Jamal Sims
Jeff Hasler
David Caruso
Donna Rice
Doug E. Doug
Dustin Diamond
Erin Gray
Jann Wenner
Jeremy Renner
John Rich
Juan Gabriel
Kathy Valentine
Katie Couric
Kenny Loggins
Lewis Hamilton
Liam Aiken
Lyndsy Fonseca
Merritt Wever
Nicholas Cage
Rex Lee
Sammo Hung

“Use your smile to change the world, don’t let the world change your smile” #candid #friday #feelingblessed #LA #guyswithstyle

A post shared by Jamal Terry-Sims (@jamizzi) on Dec 15, 2017 at 7:31am PST

Don’t think I’m going to use this as an excuse make a lot of dick jokes (just a few) but believe it or not, about 100 men a month are getting their penis whitened at Lelux Hospital in Bangkok. It’s apparently very popular with gay men.

The majority of patients are LGBT people between the ages of 22 and 55 and according to Bunthita Wattanasiri, the manager of the Skin and Laser Department at Lelux,

“These days a lot of people are asking about it. We get around 100 clients a month, three to four clients a day. We have to be careful because it’s a sensitive part of the body.”

(Hey, if you’re a penis owner, like myself, you might already know this.)

Doctors use “a very small laser” to do the whitening (insert dick size joke here) and it costs $650 for five sessions. But there ARE potential negative side effects of getting your penis whitened. They are…

• pain & inflammation

• scarring

• possible difficulty with reproducing

OK, so tell me…

Why isn’t Barbie pregnant?

Because Ken came in another box.

Lelux Hospital’s marketing manager, Popol Tansakul, said patients started to ask about penis whitening after the hospital introduced vagina whitening a few months ago.

“A man walked into the doctor’s. He said, ‘I’ve hurt my arm in several places.’ The doctor said, ‘Well, don’t go there any more.‘”

Thailand’s Public Health Minister, Dr. Thongchai Keeratihuttayakorn has spoken out against the procedure saying,

“Penis laser whitening is not necessary, wastes money and may give more negative effects than positive ones.”

But hey, if you’re a big fan of White Snake, this just might be your thing. No? Let me try again…

What do you call a cheap circumcision?

A rip off.

OK, just one more that I ripped off…

(via Gay Star News)

Ooops!

And as soon as she got into the house still flustered from the episode, as she was introducing herself to the other housemates, it fell off again!

Fellow RuPaul’s Drag Race stars were NOT going to miss this opportunity to throw some shade and support. Alaska tweeted:

“I love Courtney Act’s pussy.”

Trixie Mattel tweeted,

“Courtney Act almost wins drag race and has hit albums; people sleep on her. She gets snatched naked entering Big Brother – the gays ‘YES MY FAVE RELATABLE MY QUEEN ME AF.’”

And Kim Chi tweeted:

“Your new meme queen of the year.”

But some felt sorry for Courtney, while others speculated it may have been all an ACT. (Get it?)

One fan tweeted:

“Courtney is a show woman, she knows how to make an entrance, of course it was staged.”

London drag queen, Precious, wrote,

“I’m not saying she knew what she was doing, but I am saying she is a Drag Queen. Stealing the show and mocking pop culture is our thing.”

Watch the clip. Do you think it was all an act…?

The ultimate wardrobe malfunction @CourtneyAct! #CBB #CBBShaneJ pic.twitter.com/Dd6KoK2kHv

— Big Brother UK (@bbuk) January 5, 2018

.@courtneyact certainly made an impression last night! And the wardrobe malfunctions continued inside the House, as that skirt tried to sashay away again. #CBB continues tonight at 9pm on @channel5_tv pic.twitter.com/XUQE0xKl1w

— Big Brother UK (@bbuk) January 6, 2018

We all have a friend like this.

start of the night vs after pres going to the club #CBB #CBBShaneJ#cbbcourtney @courtneyact
pic.twitter.com/9hTJyRkoX9

— Ciarán (@farrenciaran) January 5, 2018

(Photos, YouTube, Twitter; via Gay Star News)

Via YouTube

Edward Albee’s early popular one-acts plays, including The Zoo Story (1959), established him as a critic of American values. He is most noted for his first full-length play Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1962), a Tony Award-winning production which also became a 1966 film directed by Mike Nichols starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Albee received Pulitzer Prizes for A Delicate Balance (1966), Seascape (1972) and Three Tall Women (1994), among many other awards and honors. Albee was one of the most innovative playwrights of his generation, whose raw, unnerving, funny plays scraped at the veneer of American success and happiness.

