Arts & Entertainment

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Lil Nas X First Gay Man to Receive Country Music Award Nomination

Lil Nas X has made history by being the first-ever openly gay man to be nominated for a Country Music Award (CMA). He was nominated for the Musical Event of the Year award for his song ‘Old Town Road (Remix)’ with collaborator Bill Ray Cyrus, with the awards ceremony taking place on November 13. Although ‘Old Town Road’ was originally booted off the US Billboard country charts because the company said the song “does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music”, it made its way back into the charts after a remixed version featuring Cyrus was released. The song […]

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Taylor Swift Promotes Equality Act At VMAs

From the Hollywood Reporter: Taylor Swift opened the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards on Monday with performances of “You Need to Calm Down” and “Lover.” The performance began with Swift, Todrick Hall and Dexter Mayfield sitting on lounge chairs as she sang the opening lines to “You Need to Calm Down.” Dancers dressed in colorful ensembles moved around the stage before the drag queens featured in the music video appeared next to Swift as she sang the anti-hate anthem. The first number concluded with the words “Equality Act” largely written behind the performers. Swift has been an advocate for the Equality […]

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Book Review: “The Ventriloquists” by E.R. Ramzipoor

In E.R. Ramzipoor’s novel The Ventriloquists, a cadre of Belgian resistance journalists risk their lives to lampoon Nazi propaganda. Almost unbelievably, the story is based on a real part of history: a group of the Belgian resistance really did get together to write and distribute a false version of the Nazi-led newspaper Le Soir. Most of them lost their lives for the project. All of the text from the satirical paper reproduced in the book is authentic. Some characters are composites of or riffs on real people; some are made up from whole cloth, like the narrator, a young girl disguised as […]

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Occidental Center for the Arts Hosts Archaeomythologist Resentation

Sunday August 25 @ 3 pm . Occidental Center for the Arts proudly presents: The Gorgon Medusa: Her Significance for Women of Our Time. Archaeomythologist Joan Marler will trace the ancient roots of the Gorgon Medusa’s multi-layered powers and explore her myths, stories, and iconography in a multi-media presentation that will reveal her timeless significance for women of our time. Drummer  Barbara Borden and friends will begin and conclude this memorable event, which is a fundraiser for O.C.A!Admission $15.@ https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4295297 or at the door. Fine refreshments. Wheelchair accessible. Art Gallery open for viewing. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 707-874-9293. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465

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Book Review: “Sugar Land” by Tammy Lynn Stoner

It is common to hear queer origin stories: without representation, we wither and die. Mythos, birth, coming into being—these are all invaluable totems of being truly alive for those forced into the margins. Coming out stories are radical and necessary, especially in the current political landscape, for they make space for others to find their own voices, their own stories. They clear a little patch in the grass and say, Come sit a spell. However, what’s less common is an origin story rooted in what someone did in order to not come out. And that is the story of Dara, a self-identified non-practicing […]

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Marcel Proust’s Lost Homosexual Love Stories to be Published

Nine lost stories by acclaimed French author Marcel Proust will be published this fall.  According to the Guardian, the stories were first penned in the 1890s when Proust was in his ’20s. The stories, which delved into his homosexuality, were meant to be included in his first book “Plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days),” a collection of poems and short stories. However, Proust chose not to include them. The Guardian calls the stories “a mix of fairytales, fantasy and dialogues with the dead.” The stories were discovered by Proust specialist Bernard de Fallois, who started the publishing house Editions de […]

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Book Review: “Men Touching” by Henry Alley

So many things make up a successfully written novel—two of the most important being plot and character. Henry Alley masters both in his latest novel, Men Touching, but it’s his characters, both three-dimensional and subtly nuanced, that drive the narrative with their convincing faults and merits. This is the story of a flawed protagonist—one that’s so human and so relatable that you never stop pulling for him, even when he seems to give up on himself and in turn, those he loves. Robb is a divorced Vietnam veteran living the life of a supposedly liberated gay man in the city of […]

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Book Review: “Mostly Deadly Things” by Kristen Arnett

It’s another morning in small-town Central Florida, and outside the local taxidermy shop stands a middle-aged woman in a nightgown and fuzzy slippers, tapping a cigarette into a coffee mug and admiring the pornographic window display she’s created with the shop’s wares. For her daughter, Jessa Morton, it’s one more thing to deal with on top of her father’s recent suicide and her less-recent abandonment by her lover, who was also her brother’s wife. So begins Mostly Dead Things, the first novel by the writer and Twitter virtuoso Kristen Arnett. Despite its raw materials, it is neither a slab of Southern Gothic nor a […]

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Remembering the Provocative Cult Writer Gil Cuadros

I first discovered the work of writer and poet Gil Cuadros at an exhibit on Laura Aguilar at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Aguilar is a lesbian Chicana artist known for her gorgeous photography that explores identity, the queer body, and the natural world. The exhibit featured an altar Aguilar had constructed honoring Cuadros’ life. Cuadros was a close friend of Aguilar’s until his death in 1996 from AIDS. Aguilar appears in his poem “Bordertowns” about a visit to Tijuana: Laura’s arms are crossed/to sleep, her body/ vibrates from the road. I love the way the poem concerns itself […]

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