It’s Birthday, Bitch
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#BornThisDay: Photographer, Berenice Abbott
Self Portrait
July 17, 1898– Berenice Abbott. I have a passion for Photography, whether it is formal portraiture, commercial work, art photography, or just found snapshots. I have a sizable & thought provoking collection of vintage photographs of men being affectionate together which I like to share with readers.
My passion for photography along with my keen interest in architecture brings me to today’s #recipient, Berenice Abbott, a celebrated photographer of NYC architecture. She shot using a Century Universal Camera which produced 8 x 10 inch negatives. This large scale formated camera was the instrument that allowed Abbott to photograph NYC with diligence & attention to detail. Her work has provided an historical chronicle of many now destroyed buildings, entire blocks & neighborhoods of Manhattan.
During the Great Depression, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project (FAP) as a project supervisor for the Changing New York project. She would take the photographs around the city, but she had assistants to help her both in the field & in the office. This arrangement allowed Abbott to devote all of her time to producing, printing, & exhibiting the photographs. By the time she resigned from the FAP in 1939, she had produced 305 photographs that were added to the collection at the Museum Of The City Of New York.
When she first arrived in NYC, Abbott shared an apartment in Greenwich Village with writer Djuna Barnes, philosopher Kenneth Burke, & literary critic Malcolm Cowley. She sought a career in journalism, but soon became interested in theater & art, inspired by her pals playwright Eugene O’Neill & artist Man Ray. Abbott first became interested in photography in 1923, when Man Ray, looking for somebody who had no ideas about photography & would do just as he instructed, hired her as his darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris. She hung out with Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, author James Joyce & artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau. She frequented the gay bars of Paris with a circle of younger expatriate lesbian writers: Margaret Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, & Janet Flanner.
Abbott:
“I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else.”
Ray was impressed by how fast Abbott learner the darkroom techniques & allowed her to use his studio when he wasn’t there to work on her own photographs.
In 1935, Abbott fell in love with the art critic Elizabeth McCausland. She moved in to her Greenwich Village flat. They were a couple for 30+ years, until McCausland’s death in 1965.
In the early 1960s the 2 women traveled US Highway 1 from Florida to Maine, with Abbott shooting small town & automobile related architecture. The project resulted in more than 2,500 photographs. The project brought an important record of a way of life now mostly erased. McCausland contributed the captions for the books of Changing New York (1939) & Greenwich Village Today & Yesterday (1949).
Not only was Abbott a world-class & distinctive photographer, but also was an inventor & innovator. She developed the distortion easel, which created unusual effects on images developed in a darkroom, & she came up with the telescopic lighting pole, known today by photographers as an “autopole,” to which lights can be attached at any level.
Shortly after McCausland’s passing, Abbott underwent lung surgery. She was told by her doctors that she had to leave NYC because of the air pollution. She purchased a rundown house in rural Maine & lived there until she left this world in 1991. Abbott continued to produce photographs after her move to Maine. Her last book, A Portrait Of Maine, published in 1968, was a bestseller. Her books continue to be published.
Abbott’s photography was straight, even if she wasn’t. I admire her unadorned, unmanipulated style. Always with a camera, she put her work before her personal life. She never acknowledged her relationship with McCausland in interviews or her own writing. She left an important history of a fascinating era with a distinctive American style. Abbott seems to me to have been a real feminist also, stating:
“The world doesn’t like independent women, why, I don’t know, but I don’t care.”
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Buzz Bissinger Defends Caitlyn Against Her ESPY Critics Who Said She “Traded 2 Balls for 2 Boobs” & Is a “Freak” Show
Buzz Kissinger spent weeks getting to know Caitlyn while writing her Vanity Fair cover story
It was an historic event. Caitlyn Jenner‘s Arthur Ashe Courage Award and acceptance speech at Wednesday night’s ESPYs. But for local sports commentator Howard Eskin it was a “freak” show that “embarrassed [the] name of Arthur Ashe.”
