We at Transracial have a dirty little secret (no, not THAT secret) — we’ve never been to Los Angeles!  Sure, we trekked down to LA with mom and Transracial IK back when we were kiddies up in San Fran.  And yes, I do recall a tween trip or two with our synagogue youth group to Disneyland.

But not since we passed puberty have we ever been to the city of Angels.  And we’re not proud!

It’s unlikely we’ll be trekking out to Cali anytime soon (what with barely recovering from recent jaunts to Southern Africa and South Florida).

But if we did happen to have some extra travel mojo, we’d get ourselves to Los Angeles — AND FAST!

Because this Saturday (AKA November 15th) marks what’s certain to be the party of the season.

It’s all taking place at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art (AKA, the museum that Eli Broad built), which is feting its 30th anniversary this season.

Considering the serious financial pitfalls that have recently plagued MOCA, they’ve got a lot to be happy about.

Which is why they’re going to party hard-core — and with a hard-core roster of talent.

In brief:

Led by Eli and Edythe Broad, the entire affair is Honorary-Chaired by Dasha Zhukova and Larry Gagosian

+ Lots of people far richer, thinner and more famous than you and I will be in the house — such as artists Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Chris Burden (did he ever get that gold?)

+ They’ll be eating and drinking all kinds of pricey goodies.

+ And they’ll be entertained in seriously fab style.  How fab?

How about a one-time only recreation of famed Russian composer Sergei Diaghilev’s 1929 dance piece Le Bal totally re-imagined for the early 21st century by Italian artist and social commentator Francesco Vezzoli.

Vezzoli — who’s got a thing for Prada — is reworking Le Bal with none-other than Lady Gaga in the lead role, supported by a dozen dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet.

Adding their own artistic touches are Frank Gehry (who’s designing Gaga’s hat), Miuccia Prada (her dress), Australian uber-director Baz Luhrmann (the performance’s masks) and artistic bad boy Damien Hirst, who’s painting the event’s piano.

Ferreal!

It’s a one-time, one-off fete de fabulosity that I’m sure we’ll be reading and talking about at least until the start of Art Basel/Miami a few weeks later.

For those who’ll be in attendance — bravo!

As for the rest of us, we can see what all of the fuss was about with a visit to COLLECTION: MOCA’S FIRST THIRTY YEARS — More than 500 Works by 200 Artists, which shows from Nov. 15, 2009 — May 3, 2010.

In between completing all of the work from our recent visits to Africa and Miami, we had the unexpected joy of being introduced to the work of German designer/artist Julia Lohmann.

Based in London, Lohmann’s creates truly unique furniture and home accessory pieces that unquestionably cross the lines between art and design.

At their core, each work speaks to Lohmann’s need to rigorously respect the planet and honor our sadly — and rapidly — dwindling natural resources.

Which is why Lohmann is so big on recycling — including her reuse of discarded bovine stomachs; AKA sheep and cow guts.

As the pieces above confirm, Lohmann takes the organs, preserves them and then crafts their honey comb-like remnants into lamps as part of her cleverly-branded “Ruminant Bloom” series.

Each of Lohmann’s stomachs is unique and so is the end-product — which she says “envelops the light in a beautiful, billowing lace.”

The pieces cost about $500 each and are certainly eye-catching conversation-starters.

Lohmann — who’s currently obsessed with forming lamps from kelp and seaweed — is hardly undiscovered and has shown her work at important global design fairs such s Milan’s Salon de Mobile.

But she’s new to us — and considering most ruminants come complete with four separate stomachs — Lohmann is unlikely to run out of material any time soon.

Loyal Trasnsracial readers may recall a burst of Canada-themed stories a few months ago — when we were visiting our neighbor to the north on some random, unexpected work trip.

Anyway, whilst we were there we had the chance to learn about this young kid — chef Luke Hayes-Alexander, who is emerging as the most compelling culinary talent in the entire country.

At barely 19, he is already in charge of his own kitchen — the eponymous Luke’s, which his parents named after their only child back when he was a toddler and from which he ousted his dad a few years ago.

Luke’s story is quite a read — as told in a nice story in today’s Financial Times.

In it we learn about Luke’s passion for charcuterie, his appreciation for molecular gastronomy and being home-schooled.

