back in business - part deux

So this in honor of Mel's return to the blog, who might just be the only reader of my blog :) and I do mean that smile in a nice way, not a snarky way . . .
Anyways, she's back and I wanted to post "Back in Business" from the movie Dick Tracy with Madonna and Warren Beatty. It was silly fun, pre-"Chicago", and I was a gay little 4th grader, worshipping my "I'm Breathless" Madonna inspired-by soundtrack. It had a trampy little song about S&M that I thought was so titillating as a youth, as well as all kinda campy tracks, and three gorgeous tracks written by Sondheim, who I wouldn't get to know till Bravo turned me into a big mary sissy fag in high school and I'd watch musicals all during the month of June in honor of gay pride month.
There was one long, hot summer where I watched so many "pink" films and tv shows, that truly shaped the person that I am now. I watched every episode of Twin Peaks on Bravo AND Melrose Place on E!, I sobbed at the hiv tragedy Longtime Companion, loaded up on musicals (Godspell, Pippin, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Jesus Christ Superstar, all the Rodgers and Hammerstein I could rent, West Side Story, Into the Woods(!), Camelot) Prick Up Your Ears!, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Piano, oh the Merchant-Ivory sumptuousness of Maurice . . . I raided the library for D.H. Lawrence for it's latent homoeroticism, I trolled the Sexuality section of the new Hastings in our mall to peek at "The New Joy of Gay Sex" and discovered my nipples were sensitive, I uncovered Pansy Division, found porn on the Internet (of all places!) I started "getting into" 8os music, especially all that ultra-fem and oh-so-fab New Wave . . . . I wish I woulda just come out back then, instead of delaying it for so long . . . but, it was a different time and a very different place. Anyways, back to Sondheim . . . .
That old grey girl can sure write some tunes that stab you in the heart. Inside the Actors Studio had him on its' inaugural season, before it became such an SNL gag (and really, c'mon, Jennifer Lopez? please, girl can dance and shake her ass, but acting? and teaching anyone anything about acting?) Anyways, they had a couple sing some of his signature songs ('Barcelona' ahhh), but it was only later I'd discover a few that just, *sigh, can't be ignored.

"Being Alive"
The current production of Company, starring Raul Esparza, is particularly "relevant" in that the lead actor /closet case is actually gay in real life, so the fact that he hasn't met the right woman, or "person" cuts to the heart of Sondheim, the composer and lyricist. It's hard not to turn it into a showstopper, it begs and demands and shouts itself into the theater . . . witness, children

Being Alive - Patti LuPone



I always wondered why the mom from Life Goes On was such a great singer on the show . . . woman is famazing, fantestical, but that hair is NOT electrocute. No, m'am!


I just tossed this in cause I remember watching a lot of figure skating back then, and c'mon, the Yamaguchi was a fucking bad-ass!

"I'm Still Here" - Yvonne De Carlo



you gotta love a dame in a tunic . . . and you can't sing this if you're not an old broad with a pack-a-day habit and a story to tell.

"Johanna" - Hugh Panaro (I wanna call him Huge Canary)



i dunno about the package, but what a great voice and some good acting, and fuck, the tune Johanna gets my goat everytime . . . . i feel you . . .. . one day, I'll STEAL you .. .. . mercy