Andy Cohen
B-Real
Brooke White
Charlie Watts
Dana Carvey
Dennis Haysbert
Dominic Cooper
Fabrizio Moretti
Frank Rich
Jerry Mathers
Joanna Gleason
Justin Long
Lasse Hallstrom
Morena Baccarin
Nikki Cox
Sally Kellerman
Stacy Keach
Wayne Brady
Wentworth Miller
Zachary Quinto

Although Cyndi Lauper is a very talented songwriter, True Colors was actually written by hit-makers Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. It was both the title track and the first single released from Lauper’s second album. It was the only original song on the album that Lauper did not write.

True Colors was the Number One song for two weeks in the summer of 1986, the last Lauper single to top of the Top 100 charts. It received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The album True Colors produced several hits along with True Colors: Change Of Heart (Number Three), What’s Going On (Number 12), and Boy Blue (Number Seven).

Lauper said that the songs of the album:

“Have the courage of your convictions and love yourself a little, and not to be so hard on yourself”.

The album has quite the personnel line up; contributing vocals and instrumentals: The Bangles, Adrian Belew, Rick Derringer, Ellie Greenwich, Billy Joel, Aimee Mann, Nile Rodgers, and Pee Wee Herman!

The song has been covered by many artists: a hit for Phil Collins in 1998; Jenna Ushkowitz performed it in the television Ryan Murphy series Glee in 2009; a single from the album True Colors (Glee Cast Version), going to Number 15 on the Pop Charts; and in 2016, Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick covered the song for the animated film Trolls, which is not about Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

True Colors has become an anthem for the LGBTQ community. Lauper stated that the song resonated with her because of the death of a dear friend from HIV/AIDS. She co-founded the True Colors Fund, a non-profit dedicated to eradicating LGBTQ youth homelessness.

Lauper’s True Colors Tour 2007 featured Deborah Harry, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, The B-52’s, Rufus Wainwright, The Gossip, and Erasure. The tour was for the Human Rights Campaign to promote LGBTQ Rights, benefiting PFLAG and the Matthew Shepard Foundation. There was a second True Colors Tour in 2008.

You with the sad eyes

Don’t be discouraged,

I realize

It’s hard to take courage

In a world full of people

You can lose sight of it all

The darkness inside you

Can make you feel so small

Show me a smile then

Don’t be unhappy

Can’t remember when

I last saw you laughing

This world makes you crazy

And you’ve taken all you can bear

Just, call me up

‘Cause I will always be there

And I see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that’s why I love you

So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors

True colors are beautiful

I see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that’s why I love you

So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors

True colors are beautiful

Like a rainbow

Billy Steinberg / Tom Kelly

Photo, YouTube

Stu Rasmussen

A new musical, Stu for Silverton, is inspired by the people of Silverton, Oregon elected Stu Rasmussen to be their mayor in 2008. That made Stu the first openly transgender mayor in America. This email just landed in my inbox saying that the production,

SEEKS TRANS & NON-BINARY PERFORMERS FOR MUSICAL’S LEAD ROLE

The production is inspired by the very real Stu Rasmussen – an entrepreneur, politician, movie theatre owner, and leader in the small rural town of Silverton, Oregon. Stu was named the nation’s first transgender mayor when elected in 2008, although Stu identifies as a “gender anarchist.”

Stu is as much methodical as bold, equal parts brave and kind, pragmatic while also maintaining fabulous, and all at once a mechanic, Rocky Horror lover, inventor, vintage shoe collector, and Oregonian. Vocally expressive and gritty – Frankenfurter meets Dolly Levi.

The musical’s book is by Peter Duchan (Dogfight, Breaking Upwards), music and lyrics by Craig Jessup who goes by Breedlove, and direction by Andrew Russell (former Artistic Director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre).

Stu for Silverton will have two-week workshop in Newport News, Virgina this August to prepare for future regional and New York productions. The casting search is led by Benton Whitley CSA of Stewart/Whitley and the musical is produced by Diana DiMenna (Three Tall Women, The Iceman Cometh, The Great Comet of 1812).

Interested performers are encouraged to submit their info, as well as any pre-existing videos of their work they might have on hand, to stuauditions@gmail.com. There will also be by-appointment casting calls held in New York, Los Angeles, and other major cities in late June.

(I’m thinking Ginger Minj right off the top of my head. Although not trans, qualifies as non-binary maybe? Ever heard her sing…?)

Come on queens, share this post let’s find our Stu!

Garrett Yrigoyen, the man who received the first impression rose and the first kiss on the Monday’s premiere of The Bachelorette is under fire for his not-so-progressive “likes on social media.

On his (now-deleted) Instagram account, Garrett liked more than one offensive post and was outed by Bachelor alum Ashley Spivey who posted them on Twitter. One photo he liked was a meme posted by conservative clothing line Merica Supply Co., suggesting that a thin woman wearing a “Make America Great Again” bathing suit was better than a curvier woman in all black.

He also liked a meme of two boys shooting guns with the caption

“What boys did in my day”

Above a photo of boys wearing makeup with the caption,

“What boys are doing today”

Other posts included ones mocking immigration, a student activist who survived the Parkland shooting and the transgender community.

He apologized in Instagram post on his new account @gy_yrigoyen, which now is also deleted,

“I am sorry to those who I offended, and I also take full responsibility for my ‘likes’ on Instagram … I decided to take it down and start fresh because I have learned an extremely valuable lesson and am taking steps to grow, become more educated, and be a better version of myself.

I never realized the power behind a mindless double tap on Instagram and how it bears so much weight on people’s lives.“

So, is liking the post, the same as posting it? In this guy’s case, it seems like it is. It’s what he really thinks, but when pushed into a corner, he lamely apologizes.

So good-looking and SO ugly.

No rose.

pic.twitter.com/aDWbtDr4Yp

— Ashley Spivey (@AshleySpivey) May 24, 2018

(Photo, ABC; via Us Weekly)

June 1, 1967– Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released

It was 51 years ago today. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an exceptional, magnificent work; a modern musical masterpiece. I went out and purchased it with money made from mowing lawns on the day it was released. I was 13-years-old. I didn’t come out of my room for 24 hours.

In the 1960s, Psychedelic Music was new, with songs that focused on an inner journey. It was kid’s music. A famous  1960’s slogan was: “Never Trust Anyone Over 30″. Psychedelic Music was meant to be outside of mainstream society, it was meant to be for young people. But, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a psychedelic work of art that was for, and about, everyone. Unusual for the era, it was an album that looked backwards fondly while still staying totally groovy.

From the iconic cover art to the opening crowd noises, it is an inclusive enterprise. The original British release even included cardboard cut-outs for kiddies. It addressed the generation gap with She’s Leaving Home, but the clueless parents are still portrayed with compassion and understanding.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band celebrates the mundane, and with help from psychedelics, how we look at the everyday world. There is the wonder of the trippy Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, but there is also a lovely song about having a spot of tea with a parking meter officer, Lovely Rita. Side Two starts with the Indian raga Within You Without You which segues to the old-fashioned music hall sound of When I’m Sixty-Four, with only a little spot of laughter between the two tracks. Fixing A Hole is a parent’s song about how we can roll up our sleeves and fix things that are broken. Getting Better is optimistic, even in a future that looks bleak. Within You Without You is all about looking inwards and understanding who we are. This can only be achieved, the album reminds us, With a Little Help From My Friends. The album’s astonishing aural closing extravaganza A Day In The Life, marries the prosaic and the psychedelic in a visionary new way.

The songs on Sgt Pepper’s Lonley Hearts Club Band are mostly slices of life of ordinary people, performed in wildly different musical styles. When The Beatles dropped LSD, they saw that they were part of many communities and the music, culture, and humor that they each brought.

The cover art, co-created with the band and pop artist Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, depicts The Beatles surrounded by the images of famous figures from history and pop culture featuring a funeral wreath, as if saying goodbye to the “Pop Music Beatles” and a birth of a new “Avant-Garde Beatles”. The album’s cover art includes people of different ages and races, including Indian musicians and holy men because they inspired The Beatles.

From TheBeatles.com via YouTube

From TheBeatles.com via YouTube

Blake and Haworth took their idea for the cover from an ink drawing by Paul McCartney. It was art directed by Robert Fraser and photographed by Michael Cooper. The front is a colorful collage with The Beatles in costume as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a group of life-sized cardboard cut-outs of famous people. My friends and I liked to smoke a joint and study the cover, identifying the different figures, including Karl Marx and Marilyn Monroe, Aubrey Beardsley and William S. Burroughs, Laurel And Hardy with Dylan Thomas. Dropping acid, you could go into the cover and get lost.

Each Beatle has a mustache, after George Harrison had grown one during his visit to India. The Beatles are center, standing behind a drum with the painted words of the album’s title. In front of the drum is a flower arrangement that spells out the word “Beatles”. The group were dressed in satin day-glo colored military-style uniforms. Right next to The Beatles are their own wax sculptures from Madame Tussaud’s in their mod suits and Beatle haircuts from the earlier era. The album’s lyrics were printed in full on the back cover, the first time this had been done on an LP.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a huge commercial and critical success. It spent 27 weeks at Number One on UK albums charts and 15 weeks at Number One in the USA. Critics and fans embraced its innovations in songwriting, music production, and graphic design, and for bridging a cultural divide, providing a musical representation of the older generation and the contemporary counterculture. It won four Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year, the first Rock LP to win.

Imagine there’s no Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s easy in the era of Trump.

This weekend (June 1-3) marks Wear Orange Weekend, a movement in support of gun violence prevention started in 2015 when Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl who performed at former President Obama‘s second inaugural parade in 2013, was shot and killed in Chicago a week later. Her friends wanted to honor her legacy by wearing orange, which is what hunters wear to protect themselves in the woods, but more symbolically, as a sign of peace.

Everytown for Gun Safety stats show EVERY DAY 96 people are killed by gun violence. Everytown works “to pass common-sense laws and policies that save lives” through researching issues surrounding gun violence, developing solutions and speaking with lawmakers.

National Gun Violence Awareness Day was Friday (June 1) and kicked off Wear Orange Weekend, the nationwide campaign started by Everytown, which was created

“to do life-saving work so that we can get closer to realizing a future free of gun violence.“

Erica Ford, a New York gun violence prevention advocate spearheaded the new connotation in her LIFE Camp, Inc. (Love Ignites Freedom Through Education) organization, which brings young people and their families

“positive alternatives to violence, bullying and other forms of anti-social behavior.”

The New York’s Governors Ball music festival coincides with Wear Orange Weekend this year, and musicians will show their dedication to the cause by wearing orange during their performances, showcasing videos addressing gun-violence prevention and donating money to Everytown’s mission.

And celebs are wearing orange and posting on Instagram to raise awareness.

But of course, the NRA had to make this weekend about GUNS changing its logo on Twitter to orange, and tweeting that

“Orange has always been ours. Orange has been hunters and sportsmen’s choice for decades. No organization in the world does more than the NRA to promote the safe and responsible use of firearms.”

To that I say this. The NRA is a terrorist organization.

