WHY IS THIS NOT ALL EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT?!?!
—- Aj
PS - Towels.
Last night, perusing my DVD library to find something to fall asleep to, I realized something: I’m increasingly unable to enjoy movies with outdated technology, specifically, cell phones. I can’t handle old cell phones anymore! And it’s endangering some of my favorite movies!
I was literally thumbing through DVD’s last night being like “no… too many old cell phones”… LITERALLY! My thought process: “Clueless? No… too many glorified walky-talkies… She-Devil? No… Ed Begley Jr.’s car-phone… Teen Witch? No… that car-fax machine is bothersome… Mean Girls? No… the discontinuity of the fact that it pre-dates texting doesn’t sit right with me… Hackers? That entire movie is about outdated technology PLUS I can’t buy Angelina Jolie as a pixie-cutted high-school student!”… I even passed over Superstar and My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding - two movies that have arguably nothing to do with technology, outdated or otherwise - basically because they pre-date the iPhone and, I guess, this makes them seem too far-fetched!
I really don’t understand my psychology behind this, as I have zero.zero problems watching ‘period pieces’… it might have something to do with being able to enjoy intangible nostalgia but not tangible nostalgia? That can’t be right as there is no one whose body and soul long for the 90’s than I. I really need to crack the psychology about this!
90’s homosexual teen nostalgia: I think the first blatantly gay movie I saw as a kid was “To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar”. It kind of blew my mind at the time and I took a lot of what I saw in that movie as gospel.
I revisited it the other night, and knowing what I know now, it is a downright WACKADOO appropriation bordering of intentionally broken telephone account of drag culture, not to mention - A FIRESTORM OF LOGISTICAL ERRORS.
Number’s 1 through 100 - WHY WOULD THEY HAVE TRAVELLED IN DRAG?!?! They wouldn’t have!!! They weren’t transexuals and were adamantly NOT transvestites, so there is no reason that they would have made a cross-continental trip in drag, let alone packed contempo-casual outfits suitable for rural wear-and-tear!!! That BLATANTLY misled me as a child.
Also - Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo were hardly dainty. They were linebackers. Maybe this was intentional, to discourage any gender confusion in middle America, although I’m sure there were still plenty of middle-American pigfuckers that didn’t know what was going on.
Something else - THEY NEVER WOULD HAVE TORN UP THAT MAP. I don’t care how disgruntled you are visiting your upper-class hometown, seeing your mother on your old front porch, having her look at you as if you were a terrifying ghost and fleeing back inside, Patrick “Vida Bohemme” Swayze - you would NEVER have torn up that map!
Also, the town of Snydersville/Spidersville had a population of exactly 29.
Also also, the townswomen include an especially Gwynethly-looking Blythe Danner, the mother from “A Christmas Story” and Kathy Geiss.
Also also also, I only NOW get what RuPaul’s character ‘Rachel Tensions’ name means. It just sounded like a punchy name when I was 13, as I was not even aware that racial tensions were a ‘thing’.
That said, it’s still Wesley Snipes’ best work. For real. Shoulda got Oscars for that shit. When him and Vida get tied for Miss New York or whatever, I still DIE when he says “Wushemean TAI?”…
That also said, the International indie call that it was a Hollywood response to, “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” was much, much more authentic, effective, and perhaps most importantly, logistically sound. I mean.
But in the end - To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar - more like To Wong Foor, Thanks For NOTHING, Julie Newmar.
And by that I mean everything. Especially the soundtrack. Featuring the likes of Tom Jones, Chaka Khan and a reunion of the original lineup of LaBelle. Which I totally bought.
—- Aj
New Podcast!!! With Katherine Ryan!!! … & Friends!!!
Listen/Download it HERE: http://bitchsalad.libsyn.com/episode-16-katherine-ryan-friends
The Bitch: Andrew is back! From a weekend entertaining the troops* in the Niagara Peninsula! For a self-dialogue exploring his rampant disdain for Niagara Falls, travel tips for pederasts, a gleeful recount of a night spent perusing isanyoneup, love for Todd Glass, Etta James’ passing and what that means for our ears, why he’s ambivalent about SOPA and PIPA, Madonna’s continued evolution into a full-blown Disney villainess PLUS… a formal announcement of his candidacy for president of Lana Del Ray’s fanclub!
The Salad: Andrew sits down with marvellous ex-pat and future unconsummated wife, KATHERINE RYAN, to discuss why British people are a.) assholes and b.) better than you, the unbridled hack-ness of our first stand-up sets, is Chelsea Handler 36 or a dyslexically 63, a thorough breakdown of “Whitney” (sadly, not the Houston variety), how she doesn’t want any more Canadian comics to move to England, working with Matt LeBlanc, how everyone thinks the cast of “Friends” are their friends, and… exactly WHO are the White Lipped Beans?
*no troops were entertained. Just though ‘generally fat, unruly civilians’ didn’t sound as heroic.
I’m aware that I’m a little behind the times in posting this, but I want to emphasize how very happy I am that I’m not in this funsaver-snapped picture of Justin Bieber and his mother bewilderingly shuffling through Toronto Pride, circa 2006.
Because the reality is, I so totally could have been. It was my first or second pride living in the city, when I would ACTUALLY go out during the day.
Also - Justin Bieber’s mother is younger than him.
Last night I hosted a show, and in attendance was Josh “Sweet Home Alabama/probably other things” Lucas.
After the show, the exact same scene unfolded between him and I that happened between him and Reese, above.
So basically, guys, what I’m saying is, I’m in love and moving to Alabama. Thanks in advance for your blessing.
GPOY - The Monday after spending a weekend telling jokes in Niagara Falls.
But actually - apparently Jim Carrey’s daughter, Jane, is on this season of American Idol. This was Jennifer Lopez’ reaction.
In other news: I’m still probably not going to watch it this season, again.
My new favorite thing in life.
A girl group named “Cake”? Consider me already signed up. With an epileptic member in green velvet named Janette Jacobs having a minor seizure? Uhhhh, YES. Singing the original version of the song that plays over the closing credits of ‘She-Devil’. I’M YOURS.
So, this is pretty amazing. Todd Glass - a brilliant, widely-respected journeyman comic - just trampled out of the closet.
This threw me for somewhat of a loop as I’ve been reasonably cut-in on who’s in the comedy closet, and had never even so much as heard his name whispered about… and given that his general demeanor and appearance is reminiscent of the father from “A Christmas Story”, I was never exactly onto his scent, as it were.
Anyway - I cannot offer enough congrats to him for doing so. It’s something that personally resonates to me as a gay man, as a comic and particularly as a gay comic.
[You:] “I get your need to obey the rule of the 3’s, but that was just redundant”.
If only it were. A gay comic is a comic that makes the choice to let their sexual orientation inform their comedy. I want to emphasize that this is a choice - when I started doing comedy, I can remember making a very cognizant choice that I was going to talk about this shit on stage, because I guess it occurred to me that “don’t ask, don’t tell” wasn’t the best policy for comedy and I was going to be ‘real’, whatever that means. I also entertained the choice of NOT doing that… or angling myself at more generalized material, to be clear…
My first few years, doing 7 minute spots in a cosmopolitan setting, it was a cakewalk - enough people in the audience had the point of reference to comprehend what I was talking about and be entirely comfortable with it. I’d even go so far to say it was an asset, if only because it set me apart from the 12 or so amorphous white dudes with interchangeable material who would have been on the same bill.
As I enter the thick of my sophomore term in comedy, it’s very apparent that is just not the reality at ALL. In the world of road standup comedy, the loudest, lowest common denominator rules, and about 99.9% of the time the long & short of it is that they’re not going to have an immediate enough point of reference to relate… and they’ll lose interest, sometimes actively. In other words - these suburban fire-breathing mongoloids don’t know any gays in real life, won’t have heard of GrindR, so if you’re planning on investigating the racist nuances thereof, they’re probably going to start talking to each other, and if you’re really lucky, heckle you.
Audiences aside, from an executive standpoint, you’re largely relegated to a novelty act. And if anyone ever tries to tell you that there’s a ‘gay slot’ that they need to fill, punch them in their retarded face and tell them it’s a myth. Quite simply, there aren’t enough of us to require any sort of affirmative action.
So what can Todd look forward to now that he’s out ‘da closet on the stage? Playing yearly all-gay shows called things like “OUTLaugh”, “Laughing Out Proud” and “Gay Guffaws” alongside drag queens and lesbian monologuists (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those, FYI)… being reduced to a homosexual archetype if his fellow comics ever need it for call-back filler… having a quotient of his audience desert him, not because they’re necessarily homophobic, but because “this isn’t what [they] signed up for”… and MORE!
That said, the few times I have had to muzzle myself and play neutral, I feel like I’m trying to smuggle heroin over the border, and no matter how disastrous a road gig has gone where maybe I should have slipped a toe back in the closet, I’ve slept soundly that night.
So I commend Todd Glass for providing another shade of grey in our ongoing evolution… and for being a generally awesome comic. See you at “OUTLaugh”!
—- Aj
