Gay Marriage Ruling

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the hippie-dippy California Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, destroying all that is good and sacred in a 4-3 decision.

That’s right, in a blatant display of judicial activism, the California Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, has taken the dysfunctional and failed construction of marriage and proceeded to cram it down the throats of the gay community.

It disgusts me. Hiding behind the California constitution, Chief Justice Ronald M. George proclaimed in the majority opinion “everyone must marry—even if you have only dated for two years and are not a sharing toothbrush—because it’s not fair that only heterosexual couples are saddled with the burden and broken convention that is the American marriage.”

My heart goes out to the gay community as it must now carry the dead weight of marriage, too. The statistics show that only 50 percent of marriages succeed. I mean, would you go to a doctor that offers the correct diagnosis only half the time? Absolutely not. But now we’re insisting the gay community embrace our derailed Victorian-era idea of true love and matrimony. I know, I witnessed my parents’ marriage.

Unfortunately for me, my folks didn’t divorce until after I graduated from high school. For years, I experienced firsthand the realities of marriage, the challenges of communicating, careers, and carpools, and it has left me with more anxiety than Zoloft knows what to do with. It’s a daily struggle. Thank you for your prayers.

Immediately after the ruling came down, California politicians began pandering to the powerful pro-marriage lobby. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that he, himself, would officiate ceremonies, declaring, “It's been a long journey to reach this historic day. . . . This is about people and the right for people to love who they want.” Yeah sure, buddy. This champion of loving marriages is in the midst of a messy divorce after an affair with a local television reporter.

And then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chimed in, declaring, “I respect the court's decision, and as governor, I will uphold its ruling.” Come on, Arnold! If you’re truly the Governator, you don’t need to respect anything, not even marriage.

I must say, among all this gay rah-rah over civil rights, it’s good to see Minnesota’s own governor decrying the pitfalls of marriage. Why, just this past weekend Gov. Pawlenty told WCCO’s Mike Max that he’s not “getting any” these days. Amen, brother. Pawlenty, like Aristophanes’s play Lysistrata, tells it like it is. In an election year, it’s good to see someone so willing to stand up to special interest. And sad, too, that such a good-looking guy is so high and dry. That guy got mad game.

As for me,  I truly understand the evangelical Christian’s outrage on this court ruling.  See, like any good Christian, I try as best I can to live my life in Christ’s image. And like Christ, I will not waste my time with marriage. Jesus never married, never dressed his disciples up in tuxedos and made them give drunken testaments/toasts at the American Legion of Nazareth. He never gave a sweet little Israelite a blood diamond and then forced her to choose between her falafel business or raising a family. Jesus was too busy being “married” to his one true relationship, his relationship with God. It’s truly a match made in heaven and to one we should all aspire.

You may point your finger at me and say, “What about your grandparents, David? Their marriage has ‘worked’ for more than sixty-five years.”

Sure those old coots are still stuck with each other, but it’s nothing more than a marital aberration. It’s not what nature or God ever intended. My grandparents are like those frogs in LeSueur with three legs—somehow their DNA got screwed up, most likely because of drinking water laced with pesticides.

Hopefully for California, this debate over marriage will come to a halt in the November election. Opponents of same-sex marriage have supposedly secured enough signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would effectively define marriage in California as between a man and a woman. If voters approve the amendment, it would most likely nullify yesterday’s court decision and, thus, successfully quarantine this insidious disease we call marriage to only heterosexual couples.

LA Log’s Reading Rainbow

James Frey, the Hazelden graduate and faux-memoir extraordinaire of A Million Little Pieces , has penned his first (or second, depending on how you run your card catalog) novel. The LA Times’s review yesterday called it, “ . . . a poorly written, superficial novel set in a Los Angeles populated by shallow characters . . . a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read.”

Whoa, Daddy, talk about a sour comeback.

Despite this critical lashing, Frey still gets under my skin like chiggers. It’s jealously, no doubt, that this “failed TV writer” (as one television executive once described him to me) made millions writing lies about his recovery and was scolded by Oprah on national television, only to be paid a million and half for a book that “is an execrable novel, a literary train wreck without even the good grace to be entertaining,” according to the LA Times review.

