The Ancient Ways of the Pom-Pom Artist

There were many baffling and heinously awful *performances* on Stairway to Stardom, a late-70's/early-80's cable-access talent show run out of Queens, New York.
But this is just stupid.

I don't even know where to begin or end. A drum-heavy cover of "Fame"? The whitest-dancing black girl ever? Those HORRID kicks!? I mean, no way she was actually one of the star cheerleaders from her school. And...um...does anyone else think she's totally just making this shit up as she goes along?! I mean, it's all over the place. Then she, like, vogues. And then she vogues to the wall. And when she finally picks up the pom-poms....she doesn't really do anything with them. At one point she's sorta just standing there, keeping time, and fumbles with her hold on the left one. Weird.

I looooooooove her enthusiasm, though. Bitch can sell it.

:-)

In the Parade

Ok, so first I was in the Pride parade. A year later my parents were in it (marching with PFLAG, or PFFLAG, or PFFLAAGBTQBBQ or whichever new letters have recently been added. You all know what I'm talking about anyway).

Then, in Pride 2008, we marched together. My parents with their signs, and me with my lil'homemade banner that read, in pure LittleKiwi fashion, MY PARENTS ROCK!!!
Here's a video that captures a few of my fave observations from the parade. I just randomly found it on youtube, and amazingly, me and my parents are in it. WOOHOO!
It's amazing....this parade is about Diversity and Love. You see all these images of scantily clad men and women that social-conservatives take issue with. (Um...as far as I'm concerned, it's a day about being who you are, no matter who you are, so by all means, shake what your momma gave you, my friends. it don't harm me!)

Pride is what you make of it. For me, my friends, and my family, it's about sharing stories, sharing love, and bonding with my Brothers and Sisters I have not yet met, even though we've shared very richly emotional journey in our own lives. The Old-Fort gays who opened the door for a young guy like me.  The New Blood, just coming out now, in the New Millenium.  I love meeting and spending time with both. Sharing Our Collective Histories. Memories of how things were. Hopes for how things will one day be.

PRIDE FOREVER
Sexy girls. Sexy boys. But the biggest cheers from the crowd? PFLAG, baby.
Things to watch for:
0:13 - um...what kind of dance move is that?
0:15 - eek. There is where vogue goes to die. Bless.
1:00 - funny green bike eco-cabs! woohoo!
2:36 - YAY! It's me and my parents!! WOOHOOOO! Look how happy and proud we are! YAY!
2:47 - my parents hug. AWWWWWWWWWWWW!

YAYY!

Stairway to Stardom!

Queens, New York. The early 1980's. Local cable-access "talent" showcase. I've been obsessed with these for years, and now I hope to share them with you all.
Enjoy. Hairdresser! Lyrical genius from a woman dressed in a garbage bag. Watch how tired she gets halfway through!



Precious Taft. PRECIOUS. TAFT. That's her NAME, ladies and gentleman. Precious fucking Taft. Ouch, that's gotta hurt. I have no idea what this monologue (set to tinkly Soap-opera piano music) is about. "And sometimes he was cinnamon.."? Huh? What the hell does that mean? Is he a cookie? A pie? She's trying SOOO hard to cry. I was half convinced she was gonna take a dump on camera. And the dude at the end?!?! HILARIOUS!



Ah....FAME!...as performed by what appears to be The Hunchback of the Queensboro Bridge. Jeez. Straighten your back, girl! Um, and none of this is really dancing...it's just sorta walking around, and shuffling, and doing the same 'non-move moves' over and over again. Like her two-footed variation on the pirrouette? Nice. Amazingly, she's has no formal dance training. I'm stunned.



Fuck, I HATE these bitches. Look how self-satisfied they are. I bet they tortured their families with this routine at every goddamn bar-mitzvah, bris and family-gathering for years. I can see it now....It's Shoshi's wedding "No! Don't invite Aunt Linda, she'll do that stupid Food song!"
I'm sure everyone laughed the first time. Out of politeness....but please, this is the kind of "act" that happens at a party, when they tell all the guests to "Gather 'round!" and you're corralled into watching an irony-free wankfest of delusional idiocy. When things like this happen at parties, I take it as my cue to leave immediately or get inebriated as fast and hard as humanly possible.

