Issue 203: Festivus, Freaky Boiz, Bisi Alimi, Don Lemon, Luka Magnotta, pink-washing, Westworld, Ken Ott, Michael Sam, and more...


the week's
news
& pop
culture,
with a
gay
bias.


| think, progress |



Is "fat sex" the last gay taboo?

Love and loss. "On February 11 2012, just shy of his 25th birthday my friend Daniel was found floating at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in the early morning hours."

I was a teenage fundamentalist: How I resolved the conflict between Jesus and my sexuality.


Who still hangs out at the mall? "Malls have been symbols of a certain kind of surreal suburban America for so long that they seem like permanent features of the landscape. But the truth is they're dying out, and it's not hard to imagine that in a couple generations malls will be just another IRL institution killed by the internet."

Are you totally screwed if your parents aren’t together?

What the world values, in one chart.

The End. "Death in L.A. can be an odd undertaking."

You're really nice, but I don't date black guys: Nelson's story.

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon

MASS
in
MOTION

I don't care what you think unless it is about me

REAL
BOYS

Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge

MASS
in
MOTION

The gay story arc Hollywood didn't want in Die Hard

The Parodical
news you won't read anywhere else

Die Hard has long been known as the heartwarming Christmas tale that put It's A Wonderful Life out of business, but few movie buffs know about the romantic first act director John McTiernan was forced to cut just weeks before principal photography was due to commence.

It's the question film fans have been asking since 1988: Why did Argyle, the plucky chauffeur who picks up New York cop John McClane from LAX, wait around in the basement of Nakatomi Plaza all night? Leaked documents, exposed for the first time by Sony hackers, have revealed the truth, so we asked some of the key cast and crew what it all means...

"Die Hard was based on Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever," McTiernan says. "But when it came to the screenplay, we felt it needed something. We holed up for a weekend at [screenwriter] Jeb Stuart's ranch, staring at a blank sheet of paper. Nothin'. We couldn't figure out a way to make it work."

Jeb Stuart: "The question I kept coming back to was, why is McClane in New York and Holly in LA? These guys ain't the Huxtables. I turned to John and said, what's the real story there?"

"McClane is a homosexual," McTiernan grins. "His marriage to Holly was a fraud. As soon as we cracked that, the whole first act wrote itself. It became, what happened between John McClane and Argyle on the way to Nakatomi Plaza."

Bruce Willis takes up the story. "You got to understand, this was before Michael Sam made it okay to date outside your race. It just wasn't done in the '80s. Spike Lee heard about what we were planning and threatened to pull Reg [VelJohnson, who played Sgt. Al Powell] from the picture. We needed Reg. Without Reg, we didn't have a picture."

"We shot a love scene," De'voreaux White - who played Argyle - claims. "In the back of that limo. The crew used dry ice to steam up the windows, and I dragged my hand down it." White shakes his head bitterly. "James Cameron used that shot in Titanic, but we did it first. Me and Bruce."

"Was there sex? Sure there was sex," McTiernan says. "We had Argyle riding McClane like a prize rodeo champion. This was a passionate, sexual affair, love at first sight, fireworks, everything."

Jeb Stuart interjects, "But this wasn't a story about pure lust. This was love. Argyle showed McClane - this hard, closeted New York cop - his world; the voguing, the tea, the shade. It was gay Los Angeles in the late '80s. We were going to shoot at Mother Load and Studio One. We were talking to Gene Anthony Ray about making a cameo."

"In the original script, McClane went to the party at Nakatomi to let Holly know he was  homosexual," De'voreaux White says. "He was going to take off with Argyle in the limo, head for a new life in San Francisco. Die Hard 2 would've been a gay road movie." A note of bitterness creeps into White's voice again. "Spike f**king Lee. He really did a number on me."

"There were too many obstacles in our path," McTiernan concedes. "I guess we were just ahead of our time."

For LGBT audiences, that missing first act will always remain painfully out of reach.

President Obama has confirmed "he will do more than ever to increase agricultural yields".

*This news item is fictitious.

Previously on The Parodical

Issue 202: D'Angelo, Diego Lauzen, Le1f, Cuba, voodoo, Baldwin, Beckford, BOYSTOWN, Benjy the bull, Tyson Tyler, and more...


the week's
news
& pop
culture,
with a
gay
bias.


| think, progress |

The eighty most powerful coming outs of 2014.

Five of the biggest lies gay men tell themselves.

Mean gays: What the gay "community" and the North Shore High School cafeteria have in common.


Gay marriage doesn’t equal equality. Here are five things still to fight for.

Talking to Sean Z. Maker about fighting homophobia in nerd culture, one convention at a time.



Black LGBT faith leaders on why black lives matter.

Lane Hudson: We can sift through the minutiae of the killing of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and John Crawford, or we can seek to understand the ways in which oppression is a shared burden that ignores racial and orientation boundaries.



Terry Franklin: Let’s cure cancer, not homosexuality. "It's 2014. When will Americans get over conversion therapy?"

Forty people who showed 2014 was a year for breaking gender rules.


My misspent youth. "How an author's Manhattan dream turned into a credit-card nightmare."


2014 Year in Pictures: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Above: Desperate African migrants attempt to scale border fences to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla.

2014 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. You probably don't even remember why.

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust

MASS
in
MOTION

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home

MASS
in
MOTION

What's the use of having all this jack around if it can't get us a superior kind of man?

Tired
Old
Queen
at the
Movies

Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and a brilliant cast ring in the season in George Cukor’s Holiday (1938).

Adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman from the play by Philip Barry, it deals with an unconventional young man (Grant) who wishes to marry into a wealthy family without sacrificing his ideals. He meets a comrade in the feisty sister of his fiancé (Hepburn) and her alcoholic brother Lew Ayres, in a brilliant performance. As always, Grant and Hepburn sparkle together. The dialogue is sophisticated, witty and the message as relevant today as it was when it was made.

From all of us at Tired Old Queen at the Movies have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a lovely Holiday.

Steve Hayes

I don't care what you think unless it is about me

REAL
BOYS

Picture credit: BIRON.
 
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