#StopGunViolence

Today is National Gun Violence Awareness Day and I #WearOrange because 96 people are shot and killed in an average day in America and for every one person killed with guns, two more are injured. As 9-year-old Yolanda Renee King said at the #marchforourlives, “I have a dream that enough is enough.” #nationalgunviolenceawareness @everytown

A post shared by Katie Couric (@katiecouric) on Jun 1, 2018 at 3:56am PDT

Every single day 96 Americans DIE and hundreds more are injured by gun violence. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Why do YOU #WearOrange?

A post shared by Angela Bassett (@im.angelabassett) on Jun 1, 2018 at 9:14am PDT

Time to put an end to gun violence! Today, I #WearOrange to give a voice to the 96 Americans who die and the hundreds more who are injured by gun violence every single day. Why do you #WearOrange ? Text ORANGE to 644-33 to find a #WearOrange Weekend event near you. @Everytown

A post shared by Adam Kenworthy (@adamkenworthy) on Jun 1, 2018 at 10:14am PDT

Time to put an end to gun violence! Today, I #WearOrange to give a voice to the 96 Americans who die and the hundreds more who are injured by gun violence every single day. Why do you #WearOrange ? Text ORANGE to 644-33 to find a #WearOrange Weekend event near you. @Everytown

A post shared by Adam Kenworthy (@adamkenworthy) on Jun 1, 2018 at 10:14am PDT

(via Billboard)

I can honestly say that Arsenic And Old Lace (1944) is one of most genre-bending of the classic comedies. The sheer volume of ridiculous gags and slapstick situations is enormous, making the film especially pleasurable, considering how very dark it is, stretching the very definition of a ”screwball comedy”, sometimes so ludicrous that it’s hard to grasp.

Arsenic And Old Lace is directed by the great Frank Capra, and stars the delicious Cary Grant. It is faithfully adapted from Joseph Kesselring’s play of the same name.

The screenplay is by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Julius received his first Academy Award nomination for Four Daughters (1938), and he did the script for The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942), Mr. Skeffington (1944), and Light In The Piazza (1962). And with his twin brother, Philip, won an Oscar for Casablanca.

Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros., had a tortuous relationship with the Epstein twins. While he could not argue with their commercial acumen, he deplored their pranks, their work habits and the hours they kept. In 1952, Warner gave their names to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They never testified before the committee, but on a HUAC questionnaire, when asked if they ever were members of a “subversive organization”, they responded: “Yes. Warner Brothers.”

Back to Arsenic And Old Lace: Capra filmed the movie in 1941 because of Grant’s availability, but it was not released until 1944, after the original stage version had finished its run on Broadway.

Grant’s role of Mortimer Brewster was originally intended for Bob Hope, but he could not be released from his contract with Paramount Pictures. Capra had also approached Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan before learning that his first choice, Grant, would accept the role. Boris Karloff played Jonathan Brewster, who “looks like Karloff”, in the original Broadway production, but he was unable to do the film version because he was still appearing in the play during filming. Karloff was an investor in the play and didn’t dare jeopardize a dip in the box-office receipts. Raymond Massey was cast instead. The film’s supporting cast features: Priscilla Lane, Jack Carson, Peter Lorre, and the wonderfully gay Edward Everett Horton.

Clockwise: Lane, Adair, Grant and Hull, photo via YouTube

Josephine Hull and Jean Adair portray the Brewster sisters. Hull and Adair, plus John Alexander (Teddy Brewster), were reprising their roles from the 1941 stage production. Hull and Adair both received an eight-week leave of absence from the stage production that was still running, but Karloff was an investor in the stage production and its main draw. The entire film was shot in eight weeks, and cost just over $1.2 million of its $2 million budget to produce. On time and underbudget, how often does that happen?

Grant, Massey and Lorre, photo via YouTube

Capra insisted that Massey be made up to look like Karloff. The Warner Bros. legal department was so concerned that Karloff would sue over the likeness that they had the studio get him to sign a release.

Let’s see if I can sum up the plot: when well-known drama critic Mortimer Brewster visits his charmingly lunatic family, including two adorable aunts, to tell them the fantastic news about his engagement to beautiful Elaine Harper, he finds out the horrible truth that spins the visit totally out of control. There is a dead man in the wooden box inside the house. But that is not all! There are eleven more buried under the residence. Then, there is also Teddy, who thinks that he is the late president Theodore Roosevelt. And if this was not enough, we meet another member of this peculiar family, Jonathan, possessing a face that provokes a fantastic recurring gag concerning Karloff, who shows up suddenly with his old friend Dr. Einstein, played to perfection by Lorre.

Even though Grant considered this to be one of his least favorite of his projects, his performance is so exaggerated that it’s especially good. Grant’ daughter Jennifer Grant wrote:

”Arsenic And Old Lace made him shudder. I asked him why? It’s a hilarious, sweet, madcap, thoroughly memorable movie. He replied, ‘Egads, all the overwrought double takes, all the gags… I’m way over the top!”

Grant donated his entire $100,000 salary to wartime charities, insisting:

 ”Jimmy Stewart would have been much better than me.”

Stewart later starred opposite Hull in Harvey (1950) for which she won an Academy Award.

What’s surprising is that Grant’s character is the only normal person in the entire household, and Grant was a not-so-typical comic performer. Trying to resolve all the farcical challenges in film, the hardest one proves to be convincing the aunts that killing an innocent older man by adding a bit of arsenic to his wine is not right, mostly due to the circumstances, the two ladies claim that by killing those men they just shorten their miserable, lonely lives. The two genteel ladies help the old men die happy by feeding them a wonderful meal before poisoning them. Another obstacle relates to the fact that the gruesome Jonathan, wants to torture and kill him on the same exact night. Mortimer desperately wants to protect the two serial murderers he loves and stop them from killing anyone else and keep his bride from discovering how deranged his family really is.

