Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Yale tight end Beau Palin

The Yale Daily News points out this amusing self-portrait by one of its football players:

“Tight end Beau Palin ’14 stands at 6’3” and weighs in at 240lbs. He worked in an Illinois mustard factory one summer and baled hay in Wisconsin during another one. He likes to wear the American flag. This is the story of him and his brothers at their home in Oconomowoc, WI.”

Btw, he’s no relation to the former half-term governor of Alaska.

Apparently all of his brothers enjoy wearing Old Glory in a similar fashion, and they are accomplished bare footers.

There was a cute video of Beau and his brothers “bare footing” but the video was made “private.” Sorry about that.

Posted on

DVD: “Beginners”

Based on the real-life experiences of filmmaker Mike Mills, this endearingly smart and artsy serio-comedy stars Ewan McGregor as the depressed son of a man who comes out of the closet at age 75 after his wife’s death.

The Sound of Music’s Christopher Plummer — an Oscar front-runner — plays the deliriously happy father, who spends his final years with a new gay social circle and a young boyfriend played by ER’s Goran Visnjic.

Check it out on Amazon.

Posted on

NYC tonight – Cheyenne Jackson at Carnegie Hall

Cheyenne Jackson’s Cocktail Hour: Music of The Mad Men Era

Star of Broadway, Glee, and 30 Rock, Cheyenne Jackson invites you to snap your fingers and tap your toes to the cool, swinging tunes of the 1950s and ’60s—a time when bossa nova was new, the lounges of Las Vegas were hip, and catchy dance music spun on every hi-fi.

From the Carnegie Hall website: Tonight, we take you back to a time when dance music was smooth and new opportunities were around every corner. The Mad Men era of the 1950s and ’60s introduced a new type of culture in America that combined social decadence with suave sophistication. For those special nights out on the town, elegance was the mode, with ladies in beautiful gowns and gentlemen in tuxedos. Of course, a martini and the occasional cigarette were popular accessories to complete the “look.”

Tickets still available starting under $20. How can you beat that?

Click here to for more info/tickets

Posted on

Newly restored West Side Story on Blu-ray/DVD

Available as a limited edition four-disc boxed set with Blu-ray, newly restored DVD, tribute CD, and collectible memorabilia, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s Oscar-winning 1961 “West Side Story” — based on the 1957 Broadway hit — now includes special featurettes that analyze and illuminate the film’s dance sequences and enduring legacy, plus song-specific commentary by out lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

I was fortunate to do the show many times. I think I eventually played every Jet in the cast. The score continues to be one of the most powerful and passionate scores in music theatre, and the roles are a gift for the actors who play them.

Check out the newly remastered Blu-ray/DVD package on Amazon.

Posted on

Super-committee deadline looms

The congressional super committee, facing a fast-approaching deadline, appears headed toward failure unless negotiations shift dramatically in the final few days.

Multiple sources say Republican leaders have proposed a smaller package of spending cuts and revenues as a ‘Plan B’ if the panel does not succeed, though even this offer appears unlikely to gain much traction.

But the plan, which would reduce the deficit by about $640 billion, was dismissed by Democratic leaders according to two Republican sources. Democrats, according to multiple sources, are insisting on a higher revenue component – such as eliminating oil and gas subsidies – to achieve the “balanced approach” they have sought all along.

Republicans, working with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered Democratic leaders this “backup plan” which included about $540 billion in mandatory spending cuts and fees, and only $3 billion in revenue from closing the corporate jets tax break.

That formula breakdowns to tax revenues of only one half of one percent of the total reductions proposed.

Sources say the focus has now shifted to finding a way to lessen the blow of the sequester – the automatic across-the-board cuts scheduled to set in if the super committee does not reach agreement on $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years.

(source)

Posted on

Colorado House elects gay minority leader

Colorado House of Representatives Democrats have elected Rep. Mark Ferrandino, an openly gay man, as their minority leader.

If control of the House should flip next year, Ferrandino would become House Speaker.

Though a civil unions bill failed in the legislature this past spring, Ferrandino has indicated Democrats intend to reintroduce the measure again in 2012.

Posted on

Balanced Budget Amendment would double unemployment rate

In a week, the GOP will again vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment. The vote is part of the final compromise to raise the debt limit, in which President Obama and Senate Democrats promised to hold a vote on such an amendment, despite the fact that such votes have failed numerous times in the past.

Republicans have taken to ignoring the obvious perilous consequences of the amendment even as voices on both sides of the aisle denounce it as the “worst idea in Washington.” The current amendment, former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett said, “looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.”

Today, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) added to that criticism, releasing a study highlighting a piece from Macroeconomic Advisers that notes that such an amendment would make future recessions “deeper and longer.”

And according to CBPP, passing a Balanced Budget Amendment now, with the country trying to climb out of the hole of joblessness caused by the recession, would have the exact opposite affect one would expect policy makers to try and achieve. In fact, the budget cuts required by such an amendment now would double the unemployment rate and slide the country back into the throes of recession:

If the 2012 budget were balanced through spending cuts, those cuts would total about $1.5 trillion in 2012 alone, the analysis estimates. Those cuts would throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.

Yet, despite evidence that the amendment would have disastrous consequences for our economy, Republicans — even those who pitch themselves as credible on the economy, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — continue to support it.

More at ThinkProgress.com

UPDATE: The House fell short of the votes necessary to approve a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a largely sybolic exercise on Friday afternoon.

The House voted, 261 to 165, in favor of the amendment, which would prohibit federal spending in any fiscal year from exceeding tax receipts for that year. While a majority of the chamber favored the measure, two-thirds of the House — 290 members — is needed to approve an amendment to the Constitution.