Man Crazy

For my taste, I think he may be the most attractive man on the planet. Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, actor in film, TV & stage on both continents, & a university Chancellor. Patrick Stewart's distinguished career in theatre includes leading & supporting roles on Broadway & The West End, as well as repertory & regional theatre. He is most widely known for his TV film roles: Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation & as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films. I loved him doing gay for pay in the film version of Paul Rudnick's Jeffery in 1995. He was on Broadway this season, in Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre. He has been acting for 50 years & is still doing great work. It has been noted that he is the greatest Prospero of our time, having done the role at the RSC in rep with Antony & Cleopatra. I swoon when I see him. He turns an astonishing 71 years old today.

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Raiders of The Lost Ark is in my top 10 films of all time. I remember my heart pounding at the sight of Harrison Ford in the leather jacket & fedora. Yummarific!


I first noticed him in Lucas’s American Graffitti, but the Indiana Jones films really won him over to me (I am not a big Star Wars fan).. I love his work in : Blade Runner (another favorite), Witness, Patriot Games, Clear & Present Danger, The Fugitive, Air Force One, & What Lies Beneath. Until this century, 4 of the top 5 box office hits of all time included 1 of his roles. 5 of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry. The USA domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total more than $3.4 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the 3rd highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star. Ford is the husband of actress Calista Flockhart. Lucky little skinny girl. Harrison Ford is a superb cabinet & furniture maker. He would be handy to have around, fighting Nazis & making bookshelves. Mr. Ford turns 69 today.


Favorite Harrison Ford Role? I want to Know.


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I used to do quite a bit of voice-over work in the 1980s & 1990s & much of that work was recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, owned by Anne & Nancy Wilson of Heart. I would occasionally see Cameron Crowe in the hallway with his wife- Nancy Wilson. I was awestruck. He was the man responsible for writing &/or directing: Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, & Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Little did I know that we would someday have a history together. Cameron Crowe cast me in his 1992 film- Singles, which I still get recognized for on occasion. It was a wonderful experience in every way & my 2nd film with my good close personal friend- Matt Dillon. Kyra Sedgwig co-starred, which makes me 1 degree of separation from Kevin Bacon. Today is Mr. Crowes birthday.


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On Queer As Folk, Michael leaves Pittsburgh to live with his new, very hot Chiropractor boyfriend in Portland Oregon (!). The role was played by the awesome hottie & out actor Robert Gant. Robert John Gonzalez has also starred in Personal Affairs on the BBC, Popular & Caroline in the City. Other guest appearances on TV programs include Melrose Place, Ellen, Friends, Nip/Tuck, Special Delivery ( I would like to give him a special delivery), The Contract, Fits & Starts, & Marie & Bruce.


In 2007, Gant, Chad Allen &Judith Light acted in & produced Save Me, which I thought very highly of & have posted about.. The movie about the ex-gay movement was distributed by Mythgarden, the production company formed by Gant, Allen, & Christopher Racster in 2004. Gant starred in the short film Billy's Dad is a Fudgepacker, an homage to 1950s educational films.


Gant is an advocate for elder gays. Help! I have fallen & I can't get up!

I still dream of his being my chiropractor in Portland Oregon. I can only imagine what he might do for my spine. Robert Gant turn 43 today. If you know him, please let him know I have something special for him on his special day.

Patrick Wilson Turns 38 Today

“Oh my God, what a waste”- I have overheard this declaration from straight women assessing the considerable assets of a gym bodied, stylish, good looking & personable gay man. I have found this statement to be offensive, but I let these ladies off the hook because I have had the same thoughts when considering certain straight men.

 I feel slightly ashamed (but just slightly) when I have taken note of the fine work & classic good looks of actor/singer Patrick Wilson. I thought his performance as closeted gay Mormon- Joe Pitt, in one of my all time favorite films- the masterful Angels in America was first rate & award worthy (he received a Golden Globe, SAG & Emmy nomination). He could easily be a clichéd gay theatre actor- He Sings! He Acts! He Dances! He is buff & funny & self deprecating. His certain charms have been seen on Broadway in Carousel, Gershwin’s Fascinatin’ Rhythm, Oklahoma! (Tony nomination), The Full Monte (Tony Nomination), Barefoot In The Park, & All My Sons. His film work includes a bold, fearless performance in Little Children & as a superhero in Watchmen & singing again in the regrettable Phantom of the Opera. But no, he is heterosexual & happily married… “what a waste”! He would be perfect as my secret lover.

This fall he has a new TV series- A Gifted Man. I just know he has special gifts...

Considering Meryl Streep On Her Birthday

"Instant gratification is not soon enough. "



I saw The Devil Wears Prada again while I was Shingled. Wow, that film certainly still stands up. She is not gay, but does she have the making of a Gay Icon? She turns an astonishing 63 today & she has never been bigger at the box office. I love her. She is an actor goddess to me. I love her doing anything, but I like her best doing comedy & singing.

Meryl Streep has received 15 Academy Award nominations & 23 Golden Globe nominations (winning 6), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her 2 Emmy Awards, 2 Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, 3 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, & a Tony Award nomination.

I first time I saw her was on stage in The Taming Of The Shrew with Raul Julia at The Public Theatre in 1975. At the start of her film career, I wasn't really on board. She seemed all accents & technique. I was wrong. Her work is inspired, heartfelt & transcendent. My favorite Streep film performances:

Manhattan
Silkwood
Out Of Africa
Postcards From The Edge (love her singing!)
The Bridges Of Madison County
Adaptation (fearless,& without vanity as always)
The Hours
A Prairie Home Companion (again, the singing)
The Devil Wears Prada
Julie & Julia
& Angels In America

She is funny, self effacing, & the best actor of my generation. I forgive her for Mama Mia. Next up? Streep as Margaret Thatcher! Please, share your favorite Streep performance.

They Liked The Girls... Today Is The Birthday Of Freda Josephine McDonald & Marion Pauline Levy

Stunningly beautiful & talented Paulette Goddard was an American film & theatre actress who was short-listed for the role of Scarlett O’ Hara. She was married to several notable men, including Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith & novelist Erich Maria Remarque, Paulette Goddard was known to have had several affairs with women, including a tryst with artist Frieda Kahlo. Goddard was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).


In Star Spangled Rhythm she sang a musical number- A Sweater, A Sarong, & A Peekaboo Bang.; I have been searching for the chart for this tune, I think it might be a smart addition to my club act. Starting In the 1970s, she was good chums with Andy Warhol, until his death in 1987. She was portrayed by Diane Lane in the 1992 film- Chaplin. She was my father's favorite movie star. He grew up in the Silver Lake neighborhood & met her once hiking near the reservoir. Paulette Goddard would have been 101 years old today.

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Josephine Baker was born in poverty in  St. Louis, Missouri. She was ambitious, beautiful, & talented, & the toast of Europe at the height of her fame. By the mid-1920s she was captivating audiences in Paris as a dancer, singer, & actress. She was the 20th century's first international black female sex symbol.

Famous for her glamorous, extravagant lifestyle, Baker could be devious, manipulative, & relentless. She was also always willing to break the rules, especially those relating to sex, & her sexual conquests were legendary. There were many sexual liaisons with women, 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, French novelist Colette, & Paulette Goddard’s cast off- Frida Kahlo.

Onstage she radiated such gay energy & camp that by the end of her career most of her faithful audience consisted of gay men. As part of her crusade against racism, & because she was unable to conceive children herself, Baker adopted what she called her "Rainbow Tribe" of 12 children from different parts of the world. She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas.

During WW2, Baker to showed her loyalty to her adopted country by participating in the Underground, smuggling intelligence to the resistance outside of France coded within her sheet music. After the war, for her underground activity, Baker received the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Résistance, & was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

On April 8, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue at the Bobino in Paris — Joséphine à Bobino 1975, celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, financed by Prince Rainier, Princess Grace, & Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, opened to SRO crowds & to rave reviews. The opening night audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross & Liza Minnelli. 4 days later, Baker was found dead in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance.

After her death in Paris in 1975, 3 funerals were held, 1 in Paris & 2 in Monaco, attended by much of the French government & entertainment elite. She was the first American woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral. At the request of her long time friend & benefactor Princess Grace, she was buried in Monaco.

Today Is The Second Annual Harvey Milk Day

John McCain, you are no Maverick! Sarah Palin, you don’t know the difference between Populist & Popular! Harvey Milk was not a professional politician; he was the quintessential populist maverick. He had no allegiance to any political party or platform. He was free to follow his common sense, not party dogma.

Milk was not an easy man & he had a temper, but his independence freed him from compromising party politics, allowing him to be controlled by his conscience rather than the debt owed to special interest groups. Milk had an absolute allegiance to Jeffersonian principles of American democracy, the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution.

Milk had a burning belief that the only devout defense of individual rights, Milk was individual participation in the political process. As an open gay man, Milk knew all too well that whoever holds power, dictates the limits of individuality.

Milk was a political pioneer of the 20th century. History will prove Milk’s struggles & his success show that there is no gay way, there is only one way. Milk can live forever if we can to do things his way, in the actions & accomplishments of the small daily efforts to make our world better.

Harvey Milk entrusted the energy of his eloquent voice not only to the voiceless minority, but to all minorities, whose voices are cast away in the conformity of the American cultural landscape. Milk: “All I ever seek is to open up a dialogue that involves all of us." Tragically, his assassin's bullet not only vanquished his voice, but his populist vision as well.

If you might be interested, take a peek at my post on Milk's Birthday last year: here.

Cher Turns 65 Today

The Husband: Cher!
Stephen: Where?
The Husband: There!
Stephen: Cher? Where?
The Husband: There Cher!
Stephen: There Cher?
The Husband: There! Cher!
Stephen: Cher!

Things I love about Cher:
Silkwood, Mask, Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,Tea With Mussolini, & most especially- Moonstruck

Bang Bang, I've Got You Babe, The Way of Love, The Beat Goes On

"Men should be like Kleenex... soft, strong & disposable"

A #1 Single in each of the past 6 decades

Sonny

Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar

Chaz

Farwell Tours

"After a nuclear holocaust, all that will be left are cockroaches & Cher."

A Single Man... Don Bachardy On His Birthday

3 films come to mind today as I consider Don Bachrdy on this birthday: Cabaret, A Single Man & the unexpectedly uncommon documentry- Chris & Don: A Love Story.

Christopher Isherwood has been one of my favorite writers starting in high school when I learned the Cabaret connection. It was a revelation to read at the start of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s, of Isherwood leaving England & traveling to Berlin in 1929 to meet boys. His enthusiasm for the boy bars & cabarets gives unfading allure to his look at bankrupt Germany entertaining itself during Hitler’s rise to power. As a gay man, Isherwood identified with the crushed, the criminal, the cast-off, he had to hide aspects of his personal life; defying convention to find love.

By the time Goodbye to Berlin ( the basis for the play & screenplay of Cabaret) was published, Isherwood was living in the USA.  In 1939, Isherwood had published 4 novels, 3 plays, a memoir & a travel when he landed in NYC in 1939 with his lifelong friend-  poet W. H. Auden. Auden settled in Manhattan & Isherwood went to Hollywood. He had been a movie fan since childhood & he soon became a well paid screenwriter.

Isherwood had many friends & lovers in his new country, many of them famous. He met 18 year old Don Bachardy at the Will Rogers State Beach in October 1952. Bachardy began visiting the Santa Monica beach in the late 1940s with his older brother, Ted. Bachardy: “At first Chris was attracted to Ted. But Ted was a manic-depressive schizophrenic. During his 3rd breakdown, I was distressed to realise I could no longer rely on him. Chris felt sorry for me & he was so successful in cheering me up that we formed a special bond.”

By Valentine’s Day, they had initiated an intimate relationship that lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986. They were a high profile, openly gay couple during the era of McCarthyism, when homosexuals were being driven out of the government & the film world.

A portrait of the pair by David Hockney

Isherwood & Bachardy seemed to live an enviably enchanted existence in their hillside Santa Monica home, where they entertained the leading figures of the world of arts, literature, & the movie stars that Bachardy once sought out for autographs. Yet the documentary- Chris & Don: A Love Story reveals that the couple worked hard & long to achieve their bliss.

From the start, the men's relationship was challenging: Bachardy was 30 years younger than Isherwood & was so boyishly handsome he seemed underage. A student of theatre at UCLA when they met, Bachardy soon felt overwhelmed by Isherwood's vast array of famous friends. Isherwood encouraged Bachardy's talent for drawing & eventually Bachardy did become an internationally acclaimed visual artist. Bachardy: “I was 18, Chris was 48. He had to move out of his home because the owners, close friends, were very uncomfortable about the age gap, blatantly accentuated by my callow appearance. Chris had other friends who disapproved, too, & he broke with them because of me"

Teaching Bachardy gave Isherwood sizable satisfaction. Bachardy: “We were intensely close while I went to college & then art school. I decided I wanted to be a painter, & Chris encouraged me right from the beginning.”

In a 1960 entry in his diary Isherwood wrote: “Don matters more than any of the others. He imposes himself more, demands more, cares more, about everything he does & encounters. He is so desperately alive.”

Isherwood’s success, & his affairs with Stravinsky, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote & others, his experience & his demanding nature made their relationship troublesome to Bachardy:  “I needed to establish my own identity. Some of Chris’s friends were kind, but mostly they treated me as the young boyfriend or even just a bit of fluff.”

\Bachardy moved to London to study painting. His first shows in London & NYC attracted all kinds of admirers & good reviews, plus he was talented, together, & temptingly young.  Bachardy: “Chris had always had sex friends outside our relationship, & he had been frank with me about his sexual adventures in the years before he knew me. Since I had very little sex experience before Chris, I began to feel deprived. I told him it was unfair to deny me the freedom he had enjoyed. I was usually discreet about my adventures, but I know he was tormented. We had a couple of really difficult years & in 1963 I considered leaving him. We did split up for a few months.”

Self Portrait

In his misery Isherwood wrote A Single Man; the theme of emotional loss reflected Isherwood’s fear that Bachardy would leave & that he would die alone. Ironically, Bachardy thought up the title A Single Man. He has a cameo in the film, & is credited as a creative consultant.

Bachardy & Isherwood survived the 1963 break-up. Bachardy: “Chris allowed me the freedom to have sex with other men, & the comparison favored Chris. I saw more clearly what a great treasure I had in him.” They were together for 33 years. Chris & Don: A Love Story, ends with a several scenes of Isherwood, dying of cancer, sitting for a series of portraits by his partner.  Bachardy:“Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end. But he had sat for me so often over the years, & I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.”

The last of the series was completed when Isherwood was already dead. Bachardy remained alone with the body, producing some of his finest works when he himself was newly a single man.

Bachardy still lives in Isherwood's Santa Monica home, his residence for over 50 years, where he paints portraits. Bachardy did indeed become an esteemed artist in his own right. He has painted portraits of most famous folks of the past 50 years including: Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, & Montgomery Clift. He works every day, for hours at a time, with the passion & perseverance of someone much younger. He's one of the only portrait artists in the world who only paints live, he never uses photographs or even work from memory. Once the model has left the room, he puts down his brush.

"What is exciting is to work with the person and get all the input, all the vibration & the aura of a living personality, how can you do that with a photograph?”

One of Bachardy's most notable works is the official gubernatorial portrait of Governor Jerry Brown hanging in the California State Capitol. The California state official biography page for Jerry Brown features a photograph of the painting. I think highly of his work & I have a nice coffee table book of his portraits, now on loan to Lil' Jake, the hip-hop artist/designer.

Governor of California- Jerry Brown

Still strikingly handsome at 77, Bachardy can be spotted riding his bicycle around LA. He remains a prolific artist. Bachardy is fond of saying that he is completely Isherwood's creation, but Isherwood's writing also was shaped through the openness of their relationship. I rather love him.

Recent self portrait

Born On This Day- May 17th... Composer Alfred Éric Leslie Satie

In the early autumn of 1976, I had a brief, but very intense affair with a still world famous classical guitarist. A class act, he spirited me away from NYC to Cape Cod for 3 days of hot sex, guitar breaks, food & wine, & more hot sex. During our rest periods he would play for me. One of the compositions that really struck me & made me temporarily forget his other gifts, was Erik Satie's Gymnopodie #1. This piece was written for piano & the arrangement for guitar was by my new buddy. I still listen to his recording of it & I can remember the salt air, & the sweat from our extended weekend.

Dadaist, absurdest French composer & pianist Erik Satie, was contemporary of Ravel & Debussy. he collaborated with Jean Cocteau to create the ballet Parade (1917) for the Ballet Russes, with set designs by Pablo Picasso . He knew, worked with or influenced most of the artists,  writers & musicians in Paris when it was the cultural capital of the world. He is credited with nearly every avant-garde movement of the 20th century.Satie was  influential in the fields of minimalism & ambient music,&  the use of piano music-to-film synchronisation.

Satie referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning someone who measures sounds) preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.

In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the Dada 391 to the American culture chronicle- Vanity Fair.

Satie was an incredibly private & eccentric man. He was known to enter a room & sit without removing his hat, coat or gloves, & always with a brand new umbrella.

After his funeral 1925, his friends entered the tiny room he had occupied for 27 years but had never allowed anyone else to enter. Along with dust & cobwebs, they found huge quantities of umbrellas, many never used, as well as large numbers of unknown compositions hidden all over the room.

