1.

Oh Debbie.

joset0xp, “eHarmony I Love Cats” (July 4, 2011)

This particular video has by now made the rounds, again and again and again and again (so much so that the original has been edited and re-edited so many times that it’s been lost — the only intact version of the original video I could find is this Spanish-subtitled one). It’s even been debunked, with the garish enthusiasm endemic to hammy network-affiliate soft-news reporters. But I’m less interested in this video as a documentary, and more as a document; a text, in lit-crit-ese.

Let’s pretend. Let’s suspend disbelief and pretend that this is an actual dating profile, that sweet, Villanova MBA grad Debbie wants to find love, and is making that hesitant step on to the field of hot coals that is online romance.

The mind reels. This video is a cannonade of red flags, a 21-gun salute to dysfunction, a fireworks display of emotional messiness. Completely incredulous as I am of hysteria as an actual condition (especially when applied to a woman), I might make an exception here: Debbie is so unhinged by her love of cats that she can’t help but weep; her ever-escalating emotional reaction fuels a headlong charge into an increasingly absurd fantasy land of cat-romping (bow ties? baskets?? rainbows?!?). If this is how this woman deals with cats, how on earth would she navigate the volcanic terrain of love? If just thinking about cats debilitates her utterly, what would the knotty complexities of physical and emotional intimacy with another person do to her?

2.

[NOTE: For the love of God, stop the video at 1:59]

shmoyoho, “SONGIFY THIS: Can’t Hug Every Cat” (July 7, 2011)

This song has been running through my brain on a loop for the past week. I’ve even tried to sound it out on the piano. It’s garnered 13 million hits thus far, so I’m clearly not the only one.

I’m just going to say it: it’s a really good song, pathologically catchy. And, like all good songs, the more I listen to it, the deeper are its resonances. So, in an effort to get it out of my brain, I’m going to conduct a close reading. Ahem.

A talking intro: “This is my first attempt at an eHarmony video. I’m nervous, but I’m excited at the same time. So I’m just going to start talking about what I like.” There is the sound of a tape reel looping up, and at the word “excited” a delay echo kicks in alongside the opening chords.

I love cats
I love every kind of cat
I just want to hug all of them
But I can’t
Can’t hug every cat

It begins with a declaration of love: specific, but what is more, all-encompassing. She loves “every,” not “any.” This isn’t the indiscriminate promiscuity of “any”; her love is large, but focused. And as soon as she declares the depth and generosity of her feeling, she is met with limitation: she wants to hug all, but she can’t hug every. Note the repetition of “every”: she loves every, she can’t hug every; it becomes both a signifier of generous largesse, and of the cruel pragmatics of unattainability.

So anyway
I am a cat lover and I love to run
I’m sorry I’m thinking about cats again
I really love cats
I’m thinking about cats again
And again and again and again and again

Here, the overarching theme presents itself. “I love to run”: this conjures forward momentum, linear progress. And then the object of her love asserts itself, and she is derailed. This song is about derailment, interruption, stutter. Just as her love trips her physical running, it attenuates her cognitive running. She is lost in a loop of emotion, and can’t move forward: she thinks about her love “again/ and again and again and again and again.”

I think about how many don’t have a home
And how I should have them
I think about how cute they are
And how their ears
And the whiskers and the nose

“How many don’t have a home”: her love is ubiquitous, wandering, homeless. She thinks about her love’s homelessness, and she thinks about her entitlement: she should have her love. No wonder she can’t run — simply going outside, she sees her love everywhere, and, like some cruel punishment of Greek myth, the very thing she loves escapes her by its surfeit, flaunting its beauty and desirability — ears, whiskers, nose — as it remains unattainable.

I just love them
And I want them
And I want them in a basket
And I want little bow ties

I just love them
And I want them
To be on a rainbow
And in my bed
And I just want us to roll around

She escapes into dream, an Edenic fantasy where her and her love can finally be consummated. Surrounded by the fetishistic trappings of her lust (baskets and bow ties), the fulfillment of their mutual desire (rolling around in her bed) vaults them into heaven, on a rainbow. And finally, as a tragic postscript, the theme of interruption is reiterated before launching into the final chorus. Even her fantasy is ruptured: in the midst of her heavenly reverie, achieving orgasm in a spectrum of refracted light, reality asserts itself and she wakes; she brings herself coldly back to earth, forcing herself to recontextualize her feelings in apology as outsized, unfitting and unbecoming.

Sorry, I’m getting emotional.

- Sholem Krishtalka

[NOTE: It has been pointed out below that, in fact, Tommy is the creation of Norwegian actor/comedian/singer Bjornar Loberg. As much as I wish it were not the case, as much as I wish that there really were some crazy desperate overly-tanned gay Norwegian kid full of lip gloss and furious indignation over the fact that he can't get enough butter to make his pussycat cakes, it's true; it's a fake. There were certain incontrovertible tells: the jump cuts? With all that obvious editing, one can't help think of what got left out; and of course, what gets left in becomes deeply conspicuous. It remains an hilarious clip, and Loberg is some kind of character-actor genius, but still: the thrill is gone, gone away for good, and I can't help but lament the fact that all of the world's eccentricities seem to be flattening out into sitcom vehicles.]

Usually, I like to assemble a bunch of related videos for Ryeberg posts; I like to curate group shows, if you will. But sometimes, solo shows are called for; this video popped up on my Facebook feed the other day. I have since watched this about four times daily, and I have yet to tire of it.

