Don’t get me wrong, a new Hour will publish next week, but it will be a different paper than the one you are reading now, with an all-new editorial team. But when I started here in May 1995, following a period when a series of corporate mergers forced newspapers to cost-cut newsrooms into oblivion, my way into the newspaper biz was to be out.

Today when people ask me if I am more than just Mr. Three Dollar Bill, I reply, "Well, now that I’m in I can’t get the fuck out."

As my friend and colleague, Globe and Mail arts columnist, author and playwright R.M. Vaughan once told me, "When I was shopping one of my books around, [one publisher] said they already had a gay writer. It’s like that old porn adage about blacks: ‘One’s exotic, two’s a ghetto.’ It’s an eternal battle. There is a lavender ceiling. I’ve hit it enough times to know. Newspapers expect us [gay writers] to write about art and culture. ‘Why do you want to write about the Iraq war? That’s for straight people.’"

But those early years at Hour were really fun, especially the summer of 1996 when we had no editor-in-chief and the run of the place. We pumped out many in-your-face newspapers during that era, a time when I fell in with my two mentors, legendary Montreal boulevardier and Gazette columnist Nick Auf der Maur, as well as another legend, New York Times bestselling author and the Godfather of Gay Lit, Felice Picano.

Nick – who passed away from cancer 13 years ago today, on April 7, 1998, just three days short of his 56th birthday – was always one for pithy anecdotes and hearty advice.

"Nick was a charming man, and he’d pinch anyone’s bum!" Nick’s daughter Melissa Auf der Maur told me two weeks ago. (Nick once even pinched the ass of Rudolf Nureyev!) "He is still an inspiration to anyone who reads about his life [in Nick: A Montreal Life, the anthology of his columns featuring an introduction by his old friend, Mordecai Richler] and the way he chose to live it. He was a quite a man.

"I’m happy for you that you got to see the last of that generation, all those old journalists before the Internet, before TV, when print was our source of news for hundreds of years," Melissa says. "My father was the last amazing generation of it, right down to the hat."

Many Sundays I joined Nick to read the Sunday New York Times at Else’s bar, punctuating our grunts with tequila shots. After one all-night Crescent Street boozing session we ended up in his favourite pizzeria at 5 a.m. with his godson Jake Richler, where the staff served us hot coffee laced with Baileys.

And when I freaked out over work, Nick always calmed me down.

Like the time in 1997 when I interviewed Danny McIlwaine – the Montreal hustler convicted of murdering the Rev. Warren Eling – at Bordeaux prison. My lede read, "Danny McIlwaine was sucking on a crack pipe and drinking rum punch the night Anglican priest Warren Eling asked him for a blowjob."

My cover story not only pissed off McIlwaine’s lawyer, but also many of Montreal’s gay activists. "Don’t worry about it," Nick (who inherited Eling’s cat) told me. "You know you’re doing your job when everybody’s pissed off at you. Besides, it was a great lede!"

My other mentor is Felice Picano, whom I first met at a Montreal brunch (merci, Louis Godbout!) over a decade ago. Picano founded two pioneering gay presses, Seahorse Press and the Gay Presses of New York, which launched writers like Harvey Fierstein. Moreover, with Andrew Holleran, Edmund White and others, he founded the Violet Quill, the groundbreaking gay male literary nucleus of the 20th century.

More importantly, Felice and his friends laid the groundwork so that folks like me could actually write Three Dollar Bill. When his publisher wanted to subtitle Felice’s 1995 international bestseller Like People in History with the words "An American Novel," Felice insisted it be subtitled, "A Gay American Novel."

I’ve eaten smoked meat with Felice at Schwartz’s; took him to the site of Sex Garage, Montreal’s Stonewall; and for a decade he told me star-studded personal anecdotes for my annual Felice Picano column. I still remember the first time Felice read one of my columns. He said to me, "You’re not an ordinary writer, and neither am I."

Over the years here at Hour mag and TDB headquarters, I’ve gotten death threats, outed politicians like Andre Boisclair, been banned in Winnipeg and investigated by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, got the last-ever sit-down interview with James Brown, pissed off B.B. King and been screamed at backstage by Cyndi Lauper.

I shall miss this paper, its editor and my good friend Jamie O’Meara, who always made me look good. And I still miss Nick terribly. He’d be disheartened to see the old newspaper world crumbling around us.

What I know for sure is, without my mentors Nick and Felice, this would be a different world.

But Felice has promised me his personal tour of San Francisco, and Nick, well, he’d be proud that after I get tanked tonight, I’ll make a point of taking a piss in Ruelle Nick Auf der Maur.

Essential buttplug Thank you to all my TDB readers over the years. You can still find me and Three Dollar Bill at http://bugsburnett.blogspot.com/ and in the pages of Xtra and Fugues magazine.

The Taylor-Burton wedding contract was drawn up by renowned Montreal notary Lionel Segal, who a couple years earlier also notarized the wedding contract of yet another British Empire glamour couple, my parents, Gordon and Liliane Burnett.

During this era my British banker dad managed the CIBC branch at Expo 67 before becoming known locally as the "King of Chabanel" at the height of Montreal’s schmatte business in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, my Mauritian mom’s Robin Hood politician father – Felix Laventure, who not only refused an ambassadorship in Washington, D.C., but was eventually forced into exile by the British – had words with Montreal’s Catholic Archbishop because the Catholic Church refused to marry my parents since Dad was – wait for it – a Protestant.

A deal was struck and my parents were married in Montreal’s Berkley Hotel, which later became part of the Ritz-Carlton, where Taylor and Burton were married.

"It was early March 1964 when I received a phone call from Edward and Max Bernfeld, a father-and-son law firm, wanting an immediate meeting with me in absolute privacy," Segal explained in an anecdotal feature about Elizabeth Taylor – who died at age 79 on March 23 of congestive heart failure – that Segal wrote for the Montreal Gazette. "I was a young notary at the time, in practice since June 1960, and I had no idea what these lawyers wanted from me, although I knew them well and thought they might have a client wanting to purchase a major piece of real estate in Montreal.

