"Sometimes attorneys are desperate to find a way out of the legal profession."

"Sometimes that desperation will lead them down a strange road to an entirely new career — and not just a new career, but a new way of life."

ADDED: From the comments at the link: "That Boy George, come-hither look seals the deal."

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

Alone? At home?



Not alone? Out?

"I'm a man without conviction."

Sang Boy George in "Karma Chameleon." As Sonicfrog notes, Boy George is not a man without conviction anymore.

5 minutes -- "not a second more, not a second less" -- with Rufus Wainwright.

"Somewhere where there's silence would be good." = Why he'd like being an artist if he wasn't a musician.

"Isn't gay marriage kind of the death penalty?" = What Boy George said to him when they were discussing gay marriage and the death penalty.

"One of those titanic moments." = The election of Barack Obama (presumably "titanic," large, not "Titanic," shipwreck).

"I'm writing an opera in French"... He is, and he's a native French (and English) speaker, a consequence of Canadianness.

"The 100 Greatest, Gayest Albums (of all time)."

From Out.com. I have no idea how gay these choices are, but they do seem pretty great.

To create our list of the 100 Greatest, Gayest Albums of All Time, we polled more than 100 actors, comedians, musicians, writers, critics, performance artists, label reps, and DJs, asking each to list the 10 albums that left the most indelible impressions on their lives. After receiving responses from Boy George, Rufus Wainwright, Cyndi Lauper, the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray, Candis Cayne, Perez Hilton, Nate Berkus, Jake Shears, John Cameron Mitchell, Wilson Cruz, Justin Bond, Darren Hayes, Junior Vasquez, Bruce Vilanch, Janis Ian, the Cliks, Ari Gold, Holly Johnson, and a slew of others, we tallied the results to determine our top-100 list.

So this was about indelible impressions on real people, not any abstract conception of what kind of music is somehow gay. It produced a nice list... and a real tribute to David Bowie.

Which of these albums do I have? 7, 8, 12, 17, 26, 38, 39, 43, 49, 50, 54, 57, 60, 62, 64, 68, 100.

It was almost a theme day...

... here on the blog, what with those last two posts about or partly about coined verbs. If I could revise titles -- you know there are blog rules, don't you? -- I would retitle that first post "Boy Georging."

Your Honor, I think you can see the importance of not Boy Georging my client.

Speaking of language, did you notice the way the Boy George article ended:

Later the exhausted star, who was supervised by a uniformed guard, paused for a fag break.

He said: “I am now going to go and have sex with the guard.”

He had a "fag break" and then he had sex with the guard. The British... they're an endless source of amusement, aren't they?

Humiliating Boy George.

Lots of photographers turned out yesterday to snap Boy George as he swept the streets in performance of court-ordered public service. George snapped back with obscenities, which look nasty in writing but sound fairly good-natured in the video clip. It was, as his lawyers argued, a media circus, and it did impose a much greater degree of punishment on him that the same work imposes on someone who is ignored. After 10 minutes, George is reassigned to indoor work, as if the spectacle with the photographers had not been predictable all along. I feel sorry for him and annoyed at the authorities for subjecting him to this, but only just very slightly.

Oh, look at that picture.

Who will even know it's Boy George?

Is a fashion-and-makeup workshop a ridiculous proposal for community service?

The judge in Boy George's case thought so.

His lawyer [Louis Freeman] said O'Dowd [AKA Boy George] hoped to do something more worthwhile than sweeping streets and sidewalks.

"There's nothing wrong with that if that's part of his punishment, but it will turn into a media circus, and the press will be following him every day," Freeman said.

The judge said he understood the objection to street cleaning: "It's humiliation." However, he said, O'Dowd "got out from under a felony, and he took a (misdemeanor) deal that had an element of humiliation..."

A celebrity shouldn't get special treatment, but the lawyer -- naturally -- is going to argue that to be treated the same is to be treated differently. There's more humiliation. It's a media circus.

"Gay unions, what is that about?"

Says Boy George. "I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more ... I think is a bit tragic. I am looking-forward to gay divorces."

He's got his point of view:

He dislikes George Michael, and wishes Will Young "would go back in the closet. He is a common or garden homosexual, he is NOT a queer."

George has very distinct ideas about whether people are the proper kind of gay. George Michael is the wrong kind, according to George, for being caught in a California loo and thus enforcing the reputation that gays are "rampant". He remains furious that Elton John performed with homophobic Eminem in 2002 at the MTV awards.

ADDED: Are George's opinions offensive? I think it's just fine for him to have a bohemian outlook and to cast all conventional persons outside of his preferred group. But do gay people have a special obligation to unconventional? The answer should be no, and I don't see that he's saying yes. But, then, I've always liked Boy George and naturally tend to construe his remarks in a positive light.