For an article about two older gay men fearing they won't outlast Prop 8 appeals: click here

I just had to learn to love my husband's old junk and my own past as much as he did. ~ By Taffy Brodesser-Akner

click here

sorry about the strange link, but I couldn't find the article anyplace else and I really wanted to share this one.

March 26, 2011

(apt, to have one since Hubby's uncle was George Gallup, of The Gallup Poll)

During the first phase of this project, in the creation stages of the website, we decided to make a poll to find out about how you, our viewers, feel about various topics relating to marriage.

We asked how people felt about gay marriage, how people felt about monogamy, and about how they'd rate the happiness level of their parents and their own marriage - and we have good news... Marriage won!

When we asked people if they would describe themselves as happily married 60.82 percent said yes and only 29.9 percent said no (9.28 percent replied other, but they probably weren't married in the first place)

We are also happy to announce that 86.73 percent of you responded to our poll by saying, YES!, you feel personally capable of spending the rest of your life with one person.

As we get closer to our big wedding day, we're happy to proceed with this measured enthusiasm for matrimony.

click here

I pulled two significant points I thought deserved note:

"But my title is also about the complexity of the wedding, the fact that it is messy and complicated -- aesthetically, historically, and in terms of the personal emotions it evokes."

"One important thing it does, in addition to signaling the bride and/or groom's loyalty to extended family, religion, or culture, is to display people connected to the couple in other ways besides marriage -- when else in your waking life are you going to have everyone from the various periods and parts of your life in the same room?"

click here for their website. Utilize their genius, and keep the art form alive. I don't want to give away the artist's final plans, but Cary and Brooks, the owners of Aardvark, and Bill, the very tall master of the press (with a pocket brimming and stacked with pens and tools) are all enthused about this idea and process. The letterpress text was challenging on the kind of paper I provided. They made it work, though it was no simple plan. The die cut part of the plan comes next.

The paper was complex to sort out. I've been working with this lovely gal Martha in the mid-west for over a year to make the kind of paper that Ruscha described wanting for his idea, the wedding favor. As of this moment, I've gathered about 100 sheets of her paper. It doesn't feel quite right to call it paper, since each sheet is an object in itself, and ten of them took a couple of weeks to make, dry and send. Ed wanted it as thick as you could get 'paper' and as homemade and recycled as is possible. I sampled a lot of artists who made paper until I found the right person. If you search for the company: Pulpart, at the www.etsy.com site, you'll find Martha's store.

And then the description of the order once I told her exactly what we were looking for, which has a certain poetry:

Extra thick white handmade paper - CUSTOM ORDER FOR HUBBYCO from PulpArt. Extra thick white handmade paper - CUSTOM ORDER FOR HUBBYCO. You will receive 10 pieces of extremely thick paper for your die cut project. Each sheet of paper is individually made by hand using an art form created by the Chinese over 1,000 years ago. I sift through my junk mail, old bills, letters and the like to find the highest quality paper. (You have to start with good paper to end up with good paper!) I do not use bleaches or dyes to color my paper. The color is determined from the scraps I use. I shred the recycled paper, combine it with water to make a pulp. A frame with a screen is pulled through the water to catch the pulp, which forms a sheet of paper that I air dry.

As I was walking away from taking this picture, a guy built like a house rushed out and towards my car asking what the @#$*%^& I was doing. I don't think he would have understood my aesthetic and humor-filled motivations, so I shrugged while quickly getting in the car and waved goodbye really friendly-like.

This is brilliant in my opinion. I'm thinking of reading this at the wedding

This is brilliant in my opinion. I'm thinking of reading this at the wedding:

Should I get married? Should I be Good? Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood? Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries and she going just so far and I understanding why not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel! Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--

When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where's the bathroom? How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap-- O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living? Should I tell them? Would they like me then? Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter but we're gaining a son-- And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded just waiting to get at the drinks and food-- And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife? And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue! I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha! And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on--

then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates! All streaming into cozy hotels All going to do the same thing tonight The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen The lobby zombies they knowing what The whistling elevator man he knowing The winking bellboy knowing Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything! Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye! Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon! running rampant into those almost climatic suites yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel! O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce--

But I should get married I should be good How nice it'd be to come home to her and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen aproned young and lovely wanting by baby and so happy about me she burns the roast beef and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf! God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married! So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky! And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him When are you going to stop people killing whales! And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust--

Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn, up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me, finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup-- O what would that be like! Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus For a rattle bag of broken Bach records Tack Della Francesca all over its crib Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father not rural not snow no quiet window but hot smelly New York City seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job! And five nose running brats in love with Batman And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired like those hag masses of the 18th century all wanting to come in and watch TV The landlord wants his rent Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-- No! I should not get married and I should never get married! But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream--

O but what about love? I forget love not that I am incapable of love it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-- I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible And there maybe a girl now but she's already married And I don't like men and-- but there's got to be somebody! Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married, all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible then marriage would be possible-- Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

This is the end of the film, and shows a father coming home to an empty and silent house after giving his daughter away to be married. It is incredibly moving portrayal of the quiet that settles in after a child leaves the nest. Also, it is a sad reminder of how most American films jam in constant dialogue and noise - they don't trust themselves with silence.

March 18, 2011

Its a song, American Wedding, by Gogol Bordello that I found while trolling around the internet

I would almost suggest this as the first dance to kick up a storm, but.....well, there are many reasons I wouldn't do something like that, but we sure can enjoy it here, and I hope you do.

To read T Magazine's article on Roger Herman click here

and go check out Gerald Davis' new work at Parker Jones Gallery until the 16th of April.

March 14, 2011

This is a long clip, but its a curious vision to see the bride perched on her candy colored throne while women model slips on and around chaise lounges.

Click here for an argument for the 4 year itch

Click here for an article pitching the 3 year itch

the only reason I thought this image was appropriate was because this is the only photo I have that felt itchy

Here's a good read for those that like a bit of Hitchcock in their marriage, or at least to imagine it:

There was an article in the New York Times that relates to how a woman's scent aids in keeping men monogamous who are in long term relationships; this in order to allow for people to stay together long enough for the bearing of children.

here's a quote from the article, written by John Tierney, and a link to the entire article below:

Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else.

The other guys, the ones in romantic relationships, rated her as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak stage of fertility, presumably because at some level they sensed she then posed the greatest threat to their long-term relationships. To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn’t all that hot anyway.

click here

I'd never met Kristin before, which is shocking as we know at least 158 people and growing in common, so says Facebook. Of all the interviews thus far, and most likely all in the future, she and Joshua are undoubtedly and completely unified. It was inspiring both in what I saw, being their individual art works and home/studio environments, and what I heard, which was their connectivity, their history and the story of their marriage. I looked to them to instill some breath of fresh air into this whole marriage activity amongst artists. There is so much resistance to it, and mistrust of it within my community. She and Josh are simply utilizing it as a ritual structure that they are filling with their own beliefs, reinventing it for themselves and taking from it what they like, looking forward and leaving the rest behind.

"We're both pretty rational, and we're both pretty spontaneous, but we also know who we are individually…I'm not a facade, I’m a real person and I wanted a real person. We’re just trying to live this life together" ~Josh and Kristen

"We just didn't want anything in our ceremony to be about religion, death or the law, and in some way, talking about that really allowed all the other wonderful things two people can say to each other to just come out." ~Josh

Kristen and Josh - edited by Amy Cargill