"It turned out they had been advised by Lou Herman, an attorney in Toronto, to arrange to have a marriage licence issued in Montreal for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who planned to marry as soon as possible."

Segal continues, "At the time Mr. Burton was in a stage play in Toronto, and they were having trouble obtaining a marriage licence there because they were both in the midst of obtaining divorces in Mexico, she from Eddie Fisher and he from Sybil Burton. I had obtained from the authorities in Quebec the right to issue marriage licences, which dispenses with the publication of banns prior to any marriage.

"At the time, civil marriages did not exist in Quebec, and neither did divorce, except by going through the Senate. Marriage was handled by religious authorities."

Bestselling Hollywood biographer William Mann in his 2009 biography of Taylor, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, writes that the Montreal wedding was "the climax of a red-hot, two-year romance that had left two continents scorched in its wake. The beaming bride, her hair braided with white Roman hyacinths, wore a gown of yellow chiffon designed by Irene Sharaff, who’d done her costumes for Cleopatra."

Like my mom, whose childhood friend Jackie committed suicide because he could no longer bear living as an out gay man in Africa, many of Taylor’s closest friends were also gay men – iconic actors Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Roddy McDowall.

"Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t a fag hag, but in a beautiful way she was," author William Mann told me the week his Taylor biography shot up the New York Times bestseller list. "She loves camp and bigger-than-life personalities. She’s always been ahead of her times. At 18 she told Monty Clift, ‘You will find a man to love someday.’ That was in 1951!"

Five years later, Taylor cradled Clift’s bloodied and broken body after he smashed his car into a telephone pole after leaving her Beverly Hills home during the filming of Raintree County.

"History has always tried to imply they were secret lovers, but that’s bullshit," says Mann, who also wrote the awesome 2004 must-read book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood. "From the start they were close friends. Remember, she was 14 when they met and he was this hero to her. He was a rebel. He taught her you didn’t have to be a slave to the Hollywood studios."

About Taylor’s relationship with her gay Giant co-stars James Dean and Rock Hudson, Old Hollywood starlet Noreen Nash recently claimed Taylor and Hudson had a bet on who could seduce Dean first.

"I don’t know if it’s true," says Mann. "At first Elizabeth didn’t like Dean at all because he was a method actor. She thought he was ruining her takes and was full of himself. And there was a rivalry between Dean and Rock Hudson. But by the end of the shoot they had become friends."

In fact, very close friends. Following Taylor’s death, author and former Interview magazine editor Kevin Sessums, whom I interviewed here a couple years ago, revealed in The Daily Beast that Taylor told him, "I loved Jimmy. I’m going to tell you something, but it’s off the record until I die. Okay? When Jimmy was 11 and his mother passed away, he began to be molested by his minister. I think that haunted him the rest of his life. In fact, I know it did. We talked about it a lot. During Giant we’d stay up nights and talk and talk, and that was one of the things he confessed to me."

Two years later, in 1958, when Taylor filmed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman, she understood the gay subtext of the Tennessee Williams Pulitzer Prize-winning play because, Mann says, "Her second husband Michael Wilding was gay. So she knew exactly what Maggie was dealing with."

Of Taylor and Roddy McDowall – also famed for his weekly Hollywood "salons" where he invited Old Hollywood and New Hollywood stars for brunch every Sunday for decades ("Nobody does them anymore and nobody did them like Roddy," Joan Rivers once told me) – Mann says, "They were girlfriends."

And how much did Liz love Rock Hudson?

Well, when Rock died of AIDS in 1985, at the peak of AIDS-fuelled homophobia, Taylor threw caution to the wind and, as Mann told me himself, "became the single greatest force in the fight against AIDS… Unlike so many celebrities today – today every celebrity has to have a cause – Elizabeth stood up because someone had to."

Taylor founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 and later also established the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Then, back in April 2000, America’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation presented Taylor with GLAAD’s Vanguard Award for promoting gay equality.

"It’s the first award I’ve received from a gay organization and I’m honoured and just tickled," Taylor said in her acceptance speech. "I started my activism in the ’80s when a new disease emerged that was quickly and inexplicably killing people. Worse than the virus there was the terrible discrimination and prejudice it left in its wake. Suddenly it made gay people stop being human beings and start becoming the enemy. I knew somebody had to do something. For God’s sake, our president didn’t even utter the word for years into the epidemic. So I got involved."

Taylor continued, "All of my life I’ve spent a lot of time with gay men – Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Dean, Rock Hudson – who are my colleagues, coworkers, confidantes, my closest friends, but I never thought of who they slept with! They were just the people I loved. I could never understand why they couldn’t be afforded the same rights and protections as all of the rest of us. There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda."

So it should come as no surprise that when Taylor went out for a drink, she went to her favourite gay watering hole, The Abbey, in West Hollywood.

In fact, Taylor’s last public sighting was here, on Thursday, September 11, 2008, when she reportedly enjoyed a reportedly "sizable" martini. Then she was wheeled out through the hushed crowd to a waiting, blacked-out sedan.

"At The Abbey she [was] treated like a queen by all the queens," Mann told me.

Following Taylor’s death on March 23, news reports that the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church was going to picket her funeral were overshadowed by news that Taylor has reportedly left the bulk of her $600-million fortune to AIDS charities. According to Fox News, Taylor’s famous jewellery collection – worth an estimated $150-million in 2002 – will be auctioned off to benefit the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and amfAR.

In the coming weeks, expect more biographies on Taylor to be published, including one by my colleague David Brett in the U.K., who told me a couple years ago he had already completed his bio of Taylor, which was to be published posthumously. Taylor once famously said of Brett, "He’s a shit but a lovable shit."

