Lady Gaga’s new video for “Telephone” featuring Beyonce. This is 9.5 minutes of fun imagery, great music and dancing. There is blatant product placement to remind us that Gaga is playing into the “pop” ideal unashamed. There is a nod to Cher with some fishnet stockings and Taratino inspired themes dribbled throughout the short film.

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My 5th grade boycott also entailed doing research on the negative effects of captivity on killer whales and presenting this to my class in speeches, etc.  I could not possibly stand by my personal boycott without the rightful research. The recent incident involving Tillikum, the killer whale at Sea World’s Orlando park, killing a trainer, brought these memories back to the forefront. All the issues that people discussed around Keiko, “Free Willy’s killer whale star, are coming up again as the animal rights groups, the media and various other organizations discuss holding these massive marine mammals in large pools.

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The debate is fruitful. Holding animals in captivity and allowing people to see them up close helps create a better understanding as to why humanity needs to protect the environment and the animals. It creates a deeper appreciation for nature and broader awareness of how all aspects of nature and humanity truly work together. The research conducted at aquariums and zoos is extremely helpful in creating a better understanding of the world and how to protect. This all makes very clear sense.

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On the flip side, holding whales and dolphins in captivity can be harmful to these animals for a plethora of reasons. For one, these animals use sound to navigate. In an ocean, this sonar activity does not bounce off cement walls and back to the animals. In a tank, it does. There are numerous records of killer whales smashing into tank walls due to this effect.  Another effect of captivity, includes the physical change in the dorsal fin and its vertical form falling  to a side due to swimming in circles. Albeit not harmful or painful, it is a clear indication that these tanks are not suited for these large animals. Lastly, killer whales have been seen displaying unusual behavior not seen in their activity in nature, including masturbation and aggression towards humans. I think about going from the world’s oceans to a bright blue pool and this change can not healthy for a highly social animal.

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Contemplating the idea of keeping animals in captivity and the newly sparked debate of holding killer whales captive, I ponder the difference between holding killer whales captive in Sea World and its difference from keeping elephants in a zoo. Elephants are massive animals that go from having the freedom of roaming large masses of land to smaller exhibits in zoos.  The San Diego Zoo has a family of elephants and I had no problem visiting. So why the difference? I came to the following conclusion.

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Sea World’s problem is that it is profit focused. It acts more like a theme park with animals, rather than an aquarium, with roller coasters, Budweiser beer, training killer whales to do random tricks in an amphitheatre. It is owned by a beer company. It seems more heavily profit focused than research focused, almost as though it claims “research” solely to validate its existence amongst critics. The San Diego Zoo and most zoos seem to be more like a research facility that we are allowed to view. Yes, zoos have shows with trained animals, and yes, they sell souvenirs and such. The end goal of a zoo just seems to be more on protecting animals, helping animals and researching animals. Sea World seems to get lost in the mix of Disneyland, Universal Studios and Six Flags. The San Diego Zoo, and other quality zoos, seem to be more of a living museum. So, is it simply a moral difference; the motive behind the captivity that makes it okay, rather than the actual effects on the animal? I believe so.

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Sea World is not going away and the killer whales currently captive will have  a difficult time being reintroduced to ocean life, so the least Sea World could do is make the killer whale tank look more like an ocean and less like the local community swimming pool. Until something changes, my personal boycott lives on. My 5th grade feelings remain unchanged. What are your feelings about this issue? Here is some CNN coverage to get the mind going…

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Whale photos courtesy of:

free-stock-photos.com & free-stock-photos.co.uk

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This duo could not be a better fit for the VIVA GLAM initiative, and all those involved in the upstart of this promotion are clever producers in this natural combination. Lady Gaga is like a Cyndi Lauper of the 2000s. Everyone keeps posing the question of whether Lady Gaga is the next Madonna, but I think there may be better odds that she will be more like Cyndi Lauper. The two share similar styles, personalities and talents. Like the interviewers of morning talk, I digress from the topic at hand. Lady Gaga and Cyndi were both very skilled in their ability to pull the conversations away from pop talk and back to the important issue of safe sex and women. The two women were partnered, in part, due to statistics that the rate of new HIV infection rates are jumping for women ages 17-24 and 39-60 at a staggering pace. These two musical artists fit into one of these groups and are asking women to buy this lipstick for themselves and to give it to their sisters, mothers, friends, etc and remind them to protect themselves when having sex.

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A key issue at hand is the need for women to get the men they engage in sex with to utilize condoms. Lady Gaga and Cyndi want to empower women to not only be prepared, but to force their male partners to “wrap it up.” Men will make a lot of excuses not to use a condom and women need to recognize the power they have in a sexual relationship to enforce a rule of condom protection. The situation is no time to be submissive to the desires of a man. It comes down to sheer safety. These two women make it clear that HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease and women have to protect themselves against HIV. They had candid conversations with their interviewers about this topic. They were pushing for the hard sale of their lipstick and rightfully so. More importantly, they did not skirt around the idea of safe sex and condom use, despite the morning time slot of their discussion.

