MILK

Last week I went to The Castro Theatre to see Milk. I liked it in spite of the fact that I wouldn't trust Gus Van Sant to direct my dry cleaning for fear of it becoming emotionally over-wrought and tedious. I think he really hit his stride in his Red Hot Chilli Pepper's video days, but I digress. The movie was excellent, important, and it seemed all the more so by seeing it in San Francisco. It was sort of the equivalent of seeing Casablanca in Morocco or Star Wars in Space. The place was mobbed, and for good reason, as The Castro was spawned directly from Harvey Milk's roots in the once stuffy Eureka Valley. I started thinking about the movie on my early morning flight to Dallas today. I can't think of many places that are less like San Francisco than Dallas, Texas. There was still an army of McCain/Palin lawn signs and bumper stickers up on the drive from the airport to the venue. On the flight I had been listening to the audio book of Obama's Dreams From My Father. It's really incredible, and I find his voice, both literally and, well literally to be quite soothing. He talks a lot about civil rights in the first few chapters, and his experience in an interracial family. It made me recall the Prop 6 argument from Milk (a proposal that supported the firing of gay teachers in California) and its parallels to the current Prop 8 debacle. It seems that both are matters of plain and simple civil rights, and I think (and hope, sooner rather than later) that it will become clear that refusing to acknowledge same sex couples is the same as refusing to acknowledge interracial or intercultural marriages. It all seems fairly ridiculous to me in San Francisco, but I can, if nothing else see the caliber of person that wouldn't understand why two people who love each other should be allowed to get married, or why Priscilla, Queen of The Desert is a pretty cool movie. Such is life.  In unrelated news, right now I'm looking into getting some 20-sided fuzzy dice for my new truck. In the meantime go see Milk.