In Memoriam: Sydney Pollack

Another devastating loss in the film world. The brilliant director and actor Sydney Pollack died of cancer this morning at the age of 73. I had just seen him over the weekend in Michael Clayton (which he also produced) and he was funny as hell in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives and on Will & Grace playing Will's father. But it's his work as a director that earned him the legendary status: Out of Africa, They Shoot Horses Don't They, Tootsie, The Way We Were, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, This Property is Condemned and the list goes on and on. Read more about him here.

Memorial Day Weekend Report

This weekend went by soooo quickly...too quickly. I was planning on doing absolutely nothing but reading and watching movies most of the weekend, but wound up doing tons of poetry and writing stuff instead.

Let's rewind to Thursday night. I had dinner with my former flame, Billy (he's got a number of poems dedicated to him in my books), who was back in town for a visit. I'm happy to report I no longer want to jump his bones, and that after 16 years of knowing each other, I consider him just a good friend. Whew. Glad that's over. We caught up on life over drinks at 97 Estoria, this great little bar and restaurant in Cabbagetown. Billy is still creative as hell and pursuing his painting and art. I'm really proud of him.

On Friday, it was a short day at work and then I went and met fellow poet Cleo Creech for dinner at the Silver Grill. We also had much catching up to do. He's busy writing and has met a lovely man. Then I came home and submitted my novel, Conquering Venus, to a publishing house that has an open reading period. As part of my ending the contest cycle of abuse, I've got a list of open readings for fiction that I'm slowly working my way through. I haven't given up on the novel yet. I still have many options and I'm fully exploring them.

On Saturday, I finally got around to watching Michael Clayton on DVD. Oh my god! One of the best films I've ever seen. George Clooney is so good in this and Tilda Swinton definitely deserved that Oscar. It was so good that I ordered it from Amazon to have as part of my permanent collection. I also finished up a manuscript critique for a poet whose work I admire so much. It was a pleasure to read and my list of notes for her is very short.

Sunday was the big poetry day. We had a two-hour Atlanta Queer Literary Festival meeting and I'm happy to say things are rapidly taking shape. A call for artists is on the website and we're finalizing our PayPal account so we can accept donations. A letter is also going out seeking corporate sponsorships. The dates are Oct. 15-19 and there will be poetry and fiction readings, theatre, workshops, book signings and more.

After the meeting I dashed over to Cabbagetown Park for the Mondo Homo reading. If you saw the previous post about this reading, you'll know there was some general displeasure about the lack of publicity for the event. Some poets dropped out, some didn't even bother to show up. I don't blame them. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people gathered in the park and those who spread out blankets and plopped down to listen to us. I'm sure that was partly due to the mass email blasts we all did and the sunny weather we've enjoyed all weekend. Theresa Davis, Tim'm West, Yolo, Meek, Karen G. and the other readers did a superb job.

After the reading, we all went to Java Monkey Speaks for the "emergency" slam to find a replacement for a team member who had to drop out. As expected, the patio was packed. Ten poets competed for that one spot to go with the team to the National Slam in Wisconsin and everyone brought their A-game. In the end, it was Adam Henzbo, who had come down from Bowling Green, KY, who won the spot. His work was passionate and articulate and he'll be a formidable challenger, especially with a team that also includes Gypsee-Yo, Bryan Pattillo and Chas.

Today, I started a project that's going to take weeks to complete: After 10 years of having collinkelley@hotmail.com as my email address, I'm getting ready to switch to gmail. This was prompted by hotmail's continuing decline in customer service and the fact that many of my emails are not being delivered and folks trying to email me are getting bounce backs. That's just unacceptable. So, I've started cleaning out my stored emails -- there's more than a thousand I'm sure -- and deleting, forwarding or printing them up. I'll send a notice out to all my contacts when the switch happens in a couple of months, plus post the info here. If you want to go ahead and add collinkelley@gmail.com to your address books, feel free.

Doctor Who - Rose Tyler Returns

The mid-season trailer featuring the return of Rose Tyler to Doctor Who. And who is that lurking in the darkness? One of the Doctor's greatest enemies. Giddy and geeking!

Memorial Day Weekend Music

Royksopp's What Else Is There featuring The Knife's Karin Dreijer on vocals.

Hope everyone has a relaxing weekend. Come out to Mondo Homo on Sunday if you're in Atlanta and looking for some poetry. I'll be previewing work from After the Poison. Also, on Sunday night there will be an emergency slam at Java Monkey Speaks in Decatur to fill a spot on the team going to the National Poetry Slam in Wisconsin. Only 10 people will be allowed to sign up and Gypsee-Yo will feature. Be there by 7 p.m. I'll have a full report afterwards. What are you, gentle and un-gentle readers, doing this weekend?

