This is me, alive and kicking.

People are mean.

2009-06-05T14:27:00.002-06:00

As many of you know I work for a call center. Through out my time working on phones (almost four years now.) I have found that the world is full of some very rude people. When I call starts off with "Are you in the Philippines?"/"I don't wanna talk to no people who don't speak English" and so forth I want to reach through the phone and teach them some manners. Or, for example when someone interrupts you time and time again because whatever there saying is more important, even though more often than not there saying they want your help, so when you offer it they talk over you again and demand said help your trying to offer.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, or maybe I've just worked with the public for to long, but I try really hard to be nice to the people I deal with. The last thing someone needs, is me being a dick to them. And in all honesty, your amount of bullshit directly relates to the amount you get jerked around. Try being nice, it helps I promise.

New Hampshire Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

2009-06-04T09:28:00.002-06:00

I am very excited to hear this news. The more states that see marriage is a right for all humans the more I think Utah will some day pass a simlar law. I may not ever get married, but I would like to at lest know that if/when I want to, I can. Story below.
Link to article here.

June 4, 2009
By ABBY
GOODNOUGH
BOSTON — The New Hampshire legislature approved revisions to a same-sex
marriage bill on Wednesday, and Gov. John
Lynch promptly signed the legislation, making the state the sixth to let gay
couples wed.
The bill had been through several permutations to satisfy Mr.
Lynch and certain legislators that it would not force religious organizations
that oppose same-sex marriage to participate in ceremonies celebrating it. Some
groups had feared they could be sued for refusing to allow same-sex weddings on
their property.
Mr. Lynch, who previously supported civil unions but not
marriage for same-sex couples, said in a statement that he had heard “compelling
arguments that a separate system is not an equal system.”
“Today,” he said,
“we are standing up for the liberties of same-sex couples by making clear that
they will receive the same rights, responsibilities — and respect — under New
Hampshire law.”
The law will take effect on Jan. 1. As originally cast, the
legislation exempted members of the clergy from having to perform same-sex
weddings. Then Mr. Lynch, a centrist Democrat, said he would veto the bill
unless the legislature added language also exempting religious groups and their
employees from having to participate in such ceremonies.
Mr. Lynch also
ordered that the bill protect members of religious groups from having to provide
same-sex couples with religious counseling, housing designated for married
people and other services relating to “the promotion of marriage.”
But the
House rejected that language last month by a two-vote margin, and legislative
leaders appointed a committee to negotiate a compromise.
The committee last
week recommended changes further emphasizing the rights of religious groups not
to participate. They include a preamble to the bill that states, “Each religious
organization, association, or society has exclusive control over its own
religious doctrine, policy, teachings and beliefs regarding who may marry within
their faith.”
Republicans have called the committee’s work tainted because
the Senate president, Sylvia B. Larsen, a Democrat, replaced one of its
Republican members when that legislator would not sign off on last week’s
compromise. Under legislative rules, the committee’s decision needed to be
unanimous.
As more states have legalized same-sex marriage, opponents have
increasingly lobbied for “conscience protections,” language that exempts
religious organizations from having to participate.
But many of the bill’s
opponents believe the language adopted by New Hampshire and several other states
does not go far enough because it protects only religious groups and their
employees. New Hampshire’s bill does not exempt photographers or florists, for
example, from having to provide services.
But groups that advocate for gay
rights, some of whom poured money into the state in recent months, said the law
was yet another step toward mainstream America accepting same-sex marriage. “As
people get to know the loving and committed couples at the heart of marriage
equality,” said Neil G. Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation, “our culture is moving to equality.”
Kevin Smith,
director of the Cornerstone Policy Research, a group opposing the bill, said
lawmakers “rammed this legislation through” in a way that “reeks of backroom
deals and a subversion of the legislative process.”

2009-06-03T13:54:00.003-06:00

There is this guy Andres who is friends with a few of the Mythic players, he was at the event on May 20th taking pictures. He hasn't finished editing them all yet, but here are just a few:

This one makes me want to do some sort of anti-smoking ad. "Kids if you smoke you will turn into a giant cat!"

Man who hit and killed dog turns himself in

2009-05-29T09:00:00.001-06:00

The below story makes me a little sick. I would like to see this guy fired and tossed in jail. Laws related to animals are not harsh enough.

May 29th, 2009 @ 8:37am
By Ben Winslow
OGDEN -- Police in Ogden say a man accused of hitting a puppy with his car and dragging its owner by the leash has surrendered.
The man was identified by the Ogden Police Department late Thursday as Joseph Porter, 45, who is employed as a sergeant at the Weber County Jail.
Ogden Police Lt. Scott Sangberg told KSL NewsRadio Porter contacted them on Thursday and spoke with investigators about the incident on Gibson Ave.
"He spoke with detectives who took his statement and some other witness statements," Sangberg said, adding that the statements differ somewhat from what the woman who was dragged claimed.
Kristan Kap told the Ogden Standard-Examiner she was walking along Gibson Ave. with her 4-month-old puppy on a short leash when the dog was hit by a pickup. She was dragged a short distance because the dog leash was wrapped around her wrist. The driver stopped briefly, then left when confronted by Kap.
Ogden police said that on Thursday, Porter contacted them. He was not arrested and the case will be referred to city prosecutors to determine if any misdemeanor charges would be leveled against him. Charges could include failure to remain at the scene of an injury accident.
The Weber County Sheriff's Office told KSL it was still gathering information about the incident and that it would be premature to comment about Porter's status as a jail employee there.
Kap told the Standard-Examiner she does not want Porter to lose his job over the incident and that she feels "at peace" since he turned himself in.
E-mail:bwinslow@ksl.com

