Milo: Don't Bother, They're Here

Out magazine.

Can't see why anyone's getting their knickers in a twist over this, when the gay media's run by similarly right wing cunts.

Thought For The Day: Stephen Sondheim

“Ageing is no fun. My memory isn’t sharp. All your energies diminish. You don’t want to make any more friends than you’ve made and they’re all dying anyway. You want to leave the house less. I don’t want to even leave the couch to go to the next room. I rode a bike to Broadway for 20 years. You get to know every pothole in New York. Watch me climb the stairs and you’ll know I’m an old man climbing the stairs. That also happens at the piano.”

Stephen Sondheim in The Times.

Stephen also talks about his hatred of jukebox musicals and Lady Gaga ('a travesty'), and his sex dungeon - contrary to rumour he says he doesn't have one.

Elaine Stritch: 1925-2014

And now you're not.
x

“I don't think I'm gonna die tomorrow or even two weeks from now, or even ever. I just don't know - who the hell knows what's gonna happen to them? Nobody! Isn't that comforting? Nobody has a clue. I like that we don't know. And I like that it's somebody else's decision, not mine."

Stephen Sondheim: Happy Birthday!

You are 84
I can't think of a metaphor
Or a closer rhyme
That will sound
Quite so sublime!
But there we
go.

PS It is also Pete Wylie's birthday. Let us rock!

Fagburn: Review Of The Year 2013

"When I was *cough cough*-five
It was a very good year.
It was a very good year
For Tom Daley came out and Thatcher died
and now you can marry a guy
if you want to and have one 
but I don't... " : (

Stephen Sondheim's Company: Getting Married Today

The acclaimed composer Stephen Sondheim and the Tony Award-winning director John Tiffany are collaborating on a major revision of Mr. Sondheim’s celebrated 1970 musical “Company,” a project that Roundabout Theater Company is eyeing for a possible production, according to Mr. Sondheim and others involved.

The biggest change in this new “Company” would be the central character of Bobby. Whereas he has always been a straight man struggling with commitment issues and multiple girlfriends, he has been reconceived by Mr. Tiffany as a gay man with commitment issues and multiple boyfriends. And some characters have had gender reversals; the character of Joanne, who sings “The Ladies Who Lunch” and was originally played by Elaine Stritch on Broadway, is being played by the Tony winner Alan Cumming (“Cabaret”) in Mr. Tiffany’s reading of the work at Roundabout this week.

For years Mr. Sondheim and the musical’s book writer, George Furth, who died in 2008, batted back suggestions that Bobby was furtively intended to be a closeted gay man. But when Mr. Tiffany proposed actually making Bobby gay, Mr. Sondheim said in a telephone interview on Tuesday, the idea intrigued him.

“It’s still a musical about commitment, but marriage is seen as something very different in 2013 than it was in 1970,” Mr. Sondheim said. “We don’t deal with gay marriage as such, but this version lets us explore the issues of commitment in a fresh way.”

New York Times.

Thank you all

For the gifts and the flowers,

Thank you all,

Now it's back to the showers,

Don't tell Paul,

But I'm not getting married today.

PS The original Broadway cast in 1970 rehearsing (Not) Getting Married Today with a rather foxy looking Mr Sondheim.

Stephen Sondheim: The Story So Far

Currently listening to this.
Most banging!
I really like the songs Stephen sings.
You should hear me sing along.
*Jazz hands!*

I Think About You

Stephen Sondheim: The Boy From...

Almost certainly the greatest and funniest and gayest - and least known Stephen Sondheim - song ever written.
Brava!

Fagburn Awards 5: Books Of The Year

London Triptych - Jonathan Kemp

A book you want to press into strange mens' hands and say; "It's like this."

Finishing The Hat - Stephen Sondheim

He's not bad with words.

The Big Book Of Gaydar Uncut! - jockboy26

There have been many attempts to write a gay guide to gay life - they usually fail as they are written by posh nerds who know as much about gay life as Fagburn knows about Chinese opera.
This book - hilariously, brilliantly - shows what daft buggers we are.
It's like this.

Gay Straight Men : T'Aint Who You Do

Tim Lott is a straight man, he is happily married with children.
But Lott thinks he's more than a little bit gay.
He doesn't fancy blokes, he just feels that way.
No, he's not metrosexual - that's "morphed into meaning simply someone who is young, urbane and well groomed".
He calls himself "stray" - a straight gay - and confesses all in The Times today; 'The Joy Of Being A Lifestyle Gay'
Tim Lott blames his wife for turning him stray.
"She got me addicted to chick TV. Initially Cold Feet and Sex and the City, and later the harder stuff — reality TV — including Big Brother, The Apprentice and I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!"
It's got worse as Lott's got older, but he's also learned to accept himself; "I take a recipe book to work so that I can work out what ingredients I have to buy if I need to cook that evening. I have come to love shopping for food, particularly for cheese, wine and delicatessen items. I enjoy spa treatments and visits to the hairdresser far more than shouting at 22 men chasing a ball on a TV screen..."
Thankfully, he doesn't feel the odd (straight) man out - far from it.
"...I think that there are many like me. In fact, I would imagine that, unlike the much-vaunted metrosexuals, who were always a minority, we are now well set to be in the majority over the Jeremy Clarkson/Alex Ferguson axis, the Fraternity of Blokes."
Tim Lott is far from the first straight journalist to write about how he's getting in touch with his effeminate gay side - it's almost a cliche.
It's interesting to compare it to an article in The Guardian last week;
The Death Of Camp by Kevin Troughton.
Troughton was writing as a gay man who doesn't feel "gay" - which for him means "camp" or "effiminate gay men" - a far more well-worn journalism cliche than the gay-acting straight man.
Like Lott, Troughton thinks he's part of growing trend, "masculine" gay men who prefer "outdoor pursuits" to Pride festivals.
They define "gay" in rather different ways; for Lott it's about being artistic and cultured, Troughton thinks it's horribly common.
Fagburn thinks they think it's got a lot to do with class.
Would the judge who this Summer stereotyped gay men as liking "Kylie and cocktails" have attracted as much ire if he'd said "Sondheim and champagne"?
For Fagburn what's interesting, and what's new, is not that many gay men feel they don't fit into the prevalent gay stereotypes, and some straight men do - it was ever thus.
What's interesting is how it's now generally taken as a given that gay and straight are as much cultural identities, as they are sexual;
It ain't who you do, but what you like doing.

Stephen Sondheim: "Stunning" Is Embarrasing

Sorry if I seem like a PR agent for BBC Radio 4 today, but Stephen Sondheim being interviewed by Mark Lawson is just plain wonderful.
The gay sensibility, perfect phrasing, Pet Shop Boys, hating Noel Coward's snobbery and Mamma Mia...
He's the octogenerian Stephin Merritt.
Great stuff!

Stephen Sondheim: He's Still Here

Fagburn loved this interview with the ever wonderful Stephen Sondheim in the Telegraph; 'Still Cutting it at 80'.
Octogenerian East Coast Jews rock!
It's good on his self-percieved outsider status; "Somebody who people both want to kiss and kill".
"Sondheim describes himself as 'melancholic by nature’ – if given of 'a huge adolescent streak. I would like to think I have the soul of a Russian Jew. But unfortunately I’m a German Jew, which is rather different...’"
Fagburn thinks of himself along similar lines.
Also Fagburn thinks this is the first article to draw a portrait of Stephen's boyfriend, Jeff Romley.
"For the past six years he has been in a relationship with Jeff Romley, 32, a personable young man with even good looks who comes in as Sondheim and I talk. Romley, Sondheim says, works 'in cyberspace’. He gives a bemused shrug, as if he is not quite sure what that might mean. 'He is a great joy in my life.’"
Note to journalists: Most gay men will be out if you ask them nicely.
I'm not sure what "even good looks" means, but the thought of him and Stephen Sondheim watching Glee together made me touch heaven.