Welcome to a new column called Easy Target. Oscar Raymundo is the event coordinator at A Different Light bookstore and an editor at GayCities.com. He also writes the HomoTech column for EDGE Media Networks. Each week he alerts you to potential advances or threats to gaykind from the forces of the news media, politics, and popular culture -- the front lines of the culture wars -- in San Francisco and beyond. He also rates the personal risks being taken by those speaking up: Safe, Risky, or Dangerous. This week, President Obama's warning signs lower over the Defense of Marriage Act, and Fox News issues a state of emergency. Texting turns out to be a real life-saver. James Franco keeps acting gay. Polk Street residents go after gay colors and art. A Canadian gay boy has the worst "meet the parents" ever. And The A-List wants you - to give up what you have left of your dignity and argue over salad!
Frey Norris Contemporary + Modern will open its new gallery in downtown San Francisco tomorrow with an opening reception for two exhibits, one of them unusual for a smaller space that's not a museum.
The central myth propagated by the annual Academy Awards telecast is that Hollywood is one big happy family of mutually supportive artists in thrall to the sacred muse of inspiration. (We'll pause for a minute while you stop laughing ...) You know better, and here are seven harsh beauties to blot out all those Oscar night air kisses. Don't expect a happy ending.
Barton Fink (1991)
A progressive, intellectual New York playwright (inspired by Odets and played by John Turturro) cashes in with a screenwriting gig in L.A. circa 1941. The Coen brothers take enormous and perhaps undue pleasure in mapping Barton's Hollywood highway of hell. John Goodman repeats, "Here's to the life of the mind." Indeed.
Those of you who go out to readings probably have a reason why you go: to be inspired maybe, or bedazzled, or to hear a good story. Some of you go for a sense of community, while others hope to escape into somebody else's world or to sink deeply into your own (while in the company of other people, for once). Or, whatever, weirdo.
Uncategorizable but country-flecked singer and composer Neko Case is inscrutable. Like her lyrics and song structure, her deportment is unpredictable and posessed of a feral generosity. These days, Case is busy giving away her 1967 Mercury Cougar, the one she supposedly has been working on herself, restoring it carefully to mint condition over the past decade. She named it Angie Dickinson! Having done that, she used the muscle-car to crouch atop, sword upraised, in what would become Grammy-nominated cover art for her record Middle Cyclone.
Because we can't all just hop on a plane and fly to Amsterdam, let's instead bring Amsterdam to us. Cycle tracks are the wave of the future (or of the past few decades, if you live in Europe). They're like a cross between sidewalks and bike lanes: They're physically separated from the roadway, but they're dedicated to pedal power rather than foot traffic.
