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Out & About: June 15

Drag exhibit in Alexandria, bachelor auction in Rehoboth and more in D.C., Baltimore and beyond

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Eligible bachelors up for auction in Rehoboth

CAMP Rehoboth hosts its annual Boys of Summer Bachelor Auction at the Aqua Grill (37 Baltimore Ave. Rehoboth Beach, Del.) on Saturday from 5-7 p.m. Guests can bid on Rehoboth’s finest bachelors and all proceeds benefit the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.

CAMP Rehoboth is a nonprofit community service organization dedicated to fostering more harmonious relations among the different communities of Rehoboth Beach.

Bachelor Auction attendees can first mingle with the bachelors at the Meet-The-Bachelors Preview Party hosted by Universal Gear (46 Baltimore Ave. Rehoboth Beach, Del.) from 5:30-7 p.m. on Friday. Refreshments are served.

Winning bidders at the auction on Saturday receive dinner for two at a popular Rehoboth restaurant. Admission is free. For more information, visit CAMPRehoboth.com or call 302-227-5620.

Montgomery College Pride to host consortium

Montgomery College Pride and Allies hosts a consortium dubbed LGBTQ Advocacy on Our Campuses on June 22 from 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. at Montgomery College (Health Sciences Building 7977 Georgia Ave. Silver Spring, Md.).

Campus faculty, staff, administrators and LGBT activists will discuss how to promote LGBT acceptance by sharing their own experiences and strategies. Luke Jensen, Director of LGBTQ Equity Office at University of Maryland at College Park, will be the keynote speaker.

Refreshments will be provided. Registration is free but required to attend the event. Email [email protected] to register. Visit montgomerycollege.edu/tphome for more details.

'It Just Landed On My Head,' a work by Louise Noakes honoring drag queens. (Image courtesy Noakes)

Photography exhibit pays tribute to drag performers

“Tribute to the Queens,” an art exhibit with pieces by mixed-media photographer Louise Noakes, will be featured in the Multiple Exposures Gallery of the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria (105 Union St. #312 Alexandria, Va.) starting Monday and running through July 29.

Noakes was inspired to start this project two years ago after taking a photograph at a drag brunch she attended with her 17-year-old daughter. Instead of just leaving the photographs as they are, she reduces them to more solid colors, producing what she calls “Pop Queen” art.

Many of the prints in the exhibit are available for purchase. For details, visit louisenoakes.com or call 703-634-5857.

California Dreams Ball benefits Project LINQ

The Baltimore Chapter of Pinklady and the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Project LINQ host a California Dreams Ball in celebration of Baltimore Gay Pride on Saturday from 6-9 p.m.

Project LINQ, a community-based and youth-focused program, provides STD and HIV-prevention education, free confidential STD community-based testing, LGBT and minority youth programs and education services that provide HIV testing for smaller to moderate-sized groups.

The California Dreams Ball will focus on unity among LGBT community members and the prevention of HIV throughout Baltimore. It’s free and open to the public and will include non-profit organization tabling with information. The event will be held at 1030 Morton St. in Baltimore within the parking lot.

For more details, visit umaryland.edu or call 410-706-4162.

Marylanders for Marriage Equality to host reception

Marylanders for Marriage Equality hosts a reception with the LGBT Caucus of the Maryland General Assembly on Saturday from 2-4 p.m. at City Café (1001 Cathedral St. Baltimore).

Marylanders for Marriage Equality is a coalition of organizers, including the NAACP-Baltimore Chapter and Equality Maryland, among many others, that works for civil marriage rights in Maryland.

Tickets to the reception are $75 for guests, $1,000 for hosts and $2,000 for sponsors. To RSVP, contact Sophia Silbergeld at 410-547-8884 or [email protected].

For more information on the reception, visit equalitymaryland.org.

Bonnie Raitt performs live at Pier Six Pavillion

Bonnie Raitt performs Sunday night with Mavis Staples at Pier Six Pavilion (731 Eastern Ave. Baltimore). Gates open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 7:30.

Raitt has won nine Grammys and was named one of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” by Rolling Stone. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Her new album “Slipstream” is her first in seven years and is her first independent release.

Tickets range from $30-75 and can be purchased online at piersixpavillion.com.

Santigold performs at Rams Head Live

Santigold performs at Rams Head Live (20 Market Place Baltimore) on Tuesday night with Theophilus London. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the concert is open to all ages.

Santi White is the charismatic frontwoman of Santigold. John Hill, a member of the ska-punk band Stiffed, helps White produce her sound. Santigold is a mix of punk, reggae, grime and indie rock influences, along with tribal island rhythms.

Tickets are $30 and can be purchased from ramsheadlive.com.

