Posts from — April 2011

I’m a writer. I like to have time to think about what I am going to say. So when the Programming Director at The Little Queer Radio Station That Could asked me to go out on a chase interview with someone who can only be described as a legend in both the Canadian music industry and in the LGBTQ community, I was quite literally shaking in my boots. This is not what I do—I write commercials, I write events listings, media releases, lifestyle segments. I voice things, but aside from a once-a-week segment on the morning show about what dykey things are going on in the city, I don’t really do live announcer work.

That said, I’m an Accidental VIP. I am not about to turn down the chance to interview the one and only k.d. lang.

Oh. Mah. Gah. I remember when k.d. lang was that crazy country punk that simultaneously wooed the Alberta country lovers with her intense voice and repelled them with her insane fashion sense. When she showed up at the 1985 Junos in a wedding dress and cowboy boots, nobody knew quite what to make of the Most Promising Female Vocalist of the year.

But the voice won out, of course. There was no fighting it when she joined Roy Orbison in duet on “Cryin’.” There is no defense against that song. It just kills you.

So although people made a bit of fun, asked questions and made assumptions about her sexuality, they still bought her music. Even when the Alberta farming industry and the government decided to disavow her many awards and accolades because of their thinly veiled homophobia her participation in PETA’s “Meat Stinks” campaign, she rose to the top of her career. And when she showed up on the cover of Vanity Fair to usher in the era of Lesbian Chic, well… *swoon*.

So anyway, as you may be able to tell, I have followed her career for some time, having shared at least some of that prairie queergirl upbringing myself. I went to this interview pretty well prepared even before doing any research on her new album. And it’s been 20-plus years since I first became aware of the existence of k.d. lang, so when she walked into the room at her Secret Toronto Hideout—yes, she has one, and I got to visit her there—she looked so familiar to me that I fairly blurted, “Well, hello, k.d. lang!”

She kind of laughed and shook my hand. She was so personable I could have cried with pleasure. I had been nervously asking other media-field friends of mine for tips on how to handle this mind-blowing event, and had been warned by more than one of them that Ms. lang could be…prickly. Not mean, but not someone to put up with amateurs, either. They could not have been more wrong. She was a total pro all the way. Thank heavens! I didn’t want to have another Carole Pope experience.

She sat down with me and chatted a bit, and we headed into the interview. I had been listening to her new album, Sing it Loud, non-stop for about a week, so I was really interested in hearing what she had to say about working with a band for the first time in twenty years. And the Alberta girl in me wanted to hear what her thoughts were on the concept of home.

When she talks about her music, her eyes just light up. It’s disarmingly gorgeous. I have to say, I have always thought k.d. lang was beautiful, but I had no idea how much more so she would be face to face. I had to concentrate on not swooning or floating away to Cloud 9—I was clenching that microphone like it was my anchor to the earth. At one point I tried to rest my elbow on the table between us and found that my arm was then shaking so noticeably that I was better off just suspending it in midair.

I had come up with some scripted questions and a plan to go off-script if the conversation took us there. However, I found myself so nervous that when I tried to take a thread of conversation and just expand on it, I would up babbling a bit too much and decided to return to the prepared questions for fear of annoying her. She was eloquent and sure in her answers, and I had to restrain myself from fangirling her too much. I think I did kind of gush a little bit at one point, but hey, that’s what editing is for. So you won’t hear it on the podcast—but trust me, it happened. In the end, I felt like it was a fairly successful interview, for a first-timer.

You can listen to my interview with k.d. lang here.

On Friday afternoon, I ended up co-hosting with my best boyfriend Mike Chalut because his co-host and show producer Acey Rowe had gone out of town. It was another first for me, but as Mike and I have such a great rapport together and I had that interview to air, we figured it would work out. Earlier this year I had tried to learn some of the technical operations that Acey undertakes when co-hosting, and decided fairly quickly that I would never want to do her job—there’s just too much to think about with editing interviews on the fly, running the sound board, and being generally personable on air. However, Mike’s job is great! We had another operator on the board for the afternoon and Mike and I just got to be generally funny and friendly on air. It’s a party!

All of that said, I am content to welcome Ms. Rowe back to her job, and to return to my desk and my writing and the precious time I have to think about my words before speaking them. It’s a lot of pressure to be that famous all of the time. And I’m just a no-account girl.

Let me tell you a little story from the archives of Young Stark. When I was about 4 years old, my mom took me to the movie theatre to see The Cannonball Run. Within the first few minutes of the film, there is a scene where one of the racers is distracted from the race by a woman on the side of the road who opens up her robe to reveal her body, naked but for a skimpy bikini bottom and pasties. My mom marched me right back out of the theatre immediately and explained to me about the existence of “flashers” in the world. She wasn’t talking about those creepy guys who surprise you in the park or on the subway with a gaping fly and a cheese-eating grin. She was talking about women who reveal their bodies for favours, entertainment, or money. So, like, strippers, more accurately.

A few days later my brother and I and our friends were caught in the basement playing a new game called “flasher” that we had made up based on what my mom had told me and I had passed on to the crew. My mom marched me upstairs and explained further about these “flasher” characters, saying, “Those people I told you about aren’t nice people.”

I beg to differ, mom.

On Friday night I went out to see some very nice people putting on one hell of a burlesque show to raise money for charity. It doesn’t get much nicer than that. My very good pals the Cinnamon Hearts teamed up with entertainer Ryan G. Hinds to perform in OMG DIVAS!!2!!, a fun romp through the world of the beauty pageant, combining drag, burlesque, singing, and some very unorthodox synchronized swimming, all to raise money for Camp Ten Oaks, a summer camp project for LGBTQ youth as well as children of LGBTQ parents. The only thing better than taking your clothes off is taking your clothes off for a worthy cause, I say.

As I said, the Hearts are good friends of mine. When I heard they were going to be putting on this fundraiser, I did what I could to get them as much air time as possible on the Little Queer Station That Could, adding them to my daily events listings and putting them in touch with Acey Rowe to arrange an interview. For my efforts I was given a pair of comped tickets. I felt kind of bad taking tickets to a charity event that I could actually afford to pay for, so I made up for it by buying my height in raffle tickets. Gotta send those kids to camp!

I sat with the Hearts’ partners and friends, front row centre, with a perfect view to the show. Ryan G. Hinds opened up the show with a great rendition of “Diamonds are Forever.” He was sparkling like a gem himself, with his custom blend of glitters all a-twinkle in the stage lights.

The show was designed as a mock beauty pageant, with each member of the show presenting their special talent. There was singing, there was drag, there was the taking off of clothing. Betty La Bomba did a fantastic dance with swirling lights, and Marky Marquee charmed the audience with his blend of swagger and dorkiness.

Swoon!

Bruin Pounder of Boylesque TO did a number in which the puppet would become the master. Ryan Hinds sang a tribute to his high school music teacher. Drag King Codi and Meat Pi dedicated a song to young, impressionable, and insecure teenage girls. Being that I was in the front row, I got to play the part of the young, impressionable, and insecure teenage girl and I did my best to fairly swoon any time they would approach my area of the stage. The Hearts and Bruin Pounder did a group synchronized swimming number that involved one of my favourite theatre props—the shimmying, shimmering blue fabric used to represent water. Plus shark hats. Those are always fun, too. Kenickie Street showed us her, er, teeth. Rani Rhinestone did one of her signature numbers, the feathered fan dance.

All in all, it was a great show with fabulous entertainment—equal doses of humour, sexiness, and poignancy. I have seen a number of Hearts shows and I don’t think I have ever seen one so well attended. The place was sold out. Good for those Camp Ten Oaks kids!

Oh, and I found within my height’s length of raffle tickets a winner in the bunch—I took home a basket of sex toys “for him.” So okay, I don’t have much use for a butt plug, but I work in a gay radio station. I’m surrounded by guys whose birthdays are coming up. Success!

On Wednesday night I was treated to second-row seats to see Bullet for Adolf, a new play written by Woody Harrelson and his BFF Frankie Hyman, and directed by Harrelson. It tickles me that Harrelson has this apparent love affair with Toronto as a place to open his plays. Take that Peoria! Oh, wait…

Anyway, so the play was…okay. The characters were quirky and fun, and the interactions between them generally enjoyable. But there is little thing in traditional dramatic structure referred to as “plot”—rhymes with “pot”—that was mostly missing from this play. Pot it had in spades, but as for plot, well, it was a bit thin. In fact, the main dramatic event that kicked off the central storyline didn’t occur until the moment just before the lights went down for intermission, by which time I’m pretty sure just about every character had partaken in at least one spliff.

