Below is one of the instant message exchanges between former Republican Representative Mark Foley and a teenage Congressional page. You've probably seen it or read transcriptions, but I'm enjoying this too much not to reproduce some of it:







You may, however, be unaware of the fact that similar exchanges have come to light in relation to a number of other politicians. They are not, evidently, restricted to the House of Representatives - nor even to one party. Below are several examples:

( behind the cut )

Tags: photo/graphic, political diversion, queerness
humour: naughty

I couldn't resist...





"I can't turn over a new leaf until I've reached the bottom of the page."

Tags: photo/graphic, political diversion, queerness
humour: giddy

So the Tony Awards were broadcast last night and I have to admit that it looked fucking grim. I'm going to rant about this sordid affair a bit, so feel free to skip this if it's of no interest. But, hey, I have a degree in Theatre Theory and Criticism and was a practitioner of the art for twenty-odd years (and a damned good one at that), so I deserve a rant about this sorry state of affairs.

Eight years ago, the Roundabout mounted a production of Cabaret that was one of the worst pieces of tripe ever to be hurled across the footlights. Apart from the brain-damaged direction by Sam Mendes, the worst thing about it was Alan Cumming. Both missed the point of the show - and, obviously, the source material - by light-years. It was all pretentious art school "decadence" with Cumming as a leering, mincing MC that was about as chilling as a day-glo spider in a dark ride. The immediacy and ease of the fascist impulse couldn't have been more absent. The thing apparently appealed to the sad sort of audience that mistakes style - even the jaded style of those who think too much kohl is "Brechtian" - for substance and it ran for six seemingly endless years. It was the worst thing to happen to Broadway since Andrew Lloyd Webber crossed the Atlantic. When this abomination finally closed, I thought we'd seen the last of that sort of third-hand sub-Fosse bullshit. How wrong I was.

Most of the awards last night went to Canadians and Brits, which is hardly surprising since it would appear that Americans no longer have any sense of theatre whatsoever. This is particularly sad since the musical theatre is one of the few original American art forms - or, at least, once was. Two steaming piles of excrement stood out from the rest of the debris floating in Broadway's gutters, both revivals. I suppose this is not very surprising since none of the new works were any more memorable than a State of the Union address by Gerald Ford. Well, okay, one new production stood out as excruciatingly bad: The Wedding Singer. Is it not enough that one must, from time to time, attend an actual wedding reception? Do we really need a Broadway show that celebrates wedding receptions? In 1985? In New Jersey?? Slash my throat now.

But getting back to the revivals: first, there is the appalling revival of Sweeney Todd. Okay, the original Harold Prince production wasn't that great, but at least Prince knew what the show was about. He rightly created a rich Dickensian milieu that demonstrated that the sick mind of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was both a reflection and result of the sick Victorian society that spawned him. A factory whistle underlined each murder and corruption was ubiquitous. Directed and designed by John Doyle, the new production is "pared down", purportedly placing emphasis on Sondheim's lyrics. Okay... what about Sondheim's show?

There is a pathetic tendency in theatre of late to equate every society in decay with a misreading of the Weimar Republic. Everyone is decked out in quasi-thirties garb with "expressionistic" make-up and such silly trappings as cigarette holders, garter belts, monocles, and shaved heads. And black leather. Lots and lots of black leather. And, of course, all those Bob Fosse boas, fishnets, and bowler hats. Everyone spends their time looking sinister, intense, and thoroughly unconvincing - and polysexuality rules the day. It's as though Erich von Stroheim had fucked Marlene Dietrich up the ass and she shat out a chorus line of bisexual brats costumed by Hot Topic and Frederick's of Hollywood. It's also cheap, trite, unimaginative, easy, and dead wrong for most pieces in which it's used. Sweeney Todd is the perfect example. I have no doubt that the mindless snobs who fork out a few bills for this puke leave the theatre ever so pleased with their refined selves: "It was so artistc!" Die, you shit-for-brain losers, die.

Even worse is the revival of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, one of the greatest pieces of theatre ever penned. Brecht is particularly susceptible to this class of bankrupt-style-over-semblance-of-substance treatment, though, and this production is clearly no exception. Indeed, it is the paradigm. In 1979, Garland Wright directed an hysterical show called Das Lusitania Songspiel, written by and starring Christopher Durang and Sigourney Weaver. It was a brillaint satire of all the then-recent productions of Brecht's works (and elements of Brecht's "epic theatre" in other plays and films). It was one of the most hilarious evenings I have ever spent in the theatre (and I'm not just saying that because I was sleeping with Wright at the time). Frank Rich of the New York Times, in selecting highlights of the theatre season, wrote "For flat-out, falling-on-the-floor laughter, though, nothing came close to Das Lusitania Songspiel. It takes ruthless satirists to keep our culture honest."

