#GoldenGlobes

So the Golden Globes are going along pretty much as usual. The stars arrive on the red carpet and the girls and the gays are Tweeting and live blogging away. My votes for Best Dressed go to...

...Lucy Liu...

  

...and Michelle Dockery.

Giuliana Rancic easily wins both Worst Dressed and Most Annoying on the red carpet.

As a co-host of The Fashion Police, Giuliana is probably ineligible for their "Fashole of Week" title which is really a shame. This look should not be allowed to go unpunished.

On last red carpet comment: Sam Fox looks exactly like his father did 25 years ago (but taller) which is a very good thing.

Not much noteworthy happened during most of the ceremony. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were great hosts, but MIA for much of the show. Only a few other things were post worthy.

Taylor Swift does not give good gracious loser face.

Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig were, by far, the funniest presenters.

 Tommy Lee Jones became one with a meme.

Glenn Close was hilarious acting drunk--or was she acting?

Then, Jodie Foster was given the Cecile B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award and things went a little cray-cray!

There's a lot of buzz on the Interwebs that she "came out" in her speech. She had already (sort of) did that in 2007--although a breakfast thrown by Hollywood Reporter is not as big a forum as the Golden Globes. Let's just say, Twitter was atwitter about Jodie Foster. (I can't be the first person to make the "Twitter/atwitter" joke, can I?) The best tweet was either by Frank Bruni:

 

Or by me:

Or by Dave Holmes:

Or by Melissa Harris-Perry:

Or by Kate Clinton:

Oh who am I kidding? Ben Wise clearly wins for best Jodie Foster Tweet of the Night:

In all the commentary and analysis of Jodie Foster's speech that is sure to come, I don't think anyone can do better than that. So, let's call it a night.

1983

One of my best buddies, Brendan, turned 30 today. In honor of his milestone, let's take a quick look back at the year of his birth, 1983. First, you must check out "Fads & Trends in 1983". Not only is it full of great  trivia (Ocean Spray introduced the juice box in 1983), the web page looks like it might actually have been created in 1983. Seriously, go check it out.

"Every Breath You Take" by The Police was the #1 song of 1983.

I bought Syncronicity on vinyl in 1983 and listened to it pretty much no-stop that year. Still, in retrospect, the big story in pop music was the year's #2 song. Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" was the second single from Thriller.  In addition to being part of the the best-selling album of all time, "Billie Jean" is one of the most iconic music videos ever.

Vanessa Williams became the first African American Miss America. As you may remember, that her reign ended when nude pictures of Williams were published in Penthouse. So, one outdated, sexist institution got rocked by a "scandal" created by another outdated, sexist institution. Vanessa Williams being the fabulous diva that she is went on to have arguably the best career of any former Miss America. Seriously, how many other Miss Americas can you even name?

Terms of Endearment won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1983, and Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi was the top grossing film. However, for me, as a young gay coming of age, there is one moment of 1983 cinema that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

By the way, I saw Risky Business with my parents who would not allow me to see violent movies but didn't bat an eye at one that featured prostitution and sex on public transit which partially explains why I love my parents so much.

On television in 1983, there was this on Saturday mornings:

Thanks Mom!

When I was ten years old, my mother and I made a date to watch Bette Midler: Ol' Red Hair Is Back together. Somehow, in the middle of Iowa in 1977, she had become a Bette Midler fan. When she saw the commercials for the television special, my mom thought this would be the perfect way to introduce me to The Divine Miss M. I have a distinct memory of sitting in our TV room when this opening number began and laughing with my mother and loving it all.

No good, self-respecting gay is supposed to give any credit to the idea that mothers make their sons gay. However... I mean, really... How unhappy could she have been when I came out?

A Chance To Vote On Baseball Players? I'm In!

MLB and PlayStation are giving us fans the chance to decide which player will be on the cover of "MLB 2013 The Show." I think we owe it to them to vote in this totally organic contest that is not at all about using us as free channels of advertising on Facebook and Twitter. Let's take a quick look at the candidates. I'll tell you why you should not vote for six of them, and why the seventh deserves your love.

Andrew McCutchen



McCutchen had a hell of a year. I love that he was part of the Pittsburgh Pirates renaissance--that is some old school Willie Stargell realness. Also, he has the best smile and hair in baseball.

McCutchen's undeniable cuteness is not enough to overcome the fact that others had much better 2012 seasons. I am looking forward to seeing more of him play in 2013, because he brings so much joy to the game.

Ryan Braun



Okay, Ryan Braun's abs are six points in his favor.

However, he seems to be a gigantic nozzle. These shirts alone should are reason enough to be banned from being allowed out in public much less on the cover of anything.

The only way I would vote for him to be on the cover of anything is if he promised to use this picture:

Miguel Cabrera



Winning the first Triple Crown in baseball since Yaz did 1967 is huge. On the other hand, Mike Trout deserved the MVP instead of Cabrera. In protest of the undeserved votes he got for MVP, I cannot, in good conscience, give Cabrera my vote for baseball's second highest honor--the cover of a video game. Look, he's not even mad at me--he's giving me his multi-million dollar smile.

CC Sabathia


Despite being a member of the greatest team ever in the history of baseball, Sabathia just did not have the best year. It is a scandal that PlayStation has never put a pitcher of the cover of "The Show," but if you were going to put a pitcher on this year, it would have to be R.A. Dickey. Plus, Sabathia somehow makes the greatest uniform in the history of sports look like pajamas.

Matt Kemp


There is a completely legitimate argument to be made that Matt Kemp should be on the cover of everything sports-related.

Perhaps even on the cover of everything only slightly sports-related.

He certainly should do as many "fashion" spreads as possible.

Seems like a lock,

Chris Kluwe On The Colbert Report

Someone once asked my sister, "What would do you think your mother would say if you were on the Tonight Show?" Without missing a beat, my sister replied, "I don't like what she's wearing."
Well, my crush, Chris Kluwe, gave a great, smart, funny interview on The Colbert Report...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Chris Kluwe
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...and my first thought was: He wore a stocking cap and flip-flops on national television?! I've come to grudgingly accept that some men no longer dress up for late-night television interviews, so I can live with (not like, but live with) the jeans and t-shirt; however, it is simply never acceptable to wear a ski hat and beach footwear at the same time. Keep in mind this was taped in January in New York City, so the flip-flops are doubly inappropriate. Maybe he's worried that people question his sexuality because he's such a vocal supporter of Marriage Equality, so he wore an outfit no self-respecting gay would be caught dead in.

Still, I can't stay mad at Kluwe for long because he introduced the phrases "lustful cockmonster"  and "beautifully unique sparkle pony" into the national debate on Marriage Equality.

My Comments On The F-Word

OMG! Did you hear about the Perez Hilton's BEEF with Azealia Banks?! That's about as much celebrity blogging as I can do, but I am writing about the Hilton vs. Banks fight on Twitter. Well, I'm actually writing about someone else's writing about the feud--it's meta-blogging. First, some background. In case you didn't know (I certainly didn't until a few days ago), Azealia Banks is a dance-club diva.

Perez Hilton is a celebrity gossip blogger and known gay. He's also a total douche. The only good thing he's ever done is use his evil powers against the even bigger douche, John Mayer.

So, this happened:

 
Many more Tweets were sent, but those are the key two. I was actually on Twitter during the interchange but only witnessed it second-hand--I don't follow @AZEALIABANKS or @PerezHilton. I didn't weigh in because I didn't really care about what Banks and Hilton had to say, and I still don't.

Lots of people--including GLAAD, Keo Nozari on HuffPo, Janet Mock on xojane, and Christopher Lowery at Vibe--did, however, give a fuck. Much was blogged and Tweeted, and I paid no mind. Then, there was a post on The Bilrerico Project that caught my attention. If you don't know, the Bilerico Project is a great LGBTQ group blog that has really diverse and interesting contributors. Today, Seth Kaye, "a [white]boy #obsessed with bois, divas, Pokémon, and queer activism, among other things," made a post titled Perez Hilton Actually Is a Faggot: A Defense of Azealia. You should probably go read the whole thing for the full context. It's not that long, but if you're not part of the Twitterati you may need to consult the Urban Dictionary which is the best place to decipher Twitterspeak. Here are the most relevant passages to my comments below:

Perez Hilton is a douche and an obnoxious faggot in all meanings of the word (super annoying), and I'm ok with Azealia Banks saying so.

This is gonna be #TMTH and #TLFT, so listen up.

Azealz was just keeping it real - she is one of us (bisexual and a diva that knows her audience) so it's legit for her to throw such shade.

It's different when str8 rappers throw around faggot and no homo. But Azealz gets insider privilege. #SheCanDoWhatSheWant.

However, she clarifies: "A faggot is not a homosexual male. A faggot is any male who acts like a female. There's a BIG difference."

*This* I find problematic. Here she clarifies that she is insulting his gender performance - acting female, specifically the ACT - and the mismatch between that and his sex (male). I'll admit Perez is annoying as hell, but this gendered comment bothers me. It's heterosexist & transphobic for her to insult Perez for acting femme/flaming and childish/immature - not because he isn't those things, and those things aren't annoying (they often are) - but because she assigns those things as feminine and therefore bad/less than.

More importantly tries to insult him further because those bad things are gender transgressive. She genders him female and denigrates him for not acting "properly" male (like a girl). In this case, I can see GLAAD's argument that any use of the word in this way normalizes anti-female and anti-trans sentiment. So that is what is harmful about this comment.

That said, I ain't even mad tho. #NBD. #triflin. #itsahairflip.

I don't know why I chose this point to jump into the conversation, but jump in I did. Perhaps it's because Kaye and The Bilerico Project are truly trying to engage in a dialogue. Also, I do think words matter and it's important to discuss the use of "faggot" in the LGBT community. In short, this seems like a teachable moment for all of us. My comments on the blog post grew so long that I'm calling them my blogging for the day. FYI: I didn't proofread my comments, so they might be riddled with errors. It seemed unfair to improve them in any way. I did add links for some context.

Ugh. Where to begin? For me the central problem is that the @SethEKaye doesn't explain what he believes the correct use of "faggot in all meanings of the word" would be. I think "faggot" is fairly universally understood to mean a gay and/or effeminate man. @SethEKaye seems to think it would be cool if Azealia used it to indicate "obnoxious douche" and "super annoying"; but that would make no sense because NO ONE thinks that's what faggot means. In fact, Azealia's comment that "A faggot is any male who acts like a female" is a very accurate definition of how almost everyone thinks of the word. I agree that it's really problematic to think of that as a slur because it says that not only is gay inherently less than straight but also femininity is inherently less than masculinity. @SethEKaye seems to think there is some way to use "faggot" as a put down that is not heterosexist and sexist, but I have absolutely no idea what that could be.

The Mystery of Dean Schambach

You can meet all sorts of interesting characters wandering around the internet. I was thinking about writing a post about my favorite poems (which I still may write), so I searched YouTube to see if there was any video of Tennessee Williams reading "Life Story" which is a pretty amazing poem. It's probably just as well since one should enunciate when reading poems, and Tennessee, bless his heart, tended to slur his words. I did find this treasure, Dean Schambach performing "Life Story":

Perfect, really. I like play a little game called "What's Their Story?" where I pick a stranger (or strangers) and, well, make up a story for them. So, what's Dean Schambach's story? At first I imagined Mr. Schambach to be a Southern "confirmed bachelor" who had built a career out of performing some sort of traveling one-man show about Tennessee Williams. Then, YouTube nicely suggested I watch this:

Yes, it's T.S. Eliot's "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" also interpreted very well. So, maybe not so much a Southern gentleman but a British gentleman? (By the way, who knew a sports coat with a big plaid and even bigger lapels, a bow tie, and a jaunty hat would be the perfect look for both Williams and Eliot?) Still, clearly an actor and, like many actors, a loon:

Still, what is Dean Schambach's story? Mr. Schambach has a very small internet footprint. As of this writing, the three videos above have a total of 7,771 views--respectable but hardly a viral sensation. Well, he's an actor, so I tried IMDB. Nothing there.Wikipedia? Nada. According to LinkedIn, Dean Schambach is a "driver at moo juice transport" [sic for all capitalization], so I think that might be someone else.

Finally, I found him. In Woodstock, New York, of course. He is a poet and actor, of course. Who moved to Woodstock from Greenwich Village, of course, where he hung out with Bob Dylan (or "Bobby" as he calls him). Here they are hanging out (with David Boyle) when Dylan came to Woodstock c. 1967:

Apparently, another picture of Dylan, Schambach and Boyle by Elliot Landy is so famous there's a mini-documentary about it:

Going farther back in time, Dean Schambach was a champion ski jumper. There's great footage of him in the news reel 'The Ski Trials - Where Snow is Fun'. The mystery of Dean Schambach has been solved. My search over, I was ready to move on. The best part was that I landed on the British Pathé web site where I can happily meander for hours. There's all sorts of treasures there, like this "Daring Men's Fashion Show" from 1951: