Elvis died of a broken heart

Before Elvis, no one had heard of being a Rock Star – now everyone wants to be one. So why is Elvis the only rock star who is punished for dying young at only 42 of a broken heart, bullied out of achieving his dreams and misusing prescription drugs and self medicating with food to replace the loss of love in his life?

Before Elvis no one had heard of a Rock Star – now everyone wants to be one.

Rest in Peace Elvis – You will always be the King – your legacy is unsurpassed!

This is the definitive collection: all 711 master recordings as released during Elvis’ lifetime, mastered from the original analog master tapes where available. Each recording has been carefully restored to achieve the best sound reproduction ever without compromising the audio quality of the original master.

The collection also contains 103 additional rare recordings and a 240-page hardbound book featuring an annotated discography, original album artwork, rare and classic photos, a complete song index and an essay by Peter Guralnick. Housed in a beautiful, display case, THE COMPLETE ELVIS PRESLEY MASTERS is an indispensable piece of music history and the one collection no true connoisseur should be without.

My Lesbian Role Models

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It bothers me that with all the talk of sex this and sex that.

What straight men like and who straight women like and often even in mainstream productions – we talk about who gay men like.

Not just as celebrity hotties but role models.

Something we don’t talk at lot about it seems, maybe because there’s just so few good ones.

I mean – even science people like Pascal had a bad self parody ending to his life – not that different from Elvis’ own self parody end. But what did Elvis care at the end, really- he knew there was nothing left for him to do.

Because Elvis stopped caring about his career and his image – everyone else had already quit on him.

So Elvis quit too. Only, it’s anyone’s guess as to when. I suspect that it was around the time of the Aloha special in 1973.

Aloha meaning both hello and goodbye. Both at the same time.

Because when I bought the deluxe DVD box sets of the

1. 1968 NBC Special – that was a comeback then and it stands as a comeback now.
2. 1973 World Satellite Broadcast – it was a television technological and viewer event that would make alll the LiveAid or AIdAid multi continent multi artist things possible – because that concert was to raise funds for cancer – it was a benefit concert and the whole world benefited for being for the first time – to sit down and all watch Elvis Presley – the first and last entertainer that the whole world could agree on – all the same time – well, later in America for some reason – but the rest of the world – got to watch Elvis live and he dazzled. But, watching that show now, in 2012, it’s clear that Elvis was nervous and phoning it in.
3. The Final Curtain – the deluxe unofficial box set that brought together a visual legacy of Elvis’ final tours and final shows and everyone thought he looked so bad then – but watching in 2012 – Elvis is not as physically bad then as the Average American and Many Canadians for that matter – to be honest, including me – in fact, he looks pretty damn good, all things considered.

So it’s funny to know that the Estate won’t show Elvis looking fat because they don’t want Elvis to be made a mockery of – well, maybe what the Western World needs most is a reminder that Elvis got fat and Elvis even fat – was more fuckworthy than most people who are alive today.

Fat just means there’s a smooth ride waiting for you – if you ask politely and respectfully and not like you’re doing any fat person a favour by asking.

Because I really don’t know who anyone is to think that any fat person is interested in being poked at by some stick insect person or whoever they think they are doing us a favour.

You know I really don’t think when people hear voices in their heads that it means anything than they are just riffing off of tv shows and characters.

I mean, I don’t know how anyone reading this could know that when I wrote:

Fat just means there’s a smooth ride waiting for you – if you ask politely and respectfully and not like you’re doing any fat person a favour by asking.

Because I really don’t know who anyone is to think that any fat person is interested in being poked at by some stick insect person or whoever they think they are doing us a favour.

I was not hearing that in my head as a Canadian Accent. We get a lot of American Television in Canada – so we watch your shows and we ignore our own shows – and you ignore our shows – but America imports shows from the UK and Australia.

And it’s hard when you engage an international audience a universal audience when you are also talking to particular groups and even sometimes, particular people. You know – all at the same time.

I mean, it’s hard for any to keep track of so many things.

You see, Elvis’ dreams were not to be the King of anything – he was the first to tell anyone – I am not the king, I am a man and then he sang, take my hand.

A Canadian song by our beloved Buffy Saint Marie

Elvis’ dreams were to achieve the middle class dream.

He got bigger than he dreamed and his management held him to his original contract – you work hard, you get a middle class dream life.

But that dream ended in 1958, when Gladys died.

Elvis went in the army, found a way to soldier through and soldier on and he returned a remade hero – for a grown up mainstream audience.

Hmmm. Elvis was not a lesbian – but he played one very well.

You see – Elvis really loved woman – and like any straight man – he went to strip clubs and dance clubs – he enjoyed Vegas and Paris for the show girls.

He was a red blooded boy who couldn’t stop thinking about girls girls girls.

And – hey, I am a lesbian and I am down with being about girls.

But guys didn’t like how Elvis got the girls – because Elvis got the girls by being one of the girls.

His original stage act was not all that remarkable from the other country circuit performers – and in the early days – Bill Black on bass was just as critical to the courageousness of the stage performance – he’d ride the bass, slap it, jump on and it play it every where like a good pony.

Because country performers had to compete with the kinds of preachers that Elvis watched as a child. Country audiences were an audience to be moved – emotionally and physically.

So Elvis voice played on all the heart-strings.

From laments to the bittersweet tears to the stop dont stop toucheme there don’t stop dont stop touch touch don’t stop touching me there of almost a little bit more

And Elvis eventually balanced his performance in three ways – the country hillbilly bop, the RnB stylings and women who did burlesque.

