Archive for March, 2009

24
Mar
09

Mission Accomplished

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay, People We Don't Like, People We Like and TV
Tags: ,

The dirty little “secret” about RuPaul’s Drag Race is it doesn’t matter who wins this competition. RuPaul is not passing on any crown. Are you kidding me? She’s just gettin’ started! This entire season has been all about one person: RuPaul.

And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.

Fittingly, Season One closed on one more example of the contestants acting as co-stars warming their hands on RuPaul’s fire. The girls had to learn new choreography for a guest role on RuPaul’s new video and they had to record a rap for inclusion in her single. However, I think what we saw this week firmly placed Nina and Bebe among the fiercest of the fierce.

Bebe Zahara Benet
Camaroooooon!
[www.bebezaharabenet.com

Tonight Bebe won the crown and our hearts. I had always hoped Nina would win. She’s the only one who has never had to lip-synch for her life, and her heart and charisma enriched the experience for everyone. But I would have been satisfied with either of her or Bebe. And Bebe’s plans to start a charity for kids in Camaroon with HIV/AIDS is, frankly, one of the highest marks of a true champion.

Rebecca’s lucky star, on the other hand, seemed to have faded this week. From the start of this episode (and frankly before), the race was down to Nina and Bebe. Through every step this week, Rebecca just couldn’t cut it. She didn’t hit the choreography, she had half as much rap as she needed, she couldn’t pull herself (or her wig) together for the video shoot, and she had no capacity for taking direction from Mike Ruiz.

Either she’s finally feeling the pressure, or it’s just a bad day. Or maybe it’s because she shouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place. “You never, ever rush a queen,” she says. But the other two seemed to manage just fine. She’s full of excuses this week, but even she knows her time is up.

In this week’s “Under the Hood,” Nina confronts Rebecca with a few things. It’s a classy moment: Rather than part ways with bad blood, she calls out Rebecca’s shadiness and makes peace with her. Nina and Bebe bend over backward to give her the benefit of the doubt: “You probably don’t know you’re doing it” and “you probably don’t do this intentionally.” But it was a real barrier to her ability to make any friends on this show, and it did a lot to keep people from trusting her. It’s nothing personal, but it’s an important lesson for them to impart.

And they seal it with a kiss. Mwah, mwah. “Ay, Loca. Work it out.”

Rebecca concedes a few times this season that she probably appears standoffish to the others, but it’s not intentional. “It’s just the way I am.”

But when asked about the others’ reactions to her, she always says something like, “I’m used to it.” In other words: I am a victim, those bitches don’t like me, they’re jealous of me, and I’m used to it, so whatever. She recognizes she’s improving her look or her performance, but she’s not improving herself or her professionalism: witness her Viva Glam breakdown, tonight’s disastrous video shoot tardiness.

Ru asks her point-blank, “Do you think it’s this kind of behavior that alienates you from the other girls.” And her response is either ugly or just thoughtless, I’m not sure: “I think it’s maybe because they’re a little older…”

Nothing to do with her, of course.

When Nina and Bebe are talking about staying in touch and working together after the show, Rebecca says nope, I’m here to win, and “I can’t let things like friendships get in the way.” If this is just “how she is,” it sucks, and it will always hurt her.

So, while she’s fixing her wig and being friendless, Nina and Bebe are holding hands, blowing kisses, and forging a friendship that will carry them through their success in ways Rebecca can’t seem to imagine.

21
Mar
09

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fabio

By Eric 1 Comment
Categories: Gay, Movies and TV
Tags: , ,

One idea of male physical perfection is the romance novel cover model. It’s the swashbuckling hero, stripped to the waist, wrapping himself around a fair damsel, her frills and ribbons swirling up around him, licking his bronzed, hairless torso. It’s the tamed savage, all leather straps, shells and feathers, towering magnificently over his prize, one ham-sized hand firmly grasping her arm, the other gently touching her chin as she, on her knees, reaches desperately up toward him, her hair a wind-swept tangle nearly as long as his.

There’s enough there to excite the dreams of a young boy for years into his adolescence — whether he wants to be the hero … or to receive the hero’s ill-fated, undying desire. It was rivaled only by the box-cover underwear models lining the rows of men’s department store intimate apparel aisles. (I never wore the stuff. I always had the simple Fruit of the Loom numbers. Instead of the triumphantly muscled gods of Calvin Klein and Jockey, I had a few guys in fruit fetish wear.)

