Happy Birthdays

Happy Belated Birthday to the poetic master of song, Leonard Cohen. (He turned 75 yesterday.) And Happy Birthday to Johnette Napolitano--the underrated lead singer of the underrated band, Concrete Blonde--covering Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows."

If I had to pick one video that purely and succinctly sums up the way I most often view life, this may be it.

Idiots of the Week ~ Republican Tea Baggers!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Following on the heels of their choice to have April Fool's be the day they decided to reveal their alternative budget, the Republicans continue their irony-deaf attempts to show Americans how wrong Obama's policies are for the country. Of course, they have every right to do so, every right to protest. And they're planning a big protest for April 15, tax day. Legitimate enough. But their theme for the protest: a riff on the Boston Tea Party, complete with calls to "tea bag" Obama, and everyone else. First off, as Bob Cesca on The Huffington Post, and others, have pointed out, the Tea Party analogy isn't quite right. But even if the aim of the protest was in synch with the meaning of the original Boston Tea Party, when you put "tea bagging" into your slogan, well, the protest automatically becomes a joke. The best part of the joke is that those who created it--the perpetually humorless right wing--clearly had no idea what they were doing. You mean tea bagging has a double meaning???? Uh-oh. So, for those who are still clueless about the alternative meaning of tea bagging, here are some clues:



A "Prison Break" star attempts to explain to an obviously clueless Regis, only to have in-the-know Kelly cut to a commercial break. Presumably, Regis now understands that Lipton's aren't the only tea bags in town.



Here, a FOX newswoman earnestly explains tea bagging; cruelly, she didn't share this explanation with the FOX male talking heads, who are urging, without giggling, the FOX faithful to tea bag en masse.



For those Republicans who still need visual aids to comprehend what they've done, Andy Cobb provides remedial education, complete with illustrations.

It will be difficult for the Republicans to top this, but i'm sure they have the balls to do it.

Happy Birthday, Emmylou

Happy Birthday, Emmylou. Still going strong at 62.

I Kissed a Girl X 2

Gay boy versions of the ubiquitous Katy Perry hit. I liked kissing girls, but I like kissing boys better.

Kittens Inspired by Kittens

I don't know why this is perfect and demands repeated viewings, but it is and it does.

My Favorite Anchors

I was having one of those days when everything, for no particular reason, seemed overwhelming and pointless. It was gray and drizzly outside. My mood matched the weather. Then I watched this video. It's silly, in the very best sense of the word. Here are two people who decided to make the most of a small gap in their time to do something simply for the fun of it. What emerges, along with the surprising and hilarious choreography, is so warm, funny, and affectionate that it snapped me--for the moment, at least--out of my Tuesday funk. The commercial break ends, they go back to their more serious jobs, the news marches on. But it's a reminder that the smallest of things can suddenly make life seem a little more charmed and precious.

Bravo, Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, for putting a smile on a lot of people's faces. Keep up that routine!

The Principal's Office ~ Dirty Dancing

"Is this too close?" Ah, how times have changed since I was in high school. From truTV's "reality" show, The Principal’s Office.

What About Gay Marriage?

"It's this woodworking project. It keeps falling apart." That explains it all.

RIP, Eartha Kitt

We'll miss you, Miss Kitt.

12 Saddest Songs Ever? A Countdown . . .

The Yahoo! Music Blog recently featured a list of the 20 Most Heartbreaking Songs of All Time! It's a pretty good, sniffle-worthy list, featuring such sob song experts as The Everly Brothers, Billie Holiday, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Roy Orbison, and George Jones. Since I like nothing better than a throbbingly sad song (so much more spiritually uplifting than a sappy happy song), I tried to come up with my own list, limiting it to a dozen (in a nod to the 12 days of Christmas, with sad songs replacing true love gifts and candle lighting), to songs with decent videos on YouTube, and to artists who already have a place in my iPod shuffle.

Without further ado, Saddest Song #12:

If self-love is the greatest love of all, then self-pity must be the greatest pity of all, and no one does that better than Morrissey and The Smiths. "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" is one of my Smith favorites, the ultimate ode to anyone who's felt thoroughly unloved at some point, which must include just about everyone. The story is old, I know, but it goes on . . .