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As a young gay man, HIV/AIDS is one of those topics that tend to be  automatically associated with this sexual orientation, a leftover from the 1980s. My gay generation has been less directly effected by the epidemic, and statistics show a rise in new infections amongst gay males in their 20s. Researchers believe this may be due, in part, to the fact that younger generations who not only escaped witnessing the devastation of the epidemic in the 80s, also see HIV positive individuals living productive and healthy lives on medications. Seemingly, HIV appears to be treatable to many. I have heard one to many stories about my gay male friends having too much trust in their partners and risking infection. However, our gay community is constantly bombarded with information on HIV, as well as with free condoms and HIV testing. What I find more scary are the stories I have heard from my straight girlfriends over the years.

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It seems a benefit of the gay man – straight girl relationship is the liberty girls tend to feel in expressing and discussing their sexual escapades with their gay best friend. The idea here is that gay men are probably less likely to judge promiscuous behavior and cast the girl as immoral, and shall we say, “slut.” With this in mind, I have had the privilege of providing an ear to many of my girlfriends and a safe place for them to divulge their dark and dirty sexual encounters.  After providing this service for years and years now, I am constantly shocked at the lack of safe sex practices these women have employed. It is scary and it is shameful that our patriarchal society has yet to truly attack this dilemma head on. I have found that the core fear of these women is that of getting pregnant (and even this fear is subdued with the availability of Plan B). Consistently, I have heard my girlfriends tell me that they are on birth control, so everything is okay. The thought that they could catch any STD, let alone HIV, does not cross their mind because they are so focused on not creating a baby. Well ladies, birth control only prevents you from getting pregnant and if a male ejaculates inside you, you are putting yourself at risk for a plethora of STDs, including HIV. HIV is not a gay disease and your birth control does nothing to fight it, and while we are at it, “pulling out” does not prevent the spread of HIV, as the disease lives in pre-ejaculatory fluid (to use more scientific terminology).

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Watching Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper talk about this issue made me extremely happy, because I felt like I was the only one telling the girlfriends in my life that they have to be more consistent and diligent in their condom use. Yes, it is also the responsibility of the male, but his chances of catching HIV are far less than a women’s when not using protection. Both parties need to be involved in the safety of their actions, but women need to enforce a condom rule. Safe sex is not just birth control.

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I have made it a point to ask each girl about their condom use when they divulge their sexual escapades to me, and I encourage all the gay men out there, as well as all the mothers, all the sisters and all the girlfriends to make it part of the storytelling and apart of the conversation before and after the stories are told. As society becomes arguably more and more sexually liberated, it is pivotal that these conversations happen. Buy a tube of MAC VIVA GLAM lipstick for you. Buy one for a woman in your life and like Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper say in the clip below, hand it to them and tellthem you care about them, want them to be safe and to use a condom.

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I am getting off my soap box now, but you should continue scrolling and watch the clip below.

As we explored Washington, DC, we were able to stand on the very stone that Martin Luther King, Jr. stood upon as he gave his infamous “I have a dream speech” at the Lincoln Memorial. His struggle and his fight is the same battle me, my friends, my coworkers and my family are participating in today; civil rights and protections for all Americans, gay or straight. 

I stood on that stone and I thought about MLK, Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement for equality based on race. I thought about how he told America, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up… live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” I have this dream too. I have this dream for me and my gay and lesbian community. MLK, Jr. may have been marching for racial equality, but his movement is similar to the movement I am participating in today. I look to his lessons, his words and his history to teach me how to work towards building an America where I am “judged on the content of my character,” not by the gender of the person I love.

I have been embarking on this journey for gay and lesbian equality for more than a decade. It is a journey that I am a part of every day. As a young child, I remember every January learning about MLK Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement he led. As a nation, we celebrate this great leader on his birthday — a nationally recognized holiday. I remember as a young child not understanding why people of different races would ever be treated differently, but this holiday helped teach me the necessary lessons of racial injustice in America’s history and about the man that fought to change it. It is a lesson I carried with me into adulthood and have re-crafted into my own fight for civil rights for gays and lesbians today.

MLK Jr. Day is a holiday that allows us to reflect on the dreams of one American man, which are the dreams many of us still have and are still working for today. Let us not forget this dream of equality.

Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video was amazing, yes, but Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video blew me away. It is exactly what the music video artform is supposed to be and I cannot get enough of the video or the song!

There’s been a couple new additions to some of the pages, and new posts to come soon. My favorite 2009 video is posted below, so watch it because it’s awesome and stars 2009′s and probably 2010′s best female act, Lady Gaga.

In the meantime, if you have a New Year’s resolution you want to share with everyone, post it here. Sometimes when you write it down and visually see it, it is more apt to come true. I believe Oprah calls this “The Secret.”

If you have a hope, a wish or something you want to see for 2010, leave it here.

Click “Read More” below and add your comments there.

SNL’s Weekend Update takes on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell through comedy, playing off stereotypes, double entendres and more. Sometimes we all need to step back and have a laugh. A friend of mine told me recently, “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” Comedy or not, pressure Congress and President Obama to repeal the military’s discriminatory policy. It’s our tax dollars, afterall.

According to printed materials being passed out by picketers, the Hyatt Corporation had profits in the range of $1.3 billion within the last five years, with the CEO being paid $6.7 million last year. Recognizing assumed bias in these numbers, the strong cash stockpile and low debt the company holds, in conjunction with the strong IPO last week, shows that despite rough economic times, the Hyatt Hotel Corporation is fairing alright compared to others in the lodging industry. However, Hyatt has reported losses in the last three quarters of 2009. This may weaken striking workers ability to push for “a fair deal” this year, when the uncertain economic future still looms. Local 2 says, “They don’t need to take away affordable family healthcare from working people in order to ensure the ‘health’ of the company.”

A more troubling aspect of the relationship between labor and the Hyatt Corporation can be seen at a Hyatt property in Boston and what is being called the “HYATT 100.” It has been reported that 98 housekeepers at the Boston property were fired and replaced by contracted workers supplied by Hospitality Staffing Solutions. A large portion of these 98 employees had been working for Hyatt for numerous years, earning $15 an hour. The replacement contractors are working for $8 an hour as “temporary” workers. Hyatt Hotels is not the first company to commit such an act, and it certainly will not be the last. However, one must ask whether he or she will support such acts with their travel dollars, because everyone will end up footing the bill through tax dollars.

Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor at Boston University and author of “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” discusses the “HYATT 100″ in her piece, “The Race to the Bottom.” She explains that cutting costs through labor wages and benefits eventually hit taxpayers through social programs and services these workers will need to begin relying on to fill the gap. Although it is not necessarily the duty of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation to ensure social stability through their business practices, something must be done to protect dedicated workers from hungry executives at the top. The bust on Wall Street in 2008 seems to have shed some light on this idea of overpaid and irresponsible executive rule in the business world and it continues to worm its way through all industries, not just banking and insurance. As the country debates health care reform, it should be added that these 98 fired employees and their 98 contracted replacements will probably all have to seek government health care assistance.

In the end, not everyone can be an executive. Not everyone wants to be an executive. A hard day’s work cleaning hotel rooms, washing dishes or carrying luggage must not be discounted. The dignity and respect for a hard working employee is something that should be supported by corporations and consumers alike. Some of us start our careers working at the front desks of hotels and move on to a cubicle. Some of us, whether it be due to life circumstance or ability, continue a work path cleaning hotel rooms or serving at a restaurant. These employees deserve a fair deal as it is their sweat that makes a trip to a Hyatt Hotel a luxurious stay.

Support workers’ rights to a fair deal from the Hyatt Hotel Corporation. Boycott Hyatt Hotels. Doug Manchester, owner of the San Diegos’ Grand Manchester Hyatt, supported inequality for gay and lesbians in 2008 through his $125,000 donation supporting Prop 8. A Boston Hyatt unfairly removed almost 100 employees to replace them with labor at almost 50% the cost. How much more is the Hyatt going to do to hurt the lives of Americans?

For more information about Unite Here! go to www.UniteHere.org.

 
We lost Maine’s Prop 1 battle. Yes on Prop 1 won. A revisit of Prop 8 a year later, to the date. This time, anti-equality voters won at a 57% to 43% margin. This gap was slightly larger than Prop 8′s 52-48 vote. This small percentage gap we keep losing by is frustrating, but also gives me a lot of hope. I think this gap will be gone by a mere departure to heaven by the oldest generation. The oldest generation still has this conservative viewpoint on a lot of things in American life. They weren’t teenagers during the sexual liberation of the 60s/70s. They were the ones who built up the conservative 1950s that helped give way to the liberal push in the 60s/70s.

I did some historical math and I see some good things in the near future. Let me give you some hope through historical discourse:
**15th Amendment – Right to vote for all races (women still excluded) – 1870
**19th Amendment – Right to vote for women – 1920
**Civil Rights Act of 1964 – No discrimination based on race, sex or religion, 1964

We have 45-50 years between these civil rights pushes. One leads to the other, but the struggle was always happening before that. Black men got the right to vote, which pushed women to keep their fight for suffrage. These two minorities then pushed together for civil rights equality, which happened 44 years after suffrage. This helped give way to the gay liberation movement with Stonewall in 1969, 40 years ago. Based purely on historical discourse, we are right at the breaking point. You can see this with the signing of the Matthew Shepard Act a couple weeks back, the first major federal gay rights law. Although citizens of states are ripping marriage rights from us, we are gaining some major ground in other facets of daily life and new levels of government not seen in quite some time.

Let this be the history lesson for the day. Get angry, but we must keep faith and hope! Our time is now, but we just have to keep fighting the good fight and remember that we have justice on our side. We did this last year and we will do it this year. We’re on the winning side of history and we must tell ourselves that every day.