Last Rose Of Summer 2011

Given Saturday's freakish snowstorm, this photo of a Central Park rose made last week by BaadLamb won't be repeated for many months to come.

Halloween Fright Tonight

On West 69th Street

More photos after the break!

Happy Halloween!

Mario Cantone and Jerry Dixon tie the knot

Mario Cantone is officially a married man.

The comedian and the musical theater director recently married after 20 years together.

"I got married for the same reasons you did," Cantone, 51, said on Friday to The View co-host Joy Behar, who also recently said 'I do.' "We're older now. We've been together 20 years. After 20 years you're like, 'Thanks for the anti-climactic honeymoon government!' "

Pastor Jay Bakker, son of the late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, presided over the ceremonious affair.

Cantone gushed about his special day with Dixon, saying, "It was beautiful, just my family there. I love him. He's a good man."

Happy 125th Birthday!

To Lady Liberty, not me. She was only 25 years old when my grandfather first saw her.
I bet every one of us has a Statue-of-Liberty-photo to share?

Go here for livecam views of Lady Liberty, and, at 11AM EST, five live cams mounted in her crown will go live, providing spectacular NYC views. That same link will get you those views.

Pop Souk!

Last Sunday, we stopped into the Hiro Ballroom for that delightful occasional bazaar known as Pop Souk. Among the merchants was Scooter Laforge who was live-drawing, and offering for sale some of his erotic/nefarious iterations of pop childhood imagery.



Pop Souk founder, Lady Fag, describes the event this way:


"Nightlife personalities, artists, musicians, DJ’s, designers, fashion sluts, drag queens and the rest of us who make up the creative landscape of downtown NYC are usually blessed — and cursed — with fabulously overflowing closets.

For one day only, on Sunday, October 23rd, from noon to 6pm, both floors of the majestic Hiro Ballroom will make way for POP SOUK. More than just a marketplace, it’s an event where some of the most talented New Yorkers will be hanging out in their own personal pop-up shops selling treasures from their own closets or of their own designs.

Come listen to some of your favorite New York DJ’s spin, hang out on the top floor lounge and watch the action of people shopping in the stalls below, saddle up to the bar for a drink, get your nails done, taste the delicacies you never knew these night creatures could make and, of course, shop!

Pop Souk is also perfectly timed to hit the week before Halloween, for costume needs, and just as the season demands changes in wardrobe.

We’re excited to welcome on board our media sponsors OAK, Patricia Field and StyleLikeU who will all have their own sections with goodies for you to scoop up. We’d also like to thank the generous support and corporate sponsorship of Perrier, who are providing us with complimentary bubbles to sip on while chilling out in the lounge or browsing the shops.

Pop Souk: where downtown folk sell, not sell out. Join us!"

"Milk Like Sugar" at Playwrights Horizons, October 21, 2011

A few years ago, there were news reports of unhappy high school girls who formed pacts to all get pregnant and drop out of school.  Playwright Kirsten Greenidge has written this concept into the premise of Milk Like Sugar, in which Talisha (Cherise Boothe), Margie (Nikiya Mathis) and Annie (Angela Lewis) are planning their gift list for their shared baby shower including Coach diaper bags and better cellphones.  Margie is already pregnant. Talisha has plans in place.  Only Annie seems to be dragging her feet even though Talisha has picked out a partner for her as well, Malik (J. Mallory-McCree).

As the play opens, the girls have turned up at a tattoo parlor after hours for Annie to get free ink from an uncertified tattooist.  This only one in a continuing series of bad decisions.  Annie's mother Myrna (Tonya Pinkins), cleans offices to support her family.  She fancies herself a writer,  but doesn't seem to understand why she can't use the computers in the offices she cleans.

QNY Film Review: Weekend

By West Village Bill

Last night, Tony P. and I caught Weekend, the much-acclaimed* British film about two men who hook up at a club on a Friday night and spend much of the following weekend together working out whether they have something between them that deserves to continue. That decision is complicated by a plan that one of the two guys has made to move to Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.**

Russell, a lifeguard at a community pool, lives in council housing and grew up an orphan. He's out as a gay man to his close friends but isn't comfortable sharing details of his life with anyone, including his best mate, a straight man named Jamie who grew up with him in the same circumstances, in and out of foster homes. Glen, an aspiring artist, wears his queerness on his sleeve and rants about the larger heterosexual world's disgust with or disinterest in gay men's lives. Glen is insistent that he doesn't want a boyfriend; his fag hag, Jill, explains to Russell that Glen was hurt by an ex's serial cheating and dishonesty. In their first speaking scene together, Glen asks Russell to talk into a tape recorder about their sexual encounter the night before, explaining that it's for some vague art project he's working on. Later, Glen learns that Russell has been cataloging his own sexual encounters on his computer.

TOM FORD TOMORROW

@8pm

Our Night At Studio 54

Linda Morand, Tilal Imani, and David Frank Ray

Having been to the opening night of the original Studio 54, I was excited to attend "One Night Only" with my friends Linda Morand, Jane Thorvaldson and Tilal Imani. It was a mad scene with celebs galore (Cameron Diaz, Susan Lucci, Issac Mizrahi to name just a few that I saw) and I had forgotten just how grand looking the old space was with it's chandeliers etc. Where there used to be white banquettes to lounge on with the likes of Andy Warhol, Liza, and Halston there are now theater seats. But the dance floor remained the same except there were no lights swirling about from above and no moon man with a coke spoon to ogle. And the crowd dancing away to 1970s hits seemed just a little more frantic then I remembered......but all in all it was a fun time. Ah yes I remember it well!

ONE NIGHT ONLY

NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI - News) announced today that the legendary club Studio 54 will reopen at its original location, for the first time in more than 25 years, for one night only on Tuesday, October 18.

Decades after the opening of one of the most celebrated discos in the world, SiriusXM reunites with members of the original team that worked behind the scenes at the club during its 1977-1981 heyday. They will re-create what will be billed as "One More Night" of the iconic '70s nightlife glamour inside the famed Studio 54 at 254 West 54th Street.

The hand-picked collaborators who choreographed Studio's nightly parties will create the Studio 54 experience for one more night. The team includes: Karin Bacon, Studio 54 entertainment producer; Scott Bromley, Studio 54 architect; Marc Benecke, Studio 54 doorman; Myra Scheer, assistant to former Studio 54 co-owner Steve Rubell; Chuck Garelick, Studio 54's former head of security; Scott Taylor, Studio 54's former bartender and other insiders.

On hand to capture the club's liberated atmosphere, original Studio 54 DJs Nicky Siano and Leroy Washington will play the iconic era's dance classics. Celebrity guests, some from Steve Rubell's master call list; and lucky SiriusXM listeners will be in attendance to flashback or dance for the first time in the internationally renowned club.

The evening will feature authentic, over the top details that helped define the Studio 54 experience, including the famed theatrics, backdrops, aerialist performers and dancers.

"There has been a great response to the launch of Studio 54 Radio and we want to continue that excitement with this special one-time event," said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer, SiriusXM. "We are working with many of the members of the original team that Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell so brilliantly assembled to create one more night."

Tom Ford Looking Good

The Comfort in Schadenfreude

by Ivan Vargas

I'm rarely at a loss of words for anything. So imagine my silent gape as I saw the kid puking his guts out in front of Fuse TV last night as I made my way towards the PATH train station which would whisk me home. It wasn't a little bit of puke - this was 13 year-old Linda Blair-possessed-by-the-Devil puke. I'd rate it not as thick, split pea but more of a combination of ham, minestrone, with a hint of pumpkin and chicken pot pie. Let's say I didn't get too close to make an assessment so I decided in my mind this was what he barfed out, what became his contribution to the City.

modernity

Orvieto

One of the most beautiful places on earth.
And the balls of freshly made Mozzarella cheese on the salad at the ClanDestin cafe/bistro were heavenly and paired with a superb local Orvieto vino bianco classico.

Perry Brass: Lost Gay New York: Death of Frank Kameny

Frank Kameny in front of signs Mattachine used for protests in the early 1960s, 

image courtesy Wikipedia.

Franklin Kameny: 1925 -2011




Frank Kameny died yesterday, on National Coming Out Day, which is purely appropriate. A Harvard PhD, he served in World War II, and he was fired from a federal job he held as an astronomer for being gay, in 1957; he openly fought his firing, and came out in the process. With Jack Nichols, he founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, in 1961.


Frank was a great and wonderful guy. I remember, distinctly, hearing him at Columbia University in 1967, when the Columbia Homophile League organized a forum on homosexuality and he spoke. What he said was so incredibly clear and logical—and he was actually booed by closet-case queens in the audience who didn't want to hear it; they'd gone out of some sense of morbid curiosity, but couldn't accept what he said, which was basically that human complexity, like animal complexity, gave sex other dimensions than procreative. He said, "Sheep do not grow wool in order to be sheared by humans; it's the same way with sex." I was 19 years old and just stunned by him. He was already at that time an "old man," in his 40s, and for me to hear a distinguished adult say something positive about myself was wonderful. 

Man and Boy

"Man and Boy" presented by Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, September 10,  2011

Back to reviving classic American theatre, the Roundabout has scored Frank Langella to lead Terrence Rattigan's 1963 story of a corrupt, big-money, business mogul.  Set in 1934 New York, Gregor Antonescu (Mr. Langella), who single-handedly saved the the Franc in 1926, is viewed as the Warren Buffett of his day.  The parallels to today continue with the Great Depression era during which dissatisfaction with Roosevelt sound a lot like the criticisms of President Obama. The truth turns out to reveal Antonescu as a Madoff-like cretin, who created an elaborate Ponzi scheme which is about to collapse.

Antonescu is laying low in NY, and turns to his estranged, illegitimate son Basil (Adam Driver), for help to complete a last ditch deal to re-supply his organization with cash.  Basil has cut ties and abandoned the lifestyle that might have been his after a failed attempt to shoot his father on his 21st birthday.

John Lennon (1940-1980)

John Lennon's birthday would have been today

Taverna de' Mercanti

The BaadLamb and I are in Rome for a hearty dose of La Dolce Vita ( a birthday gift from him to me!) and thought to pause long enough to make a restaurant and neighborhood recommendation. Along the crust of Trastevere where it meets the Tiber is a lovely area surrounding the Church of Santa Cecilia with its excellent excavations and its cortile and beautiful stone bell tower. After touring the church we stumbled upon a glowing and rustic structure that has been turned into a huge restaurant on three levels. It is the kind of authentic old stone structure that panders to people who like "authentic" even though it doesn't have to pander and we wish it had not. The "bufalo" mozzarella in the insalata caprese is freshly made. The garlic and olive oil bruschetta is richly savory. Skip the pizza which was surprisingly bland and go with the wonderfully grilled meats on skewers. After walking more than six miles today, it was good to sit in a warmly lit and comfortable hall.

Interior views after the jump.

Playwrights Horizons - Discount on "Milk Like Sugar"

Posted by Mondschein

The good folks at Playwrights Horizons have made the following offer.

DISCOUNT TICKETS TO MILK LIKE SUGAR for BLOG READERS:

Order by October 25 and use the code MILKGR
$35 (reg. $55) for Fri, Sat, and Sun evenings, Oct. 14-16; Oct 21-23
$40 (reg. $55) for all other performances Oct. 13-Nov 20

Online: www.TicketCentral.com<http://www.ticketcentral.com/>
Call: (212) 279-4200 Noon to 8PM daily
In Person: Ticket Central Box Office, 416 W. 42nd Street

prince fair