So, last Saturday night I was chatting with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom... and thus starts my utterly name-dropping post about last night's annual awards gala for the Human Rights Campaign in San Francisco, where actor George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes) recieved HRC's Equality Award, Elizabeth Edwards delivered the keynote address, HRC's Joe Solmonese delivered a stirring defense of LGBT rights, and Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess, Battlestar Galactica) was the world's most glamorous charity auctioneer.
I was covering it for AfterEllen.com and AfterElton.com, so politics wasn't part of my assignment -- I was there to interview Lucy Lawless and George Takei. There was no wi-fi at the Civic Auditorium so I couldn't liveblog it, but I had my laptop and ummm, deadblogged? it, so I promise to do a political post here on Dogged about Edwards, Solmonese, Newsom, Mark Leno, and all the other hot political and social stuff. [UPDATE: it's here.]
But in the meantime, back to the fluff. From AfterEllen.com:
I’m sure most of the reporters covering the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala and awards dinner in San Francisco Saturday night were there for the politics, and honestly, I’m normally the very soul of queer political activism.
But that night? Let’s face it: I was there for Lucy Lawless.
Lucy was all glammed up in high heels, evening gown and tousled curls. She sailed into the pre-dinner VIP reception like an old-fashioned Hollywood star, and signed autographs and posed for pictures with adoring Xena fans both male and female.
Since she looks just as good in girly clothes as in jeans and a cowgirl hat — not to mention her Xena fighting leathers — it’s not hard to see why she made it onto the top 100 on the AfterEllen.com hot list. What did Lucy think about that? “Well that’s pretty great,” she beamed. “I love that. Thanks very much for the vote of confidence, girls, and just thanks so much for the support, and I want to be here to support you.”
Here's a photo KT took of Lucy gazing adoringly at me being interviewed by me:
From AfterElton.com:
At the reception before the awards dinner, I told Takei I’d been a huge fan of the original Star Trek series, but had always felt excluded from the show’s Utopian vision, where queers like me – and him – were invisible.
“Well, Star Trek had as its core value what we call IDIC, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” he said. “And (Trek producer and creator) Gene Roddenberry always told us the diversity of the Starship Enterprise was where its strength was. There’s a diversity that we can see: the color of one’s skin, or the shape of one’s eyes. There’s the accent of a person, diversity we can hear. But there’s another diversity that we can’t see oftentimes, but that too is a part of the strength of America.”
Here's me being quite a bit taller than George Takei, and also showing you my new haircut at last:
Be sure to click madly on the AfterEllen and AfterElton links so they'll continue to let me stalk interview all my heroes. Thanks.
And thanks to KT for the photos! You can see more of them at the above links, as well as here.
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