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Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (October 17, 2008)

SEATTLE GRACE FLOODED WITH BISEXUAL WOMEN?

If the crumbs of the Callica love affair on Grey’s Anatomy aren’t satisfying your appetite for girl-loving content, help is on the way. Melissa George (Alias, Mulholland Dr.) will be joining the staff of Seattle Grace as a bisexual intern on Nov. 6.

But – spoiler alert! – it turns out Melissa’s character has a past with another Seattle Grace resident. Someone you’d probably never suspect.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the Aussie actor will play a woman with “a history with – holy lipstick lesbians! – Meredith.”

Meredith has a female skeleton in her closet? Well, she does love to over-process every emotion that crosses her psyche’s transom and is closer to her “person” Cristina than she is to her boyfriend. Paging Doctor Clueless.

OK, I’ll play along with the Meredith premise, except less than three weeks ago, EW reported Melissa’s new character was being “groomed as a potential love interest” for either Callie (Sara Ramirez) or Erica (Brooke Smith). Sorry, they’re taken.

And before that, there was speculation that Sandra Oh‘s character, Cristina Yang, was going to the one to come down with a previously undiagnosed case of bisexuality.

What next? Will a woman roll in on a gurney and turn out to be Izzie’s one-time college experiment? Is Lexie going to run into a Candy Striper with whom she used to play doctor?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s starting to feel like series creator Shonda Rhimes is throwing big ol’ handfuls of gay against the wall to see what sticks. Again, nothing wrong with that.

Whatever Rhimes’s master plan, Melissa is a welcome addition to the cast, and furthermore, no stranger to Sapphic scenes like this one from Mulholland Dr. with Laura Harring.

In other crazy casting news, look for Papi and the President (The L Word’s Janina Gavankar and Battlestar Galactica‘s Mary McDonnell) to pop in later this season.

That is one nutty hospital.

– by Dara Nai

DOES WRITING THIS MEAN I’LL BE TYPECAST AS A LESBIAN?

Who’s going to pay for all that vegan red velvet cake served at Ellen and Portia’s wedding?

Well, if the new promo for Season 6 of Nip/Tuck is any indication, Portia de Rossi isn’t just sitting home writing thank-you cards and admiring her new lavender KitchenAid.

The promo, which can be seen on Portia’s fan site, has a blink-and-you-missed-her clip of Ellen DeGeneres‘ wife reprising her role as Olivia Lord, the sexy acupuncturist who got all up in Julia McNamara’s (Joely Richardson) meridian and helped her release some pent-up vital energies last season.

The brief glimpse offers no indication of how many episodes Portia will be in for Season 6 (which begins in January 2009), but suffice it to say, any screen time is a good time when a beautiful real-life lesbian plays a beautiful fictitious one.

When talking last year about taking on the role of a lesbian, Portia told the UK’s Daily Mail in an interview, “I had that one moment of, ‘Does this mean I’ll be typecast as a lesbian? And Ellen turned to me and said, ‘So what?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, right, so what?'”

Yeah, so what? It sure beats playing a character that’s so against type, no one’s ever going to buy it.

Nip/Tuck is not for everyone: There are graphic plastic surgery scenes, messy and often violent relationships between some seriously damaged characters, and strong, occasionally kinky sexual content. I love this show.

– by Dara Nai

THIS WEEK IN LINDSAY: THE FASHION, ACCESSORIES, AND HEARSAY EDITION

It just wouldn’t be a week worth living without an update on the exploits of one of our favorite budding young (alleged) celesbians Lindsay Lohan.

Lohan dropped in for a screening of Madonna’s directorial debut, Filth And Wisdom (hosted by The Cinema Society and Dolce and Gabbana), which is probably the movie star equivalent of making an appearance at the boss’s barbeque. (Or, in this case, showing up at the boss’s barbeque dressed as the boss himself. Check out their look alike press photos here.)

OK! Magazine is reporting that Lohan wants Madonna to sing on her upcoming album, Spirit in the Dark. She was quoted as saying, “That would be incredible…That would be beyond.” When reporters passed the news along to Madonna, she replied, “Yeah, sure. Why not?” Nothing like an enthusiastic seal of approval from one of your heroes!

If Madonna does stop by the studio to make some vocal magic, she will be just one of many big names recruited to contribute to Spirit (along with Timbaland. Ne-Yo, The Neptunes, and Pharrell). Throw Charo into the booth and Spirit might just be the sonic equivalent of The Love Boat.

