Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Finalists for the 2005 Lambda Literary Awards (alphabetical by category):
Transgender/GenderQueer
Choir Boy by Charlie Anders (Soft Skull Press)
In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam (NYU Press)
Deliver Me from Nowhere by Tennessee Jones (Soft Skull Press)
Just Add Hormones by Matt Kailey (Beacon Press)
The Riddle of Gender by Deborah Rudacille (Pantheon)
Persephone was always one of my favorite of the Greek goddesses (along with Psyche & Athena), and today, the Autumnal Equinox, is the day when witches perform rites in her honor.
Betty finally talked me into getting cable, so expect more cranky blogging than usual for a while, at least until I figure out how to turn off the tv.
Just now, on VH-1’s “I Love the 90s, Part Deux” (hey, was this what I was missing? how nutty of me not to have wanted cable before now! what quality!!) they mentioned that Demi Moore was “gender bendering” in that GI Jane movie.
Genderbendering? Hello? How much do those people get paid that they couldn’t work out the verb form of genderbender?! Oy.
Hey, VH-1, the verb form is “genderbending.” Kinda simple now that you see it, isn’t it? I tell you what: you can pay me half whatever you paid the numbnut who wrote that bit and I won’t fuck it up.
Two observations about the decline of western civilization:
(1) cashiers do not seem to be trained, anymore, to count back change = enormously inefficient.
(2) women seem to give up seats for pregnant women & older folks more than men do = enormously not surprising.
A pure moment of unadulterated teenaged glee, here, but: Adam Ant has written his autobiography. A couple of years ago when he was first really struggling with manic-depression he got a “1%” tattoo on his body somewhere – yes, I’d like to know where – because 1% of the world’s population suffers with mental illness of some kind.
And I thought he rocked then.
But this just thrills me; in a sense it’s been a book I’ve been waiting for my whole life, or at least since I was 13 or so. I still have dreams about finding Ants stuff I don’t own, and there’s precious little out there that I don’t. And now, this, as a grown-up; it’s even better than the time he was on Northern Exposure, which was my favorite show at the time, & a little surreal, for my favorite person/hero to be on what was my favorite show. Like the kind of dream you have when you’re 16 & your life sucks.
(& by god, but look at his face! i think he’s the most perfectly formed person who ever lived, i swear it.)
Catholics really can kick ass, sometimes.
I came across an old article in Salon about Tom of Finland and I thought perhaps some of you didn’t know how it came to be that (male) homosexuals are sometimes assumed to be macho. I came to know Tom of Finland‘s art because the infamous Sex boutique sold (amongst other things) a t-shirt of his gay cowboys drawing, which was worn by Johnny Rotten and of course by Adam Ant.
Greenstone Launches All-Women Radio Talk Network
(I’ve always wanted to be a DJ.)
Today at Film Forum, Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality, with Cops, The Playhouse, and Convict 13.
Our Hospitality is required for anyone interested in the Hatfield-McCoy feud – comically done. Cops is good for anyone who likes the Keystones, of course, and so is Convict 13. But The Playhouse is a bit of film-making genius – and yet another instance of Buster in drag.
We’re back from Dark Odyssey and pretty much exhausted, but I thought I’d let people know. There is so much to report about this year’s I think I need to write another book.