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? was denied the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, when the 14-member advisory board split over the play. Some were shocked by the frank, abusive language and ignored the Pulitzer jury’s enthusiastic recommendation. No award was given, and two jurors, respected drama critics and theater historians, resigned in protest.

In the 1950s, he became friends and lovers with fellow writers, painters and musicians including playwright William Inge and composers David Diamond, Aaron Copland and William Flanagan, who became his boyfriend in the 1950s. Albee said he knew he was gay by the time he was 8-years-old. After his relationship with Flanagan, he had a romance with fellow playwright Terrence McNally in the 1960s. In 1970, he began a 35-year relationship with sculptor Jonathan Thomas. Thomas was taken by cancer in 2005.

“All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. I find most people spend too much time living as if they’re never going to die.”

Albee left this world on September 16, 2016 at 88-years-old.

Brad Pitt has added “artist” to his list of skills. He’s been learning the ropes from sculptor and close friend Thomas Houseago and talked about it for the first time in an interview with GQ Style:

“I’m making everything. I’m working with clay, plaster, rebar, wood…”

Asked what he has planned for the rest of the afternoon after he leaves the interview, Pitt answers like a real artist:

“I’m anxious to get to the studio. I think it was Picasso who talked about the moment of looking at the subject, and paint hitting canvas, and that is where art happens. For me I’m having a moment of getting to feel emotion at my fingertips. But to get that emotion to clay —I just haven’t cracked the surface. And I don’t know what’s coming.

Right now I know the manual labor is good for me, getting to know the expansiveness and limitations of the materials. I’ve got to start from the bottom, I’ve got to sweep my floor, I’ve got to wrap up my shit at night, you know?”

Photographer Ryan McGinley, shot the 53-year old actor/artist in California’s national parks.

(Photo, Ryan McGinley for GQ Style, 2017; via Artnet)

White House advisor and Trump lackey, Stephen Miller, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, just got shaded BIG TIME on live TV.

On today on State of the Union he trashed Michael Wolff‘s new book, Fire and Fury and sung the praises of Trump’s glorious leadership.

“It’s tragic and unfortunate that Steve would make these grotesque comments so out of touch with reality and obviously so vindictive.

(Bannon’s) role has been greatly exaggerated, whereas the President hasn’t gotten the due that he deserves for the movement that he put together to tap into the kinds of people whose life concerns don’t get a lot of attention on CNN.”

Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to defend his mental abilities, saying he is “like, really smart” and a “very stable genius.” Miller praised Trump extensively, saying the “reality” is that the President is a political genius and that Trump’s tweet declaring himself a “very stable genius” did not undermine the claim.

“The President’s tweets absolutely reaffirm the plainspoken truth: A self-made billionaire revolutionized reality TV and tapped into something magical that’s happening in the hearts of this country.”

During the contentious interview, Miller offered combative responses and focused on presenting Trump as that “political genius,” repeatedly refusing to answer questions. Finally Tapper had enough decided to cut him off and move on…

“There’s only one viewer you care about… I think I’ve wasted enough of my viewer’s time.”

Watch.

(via CNN)

Pulp paperbacks were made to be throwaway reading. The often ended up in the trash, and plenty were trash. Publishers of pulps had the freedom to let writers produce books too out-there for mainstream publishers. There were writers who wanted to tell stories about gay men, lesbians, transgendered and transvestites, subjects considered too risque for “normal” readers, so they turned to adults-only paperbacks. They appropriated the conventions of serious Erotic Fiction, Detective Stories, Gothic Romances, Spy Thrillers, Science Fiction, College Humor, Horror/Occult, and Westerns, and then flipped them around so that the globe-trotting, Amazons, space explorers, gold diggers and gangsters, cowboys, aliens, Sam Spades, ghosts, and sexed up sorority girls were all queer.

The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were the golden age of gay pulps, an era when they became more daring and more explicit, yet were done by writers who cared about character and plot, while preserving the history of how a marginalized, yet vital LGBTQ community lived, dreamed, and managed the pressure of living double lives.

Nearly all the gay pulps were written under a pseudonym, and most of the cover art and book designs were anonymous.

I began collection them in the 1980s, but the market for them soon turned hot and by the 21^st century, they sold for more than $100 each on eBay.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Photograph by Peter Whitehead, via YouTube

Cisgendered straight person that he is, young Mick Jagger still enjoyed a reputation for being androgynous.

Amazingly. This photograph is from 1966. Few other rock bands flirted with androgyny or cross-dressing until the advent of Glam Rock five years later.

