Arts & Entertainment
Thousands brave heat for pride parade, festival
Mayor, ten Council members march in parade
With the U.S. Capitol as a dramatic backdrop, tens of thousands of LGBT people and their friends and families jammed Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday for the District of Columbia’s 36th annual Capital Pride festival.
One day earlier, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and ten members of the 13-member D.C. City Council joined dozens of LGBT groups, colorful floats, marching bands, and thousands of individual marchers in the annual Capital Pride Parade, which snaked its way along city streets lined with thousands of spectators.
Gray also spoke at Sunday’s festival before introducing the day’s lead entertainer, Broadway actress and singer Jennifer Holliday, who debuted her new single “Magic,” marking the song’s word premiere.
Although city officials and police no longer provide official crowd estimates for large-scale events, Capital Pride organizers said they believe between 200,000 and 250,000 people turned out for the parade and festival.
“Everything was absolutely fantastic,” said Capital Pride spokesperson Scott Lusk. “All of our community partners and volunteers and attendees showed up in great numbers and with great enthusiasm. It was an absolute fantastic weekend.”
Eighteen-year-old Tiffany Johnson from Southeast D.C., who stood with a group of friends near the festival’s main stage just before Holliday began her performance, said this year’s festival represented the first time she had ever attended Capital Pride.
“It’s just awesome,” she said. “It’s just so great to be able to come out to something like this.”
Angelo Jimenez, 54, a resident of Richmond, Va., said this year’s festival marked the 31st consecutive year he has traveled to D.C. to attend the city’s Pride festival.
“I came for the first time in 1980 and haven’t missed a single year,” he said. “That tells you how much this means to me.”
Other festival attendees who approached the Blade’s booth identified themselves as residents of states up and down the mid Atlantic region as well as from the D.C. metropolitan area.
Gray and a contingent of city officials, including gay activist Jeffrey Richardson, director of the city’s Office of GLBT Affairs, walked along Saturday the entire parade route, which began at 22nd and P Streets, N.W., near Dupont Circle, and ended nearly two miles later at 14th and N Streets, N.W., near Thomas Circle.
Most of the Council members, including gay Council members David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), also walked or rode in cars along the full parade route.
The other Council members participating in the parade included Council Chair Kwame Brown (D-At-Large) and Council members Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), Michael Brown (I-At-Large), Vincent Orange (D-At-Large), Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6).
Gray had invited the Council members to join his contingent, which he named the “D.C. 41,” in recognition of the 41 city officials and activists, including Gray and six Council members, who were arrested in April outside a Senate office building near the Capitol in a protest against congressional intrusion in D.C. affairs.
But most of the Council members chose to march or ride in their own contingents just behind the mayor’s contingent.
Following closely behind the D.C. elected officials’ contingents was Adam Ebbin, the openly gay member of the Virginia House of Delegates from Alexandria, who is running for a seat in the Virginia Senate.
The parade was led by an escort of D.C. police cars staffed by members of the department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit.
Following closely behind the police escort was a contingent of leaders and supporters of the Trevor Project, a nationally recognized organization that works to prevent LGBT teen suicide. Capital Pride selected the Trevor Project contingent as the parade’s grand marshal.
A D.C. Public Schools contingent was among the parade contingents that attracted considerable attention and drew loud applause throughout the parade route. It included teachers, parents, and elementary school kids, with some waving rainbow flags.
Similar to past years, D.C.’s Different Drummers, the city’s LGBT marching band, and the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps Marching Band of New York City marched and performed in the parade.
Capital Pride organizers said they were especially pleased with the wide diversity of groups and vendors that participated in both the parade in festival. In addition to a large number of national and local LGBT organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, and the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, LGBT oriented religious, sports, and social groups participated in both event, organizers said.
A number of the city’s gay bars and nightclubs also had colorful floats in the parade. Bathing suit clad men danced to music blaring from a float from Nellie’s Sport Bar. Drag performers and male go-go dancers in bathing suites also danced to music broadcast from loud speakers atop two large flatbed trucks that made up the float for Ziegfeld’s-Secrets, the gay club in Southwest D.C. that features drag shows and male strippers.
A number of new commercial and corporate venders participated in this year at the festival, according to Capital Pride officials. Among them were the Saab automobile company and Macy’s department stores. Both were among this year’s Capital Pride corporate sponsors.
Among some of the others displaying their information at festival booths were the Goddard Space Flight Center Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Advisory Committee; the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art; the Gay-Straight Alliance of Montgomery Blair High School in Montgomery County, Md.; the Embassy of Sweden; Amtrak; the Capital Cat Clinic; the D.C. Office of Human Rights and D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.
Capital Pride board president Michael Lutz said this year’s festival included expanded family related activities, with a special family section that provided children’s games and children’s entertainment.
The Washington Nationals Baseball Team also had a presence at the festival, with at least one of its “racing presidents,” actors dressed as past U.S. president with oversized puppet-like heads, walking through the festival grounds.
The Nationals are hosting the annual LGBT “Night Out at the Nationals” game on June 21, which is sponsored by the local LGBT sports group Team D.C.
Capital Pride officials have said it costs about $500,000 to put on the annual D.C. pride events, including the parade and festival. Lutz said contributions from corporate sponsors, at least 25 local and national LGBT and LGBT-supportive organizations who sign on as Pride Community Partners, and fundraising events generate the funds needed to pay for Capital Pride.
“We’re in great shape financially,” said Lutz, who noted that a full accounting of the group’s finances is released each year after an independent accountant completes the bookkeeping process.
The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch was held at Salamander Washington DC on Sunday, April 19. Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) was presented with the Allyship Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The umbrella LGBTQ sports organization Team D.C. held its annual Night of Champions Gala at the Georgetown Marriott on Saturday, April 18. Team D.C. presented scholarships to local student athletes and presented awards to Adam Peck, Manuel Montelongo (a.k.a. Mari Con Carne), Dr. Sara Varghai, Dan Martin and the Centaur Motorcycle Club. Sean Bartel was posthumously honored with the Most Valuable Person Award.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Television
‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
In the years since “Schitt’s Creek” wrapped up its six season Emmy-winning run, nostalgia for it has grown deep – especially since the still painfully recent loss of its iconic leading lady, Catherine O’Hara, whose sudden passing prompted a social media wave of clips and tributes featuring her fan-favorite performance as the deliciously daft Moira Rose. Revisiting so many favorite scenes and funny moments from the show naturally reminded us of just how much we loved it, even needed it during the time it was on the air; it also reminded us of how much we miss it, and how much it feels now like something we need more than ever.
That, perhaps more than anything else, is why the arrival of “Big Mistakes” – the new Netflix series starring, co-created and co-written by Dan Levy – felt so welcome. We knew it wouldn’t be the Roses, but it seemed cut from the same cloth, and it had David Rose (or at least someone who seemed a lot like him) in the middle of a comically dysfunctional family dynamic, complete with a mother who gets involved in town politics and a catty sibling rivalry with his sister, and still nebbish-ly uncomfortable in his own gay shoes. Only this time, instead of running a charmingly pretentious boutique, he’s the pastor of the local church, and instead of a collection of kooky small town neighbors to contend with, there are gangsters.
As it turns out, it really does feel cut from the same cloth, but the design is distinctly different. Set in a fictional New Jersey suburb, it centers on Nicky (Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) – he openly gay with an adoring boyfriend (Jacob Gutierrez), yet still obsessive about keeping it all invisible to his congregation, and she drudging aimlessly through life as an underpaid schoolteacher after failing to achieve her New York dreams of show biz success – who inadvertently become enmeshed in a shady underworld when a gesture for their dead grandmother’s funeral goes horribly awry.
They’re surrounded by a crew of equally compromised characters. There’s their mother Linda (Laurie Metcalf), whose campaign to become the town’s mayor only intensifies her tendency to micromanage her children’s lives; Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the Turkish-American mini-mart operator who pulls them into the criminal conspiracy yet is himself a victim of it; Max (Jack Innanen), Morgan’s live-in boyfriend, who pushes her for a deeper commitment and is willing to go to couples’ therapy to prove it; Annette, his mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who lends her society standing toward helping Linda’s campaign against a misogynistic opponent (Darren Goldstein); and Ivan (Mark Ivanir), the seemingly ruthless crime boss who enslaves the siblings into his network but may really be just another slave himself. It’s a well-fleshed out assortment of characters that helps our own loyalties shift and adapt, generating at least a degree of empathy – if not always sympathy – that keeps everyone from coming off as a merely “black-and-white” caricature of expectations and typecasting.
To be sure, it’s an entertaining binge-watch, full of distinctive characters – all inhabiting familiar, even stereotypical roles in the narrative – who are each given a degree of validation, both in writing and performance, as the show unspools its narrative. At the same time, it makes for a fairly bleak overall view of humanity, in which it’s difficult to place our loyalties with anyone without also embracing a kind of “dog eat dog” morality in which nobody is truly innocent – but nobody is completely to blame for their sins, anyway.
In this way, it’s a show that lets us off the hook in the sense that it places the idea of ethical guilt within a framework of relative evils, as it permits us to forgive our own trespasses by accepting its “lovably” amoral characters, each of whom has their own reasons and justifications for what they do. We relate, but we can’t quite shake the notion that, if all these people hadn’t been so caught up in their own personal dramas, none of them would have ended up in the compromised morality that they’re in.
However, it’s not some bleak morality play that Levy and crew undertake; rather, it’s more an egalitarian fantasy in which even “bad” choices feel justified by inevitability. Everybody’s motivations make enough sense to us that it’s hard to judge any of the characters for making the choices – however unwise – that they do. In a system where everyone is forced to compromise themselves in order to achieve whatever dream of self-fulfillment they may have, how can anybody really blame themselves for doing what they have to do to survive?
Of course, all things considered, this is more a relatable comedy than it is a morality play. As a comedy of errors, it all works well enough on its own without imposing an ideology on it, no matter how much we may be tempted to do so. Indeed, what is ultimately more to the point is how well this pseudo-cynical exercise in the normalization of corruption – for that is what it really about, in the end – succeeds in letting us all off the hook for our compromises.
In the end, of course, maybe all that analysis is too deep a dive for a show that feels, in the end, like it’s meant to be mostly for fun. Indeed, despite its focus on being dragged into the shady side of life, the arc of its messaging seems to be less about a moralistic urge toward making the “right” choice than it is a candid recognition that all of us are compromised from the outset, often by choices we only force upon ourselves, and that’s a refreshing enough bit of honesty that we can easily get on board.
It helps that the performances are on point, especially the loony and wide-eyed fanaticism of Metcalf – surely the MVP of any project in which she is involved – and the directly focused moral malleability of Ortega; Levy, of course, is Levy – a now-familiar persona that can exist within any milieu without further justification than its own queer relatability – and, in this case, at least, that’s both the icing on the cake and substance that defines it. That’s enough to make it an essential view for fans, queer or otherwise, of his distinctive “brand,” even if he – or the show itself – doesn’t quite satisfy in the way that “Schitt’s Creek” was able to do.
Seriously, though, how could it?
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‘Big Mistakes’ an uneven – but worthy – comedic showcase
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