Collins' most surprising teammate, however, is actor and screenwriter Jason Segel, who slam-dunked alongside him in the late 90s on the Harvard-Westlake High School basketball team. The How I Met Your Mother star was known as "Dr. Dunk" at the private Los Angeles high school.

The two Jasons make an intriguing pair. Though devoted to vastly different fields, each has mastered his craft, a glad collaborator yet ultimately an independent success on his own terms.

While Collins and his twin brother Jarrod were the team's star players, Segel made his own contributions.

"I'm not nearly as skilled a basketball player as some of the other guys," Segel told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. "But I have a lot of bravado."

"When they stop Prop. 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization and Jesus will come back," she said while playing a show at Yoshi's, a jazz club and Japanese restaurant.

Audience member Matt Penfield, on stage live-tweeting the show, described the tirade as "totally sincere," "super anti-gay" and "hateful." The venue ended the show early, shutting off both Shocked's mike and the stage lights. Scheduled shows have been cancelled in Novato and Santa Cruz, Calif., as well as Evanston, Ill., outside Chicago.

Shocked (born Karen Michelle Johnston), from East Texas, is perhaps best known for her single "Anchorage," from her 1988 album "Short Sharp Shocked."

The "proud feminist" had long been considered an out lesbian. "I was with my first woman lover about a year and a half ago," she told the Dallas Voice in 1990. When she accepted the 1989 New Music Award for Folk Album of the Year - beating out Phranc, the Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman - she joked on national television, "This category should have been called Best Lesbian Vocalist."

Against Equality is at its strongest when pointing out the ways in which mainstream gay movements for "equality" actually perpetuate inequality. For example, in response to the oft-touted argument that ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) will provide jobs, Kenyon Farrow writes for Queers for Economic Justice, "Wouldn't more social safety net spending help the millions of queers who can barely make ends meet?" And Tamara K. Nopper thoughtfully connects DADT with the DREAM Act, as both appear progressive but actually expand the military's ability to exploit already vulnerable populations such as immigrants and working-class people - and the many queers among them.

So I forgave Weeds its moments of stomach-turning offensiveness, of which there have been plenty ("hole in her niqab," anyone?). But they ruined the finale for me with transphobia.

In 1981, the 30-year-old Hunt had been with The Muppets for a decade. Jerry Nelson, also known as The Count, says that in the early years, "Richard was like a puppy, bouncy and overeager. We had to sit on him a lot." We see Hunt's irrepressible glee in this clip, where he and Madeline Kahn play a hilarious pair of bird-brained birdwatchers.

Yet Hunt also had a serious side. Says Brian Meehl, the original Elmo, "Richard was a news addict. He read the paper. He was very tapped in to what was going on. One time I saw him just devastated was when Anwar Sadat got killed." Sadat, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty with Israeli leader Menachem Begin, was assassinated in October 1981, shortly before this episode aired.

Most people didn't see Hunt's pensive, political side. "Richard on the set was fantastic," remembers Meehl. "He was always keeping people's spirits up, and yelling stuff. You'd do a take and he'd go, 'I wept!' And he would always show up with a box of Entenmanns chocolate doughnuts. For everyone, of course." Hunt would perform with the Muppets for another decade before dying of AIDS at 40 in 1992.

Clip after the jump.

Outside of the Muppets, she and Tony Geiss co-wrote the Steven Spielberg animated movies A Land Before Time and An American Tail.

In August 2010, I interviewed Freudberg for the biography I'm writing of her Sesame Street colleague, Muppet performer Richard Hunt. We sat down at a Greek diner near Manhattan's Columbus Circle. She looked classy and casual, cheerful and quick to laugh. She had a Peter Pan youthfulness despite having just turned 60.

Please visit my blog for excerpts from our talk.

Written in a late-night fit of anger at the Indypendent office and published on the newswire under a pseudonym, the piece went on to win an Independent Press Association Award (or "Ippie") for Best Editorial from the Independent Press Association.

Gunn, a 15-year-old butch lesbian, was murdered in an anti-gay attack in Newark. What particularly rankled me was the tiny turnout at her vigil on the Christopher Street piers, mostly young queers of color. I was concerned then that the mainstream LGBTQ community was more preoccupied with assimilation for some than survival for all - and the ensuing near-decade has only proved my prescience.

The lack of attention given to the CeCe McDonald case, for example, has felt like Gunn's murder all over again. McDonald, like Gunn, is a black woman attacked on the street, largely for her unconventional gender presentation. McDonald, unlike Gunn, fought back and survived and is now essentially being punished for defending herself - jailed on a second-degree manslaughter charge. As many see it, McDonald "will serve time simply because she managed to survive a violent attack."

Yet McDonald's case has received a fraction of the hubbub over Obama's recent "evolution" on marriage, symptomatic of the mainstream LGB movement's continuing inability to show up for all of its members. Regardless of how you feel about marriage itself, community survival must come first.

After all, you can't buy wedding dresses if you're dead.

"AIDS is a test of who we are as a people," Vito Russo (1946-1990) declaimed in a 1988 ACT UP speech. "When future generations ask what we did in the war we have to be able to tell them that we were out here fighting."

"Future generations" are lucky to have Michael Schiavi's comprehensive, meticulous and frequently hilarious biography of Russo, who - if AIDS was a test of gay people - certainly passed with flying colors. But Russo was able to respond so adroitly to the AIDS crisis because, as Schiavi shows, it was in some ways a culmination of his decades as a New York gay activist.

Both ACT UP and OWS suggest the revenue from a Financial Speculation Tax would be significant - potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars - and should be used to fund the end of the AIDS pandemic, i.e. to fill in US budget gaps in the fight against HIV/AIDS at home and abroad, providing treatment, services and prevention to thousands of Americans and millions around the world.

The Fi.S.T. does not target individual investors, and would not affect regular bank transactions. Instead, it would place a small tax - a mere fraction of one percent - on speculative trading by Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and other large financial institutions.

"We are organizing this historic united front to bring our message to governments and to Wall Street financiers who are sitting on the key to ending the AIDS epidemic," says Eric Sawyer, a founding member of ACT UP New York. "There is no excuse. We have the know-how to end AIDS. It is lack of funding and political will that keeps us from reaching universal access to HIV treatment worldwide."

Additional organizations expected to join the demonstration include Housing Works, Health GAP, National Nurses United, OWS Healthcare for the 99% Working Group, Visual AIDS, MIX NYC, Le Petit Versailles, Queerocracy, Queering OWS and others.

"The AIDS crisis is not over," says veteran ACT UP New York member Ann Northrop. "But, we know it could be."

Internationally touring activist musicians Bonfire Madigan Shive and Evan Greer hit the road this spring with their babies on board, toting an arsenal of stringed instruments and a whole bunch of reusable diapers. The "Tiny Fists" tour will span from Vancouver BC to Los Angeles with dozens of stops in between featuring high energy political musical performances and interactive workshops on a variety of social justice, LGBTQ, environmental, mental health and alternative parenting topics.

The Tiny Fists Tour, Shive and Greer's first project together, will bring their art and activism into a broad range of venues: university classrooms, gay bars, art galleries and activist community centers, along with the more traditional music venues. "Our primary goal with the Tiny Fists Tour is to increase the visibility of LGBTQ and activist parents and show people that you don't have to stop rocking when you become a mom!" said Greer. Rock on!

Bios and videos after the jump.

In an unexpected partnership, MIX NYC - producers of the New York Queer Experimental Film Festival, now in its 24th year - was hired by Greenpeace to create two installations for their new boat, the Rainbow Warrior III, turning a tent on the helipad and "the mess" (the dining area) into a gorgeous jungle of repurposed materials.

"People have preconceptions of Greenpeace, but it's a constantly evolving organization," says Greenpeace media officer James Turner. "That's part of why this collaboration is so nice for us." Despite the group's largely straight reputation, Turner says, Greenpeace strives to be "an open and inclusive organization." "We have good LGBT representation both in our offices and our ship crews [including] several staff members in the US and on our ships who identify as queer," says Turner. "We are serious about dealing with injustice in whatever form it takes - it's just that our primary mission is the environment."

The installations re-used discarded synthetic materials from city agency Materials for the Arts, which recommended MIX NYC as a possible candidate for the project. Diego Montoya, designer for the space, feels the recycled materials reflect not just earth-friendly principles but also the MIX aesthetic: repurposing, reimagining, experimental. "We created a jungle; we mimic nature with these things that are counter-nature," said Montoya. Materials included cellophane, used and donated fabrics, rolls of "anti-sequins" (the sparkly fabric left over from sequin production), and even discarded costumes from Broadway's The Lion King.

More pictures and information after the jump.

A former student recently emailed me to ask, "What should an aspiring writer do at this point with a Bachelor's in English Literature?" This is what I told her.

I appreciate your asking my advice.

My short answer to what ANY aspiring writer should do: Write.

Any aspiring writer should write, find your voice, find what you have to say, write because you enjoy it, because that enjoyment is what makes you a writer. Practice it like any other skill. Write, and start looking around for magazines, journals, newspapers, websites or what-have-you that publish pieces similar to what you write. Look for their submission guidelines, and when you feel ready, send them your work.

