Category Archives: Lifestyle

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Big boys in big girls’ shoes: the significance of Sharon Needles & RuPaul’s Drag Race

It’s not easy to explain how RuPaul’s Drag Race – especially season 4 – is more than just a bunch of big boys in big girls’ heels, to paraphrase contestant Willam Belli.

On one level, the appeal of Drag Race is simply that it’s a really entertaining reality show, smart enough to adopt the good bits of shows like America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway but with a wink-wink cleverness that stays just this side of satire. (It’s Drag Show’s surreal spin-off, Drag U, that is the truly devastating parody. Also, unicorns.) There are winners and losers, heroines and villains, twists and turns, fashion and theatre.

For the gay community, Drag Race offers something special: a show about real gay people like us who, unlike us, get the chance to be famous in a way that seems almost attainable. Even the show’s arch-villains – Rebecca Glasscock, Tatianna, Shangela, and Phi Phi O’Hara – have their fans and, significantly, their fans’ approval.

It’s not that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the first three seasons, and each has shown a progression in quality and aesthetic. In hindsight the winners were perfection even if I was rooting for someone else (say, Pandora Boxx over Tyra Sanchez). But that perfection meant that the winners were less relatable; BeBe Zahara Benet – Cameroon! – was exotic, Tyra was like some sort of sickening robotic doll, and Raja‘s artistry and self-confidence were more than slightly intimidating. Still, they were the right winners.

If you’ll indulge my hyperbole for a moment, season 4 was different: a full-on cultural clash within not only drag but the gay community as a whole. Sure, Drag Race always hinted at cultural clashes – country versus city, New York versus L.A., drag as lifestyle versus drag as performance, Heathers versus Boogers – but it was the appearance, and ultimately the victory, of the iconoclastic Sharon Needles that elevated the most recent season.

I declared during the first episode that Sharon had to win; it seemed obvious and necessary. I didn’t expect many others to share that opinion, yet Sharon had a massive, dedicated, positively rabid fan base from her first, ideal, RuPocalyptic appearance on the runway. It’s worth considering why.

It’s not that I didn’t have other favourites. Of course Chad Michaels should have come second and, after Willam’s disqualification, I’d have picked Latrice Royale for third as well as Miss Congeniality, which she did win. But it was Sharon, and her conflict with Phi Phi O’Hara, that defined the season, and underlined a real evolution in how the gay community represents itself.

We have that luxury now. We see ourselves in the media, on television, in movies, treated more and more like actual human beings, yet what we see is still mostly an idealistic pinnacle of gayness. Our media image is that of well-off, overwhelmingly white, absolutely fabulous individuals who struggle comically with gripping issues like how best to spoil our adopted children. Don’t get me wrong, Modern Family is a funny show, but I’ll never be Cameron or Mitchell.

Similarly, I didn’t see myself in any of the winners of Drag Race until Sharon Needles came along. Sharon Needles must have terrified her competitors, and I don’t mean due to her “spooky” persona or even because she was a formidable opponent, though she was; I mean that some of the queens seemed genuinely unable to understand what Sharon was doing.

All due respect to Latrice, but her comment after the Fabulous Bitch Ball episode epitomized this lack of comprehension; to paraphrase, “Week after week, Sharon is imperfect and the judges let it slide.” Let’s put to one side the ludicrousness of Latrice criticizing Sharon as flawed, because I do know what Latrice means by imperfection. In fact, the judges didn’t just let it slide; they recognized the transformational nature of Sharon’s drag.

Let me be blunt: any pretty boy can pluck and shave and squeeze his squat little body into a circus costume, but Aaron Coady (aka Sharon) isn’t a “tired-ass showgirl.” He’s scrawny and self-deprecating and he clearly knows what it’s like to be rejected, both by society at large and by our own community for being “imperfect.”

In other words, Sharon Needles gave many of us, well, a heroine, if in the form of an anti-hero – not only gay but gay and weird. Thank God for that, because I’m sure there are more gay freaks and geeks out there like Sharon, like me, than there are fishy pretty boys, and I prefer a community in which we praise uniqueness, clever humour, and self-aware wit over the temerity to just flat-out steal Kenya Michaels‘ look, to give a completely random example.

We wouldn’t have a Sharon Needles without RuPaul, of course. I give Ru a lot of credit for using Drag Race for good. The meme of Drag Race “bringing families together” isn’t a joke. Those moments of high melodrama – about dead parents, Christian families, bullying, AIDS, and so on – are real, and speak to a real process: how gays reconcile the traditional concept of “family” with our own histories of disappointment and rejection.

Gays lack guidance in defining our identities; that’s just a fact. We lack immediate role models for the gay aspect of who we are, and those we have are so often larger than life, from female divas to the gay lawyers of TV. The sheer variety of Drag Race queens automatically gives the show credence.

What’s more, many of us spend half our lives in drag even if we never wear women’s clothes. Often we feel that we have to hide, sometimes to the extent of staying in the closet, but even those of us who have been out forever hide in another way, by presenting the world – gay and straight – with personae that we feel are more acceptable (more straight-acting, more fabulous, more together, sexier, wittier, fitter, happier) than just being ourselves. We identify with the queens of Drag Race, and we appreciate how these lady-boys turn it on its ear, transforming our disguises into an expression of the creative self.

As for Needles, she took it that one step further, and it actually meant something to me, however strange that is to contemplate. I don’t believe that we, as gay people, should adhere any more to a set gay standard than to the implied demands of society at large, and Sharon proved to me that we don’t have to conform to win. That, for me, is the true significance of Sharon Needles and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Now sashay…away.

 

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Flashback: Kirsty Who?

Way back when, I wrote the music column for my friend Christine Renaud’s express and upfront magazines, dedicated to “art, entertainment & life” in Prince Edward County. This review is very typical of my style at the time (or lack thereof!). I really can’t be arsed to edit it.

Remember Robert Plant’s “Tall Cool One” video, with its Robert Palmer-esque disinterested, robotic models lip-synching for Plant’s studly big eighties hair? Me neither. Even Zeppelin fans ignore it. “Tall Cool One” does have one saving grace (for me, at least) – a backing vocal by Kirsty MacColl, who sings the relentless chorus line, “Lighten up, baby, I’m in love with you.”

Kirsty was the daughter of songwriter Ewan MacColl (“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Dirty Old Town”) and backing vocalist for Tracey Ullman, Morrissey, The Pogues and Talking Heads, among others. She wrote songs for ABBA chanteuse Frida and picked the running order for U2′s The Joshua Tree, produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite. (She said later that the tracks are ranked in order of her preference. Clever woman – the first three have become rock classics.)

Kirsty is replaced in the “Tall Cool One” video by vacant-looking models. Of course she is. Kirsty had too much character, was too real to be commercial, despite her five near-perfect pop albums. She was beautiful but chubby. She was brilliant live, but shy and suffered from stage fright; she never went on tour. Her covers of songs by The Kinks (“Days”) and socialist folkie Billy Bragg (“A New England”) gave her bigger hits in the UK than her own compositions, though Ullman took Kirsty’s girl-group soundalike “They Don’t Know” to the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. She was beloved by musicians but largely unknown to the listening public, especially in North America. where fans mostly know her perennial Christmas duet with The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York.”

Before her untimely death, Kirsty released Tropical Brainstorm, her first studio album in seven years. While the previous Titanic Days was her “sad divorce album,” Brainstorm is exuberant: uptempo and optimistic music paired with Kirsty’s witty and wise lyrics. The sound is a fusion of Britpop and the Latin sounds of mambo and samba. Since 1991′s “My Affair,” Kirsty had worked with Latin musicians and Cuban charities, and sadly she was killed in a boating accident off the coast of Mexico, one of the locales that inspired her music, so full of life.

The good humour and warmth of Tropical Brainstorm starts with the lead track, an ode to the relaxed Cuban character, Mambo de la Luna, continuing with the hilarious “In These Shoes?” (covered by Bette Midler and featured in an episode of Sex and the City), “Treachery,” a tables-turned song about stalking an unsuspecting fan, and “Here Comes That Man Again,” a risqué, comic tale of online shenanigans with a Dutch pornographer. Other highlights include the soccer saga “England 2 Columbia 0″ (when it comes to love, Kirsty knows “how those Columbians feel”) and the playful “Us Amazonians,” about a back-to-nature South American matriarchal society. Brainstorm closes with “Head,” a jazzy, sax-y piece as smoky as Kirsty’s late-night, husky voice.

