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  qPDX.com for Pride Portland! Happy Pride NW 2011 everbody! Phew, what a weekend. A ton of dance nights. A slew of costume changes. Lots and lots of teal. 25+ miles on the bike on Saturday. Fliptography at Queerlandia. Waterfront. Beer, banners, bruises. Leslie and the Lys. Trying to find Alley Hector on Sunday morning. Trying to find a place to pee at Blow Pony (thanks Leila!). Trying to find the car! Trying, well, just trying! I barely have time to take a breath before its Alley’s and my birthdays (Al: Wed. Me: Thurs). It’s been EPIC. And now on to the processing reviewing that is, as it should be, part of our Pride coverage. We need your input!
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  Put This on the Map is a documentary featuring 26 different LGBTQ youth living in East King County. In the film the youth speak about what it means to be LGBTQ and discuss both gender expression and sexual orientation. One of the things I enjoyed most about the film was that youth from across the LGBTQ spectrum were included. We get to hear from youth that identify as trans, gender queer, bisexual, lesbian and gay. They talk about their experiences with bullying, their families, coming out, school, friends, their relationships, and their hopes for the future.
The film offers good basic information but is a little too after school special-esque. It doesn’t really delve into any specific topic as the experiences of so many youth are touched on.
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  I am is filmmaker Sonali Gulati’s coming out letter to her mother. Eleven years after her mother’s death, Sonali explores the possibilities of how her mother might have reacted to her sexuality by returning to her childhood home in New Delhi and gathering the coming out stories of Indian queers and their parents.
Some might think a film of coming out stories from a country which only decriminalized homosexuality in 2009 would be intolerably grim. But the film includes many heartfelt interviews with Indian parents philosophizing on parental acceptance, the meaning of unconditional love and the process of letting your children become who they are. Some of these parents showed real bravery to stick by their kids and to change their own expectations. They’ve challenged the expectations of their extended families and a society that is very focused on heterosexual marriage. Many are clearly still struggling with it, but there is a lot of love in this film.
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  Last night I took a friend who was visiting from New York to the airport. We got in a great philosophical conversation about whether gay rights are the inevitable result of a free society. At this point in history, it’s possible to view gay marriage and other advances as “just a matter of time”. The truth is there are people who faced police brutality, unemployment, societal rejection, and death to make this conversation even possible. There are people who still face these horrors, but that’s another film…
On These Shoulders We Stand puts us across the living room from a fabulous cross-section of the activists of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. There’s Ivy Bottini, founder and president of NOW New York. She was sacked when the term “Lesbian Menace” was coined.
There’s Dale Reynolds, the Hollywood leading man who founded Gay Actors RAP to fight homophobia in the film industry. Then there’s Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church who helped organize the first Pride Parade in L.A. a year after Stonewall.
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  It's hard to be pretty when being pretty makes you hard. The Adonis Factor, a film by Christopher Hines, is a look into the objectification and beautification inherent in the gay male world. Hines also brought us the movie, The Butch Factor. Both films discuss social and personal roles and image in gay culture. However, The Adonis Factor focuses more on beauty and image expectation.
I love queer documentary. I forget how narrow my perspective can be as a lesbian, and I’m always thrilled to find new beautiful pathways, and dark alleys in which to peek. I do kind of feel, that when I opened the door on this documentary, all that stood before me were boring pant suits. The emotional standpoint attempts to create empathy towards muscle ridden gay men, and remind us all that “beauty is a curse”. I can understand that breaking your back to reach a social expectation is grueling, but I’m not so sure sitting and watching an entire documentary on this one issue is eye opening.
I found the perspective narrow. Midway through, I got a sense that these men felt their pressure to work out and starve themselves was exclusive to them. There was an attitude that maybe straight people and other queer communities don’t have it quite as rough with pressure to be perfect. I did find some of the interviews to be interesting, but I couldn’t help that “I’ll give you something to cry about” feeling welling up inside me like an angry demon ready to devastate some carbs.
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 Nothing says I love you, like surgically adopting your lover's face. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a film by Marie Losier chronicling the relationship of Genesis P-Orridge and his wife Lady Jaye. Genesis took part in forming Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and kickstarting the industrial movement. Lady Jaye was his love and collaborator. Epic romance and art were among their accomplishments… so was looking alike. Man, if you think you and your partner are codependent, check these two out! They met in a fetish dungeon, and spent years having plastic surgery to look more like one another. Basically, their one-ification was their gay baby.
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  Patty Schemel with Hole, for Rolling Stone in the 1995 issue where she came out. From L Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, Schemel, Melissa Auf der Maur For any rock fan who was a teen of the 90s Seattle grunge reigned supreme and Hole was its seat of feminine power. The seminal grrl grunge group was fronted but the unmistakable, if not always likeable, Courtney Love, wife and baby momma to the most well known grunge persoanlity of all time,, the late Kurt Cobain, frontman for Nirvana. But as big a personality as Love was, all the little baby dykes had eyes only for the lady behind the drums. Patty Schemel was a kick ass ginger drummer with heart, and she was gay.
She was also a drug addict, alcoholic, friend, and now wife and mother. Five years ago, at the beginning of her new sober life, she came across archival footage taken during Hole’s 1995 world tour and thought to digitize the memories. Instead, it became, Hit So Hard: The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel a documentary of her amazing journey.
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  Scene from the stage production of 'Arias with a Twist' The dream of the 80s is alive in Joey Arias, or so it seems from the waxing nostalgic at the beginning of Arias with a Twist:The Docufantasy, Q Doc’s opening night documentary that follows Arias in his latest performance, a collaboration with classically trained puppeteer Basil Twist.
The first 20 minutes of interviews with Arias’ 80s hipster pals is tender, and I certainly sympathize with the sadness over the commodification of performance art, queerness and weirdness that has come about with the likes of Lady Gaga etc. Indeed, Joey Arias was already a brilliant Gaga-esque diva before Stephanie Germanotta was a glint in her parents eyes.
But as cute and tender as it is, it starts to get a bit tiresome. Luckily, the film moves on pretty quickly to its introduction of collaborator Basil Twist.
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  This isn't the Portland show but it is MEN live Remind me not to stop drinking, because when I fall off the wagon, I fall hard. It was a tough hump day anyway, beginning with a dentist appointment and a long work day…oh, and the death of Elizabeth Taylor. Luckily, I had two of my favorite bands to save me at the end. Lovers and MEN‘s latest albums are both on repeat on my iPod to get me through.
In the vein of an already marginally successful day at best I neglected to check the battery on my camera (and I also left my credit card at the bar) so was unable to get any pictures. But even if I had a day full of FAIL I was soothed by the sweet crooning of Lovers’ Cubbie Berk and energized by the political dance energy of MEN. As for the pre-funk and in between set turntable stylings of DJ Mr. Charming? Just right.
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  Fannie Mae Darling hosts. Photo by Marty Davis / Just Out In Portland’s world of on-the-fly and occasionally inebriated performance world, Fannie Mae Darling managed to keep the local theme alive while providing a quality holiday drag, theater and music extravaganza. In constantly rotating dresses Darling kept the crowd engaged and giggling through over two and a half hours of stage antics. Yes, while drunken.
Just Out’s Marty Davis has all the photos to prove it was a spectacularly successful Quitsmas blend of talent on her Facebook page.
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