Mygazine

One Year Ago Tonight

For many people, Oscar night is all about the parties, the glamour, and the fun of getting to judge all the red carpet hits and misses.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as into all that as much as the next gay movie fan. But for my partner and I, the annual Oscar party we go to is also where we learned about a cute little cairn terrier puppy that we ended up adopting about a week after the Oscars last year. Her birthday is in December, but we have her a year now this week. Check out these pics of Zoe then and now.

RELAUNCH

I keep saying this. I can't believe it is already February.

After a much longer holiday break than I had planned, I am back to blogging. As I am sure you noticed, my 31 days of giving was more like eleven days of giving. It's the thought that counts, though, right? Cheers to the readers who wrote in thanking me for mentioning their charities. There are so many worthy charities out there. I hope we all support as many as we can throughout the year.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the beautiful view from my recent trip to Aspen.

Angus & Zoe Wish You Happy Holidays

DSCN1100.JPG, originally uploaded by erichunter.

I hope all of you are enjoying some downtime and a much needed break. Happy holidays to you and all your favorite people. Here's to an amazing 2007.

Keeping Busy During the Long Weekend

I don't know about you but by the time I made it to last Thursday morning, I was so ready for the long weekend. The true "holiday season" hasn't even started and I'm ready for a break. Looks like I'll need to pace myself. Anyway, this weekend, in between plenty of couch time, we found all kinds of things to do—some worth the time and some not.

Thursday afternoon, the boyfriend and I caught an afternoon showing on Bobby, the new film by Emilio Estevez that tells the story of 22 people who were at LA's Ambassador Hotel on the day RFK was assassinated. The cast is definitely star-studded. In addition to Estevez, the cast list includes Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Elijah Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Harry Belefonte, Lindsay Lohan (yes, even Lindsay Lohan), Laurence Fishburne, and Freddy Rodriguez (of Six Feet Under Fame). While Stone and Moore both give great performances and Lindsay Lohan proves that she can act, even if she can't sing, the story is far too convoluted and difficult to follow for this to be the big hit that many thought it could be.

Thanksgiving was a quite day at home. In the morning, I hit Fort Greene Park with one of our dogs, Zoe. That was the extent of the day's physical activity. That night, though, we braved the icy rain for an outstanding Thanksgiving dinner at Wallse, one of my favorite holiday dinner spots. Since Dave made the reservation a couple weeks ago, I had been mentioning our plan to friends. Considering the restuarant has been open on its quiet corner in the West Village for a few years now, I was shocked by the number of people who hadn't even heard the restaurants name, let alone darkened its door. All I can say is plan a dinner there asap. It is a wonderful experience from beginning to end.

Friday was a bit of a wash since we spent it traveling back and forth between our vet dealing with a small medical emergency for our other dog, Angus. He is fine now and recovering nicely, but that night we couldn't stand to leave him by himself all groggy on pain medication.

Even though we live in Brooklyn, until Saturday neither of us had been to the Brooklyn Museum. The Annie Liebovitz exhibit running late January gave us a good excuse to make the trip. Obviously we weren't the only people who had this idea. Even when we arrived not long after noon (the museum opens at 11am on Saturdays) there was a healthy line to get in. Having be a big fan of Liebovitz's work for a long time, I was excited to see he photos up close and personal. Strangely, the exhibit is a mix of her personal and professional work. As she puts it, "I don't have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it." Whatever. The combination of the two made the exhibit a bit confusion and hard to follow. And the museum could manage the flow of people much better so that it is easier to see and enjoy the exhibit. If you decide to give the museum a try (and judge for yourself) you can also catch "Looking Back From Ground Zero," an engaging exhibition of works from the permanent collection that includes paintings, photographs, prints, and drawings of the Lower Manhattan area around the World Trade Center site before, as well as after 9/11, and an installation of the hyper-real sculputure of Ron Mueck.

Then Saturday night, we join a full house of fans for a showing of For Your Consideration. Continuing the theme of the day, though, the film didn't deliver on its positive hype. I'm still a huge fan of Christopher Guest and what has become his house ensemble of actors but this isn't their best film.

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O Shenandoah

 

A couple weeks ago we made a trip to Charlottesville to visit my sister who recently started grad school at UVA. While we were there, I could resist taking an afternoon to drive an hour over the mountains to my alma mater in Lexington, Washington & Lee University. Here we are hanging out on in front of Lee Chapel on the Colonnade.

