Category: Entertainment
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REVIEW: You F’Coffee? Up and Up The Rise of Pam Ann
Sitting in Business Class aboard this PAM ANN service to camp heaven, I was concerned that my inflight entertainment system (Caroline Reid) wouldn’t be able to deliver the high-quality broadcast I’m used to, however, I was every bit enchanted with PAM since the first time she tried to strip me…
As I arrived at the theatre to watch Pam Ann’s ‘You F’Coffee,’ I thought I was in the wrong building. The late great Astoria came to mind as hundreds of London’s gay glitterati swanned around, clinking champagne glasses and wearing t-shirts far too tight. Actually, the theatre was serving Champagne in Plastic, I know, the horror. The only thing missing from the old G-A-Y days was the smell of poppers and that feet-sticking-to-the-floor-ohmigod-what-is-that-I’m-stepping-in feeling.
Once seated and prepared for takeoff Pam enters the stage and certainly gives the audience what they want. She actually glows, radiance is my word du jour for Pam. Participation, crude and lewd language and anal jokes from wall to wall. It’s all rather marvellous stuff. I gave up counting the word c**t (and I mean that in an endearing way) after around 150 of the blighters projectiled out from the stage – mostly aimed at the second row of hoof clad British Airway’s hostesses.
It’s testament to Pam’s awareness and captivation of her audience that this act, which should be very limited in its subject matter has been doing the rounds since 1996 and yet there seems to be no faltering in the love for Ms Ann. Especially as she leaps from the stage and rub her bountiful bosom in an unsuspecting, expectant bear’s face. They love it of course. Any chance to be touched, groped or lushed upon by Ms. Ann is any gay’s dream, which I was to realize personally a few years back, when unannounced and quite early in the evening on an empty dance floor at Scala’s now-defunct Popstarz night in King’s Cross, Caroline, accosted, nay, molested me and began to strip me in the middle of the club. Now of course I’m far too much of a gentleman to go all the way – or she hadn’t ‘slipped enough E into my drink’ but the love affair had started. No woman has touched me like that. Before or since. Subtle and clever marketing, touching the lives of gay men around the world.
At times, the show felt as though it was nearly out of control with Reid, racing ahead of her own jokes, but ultimately, the overwhelming feeling is that she absolutely loves what she does and the audience loves her for it. I wouldn’t have minded if Reid had fluffed and f**ked up, because it’s in the unplanned and spontaneous that Pam Ann’s true genius shines through.
Pam Ann is a true gay icon. A f**cking class act (I know I’m swearing… even in Business Class) One dimensional – but fascinating, uncomplicatedly simple – but sublimely camp and after 16 years of Boeing 747 series 400 with… wingtips (thank you gays…) is keeping her audience quite literally lubricated.
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FILM REVIEW | The Mudge Boy; Dark, Cruel and Unfinished
A dark, cruel story of fourteen-year-old Duncan Mudge.
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Big numbers for ‘I Woke Up Gay’
BBC3 documentary I Woke Up Gay – about a straight rugby player from Wales who awoke gay after a stroke attracted nearly half a million viewers.
Chris Birch, attracted huge media attention after he claimed he woke up gay from a stoke, which was induced after rolling down a hill with his friends.
The documentary was aired on the 17th April 2012 and can be watched on the BBC iPlayer service – click here
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FILM REVIEW | Weekend; Quiet, unhurried and self assured
It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood would run a mile from, and that’s a good thing.
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Why Are Boy Bands So Gay?
So the thought of 3, 4 or 5 exuberant lads together making sweet music is one undeniably interesting prospect. One, I imagine causing many a nightly stirring whilst staring at your latest pinup poster of One Direction from Smash Hits. Hang on does Smash Hits still exist? Yes, apparently it does. Jolly good. It gets the mind-boggling, doesn’t it? How on earth do 5 guys share a tour bus, hotel, swanky lads pad in North London without straying to the gay side?
Putting aside the cluster f**k images I wonder why on earth boybands are so gay. And I don’t even mean in a ‘that’s so gay’ way. It’s like everything they’ve been marketed to be is actually Gay with a capital G. “Researching” for this article I stumbled upon The Wanted’s homepage and delved into their personal info. Every member had an innocuous homo whispering (from favourite colour pink) to the to the blatant holla (favourite movie Brokeback Mountain and loving Gok Wan.) Now I’m not saying a HetroBoy shouldn’t like cowboy cock films, but it does seem a bit odd. Doesn’t it?
THE OVERTONES
3 out of 5 men prefer lads… These stats speak for themselves and we salute you for coming out so early in your careers. Plus these pretty boys look like they’re fresh out of a D&G advert so we’re pleased that the window shopping could possibly turn into purchases!
WESTLIFE
There’s only so much pastel wearing and bleaching of hair a boy can get away with before the gay police come knocking. There’s something about the way those boys hopped off their bar stools at the key-change that reminds me of my youth – when a Britney tune came on. Plus one of the lads is a fully fledged ‘one of the boys’ – so they all gotta be – it’s gay science.