2009-05-26T14:14:00.000-06:00

California high court upholds same-sex marriage ban
Story Highlights
NEW: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praises court for leaving 18,000 marriages intact
Dissenting opinion says decision "fundamentally alters" state constitution
Court's 6-1 ruling met with chants of "shame on you" from crowd of about 1,000
Voters in November approved ban on same-sex marriage
SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- The California Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a ban on same-sex marriage that state voters passed in November, but it allowed about 18,000 marriages performed before the ban to remain valid.
The 6-1 decision was met with chants of "shame on you" from a crowd of about 1,000 people who gathered outside the court building in San Francisco.
"It's nice that my marriage is still intact, but that's not the point," said Kathleen White, who married her partner in 2008. "The point is that everybody should have the same civil rights across the board."
Opponents of the ban argued that the controversial Proposition 8 improperly altered the California Constitution to restrict a fundamental right guaranteed in the state's charter.
But the court found the measure restricted the designation of marriage "while not otherwise affecting the fundamental constitutional rights of same-sex couples." Watch what was at stake »
"We further conclude that Proposition 8 does not apply retroactively and therefore that the marriages of same-sex couples performed prior to the effective date of Proposition 8 remain valid," California Chief Justice Ronald George wrote.
The court, which is dominated by Republican appointees, ruled in May 2008 that the state constitution guaranteed gay and lesbian couples the "basic civil right" to marry. The 4-3 decision came four years after San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
But in November, state voters approved the Proposition 8 ballot initiative 52 percent to 48 percent. The measure provided that only heterosexual unions would be recognized as marriages by the state.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposed the initiative, praised the court for leaving the previous marriages intact and urged opponents of the decision to respond "peacefully and lawfully."
"While I believe that one day either the people or courts will recognize gay marriage, as governor of California, I will uphold the decision of the California Supreme Court," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
Supporters of the proposition argued that Californians long have had the right to change their state constitution through ballot initiatives. The effort to overturn the restriction "strikes directly at the heart of California's system of government," a brief by the conservative Family Research Council argued.
CaliforniaAttorney General Jerry Brown sided with advocates of same-sex marriage, stating in court papers that Proposition 8 "put the fundamental rights of a minority group to a popular vote." And in his dissenting opinion, Justice Carlos Moreno wrote that the measure "violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning."
"The majority's holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution," Moreno wrote.
Proposition 8's approval sparked protests against and criticism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which strongly supported the measure.
Opponents of the ban said the Utah-based church donated a majority of the money that funded the Proposition 8 campaign. But the Mormons said they were being unfairly singled out for criticism when other religious leaders -- including Cardinal Roger Mahoney, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles -- also supported the ban.
Tuesday's decision left unaddressed whether same-sex marriages performed in other states before the ban was adopted would be recognized in California.
Four states -- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Iowa -- allow same-sex marriages. A Vermont law making such marriages legal will take effect in September.
On May 6, same-sex marriage became legal in Maine as Gov. John Baldacci signed a bill less than an hour after the state Legislature approved it.
In April, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously that it is illegal to discriminate against same-sex couples by denying them the right to marry. The first gay marriages in the state took place April 27.
The District of Columbia voted May 5 to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, though it does not itself give marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
In April, New York Gov. David Paterson introduced legislation to make same-sex marriage legal in his state.
New Hampshire's move to legalize same-sex marriage hit a road bump Wednesday after that state's House of Representatives did not agree to legislation changes made by the governor. iReport.com: React to court decision and share photos, video
Both the House and Senate already had approved allowing gay couples to marry. But Gov. John Lynch, a three-term Democrat, said he would sign a same-sex marriage bill only if it provides "the strongest and clearest protections for religious institutions and associations, and for the individuals working with such institutions."
The House on Wednesday fell two votes short of approving Lynch's language. The chamber then voted to send the legislation to a committee to be considered further.
All AboutCalifornia • Same-Sex Marriage • Constitutional Law

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/26/california.same.sex.marriage/index.html

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2009-05-26T14:07:00.001-06:00

Prop 8, all over again.

Meet Walter

2009-05-26T13:51:00.003-06:00

On Memorial day I was having a picnic in the park with Stacie, Austyn and Steph. This little guy came up and hung out for a while. He walked right up to Austyn and bit his leg, well more nipped at it. Eventually he got Stacies toe and my shoes and pants. He made it pretty clear a few times that Stacies toes looked tasty.

I got the idea he was lost. He didn't even have wings yet, poor little guy. Just before we left I said "I shall call you Walter!", he just quacked at me.

Annoyed

2009-05-18T09:07:00.002-06:00

I am really annoyed that I keep getting ads on my blog. There is no reason for it and I can't get rid of them, tips?

Update
I figured it out, w00t!

Annoyed

2009-05-18T09:07:00.000-06:00

I am really annoyed that I keep getting ads on my blog. There is no reason for it and I can't get rid of them, tips?

Birthday

2009-05-18T08:57:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was my 24th birthday, I got The Zombie Survival Guide. I am very excited.

Face Paint

2009-05-15T17:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday May 9th I went to the Zoo with Stacie and my mom. They where doing face painting. We waiting in line for 45 minutes, and it took the lady maybe 1 minute to do my make-up.

THE GRADUATE

2009-04-17T14:34:00.020-06:00

Before I post this long article about an actor I love, I'd like to point out the the pictrue directly to me left Efron is wearing the following:
Silk suit, $4,375, by Dolce & Gabbana. Shirt, $480, and tie bar, $250, by Thom Browne New York. Tie, $95, by Ralph Lauren Black Label. Pocket square, $60, by Paul Stuart.

That would be a $5,260 outfit... Story below.

Three years ago, Zac Efron tapped into the fantasies of a generation of girls who were still wearing braces and driving with learners’ permits and became the lord of the tweenyboppers, thanks to Disney and ‘High School Musical.’ Now, at the manly age of 21 and with two major movies on the line—including Richard Linklater’s next project—he’s trying to prove he’s more than just another buffed and pretty face
By Alex Pappademas; Photographs by Peggy Sirota

there are bobcats around. sixty-eight-pound bobcats. Or that’s what the sign taped to the gate at the head of the trail says, anyway. And some amateur naturalist has written a note on the sign, pointing out that sixty-eight pounds is “more than double the previous world record of 28 pounds.” Another sign, a little to the left, pleads for the safe return of a missing black poodle. Zac Efron pauses, scans all this, says, “Yeah—that dog’s dead.”

There are bobcats around, but Efron is not afraid of them. He unlocks the gate and we start walking up the trail, into the foothills of the Santa Monicas. He lives somewhere around here, in the circa-1947 Case Study house that his singing/dancing/basketball-dribbling appearances in three zestfully clean High School Musical movies—and on countless officially licensed lunchboxes and toe socks and flip-flops and i ♥ troy messenger bags—bought. It’s built ten feet off the ground, hidden in the trees, so every morning, when his iPhone alarm wakes him up with a randomly selected song—today it was the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize,” the one with the Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see? chorus—and before he does anything else, before he takes a piss even, he can walk out onto his terrace and greet the sun, the way he likes to, without it showing up all over goddamn TMZ. It’s also close to this trail we’re on now, where Efron takes his exercise these days. He used to go to Runyon Canyon, but the last time he went up there a gentleman in Gucci loafers and head-to-toe camo gear oh-so-subtly took his picture a few hundred times.
It’s one of those L.A. days that feel like an ostentatious gift. A breeze blows clouds across a chroma-key blue sky; it’s so quiet you can hear loose sediment trickling down the canyon wall. Efron’s in a blue T-shirt, muscle-ropy arms exposed to the sun, hair crammed under a gray stocking cap. We take the hill, he talks about his twenty-first birthday—he expected his friends to get him booze; they mostly bought him books—and the way Darren Aronofsky’s camera trails the wheezing side of beef that is Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. We talk about Sean Penn, whom Efron met a couple of awards seasons ago.
“He was, uh, not in top form,” Efron says. “Or maybe he was in top form. He was in rare form. Anyway—he told me to go skydiving. That’s all. Just—‘Go skydiving.’ ”
He kinda can’t believe he gets to meet these people. He went to the Oscars last week with Vanessa Hudgens, who was his love interest in High School Musical and remains his girlfriend in real life, although he will never utter her name in our presence, and when he wasn’t onstage—and he rarely wasn’t, because the Academy, desperate to inject the show with youthiness, kept shoving him back out there to sing or dance or present something—he didn’t know which incredible famous person to embarrass himself in front of first. It’s Robert De Niro! It’s Sean Penn, drunk as a slab of tiramisu, dispensing gnomic Sean Penn wisdom!

Before long we’re at the top of the trail, all of L.A. laid out before us like God’s own craft-service spread. Efron pushes his long Japanimation-character bangs under his cap, out of eyes as blue as the shallow end, points out Melrose Avenue, the modernist pancake stack of the Capitol Records Tower, the Cinerama Dome sitting there like a golf ball whacked hard into Sunset. Yesterday it rained and washed the crud out of the sky, and today the view is high-def. You can see all the way to the ocean. We sit on bare terra-cotta-colored dirt, contemplating.
“It’s crazy, all the stuff that happens down there,” Efron says. “It’s the American dream. I mean, it’s beautiful. But it’s so fucked-up. Up here, everything’s green. And down there, it’s crazy.”
Efron comes here a lot. “You can forget where you are for a minute,” he says. “And they haven’t figured out that I come here yet.”
By “they,” you mean—
“Photographers. Yeah.”
How’s that going for you?
“Pretty well, actually,” he says, kicking a white-Conversed toe in the dirt. “I’ve kinda got it figured out. I just pull in to the lot at”—he says the name of a movie studio, then asks me not to print which one it is—“and they can’t follow me. The first time I did it, they weren’t going to let me in. The guy at the gate was like, ‘What are you gonna do for me?’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He’s like, ‘I got kids.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I got a poster in the trunk!’ It’s smart to keep some swag in the trunk, just in case.”
Do you keep a lot of High School Musical stuff around?
Efron laughs. “In the house? Oh, hell no,” he says. “It’s in the garage. And then a lot of it’s at my parents’.”
You’ll probably want the Troy doll someday, we say, or the board game. When you’re 60. You could open a place up, like Burt Reynolds’s museum, where they’ve got the Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit.
“Paul Newman had one of those,” Efron says. “He had a barn where he kept all that stuff, and that’s where he’d hold his meetings. I can’t imagine how intimidating that would be to have a meeting there.”
He’s been getting into Newman’s films lately, he says. Him and Steve McQueen. When-men-were-men kind of actors, and guys who never seemed to put a foot wrong, careerwise, despite not appearing to give that much of a shit about anything but the work.