Saddest Song #11: 

Before they were cool again, the Carpenters were a joke, but, when I was a child and playing their records over and over, I wasn't in on the joke. When I was about 11, I wrote a play about juvenile delinquents which my friend, Carol, and I performed in my basement. "Bless the Beasts and Children" was my theatrical soundtrack choice. Everyone now knows that beneath the Carpenters' squeaky clean facade and soft pop arrangements deep sadness lurked, but, at age 11, I was unaware of Karen's personal struggles. I was an irony-free, first-time-around listener. Her voice spoke directly to by budding melancholic self. Without the tabloidy tragedy of Karen's death, would the Carpenters have been cool enough to warrant a 90s tribute album? Maybe not. But songs like "Superstar"--their most exquisitely sad and timeless single--are freestanding. So never mind that Karen's skirt looks like a shower curtain in this performance. Move past the kitsch to hear the voice. It won't be matched. (Although this cover of "Superstar" by Sonic Youth certainly has its gloomy merits.)

Saddest Song #10:

Jeff Buckley, the beautiful young man with the beautifully unique voice, silenced too soon. It's a Leonard Cohen song, covered by many, but Jeff will always own "Hallelujah." This version is rough around the edges, naked, unmistakably poignant.

Saddest Song # 9:

Though written to commemorate those killed on 9/11, "If This Is Goodbye" is subtle enough to be a universal meditation on loss and the simple power of love even when the meaning of life seems most fragile and unknown. Performed by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, two mature artists who know a few things about understatement, with Mark's haunting guitar playing, the song, which appeared on their duet album All the Roadrunning, sends a fresh shiver of recognition down my spine each time I hear it.

Saddest Song # 8:

Bruce Springsteen is a master at capturing the lost dreams of youth, the human mistakes and life realities that can kill hope even as his narrators look romantically back at their glory days, days that vanished before there was time to realize that those brief, careless joys of youth were as good as it was going to get. "The River" is probably my favorite Springsteen song, and this live reinterpretation is even more sadly haunting than the studio version from the 1980 album.

Saddest Song # 7:

In the spirit of holiday shopping during tough economic times, a 2-for-1 Special for Saddest Song # 7. Nina Simone and Tammy Wynette aren't obvious musical soul mates, but these two songs--"If You Knew" and "'Til I Can Make It On My Own"--ache with need and love in a similar way, and both artists strip them down to their essence. They both knew a thing or two about heartbreak, and it shows in their guileless performances.

Saddest Song # 6:

Lucinda Williams's "World Without Tears": never has the word "if" been used more powerfully or poignantly.

Saddest Song # 5:

Janis Ian's At Seventeen was a naked tribute to everyone who's ever felt like an ugly duckling outcast in high school, and apparently that was a lot of us, since the 1975 song was a huge hit and still resonates today. Ian became an unlikely star in the 60s, at age 15, with her song about interracial romance, "Society's Child." (Think of Britney Spears, then think of her opposite, that's Janis Ian as a teen performer.) I was a devoted fan of Ian's melancholy, often minor-key 70s albums. Though I knew nothing of romantic love at the time, I assumed it would be as gloriously gloomy as her songs. Then, I grew up, she fell off my radar screen, and her additional hits didn't materialize. I was reintroduced to Ian in the 90s when she became an essayist for the gay (aha!) magazine, "The Advocate"--her funny, outspoken columns about life with "Mr. Lesbian" were nothing like the somber Ian I imagined from her music, but that was appropriate since I'd also come out and was no longer the isolated teen seeking musical angst in which to wallow. But, after hearing her in a solo concert in a Burlington, Vermont chapel a few years ago, I reconnected to the music, too, and remembered what first drew me to it. "Jesse," her plea for a lover's return is simple, spare, and timelessly haunting. It was my favorite song of the night, and the video reminds me why.

Saddest Song # 4:

It took a while for George Michael to get respect as a pop artist. Wham! hits like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go didn't inspire one to think much beyond, "Remind me not to wear short-shorts," and, "That's the gayest dancing I've ever seen." I loathed Wham! with a passion and therefore was reluctant to listen to any George Michael songs even after Wham! was kaput. I heard a few things I liked on his solo albums "Faith" and "Listen Without Prejudice," yet I still wasn't ready to fully listen without prejudice until "Jesus to a Child" from "Older." I remember first hearing it on the car radio and being floored by its tender beauty. "Older" was an appropriate title for the album--Michael hadn't been heard from in a few years (record company legal problems partly responsible for the silence), and the album showed a new, subdued maturity far removed from Wham! short-shorts go-go-ing. Though Michael had yet to publicly come out (that would take a bathroom bust a few years later), I read it as his coming out. Songs on the album clearly speak to a (male) lover's death, and I found them incredibly moving. The album wasn't a huge critical or popular success in the US, but it should have been. In recent years, Michael has gotten more attention for his personal traumas than for his music, but songs like "Jesus to a Child" and "You Have Been Loved" are a reminder of what a great, emotionally sensitive artist he can be.

Saddest Song # 3:

With Billie Holiday it's not so much the individual song but what she brings to it. She doesn't have to sell a song. She seems to live inside it. Her performances of "Fine and Mellow" and "Strange Fruit" are both so extraordinary--and extraordinarily different--I couldn't pick between them. She delivers the ultimately sad lyrics of "Fine and Mellow" with an almost casual acceptance--love could work out and he might treat me right, but it probably won't and he probably won't--making them all the more poignant. Her obvious joy in playing with other jazz greats almost turns this into a happy blues. "Strange Fruit," on the other hand, is simply devastating. As Billie says, "I don't know, the blues is sort of a mixed up thing, you just have to feel it. Everything I do sing it's part of my life."

Saddest Song # 2:

I'm a fan of Antony and the Johnsons gorgeously fragile album, "I Am a Bird Now," but I thought it was a little far-fetched when a friend told me he'd seen Antony in concert and wasn't the only one weeping in the audience. Antony's unique voice is an acquired taste, but it's quavering vulnerability perfectly suits the songs. Seeing Antony perform combines that vulnerability with the strength that comes from laying out emotions with complete focus and intensity. Antony's riveting performance of Leonard Cohen's If It Be Your Will is one of the highlights of the "I'm Your Man" documentary. And watching Antony at the piano singing "Hope There's Someone" makes me understand the tears. Physically, he doesn't much resemble Billie Holiday, but I sense a spiritual connection in the way they're both able to find the raw beauty inside a song and radiate it outward.

Saddest Song # 1:

If I had to pick one song I know I'll never tire of listening to, it would be this one, "Goodbye," written by Steve Earle. I first heard it on Emmylou's brilliant "Wrecking Ball" album. This version has both Steve and Emmylou. Add regret, broken romance, lost years, a soft breeze and Novembers. Stir. For me it doesn't get sadder better than this.

Goodbye to the 12 Days of Sad Songs.

My Flickr friend, Tim Connor, has come up with some very worthy suggestions for my Saddest Song list. Check them out on his blog. (He was also kind enough to reference my photography work in the same post; Thanks, Tim!) Tim's an excellent photographer and writer on photography, so I encourage anyone to regularly visit his Flickr photostream and his Looking at Photography blog, where you'll find his photography-related insights along with some terrific links.

I'm sure I left some worthy triple-hanky musical tearjerkers off my list, so feel free to post suggestions in the comments section.

Two Great Documentaries

Two of my favorite films in the past year have been documentaries, one chronicling the unusual and poignant long-term relationship between the writer, Christopher Isherwood, and the portrait artist, Don Bachardy, the other an intimate and visually gorgeous portrait of the rock icon, Patti Smith. 

In some ways, Chris & Don: A Love Story and Patti Smith: Dream of Life are very different films, the former a skillfully made though conventional documentary, the latter a meandering artistic life collage with few nods towards standard documentary formats. But they both deal with loss and the wonder of life, even in the aftermath of loss. They grapple honestly with grief yet seem celebratory, defiant even. 

The relationship between Isherwood and Bachardy seemed, on the surface, all wrong. The famous writer well into middle-age beds the pretty young boy, who becomes his boy toy and protégé. And yet, in spite of the age difference, and in some ways because of it, the relationship ultimately worked. Bachardy, while hugely influenced by Isherwood (he even took on Isherwood's vocal mannerisms), developed into his own person with his own artistic interests. Now in his seventies, Bachardy is fit, wise, and completely charming. Seeing his and Isherwood's love through his eyes (literally, since his portraits of Isherwood are a major part of the film) is both historically illuminating and touchingly romantic.

Steven Sebring's portrait of Patti Smith was a dozen years in the making and says as much about his sensibility as it does about Smith's. Every frame has his artistic fingerprints on it and, as such, it's an evocative poetic collaboration between artists, short on biographical details and long on sensibility. The style fits the subject, and I imagine that Smith wouldn't have participated for so long in a project that didn't hold her artistic interest. She's eternally cool and charismatic, aged and ageless, homely and beautiful. Not naturally gifted (as her rudimentary guitar picking and raw, inelegant singing demonstrate) but naturally visioned. She's treated as an icon, but there are wonderfully funny, human moments, like when she returned home to visit her elderly parents in their cow figurine-filled home, and, in my perhaps my favorite scene, when Smith and Flea hang out on a beach and trade peeing in a bottle stories. 

Both films, as different as they are, offer deep meditations on the passage of time, mourning it on the one hand, while featuring people who are living fully in the present. Smith and Bachardy clearly embrace their pasts (and, in their shoes, having lived fascinating lives surrounded by fascinating people, who wouldn't?), but they don't seem nostalgic for any past glories. These aren't "Behind the Music" falls from grace with contrived happy endings. Smith and Bachardy soldier on because they are both still invested in life, in the future. What the films brought most clearly home to me was the worthiness of an artistic life. If, as an artist, you are able to stay engaged and inspired, the passing of youth and the passing of loved ones becomes bearable. There remains something to live for. Love remains. I can't imagine that anyone in middle age (and beyond) who seeks an artful life would not be moved by these exquisitely sad and hopeful films.

Adoring Paul Rudd

I know I'm not the only gay guy who adores Paul Rudd. He's funny, he's sexy without trying too hard, he seems like a genuinely nice guy, he likes to make fun of himself, and, last but not least, he likes to take his clothes off. What's not to love? Another reason we like him is that he comes across as comfortable enough in his sexuality to allow himself frequent homo moments. Take last night's SNL, which Rudd hosted. Pretty much every skit had a gay vibe, or was, like, totally gay (the Beyoncé dancers, featuring Justin Timberlake, for instance). SNL doesn't always go gay inoffensively, but I can't think of another straight actor who can go gay more pleasurably than Paul Rudd. He lets the joke be on him instead of on us. (Not that many of us would mind having Paul on us, or vice versa.) He oozes good-humored tolerance and nonchalant masculinity. And did I mention he likes to take his clothes off? Keep doing what you're doing, Paul. Unless you let success go to your head, you're the perpetual frontrunner for Coolest Straight Guy on Earth. And the SNL digital short, "Everyone's a Critic", with naked (aside from some careful pixilation) Paul and Andy Samberg was really funny.

Here's to Wanda!

I've been a huge fan of Wanda Sykes for a long time. Wanda calls it as she sees it, and is one of those people--like Maggie Smith (not that Wanda's and Maggie's typical dialogues have much in common)--who tickles me by pretty much saying anything. In writing about the aftermath of Prop 8 and race, I listed Wanda as one of our allies. Turns out Wanda is not only for our side, she's on our side. Yes! (How much more satisfying it is to claim someone like Wanda than someone like, say, Larry Craig or Ted Haggard.) During the Join the Impact anti-Prop 8 rally in Las Vegas yesterday, Wanda spoke not only about gay marriage but about her own recent marriage to a woman. Wanda being a lesbian didn't come as too much of a shock to most of us gay folks. There are a number of celebrities who aren't quite publicly out but whom we more or less assume are on the team, or at least very gay friendly. Some may ask: what took her so long to come out? But, as Wanda says at the rally, she didn't go around blabbing about her sexuality yet she didn't exactly hide it, either, and was out to the people around her. More importantly, Wanda has stood up for gay people all along--as evidenced by the YouTube clip on gay marriage--and she's certainly never worked against us, unlike certain closeted, mostly Republican politicians. As Wanda also says, if gay people had equality, we wouldn't need to be standing around holding signs, proclaiming our gayness. We would simply be. Our sexuality would be no more or less visible than straight people's sexuality. The closet would disappear. So would gay activism. But that day's not here yet. Now is the time to be visible instead of invisible. Now is the time to be, like Wanda, pissed off and unwilling to back off until we have the equality we deserve. As Wanda says re: "gay" marriage: it shouldn't even be a debate. It's divorce that's threatening "straight" marriage, not gay people. So I'm not going to knock Wanda for not wrapping herself in the rainbow flag earlier, but I am going to officially welcome her to the team. We're one richer today. 

The (Artificial) War Between Blacks and Gays

No one has more astutely captured the absurdity of the post-election-post-Prop 8-passage "war" between blacks and gays than Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report. Ever since the right wing got wind of a rift between blacks and gays following the big black Yes vote on California's Prop 8, they have been frothing at the mouth to fan the racial flames and start a new culture war that will pit minority against minority and make gay people as scary as they find black people. (Black gay people must be truly terrifying to the white right.) Evangelical wingnut Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, did it the other day with Anderson Cooper on AC360, and Bill O'Reilly can't get enough of the black/gay divide. Nothing makes him more orgasmic than setting up a scapegoating mud wrestling match between the scary blacks and the scary gays.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are moving on. Gay people, white and black, and our allies, white and black, are protesting Prop 8 (and other anti-gay measures passed on election day) across the country, including a nationwide protest November 15. We are speaking out against the Mormon Church (who knew the Mormons are black?!), the big power and money behind Prop 8. We are boycotting businesses that devalued their gay clientele by supporting a discriminatory proposition that shouldn't have been put up for popular vote in the first place. As blowhards like O'Reilly seek to manufacture a distracting culture war, sane straight people like Whoopi Goldberg (who, shockingly, is black!) are speaking out against the real culprit, injustice.

You know something's funny in the world when you compare O'Reilly's clip and Colbert's clip, and Colbert comes off as the rational one. So let the losing right, who's looking for shit to stir up since that's all they've got at the moment, keep fanning the flames. It makes for excellent comedy. The rest of us would be wise not to take the racial bait.

Fired Up, Ready to Go!

I love this clip from Obama's last big rally in Virginia before the election. It's great to see him so relaxed and confident, so down-to-earth and comfortable in his own skin, sharing a human story, showing how something large can grow from the smallest of moments. Fired up, ready to go!

RIP, Yma Sumac

I think it can be safely said that Yma Sumac had a unique voice that will not be easily duplicated.

Idiots of the Week: Morning Joe Co-hosts

There are too many idiots to choose from these days, but I was struck by a video featured on Huffington Post in which "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist hangs around the Upper West Side wearing a McCain/Palin T-shirt. Not too surprisingly, he doesn't find many other McCain supporters in his neighborhood, but, while many passersby make their election preference clear, I didn't hear anything that could be construed as hate speech. When Geist and his cohorts discussed the video afterwards, however, they found it "troubling," the people in it "so close-minded," an example of the "really hostile people on the left." I guess viewers were meant to be shocked by these offensive elitists who believe they're "intellectually superior" to real Americans.

Let's contrast this video with a video of McCain supporters in Pennsylvania. Which is more troubling? Which shows more close-mindedness? Where is the hostility really coming from? Those are questions for you, Willie, and the gang at "Morning Joe."

Do the Monster Mash!

Revisiting Toni Childs

I've been putting some old, nearly forgotten CDs on my iPod lately, among them Toni Childs's "House of Hope" from the early 90s. When one of those songs played in shuffle while I was housecleaning (the only way I can force myself to houseclean is by cranking the tunes), it stopped me in my sweeping and took me back to the emotional place that album used to occupy. Generally, I don't listen to music with the same intensity as I did once upon a time. Perhaps that intensity gets lost along with youth, or perhaps it's more difficult to find music that speaks to the longings of middle age. "House of Hope" spoke deeply to me in the early 90s. The combination of Toni's unmistakable, powerfully yearning voice (she has one of those big love-it or hate-it voices you can identify in one note) and unabashedly emotional lyrics hit me in the spine. It was a lights out, listen alone album. As much as I've changed in the past seventeen years, the songs on "House of Hope" (the title track you may remember from "Thelma & Louise") sound as rawly beautiful to me now as they did then. And I recalled the album dedication to "people who are growing, to people who are just getting by, and to people who are hanging on for dear life." Oh, how uncool and melodramatic, yet, listening to her, I believed she meant it and saw her as a kindred spirit with a fragile ability to cope with life's hurts. 

Since I hadn't heard about her in years, I did a bit of googling and discovered Toni is alive and well, after a long period of unwellness. Her MySpace page features new music (her first album in many years) and videos from recent appearances on Australian TV. On her website, she discusses each of her albums. She said neither her record company nor American reviewers particularly liked "House of Hope," but many people wrote to her about it, telling how the songs helped heal and even save their lives. Eve Ensler, writer of "The Vagina Monologues," was one of the people moved by the album, and Toni contributed "Because You're Beautiful" to Ensler's documentary "Until the Violence Stops." About the new album, Toni says, "I am so pleased and excited about getting another opportunity to make a record I love after all these years." Welcome back, Keep the Faith.