Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

This is the world premiere of the first trailer for The Dark Place, from the same folks who brought us Judas Kiss. There are plot twists that I just didn’t see coming, and it’s refreshing to have a thriller with primarily gay characters. The reality is that most of the gay characters could have been straight (well, you’d have to swap out some of the actors to make that work) without changing the plot in the slightest, which really is a modern view on storytelling in gay cinema. It isn’t about coming out, AIDS, family acceptance of you being gay, or any of the tired tropes. It’s a real thriller, with a beautiful setting, gorgeous actors with complicated relationships. The…

Huffington Post today writes about Bob Mizer and a Tom of Finland exhibit, parts of which you can see on the video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/tom-of-finland-virtual-tour_n_4645859.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

This movie was on a list of best gay movies, and had a 90% critics rating at rottentomatoes.com, so I filled some empty space on a Saturday night watching it. I hadn't gathered that it was a movie that had as a central character a crack pipe, and probably wouldn't have watched it had I known ahead of time. But the lead character, Eric, is an engaging guy, an aspiring film maker, and kind of cute. After some one night stands, he meets the closeted lawyer Paul, who has a girl friend and a job, and, we find out, a crack habit. Eric learns this on the second date, yet pursues Paul anyway. What ensues is a sometimes very erotic relationship which we view over a period of nin…

So avoiding work as ever through mindless Googling, I was tickled at how many people have set themselves to parody the great Wallace Stevens poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.' (Original here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174503) Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tortilla (2001) by Aaron Abeyta i. among twenty different tortillas the only thing moving was the mouth of the niño ii. i was of three cultures like a tortilla for which there are three bolios iii. the tortilla grew on the wooden table it was a small part of the earth iv. a house and a tortilla are one a man a woman and a tortilla are one v. i do not know which to prefer the beauty of the r…

A sweet romance, a dash of porn but mainly two characters I really liked and got interested in. Try this out if you're interested in webcomics or, if you're curious about the artform, TJ and Amal is a good place to start. http://tjandamal.com/

A fascinating collection of photos taken over the years in New York can be found here: http://galessandrini.blogspot.fr/ Just for example: Coney island:

Neat. The British Museum's top five masterpieces On the day the British Museum celebrates its 255th anniversary – and also a Google Doodle – here's our pick of the top five objects in its collection Happy birthday: The façade of the British Museum, which turns 255 today By Telegraph Reporters 12:52PM GMT 15 Jan 2014 The British Museum has today been celebrated with a Google Doodle, 255 years to the day after it first opened its doors. Back in 1759, it was housed in the Bloomsbury mansion, Montagu House (on the same site as today's building), with a collection based on the bequest of the physician, naturalist and collector Sir Hans Sloane. Initially, it att…

Lauren Davis on io9goofballery 4/14/13 11:00am Who knew illuminated manuscripts contained so many fart and poop jokes? There's plenty of silliness sitting in the margins of illuminated manuscripts, and the Tumblr The Discarded Image collects some of the goofiest of the goofy: cats licking their junk, murderous bunny rabbits, prankster monkeys, amorous animals, and tongue-wagging jokesters. But perhaps the highlight of blog is its extensive collection of butts, and the poop and fart humor that goes with it. NSFWish images below. Evidently, the fart-powered trumpet was always good for a laugh, as was the pooping monkey. Personally, I'm rather partial to the flora…

Here's the email I received from the Signature theater: Get an Exclusive First Look at Cole Horibe as Bruce Lee in KUNG FU! $25 Tickets On Sale Now Performances Begin Feb 4th! Kung Fu Click on the photo to learn more about Kung Fu. David Henry Hwang on Cole Horibe: "It was my wife who first saw Cole on So You Think You Can Dance. Knowing I was writing the show, she excitedly called me over. Cole's electrifying martial arts and dance performances immediately riveted me. He shared Bruce's charisma. We feel incredibly blessed to have found in Cole a star who can bring Bruce to life." Behind the Scenes Go behind the scenes on our photoshoot with Cole Horibe Buy Tic…

Just ended reading that book. Amazing. HIghly recommended. "Irving came up with the idea of writing a book about a bisexual character while thinking "what if", also commenting that the subject matter of bisexuality was familiar to him, having had fleeting crushes on boys while growing up. He also remarked on the subject of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s when he wrote that he and several family members of homosexual men had only discovered the sexual orientation of these men due to their being diagnosed as having the disease and dying of it. In One Person deals with several themes such as homosexuality, bisexuality and AIDS. Other elements mentioned in the book concern …

Today's Google doodle reminds it's the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God ravished my heart away the first time I read it. The opening alone... Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

Just a heads up that this season's Downton Abbey cranks into gear Sunday, Jan. 5, 9:00 pm Eastern. Also the reason they killed off the heir apparent Matthew Crawley in last year's auto accident is that the actor found better employment elsewhere. I really couldn't figure that one out since it left so many story lines dead in the water. Stupid me, I guess it's obvious once they tell you. http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/downton-abbey-season-4-premiere-review-slow-grief-stricken-start-1.6701598

Sean Paul Lockhart's (Brent Corrigan) new movie. He actually directs this one too.

