I always knew you had it in you, Tara

TMZ is shocked-shocked!

Breaking News: Tara Reid Gets Classy!

Tragic party girl Tara Reid managed to pull it together, and dare we say, actually looked good last night.

Some people can wear a gay flag for a dress and some people can't

Further to my latest Kylie post, here's Lindsay Lohan at Maxim's Hot 100 party. Click to make it bigger.

A short review

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus for the film Shortbus is

The sex may be explicit, but Mitchell integrates it into the characters' lives and serves the whole story up with a generous dose of sweetness and wit.

No, he doesn't.

i'm old, not wise, just worried

the best man's fall
could i interest you in a little something special
pay the earth but if you have no money
your attention'll do
and if you don't give a damn
you're welcome to keep it
it's a hard road when you know where you're going
and it's harder when you know where you're not
so i'll stamp my clay feet till the staggering stops
but good god give me strength to face another lazy day of
"if i was a millionaire i'd be a million miles from here"


hands of the clock give me a round of applause
for getting out of bed and the scars of the night before
have turned into scabs and still I'm seeing double
and i'm looking twice my age
it's getting to the stage where
i'm old, not wise, just worried


stories of rags to riches leave me in stitches
and with a thread that's hard to follow


you came into my life like a brick through a window
and i cracked a smile
remember those good
who remembers the good old games
that seemed to fill our days
like a kiss, cuddle and torture and
i-spy, s-p-i-t in your eye


those around me who came up trumps
would always get down on their knees to brag

the trash can sinatras

Poetic

Le Coeur
Henri Matisse, French, 1869-1954

This is my contribution to today's offering of Poetry Corner at If I Ran The Zoo. I found this poem and the artwork I'm posting with it in one of my "Desert Island Books:" Art & Love: An Illustrated Anthology of Love Poetry, put out by the Met Museum of Art. 150 poets matched with pieces from the musem.

My first, first (and to date only) produced play was originally named after this poem. I changed the title, but it still contains a scene where a character quotes:

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which
enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring
opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world
equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

E.E. CUMMINGS, American, 1894-1962

The Garden at Vaucresson
Edouard Vuillard, French
1923 and 1937.

Sarah Silverman is mocking me with her Jewish star good looks

I tend to be a little ambivalent about Sarah Silverman. When I think of Silverman, I often think of something Dorothy Parker once said about herself,

"I was just a little Jewish girl trying to be cute."

But that thought in itself is ambivalent. I mean it, in one sense, in a desire to decrease her celebrity in reaction to the idea that she is somehow state-of-the-art in comedy. When I sometimes think that at least as much of her success is down to the fact that men like an attractive woman who is willing to talk filthy.

Yet comparing anyone who writes and can be witty (man or woman) to Dorothy Parker in any way is, inherently, a compliment. And I mean it in that sense, too. Sometimes she doesn't make me laugh as much as squirm...but sometimes that's my favorite thing that she does, as in her appearance in The Aristocrats.

All that to one side... I love this picture of her that appeared in Maxim.

I love it not just because it's a picture of a good-looking woman in her underpants (although, god knows...). But because I think it's a reference to one of the more famous scenes from the original Cabaret.

In the scene, Joel Grey as the MC of the title show in 1930s Berlin dances with an actor dressed in an oversized gorillia suit and sings lovingly "If they could see her through my eyes, maybe they'd all understand..." Originally, the last line of the song was-"If you could see her through my eyes...she wouldn't look Jewish at all."

It was meant to be chilling, and reportedly it was too much so. As happens, what was intended to be a scathing satire of anti-Semitism was taken by some to be the real thing. The creators, against their better artistic judgement, changed the line, although Grey would sometimes use the original and claim he "forgot." Bob Fosse also restored it for his film version, and I believe it is mostly used in productions today.

I should say that I don't know if that connection was intended, and if it was I don't know that it was Silverman's idea and not the photographers. But it seems so typical of Silverman that she would have things working on at least two levels even for something that's usually just as honestly sexist as Maxim photos.

I have to admire her for it.

(Photos source here. There's one or two more sexy ones, too.)

On the other hand

As most of you know, I have been writing/trying to sell a play/screenplay/novel for a few years that features a couple of characters who happen to be gay. As many of you may also know, it is a characteristic of the "struggling artist" that we sometimes feel sorry for ourselves when work that we perceive to be not as good as our own does well.

Or even just the fact that it gets made or published, even if it dies on the vine, while we still struggle. It can be disheartening, my friends, when you know that you've spent great amounts of time and care trying to create people an audience will care about. With good things to say, and a compelling story to tell.

Meanwhile, stories that seem to you to be more about exploitation and/or tokenism are put out there.

But, as in all things, there is balance.

you can get Mary Cheney's memoir for six cents (***NEVER USED***) at Amazon.

Gracias to Blue Gal.