I can’t tell whether or not this video is a fake, or a put-on. I spent a bit of time trying to figure it out. I have watched some of Tommy’s other videos: they’re mainly zany, home-spun little things, webisodes narrating some kind of silly melodrama or other. And they’re obviously intentionally zany and silly, which puts the score at 1-0 in favour of a put-on.

On the other hand, this is his first, and thus far only, English-language outing. And while his other videos are comical and absurd, they’re not knowing. I find them short, if not on self-awareness, then certainly irony. They seem to me to be genuine attempts to manufacture himself as a “singer, famous bloggers, and celebrities.” Which makes me think that this video is his genuine attempt at getting something off his chest, spurred on by the notion that, in fact, people want to know what he has to say. 1-all, sincerity vs skit.

I have stopped trying to figure it out, and decided that the tiebreaker is my desire for this to be genuine. Which leaves us with the question of what exactly is going on here. Nothing kills a joke, intentional or not, like trying to interpret it, so let’s just stick to the facts, shall we? Let’s just communally savour this, moment by moment.

Super Tommy Life, “A Butter Message to the USA!” (December 14, 2011)

“Hi. My name is Tommy. I’m a singer, and a celebrities, and a famerse – famous bloggers from Norway.”

Already, too much in the most thrilling way; I’m already hyperventilating: the vermilion tan, the pink lip gloss (which will make a cameo appearance — product placement? — later on), the dusting of pink eyeshadow, the Rachel haircut, the low-cut space galaxy tie-dye tee.

“Some of you may know that we have a butter crise in Norway right now, which basically means that we can’t get any butter from the store.”

Jump-cut. Call me brutally insensitive, but every time he iterates butter (“bah-ddurr”), my heart leaps.

“But I have noticed that some of your comedians in.. uummm.. Am… USA are making fun of the fact that we don’t have any butter products. Uummmm… wh… aah… then I wanna ask you this: what if it was you that didn’t have any butter? What if I came home to you and took your butter from your fridj-fridjyate-fidjyater and took your butter away from you… on any oth… on any other day?”

Head-shake. Yeah. Your tiny minds have just been blown, America. In your callousness, did you think yourselves immune? Only now, in Tommy’s sass-wake, did you even entertain the apocalyptic consequences of this reversal of fortune! Jump-cut.

“Yes, and uhhh let’s not shove it under the mat, we all know that American people are pretty overweight.”

Oooh snap. He is reading you America. The library is now open.

“How would you feel? What about your sweet potatoes and your sss… ssss… sour… cream and your ssh… psshhh… shtocking [inaudible] then?”

Tommy, you’re losing me. Jump-cut.

“Do you know what this is? This is a traditional box of Norwegian butter. Let’s look inside [No, Tommy, not inside the box! Don’t force me to watch!]. It’s hardly empty. Do you know what’s approaching?! Christmas is appoach-approach-approaching. How do you think we feel? Do you know what the national Christmas cake in Norway is? [Bitter laugh of incredulity at the universe’s cruel, random injustice] It’s something called Lussekatter — “pussycats” in English [you’re not helping, Tommy]. Do you know what the main ingredients in Lussekatter is?! BUTTER.”

Jump-cut.

“Do you think this is enough for all the Christmas cakes that I was gonna make in… uh… Christmas? NO. So FUCK YOU Americaaaaaan… sss… dw… w… pp… people. Because you don’t know how it feels being without butter in Christmastime.”

Jump-cut. This is getting to Chris Crocker-levels of emotional fury.

“And I ask again, what if it was you [exasperated laugh] who didn’t have butter? Would you go ask the neighbour? Oh no that’s right, the neighbour doesn’t have butter, either, NOBODY in the whole wide fucking country has butter!”

Bitter laugh of pyrrhic victory. Forelock swipe. Jump-cut.

“I will come to your house. I will go to your freshyator, your fridj-frech-frishiater, I will take your butter out of your fridge, I will EAT the butter in front of you and your family’s eyes! And I force you to watch me while I eat all your butter that you were gonna have on Christmas eve… ning! You will beg and cry and say ‘NO, DON’T EAT ALL OUR BUTTER, WE NEED FOR CHRISTMAS,’ I will say ‘HA HA NOT MY PROBLEM!’ [head- and shoulder-shake of devastating sass] and take the empty bottle and throw it on the… sss… zzz… stairway. I will go home!”

Is he tearing up? This is how far he’s willing to go to prove a point: he will serve you with Godfather-style revenge realness. More than anything else though, this summons a mental image of a skinny bronzed twink gleefully, ravenously downing stick after stick of butter like a vengeful Karen Finley performance, his face a slicked mess of butter and pink lip gloss, while a suburban American family of four looks on in confused consternation.

“And by the way, for all you Danish people [a war on two fronts!] what if we came and take all your red, disgusting saushdidge, shausidge? [the great Norwegian sausage pillage of 2011!]

Self-satisfied exhale. Don’t hold on to that anger Tommy, it’ll give you premature wrinkles and other signs of eating you from inside out.

“I don’t mean to be violent, I just have to paint it out so you understand. It is not very nice. We are a country in need… and this is the thank. Thank you very much.”

You’re welcome Tommy. You’re so welcome.

- Sholem Krishtalka

One of my favorite things is the celebrity tabloid magazine US Weekly’s feature, “Just Like Us!” in which candid paparazzi shots of whichever latest object of public fixation are splayed luridly across two-page spreads. They’re shown sneezing, pushing grocery carts, blowing their noses, picking gum off of their shoes; all evidence of their banal humanity.

