Dog Tags: A Review Monday, Nov 16 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 1:47 pm

Over the weekend PJ and I watched Dog Tags, a movie about a guy, Nate, played by Paul Preiss, who joins the marines in order to please his girlfriend and his mother. While home from basic training, Nate gets a rude awakening about the girlfriend and meets Andy, played by Bart Fletcher, a gay guy with his own set of problems. The two men hit it off, leading both to make some important decisions about their futures.

I couldn’t find a trailer for the movie, so here’s a clip I found on YouTube. It takes place after Nate (the guy in bed) and Andy (the guy in the shower) have spent a night in a motel together.

I’m glad I found this clip because it illustrates what I like about this movie. First off, Preiss is great in this role. His Nate is a typical guy who’s just trying to do the best he can in life. His main problem is that he doesn’t know how he is. Raised by a single mother who isn’t very honest about his origins and who is torn between her hope that the marines will give him direction and that he’ll fail to become a marine, Nate pretty much just goes through life doing what everyone tells him to do. He’s not a big thinker.

Yet Preiss creates a character that is good-hearted and sincere, even if he isn’t terribly bright. As we get to know him better, however, we see that he is smart and has a lot of potential; he’s just never had the opportunity to figure things out for himself.

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Wrecked: A Review Saturday, Nov 14 2009 

movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 3:41 pm

On Friday, PJ and I watched Wrecked, a gay indy we rented from Netflix. Here’s the trailer:

Wrecked is about a would-be actor, Ryan, whose plans become derailed when his ex, Daniel, suddenly shows up and wants to crash at his house indefinitely. Although Ryan knows that Daniel is no good, he agrees to let him back into his life. When it becomes apparent that Daniel is still a drug addict and unable to commit to a monogamous relationship, Ryan has to decide whether to kick him out or jump right into Daniel’s drug-fueled sexual escapades. He chooses the latter, and his life quickly begins to spin out of control.

Theo Montgomery, which is apparently a pseudonym for actor Jake Casey, stars as Ryan. (PJ thinks that all of the actors on this movie used pseudonyms, but I don’t have time to confirm that right now.) I thought his performance was excellent. His Ryan has a winning mix of youthful gay attitude and innocence. I assume Casey and the other actors use fake names here because of the sexually explicit nature of this movie, and maybe they thought it would hurt their careers or embarrass their families or something.

And this film is sexually explicit. We see the four of the actors completely nude. They make out, feel each other up, get erections (which we see), feel each others erections up, and (presumably) simulate anal sex.

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Another Reason to Visit Brazil: Arthur Sales Friday, Nov 13 2009 

male models and travel thisgaudygildedstage 8:58 am

Reading Made in Brazil, one of my favorite blogs, gives me a new reason almost every day to want to visit Brazil. Here’s today’s reason:

Based on this video I have to say that Arthur Sales is a perfect ambassador for Brazilian tourism! (Watching his video for Butch also makes me want to workout!)

Rodrigo Calazans, one of my favorite Brazilian models, was the “face” of Butch in 2009. Here’s a making of video for his campaign:

For much of the past year, a picture from Calazans’ Butch campaign has been my desktop photo on my computer.

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Sotw: Bad Romance by Lady Gaga Thursday, Nov 12 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 8:39 pm

This week’s song of the week is Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” the first single off of her new(ish) album, The Fame Monster. Here’s the video, which is crazy amazing:

Since watching the video, I’ve been reading various online reviews of it. Partly, I thought this might help me try to understand it a little more — I think Lady Gaga is a brilliant performance artist, but I don’t always think I’m “getting it” as thoroughly as I’d like to. And I was just interested in what other people had to say about it.

Critics agree that the overall message of the video is to critique various aspects of fame. As Christopher John Farley explains, “The theme of the video seems to be something about how fame seduces, addicts and perverts those that attain it.”

The best part of the video, of course, is the visuals Lady Gaga creates. As Marina Reed points out, “Only Lady GaGa could make getting kidnapped, drugged, and auctioned off to the Russian mafia look this good.” My favorite parts are the crazy eyes while she’s in the bathtub, the use of back lighting in several parts of the video, the hot Russian mafia guys’ bare chests and shoulders and tattoos (they can kidnap my ass any time they want!), the grotesque image of the nude Lady Gaga as deformed and emaciated captive, the hairless cat (totally brilliant), the floating jewels part, Lady Gaga’s white thong (she’s smoking too!), and, of course, the video’s final image. I guess that means I love it all!

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SotW: Shut Up and Drive by Chely Wright Tuesday, Nov 3 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 3:41 pm

While PJ and I were driving to Washington D.C. last week, we talked a little about songs about driving. One of my favorites has long been Chely Wright’s “Shut Up and Drive,” so when we got back I downloaded it from iTunes and started listening to it again.

The embedding for the video has been disabled on YouTube, but you can watch it here. (Usually, I don’t choose songs that won’t let you embed the video — I think it’s stupid when they do that — but I love this song enough to overcome that prejudice.)

Now I can’t stop listening to this song. It’s really a great country song, I think. Somebody really ought to cover it.

