Recently the Obama Administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down California’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

The ban emerged as a result of “Proposition 8,” or Prop 8, when put to a statewide popular vote.

The Department of Justice hopes that the Supreme Court will grant “full faith and credit” to same-sex marriages and thus forbid state-by-state banning of them.

What follows are excerpts from the California State Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the ban:

On Proposition 8 as a constitutional amendment:

It is not our role to pass judgment on the wisdom or relative merit of the current provisions of the California Constitution governing the means by which our state Constitution may be altered. We mean — Jesus, Kindergarten Cop was our goddamn governor, fer Chrissakes. We don’t know what the fuck’s going on up in this motherfucker.

Still, it is the finding of this Court, as a statement of fact rather than a legal position, that gay marriage isn’t real marriage, to wit:
•    If you’re a dude, you still get blowjobs.
•    If you’re a chick, you still get your pussy licked. You continue to go out on dates. To Home Depot and Plumbers Warehouse, but still.
•    Lesbian couples never fight about leaving the toilet seat up.
•    You have a shot at your partner’s being in the closet and not having to deal with his or her in-laws.
•    Gay sex cannot produce children “by accident,” which is responsible for 98% of all marriages. (The other 2% result because she starts crying and a guy will do anything to put a sock in that shit.)

On a constitutional “amendment” vs. constitutional “revision”

Furthermore, the Court holds that Proposition 8 constitutes a constitutional ‘amendment’ rather than a constitutional ‘revision.’

What’s the difference between an ‘amendment’ and a ‘revision’? Do we have to spell it out for you?

Oh. We do have to spell it out for you.

Okay.

Well, one means ‘change.’

The other means, ah, ‘change.’

And, well — oh, fuck it, you bunch of word nerds.

On Proposition 8 violating the equal protection clause:

Describing the effect of Proposition 8 as narrow and limited fails to acknowledge the significance of the discrimination it requires.

On the other hand, ‘narrow’ and ‘limited’ are pretty good adjectives to describe the penises and vaginas, respectively, of the bonnet-wearing, hissy-throwing, sexually repressed Christian dingbats backing this measure in the first place.

Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures seek to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification.

This violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning. Like — what happened to sticking it to Mexicans? This state was built on sticking it to Mexicans. And to the Chinese. Now there’s a Panda Express every 10 feet and a taco stand every five.

On complaints that it is too easy to amend the California Constitution:

Petitioners’ complaint is that it is just too easy to amend the California Constitution through the initiative process.

But it is not a proper function of this court to curtail that process; we are constitutionally bound to uphold it.

On the other hand, the scratch-n-sniff ballots have to go.

Likewise the Pin-the-Plug-in-the-Badonkadonk Game.

On rights retained by same-sex couples under Proposition 8:

Although Proposition 8 eliminates the ability of same-sex couples to enter into an official relationship designated “marriage,” in all other respects those couples continue to possess, under the state constitutional privacy and due process clauses, “the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage.”

Which means no, dude, you can’t “gay marry” instead of “real marry” your girlfriend and then stay out late watching Star Trek: Into Darkness with your friends on opening day at midnight on a Thursday and think you’re going to avoid her nagging bullshit when you get home.

That is some serious science-fiction escapism.

On the state’s obligations to same-sex couples:

All three branches of state government continue to have the duty to eliminate the remaining important differences between “marriage” and “domestic partnership,” both in substance and perception. Such differences are, in the opinion of this Court, a bunch of crap.

Two guys living together can get health insurance, but a guy shacked up with his girlfriend can’t?

Total horseshit.

If you want free blood work and no co-pay, then you should have to march your assless chaps down the aisle and say ‘I do,’ goddammit.

Gay couples get all kinds of sex all the time, they get parades, they get their own fuckin’ TV networks — plus they can score antibiotics for a sinus infection without auctioning off their extremities?

Total horseshit.

When does a bed become a ‘deathbed’?

A bed becomes a sickbed when you’re sick, but a deathbed become a deathbed before you’re dead.

Like: “Ned went to see Ted on his deathbed.”

