Jeremy Renner

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I mostly knew Jeremy Renner from his part in “The Town,” with Ben Affleck. Jeremy played a thug / bank robber with great abandon, and he has big staring eyes and a strange dominating presence, and he’s very real.

 

 

This is a big deal in the movies. You need to look real.

 

 

I heard last spring that he was playing Hawkeye in the forthcoming Avengers movie, and I smirked a little. Minor role in a major movie: who cares?

 

 

Well, he was wonderful. He was creepy and elegant and very convincing. He also bulked up amazingly, and did not look ridiculous when appearing with Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk at all; in fact, he looked like their peer.

 

 

Now he’s playing a superhuman secret agent in “The Bourne Legacy.” He still has that huge bulked-up body, and those chilly eyes. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m already in love with him. My friend Apollonia (who has vowed herself to Robert Pattinson) has admitted to me that she finds Jeremy attractive.

 

 

And now I discover that Jeremy, before his very successful career as an actor, was a makeup artist.

 

 

Behold this sequence from a recent episode of “Ellen”:

 

 

 

 

He is adorable.

 

 

I don’t care if he’s gay or straight. (He looks straight to me, but I’ve been wrong about these things before.)

 

 

He is a fine actor, and is also very cute, and can do makeup, and packs on muscle very nicely when necessary.

 

 

As someone online said: “It’s nice to have something to fall back on, in case Plan A fails.”

 

 

Jeremy has lots of things to fall back on.

 

 

Whatta guy!

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Pride 2012

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Pride is with us again. (Notice we don’t say “Gay Pride Month” anymore. I’m good with that: pride is pride. If straight people want to march with us because they’re proud of being straight, that’s okay. It’s all about not being ashamed of how you were born.)


I love what’s happening in the celebritysphere. Some months ago, a hate group calling itself “One Million Moms” launched an attack on JCPenney, because they were using Ellen DeGeneres as a spokeswoman. Horrible pervert! they said.  And JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson, Krishna bless him, said:


"We stand squarely behind Ellen as our spokesperson and that's a great thing. Because she shares the same values that we do in our company. Our company was founded 110 years ago on The Golden Rule, which is about treating people fair and square, just like you would like to be treated yourself. And we think Ellen represents the values of our company and the values that we share." 


No kiddin’!


Next time you’re down at your local Social Security Office, ask them for a brochure, or a bookmark. You know who’ll be on it? Patty Duke and George Takei, bless them both. Patty is straight; George is (very publicly) gay, and married to his partner Brad. He’s all over Facebook and Tumblr, and he’s very funny, and no-nonsense.


And have you watched the Tonys lately? And seen Neil Patrick Harris? He rules Broadway, like Patti Lupone used to do.  And Neil is (surprise!) gay. And he is still capable of playing an oily womanizer on “How I Met Your Mother” on CBS every week, and a sweet shy straight supervillain in Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.”


We’re out there, people.


It’s June. It’s time for Pride.


We’re among you. We’re your kids and uncles and aunts and even (sometimes) parents. We’re your teachers and bosses and employees. We’re your congressmen and your constituents. There are a lot of us – probably more than you’d think. And, as the social barriers drop, more and more of us are going to stop hiding. Many of us already have.


But it’s taken us a while to get here.


Which is why, every June, we have a little parade or two, to reward ourselves.


And then maybe some disco music.

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