By Jeff Walsh
Tales of the City, the musical based on the beloved books by Armistead Maupin, opens in San Francisco tonight. The story is set in the 70s and brings together a magic group of characters for a timeless story of self-discovery, family, and community.
The show fuses Maupin's books with some of the creative team behind Avenue Q, and music written by singer Jake Shears and musician John Garden of the dance pop band, The Scissor Sisters (My review of the show will run later this week).
I recently spoke with Shears during the show's preview run, and here's what we had to say:
By Jeff Walsh
Violet Tendencies is a fun fag hag movie, starring Mindy Cohn (Natalie from TV's Facts of Life) as the hag in the starring role.
The movie, which comes out on DVD May 24, opens on a wedding, as a fag hag is getting married surrounded by hot gay men. The bride notes that she was the last fag left, quickly adding, well... except for Violet.
Violet is so surrounded by gay men that she barely knows how to navigate the straight world, and when she does meet straight guys through an online phone dating service, her gay-tuned candor and humor sends them packing.
Violet's gay friends are all in some state of taking their lives from where they are at present to a next level, whether that is monogamy or adopting children. When Violet finally meets someone interested in her, a Mormon architect with whom she doesn't share much of anything in common, she abandons her gay life for a chance at happiness.
By Jeff Walsh
Nick Adams has been in three of my favorite shows: A Chorus Line, La Cage Aux Folles, and now he is one of the leads in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, a new musical on Broadway based on the Australian movie. Sadly at this point in time, I've only seen the movie version of Priscilla, which I've adored for years, but that will be remedied as soon as possible.
For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Priscilla is a road trip picture with two drag queens and a transvestite on a road trip through the Australian outback with a lot of campy bitchery and disco anthems peppered throughout.
Nick, 27, became more visible when he appeared in the revivial of A Chorus Line. He got press when he landed a 2(x)st underwear campaign, landing the shoot over his Chorus Line co-star Mario Lopez, which the media turned into a feud that both actors deny (publicly, at least).
He then appeared as one of The Cagelles in La Cage, where he stole every scene he was in as the odd drag queen out. And now, he recently opened Priscilla on Broadway, landing one of the main roles in the show, as well as the funniest, bitchiest, showiest roles in the piece.
In the movie, his role was played by a young unknown Guy Pearce. There's a good chance that magic will repeat itself with Nick's career.
Nick and I chatted on a spotty phone connection this week, and here's what we had to say:
In my job, I speak to americans. everyday, all day. all regions of the country, all differnt clases aswell. and one thing I have noticed is. For the most part they are dumb. I often wonder how most of these people make it thro day to day life,, they are that stupid.
Most have no concept of deductive reasoning, and the rest are so Naive in thier life, they would surely be the first to die in a cataclysmic global event.
I think there should be a student discount for vibrators and other sex toys.
In third grade I dissected owl pellets. Despite my usual enthusiasm for science, (I won the state science fair that year experimenting with the feeding habits of Lumbricus Terrestris (known to laymen as "earthworms")), I was deeply troubled- not so much by the pellet itself, after all, I handled the worms without so much as a murmur- but, as I now believe, by the concept of regurgitation. As my schooling progressed I was introduced to a more sophisticated form of pre-digestion: the textbook.
I'm on Oasis! I'm so excited. It finally worked.
So I guess this is where I just start to spill everything - who I am, what I'm all about, where I'm from...
Well, Sat. night I found out that I suck at flirting. I went to this big pompous formal event with tuxedos and evening gowns and everything. I was at a table with this guy I hadn't seen in months. (Let's just call him Andrew). I knew he was gay when I saw him last September, at a friend's party, playing truth or dare in the hottub. Wow.
here is a list of painful memories:
watching my parents shoot up
listening to my parents fight
watching my arents fight
talking to the cops about my parents fight
going to a jail, and seeing my daddy through a glass window, holding back the tears so i could talk to him over the little phone
waiting for hours to see my mom on my birthday, when she promised she would come, but then didn't show
um...here it goes...just a little background:
when i was born my parents were both drug addicts, i was born addicted to heroin and coke. when i was four things at home started to get out of hand, and my grand parents got custody of me. I guess i have always known that im not completly straight...in preeschool i had a "friend"...Chealsea...she and i used to kiss and shit...all the stuff we thought only boys and girls could do. Now dont get me wrong, i have been raise in a very liberal, accepting house...i mean, for god's sake...i live in San Francisco, and my grandma teaches human sexuality at SF state university! we always had gay family friends over, i i was told it was perfectly normal...that it was better than normal, that it was beautiful. However, that is not what our storybooks said, and that is not what the tv said...the media had a major impact on my beliefs and values during the very early years of my life...anyway, chealsea and i would kiss and stuff, but i always, to some extent, thought what we were doing was wrong...but at the same time, i thougt it was normal, that every other four year old was experimenting in this fashion...