People Who Need People... Born On May 17th- Songwriter Bob Merrill

I possess a great passion for the art of the popular song. I have a large library of books by & about 20th century songwriters including everyone from Irving Berlin to Sting, Occasionally mentioned as one of the worst songwriters of all time based on his penchant for coming up with best selling novelty songs: If I’d Known You Were Comin’, I'd Have Baked a Cake, Honeycomb, How Much Is That Doggie In the Window?, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania & Mambo Italiano.

Unfair when Bob Merrill is responsible or the music or lyrics for successful Broadway musicals: New Girl In Town, Take Me Along, Carnival, & Funny Girl. But, by the other turn, he gave us the monumental flops: Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Henry, Sweet Henry, Sugar, & The Red Shoes. He also wrote the book & lyrics for the Angela Lansbury vehicle Prettybelle , & the music & lyrics for the Robert Preston musical The Prince of Grand Street , both of which closed during their Boston tryouts. He was nominated for the Tony Award 8 times, but never won. He was nominated for an Oscar for the song- Funny Girl.

Merrill finally tired of the Broadway grind & turned to writing screenplays: the 1975 film Mahogany, starring Diana Ross, WC Fields & Me, with Rod Steiger; Chu Chu & the Philly Flash with Carol Burnett; & Portrait of a Showgirl, starring Rita Moreno, Leslie Ann Warren & Tony Curtis.

Suffering from depression, Bob Merrill took his own life on February 17, 1998 in Los Angeles, California.

Born On This Day- May 16th... Wladziu Valentino Liberace

“You know that bank I used to cry all the way to? Well, I bought it.”

Here is the craziest part.. the Husband & I briefly lived in Las Vegas (long story), & even nuttier, we didn’t have an automobile. I would actually walk in the 100 degree heat to the theatre that I was working for. There were no sidewalks. It was just me & the lizards. My route took me right by the Liberace Museum, just a few blocks from our condo. I always glanced in & I enjoyed the camp factor.

When someone seems too obviously & outrageously gay, & yet people in my life seem to not get it, my response is often- “He attended Liberace  Community College”.

Overheard on the Max Train:
Older Gay Guy: That guy is so gay.
Other Guy: Totally gay.
Older Gay Guy: Liberace gay.\

Ironic then, the man spent his life time hiding the truth & denied being gay to the very end.

Liberace was an international superstar dating back to the early 1950s. He averaged $5 million a year in income for more than 35 years. The 1978 Guinness Book of World Records identified Liberace as the world's highest paid musician.

He was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace in a Milwaukee suburb in 1919 to poor parents. He was classically trained on the piano as a youth & made his concert debut as a soloist at age 11. As a teenager during the depression, he played piano in speakeasies to make money for his family.

In 1940, Liberace moved to New York. His charm & piano skills paid off. Within 7 years he was touring the hotel clubs. The story might have ended there, except that Las Vegas & TV discovered Liberace’s charms. By the late 1940s he began playing extended runs in Las Vegas. He would appear at the casinos in Vegas regularly for the rest of his life. As Sin City grew, so did Liberace's fame.

Liberace appearances on TV cemented his superstar status. In the early 1950s, Liberace had a variety show on TV, where he would play his elaborate piano, sing & dance a little, & praise his mother Frances, who was always in the audience, & make jokes about the show’s band leader his brother- George. His TV show was a huge hit, & was carried by more stations than I Love Lucy.

In 1954, the year I was born, Liberace played to capacity crowds at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, & Soldier Field in Chicago. In 1955 he opened at the Riviera in Las Vegas for $50,000 per week, becoming the city's highest paid entertainer. Liberace became a true superstar. He bought lavish mansions, remodeled them extravagantly, & filled them with ornate pianos, antiques, & over the top furniture. He even had a piano shaped swimming pool.

Liberace's musical repertoire included a unique mix of classical, movie themes, cocktail jazz, & sentimental ballads. He knew thousands of songs & could play almost any request from the audience. He would edit classical pieces to under 5 minutes: "I took out the boring parts. I know just how many notes my audience will stand for. If there's any time left over, I fill in with a lot of runs up & down the scale."

He commissioned more elaborate costumes as the years went by. Eventually he was spending $40,000 every year on bigger, flashier, & more opulent costumes. On various tours, he wore a cape made with $60,000 worth of chinchilla, a tuxedo embedded with diamonds spelling out his name, & a King Neptune costume covered in pearls & sea shells weighing 200 pounds. He had large rings shaped like a candelabra & a grand piano, each studded with diamonds. He was the Elton John of his time.