Is It Wrong To Have A Crush On Terry Fox?

I sure hope not.
ok. Terry Fox. Let's just get this right out in the open: I think he was one of the finest human beings every to grace this earth.let's get one more thing out in the open: i have a crush on him.i know, he's dead. but i have plenty of crushes on dead people (gene kelly, james dean, scott noll,,etc)but for some reason, whenever i say "terry fox was hot" people look at me like i said something evil. like, how is it WRONG to be attracted to terry fox!?!?let's look at the stats:

1. He had cancer, and lost a leg to it and STILL ran across the country.

2. he wore little short shorts while doing it.

3. and a tight teeshirt

4. and he had a hot runners body

5. he's forever 21....so, we have a hottie who in the face of a disease that eventually took his young life, found the strength and courage to keep running. THAT IS SO FUCKING SEXY!

am i wrong?!?wouldn't it be more offensive to say "terry fox isn't sexy because he only had one leg" ? it made him SEXIER! lord, scars are hot, a prosthesis is like a sexier extension of that!look at young guys in wheelchairs. many are hot. why? cuz a lot of the ones who are in wheelchairs due to spinal cord injury were extreme athletes. hot adventurous dudes who did extreme stuff and were injured. so they're kickass punky hot. and due to being in a wheelchair, have hot upper bodies. OH! Or that documentary "MURDERBALL" about the para-and-quadriplegiacs who play murderball in their wheelchairs? Dude, they're fucking S E X Y!
i'm not fetishizing it, i'm simply saying, there's something sexy about people who've put themselves on the line physically, and refuse to be victimised and weak about it. fighting spirit man, it's so attractive.
and terry fox, beautiful inside and out, will be forever young. 21 years old, running forever, for an incredible cause. hot. hot hot. HOT HOT HOT.

love you man :-)

Beauty Fades, Dumb is Forever

That's a quote from Judge Judy Sheindlin, folks. I love her. LOOOOVE her. And it's great quote. And it's the sad truth. I'm continually feeling up and down about myself, and about others, and about people in general when it comes to issues of attraction, and what people want in a partner.
Sometimes you run across people so vapid and shallow that you just want to...well...I won't even go there. But here's an example of what I'm talking about. The following is a direct copy-and-paste from an online gay dating site profile. The guy is 29. A "headless horseman". (the name I give guys who shows pics of their naked bodies with the head cropped off). He has the kind of muscle tone that shows hours of daily gym work. But this is what he has to say......

"Hey. I'm looking for someone around my age who's muscular, fit, super fit, who's pics are for real, and who is really cool and strong and fit."

Wow. Do you think he's into guys who are fit? Say fit again. I fucking dare you. FIT. His screen-name should be "Jacob Three-Three." I mean, come ON people! Even for a gay online dating site that's just fucking pathetic. That's not a sentence, it's an affront to humanity. I can't be the only one who finds stupidity completely unsexy. Look! He even used "WHO'S" instead of "WHOSE"!!! This man is 29 years old!!! I've had more enlightened conversations with my dog. And when I say dog, I mean canine, and not the dyslexic God.

Remember that Sex and the City where Carrie gets the note from Natasha (Mr. Big's younger fiancee) and she used "their" instead of "there" and she gets a kick out of it? I get a kick out of that shit too.....for a moment. Then this sorta sadness hits me...because even though I can recognise the errors, I'm completely aware that a lot of the world...doesn't care. They don't. They see a hot person, and they forgive all stupidities. It's not fair. Why did I go to the trouble of becoming, oh, I don't know, LITERATE, if all guys want in a partner is something hot to show off on their arm? Why did I cultivate interests? Why did I bother learning anything about the world when the only thing that apparently matters is that each muscle group be buffed and toned for ultimate definition?