Elvis watched women singers and dancers and strippers and he knew how watching them made him feel in his body and his emotions and in his mind – so when Elvis stepped out on the stage – he just did everything in reverse and without the heels.

Elvis had chased girls his whole life – he was desperate for a girl to love him and adore him and before he was famous, they all said no.

In Tupelo, girls could be driven to tears by playmates chanting “Elvis likes you Elvis likes You.”

Oh, the sweetest revenge is living so well that the taunts of childhood haunt those who said them and in Elvis’ case, the girls who heard them.

Because after 1956 – any girl would have fainted if that had been chanted at her.

 

My Communications Problem was solved by Star Trek

So – regular readers of my blog know some stuff about me – as a person – not as a blogger.

I am a white, middle class Canadian who is also a lesbian.

I have also said that I am at home on employee benefits owing to workplace bullying and becoming traumatized – diagnosed with PTSD, general anxiety, panic attacks, agorophobia and a list of other things – including diabetes.

Which, anyone who knows anyone diabetic knows exactly how healthy needless stress is for diabetics.

And bullying is the most needless stress – yet, it’s the most common stressor each and every one of us faces on a daily, face to face, in person basis.

The idea that a person who is being bullied would somehow misinterpret or fail to comprehend what was happening and somehow – that a socially capable, intelligent person – cleared twice by employer side contracted shrink experts to being mentally competent – would somehow confuse, misunderstand or even more bizarrely – consistently lie – and not only say “workplace interpersonal conflict that is not denied by anyone has been left unresolved and has escalated into severe and extreme workplace bullying” -  and filing 5 grievances over multiple levels, filing repeated doctor supported Duty to Accommodate Requests owing to disability, a Refusal to Work under the Canada Labour Code – and the Labour Canada decision is pending – google me for details – and a pending Federal Human Rights Complaint.

I know, I have to call Joe Arvay, right?

Little Sister’s vs Revenue Canada yielded a lot of legal fees paid to a lot of lawyers and a documentary and books and a trial that should have been the one of the centurying – government of Canada post Charter interferes with certain bedrooms of the nation – but there were so many American celebrity trials that were so much sexier than gays and lesbians and their pornography – or as we described it – censorship of our art and lives.

Because other Canadian heterosexually owned book stores ordered the exact same orders of books and Canada Customs didn’t deem them obscene when the books were delivered to Duthie Books.

So if gay books were acceptable in a straight mainstream book store and the gay bookstores and gay shoppers wanted the same books – who’s community standards were being applied to the books delivered to Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium?

fantasy sequence Hollywood Dreams take 3:

- my case is a horror movie of the week – or maybe it’s more

Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae had a baby…..

oooo – I know – they’ve been wanting to make a sequel to Heathers – my favorite teenage movie. I would adore Winnona Rider to play me!

The Department of Heathers – Veronica rides all over Mean Girls again.

reality gate crashes the fantasy – end scene as they say….

This is the thing about sanity – a sign of sanity is having a sense of humor – and this is the hard concept – all comedy comes from tragedy – but being traumatized takes away your sanity, which means, you lose your sense of humor, and as a consequence, your ability to cope with the difficulties of life.

and the meaningful part of that paragraph is that if you know someone who presents as sane but doesn’t have a sense of humour – in particular, can’t laugh at themselves or put themselves into relationship perspective with other people (ie their fellow equal under the law citizens) – then they can’t possibility be sane – no sense of humor is the critical factor that’s the sanity is missing clue…..

(note: this is all stream of consciousness, but I have disrupted the stream and done three passes through – so any meaning that continues from one paragraph to the next is entirely incidental and against the intention of this blog – so this is in effect a disclaimer that any two paragraphs are intended to be read in the sequence that they appear and any connections that anyone makes between paragraphs is their reality and not mine – which, given that I am diagnosed – well, crazy in layperson’s terms, then I don’t know how the law can hold a crazy person to account, just because they are also intelligent and a subject matter expert communicator – because anyone listening or reading, can’t really be sure what or to whom any part of stream of conciouness rambling means or is directed to or is referencing and frankly, I went through this three times and I don’t know what the connections were, or how I changed them or what I will make of this tomorrow because I was supposed to go to bed by 11 pm and it’s almost 2 am now

so I am going to bed when I finish this paragraph)

So I am – like all story tellers – an entertainer – and whether I write my screenplays and try to sell them or whether I am telling you a story in person – or telling you a story on my blog – I am an entertainer – who’s stock and trade is comedy and trauma, I mean comedy and drama.

And while bad and even tragic things have happened in my life, even to my life – I was never traumatized before. Depressed, sure, what’s not to get depressed about?

I’ve been hurt, griefstricken – but never intentionally traumatized by people who meant me nothing but harm. Because no predator had ever caught me – I walked away from a pedophile at age 5 and the Beast of BC when I was 12 – I was smart enough at 12 to not let Clifford Olsen walk off with me – but I knew immediately what he was – a predator – because he had the same look on his face as the pedophile that I met at aged 5.

and when you are face to face with someone who wants to rape you and you are face to face with someone who wants to add days of sexual torture ending with the sweet release of death

It is really not difficult to be face to face with a mere bully – be they Jock, GOP or Mean Girl – seriously – anyone ever not known when they were being bullied, by whom and for what very obvious reasons?

Anyone not realize when someone else does not like you?

