Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Cute 'n sexy gifs: it's Young Frankenstein!
One of a hundred or so fave moments from Young Frankenstein. I want one of those wigs, not for Halloween but just for everyday wear.
Gene Wilder, Gene Wilder. . . Gene Wilder (no I'm not gay, I take it back)
Who's this? "Abbie Normal."
Even sexier in mascara.
Madeline Kahn, Madeline Kahn. . . I changed my mind, I guess I am gay.
(and, funniest movie line ever, even without seeing the movie)
"IT!. . . COULD! . . . WORK!!"
Stars and bars. . . forever
When I stumbled upon this video - well, actually, I didn't stumble because, triggered by my reflections on Vladimir Horowitz, I was deliberately trying to scare up some of his playing - I could not stop laughing, gasping, and just sitting in awe. This is one quirkily fabulous piece of music, a transformation of the ultimate American marching tune into an elegant Chopin-esque processional. I'm not sure when this was recorded, but it's certain Horowitz already had total command of it (he wrote the transcript himself, of course, and no one else dared tinker with it after that).
I thought of this one because of an interview I saw, so long ago that it appeared in my memory as grainy and bleached, like a dream or a bad colour TV. That's because, according to that resurrective/great gettin'-up mornin' of YouTube, it appeared on 60 Minutes in 1977. Mike Wallace, obviously fascinated with his subject matter, begs and pleads "Vlodya" to play his infamous version of the Sousa march, The Stars and Stripes Forever. At first he resists, insisting he has forgotten it (which he largely has), but finally he caves and goes over to the piano and just pounds the hell out of it, his foot jammed on the loud pedal, but somehow it still sounds elegant and impressive.
Personal life
In 1933, in a civil ceremony, Horowitz married Toscanini's daughter Wanda. Although Horowitz was Jewish and Wanda Catholic, this was not an issue, as neither was observant. As Wanda knew no Russian and Horowitz knew very little Italian, their primary language became French. They had one child, Sonia Toscanini Horowitz (1934–1975). It has never been determined whether her death, from a drug overdose, was accidental or a suicide.[1]
Despite his marriage, there were persistent rumors of Horowitz's homosexuality.[7] Arthur Rubinstein said of Horowitz that "Everyone knew and accepted him as a homosexual."[21] David Dubal wrote that in his years with Horowitz, there was no evidence that the octogenarian was sexually active, but that "there was no doubt he was powerfully attracted to the male body and was most likely often sexually frustrated throughout his life."[22] Dubal observed that Horowitz sublimated a strong instinctual sexuality into a powerful erotic undercurrent which was communicated in his piano playing.[23] Horowitz, who denied being homosexual,[24] once joked "There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists."[25]
In the 1940s, Horowitz began seeing a psychiatrist. According to sources, this was an attempt to alter his sexual orientation.[26][27] In the 1960s and again in the 1970s, the pianist underwent electroshock treatment for depression.[28]
In 1982, Horowitz began using prescribed anti-depressant medications; there are reports that he was drinking alcohol as well.[1] Consequently, his playing underwent a perceptible decline during this period.[1] The pianist’s 1983 performances in the United States and Japan were marred by memory lapses and a loss of physical control. (At the latter, one Japanese critic likened Horowitz to a "precious antique vase that is cracked.") He stopped playing in public for the next two years.
Blogger's comments. Because Horowitz had more performing lives than a cat, he did emerge triumphant (again!) and play for a few more years to cataclysmic applause, mistakes and all. But isn't it sad that he felt so ashamed, or threatened by his homosexual side that he couldn't act on it, at least not without the terror of being discovered?
This goes on. We haven't solved it, friends. We think we have, which somehow makes it worse. Homophobia slithers around underground now, while on the surface of things we accept being gay as an inherent orientation (though some would say it's a "lifestyle choice").
But if you're any sort of religious fundamentalist, you probably believe it's a sin or an aberration. My feeling is that sexual orientation is hard-wired, and most of us are hard-wired to "tend" one way or another. This doesn't mean there is no heterosexual element in a homosexual orientation. Or the reverse. Maybe, like in Brokeback Mountain, same-sex attractions can spring up, seemingly out of nowhere. "I ain't queer," one of those adorable cowpokes (sorry) said in that movie. "Neither am I," Jake Gyllenhaal replied. I'd love to test out that "neither am I" theory with him, preferably in a sleeping bag out on the lone prai-riee (but then, there is the little matter of those Victorian women in corsets).
