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Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (February 22, 2008)

NO WONDER SHE WANTED TO SHIMMY AT SHEBAR A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Marlee Matlin was rumored to be joining the cast of Dancing With the Stars. This week, ABC announced that the L Word knockout will indeed be strapping on her dancin’ shoes for the upcoming sixth season. To the people who cluelessly consider this an odd move for the deaf actress, Matlin says her hearing won’t be a factor in taking the top prize. As she wrote on her official MySpace page, groove is in the heart:

Really, for me and the other 26 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people out there, the only thing we CAN’T do is hear. The rest is all possible.
And considering the other contestants include used-to-be-famous buffoons Steve Guttenberg, Penn Jillette and Adam Carrolla, she’ll probably do very well indeed.

Unfortunately, her partner in paso doble won’t be Dean Porter. How hot would that be? Jennifer Beals in a tux! This photo from the Go magazine L Word premiere party proves that a Beals-Matlin duo would love the night life: And they could also be adorable when embarrassed: Instead, Matlin will be quickstepping with professional ballroom dancer Fabian Sanchez, who, despite not participating in previous DWTS seasons, was the 2006 U.S. Mambo Champion. And Matlin’s female competition is fierce: It includes Olympic skater Kristi Yamaguchi and tennis champ Monica Seles (how great was she in the ’90s?). Emmitt Smith, Apolo Anton Ohno and Laila Ali are all evidence of athletes’ ability to bring it to the dance floor on this show, but I predict Matlin’s toughest opponent will be Tony Award—winning actress Marissa Jaret Winokur, from the original cast of Hairspray on Broadway. Girlfriend can work the “Peyton Place After Midnight” moves! The joint will start jumping March 17.

FROM SIDEKICK TO SOLDIER As we reported this week on the blog, Renee O’Connor will guest star in the upcoming season of the Lifetime drama Army Wives. That probably wasn’t exactly news to you, though, if you watched our Power Premiere video in November. Renee teased us with more than just the prospect of seeing her on TV again.

   

She said she’ll be doing something “controversial” on the show and hinted that the role will be her “lesbian moment” of 2008. Army Wives creator (and Xena: Warrior Princess writer) Katherine Fugate confirmed, or at least encouraged, everyone’s suspicions at the recent Xena Convention in Burbank:

Fan: When will you be producing a gay character on Army Wives? Katherine: You know, Renee is my best friend, and she’s going to be in a five- to six-episode story arc for me. Let’s just say you may see her in a position you wish you’d seen her in on Xena.
Fugate also noted that Renee’s character will be “sexual, sensual … the aggressor.” So I guess by controversial, Renee meant delightful.

I wonder whether the Army Band needs a pan flutist? I also wonder whether there’s some way Army Wives can do a crossover with Battlestar Galactica – did you see that new promo photo of Lucy Lawless? I’d even sit through some Joxer scenes for that reunion.

Season 2 of Army Wives has just begun production, so it should premiere sometime this summer. Season 1 is available on iTunes and will likely be rebroadcast on Lifetime ahead of the premiere.

FROM DOLL TO AWOL A few weeks ago, Karman waxed poetic about Girlicious: The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll – specifically, about out contestant Keisha. But the honeymoon was very brief: Keisha was eliminated this week. And maybe that’s for the best, because the other contestants didn’t seem to know what to do with her.

   

Yay for Keisha for being that out. But I was scared of dolls when I was a kid (specifically, the extra frilly, grotesquely long-eyelashed ones my mom kept foisting on me), and perhaps that was a good instinct – some of the other Pussycat wannabes are frightening me, too.

Hey, Keisha: Next year, try out for American Idol instead, will ya? I really just want to hear Simon Cowell say “Pussycat Doll” in that uniquely contemptuous way of his.

HI, I’M DAWN PORTER AND THIS IS MY LOVER WHEN I’M DRUNK

By the time you read this, thousands of unsuspecting Brits will have endured the “documentary” Dawn Goes Lesbian on BBC3. The “personal challenge programme” requires TV presenter Dawn Porter to live with three lesbians for a month, in order to figure out whether she could “turn gay.” The Guardian blog offered this warning:

Without giving too much away, Dawn spends most of the show recoiling in horror every time a woman comes near her. Except, surprise surprise, when she is drunk. Then she snogs a couple just so the whole month hasn’t been for nothing.
To fully steep herself in all things lesbian, Dawn also interviews sex experts, works in a lesbian bar and tries to get dates as a drag king. She even attempts to “recondition her sexuality though masturbatory means.” Is this the same country that brought us the brilliant Bad Girls?

We’ll have more on Dawn Goes Lesbian next week. Meanwhile, you can read a live blog of the show’s premiere; it’s full of comments like “My head just exploded.”

My head exploded when I saw Dawn’s name – it’s like Dawn Denbo married Bette Porter, and that’s just wrong.

QUIET, KITT; WE WANT TO HEAR FROM THE BLONDE

Who knew there was such a thing as a President’s Day surprise? I woke up to one on Monday, in the form of Sarah’s article about the new Knight Rider movie. I wasn’t a fan of the original series, maybe because Sydney Tamiia Poitier wasn’t in that one. She plays FBI agent Carrie Ruvai in this version. The movie re-airs Saturday, Feb. 23 on NBC. But if you don’t want to lose two hours of your life to a resurrected show about a yappy automobile, here’s the clip you really want to see:

   

Whoa. If I can suffer through a whole season of Nip/Tuck just for some unsatisfying glimpses of Portia de Rossi, I can definitely listen to a talking car for however long it takes to see more of that!

CRIMES OF THE WRITERS’ STRIKE The revival of Pulitzer Prize—winning play Crimes of the Heart recently opened off-Broadway to generally positive reviews. The show’s director, Kathleen Turner, and one of its stars, out actress Sarah Paulson, are getting particular notice.

The New Yorker said stage vet Paulson “is an exceptionally gifted performer. She anchors whatever production she’s in with a kind of reasonableness that most actors shrink from. … Dressed in form-fitting jeans, knocking back a whiskey and smoking a cigarette, her mere presence is suggestive of a wider world.” Point me to the box office!

The New York Times

called the show a “confident debut as a theater director” by Turner, and the paper’s website features a cool audio slide show of the play, complete with raspy-voiced commentary. Turner’s opening line? “I love relationships between women.” So do we, Kathleen!

If nothing else, it’s noteworthy for being a female-centric show: The author (Beth Henley), the three leads and the director are all women, as Turner and Paulson recently pointed out to New York magazine. Crimes‘ limited run continues through April 13.

Meanwhile, Paulson’s partner, Cherry Jones, won’t be gracing TV screens as the president on 24 until January 2009. The series was originally scheduled to start in January 2007, and after the strike, there was brief talk of a fall 2008 premiere. But now we have to wait till next January. That’s gonna be a big month. I don’t know whether the 24 delay is good news or bad news. At first, I thought it would be better to have an image of a female president on TV – to help Americans get over their conceptual hurdles. But there’s a possibility that Jones’ character will be a bad president, so that’s a vision I’d rather keep out of the muddled minds of voters in November.

And anyway, as intrepid AfterEllen.com blogger the linster told me when she heard this news, “Maybe we can’t have a female president on TV until 2009, but we CAN elect a real one in 2008.”

MY DREAM GIRL DRIVES A BEER TRUCK

On this week’s episode of October Road (thanks to LC for the tip), Amy Acker (Angel) played a lesbian named Jenny. At least this gay Jenny wasn’t crazy. The character was a beer delivery girl who caught the eye of one of the main characters, Owen. He was startled to learn that the “girl of his dreams has girls in her dreams.” You can understand why he might be confused, considering Jenny’s ex’s name is Chris. Here’s a clip:

   

Ah, genderless name humor – it never gets old. During the episode, Owen and his friends had the stereotypical Skinemax reaction to the idea of two women together, and added that Jenny is even better than the standard fantasy because she delivers beer. Is this the new way of saying “all that and a bag of chips”?

It’s unlikely that Jenny will return to October Road, now that she’s served her purpose of educating the guys and stroking their egos – she told Owen he’d be at the top of her list if she were ever to consider dating men. But at least they didn’t consider her depraved or try to “cure” her – to me, these are still signs of progress. Isn’t it awful that “progress” can make you want to cry in your beer?

A CASHMERE MIFF ABC’s Cashmere Mafia ended its strike-shortened first season this week. As Sarah noted last week, the pregnancy story line turned out to be the least of the show’s problems. The two lesbian/bi characters, Bonnie Somerville‘s Caitlin Dowd and Lourdes Benedicto‘s Alicia Lawson, were barely on the show.

