The Skeleton Dance, Voted the 18th Best Cartoon of All Time, Is Now in the Public Domain (1929)

The final lines of this strong recommendation add that ‘all takes place in a graveyard.

Source: The Skeleton Dance, Voted the 18th Best Cartoon of All Time, Is Now in the Public Domain (1929)

 

(I started a post, looked for a share link, and got this. We’ll see how it goes. I’m not up to much today, but this is so good I want to share it. Totally off topic, just enjoy.)

Music in the Morning

It’s a slideshow, with links. I love The Isley Brothers’s work!

Heard of The Isley Brothers? The Legendary Group is the Only Musical Act in History to Achieve This One Feat

After decades in the music business, the Cincinnati-born siblings have been covered by everyone from The Notorious B.I.G. to Ice Cube.

By Angela Johnson

Even if you weren’t around when the band got their start in the late 1950s, you’ve definitely experienced the music of The Isley Brothers. With a sound that combines R&B, rock, funk and soul, their music has been been heavily sampled and covered by the likes of Ice Cube, The Beatles and Whitney Houston.

But while you surely know their music, you may not know that the Cincinnati, Ohio-born siblings who were known for producing sexy love ballads actually started singing gospel music as teens. Despite label changes, family tragedies and a lawsuit between two of the original members, founding member Ronald and younger brother Ernie Isley still entertain fans with the songs that first made them famous in the 1960s.

To this day, The Isley Brothers are the only act in history to hit the Billboard Hot 100 in six consecutive decades: The 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Here is their story. (snip-go see the photos, listen to the music. While going through the early slides, why not turn on this? or this? )

https://www.theroot.com/heard-of-the-isley-brothers-the-legendary-group-is-the-1851732498

Any Excuse to Crank Up Muse

or no excuse at all, really, but they’re a fine accompaniment for this!

5 black holes stories to muse about

January 2, 2025 Imma Perfetto

There was no shortage of mind-bending new science about black holes this year, these are just 5 of our favourites.

Blast “Supermassive Black Hole” by English rock band Muse and enjoy!

Scientists take even crisper images of supermassive black holes

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration made the highest resolution black hole observations ever from the surface of Earth, capturing M87* and Sagittarius A* at the centres of the Messier 87 and Milky Way galaxies.

Read more.

Black hole “starving” galaxy to death

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) identified a black hole that confirmed the theory that some supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel needed to make new stars.

Read more.

Black holes are getting caught in “traffic jams”

The complex dynamics of black holes in the centres of galaxies, including how they slow down and interact with each other, were revealed in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Read more.

Largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered

The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission found a massive stellar black hole, named Gaia BH3, just 2,000 light years away in the constellation Aquila. It is 33 times the mass of our Sun, more than 50% bigger than the next biggest stellar black hole – Cygnus X-1.

Read more.

First black hole triple system discovered

A black hole was discovered with two orbiting stars for the first time. One star orbits the black hole, V404 Cygni, every 6.5 days. The other orbits at a significantly greater distance and makes the same trip every 70,000 years.

Read more.

Originally published by Cosmos as 5 black holes stories to muse about

A Great NYE Post From The Bee

I think the song is perfect! It’s always been one of my strength songs. 🍾 🌟

Beautiful.

Music for Good Causes

(I was not aware of some of these until I read this. -A)

I Learned A Thing Last Night

I’ve always wondered if somebody gave such performances, but had never heard of them before I read this. It makes my equality-driven heart happy.

The First Reality Competition Series for Drag Kings Is Officially Seeking Audition Tapes

Comedian and drag king Murray Hill will host King of Drag, the first-of-its-kind series.

By Mathew Rodriguez December 17, 2024

Finally, some news that’s not a drag.

Somebody Somewhere actor and veteran comedian Murray Hill is set to host a drag king reality competition series, The King of Drag, which will air on the LGBTQ+ streaming service Revry this spring, Variety reports. Tucked into Variety’s announcement was the application to be on the show, for which the deadline is January 5.

The King of Drag bills itself as the first drag king competition series. Kings looking to earn a spot on the show’s inaugural cast will have to submit a wealth of material, all of which is outlined on the audition site. Potential cast must submit five photos of their top drag looks, videos of themselves in and out of drag, and a reel of previous drag performances. Finally, auditioning kings are asked to submit a resume of their performance work in drag and film themselves lip-syncing to a song or medley that shows off their “drag essence.”

King of Drag, according to the audition site, “will expansively represent drag while promoting inclusion, authentic self-expression, and diverse gender identities including trans masc, cisgender women, non-binary and more.”

Aside from the audition materials, kings who want to compete on the series must also answer a slate of questions that probe deeper into their drag personae, personal views, and craft, including whether they design their own costumes, how comfortable they would feel being open about themselves on national television, who they count among their entertainer inspirations, and — very practically — how long it takes them to get in drag.

Series host Hill just wrapped up his work on Somebody Somewhere, the acclaimed — and extremely queer — HBO series about friends as family. The six-episode series is looking to cast eight kings.

“I’m so excited to be working with Revry as the host of ‘King of Drag,’” Hill told Variety.” “I started performing in 1995, so it’s long overdue for the kings to take center stage. This vibrant community deserves to be in the spotlight, and I’ll be their biggest hype man.”

According to a press release from Revry, the show will incorporate challenges that are unlike other drag competition shows, including an emphasis on comedy, unconventional performances, and “timely commentary on masculinity. “

Drag kings have long fought for the same kind of cultural recognition that their queen counterparts enjoy; in today’s media landscape that does include time on a reality competition series. While the behemoth of the format — RuPaul’s Drag Race and its spin-offs — has started to incorporate a more diverse set of queens, including trans queens and cis female queens such as Victoria Scone and Maddy Morphosis, the show has always emphasized a feminine drag aesthetic. Other shows, such as The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula have welcomed drag kings, with Landon Cider triumphing in the show’s third season.

