Out today is Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Musicals, which is described in a press release as follows:

"Warner Bros. continues to entertain the world with films passionately produced, selectively acquired, carefully preserved and impeccably curated for both the casual and ultimate movie lover to enjoy forever. Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Musicals will be released February 12 and will include films such as Singin' in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz and many more."

Talk about a killer collection! The full list is:

With thanks to Kevin: Today would've been Divine's 67th birthday.

Image from here

Twenty-four years ago today, Divine died of cardiomegaly in L.A. while about to film a guest spot on Married With Children, and in the midst of what promised to be his breakthrough into mainstream cinema. It happened when I was in college and pre-Internet, so I had no clue until I came into work a few days later and my co-worker said, "Sorry about your friend Divine," very gingerly. I could not believe her, so I went home that night and searched the recycling pile in my dorm to find the obituary. Still hard to believe he died so young and I never got to see him perform live.

Via Modern Tonic: What a great gift for Matthew—a book of Divine's personal postcards!

Harris Glen Milstead, aka Divine, would have turned 66 today. What an unforgettable film presence, and a pop singer who approached his craft with a definite punk sensibility. I remember loving Divine from Pink Flamingos on VHS rented at our local video store—there is a sentence filled with other dead things!—and rented as many John Waters films as possible before I hit college.

As of midnight tonight, it will be exactly five years since my first post. It's hard to imagine it's been that long, and a lot's changed—the tone and subject matter are different, how often I post, my limits (no nudity in a couple of years due to ad constraints). I've devoted a crazy amount of time and money and energy to this blog for a very small financial return (you couldn't guess low enough), but it's always rewarding to have this forum with which to express myself, keep my writing ability fluid, perhaps influence a couple of people here and there, share obsessions with strangers (in both senses of the word) and learn new things.

Take That's Howard...can you believe this happened onstage at a pop concert?

Here are some of the posts that were most important to Boy Culture's history. For the uninitiated, some of the oldest ones refer to Boy Culture, the movie made of my novel; I started the blog at the time Boy Culture was being filmed as a way to keep people informed of the progress...and it all snowballed from there.

Subtle

Some of these posts are milestones when it comes to the hits they provided but most are filled with original writing and/or photography and video and are just the posts of which I'm proudest. I hope you'll take some time to click on them and send their links around to others—and some time is what you'll need...

MY ART

Boy-crazy

FROM BOY TO MAN: BC B.C. (2007): The entire history of my novella, novel and movie Boy Culture; might be my ultimate post.

From '07, one of my faves. Old iPhones were better because they were worse.

"Your pictures suck" (2008): An art critic attacks me, but not without sustaining some hits in return.

GUYDAR (since at least January 17, 2008) & ENDS OF THE WORLD (since at least January 13, 2008): Attractive men of the world—I got your backs. Your fronts, too.

i-i-i (phone)

TriBeCa is for Boy lovers...

BOY ON FILM (2006): An account of the NYC launch party for Boy Culture as it played the TriBeCa Film Fest.

I was left "Reeling" by the experience

FRIENDS AND "FAMILY" (2006): The movie version of Boy Culture hits Chicago.

RAPT PUPIL (2006): The final night of Outfest with Boy Culture; I was fat but on the other hand got to meet Bryan Singer.

Let's call it a draw

DRAWN TOGETHER (2008): How my desire to draw related to my secret desire. One of my absolute favorite posts.

ME

Death of the party—Jeff in high school, already halfway through his life

BURNING MAN (2007): Tribute to my late high school friend and first romance.

I had the Fever for Jon-Erik Hexum

AN OBSESSION IS BORN (2009): One of my best posts about my obsession with...obsession.

Death becomes here

ILLINOIS DEATH TRIP (2007): Ruminations on death while revisiting a past home, and the past.

Life is short and meaningful

PASSING BY (2008): Mourning the loss of a person I only met once.

I was given the red-carpet treatment

HAVEN'T WE MET? (2010): Celebrating my time with someone I've only met once—Madonna.

Two nights ago, I went alone to a screening of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. I don't mind doing things alone, but two nights in a row? After the headache-inducing Holmes, and like a jealous, Watson-less Holmes, I had a date with myself for A John Waters Christmas at the B.B. Blues Club and Grill on West 42nd here in Manhattan, just a few blocks from where I live and an even fewer from where I work. This kind of thing would have been unimaginably posh-sounding to me back when I was a teen in Flushing, Michigan, discovering Waters's films on VHS and feeling like I was the only person in the state who "got" them.

Fun as it might have been, it was still going alone to an event three days before the end of my tenure as a 40-year-old. (Half empty v. half full.)