Madonna played Roseland Ballroom in NYC the other night.  She did a quick 32 minute, six song set.  It was great.  I have to say she was a little rough…missing some cues and getting ahead of the music.   But the dancing was amazing. That was the best part.  Below is the video of Candy Shop.

Its gross, but funny and the bitch does Madonna, Cher, Wynonna Ryder, Britney and more….

THIS IS INSANE.

As the US refuses to provide funding and help for vets, suicides are on the rise.  Bringing the war home and hurting US families even more…

I SWORE I WOULD WAIT UNTIL THE RELEASE DATE OF HARD CANDY, APRIL 29, BEFORE I LISTENED TO IT, IN CASE IT LEAKED.  WELL IT HAS LEAKED AND I COULDN’T WAIT AND IT S ‘EFFIN GOOOOOODDDDD!  I LOVE IT.  

FIND IT. LISTEN TO IT.  DANCE TO IT. LOVE IT.

Family and friends are working out the details for a memorial service, and I have created a memorial website,http://www.kathleenbolton.org where information about the service will be posted. There is a guestbook. Please feel free to visit, comment, send pictures, share memories. Kathleen had an ever-expanding universe of people and communities of people who loved her. I know family and friends alike will appreciate reading about and learning more about the wonderful woman who was Kathleen.

–Kathy Skillicorn

My mom knew Kathleen for over 30 years and she wanted share some thoughts and memories with KB’s friends and loved ones.

I met Kathleen in 1974 when I went to work nights in the ER at St. Luke’s hospital. She was an excellent nurse and taught me a lot about what I know about emergency medicine. She showed me about SF and transferred her love of the city to me. We would go to Stinson Beach , Russian River , neighborhood festivals and the ocean.

She helped me greatly when my children Carla and Jaime were born. I used to get sooo stressed about things that were new for me. Kathleen was always there to smooth things out and say, You can do this Mare!! She was a bundle of resources and never hesitated to share them.

Her loving energy was contagious. My family all lived back east so Kathleen and Debra became Aunties and loved that role. When I was coming out, she helped me to keep the focus on myself and not get caught up in guilt, shame or denial. I’ll never forget her for that.

 My Kids and I have great memories and tons of pictures of us in the “old Days’. My shock at how she died has changed to wonder at the thought of any one of us being here literally one minute and gone the next. She did not suffer, she did not linger in pain over an illness or injury. She was just being her self and the lights went out.

I choose to picture her in paradise with Debra and Amber, a loving family once again. I will always remember the good times we had, the emotions we shared and the generosity of her friendship.  Part of why my children are such cool people now is for knowing Kathleen.

With Love and Peace,

Mary Orlando

In tough times its nice to see a little something fun like this….

Little girl don’t you forget her face
Laughing away your tears
When she was the one who felt all the pain

Little girl never forget her eyes
Keep them alive inside
I promise to try — it’s not the same

Keep your head held high — ride like the wind
Never look behind, life isn’t fair
That’s what you said, so I try not to care

Don’t let memory play games with your mind
She’s a faded smile frozen in time
I’m still hanging on — but I’m doing it wrong
Can’t kiss her goodbye — but I promise to try

-Madonna & Patrick Leonard

This is a letter I received from a friend of Kathleen’s. It made me cry.

Hi All,

I cannot believe this, but I am writing to you again to tell you that
another friend of ours died today. It is less than a month since Marsha

passed - and today, our friend Kathleen is gone. She died in Stern
Grove
in a freak accident when a tree fell on her car.

When I first saw a report in the Chronicle, it had a photo of the
crushed car and it looked like Kathleen’s car. I called Tom and we
tried
to figure out ways to prove to ourselves that it wasn’t her car. They
did not release a name, but the dog that was with her looked a lot like

Biscuit. Then, hours later it was reported that the person killed was a

dog walker. I called her, but couldn’t leave a message because her
mailbox was full. I email her begging her to confirm that it was not
her. Bit, by bit, more news came out that fit, and then, just a half
hour ago, they said her name - Kathleen Bolton. And yes, that was our
friend.