It was enough to take Fabio all the way to the top of a margarine ad empire.

Recently this dream has been playing out on the walls of the New York subway. In all their half-naked, air-brushed glory, Hollywood hotties Eddie Cibrian, Jerry O’Connell, Ivan Sergei and Jason Lewis are doing their best to out-Fabio each other, tenderly grasping their respective leading ladies, in a collection of posters for a series of Lifetime movies based on novels by Nora Roberts.

The 2009 Nora Roberts Collection

I don’t know anything about her or her work, but the art direction of the posters tells me all I really want to know.

The films themselves are probably decent, perfunctory, uncomplicated TV movies. But the candy-colored posters are ridiculous caricatures. And the assault of all four of them taken together, which is how they appear in the subway, makes the whole thing look a little like a joke. On the Web site, we learn further that erstwhile hot mamas such as Cybil Shepard and Faye Dunaway also co-star. Could it get any gayer? It’s like accidental high camp.

But this is “television for women,” after all. The images above are all arms and chest. Not a single nipple shows. And no gay soft-core porn, however accidental, would be caught dead without a couple of Susan B. Anthonys peeking through.

19
Mar
09

The Right Looks Up ‘Marriage’ and Finds ‘Revolution’

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Ain't That America, Gay, People We Don't Like, Politics and Words
Tags:

A right-wing Web site is fuming over their recent discovery that Merriam-Webster has added a secondary definition of marriage to its pages.

World Net Daily sarcastically reported Tuesday:

“One of the nation’s most prominent dictionary companies has resolved the argument over whether the term ‘marriage’ should apply to same-sex duos or be reserved for the institution that has held families together for millennia: by simply writing a new definition.”

The change occurred years before any states legalized gay marriage. It went unnoticed until now, apparently because writers at World Net Daily do not make frequent use of dictionaries.

(Personally, any publication that accepts written work from Ann Coulter, and that hawks “Where’s the birth certificate?” bumper stickers (attempting to call into question Barack Obama’s citizenship), doesn’t have much of value to say to the more thoughtful readers of the world. But I digress.)

Merriam-Webster editors are mystified by the fuss. From the story:

“Its inclusion was a simple matter of providing dictionary users with accurate information about all of the word’s current uses,” the company said, adding that it was surprised by the recent attention because it was “neither news nor unusual.”

“We were one of the last ones among the major dictionary publishers to do this,” said Merriam-Webster spokesman Arthur Bicknell.

Someone who commented on a YouTube video complaining about the definition says, “The word ‘marriage’ has never been synonymous with same sex relationships,” said the forum participant. “What is happening is the meaning is being changed to trigger it becoming synonymous, not the other way round.”

If he’d take his bible out of his ass long enough to concentrate, he’d realize that the definition does not make heterosexual marriage and same-sex marriage synonymous. What it signifies is merely that the term is used in that way. It is a figurative meaning.

Dictionaries include figurative and idiomatic meanings for a great many words. Note definition No. 6 of dig and definition No. 5 of bird.

The World Net Daily writer goes on to cite a 1913 dictionary definition that not only doesn’t mention same-sex marriage, but in fact adds biblical references to the traditional definition. In fact they are citations, meant to show context, not that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or God himself are editors of dictionaries. It could have just as easily referenced a Jane Austen novel.

More importantly, should we be shocked that a word’s usage should change between 1913 and the year the Merriam-Webster change was apparently made? Of course not. Why would a 1913 publication of any sort refer to “same-sex marriage” when that concept wasn’t even part of the public consciousness? It would be like expecting Oscar Wilde to identify as “gay.” He never would have done so. Does it mean he wasn’t a big flaming queen? Certainly not.

Completely outside of the argument for or against gay marriage, consider the idiocy of World Net Daily’s complaint. I’m not thrilled that “ain’t” is in the dictionary, and that school students gleefully point to it to justify poor grammar. However, its legitimacy is determined not by whether you or I like it, but by whether or not it is used — and useful — by speakers of English. Whatever you think “ain’t” implies about its user, we all know its meaning. Ergo: ain’t.

Same-sex couples in long-term relationships have long thought of themselves — and referred to themselves — as being “married.” It’s a matter of convenience, being far less wordy than “partnered with a member of the same sex.” And until very recently on the scale of human history, we didn’t have a choice but to be figurative.

