LGBTQ news and entertainment
Immersive Van Gogh (photo: Michael Brosilow)
Immersive Van Gogh (photo: Michael Brosilow)
Immersive Van Gogh (photo: Michael Brosilow)
Immersive Van Gogh (photo: Michael Brosilow)
Randy Rainbow drops his first Biden parody video with his take on the classic “Mr. Sandman.” But in this iteration, Randy is getting randy to get his vaccination:
Mr. Biden – bring my vaccine Keep me protected from COVID-19 Tell me the trick to how I might earn a Fix of that magic Pfizer or Moderna
Our musical hero also has a bit of ‘Trump PTSD’ to cope with along the way, but let’s face it – who doesn’t? Hit the play button and enjoy. Happy Tuesday!
Some news items you might have missed: • The Advocate: Click over to read the story of Dontai Carmon, who comes out at the intersection of Black, gay and autistic. • Stonewall Gazette: Mykal Kilgore (lead image) is the first openly gay man to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of “Best Traditional R&B.” Kilgore, an award-winning Broadway performer, received the nomination for his single, “Let Me Go”, which is the first release from his debut album, “A Man Born Black.”
• BosGuy: Our favorite Boston-based LGBTQ blogger offered this tasty recipe for pasta with tomato and feta cheese. Who can’t use a new, easy recipe? • Kenneth-in-the-212: In this week’s Mugshot Monday post, Joshua James, 24, threw a 3.5 foot alligator through a Palm Beach County Wendy’s drive-thru window nearly four months ago, according to Florida Fish Wildlife and Conservation officials. He was also charged with illegally possessing an alligator and petty theft. 
Joshua James (mugshot)
A whole fight just happened at bath & body works 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I’m dying pic.twitter.com/ocumzj8G9f
— Genevieve (@gendenslow) March 6, 2021
InstaHunk Dan Tai (via Instagram)
Singer/actor Duncan James (image via Instagram)Do people not have anything better to do than harass a pop singer’s teenage child?
Former boy bander Duncan James, of the UK group Blue, told The Sun that his daughter Tianie, like a lot of 16-year-olds, is at an age where she’s totally into her phone and being active on social media.
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But James wasn’t expecting his daughter to get trolled by haters about her famous dad being gay. “People can be quite nasty about me being gay and say quite horrible things about the fact that I’m a gay dad,” said James.
The 42-year-old singer and actor says Tianie has received messages like, “Isn’t it disgusting your dad’s gay? How do you feel?”
WTH?
“‘You must be ashamed of him,’ and stuff like that, and you’re just like ‘Why are you writing to a kid saying awful stuff like that? Are you really crazy?’ People are just awful.”
James, who came out in 2009, admits he’s had his share of online haters over the years.
“I’ve had quite a lot of people from other countries writing to me in disbelief that I’m gay, saying I’m going to burn in hell, it’s a sin and I’m going to be punished by God,” he shared with The Sun.
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James was recently in UK headlines for a happier reason as he and his boyfriend of two years, Rodrigo Reis, made their TV debut as a couple in February on the popular talk show Loose Women.
The couple explained they met in Reis’s home country of Brazil at an afterparty following a Blue concert. James admits to being smitten with Reis on the spot saying, “I saw him across the bar – he’s very much my type. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s hot.’”
But Reis told the TV viewers he had no idea who James was.
“In Brazil, where I’m from, they [Blue] are not so famous,” shared Reis. “But I knew this guy had to be mine.”
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And two years later, James says life is working out great.
“He’s met my daughter and they really get on, so it’s just fantastic,” said James. “I didn’t identify as gay for many years because of my issues with coming out, but finally I’m happy in my skin and this guy makes me proud to be gay.”
Duncan and his Blue bandmates had a string of hits in the 2000s including this cover of Elton John’s “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.” After their last album had disappointing sales, the group was dropped by its label. The guys don’t plan on releasing new music but do continue to tour (when…there’s not a pandemic happening). Duncan went on to develop a successful career as an actor onstage and television.