When Efron talks about these guys, or when he talks about meeting De Niro and how all the “dedication and hard work” De Niro had put into all those great roles was written in the lines of De Niro’s face, or when he talks about how the movies of the ’70s were better because they didn’t test-market everything, you get the feeling he just wants to say the right thing. That he wants to make sure we know he knows that everything he’s done up until now—the basic-cable ratings record set by the second High School Musical TV movie, his decision to take a smallish role in Hairspray that winked charmingly at his own decidedly retro teen-idol persona, even his leap into the world of PG-13 movies with the winningly goofy old-dude-becomes-young-dude comedy 17 Again—means exactly jack, cinematically. That at least for now, he does not yet have the kind of history a man can hang in a barn.
You get the feeling he knows he should be saying this, to the men’s magazine. That he knows a career built almost exclusively on the squealing ardor of preteen girls, on choreographed dance numbers set to expository pop tuneage so perkily inoffensive it makes early ’NSync sound like Howlin’ Wolf, is something a man has to live down before you can, y’know, call him a man. He seems like he wants to pass a test. And yet he’s not wrong. Cool Hand Luke is awesome! Compared to the movies of the ’70s, the movies of today look like cheap, mercury-contaminated Chinese toys! And Steve McQueen and Paul Newman? They were awesome!
“I mean—they lived here,” Efron says, gesturing out at the city, clearly meaning not Hollywood the place but Hollywood, the state of being. “They made it through all this.”
Plus—look at this view. Nice pigeonhole, if you can get it.
*****

back down the hill. Efron’s talking about 17 Again. “It’s very transitional, y’know? I didn’t wanna alienate the fans that had been around for so long,” he says. Then he adds, self-mockingly: “The fans, who’ve been around for so many years.”
Efron’s Audi is a kiln. He starts the car and Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga picks up midsong. The words look! safe to move? blink on the video screen in the dash. It’s like a little koan for the cautious celebrity. An empty bottle of something called 5-Hour Energy (“hours of energy now…no crash later”) rattles in the console coin holder; in the compartment between the front seats, there’s an extra stocking cap—this one’s black and white—in case Efron leaves the house without one. We’re going to go get some coffee, maybe a sandwich.

Down through the steep street maze of Laurel Canyon. Efron squeezes the Audi past a yoga-holically thin woman leaning into the window of a parked car. He checks her out. We clock him checking her out. He (maybe) clocks us clocking him checking her out, exhales a verdict—“Tooooooooo skinny”—and turns his attention back to the road. He plays tour guide. Here’s where he almost hit Kathy Griffin with his car. Here’s where one of those oversize-load house trailers came out of nowhere. He scraped a stone wall, fucked up his rim. Oh, and that house, right there? “That’s where fuckin’ Britney Spears stays,” Efron says. “You can’t drive by there because of all the paparazzi.”
(There appears to be no paparazzi there today. Maybe he’s making fun of her.)
In 17 Again, Efron plays Mike, a high school basketball star who blows the big game and winds up thirtysomething, dejected, headed for a divorce. Then the universe intervenes, in the form of Brian Doyle-Murray as a magical janitor; Efron becomes a teenager again, goes undercover at his old high school, meddles productively with his high-school-age kids’ messed-up lives, and tries to save his marriage.
In a way, it’s a strange choice—Efron is trying to prove that he’s ready for more adult roles by playing a grown man trapped in a 17-year-old’s body. But it’s also a smart choice—a family-friendly comedy that doesn’t skew straight tween, an ensemble vehicle he can drive but doesn’t have to carry. The great Leslie Mann, of Judd Apatow’s crew, plays his wife. The great Matthew Perry gives a performance as Efron’s droopy-dawg adult self that is best described as good-sportsmanly, when you consider that the part requires him to embody a younger, handsomer actor’s total failure at the game of life. And yeah, it’s not Cool Hand Luke. It’s heartfelt, it’s pretty funny, it’s a step on the path to something else.
And Efron gets this. “A guy I worked with recently told me, ‘You have to earn the right to hold a gun.’ And that completely made sense. Can you imagine me running around with a gun in a film? I noticed the second I started that the things you want to be involved with are always just out of reach. Most parts you’d want, people won’t really consider you for, because you have to earn that respect. The things people do want you for are usually not things you want to do. At one point, somebody said to me, ‘What do you wanna do? A cool crime drama? Do you wanna shoot up heroin? We’ll do anything you wanna do…the Musical.”

