Younger men are better looking, healthier, have more energy, are more fun, don’t need Viagra, and won’t die on you!

Such is the rationale for tonight’s California Cougar Convention.  While older men are considered men even though they show off their grays in the form of a young blond, society’s answer to the reverse situation is: predatory animals.  So, in the spirit of the jungle kingdom, the Society of Single Professionals (yes) organized tonight’s convention  for cougars and their would-be cubs at the Beverly Hills Crowne Plaza Hotel.  Thirty dollars will buy you access to the stalking, the pouncing, and the purring; in addition, the young cubs will vote to elect a Miss Cougar California (who must be 40 or over (that’s who an “older woman” is, apparently) and “legally single”) during the night’s dance party.

For those of you who want so desperately to cougar, but don’t know how, take the 6:30 class in cougaring at The Cougar School, free for paid convention goers.  I’m not exactly sure what this will entail, but I’m envisioning the scene from The Lion King where Mufasa teaches Simba how to pounce.  Cubs, heed the sign’s warning: If attacked, fight back.  Zazu should have been so lucky.

When mountain lions attack photo taken by jurvetson and used under a Creative Commons license.

A true Stargate fan could read this from the back of the room.

I had lunch with a few people recently in which the conversation started and ended with a mention  of “The Plan.” Non-Battlestar Galactica associates quickly booed and told us to leave the table if we were going to talk about it, and, not wanting that, we had to cease (but really, if you’re going to have a whole movie about the Cylons, why oh why would you leave Lucy Lawless out?).  In contrast, I have an inkling that a fair number of you are unabashaed BSG fans and that an ever fairer number of you were/are fans of Farscape and Stargate SG-1. I bet some of you even loudly registered your protest to Sci-Fi brass after the network abruptly, and meanly, cancelled Farscape before its 5-year contract was up.  Lucky for you, there are fan conventions in town for both Farscape and Stargate SG-1.   Starting tomorrow and running through the weekend, Creation Entertainment is hosting the annual event at the LAX Marriot.  Stars will be in tow to commiserate and commemorate, and, of course, people will be dressed up to the gills.  Best part: On Friday, Gary Jones (Stargate’s Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman) and Dean Haglund (you know, Langley) will participate in a celebrity cabaret called Starhole.  Yes, that’s right, Starhole.

Ticket prices vary depending on what days you go, and what a la carte items (i.e., autograph sessions) you want to add to your cart.  For more information on prices for the Stargate convention, see here; for Farscape, see here.

I always understood the general rule to be: one in 10 people is gay.  This ratio, which apparently has been oft-repeated to a point where it still remains lore 10 years after I first heard it (the gay population apparently has not adjusted for inflation), is a nice shorthand for: it could be you.  (One of my favoritest people of all time, Jane Lynch, interviewed with Terry Gross on NPR yesterday, and this was her reaction to her 20something realization that she is gay: “Oh man, really?”).  The threat that you could be the one left holding the rainbow flag is the greatest fear tactic of all: it results in the simultaneous internalization and externalization of one’s homophobia.  This is, in part, what moves certain people to go to the polls, draw the little iron curtain, and, in the comfortably private, if not stuffy, polling station, mark a mark that will seal the fate for all those ones in tens, if not themselves.  And they are, of course, protecting the children.  Remember the children!

Yesterday – one year after Prop. 8 passed here, and one day after a similar referendum passed in Maine – Equality Network organized “Death to Discrimination,” a march-and-mourn protest and rally in Silver Lake.  The LA Times estimates that 60 people were present when the march started, but grew to a bit over 200 as the march marched up Vermont and down Sunset towards its destination in front of Le BarCito at Sunset Junction (overall, a decent turnout, but a far, far cry from the 700+ people who RSVP’d for the event on Facebook — like certain people I’m sometimes frustrated to know, you’ll always have flakes).  As the speakers began their spiels to the converted, the number of people dwindled – slowly at first, then “exponentially faster,” as Narinda Heng, my fellow mourner, observed.  Tip to future organizers: a rally and protest aren’t the Oscars.  Keep the speeches short well before the orchestra starts to hum its boredom.

A handful of pictures from the post-march rally, after the jump.

It’s not over.

… Thompson stopped his car after passing the two cyclists and shouting at them to ride single-file. One cyclist ran face-first into the rear windshield of the doctor’s red Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose, and leaving his face scarred. The other was sent hurtling to the sidewalk and suffered a separated shoulder.

Thompson told the response officer that the cyclists flipped him off, so he hit the brakes “to teach them a lesson.”  Thompson’s version is decidedly more benign: he says he pulled over to take a photo of the riders and thought he had left them enough room to get around his car.  Which one sounds more likely?

Two lessons spring to mind.  First, statements you make after an accident can be used for and against you in court, so talk to anyone at your emotionally-charged peril.  And second, don’t effing use your car as a weapon to “teach” someone a lesson.  No apples for you.

Photo courtesy frequent commentator waltarrrrr via the Metblogs Flickr pool.

Virgina Masen's custom customization.

One of the most awkward things about being part of a minority is that you are at once the local spokesperson for the Minority, and the first person the Majority goes to for comfort.  For example, the day after Prop. 8 passed, I was sitting in my office, my little fit of depression tempered by a little relief that the American electorate actually went out of its way to make sure Mr. Obama won.  Someone walked into my office, and the first thing she said to me was: “No one should sit on the back of the bus!  No one.  Can we talk about this at lunch?  I’m really upset” and walked out.  I felt like I had been hit by a bus. And this is the response I had over a course of several days, from all sorts of people.  Well, better late than never.

The gay rights movement, like many minority groups, learned that in order to get things done, you really have to swallow your pride (that’s pride with a little p) and enlist the help of the majority group who sits in the positions of power and finally – finally – is sympathetic to your cause, is willing to gamble its political currency, and take the credit for it all once the goal is realized.  Enter FAIR (Freedom Action Inclusion Rights), an organization quickly organized after the passage of Prop. 8.  At FAIR’s request, Shepard Fairey created a poster intended to galvanize the movement as well as his Hope poster did for the MoveOn set.  The result is slightly more affecting than American Apparel’s retro, almost whimsically passive “Legalize Gay” tshirts:  his is a gnarled fist with the words “Defend Equality/Love Unites” above and below [insert snarky comment about his source material for the fist here].  You can buy shirts and the poster on FAIR’s website here (the politics of inclusion necessitates the politics of fundraising), but if you want to show all your gay friends that you really care, come out to Andaz in West Hollywood on November 12th.

There, FAIR, in conjunction with HOMOtracker and Mr. Fairey, will debut the Love Unites Shepard Fairey Equality Project and launch an online auction of select posters signed and/or “customized” by certain celebrities (from the looks of it, Virginia Madsen really took the time to hone her scrapbooking skills with hers).  Advanced tickets are here; it’s $100 for a VIP ticket, which includes appetizers, swag, and pool access, and $30 for general admission (which, fyi, also gives you access to the open bar).  Tickets are tax deductible, and all proceeds will go towards the fight for marriage equality (which is our stand-in for – say it with me – the fight against homophobia).  As if you need more reason, Mr. Fairey will be there himself to spin a few discs in a special DJ set.  And, because parking in WeHo is such a pain, try taking the bus.  I’ll sit in the front.

A little art never hurt anyone, not even Tom Bradley.

The LA Times just highlighted this study by a group called Priority Pass that lists LAX as the third worst airport – in the world, behind Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle in Paris.  I’m a bit skeptical – after all, this group is comprised of frequent business travelers who probably expect foot massages when they land.  Personally, I think there are other domestic airports that are worse (Houston’s comes to mind, and not because it’s in Texas).  Nonetheless, we all know that our home port could use a little (a lot) of improvement.  The airport has received over a billion recession dollars to improve and upgrade its facilities, and the LA Times has some ideas on how to use this money (some are blatantly silly, others are more serious).  My top gripes are after the jump.

1. Free wifi. Some airports like Louis Armstrong International (in New Orleans), Portland International, and Singapore International have it, others like LAX charge for it.  I get that in an industry that’s losing money, charging an obscene amount for wifi access is almost a capitalist given, but c’mon.

2. More outlets.  On a recent flight back from Seattle, I deplaned and walked past Southwest’s Business class waiting area.  There, I noticed that the nice leather-ish seats were adjacent to even nicer power outlets.  If all the outlets at LAX could be just as accessible, it would be so much better – and safer – than looping my cords between rows of seats.

3. Easier access to the rail. I know there is a shuttle that goes between LAX and the Green Line station, and I know that this two-step approach to airport public transportation isn’t so uncommon (for example, I had to take two buses to get to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to catch my flight back to LAX, and I had to take BART and a shuttle to get from my dorm room in Berkeley to Oakland Airport).  That said, wouldn’t it be nice if we could pull a SFO and have the rail go directly to the airport?

4.  Let buses enter the Loop. Before I found a ride back from LAX, I looked over my bus options from the airport to my apartment in Santa Monica.  I was surprised to find that I had to take a (free) shuttle from the airport to the Green Line station to get to my bus.  WTF?  Why can’t I wait for a bus on the dreaded Loop the same way I wait for a shuttle or a taxi?  To make things even easier, I would even designate one of the lanes a bus-only lane.  The FlyAway bus seems to be the only public transit-oriented bus that is permitted to make the Loop, but its use is premised on the assumption that you can get home after being dropped off in Westood, Union Station, or Van Nuys.

4(a).  More FlyAways.  That said, the FlyAway is an awesome, direct, and easy option for those of us who just need an option to get to Westwood, Union Station, or Van Nuys.  Expanding the fleet to serve other areas of the city (Mid-City and the South Bay, for example) would be welcome.

5. Improve the Loop. The Loop around the terminals is like driving in a racetrack with no ground rules.  Designate car- and shuttle-only lanes, make it easier to get into the terminal pick up areas, clearly post which lanes go to which freeways well in advance of the point of no return … anything so that little hatchback Yaris doesn’t get creamed by enormous hotel shuttle buses every single time she enters the Loop.

6.  More art, less fugly. Since we have a billion to spare, can we spend some on some art?  Even some of our rail stations look prettier and more welcoming than the static, sterile environment of the LAX terminals.

What’s on your list?

For those who miss the talk, you don’t have to miss the art:  UCLA will host a related exhibit in the Hammer Museum.  “The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis” will be on view from October 24 to February 7.  For future reference, Thursdays are free!