Rolling Stones were dressed as WW II British army nurses for the envelope photograph that accompanied their single Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow?. Peter Whitehead’s promotional film for the single was one of the first music videos. The song was only released as a single, but it appears on Greatest Hits compilations and was recorded for the Rolling Stones live album Got Live If You Want It!.

In 1967, the video for We Love You, made shortly after Jagger’s trial for marijuana possession, shows Jagger dressed as Oscar Wilde and Marianne Faithful as Alfred Lord Douglas in a parody of Wilde’s trial for ”gross indecency”.

Jagger by Daniel Filipacchi, 1971, via YouTube

Rolling Stone’s 1969 single, Honky Tonk Women has long been thought as being about a drag queen: ”a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis’ heaves him right across her shoulder… she blew my nose and then she blew my mind”.

“Performance” (1970), Nicolas Roeg, via YouTube

The term androgyny has also been used about his persona the film Performance (1970), which has Jagger as a retired rock-and-roll singer who initiates an on-the-run gangster into the ways of androgyny and fusions of gender and identity. At the end, the identities of both men are totally confused. Which one has been killed? Which one is dragged away by gangsters? There is that bit where the gangster is in bed with one of Jagger’s girls, and with a bit of tricky editing, it is Jagger himself rather than a girl.

In “Bent” (1997), Sean Mathias via YouTube

There is also Jagger in the 1997 film version of Martin Sherman’s play Bent, a surreal look at Berlin’s gay nightlife just as Nazis begin viciously cracking down on queers. In a sprawling nightclub that is part circus, part drug den, part warehouse, elegant gay men cruise one other, snort cocaine and have public sex in the club’s dimmer recesses. Presiding over the scene is the club’s owner, Jagger as Greta, a gaunt, famished-looking queen. Jagger resembles Diana Vreeland in this one.

Jagger at the Hyde Park concert in 1969. Photograph by Alan Messer via YouTube

Oprah Winfrey accepted her Cecil B. DeMille Award on at the Golden Globes with an inspiring message of hope to the young girls watching:

“A new day is on the horizon.“

At the first major award show since Hollywood first began addressing rampant sexual harassment against women in the entertainment industry wore black in solidarity and the anti-sexual harassment group Time’s Up, which led the night’s all-black fashion movement, has made it a point to highlight the fact that sexual harassment is not a problem unique to Hollywood.

Oprah said,

“Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have…

I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue.

They’re the women whose names we’ll never know.”

In her speech, Oprah highlighted the story of Recy Taylor, a black woman whose 1944 rape by six men did not lead to any convictions. Taylor passed away last month at the age of 97.

“She lived –as we all have lived– in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men, but their time is up.“

Oprah is the first black woman to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award and she described being a little girl in 1964 watching the Globes and Sidney Poitier, the first black man to ever receive an Oscar.

Watch.

“In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother’s house in Milwaukee watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history: “The winner is Sidney Poitier.” Up to the stage came the most elegant man I had ever seen. I remember his tie was white, and of course his skin was black, and I had never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried many, many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats as my mom came through the door bone tired from cleaning other people’s houses. But all I can do is quote and say that the explanation in Sidney’s performance in “Lilies of the Field”:

“Amen, amen, amen, amen.”

In 1982, Sidney received the Cecil B. DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and it is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given this same award. It is an honor — it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them and also with the incredible men and women who have inspired me, who challenged me, who sustained me and made my journey to this stage possible. Dennis Swanson who took a chance on me for “A.M. Chicago.” Quincy Jones who saw me on that show and said to Steven Spielberg, “Yes, she is Sophia in ‘The Color Purple.'” Gayle who has been the definition of what a friend is, and Stedman who has been my rock — just a few to name.

I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association because we all know the press is under siege these days. We also know it’s the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice. To — to tyrants and victims, and secrets and lies. I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: what I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year we became the story.

But it’s not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. It’s one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace. So I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military.

And there’s someone else, Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know, too. In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother walking home from a church service she’d attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped, and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church. They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice. But justice wasn’t an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted. Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.

Their time is up. And I just hope — I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on. It was somewhere in Rosa Parks’ heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it’s here with every woman who chooses to say, “Me too.” And every man — every man who chooses to listen.

In my career, what I’ve always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere and how we overcome. I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “Me too” again.“

(Photo, YouTube; via CNN)

Via YouTube

January 8, 1937– Shirley Bassey

January 8, 1947– David Bowie

Via YouTube

I had always dreamed of them recording a duet.

They have given me a lifetime of listening pleasure and they share a birthday today. They are both Capricorns, certainly the brightest birth sign. Unlike me, this pair of Brits have had decades-long super-careers in showbiz. Bassey feeds my fantasies about growing old gracefully, epitomized in beautiful songs like Charles Aznavour’s Yesterday, When I Was Young. Bowie encourages me to stay a Young American, bored with my external characters, daring to seek ideas within my alternative egos. He was an artist-hero who tosses off his past roles: Spaceman, Bisexual, Rebel, like outdated clothing.

Both are beyond normal criticism, defying purely musical assessment. Bassey over-sings, but thrillingly, and cannot perform except with total commitment. Bowie over-played, but rivetingly, and he demanded attention by his extravagant idiosyncrasy, which is as professionally unrepentant as hers. She devours the listener; he incited the listener. Each powerfully proves the power of personality.

Funny, but I seem to really fully embrace artists when they are at their core fans’ and the critics’ low ebb: The Beatles with The White Album, Rolling Stones with Some Girls, U2– Achtung Baby, R.E.M. and Automatic For The People. I have listened to and collected Bowie since 1969 with the release of Space Oddity, a song I continue to listen to. That is almost 50 years of living with Bowie in his many incarnations and personas. But, my favorite era for Bowie was not Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Alladin Sane, or the Brian Eno lean years of Low. No, I love the Bowie of the Let’s Dance era of the mid-1980s. That album, along with the next year’s Tonight were the soundtrack of the very best time of my life: Modern Love, Let’s Dance, China Girl, songs that mixed his blue-eyed soul with an industrial edge and a big dash of pop sensibilities. I thought Bowie was in his best voice and his sexiest during this time. I saw some serious moonlight in the 1980s.

There is a list of British acts that seem to have eluded pure pop music popularity in the USA: Celia Black, Lulu, and Robbie Williams come to mind. Why hasn’t Shirley Bassey caught on in this country after 65 years of recording great pop music and being the Number One Female Artist in Britain? Why isn’t she especially loved by American gay people? I love the Bassey sound of the 1960s and I am zany for her cover of Pink’s Get The Party Started which was the party song in summer 2007.

Bassey won an entirely new generation of fans when she guested on a 1997 song from British techno act, Propellerheads. The terrific tune, History Repeating, charted in both Europe and North America, and appeared on the soundtrack to the popular film There’s Something About Mary (1998). Yet, Bassey had already enjoyed a five-decade career as a performer before that point, recording a string of hit singles in the 1960s and garnering a devoted cult following for her torchy, often slightly risqué songs, glamorous looks and compelling stage presence. Sometimes called ”Bassey The Belter” for her strong distinctive alto, Bassey had already delivered a string of hits by the time she went huge with an international Number One song when she recorded the title song to the James Bond flick Goldfinger (1964). She went on to record three Bond theme songs, more than any other artist.

Bassey was born in a rough neighborhood of Cardiff, Wales. Her mother had 10 children from as many fathers. When she was two-years-old, her own father was sent to prison for five years and was then deported back to Nigeria. Bassey never saw him again.

When she was 15-years-old, Basssey began to sing in local pubs. A music agent signed her up at 17-years-old, by which time Bassey had a daughter who lived with one of her sisters. Within a year she had a record contract and was appearing in clubs in London.

Her act was perfect for London in that era. It was sexy, but not salacious, luxurious, but never vulgar, and her recordings like Hey, Big Spender and Diamonds Are Forever reflected Britain’s taste for swingin’ style.

Yet, Bassey struggled with her personal relationships. Her first husband turned out to be gay and died of a drug overdose when he was 40-years-old. Her second marriage, to a rich hotel mogul, ended in a bitter divorce after 12 years. Her second daughter, rumored to have been fathered by actor Peter Finch, committed suicide. Tales of her tempestuous personality are legendary. Bassey claims that she can count her friends on her fingers. Bassey:

”I’ve found happiness in my work, but not in my private life. I had to take from my private life to make my public life successful. I had to make a lot of sacrifices. I was happy in Cardiff. I had a great time. Every Thursday there was a factory club; darts, dancing. I was happy until success entered my life, and then it was all downhill. Success spoiled me. It took away my happiness. My success became a barrier with my family. They couldn’t relate to me, and I couldn’t relate to them.”

She has released 59 albums and 105 singles. Today, she lives alone, with homes in Monaco and London, still in superb voice and with plenty of misconceptions. She still gives concerts.

Bowie went out with a bang, with on of his best albums, his 25th, Blackstar. It is jazz infused, lyrically enigmatic and thrillingly odd. He had just had his first try at composing songs for a stage musical, Lazarus, based on the classic sci-fi novel The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis. Bowie successfully played the lead role of a hollow-eyed alien in the film version in 1976, directed by Nicolas Roeg. Lazarus was playing Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop when he left the Earth. Lazarus was directed by hot gay experimental maverick Ivo van Hove.

