Dirty Laundry: Life with my Brother Christopher Ciccone

I’m not the only one who eagerly anticipated the inside scoop by Christopher Ciccone, Her Madjesty’s brother. I held a shred of hope that he might be a very insightful person, in addition to being her brother, and that I’d be closer somehow.

There’s not much I admire more than manic creativity, and few, ever, have had as much as she has of this elusive gift. I’m most powerful when I’m creating, but to point out that my productivity is a teeny weenie fraction of hers would be kicking a bitch while she’s down.

So yeah, I’m guessing that what you’re feeling is that Madonna, like, so acts like she’s queen of the world, dear brother. Huh? Because she IS, hello?

I’m sympathetic, believe me. To be an art fag in a small town, and be sure that life will be surprising and vivid. Then, your sister just happens to be way bigger than the president. She’s president of the world. She’ s LOADED. She’s loaded with wildfire. She is a machine. She is staring at you, sometimes naked, from everywhere you look. You hear her zillion hits everywhere you go. There are cameras poking and prodding all the time. You just landed on planet Madonna.

But then, I’m vacuumed dry from a brief trip in the mall. She’s got to have a massive core of strength to retain to renew that output. The emptiness that must be there inside when every tiny thought or action is magnified. The sheer insanity and awesome vanity of her world. She writes about these unique emotions we can’t really experience in her songs. She may rule us, but she also belongs to us. She is a very deep woman if her well has not run dry. And it hasn’t. Her work is just beginning.

All that fame, all that money, all that noise. That can’t be easy either. I would so not want that. I may act like I want it, but that’s just bravado, I assure you, just like you. But you could not possibly be Madonna and survive it if you were a doormat or a pushover or shy or something.

So, look Chris, she’s high strung, wants it her way, and insists you stop doing blow with supermodels while trying to decorate her house. What’s the issue here? I hear whining.

No, really, this memoir is only embarrassing for the brother; even though it’s clear Sister can be a meanie, that she spent a lot of her life thinking only about herself. Oh, gee, that’s right, she even wrote a song about that. The lyrics were “I was selfish.” Even more degrading in this book was the continual bellyaching over and over about mopping her sweat and doing her laundry when he worked as his newly famous sis’s dresser. There’re a million fags who would die to touch the fountain of life every night, I assure you. I can appreciate that her brother isn’t one of them, but the human machine woman runs and sweats and leaps on and off stage as do many athletes, performers, circus acts, musicians, and so on, and dressing a performer is the job where dirty laundry is going to happen. There are people who work in laundromats all over the world, and many mothers, who are just doing laundry for Joe Doe and not for Madonna. People clean up sweat. It happens all the time.

Oh, yeah, and also, Chris says Truth or Dare was a bit contrived. Quelle surprise. And yet fiction always illuminates the truth, non?

Could it be that WE get it, but he can’t see the empress for the empire? Give her a break, dude- her mistakes were/are made in public. She has a lot of balls to never look back. Look, little brother, I don’t want to hear another Madonna ‘my dead mother’ song ever again, either. But yo, she does have emotions, exhaustion, and unique challenges. If you need to work your shit out, do what you got to. But saying “I miss my mother” over and over is nowhere near as embarrassing as saying, over and over, “No, really, I only ever had miniscule key bumps when I was hanging out with Kate and Naomi and Donatella.” (Lord help her, what DID happen to that poor woman’s face? I really like her but it’s difficult looking at her.) No really, the smallest bumps you’ve ever seen. Besides, like Madonna charged me fifty cents for a joint when we were 16. Can you believe that? Smoking pot. It’s fine for her to experiment 20 years ago once or twice, but it’s not okay for me and my fruit flies to have a blow orgy beside her pool whiles she’s out working. What gives?

Finally, though I am the champion of everything good and gay in this world, at the front of the parade of the pink regime, I can’t stand mumbling and whining about endless perceived homophobia, not when there are people being executed or losing jobs or getting bashed. I’m not going to blame my every failure on misogyny. We live in the real world. We have to find a way to live among people who don’t value fags or women. We have to have energy available for real crises of homophobia for which there are plenty. But there are dozens of jabs, innuendoes, and victim-mongerings throughout Chris’s bio that had me rolling my eyes so frequently they nearly fell out of my skull. Warren Beatty was secure in his masculinity, coolio with the gay brother. Guy Ritchie- not so much. Kept using the word ‘twee,’ apparently, as Chris slaved over the design of hubby’s shoe closet. You know, I’ve been looking for a new word. As a usually-straight chick, ‘fag’ doesn’t quite go well on a t-shirt. “Queer” as in “queer sensibility” is as good as it gets, but reminds me way too much of all that time spent slogging through those dullsville books on gender polemics back when I was, well, more polemic. Twee…now that’s exactly right…

