Lies That I Felt too Queasy to Tell (Ep. 99 - Game Shows)

This Week's Guest: Caleb Nelson

To what lengths are you willing to go to prove yourself? My guest this week is Caleb Nelson, who's had a lifelong fascination with game shows as a way to prove mastery and skill. As he got older, he discovered that despite always working hard to prove himself to others, he faced a far greater challenge when it came to believing in himself.

This Week's Recommendation: Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly

For my recommendation this week, I want you to do a YouTube search for two names: Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde. Both were fixtures of various gameshows throughout the 70s, a time when audiences were happy to watch fancy men lounging around playing leisurely games. Charles and Paul were the gay princes of this genre, always ready with a witty retort and a florid outfit.

Watching what clips of them exist on YouTube is like taking a peek into a time portal, when you could be as extravagantly gay as you wanted as long as you never said the word gay. It's a fascinating queer tightrope walk -- Paul makes jokes about fairies and foreplay, Charles jokes about streaking -- and throughout it all they trace a delicate path around homosexuality, queering every quip and costume but never, under any circumstances, confirming what Lord Alfred Douglas called "the love that dare not speak its name."

Charles and Paul and TV personalities like them managed to slip a gay performance under the closet door. And its subversive, creative naughtiness is at times queerer than anything you can see in the media today. I'd never suggest that things were better back then, that I'm nostalgic for the closet. But the ingenuity, the inventiveness, is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

It just goes to show -- even when closeted, silenced, and rendered invisible, it would be a terrible mistake to underestimate a man with a pink bowtie and extra-wide paisley lapels.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

Screaming on the Inside, Placid on the Outside (Ep. 98 - Mary Tyler Moore)

This Week's Guest: Chris Schleicher

How will you make it on your own? This week's guest is Chris Schleicher, who moved to a big city all by himself with some dreams, some talent, and a determination to stop living for other people. He started his career inspired by sitcoms like the Mary Tyler Moore show, and now he makes sitcoms as a writer on The Mindy Project. Season 5 starts February 14 on Hulu, and you can catch Chris on episode 513, playing "Nurse Chris."

This Week's Recommendation: Mary's Incredible Dream

We all felt the passing of Mary Tyler Moore this week, and I'm overflowing with recommendations for her work. Go to IMDB to see a ranked list of the best episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, or listen to her interviews on Fresh Air to hear about her big break on the Dick Van Dyke Show. You can find some of her more obscure appearances on YouTube, such as the variety show The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, where she begins the pilot by shrugging to the camera, "So, variety. Okay, let's give it a try."

But at the top of my list is an incredibly strange special called Mary's Incredible Dream. It aired in 1976 and stars Mary, Ben Vereen, and the Manhattan Transfer, and it's an hourlong quasi-religious musical dream sequence that is absolutely bananas, and also very very catchy. On the show, Mary and Ben and the band drift from song to song, vaguely suggesting a narrative that always seems just out of reach. My favorite part is when she talk-sings, a la Rex Harrison, through "I'm Still Here" while standing next to giant hand with a nail in it. 

It's kitschy and campy and weird and jaw-dropping and also great great fun. You might feel some guilt for laughing at what was clearly a passion project for all involved, but as Mary Richards was once reminded, don't try to hold it back. Go ahead, laugh out loud.

Nothing would have made her happier. 

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

Going to the Beach with John Waters (Ep. 97 - Peaches Christ)

This Week's Guest: Joshua Grannell

My guest this week is Joshua Grannell, but you may know him as Peaches Christ -- the host of San Francisco's wild midnight mass shows and creator of outlandish drag exploitation films. Even as a kid, Joshua orchestrated elaborate halloween shows that his whole family got in on. And as an adult, he's crafted an entire media empire dedicated to exposing the uneasy frights that hide just below the surface of suburbia.

You can see that media empire at work on the west coast -- Joshua has an upcoming show called Legally Black, starring Bob the Drag Queen, and it's coming soon to Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Tickets are at PeachesChrist.com .

Also, check out the podcast Gayme Bar -- that's Gayme with a Y -- I'm on the episode posted Wednesday, January 18th, sharing stories about my queer gamer community and Nintendo's gay cowboys.

This Week's Recommendation: Nightmare on Elm Street II

For this week's recommendation I hope your delicate constitution can withstand a few frights, because I'd like you to take a look at Nightmare on Elm Street II, a film that's half about a murderer invading your dreams and half about the real-life torment of the gay actor who starred in the film.

Mark Preston plays Jesse in Nightmare 2, and he is the most budding homosexual teen who ever budded. I won't itemize every homoerotic symbol in the film, because spotting them is a fun scavenger hunt. But remember, in the mid-1980s, seeing clues that you might be gay was like something out of a horror film. You could be rejected by your family, lose your home, and there was a scary epidemic just getting underway.

When I watch this film, I can't help thinking that Mark the actor must've been as afraid of his sexuality as the character Jesse is about his deadly dreams. It's not a very gory film, but the secrecy is frightening -- especially when it's a secret that could be a danger to everyone around you. 

Behind the scenes, Mark's manager was telling him that he had to lie and stay closeted. He wasn't allowed to go to gay bars, or do interviews with The Advocate. He was told to dress straighter. This was at a time when many of Mark's friends and colleagues were dying of AIDS, and after a while he finally decided that he'd had enough of giving in to fear and simply walked away from acting. He came out, he became an activist, and he learned what a lot of us have discovered: that being gay is only scary if you let it be.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

A Big Purple Man in a Loin Cloth (Ep. 96 - Gargoyles)

This Week's Guest: Fazaad Feroze

How far up your family tree would you have to go before the way your family lives became unrecognizable? My guest this week is Fazaad Feroze, whose parents grew up in huts in Guyana before moving to the United States. As you can imagine, assimilation into American culture wasn't always easy.

Check out Fazaad's lovely artwork at FazaadFeroze.com.

Also, check out the podcast Polygamer -- I'm on the episode posted Wednesday, January 11th, sharing stories about my queer gamer project PlayingWithPride.

This Week's Recommendation: Coraline

 We often talk on The Sewers of Paris about the enduring appeal of dark, scary stories, so for my recommendation this week, check out the movie Coraline. It's based on the book by Neil Gaiman, and tells the story of a young girl who's dissatisfied with her boring parents. Coraline discovers a portal to an Other World, complete with copies of everyone she knows from real life, and with its bright colors and attentive adults this Other World seems better in every respect.

But of course, not all is as it seems, and Coraline's temptations are soon revealed to lead to danger -- namely, plucking out her eyes and replacing them with buttons.

I love a lot of things about this film -- namely that it's one of those kids' movies that is so creepy and alarming that it will frighten adults as much as children. There are some creatures in this movie that are truly terrifying, but what unsettles me is the reminder that happiness sometimes comes at a price, and that price is blindness. 

It's the corollary to the saying that ignorance is bliss -- bliss requires some measure of ignorance. And I don't think that's something you need to feel guilty or ashamed about. It would be impossible to make it through life if you didn't anesthetize yourself every now and then. 

So despite it being a super creepy movie, I actually find Coraline comforting. It reminds me that a little darkness can be good, and that closing your eyes can make you happy -- as long as you don't let them be plucked out altogether.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

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

A Need to be Doused in Black Culture - (Ep. 95 - Sonari Glinton)

This Week's Guest: Sonari Glinton

When you look back on your life, who are the adults who were wiser than you realized at the time? My guest this week is NPR's Sonari Glinton. He grew up in Chicago, surrounded by amazing artists and curators who managed to steer him in the directions that were exactly what a little queer kid needed.

