The Dirty Martini Lounge
The Dirty Martini Lounge
Welcome to
With Rob and Craig as Your Hosts
It is always Happy Hour at the Dirty Martini Lounge
Contact your hosts at LevisRob@yahoo.com
Though highly recommended, the consumption of alcohol is not required to peruse this site.
Cocktail Hour
at the DML
The Sea Princesses Return to San Francisco
Rob and Craig arrived on July 3rd, 2009, at San Francisco's Pier 35 from a ten day cruise to Alaska. Our duo enjoyed a relaxing and exciting adventure to the 49th state.
For a full description of their trek, Click Here.
The Dirty Martini Lounge wishes to acknowledge the following individuals who made the trip just a little more enjoyable: Melanie and Danielle for minding the apartment and the ride to the pier, Paola for assisting with travel arrangements, Nerissa for great cruise preparation suggestions, Clarence for pick up service, Sally for her support and to all the friends who were just as excited as Rob and Craig on taking this trip.
As a candidate Obama promised us a lot; as president he’s delivered very little -- and many gay people are getting impatient. Does the outcry unmask this president’s indifference, or reveal our own impotence as a movement?
The DML Recommends . . .
A Little Asian In Our History
The DML takes us back to our Asian connections.
In the Spring of 2002, Craig visited Japan. He is shown here wearing a traditional kimono - getting ready for a night out in Tokyo. Karaoke and geishas were the evening's highlights - topped off with some feet binding just to keep things real.
Rob is shown performing Subli - a Phillipine folk dance commemorating harvest time. This mid-70's photo was taken at a time when rice referred only to something you ate and not someone you dated.
An Interesting VW Print Ad
The death of Ted Kennedy triggered some fond memories of a checkered history. The Liberal Lion of the Senate championed many causes dear to the DML.
Craig remembers seeing this print ad many years ago in a magazine. We share this as our tribute to a job well done. And though hope floats, we wish the same could have been said about Teddy's Oldsmobile.
Summer is Officially Over
Labor Day has come and gone and now is the time for all fashioneestas to put away their favorite white jeans or slacks - oh and don't forget the seersucker suits.
Rob and Craig had an exceptional summer this year.
First of all, let's talk about theater. Our couple watched some great productions this summer - Hello Dolly, Evita, Cabaret, The King and I, The Spitfire Grill - ending with August: Osage County. The boys love the theater, can you tell? Yes, and let's not forget the fabulous onboard cruise productions that Rob and Craig watched on their journey to Alaska. There were four fun, sometimes unintentionally fun, musical shows presented on the Sea Princess.
Speaking of cruises, the couple took a 10 day cruise to Alaska in late June. (There is a detailed story with pics available on this site - link provided further down on this page.) It was a fantastic journey for our first time visitors to this great state.
In August, Rob and Craig ventured to Reno. The duo consistently receives offers from the Peppermill. Who can pass up a free seventies time capsule room for two nights? It was a mini-getaway to celebrate Rob's birthday.
Yes, indeed, it was a special milestone for Rob this year. He reached his 50th birthday - "Thank God 50 is the new 40," Rob laments. So Rob's family threw a big birthday bash at Pasta Pelican. Overlooking the Alameda estuary towards Jack London Square, this venue was a perfect place to celebrate the big five oh. Along with a multitude of family, many folks from Rob's past joined in the festivities - which included friends from high school, AT&T and Levi's friends, church family and the many one-night stands (not really). "It was a fantastic gift - to have all these wonderful people in the same room, at the same time. It is a gift I will always cherish," Rob shares. There was lots of laughter, food, drink and dancing.
And finally Rob and Craig ended the summer with a getaway weekend in San Francisco. They were doing the things they enjoyed - shopping, dining, drinking, theater and sleeping in. Summer proved to be eventful for our couple, in a good way. Life isn't all that bad!
Here is a photo collage of the birthday party for Rob
Dis - RESPECT
There was a time when you did not eat with your elbows on the table, when your parents put you on restriction - you couldn't watch tv or play with the neighbor kids, and when you automatically gave up your seat to an elderly or pregnant passenger. The DML remembers . . . and the sad part - it wasn't that long ago.