I have an M.F.A. in creative writing. However, you don't need school to become a writer. Sometimes writing programs can make you self-conscious about your work, less free to simply do the writing you want to do. Writing programs are better once you feel relatively secure in your writing voice.

The writer/teacher life is a trade-off. I teach part-time, which leaves more time to write. Full-time college teachers are often expected to have a Ph.D. I don't think this is worth it: 8+ years and too much debt for not enough job security. I know many people who have gotten a Ph.D. and not found work as professors, or found work only in places they'd rather not live (and sometimes live there anyway, unhappily). But some writers do get Ph.Ds, and teach, and write on their breaks. This is probably more suited to those who write scholarly work.

Alternatively, any number of jobs are delighted to have someone who works in words. Editing, copyediting, proofreading, freelancing... Even a receptionist or assistant is more valuable if he or she can dash off a clear letter or email or memo, etc..

Finally, even if you love writing, it need not be your day job. Writers need to have something to write about. If someone is only a writer, do they write about writing all day? Everything you learn and experience makes you a stronger writer, gives you a more developed mental model with which to understand and describe the world.

I hope this is helpful. Keep writing!

Richard Hunt joined the Muppets with his characteristic gregarious exuberance, cold-calling them from a Manhattan pay phone on a whim one beautiful June afternoon in 1970. He was 19, a year out of his North Jersey high school. "Hello, I'm a puppeteer, can you use me?" he asked cheerily. He was in luck: Jim Henson's company was auditioning for a new production that very afternoon. Hunt ran over and landed the gig.

From these impulsive beginnings Richard Hunt launched a masterful two-decade career with the world's most popular puppet troupe - the Muppets. As part of the central core of performers on both children's television blockbuster Sesame Street and adult megahit The Muppet Show - called "the most popular television entertainment on earth" by Time magazine - Hunt brought to life such puppet icons as squeaky lab assistant Beaker, elderly balcony heckler Statler and mellow valley girl Janice, as well as helping to develop Miss Piggy and Elmo.

A genius comic performer, Hunt was a "funny boy" in another respect as well - that being his lingo for gay - living in the liberatory post-Stonewall culture of New York in the 1970s, confronting the plague of AIDS in the 80s, and succumbing to AIDS-related causes in 1992, only 40 years old. The AIDS crisis, considered "the definitive historical event" in recent gay memory, is experiencing a resurgence of interest among younger members of the LGBT community, as we grapple with its collective legacy.

The book's dual focus enables Duberman to use his subjects' lives almost as lenses through which to discuss their times, more so than usually seen in single-subject biographies. For example, Deming's and McReynolds' differing but complementary views on issues such as nuclear disarmament, the gay movement(s) and separatism allow Duberman to put a human face on some of the movements' historical disagreements.

This approach also leaves room for editorializing. Sometimes this is helpful, as when Duberman reveals the eerie parallels between America's involvement in Vietnam and our modern-day involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, both funneling money towards the military and away from pressing domestic needs. Yet sometimes the commentary feels excessive, detracting from the story and slowing down its pacing.

While a dual biography, the book's balance is tipped slightly more towards McReynolds, speeding through the first 40 years of Deming's life until her radicalization in the early 1960s. Even then, it glosses over such fascinating events as Deming's participation in multiple freedom walks and the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment, though it does discuss her intriguing allegiances with such controversial feminist figures as Andrea Dworkin and Pat Swinton. The book could use more of such stories, and less of McReynolds' involvement with the internecine inter-group dynamics of the American socialist movement, forgettable acronyms abounding with the SPUSA, the SDUSA, the DSA and the SWP (to name a few).

But ultimately, the book is Duberman's usual thorough, well-told tale of two figures who deserve more attention, along with the movements to which they devoted their lives. As Barbara Deming often said, "We are all part of one another," a good saying to remember in these divisive times.

(This article was originally published in the fall/winter 2011/2012 issue of make/shift magazine.)

And yet Orman does not blame the 99% for its plight, instead calling out the banks and the government for their role in wealth inequality, and saying a public thank you to the grassroots endeavor.

I want to publicly say thank you to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thank you for not accepting the status quo. Thank you for not assuming there is nothing to be done.

Twice named to Time magazine's 100 most influential people, Orman came out publicly as a lesbian in 2007 and last year married her partner, Kathy Travis, in a ceremony in South Africa.

For more enjoyment, after the break is Orman's It Gets Better video, and her "most favorite 'Can I Afford It' segment ever": Elf School.