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February 28, 2007
Nothing Like A Dame
Clinton, Foster, Salonga and More Set for Nothing Like a Dame 2007
A host of the theatre's leading ladies will take part in the 12th Annual Nothing Like a Dame concert March 19 at the Marquis Theatre. The annual fundraiser benefits The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative of The Actors' Fund of America.
Tickets for Nothing Like a Dame are available by calling (212) 840-0770 or by visiting www.broadwaycares.org.
February 26, 2007
Kate Blogs her way onto the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-clinton/
Oscar Night at the Lesbians!
It’s Monday afternoon in New York, so the Oscars must be over, right? Quick question: Was Jack Nicholson bald in solidarity with Britney? Is she still doing her rehabs a day at a time? I think it’s early Mouseketeer damage, but I feel for her. Can we get a restraining order out on Paris Hilton?
Our little Oscar party had a lovely time with excellent snacks. We thought Ellen did a great job hosting. The estrogen of daytime comedy does cause irony poor blood, but we were proud nonetheless. We loved the little butch outfit she wore, thought the white shoes were dreamy. That last blue outfit, not so much, but two out of three ain’t bad. Loved the American Idol/Al Gore voting joke. Very sly, beautifully constructed. We all screamed when Melissa’s name was announced. Loved the Tammy kiss and Melissa’s passionate, global acceptance speech.
When the proceedings dragged – and there wasn’t enough of Ellen to blame it on her, so stop - our self-appointed clicker and top, switched us over to quick, refreshing inter-lewds of the L-Word. How long was that Celine Dijon singing? I’m sure she’s a lovely person, or a tangy mustard, but she makes my skin crawl and my clicker finger itch. Not in a good way.
Some suggestions for next time. Hosting the Oscars is a thankless job. They’ve tried lots of combinations – straight, black, white, gay, man, woman – but somebody always ends up in tears. If critics think it’s so easy, next time instead of sacrificing another comic on the Oscar stage, how about using one of those precious actors as host? Cut the montages. How about a category for “Best Famous Person Impersonation”? I can’t wait for the movie “The Queen Latifah”.
It was a big weekend for the L-Word. Mega-Millionairess Suze Orman came out in the Sunday New York Times magazine. Stock shares in California Closet dropped drastically. How soon before we are treated to the dire climate predictions of meteorologist/fundamentalist Pat Robertson?
Now that the Oscars are over, I think, it’s on to The March Madness of Women’s History Month!!
February 25, 2007
GLAAD MEDIA AWARDS
We are excited to inform you that the Special Honorees at the New York GLAAD Media Awards are Kate Clinton, Tom Ford and Patti LaBelle. Kate Clinton will be receiving a Special Recognition award.
To learn more about The 18th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and our newest addition in South Florida, please go to: www.glaad.org/mediaawards
February 23, 2007
How Kate Clinton Made Me Gay
Calyx of the Heavens (heavenscalyx) wrote,
Long ago, before the wheel was invented (or, well, possibly somewhat after; I was a life sciences major! what did I know?), I was in college. I picked the wrong college to try first, and wandered around it like a lost soul, and stood outside the college GALA meeting (this was also before bisexuals and transfolk were invented, apparently) in a long black cloak at night under a tree, trying to make my hide in shadows roll and failing repeatedly, for half an hour. I watched the meeting of perfectly normal gay people through the walls of the large glass meeting room in which the introductory meeting was being held -- whose bright idea was that? -- and felt that piquant terror that many geeks feel at the idea of mingling with normal people.
Fortunately, I failed my hide in shadows roll at just the right moment and was found by a wandering pack of science fiction geeks who dragged me off to join THEIR club. None of them, alas, were willing to be gay at me, but I happily shoved the idea of gayness to the back of my head.
Then I went to a different college. I was too busy to try their GLSU meetings, but I eventually found a slightly geeky gay man who worked with me to come out to. I came out to him on one of our long, boring summer afternoons of watching over our brooding ranks of Apple II+ computers (before the invention of the hard drive). He told me the GLSU was a seething mass of politics, so maybe I didn't want to try them. Besides, I told myself, I was bisexual (this was after I invented bisexuality), not a lesbian. Perhaps there was still hope.
