Feast of Fun: Gay Talk Show

For many folks Valentine’s Day is a special time to celebrate the ones they love, but the origins of this romantic holiday are anything but a box of chocolates. While it may seem like just another cash grab by candy manufacturers, Valentine’s Day began in Greco-Roman times as a sadomasochistic fertility ritual and nowadays it is responsible for a lot of horrific clickbait relationship advice artic...

When life knocks you down, it’s hard to get back up, especially when you live in an oppressive place, your family rejects you for being gay and you’ve broken both your legs. For real estate entrepreneur Harma Hartouni, things weren’t always in the pink. Although he was born in the US, Harma was taken to live in Iran at a young age, and as a ethnic Armenian and a gay kid he felt he was at odds with...

With both Valentine’s Day and Groundhog Day, February has to be the sexiest month of the year, but also the most frustrating, after all, with the Covid pandemic raging, how are we going to get Cupid’s arrow to strike us in our little burrows as we self-isolate? Before Covid, many LBGTQ folks enjoyed a decade of fun thanks to PrEP, the daily pill regimen that effectively blocks HIV infections. But...

As the Covid pandemic enters its second year, we’re reminded about how vital our relationships with each other are and how much we miss human physical contact. Reach out and touch somebody's hand, but don’t breathe on them if you can! Today comedian Rachel Hall, host of the Hood Novel Book Club podcast joins us to take a look at the struggle people are going through not having hugs during the Covi...

Patti Jenkins’ highly anticipated sequel to Wonder Woman promised that WW84 would be a tribute to the campy 1970s TV series, but instead we got a movie like the year 2020, full of confusion, chaos and general contempt for humanity. Wonder Woman 84 catches up with Princess Di 70 years after her boyfriend Steve sacrificed himself. She’s now working at the Smithsonian with Geologist, Gemologist, Lith...

With so many talented people losing their jobs this past year, it’s hard not to think about the song “Music and the Mirror” from the musical “A Chorus Line” where Cassie begs to be given just a chance to work. All I ever needed is the music, and the mirror, and the chance to dance for you. The pioneering musical was created in New York City in the early 70s during an economic downturn when a lot o...

People usually think that folks who are obsessed with the income of the guys they date are tacky, dismissing them as gold-diggers. But one of the most common reasons couples break up is because of financial hardship. Mo’ money brings mo’ problems, but being broke ain't one of them. Joining us today, is the Human Ken Doll-- Justin Jedlica, who despite his humble origins, personally financed all his...

Flower power! Although they never identified as gay or straight, pioneering scientists Alexander Von Humbolt and George Washington Carver both wrote about their love of flowers and men. Also in the image collage is an awesome photo of anthropologist Margaret Mead with a parrot. It’s no secret that LGBT folks have had a profound influence on the arts but they’ve also had a tremendous effect on scie...

Comedian Pam Ann’s demented flight attendant persona harkens back to the groovy days of the airline industry when flight attendants wore sexy outfits and served up lavish meals to well dressed passengers. Since the pandemic, things have been tough for an entertainer like Pam Ann who gets a lot of energy from interacting with the live audiences who serve as her passengers on her wild plane ride. It...

It was the night the lights almost went out in Georgia, and the whole country for that matter, when on January 5, voters cast their ballots for who would control the Senate. Thankfully, the good people of Georgia broke with tradition and voted Democratic thereby rescuing us from certain facism. The next day, however, following the urging of President Trump, thousands of Republican with the help of...

Today we salute one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, a fabulous gay black man named Bayard Rustin- the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Sadly, Rustin is largely ignored in the history of equality in this country because of his sexuality, so today we also remember the importance of his influence on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his desire for non-vi...

We were all hoping that 2021 wouldn’t be as terribly twisted as 2020, but in the first week of the new year we got rumors that Kanye West is dating Jeffree Star, Azealia Banks boils her cat, Armie Hammer is into cannibalism, the Gays over Covid scandal, Trump’s second impeachment and Republicans invade the Capitol building to overthrow Democracy. Did you just say Armie Hammer is into cannibalism?...

One of the most outrageous movie characters of all time is Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest,” a movie based on the best selling tell-all book by Crawford's adopted daughter Christina. In the film, Joan Crawford is presented as a selfish, drunk, ego-maniac who terrorizes her children and fights with everyone in Hollywood all the while presenting herself as a cool, sophis...

Happy Birthday to writer and performer Dolores Deluce, who used to live with Divine, the drag queen from John Water's films and performed often with the San Francisco Cockettes. {Best of Feast of Fun, originally posted as FOF #1875 - Confessions of a Counter Culture Diva - 10.08.13} In the 1960s, Dolores Deluce was rejected by her family for giving birth to a biracial child, only to be embraced by...

Happy Glitter Day Everyone! Here's our annual tradition of posting the original podcast episode that started the new LGBTQ centric winter holiday. Enjoy! Or don't. It's Glitter Day and you can do whatever your heart desires. {Best of Feast of Fun, originally posted as FOF #1292 - Glitter Day - 11.19.10} There are a lot of holidays during the winter months, with many annoying and bizarre celebratio...

No holiday puts it all out there like Christmas! When people from all kinds of cultures and traditions come together, the food, music and celebrations regardless of who you are can be marvelous. Today we wrap up our sixteenth season of podcasting with our holiday celebration: “Incredibly Strange Christmas Music, Vol.11”- wonderfully weird songs we think deserve a spot on your playlist this year. L...

The last podcast we made in 2019, titled “A Christmas Apocalypse,” looked back on the terrible things that happened in the past decade that we didn’t want to see ever again. In 2020, we entered into a deeper level of hell where every day became an eternity- wildfires and hurricanes, systemic racism, a President endorsing facism and a global pandemic so grossly mismanaged it’s killed over 300,000 A...

Even though Saved by the Bell went off the air in 1993, it still has a firm grip on popular culture- the cast reunion of Zach and his high school friends on the Jimmy Fallon Show recently went viral, and clips of the original show often pop up as Internet memes, so much so that sometimes it really does feel like it’s Zach’s world and we are just living in it. What kid didn't want their own cell ph...

Christmas has arrived! No winter snow, no covid pandemic, no gloom nor doom is going to hold back a fierce queen like Vivacious from snapping her fan and shining her light this holiday season. Innovating like a mother-has-arrived, our gal pal from Season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race is busy cranking out the Cameos and turning her New York City apartment into an international dance club with Quarantina...

2020 has been harder on working drag queens than Baby Jane Hudson was to her poor sister Blanche in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. If only we weren’t in this Covid pandemic. But you are Blanche, you are in that pandemic. Fortunately, most queens aren’t left eating their dead pet bird. Next year just has to be better- It gets better, right? For San Francisco drag legend Peaches Christ, this has be...

Jingle Bells Batman Smells Robin Laid an Egg. How much fun it is to deride your family’s Christmas carols? There’s something hilarious about turning those precious christmas carols into rotten songs all kids will love. Today our pal Manny Petty joins us for a live music session where we harmonize some hilariously rotten christmas song parodies. Listen as we take a look at the classic Batman Smells...

The second Saturday in January marks the 10 year anniversary of Glitter Day, the fun and fabulous holiday in celebration of all things magical and sparkly inside all of us. The idea for an LGBTQ+ centric winter holiday began as a bit on the podcast and amazingly the idea caught on like wildfire. On Glitter Day there are no expectations so go wild or mild! You can light up a rainbow set of candles...

NOTE: This encore presentation of our episode of Feast of Fun is in honor of LD Beghtol, the singer-songwriter and Magnetic Fields Collaborator, he passed away at the age of 55 this week. ------- Songwriter Stephin Merritt is known as “the Cole Porter of his generation” for his unusual melodies, lovelorn lyrics and dry wit. But he’s also notoriously known as the most miserable man in rock music. T...

This holiday season, one of YouTube’s most anticipated new shows is The Great Gift Exchange, a 12 part series aiming to inspire people on the art of gift wrapping and giving back to their community. The Great Gift Exchange invites 12 YouTube stars to visit the secret studio of my dear friend Alton DuLaney, who really is the world’s most famous gift wrapping artist, to learn how to transform a gift...

When winter’s chill sets upon us during the holiday season, it’s a perfect time for Lady Bunny to deliver a flaming hot roast, and this Christmas nobody’s safe, not even Santa! In her new holiday special “What Child is This?” filmed at New York’s legendary Stonewall Inn to an audience of one, Lady Bunny examines our not-so-quiet desperation living in the middle of the Covid Pandemic where Republic...