Tarhearted.

TWO THINGS.

1. This footage of the subway 25 years ago is fascinating to me. A lot of people I know, especially native New Yorkers,  talk about how the city is so much nicer than it used to be. I don't know... I've always wanted to live in the grittier, tougher New York. The New York of After Hours. The New York of C.H.U.D. sans the cannibals in the seweres, I guess. It seemed like it was a lot more fun. I was hoping that when the economy crashed and everybody was as poor as I am the city might slide back, but no such luck. Another thing: where the hell did the K train go? A friend and I were just talking about the letters that were unused by MTA and wondered why: H, I, K, O, P, T, U, X, Y. I guess we can cross K off that list?

 

2. When I was in college I was obsessed with the band Gravy Train!!!! If you don't know them, they are (were?) a queercore electro band from Oakland, California who sang and rapped their way through hilarious and filthy songs like "You Made Me Gay" and "Cotton Mouth BJ". Now one of the gay boys from Gravy Train!!!!, Hunx, has a side project in Hunx and His Punx. This album combines so many things that I love, you don't even know. It's inspired by girl groups of the early sixties set through the lens of contemporary gay dudes.

It. Is. Awesome. This will definitely be the only thing I listen to for the next six months.

Here is the video for You Don't Like Rock N' Roll, which could have been my theme song when I was single and dating years ago. I once dumped a dude on the spot because he'd never heard of R.E.M. I'm not even an R.E.M. fan per se, but come on. That's 101 shit.

 

HOG FART SCALIA.

It's sickening that we have people like Scalia on the Supreme Court, people who are so bigoted it's barely concealed.

Via Joe.My.God

“The due process clause has been distorted so it’s no longer a guarantee of process but a guarantee of liberty,” Scalia expounded. “But some of the liberties the Supreme Court has found to be protected by that word - liberty - nobody thought constituted a liberty when the 14th Amendment was adopted. Homosexual sodomy? It was criminal in all the states. Abortion? It was criminal in all the states.” “The way to change the Constitution is through amendments approved by the people, not by judges altering the meaning of its words,” he added.

So gays and women aren't entitled to equal rights? FUCK YOU. I'm so sick of people who beleive that minorities should work through legislature, that they should convince the general population that they deserve equality. Scalia, as somebody on the FUCKING SUPREME COURT should have a better understanding of what the courts do in our system of checks and balances.

There are people who say that gay people lost the prop 8 battle because they didn't work hard enough to convince voters that they deserved marriage equality. If you beleive this, you're a dick. It's your responsibility to not be an asshole, not mine to change you.

 
How much longer will flagrant homophobia be acceptable in public discourse? How much longer will there be "two sides" to common equality for gay people? Kudos to Dan Savage who had this to say on the subject on CNN this week:

"There are no 'two sides' to the issue of LGBT rights. Right now one side is really using dehumanizing rhetoric. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups as hate groups and yet the leaders of these groups, people like Tony Perkins, are welcomed onto networks like CNN to espouse hate directed at gays and lesbians. And similarly hateful people who are targeting Jews or people of color or anyone else would not be welcome to spew their bile on CNN."

DRAG, HONEY.

The Fiance and I watched the 1977 film Outrageous! last night. How had I never heard of this movie? Is it because it's Canadian? It's an absolutely wonderful little movie about the tender friendship between a down-on-his/her-luck drag queen and a young schizophrenic woman recently released from a mental hospital. Craig Russell, who plays the drag queen Robin Turner, is magnificent. I was sad to see that he passed away in 1990. You should see it. Anyway, it was the perfect reason to blof about drag, which I've been meaning to do for a while.

Don Hall, whose blog I really love, wrote this entry about drag:

One of my least favorite things on the planet Earth is watching guys play women.  In a city with so many incredibly talented female actors, it almost seems insulting to have a man play a woman.  Most of the time, dudes perform drag roles as campy and train their voices in a higher pitch, become unnecessarily effeminate, and 'pretend' to be women-like.  Throw on some pancake make-up, rouge, fake tits and a wig, and you have the equivalent of a typing chimp on stage.  The device is most often used as a gimmick and I generally find the gimmick to be dull after about thirty seconds.

I know he didn't mean it in any kind of offensive way, but it really irked me for some reason and it's been sticking with me for a while. It took me a while to figure out why (in addition to using Divine's image to illustrate his point. Oh snap!) The thing is, he's half right. Drag is a gimmick. When straight people do it, anyway. A straight dude wearing a dress is embarrassing. A gay man wearing a dress is empowering. That's why Divine is masterful in Hairspray and John Travolta nearly ruins the entire remake single handedly. The film is meant to be a love note to outsiders, but it's constantly saying "look at John Travolta in this dress! John Travolta is a man! Ha ha ha!"

This is not to say that straight folks can't do drag well. A good performer is a good performer and many straight actors have rocked queer pieces in film and theater. But in those cases the piece is queer, even if the actor isn't. I think I'm starting to realize how important drag is to the telling of queer stories. It's a part of our culture and it kind of hurts me to see it tossed aside as if it were nothing. Brendan Kiley, a critic at The Stranger, kind of misses the mark on drag in this review too. His review is about something else entirely, but his brief comments on drag make me think he doesn't really understand it.

I've been thinking a lot about drag lately. I guess its because of MilkMilkLemonade opening this week. (Buy your tickets!) Drag is really important to me. I don't have drag in all my plays, but I'm always tempted to. It means a lot, but I'm not really sure why. I think maybe because it's a way for queer people to write about the mainstream, heterosexual culture. A way for queer people to access a culture they're shut out of. To satirize it, sure, but also to connect to it. There's an old adage in the queer/camp milieu: "Straight people don't understand camp because everything they do is camp." (Although I know plenty of straight folks who do get camp.)

Also, P.S. to Don Hall. Don't take this the wrong way, because I really like your blog and totally don't want to piss off the Angry White Guy, but...

The world is probably working on another George Clooney or Angelina Jolie as we speak. But we'll never have another Divine. A little respect?

LOVE THE SINNER, HATE THE SIN. CHRISTIANS AND ANTI GAY BULLYING.

One of the most frustrating things about being in the gay rights movement is religious people that honestly beleive they harbor no ill will towards LGBT people, even while denying them civil rights. You know, the whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" schtick that every gay person knows is absolute bullshit.

I understand that religious folk might not feel like they hate gay people, but when you marginalize people, remove their civil rights, mobilize against their quality of life, you are committing an act of hate. No matter what your intentions are, good or bad, you are committing hate against another person. No matter what your religion says to the contrary.

Dan Savage just knocked it out of the park in response to a Christian who wrote into his column, Savage Love in The Stranger (my hometown paper!)

The Christian writes:

I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life.

If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man.

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people.

Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future.

L.R.

 

Dan Savage responds:

 

 

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying. Why the hell not?

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.

And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call Mom and Dad.

 

ANTI GAY BULLYING.

I'm devastated by all these LGBT suicides. Really, really devasted. I'm also seeing a phemonenon that Shawn and others talk about but in regards to race- that is, the ability of well meaning outsiders to make an issue about them.

I'm going to ignore the fucking hideous tarhearted people that would blame these suicides on the kids that killed themselves. They're not worth my time. On our side though I've seen so many comments that are along the lines of, "this has nothing to do with being gay, bullying is just plain bad!"

Fuck you. This has everything to do with being gay. Your being bullied because you were over weight or wore glasses is not the same as silently suffering for an entire childhood because you're an outsider from your own community. It is not the same as being cheated out of an education because you're afraid to go to school, not just because of bullies, but also the teachers who purposely ignore them. It is not the same as sometimes never feeling safe in your own home. It is not the same as having entire religions set to destroy you. Most importantly, it is not the same as being a small, innocent chld in a society that thinks it's fine to contantly degrade you, push you out, vote on your civil rights etc.

Gay kids make up 20-40% of all homeless youths. Gay kids are 3-4 times more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers.

It. Is. Not. The. Same.

 

MilkMilkLemonade TRADING CARDS.

Better get ready, Queens!

Astoria Performing Arts Center's production of MilkMilkLemonade, with the original cast collected, is coming your way. Check out the cute (and collectible) post cards.

Collect them all!

GOODBYE, GLENN.

Actor Glenn Shadix, best known as Otho in Beetlejuice, has died. Bummer. Otho was everything I wanted to be when I was a little boy watching Beetlejuice: gay, tasteful, a New Yorker.

And I would be remiss if I didn't point out how amazing he was as the minister in the best teen film of all time, Heathers.

Goodbye, Glenn! You were truly beautiful. Let's just hope he's rubbing noses with Jesus.

PROP 8 SUCKS.

I don't know how all of this will end up, but as a gay man getting married in another state because it isn't legal in my own I say to Judge Walker: WORK.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for standing up for basic fairness. 

GAY DISCO.

I absolutely cannot wait for Hercules and Love Affair's new album. "Blind" was the best song from 2008 without a doubt* (Pitchfork agrees with me.) OMG has a great interview with Andy Butler, the genius behind Hercules, and it's got me all kinds of excited.

If you don't know Hercules and Love Affair, you should. It's really just Butler, who is the producer/dj, and whomever he gets to sing with him. On "Blind", for instance, the singer is Antony from Antony & The Johnsons, securing the track's place as a new gay classic.

I'm not usually into dance music- my background is in punk rock. But there are exceptions. I love disco, for instance. Especially really highbrow Euro disco like Cerrone and Amanda Lear. But mostly I love acts that inject art into their dance music. I like acts that embrace the past without recreating it and simultaneously look toward the future. I'd put Goldfrapp in this category. I also loved Sally Shapiro's record when it came out and have been waiting for something new. (The most downbeat, depressing dance music ever! That's my sound!)

I recently heard a scholarly discussion about disco somewhere. I can't remember where it was. Maybe in a documentary? It was about the vehement hatred of disco in the seventies and how that was less of a reaction to the actual music than it was a reaction to gays, especially black and Hispanic gays, gaining power. It was a rejection of race mixing, of fluid sexuality and gender representation, that the disco scene embraced.

Anyway, all of this is offtrack. I really wanted to post about Andy Butler, because LOOK AT THIS PICTURE!

HUMINA-HUMINA-HUMINA-WHA!

This could have been taken right from Randy Blue's website. Now I'm going to look for his photo spread in old issues of Butt Magazine. I just KNOW he had one. How could he not?

*It's kind of a tie for me. I was also super crazy for Santogold's "L.E.S. Artistes" in 2008. Where is Santogold, anyway?

WENDY, WENDY, CAROL.

The Fiance and I stumbled across an episode of The Wendy Williams show last night and, I have to tell you, I'm so glad we did. It must've been a fag special because her guests were Kathy Griffin and... wait for it... CAROL CHANNING!!!

It. Was. Heaven.

First of all, I'd never watched this show before. The first part is just Wendy talking to her audience and it seems unscripted. Do you have a friend that talks too much and is really, really vain and not that interesting but you like them anyway? That's kind of how Williams is. Also, I loved her even more once Carol came out and she was moved to tears.

I would be moved to tears too, Wendy.

Let's talk about Carol's outfit. She was wearing a red leather jacket a la Michael Jackson in the "Beat It" video. Her hair was up in a pony tail-ish thing, like Pebbles from the Flintstones.

Wait, I found a picture:

Amazing, right? And then, Carol brought it home, saying, "Doesn't it look like an atom bomb going off?" Ha ha ha ha ha! Then Carol and Wendy spent the ENTIRE FIRST SEGMENT talking about Wendy's make-up artist. That queen, whoever he is,  must have been backstage just glowing.

Then (oh god, I can hardly type this) they have a discussion about race. Carol shares a story about her parents worrying that she might have a black baby. Carol then says that would have been fine since, "She could've been an Alvin Ailey dancer." Then, THEN, Wendy Williams names Carol Channing an honorary black person. What the WHAT?

I ate this show up like candy. I'll tell you one thing, Carol Channing and Wendy Williams will both be in my heaven. 

P.S. It's really hard for me to not call Wendy Williams Wendy O. Williams, who was the lead singer of The Plasmatics and star of the seminal film, Reform School Girls. I kind of think that would make a better show.