Archive for April, 2008

No homo!

{ April 28, 2008 @ 12:19 am } · { Queer, Youth }
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All right, so since I work with youth I get to be down with the lingo and all that. So the latest in homophobia in schools is the “no homo!” expression. This is used in order to allow people to indulge in behavior that might somehow be um… too gay ? yes I’m saying that tongue in cheek.

For example, a guy might pay another guy a compliment and follow it up immediately with “No homo!”
Guy 1: Hey dude those jeans are tight! No homo!

(Tight meaning cool or groovy depending on your generation, not close fitting)

Youth will also ask for a no homo clarification point if not offered voluntarily. As in “ain’t you gonna say no homo man?!”

always a good source of up to date 411:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvztxVLwUow&feature=related

So, in talking with some of the folks who volunteer for my program we like to poke fun at derogatory terms and have geeky human relations inside jokes and our newest gag needs to spread. So instead of “no homo” it’s “no hetero!”

I may say to my friend J “I love you man!” and hug him, followed immediately by ‘no hetero” with the mandatory step back and posturing.

Try that one on for size. It’s tight.

Today I choose…

{ April 22, 2008 @ 2:32 am } · { Thea Leticia }
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to call on my peeps for support knowing full well that there is an abundance of love and compassion in my life.

to be patient with myself.

to see the beauty in my world.

to see the beauty in myself.

to dream luxurious dreams.

to touch freedom with outreached hands knowing it is mine already.

to bless and be blessed.

to love and be loved.

to be fully present here and now.

to lay on the floor with a coloring book and take comfort in the smell of new crayons and sharing the book with a friend.

to read to a little boy and enjoy his wonderment at the story.

to be gentle and kind, with myself as well as others.

to dance!!

Today I choose to make life.  Stand back and admire my masterpiece, the wonder of it all.

Sigo en pie.

I’m still learning my way around this new borderland, this new adventure.  Sigo aprendiendo.  Daily.  Y eligo a diario seguir.

Tickled

{ April 15, 2008 @ 1:46 am } · { Performance, Queer, Thea Leticia }
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As a grrl I’ve never really done the whole giggly grrl borrowing clothes from each other thing, partly because of my sense of style and partly because of my voluptuosity.

So… needless to say I’m absolutely tickled that for the upcoming cabaret show –preview Wed at the Paradise Lounge on Broadway, show on Friday on the Queen Mary wooot!– I’m doing a drag number (if we don’t get cut) and I’m borrowing all kinds of clothing from all kinds of hawtties.

Boots, borrowing from hot friend #1, who I’m also lucky enough to live with *insert evil laughter*

Boxers borrowing from hot friend #2, yup.  He’s hot too. ha!

Binder, borrowing from hot friend #3.  Handsome devil that he is.

Now I need a beater and a shirt.  I think I am borrowing that from hot friend #4 but I haven’t hit her up yet.  I have a goal though.  Drag in all borrowed clothing.  Fuck yeah!  (dammit Scott I need the shirt off your back baby!)

I’ll confess I’m not packing due to logistical costume change isues–mainly a dick would look tacky in my diva gown– but I’m tempted to borrow socks for stuffing as well.  I have the cutest pink socks for that though!

One notable exception: the riding crop for the number= all mine.

Today…

{ April 11, 2008 @ 7:11 pm } · { Thea Leticia }
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I feel like the love of the world is on my shoulders.

 

Boricuas everywhere!

{ April 8, 2008 @ 2:45 pm } · { California, Island musings, Puerto Rico, Queer }
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Everywhere I go here I end up running into mi gente.  Bars, boricuas.  Church, boricuas.  Schools, boricuas.  Camp, boricuas, mexiricans, cariben@s…  And now I’m devising a possible training/workshop/leadership development for queer boricua youth here in lb since there seem to be a few in the group a friend of mine volunteers with.  New project for after cabaret! Yay! 

Everywhere in the world I’ve gone, US and Europe (I won’t bother including Caribbean in there LOL) it’s like we have a magnetic pull and we just find each other.  New Orleans, touring the city on the streetcar,ran into a random dude from Ponce who had been living there for over a dozen years.  I still remember the excitement of the conversation.  Paris, random run in at a bar with other Newyoricans on holiday who were watching the world cup.  Idaho, I happened to intersect with the two other Boricuas in my area and quickly connected with a few others (probably the only others in the state!).  Utah, of all places, running into random Boricua college students, raised in Utah claiming their roots!  Western Mass, kicking it at a club and just by watching him move I could tell we shared a patria.  Representin’! And now, LB I find ‘em everywhere without even looking. 

