Painted on Beta Bridge at UVA: “Hoos for Hokies.” (Other photos.)

Beta Bridge is a bridge at UVA that’s constantly painted and repainted to publicize an event or sentiment or whatnot, from political rallies to 21st birthdays to fundraisers to concerts. (Who knows how thick the layers of paint are after all these years.)

‘Hoos are UVA students, Hokies are Tech students, and we/they have a big, longtime rivalry.

This story is not about UVA, of course. But the outpourings of sympathy from my fellow ‘Hoos for their longtime rivals keeps making me want to cry, in a good way. From UVA’s student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily: “University students dug through their closets to find anything maroon and orange — two colors all Hoos had previously tried to avoid — to demonstrate their support of Virginia Tech at the vigil held last night.” That makes me want to cry, too.

Here’s a statement from UVA president John Casteen on today’s events at Virginia Tech.

The shootings this morning at Virginia Tech have turned a seemingly normal day into one filled with grief and disbelief. For U.Va., especially on this day, Virginia Tech is family…

This is horrible. Virginia Tech was our main rival school – I went to UVA, three hours away, but I never visited Tech’s campus. My heart goes out to everyone who’s lost someone and to everyone who had to go through what sounds like a harrowing ordeal. I can’t imagine how long it will take the campus to recover from something like this. Virginia Tech has probably been marked forever. So sad.

Because I’m feeling rather emotionally open today, here’s a story.

About two years ago, Matt and I befriended a group of gay guys. We already knew one of them, but somehow we got to know the rest. They had a weekly Friday night ritual where they’d go out for drinks and then go over to one guy’s apartment and watch the Sci-Fi channel’s Friday night lineup. Sometimes they’d go out to a movie or just do a bar night.

We became a part of their circle, and it was great – a real improvement in our social lives. It gave us automatic plans for Friday night and we always looked forward to it.

Then last spring, something happened. For some reason – and to this day I have no idea what that reason was – the “leader” of the group, the guy who hosted us at his apartment every Friday night, turned on me. Matt and I stopped receiving weekly invites, and the guy de-linked me from his blog and took me off his Friendster list. All without ever contacting me directly. I emailed him to ask what was going on, and he never responded.

His behavior was totally passive-aggressive. A real sign of stunted emotional growth. He used to joke that he lacked a heart, that he wasn’t comfortable with emotion, and these actions made me realize he was right. He seemed to wear his lack of emotion as a badge of honor, but I think that’s because he was too scared to deal with what was underneath. Actually, I have no right to say that, because I don’t know him well enough, but he wouldn’t be the first person on the planet to drown his fear in an affect of bitterness.

After Matt and I were kicked out of the group, we managed to keep in touch with a couple of the guys. One of them was the friend we already knew; the other one was a friend we made in the group. As for the rest, we lost all contact. We’d never really hung out with most of the guys on their own, but there was a gay couple in the group that we used to have brunch with occasionally. The brunches stopped. It was like we’d become totally ostracized. It’s amazing what kind of power one person has. One person decides he doesn’t like you, and suddenly your social life changes. Nobody ever contacted us to say they felt bad about us being kicked out. Nothing. Of course, this was just a sign that we’d never really had close ties to the other guys in the first place. I guess we never really belonged there. Or at least I didn’t.

This all came rushing back this weekend, because the friend we’d made in the group, who is moving away, threw a going-away party. Several members of the group were there, although the group leader wasn’t. I hadn’t seen most of them in almost a year. It was awkward for me. They seemed friendly and conversational, but I have no idea what they were really thinking. The group leader had often been quite vocal about the things he disliked, and God only knows what he ever said about me over drinks behind my back and how much he might have influenced the other guys’ opinions of me.

When all of this happened last spring, it hurt. I soon realized that it wasn’t worth worrying over, because you shouldn’t value the opinion of someone unless there’s a reason to. I feel only contempt for him, zero admiration (and actually a bit of pity), so why waste the time? And yet, paradoxically, it still kind of hurts, almost a year later. The reasons for what happened have nothing to do with me — what other people think of you is none of your business — but it still happened.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time. It feels good to have done so.

For the third time this decade, New Jersey has an acting governor, following Gov. Jon Corzine’s serious car accident (in which he stupidly wasn’t wearing a seatbelt). First Governor Whitman resigned to take over the EPA, then Governor McGreevey resigned in the wake of the state homeland security debacle, and now this. Corzine won’t be able to resume his duties as governor for “days to weeks,” and he could be in a wheelchair for six months.

New Jersey really needs a lieutenant governor. Fortunately, in November 2005, New Jersey voters passed a constitutional amendment to create a lieutenant governship – although it doesn’t go into effect until the 2009 elections. Until then, the state will continue to muddle through.

At any rate, everyone seemed to like Acting Governor Dick Codey last time around, and he’s the acting governor again now, so things aren’t so bad.

There are way more important things going in the world right now. But anyway:

Al Roker blogged yesterday that Don Imus must go. (Now it turns out Imus is gone, permanently, at least from MSNBC.) Today, in response to feedback, he wrote:

My freedom of speech was questioned. Some of the complaints that came in fell in that same category; I was denying Don Imus his freedom of speech. Far from it. Don Imus has the right to say whatever he wants, however hateful, stupid or uncaring. He DOES NOT have the right to say it on public airwaves or on the cable broadcast of a publicly owned company. That is a privilege, just as you do not have the right to have a license to drive a car. It is a privilege. Privileges can be revoked if certain criteria are not met.

Amen. I can’t read Don Imus’s mind and don’t know what the appropriate response is. But I am happy when people correctly point out that freedom of speech is a right that is enforced against governments, not against private entities. A private entity can do whatever the hell it wants when it comes to speech. If a private entity bans your speech, you still have freedom of speech — the freedom to speak somewhere else. If a government bans your speech, you don’t have any alternatives. (This leaves out the issue of what happens when a government bans speech in only a certain venue, of course.)

Granted, freedom of speech is more than just part of the Bill of Rights in this country, it’s a principle that pervades our culture; when people yell “freedom of speech!” they’re usually arguing for the principle.

That’s fine – as long as they realize that that principle holds no water as a legal argument.

They seem to be under the impression that longer is better, that short, quick posts are somehow necessarily uncivilized, as though it’s a physical property of them. But blogs just don’t work like that. Often in the blog world, short and sweet is what’s required. Moreover, with the medium’s requirement that people post often (daily or more), long isn’t always possible.

I really want to blog more. I’ve been blogging less often lately because I want to be a good employee. I should write more short, quick posts – better than nothing at all.

Bush Defies Democrats With 3 Appointments – New York Times

President Bush used Congress’s Easter break today to defy Democratic lawmakers and appoint three officials who have already drawn heavy criticism on Capitol Hill…

Naming the three while Congress is in recess allows Mr. Bush to avoid the Senate confirmation process. The recess appointments allow the three to remain in their posts until the end of 2008, virtually the end of Mr. Bush’s second term.

This was the last straw for me today.

Past presidents have used the recess appointment power before. Clinton famously did it to appoint the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, to Luxemburg, over Republican objections. (Interestingly enough, one of today’s recess appointments is the ambassadorship to neighboring Belgium. Bush appointed Sam Fox, who gave $50,000 to the anti-Kerry “Swift Boat Veterans” group in 2004.)

But on top of everything else Bush is doing, this put me over the edge. It’s not enough that he has to be an ass regarding the Iraqi civil war – using totally unhelpful phrases today such as “pure evil” and defying the will of the American people. No; on top of that, he has to go ahead and pull a stunt like this.

Not that I should be at all surprised.

GOD, I can’t wait until 1/20/09.

This obituary of the composer Zalvader Ipako has got to be an April Fool’s joke, according to the New Yorker’s Alex Ross. (Especially since there are no previous Google results for him.) It’s enjoyable on a highbrow level.

Born in 1903, in Valletta, he began his musical career almost a century ago, when—so the story goes—at the age of seven he was heard by a priest as he sang folksongs to draw customers to the sardines he was selling at the quayside.

…

He worked his way into the theatre when he knew Diaghilev’s company was rehearsing, came to the notice of the great impresario, and in 1922 gained a commission to write a ballet of his own. Diaghilev appears to have intended a satirical-sentimental treatment of the Russian Revolution—the title was to be Lenine!—for which Ipako was to create an orchestral score out of songs by Brahms.

…

After his break with Thibaud, Ipako withdrew more and more into himself. From this point the chronology becomes hazy, but it was probably in 1928 or 1929 that he embarked on what would be the major endeavour of his Paris years, though probably not completed until after he had gone back to Valletta on the outbreak of war: his Tristan Mass. Far more ambitious than the Tosca violin concerto in every way, this was a setting for eight voices (it is not clear whether Ipako intended eight soloists, or four soloists with a four-part chorus, or an eight-part chorus), seemingly prompted by the conviction that Wagner’s music could expand—had to expand—into harmonic realms the original composer did not begin to envisage.

Ipako’s Tristan Mass starts exactly as Wagner’s opera does, but with the opening phrase setting the words ‘Kyrie eleison’. From there it gradually unfolds into its own universe while maintaining, all the time, its connection with Wagner’s material. The entire ‘Credo’ is built as an eight-part fugue lasting forty minutes, with complex mensuration procedures used with almost incredible skill to preserve the intervallic outlines of the themes within the consistently developing harmony. No less remarkable is the second ‘Agnus Dei’, in just two parts: a coloratura soprano line that stays always above the treble staff and goes up as high as an A in altissimo, and a basso profundo part that, conversely, lies always below the bass staff. These two voices, as they interlock and counter each other, imply a great abundance of harmonic movement in the middle of the texture—of harmonic movement that is not actually heard.

Too bad it’s not real. I’d love to hear it.

Here’s a question for you all.

Do couples have less of a social life than singles?

On a Saturday night at 8:18 p.m. when Matt and I are both sitting at our computers, I’m just wondering.

I just had a beautiful afternoon and did me some shoppin’.

Yeah. Not shopping. Shoppin’.

I went Budget Gay. (Old Navy and the Gap – I guess H&M would really go into that category, too, but I didn’t go there.) I got a pair of boot cut jeans (30×28! they fit me. yay!), a XS-size ringer tee (I found one in that size. yay!), a hooded sweatshirt, a pair of flip-flops, a polo, and two plain t-shirts.

Yeah, a hoodie and flip-flops. You know, in case the weather keeps shifting.

I also got a long-overdue haircut.

It’s beautiful out and I’m all set for spring.

Yay!

Time to harness the power of the blogosphere. Does anyone know of any available Passover seders in New York City this Monday night? My family’s going to be out of town and I’m looking for one. The gay synagogue’s seder is sold out, and I’m curious about other opportunities.

This is a great book review/profile of Andrew Sullivan.

According to the front page of today’s Washington Post, the rabbi from my old synagogue in Tokyo is now the chief rabbi of Poland.

Who knew?

The season finale of “Battlestar Galactica”:

What. The. Fuck.

“I don’t think everybody is going to move out of 80th Street, but obviously this is the most famous and most desired ZIP code in the city and in America.”

So says real estate broker Michele Kleier, about the shrinking of a zip code on the Upper East Side.

Umm… I live in New York and I’ve never heard of 10021. And I’m pretty sure 90210 is much more famous.

This looks like an article in search of a story.

Spring begins tonight at 8:07 p.m. East Coast time.

Yay!