God Is on the Dance Floor in Joseph Liatela’s “Nothing Under Heaven”
Art

God Is on the Dance Floor in Joseph Liatela’s “Nothing Under Heaven”

I don’t think I’ve ever come closer to seeing the face of God than when listening to Sylvester’s manic, soaring gospel cry, “Take Me to Heaven.” It’s not a fluke. Sylvester, too, saw his music in religious terms. In the biography The Fabulous Sylvester, Joshua Gamson reveals that after a particularly transcendent show, Sylvester, along … Continue reading

You Are A Star And You Only Happen Once: madison moore’s “Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric”
Books

You Are A Star And You Only Happen Once: madison moore’s “Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric”

“I want you to teach me how to be fabulous,” pleads Macaulay Culkin inhabiting the role of infamous club kid Michael Alig in 2003’s cheeseball Party Monster. In response, Seth Green’s James St. James spits back, “We have nothing in common,” picks up his metal lunchbox/purse, and changes his mind, quoting William Blake: “The road … Continue reading

I Am A Photograph: Reviving The Liberatory Legacy Of The 1970s At Leslie-Lohman Museum
Art

I Am A Photograph: Reviving The Liberatory Legacy Of The 1970s At Leslie-Lohman Museum

Is it possible to look back to that gold lamé-draped, handlebar moustache-wearing, disco-dancing, cruising post-Stonewall era of the 1970s without the lens of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which would irrevocably alter the course of LGBTQ life? Can you look at artwork, photographs and other documentation from that decade without searching for the images and names of those who would disappear in the decades to come? Or of the others who would become continual caregivers to friends and lovers? Or the clubs, bathhouses, piers and others spaces that would be shuttered for fear of transmission? Continue reading

Different Within Difference: Honoring Our Genderqueer Role Models At Hilton Als’ ‘One Man Show: Holly, Candy, Bobbie and the Rest’
Art

Different Within Difference: Honoring Our Genderqueer Role Models At Hilton Als’ ‘One Man Show: Holly, Candy, Bobbie and the Rest’

In his book Role Models, our preeminent filth elder John Waters writes, “Explain what? A role model? Someone who has led a life even more explosive than mine, a person whose exaggerated fame or notoriety has made him or her somehow smarter and more glamorous than I could ever be? A personality frozen in an … Continue reading