Last Thursday, Ryan Phillippe was on The Tonight Show. Early in his career he played a gay character on One Life to Live, so, of course, Jay Leno thought it would be appropriate to ask him to pretend the camera was his "gay lover...Billy Bob," who "has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming" and give it his "gayest look." Uh-huh.

Playwright Jeff Whitty wrote him a letter in which he included his "gayest look." Melissa McEwan of Shakesville posted her gayest look and invited other people to send theirs in. And LOTS of people have. Because Jay Leno is a homophobic asshole. Seriously, this is awesome. I just love how many people are calling Leno on his bullshit. Probably nothing will come of it, but it sure is fun to stand up and tell him "we are not amused." So visit mygayestlook.com and look at the photos, and send in your own if you want. Here's Zoe's and my gayest look:



Psst! Due South fans: If you're fond of playing Six Degrees of Due South, one of the people who sent in their gayest look is, I believe, Daniel MacIvor. It's hard to tell for sure if it's *the* Daniel MacIvor, since the picture doesn't show his face, but *I* think it kind of looks like him.

Yet another paper due. Perfect opportunity for another list of Things That Make Me Happy. Whee!

( Happy Happy Happy )

The Edge is giving away tickets to see a band called Snow Patrol at the Gypsy Tea Room in April. I spent an amusing (and totally productive, don't doubt it) 10 minutes reciting quotes and giggling to myself after hearing this.

"Cheese Gun."

"Uhhh...Snow Axe."

"Life Snow Picnic."

"Church of Worms."

*buzzer sound*

"Category is Fake Canadian Bands."

"Okay, Faster Leonard Cohen, Die Die."

"Sled Dog Afterbirth."

"You're the king, Pipe. Joe?"

"MacArthur Parka."


Yeah. I thought it was funny, anyway. So tonight I had a very nice time, just hanging out. I made a vegetarian pizza and watched Wilby Wonderful for the third time (one of those was with the director's commentary, so I don't know if you want to count it). This movie just, wow. So very good. Callum Keith Rennie! Paul Gross! Both of whom are so very very pretty. And Callum especially is such a very good actor. Callum plays a gay dyslexic sign painter, which was enough to make me want to see it. But you perhaps want to know what the movie is actually about. So, um...hm. It's kind of hard to describe. It's about a day in the life of a small island called Wilby. Dan Jarvis (Jim Allodi) spends most of the movie trying to kill himself, and being comically interrupted. He wants to kill himself because his wife has just left him and the newspaper is about to publish a list of gay men supposedly involved in some scandal, a list he will be on. Meanwhile, Paul Gross's character, Buddy, is investigating the scandal while his wife (Sandra Oh), a realtor, is running around trying to sell houses and organize things and generally do too much at once. So their marriage isn't going very well. Buddy is thinking about having an affair with Sandra (Rebecca Jenkins), whose daughter, Emily (Ellen Page), is starting a relationship with a boy who wants her to have sex with him. Tons of stuff is happening, and yet, it's just a normal day, because in another way, it's the kind of stuff that always happens to people and doesn't feel busy at all. I definitely haven't done it justice. This is a movie that has tons of great actors who do a great job. There's not a lot of plot, because the movie is really about relationships.

I just finished a great book called The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It's about a Jesuit mission to Alpha Centauri. The main character is a Jesuit priest. The story is about his search for God. Good and bad things happen to him, and he has to deal with them and try to find God in them. Overall, I just love this book because of its perspective on the problem of pain. You know, if God is omnipotent and he loves us, why is there pain in the world? Why doesn't he stop it? Russell converted to Judaism, and she says, "When you convert to Judaism in a post-Holocaust world, you know two things for sure: one is that being Jewish can get you killed; the other is that God won't rescue you." Sure, it's depressing in a way. But the way she addresses the issue is comforting, too. She concludes that God dignifies our pain by watching and mourning and remembering. That doesn't mean he will stop it.

"There's an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists."

"So God just leaves?" John asked, angry where Emilio had been desolate. "Abandons creation? You're on your own, apes. Good luck!"

"No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering."

"Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine," Vincenzo Giuliani said quietly. " 'Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.' "

"But the sparrow still falls," Felipe said.