leftovers

  It's been almost 10 months since I released "The White Tomato," my first original album in this decade. I've told the story before of how I had pandemic-induced writers block for several years, no motivation to write new music, let alone record and share it.  When the floodgates finally opened, I experienced a blur of creativity and productivity which resulted in not only the 9-track album, but four new b-sides and a slew of remixes. Then came a holiday song, and a couple of live shows where I got to perform a couple of the new songs for small crowds of friends in both my new home of Sacramento, and my adopted hometown of LA, where I lived for most of my second (gay) childhood.  Welp, as happy as I was releasing an album on only digital/streaming format, I finally decided I needed to release a definitive physical version of this album along with the bonus material. As much as I would have loved to go with vinyl, CDs are much more affordable and also able to fit much...

In the late 90s when I was coming of age, and coming out of the closet (slowly), there was a little explosion of gay indie films. Some of the ones I remember the most are Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, Trick, Beautiful Thing, and Edge of Seventeen. Oh, and of course, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar, which inspired my brother and I to have a party where we dressed in drag.  In the years since, there have been huge milestones in LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, with grounbreaking shows like Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, and Call Me By Your Name. One that really hit for me was "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005. I was obsessed with that movie and saw it several times in the theater. However, that movie was really very sad. So many LGBTQ "romance" stories have sad endings. Either the lovers couldn't be public about their love, or they couldn't be honest and open with each other, or one of them gets sick or dies.  So when I first st...