The Tonys

*Very glad LaChanze won. I just love her.

*3PO had a very WEIRD number but strangely, I want to see it now. Now that it's closing! I also want to see The Color Purple and Sweeny.

*What is UP with presenters who can't be bothered to look at their text before showing up and running off with their gift bag embarrassing themselves stumbling over their tele-prompter reading not just once but several times? I found that very unprofessional. Paul Rudd and the woman with whom he presented had the easiest gig in the world and they muffed it.

*I wish Megan had won but I'm thrilled she was even nominated. So amazing to see local talent make good like that. I do wish the featured number from Pajama Game had featured her a bit more, since it WAS her song!

*I wish they'd shown more from the "Memorable moments"--historic wins would've been cool to see.

*It took them SIXTY YEARS to replace Patricia Neal's Tony???

*The iconic Hal Prince characters "live montage" was HILARIOUS. They looked like a poster for Forbidden Broadway.

*I really want to see History Boys, although if felt that way before the Tonys.

*Watching that guy win Best Actor for History Boys, I was wondering how many 300-lb. women would ever win. He was morbidly obese.

Hate crimes

This weekend NY1 reported about a gay performer, Kevin Aviance, who was attacked in the East Village. His jaw was even broken. I've had some discussions about hate crime legislation and I know some people are opposed to them, on the grounds that how can you punish a thought? It's the deed, the physical attack that should be punished, not the hate. I've thought about it some more in the wake of the attack on this man--I believe hate crime legislation is not about punishment, it's about deterrence. It's obvious this guy wouldn't have been attacked if he hadn't been gay--why should he be at greater risk because he's different? He was sought out because he was gay, which means he's automatically at a disadvantage for something he can't help. Hate crime legislation tries to redress that imbalance--by scaring people who would take advantage of it. BTW, I also believe hate crimes should apply to all races/genders/groups, and I also think rape should be a hate crime. The Nicholas Minucci case is an interesting look at what constitutes a hate crime--the white defendant claims even though he said the N-word, it wasn't a hate crime when he attacked the black guy in his neighborhood. It's an interesting case because the victim was not particularly blameless--he admitted he was there to steal a car. So was Minucci a thug or a racist thug? Was his use of the N-word in any way mitigated by its free currency in hip hop? It's certainly not the unheard-of term it was 20 years ago.

If Minucci's lawyers have any sense, they'll point to this case from a few months ago, where a bunch of black kids chased a white guy (a truly innocent victim in this case, he was catching a train or something) into traffic to try to rob him, yelling "get the white guy." The prosecutors tried to make hate crime charges stick but were unable to--somehow the defense laywer got them off on those, claiming "the white guy" was an indentifier, not a racial epithet. I'd say, if you cause a guy's death when you're robbing him and call him a racial term, that qualifies as a hate crime to me. Likewise, I think Minucci's crime was a hate crime. I don't care how many thug-ass rappers use that term, it's disgusting.