NYTMagazine: James Franco Narcissus

Oh goodness, I'm a flutter... Is he talking to me? Oh, wait... It's just his reflection. Oh wait - it's HIS reflection... Uhmmm, hmmm - the fact I'm watching this is slightly bothersome... but... uhmmm...

Yuletide Bullying #2: National Portrait Gallery Protest

Man protests Smithsonian's censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video art piece "A Fire in My Belly" on his iPad, is wrestled to the ground, arrested and is banned from the Smithsonian for life, proving that art is dangerous and not to be trusted by it's very keepers. Good luck in trying to keep people out with ipads, different ideas and non-violent strategies.

Yuletide Cultural Bullying

Wow - sometimes backsliding culturally goes so unseen and unnoticed, to where you wake up and think - huh - is it really a 1990-culture war all over again?  Eerily enough - 20 years later - the Smithsonian's move to remove David Wojnarowicz from the Hide/Seek exhibit, namely the "Fire In My Belly" video, is like a sad synchronicity. Something that's not grabbing headlines as it should be, and not angering enough people.  Just in time for Christmas - and even more sadly enough - on World Aid's Day.
It is, however, self-edifying on two fronts - The exhibit is called Hide/Seek: all about that gay and often hidden desire, so subtle and lurking that no one knew (or cared to know). The National Portrait gallery is showing the other "secret history" of America - one that angers conservatives if taught and expressed and causes religious fervor, such that, the artist is hidden under a campaign of intolerance.    The gallery has works that start to evolve and become more prevelant and then show what happened with the epidemic.   Maybe there will be a shift in heart among the intolerant to see an arc of work, then a crisis followed by many deaths.
And secondly, that Wojnarowicz was practically showing the stifling silence and censorship that was killing his friends and loved ones in his work (including this one). It is amazing that this has come up AGAIN. As pointed out in prior posts, the man meant not to go quietly...  He wanted to serve as cultural beacon - and his "One Day" work is very much the anticipated panacea of gay bullying if there ever was one, and this work here is very much a religious work (and derives images from biblical passages and themes) as pointed out by Andrew Sullivan.
So - we must say thank you once again for illustrating our point, Bill Donahue - your timing on World Aid's Day shows you've got real showmanship potential.    Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for you) - the world has a secular device called "the Youtubes", and while we email the Smithsonian to ask that they project this on the biggest wall possible - I'll gladly post this here...

The B in B-list stands for Babulous...

The only way I can explain/rationalize reality TV is that the aliens, thousands of centuries from now, need to have a great punchline to "What the **** happened"? "Real Housewives" and "A-Gays" will be the only existing historical documents, and intergalactic encyclopedias will be updated to show a race of botoxed, bloated, overexposed mutants who posed, preened and recorded bad dance singles. So - Just as Logo's "A" list exists purely as one of those archeological testaments to how vapid and inane gay culture was in the teens of the 21st century, so I hope that the follow up - Brooklyn's B-List will also survive and show what the rest of us were up to:

Miniature Tigers

Sometimes it's difficult to find the pattern or the distinction. I'm never been into the details, but sometimes the details are better than the source... Take for instance this awesome video by Miniature Tigers...

Source Material: The Sexy Chaplin

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.
Charlie Chaplin

What's not to love about Chaplin?   I'm sure he would be honored that millions of twit pics on John Galliano's summer 2011 line featured a Modern Time's take on swimwear.   Sinewy twinks in impractical trunks and pants... Puttin on the ritz.
I preferably think we're regurgitating the tramp for a good reason - it's jazz-age poverty with a delicate undercoating harmless charm, just in time for the recession.    
But lest we forget, Chaplin was a complete stud in that he negotiated his own terms prior to any one else in the film industry, was a pro-immigrant humanist who praised diveresity, had scores of women who maligned him as (heaven forbid) loving oral sex, and was an ardent leftist that got him kicked out of the US.   It's probably a wonder that he's not erased from the US textbooks.

100 Games on 1 face

Terrible!  I've not made a post since NY 10... I've truly fallen off the wagon again in terms of tracking my internet ADD (and corresponding arrested development).  But I can say in my defense that I've been sorta busy on other endeavors at the moment.   So, what do I do now?   I had a whole bunch of blog-worthy stuff in the past few weeks (personal/political service announcements, outrage at lesbian prom's cancelled, horror at persecution abroad and glee at watching flashmobs market glee)... But I also know if this stuff was truly important, I would have made a space for it - but I guess sometimes you just gotta make art that sings it's own song.