I Got a Rock

Remembering Matthew Shepard

Cause Joe Biden Kicked His Ass

National Coming Out Day - October 11

Enrique Iglesias - Wish I Was Your Lover

14 Years Ago Today

On October 7, 1998, Aaron Kreifels was riding his bike through a field in Wyoming. He wasn't expecting that day to be different from any other beautiful sunny afternoon in the vast plains surrounding Laramie, but that day would change many lives.

Aaron spotted what he initially thought was a scarecrow next to a fence. Then he noticed a glisten of blood. The sun sparkled on what he barely recognized as a face. What Aaron had discovered was the 21 year-old Matthew Shepard, clinging to life.

Most of you know what happened next. Matthew held on for five more days and as his parents held his hand and prayed, Matthew slipped away quietly on October 12, leaving in his wake a new movement for equality.

The outcries for justice and for greater protections were immediate and resonating.

Since then, Matthew's mother Judy has made it her personal mission to protect all young LGBT people from Matthew's horrific fate. In founding the Matthew Shepard Foundation, she has created safe spaces in and outside of schools for kids, and worked with parents to ensure their children learn to erase hate from their lives.

But overwhelmingly what you saw in 1998 was a community ready to act, ready to change something. And Matthew's story was the catalyst for that. Many of you have seen or read the Moises Kaufman play, The Laramie Project - Matthew's story as told through interviews of those who were living in Laramie at the time - some of his friends and some who just happened to be riding a bike through the plains of Wyoming that day. If you think of nothing else today, please consider the importance of telling your story - how your story can change the world around you.

This young boy, unbeknownst to him, has changed the world with his.

Blue Moon: Rare Second Full Moon of Month Visible Tonight

Blue Moon: Rare Second Full Moon of Month Visible Tonight
By NED POTTER
Aug. 31, 2012

Once in a blue moon, we get a night like this one. If the weather is clear, you will get to see the second full moon of the month -- or perhaps the fourth full moon of a three-month season -- or maybe an early "betrayer moon" (belewe in Old English) -- or any of half a dozen other definitions that have come up over the last 400 years. At any rate, the full moon of Aug. 31 has been agreed upon, somewhere, as a blue moon, and if you go out after dark, we hope you will enjoy its light.

The moon was actually at its fullest at 9:58 a.m. EDT today, which means it was below the horizon for most of the Western Hemisphere. If you saw the moon last night, you probably thought of it as full, and when it rises again tonight, it will still be plenty bright.

If it has even a hint of a blue tinge, please let us know immediately. Blue moons have very little to do with the color blue (although the moon can take on a blue cast if there is a lot of volcanic ash in the atmosphere). The phrase "once in a blue moon" has come to mean something that doesn't happen very often, and it's been a part of our folklore since -- well, nobody's quite sure.

"Blue Moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own...."

--"Blue Moon," by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

Perhaps we are best off with expressions of sadness or loneliness. There are certainly enough songs about it, though there's also Nick Drake's more upbeat "Pink Moon," which refers to the full moon that comes in April. Sky & Telescope, a magazine for astronomy enthusiasts, ran an article in March 1946 that defined a blue moon as the second full moon in a month -- but readily admits today that it made a mistake, oversimplifying the four-full-moons-in-a-season definition. The mistake caught on, even though the folklore scholar Philip Hiscock of Canada's Memorial University of Newfoundland said he could find no references to the two-moons-in-a-month definition from before then. (For the record, the moon is full once every 29 1/2 days.)

"The term has been around a long time," said Hiscock. "The earliest uses of that term really meant something like 'never ... an impossibility.'"

And even that's not quite the case. August 2012 has had two full moons -- but so did December 2009, and so will July 2015. Months with two full moons -- the reason we're all hearing the term now -- occur, on average, about once every 2.7 years.

Today's full moon does coincide with today's private memorial service for Neil Armstrong in Cincinnati. When Armstrong's family announced his death on Saturday, they made a request: "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

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Neil Armstrong, Aug. 5, 1930 - Aug. 25, 2012

Neil Armstrong Dead; Apollo 11 Astronaut Was First on Moon
By NED POTTER
Aug. 25, 2012

Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who became first to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 11, has died. He was 82 years old.

He was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, on Aug. 5, 1930.

