Cranky Lesbian

It’s been almost a week since I last mentioned Jodie Marsh (whose lesbionic backstory you can read about here), and I think we’d all agree that’s been almost a week too long. Just as you can never have enough hats, gloves and shoes, you can never have enough news about Britain’s favorite attention-seeking clown hooker.

With that in mind, I point you in the direction of Dlisted, the brainchild of the gayelle-crazed homosexual Michael K (not to be confused with Gregory K, the kid who divorced his parents, or Kafka’s Josef K — I’m not sure how either Gregory or Josef would feel about Michael’s one true love, the celebrated lesbian folk hero Rojo Caliente), and its recap (complete with image gallery) of Jodie lezzing out for photographers the other night with her girlfriend Nina.

A Round of Applause for Timothy Egan

“There she goes again, mentioning us to Matt Lauer!”

Timothy Egan, the Times writer and noted author, wonders what the hell is going on in Alaska, and the resulting blog post is a thing of beauty. Seriously Alaskans: WTF?

Speaking of Alaskans and WTF?, Sarah Palin gave her first press conference today. If you guessed that it was barely longer than a Ramones song, you are correct and deserve some kind of prize. (Truly, Jason Biggs lasted longer with that pie than this woman who wanted to be the vice-president of the United States lasted in front of reporters. It’s insane.)

You can choose from the lovely assortment of paperclips on my desk (there’s a green one, a pink one and a bunch of boring old regular ones) or the Louise Brooks videocassettes I can’t bring myself to throw out despite the fact that Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl are now available on DVD. It seems morally wrong to send anything bearing Louise’s image to the landfill, even though I’m relatively certain the tapes and their cases don’t have feelings.

Can Anyone Really Be This Stupid?

I know I’m a bit late on this — I was away from my computer most of the day yesterday — but having finally read what Scott Eckern, who resigned as artistic director of the California Musical Theater on Wednesday amid protests over his $1,000 donation to the anti-gay Yes on Proposition 8 campaign, had to say for himself, I gotta admit: I’m a bit baffled.

In what universe does a statement like “I understand that my choice of supporting Proposition 8 has been the cause of many hurt feelings, maybe even betrayal. It was not my intent. I honestly had no idea that this would be the reaction” make sense? He’s been working with the gays for more than 25 years; he knows we’re a bit on the sensitive side even when we’re not being stripped of newly granted marriage rights by our “loving and supportive” friends and relatives and coworkers.

Update: I’m At Least a Little Gay

In response to this bit of teeth-gnashing earlier in the week, I was pointed in the direction of Channel 4’s amusing Gay-O-Meter, which — drum roll, please — tells me I’m 33% gay and even refers to me as “straight acting.”

That, my friends (sorry, I’m still having John McCain flashbacks), is poppycock. It is categorically false. It is untrue and inaccurate. I’m running out of words here, but rest assured that I’m half-tempted to have Bert Fields send the Gay-O-Meter a letter that’s heavy on mentions of defamation and retractions and public apologies. If necessary, I could produce a sworn written statement from my aunt, who claims she knew I was gay by the time I was a toddler. (And she knows from these things, having once been a gay toddler herself.)

While I liked the Gay-O-Meter quiz, I couldn’t help but feel I’d been penalized for not having tattoos, not being handy with a wrench, never having worn leather pants, and being non-violent. So I retook the test, changing my answers to those questions, and suddenly I was 17% gayer. But does that really make sense? Since when are lesbians members of the Village People?

Defiant Palin Vows, “I Will Never Stop Being Stupid”

On November 11, 2008

If you want to get all technical, Sarah Palin didn’t really vow to never stop being stupid. But she came pretty close when she lashed out at bloggers in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, calling them “kids in pajamas sitting in the basement of their parents’ homes” — ostensibly because they’ve been critical of her. (FOR BEING AN IDIOT!, I might add.)

I guess she’s forgetting the part where she probably owes her selection as John McCain’s running mate to the efforts of a college student and blogger named Adam Brickley. As Jane Mayer wrote last month in The New Yorker:

In February, 2007, Adam Brickley gave himself a mission: he began searching for a running mate for McCain who could halt the momentum of the Democrats. Brickley, a self-described “obsessive” political junkie who recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told me that he began by “randomly searching Wikipedia and election sites for Republican women.” Though he generally opposes affirmative action, gender drove his choice. “People were talking about Hillary at the time,” he recalled. Brickley said that he “puzzled over every Republican female politician I knew.” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas, “waffled on social issues”; Senator Olympia Snowe, of Maine, was too moderate. He was running out of options, he recalled, when he said to himself, “What about that lady who just got elected in Alaska?” Online research revealed that she had a strong grassroots following; as Brickley put it, “I hate to use the words ‘cult of personality,’ but she reminded me of Obama.”
Brickley registered a Web site — palinforvp.blogspot.com which began getting attention in the conservative blogosphere. In the month before Palin was picked by McCain, Brickley said, his Web site was receiving about three thousand hits a day. Support for Palin had spread from one right-of-center Internet site to the next. First, the popular conservative blogger InstaPundit mentioned Brickley’s campaign. Then a site called the American Scene said that Palin was “very appealing”; another, Stop the A.C.L.U., described her as “a great choice.” The traditional conservative media soon got in on the act: The American Spectator embraced Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, praised her as “a babe.”

