Brittani’s Video Party: It’s Okay to be Gay When Hunter Valentine Jumps Rope with Alison Brie

Greetings. This is Brittani’s Video Party, where I bring some of the “best” videos from all over my internet together so we can clap, cry or deconstruct. Have you ever gotten to a video and it already has 33 million views and you wonder where the heck have you been? Well I’m here to help you so that you see it when it only has 32 million views. Aim low, world. Aim low.

Header by Rory Midhani

Hunter Valentine released a new video for their song, “The Pulse.” I’m guessing that because of Kiyomi McCloskey’s appearance on The Real L Word some of you are fans of the band or possibly even were before. It’s honestly just a guess. Regardless of your fan status, you can always stand to get further inspiration for your Kiyomi inspired wardrobe. Her lips are very shiny in this video plus they’re all fixing things and handling tools.

Comedian Alana Johnston wants to remind you that it’s ok to be gay with this quick 30 second music video. There’s a keytar and real life queers and a gay ass beat. I know what I’m watching to cheer me up the next time I get harassed on the street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2p6tSh45ws

Dove is once again reminding us that just because the world hates women and wants you to think you’re ugly, you shouldn’t think that about yourself. This is uplifting and such for most people but I’m me so meh. I can’t be the only person who does not at all trust my ability to accurately describe myself. Since I don’t even know what I look like, describing a suspect wouldn’t be good for anyone. As for the exercise from the video, even if I thought someone had crazy eyes or sad cheeks, I wouldn’t describe them like that to some random dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

This woman is being hailed as the world’s best jump roper because that’s what the title of the video is. This is reminiscent of the Jump Rope for the Heart presentations I endured in elementary school. Is that a thing everyone did like D.A.R.E.? Let me know. If I recall, they were doing tricks like this so I guess I’m jaded. I am willing to admit I might have embellished their performances just a bit.

Alison Brie of Community and Mad Men imitates popular internet memes at the hands of Paul F. Tompkins. Not only does she nail Grumpy Cat, her Hadouken is every single thing… including hilarious.

If you have a video you think everyone should see, tweet it to @bishilarious for consideration. And of course feel free to post your favorite videos from the week below.

Hunter Valentine’s Vero Sanchez: The Autostraddle Interview

You know Vero Sanchez as the bass player of Hunter Valentine and the Coolest Cucumber on season three of The Real L Word, but did you also know that she began her music career as an 11 year-old mulleted hip-hop artist? Maybe you would’ve, if Vero’s screen time on TRLW hadn’t been limited to interviewing about everyone’s story but her own.

Since the show’s end, for Vero it’s been onward and upward; Hunter Valentine released a new album, Collide & Conquer, toured it in multiple countries, and Vero has some solo projects in the works, like a new album and a clothing line, which will probably be pretty fucking hot.

We caught up with Vero soon after she touched back down in New York, having just wrapped up the Collide & Conquer tour in Japan.

What have you been up to?

I’ve just completed the “Collide & Conquer” tour with Hunter Valentine. Holy Mother of patience! I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s been a drama series within itself. We drove around the US and Canada for the past three months and played about 65 shows including one in Japan! I’d like to consider this a lifetime experience. It was epic and absolutely intense at the same time. Our fans have multiplied enormously and meeting each and everyone of them took a primal role on this tour. I think my face has frozen into a huge smile from all the photographs.

On the downside, we had some complications with our van, gear and Laura’s ankle was injured badly. She taught herself instantly how to play with her left foot and rocked out the majority of the tour this way. It was a challenge not being home with my loved ones when Sandy hit. However, we’ve made it back in one piece and everyone here seems to be stronger than ever. I’m excited to have my own bed and and space for the time being.

It must be tough spending that long on the road, in terms of getting personal space and time. 

There were five of us sharing a van, hotel room, bathroom and stage. I’d like to say it’s “Rock & Roll” but at times I’ve thought to myself, fuck Rock & Roll, now I’m in survival mode! Here are some of my basic thoughts regarding tour: “Hmm..when we stop for gas, do I use this time to go to the restroom or smoke a cigarette. This is my side of the mirror, step the hell back before I smear this on your face. I wish I could turn this ‘Baconater’ into a chimichurri skirt steak with mashed potatoes. I need to fart right now. Should I warn them or see if they notice.” Luckily, they never did.

Let’s talk about The Real L Word for a sec. Did you watch all the episodes?

I don’t have cable but I did manage to watch the whole season. After the second episode I was hooked and became just like every other viewer out there; plastered to the screen crying or laughing. But also being weirded out because I just lived this not long ago and now I was reliving it with the rest of the world.

How did you feel about your own portrayal?

I don’t know why but when there’s a camera rolling, it sometimes helps instigate drama. We are all responsible for every action and word that comes out of our mouth so I kept that in mind. Even when I felt I had nothing interesting to offer I told myself, “It’s okay, just be yourself.” Although I had very little face time, it turned out there was a whole world out there who wanted more of my story. That was well worth the experience of being on a reality TV show. Your recaps labeled me the ‘Coolest Cucumber’ (don’t think I wasn’t paying attention) and because of my portrayal in TRLW, I’ve met so many people that come to me for advice. Good lord, I hope I don’t disappoint.

Oh so you read the Autostraddle recaps, then?

You guys are too much. Good Lord, I just fucking loved them; they’re hilarious. In my opinion, reading the recaps is much more entertaining than watching the TV show.

On TRLW you were kinda this cool cat that popped up every now and then to diffuse band problems, and I was left wanting to know more about you and your life. Were there any parts of your story cut from the show that you wish TRLW would have kept?

There were actually a quite few touching moments throughout filming. I had my mom surprise me from Argentina. She stormed into our rehearsal room, shocking the crap out of me. That was definitely a tear jerker moment considering I hardly ever get to see her. Along with my mother comes another person I rarely get to see, my girlfriend Katie Murphy.

I would have liked to have seen that. How did you meet Katie?

I met her on my first tour with HV last year, The Lady Killer Tour. Her band, Sick of Sarah was one of our touring bandmates and there I was, checking out their hot lead guitar player every night. Had I known she was also checking out HV’s awkward bass player, I would’ve not made an ass of myself with the obvious stage stalking. Little did I know that this tour crush would end up in one of the strongest relationships I’ve ever had. She lives in Minneapolis and I live in New York. She tours, so do I. She’s 29 and I’m… yeah you know. But here’s the thing, we’ve set three phones on fire so far and when we do see each other (once every 3 months) it’s all at the same time familiar and brand new.

TRLW spent a decent amount of time filming when Katie came out for her birthday. We always get nervous seeing each other every first time and having cameras around, didn’t help remove any butterflies. We may not have kept the camera rolling after hours but that part of our relationship we wanted to keep between us. However, all of our hot steamy make-out moments that were cut I’m sure exist somewhere in the archives.

You guys sent us some backstage footage from the Lady Killer tour, it looked like a blast. I recall there being some wrestling…

Yeah the Lady Killer tour was pretty wild. Wrestling after that show seemed to put things into perspective with who’s on top. I was the new girl on tour and although I have a prior undefeated food wrestling belt, I was afraid of tearing another ligament. I believe Laura got a bloody lip that night from Vanity Theft.

You could’ve really messed up your rock stance.

I NEED my rock stance.

Someone else I enjoyed watching on TRLW was Somer. Do you miss playing with her?

I had a connection with Somer and wished things could’ve been different, but her heart was elsewhere. Somer was torn between HV and her own projects, something I definitely can relate to. I also put my own band aside to play bass with HV but I’m slowly working on balancing both bands because they are very meaningful to me.

Tell me about your own band, and music.

I’m a singer-songwriter and play guitar/ukulele with a four-piece band. It all began with hip-hop. I was 11 years old when I wrote my first rap; mullet, flat chested and rocking pink chucks. As years went by I began performing and the music gradually evolved into what I call gypsy folk-rock. Storytelling and writing dark ballads with pretty melodies is mostly my thing. I’ve always been inspired by singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Chrissie Hynde and Ray LaMontagne, just to name a few.

I would really love to hear one of the songs where you rap.

Well, I just finished a song called “Girls Tale” and was actually looking for some feedback. Feel free to give me a buzz and I’ll give you a private performance. However, I will be posting it soon on www.reverbnation.com/veromusic.

© 2012 Leslie Van Stelten

Have you released any recordings?

In 2007 I released an album named Christopher, under my prior name Mahogany. I soon after changed to “Vero”. Now I’m about to hit the recording studio for my next album which should be released by next fall. Music is pretty much my everything. I will always continue to explore different avenues and that’s what helps me continue to grow as a musician. Bass is by no means my primary instrument, so when I joined HV last fall as their bass player, I guess I sort of surprised myself.

How did that happen?

One day Kiyomi came up to me while I was bartending and asked me to play bass, which totally caught me off guard. I said, “Kiyomi, I don’t play bass” but she insisted that she had a feeling I was the right person for it. She asked me to check out their music as they were going on tour the following month and that totally overwhelmed me. But I was challenged, so I went home fixed up my old shitty bass and practice my ass off. Kiyomi believed in me and kept pushing me hard. She told me that the person I needed to win over was Laura. When the audition day came I had the songs down and I showed Laura my boobs. The rest is history.

And you played on the new album, Collide and Conquer?

Yes, I am thrilled to have collaborated with the girls. We all brought songs to the table and co-wrote other songs together. It was different for me to write songs for somebody else’s voice. When I showed them “Lonely Crusade”, Kiyomi took to it and perfected it with her own style. I was impressed with how hard they worked and how determined they were to make every song the best version of itself. You can still hear the original Hunter Valentine grit but I feel this album has a thicker more mature sound.

What’s your favorite thing about living in New York?

I’m a native New Yorker and live in the East Village. My favorite thing about living here is the community of friends I have. Everyone is a struggling starving “something” but we all have a way of inspiring and helping one another without any hint of competition. It’s a beautiful thing. Well, either that or the hot dogs.

What do you get up to when you’re not doing music and bartending?

Besides talking to my girlfriend and drinking plenty of coffee, I’m working on launching my online clothing & accessory store, Gaucho NYC by summer of 2013. My dad’s a tailor so I’ve always had an anticipated eye for style. I’ve been working on this idea for about three years and a lot of thought has gone into making sure that each piece is one of a kind and ready for stage. I call it the Rock & Roll, Urban Cowgirl look.

I’ve just realized that we’re about to run out of time. Any final thoughts?

A good friend of mine once told me that if you take an orange and roll it into the middle of a street, no one will notice it. But if you take an orange, roll it into the middle of the street and film it, everyone would say, “Hey that’s the orange that I saw on TV.” And that’s what I feel kind of happened. It’s kind of strange how someone can struggle to be a “successful” artist their whole life. They struggle to get any kind of recognition and respect but it doesn’t really matter how old you are, how many people know your full name or how many Facebook likes you get. What matters most is not giving up or comparing yourself to others. Be honest with your art. At the end of the day that’s true success.

Style Thief: How to Dress Like Kiyomi McCloskey From Hunter Valentine

Welcome to the third installment of Style Thief, where I steal the clothes off queer style icons’ backs. Metaphorically, that is. I’ll try figure out just exactly what makes queer style icons tick by breaking down their look into itty bitty bite size pieces. I get a lot of questions about how to look like different celebrities/characters, so I’m finally tackling the question “How the hell do I dress like that?”

Header by Rory Midhani

CLICK FOR MORE STYLE THIEF

I get a style question about Kiyomi McCloskey basically every day of the week.

PHOTO NY LESLIE VAN STELTEN VIA DAPPERQ.COM

It seems that queer women across the land want to capture that rockstar something that makes girls go weak at the knees. Unfortunately Kiyomi’s style is hard to pin down. One day she’s in head to toe menswear and the next she’s wearing a women’s tanktop. It’s not that her look is gender-free, it’s that she embodies androgyny in such a way that she seamlessly blends butch and femme. But you lovable weirdos want to know how to dress like this Hunter Valentine singer/The Real L Word person, and hell, I do too. So with a little help from Kiyomi’s interview at dapperQ we’re going to steal all that black leather right off of her.

From the dapperQ interview:

I hate when people are like… they see your look being one way and then the next day you decide to wear something different, and they’re like “what the hell that’s so weird that’s not her style.” I like to be able to play with different looks and sexualities in fashion on a daily basis in whatever way that I want. So, if I want to wear like… a blazer and heavy eyeliner to counterbalance that and fuck with people then I’m gonna do that. The next day I might wear a leather jacket with a low cut shirt. I’m not afraid to play with my masculine side of my feminine side.

VIA KIYOMI’S INSTAGRAM

Generally speaking, Kiyomi’s wardrobe is one color: black. While Kiyomi certainly mixes it up with white shirts, silver jewelry and the occasional red hoodie, black is the name of the game. What Kiyomi’s look lacks in color she makes up for in texture. Her wardrobe is made up of studs, distressed leathers, worn-in tees and shiny satins. And of course, that hair.

Let’s start from the bottom. Kiyomi rocks a lot of skinny jeans. Keep in mind, though, that these are more like men’s slim-fit/skinny jeans than women’s jeggings. You want the denim to be thick and supportive instead of thin and elastic. Similarly the leg should be more tapered-straight than it is tapered-tight. It’s like a European men’s jean. So while her jeans have that tight appearance that screams rock star, it’s more Keith Richards than it is Katy Perry.

Next, you probably will need a shirt. Basically Kiyomi wears a couple of different types of shirts. First, she wears a lot of good old fashioned black tank tops. These are sometimes stylized with different graphics or cuts, but frequently they’re just regular black or white ribbed men’s undershirts. I like getting the type that are billed as men’s slim-fit because they are longer than the regular women’s but tighter than most other men’s. This is especially good if you’re a little bustier and need extra length to keep from wearing a belly shirt.

Second, Kiyomi wears a lot of soft black vintage-feel t-shirts. These tend to be solid blacks shirt or have somewhat abstract writing or graphics on them. Remember, artsy and stylized, not a shirt thats says Gap or has the Batman symbol on it. Allsaints is a particularly good company to check out. While you can certainly buy vintage feel tees, you can also make your own easily. Take any cotton shirt you have and soak it for three days in a salt water bath (1/2 cup salter per quart water). This should give it that faded color and super-soft texture you normally only get from wearing a shirt in.

I SWEAR I CHOSE THIS PICTURE TO SHOW AN EXAMPLE OF KIYOMI’S STRAIGHT LEG JEANS AND HER COOL BOOTS

Finally, Kiyomi wears tons and tons of button ups. These are usually either short sleeve or with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Button-ups are where Kiyomi most often breaks her all black dress code and subs out for a white button-up. One of the things I like best about Kiyomi’s style is she is as unafraid to unbutton her shirt to her navel as she is to button it to the collar. It leaves a lot of room for variety when dealing with many of the same items.

Tees
Boots

One thing to keep in mind while trying to snatch Kiyomi’s shirt style, is that though she isn’t super busty, she also doesn’t bind flat. Though her look can be adapted for a variety of gender expressions, you don’t need to feel like you have to be bust-free to steal her look. Kiyomi often will go for a masculine cut shirt that low enough to show cleavage or a high cut shirt that still emphasizes her bust. People often get hung-up when they want to wear androgynous clothing but feel like can’t or don’t want to bind down flat enough. Kiyomi is a great example that you don’t need to bind or be extra small busted to rock a very hot center-of-center style.

Now that you have you base of jeans and a shirt, it’s time to really bring Kiyomi’s look home with some layering. The importance of layering is clearly not lost on Kiyomi and she nearly always has an extra layer or two on top. While she has, perhaps, the largest collection of jackets I’ve ever seen, her two most classic looks are either a leather jacket, a vest or suspenders.

VIA LISTAL.COM

When looking for a Kiyomi-inspired leather or pleather jacket, you want something with a ton of distressed texture. Basically you’re looking for a biker jacket. The great thing about textured leather jackets is that they come in a variety of price ranges. Though Kiyomi’s are likely actual leather from Diesel or G-Star, you can find a great cheap pleather jacket a place like Topshop, Forever 21 or even a thrift store. Keep the studs and zippers simple enough that it doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard. Remember we’re trying to play it Kiyomi-cool here.

VIA KIYOMI’S INSTAGAM

If a leather jacket is a bit more than you bargained for, Kiyomi also rocks a vest like nobody’s business. While she’s occasionally seen in a denim vest, she is literally the poster child for a white shirt and black suit vest. The thing to keep in mind is that you don’t button the vest. Nope. Not even a little bit, not even at all. The black vest/white shirt look is all about wearing the vest fitted but unbuttoned.

Longsleeve Shirts
Flats

For suspenders you want to go simple or not at all. Think classic black skinny suspenders over a white short sleeve button-up. While funky suspenders are fun, this look is about bringing suspenders back to their classic roots. You can buy suspenders at most department stores, or you can just make your own. Of course, life’s big suspender question is on top of the boobs or to the side. Honestly I say whatever you’re comfortable with. Generally speaking on top only seems to work if you’ve binded or you’ve very small-busted. Aim for a skinnier width strap so that whatever you choose this is less of an issue. For the Style Thief record, Kiyomi seems to wear them to the side.

To accessorize your Kiyomi look you’re going to need some long necklaces. Kiyomi tends to wear a cross, however I’m Jewish and would basically never do that even under any circumstances. You might also have reasons you don’t want to wear a cross. That’s totally fine! There are tons of other long silver chain necklaces you can wear. The best part is, this is the kind of jewelry you can buy for super cheap at Forever 21 or Target.

Finally, there’s that hair. The reason Kiyomi’s hair is so cool is that she can do so many different things with it. It looks drastically different when she spikes it up as it does when she wears it down. An easy option is to bring a picture of Kiyomi into your friendly neighborhood queer hair salon to get that short on the sides long on the top look. The hard part is getting that gravity defying volume. Luckily, this girl seems to know how to do it:

Once you have the clothes and the hair all you need is to slap on some heavy black eyeliner and you’ll be telling girls “I can’t be in a relationship with anybody because of my job” and then changing your mind when you meet someone hotter before you know it!

If there’s a queer style icon you’d like to see stripped down in Style Thief, send me an ASS message, ask on my formspring, or tweet me @Ohheyitslizz

Real L Word 309 Recap: Perfect Day For This Show To End With A Bang Bang Bang

Welcome to the ninth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a subversive and edgy late night soft core cable special about four or ten extraordinarily good-looking lesbians who live on one side of the country or the other side and enjoy taking pregnancy tests, drinking/singing, public nudity, trying on wedding dresses, recording insufferable pop music, Tour, puppies, talking about Romi, sitting at round tables with their parents while crying and saying really truly amazing things, such as:

Unfortunately for fans of slow water torture and fortunately for my state of mind, this episode was the very last episode of the season and was therefore jam-packed with trapeeze artists, key lime pie, days-of-the-week underpants, sex swings, spring flings, weddings and evil zombies! Let’s dig into it, shall we?

We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, and are immediately informed via large white block letters that it’s ONE MONTH LATER. Given the byzantine sense of timing employed by this show, “ONE MONTH LATER” is about as meaningless as the lyrics to Dusty & Romi’s first single.

after dolphins conquered the earth and took over Los Angeles

With the wedding merely two days away, Whitney and Sarahara have got heaps of eyebrows to pencil, vows to spell-check, flowers to arrange, small address labels to print and fights to have.

i told you i was gonna get a face tattoo, we can’t both get face tattoos, we already both have full body tattoos and that’s gonna be confusing enough for my mother

Whitney interviews:

Whitney: “I love that we’re going into our wedding with such harmonious energy. We literally want to kill each other.”

The wedding situation has transformed Whitney into a one-man Pride Comedy Jam. Meanwhile, Sarahara searches for her own limbs and soul beneath a giant sheet of white medical gauze or some lacy thing I can’t understand because I don’t have a gender identity.

Whitney: “I also think it’s weird you’re wearing a veil considering in no way are you virginal, or am I like lifting it like who is this virginal person I will be experiencing for the first time tonight?”
Sara: “You’re the one taking the symbolic part of it for heart. I’m wearing it for a fashion statement.”

and the statement is “i wanna fuck you like an animal”

This riveting conversation about hymens and fashion is interrupted by a text message from Mr. Whitney:

because tegan and sara would really like to be there

Oh my goddess, Whitney’s Dad is coming to the wedding! He’s a Hunter Valentine groupie and as soon as he heard that Kiyomi would be there, he booked a ticket. Just kidding! There was a sale on Priceline. Just kidding! Maybe he found a mask to protect him from Ilene Chaiken and no longer fears the camera stealing his soul.

Cut cross-country to the post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland of New York, New York, where The Hunter Valentine Band is eagerly auditioning new hipsters with bangs to fill the void left by Somer’s absent hips and bangs.

Kiyomi: “Just so you know you’re auditioning right now too.”
Vero: “Always auditioning! When am I gonna make the band?“

what do you say we just get naked and wrestle and whoever wins gets to pick the fourth member

Basically it’s like American Idol but with only one contestant. Her name is Aimee (not Aimee Mann! I thought that too though, obvs) and she’s an “amazing musician” from Toronto.

hey hey guess what i’m gay

Aimee plays bass, I think? But Somer played keyboard. But also I don’t understand music. Three guitars? I assume they’re establishing a mariachi band to play Feliz Compleaños at Chi-Chi’s.

Luckily my G-Chat viewing companion Laneia is totally unhelpful about this:

Laneia: basically the 4th member HAS to have black hair and bangs
Riese: yeah what role is she filling
somer played keyboard
Laneia: i’m confused but also i think you can reach certain notes maybe using a guitar??
ergh idk it’s like watching fish talking about swimming
like, ok
Riese: yeah
like if i wanted to swim
i would swim

The Valentines are impressed with Aimee’s skills, as well as her “energy” and the fact that she seems “positive and comfortable with herself,” which I believe also qualifies her for the Dove Real Beauty© Campaign.

i’m going to grandmother’s house and i’m taking a mini-duck, two bottles of whiskey, and an aimee

Kiyomi interviews that Aimee’s got touring experience. Somer didn’t have touring experience, apparently, and it “showed in a major way” ’cause Somer didn’t understand the rules of the road, like “thou must suck face with regional strangers” and “that’s not the band’s repair.”

Kiyomi: “How attached to Toronto are you?”
Aimee: “I have a cat, and that’s about it.”

“You nailed it,” says Kiyomi. “Just don’t nail anybody in the band and you’ll be okay.” Hey-o!

but honestly she’s a total bitch and would be much happier in the wild

Smear across 2,777 miles of vast unexplored swaths of land to sunny yet sketchy Los Angeles, California, where Romi Flinger, as evidenced by the giant chunk of heterosexual lifestyle hair stolen from Kid Rock currently snaking down her back, has left the world of lesbianism forever to worship at the shrine of evil cis-male-privilege and The Dark Knight Dusty Ray.

ok let’s play the game again where we take turns telling the other how pretty they are

Romi: “As soon as me and Kelsey’s breakup, pretty much, I am in a relationship with Dusty.”

Suprise!

the backup knights of the apocalypse

In merely a month, Dromi and Rusty have fallen in love, which I believe is a similar sensation to falling down an endless tank of rice pudding while wrapped in latex.

Romi: “When I was in the studio I didn’t know what the hell was gonna happen. At all. I didn’t think that we were gonna end up like this again, I mean it had been so long. But there are some people in your life that you meet and it just takes over everything about you. You can’t even control it, even if it’s the wrong time or the wrong place or the wrong situation. It was just inevitable, you can’t put me and Dusty together without us being in love. And we have a history together, it’s not like we just met. And I just wanna like put my heart back into Dusty.”

That’s not all she wants to put back into Dusty HEY-O BUTTSEX!

and then, where my heart used to be in my chest, put some kind of shiny broach or something

Romi, having confused “the institution of marriage” with “staying in touch with another human,” explains that they’ve gotta marry or else may lose each other.

Romi: “I don’t ever wanna lose him again and I know that he doesn’t ever wanna lose me again and we spent six years apart and we just are so in love, it’s stupid.”

Laneia: i cannot roll my eyes hard enough
Riese: i had to put in new eyes
mine fell out when i saw romi’s extensions
Laneia: it is stupid
she’s right abt that at least

I wish they’d just gone with something more like this:

Now that they’ve spent two seconds discussing their options, it’s time to call Mom and inform her that Dusty and Romi wanna make this nonsense permanent.

and then we’re gonna get a puppy and maybe a frappuchino!

Romi: “Um, Dusty and I are getting married!”
Mom: “Like, you’re kidding right?”
Romi: “No, like we’re gonna get married.”
Mom: “What?”
Romi: “We’re gonna get married!!
Mom: “Dusty.”

Romi hands the phone to The Slice of Man.

Dusty: “We love each other so much.”
Mom: “You’re like serious? I can’t wait. What is happening, like for real, do you know what I’m saying? Marriage is for real.”
Romi: “We’re gonna do it!”
Mom: “You guys seriously, this is a serious thing and you’ve talked about it and you understand the commitment.”
Romi: “Yup!”
Mom: “Okay.”

Well, that was easier than this:

Elsewhere in gorgeous yet often sweltering hot Los Angeles, California, Lamanda are moving objects around in hopes of shipping half of said objects to The Grande Apple and keeping half in the garage. That’s right, they’re moving back to New York City, which means New York won the “New York vs. Los Angeles” Challenge this season. Good work everybody!

Lauren: “I’m so exited to be moving back to new york, it’s just gonna be incredible to like, re-learn the city, go back to my favorite places, go back to my favorite places and do it all with my fabulous girlfriend, Kiyomi.”

Storage Wars would lose their shit over this bondage chair:

my safeword was “dirty knees”

Amanda: “I think we need a box just for sex toys.”
Lauren: “Oh no we have some there. It’s too much of a pain to carry back and forth.”

Amanda interviews that despite her plans to return to The City, she and the ex aren’t back in the saddle, ’cause the ex has other ponies to ride. Amanda tells Lauren that she doesn’t want her ex to think she’s coming back to the city just for her.

ehhh i dunno, when she fucks me with that thing i feel it more in my upper abs

Amanda: “I don’t wanna give the satisfaction of me thinking that I’m going there to be with her, you know?”
Lauren: “So why don’t you tell her you’re not going, and then go anyway? And if she sees you out, just be like, Hey, I’m visiting.”
Amanda: “Well, that’s really retarded. Why would I do that?”

They’ve got this Paris/Nicole circa Season One of The Simple Life thing going on, these two.

Elsewhere in the bright futurescape of Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sarahara are prepping for their Special Day with Mama and Papa Bettencourt.

yup yup everyone puts their keys in this bowl, that’s why it’s called a key party

Whitney and Sarahara have managed to muster up a large photograph of their photogenic faces for the family to admire.

so this is what you kids have been doing with all your free time, huh?

Sarahara notes that her Mom is looking sad and removed and at first one might assume she’s just depressed that the happy couple didn’t hire Robin Roemer to photograph their wedding, but then one might realize Sarahara’s Mom is just sad about Sarahara being a homo:

Sara: “Mom, can you tell me if you feel better about this wedding?”
Mrs.Sara: “Still, I’m thinking. You don’t need to be married.”
Sara: “Why? I don’t deserve the same rights as my sister or you and Dad, why? My love is not as good as your love?”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah, of course.”
Sara: “Well, then that’s sad for you to say that.”

for example i’ve heard good things about domestic partnerships

Mrs.Sara: “But that’s what I’m still thinking, you know.”
Sara: “You want me to be happy because you love me.”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah I want you to be happy Sara, but you can be happy anyway.”
Sara: “Yeah that makes me happy and I deserve that just like you and everybody else.”

Just imagine if Sara had called to say that she’d gotten back together with Whitney a month ago and they were gonna go get married at Circus Circus! LOL!

it’s okay i still kinda love you

Sara interviews that when she’s already so nervous about the wedding it doesn’t help that her Mom would rather be at The Hollywood Wax Museum.

Real L Word 308 Recap: Premonitions Sure Are Dreamy And Disturbing

Hello and welcome to the eighth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour reality program following nine real women who hoard dead cats, use 765 coupons to obtain 675 boxes of Kraft Dinner for 49 cents, are addicted to hillbilly heroin, dress their 4-year-old daughters in sexy cowboy outfits for Lil’ Miss Pageants, compete against a large group of really stupid guys on steroids for the love of one bisexual centerfold, transform a basket filled with spam and garlic cloves into an award-winning dessert and talk about themselves.

L to R: Dusty, Romi

Reader, this has been a batshit crazy week of television! First this…

…then this…

… then this…

…and now this!

Let’s get started!

We open in sultry Los Angeles, California, where Whitney, Sarahara and Lauren are imbibing alcoholic beverages in a crazy sexy cool hot nightspot environment called “JUICY CLUB LA,” probably named after Juicy Juice, because isn’t everything.

ready for a three-peat

So, Lauren informs Sarahara and Whitney that she’s taking a red-eye to New York City, which’s insane, because when you take a red-eye you’ve got two choices: 1. drink coffee upon awakening to keep you alert, pleasant and conscious throughout your journey to and within the airport and then face the unseemly side effect of not being able to sleep on the flight, 2. don’t drink coffee upon awakening and feel like holy hell all the way there, inevitably wait for hours as your plane is delayed and delayed, but then sleep peacefully on the flight. I don’t know which one Lauren’s gonna do, especially since instead of talking about this quandary, she’s talking about Kiyomi!

Whitney and Sarahara have a vacation prediction:

there’s also a slight possibility you could fall down a well

Sara: “I feel like Kiyomi has Lauren in the palm of her hand right here just “doo doo doo” hanging out.”

honey i shrunk the cast

Sara: “You gotta keep em guessing, you know?”
Whitney: “Give ’em little tastes. We gave each other little tastes for three years before we chomped and look at us now, we’re a month away from walking down the aisle!”

Whitney asks Lauren if she’s gonna move to New York and then puts bets on “Kiyomi’s moving here,” ’cause people in Los Angeles always think everybody’s gonna move there. To be fair, it seems like everybody has moved there.

We thus ricochet cross-country to somewhere in Brooklyn during a crucial period in our nation’s history, where Kiyomi and Laura are hitting up a bar to watch Vero scale new heights of sexiness in her surprise role as “bartender.” No wait never mind, they’re there to talk about themselves:

Kiyomi: “The band is really moving at a rapid pace and as soon as the record is out we’re gonna be really busy and we don’t have time to slow down for someone who is sort of wishy washy for where they wanna be in the band.”

cause i was hoping to talk about her for a bit before actually talking to her

Mhm. It’s Somer Fry-day. They’ve decided to boot Somer from the band and they’re gonna tell her at the meeting tomorrow. Vero asks if it’s gonna be an ultimatum, but nope — it’s just gonna be an order.

but nothing’s as hard as being a green valentine

I’ve been anti-this-conflict since the start ’cause Kiyomi was obnoxious and I love Somer so much, but suddenly this week watching this episode something clicked and I finally “got it” and understood where Kiyomi and Laura are coming from because I realized I could relate their experience to my own experiences here at Autostraddle!  It doesn’t matter how awesome or talented somebody is when you’re doing shit like this, ’cause that’s not all it takes — when you’re in charge of a operation that consumes all your time, has negatively impacted most of your relationships, requires heaps of magical thinking, barely pays the bills if it pays anything at all and is in an industry in which 99% of attempters fail — you come to require so much blind faith that anybody who isn’t stark raving mad about your project keeps you up at night. Everybody at the table needs to have something serious at stake, something that prevents them from leaving. “Blind faith” is right up there with “butter” as one of the primary ingredients for Keeping the Dream Alive Cupcakes. It’s not that Somer hasn’t shown interest in the band or doesn’t add an awesome sound to it, it’s that Somer hasn’t shown borderline-psychotic passion for and obsession with the band, and that’s what the band needs, to be everybody’s unconditional first priority.

Anyhow, then Somer shows up and she and Kiyomi sneak off to a corner for some close-talking.

it’s just there’s this girl romi who says her dream has always been to play an instrument on a stage and because she’s a celesbian and everything, we have to take her up on that

Kiyomi and Somer discuss the intricacies of their friendship:

Somer: “I just want things between us to be right and they’re not right right now.”

Kiyomi says they’ll chat about it tomorrow because the sun’ll come out tomorrow, so you better hang on ’til tomorrow!

Sidenote: when we got to this part of the episode on Thursday night, I began panicking that Laneia had yet to pop up on G-chat to watch with me.

Riese: LANNEEEIAAAAAAAAAAAA
Laneia: HI
sorry my cable reset itself
fuck
Riese: jeez
Laneia: we’ve been trying to fix it
Riese: you have missed SO MUCH
Laneia: the internet and everything
DAMN IT
what
Riese: no jk, nothing has happened yet
Laneia: i have to call cox and fix it
megan has taken to making me a vodka tonic

We cut to the darkest deepest chambers of Douchebagville, where The King of the Douchebags is entertaining his new suitor, Romi Flinger.

once again the answer to the question “who’s at the door” is romi

Romi the pop star’s preparing to shoot her first music video by learning how to sing — just kidding! She’s gonna wing it. Anyhow, you know when you’re hugging somebody you wish you were fucking and you are acutely aware of the alignment of your private parts and how every limb in your body can feel every limb in their body and you feel like if you keep hugging like this forever, it’d basically become sex by default? That’s how Dusty and Romi hug.

and by “work” i mean “play”

Laneia: what’s romi wearing
besides a runway of rouge
Riese: a hoodie
and a winter hat
Laneia: is it december there

Romi interviews regarding her Passion for Music:

or really any raised surface of any kind where people will feel a social obligation to look at me and listen to me talk

In addition to always wishing she could be a basketball player, President of the United States, a movie star, Queen of the World, editor of Vogue, One Of Those Bloggers Who Just Writes About Herself All Day In Her Underpants While Bathing in Millions of Google Adsense Dollars And Then Gets a Book Deal, a fashion designer, Starfleet Captain, an FBI agent, a filmmaker or the owner of a Really Cute Bakery, Romi dreams of pop stardom:

Romi: “I love music, I love making songs, I like performing, I love being on stage. I would just love to be able to sing and get paid to do it.”

Romi perches atop the couch singing her new hit single with Dusty. Romi’s reading the lyrics off her Blackberry, which makes me insane ’cause it’s totally unfair that I’ve already accidentally memorized the lyrics to this g-dforsaken song and Romi hasn’t, and it’s HER SONG. I cannot get this shit out of my head.

romi has fooled us all into thinking she’s reading lyrics from her phone when she’s really just taking instagram pictures for “dustyandromi.tumblr.com in beta”

Romi interviews about her Amazing Artistic Connection to Dusty Ray and what each uber-talented megastar brings to the table besides L.A. Cool and gravity-defying hair:

Romi: “It’s a great team because Dusty is an amazing songwriter who’s very talented, I wanna sing, I can’t write a song to save my life, but guess what I have a really great following and a lot of publicity. So, you give me a song to sing, and I’ll give you people who will listen to it.”

i mean, “ooh la la?” you think that shit just pops into just anybody’s head? No. That’s the work of a true artist. Don’t even get me started on “Dirty Knees”

Laneia’s cable is still broken at this point —

Riese: omg i can’t believe romi just said what she said
Laneia: i’m dying
this is really irritating WHAT DOES THE UNIVERSE HAVE AGAINST ME WATCHING THIS GODFORSAKEN SHOW
i’m on hold with cox listening to the musak version of a foreigner song

Basically, Romi and Dusty Ray have now added “being obsessed with each other” to their already arduous schedules “being obsessed with themselves.”

let’s cut the bullshit and just write a song that goes like “memememememememememememe”

It’s wild, dude! When they jam together, it’s like unicorns having buttsex:

Dusty: “Music is a part of her like it is for me, so when we get together, it’s just like a constant rolling thing, like songs come out, we sing, we mix, we play, and for someone who hasn’t been in the studio before, like she can do anything already, so that’s just like so much fun, you know?”

this is how they transfer energy to each other, like E.T. but not cute

You guys. EW! Just, ew! My feelings about this scene are best expressed by utilizing the graphics fourfour made when Nicole won America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 5:

+

I mean honestly.

Before departing, Romi and Dusty share yet another sex-hug:

call your girlfriend, it’s time you had the talk

At this point, I would like to quote The Daily Fill Dot Com: “Reality TV stars refuse to learn a very simple lesson: being famous does not mean you can also make music. No amount of money or lip syncing can make up for a complete lack of musical ability, but unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped countless reality stars from trying (and failing) to launch a music career.”

This seems to be what always happens in later seasons of successful reality shows — the “cast member tries to extend their 15 minutes” storyline replaces whatever storylines made that cast member interesting in the first place.

For example:

i did way too much research for this graphic

Now we travel forward in time and emotional resonance to a magical therapist’s office undoubtedly located in or around Los Angeles, California. Charlie’s initial due date is coming up and the girls have feelings.

Laneia: have kacorcy gotten pregnant yet
Riese: they’re in therapy right now
Laneia: i might as well just slam my head against the wall

Cori, much like you and me and everyone we know, has jealousy issues with facebook.

Cori: “Seeing pregnant people on my Facebook, like seeing everybody pregnant and all that, that’s hard… it brings like this ugliness, like it makes me jealous and I’m struggling with that and then I’m mad at myself, and I should be happy for these lucky women, but I’m jealous, and it’s hard.”

The therapist drops a gallon of truth serum onto them — and onto me, too, actually, I mean, this is good advice:

Therapist: “But jealousy really is anger. I mean it brings up your anger that it can’t be you, so what you’re talking about is normal, it’s a feeling that you have to have, just like your sadness.”
Cori: “I try to distract myself a lot, but i’m so angry at my body. “

They want to acknowledge Charlie’s Birth-Day somehow, do something for it. Maybe move towards closure, if there is such a thing when things like this happen.

We starsweep all the way across the United States of America to Brooklyn, New York, where a group of carpet-munching rockstars are assembling for a meeting. Somer’s there first, obviously, with Kiyomi and Laura lagging behind:

don’t think twice, it’s alright

The ladies settle in and Laura and Kiyomi sharpen their knives, lick their lips, and dig in:

Kiyomi: “The first thing to talk about that’s the most obvious thing is the elephant in the room, is that you know we decided that we were gonna make a decision whether you were gonna commit to the band or whether the band was gonna commit to you, what the right thing to do was after the tour, at this point we’re feeling like it might not be the right fit because of all the things that we have gone through and I hope that we could figure this out in the most respectful and positive way.”

Damn.

this would be a good time to tell you that the black cups contain coffee and your white cup is basically an arsenic latte

Kiyomi: “At this point in Hunter Valentine there is no room to slow down, eight years in the making and it’s gotta keep going full force.”
Somer: “I don’t wanna slow that down by my decision or my inability to be on tour.”

Kiyomi’s slightly relieved that Somer seems to “get it,” but is also sad. Meanwhile, Somer interviews that much like an attractive well-jawed and deceptively tiny jungle animal, she feels ambushed:

Somer: “It’s not only disappointing and frustrating but a little bit heartbreaking, it felt a little bit like an ambush, and I wish we could’ve had more of a conversation and maybe we could’ve seen what we could fix and move forward and maybe do something awesome together as a band.”

especially the part where 12 soldiers jumped out of a bush, pinned me to the ground and took me hostage as a war captive

The band agrees that they want Somer recording the album with them but then that’ll be that. And even if Somer wasn’t one hundred percent about the band on the run, it still hurts to have somebody else make that decision for you, and unexpectedly, too.

three ways of looking at kiyomi

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Sarahara is tittering about the room in a lacy headscarf, straightening chairs and looking at the wall as Whitney sits on the couch, demonstrating how to finger a detachable vagina I MEAN sticking her finger in and out of her ring, asking Sara if maybe she shouldn’t wear it ’til the ceremony, lest it lodge itself in Sarahara’s cervix, causing her to birth tiny golden dragons.

hey hey my eyes are up here

The topic of this scene is that the wedding’s a month away and they’ve yet to plan anything, which’s befuddling — like really? They haven’t sent out invitations yet? Last week I got an invite to a wedding taking place in the Spring of 2013, for Christ’s sake.

Whitney: “I’m more of a planner, you know Sara kinda likes to fly by the seat of her pants.”

hello excuse me i’m here for my “save the date” invite as promised

Apparently they’ve yet to invite people, get outfits, taste cake, replace the chandelier, do a BevMo run, shoot me in the face, audition flower girls or find a DJ. West Hollywood is teeming with lesbian DJs so that shouldn’t be a problem. But you know what is a problem? THE FACT THAT “WEDDING PLANNING” HAS RE-EMERGED AS  A “TOPIC” ON THIS SHOW.

Whitney: “Alright — what are you doing?”
Sara: “Baby, I’m getting addresses.”
Whitney: “All I know is that you’re —”
Sara: “Baby, trust me, okay? I’m making headway here.”
Whitney: “I understand you’re making headway except for the fact that all I’m saying is that you’re hopping from Facebook to sending things to color schemes to —”
Sara: “So what? That’s how I work. Is there a particular way you’d like me to do it? How is that, please tell me.”
Whitney: “Yes, organized.”
Sara: “Cool. Don’t piss me off.”

can’t you tell, that’s why i’m wearing my headway headscarf

All this thinking has left Sarahara exhausted and Whitney frustrated.

Sara: “Planning a wedding is exhausting and we’ve got tons of work to do.”

Whitney would like Sarahara to do some of this work, and the beat goes on…

Real L Word Episode 306 Recap: Lost In A Bush (That’s What She Said!)

Hello and welcome to the sixth recap of the third season of Showtime’s hit series, The Real L Word, a 30-minute sitcom about a spunky young girl with pigtails, day-glo leggings and multi-colored outfit situations who is abandoned in a Chicago shopping center by her mother and subsequently adopted by Henry, the kindly manager of the building she’d found to squat in. Eventually she opens a hoppin’ burger establishment at the local mall and throughout the series deals with tough pre-teenage and teenage issues such as buying your first bra, being a tomboy, bullies, getting trapped in an old refrigerator, dodging Child Protective Services and fighting swamp monsters.

L to R: Whitney, Amanda, Lauren & Romi (the dog in the middle ate everybody’s little dog so he represents all the little dogs)

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m ready to rock this recap! Not really, I’d really rather discuss how the fuck True Blood is gonna wrap up their crazy-ass season in next week’s finale, right? Jesus. Also we interviewed Lauren and Amanda, a.k.a. “Lamanda.”

Anyhow, this week The Real L Word treated us to yet another Dinah Shore-centric hour of sapphic solipsism, in which someone curled up and took a nap on wet asphalt, someone twisted her ankle stepping off a curb, someone passed out on the bathroom floor for three hours mid-day and someone met Miley Cyrus at The Coffee Bean. Hey, who wants to see a sexy picture of Vero?

Sorry about the lateness of this recap, Intern Grace had a special weekend which led to me not getting all the screencaps ’til this morning (Monday), and also because of the cram she didn’t have time to give them all cute names. We apologize and have nothing but love for you and each other forever and ever as so it was written, amen.

We open in the sweltering wildlands of Palm Springs, California, where an enormous group of intoxicated lesbians are enjoying each other’s nipples while rocking softly to the beat of insufferable pop music. Also, Kacy and Cori are re-entering the world they’ve shunned for many moons in the most violent way possible.

DINAH!

whaddya say we bust this popstand and go emotionally eat at in-and-out instead

Kacy notes that Dinah appears to be “like a club” but “during the day.”

Kacy: “It was a little bit like walking into an alternate universe.”
Cori: “Where men did not exist, and neither did clothes. I felt out of place with my clothes on.”

Tell it like it is, Nikki Weiss:

oh no she wouldn’t

The two well-insulated ladies make their way through the hordes of women not dressed for winter and are stopped by Real L Word fans who wanna take pictures with The Celesbians Kacy and Cori. Oh wait — is everybody here clear on the definition of “Celesbian”? Let me refresh your memory:

and a bluebird is a bird that’s blue

Get it? Okay, good. So, as I was saying, Cori & Kacy are spotted by fans amid the throngs of gyrating g-strings and roped into a Kodak Moment.

hot pink bikini is going to tag the hell out of this photograph

And thus KayCor are forced to grapple with the inevitable questions:

Fan #1: “I’m planning on getting pregnant myself.”
Cori: “Really?”
Fan #1: “But like, when we saw that episode with you guys doing like, that thing, like did it work?”
[awkward pause]
Cori: “Uh, it did work. I lost her at five months.”
Fan #1: “Oh G-d, that’s the worst feeling in the world, I can’t imagine.”
Fan #2: “But keep trying.”

Womp womp.

Back in Le Chateau De Lamanda & Whitney & Sarahara, Sara and Lauren are sticking colored pencils into their eyeballs while Amanda informs Lauren that she heard from a girl who heard from another girl who heard from Hunter Valentine that Kiyomi lives with her girlfriend. But Lauren heard from Kiyomi herself that the “thing” with Ali is “sorta done.”

Amanda: “But every girl says that.”
Lauren: “Duh! It’s not like I’m like ‘Oh! I believe you!’“

duh, everybody knows that it’s really not butter

Amanda won’t let it go and Lauren reassures her that she’ll get this whole fascinating mess cleared up, and Whitney says that as Lauren’s friend she’ll support whatever decision she makes. That’s easy for Whitney to say ’cause unlike Amanda, she hasn’t ever found her arm halfway up Lauren’s vaginal canal… yet.

remember what i told you about how to get on season four and everything will be okay, grasshoppers

Everybody laughs and explodes and turns into ghost ninjas.

and the scent of kiyomi’s vagina lingered all day long

Meanwhile, Kacy and Cori are still perched precariously on the lips of the mouth of hell, wondering what the hell they’re doing at Dinah Shore.

Kacy: “It’s not that I’m not happy to be here but it’s just like, I would rather be at the hospital, exhausted, knowing that in a month we were gonna have a baby.”
Cori: “I feel it too, it’s hard. We’re not where we’re supposed to be.”
Kacy: “We can get there.”
Cori: “Dinah!”
Kacy: “I wonder if anybody else is having the same conversation that we’re having right now.”
Cori: “I think we’re the biggest Debs here.”

but only because claire didn’t show up

At this point, the couple makes the only decision one can really make under such circumstances:

Kacy: “We’re gonna drink through it.”

coincidentally, this happens to be the exact strategy i employ to endure watching this show

Kacy takes one sip of what’s likely a $9 cup of fruit punch and basement-shelf tequila, declares it horrible and then declares herself drunk. Let’s rock!

helloooo instagram

We then return to the Main Pool Area, where Somer and Donna are smooching, Laura’s carrying Vero around like a baby kangaroo, Sara’s kissing Amanda, and Somer is doing her very best to adapt to her surroundings.

play her like a guitar

I believe Dinah is especially challenging for New Yorkers, who would never, not ever, not in a million trillion bazillion years, intentionally attend an event of this nature on their home soil.

here kiss me before kiyomi sees us and tries to talk to us

Based on the six years I lived in New York City, I’d say that many New York lesbians tend to be the type that haven’t bothered buying a swimsuit in five years and only dig out the two-piece when somebody forgets how long it took to get to Coney Island last summer and ropes everyone in to a repeat excursion.

Somer: “Dinah, it’s not normally you know, my bag of tea or whatever — cup of tea? I don’t drink tea.”

smoking tea, on the other hand

But Somer’s happy to be there ’cause of the Hunter Valentine gig. Laura asserts that Hunter Valentine plans on rocking everybody’s bras off, which sounds neat.

and then sell the nice ones on ebay

Back on The Other Part of The Dinah Pool Party Area, Romi & Kelsey show up and are greeted with open arms by KayCor, who ask how the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game went and Romi explains how, once again, the universe’s axis lay between Romi’s legs and the entire world just revolved around her, being mean, like witches sticking carrots in people’s faces.

Romi: “Lauren signed up to go on a date with [Kelsey].”
[pauses, dramatically]
Romi: “They set us up. I’m like, can you guys get away? Why are you always there? and I just stood there watching the girl that I hate sign up to go on a date with my girlfriend…. it’s just — the nicest way to put it is that they’re very bully-ish.”
Kelsey: “They’re just bullies guys, it’s really sad.”

i don’t even bring pop-tarts in my lunch anymore because what’s the point, they always steal them

Romi interviews that she’s so glad Kacy & Cori are at Dinah, ’cause it’s nice to be around a “nice couple.” The implication is that Romi is nice and mature, and all the other girls are bitchy and immature, which is a valid point (about the bitchiness and the immaturity), but also who gives a fuck.

Meanwhile, said bitchy girls are exploring the swelling sexual tension inherent in every group of mojito-scented Dos-Equis-chugging hot lesbians in bikinis!

sara just saved 25 cents on q-tips

Lauren: “I don’t know why I’m sucking on Sara’s earlobes but Dinah fever is in me.”

Sara comes in her pants and Whitney’s pumped for “a big orgy later tonight.” The theme will be “The Story of O.”

Whitney: “I’m kinda turned on by the thought of you [Sara] getting it into Amanda, not gonna lie.”

but i’ve also been known to get off from stretching at the gym, so really it’s anybody’s game

Cori is wasted and stuffs her head into Kacy’s bosom and all is sunshine and beauty.

Cut to a number of hours earlier and later wherein it’s time for Hunter Valentine’s performance! Romi spies the band preparing to perform and is disturbed by their presence.

do you see that rock band, david? you know they’ve never been friends to me or mother. not one hello from them, not since jackie died

Romi interviews that she doesn’t know who Hunter Valentine is. I hope they know who Romi is, ’cause she hates it when people don’t know who she is.

Romi: “…based on the fact that they are friends with Lauren and Whitney and Sara, G-d knows what they said about me, so I’m not gonna walk in and watch somebody perform that’s just gonna think I’m like, this bitch.”

in which romi and kelsey are letting the terrorists win

One of the many hazards of Being The Center Of the Universe is that at rock concerts, all the musicians are really thinking about is you, because duh, everybody is thinking about you. Like you wish you could just enjoy a performance but the performers are like, obsessed with you. You know? That’s what it’s like to be Romi, the Atlas Of the Modern World.

Romi dramatically yanks Kelsey through the crowd like she’s Justin Bieber and zips into her room, anxious to the max. “Let’s just order,” she says. Music to my ears!

this is hands down also my favorite place to be during dinah shore

Oh, these are ladies after my own heart, really. I love hotels and 95% of the time would rather be drinking/laughing/smoking with my friends in a hotel room, rolling around on sheets we’re not responsible for laundering, than be outside in the sticky-sweaty sunshine with People Who Enjoy Socializing.

While Romi and Kelsey debate which incidentals they’d like to consume, Hunter Valentine gets ready to rock in the sweltering sunlight of the Dinah mainstage.

raise your glass

The Drunk Lesbians enjoy the show but perhaps nobody’s enjoying the show quite like Lauren’s enjoying the show:

Lauren: “When I first met Kiyomi I thought she was attractive but then they go on stage and they play, she was so hot, and then hearing her voice, it was like, wow.”

Truth: there is nothing sexier than watching your loved one play a musical instrument, which is one of many reasons why all my girlfriends have been excellent instrument-players (the primary reason is “coincidence”). Look, even Amanda likes it:

don’t let any of that drool land on amanda’s shoulder

Or maybe not.

this photo could possibly actually be from the wet t-shirt contest (also note the girl from the williamsburg bar behind lauren)

Turns out that seeing Kiyomi rock out with her cock out gets Lauren hard like Swiss Chard:

Whitney: “I could practically see Lauren’s full-on erection for Kiyomi just waving in the wind by the end of the performance she like, blew her load on herself.”

is it true that i came in my pants? i don’t know.

As you’re already aware, Kelsey & Romi have retired to their hotel room, sneakily foiling the CIA-implanted chip in Romi’s left thigh that enables them to follow her with spider trackers.

who’s at the door? who’s at the door? whooooos atttt tttthhheee dooorrrrr

So, Cori’s trashed. Which is actually a huge relief because she seems happy, at last. All of them do, all four of them.

Kacy: “When Cori gets tipsy, she has an alter ego and uh, Romi gets introduced to partial Coco. Coco At dusk. Kelsey got bent over, Coco style. It’s happened to all of us. She doesn’t really know you unless she’s bent you over and slapped your ass.”

Indeed: Coco Lite, beautifully wasted, thrusts Kelsey into a prone, stomach-to-the-mat position in which Coco Lite can properly smack Kelsey’s ass like she’s ready for some Canyon Yodeling, if you know what I mean.

is anybody here interested in pony play

Romi: “She’s making you a bottom, baby.”

For your reference, this is Coco Full-On:

Then Kacy interviews that “you looked light, for the first time in a long time you just looked light,” and Cori says that she felt light. She felt light!

little lightworker

I think that’s the thing about Dinah — it’s so grotesque and over-the top, and its attendees are so uproariously irresponsible that anything, any kind of behavior at all, is automatically deemed sensible because there’s no way what you’re doing is less acceptable than what anyone else is doing, anywhere. It’s a giant rollocking excuse to just let go of absolutely everything. You can’t feel guilty for kissing a girl you just met or getting super-drunk when two strangers with tequila fumes radiating from their pores are making out on-stage without shirts on while others wrestle topless in a kiddie pool drowning in vegetable oil.

You just let go, and then you feel light. Cori deserves to feel light. So does Kacy. Sookie should give them some light:

Your Favourite Queer Artists Will Play Phasefest 2012

Phasefest is an annual three-day music and arts festival in Washington DC that never fails to pull together a stellar cast of queer musicians for your viewing and listening pleasure. It’s like a mini queer Coachella but affordable and also indoors. Now entering its sixth year, another great Phasefest lineup has been announced!

The Lost Bois! Clinical Trials! Mitten! People At Parties! See, the great thing about Phasefest is that there’s usually something for people of all musical tastes and interests. You could go on Friday night to see Somer Bingham play cool music, and/or go on Saturday night to see Vero be cool. I bet she has an amazing rock stance. Or maybe you just wanna go so you can audition as one of Hunter Valentine‘s regional reps. Whatever you’re into, I won’t judge. It’s going to be a killer weekend.

Phasefest will run from 20 – 22 September at Phase 1. Day passes or weekend passes will be available – you can find all the event and ticket info here.

Real L Word 305 Recap: I Wasn’t Expecting This To Be So Bitchy

Hello and welcome to the fifth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour family sitcom about a teenage witch who, on her 16th birthday, learns that she has magical powers. Along with her 500-year-old European witch-aunts and her sardonic talking cat, Salem, Sabrina works to master the ancient arts of witchery while keeping her identity a secret and tackling teenage issues like learning how to drive, picking a college, earning your witch’s license and opening a jar of spaghetti sauce.

L to R: Laura, Sara, Slab of Man, Slab of Man #2, Whitney, Romi, Amanda, Slab of Man #3

This week on The Real L Word, we all journeyed to the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, California, which’s basically a Star Trek Convention but with lesbians.

Sometimes after writing a recap, I’m like, “this shit is fucking hilarious,” but throughout the entire process of writing this recap, I’ve felt like this shit is not remotely funny, I hope next week is more inspiring. I’m sorry I hope you still LOL at least once.  Here’s the thing: nothing’s happening, so everybody’s plotline is just people talking shit about other people. When I read over what I’ve written, I feel like I sound just as petty and bitchy as the show itself. It’s fun to make fun of people acting crazy or weird, but it’s difficult to make fun of people acting bitchy. Does that make sense? THIS IS HARD.

Oh also, to all the people who keep asking why I recap something if I hate it, the answer is that it makes people laugh and feel happy, and I feel like the natural human instinct when you’re told something you do makes people happy, is to do it. Right? If you’re able to. I think that’s what we’re all here to do. Also, it’s the traffic, stupid! It can be a pure motive. We do some things so that we can do some other things. Seriously I’ve recapped four seasons of The L Word, two seasons of Glee and three seasons of The Real L Word and one episode of Two and a Half Men — if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me why I recap a show I hate, I could gather enough dollars to smash together a big dollar ball of dollars, and throw it at your head! I’ve also recapped good shows, like Pretty Little Liars and Skins, that’s a whole different ballgame. Anyhow enough about me, there are all of these slightly more interesting people ready to tell you Their Stories!

Also we made a video, it’s a Whitney Mixter Self-Inquiry Supercut, and it’s kinda amazing.

We open in Silly Los Angeles, California, where Lauren is sitting at the table with a camera crew when Amanda, who has recently dipped her head into a vat of cake batter and then fallen asleep in a walk-in refrigerator, shows up at the thwarted homezone to break some unexpected news to Lauren — she’s getting back together with her ex-girlfriend and possibly re-re-locating to New York City.

1. what happened to your hair, 2. what happened to your shirt

Lauren: “I would hope that like, if you’re gonna move back, that you would give me like, advance notice so I can find another roommate and stuff.”
Amanda: [in an “oh, jeez” voice] “Woof…”

stop trying to make “woof” happen

Lauren: “What?”
Amanda: “I don’t know, that’s just like so extreme.”

You think that’s extreme, just wait ’til she dares to request that Amanda clean her room before moving out!

look the two of us together is just too much edgy hair for one relationship

Lauren presses for more details, Amanda responds with abstractions and Jesus Christ on a Cracker I always feel like we’re missing a big piece of the Lamanda story! Anyhow, Lauren wants to know when Amanda would potentially move out. Amanda’s not sure:

for example; when does filming for this show end?

Amanda interviews that she’s disappointed that Lauren isn’t throwing a Relationship Reunion Pretty Party for her and her ex-girlfriend.

Amanda: “It’s like she’s jealous or something.”

Lauren notes that Amanda lies a lot, and then Amanda’s hair catches on fire and the whole entire house burns down. Just kidding! I was confusing this show with a house fire.

Back in Lovely Long Beach, California, Kelsey and Romi are fudgepacking their clamsacks in preparation for their very first Dinah Shore together as a couple!

and sara’s dead body is enormous!

It’ll also be their first sober Dinah, a fate I wouldn’t wish upon Maggie Gallagher, as I personally failed to find a way to tolerate Dinah without ingesting at least three drugs and two drinks every 45 minutes. That was our first trip to Dinah. On our second trip to Dinah, I didn’t do drugs or have two drinks every 45 minutes, but shit got real.

Romi: “Dinah Shore is the weekend that all the lesbians from all over the world fly in to party and it does feel a little bit like high school spring break…. it’s really just a place for people to get wasted and fuck each other. Like people break up with their girlfriends just to go to Dinah and fuck other people, and then get back from Dinah Shore and get back with their girlfriend.”

but me and kelsey prefer to stay home at the farm, milking cows and/or each other

Romi The Sober Grownup explains that she’s attending Dinah Shore for work, because she is Famous and Important:

Romi: “I was invited to host and attend events as a celesbian. A celesbian is a lesbian that’s a celebrity, and they’re very rare. There’s not a whole lot of us. So, I have work to do.”

SURPRISE!

via straddlegifs.tumblr.com

She’s right, celesbians are very exotic and rare, like Leatherback Sea Turtles and Chinese Alligators.

save these endangered species

Romi suggests they try this weekeend to “have fun and like, stay out of as much drama as possible,” ’cause Romi has this routine where every time she goes anywhere, ever, she must first announce her intention to avoid drama and relay her conviction that such avoidance is indeed possible.

as opposed to what we usually do, which is to start a lot of drama and attempt to remain as miserable as possible

Furthermore:

Romi: “We’re sticking together all weekend if you leave me out there alone for the wolves to get me I will fucking murder you.”

Yikes.

baby they’re just a bunch of wolves on V, you can totally fix that with your glowy faerie thing

Romi interviews that she prays her rascally alkie ex-besties can avoid over-imbibing at Margaritaville and subsequently attacking Romi, ’cause it’s challenging to avoid drive-by attacks when the entire world revolves around you, you know? It’s like you’re everywhere!

Kelsey: “I’m trying to be respectful of Romi and I want to make her happy and if she doesn’t want me around certain people, then I’m not gonna be around certain people. Romi is usually right about certain people, so.”

Whatever you think about these two, Kelsey thinks Romi is the bee’s knees, that much is clear, and it’s kinda adorable.

like she totally called it about that kony guy

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Kacy and Cori are meeting up with the newly engayged Whitney & Sarahara to discuss Dinah Shore Weekend, which Kacy and Cori are unfortunately planning to attend, escaping their Emily Dickinson lifestyle for something more up Emily Fitch’s alley.

Whitney and Sarahara (who is operating a secret refugee ladder for oppressed termites via the extension cords dangling from each of her tender ears) say they hope KayCor are planning to attend the demented pool party from hell, especially the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game they’ll be hosting.

Whitney: “People are competing to win dates with [Romi and Kelsey.] I don’t know why…”
Sara: [FACE]

blow job face

Kori: “Are you not talking to Romi anymore?”
Whitney: “No, we have abandoned negative people in our lives, Romi is one of them. She has done shady things —”
Sara: “Even last time and what happened was, we were supposed to be friends at that time and me and Whitney had gotten in a fight but she knew how much I loved Whitney even if we weren’t like perfect, you know? And she made out with her at the pool and then looked at me like — if she could toss me off a cliff and nobody would know about it, she would.”

Although I’d assumed Kacy and Cori’s facial expressions reflected their immersion in this abyss of bratty boredom, it turns out their tentative exhaustion/disapproval is actually a reflection of their affection for Romi Klinger.

next time let’s just get takeout

Cori: “It’s hard to hear because I love Romi so much. She’s become an actual friend through all of this and she’s constantly checking in with us to see how we’re doing and she’s a great person and to hear anyone talk poorly of anyone I really care about is hard, and I really want to stay neutral — and just they have their own stuff —  but it’s hard because I want to defend her and be like, you’re wrong.”

Kacy and Cori don’t wanna be in the middle of all this, so you know. SCENE.

Back in the deepest depths of depravity vis a vis Brooklyn, Kiyomi and Ali are — surprise — fighting!

where does the kinda-good go?

Apparently Ali did the horizontal mambo with another lady whilst Kiyomi was playing sweet music for the little children of Texas and Ali lied to Kiyomi about where she met said lady, which’s what Kiyomi is latching onto to have an excuse to be pissed at Ali ’cause Kiyomi is “always honest” which’s really, really, really really not true at all, but whatever, I hate both of these people and hope they claw each other’s eyes out and then move to Newark.

Kiyomi: “I don’t care if you fucking fisted a cat, just tell me the truth, and then I don’t care, do you understand? That’s all I care about.”
Ali: “You’re being so aggressive right now because you’re gonna leave again and you wanna be able to do what you want.”

the cat, on the other hand, would care quite a bit

Ali fights with Kiyomi about how they fight too much, and Kiyomi interviews that her inability to commit is due to a recent breakup with a girlfriend-of-two-years who she was totes in love with and was about to move in with who moved to San Francisco for a new job while Kiyomi was on tour without telling Kiyomi.

Kiyomi: “I don’t wanna do that again, I don’t wanna give myself to someone completely to have them just rip me apart and destroy me.”

They yell at each other’s faces for a bit and Kiyomi finishes packing her stuff and it seems like maybe this thing is over. This terrible not-relationship thing. Kiyomi leaves her keys on Ali’s laptop and heads out.

Cut to the next morning in Brooklyn, where Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport before their flight leaves in an hour. In other words, Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport despite the fact that they are definitely gonna miss their flight.

ok you have the spare parts harness and i have the rodeo so i think we’re good to go

Donna: “We’ve gotta rush. There’s still a chance.”

Mhm, that’s what I used to tell myself on the subway at 5:55 when I’d just passed Lorimer and had to be in Midtown by 6. “I’m not late… YET.”

Back in Shifty Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sara are also packing!

try before you buy

For Sara, “packing” involves scampering around in a thong and see-through bra while Whitney interviews about hanging up her Dinah hoe hat. Look out for that shit on ebay!

Hunter Valentine arrives at the Luxurious Los Angeles International Airport — but Somer is nowhere to be found! This’d be a HUGE deal if they had a show tonight or if the bandleader was an obnoxious asshole and unfortunately the latter is in fact the case. Kiyomi interviews that she’s disappointed that they’ve been “given such a great opportunity” but “can’t be professional about it” which’d make sense if the “opportunity” was “getting a ride to Dinah right now” instead of what it actually is, which’s “playing a show tomorrow afternoon, at which Somer will absolutely be present.” So like none of this even makes sense! They should hire a monkey for the cast. Just to scamper around. Or maybe a talking horse?

wait dude is that an auntie annie’s because if so can you hold up a sec while i go get a cinnamon situation

Laura: “I think we should just leave.”
Kiyomi: “And not wait for Somer?”
Laura: “Nope.”
Vero: “We’re just gonna leave her?”
Kiyomi: “Yup. I’m outta here.”

Kiyomi’s one of those people who looks for reasons to get upset. Like she’s already upset, all the time, so she just wanders the universe with her orb of anger, looking for excuses to share it with the world.

Kiyomi: “I just think it’s one more thing on the scorecard for Somer.”
Vero: “You know what guys, could we not make it a big issue, I swear. ‘Cause I cannot make it a big issue, like the whole keyboard thing on tour.”

just smile pretty and watch your back, vero

Vero interviews:

Vero: “I feel bad that Donna and Somer are not gonna get a ride to Dinah Shore with us, but it’s Kiyomi’s band and she calls the shots.”

I wanna be in Vero’s band where Vero calls the shots! It could be called Hey Vero.

Real L Word 304 Recap: Scissor Sisters Meet Tongue Twisters

Hello and welcome to the fourth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour sitcom about an intelligent yet mischevious teenage girl struggling to carry entire flower bouquets on her head via Giant Floppy Hats while dealing with an absent mother, working musician father, an allegedly charming dumb jock brother with a lot of hair on his head and a recovering alcoholic older brother. Along with her idiotic-but-hot best friend named after the number of beers her father ingested prior to her conception, she struggles with very special teenage issues like buying tampons, going to second base, peer pressure and marijuana joints.

L to R: Romi, Kelsey, Lauren, Vero, Kiyomi (stylist: romi klinger)

This week on The Real L Word, everybody cried and everything hurt and I was mostly bored! Are you also bored? Just saying, last week my recap didn’t even get 100 comments, so. Anyhow, I feel like this recap isn’t as funny as usual, but I’d like to blame that on the rain that was falling and mostly on Ilene Chaiken and/or the patriarchy. #BOTP.

Two announcements: we’re raising money and need your support and we interviewed Somer and I think you’ll like it.

We open deep in the bowels of California’s intellectual epicenter: Hollywood, California. Here our newlyengayged couple’s prepping for a trip to San Jose to blindside Sara’s Portuguese parents with news of their impending nuptials.

so that’s a definite “no” on the wake-and-bake at your parent’s house?

Sarahara interviews that her parents grew up on a tiny island with one donkey, three dirt roads, a duck pond large enough for only 1.5 ducks and a ramshackle grocery store that only sold rice and wide-ruled notebooks. There were no gay people on this island so therefore Sarahara’s parents know nothing of the gays and their wedded ways.

we’re talking ‘lord of the flies’ type shit here, guys

Whitney’s struggling to select which neutral-toned top, jeans, and stupid hat she’ll don for the big trip:

Whitney: “I can’t with this outfit, I’m not feeling confident —”
Sara: “You look — change your shoes, if that’s the problem —”
Whitney: “— and I need to feel confident because — I think it’s my pants —”
Sara: “No, I love your pants, there’s nothing wrong with your pants.”
Whitney: “I think it’s my shirt. I feel like I wanna look like, presentable.”
Sara: “You look like a 15-year-old little skater boy.”

she was a skater boi, she said ‘see ya later boi’, she wasn’t good enough for her, she had a pretty face but her head was up in space, she needed to come back down to earth

Whitney interviews that weddings are “a whole thing” in Portugal but Sarahara’s unlikely to fit into her parents’ vision of matrimony ’cause she’s marrying a woman. What woman is she marrying?

not that other guy in the corner, he’s just here to hold the boom

We then segue somberly back to The House of Sad and Fog, where Kacy and Cori are lying in bed, as they’ve done every day since their whole world imploded.

Kacy: “Cori and I have gotten used to just being here, with each other. It’s been uh, pretty difficult, damn near impossible, to leave the house.”
Cori: “Our lives have just stopped, and we’re shattered, we’re so broken. I just wanna crawl in a hole and pretend that this isn’t my life.”
Kacy: “We are both broken-hearted and sad, and we are there together, sitting there in the pit of hell, and I wouldn’t wanna be in there with anybody else but her.”

:-(

We cut jarringly cross-country, where Amanda and Lauren have landed in New York City for a few days of fun that’ll ideally cure Amanda’s fatal case of The Homesickness.

look it’s the statue of liberty!

The Twirlable Twosome are crashing at a dog-urine-soaked Brooklyn pad inhabited by somebody’s male friend and as Amanda showers, Lauren once again interviews to explain that Amanda and Lauren both had girlfriends when they lived in New York and now they’re both single at the same time and they’ve never been single at the same time before and REALLY DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, I quit.

this is the first time we’ve ever walked down a hallway with suitcases without girlfriends

“This is our first time out in New York, single,” Lauren explains, ’cause their situation requires (apparently) constant explanation. “This is our first time eating pancakes, single,” “This is our first time accidentally taking the N train to Queens, single,” “This is our first time shampooing our dogs, single.”

Amanda says she’s got some errands to run and will be back in an hour. Hopefully she’ll return with the rest of her shirt.

this is what happens if you lean back on a chair coated in super glue

Elsewhere in New York City, Hunter Valentine are returning from Tour!

Kiyomi: “South by Southwest was awesome, we did a really good job, we busted our asses, but there were some altercations, for every show that Somer sounded really good, there was another show that was a complete catastrophe.”

