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'First Comes Love' Showcases Enduring Queer Relationships (Photos)

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A new book of photographs that documents and tells the stories of enduring relationships within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and we've got a selection of the beautiful pics below.

Called First Comes Love, the book is the culmination of years of work by photographer Barbara Proud (aka B. Proud) and merely one aspect of the larger "First Comes Love" project. As a whole, the "First Comes Love" project aims to be a traveling exhibition of photographs that document the lives and relationships of couples in the LGBT community.

First Comes Love is more than a book of beautiful photography, it’s an essential document,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “It testifies to a moment in history that all of us made possible and none of us will ever forget—when our community left the closet for good, and equality finally became a mainstream American value.”

But really, what it comes down to, is that after seeing these photos, there's just no way you can't feel better than you did a few minutes ago. Check them out below.

First Comes Love will be available for purchase on Sept. 26. Head here for more information.


'The Mary Jo Camel Show' Is Coming To NYC's The Celebration Of Whimsey

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If you frequent Brooklyn's gay bars, you may recognize Mary Jo Cameltoe as the charming bartender mixing cocktails while wearing a flowing sun dress or maybe a cat vest.

But she is also a performer and her popular show, "The Mary Jo Camel Show," is back for its second run after a sold out debut.

What makes Mary Jo's show different from the other queer performances you may see throughout New York City is the concept: "The Mary Jo Camel Show" is framed as a talk show of sorts, and each performance is considered an "episode." By fusing together drag, comedy, dance and other types of performance, Mary Jo acts as the coordinator by enlisting queer artists to help realize her personal vision of "The Mary Jo Camel Show."



In this second episode of "The Mary Jo Camel Show," set to run on Sep. 23 and 25 at The Celebration of Whimsey, Mary Jo has enlisted an all gay men's musical improv troupe, performers Charmin Ultra (as alter ego Ceclia), Brittany Alexandra Campbell, Thorgy Thor and Candi Shell, among others.

In order to better understand her vision for "The Mary Jo Camel Show" and how she curated the line-up for this second "episode" of the talk show performance series, The Huffington Post chatted with Mary Jo this week.

The Huffington Post: How did you choose the performers for this installment?
Mary Jo Cameltoe: This is the second live "episode" of the Mary Jo Camel Show. It is a live talk show, based on late night network programs such as the "Tonight Show." I grew up watching these shows nightly, and find them to be such a part of my pop culture history. I came up with the name, and then the idea, seven years ago while living in Chicago, though at the time I envisioned it as a web series. Once I moved to New York I quickly found myself performing in the queer nightlife circle, with a dance company of drag queens and fellow F2F drag performers. I have found that I have met the most magical, wonderful and talented people in nightclubs all over Brooklyn, and even Manhattan. I also started taking classes at Upright Citizens Brigade three years ago and found so many similarities between drag and more "traditional" comedy, and I wanted to be able to bridge these two worlds together in my own creative circle.

I pick my guests by asking myself two questions: "who do I like watching?" and "who do I like talking to?" I tend to pick from a pool of mostly queer artists because that is the world I am most familiar with and those are the people I most collaborate with. My dream is to have a large variety of performers and artists on as guests, and to keep the show entertaining without taking itself too seriously. It is booked the last Tuesday and Thursday of every month at The Celebration Of Whimsey starting January 2015.

What make this talk show performance series patently queer?
As I mentioned I pick largely from a community of queer artists, with a focus on drag queens. This is partly because a lot of my friends are drag queens, but also, while I appreciate that we "keep drag for ourselves" by mostly having shows late at night at bars, I think that bringing drag out of that element and into a theater space is always so great. I think this partly to expose a new audience to just how brilliant some performers are, and partly to let a queen shine under the stage lights with a sober(ish) audience. Having spent years bartending in queer bars and nightclubs, a large portion of my audience is queer -- gay men mostly. While I hate labeling comedy "gay comedy" or "straight comedy," it is hard to deny that traditional comedy is generally very heteronormative and errs to the side of "bro-y. While times are getting better for women, minorities and gays in comedy, it is still a white male dominated industry. I try to give my audience something that they can relate to, so I try to keep my artists varied to give everyone something to identify with. While there are hetero performers, this show definitely leans queer.

You've booked a gay men's improv group for this installment of "The Mary Jo Camel Show." What do you hope they bring to the production?
Fancy Man was recommended to me through my improv teacher and coach from UCB. I told her about my project and explained that I had sketch and stand-up in the first "episode" so I was looking for an improv team for this "episode." but that I didn't know where to start looking in the indy scene. I expressed that my main concern was that the show is queer and I wanted the team to at least have some queer representation. She pointed me to Fancy Man because not only are they a gay -- and hot -- but they are also really funny improvisers. Anyone who has sat through bad improv knows that it is the most painful thing in the world, even if they are gay and pretty to look at.

What do you want viewers to take away from this show?
I hope viewers walk away from this show feeling entertained. I hope that they go home and google the guests because they want to see more of their work or because they can't get Brittany's song out of her head. I want them to wonder if there's a music video for that dance the Camel Hoes did for Bpro Soundz' new project. Maybe they go see one of Thorgy Thor's other shows, or find Dan Paul's art online. I want to build a large community of collaborators.

I basically hope the audience walks away loving all the weirdos that I love.

"The Mary Jo Camel Show" will run on September 23 and 25 at 9 p.m. at The Celebration of Whimsey in New York City. Presale tickets are available -- head here.

Fan Ho's Photos Of Hong Kong In The Fifties Will Make You Nostalgic For An Era Long Gone

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Photographer, actor and director Fan Ho began photographing Hong Kong as a student in the early 1950s. The dramatic black-and-white images he captured of life in the bustling metropole in the two decades that followed are a striking testament to the changes of the era. His nostalgic shots of mysterious waterways and light-filled covered markets present viewers with a glimpse into a transforming city.

