Quantcast
Channel: Amanda LePore – The WOW Report
Viewing all 11455 articles
Browse latest View live

#DownInTheDM: Mx Qwerrrk Q&A w/ ADORE DELANO “Tell Me My Grilled Cheese Is The Best?, I’ll Marry You!”

0
0

Adore Delano is the nu-gen voice in everybody’s ears these days…and the one with the most tagged images and reposts on social media to back up her genre-breaking appeal. Her latest album Whatever is supposedly her rock opus…her authentic voice…something she’s always wanted to do. “I’m finally doing the music I’ve been dying to perform”, says Delano. But I think everyone can agree that when the RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant released single I Adore U, back in 2014, she was at her most punk rock ever! It was an anthem that would shut down a dance floor, while everyone stood in reverie. You couldn’t find a song by any other gay artist of our time that had more of a visceral impact. It spoke to our lost, nascent souls, and at the same time gave us the balls to carry on without supplication. Adore Delano is Rock ‘n’ Roll in its purest, most powerful essence…that’s LIT!!!

 

Check out the super cute Q&A #DownInTheDM from QwerrrkOut, with Adore Delano and WOWlebrity Mx Qwerrrk, where America’s favorite androgynous recording artist tells all!!! Plus, check out her latest video Whole Nine YardsWhatever is out now on iTunes! (Adore pic by Angelo Di-Benedetto Imagery, Mx Qwerrrk pic by Santiago Felipe)

 

Mx Qwerrrk: Preferred pronouns?

Adore Delano: I used to get mad when they’d call me a chick back-in-the-day, but now I don’t really give a shit what they call me, as long as it’s not collect! I also don’t want the fact that I don’t mind to take from the importance of others feelings. Non-binary people sometimes can feel completely lost for the majority of their lives.

 

Thong or commando?

Thong.

 

Cunt or uncunt?

Un-everything.

Fave punk/rock band?

Spice Girls

Best Dead or Alive song?

I’m not gonna get all deep. You Spin Me Round was everyone’s shit!

 

Best drag or trans performer?

Best RuPaul’s Drag Race season?

Season 4

 

Monogamy or Polyamory?

Both! I love sex with different people, but I can also switch it up with the same person, when I’m gross and sweet in the future.

 

What kind of boys do you like?

Every color of the rainbow. Every shape of the Lego. If you can play with my hair and tell me my grilled cheese is the best, I’ll marry you!

Size queen?

Never have been. Don’t get me wrong…I love the D, but the B and F and A’s and L’s need love too.

 

Fave song on Whatever?

It’s like asking a Mom to choose a favorite out of her kids, but I think my Mom actually does have a favorite… so, 27 Club?

 

Do you want a perfect soul?

“I want a perfect body”.
 

What’s next?

Hopefully promising tomorrows and forgetful yesterdays?

Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo

 

The post #DownInTheDM: Mx Qwerrrk Q&A w/ ADORE DELANO “Tell Me My Grilled Cheese Is The Best?, I’ll Marry You!” appeared first on The WOW Report.


August 29th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

0
0

#BornThisDay: Gay Rights Pioneer, Edward Carpenter

0
0

 

carpenter

Photograph (1905) from Sheffield Library Archives

August 29, 1844– Edward Carpenter:

“I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don’t know exactly why I didn’t.”

Gay Rights Activist, Socialist, Feminist, Pacifist, Vegetarian, Nudist, Mystic, Poet, Essayist, Sandal Wearer… an apt description for a short biography to accompany my byline? Wrong. I would never wear sandals.

Challenging Capitalism and other values of modern Western Civilization, Edward Carpenter had an important impact on the cultural and political landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He enjoyed lasting friendships with some of the greatest characters of his era: Walt WhitmanRobert GravesMahatma GandhiOscar WildeE.M. ForsterIsadora Duncan, and Emma Goldman. After reading Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass, Carpenter blissfully wrote about a world where he visualized a brotherly love that would do away with class systems and bring true freedom and democracy to everyone on our pretty, spinning blue orb.

1875

Carpenter graduated from Cambridge and then held a position there once filled by Leslie Stephen, the father of writer Virginia Woolf. Unusual for his day, he gave public lectures for the working-class. He didn’t like to save his best ideas for the ruling elite. He practiced what he preached, giving away most of his money and earning a living as a sandal-maker, lecturer and journalist. His book of poetry, Towards Democracy (1883), was modeled on Whitman’s Calamus poems. It is an outright celebration of gay love:

O child of Uranus, wanderer down all times,

Yet outcast and misunderstood of men –

I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked,

Yet outcast, slandered, pointed at by the mob.

The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages

Thy form in glory clad shall reappear.

In 1891, after meeting by chance on a train, he and George Merrill, an uneducated worker, became lovers. In 1898, when Carpenter was 54 years old and Merrill was just 32 years old, they set up house together, unheard of in England which was profoundly anti-gay in sentiment after the Oscar Wilde trials three years earlier.

carpenter merrill

Carpenter (L) with Merrill (R), from Sheffield Library Archives

Carpenter and Merrill lived openly as a couple for the next 30 years, until Merrill’s passing. Their love affair, crossing the classes, was the direct inspiration for their friend E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice (1913, published in 1971) as well as D.H. Lawrence’s straight version of their story Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1921).

