I usually enjoy watching the Oscars, but last night felt a little anticlimactic.

One, I think I was thrown off by the fact that they were being shown a month earlier than in the past.

Two, I didn’t see many of the nominees this past year. The year before, I’d really enjoyed “The Two Towers,” “Chicago,” “The Hours,” “The Pianist,” and “Far From Heaven. Most of those spoke to me in one way or another — three as a gay man, one as a Jew. And they were all amazing. But this past Christmas season, there weren’t many “big movies” I felt like seeing, and while those I saw were very good, they didn’t do anything special for me. “Cold Mountain” and “Seabiscuit” were typical Oscar-season big movies, but they weren’t particularly brilliant, even if “Seabiscuit” warmed the cockles of my heart and Tobey Macguire warmed some other parts of me. As a former resident of Tokyo, I did thoroughly enjoy “Lost in Translation,” although it didn’t strike me as an Oscar movie. And I still haven’t seen “Mystic River” or “Master and Commander” or “Monster” or “The House of Sand and Fog.”

The third reason last night’s Oscars were anticlimactic is that there weren’t many memorable moments. I liked Blake Edwards’s wheelchair ride, and I loved “Mitch and Mickey’s” performance of their song from “A Mighty Wind.” But there was no controversy and nothing outrageous — thanks to the five-second delay, no doubt. Susan Sarandon’s one-strap dress came dangerously close to providing a Janet Jackson moment, or at least it appeared that way. And I appreciated that Michael Moore could make fun of himself in Billy Crystal’s Oscar parody.

But there was something bland about the whole thing. Perhaps it was the “Return of the King” juggernaut. I loved the movie, and I’m glad it tied the record for most Oscar wins and won in every category in which it was nominated (in fact, I wish Sean Astin had received a Best Supporting Actor nomination), but… did it really deserve Best Friggin’ Adapted Screenplay? I would have given that to “American Splendor,” which was brilliant. The Oscar voters just seemed to have gone on automatic pilot. Lord of the Rings… Lord of the Rings… Lord of the Rings. They should have just given it Best Documentary as well.

I don’t want to detract from the achievement, though. The entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was a masterpiece, and last night’s Oscars were clearly meant to reward the whole thing. In fact, I may have to see “Return of the King” a second time (although 210 minutes is awfully long to sit through), and I look forward to next fall, when I can have all three Extended Editions side by side in my DVD collection.

And I don’t know who else will agree with me, but I think Dominic Monaghan looks so handsome in this picture.

Oh — and if you’re curious, this went well. It’s true that I was a bundle of nerves beforehand, especially because Matt and I were late due to having to wait 15 minutes for a stupid A train. But it turned out that my parents were late, too, so it was fine. Matt and my parents got along well enough, and there were no fiascos. Matt talked about musical theater (which interested my mom) and pulled out his new Sony Clié (which interested my dad). And my dad e-mailed me this morning to tell me that it was good to meet Matt and that he was very nice.

I have introduced my parents to my boyfriend and the world did not explode.

Yay!

Gothamist on the Oscars.

The False Debate Over “Activist” Judges. I’m tired of hearing politicians and others use the code phrase “activist judges,” not just because it shows lack of imagination but because it’s inaccurate. Steve Sanders puts it into much better words than I could. (No, not that Steve Sanders.)

Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?

My friend Jere now has his very own blog. I’m proud to have come up with the name — “Jere-Rigged.” Not only is it a pun, but it shows you how to pronounce “Jere.” I’d also thought of “Jere-Mander,” but that was not quite punny enough. Jere’s an actor, he’s gay, he’s single, and he lives in Manhattan, so have at him, boys. Congrats, Jere.

Matt and I had quite a busy weekend. It actually began on Thursday night, when we saw Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche in Twentieth Century at the Roundabout Theatre Company. I really enjoyed it, and I thought Alec Baldwin was born to play the role of the pompous, flamboyant producer Oscar Jaffe. The set consisted of several rooms on an old-fashioned luxury train, and it moved back and forth across the stage at times to highlight the action. It wasn’t as quite a madcap romp as I was hoping for, but it was still very funny. Afterwards we went to Cold Stone Creamery on 42nd Street, where I had some of the most delicious ice cream I’ve ever tasted. Definitely going back there at some point.

On Friday night, we trekked up to Fordham University in the Bronx to see a college production of Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party.

Umm… wow.

It was done very well, but I think the most shocking moment for me was the orgy scene. All the cast members slowly stripped off most of their clothes, until the men were wearing nothing but black cotton shorts. People started fondling each other. The highlight occurred when one of the guys lay on a table on his back, his legs spread in the air, while another guy stood there and slowly began thrusting. The 11(?)-year-old boy sitting in front of us giggled his little head off. I wondered what his mother was thinking. (The scene was unexpectedly shocking, but it was great.) Then the shirtless man collapsed on top of the other shirtless man, and the entire cast froze as the main characters played out the final scene. The first shirtless man lay on top of the second shirtless man for at least 10 minutes. Matt and I decided that these cast members, if they weren’t gay, must at least have been very comfortable with each other’s bodies. More power to them, I say.

All this at a Jesuit university?

On Saturday night, we saw Sweeney Todd at the New York City Opera with my friends Peter and Patrick, another couple. This was a treat for me, because I performed in “Sweeney Todd” in college. The New York City Opera production seemed virtually identical to the original production, down to Mrs. Lovett’s pigtails, which was neat. But the most wonderful part of the evening was getting to go backstage afterwards. Patrick knows Keith Jameson, who played Tobias, so we went backstage and saw his dressing room and his costumes and — of course — his copy of the score, which Stephen Sondheim had signed the day before. I stared at Sondheim’s note and signature as if it were God’s own handwriting.

Yesterday we had our second outing to Junior’s in Brooklyn, where I had a yummy tuna melt and we shared some big fluffy onion rings. We each got a huge slice of cheesecake to go. We spent much of the afternoon putting together Matt’s new IKEA furniture and getting rid of all the boxes and packaging. It felt so domestic.

Dinner was cheesecake.

Yes, I had cheescake for dinner.

We really could have split one piece — they were that huge. I wasn’t expecting it to be my dinner; I thought it would just be a post-brunch dessert (even though it was 6:00). But my stomach felt icky and bloated for the rest of the night, so I didn’t feel like eating anything else, and I’m still not feeling very well today.

So: three shows, three boroughs, and mounds and mounds of dessert. Then tonight we’re headed out to Brooklyn College, all the way at the end of the #2 subway line, for a joint Carmina Burana rehearsal between the Gay Gotham Chorus and the Brooklyn College Chorale.

I think I’m going to need another weekend just to recover from all of this.

From this week’s New Yorker: The best that can be said for Bush’s sudden call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is that, on some level, he seems ashamed of it.

It’s possible, though apparently he’s not enough ashamed of it to let it trump political expediency.

So much for not believing ”in politicizing people’s sexual orientation.”

Last night I had my first eye exam in more than three years, and I got new glasses. My left eye apparently hasn’t changed at all, and my right eye has changed very little. The eye doc wanted to dilate my pupils, but I’ve “postponed” that until I get up the courage to do it. I hate getting my pupils dilated — or at least I hated it the last time it happened, when I was 16. For a few hours, your eyes feel big and your vision is blurry. Ick.

After the exam, I got a new pair of glasses. I wanted something very different from my old ones: either rimless or Clark-Kent style. (Not quite like these, but doesn’t Tom Welling look hot there?) I wound up going with the Clark Kents — similar to the ones linked above, but made by Giorgio Armani. I’m wearing them now and I’m überconscious of them. I hope I look good — I certainly look different.

I also started growing a goatee last week, which I may or may not keep (although the boyfriend seems to love it). With the goatee and the new glasses, I sort of look too fashionable, or at least more fashionable than I’m used to. I kind of look like I live in the East Village. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

They might need to be adjusted a bit, because they keep sliding down my nose a little. Or maybe they need some tiny nosepads. Anyway, I have a month to return them if I don’t like them.

And hopefully I won’t accidentally flush them down the toilet.

