Brian Boitano Project
I recently posted about Brian Boitano’s emotional coming out moment at The White House, here. Now he has a TV show on HGTV where he travels to Italy to find his roots and winds up buying an ancient house and renovating it.
From the HGTV web site:
On a recent vacation to the old country, Olympic figure skater Brian Boitano discovered his Italian family, and the town his relatives migrated from. He also discovered, and ultimately purchased an old family home in desperate need of repair. Now Brian is taking it upon himself to totally renovate the home as a summer villa for family and friends to enjoy, and we are there for the journey!]
I’ve been recording and watching it and I think I’ve seen four shows so far. It’s surprisingly good, the scenery is wonderful, it’s interesting if you like historic renovation projects, and Boitano comes off as very endearing, creative, and talented. I never followed figure skating all that much and I knew basically nothing about Boitano other than bits and pieces I heard or read on the news. But he’s really much more than a figure skater, and this show is one of the fastest half hours on TV. His renovation projects are also very different…kind of restoration hardware meets French/Italian industrial, without once harming the integrity of the old home he’s renovating. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s adorable.
You can read more here. Photo here.
Gay NFL Love Story
This is really one of those touching/pragmatic things you read about more these days. And I don’t think it’s going to be the last time we see or hear about something like this…with men and women. There’s a new documentary out about a relationship between pro football players, Jerry Smith and David Kopay. In many ways it sounds a lot like a real life M/M romance set in the 1970’s. Only without the happy ending.
Smith was a star on the team, and according to the film, A Football Life, he struggled with the closet throughout his career. While many teammates knew that he was gay, Smith never discussed his sexuality openly. Amazingly, Smith found a protector in Redskins coach Vince Lombardi, who had a gay brother. Lombardi, who was notoriously tough, made it clear to the team that he would not tolerate any homophobic outburst directed at gay players.
You can read more here. The article also mentions AIDS and a few other interesting facts.
Gay Cat Disowned
Here’s something that’s just pure ignorance. A woman in Nigeria disowned her cat because she noticed unnatural sexual attraction, which in this case is same sex behavior.
“By this, the cat has made a record as the first cat to be so publicly declared gay and disowned by its owner,” writer Donatus Nadi notes in the article. As for the cat’s disgruntled owner, she would only add, “Anybody interested in this gay cat can have it because I have no further use of it.”
The male cat…Bull…was known to make advances toward other male cats in the woman’s household.