Manhattan's West Side.
The story of last year's Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, has really touched me for some reason. As I'm sure you know by now he suffered a tragic injury at the Preakness last year. Every effort was made to help him heal but in the end he was in much too much pain. His owners were forced to make the difficult decision to euthanize him on Monday. I don't follow horse racing all that much, but ever since I had a job that took me to Louisville a few times during Derby season, I always feel a bit nostalgic when I watch the coverage on TV.
My friend Dave, a Louisville native, hosted me for the Derby one year and made sure I got to all the best parties. I was struck by the welcoming and friendly community and the way the whole town, no matter who they are, celebrates the event. It was a great weekend.
Smarty Joneswas the winner that year. He was a long shot as I recall even though his record that season was undefeated. He went on to win the Preakness and I thought for sure that Smarty Jones, MY very first Derby winner, would go on to be the first horse in years to win the Triple Crown. But by time the Belmont Stakes came around he had slowed down. The sports commentators said he was tired. He was washed up by the end of the season.
It struck me how like a dancer the career of a thoroughbred is so tragically short. None of us wants to think of our prime being over in the blink of an eye like that--maybe that's why Barbaro's death has received so much media coverage. It speaks to us all.