One time at the gym I made a comment to another friend that one of the guys he was checking out was "the biggest idiot I've ever met in my life". The Idiots friend overheard me and was like "that's really rude". I shrugged. Whatever. Like I care what the "friend" of this dumbass thinks. He's probably dumb too. But I actually engaged him in conversation. I said, "I know him. I've known him for years. I don't consider him smart or interesting. I find him almost criminally dull." Idiot's Friend (let's just call him Plebe The Mighty) said, "well, ok, but like brains aren't everything".......OOOHhhhhh,you can imagine what a comment like THAT does to a dude like me. I went on, "Do you think it's a bigger insult to comment on someone's lack of brains than it is to comment on their physical looks"? The guy said "yeah"...so I said, "then why aren't brains given more value in our community, and the rest of the fucking world, instead of muscles?"

There was a pause in the conversation that lasted about as long as the intermission between Act 1 and Act 2 of Gotterdammerung as Plebe The Mighty attempted to think. I never really got an answer. Oh well, I guess we'll never know......

Why is it that people are able to forgive anything cute? If person A is highly attracted to Person B and person B is simply NOT an outright asshole, person A puts person B on a pedastal of godliness. Here's a quick dramatization!
Person B: Hi, my name's Jacob Three-Three, I think cool people are awesome.
Person A: OMG, he's SO nice! He's the nicest guy ever! I like him!
Reality-Check Jones: No. He's not the nicest guy ever. He's inoffensively civil and uninteresting. He simply wasn't an asshole. That doesn't make him the Jesus of Hot.

What kind of existence is this? Not knowing shit about the world, not being for or against anything, and people just falling over themselves to sing the praises of someone who has...done WHAT exactly? Worked out a lot? Here's what a big muscular body means: you spend a lot of time doing repetitive movements with an increase in weight, thus increasing your muscle mass by default. Building muscle is a simple matter of human biology: it requires no thought process, no brains. You do the motions, the human biological makeup does the rest. I have nothing against people who exercise or work hard on their bodies. Fuck, I work out a few times a week. But I also read books. Engage people in open dialogues. Watch the news. I'm not saying "don't work out", I'm saying there's more to what you should be than simply a buffed-up shell of a man. I know plenty of hot, muscled and intelligent people. I just also know far too many hot, muscled dunces.

I'd say the same argument goes, in a way, to false-sophisticates. It's not what books you've read that counts, but what you've gleaned from them. It's not what school you went to, but what you learned from it, and how you apply what you've learned in your life.
But I stand by this: if you meet a funny, intelligent, interesting guy, he can always join a gym and build his body. It's simple. Even dumb people can do it, as we learned from Idiot and his friend Plebe The Mighty. But you can't take a dumb person with no personality and make them interesting or smart.
As Dorothy Parker once said, "You can lead a horticulture. But you can't make her think"
(Yes. the angsty gay kid quoted Dorothy Parker. viva la gay agenda! it works!)

Bartending this summer it was neat to see which customers flirted with which staffmembers, and in what manner. A lot of guys talked to me. Hehehe! It was fun. But the point is that they talked to me. Engaged me in conversation. Witty banter. Words were exchanged. Dialogue opened. And then you see how some guys (usually dressed in lame "Abercrombie-chic" clothes) look past you, to the hottie with the seriously rockin'bod, and they flirt by.....staring. Nobody really says anything. The eyes take on this vacant-glazed look like a drunk child seeing the world's biggest candybar, and they just sorta...stare at each other...and don't say anything witty, or funny, or...interesting. Are they psychic? Do they communicate via googly eyes and telepathy? Puke. I guess that's what I have to take from it. I can't be upset that I'm not the object of lust of muscular vegetables, and that really isn't the point of all this...

What was my point? I ask that so often....
I guess I'm just expressing a desire and a sadness. I wish people cared more about the things I care about. Ugh, how lame is that? wah wah wah, whiney little miseryguts littlekiwi thinks he's Holden Caufield. Ugh.
Sometimes the world is like one big Highschool Cafeteria, and you're frantically looking around for the "Drama Crowd" to save you, and give you shelter and reassurance that you're just as special as the Jock Crowd makes you feel tiny. That's what I'm saying. I wish there was more Drama Crowd. Wow. That insight took forever to find.....

