Kerwin Matthews, "flesh-and-blood Sinbad"

Why didn't somebody tell us?

Kerwin Matthews, the actor who played Sinbad in the 1958 film, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad", died July 5 in his home in San Francisco. The NYTimes obituary says that his death "was confirmed by his lover of 46 years, Tom Nicoll".

Yes, the film was aimed at a young audience, but we weren't too young to fall in love with the beautiful and dashing hairy-chested Sinbad. Who could possibly have imagined that he wasn't as straight as everyone else (everyone except me, of course, and all the other queers of whose existence I would have no suspicion until years later)?

My favorite part of the short item in this morning's paper is this sweet memory recalled by his partner:

Except as Sinbad and Gulliver, Mr. Nicoll said, Mr. Mathews was never satisfied with merely playing action roles.

“He always wanted to do light comedy, or something more weighty,” he said.

Then, in 1963, Mr. Mathews was cast as Johann Strauss Jr. in the Disney television production “The Waltz King.”

“He was most proud to play Strauss,” Mr. Nicoll said, “and that he had to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. Whether they actually followed him I don’t know, but he tried very hard.”

More from the San Francisco Chronicle, and one more visual treat, a publicity shot for "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver" (1960):

Matthews as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver

[the first image from play.com, the second from briansdriveintheater]

Brandon Kelley

I'm not much of an advertisement for an energetic homosexual at this moment so I was curious about "Where do Homosexuals Get All Their Energy?", this piece in last week's The Onion. I read it straight through to the end. This was unusual for me, because I normally find the paper's headlines much funnier than the full satirical narratives. Hey, I'm busy.

Sometimes I really am a very energetic homosexual, but right now I'm sitting at the breakfast room table at one in the afternoon, after a leisurely reading of the morning papers (and an old Onion). I'm about to leave the apartment with my partner (although there's no rush) for a visit to the Metropolitan on a beautiful afternoon, leaving it to someone else to clean and put everything in order at home while we're gone.

The satirical weekly's Brandon Kelley (the writer's pseudonym*) would describe my lifestyle differently. He starts out with a general comparison and continues with an elaboration on contrasting staight/gay competencies:

Boy, am I beat. And it's not like I have some crazy life where I'm working three jobs and going to night school. No, I just have one job and a small apartment. I don't even have a pet to look after. Even so, it seems that no matter what I do, there's always more. If they put another eight hours in the day, I might be able to catch up on the laundry list of chores I have, or even just my laundry, if I were lucky. But you know who really gets it done? Homosexuals.

I know what you're saying: Brandon, you're just perpetuating the stereotype that homosexuals are superhuman. That is totally not true. All I'm saying is, with their boundless energy and talents, they make us straight guys look bad.

I'll add an excerpt which brings this post back to one of this site's foci:

And don't remind me about those gallery openings. After a hard day of work, I was barely able to drag my ass down to the last one. I told myself, I'm not doing this again anytime soon! But it would never occur to homosexuals to think those things. The moment I walked in, there they were, dressed impeccably and criticizing the choice of wine.

*
I understand the portrait images used are those of the staff and their friends

[image from The Onion]

(too much free speech)

An AP story in Newsday reports that Reverend Billy was arrested Friday night while loudly reciting the First Amendment to police.

Could anything make it more clear what's going on in this city? It's time for all New Yorkers to form a larger critical mass of resistance to this dangerous lunacy before we've lost our liberties for ever.

Gothamist tells us that a press release the blog received after the arrest of a man whose day job consists largely of exhorting people to abandon the products of large corporations and mass media, observes that "while the NYPD surrounded and intimidated last night's Critical Mass cyclists, a line of several hundred shoppers formed just across the street to purchase the new iPhone, blocking pedestrian traffic and forcing people to walk in the street." Whoa! This is all way, way beyond irony.

Go here, to Matt Semel's annotated flickr set of images, for a good-humored, inside look at Friday night's bike ride and the police tension which preceded it.

[image by Konstantin Sergeyev from revbilly.com]