19
Mar
09

Mommie Draggest

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Funny, Gay and TV
Tags: ,
octo-drag mommy
[source: Life & Style, 3/30/09, vol. 6, issue 13]
15
Mar
09

Logophilia

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay and Words
Tags: ,

The other night, in a fit of ebullient drunkenness I declared the Oxford English Dictionary the single greatest achievement of mankind. For whatever reason, all Anglo guilt aside, English is the language of record. So, to my mind, the most comprehensive and respected volumes that record its meaning and history are a treasure for humanity. “Its more important than buildings, … fire,” I said, “and makeup.”

My friend Joey has become somewhat obsessed with this statement. I’m sure it’s because of my inclusion of makeup. And I’m sure that is the influence of RuPaul’s Drag Race. My geek-out moment is apparently one of the gayest things he’s heard in a while. It’s doesn’t rise to the level of Wildean wit, exactly, but it does my ego marvelous good to get such attention.

11
Mar
09

Cat and Mouse

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Animals, Gross, My Cat and Philadelphia
Tags: ,

Our cat discovered a mouse the other day. This in itself does not bother me. The benefit of having a house cat is to keep the mice away.

What is somewhat bothersome, however, is for Jeff to come home one day to catch her in the act of taunting a half-paralyzed rodent, batting it across the floor like a shuffleboard disc. The human intrusion distracted the cat just long enough for her prey to crawl under the refrigerator to die in peace.

So now we have a dead mouse somewhere under our fridge. This is not a terribly difficult problem to solve. But now I fear that our cat, starved for excitement in an environment not built for her, has re-awakened a carnivorous desire. She will remember those days spent outdoors in Minneapolis, before we moved her to this urban prison. And even though she may appear to be lying calmly on my lap, she will secretly always have one eye open and both ears tuned to the hunt.

There’ll be no living with her now.

10
Mar
09

If “Space Invaders” Was Real

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Fun, Music, Nostalgia and Video
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Who knows what this is supposed to mean. But it sure is fun!

10
Mar
09

Absolutely Fabricated

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: People We Like and TV
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ab fab first look
Sweetie, darling, does mummy’s script need surgery?

A friend of mine who is always in the know sent me this picture of the new American Patsy and Eddie. While I’m grateful for the first look, I’m also a little scared.

OK, so you can’t judge a book by its cover, and all that, but please, please, please tell me it’s not going to look like a couple of women dressed up as Patsy and Eddie at a Halloween party!

I don’t even know why this is being taken on now. It was so right the first time around. My greatest fear is that this new series will either be so similar that it looks like a poor reproduction, or so different it will be pointless.

10
Mar
09

Shannel, No. 6

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay, People We Don't Like, People We Like and TV
Tags: , ,
Shannel    
I’m beautiful, dammit!
[www.poptower.com]

Oh, Shannel … Say it ain’t so. A sixth contestant has been cut from RuPaul’s Drag Race. And she was wronged!

I’m a little mad at her for giving up the fight. Her “I don’t want to be here anymore!” was a major disappointment for me. Week after week, she has taken harsh, often meaningless criticism with dignity and respect. Even tonight, Santino said she’s “saying everything right,” but she’s just not connecting with him. What does that even mean? I think it says more about the judge than the contestant.

It’s hard to say how much her announcement affected the judges’ decision. I think it was honest exasperation, not a strategy. And who could blame her? You can see it in this week’s “under the hood” and, sadly, her exit interview. What more can she do?

When she got pitted against Rebecca in the lip synch, she put up a fight again. I think she saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I did. And maybe I’m no judge of these things, but I think her performance was better than Rebecca’s.

Maybe it all went wrong when she lifted up that dress and shook her little butt. That and the Hannibal Lecter-esque lip-smacking earlier on, which was met with the sound of crickets chirping, may have been just a step too far. Oh, I wish she’d just hold back a bit and let her talent carry her forward. Instead, she always resorts to a trick: snakes, juggling, those assless chaps. I picture her as a trained circus animal, with Merle Ginsberg tossing her lumps of meat after each jump through the fire hoop.

Everyone wants to ditch Rebecca this week — even 47% of the audience! I wanted her to get far, but her time has come. She was so overrated during the vogue-off. Shannel characteristically pulled a cartwheel out of her ass, but her posing was better. I thought the whole drag ball/vogue theme, a nice nod to the drag history, would have given an advantage to the more seasoned of the girls. But that Rebecca has nine lives, and I think RuPaul has a soft spot for her.