If you haven't visited Virginia in the fall, I highly recommend it. You hear so much about New England at this time of year. It has nothing on Virginia. Click here for a few more photos from the trip.

A Few Things You Should Know About UVA and W&L
1) Show that you are in-the-know and refer to UVA's Grounds not the campus.

2) Washington & Lee was founded in 1749 as Augusta Academy and claims both George Washington and Robert E. Lee as former presidents.

3) Both schools have very strong Honor Systems. I can't speak for UVA, but at W&L that means students can schedule their own final exams, most of which are unproctored, and that classrooms and the library are open 24/7. The realities of modern living have caused the school to tighten security on the dorms and administration buildings, but the other buildings remain open.

4) The University of Virginia was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and is consistently ranked as one of the top public universities in the country.

5) Both schools began as all-male institutions. Washington & Lee was a single-sex university until it admitted the first class of female undergrads in 1985. (I was a member of the second coed class.) UVA began admitting women in 1970.

Enough With The Crackberry Addiction

Maybe I'm in denial, but are that many people addicted to their "Crackberries"?

In April of last year, The Washington Post did a story on pain from thumb strain related to Blackberry use.

Sure celebrities are seen carrying them all over the place. And everyone on the subway, including myself, is pounding away on their. But is it that bad? A study done by Rutgers University has kicked up the buzz on this again.

• Yesterday's New York Post crowed "Tech Junkies, Be "Berry" Afraid."
• The story is hot on the other side of the pond too. The Daily Mail says "Blackberry Addiction Similar to Drugs."

Stop the madness.

Quotable: Miss Cho Speaks Out

In today's New York Post, Margaret Cho speaks out against Atlanta.

" August 24, 2006 -- MARGARET Cho isn't high on Atlanta these days. "Atlanta is not particularly a walking city, [but] when you do walk, you become a moving target of sorts . . . I got hit today with a classic, 'Me love you long time!' " the comic says on her Web blog. "I am often glad that I am not armed . . . even though it is the sorriest excuse of a sexual advance, and then they left without wanting to know if I had accepted the offer."

Last Night On Commercial Street

I've been talking about her for a couple days now. And Tuesday night we finally caught Lea Delaria's show here in P-town. The Vixen, the venue where her show is running, has a very comfortable front bar room with comfy couches, two pool tables, and a juke box with everything from Melissa Ethridge and Janet Jackson to Heart and  classic Dolly Parton. We chilled there for about an hour before the show. My friends that I am staying here with met two great women from Chicago, the city they all hail from too, one of whom is a member of Bound Stems, a cool Chicago-based band that you can catch at the Mercury Lounge in NYC on August 30.  We ended up spending the rest of the evening with them, but I digress.

The performance room, which doubles as a dance bar after the show each night, is very nicely outfitted with a bar that runs about half the length of the room and plenty of well-spaced seating whether you get one of the tables on the floor or a space on the banquettes that line the two walls. We settled in with some cocktails and waited for Lea to take the stage. Backed by a killer trio of musicians, she turned it on and gave a knock out performance. As Lea put it, she is part Broadway diva, part stand up and part jazz singer. And all of her talents were on display in her set. She shows how she really had total control of the stage and is able to do free form comedy as she plays off of the crowd's energy. After the show, Lea signed copies of the Grammy nominated CD of the Actor's Fund of America Benefit Recording of Hair and posed for photos with fans. If you are coming to P-town through Labor Day, I highly recommend it. It is $20 very well spent.

After the show we made our way around town and hit a couple of the local watering holes. Around 1:30 as we were finishing our slices outside Spiritus, the place to see and be seen after the bars, one of my favorite writer/monologist/performers, Mike Albo, walked by with a friend. Another brush with fame and the week isn't over yet.

Lance Officially Gets His Card

After weeks, no make that years, of speculation, Lance is out of the closet. Bass is quoted in People as saying, "The thing is, I’m not ashamed – that’s the one thing I want to say," he explains of his decision to come out. "I don't think it's wrong, I'm not devastated going through this. I'm more liberated and happy than I’ve been my whole life. I'm just happy."

Congrats Lance!