Eskin sent the tweet below on Wednesday, deleting it shortly afterward later removing the term “freak.” However, he continued to refer to Jenner as “Bruce,” who changed her named to Caitlyn in early June:
Buzz Bissinger, who penned Caitlyn Jenner’s recent Vanity Fair cover story, addressed Howard’s criticisms;
“Howard’s remarks are indefensible. His apology is almost more indefensible. He made his original remarks in a sad attempt to draw attention to his has-been self. He only retrenched because they backfired. He is as gutless as Caitlyn Jenner is courageous. He knows nothing about Caitlyn Jenner much like he has made a career of knowing nothing and doing his verbal version of projectile vomiting for the sake of his calculated bulldog image. He is as fake as Caitlyn Jenner is real.
Howard did not watch the ESPYs last night or if he did, had the picture and volume turned off. I did in person. Lauren Hill, who had an inoperative brain tumor and whose last dream was to play in a collegiate basketball game, was honored. So was were Cincinnati Bengal player Devon Still and his incredible six year old Cancer patient daughter, Leah. So was former Iraqi soldier Danielle Green, a former Notre Dame basketball Player who lost her arm in combat. All these tributes were equally as moving as Caitlyn Jenner, perhaps more so.
Eskin is a disgrace. He should be fired from any broadcasting outlet desperate enough to still believe in his pitiful bloviation.”
Bissinger also told the Hollywood Reporter;
“American society is all too quick to condemn and humiliate.
Caitlyn Jenner gave a heartfelt and powerful speech. She was obviously humbled and honored. She is an inspiration to all of us who struggle with difference and that includes me.”
Bissinger addressed Friday Night Lights‘ director Peter Berg’s sharing of a transphobic meme indicating Jenner had traded “2 balls for 2 boobs” and didn’t deserve an ESPY award as a result. Berg is Bissinger’s cousin, btw.
“I love Pete. I am not in the business of censoring his comments nor he mine. He said what he believes, rare to begin with and unheard of in Hollywood where disingenuous discourse is the universal traffic.”
That’s less harsh for an offensive meme, it seems but this all goes to show, as Jenner said so eloquently on Wednesday night;
“If you want to call me names, make jokes, doubt my intentions, go head. Because the reality is, I can take it.”
(via Philly)
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Vagina Monologues Creator, Eve Ensler on Bill Cosby; “Let The Mythical Daddy Die”
Eve Ensler is the Tony-winning playwright activist and author of The Vagina Monologues who founded V-Day, a global movement dedicated to ending violence against women. This text appears in this weeks Time magazine;
“No one believed my father was a battering sex abuser. He was handsome, a corporate president. He was successful, charming, a man’s man. He wore tailored suits. He played golf. He drank martinis. He was celebrated at country clubs and knew the first names of head maitre d’s at the fanciest exclusive restaurants. He was arrogant and smug the way Bill Cosby is arrogant and smug. He had an air of superiority and contempt for those who he perceived to be weak or incapable of rising the way he had risen. He set himself up as the chief moral arbiter of right and wrong in the same way that Cosby asserted himself as public moralist on issues of family values and crime. He was righteous, particularly about honesty. He was obsessed with honesty. There were many times when he would beat my head against a wall or whip me with belts for lies he imagined I had told or would one day possibly tell. I never understood why he was so angry. I think I do now. He was raging because he was caught between two competing, demanding personas, one public, one private. He was raging because his whole life was one big seething contaminating lie. A lie that was supported and nurtured by the power that men have over women, adoring and terrified colleagues, and my dependent mother. A lie that got him countless free passes, second chances, and cheeks turned.
Like my father, Bill Cosby was allegedly one thing in public, Dr. Huxtable, and another in the dark or behind closed doors. (Cosby, of course, denies all of the allegations of rape and sexual assault. He’s never been criminally charged for any of these alleged crimes.)
I know something about having two fathers in one. I know something about this agonizing split between the man of moral fervor and the man who sexually and physically decimated my body, the man, who is a model of manners, integrity, and charm and the man of violence, control, and manipulation. I was raised in the center of this psychic chasm. My consciousness was formed in this traumatizing fracture. After years of listening to thousands of women, I know that I am not alone.
