Charles Alexander
Moles, motes, migraines
Parting Glances There's an old saying about making a mountain out of a mole hill. Another about removing the beam from your own eye before demanding your neighbor remove the mote from his. I have a theory, born of the experience that generally, [...]
Swami, swami, how I love ya!
Parting Glances It's always a transcendental pleasure to report about uplifting talks, lectures, sermons, 90-minute Power Point presentations I'm frequently asked to cover because, somewhat curiously, no one else wants to at BTL. As a writer for [...]
Mamacitas! Mujeronas!
I've returned after a heavenly week, all expenses paid, from Porta Bloomers, Texas, for the first international convention of Bilingual Drag Queens for Jesus. Hola-la-la! I flew first class with 50 lovelies, including Senorita Sinsational, [...]
Podophilia, anyone?
Parting Glances The human foot, with its 26 bones, 33 joints, is an architectural marvel of evolutionary development. Its complex structure contains more than 100 tendons, ligaments, muscles. But you knew all that. The foot is also the focus of [...]
Out life in Life!
Parting Glances For over 50 years Life magazine informed Americans what was happening in the States and abroad. Its photos and content were dramatic, mostly conservative, occasionally controversial, once in awhile shocking. When Life folded in [...]
One picture, 1000 words
Parting Glances I was ten when my grandmother took me to see "The Picture of Dorian Gray." It was the only time she ever took me to the movies. The film, based on Oscar Wilde's most famous tale, played the Mayfair movie house, now Wayne State [...]
Do not fold, mutilate or staple insertee
Parting Glances I had a marvelous time at Hart Plaza during Motor City Pride 2011, in spite of unrelenting 90+ heat, blazing sun, cascading perspiration, non-stop rainbow reveling. (No phone numbers. No requests for autographs. No midnight [...]
The Great Bumpkin Recounts!
Parting Glances You're not going to believe this, but – no pun intended – do bare with me. Truth is stranger than biblical fiction. Right on the dot, May 21, at 6 p.m., I had the biggest orgasm I've ever had in my whole life. It wasn't total [...]
A cookbook for LGBT gourmets
Too many cooks spoil the broth, so the well known saying goes. Believe it or not, Julia Child was one. In addition to being a sometime World War II spy recruit, Julia was – tell us it isn't so – homophobic. Quite. Seems back in 1992 she was sued for [...]
Hart arrhythmias recalled
Parting Glances I have a scrapbook my mother put together sometime after I came out to her in 1973, a year after my father died. She wrote a note to go with it. Her supportive words I've committed to memory. "Charles Robert! How things might have [...]
Two up yours!
Parting Glances Gay composer Leonard Bernstein's 1956 broadway musical "Candide" has a bravura soprano song, "Glitter and be gay" written for and originally sung by Barbara Cook (still giving concerts at 80-something). I thought of the show [...]
Mary: it's a grand old name
Parting Glances "I read your last column with interest," says my unannounced guest who appears in my art studio suddenly, unexpectedly – putting it mildly – on my birthday, May 12. Probably flew in through my sky light window. He sits on my couch [...]