Our friend Lee Mentley sent us this marvelous footage of John Rothermel and Rose Hips performing.
Long Live the Cockettes!:
Category Archives: Bo Young
Will someone please give these guys a blow job so we can impeach them?
Jon Stewart did a segment on this same thing last night. This is Scott Bateman’s take on it…with his usual brilliance…
ZEITGEIST, The Movie – Official Release – Full Film
| ZEITGEIST, The Movie – Official Release – Full Production
Visit www.zeitgeistmovie.com for information and the full source list for this work. |
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Big Love…Big Eden…
I got home late last night…missed the season finale to John From Cincinnati and the finale of Big Love (which I love…written by Gay couple Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer) and I was flipping around the dial and dropped by Logo while I was waiting for it to get late enough so I could see the Perseids, on the roof.
Imagine my surprise to be completely drawn into Big Eden, the first feature film made in 2000 by director, Thomas Bezucha, who went on to make The Family Stone…
Well…"real" if you happen to be having your first Whitney show as an artist and you come from a perfect little Northern Exposure-type town in Montana and… but you know….Hollywood at its best.
The cast includes Arye Gross, who I recognize, and remember from For 
the Boys and so many other character roles…he’s one of those great character actors you know but can’t quite place…as the lead for once.
And Eric Schweig, a handsome, native American actor who gets to play just a handsome man who happens to be Native American instead of having to be a Noble Indian.
And the redoubtable Louise Fletcher, no less, along with a host of, as mentioned, the late, lamented Northern Exposure-worthy characters.
A romance. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Lovely. Big Eden…good actors…good story…good movie.
They Came…They Saw…They Pandered…
OK. I like Melissa Etheridge as well as the next rocker.
But c’mon…is she really the person you want interviewing the next President? What? Were none of the Queer Eye guys available? Once again, ala The Advocate, the Gay community leadership, in their slavish currying of favor with the hetero-market, confuse "fame" with "important." Are they really prepared to say that young Gay America can’t be interested unless there’s PeepHole Magazine — sorry, I mean People Magazine content? Why was Keith Boykin just sitting in the audience? Oh…right…they already had their African American. I find it very hard to believe…and understand…that they couldn’t find a Lesbian journalist or activist.
Melissa comported herself just fine. Forgive me for thinking we might have been able to come up with someone a tad more, I don’t know…appropriate?
I was torn as I watched the Presidential "debate" last night. Granted, as we are being constantly being reminded, this forum would never have happened a few years ago. Again, we are being told to be grateful for the crumbs we get from the Democratic Party table. And if you wanted to feel good…because "feel good" is what it’s all about anymore, right?…then Dennis Kucinish had to make you feel warm and puppyish all over. Kudos to HRC, who I have little if any respect for, for accomplishing…I don’t know…what? Citizen participation in the electoral process? Logo, too. Thought the audience reminded me of the early photos of second generation Mattachines who made all the women wear dresses and all the men wear suits so we didn’t scare the straight people. 
Bill Richardson, on the other hand, is obviously a clueless homophobe trying to convince everyone how well-meaning he is. The "squirm moment of the evening" tiara goes to him, hands down. It was gratifying that someone bothered to confront his "maricon moment" for which he gave a most unbelievable and insincere apology.
And yet, after all was said and done, and everyone made their "ick-factor" excuses for not providing equal rights as provided under the Constitution, nobody…that would be not one of the candidates, not one of the questioners and not even the moderator…bothered to make the distinction between civil marriage and ecclesiastic matrimony.
One is a civil right; the other is a religious ritual.
In theory, there’s supposed to be some sort of separation there.
Obviously, no one gets it.
Faerie Erections
Faerie Camp Destiny is a wonderful sanctuary in Vermont. And the faeries there have been busy…
This is the start of the new kitchen they’re putting up. For more information about Faerie Camp Destiny…and how you can provide financial support or helping hands…go here.
The Advocate Gets Something Right…sort of.
For The Advocate’s 40th anniversary issue they’re honoring 40 Gay heroes…and they’re asking for help. God knows they need it.
The list features 100 notable Gay people from the last four decades — politicians, artists, activists, and more. As usual, The Advocate confuses "famous" with "influential" or "hero."
They’re asking readers to help rank the people listed by voting for the people you feel have made the most significant impact. You can select up to 40 names.
We’re excited, thrilled, gratified and otherwise proud to see that our friends Malcolm Boyd and Mark Thompson have been included (along with the late Bob Hattoy and Harry Hay and several others.)