Bowie:

”I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.”

Bowie is a Style Icon and a Gay Icon. He rarely did interviews. He never did much to promote his new releases. He did not do world tours playing the hit songs. In fact, he didn’t do the things that rock stars are supposed to do, or explain himself in any way. Some deaths are just more shocking than others. Bowie had released his album Blackstar on his birthday in 2016, he was gone two days later, taken by a cancer that he hid from his fans.

With so many musical legends taken that year, I thank the gods that Bassey didn’t kick the bucket in 2016.

Allison Harvard
Amber Benson
Bob Eubanks
Carolina Herrera
David Bowie
Gaby Hoffmann
Harriet Harris
Jason Giambi
Jenny Lewis
Michelle Forbes
R. Kelly
Rachel Nichols
Sam Riley
Sarah Polley
Shirley Bassey
Stephen Hawking

taken by @kombucci | mua @nataliesdurr

A post shared by Allison Harvard (@alliharvard) on Nov 9, 2017 at 12:43pm PST

Olympia Dukakis in “Tales Of The City” (1994), PBS via YouTube

Anna Madrigal (1920) is, arguably, the most famous transgendered person in American literature. She first appears in Armistead Maupin’s much-loved Tales Of The City (1978) where it is revealed that she was raised in a brothel in Winnemucca, Nevada, and that she has a secret that she shares with her lover Edgar Halcyon when he is being blackmailed, although the reader is not informed of the nature of the secret. She is also shown to be particularly concerned about one of her tenants, Mona Ramsey.

Tales Of The City began in 1974 as a newspaper serial. The fictional series is inspired by Maupin’s real-life experiences.

In the second volume More Tales Of The City (1980) she admits to being Mona’s father. Born Andrew Ramsey, she had grown up feeling like a girl.  Andy ran from home at 16-years-old, worked at various manual jobs and finally joined the army.  After the war he met a woman who proposed to him and moved with her to Minneapolis where he got a job in a bookstore. Two years after the birth of their child, Mona, Andy left and never came back.

In 1964, he went to Denmark and came back as Anna Madrigal, taking her name from an anagram of ”a man and a girl”.  She ran a bookshop in San Francisco and then opened her boarding house, ”a crumbling, ivy-entwined relic” at 28 Barbary Lane on Russian Hill. When she saw that Mona, enjoying a transitory moment of fame as an advertising executive, was in San Francisco, Madrigal approaches her and persuades her to become a tenant. Her courage, warmth and humor, plus taping of joints onto new tenants’ doors have inspired and delighted ever since.

Maupin’s nine-book opus, came to a conclusion in 2014 with the publication of The Days Of Anna Madrigal, a magnificent and moving experience for fans. Maupin’s characters reflect the changes in the American cultural understanding of LGBTQ people and gender identity with tremendous empathy, and a significant contribution to the movement for Transgender Rights.

In 1993, the first book was made into a television miniseries, produced by Channel 4 in the UK and aired on PBS in the USA in 1994. The second and third titles in the series made their television debuts in 1998 and 2001 on Showtime. The series featured the great Olympia Dukakis as Anna Madrigal.

Last summer, Variety reported that it was developing a new installment, with Dukakis, and with Maupin will be an executive producer. The project is to be a 10-part series.

Maupin insists that The Days Of Anna Madrigal is the last on the Tales Of The City series, but he has been known to change his mind.

Anna Madrigal is featured in:

Tales Of The City (1978)

More Tales Of The City (1980)

Further Tales Of The City (1982)

Babycakes (1984)

Significant Others (1987)

Sure Of You (1989)

Michael Tolliver Lives (2007)

Mary Ann In Autumn (2010)

The Days Of Anna Madrigal (2014)

Happy Monday!

Trump’s mental health might lead to the extinction of the human species, the Yale psychiatrist briefing lawmakers on the president’s psychological state told Newsweek on Friday. Many mental health experts have voiced concerns about Trump’s mental health for months.

Dr. Bandy Lee, who edited a book of 27 essays on the president’s mental status, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, said that,

“we would be declaring a public health emergency that needs to be responded to as quickly as possible.

As more time passes, we come closer to the greatest risk of danger, one that could even mean the extinction of the human species. This is not hyperbole. This is the reality.”

