Ariana Grande’s new music video for “No Tears Left To Cry” is an eye-popping wonder of computer generated gorgeousness.
Directed by Grammy Award®-winning director Dave Meyers, the trippy video allows Grande to defy gravity as she floats, falls and pretty much stays off-balance through a series of CGI futuristic landscapes.
It’s easy to wonder if the metaphor was intended to represent Grande’s state of mind following the Manchester Arena terror attack during her concert last May, which killed 23 people and wounded approximately 500.
The new single represents Grande’s first since 2016’s Dangerous Woman.
Out actor/producer/writer Kevin Spirtas has spearheaded a new digital series set to premiere on Amazon Video April 24th titled, After Forever.
With a tag line that reads, “A story about love, loss and new beginnings,” the series chronicles the journey of a gay couple, their group of friends, and how they deal with the losses in their lives.
Kevin chats with me about After Forever in this episode of The Randy Report.
Fans know Kevin not only from his long-running role as “Dr. Craig Wesley” on Days of Our Lives, and films like the Friday the 13th series, but he’s also an Indie Series Award winner and garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on the digital series Winterthorne; plus there’s his many appearances on Broadway in hits like A Chorus Line, Hairspray, Meet Me In St. Louis and The Boy from Oz where he stood by for superstar Hugh Jackman.
He’s also had a second parallel career as a producer of projects like staged readings at the New York Shakespeare Festival (starring Meryl Streep no less!), and was on the producing teams that brought the Finian’s Rainbow revival as well as Priscilla Queen of the Desert to Broadway.
The series features also features terrific actors like Mitchell Anderson (Doogie Howser, Party of Five), Tony Award winner Cady Huffman (Will Rogers Follies, The Producers), Tony Award nominee Anita Gillette (Chapter Two), and tons of TV & Broadway veterans like Jamison Stern, Jim Newman, Colleen Zenk and Michael Urie (Ugly Betty).
The one and only Cher, Grammy-winning singer and an Oscar-winning actor, wrote a tribute to Olympic figure skater and now-LGBTQ icon Adam Rippon who is being honored by TIME Magazine as one of 2018’s “100 Most Influential People.”
From a perspective that only Cher could write from, she shares her view on our man Adam:
All figure skaters are beautiful, but Adam Rippon is different. He isn’t just a beautiful skater. He has humility, grace and an incredible sense of humor.
You could see in the leather-harness suit he wore to the Academy Awards that he isn’t afraid to take chances. It wasn’t about the suit, really. It was about the fact that he dares to be different in a world where being different always comes with a cost. I thought it was fabulous, of course.
Adam is a skater who happens to be gay, and that represents something wonderful to young people. When I was young, I had no role models—everyone looked like Sandra Dee and Doris Day. There was nobody who made me think, Oh, I could be like them. They represent me. Adam shows people that if you put blood, sweat and tears into what you’re doing, you can achieve something that’s special. You can be special. And I think that’s very brave.
Seared by memories of seeing their friends murdered at a place they believed to be safe, these young leaders don’t intimidate easily. They see the NRA and its allies—whether mealymouthed politicians or mendacious commentators peddling conspiracy theories—as mere shills for those who make money selling weapons of war to whoever can pay. They’re as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry. And they live to mobilize their peers.
Already, they’ve had some success persuading statehouses and some of the biggest gun retailers to change. Now it gets harder. A Republican Congress remains unmoved. NRA scare tactics still sway much of the country. Progress will be slow and frustrating.
But by bearing witness to carnage, by asking tough questions and demanding real answers, the Parkland students are shaking us out of our complacency. The NRA’s favored candidates are starting to fear they might lose. Law-abiding gun owners are starting to speak out. As these young leaders make common cause with African Americans and Latinos—the disproportionate victims of gun violence—and reach voting age, the possibilities of meaningful change will steadily grow.
Our history is defined by the youthful push to make America more just, more compassionate, more equal under the law. This generation—of Parkland, of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter—embraces that duty. If they make their elders uncomfortable, that’s how it should be. Our kids now show us what we’ve told them America is all about, even if we haven’t always believed it ourselves: that our future isn’t written for us, but by us.
• The first Quinnipiac University poll for this year’s race for Sen. Ted Cruz’s seat in the U.S. Senate is in a statistical dead heat with Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas), his Democratic challenger, only 3 points behind Cruz 47%/44%. O’Rourke has raised $6.7 million compared to Cruz’s $3.2 million in campaign donations.
• Lobbyists at the anti-LGBT organizations the Heritage Foundation and Family Research Council were secretly involved in drafting the Trump administration’s policy banning transgender military service members. And now those same folks are hopping mad because their communications have been subpoenaed which could reveal to the world their hateful statements.
• Fraternity brothers at a joint-hosted Phi Gamma Delta and Kappa Sigma Xi-Lambda off-campus party last Friday broke the leg of a gay man in an alleged homophobic attack. Watch the report below.
I’ve featured woofy Russian artist Alexander Abramov many times on The Randy Report via his must-see Instagram account.
Now, Abramov has a five-part series of art books, featuring photography by Dmitry Bocharovwhich, which chronicle his journey as an adult gay man in the world today.
Alexander Abramov bares all in Uncovered, his coming of age story about a man who isn’t afraid to speak his truth, follow through with his vision and be exposed, both body and soul.
The five part series of art books tells the story of Alexander Abramov. The Russian artist and producer portrays different characters in unique worlds full of action and emotion.
Through images and notes from his personal diary, Alexander explains to the world who he really is.
“I started keeping journals 18 years ago. My diary is about awareness of my homosexuality, about my experiences and explorations of the world: first feelings, first love, first sexual encounter… It is also about human imperfection and struggle, drugs and fears, scars and past troubles. On the whole, it tells of becoming the man I have wanted to be: a man who is able to inspire others to makes changes for the better.”
10% of proceeds will go to The Russian LGBT Organization.
The top military leaders of the Navy and Marine Corps tell senators that so far, they’ve seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops now serving openly.
Gen. Robert Neller is Marine Corps commandant. Neller says that some of his commanders have said there are no problems at all. He says others say they’re spending “a lot of time” with transgender individuals as they work through medical requirements involving the transition from birth gender to preferred gender.
The Pentagon in 2016 lifted the ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military. President Donald Trump has pushed for a ban, but that directive is being challenged in numerous court cases.
Without even the limited sex education in public schools, where would young Americans learn the basics about human sexuality and sexual health?
From their parents? #NotGonnaHappen
Which makes a recent appearance by Mary McAlister of the virulently anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel even more dangerous as she declared sex education in schools to be “satanic.”
Mary McAlister, who is senior litigation counsel for the anti-LGBTQ organization Liberty Counsel, appeared on Cliff Kincaid’s “USA Survival” program yesterday, where she declared that sex ed programs in public schools are satanic.
McAlister and Kincaid were discussing the upcoming “Sex Ed Sit Out” effort being organized by Religious Right activist Elizabeth Johnston, who is better known as the “Activist Mommy,” which encourages parents to remove their children from school to protest what she sees as “graphic, gender-bending sex education.”
“It’s evil,” McAlister replied. “It’s absolutely evil. God has made us all in his image, he has set out for us rules for living that enable us to live rich and full and healthy lives and all of this that is going on now is directly aimed at tearing all of that down. Well, we know who does that. That’s the Enemy, that’s Satan and his minions.”
As Donald Trump holds court on a daily basis in the nation’s political spotlight, the chant of impeachment has been heard in some corners.
But the reality of a Trump impeachment means an almost certain President Mike Pence.
As the Human Rights Campaign points out, a Pence presidency would present clear danger to the LGBTQ community.
HRC president Chad Griffin said in a statement:
“Mike Pence has made a career out of attacking the rights and equal dignity of LGBTQ people, women and other marginalized communities.
“Now as vice president, he poses one of the greatest threats to equality in the history of our movement.
“With the world distracted by Donald Trump’s scandal-ridden White House, Mike Pence’s nefarious agenda has been allowed to fly under the radar for too long. He has become not only the most powerful vice president in American history, but also the least scrutinized.”
The HRC has compiled a new report on Pence’s woeful history on LGBTQ rights and policies, and assembled the information in a new microsite to shine a spotlight on Pence’s inside-the-White House efforts to continue his decades-long crusade by leading the Trump/Pence administration’s attacks on LGBTQ people, including those who bravely serve our nation in the military.
• Support for the practice of so-called “conversion therapy”
• Support for legalized discrimination against LGBTQ people
• Blocking hate crime legislation and funding for HIV and AIDS prevention
• Efforts to undermine access to health and reproductive care essential to LGBTQ people
Watch the new video below from the HRC which summarizes Pence’s poisonous positions on LGBTQ policies.
