RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2 winner Alaska Thunderfuck is “just a regular girl.” And so is Stefani Joanne Germanotta aka Lady Gaga, whom after tonight, released her most personal album to date, Joanne. At her NYC Dive Bar tour show, Alaska met Mother Monster (they were wearing the same outfit, naturally), and they even made a cute video.

Check it out after the cut:

A photo posted by Alaska (@theonlyalaska5000) on Oct 20, 2016 at 9:35pm PDT

They also made an adorable video:

Which for those that aren’t in the loop is referencing this iconic video:

The post Alaska And Lady Gaga Are Just “Two Regular Girls” At Her NYC Dive Bar Show appeared first on The WOW Report.

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2 contestant Ginger Minj is known for her smokin’ pipes and singing chops! And we’re lucky because the queen has released her highly anticipated debut album, “Sweet T.” Early favorites? I’m a sucker for “Ride or Die” (with Margaret Cho) and “God Only Knows” (with the legendary Carnie Wilson).

TAKE A LISTEN:

You can purchase the album here.

She also released this stunning music video for “Bad, Bad Boy.”

This post is approved by the diva herself:

The post LISTEN NOW: Ginger Minj’s Electro-Pop “Sweet T” Is Here appeared first on The WOW Report.

TMZ is breaking the sad, sad news that Richard Simmons‘ legendary Beverly Hills exercise studio, Slimmons, is closing its doors forever on November 19.

The reclusive Richard hasn’t been seen in public for more than 2 1/2 years, and it eventually took a fatal toll on his studio, where he was once a fixture. Simmons simply disappeared.

Richard has said that he simply wants a life out of the spotlight after battling knee problems a few years back, although many of his former friends say something more nefarious is afoot.

TMZ broke numerous stories about Richard over the last 2 years, including concerns he was being held against his will. The LAPD did a welfare check in January 2015 and found he was fine.

Simmons was hospitalized June 3rd, after his housekeeper called 911 and told the dispatcher he was exhibiting bizarre behavior. Simmons later said it was simply a case of dehydration.

Regardless, the closing of his beloved studio is a sad blow to his many devoted friends, fans, and clients. Here’s wishing him all the best, I hope he knows how beloved he is.

(Bottom photos: Pacific  Coast News)

The post End of an Era: The Richard Simmons Studio Is Closing Its Doors Forever appeared first on The WOW Report.

Casting news I can get behind: The Hollywood Reporter announced today that Jennifer Lawrence is teaming with Ron Howard to bring Nancy Milford’s brilliant biography of Zelda Fitzgerald to the big screen. The biopic about the Jazz Age icon centers on Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his indispensable muse and fiercest competitor.

Desperate to define herself through her own art, the film explores the question: Can love exist between creative equals?

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, society wild-child Zelda Fitzgerald was dubbed by her husband as “the first American Flapper,” but her life descended into madness (she was diagnosed with schizophrenia).

I predict Oscars all around!

Fun fact (that I learned from Nancy’s book): Zelda’s drink of choice was Coca-Cola spiked with ammonia. CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Also of note: The free-spirited, but ultimately unbalanced Zelda died in a mental institution. On March 10, 1948, a fire started in the hospital’s kitchen. Zelda had been scheduled for an electroshock therapy session and was sedated and locked in a waiting room. The fire spread through the floors of the building via the dumbwaiter shaft, and Zelda was killed along with eight other women. She was 47.

Below: 32 of my favorite Zelda Fitzgerald quotes:

Zelda (with yummy husband F. Scott) above.

The post Jennifer Lawrence to Play Desperate, Doomed, Flapper Zelda Fitzgerald appeared first on The WOW Report.

TS Madison
Annette Funicello
Bill Condon
Bob Odenkirk
Brian Boitano
Carlos Mencia
Catherine Deneuve
Christopher Lloyd
Deepak Chopra
Derek Jacobi
Jan De Bont
Jay Johnston
Jeff Goldblum
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Joan Fontaine
Jonathan Lipnicki
Marc Shaiman
Michael Fishman
Saffron Burrows
Shaggy
Shelby Lynne
Sofia Vassilieva
Spike Jonz
Tony Roberts
Zac Hanson

The post October 22nd: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.

October 22, 1959– Marc Shaiman

At the 2003 Tony Awards, with a lingering kiss and a prime-time television declaration of love that brought rousing applause from the audience, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, personal and professional partners for 25 years made a bit of history with their same-sex smooch.

