RIP - QAF

I just wanted to do a quick post on the ending of the Queer as Folk, which I had to chance to see Sunday night. The best thing about the end of QAF was that the super funny and scandalous show Weeds came on after it.

I have never been a big fan of the show. It seemed to me to be about whole bunch of whiney, midwest (is Pittsburgh considered the midwest), gay white big fish in a very small pond. I don’t know what it is about small cities that make divas out of some of the most pedestrian vanilla people like Brian Kinney. I will admit that large cities make divas out of the grotesque and obnoxious. As a young up and coming homosexual at the best school in the world I stood in awe of Mr. Bobby Trendy. With his glitter lip gloss, club kid shoes and entourage I would scream to my friend over the thumpa-thumpa at the club "Bobby Trendy is so cool." Getting the chance to sit next to him at gay pizza after a long night out at Axis' 18 and over night was a highlight of my sophomore year. Brian Kinney and Bobby Trendy, same script, different cast? How random.

One of the main reasons why I never liked the show was that in all of its 5 seasons they had 8 Black people appear on the show. Of that 8, 6 only had one line which was all in the same vein: you’re fucking hot Brian (Brian kicked him out of the elevator before they boned cuz he was having one of his moments of self-loathing), or you want a hit of this (from the dinner/tina party that Emmett threw for Ted). The one Black guy that got to speak for a whole episode was half of that suburban couple that hired Emmett to be their houseboy and then both boned him. What a mess!

I actually had the chance to visit Pittsburgh and it was just tragic as the show. I happened to be there the night Ms Shirley Q. Liquor was performing. The last thing I expected to see, even in Pittsburgh, was a fat white man in black face and drag talking about her 19 Chilllren. I think I could have liked it more but the crowd was absent of any irony, which actually got me scared. At least the Yuenglings were $1.

I think I am coming off as an angry African American which is far from what I am. But I must admit that my white friends are the most fab in the world, just like all my friends. We can go out get wasted on martinis, discuss world politics, give a review of the last porn movie we saw, lament and praise that fact that were almost 30, and cruise and comment on every man in the bar. Why can't art reflect reality?