Ask the Flying Monkey! What's the Meaning of Life? Plus, What is Laura Bush On?

This week! Pee-wee Herman, the Smurfs, Eric Sheffer Stevens, Laura Bush, and the meaning of life!

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Contact me here (and be sure and include your city and state and/or country!)

Q: Almighty Airborne Ape, a recent Queerty post (don’t bust me for reading that trashy site, ok?) identified Paul Reubens as the third gay actor to join the Smurfs movie, along with Neil Patrick Harris and Alan Cumming. First, I don’t remember Paul ever identifying himself as gay, and secondly, do we really think all those boy Smurfs were 100% straight? Queerty, not really known for their investigative rigor, are calling this the queerest animation movie ever. Do we agree? Has there been a queerer animated cast/movie? – Ralph, Christchurch, New Zealand

A: Paul Reubens, whose man-child persona Pee-wee Herman is a work of comic genius, IMHO, has never come out, but because of Pee-wee, a lot of people assume he’s gay. It didn’t help that Reubens has been arrested a couple of times at porn theaters for public indecency (the theater of his 1999 arrest was playing Naughty Nurse Nancy, a straight flick).

In 2001, Reubens was investigated as part of a complaint involving a his friend, actor Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Amadeus) who had hired a 14-old-boy to pose for naked photographs. Reubens was eventually charged with the possession of child porn, but all charges were dropped when The “child porn” turned out to be the Rob Lowe sex tape and Reuben’s extensive collection of vintage, mostly gay erotica, including some non-sexual teen nude studies taken at a time when such photographs were legal.

And (not surprisingly), I disagree with Queerty.

Sure, I’ll give them a somewhat gay cast, but plenty of animated movies have had that: The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mulan and on and on.

But I totally reject the idea that the Smurfs themselves are “gay.” I know there’s camp and there’s kitsch, both of which gay and bisexual men have been known to appreciate.

But the Smurfs? They’re just stupid – definitely not worth watching, but not gloriously bad enough to celebrate either. They’re just completely … mediocre. As with the TV show Two and a Half Men, the movies of Gary Marshall, and the comic strip Garfield, it’s simply a cosmic burp the cartoon is famous at all.

Maybe the movie will be different – hey, The Brady Bunch Movie made something ironic and meta from the original TV show, perhaps the Platonic "ideal" of mediocrity. But I still say the Smurfs' source material isn't "gay" and wasn’t worth a movie – there are simply far too many better, far more deserving stories to tell.

Incidentally, I worry that my column has become bland and generic because of my categorical refusal to offer up my own opinions. I should work on that, shouldn’t I?

Q: In all your glorious wisdom, can you tell me if there are any current plans to release RuPaul's Drag Race season 1 on DVD? – David

A: I contacted the production company, but they never got back to me. That said, I expect it’s pretty unlikely it’ll ever be out on DVD, because competition reality shows tend to be more “of the moment” and don’t sell (or rerun) particularly well.

That said, the buzz on Drag Race continues to grow, and a lot of people missed the first season, so I don’t think it’s a complete impossibility. In the meantime, Logo currently offers the series on iTunes, Xbox, and Amazon.

Next Page! Can I get into a cybernetic chamber until society is finally done with gay panic humor?