How To Make Your Yuletide Extremely Gay, For Jesus by Evan Hurst

It’s the reason for the season! Read on Substack

Snippet (this is so very good, and a bit long, with videos, etc. embedded as well. I know it has blue language; also, it skews Christian, but there’s a point-not proselytization, but Representation-it’s encouragement for all to be who we are):

Flamy Grant, Spencer LaJoye and Crys Matthews, three of the artists on the Make The Yuletide Gay tour. (Courtesy Flamy Grant’s Insta)

Is the world still burning down? Is President Elon Musk shutting down the government, and are his pets Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson completely powerless to stop it?

Is this happening?

Oh dear God.

Who wants to take a well-deserved break from talking about all that shit because Christmas is in five days and fuck it?

Let’s shift gears.

In the wee few months since the inception of this right here Moral High Ground newsletter, we’ve talked about lots of things that fall within the site’s description, about white conservative right-wing Christian fascist men, the Phyllis Schlafly clones who support them, and the extremely weird fears, feelings, emotions and autoerotic Braveheart fantasies that make them The Way That They Are.

Obviously we’ve talked a lot in these weekly Friday newsletters about the election and its horrifying aftermath.

But there’s another element here that I said I wanted to be present in this newsletter from the very first post, no matter if it’s just a little Substack or if it somehow grows into a great big media network.

I said this place is called “The Moral High Ground” because the bigoted, misogynistic assholes standing in the way of everything that’s good and holy are 100 percent certain they are the sole possessors of that high ground. I said that’s a toxic tumor of an idea that is unfortunately still given a shameful amount of weight in our society. You see this any time a corporate media source feels the need to host a hate-mongering bigot from a right-wing Christian group, to give “both sides” of whether LGBTQ+ kids should be allowed to live with dignity, or whether people should be forced to submit their bodies to the state for regular uterus inspections.

And I said that toxic tumor of an idea unfortunately still survives within far too many of us who have personally been abused by the conservative Christian church, or who are still currently enduring its abuse. It can be subconscious, like a vicious disease you think is gone, but then it rears its ugly head when something triggers it, telling LGBTQ people they’re not good enough, that maybe they really are going to hell, telling closeted LGBTQ kids in homeschooling households in East Cowfucker, Kansas, that they will never be able to get out, that Jesus really couldn’t ever love them.

And I said fuck that shit.

I said this isn’t a support group, and it isn’t a Christian website, but it’s a safe place for literally whoever you are, and I want the negation of the toxic messages I was just talking about to be loud and clear, front and center at The Moral High Ground at all fucking times.

And I want to showcase and bring together other people who are doing that work in their own brilliant ways.

So let’s talk about Christmas, Christian music, Christian drag queens, lesbians, non-binary people, and just generally ridiculously brilliant Christian and Christian-adjacent artists who, number one, EXIST — that’s right, LGBTQ kids living in right-wing Christian hell, they EXIST! — and who are out there this holiday season making the yuletide extremely totally fuckin’ gay.

I’m talking about Flamy Grant, Crys Matthews, Jennifer Knapp, Spencer LaJoye and Heather Mae, who have been out on tour this month that’s literally called Make The Yuletide Gay. I got to see them — well, three of them — last Friday night in Memphis, and it was so good, y’all.

If you read Wonkette AKA my day job where I am the managing editor, you may have heard of Flamy Grant. I posted the video above in 2022 in a piece about how a gay wedding was happening at Amy Grant’s house, and how it was pissing off pigfucks like Franklin Graham, AKA the ickiest byproduct of Billy Graham’s participation in the human reproductive process.

I mentioned in my post that my own personal first concert was in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1991, Amy Grant, on the Heart In Motion tour, front row, Baby Baby! (My church youth group really had the hookup on that one, I guess.)

Then in 2023, Flamy Grant started taking over the Gospel and Christian charts, for the best, funniest reason. You see, this dildo-witted MAGA preacher named Sean Feucht was birthing entire full-grown cows because Grant — a Christian drag queen for whom listening to Amy Grant was also quite formative — had collaborated with Derek Webb, who had huge success in the Christian music world back in the day with a band called Caedmon’s Call. (Webb, you might deduce, is also in a bit of a different place these days.)

This was obviously a sign of The Last Days to excitable types like Sean Feucht. Also that loud flamboyant Greg Locke creep. He’s real exercised about Flamy Grant.

So God, being the way God is, thought it’d be funny to use that moment to make sure Grant’s song with Webb and the album it came from went straight to the top of the charts. The Gospel and Christian charts.

AND WHY SHOULDN’T THEY HAVE?

(snip-go read it!)

Finally Friday!

Have a poem. As always, the title is a link to learn more.

Blues Franchise David Henderson

Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif language rather than thought—intimately

Blues as art as theme as exhibition

Up on a midtown metropolis edifice

Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE

Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms

Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows

And Caucasoid wig solid black

touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment

A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry

Framing tightly the face, reposed

A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background

 
Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,

red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension

 
Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars

Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to

The moving doors

Always looking somewhere else as the

Masses travel to all destinations

Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum

For the franchise

Forever after for as far as the past goes.

 
Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth

A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures

interlocking directorates of high art residencies.

 
Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,

The presence of your body

 
                                              *

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

And into the blues

You

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

Vanish into the blue

you

Copyright © 2024 by David Henderson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 19, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

I Think I’m Gonna Hate It Here – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody