Arts & Entertainment
Calendar through September 12
Ana Matronic, Blondie in town, parties on tap for weekend
Friday, September 6
Friday, September 6Adodi, a same-gender-loving men’s group, hosts its bi-monthly potluck from 7-9 p.m. tonight at a member’s home in Burke, Va. For more information, email [email protected].
Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) hosts its monthly “So, You Think You’re A Drag Queen?” tonight at 10:30 p.m. The winner will earn $200 and is chosen by the audience. Cover is $10 all night for guests 18-20 and $5 for guests 21 and over before 11 p.m. For details, visit towndc.com.
OUT NVA hosts “Gay Night Out,”, a bar crawl on King Street for charity, starting at 6 p.m tonight. Begin the night at Rock-It Bar (1319 King St., Alexandria Va.) with a drag show and happy hour. Purchase a wristband for $10 to aid nurses going to Haiti and receive Purple Drink Specials at each bar. For more details, visit facebook.com/OUTNVa.
The District of Columbia Arts Center (2438 18th St., N.W.) hosts its annual “1460 Wallmountables” exhibition through Sunday. Almost 100 artists feature over 300 works on 2×2 foot spaces in a range of styles and media. For details, visit dcartscenter.org.
Whitman-Walker Health provides free HIV testing at Bachelor’s Mill (1104 8th St., S.E.) from 10 p.m.-12:30 a.m. tonight. For more information, visit whitman-walker.org.
Saturday, Sept. 7
Burgundy Crescent, a gay volunteer organization, volunteers today for a lost dog and cat rescue foundation at Falls Church PetSmart (6100 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church, Va.) from 11:45 a.m-3 p.m. today. For more details visit burgundycrescent.org.
Ana Matronic, Scissor Sister’s front woman and long time LGBT advocate, performs tonight at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.). Doors open at 10 p.m. and cover charge is $8 from 10-11 p.m. and $12 after 11 p.m. Admission is limited to guests 21 and over. For details, visit towndc.com.
Adventuring, an LGBT outdoors group, hosts a hike through Paw Paw Tunnel near Cumberland today. The group meets at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station (10300 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Md.) at 9 a.m., and then walks through the tunnel to the banks of the Potomac and back through the tunnel. Transportation and trip fees are $25. For more information, visit adventuring.org.
Phase 1 of Dupont (1415 22nd St., N.W.) hosts its weekly “Booty Beach Ladies Dance Party” tonight. The winner of the party’s bikini and board shorts contest will receive cash and prizes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and admission is $5. For more details, visit phase1dc.com.
Sunday, Sept. 8
Burgundy Crescent, a gay volunteer organization, volunteers today for the D.C. Central Kitchen (425 2nd St., N.W.) from 9 a.m.-noon. For more information, visit burgundycrescent.org.
Perry’s (1811 Columbia Rd., N.W.) hosts its weekly “Sunday Drag Brunch” today from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. The cost is $24.95 for an all-you-can-eat buffet. For more details, visit perrysadamsmorgan.com.
The Arlington Gay & Lesbian Alliance (AGLA) hosts an ice cream social and firehouse tour at Aurora Highlands Community Center (735 18th St., South, Arlington, Va.) from 3-6 p.m. today. Free for AGLA members. Non-AGLA members suggested donation is $10. Firehouse tour is from 3-3:30 p.m. For details, visit agla.org.
Monday, Sept. 9
Blondie performs with X at the 9:30 Club (815 V St., N.W.) at 7 p.m. tonight. Tickets are $43 and include exclusive new music download codes from Blondie. For details, visit 930.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k20jR3FwEIU
The D.C. Center (1318 U St., N.W.) hosts coffee drop-in hours this morning from 10 a.m.-noon for the senior LGBT community. Older LGBT adults can come and enjoy complimentary coffee and conversation with other community members. For more information, visit thedccenter.org.
Nellie’s Sports Bar (900 U St., N.W.) hosts its weekly “Poker Face” poker game night at 8 p.m. Free to play. For details, visit nelliessportsbar.com.
Tuesday, Sept. 10
Whitman-Walker Health provides free HIV testing at Giant (1535 Alabama Ave., S.E.) from 7-9 p.m. tonight. For more information, visit whitman-walker.org.
Trans Legal and Whitman-Walker Health host a name and gender change clinic at Whitman-Walker Health Services (1701 14th St., N.W.) from 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. tonight. Meet one on one with an attorney to complete name and/or gender change documents. Pizza is provided. For more information call 202-939-7627.
D.C. Bi Women hosts its monthly meeting at the Dupont Italian Kitchen Restaurant (1837 17th St., N.W.) in the upstairs room from 7-9 p.m. tonight. All women welcome regardless orientation, partner preference or relationship status. For more information, visit thedccenter.org.
Wednesday, Sept. 11
Big Gay Book Group meets tonight at 7 p.m. at 1155 F St., N.W. Suite 200 to discuss “The Starboard Sea,” a powerful coming-of-age story by first-time novelist Amber Dermont. For details email [email protected].
The Lambda Bridge Club meets tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Dignity Center (721 8th St., S.E.) for duplicate bridge. No reservations required and newcomers welcome. If you need a partner, call 703-407-6540.
The D.C. Center and Pros in the City host speed dating for gay professionals at Chi-Cha Lounge (1624 U St., N.W.) from 7-9 p.m. tonight. Dating begins at 7:20 p.m. and there is a cash bar. Admission is limited to guests 21 and over. For more information, visit thedccenter.org.
Us Helping Us (3636 Georgia Ave., N.W.) hosts a support group for black gay men living with HIV tonight from 7-9 p.m. For information, visit uhupil.org.
Thursday, Sept. 12
Burgundy Crescent, a gay volunteer organization, volunteers today from 6-8 p.m. for Food and Friends near the Fort Totten Metro Station (Red and Green line). Parking also available. For more information visit burgundycrescent.org.
SMYAL (410 7th St., S.E.) hosts “Women’s Leadership Institute” for LGBT women and their straight allies from 5-7 p.m. Discuss female sexuality, relationships and women’s rights. Ages 13-21. For details, visit smyal.org.
Cobalt (1639 R St., N.W.) hosts its weekly “Ripped-Hot Body Contest” tonight from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Win up to $200 in prizes. $2 rail drinks from 9-11 p.m. Admission is 18 and up and is free.
Rude Boi Entertainment hosts “Tempted 2 Touch,” a ladies dance party, at Fab Lounge (2022 Florida Ave., N.W.). Doors open at 10 p.m. Drink specials $5 and vodka shots $3 all night. No cover charge. Admission limited to guests 21 and over. For more information, visit rudeboientertainment.wordpress.com.
Photos
PHOTOS: Remove the Regime rally and march
Dropkick Murphys, Earth to Eve perform on steps of Lincoln Memorial
The Remove the Regime rally and march was held on Saturday, Nov. 22.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Nov. 20. The event was emceed by Rayceen Pendarvis and Dwight Venson. Musical selections were provided by Agape Praise and Dynamic Praise. Proclamations from the D.C. Council and the D.C. Office of the Mayor were presented. The Pouring of the Libation was conducted by Rev. Elder Akousa McCray and Rev. Paul Fulton-Woods of Unity Fellowship Church.
Remarks were given by trans survivors of violence. Family members of slain trans woman Dream Johnson were featured speakers. Prayers were given by Rev. Cathy Alexander and Rev. Dwayne Johnson of Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. Yael Shafritz gave a Jewish prayer through a video presentation. Closing remarks were given by community leader, Earline Budd.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Books
Pioneering gay journalist takes on Trump 2.0 in new book
Nick Benton’s essays appeared in Fall Church News-Press
Nicholas Benton is a well-known local LGBTQ advocate and journalist and the longtime owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper.
In his eighth book out now, Benton offers a new set of remarkable essays all crafted in the first eight months of Trump 2.0 and its wholesale effort at dismantling democracy and the rule of law. Most were published in the Falls Church News-Press, but he adds a new piece to this volume, as an addendum to his “Cult Century” series, revealing for the first time his experiences from decades ago in the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, aimed at providing a clearer grasp of today’s Cult of Trump.
His “Please Don’t Eat Your Children” set takes off from the satire of Jonathan Swift to explore society’s critical role of drumming creativity out of the young.
Below is an excerpt from “Please Don’t Eat Your Children, Cult Century, and other 2025 Essays.”
Please Don’t Eat Your Children
In his famous short essay, “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public,” author and Anglican priest Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uses cutting satire to suggest that cannibalism of the young might help solve a battery of social ills.
As we examine our broken society today, it seems to me that reflecting on Swift’s social critique can be quite useful. Now we face a nation filled with anger and division and there is little to suggest any real solutions other than insisting people “don’t do that!” We can start out with the observation that young children, left to their own, are neither hateful nor cruel. How do they get that way later on in their lives? What drives them toward such emotional states and behaviors? It is not a problem only for the margins of society, for the extreme misfits or troubled. It is defining the very center of our culture today. Our divisions are not the cause, but the result of something, and nobody is saying what that is.
Swift doesn’t say what it is in his biting little essay. But it is implied by a context of a lack of bounty, or poverty, on the one hand, and an approach to it characterized by obscenely cruel indifference, on the other. He coined the phrase “useless eaters” in defining his radical solution. In Hitler’s Germany, that term resonated through the death camps and some in our present situation are daring to evoke it again as the current administration pushes radical cuts in Medicaid funding.
But while that refers to the old and infirm, mostly, it is the young we are talking about here. The problem is that our society is structured to devour our young and as they begin to find that out, they rebel. Not in all cases is this the practice, of course. Where there is little or no lack, things are different. We nurture our young, as we should, and we love them. Lucky is the child who is born to parents who are of means, and in a community where nurture is possible and valued. But even such children are ultimately not immune from facing a destiny of pale conformity battered by tightly delimited social expectations and debt slavery. If they have enough ambition, education and doors opened for them, some can run the gauntlet with relative effectiveness. Otherwise, our young are raised to die on battlefields, or to struggle in myriad other painful social conflicts aimed at advancing the world of their elders. In the Bible, there is a great admonition against this process that comes at the very precondition for the tradition it represents that begins with Abraham.
It is in the book of Genesis at the beginning of the Biblical story when, as that story goes, God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. As Abraham is about to obey, God steps in and says no. The entire subsequent eons-long struggle to realize Abraham’s commission by God to make a great nation that would be a light to the world would have been cut short right then if Abraham had slain his own son. The message is that all of the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, owe their source, and in fact are rooted, in God’s command to reject the sacrifice of children to the whims of their elders. The last thousands of years can be best defined in these terms, where nurture is pitted against exploitation of our young with, at best, vastly mixed results. Scenes like that at the opening of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the World War I novel and film where a teacher rallies a classroom full of boys to enlist in the war, is bone chilling. Or, the lyric in Pink Floyd’s iconic song, Comfortably Numb, “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone.”
Nick Benton’s new book is available now at Amazon.
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