Author Topic: Will you observe Leap Year Day?  (Read 8834 times)

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2020, 12:06:45 am »
You sound kind of blunt. Do you just mean you haven't made special plans, or that you dislike its existence and therefore don't want to celebrate it? It's a Saturday, so not a work day, if that helps.

Oh, I'm  not against it.  I just meant I wasn't doing anything for it.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline brianr

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2020, 04:19:14 am »
I just noticed that the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras Parade is on February 29 this year.
https://www.mardigras.org.au

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2020, 09:57:58 am »
I just noticed that the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras Parade is on February 29 this year.
https://www.mardigras.org.au

That's unorthodox, since the whole point of Mardi Gras is that it's the last day for a big blowout party before Ash Wednesday, when Lent kicks in. Fine by me, as I don't celebrate Lent, and perhaps the paraders don't either.



Offline brianr

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #13 on: February 15, 2020, 04:41:29 pm »
The Pride marches in the 1970's around Stonewall day in June were not very pleasant, not only because police famously broke one up and made over 50 arrests (1978) but also because it  was mid winter. It was moved to February in 1981. It is so named because it is like carnivale.
It is one of the largest such festivals in the world, and the largest Pride event in Oceania, attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. There are now events over the whole month of February It is New South Wales' second-largest annual event in terms of economic impact, generating an annual income of about A$30 million for the state. The parade and following party are the last events on the calendar. I took part in the 80's and later was a marshall for several years. I have not been for probably 25 years. These days there is a police contingent in the parade. I have just seen it will be the focus for World Pride 2023, the first time in the Southern Hemisphere.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #14 on: February 15, 2020, 09:39:50 pm »
I have not been for probably 25 years. These days there is a police contingent in the parade. I have just seen it will be the focus for World Pride 2023, the first time in the Southern Hemisphere.

Interesting! I wrote about a Pride festival in a park for the newspaper. I talked to people who said in the past they were afraid to be photographed for fear they'd lose their jobs. Now those concerns were minimal to absent. The event was sponsored by a bunch of really ordinary mainstream companies, like car dealerships or whatever, some of which had booths there. I talked to a woman who worked in the ticket office for the Minnesota Twins (baseball team). She was one who said she'd once been wary of being seen at Pride. Now she was hosting a photo shoot for passersby who wanted to pose with the Twins logo.

Offline brianr

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #15 on: February 16, 2020, 12:37:41 am »
On that infamous day in 1978, I attended a Homosexual rights conference during the day but did not go to the march that night. It was nothing like the present day Mardi Gras Parade, just people marching and chanting, now it is all floats and people in costumes with contingents from many areas of society. As I said the police have a float and this year they are going to give the gay firefighters the leading spot after the dreadful summer. A few years later I rented a Spanish flamenco costume and had some of my students come up to me.
Back in 1978 I turned up at the conference the next morning to discover the police had cancelled permission for the parade in the middle of it and arrested over 50. Although all charges were later dropped the main Sydney newspaper published all names. Teaching in a Catholic school, it would have finished my career and I do not know how my mother would have coped. She was always supportive but did not want the world of her friends to know. Fifty years later in 2018 the parliament moved a unanimous apology and the newspaper also apologised but a bit late for some.  My diary of the time shows how upset I was, angry, relieved and ashamed all at once.
A year later I was at a Gay rights meeting listening to a leading judge in support of legalisation of homosexuality (came in 1984) and the TV camera came and panned me up and down. I was on the late night news and the whole school knew the next day but, of course, I was not doing anything illegal. In later years I was quite out at the school and I was told that the Catholic education authorities knew but would not do anything as long as I was not too public. The brothers at the school and other staff were quite supportive and I took my boyfriend to staff socials.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #16 on: February 16, 2020, 10:51:49 am »
Wow, Brian, what a story. Somebody has probably already done this, but if not they should: It would make a great book or documentary. The author or filmmaker could track down people who were there, find out what happened to them back then and over the years and how they're doing today.


Offline brianr

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #17 on: February 16, 2020, 04:18:24 pm »
There was a TV documentary in 2018. I can only find the trailer on Youtube. It was called Riot

I think I cried all the way through it. I knew so many of the people involved

Offline brianr

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #18 on: February 16, 2020, 05:06:10 pm »

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Will you observe Leap Year Day?
« Reply #19 on: February 17, 2020, 11:29:56 am »
There was a TV documentary in 2018. I can only find the trailer on Youtube. It was called Riot

I think I cried all the way through it. I knew so many of the people involved

That looks very powerful. One of the lead actors, Damon Herriman, has been in a few good shows here. He was a regular in Justified, one of my favorite TV shows (no longer on), where he played a hillbilly-ish, not-very bright, small-time criminal. And he has played Charles Manson twice, including in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I imagine he has a different kind of casting history down there.