BY AARON STELLA Welcome back to another long awaited edition of GAYDAR! Let’s do a little recap on the parts of my crazy so-called life I have shared thus far: My family had extricated themselves from a crazy Christian cult in Augusta, GA, and have fled to Alabama to wait out the imminent apocalyptic storm of Y2K. We were, disappointed, to say the least, with the grand finale. Fast forward to 2003, I no longer live with my family. My homosexuality being one of the many reasons. My friend Andrew’s family has taken me in, and I’ve just heard word […]
GAYDAR: Golden Showers Make Nice Flowers
Madcap drag troupe The Dumpsta Players, are back this month with a geriatric extravaganza. This time around, it’s all about the gold—the golden years to be exact—and who better can throw their sassy wisdom and eye-sore pastel clothing around than the Floridian foursome: The Golden Girls, in, “Golden Girls Gone Wild!” Times are hard. The girls’ roof needs a-fixin’ but they don’t have the dough. They should’ve probably cut back on the cheesecake, huh. But since that’s not going to happen, the girls are forced to whore themselves out into the cheap and easy world of reality TV. Rose sets […]
GAYDAR: Five Reasons Why Rent Must Die
1. Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp Have Nothing Better To Do The main attraction of this particular production of RENT is original cast members Adam Pascal as AIDS-infected guitarist Roger Davis and Anthony Rapp as filmmaker Mark Cohen. For avid RENT fans, it’s a trip down memory lane. For everyone else, it’s men at work. Paschal and Rapp perform with grace and ease, no doubt inspiring the same sense of awe they did during RENT’s first production, perhaps even more so. Whatever. Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t help but think… 2. 1996 Just Called And They Want Their Hip […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: Taking The ‘Gay’ Out Of Gaming
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Hey pals and gals. Got a quick one here for ya. Editor-in-chief JV shot me an email the other day (thanks boss) alerting me to a new development in the Christian coteries: apparently, it’s not enough now to censor the sex (nudity), violence, substance abuse, and demonic images (oh lord) in video games, homosexual content is now on the chopping block. According to Tumeroks, a blog dedicated to covering the development and growth of online games (Warhammer online, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, etc) a Christian conservative investment firm called The Timothy Plan has just […]
GAYDAR: A Family Of Strangers
BY AARON STELLA Welcome back happy campers to another edition of my so-called ‘you-wouldn’t-believe-it-if-I-told-you’ life story. Last time around, I mentioned that I was developing a relationship with a family with ulterior motives unbeknownst to me. I also mentioned that they would eventually become my family. Things get kind of wild from here on out folks, so hold on to your hats! The year is 2001. I’m a sophomore at the Catholic high school in Cullman, AL, practically friendless, and in thrall to a feeling of powerlessness among my peers and family members. Giovanni, the German exchange student that had […]
GAYDAR: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells
[Photos by THOMAS SHEEDER] BY AARON STELLA Some people just get more Christmas than others this year. While the Scrooges of Wall Street help themselves to the bailout buffet, us Cratchets must fight to make ends meat, much less a “Merry Christmas” (and it’s ‘Happy Holidays’ now, by the way). Even the shrewd, business-savvy Jews are barely scraping by; at least that’s the case in the Dumpsta Players’ destitute portrait of the Lipshitz family. This year for Christmas, trash-glitz drag troupe the Dumpsta Players showed their sympathy to the millions going without this Christmas in “A Very Lipshitz Christmas” on December 18th […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: A Very Dumpsta Christmas
JINGLE BELLS, BATMAN SMELLS: Sara Sherr and Jimmy Divine get their Dumpsta on. BY AARON STELLA Christmas is here. Yeah, the economy sucks, and you’ve pawned your whole re-gift stash. Well, at least you can treat yourself to a little Christmas cheer. For only $1.99, you can revel in some holiday havoc with one of Philly’s premier trash-glitz drag troupes: you guessed it, the one and only Dumpsta Players are showcasing their Christmas extravaganza “A Very Lipshitz Christmas.” The Lipshitz’s, an orthodox Jewish family, find themselves flat broke (thanks to the Wall Street meltdown) this Christmas, a tragedy which eventually brings […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: Where Did Our Love Go?
Shout it from the rooftops: its Day Without a Gay! What would happen if one day, all the homosexuals in America—nay, the world—suddenly abandoned the work place? Today is the day we just might find out. DWD started with a few concerned homosexuals distraught over the Prop 8 ruling (boo). Even after the numerous demonstrations that erupted from the ruling, the people at DWD saw the need to up the ante in fight for the rights of gays everywhere. With their combined efforts, DWD has become a nationally-heeded herald: instead of calling into work sick today, call in “gay” and […]
GAYDAR GALLERY REVIEW: The ‘View’ Flourishes
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Budding and virtuoso artists exhibit the lush pastoral and the iridescent abstract in “Views” at Flourish Gallery, which opened First Friday this month. Ric Best, consummate photographer and co-proprietor of Flourish, produced austere stills of bucolic France, while Austin Algeo, bartender at Woody’s of five years, showed the finest of his experimental shots of Philadelphia’s 2008 Independence Day fireworks fanfare. Best’s associates and admirers had always been curious about his rumored talent for landscape stills. As the requests accumulated, Best endeavored on the laborious enterprise of sifting through the some 4,000 photographs he shot while […]
GAYDAR: My Own Private 9/11
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Today we set the Wayback Machine to September 11th, 2001, which will forever live in infamy as the day I was expelled from the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Freshman year at ASFA, I boarded in the high school dormitories, until the dorm directors permanently banned me for illicit acts of sodomy. By the time my sophomore year rolled around, I had accepted the mantle of ‘delinquent in the making.’ And so, one afternoon, September 10th, 2001 to be exact, I snuck back into the dorm to have one last romp in the sack […]
GAYDAR: How I Became The Alabama Slammer
BY AARON STELLA Welcome back ya’ll to another bold and beautiful edition GAYDAR! OK, down to business. Last time I told you how my family settled into our Alabama homestead. Now, I was never one for the bucolic pleasantries of rural living. Luckily, I would reside in Birmingham at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA, which suspiciously sounds like “ass fuck” — appropriately so, as you shall soon see). As I mentioned in the last edition, I had been accepted into ASFA. I applied as a vocalist and a pianist, but because I lack adequate sight-reading skills, they accepted […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: Taking It To The Streets
On November 4th, 2008, we made history with the election of the first black president in the history of the United States. But the motion to ban gay marriage in California cast a dark cloud over Californian gays for what was for most a joyous day. Proposition 8 is a California state ballot proposition that denies homosexual couples the right to marry. Gay activists and gay couples naturally saw this as a threat, and rigorously campaigned against the proposition prior to the presidential election, which included raucous demonstrations out front of churches of many denominations and the boycotting of business that supported the “Yes to 8” cause. But despite “No to […]
GAYDAR: Blue Boy In A Red State
BY AARON STELLA GAYDAR EDITOR Welcome friends to a very special edition of GAYDAR. I’ve just returned from visiting my family headquarters in the dirty, dirty south: Cullman, Alabama, to be exact. At the behest of the bossman, I will tell you all about it. If you have never been below the Mason Dixon, you would be well-advised to disabuse yourself of any romantic notions you might have about the South. Things have changed since Faulkner’s day, when the Land of Dixie was ripe with bucolic charm: rustic little hamlets scattered through field and vale, forests flourishing with pine and […]