I cannot explain why these men did what they did. I’ve given way too many years analyzing their perverse psychology and I’ve exhausted every option. I no longer give a damn. Survivors weave our days making excuses and evolving theories for our perpetrators that steal our lives. In the end they did what they did because they could. They did what they did because their gender, status, wealth, talent, fame, power allowed them access and protection, their inflated sense of self gave them license, their overly enlarged egos endowed them with certain patriarchal rights. And they never feared the ramifications of their violent acts. Even now, after all that has been alleged, Bill Cosby continues to work and acts the victim. No one is taking away his Hollywood star, despite mounting evidence. The President says there is no precedent to revoke his Presidential honor.
I think of my own silence early on, and maybe it was disbelief that stopped my outrage. Or protection of a daddy I desperately needed. Or fear of exclusion, exile, loss. Or the horror and heartbreak of experiencing the death of the hero. My hero. Or making a decision early on that the rare moment of love was worth the nightmares.
I think we have to ask ourselves what have we learned from this. This event with Cosby feels heartbreakingly familiar. Over these last years I’ve found myself compelled to write about the sexual machinations of prominent men. There is a maddening frequency with which the sexual abuse of powerful men is unraveled. How many others are out there? Will we wait another 20 years for countless victims to accumulate? There is something much larger here being revealed about our culture.
It is shocking that Bill Cosby has been able to carry on for so long with the allegations that have been made against him, that his wife and others, the media, the community close to him all felt comfortable standing behind a man who was systematically destroying the lives of women. Have we come to fully accept a world where the elites are untouchables? Are we saying to our young men that as long as you are a rich and famous and successful daddy icon, you too can rape?
Over the last few days I can’t stop thinking about us, about the social structures that surround these men. The world — our world — that not only turns a blind eye to their behavior but in the end becomes complicit in supporting their abhorrent deeds. And there are the economic and social factors that coalesce to make our silence. How could my mother or I, both dependent on my father for money and resources, speak out against his terror? More than forty women have now described their experiences with Bill Cosby, allegedly coaxed into his drug lair early in their careers. How could they speak out and smear and embarrass the moral cuddly king of television, be the slayers of our collective fantasy, and what would that have done to their fledgling careers and lives?
Are we finally willing to do what is necessary to make women safe?
To read the rest of the text go here. (Photo, Brigitte Lacombe, via Time)
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#NotFunny: Woman Arrested for Assaulting Her Girlfriend With a Dildo
Domestic battery is no laughing matter, but when it’s with a dildo, it’s a little bit funny. (I mean, how much can you hurt someone with a dildo?) St. Petersburg Police arrested Annette Kielhurn, 57, after an officer was present to oversee her domestic partner, Gamze Capaner-Ridley’s removal of personal belongings from their home. After the women fought over a dress, Officer Eric Blomgren directed Kielhurn not to touch the 47-year-old Capaner-Ridley. However Blomgren reported;
“Shortly afterwards the defendant intentionally shoved a ‘dildo’ in the victim’s face and grabbed her right arm while arguing whose it belonged to.”
As a result, the cop arrested Kielhurn for domestic battery. (It’s not clear whether the dildo was seized as evidence.) Kielhurn –who has Capaner-Ridley’s first name, “Gamze” tattooed on her chest –was booked on a misdemeanor charge and released after posting bond. The accused is a former New York State corrections officer and served three years in prison for after a 1996 police search of her rental car turned up 25 kilos of cocaine in the trunk.
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Brand New Web Show! Mike Diamond Solves Problems on ‘What’s Your Problem?’
The hiLARious Mike Diamond (who if you haven’t subscribed to on YouTube, you MUST!) solves everyone’s problems just outside World of Wonder Headquarters on the brand new web show What’s Your Problem? on WOWPresents watch after the jump!
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Call Me Lucky: Bobcat Goldthwait’s Riveting New Documentary About the Childhood Rape of Comedian Barry Crimmins
Call Me Lucky is Bobcat Goldthwait‘s critically-acclaimed documentary dealing with the childhood rapes of comedian Barry Crimmins, and what he did to stop child predators on a national scale. It is “One of the most powerful and moving documentaries of the year,” “A truly beautiful human document,” and “An absolute masterpiece.” Initially funded by the late Robin Williams, Call Me Lucky received three standing ovations at its premiere at Sundance.
From boingboing: Call Me Lucky is a documentary in part about child rape. But it is also a work of extraordinary bravery. It tells the life story of comedian, political satirist, and peace activist Barry Crimmins, and his incredible transformation from rape victim to hero. And that’s not just clickbait.
Watch the trailer below.
#tellsomebodytelleverybody
And be sure to check out this fascinating interview with Bobcat and Barry.
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Drool Over World of Wonder’s Weekly Island Report
If you’ve been watching Island Hunters on HGTV, then YOU KNOW the jaw-droppingly sumptuous private islands that are out there on the market. Every week on our Island Report, we’re bringing you a hot new property you DIDN’T see on the show. Check out WHITE ISLAND! Ugh, to die. This is an undiscovered gem of a private island is on the market with planning approval for either an ultra luxurious boutique spa hotel or the ultimate private villa.
More about the island via Private Islands Online:
White powder beaches, crystal clear water, and dramatic topography result in untouchable beauty and a unique experience. The island is sheltered by other beautiful islands and coral reefs ranging in depth from 8 feet to 40 feet that provide shelter as well as recreation and adventure. Super yachts can be anchored mere feet from its shore in the deep water channel, a feature not many private islands possess. White Island is located one mile off the southern coast of Carriacou and 17 miles northeast of Grenada, in the Grenadines. The unique location offers the best of all worlds on a private island that can feel secluded yet is close to other experiences, adventures and amenities should you desire or need them.
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OITNB Star Lea DeLaria Turns David Bowie’s “Modern Love” Into a Rousing Gospel Extravaganza
File under “Odd… But Intriguing.” Orange Is the New Black star Lea DeLaria has a new album of jazz reinterpretations of David Bowie songs called House of David: delaria + bowie = jazz. It features tracks such as a smooth bossa nova interpretation of “Golden Years,” a trenchant “Life On Mars” and the roof-raising gospel take on “Modern Love” that you’re about to listen to below.
“Bowie is not only a god of rock and arbitrator of style,” says DeLaria, “but he’s THE defining singer songwriter of the latter part of the 20th century. From ‘Suffragette City’ to Labyrinth through Ziggy Stardust and The Hunger, his bold career choices and mind blowing artistic technique flies in the face of convention. He is quite simply a legend. David’s music lends itself perfectly to the language of Jazz. I hope he sees this album as the tribute to his genius that I mean it to be. LONG LIVE DAVID BOWIE.”
Lea, of course, has had a long and varied career as an actress, comedian, and jazz singer (with five records on the Warner Jazz and Classics label under her belt). She was the featured vocalist at the 50th Anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival, and has performed in some of the most prestigious houses in the world including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony, Hollywood Bowl, The Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House – so as odd as this tribute is, it’s not THAT out of the blue. (via sh-k-boom)
House of David: delaria + bowie = jazz is available now in digital format and CDs will arrive in stores July 24.
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10 Times Drake Owned The Fashion Game on Instagram
Drake is a lot of things. Toronto native. Rapper. Singer. Songwriter. Producer. Actor. Bae. And, as far as I’m concerned, he’s becoming a full-on fashionisto. In the recent months, he seems to have gained a new appreciation for fashion (and beards—two of my favorite things) so to celebrate, I present 10 times Drizzy killed the fashion game.
