Divas are back on B’way — their way
For the 11th year, Uptown Players is back raising money for Dallas’ gay-themed theater troupe, and, as always, they snag some of the luminaries of the Dallas theater scene. B.J. Cleveland, Coy Covington, Marisa Diotalevi, Paul J. Williams and a host of others will be joined by special guests Denise Lee and Shane Peterman for a tribute to the songs the way they would sing them (including a preview of this season’s musical offerings). There will be auction items, refreshments and a whole lot of laughs.

DEETS:
Kalita Humphreys Theater
3636 Turtle Creek Blvd.
Jan. 18–27. 8 p.m.
$40-$45.
UptownPlayers.org.

……………….

Saturday 01.19

Bear Dance, Lord Byron team up
Remember those old ads about two great tastes that taste great together? Well that’s what happens this weekend when Lord Byron’s Panoptikon “Disco vs. Retro” dance party gets invaded by Big D Bear Dance for the sweatiest old-school dance of the week. Seems like bears do come out of hibernation early if there’s a party involved.

DEETS:
3025 Main St. (in the old Club One space).
8 p.m. $10 suggested donation.

……………….

Sunday 01.20

Denise Lee conquers the Winspear
She’s performed everywhere from Bass Hall to mainland China, so it makes sense local legend Denise Lee would take on the Winspear. She’ll perform The Divas of American Music in Hamon Hall, delighting audiences with her breathtaking interpretations of classics from the Great American Songbook.

DEETS:
Hamon Hall at the Winspear,
2403 Flora St.
7:30 p.m. $35.
ATTPAC.org.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 18, 2013.

MASCULIN, FEMININ | Ford’s Flex, above, packs a lot in a little frame; Britain’s Mini Cooper, below, is a sweet ride especially if you like showing off your sensitive side.

CASEY WILLIAMS  | Auto Reviewer
crwauto@aol.com

From a distance, the brick house Ford Flex and adorable little Mini Cooper look like remotely related siblings — love children from the Chevy Nomad and BMW Isetta. Both have elegant floating roofs in contrasting colors and two-box designs, but that’s where the man genes and feminine tendencies diverge. The Flex is great for families and high-adrenaline lifestyles, while the Mini fits a boy and his man plus enough luggage for a weekend at Fire Island. More than that makes them butch and femme, though. Let’s compare their manhoods.

Ancestors:
Flex: Your grandmother’s Country Squire, with some junk in the trunk.
Mini: A tiny little Brit with a tiny little hood.

Room for number of friends on-board:
Flex: 6 – Pack all you want, queens — there’s plenty of space for that road trip to your favorite White Party.
Mini: 3 – And don’t even think about taking your cosmetics case. Oh yeah, we know.

Cojones:
Flex: 365hp EcoBoost 3.5-liter V6 pumping like eight.
Mini: 121hp 1.6-liter, down on just fours.

Shoe size:
Flex: 20-in. – probably covering for something else.
Mini: 16-in. – little feet don’t mean little ….

Need to change the radio?
Flex: Press button, tell SYNC what you want. Please speak clearly because she’s a little hard of hearing.
Mini: Do it yourself, bitch!

Painting dark shades:
Flex: Kodiak Brown sounds like the name of a bear in drag.
Mini: Hot Chocolate is not just a delicious desert, but age-appropriate for the twink who drinks it.

Alter ego:
Flex: Neil Patrick Harris — fam and all.
Mini: Perez Hilton, who just keeps shrinking.

Last facelift:
Flex: 2013, including a smoother face, less bling and Ford MyTouch infotainment.
Mini: 2007. She still looks like the same old gal with flashy eyes, only prettier.

Tugging strength:
Flex: 4,500 lbs. — enough for a couple of watercraft, a shiny little Airstream or that fast and greasy muscle car you covet.
Mini: Just put the plastic kayak on the roof.

Safety:
Flex: Debuts first production rear inflatable belts, “sees” obstacles with rear cross path detection and blind spot warnings.
Mini: Built like an under-desk jewel vault.

Cruising:
Flex: Dynamic, can automatically slow and accelerate depending on traffic.
Mini: Like, whatever. Wake up and put your foot on the brake!

Gas mileage:
Flex: Up to 18/25-MPG; 16/23 with the steamy motor.
Mini: 29/37-MPG manual. Hand back a point if you’re lazy. You can have a lot of fun with 13.2 gallons aboard.

