Elisha Cuthbert has found her happy ending. The Canadian actress tied the knot with her longtime, hockey star love Dion Phaneuf Saturday, according to the Journal Pioneer of Prince Edward Island. Cuthbert wed the Toronto Maple Leafs captain at the St. James Catholic Church in Summerfield, P.E.I., with a reception for nearly 300 guests at Phaneuf’s home. Toronto Star reporter Rosie DiManno live-tweeted the hockey star’s nuptials from inside the church (which was fittingly decorated with maple leaves). “It’s a big wedding, probably the biggest I’ve ever done in my 46 years, as far as the celebrity part of it goes,” said Rev. Paul Egan to the publication. The couple began dating five years ago. Dion Phaneuf popped the question last September and announced their engagement to 35 friends and family during a lobster dinner at New Glasgow Lobster. Congrats to the newlyweds!!
A straight father’s open letter to his young son regarding last week’s landmark Supreme Court rulings has gone viral, and it’s easy to see why. His four-year-old boy clearly has no concept of the Supreme Court or the significance of its decisions, as Brian Gresko of The Babble points out. The bigger question is whether the SCOTUS striking down DOMA and dismissing Prop 8 will be seen as a watershed moment when he does get it. It’s a touching letter about what a father hopes will be a teachable moment someday, and emblematic of his desire for our children to inherit a better world. Read what Gresko has to say below: Dear Felix, Your mom and I put off taking you for a blood test because, honestly, we figured you didn’t really need it, that the doctor’s concerns about the level of lead in your body were the routine kind of doctor’s orders we could ignore . Doc has since corrected us of that misconception, stressing the importance of the blood test. (And we wonder where your stubbornness comes from.) Ok, point taken. So, at least a year late, this morning we walked in to get your blood work done just as the waiting room television cut to the steps of the Supreme Court Building, where the announcement came that the Court had ruled 5-4 to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), declaring the law baring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages unconstitutional . You’re four-years-old as I write this. You seem to react to adults who make good eye contact, speak with animation, get down to your level to talk to you, and ask you questions that you understand and then listen to your answers. You click with men, you click with women, and as far as I can remember you only asked once about why one of your best friends has two mommies. When I told you that couples come in all combinations – woman and woman, man and woman, man and man – you nodded and that was that. No big deal. So sitting with you in the waiting room, I had one of those moments of double-ness that parents sometimes have, as I thought about the news and what it meant, watched the happy reactions from the crowd of marriage equality supporters, and wondered what celebration might be going on in other parts of New York City, all while talking with you about the upcoming blood test and reading you a story. I didn’t explain what was happening on the television, and you didn’t ask. I figured the time will come soon enough – probably too soon for my liking – when you’ll be aware of the politics around sex and gender and sexual orientation. Or maybe you won’t. Hopefully, these issues will be moot in seven years time, or ten years, whenever you become aware of your sexual self (let’s go with ten years, eh?) and begin to find other people compelling in ways that will, at first, probably seem strange or mysterious. (For example, I didn’t notice girls had legs till eighth grade. Before then, I’m not sure how they got around, their mobility was no concern of mine. Suddenly, when springtime came and the skirts came out, their long, skinny, graceful limbs became vitally important. And yet I had no idea why. I just found them… fascinating. I knew they were key characters, I just hadn’t figured out what the story was about yet.) Maybe you’ll read about today’s decision in a history book and it’ll sound like a long time ago, the Dark Ages, when certain couples could marry and certain couples could not. You’ll feel comfortable pursuing whatever kind of partnership interests you, no matter the person’s gender, or color, or race, or class, or belief system, or whatever, and live in a country in which you can join in the legal state of matrimony with that lucky person. I hope that by then American society will have a better understanding of what I saw all so plainly today. That if you prick our skin, the same red blood flows through all of our veins. These differences in appearance and behavior and belief in many ways are trivial, surface. How you treat other people, your stewardship of our planet and society and yourself as a functioning, contributing human on Earth, matters so much more than who you’d like to date, have sex with, or marry. As Kurt Vonnegut so succinctly put it, “You’ve got to be kind.” Other than that? Have fun, kid. And while this marriage thing sure ain’t easy – in fact, I don’t wish it on anyone who doesn’t feel ready, 100% sure they want to make their commitment into a socially recognized, legal bond – I’m happy knowing that if, one day, you think you’re ready to take the plunge, you can do it with whomever the hell you want. And I’ll be right there (unless you decide to elope like your mom and me decided, which is totally cool too), cheering you on and wishing you well, no matter whose hand you’re holding when you say “I do.” Love ya kid, Dad .
If you think people were wrongfully stopped, searched, and arrested before, the 5-4 decision made by the Supreme Court to allow the collection and storage…
Tonight’s Mad Men was an exploration of the Supreme Television Court case of Don-v.-Pete. Why do we love Don so much and hate Pete so much, when they are so similar in so many ways? Tonight’s episode answered that question more clearly that perhaps any episode in the show’s history. Because Pete gives a f**k, and Don doesn’t. Because Pete tries to be successful. He tries to be powerful. He tries to live like a playboy. He tries so so hard. Don, on the other hand, tries to screw everything up, and he doesn’t even try very hard. They’re both babies. They both display the emotional maturity of a 4 year old. They’re petty, narcissistic, fragile men. But whereas Pete’s every move is to turn himself into Don, Don barely has any moves, and the few moves he does have are positively destructive. Which is probably why when Pete fails—and he always fails—we get such a darn kick out of it. The guy is so freaking driven , and in such a distasteful way. With Pete’s life already in the dumps, the new merger between SCDP and CGC puts him in a state of panicked paranoia as he feels he’s being iced out of the company. There’s no chair for him at the conference table. And when the new girl offers him her chair, he accepts without so much as twitching an eye, let alone batting it. Meanwhile, his senile mother interrupts his already disastrous life, making him face the fact that no, he can’t take her in with Trudy and the kid because he doesn’t live with Trudy and the kid. Because he’s a garbage person and she kicked him out. And his attitude is so epically unsavory. His senile pain in the neck of a mother is preventing him from doing damage control at the office he’s trying to be king of. It’s like a classic sitcom premise, if all the characters were the worst. Don, however, decides to skip work on the most important day SCDP has had since SCDP became SCDP—a day that he himself made happen—because a woman revealed to him that she was under his spell hard. “I need you and nothing else will do,” Syliva said. And he makes her repeat it. This flips a switch in Don’s head, and in his mind, it grants him permission to be Sylvia’s master. Old sexually dominant Don is back. Whereas mindlessly promiscuous Don is depressing, sexually dominant Don is exciting. For the woman, and the audience. Until tonight, that is, when it became utterly humiliating. Because Don is not in control of anything. After playing the Sex Master for a few days, Sylvia realizes that Don just oozes destruction. If she isn’t careful, her normal metropolitan life will become his next victim. And when she tells him as much, his world shatters, because the philandering, inattentive, womanizing cocksman is actually at the mercy of the attention these women pay him. Who could have guess it? Don’s destruction is felt at work too. After he gets Ted sloppy drunk at work, Peggy has to lecture him that Ted needs to rub off on him, not the other way around. “He’s a grown man” is response. Because why would he care? He doesn’t care about much of anything. OTHER NOTES: Bob finally proved himself useful for something, and a relationship between him and Joan may be on the horizon. Betty and Francis were thankfully absent from another episode! Automatic points. The episode closed with Bobby Kennedy being shot—as was inevitable after the Martin Luther King, Jr. episode —with a lot less fanfare than other famous assassinations have been given in Mad Men ’s past. The 60’s are coming to a close, reality is smashing the hell out of the shiny veneer, and things are looking more and more hopeless. Tiny planes are terrifying. RATING: 4/5
Delaware became the 11th U.S. State to legalize same-sex marriage Tuesday following a lengthy debate and a close vote in its legislative body. A half hour after the 12-9 State Senate vote, Gov. Jack Markell (D) signed the legislation into law on the main stairs in the lobby of Legislative Hall. Sens. Bethany Hall-Long (D) and Catherine Cloutier (R), the lone GOP yes vote, provided the crucial swing votes in favor of the gay marriage legislation. Delawareans will be able to enter into same-sex marriages July 1, and existing same-sex civil unions in Delaware can also be converted to marriages. “I think this is the right thing for Delaware,” Markell said, posing for pictures with supporters outside his legislative office. “It took an incredible team effort.” Delaware’s same-sex marriage bill was introduced in the Democrat-controlled Legislature last month, passing the state House on a 23-18 vote. While it doesn’t give same-sex couples many more rights than those they already have in civil unions, supporters argued it was about respect – and more. They noted that civil unions would not provide the same kind of federal protections or tax benefits under federal law to same-sex couples as marriage does. Delaware joins neighboring Maryland and nearby D.C. as jurisdictions that have approved gay marriage. All six New England states allow it as well. Last week, Rhode Island’s gay marriage law passed, allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed, with independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee signing the bill. California would become the 12th state to legalize it if the Supreme Court upholds appellate court decisions to throw out Prop 8 as unconstitutional . Same-sex marriage : Support Oppose View Poll »
A couple of the loudest voices in the Republican party have spoken out this week on the issue of gay marriage. First, Bill O’Reilly came out and sounded very much like a marriage equality advocate, saying all legal arguments were on the side of homosexuals in this debate. Now, Rush Limbaugh has sounded a very different tone, admitting that gay marriage is “inevitable,” but blaming Democrats for how they have messed with the important language of the topic. “I don’t care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable,” Limbaugh said of the the Prop 8 deliberation . “And it’s inevitable because we lost the language on this.” You may need to expound on that one, Rush. “I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word ‘marriage’ to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it,” the radio host said. “Because marriage is one thing, and it was not established on the basis of discrimination. It wasn’t established on the basis of denying people anything. Marriage is not a tradition that a bunch of people concocted to be mean to other people with. But we allowed the left to have people believe that it was structured that way.” Limbaugh is fine giving same-sex couples the “rights of contract or inheritance or hospital visits.” But he’s focused on the definition of marriage , seemingly trying to walk a line between softening his stance on gays and maintaining what he believes to be a moral high ground, concluding: “Instead of maintaining that and holding fast to that [definition], we allowed the argument to be made that the definition needed to change, on the basis that we’re dealing with something discriminatory, bigoted, and all of these mystical things that it’s not and never has been.” If you think he’s worked up now, don’t get Limbaugh started on Beyonce!
One is about the Defense of Marriage Act, another seeks to strike down California’s Prop 8. By Gil Kaufman Same-sex marriage supporters demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court on March 27, 2013 in Washington, DC Photo: JEWEL SAMAD
Is there still country for Air Force 1s? The iconic (seriously, no cliche) basketball shoe still looks ill in the right colorways and this latest Supreme version fits that bill… Continue