THE WANTED
Five lads that between them enjoy Sex And The City, Brokeback Mountain, the colour pink, Steps, Michael Barrymore, America’s Next Top Model and Gok Wan. Don’t know about you but my Gaydar has just burst into flames. Now I’m not making assumptions and I’m not someone to point my gay finger at anyone, nor cast dispersions on anyone’s sexuality – but as Mr Clary would say it’s Uncanny and Unnatural. The only heterosexual lighthouse in the midst of all this Gay is the song ‘Glad You Came’ which I know is a common relief that a lot of straight men crave.TAKE THAT
These men just get a little sexier every time I see them. At first, it was all bondage and lighting fires with Lulu but now it’s a stronger bond. 20 years on, a little more rugged, fathers, old mates, comrades of the pop machine – hanging around a campfire remembering the good ole days when they could wear jockstraps and cream themselves in music videos… Gay right?O-TOWN
Christ the first single was called Liquid Dreams. Enuff said. -
FILM REVIEW | Shortbus
★★★★★ | Shortbus
You’ll never look at a splatter painting in the way away again.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to have you face stuffed into a film’s never regions, then Shortbus is the film for you to see. Stat.
Director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig And The Angry Inch) bravely circumnavigates the world of sexuality in this stylist, almost uncomplicated observation of sexual dysfunction.
Shortbus is a New York club where the focus is sexual liberation with a heady blend of punters. Transgenders, aging homosexuals, hot young boys, a straight female sex therapist all looking to get their rocks off – a bit like Piccadilly on a Thursday night but more scintillating.
The creators and actors of Shortbus have genuinely created and sustained characters the viewer can befriend and have some feeling for. It’s almost as though you can see that the actual actors forged a real relationship with each other, which gathering from the DVD’s ‘extras’ they had to, as part of the film development process was having sexual relations with each other.
Shortbus did give me a tingling sensation. Not just because you get to see: self sucking, a blinding rim job, a 3 way, the national anthem sung into a sizable cock and Mr Cameron-Mitchell himself being sucked off by an extra (no really) but it caused me to think of my own sexuality and my relationship to it. If you’ve ever wondered how the standard British sexual sensibility is compared to an American one – go to New York, hook up with a bar tender and you might understand the discomfort that this film might create. Sex is ‘in your face.’ It is about sexual roles. It’s about ‘this moment, now’ Being British and naturally reserved such talk and this movie is better left after 2 bottles of Chablis and a handful of bar nuts.
Some fantastic performances and an introduction to one Jay Brannan – who I suggest you get yourself into – socially so to speak. He has a Facebook, twitter, albums and tours his music about regularly.
If you’re sexually revolutionize you might watch this and think, whats all the fuss about, but worth a punt anyway. You can pass it of as porn with a story line and real actors. No mention of rusty pipes than need a lube down.
If you’re a fan of the slightly psychedelic, smash colour, animatic world of John Cameron Mitchell you’ll like this movie. It isn’t one however to watch with your Mother. You get to see quite a bit of peen!
Available to buy / view on: Amazon
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FILM REVIEW | Brokeback Mountain
As a poignant and touching love story, Brokeback Mountain deserves to help revive an ailing genre..
After a short stint trying to re-craft the comic book blockbuster in his own image, Ang Lee returns, gloriously, to more familiar ground. Based on Annie Proulx’s celebrated short story, Brokeback Mountain is a grand epic, a heartbreaking love story of two Wyoming ranch hands who fall for each other.
It’s remarkable to see a movie about a gay romance told in such a determinedly straight fashion. In fact where most contemporary rom-coms perform all sorts of contrived narrative somersaults to keep its lovers apart, in Brokeback Mountain, the circumstances of a hostile society that conspire to separate Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist and Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar are utterly believable and genuinely painful.
But it’s not just the boys you end up rooting for. One of the reasons that Ang Lee’s film come across as so incredibly human is his reluctance to introduce a villain into the piece. The female leads could easily have been two-dimensional obstacles to true love. Instead, they’re almost as tragic as the men; it is not, after all, their fault that they unwittingly married blokes who were secretly spoken for.
It will be interesting to see how these themes will play in the queer-fear conservative heartlands of America. There’s a very real possibility that the idea of gay cowboys will threaten the middle class majority; those who are more comfortable when gay people are safely stereotyped as queeny LA fashionistas.
As a poignant and touching love story, Brokeback Mountain deserves to help revive an ailing genre: studio wisdom has it that sweeping romances spanning 20 years are a dead idea. On this evidence, they really should think about doing it more often.
Anticipation: Some kind of Priscilla, Queen of the Ranch, right?
Enjoyment: By the end you’d sell your own grandmother if it would help make things alright for them.
In Retrospect: As soon as it ends you’ll want to watch it again. Even if it meant putting yourself once more through the emotional wringer.
Available to buy / view on: Amazon
Brokeback Mountain (text) by Catherine Wray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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FILM REVIEW | Dream Boy
Nathan is a quiet but different boy, who lives in a very quiet town in the USA.
Nathan falls for the boy next door, Roy – and their relationship blossoms into a gay adolescent love affair with an unhappy ending.
The story is based on a novel by Jim Grimsley and delves into a world of child abuse, rape and the coming of age. It’s a very slow paced movie – think Brokeback Mountain and then slow it down some.
Unfortunately for this film it lacks any of that Brokeback Hollywood treatment. No breath taking vistas, no Jake Gynenhall. Un-hyped and grassroots look at gay life for a teenager in Louisiana.
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FILM REVIEW | Milk
Powerful, heartfelt and a strong testament to a force with that was Harvey Milk, the first openly gay political powerhouse that ran for major in San Francisco in the late 70s.
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BOOK REVIEW | When You Were Me
Robert Rodi is on fire – yet again and I’m not sure I’m really surprised.
