headshots for the nonconformist

my friend, actress erica mansfield, by my friend, photographer kevin thomas garcia.

there's more erica by kevin below the fold.

the president's rank cowardice

sullivan chides obama on his lack of leadership on dadt: "I wish I could feel some sympathy for the president on this issue. But he is making Bill Clinton look like a model of principle - and his rank cowardice on civil rights is one of the greatest disappointments of his first two years."

agreed.

the procedural whimper

gail collins gets it right on don't ask, don't tell.

today is my boyfriend bruce springsteen's birthday

i mean. c'mon. look at the arms. good god. (wanna feel old? springsteen is 61 today.)

i don't want to wait

So you look at me from across the room. You're wearing your anguish again. Believe me, I know the feeling. It sucks you into the jaws of anger. So dig a little more deeply into my life. All we have is the very moment and I don't want to do what his father and his father and his father did.

I want to be here now.

grampa has the gayest hissy fit ever

this is a crazy person who needs to go home and go to bed.

the courage of the u.s. senate

spencer ackerman asks a friend his thoughts about today's senate vote on don't ask, don't tell. a friend who is gay. and serving in the navy:

"Before I joined the Navy, I never would have thought that a bunch of drunk straight Sailors hitting on overweight lesbians in the gay bar on Neil Road in Singapore had more personal courage than the United States Senate."

52% want me to be able to marry

andrew sullivan finds a silver lining in the latest associated press poll that shows rampant distrust of government and institutions:

While distrust of most institutions has grown, and Americans are in a foul mood, the latest AP poll found that 52 percent now favor full civil marriage rights for gay couples, and 58 percent support the same rights in every respect as heterosexual couples. President Obama, and those Democrats who do not have the balls to repeal DOMA, let alone the GOP base, are now in a minority in opposing marriage equality.

don't ask, just call

call your senator tonight, or tomorrow morning. call.

irish hand dancers meet pink floyd

you may think you've seen the best of irish hand dancers suzanne cleary & peter harding (their video is posted and reposted millions of times on facebook every day. often on my wall.) but there's nothing like a little hand dancing when you're comfortably numb:

killing civilians for sport

a disgusting, blood curdling report in the washington post: a rogue army platoon with a penchant for "hashish and alcohol," charged with randomly targeting and killing afghan civilians for sport, dismembering and photographing corpses, and hoarding a skull and other human bones.

will this do for afghanistan what abu ghraib did for iraq?

"this is pierre, a frog who does oral sex."

because nobody tells a joke like an old jew.

diss of the day

alaska senator lisa murkowski, announcing she will run for the senate as a write-in candidate against sarah palin-backed tea partier joe miller and democrat scott mcadams:

"Perhaps this is one time they've met a Republican woman who won't quit on Alaska."

quote of the day, pt. II

"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment."

– christine o'donnell
tea party / republican candidate for senate in delaware

daddy's got legs

john caird and paul gordon's daddy long legs plays three more theatres before the end of the year.

attack of the gay millionaires

this is not the daily show. it's oklahoma:

quote of the day

"Today there is a grave danger that the still fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics. A turn by major governments away from the promotion of growth and jobs and to premature focus on deficit reduction could slow growth and increase unemployment – and could push us back into recession.

History suggests that a tenuous recovery is no time to practice austerity. In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal generated growth and reduced the unemployment rate from 25 percent in 1932 to less than 10 percent in 1937. However, the deficit hawks of that era persuaded President Roosevelt to reverse course prematurely and move toward budget balance.

The result was a severe recession that caused the economy to contract sharply and sent the unemployment rate soaring.

The President and Congress should redouble efforts to create jobs and send aid to the states whose budget crises threaten recovery by forcing them to lay off school teachers, public safety workers, and other essential workers. It also makes sense to invest in public service jobs – and in infrastructure projects for transportation, water, and energy conservation that will make our economy more productive for years to come."

– 300 leading economists and civic leaders
in a letter to congress and the president

congratulations governor andrew cuomo

here is the republican gubernatorial candidate for the state of new york, carl paladino.

"We need some delusions to keep us going."

"And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t."

despite what some feel are questionable choices in his personal life, woody allen remains one of my heroes. a couple of weeks ago i had what felt like the quintessential new york experience: watching allen's manhattan on a big outdoor screen in central park with about 200 other new yorkers. sitting on the lawn, eating cold fried chicken and chocolate chip cookies, watching isaac davis tromp around to places in the city that have become familiar to me (including the now-gutted metro theatre, just a few blocks from my home.)

we've been on a kick lately: manhattan, purple rose of cairo, bananas, hannah and her sisters. somehow, over time, i forget how great some of them are (especially hannah and cairo.)

allen's newest, you will meet a tall dark stranger, opens next wednesday. in today's times, he talks with dave itzkoff about the film, the concept of faith, and the aging process – "i'm against it."

write on that garage door again, russ

this is the russ feingold i voted for in 1992. not much different than the russ feingold wisconsin should re-elect this november. maybe if he wrote on that garage door again...


(hat tip lee becker)

anderson cooper = boozy mcboozerson?

cnn anchor anderson cooper seemed just a little tipsy to me tonight, getting all boyishly excited like he does about things like hurricanes, haitian disasters and, ohh... primary results. but no, i thought. i've never seen this behavior before. coop would never be tipsy on air.

or would he...?

the mormon musical

this makes me happy.

quote of the day

“In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the Nation’s school children, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served.

Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our Party today.

My children and I look forward to the President’s speech.”

– jim greer
former florida gop chairman

it's easy when you don't feel the heat

not enough has been made of the fact that the anti-islam, muslim bashing that's been ratcheted up over the last few weeks could actually put our fighting men and women in more danger. this is often the cry from the right, when liberals or moderates question things like the reasons for going to war, for continuing to support war, for not ending war: "they don't support the troops!"

now, huffington post reports that some of those fighting men and women are sounding off against that rhetoric

A small but growing group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have signed onto an open letter which calls on the American public to respect "the values we risked our lives to protect" and to avoid endangering the mission -- and safety -- of U.S. forces in the Mideast.

"America, you gotta have our back," reads the letter. "Those who would vilify and target Muslims on grounds of their religious belief not only show a deep disrespect for American values, but put American lives at risk. It's easy to burn a Koran when you won't feel the heat."

there won't be might be trumpets

the newly named stephen sondheim theatre (formerly henry miller's theatre) operated by roundabout theatre company, will receive an official unveiling and lighting ceremony wednesday, september 15 at 6:30 p.m.

the movie you don't want to be good

you can't possibly be excited to see a movie about facebook, can you? no, you can't be. no, stop. you can't be. but you should be, says rolling stone's peter travers:

This is the first film I've seen so far in 2010 that deserves my highest rating, 4 stars. It's better than the movie of the year. The Social Network also defines the decade.

How so?

Director David Fincher, working brilliantly from a dazzlingly complex script by Aaron Sorkin, uses the rise and rise of Facebook to examine a generation that can't communicate despite its obsession with social networking.

The performances are award caliber, led by Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who conceived the idea as a Harvard student. The squabbling between Zuckerberg and his friends who want a piece of the site, including Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield is outstanding) and Napster co-founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, an acting revelation), makes for a fierce and funny powerhouse, a modern Rashomon that will pin you to your seat.

the social network arrives in theatres october 1st. the trailer is below.

pardon me sir, does your dog bite?

frank rich suggests that, thanks to the return of the tougher, scrappier barack obama, the november elections might not be the tidal wave big media is telling us it they will be:

On Labor Day, the fighting Obama abruptly re-emerged... Speaking to workers in Milwaukee, the president finally started giving voice to the anger of America’s battered middle class. And he even let loose with a little anger of his own. The unspecified “powerful interests” aligned against him, he said, “talk about me like a dog.”

That inelegant line — “not in my prepared remarks,” Obama explained — landed because it was true and because he said it with a grin. Americans like their warriors happy...

For a guy facing a tidal wave, the president was so ebullient, you had to wonder if he knew something we didn’t. Maybe he simply read the unabridged poll numbers rather than the CliffsNotes summaries of cable news. Those numbers are hardly as monochromatic as advertised.

obama needs a little more "dog" in 'em. dare i say it? maybe a little more pit bull - sans the lipstick, of course.

obama in milwaukee:

"America was not built on hate"

nicholas kristof considers the debate over islam happening in our country and sums it up beautifully, especially in the last 1/4 of his piece, as he brings to light some of the more prominent christian and jewish leaders who have not used this moment in our history to bash muslims or, for that matter, our constitution:

“Shame on you,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, a leading evangelical Christian, said to those castigating Islam. “You bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ. You directly disobey his commandment to love your neighbor.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick put it this way: “This is not America. America was not built on hate.”

as with any group or religion, we are too often defined by the extremes. it's good to remember that in the midst of all the crazy out there.

new yorkers: about face

simon hogsberg gets ten new yorkers to talk about their faces.