We cannot believe that Kathleen is gone. We cannot believe it. She was
one of the gentlest souls with the biggest heart around. She was an
R.N., a nurse care manager for hospice and home care and she was a dog
walker. No, she was a dog angel. After Katrina, she personally rescued
dozens of dogs that she brought back to the Bay Area and then found
them
permanent homes. She couldn’t bear to see those animals suffer. She
gave
of her time and money to give these dogs a loving home again. She was
the best dog walker/trainer possible. When we rescued Sadie in 2003, we

were told that we should never take her to a dog park, because she
would
be too aggressive, too old to learn new things and being around other
dogs would stress her out too much. We found Kathleen, and Kathleen
took
us to Stern Grove and took off Sadie’s leash and helped her learn how
to
be with other dogs. Since Sadie is a rescue dog, we can’t leave her at
a
kennel when we go on vacation, and the only place where Sadie feels as
comfortable as at home is at Kathleen’s. She loves her two dogs, Lulu
and Biscuit. She loves ‘Aunt Kathleen’ and whenever we see Kathleen at
either Stern Grove or Fort Funston (which are the 2 places where she
walks her dogs), Sadie is very happy. She know the whistle Aunt
Kathleen
uses to call her dogs and her ears prick up and she gets really
attentive and waits for Lulu and Biscuit to appear before her beloved
Aunt Kathleen. When Sadie is boarded with Kathleen, Kathleen will call
us and tell us cute things that Sadie is doing that show how much she
is
at home with her. ‘Sadie woke up Lulu this morning to play with her’,
or
‘Sadie doesn’t use her blanket anymore (that we gave Kathleen so Sadie
would feel at home), she sleeps with Biscuit now.’ We have gotten these

calls from her in Omaha, Vancouver, New York, Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island. I remember standing outside the Rhode Island School of
Design when one of these calls came and leaving everything I was doing
to hear a report about Sadie.

Kathleen taught us how to acclimatize Sadie to a new environment - the
first time we left her with Kathleen, it was for 10 minutes (Sadie
jumped on her kitchen table under her window right next to her entry
door when I left), then for 1/2 hour (Sadie sat by the door but left
the
table alone), then 2 hours (Sadie walked away from the door), then
overnight, then for a weekend, and then for a one week vacation. All
that interspersed with many, many walks with Kathleen and her pack in
Fort Funston and Stern Grove so Sadie would not have such a big change
in her routine when we were gone. Kathleen preferred Fort Funston, and
I
want to know what made her go to Stern Grove today.
I remember a day, a couple of years ago. We were walking in Stern Grove

in the winter, and it was a little bit stormy and I wanted to stay, but

Kathleen got us out of the park because it wasn’t safe in the wind and
the storm under the trees. She was very adamant about it. ‘A person got

killed in Stern Grove a while back, when a tree fell on them’ she
warned
me. I want to know what cruel fate decided today that that was where
and
how she was going to die.

I think about Lulu and Biscuit, and how they survived and how they were

caught by Animal Care and Control Officers in the park. I think how
traumatized they are having seen their pack leader die in front of
their
eyes. I think about Kathleen’s partner who had to get the animals from
Animal Care and Control, confirming it was their dogs. I think about
Sadie who will not see her Aunt Kathleen anymore. I don’t understand
any
of this.

Kathleen wasn’t old. She was in the middle of her life and she was
doing
good. You could always count on her time and effort when a dog issue
was
at stake. She lobbied to have more off leash parks, she was always
there
when an animal needed her. Dogs love her. People loved her. Her work
here wasn’t done yet. I know all life is valuable, but to have her
taken
away is bitter.

Today the world is much, much poorer and if there is a heaven, it is
filled with dogs who are welcoming their guardian angel home tonight.

gerdi + tom lee

Yesterday my family and I lost someone very dear to us. Kathleen Bolton was my God-mother and my mom’s best friend back in the day. She died yesterday in Stern Grove, having been hit by a large tree branch that crushed her car as she was loading her dogs into her car.

I have known Kathleen since I was born. She and my parents were good friends. We have many pictures from their wild days with big hair and smoking joints. She was a free spirit, very loving and compassionate. She took care of everyone she loved, she loved dogs and if you met her you couldn’t help but loving her.

I sit here now, listening to the Like a Prayer album, thinking of her. This album is special to me for many reasons, but the first time I ever heard it all the way through on CD was with Kathleen. I found it in her stacks of CD’s and told her I loved the song and she suggested we play it. So I popped in the disc and we took in the sweet music pouring from her speakers and we danced and laughed through the entire twelve track playlist. This was when her beloved dog, Amber, was still alive who danced along with us.

Another first with Kathleen was when I was a little older. She showed me how to smoke pot out of a bong. Kathleen, her ex-partner, but good friend Debra and I sucked on the bong and laughed and laughed and laughed. I, of course, provided those two girls, who have both passed now, with some comedic moments: I didn’t know how to smoke out of that thing, so I thought you have to put your lips over the entire things like a popsicle…or a dick.

“Leave it to a gay boy to smoke like that,” Kathleen cackled in her deep, loving laugh.

Occasionally she and her friend, another ex-partner, Jane would come into my restaurant to eat. The last time was just a couple months ago. I wish I could sit with her again. She always wanted to hook me up with some random man.

Last week I bought a bicycle. Kathleen and Debra taught me how to ride my very first bike when I was a young boy. While riding through the park this past Saturday, I thought of the good times we had in that empty parking lot and decided I was going to call Kathleen and just let her know I got a bike and that it made me think of her and Debra.

I never made that call and now I never will be able to.

I didn’t see Kathleen much, but I loved her a lot and miss her already.

This is a photo we took together a few years ago at the Folsom Street Fair. It exemplifies exactly what she was, tough as leather and chains but as sweet and loving as her smile on a sunny day. I hope she’s up in heaven right now with Amber and Debra looking down on us and smiling her knowing smile because now she knows all of our secrets…

Here is the SFGate article.

This is a bit late, but I attended the protests against the Olympic Torch relay because of the cruel way China treats Tibet. It was definitely not as crazy as I thought it was going to be. There were thousands of people there, but since they changed the route all together, shit didn’t really go down, just a lot of demonstrations.

I had more to say about this, but shit has gone down, as you’ll see in future posts in a minute, but here is a video I put together. peace.

UK Review: Hard Candy

London radio station Capital Radio also attended the UK album playback yesterday and wrote this great track-by-track review of the album:
This afternoon we went to a brilliantly decorated room in East London to hear the new Madonna album while sipping champagne & eating jelly beans. Sounds good huh? Well it was! Anyone fearing a full on urban attack - don’t worry. ‘Hard Candy’ is full of long disco pop songs - it just has some heavy beats! Here’s our track by track rundown:

1. Candy Shop:
Here we go! Madonna wants to be our ‘1-stop candy shop - your lollipop’. Yum! This is produced by The Neptunes and is filled with bleeps and swirls. It ends with a ’sticky but sweet’ rap by Pharrell.
2. Four Minutes To Save The World:
You all know this one!
3. Give It To me:
Not a Furtado/Timbo cover but a Pharrell track that’s going to be the 2nd single. Let us tell you now - it’s mindblowingly amazing. There’s cowbells, twinkles and a funny vocoder you might have heard on ‘Music’. Think old school pop Madonna but fired up at 300 mph. There’s a funky break near the end where Madonna shouts ‘don’t stop!’, the music stops and a male voice sings ‘left to the right’
4. Heartbeat:
‘Probably the 3rd single’, Heartbeat has a synthy 80s sounding intro. Madge tells us that ‘when I dance I feel free!’. There’s something about the melody when she sings ‘you know I feel it in my Heartbeat’ that’s really cute!.
5. Miles Away:
This starts deceptively with guitar that reminds us of ‘Don’t Tell Me’. Is it going to be a ballad? Course not silly! 5 seconds in and here comes a pounding bassline. ‘I just woke up from a fuzzy dream, you won’t believe the things I’ve seen.’ This is the first song that doesn’t hold our attention all the way but it’s got a dreamy ending.
6. She’s Not Me:
It starts with 4 claps and then all hell breaks loose. This is the tale of a jilted lover and has about 7 different elements. It sounds kind of like a sequel to ‘Deeper and Deeper’ with the passion, the fastness and the twirls. Totally hypnotic - it’s a Timberlake/land production but it could come straight from the disco house of Nile Rodgers. Oh and it would mix into Anita Ward’s ‘Ring My Bell’ perfectly. Also it’s REALLY LONG.
7. Incredible:
The slowest track so far, but it’s full of strange noises. It’s kind of what ‘Cherish’ might sound like if it was looped and scratched up by a DJ. A sweet solo piano maintains the sweetness under the nasty dirty bass that’s everywhere else, but that bass is totally needed to stop it being smaltzy. It ends with a drum breakdown, that we’re sure wil be replaced with a beatboxer on tour, and lots of sexy ‘OOH’s.
8. Beat Goes On:
Featuring Mr Kanye West, this is a full on party disco song. ‘On and on, the beat goes - you don’t have the luxury of time - say what’s on your mind’. It has a ‘BEEP BEEP’ bit that totally reminds us of Donna Summer ‘Bad Girl’ (youtube it - it’s awesome!). Then there’s some dreamy sounding chords and up pops Kanye for a rap with some ‘Like A Prayer’ HEY!s going on underneath him.
9. Dance 2night:
Not a Paul McCartney cover! This is a bit downbeat sounding, but it’s still not a ballad. It’s just a bit dark. Wise ol’ Madonna tells us all that ‘You don’t have to be beautiful to be understood. You don’t have to be rich & famous to be good’.
10. Spanish Lessons:
She’s always loved throwing a bit of Spanish into her songs and now here’s a full on Spanish assault! Think matador trumpets and bullfighting. Plus learn her language and you might get lucky - ‘You’re so loco & you drive me crazy. If you do your homework maybe I will give it up’
11. Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You:
The 2nd best song on the album, this is ‘Cry Me A River’ 5 years later, and sung by Madonna. It’s got a gorgeous sad, synth opener which is suddenly compounded by hynotizing bleeps. Queen Madge sings ‘Over and over you’re pushing me onto the floor and I keep coming back for more’. It’s still not a ballad though. Hooray!
12. Voices:
And we’re at the end. Boo hoo. It’s a creepy sounding ending though and it’s almost as if a song off ‘Erotica’ has been brought up to date with lyrics like ‘Who is the master, who is the slave’ and ‘Are you walking the dog or is that dog walking you’.

So there we have it. Course when we listen to it all again we’ll probably completely change our mind about our favourite tracks!
As massive Madonna fans we’re very happy that she hasn’t gone off the rails as feared.

It’s simply a Madonna pop album for 2008 which starts out having a full on party and ends in that dark corner Ms Ciccone knows so well.

Are you excited?

Madonna’s new video for 4 Minutes wasn’t supposed to be available until tomorrow but for some reason its ready to download today.

The video is amazing. Lots of great dancing and her boobs look great. Check it out!

The most fun part of the trip to Kauai was the fourth day when Carla, Douglas and myself went ziplining! It was sooo much fun. By the end of the three hour trek I was enamored with the sport and even got an application to work at the adventure company. We’ll see what happens…

So we went ziplining. If you know me, you know I can be loud and goofy and if you’ve ever met my sister you know she is like me x1,000, and together, well…. you can figure it out. So we were the loud, crazy ones that everyone was kind of unsure about. After we received and put on our gear, there were two truck to take us to the ziplining course. The three of us go into one truck, and I swear to god, everyone else filed into the other truck and the left overs reluctantly climbed in with us. Bitches.

If you’ve never been ziplining then you suck and you have to do it. It is soo much fun. We did a total of 8 lines and the first one was this tiny, short one not very high off the ground, just go to get us, ya know, acclimated to the feel. then we had to hike through some mud and then fun began.

After the second zipline we had to walk across this wooden, swinging suspension bridge, two people at a time. Of course I had to cross with Carla and she, as always, had to fuck with. So she starts swinging and bouncing the bridge, which i hate. She cackling the whole time, i’m like, i just want some solid ground. Oh yes, I’ll put my life in the hands of strangers, strap on equipment I don’t know and hang from a wire 150 feet off the ground, but any kind of unstable bridge of ladder…vomit. Then the tour guide started swinging the bring, i’m like, thats unprofessional, bitch.

