Ace's blog

I can — and do — get pretty exasperated by lesbian invisibility in the entertainment industry. (I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way.) But every now and then I like to put my frustration aside and appreciate how much visibility we’ve achieved in a relatively short time. When I was first coming out, there were very few out lesbian celebrities.

In fact, I was out on television before Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge or even k.d. lang. (Of course, the only people who cared that I was out on television were my parents — who were not amused, by the way.)

However, now there are a whole bunch of visible lesbians in the entertainment industry, as well as lesbians making things happen behind the scenes. POWER UP! has celebrated 80 of these women over the last eight years and now they’re recognizing 10 more amazing gay women in showbiz. And, really, what could be more satisfying that celebrating amazing women.

Susan Miller and Liz Feldman

Let’s take a look at this year’s honorees.

Megan Cavanagh

We first loved her as Marla Hooch and we still love her as Chris on Exes & Ohs. (And I loved her as Luisa, the animal control officer on Friends.)

If you haven’t already stumbled across the letter from NPR's Linda Holmes to Pixar, read it now. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.

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Wasn’t that worth it?

I love the tone of “Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees” and I wholeheartedly second its message. Fundamentally, Holmes thinks Pixar movies are great, but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to give them a pass for being all about the boys. And so I echo her plaintive request to the powers-that-be at Pixar:

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

Holmes lays out the history quite simply:

Of the ten movies you've released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men. These movies feature women and girls to varying degrees ­— The Incredibles, in particular — but the story is never "a girl and the things that happen to her," the way it's "a boy and what happens to him."

Now, I love many of the girls in the Pixar movies. Helen Parr (a.k.a. Elastigirl) in The Incredibles kicks ass and, except for the whole stretching thing, has a quasi-realistic woman’s body.

This just out: A remake of Girls Just Want to Have Fun is in the works. My wife’s reaction of “Why would they remake perfection?!” aside, I pretty much expect this news to be met with a big resounding thud.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the original 1985 movie.

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I love this movie. In fact, I own this movie. (And in honor of this news, I watched it this weekend!) But to the best of my knowledge, Girls Just Want to Have Fun was never really a cultural phenomenon.

If you’re not familiar with the movie, the fun-seeking girls in question are a post-Square Pegs Sarah Jessica Parker as the shy army brat who loves to dance, a post-Quarterback Princess Helen Hunt as the madcap best friend who convinces her to try out for Dance TV, and a post-Little House on the Prairie but pre-90210 Shannen Doherty as the kid sister of the brooding — yet teddy-bear-cute — rebel assigned to dance with SJP.

The other night, I re-watched the pilot episode of The Facts of Life and lamented how wrong they got the central issue. When the über-girly Blair lesbian-baited tomboy Cindy, Mrs. Garrett appropriately affirmed that it was OK for Cindy to like sports and be affectionate with girls. But then she reassured her that she was normal: She could look pretty in a dress would soon start to like boys — and she did within minutes! Then Blair apologized and encouraged Cindy to run against her for Harvest Queen.

Now, I can cut The Facts of Life a little slack because it was filmed in 1979 and nobody was saying it’s OK to be a dyke — or really even to be androgynous — back then. I find it a little depressing to realize that, 30 years later, kids are still getting the same message. However, there are folks trying to do something about this. Groundspark, the educational film company helmed by Debra Chasnoff, is opening a dialogue about homophobia, gender identity and gender role expectations with their new documentary, Straightlaced.

Here’s what the folks at Groundspark have to say about the movie:

I have a number of regrets about missed theater opportunities — the biggest are that I missed Cherry Jones in Doubt and Natasha Richardson in Cabaret.

Richardson won the Tony Award for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in the 1998 revival and was widely lauded for her success at re-imagining a role so thoroughly associated with Liza Minnelli. But Richardson — who died tragically and unexpectedly last night from a head injury incurred the day before — continually lived up to the standards set by the Redgraves/Richardsons, her theater-royalty family.

