Singer and composer Vitaliy Vladasovich Grachyov, known as Vitas, was born in the Ukraine in 1979. In 2002, he performed his Philosophy of Miracle at the Kremlin, becoming the youngest person to ever perform at the State Palace. Vitas, who designs his own costumes and staging, presented his fashion line, Autumn Dreams, later that year. Vitas’ performances easily move between and combine opera, synth-pop and rock genres. With hooded orchestras, hybrid processions and sartorial excess, his performances are underwritten with mystery, ritual and an erotic charge that explodes regularly into a spine-chilling male soprano that has little to do with the grating tones of typical falsetto. More here and here.
Category Archives: GAY GAZE: Visual Culture, Photos, Art, Comics, Film, Objects, etc…
The extrordinary voice of Vitas Bumac – sexiest Russian since Nureyev.
Sign of spring in SoIL: “Fleas & ticks are here be ready!”
Sign of Spring in SoIL. c. Jordy Jones 2010
Southern Illinois. SoIL. So Ill it’s practically Kentucky. Weather in the 80s has brought out both blossoms and bloodsuckers. Humidity is rising in the Mississippi flyway. Pink buds, strange signs and an impending exodus…we’re going going back back to Cali Cali. Thirty days and counting.
Justin Bond blesses the beasts…and the children.
San Francisco impresario Marc Huestis has posted a video clip from Justin Bond’s “Close to You” show at the Castro Theatre. Justin dedicates his cover of “Bless the Beasts and the Children” to Lawrence King, the 15 year-old gay Jr. High School student who was shot and killed by a 14 year-old classmate in Oxnard, California.
Posted in Drag, Music, San Francisco
Tagged Castro Theater, Drag, Justin Bond, San Francisco
Oldest Munchkin is not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead.
photo credit: Charles Sykes / AP
Meinhardt Raabe, best known for his role as the Munchkin coroner in the Wizard of Oz, has died at age 94 at Orange Park, Florida. Mr. Raabe delivered the immortal lines: “As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she’s not merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.” According to the New York Times obituary, Raabe “was also a wartime aviator and the first Little Oscar, the mascot of the Oscar Mayer meat company.”
DIY – maker culture an antidote to consumer culture?
Build your own house. Write your own code. Fix your own sink. Grow your own vegetables. Sew your own clothes. Kill your own chickens. Play your own music. Run your own festival. Recycle. Reuse. Be independent. Be interdependent. Don’t buy it. Make it. Mod it. Do it yourself. Add to the list.
Look at a nice slide show of Butch Anthony’s backwoods design via the New York Times.
Rituals and Meditations: Personal Archetypes of Myth, Magic and Beauty from Richard Bolingbroke
San Francisco artist Richard Bolingbroke has just finished his self-published book of watercolors called Rituals and Meditations: Personal Archetypes of Myth, Magic and Beauty. The beautifully produced edition features the artist’s introduction and commentary on all the works, and essays by David Duckworth, John Mendelsohn and Jordy Jones. The book is available to view on-line and for purchase in hard or soft cover versions here.
Posted in Art and Artists, San Francisco
Tagged Art, Richard Bolingbroke, Rituals and Meditations, San Francisco
A Quiet Revolution at Oxford with Fluxus Pioneer Yoko Ono
Fluxus Pioneer Yoko Ono talks about god, chaos theory and quantum entanglement – without ever using those words.
An excerpt: “So now I call ourselves the small pebble people. Send small pebbles to the world. Don’t make big splashes with large stones. That will attract people and the wrong people as well. Our quiet revolution will not make announcements, but one day will be accepted by all people as the norm of life. The human race has done that with many things. Like we wanted to fly, and invented aeroplanes. We wanted to see the other side of the moon, and we have. This time, we want to heal our planet, and bring peace to this world. We can do that.”
The full text of her speech, A Quiet Revolution, delivered on March 10th at Oxford University, can be read here.
The Gay Highwaymen 