What I Am Obsessed With Right Now

To be fair, I will not be seeing CATS because, well, because. But I am obsessed with Jennifer Hudson's version of Memory from the film.

 

Damn. That girl can saaaaaang!

Bobservations

We went out to brunch over the weekend with our good friends David and Neal to celebrate both my birthday and their 4th wedding anniversary; four doesn’t sound long, but it’s only the amount of time their relationship has been legally and rightfully recognized. It was actually their 35th anniversary.

So there.

On Sunday, Carlos and I were running some errands and we stopped at Tractor Supply to get cat litter. As we checked out, the cashier asked if we’d found everything we wanted, and I said:

“We did. It’s my birthday and he’s buying me cat litter.”

Later in the day, when Tia Gloria called form Mexico to sing me ♪ ♫ Happy Birthday ♫ ♪ over the phone, she asked how we were spending the day, I told her Carlos had gotten me cat litter for my birthday.

She asked to speak to him. And when I spoke with my father and told him of the gift … he asked to speak with Carlos, too.

Those were all good birthday presents!

As was the day spent with Carlos and the Chocolate Orange Cake he made for me.

There’s a sucker born every minute … at least that’s what the folks at Farfetch, an online luxury fashion platform that sells products from over 700 boutiques, thinks because they are offering a Hanes Beefy-T with a small Prada logo sewn onto it for the low, low price of $410.

Seriously.

Senator Joni Ernst filed for divorce, claiming her husband assaulted her years ago, though she never reported the assault to the police.

Last fall, Senator Joni Ernst dismissed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Brett Kavanaugh because her story was  “uncorroborated.”

Let that sink in.

After years of unofficial ’Gay Days’ at Disney theme parks, Disneyland Paris has announced its first ever LGBTQ Pride event called Magical Pride. The park will welcome guests to “discover the enchantment of Disney with the Sparkle of Pride!”

Here’s hoping it spreads to the rest of the Disney empire.

Sidenote: years back Carlos and I were at Disneyworld in Orlando, and as we were leaving the park, and holding hands, two women walked around us and ahead, also holding hands. From behind us someone shouted:

“What is this? Gay Day?”

And one of the women shouted back:

“Every day is Gay Day.”

Yup.

Rent: Live it was not.

The actor playing Roger, Brennin Hunt, broke his foot near the end of Saturday’s rehearsal, so producers decided to show us a recording of that performance. The show was only truly live for the last few minutes, including a finale with members of the original Broadway cast—Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Taye Diggs—singing “Seasons of Love”.

And so it’s no surprise that Rent Not Live  was the least watched and lowest rated of the trend to date, in part perhaps due to a cast who was saving their best, and fullest, energy for the live performance and not a taped rehearsal.

This week _____ announced that he wanted to allow students who wish to study the Bible to be able to do so in schools, all schools, and his Evangelical Hypocritical Fake Faith Racist base cheered.

They cheered a man who cheated on his first wife with his second wife, then cheated on his second wife with his third wife, then cheated on his third wife with a porn actress and nude model while the wife was pregnant with his fifth child from three different women.

Right?

Lawyers for Kentucky’s Republican Governor Matt Bevin say that former Rowan Kounty Klerk Kim Davis must pay the $225,000 in legal fees owed to the gay couples who sued her for refusing to issue marriage licenses because of her ALLEGED Christian-based opposition to same-sex marriage.

Nice; except it shows the hypocrisy of Bevin. See, while Bevin has called Davis “an inspiration … to the children of America,” after a district judge ruled that the couples suing for marriage licenses clearly prevailed and that the state of Kentucky must pay their fees and costs, Bevin and his lawyers want the bill handed to Davis, and say she acted alone in denying the marriage licenses.

Hypocrisy. GOP.

Russia has embarrassed _____ … again!

This week the Kremlin leaked news that  Putin met with _____ and his nude model wife, Melanie, at the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires last fall.  The embarrassment is _____ meeting with his boss and handler, Putin, but that not one single US official was present … no collusion, nothing to see, witch hunt … no government officials, no translators, no one from the State Department. It is unprecedented to have held the meeting without a U.S. witness, especially someone to record the details of what happened.