That same day, Lohan set aside some time to launch her very own legging collection, 6126, at Henri Bendel. Lohan, herself an avid legging enthusiast, named the line after the date of idol Marilyn Monroe’s birthday. She stated on her MySpace blog that Monroe represents the sort of “timeless, confident glam” that Lohan is aiming for with her leggings.

Personally, I’ve always thought of leggings as being more “outdated, unimaginative dumpy” than anything else, but maybe it’s just a generational thing.

Lohan was also spotted with her girlfriend, Samantha Ronson, at the Saks launch of the 10TH Annual Key To The Cure Charity Shopping Weekend (benefiting women’s cancer charities) in New York.

The latest rumor about Ronson and Lohan is that they got engaged on their recent vacation in Mexico. MSN reported the engagement story, but their source was a questionable British tabloid.

Did Ronson give Lohan a $100,000 Cartier diamond band on the beach in Cabo San Lucas? Did they celebrate with Cristal champagne until 2am “before disappearing into their hotel room together”? I don’t know it’s true, and I don’t think we should bother asking their rep for confirmation.

When Lohan recently stated on the syndicated radio show Loveline that she and Ronson had been dating for a “very long time,” her publicist told the press that it was not a “confession” and that Lohan actually meant that she and Ronson had been close friends for a very long time. But when the other big rumor about the couple, that of their eminent breakup, began circulating this week, the same publicist told the press, “They are fine.”

So now a breakup is worse for business than a potential big gay wedding? I think that qualifies as some warped form of progress.

Finally, all of the engagement and breakup talk fanned the bitchy flames of E!’s gossip columnist, Ted Casablanca, who wrote a nasty little blog post speculating on how soon Lohan would be dating men again. He wrote:

“Say it ain’t so. Could Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson’s “special” relaysh already be on the fritz? It’s only a matter of time before L.L. retreats back and finds comfort in her fave male body part. ‘Course, we’ve been warning this one since that gal went all lesbyterian, anyway, but makes us wonder…”

And if the horrible, unfunny slang wasn’t bad enough, he then posted a poll, “Bi Now, Gay Later?” that offered readers three choices to best describe their opinion of whether or not bisexuality “actually exists.”

  • Not a chance, it’s a stop on the way to homoville.
  • Sure, I’m a little Anne Heche. I’ve experimented with both sexes.
  • Angelina Jolie dabbled with a woman and found her way to Brad Pitt. Works for me.

You can head over there now to flame him if you want, but rest assured that plenty of other E! readers have already beaten you to it (and some of their comments are pretty funny). What’s even stranger is the fact that Casablanca is an out gay man.

As punishment, I think Lohan should refuse to sell him any of her confident glam leggings.

by Karman Kregloe

SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL

The title of the web series Sorority Forever is enough to scare me. Forever? That’s such a long time. It’s a little too cult-ish for my liking. Let’s just learn the secret handshake, wear matching T-shirts and graduate college, OK?

So I wouldn’t be watching this CW web series without a reason, and this is it: the new episode (clocking in at just three minutes, 11 seconds) is called “Girl on Girl.” Intriguing, yes?

Turns out I had good reason to be scared. Watch first, then we’ll discuss:

So aspiring (probably straight) sorority sister Taryn is willing to “dedicate herself” to Rachel just to get into the sorority, and (lesbian/bisexual) sorority sister Rachel is happy to take advantage of that by pressuring her into doing something she clearly doesn’t want to do.

The abrupt end – with Taryn pausing to look fearfully at Rachel’s jeans – tells me that next week’s episode will feature the aftermath, and I doubt it will be the girls coming out as a couple to the rest of Phi Chi.

I’m thinking it’ll probably unfold in one of two ways: Taryn crying and Rachel asking her not to tell anyone and threatening to blackmail her. Or, Taryn crying and Rachel looking like a predatory lesbian or bisexual sorority sister.

Actually, no matter how it ends, Rachel looks like a predatory lesbian/bisexual.

Hopefully, all two people watching this web series will understand the ridiculousness of this story line, and just chalk it up to writers who have an ax to grind with lesbians. And sororities.

LEVY BRINGS SOME QUEER TO THE BEST ESSAYS OF THE YEAR

Having a lesbian on the inside of any business is always good, but I find it particularly effective in the media (see: Rachel Maddow). When I found out New York Magazine writer Ariel Levy was playing for our team (back when she was an NPR contributor and the new author of Female Chauvinist Pigs), I was thrilled. A woman on the inside!

October has been good to Levy, who had a high-profile interview with Steven Colbert as part of last week’s New Yorker Festival. Despite his expected wit and jokes (such as referring to the feminist as having “a hot little bod”), Levy was a great interviewer and pulled out a lot of information from the famously funny personality.

Levy was a guest on The Colbert Report to promote her book back in 2006. Here’s how Comedy Central describes the episode: “Ariel Levy thinks women who imitate porn stars are far from any sort of authentic sexual liberation. Stephen thinks she sounds like a Muslim fundamentalist.” Watch it here now.

An even greater accomplishment, though, is that Levy’s story 2007 New York Magazine story “The Lesbian Bride’s Handbook” is being featured in the newly published The Best American Essays 2008. The essay was a first-person narrative on her wedding to her partner, and how she had several obstacles to overcome, from what to wear (white?) and if it even constituted a “real” wedding. An excerpt from the piece (which can still be found online):

I am not a total idiot. I always had the sense to say no wedding cake, no officiant, no first dance, no here comes the bride, no Times announcement, and absolutely no white dress. Who are we kidding? And why? We just wanted a big, awesome party where everyone could meet and go bananas. It’s a special opportunity, you know: The only other time everyone you love will assemble in one place is at your funeral. (At most weddings, some people you don’t actually love will also be in attendance.But the silver lining of my parents’ being irreverent and Amy’s parents’ being in denial is that we didn’t have to invite anyone we didn’t want to.)

The thing is, though, you have to serve something, and you can’t very well go naked. You can call it a party about love all you want, but you still have to make all the same decisions that every other bride has to make, and you have to make them very carefully unless you want everyone you know to schlep to some crummy party in the middle of nowhere.

The comical piece should strike a chord with any gay woman who ever considered the idea of a ceremony celebrating “till death do us part.”

And to the straight people who buy The Best American Essays 2008 and read Levy’s account, take a good look at how non-Bridezilla lesbians are. Seriously, we’re the least of your problems.

– by Trish Bendix

WHILE SAFFRON BURROWS’S GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

Say, in one day, you got dumped, downsized and diagnosed with terminal cancer. That would be a very bad day indeed.

So, what would you do? Well, if you are the character played by openly bisexual actress Saffron Burrows in the new film The Guitar, you’d buy – um, you guessed it – a guitar.

Of course, along the way you’d also rent a gorgeous loft, buy mail-order luxuries, make out with the cute furniture delivery guy, make out with the cute pizza delivery girl and teach yourself to play guitar. Hey, everyone handles grief differently.

The independent feature debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will premiere in limited release in New York on Nov. 7. First-time director Amy Redford, daughter of Robert Redford, imagined the film as a fairytale of sorts. As such, The Guitar asks viewers to ask how they would confront their own mortality.

Saffron plays Mel, a mousy New Yorker who loses her job, her boyfriend and her lease on life. Diagnosed with throat cancer and given less than two months to live, she embarks on “the kind of self-indulgent wish fulfillment that we have all fantasized about.”

And, wouldn’t you know it, some of those fantasies include becoming romantically involved with the pizza girl, Cookie (played by Paz de la Huerta).

Some people tip; some people tip generously.

In an interview with AfterEllen.com in July, Saffron said The Guitar was one of her proudest accomplishments. She has good reason to be proud. Variety said her “delicate, somber … lovely, vanity-free” performance carried the film.

So, what do you think? Will this Guitar sing? Or is it all feedback? Discuss before I make any more bad guitar analogies.

by Dorothy Snarker

GAYING UP STARMANIA

AfterEllen.com reader Nelfy tipped us off that the Austrian show Starmania – an American Idol-type reality TV show – debuts its fourth season today with openly gay Bulgarian pop singer Lucy Diakovska among the show’s three judges.

The show airs on ORF 1, a public access TV channel in Austria that has never prominently featured lesbian or bisexual women in their programming before. (ORF bought the rights to The L Word, but decided against airing it.)

Lucy came out publicly as bisexual several years ago, and had a short relationship with German singer Juliette Schoppmann. She now identifies as a lesbian, and recently broke off her relationship with Bulgarian fashion designer Bojedara Bakalova.

Diakovska rose to fame a few years ago as part of the girl group No Angels, which was formed in 2000 as a result of the reality TV show Popstars, and went on to become one of the biggest-selling German girl bands to date. They disbanded in 2003, and Lucy developed a solo career. No Angels reunited in 2006 and is currently working on their fifth studio album.

Here’s a photo of the group (naturally, the queer woman is the one wearing pants):

Could that photo be any gayer? (And I don’t mean that as a slur.) All that’s keeping this from looking like a poster for a German pride parade is glitter and a dancing queen.

