“The Surrey school district [in Vancouver BC] has cancelled a high school production of a play designed to teach tolerance toward homosexuals.”

I learned about this event too late to hype it in Stranger Suggests, but if you’re a fan of wonderfully horrible movies, it’s not to be missed: Sextette, the 1978 musical-comedy fiasco starring an elderly (and face-lifted to freakishness) Mae West, screening this Monday, September 26 at Re-bar, as part of their “Movies of Mass Destruction” series.

Even reading down the film’s cast list is an acid trip: Along with Ms. West (whose unfortunate visage is a rubbery case study in how far the art of plastic surgery has progressed), Sextette features Dom DeLuise, Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Alice Cooper, Rona Barrett, Keith Moon, and Regis Philbin. The whole thing is mind-bogglingly awful—a duet of “Love Will Keep Us Together” sung by Mae West and Timothy Dalton is an enduring low-light—but it’s exactly the type of crappy movie that needs to watched with both a crowd and a lot of booze, which makes Monday’s screening at Re-bar a dream come true. Doors at 8:30, movie at 9:30, admittance is FREE, and the evening’s hosted by Ms. Sylvia O’Stayformore.

A NY book publicist named Kelly sent me this review pitch:

Hello Charles, In light of our government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, questions have recently been raised regarding our country’s safety and the government’s ability to handle another terrorist attack. As Ken Sewell discusses in RED STAR ROGUE: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine’s Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. — now #25 on the New York Times bestseller list, few Americans know that in 1968 Pearl Harbor was nearly attacked by terrorist forces using nuclear weapons. With the United States in such a weakened state, what could this possibility mean for us today? What would happen if terrorists attempted to strike again?

That’s one mean marketing machine.

Now that Nickels has joined the anti-monorail crowd he’s stumbling into the same anti-logic loop that has long defined the rhetoric of the obstructionists.

At his Friday press conference, when he denounced the monorail, he said: “Cost cuts have significantly compromised the system. It’s no longer the Green Line promised to voters.”

However, today, Nickels trashed the SMP board for refusing to propose a shorter line. He said: ” I wanted the Seattle Monorail Project to face up to the fundamental problem that has plagued the agency for more than two years. There is simply not enough money to build the [Green Line.]”

So, let me get this straight: Voters should be pissed because the SMP scaled back the project to cut costs, but voters should also be pissed because the board refuses to scale back the project to cut costs. ???

Nickels sounds exactly like a typical naysayer hack (or more accurately, like longtime anti-monorail mouthpiece Henry Aronson), issuing “Damned if they do, damned if they Don’t” Catch-22 statements that are nothing more than contradictory excuses to kill the project.

News from my buddy Shawna, who became a Seattle-to-D.C. transplant a year ago:

That “money for the poor not the war” slogan is plastered ALL OVER D.C. Very unfortunate.

This is the first protest since I’ve been here, though, that it is actually large enough for people to shed that “I’m too cool to protest” feeling, at least among the folks I hang out with. I went to a show last night, just a regular ol rawk show with people of all ages and backgrounds, and EVERYONE was talking about it positively. It gets ya all fired up, ya know?

The Washington Post has a great piece today on the mood in the nation’s capitol on the eve of Saturday’s big anti-war march. It’s a piece shot through with the question of the moment in D.C.: Is something happening here?

Vietnam? The unquiet ghost, the untamed analogy, is loose in the air. There’s that old nervy feeling that Something Is Happening. Here. Now. But you could be mistaken…

Critics cannot easily dismiss this incarnation of antiwar enthusiasm as a fringe passion of anarchists, communists and freaks (though an author still tried to make that case last month at a Heritage Foundation forum). Recent polls say a majority of Americans — as many as 59 percent — think the war in Iraq is a “mistake” and the troops should be brought home. (Brought home when? That’s another question.)

The news is almost too much to handle. Demonstrators walk around saying, We are the majority, trying it on like unfamiliar clothes.

It has been half a lifetime since the peaceniks felt so … mainstream. The last time a majority became disenchanted with a conflict as shots were still being fired — including the Gulf War, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan — was August 1968, when Gallup first detected that most Americans considered the Vietnam War a “mistake.”

Meanwhile, the March in Seattle is on the verge of catching a serious case of muddled message. From Seattle’s Socialists:

This Saturday, across the country, tens of thousands will march against the war. “Money for the poor, not for war!” will ring out as an indictment of the Bush administration’s callous disdain for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and for the U.S. and Iraqi people loosing their lives to capitalist plunder.

While the sentiment is true, the slogan “Money for the poor, not for war,” is awful, watered down, boring, and takes too much explaining to be effective in a march. (It’s almost as bad as this classic: “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? NOW!”)

Did organizers in Seattle fail to find our own Gold Star family, to lead the march with a smarter rallying cry? The least they can do is rip off the Gold Star brigade’s brilliant slogans, like this one: How Many More Soldiers Have to Die?

There’s still time before the rally. Let’s help them out. Send your best rallying cries to us, and we’ll post the best ones here by the end of the day tomorrow, allowing the Socialists enough time to scribble them on their placards.

Attention: Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park has shed its fences, and is open for business.

Conveniently, it is located across the street from the Stranger’s offices (it’s one of our perks, along with free pens).

I just strolled through. My favorite things include a seat built into the water feature’s downhill stream, where you can sit and dangle your feet in the cool water; the low walls at each corner, evoking the edges of the park’s prior incarnation as a reservoir; the swingset, where I just witnessed a grown man swing so high, he was able to execute a backflip dismount.