But that was only the first embarrassment; the second embarrassment came via TASS, Russia’s official state media news outlet of the Kremlin who, when asked about _____’s lack of even an interpreter, said:

"It’s none of our business whether _____ had an interpreter; Putin’s interpreter is always by his side — we have stability and order in that regard.”

We don’t because Putin owns _____ , his beck-and-call girl, and when Putin calls, _____ obeys.

New Funny Irreverent Show Alert … The Other Two tells the story of siblings Cary and Brooke whose lives are upended when their 13-year-old brother, Chase, becomes a Justin Bieber-esque type overnight sensation.

It’s very funny, and the humor is quite ballsy, and then there’s the relationship between Cary, played by Drew Tarver, left, who is gay, and his roommate, played by Andy Riddings, right, who is not, and how they just like to make out every so often.

Plus, they’re cute, so yeah, there’s that.

But it’s the funny that gets me. Okay, and the cute guys making out.

Anti-Beauty and the Beast Theater Schedules Drag Film Instead

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Disney’s new feature film version of Beauty and the Beast, based on the Broadway musical which was based on the animated film, features Disney’s “first” gay character.

First? Really? What about those dwarves living together in the woods, bathing and sleeping together. Now that’s gay, my friends, that’s gay!

But I digress.

When word got out that a homo character was in the new film, Carol Laney, owner of the Henagar Drive-In in Alabama, dropped the film from her upcoming schedule because, you know, God and The Gays. She made the announcement on the drive-in’s Facebook page:

“We all make choices and I am making mine. For those that do not know, Beauty and the Beast is ‘premiering’ their first homosexual character. The producer also says at the end of the movie ‘there will be a surprise for same-sex couples’. If we cannot take our 11-year-old granddaughter and 8-year-old grandson to see a movie we have no business watching it. If I can’t sit through a movie with God or Jesus sitting by me then we have no business showing it. I know there will be some that do not agree with this decision. That’s fine.”

It’s for the children and God and the Baby Jeebus, y’all.

Laney criticized Disney for, ahem, “forcing their views on us” because there’s a character in the film named Lafou [left]—played by Josh Gad—who is Gaston’s manservant ...

Let that sink in ... Lafou ... manservant. GAY!!

Anyway, Lafou has mixed feelings about Gaston; he wants be Gaston; he wants to kiss Gaston. The film’s director Bill Condon says:

“He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh [Gad] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its pay-off at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”

Well, a gay moment cannot be shown on a movie screen in Alabama so Laney nixed the idea; but she didn’t nix ordering another film to play at her little not-gay theater in the woods.

Laney scheduled a film called Fierce because, based on the film’s poster, she thought it was a Game of Thrones style film about dragons. 

But it’s not ... it’s a documentary about the International Drag Festival in Texas and features the tagline:

“When life drags you down, drag it up."

Poor Carol Laney was all confused because the poster showed a woman—ahem, a man in drag—surrounded by dragons and this is most definitely not a dragon film.

Carol Laney instantly pulled that film from her schedule, too, because it is not in “her comfort zone.”

Oh Carol, gurrrl, you don’t know what you’re missing. Gay men in musicals and drag queens?

Heaven!

Pink News

Overheard At Home

The other night I walked into the living room and Carlos was watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Since it had just started … I arrived right at the beginning of “Two Little Girls From Little Rock” … I sat down to watch. I love Marilyn Monroe, and when you toss in some Jane Russell, well, I sat down.

About forty-five minutes into it, as Lorelei and Dorothy board the ship to cross the Atlantic, Carlos turns to me …

Carlos: Where’s Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon?

Me: What?

Carlos: Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon? In Dresses?

Me: Uh … That’s Some Like It Hot. It takes place on a train, not a boat. Jane Russell isn’t in it, and it’s in black-and-white.

Carlos: Oh.

Later on ….

Carlos: When is she gonna sing “Diamonds Are Forever”?