American Gay Rights pioneer Harry Hay credited Carpenter’s writings for galvanizing him to start the very first Gay Rights organization, The Mattachine Society, in California in 1950.

Carpenter felt strongly that it was natural for people to settle down into a single deep permanent union with another human, but also just as normal, that along the way they should be experiencing a variety of relationships and sexual adventures. He warned that the ideal of exclusive attachment could easily lapse into a stagnant two-way kind of selfishness. He saw a society with love and devotion between individuals without the quality of their love being defined by exclusiveness based on jealousy, a sense of the other person being private property, or social opinions, or religious and legal unions. He believed that those sorts of relationships only suffocate true love. Carpenter considered sex to be a good thing and not a sign or cause of human frailty and sinfulness. All of Carpenter’s opinions were considered revolutionary in his era, just as they are today.

His very modern ideas are all brilliantly summed up in the title of his tome, Civilization: Its Cause And Cure (1889).

Merrill once chased away a clergyman who came to their door to give them a pamphlet: Merrill said:

“Keep your tract. We don’t want it. Can’t you see we’re in heaven here? We don’t want any better than this, so go away.”

Merrill left this incarnation suddenly and unexpectedly in January 1928. In May 1928, Carpenter suffered a stroke that left him mostly helpless. He lived another 13 months before he left this world on a perfect summer afternoon, June 28, 1929, exactly 40 years before the Stonewall Riots.

In 1910 Carpenter wrote:

“I should like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate. Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped to reach it. For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.”

In 1967, gay Beat poet Allen Ginsburg interviewed Gavin Arthur (grandson of President Chester A. Arthur), a world traveler, adventurer, and later a San Francisco based astrologer, about his experience as a young man of 23 years old, visiting England and having sex with the 80 year old Carpenter. Carpenter told Arthur of his own sexual experience, as a 33 year old man, with 58 year old Walt Whitman. When the young Arthur asked how Whitman ranked as a lover, Carpenter replied: “I will show you”. The account of their night together is very sweet.

This all means that I am Six Degrees Of Separation from Walt Whitman:

Whitman slept with Edward Carpenter

Edward Carpenter slept with Gavin Arthur

Gavin Arthur slept with Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady slept with Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg slept with James Dean

James Dean slept with a Certain Oscar Nominated, Tony Winning Producer

Stephen Rutledge slept with the Certain Oscar Nominated, Tony Winning Producer

It is quite remarkable that Carpenter managed to avoid any public scandal or ultimate disgrace like his friend Wilde at that time. Although Carpenter made no secret of his long relationship with Merrill, he remained discreet and the couple lived in isolation in the pretty English countryside. His controversial books avoided prosecution despite having been investigated by the morals police many times. Good karma was on Carpenter’s side.

Carpenter by Roger Fry (1894)

If you want to know more, and you really should, I highly recommend Edward Carpenter: A Life Of Liberty And Love (2009) by Sheila Rowbotham.

The post #BornThisDay: Gay Rights Pioneer, Edward Carpenter appeared first on The WOW Report.

Screen Legend Mamie Van Doren on Trans Pioneer Christine Jorgensen & What America is Losing Under Trump

0
0

Photo, Alan Mercer

I follow the legendary Mamie Van Doren on Facebook and her posts are always astute and very critical of Trump. She posted this after Trump’s transgender military ban and I asked her if I could share it with you.

Questions from History

“If we cannot accommodate people in our society who do no harm, but who deviate from the ‘norm,’ how can we call ourselves civilized?

If we soft pedal those who believe it’s all right to kill jews or people of color, or relegate them to some inferior status, can we call ourselves just?

The Constitution is clear about rights: you cannot create a second class citizen. You either have the full rights granted by the Constitution or you don’t.

Banning transgender people from the military is about as un-American and unconstitutional as you can get. All the high level officers in the services AND most of the rank and file insist there is no issue–not morale and not operational readiness–with the service of transgender people. They serve honorably and voluntarily, and to ban them based on their sexuality is blatantly unconstitutional. It is the decree of a despot–a small-minded and un-presidential act that shines a bright light into the darkness of the FAKE PRESIDENT’s heart.

(Personal note: some years ago I met Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transgender woman, who underwent sexual reassignment surgery. She was in all the headlines in late 1952 when the series of surgical procedures were performed to change her from a man to a woman. By the time I met her in the late 1980s she was suffering from liver cancer. We got on really well. She was funny and interesting to talk to, and interested in what you had to say as well. She wore her fame and historical significance gracefully. She succumbed to cancer in 1989.)

When the FAKE PRESIDENT pardons one of our country’s most bigoted public officials; when he sees violence by hate groups–Nazis, KKK, and other white supremacists–and gives them a wink and a nod instead of condemnation by name; when he bans people of certain religions or certain sexuality, then America has become unrecognizable and has lost its moral compass.

When the leader fancies himself as a dictator, unfettered by laws or the Constitution, and when that same leader is clearly unhinged and out of touch with reality, then the nation becomes unhinged too and loses its way. Led by such a moral coward, America’s historic claim as the land of the free and the home of the brave rings hollow–an empty marketing slogan selling white supremacy and hate.

History will ask many questions about this epoch. They will be very hard to answer.”

Mamie Van Doren

#WhatSheSaid

Photo, screen grab, NBC News

The post Screen Legend Mamie Van Doren on Trans Pioneer Christine Jorgensen & What America is Losing Under Trump appeared first on The WOW Report.

