NJ Governor’s Race

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My home state, New Jersey, where I grew up and where I work (even though I no longer live there), has a governor’s race in the fall. The incumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine, has a 40 percent approval rating right now and is in danger of losing to Republican Christopher Christie, formerly the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, assuming Christie wins the Republican nomination against arch-conservative Steve Lonegan next week.

New Jersey’s quadrennial governor’s race comes in the year after the presidential election, and in every election for the past 20 years, the party that wins the governor’s race has been the party that lost the previous year’s presidential race.

1988: George H.W. Bush (R)
1989: Jim Florio (D)

1992, 1996: Bill Clinton (D)
1993, 1997: Christie Whitman (R)

2000: George W. Bush (R)
2001: Jim McGreevey (D)

2004: George W. Bush (R)
2005: Jon Corzine (D)

2008: Barack Obama (D)
2009: ???

Granted, this doesn’t totally hold up, because in 2000 and 2004, New Jersey actually voted for Gore and Kerry, even though the country went the other way. But it’s still weird.

That Makes Me Angry

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I randomly came across this image online. OMG I love it I love it I love it. Domestic strife in the Ernie & Bert household!

Actually, here’s the book description:

Ernie is watching the wind blow outside his apartment and decides to fly a kite in the park. He convinces Bert to pack a picnic lunch and meet him under the big statue in the park. What neither know is that there are two statues in the park. Ernie waits to meet Bert under the statue of a boy and girl on a horse, while Bert waits under a statue of Mother Goose. They both become angry thinking that the other has forgotten about their plans, but discover there are two big statues in the park when they meet up back at the apartment.

Sotomayor

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This is a busy day for legal topics I’m interested in: the U.S. Supreme Court and gay rights law. Within the course of several hours we had the Sotomayor nomination and the California Supreme Court’s decision on Prop 8.

First, Sotomayor. She seems like a decent enough pick for the Court, but beyond her life story and the Jeff Rosen hack job on her, I don’t know much about her. I was hoping for a fierce liberal advocate to counter Scalia — I would have loved to see Obama pick Pam Karlan. Will Sotomayor be that fierce liberal advocate? Maybe, maybe not; I don’t know. You can read summaries of her past appellate rulings here. At any rate, it’s sure to be an interesting confirmation process.

As for the Prop 8 decision: no real surprise. The court upheld Prop 8 but kept the existing same-sex marriages intact. This is an incredibly long opinion — the main opinion alone is 135 pages — and I haven’t had a chance to read much of it. But the decision is ridiculous for the simple reason that it allows a majority of a population to strip a minority of equal protection of the laws. As the sole dissenting justice wrote today:

The equal protection clause is… by its nature, inherently countermajoritarian. As a logical matter, it cannot depend on the will of the majority for its enforcement, for it is the will of the majority against which the equal protection clause is designed to protect.

This case is really about whether a particular method to change the California Constitution is itself a violation the California Constitution. I’ve skimmed the decision and it seems to spend a lot of ink on the difference between a constitutional “revision” (which requires the legislature’s imprimatur) and a constitutional “amendment” (which does not), but it doesn’t really matter, because whatever you call it, changing a constitution is supposed to be difficult. As I wrote last year, it should take more than a simple majority to change a constitution. The whole point of a constitution is to have a restraint on day-to-day political passions. A constitution is supposed to be higher than ordinary law and therefore harder to amend. If it’s no different to pass a constitutional amendment than to enact a popular initiative, then you have mob rule. If not for decisions by the United States Supreme Court that found race and sex discrimination to be violations of the U.S. Constitution — which outranks the California Constitution — then it would be possible for the general population of California to enshrine constitutional discrimination against blacks and women today. The process for amending the California Constitution is nonsensical.

Our founders didn’t believe in direct democracy; they believed in representative government. They believed in the wisdom of having a particular group of people, chosen by the populace, to legislate and act in their best interests. They believed that this political class had “virtue,” an amorphous concept that I don’t think really exists, but put virtue aside and the point remains that legislators are usually smarter and more thoughtful than the populace at large. (There are exceptions, of course, such as Michelle Bachman.) The stupidly simple California amendment process flies in the face of the constitutional and political theories in which our founders believed.

Nevertheless, although this decision is a big disappointment for supporters of gay rights, I find myself not too concerned in the long run. Constitutional jujitsu is possible here: since it’s so easy to amend the state constitution, all you need is a simple majority to overturn Prop 8. The vote in November was close, 52% to 48%. Attitudes continue to change, and at some point — hopefully soon — a majority of Californians will support same-sex marriage rights, and Prop 8 will lie in the dustbin of history.

2008-09 in Theater

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Matt has written an extensive post summarizing our theater experiences this past season, including rankings of his favorite to least favorite shows in each category. We’re able to see so many shows because we see a lot of stuff cheaply, through TDF or Play-by-Play.

We have some disagreements. For instance, I found The Story of My Life incredibly treacly and the characters irritating. I can’t listen to the cast album because the songs drive me nuts. Listening to them can give you diabetes.

And everyone seems to like Rock of Ages, but for me it was too loud and gave me a splitting headache. Looking back, it was an entertaining enough show, but I couldn’t deal with the volume level. Also, I was in a bad mood that day.

But I agree with Matt that Next to Normal is amazing and the best new musical of the season. It’s heart-wrenching and depressing yet oddly uplifting, and the music absolutely rocks.

On to the Tonys!

Guys and Dolls 1992

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These excerpts from the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls will help get the bitter taste of last night’s show out of my system. The first is from The Tonight Show; the second is from the Tonys.

Quotes or Italics?

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I’m really inconsistent in my use of quotation marks or italics when I mention the titles of TV shows, books, movies and theater productions in this blog. I use quotation marks a lot (including in my previous post), but I think italics look cleaner. (I never use ALL CAPS, because it looks like shouting.)

Quotation marks are a pain when creating hyperlinks to works of art. Sometimes a period or comma comes before the closing quotation mark, but I don’t like including punctuation in hyperlinks. For instance, if, in this sentence, I link to “Guys and Dolls,” there’s a quote in that there hyperlink. I don’t like that.

And apparently I should be using italics more often than I do.

I don’t really come across movie, theater, or TV show titles in my day job as an editor, so I wasn’t clear on this.

Anyway, from now on I’ll try to use italics when referring to most titles.

Yay!

2008-2009 Broadway Revivals

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As of last night, Matt and I have seen all four Tony nominees for Best Musical Revival — three of the them in the past week.

In the fall we saw “Pal Joey,” with the unfortunately miscast Matthew Risch, the terrific Martha Plimpton, and poor Stockard Channing, whom I love but who can’t really sing.

Last Wednesday night we saw “West Side Story,” which was excellently danced and sung and had the terrific Karen Olivo, but was just… missing something. (Besides some of the English lyrics.) And as Matt said to me, seeing the show on stage makes you realize what a museum piece “West Side Story” is. And we were in the balcony, which, in the Palace Theater, is really high up, so we felt too far away from the action.

Last Thursday night we saw “Hair,” which was one of the best things I’ve seen this season. Going in, I knew very little about the show other than the two big songs, “Age of Aquarius” and “Let the Sun Shine In,” and the moment of nudity. There isn’t much of a plot. But this production is fantastic and bursting with energy. It doesn’t matter where you sit, because cast members come into the audience, even up to the mezzanine, where we sat. I totally recommend seeing this show. It’s a lock to win Best Revival.

Finally, last night we saw the revival of “Guys and Dolls,” which lives up to its dreadful reviews. We wouldn’t have seen it if not for cheap tickets.

I don’t know what director Des McAnuff was thinking. The production is way overmiked, the costume colors are depressingly subdued, there are distracting screen projections, Oliver Platt (Nathan Detroit) doesn’t speak clearly, Lauren Graham (Miss Adelaide) is bland as pudding. Craig Bierko and Kate Jennings Grant were somewhat better. Nicely-Nicely Johnson is played by Tituss Burgess, who played Sebastian the Crab in “The Little Mermaid,” and whenever he waddled around the stage I couldn’t help but think of him in his Sebastian costume with a couple of crab legs trailing behind him. And he had this horrendous faux-1940s gangster accent.

My impression of this “Guys and Dolls” was inevitably colored by the stupendous 1992 Jerry Zaks production starring Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, Peter Gallagher and Josie De Guzman, which is how I was first introduced to this show. Everything in that production just worked — bright colors, smartly over-the-top performances, great orchestrations. (Here’s Frank Rich’s review.) I don’t know what the point of the current revival is. If you’re going to do this show, do it right.

Oh, and it didn’t help that there was a group of teenagers sitting in front of us who appeared to be on a school trip. One or the other of them kept standing up in order to squeeze past his friends and go take a break. And 20 minutes into the show, the empty row in front of us filled up with four more of them, who for some reason arrived late. One of them was a very big girl who blocked my entire view of center stage, and another one of them spent the whole first act sending text messages. Fortunately we found different seats during intermission, closer to the stage and far away from those idiots.

