snyde & sneak

by tracy baim

PlanetOut (PNO), the largest gay and lesbian Internet site, has acquired GLOradio Corp., the first global gay and lesbian broadcast network. The radio programming is at www.planetout.com, www.gloradio.com, or on America Online at Keyword: PNO Radio.

Miss America Kate Shindle performs at a Test Positive Aware Network and Miss Illinois Scholarship Pageant benefit Sat., Oct. 18, State of Illinois Center, 100 W. Randolph. Call (773) 404-3784 for details.

The Association of Latin Men in Action has a new board. New officers are: President Francisco Javier Barajas; Vice President Adelfio Garcia; Secretary Felipe Cajigas; and Treasurer Richard Vega. Call (773) 918-5067.

The induction ceremony for the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is Wed., Oct. 22 at the Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph, free, (312) 744-7911. This year's inductees: Tony Armstrong, Jr.; Miguel Ayala; Roger J. Chaffin; James Darby; John Hammell (posthumous); Rick Karlin; Corinne Kawecki; State Rep. Larry McKeon; Dr. David Ostrow; Dignity/Chicago; and friends of the community Ald. Mary Ann Smith and Ida Greathouse (posthumous).

The Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce honors business owners as part of a history month celebration Tuesday, Oct. 28, 6-9 p.m. at Paris Dance; tix are $25, 1-888-GL-CHAMBER. Marge Summit, Chuck Renslow, Jan Dee, Elizabeth Tocci, Mr. B, & Male Hide Leathers are among the honorees.

The next quarterly installment of the gay and lesbian In The Life show on PBS airs Monday, Oct. 20, 11 p.m. on WTTW-Ch. 11 in Chicago. The "Back to School" episode focuses on youth, including Robbie Kirkland, a 14-year-old Cleveland kid who committed suicide. The show also looks at In & Out, the ex-gay movement, the homeless, and a gay youth space in Minneapolis.

Ellen DeGeneres and girlfriend Anne Heche are looking to have a child-and it's Anne who is pressuring for the move, and Anne would be the one having the baby.

"Anne usually gets what she wants," DeGeneres told TV Guide (Oct. 11 issue). "But what you don't know is that I'm the boss of this relationship." DeGeneres doesn't regret coming out, but adds "I never wanted to be the poster child. ... I just can't be the gay girl all the time. It's only part of who I am.'' ... Ellen's show ranked 55th during premiere week. It was against 3rd Rock (23rd), and the Country Music Assoc. Awards (11th). Ellen's lead-in show, Drew Carey, also didn't do very well, at 29th. ... Meanwhile, Chrysler Motors is Ellen's first car advertiser this season. After pulling out of ads last season, they returned Oct. 1. Write letters to Ellen sponsors: John R. Stafford, Chairman, Chef Boyardee, American Home Products, 5 Giralda Farms, Madison, NJ 07940, (201) 660-5000, fax (201) 660-7178. Richard Goldstein, Chairman, Caress soap, All and Suave, Unilever U.S. Inc., 390 Park Ave., New York, NY 10022, 800-598-1223, fax (212) 906-4411, e-mail: corporate.relations@unilever.com. Bert C. Roberts, Jr., Chairman, MCI Communications Corp., 1801 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20006, (202) 872-1600, fax: (202) 887-2967. Robert J. Eaton, Chairman, Jeep Chrysler Corp., 1000 Chrysler Dr., Auburn Mills, MI 48326, 800-992-1997 (press #1 and then #2).

Chicago's Samba Bamba band (with two openly gay men) recently performed on The Jenny Jones Show, and the segment is expected to air Thursday, Oct. 9, 2 p.m., WGN. The theme of the rest of the show is "Big Women and the Men Who Love Them."

Martina Navratilova was on the Rosie O'Donnell show Sept. 19. Martina said she dressed up to impress Rosie's (male) bandleader who she has a crush on, "Oh, but then I remembered I'm gay." Rosie said gender doesn't play a part in crushes and that she of all people knows that (most folks were probably thinking of her crush on Tom Cruise). After a second, Rosie quickly said she had crushes on people of all genders, and named a bunch of men and women.

RuPaul introduced the audience to his family Oct. 2 on his VH-1 show. First the show featured footage of RuPaul performing at a large family reunion. Then RuPaul brought out his three sisters and father, and they reminisced about his childhood and his deceased mother. When RuPaul asked one of his sisters what she would do if her son asked if he could be a drag queen "just like his Uncle Ru," she responded, "I'd say 'Let's go to Patricia Field,'" a NY shop that caters to drag queens. Contact: RuPaul and Jeff Gaspin, Senior Vice President of Programming and Production, VH-1, 1515 Broadway, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10036, fax: (212) 846-1751, Shows@vh1.com.

Straight actor Wallace Langham , known for his raging heterosexuality on The Larry Sanders Show, also now has a stint as a closeted-gay-man-who-doesn't-know-he's-gay-yet on Kirstie Alley's new NBC sitcom Veronica's Closet. Director Jimmy Burrows told him to play the Closet role completely "straight," according to Entertainment Weekly. The show follows Seinfeld so it has quite a big audience already.

Lifetime TV airs a program on open lesbian breast cancer expert Dr. Susan Love Wed., Oct. 22, 6 p.m. The Intimate Portrait: Dr. Susan Love show focuses on her professional life as well as her relationship with her partner and their daughter. A Lifetime letter for the show said "Love is such a strong role model for the gay and lesbian community."