This Week's Recommendation: Frank Sinatra's letter to George Michael

For my recommendation this week, do a search for Frank Sinatra George Michael. Sadly, you will not find them doing a duet together, which would have been awesome. But you will find a letter that Sinatra wrote to George Michael in 1990. At the time, George had just done an interview with a magazine about how he didn't like the pressure of celebrity. Sinatra, in response, wrote a letter (on a typewriter!) expressing his disbelief that "he wants to quit doing what tons of gifted youngsters all over the world would shoot grandma for."

Sinatra's advice was to "loosen up" and "be grateful to carry the baggage we've all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments." 

The letter concludes "talent must not be wasted. ... Those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it and share it lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you."

Now, to be fair, Frank didn't always take this advice to heart. When he married Mia Farrow, he famously demanded that she give up her acting career to be a wife. Her response was to be in the movie Rosemary's Baby, and that was the end of that relationship.

So I guess we should take Frank's advice like Mia Farrow did -- and like George Michael, whose solo career was just launching when he got that letter. Whatever your talent is, you can either choose to pass it up, or pass it along to everyone around you.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

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

The Best Gay Entertainment of 2016

This Week: 2016 in Review

Hello friends, and welcome to a special year-end edition of the Sewers of Paris. On this episode, I've invited some of my favorite gay podcasters to recommend their favorite entertainment of the year, from Lemonade to Difficult People and Moonlight and Reba. If you've been feeling down in the dumps about 2016, now's the time to take a deep breath and remember that it's actually been a great year to enjoy some amazing art and culture, and the next few years could be even more fertile.

Guests this week include Dan Savage of Savage Lovecast;, Kevin Allison of RISK!; Ryan O'Connor of LadyWatch, Tomefoolery with Cody Melcher; Daniel Krolik and Bil Antonio of BGM: Bad Gay Movies/Bitchy Gay Men; Marc Felion of Feast of Fun; and Dave White & Alonso Duralde of Linoleum Knife podcast. I couldn't be more grateful to them for joining me this week.

Among their picks:

Dan Savage loved Moonlight. “I was forced to confront my own privilege and bias and expectations," he said. Mark Felion liked Moonlight as well, and also had a blast working on the show Cooking with Drag Queens.

Kevin Allison of the RISK! podcast got into Game of Thrones this year -- and was surprised by how seductive the show made the emotion of revenge feel. From the Linoleum Knife podcast, Dave White liked the contemplative Cemetery of Splendor, while his husband Alonso Duralde liked Take me to the River -- a chilling take on family secrets.

Bil Antoniou and Daniel Krolik of BGM: Bad Gay Movies/Bitchy Gay Men appreciated the movie Elle and the show Difficult People, respectively. From LadyWatch, Ryan O'Connor raved for Sally Field in Hello My Name is Doris, and also suggested that we might be entering a film renaissance: "We're just an Easy Rider away from this generation's 9 to 5," he said. (Which triggers a whole conversation about who you would cast in a 9 to 5 remake.)

And Cody Melcher, from the podcast Tomefoolery, went back to the basics. Rather than wallow in 2016, he found comfort in the show Reba, and also in celebrity editions of The Weakest Link. "None of them know anything!" he laughed.

This Week's Recommendation: Inferno A-Go-Go

I hope that in 2017, you'll have an opportunity to experience MY favorite thing of this past year: BenDeLaCreme's live show, Inferno A-Go-Go, a one-drag-queen adaptation of Dante's Inferno. It may look from the outside like a kooky colorful literary joke, but the show develops layer upon layer through musical numbers, groany puns, and inventive puppetry; and by the time you get to the stunning halfway point, it's clear that what you're actually seeing is an incisive, sophisticated, and darkly funny exploration of the nature of Hell itself -- not just the biblical place, but the very ideas of cruelty, punishment suffering, and inhumanity.

The wacky concept of Inferno A-Go-Go may sound like a gay book report, but BenDeLaCreme's divinely comedic cabaret journey winds up plumbing far deeper questions than you might expect. Why did humans come up with the concept of Hell? Why do people suffer? And what can we do to escape the Hell that we live in -- or at least enjoy our time there?

The show is at some points hold-your-breath serious, and at others hilarious. But no joke, I believe Ben to be not just one of the greatest drag queens in the country, not just one of the greatest gay performers in the country, but one of the greatest living American artists period. I see a lot of drag shows, and I love recommending them because they're inventive, or surprising, or hilarious, or heartfelt. Inferno A-Go-Go is the first one I've ever recommended for being all of those things -- and also important.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

A Telemundo Reaction (Ep. 93 - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)

This Week's Guest: Jose

Have you ever experienced a Christmas miracle? My guest this week has. His whole life, Jose longed to experience a magical snowy wonderland like he saw on American TV specials -- not exactly an easy thing to find in Venezuela, where the one snowball he ever saw was scraped together from a frosty puddle and carefully passed from person to person.

But that all changed on a on a trip to New York, where in the span of just a few days he  went on his first date with a boy, grew closer to the dad he'd never really known, and found himself retracing the footsteps of Kevin in Home Alone 2.

This Week's Recommendation: Christmas at Pee Wee's Playhouse

In our conversation about strange 80s Christmas specials, we were remiss in leaving out one of the strangest... He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special. It is not my recommendation this week, because it is almost an hour long and really not good. But I do recommend looking up the one scene where Skeletor has to escort two children and a cute animal to safety, and argues with them about whether fights are fun. 

My real recommendation this week is for something that is actually good, and that is Christmas at Pee Wee's Playhouse. It's my favorite holiday special -- chaotic and weird and unpredictable, it features unmitigated cheer, a strangely relaxed Cher, hunky construction workers, and surprise guests emerging delighted from boxes like visiting angels.

Although its origins are religious, the rules for celebrating Christmas certainly have changed over the years, which is why we no longer celebrate with Yule goats. And the changeable, mystifying, bizarre fun of Pee Wee's special is, I think, the best encapsulation of what makes Christmas great: a time to gather together with people you love, to practice some silly ancient rituals, and to invent new traditions that, if they're fun, can be continued from year to year.

Because Christmas isn't frozen in time -- it's a party that for hundreds of years has been growing, evolving, and in Pee Wee's case, rapidly mutating. 

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

That Really Felt Like Christmas Magic (Ep. 92 - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

This Week's Guest: Jonathan Renteria-Elyea

Growing up as in atheist home, December was the closest I ever came to having a religious experience -- not because of actual religion, but the beauty of the snow and gifting and carols and lights just overwhelmed and transported me, years before I had any inkling that there was any kind of churchy component.

My guest this week came to Christmas from the other side of the looking glass. Jonathan grew up in a deeply religious family, and similarly found himself swept up in the pageantry of the season. These days, he's distanced himself from the faith. And now Christmas has become spiritual for him in a far more personal way.

This Week's Recommendation: A Muppet Family Christmas

My recommendation this week is A Muppet Family Christmas, a somewhat overlooked Muppet special from 1987, in which the gang shows up unannounced at Fozzie's mom's house. And by the gang, I do mean everyone -- the Sesame Street characters come caroling, there's a hole in the wall that leads to Fraggle Rock, and at one point Sam the Eagle leans into frame to ask "why am I here?"

There is a pureness to the special that will be instantly recognizable to any fan, from casual to the most seasoned toughpig. This episode features real Muppet magic, not the pale imitations that the characters became in the 90s. And this Christmas special throws them all together in an irresistible alchemy. But beyond just being the perfect showcase for the characters, it's also a beautiful celebration of family, both biological and chosen. Fozzie's brought his weirdos home, and though his mom isn't sure what to make of them, she opens her doors and welcomes them with open arms.

And even if you're not physically near your family at this time of year, you're still surrounded with happy memories, stories, movies, songs -- whatever entertainment you love is a little capsule of the season, each one a little bond with someone else you can enjoy it with. So among the gifts you give at the end of this year, I hope you'll also give the gift of sharing the culture that gives you joy with the people who give you joy. Doing that on the Sewers of Paris has been my great pleasure, and I hope in the new year it can be yours as well.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

Tragically Ludicrous and Ludicrously Tragic (Ep. 91 - Reality Shows)

This Week's Guest: Ross Semple

How do you think you'd come across if someone made your life into a reality show? My guest this week is Ross Semple, who grew up in a sort of fishbowl where the presence of family was constant and privacy didn't exist. And so naturally the round-the-clock surveillance of reality shows resonated with him, particularly as the medium evolved and the term "reality" became euphemistic.

But as young as the genre may seem, Ross eventually discovered that hysterics, outlandish costumes, and the ludicrously tragic have a long and noble history in queer entertainment.

This Week's Recommendation: All About Eve

I hope that you'll respond to my recommendation this week by saying, oh, I've already seen it. Because everyone should have seen All About Eve already. In case you haven't, I suppose we can still be friends but here's what you need to know:

It came out in 1950 and stars everyone you hope it stars: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe in a brief appearance -- the kind of actors who make you think "now THIS is a black and white film."

The story is a delicious melodrama: aging actress takes in a young ingenue and soon everyone's scheming and fighting and sobbing and blackmailing. This is the movie that invented countless catty catchphrases, but also perfected a certain way of being, a way of carrying oneself with a ferociousness that is at once dignified and absurd.

The film is wall-to-wall with tough dames making sweeping pronouncements, dueling sarcastic asides, and even occasionally an insultingly weak slap to the face. It is a crowning achievement of camp, in part because it was never intended to be. It was, after all, a more innocent time -- Susan Sontag was just 17 when it came out -- and by the time we got to the slapping fights on Dynasty, the gossip of Desperate Housewives, and NBC's Hairspray Live, the entertainment industry had developed a sort of assembly language for mass-market camp, distilling it down to just its tastiest ingredients. 

But All About Eve boasts a more complex bouquet. Its not have confessionals, drinks thrown in faces, or even a single high school musical number. But I wouldn't say it suffers for their absence.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

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

Don't Ask Me Out Again Until You've Written Chapter Two (Ep. 90 - Tootsie)

This Week's Guest: Steven Rowley

When it comes to costumes, some of us have a greater-than-average appreciation for layering. My guest this week is writer Steven Rowley, whose debut novel Lily and the Octopus is touching and familiar and funny. It is also one of the gayest stories he's ever told, after a career spent in what was a sort of disguise, writing rom-coms about heterosexual relationships. But by the time his deeply personal book was complete he knew that he was done de-gaying his stories. So he told his publisher as much, unsure how they'd respond.

This Week's Recommendation: Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride

Thanks again to Steven, and don't forget to check out his book Lily and the Octopus. Or my book, Defining Marriage. Just the thing for the readers in your life.

I also highly recommend following Steven and Byron's dog Tilda on Instagram -- her handle is tildaswintondog, all one word.

I am delighted to be talking about dogs because they are the best. Humans are fine, I guess, but it's our animal friends help us to be our best selves. For my recommendation this week, take a look at the strangely beautiful South Park episode Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride, in which Stan worries that there's something wrong with his dog because he's gay.

The episode is notable for various reasons, among them its Emmy and GLAAD Award nominations. Given the time that it came out -- 1997 -- it's a remarkably affectionate and empathetic portrayal of gay characters. It might have been challenging to talk about homosexual people on TV at the time but you could talk about homosexual animals.

Ironically, Ellen's sitcom was cancelled a few months after this episode aired. She had just come out in an hourlong special called "The Puppy Episode," so named because a producer suggested that she get a dog instead of pursuing romantic interests.

Anyway, the South Park episode concludes on a 100% optimistic note about human compassion and our ability to see the good in each other, which is not bad for a raunchy cartoon. And it might be tempting to credit the writers or the animators or the actors for this lovely piece of television history, but I think that overlooks the true heros: dogs. So, thank you, dogs, for this episode of South Park. It may help us all be better people. But we'll never be as good as dogs.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

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