He added showgirls, jugglers, singers, giant water fountains, light shows, a full orchestra, & even an elephant. During many of his shows he flew above the stage from a cable in a feather cape. He toured with a grand piano covered with thousands of glittering mirror tiles.

Liberace emphatically denied his homosexuality throughout his career. He evidently thought that coming out of the closet would hurt his popularity, & his female fans refused to acknowledge the obvious. But his denials unraveled when Liberace was sued for palimony in 1983 by his “chauffeur”- Scott Thorson, who had been living with Liberace for years. Liberace had Thorson on the payroll, dressed him up like himself, & paid for plastic surgery to have Thorson look like a young version of himself. But even this bizarre scandal didn't  put a dent in Liberace's popularity. The case was eventually settled out of court for less that $100,000.

In the 1970s, Liberace moved to Las Vegas, where he was the highest paid performer in the city. Las Vegas is a city built on fantasy, superficiality, & unbridled spending Liberace's calling cards. Both Las Vegas & Liberace proved the same motto: Nothing succeeds like excess.

Liberace was at the apex of his career in the mid-1980s. At Radio City Music Hall he had 3 extended engagements. From 1984-86, he sold out 56 straight shows. Liberace called his Radio City shows "the fulfillment of a dream & the culmination of my forty years in show business." Liberace’s massive fortune continued to grow. He owned houses all over the world & had all of his clothes made especially for him. He even had the front of a Rolls Royce attached to the front of a VW Beatle so he could drive both of his favorite cars at once.

Liberace was in a steady relationship with Jamie Wyatt when the gay world was shaken by AIDS. Liberace discovered that he was HIV positive. In the press, he attributed his weight loss to the popular watermelon diet. After a last tour to promote his new book- The Things I Love, Liberace fell gravely ill. He spent 4 days in hospital before it was decided that the best thing would be for him to go home & die comfortably in his own surroundings. Liberace spent his last days at home with his 27 dogs, watching episodes of The Golden Girls. His family & partner were by his side when Liberace died of a cardiac arrest, brought on by AIDS, on February 8th 1987. Only then did the world find out about his hidden life & illness.

Liberace chose a life where showmanship & flamboyance were his mainstay. His lust for everything fabulous, his showmanship & his talent, touched the hearts of his many fans & influenced a long line of artists from Elvis to Adam Lambert. Liberace proved that being fabulous can be a life unto itself.

Steven Soderbergh's movie version of the Liberace/Scott Thorson story is being filmed starring Michael Douglas & Matt Damon.

Born On This Day- May 14th... Post Apocalyptic Favorites: David Byrne & Bobby Darin

In November of 2005, The Oregonian's Music Critic- David Stabler honestly wrote of the music that he wished to played at his funeral & why. He then implored his readers to submit 3 of their own choices. Mine was published & I could not have been more delighted because I am a publicity whore. If I can't see my image on the screen, I find some solace in seeing my name in print.

Click if you want it bigger...

Today marks the birthday of a pair of artists: David Byrne & Bobby Darin, that are very important to me. So much so that I included them both in my own list of songs for my own memorial party (there will be no funeral, please):

Procession: Once In A Lifetime by Talking Heads
Recessional: Beyond The Sea by Bobby Darin
Service: Aquas de Marco- Antonio Carlos Jobim

Runners-up & I wish to have included at the party:
I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown
God Only Knows by Brian Wilson
If I Had A Boat by Lyle Lovett

It is hard for me to to erase the memory of Kevin Spacey 's ghastly performance as Bobby Darin in the offensive film- Beyond The Sea from my hard drive.

David Byrne, one of the most important musicians in my considerably long life. He looks a bit like the Husband.

There Once Was An Old Queer Named Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea green boat,

They took some honey, & plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

& sang to a small guitar,

'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?'

They sailed away, for a year & a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

& there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'

So they took it away, & were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, & slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

& hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

It is as simple as ABC to take joy in a gay 19th century writer named as the notable innovator of nonsense.

Today marks the 199th birthday of Edward Lear, an important English illustrator & landscape painter, but more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse & for his perfect limericks. His genius is clear in his nonsense poems, with a world of peculiar, phantasmagorical, preposterous creature in nonsense word, with a dash of deep underlying melancholy. Their quality is matched in the limerick & his pen &ink drawings.

