Love this. Love love love love love it.
I’ve watched it on YouTube, like, five times since it aired on Thursday. Which is so not me.

It could be the most passionate, realistic kiss between two men I’ve ever seen on broadcast TV.

And it wasn’t just the kiss scene that was well done; the whole story arc was well written (really, this episode overall was one of Grey’s better). It could’ve been clichéd and pathetic… but it was realistic and made a point without being preachy.

I am not a Barack Obama fan.

Really, the man annoys me.

Barack Obama is a politician. He’s a very smart politician. But he’s still a politician. And just like every other politician who runs for office, he’s going to do whatever he has to—within reason (unless he’s sure he won’t get caught, of course)—to win an election. He has convinced the cattle we call the American public that he is a different kind of politician. That he will bring about a different kind of leadership, a different kind of politics to this country.

I call bullshit.

He wants to get elected (duh), and he and his team are incredibly smart. They know the majority of Americans are so sick of what’s been going on in Washington (and their local capitols, for that matter), that they will respond strongly to a call for change, a call for a different kind of Washington.

Frankly, it reminds me of Karl Rove. Observe and analyze the public until you understand them well enough to manipulate their emotions. Create a campaign that appeals to those emotions. And voila—you win. It’s very smart (have I mentioned that yet?). And for this reason, I will not be terribly upset if Obama gets the nomination. I do believe he has the best of intentions for this country, and we agree on most some of the issues.

But I strongly dislike how he has portrayed himself as so different from “the norm” in the field.

With Hillary, I know exactly what I’m going to get. I like her (a lot, actually), but I don’t really trust her. I don’t really trust anyone in public office, period. And I don’t need to. Which is fortunate, ’cause it ain’t never gonna happen.

What I do need is to look at the candidates’ histories, look at their abilities, and consider how they’ll lead and how they’ll represent this country to the world. And I’m totally convinced that Hillary is the person for the job. She’s absolutely the most capable. She has the experience (nationally and internationally), the chutzpah, and the international respect to change this country’s position in the world—that is, to repair the damage done by Bush.

And though both Hillary and Obama bring up Jesus (everybody’s favorite when namedropping) when it suits them, Obama is so much more sincere about his Jesus-love and he uses it so much more frequently, wearing his Christianity on his sleeve. I’m not particularly fond of Jesus-lovers. Especially in the White House; we’ve had enough of that already. Hillary has the Jesus-love, she shows it, she uses it, and then she puts it away. I much prefer that. Put that shit back in the closet where it belongs. Jesus has no place in politics anyway.

Obama may command a room of emotional, needy Americans. But I don’t think he’s capable of commanding the international presence necessary for the president of the United States. And I don’t think any one person is capable of bringing about the Washington change he’s campaigning on. So I’m pissed that he’s promising. It makes me trust him even less than Hillary and the other politicians.

Maybe I’m too cynical. But I’m convinced Barack Obama is the most dangerous kind of politician: the kind who manipulates you into thinking he’s not really a politician at all.

I have never been one to link to YouTube clips.

But this is really funny.

It’s like they’re doing a little dance, choreographed especially for their outfits.

You know it has snowed a lot when the polygamists across the street shovel their driveway. Well, actually, when they send out their multiple spawn to shovel.

Let me back up a little.

The polygamists almost never shovel when it snows. They just drive over it and deal with it. I guess big, people-heavy cars can do that.

Last week, I was out shoveling our HUGE driveway (we have more square footage of driveway and sidewalk than we do house—really), when I couldn’t believe my eyes: polygamist mother #2 was instructing some of the children who’d just gotten out of the 12-passenger van to go around to the back of the house and get the snow shovels.

I thought: “They have snow shovels? Why do they have snow shovels when they clearly don’t use them?”

But, not to worry, the universe was normal: they didn’t shovel their driveway. They shoveled their sidewalk, the neighbor’s sidewalk, and part of the neighbor’s driveway. Then they went inside, apparently done. Without touching their own driveway.

Don’t ask me. As far as I know (and believe me, I know), they don’t really know or speak to that particular neighbor.

I should probably back up a little further.