Sometimes I think theater critics should be forced to review shows from the cheap seats.

Tom Lenk is Out

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Apparently Buffy‘s Tom Lenk came out of the closet several months ago. (Not that he was really in, was he?) How did I miss this?

More here:

Tom Lenk held several great reasons to come out. Beloved by Buffy the Vampire Slayer viewers for his role as the ambiguously gay geek Andrew, Lenk recently scored a gig on the Fox sitcom Do Not Disturb as the longtime boyfriend of a gay character, played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (The Class). The plot would revolve around gay marriage and provide the platform for Lenk’s first gay on-screen kiss. Even better, Lenk thought, both he and Ferguson are average-looking guys. “I don’t have six-pack abs. I don’t have highlights … anymore,” Lenk says he thought at the time. “Yay! A gay couple on TV that’s not filtered through the glossy Hollywood lens of glamour.”

Lenk finally felt he had a legitimate reason to share in the press what his friends, family, and colleagues had known for years. And then, the night before this interview, he got a call. The show, a behind-the-scenes comedy about a Manhattan hotel, had been canceled. His kiss episode would never air.

Also, he recently joined Twitter.

Glee, Swingle Singers, Golliwog’s Cakewalk

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We watched the premiere of “Glee” last night. It was cute. It’s about a high school Spanish teacher (played by Broadway actor Matthew Morrison) who takes over the school’s glee club. Apparently there are going to be all sorts of theater guest stars when it officially premieres in September. It’s catnip for us gays.

I don’t know why they’re calling it a glee club; it’s really a show choir. This is a glee club. If this show gets popular, for the rest of my life I’m going to have to explain to people that when I was in the Virginia Glee Club we did not dance around in costumes and sing pop songs.

Much of the background music to this episode was provided by the Swingle Singers; one music clip recurred three or four times during the episode, and Matt and I both thought it sounded familiar and were racking our brains to figure out what it was. After the show ended, we spent the next 45 minutes furiously googling and finally figured out that it was “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from Debussy’s “Children’s Corner.” “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” is a pretty racist name for a piece of music, but it was written 100 years ago by a Eurpoean, so what can you do. Here’s a clip of someone playing it.

Sands of Time

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This weekend it will be 10 years since I graduated from law school.

After graduating from law school, I: studied for and passed the New York Bar Exam, moved back to New Jersey, came out to my parents, had my heart broken, started a job in Hopewell, NJ, started a second part-time job at Barnes & Noble, moved to Princeton, NJ, rang in the new millennium, had a shitty roommate, moved in with a friend, studied for and passed the New Jersey Bar Exam, moved to Jersey City to work as a law clerk in Newark, had my heart broken again, started a blog, got a job as a lawyer, moved to another apartment in Jersey City, wrote a screenplay, did lots of dating, had my heart broken again, joined a chorus, met Matt and entered a long-term relationship, moved to Manhattan, got laid off, saw my brother get married, got a new job, moved twice more. And read lots of books and saw lots of movies and theater and TV.

It’s only lately that it feels like a long period of time has passed since 1999. Often in the past 10 years, I’ve felt like I’ve been living in post-Virginia time. (Virginia is where I spent most of the ’90s.) I’ve felt like I’m post-something and pre-something else, instead of in the midst of something. I feel like I’ve drifted through my life for the last 10 years and haven’t accomplished anything, and that I’ve been waiting for the next phase of my life to start.

The time is just slipping through my fingers like sand. I worry that several more 10-year chunks will pass, and one day I’ll wake up a decrepit old man with nothing to show for all the time that has gone by.

Anthony Lane on Star Trek

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The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane reviews the new “Star Trek” movie with a big stick up his ass. The tone of this piece is just off. There’s no need to mock blockbuster movies just because they’re blockbusters; some blockbusters, such as this one, are actually really good.

Who is this review written for? Are there really people out there who are going to rely on Anthony Lane’s opinion about whether to see the new “Star Trek” movie? Most of us don’t care, and the snobby Upper East Siders for whom this review seems to be written weren’t going to see it anyway.

I don’t know why the review pisses me off so much — maybe it’s because I’d just seen the movie a few hours earlier and thought it was terrific, and then I read this I’m-better-than-you piece of crap. God, no wonder people call this magazine elitist.

Linkins Sez

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Jason Linkins writes: “I mean, who knows what might happen if someone spilled THE GAY all over America’s precious writs of certiorari?”

Jason and I went to college together. He was involved in our First Year Players production of “Sweeney Todd” (I think he was the publicity director? I’m not sure).

Sparky Writes

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Sparky made a point the other day about blogging that resonated with me:

As much as I appreciate that there are people out there who have the focus to maintain a repository of targeted content, I still bristle at the idea of blogs as necessities, marketing tools, or places that have to be about just one thing. When I read someone saying that they have six blogs about different topics, I wonder why they don’t just have one that’s mostly about the six things that interest them so much, and anything else they throw in. It’s still the person that’s the point for me.

I’ve sometimes wished that I could stick to one thing on this blog. Unfortunately, I have too many interests and a fickle mind. This is not a recipe for consistency.

Many of us pre-9/11 bloggers still marvel at how blogging changed after that date. The rise of the warbloggers led to the rise of the political blogs. Blogging had been represented by Jason Kottke, but now it was represented by Little Green Footballs and Andrew Sullivan. (Actually, Sullivan has a pretty good blog, a mix of politics and “hey look at this”-type posts; the only problem is that he blogs so damn much that you practically have to be a full-time Andrew Sullivan reader to keep up. Who has the time?)

Blogging can’t just be fun anymore, apparently. Now it has to have a mission, a purpose.

Sometimes I wish I had a blog that focused on a single topic and got linked and quoted all over the place and could lead to a book deal. Not gonna happen — I don’t have the discipline or, again, the consistency. Plus, I just can’t write that fast. Prose does not tumble elegantly out of my brain. Rather, words spurt out erratically, like a broken faucet. Listening to me type at the keyboard can be weird. Dadadadadadadada dat dat dat (that last part is the sound of me backspacing because I mistyped, which I do all the time — I never learned to type properly). Dadadadadada — dat dat — dadadadada… (long pause)… dadadadadada dat dat dat dat dadadadada (long pause) dadadadada dat dat dat dadadadada.

My blog is just a place for me to be me and express whatever thoughts and ideas I feel like expressing. It’s for me, it’s not for other people.

Oh well. So much for success.

Washington Closet

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“[I]f they kicked out all the gay and lesbian staffers from Congress the way they kick gays and lesbians out of the military, then Congress would grind to a halt.”

That’s a quote from an interview with Kirby Dick about his new movie, Outrage (warning: the trailer automatically starts when you click that link), about closeted gay politicians who vote against gays. It opens tomorrow.

Dick’s previous movie was This Film is Not Yet Rated, about the MPAA’s screwy rating system.

A Gay Justice

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There are two lesbians on various people’s shortlists for Justice Souter’s replacement on the Supreme Court: Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan, both professors at Stanford Law School. (Karlan was a professor at UVa Law when I went there, but I wasn’t in any of her classes.)

I don’t think it’s going to happen — this isn’t a “West Wing” episode — and Karlan doesn’t seem to think she’ll get the nod, or else she would have been less vocal about the vacancy. But some people think Karlan would be a brilliant justice.

Maine Governor Signs Marriage Bill

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Go Maine! The state’s governor decided to sign the same-sex marriage bill! It goes into effect in September.

Baldacci said in a statement that while he has opposed gay marriage in the past, “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

When empathetic people realize that this is a question of constitutional rights, of equality, they come around.

Maybe this will put pressure on New Hampshire’s governor to sign his state legislature’s bill, too.

Condi Talks with Student

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This video of Condoleezza Rice debating a student at a recent Stanford reception has been floating around for several days now, but I just watched it, and it’s fascinating — how the cocktail chatter dies away and the room becomes silent as attention focuses on Rice, how she becomes arrogantly defensive, how she basically says, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Scotusblog on Souter

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Tom Goldstein at ScotusBlog has interesting thoughts on Justice Souter’s retirement and his possible replacements.

David Souter will be the first Supreme Court justice whose career I’ll remember from start to finish. I was too young to know about Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment; I was 16 when Souter was appointed in the summer of 1990, living at my aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey on a break from Japan. Souter’s will be one of the shortest terms in recent Supreme Court history, at just 19 years. O’Connor served for more than 24 years; Rehnquist, more than 33; Blackmun, 24; White, 31; Marshall, 24; Brennan, 31. The last justice to serve fewer than 20 years was Lewis Powell, from 1972 to 1987.

So Souter will retire at age 69 and go back to New Hampshire, where he can spend the rest of his life hiking, reading, and eating his daily lunch of a whole apple (including the core) and yogurt, seemingly unchanged by the city where he’s spent the last two decades. I wish him a happy retirement.