The Out 100 Awards

Friday night I attended the Out 100 Awards at Gotham Hall. It was a fancy-schmamcy shindig populated by pop stars, publishing honchos, pouty models, glamazon drag queens, and a veritable who's who of the gay glitterati. I spent most of the evening in the company of handsome Robert Cameron (VP of Levi's) and activist/radio host Michelangelo Signorile, we had a blast together. There were several musical performances over the evening - Nikki Costa rocked with house with her Janis Joplin-meets-James Brown act, but the absolute highlight of the night was the very first performance of the reunited Labelle in 33 years.ABOVE: How amazing does Nona Hendryx look? She's 64! She's openly bi, you know.ABOVE: Cheyenne Jackson accepts his award.

I'll have video of the Labelle's first number up a bit later - Patti got quite verklempt at singing with her old bandmates for the first time in so long. For the last number, she asked for three volunteers to come up and perform Lady Marmelade. One of the volunteers was actor Wilson Cruz and he fucking stole the show, seriously everybody thought he'd been planted, he was that good. I ran into Wilson at the rally on Saturday and he was still on a complete high, but denied that it had been staged. Below is a slideshow of the evening - I got some amazing shots. Go here for full-screen versions of the photos plus captions.

UPDATE: Here's the video. I was right under the speakers so the sound is lousy, but after the song ends there's a couple of minutes of applause and you can see how moved they were by their reception. Later in the set, they spoke passionately about marriage equality. I'll try and find a clip of that.