Leonard Nimoy

At a Chicago Star Trek convention, celebrating the 45^th anniversary of the premiere of the most iconic science fiction television/movie franchise in American entertainment history, 80 year old Leonard Nimoy announced that he is finally hanging up his ears and will no longer be trekking.

At the conclusion of an hour-long speech about his life and career, Mr. Nimoy thanked the fans for their support and affection over the years. Some were holding signs saying “We love you Leonard! Live long and prosper!” For almost thirty years, Mr. Nimoy has attended conventions, maintaining a very positive relationship with the fans.  In between conventions and Star Trek movies and television shows, Mr. Nimoy was a very talented actor with an extensive resume, a director, an author, a poet, a photographer, singer, songwriter, and a husband and father.

When Star Trek premiered on NBC, 45 years ago last month, when it was cancelled two years later and then revived and recancelled a year later, no one thought it had made such an enormous impression on its fans that public demand would bring it back to life in so many forms. It was a true grass roots movement – the fan magazines, the fan-created stories and books, the networks of fans who eventually created the first conventions…..and all of this before the internet, when people had to do this stuff with snail mail and landline telephones. And just for the bloody, damned record, we were Trekkies and proud of the term. That whole “call us Trekkers” thing came from the next generation of fans.

Six series, eleven movies, magazines, comics, games, hundreds of novels, the conventions and a fully functional language…all from those simple words “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.”

My children once figured out that if I cried, the new series or movie would be a hit. In the first movie, it was when the transport moved around the dry-dock and you caught your first sight of the Enterprise. In the first episode of Next Generation, it was the moment when DeForest Kelley said “treat her right and she’ll always bring you home.” When Spock died in The Wrath of Khan, I was bawling. As the years went by, I cried less, until 2009. By then, we had lost both DeForest Kelley and James Doohan. When Karl Urban nailed Def Kelley’s so-subtle Southern accent, that did it. And then the marvelous Simon Pegg….I was a lost cause.

Leonard Nimoy has been a true gentleman about Star Trek. Though he had his share of wishing people would forget Spock and let him get on with the rest of his career, he came back to Spock over and over again, providing the needed bridge to the new incarnation, the logical explanation of how and why they could restart a beloved myth.

To anyone who has managed to get through a few centuries of the reinventions of King Arthur, the 2009 re-invention of Star Trek makes perfect sense. A great myth is adaptable to the times. The origins are never really forgotten, but the manner in which the story is told can be altered to match the way people prefer their stories to be told or to reflect changes in the culture. King Arthur changed over time, forever being relevant to England and its problems. Star Trek has also proven it can change over time, reflecting our changing culture and problems. It was born at a time when the United States was in flux, generations, classes, races and ideologies warring with each other. The series took the freedom of science fiction, the ability to, as Robert Burns said we could not, “see ourselves as others see us,” and held a magnifying glass to our traumas. By the time we hit Star Trek: Voyager, our nation was in the midst of a cultural lull, a quiet before the next storm. 2009 was exactly the perfect time to re-invent the myth and explore new conflicts, explore the mechanics of the creation of a world government and the Federation.

Leonard Nimoy has been a vital part of the myth, the parenthesis on the first incarnation of Gene Roddenberry’s universe, there at the beginning – the real beginning, that first failed pilot – and there as the torch was passed. For forty-five years, he personified the ideal of Star Trek, a universe in which infinite diversity lives in infinite combination. We thank him, so very much, for those 45 years, and sincerely hope that he will “Live Long and Prosper.”

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8/3/2011

I got a chance to sit down with Jo Carbonell, the artist of Amie; A Web Comic, and pick at her brain about her life and ask a few question’s about where her comic ideas come from.  Her comic is a new addition to Lezgetreal.com and will be posted regularly to the site starting with Chapter one.

1. At what age did you begin to delve into the world of art?

“Both my parents were artists, so my introduction to art was very early. I began drawing people after looking through old Boris Vallejo books that my mother owned. My first canvases were the walls of our apartments with crayons. My mother never made me wash my art away, but drawing nude people in 2nd grade got me in trouble at school. Apparently you shouldn’t draw nude people holding hands next to a unicorn if you are in grade school”

2. What made you start Amie as a comic?

“Amie started as a story about a geeky lab assistant and the cat-mutant-girl he cared for in his lab. It turned into a comic when I became frustrated drawing my friends and having them get upset over how I depicted them. Amie became my outlet to draw people how I wanted and have them not complain because I didn’t get their chin right. It became my therapy. Over time people became entranced watching me draw it and it became popular among my friends and family.”

