the race is on

Hey peeps.  Some of you may not know this, but the NY legislature finishes for its summer recess on June 20th and there is a race and campaign on to bring the marriage equality bill back to the table before it does so.  It is still very dicey and down to the wire in terms of which senators will change their bigoted and anti-civil rights stance on this, BUT what has proved to be incredibly effective is them being reminded of the weight and, yes I'm going to say it, sheer girth, of public opinion that is very much against those views.

Step in to the frame Friend Factor, a great organistaion where friends come together to stand up for gay friends' rights. They are running a special campaign geared towards the NY senate, and what hapens is you join, and they show you how to get your friends involved and how easy it is to call a NY senator to voice your views.  And every call that is sent ensures a flower is sent to Albany for a visual protest too.  It really is amazing, it works and don't forget, time is marching on, people....

 

Also exciting news is that lots of the LGBT groups have come together in NY to form  New Yorkers United For Marriage.  They have a great website telling you what you can do and you can be sure that any money you donate is going straight to the front lines of this battle to get a few stubborn, scared and out of touch men and women to change their minds on giving people equality.  It is such a little thing but it take s a lot of money and effort to make change happen, as we have seen over the past few years! So please help if you can and try to get this bill brought to the senate in the next few weeks. I will blog pictures of my wedding if it happens on this very site!!!  Honest!

Here we are getting hitched in the UK, where gay people are treated with the rights and respect they deserve.

On another note, Cabaret has been much on my mind for the past few days.  So many people I run into have mentioned it. Was up wit dat? So here I am on the 1998 Drama Desk awards singing  I Don't Care Much.


Courage! Equality!

Here are some good things to do!!

Pepsi, bless them, is giving away cash to good causes.  And you can vote and decide who gets it!  If, like me, you'd like to help progressive orgnisations that value equality then go to Pepsi's Refresh Everything website  and create a profile so that you can vote for the Courage Campaign and help it in its work to empower more than 700,000 grassroots and netroots activists to push for progressive change and full equality in California and across the country!! Yay!! 

Once you create a profile on the Refresh Everything website you can vote for the Courage Campaign in three ways: by logging in online, on Facebook, or through text messaging.

Also, if you're more of a fashionista than a soft drink junkie, you may be interested in The Fight For Equality necklace and lapel pin. The concept was created by jewelry designer (and friend of mine),Carlos Antonio. It is a sterling silver, hand-crafted sculpture that is hand polished and stands just over an inch in height. It is very solid in weight yet comfortable. Money raised from the sales of the necklaces and pins go to the True Colors Fund and other organisations that are stepping up their campaigns as we take the last hurdles in the race and the fight for true equality. Here's a pic of me wearing mine, and nothing else apparently, just yesterday.

Tell your friends, make the world a better place. Do it! Courage mes braves!

sunny

It is funny to be in Hell A and to hear how utterly boiling it is in NYC. You always think of here being the hot place. But here it is pleasant.  Pleasant, pleasant, pleasant.

I am having a bit of a bad LA day. Things that I don't get about it are mounting in their adversity against me, and then I had dinner with a couple of friends and we had an LA bitchfest.  I am tired from the movie and from dealing wiht all the detritus of everyday life that you still have to deal with when you want to just completely immerse yourself in someting and someone.

 So I looked at my my camera and I found a video I made last week that shows my favourite view of California, and I found a song that I sang in the Burlesque movie that was ultimately cut that best encapsulates both what I am feeling and what I need to hear right now.  Enjoy!


Happy memorials

Thank you for everyone who came out to the Harris Theatre in Chicago on Saturday night.  I had a really good time. It was great to do the show with the full band again, much as I love the me/piano/cello combo, and so we put back in a coupe of rockier numbers to utilise the big sound. I didn't realise that gay marriage is going to be legalised in Illinois this week! That is great news, and puts other blue states like New York to shame for being so behind the curve on equality. Hopefully soon though the NY senate will join the 21st century.

Now I am back in LA where I am shooting a movie. Sometimes I just love being in a hotel and having nothing to do.  I have refused the housekeeping's offers of cleaning, I am watching TV in my pyjamas and eating trail mix in bed.

