Tag: movies

Not a Goomba*

Posted by helenboyd – October 17, 2008

I was just bitching on the MHB boards that nearly all the only portrayals of Italian-Americans is mafia related, and people pointed out a few others – like did you know Elaine on Seinfeld was supposed to be Catholic? Nice try, but she wasn’t. Other than Ray Romano, Fonzi and Al from Happy Days, there seems to be a real dearth of the rest of us that isn’t Sopranos-esque.

* Goomba, or goombah, is a term used to describe a stereotypical Italian-American, & in a few dictionaries, implies a connection to the mob. & Yes, it’s also the name of one of the bad guys in Super Mario.

I didn’t have any goodfellas in my own Italian family, and we’re even Sicilian / Calabrian. I tend to describe my dad as “the other kind of Italian” because he is – more Joe DiMaggio than Godfather. Mostly if it’s not mafia it’s about food, or more likely, it’s about both. But honestly, is there a culture where the food isn’t important? My Big Fat Greek Wedding got closer to my experience of being Italian-American than any of those goomba movies.

& These days, in New York, there’s about three blocks left of Little Italy; Chinatown has been encroaching for years, and Italians left the city – for everywhere. (Though the midwest could use a few more, because finding inexpensive, good Italian food in Wisconsin leaves you at Pizza Hut. ugh.) But at least now there’ll be a museum of the whole Italian-American experience, located where Little Italy used to be.

(Thanks to Nettie, Caprice, VM, & Donna, all of whom put in their two cents.)

Five Questions With… Monica Canfield-Lenfest

Posted by helenboyd – August 13, 2008

As many of you know, Monica Canfield-Lenfest is the daughter of a trans woman and created a new resource, with COLAGE, for kids with trans parents. I highly recommend it.

1) First, tell me about COLAGE & how the book for Kids of Trans happened, what your goals were.

COLAGE (www.colage.org) is a national movement of children, youth, and adults with one or more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer parents. We build community and work toward social justice through youth empowerment, leadership development, education, and advocacy. I first contacted COLAGE five and a half years ago, when I was working on my undergraduate thesis: “She’s My Father: The Social Experience of People with Transgender Parents”. Looking for references for my project, I discovered a diverse community of queerspawn who gave me the space to better articulate my experience and encouraged me to continue my work, since there are hardly any resources for transgender parented families. I started presenting at transgender conferences and gained a renewed sense of responsibility to build community and develop resources for people with transgender parents.

During a COLAGE conference in Dallas two years ago, I suggested to Meredith Fenton, COLAGE Program Director, that perhaps I could fill a fall internship position at the national office. We came up with a Fellowship model for my position, which has become a new program for the organization. I worked full-time for eight months focused specifically on the Kids of Trans Program. The major goal of the fellowship was to develop resources for people with transgender parents. Since there was no book detailing our experiences and offering advice to people with trans parents, the Kids of Trans Resource Guide became the obvious main project.

My goals in writing the guide were: first, to tell other people with trans parents that they are not alone; second, to recognize that the entire family transitions when a parent transitions; and third, to provide compassionate advice from people who have similar families. In short, I hoped to create the book I wanted my father to give me when she came out to me over ten years ago. More→

Next Stop

Posted by helenboyd – July 5, 2008

Anyone else catch any of the July 4th Twilight Zone marathon? Great stuff. I just saw Of Late I Think of Cliffordville which is particularly cruel, and stars Albert Salmi, who also played Smerdjakov in The Brothers Karamazov in 1958.

I also caught the only Jack Klugman TZ I’d never seen – Death Ship. & I love Jack Klugman, yes, because of The Odd Couple, but mostly because of Quincy, which, imho, gave birth to all of the forensic shows on TV now (most of which I watch).  But I have to go to sleep, despite the next one up being Printer’s Devil with Burgess Meredith. (It’s a good one.) I used to tape these when the marathons were on WPIX here in New York, but now they’re all on DVD, which makes it a bit easier. (& It took me borrowing the DVD collection to finally see the Buster Keaton TZ, which they never, ever show during these marathons.)

I really do love this series, and love Rod Serling – not just for The Twilight Zone, but because he fought and fought and fought the censorship that came with advertisers’ sponsorship of television, and during an era when they almost didn’t win. As he put it:

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.”

