Gun wielding robber steals safe with a grand total of fifteen bucks inside.

Ooops.

The other day, I caught the PBS presentation of The Celluloid Closet on KCET* during their never-ending pledge drive for your cash. LA Metblogger Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, even wrote a piece about the film recently. If you have never seen the movie, it’s a documentary about how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people have been portrayed throughout cinematic history. It’s not the best film ever but it’s worth a look if you’ve a couple of hours to spare.

What really got me riled up, and I do mean riled up, was the odd and scattershot censoring the broadcast version of the film chose to employ. The Standards and Practices folks saw fit to remove the swear words and pixelated almost all nudity on display. Ok. Fine. I get it, you don’t want to offend people by saying “fuck” a lot or by showing bared breasts or shots of hot naked lesbians knocking one out. Although really, who doesn’t want to see that? :)

No, what really pissed me off is that only some of the graphic sex and violence was left unedited. For instance, a scene involving two women making love was blurred-out but startlingly, a scene from the 1980 Al Pacino shocker, Cruising, was left unedited for all the world to see. The scene in question features a good looking fellow face-down on the bed with his hands tied behind him while an unknown killer repeatedly (and bloodily) stabs him in the back. Even more offending, is the clip is intercut with pornographic shots of the killer anally raping his victim while he stabs him over and over and over. Ew.

In the context of the unedited film, it’s a gory and disgusting example that leads to a finer point the filmmakers wish to make: which was that in 1980, the only way to show gay men or gay sex was by brutally killing and graphically raping them. However, in the context of the edited broadcast version, it serves to prove a different point altogether: PBS (or KCET*) was guilty of the very thing The Celluloid Closet was rallying against. Apparently it’s not acceptable to see an exposed breast but it is okay to see a gay man being pornographically raped and murdered. What kind of message does that send? The same one it always has: gay people aren’t fit to even be looked at unless they are being murdered. See what happens if you have gay sex? You die!

I was so mad. If you’re gonna edit it, then edit it! Their pansy-ass attempt at ‘protecting’ us failed and only further solidified stereotypes which still linger today. I’m not sure if it was PBS or KCET* who made the decision but it doesn’t really matter, because either way, their attitude and conduct is more shocking than the films will ever be.

* Author’s Note: This post was originally titled “KOCE (or PBS in general) Sucks!” The author (hey that’s me) made a sloppy and egregious error by confusing the real PBS station in question (KCET) with another (KOCE). I don’t have a very good excuse, except that I Tivo’d the film and fast forwarded through all the membership-drive and station breaks. As such, I misread the station’s call letters and failed to take the time to verify I had the information right. It’s an embarrassing mistake to say the least and I offer my sincere apologies to KOCE for the careless way I mistakenly threw them under the bus. I also thank them for their kindness in pointing out the error and I’ll take it as a lesson learned (the hard way).

A clip from The Celluloid Closet is after the jump…

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I watched this guy get out of his car, look at how he was parked, then shrug and walk into his apartment. What an ass-hat! We live in a complex that’s tight on parking as it is, so why would a person go and do this?

I hope he got his ass towed.

United States Representative John Campbell (R-Irvine) has an opinion piece in the Register about the health care debate.

And for some reason, he thinks that a comparison between owning a gun and having affordable health care is a good one.

Basically, he argues that because it isn’t stated specifically in the Constitution, the people of the United States have no right to expect affordable health care.

I’m not even going to go into the hundreds, if not thousands, of things the government does that are very much not stated in the Constitution.  Well, ok, maybe I will.  Medicare, the interstate highway system, education, and regulatory bodies such as the FDA, just to name a few of the biggies.

I would like to ask Mr. Campbell if he would also support a measure to abolish Medicare if he is so adamant about government staying out of the healthcare game. 

With a constituency that includes residents of Laguna Woods, I’m not so sure.

Oh those cute critters are sure raising some hackles at Seal Beach’s Leisure World.   Dana Parsons has a piece up at the LA Times about the conflict these varmints are causing with some residents.

Seems that some of them view them as pests that are deserving of being killed to “thin out the population” whilst others claim they bring much joy and peace as they munch through the lawns of Leisure World.

But what makes no sense to me at all is this paragraph:

Kurt Bourhenne, who’d like to see the population thinned, said people mischaracterize the pellet guns as dangerous. He said the cage method is inhumane because rabbits invariably lose some skin or fur trying to escape.

Hold on a minute.  The cages are inhumane because the bunnehs might injure themselves with some skin abrasions, but killing them is peachy keen? 

