Orpheus in the Majestic Theatre

I went to an opera on Saturday. I was invited to go and I went skeptically -- my only image of an opera was of the kind with the fat ladies with heaving bosoms, wearing horned viking hats. But it was something different to do. If nothing else, it would be fun to watch the "opera people."

There were no vikings present in Orpheus in the Underworld (although there was a centaur), and it was a lot closer to Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar than those big Italian tragedies. And I really liked it.

Unlike a musical, which I tend to hate, its songs weren't the type of song that gets stuck in your head, thank god.

And, of course, the opera people were fun to watch too. Witness the man in the front row (we were in the third row), sporting not opera glasses but a full-on opera telescope. He weaved it back and forth cocked against one eye to exam the very stage he could've reached out and touched.

And then there was the guy behind us who, during the bows at the end, emphatically declared "Yeah, oh yeah" with the volume you'd expect from a cheering audience but with none of the emotion. Opera people do their cheering in a civilized way. Even their cheering for simulated bug sex.

We are commuters

Maggie,

I also keep my phone and wallet on me, as opposed to in my bag. In my bag, aside from the face-wipes and snacks, I have a little bottle of hand sanitizer, a train schedule, a pack of tissues, three pens (including one red pen in case I need to do any spontaneous editing), a book (currently Insomnia by Stephen King), one rubber band, an umbrella, my iPod, a tin of breath mints, and a stiff folder in case I want to keep something from getting creased. I keep meaning to add a travel pack of aspirin.

I just went to HR to set up my employment. They added dental insurance while I was away, which is great. And I set the beneficiary of my life insurance to Chris (65%), my parents (20%) and my brother (15%). (If I die peacefully they don't get as much as if my body is ripped apart.) When I filled out the same form over three years ago, in a moment of panic over revealing my gayness, I skipped Chris entirely and gave everything to my brother. It weighed on me for years. If I died, what would Chris think when he saw I didn't give him anything? So I'm glad that's cleared up. The HR guy gave the typical oh-my-you're-gay beat of surprise when he read my card, but I don't care about that anymore.

Hope your day is going well.

Ben

Favorite Movie

People get really uncomfortable when you ask what their favorite movie is. Of course you can't pick just one. You can't even pick just one within a specific genre.

I was in a meeting today where everyone was asked to name their favorite movie as part of a "getting to know you" exercise. Everyone qualified their answers:

"I love SO many movies..."

"I don't have a favorite, but..."

"My favorite changes every day, so today I'd say..."

"Matrix. No, Sound of Music.... wait, can I change my answer to The Departed?"

Look, people, we realize you like more than one movie. Relax. Just throw a title out there.

Of course, the problem is that in this kind of setting, what you select defines you as a person because no one in the room knows you. You will forever be "the tall girl in editorial who likes mafia movies," for example.

Of course, I was nervous about naming just one movie. My first reaction was to go general, pick a safe bet out of my giant list of favorites: Godfather. Gone With the Wind. Then I decided that was too stereotypical. Maybe I'd say the Big Lebowski, the Princess Bride, or True Romance.

None of those movies defines me, though Princess Bride comes close, I guess. I typically judge a movie to be a 'favorite' if I could watch it repeatedly. For that reason, I ended up copping out and saying "something by Quentin Tarentino." Quentin Tarentino is a pretty well-liked moviemaker, so it was general enough, but made me feel unique enough because his movies may not be the go-to pick of many females. And for sure, I could watch Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill over and over. Hell, I even like the movies Tarentino simply lends his name to like The Protector.

But had I chosen just one of the aforementioned obscenity-laced blood baths, what would that have said about me?

Axis of Comedy

Last Friday night Chris and I went to see the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour in Boston. It's a traveling show of four Middle-Eastern American comedians. There was an Egyptian, an Iranian (though he preferred to be called Persian, "Like the cat, meow!"), a Palestinian, and another guy who was half Italian.

They joked about what it's like to be a Muslim in America post-9/11.

It's amazing to me how they can find humor in the suspicious stares they get, and the airport discrimination. I guess it's good to laugh about it. In a way, I think I can relate to some of what they go through, but as shitty and difficult as it sometimes is to be gay, I can't even imagine how it is to be Muslim right now.

The audience was very diverse and international. The girl sitting behind me was telling the boy behind me about how she just got a job in Gaza, on the West Bank. It wasn't the first time I realized how little my world-view is.

Barack for prez. Period.

