Sulu...Out!

Actor George Takei, best-known for playing Sulu on the original series of "Star Trek," came out of the closet to something called Frontiers Magazine. It was a bold move, announcing to the world what every person who knows who "George Takei" is already knew, that he is a homosexual.

Seriously, Takei wasn't out of the closet? He's a very feminine guy. I mean, frankly, I don't care if he's straight or gay or only gets aroused by chandeliers or whatever. I just always assumed the guy was gay, and that everyone knows he was gay.

And then I read this post in Pandagon, and it turns out Takei's been openly living with a man, Brad Altman, for 18 years.

The current social and political climate also motivated Takei's disclosure, he said...The 68-year-old actor said he considers himself as "having been out for quite some time." Takei and his partner, Brad Altman, have been together for 18 years.

So, how is this news, exactly?

"Gay Actor Remains Gay."

ALERT THE MEDIA!

I can't really tell, but there seems to be something vaguely weird about a magazine writing an entire article about a gay guy, just for being gay, and then that article gets picked up by the Associated Press. There's a whole bunch of gay guys, including gay actors (probably disproportionately, as a matter of fact). Who cares that this particular one prefers men to women?

You ever hear that prank call with Takei they play on Howard Stern? Someone pretending to be Ricardo Montalban, Takei's co-star in the sci-fi classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, calls Takei basically to shoot the shit, and really has him going there for a minute. Finally, after he figures out that it's a prank, he says "I don't think you're Ricardo Montalban..." It's a classic moment in prank call-dom that has absolutely nothing to do with this article. I just think it's hilariously funny, and it makes me laugh every single time it's played.

[I should note that Takei himself strikes me as an intelligent, interesting kind of guy, despite being kind of a pop culture joke and speaking in a heightened, silly manner. He keeps up a pretty cool blog, as a matter of fact, here. And, just as a side-note, it's pretty amazing to me that he lived in an internment camp from ages 4 to 8. Weird that there are still so many living people who went through such a humiliating, unforgivable experience, and yet they have managed to put it behind them and succeed in the very country that imprisoned them.]