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Television

ICYMI: ‘Overcompensating’ a surprisingly sweet queer treat

A sweet, savvy show about breaking free to embrace your true self

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Holmes, Benito Skinner and Wally Baram in ‘Overcompensating.’ (Photo courtesy of MGM Amazon)

Pride month 2025 is now behind us, and while it’s safe to say that this year’s celebrations had a darker edge than usual, it’s also true that they came with a particularly rich bounty of new queer movies and shows to entertain us – so many, in fact, that even if we are facing a lull until the fall another harvest of fresh content, there are still plenty of titles – which, for whatever reason, were off your radar – for you to catch up on in the meantime.

One of the most notable of these –  the bingeworthy series “Overcompensating” (now streaming on Amazon Prime) – will most definitely have been ON the radar for the plentiful fans of creator and star Benito Skinner, the actor/comedian who rose to viral fame through his content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. For anyone else, it might have easily slipped through the cracks.

Created and written by Skinner as a loosely autobiographical “college comedy,” it aims for the kind of raucous, explicitly sexed-up tone one expects from the genre as it centers on Benny (Skinner), newly arrived as a freshman at prestigious Yates University. A former football jock and “golden boy” at his midwestern high school, he’s the picture of idealized youthful masculinity; he’s also deep in the closet, struggling to keep his sexuality hidden and maintain his macho front under the intense scrutiny of the college’s social scene – and under the resentful eye of his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone), who has already secured her own place at the top of the pecking order.

In the first episode, Benny’s difficulties are eased when he meets Carmen (Wally Baram), another freshman trying to navigate the politics of college life; a gamer from a home marred by tragedy, she’s an outsider who feels like she’s putting on an act, too, and they click – giving him the convenient “cover” of female companionship while providing them both with much-needed support and encouragement. He’s also befriended by a handsome film major from England (Rish Shah), who has already caught his eye, stirring other kinds of feelings and possibly even reciprocating them. Meanwhile, he’s being courted by the school’s “exclusive secret society” – headed by his sister’s aggressively “alpha” boyfriend Pete (Adam DiMarco) – and trying to stay interested in his studies, despite a growing realization that a career in business doesn’t actually appeal to him all that much.

That’s a lot to juggle for anybody, even an overachiever like Benny – whose “lucky” life so far has largely been the result of playing a role he is finding harder and harder to maintain. As the series goes on through its eight-episode arc, it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who is “keeping up appearances,” and he, along with the other confused and damaged young people in his orbit, begins the painful (but often hilarious) process of evolution that is required in order to become truly oneself.

Directed toward appealing to a younger demographic, “Overcompensating” is the kind of show that requires a few episodes worth of invested time to make an impression that feels like substance. Full of the bawdy farcical antics that go hand in hand with stories about hormonally charged college kids, it’s not above leaning into the formulas and tropes that have always driven these kinds of comedies. At first, while its broadly comedic strokes and frequently explicit sexual hijinks might elicit plenty of chuckles, the show might easily feel tiresome for more mature audiences; there’s a nostalgic fun to it, made even more appealing, somehow, by the “political incorrectness” of its frequently sexist and homophobic humor, but for a while things may feel like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent “Animal House” for the Gen Z crowd.

By the time the season reaches its halfway point, however, things have started to get real. The antics of these horny almost-adults take on a more pointed absurdity, informed by the increasingly tangled web of defensive deceit they weave among themselves – and, as things draw toward a cliffhanger climax, the consequences of maintaining it – until it achieves a sense of empathy toward them all. There’s a wisdom that smacks of lived authenticity underlying the whole affair, transforming it from the “sexploitative” teen comedy of its surface into something deeper. To be sure, things stay expectedly wacky, and the soap-operatic melodrama of its twists and reversals continue to maintain the show’s “mature YA” appeal; but beneath those trappings, by the end of the season a truer identity has begun to emerge, just as its characters have begun to find their own levels of self-actualization for themselves.

As creator, primary writer, and star, it’s obviously Skinner who deserves much of the credit. While it might be tempting, early on, to dismiss the show as an “ego project,” the internet-spawned sensation proves his talents quickly enough to get past such judgy suspicions, delivering a pitch-perfect blend of sauciness and sensitivity that extends its appeal toward both ends of the taste spectrum; just as crucially, he brings the same aforementioned “lived authenticity” to his winning performance – after all, he’s essentially playing himself in a fictionalized version of his own life – while also making sure that equal time (and compassion) is afforded all the other characters around him, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of their own respective “closets,” too. It’s unavoidable to notice that – like most of his co-stars – he’s plainly a decade too old to be playing a college student; but by the time we reach that crucial halfway turning point, we’ve become too engaged by him to care.

