Where the hell is the warp wire!?

Tumblr... like excruciatingly difficult dungeon crawlers, in a way.

[only-cat-memes]

[skorgu]

[samirant]

[pressdbtwnpages]

[lindseyanna]

[bethanyactually]

[smolpocketmonstercoffee]

[andreii-tarkovsky]

To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995)

Dir. Beeban Kidron

[brehaaorgana]

This was such a formative movie

[musicalhell]

This shit was revolutionary for the mid-90s. Among other things it helped me understand that transgender and cross-dressing were completely separate things.

[aqueerkettleofish]

To this day, I am in awe of the fact that Patrick Swayze not only campaigned hard to get the audition, not only auditioned in dress and makeup, but spent most of the day leading up to the audition walking around LA in dress and makeup.

This was a man who could sing, dance, act, ride a horse, fight, and walk in heels, he had nothing to prove to anyone, and he is MISSED.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Okay, I’m not done feeling about this.

If you’re younger, you may not know Patrick Swayze; he was Taken From Us in 2009. But Patrick Swayze was an icon of masculinity. Men were willing to watch romantic movies because Patrick Swayze was in them.

Patrick Swayze was fucking beefcake.

And this man didn’t just agree to do a movie where the only time he’s not actually in drag is the first three minutes, which involve stepping out of the shower, doing make up, and getting Dressed. He has ONE LINE that is delivered in a man’s voice, and it’s not during those three minutes.

And if you watch those three minutes, you see a stark difference between his portrayal of Miss Vida Bohéme and Wesley Snipes as Noxeema Jackson. (I am not criticizing Snipes’ performance. They were different roles.) Noxeema was a comedy character. Chi-Chi was a comedy character. But Miss Vida Bohéme was a dramatic role, played by a dramatic powerhouse.

When Vida sits down in front of the mirror, she sees a man. And she doesn’t like it.

Then she puts her hair up, and her face lights up.

“Ready or not,” she says. “Here comes Mama.”

And while Noxeema is having fun with her transformation (at one point breaking into a giggling fit after putting on pantyhose), Vida is simply taking pleasure in bringing out her true self. And when she’s done, she sees this:

And you can FEEL her pride.

All of this from an actor who, up to this point, walked on to the screen and dripped testosterone.

[impossiblemonsters]

the fact that some of you history-ignorant children in the notes are trying to shit on groundbreaking historical queer cinema because it doesn’t meet 2021 standards is infuriating. sit down, shut the fuck up, and listen to the elders in the room for fucking once

[darkshrimpemotions]

This. If you have never lived in a world where queerness was universally pathologized and criminalized to the point that even IMAGINING a world where it wasn’t constituted a radical and potentially dangerous act, you don’t have any business judging those of us who have for how we survived it and how we found (or still find) comfort in the few imperfect representations we got.

You don’t have to like it. You probably aren’t capable of “getting” it. And to be honest, I don’t want you to! I am glad that young queer people will never know exactly what it was like “back then.” But what you also will not do is refuse to learn your own history and then shit on everything that came before you, because like it or not what came before you is the reason you will never have to get what it was like back then.

[hussyknee]

On Wesley Snipes’s role Noxeema and John Leguizamo as Chi-Chi Rodriguez.

“I grew up in the ‘70s and even within the street culture, there was a lot of flamboyancy,” Snipes told TODAY of his perception of drag before filming. “Pimps wore the same furs as theprostitutes wore.

“Some of the great musicians of the world, like Parliament-Funkadelic, were very androgynous. So it wasn’t really new for me to see men dressed as women or men dressed as drag queens.”

Snipes attended the famed LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and then State University of New York at Purchase. He wasn’t a dance major, but most of his friends were. “That exposed me to the world of glam, vogue, drag, transgender and gay people, LGBTQ… but it wasn’t in fashion those days. But it existed and I was around it.”

Not only did “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” pave the way for “To Wong Foo,” so did films like the 1968 documentary “The Queen” and “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 doc that chronicled ball culture of New York and the various Black and queer communities involved in it.

Even though he was known for his action roles, Snipes’ portrayal of Noxeema wasn’t the first time he played a drag queen. In 1986, he made his Broadway debut in the play “Execution of Justice,” playing Sister Boom Boom, a real-life AIDS activist and drag nun who acted as the show’s voice of conscience. Snipes pointed out, “Sister Boom Boom did not have Noxeema’s makeup kit.”

On whether he got any pushback for stepping into Noxeema’s pumps, he said, “Not so much professionally but the streets weren’t feeling it, and there were certain community circles. The martial arts community… they were not feeling it at all.”

“In fact, when the movie came out and they would come down the street, I would see them in Brooklyn sometimes, they started listing all my movies. I noticed they would always skip that one. I would correct them, ‘Now you don’t got the full count!’”

Lesser-known than his co-stars at the time, Lequizamo didn’t really anticipate becoming a transgender icon, but he did know that they were working on something special when they started filming.

“Drag didn’t really exist in movies,” Lequizamo, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal, told TODAY. “There were straight men pretending to be women to get out of trouble or into trouble but this was not that. I was trying to make Chi-Chi a real life trans character and Patty and Wesley were trying to be real drag queens.” Never fully articulated in the film, Chi-Chi Rodriguez has always been perceived as transgender, something that ending up making an indelible mark on LGBTQ people in the late ‘90s as trans representation in media was limited.

“Chi-Chi was a trans icon, but she also showed us that gay men and trans women can both perform and work in drag side by side, and that those relationships are symbiotic,” Cayne explained.

“It was a powerful thing. I get lots of fan mail from LGBTQ teens telling me how my character helped them come out to their parents,” Leguizamo said. “They didn’t feel like they were seen, so that was a beautiful gift from the movie.”

Lequizamo also articulates that if “To Wong Foo” were cast today, a trans actor should be cast in his role. (And that just may happen, since Beane is developing a musical for Broadway.) “Anybody can play anything, but the playing field is not fair that way,” he said. “Not everybody is allowed to play everything. So until we get to that place, it is important for trans actors to get a chance to act which they don’t. In the project I’m doing, I’m making sure that the person playing trans is a trans person so we can make it legit, make it real. That just needs to be done right now.”

Source: How Hollywood heartthrobs and Steven Spielberg helped make a drag queen cult classic

[fedorahead]

a monumental film in the library of queer history.

it was formative for modern society, too.

there are a lot of action fans out there who learned from their idols that respect doesn’t cost a damn thing to give. i know plenty of people who aren’t queer saw trans women and drag queens presented as people to them for the first time in wong fu. suddenly, strange and foreign queer identities that had only been presented to them as jokes if they’d even heard of them, seemed a little more relatable, and very human.

we’re all just people.

snipes, swayze, and leguizamo were willing to play people a lot of their fans didn’t respect yet or didn’t even know how to respect and demand they figure it the fuck out.

[jam-etc]

This is a HUGE reblog but I watched this as a little girl on cable TV and I’m so glad I did. GO WATCH THIS AS SOON AS YOU CAN

[hollyevolving]

I’d love it if To Wong Foo was inescapably broadcast once a year, like A Christmas Story.

[tchaikovskaya]

had to be there i guess

[arvethli]

I told y'all it was a pun

A very long thread on it: https://twitter.com/lmrwanda/status/1505646738627088389?t=06aHTTZkf1ZaJyCDhWUzTg&s=19

And the punchline, if anyone wants to jump there directly: https://twitter.com/lmrwanda/status/1505648702119202823?t=IHkQWeElTa0T63o3lbr12Q&s=19

[honeylazors]

[fierceawakening]

that’s excellent

[thisarenotarealblog]

cracking open a cold one with the sumerian dog

[brucebocchi]

[skellaloose]

First rule of being a graphic designer…they will absolutely just print and use your fake placeholder copy so just go into it expecting that

[johnnycrass]

faeries are not real but i wish thwy were so i could spray one with raid

[helloitsbees]

harry houdini to his wife after a long exhausting dinner with arthur conan doyle

[jinxysmidcentury]

Just hanging in, watching tv

[straycatj]

上の方を観察する猫と…

A cat observing above...

