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I'm coming to the Midwest in May to do some fundraising/outreach! I'm really excited (hence my use of the exclamation point); it'll be my first trip back to my roots on behalf of this organization I love so dearly. It's like chocolate and peanut butter together.

So far, I'm coming to:

Detroit
Chicago
Milwaukee
Madison
Minneapolis

In the frenzy of preparing for my first Women, Action, and the Media (WAM!) conference, I'd arranged a flight that arrived in Boston a day before the conference actually began. Not cool since my hotel room share wasn't starting until tomorrow.

I wasn't too worried because I had a layover in Minneapolis and I managed to convince myself that surely the fine folks at Northwest would let me bump my flight to tomorrow and let me spend a day with my mom.

When I think back on my own childhood, I find that my memories are sepia-toned, by which I do not mean that I am especially nostalgic, but, rather, that I grew up in the 1970s, and brown was hot. Yellow, too. Those two colors comprised the entire palette of the complete Little Tikes line and many other elements of my visual universe. Everything else was red, green, or blue. All little kids had pageboy haircuts, and boys and girls wore the same Garanimals and played with the same Legos.

I've got two weeks to rethink my babyproofing strategy of relegating the TV to the closet, because the new season of Battlestar Galactica starts up on April 4. Even if, like me, you aren't much of a sci-fi fan, BSG is worth watching for its complex storylines, shades-of-gray take on morality, and especially for its unspoken feminist agenda in which gender is largely irrelevant.

Things that are pissing me off today: Lynndie England is blaming the media for printing the photos taken at Abu Ghraib of Iraqi prisoners being tortured. According to an AP piece, she acknowledges that after the photos of the atrocities were exposed, the Iraqi insurgency picked up. Here's her quote:

"Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide.

There's a great article on Womensenews about "Torture Porn" makers co-opting the word feminism as an excuse for their extreme graphic violence.  Torture Porn, a term coined by David Edelstein in this NYT article, refers to movies like Saw, Hostel, Captivity, Vacancy and The Devil's Rejects, among others, with over the top sadistic violence.  Edelstein notes "Unlike the old seventies and eighties hack-’em-ups (or their jokey remakes, like Scream), in which masked maniacs punished nubile teens for promiscuity (the spurt of blood was equivalent to the money shot in porn), the victims here are neither interchangeable nor expendable...Some of these movies are so viciously nihilistic that the only point seems to be to force you to suspend moral judgments altogether."

Apart from a brief fascination with Go Fug Yourself and the de rigeuer doctor's office perusal of People, I'm just not that compelled by celeb gossip, whether it's online or in print. Sometime in the last year, though, someone sent me a link to the Celebrity Baby Blog, which is like an entire blogful of Us Weekly's "Just Like Us!" section with content limited solely to celebrity reproduction and offspring.

I was amped for the premiere of the new Fox sitcom The Return of Jezebel James. First off, as someone whose relationship to TV normally mimics that of a wino and a big bottle of Night Train, the writer’s strike and its aftermath has been hard for me. Second, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was the brains (and something like 80% of the dialogue) behind Gilmore Girls, and I loved Gilmore Girls. And finally, if 2007 was the year of the unexpected-pregnancy film, 2008 is shaping up to be the year of the Odd Couple-esque gestational-surrogacy comedy—along with Jezebel James, there’s the upcoming Tina Fey-Amy Poehler film Baby Mama—and I was curious to see how a half-hour sitcom was going to tackle the tricky subject of assisted reproduction.

by Margaret Price

Project Runway 4: The Season of Love. And no designer was more lovable than the prancing, snapping, flat-iron–wielding Christian Siriano, who ended up winning it all—the final runway showdown, the spread in Elle, and the $10K Fan Favorite prize. Sassing and sewing with equal velocity, the diminuitive designer and self-described "big deal" introduced us to an array of hip, new-to-many-Americans phrases: Fierce! Ferosh! A hot mess up in here! A hot tranny mess up in here!

Wait. Tranny?

Last night was Equity Foundation's annual benefit auction, held at the Portland Center Stage Gerding Theater. Equity is a fantastic Portland-based foundation that awards grants to nonprofit organizations statewide that are effecting social change, particularly around queer activism. We're honored to be among the organizations chosen for 2008: Equity will be sponsoring the Bitch In page for our upcoming Loud issue (Summer 2008).

It was fancy! And gay! Check out the archetypal gay icon herself hovering over an impressive lighting technique.