Songs of the Moment

These are the songs that are currently rocking my world.
(in no particular order)

I'm Sailing Away - Styx
I can't help it! It's just so fucking awesome! He thought that they were angels! But to his surprise they climbed aboard their STARSHIP (they have a STARSHIP!!!) and sailed for the SKIES! I don't have a clue what this song is about but that doesn't stop me from singing it at the top of my lungs on the nightbus.

Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young - Fire Inc.
Take some bombastic nonsense lyrics and then marry them to a borderline Wagnerian series of cross-harmonic melodies and you have this six-and-a-half minute rock epic about....I don't know. But there are "revels" beginning, and fires are started, and the people...they're "dancing for the restless and the broken hearted"....ok..GREAT!

Be Here Now - Ray Lamontagne
Feel like bawling your eyes out? No? Then don't listen to this song. Feel like taking a 6 minute walk through an angel chorus and plucked guitar and haunted vocals that conjure visions of sunlight and snow and the ache of love? Have a fucking listen. If Sarah Polley were a song she'd sound like this. Just oozing restrained emotion and layers of deep meaning.

A&E - Goldfrapp
Perfect trip-pop documenting the awakening in a hospital emergency room after a night of pills...*sigh*... Calling her hospital gown a backless dress? Sublime.

Grab a Hold/Same Ol' Story/Rain on Me - Cyndi Lauper
Ok, so it's three songs from the Cynd-sters 2008 Bring Ya To Tha Brink album. But they contain the same brilliance: lyrics that are clever, intelligent, meaningful, and wrapped around them are the most insanely catchy melodies and synth-driven rhythms of the year. This is the album Madonna wishes she'd made with Hard Candy, and the album everyone should have bought instead. Best Dance Album of 2008.

Juliet of the Spirits - The B-52s
Impossible to resist dance-pop with references to classic foreign film? This is what being gay is supposed to be about.

Two Times Blue - Debbie Harry
Why am I the only person that has her "Necessary Evil" album?? Why don't the gays still love Debbie? Fuck Britney. Fuck Mariah (scratch that, push Mariah off a bridge instead). This song is glooooorious! She hasn't lost an ounce of her cool.

Rip Her To Shreds - Blondie
Some more Debbie-Lovin'. This song is just so cool. Play it. Learn it. Strut to it, and when you see a dull poseur bitch, Rip. Her. To. Shreds.

Dark Road - Annie Lennox
Annie. Pure Annie. A lovesong from the Lovely Lady of Aberdeen, to you.

Republican Voters Can Go Fuck Themselves

Enough is Enough. There is no excuse to vote Republican in the upcoming US Presidential Election. I've had enough of the fucking excuses of people saying "oh, well, blah blah blah money issues, blah blah blah student debt, blah blah blah The Children..." John McCain is a bigot. His running mate, who is the governor of...ALASKA?!

Seriously!!?

Alaska.

A-L-A-S-K-A. Right, because that's a cosmopolitain mecca of cultural diversity that would completely ready someone for, you know, running a country made of up diverse people from all walks of life. Seriously. ALASKA. And she's not only against gay marriage. Oh no. She's against gays, in general. Gay rights. Gay equality. Gay people. And she wants to overturn Roe Vs Wade. Yeah. She wants to make abortions illegal in the USA. Wow. So what does this woman like? Well....guns. She's a lifetime member of the NRA.So, quick recap. John McCain thinks a suitable running mate for his run for office is the governor of ALASKA who hates gays, wants to make abortions illegal, LOVES guns (yay! guns for everyone!), and proudly talks about "Traditional Christian Values" while the reality is that she has a 17 year old daughter who is currently pregnant. And unmarried. And 17. Did I mention she's 17? So what's the deal? It's wrong to be gay but it's ok to be an unmarried 17 year old and get pregnant in the eyes of her so-called "Lord"? Did this woman not teach her (seventeen year old) daughter about Safe-sex, and let her know that there are things called "birth control" that can stop you from becoming pregnant? I mean, she probably taught her daughter about "abstaining from sex", but we can also see that that didn't work out. because she's pregnant. and seventeen years old. Interesting....this woman is straight. And she's married. And her underage unmarried daughter is pregnant....how odd. Odd, because John McCain recently stated (as I mentioned in my previous post) that it was PROVEN (yes, PROVEN) that the success of a family is dependant on there being both a mother and a father. That's why he's against gays adopting. John McCain believes that gays should not be allowed to adopt children. Because they are PROVEN (in his words) to be incapable of creating a successful family and raising children properly. Good thing we have gun-toting, gay-hating, right-wing straight Conservatives to *properly* raise their children to engage in unprotected sex before they reach adulthood or, you know, marriage. Right. Fucking hypocrisy much?Here's the OFFICIAL military stance of the 2008 Republican Party (this is a direct quote, folks...)"To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America's Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service."Huh?Really? What? So....if you can have straight men and women fighting side by side why can't you have gay men and women? Us gays don't wanna fuck you straight people. We don't. You all smell terrible. It's a fact. Alaska governor Palin is also pimping out her son, with Down Syndrome, as part of her "Let's Ban Abortion" initiative. She's misdirected with this. Look, it breaks my heart that so many people choose to abort their pregnancies when they find out the child they're carrying has Down Syndrome. Breaks. My Heart. But that doesn't mean this woman needs to make abortions illegal, it means she needs to use her voice to be a champion for the educating of the public on the very rich, worthy lives that people with Down Syndrome are entitled to. She should be showing how much love is given and received by having a child with Down Syndrome, helping to throw down whatever stigma makes people choose to abort. But you don't simply push to outlaw abortions. That's misdirected, and shameful of her to be using her son as a prop in her battle.Republican Party on Gay Marriage:"Because our children's future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. "What children? I was a child once, and let me tell you, knowing about "traditional marriage" didn't do me a lick of good, knowing from a young age that I was not "like everyone else...."The ignorance of this Republican statement...what, assuming all children are straight???(of course, until corrupted and RECRUITED by the GAY AGENDA!!! RUNNNNN!!!!!!)And look at those words "protects marriage"...as if allowing gays to marry somehow *damages* the marriages of straight people....it's all spin. It's, to quote Shakespeare (because that's what us Evil Gays do...we quote theatre) "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing"That's pretty much the mind of a Republican, in a nutshell. Nut. hahah. pun not intended.So. While some of you may say "Well, I don't want to serve in the military, or adopt children, or marry, so this doesn't really affect me"....well, you're dead fucking wrong. It affects you, and it affects every young gay boy and girl who doesn't have the courage to come out, because their government doesn't recognise them as equal human beings.Do you stay in the lie that loves you, or embrace the reality that leads to persecution? Do you want to be loved for what you're not, or hated for what you are?Make a stand, America. No more bigotry. No more choosing to vote into power people that think the LGBT community are subhuman, and unworthy of equality. America was slow to give up slavery, then slow to end segregation, and now it's slow in accepting that gay people are worthy and deserving of equality.Do I love Obama? Not as much as I loved Pierre Trudeau, and Trudeau has given the world his supersexy and intelligent sons, to boot. But I still love Obama more than I love that bigoted ballsack John McCain, and his running mate, Alaskan Governor Annie Oakley Shootfags No-Abort Palin. It's time to end this reign of pseudo-Christian hypocritical hatred that has been the Bush Administration. The Republican party is a farce of insipid, and ignorant pandering to the lower common denominator. Vote Democrat. On behalf of Canada and the United Kingdom, we're begging you, VOTE DEMOCRAT! Are they perfect? No. Of course not. They're not Canadian. But it's better than voting in another President that is ignorant and prejudiced in matters of human diversity, a woman's right to choose, and let's just be honest here about something: the simple fact that when THE PRESIDENT says that one particular group of people is unworthy of the same equal rights and freedoms of others, and that same group is also NOT protected under hate-crime legislation.....well....what *is* he saying? He's saying "Go Ahead And Hate Them Because I Do, Too"It's fuel and validation to those who commit hatecrimes. Bush has blood on his hands. So does McCain. So does Palin. And so does everyone who votes Republican in 2008.There. I said it.

Goodnight, and Good Luck.

Shortbus and the State of Queer Cinema

This is a copy of a blog of mine from a few years back. I thought it appropriate to repost it here, as I recently re-watched Shortbus, and my love for it has only grown.