Luke is young and inventive and we suspect he has a long and vibrant future ahead of  him — both in Canada and perhaps worldwide.

As you may recall, we at Transracial just returned from a fun-filled month in Southern Africa — taking in the color and culture of South Africa and Mozambique where we were stoked to attend the annual Gay Pride events.

As you might also recall, we were far-less stoked to read recent missives fired off by Gay civil rights activist David Mixner in the wake of the very disappointing results of Maine’s same-sex marriage vote on Tuesday.

Mixner — for some insane reason — has decided we are living in what he terms a state of  “Gay Apartheid”.

It’s a phrase Mixner — along with fellow shrill reactionary Herb Hamsher — seem to relish with glee, yet one that is simply vulgar and obnoxious in its lack of sensitivity, honor, respect and downright accuracy.

It’s similar to efforts used against Israel to call its treatment of its own Arab citizens and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank a form of “Apartheid”.

Again, the comparison is understandable in its use of metaphor, but simply incorrect, unconstructive and lazy!

We made it clear yesterday and we say so again: THERE IS NO GAY APARTHEID IN THE UNITED STATES!

Yet oogles of commentors seem to disagree — insisting that “apartheid” is being used as a general term for inequality and that I’m simply stirring up trouble by questioning Mixner’s motives.

They say I’m working “against” the cause. (We can’t help but wonder when insisting upon accuracy and integrity became such crime!)

Well…..everyone is entitled to their opinion.

So in the spirit of this debate,  I decided to reach out to Gay and Lesbian leaders in South Africa itself — to see what they thought of Mixner co-opting the single most important term in their entire national history.

Some — such as an archivist at the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action project in Johannesburg — were quite generous, declaring that the term “Gay Apartheid” was simply “not helpful”.

Others, however, we not so kind.

“It smacks of a total lack of understanding of what Apartheid was and its legacy upon South Africans of all races,” says Marlow Valentine of the Triangle Project outside of Cape Town, the largest GLBT social services organization in Africa. “Apartheid was a system of violence, segregation, oppression imposed by the government upon the majority of the nation.  To use that term (in an American context) displays total ignorance for the Civil Rights struggle of this nation.”

Valentine — like many South African GLBT activists — is well aware of the current battles over same-sex marriage brewing in the USA.  And he calls the recent actions in Maine “outrageous and atrocious — particularly at a moment when human rights should be on every international agenda.”

Nonetheless, he is baffled by Mixer and Co’s attempt to equate our struggles here in America with Apartheid.

“What does he mean by the term ‘apartheid’,  I want to know,” Valentine says. “If they are speaking of inequality of exclusion, I can understand their motives.”

But Apartheid was far more than merely inequality and exclusion, continues Valentine, who questions Mixner’s fundamental comprehension of what Apartheid entailed.

“Are people in America forced to walk around with identity cards, do they need permits to live in certain areas, permits to work in certain areas — permits to walk in the streets at night? THIS is what Apartheid was,” Valentine says. “And if you did not follow it, you would be arrested, beaten — war would be raged against you”

“It is a system I would not wish upon any nation — and if this were happening in the US, then you’d have Apartheid.”

Although we suspect our own missive will do little to discourage Mixner and his ilk from abusing the English language, we at least had to try.

So we end by asking Mixner this:  If he’s so certain he’s living in an era of Gay Apartheid, then we ask: Where is his Soweto? Who is his Biko, Tutu, Suzman, Mandela.

Because try as you may to galvanize your troops — Mr. Mixner, you are NO Nelson Mandela!

Tuesday’s passage of an anti Gay Marriage ordinance in Maine was unquestionably disappointing, but perhaps no more so than the shrill response from members of the same-sex marriage industry who have once again resorted to the new-found game of homo-hysteria.

Indeed, David Mixner — the de facto leader of the same-sex marriage movement (above) — has made it clear that he believes that the US is now entering an era of “Gay Apartheid” — YES! “Gay Apartheid”.

As anyone who’s studied contemporary South African history knows, Apartheid was a system of legal, physical, cultural, economic and social separation that was not voted in under referendum — but imposed via quasi-dictatorship from above. It was a policy of systematic exclusion, disenfranchisement and oppression that literally resulted in the deaths of those who violated it.

