(screen capture from ‘911’) Lady Gaga releases her latest music video, “911,” from her critically-acclaimed album, Chromatica. Directed by award-winning director Tarsem and produced by the Artists Company, the short film made its global broadcast premiere across multiple platforms including YouTube, MTV Live, MTVU and on the Viacom Times Square billboard. The short film, which ties into a message about mental health, is something of a fabulous puzzle that comes into focus by the end. After watching the first time, I suggest you go back and you’ll see aspects of the storytelling that initially simply ‘odd’ suddenly tie into the ending. You’ll connect the meaning behind, for example, the man banging his head on a pillow; the woman in white with a red cross; Gaga floating in the air adorned with a golden halo. Gaga and her director, Tarsem, partnered with entertainment technology giant LG to create an exclusive visual experience that utilizes vibrant colors and dramatic blacks taken to the next level. Those ‘next level’ visuals, however, only air on LG OLED TVs. Watch the video below.
On Instagram, Gaga told her followers about the video, “This short film is very personal to me, my experience with mental health and the way reality and dreams can interconnect to form heroes within us and all around us.” “Finally, thank you little monsters. I’m awake now, I can see you, I can feel you, thank you for believing in me when I was very afraid,” she wrote in closing. “Something that was once my real-life everyday is now a film, a true story that is now the past and not the present. It’s the poetry of pain.”
Bear Week 2019 in Sitges, Spain Some news items you might have missed: • TBT: Remembering a year ago when we discovered Sitges, Spain, for the first time (above) – and it just happened to be Bear Week 🙂 • WSVN Miami: A man was convicted of hate crime charges and sent to prison after he yelled homophobic slurs and beat up two gay men while they were walking their dog in downtown Miami. Quenton Moss, the assailant, was recorded on police body cams bragging to officers, “I split him good. He’s a [expletive]. [Expletive] should die, die.” • OUT: Author and activist Sarah McBride is poised to become the first out trans person serving in the upper chamber of a state legislature. The former Obama administration staffer and current National Press Secretary for Human Rights Campaign won the Democratic primary for Delaware’s first state senate district. The seat is considered a sure-bet for Democrats and McBride is expected to win the general election in November. • GLAAD: Bisexual+ Awareness Week seeks to accelerate acceptance of the bi+ (bisexual, pansexual, fluid, no label, queer, etc.) community. BiWeek draws attention to the experiences, while also celebrating the resiliency of, the bisexual+ community. Throughout BiWeek, allies and bi+ people learn about the history, culture, community, and current policy priorities of bi+ communities.
• Associated Press: Germany’s Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer apologized on Thursday for 65 years of discrimination against gay military service members. “I very much regret the practice of discrimination against homosexuals in the Bundeswehr, which stood for the policy of that time,” said Kramp-Karrenbauer said in a statement. “I apologize to those who suffered because of it.” • Washington Post: A seven-hour “flight to nowhere” advertised by Australian airline Qantas sold out within 10 minutes on Thursday. The flight will depart Sydney on Oct. 10 and return on the same day, with no stops along the way. But passengers are promised views of the Great Barrier Reef, the Uluru monolith and the Australian outback as the plane flies over the country at low altitudes. The 134 available tickets ranged from $787 to $3,787 in Australian dollars, the equivalent of $575 and $2,765. • HuffPost: Donald Trump was called out on Wednesday for bragging that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus would be lower if one subtracted the deaths from “blue” states. “The blue states had tremendous death rates,” Trump said. “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at, we’re really at a very low level.” According to data collected by The New York Times, 3 of the top 6 states in terms of deaths have Republican governors and 5 of the top 10 voted for Trump in 2016.
Dear @realDonaldTrump: Please stop dividing us. We are not the Red States of America. Or the Blue States of America. We are the United States of America. At the end of the day, we are all Americans. https://t.co/WxTjEqATyI
Donald Trump (photo: public domain/Flickr) Olivia Troye, a former homeland security official who served in Vice President Mike Pence’s office for the coronavirus task force, endorsed Joe Biden for president today. She described her time in the White House (she resigned two months ago) as “terrifying” and said the president “could have saved lives” in his response to the coronavirus pandemic in a video released Thursday. In the video, she says Trump was only concerned with his reelection. From CNN:
A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence assailed President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic in a new video Thursday, adding to the growing list of former Trump administration officials who have criticized the President and, in several cases, endorsed his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House’s coronavirus task force, charged in the two-minute video that Trump failed to protect the American public because he only cared about himself and getting reelected. Troye’s criticism is particularly striking because of her role working on the coronavirus task force, which Pence leads.
“Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn’t a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when,” said Troye, who left the White House in late July. “But the President didn’t want to hear that, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success?”
At one coronavirus task force meeting, Troye claimed that Trump suggested “maybe this Covid thing is a good thing.”
“I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people,” Troye claimed Trump said at the meeting.
The White House denied Troye’s statements and predictably accused her of being a disgruntled former employee.
In this new ad @OliviaTroye reveals that during a COVID task force meeting, President Trump said “Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.” WOW. pic.twitter.com/1W1tQgZCWv
When Trump attended one meeting, Olivia Troye said, he spoke for 45 minutes about how poorly he was being treated by certain personalities on Fox News.
"He spent more time about who was going to call Fox and yell at them to set them straight than he did on the virus." https://t.co/hZfyUKvDz8
Asked Trump about former VP aide Olivia Troye who criticized his handling of virus today. His response was a familiar one: “I have no idea who she is, she doesn’t know me.”
Jerry Harris (image via Instagram) Jeremiah “Jerry” Harris, who rose to fame on the Netflix docuseries “Cheer,” has been accused of child sexual exploitation and abuse, according to a lawsuit filed this week by attorneys representing two alleged victims. From CNN:
The lawsuit alleges that Harris “exploited his popularity and position of fame with young male cheer athletes” in the time “leading up to, during, and following the distribution of the ‘Cheer’ docuseries.”
The two alleged male victims, now 14, were 13 when the inappropriate behavior began, according to the claim.
Among the allegations are that Harris exchanged messages with the minors that were “sexual in nature” via social media, including requests for “explicit” photographs and sending “sexually explicit photos and videos of himself to Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit said.
Hours later, CNN filed a new report that Harris has been arrested and charged with “enticing an underage boy to produce sexually explicit videos and photos of himself,” according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. The minor involved in the complaint was reportedly 13 at the time. An attorney for Harris said he will seek his client’s release due to the 21-year-old being asthmatic and at risk for Covid-19. A spokesperson for Harris told CNN at the time, “We categorically dispute the claims made against Jerry Harris, which are alleged to have occurred when he was a teenager. We are confident that when the investigation is completed the true facts will be revealed.” According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, the production of child pornography is punishable by a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years.
Harris is one of several students who found national fame thanks to “Cheer” which debuted in January 2020. The docuseries chronicles the journey of a cheerleading team from a small college in Corsicana, Texas, on their way to national competition.
The series was recently honored with two Emmy Awards and is nominated for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Pastor Paul Van Noy (screen capture via YouTube) A pastor in A Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is being treated for COVID-19 at the Kootenai Health intensive care unit after who opening his church in May for in-person services that encouraged unmasked congregants to gather. Who’d have ever guessed something could go wrong? From the Spokesman-Review:
Paul Van Noy, the senior pastor at Candlelight Christian Fellowship, has spent the past two weeks in the ICU while his wife, Brenda Van Noy, recovered from her own bout with COVID-19 at home. Five other church staff have been infected, said Eric Reade, body ministry coordinator the church.
The church closed its doors for two weeks and underwent deep cleaning before reopening for in-person services Sunday, Reade said.
“We didn’t want, obviously, to be spreading the virus,” he said.
Church staffers don’t know how Van Noy contracted the virus, Reade said.
Van Noy, who apparently has a history of sharing his political views from the pulpit, has publicly shared his doubts regarding the efficacy of wearing face coverings to help protect against the virus.
Out former college football player Jake Bain (image via Instagram) Jake Bain, one of the first openly gay Division I college football players, tells Men’s Health Magazine he’s “more at peace” since leaving the sport a year ago. Shortly after announcing he was ending his college football career last year, Bain also shared with his 38K Instagram followers that he was coming out (again) but as pansexual. In an Instagram post, Bain admitted that when he came out to his classmates in 2017 as a high school junior in Missouri during National Coming Out Day, he wanted to send a message that “it was okay to be themselves and do whatever you put your mind to.” At the end of that speech in front of a school assembly, his fellow students gave him a standing ovation. “It was me finally letting so much weight off my shoulders that I had been carrying for so long,” he says today. But over time he’d come to realize that “gender does not effect” who he feels attracted to and that “love is something deeper than simply what gender we were given at birth.” And so, he shared with his followers, “I am pansexual.”
But after the loss of a childhood friend, Bain realized he needed to “take a step,” recalibrate and “figure out what is was exactly I wanted to do.” Speaking to Men’s Health as part of The 2020 Project, which explores the lives of 20 different American 20-year-old men, Bain says he’s now studying to be a sports psychologist at North Carolina State University. He hopes to help other young athletes “find clarity” and perhaps some answers to other questions he has about his identity. Over the past year, the handsome college student has focused on his studies and dabbled in modeling, sharing several thirsty snaps on his Instagram.