Can I confess something? Do you care? Since few people read this, I think I can safely say that for the most part I like and love men. Most of my close friends have been men (though admittedly, about 1/3 of them gay men). I like the way men smell and their low chesty voices and scratchy faces and the way they tower over me. I love their hands, especially their lack of tri-color nail polish with every other finger a different color.
Hard-wired, I think. Once in a while though, when I see, usually, a picture of a woman, or someone doing something adorable, or - what is it, anyway? Usually something very fleeting - I can't even think of an example now - and I think: my God, I can see how someone could fall in love with her. So does this make me queer-ish, or a part-time lesbian, or bisexual, or what?
As I get older I give less of a fuck because I am not, at this point, going to run off with a girl or a woman just because I wonder if I am queer-ish and want to test it out. I think women would be as hard to live with as men, but they wouldn't smell right to me. I don't want someone who looks too much like me, for one thing. I can go look in the mirror if I want to be appalled.
And going off with a woman - "going gay", a friend of mine calls it, with some annoyance - would be sexual infidelity just as surely as crawling into a sleeping bag with Jake Gyllenhaal on Brokeback Mountain.
And as far as I am concerned, neither possibility is about to happen any time soon.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Soupy Shuffle: GANGNAM STYLE!
I'm not the first one to point out that legendary entertainer Soupy Sales originated the Gangnam Style of dance. He left out the horse-riding arm movements for the most part, but the legs are the same. Like Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, he rode freehand, which is much more dangerous and daring.
There was something likeable about Soupy. I remember having lunch in the den and Soupy admonishing me to eat the crusts on my sandwiches "because they're just as good as the rest of the bread". He was in Detroit at the time, so I must've been about five. Soupy was also infamous for asking kids to mail "all those little pieces of paper" from their parents' wallets to his address. He netted tens of thousands before being reprimanded with a suppressed chuckle. (Let's not get into the naked girl who appeared at the door during a sketch on live TV.)
So why would I even want to look back on my for-the-most-part-wretched-and -miserable childhood? There were a few bright moments, but the one person I really loved and related to went crazy and died. I don't relive my childhood now: I reboot it through the sunny freedom of frolicking with my grandkids. I don' t know what might have happened to me without them, but I suspect I would not have made it through 2005.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Levant and his "honeysuckle"
This is a bad version of a good clip. The clip I used to have (of the same song) mysteriously shrank, filling about 1/4 of the screen, which is too bad because THIS one leaves out a few seconds before and after the song which are completely charming. But this is a good example of Oscar's strange seductiveness, which does seem to apply to men as well as women. I mean. . . calling a man "Honeysuckle" is just a little too much, isn't it? Any nickname that has "suck" in it is suspicious to me.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Who's Gay in Hollywood: and why do we care?
“WHO’S GAY IN
HOLLYWOOD” the rag/mag said. Not a question, but a statement. I saw it as I was waiting to buy carrots or something in
the checkout line. I didn’t have time to look the article up, but I assumed Tom
Cruise figured large.
Katie Holmes
had him over a barrel, I think, with nude bathhouse scenes or something like
that, and had her dainty little twitterfinger poised on "post". This is why he put up
no fuss, though he claims to have been “blindsided”.
Men still have
beards, apparently, and not the nice scratchy ones I like to nuzzle up to, with
the merest hint of aftershave masking the natural scent of their. . . oops,
there I go again. I guess I’m not gay after all.
Not even after
all that corset stuff.
I mean beards,
as in women who carefully protect their male partner’s gay identity. But I don’t
know whether it’s as simple as all that.
Some men
(Anthony Perkins comes to mind) have tried desperately to “straighten”
themselves, often with the help of so-called therapists in the business of
normalizing people and forcing them into boxes of conventionality. Some of them
are successful in meeting and marrying and, I assume, feeling a degree of
sexual attraction to their female partners.
But it seems
that something always “happens”. Sooner or later, there is a rebellion, a sort
of bursting out. Look at those bloody televangelists, like the one, what’s his
name anyway, the one with the rectangular smile who was caught suck - : oh sorry. I’m sorry, but I can’t avoid using technical language for
the sake of precision. They break out. Their wives stand beside them in
their pastel polyester dresses, smiling tightly during the press conference and
explaining why they’re going to “stand by their man”, who isn’t gay anyway but
merely misunderstood (or maybe bipolar, a very popular current explanation
for questionable behaviour).
This “who’s
gay in Hollywood
If this lip-smacking over who's gay and who isn't is so prevalent, just how far have we come in accepting sexual differences? Why is it that the chief insult I hear among young people today is, "Ohhh, that's so GAY"? When used this way, can it mean anything good?
