2008
27 August
I’d always hoped for a lezzie version of the revered and fashionable Butt magazine and was more than a little disappointed when its counterpart, Kutt, didn’t last more than a couple of issues. So it was great to hear about GLU magazine , a Danish-produced, US-published title that adds some long-overdue edginess to the queer girl magazine rack. It was also great to see that, alongside Kathrin Hero, Jessica Gysel (who who was responsible for Kutt) edits GLU. Consider it GLU in beta mode. As it’s a quarterly magazine and I’m looking at issue 7, this means I’m more than fashionably late coming to the GLU party. GLU stands for Girls Like Us, but I prefer the alternative version that appears on the editorial page; Gueer Lipster Utopia.
2007
02 October
I didn’t actually think I could be any more enthusiastic about make/shift magazine (subtitle: feminisms in motion) than I already had been, but then the second issue arrives in the post with an (apparently unintentional) media theme and that theory promptly fell by the wayside.
28 March
The Itty Bitty Titty Committee is the latest film by Jamie Babbit and opened this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Babbit’s directorial style remains intact; the abrupt scene jumps, (dyke)pop culture references, humour and a glossy, music video finish. This approach has served her well most recently in episodes of The L Word and it works well here for a film that takes a light-hearted (and occasionally self-mocking) look at awkward adolescence. That is, the awkward adolescence experience by newly political disenfranchised young queers, an experience that has until now remained far removed from any kind of general cinema release.
25 February
Velvetpark has sought to be the tattooed dyke to Diva (or Curve, depending on geography) magazine’s pant-suited lesbian for a few years now. And its dyke badge is something that the magazine wears proudly, having challenged the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) over their use of the word dyke, a word previously rejected as being “immoral and scandalous”. This seems to be the only appearance of anything resembling scandal, in this particular issue anyway. While the cover stars may feature the Chicago Rollergirls, the real star of the issue is Martina Navratilova.
2006
18 November
Two new US TV shows, Dexter (Showtime) and Heroes (NBC), offer a startlingly fresh take on the themes of comic-book superheroism.
08 October
Richard Bluestein recently announced the somewhat controversial (at least in the insular world of podcasting) death of his performance persona, Madge Weinstein. Bluestein podcasts in the character of Weinstein for a number of popular shows, including Yeast Radio (and the experiemental format Yeast2 spinoff show).
02 October
Finley’s latest book is a satire of current American politics told as an illicit affair between Martha Stewert and George W. Bush and mimicking Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf. As in Finley’s earlier work, Living It Up, Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Martha Stewert serves as the ultimate symbol of conservative femininity, acting out the mothering fantasies to Dubya’s damanaged little boy psyche.
28 August
This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.