And as with so many comedies of this sort, there is also more action, here involving police officers and locked-up corpses, lots of twists and turns and kooky characters.

The one scene that is the funniest, and the most absurd, is the conversation between the aunts and Jonathan, who try to resolve a dispute about their little competition: who killed the most people! The sides are currently tied, one of them must be the winner!

The original ending of Kesselring’s play, the aunts poisoning the man who’s taking them to a sanitarium was changed in the film at the insistence of Hollywood censors, who also wouldn’t let Grant’s character say: ”I’m a bastard!”

Some tid-bits:

When Karloff left to head up the touring company of Arsenic And Old Lace, he was replaced on Broadway by film director Erich von Stroheim. Karloff’s rival Bela Lugosi played the role in the Los Angeles company.

Karloff reprised his role for GIs in the South Pacific during a USO tour during WW II. He also appeared in television productions in 1955 (with Orson Bean in Grant’s role, and in 1962 opposite Tony Randall. Three months after Karloff’s death in 1969, Fred Gwynne of The Munsters played the role in a television version with Bob Crane, Lillian Gish and Helen Hayes.

Bradford Shellhammer
Anderson Cooper
Arianne Zucker
Deniece Williams
Imogen Poots
Irma P. Hall
James Purefoy
Jill Biden
John Dykstra
Kristine W
Lalaine
Melissa Mathison
Nikki M. James
Rafael Nadal
Suzie Quatro

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons

June 3, 1906 – Freda Josephine McDonald:

”I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.”

Endlessly fascinating, but still without a first-rate film biography, Josephine Baker was born into poverty in St. Louis. Her mother was an African- American laundress and her father was probably the head of the German family for which her mother worked. Baker was mixed-race at a time that America was even more fiercely racist than our own era.

When she was just eight-years-old, Baker began working as an indentured servant for white families in St. Louis. For a while, she lived as a street child, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food, and making a living with street corner dancing. At 13-years-old, she joined an all-black traveling Vaudeville company as the dresser for the female dancers. With the troupe, she had her first on stage appearance, charming the crowds with her unique, spirited, comedic style.

In 1921, she married Willie Baker. Their marriage lasted less than a year, but she kept his last name for the rest of her life.

She moved to NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, performing at the famed Plantation Club and in the chorus of the groundbreaking and hugely successful Broadway musicals Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924). Baker’s schtick was to be the last dancer on the end of the chorus line, performing as if she unable to remember the dance, until the encore, when she would perform it correctly and with special dexterity. This brought down the house.

via Wikimedia Commons

She was ambitious, alluring, accomplished, and in 1925, Baker sailed to Paris, after being cast in La Revue Nègre  at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. She was just 19-years-old. By the end of the decade, Baker was the toast of Paris, and the 20th century’s first international black female sex symbol.

Baker introduce ”Le Jazz Hot”,” characterized by jazz and exotic nudity. She appeared naked on stage except for a feather, and later, a banana skirt as part of her Danse Sauvage, which played to Europeans’ fascination with all things African, which was considered libidinous and uncivilized.

Photograph by French Walery, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Baker was embraced by the famous artists and intellectuals living in Paris. She counted Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway as fans. Hemingway, like many others who would encounter her through the years, called Baker: ”The most sensational woman anyone ever saw. Or ever will.”

In 1935, only 29-years-old, Baker returned to NYC hoping to translate her success in Paris to the USA. She failed. She left Paris rich, adored, and famous throughout Europe, yet in NYC, despite the publicity that preceded her arrival, she was received as an uppity colored girl. White American audiences accustomed to seeing blacks in stereotypical roles rejected Baker.

Baker returned to Europe in 1936. In 1937, she gave up her American citizenship. Back in Paris, she performed on stage with her pet cheetah, recorded songs, starred in three films, and toured Europe and South America. Baker was not just the most successful American entertainer working in France, she was one of the most photographed women in the world, and by 1927, two years after first setting foot in Paris, she was earning more than any entertainer in Europe.

During WW II, Baker showed her loyalty to her adopted country of France by participating in La Résistance. She worked underground, smuggling intelligence info coded within her sheet music. In 1939, when France declared war on Germany, Baker became a Red Cross nurse to help refugees from the German-occupied European countries. She was then recruited by French military intelligence. Baker collected information about German troop locations from officials she met at parties at embassies and ministries. Her fame put her in contact with everyone from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats. When Germany invaded France, Baker continued to use her access as an entertainer to move around neutral Europe, carrying information for transmission to England about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations in France. She even hid refugees and weapons at her estate, the Château des Milandes.

Photo from NYC Public Library Digital Archives

In 1941, to escape Nazi scrutiny, Baker moved temporarily to Morocco. She would still make trips to Spain, pinning intelligence notes in her underwear on the correct assumption that as a celebrity she would not be strip-searched. Beginning in 1942, she arranged and participated in morale boosting performances for French, British, and American troops in North Africa. In 1944, she was made a lieutenant in the French Air Force (she had a pilot’s license). After the war, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Resistance, and was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by her friend General Charles de Gaulle.

In 1948, Baker returned to the USA again, but was no more successful professionally than in 1936. This time, however, she insisted on nondiscrimination clauses in her contracts and integrated audiences at her performances. Her insistence on performing for mixed audiences helped to integrate the casino shows in Las Vegas.