Brett’s biography of Taylor will of course describe the Burton-Taylor wedding in Montreal that made the front page of newspapers around the world. "In 1961 Elizabeth Taylor was bigger than Princess Diana," William Mann says. "Nobody was bigger."

But I leave the final anecdote about Taylor – a genuine hero to the gay community – to my friend and New York Times bestselling author Felice Picano, the man I call the Godfather of Gay Lit. The last time we blabbed I asked Felice, "Who is the most glamorous movie star you have ever met?"

Instantly he replied, "Elizabeth Taylor! I was walking along the dock with my partner [Bob] on a hot Saturday afternoon at Fire Island Pines in ’82 or ’83 and we heard a voice above us say, ‘Do you have food there? I have liquor!’ So we looked at the very top of this very big yacht and there was Elizabeth Taylor! We went up, she was alone on the boat – evidently the others had stepped out while she was napping – and we had some snacks and a drink with her.

"She was really very nice," Felice said, "and she [had] really purple eyes."

O

Bitchslap Dept. While the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation rightfully presented Elizabeth Taylor with GLAAD’s Vanguard Award back in April 2000, just three days before Taylor passed away GLAAD also presented the Vito Russo Award to Grammy Award-winning pop star Ricky Martin at their 22nd annual GLAAD Media Awards in NYC on March 20.

Yes, the one and same Ricky Martin whom I outed in this column back in March 2001 on the eve of the nasty legal battle to repeal Puerto Rico’s sodomy law (finally repealed in 2005).

Now, the Vito Russo Award is presented to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community.

But, if you all recall, for years Martin played footsy with the closet all the while enjoying the protections and privileges of the gay community.

When I saw Martin – whose recently published memoir Me is more of a spiritual read – headline Montreal’s Bell Centre a couple of years ago, I actually walked out halfway though the concert, absolutely disgusted with how Martin disingenuously played up the role of heterosexual matinee idol, clearly to sell more tickets.

So when Martin finally "officially" came out last year, I believe he only did it because – like Rosie O’Donnell and Clay Aiken before him – he doesn’t want to look like a hypocrite in front of his own children.

When Martin took the stage at the GLAAD Media Awards in NYC this month, he actually said, "What an honour. I have no words but to say, ‘Thank you.’ GLAAD has helped me so much. A couple of months ago, I was being attacked by someone in the media in Puerto Rico, and I called GLAAD and I said, ‘What do you do? Because I’m new at this, I really don’t know what to do.’ And they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.’ And they hopped on a plane and they went to Puerto Rico and they did what needed to be done. And today, Puerto Rican television is one step closer to being free from hate, thanks to GLAAD."

Quite frankly, when GLAAD has been reduced to rewarding Ricky Martin for being some kind of hero, it proves once and for all that GLAAD really has become as dull as a fruitless Carmen Miranda.

As for Ricky Martin, that Puerto Rican maricón headlines Montreal’s Bell Centre on April 12.

Back then Nicks was a student at San José State University and Forest attended Stanford University.

"I was a freshman and social chairman of my dorm," Forest recalls today. "Seeing a chance to make money by getting other dorms and fraternities and high schools to book the top local bands that I was hiring at my dorm, I created the David Forest Booking Agency. Most of the little groups were happy if they made $125 for four 45-minute sets. I’d make a $25 fee on top of that. But not Stevie’s band, The Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band [later shortened to Fritz]. They’d only do three sets and wanted $150 net. I had to get my $25 fee ‘on top’ and they refused to do the ‘must-do’ frat-gig songs Louie/Louie, Gloria and – most importantly – Satisfaction."

David Forest went on to work for legendary rock promoter Bill Graham (who owned the Fillmore) before David Geffen asked Forest to head up the contemporary music division at CMA in 1970. There they moulded the careers of Leon Russell, James Taylor, Carole King, Van Morrison and The Carpenters, who, Forest says, "I took from a little boy-and-sister act to international headliners."

While Forest flaunted his gayness, Geffen was publicly closeted. "But we were open to each other," Forest says.

In those heady years Forest also personally managed, among others, Stevie Nicks, Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship, Elvin Bishop, Shaun Cassidy, Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe and Quiet Riot (whose singer, Kevin DuBrow, died of a cocaine overdose in 2007 and whose onetime guitarist, Randy Rhoads, died in a 1982 plane crash after joining Ozzy Osbourne’s band).

But Forest – then one of the top concert producers in the western USA – lost his shirt in 1978 financing a TV special with Alice Cooper, The Kinks and Nazareth. So he turned to the gay-porn biz, literally turning Ryan Idol and Ken Ryker into porn superstars. Along the way he also became the world’s most famous "male madam," arrested twice for pandering.

In other words, Forest went from rock to cock.

Now he’s writing all about it, warts and all, in his upcoming memoirs. "I’ve just hired a writer, and I’m talking about everything – the arrests, prison, my famous clients. And there’ll be a whole chapter just on Stevie."

Nicks appears to be the one client Forest was most fond of. "Fritz weren’t as popular as Santana or Big Brother & The Holding Company, and [when] the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service got recording contracts, Fritz was still playing high schools. But I knew Stevie would be a star the night Fritz opened for Janis Joplin and Big Brother at the Fillmore. After her band members left I told Stevie, ‘Stay and meet Janis.’ Stevie looked at Janis and she saw herself in her."

Eventually the egos of the male band members killed Fritz.

"The boys didn’t want to have a ‘lead’ singer, let alone a female lead singer," Forest explains. "They resented Stevie being the centre of attention. I did everything possible to convince them they were missing the boat. In the end Lindsey [Buckingham] and Stevie [quit] and Fritz didn’t survive their departure."

Forest put together a showcase of the newly named Buckingham-Nicks duo at the penthouse of the Hyatt on Sunset but, Forest says, "It didn’t produce any [record company] bidders."

