deep in the ocean, there lies a wave for you

i miss you, ay mami!

this will be us come two years, when we rent out wendy’s farmhouse and live there and pet the cows.
love love love love you and happy happy happy birthday.

These are the top candidates:

MIKA – ‘Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)

The white pants. Being the pied piper of a bunch of volumptuous women in the street. Getting on his knees. The pinnacle of fag-hagitude.

David Bowie and Mick Jagger – ‘Dancing in the Street’

I can’t take credit for finding this one, but I can take credit for finding gay man confirmation that this is INDEED one of the prime nominees for the title. Zack and I even watched it with the sound off to see if it was STILL that gay, and it is. Oh, it is.

Rufus Wainwright – ‘Rules and Regulations’

Rufus is wearing bulge-friendly long underwear old-style workout dudes pump various body parts around him. It’s amazing.

REM – ‘Shiny Happy People’

COME ON.

I am obviously looking for more suggestions.

Tags: gayest videos ever

My friend Lexi posted a good blog about how women get shat on all of the time. It’s true. I want to talk about what happened to one of my best friends the other night.

She was dog-sitting for our friend at the corner of Sherman and Euclid Sts. NW. Her date dropped her off at 11 p.m. and went to go find parking. She since she was walking less than a block to our friend’s door, went ahead to let the dog out. Instead, five teenagers, two girls and three guys, attacked her. The girl punched her in the head and tried to rip her purse from her. She says that she’d have rather let them knock her teeth out than give up her iPod (part of the badass attitude I love about her). They kicked her face in a bunch of times. The whole time, she’s screaming “MICHAEL! MICHAEL!” (her friend’s name). Finally, he comes running and the kids scatter … and her entire chin is bruised, her forehead has swelled, and her elbow is completely banged up.

The next day, yesterday, I’m walking the dog with her and our male friend after a few drinks. We get around the corner onto Euclid and … one of the kids who attacked her is sitting RIGHT THERE. Right where it happened, on a stoop. Our male friend calls the police, we stand around the corner and wait for them to come. They arrive and walk her down to identify the victim, who they CUFF RIGHT THERE in front of the entire street and all of the people who have come out of their apartments and houses to see what’s happening. So, everyone saw her face. Great job.

They cart the dude and her off to the police station and now she can’t pupsit anymore and she’s scared and I. AM. PISSED. This happened because she’s a white-looking woman. Other WOMEN did this to her. How could you do that to someone who every day faces catcalls, discrimination and the unfortunate-but-still-true disadvantage that comes with having a vagina in this world? She’s not privileged, she works her ass off, she’s had, at points, a rough life, and she’s come out tough and amazing because of it. And you shit all over that, other women, because you’re angry at something that has nothing to do with her. I am pissed. When are women going to realize that we need each other?

Tags: women| violence |

From the AP wire:

“McCain, who once called Falwell and his ilk “agents of intolerance,” praised him in a statement as “a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country.” Romney described Falwell as “an American who built and led a movement based on strong principles and strong faith.”

Good cop out, Johnny boy. Ugh.

We went to sushi lunch and Carol presented me with a plush doll of the AIM running man logo … with pins in it. I love it.
Kenny posted a farewell bit on QueerSighted for me!
“Rebecca Armendariz is also leaving us. She’s moving on to a new job at the esteemed GLBT newspaper the Washington Blade where she will serve as its fab online editor. Never let it be said that a gig at QueerSighted isn’t a stepping stone to greatness. I am going to miss her sitting next to me, especially since Mika is her ringtone and this has brought me a huge amount of joy on a daily basis. She also tells me when I look “adorable,” and that’s important. (I miss her already.)”
If you didn’t know already, I. LOVE. KENNY.
Also, how is this not so PERFECT? The day I leave AOL to take on homophobia, JERRY. FALWELL. DIES. The cosmos align! All is right in the universe!
Tags: queersighted | jerry falwell

1. Chris is currently taking the LSAT! I am so proud of him; I’ve never seen anyone study so hard and dedicate so much time to something. Fingers crossed that the gods of law school gave him a sweet version of the test!

2. This will be the last Justin Timberlake reference for awhile, I promise. But COME ON, look at this piece:

3. Last night we saw ‘Casino Royale.’ Needless to say, it was AWESOME. Chris claims to have liked the cheesy love bits; I think they are a sufficient substitution for sexism. I got a huge boner from the poker scenes!

which means I’m taking her advice. Let’s talk about L.O.V.E.
Oh, first of all, I was, like most people my age, a Beatles fanatic from an early age. All parents who were born too late to actually experience the ’60s focused on the Beatles instead, it seems. Anyway, there was a point when I was about 12 when I remember listening to “A Hard Day’s Night” because “it had been awhile” and I had been “focusing too much on ‘The White Album’.” When I got to college, I couldn’t really enjoy listening to the Beatles anymore. I mean, I could watch Help over and over again for the cheekiness and the quirks, but I got sick of the songs.