Greatest talent:
Flex: Keeping your drinks cool in the middle row
refrigerator.
Mini: Using rear sonar (what?) to back into spaces that would pinch a heel. Air-conditioned glove box for candy and Kool-Aid seems to fit its size.

Hails from:
Flex: Canada, where men are men and boys marry boys.
Mini: Britain, where men are princes and they all bow to an old queen.

Base price:
Flex: $30,885.That gym membership can cost, especially when you power up with a turbo and all-wheel-drive.
Mini: $20,400. I may seem cheap, but see what happens when John Cooper works me over.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 14, 2012.

NAUGHTY SANTA | Michael Brandon returns to Dallas for the third time this year to launch his new lube line at Tapelenders.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  | Life+Style Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

Michael Brandon has been a big name in sex for decades. One of gay porn’s iconic stars, his DVDs, website and live performances have kept him in the public eye since the early 1990s — and his legendary prowess (and size) have kept young hearts fluttering for this now-46-year-old performer.

But lately, Brandon jokes, he’s feeling more like a vacuum cleaner salesman than a sex object. That’s because wherever he goes, Brandon always has his sample bag handy. It’s not Willie Loman, but big man’s Willie.

Michael Brandon has gone from porn star to lube seller.

Don’t feel too bad for him. It’s actually a good gig.

The gay-owned company Product 54 produces a wide variety of silicone-based consumer products, from a cuticle treatment to one that helps divers put on and take off their SCUBA suits. The latter is also popular in the fetish community, “helping men and women put on their rubber gear,” Brandon says. “But my expertise is lube.”

Of course it is. And the signature product of the company is its 9×6 Lube — a name that, while it sounds like it might have been named after Brandon specifically, was actually already in place before he became associated with it.

After 9×6 came into being, Brandon was approached about an endorsement deal for the start-up company. He rejected the idea.

“I was with ID Millennium and told them, I’m really not looking for anything new [to endorse]. But someone slipped a bottle in my pocket. I tried it and I liked it. And I loved the stain-free aspect — very few silicone based lubes that offer that.”

That’s when he agreed to help market the lube — mentioning it in his tweets, giving away the product at his shows, etc. But Brandon saw great potential in the product and took a bold move.

“I saw some opportunities there, so I came home from a trip and told the president I wanted to invest and benefit from what I saw as a company about to explode,” he says.

“That means I am both a vested partner and the face of the brand.”

That has its downsides, as he knows from years as a celebrity spokesperson.

“When you become the brand, any and all questions start coming to you — whether it be a shipping problem or uses or whatever,” he says. “Of course, when they have any positive feedback, I receive that, too. Usually you have to say [to fans], ‘I’m just endorsing it — you need to direct your questions to the inner office of the company.’ I can’t do that anymore. I’m the vice president… I have everything to do with the inner office!”

This isn’t the first time Brandon has made a foray into the business world. In addition to running his own career — including the brand that is his reputation and his marketable appeal — Brandon was a partner in the Raging Stallion adult video company, which produced his Monster Bang line of DVDs (named for his sizeable member).

“It’s a very similar situation: Everywhere Michael Brandon goes, so does my product. It’s a win-win,” he says.

Of course, it helps that Brandon makes for a great salesman in the gay market.

“When I walk into a store, there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll recognize me — that’s my foot in the door. Then I tell them, ‘I want to offer them a sample of my 9×6 — that’s my second foot in the door.” He laughs. “Then I come do launch parties in sexy get-ups. In West Hollywood, I dressed down in a construction belt.”

Brandon will host his launch party Saturday at Tapelenders, the first retail outlet in the Dallas market to carry 9×6, with a holiday themed costume: Naughty Santa, a sexified bit of fur and red that Brandon tried out last week at an event and turned out the be a huge hit.

He’s happy to be back in Dallas for the third time since the summer. Before this year, Brandon admits, he had written off Texas as a forum for his talents; he could never get a club to book his live show and thought he had priced himself out of the market. But he’s already thinking of Big D as a second home — he loves visiting.

So what accounts for his sudden popularity here?

“Dallas needs love!” he exclaims.

And love usually comes with a little lube.

Michael Brandon will be signing autographs and running a stocking-stuffer special (buy an 8 oz. bottle, received six 1 oz. bottles as gifts), but a “naughty and nice” gift bag with $75 purchase.   

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 9, 2011.

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES
Life+Style Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

…………………….

BADASS TEXAS TOUR
Midtowne Spa,
2509 Pacific St.  July 29 at 8 p.m.

…………………….

Porn star Michael Brandon loves the cool weather in his hometown of San Francisco, but he is happily, and voluntarily, giving it up to come to Dallas.

“I actually have family there,” he says. “Legend has it my uncle was the CEO of Texas Instruments back in the day.” Not counting family reunions, the trip will mark the Dallas debut of his live show. So what exactly got him to Texas finally?

“I think I would have to credit Monster,” he says.

Monster, it turns out, is his pet name for his penis. Only if you listen to Brandon talk about it enough, it seems like a business partner rather than a part of his business.
Here’s how it happened.

“One of my fans, Topher, has been on me to come to Texas for years — ‘Bring Monster to Texas!’ he kept saying. For some reason, Texas wasn’t an easy nut to crack for me,” Brandon says. So superfan Topher took it upon himself to meet Monster in person, setting out on a campaign to get someone — anyone — to bring Monster and his owner to the Lone Star State.

“I’ll be damned if he didn’t get Midtowne Spa [on board],” Brandon says still a bit incredulously. “Midtowne doesn’t normally fly people in, but they agreed to this time — and it went from ‘just Dallas’ to a three-city tour.”

Brandon’s Badass Texas Tour — designed to promote the adult performer’s first hardcore sex film in several years, the fetish picture Badass — started in Austin Wednesday, and will bring him (well, them) to Dallas tonight at 8, followed by an appearance in Houston on Sunday.

To hear Brandon talk about it, it really is a collaboration, and one borne unexpectedly from tragedy.

In the 1980s, Brandon was, in his words, “fresh off the bus” when he came out of the closet with a vengeance. He was 24 and quickly got involved in the seedier aspects of gay culture. He was working at a bar when he answered an ad for XXX models. The photographer was impressed by the young man’s member.

“In the gay world, your cock can be your calling card on many levels — especially in the sex industry, and mine is really large,” Brandon quickly admits. But soon after he started doing porn, he developed an addiction to meth. It ruined his life.

“I was already 140 lbs. soaking wet without using anything, but I dropped even more — I was skinny as a rail. When I did the speed I stopped doing porn because I didn’t have any confidence in front of the camera. Then I started selling it, then did jail time, then prison time, then living on the streets. From 24 to 34, I saw eight-and-a-half years inside state penitentiaries. But those revolving doors kept me alive. Left to my own devices, I would have been dead. I should be dead. Dead! I’m talking skull-and-crossbones chemicals being shot into my veins. I’ve known people who did less than I did and can barely put two sentences together. Staying as strung out as I did, I would have been so out of it I would have walked in front of a bus.”

He spent 18 months in rehab, and it was really after that when “Michael Brandon” was born.

“’Michael Brandon’ was just my stage name but I started cultivating it as an entity and business,” he says.

Brandon won back-to-back performer of the year Gay VN Awards in 2001 and 2002 — the only porn actor to do so — and Monster was a big part of it.

“Part of the process [of recovery] is to learn who you really are, so I was reading reviews of me on an [escort evaluation site]. One review, the client was saying how nice my eyes were and called my cock a ‘monster.’ I thought, ‘Why don’t I give it an identity and take mine back? And it’s been a hit. Working together has been huge for my career. Monster gets his own birthday wishes, own emails, his — ‘can Monster come out and play?’ It’s been such a big marketing tool. No pun intended.”

Brandon took a break from porn and escorting when he met his true love, Marcos, “and in order to cultivate a healthy personal relationship, I stepped out from in front of the camera and basically had a monogamous relationship with him.”

That relationship ended after five years “in a blaze of glory” last October; in December, Brandon went back in front of the camera to make Badass. He was already 45 years old. But apparently as in-demand as ever.

“People ask me, ‘How long have you been in your industry?’ I sometimes answer, ‘How old are you?’ I get a lot of emails saying, ‘I have watched you since I was 12 years old.’ I wanna ask, ‘How old are you now, 15?’ Our community is youth-obsessed but I find the youth is obsessed with the papis and the daddies. I get these random emails that say, ‘I really like having sex with older men.’ When did that happen?”

But Brandon isn’t complaining. Despite a drug relapse — he has been clean for a second time almost three years now, following a nine-month binge that nearly destroyed him again — he’s as happy and focused and well-adjusted as he’s ever been. And like Lady Gaga, he credits his little — well, not so little — Monster.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 29, 2011.