Morning Brew – Wednesday, July 14: “Britain’s Next Top Model” tries girl-on-girl-on-guy, “Freeheld” gets Catherine Hardwicke

Feels so strange to be doing a Morning Brew when it’s not so morningish, but hey, we’ve got a banging new look and it took some time to launch this morning. What do you think of it? Did you miss us all morning?

We’ll start today off with a piece of info about 90210, aka the show that brings on bisexual and lesbians for short story arcs and does away with them just as quickly. Now they are casting for a good looking woman in her 40s to play Katherine, Annie’s new boss and she’s going to be, well, predatorial.

From the looks of the dialogue, Katherine is interested in Annie because she looks like her “20 years ago” and she isn’t alone in her admiration – her husband is into Annie, too. Gotta love the gay female representation on that show. In the meantime, they’ll be getting a full time gay male character that they hope will be portrayed as “real and relatable.” Is that their way of acknowledging no one else on the show is?

While we’re on the subject of menage a trois, The Guardian has called out Britain’s Next Top Model for posing the contestants in bizarre situations, like this week’s threesome photoshoot. They quote the girls from the episode:

“It was a bit like a lesbian orgy,” said one. “It was a bit creepy, but you had to get into it otherwise you’d have a crap photo.” Another said: “It made me feel uncomfortable but I just thought, there’s nothing I can do about this so I just have to get on with it.” A young Sikh woman called Harleen put it most starkly: “It made me feel really degraded.”

The photographer was apparently instructing the girls to go beyond feigning interest, which seemed only to be for the delight of the men in the room:

“Bite her lips, Kirsty, bite her lips,” exhorted the photographer, one Shane Woodward, as the first pair were encouraged to share a moment of unwanted intimacy in their scanties with snapper, TV crew and watching millions. Poor Hannah was photographed with one of the other models trying to pull off her negligee and revealing most of her bosom. The judges praised Hannah for looking so sultry in the eventual photograph. She didn’t look sultry; she looked on the edge of tears.

Who is to blame for these kinds of bizarre lesbianonic photoshoots? Thank God it’s not the lesbians. Instead, The Guardian writes:

Perhaps Madonna, or Kate Moss, or Paris Hilton, or Christina Aguilera, or Scarlett Johansson, or Sandra Bullock or any other of the rich, powerful women who have kissed other women with the cameras rolling, knowing it’ll make for great publicity, might think about the trickle-down effect of their actions the next time they pucker up. Every time they make an awards do audience gasp at their daring lubriciousness, they raise the bar a little bit higher for those behind them, and lower it a little for the likes of Woodward and Holt. What’s wrong with faking lesbian sex for a photographer, they can say to the young women who depend on their favour. Even Sandra Bullock does it.

But at least those celebrities were doing it by choice, not because they felt shamed into it. Girls kissing girls because they feel like it is a trend I can deal with; girls kissing girls when they really don’t want to and might even cry about it is ridiculous.

Susan Mikula, the artist better known as Rachel Maddow’s partner, was on The Bill Dwight Show this week to discuss art vs. national security. She talks about how she was almost arrested for her photography and how she receives death threats from obsessive Maddow fans. Seriously just kidding on that last part.

The New Gay has shared their private performances from Chris Pureka. Along with two violinists, she sings “Landlocked” and “Song for November” and looks good doing it.

Lady Gaga will be releasing a remix album on August 3 called Lady Gaga – The Remix. So if you can’t live without new versions of “Just Dance”, “Poker Face”, “LoveGame”, “Paparazzi”, “Bad Romance”, “Telephone” and “Alejandro,” your life has just been made, little monster.

Speaking of Gaga, it’s probably completely shocking to you that she’s involved in a male’s fantasy. Comedian/actor Russel Brand told The Mirror:

I’m gonna get Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift to perform a lesbian show on my lap. I’m gonna shrink them down till they’re the size of dollies.

And that’s the most disturbing thing I’ve heard today, as I have yet to listen to any more Mel Gibson rants. I don’t know who makes lesbians roll their eyes more: Russel or his wife-to-be Katy Perry.

Mission Local interviewed Michelle Tea about living in San Francisco, something she’s captured well in books like Valencia. Fans will love her speaking on why she made the move to the West Coast, where she used to eat in the Mission and when she had her last day job before she could quit to write full time.

…I had one weird last gasp of a job handing out free Camel cigarettes to people. I’d started smoking again, so that was great. But I had to &mdsah; every time I gave out a pack of cigarettes I would have to take a photograph of the person I’d given them to holding their ID. And people would look at me like I was a narc or or something. Or they would recognize me and say things like, “I read your book The Chelsea Whistle. What are you doing here?”

See I would think that anyone who read Michelle’s books would see her selling cigarettes and completely understand.

While on her press tour for Inception, Ellen Page briefly noted that she will soon be working on Freeheld, the adaptation of the award-winning documentary about a lesbian trying to receive the benefits of her deceased partner. She also noted that Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen) is now attached to direct, which gives me a lot of hope that this movie is going to be great. She also talked a bit about working on Tilda and writing Stitch ‘N Bitch for HBO, so the whole interview is worth watching.

In the last bit of good news for the day, My Idiot Brother has begun filming in New York, so we can hope to see shots of Zooey Deschanel and Rashida Jones playing girlfriends from the set sooner than later. Get on it, paparazzi!