"What could possibly matter more in life than a cheap, momentary thrill?"

Ashleigh Brilliant

Isn't This Better?

Thinking of Kander & Ebb’s songs this morning, because that is what I do, arise very early in the morning, have coffee & consider the great songwriting teams, I wanted to dig deep for a Kander & Ebb song that I held in high regard, but that readers might not know. There are platinum tunes from even their biggest flops, I can name so many. But, were they ever involved in any project as stinky as Funny Lady, the totally unnecessary 1975 film sequel to Funny Girl. This mess is a highly fictionalized account of the later life & career of comedienne Fanny Brice & her marriage to songwriter/empresario- Billy Rose. The film does feature a few well staged musical numbers & a fair share of absurd production numbers, but several top-notch songs. I always have been drawn to this torchy tune. I would like to do it in my act, in a single pool of light, in a tux with the tie undone:

I loved the man

Truly I did

When he would touch me

I’d act like a love-hungry kid

Isn't this better?

Somebody nice somebody new

Someone who lets me react as I normally do

Isn't this better?

Better

Passion is fine but passion burns fast

Passions design seems never to last

Better a match

Better a blend

Who needs a lover?

I need a friend

Now I am calm save & serene

Heartache & hurt

Are no longer a part of the scene

Isn't this better

The way it should be?

Better for him

Much better for him

& also much better for me

Kander/Ebb

1975

Born On This Day- March 18th... John Kander

The celebrated songwriting team of Kander & Ebb were working on the musical The Scottsboro Boys when Ebb died in 2004 of a heart attack. The Scottsboro Boys tells the true story of 9 young black men falsely accused of rape in 1931. It opend on Broadway in 2010 to strong reviews & weak box office. Today is the birthday of the musical half of the team- John Kander.



From The Act to Zorba, for 5 decades, composer John Kander & lyricist Fred Ebb have been Broadway's paramount songwriting team, the longest running music/lyrics partnership in Broadway musical history. They've given the world some of the great creations of the American Musical Stage. Their scores have a breathtaking ability to capture the flavor of a specific time & place, with music brimming with audacity & brilliant, droll, penetrating lyrics. The team has taken on serious, challenging subjects: Nazism, abortion, murder, capital punishment, prison torture, greed, corruption, with originality & stunning talent. Kander & Ebb combine razzle dazzle with a political conscience. On John Kander’s award shelf sit Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, Grammys & Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards. They've written for the great musical performers of our day: Lauren Bacall, Joel Grey, Liza, Stephen Rutledge, Gwen Verdon, Frank Sinatra, Robert Goulet, Chita Rivera, & Barbra Streisand.


In 1965, their 1st produced show-Flora, the Red Menace introduced Liza Minnelli to Broadway & a young singer Barbra Streisand had hits with 2 of their songs- My Coloring Book & I Don’t Care Much, & their careers were launched. 22 shows later & they are still at it, even with ½ the team deceased. Her are the John Kander contributions to Musical Theatre:


• A Family Affair (1962) - lyrics by William Goldman
• Flora the Red Menace (1965)
• Cabaret (1966)
• Go Fly a Kite (1966) - music and lyrics also by Walter Marks
• The Happy Time (1968)
• Zorba (1968)
• 70, Girls, 70 (1971)
• Chicago (1976)
• The Act (1978)
• Woman of the Year (1981)
• The Rink (1984)
• & The World Goes 'Round (1991)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992)
• Steel Pier (1997)
• Fosse (1999)
• Over & Over (1999)
• The Visit (2001)
• Curtains (2006) - additional lyrics by Rupert Holmes
• All About Us (2007 revision of Over & Over)
• The Scottsboro Boys (2010)

Chicago remains one of my favorite musicals & in high school, I adored the score to their not so successful- 70, Girls, 70s, including this tune:



In 2006, at 79 years old, John Kander bravely came out of the closet. He said he had waited so long for professional reasons. I agree, because when choosing to go to a Broadway musical, audiences have often been known to bypass shows written by homosexuals.

Born On This Day- March 17th... Рудо́льф Хаме́тович Нуре́ев

Again, I wish I had Walter Kennedy available to question about this post. He is a dance historian, a professional dancer, & a professor of dance at the University of Oregon, & I seem to recall that he once had an encounter with Nureyev.

From After Dark Magazine circa 1973

I remember my mother explaining who he was when he defected from the USSR in 1961. If Rudolph Nureyev's story had been already filmed, it should have been a preposterously pedantic piece directed by Ken Russell. He grew up in extreme poverty during WW2 in the USSR & yet somehow had this sterling single-mindedness, spirit, & strength to get himself out of his small town & to the West. Nureyev played a role in so many major historical & cultural events of the 20th century; his life was absolutely Forrest Gumpian.


I knew & understood who he was at early age & his image was sered into my young teenage consciousness by a photo from After Dark Magazine. Nureyev was admired by Jackie Onassis, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful, Andy Warhol, Freddie Mercury, Bobby Kennedy, & Madonna. Soviet Prime Minister Leonid Brezhnev personally tried to thwart his career. He was the very pretty face of the Cold War, an icon of the 1960’s sexual revolution, a representative of the new popularization of the celebrity personality as high culture. He was lordly, lusty, obsessive & opinionated. Nureyev was a 20th century true genius & his life is a record of that era.


Nureyev consorted with royalty & with gay hustlers. He was a dancing contradiction: defiant of authority, but an unmatched disciplinarian in the studio, needy & nonchalant, pious & promiscuous, cruelty & charitable.


Nureyev had an intimate, intriguing, tumultuous affair with Erik Bruhn, the very beautiful blond Danish ballet star 10 years older than Nureyev. He remained the great love of Nureyev's life even after their relationship ended.


I supervise fifteen 20-30 year olds, several who are gay, & today I tried to explain what he meant to our culture, but not one of them had heard of Rudolph Nureyev. It was just a few decades ago that he was everywhere, & now he seems almost forgotten, probably because dance is that most ephemeral of art forms.


Thousands of screaming fans used to wait for him at the stage door after his performances. Nureyev was on the cover of Time & Newsweek in the same week. Like Nijinsky, he was a dance star & a pop star.

The film of his life will have to feature a classic suspense sequence. While dancing with Kirov Ballet, the Communist Party & the KGB didn't trust Nureyev's political loyalty, & he angered them by associating too freely with Westerners while on tour. He was at the Paris airport with the Kirov, ready to fly with them to London, when he learned that he was being sent back to Flanked by KGB agents, Nureyev made an urgent appeal for help to a Paris friend, Pierre Lacotte. Lacotte brought in another friend, Clara Saint, who rushed to the airport. Posing as an adoring girlfriend, she convinced the KGB agents to let her say goodbye to Nureyev.

While kissing his cheeks, she whispered plans into his ear. Then she rushed away & got the French airport police, telling them that a famous Russian dancer wanted to stay in France. The police agreed to protect Nureyev if he could get away from the KGB & into their custody. They accompanied Saint into the airport bar where the KGB was guarding Nureyev. She approached him one last time, whispering that he needed to get to the police across the room. Nureyev bolted from his chair to the bar, a distance a few yards. He yelled: “I want to stay in France!!!” The KGB agents lunged for him & the Paris police, as promised, protected him.


The leap to freedom made Nureyev famous, but his stardom came from his impassioned, impetuous, impulsive, inspiring, intense dancing. Male Ballet dancers at that time were virile & vigorous, but they were deferential to their female partners. Nureyev gave the audiences animal attraction, allure, & astonishing sexuality onstage. I was cold cocked & riveted by his hip, flamboyant charms.

Nureyev died in 1993 from complications from HIV. He was just 54 years old. Newsweek ran its second Nureyev cover with the headline "AIDS & the Arts: A Lost Generation."

The Power Of Pussy

I am compelled to come out of the closet. I was afraid of what society would think. I needed to face my own self loathing. I have known for some time, but I have not been strong or honest. I have stood on the sidelines as friends & co-workers came out publicly, only to be ostracized, ridiculed, fervently prayed over, & physically harmed. It didn’t take long to learn who their friends were, who tolerated them, & who would no longer have anything to do with them. But now I that I am coming out of the closet, I am discovering strength & spirit.

I feel it is my responsibility to give my top reasons to come out of the closet.

1. Honesty – You just don’t wake up one day & discover that there is something “different”... well, maybe you do. For me it was a process, like baking a cake–except here you don’t get to lick the spoon. Coming out offers you an opportunity to live an honest lifestyle. Some people will say: “It’s nobody’s concern”, except this is a big part of your own experience & that regardless of what you think, it is already everybody’s business. Coming out isn’t about the world, it’s about you. If you decide to come out, consider all the pressures that are lifted; no more lying, sneaking, or carrying the guilt. It’s that negative part of “the secret” that adds to stigma that is wrong. Revaluate why you keep hiding it. To be honest with yourself will give you power.

2. Increased Self-Esteem – Something happens after you come out. You discover other people just like you & you no longer feel isolated from the world. You feel better about yourself & your decision, which adds value to your life. Looking in the mirror becomes a beautiful thing & it gets better with time. You are not a stereotype.

3. The Power of Tolerance – Coming out not only frees you from the bonds of secrecy but it also prepares you for the rest of your  life & all it throws at you. You become more tolerant towards others. Now that I am open, I try to be tolerant of those struggling with their issues but it isn’t always easy. You realize that once upon a time you were having the same issues & magically out of nowhere, the tolerance arrived like fairy dust.

4. Accept It – Although it doesn’t define you, it is a new part of your life & only a small part of who you are. You are like a pie chart & it’s up to you to divide that pie & assign the values. Is this going to take up 1% of your existence or 99%? There’s no correct value & it will fluctuate from time to time depending on what’s going on in your life. But no matter how much value you assign to your new acceptance, avoid the things that feel dangerous or uncomfortable.


So right here, on my little spot on the Internet. I want the world to know that I am an out & proud… I have a cat. Yes, I have a cat. I can say it. I am moving past the embarrassment & shame.

Oh, no! There is a cat in the house!

Nearly a year ago, & with his harrowing hard luck story, we allowed RCK to live in our basement rather than under bridges & in parks. He brought with him, his ancient cat. RCK did something very bad & he is now in prison, leaving his few belongings & his feline in our basement.

Henry is a sagacious, very old cat with a sweet disposition. With RCK gone, I explained to The Husband that Henry could live us. I was not about to have him put down, & finding a home for a 16 year old cat on Craigslist appeared futile. So, Henry stays. But, I was firm that he would live in the basement. We could bring him upstairs on occasion & even outside if we were sitting in the back garden. I felt that Henry would be content & glad not to be on the streets. We have a nice, clean, dry basement & Henry made a cozy spot for himself on a shelf of stored linen.


Lulu was indifferent to Henry, but Junior was not happy one little bit. He hated the cat & for hours, he would stare through our glass door to the basement landing with the cat on the other side.

Leaving the basement door ajar, Henry started sneaking upstairs. Over time he insinuated himself into the traffic & rhythms of the main floor & was soon napping on the backs of the daybeds. There were hisses & growls, Henry had his tail nipped & Junior had his face slapped. Lulu rose above the fray.

Now, we are a family of 5. I was able to say to strangers: “I have a husband, 2 terriers & a very lucky old cat… that’s right, I am out & proud & I have a cat.

Songs Of Spring

A dreaded sunny day

So I meet you at the cemetery gates

Keats & Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

So I meet you at the cemetery gates

Keats & Yeats are on your side

While Wilde is on mine

So we go inside

& we gravely read the stones

All those people all those lives

Where are they now?

With the loves & hates

& passions just like mine

They were born

& then they lived & then they died

seems so unfair

& I want to cry

You say:

 "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"

& you claim these words as your own

But I've read well, & I've heard them said

100 times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose & poems

The words you use should be your own

Don't plagiarize or take "on loans"

There's always someone, somewhere

With a big nose, who knows

& who trips you up & laughs

When you fall

Who'll trip you up & laugh

When you fall

You say:

 "ere long done do does did"

words which could only be your own

& then you then produce the text

From whence was ripped

 Some dizzy whore, 1804

A dreaded sunny day

So let's go where we're happy

& I meet you at the cemetery gates

Oh Keats & Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

So let's go where we're wanted

& I meet you at the cemetery gates

Keats & Yeats are on your side

But you lose because Wilde is on mine
Morrissey/Marr
1985

Maxims For Living

"Style is knowing who you are
 & what you want to say,
 & not giving a damn."

Gore Vidal

Born On This Day- March 14th... Sylvia Beach

“In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare & Company, which was the library & bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 Rue de l’Odéon… Sylvia had a lively, sharply sculptured face, brown eyes that were alive as a small animal’s & gay as a young girl’s, & wavy brown hair that was brushed back from her fine forehead… she was kind, cheerful & interested, & loved to make jokes & gossip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

A stranger recently referred to me as “bookish” (along with fat, bald & old). I had always held that bookish meant a cardigan wearing,dotty eccentrics living in small spaces with their books & 7 cats named: Twain, Dickens, Proust, Tolstoy, Poe, Fitzgerald & Rum Tum Tigger.


I suppose I am a bit bookish, with my 100s of books stacked about the house. Books have been a major force in my life since before I could read, & I always loved to spend time in bookstores. It is hard to grasp that they have become a thing of the past.

Sylvia Beach, in front of the store, with James Joyce

Born on this day in 1887, to a Presbyterian pastor & his wife in Bridgeton, NJ., Nancy Woodridge Beach changed her name to Sylvia Beach when she was a teenager. As a teenager, her father was associate pastor of the American Church in Paris & young Sylvia dreamed that she would someday live in the City of Lights. During WWI, she & her sister volunteered for the Red Cross in Euorpe, & Beach lived the rest of her life abroad.
Beach is one of the best known of the American expatriates of the early 20th century. She owned & operated the bookstore- Shakespeare & Company. The store was the first English language bookshop on Paris’ Left Bank. Shakerpeare & Company was a literary center, lending library, & publishing company between the 2 World Wars. The frequent visitors icluded: Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Andre Gide, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Tornton Wilder, Picasso, Man Ray, Hemingway & Fitzgerald. Beach introduced writers & artists to each other & ensured writers had pocket money and reading material.  Beach is remembered as the publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which American presses considered obscene & radical.


I wish I could ride in the limo from Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris. I would like to go Shakespeare & Company in Paris in 1925.


When the Nazis invaded Paris, Beach refused to leave her books, as she was ordered to. When a German officer coming to her shop & asking, in English, to purchase the copy of Finnegans Wake in the shop window. Beach refused. The officer, in a rage, told her that the next time he returned, it would be with a squad who would confiscate her entire collection. He left, & Beach promptly boxed up her entire collection, hid it away, & painted over the Shakespeare & Co. sign. The Germans did return, & while they did not get her books, they got her. She was sent to a camp where she stayed for the next 6 months, surrounded by French Jewish prisoners who would all end up in Auschwitz. There’s another great anecdote about Ernest Hemingway, who was with the Allied army when they liberated Paris & Hemingway went personally to liberate Shakespeare & Company.


She wrote it all down & immortalized her store & the expatriate literary circle in an excellent memoir- Shakespeare & Company.


The great love of Beach’s life was Adrienne Monnier, a Frenchwoman who owned a bookshop called La Maison des Amis des Livres, literally across the street from Shakespeare & Company. Beach & Monnier lived together from 1920 to 1936, when Monnier’s affair with another women caused them to separate. In true lesbian fashion, they soon reconciled & remained together Monnier’s death in 1955. Though Beach lived most of her life abroad, she is buried, not in Paris, but in a Princeton cemetery with her family. Her papers were donated to the Princeton Library.


There exists, a Sylvia Beach Hotel on the Oregon coast, a sort of large B&B with a literary theme, no phones, no TV, no Wi-Fi, & rooms named: The Mark Twain, The Emily Dickenson, The Charles Dickens & The Ernest Hemingway. Please, don’t make me stay there. I wish they featured rooms such as: The Franz Kafka, The Sylvia Plath, The Cormac McCarthy, & The William Golding.

Born On This Day- March 13th... Janet Flanner

Later this month, The Husband & I will be traveling to Tacoma to see Tacoma Art Museum. They will be bringing the internationally-acclaimed exhibition HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the only showing on the West Coast. The exhibition debuted at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in 2010 & is the first major exhibition to address the question of how gender identity & sexual orientation have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. The original showing had Christian Right Wingers all a dither & resulted in the the removal of one of the pieces. The catalog from the original show is published in hardback & is simply a must for the smart gay person or any art lover. At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia this book is held in the highest regard & has brought hours of viewing pleasure.

I am beside myself to actually see the show & we are going to make a swell day of it, taking Amtrak to Tacoma, taking in Hide/Seek at TAM, moving over to the amazing Museum of Glass, lunch, some picking through the Tacoma thrift shops for treasures & the train back to Portland.

Hide/Seek offers an unprecedented survey of nearly 150 years of American art & includes more than 100 works by masters including Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe & more.

Today is the birthday of New Yorker writer-Janet Flanner, an American who lived in Paris with her lover Solita Solano. Together they traveled in the most fashionable gay social circles & knew everybody who was anybody. Janet Flanner was best known for her Letter from Paris column, that she wrote for the New Yorker from 1925 to 1975 under the pen name- Genêt, that gave readers a coded glimpse of the Parisian in crowd. I simply ate up this column when I was a youth.

This 1923 portrait is by extraordinary photographer- lesbian Berenice Abbott. Flanner’s masks are a symbol of the multiple disguises that she wore, one for private life, & one for public life. It is featured in Hide/Seek.

Born On This Day- March 13th... Old Queen, Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

Walpole making Noel Coward beg for it.

Although I am an avowed Anglophile, I must admit to never having read the works of Hugh Walpole, & I figure I served his genres by having reading Evelyn Waugh. Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand & educated at Cambridge University. Walpole was a prolific writer: 36 novels, 5 volumes of short stories, 2 plays & 3 volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting& spirited plots, his striking profile as a well-paid lecturer & his driving ambition brought him a large readership in Britain & the USA. A best-selling author in the 1920s & 1930s, his works are rarely read since his death. Walpole wrote successfully & profitably in many genres: novels, short stories, school novels, gothic horror & biography. He also wrote plays & screenplays, including George Cukor’s David Copperfield for MGM in 1935.

Walpole was a prominent member of the1930s London gay literary group including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, W.H. Auden & Christopher Isherwood. Among his many lovers were the celebrated Danish opera tenor- Lauritz Melchior  & English set designer- Percy Anderson. In 1929 he met a handsome London policeman- Harold Cheever, who became his chauffeur & companion for the rest of Walpole’s life.

He died from a heart attack in 1941 while doing Red Cross volunteer war work in English Lake Country where he lived & based most of his stories.

God Of Dance

I should have handed this post off to my dear friend WCK3, who is a professional dancer, a dance historian & a Professor of Dance at The University of Oregon. WCK3 was briefly my boyfriend in college, but we have stayed excellent friends for 37+ years. Because of this supremely talented man, I know more about dance than most civilians.

Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky was born on this day in 1890, in Kiev to Polish parents, but for his lifetime he considered himself a Pole. He grew up poor, but by the time he was in his late teens, he had already had heady affairs with several much older men: Prince Pavel Dimitrievitch, Lvov & Count Tishkievitch, who each lavished with him luxurious libations. Soon after, Nijinsky started his rapturous romantic & professional partnership with Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev, a renowned & highly innovative producer of art exhibits, ballet & opera, who concentrated on promoting Russian visual & musical art abroad, groomed the young Nijinsky to be known as the God of Dance.


Nijinsky was the rare male ballet stars to perform en pointe, & his fame in Russia & Paris grew with each new dancing role: Cleopatra, The Sleeping Beauty, & Giselle. Diaghilev advanced Nijinsky’s work as a choreographer of his own works & the radical results were remarkable. The dancer was just 22 years old when he created a piece set to Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun which ended with him masturbating. The next year his ballet collaboration with Igor Stravinsky- The Rite of Spring ended in riotous reaction at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées when they premiered it in Paris. His work was judged as obscene, but was defended by such artists as Auguste Rodin & Marcel Proust.


While on tour in South America, Nijinsky, in an act rash, reckless & ruinous, he married a Romanian countess- Romola Pulsky, who had taken up ballet in order to pursue the young dancer across Europe & the Atlantic Ocean. The incensed & injurious Diaghilev fired him.

Nijinsky tried to start his own dance company. But, bad choices & ill-conceived projects, brought the celebrated star from luster, laurels, & lavish gifts, to needing to support a wife & child with no funds & no dance company.


Nijinsky went to Hungary to recover from nervous exhaustion. When WW I broke out, he was considered an enemy because he was a Russian citizen & he was jailed. In 1916, Diaghilev rescued him & took the family to NYC, so that Nijinsky could re-join his Ballets Russes. Diaghilev & Nijinsky rekindled their love affair, but the wife did all she could to come between the pair.


Nijinsky's mental state declined. The dancer became paranoid & obsessive, & worse; he was frightened of performing on stage. With Diaghilev back in Europe; Nijinsky was left in charge of the company. However, it was around this time in his life that signs of his schizophrenia were becoming apparent to members of the company. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919, & his career effectively ended. The depressed Nijinsky was diagnosed with schizophrenia & taken to Switzerland by his wife. Later Diaghilev attempted to reconcile, & again his wife kept her husband from him, preventing any more reunions. Nijinsky he was just 29 years old. For the next 3 decades he was in & out of institutions until his death in London in 1950.


Nijinsky left a diary with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate, & for vegetarianism & animal rights. He also wrote of his love for Diaghilev.


In 1970, a long planned film of his life was to start filming. With a screenplay by Edward Albee (with whom he shares a birthday today), The film was to be directed by Tony Richardson, starring Rudolf Nureyev as Nijinsky, & Paul Scofield as Diaghilev, but producers scrapped the project.


A decade later a film was finally made. Nijinski was directed by Herbert Ross, starring dancers- George de la Peña as Nijinsky &  Leslie Browne as Romola, & with Alan Bates as Diaghilev. Romola Nijinsky had a writing credit for the film. The film makers got the attitude right, but the history all wrong. The film is available on something called VHS, I have no idea what this is. I think the story is ripe for the right filmmaker to take another shot at it. My suggestion: John Cameron Mitchell writing & directing, with Daniel Radcliffe as Nijinsky, Natalie Portman as Romola & me as Diaghilev.

Keep It In The Family

Please, do not be unhappy with me dear readers of my little spot on the Internet. I was in a position that made it impossible to do blogs posts since 11am on Saturday 10th. The bad news, I am going to catch up by posting for each of the past 3 days & posting them as if they appeared that day, & force you to read several posts in an effort to catch up. I truly wish that you will stick with me. Post Apocalyptic Bohemia feels as if it might be getting more entertaining as I begin to name names. I'll start with this one: Jon Hamm.

Jon Hamm turned 41 on Saturday 10th. I am totally zany for him. Season 5 of Mad Men, the most intense & surprising TV series of all time, starts on Sunday 25th.

I went on a journey to be with the parental units in Spokane for the weekend. They are healthy & doing well, but in their early 80s, I feel I need to connect with them more than 2 times a year. My father had knee replacement surgery & I felt that I could assist my mother in his recovery.

I enjoyed a very happy & secure childhood. I am an only child of upper-middle class /working parents. They were & remain: supportive, funny, affectionate, open, & they are rather lovely & generous people (which is why my father voting Republican is so discouraging) .My parents attended nearly every recital, concert & play that I was involved in, following me to community theatre, university, drama department, to regional theatre.

The Lilac City, Spokane, with beautiful waterfalls in the center of town... It was a swell place to grow up; the school system in the 1960s had excellent programs of art, music, theatre, journalism, & sports. But, I wanted out & left on the evening of my HS graduation. I strangely returned in the late 1970s to teach & direct at Gonzaga University, after time spent in NYC that nearly killed me. I was not happy living in Spokane the second go around. I would continue to consider it a mistake, except that this where I met the man who would become my mate of 33 years. He also had been away from Spokane, working as a set designer in Europe & had come back to re-group, consider his life &  then decide how to move forward, just as I had.

To friends & classmates that continue to live in Spokane- I don't mean to belittle the place I grew up in, I really feel love for all of you... but you have to admit, Spokane can be a mean little city. You have to admit it. I mean, I can admit that Portland is hipster heaven, why can't you own up to the 1970s clothing (worn without irony) & the firearms?

The home my parents live in, in the country, 15 miles from Spokane, is not the house I grew up in, in fact their last home before this one, I only lived in during a brief school year (1971-72). I was doing summer stock theatre in Coeur D' Alene, Idaho, the summer of 1971. When I returned to Spokane in September, the parental units had moved, but neglected to tell me. It took a bit of work, but I located their new place & moved in a few days later.

When I moved from NYC back to Spokane in 1978, I moved back with the parents. What had been, for a short time, my room, had been appropriated by my father as an office. I took the guest room, painted it & fixed to my liking. About 12 weeks later, the parents asked if I would manage to have dinner with them, where they informed me that they were happier when I didn't live with them & it would be a good idea to get my own place. " YOU CAN"T GO HOME AGAIN..."

I have flown probably 100 times in my life. I am so old, I remember when we used to dress-up for an airplane. This afternoon's flight back to Portland was so roller-coaster that upon arriving at PDX, the passengers applauded.
My father is a car guy, & he always had a job, often that paid well, that allowed him to be a car guy, almost in the manner that I always worked in restaurants so to be able to be an actor. I posted bits & pieces of this on the Facebook, including these photos of some of Ed's cars:

1935 Dodge

1940 Mercury

Born On This Day- March 10th... Filmmaker Mitchell Lichenstein

He was one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood & I always thought highly of his work. Now he is an interesting & inventive filmmaker. Mitchell Lichtenstein is known for his performances in Robert Altman's Streamers (1983) & Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993). He won a Venice Film Festival Award for the first film & an Independent Spirit nomination for the latter. His motion picture directorial debut was-Teeth (2007), which he also wrote & produced, At the Sundance Film Festival he picked up a Grand Jury Prize for Teeth. Mitchell: "Teeth is about a young woman who discovers that she is anatomically unique & what happens when her boyfriend gets violent with her & is 'punished' for it." His drama- Happy Tears (2009) is about mismatched sisters played by Parker Posey & Demi Moore, who argue about what to do with their dad, played by Rip Torn, who is slipping into dementia, & Ellen Barkin as his girlfriend. He is the son of the the great American painter Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein turns 46 today.

