mobile logo
Ryan Murphy
September 10, 2012
FILM & TELEVISION, KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

REVIEW: ‘The New Normal’ Revives the Tired Old Ghey

I am absolutely the wrongest person in Homolandia to review the new Ryan Murphy show on NBC.  This isn’t made with me in mind, meaning you can be sure the show’s creators don’t give a Chihuahua’s sneeze about my opinion, which is based solely on the pre-premiere show that aired on August 30. (I had no idea there was such a thing as a pre-premiere show, but the mysteries of network television are revealing themselves to me gradually, like secrets to an initiate in a Freemason’s lodge.) New episodes kick off tomorrow, September 11, but I won’t be watching any more—what I have seen will have to do for this piece.

Picture, if you will, Homolandia as a quaint county on the borders of the mighty Empire of Normalcy, a pastoral landscape quilted with neatly tended fields, speckled with dozens of tight-knit communities of people with vastly different behaviors and preferences.  Over there, farthest away from the border with Normalcy, you have Trannytown, a garish, hissing locale that comes alive mainly at night, a place noted for its high suicide-attempt rate.  Very close to that is Twinksburg, which is packed with Peter Pan-like effete younger men, most of them thin, many of them preyed on at night by men from St. Mary Muscleton or Bearsville down the road, where a number of the residents of Twinksburg move after they have become fat, bald and old, and can no longer stand the “ewwws” that lick at them when they walk by.  The Lesbotrons live as far away as possible on the other end of the county, and only communicate with the gay communities when its time to band together for protection against the relentless onslaught of the barbarian bigots.

Naked Twink

The first image to come up on Google when I searched “twink.”

Guys like me live in a remote, rural area outside of AlternaQueer City, and we often live alone, occasionally socializing with the denizens of the various gay communities, but more often we venture out beyond the foggy marshes that obscure Homolandia from Normalcy so we can fraternize with the Str8s, with whom we share more in common socially that those with whom we share a preference sexually.

All the more reason why I’m so wrong to review this show: The New Normal is my true American horror story.

Continue reading
By James Killough
2
0
May 18, 2011
TUTTLEMODE

I Think I Cannes

TUTTLE MODE

by James Tuttle

Gentle reader,

I’m going to tell you about an HGTV show that I would love to like.  It’s called Secrets From a Stylist.  I know that I complained about HGTV’s programming a couple of weeks ago, when constant airings of House Hunters were beginning to erode my mental state.  I’ve since stopped automatically tuning to HGTV when I sit down after a long day of dressing my girls or playing my ponies but this show is already in our DVR queue.  It pops up every Saturday night like clockwork and I just watched the most recent episode.

The premise of the show is really quite good.  Perky stylist Emily Henderson analyses the style of each member of the homeowner couple with an interesting multiple choice test, designs their room for one person’s style, then layers on the other person’s style to create a perfect blend in which the inhabitants can live happily ever after.  What could go wrong?

The well-adjusted Dan Vickery adjusts himself (right).

In the beginning, I felt very close to this show.  I’d watched Emily win the Design Star competition over that very cute gay guy, Dan Vickery, whom I couldn’t watch without thinking whether or not he had a corrected cleft palate.  We need more cute, well-adjusted gays on TV to show America that we’re not always wearing leather halters or snorting cocaine on dance floors lit from below while listening to Gloria Gaynor or Cher but, in spite of all that, I actually rooted for Emily.

Continue reading
By Pure Film Creative
12
0
March 17, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

So It's Really A Fag Hag Thing

We’ve gotten to the bottom of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent appearances on Glee.  I draw your attention to this little item in Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com, in which show creator Ryan Murphy outs Gwyneth for who she truly is to him.  For those too lazy to click, I refer you to the following quotation:

“Gwyneth is sort of the muse of the show,” Murphy said. “She’s somebody who I write on the weekends and say, ‘What do you think about this for an episode even if you’re not in it?’ She has opinions. She’s great.”

Like in "Avatar," "How to Train Your Dragon," and "Eragon," where the dragon chooses the rider who will fly her, a Fag Hag chooses her Ghey and they bond for life.

Murphy is hiding behind subtleties that many creative Gheys might not see themselves, which is why Dr. Killough is here to explain.  He uses the word “muse.”  But a muse is distant, an inspiration, someone the artist aspires to commune with, a siren who unblocks the creative flow just by being there.  Gwyneth is the muse transformed, the mermaid wrenched willingly from the sea and forced to walk on land.  She has become Murphy’s Fag Hag.

Apparently she has been this since they worked together on Running With Scissors, Murphy’s decidedly unfunny adaptation of Augusten Burrough’s exceedingly funny memoir.  He should have gone with archly flip for RWS’s tone, not with sincerity and contrition.  I’m sure he knows that now with the tone he established in Glee, which would have served RWS better.

A true muse is someone like my creative partner, Rain Li, who basically ignores you, making you desire his or her company and the inspiration that it gives you all the more.  Rain and I hardly ever speak on the phone; I’m lucky to get a text-based Skype session once a quarter, during which she types one line every ten minutes until I just give up at 2 a.m.  I won’t hear from her for months, but then a single “You aw-right, dahling?” in that mockney Beijing accent and my entire career path becomes clear to me.  That’s a muse.

Continue reading
By James Killough
5
0
March 15, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Miss Paltrow Unravels?

Let me say right off the bat that I really used to like Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress, and she seems like a perfectly nice person as well.  I’ve never heard a bad thing about her from the few people I know who have enjoyed an interpersonal relationship with her.  Gwyneth seems familiar to me; she’s someone who might be a cousin of mine, if I had cousins.  Sadly or fortunately, both of my parents were only children.

A recent song and dance number from "Glee." Is it just me, or does La Gwyneth seem a little stiff here? I know nothing about dance; hate doing it myself, I look ridiculous. I'm far better chatting up the bartender. When I downloaded this image I started humming that gay show tune from 'Blazing Saddles': "Throw out your hands, stick out your tush!"

Gwyneth is the right kind of WASPy, you know, not the lockjawed Newport Great Gatsby manqué kind, but the down-to-earth, Yankee, descendant-of-Cotton Mather kind, who knows how to clip a coupon even though there’s a hundred million in the bank, who appreciates a well-waxed pew.  In other words, the kind we like, who inform our work with their realness and quirkiness, not the kind we feel like pushing over the porch after four scotch and sodas because they sound like an un-oiled screen door opening and shutting incessantly and are blighted with equine humor.

Gwyneth seems to be struggling these days, trying to regain a foothold in a business she once ruled over with confidence side by side with the likes of Matt Damon, who seems ready to have a constellation named after him, and her ex Ben Affleck, who is doing pretty well as a director of Boston versions of The Wire, which somehow end up on the big screen rather than where they belong.

Continue reading
By James Killough
3
0