I Needed to Feel at Home in my Home (Ep. 56 - Matilda)

How old were you when you first realized that no adult has any idea what they're doing? When you're a kid, it's easy to look up to your parents and teachers and bank tellers and taxi drivers like they have all the secrets about how to get by in the world -- but the truth is nobody's got a clue.

"I never felt safe enough to come out," John says on this week's episode. his religious upbringing made coming out a painful experience -- his mother broke down and cried, and that very same night he called called a girl he knew to ask if she'd be his girlfriend in the hopes of undoing his mom's pain.

The next few years were hard, and marked by occasional attempts to run away. John would look at his mom, who was once his best friend, and think, "my mom doesn't love me as much as she did."

"More than anything, I wanted my mom to look at me the way she did before," he said.

Finally, he was old enough to move out of the house for real -- but being on his own turned out to be harder than he thought. Two years of couch-surfing and unsteady employment convinced John that he'd failed as an adult.

But his eyes were opened by a chance re-discovery of a movie he loved as a kid, and a lesson he'd forgotten as he grew up: that making mistakes is a very adult thing to do. The movie Matilda showed him that just because a person is an adult doesn't mean that they're right about everything. His past mistakes didn't make him a bad person; and his mother's disapproval could maybe change. "Maybe one day I can pull her out of it," he thought.

John moved back home and attempted a reconciliation that stretched out over years. He wasn't sure if it was working, until one day his mother unexpectedly found a way to let him know that ever since she pushed him away, she'd been silently holding onto a lot of regrets.

A few clips of things we talked about this week:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

My Cat Makes Me Laugh a Lot (Ep. 55 - Bette Midler)

My guest this week is writer and comedian H. Alan Scott, whom you may know as co-host of the fabulous Out on the Lanai podcast. But he first came to my attention when I was working as a nightlife photographer in LA. There was this one guy I'd photograph at a bar every now and then who was shy, who hung back from the dance floor, and who whenever I took his picture would have something to say that made me laugh.

And that man ... was Howie Mandel. Just kidding, it was H. Alan Scott.

I never told him this, but I didn't just look forward to photographing him because he was funny and friendly. H Alan was a pleasure to shoot because he never posed. It may not come as a total surprise that in Los Angeles, many people are very concerned with how they are seen, and so whenever a camera is nearby they contort themselves into an improbable shape that they believe is the most flattering, and as a result, pictures of them are often more about the posture than the person. 

H Alan, on the other hand, always looked into my camera honestly, sometimes with a smile and sometimes not. I didn't know it, but at the time he was emerging from a long and difficult ordeal that had changed his life. And when I pointed my camera at him, I was pointing it at a man who had no use for putting on a happy face.

Here are some clips of things we talked about on this episode:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Don't Follow Rules (Ep. 54 - Indie Rock, Chiptunes, and Video Games)

How can you tell the difference between a rule that's best followed and a rule that's best broken? Some guidelines are there to help, like, stay out of the lion pit. But others are just rules for the sake of rules, like no white after labor day. And sometimes, one type looks deceptively like the other.

My guests this week are Daniel Culp, and his husband Stephen Van Doren. We'll mostly be hearing from Daniel, a musician who also goes by Aethernaut, and whose musical influences have veered from Pentecostalism to Duck Tales. Daniel grew up bound by rules, from what he should believe to what games he could play, until he made a clean break both in his life and in his songs. These days, he's enjoying some new-found freedom ... with the help of some familiar structure.

Here are some clips of stuff we talked about in this episode:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

My Land's Only Borders Lie Around my Heart (Ep. 53 - Chess, Mariah, and Wicked)

My guest this week is Jean-Paul Bevilacqua, who's probably best known for appearing on the show One Girl Five Gays. But he's more than just a fifth of a panel. He's a bundle of raw emotions. Despite the calm, cool, collected exterior, JP can't resist chasing after intense feelings, whether it's by listening to love ballads, or by playing the devil in an opera, or by cultivating youtube playlists of people on the verge. His favorite entertainment is the kind that explodes, that overwhelms, that dares you to endure. It's a dare that for many years JP literally hid from.

And hey -- come join us for a Sewers of Paris live video chat this weekend! We'll be talking about classic TV shows and who knows what else. Hope to see you there!

A few clips mentioned on this week's episode:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

If You Can Survive it, do it (Ep. 52 - Gay New York in the 70s & 80s)

My guest this week is Mark Finley. Again. I spoke to Mark last week about his career as an actor and talent coordinator, fleeing his small town and meeting his heroes. Mark shared so many incredible memories that I invited him back to talk more about his time in New York, traveling around the country, and how he survived after doctors told him six months to live.

