Escape American Style

In the wake of yesterday's news- a legal outcome that befuddles common sense and a suicide by overdose that just befuddles, I want to hide in the place that I have come to call my "temple": the Movie Theater. It is a good time to do that, in the middle of a film festival located down the street. But it doesn't mean that I wont be barraged with reality. Sure, last night while the verdict in the murder trial for the victim, Trayvon Martin, and millions of tweets were blowing up the blog-a-sphere, I was laughing my ass off, at the appropriately entitled "Ass Backwards" by and starring two amazingly talented, beautiful and FUNNY women, Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael. But today I will not get off so easy. I will see a film about the lives of two people who are living their gay lives in Cameroon, Africa, called "Born This Way". And there are sure to be many more where the harsh realities of the world are depicted on the screen. But there will also be the uplifting. A short documentary about two Lesbian women who 15 years ago adopted two girls from Ethiopia. There will be 5 extremely well done shorts made by at risk LGBTQ youth. There will be more silliness and laughter about our mutual predicament of living. And there will be the fantastic feeling of community. Young, old, the human coat of many colors, straight friends who love the other and good film. That is the part of life I like to celebrate, while acknowledging that many people are victims of sad, mean troubled people. A foot in both worlds, if you will.


OUTFEST Opening Night Festivities