“RuPaul’s Drag Race” Recap Realness: This Space Intentionally Left BLANK

As the show opens, I immediately wonder if the other contestants were as ready for Kandy’s exit as the audience was. No one even says goodbye to her, so I have to assume that she was already gone in their minds. Instead, all eyes are on the future. Max plans to honor Michelle’s request precisely once before going back to her signature gray, which I think is fair given that neither Kennedy nor Pearl has been similarly challenged for wearing the same hair color on the runway every week. It’s rich that Violet immediately jumps in to defend Vicious Visage. How does her scrawny neck not snap from the speed of that whiplash?

The following day, it’s a new day. I’m stunned that the producers actually prompted a queen to say that every week, and further shocked that they actually included the footage in the finished episode. Like, they’re all walking through the door together wearing different outfits. It’s evident. I promise that no one at home is wondering why they all went into the hall and changed clothes.

There’s almost no banter before Ru leaps in with her video message, assisted so briefly by Bianca Del Rio that one wonders why they bothered including her in the first place. Though the segment drops many clear hits about throwing shade, no reading mini-challenge materializes. Was it filmed and then jettisoned because of the uniformly low quality? Did the ladies take a united stand and refuse to insult each other for someone else’s amusement? Did someone have a Jasmine Masters-esque allergic reaction to the sassy sunglasses touching her face? Or did I misread those cues and they’re just saving it for a different week? (Cut to Katya emphatically saying “it’s definitely the last one” for all the morons in the audience.) Anyway, they jump right to the announcement of this week’s main event, the eagerly anticipated Snatch Game!

It’s a new paragraph! Celebrity selection always involves a few rough moments, and this season is no exception. Fame and Violet immediately struggle because they have both chosen to play Maya Rudolph. Admit it, no one was doing a Donatella Versace impersonation before that SNL skit. It ends up not being that big a deal when Fame graciously agrees to play the Long Island Medium instead, but Ru doesn’t enjoy watching people resolve issues calmly like adults, so she swoops in to encourage both contestants to second-guess themselves. Oddly, Violet struggles with the idea of following the advice of a judge, even after instructing Max to do so only one day ago. It’s almost like she’s a headstrong primadonna who believes that others are inherently inferior yet finds herself above reproach. Almost.

Ginger and Katya try to steer Kennedy away from her choice to embody Little Richard, but for someone who was willing to undo two already-made decisions just moments ago, Ru is amazingly agnostic on this one. Her lack of concrete input comes across as shady, since asking one of the queens to figure it out on her own is usually about as helpful as lighting her on fire.

Everyone gets it together by the time the panel has been assembled, though. It’s Season 7, they know the drill. Rumor has it that Max was dissuaded from her original selection, Miranda Sings, but she manages a solid Sharon Needles. Jaidynn is visually acceptable as a pre-diet Raven-Symoné, but her one-note caricature is way off key. Despite her usual comedic prowess, Katya’s Suze Orman is bargain basement Wiig in a bargain basement wig. Violet and Pearl are inoffensive as Alyssa Edwards and Big Ang respectively. Maybe Fame should have gone back to Long Island, because the quality of her Donatella is well below medium. Closing out the panel are Kennedy, whose Little Richard is both creepier and campier than a cabin in the woods, and Ginger, who serves up an audacious, addled Adele.

It’s a good thing the guest judges this week are a hoot, because the runway theme of leather and lace elicits a surprising amount of uniformity from the ladies. Like, why it gotta be black? Thankfully, Tamar Braxton can make absolutely anything entertaining. She’s a human GIF. (Pronounced like the peanut butter, right, Ru?) And Michael Urie doesn’t have a lot to say, but he looks surprisingly cute while saying it, so I’m down. Call me, Michael.

In a Drag Race first, two queens tie for first place: Ginger and Kennedy, who march away hand-in-hand dressed as a set of drag-themed salt and pepper shakers that I hope to have on my dining room table one day. Jaidynn, on the other hand, pairs her messy impersonation from yesterday with a messy outfit today, and thus takes her second trip down Lip Sync Lane. Were I a judge, I’d have thrown Fame next to her; Max might not have perfectly embodied Season 4’s scream queen, but she clearly knows what a good performance looks like and gave it the 110%  percent that only a theater weirdo can give. But it’s not my call, and Ru ushers the clucking mannequin to safety.

As soon as the music starts, it’s clear that Max’s kooky, character-based style won’t mesh with the song as well as Jaidynn’s high-energy diva strut. I’m staunchly #TeamMax, but my team loses and the Gray Lady gets sent packing. It’s frustrating that she was bullied into changing her appearance and then immediately punished for looking too plain, but that’s reality TV for you. Ru ends the episode by announcing that any of the eliminated girls could be brought back, so I guess there’s still a sliver of hope for the youngest old woman ever, but it doesn’t take Raven-Symoné’s visionary powers to know that Trixie is almost certainly the returning champion. Though if Kandy gets exhumed, we need to take to the streets, Boston Tea Party style: I’ll throw liquid liner into the ocean until the waters run black.