Now there was a fine tilt at an inexorable windmill, but at least he got a few stunning seasons of work done, which we’ll have forever.

Pride Rant

Posted by helenboyd – June 30, 2008

A great rant about Pride by Joe.My.God, which he wrote back in 2005 after watching a NYC Pride Parade:

Because even if Pride doesn’t change many minds in the outside world, it’s our PARTY, darlings. It’s our Christmas, our New Year’s, our Carnival. It’s the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other “Happy Pride!” Saying “Happy Pride!” is really just a shorter, easier way of saying “Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!”

I’m not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It’s OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our “debauched” celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

It seemed a great way to end Pride Month.

Summer Threads

Posted by helenboyd – April 28, 2008

So I’ve decided my summer look this year is going to be ‘Stranger Than Paradise extra cum Buena Vista Social Club.’

The Trip to SC, Pt. 2

Posted by helenboyd – April 14, 2008

What a trip! I haven’t had so much fun without Betty since before I met her, and while I’m sad she wasn’t there to enjoy it all, I also know that she wouldn’t have found the train much fun at all (& so might have ruined it for me, ahem). But I was early for my train, & so hung around the ass-end of Penn Station for a while (that would be the 8th avenue side, of course), talking to guys trying to bum change and cigarettes. I don’t know why I like those guys; I must’ve been a hobo in a past life. But the guy I talked to was originally from New Orleans, and it’s hard not to have a good conversation with an older brother from NOLA, imho. In exchange for a cigarette, he said he’d buy me a drink next time we’re both down that way.

On the way down I was seated next to an older man who carried only his Bible, which was a “welcome to the south” a little early for me. He was a minister from Greenville, SC, it turns out, & his stop was the one after mine, so we were stuck with each other for the duration. He slept mostly, and I got very good at climbing over his napping legs.

But I ate dinner with a man and his 15 year old son on the way down; the guy was originally from the east coast, a professor and scientist, who knew Ben Barres when he was at Stanford, but who’d moved to VA and was traveling back to VA with his son after a short sojourn in NY. They were both really nice, and I had a great chat with them despite getting a little drunk on the half-bottle of wine I had ordered (which I had ordered in order to put myself to sleep). More→

Pregnant Man, Redux

Posted by helenboyd – April 7, 2008

That bonehead Bill O’Reilly made fun of Thomas Beattie for having a baby since his wife can’t.

Keith Olbermann called O’Reilly one of the “worst persons in the world” for doing so.

Olbermann 1, O’Reilly 0.

For those of you who are confused by the whole “pregnant man” story, here’s the nutshell: female-bodied person needed to change gender due to internal sense of gender role. Took testosterone, had breasts removed, was legally declared male on important documents. Did not have full hysterectomy. His wife, Nancy, unable to have a baby due to her own gyn stuff, opted to impregnate her husband via artificial insemination, who went off testosterone two years ago in order to be able to do so.

So that’s it. It’s not complicated, it’s not disgusting. It’s just a man who, with his wife, wanted to have their own child, and had the plumbing to do so. End of story. If any other husband could, and did, we’d all be talking about how brave & selfless he was, but because this particular man was born female at birth, people are freaking out. No need. Choice is the gig, and stuff like this is going to keep happening — baby, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

While I’m here, can we toss the phrase “artificial insemination”? It’s silly. You sure can end up pregnant, & there’s real sperm involved and a real egg. So how about “technologically assisted insemination”? “Manual insemination”? Something better than “artificial.” That makes it sounds like people are getting pregnant with robots or extras from Steven Spielberg movies.

New Resources

Posted by helenboyd – February 4, 2008

So I’ve discovered a few interesting new resources in team teaching Gender Studies 100 this semester, and never posted some I discovered last term. Here are a few:

  • The Trouble with Testosterone by Robert Sapolsky – a very accessible read about the popular misunderstandings about testosterone (for instance, that it causes aggression)
  • Iron Jawed Angels – about the last push for the vote for women in the US
  • The Fire, Earth, Water trilogy by Deepa Mehta – stunning, beautiful film series by a woman director about various aspects of Indian culture. Mehta has a gentle but powerful hand as a story-teller.