I’ve long awaited the Madonna biography that might really satisfy. Something deeply intelligent, informative, insightful. This was not it. What can be said that hasn’t been said about Madonna? I mean, you can take “Madonna” courses in university. She’s living history. Rainforests have disappeared to print what has been said about Madonna. But after reading every biography known to me written about my mother, I know there’s only one who can tell the story right, and I will wait until she tells it. I should have known all along.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Donnarama Does Madonna

The first time I met Donnarama, more than ten years ago, she was plucking my roommate Dimitri’s eyebrows in my living room. I marveled at her beauty school skills, but it soon became apparent that Little Miss Vincent was good at just about everything. Those were happy days when life was all about the Spice Girls and Mike’s Hard Lemonade and every night was a drag show or dancing until dawn.

Of course, Donnarama helped make life absolutely fabulous, and we were a festive bunch. Sometimes, though, we would get frustrated or cry as we tried to figure out the chaos of this world and how to get through it.

One day I wrote a love poem for Vince called A Spell Against Sadness. (This appeared later in my book, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos. You can pick it up online at indigo or amazon.)  Here it is:

Poem for Vince (a spell against sadness)
for Donnarama

oh God how I wanted
to be a poet and a rock star and a stripper
and a shrink an artist
a missionary    how I wanted
to have something
that the rest of the world
might notice
how I never wanted to care
what anybody thought
of anything

oh baby doll, it’s all about
staying alive

falling apart on your floor last night
with fat April and
Sylvester
turning their
yellow-eyed disdain on us
consenting to a brief purr
us being out of
our minds as usual
I wake up wrapped in my dirty old red coat
all the glamour of last night’s liquor and perfume
is a sticky film on our skins

and I go

oh baby doll I hope you get out of here
I want you to see the sights
I want everything to blow your mind
I want crowds for you
applause
I want everything that you ever needed
to be real

I’ll meet up with you
in New Orleans
for whiskey sours
in a dim jazz bar
where absinthe once drenched the floors
where whores and voodoo queens made
their trades
no one will recognize us in our Gucci shades-
we will get into trouble
raise a few eyebrows and a little hell
don’t you worry baby doll,
I am there
when you least expect it in this fucking world
I will be there
you will look up form your cab on Broadway
and see someone wrapped in pink velveteen
crossing the street and you will smile
you will recall stealing ghetto rags from the Goodwill
you will hear someone’s shrill laugh in a club and
you will laugh and that is
where I am
right there

remember:
once how trashed after the club
all the queens soaked in root beer shooters
drenched in late night madness and beats
you and me ran back to my house
with our little horde of marijuana
I was standing like a preacher
waving my arms
yelling about how Courtney Love fell into
the warm blood of the man she loved
feeling how dead he was how we bawled there
leaking stark and sour tears over laughter
our sad strength for Kurt Cobain who didn’t make it

oh baby doll it’s all about
staying alive
honey honey honey
let me hear you on guitar
I hear you plan alone at night
training your fingers to go where the sound comes from
I hear your crown go wild when you come on stage
dressed in drag your own designs
Salvation Armani
dressed up as your heroes
Barbra Barbie Garbage
I watch the spell you weave and know for sure
know for certain
how you of anyone I love
how you can do absolutely anything you damn well please
how you can do anything you want to
in this fucking world
shine on, you crazy diamond.

****

And here she is, friends, a cult on youtube. Here she is, interviewing stars like Garbage’s Shirley Manson for hot magazines. She is a comic genius, and a cosmic masterpiece.

She’s an  absolute superstar, soaring higher and higher with every turn. Don’t miss this brilliant Madge parody directed by the talented Devon Poole. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Donnarama!
Papa, watch me fly!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yjuN54YoY4

Madonna and other Wacky Chicks, with Simon Doonan

Everybody wants to rule the world, but only Madonna gets to do it.

The day after a gin and oyster extravaganza, I’ve decided to lay low and have an evening of reading. It’s not the first time I’ve chosen to stay home and read on a Saturday night, and it won’t be the last. There’s much to be said for lounging around without a bra, draped on each side by a content feline friend, listening to Madonna’s brilliant retropop, Sky Fits Heaven.

