Richard Walker

"Inspired by irritability, impatience and disgust, this is a bald attempt to re-frame the debate (such as it is.) Excuse me Senator McCain but you seem to forget all of history’s lessons as completely as you forget what your own position was recently. I am in favor of a senility test for the Senate, frankly. As far a the tired old canard “unit cohesion would suffer” goes, I refer you to the Israeli compulsory military service and to World War II. Those serving in the former are quite cohesive (thank you very much) and the latter had plenty of closeted military personnel serving with honor. Let’s move on to Britain where one of the greatest minds in Mathematics and cryptology, Alan Turing, died much too young as a result of ignorant and horrific treatment by the British government. It should be noted that last year an official apology was issued by the British government concerning the treatment of Mr. Turing. Next to him in the “bad” column I’ll place Anthony Blunt, who you might say protested the injustices against him by becoming one of the most effective and damaging spies against his own government ever known: Of the Cambridge Five, as they have come to be known, only Kim Philby wasn’t a homosexual. It is rumored that Blunt recruited those four Apostles for Stalin. It is also rumored that Blunt used others’ homosexuality to blackmail even more hapless souls into the service of Mother Russia. Being homosexual was quite a different matter back in the staid 1930s. [source: Master Soviet Spy Sir Anthony Blunt’s Memoirs Released] In this country we find in the history books the likes of Roy Cohn — played so effectively by Al Pacino in the HBO adaptation of “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” “Unit cohesion” I hear people chant. I laugh at their pathetic stupidity. As far as lack of imagination goes, I ask those people to imagine where a language expert recently fired from the intelligence services might find employment — especially the Arab language experts. Thankfully these young people are much too patriotic to consider working for America’s enemies — but why on earth would you treat your own citizens so terribly for serving their own country? It’s just another bomb waiting to go off: the imbalanced, introverted genius who only needs the condemnation of family, community and government to push him over the edge. But go right ahead, keep trying to light the fuse. I’m sure someone will lend you the lucky match in time. As obvious as it may be to some, for others the fact must be underlined: it’s the stigma and homophobia here that create the security risk, not the individual’s private life." - Richard Walker

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, R. - Derrick

"These [World War II] leaders also continued to justify segregating whites and blacks as necessary for unit cohesion and morale." http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v... - bentley

"In this case a friend of mine Mark B. had his gmail account compromised this morning and clever scammers tried to turn this into a large cash payoff. After I poked around and found the number for his business online, I got him on the phone. As it turns out, Mark was fine in Sacramento, and had taken back his gmail account and was busy taking back control of his Facebook account as well. Meanwhile, the scammer had created a new gmail account with a very similar name and continued his desperate plea for cash. The original appeal: I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,I came down here to London,England for a short vacation and i was mugged at gun point last night at the park of the hotel where i lodged all cash,credit cards and cell were stolen off me.I am even owing the hotel here,and the hotel manager won’t let me leave until i settle the hotel bills now am freaked out.So i have limited access to emails for now, please i need you to lend me some money so i can make arrangements and return back I am full of panic now,the police only asked me to write a statement about the incident and directed me to the embassy,i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the money back to you as soon as i get home, I am so confused right now.i wasn’t injured because I complied immediately. Some four hours later, a final appeal: Richard, am still waiting for the MTCN number as soon you have done. And my reply Subject: some a**hole thinks this is a scam Can you believe it? Don’t worry, I gave all the info to the police and to Google — so don’t worry just answer the door when they knock, ok? What a surprise — I haven’t heard from fake Mark B. again! It’s important to make sure people with whom you have a trust relationship are protected from such things. In this case, Mark’s Google profile allowed me to locate his business and phone number. Mark answered the phone right away when I called. Scam averted! I called Western Union and asked for a fake MTCN number which would allow law enforcement across the pond to apprehend the criminal, with forged documents in possession. Such is not possible… “No can do… that’s a police matter.” What a pity… common sense deterrence methods are not available to an informed citizen with a scammer on the hook. In summary, please secure the accounts that identify you and allow your “friends” access to enough contact information (more on that later) to thwart such attacks." - Richard Walker

"Here’s the shocking video of Miley singing live on the Today show. Fair warning - this has already been “fixed in post” on official outlets, and is a typical candidate for take-down. Enjoy while you can. Schadenfreude at its best. It’s worse than bad… catastrophic, tragic, and hilarious. There is no Santa Claus and your precious Miley can’t sing. Way to go, parents! How much did you pay for those tickets? Let’s try not to confuse “autotune” with singing ability, shall we?" - Richard Walker

ANYONE HERE? - Richard Walker

Ppl may not know even if you HATE google reader and gmail, you should still do a Google profile and Contacts too possibly, so you can see your graph and use "social search"... Anyway that's it I've really gotta get away thanks everyone regardless! - Richard Walker

"The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is having a 75th Anniversary Celebration with a free weekend of special programs Free admission Saturday, January 16, 11:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. Sunday and Monday, January 17 and 18, 11:00 a.m. – 5:45 p.m. SFMOMA’s anniversary year kicks off with three free days of special programs. Throughout the weekend, enjoy: * 75 gallery talks led by members of the Bay Area creative community * Installations by artists Bill Fontana and Allison Smith * The debut of our new multimedia tour * Saturday evening performances with headliner Matmos * A Sunday family day with activities and film screenings * Special menus from Caffè Museo and Blue Bottle Coffee and delicious snacks from some of the city’s finest street food carts, parked outside the building on Minna Street * Your tweets and Flickr photos projected on our walls (tag them sfmoma75) * An inspired collection of new products at the MuseumStore * The Backstory and Overlook Lounges, where you can relax, have a bite to eat, and get a peek at how exhibitions are installed" - Richard Walker

I haven't been back since The Fiasco. http://bit.ly/80cYr6 - Richard Walker

"Can you cook well despite never having been formally trained? Gordon Ramsay (the asshole British celebrity chef behind Hells Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares) and the producers of The Biggest Loser are looking for the best amateur chefs, passionate foodies and the ultimate dinner party hosts and hostesses to participate in an “inspirational” new TV series, “Masterchef.” If chosen for this show, you’ll get to develop your cooking skills while mentored and encouraged by the judges ala The Biggest Loser (so we hope Gordon keeps his mouth shut) The Masterchef series was first a hit in the UK in 1990 and has recently garnered high ratings in Australia. It’s being described as a culinary American Idol. The show goes on a “nationwide search for the best amateur chef in America.” The San Francisco casting call takes place at Sur La Table on Maiden Lane in San Francisco on January 24, 2010 from 11am to 4pm. Fort he audition you’ll have to bring one prepared dish to serve to the judges at room temperature. Applicants must be 18 year or older and not a chef who works in a professional kitchen. Full details here." http://www.3ballproductions.com/masterc... - Richard Walker

Rochelle loves Gordon convo. from last March http://friendfeed.com/lovefes... - Richard Walker

"A specialized service such as lighting equipment rental is often subject to cold calls from self-important, ill-behaved people who expect that name-dropping over the phone will get them special treatment. Should Miss Liebowitz’s assistant phone without a referral, and attempt to throw his weight around, he’ll likely be referred to Mr. Redhill. Mr. Redhill is frequently out of the office, but he is the only person that can handle difficult would-be clients, and it’s important that they keep trying his number. When Mr. Redhill rings everyone at the shop chuckles." - Richard Walker

"This right here is a task comparable only to hauling a powerful ring to the fires of Mordor. What are we talking about? A new site called Every Bar In San Francisco, which plans on visiting every bar in San Francisco for at least one drink. Check it: After years of hearing that San Francisco allegedly has more bars per capita than any other U.S. city, I have decided to see if one person can actually drink at every bar in the City. I’m going neighborhood by neighborhood, skipping only wine bars and restaurants, and hopefully having some amazing booze fueled adventures on the way. This is the kind of new year's resolution we enjoy. EBISF dives right in with the Tenderloin (arguably the best neighborhood in SF in which to imbibe, they define the hood as bordered by Geary on the North, Van Ness on the West, Market on the South, and Powell on the East.) They will, fortunately, skip bars that charges a cover, have a dance floor or a DJ lounge, and "doesn’t sell hard liquor, or expects one to order food." As of January 3, they've had drinks from Ha-Ra, Nite Cap, Koko's pass through their liver. Be sure to check out this mammoth project. Godspeed, fellow drinker." - Richard Walker

