Good morning, radio fans. As you can see from this blog this morning, I've been a bit busy. That's because there's so much going on today. I truly don't know what to talk about first. I have lots of highlights to share with you today but I'd also like to invite you, no encourage you, to post your own highlights in the comments. This is your community, feel free to promote your shows or discuss your favorite segments.

Here are just a few of today's highlights:

Trekkies will love today's SyFY Radio. None other than Mr. Sulu himself, George Takei is stopping by to chat with host Michael Hinman. Catch the action tonight at 10:00 p.m. EST.

Today's guest on TV Talk is Graham Patrick Martin from the TBS hit The Bill Engvall Show. Listen in at 6:00 p.m. EST.

On the NY Baseball Digest the guys are chatting with former Mets slugger Mo Vaughan. Mo will talk about his time in the big leagues. Mo will also discuss his current venture as owner of OMNI New York LLC which rehabilitates housing in depressed areas. Don't miss it at 6:00 p.m. EST.

Movie Geeks United is beginning a series in tribute to Academy Award winning director Steven Spielberg. Part , airing today, talks about Jaws. Special guests include biographer Joseph McBride, Wendy Benchley, co-stars Susan Bachiline and Jeffrey Kramer, screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and members of 'The Shark is Still Working' crew. Not be be missed tonight at 10:00 p.m. EST.

Enjoy the rest of the day and remember all of our segments are available on demand immediately following the live broadcast.

Yeah...sorry. See, the only reason we watched this terrible, terrible movie was that it had not one, but two original Star Trek cast members: George Takei (Sulu) and James Doohan (Scotty). Takei, playing a near-senile Japanese entomologist, apparently was only available for a few hours of shooting, because all of his scenes take place in the same lab and without any other characters; the only interaction he has with anyone else in the movie is though a couple of phone calls. Doohan, on the other hand, has a moderate amount of screen time as Carlson, the sheriff of a small lakeside town. Whether drunk, sleepy, or suffering from early Alzheimer's (which would later contribute to his death in 2005), Doohan stumbles through every scene he's in, slurring his lines and often looking bored.

Here's a run-down of the plot. Shannon (Katherine Heigl) and her parents (Anne Lockhart and Bernie Koppel) buy a hotel in the aforementioned small lakeside town. We learn that Shannon is afraid of bugs through a series of identical dream sequences (really -- they just use the same footage three times) in which she is scantily clad and covered by large cockroaches. Strangely, while these are ostensibly nightmares, Shannon seems to rather enjoy the bugs' crawling all over her naked flesh, arching her back erotically as the cockroaches crawl slowly up her thighs.

Right as they arrive in town, a local girl gets bitten by something while skinny-dipping in the lake, and Sheriff Carlson immediately closes off access to the lake. When it's suggested that such an action might be a little hasty, he retorts, "You saw Jaws, didn't you?" Naturally, nobody can argue with that logic, and the lake is shut down while the police investigate on a patrol boat. In one of the best scenes in the movie, a deputy falls in the lake and starts thrashing about, screaming that something is attacking him. The sheriff, of course, heroically shoots the fish with his handgun. Amazing. He then takes the fish to Laura, the town vet (and, apparently, the town forensic pathologist), and she finds a large cockroach in its stomach.

This strikes her as a bit odd, so she calls up Fujimoto (Takei), her old professor. ("Ah yes," he says with a lecherous smile, "I remember. Pretty blonde.") Fujimoto has to explain to Laura that "Blatella" is the Latin term for cockroaches, which makes a person wonder how on earth she passed his entomology class. No matter. Fujimoto plays with some terrible computer graphics of various insects, puts a cockroach in a tub of water, and fiddles with some scientific gadgets before ultimately meeting his fate. (It doesn't really make sense. Let's not worry about that part too much.)

Meanwhile, cockroaches are turning up in corpses all over town. The sax player for a band called "Trailer Park Trash" falls over dead in the middle of his set, a single cockroach crawling out of his beard. Two bodies are found in a movie theater, their flesh eaten away by...centipedes, or so we're led to believe. We're treated to multiple shots of things crawling out of the lake at night, which could be centipedes but really look more like poorly animated straight lines.

Eventually, the girl who'd been bitten in the lake turns up again with some festering sores on her leg, which break open as cockroaches spill out of her body. All of this madness finally leads the vet/doctor/forensics expert to muse, "I can't help wondering if there's any connection between the roach I found in the fish and the ones I found in the humans." By then, of course, it's too late; roaches are everywhere, and the town is quarantined. Shannon's parents, while having some questionably enjoyable sex (noises heard from the room: "Oh! Oh! Wait, no....oh! Stop that!"), are apparently swarmed and eaten by bugs. (We only see their flesh-stripped corpses the next morning.) Things are not going well for our heroes.

The savior of this movie, both within the story narrative and for the viewers, is General George (Randy Quaid), an insane Vietnam-vet-turned-exterminator. Throughout the first three-quarters of the movie, we periodically see the general's low-budget TV ads, in which he hacks a snake with a machete, uses a flamethrower on some spiders, and shoots a rat with a gun. The "pest eliminator" assures us that he "kicks bug ass," and indeed, he is brought in at the end of the movie to deal with the mutant roaches.

Some quotes from the General:

"When General George opens up his can of whup-ass, there'll be roaches in Siberia feeling the heat..."

"They [the roaches] appear to be amphibious...that means they can live in water and on dry land."

In a mine shaft toward the end of the movie: "It's a vampire bat: it's bite's deadlier than a king cobra...kill you like that..."

Truly, General George is a mind to be reckoned with.

We learn that there's some sort of link between the giant bugs and some insecticides sprayed on the town a decade earlier. The sheriff turns out to be the bad guy, as he's been in cahoots with the bugs the whole time, protecting their nest and their giant bug mama in order to drive property prices down so low that he can buy up the whole town. He shoots the love interest; giant bug mama slices his throat; General George blows up the whole mine and toasts the bug. Phew.

In summary, we get to see James Doohan shoot a fish and Randy Quaid fist-fight a giant insect puppet, which is pretty much worth the price of admission. Or at least the 99 cents I paid for this movie at the video store closeout sale.

En España, aun estamos esperando el lanzamiento en DVD de la segunda película de Futurama: La bestia con mil millones de espaldas. Pero en EL CONDENSADOR DE FLUZO, hemos viajado al futuro, para traeros el trailer de arriba y algo de información de lo que será la tercera película de Futurama: El Juego de Bender.

Dicho trailer puede encontrarse en el DVD de la segunda película de Futurama, que disfrutan en EEUU desde hace semanas. En esta tercera película, nuestros protagonistas sufren algo parecido a lo que nos ocurre a los consumidores españoles... ¡el elevado precio del combustible!. Solo que en este caso, se trata de materia oscura.

Fry, Leela y Bender en su busqueda realizarán o bien un viaje al pasado a la alta Edad Media o bien un viaje a un universo alternativo lleno de fantasía con claras referencias y homenajes a Dungeons & Dragons o de El Señor de los Anillos, además de los juegos de rol (dejando a parte, el claro homenaje a El Juego de Ender).

Además, los seguidores de la ciencia ficción, tendremos entre los a George Takei (Sulu en Star Trek y Kaito Nakamura en Heroes).

Esta película se espera en EEUU para Noviembre de este año.

Via | ZonaFandom

This week California became just the second state to legally recognize same-sex marriages, joining Massachusetts. The Golden State’s Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriage (Proposition 22) last month by a narrow 4-3 margin; and the ruling went into effect this week. You’ve probably seen television coverage of George Takei, perhaps better known as Mr. Sulu, and his partner of 21-years, Brad Altman, among the first couples to receive their marriage license. They plan to marry one another this September.

Here is a summary of the ruling:

Relevant Constitutional Text:

Section 7 of the California State Constitution, which reads in part:

(a) A person may not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or denied equal protection of the laws ...

(b) A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.

The Verdict:

In a 4-3 ruling, the California Supreme Court held that the terminology of marriage contains within itself many intangible benefits. To intentionally deny one class of citizens these benefits without meeting a strict scrutiny standards violates Section 7's equal protection guarantees.