The best part of the vogue-off was RuPaul’s commentary: “Paint your face, honey!”

“Face! Face! Face!”

“Why you all gagging so? She bring it to you every ball!”

This was a tough episode: swimsuit, evening gown, and business suit. Forget about Miss America, honey. And these ladies aren’t even ladies! Plus, these colors were truly awful — more Froot Loops than mango mojito.

The inclusion of Charo was a stroke of genius on so many levels, not the least of which was a welcome lightening of the mood. I don’t know where she went, but I’m glad she’s back! (Looking strangely the same as the last time I saw her — on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse!) Who can resist her? She even got the pit crew to dance. I wish to god she had stayed on as a judge, but the flamenco diva magic ended far too soon.

The runway question, “Why should you win?” was a telling moment. Bebe led with a dignified answer: “There is pride and dignity in dressing up.” Nina said she wants to inspire others. Shannel answered like a politician, saying a lot without ever really answering the question: “I love myself,” essentially.

But I hate, hate, hate Rebecca’s answer. When someone asks why you should win, you need to have a real reason, something personal and meaningful. I want to make my grandma proud. Or I need the money to buy a house for my mom. But the best Rebecca can come up with is “I want this.”

That’s not a reason; it just restates the question: I want this because I want this. OK, obviously she’s working hard. This is not easy. So, let that be her reason. It would have been better if she’d said simply, “because I deserve to.” At least that speaks to the competition, not just some childish sense of entitlement.

Line of the night: RuPaul’s repeated declarations of “Extravaganza eleganza!”

Charo, on the dance: “Be careful. Spooning leads to forking.”

Charo, on the posture: “Even if you don’t breathe, nevermind. If you drop dead, you drop dead with class.”

Charo, on the walk: “Uno, dos, uno, dos. I am the biggest bitch in the world.”

Nina: “How am I gonna place a mango in an evening gown?”

RuPaul, to Shannel: “Yes… something to wash down the fava beans.”

03
Mar
09

Dress You Up

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Gay, People We Like and TV
Tags: ,

This week the girls get to play with some real live dolls. These fierce fairy queens have to drag five tomboy bruisers out of the fight and into the light — and down the runway. How hard can it be? Women wear drag all the time: Dolly … Cher … Edina and Patsy.

After last week, Rebecca is clearly public enemy Number One. Shannel, for one, can’t wait to see her go. It sets up another nice rivalry. Shannel wimps out at first, when the lady fighters lead the queens in a boxing ring workout. But then she rallies and comes back swinging, ultimately putting up the best fight against Rebecca.

But Rebecca pulls out ahead. Her reward for winning the mini-challenge is decide which boy gets paired with which girl. But all of those women look like a challenge to me. How much can she really stack the deck?

Since episode two, when Rebecca said she’d eliminate Shannel, she has shown herself to be a fiercely smart competitor. Of course, the assumption is that Rebecca is sabotaging the others. But behind the curtain, and “under the hood,” she says she tried to split them up fairly.

It’s touching to see the boys coaching the women. You get the impression that they’re giving the lady fighters real life advice, not just runway pep talk. And to their credit, the fighters are game for this challenge. They do their best, but it’s not like they’d normally be seeking this kind of “help.” It’s as much work for them as the workout was for the queens. These women are not gonna go back home and put these new skills to use.

This episode plays with the meaning of drag. In the runway show, the real women look no different from men in drag. Is this show about men teaching women how to act like women? Or is it about men teaching women how to act like men acting like women? How many layers are there?

What’s real? It’s almost as if the women have to exaggerate more than the queens do to “act like women.”

What’s natural? RuPaul says Mia has a “natural beauty” — but only after Mia has been all dolled up by Nina.

The results are impressive, and this is a tough one to judge. Clearly it’s getting hard on RuPaul. He has said many times in the press that he was surprised by how close he got to the competitors. He excuses himself before he can give his verdict this week. I just want to know where he goes. To meditate? Is there a chapel in some corner of the studio where he prays? Does he call in a life line? Does he consult the Psychic Friends Network?

The lip-synch showdown was a disappointment with Bebe practically tearing herself to pieces. Is everyone going to flip their wigs from now on? Is this what it takes to win?

What made Shannel’s performance remarkable was how she ran with an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction and turned it around. I don’t think ripping off your hair shows passion; I think it’s just kind of ugly. But someone has to go. Au revoir, Ongina.

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