Yo! Yo says hi.

Posted by helenboyd – January 16, 2008

I’ve never much liked “zie” and “hir,” but it seems there’s a whole new way to go about the gender-neutral pronoun: yo.

As in, “Yo likes cookies, genderfucking, and B-movies.”

Works for me.

(via Feministing.)

Even More Decline of NYC

Posted by helenboyd – December 16, 2007

Becca Tucker is clueless, of that I’m sure. This article she wrote – about stalking Claire Danes – is about as low as low gets. & Ignorant. To me, it’s typical of this new breed of New Yorkers who come here to be near the money and the fame and the art & who don’t understand the premise: that we, as New Yorkers, get to live around the talented, the rich, & the famous BECAUSE WE DON’T BOTHER THEM.

Celebrities come here in order to disappear a little, without hiding behind walled gates and guards. A lot of creative people want to be around people living, going to work, waking up in time to make the donuts. It’s why, I think, there are so many film-makers and writers and poets and performance artists here; we thrive off of each other’s ideas but also off of the buzz of life around us.

The point isn’t that you can stalk Claire Danes. Tons of famous people live here and would be easy enough to stalk, and that includes people who are famous for anything and everything you can imagine. But they live here because New Yorkers are famously cool and relatively unimpressed with fame; it’s a sign of your own couth, here, to not be so overwhelmed with seeing someone famous that you can keep your cool. You might smile, or even politely ask for an autograph if the person is an especial hero, but for me, the real joy has always been in watching someone I admire show up at an event I went to (like watching a Buster Keaton move with David Byrne, or seeing a Bill Irwin show while seated a couple of rows behind Robin Williams, or even seeing Rufus Wainwright with David Bowie en scene).

I mean, *of course* famous people are here, and accessible, and sometimes they even buy their own groceries. This is New York, and hello! – that’s the fucking point. It’s perfectly acceptable to wait to meet celebrities when they’re on – like at a stage door or a premiere, or a book signing or lecture or performance – but not when they’re walking their dog.

Get some manners, people. Or go back to where you came from.

(via Feministe)

TG 101

Posted by helenboyd – December 3, 2007

The Gender Identity Project (GIP) Center here in NYC has created a 20-minute film called Transgender Basics. It’s not necessarily thorough – it’s only 20 minutes! – but it does cover what it needs to for an introduction to the idea. You can view it on the Center’s website.

Mara Keisling on C-SPAN

Posted by helenboyd – November 17, 2007

If you haven’t seen it yet, Mara Keisling’s appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal last week is worth viewing, and apparently isn’t going to be online forever, so do go watch it within the next week or so.

(You want the 11/10/2007 show.)

My favorite bit is when the woman calls to talk about how the founding fathers were Christian, & how Mara shouldn’t be allowed to talk at all, & Mara drinks her coffee stone-faced like Buster Keaton, the smile only showing at the very corners of her mouth, after which she explains, again, that the Bill in fact exempts religious institutions. (It’s at about 1:17 or so.)

& As one caller put it, I agree with him: Mara is a brilliant woman, and I’m happy to see her doing advocacy. That anyone said, “you can’t be a full person if you have to hide all the love in your life,” on Washington Journalis amazing, but I’m pleased as punch it was someone talking about LGBT rights.

TV Boyfriend (No, Not That TV)

Posted by helenboyd – November 16, 2007

My friend Guy always refers to the men he has the hots for on TV (& the more-than-occasional musician) as his “TV boyfriends.” I know there’s a guy from Grey’s Anatomy that made the list lately, but I never watch it so I don’t know which one it is. A while back it was Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.

So since I kinda miss being with a guy sometimes, I’ve decided to have my own TV boyfriend as a way of indulging the beauty of men without risking actually doing anything with any.

Anyway, since all I ever watch is Animal Planet (& yes, Cesar Milan has his moments of hotness) and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Vincent D’Onofrio – he’s the guy who plays Robert Goren – is pretty much my ongoing TV boyfriend. Out of curiosity, or some kind of erotic masochism, I found some clips of him on YouTube, but this one is – damn. It’s just about the hottest kiss I’ve ever seen. So now, even though I’ve never seen the movie it’s from, I’m not sure I can.