Listening to it again also made me think about the late 1980s and early 1990s and when I loved a number of country songs, mostly by female artists. Here’s a list (in no particular order) of some of the ones I loved back then. Some of these video also have embedding disabled, but I’ll include what I can and link to what I can’t.

“Like We Never Had a Broken Heart” by Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks:

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    Pageant: A Review Monday, Nov 2 2009 

    documentary and movies and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 3:39 pm

    PJ was feeling under the weather on Saturday, so instead of going out for Halloween, we decided to stay in and watch Pageant, a documentary about the Miss Gay America Pageant. Here’s the trailer:

    Simply put, I loved this documentary. Let’s start with the level of being a documentary. This film focuses on five of the 52 contestants in the Miss Gay America Pageant. I liked this emphasis on just a small sampling of the contestants, since it allows you to become familiar with them and start rooting for (or against) one or more of them. This focus creates the documentary’s narrative and sucks up into the competitions and back- and onstage dramas.

    Like the ladies in the Miss American Pageant, these ladies participate in a series of competitions before the pageant’s finale, where the finalists are named and then compete for the crown. We see the contestants undergo an interview as men — they are required to dress in male clothing and are judged, in part, on their ability to distance themselves from their drag persona. They have a solo talent competition, in which they have to perform alone and without separate props. Then they have a talent production contest, in which they can have back-up dancers, props, and sets. And they have to compete in evening gowns.

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    Visiting Washington D.C. Sunday, Nov 1 2009 

    travel thisgaudygildedstage 6:14 pm

    PJ and I spent four days last week in Washington D.C. I was attending the conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council, and PJ was doing a little work at the Library of Congress.

    D.C. is one of the first cities that PJ and I visited together in the 1990s. In retrospect, it’s a great “first city” to visit: if you stay downtown, the city is fairly easy to navigate by foot, car, and/or metro. And it’s difficult now to believe how accessible all of the government buildings were before 9/11. My first memory of being at the Capitol is that we practically just walked right in — we went through a metal detector, but that was about it. Today, everything’s much more secure.

    We drove over, which took about 6 hours. The mountains of West Virginia and Maryland were gorgeous. The autumnal landscape was breath-taking with its combinations of reds, browns, yellows, greens, and oranges. Just outside of D.C. it started to drizzle a bit, but overall it was a fairly easy drive.

    Because of the drizzle, I didn’t take any pictures the first evening we were there. The next morning, PJ and I walked over to the Capitol before parting ways: he walked on to the Library of Congress while I visited the National Art Gallery before heading back to our hotel to attend a conference session.

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    Cooking Harvest Vegetable and Lentil Casserole Monday, Oct 26 2009 

    cooking thisgaudygildedstage 9:13 pm

    Yesterday I decided to cook for a change. On weekdays, I’m usually so tired after a long day at the office that we have started going out to eat a lot. I therefore try to cook at least once on the weekends.

    So, yesterday I opened up one of our vegetarian cookbooks and liked the first recipe I saw: Harvest Vegetable and Lentil Casserole. The picture in the cookbook actually looked like a soup, but apparently anything you bake can be a casserole. Here’s what the final product looked like:

    I really liked it. I tend to like lentils anyway, and the vegetables came out great. Plus, it was really easy to make. I even saved some so that I could come home today for lunch and heat up a serving.

    I’ll post the recipe after the break.

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    Paolo Baruffaldi’s Le Rasoir 2009 Thursday, Oct 22 2009 

    art and travel thisgaudygildedstage 6:22 pm

    While walking to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice this summer, PJ and I were window shopping as we passed various art galleries. One in particular caught our eyes, the Galleria d’Arte Bac Art Studio.

    This studio stood out to us for two reasons. First, most of the paintings in the window were etchings and watercolors, a medium that we both really like. And second, many of the works seemed to exemplify a queer aesthetic, also something we both really like.

    After we visited the Guggenheim, we went back to the Bac Art Studio. This time we went inside and had a good look around. The work that PJ instantly expressed a fondness for depicts two men shaving. It’s called “The Razor”:

    This painting is by Paolo Baruffaldi, a Venetian artist who has a few series of paintings displayed in the gallery. Even though “The Razor” was our favorite, we liked how a lot of his work seems to depict Venice as a homoerotic locale, something that we definitely did not pick up on while we were there. In fact, we felt that Italy as a whole was severely lacking in visible gay people, though we just might not have been looking in the right places.

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    SotW: Give It to Me Right by Melanie Fiona Tuesday, Oct 20 2009 

    music thisgaudygildedstage 9:45 am

    While browsing through the new albums on iTunes today I ran across Melanie Fiona‘s The Bridge, which I’ve downloaded and started listening to. In many ways, The Bridge is an R&B/Soul album in the vein of Amy Winehouses’s Back to Black. I really like it.

    The first single off the album is “Give It to Me Right,” a great song that is representative of the album’s neo-soul, adult, and totally catchy vibe. The official video is here. Here’s a YouTube video of a live version of “Give It to Me Right” from a British t.v. show:

    So far, I love every track on The Bridge. My favorite so far is “Monday Morning.” Here’s a live version of this track:

    Hot! Melanie Fiona can sing, not just in a technical way but also in an interpretative way — she knows how to tell the song’s emotional story. She’s amazing!

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