Frank DeCaro & Jim Colucci

Frank DeCaro (born November 6, 1962) is an American writer, performer and talk radio host. DeCaro has been a lifelong gay rights activist and splits his time between Manhattan and Little Falls, New Jersey, with his husband, James (Jim) Colucci, whom he married during the August 16, 2011, live broadcast of his Sirius radio show. Colucci and DeCaro met shortly after the publication of A Boy Named Phyllis, when Colucci attended one of DeCaro's readings. He came back for other readings and a bit of flirting and soon invited DeCaro on a date. The couple has been together ever since.

The New York-born DeCaro is the author of The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes From More Than 145 Stars of Stage and Screen (HCI Books, 2011), its sequel, "The Dead Celebrity Cookbook Presents Christmas in Tinseltown: Celebrity Recipes and Hollywood Memories from Six Feet Under the Mistletoe" (HCI, 2012), Unmistakably Mackie: The Fashion and Fantasy of Bob Mackie (Universe, 1999), and A Boy Named Phyllis: A Suburban Memoir (Viking 1996).

DeCaro grew up in Little Falls, New Jersey, and graduated in 1980 from Passaic Valley Regional High School in Little Falls.

A 1984 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, in the 1980s, DeCaro was a media critic writer for the Detroit Free Press and later the Detroit News.

He came into the public eye with his recurring commentary Out at the Movies on The Daily Show, doing movie reviews, with his characteristically flamboyant gay style, from 1996 to 2003. During those years, he co-wrote and hosted five Oscar preview specials for Comedy Central. He was a panelist on a short-lived remake of the classic TV game show I've Got a Secret, on GSN.


Frank DeCaro is an American writer, performer and talk radio host. DeCaro has been a lifelong gay rights activist and splits his time between Manhattan and Little Falls, New Jersey, with his husband, Jim Colucci, whom he married on August 16, 2011. Colucci and DeCaro met shortly after the publication of A Boy Named Phyllis, when Colucci attended one of DeCaro's readings. He came back for other readings and a bit of flirting and invited DeCaro on a date. The couple has been together ever since.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_DeCaro

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More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Patrick Dennis (May 18, 1921 – November 6, 1976)

When researching for these bios sometime I stumble upon some extraordinary lives, like the one of Patrick Dennis. Could you imagine the author who had 3 books on the New York Times Bestseller list at the same time in the '60, being a butler in the '70 without his employers even knowing who they were hiring?

Patrick Dennis (May 18, 1921 – November 6, 1976) was an American author. His novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade (1955) was one of the bestselling American books of the 20th century. In chronological vignettes "Patrick" recalls his adventures growing up under the wing of his madcap aunt, Mame Dennis. Dennis wrote a sequel, Around the World with Auntie Mame, in 1958.

"I write in the first person, but it is all fictional. The public assumes that what seems fictional is fact; so the way for me to be inventive is to seem factual but be fictional." All of Dennis's novels employ to some degree the traditional comic devices of masks, subterfuge and deception.

Patrick Dennis was born Edward Everett Tanner III in Evanston, Illinois. His father nicknamed him "Pat" before he was born, after the Irish heavyweight boxer Pat Sweeney, "a dirty fighter known for kicking his opponents." When he was old enough to say so, he let it be known that he liked "Pat" better than "Edward," and so Pat he became. Pat attended Evanston Township High School where he was popular and excelled in writing and theater.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Dennis

Little Me: Patrick Dennis. Grab an LGBT friend or friends, make some room on your schedule, read this book aloud together, and be prepared to laugh your gd heads off at the social climbing/grace falling exploits of one Belle Poitrine and her arch nemesis Maria Montezuma. That's what I did years ago w/ my friend Jon. (By the same author who wrote Auntie Mame.) --Aaron Fricke

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Jeanette Winterson, Pat Kavanagh, Peggy Reynolds, Deborah Warner & Susie Orbach

Jeanette Winterson, OBE (born 27 August 1959) is a British writer. In 2002, Winterson ended her 12-year relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds. Since then she has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner and therapist Susie Orbach. Her novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent.

Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960. She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. Intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six.

By the age of 16 Winterson had identified as a lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College, and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while reading for a degree in English at St Catherine's College, Oxford.

After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 1990. This in turn won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in Napoleonic Europe.

Winterson's subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook in 2002 opened at the Royal National Theatre, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields, east London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.


Jeanette Winterson is a British writer. In 2002, Winterson ended her 12year relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds. Since then she has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner and therapist Susie Orbach. Her novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent. She bought a terraced house in Spitalfields, east London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanette_Winterson

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson is a novel I read in college. It is about Henri, a soldier, who falls in love with Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian boatman, who lost her heart (literally) to a married noblewoman and wanders the world in search of it. When I say "lost," I mean physically ~ one of the best things about Winterson's writing is her words. I loved the language of the book, and I remember falling in love with Winterson's writing style (and it didn't hurt that her first name is the same as mine). Immediately after I read this book, I wrote quite a few poems about keeping one's heart safe in a box, then went out and bought a number of Winterson's other novels. If you haven't read anything by her, you're missing out. --J.M. Snyder

"Magical Realism" was coined for books like The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. Set in the Napoleonic Wars, it´s about a woman whose heart is literally stolen by another woman and she goes searching to reclaim it. Breathtaking. Like all the books on my Top 10 list, after I put this down I asked myself what the hell I was doing writing. Nothing I ever scratched out would ever compare to this. --Eric Arvin

Susie Orbach (born 1946) is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic.

Orbach was born in London in 1946, and was brought up in Chalk Farm, north London, the child of Jewish parents, British MP (Labour) Maurice Orbach and an American mother (who was a teacher). She won a scholarship to North London Collegiate School, and attended until she was 15.

With Luise Eichenbaum, Orbach created the Women’s Therapy Centre in 1976 and the Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, a training institute in New York, in 1981. She has been a consultant for The World Bank, the NHS and Unilever and was co-originator of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.

Orbach's relationship with Joseph Schwartz, the father of her two children, ended after more than 30 years. According to writer Jeanette Winterson, now her partner, Orbach "calls herself post-heterosexual".

Orbach has been a Visiting Scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics for ten years. She is currently chair of the Relational School in the UK. Orbach is a convener of Anybody, an organization that campaigns for body diversity. She is a co-founder and board member of Antidote, which works for emotional literacy. Orbach is also a co-founder of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility. She lectures and broadcasts extensively world-wide and has been profiled in numerous newspapers, such as The Guardian

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Orbach

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More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Rainbow Awards pre-party and 7th anniversary (Day 6)

November 2013 marks the 7th anniversary since I opened my first journal (and yes, I have an itch, but I will scratch it!), on LJ, and the 5th anniversary of the Rainbow Awards. So, of course I decided for a big bash party. 186 authors, all of them in the 2013 Rainbow Awards, have donated or an ebook, or a print book, and I will use them for a Treasure Hunt. Every day, for all November, I will post 6 excerpts (a random page of the book). No reference to title, or author, or publisher. You have to match it with the book ;-) comment on the blog, 1 comment for each matching (you can even try for all 6 books if you like, so 6 chances to win every day). Until the end I will not say which matching is right, so you will have ALL month to try. No limit on how many books you can win, the more you try the better chance you have to win. End of November, among the right matchings, I will draw the winners. So now? let the game start!

( The books are (Author - Title - Format of prize): )

Previous Post: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3917638.html

( Today excerpts are: )