I Have To Tell You Something Really Bad (Ep. 80 - Howard's End)

I Have To Tell You Something Really Bad (Ep. 80 - Howard's End)

Matt Baume and Jason Merrell

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This Week's Guest: Jason Merrell

My guest this week is Jason Merrell, who was desperate to leave his repressive religious community. Finally, he thought he'd found a way -- it just required that he make a deal with his parents. That seemed easy enough. But it was a deal that wound up nearly costing him his life.

This Week's Recommendation: Clueless

Like Jason, I missed a lot of the 90s, not because I was nearly dying in South America but because I was a child shut-in. It wasn't until many years later that I discovered one of my favorite artifacts of the 1990s -- my recommendations this week, the movie Clueless.

Watching it years later, it's hard to believe it was actually made in the 90s, because it's so aggressively of its time that it feels like a postmodern parody of the decade. Of course, if you listened to the recent episode with John Federico, you'll know that the story is actually based on the novel Emma. So it's not just of the 90s, it's also of the eighteen-teens.

This probably tells us something about ourselves -- that although the corsets and hats might change, people themselves really don't. Youthful pride always has been and always will be a thing, as well as stubborn lovers and social awkwardness.

Entertainment can serve as a sort of universal language, a way to talk when you don't know what to say or you don't understand what you're hearing. For instance, it might be hard to get to know someone new, but start a conversation about, say, Ghostbusters and you'll probably learn everything you need to know about each other pretty fast.

Current culture is a rich vein for making those kinds of connections, but there's also value to be found if you mine for pop culture that's no longer popular. Digging down to something old or obscure means you'll be a bit lonely when you bring up the novels of Jane Austen or the contralto of Alison Moyet. But it's all worth it for those moments when you find someone else who's wandered as deeply as you have, following paths dug by explorers decades or even centuries before you were born. 

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 Kid Who Had Powers in Japan (Ep. 79 - Sailor Moon)

A Kid Who Had Powers in Japan (Ep. 79 - Sailor Moon)

Matt Baume and DJ Kirkland

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This Week's Guest: DJ Kirkland

Now I don't mean to alarm you but there are evil forces within and without, teaming up to take you down. I'm referring of course to the cruel collaboration between our outer critics and our inner saboteur. DJ Kirkland was an accomplished artist in grad school when some cruel comments from an instructor took up residence in his brain, persuading him to give up on his passions and his dreams. But fortunately, he was able to pull himself out of a years-long spiral, thanks in part to the inspiring power of some very pretty guardians.

By the way, I'm moderating the panel at the upcoming GaymerX convention. It's called "Playing with Pride," and it'll be a one of a kind forum to hear people from very different sectors of the game industry share their experiences as queer fans and creators. Today's guest, DJ, will be on the panel, along with the wonderful Tanya DePass from I Need Diverse Games and Lauren Comp, a producer who works on same-sex romances.  It's on Saturday, October 1 at 2pm at GaymerX. If you're in the San Jose area, I hope you can join us for a fun, enlightening conversation.

And if you can't make it to GaymerX on October 2nd, sign up for updates at PlayingWithPride.com and we'll let you know when you can see the panel online.

This Week's Recommendation: House

Thanks again to DJ for joining me. I'm so excited that he's working a book with Oni Press and I cannot wait to see his work on Black Mage.

But until then, if DJ's love of Sailor Moon has but you in the mood for some schoolgirls and magic from Japan, allow me to recommend the movie House. It's kind of the anti-Sailor Moon: instead of having magic powers and defeating evil, the un-magical girls in House are easily dispatched by evil forces.

The premise of the film is fairly standard haunted-house: a group of high school students trapped in a house in the country with a sinister old woman and a cat that can both open and close doors. There are entertaining ghosts and decapitations and gore and floating heads, as well as my favorite horror trope, a skeleton dancing on strings.

And while the girls are the main characters of the film, it's the villain who's the real treat. No spoilers, but head boss in this movie is having a ball. She's eating eyeballs, floating through the rafters, plunging the girls into a pool of blood, and at every moment she is loving her life.

Last year around Halloween I wrote about gay men's affection for witches, from Ursula to Hermione Gingold. You have never seen a more delighted witch than you will in this film, a strangely compelling aspirational villainess for whom you are solidly rooting by the time the last girl is lamented.

Villains and enemies and saboteurs can't exist by themselves -- they need victims to keep them entertained. At least one victim, but preferably a whole team. And in their tormenting, the bad guys become as much of the team as anyone else, assuming a role in the mayhem alongside their prey. On a well-balanced team, everyone does their job in harmony, but every now and then you get a situation like House, where one person decides they're just taking over, and get out of the way, because this show belongs to them now.

In real life, that's a miserable situation to be in, and you're best off extracting yourself from the team as fast as possible. But in a movie, it's so much fun to sit back and watch just how bloody things can get.

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/

All Mothers Know (Ep. 78 - Clueless)

All Mothers Know (Ep. 78 - Clueless)

Matt Baume and Jonathan Federico

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This Week's Guest: Jonathan Federico

Who can you trust to keep your secrets safe? Well that might depend on the secret. Jonathan Federico wasn't sure the people in his life could handle the truth about him, so he entrusted the truth to fictional figures, disappearing into alter-egos on stage. Occupying characters was comforting to him -- but it wasn't until well into adulthood that he was ready to discover how much better it felt to finally be himself.

This Week's Recommendation: Cole Escola and AB Soto

As for my recommendation this week, I don't even know where to begin so I'm going to give you options -- two queer artists Jonathan's worked with. The first is the mind-altering comedy of Cole Escola, who you might know from Jeffery & Cole Casserole, or his live shows, or a neverending cavalcade of strange and hilarious YouTube videos where he plays everyone from Bernadette Peters to someone's mom.

And then there's AB Soto, an incredible dancer whose music videos feature hypnotic visions of strange gyrating creatures. Watching him perform feels a bit like that moment right before you fall asleep and then wake back up and you're not sure if the thing you were just thinking about actually happened or was a dream.

Cole and AB are really really different from each other, but there is something that ties them together -- they don't just create characters, they create entire alternate universes. Cole's weird Joyce character cannot possibly exist in the same dimension as us, and the same goes for the AB Soto, whose entire life seems to be one big sexy exploding dance number.

And while they may seem to have singlehandedly created fantasy worlds of their own imaginings, that's not actually the case. Like Jonathan said, queer artists need help, they need support, they need each other to bring their ideas to life. Visionaries needs more than their visions -- they need an army of like-minded creatives behind them. So that way they'll be ready when there's an audience in front of them.

Clips of Things We Talked About

Music

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

Little Mouse in a Big World (Ep. 77 - Furries)

Little Mouse in a Big World (Ep. 77 - Furries)

Matt Baume and Mouse

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This Week's Guest: Mouse

We all have alter egos -- most of us more than one. There's the person you are at work, the person you are online, the fun person you are when splashing around at the beach, the responsible person you are when your parents are visiting, and the unique kind of angry person that only exists when you're waiting for everyone ahead of you to get off the airplane.

But for some, those alter-egos aren't people at all. My guest this week is Mouse, a furry artist who never felt like he fit in with other humans. Fortunately, times being what they are, you no longer have to fit in with humans. There's a whole big wide world of cartoon animals out there you can join instead. And as Mouse found, sometimes those people who are animals are better people than the people who are people.

This Week's Recommendation: Pinocchio

Thanks again to Mouse for joining me, and also for the lovely illustration that he drew depicting me as a rabbit. As a slightly nervous, always listening, mostly-herbivore, no depiction could possibly be more appropriate. 

For more of Mouse's work, check out his latest project, Mice Making Love, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's at MiceMakingLove.tumblr.com. The art spans all genders and sexualities, kinks, partner arrangements, body types, and, just to warn you, there is one cat.

For my recommendation this week, I'd like to you turn your gaze to another character with large ears: Pinocchio. Specifically, give the Pleasure Island scene a watch. If you dare. It is full-on dark Disney, a fantastically scary form of body-horror that will stay with you whether you want it to or not.

I'm sure you're familiar with the scene -- Pinocchio and Lampwick and the other bad boys have found their way to an island where pleasures await, but when they indulge too much they're turned into donkeys and sent to work in salt mines. The scene where Lampwick struggles and screams as he changes is unforgettable, no matter how you interpret it, and it culminates in Pinocchio's body starting to change as well. He drank and smoked, and as a result our hero grows ears and a tail.

In the movie, this is depicted as horrifying, and yes if it goes any further and he's confined to bestial labor in the salt mines it is indeed a troubling fate. But Pinocchio's changes really stop at the ideal point: subtle enough that he can hide them in a hat or down his pants, but still an unmistakable badge of his adventure. A reminder that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some fun, to go a little wild, and be disobedient -- just as long as you can keep it under your hat.

Thanks again for listening. If you're enjoying the show, I hope you'll become a supporter on Patreon -- it's quick and easy and your support keeps the show alive. Just visit SewersOfParis.com and click the Patreon button to sign up. And check out the shownotes at SewersOfParis.com to watch video clips of everything we talked about on this week's show.

Or you can support the show for free -- just tweet or facebook about it, or leave an iTunes review. I'm really really grateful to all the folks who have helped spread the word about The Sewers of Paris. Because of your tweets, I've booked some high-profile guests who saw online praise for the show and reached out to say "hey, can I be on the show too?"

Remember to head over to PlayingWithPride.com to find out when you can see the stories we've gathered from queer gamers. And say hi if you'll be at GaymerX in October.

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/

Clam Diggers and Mussel Suckers (Ep. 76 - Coco Peru)

Clam Diggers and Messel Suckers (Ep. 76 - Coco Peru)

Matt Baume & Coco Peru

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This Week's Guest: Coco Peru

What happens to fussy little boys who love musical theater and have lots of feelings? If they're lucky, they grow up to be fearless women. My guest this week is the fabulous Miss Coco Peru, who you've seen in movies like Girls Will be Girls, To Wong Foo, Trick, and as a guest star in the greatest cold open in the entire run of Will and Grace.

Like most sensitive boys, Coco grew up feeling as though she was on an island -- but in her case, it was literally true. Fortunately, she had records to keep her company, and occasional trips to the bright lights of Broadway.

In fact, it was while riding the train in New York that she discovered what she now calls the key to her career -- and her liberation.

By the way, if you live in New York, you can see Coco live at the end of September in her show "A Gentle Reminder: Coco's Guide to a Somewhat Happy Life." Head over to cocoperu.com for tickets.

And if you're in Seattle, you can see me live with my partner James. We're presenting a panel about LGBT gamers at the Penny Arcade Expo on September 5th. It's called "Playing with Pride" and we'll be sharing personal, intimate stories shared by queer gamers all over the country. If you enjoy the storytelling on Sewers of Paris, you'll probably like this panel. And if you can't make it, don't worry -- sign up for our mailing list at PlayingWithPride.com to get updates about our gamer interview project.

And one more announcement: I'm going to be at the National Gay and Lesbian Journalist's Association annual convention in Miami from September 8th through the 10th. If you're going to be there, or just in the area, drop me a line @mattbaume on Twitter.

This Week's Recommendation: Wigstock

For my recommendation this week, check out the 1995 documentary Wigstock. The entire thing is on YouTube, and it's a mid-90s snapshot of New York's gigantic drag festival that started sometime in the 80s and at its height drew thousands of people. 

It's an amazing artifact of the time, joyful and defiant and weird -- a testament to queer determination to throw a party. Remember, by the mid-90s the gay community was at the apex of a health crisis, enduring unbearable loss and years of mainstream indifference. 1995 was the year that promising new treatments emerged and everything started to change, and there's an optimism to everything the film touches that makes the epidemic seem like it was all a bad dream.

These days, Wigstock the festival is gone, and exists as an occasional modest cruise. Maybe things have been going so well that we now have time, rather than a party, to put distance between us and the hard times. And it certainly feels good to reflect on the progress that we've made over the 21 years since the documentary came out. 

But -- and I'm sorry to be a bummer here -- bad news is always lurking around the corner, as we've seen with recent politics. In the event that times get tough once again, and at some point they probably will, it's worth remembering how we coped with adversity in the past. With music, with dance, with each other, and with really big hair.

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/