How to be Awesome (Ep. 133 - Terry Pratchett)

How to be Awesome (Ep. 133 - Terry Pratchett)
Matt Baume & Comedian Terry Pratchett
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We all know life's short, so how do you make the most of the time you've got? My guest this week is Scott Flashheart, comedian and host of the podcast Probably True. He grew up in a tiny British mining town -- or at least, what WAS a mining town, before the mine was closed, sending the place he lived into a slow downward spiral. He knew he didn't belong there, but he also felt out of place among other gays. It took a lot of work -- and a major loss -- to steer him towards his true calling: telling dick jokes to the world.

By the way, you can follow The Sewers of Paris on Facebook and Twitter -- I post clips of stuff the guests talked about throughout the week, and chat with listeners like you about the entertainment that changed YOUR life. You can also get in touch at sewerspodcast@gmail.com. Listener Jim wrote in to ask for more details about the books that guests mention -- thanks Jim, I can definitely do that. Starting this week I'll include info about books in the shownotes over at SewersOfParis.com.

This Week's Recommendation: Dress to Kill

Big thanks to Scott for joining me. Head over to ProbablyTruePodcast.com to subscribe to Scott's show. For this week's recommendation we're going to go back in time, twenty years ago to the peerless Eddie Izzard comedy special Dress to Kill.

Eddie's an actor and comic who doesn't fit neatly into boxes. In his 1998 special, he comes out in ladies' wear and calls himself an executive transvestite, though these days he uses the term transgender, and in neither case is he who you might picture when you hear those words.

He's just who he is, standing somewhat to the side of easy labels and conventional wisdom. Not just in how he presents himself, but also in his comedy, which is at its foundation mischievous and very smart. In Dress to Kill, Eddie tackles religion, history, medicine, war, growing old, and it takes a bit of work to keep up but it's worth it.

One of the topics he touches on is puberty -- you know, the time in your life when you first want to attract people and are also feel more physically repulsive than ever before.

In his act, Eddie jokes about how nice it would be to get the drama of puberty over with in just one day. But in reality, it can last for years, long past the time when one's body has settled into whatever it's going to be. The self-consciousness and horror you feel when you look in the mirror may decide to linger like unwanted body hair, and for queers that can include uncomfortable realizations about who you love, how you dress, and what you want to be.

Some of these things we can change, some we can learn to live with, some we can remove by spending thousands of dollars under a laser. The angst of our teen years can set a path for the rest of our lives, and bits of that path can seem quite miserable. But whatever that journey is, you're probably not the first to make it. There's weirdos and outcasts who came before, and you might find some solace in the ones who acknowledged "This is who I am" and asked "what if I was okay with that?"

Stuff We Talked About

Here's Scott's favorite guide on reading Terry Pratchett.

 

Music

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

The Priests of Hollywood (Ep. 132 - Designing Women & Gone with the Wind)

The Priests of Hollywood (Ep. 132 - Designing Women & Gone with the Wind)
Ladywatch co-host Jason Powell & Matt Baume
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What are the excuses you make for not doing what makes you happy? It's so easy to come up with reasons that NOW is the wrong time to launch into that project or hobby or career change you've always wanted. So where do you find permission to make a change in your life? This week's guest, Jason Powell, has only recently learned to give that permission to himself. Jason's one half of the podcast Ladywatch -- I interviewed his co-host, Ryan O'Connor, a few weeks back on episode 122. Each week on their show, Ryan and Jason talk about their shared admiration for powerful women. But off mic, they both have struggled with self-imposed limitations. We'll talk this week about the great southern belles who helped Jason find the bravery to stand up for himself to himself.
 

This Week's Recommendation: Killing all the Right People

Big thanks to Jason for joining me. Head over to LadyWatchPod.com to subscribe to Jason and Ryan's show. And visit SewersOfParis.com to see clips of the Designing Women speeches featured in this episode. Just look for Jason's episode, number 132. Also at SewersOfParis.com, you can watch a video that I made awhile back about a 1987 episode of Designing Women entitled Killing all the Right People. My recommendation this week is to check out that episode of the show -- you can find Killing All the Right People in three parts on Vimeo, and it's about what it was like to live with HIV during the dark years before reliable medication.

Remember, even into the late 1980s, very little was known about HIV, much less how to treat it. And the suffering of people with the virus was magnified by the cruelty of a country that didn't seem to care and often exhibited open glee about the epidemic. This episode of Designing Women tackled the issue head on, with a character rejected by his family for being gay and by a medical establishment that refused to treat him with dignity. 

Not only did the episode provide useful information about what HIV is and isn't, dispelling widespread medical myths at the time -- but it also shone a light on HIV stigma. 

The villains of the episode are busybody neighbors who object to queer people and to sex in general. One of them crows that the best thing about AIDS is that it's killing people who deserve to be killed. This was not an uncommon attitude at the time -- Pat Buchanan wrote an op-ed to that effect in the New York Times, and was then invited to work for Ronald Reagan as Communications Director.

It's crazy that in 1987, exhibiting compassion for people with HIV was a revolutionary act, and that Designing Women was the best education available to some people about HIV. But what's even crazier is that in some parts of the country, that's still the case. Only a handful of states offer any form of sex education relevant to queer people -- and some states actually require the teaching of inaccurate information, like in Alabama where kids are taught that same-sex intercourse is illegal. 

When Killing all the Right People aired in 1987, it was clearly ahead of its time. It would be nice to think that thirty years later, times have finally caught up. But sadly that's still not the case.

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/

Super Extra (Ep. 131 - Gabriel Fontana & Britney Spears)

Super Extra (Ep. 131 - Gabriel Fontana & Britney Spears)
Matt Baume and Pop Star Gabriel Fontana
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How much are you willing to do for love -- and how much can love do for you? This week's guest is Gabriel Fontana, who grew up in violent crime-ridden Brazilian ghettos before escaping to Sweden, where he rose to pop stardom as the winner of a Swedish Idol spinoff. Gabriel's always been something of an escape artist, relying on a mix of hard work, talent, and love to pull himself out of places he didn't want to be. Now, with thousands of fans following his every move, he's feeling more intoxicating adoration than ever before in his life -- and an ever-growing impulse to pursue that attention wherever it calls him.

A big thanks to everyone supporting the Sewers of Paris on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, you can help keep it independent and ad-free with your pledge of support. Just go to SewersOfParis.com and click support the show on Patreon.

And thanks to everyone who downloaded the Dungeons & Drag Queens bonus episode last week! I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear your feedback about what worked, what didn't, and if you'd like to hear more like that -- you can get in touch @SewersOfParis on Twitter or sewerspodcast@gmail.com.

This Week's Recommendation: Stonewall (1995)

Big thanks to Gabriel Fontana for joining me. Keep an eye on him -- I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of Gabriel in the future. 

But for my recommendation this week, cast your gaze back to the past -- to 1969, by way of the 1995 film Stonewall. Do not confuse this with the more recent movie of the same title, which is not worth your time! The 95 film is a lovely and at times unbearably sad glimpse into the lives of queer outcasts at a time before Pride parades. The movie chronicles the lives of some down-and-out young gays in New York in the days leading up to the Stonewall riots, and while it takes a few creative liberties with chronology, the film humanizes our recent history in a way that will stick with you like no textbook could.

It seems incredible that our community was so vilified so recently. It seems like it must have been impossibly long ago. But just to put that in perspective: the distance from Stonewall the riot to Stonewall the movie is about the same as the distance from the movie to today.

Stonewall the place was something of a refuge for queers with nowhere else to go, a home for people who had to look out for each other because no one else would. Together, they managed to stand up against the world, and to inspire the pride that we relish today. And I love how the movie makes gorgeous use of music as the tension of that summer builds. Pop songs are as much a part of that gay culture as the slang and the wigs and the cruising, and seeing gays of decades past relishing the same songs we love today instills in me a deep sense of connection and melancholy for the pioneers I'll never get to meet.

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/

Bonus Episode: Dungeons and Drag Queens

Bonus Episode: Dungeons and Drag Queens
Harlotte O'Scara, Butylene O'Kipple, Fraya Love, Arson Nicki, Ian Hill, DJ Robosexhomosex
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Welcome to a special bonus episode of The Sewers of Paris! 

A few days ago, some amazingly talented drag queens and I got on stage for a live show called Dungeons and Drag Queens. We played a custom-made Dungeons and Dragons adventure in front of a live audience, and I’m really excited to share it with you.

If you don’t know anything about Dungeons & Dragons, that’s OK. Some of the players didn’t either! Basically, we sit around a table, I describe a situation, the queens tell me what they want to do, and sometimes we roll dice to find out what happens.

I had so much fun trying to keep up with the queens on this adventure, and I hope you do too.

As always, The Sewers of Paris is independent and ad-free thanks to the support of listeners on Patreon. Patreon supporters, in case you were wondering, this one is a bonus. You’re not going to be charged. And to all listeners, we will, of course, be back next week with a regularly scheduled episode.

We had so much fun making the show, and I hope you enjoy listening to it. Let me know what you think on Twitter @mattbaume or at sewerspodcast@gmail.com.

Huge thanks to our fabulous performers:

Arson Nicki

Harlotte O’Scara

Butylene O’Kipple

Fraya Love

Ian Hill/Irene Dubois

DJ Robosexhomosex, aka Veronica Electronica

Brendan Mack

And you can watch video of the entire show below!

It's F*cking Tough to be Reasonable (Ep. 130 - Carlos Maza/Suikoden 2)

It's F*cking Tough to be Reasonable (Ep. 130 - Carlos Maza/Suikoden 2)
Matt Baume & Carlos Maza
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If you were to form a band of adventurers, what role would you want to serve -- fighter or healer? My guest this week is Carlos Maza, who knows how to put up a verbal fight as the host of insightful explainer videos for Vox.com. But off camera, the role in which he's most at home is that of caretaker, looking after others and supporting the well being of those around him. But as he's found, that doesn't always leave time for taking care of himself.
 

This Week's Recommendation: The Adventure Zone

Big thanks to Carlos for joining me for this very nerdy conversation. We didn't even have a chance to talk about our mutual enthusiasm for Dungeons and Dragons, but fear not -- for my recommendation this week, check out the podcast The Adventure Zone. Originally started as a one-off goof, the show was an instant hit and has grown into a sprawling emotional years-long epic.

The Adventure Zone cast consists of three brothers and their dad playing D&D, role-playing adventures in a fantasy land, and bonding as a family in real life. Over the last three years of game play, it's expanded to include LGBT characters and some truly touching romances.

When they began the show, the McElroy family had no idea they'd make more than one episode, but here it is, wildly popular and spawning live shows, comic books, cosplay, and animated tribute videos. They just set out with a rough idea and not much of a plan -- proof that sometimes no plan is the best plan.

And speaking of D&D, keep an eye on the Sewers of Paris feed for a special bonus episode going up on September 8th. It's the audio recording of a live show that I just hosted with a bunch of amazing Seattle performers, called Dungeons and Drag Queens. A lot of people helped make the show possible -- including this week's guest, Carlos Maza. He helped us test the game before we performed it before a live audience.

The Dungeons and Drag Queens special drop into the Sewers of Paris feed tomorrow, right after this episode, and if you like it -- great! If not, we'll be back with a regular episode next week.

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/