Look and Learn: An Interesting Story from 1980's New York Black/Hispanic Gay Culture

Dorian Corey was a 'legendary' transexual in New York , who in the 1980's - early 1990's was head of the House of Corey, one of the many Houses that dominated the New York Ball scene.

If you haven't seen the documentary 'Paris is Burning' then you really should, it's an utterly fascinating view of an underground world that doesn't exist anymore. Young, mainly black and hispanic gay men flocked to New York City in the 70's and 80's where they could be free to be who they wanted to be...within limits. These were aspirational times, when you didn't just want to be yourself, you wanted to be you but better, a banker, a yuppie, Joan Collins in Dynasty. Being poor, gay and an ethnic minority meant you had the faintest chance of this happening, except at the Balls, where you could dress fierce, compete in catwalks or vogueing competitions to win prizes and for that evening you WERE fierce.

Most of these young men were rejected by their real families for their homosexuality or transexualism and so saught solace in a new sort of family. Called 'houses' and named after the great fashion houses of Paris such as 'House of Dior' or 'House of Chanel', they consisted of a house mother (usually an older transsexual a.k.a a Legendary, a veteran of the ball scene) and a house father (usually an older butch gay man), and all the other members were the children.
They would all take the surname of their house, and compete in Balls for them.

Anyway, back to Corey. Wikipedia had this unusual little tidbit:

After Corey's death in 1993, a mummified body with gunshot wounds was found in Corey's belongings. The body, which had been shut in a trunk for more than twenty years, had a note attached to it which read "This poor soul broke into my apartment and I was forced to shoot him." It was later identified as Robert Worley.

For more on Ball Culture, which is quite frankly fascinating, see:

Wiki entry on 'Paris is Burning'

NYT article on the aftermath of the documentary.. Paris has Burned

Article on Angie Xtravanganza and Dorian Corey

Wiki entry on Ball Culture

Wiki entry on Venus Xtravaganza

or look up Willi Ninja on youtube

Sometimes it's just too easy...

Amazon strikes again..

A Breath of Fresh Air, October 25, 2007

By	Greeze (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

A refreshingly simple entry into the cookbook publication industry, this book brings affordable gourmet cooking to the masses by focusing on a single inexpensive and abundant ingredient. It finally answers the nagging question of "how much sugar does it really take to make my food re-edible?" It also teaches us valuable lessons about the beautiful and endless cycle of life.

Truly a breath of fresh air!....

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

At long last, October 25, 2007

By	D. Gilbert (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews

Finally a cook book that tells you how to complete the human digestive process. After your meal has been processed by your body, only waste remains. "Cooking With Pooh" shows you how to take that waste and recycle it into delicious treats. I had no idea that pooh could be used in so many dishes! Every recipe is low in fat although they all taste like crap.

Horrific Painting of the Day

Now I will admt I have a penchant for wall art featuring trannies/gold cats/pelicans/Judy Garlands who stare down at you with big boss eyes as you attempt to watch Hollyoaks, but even I would not put this headfuck of a painting on my wall. It's like being raped in the eyes.

I once read that a sign of schizophrenia is an obsession with starey art. But then I once read that if you suck your thumb a man with scissors for hands will come and cut your fingers off and that eating algae will make you lose weight. Yes, those are two things that I have also read at some point in my life and completely believed. So basically the moral of this tale is that I am a mug.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

Is a fantastic way to piffle away time, as not only is it very funny, the illustration is superb (should you care about that kind of thing) Okay, it's just very very funny.

You can see a huge collection of pbf comic strips HERE


I think there is also a book of them all you can buy from Amazon*

*Biche covers her back for using images without permission

Amusing Religious Facebook Groups

I'm very bored yo...

CRUNK 4 CHRIST (and dont care who knows it!!) - or who understands what the hell that means?

If it wasn't for jesus christ i don't know what i would do - I have a lovely image of these people just running around in a circle clucking like panicked chickens until Jesus comes along with some faith grain and mmmmm everything is okay again.


Boys Who Love Jesus are Sexy - And so much fun! Love the drama, the facepaint and the ketamine! Oh wait, that is Jesus the door whore at Heaven though..

I'm Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex - suprisingly, this is not actually a piss taking group, and for that, I salute them.

Richard Dawkins Is a Bastard - but kinda fly for an old guy

I Like Being A Mormon Girl Because I Don't Have To Shave Above My Knees. - Booking the tickets to Salt Lake now...

When God Writes Your Love Story - I think he would get more readers if he wrote that cartoon strip in the back of the Sun where the woman always has her baps out.

White Girls Who Love Hot White Guys - okay, not Christian, more like 'eh?'


I like Jesus...and cheese.
We Christians love our coffee! - voila! My breakfast via the medium of Christian facebook groups
Look Who's Toast Now?

The Google Image Search Blog

I both love and hate this website in equal measures - I love it because it is frankly flipping brilliant in it's simplicity, but hate it because I noodle around on Google image search all the time and never thought of the idea first. Basically, it is a site of pcitures found when random words are entered into GIS.
For example, here are some of the results for the word 'turp':

Anyway the website is HERE should you be as terminally bored as me.. it's made by the same 'funny blog man' from the HOT LINKZZZ section who wrote the blog about the gothic personal ads on top of many other amusing entries, and who I should probably pay royalties to, if more than three people a day (two of whom usually upon recieving a pathetic email from me on the matter) read the poor little Speeches..

Person of the Day - Pril.

Because it's her birthday, she's lovely, and she pulls the best faces of anyone I know!

"Hands off my cadaver, bitch"

I'm thinking this is possibly a subtle reference to a biblical painting of Mary as she holds a post-crucifixtion Jesus, replicated three times to symbolise the holy trinity. The denim and leather symbolising that the work of a woman is never done, the red lipstick denoting the passion and power of the female sex and ummm... the bad roots representing that one can never hide one's true character from sprouting mousily out of one's head.

Or it is simply a terribly misguided necrophilic attempt at a 'sexay' album cover.

Girl Power! (plate)

Thanks to a free voucher from work I went to a Powerplate class for the first time yesterday. To those of you who are not vapid urbanite females aged 20 - 29, working off Oxford Street, disposible income, no kids, Sex and the City boxset owners blah blah blah*, a 'powerplate' is the object to the left; a platform that vibrates really fast causing your muscles to spasm and so tone as you squat, thrust and do other faintly embarrasing exercises on it.

Now I have never really gone in for this kind of thing before, and by that I mean I have never owned one of those weird belt things that similarly cause muscle spasms via electric shocks or been wrapped in mud and clingfilm..basically expensive activities only a brandname away from medieaval torture. There was the incident with the 'Slimatea' where I didn't consider exactly how drinking tea could make you slim**, but on the whole I generally subscribe to the idea that if you want to be slimmer you have to get up off your fat arse, leave any notion of pride at the door and head down the gym.

But I digress. So what is a powerplate class like? Basically it is a group of five or so of slightly hippy (as in pelvis) deskladies plus the obligitory buff northern trainer to shout 'eey oop lasses yer doin' great!', a small room which is akin to the inside of a discoball and five or so pink little faces with expressions like horrified kittens confronted by a bee as they stare transfixed at their own wobbling images in the many reflective surfaces. Oh and there is mint tea on tap.

It was a little bit harder than the website suggested (more on that later) but thankfully the 25 minutes flew by.

What was weirdest was the sensation after the class, which I can only really liken to being in shock...a weird weightlessness/shakiness which I haven't experienced since I was evacuated from Kings Cross and saw a bus explode a couple of years ago, but without the obvious FEAR and mental skulduggery that 'shock' usually entails.

So yes, now it is 24 hours later, and I guess it worked as I am practially crippled - well my bum keeps twinging and I can't lift my arms, the usual masocistic signs that I take to mean GOOD.

