How did I miss this drag show?
This is apparently a clip of a “Wizard of Oz” tribute that the B division Pegasus Softball Team Texas KnockOuts made at the Round-Up Saloon.
The video quality isn’t the best. But the production value is jaw-dropping — especially the special effect when “Dororthy” sees Auntie Em in the crystal ball. Wow!
Cedar Springs isn’t the only neighborhood in transition; Deep Ellum has struggled with its own issues: perceived high incidents of crime, DART construction impeding access, vacant buildings. To address these concerns, the Deep Ellum Foundation is hosting a town hall meeting with Mayor Tom Leppert and others in attendance. The topic will of course focus on the Downtown neighborhood, but if you haven’t met the mayor, and want to judge for yourself whether he should be “deemed ‘gay friendly,’” this might be your chance.
The meeting takes place at the Sons of Hermann Hall on Friday (June 27) from 2 to 4 p.m.
Over at The Huffington Post, Dallas Voice contributor Jenny Block (pictured above) talks about her encounter with some homophobic kids at the True Colors concert on Sunday in Dallas. In more upbeat True Colors news, Jeff Strater reports that volunteers for the Human Rights Campaign signed up hundreds of people during the event for HRC’s “Pledge to Vote.” You can sign the pledge yourself online by going here. Also, Strater has joined the blogosphere. You can read Strater’s “Denver Bound Blog” here. (Strater, vice president of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, will be a national delegate to the Democratic Convention in Denver in August.)
Here’s a link to a strange tale about an openly gay organic farmer in Ottawa, Canada, who faces extradition to Texas over some 13-year-old criminal charges.
The Ottawa Citizen reports that Stuart Collins, then a Houston attorney who was married to a woman, took a case involving some business owners who wanted to start a horse racing track in the late 1980s. Collins filed a billion dollar lawsuit against several top Texas officials, including the governor and attorney general, alleging that they used bribery and secret deals to kill the race track. Collins also got involved in a related case after David Joost, an executive with the Texas Racing Commission, was found dead in his home along with Joost’s wife and two kids. To make a long story short, Collins’ career fell apart as a result of the cases, and he was arrested in 1993 in a park frequented by gay men. He eventually moved to Ottawa, and ever since Texas authorities have been trying to bring him back to face charges that he bilked some former clients. Collins has been fighting extradition, saying that authorities in Texas hold grudges toward him and that he’d be at risk in the U.S. prison system due to his sexual orientation. Collins now runs a successful organic farm in Ottawa with his male partner of 10 years. Anyhow, it appears as though Collins’ efforts to fight the extradition have been unsuccesful, as reported today by CTV Ottawa.
Okay. So Heinz has apparently already caved in to right wing pressure in Great Britain and pulled the “mum” ad that showed two partners saying goodbye with a kiss.
Read about it here.
That’s too bad, too. It was a cute ad. So instead of complimenting them on a good ad, perhaps we should all be complaining to them for being such wusses.
I am on the e-mail list for the American Family Association, which means that every time they get pissed off about something, I get an e-mail from them encouraging me to call or write somebody somewhere and complain about whatever it is that Donald Wildmon and his AFA minions have gotten their knickers in a twist over now.
Usually, they are mad because some company had the audacity to do something horrific, like sponsor a Gay Pride event or offer domestic partner benefits or something else that was not totally anti-gay.
Today, Don and the boys were mad because Heinz is running an ad in Great Britain (above) that features a man, wearing the white hat and apron usually associated with a short order cook, packing lunches for a little boy and a little girl, both of whom call him “Mum,” and then giving a goodbye kiss to another man who rushes into the kitchen with his briefcase under his arm.
Of course, Don and the gang want everyone to write Heinz and complain. I’m all for writing Heinz, myself, but instead of complaining, I say offer them congrats on a great ad.
The Dallas Morning News continues to spin my recent story about Tom Leppert’s first year in office in favor of the Dallas mayor. (The DMN has long been one of Leppert’s biggest supporters). DMN Metro columnist Steve Blow recently had this to say on one of the newspaper’s blogs:
“Yes, apparently you can be an establishment, Republican, Southern Baptist, gay friendly mayor of Dallas.”
To his credit, at least Blow didn’t make the same mistake as DMN reporter Dave Levinthal, who recently suggested on another blog that Dallas Voice had declared Leppert gay-friendly. Blow merely reprinted our headline, “A year later, Dallas mayor deemed ‘gay-friendly.’” Note that “gay-friendly” is in quotations, because it was taken from a statement in the story by Patti Fink, president of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance.
Anyhow, I thought readers of Instant Tea, otherwise known as Tea-baggers, might be interested in Leppert’s response to a question about the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. At the end of my interview with him for the story, I asked whether he had any thoughts about the ruling, to which he replied, “No.” I then asked whether he would support gay marriage in Texas. I didn’t include his response in the story, but you can check it out after the jump.
Early today, I posted here on Instant Tea about how much I enjoyed the True Colors concert last night. But alas, I did not carry my camera and so had no photos.
Now I do have a couple of photos to share, thanks to my coworker, Gary Karwacki:
Gary’s husband, Rick Espaillat, took this photo of Cyndi during one of those times when she came down from the stage to sing and dance in the middle of the audience.
And this one shows Gary, left, and Rick when they got to meet Cyndi back stage before the concert during a meet-n-greet session.
Thanks Gary and Rick for sharing your great photos.
Remember the person from a couple of weeks ago who “took off pants and exposed anus and genitals” on the Katy Trail at night? Well at 8:15 p.m. today officals will celebrate new lights along part of the trail to prevent this very thing.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Eric Van Steenburg, executive director of Friends of the Katy Trail says the lights aren’t in response to last year’s five reported assaults, a theft and a robbery and the recent indecent exposure – all of which happened on the trail. Instead, he says they are just to allow “all people to use the trail on their schedule.”
I have a hard time believing this because all of my friends steared clear of the trail after people started getting beaten up in the area. My bet, Friends of the Katy Trail would do anything they can to make people feel safer and return the area.
As a journalist, I understand the seriousness of fact errors. I recall that in one of my reporting courses in college, fact errors were punishable by a 50-point reduction, often resulting in negative scores even when stories were otherwise pretty good. But those penalties paled in comparison to the punishment I took via e-mail this morning from one Bruce Shelton of Dallas. In my 10 years of newspaper experience, I don’t believe I’ve ever received such a scolding for what was, after all, a relatively minor mistake (I know, there’s no such thing in this business.) Anyhow, Bruce pointed out that there was a fact error in my story Friday about local couples who plan to marry in California. I reported that California and New York are the nation’s two most populous states, which is incorrect. Texas is the second most populous state, behind California and followed by New York at No. 3. Fair enough. We’ll correct it. But then Bruce had this to say:
“I was disappointed and a bit disillusioned that the Voice would allow something like this to go overlooked. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations or ideals to assume facts like this would be researched and verified prior to publication.”
Ouch.
