Alan Rickman
Ashley Greene
Billy Baldwin
Brendan Sexton III
Charlotte Church
Christine Ebersole
Christopher Atkins
Chuck Palahniuk
Corbin Bleu
David Geffen
Ellen Page
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Kelsey Grammer
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Melanie Laurent
Nicole Parker
Tyne Daly
Vanessa Feltz
William Peterson
Wish Bone
The post February 21st: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.
February 21, 1936– Barbara Jordan:
“What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.”
It is Black History Month. It is not necessarily Black Lesbians Month, but possibly, it should be. African-American Gay Women made history too.
Today marks the birthday of an extraordinary woman. Jordan was the first woman from Texas to serve in the US Congress, and the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress from a southern state. She was noted as an outstanding orator and first-class Constitutional scholar. If she had lived, she may have served in our current administration or on the Unites States Supreme Court, just as William Jefferson Clinton intended. Way back in 1976, Jordan was much discussed by those that make such decisions as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter. Instead, she became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at a national political party convention. Her speech in NYC that summer is considered in the top 10 of the Top 100 American Speeches Of The 20th Century by the Association Of University Professors.
Jordan was a gay woman with,what used to be called, a longtime companion. Her lover for more than 25 years was Nancy Earl. Jordan never publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation, but in her obituary, The Houston Chronicle (what we used to call a newspaper) mentioned her relationship with Earl. After Jordan’s initial unsuccessful statewide races, her political advisers warned her to become more discreet.
President William Jefferson Clinton spoke at Jordan’s funeral in 1996, stating:
“Whenever she stood to speak, she jolted the nation’s attention with her artful and articulate defense of the Constitution, the American Dream, and the common heritage and destiny we share, whether we like it or not.”
In 2011, the US Postal Service chose for Jordon to have her own ‘forever’ stamp as the 34th honoree in their popular Black Heritage series. She received the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 1994. In 1984, Jordan was elected to the Texas Women’s Hall Of Fame. She was named one of the most influential American women in the 20th century by the National Women’s Hall Of Fame in 1993.
Bayard Rustin, who gets his own #BornThisDay treatment in March, was Jordon’s good friend. Rustin was a gay man and a leader in the fight for Civil Rights and Gay Rights. Together, their legacy continues with The Jordan/Rustin Coalition. The mission of the coalition is to empower Los Angeles’ Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people and their families, and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
Jordan was diagnosed with MS in 1973 and then with Leukemia in the 1980s. She gave her final speech in 1996.
A powerful political voice can make a difference in this world. Who do we have, besides President Barack Obama, who belongs to the tradition of life changing stirring orators? Hillary? Jeb!? Lil’ Marco? Could Elizabeth Warren make the grade? Cory Booker, very possibly?
I do not want Jordan and her legacy to be forgotten or diminished. I always found her speeches and her very presence to be electrifying. Had Jordon lived another decade or tw0, I believe her contribution to our country would have been even more astounding. She might have become the first woman President and the first Gay President. As it stands, Jordon was still a true trailblazer and one of my favorite politicians.
“A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness & self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.”
The post #BornThisDay: Politician, Barbara Jordan appeared first on The WOW Report.
Lindsanity. Utter lindsanity.
Lindsay Lohan appeared on Good Morning, Britain this morning and SHOCKED the nation by revealing that she was “racially profiled” while wearing a headscarf at a London airport. The incident occurred after flying into London’s Heathrow Airport from Turkey.
“I got stopped recently and was racially profiled,” the ginger starlet told the hosts.
“She [the customs agent] opened my passport, saw ‘Lindsay Lohan,’ and immediately started apologizing.”
The agent then advised Linds to “take off your headscarf.”
When asked why she was wearing the headscarf she talked about how Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn used to wear them all the time. She mentioned that while she was not wearing it for religious purposes it was a combination of out of respect from the country she was traveling from and also so that she wasn’t recognized because her red hair gives her away.
She said the experience left her “kind of shocked,” and wondered how “another woman who doesn’t feel comfortable taking off her headscarf” might feel. “That was really interesting to me.”
Read the whole story at Refinery 29.
Or watch the interview below.
.@lindsaylohan claims she was 'racially profiled' at Heathrow Airport while wearing a headscarf #GMB https://t.co/jUMFynhlz6 pic.twitter.com/tnmZUtbun8
— ITV News (@itvnews) February 21, 2017
The post Lindsay’s “Grace Kelly Look” Led to Her Being Racially Profiled at the Airport, Poor Dear appeared first on The WOW Report.
Jimmy Harry, the creative mastermind behind Bonsai Mammal – your new favorite band (AND album art) – has been busy plugging away on his new music endeavor. Sharing some pictures to his Twitter, he’s happy to announce his debut EP is available on Spotify and Apple Music now! You can stream it, download it, share it, like it, follow him on Spotify.
Check it out:
Fun fact: Jimmy Harry use to have a band called Whoregasm signed to James Murdoch’s indie
record label so he’s a really rad guy!
Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
The post “Bonsai Mammal’s” Debut EP Is Available Now On Spotify & Apple Music appeared first on The WOW Report.
Let’s be honest, the gays love Dynasty style catfights, and with FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan premiere only a couple weeks away we get see to relive one of the most glamorous brawls of all time! Well the shady b*tches have noticed, FX has collaborated with some of your favorite RuPaul’s Drag Race Queens and are hosting screenings and themed events at gay bars around the country.
On Thursday, March 2, Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood will host a themed drag bingo starring Drag Race alum, Willam and Katya.
Then the next night, March 3, there will be a “Drag-tacular Live Concert” that will take place in L.A.’s Pacific Design Center featuring live music and a dance performance. The evening will be capped off with the L.A. debut of the Whatever Happened to Bianca Del Rio? live show starring Bianca Del Rio and Peaches Christ.
Guess Alaska was busy?
Below is a list of the different bars that will host the Feud screening before its network premiere on March 5.
Sunday, February 19Los Angeles Akbar 8:00pm; ticketsMonday, February 20Los Angeles Catalina Jazz Club 8:30pm; ticketsTuesday, February 21New York Hardware 8:00pm; ticketsWednesday, February 22Los Angeles Revolver 8:00pm; ticketsFort Lauderdale Georgie’s Alibi Monkey Bar 8:00pm; ticketsPhiladelphia Tavern on Camac 8:00pm; ticketsSan Francisco Oasis 7:00pm; ticketsWashington, D.C. Town Danceboutique 7:00pm; ticketsThursday, February 23Atlanta Blake’s on the Park 8:00pm; ticketsBoston AMC Boston Commons 7:00pm; ticketsChicago Landmark Century Centre Cinema 7:00pm; ticketsSeattle Purr Cocktail Lounge 8:00pm; tickets(via NewNowNext)
The post OMG: FX’s Feud Teams Up With Your Favorite “Drag Race” Queens appeared first on The WOW Report.
There is no debate, you don’t get to have an opposing view. “I Think I Love You” is THE greatest pop song ever written, and ’70s teen sensation David Cassidy is THE greatest pop star ever.
In the wake of today’s devastating news that David is suffering from dementia (it unfortunately runs in his family), I know we all wish him the very best. Let’s all take a moment and watch him at his shagadelic best and remember the joy he brought to a generation of squealing little girls (and boys) in those tight, tight leather trousers. He truly is the quintessential ’70s superstar.
“I Think I Love You” was released as the debut single by The Partridge Family, with David Cassidy on lead vocals and his mother Shirley Jones on background vocals. The Partridge Family version was a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1970. Watch the TV show version below.
And as a bonus, let’s watch David sing “I Woke Up In Love This Morning”
Via NBC News:
The onetime star of “The Partridge Family” spoke to People magazine about his health following a weekend concert in California during which he reportedly struggled to remember the lyrics to songs he has been singing for 50 years. The 66-year-old also appeared to fall off the stage at one point.
Cassidy gained fame on the television series, which ran from 1970 to 1974. He played Keith Partridge, the oldest of five children in a musical family that formed a band.
Cassidy told People that he had watched his grandfather struggle with dementia, and had also seen his mother “disappear” into dementia until she died at age 89.
“I was in denial, but a part of me always knew this was coming,” he said.
On Tuesday, Cassidy sent out a tweet thanking those who had reached out to him following the announcement.
We love you David!
The post #DavidCassidyForever: Let’s All Take a Moment and Listen to David Sing THE GREATEST SONG OF ALL TIME “I Think I Love You” appeared first on The WOW Report.
Robert Kardashian
Clinton Kelly
Don Pardo
Drew Barrymore
Ellen Greene
Hans Klok
James Blunt
James Hong
Jeri Ryan
Jonathan Demme
Julie Walters
Julius Erving
Kyle MacLachlan
Lea Salonga
Marni Nixon
Miko Hughes
Nina Flowers
Rachel Dratch
Thomas Jane
The post February 22nd: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.
February 22, 1925– Edward St. John Gorey:
“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that’s what the world is like.”
Yesterday morning I awoke early and started my usual day: a bit of stretching, a look at the news, and then I began to formulate a #BornThisDay post for my own little place on the Internet. I ran into The Husband, who had found his way out of our bed, as I started gathering items from our sizable collection of Edward Gorey materials, including one of this year’s Saint Valentine’s Day gifts from him. The Husband said: “Hmmm… it must be Mr. Gorey’s birthday today!” As an artist and author, he is the master of the comic macabre.
The Harvard University educated mostly self-taught Gorey had a unique imagination and he exercised it in his works. He has delighted me for nearly my entire life. Indeed, The Husband and I discovered we were both big fans of Gorey’s work at the very start of our relationship 38 years ago.
Gorey was a curious man with an inordinate interest in the drama of other people’s lives, and a penchant for the grim reality of true crime. He produced over 100 books over a 50 year career, featuring his unique shadowy, black and white pen and ink drawings, along with spare, sly, satirical plots.
To this day, I remain enthralled and enchanted by his skilled drawings and his poisonous, poetic stories of cursed children, fainting femmes, shadowy specters, threatening topiary and eccentric events in eerie Victorian gardens, woods and mansions, works that are witty, woeful, devious and delirious to the point of obsession.
Gorey is one of the most aptly named notables in American art and literature. With his large body of small works, he has made an indelible imprint on my outlook and sense of humor.
Gorey was also a designer of theater productions, including revues based on his own stories and a Broadway production of Dracula starring a young, very sexy Frank Langella, for which he did sets, costumes and lighting. It was a Broadway hit and I saw it twice in 1977. I was enthralled by the look of the show and the leading man.
On occasion, I spotted Gorey walking around Manhattan in the mid-1970s. He looked like one of his own creations. In fact, his image lurks on the fringe of some of his drawings: towering, with a wild white beard and hair, with a ring in each ear and on most of his fingers. When he lived in NYC he went about town a raccoon coat.
Gorey was noted for being genial and gentle. He spoke in antiquated terms, using words like “jeepers”, “swell”, and “zingy”. He was known for his sweetness, good nature and fine spirit.
Gorey was passionate about Ballet. For years he attended all the performances of works by George Balanchine at The NYC Ballet. He invented stories about ballets and operas, and then he designed sets, costumes and drop curtains for them. He lived for a long time in a cluttered apartment on the Upper West Side, and then, after the ballet season was completed, he would retreat to his home on Cape Cod. After Balanchine’s passing in 1983, Gorey decided to leave NYC permanently.
In 1986, Gorey moved into a 200 year old house on Cape Cod that was said to have been supremely haunted. In 1994, he told an interviewer of the strange disappearance of all the finials from his lamps along with his collection of tiny teddy bears.
The Husband and I have a much loved copy of Elephant House: Or The Home Of Edward Gorey with photographs by Kevin McDermott and text by John Updike, an engaging, engrossing picture book of Gorey’s Cape Cod home. The house is a much larger version of my own place. Elephant House was filled with esoteric objects like a toilet with a tabletop. He displayed none of his own art work. But, there was a definitive Gorey touch: poison ivy creeping inside through cracks in a living room wall.
“Books. Cats. Life is Good.”
Like me, Gorey packed his home with stacks of books, but he also watched soap operas on television and rented horror movies from the nearby video store. He shared his life with a plethora of pussies. His many cats had the run of the house and furniture. If a stray showed up at his door, he would immediately welcome it in. Plus, there were the cats he drew for an early 1980s edition of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats. After his death a friend moved into the house to take care of the many cats. Gorey liked to tell of the time that the cats were on a couch and suddenly:
“Everyone turned with eyes wide, as if someone, or something, unseen had entered the room.”
Looking at his work today as I prepared this post, I reread The Gashleycrumb Tinies, a deliciously morbid, alphabetical catalog of 26 children’s deaths. It begins with “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs” and ends with “Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin”. Not just his art, my admiration extends to his poetry and prose.
My first Gorey book was a gift from my parents for my fifth birthday in 1959, The Doubtful Guests. This small tome tells of a strange, hook-nosed creature, wearing a long scarf and tennis shoes, who shows up uninvited at a dreary mansion and soon becomes a permanent member of the family, peering up flues in the fireplace, tearing up books and sleepwalking through the house, and after 17 years he showed no intention of going away. I still have my original copy.