So Buckingham-Nicks split with Forest, scored a Polydor record deal and came back to Forest (temporarily) in 1974 when Fleetwood Mac came calling. "I got the call from Stevie that Mick Fleetwood wanted them to join [his band]. It wasn’t a very good deal – no part of the publishing. They were just paid sidemen, really. But that changed real quickly."

The problems that broke up Fritz also plagued Fleetwood Mac as Nicks again became the band’s undisputed star.

Now double-headlining solo with Rod Stewart on their current Heart & Soul tour that pit-stops in Montreal on April 1, Forest is proud he gave Stevie her start.

"I’m tickled pink! I also think this tour is a big step upward for Stevie because I believe she will come off this tour better as a co-star of Rod than as a member of Fleetwood Mac."

When asked what it is about Stevie (whose new Dave Stewart-produced solo album In Your Dreams is out on May 3) that has made her a gay icon (there is even a famous all-star drag-queen tribute in NYC each spring called Night of a Thousand Stevies), Forest replies without missing a beat, "Gay men have always loved their dance divas, but Stevie has always appealed to the gay guy rockers. It’s the outfits, the twirling, the persona. The gay guys just really dig her."

As for Forest – after seeing both the music and porn businesses decimated by the digital revolution – he keeps plugging away, writing his memoirs and looking for his next big star. Says the man I call The Starmaker, "I’ll probably die at my desk."

Essential buttplugs Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks co-headline the Bell Centre on April 1. The 21st annual Night of a Thousand Stevies takes over NYC’s Highline Ballroom on May 6 (www.mothernyc.com/stevie) and check out David Forest’s porn stars at www.thepremiereartists.com.

The great Kate Clinton is laughing her head off.

"But seriously, straight men need to reel him in!" she says. "It’s not making you look good! I think straight men are in trouble and Charlie Sheen is doing them no service at all. They need to do an intervention! ‘Charlie, you’re making us look bad!’"

This year Clinton celebrates her trailblazing three-decade stand-up career – which specializes in political commentary – with her year-long Glee Party Tour! She also releases Lady HAHA, her tenth DVD collection, next month, and she happily agreed to sit down for my ninth annual Kate Clinton column.

"For those of you who speak in Roman numerals, it’s XXX, baby!" says Kate, who turns 64 on Nov. 9. "How long have we known each other, Richard?"

"Almost 15 years," I reply, recalling the Q&A with Clinton I hosted at Montreal’s downtown Chapters bookstore during her summer 1998 book tour for her first collection of essays titled Don’t Get Me Started. I was young and nervous and Kate – a personal hero of mine – put me at my ease and made me feel like a million bucks.

The former elementary school English teacher – with her always-reassuring voice – did stand-up for the first time in 1981 on a dare, and she has since headlined nightclubs and festivals around the world, and always proudly as an out woman.

Without Kate Clinton, there is no Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, no Rosie O’Donnell (whom Clinton also used to write for on her old TV show), no out Lily Tomlin. As Kate herself once said, "Lesbian humour isn’t trying to sell anything, it doesn’t have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian on stage is still a very political act – if it weren’t, more women would do it."

Kate’s also had several off-Broadway runs and was a regular at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival until JFL pulled the plug on their Queer Comics showcase in 2005, a move that hasn’t hurt all those closeted gay comics JFL loves to hire.

Moreover, in her 30-year career Clinton has helped raise millions of dollars for such organizations as the New York City LGBT Community Center, the Gill Foundation and the U.S. National Center for Lesbian Rights. In fact, working the stage at community events year-round, Clinton has inspired yet another new generation of supposedly "post-gay" activists who have finally forced Obama’s hand over gays in the military and same-sex marriage.

"They walk the walk about coalition building, they’re very gender fluid, they work in the social media but they also know you still have to go door-to-door with flyers," Kate says proudly. "Every time I go it recommits me."

While a Sarah Palin 2012 presidential ticket could very well seal a second Obama term, Clinton (not related to Bill or Hillary), says, "I don’t want to get lazy again like I did with George W. Bush. Actually, I was quite bored: ‘Yup, he’s evil!’

"Palin would be a comedy gift for me, but bad for ‘us.’ I think she’s a tool, has no clue what’s involved and that’s probably what they [the backroom Tea Party boys] want, another little puppet. I think she’s very dangerous. I [also] think the old-school Republicans are terrified."

As for anti-gay Republicans Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump making noises about running for president in 2012, Clinton says, "I think the grandiosity of Trump is why he’s running. And Newt sees himself as an idea man and represents the old guard. I think they’re both a direct reaction to the Tea-baggers. Obama could be going, ‘Yeah, destroy each other!’ but he’s [too busy] running the country."

Kate also does not believe Hillary Clinton will run for office again. "I saw her [recently] and [my partner, author and activist] Urvashi [Vaid] was talking to her about immigration and international things and I said to [Hillary], "And I’m worried about your jet lag!’ And she replied, ‘Tell me about it!’ I said, ‘I don’t know how you do it. When I get off a plane I’m barely coherent. You get off a plane you have to do a press conference!’ Hillary said, ‘I know!’ I think she’s really tired."

Kate’s favourite joke these days is, "Sarah Palin found her Jihad spot."

"I actually take a bow when I do it because I enjoy it so much!" Kate laughs. "When I first wrote it I looked heavenward and said, ‘Thank you!’"

Does our Kate have trouble living up to being a living legend? "Do you feel obliged to do something legendary every time you step outside?" I ask her.

Kate laughs, then tells me, "It’s a burden, yes! I need to be able to do that pose in yoga for the people! Actually, I don’t really. I feel like I’m a spokesperson and I know where I come from. I come from the women’s movement, the [black] civil rights movement, the sexual liberation movement, the gay movement. While I never pulled off being straight very well – I felt like a fraud – I do this job very well."