In his acceptance speech for Best Score, Shaiman turned to Wittman and said:

“I love this man. We’re not allowed to get married in this world … But I’d like to declare, in front of all these people, I love you and I’d like to live with you the rest of my life.”

Shaiman is a pianist, composer, lyricist, arranger, orchestrator, musical director, conductor, writer, producer, actor, and overachiever working in Films, Television, and Theatre.

He has contributed, in one way or another, to at least 60 films and television shows: Broadcast News (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), The Addams Family (1991), Addams Family Values (1993), Sister Act (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), In & Out (1997), and songs for what I think is one of the finest film musicals of all time, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

He has composed the scores for the Broadway musicals Hairspray (2002), Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me (2006), Catch Me If You Can (2009) and the upcoming Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, opening in Spring 2017 after a successful run in London.

He has quite the awards shelf with two Tonys, a pair of Drama Desk Awards, seven ASCAP Awards, an Emmy Award, and five Academy Award nominations, including one for the terrifically rousing song Blame Canada from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

Shaiman had been with Whitman as a creative partner and life partner for more than three decades. No longer a couple, they continue to collaborate. He frequently works on films associated with Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner and Trey Parker. He has also appeared in many of those films. His association with Crystal and Martin Short goes back to their Saturday Night Live days in the 1980s, when Shaiman was a regular as the pianist Skip St. Thomas who accompanied Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn as a lounge-singer sister act, The Sweeney Sisters.

Shaiman began his career as a cabaret musical director. He became the vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director and co-producer of many of her recordings, including Midler’s inspirational ballads The Wind Beneath My Wings and From A Distance. He helped create the material for Midler’s performance on the penultimate The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. Totally crazy, he auditioned for, but lost the role of himself on Midler’s short lived sitcom, Bette (2000-01).

He also served as arranger and musical director in the Peter Allen’s Brodway revue Up In One (1979) and wrote songs for André DeShield’s Harlem Nocturne (1984), and did arrangements for Leader Of The Pack (1985) and Patti LuPone On Broadway (1995).

To protest the passage of California Proposition 8 in November 2008, Shaiman wrote the satiric mini-musical Prop 8: The Musical. The 3 minute video was written and produced in just a few days. The cast includes Jack Black (who plays Jesus), Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney, Maya Rudolph, Margaret Cho, Rashida Jones and a bunch of other celebrities. Shaiman plays the piano and appears on the video. It received 1.2 million hits on YouTube in its first day.

Shaiman co-wrote, with Wittman, songs for Neil Patrick Harris when Harris hosted the 2009 Tony Awards and the 2009 Emmy Awards. He was Emmy nominated for musical directing and co-writing the 2010 Academy Awards hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. How meta is that?

He wrote original songs for the much missed television series Smash (2012-14) as well as serving as Executive Producer. The series revolved around a fictional NYC theater community and the creation of a pair of new Broadway musicals. A cast recording of the fictional musical Bombshell, featuring original songs from the first and second season of Smash, 160,000 copies in its first week. It contains all 22 songs written for the musical within the show and featured lead vocals by Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty as dueling Marilyn Monroes. The drama behind Smash was more intriguing than the series itself, but the musical numbers were beyond terrific.

All that, but his biggest success is certainly the hit musical Hairspray, adapted from the John Waters 1988 film. It won eight Tony Awards, with 13 nominations, running for seven years and 2,642 performances. Hairspray has toured the USA and has been produced in 18 countries around the globe. The London West End production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. It was adapted to a rather good film version in 2007, becoming the sixth highest grossing musical film of all-time. If you watch closely, you will catch Shaiman and Wittman playing talent agents in the film.

Hairspray Live! continues NBC’s tradition of live adaptations of Broadway musicals, often with dubious results. It will be broadcast on December 5, with Ariana Grande, Kristin Chenoweth, Harvey Fierstein, Derek Hough, Martin Short, Billy Eichner, Sean Hayes, Andrea Martin, Rosie O’Donnell and the fabulous Jennifer Hudson. Here’s hoping.

This past spring, just as NYC’s Gay Pride Day was to start, Shaiman took to The Facebook to literally unfriend Charlotte Crossley Fortier, a friend of four decades who starred as Motormouth Maybelle in the original Broadway version of Hairspray. Fortier had gone on social media expressing her disapproval of Marriage Equality, including the marriage between mutual male friends. This started a flurry of comments on both sides of the issue.

Shaiman noted that Fortier sang his civil-rights tune I Know Where I’ve Been on Broadway and on tour. Shaiman:

“How sad that she sang that song so beautifully and yet never listened to what she was singing. I hope she continues to sing it and always remembers it was written by two gay men who love each other.”

