So last week, in honor of National Coming Out Day, I played with Photoshop and came up with this. It was pretty funny. A number of people were shocked and even awed by it--not that I was gay (everyone knows that) but that I made the cover of Time. Somehow it seemed more plausible that I'd made the cover than that I'd pasted my head on Ellen Degeneres's body. (Eh? No, Skippy, my digital head on her digital body. But thanks for the vote of confidence.)

What was interesting to me was that this cover, which I consider iconic, is not familiar to people "outside the fold." That is, unless you were like me, holed up with your TV in 1997 being thankful that your ABC affiliate didn't participate in the blackout of Ellen's coming-out episode, this white-loafered "Yep" doesn't resonate. Sigh.