Lee said that a history of violence—like Trump’s is the best predictor of future violence, his

“verbal aggressiveness, history of boasting about sexual assault, history of inciting violence at his rallies, and history of endorsing violence in his key public speeches. He has also shown an attraction to violence and powerful weapons. He has also repeatedly taunted a hostile nation.“

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, noted linguist and activist Noam Chomsky shared his thoughts on Trump. He told a packed crowd at the anniversary of Democracy Now in Manhattan last December,

“[Dangers] We now face are the most severe that have ever arisen in human history. They are literal threats to survival: nuclear war, environmental catastrophe. These are very urgent concerns,” Chomsky said. “They cannot be delayed. They became more urgent on November 8th, for the reasons you know and that I mentioned. They have to be faced directly, and soon, if the human experiment is not to prove to be a disastrous failure.”

After a series of tweets from Trump that appeared to threaten North Korea with nuclear war, Lee and hundreds of her colleagues at the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts issued a statement calling into question his mental health and psychological fitness for the presidency. the president tweeted last Tuesday night,

“Would someone from [North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un’s] depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!“

There have been additional concerning signs oustide the president’s social media activity, she said, including the interview Trump did with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt in late December. Trump’s speech patterns, Lee said, may illuminate the state of the president’s cognitive abilities.

“He cannot seem to finish sentences, he derails from his line of thinking, he has loose associations and he jumps from one topic or another. These things could indicate a psychiatric or medical condition.“

Trump also tweeted Saturday morning that,

“throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.“

Lee said that vehement denial is almost a sure sign of illness,

“Deflecting or projecting are often concerning signs. Usually, as someone becomes mentally impaired, they lose the ability to consider the possibility that something could be wrong.

That’s why forcible commitment is permitted—because it is their illness speaking, not their own healthy decision making.”

Discussions about Trump’s psychological fitness for the presidency almost invariably wind up involving the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which lays out the presidential line of succession should the President die, resign, be temporarily unable to perform his duties or be removed from office. Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law professor, told Politico that removing Trump from the presidency in this way

“would require, for mental incapacity, a major psychotic break.”

Congress could set up a committee to evaluate the president’s health. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, has introduced a bill —which currently has 56 co-sponsors— that would set up a commission to determine if a president is physically and mentally able to serve. Leee said,

“It needs to happen as soon as possible.”

But also noted it was unlikely to be part of Trump’s physical exam, scheduled for January 12.

If the idea of Trump starting a species-ending nuclear war doesn’t make you all that concerned, don’t worry—that’s normal.

“Many people will be numbed. That’s a normal human response to such a monumental risk of danger that is before us.“

And for those of you who think it’s unseemly to openly question the mental health of the President of the United States, CNN‘s Jake Tapper has a tweet for you.

(Photo, Department of Energy, Flickr; via Newsweek, Progreso Weekly)

Our national treasure, Bette Midler, is winding down her run in Hello, Dolly! this month and making some time to cozy up to a juicy read. She posted on Facebook a gif with 47 expressions in three seconds flat, with the caption,

“Slowly I turn… page by page. I will not sleep for days! #FireAndFury”

Watch.

Smoke billows from the rooftop of Trump Tower as emergency crews responded this morning to an electrical fire.

A New York Police Department spokesman said, a call came in about a one-alarm fire on the roof of the 68-floor luxury building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. (Trump’s penthouse is on the 68th floor, right?)

Fire officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but FDNY tweeted an alert at 8:16 a.m., saying that the blaze, which was located inside an HVAC system, was soon “under control.”

The Trump Organization said in an emailed statement to The Washington Post.

“There was a small electrical fire in a cooling tower on the roof of Trump Tower. The FDNY were here within minutes and did an exceptional job. Everything is under control and no evacuations were made.”

Trump is sadly, still in Washington, D.C and is still the President. (Btw, has anyone seen Omarosa this morning…?

(via Washington Post)

Drags is a photo series in book for by photographer Gregory Kramer documenting the drag queens and kings of New York City, through glamorous black-and-white photographs. It’s presented as fashion portraiture and features the legendary and up-and-coming legends. The photos were inspired by legendary Vogue photographer, Irving Penn, and the book also includes five stories written by Charles Busch, Sasha Velour, Linda Simpson,Goldie Peacock and the late Sweetie pays homage to the queens who’ve come before.

“Drag is like an act of magic, a way of casting spells. If a spell is meant to change the living world through the constitutive powers of language, then I think drag is meant to change it through fashion, gesture, and effect. And even if it’s only for a moment, in the closed safety of a nightclub (or photo studio!), drag plants the seed for alternative gender and alternative beauty.” –Sasha Velour, season nine winner, RuPaul’s Drag Race

You can get Drags at your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Peppermint

Crimson Kitty

Flloyd

Kim Ono

Marti Gould Cummings

Murray Hill

Scarlet Envy

Wang Newton

Sugga Pie Koko

(Photos, Gregory Kramer; via CNN)

It’s a little daunting writing about my friend’s new book, as she is a real writer and I’m an artist who has a blogging gig and a laptop. Oh, well, Allegra Huston is an old friend and won’t judge me like you are now.

Allegra’s new novel, Say My Name (not to be confused with Call Me By Your Name, although it does share a younger/ older romance theme…) It starts out with this basic premise;

In an antiques shop, Eve finds a mysterious instrument, carved with twining vines and it sends her on a journey —and into a new connection with a young man, who is the son of an old flame. Twenty years younger than she is, he’s a musician, a seeker, a bohemian —and, to her shock, he’s pursuing HER.

OK, I’m in!

Allegra’s first book, Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found is about discovering, after her mother’s sudden death, that her father was not as she was told, legendary film director, John Huston, but rather John Julius Cooper, the second Viscount Norwich. As a teenager, she goes to live with her sister, the actress Anjelica Huston and her then boyfriend Jack Nicholson in L.A., and tries to discover who her mother, Ricki, really was. It’s a fantastic read. She now lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her fourteen-year-old son, Rafa.

She’s headed to New York tomorrow for a book signing, reading and conversation with author and old pal Joan Juliet Buck. I caught up with her this morning for a quick chat that often digressed from the the subject of her book…

Trey: Hi. Are you all packed?

Allegra: Haven’t even started!

Trey: Well, it’s cold AF as you know…

Allegra: I’ve bought a new sweater in honor of that cold.

Trey: It will be hidden under a coat… so, tomorrow is the big day! “Say My Name” comes out! Are you excited?

Allegra: Yes – it’s been a long time coming! Almost 9 years since my memoir LOVE CHILD was published.

Trey: OMG. Wow. That’s a while. But the timing is good. With “Fire and Fury” and freezing cold winter, everyone is into reading BIG TIME!

Allegra: Nothing better, when it’s cold outside, than snuggling up with a book. When you’ve OD’d on testosterone with Fire and Fury, you can turn to SAY MY NAME for some love and sex and tenderness. And music.

Trey: Yes, the antidote to Trump’s madness… I started reading it and almost couldn’t stop, you nearly wrecked my morning…

Allegra: Nearly…. because it’s actually quite short, and it didn’t take up your whole morning. Short and sexy – which I hope are two good things. So, as a gay man, you’re about the one sexuality not covered in it! What did you like best, if I can ask?

Trey: Well, as a gay man “of a certain age” now, the idea of “Daddy” never appealed to me, but even when I was young, I liked younger. At 24 I had a 16 year-old boyfriend… What about you? How much Cougar researched was required…?

Allegra: Sadly the plot is not based on my life – though many of the moments and emotions are. But please don’t say that word! The whole “cougar” thing makes me crazy. It gives this image of older women as being predatory and hard and desperate, with claws. Chasing. Whereas in every single relationship of this kind that I know, it’s the younger man who did the chasing! And I know a lot! I think the whole “cougar” thing is just another way to demean women and it infuriates me when women buy into it.

Trey: Yeah, well “MILF”, “Cougar”, “Daddy”, they all have their downsides, I guess… they are stereotypes that people do buy into sadly…

Allegra: MILF proves my point. Who wants to fuck who here????? Have you ever heard MSFILF?

Trey: What’s that?

Allegra: Work it out, dude… “my son’s friend…”

Trey: Ah… got it. As they say, to each his own… I’m a social outcast so no judgement here.

Allegra: Exactly. If two people are happy together, who’s to judge?

Trey: ANYWAY, you are likely to get more of these Cougar questions…

Allegra: And I will say the same thing every time! In fact, I already have, a time or two.

Trey: As Quentin Crisp used to say, “Say what you’ve come to say, no matter what they ask…”

Allegra: Should I mention that I still have the purple ostrich feather from the cake at the 90th birthday party for Quentin that you hosted?

Trey: And Serena Bass made the cake!

Allegra: I forgot that! I think she’s coming to my launch party.

Trey: And you rewrote “God Save the Queen” to be “God Save OUR Queen” for him… I have a purple feather too…

Allegra: It was an amazing night.

Trey: It was. I have video that I should digitize…

OK. So, is it the same writing a script, making a short film and writing a book, once it’s done there’s not much to do but see what people think? What’s your experience…?

Allegra: When you write a script, you either have to wait for the money to come together, and the schedules of many busy people to come together, or you have to go out and raise it yourself – which I did for my short film GOOD LUCK MR GORSKI. When you write a book, there’s still a number of hoops to be jumped through, but the path to getting it out in the world is much more straightforward. Which is definitely a plus for me! Though I do find writing a novel harder than a script. More words, for one thing! And since the form is so fluid, it’s not so clear what to do. I felt like I’d been dropped in the middle of the ocean, with no sight of land, and you don’t know if that’s a real current or just an eddy… or maybe a SHARK.

Trey: Just you and a blank page… blank page = open sea
(Jaws theme…)

Allegra: I find the blank page quite terrifying. I’ve developed techniques to fool myself that I’m not actually “writing” the book, I’m just “generating material” on the blank page. Then when I’ve covered lots of pages with “material” they’re not blank any more and I can edit them!

Trey: Well, as a former book editor, you have that skill which eludes many writers…

Allegra: Editing is my comfort zone…

Trey: Editing. Same with photographers, it’s not the picture you take, it’s the ones you omit that matter most…

Allegra: One of the best things I learned from Robert McKee was that 90% of what you write is “research.” By which he meant, backstage stuff. So, if 10% of what you write is good, you’re doing great, but you still have to write the other 90%. Or more than 90%!

Trey: As a former art director, now an artist, those extra skills come in handy, I know…
I took that McKee screenwriting course too!

Allegra: It’s also good to understand the jobs of people you’re working with. As a former publisher, I know what my publishers have to deal with!

Trey: So true.

Well, you’d better get packed, honey! Can’t wait to see you. Safe travels!

Allegra: See you day after tomorrow!

You are invited to POWERHOUSE @ the Archway, Thursday January 11, 2018, 7-9PM, 28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street @ the Archway), Brooklyn. RSVP here. If you aren’t in Brooklyn, you can get your copy here.

CNN is reporting that two sources close to Oprah Winfrey say that although she has not made up her mind, the superstar is inching closer towards announcing her presidential run.

Although Winfrey has deflected questions about a presidential run in the past, she has also acknowledged that President Trump’s election upended assumptions about how to pursue political office.

After the speech, Winfrey’s longtime partner Stedman Graham was quoted saying a run is certainly a possibility.

“It’s up to the people,” Graham told a Los Angeles Times reporter. “She would absolutely do it.”

And after last night’s show-stopping speech, the roar of the people may be harder to ignore.

Meryl Streep was quoted saying that Winfrey “launched a rocket” last night.

“I want her to run for president,” Streep told The Post. “I don’t think she had any intention [of declaring]. But now she doesn’t have a choice.”

Seth Meyers apparently agrees.

“Oprah,” Meyers said, looking out at her in the audience, “in 2011, I told some jokes about our current president at the White House Correspondents Dinner — jokes about how he was unqualified to be president — and some have said that night convinced him to run. So if that’s true, I just want to say: Oprah, you will never be president! You do not have what it takes!”

I’m still on the fence. I love Oprah, but if this year has taught us anything, it’s that political inexperience is not a good thing when it comes to running the country. We need better politicians, not celebrities with high Q ratings.

(photo: Media Punch)

Two photographs of the young Princess Charlotte were released today, showing her in a little red coat and red Mary Janes as she left for her first day of nursery at the Willcocks Nursery School. The pictures were taken by her proud mum, the Duchess of Cambridge, who was no doubt choking back tears as her daughter left the nest.

via The Telegraph:

Princess Charlotte now attends the “kind and gentle” Willcocks Nursery School, which is barely half a mile from Kensington Palace, full time.

Willcocks, which has an all-female staff, is described by Tatler as a “hidden gem” that “flies under the radar” and is attended by British children and “chic foreigners” alike, some of whom register their children at birth in order to ensure them a place.

It is rated “outstanding” by Ofsted because of the “exceptional” organisation of time and the staff’s meticulous planning, which ensures “no time is wasted.”

Her older brother, Prince George, attended a Montessori nursery school in Norfolk, with his first day similarly marked with a photograph of him with a backpack.

They grow up so fast!

I haven’t seen The Shape of Water yet, but I’ve done a couple double-takes at the trailer. The movie, about a lonely janitor who forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity, stars Doug Jones as the the hunky Amphibious Man. Does that name ring any bells? It should, because it’s the SAME Doug Jones who set your teenage loins ablaze as Billy Butcherson in the iconic Hocus Pocus

OH BILLY.

The perfect ’90s boyfriend!

The look! The hair! The outfit! SQUEEEEAL!

And now he’s being re-introduced to a new generation of stans. I love it.