Spider Man Lip Sync's Umbrella

Tom Holland aka The Leading Man of the Future ;)

For anyone who isn't aware, Tom Holland aka the new Spider Man absolutely killed it and shattered the glass ceiling of masculinity in Hollywood by donning drag and doing a stunning performance of Rihanna's Umbrella. Enjoy (video to follow). Also, the last pic is simply to show appreciation for the talented fandom. I do not own it and am not trying to make it seem like I do. I am just in awe

Justin in Bed

Good God I love him lol

Closets

Wow! I'm not sure how this short film never came onto my radar considering it features one of my favorite Whoniverse actors Tommy Knight aka Sarah Jane's son in 1 of the lead roles. This is a really heartbreaking but touching film with a kickass concept and it would make a fantastic romance or comedy if expanded to feature length. Watch and enjoy :)

Eulogy for Dad

My Dad passed away several weeks ago after a short battle with cancer. I posted a Facebook status about his death explaining the hows and whys and included a really lovely picture slideshow. Not to toot my own horn but I was quite satisfied with the end result. My brother even commented how he was speechless. I was happy I had pleased him. Initially I had every intention of writing a follow-up "eulogy" so to speak, even though Dad was being cremated and didn't want a service so really didn't require a eulogy. But I felt like I had to say more about the passing of a man who helped to create me and shape me in my childhood years, for better or worse. But the worse part held me up for a while. I decided not to post this on Facebook at all. People on Facebook are happy watching their funny cat videos. Complications and moral ambiguities not so much. At least that's how I see it. My Dad was never an easy person to love or keep a relationship with. I know that I am so very much like him and that worries me sometimes. But I also know that despite having my father's simmering temper I also have my mother's enormous and generous heart. He never held me. He hardly ever complimented me (at least until he was close to death). Later in life, he never called me unless there was an emergency. He never suggested we hang out. It always had to be me calling him to spend time together, despite the fact that other people told me he constantly griped about how little time he spent with my brother and I and his grandchildren. When we did speak on the phone, it would always consist of no more than 4 questions: 1) Whatever the primary reason for the call was 2) How I was 3) How my car was running 4) Did I need any money? That probably sounds amusing but that is the absolute truth. If I tried to interject something new into the conversation he would always cut the call short. And if you had anything morally complicated to discuss with him you'd better condense that shit into a fortune cookie sentence or you'd never get an answer. As it was, you'd have to repeat the fortune cookie sentence 4 times because he was 1) so hard of hearing 2) tended to talk over you and only pay attention to about one third of what you had just said. That's probably why I never came out to him. That and the fact that he often called Leonardo Dicaprio a faggot. I knew it would be a difficult conversation and extremely awkward after the fact so I simply bypassed the whole topic. I'm sure he knew. But we didn't discuss it. But I know that his response would have been positive had I decided to tell him. Positive in an extremely uncomfortable way no doubt knowing my Dad ("Hey Steve, my neighbor's son is gay do you know him?" sorta thing), but positive nevertheless.I should state here and now that this is not meant to be an airing of grievances against my Dad. I buried those long before I buried him. But it wouldn't do to memorialize him with just a positive whitewashing. Life is so much more complex than that. And Walter D. Shaw was no exception. One of the first memorable things I can recall him saying to me was "You wipe like a girl!". And his last words to me only 5 days before he died (expressing anger at being in a rehab center and not being able to go home) were "Thanks for shafting me." These are not the things that Hallmark cards are made out of. And yet, several weeks before he thanked me for shafting him, we had a long conversation about his time in Vietnam, which he'd never talked about before. I knew combat had changed him. I knew he was an atheist like me but when he got over there he started wearing a cross and praying to any diety he thought would listen. I knew he cheated on my mother with a Vietnamese girl and later confessed to her. But beyond that, he never spoke of it. Maybe that's because I was always afraid to ask. All I knew about the war was that it made him have horrible nightmares sometimes. And made him drink to excess every night when I was little. And made him angry at the world. An anger he would take out on my Mom and anyone else who happened to erroneously be in his way that night. Many times I recall being woken up to the sound of my mother being beaten or screaming for help. Several times we had to flee the house in the middle of the night and head in our pajamas to my Nana's house where we would spend a few days until the alcohol or his fury wore off. Once they divorced things settled down. His drinking fell to "acceptable levels" and his temper rarely revealed itself. He made a pretty decent weekend parent for a while. Several years at least. And then, something happened around the time I was 12 or so and my brother was 8. He suddenly stopped calling to come and pick us up for the weekend. I don't remember the exact circumstances or what he said when we called him to ask about it. But I was 12 I don't think I bent over backward to figure it out then. I just turned my confusion and hurt to anger and wrote him off. For about 15 years. We didn't see or hear from him. Didn't know if he was alive or dead. And then, one day I decided to give in to the nurturing part of myself that I inherited from my mother and write him a letter. Make no mistakes, if it had been the part of me I inherited from my Dad I would never have seen him again. My father hadn't seen either of his brothers for 20 years when he died. He was not prone to sentimentality. I don't remember what I said in the letter though I wish we had found it in his belongings after he died because I really would like to know. But eventually we reconnected, and my Dad got to watch his grandchildren be born and share so many life events with us. I think I'm proudest of that on a personal level. I brought that connection back even though I had deep reservations about it, and ultimately it was enriching for all of us. Despite all of his complexities, I attribute a lot of core character traits to my Dad. Certainly my love of music. He would always put a new record on the turntable and blast it through the speakers while my brother and I would run around the house like maniacs dancing to the beat. My love for cinema, most notably horror movies, started with him as well. When I was 6 and The Exorcist first came on HBO I begged him to let me stay up and watch it with him. He compromised, telling me he would wake me up when the movie started and that I had to go right back to bed afterward. You can debate the poor choice to let a 6 year old watch Linda Blair stab herself in the vagina with a bloody crucifix, but from that moment onward I was hooked on horror movies. I live for them now. That particular story comes with an amusing coda, though. I ended up being so frightened by the film that I couldn't go back to bed. All these years later, that movie still creeps me the fuck out. Some of the best makeup and voice acting in horror film history. But I can remember very clearly my Mom cuddling me in bed and telling me and my Dad that I shouldn't have watched the movie. And my Dad angrily telling me that he would never let me watch another horror movie. Spoiler alert: he did. He would also wake me up at 11:30 pm when The Honeymooners used to come on just so I could watch the episode with him and the two of us would crack ourselves up and then I would head back to bed. James Bond. Godzilla. We watched all of them together. And I still watch and treasure them to this day. I also remember during the "weekend parent" years of the early 80's Dad would take my brother and I to any movie we wanted to see that week, which sometimes made for interesting nights out. His little, unbeknownst to him, queer son (me if you've forgotten) saw a preview for this movie called A Night in Heaven which featured super sexy hottie of that moment Christopher Atkins not wearing very much at all as a male stripper who seduces his teacher. Dad thought it was pretty good but definitely gave me some major side eye afterward while asking "What made you choose that movie?" It still gets me hot. Then there was the time we went to see An American Werewolf in London and made it halfway through the movie until David Naughton started screaming hysterically while changing into the werewolf and my brother and I disappeared into the theater next store to watch Honky Tonk Freeway because we were scared but neglected to tell Dad where we were going. For years he would tell us "You abandoned me in that screwy werewolf movie!" In his later years, my Dad often helped me out with money when I needed it. When my car was hit on the street and totaled I called him up and he was there the next day cash in hand. When I needed a new computer and couldn't afford it, he sent me the money immediately. When I published my book (which happened to feature one story in particular written when we hadn't been speaking that featured a gay son who returns home to visit his dying father who disowned him when he came out that must have seemed really really familiar to him despite my still being in the closet), he bought a copy and promptly read it despite the fact that he never read fiction in his life, afterward telling me "Good job". Probably my biggest regret is never asking him why he stopped calling us and broke contact for all those years. When we did finally reconnect we simply ignored the question and started over fresh. But it forever nagged at me. As with most life mysteries, though, the answers I dream up in my head are probably much more fascinating than the truth. I'm sure being a weekend parent feels pretty thankless sometimes and he simply became bitter about it after a while. Now I'll never know. I do know that my Dad was proud of me and grateful for my presence at the end despite being angry at life for sending him out in such an undignified way. And that feels really good. Walter Shaw was many things. My Mom's first love. A war veteran. A proud grandfather. But most importantly, he was my Dad. He will be missed. RIP

Shit I Would Be Tweeting 2

Do you, like me, spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what's on the ground in Coruscant and Cloud City?