Fan Ho's Hong Kong work has previously been published in the books "Hong Kong Yesterday" and The Living Theatre." Now, he concludes the trilogy with "Fan Ho: A Hong Kong Memoir." His latest collection features previous unpublished photos as well as new-montaged photographs.

How The Internet Reacted To The NY Times Calling Shonda Rhimes An 'Angry Black Woman'

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Shonda Rhimes, along with much of the Internet, wasn't too happy on Friday after New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote that the acclaimed producer should call her autobiography “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.” (Stanley's attempt at humor was a play on "How to Get Away With Murder," a new show on ABC that Rhimes executive produced but did not create.)

Stanley's piece went on to discuss Rhimes' supposed "set of heroines who flout ingrained television conventions and preconceived notions about the depiction of diversity" and other black women on television.

Needless to say, Rhimes wasn't too pleased with the piece and shared some of her thoughts over Twitter:




Joshua Malina of "Scandal" also chimed in:




Meanwhile, Kerry Washington decided to share some of the many thinkpieces produced in response to Stanley's article:




The response wasn't limited to Rhimes' co-workers. "Rhimes is no more the 'angry black woman' than her characters," Slate critic Willa Paskin wrote in a piece published Friday, "who are angry the way that a bird is bipedal: It’s not false, but it’s not to the point." The critic went on break down Rhimes' female characters and praise how the creator has "re-framed the stereotype of the 'angry black woman'" by carving out a space for black females on television.

At Vox, Alex Abad-Santos called to light that Stanley constantly referred to Rhimes when discussing "HTGAWM" in her essay -- yet Rhimes isn't even the creator of the new series, she's one of the executive producers. "The piece refers to Rhimes 19 times and has only one mention of [Pete] Nowalk [creator of 'HTGAWM']," Abad-Santos wrote. Rhimes also found this puzzling:




Over at Vulture, Margaret Lyons called the New York Times piece "inaccurate, tone-deaf, muddled, and racist." Lyons noted a selection of obviously angry Rhimes characters (Mellie, Cyrus, etc.) who are white. Stanley failed to mention any of them. "What's the difference between a rant and a monologue? Sometimes just the race of the person delivering it," Lyons wrote. She ended her response piece by hypothetically assuming that even if Stanley's assessment were correct, there's still a flaw: "Is there anything in this article in particular that suggests any of these characters are based at all on Shonda Rhimes?," Lyons questioned. "There is not."

The takeaway from all this? Perhaps this: When writing about a beloved, powerful and successful producer, it may be best to not totally associate that person with their shows' characters, or more specifically, with characters of one race.

Preview Trent Reznor's Eerie 'Gone Girl' Soundtrack

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Can't wait to see "Gone Girl"? Instead of rereading Gillian Flynn's best-selling book again, you can now preview the soundtrack (or maybe do both together).

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have, once again, teamed up with David Fincher for another moody score. The duo previously won the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Score for "The Social Network" and also took home a Grammy for their "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" soundtrack. As far as their "Gone Girl" score, Reznor and Ross' have described it as "really terrible music you hear in massage parlors." But that's not all -- they told the Wall Street Journal that it starts off as music that's trying to give you a hug, then begins to "curdle and unravel."

If you're way too excited to wait until the film is released on Oct. 3 for a listen, you can now preview the score on the Nine Inch Nails website. Stereogum points out, however, that there appears to be another part of the score streaming on Tumblr that was ripped from the "Gone Girl" website. They both sound awesome and are already giving us chills.

[h/t Pitchfork]

Polly Bergen Dead: Emmy-Winning Actress And Singer Was 84

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NEW YORK (AP) — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original "Cape Fear" and the first woman president in "Kisses for My President," died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.

Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, surrounded by family and close friends. A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist, and founded a thriving beauty products company that bore her name.

In recent years, she played Felicity Huffman's mother on "Desperate Housewives" and the past mistress of Tony Soprano's late father on "The Sopranos."

Bergen won an Emmy in 1958 portraying the tragic singer Helen Morgan on the famed anthology series "Playhouse 90." She was nominated for another Emmy in 1989 for best supporting actress in a miniseries or special for "War and Remembrance."

Talking to women in a business group in 1968, she said her definition of success was "when you feel what you've done fulfills yourself, makes you happy and makes people around you happy."

Bergen was 20 and already an established singer when she starred with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in her first movie, "At War With the Army." She joined them in two more comedies, "That's My Boy" and "The Stooge."

In 1953, she made her Broadway debut with Harry Belafonte in the revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac." In 1957-58 she starred on the musical-variety "The Polly Bergen Show" on NBC, closing every broadcast with her theme song, "The Party's Over."

Also during the 1950s, she became a regular on the popular game show "To Tell the Truth."

Bergen published the first of her three advice books, "The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm" in 1962. That led to her own cosmetics company, which earned her millions.

Bergen became a regular in TV movies and miniseries, most importantly in the 1983 epic "The Winds of War" and the 1988 sequel, "War and Remembrance." She appeared as the troubled wife of high-ranking Navy officer Pug Henry, played by Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum also had the key role in the landmark 1962 suspense film, "Cape Fear," as the sadistic ex-convict who terrorizes a lawyer (Gregory Peck) and his wife (Bergen) and daughter because he blames Peck for sending him to prison. The film was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese.

In 1964's "Kisses for My President," Bergen was cast as the first female U.S. president, with Fred MacMurray as First Gentleman. (In the end, the president quits when she gets pregnant.) When Geena Davis portrayed a first woman president in the 2005 TV drama "Commander in Chief," Bergen was cast as her mother.

Among her other films was "Move Over, Darling" (1963) with Doris Day and James Garner, Susan Seidelman's 1987 "Making Mr. Right," and John Waters' 1990 "Cry-Baby," with Johnny Depp.

