Been There Done That

27 Mar 2019

I heard it on the grapevine …

Community, Diversity, Gay, HIV, Pop Culture

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We welcome Will to the program for his second show while Gordon is away on the high seas.

Chris tells of two great films from the recent Melbourne Queer Film Festival, which included some scenes of the early days of modern closeted gay societies in Hollywood and in New York, when everything was listed as illegal but people continued enjoying their sexuality. There are also horrifying scenes of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, which shocked the world.

In our anniversaries, we mention the birthdays of Elton John born on 25/03/1947 – UK singer musician and part of the popular music scene since 1960 and AIDS activist, and the forthcoming film called Rocketman which covers his early years when he was “broken and damaged”.
We also celebrate the birthday of Diana Ross born on 26/3/1944 – a musical legend of the modern era, starting with the group The Supremes and moving on to a long solo career.
With our tongues firmly planted in our cheek, we celebrate the birth on 21/03/2233 of James T Kirk, who will become Captain of the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek adventure.

Will shares his intimate knowledge of modern commercial aircraft and he tells us about how various parts and systems function – those bits that we use but don’t know how or why; think of oxygen masks, aircraft slides and baggage handling, etc.

From international sources, we learn of the suggestion in early March 2019 that HIV-Negative men can take the modern protective AIDS medicine PrEP (Truvada) for safe and casual sexual activities, but by the end of the month we learn of a circumstance in Sydney, which may indicate that this plan has some short-comings.