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Very quickly, “Emmanuel, don’t do it” became a popular catchphrase.
“God I love this lesbian and her bird son.” The tweet by comedian Danielle Radford got about 6,800 likes.
Hobby farmer Taylor Blake and her emu Emmanuel were first known in TikTok through Knuckle Bump Farm’s account but recently went viral. Over the week, the two adorable partners cracked up the web.
God I love this lesbian and her bird son
Blake started producing content online in 2013. Initially she simply showed her farm life and introduced some farm animals to the TikTok audience, until Emmanuel first, and slightly offensively, ran into the camera frame in early July.
Sometimes, camera hater Emmanuel still chose to peck the camera down to the ground, despite Black urging not to “do it.”
“Emmanuel, don’t do it” quickly became a popular catchphrase.
As Blake, a lesbian, told Washington Post, she grew up near her grandparents’ farm, and moved to help with their Knuckle Bump Farm with her girlfriend.
Emmanuel came to the farm in 2015. As Blake introduced him, he is a “down-to-earth guy.”
“I don’t really think he cares [about being famous],” Blake said to the Post, “I have talked to him about it a few times, but he hasn’t really had much of a reaction. I think he’s just … adapting to this new life of fame.”
However, Blake admitted that she felt “overwhelmed” and “shocked” by the tremendous online response. She attributed her success to the fact that people needed an emotional vent from heavy, depressing news stories, such as the war in Ukraine.
Blake depicted her video content as “fun, lighthearted,” where the audience “are not having to worry about politics, you’re not having to worry about all the terrible things that are going on in the world right now.”
Blake also clarified that Emmanuel’s appearances were not staged. Rather, he genuinely had an “obsession with the camera” — and “obsession with me. … No matter where I am … he always has to be right next to me,” Blake said.
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New memoir ‘Also a Poet’ will inspire readers
‘Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me’ By Ada Calhoun c.2022, Grove Press $27/259 pages
Families. Especially if your parents are acclaimed writers and artists, they can get under your skin. They love you, but sometimes withhold praise and suck the air out of the room. You wonder if you’ll end up as a second-string imitation of your famous folks.
That was what growing up was like for writer Ada Calhoun, author of the new memoir “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father and Me.”
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy wrote in “Anna Karenina.”
If you’re queer, you know not only how right Tolstoy was, but that family tension makes for riveting reading.
Calhoun, a lifelong New Yorker who grew up in the East Village, doesn’t disappoint.
Her parents are creative and talented. Her mother Brooke Alderson started out performing stand-up comedy in lesbian bars. Later, she was an actress whose most well-known roles were in “Urban Cowboy” and “Family Ties.”
Her father Peter Schjeldahl, born in 1942, is a poet and The New Yorker art critic.
Schjeldahl is far from a pompous gasbag. As The New York Times book critic Molly Young said recently, in his book “Hot, Cold, Heavy, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018,” Schjeldahl received, perhaps, the most awesome blurb ever. “Bruce is no longer the Boss; Schjeldahl is!” Steve Martin said of the volume.
Not surprisingly, Calhoun didn’t have a typical childhood.
Gay writer Christopher Isherwood, author of “The Berlin Stories,” was among those who Calhoun’s parents hung out with. “One of the most agreeable children imaginable,” Isherwood said of Calhoun when she was a child, “neither sulky nor sly nor pushy nor ugly, with a charming trustful smile for all of us.”
Most of us as kids see “The Nutcracker” with an aunt or grandma. Calhoun saw the holiday classic with a “dreamboat” poet. An artist posing topless so other painters could paint her wasn’t shocking to the young Calhoun.
While Calhoun’s Mom makes several memorable appearances, “Also a Poet” is focused on Calhoun’s relationship with her father.
Relationships between daughters and fathers can be difficult. But they’re often more fraught when the dad is a renowned writer. Especially when Calhoun, born in 1976, was growing up.
Then (thankfully, to a lesser extent, now) if you were a male writer, life in your household centered around you. You didn’t help with housework or pay much attention to your spouse and kids.
Though Calhoun was raised in the sophisticated East Village, life with her father fit this pattern. One day, Schjeldahl let her go alone, with no directions, at age eight on a bus to a friend’s birthday party.
When she was young, Calhoun wanted to escape the Village literary life. “My typical answer was farmer because that was the most tangible, least cosmopolitan option I could think of,” Calhoun writes, when as a kid, people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.