I needed a laugh

The German film Free Fall (Freier Fall) is being hailed as Germany’s response to Brokeback mountain, a tale of forbidden love between two male partners. The film details a doomed extramarital gay love affair between police cadet Marc (Max Reimelt, Before The Fall) and his copper colleague Kay (Hanno Koffler, Summer Storm,) Brokeback Mountain’s cowboys are swapped out for policemen, and ‘fishing trips’ become secluded forest jogging sessions. The powerful film portrays what it means to lead a secret double life.

Last night the spouse put the movie Skyfall on the TV. It's playing on Netflix, and I loved it when I saw it in the theaters. Judi Dench is in it, and I like watching her on screen as well. So it seemed natural to go see her newest movie, Philomena. She doesn't play the tough head of a spy agency, but rather a lonely mother who had to give her son away when she gave birth at the age of 14, some 50 years back. Evil, cold, cruel Catholic nuns took her in, took her baby, and then subjected her to years of slave labor to pay their costs. We don't know what those costs were, especially since the nuns sold the babies they took in to US folks needing a baby or two. Philomena h…

My fall trip to New York was the worst in years. there was so little theater that interested me that I might have well stayed home. I saw Big Fish, and cannot quarrel with its poor box office, and I saw After Midnight, which is more of a jazz show than theater. It was just okay. The best show on my list was A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, starring the wonderful Jefferson Mays, but I took ill right before the show and had to skip it. Spring theater looks more promising. Neil Patrick Harris will star in the wonderful Hedwig and the Angry Inch. No doubt it will be the must see ticket for gays. I remember seeing it off-Broadway many moons ago and being just knocked …

For horror fiction aficionados, the whole 20th-century canon flows from one fount -- H.P. Lovecraft. Thought I had read 97.8% of everything ever written about him, but was tickled to have just come across this delightful article in the ever-surprising web site tvtropes.org: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/HPLovecraft ...possibly the best one-piece summation of the man & his works anywhere. He is acknowledged as a if not the primary influence by such as Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, of course Steven King, many others. Another summary: http://www.americanheritage.com/content/man-who-can-scare-stephen-king In August 1990 Brown University, in HPL's belo…

New book on Jack Kennedy's best gay friend. http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2013/11/22/photos-memories-jfk-his-gay-best-friend?page=0,9 From the wiki article on Lem, it's a fair conclusion that Jack (&probably Bobby) were aware he was gay.

Somewhere in 8th grade I picked up Brave New World and 1984 at the paperback book bin one Friday after school. I remember ripping through the Huxley by that Saturday night, while the Orwell sat around for another week. Aldous Huxley: the prophet of our brave new digital dystopiaCS Lewis may be getting a plaque. But Huxley, for his foretelling of a society that loves servitude, is the true visionary John Naughton The Guardian, Thursday 21 November 2013 Aldous Huxley pictured in the 1930s. 'We failed to notice that our runaway infatuation with the sleek toys produced by the likes of Apple and Samsung might well turn out to be as powerful a narcotic as soma.' Photogra…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/comedy/comedy-reviews/10454026/Eat-Pray-Laugh-London-Palladium-review.html http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/03/farewell-dame-edna.html

I just finished this book and I liked it a lot. It's a sexual biography of sorts and chronicles Gore Vidal's sexual life. Like many guys on here, Gore Vidal never met a hustler he didn't like. For him, hustlers were a useful outlet for his voracious sexual appetite. As a young man he was very handsome and slept with a number of Hollywood stars such as Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire and Charles Laughton (who was into scat and piss). He described himself as bisexual, but was 99 44/100s homosexual. In his view there was no such thing as a homosexual just homosexual acts (i.e., sucking and fucking). It seems he harboured internalized homophobic self-loathing which is unde…

I want to read this. The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal, Regional, and Traditional--from the Lost WPA Files By Mark Kurlansky A remarkable portrait of American food before World War II, presented by the New York Times-bestselling author of Cod and Salt. Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before …

One of my favorite books. Guy Debord's The Society of the SpectacleWill Self takes a walk through the banlieues of Paris and is astonished by the prescience of Debord's 1967 masterpiece, which so accurately describes 'the shit we're in'inS Will Self The Guardian, Thursday 14 November 2013 10.01 EST 'What other text from the 60s so accurately describes the shit we’re in?' – Will Self on Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. Photograph: Situationist International A small green tent was pitched on the small daisy-spotted patch of greenish grass. It looked tidily enough done; suitable perhaps for a summer rock festival. But this was just outside the Saint-Gratie…

American Ballet Theater just closed out a two-week fall season. Sigh.