Ann Coulter Just Tweeted Something Stupid About Hurricane Harvey, the Gays, and Climate Change

0
0

If there’s a tragedy that she can somehow make worse by spewing hatred and spreading right-wing dogma, Ann Coulter will rise to the challenge. Today, it was Hurricane Harvey which she decided had something to do with evil gays incurring God’s wrath and leftie libtards who believe in a crazy thing called “science.” D’oh!

What a maroon.

(Photo: MediaPunch; via Queerty)

The post Ann Coulter Just Tweeted Something Stupid About Hurricane Harvey, the Gays, and Climate Change appeared first on The WOW Report.

#TransformationTuesday: QWERRRKOUT feat. Karen From Finance

0
0

Transformation Tuesday just got a whole lot QTer…New queers featured every week! Tag us, take a pic of us and follow us on Instagram at QWERRRKOUT, and you too could be the next QT! YOU BETTA QWERRRK! (Mx Qwerrrk pic by Santiago Felipe)

Karen From Finance

Age: ?

Location: Melbourne Australia

About:

“My hobbies include office-based bonding activities, invoice archiving and accounts payable. I enjoy styling catering platters for boardroom meetings, and loves to get out of control with the girls at Friday night after-work drinks.

I love the campery of drag, and I take inspiration from icons such as Pam AnnDame Edna Everage and Divine David just to name a few. I’ve been donning the extended eyeliner for about 4.5 years, and I’m preparing to be featured in the Melbourne International Arts Festival with Taylor Mac, the Broken Heel Festival in rural outback Australia, and the Austin International Drag Festival in Texas, USA.”

Instagram: karenfromfinance

Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo
Instagram Photo

 

The post #TransformationTuesday: QWERRRKOUT feat. Karen From Finance appeared first on The WOW Report.

A Feud’s A-Brewin’: Kim K Says that North West Haaaaaaaaates Her Brother Saint

0
0

In an interview with Ryan Seacrest this morning, Kim Kardashian revealed that her daughter North will exclude younger brother Saint from tea parties and get jealous when Saint has his mother’s attention.

“I don’t know what it is. I thought it was a phase; she does not like her brother. It’s so hard for me. I thought it was like, okay, a couple months, you know, she’s just warming up to it, she gets so jealous when I would breastfeed and all that kind of stuff. And now, just the phase isn’t going away.”

Uh-oh. It’s the 21st century version on Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland ALL OVER AGAIN. (via The Cut)

(Photos: Pacific Coast News and MediaPunch)

The post A Feud’s A-Brewin’: Kim K Says that North West Haaaaaaaaates Her Brother Saint appeared first on The WOW Report.

August 30th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!


#BornThisDay: Golden Age Movie Star, Joan Blondell

0
0

In Blondie Johnson (1933), Warner Bros. Archives

August 30, 1906– Joan Blondell, you’ve just got to love her. She was one of the most versatile stars of The Golden Age Of Hollywood. She never reached the very top of the Hollywood firmament like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Katharine Hepburn, but Blondell had a career in films that lasted for more than 50 years. She worked in at least 90 movies and also as a dependable guest or regular on dozens of television series. She is one of those actors who were able to move gracefully from leading roles to supporting player, from showgirl to character actor. Filmgoers in the 1930s truly identified with her blue-collar image.

Blondell was born into a vaudeville family in NYC. Growing up, her family’s act traveled from city to city, living in cheap hotels and sleeping in train stations.

Her look and demeanor made her perfect to play shop girls, clerks and gangster molls. Her working-class characters were so spot on that Blondell could never really convincingly play a society lady.  She was at her best as the gum smacking doll ready with a wisecrack on any occasion. For me, she still conjures up the ideal of a hard luck dame who has no time for self-pity, the tough-talking best friend everybody needs.

Blondell was sexy without being vulgar. Even when she portrays cynical gold-diggers, the Blondell character always comes across as loyal and decent when decency is least expected.

With her big round eyes, chubby cheeks, trademark beauty mark and generous smile, Blondell came across as approachable and thoroughly American. She was just the opposite of Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, exotic creatures with symmetrical faces, so perfect, with their sharp cheekbones, seemingly unworldly. But, Blondell was pretty enough to have been in much demand endorsing popular beauty products.

Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Blondell stated that she never had to fight hard for better roles or a higher salary. Other actors waged bitter battles with the studio chiefs over contracts, money and better scripts. James Cagney went on strike. Bette Davis went to Europe. Olivia De Havilland changed the Hollywood system forever when she fought and ultimately won a lawsuit against her contract at Warner Brothers that included the notorious suspension clause.

Blondell simply liked being a working actor, glad for that weekly salary, owning a house and an automobile, and the other things denied her as a child. But, she worked hard for her money, often making more than six films in a year.

“I never got away from that small salary, never did. I didn’t fight enough. You know, they’d bring in other studio stars for Warner pictures and I’d say: ‘Oh, you know I could have done that. Doggonit, why didn’t they give it to me?’ But I just didn’t put up a fight career wise. I didn’t even see the stuff I was in at the time. I just went home and skipped it all, from the rushes to the premiers. Every day was filled with work and my only relief was to get home.”

