22Jun11 Footloose: Then and Now
Posted by in Movies | Tagged ,

An all new Footloose hits theaters in October, 27 years after the original. The first trailer was just released… take a moment to compare and contrast for yourself (and apologies that you have to sit through an ad before the new trailer…it’s kinda tacky to have an ad before something that is in itself an ad).

I love that the new film takes so many of its cues from the original, but I think it’s odd that there’s not much music or dancing revealed. I’m looking forward to seeing how the marketing campaign continues to roll out over the next few months.

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20Jun11 Chelsea Challenge 2011
Posted by in Hockey | Tagged ,

Chelsea Challenge 2011 was this past weekend and my participation marked my tenth time to play in the annual New York City Gay Hockey Association tournament. This was also my third year playing with the Hartford Whalers in the recreational division. Needless to say it was a great weekend.

Hartford played all three of it’s first round games on Saturday, which made for a very intense day. We started with the NY Wizards at noon and that game ended in a 0-0 tie, leaving us with 4 tournament points and tied in second place with Toronto on top of the Rec B division and Chicago at the bottom. The second game started up around 3:30 against Chicago. This was a fast moving, crazy paced game and we lost 6-1 and didn’t get any tourney points, dropping us to the bottom of the pack in Rec B. Things didn’t get much better at 7:15 as we took on Toronto. This game was very physical and both sides ended up with a misconduct penalty after a fight (some might even call it a brawl because it was kind of crazy there for a bit). Here we lost 4-2 and picked up two points. Those points didn’t help us get out of the bottom of the pack, meaning we would face Toronto in the semi-finals Sunday morning.

For the first three games, I played defense with Tyler. It was one of the best instant-D partnerships I’ve ever had. We didn’t even know each other before we started, although we do play on opposing teams at Sky Rink. We fell in step very quickly covering for each other, changing up sides on the fly when needed, being where we needed to be. It was a solid partnership and across those three games where we had 10 goals against us, we were only on the ice for one. Not a bad statistic. I thought the team played well too for 15 guys who don’t play together on a regular basis. Many of the Whalers have played together these three years, we had a some new people this year and few of us are on the same teams during our regular playing.

For Sunday’s game the idea was to learn from Saturday and do our best to get to the finals. We were down two players–one guy got suspended in the Toronto game and the another had scheduling issues. With two missing, we had to shuffle the lines. I move to centering a line with Adam and Lief as my wings–it was a Tigers reunion and we had a great time with it. The Whalers led this game going into the third period (it was either 4-1 or 4-2). It was looking like we might get the Disney-style miracle we were looking for to get into the finals. However, Toronto stepped up their game and we had a combination of not playing with the cohesion of the first two periods and taking some stupid penalties (these were just us getting frustrated as opposed to a smart penalty to keep someone from scoring from in front of our net). We ended up losing 6-4.

It was awesome playing with Adam and Lief. Our line scored one and was on ice for one goal against, which I do partly blame myself for. I had a couple chances to get the puck away from Toronto but I didn’t get it done.

Despite the ups and downs of the weekend, it was an great experience being with the Whalers again (thanks, Gregg!). I hope to be a part of the team again in 2012.

A true highlight of the Challenge was watching the Daywalkers play in the developmental division. I had many friends on that team from the teams I play on. It was awesome watching Mike get the shootout winning goal in the semi-final game. They went on to win the gold medal in the division in a hard fought game against the Vampires (yes, there’s a True Blood theme here… the other two teams were the Werewolves and Shapeshifters) and it was fun to watch that after losing earlier on Sunday morning.

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7Apr11 Summer Camp Option?
Posted by in Life in General, TV | Tagged , , ,

I fell into liking the whole freerunning/parkour thing because of Ninja Warrior (or Sasuke if you’re a purist). On Ninja Warrior, 100 competitors gather at an obstacle course in Japan and try to beat the four stages of beyond difficult obstacles. From the US, many of the competitors who take on Ninja Warrior have a background in freerunning/parkour. Just this week, G4, which airs Ninja Warrior, wrapped up the Jump City: Seattle series, which featured four of America’s best teams vying for the Pro Parkour Cup. The series was epic as the teams used various locations in Seattle for each week’s competition.

Tempest Freerunning just opened the Tempest Freerunning Acamdey in L.A. I would love to spend some time here. I’m not sure how well I’d do with it because I’m not very agile, but I think it would be a blast to learn what I could. Check out this video of the gym (and look for appearances from the Pro Parkour Cup winning team–Levi Meeuwenberg, Brian Orosco, Paul Darnell and Caine Sinclair). This would be an awesome place to spend summer camp!

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23Mar11 It Gets Better Goes From Video to Book
Posted by in Books, LGBT Issues | Tagged ,

Last night I was at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca for the first stop on the book tour Dan Savage and Terry Miller are on for It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living. Yesterday also happened to be the book’s release day.

It was an inspiring evening as Savage and Miller talked about the genesis of the project and read from their introduction and epilogue. They also introduced five special guests of people from New York whose stories have been included in the book. I wrote up the event for LambdaLiterary.org and you can read all about the evening here.

Besides all the proceeds from the book going to the youth charities the It Gets Better Project supports (The Trevor Project, GLSEN, the ACLU LGBT Project), they’ve set up a way for people to buy books and get them donated to the school or library of their choice. If you’re interested in participating in that, check out the donation page on the It Gets Better site. It’s a great way to spend $25.

I’ve featured a few It Gets Better videos on the site in the past (including the one I took part in with my Braking the Cycle family), here’s a brand new one from the cast of the just-opened Broadway musical Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. It’s the first video produced to be aired on national television as a public service message.

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19Dec10 Tron Legacy = Epic Disappointment
Posted by in Movies | Tagged ,

The second thing I did as we left the movie theater after seeing Tron Legacy was apologize to Will for making him sit through the movie.

The first thing I did was declare how horrifically awful the movie was.

I’ve anticipated this movie since the first Comic Con footage leaked onto the web in July 2008. The 2009 and 2010 Comic Con footage continued to dazzle me.

It’s too bad Disney couldn’t put a movie on screen that lived up to the marketing. The only things I liked were Sam Flynn’s initial decent into the game grid with the requisite disc battle and light cycle competition (the multi-level light cycle grid was awesome) along with the last act’s light fighter dog fight.

The plot was nearly unwatchable to the point I almost walked out but I wanted to see if the film could redeem itself. Unfortunately it’s bogged down in a plot we’ve seen done better countless times–how the quest for perfection often leads to nothing good. At the end I expected Kevin Flynn to channel Captain Kirk to convince Clu that he had become imperfection (think Kirk talking to Nomad in “The Changling”). I think that would’ve been better than the actual ending.

Disney owes me–and my very sad inner 14-year-old–an apology, $34 (yes I want Will’s ticket money back too) and a couple hours.

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