… but enough about me

If I had ever entertained any hopes of passing for straight, I dropped them like shorts at a circle jerk when I gasped at my first sight of a poster advertising an intimate evening with Lynda Carter. She was on tour and was to make her New York cabaret debut at Feinstein’s at the Regency, performing jazz standards with a six-piece band.

Thanks to Lifetime Intimate Portraits: Lynda Carter, one of my dearest possessions on VHS, I know that she first tried to make it big as a singer way before Wonder Woman and before becoming a beauty queen.

I had no idea she was still at it. Something like this could be amazing — or completely awful — but either way, what self-respecting homosexual could pass it up?

Don’t believe me that she can sing? Check her out on The Muppet Show:

(For more YouTube fun, check out those Maybelline Moisture Whip Lipstick commercials. Who could forget those? Honestly, love her as I do, I don’t know how people can do these things … or say the word “moist” so much without cracking a smile.)

The erstwhile Wonder Woman still looks heroic at 56, thank Hera. And she’s still got the pipes. Her October show was lovingly previewed and
favorably reviewed in the New York Times.

Intrigued as I was, I had to put all hopes of seeing Ms. Carter’s show out of my mind, because that same night, November 3, Jeff and I had a hot date with Annie Lennox, who was staging one of her achingly infrequent Stateside performances.

I don’t know who went to see Lynda Carter, because all the gays in three states seemed to be at the United Palace up on 175th Street that night. Throughout the long A train ride up to Washington Heights, we revealed ourselves as the passengers thinned out. When the doors opened at 175th, I had no worries about finding the place with such a large, lemming-like exodus of gay couples to follow. (I found it sadly telling that, after the show, the subway stop was so crowded again that we were at a virtual stand-still until someone opened the emergency gate to allow the flood through — in such a rush we were to high-tail it out of the neighborhood, apparently.)

The invisible jet must be in the shop. [youtube.com]

Interestingly, Ms. Lennox appears in her music video, Dark Road, dressed as a sort of homemade Wonder Woman sitting as a bus stop. For her Nov. 3 appearance, a tastefully be-glittered black sleeveless camisole and a rather conservative pair of flared black slacks was all the costume she needed to showcase <a href="http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/ny-etlennox1105,0,5100553.story
” target=”_blank”>her super powers. Her richly layered voice was color enough.

Given the chance to speak to her in person, I would thank her for not subjugating her show to a lecture. I have no problem with famous people using their celebrity and influence to do good in the world. What I take issue with is the often sanctimonious way they go about doing it. Her pet project, Sing, whose goal is generally to bring attention to the African HIV/AIDS pandemic and specifically to help implement the Mother to Child Transmission Prevention Program in maternity hospitals throughout South Africa, should be supported. And after the recent release of an album called Songs of Mass Destruction, clearly infused with feelings of despair and frustration in the wake of a globally unpopular war, it is reassuring that her intention with this tour was to project hope and joy. She had the good sense to remember that both she and her audience were at a rock concert, not a lecture hall, and everyone was there to have a good time.

Lennox rightly observed during her mercifully brief PSA that it is a privilege to be able to use her art to draw a spotlight to a worthy cause. During an extended round of applause, she stopped us. “No, please don’t,” she said. “It’s nothing. I’m going to shut up and sing now.”