By Jeff Walsh
Tales of the City, the musical based on the beloved books by Armistead Maupin, opens in San Francisco tonight. The story is set in the 70s and brings together a magic group of characters for a timeless story of self-discovery, family, and community.
The show fuses Maupin's books with some of the creative team behind Avenue Q, and music written by singer Jake Shears and musician John Garden of the dance pop band, The Scissor Sisters (My review of the show will run later this week).
I recently spoke with Shears during the show's preview run, and here's what we had to say:
By Jeff Walsh
Violet Tendencies is a fun fag hag movie, starring Mindy Cohn (Natalie from TV's Facts of Life) as the hag in the starring role.
The movie, which comes out on DVD May 24, opens on a wedding, as a fag hag is getting married surrounded by hot gay men. The bride notes that she was the last fag left, quickly adding, well... except for Violet.
Violet is so surrounded by gay men that she barely knows how to navigate the straight world, and when she does meet straight guys through an online phone dating service, her gay-tuned candor and humor sends them packing.
Violet's gay friends are all in some state of taking their lives from where they are at present to a next level, whether that is monogamy or adopting children. When Violet finally meets someone interested in her, a Mormon architect with whom she doesn't share much of anything in common, she abandons her gay life for a chance at happiness.
By Jeff Walsh
Nick Adams has been in three of my favorite shows: A Chorus Line, La Cage Aux Folles, and now he is one of the leads in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, a new musical on Broadway based on the Australian movie. Sadly at this point in time, I've only seen the movie version of Priscilla, which I've adored for years, but that will be remedied as soon as possible.
For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Priscilla is a road trip picture with two drag queens and a transvestite on a road trip through the Australian outback with a lot of campy bitchery and disco anthems peppered throughout.
Nick, 27, became more visible when he appeared in the revivial of A Chorus Line. He got press when he landed a 2(x)st underwear campaign, landing the shoot over his Chorus Line co-star Mario Lopez, which the media turned into a feud that both actors deny (publicly, at least).
He then appeared as one of The Cagelles in La Cage, where he stole every scene he was in as the odd drag queen out. And now, he recently opened Priscilla on Broadway, landing one of the main roles in the show, as well as the funniest, bitchiest, showiest roles in the piece.
In the movie, his role was played by a young unknown Guy Pearce. There's a good chance that magic will repeat itself with Nick's career.
Nick and I chatted on a spotty phone connection this week, and here's what we had to say:
So, this has been one hell of a roller coaster of a week. literally.
Firstly, there was the family drama with the mom and the sister and the moving of things from my dad's house in MT back to Washington, which was a fucking logistical nightmare...three households worth of crap to move in four days, sort through, consign, take to the dump, etc...
Yesterday was our big date. "Texting and scones," and all. A picnic in the Arboretum. With scones.
Also with lots of snogging.
Lots
of fantastic snogging.
As she would say - it's cute how words fail her so often even though she's an English major - "So, that's a thing."
'Perpetually single' has been a major part of who I am for so long - in a way this feels kind of unreal... but not really. Maybe that she's not real but I'm not either and we both inhabit almost the same plane of not-reality? I don't know...
I saw two movies recently. Last night I watched a Serbian film called A Serbian Film. It's my new favorite movie. It has a great soundtrack, too.
Today I watched a movie called John Dies at the End. It was how I imagine doing acid would be like. Which is kind of relevant, since I checked out the Silk Road a couple days ago and found some cheap drugs. Now I want to do acid.
I’m starting to wonder if I’m just an outsider by nature, and if that’s ever going to change. I was sort of hanging out with friends today, but I felt kind of invisible because I wasn’t participating in the conversation. I’m just really introverted and live in my head a lot. If I could just get the hang of finding some common interests and carrying conversations. Unfortunately, this made me think of Beth, because I could always talk to Beth about anything so easily.
After watching what Chase and Jake did I was equally disgusted and curious about what I had seen. It was really all I could think about sometimes, and it bothered me.
What troubled me even more was sneaking peeks at the magazine hidden under Chase's mattress, seeing the biggest penis I had ever seen deeply stuck in the other guy and the expression on his face. I couldn't decide if it was a look of pain or pleasure, but I know Chase and Jake seemed to like what was happening. As disgusted as I was it was something I needed to try.

I've had an eventful past couple of weeks, I suppose. Guess whose last day of high school is May 8th!? MINE! And only Tuesday day is a full day. Monday is a half day, and Wednesday is like one class only. Graduation isn't until the week after next, but my last day of actual classes is the 8th. After that, there's only the AP English exam. And now I don't have to go into school until 10 a.m. because my dual enrollment class ended. It doesn't feel like this is actually happening to me, you know?

Dear Caitlin,
You may never read this, but I need you to know that I still love you with all my heart and soul. I feel my heart warm up and my stomach tingle with butterflies when I think about you. I cry when I remember all the times we fought and argued. I can't regret those times because they made us stronger. Even after all of those things, I still love you more than life itself.