How to be Awesome (Ep. 133 - Terry Pratchett)

We all know life's short, so how do you make the most of the time you've got? My guest this week is Scott Flashheart, comedian and host of the podcast Probably True. He grew up in a tiny British mining town -- or at least, what WAS a mining town, before the mine was closed, sending the place he lived into a slow downward spiral. He knew he didn't belong there, but he also felt out of place among other gays. It took a lot of work -- and a major loss -- to steer him towards his true calling: telling dick jokes to the world.

By the way, you can follow The Sewers of Paris on Facebook and Twitter -- I post clips of stuff the guests talked about throughout the week, and chat with listeners like you about the entertainment that changed YOUR life. You can also get in touch at sewerspodcast@gmail.com. Listener Jim wrote in to ask for more details about the books that guests mention -- thanks Jim, I can definitely do that. Starting this week I'll include info about books in the shownotes over at SewersOfParis.com.

This Week's Recommendation: Dress to Kill

Big thanks to Scott for joining me. Head over to ProbablyTruePodcast.com to subscribe to Scott's show. For this week's recommendation we're going to go back in time, twenty years ago to the peerless Eddie Izzard comedy special Dress to Kill.

Eddie's an actor and comic who doesn't fit neatly into boxes. In his 1998 special, he comes out in ladies' wear and calls himself an executive transvestite, though these days he uses the term transgender, and in neither case is he who you might picture when you hear those words.

He's just who he is, standing somewhat to the side of easy labels and conventional wisdom. Not just in how he presents himself, but also in his comedy, which is at its foundation mischievous and very smart. In Dress to Kill, Eddie tackles religion, history, medicine, war, growing old, and it takes a bit of work to keep up but it's worth it.

One of the topics he touches on is puberty -- you know, the time in your life when you first want to attract people and are also feel more physically repulsive than ever before.

In his act, Eddie jokes about how nice it would be to get the drama of puberty over with in just one day. But in reality, it can last for years, long past the time when one's body has settled into whatever it's going to be. The self-consciousness and horror you feel when you look in the mirror may decide to linger like unwanted body hair, and for queers that can include uncomfortable realizations about who you love, how you dress, and what you want to be.

Some of these things we can change, some we can learn to live with, some we can remove by spending thousands of dollars under a laser. The angst of our teen years can set a path for the rest of our lives, and bits of that path can seem quite miserable. But whatever that journey is, you're probably not the first to make it. There's weirdos and outcasts who came before, and you might find some solace in the ones who acknowledged "This is who I am" and asked "what if I was okay with that?"

Stuff We Talked About

Here's Scott's favorite guide on reading Terry Pratchett.

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Priests of Hollywood (Ep. 132 - Designing Women & Gone with the Wind)

What are the excuses you make for not doing what makes you happy? It's so easy to come up with reasons that NOW is the wrong time to launch into that project or hobby or career change you've always wanted. So where do you find permission to make a change in your life? This week's guest, Jason Powell, has only recently learned to give that permission to himself. Jason's one half of the podcast Ladywatch -- I interviewed his co-host, Ryan O'Connor, a few weeks back on episode 122. Each week on their show, Ryan and Jason talk about their shared admiration for powerful women. But off mic, they both have struggled with self-imposed limitations. We'll talk this week about the great southern belles who helped Jason find the bravery to stand up for himself to himself.
 

This Week's Recommendation: Killing all the Right People

Big thanks to Jason for joining me. Head over to LadyWatchPod.com to subscribe to Jason and Ryan's show. And visit SewersOfParis.com to see clips of the Designing Women speeches featured in this episode. Just look for Jason's episode, number 132. Also at SewersOfParis.com, you can watch a video that I made awhile back about a 1987 episode of Designing Women entitled Killing all the Right People. My recommendation this week is to check out that episode of the show -- you can find Killing All the Right People in three parts on Vimeo, and it's about what it was like to live with HIV during the dark years before reliable medication.

Remember, even into the late 1980s, very little was known about HIV, much less how to treat it. And the suffering of people with the virus was magnified by the cruelty of a country that didn't seem to care and often exhibited open glee about the epidemic. This episode of Designing Women tackled the issue head on, with a character rejected by his family for being gay and by a medical establishment that refused to treat him with dignity. 

Not only did the episode provide useful information about what HIV is and isn't, dispelling widespread medical myths at the time -- but it also shone a light on HIV stigma. 

The villains of the episode are busybody neighbors who object to queer people and to sex in general. One of them crows that the best thing about AIDS is that it's killing people who deserve to be killed. This was not an uncommon attitude at the time -- Pat Buchanan wrote an op-ed to that effect in the New York Times, and was then invited to work for Ronald Reagan as Communications Director.

It's crazy that in 1987, exhibiting compassion for people with HIV was a revolutionary act, and that Designing Women was the best education available to some people about HIV. But what's even crazier is that in some parts of the country, that's still the case. Only a handful of states offer any form of sex education relevant to queer people -- and some states actually require the teaching of inaccurate information, like in Alabama where kids are taught that same-sex intercourse is illegal. 

When Killing all the Right People aired in 1987, it was clearly ahead of its time. It would be nice to think that thirty years later, times have finally caught up. But sadly that's still not the case.

Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Super Extra (Ep. 131 - Gabriel Fontana & Britney Spears)

How much are you willing to do for love -- and how much can love do for you? This week's guest is Gabriel Fontana, who grew up in violent crime-ridden Brazilian ghettos before escaping to Sweden, where he rose to pop stardom as the winner of a Swedish Idol spinoff. Gabriel's always been something of an escape artist, relying on a mix of hard work, talent, and love to pull himself out of places he didn't want to be. Now, with thousands of fans following his every move, he's feeling more intoxicating adoration than ever before in his life -- and an ever-growing impulse to pursue that attention wherever it calls him.

A big thanks to everyone supporting the Sewers of Paris on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, you can help keep it independent and ad-free with your pledge of support. Just go to SewersOfParis.com and click support the show on Patreon.

And thanks to everyone who downloaded the Dungeons & Drag Queens bonus episode last week! I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear your feedback about what worked, what didn't, and if you'd like to hear more like that -- you can get in touch @SewersOfParis on Twitter or sewerspodcast@gmail.com.

This Week's Recommendation: Stonewall (1995)

Big thanks to Gabriel Fontana for joining me. Keep an eye on him -- I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of Gabriel in the future. 

But for my recommendation this week, cast your gaze back to the past -- to 1969, by way of the 1995 film Stonewall. Do not confuse this with the more recent movie of the same title, which is not worth your time! The 95 film is a lovely and at times unbearably sad glimpse into the lives of queer outcasts at a time before Pride parades. The movie chronicles the lives of some down-and-out young gays in New York in the days leading up to the Stonewall riots, and while it takes a few creative liberties with chronology, the film humanizes our recent history in a way that will stick with you like no textbook could.

It seems incredible that our community was so vilified so recently. It seems like it must have been impossibly long ago. But just to put that in perspective: the distance from Stonewall the riot to Stonewall the movie is about the same as the distance from the movie to today.

Stonewall the place was something of a refuge for queers with nowhere else to go, a home for people who had to look out for each other because no one else would. Together, they managed to stand up against the world, and to inspire the pride that we relish today. And I love how the movie makes gorgeous use of music as the tension of that summer builds. Pop songs are as much a part of that gay culture as the slang and the wigs and the cruising, and seeing gays of decades past relishing the same songs we love today instills in me a deep sense of connection and melancholy for the pioneers I'll never get to meet.

Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Bonus Episode: Dungeons and Drag Queens

Welcome to a special bonus episode of The Sewers of Paris! 

A few days ago, some amazingly talented drag queens and I got on stage for a live show called Dungeons and Drag Queens. We played a custom-made Dungeons and Dragons adventure in front of a live audience, and I’m really excited to share it with you.

If you don’t know anything about Dungeons & Dragons, that’s OK. Some of the players didn’t either! Basically, we sit around a table, I describe a situation, the queens tell me what they want to do, and sometimes we roll dice to find out what happens.

I had so much fun trying to keep up with the queens on this adventure, and I hope you do too.

As always, The Sewers of Paris is independent and ad-free thanks to the support of listeners on Patreon. Patreon supporters, in case you were wondering, this one is a bonus. You’re not going to be charged. And to all listeners, we will, of course, be back next week with a regularly scheduled episode.

We had so much fun making the show, and I hope you enjoy listening to it. Let me know what you think on Twitter @mattbaume or at sewerspodcast@gmail.com.

Huge thanks to our fabulous performers:

Arson Nicki

Harlotte O’Scara

Butylene O’Kipple

Fraya Love

Ian Hill/Irene Dubois

DJ Robosexhomosex, aka Veronica Electronica

Brendan Mack

And you can watch video of the entire show below!

It's F*cking Tough to be Reasonable (Ep. 130 - Carlos Maza/Suikoden 2)

If you were to form a band of adventurers, what role would you want to serve -- fighter or healer? My guest this week is Carlos Maza, who knows how to put up a verbal fight as the host of insightful explainer videos for Vox.com. But off camera, the role in which he's most at home is that of caretaker, looking after others and supporting the well being of those around him. But as he's found, that doesn't always leave time for taking care of himself.
 

This Week's Recommendation: The Adventure Zone

Big thanks to Carlos for joining me for this very nerdy conversation. We didn't even have a chance to talk about our mutual enthusiasm for Dungeons and Dragons, but fear not -- for my recommendation this week, check out the podcast The Adventure Zone. Originally started as a one-off goof, the show was an instant hit and has grown into a sprawling emotional years-long epic.

The Adventure Zone cast consists of three brothers and their dad playing D&D, role-playing adventures in a fantasy land, and bonding as a family in real life. Over the last three years of game play, it's expanded to include LGBT characters and some truly touching romances.

When they began the show, the McElroy family had no idea they'd make more than one episode, but here it is, wildly popular and spawning live shows, comic books, cosplay, and animated tribute videos. They just set out with a rough idea and not much of a plan -- proof that sometimes no plan is the best plan.

And speaking of D&D, keep an eye on the Sewers of Paris feed for a special bonus episode going up on September 8th. It's the audio recording of a live show that I just hosted with a bunch of amazing Seattle performers, called Dungeons and Drag Queens. A lot of people helped make the show possible -- including this week's guest, Carlos Maza. He helped us test the game before we performed it before a live audience.

The Dungeons and Drag Queens special drop into the Sewers of Paris feed tomorrow, right after this episode, and if you like it -- great! If not, we'll be back with a regular episode next week.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Glitter and be Gay (Ep. 129 - Julie Andrews)

This Week's Guest: Kevin Clarke

What hidden worlds are waiting to be found right under your nose? My guest this week is Kevin Clarke, who grew up in a divided Berlin, so close to the wall he could hear the police threatening to shoot people who came too close. He was eager to leave as soon as he could -- but he was drawn back to the city years later. By then, he was old enough to discover and explore a bawdy underground gay culture that had always been hiding right in his own back yard.

Enjoying the show?

Join the folks supporting The Sewers of Paris with a pledge on Patreon.
 

This Week's Recommendation: Marlene Dietrich Live in Stockholm

Thanks again to Kevin for joining me. If you ever find yourself in Berlin, I highly recommend a trip to the Schwules Museum. And not just if you're Julie Andrews. It's an incredible glimpse into history and it's one of the great wonders of the queer world. 

For my recommendation this week, take a look at the work of another great queer icon: Marlene Dietrich. Specifically, seek out the full version of Marlene Dietrich live in Stockholm, a 1963 concert featuring some of her most iconic songs: La Vie en Rose, The Laziest Gal in Town, Lili Marlene, and of course Falling in Love Again.

But the song that moves me to tears every single time is her rendition of Where Have all the Flowers Gone -- a German translated version of Pete Sieger's great anti-war song. The song is moving even if you can't understand the words, in part because of how it's delivered: she stands resolute, staring tall in a single spotlight amidst darkness, and in her gaze into the distance and her beautiful deep voice there's a heartbreaking, mournful pain.

But of course there's pain. This was a woman whose career began in Berlin cabarets, who then watched the city she loved torn apart by war. She renounced her homeland and dedicated her career to fighting Nazis, turning over entire film salaries to funds that helped Jews escape. After the war was over, she learned that her sister had run a cinema frequented by concentration camp officers, and she disowned those family members. And many Germans never forgave her -- when she returned for a concert in the 1960s, she was met with protestors and bomb threats.

But she was absolutely a hero, at times performing for troops so close to battlefields her life was in grave danger. When asked why she would take such risks simply to boost the morale of those fighting Nazis, her reply was "aus Anstad" -- out of decency.

Standing up for what what was right meant sacrificing money, career, family, homeland -- but she did it anyway, and she remained standing even decades later, alone there in the dark at that concert wondering if a day will come when we will ever learn.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

The Doctor's Wife (Ep. 128 - The Witches)

Enjoying the show? Help keep it going with a pledge of support on Patreon!

This Week's Guest: Jonathan Duffy

What are you willing to sacrifice for your freedom? My guest this week is Australian-Icelandic comedian Jonathan Duffy, who's found a way to laugh through good times and bad, whether serving as Creative Director for Iceland's entry into Eurovision... to an unexpected calling tending to people near death in a small town the Australian Outback. There used to be a time when he just sat back and let the world pass him by. But his real adventures began when he started giving up the things he loved to get even more back.

Hey, if you're in Seattle at the end of this month, I'd like to invite you to two live events that I'm hosting. The first is a show we're calling Dungeons and Drag Queens, a live comedy show where four drag queens play through a D&D adventure on stage. It's happening on Thursday, August 31st at 7pm at the Timbre Room, and you can get tickets at StrangerTickets.com.

The second is a panel at Penny Arcade Expo -- that's PAX -- about how to create queer gamer communities. Whether you live in a big city or a small town, we've assembled a panel of experts with advice for LGBTQ geeks looking to organize. Tickets to PAX are sold out but if you're going, the panel's on Saturday, September 2nd at 12:30pm.

A big thanks to everyone supporting the Sewers of Paris on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, you can help keep it independent and ad-free with your pledge of support. Just go to SewersOfParis.com and click support the show on Patreon.

This Week's Recommendation: It's Time

As Jonathan mentioned, it's so important to let people know that you love them. For my recommendation this week, I want you to check out an Australian ad called "It's Time." It's short, just two minutes long, and it's shot as an unseen person's point of view -- you're seeing through their eyes as they meet a boy, go on dates, fall in love, meet the family and start a life together. 

Because the viewer is watching all this unfold, with characters making eye contact into the camera as though they're looking into your eyes, it's easy to get lost in that gaze -- to feel as though you're there, experiencing the rush of caring for someone and being cared about.

The whole thing flies by as a fast montage, a whole relationship from initial meeting to growing close to moving in to proposal. What's beautiful about it is how ordinary and familiar it all is: buying dinner together, sure, we all recognize that. Nervously meeting parents, sure, we've all been there. it just feels so normal. Throughout the entire relationship, there's not a moment of disapproval or skepticism or resistance about the couple's gender. And even though the ad was made to persuade straight people that we all deserve the freedom to marry, it's also an amazing gift to queer viewers: this is what it would feel like to fall in love in world where nobody thinks your love is wrong.

And then the ad fades to black just as we see two men embracing, about to begin life together as a married couple. And it's like a punch to the gut. Because that can't actually happen, at least not in Australia, not yet, or even in most countries. We don't live in that a world where nobody thinks our love is wrong. Not yet. There are still lots of people who would see that ad cut to black before the relationship can even begin. 

And that's one more reason to tell the people we love how we truly feel, no matter who or what stands in our way.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I am Militantly Vulnerable (Ep. 127 - Sailor Moon)

This Week's Guest: Gilda Wabbit

What's the future you want to see? My guest this week is drag queen Gilda Wabbit, who experienced a strange moment of internet fame thanks to a photo of her riding the subway in full drag next to a Muslim woman. What that photo didn't capture was Gilda's background searching for her voice -- literally, as for years she struggled as an opera singer to find roles that felt right. Turns out putting on a wig and a dress helped point her in the right direction.

This Week's Recommendation: Giant Woman

Thanks again to Gilda for joining me. You can find her on Twitter @gildawabbit, and you YouTube where you can see her singing Do it for Her from Steven Universe.

For my recommendation this week, check out another Steven Universe song: Giant Woman. You don't need to be familiar with the show to follow along -- thought it helps to know that it's a song song by a character who wants his friends to get along, rather than fight, because when they do they can combine to become a giant woman. 

I recommend this not just because Steven Universe is the most beautiful and pure television show ever made. But during a recent livestream, viewer FreeKillZero pointed out to me that becoming a giant woman is essentially what performer do when they get into drag. And although it might not have been the meaning intended by the show, there's a lovely parallel between the magic fusing of Steven's friends and the magic transformation of drag. 

Drag is something you wear on your outside but it's something you feel on your inside. It's a fullness, an achievement of inner potential that nobody could see until the wig and the makeup came along.

It's why, no matter how popular it become, drag will never become "mainstream," because it's an intensely personal, individual, political and rebellious act to declare that person everyone sees is wrong and persona that you feel is right.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Swept Away by Dracula (Ep. 126 - horror films)

This Week's Guest: Jeffrey Schwarz

We're noted from time to time on this show that many gay men hold a special place for horror in their hearts. But that's only a fraction of the story with this week's guest. Jeffrey Schwarz has made a lifelong study of film, starting with an early job editing the documentary The Celluloid Closet, right up to today with a new documentary about flamboyant producer Allan Carr. As a weird young gay man, he found kindred spirits in people who, like him, reveled in intensity and excess. And now as a filmmaker, he's reaching out a hand to invite others to join him.
 

This Week's Recommendation: The Lost Boys

Thanks again to Jeffrey for joining me, and no thanks to all the creepy horror stuff I looked through after recording this week's episode. I had some particularly unpleasant nightmares thanks to that title sequence from the show Chiller. But that obviously means that something's working -- something's speaking to me, even if I don't want to hear it.

I've always been squeamish about horror, because I'm easily spooked in general and also because it sometimes makes me confront anxieties I don't know how to handle. That's why it is with some nervousness that this week my recommendation is The Lost Boys, a 1987 vampire movie based on the lost boys of Peter Pan.

The film is set in a California coastal town and focused on a teen boy and his preteen brother. The older boy falls in with a sinister crowd of vampires, but they're not JUST vampires -- they're also extremely gay. In fact the whole film oozes with queer desire, probably because it was directed by Joel Schumacher. 

One young boy has a sexy pinup photo inside his closet; another signals that he's joined the vampires by wearing a single earring. There's a oily muscular saxophone player in purple tights who seems to have wriggled off of the pages of International Male, and the camera devotes a deeply uncomfortable amount of attention to a boy in a bathtub who sings about not having a man in his life. And that's all before we get to the extremely thin veil on the metaphor of a fraternal plague spread by the sharing bodily fluids in the 1980s.

For all its gleeful sexuality, The Lost Boys makes me a bit sad since it ultimately feels self-loathing. The band of brothers are evil monsters, killing without remorse. And they're ultimately defeated by child-heroes wearing uniforms of 80s action-star heteronormativity. Worst of all, the film attempts to shock with a predatory bisexual twist.

I want to root for the Lost Boys, both the movie and the characters. I want to be a part of the sexy, carefree young men living hedonistically on the beach. But no, the movie insists, you can't. Those guys are bad. The straight world is good. It really bums me out that the movie sees vampires this way, especially a movie made by a gay man.

But then again, in 1987, that is how the world saw gays. It was a story told about us so widely, so emphatically, and so convincingly that many came to believe it about themselves.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Everything but the Snakes (Ep. 125 - Worship songs)

This Week's Guest: Josef Krebs

What's the project of your life? My guest this week is Josef Krebs, who's done a lot of thinking about the impact he can have on the world, whether through the evangelical church in which he grew up, or the world of theater where he eventually found a more satisfying home. Josef's work has always been about chasing the feeling of ecstasy, not just for himself but for the people around him.

This Week's Recommendation: Katamari Damacy

I'm going to get very "big idea" for a moment here and assert that one of the primary functions of myth is to connect us to the cosmos -- that is, to make sense of the insensible vastness of the universe. But sometimes, the stories we tell make the universe make even less sense, and that's the case with this week's recommendation: the game Katamari Damacy.

The premise of the game is simple enough, and it's kind of Pac Man plus a snowball rolling downhill. You play the Prince of the Cosmos, whose father the king accidentally destroyed all the heavenly bodies. He wants you to go to Earth to collect material to remake the moon and stars. And the way you do this is by rolling a sticky ball around various places -- everything you touch sticks to the ball, and while you start very tiny you eventually roll up enough to gather paperclips, then small toys, then cats and dogs, then people and cars and buildings and trees. 

A line often repeated in the game is, "I feel it. I feel the cosmos." An indeed, it's hard not to feel as though everything is connected as you roll it all up, from the tiny bugs at the start to the giant cargo ships at the end. It is deeply satisfying to squish every object in the world together to make new stars. As Carl Sagan said, we're all made of star stuff, and there's a pleasurable democracy in seeing that everything, big and small, can get rolled up into a big sticky ball of celestial light. 

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/