For those that bat for the other team, here he is in a 1998 film making out with a guy.

Kids These Days

Posted by – October 25, 2007

At least here at Merrimack, they’ve got it good, even though they probably don’t know what’s right under their noses.

They get free films, for instance. I’ve been going to see them, which is kind of funny considering I don’t like most movies most of the time & don’t go see them – not American movies, anyway, or anything contemporary. They’re rarely worth the $10.

But Tuesday night I saw Deepa Mehta’s Earth, which is about the Partition of India in 1947, into India & Pakistan, and which came with Independence. It’s a stunning movie, & I’ve been thinking about the plot and themes and scenes and characters since I saw it. It’s a terrifying film, but deeply moving as well.

Last night I saw one of the earliest Theda Bara films, A Fool There Was, in which she plays her legendary vampire character, and afterwards they’re screening a documentary about her. A Fool There Was made so much money that it helped launch Fox Studios. It’s such a lovely rare treat to get to see a silent film on the big screen.

& In a couple of weeks, they’re screening a film about Dorothy Day, though it’s not the one that I missed when it played at the Brecht Forum in NYC.

He’s Come a Long Way, Baby

Posted by helenboyd – October 22, 2007

Charles Busch‘s current production of Die Mommy Die! was reviewed in The New York Times today:

Directed by Carl Andress, “Die Mommie Die!,” which runs a peppy 90 minutes, is infused with the good-natured comic brio that has made Mr. Busch a drag artist whom middle America can embrace. Even theatergoers who don’t catch the copious old-movie quotations, verbal and physical, should enjoy Mr. Busch’s hair-trigger comic timing and rubbery mugging, which brings to mind vintage Lucille Ball. (The association is underscored by Mr. Busch’s choice of red wigs, designed by Katherine Carr.)

I’ve seen a bunch of Charles Busch’s shows over the years – including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, The Lady in Question, Shanghai Moon and Times Square Angel – and always find them smart and fun. I even met Joan Jett in the bathroom at one production! So do go if you get a chance, or rather: make the chance.

On ENDA, on National Coming Out Day

Posted by helenboyd – October 11, 2007

This is the text of the talk I gave in Denver on Tuesday. It probably won’t surprise anyone that I’ve been busting at the seams wanting to have a say in all of the dialogue going on about ENDA. At least I don’t think it should surprise anyone, not by now.

**

First, let me thank Ed and Jordan and all the students who asked them to bring me here. It’s a pleasure to be here in celebration of National Coming Out Day, a pleasure to see all of you gathered, celebrating who you are. Thanks to all the crossdressers, the gays, the lesbians, the genderqueers, the trans men & women, MTF and FTM, & to their partners. Thanks to all of you who are family, or friends, or allies, for being here.

Betty and I have been on tour a lot this year because I had a book published in March, and we’ve gotten a chance, once again, to meet a lot of people and to talk to a lot of trans people and partners, and this year, we’ve met more gay and lesbian people who aren’t trans than we did before. And it’s been a pleasure all around in hearing people’s stories of their own gender variance, or the stories of how they came out to loved ones, or of their first big crush or the moment when they realized they were trans or gay or lesbian or how they came to understand the first identity they understood themselves to be was not quite accurate in the long run. What I love to hear the most is about how queer people find one identity fits for a while and then not at all; like Oliver Wendell Holmes’ chambered nautilus, queer people build themselves bigger chambers, bigger categories, labels that are not so confining, over time.

That’s how it’s been for us, certainly. By the time people get used to what we’re calling ourselves our identities have shifted a little, changed usually by experiences we never expected and wouldn’t trade for anything. More→

SoCo Keynote: Jenn Burleton

Posted by helenboyd – September 23, 2007

SOUTHERN COMFORT CONFERENCE 2007
KEYNOTE ADDRESS – SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2007

One Community, One Family

by Jenn Burleton, TransActive Education & Advocacy, Portland, OR

Thank you to the organizers of this amazing conference and in particular, Cat Turner, Lola Fleck and Elaine Martin. And I must thank my longtime friend, Mariette Pathy Allen. My life has been truly blessed as a result of knowing her and sharing many adventures with her…some of which are suitable for sharing with the whole family.

