Wedding Update

This is the last update (and last post, for a while) before the wedding.

All is ready for Saturday, except for the programs and the place-cards (which we're doing today) and my ring, which should must be ready tomorrow afternoon. And my tux will be ready Saturday morning.

I met the DJ last night and he seems to know his stuff pretty well. We probably won't have any rehearsal and haven't trained the kids at all, so hopefully it'll go ok. Whatever happens though, it's ok, the kids will do fine, and anything they do, they'll look adorable (Danny in a tiny tux is sooo cute!)

We should have nice weather and today my 3 friends from Italy, Vittorio, Fabio and Fabrizio are arriving to our house.

I can't wait. I'm so happy this is finally happening. I love Ray to pieces and I'm looking forward to celebrating our love with all who are dearest to us.

On Saturday... we marry.

Io e te... per sempre.

George Lucas: the web is the future, goodbye blockbusters

George Lucas, the man who single-handedly invented the blockbuster movie with his Star Wars saga had this to tell studios intent in following his example:

George Lucas has a message for studios that are cutting their slates and shifting toward big-budget tentpoles and franchises: You've got it all wrong.

The creator of "Star Wars," which stamped the template for the franchise-tentpole film, says many small films and Web distribution are the future.
[...]
"We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing because it's too expensive and it's too risky.

"I think the secret to the future is quantity," Lucas said.

So after spending millions of dollars producing and directing the last three chapters of his world famous saga, the first two of which were considerable duds, he's now giving up those kinds of big productions for good.

He might have a good point about the quantity factor though:

Spending $100 million on production costs and another $100 million on P&A makes no sense, he said. "For that same $200 million, I can make 50-60 two-hour movies.

That's 120 hours as opposed to two hours. In the future market, that's where it's going to land, because it's going to be all pay-per-view and downloadable.
[...]
Lucas said he believes Americans are abandoning the moviegoing habit for good.
[...]
Lucas admitted the big-budget strategy has done well for him in the past, but said, "We're not going to do the $200 million investments."

Lucas might be right when he says that "Americans are abandoning the moviegoing habit," but let's not forget that he's the one who pushed hard for movie theaters to switch to digital projectors for his saga's final installments, and now he foresees the end of the movie theater altogether.

I'm sure that the theater chain owners who didn't bend to the Master's will are smiling right now.

Smart policies

The United States announced its biggest ever "debt-for-nature" swap, forgiving 24 million dollars of Guatemala's foreign debt to Washington in exchange for a pledge to protect tropical forests in the central American nation.

This is what I call a smart policy, after all, what are $24 million for the most powerful economy in the world? Drops of water in the ocean.

This way we get to save a portion of the tropical forests that could yield incredible scientific and medical discoveries, we save myriads of plants and trees from certain death, and we ingratiate a country and a people that can now invest those funds it owed us toward improving their daily lives.

Do you think that holding out a helping hand, as opposed to say, military occupation, would be helpful in the Middle East as well? Hmm... Just a thought.

A Quote By:

Eliot Spitzer, gubernatorial candidate for the state of New York, at last week's Empire State Pride Agenda dinner:

"We will not ask whether this proposition of legalizing same-sex marriage is popular or unpopular; we will not ask if it's hard or easy; we will simply ask if it's right or wrong, [and] I think we know in this room what the answer to that question is."

How to keep it real

I read this today:

On October 5, 1947, in the first televised White House address, President Truman asked Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.

How does that compare to Bush's message to keep doing what you're doing, the military will take care of the war?

No wonder people feel completely removed from the conflict in the Middle East. Our President told us to.

A voice of reason within the Anglican Church

Desmond Tutu's new biography is about to come out, and in it he declares that the Anglican Church's stand on homosexuality and gays in the church made him ashamed of being part of it:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the first authorized biography of the Nobel peace laureate, said he was ashamed of his Anglican Church's conservative position that rejected gay priests.
[...]
The retired archbishop was critical of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for bowing on the gay priest issue to conservative elements, particularly African bishops, in the 77-million member Anglican Church that includes Episcopalians in the United States.

In a 1998 letter to Williams predecessor, Archbishop George Carey, Tutu wrote that he was "ashamed to be Anglican." It came after the Lambeth Conference of Bishops rejected the ordination of practicing homosexuals saying their sexual relations were "incompatible with scripture."

Tutu also said he was deeply saddened at the furor caused by the appointment of openly gay V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. "He found it little short of outrageous that church leaders should be obsessed with issues of sexuality in the face of the challenges of AIDS and global poverty," wrote Allen.

It's so nice and refreshing to see that there are still voices of reason among the crazies.

And Tutu correctly points out that it is shameful on the part of any religious institution to cling to ideals of the past and close the doors to those who want to join them and help those in need when there is so much suffering and so much need in the world.