As you'll hear, the audio of our conversation is a little echoey -- it's quite not as clear as a normal episode. But the memories Mark shared are just so incredible I had to share them with you, echo and all.

For my recommendation this week, I'm going to give you a choice: if you're feeling up to it, watch Longtime Companion. But be ready for a devastating experience. This is not a film that tells its story from a distant vantage point. It is embedded deep in the most painful suffering and heartbreak of the epidemic, down to its final scene. The last few moments of Longtime Companion are a reunion, of sorts, but a reunion that reminds you that sometimes you can never go home, because home has become unrecognizable. And so have you.

If that's too much for you to bear right now, take a deep breath and watch The Gang's All Here, one of the movies Mark gave me to watch. It's an all-star musical romantic comedy from 1943, and it is about as upbeat and trouble free as a movie can get. It's a perfect escape from any worry you could possibly have, and it's probably no coincidence that it was made at a time when the whole country really needed some cheering up.

It is also, of course, wildly unrealistic, as musicals usually are. So take your pick: a devastating story that's unflinchingly honest, or a cheerful romp that's unachievably cheerful. I recommend balancing both.

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

That's a Life in the Theater (Ep. 51 - Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett)

"There was an incident and I was found to be insane," Mark reveals on this week's episode, "because my flamboyant behavior was disruptive."

Mark's been around long enough to remember when being gay was assumed to be a mental illness, and the very presence of an openly gay teenager was too much for anyone to bear. He fled his small hometown as quickly as he could, spending time in Japan, Cal Arts, and for a time at Brigham Young University where he says "I felt mighty comfortable. But apparently they didn't."

An unannounced exorcism made him aware that his presence might not have been entirely welcome at BYU. "I was sleeping with a lot of guys," he says. "Always there to lend a helping hand. I haven't been called 'The Golden Throat' all my life for nothing."

His wild life in the theater eventually took him to New York, where he took some advice given to him by Carol Burnett to heart: "you sound like you really love theater," she told him when he was young and wrote to her for advice. "And if you love it, keep doing it."

Some clips mentioned on this week's show:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I Embrace Being High-Strung (Ep. 50 - Louis Virtel & Jeopardy!)

"For trivia people, Jeopardy! is The Hajj," Louis Virtel says on this week's episode of The Sewers of Paris. "You don't know what The Hajj has in store for you, but you have to make it once in your lifetime."

Louis' infamous snap, captured and deployed in countless GIFs since he appeared on Jeopardy!, happened in the spur of the moment. But in the lead up to his appearance, he was one big bundle of nerves.

"There was a week when I read every Jeopardy! board in existence," he said. Some categories of information, like economics of football trophies, presented a challenge. "But then you look up the movies of Sandy Dennis and do a little backflip."

In the midst of cramming, he had to take a step back just to relax. "Louis," he told himself, "you better enjoy this while it lasts, because you're going to be on Jeopardy! and then it will be over. Eat up this excitement while you have it."

Appearing on the show was more than a lifelong dream -- for Louis, it approached something like a religious vision. 

The earliest childhood photographs of Louis feature him rapt with attention before the spinning Wheel of Fortune, and his family were all trivia buffs growing up. "When I think about my childhood and playing games with people, that's when I was happiest," he said. "It was cooperative and social, but you weren't just talking to each other. You were learning about the other people from how they played."

At school, he shunned all computer games not based on game shows. Even as a kid, he was a master of memory and accessing arcane knowledge. "It's so cool to trust yourself in front of other people," he said. "It feels like a superpower when you memorize something that nobody else knows."

His appearance on the show was possibly the most stressful day of his life. During rehearsal, "there was a woman she beat me on the buzzer like three times in a row," he recalled. "As somebody who grew up playing video games, that was pretty grim. Why is this woman who is like my mom's age destroying me on this thing where I feel genetically programmed to operate a button better than she does? It was pretty tough at first."

Then the show taped, the snap happened, and the rest was history. He didn't realize at first that he'd done something that would become meaningful to millions. But as soon as the episode aired, Louis noticed that people began to treat him differently than they had when he was best-known for his YouTube series, Verbal Voguing.

"Because of Verbal Voguing, I'd have people come up to me in a bar, like, 'you're funny.' After the Jeopardy! snap, some guy came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'thank you.'"

When we say "gay pride," we're usually talking about a loud parade. But Louis had demonstrated a form of gay pride that was more fundamental: a personal feeling of self-worth for being gay and accomplished and earning recognition.

So now what? He's certain it won't be the last time he's gay on television. As surely as he knew for years that he'd be on Jeopardy!, he knows that "I will host a gay version of Jeopardy! And I want it to be deep, hard knowledge that you basically have to have a drag queen teach you."