Billy Porter in the acclaimed FX series POSE
Hey Pose fam! We made the decision to end @PoseOnFX after 3 seasons because we reached the intended ending of our story. This experience has been life changing. THANK YOU is too small a word. And yet, it’s what is in my heart. Hope to see you in May 2nd when we debut. #PoseFX pic.twitter.com/P9fMZfrS06
— Steven Canals (@StevenCanals) March 5, 2021
A message from executive producer and co-creator @StevenCanals on the third and final season of #PoseFX, premiering May 2. pic.twitter.com/f3mfyK3SEQ
— PoseFX (@PoseOnFX) March 5, 2021
“‘Write the TV show you want to watch!’ That’s what I was told in 2014 while completing my MFA in screenwriting. At the time we weren’t seeing very many Black and Latino characters — that happened to also be LGBTQ+ — populating screens. And so I wrote the first draft of a pilot the ‘younger me’ deserved. Pose was conceived as a love letter to the underground NY ballroom community, to my beloved New York, to my queer & trans family, to myself.
“I, along with my incredible collaborators, never intended on changing the TV landscape. I simply wanted to tell an honest story about family, resilience, and love. How fortunate am I to have done that for three seasons. I’m filled with gratitude to our intrepid writers, cast, crew, and producers who worked tirelessly to make Pose come to life, humbled by our loyal audience, thankful to the ballroom community who trusted us to tell their story, overwhelmed by the critics who warmly embraced us, and forever indebted to Ryan Murphy, FX, and 20th Television for changing my life.”
The series garnered multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for its first two seasons including a win for Billy Porter for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 2019 Emmy Awards. Pose Season 3 premieres May 2 on FX.
Jacob Chansley (screen capture)
• New York Times: Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man charged with breaking into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and stealing her mail during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, threw a tantrum during a virtual court hearing on Thursday, yelling at the judge and his own lawyers that it wasn’t “fair” that he was still in jail weeks after his arrest. He’s the guy photographed with his feet on Pelosi’s desk. • Stonewall Gazette: The 1999 docudrama Beefcake is an entertaining homage to muscle magazines that were popular from the 1940s to the 1960s. Athletic Model Guild and Physique Pictorial magazine provided not only eye-candy but a way to explore inner desires for millions of gay and bisexual men at a time when homosexuality was illegal. • Boy Culture: Matt Rettenmund writes, “This butt is wasted, but at least it’s had its picture taken …” #BigBooty
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Instead of attempting a Zoom-adapted awards show, this year’s SAG Awards will be a short and sweet one-hour pre-taped, fully edited affair including the reveal of the winners. From Variety:
The SAG Awards, which airs Sunday, April 4, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on TNT and TBS, won’t have a host, a red carpet or even a set. Instead, the show will include comedy bits mixed in with the SAG Awards’ signature “I Am An Actor” mini-speeches from performers. Those will be sprinkled throughout the hour along with winner announcements in 13 categories and the “In Memoriam.”
Days before the broadcast, nominees from each category will gather together in their own Zoom room, where the winner will be revealed and can give their acceptance speech.
That means, in a departure from normal protocol for the show, winners and their category mates will know the results days before the rest of the world sees them on the SAG Awards telecast.
In all honesty, a pre-shot, edited, packed-to-the-gills awards gala will probably attract more viewers than a rambling, hours-long special. According to Nielsen, this year’s Golden Globe Awards Show viewership (6.9 million) was barely one-third the size of 2020’s viewership (18.3 million) and by far the least-watched ceremony in modern Globes history.
Olly Alexander in It’s A Sin
“I was told at one channel: ‘What if it starts on an AIDS ward in say, 1990 or 1992, with the machines and people dying – and then went: 10 years earlier,’” Russell T Davies recalled.
“I thought that was unbelievably crass and literally refused to do it.
“My producer said: ‘I know you don’t like that scene. If you just type it out, if you just type one page of that, it might get made.’
“I’d rather die than type that page. It’s the wrong way to tell it. There was a lot of nonsense like that. Then you just wait for the right commissioner. In my experiences, all the bosses will leave their jobs every two or three years. So just sit still and the right person will enter the seat again.”
And five years later, Davies got the go-ahead for the series the way he envisioned it. Hubby Michael and I watched the five-part series over its first weekend it was available in the U.S. on HBO Max, and we loved it. I highly recommend watching.
Elizabeth Montgomery and Agnes Moorehead in Bewitched (screen capture)
The sitcom Bewitched is one of the queerest shows I’ve ever seen — which is a little strange, since it’s about a straight couple.
Just a few years later, Soap had gay characters; Mary Hartman Mary Hartman had a gay couple; MASH had a gay coming-out episode. Bewitched never had any of that.
And yet … it somehow feels more queer than any of those other shows. So, why is that? Well, that’s what I want to show you.
I love how Matt breaks these things down showing us LGBTQ characters and story themes were really out there all the time, we just didn’t know to look for it. For more of my coverage of Matt Baume’s insights into classic TV, click here.