“We made films so fast and furiously: go in and do it and the next day start a new one. I just did it. During the Depression I was making more than six pictures year. I made six pictures carrying my son and eight when I was expecting my daughter. They’d get me behind desks and behind barrels and throw tables in front of me to hide my growing tummy. I never had more than two weeks off before starting a picture. I mean, just let me have the poor child and get back to work. The only other kind of vacation I had was in the middle of a picture with Pat O’Brien called Back In Circulation (1937) when my appendix broke. They took me to the hospital. Well, I was very near the end of that picture and about to start another, so they wanted me out of the hospital. The doctor said: ‘She can’t get out of this hospital.’ So they made a deal with the doctor to take me by stretcher to my house, and they had the set designer come and make it look like the bedroom Pat and I had done a scene in, and they got a crew of 60, sound and everything, and changed the end of the story so that I was sick in bed and that I’d marry Pat or something.”

Blondell’s casual remarks about her children are ironic. Her third husband, Mike Todd, described her as the most maternal woman he had ever known. He claimed that even when she was working in a film, she’d come home, cook, clean and make sure that the baby went to bed on time.

Her first husband was cinematographer George Barnes. He was adamant about not having any offspring. Barnes was abusive and insisted she have several abortions. After she had a son, he divorced her. That son, Norman S. Powell, became an accomplished producer, director, studio executive. He was officially adopted by her second husband, actor/singer/director Dick Powell. They had a daughter, Ellen Powell, who became a noted studio hair stylist. Powell left Blondell for another blond star, America’s sweetheart, June Allyson.

The marriage to Todd, her third, was an emotional and financial disaster. Todd smacked her around and once held her outside a hotel window by her ankles. He lost millions of her dollars gambling and they went through a controversial bankruptcy. This time Blondell left him. Todd moved on to Evelyn Keyes and then tossed Keyes aside for Elizabeth Taylor. Got that straight?

Blondell gives a slightly fictionalized telling of her life in her well-written novel, Center Door Fancy (1972). It gives an account of her lonely, vaudeville childhood and big break in films. In the novel, Blondell portrays Powell as an insufferable narcissist, hopelessly cheap, and a dreadful racist and anti-Semite; a real dick. Todd comes across as a total tool and horndog.

She received an Academy Award nomination for her dramatic turn in The Blue Veil (1951). I think Blondell was especially good in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). She could do it all: Noir, Drama, Comedy, Musicals. In The Opposite Sex (1956), an unnecessary musical remake of the classic The Women (1939), Blondell is paired with her ex-husband Powell’s wife, June Allyson.

I saw her just last week in a terrifically funny and sly performance in Norman Jewison‘s The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and as a cynical, aging playwright in John Cassavetes’ terrific tribute to The Theatre, Opening Night (1977).

I am especially fond of her work in the demented Pre-Code mystery, Night Nurse (1931), opposite Stanwyck, directed by William Wellman.

In Grease (1978), Robert Stigwood Organization/Paramount

If any of you kids are old enough, my generation best remembers Blondell for playing Lottie, a bawdy Seattle saloon owner, in the television comedy-western Here Come The Brides (1968-71) with the bluest skies you/ve ever seen, or for her witty bit in the musical Grease (1978).

Blondell’s final credits rolled on Christmas Day 1979, taken by that damn cancer at 73-years-old. She is buried at one of my favorite spots in L.A., Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

Blondell is proof that the best kept secret about The Golden Age Of Hollywood is just how hard people worked.

 

The post #BornThisDay: Golden Age Movie Star, Joan Blondell appeared first on The WOW Report.

NYC It-Boy/Gender Illusionist Kyle Farmery Gives JSJ Posing Tips

0
0

I have been dying to meet nightlife icon/drop-dead stunner Kyle Farmery for, oh my lord, absolute AGES. His haute froidure and jaw-dropping looks give me goosebumps on my goosebumps. Such style! Such beauty! It’s TOO MUCH! So to finally noodle around inside his head – finding out what inspires him and what makes him tick – is pure bliss. For instance: Did you know he was discovered at age 12 by his nightlife mentor Amanda Lepore? And that she basically taught him everything there is to know about navigating the scene and being the most glamorous creature on the planet? It’s quite a tale. Watch below as I interview him, then get some much-needed posing tips (I’m such a dork!)

 

(Top photo courtesy of Kyle)

 

The post NYC It-Boy/Gender Illusionist Kyle Farmery Gives JSJ Posing Tips appeared first on The WOW Report.

#TrumpRuinsEverything: Kathy Griffin Isn’t Friends with Anderson Cooper Anymore…

0
0

Kathy Griffin shared that infamous photo of herself holding a fake, bloodied Trump head and her career has been in a nose-dive ever since. Friendships have taken a toll too.

In a new interview with New York Magazine, Griffin talked about the backlash and aftermath of her joke. Anderson Cooper, with whom hosted CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, publicly denounced the photo, tweeting,

For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.

Griffin knew he was in a tough position but she thought that she deserved a text or phone call before he shared that tweet with his millions of Twitter followers.

On an episode of Watch What Happens Live, Cooper told Andy Cohen that he and Griffin were still friends, but she says he still hadn’t reached out her.

Griffin was hurt and ended the friendship herself after Cooper finally reached out to her via text, months later. And Griffin remains angry at Trump. She’s done apologizing.

Why are people still expecting me to apologize and grovel to a man that tweets like this? I’m a comedian; he’s our fucking president.

President Trump just pardoned Joe Arpaio, who was essentially running a concentration camp in the Arizona desert. He said there are some good Nazis, and he’s kicking out young adults who were brought here as kids by their parents, and I’m the one who has to continue to apologize?”

Apropos of the controversy, Griffin is headed on her Laugh Your Head Off tour in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Will there be Trump jokes? You can bet on it.

(Photo, YouTube; via Huffington Post)

The post #TrumpRuinsEverything: Kathy Griffin Isn’t Friends with Anderson Cooper Anymore… appeared first on The WOW Report.

#SoYouThinkYouCanDance: Entire Cast Slays with RuPaul’s “Call Me Mother”! Watch

Acid Betty Talks New York City Hot Spots For RuPaul’s DragCon NYC 2017

0
0

We’re almost ONE week away!!!

Can you believe the time has finally almost come for you to have the best weekend of your life at RuPaul’s DragCon NYC 2017?!? We can hardly believe it. There’s so much prep to do. Have you picked out your outfits yet?!?! AHHHHHH!!

Sure, your outfits, the panels you wanna see, queens you wanna meet and MORE are some of the most important aspects of DragCon, but there’s SO MANY things to do in New York City it can be intimidating if you don’t know where to begin.

That’s why we took the time to speak with the incredible Acid Betty! The Brooklyn-native is the PERFECT person to give you advice about the best drag shows, where to shop, find cute boys and MORE!

Check out our interview with Acid Betty below and be sure to snatch up your DragCon tickets NOW if you haven’t yet! Time is running out!!!

What’s your favorite place to catch a Drag Show in NYC?

“I always go to Metropolitan or a Macri Park in Brooklyn. You never know if you will see Thorgy pop-up screaming “mustard” chasing after Alotta McGriddles. Or a great fierce dance performance by the Queen of Shade, though I call her, Queen of Slay, Mizz Jade! Almost every night of the week Brooklyn features some of the up and coming drag stars as well as some of the most popular stars. Just go out and see who you will run into!”

Where do YOU go for the best boy-watching in NYC?

“Again, I like my boys a little rough around the edges, so I like the Brooklyn hangouts or the Eagle.. yea I said it, the Eagle!”

Do you have any hidden gem/secret NYC food spots?

“My favorite place to hear live music and singing, great service and food is Chez Josephine. 414 W. 42nd Street. French staples along with american standards (fried chicken) pair with piano music at this opulent restaurant, a tribute to Josephine Baker. I used to visit Jean-Claude Baker where he would remove the guests sitting at the best table for my guests and me. His spirit lives on along with Josephine Bakers.”

What’s your favorite place to go drag shopping (or regular shopping!) in NYC?

“THE JEWELRY DISTRICT! I always take my sisters to this area to get oversized over-the-top jewelry at very affordable prices. They sell earring and Large necklace packages from 15-40 dollars. Chi Chi Devayne and I spent over $500 combined in one visit. :X”

No matter how tourist-y (or NOT!) what’s the number one thing that you must-do whenever you’re in NYC?

“See a broadway show at an “affordable” price thanks to TKTS! Its always fun to spontaneously 2-3 hours prior to showtime run to TKTS located in the heart of Time Square and see what discount tickets are available for that night. Pick a show, run for some food and see great theater!”

RuPaul’s DragCon NYC is happening at the Javits Center on September 9 & 10th. Head over to RuPaulsDragCon.com for FAQ, tickets, & MORE!

[Image provided to The WOW Report via Acid Betty.]

The post Acid Betty Talks New York City Hot Spots For RuPaul’s DragCon NYC 2017 appeared first on The WOW Report.

Um, Why Was Milo Yiannopoulos a VIP at the VMAs?

0
0

#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmm: This year’s VMAs were supposed to be about being progressive and inclusive – they changed the Moon Man to a Moon Person, created a new “Fight Against the System” award category, and invited trans service members on stage to show their support. So why, then, did they ALSO invite attention-starved alt-right douche nozzle Milo Yiannopoulos? Seems a bit off-message, if you ask me….

🤷🏿‍♀️🥂

A post shared by MILO (@milo.yiannopoulos) on

🙄

A post shared by MILO (@milo.yiannopoulos) on

A post shared by MILO (@milo.yiannopoulos) on

He later wrote:

One thing I learned at the VMAs last night is that freshly-Christened lesbian Katy Perry has a terrible stylist and is possibly the least funny person in America.

These award shows are as disingenuous as telling a one night stand you love them and increasingly no different from sitting through a very long sermon at an evangelical megachurch — but instead of celebrating a loving God, the crowd of self-flagellating celebrities and millennials cower before a different mythological evil known as “white supremacy.” This came ringing through last night when an actual pastor, a descendant of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, took to the stage to lecture everyone on “America’s original sin,” racism, calling on “all of us with privilege and power to confront racism and white supremacy head on.” (By “those with privilege,” he’s not talking about the 200 rappers in the audience with diamond-studded crosses around their necks. Just for the sake of clarity.) The Left is too ashamed to admit they’ve become everything they once claimed to hate — puritanical, mob-rule zealots. Shouldn’t they be embarrassed when they show up in the tens of thousands to shut down a few dozen people holding a right-wing event, like in Boston? And when they can’t find actual Nazis to fight they conjure up make-believe ones like statues, college administrators who don’t cave to their temper tantrums, and of course President Trump… who after 200 days of facing the resistance is still President and still sticking up for America’s interests — for instance, by pardoning Sheriff Joe.