The show is full of excellent performances, in fact. Relative newcomers Baram and Barone offer layers of complex nuance, while the more familiar DiMarco (“White Lotus”) is close to heartbreaking as the toxic BMOC clinging to the illusion of power as his life begins unraveling around him. Other standouts include the mononymic actress Holmes as Carmen’s “wild child” roommate, solidly likable turns as Benny’s parents from mature veterans Connie Britten and Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence, along with stylish elements in several key scenes, hints at an homage-ish nod to the late David Lynch), and podcaster Owen Thiele as an openly gay fellow student who has Benny “clocked” from the moment they meet. Finally, Lukas Gage makes a deep impression as a former high school teammate at the heart of Benny’s most haunting memory.

There’s no official word yet on whether “Overcompensating” will be renewed for a second season, despite the multiple loose ends left dangling at the end of its first; it has proven to be popular, and Skinner’s large fanbase makes it likely that the story will continue. Even if it doesn’t, the place of uncertainty in which it has left its characters rings true enough to serve as a satisfying endpoint.

As for us, we hope that won’t happen. For all its sophomoric humor, generic plot twists, and purposefully gratuitous sexual titillation, it’s one of the sweetest, kindest, and most savvy shows we’ve seen about breaking free from conformity to embrace your true self – and that’s a message that applies whether you’re queer, straight, or anywhere in between.

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Photos

PHOTOS: Independence Day Weekend in Rehoboth

Wicked Green Pool Party, fireworks among festivities

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A fireworks show was held in Rehoboth Beach, Del. on Saturday, July 5. (Washington Blade photo by Daniel Truitt)

Vacationers and residents alike enjoyed Independence Day Weekend activities in Rehoboth Beach, Del. The Wicked Green Pool Party drew hundreds to the CAMP Rehoboth fundraiser on Saturday. That evening, revelers went to the rooftops to watch the fireworks display.

(Washington Blade photos by Daniel Truitt)

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Music & Concerts

Red, White, and Beyoncé: Queen Bey takes Cowboy Carter to D.C. for the Fourth of July

The legendary music icon performed on July 4 and 7 to a nearly sold-out Northwest Stadium.

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Beyoncé performs on July 7. (Washington Blade photo by Joe Reberkenny)

Just in time for Independence Day, Beyoncé lit up Landover’s Commanders Field (formerly FedEx Field) with fireworks and fiery patriotism, bringing her deeply moving and genre-defying “Cowboy Carter” tour to the Washington, D.C. area.

The tour, which takes the global icon across nine cities in support of her chart-topping and Grammy-winning country album Cowboy Carter,” landed in Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the Fourth of July weekend. From the moment Beyoncé stepped on stage, it was clear this was more than just a concert — it was a reclamation.

Drawing from classic Americana, sharp political commentary, and a reimagined vision of country music, the show served as a powerful reminder of how Black Americans — especially Black women — have long been overlooked in spaces they helped create. “Cowboy Carter” released in March 2024, is the second act in Beyoncé’s genre-traversing trilogy. With it, she became the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album and also took home the coveted Album of the Year.

The record examines the Black American experience through the lens of country music, grappling with the tension between the mythology of the American Dream and the lived realities of those historically excluded from it. That theme comes alive in the show’s opening number, “American Requiem,” where Beyoncé sings:

“Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don’t, don’t know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song…”

Throughout the performance, Beyoncé incorporated arresting visuals: Black cowboys on horseback, vintage American iconography, and Fox News clips criticizing her genre shift — all woven together with voiceovers from country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The result was a multimedia masterclass in storytelling and subversion.

The “Cowboy Carter” tour has been a social media sensation for weeks, with fans scrambling for tickets, curating elaborate “cowboy couture” outfits, and tailgating under the summer sun. At Commanders Field, thousands waited in long lines for exclusive merch and even longer ones to enter the stadium — a pilgrimage that, for many, felt more like attending church than a concert.

One group out in full force for the concert was Black queer men — some rocking “denim on denim on denim on denim,” while others opted for more polished Cowboy Couture looks. The celebration of Black identity within Americana was ever-present, making the concert feel like the world’s biggest gay country-western club.

A standout moment of the night was the appearance of Beyoncé’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Commanding the stage with poise and power, she matched the intensity and choreography of her mother and the professional dancers — a remarkable feat for someone her age and a clear sign that the Carter legacy continues to shine.

It’s been nearly two decades since Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child parted ways, and since then, she’s more than lived up to her title as the voice of a generation. With Cowboy Carter,” she’s not just making music — she’s rewriting history and reclaiming the space Black artists have always deserved in the country canon.

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