There are exceptions to every rule

Speaking of actresses that I don't find quite as pretty as the rest of the country seems to, I've written in the past of how Jessica Alba doesn't get me that hot.

However.

Sweet Lord, her legs are about eight feet long!

This blog needs to return to its higher purpose

Over in thoughts from an empty head, SAP replies to Maxim's naming of Lindsay Lohan as The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

I can personally think of at least seven women right off the bat who are infinitely more beautiful than Lohan.

And so SAP features them. My favorites on that list: Freema Agyeman (I think a better picture might have been found, but that's me) and Jewel Staite (hey, just because I don't think Firefly was all that doesn't mean I don't know a hot babe when I see one) .

So I figured I could also think of at least seven women who are more beautiful than Ms. Lohan. And I figured, just for the challenge and to keep you all entertained, I would do so without relying on Anne Hathaway or any of the rest of the usual suspects.

As it turns out, I thought of nine.

So.

In no particular order, here are nine women who may be less celebrated, but are definitely more beautiful than Lindsay Lohan.

Gina Philips. An actress who may be best known as the star of the first Jeepers Creepers movie. As I've written in the past, the creepiest thing about the Jeepers movies is how pedophile-erotic they are. Especially when you know that they were directed and written by a convicted child molester. But you can't blame Philips for that; she does a good job and looks like this.

Sarah Polley. As an actress, she's the queen of what they call "small" movies, with the odd exception like the 2004 Dawn of the Dead. She's also an award-winning screenwriter and director whose first feature, Away From Her, is in limited release now and has been getting terrific reviews.

But. For me, it's always been hard not to think of her as little Sally Salt in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, also starring Uma Thurman. Even as Polley grew up and turned into Uma's younger sister...

Kim Cattrall. Who really ought to get some kind of special mention on account of she's been scary sexy for over 20 years.

Kelly, aka WarriorTwo. A friendly, thoughtful and bright old girlfriend who is also a damn pretty, kissable (if memory serves) babe and a woman of vision not at all subsceptible to flattery.

On a completely unrelated matter, I sent her my novel a couple of days ago.


And, of course, the Go Gos, especially Jane and Belinda.

Note to self: Never take hallucinogens and look at Kylie

Seriously, either she actually is trying out for Doctor Who, only in 1985, or else this is her way of paying tribute to the gay subjects under her rainbow flag. I'm not saying she doesn't still look amazing, but, um, ow!

First picture credit: Pink Is The New Blog
Second picture credit: This is London

Katharine McPhee: The favorite woman singer of the cowardly, illiterate, tasteless and stupid.

Just give me a minute here folks, just a little ritual I have to perform. Like shrugging off a fly. Normal service to this blog will be resumed as soon as possible.

Katharine McPhee's fan has piped up one more time to defend her honor. Once again, he/she has done so anonymously, posting a comment to one of my blog entries as follows:

I had never heard of your Christy before. I searched her out on youtube. Can't say I was impressed in any way. :shrug: Nothing special there.

The blog entry to which he/she posted this comment...was the one about the spiders in the kid's ear. In other words, one with no connection to Katharine McPhee or my Miss MacColl.

So. From this, we may conclude:

• Katharine McPhee fans are cowards, afraid to face anyone under their own name (or any name)
• Katharine McPhee fans are illiterate. It's Kirsty, not Christy.
• Katherine McPhee fans are tasteless and like tasteless things. You don't have to be a Kirsty groupie like me, who thinks she was a foxy, supremely talented goddess. But to say there was nothing special there means not only don't you know what good music is, you don't even know what special means.
• Katherine McPhee fans are stupid. I repeat, the little punk/ette couldn't even post his/her comment to the right entry.

He/she finishes by bidding me a cool

Goodbye.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out, now.

No Flowers Please

My (below posted) opinion of Ms. McPhee has attracted the attention of an anonymous champion who tries to make me see sense on the matter. He/she also writes, in reference to my bemoaning the fact that crap (as I see it) like this rises while Kirsty is dust,

It is not good to mourn 7 years for someone and meanwhile ignore those who are still with us.

Quite right.

This is Jen Foster, performing "SHE" with 2 Chix and a Drum (shake it, ladies).



This is Venus Hum, featuring vocalist Annette Strean, performing "Montana" (I couldn't find an embedable version).

And this is Violet Indiana w/Siobhan De Marè, performing "Purr la Perla."



By coincidence, Foster and Venus Hum are both either currently based in or from the usually (and justifiably) much-mocked state of Tennessee. Proof yet again that music is the best if not only reason not to simply peel up that state and flick it away like an old scab.

The things you find when you're egotistical enough to do a Google search on your own blog...

...you find good blogs like And I Am Not Resigned, written by the curious Ellen, who linked to me back in January and I only just found out.

This is my favorite thing that I've ever found in YouTube's featured videos.