Tragically for our culture, we seem to have a dearth of ruthless satirists these days. Indeed, Scott Elliott's production of Threepenny Opera is such a trivial self-parody that it could almost be mistaken for Das Lusitania Songspiel. Like Sweeney Todd, Brecht's play is set in Victorian London. To Scott Elliott, Victorian London looks like yet another dark fantasia on the Weimar Republic, replete with every tired cliché in the Brechtian book - each of which totally misses the point of what Brecht and Weill were trying to do. Brecht was a communist and a lethally serious, if entertaining, social critic. His art is all about class divisions. Elliott would not appear to know the difference between the working and ruling classes if they collectively bit huge chunks out of his ass. Brecht created a style of theatre specifically to provoke self-reflection and a rational view of the actions on the stage. This thing looked like a cheesy entertainment at some student coffee shop catering to aging Goths. Far from leading its audience to take to the streets on behalf of the workers of the world, the most this production might do is incite them to order a toffee nut latte.

I know nothing about Elliott except that he previously directed Avenue Q, a musical in which the performers appeared with puppet versions of themselves for no apparent reason apart from giving an otherwise lackluster show a distracting gimmick, but I would not be at all surprised if he were some effete queer who spent his formative years jerking off to photos of Nazis in drag and who's finally come of age to foist his masturbatory fantasies on an unsuspecting, if wholly deserving, public. Attitude - especially attitude that was only semi-original thirty years ago - is no substitute for concept or content. And, no surprise, at the center of the production is the execrable Alan Cumming presenting the worst Macheath (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) to have ever trod the stage. I'm sorry, but Macheath - the consummate criminal businessman and aristocrat manqué - is not some prancing Gestapo ponce with a mohawk. If anyone is considering making a genuine snuff film, Cumming would be perfect casting as the victim. Please.

Bleah. I was going to go on and on about how this is all a symptom of our ailing culture and the lack of hope for the future of the artform, but I'm too dispirited. The Broadway theatre is now officially dead - and the Tony Awards weren't even an appropriate wake.


EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to an anonymous comment, I stand corrected. Scott Elliott did not direct Avenue Q. He was the Artistic Director of the company that originally produced the show. Researching Mr. Elliott's illustrious career (as I suppose I should have done in the first place), his actual directing credits only include revivals of Present Laughter, The Women, Three Sisters, and Barefoot in the Park. Great background in Brecht.

Tags: duly noted, queerness, theatrix
humour: distressed

So Oscar night is here again. By default, the management of the Virgin Megastore Orlando Oscar competition has fallen to me - and I spent the whole of last evening collating and tabulating peoples' votes.

( For what it's worth, some of the results of the voting can be found behind the cut. )

Less interesting, perhaps, are my own predictions. For the record, they are as follows:


PICTURE

Will win: Crash
Should win: Crash

I'm likely to be wrong on this one, but I'm hoping that the Academy might just go with quality over hype. Plus half of Hollywodd was in the film and the half of Tinseltown that doesn;t want to sleep with Reese Witherspoon (who will, therefore, win Best Actress) wants to sleep with Ryan Phillippe - and Crash is set in LA, which a lot of voters call home. None of this has much to do with the fact that Crash is a vastly superior film to Brokeback Mountain, but you never know - the Academy could, for once, do the right thing.


ACTOR

Will win: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Should win: Terrence Howard

I can do a better Truman Capote impersonation. And I can certainly grunt as well as Heath Ledger, the other contender that some people think has a hope of taking home the award. For sheer acting chops, the award should be Howard's.

ACTRESS

Will win: Reese Witherspoon
Should win: Felicity Huffman

I have nothing against America's Most Recent Sweetheart, but - sorry - June Carter was just not that demanding a role. Nevertheless, everyone seems to love the pointy-chinned little bitch that nabbed Ryan Phillippe.

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Will win: George Clooney
Should win: Matt Dillon

Syriana should have been nominated for Picture or Screenplay, not Supporting Actor. Clooney will get this as a consolation prize. The same argument has been used for a Paul Giamatti win, but Hollywood likes Clooney more - and he's prettier.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Will win: Rachel Weisz
Should win: Frances McDormand

Weisz is good, but McDormand is better. Neither has that much screen time in their respective films, but Frances McDormand should be given an award every year because she's brilliant and I love her. So there.

DIRECTOR

Will win: Ang Lee
Should win: Paul Haggis

Lee should have won in 1995 for Sense and Sensibility (rather than the idiotic Braveheart that year) or, maybe, 1997's The Ice Storm (the year of the execrable Titanic), but not for this thing. To be blunt: Haggis simply did better work in Crash than Lee did in Brokeback Mountain. For that matter, George Clooney did better work in Good Night, and Good Luck than Lee did this year. Yeah, well.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Will win: Tsotsi
Should win: Paradise Now

The Academy will go with Tsotsi because they should have given this award to the similar (and deserving) City of God from Brazil four years ago and because they're too cowardly to give it to the superior Palestinian entry.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: A History of Violence

Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana took an unbearably moving story and turned it into an cold, passionless, over-extended yet underdeveloped character study that missed the point entirely. Yeah, give that pair an Oscar. I'd be happy if anything else won (well, except for Munich - but that's because Tony Kushner is a fucking asshole who should be lynched rather than honored). I'd go with A History of Violence or, failing that, The Constant Gardener. The screenplays for both put Brokeback to shame.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Will win: Crash
Should win: Match Point

As it happens, I'm glad Crash is the favorite - this may be about the only award the Best Picture of the Year takes home and it deserves all the attention it can get. But, in terms of writing, Match Point was the best script to have been filmed last year. Crash was a close second - with The Squid and the Whale a close third. Then we'd get to some of the adapted screenplays. Brokeback Mountain would still come last.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Will win: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Should win: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Wallace and Gromit will win because Chicken Run was robbed in 2000 (prompting the addition of Best Animated Feature in 2001), but all three W&G shorts are better than their first feature. Besides, in the stop-action stakes, Corpse Bride was generally better designed and executed - and the story was vastly better-written.

ART DIRECTION

Will win: Memoirs of a Geisha
Should win: King Kong

Something tells me that the Academy will go with period and location over damned excellent art direction. The design of King Kong - especially the New York sequences was nothing short of brilliant. Geisha, while worthy, was pretty much been there, done that. I actually went with Kong as my vote in the Virgin competition, but suspect that Depression-era New York won't do it for the bulk of the west coast voters.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: Brokeback Mountain

This was the one area where Brokeback genuinely excelled. No one can fault the lighting or camerawork here. I'd put Batman Begins as a close second, but I suspect it doesn't stand a chance.

SOUND MIXING

Will win: Walk the Line
Should win: King Kong

Not only was the sound in King Kong stunning, it was loud - which tends to attract the non-technical voters in this category. However, the general voter also tends to favor musicals - and they will most likely use this as an oblique way of honoring Johnny Cash and giving the film a second award. I also went with Kong for this one in the Virgin competition, as well - but the consensus vote there convinced me that Walk the Line might prove as popular with the Academy voters.

SOUND EDITING

Will win: King Kong
Should win: King Kong

Again, it was good and loud - and Walk the Line wasn't nominated.

ORIGINAL SCORE

Will win: Brokeback Mountain
Should win: Brokeback Mountain

Santaolalla's score was the best thing about this movie and I suspect that the two John Williams nominations will cancel each other out. Otherwise, the Academy would no doubt have gone with a typically overproduced score with a big orchestra and swelling major chords. They may still go with Geisha or (as a boobie prize for Spielberg) Munich, but I think Brokeback will slip through.

ORIGINAL SONG

Will win: In the Deep
Should win: In the Deep

Thematically, In the Deep tied into the film's subject matter extremely well - plus it's a good song. It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp is a contender, but I suspect it's a bit too edgy for a votership whose average age is roughly 107. Travelin' Through is too innocuous, despite Hollywood's love for Dolly parton. It'll be ebough to see her on the stage of the Kodak Theater.

COSTUME DESIGN

Will win: Memoirs of a Geisha
Should win: Memoirs of a Geisha

Apart from Ziyi Zhang's performance, this is the one thing that Memoirs had going for it. Besides, apart from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which was just too garish for the Academy), the other nominees are just too lackluster.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Will win: March of the Fucking Penguins
Should win: Murderball

For me, this was a bit of a toss-up between Murderball and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Unfortunately, the best documentary iof the year (The Aristocrats) was not even nominated. Instead, I suspect the Academy will go with one of the worst films of the year - and one of the worst documentaries ever made.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

Will win: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Should win: The Death of Kevin Carter

The Academy will go with God Sleeps in Rwanda because it has Rwanda in the title and they may feel bad about snubbing last year's best film, Hotel Rwanda. In fact, The Death of Kevin Carter
is not only closer to Hotel Rwanda thematically, it is also the superior fimlm.

FILM EDITING

Will win: Crash
Should win: Crash

I don't think anything else stands a chance.

MAKEUP

Will win: The Chronicles of Narnia
Should win: The Chronicles of Narnia

Star Wars: Episode XXVII The Return of the Attack of the Snood</i> probably deserves it, and would no doubt have one if it hadn't been the twenty-seventh installment. Instead, I expect it will go to relative newcomer Narnia.

