Manhattan Offender

New York Comic Con detritus

The New York Comic Con brought together the right degree of camp and chaos.  While most attend to discover whether Batman will really die this summer or find that "near mint" copy of Flash #156, my goals are more to find outsider art, enjoy the costumed revelers, and boy-watch.  Along with buddy Dave, the following were found/observed/experienced:

The new Portishead will be amazing.  (Not something found at the con, but told to me by Dave.)

Skrull masks do nothing for me (as seen in the photo). 

Local artist Steven Belledin crafts pieces with just the right mix of horror and beauty.

Playboy cartoonist of many decades, Doug Sneyd has many original pieces available for sale (and a lovely wife).  His is the art of my pubescent viewings of Playboys, where the cartoons interested me perhaps more than the pictorials.

Every child in my life is getting a Sok-O for Christmas.  Simple sock puppets done with an exceptional degree of quality and originality were soft and fun.

My adult friends will instead be receiving My Beating Heart.  Less emo than the name may indicate, the heart is actually a stuffed heart-shaped pillow with a soft heartbeat-like pulse inside.

Artist Steven Sadowski has shaved the wild beard of years ago and is now very sexy.  (And he's working on some comic thingie for Marvel.)

Famed  designer/author/Batman fanatic Chip Kidd has what looks to be an amazing collection of Batman comics, toys, and other merchandise presented in Bat-Manga:  The Secret History of Batman in Japan.  The preview presented at the Con was probably the most exciting thing in the Javitz Center.

But Kidd's book was overshadowed, by a woman in a Dark Phoenix costume.  At every turn she caught my eye.  Whether it was the wig or the heels, she won my prize for "owning the character".  Check her out post-jump or from one of the many Con attendee's Flickrs.

How Dumbledore became gay

Scene:  The offices of Bloomsbury Publishing

VP Sales, Bloomsbury Publishing:  "Well, JK, if you're not writing anymore Harry books, what we could do is start to market them to audiences with whom we haven't had full saturation."

JK Rowling:  "Such as?"

VP:  "The gays."

JK:  "My books are very gay."

VP:  "The gayest.  But it seems we've only reached the gay nerds.  If we were to retroactively make one of the characters gay, we'd have a whole new wave of publicity and a whole new market."

JK:  "Well.  It can't be Harry.  I've shown him to love Hermione."

VP:  "We're thinking Dumbledore."

JK:  "But he's old to the point of sexless."

VP:  "Exactly.  And thus not threatening to the mainstream.  And since he's not evil, the gays won't gripe either."

JK:  "Are you going to issue a press release?  It all seems rather awkward to me."

VP:  "No.  Just let it be something announced casually.  While you're on tour.  But in a gay-friendly market.  We're thinking New York."

J.K. Rowling Outs Dumbledore

Maureen Dowd: Virgin Lesbian

Virgin "Mega"-store in Union Square slowly has decreased its book selections down to four basic categories comics, porn, pop culture and gay.

For whatever reason (okay, it's obviously the title) Maureen Dowd has been shelved under "Gay & Lesbian Interest". 

Which is in the "Adults Only" area. 

Which is a rant for another day.

I'm sleeping with Michael Musto

My first encounter with Michael Musto was, as it is for many, reading his La Dolce Musto column in the Village Voice.  At the "alternative" bookstore near Atlanta's Piedmont Park (near which I lived in the early early nineties) his vivid descriptions of vivid people would lighten my day.  For the most part the people mentioned drew a collective blank in my mind, but also created a desire to fill in the blank.

After moving to New York, our paths would cross occasionally.  Eying the crowd in a VIP room at Webster Hall or Tunnel.  Waiting for a ferry to Fire Island.  Standing in a darkened corner of a sex club.  For the most part smiles would be exchanged and there was no certainty that he knew my identity, although he did do an MO Interview.

And now, for the past week, he's been in my bed.

Most nights Michael is to the left of me, but occasionally he sleeps on the right.  Invariably though, when he sleeps on the right, he can be found on the floor in the morning.  He's been riding the subway to work with me in the mornings and at times riding home with me at night (although sometimes the iPod is turned on and the eyes closed, ignoring his presence).

Granted, this is not Musto in the flesh, but rather Musto on the printed page.  His latest tome, La Dolce Musto, is a collection of the columns of the same name from 1980's to the present.  From stories of junkets afar or clublife anear, from the freaks to the headliners (also freaks) Musto's inimitable whirlwind writing style is always a jaunty ride. 

Particularly fun given the range of time they cover are the fifteen pages of 'blind items'.  Although some are quite dated, the author still doesn't give an update.  (Surely the fabricator of the Richard Gere "gerbil rumor" can be revealed by now?)

A compendium of (counter) culture history, the book is sort of a must.  Why it was released as a post-holiday book and not as a summer beach read?  Unsure, but the short vibrant articles are great commute reads or bed-time stories.  Let Michael Musto into your bed.  If you grow tired of him, he'll sit on the nightstand and wait for you until morning.

MO Beach Reads: Star

Part E True Hollywood Story and part Jackie Collins, Pamela Anderson's fauxography Star follows it's lead character from a less than modest Florida background through a string of lucky breaks that eventually land her in a celebrity-soaked, salacious world.  Don't you totally relate?

Star follows the story of Esther "Star" Wood from dirt poor Florida.  Her existence is a simple one, work at the nail and tanning salon as well as a local restaurant, play with local friends, and general life in her small island town.  As circumstances carry her suddenly to L.A. she eventually learns to take more control of her own destiny.  And along the way, she has sex.  Lots of sex. 

While you would expect little gay content in the book, quite the opposite is true.  Pam Star's discovery is due much to meeting up with "the gays" while on a trip to Miami with Brandi, a friend with whom she lesbianically dabbles.  There is even a little man-on-man action at an orgy (yes, orgy) that Star attends.

This is perfect beach read, page-turning material.  You will have no personal revelations.  You will not be riveted.  If you lose your page, you can easily just start up somewhere else.  Perfect.

Buy Star!

MO Beach Reads: Heartbreaker: A Memoir of Judy Garland

 

"So, explain this whole Judy Garland thing to me?  Why'd those queens at Stonewall get so upset when she died?"  It's a question I had asked about seven years ago to a group of older gays (gelders?) at a dinner party.  They gave me an earful, but it never quite set.  Finally, having read this book, I finally 'get' Judy Garland.

Heartbreaker starts where Judy Garland's story is really ending.  The author, John Meyer, spent night and day with her in some of the last months of her life.

Meyer meets Garland at the apartment of a mutual acquaintance.  When he first meets her he is so struck that the fact that she is unbathed and in poor health escapes him.  His star-blindness also puts him in a nirvanic state where he can, in the beginning, ignore her various addictions, bizarre behavior, and that, in fact, over time he becomes less her lover and more her enabler.

The true strength of the book is the author's vivid recall of dialogue which makes the conversations come alive as if you were listening instead of reading.  This capture of the dialogue enables Meyer to showcase one of Garland's truly amazing abilities:  to entertain through storytelling. 

The action is quick and reads almost as a script for some perversion of an old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movie (of which I've seen none, but I think this is accurate).  Although some of the choices made seem maddeningly outrageous, it fits to the nature of the people involved.

The author, as caught in the whirlwind of Garland makes some horrific choices during his brief time with her, as often is the case in an enabling/addict relationship.  As Meyer eventually tries to break the patterns which are causing her to spiral out of control, eventually Garland finds someone else to allow her patterns to continue.

Meyer comes accross as excessively fannish, and, well, sort of gay.  He frequents piano bars and after-hours clubs.  In fact that first fateful meeting between Judy and John occurs in the apartment of a man that Meyer says had been hitting upon him.  And frankly, the cadence in which he writes is, well, flame-y.  His claim to being Judy Garland's lover during this brief time seems beard-y at times, but the book was written in a different era.

As a beach read, Heartbreaker is a perfect page-turner with a good mixture of humor and pathos.  Also, as re-released this year the book includes a cd of recordings made while the author and Garland rehearsed, putting real voices behind those in the book.

Buy Heartbreaker:  A Memoir of Judy Garland.

MO Beach Reads: Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse

 

THEORY:  Phyllis Diller is a better gay icon than Judy Garland, Cher, or Madonna.

PROOF:  Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse

Phyllis Diller's autobiography is probably not in your library, but maybe it should be. 

Then again maybe I'm biased.  Her story is strangely similar to mine, and she is sort of an inspiration.

Like me, Diller grew up in a small Midwestern town and her career as an entertainer didn't really start until she was 37.   (Granted my work on the second half of that equation  is  still in progress.)  What is truly inspiring though is that she took the tough things in her life - less than perfect looks, a lonely childhood, and a strained home life - and turned them into comedy gold. 

In her time she was the first and foremost stand-up comedian.  Taking stories of home life and turning them on their ear, Diller was able to create relatable stories to which audiences responded.  In the early years of her career she supported her husband, who suffered from mental illness and five children, often wearing the same clothes day after day.  A particular low point was having to send her children to in-laws as she could no longer support the family.

Diller overcame her challenges and professed in the "Magic of Believing".  Her own confidence in herself afforded her the time and patience to see her progression up into entertainment history.  Her story, honestly, is encouraging and inspiring and the last page cannot be turned without a feeling of hope.

(Any regular reader would know also that I had appropriated the name Fang for my ex.  It turns out that Diller's Fang was largely fictional, and the truth about Fang was far worse.  In this Diller was able to express some of her emotional bondage to her husband.  In time her Fang actually adored the caricature.  My Fang (now Mr. Ex) was not a bad guy, just not the right guy for me.)

The page-turner does have some flaws in that she glosses over affairs through the years and although the account is very personal, the reader could be left with a feeling of not know her entire emotional landscape.  Otherwise the 266 page book is a wonderful insight into a woman who, through self-deprecating humor, perhaps never achieved the greater glory she deserved.

Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse is the first of the MO recommended books for the beach this summer.  Instead of featuring the expected novels, it is hoped to pull out some more obscure, yet worthy books that still have the essential 'beach read' characteristics of lightness, page-turnability, and fun.  Buy it.

The Manhattan Offender Interview: Josh Kilmer-Purcell, the drag queen turned author

Number twenty-three in a series.
Interview (and a shot of Josh's alter-ego) after the jump.

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is (honestly/pleasantly/happily) agitating above all things

First off, a disclaimer:  yes, JT Leroy does not exist.  Surely by now you've read that "JT Leroy" was a hoax by author Laura Albert and husband Geoffrey Knoop and that Knoop's half-sister Savannah portrayed Leroy in public appearances.  I think it's fabulous.  Then again, I'm a 45-year old mother of two from outside Boise, Idaho, disguising my self as a gay man in Manhattan because no one would read my writing if they knew I bought my 'mom jeans' at Wal-Mart.  Okay, not really, but the point is that what matters in story-telling is the story, not the packaging.  Having seen an advanced screening of the movie that premieres in New York and Los Angeles tomorrow, I can look past the "controversy" and readily recommend readers to do the same.

After the jump, a full review and photo gallery.
(RELATED:  Have you entered the contest?)

MO Books: NYC Mech

In an effort to become more Oprahesque, the Manhattan Offender Book Club now commences.  Just like Oprah's version, you'll be presented, hopefully, with books you wouldn't have encountered otherwise and even books that are rather mainstream that you might have overlooked.  New books will be presented on the first of each month.  This month's selection:  NYC Mech from local boys Ivan Brandan, Miles Gunter and Andy MacDonald.

They're young and living in New York City.  They're having the common problems living their life here.  They're a bit bored with the everyday and are thrill-seekers.  Their thrills might be a bit beyond ours, involving petty larcenies.  Oh, and they're robots.

Brandan and Gunter provide quick-moving, action-packed stories, with characters of varied motivations.  Some commit crime for the mere thrill of it.  One, silver-spoon born, pretends to be a police officer in order to be relevant, but in the face of real danger, the act is exposed as a sham.

The art by MacDonald is intricate and expressive, bringing out the humanity of the robotic clan.  Beautiful streetscapes and city scenes lay out a canvas in which action is conveyed with story-telling aplomb.

NYC Mech tells stories that you'll recognize as "yeah, that could happen" in this city of six million.  It's a light, fast read and thoroughly entertaining.

Check out more at the website or just go ahead and buy NYC Mech at Amazon. 

After the jump, more art from NYC Mech.