In Toronto at the moment, theatre goers are experiencing a weird and wonderful show on a street rather unlike the classic US children’s programme icons of the seventies and eighties. What happens when puppets go bad?
Avenue Q is the raunchiest puppet production since our own beloved Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles, although they’re not quite […]

[Read more →]

 Vin Packer (aka Marijane Meaker): Spring Fire: San Francisco: Cleis Press: 2003.
Originally published in 1952, Marijane Meaker’s Spring Fire was the first lesbian pulp novel with a contemporary setting. She had some reticence about republishing this work, and asks readers to bear its historical context in mind.
Hey, I enjoyed it, though- particularly the characterisation. Susan […]

[Read more →]

It’s always a pleasure to excavate earlier decades of LGBT history, and this delightful discovery from the gay literary past is no exception.
I first discovered Victor Baris’ The Man from CAMP in Susan Stryker (no relation to either Jeff- I think…), in which she gave the pseudonymous “Don Holliday” rather short shrift. What Stryker didn’t […]

[Read more →]

At the very time that The Dark Knight opens in movie theatres, enter the spectre of the sixties Camp Crusader, his silly Silver Age counterpart. Why does the Camp Crusader haunt the visibly butcher, noir Batman of today?
After the forties, Batman and Robin went slightly tamer. They became more committed to advanced technology when they […]

[Read more →]

Warning: This is quite graphic, and about spousal violence. If you find such content traumatic, you may not want to read this story.
____________________________________________________________
I don’t know how long I’ve got. We’re trapped in this enormous baroque palace or chateau from the eighteenth century, in the Czech Republic. It’s a self-contained universe of severe columns, immobile statues, […]

[Read more →]

Several months ago, I wrote a blog entry on the existence of suicide and anorexia nervosa enablement sites on the Net. Sadly, there has now been a New Zealand case where one depressed young woman ended her life because of a suicide enablement site.
Alethea Gates (27) died in Auckland, in January 2008. Her parents, Neville […]

[Read more →]

And here’s yet another short story from my Decima series, set in a near futureworld where the world’s human population has been killed off by a devastating plague- to which only the gay gene confers immunity…
_______________________________________________________
Den Richardson doubled over as the next spasm hit him. He gritted his teeth as the wave of pain coursed […]

[Read more →]

Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders: New York: Feminist Press; 2003.
Robert Kirby and David Kelly: The Book of Boy Trouble: San Francisco: Green Candy Press: 2005.
This time, I have two reviews apiece, one for each gender.
In 1995, two young alternative gay men stapled together a zine called Boy Trouble,  intended to deal with the lives […]

[Read more →]

I realise that there was an apparent omission from my earlier descriptions of LGBT fare at the latest Wellington International Film Festival, although I think this one is so fabulous that it deserves a seperate entry of its own, in any case.
Warwick Broadhead is a performance artist, currently settled on Waiheke Island, and noted for […]

[Read more →]

 Pagan Kennedy: The First Man-Made Man: New York: Bloomsbury: 2008.
As I’ve earlier provided a capsule biography of Michael Dillon, the first recorded female to male transsexual, I thought I’d focus on some more particular details involved in this biography of the world’s first transman.
Michael lived an austere professional life, whether as a mechanic, or after […]

[Read more →]