Listening to Linda Ronstadt’s What’s New Monday, Aug 17 2009 

music and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 7:14 pm

Lately I’ve rediscovered my love for Linda Ronstadt’s 1980’s albums of pop standards: What’s New (1983), Lush Life (1985), and For Sentimental Reasons (1986).These albums combined Ronstadt’s considerable vocal talents with arrangements by Nelson Riddle, who had previously worked with Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland, among others. Here’s the title track from What’s New:

My dad had these albums when I was a kid, and I remember falling in love with many of the tracks as soon as I heard them. “What’s New” was instantly among my favorites. Even as an adolescent, I was impressed with this song’s story — I didn’t know music could do this. It made you imagine a little movie as you listen to it.

I also love the emotion of the song. Ronstadt’s ability to capture the embarrassment, disappointment, and yearning that imbues this song fascinated me. It’s so beautiful, delicate, and sad when she sings it. And the final cry of the last line’s crescendo is amazing.

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Fifteen Years Sunday, Aug 16 2009 

queer culture and relationships thisgaudygildedstage 6:15 pm

Today marks (as near as we can tell) the fifteenth anniversary of when PJ and I first met. We met during the new teacher training workshops for Ph.D. students at the University of Tennessee in 1994. We first saw each other a day before that — we both thought that we were supposed to attend a workshop about the Writing Center; it turned out that the letter telling us to go to that workshop had been sent to all of the new Ph.D. students mistakenly. But we didn’t actually meet until the real workshops started.

In 1994, I was definitely a shy, quiet kid who didn’t know how to start conversations with strangers. (I’m still shite at small talk and being friendly with people I don’t know, but I’m slowly getting better at it.) So, it’s clear that PJ made the first move towards friendship. In retrospect, I don’t know how he had the patience to cultivate my friendship that first year. I’m lucky he did!

We soon started going out to dinner from time to time, going to the gay bar, Trumps, and watching The X-Files at his apartment on Friday nights (I’ll never forget how scarily dark the staircase in his building was — it was an awful way to follow a really scary episode of X-Files.) We also had a class together that first semester, a seminar on Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot. Slowly we got to know one another and became really good friends.

Near the end our first year in the grad program we decided to move in with one another the next year. UT had cheap apartments for graduate students and married undergraduates. That fall our friendship developed into something more, and by the end of 1995 we decided that we wanted to try being together romantically.

This picture was taken around the time that we started this new phase in our relationship. (This was one of two times between 1994 and 1999 that I tried having longer hair. It didn’t really work. I still like the idea of having long hair, but I don’t think it was the best look for me.)

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SotW: It’s a Sin by the Pet Shop Boys Monday, Aug 10 2009 

music and queer culture and religion thisgaudygildedstage 8:14 am

This week’s song of the week is a golden oldie, the Pet Shop Boys‘ “It’s a Sin” from 1987. Here’s the video:

I stumbled across this song again last week. I was looking through our CD collection in an effort to find more tracks for one of my workout mixes. I started listening to a couple of PJ’s Pet Shop Boys CDs and instantly fell in love with “It’s a Sin.”

I don’t remember the song from 1987, though it sounds vaguely familiar. After uploading it to iTunes, I went over to YouTube to see if there was a video. As soon as I saw it, I loved it too. Not to sound like too much of a typical gay guy, but I especially loved the guys in their underwear. Very sexy in an innocent sort of way.

This song became even more relevant to my thinking this week after I saw Save Me over the weekend. As I wrote about yesterday, I really enjoyed that movie in part because of its ability to present its Christian characters in a non-stereotypical sort of way.

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SotW: Were the World Mine Friday, Jun 12 2009 

movies and music and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 4:07 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched the movie Were the World Mine, a queer take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Tom Gustafson and starring Tanner Cohen as Timothy, a gay high school student who uses the recipe in Shakespeare’s comedy to whip up a love potion to make the boy of his dreams fall in love with him. I’ll use this post to offer a brief review of the film, but first here’s the video of the title song from the movie, which is my song of the week:

I really like how the film makers use Shakespeare’s play to create what also stands as a great queer-affirming song. And Cohen does a great job singing the song. I’ll post the lyrics and more about the movie after the break.

The movie is a nice gay fantasy. Timothy is a student at a private school. He’s constantly abused by the school’s jocks, the members of the championship rugby team. When the school’s English teacher (luminously portrayed by Twin Peaks‘s Wendy Robie) stages Dream for the senior play, Timothy and the jocks have to work together on it. (Timothy is cast as Puck.)

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SotW: Just Another Summer by Yehonathan Thursday, Apr 30 2009 

music and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 10:51 am

[I’m actually writing this on Sunday, May 3rd, because I didn’t have time to write it during the week, but I’m posting it as if it were written on the day I meant to post it.]

This week’s song of the week is Yehonathan’s “Just Another Summer”:

Yehonathan is an Israeli pop singer who happens to be gay (and totally hot!). He’s just now released English-language music in the U.S. “Just Another Summer” premiered on MTV this week. I especially love how out he is and that he’s foregrounding queerness in his videos. The beach shower scene in this video has to be one of the hottest moments ever in a gay video!

I ran across his music a few weeks ago by surfing YouTube. I’m also a big fan of Ivri Lider, another queer Israeli singer, and one link led me to another until I came to Yehonathan’s music, which is mostly dance music.

After I started listening to his music, I joined his fan page on facebook. A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to have been added as a friend by Yehonathan too. He’s my second gay, Israeli celebrity friend — I’m also facebook friends with director Eytan Fox and his partner Gal Uchovsky.

I’ll post the Hebrew version of “Just Another Summer” after the break.

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Chris and Don: A Love Story–A Review Sunday, Mar 1 2009 

art and documentary and movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 7:47 pm

Yesterday, PJ and I watched the 2007 documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story, which is about the 30-year relationship between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. Isherwood was, of course, a famous British writer who emigrated to the United States in 1939. Bachardy is an artist who specializes in portraits; his work is also familiar to anyone who follows queer art. It’s a great documentary.

Here’s the trailer:

As the trailer makes clear, the relationship between Isherwood and Bachardy began in controversy: the former was 30 years older than the latter. The age disparity in this relationship takes up a lot of the documentary’s time, but it’s not the only, or even the most, interesting part of this love story.

It is really interesting to hear about how Isherwood and Bachardy met. The latter was still a teenager, and Isherwood was already an important author who had started working for Hollywood films. It’s also interesting to see how beautiful Bachardy was as a teen — I can see why Isherwood was initially attracted to him. Here’s an early portrait of the couple:

Seeing an image like this and knowing that the two are lovers raises a lot of issues and questions in our culture. The film doesn’t shy away from these issues. But the really interesting part of this story is watching Bachardy narrate the rest of their lives together.

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Happy Valentine’s Day Saturday, Feb 14 2009 

holidays and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 11:07 pm

I thought I would celebrate Valentine’s Day by quoting a short passage from W. H. Auden’s “The Common Life.” This poem has long been a special one for me. Today it’s a reminder of what Valentine’s Day is all about for me, a celebration of the common life one builds with someone special.

My favorite excerpt is from the middle of the poem:

…………………. What draws
singular lives together in the first place,
loneliness, lust, ambition,

or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop
or murder one another
clear enough: how they create, though, a common world
between them, like Bombelli’s

impossible yet useful numbers, no one
has yet explained. Still, they do
manage to forgive impossible behavior,
to endure by some miracle

conversational tics and larval habits
without wincing (were you to die,
I should miss yours). ………….

How two people come together and create a “common world” is amazing. That it can be sustained for years at a time is almost incomprehensible. Yet, somehow I’ve managed to do both with someone I love very much. I’m tremendously lucky.

I also love the poem’s final lines:

……………………  though truth and love
can never really differ, when they seem to,
the subaltern should be truth.

 

10 Toys that Made You Gay Monday, Feb 9 2009 

queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 12:46 pm

I this this video is hilarious. I even showed it to my English Gay & Lesbian Writers class today as part of a discussion of the nature versus nurture debate.

The only one of the toys that I had was My Little Buddy:

I think My Little Buddy was meant to lure me away from dolls and Barbies, but it didn’t work. As you can see from the following picture of me dressed for Halloween, my fondness for Barbies was deeply ingrained:

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Documenting Jack Wrangler & Peter Berlin Saturday, Nov 29 2008 

documentary and movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 8:17 pm

Last week, PJ and I watched two documentaries about 1970s gay porn stars: Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon and That Man: Peter Berlin. Both documentaries trace their subjects from childhood to success as gay icons to their more recent lives. I thought that they were both excellent and informative documentaries.

Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon looks at the life and career of Jack Wrangler, who became famous for embodying the butch, masculine gay role model that dominated the queer subculture of the 1970s. Here’s the trailer:

Born Jack Stillman in 1946, Wrangler became one of the most famous gay port stars of the decade. In the 1980s, he crossed over into straight porn and eventually became involved with Margaret Whiting, a cabaret singer. Despite his marriage to her, Wrangler continues to identify as a gay man, which makes this documentary, which is narrated by Wrangler himself, an interesting study of identity and sexuality during the last four decades.

That Man: Peter Berlin explores similar territory, in a way. Its subject is another icon of butch 1970s gay culture: German born Peter Berlin, who became a celebrity figure in San Francisco. Here’s a clip from it:

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Celebrating PJ’s Birthday Saturday, Jun 21 2008 

food and movies and queer culture and travel thisgaudygildedstage 6:47 pm

Yesterday was PJ’s birthday. To celebrate, we spent the night in Columbus. We sometimes talk about getting a hotel room in Columbus, having a nice dinner, and going out to some clubs, so we decided that this was a good time to finally do it.

We left Athens around 1 or 1:30. When we got to Columbus we went to The Book Loft, which we hadn’t been to in a long time. I was especially looking for some Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, or Dorothy L. Sayers novels, but they didn’t have any I wanted. Instead, I bought P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and 500 Greatest-Ever Vegetarian Recipes. One of the things I especially liked about this cookbook is that all the recipes come with a picture of the final product — I think that goes a long way in convincing me to try a new recipe. I like to know what I’m shooting for!

Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop next to the Book Loft, had a drink, and browsed the local papers to look for things to do that evening. After our coffee break, we drove over to our hotel, which was just on the southern end of the Short North. We stayed at the Hampton Inn on High Street. It’s a nice hotel, but the main draw for us was its location. We wanted a hotel close enough so that we could walk to (and more importantly back from) the gay bars.

But before that, we went to dinner. We had a reservation at Basi Italia, which is just off of the Short North in the Victorian Village. We’d been there once before with friends. We both liked our dinners ok, but we ultimately decided that it wasn’t quite as wonderful as we had remembered it. Last time, we had each ordered the Basi Caesar Salad, the eggplant parmesan, and cannoli. This time, PJ had trout and I had crab ravioli for our main courses. I started with roasted mussels, and Pj had the salad again. we shared a cannoli for dessert. Everything was fine, but the real standouts of the meal were the dessert, which was so yummy, and my glass of wine, a 2006 Montellori Chianti. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that brand again. I really liked its smooth, fruity flavor. We forgot to bring our camera with us, so I don’t have any pictures to accompany this description of our dinner — yet again, all apologies to Kathee!

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