SHORT CUTS
Get your Summer on with these tracks that are perfect for whatever the HEAT has in store.
DIRTY PROJECTORS: “Swing Lo Magellan” Front man David Longstreth’s distinctive sound—the band is often likened to new-wave faves David Byrne and Squeeze, as well as pop goddesses Mariah Carey and Beyoncé—and use of arrangements and lo-fi/hi-fi production techniques are present-and-accounted-for, with sweet-as-honey harmonies and just the right amount of cognitive dissonance to amp you up for some Sunday afternoon touch football.
HOT CHIP: “In Our Heads” The Brit dance music has a sense of humor—and rhythm—with a new-wave throwback sound that will have the neighbors calling the cops, and ill electronic beats that will have you dancing back for more.
JUSTIN BIEBER: “Believe” The Beebs turned 18 this year (sorry, ped-ohs, and daddy-chasers, for that matter), and he hit 25 MILLION Twitter followers last month (that’s 6 million more than the entire population of New York State, Yo). On the album’s first single, “Boyfriend,” Jussy talks about all the things he’d do if he was yours. Is there a downside to this?
NENEH CHERRY AND THE THING: “The Cherry Thing” The half-Swedish/half-Sierra Leonean singer-songwriter-rapper (and half-sister of half-Swedish/half-African American musician Eagle-Eye Cherry) is best known for her 1988 hit “Buffalo Stance,” which packed the dance floor at many a Club Caribbean Resort T-Dance. Her new collaboration with Scandinavian jazz trio The Thing—who take their name from a track performed by Neneh’s stepfather, the late jazz cornetist Don Cherry—includes a cover of one of her Pop’s songs, as well selections from odd hip-hoppers Madvillain, and Big Apple punkers Suicide.
USHER: “Looking 4 Myself” The Crown Prince of R&B turns up the sexy for his seventh album. Track “Climax” scored at Number One on the R&B charts even before the LP’s release last month. You can almost believe Ursh is singing just to you when he belts out his “mm-mm-good”-est falsetto, luring you back into bed for one more round.
Making a SCENE
Wouldn’t That Make Her a “Fag Hag?” A recently-released clip from Lifetime TV’s “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp” shows 3-year-old Tripp Palin muttering an anti-gay slur, after his Aunt Willow refuses him a trip to the swimming pool. In the clip, Auntie Willow and Mamma B gasp in shock, before breaking out into moronic giggles, when the toddler’s tirade ends in him calling his mom’s 17-year-old sis a “faggot.”
You might recall that Willow sparked her own controversy in 2010, when she referred to a classmate on Facebook as “so gay,” and “such a faggot.”
Same-Species Divorce“We get the feeling they can’t stand the sight of each other.” – Helga Happ, zookeeper at the Klagenfurt Zoo, Austria, after the separation of two 115-year-old giant turtles—Bibi and Poldi, mates for over a century—that were on the verge of killing each other.
Married, With Gay Children Cast members from ABC’s mega-hit sitcom “Modern Family” filed suit last week in Los Angeles Superior Court to void their contracts. Ty Burrell, Julie Bowen, Sofia Vergara, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Eric Stonestreet (the latter two who star as gay partners Mitchell and Cameron) made their move amid a salary-standoff that has delayed the start of shooting on the series’ fourth season.
Sources say that star Ed O’Neill has joined his cast-mates as a plaintiff in the suit. Although O’Neill is paid on a different salary-scale, has his own salary beef with 20th TV, and is said to have joined the litigation in solidarity with his fellow actors. Millionaire Workers of the World, Unite!
A Guy Who Needs A Haircut? Them’s Fighting Words! The eldest son of Hollywood power couple Warren Beatty and Annette Bening has opened up publicly—on YouTube—about his transition from female to male. Stephen Ira Beatty, 20—who was born Kathlyn Elizabeth Beatty—calls himself “a trans-man, a faggy queen, a homosexual, a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist, and a guy who needs a haircut.” The younger Beatty, a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, blogs for WeHappyTrans.com.
America’s First Gay Astronaut
America’s first woman to rocket into space, , announced her coming out—one day after her death 
from pancreatic cancer. In the final line of an obituary co-written with her partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, they disclosed their relationship “of 27 years”—and nothing else. The space shuttle Challenger alumnus makes history as both the first American woman in space, and the first openly LGBT person (that we know of) to touch the face of Heaven. Ride, Sally, ride.