Chris J. Kelly performs under the drag name Ariel Italic; in addition to this recap, he hosts weekly Drag Race viewings at the 9^th Avenue Saloon in New York City.

Chris Kelly

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/CwOdH27gJio/rupauls-drag-race-recap-realness-this-space-intentionally-left-blank-20150414

NEW MUSIC: Villagers, Du Blonde, Anna B Savage, Inner Tongue, White Sage

Jim Redmond

www.towleroad.com/2015/04/new-music-villagers-du-blonde-anna-b-savage-inner-tongue-white-sage.html

The Starting Five, 4/14/2015
“Carson is expected to present a resolution later this week expressing a ‘Sense of Congress’ that the LGBT community should be protected from discrimination under the law.” Yesterday, Emmis announced they were parting ways with Rush Limbaugh on July 3 , when his current contract with WIBC wraps up. Freakoutnation.com lifted a few graphs from the IBJ paywalled content (REBELS!)… [ Read more …

www.nuvo.net/TheEdBlog/archives/2015/04/14/the-starting-five-4-14-2015

Op-ed: My Gay Mormon Life Is Not 'Counterfeit'

The Mormon Church’s language is ignorant and dangerous.

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Brian Andersen

www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/04/14/op-ed-my-gay-mormon-life-not-counterfeit

Swiffer Takes On The Modern Dad In Refreshing Commercial
Swiffer’s new ad is all about dads.

In “A Clean House With Swiffer Dads,” father and “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson teamed up with three other dads, including HuffPost blogger Doyin Richards, to talk about taking a hands-on approach to raising their kids and cleaning their homes.

“Men really do embrace fatherhood,” Richards says in the commercial. “Everyone says 50-50. I really think it’s 100-100.” Another dad details some of the many ways he tries to be an actively involved parent — “whether that’s making lunch or helping be part of cleaning the house and being an integral part of that.”

Go dads, go!

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www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/swifferdad-commercial_n_7043836.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Marriage Equality: On the Verge of History

HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/marriage-equality-on-the-verge-of-history?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Dennis Quaid Goes Viral in Extreme Meltdown Many Believe to Be Prank: VIDEO

Andy Towle

www.towleroad.com/2015/04/quaid.html

Hillary Clinton Campaign Uses Same-Sex Twosome in Presidential Race Announcement
WASHINGTON – In announcing Hillary Clinton’s run for president of the United States on Sunday, her campaign staff included a same-sex couple in her video presentation. According to reports, the video was to have focused on “everyday Americans,” and included short segments of citizens talking about what they are “getting ready” for, including preparing for a baby, opening […]

Hillary Clinton Campaign Uses Same-Sex Twosome in Presidential Race Announcement

Brad Gooch Remembers When They Were Young And Gay In New York Memoir
In the first chapter of writer Brad Gooch’s new book Smash Cut, a vivid and searing memoir of gay bohemian life in New York City in the ’70s and ’80s, he visits the apartment of his soon-to-be lover, film director Howard Brookner. The year is 1971, the weather is warm, the mood heady, the real estate cheap.

They arrive on Brookner’s block — the last on Prince Street before the Bowery, “a burnt-out district, full of inky purple shadows tinged with even more of a sickly yellow cast than the West Village, and a smell of gas, rather than dog s–t, in the air. Few lived around here, except the street people, occupying empty eye sockets of windowless apartments across the street; the only business, a pizza shop one corner away.” Brookner’s “vast” loft apartment costs $100 a month in rent.

Today, a one-bedroom apartment on the same block goes for $5,650 a month, according to StreetEasy. On a recent visit to the block, I saw a willowy brunette examining a pair of leather “sweat pants” that retailed for $1,095 at Helmut Lang. In front of a candle shop across the street, the chalkboard advertised three varieties of flower-scented candles — Moroccan rose, Indian jasmine and Japanese peony.

Gooch says he can’t help but feel nostalgic for the old New York, despite its bad smells, its roaches and muggings. In Smash Cut, he seeks to unearth the ruins what he describes as a sort of lost Atlantis. The blocks and buildings still stand, but the spirit of that era was wiped out first by AIDS (which killed Brookner in 1989) and then, in essence, by progress — by the mainstream acceptance of gay life in America.

Gooch — now 63 and married to Paul Raushenbush, executive religion editor at HuffPost — recently sat down with me to talk about his latest work. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Why write this book now? What was your seed of inspiration?

We moved to Chelsea Gardens on 23rd Street [in Manhattan], Paul and I. And then every day when I would go to the gym down the street, I would look up at the Chelsea Hotel and see the apartment where Howard and I lived and where I had my 30th birthday party next to the ‘O’ in the ‘Hotel.’ When we moved there, I wasn’t really thinking about this. It wasn’t really weighing on me. I wasn’t thinking that Howard had died two blocks down the street at London Terrace. Somehow when we actually moved there, it sunk in.

Part of why it wasn’t sinking in was because everything was so radically different. It was like another planet. I mean, my life was completely different; Chelsea is unrecognizable from what it was. So I think the daily seeing these same locations and, at the same time, having the eerie feeling of being completely dislocated from them caught my attention.

I loved the line in the book where you write that “the ’70s had a romantic aura because of so much first love among grown men.” But I couldn’t help wondering, do you think that part of that romance becomes clear only in retrospect? That it was such a romantic time because of the AIDS crisis that followed it?

Well, possibly. Meaning that it’s the lost continent of Atlantis. It’s a very distinct time and it really ends, and it really now is history — and that’s so startling.

It’s true, as with great historical events, you wonder, “What if the South had won the Civil War?” What if Robert Mapplethorpe was alive? What if Keith Haring was alive? How would our culture be different? How would gay liberation have gone differently? And we don’t know the answers to these things. And because of what happened, which is like going through a war and all these people were killed, it just becomes its own moment.

I’d love to hear you talk a bit about the theme of “haunting” in the book. There are many references to ghosts and haunting. Was this a conscious decision? Did this happen organically?

I would like to say it was intentional because people have pointed it out and I think it’s wonderful, but I wasn’t really aware of it when it was happening. But that’s the thing of writing, too. All of this stuff, if you’re in the zone, there’s a natural structure and natural imagery to it. So there was always a feeling of being haunted, that’s true, and the Chelsea Hotel seems kind of haunted so it works. I didn’t contrive it.

Can you tell me more about your writing process and what objects and images you looked at while you were writing?

I hadn’t been precious about saving things particularly, so it was interesting to me that I had the chopsticks wrapper on which Howard had written his number the first night we met. At that point we didn’t have iPhones, so if you met someone, you’d write down their number. You would have some place in your house where you’d put all these numbers, and when you needed to call somebody, you’d go through them. There would be so many that you’d throw them away. But somehow I’d kept his number, and I had transferred it, and at this point it becomes almost amazing. And there was a poem I had written to Howard and ripped out and left out on the table, and it amazes me that these things somehow had made it to here.

Do you think you feel differently about this period of life now that you’ve finished writing about it?

In terms of Howard, I do. There was a sense of responsibility to write about him and to record him, and also in a way a responsibility to record that period and that time — because a lot of the people who were the eyewitnesses weren’t around and it was special, particular, an antidote to the present in a way.

Tell me more about that — “an antidote to the present”?

Not at all to be snotty about the present, but I just think in terms of gay history, gay culture. … Back then, there really wasn’t a gay identity yet and we were part of this first out generation. There was an intimacy to it.

Then it was very cheap and that’s why you could have artists and you could have underground clubs. Real estate was nothing. This allowed a lot to happen, but it was also very difficult. I was mugged; everyone was mugged, attacked, robbed. Apartments were full of roaches and the subways didn’t work. People didn’t have answering machines yet. Now it’s much safer and I’m benefiting from that because I’m older, but it’s not the same place. It can’t be.

Thankfully, now we have all these legal protections of gay people and marriage, which I’ve benefited from. And also a place like Chelsea — you have a gay identity to come to. There are gay gyms, gay restaurants, but identities can be confining. There’s a way that New York has become a brand now.

Some gay men who lived through the peak of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s and ’90s talk about survivor’s guilt. Have you experienced that?

I don’t think so. I wrote in the book that at the time, I told Howard I was HIV negative and I cried and he was so happy. To me, that was about separation, that I realized I was going to go on and that we were going to separate and I would face life without Howard. It took me a long time to recover from that.

What do you notice when you return to your old neighborhoods and streets?

It’s funny, you go to some fashion store and you know that that was the Mineshaft [an underground gay bondage club that Gooch once frequented]. People were being whipped where that purse is hanging. I guess there’s something about aging, but you know, it’s more than age because of the way it happened. It accelerated ages. People weren’t all supposed to die when they were 30, and I wasn’t necessarily supposed to still be here.

There are some great celebrity encounters in the book. Of those mentioned, who would you pick if you needed to chose three for a dinner party?

Certainly Robert Mapplethorpe I would really like to see and Andy Warhol. William Burroughs kind of scared me and creeped me out. I don’t know about him. Does Howard count as a celebrity? Those people would make a good dinner party.

If gay marriage had been legal and supported by society back when you met Howard, do you think he would still be alive and the two of you would be married and having kids?

We thought about it in the 1970s and I remember talking about it with my shrink. Howard had kind of a conservative side to him, too. He wanted to become his grandparents in some way. He definitely had a part of him that would have wanted to get married and he definitely wanted to have children.

Do you think society’s lack of acceptance of gay people played a role in Howard’s death?

A big part.

We’d all lived through this incredibly repressive “Leave It to Beaver” world. And very rare was the gay man who didn’t hide and lurk in his high school because of this. The cork pops in some way when you come to New York. It was part of the energy of the period — this extended adolescence and there was love and longing. But at the same time, there was a dark side to all of this. There was a danger to what we were playing around with.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/brad-gooch-smash-cut_n_7058084.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Beautiful Bremen, and the buzz of the arts in Northern Germany

Gay Star News goes in search of artistic freedom in a gorgeous town of old-world elegance

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jamiet

www.gaystarnews.com/article/beautiful-bremen-and-buzz-arts-northern-germany140415