Ugh. Why did I just give him the platform to spew hate? BAD JAMES! (Also: “Newly christened lesbian Katy Perry”? BECAUSE SHE CUT AND BLEACHED HER HAIR? What an idiot….)

(Top photo: MediaPunch)

The post Um, Why Was Milo Yiannopoulos a VIP at the VMAs? appeared first on The WOW Report.

Alt-Right Children’s Book “The Adventures of Pepe and Pede” Cancelled

0
0

A new book indoctrinating children into the alt-right has been shelved – not because its message is hateful and xenophobic, but because the self-published picture book revolves around a racist frog named Pepe. A clear copyright infringement of the neo-Nazi meme “Pepe the Frog.”

The Adventures of Pepe and Pede follows a frog and a bug as they take down a bearded alligator called Alkah (hmmm…. could they be referencing…. Allah?) To do this, they throw “buds” from the “honesty tree,” thereby defeating Alkah and his mud-covered minions, and quite literally draining the swamp.

“With law and order now restored, this land was great again,” it ends.

Via HuffPo:

After the book caused controversy in author Eric Hauser’s hometown of Dallas, he was fired from his post as middle school assistant principal. “The book was worse than I thought,” Chad Withers, a teacher in Hauser’s district, told Motherboard. “The story itself is despicable, racist, and xenophobic. I was disgusted by it. I’ve never seen anything before that was so obviously targeted propaganda to children.”

Hauser himself, however, maintained the book did not promote the “alt-right,” nor themes of bigotry and hate. Rather he told the Dallas Observer Pepe and Pede was meant to “break down the barriers of political correctness and embrace truth.”

Pepe and Pede was slated to be published in hardcover this November by Post Hill Press, the Simon & Schuster imprint behind books like Go the F**K to Jail: An Adult Coloring Book of the Clinton Scandals. 

It was the ultimately image of Pepe, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Pepe the racist meme, that got the book cancelled.

Ukrainian freelance artist Nina Khalova was hired to illustrate the book. As Gault uncovered, Hauser specifically requested that Khalova create the alligator’s minions based off cartoons of women in burqas. Because she lived in the Ukraine, Khalova was unaware of the dark political implications of the project. At the end of the day, Hauser’s fatal mistake was asking Khalova to create the character of Pepe by directly copying an image of Pepe the frog. “I want the frog to look very similar to this frog,” Hauser directed, attaching a picture of Furie’s Pepe.

This made intellectual property lawyers Louis Tompros and Don Steinberg’s job pretty simple. Hauser admitted to copying Furie’s work nearly immediately and sales of the book were brought to a halt. The $1,521.54 profit earned so far was redirected to benefit the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

“It’s important for everyone to stand up against hate, whenever and wherever they can,” Tompros, who took on the case pro bono, told HuffPost. “Matt Furie was willing to do that by fighting back against the alt-right’s efforts to claim Pepe as a symbol of hate. We knew that we had the ability as intellectual property lawyers to help in that fight, so we did.”

Glad that it got shelved, but it’s a sad state of affairs when something like this can find a publisher in the first place. What is Simon & Schuster thinking?

The post Alt-Right Children’s Book “The Adventures of Pepe and Pede” Cancelled appeared first on The WOW Report.


RuPaul’s Album “American” Hits #5 on the Dance Chart, and Her Song “Call Me Mother” Goes to #8 on Dance Singles Chart!!!

Does Kermit Have a Frog In His Throat? Check Out His NEW VOICE In “Muppet Thought of the Week”

0
0

Kermit the Frog has a brand new sound, starting today. Yes, it’s the debut of Matt Vogel, taking over puppet duties from the recently ousted Steve Whitmire. The new voice is a little higher, a litter odder, and sounds a bit like Ernie (which, considering Jim Henson originally did both, is a GOOD THING). Many people are up in arms over the new sound…

… but if I recall, when Steve first began voicing Kermit in the early ’90s following Jim’s death, he didn’t sound right either.

It takes time to get the nuances right. And I’m sure in no time at all, we will have forgotten all about the Steve Whittier era and Matt’s Kermit will be known as the de facto Kermit.

Watch today’s debut below.

The post Does Kermit Have a Frog In His Throat? Check Out His NEW VOICE In “Muppet Thought of the Week” appeared first on The WOW Report.

August 31st: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch!

#BornThisDay: Broadway Lyricist, Alan Jay Lerner

0
0

Photograph by Henri Dauman from Sony Music Entertainment courtesy of Sony Music Archives

August 31, 1918Alan Jay Lerner:

”There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years!”

Lerner had one of the legendary partnerships of the history of Musical Theater. He was one of the very best lyricists and he was a playwright, doing the books for most of his musicals. He enjoyed an amazing partnership with gay composer Frederick Loewe, but he collaborated with several talented composers before and after their eight shows together.

Lerner and Loewe inherited the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition of the integrated book musical, refining it in such acclaimed and popular shows as their masterpiece My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960), Brigadoon (1947), and Gigi (1958).

The catalog of Lerner and Loewe bulges with songs that became popular standards: Almost Like Being In Love, On The Street Where You Live, If Ever I would Leave You, I Could Have Danced All Night.

Lerner was Harvard educated, Loewe was a composer from the Viennese opera tradition, and the two men applied their intellectual strengths toward creating worlds of rich fantasy: King Arthur’s Court, London’s Covent Garden, The American Wild West, and a disappearing village in the Scottish Highlands. Loewe’s music, and Lerner’s books and lyrics brought the Broadway stage beguiling and romantic worlds that somehow were in tune with the optimism of postwar USA.

Alluding to West Side Story (1957), the gritty and musically adventurous show with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, and with a book by Arthur Laurents, Lerner wrote:

”Fritz and I don’t believe in musical plays with messages, particularly if the message deals with teen-age rumbles and switch-blade knives. To us, the best message a musical play can convey is: ‘Come back and see us again, and often’.”

It was not simply that their musicals brought a certain sense of refined style; it was also the way Lerner and Loewe lived. With the fortunes made from their hits, they typified the wealth and panache that was a part of Broadway’s Golden Age of Musicals.

Lerner and Loewe shows represent a highly idealized view of life, especially compared with the darker works of Sondheim. Yet, their musicals did make some daring leaps in adapting highbrow culture for popular consumption. My Fair Lady is, of course, based on a George Bernard Shaw play and Gigi on the story by the gay French writer Colette.

Not always old fashioned, Lerner wrote the lyrics for Kurt Weill’s score for Love Life (1948), an experimental musical with a cynical look at marriage. It is one of the first ”concept musicals”, shows built around themes instead of the narratives, musicals like A Chorus Line (1975) or Sondheim’s Follies (1971).

Lerner was never quite able to adapt to the changing American popular music, with the rise of Rock N’ Roll, and his career never really recovered when Loewe retired in 1960.

Lerner was born in NYC. His father was founder of Lerner Stores, a chain of inexpensive women’s apparel shops.

After Harvard, he attended The Juilliard School. At Harvard, Lerner began to write. He wrote for the Hasty Pudding Club shows. After college, he found work writing advertising copy and radio scripts. He wrote sketches for the annual revue produced by the Lamb’s Club, where he met Loewe.

Their first two musicals closed early, but for the next two decades they only had hits.

On March 16, 1956, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway. This musical brought Lerner and Loewe their greatest acclaim, their greatest fame, and a great deal of money. The production, directed by Moss Hart, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews ran for more than six years. By 1960, the Original Broadway Cast recording had sold more than 20 million albums. Harrison and Audrey Hepburn starred in the 1964 film adaptation, directed by George Cukor. It was an even bigger hit. A great deal of its success and stature is due, not just to the exquisite score, but especially to Lerner’s smart adaptation of Shaw’s comedy, Pygmalion (1912).

Camelot was the last and most lavish Lerner and Loewe show. It opened in 1960 with an advance sale of $3 million, adjusted for inflation, that would be like $60 million today. We are talking Hamilton huge. The evocation in Camelot of a handsome and charmed young King Arthur provided a metaphor for the Administration of John F. Kennedy. It was that President’s favorite show and he listened frequently to the cast album at The White House.

The months after Camelot were a turning point, mostly for the worse, in Lerner’s career. Moss Hart, the director of the Lerner and Loewe musicals, died and Loewe, in his late 50s, decided to retire.

Lerner had already done some excellent, celebrated work for Hollywood on his own. In 1951, he provided the screenplays for Royal Wedding and An American In Paris. His memoir, The Street Where I Live (1978) was a bestseller. It sits on a shelf with my collection of lyricists’ autobiographies, next to Ira Gershwin.

But, Lerner’s work of the theater work never reached the heights without Loewe. His later musicals were daring, flawed commercial flops.

I do really like On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965), a musical about ESP with a lovely score by Burton Lane. It had a respectable run of 275 performances on Broadway starring Barbara Harris, and was adapted into a film starring Barbra Streisand in 1970, but both lost money. The title song was a hit though, and Lerner said it was one of the most important songs of his career. It remains the most recorded of his songs.

I saw his musical about the presidency and race relations, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976), with a score by Bernstein. It was an enthralling mess and ran only seven performances on Broadway. The shows that followed also flopped.

The artistic difficulties of Lerner’s last years were reflected by his personal problems. In 1972, as one of the many celebrity patient of Dr. Max “Feel Good” Jacobson, he became addicted to amphetamine injections. That same year, Lerner was sued by the IRS for $1.4 million in back taxes.

That rare straight Broadway guy, Lerner was married eight times. In his memoir, he wrote:

”All I can say is that if I had no flair for marriage, I also had no flair for bachelorhood. Marriage, as someone said, is often like a besieged fortress. Everyone inside wants to get out and everyone outside wants to get in.”

Lerner and Loewe received Kennedy Center Honors in 1986, the first time the award was given to collaborators. Lerner won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among many other honors. Lerner took his final curtain call just a few months after the Kennedy Center Honors, gone from that damn cancer at 67-years-old.

This is my favorite Lerner lyric. It’s the greatest ”stalker” song of all time:

 I have often walked down this street before

But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before

All at once am I several stories high

Knowing I’m on the street where you live

 

Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?

Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?

Does enchantment pour out of every door?

No it’s just on the street where you live

 

And oh, the towering feeling

Just to know somehow you are near

The overpowering feeling

That any second you may suddenly appear

 

People stop and stare, they don’t bother me

For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be

Let the time go by, I won’t care

If I can be here on the street where you live

 

People stop and stare, they don’t bother me

For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be

Let the time go by, I won’t care

If I can be here on the street where you live!

 

 

The post #BornThisDay: Broadway Lyricist, Alan Jay Lerner appeared first on The WOW Report.

#OnThisDay: Twenty Years Ago, Princess Diana Dies in a Car Crash

0
0

 

On Wednesday July 29th, 1981, I had been with a gathering of my favorite friends, including me new boyfriend (now my husband) to watch the television broadcast of the wedding of Prince Charles of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral. We had a special royalty-themed party with champagne and a bunch of laughs, yet the entire gang ended up inexplicitly in tears. Famous figures attended the wedding included royal families from across the world, heads of state, celebrities, and members of the bride’s and groom’s  families. Their marriage was considered the “wedding of the century”. The broadcast was watched by 750 million people. The United Kingdom had a national holiday on that day.

But, it wasn’t a fairytale marriage. Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced on August 28, 1996.

Diana remained the object of worldwide media scrutiny during and after the marriage. She became the most famous and most photographed woman on the planet.

Diana began her work with AIDS victims in the 1980s, when the plague was new. In 1989, she opened Landmark AIDS Centre in South London. Unlike most everyone in the world, Diana was not afraid to make physical contact with people with AIDS. At that point, it was still unknown how the disease was spread. Diana was the first British Royal to acknowledge AIDS. In 1987, she held hands with an AIDS patient in an early effort to de-stigmatize the disease. Princess Diana noted:

“HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it. What’s more, you can share their homes, their workplaces, and their playgrounds and toys”

To Diana’s great disappointment, Queen Elizabeth II did not support this type of charity work, and she suggested that Diana get involved in “something more pleasant”.

In October 1990, Diana opened Grandma’s House in Washington DC, a home for young sufferers of the plague. She was also on the board of The National AIDS Trust. In 1991, she famously hugged a patient during a visit to the AIDS ward of the Middlesex Hospital. She was the patron and frequent visitor of Turning Point, a London HIV health and social care organization. She was a leader in fundraising campaigns for HIV/AIDS research.

In March 1997, Diana visited South Africa, taking a meeting with President Nelson Mandela. Together they announced that the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund would join the Princess Of Wales Fund to help people with HIV. They had planned the combination of the two charities just a few months before her death. Mandela:

“When she stroked the limbs of someone with leprosy or sat on the bed of a man with HIV/AIDS and held his hand, she transformed public attitudes and improved the life chances of such people, Princess Diana had used her celebrity status to fight the stigma attached to people living with HIV/AIDS”.

The 36-year-old princess died in the early hours of August 31, 1997. Her Mercedes, pursued by paparazzi, crashed into a concrete pillar in the Alma Tunnel in Paris while traveling at more than 70 miles per hour. Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and their driver Henri Paul were all killed. Conspiracy theories still swirl around this event. Was she murdered? Was it planned? Was it simply a horrible accident?

Like most of the planet, I was drawn to the stories and scandals that surrounding Diana before and after that car crash. On this day in, August 31 in 1997, I was at my job as a bartender when I heard the news. I customer told me, having heard it on a car radio. This was before cellphones, but the news spread with great speed. I was shocked and began to cry. I pulled myself together to appear professional, but by this time all the patrons were offering their stories about how she touched their lives. It was a collective grief shared with strangers. I bought everyone a round of drinks. I called the boyfriend, but he already had seen it on television.

It was one of those pivotal, unforgettable moments like the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy, John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr.; the Challenger Disaster, and the election of the 45th President of the United States; when there was a collective shock and then a terrible ache that was shared by friends, family and strangers, an event that you can say: “I remember exactly where I was when I heard the terrible news”.

Diana’s two sons participated in a BBC documentary, Diana, 7 Days, which will premieres on NBC on tomorrow and looks at the week after their mother’s death.

Prince William:

“I couldn’t understand why everyone wanted to cry as loud as they did and show such emotion as they did when they didn’t really know our mother. Looking back over the last few years I’ve learned to understand what it was that she gave the world and what she gave a lot of people.

The two princes also helped to produce Diana, Our Mother: Her Life And Legacy, currently streaming on HBO.

Prince William:

“She was very informal and really enjoyed the laughter and the fun, but she understood there was a real life outside palace walls and she wanted us to see it from a very young age.”

Prince Harry:

“I genuinely think she got satisfaction out of dressing myself and William up in the most bizarre outfits, normally matching… It was weird shorts and, like, shiny shoes with the old clip-ons. And looking back at the photos, it just makes me laugh. I just think, ‘How could you do that to us?!'”

Her good friend Sir Elton John, who famously performed at Princess Diana’s funeral:

“It was considered to be a gay disease and for someone who was in the royal family and who was a woman and who was straight and to have someone care from the other side was an incredible gift.”

John tweeted a photo of him and Diana this morning with the caption:

“20 years ago today, the world lost an angel. #RIP #Diana20”

The post #OnThisDay: Twenty Years Ago, Princess Diana Dies in a Car Crash appeared first on The WOW Report.

Viewing all 11455 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images