No point going to visit someone when they’re dead.  Although you would get a firm handshake.

Plus you wouldn’t want to keep a dead Ted in his deathbed long enough for Ned to make the trip.  

Once that smell hit him — holy crap.  Ned would turn around and get out of there.


Bed of the Ball

I guess every bed is a potential deathbed.  If you, y’know, die in it.

Once I was living with this girl, we were pretty serious — she had an amazing deathbed.  

Antique, ornate headboard, footboard — what might’ve been, one day, our deathbed.

Then I come home and find out she’s gone to IKEA and bought a new deathbed.  This lime-green, post-modern, semi-oval — it looked like a partially chewed gumdrop.

So I broke up with her. 

No way I wanted that to be my deathbed.


Get the Bed Out

I suppose you always buy a new deathbed.

Can’t sell an used one.  I don’t want Ted’s deathbed.  I’d never fall asleep again.  I mean — it’s a deathbed NOW.

If you can’t get cumstains out of a mattress, I’ll bet death settles right down in there.

You wouldn’t even need one of those freaky purple flashlights on CSI to imagine yourself, dozing ever so lightly, on a great big skull-and-crossbones.


Caught ‘im Bed to Rights

I saw a guy in the news shotgunned on a waterbed.

Poor dude didn’t even get a deathbed.

He died in a shallow puddle on a deflated rubber… thing.

Hey — no water, no bed.  I don’t make the rules.

I’m going to buy some bunk beds.  I never heard of a death bunk bed.  I’d probably live forever.

Stop saying “Happy Holidays!”  Just stop.

It’s that time of year again — you know, the one full of polite euphemisms for that time of year.

Happy Holidays!

Season’s Greetings!

ATTN PARENTS: Schools are closed for the winter holidays.

There are more euphemisms for this time of year than That Time of the Month.

So don’t say “Happy Holidays!”  If you want to wish me well, say what’s on your mind.

Be specific in your well-wishing. Say “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Hanukkah!” or “Snoop Kwaanza, yo!”

Merry Christmas!

If you celebrate Christmas, no matter how lapsed or wobbly in your faith in a magic baby whose belly button cast a star in the East like the Bat Signal, say “Merry Christmas!”

It’s your wish, after all, even if it’s for your Jewish or Wiccan or pagan or atheist or Satanist or even Methodist friend.

Express your comfort and joy with “Merry Christmas!”  And for 25 days a year, give or take, the rest of us all agree to forget about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Kirk Cameron’s carefully considered opinions about anything.

SHOPPING TIP! Even a small list of atrocities committed in the name of Christianity over 2,000 years makes a great stocking stuffer!

Happy Hanukkah!

If you have a Jewish friend — and who doesn’t these days, they’re everywhere, it’s like they can roam free without having to show their papers or something — you can say “Happy Hanukkah!” even though you personally celebrate Christmas.

Respect your friend’s culture with a faith-appropriate wish.  Jesus will not send you screaming straight to Hell. Like Mel Gibson, Lars von Trier, or John Paul Galliano, you can always say it was just a joke.

Jesus would be cool with that.  Any guy who thought he could kick the money changers out of religion has got to have a sense of humor!

 If you celebrate Hanukkah, celebrate Hanukkah!  Say “Happy Hanukkah!”  Don’t say “We OBSERVE Hanukkah” like it’s a mental patient on suicide watch.

Light those candles!  Spin those dreidels!  Plant a tree in Israel!  I say let’s combine Arbor Day with Hanukkah and call it Harmonica!

Happy Ramadan! (Not Now, Though)

If you have a Muslim friend, report him or her to the Department of Homeland Security immediately.  202-282-8000 or dhs.gov.  Do it now.

I’m kidding. You can wait till the end of this blog post.

Happy Nothing!

If you want to wish your friend well, but you are unsure of his or her religious affiliation, and you have none yourself, try this: “Hello!”  Or “Goodbye!”

That’s it.  That’s the whole menu.  Thank you for thinking of me enough to draw breath and exhale.

I don’t want your bogus “Happy Holidays!” because you’re worried that the law firm of Rosenberg, Rosenstein, and Rosenwicz will take you to court for a hate crime.

