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Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (March 21, 2008)

SPASHLEY SENT TO DETENTION UNTIL SEPTEMBER Bad news for South of Nowhere fans: The N has moved the premiere date of the second half of the third season – which was supposed to start in two weeks – to the fall.

In a blog post on The N’s website, they explained that they’re doing this for the fans:

All of us at The N have been absolutely overwhelmed by your reaction to the news about South of Nowhere. We so deeply appreciate your passion for and dedication to the show — it has meant a lot to us as a network, just like we know the show means a lot to you.

While sorting through the mountains of feedback that you have shared with us about the show, we realized that if we really want to give South the proper send-off it deserves, we’re going to need more time. So we decided to move the premiere date to the fall. I know it’s going to be hard to wait for the final season, but we’ve planned a lot of special material (retrospectives, a final webisode, podcasts and more) to say goodbye to this beautiful, important series, and we really don’t want to rush it. It is out of respect for the show and for you, the fans, that we’re trying to give it the time and attention it deserves.

Also, this way, when the series airs in the fall, it will be playing with a new season of Degrassi. That means it has a chance to be seen by a lot more people, and I think we can all agree that the more people that see South of Nowhere — that learn about these characters and their lives and loves and struggles — the better.

Thanks for loving South of Nowhere as much as we do. We promise to work hard to honor the final season this fall.

– The-Sarah [The N’s General Manager]

Does this remind anyone else of the “I’m doing this for your own good” speech your parents used to give you just before a spanking?

Go to SaveSpashley.com to share your thoughts with other like-minded fans, but I wouldn’t expect much – it’s clear from The N’s redesigned website (“Which Easter Candy Are You?”) that they’re making a shift to go after the tween/younger teen audience. And as much as my 13-year-old niece loves South of Nowhere, I don’t see a show that’s fundamentally about a lesbian teen relationship fitting in with a High School Musical lineup. (Although adding a lesbian teen relationship might be the one thing that would make me sit through an entire viewing of that movie.)

And for those of you wondering: No, We’re Getting Nowhere is not going away, too, they’ll just find something else to vlog about when The L Word is over. Which reminds me: You won’t want to miss their recap of The L Word‘s season finale next week, when former guestbians return to share in the sock puppet fun. Look for that exercise in chaos management vlog episode on Wednesday.

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN … The GLAAD Media Awards were held in New York last weekend, bringing an array of lesbian and lesbian-favorite celebs to the red carpet: As usual, there were only a few categories in which women or shows/movies/articles about lesbians won the prize: Outstanding Comic Book (Strangers in Paradise) and Outstanding New York Theater — Broadway & Off—Broadway (The Beebo Brinker Chronicles).

TIME IS ON OUR SIDE

Time magazine has a poll on their site asking readers to vote for the best and worst covers of all time, and Ellen DeGeneres’ 1997 “Yep, I’m Gay” cover is currently winning. By a landslide.

The poll will be up for another week, and then the top two covers will be featured in the April 7 issue of the magazine, so go vote for Ellen!

DANTE’S COVE – DEMONS + COPS = PARADISE FALLS! Here! just announced the April 11 debut of 26 new episodes of Paradise Falls, a drama the gay subscription network describes as: “Chock-full-of gay weddings, porno-shoots, creepy cults, missing bodies, Pride Day celebrations, racy couples, boys with boys, girls with girls and an election full of dirty tricks, this series promises to keep its audience whet with anticipation as it awaits the next steamy plot twist.”

Naturally, we pumped the here! folks for details on the lesbian characters, and here’s what they told us:

Bisexual Trish (Michelle Latimer) begins to crush on lesbian Cate (Meredith McGeachie, who played Tonya on the The L Word). This spark begins to fly in the second episode when Cate, one of the town’s hard-working police officers gets called to break up a fight at a wedding in which Trish was involved. But for a cop, Cate is surprisingly gun-shy when it comes to relationships. When she transferred to Paradise Falls, she swore them off to focus on her brother, Ethan and putting him on the right path. Meanwhile, Trish’s life has been on a downward spiral (she has had her heart broken more than once and was kicked out of her residence) and she has felt strongly that the possibility of salvation has escaped her….until she meets Cate, that is. But then Cate’s ex-girlfriend Julie shows up (Kerry Lai Fatt). * Note: The character of Julie is not introduced until later into the season)
Toxic Tonya’s back! Only she looks a lot less toxic and a lot more appealing here:

Lesbian Lynnie Jordan (Amanda Brugel) married a man due to familial pressure and before she had come to terms with the possibility of opening up about her sexuality. She was also under the assumption that the man she was marrying was actually gay himself. She ended up cheating on him – with a woman – but stayed married to him for her own financial gain, although he had fallen in deep love with her. Since then, she has focused her attention on a new lover, Kristen, and they plan on getting married, but Lynnie is afraid to contact Tony to finalize her divorce …
Forget Dante’s Cove, this show sounds more like Desperate Money-Grubbing Lesbian Housewives. Which doesn’t mean we won’t watch.

Keep an eye on heretv.com for more info.

HOW COULD ANYONE SAY NO TO THAT TANK TOP? Out Swedish musician Sara Em has just released her first single, “Include Me” (thanks to BrokenWings for the tip!), and no, it’s not about trying to get past the velvet rope at SheBar. It’s about gay folks being excluded from the Christian church.

It may sound like a downer, but the song is quite powerful in a non-preachy way, and Sara Em is, um, distracting. Here she is channeling Jodie Foster: Watch the video here: We’ll include you, Sara Em! Where can we sign you up?

PUNKY BREWSTER GROWS UP, BECOMES A LESBIAN MINISTER Soleil Moon Frye (you knew her as Punky Brewster) has signed on to play a lesbian minister in the indie comedy For Better or Worse, which centers on the wedding of a couple of gay grooms. Yes, Frye’s character is supposed to officiate at their ceremony.

The movie, which will be filmed this summer, also includes a nanny “who has a bombshell to drop,” played by lesbian fave Janeane Garofalo.

Here are photos of Soleil, then and now: I think I watched Punky Brewster back in the ’80s, but I can’t remember much about it, except that Punky had big hair, possibly with lots of colored ribbons in it, and she annoyed me a little. That didn’t stop me from writing the cheesy headline “Punky Brewster grows up, becomes a lesbian minister,” though.

THE SWEET FICTION THING I just finished reading Libba Bray‘s fascinating and dark Gemma Doyle trilogy, which begins with the New York Times bestseller A Great and Terrible Beauty and ends with The Sweet Far Thing (with Rebel Angels in between). The trilogy is the story of a young woman who discovers she has inherited great power and must determine how to use it to save another world that lies just beyond ours (read a longer plot summary here). I was pleasantly surprised to learn in the last book that one of the trilogy’s main characters is a lesbian. (Don’t worry, I won’t give away any spoilers as to who it is).

I’ll admit I had my suspicions about this character all along, but since this was a book aimed at teens (although loosely, in the same way that Harry Potter is) and set in Victorian England, I thought I was just reading something into it that wasn’t there (taking my work home with me, so to speak). Once it was actually confirmed, I braced myself for the lesbian to come to a bad end, but my expectations were confounded once again (in a good way).

Although reading in detail about the rules and double standards applied to women during this time is maddening, at least to me (I feel the same way when I watch AMC’s Mad Men), the trilogy is a decidedly feminist one. Beneath their endless corsets and curtsies, women literally hold all the power in this story (at least, some women do – the books also deal with class and race issues).

The trilogy isn’t perfect – it can be a little overly detailed at times and too slow at others, and there are some stereotypes around the lesbian character I wish had been avoided – but it’s an engrossing read, and stumbling across a good lesbian character in mainstream fiction is always a nice surprise. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, lesbians really do exist.

AND WHY WERE THEY SINGING ABOUT A CRUSTACEAN, ANYWAY? Our friends over at NewNowNext.com recently interviewed the B-52’s Kate Pierson and some guy named Fred about their new album and why it’s a good time to be gay. (OK, just kidding, I know who Fred is. Sort of.)

Check it out here:  

I remember dancing to “Rock Lobster” on the record player in sixth grade, and at pretty much every school dance the rest of my life. I probably would’ve been less annoyed by lyrics like “there goes a narwhal, here comes a bikini whale!” if I’d known back then that Kate isn’t straight. Of course, it also would have helped if I’d known back then that I wasn’t straight, too …

IT’S LIKE ENCHANTED, BUT GAY AfterEllen.com reader LadySam tipped us off that comic Lisa Mandel, a French web comic author/blogger (with some of her work translated into English and/or Spanish), has written a comic book about two princesses falling in love that will be released on March 20th.

Here’s the French explanation of it:

Dans la plus haute tour du royaume, la jeune princesse Végétaline est retenue prisonnière. Heureusement, un prince … heu … une princesse nommée Codette fera tout pour la délivrer. Mêlant le réel et le merveilleux, l’environnement moderne et certains éléments des contes classiques, cette histoire raconte avant tout l’éveil au sentiment amoureux chez deux jeunes filles, et les obstacles qu’elles devront franchir pour pouvoir se retrouver.
Here’s a rough English translation:
In the highest tower of the kingdom, the young princess Vegetaline is kept imprisoned. Luckily, a prince … er … a princess named Codette will do everything to rescue her. Mixing real and marvelous, the modern environment and some elements from classic fairy tales, this story tells us about the awakening of love between two young girls, and the obstacles they’ll have to overcome to be reunited.
Forget Enchanted. It’s more like Heavenly Creatures meets Sleeping Beauty, without the matricide or Kate Winslet. At least until they turn it into a movie.

SOME BILLBOARDS ARE BLUNT. GET OVER IT. U.K. organization Stonewall recently paid for a billboard ad that said, “Some people are gay, get over it!” In related news, South of Nowhere fans recently created a similar ad:

CAT CORA SHOUTS IT OUT Some unsuspecting HRC representative let Bridget and Karman into their awards gala last week, which honored out lesbians Cat Cora and Andrea Meyerson, with Anne Hathaway presenting. Cat was nice enough to send AfterEllen.com some love from the red carpet: See the whole Cat interview, plus conversations with Meyerson, Judith Light, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano and Work Out‘s Jesse Brune, in the new episode of You Can’t Take Them Anywhere!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! We forgot to mention in last week’s column that AfterEllen.com was recently named one of the world’s 50 most powerful websites. Thanks to all of you who wrote in to tell us about the news – we promise to use our power for good!

There’s apparently been some discussion in the forums about whether men and straight women can be part of the community here. Short answer: yes. They’ve always been welcome, and they’ll continue to be as long as they follow the same rules as everyone else. The site won’t change to accomodate them, but they’re not asking it to, they just want to join in the fun. Which is not only fine, it’s encouraging – the more straight people and gay men who learn to appreciate lesbian and bi women, the better!

HBO has decided not to run the Lily Tomlin-led comedy series 12 Miles, even after ordering six episodes; it’s now being shopped to other networks.

Openly gay HBO President Carolyn Strauss has stepped down after 22 years with the company, amid concerns about HBO’s recent (lack of) performance.

Uh Huh Her’s album is coming out May 20, and you can listen to some of the tracks from their new album here.

Out authors Charlotte Mendelson and Stella Duffy were named to the long list for the prestigious Orange Prize.

The Minneapolis play “Love Person” features a deaf lesbian (thanks Beth!).

Ellen DeGeneres will co-host the charity fundraiser Idol Gives Back with Ryan Seacrest, airing Wednesday, April 9, on Fox.

Due to technical difficulties and travel schedules, we couldn’t post new episodes of What’s YOUR Problem? or Kate and Julie’s next Big Gay Vlog this week; look for new episodes next week.

Malinda Lo and Danielle Riendeau wrote a guide to Dinah Shore for Logo’s TripOut, with lots of photos.

Nina’s Heavenly Delights will be available on DVD in the U.S. on April 22; you can pre-order it now.

Coming up on Monday: Lori and I (and the bunnies) return with a new She Made Me Watch This! (Finally!)

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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