But then they also include Elton John…who’s quite wonderful, to be sure; but a hero? Someone who took how many years to finally come out (and was probably the last person to figure it out!) I don’t think so. His money enables him to make some kind of impact with HIV/AIDS, but in my book that’s the least you can do when you have that much money.I mean, thanks for the tunes, Elton, you’re a rock star. Not a hero.
And Rosie…again…luv ya Rosie, but hero? Heroes do the difficult thing when it’s hard to do it. You had to be practically dragged out of your closet. And you’ve certainly proved your mettle since coming out. But again…heroic? I don’t think so.
John Waters? Hell…I’d like to have dinner with John. But hero? I’m afraid being famous just isn’t enough. Feels too much like "crumbs from the table" to me.
They promise that they will determine rankings based on your votes plus editors’ input, and the top 40 heroes will be featured on the cover of the anniversary issue. Here’s what they say:
"What do we mean when we say "greatest Gay hero" of the past 40 years? First, the person must be entirely out. Second, it’s not enough to be supremely talented or superbly competent — that person must have done something significant to improve our LGBT lives."
But then they proceed to mix up people who are simply famous with people who have actually done something, offered something, created something for LGBT people. For my money, "heroic" is standing up and being counted when you’ve got something to lose (Take Off the Masks). A hero writes a book that bears his soul (Gay Body, Gay Soul; Gay Spirit: Myth & Meaning). It’s like their covers….here’s a question: How many actual Gay people have they had on their covers in the last two years?
Here’s who I voted for: Tammy Baldwin, John Boswell, Malcolm Boyd, Martin Duberman, Bob Hattoy, Harry Hay, Frank Kameny (who, let’s not forget, The Advocate recently declared dead…of AIDS. He’s not), Jim Kepner, Tony Kushner, Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon, Armistead Maupin, Paul Monette, Joan Nestle, Bayard Rustin, Vito Russo, Mark Thompson and Urvashi Vaid. There are a few others I voted for, too.
They left out Eric Rofes. I added him.
You gotta love this…
Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God’s law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye’s shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.
Leviticus 11:9-12 says:
9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
Deuteronomy 14:9-10 says:
9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.
A Poet of Our Own…
I’m doing this because Dan, who is, I believe, immoderately modest, won’t.
Dan, who so ably and beautifully conspires with me to realize this idea he and I share called White Crane, is also a poet of the D.C. variety, and has two poems recently published in the Delaware Poetry Review.
One of them is a particular favorite of mine…Emily Dickinson At the Poetry Slam because I love Emily Dickenson…and because I love Dan.
And please, visit his website to see more…
Living on Air
I wanted to share this picture.
This is one of those "air plants" my partner and I picked up at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, our local gem. Though you can’t see it in this picture (and be sure to click on it to see it enlarged), it isn’t sitting in any soil whatsoever (it is in the window, on the sill, of our shower). It sits on top of the wood chips that cover the roots of another plant we have in the bathroom, an orchid plant.
This morning, for the sixth time, the purple "protuberance,"…erection, if you will…you see on the right, has pushed it’s way up and out of the ensiform, or sword-shaped "structure" (iris leaves are "ensiform"…and I’m not sure if this is a flower or the purple bloom is the flower…) that sits on the gray, woody stalk of the air plant. I may be mistaken, but I believe this plant is either a bromeliad, or closely related to them.
The technical name for the air plant and bromeliads are "epiphytic plants," amazing because they do not require soil to grow. Because there is no soil, watering is, in the main, via humidity. If you visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, (and I highly recommend it and the Steinhardt Pavilions where there are bonsai in what they call the Starr Bonsai Museum that are more than 125 years old and very lovely botanical art downstairs) which we do almost weekly, you can see these plants hanging in mid-air in the orchid pavilion, plants to which they are also related.
Air plants derive their nutrition from the air, rain water nutrients and decomposing matter (mostly leaves and dead insects) that may be caught among their air roots or in their leaves. Another incredible example, epiphytic plants absorb nitrogen in the air produced by lightning! In the wild, most epiphytic plants are attached to tree bark as a brace but do not in any way feed off the tree.
Anyway…every time it blossoms it is amazing to me, and I wanted to share it and preserve it in some way. Each of the individual components of this ensiform structure has had one of these beautiful purple blooms, tipped with the tiny plume.
We’ve also had pretty good luck with passion flowers actually fruiting! This is the flower we got on the right, and a picture of the fruit on the left: 