Efron says he’s never taken an acting job to get paid. That there are no commercials for frozen minibagels on his reel. And when music-business people came to him after the second High School Musical broke all those records, when they offered him the chance to do an album, he declined. It just seemed like a teen-idol thing to do.
“It’s such a fine line,” he says, “between being famous for who you are personally and for your films. And I’ve been on the wrong side of it my whole career.”
He was worried about 17 Again. He worried about it becoming nothing but a dumb teen comedy slapped together to showcase his charms. It wasn’t until he met with director Burr Steers that he felt like it could be something more. Steers—best known for the Salingerian coming-of-age dramedy Igby Goes Down—didn’t talk about him taking his shirt off in the movie. Steers talked about story, about character, how it could be a real film. Steers got the job.
Then, on the set, Efron says, “he messed with my head a little bit. There were scenes where I had to be pissed off, so he’d be a total asshole all morning, to make me a little bit on edge. I had no idea what he was doing until after the movie was over. I just thought he was a huge asshole. But it turns out he’s incredibly smart. He doesn’t just give you what you want to hear and tell you that you’re doing a great job. It’s a different kind of love and support.”
Efron still talks his career decisions over with his parents. They met at a nuclear-power plant near Arroyo Grande, a few hours north of Los Angeles. Efron’s father was an engineer. His mother was a receptionist. His dad was analytical, logical, deeply left-brained—Efron says he’s still the smartest guy he knows. His mom was spiritual, passionate. “She was at Woodstock,” Efron says. “She lived an exciting life. She still hasn’t divulged all the details.” Neither of them had any showbiz in their background. But when he started auditioning professionally—after doing tons of “bad community theater” and catching the eye of an agent—they supported everything, drove him back and forth to L.A., even though he didn’t book much real work. As long as he kept his grades up, Efron says, “they could have cared less how many auditions I tanked.
“They’re both pessimists,” Efron says. “They’ll give it to you real. They don’t blow you up with excess confidence. I didn’t grow up thinking I was the greatest kid in the world. And they completely believed that there was a one-in-a-billion chance I would ever be successful. And that was ingrained in the back of my head: I will fail. I’m going to fail. They managed my expectations. I was always prepared to fail. So it was kind of confusing when things started to work out.”

You didn’t have a plan for that.
“No,” Efron says. “That was the one thing I wasn’t prepared for. This wasn’t supposed to work, y’know? There’s 150 guys that are just like me, except more talented, and they probably deserve to be out here. It’s a fluke.”
But if you were so sure it wasn’t going to happen, why did you keep doing it?
“If I knew I was going to fail?” Efron says. “Because it was fun? I don’t know. That’s a good question.”
He thinks about it for a second. (We’re out of the car now, drinking coffee at a patio table in front of a little country store/deli in Laurel Canyon, a stone’s throw from the restaurant where Efron had his last birthday party.)
“I never half-ass anything. And every time I do, it always comes back to haunt me. Whatever I’m focused on is what I will succeed at. When I was in school, I told myself I’d get good grades, and I got great grades. And when I started doing this—you learn. You can’t help but recognize what the people that are better than you do. Every film is a challenge. You have to acquire new skills. You have to put your ass out there. And that’s what I wanna do next.”
You can tell this is what got him here, what drove him through the endless basketball drills and dance rehearsals High School Musical required—this sense that the work was a challenge and that the challenge was necessary. Sure, he’s cute as a damn button—but he’s pushed himself this far with the iron will of a mathlete bent on crushing his crosstown rivals. Whether this is going to be enough to get him into better films—as opposed to just bigger ones, which will undoubtedly come—remains to be seen. Better films demand certain intangibles, stuff an actor can’t necessarily pull out of himself by buckling down and studying hard. He could smack the ceiling of his talent and that’ll be that. But it won’t be for lack of drive.
In the second High School Musical—the one where, through various creakily miraculous plot contrivances, all the leads from the first movie end up with summer jobs at the same country club—there’s a scene where Efron, as high school basketball star and musical-theater prodigy Troy Bolton, sings and dances alone on a well-groomed golf course the color of lime Jell-O. The song is called “Bet on It”; it’s the moment in the film when Troy realizes he’s lost the trust of his friends and has to stand up to the country club’s big jerk of a manager and force him to let the guys from the basketball team perform in the country club’s annual talent show. But first he has to dance. He has to dance angrily. And the number that follows is easily the greatest Angry Dancing moment in recent film history. Efron clutches his head in frustration, falls on his knees as if cursing capricious gods, hits a golf ball right into a water trap. The scene serves almost exactly the same narrative purpose as Kevin Bacon’s legendary warehouse dance scene in Footloose, the previous high-dudgeon mark for cinematic Angry Dancing; you can see why there was a Footloose remake in development for a while as a vehicle for Efron, with High School Musical director Kenny Ortega attached. (Efron has decided not to do the film.) But when we talk to Efron about his work ethic, what we realize is that “Bet on It” may be the closest the junk written for him to sing in these movies has come to expressing something that’s really there inside him—namely, steel. I’m not gonna stop, he sings. That’s who I am. I’ll give it all I got. That is my plan.