Although this review is scathing, I can only imagine the review of Alec Baldwin’s upcoming book on “divorce and parental alienation.”

That’s right, in a one-on-one interview on 60 Minutes last Sunday, Baldwin claimed he’s writing a parenting book. It’s quite ironic considering his infamous voice mail last year in which he called his daughter a “thoughtless little pig.”

Reporter Morley Safer pushed Baldwin on the voice mail, and Baldwin replied that he’s “overwhelmed by the sanctimonious” of other people in judging him and that he received numerous calls from people who sympathized with him.

I cannot wait to learn other Baldwinian techniques for taming the out-of-control teen.

And finally, in the world of LA Books . . .

The town is buzzing with LA Times columnist Steve Lopez’s book on his friendship with a skid row musician. Entitled The Soloist, the book follows Lopez’s relationship with a homeless violinist virtuoso while writing a series of columns on skid row. Although the book came out last fall, a feature film version is currently being shot in downtown Los Angeles with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. It’s due for release in November, and I’d be willing to bet it’s an Oscar contender.

Here’s a good story in the LA Times about the production and why now, more than ever, newspaper reporters need to be seen as heroines on and off the silver screen.

Victoria's Secret Perfume Launch

Eva Longoria Parker opened a restaurant in Hollywood last month with famed chef Todd English. Beso, as it’s called, serves a Mexican-Mediterranean fusion in a trendy nightclub setting with vaulted ceilings, allowing Hollywood egomaniacs plenty of room to levitate should their head suddenly swell. Although such a blend of cuisines and stardom does not excite me, I found myself attending a Victoria’s Secret perfume launch at the restaurant on Tuesday night.

NOTE: If invited to a Victoria’s Secret perfume party, a) inquire as to how many models will show up b) don’t expect a lingerie catalog come to life; and c) don’t wear your ratty purple Gap button-up with a hole in the elbow.

Had someone clued me in, I probably wouldn’t have stood there against the bar talking to the Los Angeles magazine reporter for most of the night trying to identify celebrities. Frankly, without the lingerie (and air brushing), it’s hard to tell which LA babe is just a hoochie in heels or the real deal. It’s not like they wore name tags identifying themselves as international cover girls as I would have liked.

I did figure out that Miranda Kerr, a Victoria’s Secret Angel model and the headliner of the event, was in a booth with an entourage nibbling on uninspired cheese pizza. Yeah, I know, cheese pizza. Come on Longoria Parker!  Additionally, I recognized Christina Milian, the singer and former MTV VJ, but didn’t dare approach her because of the two-ton man walking in her shadow. As for the other hundred beautiful women making eyes at me, well, I had no clue.

So I ate the tasteless, under-cooked chicken skewers and drank the drink of the night: Velvet Jack, a mix of Chambord and Jack Daniel's. Chambord, a French liquor that’s tastes like condensed milk and shriveled raspberries, was one of the night’s sponsors.

There were other dudes there, dressed without holes in their shirts (I didn’t have time to change after I poked a hole in it earlier in the day—I have very sharp elbows), engaged in the same kind of neck straining as me. Two Project Runway contestants, Nick Verreos and Rami Kashou, mingled about. And Christian Oliver, whose career will surely soar with this summer’s blockbuster Speed Racer, was supposedly standing next to me for quite some time, but I took him for a representative from Chambord’s corporate office. Actors Chris Evans (Not Another Teen Movie) and Jeremy Piven (Entourage) were supposedly there as well. Alas, Longoria Parker never made an appearance, so I assumed she was in the kitchen under cooking the chicken.

After talking the Los Angeles magazine reporter’s ear off in an attempt to get a sensational and obnoxious quote in her story—“This type of event is for B-level celebrities and low-level PR floozies trying to justify their salaries and existence”—I headed for the door and the free swag: a bottle of Victoria’s Secret Heavenly Kiss perfume. Sadly, when I approached the swag table, I was informed that they’d just run out.

Perhaps they noticed my elbow protruding from the tear in my shirt and decided it was best if I wasn’t anywhere near the new product.

LA Gives Good Mall

The American mall, if you’re not accustomed, is no longer called a mall but rather an urban lifestyle center. And this past week, Los Angeles opened its newest and finest: Americana at Brand.