In my store, “Tropical Brainstorm” has become a secret weapon: we play it both to raise our spirits and, I admit, because every week we manage to make a few converts. Good for business, but besides, Kirsty’s fans are known for their dedication to foisting her under-appreciated talent on all. Brainstorm is a rare thing, an end-to-end good listen that puts a smile on everyone’s face. It is, to quote “Alegria,” purely, simply, an album of “happiness and joy.”

First published winter 2003.

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The etiquette of the follow back

Once upon a time, I wrote a weekly column on social media for the Belleville Intelligencer, and this post does feel rather déjà-vu-ish.

Over the years the attitudes of politicians and journalists toward social media have changed, for sure. I remember advising a certain MPP and cabinet minister to get on Facebook (baby steps!) and being told, no, the leader didn’t like social media because “we can’t control the message.” Well, duh. Seeing that same MPP with a Twitter account by the time of the 2011 election made me chuckle.

Meanwhile, Canadian news junkies can follow a plethora of journalistic accounts, from news feeds and national columnists to local reporters and satirical accounts. It’s not all Kady O’Malley tweeting from committees or David Akin‘s dull lists of spending announcements anymore!

But there are many politicos and journos who still miss the point about the etiquette of following back.

I probably follow 200 news-related accounts and a similar number associated with elected members and political parties. Bear in the mind that, while in the grand scheme of things I’m utterly unimportant, I am a former riding association president at both the provincial and federal levels and a weekly columnist for two Sun Media papers read by tens of thousands weekly.

So who follows me back? My party leader? No. My MPP? Sorry. My mayor? Afraid not. My MP? Nope. As for journalists, two prominents and none others, plus my former editor.

The highest elected official who does follow me back is, in fact, Daryl Kramp – the Prince Edward–Hastings MP outside whose office I once organized a large protest that he didn’t like one bit. (Ah, prorogation…good times.) The funny thing is that Mr. Kramp and I have interesting and worthwhile exchanges now, largely because of Twitter. Even if we’re destined to be adversaries, we have found a way, at least, to chat amicably.

I’m not bitter, just a little annoyed that people I respect seem to not grasp fairly simple concepts about social media etiquette.

First point: social media is social. You’re not talking to yourself; it’s a conversation. I view following as merely a tacit agreement to acknowledge that one is open to dialogue with another person. When my own elected representatives merely broadcast, it does make me wonder how eager they are to hear from constituents online or in real life.

Similarly, when I see journalists only following other journalists it reinforces the perception that they exist in a professional little bubble, failing to adapt to a world of news that is now, to a greater degree, shaped and spread by citizens.

Susan Delacourt follows me back. Ann Douglas follows me back. These are journalists and authors who are known to and respected by many, and I don’t assume they hang on my every tweet (though both do sometimes notice my blather, which I certainly appreciate).

My second point is that following back does not imply the need to pay attention to an account. I follow many accounts that, on any given day, I won’t notice unless they are “amplified” (to use the Klout term) by tweeps I know and trust.

See, Twitter has this magic feature called lists. If you’re able to set up an account, you can set up a list, and by all means, don’t put me on it. You do realize you can follow thousands of accounts but, using either the Twitter site itself or a more sophisticated client application like HootSuite or TweetDeck, narrow your focus to a mere handful of users…right?

I tend to have more sympathy with the journalists because they manage their own accounts. Still, I know of at least one nationally known political journalist who follows every account that mentions him then immediately unfollows, leading me to believe that he hasn’t realized he can just look at any unprotected Twitter feed without having to follow the account first.

Didn’t your editor force you to attend the sort of social media seminars I use to give? There are real estate agents in Picton with more social media know-how than a Maclean’s columnist, apparently.

Sometimes it does get downright insulting. The other day the Toronto Star‘s lead Twitter account begged for Facebook “likes” and I suggested – politely, I thought – that if the account would be courteous enough to follow me back, I would “like” the paper’s page…which it did, and which I did, except that the next morning (because I do check daily, yes) I noticed I’d been unfollowed. Rude. There goes your “like,” guys, though of course I’ll still read Delacourt’s blog. Hey, Star, you should consider asking her for social media advice sometime.

As for politicians, I know how politics works, and each and every one of them has a staffer or volunteer who could manage their Twitter accounts. There’s really no excuse. If you happen to be a politician and you’re reading this post, here’s what you say: “Loyal staffer, please log in to my Twitter account and follow back the ‘real’ accounts, then set up a list of [50, 75, 100, whatever] accounts that relate to my work, y’know, my colleagues, journalists, news feeds, then plug it into my [laptop, phone] because I really can’t be bothered. Cheers.”

I’ll do it for you. No, really, I will.

In Canadian politics and journalism we have apparently accepted social media as part of the job, and I confess that when I see sloppy Twitter etiquette it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in either profession. Haven’t we had enough shouting from the rafters? When your social media read like your election pamphlet, you’re just doing the same thing twice, and you’re missing the point about – and failing to benefit from – what the medium offers.

I would go so far as to expect most politicians and journalists to reply to mentions that are worthy of comment. That might be too tall an order for a party leader, but if one backbencher can reply to me and still get his job done, the others have little excuse, and journalists are supposed to know how to distinguish between useless information and an interesting point…right?

And if you don’t think it’s a valuable use of your time, why did you bother signing up in the first place?

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5 fave low-tech cooking tools

In my collection I have a very dated, two-decade-old cookbook produced by the Markham-Stouffville Hospital’s volunteer foundation. About one-fifth of the recipes came from my aunt and most of those were Grandma’s, so I’m bound by familial loyalty and nostalgia to keep the cookbook forever.

What amuses me (besides the really bad illustrations) is that each section ends with a slew of microwave recipes, for everything from snacks to veg to meat to dessert. I think that’s odd even for 1993 – surely by then no one actually used a microwave for anything but popcorn?

We think we’re superior in 2011 for not irradiating our food until it turns to half-cooked mush, but I still resentfully hurl cookbooks across the room for their assumption that we all own countless kitchen gadgets. Not that I eschew technology entirely, still, if a recipe requires that I take out a loan to pay for the equipment necessary to achieve culinary greatness, well, piss on that.

In this spirit, and in no apparent order, here are my top five favourite low-tech cooking aids:

  1. Cast-iron pan. Do you really need a sales pitch? Versatile, happy with the stove top, oven, or even barbecue. It never sticks. Does yours? You didn’t season it. You have no excuse for not seasoning it. Rub in a thin coat of a neutral oil with kitchen paper, stick it in a low oven for half an hour, et voilà. Repeat as needed, if needed, and you’ll never use T-Fal again.
  2. Tongs. I’m sorry, this is a bit obvious. but… Well, we forced stepdaughter A to help us cook once and she was disgusted at handling meat until we pointed out the usefulness of tongs. I find I use them more than almost any other utensil. I think mine came from the dollar store. Honourable mention: spatula.
  3. British cookbooks. Should be called “eatbooks,” perhaps, because the two to which I turn most often – Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat and Nigel Slater’s Appetite – are really more volumes of ideas about putting food together than recipe books. Both Lawson and Slater are good writers, though both whine a lot. (Maybe it’s a British thing.)
  4. Cutting boards. I own one; I need three; I am forever bleaching mine clean because I use it almost every day. Don’t ever buy a glass cutting board because they are crap and you’ll worry, justifiably, about cutting off your fingers.
  5. Mom’s old measuring spoon set. I seem to recall its having more spoons, once upon a time, and I have other sets, but Mom’s tablespoon, teaspoon, and 1/2 teaspoon set is good enough 90% of the time. I’m guessing they’re made of aluminium (screw you, spell checker, that is how one spells “aluminium” – just because Americans are incapable of pronunciation doesn’t justify changing the spelling of a perfectly good word) but whatever, the point is they’re not plastic and thus have survived since the late 60s. The set makes even me feel nostalgic and my mother never really cooked.

P.S. I realize how disgusting the photo (collard greens with bacon and ham) looks. Call it my homage to the most hilarious anything, ever – James Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food. And remember…

WARNING! The carrots here are not to be eaten. Your manly meat-a-rifficness will diminish if you eat the carrots. Vegetables are for commies.

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“Company”

I’m a wee bit of a Stephen Sondheim aficionado, by which I mean, if you know the Forbidden Broadway revue, well, in the satirical version of Sondheim’s “Unworthy of Your Love” (“Forbidden Assassins”), the lyric “you are every lunatic’s god” was, I am sure, written about me. (And I cannot sing his minor thirds, either.)

So, naturally, I was all over the staged performance of Company, with Paul Gemignani and the New York Philharmonic backing Neil Patrick Harris, Patti LuPone, Martha Plimpton, Stephen Colbert, Jon Cryer, Christina Hendricks et al, playing (I believe) four dates at selected cinemas. You may have seen the cast perform “Side by Side by Side” on the Tony Awards broadcast. I didn’t, because a Home Depot delivery truck took out my cable. Not that I’m bitter.

You know, it used to be easier to be a musical theatre buff before I knew folks like my friend Joseph and NOW Magazine critic Glenn Sumi who not only know craploads about music and theatre but are Sondheim fans as well. I learn more now, but I’m not sure the humility suits me. Oh well. For now, at least, I still know more than R; it just doesn’t seem that exceptional anymore that I caught the Sound of Music parody in the Book of Mormon‘s “I Believe.” But I digress.

Back in 1970 Company was considered radical. The book isn’t linear, the themes are non-traditional, the subject matter includes pot and gay sex. Even the straight stuff would have been risqué; an overt seduction scene only two years after Hair‘s Broadway debut was, I’m sure, pushing the envelope. Now it seems tame and rather dated, and I kept having to remind myself to think 1970.

Even that excuse doesn’t explain some of the book’s strange, awkward moments. At one point, Bobby (NPH) and Joanne (LuPone) are having an exchange in a disco, only she just looks at him, and he babbles on. It’s like the librettist couldn’t think of anything interesting for Joanne to say and inserted a stage direction for cryptic looks.

The music holds up well, of course, because it’s Sondheim. But it’s less dated than even some Sondheim compositions from later years (think of the disco-fied, almost “Copacabana”-esque bits in “Putting It Together”) and has five songs that rank as top-tier: “Another Hundred People,” “Getting Married Today,” “Side by Side by Side,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and my personal favourite, “Being Alive.” Lovely to hear/see on the big screen with Paul Gemignani conducting (my pathetically geeky reaction being, “Wow, it’s THE Paul Gemignani”).

As for the singing, as Glenn pointed out, the most wobbly compensated with acting. Hendricks was charming, Colbert suited his role, and Plimpton had great comic timing.

I can’t provide an objective review of Neil Patrick Harris’ performance because he’s NPH and I’m in love with him, of course, or of Patti LuPone’s because I worship her. Why? Well, not that she sings the song in Company, but have a listen to Patti singing “Being Alive” and you might get it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eZ8Lvg3skw]

Postscript! R bought me the DVD of the Company revival on which this performance was based, which won the Tory for best revival a few years ago. Yay! Way to earn brownie points, darlin’.

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Homosexualizing the pets

I used to let my cats outside in the good weather, until I lost Alba and Dodi that way. What can I say? We have fishers. We have foxes. The neighbours across the street have the woods behind their backyards. Belle (not pictured), at least, was always sensible enough not to stray too far from the yard, but Budgie (who is pictured) is frankly not the sharpest claw in the paw.

But Belle is also smart enough to know that spring means birds, and that I’m ever so much more likely to scamper in and out the kitchen door to provide her with opportunities for escape. The other weekend… well, there were tears, but we found her. Last Friday I had to shake the bag of kibble to get her back from her garden trolling.

Hence R’s decision to gay-ify poor Belle, Budgie, and Fletcher with matching pink ID hearts. Fletcher is used to a collar and Budgie begrudgingly tolerates it but I can’t help but note that Belle – so-named because she showed up at my back door 9 years ago with a bell around her neck – isn’t wearing hers.

The little bitch. Just because she’s Daddy’s favourite and knows she’ll get away with it.

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Chaos theory gardening

The determinate nature of my gardening does not make it predictable.

When I bought this place back, oh, seven years ago or so, the garden wasn’t overgrown, but it made no sense. Hostas in full sun! Tulips in full shade! Lilac bushes planted so close to the sidewalk as to force unsuspecting pedestrians into the road. Yes, that sort of thing.

Sorry to say that I took the easy option of container gardening, while telling myself that, year to year, I’d tackle beds and bushes on a one-to-one basis. So fast-forward to today and, yes, well, that hosta isn’t burnt today because I let mock orange grow up all around it.

Every day I go through the list – newspapers, rocks, mulch, new soil – because I’m going to kill off the periwinkle someday. Pretty as it is as ground cover, periwinkle has invaded all my beds but has proven surprisingly inept at jumping to the lawn where it would be useful as ground cover.

Meanwhile I intend to continue my (mostly fruitless) quest to “liberate” plants from the side of County roads instead of buying weeds at Canadian Tire, because buttercups are weeds, Canadian Tire. You can’t fool me. Anyway, guard your ditch lilies, and I’m coveting the poppies in your culvert.

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