From the Boston Phoenix’s ongoing coverage of today’s constitutional convention in Massachusetts:

“Outside the State House in the long line waiting to get into the building, a young man with wispy brown hair pushed behind his ears turns to a much older man standing behind him and gives him an article that the younger man says describes how heterosexuals are undermining marriage. The older man is wearing a yellow circle sticker that says ‘SUPPORT MA AND PA.’ He mutters something to the young man who loudly replies: ‘Don’t tell me to calm down. You’re trying to take away my civil rights. Of course I’m excited.’ The older man says something else, to which the younger man says: ‘You don’t like butt fucking. Guess what? I’m 35 years old and I’ve never had a man’s dick up my ass and a lot of 35 year old women have.’

“A woman wearing a MassEquality sticker who was standing in line behind the older man gently wags her finger at the younger man and admonishes him: ‘Be nice, now.’

“Too late.”

Because you asked:

And here’s what I looked like last week, with my old glasses and no goatee.

(Both pics courtesy of Matt, who loves the new glasses.)

Strangely enough, the New York Times today has a short piece on Junior’s, where Matt and I ate last weekend. And I’m pretty sure that chair in the very bottom left corner is at our table.

Too funny.

So I’ve decided to get a TiVo.

Viral marketing really works. When Matt and I watch TV, it’s usually at his place, and Matt is basically Mr. TiVo. I’d previously decided I didn’t need something like this, because I don’t watch that much TV, but I’ve become so used to it at Matt’s place that now I need one.

The last straw happened this weekend. Matt was at my place on Saturday night, and we decided to stay in and watch some junk-food TV. I opened my copy of the weekly New York Times television schedule, which is printed on paper. We decided to watch a rerun of the Facts of Life Reunion movie, followed by another made-for-TV movie called I Want to Marry Ryan Banks, starring Jason Priestley, Emma Caulfield and Bradley Cooper. I had never seen Bradley Cooper before, but Matt turned me on to his delectableness. The movie itself, a parody of a reality TV show, was entertaining enough. But the movie ended at midnight, and “Saturday Night Live” started at 11:30, so I had to turn on the VCR and tape the last half-hour of “Ryan Banks.” If I’d had TiVo, we could have just watched the rest of the movie and then started watching SNL from the beginning.

On top of that, when I watch TV at home now, it just feels so primitive after Matt’s TiVo. TiVo’s just too damn cool not to have. I checked out a comparison chart of TiVo and ReplayTV, and I’ve still decided I want TiVo.

Unfortunately, my apartment has only one working telephone jack, which TiVo needs to use in order to download information every night. So yesterday Matt and I tried to fix one of the broken jacks. We went to Radio Shack and got a new one. Later, by myself, I tried to get it working, but I couldn’t. So my choices are:

1) Wait for Matt to come over and try to fix it.
2) Get a wireless phone jack, about fifty bucks.
3) Get a really long phone cord and run it from my bedroom to my living room, up and around walls, etc.

I’m not sure which option I’ll choose (perhaps option 3 until Matt comes over to implement option 1), but either way I’m really excited.

The viral marketing has infected me, and I’m buying a TiVo.

I woke up this morning with a song in my head. I wrote it in my sleep. I’m not even a songwriter.

I was dreaming about the last episode of “Frasier,” which is odd, because I don’t even watch “Frasier.” I’ve seen it maybe five times in my life. But the show is ending this spring, and I was dreaming about the final episode. Ted Danson, Sam of “Cheers,” was the special guest star. Frasier and Sam were walking up a stairwell wearing beige trenchcoats. At the top of the stairwell, they opened a door and entered a corridor. They walked along the corridor, opened a door and walked into a room. Then they disappeared from the dream and the room became the main focus.

A group of college-age students was in the room singing a song. The final episode of “Frasier” was supposed to be a musical episode or something. I don’t think the song had words; I heard three distinct vocal parts complementing each other, as in an a cappella group. After a while, the song ended, and people clapped and wanted another song. I eagerly wanted to hear another song, but I must have been so excited that I woke up.

It was only 6:30, about an hour before I usually wake up, and I just lay there with this random song in my head. It was really just a few measures vamping over and over, and I liked it so much — it was poppish and upbeat, some combination of “Rent” and the New Radicals and Christian rock. (I’m Jewish, but I’ll sheepishly admit to liking the treacly, sugary, optimistic melodies of Christian rock songs.) I was afraid I’d forget it, so I hopped up out of bed and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. I don’t have any staff paper, so I just used a regular sheet of paper and some approximation of musical notation to get the three parts down.

My brain wrote me a song in my sleep. How cool and creepy and wondrous.

Thanks, brain!

If you’re in New York next weekend (March 26-27), you have a chance (well, two chances) to see me, Matt, and the rest of the Gay Gotham Chorus perform Carmina Burana with the Brooklyn College Chorale, a couple of other choruses, and a huge orchestra. Apparently there will be a couple of dancers, too. You’ve heard the main theme of Carmina Burana before — it’s been used in lots of movies. (Here are some MIDI files of the whole thing.) It’s a raucous, rambunctious, and just fun piece of music, perfect for the beginning of spring. Come see us.

The Ambition Tax: Why America’s young are being crushed by debt—and why no one seems to care.

(from this week’s Village Voice)

Oh, here it is.

Matt can attest to the fact that I was drooling over this full-page ad in the special Men’s Fashions section of the New York Times Magazine this past weekend. Apparently he’s Jeremy Bloom, a professional skier and NCAA football player.

Enjoy.

GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface Gallery

I don’t link much to computer stuff here, but I found the above link on MetaFilter yesterday, and I thought it was neat.

And I’m not a Mac person, but I thought these were really cool as well: a 40-page Macintosh ad from Newsweek in 1984, and a series of posters commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Mac. There’s some more interesting stuff if you poke around the main site.

This all makes me feel like I’m a kid again. Sigh.

Sometimes I wish I’d grown up on Macs. They’re elegant and simple, but I’ve never been able to get used to them. I used a Mac at work for an entire year a while back, and I still preferred my PC. Had I had a Mac as a kid, perhaps I’d be a Mac person today, and I could be part of the Cult of Mac.

How Do I Love Thee, TiVo?

Wow, what timing.

Noiseways. Listen to New York City and Portland, Oregon.

“The negative effects of noise—stress and the disruption of work, sleep, learning and other activities—are well established by scientific research. And of course it comes as no surprise that there is a lot of noise in New York City. The Noiseways Project intends to complement this knowledge by letting visitors to this Internet site experience the effects of noise through the use of pictures and sound recordings. Instead of presenting data, Noiseways engages the senses.”

Spring begins tonight at 1:49 AM EST (6:49 AM Saturday GMT). Hooray! Of course, it snowed this morning, and the weather can somtimes be chilly into April. But we’ll be getting more sunlight than moonlight now, and soon the trees will be covered in green leaves, and the Sheep Meadow of Central Park will be crowded. And Daylight Savings Time begins two weeks from Sunday.

Anyway, what better time to listen to Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons?

Or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? (music clip)

Yesterday I brought home a bouncing baby TiVo. I got it at Best Buy on Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street. Matt and I walked into the store as throngs of antiwar protesters marched up Sixth Avenue, shouting and chanting and holding signs and wearing stickers.

Matt had stuff to do afterwards, but I was dying to bring my new baby home and set it up, so I descended into the 23rd Street PATH station. As I walked along the platform, I passed the occasional protester returning home from a long day of protesting. I settled on a spot to stand and wait for the train. A protester stood nearby, a fluorescent orange anti-Bush sticker on his jacket sleeve, while I stood there, a fluorescent orange 40-hour TiVo Series 2 box at my side, representing the twin evils of American consumerism and American mass entertainment. I felt so iniquitous, and proud of it. I wish there’d been a photojournalist nearby to snap a picture of the two of us. In fact, it’s such a great idea for a photo that I’m tempted to restage it and have someone take a picture.

The PATH train arrived, rather crowded. I got on, put the box on the floor of the train and stood facing a row of seats. A woman sitting by me looked down at the box, looked up at me, and said, “You are the luckiest man in the world.”

I spent the rest of the evening setting it up and playing around with it. (Matt, technological genius that he is, managed to fix a broken phone jack in my living room, so I didn’t even need to buy an extra-long phone cord or anything.) I’ve already set up some season passes and wish lists, and it’s already recorded some shows for me. And I love the cute little TiVo guy. See? I’ve already been assimilated.

Bring on the sloth and iniquity.