Lear was a homosexual who suffered all his life from ill health & depression that he named- “The Morbids”.

He mostly lived abroad. Even though he was naturally timid, he was a constant & courageous traveler who explored: Italy, Greece, Albania, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, India & Ceylon. An indefatigable artist, he produced great number of pen & watercolor sketches of great topographical accuracy. He made his living from these pieces & large oil paintings.

After his nomadic life he lived with his celebrated cat –Foss in San Remo, on the Mediterranean coast, at a house he named "Villa Tennyson." For companions he counted on a circle of friends, correspondents, & his chef- Giorgis. Foss died in 1886 & was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888. Lear's funeral was a sad, solitary affair; not one of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.

In his lifetime, Lear published 3 volumes of bird & animal drawings, 7 illustrated travel books, 4 books of nonsense: The Book of Nonsense (1869), Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany & Alphabets (1871), More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, & Botany (1872), & Laughable Lyrics (1877), plus a posthumous release- Queery Leary Nonsense (1911).

There was an Old Man on a hill,
Who seldom, if ever, stood still;
He ran up & down,
In his Grandmother's gown,
Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.


The Post Apocalyptic Bohemian: Stephen
He liked men for no tangible reason
A frontal lobotomy
Cured him of sodomy
But ruined his plans for the season.

Born On This Day- May 11th... Fashion Icon- Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani

I have had a hard time getting around the notion of why it would be difficult to come out if you were a successful fashion designer. It is similar to being a closeted chorus boy or proffesional figure skater. Really?

It's no surprise that of all the great gay fashion designers to have chosen to be open about their gayness in recent years: Versace, Tom Ford, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Valentino should be the last to come out, because being out on the leading edge has never been the style of the designer who burst on to the fashion scene in 1959 & quickly established himself as the favorite of the ladies who lunch.


The "secret that is not a secret", is what Valentino's partner in business & in life for 50 years- Giancarlo Giammetti called it, in an feature on the designer in an issue of Vanity Fair in 2004.


Giammetti has run the business side of Valentino's fashion house until their retirment in 2008. Giammetti: "Ours was not a story of money or fashion. It was a story of love. There has never been an article about us in this sense. I think the world has changed a lot, and that once it would have been embarrassing to read but it's not any more."

Valentino: "Giancarlo & I understand each other, but his character is the opposite of mine. There are only 3 things that I know how to do: make a dress, decorate a house & receive guests ..."


Giammetti: “We were lovers for 22 years. Now it's a fraternal love, a relationship with nothing sexual in it. Yet a great love remains, ancient, surviving."


Their affectionate but testy relationship began when the pair met at a cafe in Rome in 1960. Giammetti claims if you added up the days they have spent apart since meeting, it amounts to only 2 months.


Altough they are open about being gay, Valentino & Giammetti are prudish in their perceptions. Bruce Hoeksema, Valentino's assistant for the past 15 years: "When Giancarlo sees male couple kissing in a restaurant he says, 'Disgusting!'. If he sees 2 men holding hands on the street, 'Queers!'."


The Husband & I caught the documentary- Valentino: The Last Emperor on Logo one Saturday morning. Watching the diminutive, majestically coiffed, hidden-eyed, orange-tinted, ill-tempered, impatient absolute monarch- Valentino was like enjoying chocolate & Champagne until that queasy moment arrives when you realize you’ve consumed far too much.


He travels exclusively on his own jets & yachts with a full entourage.

One of the very few things we have in common,Valentino adores dogs. He named a second line of clothing after his late pug Oliver. Today Valentino has pugs: the mother, Molly; her sons, Milton & Monty; & her daughters, Margot, Maude & Maggie. When traveling on his 14-seat jet, 3 cars are needed to move Valentino & his group to the airport: one to move Valentino & Giammetti, another for the luggage & the staff, & one to transport 5 pugs, Maude, the 6th canine, always travels with Valentino.

Born On This Day- May 11th... The Great Irving Berlin

On a late summer evening in 1978, a jaw-droppingly handsome young man with deep blue eyes, stood straight up lower center stage, & with a sweet pure tenor, sang the 1924 Irving Berlin tune- What’ll I Do? for an audition. I was impressed with his good looks & his talent. I cast him. A year later this young man would tell me that he was in love with me & wanted to spend every moment with me until the end of his life, while Harry Nillson sang What'll I Do on my stereo in the background. This handsome man would eventually become my Husband & I would spend more than half of my life at his side.