On July 20, 1969, half a billion people -- a sixth of the world's population at the time -- watched a ghostly black-and-white television image as Armstrong backed down the ladder of the lunar landing ship Eagle, planted his left foot on the moon's surface, and said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Twenty minutes later his crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, joined him, and the world watched as the men spent the next two hours bounding around in the moon's light gravity, taking rock samples, setting up experiments, and taking now-iconic photographs.

"Isn't this fun?" Armstrong said over his radio link to Aldrin. The third member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael L. Collins, orbited 60 miles overhead in the mission's command ship, Columbia. President Richard Nixon called their eight-day trip to the moon "the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation."

'I Believe That This Nation Should Commit Itself....'

Armstrong's step fulfilled a challenge laid down by an earlier president, John F. Kennedy, in May 1961. Struggling in his first months in the White House, Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth," he said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Armstrong was a 30-year-old test pilot at the time of Kennedy's challenge, flying the X-15 rocket plane for a new government agency called NASA. He had served as a Naval aviator in the Korean War, flying 78 missions, and had an engineering degree from Purdue University. A native of the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, he was married to the former Jan Shearon and living near Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of California.

NASA already had seven astronauts, flying its Mercury space capsule. In 1962 it sent out word that it was looking for more, and Armstrong was one of the nine it selected.

Gemini VIII

On March 16, 1966 he became the first American civilian to orbit the earth, commanding the two-man Gemini VIII mission with David R. Scott as his crewmate. On their fourth orbit, they made the first-ever docking in space with another spacecraft -- a maneuver the still-untested Apollo project would need to get astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

Minutes later, though, the spacecraft began to tumble wildly out of control, apparently because of a broken maneuvering thruster. It was a dangerous moment -- a 6,000-pound ship, moving at 17,500 mph, spinning and turning end-over-end once a second. Armstrong ended the emergency by using a second set of thrusters. Mission Control ordered the astronauts to land as soon as possible, and after ten hours of flight they splashed down safely in the Pacific.

The two astronauts were commended for keeping their cool in a difficult situation, and when Project Apollo began, Armstrong was assigned to command one of the first six flights. At the time this was not momentous news. NASA had a system for rotating its crews among flights -- one served as backup crew for a mission and then actually flew three flights later -- and nobody knew how many test flights would be needed before the first moon landing could be attempted.

Armstrong, along with Buzz Aldrin and Fred Haise Jr., was named to the backup crew for Apollo 9, the third manned test of the new moonship. Soon Apollo 9 was swapped with Apollo 8 -- and Apollo 8 was then sent to take astronauts around the moon. The mission was a success. While it was still in progress, chief astronaut Deke Slayton took Armstrong aside and told him that he, Aldrin and Mike Collins would fly Apollo 11.

So it was happenstance that made Neil Armstrong one of the most famous names of the 20th century. If the order of flights had been different, or if Apollo 9 or 10 had run into trouble, Apollo 11 might very well have been a practice run for the first lunar landing.

But by May 1969 the rehearsals had gone well and Apollo 11 was next up. Reporters swirled around Armstrong. More than a million people crowded the Florida coast to see the liftoff.

"I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul," Armstrong said at a preflight news conference, "We're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream."

Apollo 11 Leaves for the Moon

On the morning of July 16, 1969, Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin were woken before dawn. They suited up and climbed into the Apollo 11 command ship, high atop its 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket.

Liftoff was flawless. Three days later the astronauts arrived in lunar orbit, and on the morning of July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin took their places in the landing ship Eagle, leaving Collins to run the command ship Columbia. They fired Eagle's main engine to slow themselves toward the moon's surface, aiming for a landing site on the Sea of Tranquility, a relatively flat plain near the moon's equator.

As they came in on final approach, Armstrong later reported, he saw they were in trouble. Eagle's computer was steering them right toward a crater, with boulders the size of cars. Armstrong took over manual control. Fuel was in short supply, but he hosed out more, skittering a few hundred feet above the lunar surface in search of a clear spot to land.

"1201 alarm," called Aldrin, watching Eagle's computer readout while Armstrong looked out the window. The computer was overloading.

"Hang tight, we're go," said astronaut Charles Duke, the one person at Mission Control assigned to talk with Armstrong and Aldrin by radio.

Armstrong was silent as he lowered the ship on a pillar of flame. He was too busy flying. Aldrin called out numbers to mark their progress in feet per second. "Four forward, drifting to the right a little."

"Thirty seconds," said Duke. In half a minute he would have to tell the astronauts to abort the landing -- even though they were less than a hundred feet up.

Finally, Aldrin called out, "Contact light" -- a signal that a five-foot-long metal probe, protruding from Eagle's landing legs, had touched the surface. The ship gently settled. Finally, Armstrong came on the radio.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."

Armstrong would say later that he considered the landing a much greater challenge, and a greater accomplishment, than actually walking on the surface. But after making sure Eagle was in good shape for the return trip, he and Aldrin put on their bulky backpacks and prepared to open the hatch.

It was 10:56 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, when Armstrong backed down the ladder of the Lunar Module, went back up a step to make sure he could, and then planted his left boot in the lunar soil.

Moonwalk

Armstrong walked on the moon for two hours and 21 minutes, Aldrin for about half an hour less. They took rock samples, set up two experiments, and took a phone call from President Nixon. They planted an American flag (with some difficulty; its staff wouldn't stand firmly in the lunar dirt and the flag itself, stiffened with wires, rumpled). They bounded around in the weak lunar gravity, reporting it was great fun but a little hard to stop.

Armstrong carried a camera, mounted on the chest of his spacesuit, and took some of the most famous pictures of the century. Aldrin did not have a camera -- so, in one of the ironies of the space age, almost all the still pictures from the Apollo 11 moonwalk are by Armstrong, not of him.

After a fitful night's sleep, the two men lifted off from the lunar surface and rejoined Collins in Columbia. They splashed down safely in the Pacific on July 24, 1969. They were greeted by ticker-tape parades and a beaming President Nixon. After that, Armstrong tried his best to resume a private life.

He served for a few years as a NASA manager in Washington. He taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, not far from his birthplace. He served on corporate boards. He was appointed to the panels that investigated the Apollo 13 accident and the Challenger disaster. He declined almost all requests for interviews, and stopped giving autographs when people sold them for thousands of dollars.

A few personal details emerged: He suffered a minor heart attack in 1991. His wife Jan divorced him in 1994 and he soon married Carol Knight. In 2005 his authorized biographer, James R. Hansen, wrote, "Neil Armstrong today seems to be a very happy man -- perhaps happier than at any other time in his life."

Armstrong said he did not want to be an icon, remembered only for that one-week trip he made in 1969. He did appear at the White House to mark major anniversaries of Apollo 11, and when he did he urged America to go on exploring.

"There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers," he said in 1994. "There are places to go beyond belief."

Comedian Phyllis Diller Dies at the Age of 95

Comedienne Phyllis Diller dead at 95
Aug 20, 2012 3:22 PM EDT

Phyllis Diller was known for her eccentric costumes, makeup and hairdos, all of which helped craft her image as America's decidedly imperfect housewife.

LOS ANGELES - Phyllis Diller, the legendary comedienne who debunked the pristine image of the American housewife and broke down gender barriers in the world of standup, has died, according to CBS News.

She was 95 years old.

Phyllis Ada Driver was born on July 17, 1917, to parents Perry and Frances of the small town of Lima, OH.

Driver, an accomplished pianist left Chicago's Sherwood Music Conservatory to elope with first husband, Sherwood Anderson Diller, in 1939.

She took up residence in San Francisco, where she would become a housewife and mother. She worked as a copywriter and journalist during the day and honed her stand-up at night in comedy clubs.

Diller famously deconstructed the role of homemaker, a role society expected to be immaculate following popular sitcoms of the times like Leave it to Beaver. Her humor was self-deprecating. Her appearance - loud and proud clothing, eccentric makeup and crazily teased hair - was a direct departure from the typical portrayal of American suburbia. She was loud, raw and, at times, chaotic as she took on subjects like her fictional husband Fang and child-bearing.

But perhaps the most signature part of Diller's routine was her singular, lingering cackle, which alone would announce her entrance to a room.

Diller's first major national appearance was on the Groucho Marx-hosted game show You Bet Your Life. The successful one-liners she delivered on the revered NBC game would parlay her to fame.

Life helped Diller land a booking at the Purple Onion Comedy Club. The San Francisco engagement was supposed to last two weeks, but Diller stayed for nearly two years.

Diller's fame on TV wasn't rooted in her own ill-fated starring vehicles: The Pruitts of Southampton and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. Rather it was her status as a mainstay on entertainment game shows and talk shows, including I've Got a Secret, Hollywood Squares and The Gong Show.

Diller began to open up about her plastic surgeries - a previously taboo subject - in the '70s.

"It's a good thing that beauty is only skin deep, or I'd be rotten to the core," Diller once said.

Her efforts to stay young became an important part of her comedy routines and paved the way for future comediennes and admitted plastic surgery fans like Joan Rivers and Kathy Griffin.

Aside from television and standup, Diller also found success on the stage and in film. She famously replaced Carol Channing in Broadway's Hello Dolly! and had a good working relationship with Bob Hope, with whom she starred in B-movies and Christmas specials.

Her career endured an uptick in the late '90s after Diller landed a pair of recurring roles on the WB's 7th Heaven and CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful. In that same time frame, Diller also voiced the Queen in the hit Disney film A Bug's Life.

After departing the CBS soap in 2004, she released her final book, memoir Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse.

"My own laugh is the real thing and I've had it all my life," Diller wrote. "My father used to call me the laughing hyena. Like a yawn or a mood, it's infectious, and that's a great plus for a comic."

But Diller confessed that she didn't just turn her laugh on and off like other performers. Early on her career, the laugh was a "nervous" one.

"I was scared out of my mind. The sweat ran down my back into my shoes and it was so strong with body acids that it ate the leather lining," she wrote. "That's what is known as flop sweat - it doesn't mean you're flopping; you're just petrified - and I had man-sized coat shields in my dress to try to absorb it."

Diller reprised the role of make-up artist Gladys Pope on a two-episode arc of Bold in March 2012 for the soap's 25th anniversary season.

Until her death, Diller resided in Brentwood, CA, where she once served as honorary mayor. She is survived by her three children.

In addition to Sherwood, Diller was later divorced to entertainer Ward Donovan. Attorney Rob Hastings was her partner until his death in 1996.

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller has died at the age of 95 on Monday, the family tells Eyewitness News.

The family said she died peacefully in her sleep in Los Angeles. At 3 p.m., flowers will be placed on her Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

Diller was a staple of nightclubs and television from the 1950s when female comics were rare until her retirement in 2002. She built her stand-up act around the persona of the corner-cutting housewife with bizarre looks, a wardrobe to match and a husband named "Fang." She was known for her trademark cackle.

She didn't get into comedy until she was nearly 40, after her first husband, Sherwood Diller, prodded her for two years to give up a successful career as an advertising and radio writer. Through it all, she was also a busy mother.

Her husband managed her career until the couple's 25-year marriage fell apart in the 1960s.

She also appeared in movies, including "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number" and "Eight on the Lam" with Bob Hope.

In 1966-67, she was the star of an ABC sitcom about a society family trying to stave off bankruptcy, "The Pruitts of Southampton," and in 1968, she was host of a short-lived variety series, "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show."

"A smile is a curve that sets everything straight."

"Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home."

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight."

"Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle - keep away from children."

"The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would

never wear the same outfit in public."

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The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season

The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray]

When the world is ravaged by a zombie apocalypse, police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and a small group of others struggle to stay alive as 'the dead' stalk them at every turn. Can Rick and the others hold onto their humanity as they fight to live in this terrifying new world? And, amidst dire conditions and personal rivalries, will they ultimately survive one another?

Based on Robert Kirkman's hugely successful and popular comic book series, AMC's original series "The Walking Dead" is an epic, edge-of-your-seat drama where personal struggles are magnified against a backdrop of moment-to-moment crisis. A survivalist story at its core, the series explores how the living are changed by the overwhelming realization that those who survive can be far more dangerous than the mindless walkers roaming the earth. They themselves have become the walking dead.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Audio Commentaries
• Webisodes
• Deleted Scenes
• Over 10 Never-Before-Seen Featurettes!
• LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE: Zombie Statue Created by McFarlane Toys and Designed by Greg Nicotero

PRODUCT DETAILS

Actors: Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Laurie Holden, Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeffrey DeMunn, Glen Mazzarra, Gale Anne Hurd
Format: Limited Edition
Language: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region: Region A/1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number of discs: 4
Rated: Unrated
Studio: AMC and Anchor Bay Entertainment
DVD Release Date: August 28, 2012
Run Time: 578 minutes

The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray]

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This title will be released on August 28, 2012.

Nearly half of openly gay athletes win medals at Olympics

Megan Rapinoe, Judith Arndt, and Carl Hester are among the openly gay Olympians to impress in London 2012

12 AUGUST 2012 | BY JOE MORGAN

Nearly half, 43%, of openly gay athletes have won a medal at the London Olympic Games.

In comparison to the United States, only 18% of 530 American athletes have graced the podium so far.

Out of the 23 openly gay athletes, comprising of 20 women and three men, 10 of them have won a medal solo or in a group.

If they were Team LGBT, they would have won four gold medals, one silver, and two bronze between them.

This means they would be number 19 in the official rankings, beating countries like Spain, Brazil, and Canada.

Of course these competitors are likely only a fraction of the LGBT people really taking part at the Games. If all of them were open, then Team LGBT could be much higher in the rankings.

South African Karen Hultzer, who competed in the archery women’s individual event, confirmed her sexuality to reporters during the Games.

She said: ‘I am an archer, middle aged and a lesbian. I am also cranky before my first cup of coffee. None of these aspects define who I am, they are simply part of me.

‘I am fortunate that my sexual identity is not an issue, and I don’t suffer the level of discrimination and violence that black lesbians in South Africa do. I look forward to the day when this is a non-issue and as relevant as my eye color or favorite sushi.’

Australian diver Matthew Mitcham, one of the most high profile gay athletes, has shared similar sentiments to Hultzer.

'Ideally I would like one day for sexuality to be as unimportant and uninteresting as hair color, or eye color or even just gender in general,’ he said. ‘One day it will get to that.’

But the former Olympic champion, who narrowly missed out on the diving final, said that day was not here yet.

He said: ‘But until it is easy for sports people to come out without fear of persecution or fear of lost sponsorship income and stuff like that, or fear of being comfortable in the team environment, I don't mind attention being brought to my sexuality in the hope it might make other people feel more comfortable.'

The Dutch field hockey team has the most openly lesbian players, with Marilyn Agliotti, Carlien Dirkse van den Heuvel, Kim Lammers, and Maartje Paumen helping the Netherlands’ team to score the gold.

American Seimone Augustus helped the U.S women’s basketball team to their fifth consecutive victory, with an 86-50 win over France.

German Judith Arndt, the first solo gay athlete to win a medal, won silver in the cycling time trial.

Apart from Mitcham, the only male out athletes Carl Hester and Edward Gal won gold and bronze respectively in the equestrian team dressage events.

American soccer midfielder Megan Rapinoe was integral in the US women’s team in their gold win, finishing with four assists and scoring three goals. Also, US tennis star Lisa Raymond won bronze in the doubles event.

Rapinoe, who came out earlier this year, said it was more difficult for male athletes than for women to be open about their sexuality.

‘I think there's a lot of gay women in sports, and it's widely known in the team, they can live a pretty open lifestyle without being open in the media,’ she said. ‘But I think for men unfortunately it's not the same climate in the locker room.’

London 2012 had double the amount of openly lesbian and gay athletes than Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, which had 10 and 11 respectively.

Estimates show LGBT people make up anything from 1% to 10% of the population, so it is clear the 23 athletes are not the only ones.

OutSports co-founder Jim Buzinski has said: ‘It’s an absurdly low number. Compared to the arts, politics or business worlds, sports is still the final closet in society.’

Rapinoe said coming out had bettered her game, as seen when she scored two goals for the US soccer team in the semi-final.

‘I guess it seems like a weight off my shoulders,’ she said. ‘I've been playing a lot better than I've ever played before. I think I'm just enjoying myself and I'm happy.’

Gay Games London 2018 bid co-chair Jonathan Harbourne is spearheading the hope to provide a lasting LGBT legacy from the London 2012 Olympics.

Team GB

Tom Daley Gets Bronze!

Tom Daley

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Happy Stripe Trunk - Black

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