Clearly, the passage of the anti same sex-marriage proposition in Maine has nothing to do with Apartheid.

And yet Mixner — who goes on to describe the recent events in Maine as “ballot-box terrorism” — is not alone in resorting to Homo-Hysteria in order to rally his troops.

Fellow Gay leader Andrew Sullivan famously declared a few month on his Atlantic Monthly blog that “Fight Back. Act Up” in reference to Pres. Obama’s unwillingness to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.

While the folks over at the blog Queerty have described the Maine passage as “voter approved rape”.

This extreme language is truly hysteria at best — downright falsehoods at worst.

We all know that in the US we are not living in an “Apartheid” state; that the amazingly clever “Act-Up. Fight Back” phrases applied when folks were literally dying from HIV, not in the case of marriage debates; and that any actual rape victim would be hard-pressed to see a similarity between her experience and a legal, official vote.

What I’m getting at here is that we’ve entered an age of homo-hysteria — in which self-appointed leaders see fit to speak for the “community” in hyperbole and jargon that may make for good headlines, but is patently devoid of fact.

More worrisome, by declaring the GLBT situation dire and extreme TODAY, it both negates actual recent achievements (such as a clutch of new gay mayors; repeal of a ban allowing HIV positive foreigners into the nation; the Matthew Shephard act) and leaves little room to galvanize our resources if/when (God forbid) the forces of evil truly descend upon us.

Homo Hysteria serves homo Hysterics; but benefit every-day Gay folk — eeeh, not so much.

You may remember a few weeks back when the venerable NY Times wrote a piece bemoaned the increase in “stragglers” now participating in the annual New York Marathon.

Apparently, the average marathoner is now running slower than in years past — finishing thier 26.2 miles far later than those front-page appearing champs.

While we understand it must be difficult for ace-runners to tolerate the stragglers, perhaps we should remember that for many participants, the New York Marathon is not merely physical act — but a literal act of courage and survival.

Such is the case of runners Maria Davis (right, above) and her good friend Renee Mancino (left).

Davis — a former model and Hip-Hop promoter — contracted HIV in 1995 and nearly died three years later. During the early HIV battles that almost claimed Davis’ life, Mancino (a big-time pastry maker) visited her good friend and promised her that if she survived, the two of them would run the Marathon.

This year they did — completing the arduous course at the ripe old age of 50 (Davis) and 60 (Mancino) and despite suffering from some serious medical conditions including Maria’s Peripheral Neuropathy (a nerve disorder which causes debilitating tingling from the knees to feet) and Renee’s heart condition, which will soon require surgery.

And their times — 7:46 for Maria, 9:02 for Renee — are certainly respectable.

Maria came to the Marathon via Harlem United — which helped house her family as she battled HIV and other serious social/medical conditions. She’s now living on her own and — as we can see from the pic above — active and vital.

So why should “plodders” be allowed to run along side the swift and stealth? Because it’s often the slowest runners who’ve traveled the longest distances to reach the finish line!

We at Transracial were very happy to hear about efforts by Wisconsin Representative Tammy Baldwin to condemn a proposed law by the Ugandan government that would drastically penalize local GLBTs.

Openly-Lesbian Baldwin has drafted a letter calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to denounce the proposed anti-GLBT laws — which would not only criminalize homosexuality, but would also penalize those who support gay rights, or even refuse to turn in others for being gay.

Messed up!

Yet we can’t help but feel the bile rising in our throats over Rep. Baldwin’s latest move. Rep. Baldwin clearly has no problem denouncing a foreign government for its treatment of its own GLBT citizens.

Yet Baldwin herself is certainly not without blood on her hands — the blood of her own GLBT constituents and supporters right here in the USA.

As many of you may remember, Rep. Baldwin recorded THIS video plea to America’s GLBT community imploring them to support Pres. Obama’s health care overhaul.

While Rep. Baldwin apparently has enough time, energy and concern to craft a formal document against the Ugandan government, not once in the aforementioned video did Rep. Baldwin see fit to mention the battle against AIDS/HIV or the mounting costs of this still-rife epidemic in her own country.

Remember, 55,000 Americans contract HIV each year — the majority of them Gay-folk.

Isn’t HIV a health care issue, we ask?

And isn’t it a GLBT issue?

We repeatedly asked Rep. Baldwin’s office to explain her worrisome omission a few months back — and got no real answer. Yes, Rep. Baldwin has been a major proponent of HIV treatments within the new health care plans.

And that’s fucking awesome!

But this does not compensate for the churlishness and cowardice shown in her health care video.

We all know — Silence = Death.  Both in Uganda and right here in the United States.

So brava to Rep. Baldwin for condemning hate all the way over in Africa.

But we say so what!  Rep. Baldwin — real activism begins at home!

Get to it!

A Jewish-American West Bank settler currently in police custody in Israel has emerged as a leading suspect in the horrific attack on a GLBT community center in Tel Aviv which left two people dead, dozens injured and rocked the seaside city known for its tolerance and openness.

Indeed, Israeli police revealed to local press that Yaakov Teitel (above), a 35 year-old religious extremist originally from the United States was arrested last month during a major operation by the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s intenral secret service.

According to reports, Teitel — a father of four — is the mastermind behind a series of shockingly violent attacks against Palestinians, leftist Israelis and “messianic Jews” (AKA “Jews for Jesus) that have left a handful dead and injured. 

Teitel has been known to local security officials for almost a decade and was actually arrested in 2000 on suspician of engaging in terror attacks.  He was released for lack of evidence — a move many are calling a major blunder by Israeli security forces.

Beyond the anti-Arab terro, Teitel has both been linked to the August Gay Center attack, and apprently — while in custody — confessed to master-minding the attack.  Despite the confession, police have not yet formally charged him with the hate-crime owing to lack of sufficient evidence.

Nonetheless, what is known about Teitel is chilling.

Over the past decade, he has confessed to the following terrorist-styled attacks:

• + The 1997 murder of an east Jerusalem taxi driver
• + The 1997 murder of a Palestinian shepherd south of Mount Hebron
• + Placing an explosive device in the Ramallah-adjacent settlement of Eli in 2006 – the device was      found and disarmed safely
• + Placing an explosive device near a Beit Shemesh monetary in 2007, which resulted in one Palestinian injured
• + A 2007 explosion which took place in the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem – a police cruiser was severely damaged, but no injuries were reported
• + Hurling explosives at a police car in June 2007 – no injuries or damage were reported
• + Sending a parcel bomb to a messianic family residing in Ariel, which resulted in a 15-year-old boy suffering severe injuries
• + Placing a pipe bomb near Prof. Zeev Sternhell’s Jerusalem home in September of 2008 – Sternhell was lightly wounded.

Florida-born Teitel has lived off and on in Israel/West Bank for 20 years during which time he was able to smuggle numerous guns into the country from the United States — weapons which were used in his myriad attacks.  Many (see above) were captured during the raid on his home last month.

Despite not yet being formally charged with the Tel Aviv Gay Center attack, Teitel has a long paper trail linking him to homophobic attacks. 

According to a November 1st release from the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance – a GLBT support center in the capital — the police successfully linked Teitel to a bomb with the words “Sodomites Out” written on it, found eight days before the Jerusalem Pride March in 2006. They also found flyers nearby entitled “Death to Sodomites,” with instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons to be used against LGBTQ people. The flyer also promised NIS 20,000 to anyone causing the death of “one of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.” It was signed by “The Red Hand of Redemption,” the same title used in the flyers praising the Tel Aviv attack.

Open House director Yonatan Gher has made it clear that although his group will wait for a formal charge against Teitel from the police, they are not waiting in silence. Moreover, given Teitel’s long record of hate-based crimes, they expect Israel’s political and security leaders to respond to the Teitel arrest with appropriate gravitas.

“We expect to hear renunciations of Teitel’s shocking actions from a wide spectrum of the Israeli population, from the political right and left, from religious and secular populations, from LGBTQ and straight people,” Gher said in a statement today. “Let us unite against these hateful actions and respond to them through the love and acceptance of the other.”

Clearly this story is fluid and just beginning. We expect to hear — and report — much more.

Here at Transracial, we make an effort not to be too self-congratulatory — but sometimes you just can’t help it!

Case in point — the recent tsunami of coverage about the new move toward individualized Top Level Domains (TLDs), such as .gay, .eco and .nyc.

As many of you know, starting next year ICANN (the international domain regulatory body) will allow, well, everyone to snap up any domain combination they see fit.

This means web-sites will not longer be limited to ho-hum domains such as .com, .net, .org or those cutesy country suffixes — but rather any TLD domain they can think of.

Over the past few weeks, everyone from The New York Times to The New York Post to The New York Observer have reported on the trend.

But here at Transracial, we kinda/sorta broke the whole story with THIS lengthy report way back on August 28th.

Anyway.  Although those eye-catching TLDs are en route — they’re still months and months away.

But right NOW, there is…perhaps…even more exciting TLD news.  Last night, the ICANN board voted to liberalize country domains at the end of their most recent global conference in Korea!

This means that in a few months, folks will finally be able to type URLs in languages using non-Latin alphabets.

For instance, in China, websites will be able soon be in Chinese; in the Middle East they might be in Arabic or Hebrew; in Greece in Greek letters, Russia in Russian letters.

You get the idea — and if you don’t, just watch the nifty video above.

Furthermore, websites will also be able to end with suffixes, too, that are not Latin-letter based.  So that “.gr” at the end of Greek websites may soon be comprised of Greek letters; the “ae” at the end of sites from the United Arab Emirates in Arabic letters.

It’s all pretty cool, and will be implemented soon. ICANN committed to fast-tracking this new global TLD system so that the first examples can begin to appear by November 16th!

Meanwhile, those .gay and .eco folks continue to work with ICANN to establish the protocols needed for further TLD liberalization — expected to take place next year.

As we noted, it costs at least $185,000 to apply to own a TLD such as .gay or .nyc — so this battle is gonna be long and costly.

While we wait and watch how it all plays out, we’re stoked to see how those new polyglot web addresses will soon look on-line.

Here at Transracial we’ve always had a thing for the under-dog. Folks who struggle just a little bit harder, longer or smarter win big in our book.

Which is why we’re sending a shout-out to the Adam Cohen, the nice Jewish Guy behind the new Nice Jewish Guys calendar.

Considering his rather ubiquitous “nice Jewish guy” name, you probably know an Adam Cohen or two (we probably know three!).

But even if you don’t know THIS particular Adam Cohen, it’s likely you’re familiar with his work. Via his media company Super Delicious, Cohen is the developer/producer of important television bon mots including the Paris and Nicole-fest known as The Simple Life and other reality classics for MTV, et al.

Anyway, although Cohen is totally hitched, he began to fret over the status of dudes like him — Nice Jewish Guys.

And why not?

Good to their friends, to their folks and to their rabbis — Nice Jewish Guys kinda/sorta get shafted.

So Cohen figured it was time to sex them up — and the results are the Nice Jewish Guy Calendar, now in its 2010 edition just in time for Hannukah!

As one would expect, the calendar features 12 Jew-dudes in full nice-guy glory.

All of the guys are (obvi!) single, and Cohen insists he’s worked hard to ensure their niceness and weed out the players!

On the cover (above) is Ethan, a dark-haired business-strategy consultant who, according to the calendar, “can’t work a yo-yo, loves cereal and would eat it all day if he could.”

There’s also Aaron, a piano teacher, and David, a New York-born tutor who’s photographed in a gray bathrobe and slippers.

Most of the men are in/around the Los Angeles area — but don’t fret ladies, we Jews are known for wandering.

Cohen says he hopes to finally give Nice Jewish Guy the props they deserve and, hopefully, help them score some love with the ladies.

As for those ladies themselves, they can support the effort with new “We Love Nice Jewish Guys” t-shirts. And Cohen says there may even be a “Nice Jewish Girls” calendar coming to a Judaica bookstore near you!

Although fairly new, Cohen’s efforts are already garnering rave reviews such as the following:

+ “These are the guys you can take home to mom.” Denise Rabinowitz, New York, NY

+ “Finally a real guy on a calendar who I can actually marry… AND THEY’RE NICE!”,  Monica Stillman, Chicago, Ill

And wait: there’s a movie-component, too!