The property we live on is large, about two acres (we are still renovating the house in downtown SLC we purchased in fall 2006; we don’t live there yet, and don’t get me started on that). But the lot is shallow and very long, with much of it fronting the street (remember all that sidewalk-shoveling I was bitching about?), so there are actually three houses that are all technically “across the street” from us.

The first month that Patrick and I lived in this house, I’d pull in the driveway, look over at the house directly across from our driveway, and think, “My God, they’ve got a lot of children over there!”

Then I started noticing that the eight or so children I’d been seeing every day were not the same children from day to day.
“Ohhhhh,” I thought, “she’s running a daycare out of their house!”

Nope.

Before long, I starting paying more attention. When we first moved in, we were not particularly neighborly as we didn’t plan on staying long (buying a house, remember? Ha!), so up to that point I’d mostly ignored the neighbors and their comings and goings. Plus, we keep odd hours here at the Nick/Patrick household and rarely were we coming or going when anyone else was.

Anyway, once I started keeping track, it wasn’t difficult to see that the two women, six vehicles (including a Suburban and a 12-passenger van), and many children could mean only one thing. And I’m not talking about car-and-kid-loving lesbians. Unfortunately.

There was a brunette wife and a blonde wife, and who knows how many kids. Every once in a while, an older guy in a Buick would come by for a few days.

And then I noticed that the kids would often come and go from another house across the street, one that was two away from their “primary” house. And I thought, “Wow! It’s Big Love, right here on our street!” It looked like there was one more wife (wife #3) over there, in house #2.

That first summer, there were also a half-dozen adolescent boys living in one house or the other. They were the only people I’d see when I came home late at night, after work or post-club. They would park their cars wherever—in the driveway, in the street, on the lawn—and stand in a circle, talking, in front of their driveway (and therefore in front of ours). When I’d pull up, they’d stop talking and all turn to look at me. Then they’d stare, silently, while I opened our gate and garage, walked back to my car, drove it in, and closed both the gate and garage. Only when I went in the house and shut the door would they turn back to their circle and begin talking. Seriously—I watched from the window.

But sometime in the spring of 2007, the teenage boys all disappeared. Old enough to be competition for wives perhaps? I don’t know. But the older guy in the Buick was at the “main” house consistently now, and I began to wonder what happened to the other house.

So, just to make sure y’all are following: polygamist house #1 is across the street from one end of our lot, and polygamist house #2 is across the street from the other end, with a house between them.

As for that middle house…in 2006 I finally met the people who lived there, when there was a fire in the neighborhood and we were all out gawking. They are a young couple I really like; they have a dog, a couple little kids, and run an earth-based church out of their backyard. (Which explained the monthly or so drum circles we’d been hearing.)

When I first met the young couple, I was tempted to ask them what they knew about their neighbors. At that point, I’d only noticed polygamist house #1 and didn’t know they were sandwiched. But I didn’t ask because I was afraid they were close or something. And it seemed odd to meet someone and immediately be all, “Excuse me, have you noticed that your neighbor has two wives?”

But a few months ago, there was another neighborhood occurrence and we spent some time outside in our pajamas talking to the young couple in the middle house, particularly the wife. After chatting about how much we liked the neighborhood and how quiet it was, I finally ventured, “So…your neighbors?”
“Oh!” she said. “The polygamists!”
“Yeah! I wondered—are they really…?”
“Oh yeah. What a nightmare! Pagans stuck between polygamists.”
(”How did she know we called them that?” I wondered.)
“Across from two homos!” Patrick helpfully added.
“What nightmare?” I asked. “Do they bother you?”
“Well…” she said.

To paraphrase her story:
Their house and house #1 share a tennis court in the back yard that straddles the property line (I already knew this from previous owners; at some point, the two houses were owned by friends who were both tennis fans). As the pagan church’s membership grew, they were expanding their small backyard facility and had decided to put up a fence, down the middle of the tennis court (they didn’t play anyway). Well, they made that decision because of the church’s growth and the fact that the polygamists had been using the pagans’ backyard as a conduit to run people between the two houses.

The pagans had fence posts installed one Friday; they planned to add the fence on Monday after the concrete cured. But they woke up Saturday morning to find all their fence posts had been removed during the night, the concrete chipped off, and the posts stacked in their backyard.

So they called the police.

