Like most people, I’ve long thought that Ricky Martin is hot — or at least I have since he cut his hair shorter! For example, in recent pics (one’s in which he’s got short hair and has matured) Martin is HOT:
I don’t think he was all that hot when he was younger and had long hair:
Now that he’s out, he’s even hotter. I first heard this single when he sang it with Joss Stone on Oprah. At the time I was skeptical about it. It felt wrong for him to be singing a heterosexual love song after having just come out.
Having written about my favorite albums of 2010, it’s time to list my favorite songs/tracks of the year. As usual, I’ve identified my favorite 25 songs, whether they’re singles or tracks from an album. The list isn’t an attempt to be specifically accurate — it’s not that I like #17 more than #18 but that the top ten or so are more my favorites than the next five and so on. I’ll also try to explain what I like about each song/track.
#1: Brandon Flowers‘s “Crossfire,” a great song with a great video:
I love The Killers, and this song retains much of the flavor of one of their songs. I also like that it’s catchy and kind of a love song. From the first notes, I immediately loved every bit of the song the first time I heard it.
#2: Glee‘s “Teenage Dream”:
I know that I’m in danger of being an old, gay perv by liking this song, but I think it’s wonderful that this kind of song is on TV and no one really takes it as the demise of Western Society any more. That a guy could sing this song more or less to another guy is just great. As a “gay” song, it’s also a great love song. And Darren Criss is an energizing addition to Glee. (I have to say, though, that I find it a little creepy hearing an adult woman sing it to an adult man — a little too I’m-going-to-be-your-teenage-dream pedo fantasy for me.)
Last night, PJ and I watched Strapped, a small gay independent film written and directed by Joseph Graham. Ben Bonenfant plays a male prostitute who easily adapts to each client’s needs. After coming home with a John — literally, since the character’s name is John — the hustler becomes trapped in an apartment building, meeting some of its various tenants. He sleeps with some of them, but he learns a little more about himself from each person he meets. Here’s the trailer:
We first see him with a client who tells him a story about the guy he loved when he was a teenager in Russia. Bonenfant’s character immediately replies with his own revealing tale of childhood abandonment. He then meets a queen, instantly becoming a queen himself and pretending to be a version of Keanu Reeves’s character in My Own Private Idaho. He hooks up with a closeted married guy while pretending to be straight himself, blows a guy at the queen’s party, and gets fucked by an older gay activist who’s grateful for the opportunity to have sex with a such a hot guy. He also runs into a guy who just wants to kiss and have his soul penetrated.
The Hustler–we never know his name in the film–adapts to each client’s needs, but he also shares tender moments with most of the men, connecting with them in some deeply personal way. But is it really connection? Or are the tender moments just another part of his professional toolbox?
Fruit Fly is a 2009 musical that PJ and I recently watched on Netflix. It stars L.A. Renigan as Bethesda, a Filipina performance artist who has just moved to San Francisco. Her performance art is about her search for her birth parents, whom she has sought out after her adoptive parents’ death. Her biological father is now also dead, but no one knows what has become of her mother. She has found a room for six months in an apartment building, and the film follows her attempts to stage her performance piece while getting to know her new roommates. Here’s the trailer:
Fruit Fly is a fun, entertaining movie. PJ and I both really enjoyed it.
Part of what I liked it about is its experimental nature. It’s not a traditional musical in which the characters break into song to sing about their emotions or falling love or stuff like that. These characters do break into song, but their songs are about public transportation, workshopping your performance piece, being a fag hag, or meeting another versatile bottom. In other words, this is a musical about urban, racial, gender, and queer identities.
I’ve been working on my lists of favorite albums, singles/tracks, and videos of 2010 for the past week or so. This year I’ve been particularly interested in thinking about what these favorites say about me and what I like in music or videos. I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. So, I’ll start by listing my favorite albums of last year; then I’ll write a little about my overall thoughts about this list.
Perfume Genius
My favorite album of 2010 was Perfume Genius’s Learning. Perfume Genius is the musical nom de plume of Mike Hadreas, an early 20-something who has produced an amazingly intimate and unique album.
I came cross this album while reading omg blog’s list of the top gayest songs of 2010. After listening to “Learning,” the title track from Perfume Genius’s album (obviously), I wanted to hear more. So, I googled the album and starting listening to it and reading reviews.
This album, which is really short at only about a half-hour long, reminds me of Sadie Benning’s early short videos, which I sometimes show my gay lit students. These videos were made with a children’s camera and are therefore very stylized and amateurish (in a good way). These qualities also make them experimental and fascinating.
Last night PJ and I saw the Coen brothers’ new movie, True Grit. This movie, based on the novel, is technically a remake of the John Wayne classic. I have a healthy respect for the original film, and I love several of the Coen brothers’ movies, especially Fargo, Blood Simple, and No Country for Old Men. Here’s the trailer:
Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old whose father has been murdered by Tom Chaney. She wants justice, so she hired Rooster Cogburn, a U.S. Marshall, to track him down and bring him back for trial. Jeff Bridges plays Cogburn, also known as the part for which John Wayne won his Oscar. Matt Damon plays LaBeouf, a Texas Ranger who teams up with Cogburn for this job.
A few things stand out about this film. First, Steinfeld is excellent as Ross. She plays the character’s precociousness just right. Ross is intelligent and thinks she knows everything. This “adventure” will prove otherwise. Steinfeld is likely to receive an Oscar nomination for support actress, which is silly, since hers is a lead role. I don’t understand why critics and awards groups go along with the fiction that child actors are de facto supporting performers. Why not just have a separate category for best juvenile performance? Or better yet, why not put them in their real category? If she wins, it will be at the expense of someone who deserves the supporting Oscar — like Annette Bening for her role in The Kids Are All Right — oh, wait … I forgot … she’s in the leading category even though her role is a supporting one ….
Over the weekend, PJ and I went to see The Fighter, starring Mark Wahlberg as professional boxer Micky Ward. The film traces his rise to a welterweight title after overcoming a professional decline caused in part by his reliance on his half-brother and drug-addicted trainer, Dicky Eklund. Here’s the trailer:
I didn’t know anything about this true story before seeing the movie, and I think that helped – -I at least could imagine various outcomes. But basically, The Fighter is a genre pic that adheres pretty closely to its genre–think a modern-day Rocky: boxer gets shafted by poor management and training and has to make good on his dream of winning a title by dumping his family and going it alone. There’s nothing new here cinematically speaking, but it’s an enjoyable film nevertheless because the actors are so good.
Mark Wahlberg is solid as Micky. He’s a charismatic, engaging actor. There’s something about him that makes you instantly like his character, to root for him to win.
The last play PJ and I saw in New York was Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still. Laura Linney plays Sarah Goodwin, a photojournalist that specialized in photographing war zones. Brian D’Arcy James plays James Dodd, a journalist and Sarah’s partner. At the beginning of the play, the two return to New York after Sarah has been gravely injured by a road-side bomb in Afghanistan. The play examines what happens to this couple in the subsequent months, especially as they see their old friend, Richard, played by Eric Bogosian, fall in love with and marry a much younger woman, Mandy, played by Christina Ricci.
Here’s a brief scene from the play, in which James suddenly proposes to Sarah:
I really liked this play. All of the actors are excellent. Linney is great as Sarah, a career woman who knows what she wants but is also too smart for her own good — she’s fully aware of the consequences of getting what she wants. I really like that Sarah isn’t played for sympathy. Linney presents her forthrightly, warts and all. I could imagine that she and the playwright might be tempted to make Sarah more sympathetic, but they don’t. Instead, we see her choices and, at the end of the play, are left to judge for ourselves whether those choices are the “right” ones.
The third show PJ and I saw in New York was La Bete, a 1991 play that takes place in seventeenth-century France. David Hyde Pierce plays Elomire, a stuffy playwright attached to the court of a princess, played by Joanna Lumley. When a new playwright catches the princess’s eye, Elomire must figure out how to convince her that her new favorite is, in fact, an idiot rather than a genius. Mark Rylance plays Valere, the buffoonish newcomer.
Here’s a taste of the broadway production:
Basically, this is a play about plays. I tend to enjoy this sort of work, and I generally enjoyed La Bete. The first thing you notice is the set design. The walls of shelves with books is definitely impressive. I was a little skeptical at first — a busy set can sometimes overwhelm the action. But that didn’t happen in this play. There’s only one location in this relatively short comedy, so having a more detailed set works well.
David Hyde Pierce is very good in his role as the solid playwright who tends toward the tragic. He is not amused by Valere’s rise. To the contrary, he sees his rival as the very epitome of lowbrow, inane entertainment that cheapens the theater rather than elevates it. This view gives the play its primary relevance — it rehearses many of the same arguments various people make today about the debasement of culture due to television, bad pop music, and broadway shows based on second-rate movies.
While we were in New York, PJ and I really wanted to see Green Day’s American Idiot. We both love the original album, and we both have crushes on John Gallagher from seeing him in Spring Awakening. So, we got tickets from the TKTS Booth. Our seats weren’t the best, but we enjoyed the performance. Here’s a sample of the musical from when the cast was on Letterman:
Before seeing the show, we had heard a little about the production (in addition to knowing the original Green Day album well). What we had heard was that there are three plot lines but that they three stories don’t really jive together well. We had also heard that it’s all a little confusing.
After seeing it, we thought that these comments were ludicrous. The plot does revolve around three guys. They want to move to the city and start a band, but one of them ends up not being able to leave their home town because his girlfriend gets pregnant. The other two go anyway, but they soon part company when one of them joins the army and the other one becomes a drug addict. The show follows their separate lives over the course of about 6 months or so.
All of it is very clear and not only easy to follow but also engaging, at times dazzling, and very entertaining.
I don’t think he was all that hot when he was younger and had long hair:
Now that he’s out, he’s even hotter. I first heard this single when he sang it with Joss Stone on Oprah. At the time I was skeptical about it. It felt wrong for him to be singing a heterosexual love song after having just come out.
![IMG_8341[1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/8644/27753735444_2ca20d29d0_s.jpg "IMG_8341[1]")
This Gaudy Gilded Stage 