The Doctor is OUT!

Doctor Who is cool again. It is also considerably queerer than it ever was in its long-wool-scarf/wobbly-spaceship-walls heyday in the 70's. Consider for a moment:

-- "Queer as Folk" creator Russell T Davies brought the franchise back and is the head writer, script editor and executive producer. He is a big Welsh nurse of a queen.

-- Star David Tennant has injected a welcome dose of hipster-hotness to the role.







-- Broadway-musical star (and giant 'mo) John Barrowman plays a recurring character who will sleep with ANYONE or ANYTHING!


But also, please consider that the programme's legions and legions of gay male fans are finally getting their due at the fagulous London Pride festivities:

"As reported by PinkNews, the final episode of Series Three of Doctor Who, The Last of the Time Lords, is being broadcast on the same day as the London Pride Festival...
Organizers of the event, in an effort to not make gay Who fans choose between the annual celebration,... plan to carry the live BBC broadcast of the episode at 7:10 p.m. on a big screen at the event's main stage in Trafalgar Square. And if that's not enough to get gay fans out to the event, they've also arranged to have John Barrowman co-host the event with Graham Norton. The event kicks off at 3:00 following the Pride parade through town and concludes with the broadcast of [the Series Three finale]."

The fagulosity (Barrowman AND Graham Norton!?!) and sheer geekiness of this event nearly puts me over the edge.

Ah...to be in England...in the summertime...with Doctor Who...and a sea of 'mos...
What bliss!



(News clipping courtesy of Outpost Gallifrey. Photos from Auntie Beeb.)

The Kelly Clarkson Debate

Miss Kelly, at her best, is a spectacular vocalist. I think even her first and less listened-to album "Thankful" is a great album to listen to - whatever you think about the quality of the songs themselves - because she sang the shit out of them. I must admit nurses, though, that I'm perplexed by this situation with her managers and her fued with Clive Davis. Here's why...

A) I've been listening to tracks from the new and hotly contested album "My December" on AOL first listen and I have to say they sound like B-sides from Breakaway. Does "Never Agiain" not sound like a poor man's Since U Been Gone? And does it not make a certain amount of NO SENSE? Like how one minute she'll be with you forever and then the next moment you're never gonna have her again? Perhaps if the song was titled Spectral-Ex-Girlfriend-With-Mixed-Motives I would give more of a shit.

B) I really don't approve of Kelly constantly singing these songs that damage her voice. Did you hear her attempting to perform "Since U Been Gone" at the Olympics? She's just screeching; no sound is able to come out. I understood one album of angry girl songs but maybe she really did all she could with that and now it's time for her to pull a Christina and morph into Baby Jane?

C) People keep assuming that this brush up is about Clive Davis to not want Kelly to write her own songs, as though he were in some way anti-Kelly as a writing artist, a Mr. Burns going "mwoo-ha-ha" as he denied her the right to express herself. But could it be that the songs she worked on just turned out to be not that good? And considering that his obligation as a producer is to sell albums to people who liked her singing a higher caliber song, why shouldn't he object? And considering the new album isn't as good, why shouldn't her fans object? And considering she's an artist, why shouldn't she do whatever the hell she wants anyway despite the objections of fans and producers because that's what artists do - they expore and sometimes it leads to hits and sometimes it leads to misses?

D) Why is this news? This is old as the struggle between art and commerce. When Amy Winehouse's label wants to fire her for vomitting on fans, that's news because she's doing something outrageous. When an evil corporate entity tries to squash an artist for expressing unpopular political opinions, that's news because that's outrageous. What's happening here seems like the age old push and pool of production companies wanting control and artists wanting freedom, and I just can't believe how I keep getting rooked into clicking on these headlines and then once again nothing that interesting has happened.

So, fagulous nurses, what do we think? Is anyone in the right here? Should we be ragging on Clive or Kelly or should we just stop paying so much attention?