Modo Homo Reading Is Sunday

I'll be reading with Theresa Davis, Tim'm West, Karen G., Yolo and many other fab poets for the GLBTQ music and literary festival on Sunday, May 25, at 5 p.m. in Cabbagetown. Click the image above to enlarge it and read more details or visit the Mondo Homo website to see the line up of music, art and more. Come out and join us!

American Idol 7 - And the winner is...

I knew the two hour season finale of AI was going to be tedious, and this was proven right off the bat by the Top 12 singing yet another moldy oldy -- Get Ready -- while the past contestants of So You Think You Can Dance writhed around them. It was a frenzy of long camera angles, uninspired singing and since everyone was wearing white, it was hard to tell who was who...maybe that was by design. Then they cut to commercial and there was hatchet-faced former "supermodel" Janice Dickinson blowing kisses. Ugh!

The two Davids -- Archuleta and Cook -- sang Hero by Chad Krueger...okay Cookie Combforward sang it and Tickle Me Archuleta was the back up singer. Big D sang the shit out of this song, unlike his less than stellar performances last night when it actually mattered. Then there was the pimping of Mike Myer's new movie, The Love Guru, which had the Davids going to visit Pitka's ashram for advice. The funniest bit was Myers telling Cookie to shave off the stubble, that it was Melrose Place circa 1990. There was also some eye-rolling lines about Fetus growing hair on his naughty places that was a little inappropriate. After this nonsense, Syesha came out and sang Waiting for You with Seal. It was a bit boring, kinda like Syesha herself, but Seal was looking hunky in white pants so tight you could almost see his religion. I'm just sayin'...

The Jasonloonies must have been wetting their couches when the resident stoner came out to reprise his finest moment on the show, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. After another humiliating Ford commercial with the Top 12, Gaycrest gave both Davids a Ford Hybrid. You could practically see stage dad Archuleta licking his lips.

I knew tonight was going to be comedy gold, but not so early. The Top 6 girls doing a medley of Donna Summer hits was the ultimate train wreck. Watching Amanda Overmyer trying to do the choreography, sing Hot Stuff and looking inebriated to the point of blackout was worth the price of admission alone. Then Donna Summer herself appeared in a cheap wig and sang her new song Stamp Your Feet, which should be a huge hit at gay clubs catering to leather daddies. Syesha then got another pimp spot, dueting with Donna on Let's Dance. I couldn't stop laughing. Oh, and Gaycrest trying to breakdance...wooh...I need to pause and dry my eyes.

Carly and Michael Johns (looking and sounding very Princess Lounge on the Love Boat) dueted on The Letter, Jimmy Kimmel returned for some lame jokes, including one about tipping his valet, Sanjaya (who was in the audience). Then the cavalcade of has-beens went into high gear with the Top 6 boys singing a Bryan Adams medley, before he joined them to sing some new song and I Need Somebody. The boys managed to come off a bit better than the girls, but of course they didn't have much choreography. although Stripper Hernandez looked like he was working for dollar bills at the boy bar. David Cook did a duet with ZZ Top of Sharp Dressed Man. ZZ Top? Really? Is that all AI can afford -- 80s nostalgia acts? I think the producers have totally lost the plot on the demographics. But wait...then Graham Nash came out and sang Teach Your Children Well with Brook White. Really? Seriously? At least Cookie got to make lots of sex faces while stroking his axe...I'm sure the cougars were purring.

Early in the second hour, The Jonas Brothers -- who make the tween girls wet their Underoos -- came out and sang SOS, or whatever the hell it's called. Their voices are so thin and their pants so tight...talent really doesn't matter anymore does it? Not really. After a clip of some of the season's worst auditions, they brought out this year's William Hung, the flamboyant be-winged Renaldo Lapuz to sing I Am Your Brother backed by the USC Marching Trojans. Woah...this is a serious step down from when they backed Fleetwood Mac on Tusk. Paula got up on stage and was dancing around...like there's no tomorrow...yuck, yuck, yuck.

OneRepublic showed up to sing Apologize and were joined by David Archuleta. This was actually pretty damned good. Fetus should have sang this weeks ago, it totally suits his voice. Jordin Sparks came out to sing her new song, One Step At a Time, wearing one of the ugliest dresses I've ever seen -- it was like a gold, spraypainted Hefty bag. You've got some cash now, baby, get a stylist to work on that Amazon frame of yours. Us big girls gotta work it a little harder. I'm just sayin'...

Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. (?!) were cleverly made into The Pips and inserted into a vintage performance of Midnight Train to Georgia with Gladys Knight. Ummm...Robert, you're a huge star in the number one movie in the world, whatcha doing slumming with these idiots? Stiller and Black are so past their sell by date I can smell the sour from here. Carrie Underwood, showing some serious leg, came out and sang her new single, Last Name, about getting drunk at a club, leaving with some guy in a Pinto, bangin' him, marrying him and not knowing his last name. You GO, girl. My admiration for Carrie Underwears went up a notch.

The big surprise guest was not Madonna -- as has been rumored on the blogosphere -- but George Michael. The Top 12 did a lame medley of Father Figure (Great sex face from Cookie for all the cougars), Faith and Freedom before the man himself took the stage solo to sing Praying for Time. He was not in good voice (he apologized for having a cold), was wearing sunglasses from 1978 and might have had a little knife work done. Still, he has more talent in his little over-expressive gay pinky than anyone else on the stage. Work it, Georgie.

And finally, what we came here for -- The.Next.American.Idol. David Cook! Yes, he pulled it off, pulling ahead by 12 million votes of Tickle Me Archuleta. Hey, the Terminator always loses in the end. Cookie sang his coronation song, The Time of My Life, which, while cliched as hell, wasn't nearly as bad as some of the others from seasons' past and actually had some melody.

So, that's it for another season. Thanks to everyone who checked in each week to read and comment.

"Straight Talk Express" Derails

Don't even THINK about voting for this moron.

Thanks for finding this Tania.

American Idol 7 - Archuleta KO's Cook In Three

The corniness factor was off the scale tonight as David Archuleta and David Cook faced off on the American Idol finale. The whole boxing thing -- with the Davids coming out in boxing gloves, the Rocky them, the "let's get ready to rumble" guy announcing -- was so over the top I wasn't just vomiting in my mouth, but needed a bucket. The writers and producers are slowly putting the nails in AI's coffin. They wonder why the ratings are sagging this year? It's this kinda shit that doesn't sell to the teen and tween set. The Baby Boomer nostalgia trip the producers have been on all season nearly ruined the show. Anyway...

Record mafia don Clive Davis and Andrew Lloyd Webber (still slumming in LA, Lord Webber?) were the mentors. The Davids sang three songs: one picked by Clive, one of the songwriting contest entries (puke) and then a song of their choice. I'll just tell you right now, Tickle Me Archuleta came to win tonight and if I have to put it in boxing terms, the little fetus KO'd Cookie every round. I know the Cookloonies will have my hide, but he seemed really restrained, almost as if he was throwing the contest a bit. I have a feeling Cookie Combforward doesn't want to be locked into that binding contract with Clive and 19 Productions, who would pretty much run his recording career for the next decade. Unless he flopped, then they'd drop him like a hot Taylor Hicks rock.

David Cook: Clive selected U2's classic I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and it would turn out to be Big David's standout moment. He looked like a rock star and the crowd was with him. The songwriting entry, Dream Big, was your standard cliched bit of pablum about faith, dreams coming true, ad nausea. He powered through it, but it wasn't his kind of song, but he did what he could with the schlock. Cookie chose Collective Soul's The World I Know, and it was good, not great. It was a little slower than it should have been, but Big D was all emotional at the end. The judges thought he did well, but not as well as the Fetus. They coronated David A. long ago, just like they admitted wanting this finale.

David Archuleta: The Terminator's mission is almost complete. He laid waste to the stage tonight and sounded perfect. I didn't hear any lyric slips or overly-botched notes. Clive had him sing Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me (you can apply your own jokes to this...it's way too obvious for me to even bother) and he nailed it. The goopy contest entry song, In This Moment, was so horrible I wanted to claw my own eyes out, but once again, Little D turned it into a Disney spectacular. For the closing song, he wisely chose to recover Imagine. Once again, perfect.

All I can say is that the cougars and Cookloonies better be double-clicking their mice and dialing their fingers to the bone tonight, because he's going to need it to win. Or maybe, you'll realize he doesn't really want to win and let him go make his hit album on his own terms. Archuleta will fit well into the industry machine. He'll trade his overbearing stage dad for overbearing Clive Davis and go on to make tweens across the country swoon, scream and robotically sway their arms.

Tomorrow night's two-hour finale will be tedious beyond words. I'm going to start drinking early.

Disaster Fatigue

The Associated Press published an article yesterday stating that the double natural disasters in China and Burma have created what is known as "disaster fatigue" when it comes to donating to charitable organization. People are so overwhelmed by what they are seeing and hearing, they just ignore it and don't give anything. 

I usually make a small donation to a charity when something like this happens, but I have waited because of the situation with military junta/dictatorship in Burma. All reports from the region indicate that donations and supplies have been stymied or rounded up by the military for personal use and distribution to their cronies while thousands die. More than 132,000 are confirmed dead in Burma after the cyclone that struck May 3, 19,000 injured, untold are homeless. Of course America and its "allies" are not going liberate Burma, despite the fact that its under a brutal dictatorship and its rightful leadership, the National League of Democracy, is in exile and its president Aung  San Suu Kyi under house arrest for more than 12 years. Maybe if they had some oil, we would send in the troops? Don't even get me started on China, but at least its fascist government is helping the people after the massive earthquake that has now killed more than 40,000.  

Anyway, I am making a donation to UNICEF, which specifically aids children in disasters, and encourage everyone to do the same. Even if it's just $10 or $20.