Season’s Greetings!

And keep “Season’s Greetings!” to yourself, too.  Winter is a season, but winter can’t greet me, because a season can’t talk.

If it could talk, winter would complain about how hot it is because of climate change.  And that would be — let’s face it — a little Jewish.

Where did all the cranberries come from?

I never even saw a real cranberry when I was a kid.  And I sure never ate a real cranberry.

The only time you heard about cranberries was Thanksgiving — and that’s not even real cranberries.  That’s a squat little fireplug of purple gelatinous goo so jiggly just-out-of-a-can, you can still see the corrugation on the sides like chins on Newt Gingrich.


The Motion of the Ocean Spray

If you said “cranberry” when I was a kid, I’d say “Ocean Spray” like Marco Polo, jack.  I knew that much from TV commercials. But I still didn’t know what a cranberry was. 

Cranberries might even be a fictional food, like nectar of the gods, manna from heaven, or an Egg McMuffin.  Might as well call ‘em Franken Berries.

Cranberries are perverts, though.  In Ocean Spray’s secret laboratories, the cranberry showed its willingness to fuck any kind of fruit, so you wound up with mutant cran-apples, cran-grapes, and other cran-kids nobody wanted. 

So Ocean Spray squeezed ‘em all into a juice that if you gave to a actual kid, he’d cry for an hour till he got a serious goddamn juice like Sunny D.


To Cranfinity and Beyond

Now cranberries are everywhere.

Cranberry Raspberry Snapple. Cranberry Twist Tea. Canada Dry Cranberry Soda. Orange-Cranberry Muffins. Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies.

There’s even a band called The Cranberries, but they’re Irish so it’s probably a tribute to Stuff You Can Ferment in a Plastic Bag to Make Liquor in Prison. 

They make dried cranberries, but nobody would eat something called dried cranberries, so they call them craisins.  Which is supposed to sound better.  Sounds craisy to me.

When Leo orders cranberry juice in a bar in The Departed, the other guy has so much cranberry trivia at his fingertips, he informs Leo that cranberries are a natural diuretic.  Which ought to mean they give you diarrhea, but really means they make you pee.

If you ate enough cranberries, sure, you’d get diarrhea — but you can’t eat that many cranberries, because they’re as bitter as Republicans on November 7, 2012.


Can-Do Berries

If they could get so many cranberries into so much of our lives without a single complaint (our fuckin’ cookies?), maybe the cranberry people could do the same with gay marriage.

Just fold gay marriage into the texture of everyday life, no big deal, nothin’ to see here, folks, till it’s everywhere, in every town in every state, just like that. 

And nobody even notices, when they sit down to snack on some fresh, wholesome, old-fashioned oatmeal cookies, they’re really getting a big ol’ mouthful of gay.  And that doesn’t taste so bad, now, does it?

Angela McCaskill is the chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University, the nation’s top university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

She recently signed a petition to put Maryland’s gay-marriage law up for public referendum.  By doing so, clearly she is against same-sex marriage.

Angela McCaskill is a 1) woman who is 2) black and a steward for the interests of 3) the deaf — but she wants to deny another minority some rights.

Because of — wait for it — a church.

AP reports that McCaskill “signed the petition at her church after listening to a sermon about marriage. “

A church which, for centuries, dictated a society in which women were less than men, black people were less than human, and deaf people were less than sane.

Rather than remove her from her job, perhaps Gallaudet might mandate that she enroll in some history courses.

If men could get pregnant, a lady once said, abortion would be a sacrament. She had the right idea, but I think she took it the wrong direction.

If men could get pregnant, having babies would be a sport.

OB-GYM

You’d see guys at the gym cracking it on the VajMaster, huffing through three sets of ten Lamaze reps, showing off stretch marks like prison tats.

Morning sickness? That’s just fear leaving the body. Fear and last night’s Red Bull and Del Taco run.

You’d see nine-months-gone mutant thugs in UFC cage matches, and when they clenched in a scissor-lock, they’d pinball their papooses into play — mano a mano, utero in utero.

You’d see bulked-up beefcakes in labor at the Olympics, spitting out wet infants like watermelon seeds. They’d call it Babyball — shotgunning their bouncing bundles of joy for distance at the shotput, blasting mewling tykes through bullseyes at the archery range.

He Ain’t Heavy — He’s My Baby

If you have a kid today, chances are you had it in a maternity ward — a safe, sterile environment with friendly faces and pleasant music.

In the old days, we had another word for maternity wards: fuckin’ CAVES.

Women have been giving birth in the dirt, in the rain, in the mud for ten thousand years — but I’m supposed to feel sorry for you because, oh, the vending machine with the good Twinkies is on another floor of the hospital and you have to wait an extra 45 seconds while your baby daddy trots up and down the stairs?

And stop whining about your “contractions.”  Hey, I’ve got some contractions: Won’t you — Can’t you — shut the fuck up?

You get a shot that paralyzes you so you don’t feel anything.  Everything below the waist goes slack and you dribble out your rubbery little urchin like slipping off one of your galoshes at the front door.

Men wish they could have something like an epidural before they roll to work every morning.  A labor pain is a man wishing he could zone out and forget how hard he has to labor with two unemployed mouths to feed.

Parental Snide-ance Suggested

So having babies isn’t impressive. But raising them is.

Childbirth is a sprint. Childrearing is a marathon.

If you’re a parent — mother or father, gay or straight, adoptive, surrogate or foster — you know what I mean.

Get in there and get your hands dirty. Teach those kiddies right from wrong.  Risk their love by dishing out some discipline when they fuck up.  Confine them to their rooms.  Take away their computers and video games and TVs and iPods and iPads.

And stay home to gloat. Enjoy it. Revel in it.



There is no greater punishment than grounding your kid — then making him or her listen to the sounds of you fucking in the next room all weekend long.

Two old people like you — it’s disgusting.

Consider every knock of that headboard against the wall just one more bump up that GPA on their transcript for Princeton Law or Harvard Medical.

Spend Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday exclaiming with every grunt and thrust, “I beLIEVE the CHILdren ARE our FUture! Who’s your daddy?”

Do it for them.  Do it for you.



They won’t cop to it at the PTA, but learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.  You could look it up.

Tweet after tweet, blog after blog — this fucking shit with Daniel fucking Tosh is never going to fucking end.

Not more than a few hundred fucking people were at the fucking Laugh Factory, or else they would have been violating the fucking fire code, too, but fuckety-fuckballs doesn’t everybody want to fucking weigh in on it?

So fine.  Fine. 

Here’s my fucking take:

—-

Let’s assume two fucking things that don’t seem to be in dispute in all fucking accounts, first- and secondhand, of the original fucking incident.

1) Daniel Tosh was fucking onstage (fucking here is an intensifier, not a verb, or the fucking Laugh Factory would have another fucking problem altogether) and fucking talking when a female audience member shouted, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

2) Daniel Tosh responded, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her… ?”

—-

A fucking lot of fucking people have retweeted at least two articles on the subject in the last two days: Lindy West’s “How to Make a Rape Joke” and Jim Emerson’s “What Is a Rape Joke, Anyway?”

I read both of them.

And, while doing so, I COMPLETELY LOST MY FUCKING MIND at one point.

Well, at two points.

Same point, different pieces.

Lindy West writes:

And the flip-side of that awesome microphone power you have—wow, you can seriously say whatever you want!—is that audiences get to react to your words however we want.

and

If people don’t want to be offended, they shouldn’t go to comedy clubs? Maybe. But if you don’t want people to react to your jokes, you shouldn’t get on stage and tell your jokes to people.

Jim Emerson writes:

[The audience member] [was] heckling — but not the kind where someone in the crowd simply calls out the comic for not being funny. She was openly challenging him on what he knew was dangerous ground.

and

You could also argue that if a comedian is going to provoke his audience, he shouldn’t be surprised if they push back. She could have just started booing and hissing, which anybody in the crowd has a right to do, but she openly challenged his assumptions about what was funny.

—-

To which I say the following:

HORSESHIT.