The TiVo Style Guide. Guidelines for use of the TiVo logo (including Pantone colors), the TiVo font, and so on. Interesting stuff.
[HTML version]

A Reader’s Bill of Rights.

Here’s another version.

I like these. Several of my books at home contain bookmarks that have been stuck mid-book for years. I usually feel guilty when I don’t finish a book — and when it’s a book I’ve paid for, I feel cheated as well. But I’ve been taking books out of the library with more frequency lately. It feels so old-fashioned — do people even go to their neighborhood libraries anymore? (When I was a kid, there were these TV commercials for the Encyclopedia Brittanica. One of them had this boy in a yellow raincoat, walking through the rain, saying, “I’d better get to the library before it closes!” Ahh, those pre-Google days.) Even today, neighborhood libraries make me feel like a kid — the smell of a book that hasn’t been taken out in 10 years, the sound of a creaky swinging door, the feel of a crinkly plastic dustjacket.

Libraries go hand-in-hand with the Reader’s Bill of Rights. The best thing about libraries, of course, is that the books are free. Because you don’t have to pay for them, you can engage in no-risk reading. If you don’t like a book, you can just return it. And you don’t have to treat it like a Fabergé egg while you’re reading it in hopes that Barnes & Noble will take it back.

No-risk reading enables adventurous reading. Last week, inspired by an Ask MetaFilter thread, I took out The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, by Richard Dawkins. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it, and I’m bored, so I’m going to return it and maybe get something else. I’m glad I got to experience Dawkins, though.

The Reader’s Bill of Rights is liberating, as any bill of rights should be. I still feel bad about not finishing a book, especially when I’m 2/3 done with it — what if I’d miss a terrific or enlightening paragraph or concept? On the other hand, there are so many books out there to try, and if one book isn’t doing it for me, another one will.

Life’s too short for boring books.

Workarounds for the TiVo/Comedy Central “Daily Show” multiple-airing problem.

(This would have been meaningless to me a few days ago.)

I’m enjoying my new TiVo so far. Last night I slothfully sat at home and watched stuff. (Wednesday is usually my vegging-out night, because 1) “Smallville” and “Angel” are on; 2) it’s usually the only weeknight that I’m not otherwise occupied; and 3) Matt has his weekly residence staff meeting.)

One way in which TiVo has already changed my life is that I’ve started watching “Days of our Lives” again. I’ve watched it on and off since 1986, when I picked up the habit from my mom at age 12. During eighth and ninth grades I was obsessed with the show, taping it every day, making family trees, memorizing the order of all the actors’ names in the closing credits. On an unrelated note, I also had no social life. My obsession only ended when we moved to Tokyo in 1988. Since returning to the States in 1991, I’ve watched it sporadically, sometimes for regular stretches, such as during the spring of my first year of college (I’d monopolize the TV in our dorm suite from 1:00 to 2:00; our cleaning woman watched it, too, and she’d always ask me, “Did you see the story today?” — she always referred to it as “the story”) or during the summer I was studying for the bar exam. I’ve decided to start watching again, because there’s this big serial-killer storyline that’s been going on since August. Several beloved major characters have been murdered, including many whose histories with the show go back 20 years or more. It turns out that the Salem Stalker (as the serial killer is known) is Dr. Marlena Evans, one of the most well-loved and respected residents of the town of Salem, who’s been played by Deidre Hall since 1976 (except for a hiatus from 1987-1991 so she could star on “Our House”; Marlena was presumed dead during that time). None of the other characters knows it’s her, although some are starting to suspect. We, the viewers, have no idea why she’s gone evil. The show sucks these days — it’s poorly written, badly acted and too campy — but I can’t seem to stop watching because I want to find out why Marlena’s doing all this killing.

I watched the pilot episode of “Alias” last night (not on TiVo, but on DVD), because Matt has gotten me into the show. Wow! It was one of the most amazing pilots I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to watch the rest of the first and second seasons on DVD and catch up. I’m always a latecomer to all the good shows — I didn’t start watching “The X-Files” until season 4 and “Buffy” until season 6. I guess I don’t want to put in the time with a show unless I think it’ll be worth it.