My reaction to all of this: It’s about fucking time! And quite frankly, it’s an abomination that in these United States of America there are only two states with high courts that have the courage enough to uphold the ideals of Freedom and Liberty that this country was supposedly founded upon. This ruling explains that it is not enough to simply allow for civil-unions, but that “the terminology of marriage contains within itself many intangible benefits.” And therein lays the crux of the issue: No matter how similar marriages are to civil-unions in the eyes of the law, the very act of separation creates an unfair distinction. The concept of marriage is as ubiquitous to the human experience as, oh, say, drinking from a water fountain when you are thirsty. Creating this type of distinct between what type of marriage two people can enter into, and disallowing one group of people, a minority group, from entering into the well established version, is absolutely akin to the “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws that were abolished in 1965.

I’m sorry to inform the people who feel that this latest ruling has somehow encroached upon their rights, but this country is not beholden to the Bible; it is beholden to the Constitution. This country was founded on the separation of church and state. People are actually talking about amending their state’s, and even our nation’s, Constitution to ban certain people from doing something that the majority of the world has been allowed to do for thousands of years. This is an anathema to everything the United States, or any free society, stands for.

And unless you adhere to a rigid, archaic interpretation of the Bible, cherry-picking certain passages, a ban on same-sex marriage is patently un-Christian and contradicts the teachings of Jesus Christ that the greatest of all virtues is to love and be just towards one’s fellow man.

You will hear opponents to same-sex marriage saying that this decision somehow invalidates their marriage; or that it is contributing to the erosion of the moral fabric of our society. You will hear them say that marriage between a man and woman is the only way because that is how we perpetuate our species.

I will say that, after seeing people travel across the country to get married, and after seeing the joy on George and Brad’s faces, after seeing lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, both in their 80s and together for 55 years, tie the knot, the value of and the appreciation for my marriage has only increased. I will say that hypocritical leaders and politicians who self-righteously preach family-values in order to win elections, and then find themselves standing before a press conference having to admit that they cheated on their wives, do far more to tear away at our moral fabric. I will say that the fact that two members of the same sex can love one another, the fact that love is not simply a biological process meant for procreation, does more to prove the existence of a beneficent God than all the scriptures combined.

Whatever personal views you may have on this subject are of course well within your rights. But what no one has the right to do in this country, or any country for that matter, is to let those personal views infringe on the way another person chooses to live his or her life.

Upon receiving his marriage license, George Takei, in his charmingly corny way, split his fingers into the Vulcan hand salute and said, “I see before me people who personify love and commitment. We are first and foremost delighted. It's a landmark day. It's going to be the only day like this in our lives and it is the only day like this in the history of America. I think it's a glorious California morning to make history. Congratulations to all of us. May equality live long and prosper." Well said, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Spock would be proud.

Arbitrary Commentary

• Upon leaving the moving public memorial services for Tim Russert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., minutes after Somewhere Over the Rainbow played on a eukalaly, this is what greeted the roughly one thousand people in attendance:

A rare double rainbow. Wow. I'm not saying, I'm just saying...

• In case you haven't been following the latest political news of the day, our government , in passing the FISA bill that President Bush has been pushing for, continues to wipe its ass with our Constitution, as they shred the 4th Amendment. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18wed1.html

Actually, I just realized that you can see me in the french blue polo on the right side of the image jockeying for a place with my video camera over the heads of other media folks in front of me.  That's highly entertaining.

In fact, here I am too, filming the opening press conference (blurred, sitting down, french blue polo again, left side): 

I have no idea why I find these photos so amusing. 

Really all I wanted to say was that it was incredibly exciting being present at such a historic moment - and that the media are kind of like man-eating piranhas (whom I apparently fit in too well with, because I forcibly ejected from the main room after disobeying the "no filming" policy).  Oh - and that I never want forget the sound of the small tinkling bells mingled with applause inside the gym everytime someone's number was called to go up and get their marriage license. 

I'm not a big proponent of marriage, at least not marriage in an assimilationist way (unless that's what you want); however, it was nonetheless an incredibly moving event to witness.  Also, have I mentioned that I was paid to be at this event?  How cool is my job!     

For more photos of the media circus that occurred at the park when WeHo started handing out marriage licenses on Tuesday, check out the West Hollywood Gets Married photostream on the City of West Hollywood's official Flickr account.

(Photo credits: Brett White) 

Takei recibió su licencia para casarse el martes , seguido de muchas otras parejas homosexuales que ahora podrán contraer matrimonio en California. La pareja se casará en septiembre y después visitarán Buenos Aires, las cataratas de Iguazú en Argentina y Lima, Machu Pichu y Cuzco en Perú.

El actor reveló que su padrino sería Walter Koenig, quien interpretaba a Chekov, y que su madrina será la actriz Nichelle Nichols, que hacía de Uhura. El actor que personificaba al Dr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy, estará entre los invitados.

Takei, de 71 años, eligió Sudamérica ya que habla español, idioma que aprendió en el colegio.

O ator George Takei, o capitão Sulu da série Jornadas nas Estrelas, conseguiu nesta terça-feira [17.06.2008] em West Hollywood, licença para se casar com seu parceiro, Brad Altman.

Takei é a primeira celebridade gay a conseguir licença para se casar desde que a Suprema Corte do Estado da Califórnia aprovou no mês passado o casamento civil entre pessoas do mesmo sexo.

O ator, de 71 anos, planeja se casar com Altam, de 54 anos, no dia 14 de setembro de 2008.

George Takei, que recentemente estrelou a série Heroes, anunciou publicamente que era gay em outubro de 2005, em uma entrevista a revista Frontiers.

O estado da Califórnia é governado pelo ex-ator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Na foto, George Takei (à direita) e Brad Altman.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

UPDATE - 20.06.2008, 16h08min - Segundo o TerraSeries, George Takei e Brad Altman pretendem passar a lua-de-mel na América do Sul, e a viagem vai incluir as Cataratas do Iguaçu, no Brasil.

and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

*Listen: A piece from NPR's "All Things Considered" on rocking CEOs. And I do mean "rocking." With the "g." [whyifailed]

*How high gas prices crush touring bands: "Covering the 635 miles to San Francisco takes about 37 gallons of gas each way. With gas well over $4, that's more than $300 for a round trip." [idolator]

*Games: JamsMatch is like playing online concentration, but with album covers. [mefi]

*Play: Rock Band through Facebook. NOTHING gets you further away from the experience of actually rocking. Or your money back. (But not your private data.)

*Read: Method Man wrote a graphic novel: "If you're trying to appeal to 13-year-olds and 12-year-olds, that's cool — make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie! Which they did, and I liked that movie." [pop candy]

*Now playing: Watch music videos from Universal Music Group artists on Last.fm.

*Festivals: The full Lollapalooza lineup here.

*Off topic: George Takei is getting gay married.

*I don't know why, but the fact that the Olsen Twins like Cat Power brings me pleasure.

*Goodbye.

Let's be clear; opponents of same-sex marriage are homophobic. There's no reason to oppose lesbian and gays having the legal right to marry, but the belief that it's wrong for LGBT people to have the same civil rights as heterosexuals: and that is a homophobic belief.

The justifications for why it's "wrong" are all illogical. Maggie begins her argument with "Gay men are promiscuous!" (Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon points out that if consensual promiscuity were a reason for banning marriage for all, straight marriage has to be banned too.) In part of course Maggie is just presenting a naively homophobic argument - it's okay for straights to get married even though some of them will be openly polyamorous within marriage, but gays have all got to behave far better than straights if they want to be "permitted" the right. But mostly, I think Maggie begins her argument with this because she wants to summon the familiar prejudices against gay men, and "they're all promiscuous!" is certainly one of them.

Moving on to Maggie's next "point", she mentions:

Same-sex marriages are tailing off rapidly, after what the New York Times describes as “an initial euphoric rush to the altar.” In Massachusetts, that rush included residents of other states — as indicated by the New York Times headline of May 18, 2004: “Despite Uncertainties, Out-of-Staters Line Up to Marry.” The latest data indicate that 867 gay weddings took place in Massachusetts in the first eight months of 2007, down from 6,121 gay weddings in the first six months of 2004.

This is the same pattern seen in other jurisdictions where same-sex marriage has been allowed.