Once when he was asked why he wrote so much about murder and other forms of violence, Gorey answered:
“Well, I don’t know. I guess I’m interested in real life.”
There are a great many Gorey books available; all his works are still in print. If you wish to know Gorey, start with Amphigorey (1972), and its two sequels, Amphigorey Too (1977), and Amphigorey Also (1981).
Although Gorey’s books may seem aimed at children, they are actually very adult, and Gorey did not associate with children and had no particular fondness for them.
Gorey’s roommate at Harvard was the openly gay poet Frank O’Hara. But Gorey was very discreet about his own sex life. He stated:
“I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly. I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something. I’ve never said that I was gay and I’ve never said that I wasn’t. What I’m trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else.”
Famous around the globe, he only left the USA once, for a trip the bleak Scottish Hebrides Islands.
In 1994, at 69 years old, soon after he was told he had cancer, Gorey stated:
“I thought, ‘Oh gee, why haven’t I burst into total screaming hysterics? I’m the opposite of hypochondriacally. I’m not entirely enamored of the idea of living forever.”
I grabbed hold of that attitude when I received my own cancer diagnosis, a situation that I found as a font for gallows humor and acceptance of the inevitable.
Gorey left this world in the spring of 2000. He must have felt bad for wearing dead raccoons; he gave his entire estate to animal charities.
The post #BornThisDay: Writer / Artist, Edward Gorey appeared first on The WOW Report.
Andy memorial poster, left; his gravestone in Pittsburgh, photograph by Todd Eberle.
Warhol played a pivotal role in my life as an artist, a gay man who escaped his working class past, and the central figure in New York night life since I moved here in 1980. And I played an odd part in his after life. As I describe in Catherine Johnson‘s book Thank You Andy Warhol, I accidentally designed his gravestone and my best friends decided to rewrite history and cut me out. Here’s an excerpt from the book;
“When (Andy) died so suddenly it was like a punch in the gut; everybody was shaken up. In ‘86, Peter McGough and David McDermott, great friends of mine, had just returned from a year’s stay in Italy. They had brought this blank memorial poster back with them. When someone dies in Italy, they make this traditional poster at the printer, and plaster them all over the streets…
I took a blank memorial poster with PAX (peace) and palm fronds and filled it in with his name and the dates of his birth and death. I replaced the illustration of praying hands in an oval with Andy’s high school yearbook picture, and added a quote in from the bible. The type “ANDY WARHOL” was Xeroxed from the headline of the New York Post that read “ANDY WARHOL DEAD AT 58.” I printed the poster and we had them plastered it all over downtown, and several were given to the art critic Diego Cortez. He in turn gave one to Andy’s brother.
About a year later, I was at the gallery 33 Bleecker and I saw a grave rubbing of Andy’s headstone by my friend Scott Covert. My jaw dropped. It turns out Andy’s brother had given the poster to the gravestone maker, who used it as a template for the headstone. It’s black marble, the same size as the poster. The gravestone maker removed Andy’s picture and added back the praying hands…”
To clarify, at the time, I was a graphic artist working for art galleries designing catalogues, invitations,ads, etc, and had done catalogue design for McDermott & McGough, but I never worked for then. I physically layed out the poster, although we had the idea together and we split the printing costs. When Salvador Dali died I created one for him using the same format, and later for another spanish artist, my friend Juan Botas. You can see Juan’s poster in the last shot of Jonathan Demme‘s documentary about him (his story was the inspiration for the movie Philadelphia) called One Foot in the Grave Another on a Banana Peel.
I took this. It sits, framed on my desk.
“Why? So, they can print that YOU designed Andy’s gravestone?“
And that’s apparently what had happened. McDermott & McGough for decades had told everyone THEY had designed the poster and they conveniently left me out of the story. Neater that way, I guess. From some insecure people’s point of view, the old Gore Vidal quote strongly applies,
“It is not enough to succeed; one’s friends must fail.“
So, if this all seems like sour grapes, fine. But that’s what happened, swear to God. David McDermott & Peter McGough were once my best friends and great artists. We don’t speak anymore because of this incident and last year on the anniversary of Warhol’s death, they reprinted the poster adding their own names. Contrary to their entire ethos, this behavior is VERY modern as their work is all about the past. Today we call their version of the story, an “alternate fact.”
Because of this odd occurrence, (there are no accidents) I’ll be forever linked with my idol, someone I knew a bit and greatly admired. Whether or not history gets it right (history is ALWAYS wrong) at least I, and now you, know what happened.