If this lip-smacking over who's gay and who isn't is so prevalent, just how far have we come in accepting sexual differences? Why is it that the chief insult I hear among young people today is, "Ohhh, that's so GAY"? When used this way, can it mean anything good?
OK. Dissonances
relate, so I’m going to relate a few. I am working my way through one of the
most harrowing biographies I’ve ever read. It’s called A Talent for Genius
by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, and it’s about Oscar Levant, a celebrity
that could only have flourished in the era around World War II. This book
recounts, blow by awful blow, Levant’s slow descent into disabling mental illness
and a Howard Hughes level of reclusiveness which caused him to spend the last
five years of his life in his pajamas, seldom venturing out of his bedroom. If
anyone came to see him, he’d stand at the top of the stairs and bellow, “State
your business!”
Actually, I like that, and there’s a lot about Levant that I find charming and fascinating and even awesome. I mean awesome in the true sense, awe-inspiring. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone play the piano like that. In his movies, in which he’s often better than the predictable material, he rips open the triteness and boredom of the dialogue by blazing his way through Gershwin or Tchaikovsky or even Khatchaturian’s Sabre Dance. His musicianship was total, and his oddball role as an “Oscar Levant type” has never been equalled. (He even wrote all his own dialogue, which is still unheard-of.) The authors of the book describe this as his “disgruntled wiseacre persona”.
But something happened to Levant along the way. He was seduced by
celebrity, first appearing as a devastating “wit” on radio, then later (much
degenerated) on TV panel shows, the kind featuring Kitty Carlisle, Betsy Palmer
and Bennett Cerf.
So why am I
even mentioning this? I’m struggling with the bio, but I haven’t even been able to crack
his autobiography, Memoirs of an Amnesiac, because they were written
when his mind was half-disintegrated from the drugs his “doctor” was shooting
into his veins at midnight ,
in a car parked down the block from his house. I am mentioning this because his
memoirs are constantly mentioning and referring to “homosexuals”. Over, and
over, and over again. It’s a sort of sad, veiled “I’m not gay, I’m not gay”
that I might not have noticed before I got so deeply into this harrowing
subject.
Hell, I don’t
know if he was gay or not, and maybe he mentioned the h-word all those times because
he was provocative, a social rebel, and sometimes downright obnoxious, a
narcissist who would do absolutely anything to draw public attention to
himself. He dealt in shock, and this was a shock word then, for sure.
Homosexuality was a mental illness, something to be “treated” and, ideally,
conquered so the guy could fucking-well get married and stop suck – sorry.
I’ve seen a
few Amazon.com reviews of this book, and some are quite indignant because ONE
paragraph mentioned his idolatrous relationship with the legendary George Gershwin,
a man who would barely give him the time of day. (But he did give him a
watch. Speaking of time. And let's not get into the little sketch he drew of Oscar, above, in which he seems to be wearing very heavy eye shadow.)
It goes like
this:
“Levant , who once referred to ballet as ‘the
fairies’ baseball’, was an unenlightened creature of his time when it came to
the subject of homosexuality. His unthinking homophobia may have been a defense
against his own powerful attraction to Gershwin, whose looks and style he
admired as much as he admired George’s music.” Oh, and. . . there’s this: “Though
he would have enduring friendships with gay men such as Virgil Thomson and
David Diamond, he was not above making wisecracks.” (Blogger’s note: let’s not
leave out his associations with those indisputably gay men of music, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Vladimir Horowitz, known in the Moscow Conservatory as "Vlodya the Boy Toy". And then there was Gore Vidal - founder of the Sassoon line of hair salons - and Christopher Isherwood, author of "Boys I Have Known: from Boston to Berlin").
I just detect
a murmur below the surface here. A murmur of longing and ambivalence, a
profound discomfort with his own feelings. He loved to spend time, a lot of time,
with men who were known to be gay, fairly “out” for their era. Horowitz, well.
. . who wouldn’t want him? I’d jump him any day, fairy or not. How’s this for a
buried reference to sexual attraction:
“While both
men loathed the routine drudgery of the road, both felt that there was a
sensual, almost sexual thrill to the physical contact with the keyboard.”
And here's another, a beauty:
"Horowitz once took Levant aside and showed him a number of photographs of himself as a youth, looking like Franz Liszt with long brown hair. In one of them, Horowitz was clearly wearing lipstick. Horowitz looked at the photograph with Oscar and said with a sly smile, 'Decadent.'"
"Horowitz once took Levant aside and showed him a number of photographs of himself as a youth, looking like Franz Liszt with long brown hair. In one of them, Horowitz was clearly wearing lipstick. Horowitz looked at the photograph with Oscar and said with a sly smile, 'Decadent.'"
Whoa.
But readers of
the book don’t like this sort of thing, this implication. Even the suggestion
that Levant had a gay side, that he had a jones
for George and was horny for Horowitz, provokes a kind of fury: how dare you
even IMPLY that my hero could have been gay? It’s slander, I tell you! And this from people who would be indignant if you accused them of homophobia.
But does it
really matter who he rolled around with, so long as he was deeply unhappy?
It would be an
interesting footnote to discover that he swung both ways, or tried not to, or
was really horrified about the whole thing, or else just didn’t care. It might
be true, and it might also be that none of this is true and he was as straight as
the straightjacket he routinely wore when committed to the psychiatric ward.
Sexual
orientation, now there’s a tricky one, a marshy, even murky topic. I once had a
doctor tell me, “OK” (drawing a little diagram with “Gay” on one side and “Straight”
on the other). “Here’s the most butch guy you ever saw, driving a ten-ton truck
and tattooed all over his body.” (Drawing a little x on the far “straight”
side.) “Here’s the gayest man in the world, you know, one of those interior
decorator types you see skipping around" (similarly, the x on the “gay” side.) “But most of us are. . . "
The doctor
(probably gay) then drew a whole series of pictures of flowers and rainbows and
little frisking puppies who didn’t CARE what their sexual orientation was!
Wheeeee, it’s spring and I’m in love!
Moreover, I
had a psychologist (not that I’ve ever been to one) tell me that if society
were different, which it isn’t, we would see a lot more fluidity in sexual
orientation and less emphasis on “gay”/“straight” categories, with people moving back and
forth along that continuum throughout their lives. “I’m attracted to the person,” as the saying
goes, not putting so much emphasis on whether their genitals go “in” or “out”.
(Addendum. Men are just women turned inside-out.
The cock is the vagina. The balls are the ovaries. I don’t know what happened
to the uterus: the prostate, maybe?)
But this
fluidity, this flexibility between the poles of gay and straight would play
hell with marriage and having babies and a lot of other things. It would create great
confusion. And I am sure people are doing it, even as we speak, because things
like sexuality are powerful and don’t want to be governed, and somehow have to
be governed, or so we tell ourselves.
When someone
has an “affair”, it means breaking out in some way, bursting the bonds of
commitment and doing something illicit, exciting, and inherently shameful. I
guess if a straight man/woman suddenly burst out and had a gay “affair”, the
ante would be upped and the whole thing would be even more shameful, not to
mention exciting.
Those
supermarket social values! They do hang on. So maybe Oscar didn’t get to sleep
with George (who strikes me as cool, ascetic and probably asexual, secretly
believing no one was good enough to sleep with him anyway). Maybe he didn’t
even want to. But I pick up this subtext, this murmur of longing, and it’s
tragic. Did this have anything to do with his mental deterioration in his later
years, his natural charm calcifying so that in his later TV appearances his
face resembled “a Kibuki mask of pain”?
Clifton Fadiman, Oscar's close friend, was assigned to review his first book (A Smattering of Ignorance) for the New Yorker right about the time the Declaration of Independence was signed. No nepotism there, obviously. But he had something interesting to say about his pal's internal conflict:
"He has been immensely talented and could be again if the locked horns of the elks fighting inside his head could only be separated. He has suffered and still suffers far beyond what is proper to the human condition."
Two elks. Two rutting beasts, both male, in a battle to the death in order to reproduce. Interesting image.
Clifton Fadiman, Oscar's close friend, was assigned to review his first book (A Smattering of Ignorance) for the New Yorker right about the time the Declaration of Independence was signed. No nepotism there, obviously. But he had something interesting to say about his pal's internal conflict:
"He has been immensely talented and could be again if the locked horns of the elks fighting inside his head could only be separated. He has suffered and still suffers far beyond what is proper to the human condition."
Two elks. Two rutting beasts, both male, in a battle to the death in order to reproduce. Interesting image.
Oh, he may
have been gay, or fluid, or rigid, or this or that. We don’t know, and will
never know. Or maybe he was just a tear in the stifling fabric of convention,
frightening people into laughter by flipping politeness upside-down. He was celestial
energy blazing through the concert hall or the living room, leaving behind him a
sparkling mass of awe and confusion. For that I must thank him: and for never
resolving his sexual identity problems.