Palin’s rise from obscurity, her $150,000 wardrobe, her trip to Saturday Night Live, can all be traced back to a kid blogger. Shouldn’t she be thanking the blogosphere instead of telling it to fuck itself?

And by the way, Sarah, when I write hurtful things about you from my parents’ basement, I’m usually dressed in waders, the better to navigate the flood of bullshit that’s unleashed every time you talk to the press.

Breaking News: I Might Not Be Gay!

On November 10, 2008

Well, okay, that’s a bit of a sensationalistic headline, but I wanted to make sure I have your attention. Just moments ago, as I was looking at this, my very own website (which I only peek at through my fingers, like I’m watching a horror movie or a live Liza Minnelli performance), an advertisement caught my eye. It said something like: “Are You a Lesbian? Take This Test and See!”

I had a few minutes to spare, so I thought I’d take the test and find out. Even though I consider myself to be pretty obviously gay, others aren’t always as convinced. My siblings, for example, didn’t believe me when I came out to them. It took my sisters several months to realize I wasn’t kidding. Even after I got my parents to vouch for my gayness (I remember it like it was yesterday, calling them into the room so I could wave towards my sisters and impatiently demand, “Will you tell them I’m gay?”), they regarded me with skepticism, convinced I was secretly dating a male friend.

She Hasn’t Worked With Brett Ratner?

On November 10, 2008

“Tell Godard I’d love to work with him but I have a prior engagement.”

From a Haaretz interview with actress Jeanne Moreau in support of her latest film, One Day You’ll Understand, a partial list of directors she has worked with in the almost 60 years she has been making movies:Francois Truffaut, Orson Welles, Michelangelo Antonioni, Louis Malle, Jacques Demy, Luis Bunuel, Jean Renoir, Joseph Losey, Elia Kazan, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Amos Gitai.

No Michael Bays (though she has worked with Luc Besson) or Ron Howards or anything of the sort. It’s enough to send a thrill up your leg, as Chris Matthews might say.

Arnold Consoles the Gays He’d Been Ignoring

On November 10, 2008

Are we sure The Terminator wasn’t influenced by Cruising?

Would it kill Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured above at his favorite leather bar) to stick with a position on gay marriage? As this Los Angeles Times article so neatly lays out:

In past statements, he has said he personally believes marriage should be between a man and a woman and has rejected legislation authorizing same-sex marriage. Yet he has also said he would not care if same-sex marriage were legal, saying he believed that such an important societal issue should be determined by the voters or the courts.
Following that position, he publicly opposed Proposition 8, which amends the state Constitution to declare that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
Today, Schwarzenegger urged backers of gay marriage to follow the lesson he learned as a bodybuilder trying to lift weights that were too heavy for him at first. “I learned that you should never ever give up. . . . They should never give up. They should be on it and on it until they get it done.”

It’s nice that Governor Schwarzenegger, the star of such cinematic masterpieces as Red Sonja and Junior (oh, the side-splitting hilarity of a pregnant man! It was almost as funny as casting Schwarzenegger as a scientist), has decided that gays and lesbians are deserving of civil rights after all.

It’s also nice that he’s encouraging us to keep fighting for equal treatment under the law.

What isn’t nice is that he didn’t keep his promise to fight Proposition 8. Instead, he chose over and over again to remain mostly quiet on the issue in the crucial weeks leading up to the vote.

Maybe a guy who has blemishes like Raw Deal and Jingle All the Way on his résumé isn’t overly concerned with his legacy, but Schwarzenegger’s failure to stand up to the Yes on 8 crowd will not be forgotten. And he owes us all — not just Californians, but everyone around the country who supported No on Proposition 8 — an apology.

The Boys in the Band Comes to DVD

On November 9, 2008

Movie buffs, it’s time to get this week’s Netflix queue in order if you haven’t already, because Paramount will release William Friedkin’s gay “classic” (in quotes because your mileage may vary) The Boys in the Band on DVD Tuesday.

Love it or hate it — and I know a few of you hate it — it’s a milestone movie, it’s a part of our history, and it should have been released on DVD, complete with documentaries and audio commentaries, years ago.

I’m not much of a Mart Crowley fan, but I look forward to seeing if Paramount was able to clean up the film’s image quality and checking out all the special features. Until the Criterion edition of Chungking Express comes out later this month, it’s the most exciting DVD arrival of November.

For a blast from the past, you can read what the Times had to say about The Boys in the Band in March of 1970.

This Is Why Charlotte Converted for Harry