I Know Where I’ve Been includes the lyrics:

“There’s a dream in the future

There’s a struggle that we have yet to win

And there’s pride in my heart

Because I know where I’m going and I know where I’ve been.”

Fortier countered with:

“Marc Shaiman! I am not in a fetal position in bed with the covers pulled over my head, crying about this fiasco! It is comical and very sad… sad that the free speech rights are taken as an insult. I ain’t playin’ the Matron in THIS musical, Maestro.”

Fortier wrote that her position as a minister of the International Church Of The Foursquare Gospel forbids her from recognizing the legitimacy of same-sex marriage and that any reference to her rhetoric labeled hate speech is “a lie straight out of the pits of hell.”

Shaiman returned with:

“Separation of church and state, you ought to read up on what our Founding Fathers intended. Also, you might want to check up on what Jesus said about homosexuality. Nothing. He was too busy talking about love. I do not ask for your forgiveness, nor do I offer any to you. I am ashamed of you.”

In March, Shaiman married Lieutenant Commander Louis Mirabal. The wedding was set up as a surprise for guests following a ceremony for Mirabal’s retirement from the military after 20 years of service. Nathan Lane read the poem Old Glory, Broadway producer Tom Kirdahy officiated, and Midler, Whoopi Goldberg and Patti LuPone sang.

The post #BornThisDay: Songwriter, Marc Shaiman appeared first on The WOW Report.

Veteran stand-up comedian and actor, Kevin Meaney has died.

Meaney’s agent confirmed that he was found in his home in Forestburgh, N.Y., and that an autopsy is pending.

Fellow comedians like Patton Oswalt, Judd Apatow, Roseanne Barr and Michael McKean, paid tribute to Meaney on Twitter following the news. Apatow tweeted.

“Kevin Meaney was as funny as they get and the nicest man. He could make you lose your mind laughing.“

A stand-up comedian for more than 30 years, Meaney’s first HBO special aired in ’86 and he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Late Show With David Letterman, Oprah and Late Night With Conan O’Brien.

At 39 Meaney married a woman he had just met in Las Vegas on a lark and the marriage ended up being quickly annulled. In ’96, he wrote a one man show in 1996 about it. He later married TV exec Mary Ann Halford and they had one daughter together before splitting up.

In May of 2008 Meaney came out as gay. He said that his time working in the Broadway theater world have him the courage to accept who he was and live his life to his true self. He spent a big chunk of the 2000’s in the musical Hairspray.

The 1990 sitcom Uncle Buck, as well as the Big, starring Tom Hanks.

Kevin Meaney was 60.

https://t.co/j8tay93Ebm
real life – real love – real loss

from the ding ho to here – i love ya kev

— Rosie (@Rosie) October 22, 2016

(via THR)

The post #RIP: Comedian, Kevin Meaney appeared first on The WOW Report.

The one-and-only queen, Oprah, did an interview with Pastor TD Jakes that will air next week where she explains why she has been mostly silent about the presidential race…

“The reason why I haven’t been vocal, other than saying I’m with her, is because I didn’t know what to say that could actually pierce through all the noise and the chaos and the disgusting vitriol that’s going on and actually be heard…

There really is no choice, people. All the people sitting around talking about they can’t decide. This is what I what I wanna say — wait a minute. I hear this all the time. You get into conversations — and there’s not a person in this room who hasn’t been in the same conversation — where people say,

‘I just don’t know if I like her.’

She’s not coming over to your house! You don’t have to like her. You don’t have to like her. Do you like this country? Do you like this country? You better get out there and vote. Do you like the country? Do you like freedom and liberty? Do you like this country? OK. Do you like democracy or do you want a demagogue?”

Watch.

(via Towleroad)

The post Oprah on Hillary – “She’s Not Coming Over to Your House! You Don’t Have to Like Her…” Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

The cliché about artists is that they bare their souls and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe too this literally with his groundbreaking work. A in Montreal has taken it LOOKING at art a step further towards the erotic.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts invited around 100 visitors to view its current exhibition of Mapplethorpe completely naked. The special evening tour was conducted after hours with the unclothed participants going through the Focus: Perfection — Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition with Thomas Bastien, the museum’s Director of Education and Cultural Action,

“When you look at his photos, you can see the diversity of bodies that he captured. We wanted to find a way to reflect that diversity for visitors to the exhibit.“

The event’s organisers had hoped that the visitors would be able to better appreciate the nudes by being nude themselves although, they weren’t exactly sure how the event would be received at first.

The majority of the event’s attendees were men, with only three women. One of the nude participants, Braden Scott, a student in art history shared his experience:

“I think initially people were a bit shy, but there was a cocktail first, so anyone with issues could get over it. My initial response when I saw the ad was, ‘This is a night for perverts.’ But then I thought about it and realised what a great idea it is, given Mapplethorpe’s art.

Everyone had their clothes off and we’re looking at many photos of naked people, as well as photos depicting BDSM. It felt cruisey, but I also felt shy. It was a weird combination.”

“I might have expected an event like this to be organised by a smaller gallery. I’m very impressed that the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts did this. It shows that they are aware of what he was doing and who he was speaking to. Doing an event like this integrates the work with the spectator. I’m quite blown away that the Museum did this — it speaks to their respect for him as an artist.“

Watch what happened.

(T/Y Tad; Photos, Sebastien Roy; via Gay Star News)

The post #FullFrontal: Visitors to This Mapplethorpe Exhibit Looked at the Pictures –Naked! appeared first on The WOW Report.

Woody Allen in the Carnegie Deli in his
“Broadway Danny Rose”

“Get out of this restaurant!”

True or not, this is how much people in New York love and revere the Carnegie, which is closing its doors at the end of the year.

According to writer Mimi Sheraton, years ago the legendary New York Times editor, Abe Rosenthal, identified himself to the Carnegie’s staff and he was immediately shown to a table where a paper napkin was replaced a cloth one. The next morning, Abe told Sheraton saying of all the honors accorded him in life, none meant as much as being given a cloth napkin at the Carnegie.

Even if you never had the good fortune to order the matzo ball soup, the peppery pastrami, a corned beef on caraway rye bread, sour pickles or cheese blintzes (I’m suddenly hungry) surely you’ve seen the culural significance of this place in Woody Allen‘s Broadway Danny Rose. (I told you not to call me Shirley…)

The late comic Henny Youngman said one day while sitting in the middle of diners and said,

“The average age of the customer here is deceased.”

Opened in 1937, two partners really made the Carnegie what it was; Milty Parker at the register and Leo Steiner, who set the mood with his New York schmoozing. Marian Harper, Milty’s daughter is closing the restaurant because 68, she can’t take the early morning to late night hours anymore.

Another one bites the dust.

(via The Daily Beast)

The post As the Legendary Carnegie Deli Gets Set To Close, Here’s Why NYC Loved It… appeared first on The WOW Report.

John Hill
Kary McHoul
Alex Demyanenko
Amandla Stenberg
Ang Lee
Augusten Burroughs
Baby Jane Holzer
Briana Evigan
Brooke Theiss
Cat Deeley
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Dwight Yoakam
Jessica Stroup
Meghan McCain
Michael Rupert
Nancy Grace
Pele
Philip Kaufman
Robert Trujillo
Ryan Reynolds
Sam Raimi
Steve Wilder
Weird Al Yankovic

The post October 23rd: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.

October 23, 1923– Ned Rorem:

“Anyone can be gay, it’s no accomplishment – but only I can be me.”

I am really not much of a fan of symphonic or “serious” music, and although I appreciate the craft of his music, it is his literary accomplishments that have had me in his orbit for 45+ years. The American composer Ned Rorem has achieved literary prominence by publishing a series of diaries that include candid descriptions of same-sex love affairs and his relationships with men. He is also unnaturally Dorian Gray handsome.

“The frustration of being nonexistent keeps us awake.”

Words and music are intricately linked for Rorem. Time Magazine named him: “The world’s best composer of art songs”, yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond this very specialized field. Rorem has composed symphonies, piano concertos and other orchestral works, Chamber pieces, 11 operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, plus literally hundreds of songs.

Among his most important works is his opera Our Town, an adaptation of the much loved play by gay writer Thornton Wilder.

Rorem has won the Pulitzer Prize for music. He is the author of 19 books, including six volumes of diaries, along with collections of lectures and criticism.

In 1969, at 14 years old, I came across Rorem’s Paris Diary which I devoured. His diaries brought him some degree of notoriety, because he was absolutely candid about his sexuality and the sex lives of his friends, describing his own liaisons with Noël Coward and fellow gay composers Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Samuel Barber and Virgil Thomson, and along the way, outing at least a dozen other famous people.

You might have considered that the insulated world of classical music, noted for stereotypes like “The Opera Queen”, would have plenty of open closet doors, but Rorem was one of the first to dare. Rorem was openly gay during an era when even writers like Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote were treating their gayness as a literary device disconnected from their personal lives.

Over the years Rorem has published very readable memoirs, diaries and collections of letters from a life well-led from over a span of eight decades, including a volume devoted to his correspondence with gay writer/composer Paul Bowles. His diaries include remembrances of the times he shared with a sublime mix of people including opera legend Leontyne Price, actor Angela Lansbury and singer/songwriter Judy Collins. In Wings Of Friendship, Rorem’s letters to these friends are assembled in chronological order and they reveal the range of his interests and the depth of his passions.

Rorem has lived an extraordinary life by any standards. As a beautiful and talented young flaneur he found himself moving in the social spheres of gay artists Paul Bowles, Jean Cocteau and John Cage. His diaries don’t hold back in name dropping, gossip, scandal and recalling bawdy exploits. But they also offer a remarkably frank insight into the creative process of a fledgling artist.

Rorem has set to music, the words of many different poets, from Shakespeare, Tennyson and Yeats, to Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein; he almost never uses his own words, but Walt Whitman stands out as: “very singable, wonderfully singable. His language is special, very open somehow.”

Rorem on getting older:

“In a way, I’ve said everything I had to say, in both music and prose. Also, I don’t get commissions anymore. But then, nobody I know does. At my age, it’s nice to be encouraged with money. But I think that if I died now, as I said before, I’m not ashamed of what I would leave.”

In 1999, Rorem’s partner of 32 years, James Holmes, died after a long battle with HIV-related illnesses. Rorem chronicled Holmes’ long decline and his own mortality, as well as his everyday ups and downs in Lies: A Diary 1986-1999. It is his most poignant book.

“I’m many things: I’m gay, I’m a pacifist, I am a recovered alcoholic, I’m an atheist, and I’m a composer. Of those five, being a composer is the most problematic. As a gay person, I never suffered like some. A good friend would say to me: ‘You shouldn’t go around saying that to people.’ But my mother and father called the shots very early, and they were intelligent about it. So I never tried to hide it. But as I said in The Paris Diaries, I referred to an Italian lover of mine, Pinot, with just the letter P and arranged every sentence as ‘P came to see me.’ I didn’t write ‘P came to see me and he said…’ So the pronoun was never used. But people knew what I was doing.”

On our own modern gay times:

“I don’t approve of gays in the military. I’m a pacifist and a Quaker. To spend all of that time to get into the military so you can kill people, rather than spending the time to get rid of the military, is not what gay men, or all men, should be doing. I don’t approve of gay marriage only. Well, I don’t approve of any marriage, except if it can help legally with adoptions, to legally inherit and that sort of thing. But to fight to be legally married, I don’t think it’s very important.”

Rorem celelbrates his 93rd birthday today. He is currently single and lives in Manhattan and Nantucket.

The post #BornThisDay: Composer/Writer, Ned Rorem appeared first on The WOW Report.

Tom Hanks is America’s Dad, so at this point who better to host SNL after the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. After nasty women and bad hombres, his presence signaled things are going to be OK.

Hanks played Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace in this weekend’s cold open…

“It’s going to be a lot like the third Lord of the Rings movie. You don’t want to watch but, hey, you’ve come this far.”

Once again we get the delicious pairing of Alec Baldwin as Trump and Kate McKinnon as Clinton.

“In the first debate, I set the table, in the second I fired up the grill and tonight, I FEAST.”

Watch.

The post #SNL: Hillary Destroys Donald One Last Time –”Tonight, I Feast” appeared first on The WOW Report.

The record chain Amoeba Music has sold their iconic Hollywood building at 6400 Sunset Boulevard. They are perhaps the strongest bastion for vinyl aficionados and CD purists in California but their decision to sell their L.A. real estate was voluntary. Lucky for their devout clientele, this means that the store will remain intact for the duration of its current lease — possibly longer. Last month the posted the note below.

They are committed to “staying in Hollywood” could mean that they WILL move to a new location at the end of their lease, which is “several years” away. The space was sold last October, 2015 for $34 Million.

Architectural illustration firm Shimihara posted the below image to its website portraying a monolithic tower with a rooftop pool, which will replace the record store at some later date. (I don’t understand why businesses, like Amoeba, when they sell their space for a new build don’t make it a stipulation of the sale that they get retail space in the new building with a 99 year lease. It would be a win/win, if you ask me.)

So far, no indication that the chain will be selling its San Francisco store or their flagship location in Berkeley, CA.

MOST EXPENSIVE VINYL EVER
Speaking of vinyl and lots of money, the first test pressing of The Beatles (White Album), owned by Ringo himself, sold for a whopping $790,000, breaking the Guinness World Record for highest price ever paid for a vinyl record. The proceeds from the album sale, along with over a thousand items owned by Ringo, went to The Lotus Foundation, the charity founded by Ringo and his wife, Barbara Bach, dedicated to helping individuals in physical, mental and emotional need.

(via Dancing Astronaut)

The post #RealEstatePorn: Amoeba Music Sells Their Iconic Hollywood Building for $34 Million appeared first on The WOW Report.

No one can say Lady Gaga doesn’t work hard. This week she released her hotly anticipated new album Joanne, performed in her Bud Light Dive Bar Tour while in New York City preparing for her performance on SNL last night. But she also may have just renewed some old Gaga vs. Madonna rivalries during an interview she gave to Beats 1 Radio on Thursday.

It seems the 30-year-old singer’s interview went a bit off the rails when host Zane Lowe made a comparison between Gaga and Madonna’s relationships with their fathers. Lowe said,

“There is another artist who has lived a very parallel existence ‘based on this story, which I’m sure you can relate to. You know Madonna tells a very similar story… overprotective father… ‘Papa Don’t Preach.’ You know what I mean…“

But Gaga wasn’t having it and immediately launched into how different she was from the Material Girl.

“Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna, she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic huge career, biggest pop star of all time.

I play a lot of instruments. I write all my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer. What I do is different…“

Then, she proceeded to draw an even sharper comparison,

“There is spontaneity to my work. I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.“

Maybe she felt badly and seemed to take some of it back before showing a bit of anger…

“I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. I just will not be compared to anyone anymore I am who the fuck I am and this is me. My life story is my life story, just like yours is. The thing is we all express things in different ways, but my rebellion at my father for him being angry with me, that has ended. It’s like finally I can bite back.“

Needless to say, Twitter erupted bringing back all of the bad blood from Madonna and Lady Gaga’s first public feud from 2012 when Madge accused the budding pop star of ripping off her classic song Express Yourself with the hit Born This Way…

"Madonna and I are very different". #LadyGaga #TwoStepsBehind #StealingMyRecipe #ShesNotMe #reductive pic.twitter.com/pjHb0iCJ8m

— Nice Lady (@DitaElectronica) October 21, 2016

(via The Daily Mail)

The post #FreshFeud: Gaga Goes Off on Interviewer –”Madonna & I Are Very Different…” appeared first on The WOW Report.

Lady Gaga is one of THE biggest artists of a generation. Her performance of two songs off of her just-released album, Joanne, A-Yo and Million Reasons on Saturday Night Live proved it again. She commanded the stage next to Mark Ronson and hit all the right notes. The countrified A-Yo got the crowd fired up (Yee haw!) but Million Reasons was simplified at first with just Gaga on piano with guitar accompaniment, but it finished big with her on top of the piano.

The internet seemed to focus on a glimpse of some camel toe, at one point but really kids, do we have to go there EVERY TIME? Haven’t we had enough pussy talk lately?

Watch.

The post #SNL: Lady Gaga Slays Live with “A-Yo” & “Million Reasons”. Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.

Marco Marco debuted a new collection at the Globe Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles. Watch queens, qweens and trans icons pummel the runway to a sick set of tunes by DJ Hector Fonseca. 

Don’t miss a special performance by Alaska Thunderfuck sickening walks from RuPaul’s Drag Race alum including Adore Delano, Courtney Act, Detox, Shangela, Raja, other fierce queens, male models and trans icon Isis King.

The post #MarcoMarcoShow | Collection Five | A Night In The Red Light appeared first on The WOW Report.

Adrienne Bailon
B.D. Wong
Bill Wyman
Caprice Bourret
Casey Wilson
Drake
F. Murray Abraham
Kevin Kline
Mary Bono
Monica
Shenae Grimes
Tila Tequila
VV Brown
Wayne Rooney
Zac Posen

The post October 24th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.

October 24, 1947– Kevin Kline:

“I vowed I would never do a commercial, or a soap opera… both of which I did as soon as I left Julliard and was starving.”

The van came to pick me up first. I didn’t even know that I was sharing the ride to the film set. The driver stopped in front of the hotel and in slipped a matinée idol handsome man who buckled his seatbelt and turned to me, smiled a dazzling smile, extended his hand and greeted me with: “Hello… my name is Kevin Kline”. My retort: “No kidding”.

Do you have any idea what it is like when you meet someone that you truly idolize? I had been crazy in love with Kevin Kline beginning in 1977 when I saw him on Broadway in the Hal Prince directed musical On The Twentieth Century featuring John Cullum, Madeline Kahn and Imogene Coca.

When we worked together, Kline had just won an Academy Award for his outrageous comedic performance as Otto in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and he had a new baby with wife Phoebe Cates. I congratulated him on both accomplishments.

Kline asked me about the theatre scene in Seattle and he kept insisting that we had worked together before: “Shakespeare In The Park in 1978? I am sure of it!” Stephen: “No, Kevin Kline… I think I would have remembered that”.

I kept up my part of the conversation. While letting him know how much I admired his work, I kept a nonchalant, yet engaged demeanor. But, my brain was racing a million miles an hour with:

“Oh my God, oh my God, It’s Kevin Kline. I am sitting right next to him. He has freckles. He has freckles on his arms. His arms are hairy. I think I love him. Kevin Kline! He is talking to me! He thinks he knows me. Can I sneak a peek at his crotch? Will he notice? No, don’t do it! Oh…you did it, you looked at his basket! I’d like to give him an Oscar, right now.”

I finally let him have it. I gushed. I babbled about how much I admired his work, that he was a favorite actor, and how thrilled I was to be working with him. I let him know that I held him in the very highest regard as an artist. Kline replied:

“I am never completely satisfied with what I’ve done as an actor. I tend to look at it all too critically. I’m trying to get better about that. I’ve got that Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it’s a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.”

Kline was so much fun to work with. Our director, Lawrence Kasdan, didn’t know we had traveled to the set together and he introduced us all over again. We reenacted the ride to the set.

Kline had an almost Robin Williams-ish manic energy on the set; joking, playing the piano and singing between takes. In contrast, his co-star Tracey Ullman  (I worship and adore her also) was shy and reticent. She stayed in character when the cameras were not rolling, sitting alone, away from the other actors and crew. But, as soon as the director said “cut”, Kline was back to his antics.

At the end of the day, he touched my shoulder, looked me right in the eye, and stated: “That was fun; we need to do it again sometime”. I smiled back and deadpanned (he had found my deadpan to be funny during the shoot): “Yes indeed, Mr. Kline, let’s do it every day. Please?”  Still, my brain was going:

“Oh my God, oh my God, it’s Kevin Kline! He is looking at me… It’s Kevin Kline! He is so handsome! He is actually talking to me!”

I beamed, but tried to act like it was no big deal:

“Oh my God, I just filmed two scenes with Kevin Kline. He is like the best American Actor, he is our Laurence Olivier! I am acting with him! I think he likes me. He keeps smiling at me. I think I am in love with him!”

Did I mention that I love Kline? My favorite of his film roles include Musicals, Dramas, Westerns and Comedies: The Pirates of Penzance (1983), Sophie’s Choice (1982), The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1984), A Fish Called Wanda, Soapdish (1991), Grand Canyon (1991), The Ice Storm (1997), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and As You Like It (2006). I was surprised by My Old Lady (2014) opposite Dame Maggie Smith, and I reluctantly admire In & Out (1997). For me, In & Out is not really a very good film, but I watch it every time I come across it while channel hopping. With all of its lapses in logic, the film still makes me feel all gooey. I love watching Kline play gay.

Worth revisiting in these interesting times is Kline’s two roles in the White House comedy Dave (1993) where he is perfectly paired with Sigourney Weaver as a First Lady, and his spot-on, fast, drunk, womanizing Douglas Fairbanks opposite Robert Downey Jr.’s Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin (1992).

In 1970, Kline was in the first class of the newly formed Drama Division at The Juilliard School in NYC. In 1972, he joined fellow Juilliard grad Patti LuPone as members of The City Center Acting Company (now The Acting Company), formed and directed by John Houseman. Just kids, Kline and LuPone worked together for four years performing with the company in NYC and touring the country by bus.

Lupone and Kline in The Acting Company’s production of School For Scandal (1972).

The two acting greats had a passionate and volatile love affair that lasted on and off for a decade. In her terrific memoir imaginatively titled Patti LuPone: A Memoir (2010), she writes honestly and with humor about a certain LuPone/Kline/Peter Weller love triangle. Kline was apparently LuPone’s “first great love”. In 1977, LuPone had a romance with a pre-Robocop (1987) Weller when they worked together in David Mamet’s The Woods, a drama about an intense relationship. LuPone writes that at the closing night party:

“In a drunken stupor, I declared my love for Peter to Peter with Kevin standing right next to me. We were able to patch things up until he slept with a chorus girl in Boston while he was doing On The Twentieth Century.”

Up next for Kline: an unnecessary live action remake of the Disney musical Beauty And The Beast to be released in spring 2017. It is directed by openly gay Bill Condon and features a first-class cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Emma Thompson, Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Josh Gad, Audra McDonald and Stanley Tucci. In this version Kline plays Belle’s father and not Gaston or The Beast, but at least he will be doing some singing. With all the talent involved maybe my inner-12 year old girl will enjoy it.

Still, when I think about Kline, and I like to, it is his work in the theatre that really grabs me: Chekhov, Brecht, Shaw, plus Richard III, Henry IV, multiple Hamlets, several King Lears and a couple of Tonys.  I saw him dazzle at The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare In The Park, opposite Meryl Streep in The Seagull and in Mother Courage And Her Children. This has come at the expense of what should have been a major Hollywood career. He has shied from the lure of LA, working in quirky indie fare instead of blockbusters and franchises. Kline:

“Along time ago, my agent told me: ‘Stay in New York, there’s much more cachet.'”

In April 2017, Kline will return to Broadway in Noël Coward’s witty, glamorous comedy Present Laughter playing a role first taken by Coward himself. It is one of my favorite plays, perfect for our own social media-obsessed age. Present Laughter is a shimmering sex farce about self-obsessed actor having a mid-life crisis. It is Coward’s most personal work. I would do just about anything to see it.

The post #BornThisDay: Actor, Kevin Kline appeared first on The WOW Report.

Tom Hayden, the anti-Vietnam War activist, and former husband of Jane Fonda has died. His wife Barbara Williams told CNN that he died yesterday from complications related to a stroke suffered in 2015.

Michigan-born Hayden was one of the “Chicago 7” activists who was tried for conspiracy and incitement after protests at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. He was later acquitted and went on to serve on the California Assembly and Senate for almost 20 years

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted:

“A political giant and dear friend has passed. Tom Hayden fought harder for what he believed than just about anyone I have known. RIP, Tom.”

Hayden wrote in the book Reunion,

“Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968.”

According to USA Today,

In 1960, while a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he was involved in the formation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), then dedicated to desegregating the South.

In 1968, he helped organize anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that turned violent and resulted in the notorious Chicago 7 trial. It began as the Chicago 8 trial, but one defendant, Bobby Seale, was denied the lawyer of his choice, was bound and gagged by the judge and ultimately received a separate trial.

After a circus-like trial, Hayden and three others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riot. The convictions were later overturned, and an official report deemed the violence “a police riot.”

Hayden joined the fledgling Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), went freedom-riding during civil rights protests in the South and was beaten and briefly jailed in Mississippi and Georgia. He married a fellow activist, Sandra “Casey” Cason, and together they witnessed the violence of the battle against segregation.

In 1965, Hayden made his first visit to North Vietnam with an unauthorized delegation. In 1967, he returned to Hanoi with another group and was asked by North Vietnamese leaders to bring three prisoners of war back to the United States.

Firmly committed to the anti-war movement, Hayden participated in sit-ins at Columbia University, then began traveling the country to promote a rally in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In the interim, a single event galvanized him — the 1968 assassination of his friend, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in Los Angeles. “I went from Robert Kennedy’s coffin into a very bleak and bitter political view,” Hayden told the Associated Press in 1988.

In 1971, Hayden met Jane Fonda, a latecomer to the protest movement. After he heard her give an eloquent anti-war speech in 1972, Hayden said they connected and became a couple. He was divorced from Cason. Fonda was divorced from director Roger Vadim and had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim.

Hayden and Fonda were married for 17 years and had a son, Troy. With heavy financial support from Fonda, Hayden went into California politics in the late 1970s. He formed the Campaign for Economic Democracy and was elected to the Assembly in 1982.

Hayden went on to marry actress Barbara Williams, and they had a son, Liam and in 1994, Hayden was defeated in a run for the state governorship, and he lost a bid to become mayor of Los Angeles.

After leaving public office, Hayden wrote and traveled extensively, lecturing, teaching and speaking out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also an advocate for animals, and in 2012 he lobbied Gov. Jerry Brown to preserve a piece of legislation known as Hayden’s Law, which he had authored to protect shelter animals from premature euthanasia. (Photo, A/P; via USA Today)

The post #RIP: Anti-War Activist, Writer, Politician Tom Hayden appeared first on The WOW Report.