This past July, he penned an essay for Teen Vogue chronicling his journey from coming out in high school to ‘here,’ and many of the ups and downs along the way. “I began receiving calls and messages from people all over the country who said I was able to give them courage to be themselves,” he wrote of the period after he came out. “I never imagined I’d be able to reach and inspire so many people.” But admitting it “wasn’t all rainbows,” he reflected on the “ton of hate” he received on and off the gridiron including becoming a target of the anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church. But when word got out that the hate group was coming to protest him, his school and community rallied to show their support.
Today, after years of making sports the focus of his life, he tells Men’s Health, “I certainly miss football sometimes.” But, he quickly adds, “I feel more at peace and I definitely am happier than I was a year ago.” (source: Men’s Health,Teen Vogue)
(screen capture via ABC News)NowThis News fact-checks Donald Trump’s ABC News town hall earlier this week where he took questions from undecided voters. During the session, Trump blamed Joe Biden for not implementing a national face-mask mandate (even though Biden isn’t president) and said he thinks he’s done a “great job” handling the COVID-19 pandemic as the U.S. approaches 200,000 coronavirus-related deaths. This is a terrific quick wrap-up of the event. Hit the play button below.
(screen captures via Twitter) Let’s start the day with something to make you smile. I was amazed by this – completely didn’t see where it was going. One minute. Wait for it… 🙂
(promotional photo from the acclaimed film ‘Call Me By Your Name’) Some news items you might have missed: • The Independent: In a new interview, Luca Guadagnino, who directed the Oscar-nominated coming-of-age film Call Me By Your Name, defended casting straight actors Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in gay roles. • Washington Blade: Gay Democratic activist Eric Morrison defeated a six-term incumbent by a decisive margin in Delaware’s Democratic primary on Tuesday for a seat in the state House of Representatives. Morrison is considered the strong favorite to win in the Nov. 3 general election in a heavily Democratic district. If elected, he will emerge as Delaware’s first openly gay man to serve in the Delaware State Legislature. • Washington Post: The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted Wednesday that most of the American public will not have access to a vaccine against the novel coronavirus until late spring or summer of next year. Redfield said the vaccine will be provided first to people most vulnerable to covid-19 with Americans who are considered at lower risk offered the shot more gradually. • AARP: The venerable seniors’ organization takes a look at sacrifices Americans made out of patriotism during World War II. But, today, wearing a face mask is ‘tyranny…’ • CNN: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, on the Donald’s biggest concerns about releasing his tax returns: “His biggest fear is, if that tax return was released, there’s a whole slew of accountants and forensic accountants that will rip through it and he will end up with a massive tax bill, penalties, fines, and possibly even tax fraud.”
Donald Trump during ABC News Town Hall (screen capture) In case you missed it, Donald Trump didn’t have a great time during last night’s town hall event hosted by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. At one point, he was asked by an undecided voter about a national mandate on wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic. In an odd twist, Trump pointed to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, for failing to implement such a mandate. Note – Joe Biden is a private citizen holding no public office meaning he has no authority to enact such policies. Did Trump forget HE is currently president? “A good question is, you ask, like Joe Biden. They said, ‘We’re going to do a national mandate on masks,'” Trump said Tuesday evening. “But he didn’t do it, I mean, he never did it.” Biden has said he would encourage governors to support the use of face masks and promised to lead by example by wearing face coverings in public. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci recommend universal mask-wearing when in public and around people who don’t live in your household to help prevent coronavirus transmission. Trump also said “a lot of people” don’t like face masks. When asked who those folks were, Trump said “waiters.”
The President attempts to blame Joe Biden for not implementing a national mask mandate pic.twitter.com/nq9J6cVFoR
Additionally, Trump declared, again, that the coronavirus will just disappear citing “herd mentality.” “Over a period of time, sure, with time, it goes away and you’ll develop, you’ll develop like a herd mentality — it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen. That will all happen.” Most people believe he meant to say “herd immunity,” but, you know, four-syllable words can be hard… Along the way, the Donald also told some wild story about Winston Churchill standing on the roof of buildings while the Nazis were bombing London during WWII telling folks, “Everything’s going to be ok.” Actually, as soon as Churchill became prime minister, he warned the UK of ‘struggle and suffering’ and told Londoners the Nazi campaign was ‘killing large numbers of women and children.’
.@GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Trump on his claims that COVID-19 will "disappear."
Stephanopoulos: "It would go away without the vaccine?"
Pres. Trump: "Sure, over a period of time. Sure, with time."
