Comedian Wanda Sykes made a surprise appearance yesterday at a gay rights rally in Las Vegas.  She denounced the passing of Prop 8 and announced that she is a gay woman.  She and her wife were married on October 25th.

I love that we are approaching a place where someone can say “I’m gay” and it isn’t some big scandalous thing.  It struck me recently that it seems like there are so many more gay people now.  I remember when I was a kid that hearing about a homosexual person was a rarity.  But truly, lots of people were always gay but now they feel safe enough to say it.  This wave of openness and freedom that is currently happening…it feels like history in the making.  I’m happy to be here for it.

Pete Wentz just posted this on his blog:

due to breaking news and scheduling conflicts i will not be appearing on larry king live tonight, though i am a big fan of the show and look forward to appearing on it in the future. i also look forward to the chance to continue supporting civil rights and speaking out against the passing of proposition 8 and others like it (im looking at you arizona and florida) whenever and wherever i can.

Hmmm … “breaking news?”

Sounds like a baby’s on the way. It’s about time, too! Ashlee has been preggers, like, since the first season of ER.

Before I sign off for the day, I’d like to leave you with this lovely group of photos from a Victoria’s Secret photo shoot in Miami Beach this week.

Don’t say I never do anything nice for you.

There are peaceful Prop 8 protests going on all across the U.S. tomorrow.

And guess what?

It’s gone international now!!!

There are Prop 8 protests tomorrow in London, Edinburgh, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Melbourne, Osaka and Brussels!

To find the location of your local rally, click here.

I’ll be at the Seattle one tomorrow!

Show up at yours!!! Bring your friends!!! Bring your neighbors!!! Bring your cameras!!! Bring your voices!!!

“You know what, if they don’t want me to write bad songs about them, they shouldn’t do bad things.”

My beloved Taylor Swift, when asked if men are intimidated by the possibility of ending up in one of her songs.

So, my pal Lacy Kemp over at the RealNetworks blog called together her legions of loyal Twitter followers to do what she called a “Social Music Experiment.” She asked people all over the world to send her their favorite song, and she compiled a bunch of them into a single Rhapsody playlist. You can check it out here. It’s certainly one way to be exposed to a wide variety of new artists, although poor Lacy promised to listen to every song that was submitted, so she was stuck in her office for days alternating between Christmas tunes and GWAR.

It gave me an idea. I’m always looking for new songs to run to and/or work out to. Especially now that I’m training for a half-marathon, I’m spending a lot of time running and for some reason it’s always hard to come up with good tracks for my jogs. And I have a new Rhapsody mp3 player, so I have to load a bunch of new music on it anyway. Sooooo …

I was hoping you guys could help me come up with a new playlist. An Evil Beet Work Out playlist. It would be awesome if you could leave in the comments some of your favorite songs to work out to. I’ll put them all on a single Rhapsody playlist so you guys can check it out, too.

Thanks!!!

It’s a little French girl. Telling a little story. And it is mind-blowingly adorable.

And I just keep watching it and thinking to myself, like, “Damn! Who taught this girl her French? She speaks it really well.”