Author Archives: Joel Derfner

As long as I’m talking about prelapsarian pop music, I’d like to ask if anybody knows how the sixth line in Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” is punctuated. (I know that technically it’s Umberto Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi’s “Gloria” as translated by Trevor Veitch, but give me a break.)

Because I can’t figure out whether it’s this:

Are the voices in your head calling “Gloria”?

Or this:

Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?

If the song were in Sanskrit we wouldn’t have this problem, since feminine nouns ending in “a” decline differently in the nominative and vocative cases.

And if wishes were horses, they would long ago have trampled the warlords who have usurped our government into oblivion.

The original Italian lyrics are useless, as they’re essentially about something completely different.

The lack of any pause in the music between “calling” and “Gloria” suggests that the former interpretation is correct. However, the millenia-long pause between “head” and “calling” suggests that correct prosody was not high on the translator’s list of priorities.

Any ideas?

And here, at long last, is the video.

This honestly makes me proud to be gay.

Speaking of “It’s Raining Men,” I want to know if there’s anybody who reads this who hasn’t heard the song. I mean, what an absurd idea, but the young mystify me more and more these days so God only knows.

I ask because I found a copy of the original video and I want to post it because it’s so hilariously gay and cheesy–like, gayer than the Gingerbread Golden Girls and the Tribute to Ray Harryhausen put together–but I wouldn’t want such a post to be somebody’s first encounter with the song because the hilarity obscures the song’s brilliance now that we no longer tease our hair or wear belts wider than I-95.

So if you haven’t heard “It’s Raining Men,” email me and I’ll send it to you.

I’ll post the video in a few days.

Last night I dreamed that Barack Obama’s campaign song was “It’s Raining Men.”

I mean, I was already leaning towards voting for him.

But now he’s clinched it.

In just over a month, I will be making my professional début as an actor on the New York stage, in the Fringe Festival, in a pair of plays called Scout’s Honor and Becky’s Beaver. My character in Becky’s Beaver is apparently still under construction, but she is, I’m told, a fraidy-cat Girl Scout. In Scout’s Honor I will be playing a gay Cub Scout with an anxiety disorder. I’m a little worried that portraying a character so different from me will be difficult, if not impossible, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

The show will be performed by six actors; three men and three women. In Scout’s Honor all six of us will play boys, and in Becky’s Beaver all six of us will play girls. I got the call informing me I’d been cast a couple of weeks ago, and have spent the entire time since then hoping against hope that the character with whom I have a make-out scene will be played by a boy rather than by a girl, especially because there’s rope involved.

We had our first rehearsal last night, and not only is the character with whom I have a make-out scene played by a boy rather than by a girl, but the actor playing him is hot.

One day, when I was twelve, my mother walked in on me masturbating to The Love Boat.

Over the weekend, E.S. and I went to a wedding in Washington, D.C. In our hotel room the night before the event, we had the following conversation.

E.S.: I want to watch TV.
FAUSTUS: Fine by me.
E.S.: But the remote is all the way over there.
FAUSTUS: …
E.S.: Could you go get it for me?
FAUSTUS: No.
E.S.: Whore.
FAUSTUS: You know, it used to be that when I didn’t do what you wanted you called me a brat. Now you call me a whore.
E.S.: Well, our relationship has evolved.

I’m sorry, Isaiah Washington, but how stupid can you get?

Wow:

Cat Destroys Lloyd Webber’s Phantom Sequel Score

The award-winning composer told the London paper, “I was trying to write some new music; [my six-month-old cat] Otto got into the grand piano, jumped onto the computer and destroyed the entire score for the new Phantom in one fell swoop.”

Really, what else is there to say?

Tomorrow night, if you possibly can, you should come to the very last WYSIWYG event ever, Gays Gone Wild: Gay Tales of Gay Gayness. I’ll be performing, along with Kelli Dunham, Joe Jervis, Cheryl B, Rod Townsend, Amnesia Sparkles, and Leigh Thompson.

If you’ve never been to a WYSIWYG event before, this is your last chance. Don’t pass it up.