Essential buttplugs Check out Kate Clinton’s daily jokes, weekly video blogs and Glee Party Tour! updates at www.kateclinton.com. Kate also headlines The Crown & Anchor in Provincetown all summer, May 28 through Sept. 4. Surf to www.onlyatthecrown.com.

And when I turned to look, they hugged!

Yes, this is the Philly I know and love, hometown of Noam Chomsky, Dick Clark and Bill Cosby (who once told me he doesn’t like being called "America’s Dad"). I’ve visited this tough city a few times over the last decade – preferably in summer so I can attend a Phillies baseball game – but I’ll be damned if I was going to turn down an invitation to visit Philadelphia last week, a city that’s way warmer than snowy Montreal in wintertime.

In fact, you could say Philly is blooming, no more so than at the Philadelphia International Flower Show – the oldest and grandest show of its kind (this year’s theme is "Springtime in Paris") – which I attended last weekend, the evening before it opened to the general public.

And let me tell you, this event is gayer than the Gay Games. And way more fun.

"You will lose 1,500 calories per day walking through this exhibition!" Drew Becher, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which produces the event, told me as I guzzled a Philadelphia-brewed Yuengling lager.

But wait – it gets gayer!

The handsome Becher got his PHS gig after a five-year stint running Bette Midler’s famed New York Restoration Project, which reclaims old New York City lots and transforms them into local urban gardens. Their goal is to plant one million trees in NYC because, says Becher, when Midler moved to New York from L.A. some years ago, she exclaimed, "Oh my God, this city looks like Courtney Love!"

Midler was also on hand in Philly last November when she and Jerry Seinfeld helped launch that city’s pretty awesome National Museum of American Jewish History, about a block or so away from the National Constitution Center in historic Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

Of course, when I’m in town, I get Danny Bonaduce opening the Forman Mills Clothing Factory Warehouse.

Anyway, if Midler wasn’t gay enough, when you’re at Philly’s Jewish museum, make sure to check out a number of costume objects worn by Barbra Streisand in the 1983 film Yentl.

The museum naturally focuses on America’s great Jewish cities – New York, Boston and Philadelphia – but it also points out Montreal has also been home to a great Jewish community since the 1700s. In fact, today, Montreal is home to the world’s third-largest Holocaust survivor community, after Israel and NYC.

That’s not the only Montreal connection here. On this trip I made a point of visiting Benjamin Franklin’s grave in the Christchurch burial ground just off Philly’s historic Independence Mall. Few folks remember that in 1775 Franklin stayed in Old Montreal’s Château Ramezay – then the Canadian headquarters of the American Revolutionary Army (today located across the street from Montreal City Hall) – when he tried to persuade Montreal to join the revolution.

Near the Jewish museum, Philly’s red-brick Independence Hall is where George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the U.S. Continental Army, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was signed and the U.S. Constitution was adopted.

I tried to relive some history myself: 150 years to the day of Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural speech on March 4, 1861, I stood on the very spot outside Independence Hall where Lincoln himself raised the American flag (back on Feb. 22, 1861).

"We are not enemies, but friends," Lincoln said that March 4, in a bid for reconciliation with the South.

Today, there is just so much to see in Philly and so little space to write about it all.

So this season, go for the art: Don’t miss the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibit at the Penn Museum (runs until June 5); Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery, also at the Penn Museum (opens April 30); the 150-artifact Mummies of the World exhibition at the kid-friendly Franklin Institute (opens June 18); and the month-long Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (opens April 7).

When I booted over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the Marc Chagall exhibition (runs until July 10), I accidentally discovered the superb exhibition The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress (runs through June 2011).

Needless to say, it’s fabulously gay.

Finally, you only have until July 3 to check out the Barnes Foundation’s 1,000-piece art collection before it closes to move to their new downtown digs which will only open in the spring of 2012.

The Barnes "priceless" collection is worth billions and features 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes and 59 Matisses (including his Spirit of Life, worth an estimated $100-million)!

The art here dazzles and overwhelms, which is why I especially enjoyed one painting by local Philadelphian Harry Sefarbi, who died at the age of 92 in Sept. 2009. Decades earlier when Sefarbi was a young man, Dr. Albert Barnes bought one of his paintings and hung it above the door in Room 9, which is packed with priceless Renoirs.

"Until the day Harry died," museum director Andrew Stewart said as he gave me a personal tour, "we’d sometimes see him visit the museum and just sit there [in Room 9, awed], his painting hung next to those of so many masters."

Essential buttplug Visit Philadelphia at www.visitphilly.com and gay Philly – now one of America’s Top 10 most-visited gay destinations – at www.visitphilly.com/c/gay.

This would all be laughable if all this lunatic propaganda wasn’t dangerous. All these denials that HIV is the cause of AIDS do is encourage people to believe safer sex is meaningless.

But are we really all that dumb? Dumb enough to believe that unsafe sex with Mr. Drop-Dead Gorgeous won’t kill us?

"What more proof do people need that HIV is the cause of AIDS?" veteran Montreal gay activist Michael Hendricks told me this week. "Does Christ have to appear and they put their fingers in his bloody wounds? This is insanity!"

Tell that to the HIV-denialists who took up the cause of former World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison (48-3-1 with 42 knockouts) when Quebec’s Regie des Alcools, des Courses et des Jeux (RACJ) – the sport’s governing body in Quebec – denied him a license to box in SP Promotion’s February 25 card at the Pierre Charbonneau Centre. That’s because Morrison allegedly tested positive in 1996 for HIV and reportedly refused to take an HIV test before the RACJ.

That’s when the HIV-denialists went into overdrive.

In an op-ed piece in The Gazette headlined "Junk science and AIDS," Terry Michael, executive director of the Washington Centre for Politics & Journalism, wrote, "Regulating a sport that often draws blood, RACJ says Morrison must submit to a test much of the world wrongly believes indicates presence of a pathogenic virus, a string of genetic code in nucleic acid covered in protein."