Just as Amy J. redirected folks to the amazing Phil Donahue/Bill O’Reilly showdown video mentioned in Eli’s expansive “March on Washington” slog post, I must require everyone who hasn’t already to watch the stunning anti-war TV ad linked by Eli in the same post.

See it here.

May God have nercy on Dubya’s soul. Or not.

For an extremely satisfying collision of these two positions, watch this tense debate between Phil Donahue and Bill O’Reilly, in which Donahue more than holds his ground as O’Reilly tries to blast him with recycled Bush administration talking points.

Seriously, that video is required watching. (It’ll make you want to start the Donahue in ‘08 campaign.)

Behind all the noisy hurricane coverage, there’s a good bit of attention beginning to focus on the big anti-war march that’s set to descend on Washington, D.C. this weekend. Cindy Sheehan will be among the speakers, and to draw attention to the march the group Gold Star Families for Peace is running this devastating ad on CNN and Fox News. It shows a parade of other mothers of dead soldiers, including Lynn Bradach, who I profiled in last week’s Stranger, all making direct appeals to president Bush:

Melanie House of Simi Valley, California: Mr. President, I lost my husband, and now I’m asking you, How many more soldiers have to die for your mistake?

Elaine Johnson of Cope, South Carolina: You lied to us. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11…

Bradach, of Portland, Oregon: Mr. President, we all love our country, we all love our troops…

House: But don’t sacrifice the lives of our loved ones for your mistake.

With tens of thousands of people expected at the march, Bush today unveiled a new rhetorical gambit, saying that withdrawing from Iraq now would allow terrorists ”to claim an historic victory over the United States.” Message: If we withdraw, we lose, therefore the Gold Star moms are defeatists who want America to get beaten by terrorists.

For an extremely satisfying collision of these two positions, watch this tense debate between Phil Donahue and Bill O’Reilly, in which Donahue more than holds his ground as O’Reilly tries to blast him with recycled Bush administration talking points.

Meanwhile, a new Gallup Poll out this week finds that 66 percent of Americans support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Whether all of this will add up to a pivotal point in the anti-war movement on Saturday is hard to tell. But with Bill O’Reilly unable to effectively defend the Iraq war anymore, and a majority of Americans now calling for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and Bush reduced to calling grieving mothers defeatists, there’s an opening for a defining moment.

For information on the companion protest that will happen here in Seattle this Saturday, click here.

I recently rented The Brown Bunny, the art house flick by reviled/revered troublemaker Vincent Gallo (the movie is finally out on DVD). My verdict: I love it. Sure it’s completely pretentious and focuses on the nearly cross-eyed director (his enormous cock gets plenty of screen time too). But the story, which pulls heavily from the cult classic Two Lane Blacktop, is bittersweet and beautifully filmed. It’s the story of one man’s solitary road trip and the missed connections he makes and breaks along the way. Plus how can you give up a chance to see the demure Chloë Sevigny on screen?

The emergency landing of JetBlue 262 was the best damn reality television I’ve ever seen. From the moment the back tires touched down, to the time the plane finally rolled to a stop—and especially while the front tires were melting away in flames—it was unclear if the front landing gear was going to hold, or snap off and send the nose of the plane skidding down the runway (possibly sparking a terrible fire). But the gear held, and no one was hurt. Amazing.

Check out the video.

This is why I almost never fly.

My new book, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family, is being released today. It’s in bookstores now, as they say.

I’m too modest to praise my own work… but here’s the starred review from Publisher’s Weekly:

The author of the internationally syndicated column “Savage Love” brings much-needed humor, and a reality check, to the bitter gay-marriage debate with this polemical memoir. As Savage (Skipping Towards Gomorrah) and his boyfriend, Terry, neared their 10th anniversary, Savage’s mother put on the pressure for them to get married. But, Savage notes, there were several other points to consider before deciding to tie the knot: among them, the fact that marriage doesn’t provide legal protection in Washington State; Terry prefers tattoos as a sign of commitment; and their six-year-old son declared that only men and women can get married. Furthermore, Savage himself worried that the relationship would be jinxed by anything more permanent than a big anniversary bash, though the one they plan quickly assumes the proportions and price of a wedding reception. While documenting the couple’s wobble toward a decision, Savage skewers ideologues, both pro— and anti—gay marriage, with his radical pragmatism. Disproving Tolstoy’s dictum that “happy families are all alike,” he takes a sharp-eyed, compassionate look at matrimony as it is actually practiced by friends, his raucously affectionate family and even medieval Christians. When he explains to his son what marriage is really about, you want to stand up and cheer, and the surprise ending is both hilarious and a tear-jerker. As funny as David Sedaris’s essay collections, but bawdier and more thought-provoking, this timely book shows that being pro-family doesn’t have to mean being anti-gay.

Hey, that anniversary party was expensive. You can help me pay off the debt by buying my book. Thanks!

It’s Day Seven of my money’s captivity in Greg Nickels’ campaign coffers.

If you’re just tuning in, back in May I wrote Greg Nickels a $300 check, my support for the mayor largely based on his support for the monorail. Last Friday Nickels “withdrew” his support for the monorail, and I subsequently withdrew my support for Greg. When the mayor took the city’s Transit Way Agreement back from the SMP, I told the mayor I wanted my money back.

Well, it’s been seven days, and no check. One of the mayor’s guys told a Stranger reporter not to ask Greg about my demand; apparently it’s a sore subject. He also told the Stranger staffer that my check was in the mail. Well, now it’s going to get even more complicated. I’m off on a book tour, and that check is going to have to find its way to me before this crisis ends.

Where’s my money, Greg? I’m headed to New York City, where I’ll be staying at the Bryant Park Hotel. Can you have it sent there? I’d like to do some shopping.