And that is his plan, y’know?
Efron isn’t embarrassed about High School Musical, by the way. He says if he had it all to do over again, he’d do another one for free. He does get embarrassed, though, when he starts explaining what it was like when acting finally did get in the way of his schoolwork, when he found himself torn between his ambitions as a performer and the life of a normal high school kid. “I was really fucking confused,” he says. “This is so stupid, but it was kinda like…”
Say it!
“It was kinda like High School Musical.”
He had this other life, where he’d go and do plays, which meant being around adults, people who seemed to have their shit together, people who were making a living being creative, and this made him able to not care when people—even his friends!—made fun of him about doing community-theater productions that involved singing and dancing in front of senior citizens.
And the weird thing is that this, basically, ironically, is the plot of the movie that made Efron who he is today. High School Musical is about a young man struggling to choose between high school sports and the temptation of musical theater, and finding the courage to do something his buddies think is totally gay, except it’s a Disney movie and therefore it takes place in a universe where being gay does not exist, so Troy’s buddies just say things like “You ever think LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal auditioned for their school musical?”
“It was the worst possible thing you could do in high school,” Efron agrees. “Kids who are in musical theater tend to be self-confident in a quirky kind of way, and when kids who are really self-conscious see somebody doing that kind of thing, they try to bring them down. I used to do random things, man. When I was a kid? I dyed my hair silver, to look like SisQó in the “Thong Song” video. I just didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t care.”
Somehow this reminds us: What’s up with this story about you wearing false eyelashes? Is that for real?
Efron groans.

“If somebody can find any photo that shows me wearing false eyelashes,” he says, “I will give them a fucking million dollars. That’s bullshit.”
Pause.
“You know what, dude? A couple of times, when I was young, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing—it’s just what happens. Somebody’s there, and it’s their job. And they load you up with makeup. They don’t do the girlie thing, but they, y’know, cover your zits. It didn’t come from a self-conscious place—it was just what everyone did. And since then, people just constantly think I’m wearing makeup. It’s a recurring theme. But fuck, man. I have never worn false eyelashes in my entire life.”

He blinks a couple of times. Bat, bat—“That’s all me.”
What about, y’know, guyliner?
“No. Fuck, man,” he says. “No.”
Other things that aren’t true: He isn’t fighting with Justin Timberlake and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson over the lead in Ohio, a movie about the Kent State killings. He’s never even seen a script for that. He says he doesn’t want to say what his next movie (after 17 Again and Richard Linklater’s forthcoming indie Me and Orson Welles) is going to be. He says he doesn’t know, which means he either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to say. We ask if it’s the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, as has been reported, or a big-screen version of the ’60s cartoon Jonny Quest, and he is vague and nice about telling us he can’t tell us. “I’m truly ready right now. I can’t wait, dude. I’m going to do something—something cool. Something people aren’t necessarily expecting.”
The lady who runs the coffee cart brings a blond, very poised preteen girl in a white dress across the patio for an autograph.
“You are beautiful,” Efron says to the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Olivia,” says Olivia.
“Nice to meet you,” Efron says.
“Nice to meet you,” Olivia says. “I’m doing High School Musical 2 in school.”
(She’s playing Sharpay, Ashley Tisdale’s mean-girl diva character. It’s one of the better parts in the second movie—she gets to sing about her Jimmy Choo flip-flops and mistreat people while Hudgens, as Gabriella, is stuck with drippy ballads and lines like “Promise is a big word.”)
“My best friend,” she says, “is playing Troy.”
“Oh yeah?” Efron says. “Is he a good-looking guy?”
“It’s actually a girl,” Olivia says.
*****
the afternoon sun’s like a heat-beam from space; Efron’s all the way at the end of the picnic table, scrunched into what’s left of the shade. We’re talking about Leonardo DiCaprio. They sat next to each other at a Lakers game not long ago. Floor seats. DiCaprio talked with his hand over his mouth, like a wiseguy trying to foil FBI lip-readers; Efron took his lead, covered his own mouth. They set up a lunch. He doesn’t want to get specific about how the lunch went, but when we ask if he got tips from DiCaprio about flipping his teen-idol stock, Efron says no, not really.