But before it all went haywire – as in, a couple of months ago, when we still dared to hope – our Malinda Lo spoke to Lourdes Benedicto about the show and her role. Here are a few snippets that hark back to happier times:

AE: Did the idea of playing a lesbian character cause you any concerns when you were auditioning for the role? LB: No, not at all! In fact, I was kind of excited about it. I’ve never played one on TV or professionally. Actually, I did it in college onstage a couple of times. But no, I was excited about it.

AE: What was it like working with Bonnie Somerville?

LB: Oh, it was fantastic! It was great. She’s a lot of fun. She, like myself, is from New York originally, and we had a great time together.

AE: Your character reads, obviously, as a woman of color no matter what her specific background is, and for women of color who are queer, that’s just such a rare thing. How do you feel about that?

LB: I think it’s great. We’ve got not only all different colors across the board in our society, but we have to start representing different sexual preferences and everything. I mean, that’s the norm. That’s what we live with every day, and I think that art should represent life as we know it, so it’s important.

She seems cool, right? However, I’m a little floored by Benedicto’s view of Caitlin and Alicia’s relationship as a whole:
Bonnie and I felt really strongly when we did our breakup scene that we really had come full circle with that relationship, so that was really nice. It was real. And I liked that about it, because I think that’s important too. You can’t just represent stereotypes; you have to get down to who these people really are. That’s important to see.
Yeah, it is important! So why didn’t we get to see who they really were? Or, well, see them at all? This week, Caitlin’s sexuality seemed to disappear entirely. She did little more than scream at a fashion designer and spar with the magnificent Christine Ebersole – and not a single one of Catilin’s so-called friends inquired about her broken heart.

For my money, the queerest (and best) moment of the finale was this odd encounter between Mia (Lucy Liu) and a pet adoption representative, played by Wallace Shawn (The L Word, The Princess Bride):

  Yes, I’m back to grasping at straws, looking for any glimmer of gaiety on a show that was supposed to be chock-full of it. For more broken dreams and dashed hopes, read bad machine‘s recap on Monday.

A STEP UP FROM THOSE APPLEBEE’S COMMERCIALS Have you see those commercials in which an apple talks to people – and the flirty fruit has Wanda Sykes‘ voice? If not, be glad, and if you have, take heart: On a recent episode of the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, Sykes’ lines were actually worthy of her talent. Her character, Barb, bantered with Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) about a fling they had in college. It seems Christine wasn’t all that great in bed:

  Ha! Nobody can do unimpressed like Wanda can. And there was never a hotter LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation). Hey, Barb: I hear Caitlin on Cashmere is free, if you want to explore those youthful urges further.

LESBIAN QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I am butch, I guess. In my physical appearance. When I show up at the White House and George and Laura just about have a heart attack because they can’t figure out who the f— I am – or what I am – because I’m in a tuxedo, yeah. Or when every single time I walk into the washroom in an airport, even being famous, people … think they’re in the wrong washroom, yeah. I think about it.” – Singer k.d. lang, whose first new album in eight years, Watershed, was released this month, to New York magazine THE FRENCH-CANADIAN ALLIANCE I have long suspected that there’s something in the water in Canada that makes people more creative, more compassionate and just plain cooler. The latest evidence of this phenomenon comes in the form of singer-songwriter Émily Bégin, who has written an “ode to love” specifically for her LGBT fans. The song is called “Au Grand Jour,” and the accompanying music video features several same-sex couples (yes, most of them are male, but still):

   

Bégin told Quebec’s Musiqueplus music channel that the song is also a way to acknowledge the struggles of her gay friends who grew up with her in Montreal. She has had a very gay-friendly career, appearing at Pride events and working with LGBT artists such as Mado Lamothe.

Visit Émily’s MySpace page and official site for more French-Canadian coolness. (And merci for the tip, Pamela and Morin!)

OUT AND LOUD (AND CREATIVELY SPELLED) On Feb. 17, the all-lesbian classic rock band Wicked Jezabel was named Best Hard Rock Band at the “Wammies,” the annual Washington (D.C.) Area Music Association Awards. (Thanks to Marlene for the tip.)

Here they are showing off their trophy: Any band that can do a decent version of Heart‘s “Barracuda” is more than OK by me:

   

Visit Wicked Jezabel’s MySpace page for more info and more kick-ass rock. (Sadly, there are no videos of them playing “Barracuda” on Guitar Hero III – then I’d really be impressed.)

VAMPIRE MOVIE DELAYS SUCK For a couple of months now, I’ve been trying to figure out whether two upcoming movies based on the life of Elizabeth Bathory (aka the original lesbian vampire) are (1) ever coming out and (2) even a little bit lesbianish. I still don’t really know. But I won’t let that stop me!

First, The Countess, which looks likely to both scare and seduce. Creator and star Julie Delpy (But I’m a Cheerleader) recently told The Guardian that she’s interested in both the truth and the myth of the Bloody Countess:

I’m fascinated by how myth is born, how people become demonised. History is, after all, written by the victors, and [Elizabeth Bathory] ended up dying under house arrest. But who was she really? Certainly highly sexual for a woman of her time. She was probably bisexual. She was also certainly very powerful, running affairs of state, controlling armies. Not a woman to mess with.

It turns out that mine won’t be the first film on her in the next year or so. … I was in Slovakia about eight years ago and told a bunch of local people that I was going to make a film about the countess. No, we are going to do that, they told me. We can’t let a Frenchwoman tell our story. And they were big guys, raised lots of money. The two films will be extremely different. Theirs will have lots of battles, a big epic. I’ll have about six people. … We can safely say that my film will be the more intimate one.

That “big epic,” Bathory, stars Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies). Here’s the trailer for Bathory:

   

Hmm. I hope reclaiming the legend doesn’t involve de-vamping or de-gaying it. But I’m not optimistic. As Slovak and AfterEllen.com reader Phantom put it: “It’ll be a long, long time before the LGBT community is taken seriously here. So, since Bathory doesn’t need comic relief, there ain’t gonna be any queer content.” This really is a horror movie, isn’t it?

We’ll keep you updated as (rather, if) we get more information. But both films have been delayed so long, it seems likely that VLAAD (the Vampire Lesbians Alliance Against Defamation) is trying to keep them under wraps. Or under coffin lid, I guess.

HAVING A GREAT COMEBACK, WISH YOU WERE HERE Out WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes announced this week that she will definitely play again. Several WNBA players recently wrote virtual postcards from the All-Star Weekend. Here’s Swoopes’ greeting: Nice photo, nice words. Hmm, I wonder what that font is called – Swoopes Sans?

HAIKU FOR CHAIKEN Episodes 5.6 and 5.7 of The L Word included some not-at-all-veiled references (“Kelly Corrigan” and “The Look”) to Rosie O’Donnell‘s stint on The View. What does Rosie think of that? Get out your secret decoder rings: It’s so hard to resist replying with an actual haiku – so I’ll just give in:

rosie o’donnell i miss your rambly, rash ways be a guestbian
BECKY BUCKLES Rebecca Drysdale, aka the Time-Traveling Lesbian, unveiled the best belt buckle ever this week: Order your own (and a few extra for past and future decades) at dykes in the city.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Alyson Hannigan will be attending the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast reunion at the Paley Center in March.

This week, actor and activist Staceyann Chin‘s autobiographical piece “Paradise of Lies” was published in The New York Times.

Logo (AfterEllen.com’s parent company) relaunched its website this week. It’s vid-tastic!

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have joined the producing team of off-Broadway’s The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. I’m totally going to haunt the theater now, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of them.

Out author Charlotte Mendelson tours the locations that inspired When We Were Bad on the Guardian site. (Thanks to Kate for the tip.)

Queer cinema expert Jenni Olson, who is also the Director of E-Commerce & Consumer Marketing at Wolfe Video, launched a new LGBT movie blog over the weekend.

AfterEllen.com contributing writer and blogger Final Girl interviewed Guinevere Turner this week, about just about everything. Says Final Girl, “There’s, like, totally some gay stuff!”

Quarterlife, the TV series adapted from the web series, premieres Tuesday, Feb. 26 on NBC and then moves to its regular Sunday night time slot on March 2. The show features a “fluid sexuality” story line, which is certain to both titillate and frustrate.

For the Bible Tells Me So was released on DVD this week. The film captures the struggles of several Christian families with gay children.

Ellen Page is a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday, Feb. 22.

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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