I’m philosophically and morally opposed to television. I think it engenders sloth and passivity and sucks away the time that one could spend doing other things. And yet I can get very passionate and obsessive about the shows I do watch. And I know lots of TV minutiae. For instance, at Trivia Night on Monday, I knew that the show that spun off from “Love, American Style” was “Happy Days.” I’m weird like that.

Like sands through the hourglass…

It was a busy weekend. On Friday and Saturday night, Matt and I had our concerts, which went very well. Matt has some photos of the two of us in tuxedos. (I wanted to send one to my parents and tell them that we’d gotten married in Montreal.)

Other than that, I fell asleep on Matt’s couch on Saturday afternoon and talked in my sleep on Friday night.

And then yesterday, I had a double helping of theater. In the evening, Jere and I saw Pardon My English at Encores! (the exclamation point is part of the name, as in “Yahoo!”). Matt couldn’t make it because he was on duty. The show was a madcap trifle, not quite in the same league as Anything Goes, but still entertaining and containing a zippy Gershwin score. The other show, though, made more of an impression. I saw Craig Lucas’s Small Tragedy at Playwrights Horizons. (Craig Lucas actually e-mailed me a couple of years ago after reading something on my blog. We traded a few messages back and forth and he wound up sending me a signed copy of a book of some of his plays.) I’d thought about seeing the play, and then yesterday morning Matt and I were on the Internet trying to find out why Lee Pace, the actor who plays the brother on Wonderfalls, was so familiar to us. We realized it was because he played a transsexual in A Soldier’s Girl last year. Not only that, but he was in Small Tragedy. Since yesterday was the final performance, I knew I had to go, so I got a rush ticket and sat in the third row. Lee Pace was mere feet away from me at some points, and he did a smashing job. He’s an actor’s actor, fascinating to watch (and hot, too). He’s going places.

I’d write more, but it’s time to go meet Matt for dinner!

David Brooks has a good column in today’s Times about how pointless it is for high school seniors to get worked up about college admissions. Doesn’t he watch the WB? Everything is a big deal when you’re a teenager. And the college admissions process rivals the senior prom for the most nail-biting saga on any teen TV show. Remember on “90210” when Andrea decided to pass up the Ivies? Remember on “Buffy” when Buffy didn’t know where she’d get in, and then she and Willow both decided to go to UC Sunnydale? And did you see the size of that college library? I’m assuming Clark and the rest of the gang on “Smallville” will soon wind up at Smallville U, and new friends will arrive.

College is a time of huge cast changes. What can be more tumultuous than that?

Save Bob Edwards!

Bob Edwards has been fired as host of NPR’s Morning Edition after almost 25 years, just because NPR wants to update the show’s format. Worse, he won’t be the host when the show’s 25th anniversary arrives next fall. Back when I had a car (and was up early enough), I’d listen to Bob Edwards’s laid-back, calm voice introduce the segments on his show, and I’d know that everything in the world was going to be all right. The man doesn’t deserve to be canned like this. Sign the petition if you feel the same.

Air America Radio, the new liberal radio station, begins broadcasting today at noon with Al Franken’s “The O’Franken Factor.” The Air America website will have live streaming audio.

(Postscript, 12:06 pm: Well, I managed to listen to the first four minutes of the streaming audio and then it got cut off. I guess the website is being overwhelmed. Grrr. What I did hear of Al Franken’s introductory monologue was funny, strident, attention-grabbing, and kind of obnoxious. I guess he’ll fit right in with talk radio.)

(Post-postscript, 12:08 pm: The streaming audio is back. I guess it’s intermittent today. I’m pissed that I missed the rest of Franken’s introductory monologue.)

(Post-post-postscript: Portland, Oregon has an alternate feed.)

Reject George Bush’s Credit (in partnership with MoveOn.org).

By racking up the highest deficit in American history (half a trillion this year alone!) Bush has asked every American for a $4,500 loan that WE are going to have to pay back in taxes later. As current and future taxpayers, this hits young Americans particularly hard. Send George Bush a note rejecting his request for credit… When you do, $1 will be contributed to the MoveOn.org Voter Fund.

Click and sign and $1 will go to MoveOn.org on your behalf.

I had some time on my hands this afternoon, and I stumbled across this, so I made the following in honor of mine and Matt’s upcoming six-month anniversary. (Click for larger.)