Named for the street it sits on in Glendale, its gardens, trolleys, and fountains are supposed to invoke a Disney-esque, faux European/Mayberry town that houses a Kate Spade, Tiffany & Co., and Wetzel’s Pretzels. I, unfortunately, was not able to visit it opening weekend because my significant other thinks the whole thing rather disgusting. She doesn’t get off on “good mall” like I do. She doesn’t understand. She reads Michael Pollan.

The $400 million Americana is the brainchild of Rick Caruso, the creator of Los Angeles’s other notable mall, The Grove. Whereas The Grove is just a lifestyle center for shopping, Americana is a lifestyle center for shopping and living, containing 238 apartments and 100 condos (priced from $700,000 to $2.4 million, according to the LA Times).

Last week, the festivities kicked off with a private party that included Jay Leno as an emcee; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger uttering sentences such as, “I love shopping. I’ll be BACK”; and an entire jury who had decided a civil court case in favor of the new mall. (Basically, a competing nearby mall tried to inflict pain on the construction of Americana by, get this, illegally threatening The Cheesecake Factory from moving into the lifestyle center. The jury awarded Caruso $89 million in damages. You mess with a man’s God-given right to have a Cheesecake Factory, and you’re gonna pay, buddy.)

All this makes me think of the year 1956 and the opening of Southdale, America’s first mall and/or lifestyle center. Back then, putting birds in fifty-foot cages in the malls atrium was considered “good mall." Yeah, I can’t erase those bird cages from my childhood memories.

Sixty years later, we’re still improving on Southdale architect Victor Gruen’s idealized structure that, in his mind, would bring a civic hub to suburbia.  I’m not sure Americana at Brand is what he had in mind.

My question is this: When is MOA opening up condos with a $2.4 million price tag?

America is "So Over the Drama”

Jezebel had long legs, ratty highlights, and the first thing out of her mouth was, “I’m so over the drama of my last relationship, yeah know? Who needs drama? Pleazzze!”

I don’t know, babe. Maybe you?

Women and men who love to gush about the end of drama really never want the drama to end. They get off like frisky cocker spaniels on the lurid details of friends sleeping with friends, on-again/off-again relationships, and retelling the tales of drunken nights with the statement, “I was so wasted. . .”

I thought of Jezebel, that sweet blind date drama queen from so long ago (with whom I never got dramatic) as I read a story Wednesday in The New York Times about the sharp decline in dramatic television viewership. Since the end of the WGA strike, Americans aren’t seekin’ the drama on TV like they used to.

Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, House, and CSI have all returned with first-run episodes and have “recorded ratings among the lowest in their recent histories,” according to the article.

In comparison, comedies such as The Office, Two and a Half Men, and Family Guy have all returned at or above their normal viewership.

The network execs are claiming that the serialized stories, which were left open-ended for so long by the strike, are what initially keep viewers at bay. But, they are confident that come the fall the drama seekers will be back in full force.

This is clearly wishful thinking. America is “so over the drama” right now because, if you haven’t noticed, we’re waist f-ing deep in it.

We’re on drama overload. Everywhere you turn, every aspect of our American life is brimming with high stake dramatics: from a war to an energy crisis to a burgeoning debt to a wayward presidential election with candidates who burn American flag lapel pins for fun.

Seriously, who has any empathy these days for the problems of fictitious characters, especially fictitious doctors— most of us can’t even afford to visit a real doctor.  In fact, we really can’t afford anything until those rebate checks arrive.

I tried watching an hour of American Idol (a dramatic show, no less, that has recently seen its mighty ratings dip) Wednesday night and was made sick by the advertisements, each tantalizing me with luxury items now out of the budget, like head lettuce.

At least Hillary and McCain are going to ease the summer drama by lifting the gas tax. Gosh darn, those baby boomers are so good at solving dramatic problems. Thank you, boomers, once again for not forcing our country to make any changes or sacrifices to our blessed lifestyle even though such choices are exponentially increasing our debt and eviscerating any chance of me ever being able to retire to a 1,000 acre golf community, like you, because I’ve been crushed by global food riots . . .

I’m sorry. I’m being too dramatic. My mind’s a little foggy.

See, I got so wasted last night . . .