So, why have we been witness, in the recent weeks, to outrageous displays of bad manners and outright disrepect? And why is it that we do not hear universal condemnation of such behavior?
Freedom of speech does not give anyone license to be rude.
My goodness, the DML would recommend taking these violators over one's knee and spanking them raw, but why should we reward them?
Powerful Words
The following article is currently available on bangordailynews.com. The author, Dr. Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region. He is also the interim CEO at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital.
The Maine Legislature passed a same-sex marriage measure last spring, but a citizens’ initiative to overturn the law succeeded in getting enough signatures to put the repeal question on the Nov. 3 ballot and to suspend the law before it could take effect on Sept. 12. Just like the Proposition 8 campaign last year, there are voices of sanity that offers a glimmer of hope to all DML readers.
. . . We have been told that right would damage the institution of marriage, rock the foundations of the American family and runs contrary to the intentions of our Maker. But the clothing of rationality and God’s word have been used forever to hide the naked truth of racism, sexism and other prejudices. The arguments against the right of gays to civil marriage is no different; if you peel off the clothing, what lies underneath most opposition to civil marriage rights for gays is just naked fear, ignorance and prejudice.
It is the same old stuff we have heard forever. We were told women were too emotional to vote and that giving them equality in the home would ruin the institution of marriage. Equality of women was once thought here to be against God’s order. So was equality for African-Americans and Native Americans, who were too “ignorant” or “savage” to be allowed equal status. Many states banned marriage between whites and blacks for some of the same reasons we still ban gay marriage; bad for marriage, bad for children, bad for our values, yada yada.
In each of those cases, Americans have slowly overcome their baser instincts with their better instincts, gradually eroding institutional and cultural inequality with steady application of our founding principle that all of us must be equal before the law. The fear that marriage will suffer should not stop us from doing the same for gays who want to be legally married.
Marriage does not need protection from gays; it needs protection from the things I see in my office every day that tear half of American marriages apart. Nothing, in my experience, corrodes love and marriage like the grind of existence on the margins of economic survival. Drug and alcohol addiction will ruin more marriages than gays’ access to civil marriage ever will. With notable exceptions such as the Catholic Church, few of those who oppose gay marriage fight as hard against poverty, lack of access to good drug and alcohol treatment programs, or lack of social support for young parents, as they do against the right of gays to civil marriage.
Nor do our children need protection from the concept of gay marriage. Some opponents have argued that the right of gays to civil marriage will lead to more support for a gay lifestyle in the education of our children. Forget it; there is no education left to be done. Our teenagers already know about gays and for most of them, this debate about gay rights is so yesterday. They have gay friends, live in a world that exposes them to gay lifestyles, and most of our teenagers think the gay marriage debate is fiddling with a dead issue while the world warms around us and the federal deficit threatens to bury their futures in a sea of debt.
In the end, though, gay marriage is not about marriage or teenagers, and it is not even about gays as much as it is about us. Over the last 250 years, Americans have slowly chipped away the bias and ignorance used to deprive almost every American except wealthy, white men of equal standing before the law. The right of civil marriage for gays is about continuing that same march toward “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” You cannot oppose it without betraying American values and the rights hard won for you by those victims of prejudice in almost every family tree who fought in their time for the rights we have in ours . . .
Read the article in its entirety @ BangorDailyNews.com
Out For a Stroll
On October 11th, members of various faith communities of Alameda collected at the steps of Rob and Craig's church, the First Congregational Church of Alameda. In celebration of National Coming Out Day, approximately 150 participants walked along Central Avenue to Koffman auditorium. There was a rainbow of welcoming faiths - the Alameda Spiritual Living Center, Twin Towers United Methodist Church, Christ Episcopal Church, Native American Community, The Home of Truth Spiritual Life Center, Buena Vista United Methodist Church, Temple Israel, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Community, First Presbyterian Church Alameda, the Buddhist Temple of Alameda and Trinity Lutheran Church.
The universal message of all faiths is love, family and respect. The event was a reminder that there are welcoming faith homes in our neighborhood. As always, communication is a two way street - to the religious the DML says "You have a choice where you worship and the message that you follow." To the LGBT community we say - "Not all religious communities are unwelcoming."
Alameda's event was one of many across the nation. On the same day, hundreds of thousands of LGBT activists marched at our nation's capitol.