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BOY CULTURE REVIEW: **** out of ****

Tonight, I was privileged enough to be invited to attend a one-night-only oratorio (or, as last-minute guest Whoopi Goldberg called it, “oratio”) I Am Harvey Milk, with words and music by Andrew Lippa and starring Lippa as Milk, Noah Marlowe as Young Milk and angel-voiced Kristin Chenoweth as a soprano muse who stands in for several different women in Milk's life.

They were accompanied by the Joel Fram-conducted Orchestra of St. Luke's and The All-Star Broadway Men's Chorus.

Following Goldberg's intro (she referred to us as “family”...) and a more impassioned intro by Milk protégé Cleve Jones, the 60-minute presentation was thoroughly impressive, especially considering how well-mined the subject matter is. It was especially exciting to see and hear on the day the Supreme Court declined to review some lower court decisions, bringing marriage equality to five states immediately and another six in the long run, but this piece would be exciting to see and hear any day or night of the week, at any point in history.

The reason I Am Harvey Milk has a timelessness is that it's about the overall struggle for equality and fairness, even as it uses Milk's personal political odyssey to get at that larger theme. 

I was lulled to light sleep at times by the beauty and sonic purity, but there were plenty of attention-getting highlights, most notably the jumpin' “Enough Is Enough”-inspired “Friday Night in the Castro” (complete with clapping hands and gay boogie), the triumphant “Lavender Pen” (recounting Mayor Moscone's signing of a non-discrimination proclamation) and the searing “Tired of the Silence”, in which the assembled singers exhort every gay person in the world to come out, come out, come out. (Using images that included reluctant, quasi-out Jodie Foster was perhaps a misstep, but damned if they weren't up-to-the-minute enough to include headlines from earlier today!)

Fantastic evening, surrounded by a lot of civic-minded gay people and our supporters, lovers of the arts and some glitterati; but the snazzy ensembles and relentless fitness of the crowd was just fashion, and the music and words were a reminder than being loud and demanding respect never goes out of style.

You actually can stop the music.

The Village People's NYC is going the way of Nancy Walker.

Obama takes strong action to save the planet.

These dudes had a 50-year engagement!

Andy Cohen bringing unscripted (!) I Slept with a Celebrity to TV.

Hottest hotties of the 2014 World Cup.

OY VEY!: Donald Sterling goes to (black) church.

Conservatives hating on freed POW freed from Afghanistan & his family.

Ex-gay Antoine Dodson has a kid now, vows to help the kid be straight.

Meghan McCain on GLAAD's board now. Ugh.

Bieber apologizes for telling N-word joke on camera at 15.

Gaga in search of a swagger coach?

Miss Coco Peru urges: Show Me Your Pride!

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Jonathan Groff is so not into social media. #stuckup

Laverne Cox is, in fact, a woman. Assholes.

THE NAKED AND THE RAMMED: Nude bike ride banned.

Musto's worst movie musicals list is tone deaf. (On purpose.)

Melissa Etheridge gets married again.

Hunky Miles Davis Moody does Hey Qween!

Naked rugby brothers!

Fools want to reject mail with Harvey Milk stamps.

Church not responsible for molester priest because he wasn't on the clock.

Oh, look, he got a bonus at work.

GLAAD's Rich Ferraro has consistently invited me to his organization's events and I've consistently declined; I officially cover so many events for my dayjob and unofficially cover so many events on my blog for fun that my thought has been I don't really need to hyperextend myself by marrying the two and officially covering an event for my blog.

Gays & thespians: Honoree Nixon with Prayers for Bobby's Weaver

But The 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards were honoring Cynthia Nixon and Joy Behar (two of my favorite redheads—the red carpet was truly red/orange...it was a Night of 1,000 Gingers) so I made it my first red carpet, quickly discovering that doing an event with no boss to please and nothing to lose and yet having orchestrated access to the main attractions can wind up being the best of both worlds—officially fun.

From where I stood 

I arrived around 3PM for press check-in. There was a crush of people and the nice lady at the desk wasn't; I asked where to go and she said up the escalator, which isn't really that descriptive considering I was in the Marriott Marquis in Times Square (a place I was at on 9/10/01, and where I discussed going to the World Trade Center the following day to get TKTS tickets for a show...something that never panned out, obviously). I went up, as commanded, but couldn't figure out where to go next. I was pointed in many directions, finally landing on the third floor. (You'll see from the photos that I was much even more disheveled and droopy than usual.)

All my B-roll footage:

Here, I found my spot on the line—right toward the end. Red carpets are like the social caste system made manifest, or like a literal food chain. On the latter, I would be the seeds the birds poop out to keep the plants growing. To make it less metaphorical, I was two slots behind something called Autostraddle.com, which I refuse to look up because it sounds like one of those mechanical dildo sites. (I broke down and looked it up—it's a kinda great lesbian site with lots of traffic.)

But it turns out my spot wasn't so bad (considering I'm just some guy with a blog) because most of the stars were rather available and those who weren't were stopping to my left to do stuff with GLAAD. At first, I was right next to Ben Harvey and Dave Rubin of Ben & Dave's Six Pack (pictured, image from Metrosource). They were also covering for Queerty, though I wondered if they might not get less frozen reactions if they left the Queerty part out (I still link to Queerty, but I think it's fair to describe it as somewhat caustic). They were cute and as nice as can be; I point this out because the act of having a six-pack makes people gushingly nice, but the act of having six-pack abs usually does the opposite. They were professional and hot, the types of guys you wouldn't hate being stuck on a crowded elevator with, so I hoped they'd help attract stars, Suddenly Last Summer-style.

Samara puts the Reichen Lehmkuhls on the spot