Me: What?

Carlos: The song? “Diamonds Are Forever”?

Me: “Diamonds Are Forever” is the theme song of a James Bond movie and it’s sung by Shirley Bassey. Marilyn sings “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best friend.”

Carlos: Oh.

And then, in the courtroom scene, after Marilyn sings “Diamonds Are Forever a Girl’s Best Friend,” toward the end, Jane Russell appears dressed as Marilyn to try and save her from being arrested for jewel theft.

Carlos: She looks so different there.

Me: That’s not Marilyn Monroe. That's Jane Russell … dressed as Marilyn.

Carlos: Oh.

Never a dull moment.

Random Musings

Carlos and I love Jeopardy. He says I should be on the show, not that I’m so smart, but that I have a way of figuring out the question to the answer because, many times, they give you a clue to the question in the answer. But I digress … we were watching one day last week and the answer was something along the lines of:

Ants use these to both see and feel.

I mumbled, What are antennae?

Carlos said aloud, What are antlers?

Now, I know he meant antennae, but I literally fell outta my chair laughing at the idea of ants with antlers. And I was still laughing days later when I relayed the story to my Dad, who then asked to speak to his son-in-law about it.

And then my Dad relayed a story about my Mom that I never knew. He said that many moons ago, while driving through Texas, my mother spotted something in the road and said, Ooh, an armadillo!

My father took a look at it and said, That’s actually a piece of a tire.

And from then on whenever they spotted a piece of a tire in the road, my Dad would call it an armadillo.

I guess that’s where I get it from.

Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert is mulling a presidential run for 2016.

Just when you thought the biggest idiot running for the GOP was Ted Cruz, the clown car stops and someone opens the hatchback and Louie Gohmert pops out!

Barronelle? As I said on Facebook, I’m’a have to ask you to sit down, for a long while.

As you may recall Barronelle Stutzman is that Washington state florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding and was subsequently charged with discrimination by the state.

Well, she was fined the massive sum of $1,000 last week, plus $1 for court costs and fees, and she has 60 days to pay the state for her refusal to serve Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed when they sought to buy wedding flowers in 2013.

But now she says she’s going broke because of all this, when she’s probably just losing business because she’s a bigot and most folks don’t wanna do business with her.

Lesson learned: Discrimination doesn’t pay the bills on a florist shop.

[photo source]

This week NBC announced that their next big televised musical event will be The Wiz.

I say, Good luck, and don’t f**k it up. 

Seriously, don’t carrie-underwood The Wiz.

We’ve had our issues with Target in the past, most notably when they funded some anti-gay political candidates in Minnesota, but Target, now that they know better, is trying to do better, and have stepped up in light of these “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts {RFRAs] popping up around the nation with a new message:

“In recent days, we’ve heard from you, our guests. You’ve asked us for Target’s thoughts about what it means to have an inclusive culture. You’ve asked us if, given the current conversations taking place across our country, we were taking a stand. And while most of those have been one-on-one conversations as you have called or emailed us, we wanted to take time to share our thoughts more broadly. They are simple. Everyone deserves to feel like they belong. And you’ll always be accepted, respected and welcomed here.”

Good on Target for evolving.

So, Faye Dunaway was Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest; every self-respecting gay oughta know that. But Faye hated the way the movie turned out, and loathed that it has become a camp classic despite a really great performance as Crawford. And in the years since then Dunaway almost always refuses to talk about the film, which many believe ruined her career. I mean, she went from Bonnie and Clyde to Chinatown to Network — for which she won an Oscar — to Mommie Dearest and then almost to oblivion.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Dunaway is finally ready to address the career-changing film in a book.

Publisher’s Lunch, a publishing industry newsletter, mentioned an upcoming memoir in a recent email:

“Academy Award winning actress Faye Dunaway’s recollections, stories and behind the scenes account of the making of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, Mommie Dearest, to Julia Cheiffetz at Dey Street Books, by Alan Nevins at Renaissance (World).”

To paraphrase Dunaway as Crawford: Christina!!! Bring.Me.My.Kindle!