Returning to Paris, Baker felt that she needed to do more to fight racism. She decided to raise a group of ethnically and religiously mixed children that she dubbed her ”Rainbow Tribe”. She had adopted 12 children from Morocco, Venezuela, Finland, France, Korea, Colombia, Algeria, Japan, and Belgium. She was a regular Angelina Jolie, hold the Pitt. Jolie has acknowledged that Baker was her inspiration. Baker’s chosen family was intended to represent a utopian racial narrative to educate the world about how life could be in a world free of discrimination.

In 1964 with her tribe, Photo by Hugo van Gelderen via Wikimedia Commons

Baker supported the American Civil Rights movement from France, and when she visited America in the 1950s and 1960s, she pushed even harder against racism. She worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Baker was refused reservations at 36 hotels because she was black and in response she wrote articles about segregation in the USA. In 1963, Baker, at 57-years-old, was invited to the March On Washington, where Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous I Have A Dream speech. Baker was the only official female speaker at the event. She spoke wearing her French uniform and Legion of Honor medal. After King’s assassination, Coretta Scott King approached Baker to take over as leader of the Civil Rights movement, but Baker declined, citing concerns about how assassination would impact her adopted children.

Famous for her glamorous, extravagant lifestyle, Baker could be devious, manipulative, and relentless. She was also always willing to break the rules, especially those having to do sex. Her conquests were legendary. There were as many sexual liaisons with women as with men, which continued from adolescence to the end of her life. Among her female lovers were Clara Smith, a black blues singer who secured Baker her first job as a chorus girl, the great French novelist Colette, and hairy painter Frida Kahlo.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

On stage Baker radiated such gay energy and high camp that by the end of her career most of her faithful audience consisted of gay men.

On April 8, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue at the Bobino Club in Paris titled: Joséphine à Bobino 1975, celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, financed by Prince Rainier, Princess Grace, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, opened to SRO crowds and rave reviews. Her opening night audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. Four days later, Baker was found dead in her bed surrounded by the newspapers containing glowing reviews of her performance.

NYC Public Library Digital Archives

After her final bow in Paris, three funerals were held, one in Paris and two in Monaco, attended by much of the French government and entertainment elite. She was the first American woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral. At the request of her longtime friend and benefactor Princess Grace, Baker is buried in Monaco.

Shirley Bassey cited Baker as her primary influence:

 “… she went from a ‘petite danseuse sauvage’ with a decent voice to ‘la grande diva magnifique’… I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer.”

Who do you see portraying Baker when a film of her life is finally realized? Rihanna Fenty? Directed by Angelina Jolie?

People take their summer vacations and there are the usual destinations for swimming; Rio, Miami, Honolulu, etc. But a summer city break might include one you live in or would never think of for cooling off. These 7 cities offer hots spots for lowering the heat with the locals.

McCarren Park pool was built in 1936 and recently restored by Rogers Marvel Architects

NEW YORK CITY

Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Staten Island & Queens, the five boroughs that make up New York City have some great outdoor pools if you’re visiting or one of the 8 million trapped there during the sweltering summer months. Leave Manhattan and take the subway out to Astoria in Queens, where there’s a vast 50-meter Olympic-sized pool or Uber it over to Williamsburg to dip into THE hipsters’ hangout of choice, McCarren Park pool (which doesn’t open until June 27 this year, btw.)

Hamstead Heath swimming pond

LONDON

Swimming in the Thames might be planned for some future date, but not to worry in the north of London there’s Hampstead Heath park for freshwater bathing in one three swimming ponds. The huge Tooting Bec Lido, southwest of the city, is a 91-meter pool with room for real swimmers and just those who want to get wet. South London’s Brockwell Lido has a nice cafe and central London’s, Hyde Park has a secluded swimming spot in the Serpentine Lido.

Vancouver is one of the best cities in Canada for taking to the water. (Photo, Frontier Travel)

VANCOUVER, CANADA

Vancouver is obsessed with the outdoors, making it the best city in Canada for beaches. Third Beach is great as is the Stanley Park seawall where you have the added bonus of being able to bring you own barbecue. Trout Lake Beach has a dedicated swimming raft for freshwater dips, an alternative to the saltwater that surrounds the city.

Zurich has 18 official outdoor bathing spots with stunning city surroundings

ZURICH

Switzerland loves diving into rivers and lakes in the High Alps but Zurich has 18 official outdoor bathing spots itself, with crystal-clear water in picture postcard surroundings. Tiefenbrunnen swimming beach is on the shore of Lake Zurich and draws the crowds with diving boards and the offering of a post-swim professional massage. For segregated swimming (by sex not race) the Schanzengraben river pool is for men and dates back to 1864 and the female-only Stadthausquai pool is an art nouveau gem with beautiful views of the old town.

Berlin may be miles from the ocean but it has no shortage of freshwater beaches. (Photo, visitBerlin/ Torsten Seidel)

BERLIN

Berlin is a long way from the sea, but swimming is easy thanks to a string of beautiful lakes like the classic beach at Wannsee, open since 1907 with warm freshwater and a waterslide bonus. Muggelsee is in East Berlin, with a roped-off lido and the uber-hip Badeschiff floats on the River Spree in an old barge with a footbridge connecting the pool to a bar area with hammocks and ice-cold beer.

Stockholm has lots of pretty beaches and secluded coves to get your swim on. (Photo, Jeppe Wikstrom)

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

Daring Swedes dive straight into the water from the city’s myriad quays, but there are also lots pretty beaches for more secluded dips. Smedsuddsbadet has a sunbathing lawn and sandy shore and is popular with families. Hop on the Number 1 bus for a truly local experience and go all the way to Oxhalsbadet in Stora Essingen where there are diving platforms and steps for emerging from the cool waters.

The Molitor was once Paris’s most popular baths and now it’s one of the city’s hottest hotels. (Photo, Sofitel)

PARIS

The yearly Paris Plages event transforms the banks of the Seine with sandy beaches and temporary pool for cooling off right in the middle of the bustling city. The Molitor was once one of the city’s most popular baths, but it sat derelict for 25 years until 2014, when it was reopened as one of the city’s hottest hotels. All of the 124 rooms have views of the courtyard lido.

(via CNN)

Screen-Grab from CNN

Today is the 51st birthday of Anderson Cooper. He may be getting his milky white skin inked soon. On Friday, he told Kelly Ripa:

”The truth is my dad died when he was 50 so I never planned for past 50. I always grew up thinking: ‘Oh, you know, I’ll die at 50 because he did’. So when I turned 50 I was like: ‘Oh my God, I have no plan. I literally have no plan’. So I’m like: ‘I need a second act’. I feel like it’s time to just go for a full midlife crisis. I’m thinking a motorcycle, I’m thinking a tattoo.”

Cooper’s father, Wyatt Emory Cooper, died in 1978 at 50-years-old while undergoing open-heart surgery.

On Friday night, Anderson Cooper really stuck to POTUS on his CNN show Anderson Cooper 360. He smartly started by praising the good jobs report and other positive economic news before pivoting to Trump’s hypocrisy. Cooper:

”The unemployment rate fell to 3.8% which is the lowest in 18 years and excellent by any standards, but the President tweeted today and took aim at a comedian.”

He then turned to Trump’s comments about comic Samantha Bee, who had called his daughter a cunt.

POTUS’ tweet:

”Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show? A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2018

Next, Coop compared this to how Trump responded to Roseanne Barr‘s racist remarks:

”The president has yet to tweet once about the actual content about her remarks, though he had no trouble embracing her when her ratings were good. He has not tweeted condemning the racist language that prompted ABC to cancel her show but instead used the moment to list his own grievances. The president turned an opportunity to speak out against blatant racism into an opportunity to portray himself as a victim and for that double standard, well, the president doesn’t hold up so well on that front.”

Then, Cooper mentioned Trump’s double standard for his pal Roy Moore, who has been accused of molesting a child, and former Senator Al Franken, who was accused of inappropriate touching of another performer during a USO show. He aired a video clip of Trump insulting the appearance of Rosie O’Donnell and Chuck Todd.

”The president’s own language makes signaling out someone for vulgar or insulting language somewhat problematic. When it comes to double standards, selective outrage, whatever you want to call it, the examples are many and varied.”

Earlier this spring, Cooper and his boyfriend of nine years, Benjamin Maisani, split. At the time, Cooper said:

”Benjamin and I separated as boyfriends some time ago. We are still family to each other and love each other very much. We remain the best of friends, and will continue to share much of our lives together.”

Max Ernst & Peggy Guggenheim at Art of This Century Gallery, 30 W. 57th, NYC

“We want to trigger the creative minds of artists to create for a completely different environment. We are challenging the artists to make work for a space that doesn’t have straight walls or floors—we don’t even have walls really, it’s more like shapes coming out of the floor. And the floor is hardly a floor.”

Set within the grounds of the eco-friendly Azulik resort, nearly every surface is covered with saplings and vines, sourced sustainably from local jungles, or smooth faux-concrete with living trees and plant life sprout from walls, the ceiling, and the floor. You must be barefoot inside, but this unconventional approach to a gallery space is by (over?) design.

Sterkel designed the art space over the past several years, after opening Azulik 13 years ago. It involved no drawings or blueprints, he imagined spaces as he went going to the land where the structure will be.

The architecture of the gallery is challenging (It’s all in the family, if you think of NYC’s Guggenheim) but like Frank Lloyd Wright‘s difficult-to-install design, it’s what motivated Rumney Guggenheim to pursue the venture. The curved walls reminded him of his great-grandmother’s legendary Art of This Century gallery, the 57th Street space where she gave many Abstract Expressionist painters, including Jackson Pollock, their first shows.

This all happened in the beginning of this year, at the end of Rumney’s annual trip to Tulum a place his father first brought him many years ago. Rumney wrote up a proposal for a gallery program and sent it to Neira Sterkel, saying he could stay in Tulum and continue to develop it. An hour before his flight home to New York, he recalls, he got a text from Sterkel:

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Rumney cancelled his ticket and got to work.

The future art center plans to host 14 artists working in various creative mediums, from painting and sculpture to fashion, music, and culinary arts. Rumney says, the first residents will be housed at Azulik, creating work for IK LAB from a two-level structure that resembles a bird’s nest, connected to the upper end of the gallery’s ramp by a tree-flanked footbridge.

“Through these artist residencies, we consider ourselves a lab, in the sense that we want to integrate various disciplines of the arts.“

Sterkel says the design is to keep viewers literally on their toes,

“The uneven floor destabilizes them, it makes them warm and open to the art. The idea is to make people aware, with all of their senses. If you walk barefoot in the sand or grass, you have a special connection with nature—the same is true here.”

Brazilian artist Artur Lescher, who had never been to Tulum before, was similarly exhilarated by the challenge of the space. His sleek, minimalist forms—including a metallic pillar suspended from the ceiling—are a stark contrast to the gallery’s flowing vines and faux-concrete.

“It’s like a game. It’s like putting an artwork inside of an artwork.”

His work resonates with the show’s most impressive piece: Tatiana Trouvé’s 250 Points Towards Infinity (2015), which is comprised of 250 small pendulums suspended from the ceiling of the gallery’s domed space.

But running a gallery in Tulum isn’t easy, Rumney admits. But he’s excited by the challenges,

“You can do anything in this space. The ceiling height, the trees growing through it, the shapes, these are all things we can use; we can combine this piece of art with other pieces of art.”

