dick on the brain

Admittedly, I have a type.  Whatever.  I'm human.  That said, feel free to skip this post because I cannot be trusted when it comes to Brain Damage.

Horror nerds love Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case, but Brain Damage is better.  It's better because the male lead in this film is, to quote Claire Danes, so beautiful it hurts to look at him.  That's enough for me.

Brain Damage is a movie about a gorgeous man named Brian who thinks with his penis who he's named Elmer.  I think that's relatable.  The movie starts innocuously enough, Brian wants a night off from his girlfriend and his roommate so he pretends to be sick.   The girlfriend and roommate wind up falling in love with each other and Brian wakes up with blood all over his sheets.  A blackout moment!  One minute, Brian's throwing his sheets in the laundry and, next thing you know,  he's in an alley behind the whole foods, throwing his soiled panties in the trash.  Dick will make you do crazy things - we've all been there, sis!

Getting older, you start to know yourself.  For example, I know that I can't have chips in my house or apps on my phone because three weeks will go by and I'll be seven hundred pounds, still clicking on the same torso picture from someone 2378 feet away who I wouldn't have looked at twice in real life.  It's better (for me) not to go down that road.  A little self-awareness could have helped Brian, but instead he went down the dick hole and never came out again.

Sex addicts are a slippery lot.  They're like phallic sponges, they'll fill you up, but they also take all they can get and then leave you alone with a nasty smell on your fingers.  Gay, straight, they don't care.  They'll do anything.  I've seen Shame, I know.  When Brian has dick on the brain, it's all consuming - colors seem brighter, people seem interesting - he winds up in places with no clue how he got there.  Like an after-school special, Brain Damage shows us Brian's descent into addiction through the lens of 1980s grind house horror cinema.  If you're like me and have a fetish for  hot brunette tall men who look like vampires and who carry around anthropomorphic brain-sucking penises, pop a PrEP and go watch it on Shudder.  You'll be glad you did.

ciao, grazia, molto linguine!

I've been watching a lot of The Sopranos lately.  It calms me.   Last night I was inspired enough to make the most delicious eggplant parmesan/baked rigatoni dish.  Why make just one recipe when you can have two!  It got me thinking about Italy.

Even though I look like 1996 Claire Danes if she were a boy with glasses, I'm Italian.  My grandparents were "off the boat" and didn't speak English.  I never really had strong family ties, but do I love Italy.  I love the bustling streets of Rome, the perilous cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, the museums and cobblestones of Florence.  The pizza on every corner.  The secret covens of witches living amid the ruins and running prestigious dance academies...

But you don't have to take my word for it, just ask Susy Bannion.  Susy loved Italians so much that she followed them to Germany.  Everyone knows that when Germans aren't plotting the decimation of the Jewish people, there's nothing they enjoy more than the art of Dance.  Italians are smart - they go where the work is.  If the Germans want dance theatre, then the Italians are going to give it to them, goddammit.

Being an American, Susy doesn't let the fact that she's not a dancer get in the way of her dreams - she packs her duffle bag and heads to Germany to learn the art of Italian dance.  She found a sultry Italian roommate who wore a lot of silk and defiantly refused to condition her hair.  Everything seemed to be going just great until she gets a cold.

Everyone has their favorite Italian horror masterpiece.  For some, it's Fulci's The Beyond, for others it's Tenebre or Cannibal Holocaust or Demons... I could go on for a week (I won't go on for a week).  I'm wanted to be a ballet dancer, but my mom said it was "faggy," so I love Suspiria.  Ballet dancers wearing overalls, exotic locales, hand sculpted wood finishes covered in technicolor lacquer, how could I resist it?

Obviously I'll be seeing the Luca Guadagnino remake at least four times.  Amazon has already started hosting gay tastemaker screenings to stir us into a social media tizzy and, you know what, good for them!  The only way to out-gay Call Me By Your Name, with its Sufjan Stevens ballads and casually discarded $400 vintage bathing suits, is by adapting Suspiria with Tilda Swinton and Melanie Griffith's daughter.  I'm already planning my outfit.

effusive hyperbole

I just saw The Guest.

I loved The Guest.

You should go see The Guest.

That is all.
xxo

it's not easy being green

When Ramona Singer is bragging about the Hamptons on national television, you can't go there anymore.  When Ryan Murphy is spending weeks at a time in Provincetown, it's tired.  You can't go there anymore.  Don't even get me started on Ibiza!  So I had to wonder - is there anyplace left for the upwardly mobile homosexual to summer?

Trying to find a chic, late-summer hotspot is nothing new.  Take David and Mark.  David and Mark were a gay couple determined to save their crumbling relationship by taking a holiday, so they rallied some friends and a drag queen named Kay and they set sail for Brazil.

If any of you have been on a booze cruise with a gaggle of gays, then I don't have to tell you that it can be a recipe for disaster!  There's nothing messier than five drunk queens trapped on a boat, lashing out in every direction with no place to go.  For once, I'm not talking about The Boys in the Band, this is the story behind this week's FaggotyAss Summer Movie Club movie, The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

David and Mark had one of those couple dynamics that I just can't get behind.  Mark has all the money and thinks it exonerates him from bad behavior.  He always expected David to be at his beck and call and no one is ever allowed to question him.  I have a friend like this.  He married into MONEY but now he's not allowed to hang out with anyone and spends his days folding laundry and eating berries alone in their mansion.

"I've always found Kay was able to take care of herself."

Despite minimal resources, Kay's a regular Natalie Wood - doing water ballet in a dirty lagoon like a Vegas showgirl while the boys do God knows what behind locked cabin doors.  Her Joan Crawford eyebrows - her sensible flats to offset her high ponytail - she's nothing is not resourceful (even if she always has stains on her blouse).  Through rough waters and bickering queers, she is always serving soubrette fish on a platter.  Kay deserves our respect for holding it together as best as she could, even with all that messy machismo onboard.

I'll tell you one thing: her hard work does not go unnoticed by the local Creature from the Black Lagoon.  He goes out of his way to make nice to Ms Kay, but once David and Mark get wind of this, all Hell breaks loose.  Gays are so weird about drag queens.  And you wonder why Brazilians hate tourists!

Once upon a time, when I didn't know that I wouldn't always be working in the lap of luxury that is basic cable, I spent my entire tax refund on a 3D television.  It's big.  It's beautiful.  It takes up an entire room.  You see, I had that Universal Monsters box set and the 3D Creature from the Black Lagoon blu ray was just taunting me.  When Panasonic announced that they were no longer making commercial grade Plasma TVs, I had no choice.

Go ahead and come for me, Suze Orman.  I regret nothing!  My Creature from the Black Lagoon 3D blu ray is gorgeous.  The perfect antidote to a miserable summer day.

skyrockets in flight...

Hi, dolls.  I took today off my previously scheduled unemployment napping to pour some of the floor for Marilyn Burns.  How are you doing?  

I, for one, don’t go for summertime.  Fuck sunburns and trying to cover up my love handles.  Give me autumn!  Give me sweaters and hayrides and cider donuts!  Yesterday I was bumming around the mall and the Goddess heard my prayer – Hallmark has their Halloween goods out already.   Praise her!

The best business (aside from a witch doll just COVERED in black glitter) was their selection of the new, 2014 Yankee Candle autumn flavors – Harvest and the newly improved Pumpkin Spice rank just above their Pumpkin Apple and Pumpkin Buttercream.  Run don’t walk!

So, I’m sitting here with the shades drawn – contemplating leaving the house for a run or going to the gym – while this Halloween candle stares at me.  Taunting me.   How do we ever get through these two months to Halloween season?  Do I just hibernate until October? Oprah finally started airing reruns of her talk show on OWN and I'm starting to feel like myself again.  
You know what I think we need?   
We need a FaggotyAss Movie Club to get us through these Dog Days of Summer.  

Since it's still August and humid and seeing as I'm currently funemloyed for the first time in my young queer life, there's no better movie to get us started than the smutty French thriller, Stranger by the Lake.

"Bonjour. Croissants.  Fromage.  French fries!"

Stranger by the Lake is about exactly what I'm going through right now.  Franck is funemployed and it's summer so he goes off to swim in a magic lake that only gay people know about.  They're all French so everyone is naked and uncircumcised and they all have adorable sneakers.  We know that Franck is our final girl because he shaves his testicles and he talks to the dumpy old man who sits all by himself.  See, I don't like strangers.  I'd love to go to this magical lake, but the minute I was expected to socialize, forget it.  Not to mention, they keep referencing some sea monster that lives in the water.  Come to think of it, the sun is bad news - as much as I like sun-kissed highlights, it's not worth looking like a handbag (Luke Evans) and the last time I went on a hike, there was this HUGE rattlesnake.  Oh God.  Even thinking about it makes me shake.  Haven't I been through enough?!

Back to the film (the fact that Stranger by the Lake is French demands we call it a film and not a movie)...

One afternoon, while creeping behind some bushes, Franck witnesses gay on gay murder!  MURDER!  Like any red-blooded bottom, this only makes him desperately attracted to the killer.  He proceeds to spend the entire summer chasing homicidal dick all around that lake like a damned fool.  You know what?  Good for him.  Live.

This movie is great.  Timeless.  A midsummer night's dream.  Stranger by the Lake sets out to examine how our dicks usually wind up winning over our intellects.  This is especially relevant now with everyone treating PREP like a panacea and using Grindr free of consequence, it may as well be 1981 all over again.  You know what they say about history, dolls.

our dreams are real

All Hail!!!

Our favorite Ali Larter co-star, Wentworth Miller, just dragged Mother Russia and I LOVE IT!  I've posted the link to his letter below where he CCs not only GLAAD, but his agent at ICM.  Stunts!

http://www.glaad.org/files/W_MILLER_SPIFF.PDF

You know I live for anyone who rocks a bucket hat in public.  Considering the fact that Wentworth wrote Stoker for Nicole Kidman and Mathew Goode, not to mention his star-turn in those Mariah Carey videos... I think we have a new crush!!!

Congratulations, everyone.

eat your heart out.

"You're pissed at everyone because you're gay."

I have a complex relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer.

I hold him personally responsible for robbing me of my best slut years. While the kids nowadays can go to any bar or club or theatre festival or app to find a hot in high-waisted jeans and metallic frames, I stayed locked inside my room throughout twenties – absolutely certain that any clandestine affair with even the most devastatingly handsome investment banker was going to end with me face-down stapled to the floor of some Tribeca loft. I’m getting ahead of myself.

A while back, I was talking to my friend about the death of gay cinema and he explained that the issue at hand is not the death of gay cinema at all, but the death of independent cinema. Oh, yeah.  He's right.  We all sort of took for granted that pop culture would always be Nirvana and My So Called Life. We were wrong.

Don't get me wrong - the '90s wasn't all Crystal Pepsi and hypercolor.  Unlike the 1980s, the nineties was actually a shitty time to be a gay teen. Liberace and Keith Haring were dead. Gone were the days of jelly bracelets and pouty-mouthed camp counselors. AIDS and the recession took all the fun out of being a fag.

Queer Cinema was alive and kicking thanks to Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant, but average kids  who were looking for role models (and who didn't live in LA or Portland) were SOL. We didn’t have Glee.   We didn't even have the questionable queer content on TV like Soap or Dynasty.

In fact, aside from Marty from Showgirls, the most famous gay of the 90s was Jeffrey Dahmer.

Despite the proliferation of queer cinema in the nineties, it wasn’t until the early aughts that a proper movie based on Dahmer would see the light of direct to Blockbuster distribution.

Dahmer (2002) is the kind of movie that Chloe Sevigny and Brett Easton Ellis watch ironically projected on a tarp in someone’s backyard thinking they're such a riot while they talk incessantly about themselves and not even bothering to learn the name of their hostess.

It is not very good, this Dahmer film, but it does teach us some very important lessons.

• Lesson #1:  Banjees are a gays best friend.

True story.  In the middle of Jeffrey's Korean phase, a lobotomized gay boy managed to escape the manse. Mute and naked, this poor kid came stumbling across a couple of Banjee girls on their way home from walking their little brothers to school.  These girls were concerned. The cops were not.  Refusing to get involved in another faggoty domestic dispute, they brought that poor boy right back to Jeffrey's house where he was promptly dismembered.

• Lesson #2  Don’t go home with any guy who talks like Emma Pillsbury.

No good can come from it.

• Lesson #3  This is what Jeremy Renner’s O-face looks like.

In case you were watching Thor and, you know, got to wondering.

• Lesson #4  If I lived in Wisconsin in the early 90s, I would be DEAD.

With his shaggy hair and lanky build, Jeffrey Dahmer was a catch!
I mean, he worked in a chocolate factory…

Don't Fuck with the Babysitter.

"Get the fuck out of the water, now!"

-Elizabeth Shue 

Piranha 3 (2010)

The Good.

1. Piranha 3 cast Elizabeth Shue and Adam Scott as its heroes.  Get out of my head!

2.  At one point, Adam Scott wears metal, Terry Richardson style frames and I actually gasped.

3.  The Back to the Future 2 reunion of Elizabeth and Christopher Lloyd made me feel warm and fuzzy all over (even though I'm certain that Christopher Lloyd would have no recollection of ever having worked with Elizabeth prior).

4.  Elizabeth Shue.  Congratulations, Mamma - you're back in the game and better than ever!

The Bad.

1.  This is not a movie in 3D.  Take off the glasses, you'll see.

2.  Eli Roth and cloyingly precocious child actors nearly ruin the delicate balance of tone Piranha 3 was going for.  Eli, do us all a favor, doll, and stay behind the camera.  xoxo

The Exquisite.

Move over Katie Cassidy.  Back off, Amber Heard. There's a new Scream Queen in town and she's British!  Kelly Brook.  Now and forever.  I love her hair.  I love her kind eyes.  I love Kelly Brook.