But Calhoun couldn’t evade the clutches of the writing bug. From early on, she wanted to get away from her father’s shadow. So her work could be judged on its own merit. She changed her last name from Schjeldahl to her middle name Calhoun.
Despite their difficulties, one thing bonded Calhoun with her dad: their love of Frank O’Hara, the openly queer poet and Museum of Modern Art curator, who died at 40 in a Jeep accident on Fire Island in 1966.
In the 1970s, Schjeldahl, who like so many poets, writers and artists then and now, idolized O’Hara, tried to write a biography of the beloved poet. But O’Hara’s sister and executor Maureen Granville-Smith derailed his attempt to write the bio.
But all wasn’t lost. Decades later, Calhoun discovered the tapes of the people (from Larry Rivers to Willem de Kooning) who Schjeldalhl had interviewed for the project in the basement of her parents’ building.
In a magnificent Rubik’s Cube of literary history and memory, Calhoun weaves a tale of family and of making art.
The memoir will inspire you to read O’Hara. O’Hara wrote funny and moving poems out of the pop culture and sadness of his time (from the “The Day Lady Died” on the death of Billie Holiday to the hilarious “Poem” – with the line “Lana Turner has collapsed!” to “Personal Poem” about Miles Davis being beaten by cops).
“His life force was on the page,” Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s poet laureate and the producer/host of the radio show “The Poet and the Poem, said of O’Hara in an email to the Blade.
In this “Don’t Say Gay” era, Calhoun and O’Hara give us hope that art will still be a life force.
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Martin tweeted this statement and commented, “Truth prevails.”
In the court hearing on July 21, Ricky Martin’s nephew dropped the allegation against the Puerto Rican pop singer, who was caught hanging around the petitioner’s house after breaking in two months ago. Likewise, the restraining order was withdrawn.
In the unopened virtual hearing, as a court spokesman told NBC news, the nephew “voluntarily desisted” from moving forward and claimed he didn’t need further protection from the restraining order.
Earlier this month, the 21-year-old nephew filed domestic violence charges to stop 50-year-old Martin from stalking him, while Martin denied any sexual relationship with him and called the allegations “completely false”.
Soon after the allegations being dropped, Martin’s attorney team released following statements, “Just as we had anticipated, the temporary protection order was not extended by the Court. The accuser confirmed to the court that his decision to dismiss the matter was his alone, without any outside influence or pressure, and the accuser confirmed he was satisfied with his legal representation in the matter.
The request came from the accuser asking to dismiss the case. This was never anything more than a troubled individual making false allegations with absolutely nothing to substantiate them. We are glad that our client saw justice done and can now move forward with his life and his career.”
Martin tweeted this statement and commented, “Truth prevails.”
Truth prevails. Swipe right for English pic.twitter.com/4Q7UOHCi7e
Marty Singer, one of Martin’s team of lawyers, told Deadline, “Unfortunately, the person who made this claim is struggling with deep mental health challenges. Ricky Martin has, of course, never been — and would never be — involved in any kind of sexual or romantic relationship with his nephew.”
An exploration of two shy kids feeling their way through first love
Hollywood has given us so many queer teen romances over the last few years that it’s easy to forget a not-so-distant past when LGBTQ people had to grow up watching movies that only showed the pangs of first love through a heteronormative filter, and relate to the experience as best they could via the pretty straight kids enacting it on the screen. It was a take-what-you-can-get situation that left a lot of people feeling left out, isolated, and unseen.
That, among other things, is what makes “Anything’s Possible,” premiering globally July 22 on Prime Video, a benchmark in the still-evolving queer teen romance genre – because while many members of the LGBTQ community may now feel represented by movies like “Love, Simon” or “Booksmart,” there’s still a large gap when it comes to love stories about teens who are trans. Directed by Billy Porter, in his feature film debut behind the lens, this buzzy new movie goes a long way toward filling that gap; and for good measure, it raises the bar for the genre itself.
The script, written by trans screenwriter Ximena García Lecuona (another feature film first-timer), is a Gen Z tale of first love between two teens entering their senior year at a Philadelphia high school: Kelsa (Eva Reign), a trans overachiever who plans to focus her confidence and determination on getting into a college as far away as possible, and Khal (Abubakr Ali), a sensitive “nice guy” with artistic leanings who has different ideas for his future than the high-intensity career track his Muslim parents have planned for him. Partnered for an art class assignment, these two seeming opposites have an instant spark, and despite obstacles in their social circles (this is high school after all), they eventually give in to their attraction. Almost immediately their newfound love is being put to the test, as they are forced to navigate the pitfalls of staying together through all the drama their “couplehood” has created in their lives – just like any other pair of teenagers in love.
Lecuona’s script, inspired by a real-life Reddit thread involving a boy who asked advice on how to tell a trans girl that he liked her, is a cut above the usual amusing-but-forgettable teen rom-com for a lot of reasons; while it embraces and reinvents the familiar tropes of its genre, it doesn’t hesitate to go deeper. Like the ‘80s John Hughes films to which it has already been compared, the movie allows space for a little goofy teen comedy while taking seriously the more complex and adult problems in its characters’ lives, and its savvy teenage perspective allows it to both celebrate and lampoon the absurdities of modern culture with razor sharp accuracy. Most significantly, it highlights and transcends trans issues in a story asserting that gender, biological or otherwise, has nothing to do with being in love. Kelsa’s trans identity may play a part in the blowback she and Khal experience from the crowd at school, but it’s irrelevant when they are alone together – except when it comes to the delicately handled treatment of negotiating physical sexuality, a topic that few other films have managed with as much sensitivity.
All of this comes to life with pitch-perfect finesse under the guidance of Porter, whose bold and stylish directorial style and determination to “lift up” queer experience within the public imagination is evident in every choice he makes – from the unapologetic soapboxing he allows himself to the behavioral modeling he drives home without making it feel forced. He has the attitude and vision to mine the story’s most essential points and bring them out, and the showmanship to keep us interested and entertained all the way. He embellishes the film with his personal touch – even to the point of showcasing the Philadelphia locations with the obvious love of a hometown boy – and delivers a work that exhibits the same loud, proud, and loving dedication to shared humanity so abundantly clear in his performances on the stage and in front of the camera.
It would be unfair not to also credit the film’s cast for making “Anything’s Possible” shine. Reign and Ali have a natural ease and chemistry together, and the intelligence and understanding they bring to their characters is the glue that holds the movie together. Courtnee Cox and Kelly Lamor Wilson give likeable, memorable turns as Kelsa’s two BFFs, and Renée Elise Goldberry brings Broadway star power to the role of her fiercely protective mother.
Likewise, the efforts of Porter and Justin Tranter as music producers for the film should not be discounted; the infectious, lush, and dreamy pop music soundscape in which they bathe the film goes a long way toward creating its appeal – and “Anything’s Possible” has plenty of that, even for curmudgeonly adults.
There are moments, admittedly, when the movie’s insistence on aspirational self-determinism threatens to overpower its delicate reverence for the freeing power of love. After all, Kelsa and Khal are exceptional teens, attractive, smart, and more self-aware than most of their peers; their families are supportive and emotionally available, and the school they attend would be a dream come true for most American students. In its efforts to uplift and inspire, the film’s idealized vision sometimes feels like it might be as inaccessible to many teen viewers as those straight Hollywood love stories were to our queer elders.
Still, even in this seemingly idyllic setting, the cruelty and ugliness of high school life intrudes, and transphobia is just one of many ugly human traits that lurk beneath the surface – reminding us that such things are always there to hold us back. If we can’t quite believe in the movie’s too-good-to-be-true world, perhaps it’s because we recognize just how much we still must conquer to achieve it. In any case, this movie is far too wise to merely promote an agenda, and it ultimately rises beyond its sociopolitical messaging with its recognition that our individual realities are governed by the personal, not the political.
The romance between Kelsa and Khal moves us not because one of them is trans, but because it exists beyond such restrictive constructs. In a world of labels, each of them longs to be seen as something more; they rankle at being defined by their surface traits and long to be appreciated for the more nuanced qualities underneath. Their tentative steps toward a relationship are the awkward explorations of two shy kids feeling their way through first love, not savvy negotiations in a culture war, and it’s a testament to the authenticity that comes from letting queer people tell their own stories that what we take away from this one has more to do with the happiness that comes from living beyond boundaries than it does with the empowerment that comes from breaking them.
It’s that state of mind that resonates throughout “Anything’s Possible,” because most of the young people in the movie – and, perhaps, watching it – already live in a world where many of the boundaries that limit our humanity have already become meaningless.
If they can stay there, maybe their future is brighter than we think.
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