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It’s Birthday, Bitch
Fenton Bailey
Hedda Lettuce
Audrey Landers
Chance Crawford
Dick Button
Elizabeth McGovern
Elsa Pataky
Grant Bowler
James Brolin
Jim Bob Duggar
Kelly Reilly
Kristen Bell
Margo Martindale
Martha Reeves
Nelson Mandela
Paul Verhoeven
Priyanka Chopra
Ryan Cabrera
Vin Diesel
Wendy Williams
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#BornThisDay: Singer, Martha Reeves
July 18, 1941– Martha Reeves served on the city council for the city of Detroit from 2005-2009 & has been active in promoting the great city’s rise from the ashes. I love Detroit & the idea of Detroit. If I had any seed money, or any money at all for that matter, I would start a business in one of those amazing buildings in Downtown Detroit that can be purchased for a song, maybe a concert hall.
Reeves, one of 11 children, spent her childhood singing in her grandfather Reverend Elijah Reeves’ Detroit’s Metropolitan Church. In high school she studied voice & was in the choir along with Florence Ballard & Mary Wilson of The Supremes & Bobby Rogers of The Miracles.
In 1959, after high school, Reeves joined the girl group The Fascinations. Their single Won’t You Let Me Know on Rich Records & its answer song I’ll Let You Know on the Chess label were hits on local Detroit radio. In the summer of 1960 Reeves met Rosalind Ashford & the girls were invited to join Annette Sterling & Gloria Williamson to become the group Del-Phis. After doing some local talent shows the group recorded a single My Baby Won’t Come Back which went nowhere.
Reeves entered a talent contest as a solo act & won. The prize was a 3 day gig at Twenty Grand, a Detroit nightclub where she sang as Martha LaVaille. Berry Gordy heard her sing & hired her as his secretary at Motown. One day Gordy needed background singers in a hurry & put in Reeves & her girlfriends. They sang backup for Marvin Gaye on Stubborn Kind Of Fellow & Hitch Hike, both hits in 1962.
Later that year, in a show biz cliché, Reeves was in the right place at the right time. A union rep was checking to make sure the Motown, notorious for not paying their artists, was following the rule that a singer had to be on a mic when tracks were recorded. Because Mary Wells was out on tour, Reeves sang I’ll Have To Let Him Go impressing the producers enough ask The Del-Phis to record You’ll Never Cherish A Love So True (‘Til You Lose It), a big success. But, Williamson was afraid to quit her day job & left the group.
The other girls convinced Gordy to keep them at Motown as a trio. Gordy agreed but wanted a new name. They came up with Martha & The Vandellas, taking the name from Detroit street Van Dyke crossed with Reeve’s favorite singer Della Reese.
Martha & The Vandellas first hit was Holland-Dozier-Holland‘s beat ballad Come Get These Memories (1963), the famed songwriting team’s first collaboration. This record was followed by one the greatest summer themed songs of all time, Heat Wave, which was a massive #1 hit all across the USA. I have a special memory of this tune when I danced The Madison to the recording in a stage production of Mart Crowley’s The Boys In the Band in spring 1973. I was especially good in that one.
After being turned down by everyone else at Motown, Dancing In The Streets (1964) was given to Martha & The Vandellas, also a #1 hit. Other big hits included Nowhere To Run (1965), I’m Ready For Love (1966), Jimmy Mack (1967).
By 1967, the group was being billed as Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, with Reeves featured as lead for the group. Beard had retired in 1963 & was replaced by Betty Kelly. When Kelly quit in 1968, she was replaced by Reeve’s little sister Lois Reeves. The group spit-up in 1973 after giving a farewell concert at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. Lois went to work singing back-up for Al Green.
Reeves left Motown & launched a solo career, bouncing between MCA, Arista, & Fantasy, but sadly didn’t have another hit until the 21st century.
In her memoir Dancing In The Streets (1994), Reeves writes that the group was constantly undermined by Gordy’s obsession with The Supremes. Jimmy Mack was held back from release for a full 2 years because he thought that it sounded too much like The Supremes’ current singles. Reeves frequently clashed with Gordy demanding answers to business questions that most other Motown artists didn’t ask about until years after they left the label. Struggling to maintain a demanding schedule of concerts, appearances & recording, Reeves became addicted to prescription drugs & suffered a series of nervous breakdowns, & was even institutionalized for a year. She has been drug free since 1977. In 1989 Reeves & the other members of the group successfully sued Motown for back royalties.
In 1974, Martha Reeves had a hit with Power Of Love, produced by hot Richard Perry. But, her solo albums, always critically praised, never had the success that she had achieved with The Vandellas.
Reeves currently resides in Downtown Detroit. She continues to tour & record. Rosalind Ashford is retired from Ameritech & Annette Sterling has worked at a hospital as a phlebotomist for the last 40 years. On special occasions the trio performs together. In 2013, Reeves had an unexpected hit with I’m Not Leaving recorded with the band Crystal Method. That’s 50 years since the first hit. Pretty cool, huh?
I am crazy for Reeves’ soulful, brassy vocals. Always a very big Motown fan, I felt that The Vandellas were an earthier, more aggressive girl group alternative to the slicker more elegant The Supremes.
The Vandellas were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1995.
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#LifeHack: Put Your Car Key Beside Your Bed at Night. Here’s Why…
This might not be exciting news but it IS news to me. Yes, put your car keys beside your bed at night. Here’s why;
If you hear a noise outside your house or apartment or someone trying to get into your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will go off, and the horn will continue to blare until you turn it off (or the car battery dies)
This tip comes from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think about this: It’s a security alarm system that you already have that requires no installation. Test it –during the day. (I did.) It will go off from most everywhere inside your house. Odds are the thief won’t stick around with a car horn blaring.
Also, remember to carry your keys in your hand when walking to your car in a parking garage or lot. The alarm can work the same way there. Maybe his could save a life or prevent a molestation or worse. This can be useful for any emergency, like a heart attack for an older person, when they can’t reach a phone.
Put your car keys beside your bed at night. Share this widely, it might save someone’s life…
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#LifeHackFail: Can You REALLY Bring a Spoiled Banana Back To Life With A Blow Dryer!?
So this video has been circulating by Brandon Queen – yes, queen, BRANDON QUEEN, and there is some controversy about it. Brandon shows and claims that you can revitalize a spoiled banana, with these simple instructions:
HOW TO BRING A BANANA BACK TO LIFE
The first step is to fill a freezer ziplock bag with rice. Put the overly-ripe banana inside the bag and make sure to squeeze out all the extra air in the bag. Let the banana sit in the rice bag for about an hour – this will take out the moisture but the banana will still be brown. Then, take a hair dryer – yes, a dryer – and blow warm air (not too hot) on the brown banana and watch it magically turn back to yellow. Banana restoration!
Except that no one else seems to be able to replicate this nifty trick. Brandon’s video is below and then there are three others after where they try and fail. Some have suggested the trick was accomplished by putting an unripe banana in the fridge causing it to turn black, the rice DOES dry it out and but what the warm blow dryer does, I’m not sure. So, I think it’s safe to say this is an EPIC FAIL. Watch.
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#Outrage!: Brits Are Furious After Pics of a 7 Year-Old Queen Elizabeth Giving a Nazi Salute Are Published
The Brits are PISSED! Footage of a seven year-old Elizabeth performing a Nazi salute were just published by The Sun. The images are taken from a rather shocking film from 1933 that shows Edward VIII teaching his nieces the seven-year-old future Queen Elizabeth and her three-year-old sister Princess Margaret how to do the “Heil, Hilter!” salute in the gardens at Balmoral Castle. The publication of the 17-second film has outraged the nation who believe that the Queen cannot be held responsible for her actions as a girl playing with her family. Scores of Twitter users vented their anger this morning, saying The Sun had ‘sunk to a new low’ and calling for the newspaper’s owner Rupert Murdoch to be banned from the UK. Buckingham Palace last night slammed the publication for using he footage, from the family’s private archive, saying it was
“disappointing” that the film had been “obtained and exploited in this manner.”
The film shows the late Queen Mother saluting proudly, encouraged by Edward VIII, who is known to have harboured Nazi sympathies. This happened in 1933 just as Hitler was rising to power in Germany, seven years before the outbreak of the WWII and before the atrocities of the Third Reich terrorised Europe. At the age of seven, the Queen would not have understood the implications of making a Nazi salute. Royal commentator and the Queen’s former press secretary Dickie Arbiter said there would be great interest in royal circles in finding out how the footage from the monarch’s private archives was made public;
“I would like to think it was released inadvertently as a bit of harmless 1933 footage without anybody really knowing what was on it. I think what they (Buckingham Palace) would probably like to know is where it came from and who gave it to The Sun.”
Watch.
(via Daily Mail)
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RuPaul’s Pop Up Shop at Sweet Hollywood Will Give You Everything You’ve Ever Wanted In Life, Including Michelle Visage In Person Tomorrow!
That’s right, squirrel friends! You can go meet Michelle Visage tomorrow, Sunday June 19 from 2pm-4pm, on top of getting some delicious RuPaul candy and merchandise!
RuPaul‘s Pop Up Shop opened last weekend at Sweet! in the Hollywood and Highland complex, and it’s literally everything a RuPaul fan could ever dream of! Seriously. Go now. Not to mention, RuPaul was there in person at the Grand Opening to sign merchandise such as rare dolls, out of print books, the delicious Glamazon fragrance, t-shirts, CDs and vinyl records, and candy bars! You can also spend hours gawking at iconic dresses and outfits worn on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Oh, and did I mention there’s a SHADE TREE?
Check out some images below!
Just a peek into the magical RuPaul Pop Up Shop through the Sweet doors!
‘Cause those window displays are what? Sickening!
RuPaul candy and prints
RuPaul candy jars!
These rare posters are for sale!
Gorgeous RuPaul plates
Reading is what?
The famous GLAMAZON t-shirt. Which I now have since visiting the RuPaul Pop Up Shop, fyi.
Posters!
No tree no shade!
Everything.
Having season 1 flashbacks with this iconic look!
Seeing these three gowns in person is an experience you cannot miss.
Tons of RuPaul candy bars!
See what I mean? Go. Now.
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DragCon Panel: “Clubland Fashion Through the Decades” with MILK, the Boulet Brothers, and ME
It’s a rollicking romp through decades of drag queens, clubkids, and nightlife legends with your panel hosts the oh-so-Seussian Boulet Brothers, RuPaul’s Drag Race season six legend-in-the-making MILK and myself. Topics include: The Warhol Factory queens, Divine, ’80s club legends John Sex and Dianne Brill, the evolution of the clubkids, east coast vs west coast ravers, and future club icons like Ryan Burke and Danielle Lismore. It’s an in-depth and information-packed look at all your favorites that you simply WON’T want to miss. Watch it below.
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It’s Birthday, Bitch
David Bernardi↧
#BornThisDay: Writer, Joseph Hansen
July 19, 1923- Joseph Hansen toiled for years writing poetry & gay fiction using a nom de plume before jumping in to the mainstream detective genre with his shaggy, savvy private investigator Dave Brandstetter in Fadeout (1970).
Hansen claims it started when he decided to create:
“a compelling whodunit, but I also wanted to right some wrongs regarding homosexual characters.”
Truly tenacious in the tradition of the fictional Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade & Mike Hammer, Brandstetter was a decent dick on the deceptively sunny streets of Southern California, but when the case was solved, he preferred to go to bed with a guy, instead of a dame.
The first Brandstetter books were published at the peak of an early moment in the Gay Liberation movement, just a year after the Stonewall Riots in NYC’s Greenwich Village. In the company of the great Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Hansen became one of the few popular gay literary authors in the USA during that era, & he was almost alone in the category of Mystery books.
“Gay people have commonly been treated shabbily in Detective Fiction- vilified, pitied, at best patronized When I sat down to write Fadeout in 1967, almost all the news about homosexuals was false. So I had some fun turning clichés & stereotypes on their heads in that book. It was easy.”
Writing it may have been easy, but was publishing the novel was difficult. It took more than 3 years to find a publisher that would accept an unabashedly, unashamed gay sleuth without turning the story into a sensationalized account of his homosexuality. Pointedly, the Brandstetter series finishes with the protagonist having the same boyfriend for 22 years while his father has made his way through 9 marriages.
Hansen was praised by critics for making Brandstetter an intriguing & complex character. He did not turn the stories into political manifestos about Gay Rights. Instead, Hansen focused on a well-paced, heart-pounding mystery involving a man who just happens to have an eye for the guys.
Brandstetter was Hansen’s detective in 12 novels. The final installment of was A Country Of Old Men (1991), which placed his world-weary hero at nearly 70 years old in a post-HIV world. In the last novel, Brandstetter unsettles of his long-suffering lover with a reluctance to retire or quit cigarettes. In an unusual turn for the brand, Brandstetter turns down a hot young man’s come-on with the reply:
“I’m flattered… but my sleeping partner wouldn’t like it.”
Hansen, born in small town South Dakota, had his early poetry accepted by The New Yorker & other literary magazines. He co-founded the gay journal Tangents in 1965, produced an LA radio program titled Homosexuality Today in 1969, & along with early Gay Rights rabble-rouser & founder of the Radical Faeries, Harry Hay, he helped plan the very first gay pride parade in Hollywood in 1970.
Before his detective tales, Hansen wrote books under the name James Colton: Lost On Twilight Road (1964); Strange Marriage (1965); & Known Homosexual (1968). Always a fan of Mystery Fiction, he wrote Fadeout as an alternative to what he considered the crude literary style of Mickey Spillane but with a detective as open about his desires as Spillane’s own tough guy, Mike Hammer.
In the novel, Brandstetter investigates a popular Hollywood radio host who is presumed dead but who has conveniently taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy. When it was released by Harper & Row, Fadeout received a lot of publicity that made Hansen a sort of gay celebrity.
The other Brandstetter books included Early Graves (1987), about a killer of gay men with AIDS, which emphasized the hysteria that the disease caused, probably the first detective novel to include the issue.
Hansen received a Life Achievement award from the Private Eye Writers Of America in 1992.
Besides the poetry, Hansen wrote other detective series, & a bio of Don Slater, founder the early 1950s gay magazine One.
Hansen was married to artist Jane Bancroft for 51 years until her death in 1994. In a 2003 interview, he told Out Magazine that his wife was also gay & that they had an arrangement allowing them to have relationships with other people, provided they passed other person’s scrutiny.
“Jane was this remarkable person who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So something was right about it, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of the world.”
The couple had a daughter who was transgendered & underwent a sex-change, Daniel James Hansen.
The David Brandstetter detective books are still in print from Allyson Publications & are also available as Complete Brandstetter: Twelve Novels from No Exit Press.
Hansen left this world, gone from a heart attack, at his home in Laguna Beach, the setting for most of the books.
The post #BornThisDay: Writer, Joseph Hansen appeared first on World of Wonder.
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Real Estate Porn–NYC Rooftop Edition: West Village Porch In the Sky
This bucolic rooftop cottage with porch, garden and lawn is just around the corner from me at 719 Greenwich Street. It belongs to David Puchkoff, a developer and Eileen Stukane, a writer, who live on the top floor of the building. Puckhoff developed the building years ago and and after a visit to a friend’s house in rural Elk Lake, PA, decided to build this little secret gem. It looks like a self-contained house, but it’s not. In a 2005 NY Times article, he explains;
“The porch is basically a glorified bulkhead over a hole punched in the ceiling of the family’s loft to make way for a nautical stairway that rises to a landing with a galley-like kitchenette, with two paned windows and a door that opens to the roof. Now the couple doesn’t have to leave the city to hear the slam of a screen door, or watch a flock of mourning doves pecking for insects and seeds across the meadow.”
Want to know more about maintain a rooftop garden in the city? Watch below.
(via NY Curbed)
The post Real Estate Porn–NYC Rooftop Edition: West Village Porch In the Sky appeared first on World of Wonder.
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