I find this section so hilarious largely because it’s so absurdly obvious: being ubiquitous doesn’t exempt Beyoncé (or whomever) from having a nose or mucosa; of course she needs to expel some of it once in a while!

I have met few celebrities in my time, mostly in silly circumstances (I used to work at a chain bookstore in my hometown of Montreal, and stars would shop there if they were in town). My first instinct upon meeting them was to laugh. Their place was not in front of me, in human dimensions; they’re supposed to be 20 feet tall, on a giant screen. Milla Jovovich was supposed to be dressed in rubber Jean Paul Gaultier suspenders leaping from futuristic buildings, not disheveled and sweaty (but still totally gorgeous, PS) buying $300 worth of dog books from me on a steamy August night.

So, while “They’re Just Like Us!” is objectively absurd, it’s simultaneously astute in this strange way: they have bodies; they have banalities; and how easy it is to forget this as they float – pre-recorded, disembodied, pixellated – across my horizon.

***

The following videos were just made public. They arrived to me via my friend John Webster, who found them via the website of James St James, who found them on YouTube, via soapbxprod, who, according to her YouTube profile, is a documentary filmmaker named Carole. And Carole apparently received an armload of Roddy MacDowall’s silent home movies.

soapbxprod, “JFonda, TWeld, APerkins, RHudson, LBacall, BGazzara” (1965)

The constellations of these stars in the firmament of MacDowall’s beachhouse deck fills me with awe; my mind reels at what possibilities, relationships, conspiracies the various cliques might imply. Lauren Bacall and Rock Hudson! A nude Anthony Perkins (lounged, odalisque) talking to some bald guy, then calling Roddy MacDowall a fucker! Jane Fonda and James Fox! Kibitzing, tanning, eating, swimming, gossiping! (And what kind of high-octane gossip!)

soapbxprod, “Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, Jane Powell” (Malibu, 1965)

(And just think – these are the three- and four-minute snippets that Roddy MacDowall has allowed this woman to have! What exists outside of these margins? My mind reels at the thought of what all these superstar gays – James Fox, Sal Mineo, MacDowall himself, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, together in one house? – got up to with a camera rolling.)

I won’t say much more about these films. Though I enjoy celebrity gossip, I am not a connoisseur. There are people who know far more about them than I do, who would be able to recognize people I don’t. But the main reason I abstain is that there’s little need to comment on them: they are their own commentary.

Among the many things that amuse me about these videos is how these stars react to Roddy’s camera. Here are a houseful of people who make their living by the camera, enacting a career’s worth of lurid, emotional scenarios for it; and what do they do when Roddy turns his attention on them?

soapbxprod, “Labour Day at Rock Hudson’s House” (1965)

They do what anybody does. They make ugly faces and stick out their tongues; they go cross-eyed; they laugh awkwardly. The women strike glamour poses, which intrigues me above all else. When we little people strike glamour poses for candid videos, we imitate the stars; whom on earth or in heaven would Lauren Bacall be imitating when she camps a glamour pose? Herself? When we lounge on a beach, we aspire to the luxuriant technicolour film stills and paparazzi shots in our minds; when Natalie Wood lounges, to whom does she aspire? Who is her reference? These videos are a kind of semiotic collapse: sign and signifier exist in a single iconic vessel. These stars are our aesthetic and cultural touchstones, the ends of our metaphors. And here they are, in their natural habitat, amongst each other, enacting Platonic ideals of glamour and style that they themselves originated.

soapbxprod, “Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Hope Lange” (1965)

The circle (both social and semiotic) represented here is so tight, so hermetically self-enclosed; they can be so candid and so relaxed because they are amongst each other. There are no “regular” people for whom they must perform grandeur, or maintain decorum (has Roddy MacDowall betrayed them all, by handing over these snippets to Carole?). It’s like watching a pantheon of deities on their time off. The gods, they’re just like us!

The entire catalogue of videos can be found here. I watched them while eating out of a pint container of ice cream. I suggest you do the same.

- Sholem Krishtalka

-1-

In high school, I was what my boyfriend now refers to as a “drama pet.” My school did two theatrical productions a year — a Shakespeare play and a musical — and for my five years of secondary education, I was in every single one. I worked my way up from the chorus line, climbing the Royal West Academy theatrical ladder until, in Grade 11, I landed a lead role (the fact that my singing voice remained unmarred by the ravages of puberty gave me a significant competitive edge).

The last musical production we did was “Fiddler on the Roof.” I had received a copy of Norman Jewison’s film version as a Bar Mitzvah present.

Upon watching it, as much as I did not want this to be the case, I immediately recognized a kinship with the character of Motl the Tailor. When I, a gawky kittenish lad of 17, was cast as Motl the Tailor, my fellow drama pets smirked, rolled their eyes, and declaimed (in that inimitable tone unique to veterans of amateur theatre): “Of course. Typecasting.”

Norman Jewison, “Miracle of Miracles” from “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971)

For those not in the know, “Fiddler on the Roof” takes place in early 20th century Russia, and concerns the trials and tribulations of Tevye the Milkman; specifically, his quest to marry off his daughters.

Motl is the gawky, shy, kittenish tailor of the fictional town of Anatevka (in the Broadway and flim versions), who, against all odds, overcomes his stammering bashfulness, and through his unerring earnestness, proves his worth and gets the girl of his shtetl dreams, Tevye’s eldest daughter Tzeitl.

(A brief aside, for those interested in Canuck film trivia — in my high school production, the role of Tevye was played by a certain celebrated young rising actor/director of Canadian Cinema whose recent film, by all accounts, is a roman à clef of life in our alma mater).

I gave a rousing performance (I apparently made my best friend’s mother cry during my Miracle of Miracles solo), despite the fact that, at the time, I was just beginning to come to grips with the fact that I would have been much more personally invested in the role were I declaiming my undying love to the Rabbi’s son, or one of the other yeshiva bochers.

-2-

I am not yet 32, but I have been looking forward to that particular birthday year for one reason, and one reason only.

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band” (1970)

I have been practicing that line day in and day out since I first saw this film, this toxically self-loathing paean to pre-Stonewall New York gay life.

For those not in the know, “Boys in the Band” was among the first movies to tackle what was then scandalously referred to as the “homosexual lifestyle” head on. Based on an off-Broadway play, it centres around a group of friends who congregate for a patio party thrown by Michael on the occasion of Hallie’s (née Harold) 32nd birthday. The evening wears on, the drunkenness gives way to messiness, the party games become more catty, and it inevitably ends in a sloppy wet orgy of self-doubt and self-recrimination.

(Just FYI: the impatient can feel free to begin the first clip at the 8:55 mark)

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band: 11/12″ (1970)

William Friedkin, “The Boys in the Band: 12/12″ (1970)

The only one to navigate these choppy black waters unscathed is Hallie, who, patience finally exhausted by Michael’s attempts to prove everyone as damaged and guilty as he is, delivers the crushing moral truth; he then heads for the door and leaves with the final, compassionate “call you tomorrow.”

I identify deeply with Hallie, my fellow gay Jew; how could I not? The lacerating wit; that particular, seemingly paradoxical combination of prickly, armored irony and self-doubting vulnerability (just now, re-watching that clip, I had a heart-pang at hearing him declare his need to “get up the nerve to show my face to the world”); we even have the same laugh.

-3-

The actor who portrays both Motl and Hallie is named Leonard Frey. When I found out that these roles were played by the same man, the same gay man, the same gay Jewish man, I was ecstatic. “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Boys in the Band” heretofore represented these vastly disparate parts of my life; and here was this man — another willowy, kittenish, dramatic gay Jew — who also navigated these very same roles, negotiating them seamlessly (he earned an Oscar nomination for “Fiddler on the Roof”), collapsing the two grand narratives of my coming-of-age into a year’s worth of work (”The Boys in the Band”: 1970; “Fiddler on the Roof”: 1971).

(A brief aside, in the interest of thematic completeness: in the Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Frey played Mendel, the rabbi’s son).

Of course, Frey had a much more varied career than that — on Broadway, television and other movies. But this is immaterial to me. In that single year’s work, he laid a kind of cosmological groundwork for me, reflecting the two pillars of my identity.

Whereas I had placed those pillars on opposite sides of my self’s temple, Leonard embodied them both equally, hopping from one to the next as if they were neighbours. Leonard Frey, member of my tribe, my brother in arms: call you tomorrow.

- Sholem Krishtalka

Performed live by Jon Davies and Sholem Krishtalka during Ryeberg Live Toronto 2010.

“How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son” (2010)

SHOLEM KRISHTALKA: A couple of our gossip-loving friends have a keen fondness for psychologically revealing party games (sort of like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” only a tad more casual) with titles like “Exclusive Secrets” and “Would You Rather?” One of their favourites, adapted from turns on the therapy couch, is “Root”: everyone in the room has to take their turn and divulge the root of their homosexuality.

Of course, this game depends on a fairly thorough recall of one’s early life. I’ve never been able to firmly identify my own root (although I have narrowed it down to a few possibilities). The young gentleman in this video, should he one day be called upon to make such public confessions, will have no such trouble.

loswhit, “Single Ladies Devastation” (2010)

Here it is, clear as day, laid out for all to see. The title of the clip is “Single Ladies Devastation,” but it could more aptly be called “Young Boy Gets His First Taste of the Social Disapproval of His Own Difference.”

Losiah, the young boy in question, is thrilled by the song (who isn’t thrilled by this song?), empowered by the bouncing rhythm, by the energetic strength of Beyoncé’s commanding delivery, by the kinship he feels with his sisters. But his father feels the need to assert some heteronormativity, and the declaration, while delivered jovially, comes like a crushing blow: “YOU ARE NOT A SINGLE LADY!”

You can see it all happen in roughly two seconds. His face is still while the gears move and all the pieces of anxiety and self-doubt arrange themselves in his mind: “I want to be a Single Lady; I thought I was a Single Lady; The Father has told me I am not a Single Lady; The Father has told me that I do not and cannot belong to this club; The Father has revoked my membership, and therefore told me that wanting to belong to this club is wrong.” And all of those pieces then lock into place, and the seismic shock of this realization is too much for his 3-year-old mind to bear. He weeps for all he has lost: security, belonging, acceptance, fun.

The Father’s guilty backpedalling begins, but it’s already happened; he set off this psychological tremor, and he can’t take it back.

When this child eventually comes out to his parents, his surest ally will be his sister: the one seated next to him, in the middle of the backseat. Her look to the iPhone camera says it all: “What the fuck did you have to go and do that for?”

“Beyonce Single Ladies Little Kid Dance” (2010)

JON DAVIES: The critic Wayne Koestenbaum refers to Andy Warhol in his biography of the artist as “the proscenium for traumatic theater” and we find ourselves drawn to the trauma of queer childhood that plays itself out on YouTube – the faggy boy-children dancing, but just as often, crying, sometimes in the same video. Shame is arguably foundational to queer identity, a structuring fact.

For gay or proto-gay boys, being overly invested in femininity was and continues to be taboo. Identifying with female stars represents a kind of survival strategy in our young minds, an uplift from humiliating or merely banal day-to-day life into glamour and power. Loving and wanting to be like female stars from Maria Montez or Elizabeth Taylor to Madonna or Beyoncé is a sign of trouble. Being too musical or too artistic, moving too gracefully (or even wanting to move one’s body in rhythm at all), too conscious of aesthetics and beauty, were all qualities heavily policed by parents, school officials, doctors, church. Expert speech therapists were airlifted in at the hint of a lisp, at least at my elementary school (but I guess the benefit was that I got to leave class for an hour each week).

On the home front, my parents basically didn’t have bodies, at least ones that moved freely and without shame. I don’t dance because that would require a suspension of inherited bodily self-consciousness that I’m basically incapable of.

Another hindrance to being able to loosen up was an incident at a day-camp in my suburban neighbourhood in Montreal when I was about 5, and “the boys” (which for some reason included me) were forced to perform the song “Greased Lightning” from the musical “Grease,” on stage, dressed up.

When they forcibly slicked my hair back, I completely lost it and broke down in messy gay tears. Any possibility of a life lived comfortably on the stage was shattered at that moment, and the road to my current small-scale karaoke superstardom has been a long and arduous one.

“Lil Boy Dancing To Rihanna Rude Boy” (2010)

SHOLEM KRISHTALKA: There are precisely two moments (at least that spring easily to my mind) of my own self-conscious self-determination. Both happened when I was 12. One was Darlene, during the season of “Roseanne” that she became a goth. I said to myself, “her. I want to be like her.” The second was Madonna. I remember, clear as day and sharp as lightning, seeing the videos for “Express Yourself,” and “Vogue” (both directed by David Fincher, by the by) on MuchMusic, and thinking to myself, “her. I want to be like her.”

And so I tried. I sat in front of my TV religiously, watching MuchMusic, waiting for the Vogue video to appear, and every time it did, I studied with an intensity that I never ever applied to my schooling.

That year saw the emergence, at least in my elementary school, of “the social.” I have no idea how this term came about, but it achieved metonymic status in my school: “are you going to Lisa’s social? Is Avi having a social this week?” They were lavish dance parties, basically rehearsals for the following year’s Bar- and Bat-Mitzvahs. My friends hired DJs and had them in their basements (I went to a private Jewish elementary school; I had rich friends with large basements).

So having rehearsed the Vogue dance time and time again in the privacy of my bedroom, I went to these socials, and when Vogue came on, I went proto-gay apeshit. I struck a pose; I vogued down like the fiercest, shadiest bitch a white, middle-class 12 year old Jew could be; I did the dance from the video. My female friends made a ring around me and clapped; the boys in my class stood on the sidelines and yelled “FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!” for the 4 minute, 51 second duration of the song. But still, I danced.

If my parents had ever caught me by surprise, though, I would have screamed, cried, and fallen down in terror and shame.

nizzy1115x2, “Mom Scares Gay Out Of Kid” (2007)

JON DAVIES: Shame is also a potentially transformative creative force as all that trauma and bad feelings can be harnessed into something potent, the blazon that comes from intense self-revelation. Shame becomes performance and the stage of the theatre or the webcam becomes a place where the interior can be turned outward and extreme self-exposure can connect you with others rather than keep you apart and isolated from them.

Watching — and listening — to this video, which has logged over 23 million views just on YouTube, I know that this 12-year-old kid from Oklahoma has experienced fame and glory after the fact, and of course we hear applause at the end.

But I can’t help projecting onto the wall of girls’ faces in the background a shift in their attitudes from bored and dismissive to stunned, enraptured and tearful, but this could all be my fantasy that jaded tweens can be affected by a skinny little boy at a piano, that his extreme theatricality and naked, embarrassing display of emotion (on behalf of a pre-fab pop song, no less) can actually transform those on the receiving end.

Greyson Chance, “Paparazzi” (April, 2010)

- Jon Davies & Sholem Krishtalka

Bad romance…

“Kid Singing and Dancing to Lady Gaga Bad Romance” (2010)

I could have titled this piece something a little subtler, but that would be a disservice to my subject.

* Sexually explicit * “Alexyss Tylor Show”

How can I follow that up? What else can I say that hasn’t already been said, in the most grotesque and colourful vocabulary?

Alexyss K. Tylor was first introduced to me by an artist friend, and so I assumed, at first, that she was a performance artist of some kind (let the record show that the first thought that entered my freshly blown mind after having sat through “Two Faced Dick” was, “well, if this woman is a performance artist, she’s just ended performance art.”)

In fact, Miz Tylor is the host of her show on black women’s sexuality, “Vagina Power.” It used to be aired on Atlanta public access television until a “very vocal constituent of ‘Black Women’” (note the scare quotes) forced the cancellation of the show. But Tylor lives on—she apparently published a book in 2006 (although I can’t find a trace of it)—and still speaks her truth (thank God) on YouTube.

* Sexually explicit * That’s her mother with her on stage, by the way.

And what the hell kind of truth is she speaking? Tylor is possibly the best monologuist I’ve ever seen. No pauses, hiccups, or ums and ers; none of the inadvertent repetition, awkward nervousness or lack of preparation that’s usually the hallmark of amateur TV.

Consider that her lengthy diatribes—which wade through the deepest muck of sexual abjection, enumerating with a kind of De Sade-esque glee all the possible linguistic permutations of licentiousness, veering into unheard of metaphors and similes (government cheese?)—are entirely off-the-cuff.

Unlike, say, a professional comedian or motivational speaker, she has no written material to fall back on; once she’s on a riff, it’s just her and her alone, and Tylor dishes dick and pussy with the verve of a Baptist preacher. She gets in her groove and she’s a woman possessed (by what, I couldn’t begin to imagine), and she just lets fly a constant passionate onslaught, the burning gospel of Vagina Power. Just listen to her; listen to her iterate the words “penis” and “vagina,” stretching her mouth around the intricacies of their pronunciation—“peuyy-nuss” and “vaj-EYEEEE-nuh”—as if she’s exorcising some sick (I accidentally typed “dick” just then) demon.

Tylor claims kinship with Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey and Sojourner Truth. I only wish that her platform were as large and as public as Angelou’s and Winfrey’s. Tylor could redress the profound schizophrenia of American public sexual discourse.

In re-watching these clips for posting here, I couldn’t help but think of my recent exposure to the Twilight phenomenon (I just watched the first movie a few weeks ago, out of curiosity and the desire to see cute boys shirtless). This book and movie franchise, all sprung from the prudish imagination of a Utah Mormon, seems to want to teach kids that good girls shouldn’t want sex, and even if they do, even if they beg, good boys won’t touch them.

As a private romantic fantasy that’s perfectly fine, but “Twilight” is now a multimedia empire, and so its sexual metaphors and messages assume the scale of mass media propaganda. And given the general context of the furor over sex-ed (abstinence-only education has to be the most ludicrous oxymoron I’ve ever heard), Meyer’s priggishness-for-teens is nothing short of damaging.

If someone were going to sermonize to people about sex, I would take the balls-out-down-and-dirty realness of Reverend Tylor than the genteel, anti-feminist falsehoods of prissy Stephenie [sic] Meyer any old time. Tylor is even queer-positive! Speak truth to power, woman!

Can I get an amen?

- Sholem Krishtalka

I was going to write a beautiful, hopeful essay based on this clip:

It would have been quite something: weaving together the joys of karaoke, gay marriage and the beauty of Paris in one breathtaking essay at the end of which, the reader would walk away renewed, fulfilled, perhaps with the merest hint of a tear welling up in the corner of their eye.

Pedj y kelly est ce que tu viens pour les vacances

But no. Because you know what happened? I did some research. And it turns out, these two shirtless French hunks, these adorable boyfriends named Pedj and Kelly, whose entire life I had imagined for myself based on these clips (nuzzling in the soft morning light, sharing wicked glances at each other before spontaneously breaking into chanson in the middle of Rue de Richelieu) are not in fact named Pedj and Kelly. And they’re not, in fact, boyfriends. They’re not even, in fact, gay! (They are in fact French, though, which makes up for nothing).

They’re not even all that gay-friendly. Their website is careful to reiterate (three times, just in case you weren’t counting) that they’re straight. Pauvre bébés. Heaven forfend the videos that you posted where, hunky and shirtless, you gaze adoringly into each other’s eyes and caress each other’s chiseled features should prevent you from getting some tail.

When the hell is GLAAD (the most bitterly ironic acronym ever invented, PS) going to lynch these two? Oh, that’s right, they won’t – if their track record is any indication, they’d give these pigs an award. Because that seems to be what the gay media is all about these days: shouting hosannas at every straight actor who plays a homo on screen. A straight man is paid umpteen million dollars to kiss another dude (and maybe spoon with him), and gay magazines put him on their cover, and slobber on about what a courageous ally he is. 

Meanwhile, of course, any actor who’s actually gay is so shit-terrified of sabotaging their career by coming out that they never do; or they do when they’re too old to be a sex symbol, or when scandalous gossip threatens to do the job for them. And then, the gay media put them on their cover and slobber on about what a fearless specimen of political engagement they are. And don’t get me started on poor, misguided Adam Lambert, whose silly, nascent career is quickly being dismantled by the FCC while GLAAD is hemming and hawing and hoping that network television will still take them out for drinks and maybe invite them up to their place afterwards.

Uh…I appear to have gone off topic. Ahem. Well, what I suppose it all boils down to is that Pedj and Kelly are cock-teases. That is all.

-Sholem Krishtalka

There is a George Price cartoon where a packed room of ill-matched eccentrics, high society types and zoo animals are congregating for a round of socially disastrous cocktails. I can’t remember the exact details, but if memory serves, there are two flamingos off to the side, one of whom is saying to the other, “who made up this guest list, Norman Lear?”

Which is exactly what I wonder while watching these Dick Cavett clips. In fact, the entire “Dick Cavett Show” is a mystery to me. Maybe I should qualify that the aim of the show seems clear: Cavett & Co. are hell-bent on creating interesting television. And sure, mission accomplished, but not, methinks, in the way they were intending. They seemed to want to create some kind of latter-day salon, where the mild-mannered Cavett would moderate as the great men and women of letters, cinema, entertainment and the world at large congregate and talk loftily about their craft.

Jim Fowler, Groucho Marx, & Truman Capote (1971)

But which moron of a producer thought it was a good idea to have an octogenarian Groucho Marx (who, strangely enough, reminds me of my grandmother here) and Truman Capote together in the same room? Given Marx’s apparent state of elderly confusion, who thought to have him on the show at all? And which producer thought that this irascible old goat would have any patience for the gayest man in world history? And of course, Groucho doesn’t; he doesn’t even address Capote by name (a brief digression: can we pause to note how short all these men are?).

And then there’s Cavett himself, the whitest of men, the ur-WASP: mayonnaise on crustless Wonderbread, personified. His features are handsome, on paper: the roman nose, the firm jawline, the blue eyes, all razor sharp. Yet, he’s strangely sexless, even characterless, and not in a mysterious, or mercurial way; just bland. And his voice: his glib, obsequious, nasal voice. He elicits enormous pity from me, because his efforts at hanging back, at letting his guests assume centre stage, translate as toadying, or worse, shit-eating; and it seems as if they have nothing but contempt for him. For instance:

Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, & Ben Gazzara promoting “Husbands” (1970)

Of the four segments of this clip (all of these clips have further segments, by the by, and if you have the time, I encourage you to watch them all), this is by far the hardest to watch. In trying to wrangle John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, Cavett becomes The Square, and is painfully stripped of his masculinity. The trio of cinematic macho-artistes are contemptuous of Cavett’s profession, his interest in them, and his attempts at composure. To me, this clip is pure high school: the three jocks are gleefully trying to give the nerd a wedgie, while the nerd is trying desperately to maintain some tiny semblance of dignity (eventually, of course, Cavett walks off — of his OWN SHOW! — and has to be cajoled back by a stage manager).

I can’t end on this note. I have to give Cavett his due, and so I leave you with two victories. The first, over a blustering, indignant, rampaging Norman Mailer (who really was always a victim of his pretentiousness and ego):

Gore Vidal, Janet Flanner, & Norman Mailer (1971)

The second victory takes a little setting-up: Katharine Hepburn refused to give television interviews for most of her life, and the Dick Cavett show had been jockeying for an exclusive for years. Finally, one day, she was in the building, and decided to have a look-see on set while they were doing a tech-run. And (this is why we love La Hepburn) she decided, ‘well, I’m here, I might as well.’ Cavett was hurriedly summoned (which is why he’s in his casual tennis whites), and, after a brisk bout of set redecoration, sat down for a 3 hour (!) impromptu chat.

This is a signal victory, not only for Cavett, but for Hepburn lovers: Here She is, in all her patrician glory, radiating upper-class New England pride and privilege. I know of no one else who can stretch their legs out in a low slouch and still exude regality, holding court with her tales of precocious self-determination, guiding the viewer on the highs and lows of the Life, Loves and Losses of Miss Katharine Hepburn. She even tries to correct Cavett’s obsequiousness, in her own delicate way (at the beginning of part 3: “you keep interrupting the long story of my life, if you’d just shut up, I could tell you!”).

This is but the initial bit, in which HRH Hepburn rages against ’70s TV set decor; the whole thing is, as I’ve mentioned, 3 hours long. If you have the time, I urge you to sit through the whole thing. It is to die.

I’ll spare you Cavett’s self-serving retrospective intro to the interview; this is where it begins in earnest (click on picture to watch):

Katharine Hepburn, Clip 2/15 (1973)

- Sholem Krishtalka

I was once told, by my boyfriend, the very same boyfriend with whom I share this curatorial space, that I only like movies where people get hit in the crotch with footballs and fall down. And while I feel compelled to point out that this was his method of “consoling” me after a particularly vicious and emotionally devastating film, I also feel compelled to admit that it’s partly true.

I am a highly educated man, born of highly educated parents. I have two university degrees; I regularly attend cultural events; I’m well-spoken, articulate, and enjoy the fine art of the debate; at one point, I had simultaneous subscriptions to The New Yorker and ArtForum; I have an appreciation for music, literature, art; I’m an artist, for God’s sake! And gay! I don’t know what other signifiers of aesthetic cultivation I can haul out of my ass, here!!

“Middle-Aged Women Mostly Falling Down”

And yet, and yet…nothing will make me laugh so much and so spontaneously as someone falling down. A fat woman gets hit in the face with a dodgeball on a TV show, and I am hysterical, screeching with glee, and Jon, who has sat through the 7-hour epic “Our Hitler: A Film From Germany” twice, who can sit through a Lars Von Trier film without crying, who has enthusiastically consumed the skin-crawling oeuvre of Catherine Breillat, who loves the emotional sadism of a Michael Haneke film, looks at me and shakes his head. And I am too busy heaving with laughter to tell him to fuck off.

“Grape Lady Falls!”

I’m not proud of it; I know that others’ pain isn’t funny; and yet, and yet… I laugh. I know the theories of comedy — that we laugh at slapstick out of nervous shock, that we delight because we feel safe in the recognition that that (almost surely) physically painful humiliating loss of dignity did not happen to us. A Laurel and Hardy version of the Sublime, I suppose. It makes a certain amount of sense, but I don’t find it convincing.

A former philosophy teacher once told me that books on how to be a better lover fail for the same reason that you can’t teach someone to tell a good joke. Funny is funny, and you just can’t explain it. Moreover, funny is elusive; the more you try and explain it, the more it escapes you, and the more you sound like a prig as you try and find your way back to the joke.

“Different Bloopers and Funny Mishaps”

-Sholem Krishtalka

Whenever I am sad, I watch this:

Sesame Street, “Patti Labelle Sings The Alphabet,” (2000)

Just now, watching it again so that I could post it here, it immediately buoyed my spirits. I also used to watch this (and still do, occasionally):

Sesame Street, “Madeline Kahn, Sing After Me,” (1977)

I just tittered. These videos are like acupuncture, working my inner child pressure point. They make me inordinately happy, and not just because they’re fantastic entertainment (we could all testify to Miss Patti’s fabulousness, but who knew that Madeline Kahn had such a sparkling coloratura?). Although that reasoning is none too shabby: when I consider how many treacly, pedantic and condescending shows are vying for the attention of future generations, the gentle wry wit and cultural currency of “Sesame Street” (now in it’s astonishing 40th year of programming) is immensely heartening.

Consider who “Sesame Street” has invited into the living rooms of North America’s children (aside from Misses Labelle and Kahn): Stevie Wonder, Johnny Cash, REM, Feist; while the Teletubbies (remember that particularly horrific flash in the pan?) were trying to sear the retinae of the nation’s most precious public resource with a psychedelic baby-sun and reduce their yet to be molded minds to loose jelly with meaningless onomatopeisms jabbered by a parade of cutesy rainbow monsters, the makers of Sesame Street were priming them on the lessons of urban life and using contemporary culture to teach them the basics of vocabulary, grammar, and counting.

So perhaps I should backpedal, and qualify. These videos make me inordinately happy because they’re fantastic entertainment, and because they’re mindful entertainment; excellent entertainment. It’s the same feeling I got when I walked out of Pixar’s “WALL-E.” The thought that this movie was being viewed by millions upon millions of kids, the idea that this lovingly crafted movie was not only instilling a sense of public responsibility in these kids, but that it was setting a high bar, and thus teaching them (albeit on a subconscious level) about the excellence of craft and the importance of artistry, was… well, inspirational. In the Miss Patti sense of the word.

As someone who’s grown up with Chomsky-esque media critique, and thus, to a certain extent, internalized their cynicism, the whole notion of children’s programming that strives for mindfulness and excellence is a lovely reminder that all is not lost, that there is human action that still counts amidst the endless onslaught of marketed corporate pablum (yes, yes, I know all about the gruesome phenomenon of rampaging consumerism that was Tickle Me Elmo — don’t kill my high, alright?).

As a final amen, I offer this: a then-unknown Mr. Rogers — halting, timid, pensive — explaining to a US senator (coincidentally, in the same year as Sesame Street’s debut) why Public Television should be taxpayer funded; basically, in the language of western capitalism, why public television should exist. I defy you to make it to the end of this clip without crying:

Fred Rogers, “Against Funding Cuts,” (1969)

-Sholem Krishtalka

Quandox2, “Royce-You Know Nothing” (2007)

I would like to introduce you to Royce and Marilyn.  Who are they?  Who knows?  One of the innumerable charms of this 2 minute clip (and the bundle of related clips of which I have included one) is that it raises more questions that it answers. What we know, we know courtesy of Royce’s complaints (if we choose to believe them; I don’t know about you, but I consider anyone who wears a gold blouse, umpteen giant rings, cascades of pearls and a fur hat the size of a table to be speaking the gospel truth): she used to have money; she enjoyed playing, singing and listening to classical music; she now lives in a small apartment with Marilyn, and doesn’t enjoy her current circumstances; and she is not above swearing (even though she balks at Marilyn’s enjoyment of Martha Ray’s dirty nightclub act).  

As far as anything and everything else, to quote Royce, we know nothing. Who was Royce in her former life as a society woman? How did she lose her money? How did she meet Marilyn? How did they come to live together?   

Of course, I’m a “Grey Gardens” devotee, so my predilection for batty society ladies in decline is already pretty profound. And while the pterodactyl-esque Royce isn’t anywhere near as charming as Little Edie Beale, she has her moments: that conspiratorial giggle after having denounced the American Woman for her lack of hats; the way she subtly belies her vaunted superiority by mispronouncing Grieg as “grieve”; her dexterity with the English language — never have I heard the word “shit” pronounced so immaculately (”sheeyitt-hole”), nor have I ever before heard the phrase “God on a wheel” (but rest assured, it nows sits permanently and comfortably in my lexicon); the way she rises, like a hot-air balloon, on the fire of her own escalating indignation (”you know nothing! You know NOTHING!!”); and just when she reaches a fever-pitch of insufferability, she cracks — she loses it, finally shrieking, at such a volume that it tests the limits of the microphone’s recording capacity.  

When she pleads to the camera, “all my money is gone,” the vulnerability, the shame and the humanity come peeking through. And this is where Marilyn achieves her glory — she calms Royce down! But the moment of humanity is soon buried again, as Royce spreads her bony arms (”honey, please, please”) and re-asserts herself as the centre of her tragedy.

Quandox2, “American Woman” (2007)

Questions, questions, I only have more questions: Who is the video maker? How did he meet these women? When is the Royce and Marilyn feature film coming out? Most likely, I will never be answered.

What matters most is that these clips exist, that Marilyn’s patient, gently suffering placidity and Royce’s screeching, desperate fury is documented for posterity. Or as near to posterity as YouTube allows.

- Sholem Krishtalka