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Will win: The Moon and the Son
Should win: The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

Jasper Morello is more fully realized, more interesting visually, and more technically accomplished, but The Moon and the Son is cuter and has a "message". I first thought Jasper Morello might be good enough to sway the Academy (and voted that way on the Virgin ballot), but they'll probably end up going with cute message.

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

Will win: Ausreisser (The Runaway)
Should win: Six Shooter

This is total guesswork. I'm only backing Six Shooter because it's Irish. In fact, I predicted it would win in the Virgin competition - because it's Irish. But Ausreisser is both foreign language and issue-oriented and both are often popular in this category.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Will win: King Kong
Should win: King Kong

They were simply the best.


And now it's off to the red carpet...

Tags: movie madness, queerness, virginal
humour: contemplative

The Virgin Megastore shares a staff smoking area - more of a loading zone/breezeway, really - with the House of Blues, Wolfgang Puck Café, and the dorks of DisneyQuest. I am always struck by the frequency with which the staff of Wolfgang Puck's spits. Seriously - they spit almost constantly - all of them. Well, all of the guys, anyway. It's like none of them know how to swallow. In a kitchen staff, this is a tad worrying. Don't offend the chef at Wolfgang Puck's.

But is this to exert the fact that, in a profession sometimes viewed as "women's work" (not to mention the widespread observation about the sexual orientation of waiters), that they are, in fact, straight?

I read in some book that purported to be "gay humor" a while ago that the only differences between gay men and straight men are that a) gay men can dance and straight men can't and b) straight men spit and gay men don't. As stereotypes go, this almost holds up. As we're trafficking in stereotypes, I should add that, in my experience, it's only the straight white guys who can't dance.

Which reminds me of another class of prejudice altogether. I was watching Amazon Women on the Moon with a group of people several weeks ago - a film that has always been one of my guilty pleasures - and noticed that during the first sketch with David Alan Grier as Don Simmons, people were turning their heads slightly and casting surreptitious sidelong glances - toward a colleague, Jeremy - before laughing. The sketch in question is a fund-raising promo for "Blacks Without Soul" (narrated by B.B. King - "Did you know that every eight minutes, a black person is born in this country with no soul?"), a charitable organization for African-Americans who are afflicted with a lack of rhythm and distinctly middle-class tastes. Jeremy, with whom everyone seemed to be surveying their laughter, is black. I looked at him and rolled my eyes. He knew exactly what I meant - and shrugged. Come on, folks - the sketch is subverting a stereotype - and you either find it funny or you don't. That you feel you have to submit your behavior for the black guy's approval is the evidence of your racism. Okay, relatively harmless racism - maybe even "well-intended" racism - but it's not color-blindness. Nor is my awareness of such behavior. We are all, to an extent, racist - and homophobic - and sexist.

As a predominantly - and openly - gay man, I'm well accustomed to this sort of monitoring. The aborted fag joke when one walks into a room, the overtly guarded looks if you happen to be engaging someone's adolescent son at a family gathering - but, oddly, only among intimates. As an anonymous member of the crowd, unless I have my tongue down some guys throat, my "minority status" (and all that goes with it) is invisible. For ethnic minorities, this sort of thing is a constant. Another friend of mine - also black - once told me that he can deal with rednecks muttering about "niggers" in his presence. It's the subtle, almost unconscious, reactions of relative liberals that he finds most oppressive. A couple of times a week, he said, every week, someone in a car will regard him for a moment, look away, and "casually" lock their car door - as many people do when entering his neighborhood. When he gets on an elevator, women's arms tense against their handbags - or they furtively check to make sure they're securely closed. How does that feel after a few decades?

So, as one who is sporadically treated to this class of oppression, allow me to oppress right back:

On a cigarette break, I sometimes like sitting on the ground and leaning against a wall. I do not want to spend the next hour or so with the seat of my jeans damp with your mucoid saliva. You wanna spit? Spit on my dick. Fuckin' straights.   :)

Tags: duly noted, queerness, social and personal
humour: prejudiced

I came across an entry in Obsidian Wings' blog yesterday on the potential Academy Awards nominations of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, which raised an interesting point, but spawned an excellent satiric response. First, the blog (excerpted):


Fair point, I suppose. There followed some discussion regarding how to contend with best leading performer awards - eliminate the Actor/Actress altogether, add a Best Couple or even Best Ensemble Award (probably the best suggestion was renaming them Best Seme & Best Uke) - none of them very workable and few really addressing the question. But then satiric genius emerged (in a response by Blar:


Rick Santorum, eat your heart out.

For what it's worth, I weighed in on Brokeback Mountain myself at America's Debate the other day. For your delectation, I repost my comments below:


Good Night, and Good Luck.

Tags: movie madness, political diversion, queerness
humour: amused