3. What are your inspirations for Amie and your artwork?

“My inspirations for Amie are simple, they are the people and events in my life that inspire the storyline. Oddly enough my Amie art has been prophetic in my personal life. My inspiration for my other artwork is much the same, it is inspired by the people and events in my life. I find nothing more inspiring for artwork than the beauty and wonder of the people that surround me.”

4. What is your date of Birth?

“Haha…my birthday is February 28th. I’m a Pisces through and through.”

5. How many chapters do you have so far, and how are they going to be posted on Lezgetreal?

“So far I am working on Chapter 6 of Amie. It has been in the works for….almost a decade now. It is posted to Lezgetreal by the owners of the site that get the pages directly from me.”

6. Who or what was your inspiration for some of the characters within the comic?

“As I’ve said, Amie is inspired by people in my life. Almost all the main chracters are based off of real people in my life. For example; Lady Shakra (owner of an underground gay dance club) is based off a Vermont drag queen named Alexandra Chase, Miss is based off of my own personality traits, Robas and Bloo Bird are based off of good friends named Emer and Bloo during their younger days as delinquents, while Amie is based off of my little cousin Erik. As for the personal animal traits that each character has in their makeup, its based off of animal traits found in the actual person.”

7. Where did you go to high school, and what is your highest level of education you have reached so far?

“My schooling was varied seeing as my family moved a lot during my formative years. I spent my freshman year of high school split between Grecco Jr. High School in Temple Terrace, FL and Glynn Acadamy in Brunswick, GA. I spent the rest of high school at Rutland Senior High School in Rutland, VT (my home town and the high school both my parents went to). I went to college at the Community College of Vermont in Rutland. Currently I hold 2 art degrees; Associate’s in Liberal Arts and an Associate’s in Visual Arts.”

8. What are your plans for the future education wise and for your comic?

“My plans for my future education is to be the first doctor in my family, but to be a doctor of something I’m passionate about and is utterly ridiculous to others. I plan to be a doctor of Cartoon Studies. I find that cartoons are actually very important to the education of our young. My plans for my comic are to keep drawing and creating it for as long as people want to read it. I’d like to see it in print someday, but I’m not holding my breath.”

9.Who would you like to thank on behalf of your comic starting to get to bigger places?

“I’d like to thank my friends, family and my fans for encouraging me to continue my art and for supporting it, introducing it to new people and for allowing me new places to show it off so others may enjoy my story.”

7/4/2011

Almost everyone remembers watching the animated show Smurfs on NBC when they were little.  Those little blue people fascinated the child’s mind with life lessons and quirky humor for many years before being taken off air in December of 1989.  The show aired an amazing 256 episodes with a total of 421 stories.  Released on the big screen on July 29th 2011 Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and the whole gang returned for a 3D extravaganza staring vocal talents such as Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live, Kenan & Kel), Katy Perry, Paul Reubens (Peewee’s Playhouse), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), and many more.

The Smurfs producers went way out of the way to promote the film giving a new definition to the phrase “Smurf Fever.”  Juzcar, a remote village in southern Spain, which sits in the Genal Valley and is less than 2 miles wide, allowed Sony Pictures to paint it blue agreeing to host the film’s world premier on June 16th.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the project took 12 local painters who used up 4,000 liters of blue paint causing Juzcar to look like a giant blue dot in the midst of beautiful mountains and forests.  The town has already had an incredible increase in tourism.

Sony has agreed to restore the buildings to their original colors, however, it has been said that the town is considering leaving them all blue.  Whoever said there’s no such thing as a Smurf Village needs to recheck their information.

Rica’tte Kanji is a lesbian themed, or yuri manga, and one that seems to treat much of lesbian experiences with a bit of humor and lightness. On the whole, yuri or lesbian and yaoi or gay male manga and anime treat the subjects of LGBTQ issues with varying degrees of seriousness, fan service, and reality.

This information came via Yuricon, a website dedicated to the distribution and publication of yuri manga and anime. They have a series of yuri short story manga anthologies called Yuri Monogatari or Lily Tales. Yuri being the word for ‘lily’ in Japanese the same way that yaoi means rose.

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Walt Disney

Never, ever ask a man why Americans care about Royal Weddings. They have no clue. It’s not part of their psyches, not something they really pay attention to with their own daughters. Ask a man and you will get some sociological mishmash about celebrities and latent royalist tendencies. The real answer is two words: Walt Disney.