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Thistledown Press
CODA: a short one cuz I have to be somewhere. I have noticed lately that the term "bisexual" is fading. You're either committed to the gay cause, or you're not. If you also dip your wand in female waters, it's somehow suspect. You have to get on-board or be seen as disloyal somehow. I also notice that if male celebrities do "come out", they piggyback (sorry) or do the stepping-stone bit, first saying they are bisexual before turning into Elton John and adopting a bunch of kids, the latest fashion accesory. (Too bad they don't fit into a purse like Britney's chihuahua, later abandoned for having needs and being no fun any more.) Why must society polarize? It's yet another way of putting human sexuality into a restrictive box.
So there.
Coda to the Coda: and saaaaaay, what's the deal with "gay woman" and "lesbian"? Why all the confusion? It's as if "gay woman" is just a subsidiary of "gay man", who is just "gay" and that's it. Sorry, have to go.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Friday, November 9, 2012
Always look on the bright side
Prelude
Life can be a shit-storm, but some days it's just shit.
You get one more rejection, you're in a royal snit.
You're feeling suicidal, don't find joy in anything -
But when you feel crap-awful, just lift up your heart and SING!
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.
So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life...
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life...
(words and music by Eric Idle)
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Victorian corsets, Part 2: the Cold Iron Hand
I don' t know what it is, but in the last few years I've become enraptured with pictures of Victorian women in beautiful dresses.
Is this my gay side, or what? Or do I want to BE them? I would imagine the undergirdings for such gorgeous gowns would be uncomfortable, to say the least.
Does it get any more elegant? Do we have anything to compare to this today, except maybe in a period movie or a stage play?
Memorable quote: "The corsets are a tremendous help to the performance, because you're playing a repressed person and you can feel the pain that they endured. My waist had to be 19 inches and they had to measure me every day. I would be on the floor and they would pull the strings until it was 19 inches. . . But if I did it again I would want it the same way because it made my performance."
What takes a little thunder out of this is the fact that Winona's waist was probably about 20 inches to begin with.
Now isn't this nice? It's one of those fainting couches. Makes you want to run out and buy one. (Is that a cigarette I see in her hand??)
You didn't have to diet then. If you had overindulged or gained a few pounds, you just pulled the laces in a little tighter, et voila - a beautiful waist that a man could span with his two hands. It's proven by this shot of a woman in everyday dress whose waist has been reduced to a thread. This is probably a simple everyday outfit that somehow looks extremely elegant.
Looks like a Seurat painting, but it's real.
Ethel Barrymore, with roses stuck all over her.
From an interview with Karin Cartlidge (star of The Cherry Orchard) in the London Times:
"These bloody corsets do a lot for repression: I nearly fainted in one. I find them quite sexy; actually, it's a funny sort of thing. They hold you in like a cold iron hand round your heart, therefore all your emotions just seethe away underneath it. It's like being in a sort of prison and it's quite exciting, there's something erotic about it."
OK. . .
What about Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, being slowly and sadistically
driven crazy by Charles ("come wiz me to zee Casbah") Boyer? Sadomasochism. . . insanity. . . corsets. . . I'm ready to kvell.
This is one of those eerily crystalline Victorian-era photographs that depicts middle-class women out for a stroll in their ordinary clothes, which nonetheless look gorgeous. My goodness, I love those dresses: the proportions were always perfect, and the hats added height and style.
Another quote. . . from some anonymous
actress in The Buccaneers: "For the first two weeks it is unbearable in the
corsets. Now I put it on, and I'm saying, 'Tighten me in more, tighten me in more!' and they're saying 'Your corset is meeting! We can't!"
Goodness. Now I see why they're coming back (mainly as a fetish item, but soon the world will catch up and realize this is the ultimate diet aid).
We couldn't do this slightly bizarre post without Miz Scahhlett and her green barbecue dress, probably the most fetching thing she wore in that interminable costume melodrama. Certainly better than that red rag she was forced to wear to that, you know, thingammy, that thingamajigger where she was supposed to be publicly acknowledging she was an adulteress when in truth she hadn't even given Ashley a hickey.
Though not for lack of trying.
In this scene, I assume war has just been declared (or "woah, woah, woah", as Scarlett put it). Men are running back and forth in a blur and colliding with each other, or maybe those guys are conjoined twins joined at the ear.
Lina Cavalieri, who could throw on just about anything and look
amazing. Oh well, maybe I AM gay.
Why is it, though - I just had this thought, and it was strange - I've never heard a gay woman rhapsodize over any item of apparel or anything to do with fashion. It's funny cuz they're supposed to like women and notice women and be turned on by women. But it's gay men who do all the rhapsodizing. It's weird.
Maybe I'm a gay man?
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Thistledown Press
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
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