Cassandra Complexities: Why the death of OutGames should come as no surprise

Gay Games V figure skating: photo Jim Provenzano

Although I predicted it more than a decade ago, the abrupt cancellation of this year's OutGames –and most likely all future ones– does not induce a feeling of schadenfreude... okay, maybe a little shade.

Coverage from various media outlets (CBC News) uses the word "shock" over the abrupt cancellation of the Miami event this week. But it shouldn't be shocking to anyone who's paid attention.

Miami New Times had this to say:

"... the games had been struggling for the better part of a year to meet the basic financial benchmarks the city had set for the 10-day event. The games were supposed to take place all across Miami-Dade County, including in Lummus Park, Soundscape Park, Flamingo Park, the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, the Colony Theater, the Fillmore Miami Beach, and the National Hotel. But there were warning signs for quite a while that the OutGames, which has been staged three previous times in other countries since 2006, was having trouble raising basic levels of money."

Readings by Rob Rosen, Baruch Porras-Hernandez and Jim Provenzano

I haven't blogged in more than a month - oh my! - but I did do a reading on Facebook Live on April 20 hosted by prolific author and editor Rob Rosen, and with Bay Area poet, author and amiable event host Baruch Porras-Hernandez. 

You can see it on Rob's page HERE.

My reading was as excerpt from the title tale in my short story collection, Forty Wild Crushes. It's available in print and Kindle editions.

I hauled out an old oversize construction paper picture book that I used for the first reading of this childhood tale (with pop culture footnotes, visualized in the picture book) way back in 1994 at the old A Different Light bookstore on Castro Street. 

After being the site of several other clothing stores and businesses, that location now the new Dog Eared Books' second store, where I've already enjoyed reading a few times and attending more events.

My voice in the video was a bit nasal, since I was getting over a cold. But hey, it's there, so enjoy. And check out Rob's books HERE.

Baruch's website is HERE.

More about Forty Wild Crushes HERE and HERE. Oh, and HERE.

Flirting With History, Browsers and Other Kinds

What is the legacy you want to leave behind? As a person, you can hope your family will remember you. As an artist, you usually hope for a little more. If you're ambitious, you crave a lot more.

I began to reconsider this question as I walked from The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco this week. I was among several hundred lucky people who got to see the first open dress rehearsal of the mega-hit musical Hamilton. We didn't have to pay, because the production wanted an audience to warm them up for their extensive run.

Before the show began, Director Thomas Kail introduced himself, and asked us not to Tweet or Facebook or Instagram our experiences. Because offering opinions about a show before it opens is just bad form.

But Kail also expressed that the experience of seeing this live production (a beautiful one, by the way, but don't mistake that for a review) was a shared experience that cannot be recreated through social media.

Parks & Wreck: Trump edicts defy logic, GOP intent on destroying planet

You can tell a lot about a person by what they try to destroy.
That is what they fear.

Women. Children. Veterans. Artists. Muslims. Mexicans. Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Gypsies, Trans people, Syrians. Park Rangers, astronauts, First Nations, and the very air we breathe.

Where did it start, the unraveling of Drumpfiana? When they tried to shut up park rangers, after the wall, before the wall, the animated gif of him scowling at Melania.
What will stop him? RogueNASA, Sanctuary Cities,  altEverythingNotTrump?

Grants cut. Climate change silenced, yet sprouted up again in a thousand tweets by Badass Park Rangers.

His grubby tiny hands deep in the pipeline, he and his dinosaurs conspire to ravage Dakota, which is already spilling.

Gay rights shoved back decades, in an "Orwellina nightmare," to before Drumpf mentor Roy Cohn's could imagine such grand-scale evil a mere glimpse in the corner of his bugged out eye.