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I've met a lot of overbearing, preening, strutting straight macho alpha males who are John Wayne fans which is probably why I've stayed away from his movies my whole life. Never seen a one. Too often when I was little I'd hear stupid shit like this thrown around by WWII era elders: "Stop whining. Be a man." after which they would proceed to watch one of the Duke's Westerns declaring things like "This is when men were men." Now, I'm not saying this happened exactly like that. That would be too perfect. That's a summation and an amalgam of countless times the concept of "Being a man" and the fact that I was not one but John Wayne was got thrown in my face. It's expected that I would not be a fan. The man stands as sort of a living, breathing antiquated notion of gender concepts writ large. But sometimes I meet a Duke fan who isn't an alpha douchebag and they try to defend him to me. I'm not yet convinced (especially when said fan proceeds to give me a hummer in the men's room), but this morning a clip from a Wayne film appeared on my Facebook dash which seemed to laugh in the face of such defenses, which in turn made me laugh. A horrified laugh. But still. I don't know what movie it's from, but essentially Wayne comes upon a little boy fishing. After teaching the boy the proper way to fish, the Duke learns that he does not know how to swim. What does this bastion of all that is good and right with masculinity do? Offer to teach the boy how to swim? Say he's sorry to hear that? Nope. He grabs the boy's fishing gear from his hand and throws it aside, picks the boy up (harshly), and tosses him in the water. After screaming and struggling a bit (the Duke keeps the boy's horrified mother at bay saying "Every man should learn how to swim.") the boy makes it to the other side and he and the Duke and his mother live happily ever after (I'm assuming, the clip ended). And I was sitting there slack-jawed. Is THIS what all those dickbags who picked on me for not being manly enough idolized? And worse, the boy in the movie is made to seem thankful. If I was him and the Duke was my Step-Dad I can tell you that it wouldn't be easy sleeping in that house forever after. I'd be plotting how to slit his throat in the middle of the night to rid the world of his macho bullshit. Am I being too harsh? Probably. And taken out of context, maybe the movie condemns his actions as well. But I don't think so. And I was glad of 2 things: That I was born in the era I was and not when films like this set the tone, and that I'm still not a John Wayne fan.

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I'm often asked by people who don't work retail: Do people really come in and shop on Christmas? Let me take the time to answer this question once and for all here. Yes. Yes they do. No matter the holiday or calamity or natural disaster, there will never be a shortage of stupid people wanting to come in and buy dumb shit. You can safely bet a million dollars the next time there's an Earthquake that, right after, some dickhole will be trying to purchase a Margarita mixing machine in WalMart (yes, I stole that from South Park lol). And this bastion of commerce will almost always say something stupid like "I'm so sorry you have to work on Christmas." while he shoves his pair of jingle bell socks and guava fruit tic tacs that he just couldn't do without for 1 fucking day toward me to ring up andf I'll inevitably have to stifle the urge to reply "Well if you fucking stayed home I wouldn't have to work, asshole." Merry Christmas everyone!

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Watching The Fellowship of the Ring again recently I was struck by how much nuance is in the film and why that, and good reaction shots, and emotional setup, are all key to what makes that series so successful and also what makes The Hobbit trilogy a poor successor. Reaction shots are so important. They can be overdone sometimes, but just think about the scene in Return of the King where the ring finally falls into the lava and Mordor begins to crumble. Peter Jackson takes the time to register different emotions from every main character fighting on the ground. As Aragorn and Legolas and Gandalf and the hobbits look up and realize that Frodo has succeeded at first they are overcome with joy and relief, but as the mountain explodes he returns to their faces and we see the dread on them and the realization that Frodo and Sam were probably destroyed in the blast (as far as they know). And even though we the viewer know they are safe, its important to convey both what the characters are thinking and the gravity of the situation. There is almost none of this in the Hobbit films. We can barely remember all of the dwarves' names, let alone their motivations beyond a simple "Returning to their homeland". And the one dwarf whose motivations we DO know is busy suffering from "gold sickness" or some bullshit. Counter that with the subtle but very powerful story of Theoden in LOTR, who for all intents and purposes is master of his domain and king of all that he surveys but must unselfishly put all of that aside to make way for Aragorn to be King of Minas Tirith. The moment when he pauses after Aragorn tells him that the beacons are lit and Gondor calls for aid is beautiful. We know he could be selfish and turn his back and all will be lost. But he does not. Instead, he decides to go to war. A war in which he will end up dead. That's heroism and the stuff that good stories are made out of. And there is very little of that in the Hobbit films. Bilbo's story is a good one and a nice anchor for the movies. But its slight compared to Frodo who sacrifices his life. I'm not saying there isn't worthy stuff in those films and great performances, but in the end, its a lot of spectacle and not much heart. And that's the key.


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Some thoughts on Star Wars: Rogue One:


Holy shit Gareth Edwards, you've made the best Star Wars movie since the original trilogy.

Diego Luna needs to be in more movies and do more nude scenes point blank. That man is hot. And talented. Not necessarily in that order. He actually made me cry with his speech about doing awful things for the Rebellion.

