We Are What We Are - 9

I'm being lazy this week. Here's another number from 'Dirty Little Showtunes'

Addictions –

We all have them. Some we’ll admit to, others maybe not.

I have three that I accept and ‘deal’ with. –chuckling-

The first is my smoking. Not going to ramble on about that one. I do. I have forever and I probably will until it or something else kills me. That’s life.

The second addiction is books/reading. The reading part is a given, it is for all of us around here. The books – well for me there is something very special about holding the real thing in your hands, the feel, the heft (well not certain paperbacks have ‘heft’ LOL). I ‘need’ real, honest to God physical books. I’m addicted to them. More than that I have to own them and my budget be damned. (As if I had a budget per se –shaking my head-) If I see a book I want to read I’m off to the brick-and-mortar store to get it, or I find it online and order it. When it’s in my hands I savor it, not just the contents but the physical object. The number of bookshelves in my place speaks to this addiction. I hate to say this but I am even loath to lend them out for fear they might not be returned. That I think is an addiction personified.

My third addiction is writing. It’s my newest one. I’ve only had it for, humm, five years at most I think. But I’m in its thrall. If I’m not writing a story I begin to go bug fuck. Truly. It’s as if I have to be putting words down on paper, well in Word, or I get antsy and to be honest scared, comparable to a drug addict wondering his next fix (read idea) will come from. All right, that might be a tad over the top but still…

I write not only because I love to but because I have to. I know that’s why we all do, those of us who are authors. It’s an addiction, the need to tell a story and even more to have others read it and, we pray, enjoy and react to it. If we don’t publish then we give them away, on blogs, in groups, to any one who wants to see them.

Writing is our life, and our addiction. At least it’s mine.

From - Primetime from ABC News: Gay Parents Bashed

We Are What We Are - 8 - 'Victor/Victoria - The Musical'

Victor/Victoria (musical)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor/Victoria_%28musical%29

Victor/Victoria is a musical with a book by Blake Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and additional musical material (music and lyrics) by Frank Wildhorn. It is based on the 1982 film of the same name.
Mancini died before he could complete the music, and Wildhorn was brought in to finish the score. The original Broadway production, in 1995, aroused some mild controversy when the star, Julie Andrews, feeling that the rest of the show had been overlooked, refused her (and the show's only) Tony Award nomination.

Synopsis:
A penniless soprano, named Victoria, colludes with a struggling gay impresario to disguise herself as a man named Victor, who entertains as a female impersonator known as "Victoria" - and as a result becomes the toast of Paris. Complications arise when a Chicago mobster sees the act and finds himself attracted to the star.

Victor/Victoria 1995 He's a woman!!!

Victor / Victoria - 'Le Jazz Hot'

Victor/Victoria 1995 Tango scene

Trip Around the World to Paradise Blog Hop - Venice

Hi and Welcome to my stop on the Trip around the World to Paradise Blog Hop I’m stop #4


Before I let you go off on your tour of paradise, we need to cover a few rules.



TOUR RULES:

1) Have fun!!!

2) Invite all of your friends! Spread the word!

3) This tour starts: Monday, May 16, at Midnight (Arizona Time)

This tour ends: Monday, May 23, at Midnight (Arizona Time)

4) Meet and mingle with all the authors. Experience a new destination at every stop. Participate in every blog contest and be entered for chances to win multiple prizes! Every blog visited is another opportunity to win!! You must leave a comment to be entered in contests. Please include an email address or check back May 24 to see if you were a winner.

5) Participation at every blog is recommended. But remember: the more you hop, the more chances you have to win. Every author is waiting to meet and interact with you, so please be sure to show every author some love.

6) Did I mention to have fun? WHOO! HOO!!

My contest and prize are down below and so is the link to the next stop on your tour. First...what you'll find here in Paradise.

Where have you dreamed of going?

Humm, where have I dreamed of going? I can think of several places in fantasy novels I’d love to visit. However as that’s not in the least bit possible I’d have to say Venice. The Venice of dark alleys that lead to canals filled with nefarious characters seeking their fortunes, or their enemies. Yes I’m a romantic. I’d also like to see the rest of the city. It’s so steeped in history; murder, mayhem, great art, great architecture. Everything to make a writer’s heart beat faster. And to go there during Carnevale… Fantastico I think.

Here’s what you have to do to be entered to win a copy of my book – ‘Everyone’s Man’

Comment with your email address here to be entered in the contest

My book…..

Buy Link - https://silverpublishing.info/product_book_info/glbt-mystery-suspense-action-c-53_59/everyone-s-man-p-185

Colin Wilcox, a male whore who only handles clients of the same sex, is gang-raped while on the job. Needing medical attention, he's taken to the local ER and is befriended by one of the doctors. While he's recovering physically, reoccurring flashbacks of the attack provide small images of his brutal rape and he’s forced by Detective Keyes to handle the emotional fallout of being victimized.

Detective Keyes, a rape victim himself, is assigned to solve the crime. When a second boy is gang-raped under what appears to be similar circumstances, he needs Colin‘s help to catch the perpetrators. In the process, he tries to use his own personal experience to help Colin understand he’s not to blame for what happened.  

A slow, but sure, friendship unfolds between the two men that blossoms into love, stunted by the traumatic event.  When the perpetrators are finally in custody,  Colin has to move forward, and the next battle is underway. He must learn to lower the barriers that will allow him to let Detective Keyes into his life for both mental and physical support. Only then will the two men be able to consummate their tender passion.

Please visit stop #5 - Kally Sten -  http://original.kallysten.net/2011/mega-author-blog-hop/

We Are What We Are - 7 - 'Dirty Little Showtunes'

'Dirty Little Showtunes' is a review that .... well I'll let the creator tell you about it.



And one of the tunes.... More will come from time to time.

I Love Men ('Dirty Little Showtunes' Parody)

* * * * *

And part 7 of  'Forensics 101' is up on http://rainingmenamen.blogspot.com/

We Are What We Are - 6 - 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch'

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (musical)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig_and_the_Angry_Inch_%28musical%29

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transgender singer. The text is by John Cameron Mitchell, and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask. The musical premiered in 1998 and has been performed throughout the world in hundreds of stage productions.
The story draws on Mitchell's life as the son of a U.S. Army Major General who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was originally inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was a Mitchell family babysitter and moonlighted as a prostitute at her Junction City, Kansas trailer park home. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock era of David Bowie (who co-produced the Los Angeles production of the show), as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk godfathers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
The musical opened Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on February 14, 1998. The theater was located in the ballroom of the Hotel Riverview, which once housed the surviving crew of the Titanic (a fact which figured in the original production). Originally directed and produced by Peter Askin, the play won a Village Voice Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The Off-Broadway production ran for two years, and was remounted with various casts by the original creative team in Boston, Los Angeles, and London.

Synopsis

     The story is told by Hedwig directly to the audience in the form of an extended monologue. The concept of the stage production is that the audience is watching the character Hedwig's musical act as she follows rockstar Tommy Gnosis's (much more successful) tour around the country. Occasionally Hedwig references Gnosis's concert which is playing in an adjoining venue.
Hedwig's band (including the character of Yitzhak) appears on stage for practically the entire duration of the musical, as does Hedwig herself.
     Hedwig tells of Hansel, an East German "slip of a girlyboy" who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther Robinson, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel's mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, "with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face."
     Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for another man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite.
     Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives, which she names "The Angry Inch". Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis", but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. "Internationally ignored" Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bars and strip mall dives.
     The song "The Origin of Love", based on Aristophanes’  speech in Plato’s Symposium, explains that three sexes of human beings once existed: "children of the sun" (man and man attached), "children of the earth" (woman and woman attached), and "children of the moon" (man and woman attached). Each were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soul mate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch- Original Cast. - Origin of Love.

When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.

The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

 

Hedwig & The Angry Inch (Off-Broadway)- Wig in a Box.

FCKH8.com: The "Teachers Can't Talk About Homos" Law

UPDATE - MSNBC - Married Same-Sex Couple Hope To Avoid Government Forced Split