But wait, there’s more.

"Thousands of us in the worldwide community of dissenters from the single pathogen theory of AIDS understand Tommy Morrison is really looking for more than a fight in Montreal," Michael concludes. "He is offering an important teaching moment to Quebecers, Canadians, and millions worldwide who are victims of the multi-billion dollar HIV-AIDS Industry.

"The HIV-AIDS story is complex. Many of us have devoted years of study to it, and have concluded there is not now and there never was a human immunodeficiency virus. We ask the world to reassess 27-year-old politicized junk science. Canadians can contribute to that fight for truth by opposing injustice being visited on an American athlete who should be allowed to enter a ring Feb. 25 without taking a test about nothing."

First of all, to my eye, a newspaper running this op-ed unchallenged would be like running an anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish op-ed under the guise of reporting both sides of a story. Fortunately, in the days that followed, The Gazette ran op-ed rebuttals.

But in my mind, the damage was done. It’s like – and here I know I’m in the minority when I state this – I still do not believe gay men should donate blood.

Yes, by all means change the Hema-Quebec and Canadian Blood Services (CBS) questionnaire so that they ask us about unsafe sexual behaviour instead of whether or not we have had (gay) sex – even once – with another man since 1977.

But until we all start telling the truth when we fill in those forms before we donate blood, we risk tainting this country’s blood supply.

"The reasons I have reservations [about gay men donating blood] is because a lot of gay people are living with HIV," says Hendricks. "While it’s wonderful that we are being treated equally, giving blood is a privilege and not a civil right, and I don’t believe our blood-screening tests are 100 per cent perfect. If someone gets infected with HIV from a blood transfusion, we will be collectively blamed just like we were back in the 1980s."

CBS now reportedly believes a lifetime ban on gay men giving blood is obsolete and wants Health Canada to relax the rules.

"There have been lots of changes in the environment, lots of changes in testing [and] lots of changes on the international front," Lorna Tessier, CBS director of public relations told the Toronto star recently.

CBS is now apparently pushing Health Canada for a "one-year deferral" period for donors after they’ve had gay sex and is funding a $500,000 grant administered by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research to look into the issue.

But until I am told that under this new system Canada’s blood-bank system will be 100 per cent safe (and is that really possible?), I will not support gay men donating blood. It would be tantamount to letting an HIV-positive boxer into the ring. Because if even one person gets HIV because each party has their eye on the prize, then we’d be just as guilty of negligence as all those lunatic HIV-denialists.

Antonio – who has performed at the Segal Theatre and Monument-National in Montreal, was playwright-in-residence at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2004, and was a finalist for a 2007 Governor-General’s Award for Literary Drama (for his play In Gabriel’s Kitchen) – arrived and peeled off his clothes.

"The room was filled with girls in bikinis and guys with 24-pack abs," Antonio recalls. "They played wind chimes with birds chirping from this tiny ghetto blaster and we had to spin like whirling dervishes! I spun for 10-minutes and barely made it out of the room without puking! I went outside, began to cry and told my agent, ‘Never again!’ That was the beginning of me not selling out."

Ah, the trials and tribulations of the struggling actor.

On the eve of this weekend’s Academy Awards, there were just a few actors left that I’m interested in interviewing: Montreal’s very own Christopher Plummer who – unbelievably – has never won an Oscar (and I’d love to hear him tell stories about his youth in Montreal competing for local roles with William Shatner); the great Stephen Fry (who should’ve been nominated for an Oscar for portraying Oscar Wilde in Wilde); and the curmudgeonly film critic Rex Reed, who once co-starred with Mae West in the so-bad-it’s-good movie version of Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge. Reed actually agreed last summer but told me, "I’m in London speaking at Jean Simmons’ memorial service in Covent Garden – perhaps another time?"

The last actor on my wish-list was the handsome Salvatore Antonio who graduated from Montreal’s National Theatre School of Canada (alumni include Roy Dupuis, Colm Feore and Sandra Oh) back in 1998. In 2005, Antonio returned to teach at the NTS, which itself was founded back in 1960 (their original artistic director was Michel Saint-Denis, who created the Old Vic School and would later co-found The Juilliard Drama School).

"NTS now has more alumni teaching – not [people] from 20 years ago who had a career in England! I tell my students I was just like them and barely made it through my three years. So I’m not talking from the mount."

Antonio teaches Acting for the Camera at NTS. "Ì also teach The Business of Acting because when I graduated there was no bridge between the program and the real world. There is this shock period where you know you can play a king [on stage] but you can’t even deliver a pizza in a TV commercial!"

Antonio is arguably best-known for his terrific play In Gabriel’s Kitchen, about a gay son who commits suicide. It was compelling theatre back in 2006 when its sold-out run at Buddies didn’t impress the critics. "It was panned across the board. ‘Why bother? The whole coming-out thing has been done before.’ But it got incredible word of mouth and was the hit of the theatre season."

In Gabriel’s Kitchen practically presaged North America’s current gay-teen-suicide epidemic ("Sadly, yes," Antonio sighs). I tell Antonio I think he could’ve filmed an It Gets Better video like columnist Dan Savage. But Antonio – a former public-speaking champion – replies, "This enrages so many of my colleagues but I’ve always tried to stay away from these kinds of political statements because I personally don’t want to become a poster boy or reference point for anything."

Not to mention for gay people it’s often career suicide (no pun intended).

Like my friend writer R.M. Vaughan once accurately told me, "When I was shopping one of my books around, [one publisher] said they already had a gay writer. It’s like that old porn adage about blacks: ‘One’s exotic, two’s a ghetto.’ It’s an eternal battle. There is a lavender ceiling. I’ve hit it enough times to know. Newspapers expect us [gay writers] to write about art and culture. ‘Why do you want to write about the Iraq war? That’s for straight people.’"

