Paul Harvey has died. His radio program was the background during many a car ride during my childhood. His voice was iconic and his unique style really made him stand out.

Poignant audio:

According to People Magazine, she got back with Chris “the Abuser” Brown.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

This isn’t the kind of photo you can put in your “Me and Chris” scrapbook, RiRi. Cut the cord…

A new nationwide study from Harvard finds that 8 of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election (Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions). Six out of the lowest 10 favored Barack Obama. Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays, but they made up for it on other days of the week.

More about the hypocrisy caused by repression, from ABC News:

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behaviour.”

“One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.

Super-underrated movie on HBO right now: “Soapdish.”

First of all, who doesn’t love Kevin Kline in every role he’s ever played? Second, I like Sally Field–I really, really like Sally Field. You’ve also got Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Downey Jr., Elizabeth Shue, Kathy Najimy, Teri Hatcher, Cathy Moriarty and Gary Marshall filling out the ensemble.

But the real reasons I love this movie are the zippy dialogue and the fact that every single character in the movie is a massive narcissist pretending to be genuine. Some of the best lines include foul language, so I won’t quote them here, but this movie is extremely quotable. I would put it up there with “Clue” and “Ghostbusters” in that regard.

Two of the best scenes below:

I saw a silverware pattern a few years back and I just found a similar set. This entry is more about seeing how well the iPhone’s wordpress app works but I was so happy to find a knife like this again, so take a gander.

…but unfortunately Zuul possessed my camera after we shook hands and took our photo together. We look like the messed-up Ripley clones from “Alien:Resurrection.” So I’ll also show you some other shots to prove that we ate dinner only a table away at the PFLAG Straight for Equality Gala. Ms. Weaver did a phenomenal job in “Prayers for Bobby” and gave a very good speech Thursday night after the other honorees made it difficult for anyone to follow.

We were also only a table away from Maya Angelou (diagonally). I met Patti Austin before the gala (download “It’s the Falling In Love” from Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” album to hear her lovely disco duet with a 20-year-old King of Pop) and she sang a beautiful rendition of “Lean on Me” to the crowd. I don’t have any photos of Mayor Bloomberg, but I was seated at his table for a few minutes while I chit-chatted with Judy Reyes. It was an exciting evening and I will definitely help again next year! Oh, and there’s a photo I took of the view from the hotel which I really like.

Check out my pics from Thursday, February 5:

Yesterday morning, Dave and I picked up standby tickets for Saturday Night Live. We chose the live broadcast instead of the dress rehearsal because we did the dress rehearsal back in September when I actually won tickets through the NBC lottery.

Well, last night, we had an AMAZING dinner at the Rock Center Cafe (our table was against the window looking out into the skating rink, so people were sort of “slamming into us” on their skates and falling over a lot–very entertaining). After dinner, we walked over to the SNL ticket line for standby folks. They let in all the actual ticketholders and we were left in line to wait, just in case Lorne Michaels’ audience was a bit too trim for the show.

I had ticket number 51 and Dave had ticket number 52. It became obvious that not everyone was going to get into the show as the frequency with which the line approached the elevator dropped off dramatically. Sure enough, when the NBC page got the final word, we were standing in front of the elevator. She sent up two more of us: #50 and #51.

That’s right. I was the last standby person they let into the show. I turned to Dave and said “wait at the 49th street exit at 1am for me.” No, I’m not a jerk for leaving him. We discussed what would happen if we got split up beforehand, but never did we think it would actually freakin’ happen!

So last July I was the last person picked to get tickets to an Obama rally in Fairfax (sorry, coworkers!). And last night I was the last person in the SNL standby line to get into the actual show (sorry, Dave).

The good news? The audience was packed with celebrities: Bob Costas, James Lipton, Drew Barrymore, Ashley Olsen, Kirsten Dunst, and Sara Bareilles to name a few of the folks I saw. And most of them I saw on the way into or out of the studio!

The better news? Dave took his extra hour and a half to take the Subway back to the hotel, pick up my camera, and ride all the way back to Rockefeller Center so that I could take photos of the cast and guests leaving the studio. He’s good people, isn’t he? I should keep him around!

When the cast came out at 1:15, most of them walked over and talked with us. See the photos below:

At 5:45am this morning, our wake-up call came. Dave picked up, hung up and hopped out of bed. We were waking up early so we could get to 30 Rock to wait for standby SNL tickets (we’ll know tonight at 10:45pm if we actually get into the show, but we have our passes). Dave went to the window, then muttered something about the street below being closed off, before walking to the bathroom to shower. I let off some lazy affirmation to acknowledge that I heard him, like “weird,” and rolled over.

A few minutes later, as the shower roared in the background, I stood up, walked over to the window, and looked down 17 floors to the street to investigate. There were about 6 or 7 parked police cars with lights whirling, arranged in a way that rerouted southbound traffic away from 85 West Street, where our Marriott silently stands. I looked beyond the cars to see what the police were preventing all the drivers from seeing.

A body.

In the middle of the street, police hovered over a human being. They rolled him/her over, with a tarp spread out nearby. No ambulances. I noticed a tiny red light come on near the person laying on the ground. It wasn’t until the flash of a camera followed that I knew it was a coroner taking a picture. And the light from the flash lit the street around them all. Blood. It was horrifying.

New York City is incredible like that. It is brutal and real, but it never ceases to keep everyone’s sense of wonder turned on. But it is also a pile of humanity, and the probability that at some point I would stumble onto something this awful only increases as I visit more often.

I will still come back, and keep coming back. But, you know, I don’t plan on looking down again. Only up.

UPDATE: A hit-and-run. The woman killed was walking home with her boyfriend. She just graduated from NYU Law and was looking forward to starting her first job next week. They caught the driver and charged him. Her boyfriend has a broken leg. I crossed that same treacherous street yesterday and was much luckier. I feel for her family and her boyfriend. So very sad.

I’m flying into LaGuardia tomorrow and accompanying Dave to PFLAG’s Straight For Equality Gala (we just confirmed tonight that we’re on the list for the VIP reception!). Check out a roster of the other VIPs here. I’m not quite as famous as everyone else, but we’re working on it.

After the festivities, a much-needed, much-deserved long weekend in the city, wining and dining and enjoying winter in the Big Apple. I will have plenty of photos and stories to share when I get back on Sunday. In the meantime, have a great weekend everyone!