Toshi Yanagi /JIMMY KIMMEL BAND

although i do not watch "late night t.v."....i am excited by Jimmy Kimmel's hiring Toshi Yanagai to play with his "band"......yet another legacy of Zappa!

SALLY RAND

I met my step-father, Tom, in Chicago back in 1968 to dine in a restaurant that utilized topless serving girls..........Tom, who was somewhat embarassed by the scenerio, recalled the more "tasteful" experience of having attending a performance by Sally Rand at a Alabama State Fair, during his youth.......He had seen her famous "Fan Dance" as well as the "Balloon Dance" and thought our Chicago entertainment was tasteless and demeaning........Of course, we didn't leave in disgust, did we? The next evening I drug Tom to see a production of THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE....which was a far cry from ANNIE GET YOUR GUN! I wonder what he'd have thought of VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM! Tom was embarassed by Captain Eddy's Whizbang playing cards..........

the perfect face

the "ideal" face that represents the current standard for ideal beauty is always changing......this year, that look is a combination of Jamie Bell, Jude Law, Patrick Dempsey, Jensen Ackles, Hayden Christensen, Robert Pattinson and Milo Ventimiglia morphed together into this concoction.......Cinema technology will soon enable "creating" movie stars whose faces are exactly as needed........here comes Natalie Portman/Kiera Knightly to act opposite our new perfect man.....

ANDRE NOBLE

Yet another tragedy, now forgotten......well..he wasn't Michael Jackson or River Phoenix, or Keith Ledger or Kurt Cobain or any of the other countless number of established actors/performers who have succumbed to death by drug-poisonings and overdoses......Andre was on a naturalist expedition in Canada and died of an overdose of monkshood's sap......His legacy is the sensitive film, SUGAR, in which Andre and Brendan Fehr do their take on MY PRIVATE IDAHO.....

FOLLIES

age 12.. i was already interested in artsy movies like this one with Marilyn Miller.....they were shown on channel 17, and I watched them with our ironing woman, Lucy, who is, incidentally, still alive...she must be 100! I found some Ruth Etting albums at the goodwill store and discovered Busby Berkely much later......My parents liked Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, and I don't think they considered it odd that I liked much of the stuff they liked........At least I didn't argue with them over the "old stuff" that they preferred! I eagerly anticipated old Maurice Chevalier movies and loved the Gail Storm show and December Bride.......and...hehehe....Lucy and I watched the Liberace show after school! All those Korean era war films of the early 50's? I never gave them the time of day....Why should |, when Eleanor Powell, Jeanette and Nelson, & Fred and Ginger were around to lift my hopes for a world of Art and Music!

SPIKE JONES AND HIS CITY SLICKERS

A NATIONAL COMIC TREASURE, HE IS! As a kid in 50's Huntsville, I looked forward to this nonsense on Saturday mornings at the Lyric Theater.......I knew that there was "another world" somewhere out there and Spike was it's spokesman! I'd go out for some chocolate-covered maraschino cherries during the newsreel about the Korean "conflice"....then return for some good old Flash Gordon and a half dozen Looney Tunes....

Harvey Fierstein

Harvey was pissed that I crowned Chiwetel.......so here's last year's model.........with his boyfriend, Matthew Broderick.....

HEY, SHIRLEY, THE BOY'S ARE RETRASHING BROADWAY

This number...no pun.....from SWEET CHARITY, has retained its popularity, all these years, because it was SEXY! Now the emboldened outed stage performers can take it on! Remember Florence Henderson? She was part of the cast! Bob Fosse would have liked it, i think...What's next....let's see.....how about Swan Lake....no....the Ballet Trockadaro's done that already....years ago.......hmmmm.....how about STREETCAR with Harvey Fierstein in Brando's role and Megan Fox as Blanche.......hmmmm, maybe not! These boys could just as well perform in a naked production of the ballet, SPARTACUS......first, of course, the producers would have to replace Khachaturian's music with some really racy Sondheim or some blindly ambitious Phillip Glass.......well...that won't happen......Glass is a one trick pony, isn't he?

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Of the seemingly countless number of drag queens that audiences seem to be universally accepting of, Chiwetel Ejiofor is my personal favorite.. of the set which has included both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Dustin Hoffman, Guy Pierce, William Hurt, John Lone, Terence Stamp, Alec Guiness, Patrick Swayze, Tim Curry, Cary Grant....the list goes into the hundreds!......even teen movies have at least a few dozen examples......Dr. Frankenfurter, Hedwig and Tootsie...even Charles Peirce (a real drag queen) have even become iconic...Cross-dressing seems to be far more popular than the general public would ever like to admit......many heterosexual men are really attracted to women who look like drag queens, have silicon body parts, bleached and/or dyed hair and who exaggerate the 'fairer' sex's looks and ways.......On the other hand, many of these same people feel uncomfortable around these daringly explicit and other-worldly beings......I think every man should, at least once in his life, don an outfit that suits him and check out the "woman" in him........When I was 24, I was invited to a soire' at Clayton Spears', who was..at the time.....the manager of Atlanta's TIFFANY & CO store......he asked me to be outrageous because he wished to stage a theatrical event, at his home, to entertain his jaded clients.....so...I borrowed an Oscar De La Renta outfit from the Sak's 5th Avenue Designer Salon, then managed by my friend Ralphe Baker, had George Hererra of the Sak's Hair Salon and my friend Sonya Nickel create this femme persona from the neck up; and arm in arm with the most beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent man that I could convince to be my "date"....Rick O. Flynn, who dressed as a very young Mehr Baba, who had been something of a young dandy himself, I headed to the Plaza Towers, in size 12 heels.......making a very theatrical appearance.....Even though i was totally upstaged by my old acquaintance, Rachel Wells, who appeared, practically naked, oiled and glitter-covered...with a giant boa constrictor wrapped about his shoulders..and accompanied by two handsome oiled, Ethiopian Adonises. I have never felt the need to go to so much bother to create an "effect"......but I laud those who can and do......even Beyonce' has to haul ass to look like that! By the way....I went "as" Tallulah Bankhead, who...ironically enough... is from the same home town as both John (Rachel) Wells and myself.........

ESCAPING TO THE RENAISSANCE...... THE RESISTANCE OF THE SENTENTIOUS ESTABLISHMENT

THE ARTISTS WHO WERE THE RENAISSANCE WERE ALSO THE MOST CONDEMNED BY THOSE WHO SOUGHT TO DEFINE AND CODIFY IT.....THE TENDRILS OF RELIGION CONTINUED AND CONTINUE TO COIL ABOUT FREE WILL, COVERING THE WILLING EYES AND EARS OF WOULD-BE SENTIENT BEINGS, EMERGING, HEADS PUSHED BACK INTO THE NIGHTMARES OF IGNORANCE AND FEAR BY FEAR AND IGNORANCE, WHICH SEEK SELF-PERPETUATION........

....CARAVAGGIO ENTERS A DOOR INTO THE REALITY OF ART, NOT THROUGH THE T.V. EYE, BUT HIS OWN......

SHORTBUS

John Cameron Mitchell is the undisputed Prince of gay cinema....if only for HEDWIG and SHORTBUS. His work is not for BLOCKBUSTER'S, regretfully, which has no problem renting out a thousand varied direct-to-dvd slasher/basher films that I've never even heard of......but, please.....no homocinema.....I think John's films certainly transcend the sexuality in them.....elevated to Art.......but, still....no SHORTBUS for BLOCKBUSTER'S...

CASH IN THE JUNGLE WITH Alistair Appleton

When Alistair's not informing middle-class Brits that they can get £6o for their 1950's reproduction pine breakfront, or that the canceled stamp on an old postcard from Auntie Mame is worth a thousand, he's up to more visionary stuff.....and, he does add a lot of sex-appeal to the dreary task of dragging old stuff from closets, after all......Ali seems to know a lot about this, doesn't he? Hmmmmmmm.......Watch out for hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, Alistair...that old breakfront may look better than you would normally think! Alistair's just a well-rounded, intelligent and conscious fellow with his mind in lots of things....drinking the Universe!

http://www.alistairappleton.com/blog/

link to my blog entry about ayahuasca

NAUGHTY NEIL

I WAS SO GLAD TO SEE NEIL PATRICK HARRIS HOSTING THE TONY AWARDS THIS YEAR.....AND, DEMONSTRATING THE GROWING ACCEPTANCE OF HIGH-PROFILE GAY ACTORS AND PERFORMERS, HE ACTUALLY GOT AWAY WITH SINGING THIS DURING THE CLOSING CREDITS:

“Chris Sieber, please!

“Performing on your knees?

http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:88dTNJg6f9hGEM:http://www.broadwaycares.org/images/events/bares2002image22.jpg

He followed that with:

“I hope, tonight,

“When they’re high as a kite,

“To be there, when the Hair, cast disrobes!”

Harris continued:

“This show could not be any gayer,

“If Liza was named Mayor,

“And Elton John took flight …

“The curtain falls,

“I’m off to hit some big Tony balls!

LIGHTS DIM....ROLL CREDITS!

EPROMs by Mantic

Percy, Mary and Lord Gordon

as a youth, i got my take on historical artists through old 30's and 40's movies.......It was not until I was in college that I perceived them in any more realistic manner.......costumed Lady Caroline Lambs and Lord Byrons, Percy Shellys, Liszts......even Henri Gautier-Brezka......were introduced to me through the semi-biographical fictions depicted in old movies........In the 1970's my take on 19th century artists was through the eyes of Ken Russell's excesses..........My favorite writers, poets and composers seem to have arisen in the first 20 years of each century, when radical changes were taking place.........that time is again just ahead.....what is in store? Historical figures were the characters in Movies....Now, the Movie Stars are the characters whom the real characters once were..... What does it matter since Art reflects Life reflecting Art........It doesn't.....except to historical scholars, that is!





Mozart in the Age of Enlightenment by Seth Carlin

behind the red door.........still a celluloid closet

justin berfield and Ricky Dôminguez, Hayden Christensen and Trevor Blumas, aaron carter and elijah wood still remain closeted to their fans and the public.......
perhaps, some day soon, it just won't matter who does what with whom, in hollywood....
but...for now, anyway....mum's the word...

A teenager, watching Boccaccio '70, I was riveted to Anita's giant bosom....she had already dropped her ample brassiere to accentuate her buxom beauty.......an Italian delightful disaster.....

DENTAL ANXIETY

from age 5, when my mother tricked me into a visit to the dentist's "office" where I kicked the round milk-glass instrument tray across the room, breaking it and scattering probes and picks across the linoleum flore, fleeing from the huge,chromed hypodermic needles and pliers to the preferred environment of Becker's Notion's Store......I have always arrived at even my trusted and beloved dentist, Baxter Bender's, with high anxiety, high blood-pressure and unmitigated dread and fear.....I think this all began with my experiences with the old WWI army dentist that I first experienced as a kid.....



and, incidentally, "Little Shop......" remains one of my favored musicals....Frank Oz is a genius, isn't he!

DEREK JARMAN.......ARIA

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DEREK JARMAN.......ARIA
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THIS MAY BE MY FAVORITE VIDEO OF AN ARIA PERFORMANCE....... FROM THE FILM, "ARIA"...
AND THE HEAVENLY TILDA, TOO!

AMALIA .....MARIA

HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC

Pinter, Mamet....cynical realism....deep in our hearts we all dream of romance....even within the bitterest heart is this longing for the purest love......

THE ROSSELINI SEX EDUCATION VIDEOS

suitable for even the most conservative school system..........yea, Isabella!....tell it like it is.......A far cry from Saddest Music or Blue Velvet....I'm grateful that she is moving the educational filmmaking.......