A Late Winter Day At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

With 12 days before the official start of Spring, Portland enjoyed our nicest day of 2012, so far, with a high of 65 & sunny skies. I had one window & the French Doors of the bedroom wide open. Lulu & Junior both found a spot in the sun.

This is the space we named The Back Room. We spend a great deal of time here, each of us having our own daybed, used for TV watching, reading & naps. At the start of 2012, The Husband & I switched daybeds, after half a decade, just to prove that we could be zany. On the walls are an architectural piece from a built into the wall bed, Flemish, early 18th century, & across the room is a Belgian tapestry, an early 20th century replica of a medieval piece.

Antony Armstrong-Jones Is Small, But Very Big

When asked once at a party in NYC about the Queen’s health, Princess Margaret replied: “Which one? My sister, my mother or my husband?”

I am a fan of the work of gifted & important photographer, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, or as I like to call him – Lordy Snowdon. He has enjoyed astonishingly active & varied love-life, 2 wives, 2 illegitimate children & a lover's suicide, & several affairs with men. Princess Margaret was initially surprised that her husband had no intention of giving up his rising photographic career. Because Armstrong-Jones travelled around the world to complete assignments, he was often separated from his wife for many months at a time. The Princess was known to do some partying herself.  Princess Margaret:  “When we first met, I thought he was very pleasant but everybody told me that he was queer.”

His official biographer- Anne de Courcy blithely noted: “Tony, though small in stature, was well-endowed. Tony's always been driven by 2 things: work & sex. A day without either was considered a total waste. He was proud of his conquests of both sexes. If it moved, he would have it”

Among his lovers were British interior decorator Nicholas Haslam & another leading interior decorator- Tom Parr, Jeremy Fry, best man at the Royal wedding in 1960 & the Queen Mother's long-serving page- William Tallon, or Backstairs Billy, as he was known in the Royal household. Anthony-Jones would go on to have an affair with buddy- Fry’s wife & father a child with her, while carrying on their affair.

The break-up of Princess Margaret & Armstrong-Jones lasted 16 years, with a great deal of drugs, booze, & bizarre behavior by both parties, such as Armstrong-Jones's leaving lists between the pages of the princess’s book, of "things I hate about you".

Armstrong-Jones was able to use of a hideaway cottage with his lovers, or had assignations overseas on photographic assignments; most people, including the Royal Family, looked the other way.

Armstrong-Jones’s uncle was Oliver Messel, the famous stage designer. Messel would rent an apartment in Venice & would stay with him there during in the summer, bringing a handsome man for each of them including Parr, who was to become head of the fine antiques & design company Colefax & Fowler, now lives with his male partner in France.

Armstrong-Jones has 5 children: wood artist & Christie's chairman Viscount Linley & painter Lady Sarah Chatto, both with Princess Margaret, daughter- Frances, by filmmaker Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, who he married within months of his divorce from Princess Margaret in 1978. They were divorced in 2000 after she discovered that he had a son- Jasper, with Melanie Cable-Alexander, the editor of Country Life, & Polly Fry, a photographer, like him.

In 1996, his mistress of 20 years- journalist Ann Hills, took a lethal overdose of pills washed down with champagne. Police found her suicide message on her answering machine, saying that she was distressed that Armstrong-Jones could not see her over Christmas Holidays. An inquest concluded that she was distressed by her failure to find a lasting relationship.

I have read that Armstrong-Jones had affairs with women & only flings with men & it is easy to understand which ones he thought were less trouble.

Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, turns 82 years old today. He can still get that big thing up, or so my sources tell me.

Armstrong-Jones worked as a photographer using the name- Lord Snowdon.  In the course of his career, he photographed almost anyone of any importance in the fashion & arts world. I remember a shot he did for Vogue, of a model standing among a pile of cars in a junk yard in Queens, New York. Very outre for 1957.