A fierce ambition prevailed throughout Bergen's entertainment career and in her business life. She walked out of early contracts with Paramount and MGM because she thought her film roles were inadequate.

As the president of the Polly Bergen Co., founded in 1966, she arrived at her office at 9 a.m. and worked a full day. "It was very difficult at the beginning," she said in 2001, "because everybody considered me just another bubble-headed actress."

She sold the company in 1973 to Faberge, staying on for a couple of years afterward to run it as a Faberge subsidiary.

Bergen employed the same zeal in reviving her performing career after a series of personal setbacks of the 1990s. She played successful dates at cabarets in New York and Beverly Hills.

When she was refused an audition for the 2001 Broadway revival of "Follies," she contacted composer Stephen Sondheim. He auditioned her and gave her the role of a faded star who sings of her ups and downs in show business. The show-stopping song, "I'm Still Here," was reminiscent of Bergen's own saga. She was nominated for a Tony award for her role.

In 2002 she played a secondary role in the revival of "Cabaret" and the following year she was back on Broadway with the comedy "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks."

Nellie Paulina Burgin was born in 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, into a family that at times relied on welfare to survive. They family eventually moved to California, and Polly, as she was called, began her career singing on radio in her teens.

"I was fanatically ambitious," she recalled in 2001. "All I ever wanted to be was a star. I didn't want to be a singer. I didn't want to be an actress. I wanted to be a star."

But over the years, Bergen's personal life was not as smooth as her career. Her four-year marriage to actor Jerome Courtland ended in an acrimonious divorce in 1955. Her second marriage to super-agent and producer Freddie Fields. The couple divorced in 1975 after 18 years.

In 1982 she married entrepreneur Jeff Endervelt. She co-signed his loans and gave him millions to invest from her beauty company profits. She said in a 2001 New York Times interview: "He would come home and say, 'Honey, sign this.' I wouldn't even look at it. Because you trust your husband."

The stock market crash of the 1980s wiped out the investments. She divorced him in 1991, and she said he left her with so many debts she had to sell her New York apartment and other belongings to avoid bankruptcy. She also battled emphysema and other ailments in the late 1990s, a result of 50 years of smoking.

She is survived by her children Peter Fields, Kathy Lander and Pamela Fields and three grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, her family is asking that donations be made to Planned Parenthood, said her publicist, Katz.

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Biographical material in this story was written by The Associated Press' late Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas.

Leave It To A Delightful Illustrator To Show Us The Most Charming Way To Travel

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If you're a good traveler, you arrive at your destination with the best camera -- or camera app -- around. If you're a great traveler, you draw it.

That's what Rachel Ryle, an award-winning illustrator based in Boulder, Colo., did when she embarked on an end-of-summer trip across the Atlantic for a friend's wedding. She packed her colored pencils and headed to five spots, including London, Paris, Iceland, Italy and Germany. She took day trips to Switzerland and the French wine region, too. As a way to remember each spot on her travels, she created her own "postcards" that captured something iconic about her location.

"I picked each spot by drawing a moment or view that I wanted to remember, but that would also be recognizable to those who I shared it with," Ryle told HuffPost Travel via email. "It forced me to sit down and fully be present in the moment. Often when we travel we don't take time to sit down and soak it all in. That was my main motivation, and I couldn't be happier that I packed my color pencils and made these memories. I also wanted to highlight each region by creating an animation that would share a part of my experiences along the way!" she added.

Her favorite spots are highlighted in the Instagram shots below. Here, from start to finish, is her journey as told through photos and sketches in her words.

"'Come Fly With Me' was the first animation announcing my travels."



"First stop, Iceland! My colored pencils couldn't resist capturing this view of the Öxarárfoss waterfall outside of Reykjavik. I seriously made the right decision to visit here on my way to Europe. It's simply stunning!"



"My view of the Tower Bridge, London. I picked this spot to draw and then got caught in a crazy downpour rain! I waited for about another hour until the clouds provided me with a dry moment to take this shot. For me it was worth the wait!"



"I couldn't leave London without enjoying a proper tea time with you. Cheers to all who are watching!"



"Ciao from Italy! I am fully enjoying this part of my holiday in the small town of Taormina on the island of Sicily. This drawing is of the Piazza del Duomo along Corso Umberto."



"During my stay in Italy I have enjoyed numerous servings of coffee a day. Here is a little tribute to the land of love & to the love of coffee!"



"I came across this cluster of colorful buildings in the small town of Esslingen, Germany and immediately started drawing it."




"Cheers! Here's a tribute to Germany, their beer & delicious pretzels."




"The city of lights, love... and crazy traffic that nearly ran me over! Today I almost sacrificed my life by squatting in the middle of a busy street to get this photo. It had to be done. As any Instagrammer would say, c'est la vie! It was worth the risk."



"This tasty animation was inspired by the little delicious French treats that I have been eating every day while in Paris. I figured I should share. Bon appétit!"


Check out Ryle's full Instagram account here.

After Dark: Meet gage of the boone, Artist And Nightlife Personality

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This is the nineteenth installment in HuffPost Gay Voices Associate Editor James Nichols' ongoing series "After Dark: NYC Nightlife Today And Days Past" that examines the state of New York nightlife in the modern day, as well as the development and production of nightlife over the past several decades. Each featured individual in this series currently serves as a prominent person in the New York nightlife community or has made important contributions in the past that have sustained long-lasting impacts.

HuffPost Gay Voices believes that it is important and valuable to elevate the work, both today and in the past, of those engaged in the New York nightlife community, especially in an age where queer history seems to be increasingly forgotten. Nightlife not only creates spaces for queers and other marginalized groups to be artistically and authentically celebrated, but the work of those involved in nightlife creates and shapes the future of our culture as a whole. Visit Gay Voices regularly to learn not only about individuals currently making an impact in nightlife, but those whose legacy has previously contributed to the ways we understand queerness, art, identity and human experience today.