Seriously. How many of us remember a world without Disney Princesses? Here’s a hint: Snow White premiered in 1939. The current merchandising and video blitz has simply combined several of them into the package called “Disney Princesses,” but they have always been there. We just did them one at a time for most of the past 72 years. I’m 62. I’m on my third copy of Sleeping Beauty – videotape, the original DVD and the Special Anniversary Edition! I’m also a bit perverted. I love Maleficent. Eleanor Audley was my favorite Disney voice actress. She was also the wicked stepmother in Cinderella. The lady could drip evil. Disney Princesses didn’t get interesting until, oh, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, my own daughter’s first Princess.

I just bought my foster granddaughter a stuffed Tinker Bell holding a Disney Princess throw. Granddaughter will be five and has announced she is going to grow up and live in a Princess castle and, by the way, marry some prince, and she’s Princess-ing us all to death. Her birthday cake will be a castle, mold complements of Disney’s relentless marketing industry. There have been a few other Princesses along the way, but they certainly haven’t had the staying power of a Disney Princess.

So, here we are, for 72 years America girls have been raised on the fairy tale of Prince Charming riding to the rescue of the poor, imprisoned, exiled, sleeping, bird-in-a-gilded-cage Princess or, even better, commoner-who-will-be-a- better-Princess-than-a-real-one. And before that, we were having those stories read to us in our nurseries from our collections of extremely sanitized Charles Perrault and Brothers Grimm. The originals were much too violent for dear, sensitive, post-Victorian children. We are raised to believe that Princes exist and they are there for the getting by scullery maids and girls living with a half-dozen short men in shack in the woods.

And once in a while, the fairy tale came true. American Grace Kelly married the Prince of Monaco. American Lisa Halaby married the King of Jordan. American Hope Cooke married the King of Sikkim. American Marie-Chantal Miller married the Crown Prince of Greece who has next to nil chance of ever being king. Wallis Warfield Simpson doesn’t count. Her King gave up the throne to marry her.

This week it’s all about the British Royals. In July, it’s the Grimaldi’s turn. For the countdown, I’m going to bore you to death with a week-long run-down of the twentieth-century British Royal Weddings.

The first two are the only ones I don’t personally remember. God, that makes me feel old.

July 27-10 Posted By Lil Lesbian Devil -

Really? Yes! Ten Days Ahead! The Power of…… the Lezzies!

My late mother  one of the most brilliant women I have ever met and consciously straight – who knows about the subconscious – if presented with an impossible situation, used to say : If my Aunt had balls she’d be my Uncle!  Moms been gone almost 20 years, having passed on at my age.  I still laugh at that remark and use it now, often,  perhaps ad nauseam.

Wikepedia describes Lesbianism in profound (mm) detail take a look and I took this piece:

“Men have historically shaped ideas about what is respectable for women in love, sex, and family, and due to the absence of males in a lesbian relationship, frequently rejected the possibility of lesbianism or disregarded it as a valid expression of sexuality. Early sexologists based their characterization of lesbians on their beliefs that women who challenged their strictly prescribed gender roles were mentally ill. Since then, many lesbians have often reacted to their designation as immoral outcasts by constructing a subculture based on gender role rebellion.”

My feeling is all said and done – every lesbian who has the courage to come out has balls, though not to be called UNCLE – please… because these kinda balls are possible… Step out and Stand up for Equality.  You are who you are and you love who you love… what else is important?

Have fun….

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Posted by Melanie Nathan 7/17/10
Truth be Known!

Of course, Amy and Bender try hard to keep their affair from being found out.  At one point, when they are kissing, they are mobbed by a group of religious zealots who condemn them.  Bender throws them off by recommending that they go after a single mother.

Ultimately, their affair is found out by their coworkers and Professor Farnsworth calls Amy’s parents who lasso her off to Mars and the Preacherbot, who takes Bender off to be “reprogrammed”.  The Preacherbot condemns robosexuality while also wiping sweat off his brow after he tells the robots that he is trying to reprogram to take out their attraction to humans by cuddling human dummies.   It is rather like the “cuddle therapy” that is common in ex-gay therapy.

Finally tired of not being able to get married, Bender and Amy begin the push for Proposition Infinity.  They begin by getting it on the ballot at the Gearwich Village Pride Festival.

Ultimately, the Farnsworth Foundation, which opposes Prop Infinity, runs an ad full of dark clouds, scary statements, and parents who are afraid of robosexuality being legal.  Ultimately, there is a debate hosted by the Head of George Takai, voiced by George Takai.  As many people in the Community may know, Takai was a strong opponent of Prop 8 in California and is openly gay.  While marriages were legal in California, he married his long time partner Brad Altman.

Prop Infinity is, ultimately approved, after a startling revelation from Farnsworth (hint, he had a robosexual affair).  However, once Bender learns that he and Amy are to enter into a monogamous marriage, he runs off. . .

The episode was a blast to watch.  The best humor is the kind that holds up a mirror and makes us look at ourselves as we are not as how we think we are.  With the exception of the outcome of the episode, the writers hit everything from the hypocritical preacher who condemns the love between a human and a robot while also being tempted, the scary but not really accurate commercials, the hypocrisy of the man who loved a robot who now hates all people like him, and even the denial of robots who are hardwired to love humans by those who hate but secretly long to act upon their desires.

Set a thousand years in the future, Futurama has dealt with a large number of serious and not so serious issues over the years.  The series was first launched in March 1999, and the final episode aired in August 2003.  Then, Comedy Central bought the rights after a long stint of reruns on Cartoon Network, and released four feature length movies.  The series returned to the air in June 2010 marking one of the longest gaps between the end of a series and its resurrection.

It was a fun poke in the eye at all those people who attack lesbians, gays and transsexuals every day to deny us our rights.

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In the third season episode “I Dated A Robot,” Fry dates a robot version of Lucy Liu in which there is a video detailing the horrible possible problems of a human dating a robot.  Of course, the video mirrors a lot of the propaganda that exists with regards to homosexuality.

Well, Futurama is returning to this subject and it will, undoubtably, give people like Congressional candidate from New Hampshire Bob Giuda and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins a whole new possibility to strike fear into people with regards to lesbians and gays getting married.  In next weeks “Proposition Infinity”, Bender and a lot of other robots push for the legalization of marriage between humans and robots.  A recent episode of Futurama called “Attack of the Killer App” saw some of the problems with recycling ewaste which, while comedically presented, is a problem because a lot of it gets shipped to third world nations where it poisons the air and water that people need.

Futurama has showcased several episodes which feature LGBT themes without necessarily being about LGBT individuals.  In the fifth season show “Bend Her”, Bender undergoes a robot sex change operation.  For the year that it was created, namely 2003, it is a pretty decent episode with regards to transgender issues, though it does showcase a certain amount of unethicalness with regards to Bender’s reasoning for becoming a woman.

Though the relationship between Amy Wong and Kiff is, basically, straight, as Kiff is male, the dynamics of their relationship have always seemed far more lesbian than straight.  Kiff is very female in his emotional structure, and even in one episode becomes pregnant from touching Leela’s hand.  “Proposition Infinity” starts with an argument between Amy and Kiff, who have been having relationship difficulties ever since the movie “The Beast With A Billion Backs.” “Proposition Infinity” will air on 8 July 2010 at 10:00 pm on Comedy Central.

The new costume is designed, supposedly, to bring her into the 21st century.  In some ways, it is a lot more realistic in that I have never been able to understand how come most fantasy/sci-fi/comic book heroines wear barely enough armor to prevent them from catching a cold rather than fight off monsters, mobs and all those nasties out there.

Writer J. Michael Straczynski explained it thusly “She’s been locked into pretty much the exact same outfit since her debut in 1941. If you’re going to make a statement about bringing Wonder Woman into the 21st century, you need to be bold and you need to make it visual. I wanted to toughen her up, and give her a modern sensibility.”  Straczynski is best known for his series Babylon 5.

Her original creator William Moulton Marston, stated of her as being a “distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men.”

Okay. . .so, this Amazon . . .when does she get a girlfriend?  I mean, she is an Amazon, right. . .she hails from or is based off of a culture devoid of men . . .

Picture via Wikipedia

With so much creative control, any message you desire can be passed along cartoon style.

WOOTY99 is a user on YouTube who collects pro-gay XtraNormal cartoons on their channel, and here are a couple of the cartoons WOOTY99 scoped out from the site…

Pat the Clown and Gay Marriage:

The reason she’s still not Miss USA

Another one WOOTY99 collected is “Joe the (plumber) Clown views on gay marriage” which is too crude to place here on our site (they have to be to imitate Joe the Plumber!) and so here is the link for you watch that one.

The website to create your own videos and watch the other ones people have made can be found at www.XtraNormal.com.

**PS This is not a hearing impaired friendly website as many characters of the video use the same mouth movements and there are not sub-titles. I apologize if any of our readers were not able to understand the videos in this post.

I’m curious to know of any other good videos from XtraNormal so if anybody happens to find any feel free to link them in the comments.

Over the years, minorities have gained in representation in the comics. A number of comic strips center around women

Image via Wikipedia

including Cathy, Tina’s Groove, 6 Chix’s, and Safe Havens. Many women write and illustrate their own comics too. There are several comics centered on the African-American community including Jump Start, Candorville, and Curtis. Some comics bypass the usual minorities and go for the furry audience with anthropomorphic animals including Kevin & Kell and My Cage. However, gays, lesbians and transpeople are only slightly represented in the comics, usually as supporting characters.

