BOOKS

The title of Michael Scarce’s Smearing the Queer (Harrington Park Press) refers to the schoolyard torture, his investigation into how medicine’s homophobia screws gay men and his advocacy of anal pap smears as a lifesaving tool. This tour-de-force will make your eyes pop with its new views of health—just like Scarce’s Science Friction column in POZ.

If you’re an HIVer too busy surviving to reflect on life, get Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam Books). Spend a winter morning getting comfy in paschimottanasana (seated forward bend), and read Stephen Cope on coping—with addiction, sex issues and your health.

For a very dry look at The Effects of Substance Abuse Treatment on AIDS Risk Behaviors (Haworth Press), editor Edward Gottheil invites the brightest drug-use wonks into his den. But if you think the Beck Depression Inventory is the singer’s back catalog, maybe you should give this one to your case manager.

Blood Saga (University of California Press), Karen Resnik’s social history of the hemophilia community during its catastophic involvement with AIDS, examines the forces that led to 10,000 thin-bloods getting HIV and the battle that won $100,000-a-head legal reparations from the industry that made it happen.

Daniel Tobin, MD, pilot of the FairCare program at Albany’s VA Hospital, is on a mission to get standardized counseling for all Americans facing death. With Peaceful Dying (Perseus Books), the doctor lays out logic for big emotional
decisions and sweats the technical stuff—living wills, assisted suicide and health-care surrogates—so you don’t have to.

Only someone who’s been there—like Chris McGonigle, MD, author of Surviving Your Spouse’s Chronic Illness (Henry Holt)—could title chapters “Sex: The Plaster Saint Syndrome” and “Anger: Slaves in the Cellar.” Nothing is off-limits for this widow who wants to save all you Florence Nightingales from the guilt she felt during 15 years of caring for her husband.

FILMS

The French may have created the language of love, but fortunately for the Franco-impaired, “Love Reinvented” (Lesbian and Gay Pride Films) has subtitles. This art-house collection of 10 short films, accompanying an additional two from the United States and Australia, was selected as the best of the submissions from LGPF’s call for portrayals of ultra-modern love and HIV.

It was a lefty lovefest on the set of “Cradle Will Rock” (Touchstone Pictures) with Hollywood HIV hell-raisers Susan Sarandon and Vanessa Redgrave performing in the true story of the star-crossed 1937 staging of a pro-union, muy socialista musical. Now that Titanic Hollywood budgets outweigh those of vaccines, this story of artists moving out of a swank theater to do up the show without stage, scenery or costumes sends a message about art sans price tag.

TELEVISION

MTV World AIDS Day Hello! Recently the channel devoted to such socially conscious series as MTV Spring Break held a contest calling for viewers to send in their shorts, er, short films about AIDS. The winning two- to four-minute submissions, judged by the vidiots and Kaiser Family Foundation reps, will be aired during MTV’s HIV awareness programing on December 1.

MUSIC

When Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, the Afrobeat singer and thorn in the military government’s side, died of AIDS in 1997, the establishment didn’t count on his son Femi Kuti to fill Dad’s shoes. Though fans say Junior has yet to reveal his activist father’s ability to raise listeners’ fists, Shoki, Shoki (Talkin’ Loud) has clubbers across Europe kicking up their heels.

ART

Painter Francesco Clemente’s 1987 AIDS-inspired series The Funerary Paintings will be shown as part of a retrospective at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum through January 9.


A Gurl’s Guide to Life

The newest feat by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald and Rebecca Odes, the pioneers behind the young-Ms., third-wave feminist website gURL.com is Deal With It!, a ’00s guide to the puberty journey. POZ logged on and asked the trio what’s up. Planet Arts

What was your mission with this book?

We knew what girls wanted from the questions they were asking—and conversations they were having—on gURL.com. So we wanted to deal with those issues in entertaining and unintimidating ways.

Issues like…?

Body changes, sexuality, emotions…

And safe sex?

Teenage girls seem to be aware of STD prevention. They’ve picked up on the “Use condoms!” message—at least during intercourse. Non-intercourse safe sex seems less of a concern to them.

So what’s next in cyberspace and beyond?

A huge redesign of the website. And we’re starting a speaking tour at high schools.