I really wish this show would embrace the ‘show don’t tell’ ethos, but I suppose that’s unlikely when nobody wants your cameras in their venues.

remind me again who my regional rep in this city is

Somer returns to her lady-love, Donna, and her two dogs, one of which appears to have eaten a third dog or maybe just a very large houseplant, and is relieved to descend into her wife’s arms, far away from Kiyomi’s menacing facial expressions and a van that smells “like fish.”

school’s out for somer

Somer interviews that after being On Tour, she totally understands how Odysseus felt:

Somer: “All I could think about was just being at home with her cuddling in bed, and she’s always there for me to bounce ideas off of and give me a good perspective and those were all things that I really craved while I was on the road.”

I think that’s ultimately the thing, you know? I mean, there’s sex. You miss the sex when you’re away, but more than that you miss the person who has been processing all your feelings with you for howevermany years, the person who gets you and usually agrees with you and can tell you if you’re being stupid or the other guy is being stupid. It’s the only situation in which life partner seems like the most accurate term to describe the person you miss and love.

who’s next, mama is hungry

Somer explains that when you’re out there on the road with a vicious womanbeast, Smee and Vero The Coolest Cucumber, everything’s just “naked and bloody” and nobody is polite and it’s hard. Somer and Donna have lots of processing to do about whether or not Somer should stay in Hunter Valentine.

We cut cross-country to Sunny San Jose, California, the city Kayak always suggests I fly out of when I’m hunting for cheap plane tickets. What Kayak doesn’t know is that I don’t have a car, so like, I can’t just go to San Jose on a whim in my Lexus with my fiancé or something, like these guys:

this calls for some solid daytime drinking

Sarahara says they’ve got news. Mãe and Pai strike out once with “you’re moving to San Jose,” and then again with “you’re pregnant.” The latter prediction is totally ominous, obviously. They’ve got no idea what’s about to happen.

even better: this bitch with the dredlocks is never gonna get me pregnant. how’s that?

In a surprisingly hilarious twist of fate, Whitney’s got no fucking clue what’s going on ’cause they’re all talking in Portuguese, forcing Whit to simmer in nervousness while chugging red table wine and laughing politely at what seem to be the appropriate moments.

Sara: “I’m nervous.”
Mrs. Sara [in Portuguese]: “What is it? You’re not expecting a baby, are you?”
Sara [in Portuguese] : “She asked me to marry her.”

Whitney, who — keep in mind — has no idea what’s been said, smiles nervously as Mr. Sara chuckles benevolently and Mrs. Sara’s face crumples and it’s really sad. You can’t even be mad at Mrs. Sara, because you can see her entire vision of her daughter’s future dissolve into a big black nothing and you can see that she is mourning this life and probably wishes she could mourn it off-camera. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back from our knee-jerk self-righteous indignation at anybody who doesn’t embrace our sexuality and recognize that “accepting” doesn’t have to mean “immediately embracing.”

kinda wishing sara’s announcement had been fetus-related

Sara: “Do you guys love me?”
Mrs. Sara: “I love you very much Sara —” [stumbles on her words]
Sara: “Are you sad?”
Mrs. Sara: “Well.” [pauses] “Old-fashioned.” [looks down]
Sara: “What do you think? What does that mean?”

Whitney interviews:

Whitney: “So yeah I’m not 100% well-versed on Portugese but I’m pretty well versed on the look of shock and dismay and tears. That’s a dead giveaway. She’s not 100% happy about this.”

who’s a genius? this guy.

Sara sort of purrs and hugs her Mom and tells her she loves her over and over as her mother stares at her fork and her lap and everything but Whitney, who at least shares a kind broment with Mr. Sara.

Mr. Sara: “I love my daughter, and I will do everything for her to be happy. And we really like Whitney and she’s a very nice person.”

four for you, mr. sarahara

Some Sadistic fuck takes this opportunity to interview Mrs. Sara, who clearly needs more emotional support than an exploitative television camera could offer:

Mrs. Sara: “This is a big surprise for me. It’s not easy. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m saying this but it’s not easy.” [starts sobbing]

the saddest song

Mrs. Sara: “I never believe in gay marriage. I thought marrying is for woman and a man. Plus it’s not only me, really I don’t believe my family is going to the wedding. They all love me very much. Very much. very close family. But I don’t think they’d do that, even for me.” [starts crying again]

Back in New York Shitty, Lauren’s peeved ’cause Amanda said she’d be back in an hour and now it’s been three hours and she still isn’t back!

hi yeah, i’m calling because i used your shampoo and now my hair is pink? do you know anyplace i could get this fixed?

I believe we’re being set up to think Amanda is riding somebody’s hobby horse in a secret playpen and Lauren’s being overly possessive but seriously guys, don’t tell somebody to expect you in an hour and then go MIA, it’s ultra-rude, especially if you’re allegedly on a vacation together and have plans later.

Evil Cylon Somer Bingham Infiltrates The Real L Word: The Autostraddle Interview

Photo: Meeno

My introduction to musician slash reality television superstar Somer Bingham was in July 2011, when I received an email suggesting that I would really dig the band Clinical Trials. Somer and her music — which was described as “thrashy all-female electro grunge rock with a side of angst” — quickly became my new favorite things.

Almost one year later, the announcement was made that Somer had joined the cast of Autostraddle’s favorite lesbian reality television program, The Real L Word. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity to call her up and ask, “oh God, WHY?”

Here’s the thing: Somer gets it. Like, she’s in on the joke too, and anybody who follows her on twitter knows that from her self-deprecating episode live-tweeting and overall sense of humor about the whole project.

After dealing with a phone speaker blow-out (which, fyi, an empathetic Somer offered to help fix) and being read the world’s most polite riot act by Showtime PR, we settled in for a deep and meaningful discussion about music and TRLW that ended up getting totally de-railed.

What were you thinking when you signed on to do The Real L Word?

To be honest with you, I wasn’t all that interested on being on the show. In fact I had a couple of conversations with Vero (Hunter Valentine) when trying to decide what to do, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to be on reality television or if I wanted to let people into my life. I’m a musician, not a TV person, and so I had a lot of hesitation.

Also I was in this in-between period with Hunter Valentine, we were still trying to figure things out and it wasn’t really my decision whether the band was going to be in it or not, so I just went along for the ride. Honestly, it’s a lot harder to say no to something than it is to say yes. If you say yes then maybe you’ll wonder if you made the right choice and have to live with regret, but if you say no then you’ll always have to wonder.

So when did the decision happen?

It happened right in the first few months of us trying to work together. Kiyomi and I were already friends and she asked me to help her write songs for their new album, which sounded like fun. That led to an invitation to go to Toronto to record it, and it was right around that time the auditions were happening. Clearly Hunter Valentine did end up being cast and the story was going to be about recording the album and going on tour.

What has it been like watching your life play out on screen? Is that weird for you?

You know what’s the weirdest thing? Reading Autostraddle recaps. I read them and I’m like, “Oh wait, that’s me! They’re talking about my keyboard!”

I’m actually more nervous to be talking to Autostraddle because you guys are smart. I caffeinated myself in preparation because I don’t want to be too slow or ridiculous. I mean, a little bit of ridiculous is fine, if it’s funny. If we can pull off something that is a little ridiculous and a little funny and a little witty then I’ll be super stoked.

Way to put on the pressure. Had you seen The Real L Word? Did you know what you were getting yourself into?

I had no idea! I watched part of an episode once because one of my friends was obsessed – it was the scene with the creamed corn and the strap on scene and I was like, “Wow! This is not good television!”

I’m not a big reality television fan. I mean, I watch Survivor with my mom but that’s about it. So when we were auditioning I thought I’d better see what the show was like. That was a really interesting experience, watching the show and wondering if that would be me one day — would I be wearing pants or pumps?

So did you have “no creamed corn” as a stipulation in your contract?

That’s a great question. I’m not allowed to discuss what was and wasn’t in my contract, unfortunately creamed corn falls under non-disclosure.

How did your wife, Donna, react when you told her you were auditioning? Did she think you were a little crazy?

She always thinks I’m a little crazy. She basically said, “You’re a musician, and this show could be a way to get people to hear about your music — they may hate it, they may hate you, they may like it — at least you’re getting it out there”.

As far as being on the show, we talked about it in the context of what we would have done if this happened ten years ago — then there would have been no hesitation, we’d have been in our early twenties and we were even more crazy back then, going to lesbian parties and running around New York and just generally getting into trouble. But now we’re in a different stage in our lives, which is where that hesitation originally came from.

You already have a really great band, Clinical Trials, and so I’m curious about what drove you to join another one?

It started with a conversation — a telephone conversation — between Kiyomi and I. She said that she respected me as a musician and wanted me to infuse a bit of my sound into what they were doing. I knew that they were a lot further along than my own band was — they had more fans, they had this poppy sound that appealed to a lot of people. So we discussed and agreed how it would be mutually beneficial for both parties. I wasn’t really looking for something new, the opportunity just came up. Then all the reality craziness happened.

So far this show is portrays Kiyomi as someone who has a very strong personality, who is a little bit cocky. Is this the Kiyomi that you know?

It is and it isn’t. She does have a very strong personality and we’ve clashed a few times. As my wife has pointed out, we’re both brats. So yes, there’s a part of her that can be abrasive. She’s very focused on her music goals and whatever gets in the way of achieving success can get pushed aside.

But there’s this other side to her. She’s charismatic and she’s fun and she can be incredibly generous and caring and loyal, and these subtleties aren’t really coming across on the show because there’s so much conflict! Also, telling a story about the beauty of friendship probably isn’t all that interesting. Are viewers going to tune in for hugs, or are they going to tune in because two people are screaming at each other on stage?

When you witness all of the girl drama that Kiyomi has with her non-girlfriend, Ali, does it make you feel a sense of relief that you’ve got Donna back home?

Absolutely! I think most people want to find their soul mate and I’ve been very lucky to have found mine. Those two fight a lot and it can be tough to watch. People just want to find their partner and they’re trying to figure out whether they’re going to work as a couple.

How did you and Donna meet?

I was handing out flyers for a show, it was this drag king show with a musical act in middle. I saw this cute girl sitting on a curb and I thought, “I’m gonna give this girl a flyer!” and I did. She was so cute and so drunk — she was in grad school, she had just finished writing a paper and was out celebrating.

I was so upset because she disappeared before I could get her number. Then she showed up ten minutes later eating a falafel and I knew then that she was the one for me — the drunk girl eating a felafel in the middle of a bar. She was so sweet. We ended up hanging out another night when we were both more sober and we clicked, we both realized that we had good hearts and that was it.

SO what was the proposal like? Was it as orchestrated as Whitney’s?

No. I wanted to wait until our anniversary to propose, but then I started having these terrible nightmares about Donna not liking the ring and not liking the proposal and so I kept waking up in the middle of the night all sweaty and upset. Naturally she wanted to know what was going on. When I finally admitted that the nightmares were about getting her a piece of jewelery  that she didn’t like, she put two and two together and ruined the surprise!

So I wanted to get down on my knee and tell her that I loved her and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but I didn’t get the chance to do the romantic, suave proposal thing. No chance to do any of that Romeo crap.

Real L Word 302 Recap: A Leap Of Faith Into a Puddle Of Nonsense

Hello and welcome to the second recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour teen sitcom starring a teenage girl who sports eye-scorching brightly-colored multi-layered outfits and speaks directly to the camera regarding a plethora of Serious Topics such as her first training bra, her annoying little brother, school, boys, and pimples.

Stylist: Romi Klinger

Well, now that we’ve sold our first-born child to Contempo Casuals and strapped on our leggings and high-tops, it’s time to get down to business!

First things first: Autostraddle’s Season Two parody video, edited by the incredibly physically attractive Real L Word extra Sarah Croce and starring famous actors like Autostraddle Design Director Alex Vega and pregnant Season One cast member Jill Goldstein-Weiss, is finally here, and if you’ve yet to bear witness to its excellency, you should either kill yourself or go watch it right now.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that taken care of — one last tangent before I attempt(/fail) to turn 52 comatose minutes of “television” into something mildly entertaining — the time/space continuum on this show is totally fucked!  I mean, duh, but also, as I realized last week and consequently shared with you in the comments of last week’s recap, last week’s episode contained footage from five different months, and consequently so does this week’s episode and probably so will all the rest of the episodes.

Last week, Hunter Valentine was prepping for South by Southwest, which happened in March 2012, so the Hunter Valentine scenes are all from March 2012.

Romi & Jay were attending a Halloween Party for the LGBT Center, which happened in October 2011, and the photos Kelsey’s looking at on Romi’s facebook are from December 2011, but also, Romi and Kelsey were back together by January 2012 at the latest (they have since broken up and Romi has a new boyfriend named Dusty at present), so the Romi/Jay scenes are all from October/November 2011 and the Kelsey scene is from January 2012.

Cori got pregnant in August 2011, and they said she was four months in last week, so the Cori/Kacy scenes were from December 2011.

The launch party for Lyon Jewelry happened in February 2012, so Lauren’s scenes were shot in February 2012 — but, although Lauren spends that scene interviewing about eagerly anticipating Amanda’s arrival, Amanda was there already, she was at the launch party, so both the Lauren scenes and the Amanda scenes must be from very late January or February 2012.

In conclusion, THIS SHOW IS A LIE. Sorry!

We open in a sunny sidewalk cafè, where Whitney has summoned her sister Alexis to discuss her upcoming Proposal to Sarahara.

but have you ever gotten married… on weed?!!

Whitney’s been having some weird subliminal Moby Dick shit going on:

Whitney: “I’ve had two dreams/nightmares about it in the past two days. Last night, I had a dream that a big giant whale came and it smushed me and I pushed it away to try to save it and to prevent myself from being scrunched, and as I pushed it, it got slit open and it deflated. What does that mean?”

Pretty sure it means y’all should film an episode at Sea World, like when The Brady Bunch went to King’s Island.

Whitney: “So basically, Sara thinks pretty much that I’m 100% anti-marriage. So I feel like in order to really get that zing in, I have to make that proposal completely over the top. So of course I came up with the hardest most complicated plan that is probably unnecessary.”

Girlfriend, getting the zing in is no small task. I salute you.

is seeing dustyandromi.tumblr.com for the first time

The ever-s0-clever Whitney’s smushed together a plan wherein her true intentions (proposal) will be disguised by a “Spiritual Healing Party” she’s throwing. Apparently Sarahara “is really into new age things,” which’s a side effect of living in Los Angeles and being a girl who likes having sex with other girls. If you stay there long enough, your heart will turn into a geode.

three ways of looking like whitney mixter

Whitney spends most of the episode in awe of her own proposal-planning skills. She could’ve just had her server at The Olive Garden bring out the ring on top of a hunk of birthday cake, filmed a lip-dub with 80 of their closest friends or put the ring in a hot air balloon and then had the hot air balloon land on Sarahara’s head, but that wouldn’t be the cowboy way.

Smear on over to New York Diddy, where Kiyomi and her not-girlfriend Ali, in preparation for Hunter Valentine‘s Incredible Amazing Vadgetastic Spectacular Lifetime Monster World Tour, are poking each other in the face. Metaphorically. They’re poking each other in the face with words.

showtime keeps forgetting the “not”

It seems that while Kiyomi was hidden away in the bathroom practicing sexy facial expressions in the mirror, Ali hit up the BBB and returned with three additional closets. Or else they’ve been there all this time and there’s just nothing else to talk about so we’re gonna talk about it right now:

Kiyomi: “I don’t think you need one – two -three – four closets. Just a thought.”
Ali: “Well, that’s just towels and blankets and stuff.”
Kiyomi: “You’re just one person in here. How many towels and blankets do you need?”
Ali: “I have a lot of guests.”
Kiyomi: “Trying to make me jealous? That’s a good idea before I go on tour.”
Ali: “That’s not funny.”
Kiyomi: “Neither was your joke.”

Well, I’m glad we can all agree on something.

because then i’ll try to make you jealous right back, because i’m 12

Kiyomi interviews that due to the “200 days of the year” she’s away from home playing in her rock ‘n roll band, she can’t commit to Ali.

being batman is hard

But Ali’s conflicted between the part of her that cares about Kiyomi and the part of her that is pretending to care about Kiyomi’s career.

Ali: “I want her to be you know, playing as many different shows as possible and getting all different fans from all different states, but I worry. I can’t imagine what’s going on. Sometimes I don’t want to imagine what’s going on.”

I do! Okay, my first guess is that it’s probably like this:

baby baby baby oh!

But then I thought nooooo, it’s gotta be way more like this:

actually it kinda already was like this

Hold the phone, it’s this:

kiyomi, queen of the desert

But by “this” I mean actually THIS:

duh

JK, it’s this.

We zoom over to another street, where hey, hey, the band’s all here! Laura interviews their itinerary, which’ll first take them to Phase One in D.C., then to The Milestone in Charlotte, “where even Nirvana played.” (RIP)

Chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool.

While Laura packs the van, Somer and Donna say goodbyes and Somer interviews about the perilous future. See, apparently, Somer is a Unicorn who greets the daily dawn by prepping piping hot coffee for her lady-love, dressing her, getting her out the door, and occasionally even packing lunch! Now that she’s off On Tour, Donna will be forced to subsist on Lunchables and Capri Suns or overpriced salads at Pax!

chapstick lesbians

But seriously, they’re gonna be gone for what? A week? 10 days? And this throws “a huge curveball” into their marriage? We’re only at Episode Two and already this is what we’re being served up as “conflict.” Where’s Claire?

towards a better, more entertaining show

Cut to Rainy Los Angeles, where Lauren the Glamazonian Princess Warrior is driving to the airport to retrieve Amanda, her best friend with benefits/eyeliner.

she’s coming on a jet plane, la la la

Lauren’s not obligated to maintain the fourth wall because of how pretty she is. She just drives & talks to the camera, like a walk & talk for ladies.

Lauren: “The last time she visited, we did hook up… but it’s like, it’s not a big deal to us. We’re not starting a relationship, we’re not you know, anything, it’s just casual hooking up, you know, I’m positive nobody’s gonna have any feelings involved. That’s what I’m excited about, having someone around all the time where you can kinda do everything together and not have it be a relationship, it’s just having like your best friend.”

So, basically a relationship, but the kind where if one partner hurts or in some way betrays the other, any constructive communication about said upsetting incident is met with, “it’s not like we’re in a relationship or anything!”, therefore ensuring maximum passive-aggressive behavior between both partners and lots of drunk screaming. Bring it on!

Amanda says she’s got 800 bags. Bitch was lying, she’s got her entire life stored on a computer chip over her left ear:

still dressed for new york

The ladies are ecstatic about their mutual geography:

Lauren: “Lamanda.”
Amanda: “Lamanda’s here. Oh my gosh I’m so excited.”

maybe later lets do this again, but horizontally

Amanda interviews that she left a lady behind in New York City, which was like, one of those things where you’re like, “should I be doing this or should I not be doing this?” but then like, for her, it was that she’s not gonna stay in a city because of a person. You know? Totally.

but will i leave a because of a television show? obvs.

Amanda’s got eight billion outfits in her eight billion bags and will have to use Lauren’s closet. A lot of closet-talk this episode. I’m adding “somebody says ‘closet'” to the drinking game. Tour!

Elsewhere in Los Angeles during some other day, week, year or plague, Whitney’s making shit up about some spiritual healer she knocked boots with at the 2012 Positive Affirmational New Age Convention who can fly, see through walls, and host spiritual healing parties, or something.

and then after we get married, you and i can sit down and really talk about all that spiritual energy you’re hiding in your rectum

Whitney tells Sarahara that the Spiritual Healer does creative visualization and can also cleanse bad energies, like the bad energies whirling about within their gaggle of gal-pals, and therefore Whitney’s planning an event in which they can get this shit taken care of.

Whitney: “Basically, the Academy Award goes to this guy, right here. Sara has zero clue that I’m proposing, and especially not at this random spiritual event.”

watch out gary oldman

Several years earlier in the Los Angeles Metro area, Romi Flinger’s meeting up with Rose Garcia, a Season One cast member who doesn’t like me. No really, she doesn’t. Here’s the thing about Rose: 1. She’s smokin’ hot, 2. She reminds me of dudes I dated in college who I never want to see again. Anyhow, speaking of dudes, Romi Flinger’s got one to talk about:

so, do you suck it like this? or is it more of an up and down motion?

Romi Flinger is telling Rose and anyone else in a 50-foot radius (damn these girls talk loud!) that she’d always considered herself a lesbian until she met Jay, and now she’s dealing with all these new feelings! Except that she first dated Jay in 2009, but maybe everyone got glamoured and I missed it.

and i was like, um, no i can’t put that whole thing in my mouth. sure, if you scrunch it up like this — but then i was like, wait a second, this isn’t mr. bendy

Romi interviews:

Romi: “I would never have said that I was a bisexual honestly. I always considered myself a lesbian but now it’s a weird thing to say because I’m not used to saying it at all and I’m not comfortable with it but I guess I have to say… that I would be… bisexual.”

or else face a public stoning at the palm springs hilton

kerpow

Rose is down:

Rose: “Dude, I don’t care, all I care about is the fact that you’re happy. Whether it’s a penis injecting in you or whether your mouth is on a vagina, whatever’s going on, I mean obviously for me I couldn’t be physical with a guy but I could imagine falling in love with a guy. Love is love, you don’t care —”

I feel pretty much the opposite of that, but anyhow: I wonder if there’s a correlation between how many male friends a lesbian has and how she reacts to a bisexual woman dating a guy. Like maybe lesbros are more likely to “get it” because hanging out with dudes is the way that they live anyhow. You know?

Rose: “You know what I mean, and when it comes to the physical aspects of it –”
Romi: “You are a man.”
Rose: “Me and Jay are on the same team, you’re not on our team. He’s all about the three things that I’m about; WPP. Work Party and Pussy.”

we’re not getting any younger

They actually go on to discuss blow jobs and balls, but let’s just pretend like that never happened.

Somewhere between here and forevermore, Laura’s eating broccoli which’s stinking up the Hunter Valentine van which’s en route to their Big Gig at Phase One.

Laura: “Touring with anybody is intense. And you get to know each other very quickly. It’s an intense situation and personal space is something that you lose.”

but dude i am so close to motherfucking this game of tetris

Vero: “Kiyomi you’re moving around so much, like a little kid! Why don’t you sit in the back?”
Kiyomi: “Shut the fuck up.”
Vero: “You shut the fuck up! Don’t tell me to fucking shut up!”
Somer [to Kiyomi]: “I want you to shut the fuck up too.”

i don’t know about you guys but i’m staying for the open mic

After “driving all day,” the ladies arrive in DC where they play some rock n’roll music for a sea of alternative lifestyle haircuts and subsquently commence drinking copious amounts of alcohol from shot glasses and the bottle. Activities include Laura’s vagina in somebody’s face, Vero dancing like a boss and Kiyomi sucking a girl’s brain out of her body via mouth-hole.

it’s just that everybody keeps saying “tour”

So, here’s the deal: they’ve got hos in different area codes.

Kiyomi: “Laura and have developed a system that we call ‘regional reps,’ and that basically means that you know, when you go to said city, you have a girl that you see in that city every time and that becomes your regional rep for that area. I think we’re doing pretty well with the system, and the band is gonna continue to work hard to find reps in all areas of the country.”

Here’s Washington D.C.’s Regional Rep:

this would be more fun at fangtasia

Kiyomi, mistress of tact, stops her cuddle session short with an “I gotta call my girlfriend,” skulking outside for another adult conversation with her not-girlfriend. Luckily for all of us, a camera crew happens to be at Ali’s pad circa this phone call.

Kiyomi: “What’s been going on with you?”
Ali: “Nothing really.”
Kiyomi: “How are you feeling about me being away?”
Ali: “I just miss you and I wanna see you.”
Kiyomi: “I miss you too. Have you been good?”
Ali: “I’m always good.”

just sitting on my bed being boring, like i do when you’re here

Speaking of balls, Kiyomi interviews that she can’t trust Ali ’cause last time she went On Tour, Ali was “kinda angry” and slept with one of Kiyomi’s friends.

Kiyomi: “And I’m glad, that’s good. I’m trying to trust you.”
Ali: “How do I trust you?”
Kiyomi: [silence] “Hmmm. Well…”
Ali: “I just don’t, right?”
Kiyomi: “Okay, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hope we’re all proud of ourselves for this.

The Real L Word Season 3: Brooklyn Premiere Party Highlights

On July 8th, the cast of The Real L Word celebrated their third season premiere at a bar called, “The Knitting Factory.” I was pleased to see that it wasn’t at an actual factory and that nobody was knitting when I got there (because I don’t know how to.)

I was standing around outside waiting for the red carpet area to get set up, while Vero (one of the new girls, band member of Hunter Valentine) started talking to me. I am not ashamed to admit that her stunning good looks set my loins aflame, as though I were a straight lady discovering Fifty Shades of Grey for the first time, and that I kind of just stood there gawking at her while she talked.

At one point she said, “Hey, wait, what is your name? Etsie? Estie?”
I said, “Uh, Esther.”
She said, “Well, I’m gonna call you Estie. You have something in your hair.”
She plucked it out and I said, “Th-th-thank you!” and basically, there you have it: Estie is the new Sah-Dah.

Believe it or not, she was 75% sexier than this IRL when removing lint from my hair.

After this, I went back inside (to take photos, not because I was following Vero or anything) and watched the whole cast be fabulous and gorgeous on the red carpet

When the photo shoot was done, I checked out the “NY vs. LA: Battle of the Bartenders” set up at the bar. I might be a little biased, but I think Sabrina Haley was the winner of the evening with her signature drink, “Dyke-o-tomy,” and not just because of her ability to throw/promote fantastic parties OR because she’s total eye candy, but because of her actual talent as a mixologist— Kombucha, cinnamon and alcohol never tasted so good.

Sabrina has successfully protected me from/helped me hook up with crazy lesbians at bars for a while now…and THAT’S the Real L Word.

With drink number one in hand, I got to talking with Somer and her wife, Donna at the bar. Somer and I recalled a hilarious phone interview we did a few months ago, where she confessed that she fled from Donna the first time she tried to hit on her because she got too nervous. Also, that when she saw her future wife eating a falafel sandwich that was falling all over the ground, she knew she was The One.

Both were incredibly sweet and down to earth…all I have to say is that these are two nice ladies who take good care of their nearly identical, tiny dogs!

After this, I watched the opening electro-ish band called, Making Friends. They were super gender-fluid and awesome and rocking out with maracas. In fact, people vogued.

That girl in the middle was very sweet— she saved my spot and protected my second drink from roofies when I had to make a quick trip to the ladies room.

At this point, a preview of The Real L Word‘s opening credits for the new season came on, featuring Whitney and Kiyomi in a fierce stare off with California and LA backgrounds behind them. The camera definitely established and ensuing West Coast/East Coast rivalry reminiscent of 1996.

After that, Hunter Valentine came up and sang songs such as “The Stalker” and “Treadmills of Love.” Of course, I spent most of the time taking multiple shots of Vero and obsessing over her like a 16-year-old girl over Justin Bieber, then regretting a missed opportunity to throw my “Estie” monogrammed panties onstage.

Track 6 on their CD: “She Only Loves Me When She’s Wasted.” Now that’s a song that I can relate to.

And finally, the wait was over— I clutched a preview copy of Season 3’s first episode to my heaving bosom as I ran to the nearest cab. I can’t give away any spoilers quite yet, but let’s just say that it’s wacky, people. Wacky.

It’s Canada Day! Here’s 24 Kickass LBTQ Canadians

Today is Canada Day! Isn’t that fantastic? We’re big fans of Canada around here — in addition to having a few Canadian writers and tons of Canadian readers, my girlfriend is Canadian and she talks about Canada all the time. Having visited Toronto, Windsor, Victoria, Vancouver and Halifax, I strongly agree with her assessment that Canada is a fantastic country filled with nice people and also clouds.

Last year we celebrated Canada Day with 50 Pictures of Ellen Page, but she’s definitely not the only Canadian worth crushing on. This year we’ve assembled a list of just some of the many delightful Canadians from our queer & trans communities to present to you. You’ve probably already figured that part out yet.

24 Kick-Ass Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, Trans & Otherwise-Identified Canadian Performers, Athletes & Authors

++

18. Anna Paquin

Bisexual actress Anna Paquin stars in True Blood and won an Oscar for The Piano when she was only 11 tiny years old!