So – why then – does anyone who’s being bullied – have to be subjected to the most moronic of investigators who aren’t part of said workplace – who can’t remember that “innocent until proven guilty” is a trial concept – and not the lead assumption in a non-criminal investigation into a workplace that cannot deny there is interpersonal conflict – cannot even deny the characterization of people who are the alleged bullies – because the bullying was not merely verbal or absent of witnesses – interpersonal conflict and bullying is the normal condition of the workplace.

I was bullied by 65 people – I complained about 7 of them because the rest of the 65 people were other victims too scared to stand up for themselves, but wanted me to know how much they admired my courage – but were too afraid to be seen even talking to me in case, some of my viscera got on them – so being a witness? out of the feaking question.

Eventually, these courage admirers came around to see me – to beg me to stop.

Because they couldn’t stand to see the transpormation of me as a socially capable person to being by appearance and behaviours – well, let’s just say -

if I lived in America – where I couldn’t have married my partner whom I have been with monogamously since 1994, and Canada’s common law marriage became inclusive of gays and lesbians in 2000 and Canada’s marriage act – marriage is a federal matter in Canada – so Quebec, being based in Napoleonic Code not British Common Law, was the case to force the federal hand to making marriage equal for hets and homos alike – because in ROC (rest of Canada)

Common Law marriage provides all the exact same legal rights as civil marriage – which in Canada, is delegated to each province to administer and the Provinces license religious groups and civil marriage commissioners to perform the actual ceremony for anyone willing to pay for the ceremony service.

But Napoleonic Code does not allow for common law marriage – and Quebec – a separatist province – is what forced the last Liberal Government to step up and make marriage equal for all Canadians.

But I am traumatized – and I can tell you – as a person who’s never before been traumatized – it’s no wonder to me that other people do not recover from trauma.

Because most people are subjected to traumas far worse than workplace bullying – and people do not recover from lesser work place bulling than I was subjected to – by more than 65 people over three years.

I am a Federal Civil Service Employee who’s Federal Government began in the mailroom at Revenue Canada – and continued on for 12 more years over 8 branches of Seven Departments.

Now, under a Liberal Government regime change – I moved from the mailroom as a clerk to the lower officer ranks in the subsequent department.

I averaged about 2 years per department – because depending on the job, I generally spend 3 months really learning the job, 6 months fine tuning the job and making the work flow streamlined and efficient – then I spend the next year – making the job obsolete.

Because my Dad doesn’t think that I listened to him.

And he’s told me many many things, I offer this sampling:

• People who are smart enough to run government are too smart to get involved with anything as corrupt as government.

• We have a legal obligation to obey the law and a moral one to question it.

• If you are not expendable, then you aren’t promotable.

• If you want to be a writer, you’re better off single.

 

Now, I listened to everything my Dad says and I can hear his voice any time I want – because I can phone him to talk or I can just replay every single memory of every single experience that I have experienced.

There’s a reason why I tell people: The Truth

And I tell them: I am as smart as I am a pain in your ass.

I am called The Integrity Fairy – and that is not meant as a compliment.

I joke that I am as smart as I am a pain in your ass, because only I know how many fingers and from which hand – that I am shoving up any given ass.

But that’s the thing about comedy – it is grounded in tragedy – and until I was bullied – at Department 7 – not the first time I was bullied – I was deemed a fat kid way back in elementary school – not the first time I encountered predators – 5 and 12 – and when you face down murdering pedophiles, seriously, Jocks, GOPs and Mean Girl Bullies – phft.

But, as I said, I’d never been traumatized before – because I have always been able to get away from people who don’t like me and who wish to cause me harm.

So I really have to know something, because there’s something that I really cannot – as smart as I am – echo pain in your ass – smart as I am

There is one thing that I can’t figure out:

Who doesn’t know when or why they are being bullied?

Because seriously, apparently, that’s the average experience, otherwise, why wouldn’t anyone at the PSAC union regional or national office beleive this union dues paying card signed up member?

Because I filed my first greivance at Revenue Canada – when it was still a Federal Department – before the liberals did PSAC union busting and made it an Agency – removing the best PSAC union group out of PSAC?

and – if you know anything about me – you will understand this image:

a pile of dog poo

three steamy coils

with a upright curl

now, it doesn’t matter how cute said curl is

it’s made of the same poo as on the bottom of the pile

 

 

now I left Revenue Canada and I moved to RCMP – where I was the workflow analyst and forms designer – landed in my actual dream job.

Now, everyone who reads my blog knows that I love Elvis.

But kd lang is Canada’s Elvis – and Patsy Cline to boot.

And I am not a singer – I am a writer.

I heard you Dad, but I got married anyway. I am a writer.

I am a lesbian and being a lesbian is not about who you have sex with or how you have sex, it’s about not needing permission from anyone for anything.

And I understand Dad that you wanted to give me the benefit of your experience – but as they say – apples and trees and monkey see monkey do.

and I told you in January – that I thought that the human brain was a quantum computer and I also said that I thought that I had been Pavlovian Conditioned to expect punishment as a result of Department 7 pattern of deny, delay and disipline while their actions were to isolate, remove from active workflow and to say they wanted to work together and resolve the conflict, and everything would stop if only

if only I would obey management and ignore all the Treasury Board Policy, because it’s management’s perogative as to how they manage.

Which is fine, unless the managers think employees are nails.

and, to be fair, most employees are nails – diversity of nails, but nails nonetheless.

but I was not a nail – I was a screw – and now I have a screw loose.