When Cat Turner called back in January and invited me to come to Atlanta I was of course, very honored. I was also surprised. After all, we’d never met. I’d never attended a previous Southern Comfort Conference and I am not, in my opinion anyway, one of the gender community heavy hitters.
More→

End of Month

Posted by helenboyd – August 31, 2007

To close out the month, a Buster Keaton montage set to Radiohead’s music:

Do watch till the end for a classic Buster moment.

Five Questions With… Marilyn Frank

Posted by helenboyd – August 29, 2007

Marilyn Frank has been sharing her story with wives at Fantasia Fair, IFGE and Tri-Ess seminars since 1982. She married her husband Len in 1954 and didn’t learn about the cross dressing until 1964, 10 years and 3 children later. At that time the only information available to her was Virginia Prince’s book The Transvestite and His Wife (now titled The Cross-dresser and His Wife) which she still finds to be one of the best books written.

1) First, Marilyn, I want to thank you on behalf of all the partners out there, for stepping up at a time when most of us weren’t even in high school yet. Without women like you & Peggy Rudd, the struggle to have partners’ issues recognized would be a lot more difficult. So what caused you to do the educating you did?

In the 1970’s I was a volunteer on a crisis intervention hot line in Morris County, NJ. When I became Director, I questioned some of the professionals in the group, who did not know much about cross dressing, but were able to assist me in finding people who did know. During this time we came upon Tri-Ess, and then in 1980 Len read the article in Playboy about Fantasia Fair and in 1981 we spent a few days at the Fair. I had many discussions with Ariadne Kane about the wives’ needs, and this brought Niela Miller to the Fair and that’s where my true education began. Since it had been a very lonely road not only for Len, but for me, I decided I would reach out to help others, so that’s when I started facilitating a wives group at our local Tri-Ess Chapter, which I did for for over 10 years. I also was instrumental in starting the wives’ program at the first IFGE Convention. My philosophy is that every time I help someone, I help myself. It’s true the marriage had its ups and downs where the cross dressing was concerned, but for us it was a small part of our overall marriage. We have always had good communication, enjoy many of the same things and do have a sense of humor (that helps).

More→

Stardusted

Posted by helenboyd – August 17, 2007

Betty & I went to see Stardust for its opening last weekend because Neil Gaiman asked us to (not personally, of course, but via his blog) and we both really enjoyed the movie. It’s rare for me to like a movie – I find most comedies too mean-spirited, most romances too gendered, and since I don’t like movies all that much in the first place (which is something like sacrilege or anti-American to admit, even) as either entertainment or as an art form, Betty doesn’t convince me to go to many. I don’t find most of them deliver even $10 worth of entertainment.

But Stardust, I loved. I’ve long been a fan of Gaiman’s writing, for the fantasy, the sheer power & reach of his imagination, & the breadth of his research, but what I usually like about writers above all else is voice. You know, I was weaned on C.S. Lewis. I like a narrative voice that tells me a story in a personal way, and what comes across in Gaiman’s writing is not just a kind of bemused gentleness, but intelligence, a lot of compassion, & a kind of sly earnestness and respect for his characters that all adds up to good stories, well told.

I read the book Stardust a couple of years ago and didn’t re-read it before seeing the movie because sometimes you want to see if the movie will touch the kind of memory you have of the book – and with this movie version, I found it hit all the same notes as the book did, mixing a kind of whimsy with a remarkable wisdom. But mostly there’s that gentle compassion – for the dead brothers (despite their being power-greedy fuckers), for the star, & for the somewhat hapless young man who’s fallen in love with the wrong girl.

The only part I didn’t like was DeNiro’s performance, and that’s mostly because it was one long “poofter” joke. & For that to be in a Gaiman film – who is uncommonly sympathetic to his gay & trans & gender variant characters – it seemed out of character. As “poofter” jokes go, I suppose it was more sympathetic than most.

So go see it. Put aside the arch comments, the snarky sarcasm, the cruel retorts. Go see a story about naivety, stupidity, greed, vanity & ultimately, justice. But mostly go see a story about love, told well.