The Soft Lounge Blog

Beauty Queen + Drama Queen = Freedom of Speech?

 (If the video doesn’t show up-try clicking and watching here.)

Watch that.  Then Watch this:  Mr. Hilton expresses his discontent for her answer.

Why am I blogging about this?  Well two reasons.  First it gives me a reason to post this:

(don’t expect me to apologize for that either)

And second:  While I, arguably, have a different opinion on same sex marriage (SSM) than Ms. California  Carrie Prejean (I bet we all could find a common ground with this one) I’m fully committed to this idea:

Perez Hilton is an ass-hat and should refrain from trying to be taken seriously on any level.  Ever.  

Imagine yourself there-millions of people watching you, each one of them quite literally judging you (including those, you know, judges) and the entirety of everything you’ve spent years to achieve is right in front of you.  All you have to do is say you believe Y, when in your heart of hearts you believe X.  Could you do it? 

Maybe SSM is easy for you.  What about belief in God?  Gun Control?  Abortion? What if you knew that someone wanted one answer-and it was the answer you weren’t inclined to give.   

Prejean sucked it up and said what she believed.  For her, God was testing her faith-and honesty became more important than winning.  To use some vernacular:  For a beauty queen, she’s got balls.  And, according to some reports anyway that’s why she lost.  

A beauty pageant is decided based on what the contestant thinks.  Perhaps for the first time in recorded history. 

I’m not sure why it riles me up-it’s a tempest in a teapot, for sure.  I have this thing about defending the unpopular opinion-or at least, in this case, the right to have and express an unpopular opinion.  And Mr. Hilton should have been prepared for the possibility that she didn’t have the same views she did.  Of course (as Roland Martin points out) that would mean Hilton was an actual journalist (or otherwise person of consequence) and not an otherwise fully grown man who makes a living drawing penises and writing foul words on pictures of people. 

I think Prejean went out of her way to give a reasonably good, non-judgmental answer to a loaded on the spot question that clearly threw her (“Opposite marriage” indeed!).   And there in is why Hilton will only ever be a drama, and not a beauty, queen-he couldn’t keep it together.  Well that, and he ‘s just not nearly as hot.

Posted in Politics, Pop Culture, Thoughts and Musings | No Comments »

Apparenlty This is the Where The Wild Things Are Blog Now

Not much to write about lately-been getting the Softball season ready, adjusting to some changes at work, winding up my teaching and some other things-makes for less TSL/blog to write and read about.  I have posted at TSL/Creative and more stories etc. are on the way, as well as a lot more posting over at dc.metblogs.com.

So hear our Prez read one of my favorite childhood stories, and I’ll try to come up with something fun to read here soon.

Posted in Just Funny | No Comments »

The Movie I Really May Have Been Waiting My Whole Life To Watch

If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t.  A bonus-one of my favorite covers ever, from Bruce Jones’ run on The Incredible Hulk.

Posted in Books, Movies, Pop Culture | No Comments »

Announcing TSL-Creative

One of the longer awaited, and more blatantly teased, changes to my blogging identity is the idea of doing something a bit more creative.

Hence http://www.thesoftlounge.com/creative 

Still in what I would call a “beta” stage, you can go there now and see how it is going to work-it is certainly functional for now, and I already have some content up on the site.  If you’re wondering what it is well read the about page by all means, and the introductory post.  Then, enjoy the first Short story (which I already had written for a while now) called “Apples.”  (If any of you have read it before-it’s been fixed up a bit since then.)

Essentially it’s a different place on the Internet for a different kind of post.  More bells and whistles will follow, surely, but for now it is up and running and ready for you!

And as a matter of fact, I can tell you all this right now:  With out you this isn’t going to be very much for (for you or for me) and I’ll just go right back to keeping all my little creative stories and vignettes and comic/cartoons in my notebooks and scratch paper.  So if you have opinion whatsoever, or are engaged at all by anything over at TSL/Creative SAY SO.  This is not the time to be passive! 

As it won’t be updated all that frequently (but it will be updated) and it probably won’t always be cross posted here (that’s why I have two blogs and not one) be sure it add it to your reader and engage me about it on THAT blog.  Enough of these emails that say “hey I really liked your post on blah blah blah….”  Let’s be a community, yes?  Especially on TSL/Creative-where maybe we can all build something really fun (and I’ll take most of the credit for it!

Anyway, I do hope you enjoy.

Posted in Colonials, Personal Update, TSL-Creative, The Soft Lounge, Uncategorized | No Comments »

And just to take the edge off of that last post

Here is Neil Gaiman taThe Soft Lounge Blog › Add New Post — WordPresslking to Stephen Colbert:

Once again I highly recommend the Graveyard Book.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Why I haven’t been blogging: The Cocoon

Patrick, the City Captain at DC Metblogs has a great post today “where is my umbrella” where in he makes the following point:

When I originally tackled the question back in 2006, my blog was really more of an online journal. A simple record of some thoughts but mostly recaps of my life since I started blogging. The archives on this blog go back to when I started college but I’ve been blogging since the beginning of high school. I’ve been a blogger before it was called blogging

In recent months my blog has gone through a puberty of sorts. While it isn’t developing new and exciting feelings towards female blogs and it’s not covered in acne, it has grown and matured in terms of the content I’ve written. I’m really happy that I feel like I’m starting to find a voice on this blog that has allowed me to express my feelings and thoughts and in turn hopefully provided more interesting reading for the two people that read my blog.

In my comment to him, I left the following-which I think explains some of my hesitancy to write here recently:

I hear you on blog transition. I had a livejournal for 3 years before I closed that down-and it was very much my “online journal” where i whined and complained and gloated etc.

TSL started different-very opinionated, writing about what interested me-rather than about me. Last year I promised to write a post for every day of the year (and I pretty much did) and it managed to stay fairly on point-the point being writing about what interested me with a few key reoccurring themes (LOST, the Bills, Comparative Americana, copyright and some other stuff).

This year the roll has been a bit slow-I haven’t wanted to write about many of those things-mostly because while I enjoy writing them, and others enjoy reading them, I think it was a bit of a puberty-and now I’m at a place where I want to refine it. I want TSL to be a bit more purposeful-less “A collection of things that interest me and why you might like them” and more of a destination. People should go to TSL for….something.

Not sure exactly what yet, but I do have some ideas. I’ve started second blog TSL/creative which is where my short stories etc. will go, and I do like being the “sports guy” at DC Met-but the main hub of my Internet presence is changing. Again.

And that’s cool too.

And that is all very true.  I think if you don’t blog (and I’m not saying this in any sort of ”holier than thou” voice) you don’t really understand how these things evolve.  I mean we evolve-as people (hopefully) and grow etc.-and I think writing reflects that.  It becomes harder to write the same thing because its a conscious reflection on the fact that you just don’t think the same things anymore. 

It’s not like I don’t like LOST anymore or the Bills-it’s just time for a change.  I used to keep a daily diary on line of what I did, what girls I liked and the 50 different emotions going through my 23-26 year old body-and then I moved on.  Then for a  three years or so this blog was a bit more about what I thought, what I liked, what interested me-rather than some direct examination of self.  While there will always be some aspect of that in what I write (just as, say, the previous post about my race is an aspect of something I would have written in my first blog)-it’s time to move on again.  

I’ve been saying that for a while, I know.  I’ve made steps towards that change (like the creative blog mentioned above that will have content soon) but been slow into committing to the changes.

I look at the Planet Money guys, or how CNET has blossomed into this informative/tech entertainment site or think about how Jon Stewart completely changed The Daily Show-and I realize I don’t want to be the guy who just had some decent posts about LOST and his favorite football team.  I mean, it helps that LOST is answering more questions than they are asking right now-and so it is in fact just less interesting to write about (for me anyway).  But really-I want to do something more than that.  I must be able to do something more than that-right?

Yes. I can.  And I expect I will do-something different anyway.  For now though it’s a semi- cocoon state of concentration.  It’s funny how at these pulled in, tucked in moments there is this nexus like quality to the previous “Frank Blogging” states (personal, interest) and maybe a hint of what is yet to come?  Time folding in on itself-a choice-point in time where multiple realities exist and any possible future may come forth from it thus creating a paradox of time travel wherein I can travel back to my 24 year old blogging self and inform him of the choices and that occur only to have that Frank no longer make the same choi…

Oh , sorry.  I’ve been listening to A Briefer History of Timeon my Ipod-I think some high level physics was sneaking in there.  Or what little I understood of it anyway.

For the time being expect something to be coming along-what it quite is, who knows.  Probably some more of the same, probably some other things.  We shall see.

Posted in Personal Update, The Soft Lounge, Thoughts and Musings | 1 Comment »