Yes, Maggie, it is. And a little thought - or even a little examination of the marriages taking place in the first few months - would tell you why this pattern is common to all countries and states where same-sex marriage, or civil union equal to marriage. Because couples who have been together for decades, who have committed their lives to each other, who are given the chance to marry, will do so. Immediately.

Once all the couples who have been waiting for ten, twenty, forty years to be able to marry are married, of course there's an apparent fall in the marriage rate. There is no more backlog, so the marriage rate steadies to a normal rate.

I noted in a post I just recently republished from GJ that opposing same-sex marriage is in general tied in with racism and sexism (Why do people get so panicky about falling birthrates?), so it shouldn't surprise anyone that Maggie Gallagher is dismissive of Mildred Loving (Mildred: "I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people civil rights." Maggie, dismissively: "if the word 'marriage' can be redefined as a civil-rights imperative").

By the end of her rant, though, Maggie has moved on to the Christian platform: not the platform of this kind of evangelical Christian, but the Christianity of the Gay Hatin' Gospel, that believes homophobia is central to Christianity and asserts that anti-gay discrimination, persecution, and bullying are Christian activities: therefore interference with a Christian's discrimination against LGBT people is a threat to religious freedom.

That's what Maggie means when she writes:

Many of the harshest legal conflicts could be alleviated with religious-exemption legislation. But gay-marriage advocates will fight those religious exemptions tooth and nail (as they did in Massachusetts when the Catholic Church asked for one for Catholic Charities) because, they will say, it’s the principle of the thing: We wouldn’t give a religious-liberty exemption to a racist, so why should someone who opposes gay marriage get one?

Conservative gay-marriage advocates like Andrew Sullivan may well tut tut that they don’t really agree with, say, kicking Catholic Charities out of the adoption business. If it were left it up to guys like them, they probably would not do it. But it won’t be left up to them (and they can hardly be expected to fall on their swords to prevent it either.)

No "gay marriage advocates" agreed with "kicking Catholic Charities out of the adoption business". None whatsoever. It wasn't any gay marriage advocate that ordered Catholic Charities out of the adoption business: it was Sean Cardinal O'Malley, who considered that promoting Catholic doctrine that same-sex couples can't be good parents was more important that allowing Catholic Charities to continue to find good parents - gay or straight - to care for children in need.

Maggie appears to lay blame for the closure of Catholic Charities, not where it rightly belongs, but on the anti-discrimination laws that the Catholic Church decided they did not want Catholic Charities to obey. This is a fairly standard way of thinking for bigots: they see as the "problem" the anti-discrimination laws that check what they find "natural", discrimination against their object of bigotry. A bigot who can self-identify as a bigot is at least halfway to being able to quit bigotry: the nature of bigotry is the conviction that the negative feelings the bigot has for X (black people, women, LGBT people) are the natural and normal way to feel.

Religious belief is no excuse for extra-religious persecution. The Catholic Church has a right to decree that no Catholic priest is allowed to be openly gay - that from now on they will ordain self-hating complete closet cases only, because they want no more priests like Mychal Judge, they only want priests like these men. That's religious business. The Catholic Church has a right to order their priests not to marry in church two people who aren't able to conceive children together: that's religious business. (Catholics may well argue that they want their Church to change, to cease to persecute even on religious grounds, but they have the right.)

In the Torah, in the same book and chapter as the Mosaic law against a man lying down with another man, the law says that a devout Jew may not eat meat cooked in the milk of its mother (the law that became the rule against mixing dairy and meat at meals); may not eat meat from a pig, or shellfish, or crustaceans. All of these things are abominations. A school which provides lunches for children would be engaging in (as Maggie says) "the official harassment and repression of traditional religious faiths" if it required all children to eat a set meal which included beef and cheese, or bacon. The solution is not to require the school to provide kosher food for all children, Jewish and gentile: nor to demand that Jewish parents send their children to school with a packed lunch if they want their children to respect religious dietary restrictions. The obvious, practical, respectful solution is to provide food choices, clearly labeled, so that all children can have a decent meal without offending against their family's religious traditions.

Maggie Gallagher's argument, like many another anti-marriage nutter's, is that it is "harassment and repression" not only to have the kosher options available in the canteen, but to ensure that the kids who choose the kosher options aren't then discriminated against for their choices.

She's oddly open about it:

The architects of this strategy have targeted marriage because it stands in the way of the America they want to create: They hope to use the law to reshape the culture in exactly the same way that the law was used to reshape the culture of the old racist south.

Exactly. Just as legislation forcing bigots to refrain from racist discrimination and persecution reshaped American culture: just as the legal right for couples like Richard and Mildred Loving to marry and have their marriage recognised reshaped personal and social reactions to "interracial marriage": so too will legislation forcing bigots to refrain from homophobic discrimination and persecution reshape American culture, so too will the legal right of George Takei and Brad Altman to marry, along with so many other happy couples who have been together for years and decades, reshape personal and social reactions to "homosexual marriage".

And Maggie Gallagher thinks this is a bad thing. Maggie argues that homophobia is a necessary, essential part of US culture: that if same-sex couples get married, this will do a great deal to reshape US culture away from homophobia: and that therefore same-sex marriage must be opposed. (No wonder Maggie dismisses the Loving arguments so contemptuously: her side lost the racist argument in the old south - the law changed, and America culture changed with it and because of it.)

"The meaning of marriage" to Maggie Gallagher is not loving or human: she sees marriage as an instrument to enforce bigotry, to oppose equality. She really is redefining marriage.

The location and date of each ceremony are under wraps, but Popsquire will keep you posted!

In the meantime, watch this coverage of the San Francisco wedding between Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, who have been a couple for over 55 years years. Enjoy!

UPDATE: George Takei and his partner, who have been together for 21 years, obtained a marriage license today and intend to wed on Sept. 14, according to E!Online.

Image stolen from Wikipedia!

About a month ago, California's state Supreme Court ruled that banning gay marriage, while allowing gays to have a civil union that is marriage in all but name, violated the state's constitution.

Well, begining at 5:01pm, PDT, gay and lesbian couples in California will be allowed to get married. Among those tying the knot will be George "Sulu" Takei. He had this to say on his site:

Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years. We've worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career and I do the performing. We've traveled the world together from Europe to Asia to Australia. We've shared the good times as well as struggled through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can't imagine life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily.

I think that sums it up very nicely. It's not about special rights, or wanting to destroy heterosexual unions or bringing down our nation by wrecking Christian values. It's about love, pure and simple. It's about equality. It's about realizing that gay couples are couples just like straight ones, and deserve the same rights, freedoms and responsibilities as anyone else.

So congratulations to George Takei and his husband, Brad. Congrats to all those in California who are getting married today and in the future. Hopefully the rest of us will be able to join you soon.

Law is going to be passed today that will enable same sex couples the same opportunities as heterosexual couples to marry in the State of California. The law will permit same sex couples to wed as soon as today at 5pm. Most clerk offices close at that time but some are staying open later so that people who have been waiting for this law to be passed can marry!

The applications will be changed from "Bride and Groom" to "Partner A and Partner B".

"Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation," wrote Chief Justice Ronald M. George. "An individual’s sexual orientation—like a person’s race or gender—does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

Congrats!

1. His father named him after King George VI. That's awesome.
2. He spent much of his childhood in a Japanese American internment camp. That isn't awesome, of course, but despite the fact that such an experiment would make most people bitter and angry at the United States, Mr. Takei and his family continued to participate in public policy after they were released. George himself served as student council president in junior high, and later served for eleven years on the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit Direct. That is awesome.
3. He recently announced that he will be marrying his partner in September. George Takei has long been active in fighting for gay rights, and now that California has acknowledged the right for gay people to get married, he will be able to enjoy some of those hard-won rights by marrying his boyfriend, Brad Altman. That's awesome.

If you still doubt that George Takei is awesome, check out the Wikipedia article in his name, and his official website. Also check out this humorous public service announcement, clearly from a comedy variety show, though my efforts to find out which have been thwarted.

You can't tell me that isn't awesome.

Yesterday I went to see Adams Sandler's newest movie "You Don't Mess With The Zohan". Adam plays a counter terrorist for Israel. His dream is to to style hair. So he comes to the United States to live out his dream. I thought this movie would be very corny, but I was very wrong it was hilarious. This movie is a must see.

• Star Trek alum George Takei speaks to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on his interment experience. Want more news on the soon-to-be-wed Takei? Check out Wednesday's post on him here.

• Clint Eastwood, director of Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, responds to fellow director Spike Lee's criticism that Eastwood failed to include a single black soldier in the two WWII films: "A guy like him should shut his face."

• What does a $6,100 Densuke watermelon taste like? wonders the Daily Dish blog from the Los Angeles Times. Or better yet, what IS a Densuke watermelon? From said blog: "The 17-pound black melon is considered the cream of the crop, one of only 65 from the first harvest of the season. The fruit is only grown on the northern island of Hokkaido, adding to its value."

If you're expecting William Shatner to attend George Takei's and Brad Altman's gay wedding for the Shat to witness them get hitched in person, don't count on it. It's very unlikely that George Takei is going to invite the Shat to the wedding. Takei explained many times in interviews on TV that he had a fallen out with the Shat, in other words, not getting along with each other. The Shat still supports Takei by sending him wedding wishes even though he knows he won't be invited.

More on it here:

http://www.accesshollywood.com/article/9808/william-shatner-sends-wedding-wishes-to-george-takei/

It's good to see Shat still being supportive of George.

If you think William Shatner is a super nice guy with a wild sense of humor, in reality, I'm sure he is a complicated and difficult guy to get along with.

After Shat whining about not being in "Star Trek XI" for months and months, just shows it.

Kev

As reported earlier actor George Takei best known for his role as Mr. Sulu on Star Trek is getting married in a same sex marriage very soon. Unfortunately there are only 200 seats available for the ceremony and as Takei's partner, Brad Altman put it, "Our contact list has, like, 3,500 names, so we have to whittle it down and I don't know if William Shatner is going to make the cut."

It has been well publicized Takei's less than stellar opinion of Shatner over the years.

Takei says that the event will be a star-studded affair, with Walter Koenig, who played Chekhov on Star Trek, serving as best man and Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on the series, will be the matron of honor. Also in attendance will be Leonard Nimoy, who is famous for his Spock character. William Shatner, however, looks like he will be left off the guest list at the 200-seat affair.

If you, like Shatner, are one of the many who will not be attendance at the wedding, fear not, you can still catch the 71-year-old Takei in the new Adam Sandler movie You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

Not content with the first ever interracial screen kiss between Kirk and Uhuru, now Star Trek's Mr Sulu, the veteran actor, George Takei, is to marry his partner of 20 years. Takei also appears in the current hit TV show Heroes.

Contrast this with the hypocritical stance of Iran which countenances sex change surgery but not gay partnerships. Just today, the British Home office ruled that a gay Iranian teenager who might have been executed if he had been sent home, could be granted asylum in the UK. Mehdi Kazemi, 19, came to London as a student in 2005, but subsequently discovered his boyfriend back in Iran had been arrested for being homosexual, charged with sodomy and hanged. Over the last 30 years, it has been estimated that some 4000+ gay people have been executed in Iran.

In the UK and elsewhere transsexual people formerly had to divorce before being allowed a sex change as otherwise their gender reassignment would have led to a same sex marriage. Perhaps now gay partnerships and trans marriages will be allowed to stay together.

Marriage is part legal contract and part social construct. In some churches and religions it is also a sacred covenant or even sacrament. Biblically, however, the earliest marriages were simpler affairs. Adam and Eve were thrown together, their children obliged to marry their siblings. Abraham took his maid as a second wife, Isaac married Rebecca by just entering his tent. King David and Solomon had multiple wives and concubines. God married, divorced and remarried, Israel many times in the language and writings of the biblical prophets.

At the end of the day all human interaction involves relating and hence relationships. Not all relationships are sexual, and not all those that are sexual involve penetration (sex can be defined by many means). Similarly, not all partnerships are exclusive in business, social or romantic contexts.

If marriage is essentially legal and social only then it should be available to all. If there are religious objections they should be dealt within their communities, it is no business of the state. If relationships and partnerships, married or otherwise, are about love rather than procreation then what has gender to do with it?