Monday, January 31, 2011

Beautiful Bodacious Babe- Portia de Rossi Has A Birthday


There is something very engaging about a beautiful woman with great comic chops. She was born Amanda Rogers in Geelong Australia. When she was just a 15 years old lesbian, she reinvented herself as Portia de Rossi, choosing the name from her love of Shakespeare & all things Italian. She was cast in the Australian film- Sirens, & then it was off to Hollywood. I first took note of her funny work as lawyer-Nell Porter on Ally McBeal.She was slyly hilarious in the much missed Arrested Development, & is the comic glue on the underrated & canceled Better Off Ted.


She feared she would jeopardize her career if she came out of the closet. When she finally did come out of the closet, many people didn't believe she was gay. She told the Advocate, "I had a hell of a time convincing people I was gay…which was so annoying! First of all, you live with the fear people might find out. Then you actually have the courage to tell people and they go, 'I don't think you are gay.'"

Besides being beautiful & funny, she was able to grab the attention of some woman named Ellen. Portia says when she first saw Ellen, she took her breath away. "That had never happened to me in my life, where I saw somebody & experienced all of those things you hear about in songs & read about in poetry. My knees were weak." Portia left Countess Francesca McKnight Donatella Romana Gregorini di Savignano di Romagna (Ringo Starr’s step-daughter) to be with & eventually marry Ellen DeGeneres (who had a birthday earlier this week).

They were married in August 2008 in a small ceremony attended by family & a few close friends. Her wedding to DeGeneres was the cover story of People, which also featured page after page of photos with breathless captions detailing their clothes, the food, & the flowers, just like any straight celebrity wedding.  That is real progress! Oprah Winfrey spent an entire hour showcasing their relationship in an episode pointedly titled Ellen DeGeneres & Her Wife, Portia de Rossi.  The De Rossi- DeGeneres' live in L.A. with their dogs. 

After All The Foolish Things That We've Been Through



You & I
Tempted by the promise of a different life
Time has fled
There's a constant battle running through my head
I don't know what to do
Because I still believe
After all the foolish things that we've been through
I will always be a man who's open to
Persuasion

Blind romance
There'll be no half measures given half the chance
But we never learn
Trusting in the fire while the cruel flame burns
& we need to rebuild
What was never there
What got left behind
After all the foolish things that we've been through
I can always make a start on something new
& I'll always be a man who's open to.....
Persuasion

& it's written in my heart
So that everybody could see it
& it's written in my soul
& I still believe it
I still believe it
I still believe it
I still believe

I don't know what to do
Because I still believe
After all the foolish things you put me through
I can always make a start on something new
& I'll always be a man who's open to
Persuasion





I've Got A Goal Again, I've Got The Drive Again, I'm Gonna Feel My Heart Coming Alive Again, Before The Parade Passes By

It was one of my most favorite musicals growing up. I had the Original Broadway Cast album of Hello, Dolly! with today’s birthday girl, & I augmented my collection with cast recordings with Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman, & the Japanese & Finnish casts, plus the London cast featuring Mary Martin as Dolly Levi. But nothing was better than the original with Carol Channing.
In 1921, Albert Einstein was explaining his new Theory of Relativity, Charlie Chaplin's movie The Kid was released, Babe Ruth became the home run champ, Turkey made peace with Armenia, President Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery, Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie received its premiere on Broadway, & in Seattle, on January 31st, living legend Carol Channing was born.
Channing is a singing, dancing, acting force of nature & one of our biggest stars, but even with her fabulous talent, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what Channing’s appeal is. Her face & voice are instantly recognizable, yet in her long career, she has worked in only 5 movies including the LSD comedy Skidoo (1968), often cited as one of the worst movie ever. Channing was nominated for an Oscar & won the Golden Globe for her work in Thoroughly Modern Milley. Her triumphs were always been on the Broadway stage.

Channing is a true original. She was never a bombshell, & she is rather demented without being risqué or grotesque. And she's a belter along the like Ethel Merman, but without being brassy. She has been often cast been cast as a gold digger while there is nothing seductive about her persona.


Channing’s contradictions made a little more sense when I read her engaging autobiography- Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sort. She speaks candidly about her messy break up with her husband of 41 years, Charles Lowe. Carol disclosed that she & Lowe had only ever had sex "once or twice in our 41-year marriage & that was 41 years ago.”  She stuck to her wedding vows the whole time & didn't have sex with anyone else. What opportunities did she pass up?  Lowe had spent most of her hard earned fortune, & to make matters more bizarre, the scandal reached its anti-climax when Channing broke the news that the hubby was a homo.  A camp icon with a gay husband isn’t as shocking as the 41 year dry spell.  After 31 years, even the Husband & I manage to knock one out every month or so. The memoir also reveals that her grandfather was African-American.
Even with her resilient image, Channing has had her hardships. She triumphed on Broadway as fortune hunting Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but Hollywood cast Marilyn Monroe in the film version. Monroe saw the show over & over, & borrowed Channing’s best bits. Channing really owned the role of Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, she was the first & most famous in the role on even followed by such talents as Ethel Merman, Phyllis Diller, & Pearl Bailey. But director Gene Kelly thought casting her was too risky & gave the role to Barbra Streisand who was decades too young for the role (Streisand would be perfect now).
I love her so much in Thoroughly Modern Millie, playing a rich, madcap matron Muzzy Van Hossmere, who makes her entrance flying in a biplane, quaffing champagne. She blew my little13 year old gay mind with her 2 big musical numbers- Jazz Baby where she tap dances on a xylophone, & Do It Again which begins with Channing being shot out of a cannon.
Channing has played Dolly Levi in over 4,000 times to packed-houses around the globe without ever missing a performance. Hello, Dolly! was the first Broadway musical to play China.
In May 2003, she married her 4th husband, Harry Kullijian, her junior high school sweetheart, who reunited with her after she mentioned him fondly in her memoir.  They renamed the school's auditorium The Carol Channing Theatre in her honor. The city of San Francisco proclaimed a Carol Channing Day, for her advocacy of gay rights & her appearances as the host of the Gay Pride events around the country.



Kullijian: "Carol & I are looking at all the children in the United States. We often say, ‘Those children are our children. They're all Americans.' They have to be uplifted. They have to experience music, literature, poetry, theater, sculpture & paintings. It's a crime that these things are falling to the wayside. Art is the mainstay of our souls. I believe that Carol Channing is the one person in this country who can say ‘Come on folks, let’s get together with one voice & make this happen because the future of this country is at stake."


Carol Channing turns an astonishing 90 years old today. Happy Birthday!

Note To Self: Pencil In The Gay Exorcism For Wednesday Night, Be Sure To DVR Modern Family

I had a lazy Sunday. The only task was assigned to me by the Husband: " I need for you to deal with your gigantic pile of magazines!" I spent the afternoon tearing out images from 6 months+ worth of the 12 magazines that I subscribe to. The pictures will be added to my inspiration wall. I hereby vow to never keep a magazine longer than its publication month. Really, dear Husband.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

& The Actor Goes To... Stephen for Steve:Portrait Of A Slut, The Final Chapter

I love award shows & I remain open to winning any award being handed out from any guild, union or critics’ group. The SAG awards are a favorite. The Screen Actors’ Guild Awards is actors honoring actors while they have been drinking cocktails. The SAG awards are special at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia because I am a voting member of the Guild. It is a bit thrilling to watch the broadcast & know that I played an important role in how things played out with this award show.

I am very shallow. I often vote for who I think is the hottest. By that criteria, I would be handing the Best Film Leading Actor, Male to my current crush: soap opera star, grad student, filmmaker, poet, novelist, actor, lover extraordinary- James Franco. I wanted to vote for Jesse Eisenberg, because to me, that was the performance of the year. Yet, I voted for Colin Firth, who I  admire, & find sexy, because he should have won last year for A Single Man.


Attractive hot actors nominated tonight: Jeremy Renner, the very yummy Mark Ruffalo, Dennis Quaid, Patrick Stewart, Jon Hamm, & Alec Baldwin.

Which gentleman do you vote for as Hottest SAG Man?












The nominees are listed, my vote is in bold. I admit to not seeing every nominee’s work. For instance, I saw none of the nominees for TV Movie Actor, female. I voted for Catherine O’Hara, simply because I like her alot. For TV Series Actor, Male, I was stymied because Portland’s own Ty Burrell of Modern Family is my favorite character on TV right now, but I voted for Chris Colfer from Glee!, because he is, well, Chris Coofer & he is gay. I felt the same way about the super talented Jane Lynch. A vote was cast for Patrick Stewart because I think that he is hot & his vehicle was Shakespeare. My bad.


FILM


Male Actor, Leading


Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Robert Duvall, Get Low
Jesse Eisenberg
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
James Franco, 127 hours


Female Actor, Leading


Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Hilary Swank, Conviction


Male Actor, Supporting


Christian Bale, The Fighter
Jon Hawkes, Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech


Female Actor, Supporting


Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech
Mila Kunis, Black Swan
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailey Steinfeld, True Grit


Cast in a Motion Picture


Black Swan
The Fighter
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network


TV


Male Actor, TV Movie or Miniseries


John Goodman, You Don’t Know Jack
Al Pacino, You Don’t Know Jack
Dennis Quaid, The Special Relationship
Edgar Ramirez, Carlos
Patrick Stewart, Macbeth: Great Performances


Female Actor, TV Movie or Miniseries


Claire Danes, Temple Grandin
Catherin O’Hara, Temple Grandin
Julia Ormond, Temple Grandin
Winona Ryder, When Love Is Not Enough
Susan Sarandon, You Don’t Know Jack


Male Actor, Drama Series


Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Hugh Laurie, House


Female Actor, Drama Series


Glenn Close, Damages
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU
Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife
Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer


Male Actor, Comedy Series


Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Ty Burrell, Modern Family
Steve Carell, The Office
Chris Colfer, Glee
Ed O’Neill, Modern Famil

Female Actor, Comedy Series

Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Jane Lynch, Glee
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family
Betty White, Hot in Cleveland


Ensemble, Drama Series

Boardwalk Empire
The Closer
Dexter
The Good Wife
Mad Men


Ensemble, Comedy Series


30 Rock
The Office
Glee
Hot in Cleveland
Modern Family

Milton Avery

There’s more photography to come, but in order that my blog posts don’t become monotonous I am going to mix it up with some features on mid-century painters. I’m intending to look at some of the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, followed by artists (sometimes erroneously) associated with Pop Art.
And in no particular order…I’m starting with Milton Avery, mainly because his colourful semi-abstracted landscapes are in the same area that I’m currently working in, albeit in a very different style.
Milton Avery (1893 – 1965) was born at Sand Bank, New York. After studying for a while at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford under Charles Noel Flagg and at the Art Society School there under Albertus Jones, Avery worked in manufacturing and with an insurance company until 1924. He moved to New York in 1925 and married the artist Sally Michel, an illustrator, a year later.
He had his first one-man show as early as 1928 at the Opportunity Gallery in New York. The decades that followed saw him show work at numerous exhibitions mounted by New York galleries and American museums. Milton Avery's preoccupation with French Fauvism and German Expressionism led him to develop a simplified formal idiom distinguished by clarity of line and an expressive palette. Whereas Avery's early figurative drawings and paintings from the 1930s attest to affinities primarily with the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, by the 1940s he was discernibly close to Henri Matisse.
As the American upholder of Matisse's colouristic doctrine, Milton Avery developed the French artist's decorative colour surfaces into subtly toned colour zones, thus breaking the ground for the Colour Field painting of Mark Rothko (see blog post July 2010) and Adolph Gottlieb (blog post to come), both of whom were friends of his. Even though his style was close to abstraction, Milton Avery nonetheless clung to representation throughout his entire career. Classical motifs and subject matter in portraits, still lifes and coastal landscapes were his main thematic areas and genres.
Prolific as a painter, graphic artist and ceramist, Milton Avery received numerous awards from American art institutions before he died in 1965 although he only really became famous posthumously. He is now acclaimed as one of the most influential American C20th artists.

 1936 Vermont Hills

 1940 Gaspe - Pink Sky

 1944 Autumn

 1944 Bridge to the Sea

 1945 Three Cows on Hillside

 1952 Breaking Sea

 1952 Shapes of Spring

 1953 Advancing Sea

 1953 Excursion on the Thames

 1954 Green Sea

 1954 White Wave

 1955 Spring Brook

 1957 White Moon

 1958 Green Sea

 1958 Offshore Island

 1958 Onrushing Wave

 1958 Sea Grasses and Blue Sea

 1959 Black Sea

 1959 Boathouse by the Sea

 1961 Blue Bay and Dunes

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Born On This Day... January 29th- Olympic Champion Gregory Efthimios Louganis

 It takes real tenacity to keep having a crush on someone for 34 years, but here I am, still dreamy over Louganis, who continues to be devastatingly handsome as he turns 51 years old .He spends his mornings in a spin class, followed by 90 minutes of yoga. He takes daily naps. His afternoons are devoted to his true passion, training dogs in obedience & agility. Louganis lives in Malibu with 2 Jack Russell terriers, & a border collie.


The Husband & I caught Oprah last week on what was actually advertised as her “gayest show ever'. Oprah & Gayle’s Yosemite camping adventure was darn gay, but not as gay as 25 years of clips from shows on LGBTXYZ issues. This special show about her 25 years of supporting the gay community brought back some of her most memorable guests, including the Olympic gold medalist diver Greg Louganis who came out as an HIV+ gay man way back in 1995.




Louganis is the greatest diver in US history . He broke onto the Olympic scene when he won a silver medal at the age of 16 in the Montreal games of 1976. He went on to win 2 back to back double Olympic gold medals & multiple world championships.

We watched in horror as it happened & it was shocking because Louganis was true diving perfection. We love watching Olympic sports & the Husband had just said- "I just love to watch Louganis. He just pierces the water like a dart.” Louganis’s greatest moments came, ironically, after his worst dive. Seeking another gold medal in the Seoul Olympics of 1988, Louganis attempted a very difficult reverse 2 1/2 pike dive in the preliminary round. During the dive, he struck his head on the board, & suffered a large laceration on his head. Amazingly, despite his concussion, he finished the preliminary round & repeated the dive in the finals, receiving record-setting scores on the way to another gold medal. The performance earned him the ABC Sports’ Athlete of the Year in 1988. . Louganis described the embarrassment & fear that he felt after the aborted dive. "I knew I had a responsibility to tell the doctor about my HIV status as he sewed my head up."


In 1994 Louganis announced to the world that he was gay. In Breaking The Surface, published in the year 1995, detailed a relationship of domestic abuse & rape. His partner threatened to blackmail him if he tried to leave. "I boxed myself into the relationship with my feelings about my HIV status. I thought, `who will touch me?' But I knew that to survive, I had to get out. It was a big step for me to build the self-esteem I needed to have the confidence to leave." It was in that book that he disclosed to the world that he was HIV positive, having been diagnosed a few months before the Seoul Games. Most of his corporate sponsors dropped him as a client when they heard the news of his HIV status. Swimsuit manufacturer Speedo was the only exception & retained him as an endorser of their swimwear until 2007.



Louganis tours the country speaking about issues that affected him throughout his life: HIV, chronic depression, learning disabilities & diversity (he is Samoan & Nordic). Louganis also travels around with other athletes including Peggy Fleming, Bruce Jenner & Jackie Joyner-Kersee as they discuss living with long term illnesses. Louganis says he wants to be remembered as more than an athlete. “I want to be remembered as a strong& graceful diver, but as a person, I want to be remembered as someone who made a difference.”



Friday, January 28, 2011

Michael Wolf photography The Transparent City

In the second part of my posts on Michael Wolf’s urban photography I’m taking a look at his The Transparent City series.
In 2006 when arriving in Chicago, Wolf took the elevated train into the city at dusk and was struck by the transparency of its architecture. After having worked in Asia for many years, Wolf saw Chicago as providing the opportunity to continue his study of city life in a radically different context. Shooting from public rooftops over the course of several months, Wolf adopted a similar visual approach to his architectural work in Hong Kong. However, the transparency and monumental size of Chicago’s buildings give a very different result: the city is far less dense than Hong Kong, thereby creating a greater sense of depth to the images, while the transparency of its glass skyscrapers causes the life within them to seep out.
The Transparent City surveys the density and magnitude of Chicago's skyline. Wolf's large-scale prints reveal the enormity of its skyscrapers at the same time they enable us to observe intimate and private goings on within individual apartments and offices. By cropping out traces of street and sky Wolf constructs an abstracted and endless world of windows, lights and reflections. He has created a group of photographs that remain familiar and at the same time fantastic.
From Aperture magazine:
“This is Wolf’s first body of work to address an American city. Whereas prior series have juxtaposed humanizing details within the surrounding geometry of the urban landscape, in The Transparent City, his details are fragments of life—digitally distorted and hyper-enlarged—snatched surreptitiously via telephoto lenses: Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner. The material resonates with all the formalism of the constructed, architectonic work for which Wolf is well-known, but also emphasizes the conceptual underpinnings of his ongoing engagement with the idea of how modern life unfolds within the framework of the ever-growing contemporary city.”