In the interest of helping a sister out...

My friend Mamie has a tee shirt company that she runs on the side.  For the month of July she's going to donate the money she makes to her favorite charity, http://www.care.org.   In addition to providing short-term and long-term solutions to impoverished and disaster-stricken areas of the world, the organization is dedicated to providing women with social and economic avenues to be productive members of society, as opposed to being marginalized like they are in many parts of the world.  So, in the name of altruism, buy a funny tee shirt that will make you unique (I doubt you'll find too many other people wearing the same shirt.  Or maybe you will, because you'll tell your friends about that awesome tee shirt and they too, will buy a tee shirt in the name of altruism.)

http://www.redlettergear.com

2008 Pride LA

So, I have a lot of gay friends.  More specifically, I have a lot of lesbian friends.  Take a group of lesbians, and I'm pretty much your token male.  Strangely I manage to evade their man-hating ways, and they accept me, despite being a dirty, smelly, horny guy.  A few of my friends think that I am a lesbian, just trapped in a guy's body.  I'm not going to dispute that claim.

Anyway, so yes, I went to Pride LA.  At least, I went to one day of it (Sunday.)  One of my friends told me, "You're going with me to pride." That was said as a statement, not a question.

The experience really is more like a very, very large, urban carnival.  They basically close off a 3-square-mile area off for the event, and there's your typical carnival food available (funnel cake, greasy hot dogs, other random kiosks.)  There's a ton of booths where charities try and get you to donate stuff to them.  Other booths where people try and sell you overpriced things.  A car dealer with cars on display.  Like a gajillion music stages.  A rave floor.  Yeah.  Oh yeah, and a lot of barely-clothed men.  Apparently gay guys love their underwear.  Because for about 20% of them, that's all they wore.  It basically was like a men's locker room, only PG-13 instead of rated R.  And of course, there are your bears.  Who were pretty much clothed as much as the "prettier" gay guys.  Except they were hairy and had ridiculous mustaches/beards, and probably strolled in on their loud obnoxious Harleys.  There were other lesbians there too.  Some you could tell were gay.  Others, they start kissing a girl passionately and you're like, "Really?  Seriously?  Her?"  And of course the straight fag hags, who were generally attractive, and who I could tell were not gay, but of course they were too immersed in their gay guys that it's not like I could go up to them and be like, "what up girl?" and not have the guys all over me.

I saw Olivia Newton-John, and Supreme Beings of Leisure.  Olivia Newton-John was pretty neat - she's all famous so it was pretty cool seeing her in concert.  Even though she's like 70.  I think she did a duet with Jessica Simpson too.  I need to get confirmation on this, but it sure looked like her up there.  And I don't know too many other Jessicas that look exactly like Simpson.  The other band is a band I just recently got into.  They have full instrumentation (Drums, synth, bass, guitar) but they have a very, very electronic sound.  You can hear the electronic elements more on their Myspace.  I'll post some pics too.

Even though I'm not gay (gay guys scare me a lot of the time, actually) the whole LGBT equality thing is a pretty big deal to me, and I'm pretty happy to support anything that helps their cause.  I really, really believe in gay marriage (or some equivalent that provides gay couples the same legal rights as straight couples).  I really believe in breaking down walls of hatred that still permeates the greater part of American society regarding LGBT people.  I think anyone who feels that way should try and cultivate relationships with LGBT people and participate in these events.  Obviously the next step would be to volunteer and help out.  I'm not really there yet, but still, I think that just showing up is an important display of support, and the more straight people show up at these events, the more that the LGBT community will be able to witness the gradual acceptance they will have reached within mainstream society.

SBoL playing Never the Same: