watch what happens when 3 trannies stop being nice

and start getting REAL.

wanna talk about HIV?

Julie Blair and Tom Leger are working on a documentary project about couples like themselves--in which one partner is HIV+ and the other is HIV-. They need other serodiscordant couples who live in or near New York City to make this happen. If you or your partner are interested in being interviewed, don't hesitate to contact them (cuz they are AWESOME!).

Tom: tleger@gmail.com

Julie: julieblair1979@gmail.com.

& pass this on, too!

who's coming to see this with me?

here's a pretty good article about the film, in particular it's director lee daniels: the audacity of 'precious'

“Precious” is a world without glitz, glamour — or, for the most part, men. Daniels convinced his actresses to leave their vanity behind. “I asked Mo’Nique to grow a couple of pimples,” Daniels recalled. “And I asked her not to shave under her arms, and she went there for me.” Mariah Carey’s role was originally offered to Helen Mirren, who had scheduling conflicts. Carey and Daniels are close friends — he calls her Kitten, and she calls him Cotton — and he offered her the part on the condition that she show up at the set alone (no entourage) in a taxi (no limo) and freshly scrubbed (no makeup). “People say to me, ‘You are so ugly in this movie,’ and I take that as a compliment,” Carey told me. “During the filming, I tried to sneak some blush, but Lee caught me. He rubbed my cheek and said, ‘Take that off.’ I said, ‘But Precious is wearing makeup!’ ”

ill eat you up i love you so

so have you seen it yet?

heres a pretty detailed article about just how difficult it was to bring this movie to audiences --
Bringing 'Where the Wild Things Are' to the Screen

i mean i pretty much knew i was gonna like this movie from the first sight of the trailer. the costumes, the sets, the cinematography -- you know i love a good production design! plus i was intrigued by the fact that the book "where the wild things are" is what, 10 pages at most? howre you gonna turn 10 pages into a feature length film? lets just say it involves a lot of romps through the forest and sweeping camera shots of picturesque nature scenes. and as for the emotional content? lets just say i definitely worked some childhood shit out. gold stars all around.

from the folks that brought you Homotopia

the long-awaited sequel -- Criminal Queers.

/word on the street says itll be done by mid-fall.

//puh-lease say itll be in new york!

Angie D. discusses the PIC

i love her i love her i love her

(skip to 5:48 for the 2nd one.)

i used to go to the sfmoma on free days just to sit in front of this painting

Blue Clamp by Jim Dine (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)

clamp-

1 : a device designed to bind or constrict or to press two or more parts together so as to hold them firmly

2 : any of various instruments or appliances having parts brought together for holding or compressing something

rainy day playlist:

the moment you've all been waiting for

so, a long long time ago -- back when i still lived in california and casey toured the country reading poems & fighting crime, we made a series of videos. i swore i was going to teach myself how to edit them and casey promised to make a soundtrack for real collabo status (read: not true). then we were gonna upload that shit to our respective blogs (cuz we're nerds) so our adoring fans (all 5 of them) could see our pretty lil' faces doin' what we do best: asking ridiculous questions, laughing at ourselves, & talking about the internet. 

so here, friends, is an unedited chunk of that video, with additional reporting from my brother nicole and miller high life: the champagne of beers in a generous supporting role. 

i give you: case-face & flash-drive on "the internet" 1&2.

(yes, we actually talk about this shit -- on a daily [sometimes hourly] basis.)

its official -- we are absurd.

ABDC: I SPY TRANSPHOBIA

listen queers -- i know we were all super excited about vogue evolution on this season of mtv's america's best dance crew, but let's remember that not all representation is good representation. 

so i was almost willing to let week 3's martial arts challenge performance slide -- even though the crew presented as animals...going so far as to have leiomy come out of a cage at the beginning of the dance --

(WTF PEOPLE? HAVE WE NOT LEARNED?)

but week 4 took its fucking toll and im PISSED. 

case in point, "the bollywood episode":

 

not only are we seeing poc-queer-gender-variant folks on stage performing for us in a way that has been historically coopted by sexually-charged white female performers to commercial gain (madonna did NOT create voguing, ya'll -- she STOLE that shit from the NY drag ball scene, lets. be. real.).

but now we have to literally put poc-queers in cages and make them dance? and we have to watch the continual stereotype of the "angry black female" now be extended to a transwoman? not to mention the extreme inappropriateness of lil' mama's "remember your truth" speech.

fuck you, lil' mama for calling out a trans-persons' history to the watching public -- something that im gonna guess leiomy doesnt want attention drawn to. and fuck you lil' mama for your extreme gender stereotyping within the masculine/feminine binary gender system. you gotta "act like lady"? WTF does that even mean? FUCK YOU AND YOUR TRANS & GENDER-VARIANT-PHOBIA all the while claiming that you "live for vogue evolution."

no fucking wonder leomy is pissed. who decided to put that girl in a cage? who shot her to the center of trans-visibilty without taking stock of if the poor girl could handle it? where is her support system when she's not home? how are we, as her fans, able to tell her how important it is for us to watch her do well -- because dayum that girl is talented! -- without watching her unravel in the midst of transphobic comments and uncomfortable situations?

queers -- we have to remember that america loves to watch reality television shows that build someone up only to rip them apart and watch the drama unfold. its not about education. its about entertainment. we cannot let this happen to our queer brothers and sisters any longer.

im fucking pissed! im pissed at lil' mama. im pissed at MTV. im pissed at everyone (myself included) who got so pumped to watch this crew blow everyone away (which THEY DID -- i know you saw that beyonce episode) without taking stock of what MTV was gonna do to them. we have seen this happen to our queer and trans brothers and sisters time and time again. when are these horrible depictions of our community going to stop? it doesnt even matter if they win at this point, because the challenges will only get more and more ridiculous. and the stereotyping will continue. and the mental health of leiomy will rest in the hands of presumably transphobic mtv producers looking for ratings and drama. what are we doing to change that? 

//in a totally unrelated note, this post marks my 200th in my blogging career. i think that warrants a lil celegayation, dontchu?

i've been on quite the homo-history binge lately...

I bet few of you knew my first introduction to LGBT/Queer Studies was through the lens of queer theater and performance art... It's true -- I was a teenage queer performance artist. Ok, more so I designed & built sets as a butch carpenter with my long hair in a ponytail and Ani blasting on the stereo, but still...

Here's a lil' snippet of what I've been re-learning about the troupe that started my love-affair with queer performance -- 

(Lois Weaver & Peggy Shaw)

The Split Britches were one of (if not) the first lesbian feminist performance troupes to come out of New York's East Village queer art scene in 1980. Formed by partners Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw and later Deborah Margolin, writer Sue-Ellen Case sums up their importance in the development of contemporary lesbian performance:

"(T)he troupe created a unique 'postmodern' style that served to embed feminist and lesbian issues of the times, economic debates, national agendas, personal relationships, and sex-radical role playing in spectacular and humorous deconstructions of canonical texts, vaudeville shtick, cabaret forms, lip-synching satire, lyrical love scenes, and dark, frightening explorations of class and gender violence."

A founding member of the Split Britches is Peggy Shaw, my personal all-time-forever&allways-favorite queer icon. Peggy's life story alone will make you fall in love with her. In the few times I've been lucky enough to meet with her and see her perform, the deep appreciation I have for her as a person and as an artist has only grown greater. She is truly inspirational  -- I don't know what more to say than that without bubbling over with inaudible shrieks of devotion...

(Peggy Shaw in You're Just Like Your Father)

"Don't panic...I was born this way. I didn't learn it at theater school. I was born butch. I'm so queer I don't even have to talk about it. It speaks for itself, it's not funny. Being butch isn't funny...don't panic...I fall to pieces in the night. I'm just thousands of parts of other people all mashed into one body. I am not an original person. I take all the pieces, snatch them off the floor before they get swept under the bed, and I manufacture myself. When I'm saying I fall to pieces, I'm saying Marlon Brando was not there for me. James Dean failed to come through, where was Susan Hayward when I needed her, and Rita Hayworth was nowhere to be found. I fall to pieces at the drop of a hat. Just pick the piece you want and when I pull myself back together again I'll think of you. I'll think of you and what you want me to be."

-- from a monologue by Stanley, played by Peggy Shaw, in Belle Repreive, a butch/femme/gender-bent retelling of A Streetcar Named Desire in collaboration with Split Britches and London drag troupe the Bloolips; 1991

(Peggy Shaw & Lois Weaver, Miss America; 2008)

If you EVER want to know more about any of these performers I have mentioned, please don't hesitate to ask. Also -- fun fact: Hampshire College Media Services is the only library in the world with videorecordings of most of the Split Britches and Peggy Shaw's solo works, including Belle Reprieve and Upwardly Mobile Home (-- two of their strongest, in my opinion). 

Seriously, these women and their work are incredibly ground-breaking and so on point in terms of elaborating "queer-as-performance" concepts and analyzing oppressive power structures within identity-based communities. Get your gay hands on something from them & honor your elders, babies. Lady Gaga didn't come outta nowhere, ya hear?

you know my love for songs about technology

Trey Songz ft. Soulja Boy & Gucci Mane -- LOL Smiley Face

Shorty just text me, says she want to sex me
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

Go to my page and follow and if you got a body like a coke bottle,
Shorty sent a twitpic saying come and get this,
LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face

fucking brills -- im telling you!

& this one, too:

Mistah FAB - Hit Me On Twitter (snaps to kc & her teen girls for sharing this one with me.)

(do you love the twit pop-ups or what?!?!?!)

the internet (and other tech devices we use to access & communicate with each other) is the latest place for the fulfillment of ones sexual desires. i would like to offer these songs as further proof that our growing obsession with technology feeds directly into society's ferocious sexual appetite. now -- how is that being regulated by & for us? for youth? for sexual offenders? & for those without access? //among other things!!!!!!!

disregard the cheeze factor

and just enjoy everyone's favorite drag queen of country. she loves you, baby! 

and, while simple -- she speaks the truth. 

(c'mon -- its from her broadway musical, what else would you expect?)

race & the healthcare reform debates

watch this:

then check the racialicious open thread.

tim wise is pretty on-point -- especially during the last few minutes where he brings it all back to the white supremacist ideology on which this very country was founded. snaps to him & cnn for saying this so succinctly on a national news outlet.

whatchu think?

lyfe lessons from lady gaga

life coach lady gaga gives us all some gems of advice (the heart of it starts at 1:16).

//seriously? this is what broke my 3 week blog silence? 

better yet -- i did an image search for my said folder & this is what ive got so far...

whats in yr folder, babies?

xxxo!

i think this song just

changed my lyfe a little bit. 

plz sit very still & just listen to this one -- take a minute to soak it all in, ok?

obvi i did some research & found out its a cover of this song from former Miracle Legion frontman Mark Mulcahy and its on this tribute album, which has a pretty sad backstory & packs an impressive lineup (i mean, if yr into early 90's grunge rock -- dont lie, you loved it.) 

side note: mulcahy also played in the band polaris, whose claim to fame was playing the theme song to the tv show pete & pete.

////the shit you learn & find on the internet, right? phew, that was good. now go listen to thom yorke again, kids. itll do you good.

this is what im talkin' about, people!

so rumor has it on the world wide web that amazon is in talks to buy netflix.

Stock in Netflix Inc. surged earlier this week on rumors that the online movie rental firm would be acquired by a tech giant like Amazon.com.

why does this matter, you ask?

well, very soon (perhaps now, even) the internet will be owned by an elite few. google already owns youtube, blogger, gmail, googlemaps, etc etc etc. ANNND folks at google have serious stock in the crew over at apple, who (obvi) own that pretty mac yr reading this on, not to mention itunes, ipods, the iphone, ETC --which mind you, are all designed specifically to interface with each other. 

i feel like im getting off topic. BASICALLY, if amazon.com -- the largest online retailer in the world (you can buy ANYTHING there. plus they own other sites like half.com) -- buys netflix.com (the leader in online movie rentals and nearing it with their pay-per-view streaming vids) --  amazon & netflix will own a serious chunk of the web-based marketplace. and i imagine the companies will allow access to their sites to be interchangeable, thus you can buy furniture online and then have a movie delivered to yr computer (or your new Sony Bravia TV with internet-connection!) all on the same site. not to mention netflix's catalog will probs increase tenfold with the amount of materials amazon has stored somewhere in a back room. and, lets not forget that lil mess a coupla months ago when amazon was caught "de-ranking" book titles from patrons that were on a list of presumably amazon-banned materials (most of them sexual, queer, or lgbt-themed -- among others). does this mean they'll censor our access to film, too? 

holy shit this scares me and i hope it moves you, too.

FLASHback friday: mariah carey is a goddess!

hows this for a retrospective?

SUMMER 1993 -- whaaaat's up?

OH HEY '95 -- how you doin'?

JULY '09 -- why you so obsessed with me?

///tho id prefer a rance-ified version any day anyway. riiight?

FRESH MEAT!

becuz xxx-posting & networking is what feeds the internet -- plz circulate widely & help a homo out if you can.

dear friends, homos, blasts from the pasts, & hampco alums--

hello, darlings! wesley flash here - just checking in about big lyfe changes coming oh-so-soon. and the reason you all are hearing about 'em is cuz theyre bringing me your way!

so ive been living in berkeley in a fabfabfab house of adorable-queerbo-artists/activists/gardeners/all around dreamboats for about 2 years now. but its time to move on and head back east cuz this kid (read: me!) got into nyu for grad school! (whoa! who woulda thought?!) ill be completing a masters program through the gallatin school of individualized study over the next 2 years, focusing on internet culture & new media studies. basically ill be studying the internet for 2 years, trying to make sense of how such mass technological innovation in such a short period of time is continually re-shaping how we as individuals and as communities talk to each other, work with each other, etc etc etc. ill leave it at that but if you wanna nerd out about it with me sometime, id be so down to do that!

in short, im writing to ya'll because im moving away from a really rad comfort zone to a place ive never spent much time before. and to a place thats mad bigger than the bay, for sure. so im reaching out cuz i need community, i need a place to live thats clean & close to a train and where i can work around, think about, and process issues of gentrification, i need radical queers to dance dirty with me, i need to know where to get the best deal on a bike without hating the person selling it to me, i need to know the hot spots, the shortcuts, the free events. mostly, i need the revolutionary family i know some of ya'll got goin' cuz ill be craving it after i leave the bay so yeah -- help a queer out, you know?

if theres any advice, housing tips, questions, or affirmations you wanna offer me, plz plz plz dont hesitate to reply. im looking for a september 1 move in, but ill be on the east coast all of august so id be down to pay for a place earlier. ive got the student loans to be somewhat financially stable (but if you have a job lead too, ill take it!). and dontchu worry, babies -- ill be looking for you all when i get to nyc. i mean, if you dont mind, that is... <3<3<3  

FLASHback friday: c'mon now - what did you expect?

this video is explosive.

Scream -- Michael & Janet Jackson (1995).