Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

Happy Saturday dear readers!  I am feeling calm after a week that kind of just flew by and so there's a lot to catch-up on in the links.  Let's see what we have...

On Entertainment...

-I am following suit with the Huffington Post's ultimate shade-throw to Donald Trump this past week, putting his stories in Entertainment rather than in politics considering he has become more of a sideshow in the political arena that is taking away from the more serious discussion of whom should be the Republican nominee.  Trump, who has the tact of a four-year-old, lambasted them in the same week he also lambasted John McCain after the Arizona senator and former Republican nominee for president (a title Trump will never have) said that Trump had "fired up the crazies."  I maintain that the person who is most excited about this entry continues to be Jeb Bush, who is now in a Trump v. Bush battle, one he is sure to win, while Trump sucks the oxygen out of the air for the likes of Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz.

-In extremely exciting Broadway news this week, Tony Winner Jane Krakowski (who just scored an Emmy nomination for her hilarious work on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), will return to the boards for the first time in a decade next Spring, playing Ilona in She Loves Me.  Krakowski is an amazing singer and I am planning my first trip to NYC in three years in the Spring (cash-willing), so this will be toward the top of my "To See" list.  It's worth noting that Krakowski's role won Sally Mayes a Tony nomination in the 1994 revival of the show, so she might have a Tony chaser to go with her recent Emmy citation.

-In the wake of the recent Gawker outing of a Conde Nast exec and the subsequent uproar that followed, the Daily Beast did a piece about Gawker's obsession with James Franco's sexuality.  They focus in particular on Richard Lawson's inflammatory blind-item a few years back basically accusing Franco of being a rapist (Richard Lawson, who is arguably one of the smuggest people on Twitter, tries to back pedal this but his comments about Connor Franta in recent years make me think he has learned absolutely nothing about journalism and outing and just in general he seems to be a jackass).  The article is interesting because of the way that Franco has had to put his sexuality in the forefront of most interviews as a result since, and of course begs the question of the Frank Rule, since few actors have been as openly supportive of the LGBT cause as Franco, so if he does have relationships with men, then outing him is basically calling the Frank Rule crap, which I am not supportive of in the least.

-Oscar-winning writer Barry Morrow will make his directorial debut this upcoming year with a fantasy romance with the man who highlights all of my romantic fantasies (see what I did there?), Darren Criss!  That's right ladies and gents-after becoming the breakout star of Glee, a Broadway headliner (twice), and delaying his first full album for years (and counting...), Darren Criss is finally going to get the lead in a movie, and I couldn't be happier.  This comes on the wings of perhaps the biggest headline I missed out of this past week's Emmys: Darren Criss got nominated!!!!  He's competing against Amy Schumer's boy band parody and a pair of songs from the duo who brought you "Let it Go" (this is part of what Kathy Griffin would have called the Schmemmys), but it's still a real, true nomination.  Congrats my love!

On Politics...

-This is probably the most frightening thing I've ever read, but it's still something we should all investigate.  Yes, I'm talking about the Esquire article from this past week about the loss of glaciers in the Arctic, the damning situation of climate change, but in particular the way that the Right and the conservative nutjobs (sorry, look at the title of this blog and know what's coming) who have decided that their peace of mind and comfort in "everything will be okay" baloney is more important than saving the damn planet are targeting climate scientists and turning them into pariahs.  This is the equivalent to what happened to Galileo all of those centuries ago, and proof that people would rather destroy the truth than work hard to change it.  It's also fascinating how the climate scientists are starting to explore bug-out scenarios, buying property in Canada and Greenland.  If you skip every other article in this link roundup (and why would you do that when I worked so hard?), at least read this one.

-One of the more intriguing stories I read this week was regarding Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) who has decided that he will not be donating to the NRCC because they support gay candidates.  Now his logic is rife with eyebrow raises (he's donated to openly gay candidates in the past), but it does bring up an issue for the GOP that continues to rage-what do you do when you're base still doesn't support gay marriage and gay rights, but the overwhelming populace does?  It's been illustrated before that 2016 could be a weird reverse of 2004, when Republicans used gay marriage as a wedge issue to tear down John Kerry.  It's hard to imagine that, particularly with firebrands like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump in the mix, that the eventual Republican nominee won't have to take a stand against gay marriage, ENDA, and gay adoption.

-Have you been following the presidential selfie girls?  I'm actually wishing that selfies had been a thing when I was their age as I would have been driving down to Iowa in 2004 to get pictures with Joe Lieberman, Wesley Clark, and Carol Moseley-Braun (remember the crew of contenders that ran in 2004?).  Emily and Addy are doing a summer project to get a presidential selfie with every presidential candidate (they live in New Hampshire), and so far they have landed fifteen, including most-recently Donald Trump.  One of the few candidates that seems to be missing is arguably the one that they plan on supporting, so Hillary it's time to step up to the plate here...

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-Okay, normally this is a shameless plug for you to follow me on Twitter or Tumblr (also, why aren't you following me on Twitter or Tumblr, I'm a delight!).  But I actually wanted to link to an old article that I updated.  On occasion when I'm narcissistically reading some of my old articles, I make corrections (usually to the typing-I move 100 wpm people, sometimes tihngs egt mised), but this article I actually realized that I missed two people in a trivia article, so I updated it, so if you want all-new original content that you weren't expecting, here it is!!!

YouTube Video of the Week...

-No huge videos this week, but we got our first Mametown in two months, and that's always a joy.  Particularly since the idea of Mamrie Hart doing the TMI Question is bliss:

Just One More...

-It's rare lately that I have any sort of news that genuinely excites me, but am I the only person who has been obsessed with all of the photos coming out of Pluto?  Honestly, this is one of my favorite stories of the year and a real accomplishment for the US (we are now the first country in the world to send probes to every planet in the solar system...and yes, Neil Degrasse Tyson, I think Pluto is a planet).  Click over to this NASA site to see all of the latest and here for ten great facts about the mission you can bring up at your next intellectual roundtable, including that there are still more space photos to come (my hope is that Eris is next).