Tuesday 29 October 2013

THE TRUE COLOURS OF CYNDI LAUPER

Cyndi Lauper, circa 2013 (Photo courtesy Equipe Spectra)

Bugs' brand-new uber-queer interview with Cyndi originally ran in Daily Xtra. (A second, more mainstream interview ran in The Montreal Gazette.)

Queer audiences know Cyndi Lauper’s anthem, “True Colors,” is the theme song of the many star-studded True Colors tours she created to empower LGBT youth and benefit LGBT organizations and support groups across America.

But few people know that New York City’s True Colors Residence for homeless LGBT youth — which Lauper’s non-profit True Colors Fund built in partnership with New York’s West End Intergenerational Residence — was inspired by her close long-time friend Gregory, who was kicked out by his parents at the age of 12 when they discovered he was gay. “Gregory slept on park benches,” Lauper says today.

Shortly after Gregory died of AIDS in 1985, “True Colors” (written by songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly) was offered to Lauper.

“Songwriters pitch you songs in your style, and this song was originally written for Anne Murray. All I had was the melody and lyric. I sang it really softly,” a teary Lauper told me a year before the True Colors Residence opened in 2011. “And as time went on, I realized that with the True Colors Residence, Gregory [would] finally get his wish.”

Lauper recently told me that on opening day, “I put a little plant for Gregory in their garden.”

Wednesday 23 October 2013

THE HANGOVER: DIVA LAS VEGAS!


The Go-Go boys at Krave Las Vegas take 5 to pose for Three Dollar Bill 

(Photo by Bugs Burnett)

This travel column originally ran in the October 2013 issue of Fugues magazine
I pretty much didn’t draw a sober breath for five days when I visited Las Vegas this past summer with a motley crew of some of the world’s finest gay journalists. It was also my birthday, so I had a legit excuse.

Bugs enters Vegas limo with refreshments
But after listening to Old Vegas stories from my buddy, onetime chorus line dancer Michael Doughman, pretty much any excuse is reason enough to party in Vegas.

“Like any high-tourist town, local people tend to band together,” Michael told me. “They have their little groups and aren’t anxious to mingle with passers-though, invest time in people just for a few days and never see them again. Tourists are star struck when they come to Vegas, so there’s that starfucker mentality going on: ‘Oh yeah, I slept with one of the guys from this show or that show.’”