George Martin and son came up with the idea to remix/master classic Beatles songs for a Cirque de Soleil spectacular. Listening to it was refreshing. Let’s do this trackish-by-trackish:
1. “Because” – pretty bare. the intricate harpsichord (peut-etre?) notes that laced their way through the original are missing; John’s perfect pitch can be heard more easily.
2. “Get Back” – leads in with the first guitar note of “A Hard Day’s Night” before the steady drum of the original pounces in. Towards the end you hear the white noise of “A Day in the Life’ creep in.
3. “Glass Onion” – very muddled. I ignored most of it.
4. “Eleanor Rigby” – at this point I’m listening very closely to see if something is different, and my mind is playing tricks on me. It ends so nicely, though, with a soft “ah” and the opening notes of “Julia.”
5. “I Am the Walrus” – not noticing much.
6. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” – aw, this made me happy. There are girls screaming in the background.
7. “Drive My Car” – Jessica and I made this our answering machine message (focusing on the “beep beep”) when I was in middle school. They mix in “What You’re Doing,” which is one of my favorite old Beatles-no-substance songs, but they keep the percussion from the initial tune in. Aw, it’s so nice. Leads out with “The Word.”
8. “Gnik Nus” – “Sun King” backwards. Lame.
9. “Something” – I miss George. This song isn’t too different, but it made me want to put on the Traveling Wilburys instead. The end gets slightly dank before leading into …
10. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” – Oooh, I hate the addition of “Helter Skelter” to the end of this song. They should have left that golden nugget out.
11. “Help!” – nothing interesting to say.
12. “Blackbird”/”Yesterday” – blah.
13. “Strawberry Fields Forever” – addition of guitar parts. More pitter-patter drums. Some “Sgt. Pepper” at the end, along with “Piggies” and some “Hello Goodbye.” While it all sounds a bit jumbled, it clears up in the end with some heavy percussion and the “hey-la hey hello-ah” and ends on a clean note.
14. “Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows” – this was a perfect pair of songs to mash together. Both have the eerie sitar punctuating them. Subtle additions of the plucky opening notes from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” start increasing towards the end.
15. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – OK, now I’m bored with this idea.

All in all, a good idea, very cleanly done, one thumb up. It was satisfying to listen to these tracks with a little spice added.

I watched Shattered Glass yesterday, and man, was I entertained. For those of you who are not aware of this amazing situation, Sir Glass was a reporter/assistant editor for The New Republic, and he contributed to a bunch of other mags, including Rolling Stone. He made up about 2/3 of the stories he wrote, inventing people, places, organizations, situations, etc. I am mostly amazed with how, in 1998, nobody thought to look anything up on the Internet. Glass’s attempted cover-up was nothing short of genius. He made a “website” for the fake company he created, Jukt Micronics, that was at a members.aol.com page. Here’s a taste:

This is perhaps my favorite excerpt:
“At a conference sponsored by the National Assembly of Hackers last week, teenage hackers and graying corporate executives flocked to Ian, patting him on the back and giving him high-fives. “We’re so proud of him,” said Ian’s mother. “He’s doing such good things, and he’s so smart and kind.” At the formal dinner that followed, the emcee explained that Ian had just signed a contract for $81,000 in scholarship money–and a collection of rare comic books.”

The Glass case was something that got mentioned in journalism classes, but I never knew the specifics of it. Another famous one toted by professors as a sin is the Janet Cooke Washington Post scandal from 1981. This little lady won a Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting endeavors, and had to give it back. She completely invented an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy and wrote a piece about him. The best part of this story is that Mayor-extraordinaire Marion Barry said that ‘Jimmy’ was known to the city and receiving treatment. A worthy quote:
“Jimmy’s mother Andrea accepts her son’s habit as a fact of life, although she will not inject the child herself and does not like to see others do it.”
We had a lengthy lesson about Jack Kelley from USA Today in Advanced Reporting. This guy actually wrote letters to friends that were saved on his computer in which he asked them to pretend to be sources sought by the paper to verify his stories. Reporters like these guys always just happened to be in the right place at the right time. This story picks apart one of his articles that, in retrospect, is outright ridiculous.
Reading up and refreshing my memory on all of this stuff has given me, as stated in the title of this entry, a huge journalism boner. Stephen Glass said that when he was assigned a story, he would write it and then think, “If I only had this one quote…” But actually GETTING that quote is such an awesome feeling. I have no sympathy for him or any of these plagiarizers.
This has ignited the journalistic fire in my soul! I scoured mediabistro today looking at dream jobs. I will work at a magazine someday; I will not fuck up; I will be awesome.