And she distinguished herself time and time again onstage and on-screen.

I’m a little caught off-guard by how sad I am at her untimely death. I certainly had no personal connection to Natasha Richardson — the closest I get is a friend who once briefly worked with her and recalls the experience as “memorable.” I suppose it’s largely the shock of someone young and vibrant being alive one day and gone the next, coupled with compassion for her family, who must be enduring unimaginable grief. And, of course, there’s the disappointment that I’ll never see her perform live. So the best I can do is to take a moment to celebrate what I enjoyed while she was alive.

I waste a lot of time playing games on Facebook — mostly spelling games because that’s who I am. But my favorite game is testing my retroactive gaydar. The tomboyish girl I was friends with in junior high? Check. The sporty girl I played softball with in high school? Check. The boy whom everyone thought for years was my boyfriend? Check.

Some of the who’s-gay-now revelations are more surprising. There’s the nice but seemingly straight, sorority girl who, unbeknownst to me, viewed me as a role model when we worked together in college. And my favorite revelation lately is learning that a sweet, dorky, funny guy I knew in college not only came out, but also became a television writer who, among other things, wrote the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Tara and Willow reunited.

Drew Greenberg is the type of guy I would have dated had I still been dating boys when I met him. (I was decidedly not still dating boys when I met him … but I did accidentally go on a date with a straight-guy friend of his.) And I love that he’s grown up to write stories about kick-ass women. (Did I mention that I was a formative lesbian role model for him? I’m just saying.) His latest kick-ass women offering is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Issue #23 — available today wherever comic books are sold.

Earlier this season on 90210, West Beverly High School was staging a completely unrealistic production of Spring Awakening.

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The point of this was to illustrate how current and edgy things are at West Beverly as compared with the Kansas high school from which our protagonists have just transferred. It’s clear why Spring Awakening was chosen: It has a rock score and a very strong teen appeal. The unrealistic elements, however, were that (a) active Broadway shows are generally not available to be licensed as high school productions, and (b) the show contains both a sexually active gay male couple and a very explicit simulated hetero sex scene that results in pregnancy. This would have been controversial, even at West Beverly High School.

Real-life high schools aren’t yet grappling with Spring Awakening, but they are struggling with the other sexually explicit rock musical fresh from a long run on Broadway: Rent.

Some days I just want to be a Muppet. And I bet I’m not the only one. Don’t you have days when you’re sick of your job or stressed about the economy and you find yourself humming “C is for Cookie” or “Mahna Mahna,” and wondering which Muppet you could be?

Now, I’m already only a degree or two away from actual Muppetdom. In fifth grade I made a Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (think green Nerf ball) and used it to sing show tunes. (The fifth-grade chorus theme was “The Muppets Go to Broadway.”) Plus, my wife regularly opines that I am Muppet-like. (She also observes that I’m kind of like a 17-year-old boy in a garage band.)

But I digress.

The reason I’m even thinking about Muppethood right now is because of a recent discovery. While I once had to slog through the exhaustive work of cataloging my own personality traits and comparing them with those belonging to a host of Muppets, I can now simply answer a few questions in the “What Muppet Are You?” quiz and, in seconds, learn my true Muppet identity. And you too can have hours (or minutes) of fun and self-discovery by clicking here and answering scientifically designed questions such as “How big are you?” and “What is your favourite colour?”

I’m kind of in love with Diane Keaton right now. It’s not so much a romantic thing as it is an I-think-she’s-so-frickin’-cool-thing.

I love that she’s anti-plastic surgery and that she’s aging gracefully. I usually like her more than I don’t as an actor. (Although I chose to pretend that Because I Said So never happened, I considered Annie Hall one of my favorite movies until I got so skeeved-out by Woody Allen that I couldn’t enjoy his movies anymore.)

And she was so appealing in Something’s Gotta Give that I applauded Keanu Reeves for falling in love with her.

Do you know where your line is?

I enjoy listening to Toby Keith. Not all the time and not every song, but I definitely enjoy his music. I’m sharing this tidbit — seemingly apropos of nothing — in the spirit of something I read this week.

In the “What Tami Said” blog, Tami, a “a wife, womanist, writer, stepmother, music lover, black woman, sister, nappy advocate, American, yogi, bibliophile, daughter, student, Midwesterner, progressive, gardener, eccentric” noted that, despite herself, she saw and thoroughly enjoyed the movie Tropic Thunder:

See, I consider myself a good progressive — anti-racist, womanist, pro-equality, broad-minded, sensitive to the needs of marginalized people and all that stuff. How then, could I find humor in a movie that features a white actor in black face; an offensive portrayal of an intellectually disabled boy; stereotypically drawn evil, Asian characters; and a lame, closeted gay tough guy plotline? I don't know. I just did.

And that’s where Toby Keith comes in.

Can you imagine what it’s like to steal a scene from Meryl Streep? One of the only people on earth who can answer that question affirmatively is Oscar-contender, Viola Davis.

Davis, however, “absolutely disagree[s]” that she stole the scene, noting that Streep (or “Meryl” as she calls her) is a consummate actor’s actor, who works with her co-star to create the best possible scene. Fair enough. I’m certainly not going to suggest that Meryl Streep is not a class act. But there’s no denying that Viola Davis’ few minutes on screen in Doubt packed the greatest emotional punch of the movie.

And despite how much she enjoyed working with Streep, Davis acknowledges that she didn’t sleep the night before they filmed.

If you like irreverent, animated children’s television, you must check out the website for Dusty, the story of a magic, one-legged dust ball and his lactose-intolerant bunny friend, Spuds. This might be the best show ever. The title character, Dusty, “is made up of little bits of everyone and everything, so each episode he pulls a little piece of himself off and travels to wherever that particle is from.” He and Spuds, who is an “only child bunny” who “struggles with sharing but has a heart of gold,” travel in a magic red “Dusty-pan” and have adventures while learning about diversity.

How great does this sound?

But if you want more, you’ll have to head to Colorado. Dusty, unfortunately, is not a real show. Rather, it’s the centerpiece of Cusi Cram’s play, Dusty and the Big Bad World, a satiric comedy about children’s television programming, gay marriage and agonizing choices that opened this week at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

The play delves into the controversy that erupts when Dusty and Spuds head to Massachusetts to help her find a missing sneaker. They never find the sneaker, but they do eat vegan, wheat-free cookies and drink tea “that tastes like feet.” Oh, and they learn that some families have two dads. The inclusion of gay themes in children’s programming sparks a firestorm of protest and the Dusty creative team is thrust into crisis.

The news is not horrible.

Ugly Betty is not being canceled; it’s merely going on hiatus this spring (beginning March 26) to give ABC a chance to bring back Samantha Who? and introduce In the Motherhood.

Now, there’s nothing inherently bad about being pre-empted to shore up other shows. It suggests that your time-slot and audience is valuable. And ABC is a fan of the mid-season replacement — after all, they pioneered it 20 years ago with the Animal House spinoff, Delta House, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer. (Major points to anyone who remembers this show, and you’ll earn my undying respect if you know the lyrics to Pfeiffer’s song, “Pizza Guy.”)

Movies that make it to Sundance have a pretty decent chance of picking up a distributor, so I’m assuming that the documentary, Prom Night in Mississippi, will likely make it into theaters. When that happens, I suspect a number of moviegoers will be in for a surprise.

Some may not read the title carefully enough and believe they’re going to see this.

Others might expect to see the original Jamie Lee Curtis classic.

But even those not expecting a slasher movie about high school students stalked and massacred at the prom may still be in for a big surprise — because the documentary is about the first racially integrated prom at Charleston High School. In 2008.

Every now and then I like to take a moment to appreciate how amazing Dolly Parton is — and now is one of those moments. A local movie theater showed the Dolly classic The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas last week and will be showing 9 to 5 next week, so I’ve got me a little Dolly-on-the-brain. (And I’ve been humming “A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place” for five days now!)

Dolly turned 63 this Monday and, frankly, I’m amazed that she seems to have about a zillion times more energy than I do. (I’m considerably younger than she is and I’m not lugging breasts the size of cantaloupes around with me.) Consider what she’s accomplished in the past year alone:

Last February she released Backwoods Barbie, a mainstream country album designed to “Get Dolly Parton back on the radio!”

I have my share of strong opinions, but occasionally I read something so well-written and compelling that it leads me to question fundamental beliefs and feel chagrinned at how wrong I was.

For example — and try not to judge me too harshly for this — I used to believe that Salma Hayek was notable because of her accomplishments and intelligence and insanely good looks. But I was so wrong.

What's notable about her is her weight.

Spike.com’s list of “The Top 7 Butterbodies” made it explicitly clear that she’s too fat. (A butterbody, by the way, is “a woman who has a beautiful face but a body that’s gone to butter.” Isn’t that amazingly witty?)

I mean, I might once have looked at this picture and thought, “Eh, I don’t love the dress but, oh my, she’s lovely.” But now I know that her dress is hiding a “beer gut.” (It is worth noting, however, that her weight gain is not entirely offensive because so much of it went to her breasts.)

Bog snorkeling — uh-huh-huh-huh.

Some things just bring out the Beavis and Butt-Head in all of us.

Until a few days ago, I could not have told you that bog snorkeling was a sport in which “competitors travel two lengths of a 60-yard water-filled trench that's cut into a peat bog in the shortest time possible.”

This is what it looks like.

(Does Ben & Jerry’s sponsor competitors?)

Remember on Tuesday nights when you used to turn on the TV and see this?

Those were the days, weren’t they?

ADA Alex Cabot, played by Stephanie March, was once a regular character on Law & Order: SVU, and I was happy. Then, a drug dealer shot her and she disappeared into the Witness Protection Program — to be seen only once more* when she came back to testify against her alleged assassin, and I was sad. (*Yes, I realize she reappeared in the show Conviction, but I prefer to pretend the show never existed. The real Alex Cabot would never have had sex on her desk at the office.)

And I’m clearly not the only person who has missed Alex. There are people who care a lot more about this than I do writing blogs and signing petitions.

Broadway’s electric bill is going way down this month as almost half of the theaters go dark when 13 — count them, 13! — shows close before the end of January. (Stupid recession!) Although it’s ironic that one of the shows that’s closing is titled 13, it’s pretty depressing that so many shows are closing at once.

Now, some of these shows have already overstayed their welcome. I doubt anyone is crying about the demise of the reality-show revival of Grease. Similarly, I suspect the end of Katie Holmes’ (All My Sons) Broadway debut will not be mourned. And I’ve been waiting for Young Frankenstein to close ever since it opened, despite the casting of Megan Mullally and Sutton Foster.

And then there’s Spamalot. The recent addition of Clay Aiken to the cast strongly suggests that the show had run its course and then some. But I will always be grateful that it gave us Sara Ramirez in a Tony Award-winning turn as The Lady of the Lake.

When you think Christmas, do you think major religious holiday or big bucket of popcorn? I’m a movie-on-Christmas girl, so I’ve been checking out this year’s big Christmas releases. And I have to say, I wish I was a little more excited about them.

In this soft economy, Hollywood executives are probably hoping for a repeat of Christmas day last year, when moviegoers spent $9.5 million on Alien v. Predator — Requiem. Or they’d really love a replay of 2004 when Christmas celebrants spent $19.5 million on Meet the Fockers. (Because nothing says Christmas like an exploding RV toilet.)

