Links since "Kosher Cinema":

• New hope may lie in lab-created heart. I heard this lady speak on the radio. They strip out the cells from a heart and replace it with new cells that turn into a new, beating heart.

Kosher Cinema

A funny thing happened to me today when I was walking Miki in our new neighborhood. I saw a small movie theater that had nothing except two beat-up signs that said "Cinema" on the outside. It looked closed so I was a little sad, and started thinking about how my friend Tonya has wanted to open up her own movie theater, then I thought about how fun it would be to take out some loans, buy this place and re-open it.

Then as I walked closer, I noticed there was someone inside cleaning the bathroom and that there was another man at the ticket booth. It had some semi-recent movie posters, including one for "Life As A House," one of the earlier movies Tonya and I saw together. So I stepped inside to check the place out.

I asked the man at the booth, a nice Indian man, if they're open and he said "yes". Then I asked him if this was still a movie theater and he said "yes, yes". I looked around and didn't see any signs for what was actually playing there, so I asked him what movies they're playing. Then he finally said "oh, you've never been to this place before?"

Mind-you, my first impressions of our neighborhood is that it's a very "clean" neighborhood. There's some Russian restaurants and grocery stores, and also a lot of Jewish places (including kosher sushi, kosher burger places, kosher Chinese). I just found out there's even a Jewish gym called Kosher Gym that has a separate area for men and women out of modesty.

So the Indian man got a little giddy and he finally said "this is a porn theater!" Then he giggled and told me "we play gay movie too! Twelve dollah." So I smiled, told him "OK, thanks" and left.

Update: I found a funny TimeOut magazine review of the theater.

Moving

Alex and I moved into our new apartment this past weekend. In an hour and a half I'm going to email my parents to let them know I've moved, what the address is, and that Alex and I have been together for over three and a half years now. It's been 5 years since we've even talked about me being gay (if you could call it talking). Getting nervous...

Up Series

I just finished watching the last film from the Up Series of documentaries, where they took a group of seven year old kids from all walks of life (rich and poor, with parents and from orphanages) in 1964 and interviewed them about their lives every seven years. "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." It really has been the most rewarding movie-watching experience I've ever had.

Seven Up! gets you through the door and it's probably the least interesting one since you're just watching a bunch of bubbly kids without a frame of reference, but each one after that is amazing in its own way. A few people go through amazing life transformations, while at the core you really see the same people (at age 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49...), the same personalities, as they were when they were seven. Some ended up starting families of their own and now even have grandkids. So crazy when you've "known" them since they were kids themselves.

I guess I have a number of reasons to be interested in this series. This past year since my dad had his stroke is the main one. All your life you hear the cliché about how life is so short and even how much you really don't recognize that until something has happened to a loved one, but as much as I'd like to avoid playing into the cliché myself I didn't really believe it as much as I did when that happened to my dad, not even after my brother died. There is no question that if his stroke was one vein over or he waited a little while longer to get treated, my mom and I would either be taking care of a handicapped person or dealing with his dad. Just like that, all my 25 years with him drawn to a close just like they have for billions of other people before me.

I feel like I'm also at a certain crossroads with my life right now too. I can see all my young years finally coming together and affecting my life now, like with my career and Alex. We plan on moving in together really soon, which will be a serious step for our relationship (and making me think about those same steps people from the Up Series took and what happened with them), and possibly even more serious is that I don't want to do it without my parents knowing why.

If you read my blog five years ago (five years ago!), you'd know that I came out to my parents and subsequently dealt with a brief onslaught of hearing anti-gay things from them (mostly my dad) for a few weeks. We haven't spoken about me being gay at all since then, except for another brief time when I was emailing with my mom after JP and I broke up, and I gave her a guilt trip about how much better JP's parents were at dealing with us being gay.

I really don't know how my parents will react this time. It feels like I'll be coming out to them all over again, although a part of me thinks it'll be different and this time it might have bigger, longer-term consequences. My dad deals with stress a lot differently now than he did before his stroke too. Usually he'd blow up and yell at me about things, but since then he approaches things in my life in a calmer way. In two weeks I'm going on a vacation with them, our first one together in a long time (maybe even since I came out to them??), so maybe that'll help me gage how things will go.

Senator Larry Craig (R-ID)

This scandal over Sen. Larry Craig getting caught in the men's bathroom makes me really sad. The man is completely wrong for both cheating on his wife and family, and soliciting sex in a public place, but as inexcusable as those things are, I don't think that's why he's being asked to resign. I think he's mostly being vilified for being gay (and from our side for being closeted).

If he were a straight man who got caught trying to cheat on his wife in a public place with another woman, this situation would be completely different. It wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention and his resignation wouldn't be demanded by his party so quickly and so easily. He's not a hypocrite of his party's values for being a cheater or a pervert, but for being a perverted homosexual. During his press conference responding to the allegations, he wasn't primarily telling us he didn't cheat on his wife, he was trying to convince us that he's not gay.

On t.v., in the press and on the Internet, people's ugly true colors have also revealed themselves through this story. I am sick of hearing backhanded, homophobic comments alluding to his homosexuality. Yes, I think he's gay, but as much as he might be grasping at straws trying to hide that from people, it's not a reason to make fun of him, even if he's a dick for voting for the Defense of Marriage act.

I wish I had kept the links to some of these sites I saw about him. One of them was from a religious organization in Idaho that basically implied that Larry Craig and all gay men are extremely promiscuous, have anonymous sex in public places everywhere and are incapable of monogamy. I could say the same thing about straight people after watching Mtv for five minutes...