The Queen’s Not Dead, Long Live the Queen! BY PHILIP BENDER t’s summer time and so many of us are looking for something a little “different” to add to our summer reading list — something light, yet sat- isfying. Something slightly decadent, yet improving. Well. I have recently come across a potential candidate to pack next to your sunscreen. The Movie Queen Quiz Book: A Trivia Test Dedicated to Fabulous Female Film Stars, by Ed Karvoski. Jr., is a compilation of sil- ver screen queen facts, trivia and arcane tidbits that will challenge even the most ardent movie aficionado. But don’t let that scare you off ifyou’re not one of us crazed movie fanatics who can recite such useless trivia as every screen appearance of Eve Arden (Real name: Eunice Quedens. First film appearance: The Song of Love, 1929. Last film appearance: Pandamonium, 1982.)! There’s lots of entertaining and surprising factoids in here for you to experience as well. From a section that chal- lenges you match the movie queens with their sometimes unfortunate birth names to one dedicated to the female leads from Elvis Presley fllms, this book contains 600 trivia questions that will ultimately help you feel far superior to every other person on the planet — ifyou score well. For the rest of you, it’s a source of fascinating tid- bits with which to amaze your friends and lovers. , And of course, there are numerous opportunities to match up those memorable scenes and often delightfully bitchy classic lines from movies like All About Eve, Steel Magnolias, Mildred Pierce and others. Anyone who has sat through a dinner party with a bunch of pickled queens giggling and spouting classic diva- speak like "Princess.F ire and Musicl" and "Jungle Red!" knows first hand just how amusing and all-engrossing this pastime can be. When first asked to review this book, I smiled and reflected on my undisputed reign of trivia terror over friends and family as I gently fondled my cracked and dusty case of Trivial Pursuit Silver Screen Edition cards. I fully expected to breeze through the book on a recent two-hour plane ride to Cleveland, answer all of the questions correctly and still have time left to do the crossword puzzle in that banal little in-flight magazine they insist on stuffing in your seat pocket. And draw obscene additions on the flight safety card (“Pull handle only if flight attendant touches you I HERE!”). I To my surprise (and initial indignation — pissy bitch that I can be), I found that I didn’t know it all. And no, I ‘am not telling you how many of the 600 I got right. Only the flight attendant knew that and he went missing over Ontario. Not only has Karvoski stretched the art of movie queen trivia beyond the silver screen personas of Marlene, Joan, Bette and Greta to include more modern day divas and their screen appearances, he has branched out into the truly esoteric. He offers us the opportunity to dis- cover where Cameron Diaz was born (San Diego), what year Zsa Zsa was crowned Miss Hungary (1936), and Meg Ryan’s major at New York University (journalism). He has also included sections devoted to TV V appearances, Mae West, Bette Midler, and movie goddess autobiographies. Even for the hardened fanatic there is truly much to be learned about your favorite screen queen. And as an added bonus — with its pink, black, and orange polka- dot cover that says “Movie Queen” in big letters‘, it’s a fun book to read on crowded commuter flights. The dou- ble-takes are fabulous. Other than my score, I had only one major quibble with the book: I was left wondering what makes an actress, singer, or personality (thank you, Madonna, for expanding our choices) a bona fide “movie queen?” Most of the usual candidates were featured heavily — Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford — but others were conspicuous by their minor men- tion or total absence. Could it possi- bly be the, ahem, “bitch” factor on and/or off-screen? Or is itjust that the missing divine divas had better con- trol over their publicists? Personally, I have a video collection that includes darn near every film appearance ever made by Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney, and the brilliant Jean Harlow — yet none of them rates a prominent place in this book. Karvoski has been in print since 1997, following a career as an actor in Boston and New York, notably on soap operas — oh, excuse me, “daytime dramas.” In LA, ‘he did guest spots on such classic television shows as Facts of Life and Fantasy Island. He has also written comedy material for Jay Leno and radio djs. The Village Voice has dubbed Ed Karvoski “an insatiable vacuum cleaner in the show-biz clos- et,” and no wonder! In addition to The Movie Queen Quiz Book, he is the author of A Funny Time to Be Gay, Whats Your Gay & Lesbian Entertainment 1.Q.?, A ll-Male: The Hottest Erotic Video Stars Tell All, and the recently released Award- Winning Men. If you‘ want to try to dig up the dirt on him, try pointing your browser to I www.EdKarvoskiJr.cont. . I encourage you to check out The Movie Queen Quiz Book as a possible addition to your summer reading list. You might just find it’s the missing ingredient to go perfectly with your poolside cabana chair, para- sol drink and floppy sun hat. And, of course — those Jungle Red nails. V Philip Bender catches those old movies on satellite (no cable in the boonies) in Franklin County. Djuna continued from preceding page underbrush!” Or take these lines: “Love falling buttered side down, fate falling arse up! Why doesn’t anyone know when everything is over, except me?” From now on, I’ll always picture love gone wrong but- tered side down. I If Nightwood is an intense, contradictory, thorny, sometimes beautiful, sometimes wicked, some- _ times witty, sometimes unfath- Omable, always uncompromising work, so too was its author. After leaving home, where she was raised and educated by an eccentric father and a feminist grandmother, Djuna Barnes studied art in New York, then began a career as a writer and illustrator, establish- lng herself as ajoumalist for publi- cations such as Vanity Fair. Her first book, a collection of poetry and drawings, was brashly titled The Book of Repulsive Women. In 1920, Barnes left for Paris to continue her . journalistic career, and there she became a fixture in the modernist scene, hanging out with such notable (and lesbian leaning) women as Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, and the artist Thelma Wood, who was Bames’s lover and the model for Robin Vote. Alampoon of the expatriate lesbian community in Paris, Ladies Almanaclc, was pub- lished privately in 1928; her first novel, Ryder —.a satire based on her family — became a bestseller that same year; - . - - After achieving literary fame with Nightwood and a reputa- tion as the life of the party among the wealthy and influential, Barnes left Europe" and returned to New York. She lived the last forty years of her life quietly and reclusively in a small Greenwich,Village apart- ment, ignoring the fans who came calling, publishing only one other major work before her death. As Dorothy Allison notes, though Barnes hardly kept secret her love of women, she didn’t call her- self a lesbian. Her queerness — like the queemess of Nightwood — was defined by its undeflnability, by an unwillingness to be anything other than herself. V Vermonter Ernie McLeod is attempt- ing to earn a reputation as the life of the party in Montreal. You can reach him at \ mcleod@middlebury.ea'u GET INK DONE? GET TESTED... ORAL HIV TESTING FREE, ANONYMOUS, NO NEEDLES 1-800-649-2437 361 Pearl St Burlington 802-863-2437 Mondays, 4-7pm 1235 Hospital Dr. St. Johnsbury 802-748-9061 Mondays 9am-12pm 27 S. Main St Rutland 802-775-5884 Thursdays 1-4pm 39 Barre St. Suite 1 Montpelier 802-229-4560 August 27th porents Committed, caring families and individuals with strong parenting skills are needed to provide long-term foster homes for school-age children between the ages of 5 and 13. If you are interested in exploring the possibility of raising a child who needs and a home in which to grow up in, we urge you to contact us. 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