Sorry I had to stop there for a minute to fully take in a particularly violent christening scene on Real Housewives of New Jersey. It's at times like these that I am so glad I don't have cable at home.  But who is the most awful here?  These people for behaving so crazily? These people for allowing cameras to come into their lives and then feeling the neccesity of creating drama for them? Or us for condoning this horror by continuing to tune in?  It is of course superb car crash TV, but does that give it merit?  I feel a bit dirty.


very up front

I attended the CBS upfronts yesterday in NYC. OMSBJ is all I have to say.

First of all there was a presentaion at Carnegie Hall where they unveiled the new shows and new time slots(The Good Wife is moving to Sundaysat 9pm), and then we moved to Lincoln Center for a part of the day that I can only describe as like being at a country fair, with the advertisers wandering around looking into various pens wherein the actors from the shows sat. If the advertisers wanted a picture with said actors, the rope that surrounded the pen was lifted and they were let in and were allowed to pet the actor, as it were.  It was all I could do to stop myself bleating. Then there was a big party where I caught up with lots of old friends. I also went ot the party of my friends at Kiehl's who are launching a new thing called Kiehls Gives.

 Here I am with Demetre who is an amazing guy who does great work in HIV/AIDS prevention and sex education, causes that Kiehl's support too.  One time at their Gay Pride party he came wearing a gold sweater and gold pants and he looked like an Oscar.

And here is a video I made the other day.  It is very calming, especially as the allergies I was suffering that day do not need to be endured to remember the nice time I had.

stuff

A lot has happened in the past week.  In Uganda there was a bill that was brought to parliament that would make it illegal to be a homosexual, and in fact you would be killed for being one.  Thankfully,  on the last day of parliament this bill did not make it to the floor to be debated and so it was passed over.  Many think the weight of international pressure stopped something so insane being given credence and it was merely introduced into the parliamnetary session for political reasons with a small p, but nonetheless the very fact that something so barbaric could even be entertained at all at such a high level is just a sign of how far we have to go in the fight for equality.  And never forget it is a fight.

That is why I am very pleased to announce that my share of the profits of Second Cumming, my eponymous fragrance crafted by the genius Christopher Brosius, has produced about $2500 from its first quarter on sale and so I am sending that money to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, or IGLHRC for short, to help their work on making places like Uganda safer and saner.  Tnanks to everyone for buying and please tell your friends to do the same because you will not only smell good, you will do good too! (Click on the box on the right to buy)

I got a ticket last week for not driving my bike in a bike lane!!! I was tailed by a traffic cop in one of those little electric car things and told that I should have crossed four lanes of traffic and avoided an ambulance with its siren blaring to get to the bike lane.  Now, I know there has been a lot of bike controversy since Robin Williams was let off from a charge for biking on the sidewalk and then the NYPD being criticised for being favourable to celebs and not hard enough in general on errant bikers, but come on!!  I think it is fine to be reprimanded for breaking the law, no matter how stupid the law is, but I think it is also fine for me to DEMAND that there be bike lanes on every street in NYC, so that I would not have to wonder if I was going to be potentially ticketed each time I go round a corner. Do you hear me, Mayor Bloomberg? Here is a picture I took of the traffic cop writing up my ticket.

In other news, Beige, the legendary Tuesday night party at B Bar in NYC has ended.  The picture at the top is of me there showing my respects. It was the very first place I ever went out to in NYC. I was asked by the New York Times to contribute to a report about its demise and to give my memories.  First of all I was on vacation when they asked, but second of all, my most vivid memories are much too dirty for the NY Times, or indeed this blog. But here is one little nugget: I once broke the bar at Beige. I pulled against it to do alittle stretch, perhaps to facilitate the alcohol to speed faster through my veins, and the rim of the bar came away in my hands and I fell to the floor. Happy days.

vacation

I'm on vacation in Marrakech.  After checking in to our hotel last Wednesday, Grant and I went for a walk and ate dinner at the Cafe Argana. We awoke late the next day with a start, jetlagged.  Again we walked into the main square. There we saw the Cafe Argana had been blown up by a bomb. That's what had woken us. The whole front of the restaurant was gone and we could see exactly where we had been sitting the night before, where we would have been killed had we been there when the blast happened.

It was a lucky thing we weren't crazy about the food and we had slept in or we might have returned that day.  There's something very sobering and chilling and also galvanising about a lucky escape like that.  I think I do live in the moment, treat every day as though it were my last, all that sort of stuff. But this very real and very violent reminder of what a thin string our lives can hang on has made me even more determined to appreciate what I have, and to never forget how much anger there is in the world.

We are in a beautiful hotel. This is the very calming view from the window of one of our rooms