Gerber/Hart Library's Out-Takes and Columbia College's Film/Video Dept. present "Racy Thoughts: Fantasies of Color/Fantasies of Whiteness," a video presentation and lecture by Dr. Jose Munoz, Thursday, Oct. 9 at Columbia, 623 S. Wabash, 7 p.m. The program looks at the ways in which gay men and lesbians name, label and dream the elusive "racial other" in queer cinema. Tix are $5, (773) 883-3003.

The Chicago International Film Fest runs Oct. 9-19, (312) 332-FILM. There are schedules out around town. After repeated requests, they couldn't tell us what was queer-specific at the fest. Germany's Killer Condom shows Oct. 11 & 12. Norway's The Other Side of Sunday may be a bit lesbian, running Oct. 10 &11; it's about a woman who seeks out the help of another woman, who encourages her to "explore her sexuality." Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls premieres at the fest Oct. 18.

The 17th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Fest, Nov. 7-20, is seeking volunteers; (773) 384-5533.

Reuters and Variety Oct. 3 reported that "Gay rights activists have a beef with how the movie rating system treats films dealing with homosexual topics." Variety says Bent, about the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, has a NC-17 rating, the most restrictive label. The MPAA says the rating was assigned in response to a "strong scene of graphic sexuality." But Reuters said the sex scenes in Bent are actually less graphic than many that appear between heterosexuals in mainstream movies that have received R ratings, according to sources who have seen the film.

Indigo Girls perform at the Rosemont Sunday, Nov. 16, tix on sale Oct. 11, noon, (312) 559-1212. ... k.d. lang performs Oct. 25 at the Rosemont Theatre, (312) 559-1212.

Billy's Boy, the second sequel to the most popular gay male novel of all time, The Front Runner, by Patricia Nell Warren (who is now an out lesbian) is out soon. The Front Runner, Warren's landmark story about the gay relationship between college track coach Harlan Brown and Olympic hopeful Billy Sive, became an instant bestseller 22 years ago, has sold over ten million copies, and been translated into eight languages. Harlan's Race was the first sequel.

Advertising spending in the gay press reached $100.2 million this year, a 35.9% increase over 1996, according to the 4th annual Mulryan/Nash Gay Press Report, a study of ad spending and editorial content in the 138 gay-targeted print publications across the U.S. "According to our calculations, the gay press has once more emerged as the fastest growing print/ad market in the U.S.," stated Dave Mulryan, partner of M/ N. "For the past three consecutive years, gay-press ad revenues have grown faster than those in both the mainstream press and other niche markets." In comparison, he noted, ad revenues in mainstream newspapers grew just 12.9% over 1996.

A.L. Rowse, historian, Shakespeare scholar and eminent authority on Tudor England, has died at the age of 93, reports AP. The author of some 90 volumes of history, poetry and biography, plus more than two dozen as-yet-unpublished diaries, Rowse was made a Companion of Honor in 1996- a royal honor bestowed for "conspicuous national service,'' according to AP. "Always openly homosexual, a Marxist turned conservative and twice a loser as a Labor Party candidate for Parliament in the 1930s, he was never less than colorful," AP reported.

Deep Inside Hollywood

by Miss Paige Turner

With the hit play Making Porn doing strong business on tour, and the new porn-themed Boogie Nights hitting movie theaters, there is a resurgence of the porn industry in more mainstream entertainment. Hopping onto this latest trend is a new film by gay Sci-Fi director Sam Irvin entitled Male Fraud. The film stars former Playgirl centerfold Dirk Shafer, who last appeared on-screen in his mockumentary Man Of The Year about his experiences as a secretly gay sex object. Male Fraud is the story of a closeted, struggling actor (Shafer) who finally lands a great job on TV, only to be immediately fired when they discover he had done gay porn. Shafer's character claims the porn star is actually his evil twin, and married to a straight former porn actress played by Julie Brown (Earth Girls Are Easy). The comedy will also star Paul Bartel (The War Of The Roses, Scenes From The Class Struggle In Beverly Hills), Alexis Arquette as an artist who creates dildos, and RuPaul as "Fi Fi LaDouche" a drag queen porn director modeled after (you guessed it) Chi Chi LaRue. Director Irvin is hoping to lure several adult film actors to play themselves in the movie. The film is expected to go into production this fall, with release planned for the fall of 1998. In the meantime, Irvin will be completing a film project for Showtime titled The Orb, about a mysterious alien object that cures terminal illnesses like cancer and AIDS but which the government wants for its own purposes.

Back-to-school has many traditions associated with it, but this year, the far right has added homophobia to the curriculum. The conservative organization Concerned Women for America (CWA) has launched a back-to-school protest against the documentary It's Elementary-Talking About Gay Issues In School. The film is a thought-provoking series of interviews with elementary school children and their teachers discussing their views about homosexuality.

In a recent fundraising letter, the CWA called the documentary an "abomination" and a "militant homosexual propaganda effort." This latest attack follows other similar protests from Focus On The Family, the Family Research Council, and the Phyllis Schlafly Report. Debra Chasnoff and Helen Cohen, the team behind the documentary, are the parents of elementary school children and find the protest against the film disturbing. "We, too, are concerned women." Chasnoff stated in a written response to the protest. "The feedback we have been getting from educators and parents ... is that, in fact, It's Elementary is a highly effective resource for helping schools prevent violence, support all families, and affirm all children so that they can thrive academically." Working with the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, Chasnoff and Cohen are now offering free copies of the documentary on videotape to any public school board member or school district superintendent so they can judge the message of the documentary for themselves.

Miss Paige Turner can be reached through this publication or by e-mail at paige@planetout.com.