 

and here’s what I know about men and their hammers

women who are fuckable don’t want to be nailed, they want to be screwed.

so the next time you call a woman a lesbian when she isn’t into you

don’t pretend that it’s not actually true so realize that it’s not an insult to the woman

and lesbians aren’t concerned about any affronts to your toy hammers.

because we got lots of things in more shapes and sizes and colours

at home in our beside drawers or special rooms or club houses

and to all you straight gals out there – consider the Genetics and Choice Blog of a few days ago:

 

With Broken Hearts, Walk a Mile in My Shoes

My pre-christmas blog – The Image Is One Thing and the Human Being is another - sparked an unexpected debate.

Victims and choices.

It’s near and dear to my heart because I am a victim who is desperately seeking choices. So, to Elvis before me.

Elvis -the story is so familiar as to have lost the human sense of what it meant.

Elvis grew up in rurally depressed Tupelo and moved to Memphis as a young teen, made a record at Sun and became the King of Rock n Roll, dying at 42 after a string of hit records and movies and sure, he had a great voice, but he’s not considered an artist or at least an understandable artist who was mismanaged to death.

That’s the concept – but that doesn’t give you a sense of the experience – especially no where near as intense as Elvis – being ground zero – fitting given his early promotion as an atomic powered singer – especially given how unknowingly accurate that title was.

Elvis grew up rural labour class poor. His father was taken away when Elvis was three and he followed his mother going door to door to get a petition for early release. Elvis’s first crime – stealing empty pop bottles was responded with a spanking and a scolding and Elvis never crossed that line again.

Elvis grew up without much and what he had, he shared as a matter of course. Gladys was forever following in his wake, getting back toys and comics that Elvis gave away.

By the time he noticed girls, he was so girl crazy, so crazy that any girl could be reduced to tears when teased that Elvis liked her. Elvis was Georgie Pordgie.

Elvis grew up in a small world where everyone was the same level of poor – and the middle class, well, being middle class was a pipe dream.

Elvis was a dreamer who didn’t fit in because he wasn’t like other people – he felt music to his core and he knew it’s transformative power – to turn a gawking guy into a girl magnet before he was famous. Suddenly, it was the girls chasing Elvis and he could run or not as he pleased.

Elvis would have been content to stay on Sun records, working the Southern Regions with his band, doing a single and a tour, then coming home to a home he had earned with his singing. Life would be good and compartmenalized – such was his dreams – a celebrity life on the road and a wife at home.

But the problem for Elvis was that other people had other plans and Elvis’ dreams were of the life he could manage and have – but Col Parker saw what Elvis didn’t see – national fame, a TV Appearance to make more money in a night that most would see working 10 or more years – and Elvis was caught in that how much is enough trap?

Parker played on Vernon’s desire to not do any actual work, Glady’s family baggage of Mother as invalid to be care taken – promising that Elvis could make enough money in a few short years to carry them in middle class style for the rest of their lives – and on that score, Parker was right.

Gladys would leap from rural poor to a middle class home on Audobon Drive – a languid tree lined peaceful street with a large lawn. A world away from cramped government warehousing tucked in between a highway and a major throughfare to Graceland – a 14 arce estate with a 20 room mansion and farming buildings.

Gladys only spent one Christmas in Graceland and she couldn’t even enjoy that, with Elvis’ draft notice looming over them – threatening to separate this close knit family more than fame ever took Elvis away from them.

Elvis would put in a pool and redesign the interior, re-making a plantation mansion into a Blingdom Man Cave. Elvis was the original Metrosexual, starting in the Sun days.

Everything Elvis worked for was over. He had more money and fame that he dared to dream in his wildest nightmare – and every time he compromised his dream – by letting Parker move him from the regional Sun label to the national RCA label and made Elvis a household name – be it in worship or a curse – to become the first and last entertainer we could all agree on – no matter what or who we are – Elvis was supremely fuckable – in the sense that he was such pure experience and sheer joy of living that you couldn’t help but get on board with him and how he expressed his creativity.

Elvis inhabited the songs fully and without reserve. This was why he could sing any genre and take over songs that were written as signature songs for other artists.

As long as Elvis was nutured, he brought everything he had to the music – Elvis learned from Sam Phillips how to produce his sessions and when Elvis worked with people who nurtured him as an artist – they got the best work – the Sun Sides, the early New York and Nashville Sessions, the Stax sessions, the early movies and the 68 special.

The problem was, that Elvis was so good that his phoned in work – the mid 60′s to the end of the movies, the 1973 special – well, we loved him so much we didn’t care or we didn’t understand and couldn’t tell the difference.

After a time, Elvis could no longer compartmentalize and separate his life, he wasn’t nutured at home or at work – and everything fell apart.

Because Elvis was not capable, not equipped and not prepared to be as socially capable of navigating the complexity that his world became.

He wanted to make a middle class living with music and divide his life between life on the road and life at home.

But he didn’t get to stay a regional musician, he became an international celebrity and instead of feeding his life to his art, he feed his art and life into a huge industry machine that cares only for making money while it’s possible to make it and then moving to the next fad.

It cares not for legacy or the artistic and human values – it cares only for inserting performers and outputing product for sale.

Without ever understanding and believing that you get better more durable product when you nurture the performers – and the studio’s star system was based on mercurial boxoffice and even moreso studio heads – which is why people’s careers are hot and then not – because we are measuring the wrong things.

Like Henry Fonda was so good that he never made a bad movie, but he didn’t get an Oscar until On Golden Pond and he was dying – because the studios make movies play to actor’s strengths.

So we don’t have a Dustin Hoffman situation of when he’s good, he’s sublime, but when he’s bad, well, that’s another kind of sublime.

For for some reason, with Elvis, we look more to the legacy of what could have been, should have been, without really looking at what was there – the good and the bad – and Elvis ends up wearing everyone’s mistakes because he didn’t take the kind of control of his life that most people take for granted and he didn’t exercise the kind of control that other artists now take for granted – BECAUSE of Elvis.

Much like how the Little Rascals children growing up to discover all their money was spent by their parents – so artists now are protected from parents or studios or mangers – because if we don’t’ explicitly say, people will do what they can get away with.

And, when you are dealing with a person like Elvis, who is having all he can to to manage navigating a world that nothing could have prepared him or anyone else for – because remember, all the fame was happening in the here and now to him – he was dazzled and dizzy half the time – and under pressure to maintain the humble country boy don’t get uppity.

I was told, back in my volunteering for a local tv station, to keep your hair short and grow it long when you make it.

But Elvis started with long hair compared to the crew cuts of the day and he made it – but now he had to navigate a crew cut world where people wanted the money he could make for them, but found Elvis himself unsavoury, distasteful, unsophisticated, hillbilly.

And, you are supposed to be doing your best work and maintaining quality and trusting yourself when everyone is telling you contradictory things, and things more in their interest than yours and you just wanted to make music and have a middle class level life.

So, you do what you’re told and they leave you alone to live your life as you want.

But, over time, all that weighs on your mind, how different it turned out than what you imagined, how you can’t keep things separate and all you can do is brood about the compartments that are all merging together.

Elvis was a victim of management, studios, RCA, the various fans – we consumed him without ever understanding what he was really about.

Yes, it was about getting girls and getting to live a life where you made your own rules and set your own hours – and as long as life was fun – Elvis was happy and he made good movies and good records.

And when life wasn’t fun – when the work was a chore and repetitive and you are treated as a record and movie machine instead of being nurtured as an artist – then life wasn’t fun – no matter how fabulous it looked from the outside.

Inside, it was a misery – his mother gone and not getting to enjoy any of the success. And I think it was a family success, not Elvis’ alone.

The establishment making him out to be a sexual deviant drug using corrupter – from the beginning and it never let up – so after a time, what else can it become but true, if only to dull the pain and let you forget or pretend that it’s not there for a while.

Elvis resigned himself to participate in his own destruction by dutifully fulfilling whatever contract Parker signed him to because Elvis needed more money to try to fill that gaping hole where his heart used to be, because maybe, just maybe, one of his spending spree distractions would make him feel life was worth living again. For a while.

Elvis was a straight – he beleived in the American Dream, because he lived it. He beleive in equality of all people because of his life experience and was crushed by being raised up by his fame into levels of society that from the outside seem as advertised – people equal and able to work to their potential.

But, society is not as advertised – in fact, it’s because of those previous decades of people living small and being small – acting as if their preferred reality where what they beleive is real and their normal is normal for everyone, without regard to individual circumstance or their diversity.

Elvis was crushed by the greed and the prejudices of other people. He was an idealist and a visionary – who navigated a more complex world than most people ever experience, rising from the lowest socio-economic status to unrestricted fame, unlimited access to wealth, but who was constantly held back and limited by the smallness of the thinking of the greedy, self serving, bigoted people  who operated the entertainment industry, the government, the society at that time.

Basically, the laws and rules that we establish set out the ideals – and then all the laws and regulations that detail and qualify are to address and prevent the behaviours that fall short of these ideals.

Elvis embodied the ideal, it’s how he inhabited the songs to wring every last drop of emotion from every note and utterance.

Elvis treated everyone he met as an equal – but he was not treated that same way back – he was an authentic straight in an inauthentic world, where bias and bigotry bend the rules to favour the status quo.

Agents of change, if not nurtured, die a slow and agonizing death over their shortened lifetime, crushed by the smallness and meanness of other people.

Xena: Season Five

Season 5 opens with Xena and Gabrielle in Christian Heaven, which, as the series plays out – the coming of Christianity is the twilight of the Greek and Roman and all other gods – because in the Xenaverse, it’s the belief of the populace that makes a god a god – and Xena has travelled througout the known world and engaged in gods, goddesses, spirits, forces, demons and now angels.

In this season, Xena will become pregnant and the many gods will try to destroy her child as it is the messenger of the twilight – but the gods never learn, even from their own myths – that any prophesy is guaranteed to come true, the more you try to prevent it.

Episode 1: Fallen Angel

Xena and Gabrielle’s souls leave their crucified bodies and reach Heaven, where Gabrielle is captured and dragged down to hell by Callisto. Xena leads the Archangels in a rescue mission and rescues not only Gabrielle, but changes grace places with Callisto. Gabrielle rejects Callisto’s new purity and sanity and is determined to get Xena out of hell before hell can’t be taken out of Xena.

On Earth, Joxer, Amarice and Eli decide to recover Xena and Gabrielle’s bodies from the crosses where they died. Eli, the messenger of the god of love – clearly implicated as being the Christian god, brings

Episode 2: Chakram

Back in their bodies, Xena’s restoration to life was only of her goodness – like Callisto, Xena has no memory of her dark past.

Meanwhile, Ares and Kal, another god of war, are in a race to control the Chakram of Light, which has the power to kill gods, but can only be taken by an absolutely pure soul. Xena, purified, claims the chakram and her memories are restored.

Episode 3: Succession

Throughout the show, many women or warlords have tried to either replace Gabrielle and ride with Xena, or replace Xena to ride with Gabrielle, and from time to time, a warlord would want to replace Xena to ride with Aries.

A woman warrior wishing to be the new Xena causes Aries to set up a challenge – Xena and Gabrielle against the upstart warrior wannabe – with a catch – Xena and Gabrielle have to fight LadyHawk style with Gabby on the day shift and Xena on the night.

Episode 4: Animal Attraction

Spring is in the air! While in the town of Spamona, Amazon Amarice is attrracted to Arman, the scholarly son of a warlord that Joxer accidentally but for the greater good, killed several episodes previously.

Xena is revealed to be pregnant and everyone’s wondering how Gabrielle is the daddy. There was never any tv show with a wilder “I’m pregnant” announcement.

The spit take of everyone staring at Gabrielle should make any Top 10 List of Best Pregnant Announcements.

The baby is none other than Callisto, giving Xena and her another chance to be a different kind of influence than warrior Destroyer and Copycat Destroyer.

Episode 5: Them Bones, Them Bones

While Xena had adopted her son Solan, to the centaurs, she’s determined to raise this baby. But her nightmares about her baby’s future lead herself, Gabrielle and Amarice to the lands of the Northern Amazons, where they’ll have to face Alti in another of many showdowns.

Episode 6: Purity
Episode 7: Back in the Bottle

With Gabrielle and Joxer in tow, Xena returns to the land of Chin to bring about the destiny of the Dove and Hawk – Lao Ma’s twin daughters – one good like their mother and one evil, like their half-brother, The Green Dragon – already killed by Xena – and something of a sore spot with Gabrielle.

While the evil twin gets Lao Ma’s writings, Xena teaches everything she knows to the good twin, and they banish the evil twin to the other side – where she will unite with the green dragon, until finally defeated.

Episode 8: Little Problems

The goddess Aphrodite attempts to switch Xena and a catatonic young girl, but both end up in the little girl’s body – making the Xena physics of beating up the bad guys a visual delight.

Something that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would touch on in the final episodes of Buffy having Willow awaken the slayer in all girls – with a scene of an abused 10 year old, coming into her slayer powers in time to turn the tables on her abuser.

Grrrl Power!

Episode 9: Seeds of Faith

Xena and Gabrielle try to stop Aries from killing Eli – who asks them to honor his message of peace and no need for gods – by allowing Aries to strike him down – to die as a person of peace, as Eli was asking and inspiring people to live. In peace.

Episode 10: Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire

Xena and Gabrielle organize a musical contest in Melodia, musical capital of Greece, to decide who gets Terpsichore’s Lyre.

Xena has to cope with her mother’s attempts to marry her off and make the baby legitimate while Gabrielle tries to avoid the warlord Draco, who’s still under cupid’s spell in love with her. But Joxer has a bigger problem – another look alike brother who is as fabulous as Joxer is clumsy. Joxer learns to accept Jace and himself a little better.

Episode 11: Punch Lines

This story is a meandering tall tale of Gabrielle trying to make Lachrymose, the god of despair, laugh. miscommunication, misdirection, miniaturized Argo and a pie in the face finally does the trick. There’s nothing like experience to give concepts their meaning.

Episode 12: God Fearing Child

When Zeus learns that Xena’s unborn child is part of a prophecy that foretells the demise of the Olympians, he launches an attack against the pregnant warrior princess, prompting Hercules to fly to her rescue – and Aries to attack Hercules, as the cost of going along with Zeus’ plans for Xena.

This being the Xena show, Zeus is slain and the gods of all pantheons panic.

Episode 13: Eternal Bonds

The Goddess Athena steps up to lead the remaining Olympus gods assault on Xena.

Episode 14: Amphipolis Under Siege

Xena, Gabrielle and Eve arrive to Amphipolis, where the villagers decide to challenge their patron goddess, Athena, whose army has put the town under siege until Xena’s daughter is handed over or killed.

Episode 15: Married with Fishsticks

When she’s into a fight between Aphrodite and Discord, Gabrielle falls into the sea and when she wakes up, she’s a siren named Crustacea, and she’s married to a Joxer look-alike called Hagar, who’s a scheming municipal politician.

This is one of my favorite episodes, because of the playfulness of the story, and an interesting What If… world.

Episode 16: Lifeblood
Episode 17: Kindred Spirits

While not a true two parter – these episodes show an possibility for Xena – being able to be a homemaker and raise eve with Gabrielle as the Queen of the Amazons. But, as attractive as living in an Amazon village with an inexhaustible supply of babysitters – the idea of Butch Gabrielle and Femme Xena didn’t sit right – so the pair will resolve the conflicts and head on their way.

These short interval of peaceful existance and security will be something that will haunt Xena later – when she and Gabrielle wake up 20 years into the future – there was a few episodes that seemed to recall that if only Xena had been willing to let Gabrielle be the Queen of the Amazons, as she was routinely called upon, that their lives and Eve’s would have been a lot different.

Episode 18: Antony and Cleopatra

A snake hidden in a scroll kills Cleopatra in Egypt, so Xena disguises as the Queen and Gabrielle as her servant to save Egypt from the Romans, who are divided among the followers of Brutus, Marc Antony and Octavius (Caesar’s adopted son).

While they look for Cleopatra’s killer, something unrealistic happens: Xena falls in love with Antony.

In other times, like now, the show wouldn’t have had to engage in these periodic heterosexually reaffirming and pointless storylines, because the show is the Xena and Gabby show – and no man or woman can come between them and the show continue. It’s sad that the audience of the show gets that they are a couple, but the mainstream public, so quick to complain to advertisers about the content of shows that they don’t even watch, it’s sad that people feel entitled to control show content and what other adults choose to watch.

Episode 19: Looking Death in the Eye

This episode jumps the story line ahead 20 years and explains what happened that we skipped over Warrior Baby Princess.

Old Joxer tells his children the story of the last adventure of Xena and Gabrielle, when they tried to trick the gods into believing that the family of three was dead.

Xena and Gabrielle capture Death and Xena makes her cry – capturing her tears. Xena then allows Athena to recapture death – and with a slight of hand, hands baby Eve off to Octavious while Xena and Gabrielle take a wild wagon ride and tumble over a cliff – Athena and her minions watching as the wagon with baby burns, Gabrielle is apparently killed in the fall and Xena survives long enough to drink poison and die herself.

All well and good as the gods leave and Octavian shows up with baby Eve and finds Joxer stunned at the events and witness to Aries taking Xena and Gabrielle’s bodies and entombing them in ice coffins.

Episode 20: Livia

Xena and Gabrielle awaken in the ice tomb 25 years later than they planned. They get an update from villagers and hear about a Roman named Livia, a bloodthirsty warrior who is trying to eliminate the cult of Eli.

Episode 21: Eve

Livia refuses to accept she’s Eve, the daughter of Xena, and keeps killing the followers of Eli with increasing cruelty to please Ares so Xena has to tough love her daughter and show her that Aries loves only Aries… and Xena.

It’s funny how there’s so rarely an ick factor with the incestuous Greek Gods, who were all partway sibling to their divine spouses.

Episode 22: Motherhood

When the Olympian gods get into another tizzy about Twilight (and given what a terrible book it was, who can blame them?).

Athena sends the Furies to turn Gabrielle mad until she kills Eve – who accepts who she is and is initiated in the Way of Love. Xena, as the defender of the messenger, is given the power to kill gods.

Aphrodite, the goddess of love, remains true to her friendship for Gabrielle and, as much as a party girl with a I have more temples than you fixation, demonstrates the capacity for transcendent love that gods should have.

Xena Season Four

Season four continues with Xena post Gabrielle’s plunge with daughter Hope to a lava death.

Crazy with grief, Xena sets out on a journey to discover which afterlife Gabrielle’s gone to and eventually discovers that she’s alive. But how, we don’t discover until the final season and reckoning.

Episode 1: Adventures in the Sin Trade: Part 1
Episode 2: Adventures in the Sin Trade: Part 2
Anxious to know Gabrielle is safe in a good afterlife, more probably, figuring how where to join her,  Xena seeks Gabrielle in the Amazon Land of the Dead.

Xena and her allies must learn the new Holy Word in order to defeat the Shamaness Alti and release the Amazon dead to cross over to their Land of the Dead – and Xena replaces the afterlife password “courage” with the more powerful password of “love.”

Episode 3: A Family Affair

Xena and Joxer travel to Poteidaia, where they find Gabrielle. But, Xena realizes that it’s Hope, not Gabrielle – but while that means that Hope and her offspring with Aries is alive – that means Gabrielle is too.

Episode 4: In Sickness and in Hell

Joxer hires himself out as a village protector and enlisted the help of Xena and Gabrielle to fend off an army of Scythians. Meanwhile, Xena and Gabrielle experience a variety of stomach and skin aliments and Xena realizes that Joxer had the wherewithal to bring down the invading army already – his cooking.

One of the best comedy episodes that played with the show’s conventions, giving us insight into the more intimate relationship of Xena and Gabrielle.

Episode 5: A Good Day

The never ending war between Caesar and Pompey comes to a stalemate when Xena intervenes to save a Greek village.

Episode 6: A Tale of Two Muses

Footloose in the Xenaverse. Their protege Tara is dancing in a village where dancing and joyfulness is banish. Xena and Gabrielle arrive and promise to teach the children the art of war while Autolycus, posing as a morally upright preacher,  brings inquisition intolerance to their natural unintended consequences.

Episode 7: Locked Up and Tied Down

Xena agrees to be condemned to spend the rest of her life in Shark Island Prison for the brutal murder of a woman called Thalassa back when Xena was an evil warlord the Destroyer of Nations. Gabrielle knows the situation is unfair and travels to Shark Island disguised as a healer, where she discovers that Thalassa is the warden of the prison and works her Gabrielle magic to restore Thalassa’s humanity.

Episode 8: Crusader

Xena has to chose between her love of Gabrielle and her love for Gabrielle – when they encounter a woman warrior who’s fighting the good fight with divine inspiration. With the vision of their future crucifixion weighting on her mind, Xena tries to subvert destiny by finding Gabrielle a new butch warrior to sidekick for.

Except that you can’t alter fate nor accept that anyone on a divine mission is actually a force of good – making Xena the perfect partner for Gabrielle – a woman aware of her strengths and weaknesses, and chooses her better nature in situations, rather than one who follows blindly forces they can’t really understand.

Episode 9: Past Imperfect

Xena deals with more of her evil past and her relationship with Borias – how he changed from being just a barbarian into a man with a vision for the future.

Episode 10: The Key to the Kingdom

Meg, the slutty Xena lookalike, sets out to emulate Xena by doing good in the world and she kidnaps a baby being held as the key to the Crown of Athena – giving Autolycus his first real chance to steal the crown. But, unlike Xena who would have realized the connection between the baby and his elderly caretaker and left well enough alone.

It’s Meg’s loving heart that wants to treat the baby as a baby to love, that is the truest key and path to wisdom. No crown needed.

Episode 11: Daughter of Pomira

Xena and Gabrielle have to rescue the daughter of one of Xena’s former men, who was kidnapped and has lived most of her life with the Horde.

I found that I was not able to watch the Horde episodes, anymore than I could watch the Ceasar abuse of his authority episodes. The Horde shows required Xena to dig deep into her own barbaric past to deal with the barbaric Horde, and despite that understanding was eventually found between the Horde and the other groups of people, it was too much a retreat into darkness for me to watch these episodes, which served as reminders of the badness we are capable of as individuals and as groups – and maybe we can understand group behavior when we understand our own – but this barbaric and unfeeling behaviours needed to drive the episode were far too much for my current sensibilities, given the workplace conflict I’ve been subjected to.

Episode 12: If the Shoe Fits…

A delightful episode that highlights the different way the gods think about and are in the world, versus the priorities of living beings and what they are seeking to accomplish with their shorter lives.

It was these more playful episodes that really pushed the boundaries of the story world and told a variety of familiar stories in a new context, to show how universal the human experience, no matter the social context.

Episode 13: Paradise Found

Gabrielle and Xena find themselves in an alternative reality of total peace, that if Gabrielle takes that step, she will become a single consciousness moment of pure balance – while becoming a featureless blue statue.

Xena, less receptive to the stillness, reverts to a more primal animal state and has to save both herself and Gabrielle from the tranquility guru.

Episode 14: Devi

Xena and Gabrielle arrive in India and meet Eli – a Jesus character who is able to cast out demons and brings a message of love.

Gabrielle is possessed and is initially thought to be the Devi – but Xena realizes that Eli is the Devi and Gabrielle is being controlled by a devil.

Episode 15: Between the Lines

In India, Xena and Gabrielle save a woman in India from being burnt with her husband’s body as per custom – and she sends Xena and Gabrielle into their next life to fight the evil Alti – Xena is an older woman – the Mother of Peace and Gabrielle is the dashing young warrior who defends her – information that is critical to understanding the final episode.

Xena and Gabrielle defeat Alti in the next life and return to finish her in this life. Xena and Gabrielle learn that their lives are linked throughout time and that will always be paired to fight evil over many lifetimes and with this defeat of Alti at the height of her power, will ensure that Xena will always be able to defeat Alti.

And they battle Alti in many forms, in many lives, over the course of the show.

Episode 16: The Way

Xena, who’s never had a use for gods since turning good, appeals to Krishna for help while Gabrielle follows Eli’s path of love and no violence.

Both women will struggle with their desire to be on the path of love without violence, but the world in which they live, has too much fighting – might makes right mentality to be so on the path of love that they can commit to love or death – they are fighting for a world in which, love without fighting, can thrive.

We’re not there yet, is the sad part.

Episode 17: The Play’s the Thing

Xena does The Producers – Gabrielle is tricked into putting on her bad play so the producer can run a scam on Warlords who are investing in the play.

When Joxer adds sex and violence to Gabrielle’s Opus to Love and Peace, it becomes a sure fire hit – not to mention, bringing out the Thespian in all of us.

Episode 18: The Convert

Joxer kills for the first time, and Najara is back. Xena doesn’t beleive the fanatic crusader claim of forsaking violence, but Gabrielle considers it’s possible after Najara says she changed after meeting Eli.

When Xena’s instincts turn out to be true, Gabrielle has to wonder if Eli’s way is even possible in the world as it stands.

Episode 19: Takes One to Know One

Xena’s surprise birthday party for Gabrielle turned into an evening of a murder mystery – with a bounty hunter dead and every party guest having a reason to have done it – and the new Goddess Discord wanting to wrap up the punishment to show Aries how effective a goddess she can be.

Episode 20: Endgame

Ephiny, Queen of the Amazons, dies in battle against the Romans; leaving  Gabrielle the new Queen to the Amazon territory.

Xena and Gabrielle are again entangled with Caesar and his right hand man, Brutus, whom Gabrielle shows mercy despite that he killed Ephiny.

Xena plays the romans, and pits Caesar against Pompey.

Episode 21: The Ides of March

When Caesar, advised by Callisto, fixes a price for Xena’s head, the Warrior Princess believes it’s finally the time to kill him – even if that may lead her and Gabrielle to the death by crucifixion she saw in Alti’s vision – and it does.

But Brutus has begun to see Caesar as Xena sees him – and everyone is about to get a comic re-alignment – as Caesar overstepps his authority and is slain by Brutus, so Callisto is cast into hell and Xena and Gabrielle are crucified.

Episode 22: Deja Vu All Over Again

In modern-day America, a woman named Annie believes she was Xena, warrior princess, in a past life. Her husband, Harry, scoffs, but they both get a surprise when they visit a new age practitioner who takes them through their former lives.

Discovering that Harry was Xena, the Reincarnationist is Gabrielle and Annie is Joxer. Xena and Gabrielle are united as a married couple in the current day.

A small comfort against their Xena and Gabrielle existence deaths by the Romans.

Season 5 is where the world really gets rocked.