• LGBTSR,  On the Map

    On the Map: Cruising the Caribbean on the Anthem of the Seas (Includes Slideshow and Video)

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    By Mark McNease

    Reprinted from LGBTSR.com

    On the Map is a feature at LGBTSr offering travel reviews and experiences.

    If you know us, you know we love to cruise, and we’ve been doing it for the 17 years we’ve been together. Now that we’re both retired from the 9-5 world (I prefer the word emancipated), we’re cruising even more. We went to Canada last October, with stops in Boston, Portland, Bar Harbor, Halifax and St. John. We’re heading on another cruise in May, but in the meantime … we just did an 11-nighter to the Caribbean, on Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas.

    Cruising is one of the most popular ways to travel and relax at the same time. Cruises offer a variety of benefits that make them appealing to people who like just chilling out at sea, and people who love visiting ports and taking excursions. You can get it all on a cruise, and it’s one of the most affordable getaways available. If you didn’t want to spend any extra money for food, you wouldn’t have to. It’s included! We like going to some of the specialty restaurants, and I enjoy eating locally for lunch, but there’s food available on the ship 24/7.

    Five ports in five days!

    I love sea days, when we have the entire day and night just to relax, do activities on the ship, encounter people we’ve made friends with on the cruise, and … nap! I’m a big napper. If I can’t get an hour’s sleep in the cabin, I’m happy to recline in a chaise on deck or by the pool, and settle in for a good read and a snooze.

  • Podcasts,  The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #251: Rick’s Big Birthday, Caribbean Cruise Memories, and an Interview with Hollywood Hustle Author Jon Lindstrom

    Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose for a recap of Mark’s Caribbean cruise, party hat hurrahs for Rick’s big birthday, and Rick’s interview with Hollywood Hustle author Jon Lindstrom.

    About Hollywood Hustle

    Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside—traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win’s troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his “movie money” for her safe return. But what they don’t know is…his movie money is long gone.

  • The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #250: Blast Off in 2024, Listeners Chime In on the New Year, and An Interview with Author Lucas Hilderbrand

    Listen in as co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose leap into the New Year, hear from listeners about their hopes for 2024, and enjoy an interview with author and professor Lucas Hilderbrand.

    Fasten your headphones for a conversation with Professor Lucas Hilderbrand, whose latest book, The Bars Are Ours, offers a meticulously researched, scholarly and always engaging look at the history of gay bars and their place in queer culture over the decades. We talk about his life, his career, and his dedication to a subject that is as significant as ever.

    About Lucas Hilderbrand 

    Lucas Hilderbrand is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright, also published by Duke University Press, and Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic.

    Hilderbrand lives in Los Angeles and teaches film and media, visual, and queer studies at the University of California, Irvine. He has written on the pleasures and politics of video bootlegging, the mediations of queer memory, and the ambiguities of experimental documentary.

  • New

    It’s Official: ‘Killer Instinct: A Marshall James Thriller’ Set for Release in Spring, 2024

  • The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #248: Listeners Christmas Gift Ideas, Billy Bob Beer Belly Joins the Show, and an Interview with Robert Kesten of the Stonewall National Museum

    Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we hear gift ideas from Twist listeners, welcome new semi-regular contributor Billy Bob Beer Belly, and listen to an interview with Robert Kesten, Executive Director for the Stonewall Museum, Archives and Library.

    Click to listen to the full interview with Robert Kesten, Stonewall National Museum

    Listen in as I chat with Robert Kesten, Executive Director of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives, and Library in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. We talk about the need to preserve our history, the mission of the Stonewall Museum, and how we can sustain an awareness of our past and present in a way that informs our future.

    About Robert Kesten

    Robert Kesten (he/him/his) has worked globally promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and furthering democracy. This work has taken many forms including writing and producing an award winning documentary on learning about the Holocaust at the Concentration Camps in Poland, Working on the Ghanaian Constitution, coordinating and producing events leading to Ukrainian independence, producing events for the first AIDS day treatment center in the nation, pushing for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Ukraine (the first Soviet Republic to do so).

    Kesten comes to Stonewall National Museum and Archives with national and international experience, taking ideas and bringing them to life. This position brings full circle his active engagement in the LGBTQ+ community and his commitment to using history as a tool to make sense and fashion a response to today and tomorrow.

  • New

    Mark McNease On Topic (Substack)

    Subscribe to Mark McNease On Topic HERE

    Tis the season for stockings full of crap

    Who doesn’t want to end the year with a Trump-ordered impeachment of President Biden, the man who kicked his ass once and will kick it again?

    Who doesn’t want to see Ukraine abandoned in the manger while Jesus, Mary, and the Republican House head off for selfies and sleigh bells?

    Who doesn’t look forward to a continuation of all-Trump-all-the-time media coverage of the only man whose obituary I long every day to read?

    Who takes comfort in knowing even monsters die?

    Me! Me! Me!

    Can we stop calling them ‘Supreme’?

    Unsurprising, to say the least. The Republican justices (for that’s what they are, not “conservative”) are political hacks through and through. They lie and deceive and live lavish, kingly lives bought and paid for. We can’t do anything about their unaccountable power at this point, but we can stop pretending they deserve the least bit of respect, no matter how they decide. America is so broken, in so many ways. It all appears to have been a very long-lasting fiction that is now threadbare and exposed as the corrupt-from-to-to-bottom smoke and mirrors it always was.

    From Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:

    “With each new peek behind the curtain, this fantasy becomes more difficult to buy into, even for those desperate to believe. It turns out that the justices—at least five of them on the right—are functionally indistinguishable from cynical partisan lawmakers making deals in the Senate cloakroom. It turns out that abortion rights vanished in America because five conservatives barely tried to hide the fact that they could do that, simply because they could do that. And it turns out that they’re increasingly bad at covering their tracks.”

  • The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #247: Eggnog and Impeachment, Listeners’ Favorite Things about Christmas, and an Interview with Equality Florida’s Carlos Guillermo Smith

    Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we add Congress to the naughty list, hear listeners’ favorite things about Christmas, and enjoy an interview excerpt with Carlos Guillermo Smith, Senior Policy Advisor with Equality Florida.

    Click to hear the full interview with Carlos Guillermo Smith.

    I had the pleasure of speaking with Carlos Guillermo Smith, Senior Policy Advisor for Equality Florida. Carlos was also a member of the Florida legislature for six years (D), and has extensive experience as an advocate for LGBTQ people in a state where anti-LGBTQ legislation has taken hold. I spoke with Carlos about life on the ground for LGBTQ people, how the laws are shaping reality for us and our allies, and what is being done to resist the forces working against us. Fasten your headphones for an engrossing conversation.

    Carlos Guillermo Smith

    About Carlos Guillermo Smith

    A graduate of the University of Central Florida, Carlos Guillermo Smith first joined Equality Florida in 2011 as a public policy fellow and returned in early 2015 as government affairs manager. Carlos previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2011-2012 as the chief of staff to former Democratic Representative Scott Randolph as well as one of Florida’s first openly gay state representatives Joe Saunders from 2012-2014. A twice-elected former chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party himself and longtime LGBT progressive activist, Carlos made history in November 2016 when he was elected to the Florida House as our state’s first openly LGBT Latino lawmaker. [Equality Florida]