#RIPAndy.
Meanwhile, you can see Andy’s gravestone through this 24/7 live feed here.
I took this photo of art dealer Massimo Audiello presenting a birthday cake to artist David McDermott in Julian Schnabel’s loft as Andy photographs the moment. Interview’s Sam Bolton, far left.
The post #RIP: Andy Warhol Died 30 Years Ago Today. It Still Hurts –For Lots of Reasons appeared first on The WOW Report.
Today is the 30th anniversary of Andy Warhol‘s death. The late Nelson Sullivan was always on the scene with his video camera and in 1986 on Valentine’s Day, he caught Warhol signing his new photography book America at a Fiorucci in-store party. My old pals Joey Arias, Erich Conrad, April Palmieri, Andy’s assistant Benjamin Liu, then club kid, James St. James (at about 3:20. How cute is he?) Phoebe Legere and Billy Boy were there too, among others. I love that while Andy was signing away, they announce that
“the store is closing in ten minutes.“
These kind of events were not the micro-managed, PR-nightmares we have today – it was much more “anything goes”, Andy’s one of us.
Watch.
The post #Flashback86: Fiorucci Loves Andy Warhol (with James St. James & Joey Arias) Watch. appeared first on The WOW Report.
Yesterday, hate-filled former alt-right celebrity Milo Yiannopoulos went after Ross Mathews – of all people! – saying in a speech that he (Milo) gets letters all the time from mothers saying they’re happy he exists “so their children don’t grow up to be like Ross.” HUH? Ross is literally the kindest, sweetest, most gentle human being ON THE PLANET. You should be happy if your child is 1/10th as perfect as he is.
Well. Ross took to Facebook a few hours ago and responded to the attack. And, as you might expect, it is absolutely wonderful. And poignant. And the perfect comeback.
Watch below.
The post Watch Ross Mathew’s Poignant Response to Milo’s Out-of-the-Blue Attack appeared first on The WOW Report.
February 23, 1938– The most interesting thing about filmmaker Paul Morrissey, is that the subversive creator of Trash (1968), Flesh (1970), and Heat (1972) is actually a rabid Right-Winger Christian Conservative Republican (but not a Trumper, he wants you to know).
“Without institutionalized religion as the basis, a society can’t exist. All the sensible values of a solid education and a moral foundation have been flushed down the liberal toilet in order to sell sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
I am not certain he would be able to make his kind of films in a Mike Pence USA.
Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, Joe Dallesandro, Candy Darling
For me, Morrissey will always be associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory and its decadent damaged denizens. He was handsome enough to have been one of the actors, but it seems that Morrissey was the straight businessman seeking the commercial possibilities in the underground film movement at The Factory. Morrissey’s work ethic and ambition led him to reconsider the Warhol’s sleep inducing cinematic experiments Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964) by making more watchable works like Mixed Blood (1984), Blood For Dracula (1974), and Women In Revolt (1974). Although most people think of these as Warhol Films, for the most part Morrissey wrote, produced, and directed all of them while Warhol’s contribution was his name above the title.
Morrissey made extremely low budget films before “collaborating” with Warhol on innovative art films like My Hustler (1965) and The Chelsea Girls (1966), but The Factory provided his money for bigger, if still small budgets.
Warhol’s own filmmaking technique influenced Morrissey, including Warhol’s use of performers with strong personalities who did their own thing while the camera rolled, with far less direction than a filmmaker would normally use. His movies are mostly improvised, with just the hint of a screenplay by Morrissey, but he had faith in his actors. His work has a kind of a freedom that makes it easy to ignore the scenes running way too long and all the technical errors, problems with continuity and peeks of the boom mic in the shots.
Morrissey’s films feature powerful, problematic personalities starving for self-expression: disillusioned drag queens, hostile fag hags, menacing has-been movie stars. Plus, there was always a beautiful, butch, hustler stud, usually played to perfection by the great Gay Icon Joe Dallesandro, one of the most beautiful men to appear in 1970s era films.
In Heat, Dallesandro plays a former child actor from the fictional television series, The Big Ranch, where he is appealing as always, playing someone too trashy to make it big even in trash loving Hollywood. In Trash (1970), the late great Holly Woodlawn portrays a character as tenacious, yet burdened by emotion as she was in real life. In Morrissey’s films, Many characters in Morrissey’s films have the same names as the actors portraying tem, making a dizzying mix of realism into a fictional frame.
