Giuseppe Zangara

The real Rudy gave a speech at my high school in either my freshman or sophomore year. Nothing special happened, though he was a bit of prick when it was time for him to go. He cut the audience Q & A short by saying, "So, I guess there are no more questions? Well, have a good day, everyone!" and walking off the stage, in spite of there being in plain sight a line of about 10 students waiting to ask him something.

First-world problems.

I soon developed a thirst for knowledge.

I think that's the least of your problems.

Maybe this one, given it's comparatively short length, will actually get some fair reviews. Much of the negative press that greeted Against the Day read as if it stemmed from whatever the reviewers could gleam from the book jacket, press materials, and the first 50 pages of the novel itself. I'm looking at you, Michiko Kakutani.

That scene in In the Realm of the Senses where an egg is inserted into the lady's vagina.

It's strange that anyone would focus on the hair in that pic, anyway. It's barely visible.

I posted this in GTG. Looks like you beat me to it.

I liked the use of "Courage" in the movie The Sweet Hereafter.

Pretty embarrassing. But how would you compare it to the time Kotzenjunge confused Nick Cave for a gay icon and member of the Pet Shop Boys?

Participating in homosexual activity does not make you any more homosexual than participating in a sport makes you athletic.

When I was in high school, it was the 90s, the South, and these were teen-agers. Given all that, it's surprising that there wasn't much homophobic hatred directed toward the drama students. In fact, up until my senior-year drama class—which required a passing grade in the previous classes and had a small cap for student admission—the drama classes were often frequented by jocks, who were under the mistaken impression it would be an easy 'A.' Well, it was an easy 'A,' but somewhere along the way the jocks got to believing they wouldn't have to do much work. Anyway, the senior-year class was the one I shared with Todd, the twink from my previous post. The bulk of my senior-year class were serious about drama, though they never got anywhere for all their talk. I think most were indifferent or confused about the idea of homosexuality. They knew it existed but had never given it any thought. Shortly after graduating, I got a job at Blockbuster Video, where I ended up working with Nick, one of my former classmates and "serious" drama student. A couple of the people who worked at the store were gay, so he, Nick, took the opportunity to educate himself about homosexuality, becoming, I guess, a more open-minded, well-rounded person. Back to the serious students, only one of them had any legitimate talent, I felt (it wasn't Nick, who, for one monologue, while playing a drunk with Brooklyn accent, produced the unintended result of sounding mentally challenged); I don't know what became of the talented one after graduating, outside of learning that his girlfriend, also from that class, got pregnant with a child that wasn't his.

I took drama classes for three of my four years in high school. Not counting a couple of bi-curious females, no one I knew in that scene was openly gay. There was one guy whom I found out, six or seven years after graduating, was not only now openly gay, but a twink as well. I found him on MySpace, where he had a number of nude-save-for-an-artfully-placed-hand-or-angled-camera pics. (FYI, I've posted these pics elsewhere on the board.) He was fit and toned, a vast improvement over his old, chubby self. I also remember him being terribly homophobic. It's not surprising to learn that there was a reason he acted ridiculously macho (not only was he liberal with his use of the word "faggot," he also often talked about all the girls he wanted to bang, such as Madonna and Alanis Morissette), but we all assumed he was gay anyway, because other than his being fat, he perpetrated almost every gay stereotype you can think of.

Watching Lifetime television movies.