Gay Games Closing Ceremonies (& celebutante dinner)
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: What a great show. Gay Games Chicago organizers took account of the feedback from the Opening Ceremonies, which many people felt were too long and boring. They ruthlessly cut speeches and other ‘fat’ from the Closing Ceremonies rundown, so it really zipped right along, actually ending slightly under its planned three-hour run time. And unlike the Opening Ceremonies, the weather at Wrigley Field was bee-youtiful — clear, relatively dry, and about 79 degrees, with a slight breeze off nearby Lake Michigan. The performances were uniformly good. I especially loved Cyndi Lauper, dressed as a rainbow Statue of...
Watching the Pink Flamingoes
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: I’ve been at the Sirius studios in the Chicago Hilton for a lot of the week, making sure that all of our correspondents’ reports get on the air. Haven’t had as much of a chance to get out to Gay Games events as I would have liked. But finally, as we’ve gotten caught up on our production, I was able last night to see the famed Pink Flamingoes event at the Flames Natatorium (i.e. competitive diving pool) at the Univ of Illinois Chicago campus. This event happens at each Gay Games, and I understand, at national gay...
Gay Band Concert at the Park
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: The horrible heat wave has broken here in Chicago. It was actually pleasantly cool(er) and breezy tonight for the lovely Gay Games band concert in the amazing Frank Ghery-designed Millennium Park band shell. Naturally, nothing so sublime could go completely unsmirched. At the exit from the park, the self-deluded hypocrits from Repent America were staging a noisy anti-gay protest (covered in today’s Sirius OutQ News). Is it just me, or are the evangelicals who engage in this kind of public hate-mongering getting wierder, sadder, and frankly, less scary, as the years go by?
Gay Games Opening Ceremonies — the real deal
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: It’s late Sunday night — early Monday morning, actually — and I’m contemplating the beauty and spectacle of the Gay Games Opening Ceremony. When it was actually happening Saturday night, I couldn’t really let the experience wash over me because I was focused on describing what I was seeing for the audience. But at a distance of just over 24 hours, as I caption the photo’s I’ve uploaded to our Flickr site, I can see just how amazing it was to pull so many performers, athletes and spectators in the same, inspired direction. The producers of the...
Gay Games Opening Ceremonies rehearsal
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: John McMullen and I are sitting in the Sirius broadcast booth at Chicago’s famed Soldier Field, watching the Friday night dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony. As is the norm with this sort of thing, there are lots of stops and starts to take care of technical problems — wireless microphones not working and so on. There are also a few queer moments that arise when performers don’t make it to the dress rehearsal — and the producers send out technical personnel of the opposite sex to hold their place. For example, the plus-size White guy who...
Gay Games a-comin’
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: My sources tell me things are crazy at the Gay Games offices in Chicago as the clock ticks down to the spectacular Opening Ceremonies on Saturday night. Things are nearly as crazy here at Sirius OutQ, as we make our final preparations to cover the Games. Our plans are very ambitious: The first-ever live national broadcasts of the Gay Games opening and closing ceremonies. Four reporters providing a dozen daily updates that will air at the bottom of each hour starting on Monday. All that, plus a couple of daily stories for our signature top-of-the-hour newscasts. Oh,...