Yareah Magazine

  Chess...One night in Bangkok results in one shot of penicillin, or worse.; Titanic...You're all going to die!; Wicked...Stay away from water.; Cats...Screw Mr. Mistoffelees.; Hair...Don't get on that plane.; Mamma Mia!...It's been done before, better, with Swedes.; A Chorus Line...More like a bread line.; Miss Saigon...Big hint: the Communists win!  Take almost any setting in life (debacle, disaster, disease), turn on the music, open a bottle of booze, throw in some gay men, and voila, you have a musical!  If there's life, and music, gay men aren't far behind.

 It's not just musicals.  Take a look at Eurovision 2010's front row, and you would've thought a gay-pride parade had thrown up.  Admittedly, Eurovision is campy, crass and cheesy, but you know something's up when Norway's nightly news leads off with a main story about gay men and music.  Some of the most atrocious violations of the Geneva Convention, Belarus' rendering mangled English lyrics, “Butterflies flying to the sun.” to “Mayonnaise to the butt.”, Poland's near choking of a woman, etc., were still loved and cheered by the gaggle of gay guys because it was sigh, gasp, EUROVISION!  It's about uniting Europe rather than good taste.  It's much better than pitching bullets at each other.  There's something almost goose-pimply when a whole continent that tried to kill each other many times over dances stupidly together.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsuPqiCjyag  Hitler, Franco and Mussolini are rolling in their respective dictator graves.

 Perhaps I'm being an elitist.  I know the words to “Happy Talk” from South Pacific.  I'd be a Jet but I'd want to sleep with a Shark.  The Wizard of Oz is a way of life.  Pocahontas' “Colors of the Wind” is a cry for the Green movement.  Mary Poppins is an advocate for the rights of children.  I go catatonic for those T-Mobile commercials where people dance and sing in European train stations.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM  I cry when I hear the multi-language version of “When You Believe”.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIHkI3lU8cI&feature=player_embedded.  If my life were a musical, it would be The Sound Of Musical.  Something about running away from religious orders and outsmarting the Nazi's gets me every time.  OH MY GOD...I'm so gay.

 I lugged a 1,000 CD's across the Atlantic because I HAD to have them on disc rather than a jump drive.  They're tangible proof of my existence.  If I can find the right song at the right moment (and I can), I can get through anything.  Hit it, Sally Bowles...start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, (it) isn't that long a stay!  Life is a Cabaret, old chum, only a cabaret!

Read about Charles Kinney Jr:

 http://charleskinney.blogspot.com/