I’m super-stoked tonight because I’ve stocked up on the Madonna cover stories popping up everywhere as the world anticipates Hard Candy, her zillionth studio album. Also, I’m researching for a future project in my ‘fun feminism’ files and Simon Doonan’s Wacky Chicks has finally arrived from the library. Picking up the May 2008 Elle, ready to learn more about My Madgesty’s pending 50th, I notice that the interview is by the same author as Wacky Chicks. You all know the big ol’ fuss I make over every little coincidence. Groovy.

Now, everything in me appreciates the candy-coated pop propagation, but my interest in Madonna’s longstanding supremacy acknowledges the considerable depth of her mission. I’m curious to see how this all plays out- I’ve got my theories in that wacky goddess’s heart of mine that match rather nicely with some of the weird Kabala stuff going on. Methinks Our Lady of Mission Malawi just might be the Messenger/Messiah/Angel, call it what you will. Her public transformation from pop tart to saint to superpower is stunning.

Madonna’s messages can’t be underestimated- forget the presidency- Madonna’s influence is unparalleled. I can’t imagine being an outspoken woman artist without her paving the way. I can’t imagine what state gay rights would be in, or women’s rights for that matter, without her enormous influence changing our culture’s- and the world’s- paradigms. Every controversy has culled more money, more thoughts, more work toward or forward on more issues. Though many may find her mannerisms and her path to be outrageous, that’s also what was said about another teacher in his day. And I for one don’t think it’s that farfetched that a lady named after his mother might just be his messenger. Uptight Puritans who still equate a hot, sexy woman with the fall of man and can’t conceive of human sexuality as holy might think I’m off my rocker, but honey, that is just so five millenniums ago.

I digress, as usual…now Doonan’s awesome book Wacky Chicks celebrates other pink pluckies who won’t necessarily end up in Gautier with disco-ball pasties as the costume to their truth telling. But they might…Doonan gushes over a bunch of oddball chicks we’ve never heard of, and he does it with that particular type of observant candor and incisive wit that makes me damn jealous. Subtitled “Life Lessons From Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women,” this stupendously entertaining collection is vivid, to say the least.

“Life’s a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death,” is how the book begins, quoting Auntie Mame. It’s great thinking on Doonan’s part to highlight some of less-known bright and brilliant broads. The 2003 collection is true, pure camp, yet treads new territory so stylishly that one day he’s going to get to interview Madonna. And in that interview he willingly refers to himself as a screaming queen, praying for nerves of steel as he’s about to come face to face with wonder woman. Or God herself.

Everyone should read his piece in Elle because maybe they didn’t know what Madonna has been doing in the world. She’s not in the papers every day naked anymore. Sometimes there’s a half-hearted divorce rumour, then the chitchat reverts to Lindsay’s vodka relapse- or was that just water in that water bottle? Madonna has managed to live a surprisingly private life for the most famous woman in the world. (So much can be done, folks, see, when you aren’t on drugs.) Madonna’s spiritual evolution is the stuff of history books, and to the naysayers who say ‘say it ain’t so’ sure, love, I’ll say it, but it IS so. Madonna is already a curriculum in university and has been for over a decade. I have umpteen academic discourse collections. The future classroom won’t mention you or me, darling.

All this means, of course, that Madonna’s fate has been mythically meant into existence. It’s possible that no one believes in fate more than I do, despite the backlash on ‘voodoo science.’ Voodoo is the ONLY science, for crying out loud. Alchemy, magic, madness, creativity, chemistry, dendrites and axons, hello. It is indeed magic to have 3000 songs- unique acts of art, of creation by a variety of artists- in a small box on my desk. That I can talk to Japan tonight. That milk thistle herbs heal your liver. Get it? It’s no war between irrational beliefs and science. The phenomenal world is science uncovering.

And yay, we have a ways to go. So yes, I am proudly a fate-alist and I’m out loud and proud and do have half a brain. Not the same half as yours. My childish, insecure, ridiculous ideas that I should be/have been Madonna instead of Madonna were simply insane. But just as I felt lame for even thinking it, I can only be myself. My fate is there, and I’m in it, and part of it was dreaming crazy shit like that. Not that uncommon, huh, ladies?