Is Guggenheim interested in building upon the family legacy?

“They set the bar very high and I can’t compare what I’m doing to what they’ve achieved. But, I do want to do things differently, and maybe unconsciously that’s what has led me to do this. Really, I’m just following my instincts.”

ALIGNMENTS; Artur Lescherm, Mago Trushina, Tatiana Trouvé runs through September 19, 2018.

Tatiana Trouvé’s “250 Points Towards Infinity”, 2015

(Photos, IK Lab; via Artsy)

Liu Jiakun’s Luyeyuan Buddhist Sculpture Museum in Sichuan, China

But this design is rigorous and minimal with zero flash, as in Jiakun’s previous work like his Luyeyuan Buddhist Sculpture Museum, left. He describes his work as “low-tech”. The Serpentine’s artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist said,

“His projects engage with a local context, connecting Chinese public life and urban cultural space.“

As we near the tenth anniversary of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, his approach stands in stark contrast to that event that signaled China’s return as a global power. Just a stone’s throw from the Forbidden City, Liu’s Serpentine Pavilion Beijing is aligned with the Bird’s Nest stadium by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, but the two are separated by more than just 10 years. The contrast represents a big shift in architectural tone.

According to Liu, it reflects the Confucian concept of “junzi,” a morally cultivated self expressed as a metaphor of an archer’s bow,

“I wanted it to give a sense of inner strength. It’s like an archer standing firm without firing a shot. It’s pure force, but how you handle that force reflects your cultural attitude.“

The Serpentine Gallery’s CEO, Yana Peel, summed up the choice saying,

“He’s the right architect at the right time.“

(Photos, WF Central; via CNN)

“The Critics” (1927) by Henry Scott Tuke, Warwick District Council, UK

“Bathing” (1911), Duncan Grant.The Tate

“Man On The Beach” (1993) By Fernando Botero

“Men On The Beach” (1888) by Edvard Munch, Munch Museum, Oslo.

“Lifeguard, Save Me!,” (1924) by J.C. Leyendecker

“The Bather” (1885) by Paul Cézanne

“San Giorgio Bathers” (1970) by Keith Vaughan

“Another Place” (1997) by Antony Gormley

“Two Boys on a Beach” (1938) by Paul Cadmus

“Fire Island” (1950) by PaJaMa

Time at the beach, playing in the waves and splaying your limbs out on the warm sand, who can resist?  Yet, people didn’t always consider the beach a place for relaxation. After all, the beach can be cold, hot, sandy, wet, dismal and/or uncomfortable. And then there’s the whole prospect of drowning.

Like so many things, spending time at the beach became popular in Britain. It started  late in the 18th century and spread through the world from there. Its origins were tied up with how industrialization was remaking the world at the time, as well as in popular medical theories that now sound bizarre.

Earlier periods in history find very few tales of relaxing at the beach. From antiquity through the 18th century, the beach stirred fear and anxiety in the popular imagination and was synonymous with danger.

Some of the earliest and most influential references to the sea in Western culture come from the Bible, where the ocean is depicted as mysterious and destructive.

The gay Roman poets and philosophers Horace, Ovid and Seneca hated going to the beach, even though they had worked-out bodies. They saw the ocean as a force that drove men apart. In Shakespeare’s plays, the ocean appears in the form storms and shipwrecks.

By the 1600s, the beach began to appear in French poetry as a place of beauty worth visiting. By the 17th century, Dutch seascape paintings began bringing tourists to seaside towns.

A cultural appreciation of the benefits of being at the beach really started in England in the late 18th century. Doctors believed that bathing in cold sea waves was beneficial for conditions they called ”melancholy” or ”spleen”, black bile that made people depressed, cautious or moody.

Over the next two centuries, doctors recommend that patients head to the shore, believing that the shock of submersion in cold, salty and turbulent seawater was beneficial for health. Doctors would issue prescriptions to patients detailing exactly how long, how often and under what conditions they were to bathe.

Women relied on bathing attendants, who would help them with the correct timing and method of sea bathing, including which part of their body would make contact with the waves. They would plunge females into the water just as the wave broke. These cold dips were seen as a method of toughening up patients, especially women who were thought to be dangerously pale.

Antoine Lavoisier‘s discovery of oxygen in 1778 led to popular theories about the health benefits of sea air, which was thought to be more oxygenated and purer. At the same time, of course, the water and air in British cities was actually getting grungier. Factories were springing up near the beaches. But, tourism and industrialization went together, giving people both the desire and the ability, in terms of money and transportation, to get away from it all with a day at the beach.

Going to the beach became a kind of competitive activity among the upper-classes. In 1783, the Prince of Wales, who would later become King George IV, visited Brighton after being advised that bathing in the sea would help his gout. In the decades that followed, the fashion spread. In Jane Austen‘s Emma (1815), the main character’s hypochondriac father endlessly debates the health benefits of Britain’s beaches with his upper-class friends.

The idea of going to the beach spread to the middle and lower-classes. Railroads in the early 19th century made a trip to the beach affordable. By 1840, the beach meant something new. It had become a place of human consumption; a sought-after escape from the city and the drudgery of modern life, and a chance to cruise the hotties.

Going to the beach became very popular in America. But, the upper-classes didn’t swim, they merely took a quick plunge. And they plunged naked. They devised a horse-drawn barrel that was backed into the water. People took off their clothes inside and then went naked for a quick plunge. But they got right out again and dressed inside the barrel.

Beaches suddenly had promenades, boardwalks and social halls. Since people only took a five-minute dip, they had to find other things to do at the seashore. Period paintings portrayed raucous beach behavior: street performers and dancing girls, gamblers, even horse racing.

For women, the first bathing suits were heavy woolen suits not much different than their regular attire. Men still swam naked. Not until about 1900 did bathing suits become the universal American beach garb for men and women. Eventually, the beach played a role in the shedding modesty. Women emerged on the sand with a leg-revealing two-piece suit in the 1930s and continued paring down their beach attire until it was just a bikini in the 1960s. Men’s suits went from two-pieces in the 1920s to Speedos and thongs.

Are you going to the beach this summer? Remember, wear sunscreen!

10 Best Gay American Beaches:

Herring Cove, Provincetown

Little Beach, Maui

Will Rogers State Beach (aka Ginger Rogers Beach), Santa Monica

Sebastian Street, Ft. Lauderdale

Black’s Beach, San Diego

Poodle Beach, Rehoboth, Delaware

Fire Island Pines, Fire Island

Baker Beach, San Francisco

South Beach, Miami Beach

Collin’s Beach (clothing optional), Portland, Oregon

Photo from supremecourt.gov

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple for religious reasons – but avoided a wider ruling on religious exemptions for businesses.

Charlie Craig and David Mullins went to the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, in July 2012, but the bakery owner Jack Phillips refused to provide a cake for a same-sex couple. They complained to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which decided against Phillips.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled 7-2 that the commission had violated Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression.

The court did take up the wider issue of whether a business can refuse to serve gay and lesbian people, saying: “…this must await further elaboration”.

Writing for the court’s majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed “hostility” to Phillips’ religious beliefs in a proceeding that found he violated the law and ordered him to undergo anti-discrimination training.

Kennedy:

“The laws and the constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.”

The decision focused narrowly on the handling of Phillips’ case, leaving open the question of whether anti-discrimination laws trump religious beliefs in future cases. The ruling also specifically defends the rights of LGBTQ Americans. Kennedy:

 “Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.”

While religious and philosophical objections to Marriage Equality are protected under the First Amendment, SCOTUS warns:

“It is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services. Yet if that exception were not confined, then a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.”

The court noted that Phillips’ exemption from anti-discrimination laws will not be broadly applicable in the future:

“The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”

THEEE Queen of Bounce music, Big Freedia, has just put out her latest EP 3rd Ward Bounce– a newer, more mainstream sound, but still infused with her signature booming vocals, frenetic handclaps…and even sharper songwriting. Lead single Rent is all attitude, rebuffing the type of people who occupy a space in your mind, while Karaoke, featuring fab hip hop artist Lizzo, pounds along with robust horns, intended to become the freewheeling type of anthem that soundtracks a night out of singing. 3rd Ward Bounce is available for streaming and download HERE. (above pic via Big Feedia’s Instagram)

Big Freedia:

“I just want to inspire people to understand that New Orleans culture is very special, it’s a phenomenal place and that we’re on a rise to bigger and better things and we speak it through our music and everyday living down here. The pain and suffering that we go through here in New Orleans, we take it and we flip it around.”

Ms. Laganja Estranja is headed to prime time y’all! Okkkkkkurrrrrrrr! Langanja is competing on So You Think You Can Dance and you can catch her audition on tonight’s premiere episode. A teaser clip of the episode was released this morning and it shows the judges gagging over Ms. Estranja, because who doesn’t henny! Check it out and be sure to catch Laganja on So You Think You Can Dance tonight!

Tune in to the season premiere of So You Think You Can Dance tonight at 8/9c on Fox and make sure to show your love for Laganja Estranja!

Photo via YouTube

26-year-old Peter Bence is a Hungarian pianist, composer and music producer. He has become very popular with his piano arrangements of covers of songs by Michael Jackson, Queen, Sia, and others, with over 350 million hits and on YouTube.

Even before he began his studies at Berklee College of Music, Bence already had recorded two albums. He broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the most piano key hits in one minute, with 765 strokes.

He earned his Master of Arts in Film Scoring and Electronic Production and Design from the Berklee in 2015.

His edgy, percussive and expressive piano style breaks the boundaries between classical and popular music, to say the least.

When he was just two-years-old, Bence was able to play melodies by ear from his favorite cartoons and films on his grandparents’ upright piano. He began his formal musical education at 4-years-old at a music school in his hometown, Hajduboszormeny, Hungary. He was accepted at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Debrecen, while still enrolled in elementary school.

In his teens, Bence fell in love with film music, especially the movie scores by John Williams and Hans Zimmer.

In the last year, he has given sold-out concerts in 20 countries, playing in London’s Hyde Park for 50,000 people, and was featured on Ellen.

Watch:

You can never have too much Ryan Serhant, but sadly you can’t get a new episode of Sell It Like Serhant every day, so to make the wait for tomorrow’s new episode a little easier we have pulled some of our favorite bloopers/behind the scenes moments for you to enjoy! Check them out!

A post shared by World of Wonder (@wowreport) on Jun 3, 2018 at 11:06am PDT

Tomorrow night! The season finale of #SellItLikeSerhant is almost upon us! While you wait to watch @ryanserhant on @bravotv at 10/9c, check out another round of hilarious and adorable bloopers from this season! pic.twitter.com/CDAqGrMsNM

— World of Wonder (@WorldOfWonder) June 4, 2018

Tune in to the season finale of Sell It Like Serhant tomorrow at 10/9c on Bravo!

There’s a new episode of The Switch available on WOW Presents Plus and you definitely don’t want to miss this week’s episode. With 5 queens left, this week they are getting down and dirty with a Moulin Rouge inspired challenge. Be sure to watch the episode so that you don’t miss a moment of the drama!

Subscribe to WOW Presents Plus to catch a new episode of The Switch every Monday!