There is a folder, tucked within a folder, buried deep in my computer files. I shouldn't be looking at its contents, yet I can't bring myself to delete it altogether. It is labeled MARCUS, and inside the folder is my disease. During my years of crystal meth addiction...
So don’t mind if I fall apart There’s more room in a broken heart. -- Carly Simon, “Coming Around Again” When Will Armstrong emerges from heart surgery in just a few days, he will have weeks of hospitalization ahead. He will also have expensive new hardware in...
The young woman sitting across from me on the bus is in her mid-20s. She turns to her companion and her voice grows serious. “I know someone who died,” she says in the hushed tone reserved for tales of mortality. Her friend looks up from his phone. “He was a good...
Daniel Cardone’s essential but relentlessly grim documentary about longtime AIDS survivors, Desert Migration, is fascinated with the bodies of the gay men it profiles. The film begins with lingering shots of each of the subjects as they begin their day. It follows...
Stigma is insidiously quiet. It is conjured in the mind, born of discomfort and fear, and then it is projected at “the other” among us. It judges them and isolates them. And it happens without a sound. Stigma lets us take comfort in seeing things in others about...
In the gorgeous and sometimes maddening web series Unsure/Positive, we follow the life of a Boston gay man, Kieran, literally from the moment he gets his HIV positive test result. Kieran’s journey in the six-episode first season (available for only $3.99 on Vimeo)...
Dr. Oz has a very strange verbal compulsion. He can't stop making lame metaphors. When taking an early morning jog with Charlie Sheen, in the first of their two-part interview for The Dr. Oz Show, the doctor sees metaphors everywhere. "You have to look down so you...
(I can't resist posting this each Holiday Season. The video below is my very favorite, of the more than 70 I have produced over the years. Enjoy!) My mother's home here in Shreveport, Louisiana, was fraught with excitement last week. Christmas decorations littered the...
The subtle moment came during the second segment of Matt Lauer’s explosive interview with actor Charlie Sheen. It impressed me so deeply I actually backed up my recording and watched it twice more. Sheen had already endured the first segment of his time with Lauer,...
My discomfort began as I sat in front of my web cam, waiting to join Danny Pintauro in a segment on Huffington Post Live. Danny had recently announced on an Oprah special that he was living with HIV, which was big news for fans of “Who’s the Boss?” and those who loved...
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