Bay Windows
Coma chameleons
Naming your band for a song by one of your idols automatically raises listener expectations, but for Girl In A Coma, when the idols in question are the infamous and legendary The Smiths, there’s a lot to live up to. With their debut record "Both Before I’m Gone", released last year on Blackheart Records (started by another music legend, Joan Jett), sisters Nina (vocals/guitar) and Phanie Diaz (drums) alongside bassist Jenn Alva, placed those legendary influences on their sleeves.
Gay author dismissed from duties at St. Anthony Shrine
This summer Scott Pomfret released a memoir, Since My Last Confession, about reconciling his gay and Catholic identities as a parishioner at Boston’s St. Anthony Shrine. Last week the friars at the shrine told him that he was no longer welcome to serve as a lector or in any of his other volunteer capacities with the church.
Mousetraps
Meet the Judy Blume of the post-Columbine generation and her charming protagonist, Maxie. High school is tough for Maxie for all the usual reasons; not to mention that she’s overshadowed by her athletic best friend and her over-achieving cousin, Sean, who’s already taking college classes and is secretly dating the school’s star football player.
"Not-So-Straight Talk Express" heading from Mass. to Ohio
Most Bay Staters lament Massachusetts’ relative insignificance in presidential politics, but a pair of local LGBT political power players aren’t content to just sit on the sidelines and hope for the best come November. Marc Solomon, executive director of MassEquality, and state Rep. Carl Sciortino have partnered with LGBT activists in Ohio to charter buses full of LGBT volunteers for Barack Obama to the battleground Buckeye State next month.
Don’t Call Me a Drama Queen!
You’ve got to love the audacity of the title of this book, which is most definitely not a guide to handling disrespectful people. Rather, it’s a reality check for the thin-skinned, or as Mandel describes it, "a guide for the overly sensitive ... who need to learn to lighten up and go with the flow."
ClubCaf?: 25 Years
Club Caf?’s back room was buzzing on the evening of Sept. 22, as about 25 people loaded up plates at the pasta buffet and sat chatting at tables throughout the room for the Poz Pasta Night, the kickoff event for Club Caf?’s 25th anniversary week.
The Nude Male
In his forward to this gorgeous collection of male nudes, Leddick says that male nudity in art has now moved from idealization and objectification to actual portraiture.
Unique gathering for LGBT grandparents in November
Inspired by the Senior Pride Coalition, a group of LGBT elders and elder organizations who marched in the Boston Pride last June, Stonewall Communities Lifelong Learning Institute at Wheelock College will be organizing what seems to be New England’s first gathering of LGBT grandparents.
Wilkerson rallies troops for uphill sticker campaign, LGBT support up in the air
State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, who lost the Democratic primary Sept. 16 by a one-percent margin to challenger Sonia Chang-D?az, announced plans to run a sticker campaign to retain her Second Suffolk District seat in November at a community forum at the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in Dorchester on Sept. 23.
A ’Backstage Pass’ with sass and ass
For going on two decades, one of New York’s hottest tickets has been Broadway Bares, a raucous and often raunchy cabaret that raises money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The town’s top talent, from the humblest of chorus boys and girls to above-the-title names like Alan Cumming, Bebe Neuwirth, Andrea Martin and David Hyde-Pierce, come together to raise awareness about HIV, and to raise money for people in the entertainment industry living with HIV.
Me and Armini
It’s been almost nine years since Emiliana Torrini captured the music world’s attention with her fourth album, Love in the Time of Science, a disc rich in UK trip-hop influences, and three years since her Rough Trade Records debut, the pop-folk infused Fisherman’s Woman.
Scott unplugs Gender Crash open mic
For nearly nine years Gunner Scott’s monthly Gender Crash open mic night has provided a venue for transgender and other LGBT poets, singers, and other performers to express themselves and cause a stir. But in a few months Scott will retire the event; the last show is scheduled for Jan. 8.
The fabulous stupid world of "Another Gay Sequel"
In 2006, indie writer/director Todd Stephens shook up gay cinema in
DVD release for groundbreaking documentary about Jewish LGBT youth
In 2005 the film Hineini, a documentary about a student at a Boston Jewish day school trying to start a gay/straight alliance (GSA), helped jumpstart a debate on LGBT inclusion in Jewish schools and communities.
MBTA inspires "The T Plays"
At 11:15 a.m. last Saturday, Ginger Lazarus boarded an Orange Line train at Oak Grove. While her fellow passengers were eager to reach their destinations - many of them appeared to be headed to the Red Sox game - Lazarus was hoping for a long ride. The clock was ticking: she had to write a short play, to be performed the following Wednesday, by the time she arrived at the end of the line at Forest Hills.
Primary results a mixed bag for LGBT community
The Sept. 16 Democratic primaries were a mixed bag for the LGBT community, yielding some major wins but also some losses, including the defeat of a pro-marriage equality incumbent state representative by an anti-gay challenger.
Costume drama: Speakeasy’s "The Light in the Piazza"
There’s no better place to fall in love than Florence, Italy, especially the romantic version of it seen in the hit Broadway musical The Light in the Piazza. Speakeasy Stage brings the tale of young love to the Boston Center for the Arts this weekend, with an elegant staging that’s brought down to earth, in part, by the meticulous costumes of Charles Schoonmaker.
CDC: rates of new HIV cases in MSM of color ’alarming’
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report Sept. 11 that for the first time shows the number of new national HIV cases in specific sub-populations, and the numbers show that within the gay and bisexual male community the epidemic has taken the greatest toll among young African American men and white men in their 30s and 40s.
From the anchor desk to the open road: Out newscaster David Brown tackles Harbor to the Bay ride
David Brown, the anchor of Channel 5’s Eye-Opener newscast, doesn’t believe in doing anything halfway. When the organizers of the Boston Marathon called the station in 2006 to ask if any of the reporters were interested in running to benefit Children’s Hospital, Brown signed up and spent the next six months training for his first marathon.
Treasuring dance
To secure a position with a dance company a dancer needs training and experience, often in more than one style of dance. But innovative contemporary choreographer Caitlin Corbett only had two criteria in mind when she began casting for her latest work, Tom’s Wealth: A Dance for the Masses, last January: the dancers had to be able to count, and had to be able to get up and down from the floor with relative ease.