Hey, but who needs plot when you have moderately funny people being moderately funny onstage? There was some witty dialogue playing on themes of racial harmony/disharmony, some romantic entanglement, and even a very human portrayal of a former Nazi sympathizer. And really, more important than the pot—oops, I mean plot—in this play was the relationship between the two main characters, who were very clearly and unapologetically based on Frankie and Woody themselves. Their BFF-forever-ness was almost endearing enough to carry over a plot-light comedy.

What really made the night, though, was not the play itself. It was the talk-back afterwards. Usually I am not a big fan of post-play or post-screening Q&As. I have been to too many of them where people don’t really ask any questions; rather, they use the opportunity to pose a whole theory or demonstrate their great knowledge of the subject matter, with an appended, “What do you think of that?” It can be a bit masturbatory, which is only really fun for the masturbator. Too much? Alright then, moving on.

This talk-back wasn’t like that at all. First of all, I don’t think anyone was under the impression that Woody Harrelson is some kind of great intellectual that would want to listen to a long, academic diatribe on his work, much less agree or disagree with it. Second, the guy moderating the talk-back did most of the questioning, and when he did choose from the audience, it appeared that he chose mostly people he knew and recognized. And third, it was clear that Woody was a bit stoned—or, you know, just in a really laid-back, happy mood—and he seemed inclined to either deflect the more complicated questions to Frankie or one of the cast members, or to go off on tangents about living his life in a happy, happy place, and then lose the point. In short, he was hilarious and totally lovable.

It was clear that relationships between people were more important to both Harrelson and Hyman than was plot. They really love their actors and spent a long time during the rehearsal process allowing the cast to improvise much of their characters. And their love for each other is front and centre. At one point Hyman talked about the multimedia elements to the play, saying that they filled him with feelings of nostalgia and love—1983 was the year that he met his best friend. Woody got all misty and hugged him. It was so cute I almost squealed aloud and seal-clapped. I have been known to do that in response to particularly cute puppies. Woody and Frankie are like really darned cute puppies.

Puppies!

Someone finally asked the inevitable, “Are you thinking of making this into a feature film, and if so can I give you my number?” question. Woody looked a bit confused, as though he wasn’t sure if the guy was hitting on him or trying to do business. At any rate, he just smiled and said he kinda thought of the production as a play, and then decided he wanted to go. I think maybe he was coming down. So the talk-back wrapped up neatly and we all headed out of the theatre. It was the best Q&A I have ever attended.

So despite the fact that the play itself was a bit more pot than plot, I thoroughly enjoyed my evening, and if I wasn’t a huge fan of Woody Harrelson before, I am now practically in love with the man. What better way to spend 4/20?

So the other day I had the following exchange with my Programming Director at The Little Queer Station That Could:

Programming Director: [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon] is going to be in town in a couple of weeks, and she’s taking interviews. She won’t be coming into the station, but she’ll be doing media from her hotel. And we’ve been offered a slot, so we need someone to do the chase interview. And you are our Dyke About Town…

Me: Um… I don’t really know anything about doing interviews. I might suck.

Programming Director: Well, there’s only one way to find out!

Me: But… would I be stepping on anyone’s toes?

Programming Director: Well, it’s sweet of you to concern yourself with how other people feel, but I personally don’t care.

Me: Hrm. I do.

Programming Director: Okay, I respect that. You can take some time to think about it, and let me know.

So I went about discussing this exchange with the people with whose toes I had concerned myself and was given the okay by all. Then I thought about all of the things that I could talk about with [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon]. We are from the same background and the same region of Canada, and we both experienced what I think of as an exodus from that region, and I have actually been alive long enough to remember her music as it crossed three or four genres, not to mention her very dramatic coming out which basically opened the door to what would become known as “lesbian chic” in the 90s. And I realised that even if I have no experience doing the announcer thing, I am very likely the perfect choice among the folks at our station for this particular interview.

So I went back to my Programming Director and told him that I am on board. On the 25th I am going to be interviewing [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon]!! I’m kinda freaking out about it. Yaiii!

I’ll fill you all in on the details after the event. And yes, I will also reveal the name of [Major Canadian Lesbian Music Icon], although some of the more Canadian-music-savvy of you have probably already figured that one out. Watch for it!