Which is why I want to film an It Doesn’t Get Better, So You Better Get Used to It video.

Just ask any matinee idol in Hollywood. Are there any openly gay actors nominated for an Oscar this weekend?

"You know, now being part of the jury for the Geminis and the Genies, I never trust that everybody sees everything. So I think it’s a popularity contest. Still, I’d love to get one one day!"

Finally – like Plummer and Fry – there is no escaping Antonio’s awesome voice.

"I still want to be a TV news anchor!" he says. "There’s something about how polished they are. I always wanted to be a fake news anchor. That’s the lure, you know, to look like plastic. That’s what I always wanted to be!"

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Essential buttplugs The Oscars air Feb. 27 on CTV at 8 p.m., while the National Theatre School of Canada celebrates its 50th anniversary this season. Surf to www.ent-nts.ca/en. Also, director John Greyson will answer questions following the Sex, Song and Segregation screening of nine shorts and excerpts from his films, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m., at Concordia’s Hall Building auditorium.

After losing, then regaining, control of his Chevy Impala – the words "Montreal, Canada" painted on his fenders – Foley spun out into the infield. Thirty-seven cars (in a record 73-car field) behind Foley weren’t so lucky, crashing in a spectacular demolition derby that you can still see by surfing to www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Eb3Sf6Kf1I.

Stock-car racing’s storied bootlegging past, car crashes and stunts – one driver was even offered $1,000 cash to race without a roof in Daytona’s 1959 inaugural race – established NASCAR as a macho club of good ole boys, thrill-seekers and speed demons.

Over the decades, everybody knows there have been gay drivers in NASCAR – though just one has ever publicly come out of the closet, Massachusetts-born Evan Darling, who recently told the Florida Agenda newspaper, "I don’t have a big gay flag on my racing suit. My partner always came to the races with me. And [other drivers] never had an issue with that."

Continues Darling, "However, since I’ve turned pro some of the teams have talked about me behind my back. They’re just pussies, they don’t want to talk to your face. If you ask them if there’s a problem, they say ‘No,’ they’re okay with it, but then you hear the stories of what they say behind your back. That’s just how it is and I don’t care. I’m happy and comfortable with myself and I think we should all be that way."

I’m not surprised Darling is treated this way considering the God-awful homophobic reaction to the news that racer Tim Richmond – one of the first drivers to switch from open-wheel racing to stock-car racing – died of AIDS back in August 1989, at the height of the AIDS hysteria. Richmond was just 34.

"Folks now admit, ‘We were ashamed of how we acted back then. We were ignorant, we thought HIV equalled gay, we did Tim Richmond wrong,’" says Vegas-based gay NASCAR fan Michael Myers, who started the NASCAR racing website called www.queers4gears.com back in Sept. 2009. "NASCAR is very charitable and donates lots of money to various charities each year. But if they really learnt their lesson [about Tim Richmond], then [AIDS] would be a cause they would give money to."

Queers4Gears is not the first racing website for gay racing fans – that honour goes to www.gaytona.com, run by 30-year gay couple Betty Jack DeVine and Dixie Richardson.

But the limited popularity of both sites (Queers4Gears currently draws 2,000 monthly unique visitors) suggests gay racing fans aren’t exactly prepared to show their true colours – yet.

"NASCAR has more fans who are accepting of me being gay than gays have been accepting of me being a NASCAR fan," says Myers, who – like driver Evan Darling – doesn’t wear the rainbow colours to the track. "I don’t preach about [gay] politics or gay marriage on the site; I don’t have stickers all over my car. Yes, people know I’m gay but I try to just focus on the racing. I do what I call the ‘gaynalysis’ and I call all the drivers divas. For the most part I just want to focus on the races."

When anti-gay preacher James Dobson of Focus on the Family delivered the invocation before a race in Atlanta last August, Myers took some heat for not commenting on the choice of Dobson. "Everybody wanted me to come down harshly on the track. But if I focus on who sings the anthems and complain about who delivers the invocations at every race, I’m going to be seen as a [pain in the ass]. I want to save my bullets for what matters."

Like me, Myers – accredited by NASCAR – would love to see a drag queen drive a pace car at a NASCAR race one day.

"But if there’s a gay driver in the starting grid at Daytona this weekend, I don’t see them coming out any day soon – not in NASCAR or Indycar, though I could see it happening in Formula One, with the European influence. I also think NASCAR pit crews will be more accepting of gay drivers before NASCAR fans are."

About my column two summers ago with NASCAR racer Carl Edwards ("I love all my fans – all of them!" Edwards happily told me), Myers says, "I remember that interview. Carl is very gay-positive and drivers like him are the future of NASCAR."

As for Montreal’s NASCAR race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Myers says, "Last summer’s race in Montreal was one of the best races I’ve ever seen in my life! The storyline, that track – I’d love to come up there one day. Talladega and Montreal – those are the two tracks I really want to see."

Essential buttplug NASCAR launches its 2011 Sprint Cup season with the 53rd annual Daytona 500, which airs on Fox, Feb. 20 at 1 p.m.

"Mitchell was in Vancouver for the 2007 queer film festival soon after I had played Hedwig in a local remount of the musical a few months earlier," Drabinsky – who was all of 22 years old at the time, and an opera student at UBC – says today. "The festival organizers asked us to perform a few songs at the closing gala at this tiny martini bar and Mitchell stood right in front of me and looked up at me centre stage! It was one of the scariest moments of my life!"

Once he found his nerve, though, Seth says, "I began singing Sugar Daddy right at him! We chatted afterwards and John told me that I looked good."

So good, in fact, that Drabinsky went on to wow audiences across Canada last autumn in the touring musical production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. "Drabinsky’s energy and singing during full-on Bowie- and Iggy-inspired rock numbers is stadium-sized," Toronto’s Now mag raved.