++

17. Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is a prominent award-winning sci-fi/fantasy writer who I actually first heard of because I worked for her literary agent for nearly two years. (Her book The New Moon’s Arms was about to debut during my tenure there.) Born in Jamaica, Hopkinson has been a Canadian for over thirty years, where she writes novels, edits anthologies, teaches and freelances as an arts consultant.

+

16. Samantha McLeod

Fun fact: the girl who played Cherie Jaffe’s daughter Clea in the first season of The L Word — you know, the one who had a big fat lesbian crush on Shane and then ruined Shane’s affair with Cherie and it was all very sad — is Canadian and also queer.

+

15. Hunter Valentine

These alt-rocker ladies have been making a name for themselves stateside, specifically in Brooklyn (look out for them in The Real L Word’s third insufferable season!), but Hunter Valentine is actually originally from Toronto.

+

14. Gloria Eshkibok

This two-spirited actor, singer and activist has appeared in numerous theatrical, television and independent film productions and is the lead vocalist for the Unceded Band. Gloria was born/raised on Wikwemikong Unceded Territory in Manitoulin Island.

+

13. Lesbians On Ecstasy

Since 2003, Lesbians on Ecstasy have been sharing their delightful electropunk with the world by making albums (Their self-titled debut was awarded “Album of The Year” by The Advocate) and touring — including a recent spot opening for Le Tigre.

+

12. Peaches

photo by robin roemer

Queer musician Merril Beth Nisker, aka “Peaches,” was born in Toronto and currently dwells in Berlin, Germany. Her electroclash/synthpunk/dance-punk music is known for its critique of gender norms and sexually explicit language. In addition to making albums, touring and doing backup vocals for people like Pink and Christina Aguilera, her music has made it on TV shows like The L Word and movies like Mean Girls. Also, her outfits are epic and now I have “Lovertits” in my head.

11. Jane Rule

Lesbian writer Jane Rule is a Woman You Should Know About. She was born in New Jersey but, after college and working abroad, settled in Vancouver, Canada, with her partner Helen Sonthoff (they would later move to Galiano Island, where Rule passed away in 2007). You’ve probably seen Desert Hearts (if you haven’t, you should!), a seminal lesbian film based on Rule’s groundbreaking novel, Desert of the Heart. The novel, the first of over a dozen Rule would write during her lifetime, was rejected 22 times before it found a home and provoked scandal — Rule recalls “I became, for the media, the only lesbian in Canada. A role I gradually and very reluctantly accepted and used to educate people as I could.”

+

10. Ivan Coyote

Born in the Yukon, Ivan Coyote is a writer, spoken word performer and writing teacher. They write a column for Xtra! and has published seven books with Arsenal Pulp Press. You may be familiar with their spoken-word piece dedicated to kick-ass femmes.

+

9. Dionne Brand

Poet, novelist, essayist, teacher and documentarian Dionne Brand uses her writing, art and research to address race, class and other intersectional issues. She’s published multiple books of poetry as well as the non-fiction book Rivers Have Sources, Trees Have Roots, for which she and her co-author interviewed Canadians of color about how racism has impacted their lives. Brand emigrated to Canada from Trinidad in 1970 in order to attend the University of Toronto. Now Canada is her home and she became Toronto’s third poet laureate in 2009.

+

8. Persimmon Blackbridge

Persimmon Blackbridge was a co-founder of the Vancouver-based performance and artist collective Kiss and Tell, which concerned itself with lesbian sexuality, a constant theme in Blackbridge’s writing, sculpture and other artistic endeavors. She is “known internationally as a pioneer in feminist, queer and disability arts and culture.” Mental illness is the other primary theme in her work including her novel Prozac Highway.

7. Michelle Dumaresq

Michelle Dumaresq has been competing as a professional downhill mountain bike competitor for over a decade and has been open about her transwoman identity since day one. She’s featured in the documentary Dirt Divas, about female mountain bike racers, and is the subject of 100% Woman. The title was inspired by a t-shirt one of Dumaresq’s transphobic competitors’s wore to protest Dumaresq’s inclusion in the event.

+

6. Elvira Kurt

Born in Toronto, Elvira Kurt is a popular stand-up comedian and television host — she actually hosted the second season of the gay wedding series First Comes Love in addition to working a serious stand-up schedule. Kurt’s self-proclaimed gender identity is “fellagirly.”

+

5. Sook-Yin Lee

You may recognize bisexual musician and actress Sook-Yin Lee from the John Cameron Mitchell film Short Bus, but she’s best known in her Canadian homeland as the host of CBC Rado’s Definitely Not the Opera.

+

4. Tasha Tilberg

32-year old Tilberg, born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, is a smokin’ hot relatively famous fashion model. She’s done heaps of runway work and appeared in advertisements for Fendi, Gucci, Cover Girl and Versace, among others, as well as magazine editorials in pretty much every fashion magazine ever. She recently married her partner Laura Wilson.

+

3. DeAnne Smith

DeAnne Smith, who started doing stand-up at the age of 25, was born in America but has been living in Montreal for so long that Wikipedia calls her a Canadian. You know DeAnne Smith because she writes for this website and is hilarious and tours a lot and sometimes is on the teevee.

2. k.d. lang

k.d. lang is a serious trailblazer and one of the first popular musicians to come out as a lesbian. I don’t really know where to start with a bio on lang. You know k.d. lang.

+

1. Tegan & Sara

Duh.

Who are your favorite Canadians?

New Music: A New Single From Clinical Trials Is Free For You!

Brooklyn two-piece Clinical Trials have released a new single — a dark, rocked out version of Coldplay’s “Yellow” — and for the next week they’re giving it away to Autostraddle readers for free!

You can download the track here.

Clinical Trials are two very talented women, Caryn Havlik and Somer Bingham, the latter who is a new addition to one of my favorite bands, Hunter Valentine as well as one of Riese’s favorite television shows, The Real L Word. Some of you may remember Clinical Trials from the time when I reviewed their awesome EP, Bleed Me, and likened it to a panther. They’re an act to keep your eye on.

Photos by Julian Rad.

Playlist: Girl Power

Last weekend I had the pleasure of seeing all-female metal act Kittie perform at Sydney’s Soundwave festival. It was everything I’d imagined it would be as a teenager, except that their set was cut short and they didn’t play “Brackish” and it wasn’t the original lineup. Even then, it was perfect. It was a show I’d been waiting over a decade to see.

To say that I was once infatuated with all-female musical acts would be an understatement. In my teens I compulsively trawled record stores and libraries for music by and information on every all-female act that had ever existed. I didn’t really care what genre of music they played or if it was typically my jam, I was just so inspired by female musicians rocking out en masse that it became so easy to support them unconditionally.

I hit the peak of my obsession (or “rock bottom”, as some called it) when I borrowed a school friend’s mother’s credit card to buy unofficial Spice Girls collector cards via mail order. The Spice Girls didn’t make it on to this playlist, but a lot of other all-female acts did – there are some riot grrrls, some pioneers and some rockers who are out there killing it right now. Hope you enjoy.

Girl Power

Hej – Skulker
Dark Side – Netocris
Seether – Veruca Salt
Romance – Wild Flag
Born To Be Bad – The Runaways
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone – Sleater-Kinney
Deceptacon – Le Tigre
Jimmy Dean – Hunter Valentine
Barcelona – The Plasticines
We Got The Beat – The Go-Go’s
Hero Takes A Fall – The Bangles
Bedroom Eyes – Dum Dum Girls
I Want You To Rock Me – Vixen
Pretend We’re Dead – L7
Pleasure and Pain – Girl In A Coma
Hands – Bonney Read
Brackish– Kittie

STREAM THE PLAYLIST HERE

Want to suggest a playlist theme? Hit me up on Formspring and someone on the team might make it for you.

Lady Killer Backstage Pass: Part Three, Hacky Sack

Welcome to the Lady Killer Backstage Pass, where we post videos submitted by our favourite lady rockers – Hunter Valentine, Sick of Sarah and Vanity Theft – as they tour the United States.

This is the sentence where I usually tell you what’s happening in this week’s video, but to be honest, this time I have no idea. I think we’ve reached that point in the tour where the band members have become delirious.

“I am a hacky sack professional. It pays about as much as the band does.” – Katie

Want to see some live footage from the Lady Killer Tour? Check out these videos of Hunter Valentine and Vanity Theft, courtesy of rockin’ queer music podcasters, Homoground.

Lady Killer Backstage Pass: Part 2, Texas Forever

It’s time to catch you up on the antics of our favourite female rockers as they cross the United States on The Lady Killer Tour.

This week’s installment is brought to you by flat tires, Playboy, thug life, and ‘Hunter Vagentine’.

Want more? Okay! Here are some photos courtesy of Hunter Valentine’s cell phones.

If you want to see these gals live, get yourself to the next Lady Killers show.

Your Lady Killers Tour Backstage Pass: Part 1, Wrestling

When we asked all-female rockers Hunter Valentine, Sick of Sarah and Vanity Theft to show us what goes on behind the scenes on The Lady Killers Tour, we didn’t know what to expect. Photos? Anecdotes from the road? Analysis of a touring musician’s diet?

Nope. What we got was this.

Obviously, we were delighted.

If you want to increase your chance of seeing talented lady musicians with nice arms rolling around the floor, get along to the next Lady Killers show. There’ll be some stellar music there too.

 

Lady Killer Tour Backstage Pass: Sick of Sarah, Hunter Valentine & Vanity Theft

Good news! Some of Autostraddle’s favorite all-female bands — Sick of Sarah, Hunter Valentine and Vanity Theft — will be hitting the road together for The Lady Killer Tour, a 30-date adventure across the United States in August and September.

Experience has taught me that it’s a lot more fun when what happens on tour doesn’t stay on tour. Clearly 12 lady musicians spending copious amounts of time together will lead to all sorts of trouble and hilarity, and we don’t want you to miss a moment. We’ve roped the girls from Hunter Valentine, Sick of Sarah and Vanity Theft into sharing their tales (and photos!) from the road in an epic segment we’re going to call The Lady Killer Backstage Pass. 

If the following tour video is any indication, this tour, and the backstage pass, will be nothing short of spectacular. Stay tuned for the first instalment.

The Lady Killer tour dates are below. Visit ladykillertour.com for more info.

8/18 Knitting Factory – Brooklyn, NY
8/19 Maxwell’s – Hoboken, NJ
8/20 M Room – Philadelphia, PA
8/21 Phase 1 – Washington DC
8/22 The Milestone – Charlotte, NC
8/23 The Clubhouse – Greensboro, NC
8/24 The End – Nashville, TN
8/25 The Drunken Unicorn – Atlanta, GA
8/27 Jones Plaza – Houston, TX
8/28 Sue Ellen’s – Dallas, TX
8/29 Emo’s Alternative Lounge – Austin, TX
8/30 Korova – San Antonio, TX
8/31 House of Rock – El Paso, TX
9/1 The Rogue Bar – Scottsdale, AZ
9/2 Bunkhouse – Las Vegas, NV
9/3 Roxy Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
9/6 Hotel Utah – San Francisco, CA
9/7 Backspace Cafe – Portland, OR
9/8 Studio Seven – Seattle, WA
9/9 Nuerolux – Boise, ID
9/11 Kilby Court – Salt Lake City, UT
9/12 The Marquis Theatre – Denver, CO
9/14 7th Street Entry – Minneapolis, MN
9/15 Shank Hall – Milwaukee, WI
9/16 The Abbey – Chicago, IL
9/17 Cicero’s – St Louis, MO
9/19 Birdy’s Bar & Grill – Indianapolis, IN
9/20 Pirates Cove – Cleveland, OH
9/22 MidPoint Music Festival – Cincinnati, OH
9/23 Canal Street Tavern – Dayton, OH

The Cliks and Hunter Valentine Interview Each Other

As we’ve mentioned last week, two of Autostraddle’s favorite bands – The Cliks and Hunter Valentine – are currently traveling around the USA on their ‘Guts ‘N Glory‘ tour, and we’re really excited about it!

Typically when we get this amped up about a tour, our first instinct is to interview the bands. However in this instance we’ve already been there and done that. So we thought the only thing left to do was ask the bands to interview each other.

Lucas (The Cliks) and Kiyomi (Hunter Valentine) took some time out of their hectic tour schedule to ask each other hard hitting questions about topics ranging from life on the road, to sushi parties, sanity and Linda Perry’s bad-assery.

This interview also exists in video form, which we’ll hopefully get our hands on once these bands return from tour. ‘Til then, have a listen to the mp3 recording below. It’s probably going to be the best thing you hear this week.

Highlights:

Here are just a few of excerpts – listen to the recording to hear the full context and find out who said what.

On life on the road:
“Your bag is like your home, right? It’s your anchor. You’ve got all your compartments, like the net part of your bag is like your living room.”

On favorite cities:
This time around, oddly, I would have to say San Francisco. When I say oddly, it’s because I have such a weird history with San Francisco, of coming in and out of there with death on my back … I was like, “What is up with this city? I am always depressed here!”

On rock ‘n roll:
We had a sushi party. We had too much sake and not enough sushi.

On staying sane:
I try to escape to my own little place because I’m very much a person who likes to spend a lot of time alone.
Me too, I get that. I think it’s very important to place that as a priority … just so you don’t completely lose your mind.

On favorite tour moments:
“Kiyomi and Laura proceeded to take my shirt off.”

On missing home:
[I miss] Sleeping alone in my bed.
Or not sleeping alone.
Yeah, I kind of miss sex.

Tour dates

If you haven’t caught these bands on tour yet, it’s not too late! The Cliks and Hunter Valentine might still be coming to your city with The Dollyrots:

Aug 25: Bender’s Tavern, Denver, CO
Aug 26: The Riot Room, Kansas City, MO
Aug 27: The Firebird, St Louis, MO
Aug 28: Phoenix Hill Tavern, Louisville, KY
Aug 29: Radio, Indianapolis, IN
Aug 30: Skully’s Music Diner, Columbus, OH
Aug 31: Frankie’s ,Toledo, OH
Sept 3: The Studio @ Webster Hall , New York, NY