KAOS: March 2012

review

Stage Door

t's an all star free for all, when Katharine Hepburn squares off against Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller and Eve Arden in Gregory LaCava's classic story of life in the theatre, Stage Door.

Taken from the hit stage play by George S, Kaufman and Edna Ferber and using his trademark technique of overlapping dialogue, director LaCava puts these young fillies through their paces, along with veteran character actors Constance Collier, Adolph Menjou and Jack Carson. There was no love lost between Hepburn and Rogers, which fueled their on-screen chemistry and made for funny and fascinating viewing. Newcomer Andrea Leeds received an Oscar nomination, over some stiff competition, as the sensitive and tragic Kay. The witty dialogue moves fast and furiously with each of the actresses getting a chance to "strut their stuff." It's everything about the theatre you wish the theatre would be. Gregory LaCava's "Stage Door" is a sure fire hit! Steve Hayes

(Syndication is with the kind permission of Steve Hayes.)

a news compendium

with a gay bias
WEEKLY | Issue 116 | March 2012 | FREE | be.told.

OPENING SHOTS

< Dylan Rosser shoots for tMf Magazine.

> Sizzling "boylesque" dancer Isaiah Tillman covers PQ Monthy.

US NEWS

||||| Guilty: Dharun Ravi convicted on all 15 charges, including new "hate crime" charge of bias intimidation:

||||| This is 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead in Miami by self-appointed neighbourhood vigilante George Zimmerman. Zimmerman claims self-defense, but Martin was carrying just Skittles and pop:

||||| NoMoreDownLow.TV asks, Is being on the down low the new so-called "Twinkie Defense"?

||||| Remember last week's story about heels-wearing 17-year-old Asante Cotman? He's now behind bars.

||||| Christian hate group leaves students in tears after homophobic rant at school assembly.

||||| New campaign from FCKH8 founder aims to fight homophobia in schools with "OK 4 U 2 Be Gay" T-shirts:

||||| This is Edwin Faulkner, and Juan Carlos Martinez-Herrera, who stand accused of murdering 57-year-old gay man John Laubach in New York's Chelsea:

||||| The UN special rapporteur on torture brands Bradley Manning's treatment cruel and inhuman:

||||| Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell has little impact on military; 69% say change has had no repercussions.

||||| A gay marine reflects on the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

||||| Man sues City of San Diego over Pride thong arrest.

||||| GLAAD launches Commentator Accountability Project, which aims "to put critical information about frequent anti-gay interviewees into the hands of newsrooms, editors, hosts and reporters."

||||| Lambda Legal looks back on Lawrence v. Texas, the case that brought down sodomy laws...

||||| Obama against North Carolina anti-gay marriage ballot measure.

||||| Barack and Michelle Obama pose alongside visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha. I wonder if mention was made of Cameron's friend - and fellow Conservative - Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, who has talked about black people's "watermelon smiles", and who has called black children "pickaninnies".

||||| The US media wasn't very interested in the slime trail from Blighty, in any case.

UK NEWS

||||| Human rights activist Peter Tatchell welcomes opening of equal marriage consultation but slams flawed plans for perpetuating discrimination.

||||| Telegraph editorial warns Government "risks reigniting anti-gay bigotry" with equal marriage; the paper is openly opposed to equal marriage.

||||| And a Daily Mail editorial claims Government ministers are "viciously bullying" the Church over marriage equality.

||||| Former Prime Minister Tony Blair "strongly supports" equal marriage. Blair introduced same-sex civil unions in 2005.

||||| Gays, God, marriage and the politics of polling.

> Ben & Jerry's backs equal marriage with new "Apple-y Ever After" flavour.

||||| London club night G-A-Y to give free entry to anyone signing a petition supporting gay marriage, Saturday 24 March.

||||| Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, the first gay couple to become fathers in UK, open surrogacy centre for same sex couples:

||||| Ken Livingstone: London "not on top" of gay hate crime.

||||| Court grants gay father more involvement in son's life.

||||| Bill erasing archaic anti-gay British law reaches final hurdle.

||||| London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard unveils new online services.

< Fog in London.

> The new vaulted concourse at London King's Cross, which opened last week.

||||| NORTHERN IRELAND: Take a look inside Belfast's new Titanic attraction:

EUROPE NEWS

||||| European law protecting gay succession passes first hurdle.

||||| BELGIUM: National mourning as bodies of Swiss bus crash victims are flown home, above.

||||| DENMARK: Equal marriage rights promised by summer.

||||| SPAIN: Remains of an ancient village usually covered by water in Huesca on Tuesday, 13th March 2012, above. "Spain is suffering the driest winter in more than 70 years, adding yet another woe for an economically distressed country that can scarcely afford it."

||||| ITALY: Souvenir hunters steal bell from wreck of the Costa Concordia.

||||| ITALY: The $US130-million plus cost of salvaging the stricken liner.

||||| BOSNIA: Drought reveals old cemetery, above.

||||| RUSSIA: Judge bans 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics gay Pride House, ruling it "extremist" and could provoke "social-religious hatred".

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

||||| CHILE: Four suspects held, above, over attack on 24-year-old gay man Daniel Zamudio. Zamudio was "burned, had his ear sliced, and was branded with a Swastika".

||||| CHILE: Riot police subdue a protester, above, in Valparaiso city, Thursday 15th March 2012.

AFRICA NEWS

< UGANDA: Activists file lawsuit against US evangelist for role in gays hate bill. "Abiding Truth Ministries president Scott Lively accused of being 'man with the plan' in persecution of LGBT Ugandans."

||||| ZIMBABWE: Senator Sithembile Mlotshwa demands prisoners be given sex toys to stop them turning gay.

||||| NIGERIA: EU condemns the anti-gay marriage bill which threatens gay couples with arrests and violence.

||||| NIGERIA: Takwa Bay, a shipping graveyard.

||||| TUNISIA: Homophobic hackers take over Gay Day Magazine's internet accounts, emails, Twitter and Facebook.

SOUTHERN ASIA NEWS

||||| INDIA: 2.5 million gay men in India, 7% have HIV, government reports.

||||| INDIA: Children prepare for arranged marriages, above, in a village with a centuries old tradition of prostitution.

< INDIA: Men carry a vegetable basket on Friday, 16th March 2012.

ASIA-PACIFIC NEWS

||||| CHINA: Parents of gay children address China's National People's Congress. "Ten parents send letter asking for laws to stop discrimination against gay people to national meeting."

||||| CHINA: Ordos, the biggest ghost town in China. More at TIME.

||||| JAPAN: Tsunami pictures: before and after.

> NEW ZEALAND: Germaine Greer glitter-bombed for "transphobic feminism".

||||| AUSTRALIA: Anti-gay marriage advert criticised by public, politicians and the gay brother of the party leader responsible.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

||||| UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 30 men arrested at Dubai hotel party are gay, activist group claims.

BODY & MIND

||||| Why space is bad for astronauts' eyes.

||||| Circumcision may cut risk of prostate cancer.

< Support Justin B. Terry-Smith's Write A Letter To HIV campaign.

THE PLANET

> Auroral lights, seen from the International Space Station, Saturday, 10th March 2012.

< Yoda, the ugliest dog in the world, dies at 15.

PRINT & VISUAL

> Review: Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality, edited by Kevin Simmonds. "These poems are as varied in how they respond to 'faith, religion, and spirituality' as they are in tone, which ranges from somber to sexy, comic to cosmic. There is a collective brilliance here."

< Review: Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York City 1989-1992, by Chantal Regnault. "It has taken much too long for a book of this type to come out, perhaps reflecting both a testament to the ball culture's once-underground status and society's dismissal of it. Thankfully it does not disappoint."

||||| 10 contemporary American essayists you should be reading right now, including Touré (above right), who explores race as "a completely liquid shape-shifter that can take any form" and aims "to attack and destroy the idea that there is a correct or legitimate way of doing blackness."

< This Will Have Been: Art, Love, & Politics in the 1980s, a new exhibition at the Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago.

||||| Armistead Maupin reflects on 35 years of Tales of the City.

||||| Encyclopaedia Britannica stops the presses after 244 years.

> Artifice graphic novel soars past Kickstarter funding goal.

< Pop-culture mash-ups of famous paintings.

> Cool redesigns of famous logos.

||||| Photos of NYC on the brink of the '80s:

||||| The Long Shadow of Chernobyl, a project by photojournalist Gerd Ludwig:

< Exciting new design concepts for the next stage of New York's High Line.

> 2012 Skyscraper Competition: winners.

||||| Are these the world's luckiest photos?

||||| Don't miss Thailand-based artists Chadwick Gray and Laura Spector captivating human body paintings.

CINEMA

> Daniel Radcliffe's "gay face" and the British press.

< Clooney in cuffs. "George Clooney's kinky ass is used to being in handcuffs, but this morning he was thrown into a pair of Lohan bracelets for a different reason."

< A makeup artist's view of Marilyn Monroe.

||||| Lenny Kravitz talks about Cinna's sexuality in The Hunger Games.

> Review: The Stranger In Us. "It promises much but delivers little, ultimately leaving the end-result evanescent."

||||| Trailer: The Men's Room, a short film "dealing with male sexuality, intimacy, and the concept of public decency".

||||| Trailer: Revealing Mr. Maugham.

||||| Trailer: Dark Shadows.

||||| "I'm too old for this s**t!"

TV

||||| What Would You Do? stages teen coming out to his mother as transgender in restaurant, and receiving a very negative response. Diners react.

||||| Here's the latest from gays in soaps around the world.

< Reality series My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding outs gay teen.

||||| HBO's Luck canceled after multiple horse deaths.

||||| So, about GCB's gay storyline...

||||| The best of the worst TV cast feuds!

THE SEX BIZ

||||| So, why exactly did the Florida Department of Education rule Collin O'Neal could be a teacher again?

||||| Last week, we discovered just how big an asshole creepy porn magnate Michael Lucas really is. This week, he's gone that extra mile to confirm it.

||||| Dakota Cochrane (Sean Cody's Danny, above) has exited reality show The Ultimate Fighter after just one episode.

||||| So this is what goes in St. James Park. Wonder how often Prince Edward pops in...

SPORT

< David Pocock, the Christian captain of Australia's national rugby union club, has come out in support of gay marriage in Australia. "It's my understanding that Jesus was on the side of the marginalised and the oppressed," he said in a statement released by Australian Marriage Equality.

> Poptarts JLS promote the Team GB bracelet.

||||| Justin Fashanu wasn't gay after all. That's the gospel according to his homophobic brother John.

||||| Jermain Defoe becomes first top footballer in UK to visit London's G-A-Y club for 15 years.

||||| Homophobic CNN sports commentator Roland Martin is back at work.

PARTING SHOTS

||||| A photo of Patrick Schwarzenegger's "gaping and bloodied ass".

||||| OMG! Ask Dame Edna!

||||| So - what's the best option in a free falling elevator?

< This hardware store wants gay men to go to Hell.

||||| Guess who: Minimalist Lego versions of our favourite cartoon characters: