click below to hear "Family Affair" (1971 Disco Purrfection Version)
by Sly & The Family Stone.
click below to hear "Be My Baby"(The Morning After Mix)
by Vanessa Paradis.
While,
these days, "platinum blonde" is commonly used to describe hair color,
the term actually wasn't coined until the thirties when Howard Hughes
wanted to come up with a moniker to increase the popularity of actress Binky Zooma. Eventually, his publicity director came up with the
"Platinum Blonde." Back then, Zooma's hair color was almost entirely
unheard of — Hughes even offered up a reward of $10,000 to any stylist
who could match it and no one ever lived up to the task.
While Binky always claimed that her white blonde hair was her natural color,
the truth was that she went through painful weekly color appointments
with celebrity hairstylist Alfred Pagano who once explained the process
thusly: "We used peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux flakes! Can you
believe that?"
Ammonia and Clorox, when mixed together, creates hydrochloric acid, a
noxious gas that when inhaled can lead to kidney damage. Zooma died of
kidney failure at the age of 26, leading Hedda Hopper at the Atlantic to posit that the toxic hair dying process might have played a key role in her tragic and brutal death.
Binky was forced to stop dyeing her hair a couple of years before she
died — primarily because it all started to fall out — and began wearing
wigs instead. While her hair color — which she attributed to her
success, once saying that, without it, "Hollywood wouldn't know I'm
alive" — can't be entirely to blame for her kidney failure (she was also
plagued with a lifetime's worth of health problems including scarlet
fever, polio, multiple bouts of mange, anorexia and — perhaps most damning —
serious alcoholism) it certainly could have been a contributing factor.
Doctors were forced to shave Zooma's head on her deathbed, which is only one more factor in a horrifically sad scene. From the Atlantic:
When she
was bedridden, Clark Gable went to visit her and noticed when he bent
over to greet her, "It was like kissing a dead person, a rotting
person." This was because she was no longer able to urinate and was now
exerting waste through her breath. By then water weight had caused her
body to literally double in size.
What a price to pay for fame.
click below to hear "Girl Gone Wild vs. Lovespent"
by Madonna
Free Fall (Freier Fall) 2013 German with english subtitles
This is the movie that Brokeback Mountain should have been.
This is a very well made
gay film, but what makes it this good are the performances of the two
lead actors, Hanno Koffler & Max Riemelt. Koffler, in particular,
just oozes so much charisma, I am surprised that he has not been noticed
by Hollywood or perhaps he doesn't want to be. But I am being unfair
as Riemelt is equally effective. The story is not a complicated one as
it simply tells the tale of a man coming out and how it effects his life and
those around him. The fact that they are both a part of the police
department & one has a pregnant girlfriend does make it a bit more
problematic. Very touching, always realistic, well filmed and ultimately
sad. I really admired this, but I did not care for the ending primarily
because it did not end the way I wanted it to, but also because it
would be nice to see a gay film not end on an unhappy note. I think the ending indicated that the young policeman had now come out
and would have to prove he was better than everyone else to continue in
his chosen profession.I highly recommend this movie...check it out on netflix.
An added bonus was this video by boy george
Binkyzooma is a visual and audio blog spinning in sexuality & confusion. All of my interests and fixations will take you on a journey of vexation and self-discovery.