Morrissey’s campy sensibility is often tempered with a surprising sadness, like in Trash, with Woodlawn’s beer bottle masturbation scene, or in Flesh, when Dellesandro is left naked and alone while his wife enjoys her new found lesbian relationship. Just as often, Morrissey is just pure camp, like Blood For Dracula (1973), with Dallesandro as a hapless handyman who is a European Communist with a Brooklyn accent. Heat is a burlesque of Billy Wilder’s classic black comedy Sunset Boulevard (1950), featuring a frustrated wealthy B-movie star, played by the forceful Sylvia Miles, who is cursed with a deranged daughter, a caterwauling career, and a guiltless gigolo.
His best film is Women In Revolt (1971), which savagely satirizes women’s films like Valley Of The Dolls (1967), but with the dames played by Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis. In the film, the three superstars are members of P.I.G. (Politically Involved Girls). Curtis plays a lonely socialite who ends up hiring male prostitutes, Darling screws her way to the bottom of Hollywood, while Woodlawn becomes a skid row alcoholic. Morrissey’s camera is stationary as he stands back allowing the three strong women to go at it.
His films show a fascination with drag queens, transsexuals and drug addicts. Again, mixing real life with fiction, many of the actors show the intimate details of their own drug addiction, waiting for a fix, and queasy views of actual needle injection. This is Morrissey’s specialty: telling details of exotic subcultures.
After his Warhol period, Morrissey made more mainstream projects: Forty Deuce (1982), Beethoven’s Nephew (1985), and Spike Of Bensonhurst (1985). They are all solid efforts, but box-office failures.
In his memoir, Factory Days (2006), Morrissey claims that he discovered and signed the great band, The Velvet Underground. He says of Warhol and The Factory:
“Andy Warhol never met one of those people before I cast them. They were not his coterie, and they were not hanging out at his gallery. These were selections of mine! I’ve had this all my life! The horror of it! His celebrityhood, which is an invention of the media, dominating my films!”
Morrissey still lives and works in NYC.
The post #BornThisDay: Filmmaker, Paul Morrissey appeared first on The WOW Report.
LGBTQ super villain, Milo Yiannopoulos has been in the news way too much this past wee. He has just resigned from Breitbart News over comments he made that appeared to condone pedophilia. This after he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and showed the world his true colors, lost his invitation to speak at CPAC and a $250,000 Simon & Shuster book deal.
Along with Bianca Del Rio & the Lady Bunny, New York drag legend Linda Simpson is known for being pushing the envelope of good taste, so to speak. Well, she pushed that envelope up Milo’s ass with her latest Facebook rant making tasteless pedophile jokes
As I’ve said, it couldn’t have happened to a bigger creep.
NOTE: I’m sure I don’t need to repeat here to THIS audience that pedophilia, the practice of which the right often tries to lay at the feet of the LGBT community, is obviously something serious and not condoned by myself or Linda. You get that these are jokes, right? If not, Joan Rivers has a message from the grave for you…
The post Linda Simpson Is Making Milo Yiannopoulos the Butt of Inappropriate Pedophilia Jokes (& He Deserves It) appeared first on The WOW Report.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer (seen, above) said Tuesday that the Justice Department is working on a new set of guidelines that would revise or withdraw an Obama-era directive requiring public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their chosen gender identity.
“I think that all you have to do is look at what the president’s view has been for a long time, that this is not something the federal government should be involved in, this is a states’ rights issue.“
Spicer’s comment stoked concerns among transgender-rights advocates about a reversal of the Obama administration’s protections.
LGBTQ Nation took a look at the issue and what might happen:
What is the federal guidance for school bathrooms?
The Obama administration in May told public schools nationwide that they are obligated to treat transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even when records differ or it makes others uncomfortable. It was the administration’s determination that Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education and activities, also applies to gender identity.
About 150,000 youth — 0.7 percent— between the ages of 13 and 17 in the United States identify as transgender, according to a study by The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The Obama-era guidance held no force of law but sent a warning that schools could lose funding if they did not comply with the administration’s interpretation of the law. Republicans immediately pushed back, arguing it was an example of federal government overreach and the Obama administration meddling in local matters. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick equated it to “blackmail” and said at the time that the state was ready to forfeit federal education money rather than comply with the guidance.
Thirteen states sued to challenge the directive. A federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the guidance in August, and the Trump administration this month said it would no longer fight to limit the injunction.
What could happen if the guidance is withdrawn?
Advocates said federal law would still prohibit discrimination against students based on their gender or sexual orientation even without the Obama guidelines.
