American Idol heartthrob Adam Lambert’s scheduled appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America has been cancelled following his controversial number on Sunday’s VMA Awards show. Reportedly some 1500 complaints flooded ABC after Adam locked lips with one of his male bandmates, live on east coast TV. The west coast feed was censored.
Marcela Davison Avilés, the president and CEO of Mexican Heritage Corporation, notes that part of their mission is to build bridges between the LGBT and Hispanic communities of the Bay Area. So cross that bridge September 20-27 for the San Jose Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival, a celebration of Mexican Music, Culture, and Cuisine. Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, and many others will perform. The amazing Aida Cuevas takes “Mariachi to the Movies” on the 26th. Details here.
A new movie will focus on Brian Epstein, the homosexual manager of the Beatles who charted the Liverpool moptops’ rise to fame. Producer David Permut (Prayer for Bobby, Face/Off) has acquired A Life in the Day, a script by TV director Tony Gittelson. The film will explore events early in the band’s career following their discovery by Epstein. As Permut describes it, “Everybody turned down the band, even though Brian promised they would become bigger than Elvis, and he finally got George Martin at EMI to change his mind and give them an audition.”
It all started one evening when Epstein, then a prim and proper businessman, stumbled into the steamy Cavern Club, where the scruffy, leather-jacketed Beatles were twisting and shouting.
Epstein was immediately fascinated by the possibilities: he went to work on their rough image, dressing the band in fashionable suits by Douglas Millings and hiring stylists to touch up their soon-to-be-famous androgynous hairstyles. The combination of Paul McCartney’s melodies, John Lennon’s intellect, and Brian Epstein’s gay sensibilities created sex/music/fashion havoc that energized the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Of the “fab four,” Epstein’s favorite was John Lennon. When Epstein published his 1964 autobiography A Cellarful of Noise, Lennon joked to Epstein that he should have called it A Cellarful of Boys. It’s believed that Lennon wrote the song, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” about Epstein. As homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967 it was indeed necessary for Epstein to be discreet.
Legend has it that Epstein and Lennon slept together once, during a visit to Spain. Later Lennon told his friend Peter Shotton, “I let him toss me off, and that was it.” An interesting version of what may have happened between the two inspired the 1991 film, The Hours and Times, by Chris Munch. Imagine.
The Beatles with Brian Epstein
You be the judge — David Fudge presents his take on Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA”. Party in the FIP:
In an interview with Australia’s Woman’s Day magazine, a medical worker claims he enjoyed a love affair with Michael Jackson during the weeks before the pop star’s death. Jason Pfeiffer, 35, works for Dr. Arnold Klein, Jackson’s dermatologist, long-time gay friend, and possible biological father to some of Jackson’s children.
Pfeiffer claims he and Jackson began their affair after he was asked to drive Jackson home. They then met “many times” at Jackson’s rented home or Klein’s office.
“I’ve lost my soul mate, it’s very hard to describe the loss I feel but there is something that is empty in my heart.”
Forty years ago this week, several hundred thousand people gathered on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, to attend an “Aquarian Arts Exposition” billed as “3 Days of Peace & Music.” It’s worth remembering that without the participation of Elliot Tiber, Woodstock would never have happened.
The festival was originally planned to take place in an industrial park in Wallkill, NY, but local authorities banned the concert just a month before the scheduled event. Tiber, then the 34-year-old president of the Bethel Chamber Commerce, invited the promoters to move the festival to the grounds of the small motel he owned. Tiber had already obtained the required permits for an arts and music festival which was to feature chamber music.
When it became apparent they would need a bigger place, Tiber thought of the farm of his “milk and cheese man,” Max Yasgur. They all met in a local restaurant and a deal was made. 26 days later the festival began.
Tiber went on to become a very successful writer. In his memoir he recounts his participation in an event that preceded Woodstock by about six weeks: the Stonewall riots in New York City that marked the official launch of the modern gay rights movement. His book Taking Woodstock formed the basis of Ang Lee’s 2009 film.
Elliot Tiber
Writer/Musician/Rock Star of Graphic Designers, Chip Kidd will be reading at Joe’s Pub in NYC Wednesday, September 2 @ 7pm, doors open @6. Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners, will appear as part of the “Happy Ending” series.
Two-time Tony nominee Gavin Creel, currently starring in the Broadway revival of Hair, will be doing two shows at Joe’s Pub in New York July 27. Tickets for the first show sold out within an hour, prompting addition of the second set. Quiet, Creel’s follow-up to his 2006 CD Goodtimenation is due to be released soon.
Gavin Creel
Meanwhile, the entire cast of Hair will make an appearance on The Tonight Show tomorrow night (Monday July 13). Following the taping, they will troop out to West Hollywood’s Here Lounge where they will stage a “Be-In for Equality” with legendary gay activist Cleve Jones.
Multiple sources are reporting the self-styled “King of Pop” has died at UCLA Medical Center, where he was taken following cardiac arrest this afternoon. LA Times reported he went into a coma and now comes word that Michael Jackson has passed.
UPDATE: LA Times confirms Michael Jackson has died. He is survived by his father, mother, siblings, and three children.
UPDATE 2: Reports are surfacing that Michael Jackson received an injection of Demerol, a powerful painkiller, Thursday morning, after which his “breathing gradually got slower and slower until it stopped, ” after which he died.
By the age of eleven, Lindsay Lohan was a show business veteran with a career in modeling and commercials, and a regular role on a daily soap opera. At age twelve, she starred in the Disney remake of The Parent Trap, garnering favorable reviews. Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan called her “the soul of this film as much as Hayley Mills was of the original, and…she is more adept than her predecessor at creating two distinct personalities.” Lohan followed that with another Disney remake, Freaky Friday, playing Jamie Lee Curtis’ daughter. In 2004, Lohan became a major star with the success of Mean Girls, a teen comedy written by Tina Fey.
Pursuing a singing career, in 2004 Lohan released her debut album Speak, produced by Emilio Estefan, Jr., which went platinum. A second album was less successful.
As Lohan became a celebrity and paparazzi began to follow her every move, personal and professional problems began to emerge. During filming of Herbie: Fully Loaded in 2005 she was hospitalized with a kidney infection. Overstressed, she refused to promote the film and Disney dropped her from their publicity. A public row erupted with producers of her next movie, Georgia Rule, who wrote her a letter complaining: “You and your representatives have told us that your various late arrivals and absences from the set have been the result of illness; today we were told it was ‘heat exhaustion.’ We are well aware that your ongoing all night heavy partying is the real reason for your so-called ‘exhaustion.”’
Lohan has had a troubled relationship with her father, a former stock broker who has been in and out of prison for fraud and probation violations. He has not hesitated to inject himself into the limelight surrounding his daughter, sagely pronouncing his advice and expressing concern for her welfare to any reporter who will listen.
In 2007, Lohan was arrested twice for DUI and underwent treatment in a rehabilitation center. Unable to obtain insurance, due to her unpredictability, Lohan became unemployable in films. At the same time she has maintained her place in the spotlight, conducting an affair with a young British DJ, Samantha Ronson (b. 1977), complete with public shows of affection and shouting matches. In a Harper’s Bazzar interview, Lohan summed it up when asked about Ronson: “I think it’s pretty obvious who I’m seeing…I think it’s no shock to anyone that it’s been going on for quite some time…she’s a wonderful person and I love her very much.”
Queers in History
Queer of the Month | December 2009
Total Voters: 10
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