He once photographed Rudolf Nureyev in his ordinary clothes & asked him to remove the handkerchief from his trouser pocket because it looked ridiculous. Nureyev said: "that is no hankie…".  Armstrong-Jones:“I’m not a great one for chatting people up because it’s phony, I don’t want people to feel at ease. You want a bit of edge. There are quite long, agonized silences. I love it. Something strange might happen. I mean, taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do. It’s very cruel.”

This remains my favorite photograph of Princess Diana

Born On This Day- March 7th... Bill Brochtrup

I have always admired the work of Bill Brochtrup. I first spotted him in the early 1990s one of my favorite shows- NYPD Blue as the 15th Precinct openly gay administrative assistant John Irvin. His role was added during the show’s season, slated to appear of 2 episodes, but proved to be such a fan favorite that he was brought back in as a series regular. For me, he was one of the very first reoccurring openly gay characters on prime time.

Series creator Steven Bochco hired Brochtrup to play the same character on the comedy Public Morals, giving the him the distinction of playing Irvin on both a drama & a sitcom. By the time NYPD Blue ended its 12th & final season in 2005, he had played the longest-running gay character on network TV.

He continues to work in TV: Dexter, Without a Trace, The Wild Thornberrys & Steven Bochco’s Total Security.

Brochtrup has appeared Off-Broadway & in regional theatres around the USA.  He is an Associate Artistic Director of The Antaeus Company, LAs’ acclaimed classical theatre ensemble. He is a frequent guest host of the PBS’s- In the Life, has told his original comic stories at numerous Spoken Word events, & has written for Out magazine.

Brochtrup has hosted AIDS Walks across the country, is an SPCA “Friend for Life,” & has toured with the USO & Armed Forces Entertainment, visiting Troops in the Persian Gulf, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Germany, Japan, Bosnia, & Kosovo.

He is looking fine at 49.

Don't Give Up When You're On The Brink Of A Miracle ... Tammy Faye On Her Birthday

Sometime in the early 1980s, The Husband called me to the TV to catch The Jim & Tammy show with the demented hosts- Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker. We laughed & cried until our mascara was running down our cheeks & on to our summer white clothing. In that moment, I would not have believed 25 years later, I would actually shed a real tear when it was announced that Tammy Faye La Valley Bakker Messner had passed over to the other side.

When she was 6 years old she found Jesus, when she was 16, she found makeup, & she stayed with both them through her 65 years of this incarnation. When Tammy Faye sadly passed away in summer 2007, the outspoken, diminutive, fake eyelash wearing, emotive evangelist had gone from ridiculous Christian TV host to vilified woman to the highest honor- Gay Icon.

Tammy Faye is a Gay Icon because of her fabulousness & honesty. She is celebrated for her perseverance. She fell from grace & lost her fortune when her husband- Jim Bakker, was found cheating on her & swindling their followers out of $158 million. Tammy Faye talked plainly about her pain on TV & she stood by her man after his conviction. 3 later, she divorced Bakker, who was serving a 45 year prison sentence. In 1993, she married Roe Messner (after he had divorced his wife), a wealthy contractor & former business associate of Bakker. Bakker’s sentence was eventually reduced, & he was paroled in 1994. In 1996, Messner was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for bankruptcy fraud. How Nicky Arnstein is that?

Tammy Faye by Martin Schoeller

Tammy Faye is a Gay Icon because she refused to change her unique style of runny mascara & garish jewelry to suit her Christian critics. Tammy Faye:  "Without my eyelashes, I wouldn't be Tammy Faye. I don't know who I would be."

Tammy Fay had long refused to denounce homosexuals on the PTL broadcasts & she had urged understanding & sympathy for those suffering from AIDS. Tammy Faye: "When we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, & I will always love them for that."

When the Bakkers were living the good Christian life, they enjoyed 2 lavish homes & matching Rolls Royces & an air-conditioned dog house. Tammy Faye’s travails with drugs & depression made her a target of tabloid talk.

When Tammy Faye became a camp figure, making her the subject of many a drag queens’ creations, he embraced her gays. She began attending gay pride events, & in 1996, she became the co-host of a syndicated television talk show with openly gay actor- Jm J. Bullock.

Tammy Faye: “I refuse to label people. We’re all just people made out of the same old dirt, & God didn’t make any junk.”

In 1996, Tammy Faye was diagnosed with colon cancer. She was told in 2004 that it had spread to her lungs. She was & funny about her illness on TV. In her 2003 memoir- I Will Survive ... And You Will, Too!, Tammy Faye wrote: “I want my funeral to be a real happy time. I want everybody laughing and remembering how crazy I was.”


Tammy Faye would have been 70 years old today.