This is the man who auditioned to become my husband by singing an Irving Berlin song, circa 1978.

Irving Berlin wrote for Broadway & Hollywood. He composed 17 complete scores for Broadway musicals & revues, including the phenomenal score for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. Among the Hollywood movie musical classics with scores by Irving Berlin are TOP HAT, FOLLOW THE FLEET, ON THE AVENUE, ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND, HOLIDAY INN, THIS IS THE ARMY, BLUE SKIES, EASTER PARADE, WHITE CHRISTMAS & THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS. His songs have provided memorable moments for other films, from THE JAZZ SINGER in 1927 to HOME ALONE in 1991. Among his many awards are Grammys, 2 Tony Award & the Academy Award for WHITE CHRISTMAS in 1942.

He was born 103 years ago today... Irving Berlin, not the Husband. 

Gone is the romance that was so divine.
'tis broken and cannot be mended.
You must go your way,
& I must go mine.
But now that our love dreams have ended

What'll I do
When you are far away
& I am blue
What'll I do?

What'll I do?
When I am wond'ring who
Is kissing you
What'll I do?

What'll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?

When I'm alone
With only dreams of you
That won't come true
What'll I do?

What'll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?

When I'm alone
With only dreams of you
That won't come true
What'll I do?

Born On This Day-May 8th... Tom Of Finland

The first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing was in a downtown Spokane used book store near the bus station in the 1970. The image, buried at the back of a men’s physique magazine (this is pre-MEN’S HEALTH, but the same idea), was in a small ad for more “special” publications. It jumped out at me like a great big erection. It depicted a pair of muscular butch men with big chins & broad grins grabbing each other's bubble butts & straining packages while winking at the reader. I was startled & aroused. Tom of Finland's pornographic drawings of hunky, fuck-booted, big butted beefcakes banging the booty in charcoals, pencil, ink, & watercolors had my full attention, & remonded me that I would need to get to a gym.

Tom was born Touko Laaksonen in Kaarina, Finland, in 1920. His work is literally the masturbatory fantasies of a lonely young homosexual Finnish boy; he began drawing in his bedroom in the 1940s. Tom worked as an illustrator in the Finnish advertising business until the early 1970s, when he became a full time gay pornographer. He sold the idea of the male body as a pleased, pleasuring & pleasured thing decades before Calvin Klein thought of it.


Tom's greatest achievement was in drawing gay men who were masculine, happy & proud at a time when they were supposed to be effeminate, neurotic & shameful. This is certainly the reason why so many gay men are Tom of Finland fans. Today's gay porn is just a footnote to Tom of Finland, endless loops of a garage full of “regular guys” with huge cocks & massive pecs having spontaneous, shameless sex at the drop of the monkey wrench. His achievement was more than just making gay men feel good about themselves, or the feel of leather.

Tom had a profound influence on gay culture because, in a world that insisted gay men were sissies, Tom portrayed them as confident, macho & aggressive. Every drawing features a lumberjack, cop, construction worker, cowboy, biker, sailor or soldier. Not a florist, choreographer or dress designer in the bunch. He suggested something more than the masculinity in gay men. Tom turned it around on the straight world; you couldn't be masculine unless you were gay.

Before Tom, no one drew men like he did, unabashed sex objects & sex subjects, giving them exaggerated big chins, strong jaws, full lips, bubble butts, full bulges. His idea of masculinity & virility end up looking so... well, yummy. They seem to be seeking the attentions of the powerful Abercrombie & Fitch photographer Bruce Weber (a big Tom fan), or perhaps a Levi's commercial.

Tom's big break came in the 1950s from Physique Pictorial, semi-legal gay American magazine disguised as a straight men's bodybuilding magazine, which frequently put Tom's men on the cover. Half a century later, & 19 years after his death in 1991, the world has turned around & real men who look like Tom's drawings now appear on the cover of magazines like Men's Health. I was reading one while waiting to get my haircut at 7 Bucks A Whack (the perfect Tom of Finland business name) & the thing was full of advice on how straight men can turn themselves into something out of Tom of Finland.

The big question begs- is it art or is it porn? David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe & Andy Warhol were admirers & collectors of Tom's work. Not bad for a pornographer. He continues to have gallery shows & his work is in the permanent collections of 7 museums, including MOMA. While the debate goes on whether Tom's fuck machines constitute art, anyone can see that the macho men of Tom of Finland are hung… they're hung in museums.


* These were the most post-able images I could dig up.