それを観察する猫。

and a cat observing it ...

[clonerightsagenda]

Contemplating it and I think the reason I've always been fond of ghosts over vampires, werewolves, and other stock paranormal entities is because ghosts, at their core, represent Not Getting Over It. They're grudges. They've defied natural laws in order to continue being a bitch about it. No I'm not going to move on. I'm going to make you look at what killed me. I'm going to keep you up at night. Even if they're not actively hostile ghosts are, by their very nature, Haters. Forget biting people in a horny way, if I had to pick an undead fate you will find me in the basement screaming.

[cradletotomb]

the train of thought in this comment is phenomenal. so true.

[montereybayaquarium]

🐧Waddle we have here? It's a Gerry update!

🪶It’s o-fish-ally time for Gerry’s first annual adult molt. Instead of a feather here and there, African penguins do an all-at-once feather swap in just a few weeks. Talk about a glow-up!

💪Before a molt, African penguins bulk up their fat reserves. Without an intact, waterproof coat of feathers, they can’t get into the chilly ocean to hunt for their food!

🐟Penguins face significant threats from habitat loss and overfishing. Conservation efforts are crucial to ensuring their survival and protecting their natural habitats. 

💙Let's waddle together to make a difference!

[skyberia]

was reminded of that youtube channel that records footage of that bridge that scalps trucks today. one of the fascinating developments that's happened since i last heard about it is that, in one of their many attempts to stop the trucks from being can-opened, they installed a traffic light that detects when a vehicle that's over the allowed height is coming and turns red so the driver can stop and hopefully notice the signage all around that's screaming "YOUR VEHICLE IS OVERHEIGHT TURN AROUND" and avoid an accident. However as a result sometimes drivers see the light turning yellow and IMMEDIATELY start flooring it to avoid having to stop, ensuring that the roof of their truck just gets fucking annihilated instantly. Really beautiful stuff you should check it out

[nieyao]

the comments have me in tears

[abowlofjellyfish]

[twiggies-draws]

@rogue-bard

It DOES have a sign. It turns on when it detects something too tall for the bridge. It even flashes. And the traffic lights will go red to get people to stop when it detects an over height vehicle so they read the signs. (note this lovely example where the lights are red, because the truck thought it was better than the lights)

[sunspotpony]

@sistertenebrae

[thememedaddy]

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

also-

[ancient-string]

And also

[bvlma]

My neighbour totoro, 1988

[shopcat]

do you want to see the best trail cam photo ever

[shopcat]

let it be known he is chilling like crazy

[consulships]

i do think theres something sad about how largely only the literature that's considered especially good or important is intentionally preserved. i want to read stuff that ancient people thought sucked enormous balls

[literaryreference]

Time to take this post entirely too seriously:

I often wonder if this is why you so commonly see the sentiment that we are in an era of uniquely bad literature, or at least that the fact that most books don't have artistic aspirations and are not aiming to be anything other than mindless entertainment is new. In fact what's new is the idea that everything is worth preserving (and also the internet making it easier to preserve it). The dumb artistically unambitious trash books of the past have survived only sporadically, because people thought of them as literally disposable.

When I was in college I had a professor who was an expert on detective fiction. He had a longstanding beef with the idea that "Murders in the Rue Morgue" was the first detective story. He thought that it seemed way too polished to be inventing a new genre, and also that the whole orangutan business had the vibe of someone subverting preexisting audience expectations and maybe engaging in a bit of stealth parody. With the help of some student volunteers, he went trawling through old magazines and newspapers and found hundreds of detective stories from the early 1800s that just hadn't garnered enough individual attention to be remembered. This was because most of them sucked balls. He created an online archive of them, so you too can read these mostly terrible stories.

[dedalvs]

When I was an undergraduate English major we asked our grad. student TA what it was like being a grad. student. One of the things he said grad. students would do is review work that has been left out of the “canon” of whatever time period or genre they worked in to assess its value and see if it should be reintroduced. For his time period, that meant reviewing, apparently, a *LOT* of epic poetry about the American revolution. Like, you know how there’s *The Odyssey*, *The Song of Roland*, *El Cid*, *The Nibelungenlied*, or modern wartime novels like *A Tale of Two Cities*, etc.? Apparently it was quite popular in the 1800s in America to write epic poetry about the American Revolution, with the idea that it would be *the* hallowed tale read about the founding of the United States for centuries to come. It was his job to read these vaunted works detailing the heroic deeds of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the like.

The result?

There was a *LOT* of utter garbage written about the American Revolution in the 1800s.

And so, essentially, there are also a lot of scholarly works (likely unpublished) of grad. students who have gone back in the archives, taken this work very seriously, read it, evaluated it, and come to the conclusion, some hundred pages later, “We haven’t assigned this to students in the past because it was generally accepted that the work sucked. Having evaluated from a modern perspective, it is my opinion that the work does, indeed, suck, and we shouldn’t bother assigning it to students.”

[rollingtablesiguess]

Rolls to Alarm Your Players

Want to spice the game up? Why not try alarming your players for no real reason? Make sure to make a show out of counting the dice before you roll.

[factsinallcaps]

YOU COULD SPELL "FISH" AS "GHOTI" AND IT WOULD BE PRONOUNCED THE SAME

THIS IS NOT TRUE.

FOR THOSE UNAWARE OF THIS, UH, “FACT,” THE IDEA IS THAT “GHOTI” COULD BE PRONOUNCED “FISH” IF YOU PRONOUNCE THE GH- AS IN “LAUGH,” THE -O- AS IN “WOMEN,” AND THE “TI” AS IN “AMBITION.”

HOWEVER, THIS FAILS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE PRONUNCIATION OF LETTERS IS DEPENDENT ON THEIR POSITION WITHIN THE WORD.

AT THE END OF A WORD OR SYLLABLE, “GH” CAN BE PRONOUNCED LIKE THE LETTER F. THIS IS WHY IT’S PRONOUNCED THAT WAY IN “LAUGH” AND “LAUGHTER” AND “ENOUGH” AND, DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ASK, “VAN GOGH.” AT THE BEGINNING OF A WORD OR SYLLABLE, “GH” IS PRONOUNCED AS AN EXTRA-HARD G-SOUND, AS IN “GHOST” AND “GHOUL” AND “GHASTLY.”

LIKEWISE, “TI” IS NOT PRONOUNCED AS “SH” AT THE END OF A WORD. IN “AMBITION,” IT IS ONLY BECAUSE “TI” IS FOLLOWED BY “O” THAT THERE IS AN “SH” SOUND IN THE WORD AT ALL. THIS IS WHY “RATIO” IS PRONOUNCED WITH AN “SH” SOUND, WHILE “MANTIS” IS PRONOUNCED WITH A “T” SOUND. 

IT’S ALSO IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT, IN WORDS LIKE “AMBITION” AND “NATION,” IT’S NOT THAT THE “TI” IS PRONOUNCED LIKE “SH.” “TION” IS A COMPLETE SYLLABLE, PRONOUNCED “SHUN” OR “SHEN.” IF YOU REMOVE ANY OF THE LETTERS, THE PRONUNCIATION WOULD CHANGE.