So will I go back? Not sure. If anything it is an expensive (£20 for 25 mins!) way to lose any sense of self esteem and get an achey bum, but I think in these vapid grande skinny wet double latte times we all need to be taken down a notch or two. Even if it does mean you will shell out a whole load more on other pointless weightloss quackery.

p.s you can check out the website HERE if you so wish, but I warn you now, you will want to beat the web designer, PR company and whoever else was involved over the head with a metal bound version of the Female Eunich until they are a bloody pulp. It is the most patronising, chic lit More magazine lambrini HELL of a website. Quite why they haven't marketed it to the wannabe Carrie and Samanthas who at least possess half a brain and maybe an unread copy of the Female Eunich is beyond me.





* Biche does not own aforementioned boxset, sadly she does not need rolemodels for her slide into superficial oblivion
** laxative

...or How to Make Friends and Influence People in Soho

I'm sure I've seen the blue guy in the John Snow...

'Speeches of Biches - they come for the calming pink background but stay for the stating the bleeding obvious'

"That is like, massively disrespecting of your trousers"

The Armstrong and Miller show has moved to BBC1 primetime, which, as any fan of comedy knows, means completely selling out and becoming rubbish and crap an' 'at. I haven't seen many episodes, but have actually been pleasantly suprised by how not rubbish it is, which has quite a lot to do with these characters:

Burning (ho ho) Questions of the Day

* Who keeps on burning the pile of refuse sacks full of chicken bones outside KFC in Crouch End?

This appears to happen about once a week and leads to the further query as to why a giant smoldering heap of orange plastic and bones smells distinctly like overcooked bacon.

I somehow doubt it is an organised protest like this photo rather than a load of little scallywags on their way to school. The ruffians!

*Why people are so shocked that that young girl was kicked off X Factor for happy slapping?

She's from North Finchley for chrissakes. There is not much to do in the 'armpit of london'* apart from smoke weed in carparks, try and get served in the Tally Ho and mooch up and down the grey streets looking for a brightly tracksuited youth to give you one round the back of Hollywood Bowl, so really her violence is proabably an artistic act of self expression at the grey futility of her homeland. Probably. In any case, she should be thankful. It's not like she lives in Friern Barnet.

* (c) Biche 2001

*Why there are so many ginger people in Eastenders?

I haven't seen this programme in a while but when I did I began to wonder if it was some special Comic Relief Episode or something. Bradley, his dad, Sean, Mickey, that kid who has the Manc dad...okay well that's it, but I heard that Patsy Kensit is coming back with a load of kids, at least one of which WILL be a ginge.

It has to be noted that I bare no ill will towards people of the gingery persuasion, hell, after a freak dying accident a long time ago I was one of them and was saddled with the nickname 'ginga' for at least four years, by which time I had blonde hair and anyone new who met me wondered why the hell I was nicknamed thus.

I do however find the ginger ratio in Eastenders, which purports to be a realistic soap set in the east end of London, quite amusing. At last count there were approximately four asian people and one black person in Eastenders, versus the four gingers. In the real east end of London there approx 77,885 asian people and only 1,956 ginger people*.

*based on my calculations of asian-white population percentages of Tower Hamlets plus the fact that 2% of caucasians are redheads. Thank you Wikipedia!

Belated Halloween Post 2007!

Halloween costume ideas for the disabled child in your life:

Lots more tips and tricks for costumes here!

What can I say? I'm just bitter because my costume consisted of a pink wig which I have had for three years... I decided to cut it into a bob this year for a 'fresh new look' (aka it was getting all ratty) and ended up looking like the girl from Lazytown rather than the 'Natalie Portman in Closer' look I was aiming for. The girl from Lazytown if she wrapped her pear shaped arse in a black mac and trudged around Whitechapel looking at carparks where 119 years ago some prostitutes were killed rather nastily. *

*Jack the Ripper tour, in case that wasn't clear. Pretty interesting, but only because of what the guy said, which I think would have had the same effect said on a warm coach instead of wandering around law firm carparks and back entrances to office blocks. Although I suppose there were a couple of old buildings that gave a sort of atmosphere, until we had to move on as another Ripper group was on our tail.

Richard Littlejohn - He writes for the People

The second in an occasional series of amusing amazon.co.uk book reviews. This week:

Littlejohn's Britain: 'a themed collection of pieces that fires broadside at Blair's Britain and the absurdity of petty bureaucracy' - The cover

'the racist xenophobic witterings of a fool' - The Biche
finally someone gets it, 10 May 2007
By
pablo dombrowski "wewillcomebackasfire" (london) - See all my reviewsat last, a man with the visionary skills to realise how dangerous the London Eye is. So many people don't realise that this is an evil eye. Look at the patterns... it's clearly the eye that the freemasons use to signify control. They're laughing at us people, laughing. They're in league with the communists that make up the so-called labour party, and have ACTUEALLY erected this monument to their control, and we like sheep, actually RIDE IN IT. oh, i could weep for the stupidity of humanity. Buy this book AND LEARN THE TURTH before they get you.

the intellect of this man hath no bounds, 12 May 2007
By
Mr. B. B. N. Farrant "natural history fan" (uk) - See all my reviews One is reminded of Orwell, who once said "Every book is a failure." Well Orwell was clearly a fool and had not stumbled upon 'Littlejon's Britain' whilst browsing on Amazon, for no educated man could dare claim this seminal piece of literature a failure. If, as H.G. Wells assures us, that "Good books are the warehouses of ideas" then this book is a vast chasm of a warehouse, overflowing with such a smorgasbord of enlightened ideas that may liberate us from the shackles of contemporary liberal Britain. Oh how i feel complete having read this book, now i truly understand the meaning of Bernard Shaw's musing, "Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty." LittleJohn i am indebted to you. hurrah



A new world dawns at the turn of a page., 12 May 2007
By
Mizake - See all my reviewsWith this insightful, visionary, and - I am not ashamed to say - celestially inspirational commentary on modern life, Richard Littlejohn has rendered the entire canon of Western literature, philosophy and ethical discourse entirely moot. On finishing the book - in one sitting, I might add, its compelling majesty renders one utterly incapable of laying it down - I had no choice but to burn each and every one of the other books I own. Such trinkets are simply unnecessary in the face of such brilliance, in this new and glorious era of "Anno Littlejohn". Yes, I cry, cast Hamlet and Macbeth into the fire! Render the Iliad and the Kalevala into dust! Drive away the librarians and book sellers! No other works are necessary; all knowledge and truth is contained herein. Praise you, Sir Richard, and long may your wisdom guide us all.

Thought provoking stuff!, 12 May 2007
By
Mangina Reilly-Hurtz (Misogyny) - See all my reviewsI read this while awaiting clearance in a terminal at London's Heathrow. By the time I turned over the last page I realised Britain was not for me. Thank you Mr Littlejohn. You have saved me from a squalid life living in a small studio flat above yet another Indian Takeaway or Pizza Delivery service. As for the neighbours I would have had according to you. Well it is not worth thinking about. So I asked for the Immigration Service to return me on the earliest flight back to where I came from. I just wouldn't want to live in a country that produced Littlejohn. Plain and simple

Brilliantly exposes the bonkers values of socialist Britain:, 1 Jun 2007
By
Brian Ginnity (Colchester) - See all my reviews
This book exposes the way we are now governed, which is why a lot of socialists can only respond with mockery and insult. It hits home and they can't handle it. It's the old "we're right (by definition) so anybody who doesn't agree with us must mad, bad or both. That's how the old USSR was able to justify locking up it's political opponents in mental hospitals. The book was a funny and merciless description of the self-serving, hypocrital antics of the likes of Prescott, Blair (Mr and Mrs), police chiefs who refuse to fight crime, councils who refuse to collect rubbish and all the other useless so-and-sos who have got us to where we are now.



Oh wait, that last one could be serious... well anyway, you can find all the reviews here