It's a disco-pop song called "Your Mama," by someone I've never heard of who calls himself Kennedy, and basically it's a love song to M.I.L.F.s and Hot (for) Teachers.

The song's good, but the video's great, highly sexy but also funny.

Enjoy, or see if you don't.

Things that make me miss my girl Kirsty

I just happened to come across the video for Katharine McPhee's song, "Over It." I'm not linking to it, but it's not hard to find if you're curious.

And I'm not denying Ms. McPhee is hot and shapely (why do you think I watched the video?).

The thing is, Kirsty MacColl was both of those things and could actually sing and write.

Based on the video (and songwriting credits), McPhee can't do either.

It's seven years since Kirsty was wrongfully taken from us and Katharine McPhee is an "American Idol."

Things that make me miss my girl Kirsty.

And frankly hate the American music biz, just a little bit more.

Oh my god

Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

...parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.

There's more if you can take it. But first of all, you longtime readers...guess in which state this betrayal of children by people they are suppoed to trust took place. Go on, guess. If I were a parent of any of those students I'd want every single person involved fired.

I might even want the school shut down. There is no excuse, none, for making a bunch of elementary school children think they're in some cross between a real-life nightmare and a Friday the 13th movie.

"people who are gay," vs. GAY PEOPLE

I'm Team DeGeneres all the way.

In a long video post on her blog, Rosie O'Donnell claims fellow out lesbian Ellen DeGeneres is not allowed to talk about anything "gay, gay gay!" on her daytime talk show. Mum's the L word?

In her video, Rosie claims Ellen signed a contract that forbids her to mention anything to do with gay issues, adding, "I talk about 'gay' because I like to and she doesn't talk about it because she doesn't want to or she can't."

TMZ contacted a rep for Telepictures, producers of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," who jokingly said "She's gay? Who knew?" The rep then added that this is completely untrue, and that they have no such contracts with any of their hosts, saying,"Ellen is free to talk about whatever she wants and we encourage her to do so."

The Telepictures rep is correct (plus, how much do you love the style of that joke?). I'm not a regular watcher of Ellen's talk show, but without even thinking very hard I could think of three examples of her mentioning her own homosexuality, or gay issues on episodes that I have seen.

It's just that-unlike Rosie-Ellen does and says things that are worth admiring for reasons other than that she's gay, too. I am absolutely confident that her performance in Finding Nemo will live on long after people have forgotten Rosie's vocalizing in Tarzan (if that hasn't already happened)

When she does mentions her homosexuality, she's usually either being funny-she is a comic, after all-or she's just talking about her life (with Ellen, she's usually doing both, actually). I caught a recent episode where she was talking about the back incident that led her to do her show from a hospital-style bed.

In the course of telling the story, she made mention of her girlfriend, the v. hot Portia de Rossi (lucky girl, that Ellen), taking care of her. That the person taking care of her and sharing her life was another woman was part of the story and included as such, as it should have been.

What it was not was rammed down people's throats, let's-scare-the-hell-out-of-the-straights style. It's "people who are gay," vs. GAY PEOPLE, again.

It seems also worth mentioning that DeGeneres is an admired, succesful and award-winning performer, and rightly so, who brings her live-in girlfriend with her to events like the Emmys and People's Choice Awards.

Is it just my blinders as the straight boy that make me wonder what more she is supposed to be doing to help Advance The Homosexual Agenda?

And by the way...obviously I never watched Rosie O'Donnell's talk show when it was on, but via "the trickle down theory of pop culture," ISTR hearing something. Isn't it true that she spent a lot of time talking about her big, hot crush on dreamy Tom Cruise?

Never mind the fact that should have set off at least one or two irony alarms. Doesn't it make her criticizing DeGeneres for the way she chooses to live and talk about her life just a tad hypocritical?

Candy writes Paris

The window Spelling writes a letter to the evil Hilton. Mine was better. BTW, my theory is, Candy is a secret comic book fangirl, is one of those who found this blog via When Fangirls Attack*, and stole my idea.









*Between that and Feministing, my Average visits Per Day, as I post this, is at 1,047!

Ladies Love Cool Ben

By coincidence, I've gotten nods from a couple of journals and websites for women and feminists this week. Ann from Feministing included my review of the model kidnapping-torture flick ad campaign in her Weekly Feminist Reader. Thanks to her.

Also worth checking out in this week's reader:

Abstinence only sex education isn't even playing in Kansas anymore.

This article from Alternet on "The Hidden Costs of America's Hypermasculine Culture:" asks:

What can we say about a country so anxiously hypermasculine that it can give rise to Godmen, a muscular-Christianity movement that seeks to lure Real Men back to church with services that feature guys bending metal wrenches with their bare hands and leaders exulting, "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

("Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone.")

(Yes, thank you, Lord...)

And this post from Salon about how a man and his wife made a decision to abort.

Random Flickr-blogging 2193

If only you could just go buy it in a bottle.

Credit.