Kristen Wiig!!!

I forgot to post my review of Bridesmaids, which I loved. I think my review is a tad odd, but whatevs. Here’s the opener:

At the screening of Bridesmaids that I attended with my husband, during the few lulls between thunderous guffaws we could hear the young blonde woman sitting next to Rob commenting on the plot to her mother: “What a bitch!” “Aw, he’s so cute!” “That would never happen!” As we walked out, she said, “If my best girlfriend ruined my shower, she would not be invited to my wedding. That was so unrealistic!”

I wanted to say two things to this girl, but civility prevented me.

First, I would have pointed out that Bridesmaids is a broad comedy in which things that would never happen do happen all of the time. Don’t ponder the psychology or the physics; just laugh!

Second, I would have said, “Talking during a movie is rude. You’re exactly the kind of bobble-headed dingbat Kristen Wiig would have hated.”

Read the rest on the LGBT Weekly website, or, if you’re local, in the actual print edition, found at your local gay-friendly business.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 7: A Song That Reminds Me of a Certain Event

I can’t remember which of the first two out gay men I ever met put the Communards version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” on a mix tape for me. I’ve lost both tapes, which is a shame, because they were both awesome mixes. I think it may have been one of the gay boys from Indiana who participated in the rousing renditions of “Express Yourself,” but it could have been the first man I went on a date with, a college student who was perfectly nice but whose entire existence scared the bejeezus out of me. Whoever it was, the song became my go-to singalong favorite of 1992, the year I came out. I think the Thelma Houston version is better in all ways and the Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes version is stellar, but none of those musicians is a fabulously, awesomely queer gay man like Jimmy Somerville is. His version is my coming out song. Every time I hear it, I’m thrilled by the possibilities of the universe. Also, the video is bitchin’.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 6: A Song That Reminds Me of Somewhere

In junior high and my early years of high school, I spent most of my afternoons in my bedroom doing homework (after a bowl of cereal and 30 minutes of DuckTales). My room was full of comic books and Legos and signs that I was gay, like the giant silk screen print of a unicorn hanging on the wall and the pornographic contraband under the mattress. I never listened to music when I was studying or reading, but my brother did. During his adolescence, he transitioned from an angry skate punk to an angry art class iconoclast, and his music transitioned from Minor Threat and JFA to Jane’s Addiction and Concrete Blonde. He played the latter’s album Free a few hundred times when he was a high school junior. And one song vibrated through three walls, into my brown and nerdy room, and it was burned into my brain: “God is a Bullet.” It also happens to be an awesome song. I ended up a huge fan and I saw Concrete Blonde more times live than any other act. But it always reminds of sitting in my bedroom and doing pre-calculus problems.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 5: A Song That Reminds Me of Someone

When I was in college, my most over-the-top, crazypants, tortured love affair was with a talented, if a bit bat-shit crazy, actor. Shortly after we started seeing each other, he starred in Falsettos. When I hear any song from Falsettos, I think of him, but “What More Can I Say?” is the one he would sing to me. While he was on stage. Acting, schmacting: His boyfriend was in the audience, and that was a love song, and that boyfriend turned to a quivering mess of Jell-O when being sung to. Ah, young love. Ah, stupid, stupid, stupid young love. Anyway, here’s a grainy video of the original Marvin, Michael Rupert, singing the song. The photo here is from a clearly much sexier version of the show that ran in San Francisco a few years ago.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 4: A Song That Makes Me Sad

This song. Jesus! It’s the last track on Prince’s probably most underrated album, Parade, which is my favorite after Purple Rain. It’s an absolutely gorgeous song that perfectly encapsulates, in both lyrics and notes, grief and understanding. I used to be unable to listen to it; I’d stop the tape at the first note. And when it was played, only on piano and without singing, at my friend Gabriel’s memorial service, I couldn’t stand it and had to leave the auditorium until the song was done. The first video is the song as recorded, and the second is Prince doing it live.

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