HRC Garden Party and the hottest man in Gay Film

Hello darlings.

Okay, back the gay scene in Los Angeles. This Saturday I attended the HRC Women's Garden Party. Before I lose all the boys, I'll enclose some hot photos of a man later in the post, k? Although, isn't it more rare than Haley's to see JD in a large group of lesbians as opposed to a large group of gay men and aren't you curious to see how it went?

If you aren't familiar with HRC, shame on you. HRC is the Human Rights Campaign. They are a national non-profit advocacy group that works on LGBT rights on the political and legal playground.

Click here to go to HRC's Web Site

As a superficial aside, I have to mention the only time I have met gay icons Barbra Streisand and Liza Minelli... in the same night...was at an HRC event about four years ago. If Stephen Sondheim and Liz Taylor had also been there, the planets would have alligned for me and I would have exploded into a million tiny pieces, but alas, since you enjoy reading my blog, it's fortunate that didn't happen, eh?

Anyway, the Garden Party was an opportunity to bring fabulous lesbians from our local community together to get them interested in getting involved with HRC to some capacity. Kudos, by the way, since HRC is tradionally a billionaire's boys club. It's about time the lesbians got chique and started infiltrating the LGBT rights activism groups to unleash their power dykedom.

So first of all, here were my two dates for the night:


Make note: Three - how shall I put this? - wild and crazy lesbians should really not go anywhere without adult supervision.
We shoulda had at least one guardian around to keep us from either starting a conga line, flashing our breasts, encouraging women to do tequila shots, and kissing strangers. Especially since this was a "classy" event.

Okay, I didn't pick up these women at a local strip joint. Mariah is the producer of the infamous Dinah Shore Weekend, and Lisa Dickey is now #3 on the New York Times best seller list for non fiction with the book she helped Cathie Black to write, BASIC BLACK. Visit her web site at: http://www.lisadickey.com/

But I hang out with them because, you know, they're cute and they always fondle me when they've had too much to drink.

On the ride up the windy roads of the Hollywood Hills, I have to say, if silence was oxygen, we woulda died of asphyxiation . We all talked and talked like junior high school girls.

Anyway, when we got there we donned-we-now-our-gay but appropriate party behavior.


Mariah and Lisa with the two hostesses of the evening, Nancy Haag and Wendy Alexander.

They opened up their lovely Hollywood home to host this event, which had a hardy attendance.



I posed with the other two that were classy and sophisticated enough to have the "IT HAIR"...gray. Silver foxes, baby!

"Dontcha wish your hairdo was gray like mine? Dontcha wish your hairdo was gray like mine? Dontcha?"


Todd! The first and one of like 3 gay men at the event. I clung to him for a while at the beginning, scared of being released into the wild with my own kind after having been raised by gay men in domesticity.*



Leslie Barclay. Every body's friend at every gay event!!! "I'd like a whiskey. And don't be stingy, baby".**

My friend Carrie and Tracy, from Gay Wired (which is owned by here! the company that also produced my film SHELTER, which recently won 5 audience awards at Tampa Int'l. I KNEW IT! I KNEW I COULD WORK IT IN HERE SOMEWHERE!!!)


The ladies listenened to Hilary Rosen's talk.


Sisters? The woman on the right is wearing my exact same jacket (camel hair from Brooks Brothers). I told her how my friends always tease me about looking like a college professor, but us east girls girls....

Here I am wearing the same jacket last week at The Point Foundation.


Jane Lynch and a man I did not meet so I don't know his name.

When you are so passionate about LGBT rights and political talk, it may actually look like you're just flirting.
That's Hilary Rosen on the right, who now runs OUR CHART. She gave a wonderful speech at the event regarding the work of HRC and why now more than ever it is important to get involved with political issues to further the rights and freedoms of LGBT folks.

The cop and the lawyer. I loved these girls! After I snapped the photo, one said to the other, "I hope your girlfriend doesn't see this." SO L WORD!


Katherine and Angela.

Katherine earned uber brownie points with me by getting my somewhat obscure and really-really GAY joke I made in the valet line. A friend asked me, "So, JD, what is your job-job? I mean, other than blogging and going to a lot of parties."
"Well," I said, "In addition to developing oscar-worthy, gay positive feature films, I also ....." Okay, not telling everyone! But I continued to say, "But don't tell anyone. I like to have the allure that I am being kept by an filthy rich, 80 year old washed up actress high in the Hollywood Hills. In fact, I have to hurry home now to write another batch of fan letters that she thinks she's still getting." To which Katherine leaned over and uttered, "Do you live on Sunset Boulevard?" I nodded and said, "Yes, and we just had a funeral for a monkey in the backyard yesterday."

Okay, enough iconic Hollywood humour, back to the party at hand.


Jean and Karen.



Lisa did get Mariah up on the podium overlooking the pool, but they did not start singing "I got the world on a string"


HRC has chapters all over the United States and there is a list of these parties, which occur in every major city on their web site:
Click here to go to HRC's Web Site


*If you haven't been following along, I'm a gay man. Don't know why, really, but it has to do with my love of old Hollywood, camp tv shows, the works of Truman Capote and Christopher Isherwood and my ridiculous connection to anything musical theatre. Well, not anything. I hate Lloyd Weber and Love Sondheim.

**And if you were a gay man you'd get that as the reference to the first words ever spoken on screen by the diva Greta Garbo in her first talkie, ANNA CHRISTIE.

Okay, okay, you hungry-like-the-wolf gay men. If you made it this far, here's some eye candy.

Here's one of my favorite actors (okay, you people, you know if you've worked with me you are all my favorites, k?) from the film I produced a few years back, EATING OUT 2, Marco Dapper.

We had cocktails together oceanside at sunset two weeks ago during the AFM Film Market and Conference.

He was there with an exciting new film project, as was I, and we had a wonderful time comparing notes and cheering each other on in our new cinematic endevours.


Here he is when he is not being photographed with a gray haired old lady by a consumer digital camera:

By the way, Adam Bouska, the photographer....don't even get me started. Aside from La Liebowitz, my favorite living celebrity photographer.

Check out his stuff at: http://www.adambouska.com/

And if you'd like to see Marco Dapper completely naked, get EATING OUT 2. The film which has been called, "Voltaire meets Porky's" and "American Pie if Preston Sturges wrote it."*

CHECK OUT EATING OUT 2

*Okay, okay I said that. But it's in print and I really mean it!

Tune in tomorrow for the Bill O Reilly celebrity smack down competition.