Invert(e)

Q on the Tube: Inside Track

RuPaul is America’s most prominent drag queen. He’s played himself on numerous TV shows over the years, but now he’s hosting his own. 
 
RuPaul’s new reality series debuted Monday Feb. 2 on LOGO. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is as it sounds–a contest to see who is the best drag queen among nine contestants considered the top drag queens in the country. The contestants range in age from 24-year-old Akashia to the 39-year-old Victoria Parker.
 
Before the queering of America, true drag was marginal. Of course men have dressed as women for centuries–just ask William Shakespeare. And in modern TV times Milton Berle dressed as a woman for comedic effect on his variety show as did a host of other comedians like Jack Benny and all of Carol Burnett’s friends.
 
Dustin Hoffman was still talking about his role as Dorothy Michaels in “Tootsie” last week on David Letterman where he was plugging his latest film. Hoffman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in the 1982 role. And “Late Night’s” Craig Ferguson continues to do drag routines almost every night. 
 
But all of these men have been playing drag for laughs. None were/are gay. None were bridging the chasm between the queer world and the straight world or even attempting to. In fact at times drag by actors and comedians has been a clear put down of both women and queers.  
 
But for more than a quarter century the 48-year-old RuPaul Charles has been turning drag into the art form he’s always asserted it is and without trashing women in the process. There’s far more disrespect for women on “America’s Next Top Model” than on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

January 2009 Publishing Notes

The buzz: Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Alex Ross’s new book, Listen to This, based on his New Yorker essays, discussing basic musical concepts in a conversation about classical and pop music, in 2010, along with Wagnerism: How a Composer Shaped the Modern World.

Spiegel & Grau will publish A Place to Come Home To by Margaret Robison, Augusten Burroughs’ mother, drawing on years of her journals and diaries about her early life in southern Georgia, her marriage; raising two boys whose own memoirs would become publishing phenomena; and her descent into psychosis, followed by a massive stroke; and now a hard-won ability to speak, write, and reflect on her life.

Riverhead will publish Sarah Waters new novel, The Little Stranger, a ghost story set in 1940s Great Britain, in Hundreds Hall, a centuries-old house of declining health and fortune, in the spring of 2009.

Running Press is releasing a line of gay historical romances written for straight women. The series will launch in April with Transgressions by Erastes and False Colors by Alex Beecroft. Two more titles are set for fall 2009.

It's a Rufus Christmas

Oh boy! Queer Christmas TV! Rufus Wainwright making cookies with Martha Stewart and his own mother. A bunch of the rest of the family - like Martha and Anna McGarrigle - are in the audience, all of them wearing sweaters Kate McGarrigle made.

The McGarrigles were in town to perform The McGarrigle Christmas Hour at Carnegie Hall Wednesday night.

He mentions his boyfriend, losing his ski sweater in a disco in Paris, and opera - more than once.

SICK COMMITTED HORE

I want to kiss Deepak Chopra’s ass.

I want to hold him in my arms and love him on a level that allows him to relax in a whole new way. (A ‘Whole New World’?  Sing it, honey!) I want to thank him for being on my local PBS station tonight. Television doesn’t help me much when I’m sick: it’s not good enough to be uplifting, nor riveting enough to make me forget my woes. Seeing Deepak Chopra’s face on the tv, hearing his voice, does help. Mind you, I don’t see him as the Second Coming or anything. He seems perfectly human to me. In his manner, I see the possibility of a lot of problematic ego, an impatience with listening, ambition, and I would not be surprised to learn that he’s capable of being sneaky. Doesn’t make him less divine in my opinion; in fact, that only makes me want to get into bed with him even more.

In Which Hore and Rush Limbaugh Almost Agree on Something

So, Rush Limbaugh is quoted as saying, “There’s no love lost between Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton, and he is good a old-fashioned Chicago thug, just like Obama is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug.” (In case anyone is wondering, yes I do get my news from “The View.” Since I’m already on record as being gay and an idiot, this should not come as a surprise.)

‘Thug?’ Obama? Wow, that’s quite a visual, Mr. Limbaugh. I’m getting kind of turned on. I think I need to contemplate this . . . .

$46,790 and Democracy Now! Headlines

$46,790!

That's how much we (taxpayer's money) are paying to have a portrait of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld painted to be hung in the Pentagon.

You've got to be fucking kidding! $46,790 for that douchbag.

I understand he's part of history and needs to be painted like all the other...douchbags before him. And in the world of real art, that's not too high. But he's a horrible, horrible man.

Here's a clip of the Democracy Now! headlines segment for October 23:

Battleground Ohio and Democracy Now! Headlines

Battleground Ohio.

Battleground Ohio.

Battleground Ohio.

Ian and I lived in Cleveland last year for a while. Ohio is seriously depressed. Many of our friends there worry about how to pay the gas bill each month so heating isn't turned off. How much money did each candidate raise last month--just last month? Obama raised $150 million. I know he beat McCain but I'm sure McCain's figure is still huge. Now I realize it's not how it works (and I know the hungry bitch election machine takes money) but just imagine how much good just part of that could do for the Rust Belt of America if invested directly to those people they are trying so desperately to reach.

Here's a clip of the Democracy Now! headlines for October 22:

Sacrificed Virgin Souls and Democracy Now! Headlines

Dinner was delicious.

We had cheese and chile tamales, refried beans, rice, guacamole, tostados, and chipotle salsa. I had iced tea and Ian had Coke.

We watched Keith on MSNBC while we ate.

For dessert we sacrificed two neighbor virgins then fucked like happy little bunnies in the mess of what was once alive and innocent. I ate their souls then downed an Alka-Seltzer chaser.

Here's a clip of the Democracy Now! headlines for today:

TEMP!

I totally love Matt Taibbi.

Ian and I are big Rolling Stone fans. On top of the good, bad, and ugly of all things music, Rolling Stone is always one of—if not the best—places for current events and political writing in print.

And Matt Taibbi regardless of topic always gives me a perverse thrill.

Two issues ago (okay, I'm a bit behind on blogging), RS published an article of his that totally captures what is most wrong about Palin as a VP candidate.

"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation."

What the World Needs Now Is Blog Sweet Blog

What’s Invert(e)?

Well, Invert(e) is a hold-in-your-hands journal that Greg Wharton created to take the place of his online journal, suspect thoughts. That was a pansexual playground of authors and artists that colored outside the lines in whatever art they created. Invert(e), this blog, is similar but not quite the same. This time, “queer” as a word, concept, identity, social construct, religion, revolution is the theme on which artists are invited to vary.

Invert(e), the name itself, is a play on an old-time-y term for queers: invert. Uranians was another coined-to-name-queerlings-before-the-jury-pigeonholed-everyone-into-the-homosexual corral and those identity rustlers—the trannies, the fairies, the bi-all-means—threw open the gates. But it sounds like someone from Uranus, and we welcome them to blog here when not jetting back and forth between the Io9.com-esphere and Captain Jack Harkness’s bedroom.

But why a blog when there's already a journal?

Because Greg and I don’t have a house in realtime anymore where we can throw a party and invite everyone we’d love to have there. And even if we did, not everyone could come. (It’s much cheaper to commute in cyberspace these days.) So, here’s our new house party and you're invited to revel in the dancing on the kitchen table or the fucking in the closet or the fighting on the front lawn.

It’s kind of like a kinkier, dorkier, queer-er version of Hugh Hefner’s old Playboy After Dark TV series meets the rancid right’s Free Republic (NSFW or NSFRT—not safe for rational thinkers)—but without that embarrassing rancid right smell.

So, if you want to know the secret connection between Camille Paglia, South Ossetia, and the Jonas Brothers, Invert(e) is the place to read all about it and become enlightened. Or a great place to find the recipe for McCain-endorsement-free homemade lube to use on your next Manhunt.net outing. Normalcy makeover tips? Ms and Ms and Ms Bigfoot sightings from the astral plane? And photos confirming the plane was flown by Rachel Maddow? We’ve got it all here!