FUCKING HORSESHIT.

—-

I’m fucking tired of hearing people fucking talk at the movies.

At the theater.

At concerts.  Sometimes the music’s so loud, they actually TALK LOUDER. People have ENTIRE FUCKING CONVERSATIONS while I’m reelin’ in the years and stowin’ away the time.

And at fucking comedy clubs.

YOU ARE NOT IN YOUR LIVING ROOM.

YOU ARE NOT AT A TOWN HALL MEETING.

THIS IS NOT A DIALOGUE.

IT IS A MONOLOGUE, from Latin mono-, meaning “one,” and -logue, meaning “should shut the fuck up.”

Even if you’ve never fucking been to a fucking comedy club before, you’ve probably seen Leno’s monologue. Letterman’s. Fallon’s. Kimmel’s. Maher’s.

Have you ever heard a fucking audience shout shit at them?

(Well, once. And this is what happened.)

DO NOT “PUSH BACK” OR “CHALLENGE” THE PERFORMER.

DO NOT “REACT” HOWEVER YOU “WANT.”

DO NOT “CALL OUT” THE PERFORMER FOR NOT BEING FUNNY.

DO NOT “BOO” OR “HISS.” 

One person fucking starts, everybody thinks the fucking dam has cracked like it’s a Michael fucking Bay movie, and so everybody paddles in and tries to catch a fucking wave.

DON’T FUCKING DO IT. 

Just because a fucking group decides to do it at the same fucking time does not make it acceptable fucking behavior. 

Your performer will hear the horrible fucking sound of your not fucking laughing.

That is entirely fucking sufficient to fucking communicate to her or him your fucking displeasure with his fucking material.

It is also entirely fucking sufficient for the fucking club to make a fucking value judgment as to whether to put that fucking person in front of a fucking audience again.

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Laugh, chortle, guffaw, weep, sob, gasp — but SHUT THE FUCK UP.

—-

If you don’t fucking like what you are fucking seeing or fucking hearing to the point where can still fucking sit there and not disintegrate into a million disappointed little pieces —

Please leave.

Pretty please, with sugar on top.

Just leave.

You’re not enjoying yourself, anyway. Why not leave?

Ask a staffperson for your money back if you feel so inclined.  There are no hard and fast rules on this.  The Laugh Factory may differ from the Improv, and such may differ manager to manager, and such may differ night to night.

You may talk about your experience outside, you may blog about it, you may tweet about it or post on Facebook.  You may host a rally.  You may call for a boycott.

That is, Lindy West and Jim Emerson are entirely correct that you have a right to react to what you see and hear in an entertainment venue — comedy, movies, theater, concerts, etc. —

BUT NOT AT THAT FUCKING MOMENT.

—-

Lot of fucking tweets, lot of fucking blogs, lot of fucking Huffpost comments — but I’ll stick with Lindy West and Jim Emerson for simplicity’s sake.

That is, other than the remarks above, I have no complaints to lodge with either.

Both are fine and thoughtful articles about subjects that these writers care deeply about.

At first, Lindy West raises an objection to Daniel Tosh’s remarks based on an advocacy for women and their lifelong vigilance against sexual assault.

Then she proceeds to make a case for four (4) comedians whose rape jokes she likes.

So her umbrage with Daniel Tosh is not necessarily the reference to rape, then.

Jim Emerson skips over the women’s issue completely, preferring instead to discuss joke construction — and, in fact, also references a Louis CK piece cited by Lindy West.

That is, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with rape as a subject for humor per se, either.

—-

So:

The whole incident can be reduced to two clear calls to action.

1) Audience: SHUT THE FUCK UP.

2) Comedians: BE FUCKING FUNNIER.

And don’t get fucking confused as to which of the above you fucking are.

I haven’t seen Ben in a couple of weeks, so I call to see if he wants to hang out. He says he’s got a dinner party to go to, I could probably come along if I want… but.

I say, But what?

He says, I don’t know whether you’d be comfortable in a roomful of gay men.

Hmm. I say, Do you think you’re the first gay dude I ever met? I’ve been to WeHo. I’ve been to Chelsea. I’ve been to the Tenderloin. Dear God — I have shopped for furniture on a fuckin’ Saturday.  Who else is in IKEA on the weekends except pussywhipped straight guys and gay men?

Plus you can eat off the kitchen floor in my place. I can hardly eat off your fuckin’ table. You’ve got magazines stacked so high, just walking through the door drops my center of gravity below sea level.  By “fastidiousness” alone, I’m gayer than you by several micro-metro-meters of the Metrosexual Metric System.

Is everybody going to be wearing assless chaps? Do I have to have my gown taken out (just a little — the holidays, y’know) and replace the brown bananas in my Carmen Miranda hat? No? Then thank you for the invitation and I’ll pick you up at 7:30.

—————

We’re in the vicinity of our destination when my GPS pipes up like an MP3 player they hang on the inside of your car at a wildlife preserve:

“On your left is the natural habitat of the North American hommasexshul.

“As with birds, the males tend to be the more colorful and flamboyant of the species, plus they giggle every time you say ‘peacock.’

“They congregate around watering holes with names like The Balls Room, Ass Wednesday’s, or Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar Except When It’s a Big Brown Dick in Your Mouth.

“Please keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, as there have been numerous but uncorroborated accounts of forced manicures and pedicures upon the poorly groomed.”

—————

Our hosts are Mark and Noah. Their home is decorated with tribal ornaments where Mark has traveled as a documentary filmmaker, including a country that sounds like Popeye New Gimme, some country in Africa that sounds like Steven Seagal, and other places I’m pretty sure he just made up.

Mark’s partner Noah practices acupuncture. Noah tells me that a poke on the ear can alleviate pain. I must disagree, because I once whacked a woman upside the head for eating the last of the ice cream in the freezer, and that only made my suffering much, much worse.

—————



Jason is gorgeous enough to be gay but isn’t, having met his lady love in a gay bar in Argentina.  After a year of courting, which is what you call fucking when you’re writing about a guy you just met, his girl is moving from South America to move in with him.

Can you beat that shit? I couldn’t find a woman in a tampon focus group and this lucky motherfucker stumbles into kitty at the dog pound.

And you know she’s gorgeous, too. Nobody journeys a continent-and-a-half for a girl with a pleasant personality. I want to beat both of them to death with a scratching post.

—————

Ed enjoys an LTR with a woman who lives in Spain. Lillis lives and teaches in Ireland. His partner lives in Los Angeles, where both of them own their home. I wonder whether the secret to commitment is parking your ass on the other side of the fuckin’ world — before the object of your affection can park her or his ass on your last nerve.

—————


Dove introduces me to her son Addison, who’s 11 months old. Aren’t you, sweetie? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!

Oh, no, you ain’t. You’re one year old. I’m not doing fractions on my day off. You’re one. Next year you’ll be two. The year after that, three. You’ll get the hang of it.

Addison is adorable, which is what you call a baby you just met. If left on the floor, a baby will crawl straight to the most expensive thing in the room and fuck with it. In this case, the stereo.

—————

There is laughter. There is the sound of seven unrelated conversations at once. There is talk of work and, of course, travel.

A woman from Italy joins us. I learn that if you don’t actually speak Italian, you can-a make-a you-self unda-stood-a by-a talking like-a this-a.

In Spanish, every other word means what it means, but it also means “dick” or “fuck” if you say it wrong. Like instead of saying, I caught a cold, you might accidentally tell someone, I fucked a cold. I say, Oh, I think I dated her.

In Spanish, instead of ordering a piña colada, you might accidentally ask a bartender to put your cock in a blender. I say, I know for sure I dated her.


—————


Mark has made an appetizer of goat cheese, char leaves, and walnuts in a pastry shell. I’m pretty sure he made most of that stuff up, but I eat three of them.

Chris, though, is the evening’s master of ceremonies, kitchen-wise. Esconsed among ovens and burners and fridges, he is an enigma. If you go anywhere near the stove, he raps your knuckles with a soup ladle.