For more info, check out the No Angels MySpace page, and Lucy’s MySpace page.

by Sarah Warn

RACHEL MADDOW IN VERBAL SMACK-DOWN WITH FORMER BUSH SPEECH WRITER. GUESS WHO WON?

Former Bush speech writer David Frum appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC) this week and accused openly gay political commentator Rachel Maddow of inciting the same kind of violence through satire and humor that John McCain’s campaign has been doing lately in its efforts to paint Obama as a terrorist (or terrorist sympathizer).

Then he spent the rest of the interview backpedaling as Rachel challenged his statement, and he tried to pretend that’s not what he said.

Since we’re not a news site (although we sometimes cover politics and news if it’s presented as entertainment, ala Saturday Night Live), I’m blogging about this not so much because of the issue being debated, but because of how riveting this argument is to watch, and how well I thought Rachel responded to David’s comments.

This is the kind of raw (if polite) argument we haven’t seen on TV since Rosie and Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View – only this time, the stakes are higher, there’s less emotion, and the lesbian clearly won the debate.

Look for the interview to start about three minutes in. (If this video isn’t working for you, try this one.)

I don’t disagree with Frum that there is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to lowering the quality of discourse in this country, but Rachel Maddow is hardly where I’d start pointing fingers (in fact, I’d argue she’s raising the quality, but that’s a blog topic for another day).

More germane to this site is Rachel’s point about the power of well-crafted humor to educate and inform. The increased acceptance of lesbian relationships in America in the last decade is arguably due more to the efforts and visibility of comedians like Ellen DeGeneres than to legislation and lawsuits (although the latter are important, too).

Smart, satirical commentary certainly involves more work and “thoughtfulness” than implying someone’s a terrorist.

Don’t believe me? Just try making Grey’s Anatomy funny every week.

LET’S HOPE THERE’S NO PROPOSITION 8 IN PINE VALLEY

Eden Riegel‘s Bianca returns to All My Children (ABC) today, for her first appearance under a new, four-month contract.

Tamara Braun, who plays her new girlfriend Reese, confirmed to TV Guide magazine this week that she pops the question to Bianca after their baby is born, and Bianca accepts. (Thanks to Pyewacket for the tip!)

Braun elaborated on why she took the role:

I wasn’t expecting to do another soap so soon after Days [of our Lives] but this is a story that’s groundbreaking and overdue. Two female soap characters having a baby together is unprecedented. I wanted to be a part of something that could have a strong and positive impact and help give same-sex couples their rightful place in the world of daytime drama.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I can think of lots of other ground-breaking and overdue storylines involving lesbian couples I’d like to see on daytime before we get yet another pregnant lesbian story line. Like, two women on a romantic date that actually ends in a kiss.

Come to think of it, I’d like to see that on primetime TV, too.

Braun goes on to describe her character as “a strong independent woman” who is also “very warm and real and very expressive with her feelings. And she’s madly in love with Bianca. It’s the kind of love you can’t describe, the kind of love Reese has never known before.”

When TV Guide‘s Michael Logan asks her if this means Reese has “always been a lesbian,” Braun avoided answering the question, saying only that Reese “has her issues. But who doesn’t? This is a soap!”

Hmmm. This is the same network that runs Grey’s Anatomy, which has suddenly never met a bisexual woman it didn’t like. Hey, maybe Reese has a history with Meredith, too!

by Sarah Warn

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Lesbian Vampire Killers has revealed its tagline: “What more could you possibly want?”

L Word star Mia Kirshner celebrated the publication of her first book, I Live Here.

Check out this excellent new online novel, “Law School Story,” about a lesbian in (wait for it) law school. Seriously, it’s good.

Join IndieJam.org, the new social network that promotes indie musicians like Missy Higgins and Tegan and Sara. (Thanks to sam for the tip!)

Ellen DeGeneres and Joan Jett are among the 15 women featured in wowOwow’s “Can You Believe She’s 50?” slideshow. (Thanks Lauren!)

This week in No on 8 PSAs: Straight comedian Mandy Steckelberg created a comedic music video called “I Love the Gays”; Molly Ringwald and Margaret Cho spoofed the Mac vs. PC commercials; and Ellen DeGeneres just plain asked her fans not to vote for it.

Heather Matarazzo guested on ABC’s new series Life on Mars last night. (Thanks for the tip, Suzanne!)

Next Tuesday, Oct. 21 is the lesbian episode of House, aka lots of Olivia Wilde‘s Thirteen making out with women. Program your DVRs!

That’s it for this week! Got the inside scoop on a hot new lesbian/bi actor/musician/TV show/film? Tell us at [email protected]. Check back next Friday for another edition of Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever.

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