“To cloak this in federalism ignores the vital and historic role that federal law plays in ensuring that all children (including LGBT students) are able to attend school free from discrimination,” Vanita Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division when the guidance was issued, said in a statement.
Still, legal experts say a change in position could have consequences for unresolved court cases dealing with Title IX.
The Supreme Court could decide to send a case about a transgender teen in Virginia back to a lower court. The high school senior was born female, but identifies as a male and wants to use the boys’ bathroom at his school. The high court is scheduled to hear the case in March. Courts are unsettled about whether, in the absence of guidance from the federal government, anti-discrimination laws require schools to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity. The justices could direct lower courts to decide that issue.
Similar lawsuits are still playing out across the country.
“Some courts might say the fact that they go back and forth on this every time the administration changes, maybe we shouldn’t defer to it, maybe we should just decide for ourselves,” said Arthur Leonard, a professor at New York Law School who has studied LGBT legal history.
What would the change mean for schools?
A patchwork of state laws dealing with the bathroom issue will continue to emerge. Fifteen states have explicit protections for transgender students in their state laws, and many individual school districts in other states have adopted policies that respected such students on the basis of their gender identity, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign. Just one state, North Carolina, has enacted a law restricting bathroom access to the sex at birth. But so far this year, lawmakers in more than 10 states are considering similar legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Transgender-rights advocates argued the guidance was a helpful tool for districts in understanding federal law. Without it, more schools could be subject to lawsuits as districts try to sort through the confusion, said Rachel Tiven, CEO of the LGBT advocacy group Lambda Legal. revising or rescinding the guidance,
“The important thing to understand is that it doesn’t change the underlying law, but it’s an invitation to harm the most vulnerable kids in school,” Tiven said of any efforts to revise or rescind the guidance.
It’s a wait and see game but you can be sure, it’ll be a battle in the courts and in the streets. #Resist
(via LGBTQ Nation)
The post #LGBTQ: What Do Trump’s New Trans Student Guidelines Mean? appeared first on The WOW Report.
Here I am with Leah Alder on January 12, her 97th birthday. That day Steven Spielberg looked at me and said, “Thank you for loving my mother.”
I told him that she was very easy to love.
Leah Adler, a California restaurateur who dished out forgettable food and memorable anecdotes — many about her son, Steven Spielberg, the most successful director of all time — died at home on February 21.
For more than 30 years, Ms. Adler presided over the Milky Way, a kosher dairy restaurant on Pico Boulevard near Century City. But she rarely set foot in the kitchen. Her domain was the front of the house, where she ricocheted from table to table, keeping as many as a dozen conversations going at one time.
She reminded anyone who asked about her son that she also had three daughters, Anne, Nancy, and Sue. But it was Steven who provided Ms. Adler with her best material.
The actor Kirk Douglas, who befriended her in the 1990s, wrote in his 2000 memoir, Climbing The Mountain: My Search For Meaning,
“Leah never brings up her famous son. But if you cue her, she’s off.”
Once, when her diamond earrings attracted compliments, Ms. Adler recalled that, because Steven hated seeing his mother get old, she had consulted a doctor abut having a facelift. But she decided plastic surgery wasn’t for her.
“So I called Steven and said, ‘I’m going to keep the face; you’re just going to have to decorate it better.’”
The earrings arrived the next morning.
Asked how she liked her son’s scary film Jaws, she said:
“I heard somebody in the theater screaming at the top of her lungs. And then I realized it was me.”
A diminutive presence in denim smocks with Peter Pan collars, Ms. Adler opened the Milky Way with her second husband, Bernard Adler, in 1979. The menu offered cheese blintzes and — in a nod to the southwest — latkes with jalapenos. But the specialty of the house was Ms. Adler’s irreverence.
In 1994, after watching her son win seven Academy Awards for Schindler’s List, she announced,
“If I’d known how famous he was going to be, I would have had my uterus bronzed.”
According to Mr. Douglas, the perpetually youthful Ms. Adler told him,
“The only rule in my family is: don’t become an adult.”
Leah Adler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 12, 1920. Her father, Philip Posner, a Russian immigrant, was in the garment business, but, she said,
“what he really liked to do was dance ballet and play guitar.”
Leah’s mother, Jennie Posner, was a public speaker.
“When they opened a building, they’d hire her to speak. She had a speaking voice like a singing voice. I remember her walking around the house, practicing her speeches while she dusted. She mostly missed the dust — she was never too domestic.”