He presents a salad with hearts of palm, slices of bread with some spicy seafood paste lathered over them, and finally a brothy stew of different kinds of fish and mussels still in the shell.

I affirm my belief in gay adoption and tell Chris I’m bringing over the papers in the morning, and my bunk beds can go in the big closet in the hall.

—————

Anyone who doubts the authenticity of gay couples ought to spend some time with one, or three, or however many there are in the room. In a mixed group of gays and breeders, sometimes you can’t tell the players without a score card and a Twister mat.

No one mentions butt-plugs or big black knobby dildos. No one offers me poppers or crystal. No one says can I get another motherfuckin’ iced tea, because this crowd drinks wine, and not the cheap stuff.

No one rhapsodizes about Brad Pitt’s abs in Troy, or Tom Cruise’s abs in Vanilla Sky, or Gerard Butler’s abs in 300, or why a straight guy like me might have such encyclopedic recall of other dudes’ abs in movies. No one talks about all the sex they could be having if not for all this chitchat. Except, well, y’know, me.

—————



Gay men and gay women should be able to tell other people they’re married. Every time someone introduces me to his or her “partner,” I want to ask them if they solve crimes.

Straight relationships have two speeds: girlfriend and wife. If I introduce a woman I’ve fucked twice as my “friend,” I’m getting a high heel spiked through my occipital lobe before I get home.

Fellas, try introducing a woman as your sidekick. Or your faithful ward. Or your mascot. Then you’ll know how a gay man feels. Your asshole will hurt all night — from the shoe yo’ podna leaves in it.

—————

Gay couples ought be able to say yes, we could be doing the Hot Butt Nekkid with strangers till the break of dawn — cranked on crank, swinging in leather harnesses with more straps and buckles than Michael Jackson’s back-to-school backpack, watching hot boy-men roller-skate around the dance floor in hot pink booty shorts — but we know one day the music will stop, the disco ball will spin no more, and last call for Cosmopolitans was the godawful second Sex and the City movie. We want a True Fine Love. We want to stay home and watch videos and, every once in a while, host a houseful of people who enjoy our company.

It’s not an orgy — but if you’re lucky, at the end you get chocolate mousse.

Nothing can take the sting out of economic problems like watching millionaires collecting gold statues.

Billy Crystal, host, 84th Annual Awards of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences

Visit doitinprivate.tumblr.com for the full text of my speech, which lists everybody to whom I’m grateful for this Award.

(NOTE: Write a speech and ask friend/assistant/minion to post if I win.)

I think that’s the first Oscar speech delivered over the Internet.

I’m taking my time to address a earlier joke from our host and the show’s writers.

Sparkling Water, Sparkling Water Everywhere

This room is not filled with millionaires.

This room is filled with people who make movies.

Documentary filmmakers. Animators.  Set designers and makeup artists and costume designers and cinematographers and CGI people.  Men and women who hang lights and run sound and coil and uncoil electric cables and herd the set together when the director is ready to say “Action!” again.

These relative few professionals, among the thousands in their fields, make a good living — but they’re not millionaires.

Many of our Supporting Actor and Actress nominees, whose performances were essential to the success of their films and the millions those films earned at the box office, are not millionaires.

Meet Your Makers

We do have a few millionaires among us. 

Good for them.

I’m not sure when our culture started saying it’s okay to succeed in anything else, just not the entertainment business.

Movies are among the last things that Americans make that anybody wants anymore.

We use terms like “producer” and “filmmaker” because we produce things.  We make things.  Film production boosts an entire economy on location.

We are not stock swindlers, real estate speculators, or war profiteers.

We make movies.

The Meat of It

So shame on you for feeding that talk-radio, red-meat propaganda machine that tells people that the excesses of Hollywood are responsible for their problems.  Shame on you.

Thank you for voting for me and for recognizing this picture.  Good night.

BLOGGER’S NOTE: I’ve been thinking about this speech for months.  I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  But today I read about an ad calling Obama a “celebrity President.”  And I know it’s trying make people associate Obama with Hollywood and the entertainment industry at large, which somehow is worse than an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or “lagoons” of toxic cow and pig shit coast-to-coast.