What you’d expect followed: legal threats, surveys, deeds, etc. As most of you probably know, you can pretty much always install a fence in your backyard if you want to. But the tennis court complicated it a little, so pagan wife had to get deeds, tax records, surveys, and whatnot to prove that the tennis court didn’t involve an easement for either property. In the process, she came across the name of the party responsible for house #1’s property taxes: a company owned and run by one of Utah’s most notorious (and wealthiest) polygamist clans. And older guy in Buick isn’t exactly a nobody within the group. Oh, and by the way, members of this particular polygamist clan all dress normally; no special braids, hair-curls, or pioneer dresses here. You’d never know if you ran into one of the wives at the grocery store.

Anyway, the pagans got the fence installed, and their relationship with the polygamists is no more chilly than the homos’ relationship with the polygamists.

That explained why I’d suddenly noticed more “front-of-house” activity between polygamist houses 1 and 2. But I still wondered:
“Your house was for sale when they moved in,” I said to pagan wife that night. “Why didn’t they just buy adjoining houses?”
“Too obvious, maybe?” she shrugged.
“Did you know when you bought the house that you would be sandwiched between…”
“Oh, no way!”
“Ouch.”
“But we probably would have bought anyway. It was a great price. And we love the neighborhood.”

Actually, we’ve ended up loving this neighborhood, too. Even though I am so excited about moving out of suburbia and into our new house in downtown SLC (whenever we finish it, that is), I am really going to miss this block. It’s soooo quiet, but at the same time so entertaining in its own way.

As you’ve read.

Wrap your head around this: a nice, young pagan couple lives smack between the two homes of a polygamist family. Across from a nonreligious gay couple. If that isn’t enough, within a block—in addition to polygamists, pagans, and homos—there’s a Buddhist temple and a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

How’s that for religious diversity?

There’s not a nuclear Mormon family on the block. Thank God.

A visitor from the United Kingdom just found Zionide by Googling “swollen vagina and now smells.”

I didn’t think I could get any more gay but, given my reaction to that search string… I was wrong.

Feeling antsy over here.

For months, I’ve been ignoring the urge to write. Don’t know what I want to say, but… something’s brewing.

Stay tuned?

So John Amaechi, former Utah Jazz player (among other teams), is coming out of the closet.

Funny, I didn’t think he was ever really in the closet. When Amaechi was in Salt Lake (2001-2003, I think), a lot of people around the team and in the local media knew. I heard back then that the guy he was dating was invited to the “Jazz wives’” functions during away games, etc., just like Kay Malone et al. I thought that was pretty cool, especially for a Larry H. Miller enterprise.

There was another gay player on the Jazz a few years before Amaechi (no surprise, statistically–there’s probably one now I just don’t know about), but he was–and, apparently, still is–significantly closeted. It’s a shame.

And no, I’m not in the business of outing athletes. Even retired ones that should grow a set and do it themselves.

Patrick is convinced there’s something dead in our furnace vents. He smells something bad, he says. It’s disgusting, says he.

I smell nothing.

He’s been unscrewing grills, shining flashlights through ductwork, being a little HVAC detective for almost an hour now. I find it amusing, and kinda cute. I suppose I’ll be grateful if he actually finds something, or if I suddenly develop a better sense of smell.

That brings up a strange point, actually. I usually have a really fine sense of smell. I’m always telling Patrick that this or that smells funny, wrong, bad. Things HE can’t smell.
“What’s that smell?” I’ll ask when I get home.
“I had onions with lunch… 8 hours ago,” he’ll say from the other room.
“Here?”
“No, at work.”
“Did you spill on yourself?”
“No!”
“Well, then I guess I’m smelling them on you still, from here!”
“I love you, too.”

Really, I’m kind of enjoying being the olfactory-challenged one for once. Especially if it’s as bad as he’s making it out to be.

I hope he finds the source so we can go to bed…

Oh, and yeah: Welcome to 2007. Missed a few months there, didn’t I?

I haven’t even thought about blogging in the last month, and I completely stopped reading blogs, too.

I was initially a little ashamed that I did a big redesign, then wrote just two posts in two months… but I’m over that now.

This is what’s working for my life, and that’s all that matters. I’ll post when I want to, if it happens again. Part of me thinks the freedom I’m granting myself by not feeling obligated will fuel me to write. And part of me thinks that’s bullshit. So we’ll see.

Really, I’ve been pretty absent from blogland, especially gay Utah blogland, for over a year, and dozens of new local blogs have popped up in that time. I’m less than impressed with what I’ve read so far, but I don’t think anybody’s out to impress me anyway.

I’m also saddened that two of my favorite [non-local] gay bloggers–you know who you are–have closed up shop in recent weeks. The future of blogging seems dismal to me right now, and for once I don’t think it has as much to do with my mood as the actual swear-to-God state of things. What is probably all about my mood is the poor taste left in my mouth after reading the suddenly-trendy, woe-is-me gay Mormon bloggers. But more on that some other time.

Since I last posted, Patrick’s and my life has changed quite a bit. Baxter has a sister, Abby, who is clumsy, loud, and super-friendly–in short, everything Baxter is not. But she’s good for him, and she really is a charmer.

Also, I have a broken thumb. I was a klutz and fell down a big flight of stairs. I tripped. Oops.

The good news is that after a fall like that, I expected a hurt back or a broken leg or something, but no. When I got up, I was relieved to note that a) I did not hurt, and b) no one saw it happen.

Then I looked down at my right hand and noticed that the end knuckle of my thumb was bent 90 degrees the wrong way. While I was still full of adrenaline and there would be no pain, I hurried and popped it back in the direction it was supposed to be. The knuckle made a satisfying *pop* when it was re-located, and I can only imagine how bad it would’ve hurt if I’d waited until I could feel something. Now, of course, it hurts like hell and is purple and swollen. The doc says 5 days in a brace thingy that keeps my wrist and thumb from moving.

Because it’s my right hand, I can’t really write, eat with utensils, or do up my own pants. (Hey, you try doing up buttons without a thumb!) Even typing and using a mouse are kinda tough. Thank god I can mostly still use my fingers.

And double thank god that I’m ambidexterous for certain other… hand-necessary activities.

Oh, stop. You knew I would be. And that eventually I’d go there.

Other changes… Patrick and I bought a house at the end of last month. It’s overwhelming and scary and all those adult things, but we’re really excited.

Our new house is a big, old 1896 Victorian in downtown Salt Lake City, in an area designated the Central City Historic District. It needs a LOT of work, so we’re not moving in immediately, but I’ve always wanted to live in central city, and I’ve always wanted a house just like this… and now it’s going to happen!

Our neighborhood is in the middle of a gentrification wave, so many of the homes on our block are undergoing renovation - and some of the renovators are other gay people. Like our realtor says, “Wanna know where the next hot housing area will be? Follow the gay boys!”

I’m working quite a bit–we’ve got a mortgage now, after all–but it’s good work and I’m reasonably satisfied. That is, I’ve temporarily stopped stressing over the million dollar question, “What am I going to DO with my life??” I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing, because I need that push to keep growing and trying new things, but I do think it’s nice to take a short break from constantly trying to figure it out. It was getting to be too much.

In that vein, right now I’m reading The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, and though it seems a little too proud of itself, most the ideas make sense and it’s helped me realize I really don’t have to settle on doing only ONE of the things I love and am good at. Which is nice, since I’ve all but given up on ever having a regular day job again. This varied freelance life, where I can write, edit, produce TV, consult, bartend, sleep all day… or whatever else I feel like that week, is much more my style.

Hey, as long as it pays all the bills, right?

From this morning’s cross-country conversation with my best friend, who is a lesbian currently engaged to her girlfriend:

BF: I need to talk to you about something.
Me: Okay.
BF: I have a crush. And I need help handling it.
Me: You always have crushes. It’ll pass.
BF: This one’s different. It’s a big, big, BIG crush.
Me: Oh? Who is she?
BF: Well… that’s the other thing. It’s… he.
Me: …
BF: Hello?
Me: …
BF: Stop it! I know, I know!
Me: Wow. Okay. Let’s think about this. Is it a big crush like, “That gay boy is so cute! I love him!”?
BF: Well…
Me: Or a big crush like, “I want that straight man’s penis in my vagina RIGHT NOW!”?
BF: …
Me: Well?
BF: Eww! Gross!
Me: Alrighty then.
BF: Wow… crush is over. I knew there was a reason I always called you with these things.
Me: My job is done.