We are quite aware we are a bawdy gold-rush party town. Bring your hard-earned ore and try not to get Shanhai-ed. I live a few short blocks from the notorious old Barbary Coast bar where that did really happen. - Richard Walker

"Almost a year ago, I won an Oscar for writing Milk, a film about a famous gay-rights pioneer. My acceptance speech was a call for gay rights that got me lots of attention and plenty of hate mail. Then last summer, my film was banned by the college in the small Midwestern town where I was scouting my next project. It would have stayed that way, if not for an unlikely coalition of conservative local leaders, students, and a gay kid in short-shorts who fought to get the film its due—and gave the town some hope. While scouting in West Michigan last spring, I was led to the small city of Holland, a picturesque hamlet with strong Dutch roots, and the place where I would start pre-production on my directorial debut—my first project since Milk. I packed up and moved there last August. The sun was warm and the reception from the town even warmer. I hadn’t run across such courteous people since I left Texas when I was 13 years old. As I drove down College Avenue, I passed a school. The sign out front read: Hope College. I smiled. I was supposed to be moving on from Milk, the 2008 film in which Sean Penn portrayed early gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk. But here was Harvey’s favorite word, “Hope,” finding me once again. They had simply never discussed gay rights openly before, and here I was, an interloper, threatening to thrust this hot-button issue into their community. Early on, a couple of locals told me the city was one of the most conservative voting districts in the country, and that Hope College, a Christian institution, was the heart of the city. It was built four years after Dutch immigrants seeking religious freedom settled along Lake Macatawa in 1846. Since then, the school has remained strongly tied to the Reformed Church in America. Like most places in town, the campus was crisp, clean, and filled with a Holy Spirit and devotion I hadn’t felt since my childhood in the Mormon Church. Perhaps surprising to some, I felt quite at home. Just beyond campus, I spotted the town’s sole late-night coffee shop. It was packed with neatly combed, mostly blond, well-spoken Hope College students. I settled in with my laptop, but soon felt a pair of eyes on me. They belonged to a student who, shattering the city’s 1950s mirage, was dressed in short shorts and a “Legalize Gay” T-shirt. Within minutes he was at my table, asking if I would screen Milk and speak on his campus. I thought, “I’m about to call Holland home for six months. I should probably pitch in.” Production began, and though I was busy I occasionally wondered, “Why haven’t they confirmed that screening date yet?” The answer came soon enough. Four weeks into shooting, I walked into my now-favorite coffee shop and saw the local paper’s front-page headline: “Filmmaker Receives Mixed Welcome from Hope.” The story said I had been banned from screening Milk and was officially not welcome on Hope College’s campus. The dean of students wasn’t shy about it. He called my brand of “advocacy” hurtful to the student body. Without ever meeting me in person, without so much as a phone call, he had publicly declared me and Milk unholy and unwelcome. What had started as a wide-eyed adventure to bring Harvey Milk back to life had taken a darker turn since my Oscar acceptance speech appeared and re-appeared on Oprah, The View, and The O’Reilly Factor. Anti-gay letters, emails, and attacks had begun, and now, here in West Michigan, I had met the same fate as many of my favorite writers: I was banned. Naïveté was gone. My education had begun. Between the apologetic handshakes were glares from unknown locals. The politeness I’d come to admire was lifted up, revealing hidden enmity. But let me be clear: I don’t think the town was homophobic. I think they had simply never discussed gay rights openly before, and here I was, an interloper, threatening to thrust this hot-button issue into their community. As the dean kept talking and students began protesting, calls came from journalists in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. I did my best to stay focused, wrap up production, and in the end, decided to move my editing room out of West Michigan. But that’s not how the story ends. Two weeks ago, in blizzard conditions, a Delta pilot landed on a snowy runway in Grand Rapids, and I drove the half hour from the airport to Holland, watching SUVs slide into ditches in front of me. With five minutes to spare, I arrived at the Park Theater off Main Street, right across from the steeples of Hope College. Why had I made the journey back? Because when I decided I needed to set things right with the people of Holland who had been so welcoming, I called that same student who had come up to me in the coffee shop months ago, and we decided not to take “no” for an answer. He organized a new group