Something else that made me cry: the deaths of Chirrut and Baze. And I don't care what anybody else says, they definitely rang my gaydar throughout the movie so I'm going with "They're queer". It was so touching when Baze repeated Chirrut's mantra about the Force as he sought some revenge.

The fan orgasm that was Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar. I was not aware that Vader had a castle on the planet where Obi Wan mortally wounded him (though I'm guessing it is in some of the animated spin offs) but this was fucking brilliant. He's like the Frankenstein monster if he had killed his Creator and everyone else in the castle and decided to stay there. Except instead of a bed he stays in some weird blue bubbling misty liquid vat. This whole sequence was fascinating. First of all, the only people we see there with him are two Imperial guards. Do they follow him everywhere? Is it just the three of them there? So many freaky unanswered questions.

Not to mention Vader's amazing siege on more than a dozen armed men in a dark hallway where he proceeds to cut them down with either his light saber or the Force. This was an excellent reminder of why Darth Vader so captivated audiences in the first place. He's scary. And badass. Indeed, when he first approaches in the pitch black hallway, all we hear is his heavy breathing. It was like something out of a horror movie.

The Death Star when experienced from the ground is fucking terrifying again. Remember way back when Tarkin uses the Death Star to destroy Princess Leia's planet killing billions of people and you were like motherfucker that's awful. But then in subsequent sequels (not to mention Family Guy parodies) it became quite comical because the Empire keeps building the same thing over again and putting the same weaknesses in it and you kinda forgot how horrified you were the first time you saw it put into action. But watching it blow up just a city in this film as the characters on the ground from miles away struggle to get out of the debris, was amazing. And terrifying again. Kudos. A planet killer should be nothing if not scary and impressive.

This is a war movie. And a dirty, grimy one filled with characters of questionable morals. As it should be.

I have NEVER been a proponent of CGI. I hate it usually. But here, it looks beautiful. So if it could look this good all the time I'd be a happy guy.

My only tiny quibble was Darth Vader's voice. It sounds frail and old, as James Earl Jones no doubt is at this point. And I'm not saying I want somebody doing an approximation of his voice. While he's alive I'd much rather have the real thing. But I kept thinking "Christ they raised Peter Cushing from the dead for this movie couldn't they make James Earl Jone's voice a little scarier digitially or something? But besides that, not many nitpicks here. This is a kickass movie.

Shit I Would Be Tweeting

I've decided that while my Twitter is suspended I will start writing down all the useless but highly important to me shit I would normally post there here under the heading "Shit I Would Be Tweeting" to vent my creative urges. Enjoy or ignore at your pleasure. Obviously I didn't limit myself to 140 characters 😉

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As each successive day goes by and another Neo-Nazi or useless scumbag campaign donor totally unfit for the position they're accepting gets appointed on Trump's staff, as each diplomacy gaffe unfolds over Twitter ("unpresidented" OMFG), even as he does a disgusting "Thank You" Tour where he basically bloviates at a crowd of people who he conned to help get him there and essentially admits that his entire campaign was all hot air and that he has no intention of following through on most of the shit he promised, I'm still sitting here in shock that this total buffoon of a man will soon, unless action is taken, be leading our country. It seriously frightens me. And I am not a person easily frightened. It also mystifies me why the Democrats are so easily beaten. Right now, we have a bloodless coup going on in North Carolina over the ousting of Pat McCrory, that shitbag who orchestrated and defended to his last breath the horrid anti-trans HB2 Bill. Republicans are pulling all kinds of dirty tricks to fight back. That is what the Democrats need to be doing on a National scale. I don't care if it makes us look like sore losers. I don't care if it's getting down to their level. I don't care that we should honor the will of the people (a majority of whom, incidentally, didn't vote for the man). Fuck the people. There are a lot of dumbass people in America. We just usually don't let them run the fucking country. Get to fighting you spineless Democrats!

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Why does every sequel feel it necessary to bust up the romantic pairing that the first movie spent so much time getting us invested in? It's a pointless bid for drama and lazy writing. I don't care if, in reality, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock's characters in Speed wouldn't stay together past a first date. You've made me hope that they would. Stop that shit.

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You know a show has problems when you can't remember if 1 main character knows that another is dead yet or not because the show enjoys splitting everyone up for months at a time. I'm looking squarely at you, The Walking Dead.

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You know it's reached the harsh days of Winter (though Winter isn't technically even here yet) when I start saying in my head "You don't really wanna jack off today you'll have to be out from under the blanket too long!"