All About Magic Mike

This makes me think about the Chippendales.

Yesterday, if you had asked me what “Magic Mike” was about, I would have said, “Channing Tatum and a bunch of other sexy guys strip.” This morning, I happened to see a review of “Magic Mike” written for Cleveland.com (Click here to read the article).

The review said, “Warner Bros. is marketing the film to women and gay men.” To that, I respond, “Well duh!” Until today, all I had seen were scenes from the strip club or of the men talking about stripping. Of course the marketing was aimed at women and gay men, who else wants to watch men strip?

The article used a trailer that I shared before and I was reminded that “Magic Mike” is about more than stripping. The following trailer starts with stripping to pull you in, but it doesn’t stop there. This trailer tells you something about the plot (audible gasp):

 

Even after that trailer, all I can think about are the stripping scenes. I will confess that I am seriously thinking about going to the early bird showing of “Magic Mike.” Watching Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey with little clothes on and on the big screen at a cost of about $6.00 is a steal. 

On a different note, Channing Tatum went on the Today Show to promote “Magic Mike” and this is what happened: 

 

Channing unbuttoned his outer shirt and revealed a “Magic Mike” t-shirt, but I have created a picture (thanks to Channing’s Saturday Night Live appearance) of what should have been revealed when Channing unbuttoned his shirt:

Status: Still trying to make a final decision about going to the theater to see this movie.

  

My Search for Will & Grace

I spent about two hours this morning hunting down the Will & Grace Finale. I missed it when it originally aired. Back then, one of my friends gave me such a good summary that I felt as if I had seen it so I didn’t bother trying to find it. I woke up this morning with Will & Grace on my mind. Yes, random shows and movies pop in to my head a lot. I wasn’t a huge Will & Grace fan. I watched a few episodes each season, but that was it. The wish to watch the finale kind of surprised me this morning. Anyway, back to my search. I turned to my number one source for videos: YouTube, only to be disappointed. Apparently NBC or whoever holds the copyright has shut down every version of the finale except the Spanish version. I barely speak Spanish and the first part didn’t offer closed captions. I watched and translated as best I could then I made up my own lines. The third part of the finale offered beta closed captioning based on the audio. I tried it. I saw several mistakes in the translation and that wasn’t counting the words that weren’t translated at all. I guess the beta version still needs work.

I thought watching it in Spanish would be enough, but I finished it and I was upset because I wanted to know exactly what had been said. I decided to search for the finale. After sifting through several “free” sites that requested a credit card number that I wasn’t willing to give, I finally found one that allowed me to watch the entire final episode. I don’t mind watching advertisements, but I’m not about to pay for one episode of something that I could have recorded for free. I’m only willing to pay if I’m buying the entire season. 

I’m glad I watched it. I like the idea that there are certain people who are meant to stay in your life. You might fall out of touch, but no matter how many years pass, you’ll find your way back to each other. I’ve had similar experiences. Of course it was randomly reconnecting after 3 or 4 years, and before the explosion of Facebook, but I get it. Facebook makes it hard to ever truly be out of anyone’s life. You’d have to de-friend them and go through a lot of effort to avoid hearing or reading something about them.

Another Example of Bullying

My local news picked up the story of Karen Klein, a 68 year-old bus monitor from Greece, New York who was being bullied by a group of middle school students. While certain groups are busy explaining how gay marriage will lead to the destruction of America, I think those groups need to take a step back and look at today’s youth. If you want to know who’s going to ruin our country then look no further. As adults, our number one priority should be raising the next generation to be good citizens. 

We need to stop making excuses for them. People love to point to youth as some sort of disclaimer. “They don’t know any better.” “Their brains aren’t fully developed.” “They can’t process the consequences of their actions.” If these arguments are true then why doesn’t crime magically stop once people are old enough to know better and their brains are fully developed and they are able to process the consequences of their actions? 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the death penalty or life in prison for teenage criminals. I think that unless the teen is a serial killer or sociopath or something equally dangerous to society, the focus should be placed on rehabilitation because (in my opinion) teenage criminals have the most hope in terms of turning their lives around. While most people are the same person they were in high school, there are lots of people who for better or worse, change over time.

The biggest difference I see between me and this new generation is that my parents taught me a simple thing called respect. I was raised to automatically respect people. Today we say people have to earn respect. Go somewhere with that mess. Everyone should be respected until they give you a reason not to. If the bullies in the video had respect for Karen Klein or for themselves or for their parents or for the school bus or the bus driver they would have behaved differently and they certainly would not have recorded their actions.

As for the punishment, I’ve always been a firm believer that the punishment should fit the crime. I think the students involved should have to make an anti-bullying video, volunteer at a nursing home for at least a month and meet with the friends and family of someone who has committed suicide. The sad thing is that after all that, I’m sure most of the kids would still be just as clueless as they are in the video.

I have posted the news piece below. Before anyone says that Karen Klein should have done something, I want to point out the obvious: she is an adult and they are children. If she had cursed them out, she would be fired. If she had smacked one of them, she would be fired. If she had made a disparaging comment about any of them or their families, she would be fired. The only option she had was to endure the taunts and maybe report it afterwards and try to get the offending students kicked off the bus, but even that would have met with a lot of drama.

It’s Okay for Gay People to Support Romney

I read an article about a gay conservative group (GOProud) that came out and endorsed Mitt Romney. For me the key word was “conservative.” Who is a conservative group supposed to support if not Mitt Romney? Unfortunately, there are only two viable options for president: Obama or Romney. I wish there was more variety, but there isn’t. The lesser known candidates will be nothing but blips on the ballot. As such, sometimes people have to make difficult decisions. The GOProud group voted and decided that their larger political beliefs outweighed everything else. I can respect that.

Romney is in favor of a federal marriage amendment, the gist of which will be: gays need not apply. People don’t understand how a gay group could support Romney. I say, why not? This group is conservative first and gay second or third or fourth or who knows. Romney falls in line with more of their values than Obama does. Why support a guy who only shares a few of your values when you can support a guy who shares a lot of your values?

People vote against what’s in their best interest all the time. This is America. They are allowed to do that. I wouldn’t knowingly do it, but I’m not going to knock them for working towards what they believe is the greater good.

Mysterious Skin

The other day, I was reading an article about the Jerry Sandusky trial. The article went in to great detail about the testimony of a couple of the victims. I thought some of the details should have been omitted. I discussed the article with someone and they had a completely different opinion. While I was asking, “What good is it to repeat the graphic details?” they were asking, “What good is it to sugar coat what happened?” We couldn’t reach an agreement, but it did make me think more about my position. I wanted the details to stay in the court room because I’m an empathizer. I didn’t just read the details and see it as facts of the case. I read the details and pictured the scenarios in my head. I imagined how the child must have felt, especially the one who said he screamed for help but no one came. I’m not the type of person who can read about something like that and not be affected. I can admit that I don’t like hearing the descriptions of the abuse because it makes me feel too much. When I hear an overview of the case, such as two victims testified or something like that, I don’t feel anything; it’s just another news story. But when I can picture it in my head and associate emotions with it, the case becomes much more.

After accepting that the problem was with me and not the article, I remembered a movie that someone told me about a few years ago. They made the movie sound so traumatizing that I didn’t want to see it. I finally felt ready to watch it. I looked for it and was surprised to find the full length movie on YouTube. 

Mysterious Skin is a disturbing movie. It delves in to the intricacies of sexual abuse with little regard for people like me who have difficulty dealing with the topic. Yet, even I was unable to look away from the movie. I wanted to reach through the computer and rescue Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character from himself. 

The imdb description of the movie reads: A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth. The movie has an NC-17 rating. If you watch it, you will definitely understand why. I found an old review of Mysterious Skin from Roger Ebert. In the review Ebert acknowledges that the movie “is at once the most harrowing and, strangely, the most touching film I have seen about child abuse. It is unflinching in its tough realism; although there is no graphic sex on the screen, what is suggested, and the violence sometimes surrounding it, is painful and unsentimental.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

This movie isn’t for everyone. Please only watch the movie if you think you can handle it.

My Obama Experience



The picture I took of President Obama


I went to see President Barack Obama’s speech today. A friend was able to get me a ticket to the event. Anyway, while I was standing in line outside, a bus with “Romney” plastered on it drove around the facility and blew its horn. As if that wasn’t enough, the bus came around at least one more time that I noticed. Mitt Romney’s people must have big cojones because that was a ballsy move. Part of me was impressed. Most of the crowd wasn’t impressed though. There was a lot of booing. They thought it was disrespectful.


I was happy to get inside and have a seat, but the event took a long time to get started. By the time the president came out, I had a headache from the loud crowd and from the air conditioner. The speech was okay. There were a couple of new points, but most of the speech was bits and pieces from previous speeches. I know because I’ve watched a lot of his speeches.

Side note: I was surprised to see that he looks exactly the same in person. Most people look slightly different.

Let the Photo Do the Talking

This picture was posted by Israel’s military on its Facebook account. The caption under the picture said, “It’s Pride Month.” My first thought was that it was a very cool thing to do. I kept reading and wasn’t surprised that people were more focused on the politics than on the image. Some people have expressed concern because the rumor mill is claiming that the picture was part of a photo shoot and that one of the soldiers is not gay. Why do people have to do that? Who cares if one of the guys in the picture isn’t gay? The message of the picture is clear and welcoming. Let’s not analyze the picture or the motives. Let’s allow the image to stand alone. The Israel Defense Forces welcome gays and lesbians. Period. No need to analyze. Message received.

Corey Kelly Sings?...Indeed he Does

Yes Corey said he loved Bump This (my book), but that’s not why I’m sharing his videos. He sent me a link to his alternative video and I genuinely liked the song, plus, I can’t be mad at his hustle. At least he has real talent. His song, Can’t Live Without You, reminds me of Mario’s Let Me Love You. I haven’t figured out if that’s because of Corey’s voice or the music or the lyrics or all of the above, but I don’t particularly care about that. The music is pleasing to my ears and that’s all that matters. I liked that it was r&b all the way through.

Corey made two versions of the video. The first one that I’m sharing is the alternative one that features Corey and another man (his hubby Tyree Williams-Kelly). The second video features Corey and a woman.  

 Pick your poison:

Can’t Live Without You (Alternative Version)

 

Can’t Live Without You (Official Video)

Wade Davis

I want to begin by saying, “Way to go Wade Davis!” I love the fact that he reached out to LGBTQ youth and tried to give back. I agree with him that it would be huge for a current NFL player to come out. Normally I would make a snide remark about him waiting until his career was over to speak out, but I won’t do that. I appreciate his honesty and everyone knows hindsight is 20/20. Now he sees what he could have done, but he’s not letting that bring him down, instead, he’s focusing on what he can do. I hope he continues to speak out.