The next school year, I lived in a dorm that was next to a set of train tracks. After getting used to the sound of the train running by my back door every hour, I started wandering the town a bit more. One store I walked past on an almost daily basis was Wonderland Records.
I was certain it was a Head Shop.
I wasn't really sure what, precisely, a Head Shop was, but I was certain that it wasn't the sort of place a Nice Catholic Girl like myself should be. (This was before I invented paganism.)
It took me something like six months before I dared cross that Heady threshold.
It wasn't, actually, a head shop or anything of the sort. It was a record store. It sold records. You know, those vinyl disc things that play on phonographs. It also sold cassette tapes, but I didn't have a cassette player, so I didn't even bother looking at those. There was a bargain bin of 8-tracks in the corner.
I looked around the store very carefully. I found a tiny section in the racks near the windows marked "Women's". I thought, "Women's music?" and flipped through it.
I don't remember seeing anything in there except two records by Kate Clinton. One was called Thanks for the Mammaries and the other, Making Light. (This led to later confusion and disappointment when I discovered the blog of the same name.)
There was something deeply subversive and intensely scary about women's comedy, so I fled.
It took me something like six months before I chose Making Light because it had a less intimidating (and revealing) title. I carried it to the cash register with an exaggeratedly casual air, paid the uncaring clerk for it with cash, and ran for the hills. When I got to my closet-like dorm room, I played it.
I laughed and howled and played it again.
The line that stays in my head from that album: when she's talking about removing stuck tampons, she notes, "Fortunately, we have friends to help us."
Over the subsequent years of waffling and confusion, that album was one of those things I returned to like an orbiting comet. It made me wonder what I could be sometime, maybe, possibly. And every return felt a little more like home. I mean dykes! Making jokes about being dykes! How cool was that? And she wasn't mean. Well, not to anyone who didn't deserve it. So much humor about women is based on meanness.
I thought, wouldn't it be nice to be a woman and funny and not mean about other women? It sounds like dykes have so much fun!
(Clearly, Dykes To Watch Out For had not yet been invented. Or, well, it had. I remember seeing the title on the table of the women's book co-op I went to twice, and wanting to flip through it, but I ran away.)
Meanwhile, I kept getting closer and closer to realizing that being a dyke, being part of dykedom, was what I wanted.
It took me a long time to come around to coming out.
Fortunately, I had friends to help me.
---
Several years ago, while in Provincetown, I bought another Kate Clinton album, this time on CD, in Womencrafts (10% Dyke Discount!). I took it home and forgot it. A month or so ago, I found it again, unwrapped it, and listened to it on the way to work. I laughed and howled and played it again, this time for Akycha.
When I think about lesbians, the first thing I think of is Kate Clinton's voice. I didn't realize this until I listened to this album.
Someday, I'd like to see her perform live. And maybe if I'm brave, I can shake her hand and thank her for helping to make me gay.
February 22, 2007
L-Word
The N-word, the F-word, and a whole Sesame Street of offending words has caused Slur Rehabs to proliferate faster than non-binding resolutions. But lesbians? Heck, we don’t take offense at the L-word. We embrace it, celebrate it, and make it into a smash hit series on Showtime! I love us.
And nothing makes me happier than a Northeast winter snowstorm, a backlog of unwatched L-Words and an at-home with my girlfriend! We watched three Ls in a row one recent, football-less Sunday, and I’m sure that Cybill Shepherd packs a wallop on a week by week basis, but to watch her over a three hour period was completely engrossing. I wore my astronaut diaper. It was multi-purpose.
Cybil’s character is exuberant, joyful, lustful and finally discovering lesbians. I am not current with my L-words again, and maybe Cybill’s character has turned into some kind of freak show - don’t tell me - but she sure was fun to watch opening up. As opposed to say, Judi Densch in Notes on a Scandal. You just wanted to say to her, “Judi, Judi, get a little rainbow flag, march in the Dyke March, watch Cybill in the L-Word. Loosen up.”
Like so many other story lines on the L-Word, the late coming of Cybill’s character is an untold, largely invisible story. A recent article in the New York Times chronicled the increase of sexual activity in naturally occurring retirement centers because of the “popularity of Viagra” as well as “women shedding the idea that sex is shameful.” Most of the women quoted in the article seemed happy for the knowledge, but not about to put it into action. The article also noted “an uptick in homosexual activity” and detailed the lecture given by a sex educator who had been invited to one center to give safe sex information.
Can we augment her talk with some episodes of the L-Word? It’d help those old coot guys more than any Viagra. But since the aging population is predominantly female, just show the Cybill episodes I saw – it might give some of our dear older unsuspectingly Sapphic sisters some ideas!
This was also posted on ourchart.com
February 20, 2007
TGIF
I never thought I’d say this, but thank goddess it’s February. Though it’s the shortest month, it is jam packed – Articulate, Clean, Good-Looking Black History Month, Super Bowl, the Grammies, Valentine’s Day, Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday, bone crushing winter and just in time, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. In its Northeast distribution, SI usually airbrushes in little goosebumps. Not this time. One of the hardest working dreamgirls in the business graces this year’s cover, Beyonce Knowles. I defy you to describe her without using your hands. She makes this white girl inarticulate.
February 13, 2007
Happy V-Day!
Had a blast in New Paltz the other Friday night, as part of the celebration of the opening of the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center. After an obscenely short period of organizing and fundraising time, the building was bought, refurbished and the doors opened with 850 members!! Board chair, Ginny Appuzo, used her organizing experience, inspiring wit and a talented board to push the process forward. Actually they weren’t allowed to process. Their meetings were an hour long.
I stayed at the lovely LeFevre House B and B for the afternoon, did the show to a raucous audience and then attended a reception after, catered by the Culinary Institute of America. Thank god there were a lot of familiar faces – Alix Dobkin! Retts! Judith Turkel! - at the reception or I would have eaten all the dark chocolate caramels with sea salt topping. The Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center has awakened Rip Van Winkle but good. He doesn’t want to miss a thing.
The next day I was off to Dallas for a show produced by the multi-talented Susan Gore. She picked me up at the airport in a hot Chevy truck with decaled flames shooting back from the hood. The gorgeous landmark First Unitarian Church was the site of the night’s fun and was followed by a reception for NCLR. Again I saw lots of familiar and new faces and thus missed out on an amazing cake. I do believe my mother would come from the great beyond and crack me upside the head if I talked with my mouth full. She watches my points.
Texas seemed diminished by the loss of the great Texans, Ann Richards and Molly Ivins. And Anna Nicole Smith too. The Newsweek cover “Girls Gone Wild” does not begin to capture the true wildness of the girls who are gone. And as war rages in Iraq and George decides to turn toward Iran, it’s really the boys who are gone wild.
February 15 is the birthday of that great upstate suffragist, Susan B. “Failure is Impossible” Anthony. We’ll be celebrating the day in our house. My gal pal wears Elizabeth Cady Stanton drag. I’ll be the tall one in the wire rimmed specs. It’s a great scene.
February 05, 2007
Stupor Bowl
Truth be told, and it so rarely is, I generally do the crossword puzzle while my gal pal is watching Sunday football. It’s good for my brain. Until I have to Google my inadequacies because I'm really not up on my lakes in Australia. But the Super Bowl is different. It’s all about the snacks and a chance to wear black Capri slacks around the house. And dance to Prince.
Our company was a raucous gang of gals and one guy who left after the first play, and some snacks. As I was trundling platters back and forth, I heard shrieks about the Bears quarterback, “How did he get this far? Why can't they get rid of him? Oh no! He fumbled it! What is he thinking? He’s terrrrrrrrrrrrible.” It reminded me of the screams during the State of the Union blather. Without benefit of Madame Speaker.
The world might being going to hell in a lovely hand basket, but the story in the Sunday NYT Magazine was on Designer-Dog fights. The article was to get folks fired up about the annual February Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. People with way too much time on their hands are getting pugs to mount Yorkshires, begetting pugshires; beagles to mount bassets, begetting bagels and Labradors to mount poodles, begetting labradoodles. In the article, poodles come off like slutty, species-traitors.
Luckily there was no mention of that anti-gay marriage trope that same sex marriage leads inevitably to man-on-dog sex. Ex-senator, Rick Sanctimoron loved to bring that one up a bit too often. I admit to quickly scanning the article for any references to Gayshires, fagadoodles or, if it were a pug top – Puggots. As usual, lesbians were completely left out of the story, so there were no lesbidoodles or dykeadors. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the cat show.
May I offer you some Kibble?
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