His hope is that he can keep showing the world what successful gay men look like, and how different they can be from one another. After all, the key to trivia success is diverse knowledge. When it comes to quiz shows, "your differences are your assets," he said. "There's a level playing field, and the only thing separating you from victory is a buzzer."

Some clips mentioned in this week's episode:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

You've Got to Appeal to the Queens (Ep. 49 - Judy Garland & Shelley Duvall)

My guest this week has been putting out a podcast of his own for years, and yet listeners have never heard his voice. Or at least not his real voice. They've heard him as Judy Garland, or as Carol Channing, or as Bernadette Peters or as Gollum. But today I'm just talking to Bill, the creator of Judycast: the Entertainment Beat with Francis Gumm.

Bill's always had lots to say, but was too shy to say it out loud. So he kept quiet, kept to himself, buried his true self so he wouldn't cause a fuss. Until one day he opened his mouth to speak and someone else's words came out.

A few clips from this episode:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Being Gay is Hilarious (Ep. 48 - Dawson's Creek)

"I didn't come out," says comedian David Morgan on this week's episode of The Sewers of Paris. "I confirmed rumors."

British listeners will know David from the show Safeword, where a panel of comedians takes over the social media of a celebrity to tweet embarrassing or revealing messages.

It's probably not a coincidence that David thrives in an environment where everyone's expected to expose their deepest vulnerabilties. "I'm very good at picking up on somebody's insecurity and then weaponizing that," he says. "I think I have that because when I was little I was constantly trying to mask mine. You become so heightened at how you are presenting yourself to people that you start being able to read what people are presenting to you."
 
As a kid, it wasn't much of a secret that he was gay, even if he hadn't yet mustered up the courage to tell anyone. Somehow, his classmates all just seemed to know.

Still, the fear of coming out weighed on him. That's probably why, when I asked him what entertainment changed his life, the first thing he thought of was Dawson's Creek and the character Jack. When Jack comes out to his dad, he's despondent -- but his father comforts him. "I didn't ask for a gay son," says the dad, "but boy am I glad I got one."

David had similar support waiting for him when he came out to his parents. On this week's episode, he tells the story of an incident at school that involved some bullying (a bunch of boys harassed him for dancing). The headmaster's response was to out David to his parents, and then call them in for a meeting where he suggested that David resign as a student body leader.

"If you do that," his mother cooly responded, "if you say that my son must step down, what I will do is phone every newspaper and television outlet that exists in the UK and get them on your front lawn because you're a homophobe."

David was allowed to keep his post -- though his mother didn't tell him what transpired in the meeting until years later. In fact, without telling him, she'd spent weeks calling support groups and reading up on parenting gay children, so that she could be prepared in case he had any questions.

Over time, David's grown more comfortable being out. When his standup career started, he would never reveal his homosexuality to audiences. 

"When I started, I didn't talk about being gay onstage at all," he says. And then: "a few months in, I let slip that I had a boyfriend onstage and the audience audibly went 'ohhhh,' as if that's what I'd been hiding from them. Like, 'that's what it is, we get him now.'"

He added, "Before then I'd just been lying to them, and I realized that I'd been locking off a whole lot of my life that I could talk about it onstage. Now I talk about it a lot."

In fact, we talk about it so much on the podcast this week that he eventually reveals his wedding plans, and the ongoing the dispute with his boyfriend over how to get married. And then he jokingly proposes to me. (At least I think it was a joke. I'm not sure. Listen and let me know if I just crushed his heart.)

Some things we talked about on this episodes:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Sewers of Paris Valentine's Day Special (Ep. 47 - Love Stories)

On most episodes, we're on a search for entertainment that changed the lives of gay men. But this week, for Valentine's Day, I'm doing something special. Join me this Saturday, the 13th, for a live video chat with some friends about our favorite love stories. You can chat along with us on my YouTube channel, at 12 noon Pacific this Saturday. And you can follow me @mattbaume on twitter for a heads up when we go live.

Also on YouTube this week, I'll be posting some love stories sent in to me by listeners, twitter followers, and commenters. I asked folks to tell me how they met the people they love and I got some great responses. So check out my YouTube channel or twitter feed, @mattbaume, for that video -- I'm posting it on Friday, the 12th.

So in the mean time, I've decided to go for a little romantic paddle through the sewers on this gondola, just me and my two friends the alligator and the rat. And hey, who knows -- some more friends might float by. Friends like Louis Virtel, Edd Kimber, Kevin Yee, Terry Blas, Conor, and Terrence Moss.

A few of the movies mentioned this week:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/