MadProfessah Meets Markos of DailyKos

One of the amazing aspects of Netroots Nation is that you never know who you'll run into. Right before Senate MajorityLeader Harry Reid spoke on Saturday, I ran into DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and he took this picture with me. Netroots Nation started off as the annual get together YearlyKos, a gathering of like-minded people who used the Dailykos.com site to share idea and form an online progressive community. DailyKos.com is one of the biggest blogs on the Internet, getting hundreds of thousands of hits per day, nearly 4 million hits per week. Markos is now a best-selling author and frequent television commentator but he is still very down-to-earth and it was an honor to meet him.

Pretty cool, eh?

Thanks again to Mike Rogers and the Citizen Journalist/ Blogger Initiative for the financial support to attend the conference for the second year in a row. Next year it is in Minneapolis!

Netroots Nation 2010 Las Vegas: #lgbtnn10

MadProfessah is attending Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas this week July 20th-24th thanks to financial support from Mike Rogers' Blogger Initiative. The Twitter hashtag for LGBT coverage at Netroots Nation is #lgbtnn10.

Yesterday I attended the LGBT confab for Netroots Nation attendees where some of the people there were Dan Choi, Fred Karger, Barbara McCullough-Jones, Gloria Nieto, and Phil Attey. There were also presentations from organizational representatives like Fred Sainz (Human Rights Campaign Foundation), Jason Perez Howe (Lambda Legal), Steve Hildebrand (Faith in America), Michael Crawford (Freedom To Marry) Heather Cronk (GetEqual). Since I'm on the board of Immigration Equality, I represented that organization at the caucus.

Strangely, the Task Force had no representative.

Later on there were interesting discussions between the attendees on "ENDA" and "Immigration Reform" in one session and "Marriage Equality" and "HIV/AIDS" in the second session.

Thursday, after an eventful night (which I may blog about later involving a trip to a local Urgent Care Clinic!), I attended the three sessions:"Marriage Equality: Building a Movement Online," "Immigration Reform's Strange Bedfellows," and "How to Plan for Your Website Redesign"

MOVIE REVIEW: The Hangover

The Other Half wanted to see a movie this weekend so we went and saw The Hangover. The film is directed by Todd Phillips and stars Bradley Cooper (ABC's Alias), Ed Helms (The Daily Show, The Office) and two guys I had never heard of before, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha.

The Hangover is most definitely an "adult comedy." It is chock full of ribald jokes, foul language, sexual situations, male frontal nudity, depiction of massive alcohol consumption (and its after effects).

The movie's plot is surprisingly simple but effective. Four friends (well, 2 friends of the groom-to-be plus his future brother-in-law) go to Las Vegas for a Bachelor Party and wake up the next day with a hilariously awful situation: their hotel suite has been ransacked, the groom is missing, and there are strange objects left in the room (an infant, a chicken, a live tiger) and none of them have any memory of what transpired the night before.

Instead of a "whodunit" this is a "what the **** did we do?" kinda movie. Surprisingly, it is very watchable and almost unwatchable at the same time. You can't believe what a horrible situation the guys have gotten themselves into, but you also can't stop watching.

The Hangover is lots of fun, with a standout performance by Helms. Cooper is always easy on the eyes and Galifianakis weird brand of humor takes awhile to get used to, but is (mostly) effective.

MPAA Rating: R [See Full Rating] for pervasive language, sexual content including nudity, and some drug material. Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

OVERALL GRADE: B/B-.

ACTING: B-.
IMAGERY: B-.
PLOT: B+.
IMPACT: B.