Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Musician Eric Woolfson, a singer and songwriter best known as co-founder of progressive rock group Alan Parsons Project, has died. He was 64.

A songwriter since the early 1960s, Woolfson created 10 albums with Alan Parsons, an engineer who had worked on the Beatles' Abbey Road and on the Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon.

Their low-key albums, recorded with a revolving cast of session musicians, had a cult following, especially in Germany and the U.S. Their biggest selling album was 1982's Eye in the Sky.

Other albums included I Robot and Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

In the 1960s, Woolfson worked alongside two then-unknown writers, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Canada Border Services Agency are DINX

An award-winning film, on its way back to Canada from an international gay and lesbian film festival in October, was held up at the Canadian border for more than a month.

On Nov 24, Edmonton filmmaker Trevor Anderson received a letter from Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) informing him that his short film DINX had been detained on Oct 21 and was being investigated for obscenity. A few days later, the tape was returned to him in the mail.

"It concerns me that the determination of what gets into our country is in the hands of individual border guards," he says.

A fun parody and a call-to-arms

Bash’d – A Gay Rap Opera will be at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa from January 12-31.

Billed as “a gay rap opera,” the Edmonton-grown, Fringe-Fest-honed musical Bash'd has intrigued and titillated audiences in Canada and the United States. It garnered the 2007 Outstanding Musical Award at the New York International Fringe Festival and the 2008 GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award in the category of Off-Off-Broadway Production.

The plot follows two star-crossed lovers who fall in love and get hitched. As the name implies, one of the men is eventually gaybashed. Enraged at the brutal attack, his spouse vows revenge. That’s the opera part. The gay part, of course, is that the lovers are a couple named Jack and Dillon, who first meet in a gay bar.

The rap element is a twist that might initially perplex the average theatregoer. While there is indeed music, spoken word, and a bit of good old-fashioned poetry thrown in, this approximately hour-long production is presented and narrated almost completely through the medium of rap — by two MCs named Feminem and T-Bag.

Gay rap or hip hop, aka “homo hop,” has existed as an underground movement since the late ’90s, thanks to the influence of such pioneers as Tori Fixx and the Deep Dickollective. However, Nathan Cuckow, co-writer and co-performer of Bash’d, admits that he was unaware of the movement when he created the character of Feminem ten years ago, for Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret.

"I stayed in line as I was brought up to do."

Three months after suffering a stroke, Prairie Home Companion writer and broadcaster Garrison Keillor is more than ready to poke fun at the experience.

"I'm feeling fine," he said in an interview aired Wednesday on CBC's Q cultural affairs show. "If you're going to have a stroke, a minor one is the way to go."

Keillor, speaking from his studio in St. Paul, Minn., described why he drove himself to the hospital in Minneapolis after suffering a stroke this September.

"I didn't want to be any trouble to anybody, so, I got behind the wheel of my car," he said. "I felt a little odd, but I drove very carefully, very slowly, in the right-hand lane.

"And I got to the emergency room, and I stood in line as other people came up to the triage desk and talked about minor skin irritations and a mole that needed to be looked at and a possible ankle sprain. I stayed in line as I was brought up to do."

Keillor, author of Lake Wobegon Days and Life Among the Lutherans, has made a career out of satirizing his Calvinist upbringing, including its emphasis on never making a fuss.

"Sexually risky behaviour" NOT "Sexual orientation" for blood donations in Sweden

Sweden will lift its ban on gay blood donors as of March 1, 2010, but will restrict donations to gay men who have not had sex with a man for a year, national health authorities said Tuesday.

"Men who have had sex with men will no longer be permanently barred from donating blood," the National Board of Health and Welfare said in a statement released on World AIDS Day.

Sexual orientation will no longer determine whether a person can give blood. Instead, people who have engaged in "sexually risky behaviour" can be barred as donors for one year.

"Unscrupulous uses of the Olympic marks"

Police answering a 911 call about a home invasion in East Vancouver Wednesday found no break-in suspects when they arrived but did discover 107,000 ecstasy tablets, some imprinted with the Olympic rings symbol.

"The officer saw large bags of multi-coloured pills in plain view, which the officer believed to be consistent with ecstasy," Desmarais said.

Some of the tablets were stamped with peace signs and some with the Olympic rings.

Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee has vigorously pursued unlicensed use of the Olympic rings symbol in the past and a spokesman said it was aware of the Vancouver police seizure.

"This illustrates that there are and will be unscrupulous uses of the Olympic marks," said Bill Cooper, VANOC's director of commercial rights management. "Like the Vancouver police, we will continue to be diligent in our surveillance and rigorous followup."

[ Who cares about the ecstasy when the Olympic logo is being misused! ]

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"How long does this battle have to go on?"

The fallout from the blocking of three gay films at the border has reverberated across Parliament Hill. Queer MPs are universally outraged by what they see as a return to the era of Little Sister's struggles.

On Nov 20, an official with the Canada Border Services Agency flagged three films destined for Inside Out's Ottawa screenings — I Can't See Straight, Clapham Junction and Patrik, Age 1.5. The material was approved after the festival was over, and the delay left organizers scrambling to find replacement copies of the films to screen.

"It just seems so spiteful, so intolerant," says Davies. "I'm shocked that still, in this day and age, we're fighting a government who's determined to censor material for the queer community. What right do they have to do that?"

Ugandan law targeting gays is vile and hateful

The Canadian government is making its strongest defence yet of human rights for gays and lesbians, calling a proposed Ugandan law that would imprison and even execute homosexuals "vile and hateful."

The condemnation comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares to join leaders of Commonwealth countries at a meeting in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend.

The Ugandan "anti-homosexuality bill" is already spurring international calls for the country's suspension from the organization.

Peter Kent, minister of state for foreign affairs, said "Our position is that the proposed Uganda law is reprehensible, vile and hateful and it's appalling that such legislation would be brought to the parliament of a commonwealth democracy. "

... The new Chairman of the Commonwealth from Trinidad & Tobago doesn't seem much better.

CLICK HERE to read about the upcoming Commonwealth Summit.

CLICK HERE to see details about the Legal status of homosexuality worldwide as shown in the map above.

Focus on THIS family!

This movie was featured on a recent episode of In The Life, PBS's magazine show about gay, lesbian and transgendered issues.

In 1999 Reverend Greg Stewart preached about the dire need in Los Angeles County for foster and adoptive parents. Soon after, he and Stillman White, his partner of more than 20 years, opened their home to some of these children. Their priority was to keep siblings together, regardless of age, gender, or chance for success. Over the next three years, the men fostered and then adopted five children considered “at risk”and in desperate need of love and support they have never known.

CLICK HERE to visit the movie's website.