Suddenly San Franciscan

Richard Socarides, an openly gay former Clinton aide, writes in Americablog today on the DoJ’s defence of DOMA.

And Pam’s House Blend, in linking and commenting on Socarides’ piece notes:

Who’s holding this administration hostage to PTSD fears of Clinton and DADT in 1993? It’s 2009, toadies. This administration, sitting atop high approval ratings with a minority party choking on its own bile and an American public that is more supportive of LGBT issues in the polls that at any time in history is crapping on the community in broad daylight and wondering what all the fuss is about. Someone in the White House needs a reality check. Fast.

June 14th, 2009 | Tags: LGBT rights, marriage equality, news | Leave a comment

A while back I mentioned that in light of the passage of Proposition 8 here in California, and similar political debates around the US, I’d probably be keeping a political angle here for a while, then I went quiet and it didn’t really happen.

That changes today.

Today is the day the the Obama Adminstration, the Administration of a man who dared to call himself a “fierce advocate’ for LGBT equality, and pledged during his campaign to repeal the Defence of Marriage Act (the piece of legislation most responsible for, for example, The Mrs not being able to get a spousal visa and having to be humiliated by saying I ’support’ him financially), betrayed the LGBT community and the cause of equality in the most disgraceful manner imaginable.

The following is only skimming the surface of the story.

Arguing against a legal challenge to DOMA, President Obama’s Justice Department issued a brief which, among other things, connected gay marriage with incest and people marrying children, and basically created a framework on which to make ongoing defence of DOMA on their behalf almost obligatory.

Inexplicably, (and ironically given that today is the anniversary of the Virginia vs Loving decision), they argue that DOMA is not unconstitutional, because it doesn’t seek to discriminate against men or women.  Essentially it reinforces the argument trotted out by bigots the world over (it was certainly a feature of the UK Parliamentary debate) that LGBT people can get married any time they like as long as it’s to someone of the opposite gender.

In amongst all this (and there’s a lot more that’s way over my head), the fact that DOMA saves the Federal Government money is trotted out as an argument.  In a case involving equality of treatment for fuck’s sake.

By actively stating their support for DOMA as both constitutional and reasonable, Justice have surely made it impossible for the Administration to argue against it further down the line.  And the worst of it is, they didn’t have to.  They could have defended the current claim without needing to take one single step further in support of DOMA’s consitutionality.  Someone, somewhere, in this “fierce advocate”’s team, decided that the Presidential position is unequivocally to support DOMA against all possible challenges, and to get its defence in first.

Oh, and by the way, there’s plenty of precedent from the last two administrations among others that means the DOJ is actually not required to defend cases against laws it believes to be unconstitutional, so they could have just not said ANYTHING.  So first they decided that they would, then they decided to go a whole lot further than they needed to.  There’s no way this isn’t a deliberate attack from the ‘fierce advocate’.

I’m somewhere beyond horrified and accelerating towards revolted.

Pam’s House Blend pulls it all together.

Amercablog’s John Aravosis on the brief (a comprehensive summary)

And in covering the DOJ’s attempt to claim (falsely) that they had to defend the case see this especially at the end:

You see, this is the problem with what Obama did to our community last night. He can talk all he wants about helping us get our civil rights (well, in fact, notice the Justice spokesman said nothing about Obama actually helping us get DOMA repealed), but the Obama administration’s own word will now be used against us, and against him, if he ever deigns to actually fulfill even one promise to our community.

Andrew Sullivan - Insult to injury

Equality California have an online ‘Letter to the President’ tool that I’d encourage any Americans reading please to use.

June 12th, 2009 | Tags: LGBT rights, marriage equality, news, proposition 8 | Leave a comment

We do this thing in the office here where we take it in turns on Fridays to have an iPod Day.  The person whose day it is creates a playlist from their iTunes library and plays it over the internal system, giving us all;

a) exposure to music we might not know about otherwise, and

b) a break from the usual nightmarish muzak.

In typical ‘me’ style, I suspect I overthink these things when my turn comes around, and I really work at something like a sensible order for the songs, rather than just dragging everything over and setting it to shuffle.  I don’t think other people do the same.

So the last time it was my turn, there was a little run that started with the original Kate Bush version of Hounds of Love, moved on to the Futureheads’ version, then shifted to The Puppini Sisters’ cover of Wuthering Heights before wrapping up with the Kate original - you see the kind of thing I’m doing here?

Today (for it’s my turn again) I was in a bit of a hurry pulling something together after getting in from the theatre last night, but I’m still happy with some details I’ve wrangled in, like leading into the first Pet Shop Boys track with The Loving Kind, the Girls Aloud song they wrote, and including Inner City Pressure, the Flight of the Conchords PSBs pastiche nearby.  And there’s other little groupings that I’m quite pleased with.

Most of the office here don’t recognise much of what I tend to include, which I think is good - it reinforces that I come from somewhere different, and have exotic tastes (:-)).  But I suspect the little batch of numbers I think of as ‘the rude songs’ I tacked on the end might stop them in their tracks.  Britney’s If You Seek Amy is just for starters.  The whole playlist builds up to Lily Allen’s Fuck You.

I know it seems a lot of trouble to go to, but I take a certain pride in making a little more effort than I strictly need to on these occasions.

I acknowledge that this probably makes me quite sad.

June 12th, 2009 | Tags: culture shock, real life | Comments (2)

We went to see this new play at the rather lovely Berkeley Rep theatre last night, and while I think it’s fair to say all of our party enjoyed it, we did so with reservations.  I think on the whole the performers rose above the quality of their material.

The play tells the story of Nero, as seen through the eyes of the dramatist Scribonius, drafted into the court to tell Nero’s story to the people and make the emperor more acceptable.  At first horrified by the prospect, the author begins to see some hope that he might actually change Nero for the better through his work.   The play shows Scribonius drawn deeper into the court’s intrigues as he attempts to hold on (not always successfully) to both his artistic and personal integrity.  The historical backdrop (particularly the complicated family relationships at the Roman court around this time) was solid as far as I can remember, and helped ground the somewhat lightweight production.

The play was written with its lead actor, Danny Scheie (Nero) in mind, and both author and director have noted that knowing his performance style made it easier for them to bring the play together.  He certainly makes the most of a complex character, being a combination of camp, uncertain, loving, homicidal, crazed and tragic, often all in the same scene.  Which makes it odder that really, this is Scribonius’ play.  He’s the first and last person we see on stage, the narrator, and if a story is about how its protagonists are changed, then it’s categorically his tale - Nero is resolutely unchanged either by the circumstances he experiences or Scribonius’ efforts.  Jeff McCarthy gives the dramatist a certain conviction even as he occasionally falls to his own less noble instincts.

But the problem here is that the play seems oddly pointless (really in both senses - it feels slight and inconsequential, but also lacks ‘a point’).  It comes across as a morality tale wrapped up in a campy comedy, but exactly what the moral might be eluded us.  It could be about the danger of absolute power, but equally it might be about giving in to one’s baser side.  It’s presumably not about trying to use art to affect the world for good, since Scribonius fails in his every effort to do so.  But given the way the the staging outweighs the content, it might equally be a warning not to stage American Idol in the Colosseum.

The reviews are full of comments about it being a two hour laugh riot.  We laughed, but not that much.

June 12th, 2009 | Tags: review | Leave a comment

This is my first Pride month as a San Francisco resident.  Pride weekend itself is the last weekend of the month, with the Dyke March on the Saturday, the parade on the Sunday and a two-day celebration event at the Civic Center.

The theme for the event this year relates to that subject which is particularly sensitive here at present “To form a more perfect union”, which touches on the issue of gay marriages/unions as well as the growing disparity between those states which recognise and solemnise gay marriages and those (like California) which don’t.  Off the back of the Proposition 8 win last year, it’s clear that Pride here remains something with a distinct political charge, rather than the fluffy nonsense that London’s event has become.

It’s interesting being in a city which so embraces and endorses its LGBT population and its Pride activity (and I use the term to mean the city as a corporate entity, not the populace) - Market Street, the major thoroughfare in the city centre, has large rainbow flags along its entire length, and there are pride posters prominently displayed in public buildings and places like Muni stations.  Even businesses are tapping into the spirit with their advertising - there’s a bus stop ad I want to get a photo of and post.

It feels like the city is itself actually proud of this significant chunk of the population and its celebration.

Funnily enough, I recently read some comment on the San Francisco Chronicle’s site in which someone trotted out the old “well if they’re born like that they haven’t achieved anything, so what do they have to be proud about?” saw.  To which my reply is the one I learned from a former poster at Millarworld when the same question arose.

We don’t use it because we’re proud of ourselves, we use it because it’s the opposite of shame.

June 11th, 2009 | Tags: culture shock, pride, proposition 8 | Leave a comment

Despite one or two comments from people who saw it at the weekend suggesting that I take tissues, I was in no way expecting UP to be one of the saddest films I’ve ever seen.

The story, while fantastic, is pretty straightforward.  Old man (former balloon seller at the zoo) faced with being consigned to a retirement home, decides to escape by attaching thousands of helium balloons to his house and flying to to South America.  His objective is to follow in the steps of a great explorer he and his now-dead wife had both idolised since childhood and go where they never mangaged to go while she was alive.  Along the way he picks up an over-eager boy scout, a talking dog and a strange bird, and perhaps inevitably discovers something about the nature of dreams and making the most of the lives we have.

As an animated movie, it’s right up there with Pixar greats like last year’s Wall-E.  As a 3D experience it’s an interesting move - the effects are clever and the 3D is mostly effective, though during some of the more frenetic action sequences it can be hard to keep focus.  The characters are generally well drawn (no pun intended), with fun quirks and the story doesn’t always take the easy way - there’s a theme about Russell the scout’s mostly-absent father which could easily have ended on a cop-out and doesn’t, for instance.