The first gay character that I’ve been able to find is Andy Lippincott. He was introduced into Doonesbury back in 1976. Andy disappeared after a short stint in the strip where he was the romantic obsession of Joanie Caucus. He returned to the strip in 1982 as the organizer of the Bay Area Gay Alliance, and returned again in 1989 after being diagnosed with AIDS. He died listening to the Beach Boy’s Wouldn’t It Be Nice. His final appearance was when he returned as an angel to reveal to long time main character Mark Slakmeyer that Mark is gay. Lippincott was given a rare honor for a cartoon character in that he has an AIDS quilt panel with his name on it.

Mark has continued on the strip. He remains the only gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender character in a main role. Going well back into the strip, Mark rarely had any relationships with women. For a while, he was in a serious relationship with Chase Talbot III, only to break up over major differences over politics. He is currently a commentator on NPR.

Image via Wikipedia

The comic strips Kevin & Kell and 9 Chickweed Lane have supporting characters who are gay, lesbian or trans. Kevin & Kell is set in an alternate world full of anthropomorphic animals, the strip centers around Kevin, a six-foot tall rabbit; his wife Kell, a wolf; his adopted daughter from his first marriage, Lindesfarne; Kell’s son from her first marriage, Rudy; and Kevin and Kell’s daughter Coney. Among the supporting characters are Bruno Lupulin and Rachel Einhorn. Bruno is a trans-dieter. In this world, the bigger issue is that of diet and not gender. Bruno, a meat eating wolf had surgery to become an herbivore. Many of Bruno’s issues parallel those of a transsexual in our world. Rachel Einhorn is a lesbian rhino, and no one cares. While both are side characters more often discussed in the supporting blog that goes along with the site, they are still there.

9 Chickweed Lane has featured Seth Appleby and his boyfriend Mark for some time. Seth is a ballet dancer and good friend of one of the main characters, Edda Burber. Seth and Mark’s relationship is not always easy. Recently they broke up and got back together.

For Better or For Worse, which ended original strips in September ‘08, also featured a gay character in the form of Lawrence Poirier, Mike Patterson’s life long best friend. FBFW highlights the controversy that has

Image via Wikipedia

always surrounded the coming out of a particular character in a comic strip. The controversy over Lawrence’s coming out was costly for Johnston. She lost many readers who objected to having an openly gay character in a family strip, and several newspapers chose to cancel the strip or refused to run the arc. Three years later, Nick, Lawrence’s boygriend, came into the strip and caused a slightly smaller outcry. Johnston worked for two years hammering out the arc concerning Lawrence’s coming out. In an interview from around that time, Johnston stated that she knew that Lawrence was gay when she introduced him to the world in 1979. Johnston, on her site, includes a five page overview of the entire process which both she and her character Lawrence went through including several key strips. Johnston has gone back to the beginning of her strip and we are getting to see Lawrence grow up all over again.

Comic strips do not necessarily need a gay, lesbian or transperson as a character to be friendly to the LGBTI community. Darrien Bell’s Candorville is one such strip. Set in a sort of alternate Los Angeles, Candorville has strayed into the political quite often. In November ‘08, Bell ran a three part arc in the strip called Pride and Prejudice about Prop 8. He has continued to address the rocky and difficult relationship between the LGBTI and African-American communities.

The funny papers are changing. Not only are they becoming more inclusive, they are also becoming, well, paperless (I subscribe to three different comics sites and read five pages of funnies per day). Perhaps, some day soon, we will see a mainstream comic strip that centers around a gay, lesbian or trans character.

My thanks to Darren Bell for writing these three strips and making a very quiet statement about the illogic and idiocy of prejudice.

Sei is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. You can visit her Blogger profile here.

Mr. Bell lives in Los Angeles. His strip Candorville is set in a sort of mirror world and stars Lemont Brown as well as his friends Clyde (aka C-Dog) and Susan Garcia.

What follows are two strips entitled Pride and Prejudice 1 & 2.

Darrin Bell is the first African-American cartoonist with two strips simultaneously.

Bell writes and illustrates Candorville as well as illustrates the strip Rudy Park written in collaboration with Theron Heir. He attended UC Berkley where he studied political science.

Candorville Official Site:
http://candorville.com/

More Published Candorville:
http://comics.com/candorville
http://www.gocomics.com/candorville

Sei is a trans-lesbian who lives in Vermont and has a strong passion for LGBTI rights. She has a BA in History and her hobbies include sci-fi, anime, fantasy, action movies, video games, and more. You can visit her Blogger profile here.