[photo source]

So  a couple of weeks back I tuned in to a new comedy starring Nick Zano as a man who donates sperm to his Lesbian BFF so they can raise a child together and then, as the Lesbian reveals she’s knocked up, he reveals he’s just gotten married.

So, it’s straight guy and his wife, with his gay bestie raising a child. The show is called one Big Happy, but after watching for roughly five minutes, I dubbed it One Big Not Funny. And, while I won’t watch again, I was intrigued by Nick Zano, who has a younger Brad Pitt thing goin’ on.

He’s hot, but not hot enough to make me sit through thirty minutes of crap every week … though I think the show has already been cancelled.

[photo source]

School Musical Canceled Becaue It's Gay

Back in May of this year, Principal Jesse Smith of the South Williamsport Jr/Sr High School in Pennsylvania dashed off a $1935.00 check to order the licensing rights for the musical Spamalot to be performed at the school next spring. Then, without warning, the play was off.

And when people began to question why the play had been cancelled, speculation arose it was because the musical contained a same-sex wedding scene and, you know, gay. Principal Smith, who’d sent the original check, vehemently denied that the cancellation had anything to do with homosexual themes except … lie.

In addition, Mark Stamm had claimed that, even though the play was cancelled, it was never really scheduled to be performed, even though the school had spent nearly two-thousand dollars securing the rights to perform the musical.

Then Keystone Progress, using Pennsylvania’s ‘Right to Know’ law found a series of emails between Principal Smith, school musical director Dawn Burch, and Superintendent Mark Stamm making it quite clear that the only justification Smith ever gave for canceling the Spamalot production was its “homosexual themes.”

In emails sent by Principal Smith to Dawn Burch, he voiced his concerns about two issues in the script: “a guy sending another guy a message on girl’s underwear and a gay wedding being performed.”

Dawn Burch, who had a copy of the script and had read it through twice, replied that there was no underwear-sending scene in the script, and, as for the “homosexual themes” she replied: “I am fully aware of their place in the script and am not certain what offense they create” since marriage equality had recently arrived in Pennsylvania.

Smith then made it clear that he was “not comfortable with Spamalot and its homosexual themes for two main reasons:”

1] Drama productions “are supposed to be performances that families can attend” and that “this type of material makes it very hard for that to take place.”

2] Controversial productions “put students in a tough spot.”

He said he didn’t “want students to have to choose between their own personal beliefs and whether or not to take part in a production.” He also said homosexuality does not exist in a conservative community such as South Williamsport.

Wow, then it must be the only place in the entire world that is queer free, eh? 

Dawn Burch, apparently aware that Principal Smith was pushing his own anti-gay agenda onto the production, reached out to Superintendent Stamm to tell him how shocked she was by Smith’s decision: “It is extremely disappointing that homosexuality would be the basis of not approving a show.” She also suggested that, by cancelling the show, that “this is how we raise children to be haters.”

Stamm, though, was firmly on Team Bigotry, saying “[Principal Smith’s] decision is sound” and so the play was off; the two grand flushed away.

Dawn Burch put away her plans for Spamalot and met again with Smith to select a new musical, but by this time the story had gotten out and a local news station, WNEP, as well as Think Progress reached out to Dawn Burch, Principal Smith and Superintendent Stamm for a comment.

Stamm apparently replied that the school wanted performances “to be appropriate for the student performers and audiences” and then asserted, again, that the play was only in consideration—the existence of that check had yet to be revealed. School Board President John J. Engel Jr. also claimed that homosexuality did not enter into the decision to cancel the production, but that they had merely decided it was not an appropriate show because … gay.

Look, let me make this queer for Smith and Stamm, et al: there was no issue with the play in the beginning; the school paid to license the rights to the play so it was planning to perform it; it wasn’t ‘under consideration’ because two-thousand dollars had already been spent and you don’t spend that kind of money on an ‘if.’ It wasn’t until Smith and Stamm got wind of the same-sex wedding scene that they decided, these two men and no one else, that Spamalot was inappropriate for the students and for a town where The Gays don’t exist.