The fabulous thing is though, that we are each unique, with our own fate alchemizing before our eyes. And my particular role as a bit over the top, a bit messy, a worrywart, a writer, is oh, so perfect. Oh, it really fits!

So if you’re a wacky chick, so lucky to live in this free to be you and me era that Madonna helped usher in, do yourself a favour and read about these other superdames. Bask in the afterglow of Doonan’s meeting with Madonna by laughing through these tales of mad money makers, strippers, fashionistas and other wackettes.

Donna Karan says Simon is a male Lucille Ball. I’m too young to really recall or appreciate this spitfire heroine- but I can nearly agree with Liz Smith, who called him “the most brash and brilliant thing in type.” Imaginative and fearlessly working it, Doonan captivates. You laugh, you cry. You fix your powder.

Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women
Simon Doonan
Simon and Schuster, 2003

If you like my columns, you’ll love my poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife. You can order it through amazon or indigo online. Or visit me at www.thegirlcanwrite.net and add me to your facebook!

xoxox Lorette C. Luzajic

Feud of the Gods

I missed what is now old news: Moby’s declaration of love to Eminem, after years of feuding between them over whether or not Moby’s music should be called “techno.” Seems the yappy rapper impressed the lily-livered sage with his anti-Bush rhetoric. I’ve been a fan of Moby’s music for a long time, but spent 2007 hopping around to Eminem and dreaming up ways that we could get together. Eminem used to offend me, too, and now I just can’t get enough of his dynamite. I think Moby is catching on, too, as he ages. Some gods are more theatrical, some more solemn. Each has his place. Britney and Kevin? Elton and Diana? Madonna and the rest? It’s just the feud of the gods.

Now Moby is more famous for his one minute on last week’s Daily Ten than he is for his baldness, unorthodox ethical life, and 20 years of innovative, exquisite music. “I love Eminem, and I decided if I’m gonna have feuds in the future they’re not gonna be with the most successful musician on the planet, who travels with people who have guns.”

Moby was not, of course, the only queer or woman to take offense at Eminem’s fag and bitch jabbery. Whole armies of human rights advocates were up in arms. So was Boy George.

Then again, Boy George and Elton John both made public their distaste for their own mother, The Madonna. Weird. It was just plain bizarre for Elton to poopoo Madonna’s live shows for lip-synching. Consider that if I am naked, dancing aerobically on the roof with acrobats and drummers, flying through the air, I may have to lip-synch here and there. But everyone knows Madonna does all the work that is humanly possible, all the time.

You would also expect a skinny white boy like Eminem to very realistically diss fags the way many cultural groups do- most certainly his demographic. It was refreshing to see Elton John get it right for once and join with Em at those infamous Grammy awards of yesteryear as if to say, “can’t we all just get along?”

I’m the quintessential fruit fly, born that way in my own way, and the view from here is this: Elton John performing with Eminem is building a bridge the way nothing else could be. Props to both parties for showing the truth: that showbiz is just showbiz. You gotta read behind the scenes. Music makes a world where Eminem and Elton can merge audiences in peace. In the Madonna era, we are the champions.

Hilarious that some of these same girls have got too big for their britches. That they dared to lash out publicly at Madonna! Oh, keep it to yourself. I mean, come on, Madonna made a world where I can spend my life in clubs with the fiercest and the finest. I can go to gay church on Sunday and watch Will and Grace with my best friends and their shih tzu Lola. I can drink frosted crantinis and still pick up men, because everyone mingles now like one big happy family. And those crantini girls? They’re a really married couple, because I live in an awesome country that affords my friends to make the same marital complications that I’m allowed. Elton was still in the closet until Madonna let him out. I mean, wow, ELTON JOHN tried to pass himself off as straight- kind of like Jodi Foster. Imagine.

So what was what’s his name? Yes, war is stupid, my silly bear. That’s why Eminem and Madonna put out powerhouse songs like Square Dance and American Life. So what was your sketch, honey? Oh, right- Madonna doesn’t do her own accounts and she should have dissed Eminem for saying ‘fag’ instead of giving torch to free speech.

Since when do we only hear what we want to hear? How little can we then know about human nature and behaviour? Besides, Georgia you’re a big girl now. You’re allowed to walk on the streets with those eyebrows without getting killed.

Here’s the deal: whatever our special subgroup, whatever our unique identity markers, we’re going to have to endure some blatantly irritating stories and insinuations, but we also get to tell ours. We MUST fight to keep free speech, not fight to censor the speech of someone we don’t like. It riles me up how much we take for granted: it wasn’t too long ago that I could not vote because of my pretty little head. I don’t have to be married or live as a man in order to paint. I might hear “bitch!” as I walk down the street. Bring it on. But don’t send me to a country where I would go to jail for showing my ankles. Come on, George, you should be going up to the guy and asking if he wants to talk about it, for crying out loud. Do you think there are ghetto kids home in from the streets, crying because Tupac said nigger?

The thing is, ladies, we need Madonna to remind us, like the great Mother that she is to all, that though gay music is indeed among her inspirations, the rest of the world is still breeder. And in that world is also eroticism, and oppression, and sorrow, and beauty, and those worlds must also tell their stories. I’m very happy to be among the shiniest gems in this city, but at some point I am also one of those fine breeder specimens (with a twist, of course!) with unique needs and stories of my own.

The point is, Georgie Girl, Eminem and Madonna are both a zillion trillion kabatetrillion times more spectacular, creative, talented, smart, and more adept at perceiving the world around them than you will ever be. Yeah, it was a blow to me as well, and I just had to accept that I will never be as celebrated as Madonna! And as soon as I understood that we have to have teachers, the easier it got for me to be humble. What could we learn if we were at the top of our game? Even Madonna learns, gleans, muses over and mulls. She knows she is not the only player in showbiz, even if she is the Lady Messiah.

Besides, if I were relegated to a life of nothing but the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, I’d shoot myself in the eye. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Pet Shop Boys are underrated and love their glossy, detached sardonicism. And Erasure is so happy and angelic, a true flame of positive energy making. But once in a while I’m going to have to mate. And when that happens, it’s either smoldering with Nina Simone’s blues, or Led Zeppelin maxed up on volume, or, well, Madonna’s Bedtime Stories.

I knew Moby was smart enough to come around, and that he’d come to agree to disagree and offer his respect. I’m not saying you have to love Eminem just because I suddenly do. I was very much of that mindset that I couldn’t tolerate the word ‘bitch’ and hence, I missed out on a lot. Then I figured it out. I do not have to endorse a certain headset toward any group just because I am capable of listening to elements of those groups through their cultural markers like music, film, art. But I sure as hell have to give props where props are due, and allow you space and audience to say your piece, so that I can also have mine.

Sigh- the last man I seriously considered running away with, the rippling army brat slash firefighter- expressed some surprise that someone of my awesome intellectual fortitude would give a flying flick about what Paris was wearing and whether Eminem’s 20 year relationship with his foster sister/wife was going to last.

Well, I wasn’t going to go anywhere if I wasn’t allowed to read my magazines! Most people are a little embarrassed about their celebrity fixations, perhaps guilty because they cannot name a dozen Nobel or Pulitzer winners. But I’m not ashamed. Guerrilla scholar and intelligence of the world, Camille Paglia, is also very candid about her worship of various icons, including Madonna.

By following the triumphs and tragedies of our stage and screen, we are merely re-enacting the great loves and the great feuds of the gods. Like Dionysus and Isis and Ganesh and Pan, like Medusa and Imanja and Thor- our pantheon is rife with vanities, insanities, jealousies, scandals, affairs, murders, adventures, broken hearts. Human beings have a profound need to deduce their world through the scandalous sagas of the gods and goddesses.

Ancient or modern, we do now and always will weave our stories within theirs. Moby and Eminem are just classical archetypes, finding their places after a dramatic rift. The escapades and sagas of the immortals are exactly the theatres we’re re-enacting. Academics can snivel at me, and turn into their soulless diagrams of the epoch of Horus or Tristan and Isolde.

But we live our life in archetypes, and today’s paparazzi zeitgeist is no exception.

November 2007
Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net
www.literaryaddict.wordpress.com
www.thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com
If you like me, please recommend my writing to friends who may enjoy it. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like me to write something for your project.

Scared Straight: Reading Boy George’s Autobiography

Could it be that under all that festivity, sassy saccharine songstress Boy George is just one of those sniveling, whining queens no one really likes?

So it appears after reading his tedious and self-absorbed autobiography, Straight, with Paul Gorman. I definitely admire anyone who wears extreme makeup with panache and aplomb. Georgie Girl writes as if his artistry is an inner force that has knocked the world over, but even hardcore fans can only name a song or two- the chameleon one, yeah, that’s it. It’s fine to be fluffy; it’s fine to be famous for your public persona and style, but let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?

Boy George defends this lack of artistic production as a conscious, stress-relieving system that works for him. He says he’s very choosy about what work he takes on. Very selective. Sure, perhaps the joy of your life is radical clubbing and you are surrounded by intriguing fuck-ups and want to tell us about them. Terrific!

Sort of. There’s lots of stuff about the clubs and the weirdoes inside them, but instead of getting the feeling that Boy George is a very funny, friendly girl, you’ll just hear about how well-adjusted he is versus all the others. Factory freaks were far from “well-adjusted,” and it seems George wants to come across at the same time as a post-Warholian diva. Problem is, the art and the personality are both lacking.

Finally, half the book is anti-Madonna simpering, which is hardly good for anyone’s image. It used to be fine for your mother and mine to dismiss her as nothing but a half-naked tartette, but since she ruled the world with her mastermind magnificence, dissing Our Lady is really rather silly, even if she’s not your cup of tea. Leaving well enough alone would be the wise idea for George, given the obvious contrast in success and innovation and spirituality and performance ideas between the two. But Georgie can’t look up from his navel long enough to realize Madonna rules the world, or at the very least, has accomplished something.

However, this doesn’t faze him: “I’m not one of those people who respect success for the sake of it,” he writes. “Arms dealers and warlords accumulate fortunes but I don’t respect them.” Oh, yes, right, the tyranny of the breast.

Or this: “People always say she’s a brilliant businesswoman, but trust me, at that level of income she hardly does her own accounts.” I bet she does, George, I bet she actually hand selects each and every advisor, investor, accountant and runs the show thoroughly, but whatever, darling. You go back to your corner of the room now.

Oh, yeah, he says either she’s predicable or else he’s a mystic, and that she’s just an abandoned little girl wanting to be loved. You know what? So am I. So is everyone. And I’m not strutting the globe in the coolest boots ever and spreading the good news to every nation under the sun. And neither, George, are you.

It gets worse, though. You’ll want to leave your radical ‘80s childhood in tact, so skip the whole thing before the illusions burst and leave you with nothing. Apparently George is a better artist than Eminem, so he recorded a song called Swallow Me, where he rapped about the “great white saviour of hip hop.” You can be sure I’ll be downloading this one for a good laugh- good thing he mentioned it, otherwise I would never have heard of it. Anyhow, here he whines on about how easily Eminem throws around the word ‘faggot’ and how since Eminem got popular, he’s had to endure people shouting ‘fag’ at him more frequently than before.

First of all, sister, if you show up anywhere in swaddling neon scarves with lipstick on your forehead, someone’s gonna pipe up with the f-word. Second, can our rainbow nation please develop a thick skin and a funny bone? People are gonna dismiss faggots and women from here until the end of time, and I’m gonna roll my eyebrows, not roll over and die when I hear it.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Give me a bleeding break, my friend. The world is more faggot-friendly than ever before. It’s true that when I grew up, I was ostracized for hanging around with queens from art school and listening to Culture Club. But now Dan Savage, lover of Ashton Kutcher in the tightey-whitey, is sex advice guru to all men. It’s the age of the metrosexual and the sensitive male. It’s post-Will and Grace, and yes, dear George, it’s a culture taught by Madonna that gays are people, too. It’s the age where gay marriage is finally allowed, and changes are happening all over the world. For the very first time in history, the fag has a few rights, and more are coming, and ladies are allowed to vote, too!

Still, he digs the grave deeper siding with critics who lambasted Madonna for standing up for Eminem’s right to free speech, when she should have been attacking Em’s shock-cock values. I have about a zillion queeny friends and all of them agree that Eminem is a cherubic hottie, and no one, including Elton John, is afraid he may attack them for being queer. It may or may not be stage personality in good taste, but I’m not even going to bother going after rap for what it says about women. I’m going to say what I want about women, and listen real good to Madonna’s message, and leave it at that, because some things are just stories. Lest we forget, it is free speech, however disarming, that let Will and Grace on the air, that let us talk about taboos, that lets us get away with outrageous talk and dress, that lets us address sexuality and religion and make sense of things. If poor white trash is not free to speak, then neither are poor white peasants like myself or apparent aristocracy like Boy George.

So yawn. I could hardly stay awake to endure another supposedly outlandish opinion. All I could think was “Who are you?” and mourn that my beloved favourite sultry trannie song will now forever flash through my head as The Whining Game. Now that is something to cry about.