Remains of the Day (04/04)

Star Observer: Joe Hasham on 'Number 96,' 1970s Australian TV soap that featured first gay character

GCN: Bruce-Michael Gelbert, pioneering gay and leather activist, dies at 71

Brian Ferrari's Blog: Michelangelo’s David on 'The Robin Byrd Show'

NYT: Same-sex couples' use of surrogacy emerges as the wedge issue for Italy’s hard right

Dallas Voice: Judge halts enforcement of Tennessee drag restrictions as likely both 'vague and overly broad'

WaPo: After decades under a virus’s shadow, he now lives free of HIV 

Boy Culture: A roundup of TV and film's best male shower scenes

People: Christine McVie's cause of death revealed as stroke and metastatic cancer 

Page Six: Raquel Welch was battling Alzheimer's disease at the time of her death by cardiac arrest

NYP: David Cassidy’s brother Ryan -- who looks exactly like dad Jack -- is proud of his late teen idol sibling

Gray Lady: ‘Grease’ prequel series describes the origins of the title 1950s girl gang before Rizzo and Frenchy took over, as viewed through a 2020s lens

BL: Gay Muslim activist speaks out after receiving 'death threats' in school homophobia row

NYT: Brooke Shields documentary on Hulu explores the toll that sexual and commercial objectification takes on women

Back2Stonewall: When the Nazi Party announced that homosexual prisoners were to be sent to concentration camps

NME: Barbie Ferreira -- who played Kat on 'Euphoria’ -- explains why she quit the HBO show

Hot Cat of the Day: This cutie reminds me of my Larry, who managed to find the box of pizza up on the range top even when he was deathly ill. xo

Tennis Tuesday: Cameron Norrie

 

I've been sitting on these Cameron Norrie "shirtless practice session" photos far too long. See them come to life BELOW.

Tennis Scores at Beacon Theatre

Save for the rain, Damian and I had a perfect evening Saturday seeing Tennis in concert at the Beacon Theatre. It was our second time seeing the band -- made up of wife-and-husband duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, plus touring drummer Steve Voss and bassist Ryan Tullock -- only this time we didn't miss the first few songs. (That's the difference between Brooklyn Steel on a workday and a theater that's a stone's throw away from your apartment on a Saturday!) 

Tennis performed a number of songs off their just-released sixth album ("Pollen"), including “Forbidden Doors,” “One Night With the Valet,” “Hotel Valet,” and “Pollen Song.”). Thankfully, I'm already well-versed in them, so they blended in perfectly with favorites like “Runner," "Need Your Love,” “Matrimony” and "Diamond Rings," perhaps my favorite song of theirs. I often joke that I never sought out new music after the "last" Bangles album -- in 1988! -- but that's only a slight exaggeration. Although I was out of the loop during much of the '90s dating a music-control-freak Latino -- if I ever hear Carlos Vives or Gipsy Kings again I might gritar! -- I did catch up eventually with the best of the decade. (Breeders, Belly, Ivy, Garbage, Hole, a side of Cranberries) But it's been slim pickings over the past 20-plus years, which is why Tennis is so special to me.

A three-song encore of “I’ll Haunt You,” "My Better Self" and “Glorietta” brought the show to a close, before Damian and I made our way to a local diner just as we had after seeing Chrissie Hynde on our second date, nearly nine years ago. ❤️

P.S. Kudos to opener Kate Bollinger, who put on a charming set to kick off the evening. 

P.S. Just need to go back to retrieve my umbrella! 

Remains of the Day (04/03)

Yahoo Life: Bangles babe Susanna Hoffs has a novel and a new covers LP coming your way / See book tour dates HERE.

Billboard: Seymour Stein, record industry giant behind the Ramones, Pretenders, Talking Heads and Madonna, dies at 80 

Mug Shot Monday: I can change him 

HuffPost: Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old files $40 million lawsuit after she says school ignored warnings

Manspread Monday: Model-athlete-runner edition

Gregg Shapiro: Debora Iyall discusses a live Romeo Void album recorded in 1980 is coming out for Record Store Day, and more 

NBC News: Uptick in legislation suggests transgender issues are the GOP’s new cultural frontier (no f**king kidding)

Boy Culture: Fired (and frisky) gay judge breaks silence, pledges to continue OnlyFans

WaPo: How ‘Latinx’ united -- and divided -- a community seeking to redefine itself

Gray Lady: The lesbian bar isn’t dead. It’s pouring orange wine in Los Angeles.

CBS News: Stephen Smith's body has been exhumed after investigation into his death re-opened during Murdaugh case

Queerty: Turns out soldiers in both world wars had a ton of gay sex in their downtime

NYP: Athlete dies after swallowing bee while cycling

The Atlantic: The moral case against equity language: What's a 'justice-involved' person?

NYT: Three men charged in drugging murders and robberies at Manhattan gay bars

Hot Cats of the Day: It would take a strong, strong man to ever let one of these cuties go!

Weekend Tennis Roundup

Medvedev and Kvitova came out on top in Miami. Details from the conclusion of the Sunshine Double plus all the ATP beef that's fit to post BELOW.

More about Bachelor No. 2 HERE. 

Song of the Day: 'Heartbeat' by Ryuichi Sakamoto featuring David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez

Was saddened to hear about the death of Ryuichi Sakamoto, an Oscar-winning Japanese composer whose work I knew and loved mainly because he seemed to collaborate with every cool artist I was a fan of back in my youth, most notably Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera) and David Sylvian (Japan) as well as Thomas Dolby, Iggy Pop and David Byrne. 

Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most prominent composers and a founder of the influential Yellow Magic Orchestra techno-pop band who scored films including “The Last Emperor,” “The Sheltering Sky” and “The Revenant,” died on Tuesday. He was 71.

Mr. Sakamoto was beginning to achieve wide recognition in the early 1980s when the director Nagisa Oshima asked him to co-star, alongside David Bowie, in “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” a 1983 film about a Japanese P.O.W. camp. Mr. Sakamoto, having no background in acting, agreed under the condition that he could also score the film.

He also played roles in "The Last Emperor" (as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.  

Teen me banging my own 'Tin Drum'

Now I'm not saying I killed Sakamoto -- he'd been battling cancer for years -- or that I'm a witch. (This rabbit hole is weird, though.) But as has happened repeatedly in recent years, I was JUST thinking about/researching him in the days before he expired, which is where I learned that it was while David Sylvian -- a childhood idol of mine -- was working with Sakamoto on the latter's brilliant 1992 single "Heartbeat" that the former met future wife Ingrid Chavez. a singer and actress who had been a member of Prince's inner circle.

I discovered this without realizing that Chavez was the same woman I had looked up a few weeks before this when I discovered she is supposedly the actual writer (or at least co-writer) of "Justify My Love," a song that was originally credited to Lenny Kravitz (and additional lyrics by Madonna). Chavez reportedly got an out-of-court settlement and then released her own version of the song. (She and Sylvian would go on to have two children before divorcing in 2003.)

RIP, Mr. Sakamoto. And thanks for the music, by which there is so much to remember you.