Even better, the residents are just fine with the rabbits being shot, just not in front of them, thank you very much.  It would cause too much distress if it happened right in front of them.  They currently get shipped to and shot in Riverside, and that’s just how they like it.  And hey, someone might just get hit by one of those pellet guns, and that is simply not acceptable.  But fine for the rabbits, of course.

Wasn’t there just an article not too long ago about Los Al having a problem with coyotes and wanting to kill them as well? 

Seems like the two cities might need to talk.  You know, about the circle of life and all that good stuff.  I’m thinking a bargain could be struck.

According to the Register, a nudist group lost a court battle to keep Trail 6 of San Onofre Beach a legal haven for the clothing-less.

Problem is that there was no true set policy, the one being relied upon to fight the legal ban on nudity at public beaches being a letter written by a deputy-director parks official twenty years ago.

I’m no jurist, but a letter, as opposed to an official memo, doesn’t sound like a valid reason to being an exception to the existing no-nudity policy.

I don’t think the human body is something one should be ashamed of, but I think it is presumptuous of people who wish to be nude to assume that someone on a public beach is OK with seeing them nude. I have no problem with nudists, but I am of the opinion that they should keep their nudity confined to the eyes of like-minded people.

And on a public beach, that just isn’t possible.

Here we go again.

Based on rules they made up a couple of  months ago, the Orange County Board of Supervisors rejected the grant application for tobacco settlement money from Planned Parenthood.

It seems they rejected the grant on a technical issue concerning a nurse case manager, whom the Board claims would not be providing direct clinical care, and thus the application does not meet the requirements.

Uh, I’m going to guess that pretty much any program from any applicant is going to include incidental personnel such as the case manager.  Have you ever known a doctor to answer the phone at their clinic or hospital?

No, what I’m guessing is that Planned Parenthood’s application was gone over with a fine-toothed comb until the supervisors found something they thought could be used against them.

Here’s hoping Planned Parenthood sues the crap out of them.

Proof that there are rednecks in Orange County. I spotted this lovely sight inside the secured parking garage at my “luxury” apartment complex in Anaheim. Nothing hotter than putting your Cadillac up on blocks and then letting it sit there for weeks on end. Maybe it’s time to move….

There are not many things in the food world that I love more than a good steak. For the longest time, I had heard various whisperings about Stubrik’s Steakhouse in downtown Fullerton.

Great steaks….mutter mutter mutter…the best I’ve ever had…mutter mutter mutter…it’s fantastic…mutter mutter mutter

So with all these ephemeral compliments floating around, we finally got to try Stubrik’s not that long ago.

And I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but Stubrik’s in no way met those expectations.

For a restaurant that bills itself as a steakhouse, having only five cuts of steak feels like cheating.

If I hadn’t known I had ordered a filet mignon, I would never have known that what was on my plate was a filet mignon. It had maybe three bites that contained the signature filet mignon tenderness.

I’ve had better mashed potatoes and gravy at roadside diners.

For around thirty bucks a meal, I want better a better ambiance than “dive.”

The vegetables were the best thing about my meal. Grilled to perfect crispness and nicely seasoned.

Except I’m at a steakhouse, dammit! I don’t give a rat’s ass about the vegetables!

Stubrik’s doesn’t even give you bread with your thirty dollar meal and charges an outrageous amount for a beer.

For the money, I’m going to be sacrilegious and claim that Outback is a better value for your money.

According to The ScienceDude, a study done by UCSB has found that Orange County beaches in particular have had quite a bit of damage done by, you guessed it, people.

Well, it’s no surprise that the more people visit something, the more jacked up that something tends to get. Think of the Sistine Chapel, or the caves of Lascaux, or the entire city of Rome. Ha, kidding on that last one. Sort of. But, eventually they figured out that reducing human exposure was actually a good thing, even though some of that damage was done inadvertently, from like, the act of breathing. Hard to avoid, that. However, if you wanted to limit the damage, then you had to limit the people.

So why not the same for our coastline? Sure, beaches may be public, but that shouldn’t necessarily mean that anyone who wants to be there should be there. Many buildings are “public” spaces, but the amount of people allowed is not infinite.

Perhaps we should limit the amount of people allowed on the beach per day, lumping sunbathers and recreational fisherman all together. After that amount has been reached, then someone can only arrive if someone else leaves.

Our beaches and coastline are precious natural resources. Let’s not screw them up for future generations in the name of “Me, me, me!”