It's a Miracle! Boy George Turns 50

Here's wishing Boy George a happy 50th birthday! There was a time when it seemed like he wouldn't live to be 30 ... or 40 ... but it seems the half-century mark suits him well, as he has kept his nose clean in recent years. Although I've lost interest in his solo material over the years, all five of Culture Club's albums -- including their late '90s reunion LP -- are winners, with 1983's "Colour by Numbers" rising to the classic level. But as great as some of his band's songs were -- "Time (Clock of the Heart)" and "Church of the Poison Mind," in particular -- I think his most lasting legacy just may be his gender-bending ways, which forced people to rethink what it meant to be a man or a woman, before it was a widely discussed subject Although I was equally titillated and petrified by him as a child, his audacity, however coy at times, certainly helped me come to terms with who I was back in the ambiguous sexuality days of the New Wave '80s. Culture Club's late '90s reunion concert at Radio City with Howard Jones and Human League ranks as one of my all-time favorite shows, and I'm hoping the band's planned 2012 reunion will be equally, uh, fruitful.