“ION” DOESN’T HAVE AN SH- SOUND IN IT. “TIN” DOESN’T HAVE AN SH- SOUND IN IT. “TI” DOESN’T HAVE AN SH- SOUND IN IT. “TON” DOESN’T HAVE AN SH- SOUND IN IT. “TIO” ONLY HAS AN SH- SOUND IN IT IF IT’S PRECEDED BY A VOWEL, AS IN “RATIO,” AND EVEN THEN, IT’S PRONOUNCED “SHYO” OR “SHI-O,” DEPENDING ON YOUR ACCENT. 

“O” IS RARELY PRONOUNCED AS IN “WOMEN,” EXCEPT WHEN IT’S IN THE MIDDLE OF A SYLLABLE. 

THAT’S THE THING. “-GH” IS ONLY PRONOUNCED “F” AT THE END OF A SYLLABLE. “O” IS ONLY PRONOUNCED AS IN “WOMEN” IN THE MIDDLE OF A SYLLABLE. “TI-” IS ONLY PRONOUNCED “SH” AT THE BEGINNING OF A CERTAIN SYLLABLES, AND NEVER BY ITSELF.

WHEN ASSEMBLED IN THAT ORDER, NONE OF THOSE PRONUNCIATIONS WOULD APPLY. IF THEY HAD SPELLED IT “GHOTION,” IT WOULD BE PRONOUNCED “GOSHEN.” IF THEY HAD IT “LAUGHOTI,” IT WOULD BE PRONOUNCED “LAFF-OH-TEE.” 

HOWEVER, SPELLED “GHOTI,” THERE’S NO WAY TO PRONOUNCE IT “FISH” UNLESS YOU PRONOUNCE EVERY LETTER INCORRECTLY, IN WHICH CASE YOU’RE NOT PRONOUNCING “GHOTI” AT ALL, YOU’RE PRONOUNCING “FISH.” “GHOTI” IS PRONOUNCED “GOATY.”

NOW, THE ORIGINAL IDEA BEHIND “GHOTI” WAS MAKING FUN OF THE LACK OF RULES GOVERNING ENGLISH SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION. THIS IS STUPID AS HELL, BECAUSE THEY HAD TO IGNORE A BUNCH OF THE RULES GOVERNING ENGLISH SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION IN ORDER TO MAKE FUN OF THEIR NON-EXISTENCE.

THEY LITERALLY PRETENDED THE ESTABLISHED PRONUNCIATION CONVENTIONS DIDN’T EXIST JUST SO THEY COULD MAKE FUN OF ENGLISH FOR NOT HAVING ESTABLISHED PRONUNCIATION CONVENTIONS, WHICH IS ESPECIALLY AGGRAVATING BECAUSE THIS COULD EASILY BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH THE EXISTING WORD “COLONEL.” 

[jewishdragon]

WHY IS IT SPELLED THAT WAY WHEN CORN KERNEL IS SPELLED LIKE IT FUCKING SOUNDS

[factsinallcaps]

SORRY FOR THE SLIGHT DELAY IN RESPONDING TO THIS COMMENT, I WAS AT WORK

THE ITALIAN WORD “COLONEL” WAS DERIVED FROM TWO SOURCES: ITALIAN AND FRENCH. WHEN IT WAS IMPORTED INTO ENGLISH IN THE 16TH CENTURY, THE FRENCH VERSION WAS SPELLED CORONEL AND THE ITALIAN VERSION WAS SPELLED COLONNELA. THE SPELLING IN BOTH ENGLISH AND FRENCH WAS LATER UPDATED AND STANDARDIZED TO MATCH THE ITALIAN SPELLING, BUT THE OLDER FRENCH-STYLE PRONUNCIATION WON OUT AMONG ENGLISH SPEAKERS, LEAVING US WITH A WORD THAT IS SPELLED ONE WAY AND PRONOUNCED ANOTHER

[jewishdragon]

I’m crying, 10 years later. I’m still here. I see the response.

Thank you