I've attached a pic of me and my armpit. Why? Why the heck not? I just feel like it. It's not hurting anyone. It's my armpit.

Rad.
:-)
SHORTBUS and the state of Gay Cinema Current mood: optimistic
Ahhh...gay cinema. now, go to the "gay/lesbian" section of your local videostore. if your store does not have a gay/lesbian section, you need to become a member of a different videostore. if there are no videostores with gay/lesbian sections where you live, then you live in the wrong place and you need to move.once you have moved, and become a member of a hip videostore, go to the Gay/Lesbian section.you will see the following types of films:

-Films where straight actors play gay men dying of AIDS.

-Films where straight women play lesbians who look like fashion models

-Films where straight pretty boys walk around shirtless and have ONE (mmmmaybe two) male/male kissing scenes.

-Films where gay people die from violent hatecrimes

-Films where nobody can act, but they're reasonably cute, and there's usually a C (or D) list 'gay celeb' in a featured role (and it's usually a gay guy from some american reality show...)

it's strange. the majority of the films you will find in the gay section are films with handsome boys prominently displayed on the cover, but the acting and writing are generally subpar, there's no real emotional resonance, and the sex/kissing always feels tacked-on and forced.
Enter, SHORTBUS.WOW.WOOOOW.i went into this film knowing it was "the sex film" by john cameron mitchell (hedwig baby! aka, one of my fave films of all time)so, all i really knew was there was sex, and i had some friends in it. what i didn't know was that i would have my emotional centre completely shattered while watching it, and completely put back together by the films end.

WOW.

here we have a film full of graphic honest-to-God sex, and all i'm feeling is an intense emotional connection to all of the characters and their stories. completely blindsided me.so, shortbus. i couldn't stop crying for 2 hours after i watched it. i stood outside the theatre with tears in my eyes, put my ipod on to Henry Mancini's greatest hits (love me some classic romantic music) and walked around the city that night, just "feeling" everything that Shortbus had stirred up inside me, which is a hell of a lot of emotions. i wasn't even sure if i could accurately describe everything i was feeling, i just knew i felt ALIVE.so that was fun.which brings me to gay cinema....here was a film FULL of hardcore sex. and i walked out with my heart touched.there are tonnes of films with "implied" sex, and i walk out being neither touched, nor sexually aroused.
it's funny. when you SEE sex on film, your mind doesn't think about it. it doesn't have to, it's seeing it, right there. but when a film has an "implied" sex scene, the use of editing, sound and camerawork tries to make you think you're seeing more than you actually are. it's tricking your mind into thinking about sex. so you're not focusing on characters, you're building up a sexual scenario in your head, which is a distraction from the characters on screen. show then fucking, and you focus on THEM. intesting how that works....
you know how films like Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, and practically every other "gay film" ever made is sorta "safe" , for heterosexual viewing? like, we can't make it TOO GAY or else the straighties won't "get it"? Shortbus doesn't pull that shit.NOW, i think there is a great time and place for "safe" gay films for straight people. as a medium, film can be a great educator/enlightener. films with non-threatening gay characters can open the minds of people who would previously not have thought that gay people are, you know, regular human beings. it can give people a new perspective, one that radically needs changing. let's face it, this IS a homophobic world we live in.so, while i appreciate the "gay films for straight people" that are being made, it was just so wonderful, as a gay man, to see a film that didn't fucking care if straight people didn't like it.the opening of the film is so graphically sexual, it practically dares the audience. it says "If you can't handle this, you might as well leave now". which is awesome. sometimes it's nice to see a gay film for gay people. telling our stories, and not caring what the straight world thinks. while i applaud filmmakers for tackling gay subject matter, and presenting it to a wide audience, my heart was overjoyed to FINALLY see a movie that told a story...to me. a gay guy.

To John Cameron Mitchell, and the cast/crew/creative team of Shortbus...THANK YOU. it was a profoundly moving experience, and incredibly cathartic to see "my story" told so well, and with such genuine feeling.Ladies and Gentlemen, the revolution has just officially begun...