You Can be Sad or You Can be Gay (Ep. 107 - Guy Branum)

March 30, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Guy Branum

Why is "gay" the word that the world seems to have picked to describe us? My guest Guy Branum has some thoughts on the topic, and on many more. You can see Guy as the host of "Talk Show the Game Show," debuting April 5 on TruTV, where celebrities compete to be the best guest on a talk show. There could be no better environment for Guy, a brilliantly funny comedian with a superpower for first breaking rules, and then reassembling them into something far more fascinating.

This Week's Recommendation: Talk Show the Game Show & My Fair Lady

Please do not commit the crime of missing the debut of Talk Show the Game Show on TruTV, April 5. I've seen it when it was a live show, and words cannot describe how fortunate the world is that you no longer have to fly to Los Angeles to see it -- though it woudl be entirely reasonable to do so. It's that good.

Guy mentioned his love of Pygmalion stories, and so of course my recommendation this week is for the musical My Fair Lady. It's the story of a poor rag-tag young woman who dreams of finding someplace better, and is then plucked from the street by a man of high society who wishes to trains her be a cultivated lady for his own amusement.

As she struggles to move from grimy streets to wealth and excess, Eliza quickly becomes a person of overwhelming contrasts. She's torn between the place that she's from, the person who she is, and the world that she's entered. She finds her feet planted in two very different realms, and as they slide further and further apart she begins to lose her footing in each.

I often wonder what my life would be life if I were born in different circumstances. How much of me is me, and how much it is the house where I grew up and the city I moved to as an adult? We're all made up, to varying extents, of pieces of everywhere we've been and everyone we've met. It can be hard to fit those pieces together -- say, combining the streets of London with an ornate ballroom, or a dusty farm town with a flamboyant TV game show -- but ultimately, those pieces don't define us nearly as much as the unique connective tissue that we grow to attach them to each other.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A Giraffe Gynecologist (Ep. 106 - Opera)

March 23, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: James Jorden

Longtime listeners may remember way back in episode 4 of The Sewers of Paris, my guest Greg talked about picking up copies of an unofficial queer opera zine called Parterre Box in the men's room of the Metropolitan Opera. The publisher of that zine is this week's guest. James Jorden always wanted to direct, but when he first moved to New York the closest he could get to the stage was in a low-paying job sweeping up bobby pins. That's when he had a a stroke of inspiration: if his career wasn't advancing through official channels, maybe more underground measures would bring him success. There's no way he could have imagined how right he would be.

This Week's Recommendation: What's Opera Doc

Thanks again to James for joining me and for bringing so many enlightening cultural references. But somehow, we neglected to discuss my favorite opera singer: Bugs Bunny. For my recommendation this week, take a look at the masterpiece What's Opera Doc, where Elmer Fudd chases Bugs through Wagner's Ring Cycle. Of course, there is drag.

But there is also a real affection for the source material, with references to Sigfried's horn, and the horse from the actual opera, and Valhalla and the opera The Flying Dutchman. If you find opera intimidating or confusing or dry, you couldn't ask for a better way in to the actual music and characters and story.

That mismatch of tone -- tragic opera and goofy cartoon -- could have been a disaster, but What's Opera Doc (and the similarly brilliant Rabbit of Seville) create a perfect blend of high drama and campy slapstick. And I think it works so well because of a principle that Elmer Fudd never seems to learn: the more serious and imposing a force tries to be, the better it pairs with the absolutely ridiculous.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I Always Wanted to be the Pretty one (Ep. 105 - Miss Universe)

March 16, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Ben Fede

How do you know when you're home? Is home a place you find, or a place you make? My guest this week grew up in the US, but never quite felt like he belonged. That all changed after a chance film screening, a lucky visit to a chat room, and a surprise visit to Ireland. After a lifetime of trying to figure out where he belonged, Ben took a gamble on international romance -- and won.

This Week's Recommendation: Leather Pageants

As we make our way into springtime, we're coming up on what is, in many cities around the world, leather season. Atlanta Leather Pride starts April 7, Minnesota's starts March 31, Washington's is March 16, Los Angeles is March 26. Chances are good that there's leather pride happening somewhere near you in the next few weeks.

For my recommendation this week: get yourself to a leather contest. If you're not familiar, they're basically beauty pageants for masculinity. They're generally held at a bar, and there's usually a talent portion, a Q&A with judges, and some kind of jockstrap posing competition.

There's a lot of beauty on display at these events, and not all of it physical. In addition to benefitting charity, many Leather Pride pageants celebrate diverse bodies, community service, and social support. Many contests are growing more adventuresome with gender and sexuality, pushing at the boundaries of what masculinity can mean. One of my favorite winners in recent years was Pup Tugger, who marched out on stage in a corset and high heels.

Leather competitions manage to combine the best things about beauty pageants and raunchy filthy sex -- the contrast is stark and ridiculous and super fun, especially because it's such a tiny community, so everyone knows everyone else.

I often tell people here's nothing like live entertainment, and it's hard to get more live than a parade of hairy men bending over for a cheering crowd.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

It Makes Every Gay Bone in my Body Vibrate (Ep. 104 - Broadway)

March 9, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Stephen Oremus

My guest this week started his musical career at a neighborhood friend's piano, hanging out and playing showtunes. These days he's doing pretty much the same, but he's accompanying Broadway stars and winning Tonys. Stephen Oremus worked on The Book of Mormon, Avenue Q, Frozen, and 9 to 5, among many others, and was music director for the 87th Academy Awards -- a role that became a little tense when one of the winners had an unexpected message to deliver from the stage.

This Week's Recommendation: Showgirls

It was a real delight to reflect on musical dreams coming true, and so for my recommendation this week, I'd suggest taking a look at another story of an artist who reaches for the stars in the big city: Showgirls.

It is incomprehensible to me that I have not recommended this movie already, though episode 28 of Sewers of Paris features Patrick Bristow, who appears in the film as a choreographer with a short fuse. If you haven't seen this film, let me just prepare you: it is not what you would call cinema verite. Its proximity with reality is as close as that of some of director Paul Verhoeven's other films, like Starship Troopers and Robocop. It's the story of a woman who arrives in Las Vegas with dreams of dancing and glamour and fame, and she achieves it all -- but at the price of... well... her dignity, maybe?

I love Showgirls because it is weird and extravagant, and sexually sideways in a way that feels like the script was a mad lib. But it is not, I don't think, accidental. I don't believe there's anything on the screen that isn't supposed to be there, and as with Starship Troopers and Robocop, I suspect that the filmmakers knew exactly how insane this vision was. There are those who claim that Showgirls is a failure of seriousness, a fiasco of bad taste, and a train wreck of glitter.

But I don't think it is those things. I think it's about those things.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A Weird Thing From Outer Space Having a Love Affair (Ep. 103 - RISK's Kevin Allison)

March 2, 2017 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Kevin Allison

Imagine this riskiest thing you could do -- and then imagine what would happen if you did it. My guest this week knows something about taking a chance -- Kevin Allison is the host of the Risk podcast, a show where people tell true stories about the times they put everything on the line. It's a concept that came to him after he'd spent too many years playing it safe, from tiptoeing around his sexuality to his mild-mannered persona on the sketch comedy show The State. It was on the advice of his fellow troupe-member Michael Ian Black that Kevin finally decided that some risks are worth taking.

This Week's Recommendation: Richard Simmons

Thanks again to Kevin for joining me. You can check out his podcast at risk-show.com, and support the show at patreon.com/risk.

There are all kinds of risks in life -- just the other day, I served a cucumber salad made from a recipe I'd never tried before. (Don't worry, it came out fine). But there's another form of risk that many of us don't dare attempt, and that's honesty.

For my recommendation this week, I'd like to you take a look at Richard Simmons. Really any video of his is a pleasure to watch, but in particular I recommend searching YouTube for his name plus CNN for a video called "Richard Simmons breaks down in tears and cries." For most of the interview, Richard exhibits impeccable message discipline, focusing on the products he's selling and his advice for others -- in particular to be kind to yourself in the mirror. But when the host asks him what he says to himself in the mirror, the persona slips away and you see a moment of real vulnerable honesty.

I've interviewed a lot of people, and asked a lot of really invasive personal questions. Sometimes -- most of the time, in fact, people deflect or avoid or make a joke because it's weird to open up to a stranger, especially if you know you're being recorded. Giving an honest answer to a personal question feels tremendously risky -- but it's also the one risk that anyone can take. We can't all go skydiving, or elope, or make a new cucumber salad, but opening up, telling the truth, that's one risk that universal.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

About The Sewers of Paris

The Sewers of Paris is a podcast about how queer lives are shaped by our favorite books, movies, music, and shows. Each week, guests open up about their secret struggles, hidden passions, and surprising triumphs by plucking a piece of entertainment from their past and answering the question: What’s the entertainment that changed your life?

About Defining Marriage

Each week on Defining Marriage, hosts Matt Baume and James Morris chat about what's happening with marriage equality, featuring frequent digressions into pop culture, silly banter, and the jokes and quibbles that have kept them together as a couple for over a decade.

The first eighteen episodes of the podcast contain the complete audiobook version of the book Defining Marriage, which traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it, featuring personal insights from the lives of Evan Wolfson, Dan Savage, Ken Mehlman, Dustin Lance Black, and many more.

About Matt's So-Cast Pod

Revisit the iconic '90s drama My So-Called Life, one episode at a time. Every week, host Matt Baume & his guests delve into the teen angst, the grown-up turmoil, and the endless flannel of the 90s -- and examine the show's impact on television and our lives.