But the bridge did go over a waterfall and all, so it was ok. As with anywhere in Hawaii our surroundings were beautiful. Just lush green everywhere. And the rain had actually stopped long enough for us to get through except for some drizzle at the end.

Rhonda, our guide was awesome, she’s in this video. And the last one, actually. The run I do in this video, i think turned out really good, it was the smoothest of all the footage i took in the air…enjoy. Also it was the highest and longest, I think 150 ft high and 750 ft across. Amazing.

In the end I was in love with ziplining. I could see myself moving to Hawaii to be a zipline guide for a year…that would be awesome.

In the end everyone loved us. Douglas was the nice guy, Carla was the screamer and also volunteered to go first on the very first line, so she set the precedent and I did a lot of posing up in the air. You’d be surprised at how freeing it is to hang from wires over a huge canyon.

We took a ton of pictures…so here’s a little montage set to Madonna, of course, 4 Minutes mashed with Garbage’s Paranoid.

Did anyone see The Biggest Loser this week? My DVR was set to record, like it does every week, but for some reason it didn’t record. What happened? Who got voted off? Did the boys get their asses kicked again or did a girl go home.

Email me if you saw it!

Big Gay Movie Night: A Tribute to Madonna

Energy 92.7 are bringing back Big Gay Movie Night to the Bridge Theatre on Thursday April 17th. This time we are saluting the matron saint of Energy 92.7, Madonna.

We’ll be watching Desperately Seeking Susan and Body of Evidence. Plus we’ll have plenty of win it before you can buy it copies of Madonna’s new “Hard Candy” CD, in stores on April 29th, as door prizes.

Tickets are only $7 and a portion of the proceeds go to Project Open Hand.

Beatie, who is legally a man but used to be a woman, chose to keep his reproductive female organs when he went through reconstructive surgery.

Beatie tells Advocate magazine:

“Ten years ago, when Nancy and I became a couple, the idea of us having a child was more dream than plan. I always wanted to have children. However, due to severe endometriosis 20 years ago, Nancy had to undergo a hysterectomy and is unable to carry a child. But after the success of our custom screen-printing business and a move from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest two years ago, the timing finally seemed right. I stopped taking my bimonthly testosterone injections. It had been roughly eight years since I had my last menstrual cycle, so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly. My body regulated itself after about four months, and I didn’t have to take any exogenous estrogen, progesterone, or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy.

“Our situation sparks legal, political, and social unknowns. We have only begun experiencing opposition from people who are upset by our situation. Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Health care professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognize Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m transgender.

“This whole process, from trying to get pregnant to being pregnant, has been a challenge for us. The first doctor we approached was a reproductive endocrinologist. He was shocked by our situation and told me to shave my facial hair. After a $300 consultation, he reluctantly performed my initial checkups. He then required us to see the clinic’s psychologist to see if we were fit to bring a child into this world and consulted with the ethics board of his hospital. A few months and a couple thousand dollars later, he told us that he would no longer treat us, saying he and his staff felt uncomfortable working with “someone like me.”

“How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child — I am so lucky to have such a loving, supportive wife. I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

The Advocate spoke with Corey Johnson (pictured here — you may remember Johnson as the Massachusetts high school football player who received national attention when he came out to his team in 1999) about a fundraiser held last Thursday hosted by GLSEN founder and executive director Kevin Jennings and his partner, Jeff Davis, which raised $170,000 for the candidate:

“Johnson, who is 25, has supported Obama for about a year but prefaced his remarks by saying he has never been an ‘Obama-phile.’ He said the senator addressed some of the most contentious LGBT issues without prompting, such as same-sex marriage and the inclusion of transgender people in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In fact, those were the two issues Sen. Obama singled out as being potential disappointments to the LGBT community right now, while he signaled that a hate-crimes bill could likely be passed and signed into law and that repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ might be on the horizon. According to several sources, including Johnson and Lenore, Obama said he did not think it was “politically feasible” to secure marriage rights for same-sex couples in the country at this point. Sen. Obama acknowledged that the community wanted full marriage rights but said that he favored civil unions for now while leaving open the possibility that his position might evolve in the future. In terms of ENDA, Obama said he supported an ENDA that included transgender protections but that he didn’t believe a fully inclusive bill had enough votes to pass the Senate at this time.

Said Johnson: “Senator Obama was asked at the fundraiser if he would publicly state that he didn’t find being gay immoral in front of a non-gay audience. The question was clearly alluding to the Peter Pace firestorm from last year and Obama said that there was a misunderstanding that took place. He gave a policy speech in the morning and was walking to his car when a reporter kept shouting the question about General Pace. He said he wasn’t answering any questions at all that day about anything other than the policy speech. So he said ‘I’m not answering that’ and got into his car. It was spun as him not speaking out against Pace’s remarks. He was genuinely upset that it was portrayed in such a way in the media and tried to have his campaign clear it up immediately by repudiating General Pace with a public statement.”

As to whether or not he would publicly state that he didn’t find homosexuality immoral in front of a non-gay audience, Johnson said Obama declared “he absolutely would, and he has in the past.”

In the first week of February 2008 I went to Hawaii with my family. We went to Kauai. I took a ton of pics and videos, which I had always planned to share on StrangeCandy. But YouTube has been a bitch and I haven’t been able to load the videos…until now. So now i’m starting to share the story of my vacation along with the pictures and video…some are really fun. It’ll take a few installments.

Carla, my sister, came down to stay with me the night before we flew out to Kauai. I, of course, had work late and hadn’t even started packing until I got home from work. I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep, so i wasn’t about to let Carla get any sleep. So i put on some Kathy Griffin and got to it.

Here I am, obviously very excited.

After a six hour flight we finally got to Kauai. It was muggy and raining lightly. We didn’t start to panic yet, because we knew it rained in Hawaii all the time, on every island. And we had even checked the weather and we knew it would be raining a little more than usual.

We were staying at Hanalei Bay Resort, it was super nice and we could see mountains and waterfalls out the back doors. There were pretty birds and all that. The grounds were just beautiful.

Apparently Kauai is, literally, the wettest place on the planet. This island gets, like, 600 inches of rain a year!!! And, unknown to me and my sister, we were vacationing on this wet wet island right in the middle of its rainy season. Mom and her partner, Benitta, knew this and chose not to tell us.

We realized this fact the second day we were in the condo when there was torrential downfall rain. It was crazy. It was the day of the Superbowl and Benitta and I went with her niece, Belia, and her husband, Doug, who live on Maui and were staying with us for a few days, to find a bar to watch the Superbowl. A few minutes after leaving the grounds we got a call from my Mom saying the rain actually FLOODED our condo and then the power went out. So we had to actually switch condos. It was crazy. When we got back, almost the entire condo had water all over the floor.

This is my Mom, she was very excited when we finally got settled into our second condo.

RAIN. Here’s a sample. The part where we’re in the car is when we were searching for the bar.

There is only so much rain we could take, so me and my sister were looking for something to make it fun. She came up with the great idea of the EXPERIMENT: to find out if we could slide down a wet, muddy hill in plastic garbage bags. This is actually her second attempt. She erased the first video i had because she thought it was just a bad picture of her…we had words about that.

This is Belia and Doug, you’ll see more them in future posts…

One thing about this island is there are roosters EVERYWHERE.

Finally, sun starved on the third day, we drove to the south, “sunny,” side of the island for some beach time.

Driving back to the north side, we stopped by Waimea Canyon, the grand canyon of Hawaii. It was beautiful.

And we got some ice cream. Apparently the place is famous. I don’t know about all that but the ice cream was hella good.

That night me and Carla couldn’t sleep, so we had a photo shoot. It was super duper HOT:

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF HAWAII 2008: ZIPLINING!!!!! I’ve got tons of video of that….

This has been on a lot of blogs already, but since the message is so important, I’m posting it here as well. Please share it on your own blog or send it to your friends.

People that live for peace are being beaten and imprisoned by China’s police. Boycott the Olympics!