This year’s crop doesn’t give us alien showdowns or mismatched family wackiness, but we do have some dogs and Nazis. So let’s take a look at the offerings to assess what’s worth seeing.

Marley & Me

Marley & Me gives us Jennifer Aniston and a really cute lab puppy (played, of course, by approximately a zillion puppies) that grows into a beautiful dog. The dog is difficult, but the family learns lessons about life and love and loss. And Kathleen Turner is in it, so how bad can it be?

According to the reviews, it could be pretty bad. However, as a newlywed with a difficult dog — who is snoring as I write this — I can relate, and might see it for that reason alone.

Shout! Factory announced last week that they will be releasing Rhoda — one of the best television spinoffs ever — on DVD in the spring. Although the DVDs won’t be available until April, I kind of see this announcement as a nice Chanukah present because, in my opinion, Rhoda contains the most authentic — and funny — representation of New York Jewish women in the history of television.

If you’re not familiar with the show, the title character, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), was the buddy on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She was the slightly overweight, bohemian, earthy, ethnic “other” to Mary Richards’ thin, beautiful, modern career girl.

Rhoda’s spinoff had her moving back to her native New York to get married — and, of course, to be close to her family.

The Federation flags are at half-mast today. The “First Lady” of Star Trek, Majel Barrett Roddenberry died yesterday morning, thereby ending an extraordinary run of Star Trek continuity.

Roddenberry was the only performer to appear in some form or another in all of the Star Trek franchises. Now, this may not mean much if you’re only casually aware of the ST universe, but Trekkies know how huge an accomplishment this is. There were five live-action television series, movies based on two of the series, cartoon and video games and there's an upcoming J.J. Abrams’ remake. While she didn’t appear in all of the movies, she did participate in movies based on both the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I could get irked that 80 percent of the books designated “The 10 Best Books of 2008” by the editors of The New York Times Book Review were written by men, but the fact that Toni Morrison’s new novel, A Mercy, is among the celebrated books enables me to simply enjoy that Morrison gets the recognition she so justly deserves.

Well, I’m actually assuming she deserves recognition for A Mercy, as I have not actually read it yet. (You can, however, read glowing reviews of it here and here.) I have read other Morrison novels, so I’m not a total fraud. And she’s won numerous writing awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. (Given that American writers do not win the Nobel Prize for Literature anymore — Morrison was the last to win it, in fact — this is especially impressive!) Plus, I am going to read her new book one of these days.

Entertainment Weekly just published its list of “The 25 Smartest People in TV” and The Hollywood Reporter gave us their “Power 100 Women in Entertainment” list. Now, I could delve into a philosophical discussion of the differences between “smart” and “powerful,” but I’m not feeling that philosophical right now. So I’ll just point out the most glaring omission from both lists.

How is it possible that Ellen dos not appear in either list? I still don’t really understand how Entertainment Weekly defines “smart” — it seems to be some combination of successful and savvy — but I have to believe that Ellen fits their definition. I mean, she came back from oblivion to helm a highly rated talk show that’s won 25 Daytime Emmy Awards.

I would think this would make her powerful as well. She’s not just the star of her show, she’s an executive producer. She was also the second woman to host the Academy Awards as a solo gig. Plus she’s got a hot, blond wife, which is certainly a symbol of power in Hollywood.

In spring of 2007, Dorothy Snarker challenged us to cast the upcoming biopic of the '70s girl-group-punk-band, The Runaways.

The production team has finally begun to do the work for us. It was announced today that Kristen Stewart has been cast as young Joan Jett.

I’ve read a few comments indicating that some folks find this to be terrible casting, but I’m not yet sure how to react. I know that I want this movie to be done well. The Runaways paved the way for other women rockers and their legacy deserves respect. Additionally, I’m quite impressed that the band members generally survived teenage punk stardom quite well.

Bassist Jackie Fox is an entertainment lawyer in Southern California. Lead singer Cherrie Currie owns a chainsaw art gallery in Chatsworth, Calif.