Hedwig really began back in 1994 at NYC’s famed drag-punk nightclub Squeezebox, where Stephen Trask – who would write the music and lyrics for Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell wrote the text) – headed the house band and Mitchell’s boyfriend, Jack Steeb, played bass.

Mitchell worshipped the rock’n'roll singing drag queens at Squeezebox. So he began to rewrite covers of such songs as Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well, Cher’s Half Breed, David Bowie’s Boys Keep Swinging and All the Young Dudes by Mott The Hoople, incorporating them into Hedwig‘s original concerts.

In fact, Mitchell’s second gig at Squeezebox also featured singer Debbie Harry on the bill, and Hedwig’s trademark wig was famously created that night with toilet paper rolls wrapped in synthetic blond hair!

By 1998, Hedwig and the Angry Inch debuted at the gloriously rundown Jane Street Theatre in NYC’s West Village as a fully fledged original punk/glam rock musical about a lonely girly-boy named Hansel from Communist East Germany who, after a botched sex change (which leaves him with the titular angry inch), flees Germany before the Wall comes down. Hansel morphs into Hedwig, who is neither completely male nor female, but a glam rock’n'roll queen reduced to playing dives while her former protégé and lover Tommy Gnosis performs in stadiums across America.

After Hedwig won a Village Voice Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical, the film adaptation won an award for best direction and the Audience Award for Best Drama at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. Some weeks later Mitchell himself told me about the time he took a piss during one performance at the Jane Street Theatre: In the middle of the show he walked into the men’s john – in character, of course.

"I kept talking into the mic while I was urinating," Mitchell said. "Generally there was complete shock as I’d interview people in the toilet. But this old Irish drunk was both delighted and outraged and followed me on stage. So I let him regale his wife – it was her birthday – and sat down. Then when it was time, I gave him a big hug and sent him off on his merry way."

In his Canadian incarnation of Hedwig, Seth Drabinsky also ad-libs. "Our production is based on the off-Broadway script," says Drabinsky who, like Mitchell, is openly gay. "It really basically is a concert, so there are moments when you get so involved you break the fourth wall with the audience. It really is an interactive show. Stuff happens that I just can’t ignore!

"The opera singer in me fell in love with this rock musical because it is so beautifully written. The songs are really integrated into the story organically, not stitched together like a jukebox musical like Mamma Mia and Priscilla Queen of the Desert."

The success of Broadway rock musicals like American Idiot and Spiderman – unfathomable before Hedwig – reportedly has John Cameron Mitchell back in the gym getting his 48-year-old body back into shape for a future Broadway run of Hedwig with original producer David Binder and original director Peter Askin at the helm. The New York Post also reports Stephen Trask is writing new songs for the production.

Meanwhile, here in Montreal, a Facebook page is already organizing local Hedwig fans gay and straight to attend the Montreal performance in drag – or at least wearing a dab of lipstick.

It is these diverse, mixed audiences that John Cameron Mitchell loves so much.

"It just makes for a more interesting party," Mitchell told me all those years ago. "You know, I think I needed to be more with gay people when I came out, in a more monolithic way. But then you grow up and realize you want a little variety. A lot of gay people only hang out with people who listen to the same music and have the same body and same gender. That’s boring and quite annoying. [It only makes me] feel like a freak among a majority."

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Essential buttplug Seth Drabinsky stars in Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Le National (1220 Ste-Catherine E.) on Feb. 12.

Then the 3,000 people in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier turned their heads to watch Mado and Madame Simone – who resembled Marie Antoinette, Queen of France during the French Revolution – and let out a collective gasp.

It was like a command performance.

But when it comes to entrances, no one beats Les Ballets Trockadero, or "Les Trocks" as they are more affectionately known. Back in the 1980s, during a performance at UCLA, the curtain actually fell onto the stage!

"We were in the middle of a dance from Don Quixote and the curtain fell and half of us could have been killed!" says Les Trocks artistic director Tory Dobrin, who originally joined the company as a 26-year-old dancer back in 1980. "Boom! It nearly took out the front row! Dust was flying all over. It was pretty funny, actually. The crew just picked up the curtain, we dusted ourselves off and started again!"

Les Trocks were officially founded back in September 1974 when the company’s first-ever performance was held in a second storey loft theatre (filled with about 100 folding chairs) on 14th Street in NYC’s meat-packing district.

Since then Les Trocks have played most of the great theatres in the Western Hemisphere, as well as across Europe, Australia and Asia, where they have done 26 national tours of Japan alone.

While they make headlines wherever they go, they aren’t exactly rolling in the dough. "You don’t go into the dance world thinking you’re going to make a fortune," Dobrin says. "We have a limited amount of resources. Sometimes our credit card bill reaches close to $100,000! Is that scary? Oh yeah!"

The day after Dobrin auditioned as a dancer back in 1980, he was immediately hired and next day flew with the company for a stint in Brazil. But back then young male dancers didn’t think of Les Trocks as a dance company of choice.

"When I joined the company people asked me, ‘Why are you doing that? It will ruin your career!’ Today guys are now auditioning for the company right out of Juilliard! Les Trocks is now considered an acceptable career choice for a dancer."

That doesn’t mean straight male dancers are auditioning for Les Trocks, however. In other words, there is still some stigma attached to being a dancer for Les Trocks. After all, many folks still think they’re a bunch of dancers in drag.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. And just because pretty much everybody in the company is gay doesn’t mean there’s a lot of drama backstage either.

"We’re all gay guys [but] there are no frayed nerves backstage, there is no drama – we don’t allow it," Dobrin insists. "We hire people who tend to be eccentric characters and when you put together a group of 15 individual personalities, you really need everyone to respect everybody else to make it work."

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Essential buttplug Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo perform at Place des Arts’ Salle-Wilfrid Pelletier on Feb. 8.