The Huffington Post: What did your journey to becoming a fixture as an artist and personality within the New York nightlife scene entail?
gaga of the boone: I moved to NYC from San Francisco but spent time living in France and traveling throughout Europe in between. After San Francisco, I was city shopping to see where I belonged. I wanted to move to London but that didn't work out -- instead NYC reached out and grabbed me. In San Francisco I was part of a wild and colorful world of parties, art and music and also part of a band called HETICIDE. That period of my life really influenced where I am now. Nightlife in San Francisco was less of a focused thing; everyone was an active part of creating the world and making events or parties happen.

I've always dressed crazy. I started making clothes when I was 15 because I started going out to raves. The first club I started going to was a mega club with four rooms and two floors where DJs from NYC would come to spin. The club was just down the street from our house. San Francisco made my "looks" a 24/7 lifestyle; not necessarily like drag that would come off and go on -- more like you would just wake up in it. New York is clearly a little different. People are more judgmental and sometimes homophobic, so my life changed slightly when I moved here. Nightlife here is the place where the drag queens can put on their look and the 24/7 freaks can feel really comfortable and at home. I've always been nocturnal, so this very naturally became my playground. When I first moved here I put more makeup on at night and turned up the look a little more, but it was still a 24/7 thing. I had been to parties in NYC and all over Europe before I moved here, so I see nightlife as an international scene. In a way I accidentally gravitated towards the people who organize things and our bond organically formed through mutual respect and admiration.

I never really intended for nightlife to become my job, it just happened. I was working a lot of freelance and random jobs and was literally a starving artist, so when people started to ask me to host parties there was no way I was going to say no -- and it was and still is a great work environment. Desi Santiago and Ladyfag were really instrumental in seeing my potential and bringing me into the world. I'll be forever grateful.

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Your work embodies a combination of art, fashion and performance. How do all of these intersect within your identity as gage of the boone and the work you produce?
While nightlife is kind of my 9-5 job and it's fun, like any other artist in NYC you've got to have that job on the side to be able to create your work. I'm really lucky because my art work and work work overlap, in a way, since it's all creative.

I went to school for fashion and sculpture. From an early age I was taking acting and dance classes but I was really shy, so I never thought anything would come from that. However, through fashion and sculpture I realized that performance was central to activating everything. At this point I'm creating multimedia installation and performance pieces. Not to be confused -- I make art/performance for clubs, but also make much quieter and more conceptual work for my own practice. The way I conceptualize things varies. Sometimes its concept based, and the work itself is research into gaining a personal understanding of the ancient past or the future, or esoteric, metaphysical theorems I'm meditating on. Other times it comes from a shape or a color and is completely visual. Usually everything convolutes, eventually emerging, such as a shape leading me to unearthing the concept.

The work in the long run is visual, hermetic and abstract. It's very open to the audience's eye, the aim being to slow viewers down and transport them and their reality. I love doing site-specific work as well, so, sometimes it's more about creating an immersive environment for a specific place. The clothes that I create are also made in this organic way, and they are visual, as well, to break people out of their everyday reality. Sometimes people actually scream when I enter a bathroom. It can be hilarious to see peoples' reactions. Some people are frightened, others in a state of awe, some think it's funny.

What is Dreamhouse? How does it function and what is the vision you have for it?
Dreamhouse was my solution to being asked to present parties -- a way of breaking up my personal identity and my promoter identity: gage of the boone is a performer/artist. I'm not that serious about trying to become a giant promotor. I'm a dancer, so I've always loved getting people to dance and feel comfortable. I started to throw parties because I saw a need for something in the scene and wanted to create an experience for people to get lost in. At this point NYC has an abundance of nightlife, but I guess it comes in waves. When I first started throwing underground events there wasn't much happening. But now it's exploded. People need different things.

Dreamhouse is kind of like the Overground equivalent. It's the underworld creating interventions in nightlife.

The first monthly party I started was at a club in Marseille with a DJ friend, Danton Eeprom, who's now in London. It was a moment where we decided to hijack this club because it was empty and no one was dancing, so we went around the block to get his DJ equipment and came back and started a party. It went crazy pretty immediately and became a monthly thing. In that style, Dreamhouse is inserting different artists/performers and DJs in new spaces to shake things up a bit and keep people dancing and on their feet. KUNST is the first Dreamhouse endeavor; it's a collaboration with Susanne Bartsch. I was excited to do it because it's forcing a collision of Manhattan overground and Brooklyn underground under one roof. Dreamhouse is always different, like a dream that you may never have again in the same way.



The space you run, The Spectrum, has become integral for the evolving queer creative scene in Brooklyn as both a venue and queer community space. What does The Spectrum represent to you and what do you want it to become?
I created The Spectrum in active resistance to NYC shutting down queer spaces. Clearly spaces come and go, but at the time when The Spectrum was created a number of amazing DIY queer spaces/venues had been shut down. It was starting to feel like that was no longer possible, and I wanted to make sure that it was a possibility. There are amazing queer spaces in cities all over the world. I was really inspired, with friends in California, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London for facilitating these spaces. It felt necessary for every queer living in Brooklyn that The Spectrum exist. I feel my role has been to build and begin steering the ship, but it couldn't have thrived without the help of the many friends and volunteers who have helped along the way.

I see my participation in The Spectrum as a helper and a worker but in no way am I a singular face of The Spectrum. Everyone who enters The Spectrum embodies The Spectrum and that's what keeps it a community space. It's a cultural hub nuanced by the many people who come and go from all over the world. This constant flux of participation allows for the space to constantly shift and change and the longer it exists the more international it becomes. I have friends all over the word and hear people talking about The Spectrum globally -- it's an amazing feeling. The Spectrum's main purpose is to provide affordable space for queer artists, musicians and performers to rehearse and create art work. This operates on a sliding scale basis in order to keep the focus on accessibility rather than money hungry profiteering. We also provide donation-based classes: so far we have had yoga, pilates, meditation, esoteric occult theory and dance classes, as well as queer self-defense workshops, but we'd like to continually evolve and add to our programming schedule. We also have monthly performance events, CLOUD SOUNDS which is for live music and REVOLTING GRACE & EXECUTION, which is for readings, performance art and danced-based work. The Spectrum is a space where avant garde work can occur for an audience that is aware and invested in experimentation.

How does technology intersect with your work? How do you think technology has shaped and augmented nightlife?
My perception of technology is based on dreams that I've had that have influenced my work. I have very strange and vivid dreams of the future and extra-terrestrial spaces, where the technology is way more evolved. This is the visual inspiration for a lot of my work. I also think there will be a point where humans realize that they can interact with technology through their physical beings/breath/energy. Technology's effect on nightlife is interesting because the Internet has taken over as far as promotion and, arguably, aesthetics are concerned. There's a global aesthetic shift happening; suddenly people are evolving faster and as a more connected entity. The time it takes for a look to be seen in a club, and then co-opted for the runway by some designer and then worn by a celebrity to then be reproduced for mass consumption is suddenly ridiculously quick and slightly creepy. However, it keeps creativity moving and evolving faster. I think it's amazing that through the Internet more people are able to access the spaces where they will meet like-minded people. It helps to build community. I am just waiting for the next solution to Facebook (which is kind of a nightmare).



How would you say nightlife influences or informs your art -- or vice versa -- as well as your identity as an artist and nightlife personality?
My involvement with nightlife has changed over the years -- different periods come in waves, with my personal art work and club identity being more similar at some points and more separate at other times. Even my everyday life shifts -- sometimes I'm a 24/7 weirdo engaged in art all the time, other times I'm in a state of introverted metamorphosis plotting my next aesthetic move or breakthrough. At certain points it's more in flux.

Right now, I'm more interested in having fun at the club and making art and performances separately. My monthly party, OVA THE RAINBOW, was born out of an urge to combine art with nightlife. The party currently varies from month to month, sometimes having visual themes that are somewhat silly -- the one this month being: PUT ON A HAPPY FACE. The root of where it came from was much more of an experiment pushing people into a new environment and seeing how different fully saturated colors or themes would effect a crowd. Sometimes the theme is conjoined with the metaphysical and occult, such as the first one RUBEDO, which was a Red party that delved into the RED phase of the alchemical opus. We have had HYPER CUBED, GOLDEN DAWN, TRANSPARENT, FROST, ONYX and EMERALD TABLET, to name a few -- each one creating an immersive, conceptual installation while simultaneously acting as a "just for fun" environment. Each time we also host performances from musicians and the most conceptual performers I know.

As for myself, as an artist and nightlife personality it's a little confusing, but I think it's more about the space that things occur in. I like to think that there is a symbiosis. At the moment I'm more looking to do things in galleries or different spaces outside of nightlife. As for the "club," I still believe it is a powerful space to create. But at this particular moment it's not my main interest. The way that clubs allow people to come together to celebrate and let go is very unique. It's also timeless and has been happening since the beginning of time. People have been making music, dancing, going into trances, having revelations, Dionysian frenzies since humanity first found consciousness. There's something about beats and rhythms and being connected with the body through movement that has allowed people to express and explore their humanity, as well as the human ability to communicate and connect non verbally.

Kenny Kenny stated in his feature: "We are the shamans of society. We’re here to show them you don’t have to go by the conditioned way of living. We’re here to show them you can live your life in a very authentic way. That’s what I think gay people are here for." -- What are your thoughts about this? What do you think the function of queer people, and queer art, is within the context of mainstream society?
NYC makes it really easy to get trapped into a prescribed way of life: you're supposed to get a job and to grow in your field. But there are many other ways to live and grow in cities non-linearly. I read somewhere that shamans wear many different patterns and colors because if you wear more than three or four you send people into a space of trance because their brains can't instantaneously process all the information. I find it much more interesting to never know what different friends of mine are going to look like at any given moment. I also like getting lost on the street, and prefer when unexpected things happen.

gage2

The Situationists did a similar thing when they strove to break up everyday mundane life. I'm constantly amazed and surprised when people clap their hands and thank me on the street for how I look. It's equally powerful when people are morally offended by my visual presence and it's important to remember a look is possibly triggering something deep and unresolved in another person. But most importantly, city children need to see alternate ways of living, so they are aware that they don't have to live the prescribed point A to point B lifestyle they are taught in school and perhaps by their parent/s. When I was 16 or 17, I found out about queer life. Before then I didn't know that there was something beyond gay or straight, and discovering queer identity was like a doorway opened for life to provide infinite possibilities.

It's important for people to dream big and not limit themselves, and also for people to be aware that their existence is political if they like it or not. Queerness is not just about gender or sexuality -- it's about an awareness of infinite possibilities of lives that can transcend gender norms, spiritual and religious understandings, social class limitations, political understandings.

To be queer has always meant that the individual is constantly deconstructing whatever barrier, limitation or label confines them, in order to be open to the moment. It's extremely important.

What projects are you currently working on and what shows do you have coming up?
At the moment Im working on:

REVOLTING GRACE & EXECUTION at The Spectrum Sept 30th 9PM

The next KUNST October 18th. (Dreamhouse)

I host ever Sunday at The Gilded Lily for botaniCULT

A new bartschinspiration collaboration with PS1

Secret DREAMHOUSE party in the works

What do you hope to see as the future of nightlife in NYC?
I really hope that one day the gay/queer and lesbian worlds of New York collide even more. There's a lot of different gay/queer/lez scenes in New York and I love to jump in and out of them, but it would be great if they'd overlap more. Some people perceive that there's competition in nightlife and try to play with that. It's always been a social insecurity, perhaps? Or a thirst for drama? I don't think it's necessary. I see everything currently happening in nightlife building together -- it has some sort of symbiosis and it's making everything stronger. The nightlife family tree in New York City is a little complicated, like any "family," but it's nice to see the strength when the family comes together and supports each other -- it's really beautiful. When I look to the future of nightlife it isn't focused on hierarchies but instead on creativity and passion. Oh, and more crazy LED screens and sci-fi club lighting budgets... This is the future after all...

For more from gage of the boone head here to check out the artist's Instagram or here for his Facebook. Missed the previous installments in this series? Check out the slideshow below.

Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Strokes Form Supergroup, Perform 'Seven Nation Army' And 'In The Air Tonight'

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Win and Will Butler of Arcade Fire had something special planned for the halftime performance at their Pop Vs. Jock annual charity basketball game held during the Pop Montréal festival on Saturday. Recruiting Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, the Strokes' Nikolai Fraiture and Régine Chassagne, they formed the Pop All Star Band for one night only. They performed covers of songs such as The White Stripe's "Seven Nation Army" and Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight," amongst performances and DJing by Chassagne, Kid Koala and A-Trak. Watch the videos of the Pop All Star Band below because it will never happen again.



This Kids' Movie Makes 'Transformers' Look Like Child's Play

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"It definitely feels like an odd choice when everything is going electric for someone to stick with a cart and a buggy."

Stop-motion animation is such a labor-intensive process that it almost seems masochistic. The method is daunting: Every figure needs to be manually adjusted for each frame, of which there are 24 each second, 1440 each minute. Never mind that computer generation can do anything stop-motion can ... and better, in much less time. Yet, while CG is inarguably the major reason for the fall of stop-motion, its biggest proponents are now using the so-called "author of their demise" to save the beloved medium.

Although stop-motion has been around nearly since the dawn of film, the process hasn't changed much since its inception. Today's stop-motion animators are going through steps similar to those followed by George Melies in order to send men to the moon in 1902: the figures and set are designed, sculpted (most often out of clay) and manipulated by hand.



Since it began its sharpest decline in the early 1990s, that lack of adaptation has been a reality of which the industry is all too aware. As anecdote would have it: Steven Spielberg hired the renowned stop-motion animator Phil Tippett for work on the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" (1993), eventually bringing on CG expert in favor of stop-motion. When Spielberg told him that he'd been replaced, he said, "No, I've gone extinct."

"For people who loved and were practitioners of stop motion in the '90s, that’s kind of how we felt," said Travis Knight, producer and lead animator on "The Boxtrolls." "Everything was shifting over to the computer and so it definitely feels like an odd choice when everything is going electric for someone to stick with a cart and a buggy."

For Knight, like many proponents he mentions, he was passionate about stop-motion, but he understood that he couldn't be complacent about its path to endangerment. Teaming up with Laika animation studios, he became part of a process that has begun to define stop-motion as more than the "herky jerky" experience it had come to represent.

boxtrolls

Laika is best known for "Coraline" (2009), for which Knight won an Academy Award. Their most recent feature, "The Boxtrolls," is the most highly developed use of stop-motion to date. Although, that's not to say it wasn't labor intensive.

"I’m sure most career advisors don’t list miniature sofa upholsterer as a job."

Isaac Hempstead Wright (who voices the lead role of Eggs) was impressed with just how much work went into every detail still being set in place when he came on after the film had been in development for over seven years.

"I’m sure most career advisors don’t list miniature sofa upholsterer as a job," Wright said. "On set, there were people upholstering sofas or creating mini furniture or mini cabbages for the garden. The detail of the work is unbelievable."

The extensive preparation "The Boxtrolls" required was largely centered around figuring out how time filming would be spent. The most difficult part of this period included planning out a ballroom dancing scene.

Directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable remembered discussing the sequence and meeting resistance from a room of overeager draftsmen. "The room went totally silent," Stacchi said. "It was like: there’s no way we can do this." It turned out there was a way, but it took over 18 months to execute."

One of the draftsmen, Emanuela Cosi, studied every instance of the waltz on film and drew out hard sketches so that animators could better understand the dancers' movements. Then a composer, Dario Marinelli, was brought on in order to write the piece of music the waltz would be set to. From there, Stacchi and Annable took Cosi's sketches and Marinelli's music to a group of local choreographers who danced through the entire sequence and had it filmed in every direction for reference. With that in mind, the sculptors reformatted the armatures in the women's dresses, so that they could move up and down through the steps. All of this was mere anticipatory work for the actual filming process. The final cut of the scene was two minutes long.



At it's core, much of the process is still the same, though CG has made an incredible difference when it comes to smoothing out the image and eliminating the most impractical aspects of frame-by-frame manipulation.

Knight estimates that Eggs has 1.4 million facial expressions over the course of "The Boxtrolls," a number that would have been impossible to achieve, even if it was something that could be done with precision. "You could never get the changes between expressions as subtle as you like doing it by hand," he said. "So we turned to rapid prototype printing to take the place of sculpting every individual face."

The use of CG also allowed "The Boxtrolls" (and "Coraline" before it) a certain clarity as well or, as Stacchi put it, "made the image more fantastic." It's true, but returns us to the question of why one would choose to use stop-motion in the first place. Couldn't you just get that more fantastic image in less than half the time using CG?

"There’s something you get out of the hand-crafted quality of stop motion," Annable said. "It's real life landing on real fabrics. Deep in the DNA of everybody there is the memory of having played with toys or trucks or model trains and I think stop-motion gets right into people’s subconscious. It’s like a dream world that you just don’t get with hand drawn animation which has an appeal of its own, graphic things coming alive and living."

eggs

" If under all the fancy tools, you don’t have anything there, it’s all just an empty experience."

There is something special about it, a tangibility to the texture that rests in the fact that it is, in a way, real. Everything you see on screen exists somewhere (in Laika's studios, to be specific). A tiny Eggs exists, as well as a tiny box trolls family and the even tinier bugs they eat throughout the movie. They have all been built by hand, and that allows them a visceral quality that renders something different than the bigger-means-better push of CG.

Since it is based on a children's book (Alan Snow's "Here Be Monsters"), "The Boxtrolls is an especially good fit for stop-motion, because it begs the magical feel of a fairy tale coming to life. But Knight believes any story could be told through the process.

"At it’s core, what you’re looking at is a physical thing that was shot on a set with a real life camera being brought to life by the hands of an animator," Stacchi said.

And maybe part of the appeal is in something so painstakingly detailed, but also refreshingly small. "I think it’s rarer and rarer to go to the movie theater now where everything isn’t just louder and bigger. It can get bigger and bigger and bigger, but in the end, a lot of the stuff just ends up being hollow," Stacchi said. "Directors have to figure out what they're trying to do with this stuff."

Stacchi, like Knight, understands that stop-motion will never be the "queen of the realm," like CG, but he hopes it will continue to prosper, despite the fact that modern technology has moved so far past Melies and his trip into outer space.

"Stop-motion has its limitations, but I also think the process elicits something at the other end that has this quality of warmth, charm and beauty that’s unlike anything else," Stacchi said. "So, that's why we focus on that bit of film making, despite the fact that it's so damn hard."

Colin Farrell Officially Joins On For 'True Detective' Season 2

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Well, Internet, we officially have one half of #TrueDetectiveSeason2. Colin Farrell has confirmed his role in the show in an interview with The Sunday World.

I know it will be eight episodes and take around four or five months to shoot," he said, "I know very little about it, but we’re shooting in the environs of Los Angeles which is great. It means I get to stay at home and see the kids.”

Apparently, the rest of the cast is still being locked down / subject to the rumor mill. Elisabeth Moss, Rachel McAdams and Jessica Biel are among the many names that have been tossed around. HuffPost Entertainment contacted a representative for HBO to confirm Farrell's involvement. This post will be updated if and when they respond.

In the meantime, what we can confirm is that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen will not be involved. Probably.




[h/t Uproxx]

'Maze Runner' Sequel 'The Scorch Trials' Scheduled For 2015 Premiere

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After earning $32.5 million during its debut weekend, beating out Liam Neeson's "A Walk Among the Tombstones" and the dramedy "This Is Where I Leave You" for the top spot at the box office, Fox has announced the release date for the follow-up to "The Maze Runner." It'll be called "The Scorch Trials," and it's less than a year away.

Confirming that a sequel was in the works months ago, "The Scorch Trails" is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 18, 2015, the same weekend as "The Maze Runner" hit theaters. It will compete against Universal Pictures’ action-adventure film "Everest," which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robin Wright, Keira Knightley, Josh Brolin and Sam Worthington. Wes Ball will direct "The Scorch Trials," which is based on a screenplay written by T.S. Nowlin. The movie's first concept art was released at San Diego Comic Con International in July, which can be viewed below via Slashfilm.

scorching trials

If "The Scorch Trials" sees the same success as its predecessor, we can likely expect a movie adaptation for the third book, "The Death Cure," and maybe even the prequel, "The Kill Order."

Alicia Keys Is Trying To 'Make The World A Better Place' With This Nude Photo

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Alicia Keys has painted a peace sign on her pregnant belly and posted a nude photo to Instagram in order to "make the world a better place." According to the New York Times, she "knew this image would draw attention, which is just what she wants as she builds an army of fans who want to make the world a better place for all."



The photo is included in an op-ed in which Nicholas Kristof outlines Keys' plans to "gather an army" from her fans in support of 12 specific groups. Listed by Kristof, they are as follows:

All Out, a gay rights organization; CARE, the aid group; Equal Justice Initiative, which combats racial inequity in the criminal justice system; the Future Project, which empowers high school students in America; Girl Rising, which supports girls’ education around the world; Keep a Child Alive, which helps children affected by H.I.V. and AIDS; Moms Rising, which supports universal prekindergarten, maternal leaves and tighter gun laws; Oxfam, which fights global poverty; Partners in Health, which tackles disease worldwide; the Trevor Project, which prevents suicide among gay and lesbian youths; the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which fights racial profiling; and War Child, which supports children in conflict areas.


Keys is expecting her second child in December, and Kristof notes that her idea for "the movement arises partly from her concern about the world that the child will inherit," as well as answering the question "Why are we here?" The answer to that is obviously a mixture of being galvanized by nude pregnancy Instagrams and making the world a better place.

Head over to Kristof's piece for more details on the We Are Here movement.

Philosophy In The Kitchen

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Few philosophers have achieved fame as cooks. However, many of their theories can be perfectly explained through the medium of food. Here we inaugurate a new series, Philosophy in the Kitchen, by considering the work of Martin Heidegger, with the help of shrimp, jelly babies and other foods.

Banned Books By The Numbers (INFOGRAPHICS)

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Banned Books Week, an annual event organized by the American Library Association (ALA), grants readers, parents, teachers and librarians an opportunity to discuss the value of unhindered expression.

Throughout the week, The Huffington Post will highlight voices from various communities impacted by censorship, including LGBT readers, religious writers and Latino bibliophiles. We will share an excerpt from a frequently challenged graphic novel, and examine the effect book banning has had on literature historically. We've also invited our readers -- especially those in the education field -- to share photos of the banned books they teach or admire.

We've also taken a look at data provided by the ALA* about which books and authors have been challenged recently, where those challenges occur, and what the cited reasons are for said challenges.

What's the difference between a challenge and a ban? The ALA explains: "A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials."

