During LGBT Gay Queer Homosexualist Pride week every year, Out There is always proud to put on our party dress and proclaim, "Welcome, LGBT tourists, to the gayest little cowtown in the wild old West!" Oh, we weren't always so gung-ho. Prior to our current incarnation as a San Francisco cartoon character (along with the rest of you), we lived several past lives in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. But we moved here a few lifetimes ago, fell in love with the Bay Area and some Bay Areans, then never looked back. That's why we're here to declare, just as Madame Luisa Tetrazzini famously pronounced to an adoring Market Street crowd after the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, "San Francisco is my country!"
Opening night of the 32nd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival last Thursday found the town sweltering in a helluva heat wave. This made the old Castro Theatre into a homo hot-box, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm for the film offering, "Affinity" - novelist Sarah Waters was in the house, declaring that the audience was her idea of heaven - and the heartfelt tribute to outgoing artistic director Michael Lumpkin. From the stage, SF luminaries Marc Huestis and Dan Nicoletta separately sang his praises. Noting that he was garlanded with a necklace of flowers, programming director Jennifer Morris congratulated Lumpkin on "finally getting lei'd at the festival!" In the audience: "Affinity" star Anna Madeley and producer Adrian Bate, "Don't Go" star Guin Turner, "Late" exec. producer Jenni Olson, director/writer Gabriel Fleming and lead actor Ian Scott McGregor of "The Lost Coast".
Frameline's afterparty at the newly renovated 1015 Folsom was stylish and grand. Our special thanks go out to Frameliners, associates and kibitzers who make us feel a part of the picture, including Lumpkin, Morris, Huestis, David Perry, Michael Micael, Hillary Hart, Karen Larsen, Steven Saylor, Erin Blackwell, Marco Serpas, and our faithful readers, dearest hearts of all. Thanks for helping OT change the world, one column at a time!
Having a goal is always good. Castro correspondent Strange de Jim has a new aspiration now that owner Les Natali has apparently decided to change the name of the old Pendulum. Instead of the 18th Street Bar, there's an awning that reads Toad Hall. Strange says he hopes to have his own dedicated Toad stool there.
Also, we don't know about you, but de Jim has been paying de attention to de late-night television. Here's his awesome sound-bite collage.
Jimmy Kimmel: "This month, gay people in California will gain the power to make the biggest mistake of their life."
Stephen Colbert: "College has all the discomforts of prison, without the lasting relationships."
Craig Ferguson on the 1970s: "Remember disco balls? You got them from the polyester pants."
Dave Letterman on Father's Day: "As a gift for an older dad, have you considered Barbara Walters?"
Joel McHale on The Soup: "The Brokeback Mountain opera will star two unknowns. One will be a tenor, and the other one a catcher."
Scare quotes
In honor of Gay Pride Month, here are a few of our favorite epigrams from "To Quote a Queer - A Compendium of Wit, Wisdom, and Devastating Remarks" edited by John Lessard (Quirk Books), coming out in July:
"Being single is not a pathology." - feminist scholar Cynthia Port.
"I think it's our job to bring sexiness into the consciousness of people - instead of having it be our terrible little secret." - Grammy Award-winning lesbian musician Melissa Etheridge.
"I didn't even know I was doing prostitution for three months - I really thought I was a masseuse." - polymorphously perverse sex educator Annie Sprinkle.
"This is what I know of homosexuality: That it is a sin if done wrong. That it is a better sin if done right." - post-punk poet Justin Chin.
"For some time I had felt within my caressing hand something small, moist, bizarre. I look in surprised: it was my penis." - Surrealist artist Salvador Dali.
Snail mail
The great thing about reading books made out of collections of letters is that there's never any obligation to read from start to finish, as you'd want to read a novel - skipping around in the correspondence is just fine. So reading an advance copy of "The Letters of Allen Ginsberg", which comes out this fall from Da Capo Press, is like nibbling at a continual banquet of small, tasty plates. Many entries are written in a Ginsbergian stream-of-consciousness, but there is also a helluva lot of gossip going on. Just like texting, today!
AG [New York, NY] to Paul Bowles [Tangier, Morocco], December 23, 1992: "Peter Orlovsky's been in and out of Bellevue with alcoholism and some coke problems adding to his melancholia - enthusiasms quasi mani depressive cycle. Young lads around, his admirers, have been typing up his 1955-65 letters from Europe Tangier India etc., a huge book and City Lights has asked for an 'Orlovsky Reader.'"
AG [Paris, France] to Jack Kerouac [unknown location], November 13, 1957: "I got mad Rimbaud letter from boy in Bordentown Reformatory [Ray Bremser]. I wrote mad Rimbaud letter to [Rosalind] Constable at time saying [Henry] Luce should send me (and you) (and Peter and Greg) on secret trip to Russia. She said she passed letter along, who knows?"
AG [San Francisco, CA] to Carolyn Kizer [unknown location], September 10, 1956: "And Robert Duncan. Ever hear of him??? He has been running SF poetry, holding fort, immense intelligence and learnedness. I've always been interested in Duncan, his clearing of his mind of chatter, meditation, and then transcription of the endless sentences of his consciousness."
"Palm oil"
"Postcards from Palm Springs", the memoir penned by the "Bay Area Reporter"'s own Robert Julian, continues to make waves in Southern California. Now referred to in the desert as simply "the book," "Postcards" has sold over 1,400 copies in spite of the fact that it does not have the backing of a large national book publisher. Six weeks ago, Julian was contacted by one of the Big Three talent agencies in Beverly Hills, who think his memoir would make a great television series. They are currently in the process of developing and packaging the show for sale to cable television. The racy, gay content of the book makes mainstream network TV out of the question. But Julian's vision of Palm Springs could well turn up on the racier channels. We'll be looking out for it.
Super Mario
Last week's "People" magazine brought us a feature on the too-impossibly cute Mario Lopez, in which he is the model in a series of photos which recreate classic moments in beefcake photography. In one photo, he's seen standing in his skivvies in an homage to Marky Mark. As Shirley Temple used to say, "Oh, my goodness!"
In another, he poses like the young Brad Pitt did, shirtless, in "Thelma & Louise". He also does pretty good takes on "American Gigolo"-era Richard Gere and "The Blue Lagoon"'s loincloth-clad Christopher Atkins. Regarding this last pose, the B.A.R.'s resident sexo expert John F. Karr noted, "Christopher Atkins' loincloth was flimsier and revealed more, but Mario's looks like it needed to be doubly strong."
Finally, Lopez replicates the famous Burt Reynolds nudie shoot for "Playgirl". "What was extra scandalous about Burt's pic was that it had pubic hair," Karr informed us. "Mario either shaves - a thought that makes my nipples hard - or has been drastically airbrushed. In the interview, he says he sleeps naked, doesn't manscape (well, okay, the pics are airbrushed), and is hit on by men all the time and is very flattered, 'because the gay community is a hip, cool community. They're very cutting edge, so they like me, and I think that's great.' Wait, did he just say he was cutting edge?" He did. And he thinks we're hip and cool.
TV funhouse
Our TV-monitoring correspondent Strange de Jim checks in once more with reports of some televised funnies.
Jay Leno was happy to attend the marriage of the gay couple on his block. Both grooms wore white bridal gowns. "It's the first time I ever saw both parties to a wedding so excited."
"Someday, gay weddings will be as common as Pam Anderson weddings," Leno went on. "I feel sorry for the women. Now in LA, all the best men are married and gay."
Jon Stewart: "Two women were married in California today. I don't know why God took it out on the Midwest. I'm for gay marriage, but I worry about a child with two Jewish mothers."
Dave Letterman: "McCain is going after women over 60. Who does he think he is, Ashton Kutcher?"
Craig Ferguson: "Gay marriages started in California today. Congratulations to Mr. and Mr. Seacrest."
Conan O'Brien: "A new machine lets airport security see the size of your penis. There's nothing more flattering than being told, 'You'll have to check that.'"