One thing I noticed about Barack's website is that he always ends his sentences with a period. For example,





I looked on the other candidates' websites and I saw nary a dot of punctuation. How can you end a war if you can't end a sentence?

On a more serious note, since all the above can be considered headlines, they don't really need punctuation. But the periods do have a way of making everything more assertive.

Who in the what now?

Is it just me or are movies becoming harder to follow? Lately the new releases I've seen have left me baffled. Sometimes it's the bizarre plot structure -- the A to Z to Q to B arrangement of The Prestige and Flags of Our Fathers, for example. Or else I just have no frickin idea what's going on (like with Children of Men, about which I realized too late that nothing, in fact, was going on at all).

It makes me think of how my grandmother used to watch cartoons with my brother and me. She would exclaim several times during every episode of Ninja Turtles, "I can't make heads or tails of what they're saying!"

Anyway, all of this makes me even more sure that there's no reason to watch any movie that doesn't star Jack Lemmon. I'm clearly not getting these new-fangled pictures.

From Threadless.com

Fairy Tales

The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy to allow same-sex couples to participate in its popular Fairy Tale Wedding program at Disney World and Disneyland. That's nice to hear. But when I found out what the wedding packages entail, I couldn't believe they weren't always targeted at gays.

The wedding packages start at $8,000 and include a ride to the ceremony in the Cinderella coach, costumed trumpeters heralding the couple's arrival, and attendance by Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters dressed in formal attire.

Trumpeters? Cinderella's stagecoach? C'mon, that's pretty darn gay. As much as I feel bad about gays being denied such a fairy-esque day in the past, I feel even worse for the straight guys who have to endure one!

Barack and Rolling

Barack's had me squirming the last couple days, while he waited, after everyone else, to release the figures on his fundraising. Why wait? Was waiting a good sign or a bad sign?

I decided it was a good sign -- why would he want to make news with bad figures? If they were bad it would've been better to slip them in with everyone else's, like John McCain did. So they had to be good, right? He had to be raking in the dough, right?

Right!

His $25 million puts him on par with Hillary financially, and in some ways surpasses her.

What makes this achievement even more noteworthy is that we did it without taking any money from PACs or federal lobbyists. Instead, we're counting on you. In less than three months, a staggering 100,000 Americans have contributed to our cause -- tens of thousands more than the number reported by any other campaign.

I'm happy with Barack's campaign so far. It's been really smart. The whole lead-up to his officially entering the race, and the announcement itself, were finely crafted; his website is beautiful and he has a great campaign logo; and I like how he waited to unleash his good numbers. And most of all, I like how he's handling a 2002 speech he made against the war in which he basically predicted everything that has gone wrong. "I'm not pointing to that speech to say 'I told you so,'" he said, "but it's a good indicator of my judgment."

It is. And everything else has been too.

Reverse the curse

I know Deval Patrick got off to a rocky start, what with the drapes and the Cadillac, but every time I see the headline "Patrick reverses Romney order" I breathe a sigh of relief. In this case,

Governor Deval Patrick has ordered the state Department of Public Health to officially record the marriages of 26 out-of-state gay couples whose unions Governor Mitt Romney had blocked from being entered into the state's vital records.

Speaking of Mitt Romney, did you know everyone's favorite sonofabitch presidential candidate is already choosing his running mate? Seems a bit premature to me.

It's Mika I seek-a

At work a month ago I was setting up CD giveaways ("enter to win!"), and when I came to one by a singer/songwriter called Mika, I was stopped in my tracks. Oh, Mika! He was my ideal: awkward and shaggy-haired with a hint of non-threatening ethnicity. I was mesmerized by his headshot and captivated by the exotic history his press release revealed (not to mention the fact that he's gay as last Christmas).

I told my boss that when we got our review copies of the CD, I needed one. It was kind of a joke. I didn't even know what Mika's songs sounded like. To be honest, I didn't really care. It was just fun to ask every day when I got to work, "Are the Mika CDs in yet?"

One day last week there was a copy sitting on my desk when I arrived. I was kind of disappointed that the joke would now be over. Mika would probably suck, and if that was the case, his puppy-dog eyes wouldn't be enough.

But imagine my surprise when he didn't suck! Life in Cartoon Motion is a great album. It's all bubble-gum pop, but it's complex enough that it doesn't get boring after the first listen. And it's a rare thing when I can tolerate *happy* music, since I tend to prefer songs that makes me want to kill myself.

Since the album's release last week, I've heard Mika's first single in a movie trailer and I've seen the album in the "featured titles" section of iTunes. But I like to think I discovered him first.