It’s been remarked on in many other places, but Doug the talking dog is, frankly, a work of genius.  Exactly the opposite of what you’ll expect from a talking dog in a cartoon.  And the use of his packmates is brilliantly funny.  I couldn’t tell you most of the dialogue in the first scene featuring Alpha, the leader of the pack, because I was laughing too much, and so was the rest of the audience.

But oh dear lord it’s sad.  The early sequence showing an entire relationship from childhood to old age and death is better done in animation than I think any number of live action films with actual actors emoting away could have achieved, and at the end of it when a cartoon character is dead you’ll feel the loss.  Particularly as it’s a character launched into the film with such incredible energy.  The whole film is marbled with a sense of loss and regret, somewhat alleviated towards the end, but still lurking in the back of the audience’s mind.  As I left I heard one woman commenting that she’d been “crying her eyes out”.

UP is, in many ways, a small film.  It’s about relationships, dreams, loss, and getting by.  It’s not one of those animated films, like Wall-E, to take advantage of the medium to go all out for scope, spectacle and big ideas.  But even though it’s small, it’s very nearly perfectly formed.

June 2nd, 2009 | Tags: film, review | Leave a comment

Lord it’s been a while.  Sorry.

No particularly good excuses either I’m afraid, just a lot of stuff going on to distract me and not a lot of it the kind of thing I can talk about here.  But enough’s enough.  Back to nonsense and flim-flammery (another good name for a blog).

Last time I wrote I was on a plane, and my projected several postings were reduced to two upon the realisation that tiredness was making me increasingly incoherent.  I left off in the middle of a positive paean to Turn Left, episode 4.11 of new Doctor Who, which I’d just watched for the umpteenth time.  It was almost insanely glowing (blame the tiredness), but I’ve watched it again on a flight since and oh my god it’s brilliant.  Possibly the best single Doctor Who story ever, and a triumphant kick in the balls to all those naysayers who kicked off about Catherine Tate and Donna both.

One of these days I’ll properly analyse what makes it so good, but in the meantime - it just is, all right?

More stuff soon (promise).

June 1st, 2009 | Tags: blog, Doctor Who | Comments (1)

The new Pet Shop Boys album (Yes, Pet Shop Boys) is now available via the (UK) iTunes store, and is available via traditional channels next week.  It’s *cracking* - stop wasting time reading this nonsense and go get it now.  It’s the first extended collaboration between the Boys and the Xenamania production team led by Brian Higgins.  (He’s the production force behind all the best Girls Aloud stuff, which should be the only recommendation you need.)  The first single, Love, etc, has been on an almost permanent loop for me at various points in the last few weeks - how can you not want to hear the line “You don’t have to be beautiful but it helps” as frequently as possible?   It’s a *very* PSB line.

Anyway, here’s a fab extra reason to get the download version.  The Boys (I always feel weird calling them that, but ‘Chris and Neil” sounds far too familiar) have provided ‘The DVD commentary’.  This is an extra track in which they play all the songs on the album and talk about where they came from, how they evolved, and where the influences are (Daphne Du Maurier’s  Rebecca, Richard Strauss (one particular chord change, for god’s sake), Tchaikowsky…).  It’s a brilliant insight into the process without completely stripping it bare.  Neil just observed that “If this was a vinyl album this would be the start of side two, which is very different”, and I love that they actually think about the structure of an album in those terms.

They talk fairly frankly about how the process works.  Some of the songs were originally written for Kylie, and then they started working with Higgins and new influences came to bear.  It’s *fascinating*.

Highly, HIGHLY recommended for this commentary alone, but actually because you’ll rarely these days get pop this good *and* this intelligent.

EDIT:  Oh my god.  They just mentioned that my third favourite track, Pandemonium, was originally going to be a Kylie track, and Neil says “Actually, I also think The Spice Girls could have done this really well”.  Somebody with enough money - MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

March 21st, 2009 | Tags: music | Leave a comment

The next few catch up postings are all going to be written (though obviously not posted) on a plane.  They may get progressively less coherent.

So I’m on a Virgin Atlantic flight back to London, and have had a slightly mental week getting everything done I needed to do before leaving.  Work suddenly turned  even more crazy than usual with a client suddenly landing us with a major new piece of work and another who’d gone oddly quiet suddenly coming back to life.  All while at the same time fretting about the cat being taken care of (not you taking care of him, I promise - just me making sure I’ve done everything I needed to do to get ready for you), doing all the domestic stuff that arises when you’re about to go away (washing, cleaning, packing, yada, yada) while basically barely being at home.  Thank goodness I’d planned a week off from World of Warcraft (yes, I’m still doing that - I’ll post about it at some point - it’s got different and interesting in a new way).

So I’m currently crossing the US/Canadian border (thank you i:map) and heading back to the loving arms of the family (hello all), friends and most importantly of all, The Mrs.  I hate being away from him, and this week, as I noted, has been particularly weird.  I’m used to leaving him behind when I travel, but this time it’s been the other way round.  Not like.

So that’s just a domestic round up.

March 21st, 2009 | Tags: real life | Leave a comment