Categories
Malibu

Garden News

Henry

This summer has not delivered the early morning, glittering sea views we are used to.  It is gray and wet.  The dew is so heavy that it drips like tropical rain off the plane trees.

By 10am the sun has burned off the marine layer but somehow never really recovers.  The weather is totally messed up.  The garden thrives although I worry about the cacti.

We lost three this year, rotting in the damp air.

I have huge and beautiful squash growing on the terrace.

Henry is dropping by today.  He is taking me to the doctor.  My foot is still very painful.  Swollen.  I can see that it gets better.  Slowly, slowly.  I take a stick with me into the garden.  Ever since the coyote attacked the little dog he stays close to me.

There is a very destructive squirrel chomping on anything and everything but mostly he/she picks oranges and peels them very carefully.

The plums have all been harvested.  The figs are ripening.  There are so many this year.

Tomatoes and beans, lemons, limes and grapes.

I cooked dinner for Andrew last night, we sat eating it watching Ted on Chopped.  I rarely veer from watching HGTV or MSNBC.

Late last night the dog started howling at the moon.  It’s impossible to get back to sleep.

Categories
Malibu

BAFTA

Let’s not forget shall we that I was nominated for a BAFTA for my film AKA.  However insane you might think me now…there was a time when I could get things done and to a certain extent I still can.  I only mention this because some people would like to forget that it ever happened…rendering me and my life utterly useless.

So, I decided to fetch out all of my awards put them on my desk.

Last day of the vile tasting chinese herbal medicine yesterday.   No more foul-smelling pee.

There seems to be a small window of creative opportunity that I can mine the first thing in the morning.  Just after I have had my coffee.  If I am lucky I can spin this into a day of writing.  If I fail to act then I tend not to write a thing.

I bought a small publication at The New Museum called For Lonely Adults Only.  A pictorial diary by Regis Trigano.  It is very beautiful.  Documenting this gay artists various hookups.

I feel sad.

Set adrift in an ocean of self-pity.  FUCK!

I am often asked where one can buy my version of Dorian Gray.  Well, we only really played it at festivals.  When the cast becomes more famous (as they are doing) we may very well release it.  It is proving nicely.  One day it will be released.

I am in LA.  At the house.  Another huge rattle snake in the garden resting on the step.  I hit it with spade but it slithered away.   Thankfully the Little Dog didn’t see it.   He may very well have chased it.

The twins are a joy.  So sweet to me.  The house was perfectly well-kept when I got home.  The larder well stocked and the fridge full of things I would never eat but hey ho.

I bought the most beautiful new hat.  A Derby from Stronghold on Abbot Kinney.  Dinner at Nobu with Miami Henri.   He looked better in my hat than I did.  See above.  Damn.

Sharon S came by and I made cauliflower cheese and pasta ripiena.  The twins need to learn how to cook.  I taught them how to make a roux then showed then how to turn that into a delicious cheese sauce.  They don’t even know how to boil pasta!  Miles makes the most inedible, lumpy, often burned scrambled egg.

I forced them to watch Rachel Maddow.  They are self-proclaimed born again christian republicans.  Once they understand what is really going on they are amazed at how the world really is.

One of them said, “Obama is trying to cut funding for education.”  No, I grimaced, he’s not.

The other said, “Is there a Republican Rachel Maddow?”  I balked.

I think that they were anti-abortion.  Hmmm.  Not for much longer.  I feel like Socrates corrupting the youth of Greece.  Let’s hope that I don’t end up like him.  Oh why not?

Will be back in NYC in two weeks then Cannes, after Cannes I will spend a week or so in London and Whitstable.  I bought a ticket to Sydney for next winter.   I need me some Southern Hemisphere.

This is great!  Please listen to this lecture from the good people at TED.

Categories
Gay Rant

Critical Mass

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers]

Japan.  Spent zirconium fuel rods, usually submerged under forty feet of water, now lie uncovered in the drained spent fuel pools where they are stored.

The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi complex contain plutonium — better known as fuel for nuclear weapons. While plutonium is more toxic than uranium, other radioactive elements leaking out are likely to be of greater danger to the general public.

Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation.  The fuel in the other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process.

This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium.

In the heart of not one but six nuclear reactors some fuel rods maybe broken…ready to melt down, ready to spew radioactive material into the atmosphere.

We are facing a potential catastrophe in Japan.

Here I link you to the Vlogbrothers simple yet elegant explanation of nuclear fission…for those of you who may not understand what is going on.  Technically.

Critical mass imminent?  Likely?  Who the hell knows.

Critical mass means that there is enough fissionable material to produce and sustain a chain reaction, which grows exponentially within a miniscule passage of time. This chain reaction is precisely what happens in nuclear weapons and could happen in Japan.

We are witnessing critical mass in other parts of the world:  Bahrain where the government saw fit to shoot little children demonstrating with their parents.  Libya where after the United Nations imposed a ‘no fly zone’.  Gaddafi proclaimed a cease fire…then promptly bombed the rebels.  Where, you may ask, were the fearless British and the noisome French?

Critical mass in Wisconsin is growing daily but completely ignored by almost all of the US news media who are frankly perplexed when confronted by white Americans behaving like anything other than bovine subserves.

Last night I, uncharacteristically, turned on the TV and sat with Rachel Maddow for a few irritating minutes.  She was blathering on about how in the 1950’s the Democrats benefitted from the last time the Wisconsin Republicans tried to vote away collective bargaining, unions and the like.   Well, that was then Rachel…when the Democrats served the people and as an effective opposition to the rabid corporation obsessed Republicans.  In a time, long ago, when America and Americans were relevant.

Occurs to me that even if Rachel Maddow believes the Democrats can benefit from getting behind American Working People (she may be right) the working people of America will not be served by those Democrats they elect…most of whom are already bought and paid for by the corporation.  Who said that capitalism means the enslavement of the people?

As fabulously bright as Maddow is there is something vaguely mithering and condescending in her tone.  More worryingly..her solutions are rather naive.

Meanwhile…if it couldn’t get any worse for the LGBT community…

In Congress the ultra right-wing, motivated by crazy house leader John Boehner (Boner), is so deeply committed to dialing back rights for LGBT Americans that nearly 100 of them are co-sponsoring a resolution condemning President Obama for his decision last month to no longer defend DOMA in court.

As Americans struggle to recover from the recession, they just want their government to do right by them.  Republican House leaders are doing the exact opposite – committing taxpayer money and precious time to defend a law that most Americans oppose, and a social agenda that most Americans reject.

Finally, critical mass at the micro level rather than the macro…I am suing somebody.  It stinks…but it has to be done.  Business is business and I hope that he doesn’t take it personally.