To find out whether your favorite author is subject to censorship, or whether your state is prone to challenging titles, check out the infographics below:



























*This data is based on information provided from the American Library Association, from January 1, 2013 to August 6, 2014. It represents reported challenges, and does not account for those that go unreported.

'Gone Girl' Movie Reviews Confirm Ending Was Unchanged

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The first reviews of David Fincher's "Gone Girl" adaptation have arrived, and the praise-filled notices confirm that one key element from Gillian Flynn's source novel is unchanged: the ending.

"Despite published reports that major plot changes were being made, particularly in the third act, this simply isn't true; it's an extremely faithful adaptation of what is ultimately a withering critique of the dynamics of marriage," wrote Todd McCarthy in his review for The Hollywood Reporter. Justin Chang at Variety also noted that the film's denouement is "completely faithful to the novel's wrap-up."

Their words echo what Cara Buckley wrote in a New York Times feature on star Ben Affleck earlier this month: "Mr. Fincher granted The New York Times a private screening at his office. Contrary to early speculation, the film hews closely to the book."

That there was any doubt to how "Gone Girl" would finish stems from an interview Flynn, who also wrote the film's script, gave to Entertainment Weekly back in January of this year.

"Ben [Affleck, the film's star] was so shocked by it," Flynn said of her screenplay. "He would say, 'This is a whole new third act! She literally threw that third act out and started from scratch.'"

Flynn walked back those comments during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session in April, calling the reports of a new finale "greatly exaggerated."

"Of course, the script has to be different from the book in some ways -- you have to find a way to externalize all those internal thoughts and you have to do more with less room and you just don't have room for everything," she wrote. "But the mood, tone and spirit of the book are very much intact."

Which doesn't mean faithful readers of Flynn's prose will find the film without twists.

"I think if you look at the trailer, there's some moments where you think, 'Wait a minute ... I know the book said this, but the trailer is taking it in a whole different direction!'" Tyler Perry, who co-stars in the film, told Vulture in August. "So David has his own way of telling the story. Whether you've read the book or not, I think it's going to surprise people."

"Gone Girl" debuts at the New York Film Festival on Friday. It opens in theaters on Oct. 3.

Watch This Little Girl Age 80 Years Right Before Your Eyes

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They say time flies when you're having fun -- and if that's true, the little girl that opens this video must have been having a lot of it.

The clip above, a "live painting" from South Korean illustrator Seok Jeong-hyeon, captures a woman's life as it cycles through the years from birth to old age, all in a four-minute span and in one continuously updated drawing. The character begins as a few lines that then morphs into an infant, and then a toddler.

As her face changes from a baby's to one filled with laugh lines, her lips begin to quirk upward in a smile. The illustrator only hints at her life outside the portraits through subtle clothing changes, but it had to have been one incredible ride.

h/t 22 Words

Ken Jennings Of 'Jeopardy!' Fame Tweets Awful Wheelchair 'Joke'

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Ken Jennings may have won big with fans on "Jeopardy!," but his latest tweet may lose him a lot of followers and respect.

Known on Twitter for his smart and snarky tweets, Jennings tweeted an apparent "joke" on Monday that mocked people in wheelchairs:




It is unclear if Jennings' account has been hacked, but his followers have already tweeted their disgust at the 40-year-old television personality and author:













HuffPost Entertainment contacted Jennings to see if he had any comment on the tweet; this post will be updated if and when he responds.

This College Student Is Trying To Eliminate Small Talk One Big Question At A Time

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Kalina Silverman thought she was alone. She was wrong.

As a freshman at Northwestern University, Silverman had a tough time adjusting to life on the Evanston, Illinois campus. While writing an article for her journalism class about her experience, she asked the class of 2016 on Facebook if they had similar experiences, and the stories came flooding in.

"It made me realize that everyone goes through tough stuff and they just don't talk about it," Silverman, now 20, told The Huffington Post in an interview. "Then the next year I was having a really deep conversation with one of my friends and said 'Wow, I wish every conversation could be like this,' and he said how much he hated small talk. Immediately the idea of 'Big Talk' popped into my mind and it grew from there."

Silverman began her project called "Big Talk" where she approaches strangers on the street and films their responses to bigger life questions, like "What do you want to do before you die?" She hopes that by labeling it "Big Talk" the concept won't seem as intimidating as it initially sounds.

"My dream for the whole concept is for it to become a social movement where people want to have big talk in every day life," she said. "I'd love to have discussions or groups to talk about these things. I want it to inspire people to go up to strangers and start asking these kind of questions when they meet them."

Her social experiment raked in some seriously emotional responses. Watch the video above to see the seriously emotional responses her social experiment raked in.

Fashion And Ballet Go So Well Together, And We Have The Sketches To Prove It

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Few things excite us more than when two of our greatest passions collide, so this season's fashion-filled New York City Ballet Gala is giving us many reasons to leap from our seats.

Fashion heavyweights including Carolina Herrera, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Thom Browne and Mary Katrantzou collaborated with New York City Ballet's Costume Shop on sartorial sensations for four ballets, and we got a behind-the-scenes look.

As one might expect, the designers stayed true to their respective aesthetics when approaching ballet costume design. Herrera designed exquisite female costumes that are the picture of elegance, while Browne created suiting designs that are crisp and tailored. Leave it to Burton to bring the drama with a heavy black and gold gown reminiscent of a red carpet look, and Katrantzou to design an airy, colorful creation filled with pattern.

While all the ballets featuring fashion designer costumers will debut at the Fall Gala on Tuesday, September 23, New York City audiences will have the opportunity to see the designs in action again on October 2 at 7:30 p.m.; October 7 at 7:30 p.m.; October 9 at 7:30 p.m.; and October 11 at 8 p.m.

Check out images from the costume shop and sketches from the design houses in the photos below.
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