Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Just as a quick post-script to my previous descriptions of the joys of Christmas with my family in Milwaukee (and I actually mean that without sarcasm, for once, in spite of the accident to my foot -- apparently, my brother's decision to drive out to Long Island to spend the holidays with his boyfriend removed one of the major irritants as far as my sister and parents are concerned, even if they all more or less agree that he's much more human and beginning to be slightly less of an emotional land-mine since he's 'come out').

While I was visiting, my sister was able to get the first season of the Canadian TV series "Slings and Arrows", and it was every bit as quirky and addictive and even thought-provoking as I could have wished. Bless my sister's heart, she even put off picking up the DVD's from her local library branch as long as she could, so that she'd be able to keep them long enough to overlap with the beginning of my visit. Paul Gross definitely proved to me that he has more than just "Constable Benton Fraser" of "Due South" to be proud of.

Then, as if that wasn't whimsy and joy enough, my sister's request for the movie "Bedrooms and Hallways" came into her local branch while I was there. If you haven't seen it (I highly recommend it), this movie stars a slightly younger (than in HBO's Rome or the recently cancelled "Journeyman") Kevin McKidd as a gorgeous and occasionally sweetly clueless gay man who falls in love with one of the straight men in his Men's Group (a group led by Simon Callow), while his roommate is having a wild fling with buttoned-up estate agent Hugo Weaving.

See this movie by all means, if you possibly can -- it's worth a rental fee just for the Jane-Austen-inspired sex dream that McKidd's character has at one point, and all the rest is pure, sexy, hilarious gravy.