Marc , Fausto and Sal-E at the People's Choice Podcast Awards, 2007The year of 2007 was a big blender of emotions, podcasts and dazzling glitter spinning around in my head. We have made a lot of important achievements in the podcasting world. The Feast of Fools: Gay Fun Show had a lot of fun and excitement this year. We won the People's Choice Podcast Award for "Best GLBT" podcast for a second year in a row, but were also nominated for "Podcast of the Year." This was the first time ever a gay-themed podcast has been nominated for the prestigious award. We were so excited going to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony-- everyone looked fabulous!

This year we also launched our video podcast "Show Me Now" which just got nominated for a Queer Verve "Best Video Blog" award. I also managed to land an interview with THE supermodel to the world, RuPaul. It was like a dream come true when she personalized her famous mantra for us by shouting "You Feast of Fools Bitches Better Work!"

And work we do: I put out a new talk show five days a week because I see it makes a difference in my audience's lives. The Internet is wonderful way to bring people together. When I came out of the closet at 18 I only knew a small handful of gay people. But now our audience alone shows the wide range and variety of gay life that is out there and accessible to everyone.

Our daily talk show provides entertainment, comfort and insight about the gay experience to many different kids of people. We share with our audience the joy, wonder and laughter of a journey of discovery.

We got a letter from one of mature lesbian listeners, Barbara who lives out in California. She wrote to say that she sees the positive impact our show has on young people. She donated to offset our production costs saying, "you may not be a charity, but you do good work."

Papi-ClassicBut the most intense moment of 2007 for me personally was my father passing away. In the middle of March my elderly father was moved into intensive care for problems with diabetes and was obviously not in good shape. Knowing this would be my only chance to say goodbye, I took a couple of days off work and jumped on the next plane down to Puerto Rico.

After eating this fruit salad, my dad refused to eat anything else for 5 hours. He has diabetes.I will never forget looking into my father's sad eyes, both of us crying, knowing it would be the last time I would ever see him alive. I'm so thankful that I was able to tell him that I loved him and that I owe so much of who I am to him. I thanked him for being my dad. My dad was never very close with any of his sons, but I told him that I forgave him for any distance that there was between us.

I returned to Chicago and several days later I got a call from my sister that my father was about to die. My partner Marc and I tried to fly right back to Puerto Rico but a volcano explosion on the neighboring island of Montserrat delayed our flight. Of all the things in the world, who would have thought that a cloud of volcanic ash would have kept us from flying that night? The next morning we took off only to discover that my father had already passed away by the time we got there. I was OK though, I had said goodbye.

The monolithic dome crematorium and funeral home where my dad was remembered at- the Celestium.Years ago my father picked out for his service one of the strangest funeral parlors in Puerto Rico, the Celestium. Maybe he discovered it in a local architectural journal because of its unusual structural design: a monolithic domes, arranged in a triangle. A monolithic dome is a structure that is built much like a large-scale piñata, where fiberglass rods are glued onto a large inflated bubble and upon curing are reinforced by spray-on concrete. Not only is it cheap to build, it also withstands hurricanes and looks a like a fabulous concrete spaceship.

My father, the architect and UFO fanatic, would have been enthralled!

This unusually designed crematorium was was home to an equally strange staff: a group of Puerto Rican new-age lesbians who could have even been off-worlders themselves.

My father surely would have loved the "Sleeping Beauty" like plexiglas case in which he was displayed. His glass coffin was guarded by a butch female attendant who would pull back a lace shroud allowing you to peer inside. A gutsy folk singer sang proudly with her guitar songs of lost love and forgiveness.

Painting of my dad, Gonzalo Fernós-Lopez (1919-2007)When my sister Talia and I were in our teens, one day after school my dad looked at us in the eye and said with a very serious tone: "My children, when I die I will go on to live on other planets in outer space and enroll in the great University of the Cosmos in order to learn about many wonderful things." As you can imagine, my sister and I were stunned. But that day, it totally made sense. My father would have enjoyed seeing us mourn his death in the spaceship Celestium slash funeral parlor, contemplating whether he indeed made it to outer space and what wonderful things he may be learning.

I remember my father by doing my talk show. Whether here on Earth or in Outer Space: to love, learn, entertain, inform and raise consciousness is the most important thing of all.

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