called “Hope Is Ready,” and raised funds from local city leaders who had never taken a stand on gay rights before, but in the face of Hope’s now widely publicized homophobia, decided to put their quiet courtesy aside (most for the first time), and donated time, money, and space to do what Hope wouldn’t: have this conversation. The theater sold out in an hour. We booked a second night at a larger venue and it, too, filled up. As the film wrapped up, Harvey called out from the screen: “You gotta give ‘em HOPE. You gotta give ‘em HOPE.” And for the first time, those words meant something very different to me. They meant, as we fight for equality in California and New York, we can’t forget about those kids out there in small-town America, in the Hollands or Hope Colleges. Their lives are too valuable. When the lights came up, it became clear the audience was almost entirely students and faculty from Hope College. And it wasn’t just gay people who stood up and told their stories at the Q&A afterward; it was minorities of every kind. I was transported back to the early ‘70s, when Harvey first arrived in San Francisco and started building coalitions with other minority groups. Here it was, happening right before my eyes: coalition-building, outreach, education. Yes, Holland is behind when it comes to LGBT issues, but that night was a turning point. And the next morning, for the first time, the dean of Hope College called me. As long as there was no one else around to witness it, he wanted to meet. A tall, white-haired man waved to me from under the marquee of another local theater. It had warmed up to 20 degrees. I was shivering; he was braver about the weather. This was the man who had banned my film and lecture, and denounced me to reporters. Now he was responsible for my return. Without him, I likely would have spoken to a handful of students on campus, the event would have gone largely unnoticed, and the long-needed dialogue that had taken place the night before would never have happened. Gay people in Holland had this man to thank. What struck me immediately was his referring to me as “you people.” I asked him to clarify, and he hesitantly said, “gay people.” He claimed it was “my people” who had been attacking him since the news broke, though all of the complaints I’d read in the papers had come from straight people in his own community. But I didn’t argue that. Instead, I asked that he get to know gay and lesbian people individually instead of lumping us together, stereotyping. He agreed, but again used that phrase: “You people.” When I asked him to clarify again, he said, “You Hollywood people.” I assured him that, like gay people, Hollywood folks are also a diverse bunch. But it popped out again: “You people.” This time he wasn’t talking about Hollywood or gay people—this time it was “California people.” It became clear the problem here wasn’t gay people or Hollywood people or people from California. The problem was a fear of “other” people, people from different worlds or with different viewpoints. I was reminded of Harvey Milk who claimed the war against homophobia was a war against fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what is different. So when the dean asked what we could do to move past this, the answer was clear. Fear and understanding can’t coexist. One devours the other. Students at his college had formed a Gay-Straight Alliance some time ago, but he had refused to recognize it. I told him it was time to officially support that group and allow a dialogue between gay and straight people on his campus. Because as Harvey Milk said so long ago, telling our personal stories is the only way to educate, to reach out and dispel those myths and fears that this dean was still holding onto. He didn’t promise to do so… but he never said no. As I drove back to the airport, I knew full well these students and this town had their work cut out for them. The road will be long and rough, but the conversation had finally begun, and to me, it was clearer than ever that Harvey’s brand of hope will soon be reality at places like Hope College." - Richard Walker

Twitter experiment underway. 5 bites so far. http://twitter.com/#search... - Richard Walker

"Newly installed bar manager at Absinthe, Carlos Yturria (formerly of Range, Bacar and Rye), has come up with several specialty cocktails for the board in his first weeks on duty. Our favorite is this wintry take on a whiskey sour, which includes one of the best and most unsung cocktail fruits of the season, the kumquat. Shortly this drink will be replaced on the menu by a milk punch with rum, cinnamon, and brandied cherry juice, so hurry if you want to try this, or try replicating it at home. The Piccadilly 1 kumquat 2 oz. Dickel Tennessee Whisky 0.5 oz fresh lemon and lime juice 0.5 ounce simple syrup Dash Pernod Absinthe Muddle kumquat and combine remaining ingredients in a mixing glass with ice & stir. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass & garnish with a slice of kumquat." - Richard Walker