In honor of Gay Pride
this weekend in Phoenix, I’d like to offer up my own personal collection of
what I think of as Gay favorites and essentials when it comes to music. You may
not see some obvious choices, but I hope you jam out this weekend to a little
bit of some Vinny Hits!
14.) “S&M
[Remix]”
Rihanna & Britney
Spears
Two gay icons of our time, Rihanna and Britney Spears,
joined forces last year for a raunchy, dirty guilty pleasure. Sure, Spears’
voice doesn’t add much seduction like Rihanna’s rasp does, but you can’t deny
the power of this collaboration.
13.) “Livin’ La Vida
Loca”
Ricky Martin
What’s a gay pride countdown without a gay man to go along
with it? Kids today may know him as just a gay musician. But back in 1999, we
all knew him as the Latin heartthrob who had all the ladies screaming and living
the crazy life. My, have the times changed…
12.) “Love Today”
Mika
On a day celebrating one’s pride in their life as a lesbian,
gay, or transgender person, you can’t help but have this song on in the
background, humming along to what a wonderful day and life it is to be living
in.
11.) “Boys [Co-Ed Remix]”
Britney Spears & Pharrell Williams
What better way to celebrate the boys we love than with a
Britney Spears song?
10.) “Waiting For
Tonight [Hex Hector Remix]”
Jennifer Lopez
Here it is, a pulsating club jam from J.Lo. It’s certainly
one of the hottest remixes out there if I do say so myself!
9.) “Can’t Get You
Out Of My Head”
Kylie Minogue
You definitely can’t get this song out of your head. Kylie
Minogue is one of the more recent gay icons of our time and certainly has a lot
of stamina with this hit and those eyes!
8.) “Dancing Queen”
ABBA
Dancing queens are here to stay, need I say anymore?
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I first saw Titanic as a 6-year-old boy. Back then, I did not know this would be the blockbuster of my generation that I was fortunate enough to live and see in the movie theater. I’ve heard stories of older folks saying that they remember when they saw Psycho, Jaws, or even Star Wars for the first time in theaters. There is something so monumental about these films. They all have something within that defined the times, brought together an entire world with just a few hours of entertainment on the big screen. For me and my generation, I feel as though Titanic is that uniting movie.
Last weekend on April 14th, 2012 (which I might add was exactly 100 years since the actual sinking), my best friend Krystin and I set forth on the wonderful voyage to see the re-release of this memorable film in 3D. Sitting through the beginning of the movie, I couldn’t help but feel a rush of emotion come over me as the music faded in, the title appeared across the screen, and the film started its wonderful 3 hour journey. I immediately rushed back to 13 years ago when I was in the theater watching it with my family and our first Japanese exchange student we had over the Winter Break. As I mentioned before, I saw this movie three times in the theater during its first release.
I can remember being mesmerized by the glamour of the whole thing. The romanticism is really what got to me as a little boy. The idea of this big, grand ship being whisked away across the Atlantic in hopes of helping thousands create a new life for themselves and their families in America, the idea that among this sea of people, two of them came to find each other and fall madly in love against all odds in just a matter of days, and the idea that a so-called un-sinkable ship could hit an iceberg and actually in fact sink to the bottom of the ocean was just so overwhelming to me at that young age. But I was captivated! From the love story, to the nude scene my mom had to cover my eyes from, from the shots of the vast ocean, the sound of the beautiful James Horner score, and boy oh boy the image of the Titanic sinking down into the ocean made me so happy that I was witnessing this blockbuster in a movie theater! It was iconic what I was seeing, and even at the young of an age, I understood just how big this movie was.
Flash forward to last Saturday when I’m sitting in the theater, now at the ripe-old age of 21, and I still feel that sense of excitement and bewilderment from a movie I had watched countless times prior. It was as though I was seeing it for the first time.
The setting was spectacular, the casting was so memorable (Leo and Kate at the breaking point of their careers), the sinking was so heartbreaking, and the story was still so timeless. I was glad that I got to take a trip down memory lane and recapture that feeling of inspiration that I wanted to be in one of these movies. I wanted to be the romantic lead in a blockbuster disaster movie. I wanted to capture hearts and win recognition. I wanted to do it all. While early in my life I had older films like The Godfather, West Side Story, and The Goonies that first inspired me to want to perform and act, Titanic was the first movie I saw in the theater that really pushed me to the tip of my own iceberg (pun intended).
But of course, the nostalgia in the theater had to end eventually. As the credits appeared on the screen after 194 minutes, Krystin and I realized two things. For one, we found it ironic that we were at the 10:00pm showing on April 14th, just a few hours before the ship actually sunk in the ocean. We realized that it was fate which made us view this film exactly 100 years after the actual sinking.
The second realization was just how much we love singing along to Celine Dion and the timeless classic that is “My Heart Will Go On”. Again, flashbacks of me on my 7th birthday (April 11, 1998 to be exact) came into my mind when I received my first CD ever: the Titanic soundtrack. I remember waiting for all my guests to leave the party at my house as soon as possible. If anyone had any doubts that I was gay even from at a young age, just picture an image of a now 7-year-old Mexican boy with his bowl cut hair, singing with Celine on the CD outside by the big rocks around my pool. That oughta clear some doubts people may have had!
When all has been said and sung, I would just like to say thank you to James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Celine Dion, and everyone else equally as integral to making this movie possible. It continues to inspire me and truly does make my heart feel the need to go on and on.
And last but not least, I continue to pray for the real lives that were taken so suddenly back in 1912 from this unfortunate sinking ship, and for the families that may never have gotten the chance to properly say good-bye. Rest in peace always…