La mancha.  La sangre llama.  It never ceases to amaze me that magnetic draw that brings us to each other.  And it always excites me to find another.  And here, well we network about where to find ingredients for our favorite dishes, or I get questions about the island, or we talk about what it means for them to be mexirican and how the two cultures are expressed in their families.  Always such an affirmation and such an adventure.  Always so familiar.  Well, it is a small island, we could be cousins after all.  And that is generally the attitude we approach encounters with, mi gente.  And every now and then it proves true and we find a primo tercero, a random relation, a suspected branch on the family tree. 

I’m excited and fascinated to be part of this beautiful web that joins us all together and somehow lets us recognize each other in multitudes, carries the message of our history, our blood, our collective being… beyond stereotypes or phenotypes.

Immigration Debate

{ April 8, 2008 @ 2:21 pm } · { California }
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Public Debate On Immigration
The Hammer Museum In Westwood
10899 Wilshire Blvd  cnr Westwood Blvd.   map
This Wednesday Evening, April 9, At 7:00 pm.
Seating as available, come early
Free to the public with $3 parking in garage below the Museum
For further information go to www.hammer.ucla.edu

Blowing Up The Melting Pot
Rather than a strident pro and con argument on Immigration, Ian Masters will moderate a debate at that will turn down the heat and try to shed some light on the conflicting interests and concerns involved in an issue roiling beneath the surface in this election year.

Professor Felix Gutierrez of the Annenberg School of Communication at USC will debate the CIA’s former expert on Al Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, on open borders in the post 9/11 world.
With security concerns apparently in conflict with economic, social and humanitarian considerations, and as walls are erected, communities divided, and with unemployment on the rise, can we secure our borders against a future attack that Mr. Scheuer sees as inevitable, while still proclaiming to be a nation of immigrants?

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Felix Gutierrez is a Professor of Journalism and Communication in the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and an Affiliate Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity.  He has received many awards nationally for his work to advance more accurate understanding of the nation’s racial and social diversity. 

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Michael Scheuer  is a twenty-plus-year CIA veteran, best-selling author and commentator. He resigned from the CIA in 2004.  He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. In November 2004, Michael Scheuer revealed his authorship of “Imperial Hubris” and “Through Our Enemies’ Eyes”, both originally published under the byline “Anonymous.”  His new book is “Marching Towards Hell: America and Islam after Iraq.”

Cabaret Preview!

{ April 4, 2008 @ 5:38 pm } · { Performance }
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Wednesday April 16 from 6-7 at the Paradise Lounge on Broadway in Long Beach… South Coast Chorale will be performing a sneak preview of our upcoming Queen’s Cabaret show.

Don’t miss it!

Spring

{ April 3, 2008 @ 11:56 am } · { poetry }
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It was Winter

and your kisses were the antidote to snow

Taste of Spring to come

melting on hot tongue

It was Winter

and I clung to the promise of

tomorrow on your breath

laid my head on your chest

set aside shivering fears

at rest

Then waking

frozen to the core

the hope of you

a distant fiction

fading before its time

sepia melting into white

dreams of dawn dissolved in darkness

I’m stammering goodbye

when you’ve already left.

That taste of Spring

the only treasure

left in the end

waiting for my time to bloom.

Pink bling! and random tidbits

{ April 3, 2008 @ 11:55 am } · { Trivial, Uncategorized }
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  • I have the best most comfiest most beautiful yummy bed ever.  I didn’t want to leave it all by itself today. *le sigh*
  • I got some serious pink bling from a five year old!  yeah yeah!  He found a pink jewel at school and thought of me (awwwwwwww!) and brought it home for me.  Awwwww!  I am now associated with pink and sparkly in a little boy’s mind, how speshul is that? LOL!
  • CSI Miami: caught two filmings in one week.  One we had to drive around and lo and behold!!  David Carusso was just outside my window.  (Well okay not literally outside it, I AM on the 9th floor after all)
  • I witnessed a baloney and american cheese on white bread sandwich being consumed yesterday and felt like taking field notes. Or at least providing background commentary.  But I didn’t.

The end. 

Sunlit tree

{ April 2, 2008 @ 4:38 pm } · { California, Images }
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I heart my home

I heart my new home!

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