And I’ll go back to what Dawn Burch said, because it’s true: by cancelling this play it sends a message to the students at the school that being gay is wrong, that same-sex marriage is wrong. This decision reinforces that sense of hatred, bigotry and intolerance on yet another generation.

It’s time that stopped.

via ThinkProgress

Random Musings

Last weekend we had The Three; when bad things—or in our case, not bad just inconvenient—happen they usually come in Threes:

Number One: we have a fake tree — I have a yard full of pine trees, real pine trees, so I don’t like the idea of cutting one down just to decorate it and then throw it out — and we were putting it up when we realized that only about ten-percent of the lights worked in spotty areas of the tree. So we made a note to get some more lights for the tree on our way out.

Number Two: on our way out, we pushed the button to open the garage door and the bar that attached the door to the track so the door can be raised, snapped off the door. The pin that held the bar to the door had broken. So, we stopped in at The Homo Depot for lights, a pin, and a couple of cotter pins to fix the door.

Number Three: upon returning home I made a sandwich and sat down to watch some TV. There was a giant green strip running down the TV splitting the picture 70/30.

Threes.

Sidenote: Good news. While we debated on having the TV repaired or buying a new one if it was too expensive, we checked with one of our Smallville TV repair shops. The owner told us to try our DVD player and see if the green stripe was there, and then to turn off the TV and all its components at the power surge switch for five minutes.

Guess what? No more stripe. Apparently it had something to do with the cable rebooting itself and so the TV had to reboot as well. And that fix was free thanks to the good folks at Hall TV Repair!

Big news in the Coming Out Department this week …

Tom Daley didn’t Come Out. As gay. He came out saying he was dating a man, but didn’t feel the need to label himself.

“One thing I consider to be pretty important is to have some form of private life and you're probably thinking 'well why did you do a book and why did you do a documentary and stuff' but I've only ever talked about things I feel comfortable talking about. …It’s one of those things where in an ideal world I shouldn’t be doing this video because it shouldn’t matter but recently I was misquoted in an interview and it made me feel really angry and frustrated. Emotions that I’ve never felt before when reading quotes about myself. 

Honesty, for me is something I really do believe in. And I’ve always been honest. I may have been vague in some of my answers, but one thing I’ve never felt that comfortable talking about are my relationships, because it is what I get asked even if I’m doing sporting interviews ‘do you have a girlfriend, who are you seeing’ all that sort of stuff. 

I mean, I've been dating girls and I've never really had a serious relationship to talk about. Now I kind of feel ready to talk about relationships. Come Spring this year, my life changed, massively, when I met someone and they make me feel so happy, so safe and everything just feels great. 

Well that someone is a guy. And it did take me by surprise a little bit. It was always in the back of my head that something like that could happen. But it wasn’t until spring this year that something just clicked, it felt right. And I was like: OK. 

Like I said, my whole world just changed right there and then. Of course, I still fancy girls, but right now I’m dating a guy and I couldn’t be happier. I feel safe and it just feels right. “

Lotsa folks, gay and straight, are annoyed that he didn’t say, with trumpets and flags, I’m gay but what does it matter to us. He said he found someone he loved and who made him feel safe and that someone is a man.

Good for Tom.

PS That secret someone didn’t stay secret for long, because it was revealed a day later to be none other than screenwriter and LGBT activist Dustin Lance Black.

Congrats to the happy couple.

Overheard at work:

Female coworker: “Wow, Bob, I like your new haircut.”

Bob: “I like yours too, though I do think Bette Davis wore it better in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?.

So the OMM—er, the One Million Moms … er, the 47,000 Moms to be accurate—is mighty pissed off at Macy’s for including a performance from the Broadway musical Kinky Boots during their annual parade:

“The annual tradition for family entertainment had a not-so-discrete agenda this time around. This year's parade chose to send a Politically Correct message, but their plan backfired and the statement they really sent to families is that Macy's cannot be trusted.

"Raise You Up" was not suitable for families for many reasons. The inappropriate act starred Kinky Boots, referencing a musical written to celebrate the differences in each other and included: (all) the men and women in thigh-high boots [mostly red pleather while others were sparkly "hooker" boots], a man in boxer shorts and men in burlesque and Moulin rouge costumes prancing around expressing themselves, RuPaul (famous drag queen) along with several men dressed in drag, transgender and transvestites, singing and dancing as an expression of "diversity" and honoring whatever sexuality you want.

The performance was sexually charged and quite offensive. Here are some, but not all of the lyrics to the song they chose to sing, to give you a better idea:

Accept yourself and you'll accept others too.Let love shine.Let pride be your guide.Change the world when you change your mind.Just be who you wanna be.You're beautiful; it's beautiful! 

Shame on Macy's for promoting this. We cannot trust Macy's Dept. Store any longer. This is the straw that broke the camel's back. It is clear that Macy's does not have our children's best interest in mind.

Macy's needs to know that trust must be earned and once trust is lost it is difficult to get back.”

A couple of things:

Those lyrics are offensive? Accept yourself? Have pride? You’re beautiful?

And, um, OMM, that wasn’t RuPaul, that was Tony winner Billy Porter. Not every Black man in drag is RuPaul.

So …. TV

Also at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was a performance of the upcoming Live! TV airing of Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music!

Except the performance was “I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen” a cute, but kinda nonsensical choice. Why not have Carrie sing ♫♪ The hills are alive with the sound of music ♪♫ or ♫♪ Doe, a deer a female deer … etc ♪♫?

Well, maybe because we’d all be reminded that Carrie Underwood, while a capable singer, is no Julie Andrews.

I was reading that the new CBS show Mom was actually getting better. I watched the first episode — produced by the same dude that does 2.5 Men — and found it to be cheesy and dumb. But, hey, maybe changes were made, and I do like Ana Faris and Allison Janney, so I went back,

Cheesy and dumb.

Not nearly as cheesy and dumb as Kirstie Alley’s new show, Kirstie! With her former Cheers co-star Rhea Pearlman — trying not to be Carla — and former Seinfeld co-star Michael Richard — still playing Kramer … at least in the pilot.

Dumb.

Also in the Coming Out Department is actress Maria Bello who announced that she is, and has been in a relationship with a woman named Claire.

But, like Tom Daley, Bello isn’t saying she’s gay, she’s simply saying that she’s in love with a woman.

Do we need to hear the words? Do we need to label folks? Or, can we just be happy that people are in love?

Okay, it’s no secret that I loathe Mama Grizzly Bore™. I have since the moment McCain plucked her off the Alaskan tundra where she was looking at Russia to be his choice for Veep.

I loathe her ignorance; he aw shucks-itude; her holier than thou rollerness; and her stupidity.

And I loathe how she turns every anti-Obama speech she gives into something about slavery. She did that recently when talking about US debt to China, and said she wasn’t a racist but that’s what all racists say before they say racist things.

Then, Martin Bashir of MSNBC took her to task for the slavery remarks, and told vile stories of how slaves had been treated; including one where a slave who dared to talk back to his master was held down, his mouth opened, so another slave could defecate in his mouth.

Bashir thought MGB™ might deserve that same treatment.

And I thought he went too far; MGB™ is full of sh*t, there’s no doubt, but his analogy was wrong and stupid and insensitive. And it has apparently caused him to resign from his post at MSNBC following a so-called vacation from the airwaves.

I imagine the Mama Grizzly Bore™ is killing wolves and moose in celebration as we speak.

So, remember Dayna Morales, the gay server who said she got an anti-gay message on a credit card receipt in lieu of a tip?

Well, apparently she is out of a job. The Gallop Asian Bistro, where Morales worked, posted on their Facebook page that Dayna “is currently not on our employee schedule while (we) are still working to complete our investigation.”

I hope, if it turns out that Morales lied — and how hard would that be to prove, just look at the original receipt which the restaurant must still have — that Dayna gets kicked to the curb.

We have enough people in this country that hate us for being gay, we don’t need this kind of attention.