Her parents, she said,
“were madly in love with each other their whole lives, and I thought that’s how everybody lived.”
Her uncles, she said, included a Yiddish Shakespearean actor (”I remember him in the living room doing ‘To be or not to be’ in Yiddish”) and a vaudevillian (“He used to dance with a straw hat and a cane”).
“We were poor,” she adds, “but there was no depression in our house. We didn’t know what we didn’t have. And we liked what we did have. I remember going to bed thinking, ‘Wow, I have new shoes,’ and jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to look at my new shoes.”
Leah studied to be a concert pianist, but after she married Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer, parenthood became her chief creative outlet. Steven, the first of the couple’s four children, terrorized his three sisters. Ms. Adler recalled:
“He used to stand outside their windows at night, howling, “I am the moon. I am the moon.” They’re still scared of the moon. And he cut off the head of one of Nancy’s dolls and served it to her on a bed of lettuce.”
“If I had known better,” she quipped, “I would have taken him to a psychiatrist, and there would never have been an E.T.”
Instead, she supported his early filmmaking efforts, loading up her car — a 1950 Army surplus jeep — and heading into the desert near the family’s home in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“Steven had the whole family dressed up in ridiculous costumes,” she recalled. “He’d say, ‘Stand behind that cactus,’ and I actually did it Nobody ever said no to Steven. He gets what he wants, anyway, so the name of the game is to save your strength and say yes early.”
Once, she should have said no, early. Steven wanted to do a scene (similar to the one in his firm Poltergeist decades later) in which blood came oozing out of Leah’s kitchen cabinets. She not only agreed but went to the supermarket and bought cans of cherries, which she cooked in a pressure cooker until they exploded all over the room.
“For years after that,” she said, “my routine every morning was to go downstairs, put the coffee on, and wipe cherry residue off the cabinets.”
When he was fourteen, Steven made his first full-length movie, a sci-fi flick called Firelight, and he got a theater in Phoenix to show it. It was Leah who put up the letters on the marquee.
Leah and Arnold Spielberg split up in 1966. The reason, Ms. Adler said, is that she had fallen in love with a family friend, Bernie Adler, whom she married in 1967. With Mr. Adler, who was an Orthodox Jew, she became Sabbath-observant, which gave her one day a week away from the restaurant.
Mr. Adler died in 1995. During her years as a widow, Ms. Adler often socialized with her first husband, Arnold Spielberg, who survives her.
Ms. Adler said she had good relationships with all four of her children, which she attributed to the fact that she kept busy at the restaurant.
“I’m not sitting around waiting for them to call.”
In addition to her four children, she is survived by 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
When people asked her what it was like to have a son like Steven Spielberg, she replied:
“I get all the glory. I eat it up. And all I have to do is be the mother.” –Fred A. Bernstein
Leah Adler with her son Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw at the 1993 Oscars
The post #RIP: Steven Spielberg’s Mother, Restaurateur, Leah Adler appeared first on The WOW Report.
This isn’t new but in the interest of the public, I thought it was a good time to revisit College Humor‘s PSA. You need to know the warning signs and get help before it’s too late. This bitch caught it early… #blessed.
Watch.
(T/Y David)
The post #TBT: How To Tell if You’re a Basic Bitch appeared first on The WOW Report.
Chances are you’ve seen a few (hundred) videos of Hitler reacting angrily to pop culture news. The clip itself is a scene from Downfall, a drama about Hitler’s last days.
Ever wonder why there are SO many? Well, you can make your own here.
In the meantime, take a look at the Fuhrer reacting in fury to our Orange SCOTUS’s incompetence. According to a White House leak, this is pretty much how it really is.
Watch.
The post Hitler Finds Out How Incompetent Trump Is & He’s NOT Happy. Watch. appeared first on The WOW Report.
“Loverboy” was the first single from Mariah Carey‘s movie Glitter released on July 16, 2001. It samples the track “Candy” by Cameo.
The post #ThrowbackThursday: Mariah Carey’s “Loverboy” from 2001’s ‘Glitter’ appeared first on The WOW Report.
Trace Cyrus
Howard Bragman
Abe Vigoda
Barry Bostwick
Billy Zane
Bonnie Somerville
Chad Hugo
Debra Jo Rupp
Dominic Chianese
Edward James Olmos
Emmanuelle Riva
Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
Helen Shaver
Kristin Davis
Lleyton Hewitt
Paul Jones
Paula Zahn
Rupert Holmes
Todd Field
The post February 24th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.
