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silverfoxesclub-digest
Thursday, November 16 2000
Volume 01 : Number 047

In this issue:

-Just a little fun - I hope!!!! (+ responses)
-QueerNet's Navidad Virus Solution
-To those writing about the virus
-Tasmania lifts cross-dressing ban
-Inside Queer as Folk

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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:48:36 +1300
From: "Peter"

Subject: Just a little fun - I hope!!!!

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".

2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.
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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:02:15 -0800
From: "Tonka"

Subject: fwd:- just a little fun

HA HA HA

brilliant peter...........i did have a good laugh at that. keep the funny's coming. I'm gonna out that up on my website :o)

all the best
Tonka
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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:14:44 -0800
From: "Tonka"

Subject: Oh Dear Me

I don't think i can take much more of this....................hehehe You guys are killing me here :o)

Love
Tonka
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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 17:39:46 -0700
From: "Darth Paul"

Subject: Re: Just a little fun - I hope!!!!

Then who is going to rule over us in Utah?? :)
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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 22:12:10 -0800
From: "Ben Boxer"

Subject: QueerNet's Navidad Virus Solution

QueerNet.Org has advised me that they have trapped the Navidad.exe virus attachments now, so no more of them should be coming to the list. We owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Klorese, our man at QueerNet.

Thank you, Roger!

Ben Boxer
in behalf of everyone at The Silverfoxes Club
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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:22:13 -0800

From: "Ben Boxer"
Subject: Tasmania lifts cross-dressing ban

Ben Boxer applauds: I used to know (biblically) an Australian sailor from Hobart (Tasmania) with a presumably male Taz (Tasmanian devil) tattooed on his beer belly. It was wearing a tutu (ballet skirt) and used to dance when he let loose his usual hearty laughs. I guess he can go home, now.

Headline:
Tasmania lifts cross-dressing ban

(The Advocate, 11/15/00)

Text:
The government in the Australian state of Tasmania on Tuesday lifted a 65-year-old ban on cross-dressing, Agence France-Presse reports. Itl was part of a series of such repeals of similarly outdated laws, including a ban against spending the night in a barn or outhouse. Tasmanian anticross-dressing laws have been used in the past, including the recent past, as a justification for harassment of transgendered people, said Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group. This change will eliminate an anachronistic and very damaging section of Tasmanian law.
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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:22:36 -0800
From: "Ben Boxer"

Subject: Inside Queer as Folk

Ben Boxer comments: I know a lot of you are waiting to see "Queer As Folk," a North American version of the gay TV series of the same name as the hugely successful one originally produced in Britain. It is being filmed by Showtime in Canada (shades of "The Kids in the Hall"!). Here is a current report on the production:

Headline:
Inside Queer as Folk: An exclusive, uncut, and uncensored look behind the scenes on location with Showtimes big, bad, gay bombshell

By Dennis Hensley
(The Advocate, 11/15/00)

Text:
The scene now being filmed on the Toronto location of Showtimes Queer as Folk series is set in the modest, comic bookstrewn Pittsburgh apartment of Michael, a sweet-natured but put-upon assistant department store manager. As the scene opens, Michael (played by former Talk Soup wiseacre Hal Sparks) is facing his bathroom mirror, nervously preparing for a date with Dr. Dave (Chris Potter of Silk Stalkings), a humpy chiropractor Michael fell for while lying facedown on his examining table.

Im putting a little rouge on my penis to make it look longer, quips Sparks, the shows unofficial morale-booster, just before the cameras roll. A nice horizontal stripe.

Action is called; theres a knock at the door. Michaels over-the-top roommate, Emmett (Peter Paige), skitters off to answer it, and in struts the wrong guyBrian, Michaels best friend and the shows resident shit-stirrer (played by sexy newcomer Gale Harold). Instantly the tension rises. Michael has long carried a torch for Brian, and Brian uses that to keep Michael where he wants him: beholden yet unfulfilled. Brians no sooner plopped himself down on the sofa and doffed his designer sunglasses than he starts making trouble by helping himself to the chocolate iclairs that Michael bought especially for his outing with Dr. Dave.

Insert it into your mouth in a phallic way, Gale, coaches the episodes director, Canadian film vet David Wellington, between takes. Make it a performance. Harold takes the note gamely and in subsequent takes looks longingly at the iclairs before swallowing them whole. Linda Lovelace would be proud.

This is such a blast, Harold chuckles after the scene is wrapped. I get to be the ultimate antihero every day. Like in the scene today, I was only there to cause problems. Like Stuart from the original U.K. Queer as Folk, on which the Showtime project is based, Brian is an Olympic-level bed hopper and completely unapologetic about it. Asked how many different sex-scene partners hes had so far, Harold laughs and says, Thats a hard question. He counts on his fingers for at least a half a minute, then gives up. Somewhere over 10.

Thats Brian, the bad boy who never grows up, laughs Dan Lipman, one of the shows executive producers, a bit later in the shows production office. (The set is now off-limits while Sparks and Potter shoot a love scene between Michael and Dr. Dave in Michaels childhood bedroom.) We all have friends that were not too wild about, but why do we like them? Well, because we understand. Still, Lipman is quick to point out that Queer as Folk has more to offer than men behaving badly. We have a whole tapestry of different kinds of gay characters, boasts the producer, who along with his work and life partner, Ron Cowen, created the series Sisters and the AIDS-themed TV movie An Early Frost, both of which won Emmys. Theres a domesticated lesbian couple with a child; Brian and Michael, who are about to turn 30, which is a certain kind of death in this world. Theres Ted, who is 33 and running after young guys who are inappropriate for him; Dr. Dave, who is in his late 30s and very relationship-oriented. Theres Michaels mother, Debbie, played by Sharon Gless, who is so overly supportive you want to strangle her. Theres also Michaels uncle, whos in his late 40s and has AIDS and [has been revitalized] because of the cocktails and has to deal with his life; and, of course, Justin, a 17-year-old gay young man who is not in conflict about his sexuality. This is not an after-school special where hes walking on the beach in scenes of emotional conflict

Adds Cowen, This is probably the first time in history that gay people will actually get a chance to see their lives portrayed truthfully on television with no restrictions and no censorship, unless Showtime kowtows to the MPAA ratings board. But it was certainly written and filmed with the intention of showing all aspects of gay life honestly. Yes, that includes foam parties, nipple piercings, recreational drug use, and scads of same-sex lovemaking scenes, including repeated couplings between our 29-year-old Jeep-driving, loft-living lothario, Brian, and our baby-faced but hungry for experience high schooler, Justin. Some gay people will be upset that straight people are seeing things that they would wish they would not see, asserts Cowen. But I think politically correct behavior is a form of internalized homophobia, that you are basically afraid to show straight people what your life is really like, and so you put forth a PC image out of fear.

For Thea Gill and Michelle Clunie, the actresses who play the lesbian couple, dramatizing the frustrations, expected and unexpected, that come with starting a family made for a refreshing challenge. It seems like any time I see lesbians portrayed in film, they have to be carrying guns and doing something dangerous, says Clunie, who plays no-nonsense attorney Melanie. Were just two women trying to cope with life. But that doesnt mean they dont get frisky. They are in sexual situations, vows Cowen. They make love; we see that.

Thats good news to Gill, who plays Melanies lover, Lindsay, a college art teacher who was artificially inseminated with her friend Brians sperm. Its been pretty subtle for us so far, so Michelle and I are like, OK, were ready for our big sex scene now! 

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End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #47
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