The Revolution Will Be Dirty, Fabulous and Live on the Air

My activism has taken many forms, I’ve been a street fighter, a journalist, a speech maker, just about anything you can imagine. But I never thought I’d take my fight to the airwaves as I have over the last several months.

I’m the co-host of a weekly show called The Rainbow Asylum, along with Arizona activist Mike Shipley (aka Head Nurse Mikester). We started the show back in September after I was a guest on Mike’s weekly political talk show Outright Arizona. The both of us had such a blast on the air that I suggested we do our own show.

But it had to be something different, Outright AZ, the radio network Mike had his show on, was mainly political shows, all of them with a libertarian bent and a few focused on LGBT issues. Mike and I were both serious political junkies and insanely driven activists, we needed a break from the constant work we were both engaged in.

So that’s how it started, a weekly break from the insanity that consumes most serious political addicts (and hence the name “The Rainbow Asylum”). But we had to go further than that; Mike and I are both cultural radicals, often scorning mainstream gay culture. We had to attempt to reinvent it.

We went for it, Mike adopted the stage persona of Head Nurse Mikester and became a sharp tongued androgynous king bitch, liberally lashing celebrities, politicians and yes, even yours truly. I became the Soundmaster, spinning gems from the queercore underground, including mainstays like Sister George, the Tom Robinson Band, and Pansy Division, but also digging deeper and airing bands like Maris the Great & the Faggots of Death, Le Sexoflex, Hunx & His Punx, the Strong Boys, and Closet Burner.

Slowly, but surely we started to get somewhere with it, people dug our crass humor, the records we were playing, and our first weekly bit “Slut of the Week”, where we pick a celebrity that’s being particularly asinine and officially end their careers. Most of our targets have been musicians or actors, but we have taken a few political swipes, such as when we declared the entire US Congress as “Slut of the Week” over the government shutdown.

Our first break happened with our Halloween show, we had Maris the Great on as our guest and he was insane, discussing his habit of eating the brains of his lovers, the danger that mere mortals face in his presence and during our “Slut of the Week” bit, he ate the brains of our chosen loser. People tuned in to hear the King of the Gay Undead growl with two weird activists.

Shortly after Maris was on, we expanded our show to an hour and a half and added a new cast member, Sandra Furr. I knew Sandra back when I was in college and knew she would be perfect for the show. With her sharp drag persona, she started doing a bit called “Sandra Furr’s Concrete Carpet” where she would dig up a queer artist who was more pop than what I normally played and highlight one of their songs.

We were growing and quickly becoming the highest rated show on the network, we had our own on-air personalities and were getting a fairly regular cast of callers, who would dial in to make crass jokes, tell us they loved the show, or tell embarrassing stories about either me or Mikester.

But even though what we were doing was meant to be non-political, it was revolutionary in its own right. Mike and I both came out of the underground music scenes, we were used to digging for our own culture and identities and with the mainstreaming of American gay culture, a lot of that raw, dirty edge was rapidly disappearing in a haze of Top Forty pop radio and drag queen reality shows.

So we set out to tear it down and rebuild it in our own image and encourage our brothers and sisters to rediscover their own queer cultural roots and find what was going on that The Advocate wasn’t talking about.

And I think so far we’re succeeding…

Tune into the Rainbow Asylum, Sunday Nights at 10:00 PM EST (9:00 Central, 8:00 AZ) on the Outright Arizona Network at BlogTalkRadio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/outrightaz

Find the Rainbow Asylum on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RainbowAsylum

2013: A Year of Celebration

I have returned! Sorry I disappeared there for a couple weeks, with the holidays and all, things just became sort of a blur. OK, that also may have been the brandy egg nog…

Anyway, being that this is my last rant of the year here, I thought we’d look back at some of major victories we’ve had in the Movement in 2013.

Wedding Bells Are Ringing

Yes, the biggest news of the year has been on the front of marriage equality! In June 2013, the Supreme Court issued two decisions that turned the tide in our favor. First, they struck down Section III of the Defense of Marriage Act, finally granting Federal recognition to the marriages performed in those states which have equality. The Court didn’t strike down the whole Act, but they kicked open the floodgates a bit.

The second decision of the Court was to remand the decision of the Prop 8 case to the district court, allowing that court’s judgment to stand. The fight over marriage equality in California has been one of the longest yet and after five years, the battle is over with a victory for our side.

On the state level, things have been picking up steam as well; eight more states now have marriage equality. Utah’s has been the most surprising, coming from the state court decision Kitchen v. Herbert. In that case, the judge struck down Utah’s state constitutional amendment barring gay marriage as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. As of now, the judge’s ruling stands. If it stands, there is no reason for other state’s constitutional amendments to hold up under judicial scrutiny.

ENDA Advances

Another long time battle has been with the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA has been introduced in every Congress since 1994. In November, it passed the Senate for the first time, advancing it to the House.

Being that the House is more conservative leaning than the Senate, the bill may stall there. But after nearly twenty years, it’s nice to finally make some serious advancement for employee protection.

California’s AB1266

California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB1266 into law earlier this year, making it the first bill in the nation to offer Trans* students protection in the state’s public school system. The bill protects students’ gender identity from discrimination in school facilities, classes, or extracurricular activities.

The opposition has tried to derail the bill, using their tried and true scare tactics, but as of this writing, their efforts have failed and the bill goes into effect in January.

New Jersey Bans “Pray Away the Gay”

Following California’s lead last year, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a bill into law banning conversion therapy (“Pray Away the Gay”) for minors. Most of us in the Community have either experienced such “therapy” ourselves or have at least read the stories of our brothers and sisters who went through it. The “therapy” is pure junk science with no basis in reality or even success rates. Now Gov. Christie has offered our young brothers and sisters’ protection from this form of psychological brutality.

Hopefully more states will follow soon.

It has been an incredible year for us in the area of equality, we have scored several major victories and the opposition is on the run (NOM, the National Organization for Marriage, reported major deficits in fundraising this year).

Let’s take the momentum and keep running. Maybe in 2014, we will reach that final mountaintop and finally be equal citizens.

Last Minute (Near) Bust

Back in 2011, I was having one of my best years as a live poet; I was doing at least a gig a week, sometimes two or three, hell I did three gigs in one day back in August. Most of them were triumphs, I did my first live show out of state at Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago, I recorded a couple live albums, it was a pretty good year. But I’m not here to tell a story about my triumphs on stage.

It was December 14^th, I had finished my last final of the year and getting ready to move back home. My buddy Jimmie wanted to go out for a beer, so he came over. I suggested we call our buddy Ryan to see if he wanted to join us in a cold one.

I call Ryan and he says, “I can’t join you right now, but I’ll be out for your show tonight.”

I said, “What show? No, my show is tomorrow night, I’m booked at Coffee Grounds.”

“I thought you had a performance at Zims tonight, they said you’re performing.”

“Huh? Well I guess we’ll see you there.”

I hang up, and Jimmie looks at me sort of funny. I call the barkeep at Zims and she tells me, “Yeah, I thought we were doing the poetry thing on a weekly basis, I have you booked for 10:00.” I said OK and hung up.

So there I was, with a last minute booking, no time to really promote it or really get a good original set list together. Jimmie and I headed out to Ginny’s, one of our favorite local dives where we got a couple of power mugs, these big quart glass mugs of draft brew. I’m sitting there, pounding down this beer, flipping through notebooks and poetry books, trying to get a set together before I had to hit the stage at Zims.

After the power mugs, we went back to Jimmie’s place and I tried to get some last minute publicity drummed up. It was scheduled to be amateur night anyway, so I thought there’d at least be a few people out there to catch some of the upcoming and local drag queens, along with the notorious gonzo poet.

We went out to Zims at about 9:00; it was getting a bit nasty outside, not horrible, but cold and rainy. We walk in and it’s empty, there’s a few guys hanging out at the end of the bar, I recognize one of them, and that’s it. It’s alright, it was early, surely a few more would show up, so we ordered a pitcher of draft and hung around, I was still putting together my set list. It looked like I was the only one who showed up to perform, so it was all me that night.

10:00 rolls around and still nobody’s there. We decided to wait a bit longer, I ordered another pitcher of brew, Jimmie declined to have any more since he had to drive. At around 10:30, I said fuck it and went to do the show.

We move into the showroom, there’s me on stage, Jimmie, a couple of guys from the bar, and the sound guy. I’m up there on stage, pitcher of beer next to me, along with an ashtray, and my set list in my bag.

There were no other poets, no drag queens, just me. So I went through a forty-five minute set completely smashed, the previous beers were kicking in and the current beers were catching up. I did a couple of originals, but it was a lot of covers, I did some Ginsberg, some Bukowski naturally, and ended the set with Eric Norris’ three part piece “A Life”.

I stumbled off stage to a bit of scattered applause and Jimmie and I headed for the door. It wasn’t a total bust, the sound guy said he dug it and the other dudes in the showroom seemed to enjoy my act. It wasn’t my best performance, but I made it through and still got a good reaction from the few people there to see it.

Funny post script to that story, the next night, I did my gig at Coffee Grounds, it was a packed house, a good rowdy crowd, a forty-five minute set of originals, and one of the best performances I ever did in Terre Haute, IN.