WHAT ABOUT US? Jordan Peele covers the latest issue of Rolling Stone to preview his latest horror flick, Us. “We don’t know much about Us, other than it looks creepy as hell and it involves a lot of scissors and bunnies. YIKES. Anyway, I love Jordan Peele and this interview just made me happy – it’s an in-depth piece about his vision, his ideas, what he thinks about race and pop culture, and it also includes some stuff about his childhood which I did not know. I didn’t know he was raised entirely by his white single mother. I didn’t know he came up with most of his horror-film pitches when he was high either (although that explains some sh-t). I did know that he’s a complete pop-culture nerd though, which is evidenced by the fact that the bulk of the interview takes place at Universal Studios’ The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.” You can read the full piece here.
BIRTHDAY LOVE Hannibal Burress the man who brought down Bill Cosby is 36 today.
Watch his latest joke below: Hannibal Buress talks about getting a ticket for jaywalking in Montreal and wonders at the absurdities of airport security in his special Animal Furnace.
MEH Maroon 5’s Ssuper Bowl Halftime Show 2019 “was okay and not nearly as a bad embarrassment as that awful Game of Thrones advertisement.”
Adam Levine and his band Maroon 5rock out on stage during the 2019 Super Bowl Halftime Show . The 39-year-old singer and his bandmates kicked the show off with their classic hits “Harder to Breathe” and “This Love.”
Travis Scott then came out on stage to perform his hit song “Sicko Mode.” He was introduced to the stage with help from Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants and a CGI fireball that flew into the stadium!
M5 then continued things with “Girls Like You” and “She Will Be Loved.” During the latter song, lantern drones in the sky spelled out the words “One Love.”
BACK FROM THE DEAD? Jussie Smollett played his first concert since alleged attack.
Jussie Smollett was blunt, emotional and defiantly determined on Saturday night at a southern California concert some urged him not to play. The actor and singer told the crowd before singing a note that he had to go on with the show because he couldn’t let his attackers win said The Guardian.
“And above all, I fought the fuck back,” he said to cheers. Then he paused and said, emphatically but with a laugh: “I’m the gay Tupac.”
“The most important thing I can say is ‘thank you so much, and I’m OK,” said the Empire actor and R&B singer from the stage at the Troubadour in West Hollywood in his first public appearance since he reported to police in Chicago on Tuesday that two masked men had assaulted him and put a rope around his neck while using homophobic and racial slurs.
“I’m not fully healed yet,” said Smollett, who is black and openly gay, “but I’m going to be, and I’m gonna stand strong with y’all.”
IT’S NOT ABOUT RELIGION Faith should be no barrier to schools teaching respect for LGBT rights. “Recently we’ve seen several clashes between local communities and education leaders over the application of the Equality Act in Britain’s schools. Shraga Stern, the Orthodox Jewish activist, warned earlier this year that Haredi Jews would ‘leave the UK’ if faiths schools were forced to teach children about same-sex relationships and gender reassignment. And last month, the headteacher of a school in Birmingham was petitioned by mainly Muslim parents to do away with a pilot programme called No Outsiders, which is centered around inclusion and diversity as part of sex and relationship education. Although the program addresses issues as broad as gender, race, ageism, faith and disability, the spotlight has, inevitably, fallen on the teaching of LGBT identities according to The Guardian.
Children will naturally have questions … but it is dangerous to assume they will all be able to ask their parents
SEX ED Why are we so coy about sex education for gay teens? Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. No one wants to talk to them about sex. It sounds pervy to tell kids how to have sex – as if you’re ruining their innocence or, worse, grooming them. I don’t know what your sex education was like, but I remember mine: it was putting condoms on bananas says The Guardian.
BAD BLOOD Natalia Taylor at The Yale Daily News is furious that there’s still a blood ban on gay men. “As an active member of the American Red Cross at Yale (ARCY) here on campus, I volunteer regularly at blood drives. Being a part of this community and knowing that I am helping save lives has been an incredible experience. But recently, something happened that made me reconsider my membership in the organization. When I ask other students to donate blood, I’m not surprised when they respond with resistance. I typically get “I’m afraid of needles”, or “I’m too busy”, but one day I got something I wasn’t prepared for — “They don’t want me to donate because I’m gay.”
I am pansexual, and have always advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, so I was outraged when I first learned about the donation ban on gay men. I brought it up at one of the ARCY meetings, frustrated and angry, and my peers were very receptive. ARCY has historically swept this issue under the rug; we don’t make the rules, so it isn’t our problem. But this year we decided to address the argument and do some research before jumping to conclusions. Now I would like to tell you, the broader Yale community, what we discovered.”
SOAP DIGESTKristoff St. John of Young & The Restless has died at 52.
A COLD RUSSIAN WINTER NIGHT Russian based Medusa Project has published a riveting story of a murder in a small remote village in RussiaOn January 10, neighbors reluctantly checked in on 70-year-old Vladimir Dubentsov and 64-year-old Nikolai Galdin and discovered their bodies. People in Ilsky repeatedly asked Novaya Gazeta correspondent Elena Kostyuchenko not to name them in her story — not because they were ashamed of how these two men were harassed or even murdered, but because they were embarrassed that a gay couple lived in their town at all.
Many in Ilsky don’t conceal their hatred of Dubentsov and Galdin, and complained to Kostyuchenko that the couple was openly gay. Starting roughly five years ago, the two men started feuding with neighbors, and local youths began tormenting and abusing them. The trouble apparently intensified when Dubentsov started lobbying the local government for priority housing that many in the community felt he didn’t deserve. He regularly called local officials, demanding the assistance and entitlements he was owed as the son of a World War II veteran (his mother served in the USSR’s brief naval war against Japan).
Dubentsov reportedly had a tense relationship with the local Cossacks, as well, who allegedly refused to let him join their May 9 Victory Day March as the son of a veteran, claiming that his homosexuality made him “less than a man.” The group’s leader, Ataman Viktor Pikalov, denies these rumors. Pikalov says he met Dubentsov twice: once to help him when his home flooded, and a second time when he asked for help being buried beside his mother. The Cossack elder even took Kostyuchenko to a former factory dormitory where some of the town’s gay men apparently live, in order to demonstrate his supposed benevolence toward the LGBTQ community.
While Kostyuchenko was in Ilsky, detectives told her that homophobia was the most likely motive for the double homicide. Police working the case had interviewed all the known gay men in town, and the senior investigator joked to Kostyuchenko that the murders might have been a crime of passion committed by a jealous lover. The victims had just received their pensions, but the killer left the money and everything else in the house. In connection with the case, police interrogated the neighbor’s son, Alexander Panteleenko — a 53-year-old unmarried, childless, nearly blind man, whose detention mortified his mother. When he was released after three days, Panteleenko’s biggest concern was that the town would think he is gay, like Dubentsov and Galdin.
COVER BOY Pete Davidson.