“I thought I was gonna ask him questions,” Efron says. “He ended up asking me questions, and in that, he told me a lot. He said, ‘There’s one way that you can really fuck this all up. Just do heroin. If you steer clear of that—the other obstacles you’ll be able to navigate.’ And that makes sense, dude.”
Efron’s not doing heroin. He cops to having enjoyed the rights afforded a 21-year-old on his birthday. He drinks in private, with friends. “Behind closed doors,” he says, in a way that seems to close a door conversationally. He has not rounded up a Pussy Posse. You get the sense that he has calculated the potential fun quotient of these activities, weighed that against his long-term goals. Or that the undoubtedly kick-ass, CIA-assassin-school-grade media training he received at an impressionable age is still working.
“I wasn’t programmed by Disney,” Efron says. “It’s common sense. If you’re gonna be drunk with your friends, don’t get wasted at the Chateau Marmont and hook up with some famous chick. It’s not rocket science.
“I don’t want to be famous for my personality. If anything, I keep that under wraps.”
All this makes good sense. But by refusing to be out there in the mix, participating in the thermodynamics of Hollywood social life, Efron’s placing a giant bet on his ability to stay relevant post–High School based on hard work and talent alone. He grew up in a Disney force-field bubble surrounded by shrieking girls; now it’s like he’s replaced that bubble with one of his own making. It protects him from dirt; it may also be protecting him from grit. He might have a better shot at some of those Penn-like roles if he were willing to let the world see a side of him that hasn’t been carefully managed.

A couple of months ago, there were these pictures on the Internet of Hudgens and Efron posing with a fan in what appeared to be the adults-only section of a novelty store. Inflatable farm animals, Penis Pasta—the kind of naughty, bachelorette-party-gift items no one’s ever put to serious use in the bedroom. This was covered on blogs as an embarrassing gaffe on Efron and Hudgens’s part. The Disney couple saying cheese in the marital-aids aisle—they might as well have been Mickey and Minnie caught shopping for cock rings. But we venture a theory that this might actually have been good for his image—that it was the kind of fuckup that makes famous people seem less like robots and more like human beings. Human beings who have sex. Efron sort of grumbles noncommittally.
“That’s a Halloween store,” he says, by way of explanation. “You know those stores that pop up during Halloween? But there’s always an adult section. And somehow there was a brilliant lapse in judgment, and I decided to take a photo with a fan, in front of a giant dildo or something.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Your parents see that stuff, y’know? My mom was like, ‘Zac, what are you doing in a sex shop?’ And I was like, ‘Mom, it’s not a sex shop.’ My dad called me, and he’s like, ‘Y’know, Zac, just from now on’—it was literally straight out of American Pie—‘if you’re shopping for sex toys, don’t take pictures with fans inside the store.’ I’m like, ‘Really, Dad? I’ll take that into consideration next time I’m stocking up.’ And then my friend is like, ‘Next time why don’t you take a picture holding a giant dildo? Really give ’em something to talk about.’ ”
Well played—he doesn’t mention Hudgens, even though she’s there in the pictures next to the Luv Ewes, too. Just as carefully, we ask about their status. You went to your manager’s wedding in Kauai, we say. Everybody thought you were getting married.
“That was such bullshit,” he says. “I’m definitely not getting married. In this business, you’re either getting married or they want you to be pregnant. I’m not getting married until I’m 40. If ever. The thought never crossed my mind.”
And then, after a few seconds in which he maybe calculates how this is going to sound to the girlfriend he doesn’t talk about having, he says:
“Maybe not 40. Maybe not until I’m 30.”
alex pappademas is gq’s staff writer.

2009-04-16T17:19:00.001-06:00

From Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-04-16T17:15:00.002-06:00

Annie Leibovitz recently took some disney movie themed pictures that I have fallen in love with.

And my two faves...

This amused me...

2009-04-08T16:54:00.004-06:00

If you have to ask whats funny, your not going to get it, click to enlarge.

Mike Huckabee, douche bag.

2009-04-08T12:32:00.001-06:00

Gov. Mike Huckabee release the following statement this afternoon regarding the Iowa Supreme Court Ruling on gay marriage…

I wanted to get this news to you immediately. The Iowa Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, struck at the heart of the family in Iowa and indeed in the whole country. The ruling, which, will be viewed as a victory for the gay rights movement, should instead, be viewed as an attack on the traditional family as recognized in this country. It is a sad day for Iowa and for the country

Now, because of the ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court, gay couples can legally marry in Iowa beginning April 24.

And Iowa, by the decision of the State Supreme Court, becomes the first mid-western state, and the third in the country, to allow same-sex marriages. I have long believed that marriage must be defined as a marriage between one man and one woman. To that end, we must pass a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. I continue to believe that neither the federal government or any state government should recognize same sex marriages.

As the late Cardinal O’Connor said, a domestic partnership law is legislation that says “marriage doesn’t matter.” The Cardinal was right. Marriage does matter. Our true strength as a nation comes from our families. We must continue to fight by every legal method available to us to preserve the importance of the family as a unit and to amend the Constitution of the United States to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Continuing the Fight

Mike Huckabee

2009-04-03T14:34:00.002-06:00

My boss put this sign on the chair of a co-worker, he like the grossest gay man I've ever seen.

Umbrella Corporation requests bailout

2009-04-02T17:08:00.003-06:00

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Executives from the Umbrella Corporation today asked the US government for nearly $100 billion in aid money. They said that without such funding, the world's largest pharmaceutical bioterrorism researcher could go bankrupt as early as June. It would be the company's second bankruptcy, having restructured several years ago after running a gauntlet of lawsuits and criminal investigations.

"This isn't just about keeping the Umbrella family together, or making sure our 10,000 employees have paychecks to put food on the table," Umbrella founder Ozwell E. Spencer said in an impassioned speech to the US Senate earlier today. "It's about hope. It's about mom, baseball, and apple pie. It's about keeping the United States at the forefront of exciting fields such as pharmaceutically mind-controlled supersoldiers."

Spencer said that simply powering the containment tanks at Umbrella's Washington, D.C. facility of supermutated biological weapons costs several million a month. He added that the company has been genetically engineering these creatures, which can no longer be deemed "human," so that they can sustain themselves only on the flesh of the perpetually homeless. Although Spencer stressed that only grown males were intended to be among the sustainable food sources for these creatures, he did admit that, "There are some glitches that have yet to be worked out." Last month's glitches alone tallied three women, a small orphanage, and a stray cat.

Opponents of the proposed Umbrella bailout, such as Senator Ron Davis, have criticized the company for stepping up its outsourcing in recent years. "Umbrella practically owned Raccoon City as the rural town grew into an industrialized metropolitan center," declared the senator. "But after the city was devastated by an unrelated catastrophe, Umbrella turned its back on the hard-working Americans of Raccoon City who survived physically, if not mentally. Instead, the company turned overseas, using subsidiaries to set up operations in rural Spain and the African nation of Kijuju, where labor is incredibly cheap and frequently homicidal."

After Spencer's appearance before Congress, Atlantic Colgate Securities' Wilson Evans downgraded Umbrella stock from "Hold" to "Sell."

"After years of stagnant revenues and slipping profit margins, we have lost faith in this management team," Evans said in a note to investors. "While they undeniably lead the world in turning ordinary people into turbo-freaky killing machines with, like, a bajillion tentacle knives, we are beginning to rethink the profit potential of furthering humanity's evolution by devastating the world's population. Also, we believe the corporation faces customer confusion issues, as Umbrella has been responsible for roughly a dozen different viruses on the market in the span of about a dozen years. Do they really expect consumers to understand the difference between the T-Virus and the T-Veronica Virus, or Las Plagas and Uroboros?"

In other bailout news, after being denied federal funding last month, the Mishima Corporation declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy today. "It turns out that holding a no-holds-barred international fighting tournament to determine the company's CEO wasn't such a hot idea after all," lamented one executive who wished to remain nameless.

ST meeting...

2009-04-01T14:26:00.002-06:00

Had my ST meeting last night at Applebees. Good food, good meeting. I think we got a lot done. We where there for like four hours. No Cam this week, which is nice in a way. I could always use a break...

Testing

2009-03-31T16:08:00.002-06:00

There is a picture here. The idea is, if I make my albums private on photobucket, can you still see the pictures from this album when I post them?

2009-03-31T15:36:00.004-06:00

So today, this guy calls in to report a place he used to work at for software piracy. Not even 10 minutes into the call he says

"Yeah I think software piracy is as wrong as two men having sex with each other,
it should be one man and one women, that's God's way."

Grr I say. I put him on hold right after. Call it a "bigotry penalty hold". Anyways, after that I got a bunch of info, I got to the point where I need the companys name and address annnnd he whimps out. So I got to hear some homophobe rant for 20+ minutes only to NOT get the report and hurt my stats. yay.

I have an ST meeting tonight at Applebees for the Camarilla. It's long over due so I hope we can get a lot done. :P

2009-03-27T16:48:00.001-06:00

Fmylife.com - FML #9321

2009-03-19T10:55:00.001-06:00

http://www.fmylife.com/images/logo400.jpg

Posted using ShareThis

2009-03-11T10:46:00.001-06:00

Homeless Utah dogs head to Colo.

2009-02-25T11:17:00.001-07:00

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

February 24th, 2009 @ 5:00pm
By Amanda Butterfield
Twenty dogs from Salt Lake County are en route to Boulder, Colo. The animals were picked up early Tuesday morning, and the trip on the "Rescue Waggin'" will save their lives.

The Rescue Waggin' program was created to help save the lives of homeless dogs and puppies by transporting them from areas of high pet population, where they face euthanasia, to shelters where adoptable dogs are in demand.

The program takes dogs from Utah because there are too many homeless dogs here and not enough people who want to adopt them. But that's not the case in Boulder.

April Harris of Salt Lake County Animal Services said, "It's actually a wagon that shows up and picks up anywhere from 30 dogs twice a month."

Animal services has teamed with Rescue Waggin' to take the animals to a neighboring state since last spring.

Harris said, "The reason they go to Boulder is because they have many people who neuter their pets. So they don't have enough puppies for the amount of homes for the people who are adopting."

Testing a dog for aggressiveness More than 200 dogs have been saved by going to Colorado, but not every dog gets to take a ride on the wagon.

"They need to pass behavior assessments, be good with family. They also have to go through a medical evaluation," Harris explained.

The dog shouldn't growl, bark or bite if you touch its food or touch it while it's eating.

"We look at the ears, teeth, paws, whole body to make sure she's not going to bite. That's how we know she's a good candidate for the rescue wagon," Harris said.

If you would like to help but can't commit to adopting a dog, the shelter needs people to foster the Rescue Waggin' dogs for a week before they go. The shelter will provide the food and vet care. If you're interested, go to the Salt Lake County Animal Services Web site.

E-mail: abutterfield@ksl.com

Found here.