Morning Meme: Gay Heroes of September 11, Sir Ian Gives Back, and Is Lady Gaga the Death of Sex?

Plus meet Brother Gaga, Jai Rodriguez sports a new look, and we go "Over the Rainbow" on a cat organ.

The nation and indeed the world took some time to remember Sept 11, 2001 over the weekend. Beyond a couple incidents, it went smoother than I had anticipated. I did find a memorial page to the GLBT victims of September 11. It was so many more than just Mark Bingham.

The story of NYC professional photographer Bill Biggart is stunning. He walked toward the towers that morning, taking pictures with three cameras, two film and one digital. Eventually he got so close documenting the tragedy that he was crushed by debris. His camera bag was recovered, and the film was ruined, but his flash card was preserved. His last photo is stunning, and indeed the 150 photos on the digital camera tell the story of his day.

Because Big Brother hadn't been that offensive this season, we get Lane whipping out "faggot" on the live feeds for no reason and lying about it, and Enzo making rape jokes. I weep for America. 

A high ranking Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles has applied for asylum with the United States to prevent his return to Saudi Arabia, and likely arrest for being gay. It’s the first such asylum request in 15 years.

Nikki Weiss and Jill Goldstein of Showtime’s The Real L Word say they’re stunned at the level of criticism leveled at the show by the lesbian community. I’ve never seen it, but just based on the promo photos the PR people sent out, it seemed pretty one-dimensional, but maybe I’m wrong.

Remember when @BPGlobalPR took over Twitter and made a mockery of the way BP handled the oil spill? Well, the man behind the account, Josh Simpson has finally given an interview.  There’s more here than expected. Josh is a comedian and was a writer for Funny Or Die and The Late Show with Conan O’Brien. There were about 15 people involved in the writing of the account. And how they made sure BP wouldn’t shut them down is fascinating.

These Sir Sean Connery movie poster mashups are pretty clever. Also, Sean Connery has been extremely handsome for many, many decades.

I find it incredibly endearing that when a public school English teacher approached  Sir Ian McKellen at a Waiting for Godot performance to ask him to visit her school, he not only didn’t call security, he came and spoke to the school and gave an acting workshop. He brought along Coronation Street’s Anthony Cotton just for good measure.

The hunky Gavin Creel is back in America, and it already feels like there are more possibilities in the world. He’s going to headline Broadway Comes to Minnesota September 24^th to raise money for pro-equality candidate Mark Dayton.

As Kapil Sharma prepares for Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyon to open the South Asian Queer Film Festival, he laments that he couldn’t find an established Bollywood star to play Ashley. “When I was writing the script, I didn't have myself in mind for the role of Ashley. I wanted a more established and senior actor. But when I approached some of them, they rejected it straight away, which is quite sad because if you offer these actors the role of a smuggler or a terrorist, they'll do it. But offer them the role of a gay man and they have apprehensions.” I’m a little shocked he watched Queer as Folk for inspiration and used Brian Kinney as a role model.

The Italian press is accusing Quentin Tarantino of favoritism for his ex-girlfriend Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere winning the Golden Lion. If there’s one thing the Italian press knows, it’s favoritism.

Meanwhile, the Argentine film In the Future picked up the Queer Lion award, which I assume is a figure of Scar from The Lion King.

I’m not sure what to make of Jon Hamm joking about the opening of Ben Affleck’s The Town, “My sex scenes with Ben, which were cut, I think, wisely … were raunchy.” The room roared with laughter – but why?

Having learned nothing from the offensive polls about gays and lesbians from CNN or the BBC, Univision wants to know Is football compatible with homosexuality? 

As always, Brett Berk takes a humorous look at a serious subject, this time it’s the court ruling on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Bonus point for the picture at the top combined with a Village People reference. But you need one more to get the hat trick.

I’m a little perplexed by why it’s relevant at the 15-year point in the newspaper run, but Zits is being developed as a 30 minute comedy series by Jerry Bruckheimer. The strip does have a minor out gay character, Billy, who is in high school.